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Home > Introduction
  1. Introduction
  2.     >Discussion Questions
  3.     >Video and Web Resources
  4. Section One
  5.     >Discussion Questions
  6.     >Video and Web Resources
  7. Section Two
  8.     >Discussion Questions
  9.     >Video and Web Resources
  10. Section Three
  11.     >Discussion Questions
  12.     >Video and Web Resources

Introduction

Introduction: Making Room for Space at the Theatre

Summary

“Space” is a paradox: it is at once one of the most abstract and one of the most concrete aspects of human life. We struggle to discuss it because of its abstraction, yet we cannot avoid it because it is everywhere, frames every aspect of our daily interactions, shapes the places we inhabit, and organizes where we can and cannot go, how we can or cannot be, who we may or may not become, on this shared earth.

It is this all-encompassing yet often invisible quality that renders space powerfully political. Its political nature has always been apparent to theorists of the theatre: for a long time it was the source of injunction (such as in the neoclassical rules governing “unity of place”), and now, in contemporary theatre and performance theory and practice, space’s political nature has become a site of investigation, inspiration, and important critique.

In the book’s introduction, I begin by asking readers to locate themselves: in their personal spaces, in their own bodies and subjectivities. Together we imagine what space and place mean to us, and how those meanings might be more public (more outwardly- and politically-oriented) than we could initially reckon. After a quick trip to the theatre, to ground our early theorizing in a performance object (Carrie Cracknell’s 2012 production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House for the Young Vic), and a stop to situate that production in its broader public contexts, I outline the shape of the book ahead. I briefly note the importance of semiotic approaches to theatrical space, the landmark notion of space as a social construction and its relationship to cultural materialism, and I introduce key ideas from contemporary scenography that will return in the sections to come.

A short but clear description of sections one, two, and three at the end of the introduction will help readers to note where specific theoretical frameworks will be discussed in the book, complementing the section subheadings in the table of contents and assisting with navigation.