Movable Londons: Performance and the Modern City
Movable Londons: Performance and the Modern City
by Julia H. Fawcett
University of Michigan Press, 2025
ISBNs
Cloth: 978-0-472-07762-5
Paper: 978-0-472-05762-7
eISBN: 978-0-472-90521-8 (OA)
About the Book
In September 1666, a fire sparked in a bakery on Pudding Lane grew until it had destroyed four-fifths of central London. The rebuilding efforts that followed not only launched the careers of some of London’s most famous architects, but also transformed Londoners’ relationship to their city by underscoring the ways that people could shape a city’s spaces—and the ways that a city’s spaces could shape its people. Movable Londons looks to the Restoration theater to understand how the dispossessed made London into a modern city after the Great Fire of 1666 and how the introduction of changeable scenery in theaters altered how Londoners conceptualized the city. Fawcett makes a claim for the centrality of unplanned spaces and the role of the Restoration theater in articulating those spaces as the modern city emerged and argues that movable scenery revolutionized London’s public theaters, inviting audiences to observe how the performers—many of them hailing from the same communities as their characters—navigated the stage.
About the Author
Julia H. Fawcett is Associate Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. She is the author of Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696–1801.
Reviews
“Movable Londons makes a compelling argument that focuses on the intersection of theatrical and urban practices in one particular time and place, though with an impact that reverberates in later eras and (eventually) across a global geographical range. Fawcett's book is a remarkable achievement: engaging to read, well argued, and deeply researched.”— D.J. Hopkins, San Diego State University
“Movable Londons is a compellingly original, deeply researched, and beautifully written study of the performance of (and performances in) urban space, invaluable for the history of drama, London history, Restoration and eighteenth-century studies, and women’s studies. One of Fawcett’s greatest strengths is rendering the supposedly unrenderable: performance itself.”— Cynthia Wall, University of Virginia
Tags
Stagecraft & Scenography, Theaters, Stuart Era (1603-1714), Stage-setting and scenery, Modern City, Performance, 17th century, Renaissance, England, Theater, Architecture, Great Britain, Social life and customs, Performing Arts, Social conditions, Europe, History
Open Access Information
License: CC BY-NC
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