The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics

The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics is a volume of critical essays provocations and interventions on the most important questions faced by today’s writers critics audiences and theatre and performance makers. Featuring texts written by scholars and artists who are diversely situated (geographically culturally politically and institutionally) its multiple perspectives broadly address the question How can we be political now? To respond to this question Peter Eckersall and Helena Grehan have created eight galvanising themes as frameworks or rubrics to rethink the critical creative and activist perspectives on questions of politics and theatre. Each theme is linked to a set of guiding keywords:Post (post consensus post-Brexit post-Fukushima post-neoliberalism post-humanism post-global financial crisis post-acting  the real)Assembly (assemblage disappearance permission community citizen protest refugee)Gap (who is in and out what can be seen/heard/funded/allowed)Institution (visibility/darkness inclusion rules)Machine (biodata surveillance economy mediatisation)Message (performance and conviction didacticism propaganda)End (suffering stasis collapse entropy)Re. (reset rescale reanimate reimagine replay: how to bring complexity back into the public arena how art can help to do this).These themes were developed in conversation with key thinkers and artists in the field and the resulting texts engage with artistic works across a range of modes including traditional theatre contemporary performance public protest events activism and community and participatory theatre. Suitable for academics performance makers and students The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics explores questions of how to be political in the early 21st century by exploring how theatre and performance might provoke unsettle reinforce or productively destabilise the status quo.