Presentation

This book analyzes the interest on new modes of representing reality in contemporary performance, cinema and literature, but also how each one of these means faces the irruption of the real in the artistic realm. The urgency of reality in the late nineties and first decade of XXIst Century led to productions whose aim was a particular representation of reality through verbal or visual accounts which didn’t renounce to the understanding of complexity. But it also led to several attempts to get directly involved: either by audience participation in the construction of a collective form, or by direct actions in the social space without the protection of artistic institutions. 

Four different lines are proposed: 1) representation of the visible and its paradoxes, 2) investigation of the real in the body experience, 3) the limits of representation in front of pain and death experience and 4) the abandon of representation for participative, playfull, essayist or activist practices. Each line is followed in analysing the work of various artists, such as 1) Gustave Flaubert, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht, William Kentridge, Wooster Group, Thomas Ostermeyer; 2) Antonin Artaud, Living Theatre, John Cassavettes, Georg Tabori, Lars Von Trier, Reza Abdoh, Óskar Gómez, Societas Raffallo Sanzio, Angélica Liddell, Rodrigo García; 3) Courbet, Tolstoi, Wim Wenders y Nicholas Ray, Hannah Wilke, Ron Vawter, Peter Weiss, Rithy Panh, Atom Egoya, Groupov, Rabih Mroué; 4) Yuyachkani, Santiago García, Augusto Boal, Armand Gatti, Ann Carlson,  Peter Watkins, Jesusa Rodríguez, Mapa Teatro, José Luis Guerin, Joaquim Jordà, Roger Bernat, René Pollesch, Leo Bassi.

The book concludes with a reflection on “Theatre and reality”, that can be read in the attachment (only in Spanish at the moment)