Performing New Orleans

“Highlighting the importance of understanding climate adaptation as a cultural problem as much as a question of science or policy, Performing New Orleans offers an innovative look at emergency planning and hazard-mitigation practices in New Orleans. The book’s findings suggest novel approaches to resilience that will be valuable to colleagues across the globe.” ~Austin Feldbaum, director, New Orleans Hazard Mitigation Office

“Performing New Orleans is a significant contribution to the discourse on the civic role of the arts. Stuart Andrews and Patrick Duggan have done what is rarely achieved—they have approached New Orleans with the depth, care, and rigor necessary to understand its cultural ecosystems, artistic practices, and historical continuities. This work is an essential resource for artists, cultural practitioners, and arts leaders seeking to engage with the ways performance not only sculpts discourse but also co-designs civic spaces. It reveals how the arts guide citizen focus, influence collective responses to pressing issues, and serve as a dynamic force in shaping the shared vision of a place. More than a study of New Orleans, this book is a critical resource for anyone invested in the intersection of performance, public life, and community-driven design.” ~Lauren Turner Hines, founder and executive director, André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice

“This curation and theorization of and through the Big Easy is a welcome addition to the robust performance studies scholarship focused on cities. Andrews and Duggan specifically offer a polyvocal and practical approach to rethinking resilience now. The book reveals how artists, planners, public servants, residents, and tourists inhabit and shape New Orleans through a vast range of corporeal, discursive, and material performances. . . . The authors insist that New Orleans is never ‘done,’ and they elaborate methodologies in these pages that will have lasting import for future work in and beyond this particular location.” ~Sean Metzger, author of The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization