Good Reads

11 Jan Good Reads

I’ve been series editor for the Palgrave Studies in Play, Performance, Learning and Development since 2016. It’s been a great opportunity to support the publication of books that link play and performance to community development and learning and development across the life span—and to get to know the creative researchers and practitioners whose work is featured. Some of the books in the series are single authored and others contain several authors, but they all, in different ways, cross theoretical, conceptual and professional boundaries (both spoken and unspoken). It’s this postdisciplinary direction of the series that I am most proud of.

As 2021 came to close, the sixth book in the series was published—Dan Friedman’s Performance Activism: Precursors and Contemporary Pioneers. And it couldn’t be more “postdisciplinary!” Dan has written a global overview of the growing interface of performance with so many areas of life—education, therapy, conflict resolution, trauma, civic engagement, community development, social justice activism, to name the most prominent. We are told the history of how, over the course of the 20^th Century, performance has been loosened from the institutional constraints of the theatre, and we’re then presented with a mosaic-like overview of the wonderfully diverse work and play of contemporary performance activists around the world. The stories of the “precursors” and “contemporary pioneers” make fascinating reading.

Performance Activism, Dan writes, is a “book about the movement’s discovery of itself.” In my experience, discovery comes from the activity of posing good questions and exploring them (rather than seeking “the” answer). In that tradition, the book explores questions like these:

• In what ways can play and performance impact on communities and their social and power dynamics?
• Can small groups working separately impact the large frameworks of tradition and custom?
• What kind of connections are there (and can there be) between and among those using performance for various ends, such as bridging antagonisms, educating, healing and building community?
• Can cultural activity be transferred/transformed into political activity?

Performance Activism is based on, and in, scores of interviews with contemporary performance activists from all over the globe, voluminous scholarly and on-the-ground research, and everything else that makes up a life spent as one of the makers of the movement that’s discovering itself. I hope you’ll read it!

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For the curious, here are the other books in the series (with two more in the works).

Storytelling in Participatory Arts with Young People: The Gaps in the Story. By Catherine Heinemeyer

Contemporary Theatre Education and Creative Learning: A Great British Journey. By Mark Crossley

The Search for Method in STEAM Education. By Jaime E. Martinez

Creative Collaborations through Inclusive Theatre and Community Based Learning: Students in Transition. By Lisa A. Kramer & Judy Freedman Fask

Creativity and Community among Autism-Spectrum Youth: Creating Positive Social Updrafts through Play and Performance. Edited by Peter Smagorinsky