This edited collection gathers together leading voices in theatre and performance studies to debate the politics of participation and find points of connection across a range of performative forms - including community theatre, live art, applied theatre, one-to-one performance and marathon running. Arranged in three sections, 'Recognising Participation', 'Labours of Participation', and 'Authoring Participation', the book raises productive questions about how and why audiences are encouraged to participate in creating the artistic work. This intersection, the authors suggest, blurs the boundaries between producer and consumer, promising modes of engagement that are at once political, social and aesthetic.
Applying theoretical ideas to concrete discussions of practice, this is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of applied theatre, political and socially-engaged theatre, participatory theatre making and performance studies.
1. Performance and Participation; Anna Harpin and Helen Nicholson
PART I: RECOGNISING PARTICIPATION
2. The Cultivation of Entangled Listening: An Ensemble of More-than-Human Participants; Deirdre Heddon
3. Renegotiating Immersive Participation in Analogue's Re-enactments; Liam Jarvis
4. Mute Stages: Performing Silent Lives; Anna Harpin
5. Participation, Recognition and Political Space; Colette ConroyPART II: LABOURS OF PARTICIPATION
6. Affective Labours of Cultural Participation; Helen Nicholson
7. Sometimes the Quieter the Revolution, the Louder it is Heard: Crafting, Protest and Gender; Dawn Fowler
8. 'Tell no-one': Secret Cinema and the Paradox of Secrecy; Adam AlstonPART III: AUTHORING PARTICIPATION
9. The Agency of Environment: Participation Citizenship and Multi-Story Water; Stephen Bottoms
10. One Step Forward, One Step Back: Resisting the Forensic Turn; James Frieze
11. Authority, Authorisation and Authorship: Participation in Community Plays in Belfast; Alison Jeffers
Bibliography
Index.
