Cancer langscapes and the (digital) art of pain in Beth Herst ’s Dark room/Gray Scale /White Noise
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.17, No.1, 2009, pages 111-127
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111-127
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Word and spectacle: new configurations
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The aim of this paper is to examine the intersection of live and digital theater in Beth Herst's performance Dark Room/Gray Scale/White Noise. First, I will discuss the way Herst employs discourse, with emphasis placed on the written/projected/printed dramatic text itself, and its performativity, to create linguistic landscapes, or "langscapes." These sites are shaped out of Herst's language of pain and its problematic expressibility by means of cancer metaphors and their digitalized mise en scène. Further on, I will examine the tension found in the interplay of living versus digital/symbolic suffering bodies, which expands to embrace the playwright's concerns regarding the cultural effects of the new technologies reflected in the body of traditional art. As a conclusion, I will attempt an evaluation of Herst's digital theater experiment under the perspective of the disparate attitudes regarding the future of the dramatic text and its contested technologically-empowered hybridization.
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Περιέχει βιβλιογραφία.The text strikes back: the dynamics of performativity
