Part I - Definitions of performance

Summary

It was a new sort of activity. Well, actually, it was a very old sort of activity. Human beings appeared to have been doing it for centuries, but nobody had really called attention to it before. From the mid-1950s onwards, scholars in various academic disciplines began to get interested in how to describe and explain this activity. It was a little bit like theatre acting but didn't happen within the formal conventions and purposes of theatre. Instead it took place within what could be called everyday life, except that it could often be distinguished from other sorts of ordinary behaviour. While there were many different ideas as to how it was specifically distinguished, and to what sort of degree, from artistic theatre and ordinary behaviour, the various different scholars all ended up calling it the same thing, which was, of course, performance.

Although they were going on simultaneously I shall deal with these developments under two separate headings: first, the identification of a particular form of behaviour; second, the terminology of performance. In the first case, work by sociologists and sociologically influenced theatre specialists borrowed from each other to identify modes of interaction that were neither formal aesthetic drama nor casual everyday behaviour. In the second case, work by cultural anthropologists and folklorists developed terminology for, and understanding of the operation of, performed events in different societies. All of this together amounted not just to a new understanding of human interactions but also to a new way of doing understanding. The concept of performance was integral to both.