ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes the political and philosophical stakes of interdisciplinary Performance-and-Politics projects by locating them within historical approaches to interdisciplinarity in academia. This leads to a suggestion that more consideration should be given to approaches that draw equally on both fields thereby enhancing knowledge generation in both. The chapter argues for greater engagement with a wider range of global theatrical practices and epistemologies in order to provide avenues for the diversification of Performance-and-Politics scholarship. The chapter then provides a summary of key interdisciplinary engagements with theatre and performance by Politics scholars. The concluding section discusses three notable practitioners whose work was informed by first-hand experiences of political conflict: voice artist Alfred Wolfsohn, political puppeteer Peter Schumann, and Applied Theatre pioneer Augusto Boal. This discussion introduces a body of theatrical tactics that have shaped the author's own Applied Theatre practice and provides the basis for the analysis of populism in the chapters to follow.
