Salesman in Abu Dhabi: The Geopathology of Objects

In Theater Mitu’s Abu Dhabi production of Death of a Salesman, most of the parts were played by physical objects. With their meticulous attention to the material relationships onstage, Mitu reveals how Salesman – and modern drama, more generally – moves and is made to move unevenly in the global repertory. Spurred by this production, the article puts into conversation the recent critical discourses on global theatre and performing objects. Global studies of theatre, as they accumulate their examples, tend to distance themselves critically from individual performances as performances. The study of performing objects, in a sense, checks these more sweeping critical tendencies by reminding us of the obstinate materiality, contingency, and strangeness of live theatre. In its defamiliarization of a familiar tragedy, Mitu’s Salesman negotiates this methodological difference and illuminates the physical ways that performance moves onstage and off, and both in and out of our critical gaze.