While last week we focused on political theories in the abstract, the writings this week had to do with conceptions of politics within and through performance. I was drawn to Boal’s work in breaking down the numbing of contemporary audiences through Aristotelian structures of “coercion” which built upon Brecht’s disavowal of the entertainment of theatre. Through these structures, performance is a practice, rehearsal, or training ground for the “real” political sphere, a place where we are able to think critically about and try-out new strategies of disrupting economic realities and distributions. However, for both, the performance while it is political is not necessarily politics. In the Taylor text, we are introduced to a more nuanced definition of performance where art provides “a means of intervention into the political (which she cannot control) by using her body, her imagination, her training, self-discipline,” (116) and that “large or small, visible or invisible, performances create change” (10). Here, the performance is more than a practice round for the political sphere, it is the sphere in its ability to change and transform people. These works continue to make me think about the power of performance and the affect it creates, and how these tools are used in the political. When we break down the barrier and view politics and performance as the same thing, how does this help us reflect on and and analyze transformational claims (perhaps, “truths”?) being formed in either methods?