Performing Mountains (eBook)

Launching the landmark Performing Landscapes series, Performing Mountains brings together for the first time Mountain Studies and Performance Studies in order to examine an international selection of dramatic responses to mountain landscapes. Moving between different registers of writing, the book offers a critical assessment of how the cultural turn in landscape studies interacts with the practices of environmental theatre and performance. Conceived in three main parts, it begins by unpicking the layers of disciplinary complexity in both fields, before surveying the rich history and practice of rituals, playtexts and site specific works inspired by mountains. The last section moves to a unique analysis of mountains themselves using key concepts from performance: training, scenography, acting and spectatorship. Threaded throughout is a very personal tale of mountain research, offering a handrail or alternative guide through the book.    

Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Leeds, UK, and specialises in environmental performance, performer training and blended learning. He is a keen hill walker and completed the Wainwright challenge of climbing 214 summits in the Lake District along with his family in 2018.

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The first book in the new Performing Landscapes series, this original new work harnesses Performance Studies' understanding of behaviours, spaces and applied technologies to explore the culture of high places across six continents. At the same time, it borrows extensively from the critical frameworks associated with Mountain studies in order to examine a selection of ritual, dramatic and performative responses to mountain landscapes drawn from the last two millennia. The book offers the first comprehensive examination of the ways in which mountains are represented in dramatic literature; are exploited as sites for performance; and how they themselves 'perform'. It will complement recent developments in environmental performance and criticism, extending the reach of Performance Studies into the interdisciplinary space of Mountain studies and expanding understandings of behaviour, space and psychology in both fields.