Performing Statecraft: The Postdiplomatic Theatre of Sovereigns, Citizens, and States

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The crafts of governance and diplomacy are spectacular, theatrical, and performative. Performing Statecraft investigates the performances of states, their leaders, and their citizens on an expanded field of the global arts of statecraft to consider the role of performance in the domestic and international affairs of states, and the interventions into global politics by artists, scholars, and activists. Treating theatre as both an art form and a practice of political actors, this book draws together scholarship on the embodied dimensions of governance, the stagecraft of revolution, arts activism on the world stage, sports performance by heads of state, the performativity of national dress, speechmaking and colonialism, war and medicine, singing diplomats, indigenous sovereignties, and performed nationalisms. It brings the perspective and methods of performance studies to bear on global politics, offering exciting new insights into encounters between states, sovereigns, and people. Whether one is watching a campaign speech, a nightly news broadcast, a sacred dance, or a play about global conflict, these chapters make clear the importance of performance as a tool wielded by amateurs and professionals to articulate the nation in global spaces.

Author Bio

James R. Ball III is Associate Professor in the Department of Performance Studies and Director of the Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts at Texas A&M University, USA. He studies the performance of diplomacy, and is the author of Theater of State: A Dramaturgy of the United Nations (2020). Related work has been published in TDR, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, e-Misfrica, and elsewhere.