Notes Introduction: Theatre, Space, and World-making 1. This work is primarily focused on theatre studies but its argument also pertains to the broader field of performance studies. 2. For a fuller discussion of this text, the significance of land rights, the importance of simultaneous occupation, and the staging of landscape in Australia, see my Unsettling Space (2006, pp. 25–48). 3. Escolme describes the ways in which a similar design decision was used in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Richard II with Sam West, directed by Steven Pimlott at The Other Place in 2000. Her interpretation of this moment takes the argument about the externalities in a different direction – she explores the ‘violence done to conventions of inside and outside’ (2006, p. 107) – but she recognizes this staging technique as a challenge to space, reality, and as a result, the politics of the play itself. A movie that mirrors this approach is Tim Robbins’s 1999 Cradle Will Rock about the actual 1937 attempt to mount Marc Blitzstein’s left-leaning musical of the same name. It depicts the power of theatre in the United States where the hunt for Communists among artistic communities destroyed lives and careers. Thanks to Fred D’Agostino for alerting me to this film. 4. Barker’s argument may appear to be utopian rather than heterotopic but as I argue in Chapter 1, there are intersections between these terms. While heterotopia also has a utopian aspect, I regard it as more likely to be materialized than utopia. 5. Of course, analysing performance necessarily calls on a broad range of theatrical features. 6. Theatre is, of course, already distinguished from the world when it occurs in a purpose-built venue. Theatre that engages with heterotopia acknowledges more intensively than usual both the discreteness of its location(s) and the possibility for a closer connection with the world beyond the venue. 7. See Hetherington’s argument that factories generally are not hetero- topic but one particular factory (Josiah Wedgwood’s) could be (2001, pp. 52–70). 8. The fleeting nature of insights in theatre can be frustrating for theatre researchers but it is also part of theatre’s appeal. For accounts of elusive exchanges and meaning-making in theatre, see, in various contexts, Dolan 2005; Hodgdon 2012; Phelan 1997; Skantze 2013; and Sofer 2012. 9. See also Lefebvre’s ‘possible-impossible’ ‘U-topia’ (2003, p. 39). 10. For an account of the history of space and place, see Casey’s The Fate of Place. Unless otherwise specified, I follow Lefebvre’s conclusions 187 188 Notes regarding space as a chief determining factor in culture and his lead in referring to space as the larger entity, although Casey’s theory of place is particularly helpful in my construction of heterotopia, as I outline in the next chapter. 11. Of the many studies that exist on theatre space, see Mackintosh’s his- tory of the western theatre through an analysis of its playhouses (1993). Others that address spatiality in theatre, at least to some extent, include: Carlson 1989; Chaudhuri 1995; Chaudhuri and Fuchs 2002; Dillon 2000; Garner 1994; McAuley 1999; McKinnie 2007; Sullivan 1998; Tompkins 2006; and Ubersfeld 1998. 12. I am not using ‘possible worlds’ in its narrative theory context. 13. This categorization assumes that the location of such performed spaces must also account for the (usually urban) geographical context. For more on this, see Carlson 1989 and McKinnie 2007. 14. See Carlson for an account of the ‘haunting’ of theatre venues (2003a, p. 140), whether in terms of previous productions that were housed in the same venue, the re-use of props or even set designs, among other echoes of productions past. 15. Among the commentators on site-specific performance (which I address in Chapter 2) see Birch and Tompkins 2012; Thomasson 2011; and Wilkie 2008. 16. McAuley extends this argument in her analysis of all the locations in a theatre venue (1999, pp. 24–32). 17. Certainly the connection between space and theatre design or scenogra- phy is essential, as Howard articulates: ‘space is the first and most impor- tant challenge for a scenographer’ (2002, p. 1). Most people who attend theatre don’t have the skill to isolate a production’s design elements (such as colour, composition, balance, line). A closer analytical relation- ship between design and theatre is clearly desirable but beyond the scope of this project. 18. I do not, however, insist that all performances make, or must make, such a connection but I often find more rewarding the performances that do. 1 Theatre and the Construction of Alternate Spaces 1. I am less well-equipped to articulate a methodology for a production tool than I am a reading strategy. Nevertheless, the two emerge strongly from my study of heterotopia. This project leaves scope for others to analyse exactly how heterotopias might enhance performance production. 2. Utopia has been deployed by so many different cultural sectors that Neville-Sington and Sington maintain it to be ‘one of mankind’s prin- cipal navigational instruments for at least five hundred years’ (1993, p. 253). 3. See also Hetherington’s outline of the term’s anatomical origins: ‘[i]t is used to refer to parts of the body that are either out of place, missing, extra, or, like tumours, alien’ (1997, p. 42). Notes 189 4. For more on utopia, see those sources referenced above, and Bisk 2002; Bloch 1988; Gindin and Panitch 2002; Giroux 2004; Jestrovic 2013; Markus 2002; Schehr 1997; Wegner 2002; Wood 2002; and Yoran 2002. 5. See also Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, which takes a different approach to utopianism, although it is as hopeful as Dolan’s book and my own. Like Dolan’s, it is not fixed in space per se, but more in time. 6. As I explore later in this chapter, the other component of utopia – the ‘good place’ – is, for me, equally important. It operates as a unity in the context of ‘utopia’ but as a separate spatial field in ‘heterotopia’. 7. Marin frames the ‘place’ of utopia differently, arguing ‘[i]t is often said that it [utopia] is an imaginary place. Rather, it is an indetermined place. Better yet, it is the very indetermination of place’ (1984, p. 115). 8. Dolan suggests a fusion of the good no-place that is theatre but as I outline below, heterotopia occupies a space between these two structural components. 9. While I appreciate Dolan’s project very much, it received some criticism, which Reinelt sums up as follows: [r]eaders will find her arguments variously persuasive or weak depend- ing in part on whether or not they are prepared to accept some of her premises: that emotional experience might lead to social action, that performances can create a temporary community, that respect for dif- ference does not interfere with experiencing an intersubjective sense of common humanity, that there is a spiritual dimension to extraordinary performances. (2007, p. 215) My project will, I hope, sidestep similar criticism because of its somewhat ‘firmer’ grounding in spatiality. 10. There are other variants of the conventional topos of utopia: for instance, in a non-theatrical context, McGrath conjures ‘simultopia’ which, in the context of contemporary Bangkok, is ‘a hyper-modern milieu of surfaces and signs without an authentic centre or origin over-occurring within the same space of ancient beliefs, practices and rituals’ (2002, p. 204). 11. Dolan comments that dystopias and utopias are not mutually exclusive: ‘spectators might draw a utopian performative from even the most dystopian theatrical universe’ (2005, p. 8). 12. Lefebvre mentions heterotopias in the context of a topos grid: ‘isotopias, heterotopias, utopias, or in other words analogous places, contrasting places, and the places of what has no place, or no longer has a place – the absolute, the divine, or the possible’ (1991, p. 163). He briefly articulates heterotopias as mutually repellent spaces (1991, p. 366) and as inverted space: ‘full space may be inverted over an almost heterotopic void at the same location (for instance, vaults, cupolas)’ (1991, p. 224). He refers to the concept further, briefly, in The Urban Revolution (2003, p. 38 and pp. 128–32). See Johnson (2006, pp. 83–4) for a discussion of the poten- tial relationship between Foucault’s heterotopia and Lefebvre’s urban 190 Notes utopia. Harvey takes Lefebvre to task for suggesting that everything can be a heterotopia (2013, p. xvii). 13. See also Lefebvre (2003, p. 4) and Casey (1997, p. 301). 14. See also Casey (1997, p. 300). Relph is perhaps the most enthusiastic proponent of heterotopias as they directly connect with geography: [h]eterotopia is the geography that bears the stamp of our age and our thought – that is to say it is pluralistic, chaotic, designed in detail yet lacking universal foundations or principles, continually changing, linked by centreless flows of information; it is artificial, and marked by deep social inequalities. It renders doubtful most of the conventional ways of thinking about landscapes and geographical patterns. (1991, pp. 104–5) For others who write constructively on heterotopia, see Boyer 2008; Faubion 2008; Hook 2010; Johnson 2006; Kohn 2003; Pinder 2005; and Topinka 2010. 15. Among the theatre scholars who refer to heterotopia, Birringer uses the term in passing to describe Makrolab, a Project ATOL intervention in the notion of museum exhibitions (2000). Jestrovic mentions hetero- topia in the context of theatre in Belgrade (2013, p. 71). Moser isolates heterotopia as useful for understanding two plays by the Canadian playwright, Margaret Hollingsworth. Moffat analyses the heterotopic woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2004).