Exit the Frame: Embodying Spatiotemporality in Comics and Theatre

Abstract

This thesis addresses a significant critical gap in current scholarship by examining the formal and experiential intersections between comics and theatre—two media forms often treated as categorically distinct. While traditional scholarship frequently isolates comics within literary or visual culture, and theatre within performance studies, this research argues that both forms operate as comparable spatiotemporal systems. This thesis instead investigates how each medium organises and produces experience and meaning making through the manipulation of space and time by shifting the analytical focus away from narrative content and adaptive fidelity. This research is grounded in the concept of embodiment, asserting that meaning in both comics and theatre is not merely represented, but enacted through the active participation of the reader or spectator. Utilising a comparative methodology, the thesis employs textual examples to explore how shared formal logics, such as the “gutter” in comics, or the transition in theatre, demand interpretative labour to construct meaning. Theoretical frameworks are integrated throughout the thesis, highlighting how the heterotopia, spatio-topia, and chronotope render time and space perceivable in these media forms. The structure of this thesis progresses from intermedial adaptation to specific formal strategies, before ultimately presenting a comic to playscript adaptation as testing ground for the thesis’s central claims. This research demonstrates that comics and theatre can both be understood through their representation and performance of spatial and temporal elements.