Nomadic Theatre: Mobilizing Theory and Practice on the European Stage

Fluid stages, morphing theatre spaces, ambulant spectators, and occasionally disappearing performers: these are some of the key ingredients of nomadic theatre. They are also theatre’s response to life in the 21st century, which is increasingly marked by the mobility of people, information, technologies and services. While examining how contemporary theatre exposes and queries this mobile turn in society, Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink introduces the concept of nomadic theatre as a vital tool for analyzing how movement and mobility affect and implicate the theatre, how this makes way for local operations and lived spaces, and how physical movements are stepping stones for theorizing mobility at large. Now available in paperback, this book focuses on ambulatory performances and performative installations, asking how they stage movement and in turn mobilize the stage. By analyzing the work of leading European artists such as Rimini Protokoll, Dries Verhoeven, Ontroerend Goed, and Signa, Nomadic Theatre demonstrates that mobile performances radically rethink the conditions of the stage and alter our understanding of spectatorship. Nomadic Theatre instigates connections across disciplinary fields and feeds dramaturgical analysis with insights derived from media theory, urban philosophy, cartography, architecture, and game studies. It illustrates how theatre, as a material form of thought, creatively and critically engages with mobile existence both on the stage and in society.

Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink is a Lecturer and Researcher in Theatre Studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Her work has been published in Performance Research and in Mapping Intermediality in Performance (ed. Bay-Cheng et al, 2010) and in Contemporary Theatre Review.

Professor Adrian Kear is Programme Development Director, Performance Arts, at Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London, UK. His books include: Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century (2013); International Politics and Performance: Critical Aesthetics and Creative Practice (with Jenny Edkins) (2013); On Appearance (with Richard Gough) (2008); Psychoanalysis and Performance (with Patrick Campbell)(2001).

Maaike Bleeker is a Professor and the Chair of Theatre Studies at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She is President of Performance Studies international, a Member of the International Advisory Board of Maska (Ljubljana) and of Inflexions: A Journal of Research-Creation (Montreal). Her publications include: Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking (2008); Anatomy Live: Performance and the Operating Theatre (2008); BodyCheck: Relocating the Body in Contemporary Performing Arts (with Stephen DeBelder, et al).

Joe Kelleher is Emeritus Professor of Theatre and Performance at Roehampton University, UK.

Heike Roms is Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of Exeter, UK. Her books include: Silent Explosion (2015) and Contesting Performance – Global Sites of Research (co-edited with Jon McKenzie and C.J.W.-L. Wee, 2010). Her research into the history and historiography of early performance art won the David Bradby TaPRA Award for Outstanding Research in International Theatre and Performance 2011.