Pearl & Theory Make Compost (2020)

Emergency INDEX is an annual print publication documenting performances that occurred in one calendar year. Begun in 2011, INDEX was conceived as a "state of the field" publication that could present a year-to-year view of the issues, techniques, and challenges that performance makers dealt with in the work they actualized. Every year since then, INDEX has published hundreds of documents of performances made in various genres and media, for different audiences and purposes, and in a wide variety of venues, cities, and countries. Each annual volume includes three back-of-the-book indexes: an index of terms, an index of places, and an index of contributors. Taking as its starting point actual performances described by the artists who made them, INDEX proposes building your performance theory from the ground up.

INDEX is part of Ugly Duckling Presse’s Emergency series of performance-related publications, which also includes Emergency Playscripts, eclectic performance notations which highlight tensions between text and performance, as well as the forthcoming Emergency Analysis series, annual monographs on performance from theorists outside the field.

Issue 10/+, encompassing 2020-2021, is Ugly Duckling’s concluding issue before the series moves to a new home.