Theater in a Post-Truth World: Texts, Politics, and Performance

Description

This is the first book to examine how the concept and disagreements around “post-truth” have been explored in the world of theater and performance. This ranges from the plays of Caryl Churchill, Anne Washburn, and David Henry Hwang, to the inherent theatricality of press conferences, interviews and protests that embrace the confusion created by “post-truth” to muddy issues and deflect blame, to theatrical performance, where the nature of truth is challenged through staged visuals which run counter to what the audience hears, provoking a debate about where the truth actually lies. With contributions by scholars from around the world, Theater in a Post-Truth World considers a wide array of examples from American and British drama and politics, Australian theater, West African politics, and the work of performance artist Marina Abramovic. Together these provide a glimpse into how the theater in its many forms provides a venue to raise critical awareness and encourage critical thinking about the ubiquity of “post-truth.” Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Post-Truth: A Brief Introduction Part One Text 1 Post-Truth but Not Post-Race: The Repeating Realities of Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Heidi E. Bollin 2 Knowing Not What It “Seems”: Re-Viewing Caryl Churchill’s Post-Truth World in Glass, Kill, Bluebeard’s Friends, and I Part Two Politics 3 The Alternative Realities of David Henry Hwang’s Soft Power and Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck (William C. Boles) 4 Negotiating the Fifth Wall (Lynn Deboeck) 5 When the Play Is Not the Thing: The Mueller Report and the Limits of Documentary Drama (Victoria Scrimer) Part Three Performance 6 Australian Biographical Theater on the Post-Truth Stage (Stephen Carleton and Chris Hay) 7 Performing Reality: Tina Satter’s Verbatim Staging of an FBI Transcript in Is This A Room (Helen Georgas) 8 Seductive Frames: Digital Aesthetics in Kip Williams’s Staging of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (2018) 9 Satanic Panic: Performance in the New Culture War (Lewis Church) Contributors Index