Auslander's Version of Performance Studies

Philip Auslander's recent book on Theory for Performance Studies draws a distinction between 'Theatre Studies' and 'Performance Studies'. Whilst Theatre Studies is 'object based', deploying a wide range of theoretical approaches to focus on the specific events that we call 'theatre', Performance Studies, he claims, is 'paradigm based'. By this he means that performance itself provides an analytic framework according to which many activities and objects not usually considered 'theatre' can be analysed. So far so good, the problems are that, firstly, this is not the understanding of Performance Studies which is current is the academy, and more importantly this is not the approach that is taken throughout the rest of the book. After the introduction a range of theorists are discussed and the impact of their ideas on our understanding of performance exampled, but these theorists do not themselves use the performance paradigm as an analytical framework. Rather, these ideas tend to come from literary and cultural theory and draw on language paradigms or other non-performance models.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Philip
• Auslander
• performance
• studies
• theory
• theatre
• theater
• Schechner
• Turner