Sound and Sense in Contemporary Theatre Mad Auralities

This book is among the first to consider the subject of mad auralities in theatre and performance, asking: what does it mean to hear and listen madly? Drawing widely upon mad studies, critical disability studies, theatre studies, sound studies, queer studies, and critical race theory, it seeks to explore the theatrical relationship between sound and mental health differences by examining a range of case studies in which audience members are immersed in auditory simulations of madness. Ultimately, however, this critical study investigates the shortcomings of simulation as a representational practice, in keeping with the critical tradition of disability studies and mad studies.

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Listening Cures: On Acousmatic Sound in Ridiculusmus’s The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland.- Chapter 3: of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland Mitchell’s Ophelia’s Zimmer and Janet Cardiff’s Her Long Black Hair.- Chapter 4: Mitchell’s Ophelia’s Zimmer and Janet Cardiff’s Her Long Black Hair the Fragments.- Chapter 5: Notes on Mad Listening.

Matthew Tomkinson is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies (CENES) at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from UBC, where he studies sound within disability arts cultures. His postdoctoral research examines multimedia adaptations of Daniel Paul Schreber’s memoirs.