Political performances : theory and practice / / edited Susan C. Haedicke ... [et al.].

• Superior document: Themes in theatre ; 4
• TeilnehmendeR: Haedicke, Susan C.
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Series: Themes in theatre ; 4.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (384 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Political Performances: Theory and Practice emerges from the work of the Political Performances Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research/Fédération Internationale pour la Recherche de Théâtrale. The collection of essays strives to interrogate definitions and expand boundaries of political performance. Members of Political Performances are from around the world and so approach the intersection of politics and performance from very different perspectives. Some focus on socio-political context, others on dramatic content, others on political issues and activism, and still others examine the ways in which communities perform their collective identity and political agency. The organizational structure of Political Performances highlights the variety of ways in which politics and performance converge. Each section - “Queries”, “Texts”, “Contexts” and “Practice” - frames this confluence according to certain common threads that emerge from essays that deal with topics from the ethics of autobiographical performance, the political efficacy of verbatim theatre, the challenges of community-based performance, political and self-censorship, and the impossibility of representing atrocity. The essays challenge existing ideas of political performance and point the way to new approaches.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Mapping Political Performances: A Note on the Structure of the Anthology / E.J. Westlake -- Performance as Sepulchre and Mousetrap: Global Encoding, Local Deciphering / Avraham Oz -- Witnesses in the Public Sphere: Bloody Sunday and the Redefinition of Political Theatre / Paola Botham -- Orality and the Ethics of Ownership in Community-Based Drama / David Grant -- The Théâtre du Soleil's Trajectory from “People’s Theatre” to “Citizen Theatre:” Involvement or Renunciation? / Bérénice Hamidi-Kim -- Ways of Unseeing: Glass Wall on the Main Stage / Tal Itzhaki -- To Absent Friends: Ethics in the Field of Auto/Biography / Deirdre Heddon -- Reading the Blacks Through the 1956 Preface: Politics and Betrayal / Carl Lavery -- Barbarians and Babes: A Feminist Critique of a Postcolonial Persians / Sydney Cheek O’Donnell -- Performing Stereotypes at Home and Abroad / Tom Maguire -- The Comeback of Political Drama in Croatia: Or How to Kill a President by Miro Gavran / Sanja Nikčević -- Local Knowledges, Memories, and Community: From Oral History to Performance / David Watt -- Modalities of Israeli Political Theatre: Plonter, ARNA’S Children, and the Ruth Kanner Group / Shimon Levy -- Documenting the Invisible: Dramatizing the Algerian Civil War of the 1990's / Susan C. Haedicke -- The Erotic Politics of Critical Tits: Exhibitionism or Feminist Statement? / Wendy Clupper -- The Güegüence Effect: The National Character and the Nicaraguan Political Process / E.J. Westlake -- Do the Ends Justify the Means? Considering Homeless Lives as Propaganda and Product / Beverly Redman -- The Birabahn/Threlkeld Project: Place, History, Memory, Performance, and Coexistence / Kerrie Schaefer -- Non-Naturalistic Performance in Political Narrative Drama: Methodologies and Languages for Political Performance with Reference to the Rehearsal and Production of E to the Power 3—Education, Education, Education / Lloyd Peters -- Gay Muslims and Salty Meat Pies: The Limits of Performing Community / Sonja Arsham Kuftinec -- About the Contributors.