Performance and Real Relationships: Family, Kinship and Love in Contemporary Theatre (Methuen Drama Engage)

This book argues that staging real relationships and collaborating with family members has the potential to rupture theatrical representation by producing an effect of authenticity. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory (Lacan, Kristeva), poststructuralist critique (Derrida), and feminist and queer theory, the author explores how theatre becomes a method of doing family: a set of embodied, affective and performative practices rather than a fixed institution. The book is richly informed by case studies, supported by production photographs, including the German company She She Pop performing Testament (2010) with their fathers; Liz Clarke performing I Tattooed My Baby (2013) with her infant daughter; Zoo Indigo’s Under the Covers (2009) and Blueprint (2012), performed with their children and mothers; Bryony Kimmings performing with her partner in Fake it Till you Make it (2015); and First Trimester (2023) by Queer performance maker Krishna Istha performing alongside their partner and extended