ABSTRACT
Richard Schechner is central to the development of Performance Studies as a discipline that embraces a range of human activity including for instance play, games, sports, theatre and ritual. In 1980, New York University’s Graduate Drama Program was renamed the Graduate Department of Performance Studies, with Schechner at its centre. In 1986, Phillip Zarrilli reflected on this ‘institutional and programmatic recognition of the increasingly interdisciplinary nature’ of both performance practice and the theorised study of performance, by seeing how some recent books might begin to define the field (Zarrilli 1986, I: 372).
