Performance Affects : Applied Theatre and the End of Effect

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.

Performance Affects, now in paperback and with a new preface,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. Applied Theatre has traditionally concentrated on effects - impacts, themes communicated or ''truths'' revealed. Performance Affects challenges this orientation by suggesting that an affective realm needs to be the focus for a renewed aesthetic, ethical and radical vision of the practice. Performance projects with child soldiers, storytelling programmes in tsunami-affected areas and prison theatre workshops in post-genocide Rwanda are used to demonstrate the limits of a practice reliant solely on effect - and an alternative is suggested: one that encourages a commitment to pleasure, passion and enjoyment as a starting point for a political-aesthetic practice that acknowledges the importance of our affection for others as a stimulus to social change.