Performing Care

Amanda Stuart Fisher is Reader in Contemporary Theatre and Performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and DramaJames Thompson is Professor of Applied Theatre at the University of Manchester

'... 13 rigorous essays that utilize theory, analysis, and critique to interrogate “care as embodied knowledge, and care as emotional labor” (p. 3). The collection effectively complicates discourse around philosophies of care, allowing space for the critical considerations of age, gender, abilities, and memories.'CHOICE(Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.)'This book is an invaluable addition to the relevance of our modality and contains many crossovers with which our practice is affiliated... The global COVID-19 pandemic witnessed the power that the arts hold in keepingpeople creative, playful and, most importantly, connected. Care is ultimately about our relationship with others. This book is tantamount for exploring how and why it is so important to enmesh the arts within the caring professions.'Dramatherapy

• Introduction: caring performance, performing care – Amanda Stuart FisherPart I Performing interrelatedness1 Care ethics and improvisation: can performance care? – Maurice Hamington2 Towards an aesthetics of care – James Thompson 3 Performing tenderness: fluidity and reciprocity in the performance of caring in Fevered Sleep’s Men & Girls Dance – Amanda Stuart FisherPart II Care-filled performance4 Caring beyond illness: an examination of Godder’s socially engaged art and participatory dance for Parkinson’s work – Sara Houston5 Convivial theatre: care and debility in collaborations between non-disabled and learning disabled theatre makers – Dave Calvert6 Road care – Jen Archer-Martin and Julieanna PrestonPart III Care deficits7 Clean Break: a practical politics of care – Caoimhe McAvinchey8 Performing a museum of living memories: beholding young people’s experiences and expressions of care through oral history performance – Kathleen Gallagher and Rachel Turner-King9 'Still Lives': Syrian displacement and care in contemporary Beirut – Ella Parry-DaviesPart IV Care as performance10 Verbatim practice as research with care-experienced young people: an ‘aesthetics of care’ through aural attention – Sylvan Baker and Maggie Inchley11 Acts of care: applied drama, 'sympathetic presence' and person-centred nursing – Matt Jennings, Pat Deeny and Karl Tizzard-Kleister12 Taking care of the laundry in care homes – Jayne Lloyd 13 Performing the ‘aesthetics of care’ – James Thompson