The Theatre of Death - The Uncanny in Mimesis [electronic resource] : Tadeusz Kantor, Aby Warburg, and an Iconology of the Actor / by Mischa Twitchin.

Introduction. Three instances of present readings of past writings -- Part I. Thinking of the dead through a concept of theatre (The Dead Class) -- Part II. Chapter 1. Precedents (Craig and Artaud, Maeterlinck and Witkiewicz) -- Chapter 2. Survivals and the uncanny -- Chapter 3. Superstition and an iconology -- Part III. Chapter 1. What do we see in theatre - in theory? -- Chapter 2. A question of appearance - enter the actor -- Part IV. Tadeusz Kantor - An avant-garde of death -- Bibliography.

Distinct from the dominant expectation that actors should appear life-like onstage, why is it that some theatre artists - from Craig to Castellucci - have conceived of the actor in the image of the dead? This book explores such questions through the implications of the twofold analogy proposed in its very title: as theatre is to the uncanny, so death is to mimesis; and as theatre is to mimesis, so death is to the uncanny. Walter Benjamin once observed that: "The point at issue in the theatre today can be more accurately defined in relation to the stage than to the play. It concerns the filling-in of the orchestra pit. The abyss which separates the actors from the audience like the dead from the living..." If the relation between the living and the dead can be thought of in terms of an analogy with ancient theatre, what about modernity? .