The Performance Studies Reader

by Bial,Henry

• ISBN13: 9780415302401
• ISBN10: 0415302404
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-12-09
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Performance Studies Readeris a lively and much-needed anthology of critical writings on the burgeoning discipline of performance studies. It provides an overview of the full range of performance theory for undergraduates at all levels, and beginning graduate students in performance studies, theatre, performing arts and cultural studies. The collection is designed as a companion to Richard Schechner's popularPerformance Studies: An Introduction(Routledge, 2002), but is also ideal as a stand-alone text. Henry Bial collects together key critical pieces from the field, referred to as 'suggested readings' inPerformance Studies: An Introduction. He also broadens the discussion with additional selections. The structure and themes of theReaderclosely follow those of Schechner's companion textbook. The articles in each section focus particularly on three primary areas in performance studies, theatre, anthropology and sociology/cultural studies.

Table of Contents

Contributors	xi
Acknowledgements	xvi
Introduction	1	(4)
Henry Bial
PART I What is performance studies?	5	(52)
Performance studies: the broad spectrum approach	7	(3)
Richard Schechner
Disciplines of the text: sites of performance	10	(16)
W.B. Worthen
The liminal-norm	26	(6)
Jon Mckenzie
Professing performances: disciplinary genealogies	32	(11)
Shannon Jackson
Performance studies	43	(14)
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
PART II What is performance?	57	(20)
Performances: belief in the part one is playing	59	(5)
Erving Goffman
Blurred genres: the refiguration of social thought	64	(4)
Clifford Geertz
What is performance?	68	(6)
Marvin Carlson
Life the movie	74	(3)
Neal Gabler
PART III Ritual	77	(38)
Liminality and communitas	79	(9)
Victor Turner
``Performance'' and other analogies	88	(9)
Catherine Bell
``The blood that runs through the veins'': the creation of identity and a client's experience of Cuban-American santeria dilogun divination	97	(11)
Michael Atwood Mason
Saint Orlan: ritual as violent spectacle and cultural criticism	108	(7)
Alyda Faber
PART IV Play	115	(30)
The nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon	117	(4)
Johan Huizinga
A theory of play and fantasy	121	(11)
Gregory Bateson
The ambiguity of play: rhetorics of fate	132	(7)
Brian Sutton-Smith
Just doing	139	(6)
Allan Kaprow
PART V Performativity	145	(38)
How to do things with words: lecture II	147	(7)
J.L. Austin
Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory	154	(13)
Judith Butler
Introduction to Performativity and Performance	167	(8)
Andrew Parker
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Theater and anthropology, theatricality and culture	175	(8)
Johannes Fabian
PART VI Performing	183	(32)
A dialogue about acting	185	(4)
Bertolt Brecht
The actor's technique	189	(6)
Jerzy Grotowski
A dream of passion	195	(2)
Lee Strasberg
Presenting and re-presenting the self: from not-acting to acting in African performance	197	(18)
Frances Harding
PART VII Performance processes	215	(48)
First attempts at a stylized theatre	217	(9)
Vsevolod Meyerhold
The oral artist: training and preparation	226	(6)
Isidore Okpewho
The performance text	232	(20)
Marco de Marinis
The deep order called turbulence: the three faces of dramaturgy	252	(11)
Eugenio Barba
PART VIII Global and intercultural performance	263	(60)
Performing ethnography	265	(14)
Victor Turner
Edie Turner
Of mimicry and man	279	(8)
Homi K. Bhabha
Culturas-in-extremis: performing against the cultural backdrop of the mainstream bizarre	287	(12)
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Reverend Billy: preaching, protest and post-industrial flanerie	299	(12)
Jill Lane
Performance studies: interventions and radical research	311	(12)
Dwight Conquergood
Index	323