Theaster Gates doesn’t use the word activism. “I grew up thinking that my politics would be more in my hand and in my body and in labor,” he said. This month the Walker presents an exhilarating work by Marc Bamuthi Joseph that features Gates’ sets and addresses environmental justice. He and Bamuthi recently discussed the project and the question, “Is my hand needed more in this situation, or my voice?”

Becca Blackwell has performed nude before, but it “feels different” doing it in Untitled Feminist Show, which debuted at the Walker before heading to NYC. “I have no props or words to draw attention away from the loadedness of my junk while I’m trying to be myself.”

Given the tumult in the Middle East, it’s no surprise that Lebanese theater-maker and visual artist Rabih Mroué is interested in revolution. But he doesn’t see his work as activism. Eschewing the term “political theater,” he says, “If there’s a revolution, it’s revolution against myself, to provoke myself.”

“The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist—that it’s a godlike thing,” says Laurie Anderson. “You are the ultimate authority. There is no other ultimate authority.”

Activist, artist, and performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph can add another title to his CV: director of performing arts at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Bamuthi brings his red, black and GREEN: a blues to the Walker in March.

It’s interesting “to think that still, in this country, one can slip through cracks, one can vanish. For me it was a kind of sign in a positive way,” says Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué, who presents Looking for a Missing Employee at the Walker next weekend.

The six performers onstage in Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show could scarcely be more exposed. In a move to “de-objectify the performers,” all actors wear no clothing or makeup. But beyond that, they work without a script, without dialogue. In a recent interview, Lee discusses these choices as well as her strategy of building each show as “a trap” for audiences.

How does the Walker’s Out There series reflect or reject broader performing arts currents in the Unites States and around the globe? Walker staff writer Julie Caniglia tests the waters surrounding the quartet of theatrical freethinkers appearing at this 24th annual festival of adventurous performance.

“Approachable and avant-garde,” performing artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph is one of the year’s best artists, writes hip hop artist Guante, who praises Bamuthi’s skill in using “art as an entry point to engage in real, sustainable community activism.”