Brian Lobel

This incisive and thoughtful new title in the Theatre And series confronts the difficult relationship between theatre and cancer. It explores representations of cancer in fictional worlds and autobiographical performances while also highlighting work that reimagines and reinvigorates the genre of ‘Cancer Performance’. Challenging conventional narratives which rely on the binary of tragedy versus survival, Brian Lobel argues for an alternative approach to understanding cancer in relation to theatre. Concise yet thought-provoking, this book is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre, performance and disability studies.

An all-singing, all-dancing celebration of ordinary life and death. Single mum Emma confronts the highs and lows of life with a cancer diagnosis; that of her son and of the real people she encounters in the daily hospital grind. Groundbreaking performance artist Bryony Kimmings creates fearless theatre to provoke social change, looking behind the poster campaigns and pink ribbons at the experience of serious illness.

Part game show, part love story, part lecture exploring modern friendships. Purge addresses where online friendship stops and real friendship begins. In 2010, Brian discovered that his deceased ex-boyfriend and best friend, Grant, had deleted him from Friendster (a pre-Facebook networking site), which neither had checked since they stopped dating in 2006. Although they had since re-‘friended’ in life (both virtually and non-virtually), it was the discovery of this past de-friending (and impossibility to ‘reconnect’ since Grant’s death), which inspired Brian to create Purge in 2011. In 2011, Brian Lobel played a brutal game of friendship maintenance: over 5 days in cafés in both London and Kuopio, Finland, Brian gave strangers one minute to decide which of his 1300 Facebook friends to keep or delete. The deleting was real, the pace was maniacal, the results were final. 50 hours of performance, 800 emails from angry, amused and intrigued friends and over 2500 comments from people watching via live stream later, Purge is an interactive performance lecture exploring the process of, and fallout from purging and examines how we emotionally and socially interact with digital media.

Unexpected, quirky and provocative, BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer is a unique collection of performances about illness and the changing body over time. Documenting a trilogy of Brian Lobel’s monologue performances from 2001-2011, this collection challenges the inspirational stories of survivors and martyrs that have come before, infusing the ‘cancer story’ with an urgency and humour which is sometimes inappropriate, often salacious and always, above all else, honest and open. Published together for the first time, this collection of performances goes beyond the chemotherapy to include reflections on politics, sexuality and gender, providing cancer – and cancer narratives – with a much-deserved kick in the ball(s).