Pinchbeck, M., Edelman, J., 2027.

The Performativity of Citizenship: Enacting Civic Identity in Public Life

This chapter explores how immersive, arts-led practices enable the performative enactment of citizenship, drawing on Granny Jackson's Dead, a collaborative research and theatre project developed by Manchester Metropolitan University and Big Telly Theatre Company. Positioned at the intersection of performance, technology, and public deliberation, the project offers a rich case through which to examine how civic identity is not simply held but actively performed through participation, dialogue, and embodied experience.

Granny Jackson's Dead situates audiences within the familiar yet emotionally charged setting of an Irish wake, reimagined through immersive theatre and digital technologies. Participants move through a shared ritual space where traditional practices of mourning intersect with emerging "grief tech" such as virtual reality, AI, and digital memorialisation. This blurring of cultural ritual and technological speculation produces a "temporary public" in which individuals collectively confront ethical, social, and emotional questions about memory, loss, and technological mediation. [performanc....mmu.ac.uk], [causewaych...icle.co.uk] [performanc....mmu.ac.uk]

Within this framework, citizenship emerges not as a static legal status but as a dynamic and relational performance. Audience members are invited to co-create meaning, deliberate on contested issues, and negotiate their own positions in relation to others. The project foregrounds arts-led dialogue as a methodological intervention, demonstrating how immersive performance can foster inclusive, participatory spaces for public reasoning and shared sense-making. In doing so, it highlights how civic identity is enacted through acts of witnessing, storytelling, and affective engagement rather than solely through formal political structures. [culturalvalue.org.uk]

The paper argues that such performative environments enable a mode of "lived citizenship" grounded in affect, embodiment, and co-presence. By engaging audiences in scenarios that are at once intimate and socially consequential, Granny Jackson's Dead reveals how civic agency can be activated through ritualised interaction and creative encounter. These spaces encourage participants to grapple with ambiguity, disagreement, and ethical tension, foregrounding citizenship as an ongoing, negotiated practice rather than a fixed category.

Ultimately, this analysis contributes to broader debates around civic engagement, cultural value, and the role of the arts in democratic life. It proposes that immersive theatre can function as a critical civic infrastructure--one that enables individuals to rehearse, contest, and reimagine their roles as citizens. In an era of rapid technological change and shifting public discourse, such performative approaches offer vital opportunities to cultivate reflective, dialogic, and participatory forms of public life.