The Stage Life Of Props (theater: Theory/text/performance)

Fresh and provocative readings of familiar stage objects provide new ways of understanding theater, dramatic literature, and culture | In The Stage Life of Props , Andrew Sofer aims to restore to certain props the performance dimensions that literary critics are trained not to see, then to show that these props are not just accessories, but time machines of the theater. Using case studies that explore the Eucharistic wafer on the medieval stage, the bloody handkerchief on the Elizabethan stage, the skull on the Jacobean stage, the fan on the Restoration and early eighteenth-century stage, and the gun on the modern stage, Andrew Sofer reveals how stage props repeatedly thwart dramatic convention and reinvigorate theatrical practice. While the focus is on specific objects, Sofer also gives us a sweeping history of half a millennium of stage history as seen through the device of the prop, revealing that as material ghosts, stage props are a way for playwrights to animate stage action, question theatrical practice, and revitalize dramatic form. Andrew Sofer is Assistant Professor of English, Boston College. He was previously a stage director. In The Stage Life of Props, Andrew Sofer aims to restore to stage objects the performance dimensions that literary critics are trained not to see, then to show that certain props are not just accessories, but time machines of the theater.

Using case studies that explore the Eucharistic wafer on the medieval stage, the bloody handkerchief on the Elizabethan stage, the skull on the Jacobean stage, the fan on the Restoration and early eighteenth-century stage, and the gun on the modern stage, Andrew Sofer reveals how stage props repeatedly thwart dramatic convention and reinvigorate theatrical practice.

While the focus is on specific objects, Sofer also gives us a unique account of half a millennium of stage history as seen through the device of the prop, revealing that as material ghosts, stage props are a way for playwrights to animate stage action, question theatrical practice, and revitalize dramatic form.

About the Author:
Andrew Sofer is Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He has directed many new and classic plays.

Frontmatter Introduction: Rematerializing the Prop (page 1) 1. Playing Host: The Prop as Temporal Contract on the Medieval Stage (page 31) 2. Absorbing Interests: The Bloody Handkerchief on the Elizabethan Stage (page 61) 3. Dropping the Subject: The Skull on the Jacobean Stage (page 89) 4. The Fan of Mode: Sexual Semaphore on the Restoration and Early-Eighteenth-Century Stage (page 117) 5. Killing Time: Guns and the Play of Predictability on the Modern Stage (page 167) Notes (page 203) Bibliography (page 251) Index (page 269) In this book, the author engages the critical dialogue on the stage property by locating the prop squarely in the theatrical event. In a series of case studies, he explores how, in the hands of skilled playwrights, the prop becomes a concrete vehicle for confronting dramatic convention and revitalizing theatrical practice