From Inner Worlds to Outer Space. By Dan Kwong. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004; 280 pp.; 6 black-and-white illustrations. $55.00 cloth; $22.95 paper;Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s–1920s. By Krystyn Moon. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005; 224 pp.; 25 illustrations. $23.95 paper.

2006 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 187-189
Author(s):  
Sean Metzger
2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-296
Author(s):  
Mark Pizzato

William W. Demastes's new book is a rare find. It shows a new direction for interdisciplinary theatre scholarship, combining drama and performance with cognitive science, fuzzy logic, and complexity theory. With this challenging combination, Demastes extends the significance of theatre beyond its conventional place in the humanities and proposes specific ties between an ancient art form and recent scientific discoveries. He demonstrates a post-postmodern or “neostructuralist” approach that dares to discuss “the emergent essence of life itself,” through a materialist, yet “nonpositivist” science of the drama. He thus offers a glimpse “of ’universal' consciousness” in theatre's “spiritual something more” (7–9).


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