The Invisible City: Travel, Attention, and Performance

The Invisible City: Travel, Attention, and Performance

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Description

The Invisible City explores urban spaces from the perspective of a traveller, writer, and creator of theatre to illuminate how cities offer travellers and residents theatrical visions while also remaining mostly invisible, beyond the limits of attention.

The book explores the city as both stage and content in three parts. Firstly, it follows in pattern Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, wherein Marco Polo describes cities to the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, to produce a constellation of vignettes recalling individual cities through travel writing and engagement with artworks. Secondly, Gillette traces the Teatro Potlach group and its ongoing immersive, site-specific performance project Invisible Cities, which has staged performances in dozens of cities across Europe and the Americas. The final part of the book offers useful exercises for artists and travellers interested in researching their own invisible cities.

Written for practitioners, travellers, students, and thinkers interested in the city as site and source of performance, The Invisible City mixes travelogue with criticism and cleverly combines philosophical meditations with theatrical pedagogy.

Publication Date

5-2020

Publisher

Routledge

Keywords

performing arts, history, criticism, architectural criticism, literary travel guides, religious travel guides

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Theatre and Performance Studies

Original Publication Information

Routledge

The Invisible City: Travel, Attention, and Performance

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