Queer exceptions: solo performance in neoliberal times is a study of the contentious relationships between performance, individuality and the demands of neoliberalism.
Featuring practitioners including La Ribot, David Hoyle, Neil Bartlett, Bridget Christie, Oreet Ashery and Tanja Ostojic, it provides an essential account of the diverse practices which characterise the field of contemporary solo performance across the UK and Europe, and their significance to debates concerning equality, inclusion and social progress.
What’s in the book?
Drawing together works from the overlapping fields of theatre, performance, cabaret, live art and stand- up comedy, this book traces the cultural significance of ‘threshold’ subjects who occupy a suspended relation to the social and political sphere. Each chapter is structured by a different figure – the entrepreneur, martyr, the pariah, the misfit, the stranger, the killjoy and the optimist – which offers a different way of thinking about who is included, and on what terms.
Informed by the work of scholars including Sara Ahmed, Zygmunt Bauman and Giorgio Agamben, this interdisciplinary text offers an incisive analysis of the cultural significance of solo performance for students and scholars across the fields of theatre and performance studies, sociology, gender studies and political philosophy.
For further details, visit the chapter summary page.
Now in paperback, RRP £20.
Reviews
“Something of a rarity in academic publishing, this book leaves us with a queer, radical optimism, a present full of possibility” – Lazlo Pearlman, Contemporary Theatre Review
“Rising to the promise that the title holds out, this excellent book will be of value to all scholars with an interest in contemporary performance practices” – Alison Jeffers, New Theatre Quarterly