ABSTRACT
A workbook is always going to focus on pragmatics, on everyday practices that are somehow brought into play when putting a performance together.As the questioner above illustrates, there is often a skeptical response to pragmatics, especially within academic circles, as if a direct engagement with the processes of making work, what might be called the “doing” of performance, is avoiding those larger issues of meaning and context. LeCompte’s playful retort, “Only pragmatics?” which so disarmed the dramaturg that was attempting to locate The Wooster Group’s work within what he termed “the socio-cultural contexts of downtown New York,” can be interpreted as the conventional refusal of the experimental artist to explain their work. However, LeCompte’s insistence on engaging with the pragmatics of making and doing, as a means to speak about her practice, gestures towards significant ways in which we might critically encounter the five performances that make up this book that have often been overlooked in previous attempts to negotiate The Wooster Group’s work.
