University of Exeter Press
From Mimesis to Interculturalism
Readings of Theatrical Theory Before and After ‘Modernism'
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- 360 Pages
From Mimesis to Interculturalism offers a series of critical readings of key texts in the history of European and American theatrical and performance theory. It answers the need for a detailed critique of theatrical theory from its origins in Greek antiquity to the present day, asking the reader to re-examine the basis of what have become assumptions, but are all too often perceived as truths. The book complements existing studies of the major modern theorists by giving close attention to the European tradition before Stanislavski, and to the theorists who have gained prominence after Grotowski. The use of language and the creation of meaning is the primary concern of all the readings.
Part One considers classical and classicizing theorists from Greece and the European enlightenment, and Part Two twentieth-century theorists after Grotowski; a concluding Part Three indicates how the approach might be applied to exemplary theorists from the modern canon, and to certain contemporary theoretical proposals.
From Mimesis to Interculturalism offers a series of critical readings of key texts in the history of European and American theatrical and performance theory. It answers the need for a detailed critique of theatrical theory from its origins in Greek antiquity to the present day.
This is a hard book to read and one that makes no pretence of being anything else. It does not offer itself as a sourcebook of readings in theatrical theorists. Rather, it offers a critique of the rhetorical devices employed by Plato and Aristotle, Rousseau and Diderot, Peter Brook, Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, and concludes with 'Some observations on Stanislavski and Brecht' and a short essay on 'The Significance of Theory' . . . The fact that Ley is equally at home in Ancient Greek, eighteenth-century French and the discourses of modern American theatre anthropology, makes it possible for him to give readings of his chosen texts which are consistently well-informed, densely structured and highly intelligent . . . A treasury of detailed discourse analysis. Theatre Research International, Vol. 27:1, 2002
It's good to see a book like this challenging conventional notions and categories of postmodernism head-on. Speech and Drama, Vol. 50, No. 2, Autumn 2001
Refreshingly scholarly - and entirely accessible - discussion of a range of writers and ideas from Plato to interculturalism which impresses by its research and stimulates and educates the reader. Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol 20, June 2000
Part I Before:
The idea of sight - Plato and Aristotle
Performances of the mind - Rousseau and Diderot.
Part II And after:
Brook and the theory of rhetoric;
Theatre anthropologies - Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, Eugenio Barba
Part III: some observations on Stanislavski and Brecht;
The significance of theory
