Performance Affects

Performance Affects explores performance projects in disaster and war zones to argue that joy, beauty and celebration should be the inspiration for the politics of community-based or participatory performance practice, seeking to realign the field of Applied Theatre away from effects towards an affective role, connected to sensations of pleasure.

'Drawing on his own workshops in Sri Lanka in 2000 and research in Rwandan prisons, Thompson builds a moving and often disturbing picture of how theatre can be used for political ends' - What's On Stage.com 'Performance Affects, focusing on the aesthetics and politics of performance in sites of war, disaster, and crisis, will be of immediate interest to academics writing and working in and around those settings and in the applied theatre field. The book provides a rich, complex, and theoretically aligned set of ideas and contributions to discourses of theatre performance in political contexts.' - Sheila Preston, New Theatre Quarterly 'The strength of the study stems from the sensitive, insightful and extremely self-reflexive observations from Thompson's work as a practitioner and participant in applied theatre projects in Sri Lanka and Rwanda... His study is theoretically eclectic, and yet refreshingly non-presumptuous... Thompson makes a consistent, sincere and timely argument.' - Sruti Bala, Theatre Research International 'This book is bold, admirable, moving, lucid and persuasive, and its argument for an affective turn in the practice and scholarship of applied theatre is already, fundamentally, changing them.' - Jen Harvie, Research in Drama Education 'Performance Affects is a timely, eloquent and urgent call to theatre makers and academics working in the field of applied theatre to interrogate the existing critical discourses and political aspirations of contemporary practices and to develop new practical and theoretical vocabularies to advance the field...Performance Affects offers an original and important contribution to applied theatre by challenging, critiquing and championing the aesthetic and political aspirations of work. This book will be an invaluable addition to the practical and theoretical development of the field.' - Caoimhe McAvinchey, Contemporary Theatre Review

JAMES THOMPSON Professor of Applied and Social Theatre at the University of Manchester, UK, Director of In Place of War and a Director of the Centre for Applied Theatre Research. He is author of Drama Workshops for Anger Management and Offending Behaviour (1999), Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond (2003), Digging Up Stories: Applied Theatre, Performance and War and with Jenny Hughes and Michael Balfour, Performance In Place of War (2009).