Staging The Gaze

By exploring the concept of the tender gaze in German film, theater, and literature, this volume's contributors illustrate how perspective-taking in works of art fosters empathy and prosocial behaviors.

Theatre, in some respects, resembles a market. Stories, rituals, ideas, perceptive modes, conversations, rules, techniques, behavior patterns, actions, language, and objects constantly circulate back and forth between theatre and the other cultural institutions that make up everyday life in the twentieth century. These exchanges, which challenge the established concept of theatre in a way that demands to be understood, form the core of Erika Fischer-Lichte's dynamic book. Each eclectic essay investigates the boundaries that separate theatre from other cultural domains. Every encounter between theatre and other art forms and institutions renegotiates and redefines these boundaries as part of an ongoing process. Drawing on a wealth of fascinating examples, both historical and contemporary, Fischer-Lichte reveals new perspectives in theatre research from quite a number of different approaches. Energetically and excitingly, she theorizes history, theorizes and historicizes performance analysis, and historicizes theory.

The plot of the late-medieval Spanish work Celestina (1499) centers on the ill-fated love of Calisto and Melibea and the fascinating character of their intermediary, Celestina. In this ground-breaking rereading of the play, James F. Burke offers a new interpretation of the characters' actions by analyzing medieval theories of perception that would have influenced the composition of Celestina. Drawing upon a variety of texts and thinkers—including the medieval theories of Thomas Aquinas, the Renaissance treatises of Marsilio Ficino, the classical philosophy of Aristotle, and the modern psychology of Jacques Lacan—Burke relates ancient and medieval theories of sensory functions to modern understandings. He demonstrates that modern concepts of "the gaze" have their premodern analogy in the idea of an all-encompassing sensory field, both visual and auditory, that surrounded and enveloped each individual. Touching on medieval theories of the "evil eye," the sonic sphere, and "the banquet of the senses," Burke offers a new perspective on the use and manipulation of sensory input by the characters of Celestina. This book will be welcomed not only by students of Spanish literature but also by those interested in new ways of approaching medieval and Renaissance texts.

Performing Magic on the Western Stage examines magic as a performing art and as a meaningful social practice, linking magic to cultural arenas such as religion, finance, gender, and nationality and profiling magicians from Robert-Houdin to Pen& Teller.

A beautiful and compelling novel, Elif Shafak's The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others "I didn't say anything. I didn't return his smiles. I looked at him in the wide mirror in front of where I was sitting. He grew uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. I hate those who think fat people are stupid.' An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organised in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others. "Beautifully evoked" - The Times "Original and Compelling" - TLS "Plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes" - Helen Oyeyemi "Entertaining and affecting" - Publishers' Weekly Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for The Telegraph, Guardian and the New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 viewers since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.

Feeling the Gaze explores the visual elements in eight contemporary Argentine and Chilean theater performances. Gail A. Bulman shows how staged images can awaken spectators' emotions to activate their intellect, provoking nuanced and deep contemplation of social, historical, and political themes. Ranging from simple props, costumes, body movements and spatial constructions to integrated media and digital images, the aesthetic components in these pieces engage to forge multifaceted storytelling, stimulate the public's relation to memory, and create affective bonds that help build individual and collective social consciousness. Recent innovations in Southern Cone theatre aesthetics have been shifting traditional performance/spectator relationships and animating ideological discussions. The various works presented here give readers a holistic understanding of the emerging prominence of visuality and affect as a vehicle for political advocacy in Latin American theatre and performance. The book asks us to consider the formation of new spectator-performance bonds as authors, directors, and theatre groups increasingly turn toward alternative settings for their work. Lingering visual memories of the performances, together with the feelings that the performative experience stirs up, provide spectators with an enduring focal point through which to reflect on and judge what is "beyond" the performed scenes. Staged live in the Southern Cone and internationally since 2014, these plays demonstrate the transgressive power of the visual to make spectators see, feel, and potentially act against injustices and violence. This study offers comprehensive critical discussions of Teatro Banda's O'Higgins: un hombre en pedazos; Teatro Nino Proletario's Fulgor; Mario, Luiggi y sus fantasmas's Manual de carrona; Agustin Leon Pruzzo's En la sombra de la cupula; Teatro la Maria's Los millonarios; Claudio Tolcachir's Proximo; Sergio Blanco's Tebas Land; and Lola Arias's Doble de Riesgo.

Re-envisions epic from Homer to Nonnus through theories of the gaze.