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POLITICAL PERFORMANCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE. Edited by Susan C. Haedicke, Deirdre Heddon, Avraham Oz, and E. J. Westlake. Themes in Theatre: Collective Approaches to Theatre and Performance, no. 4. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009; pp. 380.
Political Performances: Theory and Practice is an anthology of eighteen essays from the Political Performances working group of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). This international collection of scholars offers academic readers a snapshot of current scholarly work on recent and contemporary performances that question dominant ideologies, mostly from Western cultures, including work by Algerian, American, Australian, British, Croatian, French, Irish, and Nicaraguan playwrights and practitioners. The authors use a diversity of approaches that include performance analyses, considerations of individual playwrights, and historical overviews of applied theatre forms. Despite these varied approaches, this anthology finds cohesion in the authors' shared research concerns of ethics, efficacy, and productive dissent.
The authors' first task is to define political performance. Coeditor E. J. Westlake asserts in her preface that all performances can be considered political, since performances are cultural products that either challenge or reify dominant ideologies. In his introduction, coeditor Avraham Oz agrees, but also emphasizes context and action as key for defining political performance, explaining that political performers typically take action by challenging larger contexts of hierarchy, structure, and myth (17). Accordingly, the anthology includes essays on performances that address global concerns in varying contexts, such as civil war in Algeria, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, and territoriality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Other essays explore how community-based performances, taking up topics like homelessness, faith, and gender stereotypes, can...