Writing, texts and site-specific performance in the recent work of Deborah Warner

McEvoy, William (2006) Writing, texts and site-specific performance in the recent work of Deborah Warner. Textual Practice, 20 (4). pp. 591-614. ISSN 0950-236X

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Abstract

This article examines three site-specific performances by British theatre director Deborah Warner that took place in London in the 1990s. Its main premise is that site-specific performances, even those without a written text, are mediated by a complex and fluid array of other texts, intertexts and textual effects. Comparing Warner's production of Eliot's The Waste Land with two text-free productions offers a way to chart how these performances interpenetrate, while a consideration of spectatorial subjectivity and cultural frames of reference reveals how wider issues of cultural competence and aesthetic criteria impact on the work. A detailed analysis of the critical responses to these performances demonstrates their marked creative dimension, accounted for in some part by a thematics of secrecy and a self-consciousness about how to figure the spectator's own key role in the construction of the performances' meaning.

Item Type: Article
Schools and Departments: School of English > English
Depositing User: William McEvoy
Date Deposited: 06 Feb 2012 18:19
Last Modified: 24 Mar 2015 12:00
URI: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/15804
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