DRAMA/THEATRE/PERFORMANCE What is implied when we refer to the study of performing arts as ‘drama’, ‘theatre’ or ‘performance’? Each term identifies a different tradition of thought and offers different possibilities to the student or practitioner. This book examines the history and use of the terms and investigates the different philosophies, politics, languages and institutions with which they are associated. Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis: • analyse attitudes to drama, theatre and performance at different historical junctures • trace a range of political interventions into the field(s) • explore and contextualise the institutionalisation of drama and theatre as university subjects, then the emergence of ‘performance’ as practice, theory and academic discipline • guide readers through major approaches to drama, theatre and performance, from theatre history and sociology, through theories of ritual and play, to the idea of performance as paradigm for a post- modern age • discuss crucial terms such as action, alienation, catharsis, character, empathy, interculturalism, mimesis, presence and representation in a substantial ‘keywords’ section. Continually linking their analysis to wider cultural concerns, the authors here offer the most wide-ranging and authoritative guide available to a vibrant, fast-moving field and vigorous debates about its nature, purpose and place in the academy. Simon Shepherd is Director of Programmes at Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Mick Wallis is Professor of Performance and Culture at the University of Leeds. THE NEW CRITICAL IDIOM Series Editor: John Drakakis, University of Stirling The New Critical Idiom is an invaluable series of introductory guides to today’s critical terminology. Each book: . provides a handy, explanatory guide to the use (and abuse) of the term . offers an original and distinctive overview by a leading literary and cultural critic . relates the term to the larger field of cultural representation. With a strong emphasis on clarity, lively debate and the widest possible breadth of examples, The New Critical Idiom is an indispensable approach to key topics in literary studies. Also available in this series: Autobiography by Linda Anderson Literature by Peter Widdowson Class by Gary Day Magic(al) Realism by Colonialism/Postcolonialism by Maggie Ann Bowers Ania Loomba Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form by Philip Hobsbaum Culture/Metaculture by Francis Mulhern Modernism by Peter Childs Difference by Mark Currie Myth by Laurence Coupe Discourse by Sara Mills Narrative by Paul Cobley Dramatic Monologue by Parody by Simon Dentith Glennis Byron Pastoral by Terry Gifford Ecocriticism by Greg Garrard Realism by Pam Morris Genders by David Glover and Romance by Barbara Fuchs Cora Kaplan Romanticism by Aidan Day Gothic by Fred Botting Science Fiction by Adam Roberts Historicism by Paul Hamilton Sexuality by Joseph Bristow Humanism by Tony Davies Stylistics by Richard Bradford Ideology by David Hawkes Subjectivity by Donald E. Hall Interdisciplinarity by Joe Moran The Unconscious by Intertextuality by Graham Allen Antony Easthope Irony by Claire Colebrook DRAMA/THEATRE/ PERFORMANCE Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis First published 2004 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2004 Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-64517-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-67268-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-23493-X (hbk) ISBN 0-415-23494-8 (pbk) C ONTENTS SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE viii Introduction 1 PART ONE: A GENEALOGY 5 1 Drama and Theatre as University Subjects 7 2 Drama and the Literary Tradition 15 Mingling Kings and Crowns: Sidney 15 Nature at a Higher Pitch: Dryden 17 The Stage is only a Stage: Johnson 19 Drama and Order: Sidney, Dryden, Johnson 20 Confusion of the Natural Order of Things: Coleridge 22 Imitation: an Interlude 23 Modern Tragedy: Bradley 25 Dramatic Poems: Knights and New Criticism 27 Human Needs and Satisfactions: Eliot 29 Embodying History and Presence: Williams 31 3 History, Theatre, Society 35 Drama, Theatre and History 35 Drama and Society 43 4 The Essence of Drama 56 The Nature and Origins of Drama 56 Drama’s Origin and Human Nature 58 Drama’s Origin and Human Organisation 60 Nietzsche 61 Artaud 63 Drama’s Psychoanalytic Truth 65 vi contents 5 Women, Theatre and the Ethics of the Academy 70 Feminism and the Discipline of Theatre Studies 70 Feminism, Tragedy and the Patriarchal Academy 72 Feminist Ethics and Positionality 73 Feminist Communities, Textuality and Transcendence 76 Technologies of Gender and the Feminist Subject 78 Marked and Un(re)marked 80 6 Performance, Art and the Avant Garde 82 Narrative Definitions of Performance 82 The Question of Critique 88 Fluxus and Situationism: Keys to Another Narrative 90 Western Marxism and After 96 7 The Rise of Performance Studies 102 The First Performance Studies Department 102 Schechner and the Ethics of Performance Studies 104 Performance Studies and Academic Imperialism 107 Historicising the Emergence of Performance Studies: The Liminal Norm 110 A General Theory of Performance 112 8 Performance Studies: Some Basic Concepts 116 Aesthetic and Social Drama 116 Ritual 118 Play 122 Theatre Anthropology 127 Cultural Performance 130 9 Postmodernism and Performance 134 Minimalism, Theatricality and the Authority of Art 135 Premonitions of Postmodern Performance 137 Undecidability, Avant Gardes and the Recuperation of modernism 139 contents vii Formalism, Feminism and Performance 140 Three Systems of Undecidability 141 Practice, Criticism and the Body 143 The Body and Postmodernity 145 Defining Fields: Art Versus Performance 148 Radicalism, Narcissism and Performing Theory 149 10 Recent Mappings of Drama–Theatre–Performance 151 Performance Versus Theatre 151 Drama, Theatre, Performance . Script and Text 154 Drama Versus Theatre 160 PART TWO: KEYWORDS 165 Action 167 Aleatory 172 Catharsis 175 Character, mask, person 179 Defamiliarisation and alienation 185 Embodiment 191 Empathy 195 Interculturalism 198 Kinaesthetic 207 Mimesis 212 Performativity 220 Presence and representation 225 Semiotics and phenomenology 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY 241 INDEX 254 S ERIES E DITOR’ S P REFACE The New Critical Idiom is a series of introductory books which seeks to extend the lexicon of literary terms, in order to address the radical changes which have taken place in the study of literature during the last decades of the twentieth century. The aim is to provide clear, well- illustrated accounts of the full range of terminology currently in use, and to evolve histories of its changing usage. The current state of the discipline of literary studies is one where there is considerable debate concerning basic questions of terminology. This involves, among other things, the boundaries which distinguish the literary from the non-literary; the position of literature within the larger sphere of culture; the relationship between literatures of different cultures; and questions concerning the relation of literary to other cultural forms within the context of interdisciplinary studies. It is clear that the field of literary criticism and theory is a dynamic and heterogeneous one. The present need is for individual volumes on terms which combine clarity of exposition with an adventurousness of perspective and a breadth of application. Each volume will contain as part of its apparatus some indication of the direction in which the definition of particular terms is likely to move, as well as expanding the disciplinary boundaries within which some of these terms have been traditionally contained. This will involve some re-situation of terms within the larger field of cultural representation, and will introduce examples from the area of film and the modern media in addition to examples from a variety of literary texts. INTRODUCTION ‘Drama’, ‘theatre’ and ‘performance’ all have long-established common usages. A recent insurance commercial on UK television promises that the firm will not ‘make a drama out of a crisis’. We speak of ‘theatres of war’. Performance, especially, shifts between areas of meaning. A child might be warned not to ‘make a performance’ out of a disappointment; cars are promoted and people sacked according to their claimed ‘perfor- mance’; and we ‘perform responsibilities’. Through history there have been attempts to define the words. Aristotle distinguished between ‘drama’ and ‘epic’ and argued that ‘drama’ is the form proper to the stage. Brecht inverted that binary. Also through history people have found productive relationships between different aspects of the same word. ‘Performance’ now is an inclusive term covering: performance