Reading Contemporary Performance: Theatricality Across Genres

Description

As the nature of contemporary performance continues to expand into new forms, genres and media, it requires an increasingly diverse vocabulary. Reading Contemporary Performanceprovides students, critics and creators with a rich understanding of the key terms and ideas that are central to any discussion of this evolving theatricality. Specially commissioned entries from a wealth of contributors map out the many and varied ways of discussing performance in all of its forms - from theatrical and site-specific performances to live and New Media art. The book is divided into two sections: Concepts - Key terms and ideas arranged according to the five characteristic elements of performance art: time; space; action; performer; audience. Methodologies and Turning Points - The seminal theories and ways of reading performance, such as postmodernism, epic theatre, feminisms, happenings and animal studies. Case Studies - entries in both sections are accompanied by short studies of specific performances and events, demonstrating creative examples of the ideas and issues in question. Three different introductory essays provide multiple entry points into the discussion of contemporary performance, and cross-references for each entry also allow the plotting of one's own pathway. Reading Contemporary Performance is an invaluable guide, providing not just a solid set of familiarities, but an exploration and contextualisation of this broad and vital field. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures List of contributors How to use this book Acknowledgments Part I Introductions Reading performance: a physiognomy Theatricality across genres Performing the theatrical matrix Introductory essays bibliography Part II Concepts and paired case studies Time Communitas Endurance performance Marina Abramovic’s Durational Opus Event Liminality Post-linearity Precariousness Wang Wei’s Temporary Space Remains Reproduction Space Environmental Theatre Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s red, black, and GREEN: a blues Hierarchy Installation art The Internet Landscape theatre Mise-en-scène Prison culture Proxemics Fifteen principles of Black Market International Scenography Surveillance Performing Surveillance Camera Art Virtual reality Action Appropriation Circus Experimental music Grace notes: Meredith Monk’s Songs of Ascension Extreme performance He Yunchang’s limit acts Happenings Historicity Intervention Sisters Of Survival Signal S.O.S. Mediaturgy Romeo Castellucci’s Hey Girl! Mimicry Montage New genre public art Excerpts from Prostitution Notes (1974) Paradox Paratheatre Feminist blogging as activism and pedagogy Propaganda Quotation Reenactment Heather Cassils’ indeterminate body Scenario Simulacrum War Performer Active analysis Actor Animalworks Body Art Still Image Action: OFFERING Archive and repertoire 35 Years of Living Art (excerpts from Linda Mary Montano’s blog, Thursday, December 6, 2012) Camp Celebrity Cultural production Drag Ethnic drag Memoirs of Björk-Geisha Explicit body performance Gestus Glossolalia Identity politics Weights–an excerpt Identification/dis-identification Masochism Performing body modifications Media New Media Art Performance in the digital age Performativity Pornography Audience Audience Global censorship Ai Weiwei’s transnational public spheres Double-coding Dramaturgy Emotions Framing Historiography Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker Invisible Theatre Liveness Prosthetic performance Gyrl grip Reception theory Concept entries and paired case studies bibliography Part III Methodologies/turning points and paired case studies Aging The ecodramaturgy of Anna Halprin, Eeo Stubblefield, and Rachel Rosenthal Animal Studies Knowing animals now: The Unreliable Bestiary, a multi-part, ongoing performance project by Deke Weaver Anti-art Broad-spectrum approach Choreography Dance or we are lost: The Tanztheater of Pina Bausch Cybernetics The d/Deaf Performative Destruction art Disciplines in performance Ecodramaturgy Expanded cinema Carolee Schneemann’s Cat Scan (New Nightmares/Ancient History) Fluxus Gaga Feminism Boychild Hybridity Intercultural performance Guillermo Gómez-Peña attempts to explain performance art to people who may have never heard of it Intermediality Elevator girls return: Miwa Yanagi’s border crossing between photography and theatre Mimesis Minimalism Modernism Multicentricity Performing the archive Performance, postmodernism, and beyond Performance Studies Photography and performance Cindy Sherman’s real fakery Play Reality Ends Here Postcolonial performance inquiry Postdramatic theater The Wooster Group’s TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (Phèdre) Posthumanism Becoming Kinocognophore Puppet and object performance Racialization Readymade Rhetoric Sampling Feminist hip-hop fusion Semiotics/semiology Bodies in action Terrorism and performance Theatre of images Transcontextuality Goat Island’s The Sea & Poison Transnationalism Whiteness The Muslim performative Methodologies/turning points and paired case studies bibliography Index of essays Index