The Fascination with Crisis and the Crisis of Perception in Contemporary British Drama
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Sibylle Baumbach
is Professor of English Literature at Stuttgart University. Her research interests include early modern English literature and culture, cognitive literary studies, the aesthetics of fascination, and literary attention. She was a member of the German Young Academy, Humboldt fellow at Stanford University, and taught at the universities of Warwick, Gießen, Mainz, and Innsbruck. Her publications include monographs on
Literature and Fascination (2015) andShakespeare and the Art of Physiognomy (2008) as well as (co-)edited volumes onRegions of Culture – Regions of Identity (2010),A History of British Drama (2011),Travelling Concepts, Metaphors and Narratives (2012),A History of British Poetry (2015), andNew Approaches to the Twenty-First-Century Anglophone Novel (2019).
Abstract
Based on considerations of the connection between fascination, crisis, and the “Medusa effect,” this paper argues that contemporary drama tends to challenge the audience’s sense of safe spectatorship by stimulating perceptual crises, returning the spectators’ gaze, and exposing their tendencies of (in)attentional blindness. Besides plays by Martin Crimp, Carol Ann Duffy, and Rufus Norris, the analysis focuses on James Graham’s Quiz (2017), which dramatizes one of the most popular scandals in the history of British game shows and challenges the audience’s capacity of moral attention. As I argue, Quiz engages the audience in multi-levelled crises (a crisis of knowledge, a crisis of perception, and a crisis of judgement), which stimulates conceptual blending, tests spectators’ response-ability on an ethical, aesthetic, and political level, and eventually allows them to overcome the perceptual crisis created in the course of the play.
About the author
is Professor of English Literature at Stuttgart University. Her research interests include early modern English literature and culture, cognitive literary studies, the aesthetics of fascination, and literary attention. She was a member of the German Young Academy, Humboldt fellow at Stanford University, and taught at the universities of Warwick, Gießen, Mainz, and Innsbruck. Her publications include monographs on Literature and Fascination (2015) and Shakespeare and the Art of Physiognomy (2008) as well as (co-)edited volumes on Regions of Culture – Regions of Identity (2010), A History of British Drama (2011), Travelling Concepts, Metaphors and Narratives (2012), A History of British Poetry (2015), and New Approaches to the Twenty-First-Century Anglophone Novel (2019).
Works Cited
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgments
- Articles
- Theater of Crisis: Contemporary Aesthetic Responses to a Cross-Sectional Condition – An Introduction
- Tragedies of the Capitalocene
- “Writing Plays That Are Climate Change”
- The Fascination with Crisis and the Crisis of Perception in Contemporary British Drama
- Small Stories, Local Places: A Place-Oriented Approach to Rural Crises
- A Slow Unfolding “Fault Sequence”: Risk and Responsibility in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children
- The Crisis of Becoming-Nature in Howard Barker’s Recent Dramas
- Looking at “Experiences on the Edge of the Edge”
- Radical Gesture and the Politics of Postdramatic Tragedy: Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains
- Fifteen-Minute Moments: Black Women’s Short Plays as a Political Aesthetic of Crisis
- The “Ordinary” Cruelty and the Theatre as Witness in Four South African Plays
- Reviews
- Marilena Zaroulia and Philip Hager, eds. Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance: Inside/Outside Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, xiii + 265 pp., €103.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Konstantinos Thomaidis. Theatre & Voice. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xiii + 89 pp., £6.99 (paperback), £6.72 (PDF ebook). Lynne Kendrick. Theatre Aurality. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xxviii + 164 pp., £89.99 (hardback), £71.50 (PDF ebook).
- Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier, eds. Queer Dramaturgies: International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016, 353 pp., €85.59 (hardback), €48.14 (paperback), €35.69 (PDF ebook).
- Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost, eds. Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre: Populating the Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, xv + 301 pp., €106.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Eamonn Jordan and Eric Weitz, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. London: Palgrave, 2018, xxxiii + 866 pp., €245.03 (hardback), €190.39 (PDF ebook).
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgments
- Articles
- Theater of Crisis: Contemporary Aesthetic Responses to a Cross-Sectional Condition – An Introduction
- Tragedies of the Capitalocene
- “Writing Plays That Are Climate Change”
- The Fascination with Crisis and the Crisis of Perception in Contemporary British Drama
- Small Stories, Local Places: A Place-Oriented Approach to Rural Crises
- A Slow Unfolding “Fault Sequence”: Risk and Responsibility in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children
- The Crisis of Becoming-Nature in Howard Barker’s Recent Dramas
- Looking at “Experiences on the Edge of the Edge”
- Radical Gesture and the Politics of Postdramatic Tragedy: Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains
- Fifteen-Minute Moments: Black Women’s Short Plays as a Political Aesthetic of Crisis
- The “Ordinary” Cruelty and the Theatre as Witness in Four South African Plays
- Reviews
- Marilena Zaroulia and Philip Hager, eds. Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance: Inside/Outside Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, xiii + 265 pp., €103.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Konstantinos Thomaidis. Theatre & Voice. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xiii + 89 pp., £6.99 (paperback), £6.72 (PDF ebook). Lynne Kendrick. Theatre Aurality. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xxviii + 164 pp., £89.99 (hardback), £71.50 (PDF ebook).
- Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier, eds. Queer Dramaturgies: International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016, 353 pp., €85.59 (hardback), €48.14 (paperback), €35.69 (PDF ebook).
- Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost, eds. Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre: Populating the Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, xv + 301 pp., €106.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Eamonn Jordan and Eric Weitz, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. London: Palgrave, 2018, xxxiii + 866 pp., €245.03 (hardback), €190.39 (PDF ebook).
