Democracy & the ancient art of working an audience

BRLSI’s Democracy Under Threat series invites you to pause and take stock by surveying the wealth of history and political thinking which underpins our long-held democratic systems and institutions. It explores the laying down of democratic principles from Ancient Athens to the present day, and takes in current scenarios in international geopolitics, while considering Britain as its own small island with its own set of political traditions.

An upcoming talk in the series asks if performative politics is really such a bad thing? Democracy rests on public persuasion, says David Wiles, and persuasion (aka ‘rhetoric’) rests on technique. Democracy and theatre emerged together in Athens as twin arts of public speaking.  The French revolutionaries embraced oratory in the late 18th century, but the American founding fathers were ambivalent – they were wary about ‘democracy’, and could not define ‘the people’. Why do we worry about ‘performative’ politics, and ‘populists’ who construct an image of ‘the people and why have we driven performance from our educational system, and let social media rob us of a public sphere where people listen as well as orate? Could it possibly be that ancient issues have come home to roost?

David Wiles is a theatre historian who has worked extensively in the fields of Greek and Elizabethan theatre.  He spent most of his career teaching at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is now the Emeritus Professor of Drama, University of Exeter. Recent books include Theatre and Citizenship (2011) and Democracy, Theatre & Performance (2024), both published by Cambridge University Press. He was lead editor of The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History (2013)

A discount of 20% is on offer to all those purchasing five tickets or more from the series, excluding the conference on the 4th of July.

Image: “Give me liberty or give me death! Patrick Henry giving his great speech on the Rights of the Colonies, before the Virginia Assembly… concluding with the above statement which became the war cry of the Revolution.”

To learn more about Democracy Under Threat and the exciting range of speakers coming up as part of the programme, don’t forget to follow our Democracy Under Threat Webpage: https://www.brlsi.org/democracyunderthreat/