This dissertation is situated within the field of media studies, with a particular focus on the "materialities of communication." The concept of "materialities" is oriented to the underlying conditions that allow communication to take place: the places, carriers and modes of communication that serve to shape and even alter meaning. My dissertation asks how this "material turn" can usefully be applied to and help develop the study of theatre. / The dissertation is divided into four chapters. In Chapter 1, I undertake a critical review of the theoretical literature regarding materialities and its applications to media theory. In Chapter 2, I begin to explore the implications of the material turn for theatre. Scholarly interest in the relation of media and theatre has largely been focused on the use of media and technology within theatrical practice. I argue that theatre cannot be conceived of separately from the prevailing communicational possibilities of a given era, even if we accept the capacity for artistic intervention within these parameters. I integrate theoretical standpoints on the reproducibility, iterability and liveness of theatrical presence into a broad discussion of media and communication and thereby demonstrate a more fundamental relationship between theatricality and mediality. / In Chapter 3, I extend my discussion of a "materialities of theatre" to the subject of translatability. Translation has long functioned as a metaphor for media as well as for theatrical representation. Discourses of the translatability between media forms have recently been revived by digital technologies that present translation as a model of universalization: the search for the perfect language into which all forms of knowledge can converge. Theatre works to converge media forms as a point of intersecting bodies, texts, voices and technologies, yet also remains persistently aware of the economy of shifting linguistic exchanges that renders total translation an impossible pursuit. I thus develop a study of the materialities of theatre that can attend to this disjunction in translation theory by addressing theatre as a point of medial convergence as well as a site of linguistic difference. / In Chapter 4, I elaborate upon these standpoints by discussing circulation as a theoretical concept that, on the one hand, complements the study of materialities of communication and, on the other hand, seeks to overcome the abovementioned disjunction of translation theory. Concentrating on the case of Montreal as a site of heightened linguistic interaction, I investigate theatre as a medial system that works to absorb, interrupt and rediffuse the linguistic materialities of this city.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.102797 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Darroch, Michael. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Art History and Communication Studies.) |
| Rights | © Michael Darroch, 2006 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002594298, proquestno: AAINR32169, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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