Site-Specific Performance

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Site-specific performance - acts of theatre and performative events at landscape locations, in village streets, in urban situations. In houses, chapels, barns, disused factories, railway stations; on hillsides, in forest clearings, underwater. At the scale of civil engineering; as intimate as a guided walk.

Leading theatre artist and scholar Mike Pearson draws upon thirty years practical experience, proposing original approaches to the creation and study of performance outside the auditorium. In this book he suggests organizing principles, innovative strategies, methods and exercises for making theatre in a variety of contexts and locations, and through examples, case studies and projects develops distinctive theoretical insights into the relationship of site and performance, scenario and scenography. This book encourages practical initiatives in the conception, devising and staging of performances, while also recommending effective models for its critical appreciation.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Images (p. vi1)
• Chronology (p. viii)
• Acknowledgements (p. xi)
• The Practice of the Book (p. xiii)
• Prologue (p. 1)
• 1 Introduction (p. 7)
• 2 Models and Approaches (p. 18)
• Visitation: going and doing (p. 18)
• Phenomenology: experiencing (p. 29)
• Chorography: differentiating (p. 31)
• Art: modelling (p. 33)
• Architecture I: occupying (p. 34)
• Architecture II: programming (p. 38)
• Mobility: sauntering and loitering (p. 40)
• Archaeology: marking (p. 42)
• 3 Site: Places (p. 47)
• Field: Haxey, Lincolnshire (p. 47)
• Landscape I Mynydd Bach, Ceredigion (p. 50)
• Village: Hibaldstow, Lincolnshire (p. 54)
• House: Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth (p. 57)
• Chapel: Morriston Tabernacle, Swansea (p. 61)
• Barn: National History Museum, St Fagans, Cardiff (p. 65)
• Public building: Aberystwyth railway station (p. 68)
• Disused building: Ferry Road, Cardiff (p. 72)
• City: The Hayes, Cardiff (p. 76)
• Landscape II Snitterby Carrs, Lincolnshire (p. 80)
• Site: Exercises (p. 83)
• Site: Project: Trace:, Cardiff (p. 88)
• 4 Context: Conditions (p. 92)
• Landscape (p. 92)
• Cityscape (p. 96)
• Environment (p. 100)
• Heritage (p. 104)
• Place (p. 108)
• Scenography (p. 112)
• Materiality (p. 115)
• Virtuality (p. 119)
• Connectivity (p. 123)
• Inaccessibility (p. 126)
• Context: Exercises (p. 130)
• Context: Project: FIBUA, SENTA, Sennybridge (p. 135)
• 5 Scenario: Dramaturgy (p. 140)
• Event: the nature of performance (p. 140)
• Context: the influence of location (p. 143)
• Concept: governing ideas (p. 147)
• Devising: practical applications (p. 150)
• Space: as organizing principle (p. 155)
• Time: as organizing principle (p. 159)
• Sequence: ordering material (p. 162)
• Stratigraphy: layering material (p. 166)
• Engagement: performers and site (p. 170)
• Reception: audience and site (p. 174)
• Scenario: Exercises (p. 178)
• Scenario: Project: country hotel (p. 183)
• 6 After Effects (p. 188)
• Afterlife: pedagogy (p. 188)
• Afterlife: archive (p. 191)
• Postscripts (p. 194)
• Bibliography (p. 195)
• Index (p. 203)