Performance Studies
Encyclopedia
Performance studies have been growing as an academic field since the 1960s. Performance studies believe in the social act of Doing as it takes performance itself as the object of inquiry.The process of defining it becomes a practice in performance studies itself. How is it being inscribed? What does it mean or do to engage in this process of creating a wiki entry? Does it impose an ideology, an abjection frame of assumption or logic? What does it perform? How is it per-formative? Perhaps once we have defined it, we have already pinned it down? Performance studies is interdisciplinary: "The primary fundamental of performance studies is that there is no fixed canon of works, ideas, practices or anything else that defines or limits the field.
Performance Studies has been challenged as an emerging discipline. Many academics have been critical of its instability. As an academic field it is difficult to pin down; either that is the nature of the field itself or it is still too young to tell. There are, however, numerous degree granting programs that train researchers being offered by universities. Some have referred to it as an "inter discipline" or a "post discipline." "
On the theatrical and anthropological front the research collaborations of director Richard Schechner
and anthropologist Victor Turner
. This origin narrative emphasizes a definition of performance as being "between theatre and anthropology" and often stresses the importance of intercultural performances as an alternative to either traditional proscenium theatre or traditional anthropological fieldwork. Dwight Conquergood
developed a branch of performance ethnography that centered the political nature of the practice and advocated for methodological dialogism from the point of encounter to the practices of research reporting. Bryan Reynolds
has developed a combined performance theory and critical methodology known as “transversal poetics” to bring historical analysis in conversation with current research in a number of fields, from social semiotics to cognitive neuroscience, the effect of which has been to expand the relevancy of performance studies across academic disciplines. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has contributed an interest in tourist productions and ethnographic showmanship to the field, Judd Case has adapted performance to the study of media and religion, Diana Taylor
has brought a hemispheric perspective on Latin American performance and theorized the relationship between the archive
and the performance repertoire, while Corinne Kratz developed a mode of performance analysis that emphasizes the role of multimedia communication in performance.
An alternative origin narrative stresses the development of speech-act theory by philosophers J.L. Austin and Judith Butler
, literary critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
, and also Shoshana Felman
. The theory proposed by Austin in How To Do Things With Words states that “to say something is to do something, or in saying something we do something, and even by saying something we do something.” the most illustrative example being "I do," as part of a marriage ceremony. For any of these performative utterances to be felicitous, per Austin, they must be true, appropriate and conventional according to those with the proper authority: a priest, a judge, or the scholar, for instance. Austin accounts for the infelicitous by noting that “there will always occur difficult or marginal cases where nothing in the previous history of a conventional procedure will decide conclusively whether such a procedure is or is not correctly applied to such a case.” The possibility of failure in performatives (utterances made with language and the body) is taken up by Butler and is understood as the “political promise of the performative.” Her argument is that because the performative needs to maintain conventional power, convention itself has to be reiterated, and in this reiteration it can be expropriated by the unauthorized usage and thus create new futures. She cites Rosa Parks as an example:
The question of the infelicitous utterance (the misfire)is also taken up by Shoshana Felman when she states "Infelicity, or failure, is not for Austin an accident of the performative, it is inherent in it, essential to it. In other words…Austin conceives of failure not as external but as internal to the promise, as what actually constitutes it.”
Performance studies has also had a strong relationship to the fields of feminism
, psychoanalysis
, critical race theory and queer theory
. Theorists like Peggy Phelan
, José Esteban Muñoz
, E. Patrick Johnson
, Rebecca Schneider, and André Lepecki have been equally influential in both performance studies and these related fields.
Performance studies incorporates theories of drama
, dance
, art
, anthropology
, folkloristics, philosophy
, cultural studies
, sociology
, comparative literature
, and more and more, music performance. More can be found out by reading Schechner's book: Performance Studies: An Introduction or in D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera's The Sage Handbook for Performance Studies. The first performance studies department was created at NYU
. However, there is some debate that the joint-cradles of Performance Studies are Northwestern University
and NYU. For more information on the different origins and disciplinary traditions of performance studies see Shannon Jackson's book Professing Performance and the introductory chapter in Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer's Teaching Performance Studies. Generally the differences between the NYU and Northwestern models cite different disciplinary concerns. NYU is generally characterized as a program that pushed the definitions of theatrical practice influenced by the thearical avant-garde thus expanding its definition of what can be framed as an event. Northwestern transitioned from an elocution and performance of literature tradition to expand its definition of presentational aesthetics beyond oral interpretation. In both instances a focus on practice lead to a research methodology beyond theatre or literature/speech. In the United States, the not interdisciplinary and multi-focus field has spread to Brown
, UC Berkeley, and elsewhere. Undergraduate and graduate programs are offered at UC Davis, Louisiana State University
, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
, California State University, Northridge
, San Jose State University
, University of San Diego
, and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Texas A&M University
’s Department of Performance Studies is unique in including both Music and Theatre degree programs. A new generation of researchers have also joined the faculty ranks at these and other institutions and evidence the continued expansion and rejuvenation of the field. These scholars include: Patrick Anderson (UCSD), Robin Bernstein (Harvard), Henry Bial (Kansas), Brandi Catanese (Berkeley), Renee Alexander Craft (UNC), Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (Southern Illinois), Suk-Young Kim (UCSB), Branislav Jacovljevic (Stanford), Jill Lane (NYU), Eng-Beng Lim (Brown), Paige McGinley (Yale), Jisha Menon (Stanford), Tavia Nyongo (NYU), Jennifer Parker-Starbuck (Roehampton), Ramon Rivera-Servera (Northwestern), Shannon Steen (Berkeley), Alexandra Vasquez (Princeton), Shane Vogel (Indiana), Maurya Wickstrom (CUNY), Patricia Ybarra (Brown), and Harvey Young
(Northwestern).
In the United Kingdom
Aberystwyth University offers a degree scheme in performance studies with highly acclaimed performance artists such as Mike Pearson, Heike Roms and Jill Greenhalgh.
In Denmark
Roskilde University
offers a master and ph.d. degree in "performance design", focusing on subjects such as theatrical performances, live music, festivals, and urban performances.
In India, the research initiatives of Centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia (cpracsis) focus on redefining methodologies of cultural studies and research on the basis of the nuances of performance studies.
In Australia
, the University of Sydney
, Victoria University
and Queensland University of Technology
offer degrees majoring in performance studies, Honours, Masters and Phd. Performance Studies in some countries is also an A-level (AS and A2) course consisting of the integration of the discrete art forms of Dance, Music and Drama in performing arts.
Performance studies has a long-standing and complex relationship to the practice of performance art
, also known as live art
or visual art performance.
Some key companies and practitioners who are widely considered to be working within this field include: Karen Finley
, Robert Lepage
, Ariane Mnouchkine
and the Theatre du Soleil
, Robert Wilson
, Forced Entertainment (UK), Pina Bausch
, Trisha Brown
, DV8 Physical theater, The Wooster Group
(New York), Anne Bogart and The Siti Company (New York), and Jan Fabre
(Belgium). Other artists, generally outside the European avant-garde theatre, who have been instrumental to the development of analysis in the field include: Carmelita Tropicana
, Holly Hughes
, Tim Miller
, Annie Sprinkle
, John Leguizamo
, Guillermo Gomez-Peña
, Coco Fusco
, Ruby Tru, Linda Montano
, Vaginal Davis
, Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw, Anna Deveare Smith, Robbie McCauley, Marga Gomez
, Dan Kwong
, Diamanda Galas
, Ron Athey
, Reverend Billy, Ana Mendieta
, Deb Margolis, Terry Galloway, Eric Bogosian
, Danny Hoch
, Quentin Crisp
, Justin Bond
and Kenny Mellman
aka Kiki and Herb
, Rachel Rosenthal
, Spalding Gray
, Laurie Anderson
, Rhodessa Jones, Bill T. Jones
, Luis Alfaro
, Reno
, John Fleck, Keith Hennessy
and Meredith Monk
.
and Richard Schechner
who were highly involved in the avant garde art scene that developed in the U.S. in the 1960s.
The publication of the article 'Approaches' by Schechner in the Tulane Drama Review, in which he articulated that 'performance is an inclusive category that includes play, games, sports, performance in everyday life, and ritual' was just the beginning of his insight about the fluid spectrum of theatrical activity. Broad Spectrum Approach was one of the many more subsequent works that were yet to come.
The addition of the subtitle ‘Journal of Performance Studies’ by the Drama Review signaled its more inclusive approach to performative behavior.
Turner, an anthropologist and articulator of continuum of ‘theatrical’ behavior in his book From Ritual to Theater, invited Schechner to help plan a ‘World Conference on Ritual and Performance.’ Three related conferences are held during that year.
A second major Performance Studies department begins in the US Northwestern University.
New York University holds the first U.S. Performance Studies conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Performance Studies department.
A ‘performance studies’ focus group forms within The Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE).
Peggy Phelan chairs ‘Performance Studies: The Future of the Field,’ a conference attended by upwards of 500 people as a follow-up to New York University’s 1990 gathering.
Northwestern University holds a second Performance Studies conference.
Georgia Tech hosts the third Performance Studies conference.
This year was marked by the foundation of Performance Studies international the first worldwide association devoted solely to Performance Studies. Performance Studies international is a professional association that promotes communication and exchange between scholars and practitioners working in the field of performance. It has staged numerous international conference and festival gatherings.
Membership in ATHE’s Performance Studies focus group reaches 450.
Performance Studies international 12 was held at Brown University, March 30-April 1. Its name, ‘Becoming Uncomfortable,’ was taken from Brown President Ruth Simmons’ university lecture, in which she stated that students must ‘become uncomfortable in order to grow, in order to build an education, a life, a world.’
In TheaterWeek
, Richard Hornby wrote that the field of performance studies must embrace acting theory and traditional Euro-American theater if it is to have any value. Performance Studies, at least as Schechner had come to it, had little to do with stage performance, Hornby maintained.
Davi Napoleon
went further in the pages of the same magazine. "Performance Studies doesn't have the integrity of any discipline," she wrote. "It's not a mix of theater and other performing arts, such as dance and opera, though these are included....There are classes in Aesthetics and Everyday Life, Autobiography and the Performing Self, Creativity in Covergence and Creolization...Performance studies covers everything, and those who want to study something, such as theater history, cannot."
Schechner said he did not reject theater but expanded the department at NYU by bringing in other disciplines. "I can eat pasta and also eat sushi."
Napoleon countered that pasta and sushi are both foods, while archeology and theater are not both performing arts. "Moreover, Performance Studies students don't digest two fields. They sample from a smorgasbord of disciplines without troubling to learn any. It may appear to be interdiscipinary, but Performance Studies is really anti-disciplinary." Napoleon also quotes Michael Kirby
, a colleague of Richard Schechner's at NYU who felt Schechner was taking the department in the wrong direction.
Performance Studies has been challenged as an emerging discipline. Many academics have been critical of its instability. As an academic field it is difficult to pin down; either that is the nature of the field itself or it is still too young to tell. There are, however, numerous degree granting programs that train researchers being offered by universities. Some have referred to it as an "inter discipline" or a "post discipline." "
Origins of and basic concepts in Performance Studies
Performance Studies as an academic field has multiple origin narratives. On the literature front Wallace Bacon (1914–2001), considered by many the father of Performance theory, taught performance of literature as the ultimate act of humility. In his defining statement of performance theory Bacon writes "Our center is in the interaction between readers and texts which enriches, extends, clarifies, and (yes) alters the interior and even the exterior lives of students [and performers and audiences] through the power of texts" (Literature in Performance, Vol 5 No 1, 1984; p. 84). In addition, Robert Breen's text Chamber Theatre is a cornerstone in the field for staging narrative texts though controversial in its assertions about the place of narrative details in chamber productions. Breen is also regarded by many as a founding theorist for the discipline along with advocate Louise Rosenblatt.On the theatrical and anthropological front the research collaborations of director Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
and anthropologist Victor Turner
Victor Turner
Victor Witter Turner was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage...
. This origin narrative emphasizes a definition of performance as being "between theatre and anthropology" and often stresses the importance of intercultural performances as an alternative to either traditional proscenium theatre or traditional anthropological fieldwork. Dwight Conquergood
Dwight Conquergood
Lorne Dwight Conquergood was an ethnographer who is best known for his work with the Hmong of southeast Asia, street gangs of Chicago, and refugees in Thailand and Gaza.-Background:...
developed a branch of performance ethnography that centered the political nature of the practice and advocated for methodological dialogism from the point of encounter to the practices of research reporting. Bryan Reynolds
Bryan Reynolds
Bryan Reynolds is an American critical theorist, performance theorist, and Shakespeare scholar who developed the combined social theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology known as transversal poetics...
has developed a combined performance theory and critical methodology known as “transversal poetics” to bring historical analysis in conversation with current research in a number of fields, from social semiotics to cognitive neuroscience, the effect of which has been to expand the relevancy of performance studies across academic disciplines. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has contributed an interest in tourist productions and ethnographic showmanship to the field, Judd Case has adapted performance to the study of media and religion, Diana Taylor
Diana Taylor (professor)
Diana Taylor is a University Professor and professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University as well as the founding director of . As a major contributor to the area of Performance Studies in the Americas, her work focuses on Latin American and U.S...
has brought a hemispheric perspective on Latin American performance and theorized the relationship between the archive
Archive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
and the performance repertoire, while Corinne Kratz developed a mode of performance analysis that emphasizes the role of multimedia communication in performance.
An alternative origin narrative stresses the development of speech-act theory by philosophers J.L. Austin and Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, literary critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory , and critical theory. Her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies...
, and also Shoshana Felman
Shoshana Felman
Shoshana Felman is Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She was on the faculty of Yale University from 1970 to 2004, where she became Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature....
. The theory proposed by Austin in How To Do Things With Words states that “to say something is to do something, or in saying something we do something, and even by saying something we do something.” the most illustrative example being "I do," as part of a marriage ceremony. For any of these performative utterances to be felicitous, per Austin, they must be true, appropriate and conventional according to those with the proper authority: a priest, a judge, or the scholar, for instance. Austin accounts for the infelicitous by noting that “there will always occur difficult or marginal cases where nothing in the previous history of a conventional procedure will decide conclusively whether such a procedure is or is not correctly applied to such a case.” The possibility of failure in performatives (utterances made with language and the body) is taken up by Butler and is understood as the “political promise of the performative.” Her argument is that because the performative needs to maintain conventional power, convention itself has to be reiterated, and in this reiteration it can be expropriated by the unauthorized usage and thus create new futures. She cites Rosa Parks as an example:
When Rosa ParksRosa ParksRosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
sat in the front of the bus, she had no prior right to do so guaranteed by any…conventions of the South. And yet, in laying claim to the right for which she had no prior authorization, she endowed a certain authority on the act, and began the insurrectionary process of overthrowing those established codes of legitimacy.
The question of the infelicitous utterance (the misfire)is also taken up by Shoshana Felman when she states "Infelicity, or failure, is not for Austin an accident of the performative, it is inherent in it, essential to it. In other words…Austin conceives of failure not as external but as internal to the promise, as what actually constitutes it.”
Performance studies has also had a strong relationship to the fields of feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, critical race theory and queer theory
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
. Theorists like Peggy Phelan
Peggy Phelan
Peggy Phelan is an American feminist scholar, one of the founders of Performance Studies International and was chair of New York University's Department of Performance Studies from 1993 to 1996. She is also the author of Unmarked , Mourning Sex and Art and Feminism -External links:*...
, José Esteban Muñoz
José Esteban Muñoz
José Esteban Muñoz is an American academic in the fields of Performance Studies, visual culture, queer theory, cultural studies, and critical theory. His book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics examines queer and racial minority issues from a performance studies...
, E. Patrick Johnson
E. Patrick Johnson
E. Patrick Johnson is an African American performance artist, ethnographer, and scholar.-Contributions:Johnson has made important contributions in the fields of performance studies, critical race theory, and queer theory...
, Rebecca Schneider, and André Lepecki have been equally influential in both performance studies and these related fields.
Performance studies incorporates theories of drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
, dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, folkloristics, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, comparative literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
, and more and more, music performance. More can be found out by reading Schechner's book: Performance Studies: An Introduction or in D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera's The Sage Handbook for Performance Studies. The first performance studies department was created at NYU
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. However, there is some debate that the joint-cradles of Performance Studies are Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
and NYU. For more information on the different origins and disciplinary traditions of performance studies see Shannon Jackson's book Professing Performance and the introductory chapter in Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer's Teaching Performance Studies. Generally the differences between the NYU and Northwestern models cite different disciplinary concerns. NYU is generally characterized as a program that pushed the definitions of theatrical practice influenced by the thearical avant-garde thus expanding its definition of what can be framed as an event. Northwestern transitioned from an elocution and performance of literature tradition to expand its definition of presentational aesthetics beyond oral interpretation. In both instances a focus on practice lead to a research methodology beyond theatre or literature/speech. In the United States, the not interdisciplinary and multi-focus field has spread to Brown
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, UC Berkeley, and elsewhere. Undergraduate and graduate programs are offered at UC Davis, Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a public research university located in Carbondale, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1869, SIUC is the flagship campus of the Southern Illinois University system...
, California State University, Northridge
California State University, Northridge
California State University, Northridge is a public university in Northridge, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, California, United States....
, San Jose State University
San José State University
San Jose State University is a public university located in San Jose, California, United States...
, University of San Diego
University of San Diego
The University of San Diego is a Roman Catholic university in San Diego, California. USD offers more than sixty bachelor's, master’s, and doctoral programs...
, and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...
’s Department of Performance Studies is unique in including both Music and Theatre degree programs. A new generation of researchers have also joined the faculty ranks at these and other institutions and evidence the continued expansion and rejuvenation of the field. These scholars include: Patrick Anderson (UCSD), Robin Bernstein (Harvard), Henry Bial (Kansas), Brandi Catanese (Berkeley), Renee Alexander Craft (UNC), Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (Southern Illinois), Suk-Young Kim (UCSB), Branislav Jacovljevic (Stanford), Jill Lane (NYU), Eng-Beng Lim (Brown), Paige McGinley (Yale), Jisha Menon (Stanford), Tavia Nyongo (NYU), Jennifer Parker-Starbuck (Roehampton), Ramon Rivera-Servera (Northwestern), Shannon Steen (Berkeley), Alexandra Vasquez (Princeton), Shane Vogel (Indiana), Maurya Wickstrom (CUNY), Patricia Ybarra (Brown), and Harvey Young
Harvey Young
Harvey Young is an African American cultural historian, theorist, and scholar.-Contributions:Harvey Young has made significant contributions in the fields of performance studies and critical race theory. He is an Associate Professor at Northwestern University, where he holds appointments in...
(Northwestern).
In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Aberystwyth University offers a degree scheme in performance studies with highly acclaimed performance artists such as Mike Pearson, Heike Roms and Jill Greenhalgh.
In Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
Roskilde University
Roskilde University
Roskilde University is a Danish public university founded in 1972 and located in Trekroner in the Eastern part of Roskilde. The university awards bachelor and master's degrees as well as Ph.D...
offers a master and ph.d. degree in "performance design", focusing on subjects such as theatrical performances, live music, festivals, and urban performances.
In India, the research initiatives of Centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia (cpracsis) focus on redefining methodologies of cultural studies and research on the basis of the nuances of performance studies.
In Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
, Victoria University
Victoria University, Australia
Victoria University is a multi-sector tertiary institution based in Melbourne, Australia with 10 campuses.VU offers qualifications in higher education, vocational education , and short courses...
and Queensland University of Technology
Queensland University of Technology
Queensland University of Technology is an Australian university with an applied emphasis in courses and research. Based in Brisbane, it has 40,000 students, including 6,000 international students, over 4,000 staff members, and an annual budget of more than A$750 million.QUT is marketed as "A...
offer degrees majoring in performance studies, Honours, Masters and Phd. Performance Studies in some countries is also an A-level (AS and A2) course consisting of the integration of the discrete art forms of Dance, Music and Drama in performing arts.
Performance studies has a long-standing and complex relationship to the practice of performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
, also known as live art
Live Art
Live Art is the fifth album released by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and their first non-studio album. It was recorded live at various concerts between 1992 and 1996 and features ten guest musicians....
or visual art performance.
Some key companies and practitioners who are widely considered to be working within this field include: Karen Finley
Karen Finley
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement...
, Robert Lepage
Robert Lepage
Robert Lepage, is a playwright, actor, film director, and stage director from Québec City, Québec, and is one of Canada's most honoured theatre artists.- Life and work :...
, Ariane Mnouchkine
Ariane Mnouchkine
Ariane Mnouchkine is a world-renowned French stage director. She founded the Parisian avant-garde stage ensemble Théâtre du Soleil in 1964. She has written and directed 1789 and Molière , and in 1989, she directed La Nuit Miraculeuse...
and the Theatre du Soleil
Théâtre du Soleil
Le Théâtre du Soleil is a Parisian avant-garde stage ensemble founded by Ariane Mnouchkine, Philippe Léotard and fellow students of the L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in 1964 as a collective of theatre artists. Le Théâtre du Soleil is located at La Cartoucherie, a former munitions...
, Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
, Forced Entertainment (UK), Pina Bausch
Pina Bausch
Philippina "Pina" Bausch was a German performer of modern dance, choreographer, dance teacher and ballet director...
, Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...
, DV8 Physical theater, The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged during 1975-1980 from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and took its name in 1980...
(New York), Anne Bogart and The Siti Company (New York), and Jan Fabre
Jan Fabre
Jan Fabre is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer.He studied at the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp...
(Belgium). Other artists, generally outside the European avant-garde theatre, who have been instrumental to the development of analysis in the field include: Carmelita Tropicana
Carmelita Tropicana
Alina Troyano , better known as Carmelita Tropicana, is a Cuban-American stage and film actress.-References:* * -External links:...
, Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes (performance artist)
Holly Hughes is an American lesbian performance artist. She began as a feminist painter in New York but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe. Her plays...
, Tim Miller
Tim Miller (performance artist)
-External links:* *...
, Annie Sprinkle
Annie Sprinkle
Annie M. Sprinkle is an American former prostitute, stripper, pornographic actress, cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer and sex film producer...
, John Leguizamo
John Leguizamo
Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo is an Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian.-Early life:...
, Guillermo Gomez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña was born in Mexico City and moved to the US in 1978, where he established himself as a performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. He has pioneered multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, performance photography and installation art...
, Coco Fusco
Coco Fusco
Coco Fusco is a Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist and writer who began her career in 1988. Fusco has performed and curated throughout America and internationally, and currently is full-time faculty in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design...
, Ruby Tru, Linda Montano
Linda Montano
Linda Mary Montano is a central figure in contemporary performance art. She was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic household, partly Irish and partly Italian, that was surrounded by artistic activity...
, Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis is an American genderqueer performing artist, painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Davis's name is a homage to activist Angela Davis.-Life and career:Davis is often associated with the formation of the Queer-Core Zine Movement...
, Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw, Anna Deveare Smith, Robbie McCauley, Marga Gomez
Marga Gomez
Marga Gomez is a Puerto Rican/Cuban-American comedian, playwright, and humorist. She is openly lesbian....
, Dan Kwong
Dan Kwong
Dan Kwong is an American performance artist, writer, teacher and visual artist. He has been presenting his solo performances since 1989, often drawing upon his own life experiences to explore personal, historical and social issues. He is of mixed Asian American heritage...
, Diamanda Galas
Diamanda Galás
Diamanda Galás is an American avant-garde composer, vocalist, pianist, organist, performance artist and painter.Galás has been described as "capable of the most unnerving vocal terror", with her three and a half octave vocal range. She often screams, hisses and growls...
, Ron Athey
Ron Athey
Ron Athey is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally . Athey's work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality, and traumatic experience...
, Reverend Billy, Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta was a Cuban American performance artist, sculptor, painter and video artist who is known for her "earth-body" art work....
, Deb Margolis, Terry Galloway, Eric Bogosian
Eric Bogosian
Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologist, and novelist of Armenian descent.-Personal life:Bogosian, an Armenian-American, was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, the son of Edwina, a hairdresser and instructor, and Henry Bogosian, an accountant. After graduating from Oberlin College,...
, Danny Hoch
Danny Hoch
Danny Hoch is an American writer, director and performance artist. He has acted in larger roles in independent and art house movies and had a few small roles in mainstream Hollywood films, with increasing exposure as in 2007's We Own the Night...
, Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp , was an English writer and raconteur. He became a gay icon in the 1970s after publication of his memoir, The Naked Civil Servant.- Early life :...
, Justin Bond
Justin Bond
Justin Vivian Bond , formerly simply Justin Bond, is an American singer-songwriter, performance artist, occasional actor and Radical Faerie. Described as a "fixture of the New York avant-garde", Bond arose to notability playing the role of Kiki DuRayne in the drag cabaret act Kiki and Herb from the...
and Kenny Mellman
Kenny Mellman
Kenny Mellman is an artist living in New York City. He was one half of Kiki and Herb. A co-creator of Our Hit Parade. He is currently in the band The Julie Ruin....
aka Kiki and Herb
Kiki and Herb
Kiki and Herb are an American drag cabaret duo. Bond portrays Kiki DuRane, an aging, alcoholic, female lounge singer...
, Rachel Rosenthal
Rachel Rosenthal
Rachel Rosenthal is an interdisciplinary artist, a teacher, and animal rights activist based in Los Angeles, California. She is also known for her smoothly shaven head. She is best known for her full-length performance art pieces which she has toured, with The Rachel Rosenthal Company, to numerous...
, Spalding Gray
Spalding Gray
Spalding Rockwell Gray was an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, performance artist and monologuist...
, Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, Rhodessa Jones, Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones is an American artistic director, choreographer and dancer.-Early life:Jones was born in Bunnell, Florida and his family moved North as part of the Great Migration in the first half of the twentieth century. They settled in Wayland, New York, where Jones attended Wayland High School...
, Luis Alfaro
Luis Alfaro
Luis Alfaro is a renowned Chicano performance artist, writer, theater director, and social activist. His plays and fiction are set in Los Angeles's Chicano barrios, including the Pico Union district, and often feature gay and lesbian and working-class themes. Many of Alfaro's plays also deal with...
, Reno
Reno
Reno is the fourth most populous city in Nevada, US.Reno may also refer to:-Places:Italy*The Reno River, in Northern ItalyCanada*Reno No...
, John Fleck, Keith Hennessy
Keith Hennessy
Keith Hennessy is a San Francisco-based dancer, choreographer, and performance artist regarded as a pioneer of queer and AIDS-themed expressionist dance...
and Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...
.
Chronology of Developments in the field
Though Wallace Bacon (1914–2001), is considered by many the father of Performance theory, it was that both Victor TurnerVictor Turner
Victor Witter Turner was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage...
and Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
who were highly involved in the avant garde art scene that developed in the U.S. in the 1960s.
1965
The publication of the article 'Approaches' by Schechner in the Tulane Drama Review, in which he articulated that 'performance is an inclusive category that includes play, games, sports, performance in everyday life, and ritual' was just the beginning of his insight about the fluid spectrum of theatrical activity. Broad Spectrum Approach was one of the many more subsequent works that were yet to come.
1980
The addition of the subtitle ‘Journal of Performance Studies’ by the Drama Review signaled its more inclusive approach to performative behavior.
1981-82
Turner, an anthropologist and articulator of continuum of ‘theatrical’ behavior in his book From Ritual to Theater, invited Schechner to help plan a ‘World Conference on Ritual and Performance.’ Three related conferences are held during that year.
1984
A second major Performance Studies department begins in the US Northwestern University.
1990
New York University holds the first U.S. Performance Studies conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Performance Studies department.
1993
A ‘performance studies’ focus group forms within The Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE).
1995
Peggy Phelan chairs ‘Performance Studies: The Future of the Field,’ a conference attended by upwards of 500 people as a follow-up to New York University’s 1990 gathering.
1996
Northwestern University holds a second Performance Studies conference.
1997
Georgia Tech hosts the third Performance Studies conference.
1997
This year was marked by the foundation of Performance Studies international the first worldwide association devoted solely to Performance Studies. Performance Studies international is a professional association that promotes communication and exchange between scholars and practitioners working in the field of performance. It has staged numerous international conference and festival gatherings.
2001
Membership in ATHE’s Performance Studies focus group reaches 450.
2005
Performance Studies international 12 was held at Brown University, March 30-April 1. Its name, ‘Becoming Uncomfortable,’ was taken from Brown President Ruth Simmons’ university lecture, in which she stated that students must ‘become uncomfortable in order to grow, in order to build an education, a life, a world.’
Controversies
Richard Schechner was a professor of drama, first at Tulane University, then at New York University, before he became interested in integrating the field of theater with numerous other disciplines. At least two of his former students wrote significant criticisms of the new field.In TheaterWeek
TheaterWeek
TheaterWeek was a favorite magazine among theater artists and theater lovers. It covered Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and educational theater with articles theat included profiles of actors, directors, designers and behind the scenes looks at particular shows...
, Richard Hornby wrote that the field of performance studies must embrace acting theory and traditional Euro-American theater if it is to have any value. Performance Studies, at least as Schechner had come to it, had little to do with stage performance, Hornby maintained.
Davi Napoleon
Davi Napoleon
Davi Napoleon, aka Davida Skurnick is an American theater historian and critic. She is a theater columnist for The Faster Times, an online newspaper, and a regular contributor to Live Design, a monthly magazine about entertainment design and designers...
went further in the pages of the same magazine. "Performance Studies doesn't have the integrity of any discipline," she wrote. "It's not a mix of theater and other performing arts, such as dance and opera, though these are included....There are classes in Aesthetics and Everyday Life, Autobiography and the Performing Self, Creativity in Covergence and Creolization...Performance studies covers everything, and those who want to study something, such as theater history, cannot."
Schechner said he did not reject theater but expanded the department at NYU by bringing in other disciplines. "I can eat pasta and also eat sushi."
Napoleon countered that pasta and sushi are both foods, while archeology and theater are not both performing arts. "Moreover, Performance Studies students don't digest two fields. They sample from a smorgasbord of disciplines without troubling to learn any. It may appear to be interdiscipinary, but Performance Studies is really anti-disciplinary." Napoleon also quotes Michael Kirby
Michael Kirby (theater)
Michael Kirby was a professor of drama at New York University. He wrote several groundbreaking books, including Happenings, Futurist Performance and The Art of Time...
, a colleague of Richard Schechner's at NYU who felt Schechner was taking the department in the wrong direction.
See also
- J.L. Austin
- Judith ButlerJudith ButlerJudith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
- Dwight ConquergoodDwight ConquergoodLorne Dwight Conquergood was an ethnographer who is best known for his work with the Hmong of southeast Asia, street gangs of Chicago, and refugees in Thailand and Gaza.-Background:...
- Shannon Jackson
- E. Patrick JohnsonE. Patrick JohnsonE. Patrick Johnson is an African American performance artist, ethnographer, and scholar.-Contributions:Johnson has made important contributions in the fields of performance studies, critical race theory, and queer theory...
- André Lepecki
- David LewinDavid LewinDavid Lewin was an American music theorist, music critic and composer. Called "the most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation" , he did his most influential theoretical work on the development of transformational theory, which involves the application of mathematical group theory to...
- D. Soyini Madison
- Fred Moten
- José MuñozJosé MuñozJosé Muñoz may refer to:*José Antonio Muñoz, a.k.a. Muñoz , Argentine artist and cartoonist.*José Esteban Muñoz , U.S. Latino writer, academic.*Jose C...
- Peggy PhelanPeggy PhelanPeggy Phelan is an American feminist scholar, one of the founders of Performance Studies International and was chair of New York University's Department of Performance Studies from 1993 to 1996. She is also the author of Unmarked , Mourning Sex and Art and Feminism -External links:*...
- Performative turnPerformative turnThe performative turn is a paradigmatic shift in the humanities and social sciences that has affected such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, ethnography, history and the relatively young discipline of performance studies...
- Joseph Roach
- Richard SchechnerRichard SchechnerRichard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
- Eve Sedgwick
- Diana TaylorDiana Taylor (professor)Diana Taylor is a University Professor and professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University as well as the founding director of . As a major contributor to the area of Performance Studies in the Americas, her work focuses on Latin American and U.S...
- Brooks McNamaraBrooks McNamaraBrooks McNamara earned his PhD in theater arts at Tulane University, where he became an academic colleague of Richard Schechner and an active contributor to Tulane Drama Review . McNamara served as an Associate Editor of TDR while he taught theater history in the Drama Department at the...