Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation by Nick Kaye (review)

Reviews 135 only characters who actually achieve redemption. Another feature of Kane's development that Saunders clarifies is her movement away from languagebased work to a more minimalist yet intense use of words and an increasing emphasis on theatrical imagery and metaphor. The text of Cleansed thus includes more stage directions than speech, and the play is Kane's most Artaudian work in its concatenation of several physically exhausting "tableaux." The second part of Saunders's book is devoted to interviews that he conducted with eight people closely connected to Kane and her work, among them directors James Macdonald and Vicky Featherstone and actor Daniel Evans. They all speak of their experiences of working with Kane and how they dealt with staging her work, while translator Nils Taben describes how Kane's work was received in Gennany and the stumbling blocks associated with adapting her plays to the continental stage. Thanks to a balanced compilation of directors, actors, translators, and artistic directors, Saunders avoids the trap of repetition. Answers never overlap too much, though it would sometimes have been interesting to have more extensive responses, as, for example. when Kane's agent Mel Kenyon remembers discussing with Kane issues relating to 4.48 Psychosis. Instead of functioning as a mere appendix, this second part of Saunders's book is closely related to his preceding readings of the plays as he seeks further clarification of previously considered problems or obscure passages. Kane's plays constitute a rich and striking oeuvre distinguished by its poetic and theatrical strength. Drawing on a rich literary and theatrical tradition , Kane's voice is unique in terms of both form and content. Saunders's study offers a first sustained analysis of her work, while at the same time touching upon aspects of the plays that invite further research. N ICK KAYE. Sile·Specijic Art: Pelformance. Place alld Documentation. London : Routledge, 2000. Pp 238, illustrated. $32.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Andrew Houstoll. University of Waterloo As the author of Postmodernism and Pelformance (1994) and Art into Theatre (1996), Nick Kaye is probably best known within contemporary theatre scholarship for the effective way in which he brings together cun'ent practices in live art and theatre through his own style of performance analysis. The transdisciplinary strength that characterizes Kaye's earlier work finds its greatest expression to date in Site-Specific Art. While this book is obviously intended to reach a broad spectrum of artists exploring space as a tool for creation, theatre practitioners and scholars should not be misled into thinking that Kaye's focus is either too vast to be of much REVIEWS use to our understanding of theatre, or that the use of the word "art" in the title makes the book of concern only to those interested in visual art. In fact, the transdisciplinary outlook of Site-Specific Art offers an important perspective beyond what is so often a "ghetto" of formal innovation (or lack thereof) in theatre. The book is concerned with practices that, in one way or another, articulate exchanges between forms, and between a work or performance of art and the place in which its meanings are defined. Kaye deserves full praise for the way in which he has skilfully integrated critique and creativity. as well as practice and analysis in his investigation. The book is divided into particular areas of concern for site-specific artists: spaces, materials, sites, and frames. These elements of practice are innovatively examined by Kaye, but they receive their fullest illumination by specially commissioned documentary artwork from some of the world's foremost practitioners. Here we experience in various ways the reinvention of a dramaturgical casebook, as the artists demonstrate how a site-specific focus has altered the form of their work. For example, reflecting on the transfer of Forced Entertainment's bus-tour show Nights ill This City from Sheffield to Rotterdam, Tim Etchells sets a series of love letters sent home alongside tourist -like photographs taken of the show's new route. Clifford McLucas of the Welsh theatre company Brith Gof has submitted a "hypotaxis" entitled "Ten Feet and Three Quarters of an Inch of Theatre." Part site report, part forensic examination. the hypotaxis...