Books by Jan Cohen-Cruz
See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love
New Village Press, 2024
Conceived and co-written by Cohen-Cruz with Finn K. Additional essays by Ausettua Amoramenkum, Kathy Randels, & Gloria Williams; Alexander Anderson & Kevin Bott; Reginold Daniels & Rand Hazou; George Ferguson & Jess Thorpe; and John Bergman & Saul Hewish.
A collection of intimate essays, each a collaboration between two or three people who connected profoundly in the temporary community that a prison theater workshop can create. It reflects experiences in Trenton State Prison, the Louisiana Women’s Correctional Institution, a Scottish juvenile prison, a New Zealand prison, a post-prison reentry workshop, and a range of workshops cofacilitated by two Geese Theater founders. Cover by Russell Craig.
Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response
Routledge Press, 2010
A range of approaches, exercises, analyses, and principles for using performance in various social and artistic projects. Explores how differing theater formats including playwrighting, theatre of the oppressed, testimonial, cultural organizing, and art’s role in revitalizing cities and neighborhoods respond to particular social "calls." Jan draws on ideas of Bertolt Brecht, Augusto Boal, and Doreen Massey, and highlights contemporary US practitioners who exemplify engaged performance in action. Cover photo by Rachel Slowinski.
Meeting the Moment: US Socially Engaged Performance, 1965-2020, by Those Who’ve Lived it
Co-author with Rad Pereira, New Village Press, 2022
Experiences of a diverse range of progressive theater and performance makers in the US in their own words. Weaving over 75 interviews and informal exchanges with critical reflections, Cohen-Cruz and Pereira present performance artists committed to both rigorous theater-making and community care over 55 years. Subjects include how artists are educated and supported, what content is deemed valuable and how it is brought to bear, and the perceived tension between commitment to art and to community.
A Boal Companion: Dialogues on theatre and cultural politics
Co-editor w/ Mady Schutzman, Routledge Press, 2006
Explores ideas and practices that inform Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) within the frame of cultural politics and performance theory. The contributors put TO into dialogue with complexity theory, Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, race theory, feminist performance art, Deleuze and Guattari, and liberation psychology, and more--and in so doing, make visible the kinship between Boal’s project and multiple fields of social psychology, ethics, biology, comedy, trauma studies, and political science.
Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology
Editor, Routledge Press, 1998
Over 30 essays by activists, directors, performers, critics, scholars, and journalists engaged with street theater around the world. Contributors explore the myriad forms this most public of performances can take including agit-prop, invisible theatre, demonstrations and rallies, direct action, puppetry, parades and pageants, performance art, guerrilla theatre, and alternative circuses. They look at performances in Europe, Africa, China, India, and both the Americas, and describe engagement with abortion, colonialism, the environment, homophobia, etc..
Remapping Performance: Common Ground, Uncommon Partners
Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015
Artists in interdisciplinary collaborations expand their training, methodologies, efficacy, and mind-sets. Case studies include ArtSpot Productions/Mondo Bizarro's Cry You One about climate change, incorporating organizing; Michael Rohd/Sojourn Theatre's social and civic practices; Anne Basting's integration of art in creative aging; and the cultural diplomacy experiment, smARTpower. Short companion pieces by Helen Nicholson, Todd London, Julie Thompson Klein, Nancy Cantor, Maria Rosario Jackson, and Penny Von Eschen add interdisciplinary expertise. Cover photo by Melisa Cardona.
Local Acts: Community-based Performance in the United States
Rutgers University Press, 2005
A survey of US community-based performance. Examples include the African American Junebug Productions, the Appalachian Roadside Theater, and the Puerto Rican Teatro Pregones. Cohen-Cruz provides detailed descriptions of performances and processes, first-person stories, professional artistic input, and analysis. She shows how the ritual side of these endeavors reinforces community identification while the aesthetic side enables participants to question cultural norms.
Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism
Co-editor with Mady Schutzman, Routledge, 1994
The first book outside of Boal’s own to examine the techniques in application of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. A variety of practitioners and scholars in Europe and North America explore possibilities of these tools for active learning and personal empowerment; co-operative education and healing; participatory theatre and community action. The collection is designed to illuminate and invigorate discussion about Augusto Boal's work and the transformative potential of theatre. It includes two interviews with Boal, and two pieces of his own writing.