Performance and Publics
Lecture by Nicholas Ridout
This lecture attempts to sketch out some ideas that might assist in developing a theoretical history of performance spectatorship.
It begins by asking how the figure of the spectator – at the theatre, and in wider public situations – might help us understand the formation of subjectivity during the period of bourgeois ascendancy in Europe from the early eighteenth century. It suggests that contemporary experiences of spectatorship cannot fully be understood without a critical re-evaluation of this historical dimension.
On Friday, February 21, Nicholas Ridout will moderate a seminar on "Audiences, publics and economics". A registration for this seminar is required. Applications consisting of a bio (max. 300 words) and a brief explanation why you would like to participate in the seminar (max. 500 words) should be sent to: zapisy@artmuseum.pl with "POINTS OF CONVERGENCE" in the subject line. Submissions deadline is February 12, 2014.
Theatre and performance art professor at Queen Mary University in London. In his academic research, his main focus is performance in the extended spectrum of the theatre as well as the links between theatre, live art, performance and economy, the theory of audience, participative art, the notion of interactivity and interpassivity.
Among his recent publications are: “Amateurs: Theatre, Communism and Love” (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2013), “Oman, Culture and Diplomacy” (with J. Jones, Edinburgh University Press, 2010), “Theatre and Ethics” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009); moreover, Ridout is a co-editor of “Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion (London: Routledge, 2006) with J. Kelleher and of “Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).