Abstract
This article is in two parts. The first part gives a broad outline of the ways in which Deleuze and Guattari engage with what Angela Woods has called that ‘quintessentially twentieth-century psychopathology’: schizophrenia (Woods 2011a: 48), providing a very brief exposition of their concept of schizophrenia (as distinct from its conventional clinical definitions) before moving on to address some of the problems or concerns that their celebration of ‘the schizo’ as an emancipated and emancipating figure might be understood to raise. In the second part, I explore some potential connections between these ideas and the area of theatre and performance, thinking in particular about the ethics and aesthetics of what we might name a ‘schizo-theatre’. Here, my own concern is less with explicit representations of schizophrenia, psychosis, madness or mental distress in theatre and performance. Rather, my research interests lie in the production of a Deleuzian account of theatre and performance that rethinks the nature of the performative event through largely non-representational concepts of affect, becoming, and encounter, exploring the relationship between Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of schizophrenia and performance, but also examining what relationship, if any, these might have to the wider field of mental health.