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Introduction: Three Instances of Reading the Past in the Present

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The Theatre of Death – The Uncanny in Mimesis

Part of the book series: Performance Philosophy ((PPH))

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Abstract

This chapter explores its own possibilities for proposing a concept of theatre—that “of death”—with reference to both historical and theoretical sources. How do anthropological and aesthetic questions meet in an iconology of the actor (distinct, for example, from research into actor training)? How have twentieth-century theatre artists conceived the appearance of the corporeal image (with the figure of the actor) in the name of the dead? How do readings from Tadeusz Kantor and Aby Warburg underpin this book’s enquiry into analogies between the relation of actor and audience with that of the living and the dead?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow Department of Drama, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    Mischa Twitchin

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  1. Mischa Twitchin
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Twitchin, M. (2016). Introduction: Three Instances of Reading the Past in the Present. In: The Theatre of Death – The Uncanny in Mimesis. Performance Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47872-6_1

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