When he started to write The Performer, says Richard Sennett, “a cluster of demagogues had come to dominate the public realm”. Figures such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are skilled at “malign performances” that draw on a wide range of theatrical devices and materials. To which, however, the best response is not to abhor their techniques – to try to fight them only with cold correctness – but for “art-making” to “push back” in equally compelling ways. Performance, he believes, and the emotions it arouses, are fundamental to being human.
Ever since he published The Fall of Public Man in 1977, Sennett has described with unique insight and intelligence the ways that human bodies and actions interact with the cities and buildings that they inhabit. Now aged 81, he plans to complete a trilogy, “if I live long enough”, on the “presence of art in society”, with essays on narrating and picturing to follow. In The Performer he brings particular experience to the subject, as he himself trained as a professional musician – a cellist – at the Juilliard School in New York. A career-ending hand injury and a botched operation to mend it caused him to pursue an academic career in sociology.
