A groundbreaking collection of original essays, Stages of Reality establishes a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between stage and screen media. This comprehensive volume explores the significance of theatricality within critical discourse about cinema and television.

Stages of Reality connects the theory and practice of cinematic theatricality through conceptual analyses and close readings of films including The Matrix and There Will be Blood. Contributors illuminate how this mode of address disrupts expectations surrounding cinematic form and content, evaluating strategies such as ostentatious performances, formal stagings, fragmentary montages, and methods of dialogue delivery and movement. Detailing connections between cinematic artifice and topics such as politics, gender, and genre, Stages of Reality allows readers to develop a clear sense of the multiple purposes and uses of theatricality in film.

André Loiselle teaches film studies at Carleton University, Ottawa. His main areas of research are Canadian and Québécois cinema, screen adaptations of drama, and the horror film. He has published half a dozen books, including Le Cinéma de Michel Brault, à l’image d’une nation (2005). He is currently working on a new book project provisionally entitled Stage to Scream: The Performance of Villainy in Theatre and Film.

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Jeremy Maron is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture at Carleton University.

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‘This is a lively and stimulating collection of essays that will appeal to both theatre and film scholars and students alike, and ably demonstrate that a discussion of cinematic theatricality can facilitate productive reflection on the nature and function of filmic realities.’

Screen vol 55:01:2014