Theatre and the Threshold of Death: Lectures on the Dying Arts

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On the eve of a global pandemic, Kathleen Gough, a theatre professor, becomes immersed in the lives of five artist-mystics, each of whom is a pioneer in her field: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the first known musical composer; Eleanora Duse (1858-1924), the first modern actor in the Western world; Simone Weil (1909-1943), philosopher, activist, and mystic, whom Albert Camus called the only great spirit of our time; Marina Abramovic (b. 1946), the grandmother of performance art; and Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), the first known (and belatedly acknowledged) abstract painter. Each time Gough crosses a threshold into their world, she is compelled to attend courses, seminars and workshops that are simultaneously about dying and healing. Curious to learn more about the relationships between art practice, dying, and healing, Gough imagines the five artists as wisdom teachers in a mystery school. In a series of eight lectures, she turns to performance theory to provide a framework for engaging with the unknown world. In Theatre and the Threshold of Death, Gough makes a persuasive argument for the world-making power of relational thinking in our increasingly polarized age.

Author Bio

Kathleen M. Gough is Associate Professor of English and an affiliated faculty member in the Theatre and Dance program at the University of Vermont, US. She was previously Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at UVM (2014-22), US and a lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow (2006-2014), UK. Gough is the author of Kinship and Performance in the Black and Green Atlantic (2013) and the recipient of the 2014 Errol Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR). She also received the 2017 Oscar G. Brockett Essay Prize from ASTR and the Oscar G. Brockett Center for Theatre History and Criticism at the University of Texas-Austin for The Art of the Loop: Analogy, Aurality, History, Performance (TDR 2016).