The Routledge Companion to Performance and Science

The Routledge Companion to Performance and Science investigates and illuminates the growing international interest in the intersections and interactions between theatre, drama, performance and the sciences.

These disciplines are explored through an extensive range of essays from artists, practitioners, researchers and scholars, many of whom are working in interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary or multidisciplinary contexts. With a largely contemporary focus underpinned by an introductory section that sets out a history of antecedent intersections, the volume offers a diverse range of perspectives on science, scientific methods, and scientific knowledge in dialogue with performance scholarship and practice. Our understanding of ‘practice’ is capacious, from different performance forms to science communication and interpretation, to scientific approaches to performance, to ways of generating and disseminating scientific knowledge. Within this vast scene, a number of key questions and themes emerge: How can scientific knowledge be interrogated by performance practices? How can performance explore the human implications of scientific development? How can scientific practices be understood through performance theories? How are scientists or scientific practices, and ideas represented in performance?

This is a key resource for scholars and upper-level students of performing arts, science communication, medical and health humanities, science and technology studies, and interdisciplinary arts/humanities/sciences projects.

Paul Johnson is Dean of Academic Quality and Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Chester.

Simon Parry is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Arts Management at The University of Manchester.

Adele Senior is Reader in Theatre and Performance at Leeds Beckett University.