Performance Reconstruction and Spanish Golden Age Drama : Reviving and Revising the Comedia

Spanish Golden Age drama has resurfaced in recent years, however scholarly analysis has not kept pace with its popularity. This book problematizes and analyzes the approaches to staging reconstruction taken over the past few decades, including historical, semiotic, anthropological, cultural, structural, cognitive and phenomenological methods. "Taking into account the ephemeral nature of performance, this book develops innovative approaches to the reconstruction of historical staging practices through the lens of Spanish classical theater. Vidler emphasizes the need to take into account not only structures of culture, but also the human capacity to manipulate those structures for both individual and group expression. Through a detailed analysis of approaches to space, the body, the stage object, and the spectator in the comedia, it is possible to discern analyzable artifacts that permit us to reconstruct significant aspects of early modern stagings. Furthermore, because it actively engages and intertwines both objective and subjective modes of interpretation, Vidler argues that performance theory itself will be the locus of the next breakthroughs in interpretive studies"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction: Critical Theory and the Reconstruction of Early Modern Performance....Pages 1-8 Revisiting Comedia Reconstruction in a Revisionist Performance Environment....Pages 9-23 The Habitus of Corral Scenic Space....Pages 25-54 (Re)Placing the Corral Body: Problematizing Semiotics and Gesture....Pages 55-73 Staging the Object....Pages 75-106 Women/Objects on the Modern and Early Modern Stage: Two Exceptional Case Studies....Pages 107-121 Adaptation, Translation, and the Relevance of Classical Theatrical Performance....Pages 123-139 Theory Performance....Pages 141-151 Back Matter....Pages 153-187 "Taking into account the ephemeral nature of performance, this book develops innovative approaches to the reconstruction of historical staging practices through the lens of the comedia, Spain's classical theater. While poststructuralism and other theories problematize previous studies, this book argues that an interdisciplinary approach to staging reconstruction produces illuminating conclusions"-- Provided by publisher