Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin: Out of the Natural Order

Description

Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin reveals the ways in which the major themes of evolution were taken up in the performing arts during Darwin's adult lifetime and in the generation after his death. The period 1830-1900 was the formative period for evolutionary ideas. While scientists and theorists investigated the law and order of nature, show business was more concerned with what was out of the natural order. Missing links and throwbacks, freak taxonomies and exotic races were favourite subject matter for the burgeoning variety theatre movement. Focusing on popular theatre forms in London, New York and Paris, Jane Goodall shows how they were interwoven with the developing debate about human evolution. With this book, Goodall contributes an important new angle to the debates surrounding the history of evolution. She reveals that, far from creating widespread culture shock, Darwinian theory tapped into some of the long-standing themes of popular performance and was a source for diverse and sometimes hilarious explorations.

Jane R. Goodall is currently Director of Research in the College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney where she specialises in the development of cross-disciplinary research. She is the author of Artaud and the Gnostic Drama (1994).

"Meticulously researched and wittily told, Goodall's history of the curious crossbreeding between popular entertainment and the protocols of science is a delightful read. Brilliantly rethinking the division between the arts and sciences, Goodall makes clear the mutant hybrids at the core of nineteenth century spectacles of performance and science. Performance and Evolution is an exhilarating revision of the histories of science and popular entertainment. Peggy Phelan Ann O'Day Maples Chair in the Arts Stanford University.""A veritable wunderkammer of nineteenth-century performing arts, Jane R. Goodall's book dusts off dozens of curiosities in ye olde dramatic cabinet and sets them sparkling and spinning before our eyes in kaleidoscopic wonder.."-Anrdrea J. Onstad, Theatre Journal