Performing Objects and Theatrical Things

Marlis Schweitzer, Joanne Zerdy

"Performing Objects and Theatrical Things rethinks historical and contemporary theatre, performance, and cultural events from the perspective of the objects and things that activate stages, venues, environments, and archives. Embracing methodologies from across the humanities and social sciences, we understand physical materials as actants, with particular frequencies, energies, and potentials to affect human and nonhuman worlds. The texts, stage properties, instruments, costumes, photographs, and detritus that animate this collection emerge from the thirteenth- to the twenty-first century, traversing sites across Europe and North America. Challenging anthropocentric narratives that foreground humans as sole agents, our authors present object and 'thingcentric' methodologies that range from deeply personal autoethnographic reflections and close textual readings to carefully researched...