FREE delivery: Nov 25 - Dec 10
Usually ships within 4 to 5 days.
As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app.
$$19.42 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$19.42
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Ships from United Kingdom and sold by Book Depository CA.
Return policy: Returnable until Jan 31, 2022
For the 2021 holiday season, returnable items purchased between October 1 and December 31 can be returned until January 31, 2022. You may receive a partial or no refund on used, damaged or materially different returns.
1-Click ordering is not available for this item.
FREE delivery: Nov 29 - Dec 20
Used: Good | Details
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: ** Orders are dispatched swiftly within 24 hours from London. Experience has shown 98% of the items we ship to the USA and Canada are received within 7-10 days by our customers. We continue to serve several million of happy customers globally and believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. Buy with confidence!
<Embed>

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer – no Kindle device required. Learn more

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle app

Enter your mobile phone or email address

Processing your request...

By pressing "Send link", you agree to Amazon's Conditions of Use.

You consent to receive an automated text message from or on behalf of Amazon about the Kindle App at your mobile number above. Consent is not a condition of any purchase. Message and data rates may apply.

Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

Follow the Author

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Social Acupuncture Paperback – Illustrated, March 8 2006

5.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating

Amazon Price
New from Used from
Kindle Edition
Paperback, Illustrated
$19.42
$19.01 $13.99

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

  • Social Acupuncture
  • +
  • Haircuts by Children and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
One of these items ships sooner than the other.
Choose items to buy together.

Product description

Review

Darren O’Donnell isn’t your “art for art’s sake” kind of guy. The Toronto-based playwright, director, actor, author, and student of acupuncture believes theatre should be a vehicle for social change, and he sees his own work as the theatrical equivalent of that traditional Chinese holistic treatment in which small needles are inserted into key areas of the body to trigger a larger effect. He explains his theatre-as-medicine theory in “Social Acupuncture”, the long but engaging essay that comprises more than half of his latest book, Social Acupuncture: A Guide to Suicide, Performance and Utopia.
O’Donnell has been testing his theory for a few years now through Mammalian Diving Reflex, the theatre company made up of himself and producer Naomi Campbell. Although they started out unpromisingly with the play White Mice, a heavy-handed satire of racism that just looked like old-fashioned didactic theatre, since 2003 they’ve been up to newer and more interesting tricks, with a string of unusual projects aimed at what O’Donnell calls “civic engagement”, delineated in his essay. Most of these acts of social acupuncture essentially involve groups of participants approaching and talking to strangers in public places, generating dialogue that has no overt purpose beyond getting to know people and what’s on their minds, with the ground rule that any question can be asked but no question has to be answered. It’s a benignly radical gesture in an urban society that enshrines privacy, but, according to O’Donnell, more often than not strangers are willing and eager to submit to the impromptu Q&As. The company’s other offbeat projects verge on being humorous social experiments, such as recreating the teenage rituals of spin the bottle and back-of-the-bus necking, using adult volunteers, or empowering children by putting adults in a hairdresser’s chair and letting kids wield the scissors.
But is any of this theatre, you ask? O’Donnell’s challenge has been to bring this civic engagement back to the stage, which has led to Mammalian Diving Reflex’s most recent project, Diplomatic Immunities, a combination of videotaped encounters outside the theatre and further live interaction with an audience. It culminated this past winter in Calgary with a series of well-received performances at Alberta Theatre Projects during that company’s annual playRites festival, although, as O’Donnell himself admits, “It still remains to be seen if all of this [activity] will result in compelling entertainment.”
And that brings us to the second part of the book, the text of his 2004 play A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, which finds O’Donnell trying to apply his ideas-and particularly his distaste with the artifice of representational theatre-to the format of a solo show. In this rambling monologue punctuated with video, sound and lighting effects, actor O’Donnell refuses to act (or, if he does, he quickly points it out to us); instead, he deconstructs his own writing, playing with the stage illusion of spontaneously addressing an audience when his words have been scripted well in advance. Certainly, the ubiquitous autobiographical solo play is a ripe target for subversion, and some of O’Donnell’s random musings are compelling and entertaining, but ultimately his anti-theatre tactics here do little more than hint at the creative alternative of a work like Diplomatic Immunities. And for those bent on self-slaughter and wondering if there are better Toronto options than the Bloor Street Viaduct, the play signally fails to deliver on the promise of its title.
Martin Morrow (Books in Canada)
-- Books in Canada

From the Inside Flap

‘No other playwright working in Toronto right now has O’Donnell’s talent for synthesizing psychosocial, artistic and political random thoughts and reflections into compelling analyses … The world (not to mention the theatre world) could use more of this, if only to get us talking and debating.' – The Globe and Mail

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Coach House Books; 1st edition (March 8 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1552451704
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1552451700
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 227 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.7 x 1.27 x 19.05 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Darren O’Donnell is an urban cultural planner, novelist, essayist, playwright, filmmaker, performance director and the Artistic and Founding Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex. He holds a BFA in theatre and a M.Sc. in urban planning from the University of Toronto and studied traditional Chinese Medicine at the Shiatsu School of Canada. His books include: Your Secrets Sleep with Me (2004), a novel about difference, love and the miraculous, Social Acupuncture (2006), which argues for aesthetics of civic engagement, and Haircuts by Children and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract (2018), which proposes the cultural sector as a site to pilot a new social contract with children. As an urban cultural planning his focus is on participation and, in particular, the radical engagement of children and young people at the core of cultural institutions. Past and current planning collaborators include the Humboldt Forum, the Tate Modern, the West Kowloon Cultural District, the London International Festival of Theatre, the Metropolitan Region of Rhine-Neckar, the Schauspielhaus Bochum and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.

Customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
1 global rating
5 star
100%
4 star 0% (0%) 0%
3 star 0% (0%) 0%
2 star 0% (0%) 0%
1 star 0% (0%) 0%
How are ratings calculated?

No customer reviews

There are 0 customer reviews and 1 customer rating.