Performance Analysis: An Introductory Casebook (review)

Performance Analysis: An Introductory Casebook. Edited by Colin Counsell and Laurie Wolf. London: Routledge, 2001; pp. v + 250. $75.00 cloth, 23.99 paper.

In the preface to their outstanding anthology, Performance Analysis: An Introductory Casebook, editors Colin Counsell and Laurie Wolf state that their central aim when choosing texts for inclusion was to weigh each piece in terms of its "usability . . . [or] its potential to illuminate the meaning making process of the stage" (v). Wishing to provide for students a sampling of texts from a variety of critical theoretical perspectives that would furnish neither stock "formulas" nor "given interpretations," the editors instead sought to include documents that would encourage a theorized analysis of the performed event (v). The editors have endeavored to spark critical thinking via the implementation of various theoretical lenses and not provide easy, unsophisticated, or narrow answers. For this reason, the book will undoubtedly be viewed as a foundational text for those who teach introductory courses in performance criticism and theory at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels. Further, because the editors have gone a long way in bridging the artificially imposed chasm that too often separates practice from theory, Performance Analysis: An Introductory Casebook will prove invaluable to almost anyone concerned with how meaning is made in performance.

The anthology is divided into nine parts. Parts one through eight each include between three and five selections, organized developmentally. Part one, "Decoding the Artefact," which includes selections from Saussure, Peirce, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, and Goffman, and part two, "The politics of Performance," which includes selections from Althusser, Brecht and Lyotard, serve as the foundation to the rest of the book in that most of the pieces aid in the critical analysis of not just performance and theatre, but all cultural outpourings. Parts three through eight are more focused on performance related issues: "Performing Gender and Sexual Identity," "Performing Ethnicity," "The Performing Body," "The Space of Performance," "Spectators and Audience," and "At the Borders of Performance." As in parts one and two, the following six units include a wide variety of essays, drawing from theorists both inside (e.g., Diamond, Pavis, and Carlson) and outside (e.g., Foucault, Kristeva, and Bakhtin) theatre and performance studies. While some might view the absence of more performance and theatre theorists proper as problematic, I believe it to be one of the principal strengths of the anthology. The breadth of selections will undoubtedly encourage the reader to think about performance in terms of its position within a larger cultural milieu. The study closes with part nine, "Analyzing Performance," which includes just one piece: Patrice Pavis's well-known "Theatre Analysis: Some Questions and a Questionnaire."

Each part of the anthology opens with a brief, lucid, one- or two-page introduction that serves to frame historically and theoretically the issue under consideration. These introductions also include rather extensive lists of texts for further reading, all clearly annotated. Also included in each introduction is a very helpful cross reference to other essays within the anthology. Thus, for example, the Bakhtin selection, an excerpt from Rabelais and His World, though featured in part eight, is also referenced in parts two, five, and six. While certainly beneficial on a pragmatic level, this cross reference feature also serves as something of a conceptual cornerstone on the part of the editors in that it helps illuminate the breadth and fluid nature of critical theory by showing how the borders that separate various schools of thought are often artificially imposed. Further, by highlighting the constant and fruitful intersection of theoretical perspectives, the editors indirectly suggest that the reader should be forever aware of not only the subjective nature of reading the stage for meaning, but also the range and limits of various perspectives being considered.

In addition to the general introduction to each section, each individual section is preceded by a one- or two-paragraph biographical sketch of the contributor. Here, the editors seek to preview key terms and ideas, as well as to...