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			{{Short description\|Interdisciplinary academic field that uses performance as a lens and a tool to study the world}}
	'''Performance studies''' is the academic field concerned with the study of ] in any of its various forms. The term 'performance' is broad, and can include artistic and aesthetic performances like concerts, theatrical events, and ]; sporting events; social, political and religious events like rituals, ceremonies, proclamations and public decisions; certain kinds of language use; and those components of identity which require someone to do, rather than just be, something. Consequently, performance studies is interdisciplinary, drawing from theories of the performing arts, anthropology and sociology, literary theory, and legal studies.<ref>{{cite web \|url=http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic235750.files/Peformance_Studies.pdf \|title= A Student Guide to Performance Studies\| year=2011}}</ref>
			{{Use dmy dates\|date=December 2020}}
			{{Use Oxford spelling\|date=April 2020}}

			'''Performance studies''' is an interdisciplinary academic field that teaches the development of performance skills and uses ] as a lens and a tool to study the world. The term ''performance'' is broad, and can include artistic and aesthetic performances like concerts, theatrical events, and ]; sporting events; social, political and religious events like rituals, ceremonies, proclamations and public decisions; certain kinds of language use; and those components of identity which require someone to do, rather than just be, something. Performance studies draws from theories and methods of the performing arts, anthropology, sociology, literary theory, culture studies, communication, and others.
	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."<ref>Schechner, Richard. "Foreword: Fundamentals of Performance Studies," Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer, eds., ''Teaching Performance Studies,'' Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. P.x</ref>

			Performance studies tends to concentrate on a mix of research methods. The application of practice-led or practice-based research methods has become a widespread phenomenon not just in the anglophone world. As such research projects integrate established methods like literature research and oral history with performance practice, i.e. artistic auto-ethnographic approaches and verbatim theatre. The documentation of ''Practice-as-Research in Performance'' (PARIP), a devoted research project conducted at the University of Bristol between 2001 and 2006, offers a number of inspiring articles and portraits of such research projects and was key for a breakthrough of using creative thinking within this subject field.<ref>Allegue, L., Jones, S., Kershaw, B., & Piccini, A. (2009). Practice-as-Research in performance and screen. Basingstoke.</ref>
	==Origins of and basic concepts in performance studies==
	===Theatre and anthropology===
	Performance Studies as an academic field has multiple origin narratives. On the theatrical and anthropological front the research collaborations of director ] and anthropologist ]. This origin narrative emphasizes a definition of performance as being "between theatre and anthropology" and often stresses the importance of ] performances as an alternative to either traditional proscenium theatre or traditional anthropological fieldwork. ] 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. ] 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. ] 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,<ref>Case, J. A. "Sounds from the Center: Liriel's Performance and Ritual Pilgrimage" ''Journal of Media & Religion'', October 2009, 209-225.</ref> ] has brought a hemispheric perspective on Latin American performance and theorized the relationship between the ] and the performance repertoire, while Corinne Kratz developed a mode of performance analysis that emphasizes the role of multimedia communication in performance.<ref>Kratz, Corinne A. ''Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement and Experience in Okiek Women's Initiation'', Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994 (new edition, Wheatmark 2010).</ref>

			==Origins and basic concepts==
	===Literature===
			Performance studies has been charged as an emerging discipline. As an academic field it is difficult to pin down; which could be the nature of the field itself or it is still too young to tell. In either case, many academics have been critical of its instability. 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."<ref>Schechner, Richard. "Foreword: Fundamentals of Performance Studies," Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer, eds., ''Teaching Performance Studies'', Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. P.x</ref>
	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 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.

			Scholars in today's field of performance studies may trace their roots to a number of other fields such as elocution, interpretation, theatre, anthropology, and speech communication. According to ], "what they have in common is their shared object of study: performance—in the broadest possible sense—as a process, praxis, and episteme, a mode of transmission, an accomplishment, and a means of intervening in the world."<ref>{{cite book \|last1=Taylor \|first1=Diana \|title=Performance \|publisher=Duke University Press \|page=202}}</ref>
	===Speech-act theory and 'performatives'===
	An alternative origin narrative stresses the development of ] by philosophers ] and ], literary critic ], and also ]. 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.”<ref>Austin, J. L. ''How To Do Things With Words''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. P. 94</ref> 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.”<ref>Austin, J. L. ''How To Do Things With Words''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. P. 31</ref> 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.”<ref>Butler, Judith. ''Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative.'' New York: Routledge, 1997 P. 161</ref> 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:<blockquote>
	When ] 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.<ref>''Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative.'' New York: Routledge, 1997 P. 147</ref>
	</blockquote>

			] states that performance studies examine performances in two categories, the first being ''artistic performance'', marked and understood as art. This includes solo-performance, performance art, performance of literature, theatrical storytelling, plays, and performance poetry. Artistic performance considers performance as an art form. The second category is ''cultural performance'', which includes events that occur in everyday life, in which a culture's values are displayed for their perpetuation: rituals such as parades, religious ceremonies, community festivals, controversial storytelling, and performances of social and professional roles, and individual performances of race, gender, sexuality and class are all considered a form of cultural performance.
	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.<ref>Felman, Shoshana ''Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages'' P. 45-46</ref>”

			===Elocution===
	Performance studies has also had a strong relationship to the fields of ], ], critical race theory and ]. Theorists like ],<ref>Phelan, Peggy. ''Unmarked: The Politics of Performance''. London; New York: Routledge, 1993</ref> ],<ref>Muñoz, José Esteban. ''Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics''. University of Minnesota Press, 1999.</ref> ],<ref>E. Patrick Johnson. Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity. Duke University Press, 2003</ref> Rebecca Schneider,<ref>Schneider, Rebecca. ''The Explicit Body in Performance''. London ; New York: Routledge, 1997.</ref> and ] have been equally influential in both performance studies and these related fields.
			The oldest roots of performance studies are in ], sometimes referred to as ]. This early approach to public speech delivery focused on verbal diction, physical gestures, stance, tone, and even dress. A revival of its practices during the eighteenth century, also known as ], contributed to the emergence of Elocution as an academic discipline in its own right. One of the major figures of the Elocution Movement was actor and scholar ]. Sheridan's lectures on elocution, collected in Lectures on Elocution (1762) and his Lectures on Reading (1775), provided directions for marking and reading aloud passages from literature. Another actor, John Walker, published his two-volume Elements of Elocution in 1781, which provided detailed instruction on voice control, gestures, pronunciation, and emphasis.

			The elocution movement took hold in the West; schools and departments of elocution and oratory cropped up across England and the United States throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most significant of these to performance studies today is the ] School of Oratory, established in 1894 by Robert McLean Cumnock<ref>{{cite web \|title=Northwestern University Archives \|url=https://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/agents/people/1060}}</ref> to teach speech education on the principles of elocution.<ref>{{cite book \|last1=REIN \|first1=Lynn \|title=Northwestern University School of Speech: A History. \|url=https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED209705 \|website=ERIC\|year=1981 \|publisher=Northwestern University Press, P }}</ref> The School of Oratory housed their Department of Interpretation which focused on literature and on the art of interpretation as a means of understanding literature and bringing it to life through oral reading. In 1984, the Department of Interpretation was named the Department of Performance Studies to incorporate a broader definition of texts.<ref>{{cite web \|url=https://www.communication.northwestern.edu/academic-programs/major-in-performance-studies/#:~:text=The%20History%20of%20the%20Department&text=The%20department%27s%20name%20was%20changed,range%20of%20experiences%20and%20events. \|website=Performance Studies Department History\|title=Major in Performance Studies \| Northwestern School of Communication \|date=4 May 2020 }}</ref>
	==Academic programs in performance studies==
	Performance studies incorporates theories of ], ], ], ], folkloristics, ], ], ], ], ], and more and more, music ]. 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.<ref>Madison, D. Soyini and Judith Hamera, eds. The Sage Handbook for Performance Studies. SAGE 2006</ref> The first performance studies department was created at ]. However, there is some debate that the joint-cradles of Performance Studies are ] 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''.<ref>Stucky, Nathan and Cynthia Wimmer, eds. ''Teaching Performance Studies.'' Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.</ref> 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. Interaction with departments that include ]'s Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy have made this an ongoing pursuit. Northwestern transitioned from an elocution and performance of literature tradition to expand its definition of presentational aesthetics beyond oral interpretation. Northwestern's unique brand of performance studies has its origins in ], having been started by the ethnographer ] with the goal of understanding all manner of local cultures through their performance practices. In both instances a focus on practice lead to a research methodology beyond theatre or literature/speech. In the United States, the interdisciplinary and multi-focus field has spread to ], ], and elsewhere. Undergraduate and graduate programs are offered at , ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and the ]. ]’s is unique in including both Music and Theatre degree programs.

			===Oral interpretation of literature===
	In the ] ] offers a degree scheme in performance studies with highly acclaimed performance artists such as Mike Pearson, Heike Roms and Jill Greenhalgh.
			On the literature front, ] (1914–2001) was considered by many to be someone who pioneered performance theory.<ref>{{Cite web\|last=Writer\|first=James Janega, Tribune Staff\|title=WALLACE A. BACON, 87, NU PROFESSOR\|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-02-16-0102160209-story.html\|access-date=2021-09-30\|website=chicagotribune.com\|date=16 February 2001 \|language=en-US}}</ref> Bacon taught performance of literature as the ultimate act of humility. In his defining statement of performance theory, "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 through the power of texts" (''Literature in Performance'', Vol 5 No 1, 1984; p. 84).

			In addition, Robert Breen's text '']'' is a cornerstone in the field for staging narrative texts, though it remains 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. More recently, performance theorist and novelist ] has suggested that narrative fiction itself—and particularly the novel—demands the performative participation of the reader.<ref>{{cite web\|last1=Browning\|first1=Barbara\|title='Dear Reader': The Novel's Call to Perform\|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1m4uWyRjvo \|archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211212/Y1m4uWyRjvo\| archive-date=2021-12-12 \|url-status=live\|website=YouTube\|publisher=The Book Lovers\|access-date=12 August 2014}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
	In ] ] offers a master and ph.d. degree in "performance design", focusing on subjects such as theatrical performances, live music, festivals, and urban performances.

			===Theatre and anthropology===
	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.
			On the theatrical and anthropological front, this origin is often regarded as the research collaborations of director ] and anthropologist ]. This origin narrative emphasizes a definition of performance as being "between theatre and anthropology" and often stresses the importance of ] performances as an alternative to either traditional proscenium theatre or traditional anthropological fieldwork.

			] 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.
	In ], the ], ] and ] 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.

			] 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,<ref>Case, J. A. "Sounds from the Center: Liriel's Performance and Ritual Pilgrimage" ''Journal of Media & Religion'', October 2009, 209–225.</ref> ] has brought a hemispheric perspective on Latin American performance and theorized the relationship between the ] and the performance repertoire, while Corinne Kratz developed a mode of performance analysis that emphasizes the role of multimedia communication in performance.<ref>Kratz, Corinne A. ''Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement and Experience in Okiek Women's Initiation'', Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994 (new edition, Wheatmark 2010).</ref> Laurie Frederik argues for the importance of ethnographic research and a solid theoretical base in anthropological perspective.
	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), Christine Balance (UC Irvine), Robin Bernstein (Harvard), Henry Bial (Kansas), Rachel Bowditch (ASU), Bernadette Marie Calafell (University of Denver), Brandi Catanese (Berkeley), Renee Alexander Craft (UNC), Craig Gingrich-Philbrook (Southern Illinois), Brian Herrera (Princeton), Jill Dolan (Princeton), Stacy Wolf (Princeton), Suk-Young Kim (UCSB), Branislav Jacovljevic (Stanford), Jill Lane (NYU), Eng-Beng Lim (Brown), Paige McGinley (Yale), Jisha Menon (Stanford), Tavia Nyongo (NYU), Tony Perucci (UNC), ] (San Jose State), Jennifer Parker-Starbuck (Roehampton), Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr. (UMD), Laurie Frederik Meer (UMD), Ramon Rivera-Servera (Northwestern), Theresa Smalec (CUNY), Shannon Steen (Berkeley), David Terry (San Jose State), Alexandra Vasquez (Princeton), Shane Vogel (Indiana), ] (Michigan), Maurya Wickstrom (CUNY), Patricia Ybarra (Brown), and ] (Northwestern).

	==~~Performance~~ ~~studies~~ and ~~performance art~~==		===Speech-act theory and performativity===
			{{more citations needed\|date=March 2023}}
			An alternative origin narrative stresses the development of speech-act theory by philosophers ] and ], literary critic ], and also ]. 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".<ref>Austin, J. L. ''How To Do Things With Words''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. p. 94</ref> 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".<ref>Austin, J. L. ''How To Do Things With Words''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. p. 31</ref> 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".<ref>Butler, Judith. ''].'' New York: Routledge, 1997 p. 161</ref> 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:<blockquote>
			When ] 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.<ref>''Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative.'' New York: Routledge, 1997 p. 147</ref>
			</blockquote>

			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."<ref>Felman, Shoshana ''Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages'' pp. 45–46</ref>
	Performance studies has a long-standing and complex relationship to the practice of ], also known as ] or visual art performance.

			===Other fields===
	Some key companies and practitioners who are widely considered to be working within this field include: ], ], ] and the ], ], ] (UK), ], ], ], ] (New York), ] (New York), and ] (Belgium). Other artists, generally outside the European avant-garde theatre, who have been instrumental to the development of analysis in the field include: ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ] and ] aka ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ] and ].
			Performance studies has also had a strong relationship to the fields of feminism, ], ] and ]. Theorists like ],<ref>Phelan, Peggy. ''Unmarked: The Politics of Performance''. London; New York: Routledge, 1993</ref> ],<ref>Muñoz, José Esteban. ''Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics''. University of Minnesota Press, 1999.</ref> ],<ref>E. Patrick Johnson. Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity. Duke University Press, 2003</ref> Rebecca Schneider,<ref>Schneider, Rebecca. ''The Explicit Body in Performance''. London; New York: Routledge, 1997.</ref> and ] have been equally influential in both performance studies and these related fields.

			==Academic programs==
	==Chronology of Developments in the field==
			{{more citations needed\|date=March 2023}}
	Though Wallace Bacon (1914–2001), is considered by many the father of Performance theory, it was that both ] and ] who were highly involved in the avant garde art scene that developed in the U.S. in the 1960s.
			Performance studies incorporates theories of ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and increasingly, music performance.<ref>See e.g.
			Nicholas Cook and Richard Pettengill (eds.), "Taking It to the Bridge. Music as Performance", University of Michigan Press, 2013; Nicholas Cook, "Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance", in: ; Philip Auslander, "Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World," in: "; Melanie Fritsch and Stefan Strötgen, "Relatively Live: How to Identify Live Music Performances", in: </ref>

			The first academic department with the name "Performance Studies" started at ] in 1980. Shortly after in 1984 ] renamed its long-standing Department of Interpretation as the "Department of Performance Studies;" finally reflect their broadened definition of text and performance. Generally the differences between the NYU and Northwestern models cite different disciplinary concerns, however, in both instances a focus on practice lead to research methodologies and theories beyond theatre or literature in relation to or in service of understanding performance. 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''.<ref>Stucky, Nathan and Cynthia Wimmer, eds. ''Teaching Performance Studies''. Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.</ref>
	=== 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.

			In the United States, the interdisciplinary and multi-focus field has spread to ], ], ], ], ], and elsewhere. Undergraduate and graduate programs are offered at , ]'s , , , ], ], ], ], ], ], ], the ], and . ]'s is unique in including both Music and Theatre degree programs.
	=== 1980 ===
	The addition of the subtitle ‘Journal of Performance Studies’ by the Drama Review signaled its more inclusive approach to performative behavior.

			In the United Kingdom ] offers a degree scheme in performance studies with highly acclaimed performance artists such as Mike Pearson, Heike Roms and Jill Greenhalgh. The ] in London offers a BA in drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. ], London also offers a BA in Performance and Theatre Arts. The University of Plymouth has offered a BA in Theatre & Performance since the early 1990s; its postgraduate research programme (ResM and MPhil/PhD) specialises in performance studies. The ] also offers a BA in Theatre and Performance Studies, in addition to leading Postgraduate programmes. More recently, the ] has offered a BA in Theatre and Performance. Part of the conservatoire, the course focused on investigating performance practically, with strong emphasis on the idea of ]. The programme was led by Dr Laura Cull, founder of the now multinational Centre for ; a new strand of performance studies which attempts to develop the relationship between philosophy and performance.
	=== 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.

			In Denmark ] offers a master and ph.d. degree in "performance design", focusing on subjects such as theatrical performances, live music, festivals, and urban performances.
	=== 1984 ===
	A second major Performance Studies department begins in the US Northwestern University.

			In Germany ] offers a master program in performance studies at the centre for performance studies run by ]. The Centre for Performance Studies at the ] offers a certificate in performance studies focussing on the combination of academic and artistic research within performance projects.
	=== 1990 ===
	New York University holds the first U.S. Performance Studies conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Performance Studies department.

			In Poland, ] in Kraków offers a master program in performance studies at the Faculty of Polish Language and Literature.<ref>https://polonistyka.uj.edu.pl/studia/studia-stacjonarne</ref>
	=== 1993 ===
	A ‘performance studies’ focus group forms within The Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE).

			In India, ] offers MPhil and PhD program in theatre & performance studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics. Since 2012, School of Culture and Creative Expressions, ], started a MA program in performance studies, which focus on redefining methodologies of cultural studies and research on the basis of the nuances of performance studies. It is formulating the first Practice based PhD in the country and working extensively in the realm of Practice-as-Research. On the similar lines, the Centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia (CPRACSIS), Kerala have organized series of workshops and seminars over the last few years to engage scholars, artists and practitioners in conversation informed by performance studies.
	=== 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.

			In Australia, the ], ] and ] 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.
	=== 1996 ===
	Northwestern University holds a second Performance Studies conference.

			In Brazil, the ], started an interdisciplinary program (masters) in cultural performances in 2012, the first in a Latin country. The goal of this program is to analyse "rituals, games, performances, drama, dance" from a cross-cultural point of view.
	=== 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 ], 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.

	] 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 ], a colleague of Richard Schechner's at NYU who felt Schechner was taking the department in the wrong direction.

	== See also ==		== See also ==

	* ]
	*]
	*]
	* ]
	* Shannon Jackson
	* ]
	*André Lepecki
	*]		*]
	* D. Soyini Madison
	*Fred Moten
	*]{{Disambiguation needed\|date=June 2011}}
	*]
	*]
	*Joseph Roach
	*]
	*]
	*]
	*]		*]
			*]
			*]
			*]
			*]
			*]
			*]
			*]
			*]

	==References==		==References==
			{{reflist}}
	<references/>
	*Napoleon, Davi. ''Transcending Substance'' in ''TheaterWeek'' November 20, 1995.
	*Hornby, Richard. ''Against Performance Theory'' in ''TheaterWeek'' October 17, 1994.
	*Lepecki, André. O''f the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory''. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
	*Taylor, Diana. ''The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas''. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
	*''Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory''
	*Schechner, Richard. ''Between Theater and Anthropology''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.

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Latest revision as of 06:47, 28 October 2024

Interdisciplinary academic field that uses performance as a lens and a tool to study the world

Performance studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that teaches the development of performance skills and uses performance as a lens and a tool to study the world. The term performance is broad, and can include artistic and aesthetic performances like concerts, theatrical events, and performance art; sporting events; social, political and religious events like rituals, ceremonies, proclamations and public decisions; certain kinds of language use; and those components of identity which require someone to do, rather than just be, something. Performance studies draws from theories and methods of the performing arts, anthropology, sociology, literary theory, culture studies, communication, and others.

Performance studies tends to concentrate on a mix of research methods. The application of practice-led or practice-based research methods has become a widespread phenomenon not just in the anglophone world. As such research projects integrate established methods like literature research and oral history with performance practice, i.e. artistic auto-ethnographic approaches and verbatim theatre. The documentation of Practice-as-Research in Performance (PARIP), a devoted research project conducted at the University of Bristol between 2001 and 2006, offers a number of inspiring articles and portraits of such research projects and was key for a breakthrough of using creative thinking within this subject field.

Origins and basic concepts

Performance studies has been charged as an emerging discipline. As an academic field it is difficult to pin down; which could be the nature of the field itself or it is still too young to tell. In either case, many academics have been critical of its instability. 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."

Scholars in today's field of performance studies may trace their roots to a number of other fields such as elocution, interpretation, theatre, anthropology, and speech communication. According to Diana Taylor, "what they have in common is their shared object of study: performance—in the broadest possible sense—as a process, praxis, and episteme, a mode of transmission, an accomplishment, and a means of intervening in the world."

Richard Schechner states that performance studies examine performances in two categories, the first being artistic performance, marked and understood as art. This includes solo-performance, performance art, performance of literature, theatrical storytelling, plays, and performance poetry. Artistic performance considers performance as an art form. The second category is cultural performance, which includes events that occur in everyday life, in which a culture's values are displayed for their perpetuation: rituals such as parades, religious ceremonies, community festivals, controversial storytelling, and performances of social and professional roles, and individual performances of race, gender, sexuality and class are all considered a form of cultural performance.

Elocution

The oldest roots of performance studies are in elocution, sometimes referred to as declamation. This early approach to public speech delivery focused on verbal diction, physical gestures, stance, tone, and even dress. A revival of its practices during the eighteenth century, also known as The Elocution Movement, contributed to the emergence of Elocution as an academic discipline in its own right. One of the major figures of the Elocution Movement was actor and scholar Thomas Sheridan. Sheridan's lectures on elocution, collected in Lectures on Elocution (1762) and his Lectures on Reading (1775), provided directions for marking and reading aloud passages from literature. Another actor, John Walker, published his two-volume Elements of Elocution in 1781, which provided detailed instruction on voice control, gestures, pronunciation, and emphasis.

The elocution movement took hold in the West; schools and departments of elocution and oratory cropped up across England and the United States throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most significant of these to performance studies today is the Northwestern University School of Oratory, established in 1894 by Robert McLean Cumnock to teach speech education on the principles of elocution. The School of Oratory housed their Department of Interpretation which focused on literature and on the art of interpretation as a means of understanding literature and bringing it to life through oral reading. In 1984, the Department of Interpretation was named the Department of Performance Studies to incorporate a broader definition of texts.

Oral interpretation of literature

On the literature front, Wallace Bacon (1914–2001) was considered by many to be someone who pioneered performance theory. Bacon taught performance of literature as the ultimate act of humility. In his defining statement of performance theory, "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 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 it remains 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. More recently, performance theorist and novelist Barbara Browning has suggested that narrative fiction itself—and particularly the novel—demands the performative participation of the reader.

Theatre and anthropology

On the theatrical and anthropological front, this origin is often regarded as 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.

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. Laurie Frederik argues for the importance of ethnographic research and a solid theoretical base in anthropological perspective.

Speech-act theory and performativity

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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:

When Rosa Parks 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."

Other fields

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.

Academic programs

Performance studies incorporates theories of drama, dance, art, anthropology, folkloristics, philosophy, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, comparative literature, communication studies, and increasingly, music performance.

The first academic department with the name "Performance Studies" started at NYU in 1980. Shortly after in 1984 Northwestern University renamed its long-standing Department of Interpretation as the "Department of Performance Studies;" finally reflect their broadened definition of text and performance. Generally the differences between the NYU and Northwestern models cite different disciplinary concerns, however, in both instances a focus on practice lead to research methodologies and theories beyond theatre or literature in relation to or in service of understanding performance. 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.

In the United States, the interdisciplinary and multi-focus field has spread to Columbia, Brown, UCLA, UCI, UC Berkeley, and elsewhere. Undergraduate and graduate programs are offered at The University of Texas at Austin, UCLA's Culture and Performance Program, UC Davis, UC Irvine, Kennesaw State University, Louisiana State University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, California State University, Northridge, San Jose State University, University of San Diego, University of Maryland, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Washington University in St. Louis. Texas A&M University's Department of Performance Studies is unique in including both Music and Theatre degree programs.

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. The University of Roehampton in London offers a BA in drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. Richmond University, London also offers a BA in Performance and Theatre Arts. The University of Plymouth has offered a BA in Theatre & Performance since the early 1990s; its postgraduate research programme (ResM and MPhil/PhD) specialises in performance studies. The University of Warwick also offers a BA in Theatre and Performance Studies, in addition to leading Postgraduate programmes. More recently, the Guildford School of Acting has offered a BA in Theatre and Performance. Part of the conservatoire, the course focused on investigating performance practically, with strong emphasis on the idea of Practice as Research. The programme was led by Dr Laura Cull, founder of the now multinational Centre for Performance Philosophy; a new strand of performance studies which attempts to develop the relationship between philosophy and performance.

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 Germany University of Hamburg offers a master program in performance studies at the centre for performance studies run by Gabriele Klein. The Centre for Performance Studies at the University of Bremen offers a certificate in performance studies focussing on the combination of academic and artistic research within performance projects.

In Poland, Jagiellonian University in Kraków offers a master program in performance studies at the Faculty of Polish Language and Literature.

In India, Jawaharlal Nehru University offers MPhil and PhD program in theatre & performance studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics. Since 2012, School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University Delhi, started a MA program in performance studies, which focus on redefining methodologies of cultural studies and research on the basis of the nuances of performance studies. It is formulating the first Practice based PhD in the country and working extensively in the realm of Practice-as-Research. On the similar lines, the Centre for Performance Research and Cultural Studies in South Asia (CPRACSIS), Kerala have organized series of workshops and seminars over the last few years to engage scholars, artists and practitioners in conversation informed by 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.

In Brazil, the Universidade Federal de Goiás, started an interdisciplinary program (masters) in cultural performances in 2012, the first in a Latin country. The goal of this program is to analyse "rituals, games, performances, drama, dance" from a cross-cultural point of view.

References

Allegue, L., Jones, S., Kershaw, B., & Piccini, A. (2009). Practice-as-Research in performance and screen. Basingstoke.
Schechner, Richard. "Foreword: Fundamentals of Performance Studies," Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer, eds., Teaching Performance Studies, Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. P.x
Taylor, Diana. Performance. Duke University Press. p. 202.
"Northwestern University Archives".
REIN, Lynn (1981). Northwestern University School of Speech: A History. Northwestern University Press, P. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
"Major in Performance Studies | Northwestern School of Communication". Performance Studies Department History. 4 May 2020.
Writer, James Janega, Tribune Staff (16 February 2001). "WALLACE A. BACON, 87, NU PROFESSOR". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 30 September 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Browning, Barbara. "'Dear Reader': The Novel's Call to Perform". YouTube. The Book Lovers. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
Case, J. A. "Sounds from the Center: Liriel's Performance and Ritual Pilgrimage" Journal of Media & Religion, October 2009, 209–225.
Kratz, Corinne A. Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement and Experience in Okiek Women's Initiation, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994 (new edition, Wheatmark 2010).
Austin, J. L. How To Do Things With Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. p. 94
Austin, J. L. How To Do Things With Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. p. 31
Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997 p. 161
Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997 p. 147
Felman, Shoshana Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J.L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages pp. 45–46
Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London; New York: Routledge, 1993
Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
E. Patrick Johnson. Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity. Duke University Press, 2003
Schneider, Rebecca. The Explicit Body in Performance. London; New York: Routledge, 1997.
See e.g. Nicholas Cook and Richard Pettengill (eds.), "Taking It to the Bridge. Music as Performance", University of Michigan Press, 2013; Nicholas Cook, "Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance", in: "The Online Journal of the Society for Music Theory", Vol. 7, No. 2, April 2001; Philip Auslander, "Music as Performance: Living in the Immaterial World," in: "Theatre Survey", Vol. 47, No. 4, Fall 2006"; Melanie Fritsch and Stefan Strötgen, "Relatively Live: How to Identify Live Music Performances", in: "Music and the Moving Image", Vol. 5 No. 1, 2012 (March), p. 47–66.
Stucky, Nathan and Cynthia Wimmer, eds. Teaching Performance Studies. Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.
https://polonistyka.uj.edu.pl/studia/studia-stacjonarne

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