1
Contents
Acknowledgments 1
Introduction
Part I From acting to performance 2
“Holy theatre” and catharsis
3
“Just be your self”: logocentrism and différance in performance theory
4
Task and vision: Willem Dafoe in LSD
Part II Postmodernism and performance 5
Presence and theatricality in the discourse of performance and the visual arts
6
Toward a concept of the political in postmodern theatre
7
Embodiment: the politics of postmodern dance
Part III Postmodern body politics 8 9
Vito Acconci and the politics of the body in postmodern performance Boal, Blau, Brecht: the body
ix 1
11 13 28 39
47
Introduction
49 58 73
87 89 98
10
“Brought to you by Fem-Rage”: stand-up comedy and the politics of gender
108
11
The surgical self: body alteration and identity
126
x
Acknowledgments
145 / 180
Francisco, 1984. It was subsequently published in Art and Cinema (New Series), 1, 1 (1986), and in Acting (Re)Considered, edited by Phillip Zarrilli (1995). It has been revised for inclusion here. “Task and vision: Willem Dafoe in LSD” (Chapter 4) was commissioned for a special issue of TDR on the subject of performance personae. That issue never came off, but the essay appeared (severely edited) in another special issue on the Wooster Group (TDR, 29, 2), reprinted here by permission of MIT Press, © 1985. The unedited version was published in Acting (Re)Considered,The title of this collection, for which I have my edito edited by Phillip Zarrilli (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).Rodgers, to thank, is evocative for me on several level That version has been revised for inclusion here. personal level, From Acting to Performance suggests the cou “Presence and theatricality in the discourse of performance and thedevelopment of my own interests has followed, from an visual arts” (Chapter 5) was my contribution to the State of thecommitment to theatre toward a broader concep Profession panel at the annual conference of the American Societyperformance and its genres. (I hope it is not presumpt for Theatre Research in Providence, Rhode Island, 1992. suggest that many theatre scholars of my generation sh “Toward a concept of the political in postmodern theatre”intellectual history with me.) The same phrase sugge (Chapter 6) is reprinted from Theatre Journal, 39, 1 by permission ofdirection of developments in my original area of in the Johns Hopkins University Press, © 1987. experimental theatre, over the last twenty-five years “Embodiment: the politics of postmodern dance” (Chapter 7) isWhereas the modernist and avant-gardist theatres of reprinted from TDR, 32, 4 by permission of the MIT Press, © 1988.nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries conceived “Vito Acconci and the politics of the body in postmodernwork in terms of innovations in acting, subsequent postmo performance” (Chapter 8) is reprinted from After the Future:innovations have resulted from a recon-sideration of th Postmodern Times and Places, edited by Gary Shapiro, by permissionnature of the activity that takes place on the stage, a of the State University of New York Press, © 1990. development of performance art, in which artists fro “Boal, Blau, Brecht: the body” (Chapter 9) appeared originally intheatrical backgrounds have brought divergent sensibil Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism, edited by Mady Schutzmanbear on the act of performance. Finally, the title phrase ical theories, the and Jan Cohen-Cruz (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). Itdevelopments and debates within the American ac roduction of the has been revised for inclusion here. surrounding the evolution of Peformance Studies as a di tre studies. For “‘Brought to you by Fem-Rage’: stand-up comedy and the politicsapart from Theatre Studies. It is with these debates that ning a critical of gender” (Chapter 10) is reprinted from Acting Out: Feministbegin my discussion here. Despite the antagonisms expre analytically, but Performances, edited by Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan, by permissionboth sides, the title of this book expresses my perception d me to see both of the University of Michigan Press, © 1993. relationship between Theatre Studies and Performance Stu nded notion of Part of “The surgical self: body alteration and identity” (Chapterone of continuity rather than rupture. bject to the same 11) was published as “Orlan’s Theatre of Operations,” TheatreForum, Detecting within me a histrionic impulse, my mother cause 2theIntroduction panel 7 (1995). I presented an earlier draft of the current essay to theoff to acting classes beginning around age nine. Thus be was particularly Gender/Technology Conference organized by E.Ann Kaplan at thelife-long involvement with an art form and an academic high school, I worked Institute intensively in the theatre, primarily as York an at Stony r future theatre Humanities at the State University of New which I eventually earned two graduate degrees. Thro actor, takingBrook, a relatively rridean concept 1996. uncritical view of the enterprise. It was only Introduc undergraduate that I began to think about the social, cultural, methodasofanacting and political significance of theatre. That I attended college during , when I started mutually exclusive: if you accept the new paradigm, you must immediate post-Viet Nam, post-Watergate period had much to iticalthe theatre, the previous one. So different are the premises on which comp with this growing emphasis. I left college briefly to study acting ing a do necessary paradigms are based that scientists who accept different parad at professional schools in New York, but was so disenchanted with cannot even speak meaningfully with one another. In Kuh theWillem lack of intellectual curiosity among my fellow students that I vision: terms, Theatre Studies would not be a subset of postrevo-luti returned ormer’s work. to I a conventional undergraduate education at a university Performance Studies—it would be the repudiated paradigm. Th without of a theatre department. It was during this time that my own discussion would be as phlogiston to performance’s oxygen: theatre sch of theatrical avant-gardism and reading in ter 3,investigations and also and performance scholars would be unable to engage in mean theory brought home to me that theatre is a much le is performance based in exchange; those who insisted on the validity of the Theatre St largervery category than I had originally conceived it to be, and that it ting those paradigm would be regarded as quacks akin to those who w is, in turn, the inclusion of a subset of a still larger category reasonably called defend the scientific integrity of astrology against that of astron performance. I want to chart As the thumbnail biographical sketch I have offered here s To from me, then and now, this insight seems wholly unproblematic. own work imply, my own practical and scholarly experience of theatr I have never felt that my (admittedly often strained) allegiance to ore theoretically performance suggests that the relationship between Theatre St theatre isofsomehow compromised by the notion that it is part of a at a moment and Performance Studies is not best described as a paradigm picture. My academic career has been reflective of the peaceful icateslarger historical The concept of performance enabled me to extend my ori coexistence iversal levels of of the concepts of theatre and performance: I frequently inquiry into the nature of theatre to other forms (e.g., perform literature but, as this collection will attest, I almost urses;teach fromdramatic the art and stand-up comedy) and to look at those other forms in never write about plays, preferring to focus on performance texts he 1960s toward the same way that I had previously considered theatre and theories of performance. Early in my scholarly career, this meant eatrical mimesis evolution of Performance Studies out of Theatre Studies, S examining persona,” with theories of acting rather than more conventional theatre Communication, and Anthropology has the character of what historical former’s self inor critical issues. Even as I have moved away from theatre calls the articulation of a paradigm. By articulation, Kuhn mean as my primary object of study, I have always felt that my work has application and extension of a paradigm to new areas of res remained rooted in the same fundamental concerns.1 deconstruction, Elin Diamond has identified some of the basic questions eme One of the flashpoints for recent debates over the relationship of as a framework from the study of theatre that are also fundamental to the stu Theatre Studies to Performance Studies was Richard Schechner’s a longstanding performance more broadly construed: 1992both editorial “A New Paradigm for Theatre in the Academy.” to offer a in stirring up controversy, Schechner declared that nd a Always context interested in [P]owerful questions posed by theater representation—que “The new paradigm is ‘performance,’ not theatre. Theatre e the theoretical of subjectivity (who is speaking/acting?), location (in what departments should become ‘performance departments’” (1992:9).