Description
Book Synopsis
‘In Comes I’ explores performance and land, biography and locality, memory and place. The book reflects on performances past and present, taking the form of a series of excursions into the agricultural landscape of eastern England, and drawing from archaeology, geomorphology, folklore, and local and family history.
Trade Review
‘In Comes I is a brilliant and timely book, and one that will expand the field of Theatre and Performance Studies by introducing new concepts, functions, forms, and vocabularies.’ ‘…In Comes I is beautifully designed: the images, layout, and font transform the book into a kind of page-bound installation, a landscape to hold and move through. It feels good to look at and to touch.’
New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 23, Issue 3 August 2007
‘All credit to the author for a book that could have been tedious…but is by contrast heart-warming and inspirational, as Pearson explores history and identity with the help of local historians, museum curators and archaeologists.’
British Archaeology, July/August 2007
‘Pearson handles an impressive range of scholarly knowledge with clarity and elegance, and his book is easy to read. The apparent simplicity is, however, deceptive – for what he is proposing has radical implications for performance-makers and analysts and, indeed, for theatre studies more generally.’
Theatre Research International, 32.3, 2007
‘…essential reading for anyone seriously interested in everything good that performance study can do at its best.’ (Contemporary Theatre Review, 18:1, 114-125, 01 February 2008) ‘However, what may distinguish his book is his unique approach, for by drawing on theory and literature of a range of academic disciplines he challenges academic boundaries and conventions. But he also challenges each of us to reflect in our own ways: to remember, to perform, to recreate, and most importantly, to be free again. Performance artists and theorists will find this book particularly exciting but so too should archaeologists, historians, and folklorists. Even materially driven Baby Boomer bankers might find it rewarding in that it may reawaken something long forgotten of benefit to others, such as the value of creative arts to memory, landscape, and personal experience.’
Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology Consciousness and Culture, Volume I, Issue I, March 2008
‘A compellingly attractive, beautifully produced volume, full of maps, photographs, cartographical coordinates, anecdotes, recollections, analyses and speculations.’
Online: http://www.performanceparadigm.net/journal/issue-4/bookreviews/
‘In Comes I is not a book about performance so much as a performance in its own right.’
‘The scholar of English folklore will find much to value here.’
Phil Stafford, Journal of Folklore Research, March 9 2009, www.indiana.edu/%7Ejofr/review
‘You make this work essential reading for anyone seriously interested in everything good that performance study can do at its best.
‘A collector’s piece and that rare work, truly world class, that is always cognisant of class and the world’
Alan Read, Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 18 (1), 2008
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Map of the book
Introduction
VILLAGE:
Preamble
Performance: Bubbling Tom
Excursion: Hibaldstow
Project: White House Yard
NEIGHBOURHOOD:
Preamble
Performance: Hibaldstow Plough Play
Excursion: Hibaldstow, Redbourne and Kirton in Lindsey
Project: Gainsthorpe
REGION:
Preamble
Performance: Haxey Hood
Excursion: North Lincolnshire
Project: Ousefleet
Afterword: Performance and landscape
Bibliography
Index
