Performance and the Disney Theme Park Experience: The Tourist as Actor
Jennifer A. Kokai & Tom Robson, Editors Palgrave Macmillan, 2019
This book addresses Disney parks using performance theory. Few to no scholars have done this to date—an enormous oversight given the Disney parks’ similarities to immersive theatre, interpolation of guests, and dramaturgical construction of attractions. Most scholars and critics deny agency to the tourist in their engagement with the Disney theme park experience. The vast body of research and journalism on the Disney “Imagineers”—the designers and storytellers who construct the park experience—leads to the misconception that these exceptional artists puppeteer every aspect of the guest’s experience. Contrary to this assumption, Disney park guests find a range of possible reading strategies when they enter the space. Certainly Disney presents a primary reading, but generations of critical theory have established the variety of reading strategies that interpreters can employ to read against the text.This volume of twelve essays re-centers the park experience around its protagonist: the tourist.
“This engaging collection is likely to become required reading for scholars across a number of fields. It intelligently addresses a set of immersive performances that has largely been ignored by performance scholars and, in doing so, provided engaging and original insight.”
— Adam Rush (University of Winchester, Hampshire, UK) in Contemporary Theatre Review
“[Performance and the Disney Theme Park Experience] addresses an impressive range of issues surrounding the tourist experience at Disney parks. In this time of stay-at-home orders and physical distancing, Kokai and Robson’s collection provides useful tools to reconsider the value, importance, and impact of gathering together and playing.”
— Shelley Orr (San Diego State University) in Theatre Annual
“The authors present deep analyses of the scenography, costumes, choreography, dramatic tropes, and other performance elements that shape the tourist experience...an invigorating read.”
— Marlis Schweitzer (York University, Canada), advance testimonial
“Jennifer Kokai and Tom Robson draw together a rich combination of essays that provoke necessary debate in this area. In doing so they offer a collection that opens up arguments around the commercial, cultural and political impact of interactive Disney events for a contemporary audience. Combining theory and practice from the fields of business, culture, economics, identity politics, performance, theatre and tourism, the scope of this book is broad in its appeal...By placing the tourist as actor at the centre of the analysis, this edited collection addresses issues of agency and repeatedly returns to the intersections of Disney worlds with immersive theatres. It offers clear illustration of the value of theme parks to the creative industries (not to mention the immersive economy) in providing access to artistic events for a vast and enthusiastic audience. Anyone with an interest in how immersive practices are at work in popular contexts—and how this wide-ranging form remains at the forefront of critical enquiry as much as creative practice—will benefit from reading this book.”
— Josephine Machon (Middlesex University, London), advance testimonial
Chapters & Articles
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“Haunted Waters: The Elimination of Liveness in Disney’s Rivers of Light,”
Disney Fan Phenomena, Sabrina Mittermeier, ed., Intellect Books (Under Contract).
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“Competing Interiorities in the Disney Theme Park Space,”
co-written with Jennifer A. Kokai, Virtual Interiorities, Dave Gottwald, Gregory Turner-Rahman, and Vahid Vahdat, eds., Carnegie Mellon ETC Press (Under Contract).
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“Advertising and the Commercial Spirit: Cataloging Nineteenth-Century Scenic Studio Practices,”
Working in the Wings: New Perspectives on Theatre History and Labor, Christine Woodworth and Elizabeth Osborne, eds., SIU Press, 2015.
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“The New Stagecraft’s Nuts and Bolts,”
Theatre Design & Technology 53.2 (Spring 2017).
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“A More Aggressive Plantation Play: Henrietta Vinton Davis and John Edward Bruce Collaborare on Our Old Kentucky Home,”
Theatre History Studies 32 (2012).
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“Field of American Dreams: Individualist Ideology in the American Baseball Movie,”
JUMP CUT: A Review of Contemporary Media 52 (Summer 2010).
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“The Rockae: An Adaptation of Euripides’s The Bacchae,”
Ecumenica: A Journal of Theatre & Performance 3.1 (Spring 2010).
Reviews
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“Book Review: Showing Up, Showing Off: Studies of Hype, Heightened Performance, and Cultural Power,”
Theatre Journal 72.4 (December 2020).
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“Performance Review: Violet,”
Ecumenica: A Journal of Theatre & Performance 8.1 (Spring 2015).
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“Book Review: Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the American Stage and Screen,”
Theatre Journal 66.1 (March 2014).
Public Scholarship (Not Peer-Reviewed)
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“In This Together,”
contributor to special section “Where the Year Went: A Look Back, and Forward,” American Theatre Magazine, March 2021.
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“Going Back in Time to Find Common Ground,”
co-written with Paul J. Brunner, Sightlines: The Monthly Newsletter for U.S.I.T.T. Members, October 2011.
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The Leading Creative Podcast: “Theatre Endures: A Conversation with Dr. Tom Robson,”
June 9, 2020