Theater Keywords

Restored Behavior

Richard Schechner

Actions or behaviors that are learned, rehearsed, separated from their original context/meaning, and performed again (twice behaved behavior)

Repetition and Revision (Rep and Rev)

Susan Lori Parks

The repetition and revision of actions in performances are never truly the same, emphasizing that each iteration is unique

Theatricality

Mark Russell

The expert deployment of theater and all its tools, weapons, and characteristics that engage an audience, facilitating their participation in the creation of an event

Liminality

Victor Turner

In between stages or identities, our roles in society. An ambiguous in-between phase during rituals or life changes, where individuals are stripped of status and social positions leading to profound transformation

Napantla

Gloria Anzaldua

The psychic, spiritual, and transitional state of living at the intersection of multiple cultures, identities, and worlds. In-between state, a place of both struggle and potential for new identities and understandings.

Embodied knowledge

Diana Taylor

Knowledge residing in and transmitted through physical body, gained from experience, sensation and action rather than thought, knowledge we get from just existing and going through life.

Performative

JL Austin

An utterance which performs an action, explores utterances which do what they say (promising, naming, marrying)(I promise, I do, I apologize). Judged as successful (felicitous) or unsuccessful (infelicitous)

Constative

J.L. Austin

Describes how the world is or could be (girls just wanna have fun)(true or false)(just describing the world). State something that can be tested to be true or false, asserting what you think to be a fact.

Felicitous

JL Austin

Are the conditions right for these words to do their thing or aren't they (yes it actually happened, it actually changed something in the world). A performative utterance is considered successful within the specific social or cultural context

Gender performativity

Judith Butler

Gender is not a stable identity but rather a performance shaped by societal norms. Emphasizes the fluidity of gender and challenges traditional binary notions of male and female

Heteronormativity

Lauren Berland and Micheal Warner

The institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent but also privileged

Queerness

Sedgwick and Somerville

Queerness names the unstable, fluid, and expansive range of identities that resist being fixed into rigid categories like gay/straight.

Intersectionality

Kimerle Crenshaw

A framework for understanding how various social identities such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability overlap and interact, creating unique experiences of both privilege and discrimination rather than a single forms of bias

Disidentifications

Jose Munoz

A survival strategy for marginalized minority groups to navigate and resist dominant culture without fully assimilating or opposing it. Rather than adopting or rejecting the mainstream ideology or norms, individuals use disidentification to engage with and 'reform' cultural materials for their own empowering purposes

Restorative Behavior

Colbert, Jones, and Vogel

Performances attend to painful moments of history, particularly racial and sexual violence with specific intent of restoring or repairing a sense of self and community in the present

Presence

Peggy Phelan

Performance is defined by the unique and unrepeatable event itself, existing only in the moment resisting documentation.

Performance Art

Peggy Phelan

An art form in which the artist uses the body, actions, or live presence as the medium. Often non-producible, and emphasizes process, presence, and audience interaction.

Archive

Diana Taylor

Knowledge storage as split between stable written records (the archive) and embodied memory through acts like dance ritual and protest (repertoire)

Repertoire

Diana Taylor

Embodied performative memory transmitted through acts like dance, storytelling, and rituals

Performance

Diana Taylor

By taking performance seriously as a system of learning, storing, and transmitting knowledge, performance studies allows us to expand what we understand by 'knowledge'. Embodied and performed acts generate, record, and transmit knowledge.

Scenario

Diana Taylor

A repeated culturally recognizable script that structures social behavior, performances, and historical events. A framework of actions, and relations that gets reenacted across time, shaping people's understanding

Liveness

Auslander

A cultural and historical construct that only exists in relation to media technologies. Rather than being an inherent quality of a performance, 'liveness' is produced through the shifting relationship between live events and mediatized forms like film, television, and digital media

Interactivity

Abigail De Kosnik

How audiences actively participate in, manipulate, recirculate, and transform cultural material rather than passively consume it.