This volume brings together important work at the intersection of politics and performance studies. While the languages of theatre and performance have long been deployed by other disciplines, these are seldom deployed seriously and pursued systematically to discover the actual nature of the relationship between performance as a set of behavioural practices and the forms and the transactions of these other disciplines. This book investigates the structural similarities and features of politics and performance, which are referred to here as ‘grammar’, a concept which also emphasizes the common communicational base or language of these fields. In each of the chapters included in this collection, key processes of both politics and performance are identified and analyzed, demonstrating the critical and indivisible links between the fields. The book also underlines that neither politics nor performance can take place without actors who perform and spectators who receive, evaluate and react to these actions. At the heart of the project is the ambition to bring about a paradigm change, such that politics cannot be analyzed seriously without a sophisticated understanding of its performance. All the chapters here display a concrete set of events, practices, and contexts within which politics and performance are inseparable elements. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars in both International Relations and Performance Studies.

Drawing on the hermeneutical reflections of John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Mikhail Bakhtin, Cartwright challenges the way twentieth-century American Protestants have engaged the "problem" of the use of scripture in Christian ethics, and issues a summons for a new debate oriented by a communal approach to hermeneutics. By analyzing particular ecclesial practices that stand within living traditions of Christianity, the "politics" of scriptural interpretation can be identified along with the criteria for what a "good performance" of scripture should be. This approach to the use of scripture in Christian ethics is displayed in historical discussions of two Christian practices through which scripture is read ecclesiologically: the Eastern Orthodox liturgical celebration of the Eucharist and the Anabaptist practice of "binding and loosing" or "the rule of Christ." When American Protestants consider "performances" of scripture such as these alongside one another within more ecumenical contexts, they begin to confront the ecclesiological problem with their attempts to "use" the Bible in Christian ethics: the relative absence of constitutive ecclesial practices in American Protestant congregations that can provide moral orientation for their interpretations of Christian scripture.

Considering both making political performance and making performance politically, this collection explores engagements of political resistance, public practice and performance media, on various scales of production within structures of neoliberal and liberal government and power.

While political scientists and political theorists have long been interested in social and political performance, and theatre and performance researchers have often focused on the political dimensions of the live arts, the interdisciplinary nature of this labor has typically been assumed rather than rigorously explored. This volume brings together leading scholars in the fields of Politics and Performance--drawing on experts across the fields of literature, law,anthropology, sociology, psychology, and media and communiction, as well as politics and theatre and performance--to map out and deepen the evolving interdisciplinary engagement. Organized into seven thematic sections, the volume investigates the relationship between politics and performance to show thatcertain features of political transactions shared by performances are fundamental to both disciplines--and that to a large extent they also share a common communicational base and language.

This volume brings together important work at the interstection of politics and performance studies. While the languages of theatre and performance have long been deployed by other disciplines such as psychology (Freud's primal 'scene'), sociology (Goffman's 'backstage'), and politics (politicians 'play' to the public, stage debates), this metaphorical attribution has seldom been taken seriously and pursued systematically to discover the actual nature of the relationship between performance as a set of behavioural practices and the forms and the transactions of these other realms. Rather than take these for granted, this book investigates the relationship between politics and performance to discover structural similarities we are calling 'grammar'. Designed to mean that certain features of political transactions shared by performances are fundamental to both disciplines, the concept of grammar also emphasizes the common communicational base or language of these fields. Neither politics nor performance can take place without actors who perform and spectators who receive, evaluate and react to these actions. In each of the essays included in this collection, key processes of both politics and performance are identified and analyzed, demonstrating the critical and indivisible links between the fields. At the heart of the project is the ambition to bring about a paradigm change, such that politics cannot be analyzed seriously without a sophisticated understanding of its performance. These essays were chosen for the volume because they display a concrete set of events, practices, and contexts within which politics and performance are inseparable elements. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars in both International Relations and Performance Studies.

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.

Performance and Cultural Politics is a groundbreaking collection of essays which explore the historical and cultural territories of performance, written by the foremost scholars in the field. The essays, exploring performance art, theatre, music and dance, range from Oscar Wilde to Eric Clapton; from the Rose Theatre to U.S. Holocaust museums. The topic includes: * Sex Play: Stereotype, Pose and Dildo * Grave Performances: The Cultural Politics of Memory * Genealogies: Critical Performances * Identity Politics: Passing, Carnival and the Law In the concluding section, `Performer's Performance', performance artist Robbie McCauley offers the practitioner's perspective on performance studies. Interdisciplinary, thought-provoking and rich in new ideas, Performance and Cultural Politics is a landmark in the emerging field of performance studies.