In Place of a Show: What Happens Inside Theatres When Nothing Is Happening

by Augusto Corrieri

In Place of a Show is a compelling account of Western theatre buildings in the 21st theatres stripped of their primary purpose, lying empty, preserved as museums, or demolished.

Playfully combining first-person narratives, scholarly research and visual documents, Augusto Corrieri explores the material and imaginative potentials of these places, charting interconnections between humans, birds, vegetation, and the beguiling animations of inanimate things, such as walls, curtains and seats.

Across four chapters we learn of the uncanny dismantling and reconstitution of a German Baroque auditorium during the Second World War; the phantasmal remains of a demolished music hall in London's East End; a Renaissance Italian theatre, fleetingly transformed into an aviary by the appearance of a swallow; and a lavish opera house emerging from the Amazon rainforest. In these pages we are invited to discover theatres as sites of anomalous encounters and surprising places that might reveal the performative entanglement of human and nonhuman worlds.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2016

Reviews

[MH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corrieri explores space and absence through four brief, personal chapters on Western theaters. He's a smart, engaging writer, and the brevity of the book works in his favor. One chapter is largely on walking around his neighborhood, another chapter centers on seeing an unexpected bird - for me, this sort of first person 'I sat on a bench and had deep thoughts' academic writing can easily become painfully self-indulgent, but Corrieri's personable voice and facility with a breadth of theories keeps him very readable, and his self-awareness in keeping the work brief protects him nicely from succumbing to self-absorption. I was surprised that he didn't use any touristic theory, and also by the abrupt ending from such an elegant writer (I'm convinced something got lost in the edit), but it's a compelling, enjoyable work that invites thoughtful engagement.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally I write reviews on Goodreads right when I finish the book, but this one I will have to reflect on for a while first. For a relatively short book, it leaves you with a great deal to think about. I've been extensively involved with theatre for about a decade now, and I've spent some of nearly every day in a theatre for maybe the last five years. But I've never seen the buildings around me the way Augusto Corrieri does, and I think that all may change now.