Theatres of Affect - Erin Hurley

Contributors assess the deployments of various emotional registers in theatrical performance and explore how and where the "affective turn" in contemporary humanities scholarship affects theatre studies in Canada.

What is it to think feeling, to put the affective dimensions of theatrical experience and its production centre stage? As theatre people, we are well equipped for the challenges of this task, for we labour expressly, consistently, and consciously with emotion, feeling, mood, and affect. In essays by seasoned and emerging scholars, Theatres of Affect takes the emotional temperature of Canadian performances, ranging from a verbatim theatre piece on the emotional labours and costs of kin care, to the Canadian military's "theatre of war," to disability arts performances of sexuality, to the affecting role of intercultural music theatre in reconciliation proceedings. Contributors assess the deployments of various emotional registers in threatrical performance and explore how and where the "affective turn" in contemporary humanities scholarship affects theatre studies in Canada.