A Profound Edge (hooks, 1989): Theatre as Participatory Activism

Considering hooks’ (1989, Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 36, 15–23. JSTOR.) space for radical openness, as a ‘profound edge’ this chapter will present how theatre has a history of participatory activism; Claire Bishop’s work Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Verso) is an exploration of how this happens. By using both the metaphor of theatre and its historical influence on ‘participatory arts’, Bishop charts the history of this practice as a form of spectatorship that bridges the actor-audience divide and, through the manipulation of space as a process that reconstructs the audience as active agents to the experience, makes them more aware and not passive. Art, for Bishop, is used as a provocation to elicit change in the audience and inspire action. Bishop allows the reader to comprehend the machinations of participatory work through an explanation of how. In some earlier works on ‘participation’, this metaphor of theatre is not as explicitly utilised and tends to rest on explanations of what ‘participation’ is. Thinking about this theatre heritage, this chapter offers valuable alternative discourse to the non-selective practitioner who can adopt tried and tested ideas to reposition the hierarchies of ‘Us and Them’ dynamics and power.