Performing the Unstageable

From the gouging out of eyes in Shakespeares King Lear or Sarah Kanes Cleansed, to the adaptation of Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials trilogy, theatre has long been intrigued by the staging of challenging plays and impossible texts, images or ideas. Performing the Unstageable: Success, Imagination, Failure examines this phenomenon of what the theatre cannot do or has not been able to do at various points in its history. The book explores four principal areas to which unstageability most frequently pertains: stage directions, adaptations, violence and ghosts. Karen Quigley incorporates a wide range of case studies of both historical and contemporary theatrical productions including the Wooster Groups exploration of Hamlet via the structural frame of John Gielguds 1964 filmed production, Elevator Repair Services eight-hour staging of Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby and a selection of impossible stage directions drawn from works by such playwrights as Eugene ONeill, Philip Glass, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane and Alistair McDowall. Placing theatre history and performance analysis in such a context, Performing the Unstageable values what is not possible, and investigates the tricky underside of theatres most fundamental function to bring things to the place of showing: the stage.