What is it about?
Delegated performance is a performance in which spectators play a role in shaping the performance, often guided by an artist's instructions. This paper considers the ethics of this practice. What might those who work and research in these fields consider as issues surrounding the delegating performance? Of what value is this notion in assisting in thinking about practice?
Featured Image
Photo by Vita Marija Murenaite on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Art historian and critic Claire Bishop and theatre/performance scholar Jen Harvie have each written about a relatively new form of socially engaged participatory performance art that Bishop calls ‘delegated performance’. Delegated performance differs from earlier forms of performance art in that the performance is delegated to other people (hired or volunteer), including (at times) spectators, who enact the piece, rather than the piece being carried out by the artist herself. In light of this investigation, drama educators and applied theatre facilitators are recommended to consider how much and in what ways they are delegating performance with students/participants, and to what effect.
Perspectives
I use a mashup of writing styles in this article, including found poems and 'micro-lectures'. This writing style makes clear to a reader that a text is an imaginary dialogue between reader and writer.
Monica Prendergast
University of Victoria
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Delegated performance: Interdisciplinary tensions, provocations and questions, Performing Ethos International Journal of Ethics in Theatre and Performance, October 2017, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/peet.7.1.25_1.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
