This title unravels politics from theatre in order to propose a new means to politicize performance. Performance analyses ranging from child actors, animals and objects to reflections on the innovative theatre work of Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Forced Entertainment and Goat Island combine to offer a radical critique of performance studies.

ALAN READ is currently Professor of Theatre at King's College London. In the 1980s he directed the neighbourhood theatre, Rotherhithe Theatre Workshop, in the 1990s he lived and worked in Barcelona and was Director of Talks at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Alan Read is the author of Theatre& Everyday Life and the editor of The Fact of Blackness and Architecturally Speaking.