Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century, examines how, in these first decades of the twenty-first century, contemporary European theatre-makers have sought to consider the disastrous
events of the twentieth century as the ’unfinished business’ of the contemporary. Kear argues that by thinking through the logic of the event, and the theatre event especially, contemporary
performance practice enables an affective interrogation of ’the event’ of the European century.
Examining the work of leading theatre companies, Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century offers detailed expositions and engaged analyses of key works by Needcompany (Belgium),
Jaunais Rigas Teatris (Latvia), Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (Italy), National Theatre Wales (UK), and Studios Kabako (France/Democratic Republic of the Congo). This book offers an original
conception of the theatre event as an event which exists in relation to, and performatively historicises, other ’events’, requiring a critical and creative practice of spectatorship to
animate its political affects.
