Editorial

It is no secret that discussions of undercover practice tend to veer towards topics like police work, spies, saboteurs, disguises and all things dubious and manipulative. Perhaps this is because history (both known and unknown) is littered with examples of such practices and because such practices are often glorified in national and cultural myths. Indeed, instances of undercover practices are interwoven with the religious/spiritual narratives, fables and folktales that provide the cultural and political frames to our knowledge of historical events. What is curious about such representations, however, is that even with a history that dates to times prior to antiquity, the term undercover really only came into use in the last 200 years and specifically with respect to secret operations, only in the last 100 years. In many respects, this linguistic history speaks to an evolution (both in theory and practice) in what undercover practices mean in academic discourse and in common parlance. Just as undercover work reinvents itself, so too does the term. And so too does the repeated need to uncover, to rediscover and to explicate what undercover means as a concept and as a practice.

This issue of Performance Research focuses on this need to uncover and rediscover the multiple engagements, acts, operations, performances, and, not least of all, the theatre practices that are undercover. Our conceptualization of the theme of undercover performance came from an interest in the clandestine realms of the state —namely espionage and surveillance. Classifying such undercover practices as forms of theatre and performance required little stretch of the imagination. They fall within the ideas of ‘dark play’ suggested by Richard Schechner, ‘performing ground’ theorized by Laura Levin and ‘not–not’ identities proposed by Sarah K. Schneider. Yet we also recognized the limitations that arose when undercover is only viewed within a government/military framing. So we made efforts to cast our net wider. This issue of Performance Research is the result.

EXPANDING UNDER COVER PRACTICE

We expanded our line of enquiry, allowing the concept of undercover practices to evolve in ways that we had not seen ourselves. We looked towards scholarship that addresses the ideas of passing, or what Randall Kennedy suggests is ‘a deception that enables a person to adopt specific roles or identities from which he or she would otherwise be barred by prevailing social standards’ (2003: 283) and deception, or what Thomas L. Carson explains is an instance where ‘the deceiver believes what [they] cause the other person(s) to believe is false’ (2010: 48). We also felt that we needed to recognize the role that secrecy plays within undercover practices, a term that Sissela Bok would define as ‘intentional concealment’ (1984: 9). Not only is secrecy a reinforcement of the planned elements of deception, but also an indication that in undercover theatre and performance practices there are ethical and moral pitfalls that must be negotiated.

With these perspectives in mind, we quickly recognized that manifestations of covert and clandestine performance are multitudinous. Cover stories and secrecy are merely two aspects of covert and undercover practices. Indeed, instances of professional theatre practice also stray into the realm of undercover work. The Belarus Free Theatre, Augusto Boal’s ‘Invisible Theatre’ and personal performance in lifethreatening situations all contain elements of performance work that may take place undercover. Consequently, we encouraged topics that expanded our understanding of undercover performance and of theatrical practices that are hidden and operate under a guise.

Perhaps it goes without saying that with much undercover practice there is also risk, and often that risk amounts simply to the risk of being caught and of the consequences of being caught. Such risks confront the scholar with an ethical dilemma. Some performers of undercover work arguably deserve to be found out and have their performative shells stripped away— like the secret machinations hidden beneath the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, for example. For others, undercover practices are acts of survival, and we would be loath to out members of the gay community, to cite a contrasting example, who love covertly to avoid persecution and violence from a bigoted society. The gay community is not unique in this regard. Many undercover practices are in fact acts of resistance against oppressive entities. With the rise in authoritarianism around the world in the last several years, such undercover practices—ones of day-to-day survival, struggle, and speaking truth to power—are all the more important. Because of these ongoing risks, we were and are limited in what we can ethically reveal. And we hope that in the future some instances of undercover work can be shared openly because the hidden acts of resistance have succeeded and are no longer necessary.

A SERIES OF UNDER COVER ACTIVITIES

What follows here are essays that collectively address four fundamental questions. How does society understand covert, clandestine and undercover operations? Where do theatre and performance intersect with undercover practices? Which theatre and performance methodologies might help us better understand these areas of work? And which histories, performances and projects remain secret and unknown? Each contributor addresses these questions in some way or another. The result, we believe, is a broader and more nuanced sense of how the notion of undercover fits within the larger discourse of theatre and performance studies and related disciplines today. We see this not only in the range of case studies that this issue includes but also in the range of the critical strategies that our contributors have employed in their individual essays.

In the first pairing the essays are aligned by the engagement of paranoia, suspicion and control, along with the ability to survive. Johanna Braun’s essay brings us under the covers in her analysis of hysteria. Her dreamlike writing captures both the ambience and milieu of the bedroom while simultaneously tackling the performance aspects of hysteria and madness, most especially as they relate to the female body and identity. Braun’s essay opens the collection by pointing distinctly at a new direction for the notion of undercover practices. The second essay of the collection, by Q-mars Haeri, reframes topics of paranoia, suspicion and control with respect to theatrical productions. Haeri tackles the complexities of censorship practices in contemporary settings and details hidden strategies that artists employ to both circumvent and adhere to censorship policy. Gesturing to the wave of autocratic approaches to governance flooding the world, Haeri’s work looks at the performative acts of power reproduction in such censorship, and gives artists and others hope for survival.

The second grouping has the theme of shifting identities. Fraser Stevens’s essay interrogates power reproduction through the mechanisms of espionage and does so by employing the case study of Mata Hari, her navigation of four identities and her ultimate execution. Stevens argues that theatre and performance is a lens through which to view the dialectic of success and failure interwoven into espionage. He ultimately aligns the espionage practice with those of Performance Theatre and Postmodern Theatre. In the essay written by Željana Tunić and Snežana Stanković the act of hiding in plain sight and the issue of documentation are at the forefront. Focusing on the post-Yugoslavian civil war period, they work through the acts of camouflage that Radovan Karadžić undertook to evade capture and trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, along with his role as performer and storyteller. Addressing liminal realities governed by both the real and unreal, Tunic and Stankovic then turn to the play Srebrenica. When we the murdered rise. A liturgy by Serbian playwright and theatre director Zlatko Paković to address how these concepts manifest in post-Yugoslav societies.

The middle portion of the collection, written by Sara Brady, Adela M. Karsznia and Isabel Stowell-Kaplan, engages the covert in domesticity and quotidian existence. Using the story of Cynthia and Richard Murphy (Lidiya Guryeva and Vladimir Guryev), who were a part of the Russian illegals programme, Brady tackles the everyday life of deep-cover agents, and the blurring that arises from such committed living. She uncovers how these incomplete but successful transformations employ a mixture of real and unreal biographical information to hide in plain sight. In Adela M. Karsznia’s essay, we are provided an analysis, not of infiltration but of survival. She examines forms of strategic passing in the Alltagsgeschichte, or microhistories, of those surviving the Polish ghetto and beyond in World War II. Such analysis provides insight into these adaptive public performance practices by looking from below—an alternative to more common overarching historiographic analysis undertaken in scholarship. Isabel Stowell-Kaplan’s essay takes quotidian undercover performance in yet another direction. Neither deep-cover nor survival, her essay sheds light on the use of disguise in day-to-day work by the Metropolitan Police—use that is both conspicuously inconspicuous as well as dramatic. The essay then turns to theatrical practices inherent to these efforts, and how they are epitomized and retold in mid–late nineteenth century detective dramas, in turn identifying the social consequences of such practice.

Stage-actors and the shifting of identities of performance are the themes of the fourth pairing. They are examined through historical case-studies. Sophie Doutreligne documents the excluded history of Emmy Hennings’s Three Dada Dances and Sophie Taeuber’s Abstract Dances within the framework of masquerade and masking. The concept of masquerade, as Doutreligne identifies, provides a feminist intervention into the research of hidden and disguised practices. This is particularly salient given the challenges and discrimination that both Hennings and Taeuber experienced in their artistic work. Moreover, a feminist conceptualization of artistic practices that is tied to anonymity broadens the scope for analyzing other forms of performance that aid in hiding identity. In another historical case study, James M. Harding’s essay engages the issues of truth, authenticity and deception as overlapped in the Portland Spy Ring case. He considers how such concepts are foundational to the notion of modernism and modern aesthetics. Harding contrasts these suppositions with Gordon Lonsdale’s memoire, Spy: Twenty years in Soviet Secret service, Hugh Whitemore’s play A Pack of Lies and Peter Wright’s book Spy Catcher giving due consideration to the roles that conviction, motivation and ideology play within both spywork and the state.

The last grouping of essays in the journal engages the topics of hidden work and the work of hiding. Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay explores the archive of the Turkish ultranationalist politician, medical doctor, historian, translator, poet, essayist, memoirist and playwright Rıza Nur. Altınay teases apart accusations of espionage and sexual impropriety made against Nur. Through a fascinating lens of queerness, Altınay reveals the archive and historiographic analysis to be within the realm of performance praxis. Moreover, his case study uncovers materials that challenge utopian conceptualizations of queer performance. Altınay’s work ultimately provides new insights into Turkish theatre and performance history against a backdrop of contemporary Turkish politics. The final essay by Natalie Doonan engages the performance of undercover work by going into the field, literally. Her essay documents an exploration of the camouflage practices associated with duck and goose hunting via an auto-ethnographic/ sensory-ethnographic narrative. Doonan explores mimesis, bodily performance and food-oriented practices, while also challenging prevailing naïve assumptions of the urban–rural divide, which is decidedly at the forefront of her experiences. As it was with her hunting experience, she guides us through a complex and rich performance practice to a deliciously descriptive ending.

UNDER COVER ARTISTR Y AND OPACITY

The collection of articles within or under the cover of this special issue has been arranged in a manner that showcases the diversity of undercover topics, while strategically placing articles that tackle similar topics in dialogue. Punctuating the groupings of essays are artist pages. Some follow a more traditional format of an essay-like structure while others, with our encouragement, play with the print medium—a performative engagement within an, arguably, limiting mode of communication. Topics addressed in the artist pages include clandestine topics in theatrical productions, undercover practices in arts installations, the hidden lives and practices of healthcare professionals and the intersections of ecology, trauma and archives.

As the journal collection illustrates, undercover performance practices are profoundly diverse. They range from the work of clandestine affairs to personal domiciles to the rivers of major metropolitan centres. Undercover work can reinforce power structures, appropriate artistic practice, provide hope, enable survival and even bring food to the dinner table. Against a backdrop of a world seemingly in increasing conflict, an understanding of how theatre and performance is found in undercover practices and its associated endeavours provides some clarity on what often seem to be opaque realities. Obviously, in such a short space we have not been able to cover everything, but we hope that this collection will encourage subsequent scholars to seek out and uncover more material on undercover performances.