Theatre and Feeling

'[a] brilliant series...these mini paperbacks each give an insightful, focused overview of a key topic...start collecting now.' - Whatsonstage.com 'An excellent book...the writing is extraordinarily lucid, without ever simplifying the issues at hand. The effect is really pleasurable'. - Nicholas Ridout, Reader in Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary, University of London 'Reading Theatre& Feeling can help us to make our choices with more consciousness and accountability.' - Anne Bogart, Artistic Director of the SITI Company '...Palgrave Macmillan's excellent new outward-looking, eclectic Theatre& ... series.These short books, written by leading theatre academics, do much to reintroduce some of the brightest names in theatre academia to the general reader. Plus, the matrix of references to bigger books soon builds quite a comprehensive catch-up reading list for those of us who graduated more than a decade ago and are interested in where contemporary thinking is at...' - Guardian Theatre Blog, September 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/10/theatre-critics-academics-artists 'Through its clarity and precision, as well as through its well-chosen examples, Hurley makes theatre and feeling accessible to a wide readership. The book thus delights while breaking new ground in the field, particularly regarding the crucial issue of how the feeling-technologies of theatre may contribute to a pedagogical, ethical programme. Most importantly, the book highlights the necessity, in the age of global capitalism, for further research into a feeling-based approach to the politics of performance.' - Platform

It provides an intellectual framework for the range of emotional experience engendered by the theatre, establishing a base-line for further thinking and practice in this rich and emergent area of inquiry. Moving across western dramatic theory and theatre history, the book demonstrates the centrality of feeling to the theatre.
How does a tragedy arouse pity and fear? How do music and lighting set a mood or convey an emotional tone for an audience? Why does theatre move us?

Theatre& Feeling explores the idea that, for many people, theatre is a passion. It provides an intellectual framework for the range of emotional experience engendered by the theatre, establishing a base-line for further thinking and practice in this rich and emergent area of inquiry. Moving across western dramatic theory and theatre history, the book demonstrates the centrality of feeling to the theatre.
 
Foreword by Anne Bogart