Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism

This book looks at the connection between contemporary theatre practices and cosmopolitanism, a philosophical condition of social behaviour based on our responsibility, respect, and healthy curiosity to the other. Advocating for cosmopolitanism has become a necessity in a world defined by global wars, mass migration, rising xenophobia, and nationalism. Theatre is well-positioned to address these issues. Using empathy, affect, and the telling of personal stories of displacement through embodied encounters between the actor and their audience, performance arts can serve as a training ground for this social behavior. In the centre of this encounter is the new cosmopolitan: a person of divided origins and cultural heritage, someone who speaks several languages and claims different countries as their home or place of belonging. The book examines how different theatre practices in Europe and North America stage this divided subjectivity: both from within, the way we tell stories about ourselves to others, and from without, through the stories that others tell about us. Structured in three sections - encounters in language, encounters in body, and encounters in time/space and history - the book studies artistic strategies of constructing the divided self on and off stage, both as individual experiences, including multilingual solo-performances and one-to-one productions, and placing the individual within a group, within the contemporary chorus play and performance walking.