Amplifying Theatrical Horizons: Rethinking the Value of Waste in Performance (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781835953303)

A reexamination of the role of waste in theatrical practices, from escape rooms to traditional proscenium theater.

Amplifying Theatrical Horizons reimagines live performance through the lens of economy, value, excess, and waste, asking what it means to shower resources--material, sensory, and symbolic--on audiences beyond utilitarian calculation. It examines how waste operates within the theatrical relationship between audience, performer, genre, and space, focusing on excessive deployments of value.

Drawing on scholarship in theater studies, economics, philosophy, and performance practice, Lisa Hall proposes what she calls the Wasteful Theatre Equation, distinguishing waste as a surplus that amplifies experience rather than diminishing it. Case studies span immersive environments, haunted attractions, escape rooms, site-specific productions, and traditional proscenium theater, demonstrating how space, participation, sensation, and fear operate as sites of wasteful excess.

Key chapters pose practical questions for makers, reframing contracts of performance, proximity, and risk as tools for creating singular experiences. Across examples from Robert Wilson to Punchdrunk, Grand-Guignol to theme parks, the book positions waste as both disruptive and generative. Ultimately, it argues that wasteful excess enchants, reorienting theater toward presence, wonder, and transformative exchange.