Prefigurative performance in the age of political deception

The most notable forms of activism in recent years, prefigurative interventions and occupations, are comparable to theatrical performance by embodying, situating and interacting hypothetical scenarios. The mutual points of political performance lies in open-ended, horizontal performance practices such as site-sensitive interventions, tactical media, applied theatre and cognate modes of interactive performance. Whilst several examples of such overlapping performance phenomena are given and justified in the article, the political disciplines also face mutual challenges from hegemonic politics and thus share a need to adapt their performative effects into sustainable social movements.

TDR: The Drama Review 61:1 (T233) Spring 2017. ©2017 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The 'Final Accepted version' is the author’s final version of the article accepted for publication in The Drama Review