Theatre Survey – Performance and the Public Good

Theatre Survey

Special Issue: Performance and the Public Good

The words “performance,” “public,” and “good” combine to produce an analytic with the potential to illuminate a wide array of cultural practices. The concept of “public goods” receives its most fulsome treatment in the realm of economic theory, where its defining characteristics are nonexcludability and nonrivalrous consumption, and direct our attention toward infrastructures intended to route material resources expansively throughout our society. However, another permutation, “the public good,” tends toward the immaterial, referencing an ostensibly self-evident public interest. In our neoliberal moment, the values undergirding both of these definitions have a polarizing force, either lionized or demonized. 

Thus, the theme of this special issue centers on the following questions: historically speaking, in what ways and at what times has performance functioned as a public good, or at least attempted to function as such? In what ways has it rejected or failed to live up to this promise? Under what conditions has performance ever contributed to the public good, or undermined it? (Beneath all of these, of course, are the questions, Which public? Whose public?)

We seek essays that will historicize, interrogate, and problematize the notion of performance practices and infrastructures as public goods, or as social practices that support the public good. We especially welcome essays that approach this question from geographic sites and historical periods that center new objects of analysis by deploying interdisciplinary frameworks.

Drafts of 7,000-9,000-word essays (inclusive of footnotes) are welcomed for consideration through May 1, 2020 September 1, 2020. Peer review and editorial revision processes will prepare accepted manuscripts by January 2021 May 2021 for inclusion in the May 2021  September 2021 issue of Theatre Survey.

Please use the Scholar One platform to submit essays for consideration via the Theatre Survey website: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/theatre-survey. Please direct inquiries about this special issue to Brandi Wilkins Catanese, Associate Editor, at catanese@berkeley.edu.