Performance and Modernity

'This is a confident, intellectually rigorous, stimulating and innovative book. The perspectives it offers on the relationship between cultural innovation and performance practices, the space it opens for an embodied understanding of historical materials, and the claims it stages for the centrality of performance - not only to historical narrative, but to the process of historical change itself - will make it an important and influential addition to the Performance Studies canon. It deserves to find a wide and enthusiastic readership.' Sophie Nield, Royal Holloway, University of London 'This is a deeply rich and wide-ranging study. It contains subtle readings of little-considered theatrical texts; erudite and illuminating surveys that approach well-trodden historical material from fresh and unexpected angles; and provocative methodological musings on major problems in the study of reception and the history of acting.' Margaret Werry, University of Minnesota 'Julia Walker's Performance and Modernity has all the electricity of a lightning bolt. Brilliantly reimagining performance in light of the technological, representational, and ontological crises of modernity, this book provides a breathtaking history of performance that is both truly global and shockingly new. Meticulously reconstructing accounts of changes in styles of performance as an embodiment (in every sense) of the forces of modernity itself, Walker sees different styles of performance - from the 'point' technique to psychological realism - not merely encoding desires for and fears of modernity, but enacting and fomenting them. Reading across many national traditions and genres of performance, this book recasts our sense of the modern in a way few other books have.' MSA 2021 Book Prize Committee (2022)