1st Edition
Actors and Activists Performance, Politics, and Exchange Among Social Worlds
By David Schlossman
Copyright 2002
358 Pages
by
Routledge
This scholarly work looks at the issue of politics and performance in America today with particular attention paid to performances produced by activists, the NEA Four, and "Miss Saigon".
Chapter 1: Exchange Between Art Worlds and Political Worlds I. Necessarily Cumbersome Terminology II. Perennial Questions of Performance and Politics III. Sociology, Critical Theory, Politics, and Representation IV. An Exclusive Model for the Intersection of Politics and Performance V. Methodology VI. Historical Examples of the Intersection of Activism and Institutional Performance Chapter 2: Political Insiders and Art: Activist Performance in the 1990s I. Activism II. The Demonstration as Performance III. Activist Performance IV. Activist Performance and Institutional Performance Chapter 3: Theater Insiders and Politics: Miss Saigon, Commercial Theater, Professional Actors, and Activism I. Commercial Theater, Politics, and Representation II. The Politics of Miss Saigon III. A Tradition of Activism IV. Activism Goes to the Theater: The Miss Saigon Controversies Analyzed V. Negotiation of Political Activism by Professional Actors Chapter 4: Artist-Activists and Blurring Boundaries: Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller I. Performance Art, Institutional Performance, and Politics II. The Activist Performance of the NEA Four III. Artist-Activists and the National Political Discourse: The NEA Controversies Conclusion Appendix: Chronology of Major Events Pertaining to the Cases Bibliography Index
Biography
David A. Schlossman is currently teaching in the Master of Liberal Arts program at John Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. from the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theater and Drama at Northwestern University.
"I admire Schlossman's exhaustive research and his clear political and intellectual commitments to activism and performance. 'Actors and Activists' does a good job of arguing that the worlds of theatre/performance and activism are never far apart, and that art can never be kept pristine from politics (or vice versa), leaving the reader with a complicated, productive, hopeful vision of interaction among social worlds." -- Jill Dolan, Theatre Journal
