The coup de théâtre and the enchanting object of performance

Examining three examples from theatre productions in London and Edinburgh between 1997-2001, this article explores the coup de théâtre as a theatrical phenomenon. It argues for the importance of enchantment in conceptualising the coup de théâtre and that the suspension of the rational in relation to such theatrical moments is central to their impact. This sense of enchantment revolves around the changing status of the object in the coup de théâtre, which, it will be suggested, is linked to the shift between animacy and inanimacy. By destabilising rational modes of understanding, the coup de théâtre enters into the temporality of death and mourning, as objects occupy dual ontologies, both living and inanimate, literal and metaphorical. The coup de théâtre, it will be argued, is a point in performance in which perception and memory, the visible and the conceptual, converge, and in which the permanence of death is troubled by the reanimating effect of theatre.