Staging Technology: Medium, Machinery, and Modern Drama

Staging Technology explores the relationship between theater production and technology, examining how it influences the choice of subject matter for staged representation and how it shapes the way we think about the interrelationship between theater practice, performance, narrative drama, and text.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 22 September 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Staging Technology delves into the intricate relationship between performance works and the exploration of fraught human-machine interfaces. By examining a diverse range of performance pieces, from Jean Cocteau's ballet The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party (1921) to Julie Taymor's monumental production of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark (2010) and Mexican playwright Isaac Gomez's La Ruta (2018), the book seeks to unravel the visible aspects that emerge when we engage with plays, operas, and musicals that revolve around these complex interactions. It poses profound questions about the role of technology in narrative drama, exploring how it functions as an element of ideology and power. Furthermore, Staging Technology examines the boundaries of the human and explores the ways in which theatrical production sheds light on these limitations. By bridging the gap between technical practices of theatre production and critical, theoretical approaches to interpreting drama, the book offers a comprehensive examination of the ways in which dramatic theatres' technologies are shaped by larger historical, ideological, and economic forces. At the same time, it delves into how these technologies have influenced the choice of subject matter for staged representation by 20th and 21st-century playwrights, composers, and librettists.

Examining performance works from the modernist and post-modern European and American canon of drama, opera, and performance art, including works by Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, Sophie Treadwell, Harold Pinter, Tristan Tzara, Jean Cocteau, Arthur Miller, Robert Pinsky, John Adams, and Alice Goodman, Staging Technology offers a transformative perspective on the interrelationship between theatre practice, performance, narrative drama, and text. In this comprehensive synthesis, Craig N. Owens draws upon approaches to interpretation and practice from various fields, providing insightful insights into overarching ways of making meaning that are illustrated through focused and innovative readings of individual works for the dramatic stage.

Staging Technology provides a fresh and transformative lens through which to understand the complexities of performance and the profound impact of technology on narrative drama. It is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and practitioners alike, offering a comprehensive exploration of the ways in which theatre production shapes our understanding of the world and the human experience.

Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350196704