Overview

Homelessness in Performance, Art and Society investigates the contemporary context of homelessness in England and how performance and the arts can engage with this complex issue to advocate for, value and foster the lives, creative identities, and artistic ambitions of people who are, or have been, affected by homelessness. The book offers critically informed analysis of the artists, theatre-makers, social enterprises, investigative journalists, and cultural, heritage, and charitable organisations, drawing on socially committed arts practice. It highlights, documents, and investigates artistic interventions that provoke new ways of perceiving homelessness and examines projects that offer those who have experienced homelessness an opportunity to showcase their stories, heritage, creativity, and cultural leadership. Capturing the breadth of socially committed arts practice in England, this book engages with arts and homelessness through a consideration of autobiographical performance, photography and graphic novel projects, performance installations and festivals, as well as digital and embodied memorialising outputs and events. Homelessness in Performance, Art and Society is ideal for students and scholars of applied theatre, socially engaged theatre, and broader humanities studies that interrogate the intersections between homelessness and the arts, as well as artists and community activists with an interest in this field.

Full Product Details

9781032848105

Table of Contents

Reviews

“This book is a remarkable and key intervention within the fields of performance and homelessness studies. Holdsworth interweaves performance analysis, contemporaneous research notes, artist and participant interviews, and secondary research expertly. This mixed-method approach allows her to analyse the relationship between various types of performance (theatrical and otherwise) and produce vital and nuanced readings. She is able to extrapolate what could be dense secondary and theoretical material into concise, accessible and often deeply moving prose. The book’s argument that ‘various artistic modalities can offer a powerful way for the experience of homelessness to be seen, heard, and apprehended’ should be a rallying cry for artists and those working and living in the homelessness space.” Dr Owen Clayton, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Lincoln, UK and author of Vagabonds, Tramps and Hobos: the Literature and Culture of U.S Transiency (2023)

Author Information

Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She has published English Theatre and Social Abjection: A Divided Nation (2020), Joan Littlewood’s Theatre (2011), Theatre & Nation (2010), and Joan Littlewood (2006, second edition 2017) and co-authored The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre (2018).

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