Ways of understanding the culture: Re-examining the performance paradigm

The tendency for 'performance studies' to embrace and even supplant 'theatr e studies' can usefully enlarge our perceptions of the relevance of theatri cality to other disciplines and activities-but fully extended into the 'per formativities' of everyday life can be counterproductive when definitions a re so loose as to be redundant. Here, Ian Watson, considers the boundary-cr ossing qualities of two variants on the 'performance paradigm'- Eugenio Bar ba's bridge-building concept of 'Barter Theatre' and Augusto Boal's deliber ately provocative 'Invisible Theatre.' He proceeds to relate the characteri stics identified to an event no less clearly staged, though less often disc ussed as such: the set-piece political speech, in this case President Clint on's acceptance of his renomination as Democratic candidate at his party's Chicago convention in 1996.