Performative Criticism

Genre-bending experiments that appropriate, impersonate, and speak through already-created literary characters in order to offer fresh interpretations of well-known literary works.

Receiving a letter from Paul was a major event in the early churches. Given the orally oriented culture of the time, a letter was designed to be read out loud in front of an audience. The document was an intermediate state for the local transport of the message, but the actual medium of communication was the performance event. This event was embedded in the written text in a manner comparable to a theater script. After careful preparation because of high expectations from ancient audiences, a presenter embodied the message with his voice, gazes, and gestures and made it not only understood but jointly experienced. After presenting a short history of performance criticism, this book clarifies what is meant by the highly ambiguous term "performance" and develops steps to analyze ancient texts in order to find and understand the embedded signals of performance. This leads to a critical assessment of the potential of performance criticism as a method. Then, the method is applied to the Pauline Epistles and other early Christian letters. It proves to be highly rewarding: difficult passages become comprehensible, new aspects come to light, the text's impact on the audience is felt--in short, the texts come alive.

This volume reimagines the first-century reception of the Gospel of Mark within a reconstructed (yet hypothetical) performance event. In particular, it considers the disciples' character and characterization through the lens of performance criticism. Questions concerning the characterization of the disciples have been relatively one-sided in New Testament scholarship, in favor of their negative characterization. This project demonstrates why such assumptions need not be necessary when we (re-)consider the oral/aural milieu in which the Gospel of Mark was first composed and received by its earliest audiences.

In analyses of tattoo contests, advertising, and modern primitive photographs, the book shows how images of tattooed bodies communicate and disrupt notions of gender, class, and exoticism through their discursive performances. Fenske suggests working within dominant discourse to represent and subvert oppressive gender and class evaluations.

Discussing some of the pivotal questions relating to the complementary fields of theatre and performance studies, this engaging, easy-to-use text is undoubtedly a perfect reference guide for the keen student and passionate theatre-goer alike.

The Routledge Dictionary of Contemporary Theatre and Performance provides the first authoritative alphabetical guide to the theatre and performance of the last 30 years. Conceived and written by one of the foremost scholars and critics of theatre in the world, it literally takes us from Activism to Zapping, analysing everything along the way from Body Art and the Flashmob to Multimedia and the Postdramatic. What we think of as 'performance' and 'drama' has undergone a transformation in recent decades. Similarly how these terms are defined, used and critiqued has also changed, thanks to interventions from a panoply of theorists from Derrida to Ranciere. Patrice Pavis's Dictionary provides an indispensible roadmap for this complex and fascinating terrain; a volume no theatre bookshelf can afford to be without.

"The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and '60s, performance art in the '70s, theater in the '80s, television in the '90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed--with, around, and against the text of their lives." --

The Methuen Drama Companion to Performance Art offers a comprehensive guide to the major issues and interdisciplinary debates concerning performance in art contexts that have developed over the last decade. It understands performance art as an institutional, cultural, and economic phenomenon rather than as a label or object. Following the ever-increasing institutionalization and mainstreaming of performance, the book's chapters identify a marked change in the economies and labor practices surrounding performance art, and explore how this development is reflective of capitalist approaches to art and event production. Embracing what we perceive to be the 'oxymoronic status' of performance art-where it is simultaneously precarious and highly profitable-the essays in this book map the myriad gestures and radical possibilities of this extreme contradiction. This Companion adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to present performance art's legacies and its current practices. It brings together specially commissioned essays from leading innovative scholars from a wide range of approaches including art history, visual and performance studies, dance and theatre scholarship in order to provide a comprehensive and multifocal overview of the emerging research trends and methodologies devoted to performance art.