Abstract
This chapter discusses the seminal role of the grotesque in Tim Crouch’s consistent effort to strip bare the fundamentals of theatre and reject verisimilitude in favour of an active employment of the spectators’ imagination. Examining Crouch’s dramatic oeuvre from My Arm up to Adler & Gibb, it argues that the grotesque combination of real and fictitious elements pushes the audience to construct an alternative reality, and thus bears significant ethical potential, since it makes them emancipated in Jacques Rancière’s sense of the term. At the same time, Crouch’s theatre is that of paradox: characterized by foregrounding conflicting propositions, it often voices scepticism regarding the impact of art on what truly matters, such as loss, grief, and death within what are highly innovative aesthetic creations.
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Pilný, O. (2016). Imagine This: Tim Crouch. In: The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51318-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51318-2_6
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