Performance: A Critical Introduction

By Marvin A. Carlson

Book Overview

Since its original publication in 1996, Marvin Carlson's Performance: A Critical Introduction has remained the definitive guide to understanding performance as a theatrical activity. It is an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415137039
• ISBN13: 9780415137034
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Pretty much the only coherent overview of "Performance Art"

I bought this book because I was taking a modern drama class. The course readings were baffling and the plays were fashionable nonsense in a fashion I didn't understand. This book tells you what the relevant ideas are for understanding (inasmuch as inscrutable irrationalist art can be understood, at least) "performance" succinctly. It identifies the theorists associated with various performance styles, and relates major events in the history of "performance art". The style is reminiscent of Russell's History of Western Philosophy. It's mildly informal (but richly informed), fairly dry, very succinct, and ultimately so compact as to be almost bullet-point like. A true rarity in a field filled with obscurantism. This guy is a knowledgable and phenomenal writer to essentialize an entire field full of baffling primary sources so well and transform it into a textbook. An absolute must buy if you have to take a modern drama or performance class.