Foreplay names a peculiar mode of being together and working in performance, recognized as distinctive of a group of artists operating in the 1960s New York scene, among which Ellen Stewart, John Vaccaro, Ruby Lynn Reyner, Jackie Curtis, Andy Warhol, Tom Eyen, Jack Smith, Penny Arcade. Matching an original approach to historical materials and theoretical reflection, the book addresses the peculiar forms of production, reproduction and consumption elaborated in the 1960s scene, through artistic experiments and social performances, as labors of love, creating for artists a condition of ‘preliminarity’ toward professional work, and at the same time functioning as a counterforce within productive economy, as a prelude where value is not yet conferred upon labor. The book proposes that such labors of love can be considered both as paradigmatic for contemporary forms of precarious labor, and also as marginal forms of resistance to ideas of capitalist productivity and professionalism. This book, and the idea of foreplay which stands at its core, took shape as the unlikely encounter between two lines of inquiry which have punctuated my work in the last decade, proceeding simultaneously and progressively interlocking: a historical investigation into performance history, and a theoretical inquiry into modes of performance labor in contemporary capitalism.