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.
Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements
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.