1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910723700903321

Autore

Mihaylova Stefka

Titolo

Viewers in Distress : Race, Gender, Religion, and Avant-Garde Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ann Arbor : , : University of Michigan Press, , 2023

©2023

ISBN

0-472-90370-5

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (223 pages)

Disciplina

792.0905

Soggetti

Theater - Political aspects - History - 21st century

Experimental theater - History

Gender identity in the theater

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Intro -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction: "Can We All Along?" Get -- Chapter 1: The Radical Formalism of Suzan-Lori Parks and Sarah Kane -- Chapter 2: A Spectator Prepares: Forced Entertainment's Theater of Critical Feeling -- Chapter 3: The Behzti Riot as a Contemporary Avant-Garde -- Chapter 4: Feeling Bad about Being White: Young Jean Lee's Theater and the Progressive Avant-Garde -- Coda: The Liberal Individual's Postmodern Return -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

Conventional notions of avant-garde art suggest innovative artists rebelling against artistic convention and social propriety, shocking unwilling audiences into new ways of seeing and living. Viewers in Distress tells a different story. Beginning in the tumultuous 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, rebellious spectators in American and British theaters broke with theater decorum and voiced their radical interpretations of shows that were not meant to be radical. In doing so, audiences tried to understand the complex racial, gender, and religious politics of their times, while insisting that liberal societies fulfill their promise of dignity for all. Stefka Mihaylova argues that such non-conforming viewing amounts to an avant-garde of its own: a bold reimagining of how we



live together and tell stories of our lives together, aimed to achieve liberalism's promise. In telling this story, she analyzes the production and reception politics of works by Susan-Lori Parks, Sarah Kane, Forced Entertainment, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, and Young Jean Lee, as well as non-theatrical controversies such as the conflict over Halloween costumes at Yale in 2015. At the core of spectators' discontent, this book suggests, is an effort to figure out how to get along with people different from ourselves in the diverse U.S. and British societies in which we live.