Janet Gibson, Dementia, Narrative and Performance Review: Staging reality, reimagining identities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

Research output: Contribution to journalLiterature review

Abstract


In the opening chapter, Gibson makes clear the intentions of the book: 'to challenge the hegemony of the "right kind" of dementia story in Western "theatre of the real" (Martin 2013) offerings in both art and applied theatre domains in order to reimagine other stories' (5). Some examples of these 'right kind' of stories range from biomedically framed stories of loss and the failure of the body; stories that align dementia with the global health crisis and emphasise the perceived negative impact on economies and societies, playing on cultural anxieties about an ageing population (40); and stories of dementia in the arts, which are often framed as tragedies, as a fall from who a person once was to who they are now. The second component is 'celebrations', where facilitators 'are encouraged to use their imaginations in sharing the stories through the creation of books, public readings, public art displays' (190) and so on. The case study examples of applied theatre practice in Chapter Six and autobiographical performance in Chapter Seven balance a description of each project's creative process and practice with rigorously informed critical analysis, and this balance provides entry points to these chapters for practising artists and academics alike.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)355-362
Number of pages8
JournalAustralasian Drama Studies
Issue number80
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2022

Keywords

  • Alzheimer’s disease
  • book review
  • dementia
  • theatre

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