Applied Theatre: Aesthetics
- Submitting institution
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The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- GWHI1
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.5040/9781472507129
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- ISBN
- 9781472507129
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Applied Theatre: Aesthetics’ combines a short 30,000-word monograph authored by White with an edited collection of six additional chapters by six different contributors. The book’s theme — the application of aesthetic philosophy and questions of artistic quality to interventionist and socially embedded performance — is tackled from a broad variety of perspectives. The opening two chapters from White address the question of aesthetic autonomy as a fundamental problem in this conjunction of theory and practice. Surveying important foundational perspectives and their positions on the autonomy and heteronomy of art in chapter one, chapter two moves on to sketch possibilities for overcoming (or holding unresolved) the contradiction of these two aspects of art experience, and makes a case for the importance of beauty, and other dimensions of specifically aesthetic experience, for the art of social and personal change.
This establishing material was shared with the contributors during the writing process, to aid in the framing of the overall theme, and it serves to put the diverse contributions that follow into context. The range of subject matters, context and theorisation is broad, and is not intended to justify or present a single approach. But framed in this way, they evidence the importance of considering the power of the aesthetic as part of the instrumental power of performance. Their contrasting (and sometimes contradictory) arguments evidence the variety of aesthetic thinking implicit in applied theatre practice, and that its ethical and political positions are intimately connected to aesthetic positions, and their balancing of heteronomy and autonomy.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -