Land/Scape/Theater ed. by Elinor Fuchs and Una Chaudhuri (review)

554 REVIEWS tion, offers the caveat that "the volume attempts the impossible task of trying to convey on the page ideas about a moving spectacle," she nonetheless animates the two-dimensional images through her own observations as a viewer (128). Despite the title (or possibly my expectations) there is no attempt by Rewa to provide a larger, national context for either the scenographers or their work. That is, despite her extensive chronicling of both scenographers and productions , not to mention her provision of a historical and cultural definition of scenography in Canada, Rewa resists drawing conclusions from eitherher work or the work of the scenographers. Such an analysis might truly enable the reader to understand the place and role scenography has (or has not) both in Canada and in the world today. Thisbeing said, Rewa's book isa valuable resource and a great snapshot of some of Canada's most prolific scenographers. ELINOR FUCHS and UNA CHAUDHURI. cds. LandlScapefTheater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Pp. 390, illustrated. $29.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Sophie Nield, University ofSurrey Roehampton ~ Theatre and performance studies has recently seen much critical energy focused on place, space, and performance. This new collection of essays, edited by Elinor Fuchs and Una Chaudhuri, situates itself both within and beyond these areas of concern, explicitly moving through both the unfeatured "space" and the over-specificity of "place" into what they describe as a new spatial paradigm: landscape. Insisting on both the material and conceptual application of the tenn, the editors make clear that this book does not represent an attempt to define and detennine the field of landscape analysis. In a sense, the book provides a landscape of approaches, each of which serves as a provocation and opening sally for future investigation and debate. After a pair of agenda-setting chapters by the editors, the book is organized around four. key problematics. The first of these, "Groundings," locates the landscapes arising from three particular performance contexts. As is the pattern with other sections in the book, connections are structural rather than explicit - here, Irish writing is a focus, with key new work on Yeats by Natalie Crohn Schmitt and on Beckett by Joseph Roach. The third chapter, by Stanton Gamer, Jr., moves the application of the critical perspective both to contemporary site-specific work and to the city. This judicious selection of theme and example gives a real sense of the range of possibilities inherent in the concept of landscape for perfonnance analysis, without being overly programmatic. The next section of essays, "Steinscapes," focuses on the pioneering work of Gertrude Stein as a key originator of this kind of critical perspective in the interpretation of dramatic work. The three essays in this section complement Reviews 555 each other very effectively both by exploring the work of Stein herself and by extending this work to the interpretation of particular performance histories and instances. Jane Bowers' essay on Stein contextualizes both Marvin Carlson 's survey of linguistic and fantasy landscapes and Marc Robinson's focused engagement with the work of Robert Wilson. Rereadings of material geographies represent the third problematic of the volume and take in a fascinating series of essays. Edward Ziter's work, here, on the exotic in imperial melodrama brings a realized stage space into critical conjunction with the expanding space of empire, thus outlining the potential ideological effects of theatre's geographic realism - a most useful insight. This palimpsest of theatrical and actual geographical spaces affords one of the most suggestive applications of landscape analysis, producing as it does both a contextualized and, crucially, politicized sense of theairical space. Essays in this section are equally suggestive through thcir juxtaposition. Julie Stone Peters positions the European sensibility of Artaud within a reading of his encounter with Mexican landscapes, and, after Matthew Wilson Smith's engagement with Wagner and Disney, W.B. Worthen returns to the imagined and material Mexico to reposition it from the perspective of border art. The final section of the book moves from material spaces into landscapes that are, or are about, absences, unpicking the potential of a landscape without space. Daniel Gerould provides a historical context for this section in his treatment...