Humanities and Liberal Arts » Performance Studies
Performance Studies addresses the reality which classic Drama and Theatre studies have avoided or ignored, the phenomenology of performance (although that's all there is in practice, terms like Drama and Theatre being context-determined labels). The field is therefore multi- and cross-disciplinary, and tends to focus on contemporary and innovative performance work as exemplars and raw material - performance is by definition time-based and impermanent, and considerations of e.g. theatre history become exercises in imagination. Moreover, new performance work is heavily influenced by the re-appraisals of identity, self-and-other, the authorial voice, the status of narrative, etc., etc., which are the meat of current cultural theorising. The products of new performance therefore invite - and sometimes demand - new modes of appraisal and analysis. Performance Studies do not operate in terms of any aesthetic hierarchy, and are open to the huge varieties of form, and differences in social function, which are available globally. They look to a wide variety of cognate fields, such as cultural theory, sociology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, and 'real' history, to inform and enrich.
Performance Studies were initially established in the USA, and certain key institutions, journals, etc., celebrate that fact. The practice then developed in Continental Europe, with the UK coming late to the field - partly because of the powerfully established schools of classic Drama and Theatre studies already in existence. It is now a global discipline.
