JSTOR Presents | Dying Onstage: Real and Imaginary Deaths in Live Performance

• Performing Arts

An illustrated lecture by Michael Lueger

The theatre has always been preoccupied with the line between what’s fictional and what’s real, especially when it comes to death. How do you stage a believable death scene? How can the audience tell if it’s real or not? Is death even something that’s appropriate to show onstage?

This lecture will look at how deaths, both real and imaginary, have been staged in the theatre over the centuries. From Roman executions that turned the condemned into unwilling actors, to the gruesome (but fake) spectacle of the Grand Guignol, performers have been figuratively and sometimes literally dying onstage for as long as theatre has been existed.