Performance and Community: Commentary and Case Studies ed. by Caoimhe McAvinchey (review)

In this edited collection, Caoimhe McAvinchey joins the conversation about the role of theatre in society, providing compelling counter-narratives to the “useful” approach of community-based performance through case studies and interviews. Designed to be a “resource for students of applied, social, community and contemporary theatre practices,” Performance and Community offers a snapshot of current approaches to making theatre with, about, and by diverse communities, most of which are rooted in the United Kingdom. In direct contrast to the approach of tackling social exclusion taken by the UK’s Labour Party over the last decades, this collection highlights the aesthetic and political ambitions of community practitioners, providing evidence for interpreting applied performance as vital to society for its affect, as well as its effect. The problem with the Labour’s narrow focus on a social return for its investment in the arts, according to McAvinchey, is that “such singularity of approach negates the glorious complexity of human beings and how fluid, accommodating, or even contradictory our identities and notions of community can be” (6). To demonstrate this variety, McAvinchey has woven a tapestry of examples through carefully curated interviews with and case studies about leading practitioners in community performance. The result is a provocative invitation to redefine both key words in the title of the anthology: what is performance, and how can it help reimagine and critique our understanding of community?

The ordering of the case studies and interviews helps to flesh out these questions, in (roughly) three sections— each proposing a different definition of community (and, by extension, an aesthetic of performance). In the first, combining interviews with Lois Weaver and Mojisola Adebayo with a case study of Magic Me, McAvinchey explores the generative potential of “negotiated togetherness,” or a temporary community (11). For Weaver (now based in London), whom American audiences will recognize as a pioneer in lesbian and feminist performance, her current projects center on “inventing ways to get people to talk to each other,” such as The Long Table, an approach that uses the dinner table as the centerpiece to encourage what Weaver calls a “seeded conversation” (26). Adebayo is passionate about recognizing minorities within minority communities, and the workshops she facilitates create spaces for LGBTQ individuals of mixed ethnic and racial heritages to find temporary communities within their other communities, whether bound by geography, race, or economic strife. Magic Me, an East London–based arts organization that forges connections between youth and the elderly, uses performance to articulate connections between generations of people who are otherwise isolated from each other.

Next, with case studies of the Lawnmowers Independent Theatre Company and Grassmarket Project, as well as an interview with performance artist Bobby Baker, the focus shifts to community performances that are by and about marginalized populations. Lawnmowers, for example, intervenes in the public understanding and acceptance of adults with learning disabilities, while Grassmarket takes a théâtre verité approach to staging, typically casting nonactors to portray themselves in performances that offer a voyeuristic glimpse into the gritty reality of, say, drug addiction and poverty. Baker, meanwhile, seeks out “places where people meet rather than . . . places where theatre audiences go” for projects like Mad Gyms and The Daily Life Project, which offer survival tips and rebuttals to the prejudices often associated with mental illness.

The latter half of the collection identifies six examples of collaborative creation, ranging from choreographer Rosemary Lee’s Common Dance, to the partnership between Mark Storor and Anna Ledgard, to “the only building-based theatre” group in this collection, the Young Vic Theatre, as revealed through an interview with Sue Emmas, director of their community performance program Taking Part (15). In an interview culled from a larger academic study, including a symposium and an interactive DVD, Lee discusses the creative process behind Common Dance, a 2009 piece that featured fifty-three dancers (most of whom were not professionals) ranging in age from 8 to 83. Because dance uses a nonverbal bodily language, Lee suggests, it has the ability...