Preface; Alice O’Grady.- 1. Introduction: Risky Aesthetics, Critical Vulnerabilities, and Edgeplay: Tactical Performances of the Unknown; Alice O’Grady.- 2. Theatre in the Age of Uncertainty: Memory, Technology, and Risk in Simon McBurney’s The Encounter and Robert Lepage’s 887; Lourdes Orozco.- 3. Putting Prejudices on the Spot and in the Spotlight: The Risks of Politically Motivated Public Space Performance Practices; Bree Hadley.- 4. The Drama Spiral: A Decision-Making Model for Safe, Ethical, and Flexible Practice when Incorporating Personal Stories in Applied Theatre and Performance; Clark Baim.- 5. Dance with a Stranger: Torque
Show’s Intimacy (2014) and the Experience of Vulnerability in Performance and Spectatorship; Matt Hargrave.- 6. Risking Intimacy: Strategies of Vulnerability in Vertical City’s All Good Things and Trace; Bruce Barton with Pil Hansen.- 7. Collect Yourselves!: Risk, Intimacy, and Dissonance in Intermedial Performance; Jocelyn Spence, Stuart Andrews, and David Frohlich.- 8. At the Risk of Being Sincere: Participation and Delegation in South African Contemporary Live Art; Rat Western.- 9. Upon Awakening: Addiction, Performance, and Aesthetics of Authenticity; Zoe Zontou.- 10. Risk in Theatrical Performances in the City: Creating Impact and Identities; André Carreira.- Index.
Alice O’Grady is Professor in Applied Performance and Head of the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, UK. With a background in drama education, her research is focused on examining the ways in which performance, participation and play activate social agency and engagement across a diverse range of contexts.
This book explores a range of contemporary performance practices that engage spectators physically and emotionally through active engagement and critical involvement. It considers how risk has been re-configured, re-presented and re-packaged for new audiences with a thirst for performances that promote, encourage and embrace risky encounters in a variety of forms. The collection brings together established voices on performance and risk research and draws them into conversation with next generation academic-practitioners in a dynamic reappraisal of what it means to risk oneself through the act of making and participating in performance practice. It takes into account the work of other performance scholars for whom risk and precarity are central concerns, but seeks to move the debate forwards in response to a rapidly changing world where risk is higher on the political, economic and cultural agenda than ever before.