Maria Shevtsova

Maria Shevtsova

MARIA SHEVTSOVA is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. She previously held Chairs at the University of Lancaster (Founding Chair of Theatre Studies) and the University of Connecticut, and was the Director of European Studies at the University of Sydney. She was Secretary and Vice-President of Research Committee 37, the Sociology of the Arts, of the International Sociology Association, editor of its Newsletter and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Her professional commitments also include membership of editorial boards of various journals, including the on-line journal Critical Stages of the International Association of Theatre Critics. Since 2003, she has been the co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly. She is the author of a number of books, some of which are listed in the bibliography of this volume, and of more than 100 articles and chapter contributions to collected volumes. Her Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004) has been translated into Romanian (2008) and Korean (2009), and articles have been translated into Russian, Arabic, Korean and Mandarin.

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    By : Maria Shevtsova

    Sociology of Theatre and Performance

    by Maria Shevtsova

    These essays from 1983 to 2008 are pioneering in establishing the field of the sociology of theatre and performance. They cover various aspects, focusing on theoretical and methodological principles, the problem of contextualisation and of defining contexts for theatre practice, and approaches to analysing and understanding performances in terms that are aesthetic as well as sociocultural at one and the same time. It is in this area of artistic works as process and achievements, which the sociology of the arts in general has found notoriously difficult, that the book makes its most innovative contribution.

    The book also provides examples of audience analysis, introducing the category of ethnic identification, which studies of audiences had neglected, including those by Pierre Bourdieu concerning museum attendance and viewing in galleries. Here domographics and other quantitative factors are correlated with spectators’ assessment of theatre productions, emphasising the importance of such qualitative material for grasping the social significance and dynamics of theatre/performance.

    The book’s wide range of interest, perceived and presented from a number of different angles, employs a diverse range of methods: conceptual framing, cultural embedding, textual deconstruction, empirically-based sociocultural performance analysis, ethnographic research, media documentation, questionnaire surveys and interviews with actors, directors and spectators. Different types of performances are discussed, going from the mainstage productions of path-breaking directors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – including opera – to performances with a political thrust, or to community groups involved in identifying and authenticating multiculturalism.

    €25,00