Editoral

2017

This year, About Performance celebrates thirty years of the teaching of performance studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney-the journal's home. To mark the occasion, we have produced a special issue, a double issue, with an oversized sixteen articles. There have been thirteen issues of About Performance to date. The first appeared in 1995, and each edition has collected its papers around a special theme. Successive editors have explored the lives of actors (no. 13), risk and performance (no. 12), movement (no. 11), audiences (no. 10), politics and performance (no. 9), photography as/of performance (no. 8), sitespecific theatre (no. 7), rehearsal studies (no. 6), Body Weather (no. 5), performance analysis (no. 4), theatre (no. 3), crosscultural performance (no. 2), and translation (no. 1). Upcoming issues of About Performance, currently in the works, are on fashion, phenomenology, medicine, and the history of emotions. Although this anniversary issue, Performance Studies: Here, There, Then, Now, has no specific organisational theme, there are two things that bring the edition together: the subjects explored in each paper follow in the theoretical and methodological veins of our catalogue to date, adding to an image of the discipline as About Performance has explored it; and each papers' author has had, and in many cases continues to have, an association with the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. There are papers from established and emerging scholars: former and current students, visiting fellows, current and former academic staff, as well as research and artistic associates. As editors of this edition, Justine Shih Pearson and I cast the net wide in our call for abstracts; a shortlist was chosen by the Executive Editors of the journal, all current and former staff with the department, and together they collated an eclectic, yet representative, mix of papers which were peer reviewed by theatre and performance studies colleagues and fellow travellers. There are articles on butoh in Australia, immersive and site-specific performance in the United Kingdom, union parades in 1889, contemporary theatre in Ireland, phenomenology and performance, actors as manual philosophers, Body Weather and butoh, student theatre, fashion parades, Capetown music and patois, performance art in Detroit, and discussions about the

The Scottish Journal of Performance, 2014

Scene: Reviews of Early Modern Drama, 2019

Kevin A. Quarmby situates the 2019 theatre scene within the context of social justice concerns prevalent in 2019. Not only did 2019 pass with all its political, social, and cultural discord painfully intact, but also the year’s focus on disparate, often localized events now appears quaintly ill-considered given the global problems that erupted in 2020. The varied articles in Scene’s 2019 issue offer a taste of what was, a reminder what we missed, and what we hoped would soon return.

The logical contradiction according to which writings about theatre outlive the artworks to which they bear witness, giving them meanings different from the original work, is particularly problematic in the case of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, because here we have something that is theatre in the full sense, yet simultaneously something very different from theatre as it is commonly understood. Since in this case the fundamental link is constituted by the essence of theatre and not its current norms, the reader cannot fall back on his or her own ordinary experience to fully understand, nor can one use other experiences of essential theatre as a key. If one thinks of a well-known theatre of this type, for example that of Peter Brook, adherence to the same ontological principles manifests in extremely dissimilar types of work, and it is difficult to recognize what belongs to the same species. Moreover, few indeed are the critics and scholars who know how to awaken the necessary sensitivity in younger, less experienced spectators. The non-narrative dramaturgy of the Workcenter is influenced by the fact that each of the two branches from which it is comprised continues to develop Grotowski's research on the distinctiveness of theatre in a contemporary world hegemonized by mass media. Of course, Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini are by no means the only proponents of a theatre conceived not as a collection and exchange of ideas, but rather as an encounter and intense exchange among human beings. Since June 2009, after many years of sowing and tending seeds, the Workcenter has experienced a bountiful spring that includes the blossoming of several new works. This means, among other things, that the true summer harvest is yet to come. The work currently led by Richards and Biagini offers continuous surprises to those who accept the invitation to witness it. Professional observers can only report their own impressions and (if they are able) those of other passersby met on the field, yet nothing prevents one from hoping that the sense (significance and direction) of these events can be delineated through the interweaving of different descriptions and reflections. In this case, therefore, the absurd proposition of recording by means of writing an artistic phenomenon still in its birth phase could be useful in directing someone's attention to the Workcenter's new-yet-ancient way of broadening and deepening the craft and the art of theatre. Someone has said that in a theatre not devoted exclusively to representation, what matters is to " be oneself. " However, philosophy and other disciplines have demonstrated that to be oneself is impossible, since being is an activity, as already explained by Aristotle, the first theorist of Western theatre. So the true question is to become oneself, and one can do this only while carrying out an activity to the best of one's ability. There are different definitions of the final objective: for Leo de Berardinis at the end, it was a matter of conquering the true Silence, while Carmelo Bene always maintained the need not to be artists who make works, but rather to make the artist himself the work (he, a masterpiece).

About Performance special issue, 2017

This year, About Performance celebrates thirty years of the teaching of performance studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney—the journal’s home. To mark the occasion, we have produced a special issue, a double issue, with an oversized sixteen articles. There have been thirteen issues of About Performance to date. The rst appeared in 1995, and each edition has collected its papers around a special theme. Successive editors have explored the lives of actors (no. 13), risk and performance (no. 12), movement (no. 11), audiences (no. 10), politics and performance (no. 9), photography as/of performance (no. 8), site- speci c theatre (no. 7), rehearsal studies (no. 6), Body Weather (no. 5), performance analysis (no. 4), theatre (no. 3), crosscultural performance (no. 2), and translation (no. 1). Upcoming issues of About Performance, currently in the works, are on fashion, phenomenology, medicine, and the history of emotions. Although this anniversary issue, Performance Studies: Here, There, Then, Now, has no speci c organisational theme, there are two things that bring the edition together: the subjects explored in each paper follow in the theoretical and methodological veins of our catalogue to date, adding to an image of the discipline as About Performance has explored it; and each papers’ author has had, and in many cases continues to have, an association with the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. There are papers from established and emerging scholars: former and current students, visiting fellows, current and former academic staff, as well as research and artistic associates.

2017

At the dawn of the 19 th century, dancing, politics and gender all came under the scrutinizing pen of British moral reformers. Dancing was a ritual performance maintained by a society in which "the personal could be public; the political, social; and the social, political." 2 In fact, since the Renaissance in Europe, attending balls and masquerades, performing and observing others perform in such contexts, functioned as a self-conscious form of "political theatre." 3 As Hannah Greig has argued in her recent study of London's Beau Monde, Georgian assemblies functioned as an "extra-parliamentary arena, as an extension of the patrician drawing room, as another manifestation of a members' club and as a showcase for the marriage market." 4 Jennifer Hall-Witt confirms the importance of social dancing in the management and "smooth functioning" of the patronage system and highlights the impact of the political reform movement on 1 The title and image depicted in the 1817 satirical print, Waltzing-vide Wilsons Rooms, provides a frame for our discussion of dance, politics and gender in the British reception of the modern waltz. George Cruikshank's hand-coloured etching on paper (London: S.W. Fores,

Queens on Stage. Female Sovereignty, Power and Sexuality in Early Modern English Theatre, 2018

Shakespeare Bulletin, 2015