Performance Studies, An Introduction, Second Edition - Softcover

'This isn't merely the musings of a theatre director who never stops innovating. It is a global thinker's striking, historic way of understanding human nature from a surprisingly practical perspective, which can be adapted in countless areas at numerous levels.' – Sun Huizhu, Professor of Drama, Shanghai Theatre Academy

'The text is very cleverly put together with a clear idea of how its features contribute to the reading of the material. I frankly cannot imagine it being done better.' – Simon Shepherd, Central School of Speech and Drama, London

'A very effective summary of a lifetime of major creative and scholarly experiment.' – New Theatre Quarterly

In this second edition, the author opens with a discussion of important developments in the discipline. His closing chapter, 'Global and Intercultural Performance', is completely rewritten in light of the post-9/11 world. Fully revised chapters with new examples, biographies and source material provide a lively, easily accessible overview of the full range of performance for undergraduates at all levels in performance studies, theatre, performing arts and cultural studies. Among the topics discussed are the performing arts and popular entertainments, rituals, play and games as well as the performances of everyday life. Supporting examples and ideas are drawn from the social sciences, performing arts, post-structuralism, ritual theory, ethology, philosophy and aesthetics.

User-friendly, with a special text design, Performance Studies: An Introduction also includes the following features:

• numerous extracts from primary sources giving alternative voices and viewpoints
• biographies of key thinkers
• student activities to stimulate fieldwork, classroom exercises and discussion
• key reading lists for each chapter
• twenty line drawings and 202 photographs drawn from private and public collections around the world.