I'm Looking Through You

I gave a paper at the Alternative Victorians and Their Predecessors: New Directions in Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Performance Research conference at Warwick University, co-organised by  Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film & University of Warwick.

It's part of the Naturalism project. I'm trying to think through what the 4th wall idea might have meant in its specific historical context. To that end the paper tries to argue for the historical specificity of the 4th wall (distinguishing it in the 1880s from certain potential precedents for it). I then try to make the invisible wall visible, by trying to say what the 4th wall would actually have looked like if we could see it. In the process that reveals some interesting things about the nature of Second Empire architecture, the separation of private and public space and of private and public morality. And finally I then try to think through what its invisibility might have meant in context and that takes me further into Haussmanization and the Commune.

I think it's an interesting piece and I hope to develop it further for TaPRA this year. Baby permitting.