This Distracted Globe
Attending to Distraction in Shakespeare's Theatre

Draws together anecdotal, theoretical and archival material to consider playing and playgoing at the Globe through the lens of distraction.

Jennifer J. Edwards (Author)

9781108969901, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 May 2023

75 pages
17.8 x 12.6 x 0.5 cm, 0.09 kg

This Element attends to attention drawn away. That the Globe is a 'distracted' space is a sentiment common to both Hamlet's original audience and attendees at the reconstructed theatre on London's Bankside. But what role does distraction play in this modern performance space? What do attitudes to 'distraction' reveal about how this theatre space asks and invites us to pay attention? Drawing on scholarly research, artist experience, and audience behaviour, This Distracted Globe considers the disruptive, affective, phenomenological, and generative potential of distraction in contemporary performance at the Globe.

Introduction
1. Distracted Trajectories: Tracing the Detour
2. Attending to Distraction: Feeling Faint
3. Our Distracted Globe: Playing in a Pandemic
Coda
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]