Ken and I are in the advance party. We arrived in Chicago late Saturday evening and are staying, together with Tami Spry, as guests of Soyini Madison. Soyini is professor of performance studies at Northwestern and lives on the ‘south side’, in Hyde Park, where Barack Obama used to live until his minor promotion 18 months ago. Our cab driver proudly pointed out Obama’s old house and we’re going to get breakfast this morning at his (Obama’s, not the cab driver’s) favourite breakfast haunt.

Soyini and Tami will both be at the conference. Awake before the others I’ve just been looking at Soyini’s beautiful new book, Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance, drawing on her field work in Ghana, about how performance forms part of everyday struggles for human rights and social justice. She comes to London regularly. Perhaps she can be persuaded to take a short trip or two westward….

Blues club last night – the Checkerboard Lounge. http://www.centerstagechicago.com/music/clubs/checkerboard-lounge.html

Theatre later today (after Obama breakfast). How cultural are we?

The Bristol posse arrive tomorrow.