Nicholas Ridout: "The dead are always with us, or the theatre of modernity"
Quorum welcomes Nicholas Ridout, Professor of Theatre at Queen Mary University of London, for a seminar on the topic of theatre and death.
QMUL's Drama Department welcome you to the next edition of our public seminar series. A 40-minute talk will be followed by refreshments and a Q&A/open discussion on the topic of THEATRE AND DEATH.
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Walter Benjamin may have been wrong, but in a very fruitful way, when he wrote of the abyss between the actors and the audience in relation to the one between the living and the dead. This paper explores the implications of Benjamin's analogy for thinking about theatre and the dead in European modernity, to suggest that a third abyss and a lacuna in historical materialist thought have stood in the way of a reckoning with the presence of the dead in modern life.
(Image: Orfeo ed Eurydice, by Christoph Willibald von Glück, in a production by Romeo Castellucci. Photo: Luca Del Pia)
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Nicholas Ridout is Professor of Theatre in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author, most recently, of Scenes from Bourgeois Life (Michigan, 2020), and previously, of Passionate Amateurs: Theatre Communism and Love (Michigan 2013), and Stage Fright, Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge 2006). He is the co-editor of the book series Performance Works at Northwestern University Press and is currently completing a three-year collaborative research project, performance, possession + automation, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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This is a hybrid event — online attendees should register attendance to receive a Zoom link shortly before the event.
In-person attendees should arrive at Rehearsal Room 2 (Arts One, Mile End Campus) at 5.30pm for a 5.45pm start. Please register attendance to help us plan the event.
Quorum welcomes Nicholas Ridout, Professor of Theatre at Queen Mary University of London, for a seminar on the topic of theatre and death.
QMUL's Drama Department welcome you to the next edition of our public seminar series. A 40-minute talk will be followed by refreshments and a Q&A/open discussion on the topic of THEATRE AND DEATH.
//
Walter Benjamin may have been wrong, but in a very fruitful way, when he wrote of the abyss between the actors and the audience in relation to the one between the living and the dead. This paper explores the implications of Benjamin's analogy for thinking about theatre and the dead in European modernity, to suggest that a third abyss and a lacuna in historical materialist thought have stood in the way of a reckoning with the presence of the dead in modern life.
(Image: Orfeo ed Eurydice, by Christoph Willibald von Glück, in a production by Romeo Castellucci. Photo: Luca Del Pia)
//
Nicholas Ridout is Professor of Theatre in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author, most recently, of Scenes from Bourgeois Life (Michigan, 2020), and previously, of Passionate Amateurs: Theatre Communism and Love (Michigan 2013), and Stage Fright, Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge 2006). He is the co-editor of the book series Performance Works at Northwestern University Press and is currently completing a three-year collaborative research project, performance, possession + automation, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
//
This is a hybrid event — online attendees should register attendance to receive a Zoom link shortly before the event.
In-person attendees should arrive at Rehearsal Room 2 (Arts One, Mile End Campus) at 5.30pm for a 5.45pm start. Please register attendance to help us plan the event.