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Gaming the stage : playable media and the rise of English commercial theater / Gina Bloom

Author
Bloom, Gina
Published
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2018]
Copyright Date
©2018
Physical Description
xii, 276 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm.

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Contents
Machine generated contents note: One.Gaming History -- Material Objects and Practices of Play -- Attitudes toward Gameplay -- The Politics of Gameplay -- Spectatorship, Performance, and History -- Two.Cards: Imperfect Information and Male Friendship -- Imperfect Information in Gammer Gurton's Needle -- Cards, Theater, and Male Friendship at Cambridge University -- Imperfect Friendship in A Woman Killed with Kindness -- Wagering on Theater -- Three.Backgammon: Space and Scopic Dominance -- Theater Space and Scopic Dominance -- Navigating Space and Place in Arden of Faversham -- The Two Angry Women of Abington and Blind Play -- Theatergoers on the Boards and Vicarious Play -- Four.Chess: Performative History and Dynastic Marriage -- The Temporality of Chess in Benjamin and The Tempest -- A Game at Chess and Polytemporal History -- Performative Histories -- Recursive Temporality, Political Agency, and Embodied Skill.
Summary
Rich connections between gaming and theater stretch back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when England's first commercial theaters appeared right next door to gaming houses and blood-sport arenas. In the first book-length exploration of gaming in the early modern period, Gina Bloom shows that theaters succeeded in London's new entertainment marketplace largely because watching a play and playing a game were similar experiences. Audiences did not just see a play; they were encouraged to play the play, and knowledge of gaming helped them become better theatergoers. Examining dramas written for these theaters alongside evidence of analog games popular then and today, Bloom argues for games as theatrical media and theater as an interactive gaming technology. Gaming the Stage also introduces a new archive for game studies: scenes of onstage gaming, which appear at climactic moments in dramatic literature. Bloom reveals plays to be systems of information for theater spectators: games of withholding, divulging, speculating, and wagering on knowledge. Her book breaks new ground through examinations of plays such as The Tempest, Arden of Faversham, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and A Game at Chess; the histories of familiar games such as cards, backgammon, and chess; less familiar ones, like Game of the Goose; and even a mixed-reality theater videogame.--From back cover.
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ISBN
0472073818
9780472073818
9780472053810 (paper ; alk. paper)
0472053817 (paper ; alk. paper)
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references (page 245-265) and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 24439481