definition Performance Studies is an academic field concerned with performance in all its forms.
sydney uni: Performance Studies considers the whole extended field of aesthetic, social and everyday performance across a range of cultural and historical contexts: from theatre, dance, popular music and contemporary performance through to the performative dimensions of rituals, sport, politics and the law. This is an exciting area of interdisciplinary study (drawing, for instance, on anthropology, history, cultural studies, theatre studies, musicology, dance and movement studies) in which we seek to explain the phenomenon of performance as a complex, collaborative endeavour, involving performers and audiences alike in the production of meaning, feelings, a view of the world as it is and as it might otherwise be.
- when was term coined, and by whom?
origins theatre literary anthropology and sociology
chronology
areas of inquiry
notable theorists