This dissertation, “Performing Exposure: Race, Empire, and Minoritarian Performance in the 21st Century,” investigates contemporary immersive and participatory theatre; this work has been recognized by the 2024 Helen Krich Chinoy Fellowship at the American Society for Theatre Research, and has led to a performance review in Ecumenica. I analyze minoritarian theatrical works that animate racial performativity through a trend I theorize as “exposure.” Case studies include Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview (2018, New York), The Walk’s Little Amal (2023, Philadelphia and San Diego), Fix + Foxy’s Dark Noon (2024, Brooklyn), and Basel Zaraa’s Dear Laila (2025, Portland). In dialogue with these case studies, I ask: how do these participatory works produce a new social contract (Rancière) for minoritarian subjects? My methods include ethnographic fieldwork (including artist interviews and documentation of live performance); archival engagement with performance reviews and performance ephemera; and a survey of production histories. Crucially, this work archives the response of global artists (including artists from the U.S., U.K., Palestine, and South Africa) turning to performance, and to “exposure,” to disrupt normative, hegemonic ways of viewing and being in the world by aesthetically revealing racial, colonial, and imperialist forces.