Theatre & Protest

by Lara Shalson

How does protest engage with theatre? What does theatre have to gain from protest? Theatre and protest are often closely interlinked in the contemporary cultural and political landscape, and the line between protest and performance is often difficult to draw. Yet this relationship is also beset with doubts about theatre’s capacity to intervene in the social world. This fresh and insightful text thinks through the intersections and tensions between theatre and protest. Exploring the cross-fertilization of international theatre and protest across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Lara Shalson illuminates how and why these two are mutually influencing and enriching forms. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Theatre

100 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 25, 2017

Reviews

[leni swagger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only good thing about this was the Pussy Riot mention

[Ghazal Nessari · Rating 2 out of 5]

It gives you some idea of the interactions between performance studies and protests.

One thing that I thought was exceptionally well illustrated (although briefly, which also means all the more kudos for the author!) was the emphasis put on The Body that protests. I always had a problem with people nonchalantly imagining themselves in shoes of the protesters without counting in the differences that their bodies have. It is not out of segregation that a POC protesting and a white person protesting is different. It is not out of segregation that a woman or queer's protest is different from a man's. The Body that protests is the protest itself too. It is important to know what happened to someone is unlikely to happen to another person with different race, class, gender, able-body-ness, age, religion, ethnicity and background that have hegemonic leanings. Not everything happens to every Body.