JCDE 2017; 5(2): 385–391

Book Reviews

Andy Lavender. Performance in the Twenty-First Century: Theatres of

Engagement. London: Routledge, 2016, xii + 235 pp., £ 80 (hardback), £ 24.99
(paperback).
Florian Malzacher, ed. Not Just a Mirror: Looking for the Political Theatre of
Today. Berlin: Alexander Verlag/Live Art Development Agency, 2015, 195 pp.,
€ 14.90 (paperback), € 9.99 (PDF ebook).

Reviewed by Anja Hartl, E-Mail: anja.hartl@uni-konstanz.de

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2017-0035

Investigating the burgeoning field of contemporary theatre and performance,

both Andy Lavender’s monograph Performance in the Twenty-First Century: Thea-
tres of Engagement and Florian Malzacher’s anthology Not Just a Mirror: Looking
for the Political Theatre of Today examine the role theatre and performance play
in the social, cultural, philosophical, economic, and political context of the
twenty-first century, positing, with different emphases, an intricate relationship
between the arts and society. Going beyond postmodernist assumptions of relati-
vism and detachment, both contributions represent timely interventions as they
explicitly re-engage with questions of meaning, politics, and commitment in the
context of recent developments in theatre and performance studies. While Mal-
zacher’s contribution focusses specifically on political theatre, Lavender chooses
a more expansive approach that also takes into account the relevance of perfor-
mance theory for an analysis of contemporary culture. Thus, Lavender is inter-
ested in performance as a wider cultural phenomenon, asserting that “[t]he
society of the spectacle became a multi-theatred communications zone” (195).
Central to his argument, as the introduction and chapter 1 in part I, “Scenes of
Engagement,” cogently argue, is the assertion that society and performance
have, in a new social commitment, taken a step beyond postmodernism into a
new “age of engagement” (21). This turn towards engagement, which Lavender
understands as both an investment in political processes – an aspect which,
however, remains largely unexplored in the book – and as an emphasis on
personal experience and individual involvement, has been facilitated by the
increasing availability of digital technologies, which have “extended the relati-
vizing work of postmodernism, but also helped us to rediscover our voices and
values, and our singular selves” (17). In this considerably transformed social and
cultural context, theatre “has become more than itself, a compound of media”
and has developed into “something other than an encounter between actors, or

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386 Book Reviews

between actor and audience” (9). Drawing upon an eclectic and appealing mix of
examples, ranging from more conventional theatre and performance pieces to art
installations to everyday cultural events in television, social media, or sports,
which are recounted in the form of – sometimes slightly extended – “immersed
analysis” (4), the book examines the new conditions of theatre and performance
and illustrates the extent to which fiction and reality, virtuality and actuality, and
performance and culture have become enmeshed. Arguing that “[t]here is no
longer a separation between the space of performance and that of spectatorship”
(9), Lavender nevertheless decides to dedicate separate parts to mediating,
acting, and spectating to structure the book, which necessarily creates repetitions
and overlaps.
Part II, “On Mediating Performance,” introduces authenticity, hybridity, and
experience as the major parameters that shape performance in the twenty-first
century and establishes them as key categories of analysis in the book. Thus,
chapter 2 focusses on “reality-oriented performance” (35) in both the arts, where
verbatim and documentary theatre are enjoying huge popularity, and the media,
especially regarding the increasingly important role of social media and reality
TV, thereby blurring the boundary between reality and fiction. Lavender fore-
grounds the extent to which these trends privilege individual experience, which
is performed in the mode of “authentic speaking” (37). It is this performative
aspect which renders the personal public and therefore political: expanding
Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, this centring on subjectivity contributes
to an essentially pluralistic political scene of dissensus rather than consensus in
which the individual voice is allegedly empowered. Yet, this potential for emanci-
pation rather than disempowerment in the neoliberalist cultural sphere seems
debatable and represents a conundrum that runs through the entire book.
In addition, chapter 3 examines hybridity as an important tool in twenty-first-
century performance. Referring to the multiple academic contexts in which the
term is employed, Lavender chooses hybridity rather than intermediality to
describe the tendency in contemporary performance to blend and thereby con-
front different artistic, cultural, and media forms, aesthetically creating a “‘thea-
tre-plus’” (61) that pushes at the limits of theatre. It is the resulting “tense
relations” between, rather than of, “actual fusions” (59) of, these various influ-
ences that create an essentially new quality of spectatorial involvement and
engagement, as Lavender suggests. Chapter 4 compellingly traces this develop-
ment by identifying a turn from the traditional representational staging of an
authoritative text (mise en scène) to the arrangement of the audience’s experien-
tial encounter with the performance (mise en événement and mise en sensibilité).
Shifting its focus from intra-textual meaning to the decisive role of the audience
in the interpretive process, twenty-first-century performance is conceived as a

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 Book Reviews 387

theatrical event, which “is not just watched or received, but encountered” (97)
corporeally, sensuously, and experientially.
Chapters 5 and 6 in part III, “On (not) Being an Actor,” focus on the con-
sequences these recent developments have had on acting in twenty-first century
performance and culture, challenging “the apparent shift in postmodernism from
characterization to the presentation of a persona” (5) and revaluing character and
the notion of recognizable individuality it seems to imply. In post-postmodernist
fashion, Lavender identifies an overlap between sincerity and authenticity on the
one hand and performative fabrication on the other in contemporary perfor-
mance. This “hybridizing of self, character and persona” (118) complicates no-
tions of truth and actuality and thereby reproduces a wider cultural trend in
which the increasing ambivalence between authenticity and appearance is
exploited through “ubiquitous mediation, the theatricalization of political pro-
cess and an aesthetic interest in the phenomenological self” (114). This is rein-
forced through digital technologies, in particular social media, which have given
rise to an expanding culture of participation capitalizing on the blurred distinc-
tion between authentic and fabricated self through the users’ “simultaneous self-
presentation and performance” (131). Acknowledging the problems this kind of
self-exposure entails, particularly with regard to the resulting subjectification to
neoliberalist market principles, Lavender nevertheless celebrates online plat-
forms like YouTube for “allow[ing] us to repossess our bodies even while we lend
them to others” (131) – although it remains doubtful how much agency, control,
and independence we actually achieve through our engagement because of our
simultaneous “entanglement with corporatism” (131).
Part IV, “On (not) Being a Spectator,” finally turns to the audience and
examines developments in spectatorship, with a particular focus on different
forms of participation and their potential for experiential engagement. Revisiting
in detail the relationship between politics and aesthetics as formulated by Jac-
ques Rancière, chapter 7 explores the intricate relationship between (passive)
viewing and (active) doing – a distinction Rancière provocatively challenges.
Specifically focussing on instances of “heightened viewing, whereby spectators
[...] can experience themselves in the act of watching” (135), Lavender both
expands Rancière’s theoretical concept and eventually questions its usefulness as
a tool of emancipation and resistance. Thus, analysing diverse examples from
promenade performances, museum events, and baseball matches, which turn
spectators into vital components of the performance and self-reflexively raise
awareness to the act of spectating itself, Lavender concludes that spectators are
commodified rather than empowered in their engagement with the work, “impli-
cated, even incorporated, rather than emancipated” (156) through their simulta-
neous self-presentation and -observation. While this analysis may uncover cer-

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388 Book Reviews

tain limits of Rancière’s emancipatory politics, it seems to question too easily the
political impetus behind Rancière’s dissensual project by relying on a very speci-
fic, one-sided set of examples which, even though representative of contemporary
culture, seems necessarily reductive in its evaluation of Rancière’s work.
Continuing this debate, chapter 8 makes the link between spectatorial partici-
pation and potential complicity with late-capitalist processes of commodification
even more explicit by drawing upon both economic theory and cultural trends to
illuminate how performances facilitate an affective experience for the spectator-
participants. Combining the growing interest in affect in theatre and performance
studies with recent trends in the economy to capitalize on feelings and affective
experiences, Lavender employs economic terminology and tools to examine
different modes of involvement and activity, ranging from consumption to pro-
duction and from separation to incorporation. Examples as diverse as works by
Punchdrunk and Blast Theory or a sports event blog help to identify various
degrees of experiential engagement and agency and to challenge common as-
sumptions of passivity, activity, and emotionality usually tied to the respective
parameters, thereby also relativizing the ostensible emancipatory impact of im-
mersive practice. While Lavender’s theoretical framework unequivocally con-
nects the analysis to “the tactics of late-capitalist experience economy” (165), it is
nevertheless in the uncontrollability of the audience’s emotional reaction that he
locates a “capacity for resistance” as well as a “deliberate disposition to pleasure”
(190), a tentative proposal for political engagement, which, however, remains
largely unexplored.
The final chapter 9 concludes the discussion and opens up the horizon of the
book towards a “Theatre beyond Theatre,” as the title of part V suggests. Revisit-
ing his most important arguments, Lavender emphasizes the importance of
“[p]rocesses of theatring” beyond the realm of the arts as omnipresent and
ubiquitous phenomena shaping our experience of and participation in everyday
life and culture. The appeal of the book lies precisely in this examination of the
interface between theatre, performance, and culture and the importance it at-
taches to the role of performance in a general cultural and economic context as
well as our active part in it. Lavender reasserts this central argument by citing
different examples of theme parks, where this blending of “theatricality, actual-
ity, personal performance and experiential encounter” (199) crystallizes most
clearly. What remains an unresolved paradox is, however, the problems such an
engagement may entail in the neoliberalist context Lavender’s examples are
firmly placed in. This complex question remains insufficiently explored, as this
positive evaluation of a visit to Dickens World reveals: “We have arguably no
greater understanding of Dickens or things Dickensian. We might even have less
understanding. But we have had a degree of fun, placed inside a simulation of

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 Book Reviews 389

history, biography and literature in order to produce our own eventful present”
(211). While Lavender adds with regard to his unfortunately rather short analysis
of Dismaland that “theatres of engagement can also be theatres of disengage-
ment, capable of performing separation, disagreement and resistance” (212), this
promising line of thought would have deserved more consideration in this other-
wise insightful book that represents an important and valuable contribution to
the vibrant field of twenty-first-century theatre, performance, and culture.
While limiting its scope to the exploration of the place and forms of political
theatre in the contemporary political and theatrical context, Malzacher’s edited
volume Not Just a Mirror offers a multitude of perspectives on the complex
relationship between theatre and politics. Positing “a social and political turn in
theatre” (11), this collection, which inaugurates the new series Performing Ur-
gency initiated by the European theatre network House on Fire, shares with
Lavender’s monograph its diagnosis of a movement beyond postmodernist self-
reflexivity towards engagement, even though this is understood in more radically
politico-ethical terms here. Juxtaposing thought-provoking contributions from
practitioners, critics, and researchers from diverse fields, thereby providing a
remarkably rich variety of concerns and contexts for this investigation with an
explicitly international outlook, the book does not pursue a stringent line of
argumentation, but rather offers a kaleidoscopic overview of current strands in
political theatre. This approach particularly reflects the extent to which “theatre
[...] is struggling to find its place” (11) in the contemporary context as well as the
fact that “[t]here is no common organum to follow. We are in a period of trying
out, of finding out – artists as well as audiences” (12). The two parts of the book,
“Essays and Conversations” and “Inventory of Artistic Strategies,” combine re-
flections on the conditions of political theatre with investigations into specific
aesthetic devices, foregrounding in particular the value of traditional approaches
alongside innovation and experimentation.
The eight essays and interviews of the first section explore the possibilities,
aims, and difficulties of contemporary political theatre in more general terms,
shedding light on a variety of attempts at defining and making political theatre in
the twenty-first century. Malzacher opens the discussion by pointing to the
central problem theatre-makers face today:

If political theatre can only exist in a context in which the world is believed to be change-
able, in which theatre itself wants to be part of that change, and where there is an audience
that is willing to actively engage in the exploration of what that change should be – then it
becomes clear why it is so difficult to think of such a theatre today in a society paralysed by
the symptoms of post-political ideologies that tend to disguise themselves as positivistic
pragmatism, lachrymose resignation, or cheerful complacency. (17)

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390 Book Reviews

In his cogently argued article, Malzacher extends the arguments presented in the
introduction, offering in particular a careful consideration of issues of representa-
tion and participation, which is more often than not merely a form of “placebo-
involvement” (21) rather than an instance of real agency and responsibility for the
spectator-participants. Rejecting any simplistic, content-based understanding of
political theatre and critical of wide-spread tendencies to exaggerate the emanci-
patory impact of aesthetics alone, Malzacher calls for a theatre that re-engages
with the contradictions, antagonisms, and pluralism of social reality through both
content and form.
Taking up and developing the perspectives brought up by the editor, the
other essays included in the first part continue to reflect on these issues, each
focusing on a particular trend in contemporary political theatre. Thus, starting
from the assumption that theatre constitutes “a serious social space where audi-
ences can learn about the real world” (42), Carol Martin explores the complex
relationship between theatre and reality as a key area of political theatre. Taking
into account the diverse manifestations of the “theatre of the real” (42), Martin
emphasizes especially the crucial role digital technologies have come to play in
this context. Locating theatre’s “political potential [...] in the space it offers the
audience to experiment with ways of viewing, with imagining oneself differently,
and ultimately with citizenship” (46), Joeroen Peeters connects the current inter-
est in ecology with larger questions of responsibility and sustainability as nego-
tiated in the space of the theatre. While Julian Boal’s contribution and Judith
Malina in her conversation with Anne Dorsen critically examine the legacy of the
Theatre of the Oppressed and The Living Theatre respectively, Margarita Tsomou
and Vassilis S. Tsianos’s essay on the Athenian anti-austerity movement and art
activist John Jordan’s personal account of his experience as an initiator of direct
action movements share a certain dissatisfaction with traditional political theatre,
turning to activism and the theatrical and performative nature of protest as a more
promising pathway for inspiring change through performance. The geographical
scope of these debates is expanded by Monika Gintersdorfer’s discussion with
performers and practitioners from Rwanda, Ivory Coast, and Zimbabwe, who
reflect on the challenges of producing political theatre in a highly conflict-laden
political context.
The debate on the forms and functions of political theatre today is further
developed in the second section, whose 15 case studies spotlight a broad range of
approaches to political theatre and provide an overview of a variety of artistic
practices. The chapters are short but comprehensive, each introducing a specific
group of practitioners or individual theatre-makers with a specific social and
political agenda: indeed, all artists share the belief that theatre is “a powerful
medium of not only mirroring society but being a part of changing it” (11), which

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 Book Reviews 391

is the core concern of the volume. The selected works from around the world
reflect the interdisciplinary appeal of political theatre, as they combine elements
of theatre and performance with influences from dance, choreography, activism,
and the visual arts, thereby attesting to the sheer eclecticism and vitality of
contemporary political theatre. The analyses are accompanied by useful bio-notes
with information on the artists and their work, which helps to orientate readers
and to introduce them to representative examples. What is common to all practi-
tioners under discussion is their concern to re-think political theatre and to
challenge traditional ways of making theatre, with a particular commitment to the
spectators and the productive role they can perform during the performance. This
approach echoes in a way Lavender’s interest in the extent to which productions
go beyond theatre, thereby also frequently problematizing the institution of the
theatre itself as well as its inherent politics. Presenting the works as sensitive and
responsive to the respective political context, the analyses pay close attention to
exploring how the specific artistic devices help to establish a transformative
agenda that inspires change. Intriguingly, the various approaches are often con-
tradictory in nature. Yet, what may be perceived as a potential weakness – the
lack of a clearly defined stance towards what political theatre is today – emerges
as an asset to the collection: by opting for a polemical and pluralistic approach,
the volume revives critical discourse on political theatre, asserts its relevance and
vigour and opens up, in brief but thought-provoking chapters, a lively field for
future research.
Both contributions under examination represent exciting explorations of
contemporary performance, especially in their common interest in engagement as
a field of intervention: while Lavender develops a more subjective, experiential
understanding of the term that foregrounds the role of the individual spectator
within a performance event, Malzacher’s volume focuses on more traditional
forms of engaged theatre that emphasize the social and political dimension as a
key area of politically-oriented theatre. Raising important questions about theatre
after postmodernism, both books are highly complementary despite, or rather
because of, their entirely different approaches to their investigation into theatres
of engagement in the twenty-first century. By offering fresh and provocative
perspectives on contemporary performance, politics, and culture, both studies
will certainly stimulate critical discourse in the field of twenty-first-century thea-
tre and performance.

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