ABSTRACT

Disability and Contemporary Performance presents a remarkable challenge to existing assumptions about disability and artistic practice. In particular, it explores where cultural knowledge about disability leaves off, and the lived experience of difference begins. Petra Kuppers, herself an award-winning artist and theorist, investigates the ways in which disabled performers challenge, change and work with current stereotypes through their work. She explores freak show fantasies and 'medical theatre' as well as live art, webwork, theatre, dance, photography and installations, to cast an entirely new light on contemporary identity politics and aesthetics.
This is an outstanding exploration of some of the most pressing issues in performance, cultural and disability studies today, written by a leading practitioner and critic.

chapter |11 pages

Performance and disability

An introduction

chapter 1|19 pages

Practices of reading difference

chapter 2|18 pages

Freaks, stages, and medical theaters

chapter 3|21 pages

Deconstructing images

Performing disability

chapter 4|17 pages

Outsider energies

chapter 5|18 pages

Encountering paralysis

Disability, trauma, and narrative

chapter 6|17 pages

New technologies of embodiment

Cyborgs and websurfers

chapter 7|13 pages

Epilog Toward the unknown body

Stillness, silence space in mental health settings