Repetition in Performance Returns and Invisible Forces

Dealing with the phenomena of repetition across a broad range of modern and contemporary aesthetic practices, Repetition in Performance discusses work from dance-theatre (Pina Bausch), avant-garde theatre (Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett) and performance practice (Lone Twin Theatre and Sophie Calle). The book explores repetition as generative of particular modes of both watching and making performance, and raises questions about the experience of spectatorship.

This book explores repetition in contemporary performance and spectatorship. It offers an impassioned account of the ways in which speech, movement and structures repeat in performances by Pina Bausch, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Lone Twin Theatre, Haranczak/Navarre and Marco Berrettini. It addresses repetition in relation to processes of desire and draws attention to the forces that repetition captures and makes visible. What is it in performances of repetition that persuades us to return to them again and again? How might we unpack their complexities and come to terms with their demands upon us? While considering repetition in relation to the difficult pleasures we derive from the theatre, this book explores ways of accounting for such experiences of theatre in memory and writing.