Overview

It is a book about dying, or, more accurately, about the representation of dying in the theatre. Its chief concern is how actors undertook to translate words and concepts into forms legible and significant to an audience. It deals with the ways in which playwrights wrote about death and attitudes towards death in their cultures. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on the practice of acting. This ""death spectacle"" runs the gamut. From the Greek tragic stage which was highly selective in determining which deaths it (re)enacted to the elaborately stylized murders and suicides in the Kabuki to the lavish blood-letting of the Elizabethans to the deathbed visitations of the modern era, what was acceptable and/or enjoyable fluctuates wildly.

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9781839993114

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Reviews

Theatre Notebook Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism “Audaciously wide in its reach across centuries and cultures and rich in observed detail of innumerable stage performances, Laurence Senelick offers an eloquent and graphic review of the Western theatrical canon seen through enactments of death and that moment’s impact on audiences. And always there are two Professor Senelicks: the scholar-historian and the sharp-eyed (and sometimes bemused and quietly ironic) critic. A brilliant tour de force.” —David Mayer, Emeritus Professor of Drama and Research Professor, University of Manchester, UK “A compendiously learned and thoroughly entertaining account of how the inexorable reality of death is conceived, engaged and enacted through the many phases of Western playmaking and performance, from the Greeks to the era of the AIDS disaster. Senelick as always finds a pearl of interest in every seeming quirk and divagation in theatrical practice while evoking the surrounding cultural attitudes, fixations and avoidances, and brings to bear an encyclopedic knowledge of theater and all that relates to it. Writing with verve and lucidity and a nice balance of irony and humanity, Senelick never loses sight of the serious challenge in the sentient lives of the audience of coming to terms with the inevitable.” —Martin Meisel, Brander Matthews Professor Emeritus of English and Dramatic Literature, Columbia University, USA Like Senelick's other works, the present work is well researched and well written, and his sardonic humor shines through. [...] Particularly interesting are Senelick's explorations of the cultural standards and reactions to death in each historical period and the process of critiquing performance and recording immediate audience reaction in each social era. —CHOICE Readers interested in the history of stagecraft will find value in Senelick’s description of how techniques for staging death developed alongside technologies of death (advancing from swordplay to dueling with pistols), medical understanding, and the constantly shifting aesthetic preferences of audiences. —Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism The Final Curtain is exemplary in its perceptive treatment of evidence from reviews and memoirs, complemented by an acute sense of historical context.—Theatre Notebook

“Audaciously wide in its reach across centuries and cultures and rich in observed detail of innumerable stage performances, Laurence Senelick offers an eloquent and graphic review of the Western theatrical canon seen through enactments of death and that moment’s impact on audiences. And always there are two Professor Senelicks: the scholar-historian and the sharp-eyed (and sometimes bemused and quietly ironic) critic. A brilliant tour de force.” —David Mayer, Emeritus Professor of Drama and Research Professor, University of Manchester, UK “A compendiously learned and thoroughly entertaining account of how the inexorable reality of death is conceived, engaged and enacted through the many phases of Western playmaking and performance, from the Greeks to the era of the AIDS disaster. Senelick as always finds a pearl of interest in every seeming quirk and divagation in theatrical practice while evoking the surrounding cultural attitudes, fixations and avoidances, and brings to bear an encyclopedic knowledge of theater and all that relates to it. Writing with verve and lucidity and a nice balance of irony and humanity, Senelick never loses sight of the serious challenge in the sentient lives of the audience of coming to terms with the inevitable.” —Martin Meisel, Brander Matthews Professor Emeritus of English and Dramatic Literature, Columbia University, USA Like Senelick's other works, the present work is well researched and well written, and his sardonic humor shines through. [...] Particularly interesting are Senelick's explorations of the cultural standards and reactions to death in each historical period and the process of critiquing performance and recording immediate audience reaction in each social era. - CHOICE

Author Information

Laurence Senelick is Fletcher Professor Emeritus of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His many books include The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre; The American Stage (Library of America); and Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture.

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