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Theatre's immediacy: notes on performing 'with' Žižek

Theatre's immediacy: notes on performing 'with' Žižek
Theatre's immediacy: notes on performing 'with' Žižek
This chapter critically reflects on a production of Anthony Neilson's Normal (directed by the author in July 2012) to explicate the ways in which vZivzek's philosophical writings were useful in and pertinent to rehearsals; it examines moments in which the play in performance adhered to and/or corresponded with that philosophical work, and also how it pushed back against it in various ways. The author challenges the orthodoxy that performance (and live art) is somehow more immediate textendash more real textendash than theatre. The essay employs vZivzek's work to challenge the hierarchized 'performance versus theatre' binary by relating his theories of the oscillation of the real and virtual to the author's own theory of 'mimetic shimmering' (2013), and to an analysis of the various theatrical devices used in the production of Normal to facilitate such an oscillation in performance. The intention is to push back against the way that performance theory often under theorizes what constitutes a real event.
Duggan, Patrick
d6708da8-fc8f-490c-9005-fd8302295999
Duggan, Patrick
d6708da8-fc8f-490c-9005-fd8302295999

Duggan, Patrick (2014) Theatre's immediacy: notes on performing 'with' Žižek. In, Žižek and Performance. (doi:10.1057/9781137403193_14).

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

This chapter critically reflects on a production of Anthony Neilson's Normal (directed by the author in July 2012) to explicate the ways in which vZivzek's philosophical writings were useful in and pertinent to rehearsals; it examines moments in which the play in performance adhered to and/or corresponded with that philosophical work, and also how it pushed back against it in various ways. The author challenges the orthodoxy that performance (and live art) is somehow more immediate textendash more real textendash than theatre. The essay employs vZivzek's work to challenge the hierarchized 'performance versus theatre' binary by relating his theories of the oscillation of the real and virtual to the author's own theory of 'mimetic shimmering' (2013), and to an analysis of the various theatrical devices used in the production of Normal to facilitate such an oscillation in performance. The intention is to push back against the way that performance theory often under theorizes what constitutes a real event.

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Published date: 17 October 2014

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Local EPrints ID: 504047
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/504047
PURE UUID: cc823cac-70f7-4fe3-8cf2-5680244fd99e
ORCID for Patrick Duggan: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8139-8297

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Date deposited: 21 Aug 2025 16:14
Last modified: 22 Aug 2025 02:49

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Author: Patrick Duggan ORCID iD

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