Being an audience participant can be a confusing and contradictory experience. When a performance requires us to do things, we are put in the situation of being both actor and spectator, of being part of the work of art while also being the audience who receives it, and of being both perceiving subject and aesthetic object. This book examines these contradictions – and many others – as they appear by accident and by design in increasingly popular forms of interactive, immersive, and participatory performance in theatre and live art.
Borrowing concepts from cognitive philosophy and bringing them into a conversation with critical theory, Gareth White sharply examines meaning as a process that happens to us as we are engaged in the problems and negotiations of a participatory performance.
This study will be of great interest to scholars and students of theatre and performance, intermedial arts and games studies, and to practising artists.
Borrowing concepts from cognitive philosophy and bringing them into a conversation with critical theory, Gareth White sharply examines meaning as a process that happens to us as we are engaged in the problems and negotiations of a participatory performance.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Watching, doing, meaning
Contradiction 1: Watching
Contradiction 2: Action
Contradiction 3: Body
2 Other people/other things
Contradiction 4: Object
Contradiction 5: Affect
Contradiction 6: Play
3 Autonomy/Identity
Contradiction 7: Authenticity
Contradiction 8: Mediation
Contradiction 9: Identity
Conclusion. Culture, crisis, aesthetics
Contradiction 10: Culture
Contradiction 11: A Post Covid Coda
Index
Gareth White is Reader in Theatre and Performance at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK.
