Performance Studies: An Introduction

Rating:
Summary: Where Theatre Studies Needs to Go
Review: This long awaited book by Richard Schechner breaks the traditional boundaries of how theatre is to be studied. He assures us through numerous examples, comments, quotations, and theories how interrelated theatre is with life and life with theatre. To see performance as a part of life and as an extension of it is to see performance with a clarity that has never before been discussed in such depth.

By the end of the book, which is probably more useful as a reference than even as a textbook that students read chapter by chapter (though it does offer great possibilities for creatively integrating in the classroom as it was intended), one has more questions than answers, and that is a good thing, because the questions become more focused and more relevant and more conducive to individual introspection. As a college professor in Theatre, I find that refreshing and valuable.

This is a seminal work, and should certainly be on every theatre practitioner's bookshelf, if not in their hands.

The book contains nudity and language in the examples of performance he gives, so is not suitable for children.