Intending ‘to interrogate and expand the boundaries of . . . political performance’ (p. 7), the eighteen essays collected here (including the two introductory essays by E. J. Westlake and Avraham Oz) not only cover a vast range of ‘politics’ (from contributions addressing political conflicts and civil war to papers exploring themes like homelessness and intercultural exchange) which are performed in different geographical spaces and theatrical locales (from Israel to Nicaragua and from Croatia to Australia), they also bring together different perspectives on political performance. The anthology collects valuable contributions from theatre scholars and critics, theatre practitioners, participant observers and authors walking the line between theory and practice.

Since political performance cannot be considered a ‘fixed terrain’, the editors contend that ‘a complete representation’ is neither achievable nor intended. Instead, they employ the image of the map to structure the variety of approaches and topics, emphasizing the essays’ ‘interlocking relationships’ (p. 8). They thus organize this territory according to the four vectors of ‘Queries’, ‘Texts’, ‘Contexts’ and ‘Practice’. At the same time, it is the apparent resistance of most essays to being mapped within the selective confines of such vectors that illustrates political performance as a nexus deliberately operating at the crossroads of various borders. The majority of the essays exemplify and celebrate political theatre as a cultural practice bridging the gaps between self and other, theory and action, art and politics. For instance, David Watt's and Kerrie Schaefer's contributions theorize and contextualize their engagement in community theatre projects in New South Wales; Susan Headicke explores the ‘porous boundaries’ (p. 237) between historical facts and dramatized events in Noureddine Aba's play about the Algerian War, Such a Great Hope. Other examples include Deirdre Heddon's excellent contribution on verbatim theatre and Sydney Cheek O'Donnell's feminist reading of Waterwell's adaptation of Aeschylus’ The Persians.

As the vast majority of the essays discuss political theatre, the perceived ‘project of political performance’ (p. 18) remains, however, largely limited to conventional theatre spaces. Here, interlocking topics include the discussion of documentary and community theatre (Botham, Heddon, Watt, Schaefer, Peters and Becker, Kuftinec), political plays (Nikčević, Maguire, O'Donnell, Levy), the politics of production and presentation (Hamidi-Kim, Redman, O'Donnell, Grant, Itzhaki, Headicke), and essays discussing specific visions of political theatre-makers, such as Carl Lavery's fundamental analysis of Jean Genet's preface to The Blacks. Only two contributors address political performance in a wider sense: Clupper's discussion of the performativity of festive nudity, and Westlake's inquiry into the function of the dramatic figure of the trickster for Nicaraguan electoral politics. In sum, Political Performances is a valuable collection of essays that highlight the function of drama, theatre and (to a small degree) performance as a vital force in political negotiation and struggle.