Theatre & Festivals rethinks the common wisdom that festivals, sites of collective celebration and play, provides a temporary reprieve from the grind of everyday life. The book explores the ways in which cultural performances of resistance that have their basis in festivals can migrate to other contexts, making festivals as much the domain of free markets and state power as that of vanguard artists and progressive social movements. I bring classical theoretical texts on festivals into conversation with a cross-section of examples in a variety of geographic locations. The book shows how artists are chartering new curatorial practices at festivals, how spectators are engaging in novel modes of itinerancy and intimacy through performance, and how activists are reconfiguring festival spaces through their political actions.