1st Edition

Homelessness in Performance, Art and Society Becoming Visible

By Nadine Holdsworth Copyright 2026
198 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

198 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

198 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Homelessness in Performance, Art and Society investigates the contemporary context of homelessness in England and how performance and the arts can engage with this complex issue to advocate for, value and foster the lives, creative identities, and artistic ambitions of people who are, or have been, affected by homelessness.   The book offers critically informed analysis of the artists,... Read more

Introduction: Homelessness in Performance, Art, and Society

1 Identity, Agency, and Complexity: Performing the Homeless Experience

2 Crafting Communities and Dramaturgies of Care in the Work of Arts & Homelessness International and Museum of Homelessness

3 Social Enterprise, Homelessness, and Neoliberal Logics: Accumulate and Café Art

4 Homeless Deaths: The Politics and Performance of Remembrance and Affect

A Final Word: On Solidarity

Biography

Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She has published English Theatre and Social Abjection: A Divided Nation (2020), Joan Littlewood’s Theatre (2011), Theatre & Nation (2010), and Joan Littlewood (2006, second edition 2017) and co-authored The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre (2018).

“This book is a remarkable and key intervention within the fields of performance and homelessness studies. Holdsworth interweaves performance analysis, contemporaneous research notes, artist and participant interviews, and secondary research expertly. This mixed-method approach allows her to analyse the relationship between various types of performance (theatrical and otherwise) and produce vital and nuanced readings. She is able to extrapolate what could be dense secondary and theoretical material into concise, accessible and often deeply moving prose. The book’s argument that ‘various artistic modalities can offer a powerful way for the experience of homelessness to be seen, heard, and apprehended’ should be a rallying cry for artists and those working and living in the homelessness space.”

Dr Owen Clayton, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Lincoln, UK and author of Vagabonds, Tramps and Hobos: the Literature and Culture of U.S Transiency (2023)