Viewers in Distress - 9780472056323

Viewers in DistressRace, Gender, Religion, and Avant-Garde Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century\nAuthor(s): Stefka Mihaylova\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: The University of Michigan Press, United States\nImprint: The University of Michigan Press\nISBN-13: 9780472056323, 978-0472056323\nSynopsis\nConventional notions of avant-garde art suggest innovative artists rebelling against artistic convention and social propriety, shocking unwilling audiences into new ways of seeing and living. Viewers in Distress tells a different story. Beginning in the tumultuous 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, rebellious spectators in American and British theaters broke with theater decorum and voiced their radical interpretations of shows that were not meant to be radical. In doing so, audiences tried to understand the complex racial, gender, and religious politics of their times, while insisting that liberal societies fulfill their promise.