The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science

Kirsten E Shepherd-Barr editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:3rd Dec '20

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The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science cover

The first ever companion to theatre and science brings together research on key topics, performances, and new areas of interest.

This Companion is for undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars, and theatre makers as well as general readers interested in the relationship between theatre and science. It covers topics such as climate change drama, theatre technology, animal studies, and performance and cognition, as well as many periods of theatre history.Theatre has engaged with science since its beginnings in Ancient Greece. The intersection of the two disciplines has been the focus of increasing interest to scholars and students. The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science gives readers a sense of this dynamic field, using detailed analyses of plays and performances covering a wide range of areas including climate change and the environment, technology, animal studies, disease and contagion, mental health, and performance and cognition. Identifying historical tendencies that have dominated theatre's relationship with science, the volume traces many periods of theatre history across a wide geographical range. It follows a simple and clear structure of pairs and triads of chapters that cluster around a given theme so that readers get a clear sense of the current debates and perspectives.

'This is a mind-expanding book. It not only shows that theatre and science have been interacting for centuries but offers a series of pathfinding essays on subjects ranging from mental health to plague and infection. It establishes beyond doubt that theatre and science are indissolubly linked and challenges, informs and stimulates the reader at every turn.' Michael Billington
'The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science is a masterpiece of interdisciplinarity, bringing together any number of disciplines perhaps formerly thought to have nothing in common. And no one is currently better situated than Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr to undertake such a project. The choice of essay topics is varied and expansive, and the selected contributors are drawn from an international list of the most exciting thinkers currently pursuing ways to see, understand, and enjoy the rich interplay between theatre and science.' William W. Demastes, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
'This Companion is a powerful contribution to the field. From experiments to the Anthropocene, bestiaries to bodies, pathogens to meteors to back-stage technologies, it demonstrates the enormous range of contemporary thinking on the connections running between theatre and science - and delivers this in a way that manages to be both invigorating and deeply enjoyable.' Tiffany Watt-Smith, Queen Mary University of London
'… a compact, wide-ranging survey of some of the key issues in this diverse set of interactions … these assured, stimulating essays offer a wide-ranging snapshot of current trends in how science touches theatre and vice versa.' Jonathan W. Marshall, Performance Research

ISBN: 9781108700986

Dimensions: 150mm x 230mm x 15mm

Weight: 340g

300 pages