Site-Specific Performance (review)

Mike Pearson’s Site-Specific Performance examines the connective thread linking theory and practice in site-derived projects. Pearson serves as a professor of performance studies at Aberystwyth University in the UK and is the author of In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape and co-author of Theatre/Archaeology, both of which explore the conceptualities and practicalities inherent within the site genre. In Site-Specific Performance, he illustrates his points almost exclusively through the work of three companies: Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (where he was an artistic director during 1973–80), Brith Gof (he served as an artistic director during 1981–97), and Pearson/Brooks (a continuing collaboration with artist and scenographer Mike Brooks, which began in 1997). By describing the processes of his work and those of practitioners within his immediate circle of colleagues, Pearson offers a pedagogical examination of site work that, while limited in scope, is intensive.

Pearson readily acknowledges the risks inherent in narrowing the focus upon his own artistic works and those of his colleagues, but does so, in part, to argue for a definition of site-specific performance based on an individual’s own experience. Early on he points out that “although the search for a practicable, encompassing definition of site-specific performance has long claimed scholarly attention, it remains slippery” (7). Pearson presents many of those contemporary scholarly definitions and insights—both conflicting and complementary to his practices—throughout the book, while choosing not to favor or promote any particular definition of site-specific performance, inasmuch as he deems it a constantly evolving field.

Although a precise definition is avoided, the organization of the book seems to parallel the creation of the author’s brand of site performance: theoretical concepts must come first, then site exploration, and, finally, dramaturgical examination. While the professed goal of encouraging the creation of site performance as a pedagogical mission is born out in chapters 1 and 2, Pearson’s use of poetic expression to articulate abstract systems proves problematic for all but the most advanced academic practitioners. In this regard, the largely theoretical and analytical nature of these chapters is less accessible than the emblematic performance descriptions and exercises that populate the sections to follow.

Chapters 3 through 5 outline the evolution of conceptual site examination into applied practice and comprise what Pearson refers to as “the core of the book” (xiv). Chapter 3 includes rich descriptions of ten works of site-specific performance to demonstrate various models of implementation. The examples include walking tours of various sites, fixed localities in rural and urban areas, and multisite works utilizing maps, scripts, photographs, videos, and texts in order to achieve the sense of a singular “space.” For example, he details an autobiographical piece titled Bubbling Tom, performed while conducting a walking tour of the village of Hibaldstow in Lincolnshire, where significant and memorable events impacted him as a child. Accompanied by family members and others familiar with the village (who freely interject their additions and contradictions), he visits several locations, pausing to remember events and people “in a rolling sequence of performed texts and orchestrated movements” (55). This piece clearly illustrates Pearson’s “You and I and they go there together” (26) model, with audience members becoming equal participants. Carrlands, a performance of site-inspired audio works, exemplifies the “They go there, you and I do not” (24) construct by integrating folklore, landscape, and archaeology into sound composition. Pearson includes a list of critical questions attendant to several of the works that encourage participant responses as a form of feedback and contribution, thereby underscoring one of the main benefits of site work: namely, its power to help artists and audiences examine the “entangled nature of land, human subject and event” (83).

If the examples of performance are offered as a prescriptive for dealing with all forms of space, the well-developed “Site: Exercises” included in this chapter are the logical next steps. The exercises explain how to go about researching, developing, and engaging in a physical exploration of a site, and are therefore particularly...