Theatre of the Real

Abstract

At an unparalleled time of the construction of reality across the fields of the science and humanities on a variety of platforms, theatre and performance participates in the current obsession with the problems and possibilities of the epistemologies of the real by using and revising the conventions of dramatic writing and performance to create and recreate personal, national, historical, and virtual realities. Theatre of the Real examines a wide range of international theatre and performance that claims a special relationship to contemporary reality in order to theorize how theatre and performance participates in how we come to know, experience, and understand the important events of our personal, social and political lives. The wide range of works discussed include Kamp and History of the World - Part Eleven by Hotel Modern, Is.Man by Adelheid Roosen, I am My Own Wife by Doug Wright, Southern Exposure by JoAnne Akalaitis, My Name is Rachel Corrie by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner and Via Dolorosa by David Hare.