The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance ed. by Lizbeth Goodman and Jane de Gay (review)

312 REVIEWS review quoting Counsell and Wolf gesturing to these tensions: "'[p]erformance ' is not an unproblematic concept." Sadly, this observation rarely yields to its affirmative complement: "performance is a problematic." Perfonnance is more than a suitable object of cultural critique; it is a critical term in its own right, a contested category, a developing epistemology. This largely wonderful book would benefit from some explicit recognition of its subtly partisan position in its own intellectual field. Nevertheless, granted its aims and assumptions. Performance Analysis emphatically meets one of life's foremost criteria: it will be of use. It will do good service to theatre students beginning to assay the dense pleasures of critical theory and to tcachers seeking a comprehensive theoretical reader to introduce their brightest students to the essential material. L1 ZBETH GOODMAN AND JANE DE GAY, eds. The Routledge Reader ;n Politics and Performance . London: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xxvii + 322. $95.00 (Hb); $27.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Nadine George-Graves, Yale University HEY! WHO PUT POLITICS IN MY PERFORMANCE! The Routledge Reader in Politics alld Performance is an excellent text for anyone looking for an introduction to some of the most important theoretical perspectives on politics and performance. For scholars familiar with these major texts and ideas, it provides an opportunity to read earlier concepts alongside newer critical discourse. For scholars new to the work, the book is eminently readable and provides many sources for further inquiry. These selections (often a few pages from longer works) scrape the surface and whet the appetite. For an in-depth discussion of any of the issues, one needs to look elsewhere, as the text is meant to touch on topics and make connections, not delve deeply into one author's ideas. It is an important part of a much larger project. The discussion of politics and performance has become taboo in recent years. Indeed, many of the contributors refer to the disfavor with which much of this work has been met and spend some time defending the importance of performance that attempts to be both an art form and a platform. In the introduction , playwright Sarah Daniels talks about her play Masterpieces, which is often criticized for being "issue-based" (anti-pornography), as if that were a dirty phrase that in and of itself warranted attack (xxvi). She is now wary of being so overtly didactic but is not entirely opposed to the ideology of didacticism . Through it all, she holds onto a belief in the power of theatre for political transfonnation. Reviews 313 Politics has become such a dirty word that we must go back and ask whether or pot performance can even respond to social crisis and have an impact. If so, how do we produce this kind of performance in the face of, for example, financial problems, aesthetic shifts, and institutional hostility, and perhaps even more controversially, how can we enter into scholarly dialogue about and evaluate it? Awam Amkpa exhibits similar wariness about idealism in his article in the reader, despite the fact that he attempts to engage performance that is often deeply rooted in strong ideology. The volume assumes a very broad definition of performance and includes traditional forms like theatre (though not much) and dance, as well as performance in everyday Jife. cyberspace interactions, intercultural experiments. and so forth. Performance is articulated as the genre that broke from the rigid definitions of theatre, although I would modify the definition to that of a form that widens the scope of critical inquiry so that theatre does not lose its seat at the table. These types of performance tend to resist the dominance of the text, the theatre building, and the traditional audience and to promote the mutability of form to suit content. As Raymond Williams observes here, drama has permeated society. Performance is a vital part of who we are and who we will become. Lizbeth Goodman, with the help of Jane de Gay, made the initial decisions about the work to be included in the compilation. The articles are grouped into parts, and each part is introduced by a different theatre maker and/or scholar, with her or his interpretation of the phrase "politics...