Exercises for Rebel Artists：Radical Performance Pedagogy

In Exercises for Rebel Artists, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes use their extensive teaching and performance experience with La Pocha Nostra to help students and practitioners to create ‘border art’.
Designed to take readers right into the heart of radical performance, the authors use a series of crucial practical exercises, honed in workshops worldwide, to help create challenging theatre which transcends the boundaries of nation, gender, and racial identity.
The book features:



Detailed exercises for using Pocha Nostra methods in workshops


Inspirational approaches for anyone creating, producing or teaching radical performance


A step-by-step guide for large-scale group performance


New, unpublished photos of the Pocha Nostra method in practice


Exercises for Rebel Artists advocates teaching as an important form of activism and as an extension of the performance aesthetic. It is an essential text for anyone who wants to learn how use performance to both challenge and change.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a post-Mexican performance artist, writer, activist and pedagogue. He is the author of ten books including Ethno Techno and Dangerous Border Crossers, both published by Routledge. His legendary performance pieces include "Border Brujo" (1988), "Couple in the Cage" (1992), "The Cruci-fiction project" (1994), "El Mexterminator" (1987-88) and the Mapa/Corpo series (2004–2008). He is founder of the San Francisco-based art collective La Pocha Nostra.
Roberto Sifuentes is an interdisciplinary artist and founding member of La Pocha Nostra. He has toured internationally with Gómez-Peña since 1991. As a performance pedagogue, Sifuentes has been Artistic Director of The Trinity College/La MaMa Performing Arts ProgramNYC and is currently Assistant Professor of Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Intro by Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Aims and Objectives
Preparing a Performance Workshop
Notes to the Workshop Participants
The Workshop
Performance Exercises, Rituals and Games To Cross Borders
Part One: ‘Hands On’, Physical and Perceptual Exercises
Part Two: Conceptual and Poetic Exercises
Part Three: Living Images and Exercises to Generate Performance Material
Part Four: Designing and Fleshing Out Performance Personas
Part Five: Preparing a Performance Salon
The Syllabus
Quick and Dirty Exercises
In Permanent Process Of Reinvention: A Pedagogical Travelogue
Tips for Young Live Artists
Letter from Oaxaca