Posthumanist Collaborations in Performance: A Praxis-based Approach to Qualitative Inquiry

Posthumanist Collaborations in Performance presents a novel approach for readers to engage with new materialist performance as a method of qualitative inquiry and as a means of combating the anthropocentric loneliness of modern life.

It offers a theoretical and practical examination of how we are fundamentally entangled with a more-than-human world through practices the authors call “naturecultural performances.” The book features a collaborative body of arts-based research by three scholars working at the intersections of performance studies, new materialism, environmental studies, and qualitative inquiry. The result is an interdisciplinary body of theoretical scholarship, including a wide array of landscapes, plants, animals, minerals, and other more-than-human agencies. The book also presents practical examples and case studies of naturecultural performances, showcasing the diverse ways in which the concept of “natureculture” can be applied in research and creative practice.

This book will be of interest to faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, performance practitioners, and anyone else interested in exploring or creating work based on their own fundamental relationships with the more-than-human world.

Travis Brisini is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies (Performance Studies) at Louisiana State University, USA. His research and creative works explore the intersections between performance studies, new materialist and posthumanist philosophy, and techniques of staging and adaptation.

Jake Simmons is Associate Dean of the Judith Enyeart Reynolds College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities and Professor of Communication at Missouri State University, USA. His research focuses on new materialist approaches to qualitative inquiry, performance studies, naturecultural performance, and posthumanist staging practices.

Tami Spry is Professor Emeritus of Performance Studies and Communication Studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, USA. Her work includes Body, Paper, Stage: Writing and Performing Autoethnography and Autoethnography and the Other: Unsettling Power Through Utopian Performatives, with current research focused on cultivating kinships with the more-than-human world.