Content area
Full Text
THEATRE, BODY AND PLEASURE. By Simon Shepherd. New York: Routledge, 2006; pp. 198. $31.95 paper.
A group of bodies watching other bodies is the core of theatrical performance. The body of the performer is the object of physical manipulation and display, which speaks to and manipulates the body of the spectator in varying degrees. Simon Shepherd begins with the proposition that "theatre is, and has always been, a place which exhibits what a human body is, what it does, what it is capable of" (1). Through the pleasure generated and manipulated within the body, the theatre engages personal and cultural values. These values can include the social, moral, and political and attach themselves to the physical characteristics of the body, as well as to the distinctions between the body and nonbody.
In his introduction, Shepherd explores several developments that have influenced contemporary thinking about the body. He begins with feminist body art of the 1960s, which challenged dominant assumptions about gender roles through performance and made the body into a key theoretical and political topic, a site of contestation in a variety of ongoing struggles. He also notes George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's interest in the interconnection of mind and body, Erving Goffman's understanding of human behaviors as social roles, and the anthropological work on performance by scholars such as Mary Douglas and Victor Turner, which in turn came to influence the development of performance studies, particularly through Richard Schechner.
Shepherd especially utilizes a phenomenological...