25 Feb The Performance Turn in Social Activism
New Book and Coffee Cup
I was so pleased to see this new book in the mail yesterday that I took a photo of it. Performance Studies in Motion originated in a 2010 conference at the University of Haifa: RS and PS: Richard Schechner and Performance Studies. Appropriately, it contains an essay by Schechner (a really great essay) that concludes, “We must imagine, invent and perform new ways of becoming.”
Among the other 23 essays is one by Dan Friedman and me, Performing the World: The Performance Turn in Social Activism. I’ll be using these two essays in the online course I’ll be leading beginning April 7, Performance Activism.
The turn to performance (and away from psychology) as a creative response to local and global social problems has grown exponentially since the first Performing the World conference in 2001. Lois Holzman, a founder and chief organizer of Performing the World will lead a discussion on the history of this emergent progressivism and its roots in experimental and educational theatre, performative psychology and the development community that gave rise to Performing the World. Together with her guest, Dan Friedman, a theatre artist, historian, and community organizer, the class will explore the role of performance as a promising new way of engaging social problems.
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