WAR (Erin) on the Keyword Performance

I wanted to add something to our discussion about the meaning of the word performance:

My most immediate take on the term is related to how I perceive it to be replacing the word 'Theatre' in contemporary practice (at least in the UK and to some extent North America).

In April this year, I organised a panel called "On Theatrical Behaviour." The panel was in part about one venue's shift away from using the word 'theatre', opting to re-brand/re-imagine its annual 'Theatre Festival' calling it simply: Behaviour instead... In preparation for the panel, I asked Deborah Richardson-Webb, now head of performance pedagogy at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, if she could tell me a bit about why a course that she developed at the Academy, formerly called Contemporary Theatre Practice, had been renamed Contemporary Performance Practice. She shared with me a document she had written called: Troublesome Horses: Radical Performance Pedagogy in the Conservatoire. I thought I would share a paragraph from this document that addresses this semantic shift:

In the title of the Programme we chose to use the word ‘Performance’ not ‘Theatre’ in order to clarify its position in relation to the education of its students within the broadest field of performance practices. By ‘Performance’, it is understood that whilst drawing upon the tradition of British and European Theatre, the Programme seeks to address the wider phenomenon of performance in human cultures from ritual practices, through performance in everyday life to art-making processes. The Programme draws upon and synthesises a wide variety of disciplines and discourses including, improvisation, physical performance, writing for performance, voice, movement, visual art, feminist studies, gender studies, queer theory, semiotics, ethology, pedagogy, media and popular culture theory and cultural studies.

This seems relevant to the title of our course as well.

Performance for me, in part, means a shift in thinking about/experiencing/making contemporary 'theatre'--it is in some respect a way of distinguishing the old from the new.

AMS GROUP C: A comment on Kati's presentation

This post is going to try to comment on Kati Röttger's presentation on her use of the concept 'performance'. She draws our attention towards theatrical performance, and in doing so, she underlines the importance of being aware and reflecting on the medium (mediality). The video of Gómez Peña, is just an example of this. It exposes the loadedness (non-neutral) of the apparently transparent medium, i.e. the video. Upon analyzing this, we have come to the following understanding:

• The video has the power to manipulate our gaze. Through close-ups and framing we are constantly guided in our perception of things. We are made to see what the camera wants us to see in the way it wants us to see it. There is a forced identification of our gaze and that of the camera.
• We also thought it is interesting to think upon the relationship of the stage and the camera. The camera man is also a performer. If we stood as a spectator on a third point, apart from GGP and the camera man, we would be able to see him performing. Although, this is not the case through the video. 
• There is a parallel (mirror-like) structure between the two 'shooting devises' involved in the video. One is the gun, which is pointing directly to the camera man and indirectly to all of us, spectators. The other, we never see and realize the presence of, is the camera. The camera is also 'a gun'.
• The camera 'shoots'. The use of the same verb for both camera and gun is not innocent. Coming back to the example, we realize that in fact the most violent event is not the portraying of a man handling a gun pointing at us. It is probably the use of the medium, the purposes it serves, that can have a destructive power, through selection and marginalization of the images portrayed. It is the 'use' of the image on the screen which is really violent.
• Mediality 'lives' in-between 'performance' and 'theatricality'. It is both a theoretical and practical tool to be used. Therefore, it is terribly well suited for a field such as 'performance studies'.

Swati, Ian, Diego

What is a Performance? - Deleted Scene

A'dam Y team

What is Performance: mediated- marifetluk

Here's the second (and final) version to the provocative (or not?) performance example. Feel free to comment.



A'dam Y team

Keyword-Rang Bhoomi-swati

RANG BHOOMI
Rang Bhoomi can be said to be made of two hindi words, ‘rang’ which means colour and ‘bhoomi’ which means land. So the literal translation of it would be Coloured Land.
In its common usage this word is usually used in contrast with Karma Bhoomi, which again is a composite of two words, ‘karma’ meaning work and ‘bhoomi’ meaning land. So one can make out the larger interplay of work and play in the usage of these word-phrases, something serious as against something playful and jovial.
Rang bhoomi can be described as one open area where one ‘plays’, which allows ‘performativity’ and ‘theatricality’. This clearly differentiates it from two things:
*From an auditorium which is a closed space and where the stage is clearly demarcated from the audience seating area.
*From all utilitarian associations since it is a space used for non-work.
Since Rang Bhoomi is an open space used for performances, it can be said to be the area where street performance, live art, public mobilisation and other similar activities take place. But if we go by the sematic associations of the word, they could all be dismissed as trivial and apolitical. The word might assume that the conceptual categories of the ‘aesthetic’ and the ‘political’ are in adversarial relationship to each other but one cannot deny the power of the cultural intervention in the larger socio-political environment. I believe a careful examination of the cultural can unsettle the hegemonic hierarchies of ideas, organisations and principles that propel the dominant discourses around us.