Synopses & Reviews
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.
Synopsis
This book brings together essays by leading international scholars and practitioners to map the present and future of the field of performance studies. Covering diverse cultural areas, they examine the field's diversification in a variety of contexts and demonstrate its influence, implementation and academic experimentalism. The essays analyse social, political, theatrical, therapeutic, religious, artistic and biological phenomena and processes that are understood as performative.
Employing a reflexive approach to observation, description, and analysis, contributors introduce a variety of applications of performance studies methodologies to contemporary life, thus showing how the field can continue to create significant links among arts, humanities, and social and life sciences. The essays in Performance Studies in Motion bring together critical perspectives addressing theoretical notions and case studies from places as diverse as Austria, China, Belgium, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Korea, the Philippines, Poland, Rwanda, and the USA.
About the Author
Atay Citron heads the Medical Clowning Academic Training Program at the Theatre Department of the University of Haifa, Israel.
Sharon Aronson-Lehavi is a tenured Senior Lecturer of Theatre and Performance Studies at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
David Zerbib teaches philosophy of art and aesthetics at the University of Paris, France. He has written extensively on performance and is currently directing an edition and translation in French of Richard Shechner's essays.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
* Introduction Atay Citron, Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, and David Zerbib * Motion I: Performance Studies:Perspectives and Prospectives 1. Dionysus in 1966: The Force of Performative Circumstances / David Zerbib
2. Performance Studies 3.0 / Henry Bial
3. Can We Be The (New) Third World? / Richard Schechner
* Motion II: Beyond Experimental Theatre 4. Table on Stage: The Rise of the Messenger / Carol Martin
5. Performing History, Performing Memory with the Théâtre du Soleil / Judith Miller
6. Embodying the Performance Text: Tradition versus New Dramaturgy in Contemporary German Postdramatic Theatre / Gad Kaynar
* Motion III: Performance in/of Social Spaces 7. Re: Location / Sharon Aronson-Lehavi
8. Critically Civic: Public Movement's Performative Activism / Daphna Ben-Shaul
9. Rising from the Rubble: Creating the Museum of the History of Polish Jews / an interview with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
* Motion IV: Into the Political Arena 10. The Impossible Disappearance of Belgium: Notes on Politics, Dramaturgy and Performance/ Klaas Tindemans
11. National Street Theatre: Large-Scale Performances in Poland after the Crash of the Presidential Plane / Dariusz Kosinski
12. Social Transformance: In Defense of Political Performance/Art / Eva Brenner
* Motion V: At War 13. Beyond the Boundary of the Agora: the Hilltop Performance at the Western Front, 1915 / Annabelle Winograd
14. Dismantling Road Blocks: Non-Violent Resistance of the Palestinian-Israeli Group ‘Combatants for Peace / Chen Alon
15. Theatre as Metaphor: Isôko Rwandas Trilogy of Time / Jennifer H. Capraru
* Motion VI: Contemporary Rituals: Challenges and Changes 16. At the Site of the Void: Inaesthetics of Performance in the Bicol Dotoc / Jazmin Badong Llana
17. New Technologies in Korean Shamanism: Cultural Innovation and the Preservation of Tradition / Liora Sarfati
18. Performing Jewish Prayer on Stage: From Rituality to Theatricality and Back / Sarit Cofman-Simhon
* Motion VII: Applied Performance Studies: Therapy, Activism, and Education 19. Audacity and Insane Courage: Clown Doctors' Secret Remedies / Atay Citron
20. Performing the World: The Performance Turn in Social Activism / Lois Holzman and Dan Friedman
21. Social Performance Studies: A New PS School with Chinese Characteristics / William Huizhu Sun and Faye Chunfang Fei
* Motion VIII: Performance Studies and Life Sciences 22. What Is Performance Anyway? A Cognitive Approach / Tomasz Kubikowski
23. The Mirror Game: A Natural Science Study of Togetherness/ Lior Noy
24. Performing Science / Uri Alon
Notes About the Contributors Index