Mess and Contemporary Performance

This book identifies and theorises mess in contemporary performance and argues that mess offers a site from which subjects might mobilise and find agency, even as the complexity (and indeed messiness) of everyday life conditions and contains.

Harriet Curtis is Senior Lecturer in Drama at De Montfort University, Leicester.

1. Introduction: Locating Mess 2. Mess, Materiality, and Labour 3. Holding Space: Mess, Complexity, and Containment 4. Hot Mess: Vulnerability and Exhibitionism in Performance 5. The Uses and Mis-Uses of Mess 6. Conclusion: Mess, Exhaustion, and Collapse