A dramaturgy of cultural activism

In this chapter, we argue for new and diverse theoretical approaches to considering the relationship between theatre and politics. We describe both our curatorial and editorial work for The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics as a dramaturgical process – one that aims to bridge the political themes and organising practices of the volume and outline the processes of dialogue and exchange with a diverse range of contributors. We introduce and situate the eight galvanising themes that we devised for the book. These themes are as follows: post, assembly, gap, institution, machine, message, end, and re. We connect these themes to the urgent need to rethink critical, creative, and activist perspectives on questions of politics and the performing arts in the context of a radically unsettled 21st century