Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Excellence in Editing Award 2016
Urban studies has long understood the city as a 'text'. What would it mean now to use performance to rethink that metaphor? Performance and the City queries the role theatre and performance play in urban policy, architecture, and civic history, while also exploring their important place in the memories created in the wake of urban trauma.
'The publication opens up a relevant perspective for theatre and performance studies as well as allied fields. It emerges at a time when the city, and performance in the city, offer particularly charged experiences.' - Stuart Andrews, University of Surrey, UK, Theatre Research International.
'...high quality, engaging - and moving - explorations of the relationship between spectators, performers and spaces, written by the best scholars in the field both established and emerging.' - Stephen Johnson, Director, Graduate Centre for Drama, University of Toronto, Canada
'Hopkins, Orr and Solga have edited a text which foregrounds the individual's performance of the city. [.... Performance and the City] offers a range of essays that question how the city performs itself, how institutions, organizations and policies perform the city and what role the individual's body might play in this nexus of relationships.' - Lee Miller, University of Plymouth, UK
'Since its publication in 2009, Performance and the City and its expertly curated and introduced essays have quickly circulated and now appear on the reading lists of students and scholars interested in the rapidly growing fields of history and theory of urban theatre and performance. The collection's potential influence extends beyond that for traditional theatre and performance studies; each essay intervenes in larger conversations regarding globalization and urban capital production. The result is that all three editors are today identified as leading figures in the study of the city and urban performance.' - Jean Graham-Jones, Professor in Theatre, City University of New York, USA
'This is cutting-edge work that provides up-to-the-minute models for those who are continually searching for work that will engage their imaginations and provide springboards for their own thinking.' - Barbara Hodgdon, University of Michigan, USA
'Performance and the City opens out a whole new area of consideration for the practice, research and teaching of performance. It identifies key thematic clusters, includes essays by leading international lights in the field of performance... and does an excellent job of framing the arguments in a series of illuminating introductions.' - Nicolas Whybrow, Associate Professor (Reader) in Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick, UK
'Performance and the City allows for the poetic and the politic, and connects the philosophical with the personal. This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers from Performance Studies, Drama, Visual Culture, Sociology, Architecture, Urban Politics, and Environmental Studies... Hopkins, Orr and Solga have produced a timely, resonant, and rich collection, highlighting performance and the city as a fertile terrain for exploration and analysis.' - Helen Paris, Canadian Theatre Review
'Works by Marvin Carlson, Gay McAuley, Una Chaudhuri, Elinor Fuchs, Leslie Hill, and Helen Paris, to name but a few, have expanded our understanding of how performance relates to the way we move through space and experience a sense of place. Performance and the City is a valuable contribution to this ever-growing body of scholarship...the editors of this important book hope that it will be the first in a continuing series that looks at a variety of performance trends around the world. I would welcome further studies of other cities that such a series might provide.' - Deirdre O'Leary, Manhattan College, Theatre Journal
'...the book is well worth reading and remains memorable for its rich archives and its many local insights into urban issues...these local reflections and insights into the relationship between performance and the urban make Performance and the City well worth reading.' - Sabine Haenni, Cornell University, Modern Drama
