Performance Studies

"Between the lines: Reading into the Essence of Performance Studies"

-Kesshia Jake Alesna-

"Whatever it is, it wasn’t exactly that before and it won’t be exactly that again."

An interdisciplinary branch of study that incorporates elements of the arts, humanities, and social sciences is Performance Studies. It focuses on the ubiquity of performance as an essential element of social and cultural life, encompassing not only theater and dance but also a variety of other forms such as storytelling, public speaking, avant-garde performance art, worldwide fairs and heritage festivals, play and sports, political protests and technological civil disobedience, sex shows and drag performances, and other forms of expressive behavior or cultural enactment. Performance in this context refers to the "reactualization" or presentation of symbolic systems via mediated and living bodies.

As growing individuals, we have seen and done so much more than we expected. Richard Schechner and  is a pioneer of performance studies. Schechner is associated with performance studies, a discipline that bridges theater arts, anthropology, and cultural studies. He extends his study to macro-level cultural performances, including rituals, ceremonies, and artistic expressions. Erving Goffman on the other hand is a canadian-born anthropologist who studied the performances and rituals of everyday life. Goffman's focus is primarily on microsociology and face-to-face interactions, exploring how individuals present themselves in everyday situations. While Goffman and Schechner share an interest in the concept of performance and its impact on social dynamics, their disciplinary backgrounds, scopes of study, and methodologies distinguish their contributions to sociology and performance studies.

Richard Schechner

A scholar, theater director, editor, and playwright, he is University Professor of Performance Studies Emeritus at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and Editor of TDR:The Journal of Performance Studies.

Erving Goffman

His books include The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Behavior in Public Places (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967), and Frame Analysis (1974).Goffman argued that in each social situation we present an appropriate ‘front’, a ‘mask’ or ‘persona’.

In the book of Schechner the Performance Studies: An Introduction, he claimed that there are nine kinds of performances: (1) in everyday life; (2) in art; (3) in music and other popular entertainment; (4) in politics; (5) in technology; (6) in medicine; (7) in sex; (8) in ritual; and (9) in play.

Performance is a broad spectrum of actions ranging from play, games, sports, popular entertainments, and rituals to the performing arts, professional roles, political personae, media, and the constructions of race, gender, and identity in everyday life (Richard Schechner).  All the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants may be seen as a kind of gangplank between life and theatre. It exists in both, and helps us to understand both. (Erving Goffman)

People in the twenty-first century – enabled, powered, and driven by social media and vast digital resources – live by means of performing.

“As” Performance means whatever one could ask of a performance, one could ask of whatever is being studied. In terms of performance theory, there is no limit to what can be studied “as” performance. The “Is” Performance on the other hand means when historical-social context, convention, usage, and tradition say it is. Rituals, play, sports, theatre, dance, and music, and the roles of everyday life are performances because context, convention, usage, and tradition say so. It is more definite, bounded events marked by context, convention, usage, and tradition.

Another thing in performance studies that makes sense are the seven functions of performance: (1) to entertain, (2) to create beauty, (3) to mark/change identity, (4) to make/ foster community, (5) to heal, (6) to teach/persuade, and (7) to deal with sacred and the demonic.

Goffman uses the term ‘performance’ to refer to all the activity of an individual in front of a particular set of observers, or audience. Through this performance, the individual, or actor, gives meaning to themselves, to others, and to their situation. These performances deliver impressions to others, which communicates information that confirms the identity of the actor in that situation. The actor may or may not be aware of their performance or have an objective for their performance, however, the audience is constantly attributing meaning to it and to the actor. Goffman felt that all social encounters were theatre-like “because life itself is a dramatically enacted thing”

Goffman argued that we present appropriately in each social situation through the 'front', a 'mask' or 'persona'. We ---they--- think and so, we ---they--- behave accordingly during the encounter. Each participant ‘reads’ the other’s performance and responds as appropriately as they can. It is a little like a drama improvisation. 

Frame is the context of the encounter. It includes the setting and the way self is presented. Goffman’s conclusion from this was that there is effectively no difference between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’. The ‘performance’ we give in any encounter is, in one sense, simply skin-deep, an ‘appearance’. But it is also the reality of how we behave. The performance, in other words, is the reality.

Sometimes known as happening or what we call Performance art/live art certainly reinvigorated theatre in the 1970s and 1980s. It is often the work of an individual using her, his, or their own body, psyche, documents, and experiences. It happened in the streets and swimming pools, on roofs and beaches, in storefronts and art galleries, and too many elsewhere to list. It was a deep democratization of art. Long before the end of the twentieth century, performance art was an established and widespread genre which continues to flourish today. No story line, no ‘character’ in the traditional theatrical sense, rather something ‘real’ is performed.

During the second half of the 20th Century is one of the significant means of bridging the gap between performance and reality, or perhaps of pointing it up, which was developed. The Postmodernist are ideas about performance per se, its meaning and its significance, gradually moved to the forefront of debates about theatre, and these were conducted in a new kind of language – at least for discussions about theatre. The characters on the stage interact in a fiction is called a Play Theatre agrees to ‘believe’ in the characters and their world; the actors agree to ‘present’ the characters in that world, their intentions, emotions, reactions and all. A performance that is highly complex (Theatrical Performance) can detect the psychological melding with the perceptual, what is abstract becoming concrete, thought directly relating to action. It is important to remember that when performing, without an audience the theatrical performance cannot happen. Since we mentioned audience, they also have a role too which is called the Audience’s performance that is an audience's living response that the theatrical performance is completed.


As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7 is a famous speech that expressed the idea that we can go from life to theatre across the same gangplank of performance and it reads life as performance.

This can be a reference for a Reading Performance in which all read performances all the time, and so expertly that we hardly notice we are doing it. The stage gives the performance a peculiar power, but essentially the semiotics of stage performance are similar to those of life, though the reading may be more self-conscious and therefore probably more sophisticated.

As we go through the performance studies, we must also be aware of something important that is called Signs  (as the structuralists called them) which are often ambiguous. For instance, what someone is wearing may suggest that person’s socio-economic status, psychological clues to the person’s ambitions, mood or predilections, or may even reflect on their morality. In theater, an actor may signify little more than a prop (a passive sign). Semiotics is the way we read signs.

The spectator’s most valuable skill which usually points towards the truth which can communicate in the theatre, and how they do so is called the Ability to Read Space.

Culture is an invisible thread that weaves through every step we take, reminding us that wherever we go, we carry the essence of who we are with us.

But what if somewhere around the world, something can make you let go or multiply that invisible thread? A performance perhaps.