Homelessness in Performance, Art and Society

Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She has published English Theatre and Social Abjection: A Divided Nation (2020), Joan Littlewood’s Theatre (2011), Theatre & Nation (2010), and Joan Littlewood (2006, second edition 2017) and co-authored The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre (2018).

“This book is a remarkable and key intervention within the fields of performance and homelessness studies. Holdsworth interweaves performance analysis, contemporaneous research notes, artist and participant interviews, and secondary research expertly. This mixed-method approach allows her to analyse the relationship between various types of performance (theatrical and otherwise) and produce vital and nuanced readings. She is able to extrapolate what could be dense secondary and theoretical material into concise, accessible and often deeply moving prose. The book’s argument that ‘various artistic modalities can offer a powerful way for the experience of homelessness to be seen, heard, and apprehended’ should be a rallying cry for artists and those working and living in the homelessness space.”Dr Owen Clayton, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Lincoln, UK and author of Vagabonds, Tramps and Hobos: the Literature and Culture of U.S Transiency (2023)

• Introduction: Homelessness in Performance, Art, and Society1 Identity, Agency, and Complexity: Performing the Homeless Experience2 Crafting Communities and Dramaturgies of Care in the Work of Arts & Homelessness International and Museum of Homelessness3 Social Enterprise, Homelessness, and Neoliberal Logics: Accumulate and Café Art4 Homeless Deaths: The Politics and Performance of Remembrance and AffectA Final Word: On Solidarity