Performance Studies in Motion International Perspectives and Practices in the Twenty-First Century

Performance Studies in Motion offers multiple perspectives on the current field of performance studies and suggests its future directions. Featuring new essays by pioneers Richard Schechner and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, and by international scholars and practitioners, it shows how performance can offer a new way of seeing the world, and testifies to the dynamism of this discipline.

Beginning with an overview of the development of performance studies, the essays offer new insights into: contemporary experimental and postdramatic theatre; participatory performance and museum exhibitions; the performance of politicians, political institutions and grassroots protest movements; theatricality at war and in contemporary religious rituals, and performative practices in therapy, education and life sciences.

Employing original reflexive approaches to concrete case studies and situations, contributors introduce a variety of applications of performance studies methodologies to contemporary culture, art and society, creating new interdisciplinary links between the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences. With studies from and about places as diverse as Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Israel, Korea, Palestine, the Philippines, Poland, Rwanda and the USA, Performance Studies in Motion showcases the vitality and breadth of the field today.

David Zerbib teaches philosophy of art and aesthetics at the University of Paris, France. He has written extensively on performance and is currently directing an edition and translation in French of Richard Shechner's essays.

Acknowledgements
Introduction by Atay Citron, David Zerbib, and Sharon Aronson-Lehavi
Motion I: Performance Studies: Perspectives and Prospectives
1. David Zerbib: The Motion of Performative Circumstances: Richard Schechner and the Transformations of Theory
2. Richard Schechner: Can We Be The (New) Third World?
3. Henry Bial: Performance Studies 3.0
Motion II: Beyond Experimental Theatre
4. Carol Martin: Table On Stage: The Rise of the Messenger
5. Judith Miller: Performing History, Performing Memory with The Théâtre du Soleil
6. Gad Kaynar: Embodying the Performance Text: Tradition versus New Dramaturgy in Contemporary German Postdramatic Theatre
Motion III: Performance in/of Social Spaces
7. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett: Rising from the Rubble: Creating the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (an interview)
8. Sharon Aronson-Lehavi: Re: Location
9. Daphna Ben-Shaul: Critically Civic: Public Movement's Performative Activism
Motion IV: Contemporary Rituals: Challenges and Changes
10. Jazmin Badong Llana: At the Site of the Void: Inaesthetics of Performance in the Bicol Dotoc
11. Liora Sarfati: New Technologies in Korean Shamanism: Cultural Innovation and the Preservation of Tradition
12. Sarit Cofman-Simhon: Performing Jewish Prayer on Stage: From Rituality to Theatricality and Back
Motion V: Into the Political Arena
13. Klaas Tindenmans: The Impossible Disappearance of Belgium: Notes on Politics, Dramaturgy and Performance
14. Dariusz Kosinski: National Street Theatre: Large-Scale Performances in Poland After the Crash of the Presidential Plane
15. Eva Brenner: Social Transformance: In Defense of Political Performance/Art
Motion VI: At War
16. Chen Alon: Dismantling Road Blocks: Non-Violent Resistance of the Palestinian-Israeli Group ‘Combatants for Peace’
17. Jennifer H. Capraru: Theatre as Witness: Isôko Rwanda’s Trilogy of Time
18. Annabelle Winograd: Beyond the Boundary of the Agora: the Hilltop Performance at the Western Front, 1915
Motion VII: Performance Studies and Life Sciences
19. Tomasz Kubikowski: What Is Performance Anyway? A Cognitive Approach
20. Lior Noy: The Mirror Game: A Natural Science Study of Togetherness
21. Uri Alon: Performing Science
Motion VIII: Applied Performance Studies: Therapy and Education
22. Lois Holzman & Dan Friedman: Performing the World: The Performance Turn in Social Activism
23. Atay Citron: Audacity and Insane Courage – Clown Doctors' Secret Remedies
24. William Huizhu Sun and Faye Chunfang Fei: Social Performance Studies: A New PS School with Chinese Characteristics
Notes
Index
Notes on Contributors