L. M. Bogad is a Guggenheim Fellow, author, performance artist/activist, educator, Director of the Center for Tactical Performance, and co-founder of the Clown Army. He has performed across the United States, Europe, and South America, from SF MOMA, the Whitney Museum, Yerba Buena Arts Center, and the Mattress Factory to occupied zones and a squatted military base in Barcelona. He has led Tactical Performance workshops around the world, including in Cairo during the first month of the Egyptian Revolution. He was the Art and Controversy Fellow and Distinguished Lecturer on Performance and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University, Humanities and Political Conflict Fellow at Arizona State University, Arts and Publics Fellow at Northwestern University, and Charlotte Newcombe Fellow for the Institute for Scholars and Citizens.

Bogad has performed and led “tactical performance” workshops in twenty countries on five continents. His performances have covered topics such as the Egyptian revolution, the struggles of indigenous immigrant farmworkers in the United States, George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War, climate disaster, the Haymarket Square Riot, the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities, and the Pinochet coup in Chile, and have received grant support from the California Arts Council, San Francisco Foundation, Creative Work Fund, Puffin Fund, Network of Ensemble Theatres, Bay Area Theatre Artists Fund, U.C. Institute for Research in the Arts, the British Academy and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. His Economusic: Keeping Score, has been performed in NYC at the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, and at festivals in Helsinki, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, at SF MOMA, and Barcelona. His play, Cointelshow: A Patriot Act, was published by PM Press and performed at the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Studio and in New Orleans for ArtSpot Productions. The Mondo Bizarro production of this piece was coproduced by Emerson Arts.

Bogad’s first book, Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements, analyzes the international campaigns of performance artists who run for public office as a radical prank. That booka and his many articles on political performance are used in college classes internationally. His second book, Tactical Performance: On the Theory and Practice of Serious Play, analyzes and critiques the use of guerrilla theatre/art for human/civil rights, social justice, labor, and environmental campaigns. His third book, Performing Truth: Works of Radical Memory for Times of Social Amnesia is a collection of his scripts from the last twenty years, with commentary by an international group of scholars and artists.  He also wrote and produced a documentary, Radical Ridicule: Serious Play and the Republican National Convention.

Bogad has led Tactical Performance workshops, helping activists create performative, nonviolent images to contest and critique power, in revolutionary Cairo, Barcelona, Riga, Helsinki, Reykyavik, Buenos Aires, Trondheim, across the USA and Europe, and for the Center for Victims of Torture. He has been a commentator on political performance on Michael Krasny’s “Forum,” Air America, NPR, Pacifica, Peace Radio, and many other radio stations and programs.

Books by L.M. Bogad:

Performing Truth: Works of Radical Memory for Times of Social Amnesia, which you can purchase here.

Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play, which you can purchase here.

Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements (updated and expanded second edition) which you can purchase here.

Cointelshow: A Patriot Act (a darkly satirical, $5 play about COINTELPRO), which you can purchase here.

See L.M. Bogad’s website for complete information on his publications, performances, workshops, and more.