Identity, Culture, and the Science Performance, Volume 1: From the Lab to the Streets (Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues)

Identity, Culture, and the Science Performance, Volume 1: From the Lab to the Streets is the first of two volumes dedicated to the diverse sociocultural work of science-oriented performance. A dynamic volume of scholarly essays, interviews with scientists and artists, and creative entries, it examines explicitly public-facing science performances that operate within and for specialist and non-specialist populations. The book’s chapters trace the theatrical and ethical contours of live science events, re-enact historical stagings of scientific expertise, and demonstrate the pedagogical and activist potentials in performing science in community settings. Alongside the scholarly chapters, From the Lab to the Streets features creative work by contemporary science-integrative artists and interviews with popular science communicators Sahana Srinivasan (host of Netflix’s Brainchild) and Raven Baxter (“Raven the Science Maven”) and artists from performance ensembles The Olimpias and Superhero Clubhouse. In exploring the science performance as a vital but flawed method of public engagement, it offers a critique of the racist, ableist, sexist, and heteronormative ideologies prevalent across the history of science, as well as highlighting science performances that challenge and redress these ideologies. Along with its complementary volume From the Curious to the Quantum, this book documents the varied ways in which identity categories and cultural constructs are formed and reformed through science performances.

Vivian Appler is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Georgia, USA. She has published scholarship at the intersection of science and performance in Global Performance Studies, Theatre History Studies, and other journals. She is a former fellow of Fulbright and the Huntington Library.

Amy Cook is Dean of the School of Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College, Boston, USA. She is the author of Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science, (2010) and essays in, among others, Theatre Journal, TDR, SubStance, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, the Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (forthcoming). She was the co-chair of the Working Group in Cognitive Science and Performance for American Society for Theatre Research from 2010-2014.

Meredith Conti is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA. She is the author of Playing Sick: Performance of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine (2018) and the co-editor (along with Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.) of Theatre and the Macabre (2021).

John Lutterbie was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theatre Arts and the Department of Art at Stony Brook University, USA. He was the director of the International Network for Cognition, Theatre and Performance and with Nicola Shaughnessy was the series editor of the Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues series.

Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. She is Director of the Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and is leading the AHRC funded project 'Imagining Autism.'
She is the author of Applying Performance (2012), Gertrude Stein (2007) and co-editor of Margaret Woffington (2008).