Performed Imaginaries

<p>In this collection of essays performance studies scholar and artist Richard Schechner brings his unique perspective to bear upon some of the key themes of society in the 21st century. </p><p>Schechner connects the avantgarde and terror the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s/70s and the Occupy movement; self-wounding art popular culture and ritual; the Ramlila cycle play of India and the way imagination structures reality; the corporate world and conservative artists. Schechner asks artists to redeploy Nehru's Third World as a movement not of nations but of like-minded culture workers who must propose counter-performances to war violence and the globalized corporate empire. </p><p>With characteristic brio Schechner urges us to play for keeps. Playing deeply is a way of finding and embodying new knowledge he writes.</p><p>Performed Imaginaries ranges through some of the key moves within Schechner’s oeuvre and challenges today’s experimental artists activists and scholars to generate a new third world of performance. </p>