Performance and the Medical Body (Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1472570782 ISBN 13: 9781472570789

Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016

Synopsis

This edited collection focuses on performance practice and analysis that engages with medical and biomedical sciences. After locating the biologization of theatre at the turn of the twentieth century, it examines a range of contemporary practices that respond to understandings of the human body as revealed by biomedical science. In bringing together a variety of analytical perspectives, the book draws on scholars, scientists, artists and practices that are at the forefront of current creative, scientific and academic research. Its exploration of the dynamics and exchange between performance and medicine will stimulate a widening of the debate around key issues such as subjectivity, patient narratives, identity, embodiment, agency, medical ethics, health and illness. In focusing on an interdisciplinary understanding of performance, the book examines the potential of performance and theatre to intervene in, shape, inform and extend vital debates around biomedical knowledge and practice in the contemporary moment.

About this title

About the Authors

Alex Mermikides is D'Oyly Carte Senior Lecturer in Arts and Health in the medical school at King's College London, UK.

Gianna Bouchard is Professor of Contemporary Performance at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her interdisciplinary research explores the interface between medicine and performance. She is the author of Performing Specimens: Biomedical Display in Contemporary Performance (Methuen Drama, 2020).

John Lutterbie was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre Arts and the Department of Art at Stony Brook University, USA. He was the director of the International Network for Cognition, Theatre and Performance and with Nicola Shaughnessy was the series editor of the Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues series.

Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. She is Director of the Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and is leading the AHRC funded project 'Imagining Autism.'

She is the author of Applying Performance (2012), Gertrude Stein (2007) and co-editor of Margaret Woffington (2008).

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1472570782
• ISBN 13: 9781472570789
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Alex Mermikides, Gianna Bouchard