Performance Studies - Origins of And Basic Concepts in Performance Studies - Literature

Literature

On the literature front Wallace Bacon (1914–2001), considered by many the father of Performance theory, taught performance of literature as the ultimate act of humility. In his defining statement of performance theory Bacon writes "Our center is in the interaction between readers and texts which enriches, extends, clarifies, and (yes) alters the interior and even the exterior lives of students through the power of texts" (Literature in Performance, Vol 5 No 1, 1984; p. 84). In addition, Robert Breen's text Chamber Theatre is a cornerstone in the field for staging narrative texts though controversial in its assertions about the place of narrative details in chamber productions. Breen is also regarded by many as a founding theorist for the discipline along with advocate Louise Rosenblatt.

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    Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.
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