This is the first book to examine how the concept and disagreements around post-truth have been explored in the world of theater and performance. It covers a wide spectrum of manifestations and expressions—from the plays of Caryl Churchill, Anne Washburn, and David Henry Hwang, to the inherent theatricality of press conferences, FBI interviews and protests that embrace the confusion created by post-truth rhetoric to muddy issues and deflect blame, to theatrical performance, where the nature of truth is challenged through staged visuals which run counter to what the audience hears, provoking a debate about where the truth actually lies.
With contributions by scholars from around the world, Theater in a Post-Truth World considers a wide array of examples from American and British drama and politics, Australian theater, and the work of performance artist Marina Abramovic. Together these provide a glimpse into how the theater in its many forms provides a venue to raise awareness and encourage critical thinking about the contemporary ubiquity of post-truth.
Acknowledgements Introduction: Post-Truth: A Brief Introduction, William C. Boles (Rollins College, USA) Part 1: Text 1. Post-Truth but not Post-Race: The Repeating Realities of Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Heidi Bollinger, Hostos Community College, CUNY, USA) 2. Knowing Not What It “Seems”: Re-viewing Caryl Churchill’s Post-Truth World in Glass, Kill, Bluebeard, and Imp, Mamata Sengupta (Islampur College, India) Part 2: Politics 3. The Alternative Realities of David Henry Hwang’s Soft Power and Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck, William C. Boles (Rollins College, USA) 4. Negotiating the Fifth Wall, Lynn Doboeck (University of Utah, USA) 5. When the Play is Not the Thing: The Mueller Report and the Limits of Documentary Drama, Victoria Scrimer (University of Maryland, USA) Part 3: Performance 6. Australian Biographical Theater on the Post-Truth Stage, Chris Hay and Stephen Carleton (University of Queensland, Australia) 7. Performing Reality: Tina Satter’s Verbatim Staging of an FBI Transcript in Is This A Room, Helen Georgas (Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA) 8. Seductive Frames: Digital Aesthetics in Kip Williams' Staging of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (2018), Susanne Thurow (University of New South Wales, Australia) 9. Satanic Panic: Performance in the New Culture War, Lewis Church (Birkbeck, University of London, UK) Notes on Contributors Index
William C. Boles holds the Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean Chair of English at Rollins College, USA. He is the editor of After In-Yer-Face Theatre: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution and the author of The Argumentative Theatre of Joe Penhall and Understanding David Henry Hwang. He is the Director of the Comparative Drama Conference.
