Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems (Theatre and Performance Theory) - Softcover

Ridout, Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521617561 ISBN 13: 9780521617567

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Why do actors get stage fright? What is so embarrassing about joining in? Why not work with animals and children, and why is it so hard not to collapse into helpless laughter when things go wrong? In trying to answer these questions - usually ignored by theatre scholarship but of enduring interest to theatre professionals and audiences alike - Nicholas Ridout attempts to explain the relationship between these apparently unwanted and anomalous phenomena and the wider social and political meanings of the modern theatre. This book focuses on the theatrical encounter - those events in which actor and audience come face to face in a strangely compromised and alienated intimacy - arguing that the modern theatre has become a place where we entertain ourselves by experimenting with our feelings about work, social relations and about feelings themselves.

About this title

Book Description:

Things nearly always go wrong in the theatre. This study looks at the things that shouldn't happen: stage fright, embarrassment, animals on stage, getting the giggles and bumping into the furniture. All these turn out to be neither anomalies nor accidents, but are instead what makes theatre, theatre.

About the Author:

Nicholas Ridout is Lecturer in Performance at the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0521617561
• ISBN 13: 9780521617567
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206