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Drama General

Insecurity

Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real

by (author) Jenn Stephenson

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2019
Category
General, Canadian, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487501853
    Publish Date
    Apr 2019
    List Price
    $85.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487514105
    Publish Date
    Apr 2019
    List Price
    $85.00

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Description

The early years of the twenty-first century have witnessed a proliferation of non-fiction, reality-based performance genres, including documentary and verbatim theatre, site-specific theatre, autobiographical theatre, and immersive theatre. Insecurity: Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real begins with the premise that although the inclusion of real objects and real words on the stage would ostensibly seem to increase the epistemological security and documentary truth-value of the presentation, in fact the opposite is the case.

 

Contemporary audiences are caught between a desire for authenticity and immediacy of connection to a person, place, or experience, and the conditions of our postmodern world that render our lives insecure. The same conditions that underpin our yearning for authenticity thwart access to an impossible real. As a result of the instability of social reality, the audience, Jenn Stephenson explains, is unable to trust the mechanisms of theatricality. The by-product of theatres of the real in the age of post-reality is insecurity.

About the author

Jenn Stephenson is Professor at Queen’s University in the Dan School of Drama and Music. She is the author of two books: Insecurity: Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real (UTP, 2019) and Performing Autobiography: Contemporary Canadian Drama (UTP, 2013). Recent articles have appeared in Theatre Research in Canada and Contemporary Theatre Review.

Jenn Stephenson's profile page