IMPOSSIBILITIES AND POSSIBILITIES: THE CHALLENGES OF DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

Resumo

Surely, performance is a mode of behaviour that characterizes any activity. Yet, placing performance within the broad perspectives of Intercultural Theatre and Sociosemiotics, the proposed paper focuses on theatre and on live performance in order to attempt a reflection on theoretical and procedural provisos and potentials of dramatic performance analysis. With an additional focus on and foregrounding the conceptual “contestedness” of performance, as well as chronicling definitions of performance and dramatic performance analysis, and challenging the received distinction between the notions of performance analysis and historical reconstruction, I argue that these two processes engage in reconstruction, since any live performance is evanescent, and that, strictly speaking, analytical procedures and constraints equally apply and are equally mediated by the analyst.