Acting out dissent; imaginary lives the performance strategies of My barbarian’s Post-Living Ante-Action Theater

This thesis introduces readers to the interdisciplinary performance collective My Barbarian, consisting of artists Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The primary focus of this thesis is the body of work, the Post‐Living Ante‐Action Theater (PoLAAT). The project was conceived as a pedagogical model and codification of My Barbarian’s larger performance strategy as a way for the artists to experiment with group expansion and contraction by inviting participants to join the group in producing performances. PoLAAT performances have often been characterized in terms typically associated with musical theater, camp, and kitsch. While these terms are not incorrect, this thesis will articulate how these are part of a highly sophisticated performance strategy informed by the artists’ engagement with a history of experimental theater projects such as the Living Theater, the antiteater, and Theater of the Oppressed. By framing the practice using critical gaming theory this thesis articulates how My Barbarian utilize concepts such as critical play to show how play operates and how it engages willing participants through the model. Analysis of the portability of the model shows the challenges incurred when PoLAAT has been performed outside of the US with non‐native English speakers, as was the case in Italy, Israel, and Egypt. Additionally, analysis will articulate how environmental factors test or inhibit the model’s adaptability in sites as diverse as Egypt, with its large Muslim population, and Los Angeles, where PoLAAT occurred within a classroom setting. Finally, the thesis will demonstrate how economic conditions affecting the art world have produced My Barbarian’s unique form of political imaginaries through use of creative enactment to produce what some theorists have identified as metamodern art, or art produced after the moments of modernity and post‐modernity have passed.