This book examines performance practices that involve people in recovery from addiction, theorising such practices as recovery-engaged.
Focusing on examples of practice from a growing movement of UK-based recovery arts practitioners and performers, it highlights a unique approach to performance that infuses an understanding of lived experiences of addiction and recovery with creative practice. It offers a philosophy of being in recovery that understands lived experience, and performance practice, as a dynamic system of interrelations with the human and nonhuman elements that make up the societal settings in which recovery communities struggle to exist. It thereby frames the process of recovery, and recovery-engaged performance, as an affective ecology - a system of messy connections. Building upon ideas from posthumanist research on addiction, cultural theory on identity and new materialist interpretations of performance practice, it considers how such contemporary theory might offer additional ways of thinking and doing arts practice with people affected by addiction. The discussion highlights the distinct aesthetics, ethics and politics of this area of performance practice.
This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in Applied Theatre and Critical Arts and Mental Health studies.
| ISBN: | 9781032220710 |
| Publication date: | 29th September 2025 |
| Author: | Cathy Sloan |
| Publisher: | Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 122 pages |
| Series: | Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies |
| Genres: |
Theatre studies Health, illness and addiction: social aspects Performance art Psychotherapy Addiction and therapy Social and political philosophy Sociology Medical sociology The arts: general topics |
This book examines performance practices that involve people in recovery from addiction, theorising such practices as recovery-engaged.
Focusing on examples of practice from a growing movement of UK-based recovery arts practitioners and performers, it highlights a unique approach to performance that infuses an understanding of lived experiences of addiction and recovery with creative practice. It offers a philosophy of being in recovery that understands lived experience, and performance practice, as a dynamic system of interrelations with the human and nonhuman elements that make up the societal settings in which recovery communities struggle to exist. It thereby frames the process of recovery, and recovery-engaged performance, as an affective ecology - a system of messy connections. Building upon ideas from posthumanist research on addiction, cultural theory on identity and new materialist interpretations of performance practice, it considers how such contemporary theory might offer additional ways of thinking and doing arts practice with people affected by addiction. The discussion highlights the distinct aesthetics, ethics and politics of this area of performance practice.
This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in Applied Theatre and Critical Arts and Mental Health studies.
Messy Connections features in the following genres: Theatre studies, Health, illness and addiction: social aspects, Performance art, Psychotherapy, Addiction and therapy, Social and political philosophy, Sociology, Medical sociology, The arts: general topics
Messy Connections is available in Paperback, Hardback
Messy Connections was written by Cathy Sloan and published by Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis
Messy Connections has 122 pages
Yes it is part of Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies series
£49.49