Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play (Routledge, 2016) by Larry Bogad, a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, draws on his experience as a writer, performer and strategist to share effective nonviolent tactics. The book explores creative protest — pranksterism, subvertisement, cultural sabotage — looking at the possibilities for direct action and theatrical confrontation with the most powerful institutions in the world. In addition, a revised and expanded edition of his Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements (Routledge) looks at the satirical election campaign, such as Stephen Colbert’s run for President in 2012, and explores the purpose of such public political performances.
L. M. Bogad is a Guggenheim Fellow, author, performance artist/activist, educator, Director of the Center for Tactical Performance, and co-founder of the Clown Army. He has performed across the United States, Europe, and South America, from SF MOMA, the Whitney Museum, Yerba Buena Arts Center, and the Mattress Factory to occupied zones and a squatted military base in Barcelona. He has led Tactical Performance workshops around the world, including in Cairo during the first month of the Egyptian Revolution. He was the Art and Controversy Fellow and Distinguished Lecturer on Performance and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University, Humanities and Political Conflict Fellow at Arizona State University, Arts and Publics Fellow at Northwestern University, and Charlotte Newcombe Fellow for the Institute for Scholars and Citizens.
Bogad has performed and led “tactical performance” workshops in twenty countries on five continents. His performances have covered topics such as the Egyptian revolution, the struggles of indigenous immigrant farmworkers in the United States, George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War, climate disaster, the Haymarket Square Riot, the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities, and the Pinochet coup in Chile, and have received grant support from the California Arts Council, San Francisco Foundation, Creative Work Fund, Puffin Fund, Network of Ensemble Theatres, Bay Area Theatre Artists Fund, U.C. Institute for Research in the Arts, the British Academy and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. His Economusic: Keeping Score, has been performed in NYC at the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, and at festivals in Helsinki, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, at SF MOMA, and Barcelona. His play, Cointelshow: A Patriot Act, was published by PM Press and performed at the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Studio and in New Orleans for ArtSpot Productions. The Mondo Bizarro production of this piece was coproduced by Emerson Arts.
View the book at Routledge