Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater

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ISBN 10: 0472069071 / ISBN 13: 9780472069071

Published by University of Michigan Press, 2005

About this Item

In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan traces the sense of visceral, emotional and social connection that we experience at the theatre, connections that allow us to feel for a moment not what a better world might look like, but what it might feel like, and how that hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for social change. Num Pages: 248 pages. BIC Classification: AN. Category: (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 229 x 152 x 17. Weight in Grams: 340. . 2005. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780472069071

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472069071
• ISBN 13: 9780472069071
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

"Jill Dolan is the theatre's most astute critic, and this new book is perhaps her most important. Utopia in Performance argues with eloquence and insight how theatre makes a difference, and in the process demonstrates that scholarship matters, too. It is a book that readers will cherish and hold close as a personal favorite, and that scholars will cite for years to come."
---David Román, University of Southern California


What is it about performance that draws people to sit and listen attentively in a theater, hoping to be moved and provoked, challenged and comforted? In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan traces the sense of visceral, emotional, and social connection that we experience at such times, connections that allow us to feel for a moment not what a better world might look like, but what it might feel like, and how that hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for social change.

She traces these "utopian performatives" in a range of performances, including the solo performances of feminist artists Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, and Peggy Shaw; multicharacter solo performances by Lily Tomlin, Danny Hoch, and Anna Deavere Smith; the slam poetry event Def Poetry Jam; The Laramie Project; Blanket, a performance by postmodern choreographer Ann Carlson; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; and Deborah Warner's production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw. While the book richly captures moments of "feeling utopia" found within specific performances, it also celebrates the broad potential that performance has to provide a forum for being human together; for feeling love, hope, and commonality in particular and historical (rather than universal and transcendent) ways.

About the Author

Scholar, critic, and theorist Jill Dolanis Zachary T. Scott Family Chair in Drama at the University of Texas, Austin. She is author of The Feminist Spectator as Critic; Presence and Desire: Essays on Gender, Sexuality, and Performance; and Geographies of Learning: Theory and Practice, Activism and Performance.