Performing (for) Survival [electronic resource] : Theatre, Crisis, Extremity /
Duggan, Patrick.editor.
Peschel, Lisa.editor.
This volume gathers contributions from a range of international scholars and geopolitical contexts to explore why people organise themselves into performance communities in sites of crisis and how performance – social and aesthetic, sanctioned and underground – is employed as a mechanism for survival. The chapters treat a wide range of what can be considered 'survival', ranging from sheer physical survival, to the survival of a social group with its own unique culture and values, to the survival of the very possibility of agency and dissent. Performance as a form of political resistance and protest plays a large part in many of the essays, but performance does more than that: it enables societies in crisis to continue to define themselves. By maintaining identities that are based on their own chosen affiliations and not defined solely in opposition to their oppressors, individuals and groups prepare themselves for a post-crisis future by keeping alive their own notions of who they are and who they hope to be.
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
This volume gathers contributions from a range of international scholars and geopolitical contexts to explore why people organise themselves into performance communities in sites of crisis and how performance – social and aesthetic, sanctioned and underground – is employed as a mechanism for survival. The chapters treat a wide range of what can be considered 'survival', ranging from sheer physical survival, to the survival of a social group with its own unique culture and values, to the survival of the very possibility of agency and dissent. Performance as a form of political resistance and protest plays a large part in many of the essays, but performance does more than that: it enables societies in crisis to continue to define themselves. By maintaining identities that are based on their own chosen affiliations and not defined solely in opposition to their oppressors, individuals and groups prepare themselves for a post-crisis future by keeping alive their own notions of who they are and who they hope to be.
Introduction: performing (for) survival: frameworks and mapping / Patrick Duggan and Lisa Peschel -- Surviving war and exile: national and ethnic identity in performance. Surviving (with) theatre: a history of the elf and eplf cultural troupes in the Eritrean War of Independence / Christine Matzke -- Theatre for survival: art of creation and protection (kubunda) / Ananda Breed and Alice Mukaka -- A space where something might survive: theatre in concentration camps. The cultural life of the Terezin Ghetto in 1960s survivor testimony: theatre, trauma and resilience / Lisa Peschel -- Imagining theatre in Auschwitz: performance, solidarity and survival in the works of Charlotte Delbo / Amanda Stuart Fisher -- Tactics and strategies: dissent under oppressive regimes. Swazzles of subversion: puppets under dictatorship / Cariad Astles -- Against order[s]: dictatorship, absurdism, and the plays of Sony Labou Tansi / Macelle Mahala -- Surviving censorship: El-Hakawati's Mahjoob mahjoob and the struggle for the permission to perform / Samer al-Saber -- Coming in from the outside: theatre, community, crisis. The council estate as hood: SPID Theatre Company and grass-roots arts practice as cultural politics / Katie Bbeswick -- The art of survival: social circus, youth regeneration and projected community in the North East of Scotland / Graham Jeffery, Neill Patton, Kerrie Schaefer and Tom Wakeford -- Crisis and extremity as performance. The paradox of dis/appearance: Hunger strike in Athens as a performance of survival / Aylwyn Walsh -- "Dis-ease" and the performance of radical resistance in the Maze Prison / Patrick Duggan -- Coda: "Je suis Charlie": the afterlife of inspiration / Sophie Nield.
Performing arts.
Theater—History.
Theater.
Arts.
Performing Arts.
Theatre History.
Theatre and Performance Studies.
Arts.