The Transformative Power of Performance

In this book, Erika Fischer-Lichte traces the emergence of performance as 'an art event' in its own right. In setting performance art on an equal footing with the traditional art object, she heralds a new aesthetics.

The peculiar mode of experience that a performance provokes – blurring distinctions between artist and audience, body and mind, art and life – is here framed as the breeding ground for a new way of understanding performing arts, and through them even wider social and cultural processes.

With an introduction by Marvin Carlson, this translation of the original Ästhetik des Performativen addresses key issues in performance art, experimental theatre and cultural performances to lay the ground for a new appreciation of the artistic event.

Erika Fischer-Lichte is Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universitaet Berlin and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies on the Interweaving of Theatre Cultures. She was President of the German Association for Theatre Studies (1991-1996) and of the International Federation for Theatre Research (1995-1999). Among her numerous publications are The Semiotics of Theatre (1992, in German 1983), The Show and the Gaze of Theatre (1997), History of European Drama and Theatre (2002, in German 1990), Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual. Exploring Forms of Political Theatre (Routledge, 2005).