Staging Decadence: Theatre, Performance, and the Ends of Capitalism

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Adam Alston (Goldsmiths University of London, UK) Mark Taylor-Batty (University of Leeds UK)

Staging Decadence

Theatre, Performance, and the Ends of Capitalism

Adam Alston (Goldsmiths University of London, UK), Mark Taylor-Batty (University of Leeds UK), Enoch Brater (University of Michigan USA)

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English

Methuen Drama
29 May 2025

Theatre direction & production; Social & political philosophy

Series: Methuen Drama Engage

Winner of the 2024 TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize

How is decadence being staged today – as a practice, issue, pejorative, and as a site of pleasure? Where might we find it, why might we look for it, and who is decadence for?

This book is the first monographic study of decadence in theatre and performance. Adam Alston makes a passionate case for the contemporary relevance of decadence in the thick of a resurgent culture war by focusing on its antithetical relationship to capitalist-led growth, progress, and intensified productivity. He argues that the qualities used to disparage the study and practice of theatre and performance are the very things we should embrace in celebrating their value – namely, their spectacular uselessness, wastefulness, outmodedness, and abundant potential for producing forms of creativity that flow away from the ends and excesses of capitalism.

Alston covers an eclectic range of examples by Julia Bardsley (UK), Hasard Le Sin (Finland), jaamil olawale kosoko (USA), Toco Nikaido (Japan), Martin O’Brien (UK), Toshiki Okada (Japan), Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca (Spain), Normandy Sherwood (USA), The Uhuruverse (USA), Nia O. Witherspoon (USA), and Wunderbaum (Netherlands). Expect ruminations on monstrous scenographies, catatonic choreographies, turbo-charged freneticism, visions of the apocalypse – and what might lie in its wake.

By: Adam Alston (Goldsmiths University of London UK)
Edited by: Mark Taylor-Batty (University of Leeds UK), Enoch Brater (University of Michigan USA)
Imprint: Methuen Drama
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781350237087
ISBN 10: 1350237086
Series: Methuen Drama Engage
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 29 May 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction Uselessness, wastefulness, outmodedness, and alternative productivities Decadence in context: from page to stage Slowdown and the pursuit of busyness What follows 1. Zombie time: Sickness, performance, and the living dead - Interminable waiting - Zombie Time 2. Para-sites and wired bodies: Decadence, scenography, and the performing body - Parasitical space: Julia Bardsley - Techno-productivism: Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca 3. Alien Nation: Afropessimism, Afrofuturism, and the decadent society - ‘What beasts they are’: Jaamil Olawale Kosoko - Alien Nation: The Uhuruverse 4. Frenetic standstill: Decadence, capitalism, and excess on the Japanese stage - Unstoppable motility: Toshiki Okada - Theatre is explosion: Toco Nikaido 5. ‘A dangerous form of decadence’: Decadence, performance, and the culture wars - ‘We should not subsidize decadence’: Ron Athey - Art, outrage, and austerity: Paul McCarthy and Wunderbaum - ‘A dangerous form of decadence’: The war on woke 6. Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

Adam Alston is Reader in Modern and Contemporary Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. He is the co-editor of Decadent Plays, 1890-1930 (Bloomsbury, 2024), co-editor of a special issue of Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies on ‘Decadence and Performance’ (Winter 2021), and he runs the AHRC-funded Staging Decadence project. He has also published extensively on immersive theatre.

Reviews for Staging Decadence: Theatre, Performance, and the Ends of Capitalism

Staging Decadence convincingly illustrates how, amid the frenzy, stagnation, and relentless productivism of present-day capitalism, artists and performers take pleasure in the ruin and waste and, far from escaping the material conditions of the modern world, imagine their way to alternatives. Alston vividly demonstrates how decadence is embodied--exuberantly, lavishly, grotesquely, wastefully, weirdly, queerly -- on the stage, in live performance, and in the work of a kaleidoscopic array of artists. No work of scholarship better demonstrates the urgency of contemporary decadence studies and will speak to multiple audiences in theatre, performance, disability studies, literature and art. Alston shows us what it is to live and breathe along with the artists whose work he so carefully illuminates. As it explores the counter-pleasures offered by contemporary decadent performance, Staging Decadence is as pleasurable and exciting to read as it is intelligent in its critique of twenty-first century capital. * Robert Stilling, author of Beginning at the End: Decadence, Modernism, and Postcolonial Poetry *