Performing Left Populism: Performance, Politics and the People

This interdisciplinary volume offers new insights into the connections between populism and performance. As a driving force of the contemporary left, the populist logic offers a way for progressive politics to radicalize actions against the elite, fostering greater democratization of societies at a time of socio-political and environmental crisis. Exploring the populist roots of a number of performances, the contributors to this study analyze the potentials and limits of the new forms of left populism for more democratic ways of living together. Combining performance studies and political theory, Performing Left Populism demonstrates how various performance practices give rise to populism. It shows how both civic performances (including grassroots, civil movements, political speeches, state policies and media campaigns) and artistic performances (such as theatre, dance, music and artistic activism) contribute to these processes. By these means, the book examines the processes of constructing ‘a people’ through both the real/civic and imaginary/artistic perspectives. Offering scholars and practitioners a thought-provoking analysis of the ways in which performance can be viewed politically, as a social practice capable of mobilizing alternative ways of living and invigorating democracy, this study expands the debate about left populism towards strategies of mobilization, collectivism and democratic politics.

Goran Petrovic Lotina is Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, and Lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, France. He is an author, scholar and curator who has published widely on the interplay between art, politics, and theory. He is the author of Choreographing Agonism: Politics, Strategies and Performances of the Left
(2021)

Théo Aiolfi is a Marie Curie Cofund EUTOPIA Science and Innovation Fellow at CY Cergy Paris University, France. His interdisciplinary research is located at the intersection of politics and performance studies, focusing on the concept of populism as a political style.

William C. Boles holds the Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean Chair of English at Rollins College, USA. He edited Theater in a Post-Truth World: Text, Performance, and Politics and After In-Yer-Face: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution and authored The Argumentative Theatre of Joe Penhall, Understanding David Henry Hwang and Mike Bartlett.

Anja Hartl is Assistant Professor at the Department of English at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She is the author of Brecht and Post-1990s British Drama: Dialectical Theatre Today and editor of the Methuen Drama Student Edition of The Threepenny Opera. Her research focuses on contemporary British theatre, Victorian fiction and adaptation studies. She co-edits the Methuen Drama Agitations Series.