The Spectator and the Spectacle: Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity

Dennis Kennedy

ISBN 10: 110740360X / ISBN 13: 9781107403604

Published by Cambridge University Press 2011-10-27, 2011

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 6666-IUK-9781107403604

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Spectator and the Spectacle: Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press 2011-10-27
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 110740360X
• ISBN 13: 9781107403604
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Spectators and audiences are everywhere in contemporary culture. However, even in conventional performance, whether in the theatre, in film or television, or at a sporting event, it is difficult to discuss spectators with any authority, since each of us experiences and understands the display in different ways and all methods of analyzing spectators are flawed or unreliable. This book provides instead a series of investigations into specific types of performance activity, and how they relate to their audiences. Specific topics discussed include the relationship of audiences to the rise of the director, the avant-garde, tourism, gambling, the effect of cinema on live performance and sport, including crowd violence. Spectatorship is an area of increasing importance in the field of theatre and performance studies, and this engaging study is a valuable contribution to the development of thinking about audiences and spectators.

Review

Review of the hardback: 'Kennedy engages the reader in a series of well-observed, clear-eyed, clear-minded, and finely wrought conversations that are thematically linked, yet also discrete about historically specific audiences and the inevitable failure of efforts to control or contain them in theory or practice.' Modern Drama

'It is a very refreshing way of putting theoretical "big talk" into concrete perspective ... contain[s] some excellent studies on the corporeality and phenomenology of visuality ... The idea of various "modes of spectating" promises an intriguing concept ...' Theatre Research International