Dark Matter

Reviews / Votes

Finalist, George Freedley Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association * George Freedley Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association * Honorable Mention, Outstanding Book Award, Association for Theatre in Higher Education * The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Outstanding Book Award * "Invisibility, Andrew Sofer argues in his complex and compelling Dark Matter, is a structuring principle of theatrical performance. . . . The breadth of Sofer's study is ambitious and invigorating, not simply in the range of case studies, but in the dazzling scope of his archive."
-Modern Drama -- Ariel Watson * Modern Drama * "Richly learned and originally poised historicism... Dark Matter provides a savvy lens on what Aristotle called opsis and Shaw 'the optics of the theatre': as an art of appearing, of appearances, of making an appearance, theatre depends on the ideological, and often material, presence of everything that remains in the dark."
-Theatre Journal -- W. B. Worthen * Theatre Journal * "Andrew Sofer's Dark Matter proves a true tour de force . . . its immense scholarly depth deserves much admiration. . . . supporting research, like the entire volume, provides criticism of the first order-informed, reasoned, careful, and inventive. The book is decisively rich-and especially strong in its poet-critic's sense of analogies between scientific and humanistic studies. This publication, albeit daunting in its amazingly vast range, is surely also exciting for that very extensiveness of endeavor."
-Jeffrey B. Loomis, Text and Presentation -- Jeffrey B. Loomis * Text and Presentation * "'Dark matter' is the name that physicists give to material that is irregularly distributed around the visible universe but is itself undetectable. . . . Andrew Sofer's ingenious and somewhat playful book adopts this concept as a metaphor for theatre. It is a good idea: the theatrical significance of the invisible is often over-looked, but a moment's thought confirms how central it is."
-Peter Womack, Theatre Survey -- Peter Womack * Theatre Survey * "Invisible, but exerting a gravitational force on all stage elements, dark matter is more than a textual device; it is 'woven into the fabric of theatrical presentation.' Sofer's book is impeccably researched, with a glossary of terms that invites the reader to explore this methodology beyond the six studies offered here. . . . Initiating his final section with a discussion of a medieval visit to the sepulchre in which Christ's body is revealed to be absent, Sofer compresses his analysis until what is left is dark matter itself."
---Dean Wilcox, Theatre Research International -- Dean Wilcox * Theatre Research International * "[Dark Matter] provides criticism of the first order - informed, reasoned, careful, and inventive. The book is decisively rich - and especially strong in its poet-critic's sense of analogies between scientific and humanistic study. This publication, albeit daunting in its amazingly vast range, is surely also exciting for that very extensiveness of endeavor."
--Jeffrey B. Loomis, Northwest Missouri State University, Text and Presentation -- Jeffrey B. Loomis * Text & Presentation 2014, the Comparative Drama Conf Series) *