Performance: a critical introduction / Marvin Albert Carlson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carlson, Marvin, 1935-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Performance art--United States.

Performance art.

United States.

Arts, American--20th century.

Arts, American.

Arts, Modern--20th century.

Arts, Modern.

Physical Description:

x, 276 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2004.

Summary:

Performance: a critical introduction was the first textbook to provide an overview of the modern concept of performance and its development in various related fields. This comprehensively revised, illustrated edition discusses recent performance work and takes into consideration changes that have taken place in the study of performance since the book's original publication in 1996. Marvin Carlson guides the reader through the contested definition of performance as a theatrical activity and the myriad ways in which performance has been interpreted by ethnographers, anthropologists, linguists, and cultural theorists. With a fully updated bibliography and additional glossary of terms, students of performance studies, visual and performing arts or theatre history will welcome this new version of a classic text.

Contents:

The display of skills 2

Patterned behavior 3

Keeping up the standard 4

Theatre and performance art 5

The plan of this book 6

Part I Performance and the social sciences 9

1 The performance of culture: anthropological and ethnographic approaches 11

Performance and anthropology 12

Theories of cultural performance 13

Liminality and play 18

Performing anthropology 24

2 Performance in society: sociological and psychological approaches 31

Social performance 32

Framing 35

Performance and agency 37

Perspectives on social performance 38

Moreno and psychodrama 41

Eric Berne and Talcott Parsons 43

Social constructionism 44

Erving Goffman and keying 45

Richard Schechner and restored behavior 46

Binocular vision and the actual 48

Performance and psychoanalysis 50

3 The performance of language: linguistic approaches 56

Semiotics 56

The poststructuralist challenge 57

The linguistic tradition 58

Speech act theory 61

The literary speech act 65

Speech act theory and semiotics 71

Text and performance 74

Performativity and citation 75

Performance and the social sciences: a look backward 79

Part II The art of performance 81

4 Performance in its historical context 83

Performance's new orientation 83

Folk and popular performance 87

Experimental performance 95

Modern mime and dance 101

Non-dramatic events 104

5 Performance art 110

The beginnings of performance art 110

Spectacle performance 117

Solo work 123

The turn to language 128

Live art, liveliness, and the media 132

Looking ahead 134

Part III Performance and contemporary theory 135

6 Performance and the postmodern 137

Theorists of the modern and postmodern 137

Postmodern dance 142

Strategies of postmodernism 145

Postmodernism, poststructuralism, and theatricality 148

Performance as experience 151

After postmodernism 155

7 Performance and identity 157

Early feminist performance 157

Autobiographical performance 162

Male performance 164

Controversies of the 1990s 168

Performance and ethnicity 173

8 Cultural performance 179

Guerrilla and street performance 180

Social concerns in early feminist performance 182

The search for subjectivity 184

Resistant performance 188

Recent political performance 194

Post-colonial perspectives 198

Intercultural performance in a global context 204

Conclusion: what is performance? 205

Drawing to a close 205

Some overviews 208

The spread of performance study 211

Coda: an apologia for theatre 213.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [247]-265) and indexes.

ISBN:

0415299276

0415299268

OCLC:

51985982