Theatre/Archaeologyis a brilliant and provocative challenge to disciplinary practice and intellectual boundaries. It brings together radical proposals in both archaeological and performance theory to generate a startlingly original and intriguing methodological framework. It facilitates a new way of investigating landscape and cityscape, and notions of physicality, encounter, site and context. The book takes scholarly innovation to new levels. It is the result of a long-term, unique collaboration between a renowned archaeological theorist and a leading theatre artist. The result is a vibrant dialogic writing that bridges the scholarly/poetic divide. In its unique integration of theory, narrative, and autobiography,Theatre/Archaeologybrings a new dimension to two burgeoning fields of inquiry.
Industry Reviews
"An extremely influential book.."-Julian Thomas, Univesity of Manchester "Fascinating and ground-breaking.."-Elin Diamond, Rutgers University "Together they have a written a wonderfully evocative book, tracing the evolving dialogue between them as they explored what each discipline had to offer the other, leading eventually to the elaboration of the common project they call 'theatre/archaeology'. The book is a fascinating intermingling of different narratives (artistic, intellectual, autobiographical) and discourses (scholarly, polemical, visionary), and it begins at the end, which is of course a new beginning, with the outline of the academic programs that have emerged from their interdisciplinary collaboration."."-Gay McAuley, University of Sydney "The authors provide brilliant insights into the practice of site-specific performance, and their book makes a major contribution to the discipline of performance studies through its elaboration of concepts such as the deep map, the sensorium, second-order performance as a mode of performance documentation, and more generally, in the seriousness with which it addresses the task of documenting performance. "A brilliant and imaginative cross-disciplinary collaboration, Pearson and Shanks have provided analytical concepts and an intellectual framework that can be applied to many different performance genres."."-Gay McAuley, University of Sydney