Theories of Performance
- Elizabeth Bell - University of South Florida, USA
Written specifically for the undergraduate classroom, performance theories are explained in ways accessible to students, relevant to their lives, and richly illustrated with examples that encourage students to think more, to think harder, and to think differently about performances around them.
Beautifully designed for an undergraduate audience in both content and layout.
Fantastic resource for teaching performance. However this is beyond A-Level students.
Excellent, accessible text that covered a range of theories comprehensively.
There was not an angle to incorporate social work and performativity
The book provides excellent textual bases and is very current in terms of content and examples.
The overall structure of the book is excellent and its length well-suited for student use. However, the constant encouragement of in-class performance is not practical nor feasible for my class. Furthermore, a number of the study questions remain too vague. They would profit from employing concrete examples for discussion, instead of asking students to look for examples themselves.
This is an essential text for undergraduate students in their debate and analysis of performance in its many facets. The text offers suggestions for debate across practices and offers clear contextual briefing to surround the nature of the debate and further discussion.
This feedback is based on my discipline of fine art, and how it incorporates live/performance based practice and theory. To that end it would be supplemental reading for fine art students, but I will use the text for discussions on the relevance of text and theory. The publication's meaty analysis of this area will be of great use, as it of regular debate in taught sessions.
This is an excellent book even though it's not within the conventionally recognized lineage of Performance Studies. Perhaps this is what makes is a compelling text and one that's excellent for comparative study.
An excellent book that explains and analyses performance theory. A very good teaching resource in theoretical sessions.
The book will be an essential instructional material especially the third chapter for my class in Hum 3. This will be helpful in discussing technology and performance as a mediated and communicated social aspect in this very modern age. The book however, needs to adds a chapter that discuss performance as a global and interconnected critical concept that bridges culture and societies. This will help non-American societies to adapt the book and use it to scrutinize cultural and communicative aspects in their own local experience. Overall, the book is an essential guide that students can easily use, with its jargon-free discussion of critical terms (and yet, it maintains an academic voice appropriate for classroom and research discussion). I would like to order several copies for my library.
