Week 1 Dram1100

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The Haunted Stage

"All of his plays could be called ghosts", referring to the image of the dead embodying living people, in a live performance. This line holds significance in the aspect that theater often represents the dead, an orchestrated revival of characters after each performance, leaving a lingering ghost of previous roles with both the actor and the space. Not only this, but much of theater extends throughout generations; productions of shows centuries old being showcased regardless that the original props, actors, spaces, writers and directors are long gone, the efforts of the living carry out the same efforts of the dead, giving new life to otherwise graveyards.

Joseph Roach related performance to surrogation "Doomed search for originals by continuously auditioning stand-ins". Theater is in a sense a library of memories and culture, each recallition of memory being slightly altered as time progresses and as contexts change. This makes theater so human, the same script can be interpreted so many different ways based on so many contexts but always aims to portray the same plot despite the evolution that occurs as plays are interpreted and reinterpreted over and over.

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