Interview with Rebecca Schneider : what is performance studies?.

Interview with Rebecca Schneider, conducted by Diana Taylor, founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. This interview is a part of a series curated by the Hemispheric Institute, articulated around the question 'What is Performance Studies?' The series aims to provide a multifaceted approach to the often difficult task of defining the coordinates of both a field of academic study as well as a lens through which to assess and document cultural practice and embodied behavior. The contingent definitions documented in this series are based on the groundbreaking experiences and the scholarly endeavors of renowned figures in contemporary performance studies and practice. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

Rebecca Schneider, Chair of the Department of Theatre, Speech, and Dance at Brown University, teaches performance studies, theater studies, and theories of intermedia. She is the author of The Explicit Body in Performance (1997). A second book titled Reenactment: Essays on Performance Remains in Visual Culture is forthcoming with Routledge. She has coedited the anthology Re:Direction: A Theoretical and Practical Guide to 20th-Century Directing. She is a contributing editor to TDR: The Drama Review and coeditor with David Krasner of the book series 'Theatre: Theory/Text/Performance' with University of Michigan Press. Schneider has published essays in several anthologies, including Psychoanalysis and Performance, Acting Out: Feminist Performance, Performance and Cultural Politics, and the essay 'Solo Solo Solo' in After Criticism. As a 'performing theorist, ' she has collaborated with artists at such sites as the British Museum in London and the Mobile Academy in Berlin. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics