Staging Change

Exploring a wide variety of examples of activist performances, such as David Buckel’s self-immolation, and the January 6th capitol insurrection, this book analyses activist performance through the lens of post-dramatic theatre theory.

Staging Change explores the ways in which activist performances are deeply informed by dramatic logic in both the way they are designed and in the way audiences read them. Scrimer argues that these performative arrangements are naturalized to the extent that they can limit our ability to imagine other ways of thinking and being. By combining performance analysis, interviews with artists and activists, and autoethnographic accounts of the author’s own experiences as an environmental activist, the book illustrates the limitations of dramatic representation in activist performance and then explores how Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theatre might provide alternative models for activism and new ways to talk about and evaluate activist performances as they play out in the 21st century.

The last decade has seen an increase in political demonstrations world-wide particularly following the excitement and disappointments of the Arab Spring uprisings. We have seen several notable movements such as the Occupy movement, the mobilization of Black Lives Matter, and the Me Too movement. In response, scholars, artists and activists from diverse disciplines have produced an exciting array of practical and theoretical approaches for talking about and thinking through activism. Utilizing these interdisciplinary approaches, Scrimer offers us a theoretical inquiry into the possible applications of postdramatic theatre theory in the context of political activism, and subsequently extends an alternative conceptual model for activist performance beyond the dramatic paradigm.