Can I Join In? Playful Performance as Political Intervention

Two years ago, Andy Lavender proclaimed that contemporary performance had reached an ‘age of engagement’; a theatre of ‘nuanced and differential negotiations, participations and interventions’ (Lavender 2016, 21). Daniel Shulze recently expanded on this by aligning the participatory audience to a desire for authenticity within performance (Shulze 2017, 73). He sees this as reflective of a changing ‘structure of feeling’ akin to Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen’s concept of the metamodern; an oscillation between postmodern irony and a modern yearning for truth, sense and tangible, human connection. By focusing on a number of contemporary productions, including the work of art collective LaBeouf, Rönnkö & Turner and performance artist Mem Morrison, this paper examines how artists are creating participatory, playful performances that engage with, and disrupt, both the physical, public space and the political sphere. Can playful participation lead to deeper social connections? Can interactive performance change the world?