L.M. Bogad (Associate Professor, University of California at Davis) is an author, performer, and activist. His book Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements, is an international study of performance artists who run for public office as a prank. Bogad works on the intersection between art and activism, and on the role of humor and imagination in organizing social movements.
Bogad’s darkly humorous plays and one person shows have covered topics such as the Haymarket Square Confrontation of 1886-7, the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities and the PATRIOT ACT, and global climate chaos. He is a veteran of the Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Laboratory and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. He has performed in film, theatre, and street theatre across North America and the UK.
His writings have appeared in TDR: The Drama Review, Contemporary Theatre Review, Research In Drama Education, Red Pepper, Fifth Estate, Radical Society, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, International Brecht Society’s Communications, and the collections Place and Performance, A Boal Companion, The Art and Cultural Politics of Carnival, and Images of Mental Illness Through Text and Performance.
Eradi-Redaction: A Patriot Act
November 1st & 2nd :: JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St, Berkeley, CA
Inform yourself! Inform on your neighbor!
Follow Special Agent Christian White (Bogad) on a cheerfully creepy tour of declassified government surveillance documents. White probes the redacted (blacked-out) texts of the FBI's notorious Counterintelligence Programs, searching for the words erased in the name of the Freedom of Information Act.
Learn fun techniques for the infiltration of activist groups, how to earn benefits and a pension as an agent provocateur, and how to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize" your neighbors!
(follow title link for details)
September 11, 2008 :: San Francisco Art Institute
Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements (Paperback)
Across the globe, in liberal democracies where the right to vote is framed as both civil right and civic duty, disillusioned creative activists run for public office on sarcastic, ironic and iconoclastic platforms. With little intention of "winning" in the conventional sense, they use drag, camp and stand-up comedy to undermine the legitimacy of their opponents and sometimes the electoral system itself. Electoral Guerrilla Theatre explores the recent phenomenon of the satirical election campaign.