Applying Performance is a timely and engaging addition to the field, extending the scope and possibilities of what defines applied theatre, and pointing to emerging trends and thinking
Michael Balfour, Chair, Applied and Social Theatre, School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Australia
Applying Performance offers new ways of thinking about contemporary performance, live art and applied theatre. The book features a range of examples of socially engaged and participatory practices, considering key questions and debates about how we value this kind of work, who it is for, what purposes it serves and its status as art. Challenging divisions between subject and object, process and performance, artist and spectator, theory and practice, mind and body, the book participates in the various theoretical turns to affect, ethics and cognition to consider how and why we are moved as partakers in performance, the importance of empathy and embodiment to critical and creative engagement and the role of play and pleasure in affective practice. Case studies include work in a range of institutional settings to include education, health care, museums and prisons as well as projects using performance in developing communities and cultures. The examples are considered in the context of contemporary performance with sections on auto/biography, space, site and place, digital cultures and participatory performance.
CONTENTS:
Preface: Applying Performance
PART I: HISTORIES & CONTEXTS
Setting the Scene: Critical and Theoretical Contexts
Pasts, Pioneers, Politics
Principles of Applying Performance
PART II: PRACTICES
Performing Lives
Placing Performance
Digital Transportations
PART III: PARTICIPATION
Unhappy Relations: Critiques of Collaboration
Theme Park Hells: Incarcerations
Participant Centred Pedagogy and the Affective Learning Environment: LIFT 2011
A Taste of Heaven: (Syn)aesthetics and Participatory Visceral Performance
Conclusion