To All Appearances
Ideology and Performance
1st Edition
Published on 3. March 2025
240 pages
978-1-040-31729-7 (ISBN)
Description
First published in 1992, To All Appearances is a book in which ideology and performance shadow each other, in a theoretical inquiry which ranges widely across historical periods and cultures. The author's concerns-which include the social meaning of illusion and the cultural manifestation of power-take the reader from Jacobean drama to the pageantry of Robert Wilson; from Eleanora Duse to Laurie Anderson; from the puppet theater of Kleist to Kantor's theater of the dead; and from the Kutiyattam temple dancers in Kerala to Womanhouse in Los Angeles.
A brilliant, uncontainable, and chastening look at the rhetoric of critical theory in relation to performance and ideological practice, this is undoubtedly a book for the twenty-first century. It returns us, through all appearances, to the unavoidable question in art, in politics, in the society of the spectacle: what, after all, is the future of illusion?
A brilliant, uncontainable, and chastening look at the rhetoric of critical theory in relation to performance and ideological practice, this is undoubtedly a book for the twenty-first century. It returns us, through all appearances, to the unavoidable question in art, in politics, in the society of the spectacle: what, after all, is the future of illusion?
Reviews / Votes
Review of the first publication:'...To All Appearances raises a number of important questions, for both theatrical practice and cultural theory.'
- Julie Adam, Border/Lines
More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
File size
31,04 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-31729-7 (9781040317297)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
05/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€57.19
Shipment within 10-20 days
Book
03/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€133.91
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Herbert Blau was the most influential theater theorist, practitioner, and educator of his generation. He was Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After many years in the theater, where he was particularly well known for his innovative work as a director, he also gained an international reputation for his theoretical writings on performance and postmodern culture.
Content
Foreword 1. Statutes of limitations 2. The theatrical fact 3. The surpassing body 4. Distressed emotion 5. The struggle to appear
