Overview

This book offers an innovative account of how audiences and actors emotionally interacted in the English theatre during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a period bookended by two of its stars: David Garrick and Sarah Siddons. Drawing upon recent scholarship on the history of emotions, it uses practice theory to challenge the view that emotional interactions between actors and audiences were governed by empathy. It carefully works through how actors communicated emotions through their voices, faces and gestures, how audiences appraised these performances, and mobilised and regulated their own emotional responses. Crucially, this book reveals how theatre spaces mediated the emotional practices of audiences and actors alike. It examines how their public and frequently political interactions were enabled by these spaces.

Full Product Details

9783031229015

Table of Contents

Reviews

“The book is particularly strong in its nuanced elucidation of pre-Stanislavski ideas of natural acting: how this performance style was produced by the actor, received by the playgoer and mediated by the auditorium. This study will be helpful to students and scholars of eighteenth-century theatre and offers many new directions for future study.” (Fiona Ritchie, Emotions  History, Culture, Society, Vol. 8 (1), 2024)

Author Information

Glen McGillivray is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He was an associate investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and his research focuses on the intersection between emotions and performance.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available