Dazzle Camouflage: Spectacular Theatrical Strategies for Resistance and Resilience is the type of book you want to buy multiple copies of and give to your friends so you all can talk about it. It’s funny, accessible, and most importantly, it is about people and ideas that are otherwise absent from mainstream discussions around contemporary art and life.
In the book, Philadelphia based artist, activist, and public intellectual Ezra Berkley Nepon provides examples of engaged theater practices rooted in ideas of health, identity, faith, citizenship, and community by looking at New York based theater artist Jenny Romaine and the Eggplant Faerie Players, a theater troupe with a connection to the wilds of Tennessee. Collectively their work explores Jewish history, the legacy of family and trauma, gender, sexuality, age, HIV / AIDS, the impact of capitalism and gentrification, and the ongoing role of the archive. The book is a reach back into the not-so-distant past to help us think about how we are living now.
Read more of this review and interview with Theodore Kerr in Arts Everywhere
EZRA BERKLEY NEPON 