Amplifying Theatrical Horizons: Rethinking the Value of Waste in Performance

Wasteful Theatre reimagines live performance through the lens of economy, value, excess, and waste, asking what it means to lavish resources—material, sensory, and symbolic—on audiences beyond utilitarian calculation. It examines how waste operates within the theatrical relationship between audience, performer, genre, and space, focusing on excessive deployments of value. Drawing on scholarship in theatre studies, economics, philosophy, and performance practice, the book develops the Wasteful Theatre Equation, distinguishing waste as surplus that amplifies experience rather than squandered loss. Case studies span immersive environments, haunted attractions, escape rooms, site-specific productions, and traditional proscenium theatre, demonstrating how space, participation, sensation, and fear operate as sites of wasteful excess. Key chapters pose practical questions for makers, reframing contracts of performance, proximity, and risk as tools for creating singular experiences. Across examples from Robert Wilson to Punchdrunk, Grand-Guignol to theme parks, the book positions waste as both disruptive and generative, showing how performance transforms by amplifying horizons of possibility. Ultimately, it argues that wasteful excess enchants, reorienting theatre toward presence, wonder, and transformative exchange.