ABSTRACT
Special Issues of two performance studies journals, Performance Research and TDR, guestedited respectively by Alan Read and Una Chaudhuri, have initiated discussion of the many contemporary performance practitioners, companies, and playwrights like Romeo Castelluci, Forced Entertainment, Rachel Rosenthal, Caryl Churchill, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, and Zingaro, who have all, in recent years, updated a theatrical tradition reaching back at least as far as Greek “tragedy” (etymologically, “goat-song”) and, in terms of ritual performance, to the dawn of religion. is work joins that of countless artists working in various media, worldwide, in envisioning a “postmodern animal” (Baker 2000, 52) whose disturbed and disturbing form is an invitation to imagine living ethically in a “morethan-human world” (Abram 1996, 256).
