Performance Research Volume 15 Issue 1
Memento Mori
Issue editors: Robert John Brocklehurst & Daniel Watt
ISBN: 978-0-415-55682
Memento Mori explores how theatre, performance and the cultural practices of death bring mortality to mind, enabling us to reflect upon our own lives and the lives of those departed. Performance equally struggles with the passing of its own event and the complex archival activity that stands in place of its vanishing. Despite our best attempts at seriousness and respect issues of death and dying provoke grim humour, sensationalist performances and slapstick comedy. This issue questions how and why we attempt to negotiate the processes of death and dying or find representations and memorialisations that attempt to normalize the inevitable. Memento Mori includes a range of critical and photographic essays, artist’s pages and interviews, that explore the ways in which death and the cultural practices that surround it are represented and memorialised in social and private spaces, from theatre to everyday ritual.
Intro 1: PSi Mis-Performing Papers
Lada Čale Feldman
pp. 1 - 5
Consider Phlebas …
Robert John Brocklehurst, Daniel Watt
pp. 1 - 3
The Hanging Man: Death, indeterminacy and the event
Lib Taylor
pp. 4 - 13
A Glass of War: LS (remix) Chapter 7
Matthew Goulish
pp. 14 - 22
Corpo-Reality, Voyeurs and the Responsibility of Seeing: Night of the Dead on the island of Janitzio, Mexico
Ruth Hellier-Tinoco
pp. 23 - 31
Beyond Performance: Yukio Mishima’s Theatre of Death
Yuji Sone
pp. 32 - 40
Vodou, Penises and bones: Ritual performances of death and eroticism in the cemetery and the junk yard of Port-au-Prince
Myron M. Beasley
pp. 41 - 47
Tissue to Text: Ars moriendi and the theatre of anatomy
Karen Ingham
pp. 48 - 57
Bodyworlds and Theatricality: ‘Seeing death, live’
Gianna Bouchard
pp. 58 - 65
[artists pages]
Kreider + O’leary
pp. 66 - 71
A Rehearsal for Mortals
Per Roar
pp. 72 - 80
On the Performativity of Absence: Death as community
Natasha Lushetich
pp. 81 - 89
Martyrium as Performance
Daniel Tércio
pp. 90 - 99
I see you, but I don’t see you dying …
Dorinda Hulton
pp. 100 - 109
The Putrefaction of Diogenes Postponed Memento mori in the work of Robert O. Lenkiewicz (1941–2002)
M. A. Penwill
pp. 110 - 122
Coffins and Cameras: A conversation with Sheree Rose
Klare Scarborough
pp. 123 - 130
Of Last Things in Memento Mori: Silence, eternity and death
Michal Kobialka
pp. 131 - 139
The Death of the Actor
Nigel Ward
pp. 140 - 147
Notes on Contributors
pp. 149 - 150
