Dark Matter: Invisibility in Drama, Theater and Performance (Theater: Theory/Text/Performance) - Softcover

Sofer, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472052047 ISBN 13: 9780472052042

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2013

Synopsis

Dark Matter maps the invisible dimension of theater whose effects are felt everywhere in performance. Examining phenomena such as hallucination, offstage character, offstage action, sexuality, masking, technology, and trauma, Andrew Sofer engagingly illuminates the invisible in different periods of postclassical western theater and drama. He reveals how the invisible continually structures and focuses an audience’s theatrical experience, whether it’s black magic in Doctor Faustus, offstage sex in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, masked women in The Rover, self-consuming bodies in Suddenly Last Summer, or surveillance technology in The Archbishop’s Ceiling. Each discussion pinpoints new and striking facets of drama and performance that escape sight. Taken together, Sofer’s lively case studies illuminate how dark matter is woven into the very fabric of theatrical representation. Written in an accessible style and grounded in theater studies but interdisciplinary by design, Dark Matter will appeal to theater and performance scholars, literary critics, students, and theater practitioners, particularly playwrights and directors.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Sofer teaches in the English department at Boston College. He is the author of The Stage Life of Props and Wave, a collection of poetry.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472052047
• ISBN 13: 9780472052042
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 242