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Stumbling in the Dark: Facets of Sensory Perception and Robert Wilson's ‘H.G.‘ Installation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Stephen Di Benedetto
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Abstract

The ways in which we receive and perceive what we taste, hear, touch, and smell all serve as potential resources for our understanding of an artistically mediated event. Though some modes of perception are more usually associated with the visual than the performing arts, the development of forms of Live Art has begun to challenge our understanding of how the conventions of theatricalizing experience can be modulated. Using methodologies drawn from a phenomenological perspective, Stephen Di Benedetto here examines the way in which Robert Wilson's installation, H.G., presented at the Clink, near London Bridge, in 1995, triggered a journey in sensory perception for its spectators, and served as an exemplar of the ways in which the full range of sensory resources can be ‘theatrically’ deployed. Stephen Di Benedetto, having received his PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London, for his thesis on Playwriting as a Visual Art, is currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre History at the School of Theatre, University of Houston, and is now actively engaged in research on the body in contemporary Live Art and new Irish and English playwriting.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , August 2001 , pp. 273 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

Notes and References

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