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About Performance

About Performance 8 Cover Image

About Performance is the refereed journal of the Department of Performance Studies, and is concerned in the broadest possible way with the phenomenon of performance and with the processes involved in its production and reception. We are interested in all genres of aesthetic performance and live art, as well as social/cultural performance, ritual, and a wide range of performative activity. The journal provides a forum for analysis, theorisation and critique by academic researchers and performance makers. We welcome articles that bring theoretical perspectives derived from other disciplines to bear on performance practice.

Each issue of About Performance is devoted to a single theme and the journal appears once a year. It is published by the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney and is produced in print and online; articles are peer reviewed in accordance with DEST guidelines.

About Performance is edited by Gay McAuley.
To view the Editorial Committees click here
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CALL FOR ARTICLES: About Performance 10: Audiencing: the Work of the Spectator in Live Performance

The 2010 issue of the journal will deal with the complex role played by spectators during the performance event (and afterwards). In agreeing with Grotowski’s minimalist definition of theatre as “what takes place between spectator and actor”, we have to acknowledge that performance theorists have to date devoted a great deal more attention to the performer than to the spectator and we are keen to publish reports on current research into audiences and audiencing. The title of the issue will be Audiencing: the Work of the Spectator in Live Performance and, as usual, we are concerned with the widest possible range of performance genres.

Topics may include empirical or historical studies of audience behaviour, consideration of spectatorship as part of broader cultural processes, the claims and counter claims concerning the passivity of the audience in certain kinds of performance, issues such as the exchange of energy between performers and audience, follow-up studies concerning spectators’ memory of performance, questions such as why catharsis has proved such a dominant concept in theorising spectatorship, the parallels/differences between audiencing in live performance and spectatorship in mediatised works. What new metaphors, paradigms, theoretical concepts are emerging from contemporary work on audiencing? What methods are being used to study audiences and what disciplines are being called upon?

Proposals are invited for articles, normally between 6000 to 8000 words in length, dealing with any aspect of the role of the spectator in live performance. Please send your proposal to The Editor (Dr Gay McAuley, Department of Performance Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia; or by email to and include a brief note giving your institutional affiliation, recent publications, mailing and email addresses. Proposals (200 words maximum) should be sent by 1. July 2009 and we will notify you within a month whether the proposal has been accepted. The deadline for completed articles is 1 November 2009. Articles are submitted to a peer review process and any suggested revisions are to be completed by 1 February 2010. The journal will be published in July 2010.

Current Issue

No. 8 (2008) Still/Moving: Photography and Live Performance

  • Gay McAuley (University of Sydney)
    7 "Photography and Live Performance: Introduction"
  • Anne Marsh (Monash University)
    15 "Performance Art and its Documentation: A Photo/Video Essay"
  • Glen McGillivray (University of Sydney)
    31 "Still. Not Seen: The Hidden Archive of Performance"
  • Heidrun Lohr with Gay McAuley (University of Sydney)
    47 "A Duet Between Performer and Photographer: A Photo Essay"
  • Petra Kuppers (University of Michigan) with Aimee Meredith Cox, Jim Ferris, Alison Kafer, Neil Marcus, Nora Simonhjell, Lisa Steichman and Sadie Wilcox
    67 "Oracular Practice, Crip Bodies and the Poetry of Collaboration: A Meditation"
  • Ralph Fisher (University of Vienna)
    91 "Capturing Absence: Walking Performance and Photography"
  • Amy Simpson (University of Hull/University of Lincoln)
    111 "Craving the Whole Essence: The Photograph as Document, Artwork and Framework in the Theatre of Vs. E. Meyerhold"
  • William Yang and Jacqueline Lo]] (Australian National University
    125 "Image and Performance"
  • Paul Dwyer (University of Sydney)
    141 "Theatre as Post-Operative Follow-Up: The Bougainville Photoplay Project"
  • Joel Anderson (University of London)
    163 "Theatrical Photography, Photographic Theatre and the Still: The Phtoography of Sophie Moscoso and the Théâtre du Soleil"
  • Jonathan MarshallEdith Cowan University
    180 "Pathos, Pathology and the Still-Mobile Image: A Warburgian Reading of Held by Garry Stewart and Lois Greenfield"
  • Wiebke Leister (University of the Arts, London)
    209 "Performaing Laughter: Duchenne's Smile in the Light of Photographic Practice"
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Next issue

  • Number 9 (2009) Playing Politics: Performance, Community and Social Change

Proposals for articles to be included in issue 9 should be addressed to

The Editor
About Performance
The Department of Performance Studies
A20 Manning Rd
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
AUSTRALIA

Alternatively, email The Editor.

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Back Issues of About Performance

About Performance 7 Local Acts: Site-based Performance Practice
Edited by Gay McAuley
Now available. To order a copy, download the order form

Table of Contents

  • Gay McAuley (University of Sydney)
    7 "Introduction"
  • Mike Pearson (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
    13 "It came apart in my hands: Reflections on Polis by Pearson/Brooks"
  • Fiona Wilkie (University of Surrey)
    25 "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards": Performance, Site and Remembering"
  • Mark Minchinton ((Victoria University) and Domenico de Clario (Monash University)
    45 "Kelleerrin on our Minds"
  • Maryrose Casey (Monash University)
    69 "Carnivalising Soveriegnty: Containing Indigenous Protest Within the 'White' Australian Nation"
  • Elizabeth Dempster (Victoria University)
    87 "Welcome to Country: Performing Rights and the Pedagogy of Place"
  • Paul Brown (University of New South Wales) and Xanth-Rose Crittenden
    99 "Nature Moves Centre Stage: Eco-Centrism in Community Theatre"
  • Kerrie Schaefer (Exeter University) and David Watt (University of Newcastle)
    117 "Not Going Quietly: the Royal On The Move Procession. Place, History, Memory and Community-Based Performance"
  • Lisa Warrington (University of Otago)
    133 "Playing With Fire. Staging Lines of Fire: a Site-Specific Project"
  • Mary Elizabeth Anderson (University of California, Davis)
    151 "Engrounded: a Developing Theory of Site-Based Performance in the Context of Cognitive Linguistics"
  • Kate Lawrence (University of Surrey)
    "St Catherine's Chapel Pilgrimage: a Guide"
  • Michael Cohen (University of Sydney)
    183 "Tracing New Absences: Events for Place-Making and Place-Faking"

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About Performance 6: Rehearsal and Performance Making Processes
Published May 2006. Download order form.
Table of Contents

  • Rachael Swain "Telling That Story: The Marrugeku Company's Creative Process in Western Arnhem Land"
  • Peter Snow "Ovid in the Torres Straits: Making a Performance from The Metamorphoses"
  • Laura Ginters "And there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously: The Lengths they go to in the Rehearsal Room"
  • Kate Rossmanith "Feeling the Right Impulse: 'Professionalism' and the Affective Dimension of Rehearsal Practice"
  • Paul Moore "Rehearsal and the Actor: Practicalities, Ideals and Compromise"
  • D Ohlandt-Ross "Rehearsal as Cartography: Some Challenges for Metaphor and Practce"
  • Tim Fitzpatrick "Performance Preparation Processes and their Textual Reconstruction"
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About Performance 5: Body Weather in Central Australia
Edited by Gay McAuley (2003)

About Performance No. 5 is concerned with Tess de Quincey's Triple Alice project which brought together Body Weather performers, visual artists and writers on three occasions over a three year period at Hamilton Downs, near Alice Springs in Central Australia. The project also began a dialogue between de Quincey's group and members of the Indigenous community living at Yuendumu exploring the possibilities of a genuine exchange between different performance traditions grounded in experience of place.

Table of Contents and Introduction

order a copy ($20.00)

Students and unwaged are encouraged to buy a copy through the Department of Performance Studies at the student rate: $10.

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About Performance 4: Performance Analysis
Edited by Gay McAuley (1998)

This issue of About Performance is concerned with performance analysis, which I see as one of the major critical tasks required by the developing discipline of Performance Studies. It must be acknowledged at the outset that the analysis of live performance is a complex and problematical understanding and that there is no consensus amongst academics and performance practitioners about methodology or even about the rationale for doing it. The articles published here are intended as a contribution to discussion about both the how and the why.

Contents

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About Performance 3: Theatre as Performance
Edited by J. Lowell Lewis and Ian Maxwell (1997)

About Performance No 3 is devoted to theatre issues, primarily, always a major focus for the Centre for Performance Studies, but which this year seemed to emerge as a general theme for the year. Many people recognise that Performance Studies was an outgrowth of theatre studies, of course, but as we have expanded our look at many different sorts of staged genres from a variety of cultural worlds, sometimes the original source of inspiration can recede from view. It is in this spirit that some of us have turned back to theatre in this journal, to see what general performative insights culled from around the globe might be applied to familiar domains here at home.

Table of Contents and Introduction

Hard copies of this issue are still available through the Department for $20 ($10 students and unwaged). Contact Ian Maxwell

Contents

  • "Introduction" J. Lowell Lewis and Ian Maxwell
  • "Special events at the Centre for Performance Studies 1997" Laura Ginters
  • "Report on Teaching" Various
  • Post-Graduate Research Seminar
    –"Introduction" Laura Ginters
    –"Rehearsal Observation: The New Theatre’s 1997
    The Season at Sarsaparilla" Kate Rossmanith
    –"In her Own (W)right: Alter/Native Performance" Mary Adams
    –"The Forum Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings" Paul Dwyer
    –“So this is Heaven? I didn’t think there’d be so many blackfellas here” Laura Ginters
    –"Computer Imaging of Theatre Spaces. Representing the Empty Space: Software as Design Tool" Russell Emerson
  • Forum Proceedings: ‘Theatre Matters’
    –"Foreword" Ian Maxwell
    –"Why ‘Theatre Matters’" Ian Maxwell
    –Keynote Address: "Models of Comportment" Ross Gibson
    –Discussion
    –"Cruel are the Times" Chris Mead
    –Discussion
    –"Why Did the Actor Cross the Road?" Anna Broinowski
    –Discussion
    –"Sustaining Theatre: Theatre and Sustainability" Cameron Tonkin
    –Discussion
    –Wrap Up

    "Afterword" J. Lowell Lewis
  • Key to Names and Glossary
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About Performance 2: Performances East/West
Edited by Tony Day and Paul Dowsey-Magog (1996)

The essays on performances “East/West” presented below convey something of the range and excitement of the work on Asian and cross-cultural performance which has been taking place in courses, in workshops, and in research projects at the Centre of Performance Studies over the past several years.

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About Performance 1: Translation and Performance
Edited by Gay McAuley and Tim Fitzpatrick 1995

Contents

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About Performance Editorial

INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY EDITORS

  • Philip Auslander (Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Christopher Balme (University of Amsterdam)
  • Jennifer Lindsay (National University of Singapore)
  • Mundoli Narayanan (Miyazaki International College, Japan)
  • Alan Read (University of Surrey, Roehampton)
  • Takahashi Yuichiro (Dokkyo University, Japan)

About Performance EDITORIAL PANEL

  • Tom Burvill (Macquarie University)
  • Michael Cohen (Theatre Kantanka)
  • Rachel Fensham (Monash University)
  • Jane Goodall (University of Western Sydney)
  • Helena Grehan (Murdoch University)
  • Julie Holledge (Flinders University)
  • Mary Ann Hunter (Freelance consultant and artsworker)
  • Jacqueline Lo (Australian National University)
  • Mark Minchinton (Victoria University Melbourne)
  • Kerrie Schaefer (Newcastle University)
  • Peter Snow (Monash University)
  • Peta Tait (La Trobe University)
  • Joanne Tompkins (Queensland University)

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Amanda Card, Paul Dwyer, Russell Emerson, Tim Fitzpatrick, Laura Ginters, Lowell Lewis, Ian Maxwell
(Department of Performance Studies, University of Sydney)

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Flesh Winnow

Barbara Campbell
  • Sarah Miller "Introduction: Flesh Winnow and the Rhetoric of the Pose"
  • Joan Kerr "Performing Art History"
  • Mary Roberts "Inhabiting Tradition: Inflorescent"
  • Anne Brennan "Life, Still: Sécateur"
  • Joan Grounds "Retelling: Remanence"
  • Ian Maxwell "Retrospecting: The Midday Movie and the History of Australian Painting"
  • Clare Grant "What's Left: Cloche

Flesh Winnow is a collection of essays, edited by Laura Ginters and Barbara Campbell to mark Barbara's retrospective exhibition "Six Performances 1997-2001: The University of Sydney".

published by
POWER PUBLICATIONS
available from
The Department of Performance Studies
52pp., colour illustrations.

*(incl GST) + $3.00 p&h
Copies are available through the Department. Contact Laura Ginters or Ian Maxwell

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