Pandemic Performance

Pandemic Performance chronicles the many ways that people are surviving/thriving through performance in a global pandemic. Covering artists and events from across the United States: from New York to California and from South Dakota to Texas, the chapters are equal parts theory and practice, weaving scholarship with personal experience from contributors who are interdisciplinary artists, scholars, journalists, and community organizers providing unique and invaluable perspectives on the complicated work of resilience during COVID-19. This study will hold interest for students and scholars in the performing arts, arts, and social justice as well as professional artmakers and creative community organizers.

Kendra Claire Capece is a New York-based writer and researcher with special interest in high-impact work that exposes injustice. Patrick Scorese is an independent writer and performance-based artist who also serves as the Associate Director of Development at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning.

List of Contributors; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Pandemic Performance and Aliveness as Art (Kendra Claire Capece and Patrick Scorese); PART I: America God Damn; 1. Imagining Decolonial Futures: In Conversation with Autumn White Eyes (Autumn White Eyes with Kendra Claire Capece); 2. How Do You Hold When You Need to Be Held?: Dance and the Embodied Practice of Grieving (Joya Powell); 3. (Re)current Unrest: The Fire This Time (Charles O. Anderson); PART II: Friction and Encounter; 4. Performative Allyship and the Foxes That Drool: In Conversation with Brittany Talissa King (Brittany Talissa King with Kendra Claire Capece and Patrick Scorese); 5. Theatre in Quarantine: Temporality and Nostalgia in Remediation (Patrick Scorese); 6. 'Come Be People in Space with Us:' Space-making as Mutual Art and Mutual Aid (Theresa Buchheister); PART III: Building a New Future; 7. On Composition, Conspiracies, and 'Dancing in the Light of Tomorrow': In Conversation with Ricardo iamuuri Robinson (Ricardo iamuuri Robinson with Kendra Claire Capece); 8. The COVID-19 Ruptured Art World: Sustainable Elements of Structural Change for a Transformative Future (Lee Painter-Kim); 9. Dancing In the Rubble: Post-MoMA and Otherwise Post-Pandemic Futures (Marz Saffore); Index