Dramaturgy and Architecture ─ Theatre, Utopia and the Built Environment

Dramaturgy and Architecture approaches modern and postmodern theatre's contribution to the way we think about the buildings and spaces we inhabit. It discusses in detail ways in which theatre and performance have critiqued and intervened in everyday spaces, modelled our dreams or fears and made proposals for the future.

Cathy Turner examines the tensions that are inherent in considering the architectural aspects of dramaturgy, where the stage appears as a constellation of objects, figures and structures. She concludes that where theatre meets architecture in re-imagining the world, it tends to shimmer between criticism, warning and proposal. The book takes an inclusive approach, connecting the plays of Ibsen and Shaw to the concerns of later-devised and visual dramaturgies. It digs into the history of site-based and visual theatre in a postdramatic mode, articulating the ways in which it is informed by the work of the Russian Constructivists, Bauhaus artists, Situationists and others. New material on theatre in British Garden Cities is set alongside a discussion of the more famous work by Jacques-Dalcroze in Germany's Gartenstadt Hellerau. The well-known site-specific work of Brith Gof is unusually approached through the contribution of co-director Cliff McLucas. Recent and in some cases little known works by The Builders Association, Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells, Krzyztof Wodiczko, Robert Wilson, NVA and Wrights & Sites are described in detail.

Cathy Turner is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, UK. She is co-author, with Synne K. Behrndt, of Dramaturgy and Performance and co-editor, with Behrndt of the Palgrave Series New Dramaturgies. She is a founder member of artist's collective, Wrights & Sites, making site-based work since 1997.