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Staging Ageing

Theatre, Performance and the Narrative of Decline

How can plays and performances, past and present, inform our understanding of ageing? Drawing primarily on the Western dramatic canon, on contemporary British theater, on popular culture, and on paratheatrical practices, Staging Ageing investigates theatrical engagement with ageing from the Greek chorus to Reminiscence Theater. It also explores the relationship of the plays, performances, and practices to the material, social, and ideological conditions that produced them. A seminal work on the cultural past and present of ageing, the book will find grateful audiences not only among scholars but also among theater and health care professionals.

220 pages | 8 halftones | 7 x 9 | © 2013

Literature and Literary Criticism: Dramatic Works

Sociology: Social Gerontology


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Reviews

"A lively and highly accessible resource for both theatre practitioners interested in the aesthetic possibilities of ageing and gerontologists who are interested in creative and cultural responses to ageing. . . . Its emphasis on the relationship between dramatic representations of ageing and the cultural narrative of decline makes it an incredibly valuable contribution to both performance studies and cultural gerontology. As a practitioner-researcher who works in dementia care settings, the book has broadened my thinking about the possibilities of theatre for representing dementia in different ways. I have no doubt that it will also be an extremely valuable book for other students and practitioners who are making theatre with and about older people."

Nicola Hatton | Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Mind, Body and Ageing in Drama, Theatre and Performance
 
Part I: Frames and Contexts
Chapter 1: On Gerontology
Chapter 2: On Age, Stage and Consciousness
 
Part II: Tragedy and Comedy
Chapter 3: On Liminality and Late Style: Oedipus at Colonus
Chapter 4: On Negative Stereotypes in Classical and Medieval Drama
Chapter 5: On Sex and the Senex: English Restoration Comedy
Chapter 6: On Dirty Old Men and Trickster Figures
 
Part III: Memories
Chapter 7: On Memory and Its Modes
Chapter 8: On Reminiscence, Interaction and Intervention
 
Part IV: The Value(s) of Old Age
Chapter 9: On Longevity
Chapter 10: On Institutions
Chapter 11: On Song and Dance
 
Epilogue: The Amazing One-Hundred-and-Sixty-One-Year-Old Woman
References
Index

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