Performance in an Age of Precarity

"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

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.

Together, the 40 essays sketch a map of the contemporary performance landscape from avant-garde dance to live art to independent theatre, tracing the contours of its themes, aims, desires and relationship to the wider worlds of mainstream theatre, art and politics.

Each essay focuses on a particular artist and these include Bryony Kimmings, Dickie Beau, Forced Entertainment, Scottee, Selina Thompson, Tania El Khoury and Uninvited Guests.

Reflecting the radical nature of the work considered, the authors attempt to find a new vocabulary and a non-conventional way of considering live performance in these essays.

As both a fresh survey of contemporary performance and an exploration of how to think and write about upstream and avant-garde work, this book should be an essential resource for students, artists and audiences, as well as an accessible entry point for anyone curious to know about the beautiful and strange things happening beyond the UK’s theatrical mainstream.

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.