Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice

This book draws upon cognitive and affect theory to examine applications of contemporary performance practices in educational, social and community contexts. The writing is situated in the spaces between making and performance, exploring the processes of creating work defined variously as collaborative, participatory and socially engaged.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface: Applying Performance PART I: HISTORIES & CONTEXTS Setting the Scene: Critical and Theoretical Contexts Pasts, Pioneers, Politics Principles of Applying Performance PART II: PRACTICES Performing Lives Placing Performance Digital Transportations PART III: PARTICIPATION Unhappy Relations: Critiques of Collaboration Theme Park Hells: Incarcerations Participant Centred Pedagogy and the Affective Learning Environment: LIFT 2011 A Taste of Heaven: (Syn)aesthetics and Participatory Visceral Performance Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
NICOLA SHAUGHNESSY is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent, UK. Her teaching and research specialisms are contemporary performance, applied theatre, autobiography and performance theory. Previous publications include essays on gender and theatre, autobiographical drama and applied theatre as well as a book on Gertrude Stein. She is Co-Director of Kent University's Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and leads the AHRC funded research project Imagining Autism.

Review :
"Shaunghessy uses her expert authority to prove that performance matters, and that it matters in an enormous way." - Christine Boyko-Head, Mohawk College, Canada "...Shaughnessy's analysis of applied performance within the frame of cognitive science raises and rearticulates crucial questions held about the practice, indicating that there may be more to be learned about cognitive science and the value it has for applied performance as a field. Overall this book is a wealth of diverse case studies and analyses surrounding some of the key principles held in applied performance practice, and as such it is a vital read for practitioners and students alike." - Katharine E. Low, New Theatre Quarterly "Applying Performance opens out a topical landscape of applied practices in the UK that will hopefully yield new and more pertinent approaches to the expanding filed of socially engaged art." Ola Johansson, University of Middlesex, UK