Theatre and Performance Studies News

A new book by Dr. Julia Peetz, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Performance and Politics at the Department for Theatre and Performance Studies, Performance, Theatricality and the US Presidency - The Currency of Distrust, has been published by Edinburgh University Press. At a time when the issue of lying in politics has assumed a new saliency on both sides of the Atlantic, the book proposes a new, interdisciplinary perspective on the contemporary rise of mainstreamed populism by exploring features of populist-style politics through the lens of distrust.

Dr. Peetz argues that, rather than being a flaw or corruption, the potential for political distrust must be understood as an essential feature of representative democracy because representation works through performance. The book explores performance as a constellation of factors: scripts, embodiment, ideas of selfhood, and historical norms and ideals. It draws on key scholarship of political representation, rhetoric, and populism; on theories of performativity, theatricality, and acting; and on interviews the author conducted with political speechwriters spanning presidential administrations and campaigns from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama to demonstrate both that distrust is inherent in representative politics and that in mainstreamed populism distrust becomes a focal point around which the theatre of politics revolves.

Going beyond well-worn and simple theatrical metaphors to describe political action, Julia Peetz’s new book offers a sophisticated – and genuinely interdisciplinary - blend of performance and political analysis. Readers will find compelling new approaches to, and arguments about, crucial factors in political life, from legitimacy and representation to distrust, authenticity and populism. The book’s in-depth engagement with the past and present of US presidential performance is both illuminating and insightful. – Michael Saward, University of Warwick

Huge congratulations to Theresa Spielmann on her viva which she passed with no corrections! Her MA dissertation has turned out so exceptional that it was upgraded to MPhil. And additional congratulations on her co-edited collection that she published with her collective: ‘The 2051 Munich Climate Change Conference’ https://www.transcript-publishing.com/978-3-8376-6384-6/the-2051-munich-climate-conference/

On Protest, a new special double issue of Performance Research edited by Julia Peetz, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Performance and Politics at Warwick TPS alongside former Head of School Andy Lavender, has been published. The issue includes an extended editorial by the two.

Jussara Belchior, Magdalena Hutter, Gillie Kleiman

Wednesday 24^th May 4pm-5.30pm on MS Teams

The Fat Performance Reader is to be an edited collection of original artistic and scholarly material discussing fat performance, which we define - for the moment - as performance whose meaning-making is both predicated on fatness and can speak into a conversation about fatness. In this talk, the three editors of this collection will discuss the origins of the project, its aspirations and limitations, and the key themes that have emerged through dialogue with contributors, as well as our individual perspectives on fat performance (studies). We will continue to unpick our understandings of fat performance and its relationship to the disciplines of performance studies and fat studies, unfolding our collaboration in public.

Biographies

Jussara Belchior (Brazil)

Jussara Belchior is a fat ballerina. She also works as a choreographer, a collaborator in other artists’ projects and a researcher of practices and writings in contemporary dance. Her projects deal with fat people, fatness and non-normative bodies. She has a PhD degree in Live Arts. She is currently developing the CAIBA project (Catálogo Imaterial da Baleia - Whale Immaterial Catalogue), alongside that she is a part of the MANADA and the Escrita Performativa collectives. She is interested in poetics and politics of movement and positioning yourself through dance.

Magdalena Hutter (Germany/Canada)

Magdalena is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and photographer. Her projects frequently deal with themes of belonging, ranging from documentary film to installations and interactive documentaries. In addition to her own projects, she also works as a DoP and consulting producer on other documentary films. She is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities at Concordia University in Montreal/Canada, doing research-creation about fatness in dance and developing frameworks for Fat ScreenDance.

Gillie Kleiman (United Kingdom)

Gillie Kleiman works with and in dance and choreography, creating performances, texts, events and pedagogical encounters. Gillie’s work has a persistent interest in both the figure and the activity of the non-professional, and many of her projects have involved participation of non-professional collaborators or of the audience; this was the topic of her PhD project (completed in 2019). In 2020, Gillie initiated a new cycle of thinking and working about fat and fatness. Alongside her artistic practice, she is Head of Higher Education at Dance City, an adviser to Jerwood Arts, a Trustee of People Dancing, and external examiner at the Danish National School of Performing Arts. She is a member of the trade union UVW-DCW and is an accredited trade union representative. Gillie lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne.