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dc.contributor.authorClaycomb, Ryan
dc.date.accessioned2023-01-03T15:23:10Z
dc.date.available2023-01-03T15:23:10Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.identifier.urihttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/60482
dc.description.abstractSome of theater’s most powerful works in the past thirty years fall into the category of "verbatim theater," socially engaged performances whose texts rely on word-for-word testimony. Performances such as Fires in the Mirror, The Laramie Project, and The Vagina Monologues have at their best demonstrated how to hold hard conversations about explosive subjects in a liberal democracy. But in this moment of what author Ryan Claycomb terms the “rightward lurch” of western democracies, does this idealized space of democratic deliberation remain effective? In the Lurch asks that question in a pointed and self-reflexive way, tracing the history of this branch of documentary theater with particular attention to the political outcomes and stances these performances seem to seek. But this is not just a disinterested history—Claycomb reflects on his own participation in that political fantasy, including earlier scholarly writing that articulated with breathless hopefulness the potential of verbatim theater, and on his own theatrical attendance, imbued with a belief that witnessing this idealized public sphere was a substitute for actual public participation. In the Lurch also recounts the bumpy path towards its completion, two years marked by presidential impeachments, an insurrection, a national reckoning with racism, and a global pandemic. At the heart of the book is a central question: is verbatim theater any longer an effective cultural response to what can look like the possible end of democracy?en_US
dc.languageEnglishen_US
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AT Performing arts::ATD Theatre studiesen_US
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government::JPH Political structure and processes::JPHV Political structures: democracyen_US
dc.subject.otherVerbatim theater, documentary theater, political theater, performance, testimonial theater, modern drama, contemporary theater, English Language theatre, liberal democracy, public sphere, utopia, political fantasy, empathy in the arts, democratic deliberation, cruel optimism, nostalgia, suspicion in the arts, Anna Deavere Smith, Emily Mann, Tectonic Theatre Project, Ping Chong and Company, Porte Parole, Tricycle Theatre, The National Theatre UKen_US
dc.titleIn the Lurchen_US
dc.title.alternativeVerbatim Theater and the Crisis of Democratic Deliberationen_US
dc.typebook
oapen.identifier.doi10.3998/mpub.12210885en_US
oapen.relation.isPublishedBye07ce9b5-7a46-4096-8f0c-bc1920e3d889en_US
oapen.relation.isbn9780472075744en_US
oapen.relation.isbn9780472055746en_US
oapen.pages173en_US


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