Rethinking Roland Barthes Through Performance: A Desire for Neutral Dramaturgy

Through a series of reflections from internationally renowned performance-makers and contextualising essays from leading theatre and performance scholars, this is the first book to map the influence of Roland Barthes on performance.

The contributions are framed through Barthes's notion of 'neutral dramaturgies' - a welcome antidote to the political deadlock of our present moment - and cover the breadth of Barthes's work from his essay 'The Death of the Author' (1967) to Mythologies (1972), Camera Lucida (1981), A Lover's Discourse (1990) to the more recently available lecture courses at the Collge de France.

Together, they capture a range of Barthes's preoccupations, from his early writing on myths and meaning to personal reflections on love, loss and desire, and interrogate the intersections between Barthes's work and contemporary theatre and performance.

Having read this book, readers can approach Barthes's writing from a breadth of creative perspectives, be more aware of the importance of his late thought for thinking through a range of dramaturgical forms, and become more familiar with the work of internationally significant performance practitioners and the possible critical perspectives to analyse his work.