80 Stripped, subordinate, and structural: how does peep-box theatre interrogate the mechanics of power? Adam Purdy To be stripped is to be exposed, to be reduced to function; to be subordinate is not to be silent, but to labour under a system, to speak on behalf of the oppressed. This essay will expose the structural conditions of power revealed through peep-box theatre, focusing on how positioning a performer’s body as technical infrastructure exposes systems of subordination, labour and exoneration. Drawing on Tony Lidington’s concept of “seer-performance”, a form rooted in itinerant popular entertainment which relies on immediacy and the showman’s labouring presence to attract a wide social demographic of “punters” (Lidington, 2017:42), I will reflect on the critical motivations behind my practice-as-research methodology and the final performance of The Adventures of Andy: Royal Turned Commoner, that developed out of this approach (Skains, 2018), particularly my changing relationship with mechanisms of power and the persistence of elite immunity within contemporary spectacle. The impetus behind our peep box performance was the stark and highly relevant contrast between public outrage and elite immunity in the exile of Prince Andrew, who, despite having proven active affiliation with human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, is treated to living in “a modest cottage on the estate” (Rayner 2025). Lidington states: “popular entertainment has always been linked with popular politics” (Lidington 2017:39), a statement I wore on my sleeve as the audacity and outrage this caused provided a compelling site for performative interrogation. Plunkett’s analysis of peep-shows as “enclosed scenes viewed through lenses” (Plunkett 2015:9), offers a crucial framework for understanding how visibility is structured through anticipation and restriction rather than access or agency, resisting the notion of the peep-show as a purely visual encounter and emphasising its true speciality of narration and curiosity for the viewer as well as the surrounding crowd, in which the viewer is left “full of curiosity about what the enclosed box actually contains” (Plunkett 2015:15). Being tasked with the creation of our peepbox, I often laughed to myself about the nature of looking into a box and seeing everyday life, grey street, local bossman, nothing truly special, yet this simple ordinariness lit with a few car lights became a mechanism for control and anticipation. Framing this box as something of mystery despite being highly average imbued the meaningless with meaning, with our labour to attract an audience, embodying what Plunkett calls “a vital commercial purpose…to encourage the surrounding audience to desire their own glimpses of the mysteries inside the box” (Plunkett 2015:16). Within this ingenious system of tantalisation and reward, the body is highly visible yet subordinate, labouring to animate
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