This edited collection focuses on performance practice and analysis that engages with medical and biomedical sciences. After locating the 'biologization' of theatre at the turn of the twentieth century, it examines a range of contemporary practices that respond to understandings of the human body as revealed by biomedical science.
In bringing together a variety of analytical perspectives, the book draws on scholars, scientists, artists and practices that are at the forefront of current creative, scientific and academic research. Its exploration of the dynamics and exchange between performance and medicine will stimulate a widening of the debate around key issues such as subjectivity, patient narratives, identity, embodiment, agency, medical ethics, health and illness. In focusing on an interdisciplinary understanding of performance, the book examines the potential of performance and theatre to intervene in, shape, inform and extend vital debates around biomedical knowledge and practice in the contemporary moment.
Alex Mermikides is D'Oyly Carte Senior Lecturer in Arts and Health in the medical school at King's College London, UK.
Amy Cook, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English at Stony Brook University, New York, USA, is the author of
Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science, (2010) and essays in, among others,
Theatre Journal,
TDR,
SubStance, the
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism,
Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, the
Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (forthcoming). She was the co-chair of the Working Group in Cognitive Science and Performance for American Society for Theatre Research from 2010-2014.
Gianna Bouchard is Professor of Contemporary Performance at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her interdisciplinary research explores the interface between medicine and performance. She is the author of
Performing Specimens: Biomedical Display in Contemporary Performance (Methuen Drama, 2020).
Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. She is Director of the Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and is leading the AHRC funded project 'Imagining Autism.'
She is the author of Applying Performance (2012), Gertrude Stein (2007) and co-editor of Margaret Woffington (2008).
John Lutterbie was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre Arts and the Department of Art at Stony Brook University, USA. He was the director of the International Network for Cognition, Theatre and Performance and with Nicola Shaughnessy was the series editor of the Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues series.