Performance and the Medical Body
- Submitting institution
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Guildhall School of Music & Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- MERALEB
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Bloomsbury
- ISBN
- 978-1-4725-7078-9
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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13
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This is the first issue in Bloomsbury’s series ‘Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues’. The series editor solicited a proposal after participating in the symposium that launched Mermikides’ research network on the interface between medicine and performance (AHRC ‘Science in culture’ 2012-2014). Mermikides approached Bouchard as co-editor given their complementary research interests: Mermikides’ in the creation and staging of medical performance, Bouchard’s in analysing such performances alongside medical discourses. Thereafter the proposal-writing and editorial processes were collaborative.
The project addressed the need to capture then-new convergences between 21st-century drama/performance practice and the medical domain. Our approach was to focus on the human body as an object of evolving scrutiny. Our argument that ‘the body’ is socially constructed through medical discourses and practices led us to structure the book to replicate the historical shift in medicine ‘from examining the outside of the body, in holistic terms, to examining its internal and microscopic structures’ (p. 12).
To reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the field, our editorial methodology involved scanning theatre studies, performance practice, medical humanities and disability studies to identify thought-leaders with distinct yet complementary perspectives. We each liaised with five of the commissioned contributors through the writing process, responding to drafts to create a deliberately ‘heterogenous mix of methodologies, topics, and voices’ (Conti, review in 'Theatre Journal') that cohered under our conceit of the ‘medical body’.
The book was designed to establish the intersection of theatre and medicine as a distinct category worthy of scholarly attention, in a format accessible across disciplines. The co-written introduction provides one of the very first overviews of this field and critiques established and emergent intersections between performance and medicine. Mermikides’ sole-authored chapter considers performance as a medium that ‘subjectifies’ the microscopic, and provides a novel analysis of dramaturgical strategies that engage audiences with biological minutiae.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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