The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard

Description

The Radical in Performance interrogates the crisis in contemporary theatre, and celebrates the subversive in performance. It is the first full-length study to explore the link between a western theatre culture which, says Kershaw, is largely 'past its sell-by-date' and the blossoming of postmodern performance, much of which has a genuinely radical edge. In staying determinedly poised between Brecht and Baudrillard, modernity and postmodernism, Baz Kershaw identifies crucial resources for the revitalisation of the radical across a wide spectrum of cultural practices. He asks, what next, once political theatre is all but dead, smothered by the promiscuity of the political in postmodern culture? This is a timely, necessary and rigorous book. It will be a compelling read for anyone searching for a critical catalyst for new ways of viewing and doing cultural politics.

"Kershaw's project is complex and broad-ranging.."
-"Research in Drama Education, 2001
..."this serves as a useful synthesis of contemporary cultural theory and its modernist, and post-structuralist, antecedents.."
-"Research in Drama Education, 2001
"This is a charged, interesting book. It is radical in its scope, ambition and coverage. Ultimately, it confirms the dilemma faced by so many drama teachers-------how to develop work with students that is resistant and transformational and yet contained within the oppresive disciplines and ideologies of institutionalised schooling. "Research in Drama Education."
2001
"This book's historical purview (1960s-'90s) and earnest radical perspective match those in Kershaw's The Politics of Performance (CH, Jan'93). He is still fighting the good fight of his postwar British generation. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."
-"Choice, Apr 2000