Performing (for) Survival: Theatre, Crisis, Extremity [Paperback]

This volume gathers contributions from a range of international scholars and geopolitical contexts to explore why people organise themselves into performance communities in sites of crisis and how performance  social and aesthetic, sanctioned and underground  is employed as a mechanism for survival. The chapters treat a wide range of what can be considered 'survival', ranging from sheer physical survival, to the survival of a social group with its own unique culture and values, to the survival of the very possibility of agency and dissent. Performance as a form of political resistance and protest plays a large part in many of the essays, but performance does more than that: it enables societies in crisis to continue to define themselves. By maintaining identities that are based on their own chosen affiliations and not defined solely in opposition to their oppressors, individuals and groups prepare themselves for a post-crisis future by keeping alive their own notions of who they are and who they hope to be.

This book investigates trans-historical and international instances of performance that arise directly out of situations of crisis and extremity to ask what performance is for in such contexts. It explores how people living in oppressive, dangerous or deprived conditions use performance to survive, to express dissent or a desire for change.

Introduction Performing (for) Survival: Frameworks and Mapping; Patrick Duggan and Lisa Peschel
PART I: SURVIVING WAR AND EXILE: NATIONAL AND ETHIC IDENTITY IN PERFORMANCE
1. Surviving (with) Theatre: A History of the ELF and EPLF Cultural Troupes in the Eritrean War of Independence; Christine Matzke
2. Theatre for Survival: Art of Creation and Protection (Kubunda); Ananda Breed and Alice Mukaka
PART II: A SPACE WHERE SOMETHING MIGHT SURVIVE: THEATRE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
3. The Cultural Life of the Terez?n Ghetto in 1960s Survivor Testimony: TheatlÓ!