Moving Targets: Political Theatre in a Post-political Age

This book gauges the contemporary landscape of political theatre at a time in which everything, and consequently nothing, is political. That is, almost all theatres today proclaim a politics, and yet there is widespread resignation regarding the inevitability of capitalism. This book proposes a theory of political action via the theatre: radical theatre today must employ a strategy of moving targets. I approached this topic through four case studies: Reverend Billy, Critical Art Ensemble, and two Free Theatre Christchurch productions of which I was a part. These case studies led to the determination that creating aesthetic experiences and actions, as opposed to having explicitly political content, can be a strategy or foundation for a radical political theatre that resists, undermines, and at times transcends the seeming inevitability of consumer capitalism. In an age in which any political intervention is seen as senseless disruption, a form of pointless violence, this theatre has adopted the strategies of terrorist actions to have a disruptive effect without positing a specific alternative social structure.