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3 - The Experimental/Experiential Stage

Extreme States of Being of and Knowing in the Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

By
Carina Bartleet
Edited by
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Chapter 3: This chapter charts the intersections between theatre and science and explores how experience and experiment are interlinked in each domain. Looking at three key scientific ideas and theatrical moments, the chapter draws out contextual aspects of the science that reflect the scientific concerns of their moments. Exploring first a play from the early years of the recent resurgence in the interest in theatre and science, the chapter investigates how the biological and medical sciences with their obvious link to genetic testing and human experience are represented, and moves on to consider how science, gender, and life become crystal clear in early twenty-first century theatre. It concludes by looking at how theatre is shaped by the experience of climate change and its science in the 2010s through two very different plays, one a staged lecture and the other a production whose deliberate excess results in an expansive ‘epic’ theatrical form that appears to take precedence over the science.

Keywords

2071air pumpclimate changeDNAexperimentgeneticsRosalind FranklinscienceShelagh Stephensontheatre
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science , pp. 40 - 54
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

Suggested Reading

Angelaki, Vicky. Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain. London, 2017.Google Scholar
Barnett, Claudia. ‘A Moral Dialectic: Shelagh Stephenson’s An Experiment with an Air Pump’. Modern Drama 49, no. 2 (2006): 206–22.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. ‘Gender, Development and Post-Enlightenment Philosophies of Science’. Hypatia 13, no. 3 (1998): 146–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Julie. ‘“If You Want to Be Green Hold Your Breath”: Climate Change in British Theatre’. New Theatre Quarterly 28, no. 3 (2012): 260–71.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, 1985.Google Scholar
King, T., and Headlong Theatre Company. Earthquakes in London: Education Pack, 2011. https://headlong.co.uk/media/media/downloads/Earthquakes_in_London_-_Education_Pack.pdf.Google Scholar
Raby, Gyllian. ‘From Pre-Luddites to the Human Genome Project: Smashing Frames in Shelagh Stephenson’s An Experiment with an Air Pump’. In Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature, ed. Boldt-Irons, Leslie, Fdeerici, Corrado, and Virgulti, Ernesto. New York, 2005. Available at http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~graby/pdfs/airpumppaper.pdf http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~graby/pdfs/airpumppaper.pdf.Google Scholar
Rapley, C., and Macmillan, Duncan. 2071: The World We’ll Leave Our Children. London, 2015.Google Scholar
Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten. Science on Stage: From Doctor Faustus to Copenhagen. Princeton, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten. Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett. New York, 2015.Google Scholar
Siegfried, Susan L. ‘Engaging the Audience: Sexual Economies of Vision in Joseph Wright’. Representations 68 (1999): 34–58.Google Scholar
Zehelein, Eva-Sabine. Science: Dramatic. Science Plays in America and Great Britain, 1990–2007. Heidelberg, 2009.Google Scholar

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