A groundbreaking lens on humanitarianism, which reframes global humanitarian responses to war and disaster through performance studies, revealing how aid, media, and public attention transform crisis into spectacle on a world stage.

As the world is challenged by a state of constant conflict and by disasters, both natural and manmade, support communities endeavour through humanitarianism to overcome human suffering and help to build more peaceful and safe futures. Humanitarian Performance argues that the humanitarian project—from its history and rationale to its contemporary practice—can be productively explored through the critical lens of performance studies. Using the outpouring of international support for projects to benefit survivors of the Asian tsunami, the War in Kosovo, and the crisis in Darfur as case studies, this timely volume explores humanitarian attention to these narratives and the stories of tragedy and survival that emerge. With the peculiar focus and international audiences that the media brings to local tragedies, these contemporary disasters—and the humanitarianism that they elicit—become a performance on the world stage.

James Thompson is professor of applied and social theater and founding director of the TiPP Centre, as well as founder of In Place of War, which supports arts initiatives in conflict and disaster zones. 

1.Introduction
2.The Shape of the Show
3.From Consequentialism to the Theatre of Bare Life
4.Kosovo: Simultaneous Truths and the Stages of War
5.Darfur and the Unhappy Performative
6.The Asian Tsunami: Photogenic Aid and the Pressure to Be There 153
7.Afterword: ‘Haiti’
8.Works Cited
9.Index