Performance, Madness and Psychiatry: Isolated Acts (Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series)

This exciting collection of essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the 18th century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. The book will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike. "This exciting collection of interdisciplinary essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the eighteenth century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. Performance, Madness and Psychiatry will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike. It features interviews, archival research and academic analysis of this rich and diverse area of theatrical and psychiatric history. The book departs from a set of questions regarding the role and nature of theatre both within asylums and hospitals as well as beyond these spaces. The authors pause over questions of environment, architecture, politics, language, performance and power and try to illuminate the interrelations between madness and theatre in a number of periods and health contexts. This eclectic volume attempts to examine some varied voices that collectively challenge the dominant orthodoxies of psychiatry. In this sense the book argues that madness matters"--Page [4] of cover This exciting collection of interdisciplinary essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the 18th century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. Performance, Madness and Psychiatry will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike. It features interviews, archival research, and academic analysis of this rich and diverse area of theatrical and psychiatric history. The book departs from a set of questions regarding the role and nature of theatre both within asylums and hospitals as well as beyond these spaces. The authors pause over questions of environment, architecture, politics, language, performance and power and try to illuminate the interrelations between madness and theatre in a number of periods and health contexts. This eclectic volume attempts to examine some varied voices that collectively challenge the dominant orthodoxies of psychiatry. In this sense the book argues that madness matters Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction: Locating Madness and Performance....Pages 1-16 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 Smart’s Authority and the Eighteenth-Century Mad-Business....Pages 19-41 Performance in Bethlem, Fulbourn and Brookwood Hospitals: A Social Psychological and Social Historical Examination....Pages 42-62 Front Matter....Pages 63-63 A Life of their Own: Reflections on Autonomy and Ethics in Research-Based Theatre....Pages 65-84 Whose Mind is it Anyway?: Acting and Mental Illness....Pages 85-108 Front Matter....Pages 109-109 Start Making Sense....Pages 111-136 ‘No one ever listens’: Body, Space and History in RedCape Theatre’s The Idiot Colony....Pages 137-162 Front Matter....Pages 163-163 Ophelia Confined: Madness and Infantilisation in Some Versions of Hamlet ....Pages 165-186 Dislocated: Metaphors of Madness in British Theatre....Pages 187-215 Afterword: Relocating Madness....Pages 216-218 Back Matter....Pages 219-229