Performance Analysis: An Introductory Coursebook ed. by Colin Counsell and Laurie Wolf (review)

308 REVIEWS These cheap swipes at a methodology (not a cult, as his phrase "the poststructuralists " implies) that sought new language with which to describe and then affect social inequities demonstrates Schechner's sometimes too romantic nostalgia for the performance (and performance studies) of the 1960s, whose radical activist movements and art practices he clearly prefers. Sometimes, Schechner's biases and flippant proclamations sound a bit outrageous . For instance, in his chapter on "Performing," Schechner cites OJ. Simpson's trial and says, "It was about race relations in the US, the lifestyle of the rich and famous, sex and jealousy, and the kind ofjustice money can buy" (178). While I agree with his politics, this seems an odd place for this kind of commentary. In another instance, Schechner says, "In his own way, [Allan Kaprow] was}aying the basis for 'the personal is the political'" (139), a blatant misattribution of one of the most potent phrases of the twentieth century, which most people would agree found its first and most effective expression in second-wave American feminism. These slights (or sleights-of-hand) may seem minor, but since this is an authoritative textbook, historical rewritings or mistakes matter a great deal. Some of the information Schechner amasses is simply sloppy. He describes A.T.H.E. as the "American Theatre in Higher Education" professional organization (16), when it is actually the "Association for Theatre in Higher Education ." This, too, is perhaps a minor detail, but many minor mistakes (and typos) over the course of the whole textbook add up to some unnecessarily slipshod scholarship, which Schechner's breezy, conversational style doesn't excuse. Schechner describes his own theoretical contributions to performance studies most coherently and eloquently. His chapter "What is Performance?" explains his concepts of "twice-behaved" and "restored" behavior, offering concise and useful examples, photographs, his ubiquitous diagrams, and long, sometimes contradictory quotations. to answer the question in complex ways. He brings together multiple examples of cultural expression, refusing the linear , geographically bounded exegeses of more conventional texts. In many ways, Schechner was born to the task of writing this book. He brings to life the praxis and theories of performance studies, its applications and possibilities. The contentious, sometimes boastful tone readers wi1l hear in his words makes this a dynamic textbook, one open to debate and disagreement even as it asserts, extends, and shares Schechner's deep knowledge of the field. COLIN COUNSELL AND LAURIE WOLF, eds. Peiformance Analysis: An Introductory Coursebook. London: Routledge, 2001. Pp. xiii + 250. $25.Q5 (Pb). Reviewed by James Peck, Muhlenberg College "'Performance' is not an unproblematic concept," write the editors of Pelfor- Reviews 309 monee Analysis: An Introductory COllrsebook (201). Indeed. Long .undervalued in the academy, perfmmance has, in the last twenty or so years, emerged as both vital subject maU er and prevalent critical category. With this ascent has come debate. What counts as a performance? How should we analyze one when we find it? With what questions in mind? This intellectually engaging, useful, anthology implicitly provides an approach to answering these questions . It also emphatically performs some of the reasons performance is not an unproblematic concept, enacting, perhaps unwittingly. some contradictions that characterize the disciplinary relationship between theatre studies and perfonnance studies. As such, it is a remarkable document - an exciting anthology in its own right and an opportunity to examine tensions endemic to the encounter between these contiguous, interwoven, and occasionally hostile academic fonnations. I will be critiquing some aspects of this collection, so I want to state clearly that, taken on its own terms, it's a superb book. Colin Counsell and Laurie Wolf have gathered a host of critical writings pertaining to performance into one challenging, enormously useful anthology. Their editorial decisions evince wide knowledge of current trends in theatre studies and critical theory generally. As the subtitle ("AnlnrroductOlY Coursebook") indicates, heuristic agendas motivate their choices. The book aims to introduce the key ideas, thinkers, and methodologies of contemporary theatre criticism to advanced undergraduate or early-career graduate students. The overarching method is an ideologically inflected theatre semiotics; Roland Barthes's combination of Brechtian materialism and Saussurean semiology looms large throughout. The book contains seven substantive sections...