Description:
This book charts a genealogy of alternative practices of theatre-making since the 1960s in one particular city - Cardiff. In a series of five itineraries, it visits fifty sites where significant events occurred, setting performances within local topographical and social contexts, and in relation to a specific architecture and polity.
Brief description:
Mike Pearson was Leverhulme Research Fellow and Professor of Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University. He was co-author with Michal Shanks of Theatre/ Archaeology (2001) and author of 'In Comes I' Performance, Memory and Landscape (2006); Site-Specific Performance (UEP, 2010); Mickery Theater: An Imperfect Archaeology(2011) and Marking Time: Performance, Archaeology and the City (UEP, 2013)
He made theatre professionally for over forty years, notably with Brith Gof (1981-97) and Pearson/Brookes (1997-present). With Mike Brookes, he co-conceived and co-directed The Persians (2010) and Coriolanus for National Theatre Wales, the latter in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a contribution to the World Shakespeare Festival/London 2012.
Review Quotes:
from reviews of In Comes I (published 2006):
'...essential reading for anyone seriously interested in everything good that performance study can do at its best.'
Contemporary Theatre Review
'...In Comes I is beautifully designed: the images, layout, and font transform the book into a kind of page-bound installation, a landscape to hold and move through. It feels good to look at and to touch.'
New Theatre Quarterly
'Marking Time is a publication that will be of great interest to researchers of site-specific performance. It offers a fascinating historical case study, demonstrating how the shifting topography of the city can provide spaces for performance but also seize, modify and reposition them.' (Kris Darby, Studies in Theatre and Performance, Volume 34 (3), 2014)
'As you'd expect of Mike Pearson, Marking Time: Performance, archaeology and the city is caringly done, with the devil in the detail. It's a story of alternative theatre in Cardiff since the 1960s, divided into five ' itineraries', in which Pearson moves through different parts of the city - from the University Assembly Hall to 47 Park Place to the Sherman Theatre, for instance - to trace instances of performance, and quietly celebrate their place in the lives of Cardiff and its inhabitants.' (Andy Lavender, Professor of Theatre and Performance, University of Surrey)
'an extraordinary book' (Silvija Jestrovic, Theatre Research International, Volume 40, Issue 2, 2015)