Performance Art Books

New and Published Books

1. Critical Live Art

   Contemporary Histories of Performance in the UK

   Edited by Dominic Johnson

   Live Art is a contested category, not least because of the historical, disciplinary and institutional ambiguities that the term often tends to conceal. Live Art can be usefully defined as a peculiarly British variation on particular legacies of cultural experimentation – a historically and...

   Published April 2nd 2013 by Routledge
2. Understanding Disability Studies and Performance Studies

   Edited by Bruce Henderson, Noam Ostrander

   This collection brings together scholarship and creative writing that brings together two of the most innovative fields to emerge from critical and cultural studies in the past few decades: Disability studies and performance studies. It draws on writings about such media as live performance...

   Published July 25th 2012 by Routledge
3. The Theatre of the Bauhaus

   The Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer

   By Melissa Trimingham

   Series: Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies

   Focusing on the work of painter, choreographer and scenic designer Oskar Schlemmer, the "Master Magician" and leader of the Theatre Workshop, this book explains this "theatre of high modernism" and its historical role in design and performance studies; further, it connects the Bauhaus exploration...

   Published April 19th 2012 by Routledge
4. Exercises for Rebel Artists

   Radical Performance Pedagogy

   By Guillermo Gómez Peña, Roberto Sifuentes

   In Exercises for Rebel Artists, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes use their extensive teaching and performance experience with La Pocha Nostra to help students and practitioners to create ‘border art’. Designed to take readers right into the heart of radical performance, the authors use a...

   Published September 12th 2011 by Routledge
5. Social Works

   Performing Art, Supporting Publics

   By Shannon Jackson

   ‘a game-changer, a must-read for scholars, students and artists alike’ – Tom Finkelpearl At a time when art world critics and curators heavily debate the social, and when community organizers and civic activists are reconsidering the role of aesthetics in social reform, this book makes explicit...

   Published February 20th 2011 by Routledge
6. ORLAN

   A Hybrid Body of Artworks

   Edited by Simon Donger, Simon Shepherd

   ORLAN: A Hybrid Body of Artworks is an in-depth academic account of ORLAN's pioneering art in its entirety. The book covers her career in performance and a range of other art forms. This single accessible overview of ORLAN's practices describes and analyses her various innovative...

   Published May 19th 2010 by Routledge
7. The DbD Experience

   Chance Knows What it's Doing!

   By Rachel Rosenthal

   Edited by Kate Noonan

   First, pick up a copy of Rachel Rosenthal’s inspiring The DbD Experience; Part manual, part manifesto, part memoir, then head for Los Angeles… FRIDAY - OriginsArrive at the Doing by Doing workshop to be greeted by Rosenthal, pioneering theatre explorer and your host for the weekend ahead. Explore...

   Published October 15th 2009 by Routledge
8. What is Scenography?

   2nd Edition

   By Pamela Howard, Pamela Howard

   "Pamela Howard’s ground-breaking What is Scenography? was the first book to set out the bold new approaches to designing and directing for theatre which had dazzled audiences in Europe during the previous decades. It did us all a service by enriching the scope of how we understand the aesthetics of...

   Published July 27th 2009 by Routledge
9. The Performance Studies Reader

   2nd Edition

   Edited by Henry Bial

   Following on from the highly successful first anthology of critical and theoretical writings on performance studies, this is an updated and significantly expanded second edition which brings the anthology up to date with current debate. The new edition contains expanded introductory essays, eight...

   Published April 4th 2007 by Routledge
10. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual: Exploring Forms of Political Theatre

    By Erika Fischer-Lichte

    In this fascinating volume, acclaimed theatre historian Erika Fischer-Lichte reflects on the role and meaning accorded to the theme of sacrifice in Western cultures as mirrored in particular fusions of theatre and ritual. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual presents a radical re-definition of ritual theatre...

    Published March 23rd 2005 by Routledge