Description
Book SynopsisProposes that theatre spectatorship has made a significant contribution to the historical development of a distinctive bourgeois sensibility. This engagingly written treatise on history, class, and spectatorship offers compelling proof of “why theater matters”, and demonstrates the importance of examining the question historically.
Trade ReviewRidout’s prose is a pleasure to read; his glosses on theory are illuminating; his excavations of primary texts are surprising; his argument is timely, and substantial enough to influence the course of scholarship in the field." —Julia Jarcho, New York University
"An important contribution to theater studies and the study of the role of spectatorship... the book also deepens our understanding of the public character of theater (and art in general) and their relationship to the social and cultural processes in capitalism." —Bojana Kunst, Justus Liebig University Giessen
"Ridout identifies what other scholars of spectatorship have failed to see: that the ongoing wrenching of hands about how spectators watch suffering on a stage but feel an inability to do anything about it is a historical condition that can be changed. This is
the new necessary book on spectatorship." —Maurya Wickstrom, CUNY Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island
