Module description
This course introduces students to performative events, dramatic representations, performance processes and theatre institutions in London. It is self-evident that for more than a millennia London has been a ‘dramatised society’ as Raymond Williams once put it, a ’society of the spectacle’ as Guy Debord claimed in another capital context. But what might these general terms mean more specifically in London, now?
From the first appearance of an elephant at the Tower Menagerie in 1254, through London Bridge jousts of the fourteenth century, the height of public executions in the mid fifteen-hundreds, through the establishment of theatres in Elizabethan London the early history of London as a performative capital has never been lacking. This course takes this long theatre history (both in and outside the auditorium), inscribed within the fabric of the urban realm as a starting point for an enquiry into the way that cities and theatre in general, and London and performance in particular, are always braided entities and cannot exist without each others protocols and passions.
How does performance theory help us to read the behaviours and relationships of people that make up the city? What are the ways in which configurations of space, power, and movement determine what it is possible to think and feel in the city? This module uses ideas from performance, theatre, and literary studies as a framework to think about our everyday experience as consumers, tourists, and citizens in the global city that is London.
In addition to the coursepack reading, you will also be assigned exercises to be completed outside of class time during selected weeks; these will involve various forms of observation and intervention within the city around you.
Assessment details
1 x 4,000 word essay (100%)
Teaching pattern
One 1-hour lecture and one 1-hour seminar per week