Risk, Participation, and Performance Practice

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiv

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2. Introduction: Risky Aesthetics, Critical Vulnerabilities, and Edgeplay: Tactical Performances of the Unknown

   • Alice O’Grady

   Pages 1-29

3. The Ethics of Risky Aesthetics: Moral Codes, Being Decent, and Doing it Right

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 31-31

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   2. Theatre in the Age of Uncertainty: Memory, Technology, and Risk in Simon McBurney’s The Encounter and Robert Lepage’s 887

      • Lourdes Orozco

      Pages 33-55

   3. Putting Prejudices on the Spot and in the Spotlight: The Risks of Politically Motivated Public Space Performance Practices

      • Bree Hadley

      Pages 57-78

   4. The Drama Spiral: A Decision-Making Model for Safe, Ethical, and Flexible Practice when Incorporating Personal Stories in Applied Theatre and Performance

      • Clark Baim

      Pages 79-109

4. Performing Intimacies: Flirting, Whispering, and Sharing Stories in the Dark

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 111-111

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   2. Dance with a Stranger: Torque Show’s Intimacy (2014) and the Experience of Vulnerability in Performance and Spectatorship

      • Matt Hargrave

      Pages 113-130

   3. Risking Intimacy: Strategies of Vulnerability in Vertical City’s All Good Things and Trace

      • Bruce Barton, Pil Hansen

      Pages 131-152

   4. Collect Yourselves!: Risk, Intimacy, and Dissonance in Intermedial Performance

      • Jocelyn Spence, Stuart Andrews, David Frohlich

      Pages 153-175

5. Risking the Self: Identities, Playing with Risk, and Encountering the Edge

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 177-177

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   2. At the Risk of Being Sincere: Participation and Delegation in South African Contemporary Live Art

      • Rat Western

      Pages 179-204

   3. Upon Awakening: Addiction, Performance, and Aesthetics of Authenticity

      • Zoe Zontou

      Pages 205-231

   4. Risk in Theatrical Performances in the City: Creating Impact and Identities

      • André Carreira

      Pages 233-260

6. Back Matter

   Pages 261-264

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This book explores a range of contemporary performance practices that engage spectators physically and emotionally through active engagement and critical involvement. It considers how risk has been re-configured, re-presented and re-packaged for new audiences with a thirst for performances that promote, encourage and embrace risky encounters in a variety of forms. The collection brings together established voices on performance and risk research and draws them into conversation with next generation academic-practitioners in a dynamic reappraisal of what it means to risk oneself through the act of making and participating in performance practice. It takes into account the work of other performance scholars for whom risk and precarity are central concerns, but seeks to move the debate forwards in response to a rapidly changing world where risk is higher on the political, economic and cultural agenda than ever before.

• participatory performance
• risky aesthetics
• risk and aesthetics
• performance and vunerability
• audience risk

“This is a wide-reaching and timely volume with a firm focus on twenty-first century performance. Traversing applied, socially-engaged and experimental practices, and featuring a broad range of perspectives by theorists and practising scholars, it marks out unique opportunities at the disposal of theatre and performance makers to explore vulnerability and precarity in a century already plagued by catastrophe.” (Adam Alston, Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Surrey, UK)

• University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

  Alice O'Grady

Alice O’Grady is Professor in Applied Performance and Head of the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, UK. With a background in drama education, her research is focused on examining the ways in which performance, participation and play activate social agency and engagement across a diverse range of contexts.

Policies and ethics