Performing Arts

Vernacular Theatre
Making Theatre with Community
Between 1989 and 2020 Jonathan Petherbridge worked as the Artistic Director of a community-based theatre company - London Bubble. This longer than average tenure allowed him time to forge a close working relationship with the community and develop new ways to involve people of all ages in theatre-making.
Out of a slew of projects emerged a particular methodology to make work that was researched curated and performed by citizens between the ages of 8 and 80. The process that emerged was called Foraging – a methodology carefully divided into five phases which attempts to bring the best out of both voluntary and specialist artists – making time and space for them to create theatre that has a striking beauty and an ingrained aesthetic of care. Vernacular Theatre describes the result – the aesthetic.
The case studies - based on work with citizens of London and Hiroshima - examine how this theatre has valued key moments of communal history contemporary issues and everyday institutions. The book suggests reasons and techniques for others to make similar work. Concluding with a reflection on the pre-classical Chorus of Greek Theatre where original work was produced to celebrate events with and for the community this book proposes a new genre – a social and intergenerational art form that invites people to gather and share their life experience concerns and creativity.

Still Moving
Conversations with Senior Professional Dancers Still Performing
The concept of this book is ‘dance and ageing’ and is driven by the possibility that everybody in the Western dance community in particular young dance students but also readers beyond the parameters of dance will profit if the voices of senior professional practitioners are heard.
It features dancers from USA Canada UK Europe and Australia all interviewees are practitioners of stature and prominence who continue to contribute despite ageism to the dance industry. They are inspiring role models for younger dancers but also for an ageing demographic in society; it is a celebration of the body and the indomitable urge to create and express.
Conversations with twenty senior professional dancers explore how they sustain performing despite the inground ageism that exists through society and is mirrored within the dance world. This cohort of older dancers aged between 41 and 107 illuminate inspiring life stories that convey their passion to continue performing while overcoming the prejudices in an artform that champions youth.
Dance practitioners remaining active and relevant throughout the life stages is an area of growing interest particularly in community dance health and wellbeing. This would inspire all dancers to follow in their footsteps to believe that diversity and inclusion would widen the boundaries within Western dance culture and eradicate bias. Further interest from an older demographic who enjoy watching dance or dance themselves who would appreciate their representation in a book that reveals the positive attributes ageing can bring. It also has the potential to reach an anti-ageing reader as well as a dance reader. The book has a broad appeal not just within Western dance culture but also where ageing/ageism is a prominent concern within Western society.

Dancing Place
Scoring the City, Scoring the Shore
The book explore how dance practices can be embodied through relationships with the environment. The book begins with discussing somatic experiences of being in Place; including discussing a sense of belonging to the environment through responsive movement. The second part offers infrastructures (scores) for generative movement drawn from transdisciplinary workshops. The book presents text poetic prose and image.
Dancing Place: Scores of the City Scores of the Shore reveals the collaborative choreographic making process as a way of being in the world. In the book the authors story their experiences of working with scores as ways of noticing sensing and bringing focus to moments within the assemblage of environments of which we are a part.

Theatricality Beyond Disciplines
This book expands on theories of "theatricality" in French and critical studies adopting a transdisciplinary approach that reaches beyond performance studies into poetry media technology translation and psychoanalytic theory.
Building on Artaud’s concept of theater as a "plague"—an unpredictable cataclysmic and contagious force that disrupts power structures and knowledge—the book challenges Aristotelian norms of theater as a medium of "healing" and "teaching." Instead theatricality emerges as a force of radical disruption what Artaud called "the return of the repressed" demanding openness to otherness.
The chapters present theatricality as primarily aural rather than visual inciting "paranoiac listening" invoking unretrievable "primal scenes" and allowing unconscious "psychic" contamination. "Theatricality" is explored through works by Artaud Genet Novarina and Koltès but also Freud Barthes Kristeva Girard and Derrida. Each writer challenges the premises of their own artistic genres and fields of study questioning binary systems like artistic production versus theoretical articulation the technological versus the natural and art versus life.
As shown these binaries underpin mechanisms of repression sacrificial violence and the exclusion of the voiceless other. The book assigns a generative function to traditionally maligned notions like unintelligibility madness marginality contagion and criminality.

Drama for Schools and Beyond
Transformative Learning Through the Arts
Transformative Professional Learning in Arts Integration invites educators and artists to name and center dilemma discovery and learning at the core of their collaborative efforts to improve the learning culture of classrooms through the arts. A dilemma comes in many forms.
Personal and programmatic dilemmas are often the result of a rupture between personal belief and the requirements of a system. The rupture - or dilemma - seeds a desire for something new something better. However as Queensland Aboriginal activists remind us we must address our own bias and power in relationship to those we presume to support: "If you have come to help me you are wasting your time; but if you are here because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together.” This text therefore shares the stories of individuals working towards collective educational improvement and change.
It is a story of failure and possibility about individuals “bound up with” with each other harnessing the power of the arts in the common effort to make education more just and equitable for all.
Drama for Schools and Beyond: Transformative Learning Through the Arts tells the story of twenty years of research and practice grounded in the Drama for Schools (DFS) professional development learning model based at The University of Texas at Austin USA.
This book offers a critical look at the evolution of Drama for Schools through the learnings of its leaders and participants. It also gathers stories from partners across the globe who have adapted and built upon this model at their own sites. It is a primer for how to centre teacher and student inquiry and learning at the core of educational improvement. It is an invitation for teachers administrators and researchers to address their own bias and power in relation to those they aim to support.
Throughout the authors show that by integrating the arts across education new networks of possibility can be grown to create a more just and equitable education for all.

The Intellect Handbook of Dance Education Research
A review of dance education research methodologies with examples and exemplars from the field and an important resource for dance students professionals and advocates.
The editors recognized the need for a book of this type – one that would not only provide examples of a variety of dance education research projects but also present a broad look at methodologies. In addition the book would not only focus on Dance Education research in the U.S but more broadly with examples of dance research from several different countries. The curated book includes the voices of both seasoned professionals and newer scholars in the field with examples of dance research from a number of different countries. The contributions represent several countries including Korea South Africa United States of America Jamaica India United Kingdom Brazil and Slovenia underscore the global relevance and significance of research in dance education.
This book is divided into 5 parts. The first part focuses on dance education research and methodologies and is divided into three sections. With an introduction by Jill Green the chapters that follow provide an overview of research types including the more traditional qualitative quantitative and mixed and other methods such as portraiture and a/r/tography.
Part II introduced by Lynnette Young Overby includes examples of dance education research that incorporate qualitative quantitative and/or mixed methods. Three sections covering dance education research applications in the areas of history and culture dance teaching and choreography and community based research follow.
Part III of the Handbook of Dance Education Research provides insight into dance education that takes place in several countries. This part is introduced by Peter Cook Associate Deputy Chancellor Southern Cross University Australia. The collection of chapters within this part of the Handbook of Dance Education Research provides snapshots of research practices from contrasting international areas and with a variety of approaches and paradigms.
The final Part IV includes chapters focused on Social Justice dance education practice and research. This part is introduced by Alfdaniel Mivule Basibye Mabingo Makerere University Uganda. These chapters push the boundaries of dance education research to promote meaning and social change. They provide substantive examples of the impact dance education research can have in response to social and cultural issues.
This book will be a key resource for university students professors practitioners and policy makers in organizations and in school systems. It will inspire future dance education researchers to conduct research that is collaborative impactful inclusive and diverse– research that will solidify the place of dance as an integral part of each person’s education.

Entrepreneurial Arts and Cultural Leadership
Traits of Success in Nonprofit Theatre
Traits is timely and needed. It provides a pathway to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset in nonprofit arts management students and in those in the nonprofit field. Traits is not another academic hypothetical imagining text. Rather Traits is a tactical centred on entrepreneurial leadership offering a concrete case example Imagination Stage.
2020 brought significant changes to the world’s business and social fabric. The nonprofit arts has been greatly impacted with the highest unemployment rate during the peak of the pandemic response to the slow and inconsistent return of patrons. Internally organizations had to address often long-over-due adaptations to the inclusive and accessible practices demanded by their communities including equitable pay scales diversity inclusion and access on stage staffs and boards.
Consequently many nonprofit arts organizations are now less viable; many have gone out of business; and most are struggling to adopt new post-pandemic practices that promote a new culture in their organization. The authors contend that those organizations that have survived are led by social entrepreneurs who were always ahead of the curve and able to adapt.
The authors’ underlying assumption is that while entrepreneurship may be innate in some in most it is not - even in those who lead organizations. But it can also be taught – just like any form of leadership. And this is what Traits does.

Leigh Bowery
Performative Costuming and Live Art
An exploration of the life artistic practice social-historical context and cultural impact of Leigh Bowery. Vranou particularly considers Bowery's performative costuming and Live Art in relation to the ways they have influenced the broader spectrum of visual culture and the expanded field of performance studies.
Bowery’s cult status as an outrageously self-styled nightclub personality has obscured his significant contribution to performance studies and visual culture in favour of a justifiable discursive emphasis on his importance to fashion. The diversity of Bowery’s work and his marginality as an artist who emerged from a subcultural milieu complicated and thwarted his cultural value hindering as a consequence his incorporation into art institutions and performance narratives.
Through close analysis of Bowery’s key looks and non-theatrical performances the book examines the implications of his work in dominant histories of performance art and urgent discourses surrounding normativity representations of illness and body politics. It focuses on the performative dimension of Bowery’s costuming as an effective strategy for blurring the boundaries between art and life reflecting his aesthetics of freakishness and narcissistic desire his engagement in BDSM practices and the performance of extremity and the posttranssexual ethos behind his hybrid embodiments and trans-queer visual language.

Flesh and Text
Devising Performance by Bodies in Flight
BODIES IN FLIGHT make performance where flesh utters and words move challenging and re-energizing the relationship between audiences and performers and audiences and place.
Emerging from rigorous interdisciplinary and collaborative methods often with new technologies in cutting-edge venues we insist on the buzz of ideas on philosophy and poetry using words and images movement and stillness voices and bodies through which they aim to move audiences emotionally and spiritually. Organized in a highly visual design this volume is both a history and a workbook with selections of scripts and archival material from 30 years of making devised theatre and performance in the UK and internationally plus texts by collaborators arts professionals and scholars exploring the company’s collaborative working method contextualizing it in the wider performance ecology and culture.
Intended as an inspiration to emerging artists the volume covers key questions for any maker of contemporary performance: the relationship of choreography and spoken word the use of new technologies and multi-media the role of original music and soundscapes the differences between work presented in a theatre or gallery or sited in non-theatrical places the persistence of theatre as an art-form in an increasingly digital culture.

Schechner Plays
A collection of performance texts ranging from orthodox plays to group-devised texts. The book traces from most recent to earliest Schechner's work as a "writer" and a "wrighter" -- the author of plays and the conceptualizer and leader of teams of artists. The book includes several never before published early texts as well as updated versions of well-known productions such as "Dionysus in 69" "YokastaS" "Makbeth" and "Imagining O." The earliest texts are from the 1950s the most recent from 2014.
This book brings together for the first time Richard’s original plays and adaptations: YokastaS Redux Dionysus 69 Commune Oresteia Prometheus Project Makbeth Richard’s Leer Imagining O Faust/gastronome Blessing of the Fleet Briseis and the Sergeant Lot's Daughters and The Last Day of FK. The scripts engage with perennial canonic themes such as Oedipus and Faust and topical issues of our times. They embody Richard’s world-famous performance approach. The introduction sets the scripts in intellectual and production context. The book complements Schechner’s other works Performance Studies (now in its 3rd ed.) Performance Theory The Grotowski Sourcebook The Future of Ritual and his new A New Third World of Performance.

artmaking as embodied enquiry
entering the fold
What can a fold be? Virtually anything and everything.
For centuries folds and folding have captured the world’s imagination. Folds readily appear in revivals of the ancient craft of origami amid the simplest acts of pedestrian life within the philosophical turnings of the mind and in art design architecture performing arts and linguistics around the world. What awaits our understanding is how deeply the fold figures into embodiment into our very impulse to create.
This book is about folding as a vibrant stimulus for inter/trans/postdisciplinary artistic research whether for the performative for product realization or simply to enliven body mind and spirit. Destined for artmaking—for making any art—the f/old practice etches into the very fabric of embodiment. As such the f/old reaches outside the constraints of disciplinary silos into nice areas that embrace the unknown with all its underlying tensions and ambiguities. In conceiving of art made differently two seasoned facilitators Susan Sentler and Glenna Batson share the abundance of their decade-long collaboration in developing their approach to practice research in the fold. In addition to their insights they invite eight of their collaborators to contribute each a veteran artist of a diverse genre.
Featuring a wide variety of practice samples and images this book reflects on a current and unique somatic-oriented arts research practice and pedagogy with an intriguing blend of interdisciplinary concern and practice.

The impact of modern band experiences on pre-service music teachers’ creative identity: A pre–post assessment
This study explored the impact of a fifteen-week course in modern band practice on developing music teachers’ identities as creative music-makers. Modern band is a growing area of the research literature in music education. Composition improvisation and popular music-making experiences constitute current band activity. The creative identity measure (CIM-measure) evaluates self-perceptions of abilities in these areas. The measure has been used and adopted in various research studies over the past decade. For this study twelve pre-service music teachers enrolled in the course ‘Creative Performance Chamber Ensemble I’ at School of Music University of South Florida USA were assessed on their perceptions of their abilities associated with various creative musical activities. The CIM-in music was used as a pre-and post-assessment of modern band experiences at the beginning and the end of the fifteen-week class. There were significant positive changes between the pre- and post-assessments. Open-ended response items were also collected. Findings suggest that pre-service music teachers increased their confidence levels associated with their abilities to compose improvise be involved in ‘new’ music ensembles and be involved with popular music ensembles as a result of taking this course. They are more likely to plan on teaching their students to do these musical activities in the future as a result of these experiences.

Artists as Writers
Part of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series Artists as Writers joins the tradition of writing books designed or intended to inspire would-be writers to write but distinguishes itself by offering succinct first-person narratives by writers of varied genres about the day-to-day life of writing for a living.
Artists as Writers offers accounts of the journeys that thirty two writers have taken to becoming a real writer what decisions were made which paths were taken rejected charted and why. It answers the question: What magic keeps a writer writing?
Writers from Ethiopia Guatemala Nigeria Palestine Poland and Sweden as well as several who live throughout the United States: California Colorado Georgia Louisiana Pennsylvania Texas and Washington contribute their stories. They each provide vividly detailed accounts of the circuitous roads that each individual took to earn the title “writer.” These are richly descriptive stories from writers who write consistently relating how they came to the writing life who helped them get there and what sustains them as writers.

Running Punks: More than just turning up
This study explored why runners have joined an online running group called the Running Punks that was set up in 2020. Running Punks espouses running for pleasure and repudiates the ‘rules’ of running groups which are mainly concerned with speed and performance. This research aimed to discover through semi-structured interviews why people joined a group that differs so significantly from others. In total 44 semi-structured interviews were undertaken and the data was analysed using thematic analysis. The results constructed three broad themes: belonging; connected; and catalyst for change which are discussed by applying two theoretical strands: community of practice (CoP) and self-determination theory (SDT). The results discovered that while individuals benefited enormously from being connected and related as part of a community they identified as ‘Running Punks’ as they valued their autonomy as individuals.

More than music: The relationship between punk and mainstream/liberal politicality in Zagreb
The goal of this research is to determine what activities young actors in the punk scene view as forms of politicality that they either practise themselves or see among other actors in the punk scene in Zagreb. This research focuses on young people because of the marginalized position older people have put them in. Likewise the attitudes of young people towards politics are sometimes seen as ‘apolitical’ describing mistrust towards politicians or dislike of political parties. Regardless of these (un)conscious barriers that are often placed before young people we can see their different reactions: from accepting the political disinterest others expect of them to resisting their imposed marginal social status. Accordingly we were interested in often unrecognized alternative forms of politicality among young people. We focus on punk as an example of a subculture that revives political activity among young people. Analysing the collected data we obtained descriptions of 39 practices activities and political ideas – organized into seven categories – through which participants described their politicality or the politicality of that of other actors in the punk scene in Zagreb. This article will introduce the results of ethnographic research during which 28 interviews were conducted with participants between 20 and 36 years of age. The field part of this research was conducted in fifteen months.

Reimagining pop vocal pedagogy through the lens of disability
Singing is an embodied creative human endeavour a means of getting in touch with and communicating ideas inner feelings and emotions. The purpose of this study was to discover participatory kinaesthetic and personalized learning strategies in the context of popular vocal pedagogy (PVP) for students with disabilities. When I started working with Spencer a young composer with chronic pain caused by complex regional pain syndrome he did not feel supported by his professors. He perceived they were not supporting his musical and career goals nor were they open to making necessary accommodations for his disability. Together using a critical participatory action research methodology Spencer and I confronted masterful centuries-old patriarchal practices that often foster violence and repression on singer’s minds and bodies hoping to discover new learning and teaching strategies for disabled students in the PVP studio. Our goal was to make Spencer’s overall experience as a singer and performer in a conservatory-style music programme more student-centred and empowering. Findings from the study suggest ways that teachers in higher education might incorporate flexible teaching contexts (live and remote) engage the use of technology as a teaching tool and develop pedagogical strategies that involve the learner in reflection and self-evaluation (rather than imposing uniform standardized approaches) in order to create more accommodating classrooms for their vocal students with disabilities.

Interview with Tamar Reva Einstein
In this interview with Dr Tamar Einstein she talks about her work over the past 37 years transversing the boundaries between East and West Jerusalem between the Arab and Jewish sectors working as an expressive arts therapist. Over these years she has woven her deep beliefs in the power of art to transcend boundaries and bring communities together. She speaks of the current difficulties in the region and the attempts to keep working towards peaceful coexistence. In line with her work as an art-based weaver she talks about her dissertation research that focused on creating a multicultural coat with all the symbols of the land she lives in including a Tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) a keffiyeh (Arab headdress) the Gay Pride flag the Palestinian flag and the Israeli flag. Throughout the article she emphasizes art is her mother tongue guiding messages in her clinical and academic life.

Art Psychotherapy Groups in the Hostile Environment of Neoliberalism: Collusion or Resistance?, Sally Skaife and Jon Martyn (eds) (2022)


Review of: Art Psychotherapy Groups in the Hostile Environment of Neoliberalism: Collusion or Resistance? Sally Skaife and Jon Martyn (eds) (2022)
New York: Routledge 220 pp.
ISBN 978-0-36761-984-8 p/bk $36.95

Interview with Clare Wassermann
In an interview conducted by Ross W. Prior Clare Wassermann reveals her diverse career starting as a professional musician and woodwind teacher before venturing into complementary medicine and becoming a homeopathic consultant yoga instructor and visual artist. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Wolverhampton her research explores the integration of eastern meditation and spiritual practices within western art emphasizing the therapeutic aspects of art-making and mindfulness. In the interview Wassermann advocates for the interconnectedness of art and health believing that creative expression can provide profound mental and emotional benefits and she aims to share these insights through her art and workshops.

If Colors Could Be Heard: Narratives About Racial Identity in Music Education, C. Cayari, J. D. Thompson and R. S. Rajan (eds) (2025)
Review of: If Colors Could Be Heard: Narratives About Racial Identity in Music Education C. Cayari J. D. Thompson and R. S. Rajan (eds) (2025)
Bristol: Intellect 288 pp.
ISBN 978-1-83595-167-5 h/bk $124.95

SHARED1: Building a network of arts and humanities-based initiatives in mental health and well-being across the globe
This article reports on the learning from a series of workshops organized by the Seeing Arts Health Research EnacteD (SHARED) project that aimed to establish an international network of researchers arts and health providers and practitioners. Online workshops were designed to provide a platform for exchange of best practices in arts in health research and to encourage a dialogue between various international arts in health researchers and practitioners from six countries across the globe. This exchange was built on participant contributions (three practice-based presentations for each workshop highlighting alignment with community assets inclusion and partnerships) followed by reflective group discussions. Results show that arts in health initiatives in different contexts globally often share similar strengths and face common challenges. Participants noted the need for networks such as SHARED where researchers and practitioners can come together to exchange best practice collaborate on future initiatives and work out solutions for shared challenges.

Popular music pedagogy in music teacher education: A literature review
Higher education music education programmes that prioritize Eurocentric perspectives related to the western classical canon may limit future music educators’ ability to connect students’ in-school and out-of-school music experiences. Growing interest in diverse and inclusive approaches to music education has led to increased attention on the inclusion of popular music pedagogy in music teacher education. Drawing on culturally responsive pedagogies as a theoretical framework in this review of literature I examined research related to popular music pedagogy in music teacher education. Researchers suggest that incorporating popular music in music classrooms may connect students’ in-school and out-of-school music experiences resulting in greater student engagement and promoting lifelong musical involvement. Based on significant findings in this research music educators might consider reimagining music teacher education programmes to reflect the changing landscape of music education and prepare future music educators with the skills necessary to acknowledge and value the diverse musical experiences and cultural contexts of students.

Youth, Power, Performance
Applied Theatre with Systemically Marginalized Youth
This book draws on over twenty years scholarship from Diane Conrad's academic career in applied theatre research with systemically marginalized youth. It draws on applied theatre research conducted with youth in three specific contexts: in alternative high schools in a youth jail and with street-involved youth.
By drawing on examples from several projects highlighting youths’ voices and youths’ creations the book offers an introduction to the researcher and theoretical considerations for the research suggests practical strategies for engaging with this youth population describes the applied theatre process developed. It addresses specific considerations for working with incarcerated youth and with Indigenous youth and explores the potential demonstrated for youth empowerment through applied theatre some ethical considerations in conducting such work and the role of applied theatre in social change. The book may be of interest to applied theatre researchers instructors practitioners and students and to drama teachers and youth workers.

Community music for critical positive youth development: A cross-disciplinary literature review of implications for addressing social inequity
Critical positive youth development (CPYD) is a promising framework for supporting young people in strengths-based ways to both thrive individually and address structural foundations of social inequity. This literature review explores community music for operationalizing CPYD. Database searches were supplemented with expert consultation and handsearching of identified articles and key journals. The authors used a purposive sampling strategy within a critical interpretive synthesis methodology to select 50 articles exploring outcomes of community music programmes with young people. They synthesized findings from these 50 cross-disciplinary studies to illuminate outcomes across the CPYD framework: competence confidence compassion connection character contribution and critical consciousness. This study affirms the use of community music in contexts of youth development and implications for health and arts practitioners and researchers are discussed in relation to using music as a potential approach for CPYD to address social inequity with young people. Findings highlight the need for increased art-based research that explores how community music can support equity.

VestAndPage’s performance operas: Dreaming space–time alternatives through body-based performance actions and sound
This article addresses the concept of performance opera by artist duo VestAndPage aiming to investigate how the corporeal and sonic can generate space–time alternatives through unconventional modes of performance-making. They describe performance operas as collaborative site-specific works that are unrepeatable. To produce them VestAndPage organized experiential co-creation artist-in-residences to encourage community-building among the performers they invite to collaborate on an opera. During production body-based performance actions and the sounds of various elements (from everyday noises to sophisticated electronic experimentation) allow aesthetic pitfalls and ruptures to emerge shaping a performance opera’s immediate experience and contributing to reshaping what might otherwise be considered ‘normal’ reality.

Techno-musicality in Australian secondary music classrooms
Techno-musicality – the mechanics of audio production on the meaningful effect of a recording – is an integral part of composition production and performance of popular music. Yet this discussion is largely absent from Australian music classrooms. The pedagogy of aural perception is taught as part of the Australian music curriculum and framed via six concepts/elements of music – pitch duration structure texture timbre and dynamics/expressive techniques. Student engagement with these six concepts largely neglects to address matters of techno-musicality. A study conducted across Australian secondary students and their educators revealed that students demonstrate rudimentary skills and/or knowledge to adequately engage with techno-musicality in their listening analyses and yet educators are willing and mostly confident working in this area. This article addresses the importance of techno-musicality to meaningful analyses of recorded sound and discusses how educators can equip students to engage with techno-musicality utilizing the musical concepts and in particular timbre and expressive techniques.

Working with words: A heuristic study into the companionship of visual art-making and intuitive prose
This article delves into a heuristic research exploration through art-based inquiry examining the symbiotic relationship between art-making and writing revealing profound insights into the author’s creative synthesis as a reflection of self. The study explored how the interplay between words and images might facilitate an enhanced art therapy experience particularly relevant for trauma resolution. Outcomes suggest that using ‘intuitive prose’ writing a method developed by the author alongside expressive art-making appeared to foster recognition of the authentic self integration of previously hidden emotions connection with transpersonal awareness the ability to re-enter art-making more seamlessly and an improved tolerance to a both/and mindset. Self-study gleaned three implications for practice: pairing art-making and writing deepens the noticing of unconscious emergent themes prolongs the staying with and revisiting of emotional states and supports the integration of meaning-making. Ethical approaches in further research and potential applications to therapeutic client work are noted.

Mourning lost parts: An art-based response to experiences in/of a neurorehabilitation day service
This visual essay honours the importance of creative practice as a way of staying in touch with the affective dimensions of human situations and experience. Drawing on observations field notes and documentation of artistic practice from her doctoral research the author engages in a reflexive conversation with an emergent ‘body’ of artwork made in response to observations and experiences in and of a neurorehabilitation day service. Broadening the scope of response art to the performative nature of ‘making’ the work of art amplifies the resonance of emotional and sensory affect. This brings an ethics of care to the fore giving voice to aspects of organizational culture (internal and external) that might easily be lost and emphasizing the need for time and space to mourn.

A cold case from 1984: Navigating subcultural memory, discomfort and uncertainty
The goal of this article is to provide an account of the difficulty in the present of reconstructing a punk event that took place 40 years ago. I will use this undertaking as the basis for reflecting on the larger conceptual stakes (ideas and concepts) that are illustrated by this specific event from the past the Brockwell Park Festival London. I played bass at this event in Strawberry Switchblade a female-led cult post-punk band. A cold case is used here as a metaphor for this reconstruction; the larger conceptual stakes are the ‘mystery’ to be investigated. This in turn enables me to frame my account of that day from the past in terms of how it functions within punk and post-punk culture and scholarship. There was a lot of fun energy and some ‘aggro’ (i.e. violent or threatening behaviour) at this event. I present an autoethnography reviews from the time and various first-hand accounts of this particularly tense punk and post-punk event i.e. my cold case so that I can examine the significance and the importance of returning to the past and unpicking the memories and myths of subcultural experience. This is followed by a discussion of the larger conceptual stakes: memory subcultural memory and myth; ‘tribes’; discomfort and uncertainty.

Developing habits of mind for an ethical and accountable songwriting praxis
In a co-taught course on songwriting we identified a need to discuss the ethics of being a songwriter. Songwriters and songwriting educators must consider how to best address issues related to cultural appropriation and develop ethical and accountable responses in their creative works. This article forwards habits of mind songwriters and songwriting educators can use to develop intellectual practices to focus on cultural exchange and lean into the power dynamics that surface in creative work. Habits of mind include posing critical questions and engaging reflexivity researching lineages of the musics practised by individual songwriters considering how songwriters position themselves in their music developing a disposition towards compensation and taking a stance of cultural humility. This article suggests methods to help aspiring songwriters take up hard questions about what it means to be creative in a world where cultural exploitation has too quickly become a way to find commercial success.

Navigating well-being through shoreline walking as artistic practice
This visual essay explores the intersection of walking art-making and well-being documented over six months of biweekly walks along the shoreline of Burrard Inlet in Port Moody British Columbia Canada. Engaging with the intertwined paths of movement and artistic expression the authors delve into a reflective practice that harmonizes the act of walking with the pursuit of emotional well-being. The journey unfolds as a correspondence – with one another with the environment and with one’s inner selves – facilitated by the rhythmic interplay of footsteps sketches and photographs. This evolving narrative interweaves individual experiences with collective stories showcasing walking as an embodied practice that fosters resilience and adaptability. By immersing themselves in the shoreline’s literal and metaphorical landscape the authors uncover a dynamic way to understand and enhance well-being indicating a holistic strategy to navigate the complexities of life.

In and of an Archive
Contextualizing the process behind the making of Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective as a dramaturgy of “curating in the continuous present” exhibition curator Emelie Chhangur discusses the innovations and stagings of this project as both a performative exhibition and an exhibition that performed the work of the artist. The paper includes curatorial texts an exhibition walkthrough and a personal account of the almost 4 year journey what the writer also refers as a durational 1:1 performance with the artist Jess Dobkin.

Wetrospective <img src="UF000-004.jpg"/> Description
In contributing to the audio descriptions for Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective I approached each artwork with a deep sense of intimacy and creative exploration. Rather than adhering strictly to visual accuracy I chose to interpret and describe the pieces through the impressions they left on me—emphasizing mood emotion and the sensory experience of encountering the works. Inspired by creative writing and poetic practices this experimental approach allowed me to provide affect-based intuitive narrations that invite listeners to engage with the artwork on a deeper more personal level.

Post Performance / Conversation Action
What better way to perform a refusal than to host a discussion not as heroes in isolation but rather as partners co-conspirators or equals? To open this event by pointing to the work that was being done by Native women artists as an anti-colonial and matrilineal action on an elevated stage made sense as an effort to shift power dynamics. Post Performance / Conversation Action centered Indigenous women as vital presences from traditional territories across Turtle Island.

A Woman is her Own Ocean
This essay examines a drawing by performance artist Jess Dobkin. Created for her 2021 Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University the drawing depicts a female-body-shaped Venn Diagram that contains all the names of the people artists places and groups that Jess has collaborated with in her art practice since 1991. The drawing has a notable crossover of two circles that form a bright pink pointy-ended oval. This is the vaginal portal of the “Venn woman” at the center of the drawing. Through an analysis of this drawing this essay considers the nature of collaboration and community-building in both art-making practices and in life.

Lobby of Hospitality
The entrance lobby of Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective is riddled with clues to the magical and performative world on the other side. This essay discusses these clues in an attempt to exploring the hospitality and generosity of the artist's practice.

Waves
Ah the pink reminds me of my first favourite colour. Soft and bright as I got excited to meet Jess an extraterrestrial from the space. Shiny suit as the whimsical energy radiated from the alien. We made a deal we are going to have a fun party in the archive room with floating objects.

Jess Dobkin's Vaginal Archive
Taking an autotheoretical approach this short chapter discusses how Jess Dobkin activates her vagina and references to it in works such as Fee for Service (2006) Everything I've Got (2010) Clown Car (2008) and Being Green (2009). It uses Julietta Singh's framing of the body as an archive of penetration produced through its orifices to explore how Dobkin performs her vaginal archive as an intimate and witty assemblage of historical traces as a space of self knowledge and of hopeful becoming.

I've Got Your Hole
This chapter reflects on the author's relationship to Jess Dobkin and Jess Dobkin's work

Queerly Touching
Media performance artist Dayna McLeod recalls Jess Dobkin's It's Not Easy Being Green and the impact it had on a Montreal audience in 2009.

Renovated Memories and the Stories they Tell
In ‘How Many Performance Artists Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb (for Martha Wilson)’ Jess Dobkin refuses the linearity prescribed by straight heteronormative time and instead leans into a collectively constructed archive of a past and future in the making inviting us as an audience as participants as time keepers to collaborate in a story that is multidirectional and multiple. As the durational performance unfolds time stands still never stops changes pace and always comes back to itself never quite ending as it takes and changes shape through its archive. This chapter considers how the queer temporal logic of How Many Performance Artists actively disrupts the compartmentalizing of past present and future layering subjective truths upon themselves always in a state of shuffle.

Evidence Towards a Hungry Room
This chapter explores the unofficial archive of performance making from the perspective of the organizer from initial meeting to post-performance clean up. What is remembered and what continues to linger after an event that is not collected through visual documentation?

Music in Eight Parts
Music In Eight Parts is a text piece that accompanies and outlines the sound installation by Zealley for Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective. Using documentary sounds from Dobkin's performance works and musics that echo Dobkin's past and present-future.

The Healing Magic of the Archival Box
This essay discusses the archival boxes in Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective as a version of what Cvetkovich calls “an archive of feelings” and explores the magic powers of the material artifact and its storage systems. The contribution also includes a transcription of a conversation between Cvetkovich and Dobkin about the relation between the magic boxes and healing from trauma.

(Re)Defining ‘Archivist’
Archivists often have to explain what we do and this piece is my definition - one that is radical sacred and concerned with archives being spaces for healing and transformation.

On Touching the Intangible
This chapter reflects on Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective through an examination of the archive as lived embodied and relational. Grounded in my friendship with Jess and our experiences in co-creating and performing archives I attend to the archival trace as both a methodology and a materiality of sorts a means of honoring queerness and other excesses not contained within traditional archives.

Power to the Pause
This interview was conducted with Jess Dobkin during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interview focuses on the critical juncture of the pandemic pause and perimenopause a career retrospective a birthday milestone of fifty and themes of aging time and performance-making in a period of intense uncertainty.

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective
Constellating performance archives
Taking as its starting point the first-ever retrospective exhibition (2021) of performance art icon Jess Dobkin the book reflects on the internationally acclaimed artist’s playful and provocative practice as performer activist curator and community leader. At the same time it grapples with a question that is vital for art and performance studies: How do archives perform?
More than a discrete showing of a single artist’s work the exhibition including its new staging in book form is a large-scale research experiment in performance curation investigating what it might mean for art institutions to take seriously the embodied and communal nature of performance art in their practices of archiving and museological display.
In Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective a cast of renowned international performance theorists and artists dive into this exploration alongside Dobkin curator Emelie Chhangur and performance theorist and dramaturg Laura Levin. These contributions appear alongside a riot of full colour photographs providing access to Dobkin’s celebrated artistic productions from the last 30 years.

In Smithereens
The Costume Remains of Lea Anderson's Stage
What happens to contemporary dance costumes when the show is over and their surrounding legacy slips from view? How might costumes be mobilised towards representational repair post-performance? Located within Lea Anderson’s choreographic archive this book charts a series of hands-on interventions with the fabric remains of her companies The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs. Centred on practices of Disintegration Preservation Transaction and Display they offer provocative modes of engaging with the physical leftovers of performance the degrading of memory and legacy around pre-digital theatre work and the temporal material transitions of artefacts enduring outside of traditional museological contexts.
How might we regard these mercurial items? As precious relics to be protected in museum holdings ghostly harbingers of residual performance histories or inconvenient detritus? The book travels from props-makers’ studios to auction houses and galleries incorporating film-making artefact handling and curation along the way in lively dialogue with perspectives from dance history material culture sociology and performance studies. The choreographic archive is envisioned as repository of the awkward scattered remains of legacy blown apart into fragments. Smithereens which can if we allow them demand an alternative after-life that disrupts the vanishing inflicted on these costumes and the companies who danced in them.

Obsessions of a Showwoman
The Performance Worlds of Marisa Carnesky
Explores ‘showwomanry’ tracing a trajectory of incredible weird women at work: women who were stone eaters fire walkers women who hypnotized alligators or presented crucifixion shows; women in entertainment who worked for themselves; women that were often referred to as showgirls despite their extraordinary skill and artistry.
Carnesky continues an important lineage of performing women with bombastic theatrical flair and an extraordinary skill that ‘do not work for the management or the man. Showwomen work for themselves and other people work for them”. Carnesky has been a central figure in performance and live art during the last thirty years; her practice as a showwoman promotes alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and a new relationship to women’s position to power and politics.
The term showwoman introduces a new identity a new kind of performer who does not control or exploit others but opens up a possibility for collaboration that enables ‘shared experiences of visceral euphoria applause loss shape abjection hustle and struggle marginalisation and the fight against patriarchal injustices’ (Carnesky
2019 53). The book will use Carnesky’s work to showcase women working in radical ways treading the margins of cabaret and live art disrupting normative ideologies through the spectacular and opening new lines of feminist enquiry through weirdness absurdity provocation in live art and popular culture.

Incredible Bleeding Women II
This chapter is a conversation between Nao Nagai H Plewis and Marisa Carnesky where Carnesky asks the other artists about their experience working on the show Dr Carnesky's Incredible Bleeding Women. They discuss their involvement and creating performance material. They also talk about menstruation rituals and what it means to be a showwoman.

Earth as Genderqueer Showwoman
This chapter is a conversation between Annie Sprinkle Beth Stephens and Marisa Carnesky. They reflect on the relationship between the show activism and ritual. They also imagine Sprinkle and Stephens' ecosexual ritual in a war-torn landscape if given the possibility. They introduce the idea of earth as a genderqueer Showwoman.

The Coven
In this chapter Amy Ridler reflects on meeting Marisa Carnesky and how she influenced her life career. She discusses her ideas of what a showwoman is and how it is to work together with other showwomen. Amy talks about the projects she was part of within Carnesky's company such as Dr Carnesky's Incredible Bleeding Woman and Dystopian Wonders.

The Department of Feminist Conversations in Dialogue with Marisa Carnesky's Live Archive
The Department of Feminist Conversations is a collective exploring feminist modes of gathering and exchange. In this chapter we approach Marissa Carnesky's ‘Live Archive’ as a creative inspiration for writing about the politics of memory loss identity migration gender and belonging.

Ballad of the Bloody Pearl
In this chapter Daniel Oliver recalls the time he saw Marisa Carnesky in a documentary called XXXTripping on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 1998. The documentary was about sex death magic transgressive art and underground culture and included short sections from her performance with the Dragon Ladies entitled ‘Ballad of the Bloody Pearl’. Oliver discusses how it left a big impression on him and showed it to his parents as inspiration of what kind of performance artist he wanted to be.

Penny Slot Somnambulist
This chapter is about Marisa Carnesky's performance Penny Slot Somnambulist (2000–03). It was selected by Ron Athey and Vaginal Davis for their co-curation of the first UK Visions of Excess festival (2003). In this chapter a comparison is made between Carnesky's performance and ORLAN's Le Baiser de L'Artiste (The Kiss of the Artist 1977). Penny Slot Somnambulist binds the histories of fairground and performance art together to invite the audience to interact with the art.

From the Finishing School of Marisa Carnesky: Lessons in Doing It Together
Marisa Carnesky's Finishing School has shaped over a decade of performance makers of all ages in the early stages of their careers. Since starting at the Roundhouse in 2010 pupils have been admitted into what has been described as an ‘esoteric St Trinian's for the queer cabaret generation.’ This chapter takes five key lessons in ‘Doing It Together’ which considers the pedagogic processes at play in Carnesky's classroom.

Their Phantasmagorical Appearances
This chapter is a conversation between Tai Shani Geneva Foster Gluck and Marisa Carnesky. They discuss their creative process and their artistic visions. They talk about rituals political work and how their heritage influences their art. They also reflect on being showwomen and the complex politics of showwomanry.

Marisa Carnesky, Showwoman
This chapter positions Carnesky's performances to date as she suggests as ‘work’ at the intersection of aesthetic show-making and commercial show-business in order to explore what it is that she is attempting to present and make present how she does so and why it matters. According to Carnesky they ‘are always in the same vein but with a different emphasis: cultural identity as it lives in the unconscious folklore ritual sexual performance and the politics that surround women's bodies as entertainment’ (Carnesky 2012). Similarly she has been consistently fascinated by a particular aspect of ‘Showwomanry’: that which uses ‘the abject the taboo and the forbidden to create spectacle and magic’ (Carnesky 2015).

Showwomen Who Risk It All
This chapter is a conversation between Lucifire Lalla Morte Miss Behave and Marisa Carnesky where they discuss artistic practice and the difference between working as a showwoman and a showman. The artists reflect on representing themselves as exotic the thrill of danger and how their heritage informs their art. They also talk about memories of performances they have done and of each other.

Finding Power in Pathos
In 2020 a group of emerging artists joined Carnesky's Radical Cabaret School; it was the peak of lockdown when Covid had dominated our lives. Similar to processes and principles Carnesky employs in her own performance work this course encouraged artists to create and develop work that sought to engage with contemporary politics whilst finding power in ones' identity. In particular Carnesky's teachings and methodology of ‘finding power in pathos’ became a tool for understanding performance's impact and how its radical nature can foster shared identification political transformation and community.

Shape Changing: The Metamorphosis of a Showwoman
In this chapter Vanessa Toulmin reflects on meeting Marisa Carnesky for the first time and how Carnesky influenced her work and life. The author discusses working on Carnesky's Ghost Train together Toulmin as the researcher and Carnesky as the artist. She also looks back at her other research projects and how Carnesky encouraged her to become a producer.

Weird Women
Weird women this chapter proposes are artists who challenge boundaries and are uneasy within neat already existing categories of art sex identity and desire. Their existence is emphatic; yet the categories we already have cannot account for the complexity of who they are. Weird women seem to suggest that a new language is necessary one that will point towards our unnamed desires blind spots and unknowns. The weird not only points to something we do not yet have the language for but also demands a reconsideration of its articulation. The weird could be thought of as another category but more accurately as a fascination with the uncategorized.

A Showwoman of a Certain Rage: Marisa Carnesky's Bleeding Spectacular
This chapter charts Carnesky's key ‘performance-rituals of passage’ through Jewess Tattooess (1998-2001) Carnesky's Ghost Train (2004; 2008-2011) to Dr. Carnesky's Incredible Bleeding Woman (2017-2018). The visceral aesthetics of Carnesky's showwomanry - magic marvels illusion horror and the persistent presence of blood – pervade Dr. Carnesky's Incredible Bleeding Woman to offer alternative visions of womanhood. Through sensational performance rituals Carnesky's ensemble demonstrates a revolutionary position to ideology power and politics. In examining this work the chapter considers how Carnesky's showwomen are vital to a broader feminist performance practice; one that celebrates the dawning of a new (r)age of the menopausal woman in bloody spectacular ways.

Introduction: Marisa Carnesky — Sorceress, Radical School Mistress, Showwoman
Kartsaki introduces Marisa Carnesky to the reader as an indomitable sorceress an eccentric magicienne and a Showwoman. The introduction reflects on the ways in which Carnesky's trajectory of performance practice merging genres and creating community as well as her significant work as an educator.

The Making of a Future Showwoman
This chapter is a reflection of Empress Stah's career so far. She discusses meeting Marisa Carnesky and how this further informed her art. She reflects back on her youth in a rural town and how she never fit the stereotype of what aerial artists looked or acted like. The chapter continues with a callback to one of her shows called Empress Stah in Space for which she did a lot of research into spacecraft and ended up with a laser beam coming from between her buttocks.

Incredible Bleeding Women I
This chapter is a conversation between Rhyannon Styles Livia Kojo Alour Veronica Thompson and Marisa Carnesky where Carnesky asks the other artists about their experience working on the show Dr Carnesky's Incredible Bleeding Women. They discuss their involvement what it means to be a showwoman means and navigating the life of showwomanry.

Her Spectacular Entrances
Her Spectacular Entrances sees Showwoman and performance maker Marisa Carnesky chart the research processes and productions of her 30 year career in the UK. It explores the projects that have defined her work including the solo show Jewess Tattooess in the 1990s the large-scale ride Carnesky's Ghost Train in the 2000's the company stage show Dr Carnesky's Incredible Bleeding Woman in the 2010s through to the stage and promenade performances of Showwomen in the 2020's. It proposes the potential power of the word Showwoman as a development from the term Showgirl and explores how new communities of women performers inhabit it. Carnesky looks at the relationship of her practice and contemporary performers to lesser-known women's performance heritage. Moreover she considers the drive to sustain a long term practice of making cross genre performance work that draws both from art and entertainment traditions.