In Antitheatricality and the Body Public, Lisa A. Freeman situates her study beyond the borders of Jonas Barish’s suppositions of antitheatrical mistrust, presenting an innovative and valuable argument that antitheatricality is not a response to the public harm of theatre but rather a means to challenge and question, claim, reclaim, and shape power and authority. Her book demonstrates an integrated and complex conversation with historical and theoretical scholars ranging from Barish to Phelan. Contextualizing antitheatrical events as complex cultural performances, Freeman carefully and painstakingly traces the multiple threads of political power that pervade the antitheatrical debates that span from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. According to Freeman, theatre has “ever been located at the center of ... broad cultural movements and conflicts and ... antitheatrical incidents ... provide us with occasions to trace major struggles over historical shifts” with regards to power and authority. It is through her careful examination of evidence—both original documents and the narratives that arose from the historical incidents—that she illuminates the broader cultural movements at play in these five case studies (2). The five case studies, at first glance, hold only cursory connections in terms of religious fervor against playing, immoral behavior represented and lauded in plays, and attending the theatre: William Prynne’s Histrio-mastix, Jeremy Collier’s A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, John Home’s Douglas, the Richmond Theatre fire, and the National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley. However, through her careful and thorough dissection of the evidence of each case study, Freeman reveals a long history of those using antitheatrical sentiment along with theatrical form, genre, and performance techniques to create a body public who, in turn, could become a body politic. Each chapter and case study establishes the foundation and framework for the one that follows, building from William Prynne’s not-so-subtle attack on monarchic rule in the 1630s to the Christian conservative attack and Supreme Court ruling on the NEA Four in the 1990s. These case studies create an antitheatrical history that brings the readers to the present-day United States in which a conservative Christian body public is still working to marginalize other bodies public in the name of “American” values. Each chapter is useful on its own, but the real argument of the book is the history Freeman constructs between all five cases studies. The reach of her work goes beyond the field of theatre into journalism

中文翻译：

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丽莎 A. 弗里曼 (Lisa A. Freeman) 的反戏剧性和身体公众

在 Antitheatricality 和 Body Public 中，Lisa A. Freeman 将她的研究置于 Jonas Barish 的反戏剧不信任假设的边界之外，提出了一个创新且有价值的论点，即反戏剧不是对戏剧公共伤害的回应，而是一种挑战和质疑、主张、收回和塑造权力和权威。她的书展示了与从 Barish 到 Phelan 的历史和理论学者进行的综合而复杂的对话。弗里曼将反戏剧事件情境化为复杂的文化表演，仔细而艰苦地追溯了贯穿 17 世纪到 20 世纪反戏剧辩论的政治权力的多重线索。根据弗里曼的说法，剧院“曾经位于……的中心。广泛的文化运动和冲突以及……反戏剧事件……为我们提供了追溯“历史转变中的重大斗争”与权力和权威相关的机会。正是通过她对证据的仔细检查——原始文件和历史事件的叙述——她阐明了这五个案例研究中更广泛的文化运动 (2)。乍一看，这五个案例研究在反对游戏的宗教热情、戏剧中表现和赞扬的不道德行为以及上剧院方面仅具有粗略的联系：威廉·白兰 (William Prynne) 的 Histrio-mastix、杰里米·科利尔 (Jeremy Collier) 的《不道德与亵渎的短视》(A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness)英国舞台、约翰霍姆的道格拉斯、里士满剧院火灾和国家艺术基金会诉芬利案。然而，通过对每个案例研究的证据进行仔细而彻底的剖析，弗里曼揭示了那些使用反戏剧情绪以及戏剧形式、流派和表演技巧来创造身体公众的悠久历史，而后者又可能成为政治身体。每一章和案例研究都为接下来的章节奠定了基础和框架，从 1630 年代 William Prynne 对君主制统治的不那么微妙的攻击到 1990 年代基督教保守主义攻击和最高法院对 NEA 四的裁决。这些案例研究创造了一段反戏剧的历史，将读者带到当今的美国，在这个美国，保守的基督教团体仍在以“美国”价值观的名义努力边缘化其他公众团体。每一章都有自己的用处，但本书真正的论点是弗里曼在所有五个案例研究之间构建的历史。她的工作范围超越了戏剧领域，进入了新闻领域