The Rise of Performance Studies

The Rise of Performance Studies
Author: J. Harding
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2011-05-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0230306055

Few individuals have positioned their work more controversially or consequently than Richard Schechner within the pivotal debates that define Performance Studies. The Rise of Performance Studies is the first collection of essays to critically examine the profound contributions that Schechner has made to Performance Studies as a discipline.

Performance Studies in Motion

Performance Studies in Motion
Author: Atay Citron
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 555
Release: 2014-02-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1408184133

Performance Studies in Motion offers multiple perspectives on the current field of performance studies and suggests its future directions. Featuring new essays by pioneers Richard Schechner and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, and by international scholars and practitioners, it shows how performance can offer a new way of seeing the world, and testifies to the dynamism of this discipline. Beginning with an overview of the development of performance studies, the essays offer new insights into: contemporary experimental and postdramatic theatre; participatory performance and museum exhibitions; the performance of politicians, political institutions and grassroots protest movements; theatricality at war and in contemporary religious rituals, and performative practices in therapy, education and life sciences. Employing original reflexive approaches to concrete case studies and situations, contributors introduce a variety of applications of performance studies methodologies to contemporary culture, art and society, creating new interdisciplinary links between the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences. With studies from and about places as diverse as Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Israel, Korea, Palestine, the Philippines, Poland, Rwanda and the USA, Performance Studies in Motion showcases the vitality and breadth of the field today.

Performance Studies

Performance Studies
Author: Richard Schechner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136448721

Richard Schechner is a pioneer of Performance Studies. A scholar, theatre director, editor, and playwright he is University Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and Editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. He is the author of Public Domain (1969), Environmental Theater (1973), The End of Humanism (1982), Performance Theory (2003, Routledge), Between Theater and Anthropology (1985), The Future of Ritual (1993, Routledge), and Over, Under, and Around: Essays on Performance and Culture (2004). His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Serbo-Croat, German, Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Polish. He is the general editor of the Worlds of Performance series published by Routledge and the co-editor of the Enactments series published by Seagull Books. Sara Brady is Assistant Professor at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is author of Performance, Politics and the War on Terror (2012).

Performance Theory

Performance Theory
Author: Richard Schechner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 113596517X

First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Performance Studies

Performance Studies
Author: Richard Schechner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1135652597

In this second edition, the author opens with a discussion of important developments in the discipline. His closing chapter, 'Global and Intercultural Performance', is completely rewritten in light of the post-9/11 world. Fully revised chapters with new examples, biographies and source material provide a lively, easily accessible overview of the full range of performance for undergraduates at all levels in performance studies, theatre, performing arts and cultural studies. Among the topics discussed are the performing arts and popular entertainments, rituals, play and games as well as the performances of everyday life. Supporting examples and ideas are drawn from the social sciences, performing arts, post-structuralism, ritual theory, ethology, philosophy and aesthetics. User-friendly, with a special text design, Performance Studies: An Introduction also includes the following features: numerous extracts from primary sources giving alternative voices and viewpoints biographies of key thinkers student activities to stimulate fieldwork, classroom exercises and discussion key reading lists for each chapter twenty line drawings and 202 photographs drawn from private and public collections around the world.

Gaming the Stage

Gaming the Stage
Author: Gina Bloom
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2018-07-10
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 0472053817

Illuminates the fascinating, intertwined histories of games and the Early Modern theater

Institutional Theatrics

Institutional Theatrics
Author: Brandon Woolf
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0810143577

Shortlist, 2021 Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize In a city struggling to determine just how neoliberal it can afford to be, what kinds of performing arts practices and institutions are necessary—and why? Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, political and economic agendas in the reunified German capital have worked to dismantle long-standing traditions of state‐subsidized theater even as the city has redefined itself as a global arts epicenter. Institutional Theatrics charts the ways theater artists have responded to these shifts and crises both on- and offstage, offering a method for rethinking the theater as a vital public institution. What is the future of the German theater, grounded historically in large ensembles, extensive repertoires, and auteur directors? Examining the restructuring of Berlin’s theatrical landscape and most prominent performance venues, Brandon Woolf argues that cultural policy is not simply the delegation and distribution of funds. Instead, policy should be thought of as an artistic practice of institutional imagination. Woolf demonstrates how performance can critique its patron institutions in order to transform the relations between the stage and the state, between the theater and the infrastructures of its support. Bold, nuanced, and rigorously documented, Institutional Theatrics offers new insights about art, its administration, and the forces that influence cultural production.

The Body in Sound, Music and Performance

The Body in Sound, Music and Performance
Author: Linda O Keeffe
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2022-07-20
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000620476

The Body in Sound, Music and Performance brings together cutting-edge contributions from women working on and researching contemporary sound practice. This highly interdisciplinary book features a host of international contributors and places emphasis on developments beyond the western world, including movements growing across Latin America. Within the book, the body is situated as both the site and centre for knowledge making and creative production. Chapters explore how insightful theoretical analysis, new methods, innovative practises, and sometimes within the socio-cultural conditions of racism, sexism and classicism, the body can rise above, reshape and deconstruct understood ideas about performance practices, composition, and listening/sensing. This book will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers in the fields of sonic arts, sound design, music, acoustics and performance.

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction

Ritual: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Barry Stephenson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2015-01-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199943583

Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Digital Performance

Digital Performance
Author: Steve Dixon
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 1027
Release: 2007-02-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0262303329

The historical roots, key practitioners, and artistic, theoretical, and technological trends in the incorporation of new media into the performing arts. The past decade has seen an extraordinarily intense period of experimentation with computer technology within the performing arts. Digital media has been increasingly incorporated into live theater and dance, and new forms of interactive performance have emerged in participatory installations, on CD-ROM, and on the Web. In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon traces the evolution of these practices, presents detailed accounts of key practitioners and performances, and analyzes the theoretical, artistic, and technological contexts of this form of new media art. Dixon finds precursors to today's digital performances in past forms of theatrical technology that range from the deus ex machina of classical Greek drama to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (concept of the total artwork), and draws parallels between contemporary work and the theories and practices of Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, and multimedia pioneers of the twentieth century. For a theoretical perspective on digital performance, Dixon draws on the work of Philip Auslander, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and others. To document and analyze contemporary digital performance practice, Dixon considers changes in the representation of the body, space, and time. He considers virtual bodies, avatars, and digital doubles, as well as performances by artists including Stelarc, Robert Lepage, Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, Blast Theory, and Eduardo Kac. He investigates new media's novel approaches to creating theatrical spectacle, including virtual reality and robot performance work, telematic performances in which remote locations are linked in real time, Webcams, and online drama communities, and considers the "extratemporal" illusion created by some technological theater works. Finally, he defines categories of interactivity, from navigational to participatory and collaborative. Dixon challenges dominant theoretical approaches to digital performance—including what he calls postmodernism's denial of the new—and offers a series of boldly original arguments in their place.