Since the turn of the century, Performance Studies has emerged as an increasingly vibrant discipline. Its concerns – embodiment, ethical research and social change – are held in common with many other fields; however a unique combination of methods and applications is used in exploration of the discipline. Bridging live art practices – theatre, performance art and dance – with technological media, and social sciences with humanities, it is truly hybrid and experimental in its techniques.
To celebrate the launch of The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, which brings together specially commissioned essays from leading scholars who reflect on their own experiences in Performance Studies and the possibilities this offers to representations of identity, self-and-other, and communities, a conference was held in the Arts Centre, University
of Warwick, from Friday 10 October – Saturday 11 October. It was funded by the Humanities
Research Centre, the Warwick North America Fund, the School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural
Policy Studies and Northwestern University.
Keynote speakers included Professor Tracy Davis (Northwestern University and editor of the volume) on “Performative Time” and Professor Baz Kershaw (University of Warwick and contributor) on “Performance practice-as-research and ecology”. Tracy Davis, currently President of the
American Society for Theatre Research and an alumna of Warwick, where she studied for her PhD, specialises in nineteenth century British theatre and in contemporary performance. While she was over, she also contributed a seminar to the School’s staff/postgraduate seminar series in Theatre
Studies, entitled The Witness Protection Program: Making Theatre, Everyday, and taught two sessions on a third year undergraduate option, ‘Interpreting the Theatrical Past’, which is piloting the study of her on-line Broadview anthology of nineteenth-century performance, prior to it publication in late 2009.
Papers were also given by many of the contributors to the volume, enlarging on and critiquing the chapters they had written and demonstrating how theories which have been absorbed into the field can be applied to compelling topics in current academic, artistic and community settings.
These included:
Susan Bennett (University of Calgary) on “The Theatrical City”, John Emigh (Brown
University) on “Performance Matters: Bali and Baliology in the Years of Living Dangerously” ,
E. Patrick Johnson (Northwestern University) on “Queer: A Postscript”, Amanda Jones
(University of Manchester) on “Live Art in (Art) History”, Della Pollock (University of North
Carolina) on “Memory Moves” , Nick Ridout (Queen Mary College, University of London) on
“Performance and Democracy after Democracy”, and Shannon Jackson (University of
California, Berkeley) on “Social Practice and Systemic Aesthetics”
Respondents to panel sessions were Janelle Reinelt, Edward Scheer and Silvija Jestrovic, all from the
University of Warwick.
The conference was attended by both external and internal delegates and provided an ideal forum through which to maintain the School’s ongoing links and dialogue with national and transatlantic colleagues.