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Applied Theatre: Aesthetics. Edited by Gareth White. Applied Theatre series. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. 320.
Applied theatre is in a precarious situation. Its sustaining institutions, which provide funding for applied theatre projects around the globe, demand a preoccupation with practical efficacy that can be measured in quantitative data. These institutions largely ignore the fact that theatre, as a broad discipline and a specific model for social justice, is a fine art that cannot be separated from aesthetics, regardless of its purpose. There is a place for beauty in applied theatre, although it has not been well-articulated. In his book Applied Theatre: Aesthetics Gareth White confronts this conflict in the social construction of applied theatre.
Part theory and p16art case studies in practical application, Applied Theatre: Aesthetics offers a valuable perspective on the significance of beauty within the context of theatre engaged in social change. In this collaborative work, White enters into a dialogue with various theorists and practitioners on a number of different artistic attitudes within the context of applied theatre. White uses Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment as the basis for a theoretical approach and argues the case for revolutionary thought and practice in aesthetics. White's edited book is a well-written, well-formatted collection of essays offering conflicting, yet complementary views on these diverging notions of what a revolutionary aesthetic must resemble.
Applied Theatre: Aesthetics is organized into four sections: an introduction, parts 1 and 2, and an epilogue....