Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning (Theater: Theory/Text/Performance) - Softcover

Magelssen, Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472052144 ISBN 13: 9780472052141

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2014

Synopsis

At an ecopark in Mexico, tourists pretend to be illegal migrants, braving inhospitable terrain and the U.S. Border Patrol as they attempt to cross the border. At a living history museum in Indiana, daytime visitors return after dark to play fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. In the Mojave Desert, the U.S. Army simulates entire provinces of Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with bustling villages, insurgents, and Arabic-speaking townspeople, to train soldiers for deployment to the Middle East. At a nursing home, trainees put on fogged glasses and earplugs, thick bands around their finger joints, and sandbag harnesses to simulate the effects of aging and to gain empathy for their patients.

These immersive environments in which spectator-participants engage in simulations of various kinds—or “simming”—are the subject of Scott Magelssen’s book. His book lays out the ways in which simming can provide efficacy and promote social change through affective, embodied testimony. Using methodology from theater history and performance studies (particularly as these fields intersect with cultural studies, communication, history, popular culture, and American studies), Magelssen explores the ways these representational practices produce, reify, or contest cultural and societal perceptions of identity.

About this title

About the Author

Scott Magelssen is Associate Professor of Drama and Performance Studies at the University of Washington

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472052144
• ISBN 13: 9780472052141
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264