From burning draft cards to staging nude protests, much left-wing political activism in 1960s America was distinguished by deliberate outrageousness. This theatrical activism, aimed at the mass media and practiced by Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies, the Black Panthers, and the Gay Activists Alliance, among others, is often dismissed as naive and out of touch, or criticized for tactics condemned as silly and off-putting to the general public. In Radical Theatrics, however, Craig Peariso argues that these over-the-top antics were far more than just the spontaneous actions of a self-indulgent radical impulse. Instead, he shows, they were well-considered aesthetic and political responses to a jaded cultural climate in which an unreflective “tolerance” masked an unwillingness to engage with challenging ideas. Through innovative analysis that links political protest to the art of contemporaries such as Andy Warhol, Peariso reveals how the “put-on” — the signature activist performance of the radical left — ended up becoming a valuable American political practice, one that continues to influence contemporary radical movements such as Occupy Wall Street.

Between 1935 and 1939, the United States government paid out-of-work artists to write, act, and stage theatre as part of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal job relief program. In segregated "Negro Units" set up under the FTP, African American artists took on theatre work usually reserved for whites, staged black versions of "white" classics, and developed radical new dramas. In this fresh history of the FTP Negro Units, Kate Dossett examines what she calls the black performance community—a broad network of actors, dramatists, audiences, critics, and community activists—who made and remade black theatre manuscripts for the Negro Units and other theatre companies from New York to Seattle. Tracing how African American playwrights and troupes developed these manuscripts and how they were then contested, revised, and reinterpreted, Dossett argues that these texts constitute an archive of black agency, and understanding their history allows us to consider black dramas on their own terms. The cultural and intellectual labor of black theatre artists was at the heart of radical politics in 1930s America, and their work became an important battleground in a turbulent decade.

Using his extraordinary grasp of the theatre, Robert Brustein, Dean of the Yale Drama School and prize-winning critic, examines campus turmoil, radicalism versus liberalism, the fate of the free university, and the new revolutionary life style. Brustein sees American society as profoundly decadent, and those radicals from whom creative and rational alternatives should come as being increasingly dominated by sentimentality and false emotionalism. His observations are often controversial, always timely and interesting.

The iconoclastic ingenuity of bohemians, from Gerard de Nerval to Allen Ginsberg, continually captivates the popular imagination; the worlds of fashion, advertising, and even real estate all capitalize on the alternative appeal of bohemian style. Persistently overlooked, however, is bohemians' distinctive relationship to work. In this book, sociologist Judith R. Halasz examines the fascinating junctures between bohemian labor and life. Weaving together historiography, ethnography, and personal experiences of having been raised amidst downtown New York's bohemian communities, Halasz deciphers bohemians' unconventional behaviors and attitudes towards employment and the broader work world. From the nineteenth-century harbingers on Paris' Left Bank to the Beats, Underground, and more recent bohemian outcroppings on New York's Lower East Side, The Bohemian Ethos traces the embodiment of a politically charged yet increasingly precarious form of cultural resistance to hegemonic social and economic imperatives.

A dynamic exploration of eight radical theater collectives from the 1960s and 70s, and their influence on contemporary performance

The Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance brings together the very latest international research on the performing arts across the continent and the diaspora into one expansive and wide-ranging collection. The book offers readers a compelling journey through the different ideas, people and practices that have shaped African theatre and performance, from pre-colonial and colonial times, right through to the 20th and early 21st centuries. Resolutely Pan-African and inter- national in its coverage, the book draws on the expertise of a wide range of Africanist scholars, and also showcases the voices of performers and theatre practitioners working on the cutting-edge of African theatre and performance practice. Contributors aim to answer some of the big questions about the content (nature, form) and context (processes, practice) of theatre, whilst also painting a pluralistic and complex picture of the diversity of cultural, political and artistic exigencies across the continent. Covering a broad range of themes including postcolonialism, transnationalism, interculturalism, Afropolitanism, development and the diaspora, the handbook concludes by projecting possible future directions for African theatre and performance as we continue to advance into the 21st century and beyond. This ground-breaking new handbook will be essential reading for students and researchers studying theatre and performance practices across Africa and the diaspora. Kene Igweonu is Professor of Creative Education at University of the Arts London, where he is also Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of London College of Communication. An interdisciplinary researcher, Professor Igweonu has extensive experience of senior academic leadership in immersive and interactive practices and performance practice. His practice research and publication interests are in storytelling, theatre, and performance in Africa and its Diaspora, as well as the Feldenkrais Method in health, wellbeing, and performance training. A champion for arts and creative industries, Professor Igweonu is Chair of DramaHE, Council Member for Creative UK, and until August 2023, President of the African Theatre Association.