Modernism and Theatrical Performance

Abstract

In ‘Modernism and Theatrical Performance’ Kirsten Shepherd-Barr surveys the status of theatre within histories of modernisms and argues that despite a current claim to interdisciplinary awareness by modernist scholars, avant-garde theatrical performance remains marginalised by critical paradigms dominated by a focus on textuality and the divorce of the ‘performative’ from the theatrical within contemporary theory. She argues that narratives of modernism have yet to register the rise of performance as a field within drama and theatre studies, and advocates the re-establishment of theatrical activity within modernist historiography.