Avant-Garde Theatre Sound: Staging Sonic Modernity (Avant-Gardes in Performance)

Sound experimentation by avant-garde theatre artists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is an important but ignored aspect of theatre history. Curtin explores how artists engaged with the sonic conditions of modernity through dramatic form, characterization, staging, technology, performance style, and other forms of interaction. Sound experimentation by avant-garde theatre artists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is an important but largely ignored aspect of theatre history. In this book, Curtin shows how attention to this activity enhances our understanding of artistic practice (modernism) and historical circumstance (modernity) and considers how avant-gardists staged sonic modernity by exploring its conceptual and communicative possibilities as well as its experiential realities. He critically examines avant-garde theatre through a composite analysis of dramatic texts, historical productions, sound recordings, philosophical speculations, and social movements "In this engaging and penetrating study, Curtin relates the theatrical avant-garde's interest in sonic experimentation to several key features of sonic modernity. Ranging from modernity's 'acoustic imaginary' to the 'exuberant noise' of avant-gardism itself, Curtin recovers a lively historical dialogue between modernist theatre practices and the shifting soundscapes of modern culture."--Andrew Sofer, Boston College, USA "Avant-Garde Theatre Sound lends an expert and well-tempered ear to the often clamorous but strangely overlooked soundscapes of modern avant-garde theatre. Eschewing the excitable acousmania of many other sound theorists, Curtin offers searching and historically informed explorations of the intrigues and elations of noise in modern performance. This book puts the question of sound firmly and unignorably into the history of theatre, just as it puts theatre at the heart of sound studies."--Steven Connor, University of Cambridge, UK Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction: The Sound of No Hands Clapping....Pages 1-19 The Acoustic Imaginary....Pages 21-62 Theatre Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction....Pages 63-100 Reinventing Language: Sense and Nonsense....Pages 101-142 Hearing Affectively: The Noise of Avant-Garde Performance....Pages 143-198 Conclusion: A Resounding.......Pages 199-204 Back Matter....Pages 205-260