The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory

From about the mid-1950s onwards there were people doing political, cultural and artistic things that seemed to be unlike things that had been done before. Much of what they were doing was consciously experimental, seeking to avoid or challenge already available categories. Politics and art were being made in a different way. But through this range of work there were some consistent ideas and connections. We shall trace these as we encounter the emergence of practices, and ideas about those practices, to which we might now give the name of performance.