Sign-In
Cart
Playing Sick: Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine
Paperback
Series: Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
Medical ReferenceBritish HistoryTheater History
ISBN13: 9780367733919
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Dec 18 2020
Pages: 196
Weight: 0.73
Height: 0.49 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
Few life occurrences shaped individual and collective identities within Victorian-era society as critically as witnessing or suffering from illness. The prevalence of illness narratives within late nineteenth-century popular culture was made manifest on the period's British and American stages, where theatrical embodiments of illness were indisputable staples of actors' repertoires.
Playing Sick: Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine reconstructs how actors embodied three of the era's most provocative illnesses: tuberculosis, drug addiction, and mental illness. In placing performances of illness within wider medicocultural contexts, Meredith Conti analyzes how such depictions confirmed or resisted salient constructions of diseases and the diseased. Conti's case studies, which range from Eleonora Duse's portrayal of the consumptive courtesan Marguerite Gautier to Henry Irving's performance of senile dementia in King Lear, help to illuminate the interdependence of medical science and theatre in constructing nineteenth-century illness narratives. Through reconstructing these performances, Conti isolates from the period's acting practices a lexicon of embodied illness: a flexible set of physical and vocal techniques that performers employed to theatricalize the sick body. In an age when medical science encouraged a gradual decentering of the patient from their own diagnosis and treatment, late nineteenth-century performances of illness symbolically restored the sick to positions of visibility and consequence.
Also in
Theater History
History Hiding Around Broadway: Backstage Lore, Secrets & Surprises from New York's Famed Theater District
Dvornik, Teale
Hardcover
Shakespeare's Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen
O'Malley, Charles
Stern, Scott W.
Hardcover
The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
Swift, Daniel
Hardcover
Houdini's Library: Inside the Spellbinding Collections of the Great Illusionist
Colleary, Eric
Hardcover
The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition
Landau, Tina
Bogart, Anne
Paperback
Shakespeare's World: Seeing the Plays Through Elizabethan Eyes
Krausnick, Dennis
Lubarr, Josh
Goodheart, Rebecca
Paperback
Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes!: Stuart Gordon and Chicago's Organic Theater Company
Heard, Cordis
Rinnert, Jim
Griswold, Mary
Hardcover
Champions for the Arts: Lessons and Successful Strategies for Engaging Diverse Audiences
Walker-Kuhne, Donna
Paperback
Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919
Thompson, Cheryl
Paperback
Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park with George
Lapine, James
Paperback
Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive
Bainbridge, Danielle
Paperback
The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War
Shapiro, James
Hardcover
Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel
Gerould, Daniel
Paperback
Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry That Changed Acting Forever
Rader, Peter
Paperback
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Gefter, Philip
Hardcover
Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Every Told
Papp, Joseph
Turan, Kenneth
Paperback
The Second City: The Essentially Accurate History
Kozak, Liz
City, The Second
Patinkin, Sheldon
Hardcover
The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
Swift, Daniel
Paperback
Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women's Visual Work and the Ethics of Representation
Barber, Tiffany E.
Paperback
Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theatre
Goldmann, Kerry
Paperback
Genos Dikanikon: Amateur and Professional Speech in the Courtrooms of Classical Athens
Bers, Victor
Paperback
Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
Vollmann, William T.
Paperback
Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project's Process of Devising Theater
Pitts McAdams, Barbara
Kaufman, Moises
Paperback
The Bird Cage Theater: The Curtain Rises on Tombstone, Arizona's National Treasure
Mihaljevich, Michael Paul
Hardcover
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Nineteenth-Century America: Discourse and Criticism
Rowland, Herbert
Hardcover
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Gefter, Philip
Paperback
Chasing the Sun: Staging Black Life and Belonging in California's Bay Area
Thompson, Wendy M.
Paperback
Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim
Kapilow, Rob
Hardcover
Political Stages: Toronto Gay Theatre from Criminalization to Queer Protest
Halferty, J. Paul
Paperback
Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive
Bainbridge, Danielle
Hardcover
Something Wonderful Right Away: The Birth of Second City--America's Greatest Comedy Theater
Sweet, Jeffrey
Paperback
Les Misérables: The Story So Far of the World's Longest Running Musical
Nightingale, Benedict
Wolf, Matt
Palmer, Martyn
Hardcover
Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theatre
Goldmann, Kerry
Hardcover
Japanese No Masks: With 300 Illustrations of Authentic Historical Examples
Perzynski, Friedrich
Paperback
Mediatic Shakespeare: The Dynamics of Orality, Script and Print in the Plays and Poems
Cavell, Richard
Hardcover
Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts
Horowitz, Joseph
Paperback
Artistic Collaboration, Exile, and Brecht: A New Intellectual History, 1900-1950
Hollander, Katherine
Hardcover
A History of Leadville Theater: Opera Houses, Variety Acts and Burlesque Shows
Scanlon, Gretchen
Hardcover
Boom Chicago Presents the 30 Most Important Years in Dutch History
Rosenfeld, Pep
Moskos, Andrew
Hardcover
The Long Revolution: Sixty Years on the Frontlines of a New American Theater
Fichandler, Zelda
Paperback
Collaboration in Theatre: A Practical Guide for Designers and Directors
Domer, K.
Roznowski, Rob
Paperback
The Stage of Her Life: Conversations with Actress Lea Koenig on Theater and Her Life
Goldberg, Yaniv Shimon
Paperback
New Directions in Tarot: Decoding the Tarot Illustrations of Pamela Colman Smith
Martin, Scott
Hardcover
The Untold Stories of Broadway: Tales from the World's Most Famous Theaters
Tepper, Jennifer Ashley
Paperback
New York Theatre Walks: Seven Historical Tours from Times Square to Greenwich Village and Beyond
Kissel, Howard
Paperback
A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge
Carey, John
Hajdu, David
Paperback
The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy
Wolff, Larry
Paperback
Local Glories: Opera Houses on Main Street, Where Art and Community Meet
Satterthwaite, Ann
Hardcover
Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England
Kuhn, John
Hardcover
100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater
Ruhl, Sarah
Paperback
The Rise and Fall of the Royal Shakespeare Company: An Illustrated History
Trowbridge, Simon
Paperback
Up Your Ass: Or from the Cradle to the Boat or the Big Suck or Up from the Slime
Solanas, Valerie
Paperback
Pioneering Theatre-in-the-Round: The Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, 1962-1986
Walker, Rachel
Hardcover
Sistren Theatre Collective and the Politics of Space in Jamaica: Woman Talawa
Smith, Karina
Hardcover