Table of Contents

Acknowledgements About This Book 1. Reckoning with History Rachael Young Dickie Beau Tania El Khoury Breach Theatre Uninvited Guests 2. In Search of New Languages Verity Standen Nigel Barrett & Louise Mari Ellie Dubois Alexandrina Hemsley & Jamila Johnson-Small 3. The Company You Keep Deer Park Made In China Bertrand Lesca & Nasi Voutsas Neil Callaghan & Simone Kenyon Action Hero 4. Fractures and How to Mend Them Dan Canham Sue MacLaine Amy Sharrocks Rachel Mars Selina Thompson 5. Close Encounters Abigail Conway Sheila Ghelani Brian Lobel Ria Hartley Stephanie Albert 6. Acts of Resistance Nic Green Scottee Leo Skilbeck & Milk Presents Christopher Brett Bailey Adrian Howells 7. Other Lives Are Possible Hunt & Darton Rajni Shah Bryony Kimmings Emma Frankland Figs in Wigs 8. Ways of Remembering Jemima Yong Deborah Pearson Greg Wohead Forced Entertainment Tim Crouch & Andy Smith

Promotional Information

An anthology of critical essays that draw on a decade of the authors thinking, writing about and working within contemporary performance as critics, producers, dramaturgs, makers, archivists and more.

About the Author

Maddy Costa writes about theatre and performance online, in fanzines and in collaboration with other writers and artists. Together with Mary Paterson and Diana Damian Martin she is a co-founder of the experimental writing platform Something Other and the Department of Feminist Conversations collective. Andy Field is a writer, artist and the co-director of the award-winning performance collective Forest Fringe. He has toured his own contemporary performance work across the UK and internationally. He also writes on performance and in 2012 completed a PhD exploring the performance work of the New York avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s.

Reviews

Andy Field and Maddy Costa have built a theatre of words inhabited by a fascinating cast of performers. Beyond their evocative descriptions of spectatorship and participation, Performance in an Age of Precarity also shares compelling accounts of friendship, landscapes of memory and expressions of political urgency. These warm and generous portraits are an important record of observation and affect, placing the artist (as independent maker) center stage.
*Robin Deacon, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA*

This magical book is a love letter to the artists whose imagination and cleverness transport us and unite us, and to the beauty and fragility of their performance. When I read it I feel like I am constantly on the joyful edge of falling in love, trying so hard to keep hold of the feelings evoked. A very precious book in our precarious times.
*Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director, Royal Court Theatre, London*