Feeling Theatre

In idiomatic English 'feel', as both verb ('to feel...') and noun ('the feel of...'), describes an affective continuum whose terms range from the particularity of various emotional states to an indistinct movement on the threshold of language. Feeling Theatre explores the range of this continuum from a variety of positions both inside and outside of the theatre itself. It proposes that theatre is as much concerned with the condition and conditioning of feeling as it is with buildings, texts, sign-systems and representation. It considers theatre as a particularly affective kind of event, neither limited by nor restricted to that which can be seen or heard. It argues for the expansion of the sensorium of theatrical criticism beyond the strictly audiovisual, and in doing so, consideration of how theatre 'makes sense' to or for its participants on either side of the footlights. It places performers and their audiences in a shared realm of feelings, in which the play is not always the thing.