Performing Site-Specific Theatre

Performing Site-Specific Theatre turns a critical eye to the increasingly popular form of site-specific performance. By re-assessing this contemporary practice, the book investigates the nature of the relationship between "site" and "performance." Site-specific performance operates differently from performance that takes place within a theatre venue because it seeks to match form and content (and place and space) more finely than does theatre that takes place inside conventional venues. Yet the form also encourages an investigation of how we might understand "site" as less fixed or less specifically geographical; it broadens the types of relevant "spaces" we might consider. The form also enables us to address a range of performative issues, from the development of site-specific "soundscapes" to the role of the spectator in site-specific performance. The contributions in the book from leading theorists and practitioners demonstrate how site-specific performance extends theatre's potential engagement with its geographical and political communities, and cover an exceptional range of innovative performance practices. Students, scholars and practitioners of contemporary theatre and performance, space and place, and site-specific performance will find much to value in this timely interrogation of current trends, practices and implications of performance in which site/landscape is central.

ANNA BIRCH is a lecturer in Research at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK. She produces and directs performance and film projects as part of her engagement with practice as research. She is Artistic Director of Fragments & Monuments Performance and Film Company, based in Hackney, UK.

JOANNE TOMPKINS is a professor of Drama in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland, Australia. She is the (co-)author of Post-Colonial Drama (with Helen Gilbert), and of Women's Intercultural Performance (with Julie Holledge). She is author of Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre (2006).