This book is concerned with such questions as the following: What is the life of the past in the present? How might the theatre of death and the uncanny in mimesis allow us to conceive of the afterlife of a supposedly ephemeral art practice? How might a theatrical iconology engage with such fundamental social relations as those between the living and the dead?

Distinct from the dominant expectation that actors should appear life-like onstage, why is it that some theatre artists from Craig to Castellucci have conceived of the actor in the image of the dead? Furthermore, how might an...