Theatre Aurality

This book explores the critical field of theatre sound and the sonic phenomena of theatre. It draws together a wide range of related topics, including sound design and sonic sonographies, voice as a performance of sound, listening as auditory performance, and audience as resonance. It explores radical forms of sonic performance and our engagement in it, from the creation of sonic subjectivities to noise as a politics of sound. The introductory chapters trace the innate aurality of theatre and the history of sound effects and design, while also interrogating why the art of theatre sound was delayed and underrepresented in philosophy as well as theatre and performance theory. Subsequent chapters explore the emergence of aurally engaged theatre practice and focus on examples of contemporary sound in and as theatre, including theatre in the dark, headphone theatre and immersive theatre, amongst others, through theories of perception and philosophies of listening, vocality, sonority and noise.

Lynne Kendrick is Senior Lecturer in New Theatre Practices at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK. Her publications include: ‘Aural visions: sonic spectatorship in the dark’ in Theatre in the Dark: Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre (2017), ‘Auralite’ et performance de l’inaudible’ in Le Son du Theatre (2016); ‘Aurality, Gestus and the Performance of Noise’ in Sound und Performance (2015), and Theatre Noise: the Sound of Performance, co-edited with David Roesner CSP (2011).