The role of performance in ontological security seeking is underdeveloped, despite the fact that many elements of such behaviour – narratives, rituals, routinised meetings – carry a distinctive performative quality. Drawing on Butlerian performance theory, this article makes the case that performances are essential to re-establishing coherence and a sense of self following ontologically critical situations. The reproduction of the self, especially while directly addressing fundamental existential questions, is an important way to overcome critical situations. At the state level, this reproduction of self also includes a reproduction of the international system, a task which is best enacted in everyday diplomatic practice. To explore this theory, I use Brexit as an illustrative case study. Brexit was a moment of profound crisis for the United Kingdom (UK) and an ontologically critical situation. It forced the UK to reposition itself on the world stage and confront significant challenges to its self-understanding. In Westminster, these efforts centred on ‘Global Britain’ – a narrative shift that bridged the identity gap and provided a thin framework for foreign policy. At the same time, British diplomats were tasked with international realignment post-Brexit. In this way, everyday diplomatic practice became Brexit performances.

Like many modernist engagements with the theme of outsider identity, Alexander Zemlinsky's 1921 opera Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) finds its dramatic nexus in the disabled body. In opera, such bodies are not only (historically) texted but also (presently) performed, with modern stagings offering a form of mediation between the historical and contemporary. With reference to two productions of Der Zwerg, this article unpicks aspects of the representation and performance of disability on the operatic stage. I first explore disability's simultaneous exaggeration and disappearance as a result of the problematic practice of ‘disability mimicry’. The effects of this practice and its proximity to issues of authenticity and embodiment are only made more tangible in the context of live performance, where attempts to embody disability's physicality are often sensationalised and unconvincing at best. However, disability can be, and is, represented in myriad ways. While disability mimicry can engender modes of perceiving disability from a voyeuristic perspective, these productions in fact make use of processes of ‘enfreakment’ to present disability through modes of theatrical production and aesthetic choice. This raises pertinent questions about why and by what means the disabled body is mobilised (or not) on the operatic stage, highlighting, moreover, disability's tendency to indicate meaning in registers beyond the body.