Petra Kuppers: Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge
(Routledge: 2003).
Disability and Contemporary Performance explores the relationship
between contemporary performance practice and disability, and
investigates the ways in which disabled performers challenge, change
and work with existing stereotypes through their work. Encompassing the
fields of performance, cultural and disability studies, Petra Kuppers
draws on the insights developed by theorists such as Foucault, Merleau-
Ponty and Deleuze to question the assumptions of tragedy and loss that
are traditionally associated with the disabled person and to suggest
new understandings of disability and identity politics. She draws on
numerous examples of individual performers and groups from the UK,
North America and Europe who constantly challenge stereotypes through
the media of live and performance art, theatre, dance and photography,
including Mat Fraser, Jo Spence, CandoCo and L?Oiseau Mouche, and opens
up new and lively perspectives on contemporary performance practice,
identity politics and cultural conceptions of disability.
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Petra Kuppers: Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge.
London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
ISBN 0-415-30239-0
Chapters:
Performance and Disability: An Introduction
Practices of Reading Difference
Freaks, Stages, and Medical Theatres
Deconstructing Images: Performing Disability
Outsider Energies
Encountering Paralysis: Disability, Trauma and Narrative
New Technologies of Embodiment: Cyborgs and Websurfers
Epilog: Toward the Unknown Body: Stillness, Silence, and Space in
Mental Health Settings
Also by Petra Kuppers:
Community Performance: An Introduction