In this book, Chloë Rae Edmonson analyzes performance sites from throughout U.S. history to reveal the material ways that drinking culture is performative, immersive performance is intoxicating, and how alcohol shapes performance space and practice.
Combining archival research with firsthand accounts of immersive spaces, this study demonstrates how social drinking and performance in themed spaces often collude to reify power dynamics latent to mainstream American culture, such as patriarchal values, racial and wealth inequality, and labor exploitation. Yet there are also examples of how performers, designers, and consumers creatively subvert such dominant attitudes in pursuit of their own creative expression and fulfillment. Part I examines historic bars and clubs that are immersive by design, while Part II explores immersive theatre productions from the 1980s to today. At the heart of all these American examples, of course, is alcohol, its associated cultures of immersive consumption, and the wide range of influence it can have on the bodies and minds of performers and participants.
In addition to its pop cultural appeal, this study will be relevant to scholars and university students interested in immersive theatre and performance, drinking culture, and American studies.
By:
Chloë Rae Edmonson
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 485g
ISBN: 9781032266565
ISBN 10: 1032266562
Series: Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
Pages: 166
Publication Date: 04 September 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: Immersive Bars 1 – The Concert Saloon: Waiter Girls and Hetero-Masculine Drinking Culture 2 – Slumming: Racialized Intoxication and Black Performance in Prohibition-Era Harlem 3 – The Tiki Bar: Exoticized Cocktails and American Fantasies of Escape PART II: Intoxicating Theaters 4: Tony, Tina, and Tamara: Champagne and Distinction in 1980s Immersive Theater 5: Contemporary Immersive Theater: The Cult of Ritual Drinking in Sleep No More and The Illuminati Ball Conclusion: Drinking, Culture, and Immersion from a Distance Index
Chloë Rae Edmonson is Assistant Professor and Dramaturgy Coordinator at the University of Central Florida School of Performing Arts, USA.
