Performance on the Edge

This title crosses geographical and conceptual boundaries to map out the new territory of contemporary theatre, dance, media arts and activism. Working across social, cultural and political fault lines, it explores performance as process and contact, as commitment to political activism, reconstruction of community, and as the highly charged embodiment of erotic fantasies. It dresses the politics of community-oriented and reconstructive artmaking in an era marked by the AIDS crisis, cultural and racial polarization, warfare, separatism and xenophobia. Provocatively illustrated with work from North and Central America and Eastern and Western Europe, the book challenges our assumptions about the relations between media and activism, technological imperatives and social processes, and bodily identities and virtual communities.