The fifth issue of Music and Arts in Action (MAiA) (marking the third year of publication) is now online, The articles in this issue address varied fields of performance: opera, rock music, and engaged theatre. Taken together, these pieces look in detail at how individual performers, prop-makers, directors, playwrights, composers, and others work interactively with aesthetic materials (e.g., scripts, lights, bodies, musical scores and instruments, etc.) to carefully design and carry out a ‘successful’ performance (both in terms of achieving a set aim of audience impact, as well as seamlessly integrating performer and performance). 

Paul Atkinson explores the mundane work required to assemble an opera production from a variety of physical artefacts in Making Opera Work: Bricolage and the Management of Dramaturgy. Women Rockers and the Strategies of a Minority Position by Adele Keala Fournet discusses the results of a recent ethnographic study of female rock instrumentalists in Tampa, Florida. This issue also has two articles on the practical use of theatre. Swati Pal investigates agit prop theatre, or theatrical performance with a political end in her article Theatre and Activism: The Agit Prop Theatre Way. Similarly, Plague and the Moonflower: A Regional Community Celebrates the Environment by David John Curtis evaluates the role of aesthetic devices in engendering community awareness through a large-scale music performance event. You can read the issue in full here.