Action Plans - Selected Performance Pieces by Action Hero

Exploring the epic and the banal, Action Hero (Emma Paintin and James Steinhouse) creates performance that is intimate, distinctive and invigorating

Their ongoing interests lie in the iconography of popular culture and its use - both as a weapon and as a shared cultural memory

The audience become co-conspirators in work which is playful yet intellectually rigorous

The distinctive and accessible aesthetic developed through their 10-year collaboration is now influencing a new generation of theatre-makers

Their work has been performed in theatres, galleries, bars and public spaces across five continents

This collection includes the pieces Hoke's Bluff, Slap Talk, Watch Me Fall, A Western, Frontman and Extraordinary Rendition

Includes an Introduction by Professor Carl Lavery, University of Glasgow.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse have been working together as Action Hero since 2005

They create events that use the audience as the co-creators of the work

They are interested in ideas that link audiences together and unify them as part of a live event, and the building of temporary communities

Limited resources have created an aesthetic of roughness and intimacy that has become central to their work

They also have a long standing obsession with America and pop culture

They have performed all across the UK and in the U.S, Brazil, China, Germany, Austria, Bosnia, Thailand, Canada, Portugal, Spain and France

REVIEWS

"See why this maverick company, with its engaging DIY aesthetic, is attracting so much attention" ~ Guardian

"It's another gorgeous book from Oberon, whose dedication to exploring the possibilities of print to do justice to their subjects is one of the joys of contemporary performance publishing and to a greater extent even than OG's All Work, it feels like an heroic extension of everything Paintin and Stenhouse have built so far" ~ Exeunt

"Hoke's Bluff is inventive, laugh out loud funny, and takes on a poignancy in its final sections that reminded me of Thorton Wilder's everyman epic Our Town ~ Time Out