Beyond Failure : New Essays on the Cultural History of Failure in Theatre and Performance

In setting foot on stage, every performer risks the possiblity of failure. Indeed, the very performance of any human action is inextricable from its potential not to succeed. This inherent potential has become a key critical trope in contemporary theatre, performance studies, and scholarship around visual cultures. Beyond Failure explores what it means for our understanding not just of theatrical practice but of human social and cultural activity more broadly. The essays in this volume tackle contemporary debates around the theory and poetics of failure, suggesting that in the absence of success can be found a defiance and hopefulness that points to new ways of knowing and being in the world. Beyond Failure offers a unique and engaging approach for students and practitioners interested not only in the impact of failure on the stage, but what it means for wider social and cultural debates. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements Chapter 1 Introduction: Knowing failure Notes References The cultural politics of failure Chapter 2 Carry on camping?: Spectacle, concealment, and failure in the performance of politics 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Acknowledgements References Chapter 3 What chance failure? I II III IV V VI Note References Chapter 4 Subverting the system: Kent Monkman and the cultural politics of performing ‘two-spiritedness’ Developing ‘Miss Chief Eagle Testickle’: Two-spirit activism and the Indian object Performing two-spiritedness: From ‘Dance to the Berdashe’ to ‘Dance to Miss Chief’ Native American performance studies Notes References Chapter 5 Come hear the music play: The politics of queer failure and practices of survival Notes References Chapter 6 Asserting Afro-German subjectivity on the German stage Anti-racist protests as public performance of Afro-German presence Asserting subjectivity through the creation of Afro-German theatre Claiming the canon Notes References Failure and performance Chapter 7 Anaesthesis: Dance marathons and the limits of sense After Beckett: Exhausting exhaustion The rules of the game: Last one standing has ‘won’ Dance marathons: A new ‘wave of fatigue contests’ ‘It’s called “empathy” and it’s the new show business – it’s modern’ Trading time Of sensible fabrics and intelligible forms Lasting ‘A show to the taste of the tasteless’ Chaosmosis: Rethinking ‘depression’ 24/7 busyness: Frayed ends So as not to conclude Notes References Chapter 8 Missing the target: Emotion, stoic psychology, and the actor Notes References Theatre’s philosophy of failure Chapter 9 Theatre of the worldless I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X Notes References Chapter 10 Theatre’s broken middle Avant-garde failure The Serate The speculative stage Cognition – Re-cognition References Chapter 11 What a joke: Ruzzante’s failed attempt at the good life Meet Ruzzante Ha. Ha! Ha? The good life Ruzzante’s constipated sublation Notes References Index In setting foot on stage, every performer invokes their own capacity to fail. The very performance of this action and those that follow it are inextricable from their potential not to succeed. Beyond Failure explores what it means for our understanding not just of theatrical practice but of human social and cultural activity more broadly.