AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

Through a detailed performance analysis of Kindle Theatre’s Eat Your Heart Out (2009), Punchdrunk’s Faust (2006) and my own practice directing Tin Box Theatre’s Stop the Clocks (2011), this thesis investigates the phenomenological impact of performances which take place in non-theatre sites. I explore phenomenology with reference to Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his Phenomenology of Perception, in relation to existing notions of theatre phenomenology examined by Bert O. States and Stanton B. Garner. Using site-specific discourse to frame my analysis, I emphasise that the phenomenological experience of an audience is key within site-specific work, and of significance to existing conversations about the genre. I argue for the importance of phenomenology in such work specifically since it offers a live, multi-sensory experience to audiences in a world of increasing digitisation.