Performing labour in Look Left Look Right's Above and Beyond

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Alston, Adam. 2015. Performing labour in Look Left Look Right's Above and Beyond. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 20(1), pp. 50-61. ISSN 1356-9783 [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2014.983467

Abstract or Description

This article looks at the theme of ‘performing labour’ in Look Left Look Right's Above and Beyond (2013). In this performance, individual audience members participate as a generic staff member in a fully functioning five star hotel in London. I consider three modes of performing labour in Above and Beyond: audiences role-playing as staff; theatre workers role-playing as staff and hotel staff performing care and attentiveness. The aesthetics of performing labour is considered as being noticeably theatrical in each of these three modes, prompting an evaluation of what it means to ‘reveal’ labour both inside and outside of explicit theatre contexts. The article concludes, perhaps controversially, by focusing on the bourgeois qualities of this revelation: to be attended to, either as audience or guest, as one who pays for the craft of care.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2014.983467

Additional Information:

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Research in Drama Education on 27 February 2015, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2014.983467

Keywords:

performing labour; labour and performance; Look Left Look Right; Above and Beyond; thrice-behaved behaviour; immersive theatre; audience participation

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Theatre and Performance (TAP)

Dates: