The Door: Site, Object And Threshold In Performance

What is a door in performance? What does it do, what are its functions, what does it add to the aesthetic, dramaturgical, or purely pragmatic elements a performative event?

From Nora’s slamming of the door in The Doll’s House, to debates about stage doors in Shakespeare’s Globe, to immersive performance in which both performers and spectators may pass through doors together, the door is a critical but under-explored feature of performance. This symposium examines the door as a performative ‘threshold’, exploring doors as both objects and places that, in being opened and closed, not only enable and restrict movement, but also contribute to the ‘play’ of presence and absence that is endemic to performance. An international and multi-disciplinary panel will unpack the door’s function as site and object, and invite discussion about the ways it materialises and crystalises a broader spectrum of performance phenomena, including practices of invitation/exclusion; revelation/secrecy; conjoining/separation; transformation.

Event Supporters

British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, Delfina Foundation, and University of Surrey

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