Performance, Theatricality and the US Presidency

The erosion of trust in politicians and political institutions is a major challenge in early twenty-first-century democratic politics, not least in the United States. This book argues that, rather than being a flaw or corruption, the potential for political distrust must be understood as an essential feature of representative democracy because representation works through performance. The book explores performance as a constellation of factors: scripts, embodiment, ideas of selfhood, and historical norms and ideals. It draws on key scholarship of political representation, rhetoric, and populism; on theories of performativity, theatricality, and acting; and on interviews the author conducted with political speechwriters spanning presidential administrations and campaigns from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama to demonstrate both that distrust is inherent in representative politics and that in mainstreamed populism distrust becomes a focal point around which the theatre of politics revolves.

Julia Peetz is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick. She has previously lectured at Goldsmiths, University of London; the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama; and the University of Surrey. Her work, which has been awarded the Asako Ukukubu Prize (2019) and James Thomas Memorial Prize (2017) and been nominated for the Theatre and Research Association’s Early Career Prize, addresses questions of political representation, democracy, and performance – particularly in the context of the U.S. presidency and in Anglo-American relations. Previous work has been published in Contemporary Theatre Review, Performance Research, Contemporary Political Theory, Studies in Theatre and Performance, and in the Oxford Handbook of Politics and Performance.