ABSTRACT
In my view, performance studies is a paradigm-driven field, by which I mean that it takes the concept of performance as both its object of inquiry and its primary analytical concept (I will explain further shortly). The central question animating the discipline is: “What is performance?” The more contexts in which we look at the concept of performance and the more cases to which we apply it, the better we will be able to answer that question. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we will come up with more and more useful answers to the question, for performance studies is not about discovering a single theory of performance. Any answer to the basic question constitutes a de facto theory of performance, that is, an idea of performance that is used to make sense of various practices and forms of expression. Every theory frames and focuses our attention on some things while leaving other things outside the frame or out of focus. Thus, performance studies is always in search of new theories that might open up new ways of seeing and interpreting performance. Performance studies is theory: it is the myriad conceptual tools used to “see” performance.
