David Greig's Holed Theatre: Globalization, Ethics and the Spectator

by Verónica Rodríguez

Overview

With a Foreword by Dan Rebellato, this book offers up a detailed exploration of Scottish playwright David Greig’s work with particular attention to globalization, ethics, and the spectator. It makes the argument that Greig’s theatre works by undoing, cracking, or breaking apart myriad elements to reveal the holed, porous nature of all things. Starting with a discussion of Greig’s engagement with shamanism and arguing for holed theatre as a response to globalization, for Greig’s works’ politics of aesthethics, and for the holed spectator as part of an affective ecology of transfers, this book discusses some of Greig’s most representative political theatre from Europe (1994) to The Events (2013), concluding with an exploration of Greig’s theatre’s world-forming quality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030061821
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	02/09/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	631 KB

About the Author

Verónica Rodríguez is Visiting Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University and Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. She is a member of 'British Theatre in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis, Affect, Community', a four-year research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and by FEDER (European Union) (FFI2016-75443).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: A Shamanic Semionaut.- 2. Holed Theatre as Response to Globalization.- 3. From Ethics to the Politics of Aesthethics.- 4. Affect and the Holed Spectator: Ecology of Transfers.- 5. Europe: Globalization’s Inferiors.- 6. The Architect: Blowing Up Architectures of Power.- 7. The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union: “All this Fucking Beautiful Stuff”.- 8. San Diego: Stitching up the Globe.- 9. The American Pilot: A Precarious Restoration to ‘the Real’.- 10. Damascus: Trouma.- 11. Fragile: Sharing Doing and Spatial Transcorporeality.- 12. The Events: Confounding Spacecraft – Here.- 13. Conclusion: World-Forming Theatre.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“David Greig’s Holed Theatre: Globalization, Ethics and the Spectator is a creative and theoretically nuanced study of Greig’s drama from Europe to The Events. Identifying Greig as a “shamanic semionaut”, Rodríguez weaves an intricate and compelling analysis of the porous, relational nature of his theatre that meshes its aesthetic, ethical and political dimensions. An illuminating book guided by a passion for its subject and opening fresh perspectives on Greig’s multifaceted work.” (Clare Wallace, Charles University, Czech Republic)

“This is an important book that offers new ways of thinking and new vocabularies for approaching Greig’s rich and often puzzling body of work. Rodríguez methodically and meticulously investigates how Greig’s “holed theatre” momentarily and through contradictions might critique but also offer hope on the state of our world.” (Marilena Zaroulia, University of Winchester, UK)

“This book offers a reading of Greig’s work that has been indicated in previous accounts, but which has, up to this point, not received the detailed study it deserves. The theoretical framework is clearly delineated, the individual chapters rest on very careful readings of specific texts and performances, and Rodríguez is commendably clear on the links between the texts and performances, the theoretical framework she has established, and the wider world in which Greig’s work operates. This is an important contribution to the study of Greig’s work.” (David Pattie, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, University of Birmingham, UK)