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Spectatorship, Affect, and Liveness in Contemporary British Performance

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Spectatorship, Affect, and Liveness in Contemporary British Performance Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-17-2017 1:00 PM Appearing Live: Spectatorship, Affect, and Liveness in Contemporary British Performance Meghan O'Hara The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Jonathan Boulter The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Meghan O'Hara 2017 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation O'Hara, Meghan, "Appearing Live: Spectatorship, Affect, and Liveness in Contemporary British Performance" (2017). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4764. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4764 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract The liveness of theatre is a much-debated topic in playwriting, arts policy, and performance studies. Discussions of liveness, by scholars such as Peggy Phelan, Richard Schechner, and Herbert Blau, have historically suggested that performance is an ephemeral medium, defining “liveness” as a descriptor of theatre’s transient existence, a phenomenon which disappears at the same moment it is performed. More recently, scholars such as Philip Auslander, Rebecca Schneider, and Amelia Jones have reconsidered this historical debate, suggesting that performance does not simply occur once and then disappear, but that its temporality must include repetition, reperformance, and memory. However, these approaches continue to theorize liveness in terms of its temporality. This dissertation intervenes in two ways: firstly, I reorient the definition of “liveness” away from temporality and toward affect: “liveness”, from my perspective, is a felt quality of performance, but is not restricted to the moment that performance takes place. Secondly, I analyze the relationship between the ways that affective liveness is invoked in performance and the UK’s current socio-economic and political environment to suggest that the increasing desire for experiences which feel live is an index of that country’s neoliberal context. Informing my argument are theorists such as Bergson and Derrida, as well as affect theorists such as Massumi, Bennett, and Berlant. This dissertation addresses several case studies. Chapter one discusses playwright Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life (1997) and The City (2008) as projections of capitalist promises and expectations of a “good life”, following Lauren Berlant. In chapter two, I analyze immersive theatre company Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More as a bodily, but purposefully individualistic, affective experience. The third and final chapter, I discuss i several multi-form archival projects by performance collective Forced Entertainment, analyzing their attempts to make documentation live. In foregrounding their own liveness, these performances attempt to capitalize on the community feeling produced by collective experience. However, I conclude that liveness has been deployed in these performances in order to encourage a particularly neoliberal form of affective consumption, which privileges individual, entrepreneurial, and capitalistic forms of creation and spectatorship. Key words performance studies, affect theory, liveness, contemporary drama, immersive theatre, Martin Crimp, Punchdrunk, Forced Entertainment. ii Acknowledgments I am endlessly grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Jonathan Boulter for his expertise, careful and considered reading of this work, and his astute insights. My abilities as a scholar have grown immensely as a result of his guidance. I am also deeply thankful to my second reader, Dr. Kim Solga, for her incredible skill as an editor, for generously sharing her knowledge with me, and especially for her mentorship over the past few years. My research for this project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and I am very grateful for their financial support. This dissertation would not have been possible without the further support provided to me by the Department of English and Writing Studies and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. I must offer special thanks to Leanne Trask, our graduate assistant, for her patience, attentiveness, and care. Thanks are also owed to the librarians and staff at Weldon Library, who made it possible for me to locate and access numerous sources, several particularly rare and elusive, for the purposes of this dissertation. I would also like to express my gratitude to the British Library and the National Theatre Archive for permitting me to view video recordings of performances of Martin Crimp and Forced Entertainment’s work, as well as granting access to an unpublished manuscript from Crimp’s early career. Thanks also to Forced Entertainment for allowing me to reproduce some of their images within. Finally, I owe many thanks to the Canadian Association for Theatre Research: the association’s annual conference allowed me to test out early versions of several sections of this project, and has always offered a welcoming, thought- provoking, and supportive environment which has inspired much of my research. iii I would be remiss if I did not mention the positive impact that my Ph.D. cohort has had on the development of my work as a scholar. Every member of this smart and insightful group has enriched my experience of graduate school. Thank you all for listening to and exchanging ideas, and for your endless encouragement. In particular, I would like to thank my friends Donnie Calabrese, Emily Kring, Nahmi Lee, Katlynd McLaren, Kevin Shaw, Tom Stuart, and Andy Verboom for being there during the long days and longer nights, and for making possible all that I have done over the past five years. To my parents: thank you for making me who I am, for teaching me to love the arts, and for encouraging and supporting me in each of my endeavours. Finally, to Rory, thank you for your love and, most of all, for keeping me sane. iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. v List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 i. Neoliberalism and the UK ............................................................................................. 4 i.ii Looking Back (In Anger, or Otherwise) ................................................................... 17 i.iii Theoretical Overview .............................................................................................. 30 i.iii.i The Liveness Debate .......................................................................................... 30 i.iii.ii Thinking in the Present Tense ........................................................................... 36 i.iii.iii Traces, Remains: the (After)lives of Performance .......................................... 43 i.iii.iv The Liveness Affect ......................................................................................... 47 i.iv Methodological Approach ........................................................................................ 65 i.v Dissertation Structure ................................................................................................ 69 Chapter One: Presence ....................................................................................................... 76 1.1 Living Remains ................................................................................................... 76 1.2 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 80 1.3 Attempts on Her Life ........................................................................................... 90 1.4 The City ............................................................................................................. 113 1.5 Living Spectrally ............................................................................................... 145 Chapter Two: Community ............................................................................................... 151 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 151 2.2 Immersive Culture .................................................................................................. 153 2.3 Emancipated Spectators ......................................................................................... 165 2.4 Performance on the Market .................................................................................... 174 2.5 Punchdrunk Theatre: Case Study ........................................................................... 192 2.6 Welcome to the McKittrick Hotel .........................................................................
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