Toward a Poetics of Theatre and Public Events: In the Case of Stephen Lawrence Unavailable

Looking at the murder case of Stephen Lawrence, and then at the art object made out of the event—the documentary play, The Colour of Justice—the interpenetration of performance codes and practices with “real life” demonstrates the explanatory power of performance to shape ideas, question truth claims, sway public opinion, and construct an aesthetics that might functions as an epistemology.