On one hand, it feels weird to have a page that says "Shop" on my website, but on the other hand, a lot of great people have given me the opportunity to have my work published and accessible to larger audiences, so it feels appropriate to help them sell their wares. The top section is work that is just mine whereas below is more work that I feature in in some way. Support independent press and independent distributors, buy for libraries, use libraries, and let me know if anything is still unavailable, unaffordable or otherwise inaccessible for you...
I’m super proud to announce that, in July 2019, my book Theatre & Cancer was published. To accompany the volume, I commissioned three pieces of writing from cancer activists, academics and artists Gia Jones, Emily Underwood-Lee and Lynn Ruth Miller. Check them out here. And the book below.
Other Publications Here:
Theatre & Cancer (Red globe Press/Macmillan Education, 2019)
This incisive and thoughtful new title in the Theatre And series confronts the difficult relationship between theatre and cancer. It explores representations of cancer in fictional worlds and autobiographical performances while also highlighting work that reimagines and reinvigorates the genre of ‘Cancer Performance’. Challenging conventional narratives which rely on the binary of tragedy versus survival, Brian Lobel argues for an alternative approach to understanding cancer in relation to theatre. Concise yet thought-provoking, this book is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre, Performance and Disability studies.
£6.99
Buy now from Macmillan
Purge (Oberon Books, 2016)
Part game show, part love story, part lecture exploring modern friendships. Purge addresses where online friendship stops and real friendship begins. In 2010, Brian discovered that his deceased ex-boyfriend and best friend, Grant, had deleted him from Friendster (a pre-Facebook networking site), which neither had checked since they stopped dating in 2006. Although they had since re-‘friended’ in life (both virtually and non-virtually), it was the discovery of this past de-friending (and impossibility to ‘reconnect’ since Grant’s death), which inspired Brian to create Purge in 2011. In 2011, Brian Lobel played a brutal game of friendship maintenance: over 5 days in cafés in both London and Kuopio, Finland, Brian gave strangers one minute to decide which of his 1300 Facebook friends to keep or delete. The deleting was real, the pace was maniacal, the results were final. 50 hours of performance, 800 emails from angry, amused and intrigued friends and over 2500 comments from people watching via live stream later, Purge is an interactive performance lecture exploring the process of, and fallout from purging and examines how we emotionally and socially interact with digital media.
£10.00
Buy Now from Oberon Books
BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer (Oberon Books, 2012 + 2015)
Unexpected, quirky and provocative, BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer is a unique collection of performances about illness and the changing body over time. Documenting a trilogy of Brian Lobel’s monologue performances from 2001-2011, this collection challenges the inspirational stories of survivors and martyrs that have come before, infusing the ‘cancer story’ with an urgency and humour which is sometimes inappropriate, often salacious and always, above all else, honest and open. Published together for the first time, this collection of performances goes beyond the chemotherapy to include reflections on politics, sexuality and gender, providing cancer – and cancer narratives – with a much-deserved kick in the ball(s).The publication features an Introduction by Brian Lobel.
￡10.00
Buy Now from Oberon Books
CANCERCANCERCANCERCANCERCANCER:
collected cancer works by Brian Lobel (DVD, 2012)
Cancer Cancer Cancer Cancer Cancer brings together 10 years of performance and live are projects by Brian Lobel made in response to, well, cancer. This double DVD set includes excerpts and full-length stage performances of the BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer trilogy as well as documenting his installations Carpe Minuta Prima and Hold My Hand and We’re Halfway There. Also included are three shorts films made as part of Fun with Cancer Patients, a project exploring how live art methodologies can document the experience of illness. Unexpected, provocative and irreverent, this collection of performances demonstrates that cancer might be more than just a horrifying malignancy ― it may just be a life’s work.
￡15.00
Buy Now from Unbound
Or Else Your Friends Will Have to Do It (limited edition publication made for Sacred Festival of Live Art)
A gentle and playful reminder about what remains behind when we’re gone. A reflection on mortality and responsibility, this limited edition performance publication explores the rituals of mourning, memory and the music that goes with it. Each publication comes complete with the instructions and tools necessary to create your own memorial through music.
£10.00
Buy Now from Brian, send email to blobelization[at]gmail
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Other Books/Publications Featuring Brian's Writing and Artwork
‘Illness and the one-to-one encounter’ (with dr. Emily underwood-lee) in the routledge companion to performance and medicine, edited by gianna bouchard and alex mermiksdes (2024)
This chapter reflects on ‘Kicking Up Our Heels’ (2019), a project co-created by myself and artist/academic Emily Underwood Lee, for GOSHArts at Great Ormond Street Hospital. GOSHArts’ first project aimed at hospital parents and carers, this work asked parents to share knowledge an best practice to their peers in new and responsive ways.
‘Preparing for and reflecting on a New Normal: TV RECOMMENDATIONs’ in Metal’s In Other Words (2020)
This small but mighty publication features the work of a ton of brilliant artists. In it, I made recommendations on what people facing COVID, and living through the 2020 lockdowns and pandemic should be watching on tv.
‘On the Fringe of the fringe: artmaking, access, rights and community’ (with Jess Thom) in The routledge Handbook on Disability arts, Culture and Media (2018)
An interview and conversation with Touretteshero founder and icon Jess Thom about her experience at the Edinburgh Fringe.
The Live Art of Sociology (Cath Lambert, 2018) - features a chapter about Fun with Cancer Patients
The Live Art of Sociology attends to the importance of ‘the live’ in contemporary social and political life. Taking existing work in live sociology as a starting point, this book considers some of its aspirations through unique empirical investigations. Queer and feminist theory and methods are also employed in exploring the challenges of researching live experiences and temporalities. With case study examples ranging from the work of live body artists to experiments in curating sociological research, Lambert successfully demonstrates the diverse ways in which art can provide the aesthetic and affective conditions for social and political disruption. By emphasising the political importance of how people, knowledges, materials, emotions and senses are configured and reconfigured, The Live Art of Sociology asserts a creative and vital role for sociology in not only representing but also generating social realities and political possibilities. Putting aesthetics at the heart of contemporary sociology and making a strong case for a renewed sociological aesthetics, this volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers and academics interested in fields such as Sociology, Cultural Studies, Art and Visual Culture, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Leisure Studies. It will also be of interest to creative practitioners.
Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing (Edited by Low & Baxter, 2017)
Features my chapter: 'Proud Disclosures and Awkward Receptions: Between bodies with cancer and their audience’
Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing is the first volume in the field to address the role that theatre, drama and performance have in relation to promoting, developing and sustaining health and wellbeing in diverse communities. Challenging concepts and understanding of health, wellbeing and illness, it offers insight into different approaches to major health issues through applied performance. With a strong emphasis on the artistry involved in performance-based health responses, situated within a history of the field of practice, the volume is divided into two sections: Part One examines some of the key questions around research and practice in applied performance in health and wellbeing, specifically addressing the different regional challenges that dominate the provision of health care and influence wellbeing: how the ageing population of the global north creates pressure on lifetime healthcare provision, while the global south is dominated by a higher birth rate and a larger population under 15 years old. Part Two comprises case studies and interviews from international practitioners that reflect the diversity of practices across the world and in particular differences between work in the northern and southern hemispheres.
A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer (Bryony Kimmings, Brian Lobel & Tom Parkinson, 2016)
A script from the original, 2016 production which played at the National Theatre in London, HOME in Manchester and Northcott in Exeter. An all-singing, all-dancing celebration of ordinary life and death. Single mum Emma confronts the highs and lows of life with a cancer diagnosis; that of her son and of the real people she encounters in the daily hospital grind. Groundbreaking performance artist Bryony Kimmings creates fearless theatre to provoke social change, looking behind the poster campaigns and pink ribbons at the experience of serious illness.
Performance and the Medical Body (Bloomsbury, edited by Gianna Bouchard & Alex Mermikides, 2016)
Features my chapter ‘Fun with Cancer Patients: the affect of cancer’
This edited collection focuses on performance practice and analysis that engages with medical and biomedical sciences. After locating the 'biologization' of theatre at the turn of the twentieth century, it examines a range of contemporary practices that respond to understandings of the human body as revealed by biomedical science. In bringing together a variety of analytical perspectives, the book draws on scholars, scientists, artists and practices that are at the forefront of current creative, scientific and academic research. Its exploration of the dynamics and exchange between performance and medicine will stimulate a widening of the debate around key issues such as subjectivity, patient narratives, identity, embodiment, agency, medical ethics, health and illness. In focusing on an interdisciplinary understanding of performance, the book examines the potential of performance and theatre to intervene in, shape, inform and extend vital debates around biomedical knowledge and practice in the contemporary moment.
Buy from Bloomsbury
D.I.Y (Do It Yourself) (Rob Daniels, 2014)
This book is written by over 30 arts practitioners and collectives. It's aim is to articulate and contextualise an ethos and practice within contemporary art called "DIY" theatre and performance. It is a text that provokes, prescribes, instructs, argues, plays, advises, promotes and describes. Its emphasis is on how theatre makers can encourage and evolve performance making by sharing their theories and practices, to help empower more artists to engage with this way of working. Critically (or theoretically) this book addresses a wide range of perspectives on "DIY" theatre and performance and identifies key axioms and dichotomies between ethos and style. Little efforts like this to catalyse and advocate an alternative community and new ways of making theatre and performance are always a good thing. And this book is an effort at that. Contributors include: Accidental Collective, Action Hero, Arnolfini, Pat Ashe, Bootworks, Ira Brand, Karen Christopher, Abigail Conway, Cool Hunting, Richard Dedomenici, Dirty Market, Ella Good and Nicki Kent, fictional dogshelf, Andy Field, Forest Fringe, Gob Squad, Mamoru Iriguchi, Live Art Development Agency, Brian Lobel, Low Profile, Made in China, Milk Presents, Hannah Nicklin, Deborah Pearson, Michael Pinchbeck, Residence, Search Party, Shatter Resistant, Sleepdogs, Sleeping Trees, Sleepwalk Collective, Stans Cafe, Stoke Newington International Airport, Suitcase Royale, Theatre Bristol, Third Angel, Chris Thorpe and GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN.
Live Art Almanac 2 (Eds. Lois Keidan, CJ Mitchell and Andrew Mitchelson, 2012)
The Live Art Almanac Vol. 2 is a new collection of found writing from 2008 and 2009 about and around Live Art. It brings together texts from a variety of UK and international sources, which are representative of some of the most engaging, provocative and thoughtful writing about Live Art and its cultural landscape. Contributors: David A Bailey, Guy Brett, Gavin Butt, Helen Cole, Wesley Enoch, Andy Field, Lyn Gardner, Guillermo Gomez-Pea, Manick Govinda, Matthew Hearn, Simon Herbert, Lucas Ihlein, Bridgit Istim, Jonathan Jones, Nick Keys, Carol Kino, Caleb Kraces, Astrid Lorange, Arthur Lubow, Jason Maling, Paul Morley, Rabih Mrou̩, Lizzie Muller, Mary Paterson, Mike Pearson, Theron Schmidt, Aleks Sierz, Alistair Spalding, Julian Stallabrass, Jane Trowell, David Vaughan, David Williams (Australia), David Williams (UK), Aaron Williamson. Facebook updates throughout the Almanac have been taken from Richard DeDominici, Brian Lobel and Kira O'Reilly's walls.
Access All Areas: Live Art & Disability (2012)
Access All Areas is a combination of artists' writings, creative dialogues, critical commentaries and DVDs featuring documentation of artists' presentations and performances spanning 20 years, which reflect the ways in which Live Art has represented issues of disability in inventive and radical ways. This 200 page publication and double DVD set has been developed from the groundbreaking Access All Areas public programme of performances, screenings and talks produced by the Agency in March 2011. Featured artists and writers include Jon Adams, Katherine Araniello, Ron Athey, Back to Back Theatre, Bobby Baker, Caroline Bowditch and Luke Pell, sean burn, The Disabled Avant-Garde, Pete Edwards, Extant, Mat Fraser, 15mm Films, Lyn Gardner, Girl Jonah, Tony Heaton, Raimund Hoghe, David Hoyle, Noemi Lakmaier, Brian Lobel, Catherine Long, Rita Marcalo, Alan McLean and Tony Mustoe, Kim Noble, Martin O'Brien, Sinead O'Donnell, Maria Oshodi, Mary Paterson, Aine Phillips, Juliet Robson, Sheree Rose, Rajni Shah and Aaron Williamson.
Special issue of Performing Ethos: An International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance (edited Collection on one-to-one practice, edited by Eirini Kartsaki, Brian Lobel and Rachel Zerihan, 2012)
Features: 'Generous Gestures and Frustrated Acts: Ethics in one-to-one Performance' Eirini Kartsaki And Rachel Zerihan And Brian Lobel
'Reflections on Intimacy and Narcissism in Ontroerend Goed’s Personal Trilogy;' Adam Alston
'The Libido-Maker’s Apprentice: Working the Window’s Proscenium', Alison Matthews
'You, Hope, Her & Me: Liminoid Invitations and Liminoid Acts', Joanna Bucknall
'Slots, Slaps, Sluts and Other Cheap Thrills: Promiscuity, Desire and Labour in one-to-one Performance', Eirini Kartsaki and Rachel Zerihan
'The Kindness of Strangers: An Interview with Adrian Howells', Dominic Johnson
'The Morning After: A Roundtable Discussion with Cruising for Art with Brian Lobel & Performers R Justin Hunt, Owen Parry, Hannah Jones, Rachel Dobbs, Luke Pell and Catherine Hoffman
'Fee for Service', Jess Dobkin
'Sexist and Racist People Go to the Theatre Too', Tania El Khoury
'Working notes on the end of Capitalism and Performing in Couples', Gary Anderson a Lena Simic
'Getting Intimate in India: Care and Presence', Adam J. Ledger
'Confront the Cunt: A 1 on 1 Interactive Performance Installation (for Gay Men)', Ursula Martinez