Staging Change Toward a Theatrical Theory of Activist Performance
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Victoria L. Scrimer is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Criticism at Millikin University, USA. She has spent a decade working for social and environmental justice organizations including Greenpeace and First Peoples Worldwide.This provocative study forces readers to confront the uncomfortable truth that contemporary American culture seems reliant on dramatic conventions to understand and engage with current events ... Highly recommended [for] graduate students through faculty.
CHOICE
Exploring a wide variety of examples of activist performances, such as David Buckel’s self-immolation, and the January 6th capitol insurrection, this book analyses activist performance through the lens of postdramatic theatre theory.
Staging Change poses the provocative question: are activists addicted to drama? Scrimer examines the ways in which the performance and reception of protest is informed by the logic of dramatic theatre, and argues that such performative arrangements are so naturalized that they can limit the ability of activists and their audiences to imagine different ways of precipitating change. By combining performance analysis, interviews with artists and activists, and autoethnographic accounts of the author’s own experiences as an environmental activist, the book illustrates the limitations and alternatives to dramatic representation in activist performance.
The last decade has seen an increase in political demonstrations worldwide, particularly following the excitement and disappointments of the Arab Spring uprisings. We have seen several notable movements such as the Occupy movement, the mobilization of Black Lives Matter, and the #MeToo movement. In response, scholars, artists, and activists from diverse disciplines have produced an exciting array of practical and theoretical approaches for talking about and thinking through activism. Utilizing these interdisciplinary approaches, Scrimer offers us a theoretical inquiry into the possible applications of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s postdramatic theatre theory in the context of political activism, and subsequently extends an alternative conceptual model for activist performance beyond the dramatic paradigm.
Preface
Introduction
Politics and the Postdramatic
On Activism and Dramatic Theatre
Chapter Summary
Chapter One: Directing the Activist Gaze
Greenpeace: Ordering the Visible
On Seeing and Perceiving in The Weavers
From Bearing Witness to Being Witnessed
Chapter Two: Absent Executioners and the Spectacle of the Scaffold
The Self-Immolation of David Buckel
Dramatists and Activists
A Semantics of Form
Chapter Three: When the Play is Not the Thing
Political Hobbyism and Deadly Theatre
The Mueller Investigation: A Search for Truth in Ten Acts
Ritual and Live Readings
Chapter Four: Soft Authoritarianism and the Hybrid Drama
Dramacracy in Russia
Drama and the Distribution of the Sensible
Cacerolazo: Ordering the Audible
Chapter Five: On Transgression and Resistance
A Promiscuity of Form
Trump’s Theatre of Cruelty
Affirmation of the Irregular
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Theatre has always offered immediate responses to political, social, economic and cultural crisis events that are local, national and global in dimension, establishing itself as a prime medium of engagement. Methuen Drama Agitations interrogates these manifold intersections between theatre and the contemporary: What is the relationship between theatre and reality? Which functions does the theatre perform in public life? Where does the radical potential of the theatre reside and how is it untapped?
Methuen Drama Agitations addresses issues from across a number of spectrums, including contemporary politics, environmental concerns, issues of gender and race, and the challenges of globalization. The series focuses on text as much as performance, on theory as much as practice. It investigates the lively dialogues between theatre and contemporary lived experience.
Advisory Board:
Anne Etienne (University College Cork, Ireland)
Alex Feldman (University of Haifa, Israel)
Lynnette Goddard (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
Anton Krueger (Rhodes University, South Africa)
Esther Kim Lee (Duke University, USA)
Benjamin Poore (University of York, UK)
Marcus Tan (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Sarah J. Townsend (Penn State University, USA)
Denise Varney (University of Melbourne, Australia)