Abstract
Performance studies’ origin narratives have been well rehearsed. In seminars, at conferences, in the pages of TDR and other journals, the legend grows: the Tale of the Young Ones from New Orleans, When Richard Met Victor, The Performance Studies Turn. Elements of these stories appear in the pages of this very volume, and this is only fitting. They are an essential and important part of understanding performance studies’ past, present, and future. But this chapter tells a different story. This is the story of our field’s gawky, geeky adolescence and its transition from that awkward state to a seat at the Grownups’ Table. This is the story of (you should excuse the expression) performance studies’ bar mitzvah.
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Notes
1. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 40.
2. Jon McKenzie, Perform or Else. London: Routledge, 2001, 50.
3. Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002, 16. That these events span exactly 13 years is serendipity, not beshert (destiny).
1. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 40.
Richard Schechner, “TDR Comment: A New Paradigm for Theatre in the Academy,” TDR 36:4 (T136) (Autumn 1992): 7–10.
8. Jill Dolan, “Geographies of Learning: Theatre Studies, Performance, and the Performative,” Theatre Journal 45 (1993): 417–41. Quote from p. 424.
11. Richard Hornby, “Against Performance Theory,” TheatreWeek 8, 11 (17 October 1994): 31–7.
16. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge, 1993, 152.
17. Dwight Conquergood, “Of Caravans and Carnivals: Performance Studies on the Move,” TDR 39, 4 (T148) (Fall 1995): 140.
20. Peggy Phelan, “Introduction,” in Phelan and Jill Lane, eds, The Ends of Performance. New York: New York University Press, 1998, 4.
21. Philip Auslander, “Evangelical Fervor,” TDR 39, 4 (T148) (Fall 1995): 178–83.
22. Richard Schechner, “TDR Comment: “The Future of the Field,” TDR 39, 4 (T148) (Fall 1995): 7.
26. Deb Margolin, “O Wholly Night and Other Jewish Solecisms,” in Lynda Hart, ed., Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo. London: Cassell, 1999, 141.
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© 2011 Henry Bial
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Bial, H. (2011). Today I Am a Field: Performance Studies Comes of Age. In: Harding, J.M., Rosenthal, C. (eds) The Rise of Performance Studies. Studies in International Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306059_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306059_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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