A Critical Exploration of Protest Culture in the Performing Arts

Protest culture in the performing arts constitutes an artistic and civic response to injustice, failed governance, social exclusion, and abuse of power, among other social anomalies. It is a long-standing practice that transforms creative expression into activism. Studies on the art of protest in performing arts often emphasise historical examples of resistance but give limited attention to how performance elements such as voice, body, rhythm, space, costume, music, and audience participation produce dissent. This study reassesses the political value of protest performance and identifies the artistic strategies through which it confronts sociopolitical abnormalities. The study adopts a qualitative research design, and is carried out through a performance analysis of purposively selected theatrical and musical protest forms. It draws theoretical insights from Richard Schechner’s Performance Theory and Jacques Rancière’s Politics of Aesthetics, especially his notion of ‘the distribution of the sensible’ to explain how artistic performances create spaces for political visibility and resistance, and how protest performances disrupt dominant social arrangements by amplifying marginalised voices and challenging overriding narratives. Finding reveals that protest performance exposes injustice, preserves social memory, mobilises civic consciousness, and challenges established hierarchies of visibility and voice. This positions the performing arts as active instruments of social engagement and reconstruction beyond entertainment. The study concludes that protest performance remains vital to democratic renewal, ethical awareness, and social transformation.

Protest culture in performing arts, Sociopolitical tension and resistance

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