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Malign performances
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The Performer: Art, Life, Politics
Richard Sennet
Allen Lane, £25
“WHEN I started to write this essay on society and the performing arts, a cluster of demagogues had come to dominate the public realm. Donald Trump in America and Boris Johnson in Britain are skilled performers. Malign performances of this sort draw on the same materials of expression, though, as other kinds of expression.”
This is a promising start to leading US sociologist Richard Sennett’s entertaining and provocatively informative examination of the place and the nature of performance both on stage and in society at large.
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