groupings not only shows Shepard's command of the politics of play, but also exemplifies how much playful political action one encounters in almost any movement.Shepard's concluding chapter presents an assessment of the strengths and weakness of play in the context of social movements. He argues that play is strongest when it invigorates, builds culture, centralizes pleasure, cultivates humor, and invites joy to fight in the struggle. Most savvy activists already understand this and often deploy it effectively. However, Shepard attempts to explain why this is. He concludes that if the whole world is a stage, as Shakespeare denounced, then play is an invitation to grab a costume and communicate new forms of social arrangements, confronting power relations while wearing a hat and a smile.Finally, Shepard cautions us with a discussion of the potential weaknesses of play, suggesting that play can be stale, easily misunderstood, dismissed as entertainment, or at worse become fetishized. This last warning is important, since it points to strategic thinking and away from ideological or ontological understandings of what constitutes play. I read his suggestion as a warning that play is not an end in itself, but that it exists within the larger framework of power. The role of political play, then, is to make power visible. This visibility can at times result, if not in conflict, in forms of strong disagreements. These, of course, can be resolved peacefully. However, some conflicts are more difficult and require other strategies.At the end, Shepard convincingly argues that play is key in social movement work and in the politics of social transformation. This alone makes the book worth reading and referencing. Shepard also provides important theoretical developments that help us be more mindful about comedy and drama within the political realm of resistance. However, I am left to ponder the relations between play and anger, between conflict and joy. That is, Shepard does not fully answer the strategy question of when we deploy one tactic vs. another, of when we (collectively) should invoke the absurd and the surreal or when we should shy away from it. In what moments does laughter work better than anger, or vice versa? However, these questions are better asked of another book, since the questions are beyond the good work presented in Play, Creativity, and Social Movements.