The Spectator and the Spectacle
Audiences in Modernity and Postmodernity

"‘Kennedy’s scholarship is both precise and wide-ranging; he skillfully draws connections among a multiplicity of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performance genres. . . . The Spectator and the Spectacle is a superb work; thoroughly engaging, and written in clear, conversational prose. . . . Scholars of theatre, performance, and Shakespeare – and even those people who are simply devoted to lifelong spectatorship and participation in the spectacle – will find much of value in this compelling book. They will remember it . . . for years to come."
-Dan Venning,Theatre Journal

"‘ . . . a series of well-observed, clear-eyed, clear-minded, and finely wrought conversations that are thematically linked, yet also discrete . . . bracing correctives to the pieties and simplifications often dished up in the name of theatre history."
-Philip Auslander,Modern Drama

"[A] work that extends from Shakespeare performance into sophisticated reconceptualizations of acts of performance . . . deliciously provoking."
-Peter Holland,Theatre Survey

". . . an extensive mapping that widely illuminates the topic . . . starting with the theatre but . . . taking in fields such as television, sport and ritual . . . a rich resource."
-Peter W. Marx,Forum Modernes Theater

"Dennis Kennedy takes the spectator . . . as main reference point in his varied study that diverges from ideologies of the historical avant-garde and intercultural theatre to sports events. . . . Kennedy pays attention to actual audiences and audience behaviour, [focussing] on the possibilities of the spectator’s agency and resistance against consumerist or political ideology. It is a very refreshing way of putting theoretical “big talk” into concrete perspective."
Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink,Theatre Research International

"‘I will definitely assign parts of Dennis Kennedy’s The Spectator and the Spectacle . . . for the breadth of perspective he offers."
Judith Milhous,Theatre Survey

"It is a very refreshing way of putting theoretical 'big talk' into concrete perspective … contain[s] some excellent studies on the corporeality and phenomenology of visuality … The idea of various 'modes of spectating' promises an intriguing concept …"
Theatre Research International