Theatre of the Real

At an unparalleled time of the construction of reality across the fields of the sciences and humanities on a variety of platforms, theatre and performance participates in the current obsession with the problems and possibilities of the epistemologies of the real by using and revising testimony and the archive to create and recreate personal, national, historical, and virtual realities. Carol Martin examines the special relationship of theatre and performance to the real in order to theorize how we come to know, experience, and conceptualize our personal, social and political lives. Theatre of the Real, now available in paperback, includes a discussion of a wide range of work including Is.Man by Adelheid Roosen, Rumstick Road by Spalding Gray, Via Dolorosa by David Hare, Kamp by Hotel Modern My Name is Rachel Corrie edited by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner, House/Divided by The Builders Association, and The Pixilated Revolution by Rabih Mroue.

Carol Martin is a Professor of Drama at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, USA. Her essays and interviews have appeared in anthologies, academic journals in the U.S. and abroad and the New York Times and have been translated into French, Japanese, Polish, Chinese, and Romanian. Martin's books include Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage (Palgrave 2011, 2012). In addition, she is a Guest Editor of two special issues of TDR 'Performing the City' (fall 2014) and 'Documentary Theatre' (fall 2006) as well as the General Editor of the book series In Performance devoted to the translation of international plays and performance texts. She was awarded grants the De La Torre Bueno Special Citation for her book Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture of the 1920s and 1930s.