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Performance Studies

Performance studies examines performance itself as an object of inquiry, seeking to understand behaviors and their implications. It views many everyday activities as performances, from reporting to speech acts to enacting gender or race. Key figures like Victor Turner and Richard Schechner established that rituals and theatrical performances both transform consciousness and enable audience-performer interactions through sequenced behaviors. Performance studies has broadened to critique more areas, though some argue it risks losing focus if everything can be viewed as a performance.

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348 views1 page

Performance Studies

Performance studies examines performance itself as an object of inquiry, seeking to understand behaviors and their implications. It views many everyday activities as performances, from reporting to speech acts to enacting gender or race. Key figures like Victor Turner and Richard Schechner established that rituals and theatrical performances both transform consciousness and enable audience-performer interactions through sequenced behaviors. Performance studies has broadened to critique more areas, though some argue it risks losing focus if everything can be viewed as a performance.

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thecoffeecan
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© © All Rights Reserved
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PERFORMANCE STUDIES

Why study performance?

Reporters: Abao, Banaag, Gacutan, Trasporte


Comm Res 101

Seven functions of performance by Richard


Schechner:

I. What is Performance Studies?

1.
2.
3.
4.

Performance Studies takes performance


itself as the object of inquiry.

all aspects of everyday life, reveal a


performative component
behaviors in relation to the individual or
group that exhibits them

PS scholars hope to comprehend and explain


what such behaviors might indicate about the
individual, group or culture that enacts them.
To treat any object, work or product as
performance - a painting, a novel, a shoe, or
anything at all - means to investigate what the
object does, how it interacts with or objects or
beings, and how it related to other objects or
being. - Richard Schechner
. Examples of performances
1) reporting
II. Elements of a performance (performer,
repeated action, et al)

any behavior that is twice-behaved or


restored

transformative

building blocks that structure our reality


o

it is the central constituent of


the fabric of social reality

To entertain
To make something that is beautiful
To mark or change identity
To make or foster community
To heal
To teach, persuade or convince
To deal with the sacred and/or the
demonic

5.
6.
7.

IV. Broadening scope:


a. The self as a performer
b. Speech Acts
c. Race

In a world that is everywhere structured by


human activity, behaviors, actions and events
are now the keys to understanding.
III. Brief History
Victor Turner and Richard Schechner, may be
considered the fathers of the field of
Performance Studies
1960s: Turner saw universal theatrical language
in cultural rituals

occur in a state of intensity


enable interactions between audience
and performer
consist of a whole sequence of
behaviors prior to and after the main
event on display

d. Gender,
e. other technological forms
V. Performance Studies critiques
a. Some critics reject its behavioralist
approach to all human phenomena, wondering
why What is Real has been reduced to an
outcome of scripted actions and social
repetition.

Various groups perform rituals that dramatize


and communicate stories about themselves.

b. When any action can be regarded


as performance, there is nothing that wont be
cast into PS net

1981: Turner invited Richard Schechner to join


in organizing the World Conference on Ritual
and Performance.

c. performance studies is too a


voracious a field: the broader its reach
becomes, the more it loses critical punch

Schechner agreed that there is a point of


contact between the anthropological and
theatrical thought.

Main References:

Common Features of Ritual and Theatrical


Performances

both enact a transformation in being or


consciousness

A Students Guide to Performance Studies by


Shana Komitee
http://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/fi
les/peformance_studies.pdf
Theory for Performance Studies by Philip
Auslander

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