This book engages with the relationship between ruins, dilapidation, and
abandonment and cultural events performed within such spaces. Following
the author's fieldwork in the UK, Bosnia Herzegovina, Poland, Germany,
Greece, and Sicily, chapters describe, investigate, and reflect upon
live performance events which have taken place in sites of decay and
abandonment. The book's main focus is upon modern economic ruins and
ruins of warfare. Each chapter provides several case studies based upon
the author's own site visits and interviews with actors, directors,
producers, curators, writers, and other artists. The book contextualises
these events within the wider framework of Ruin Studies and provides
brief summaries of how we might understand the ruin in terms of time,
politics, culture, and atmospheres. The book is particularly preoccupied
with artists' reasons and motivations for placing performance events in
ruined spaces and how these work dramaturgically.