This thesis explores the figure of the expert in a range of contemporary performance practices. Much has been written in recent years about the rise of education, pedagogy and research as both curatorial strategies and modes for making art (see below for cited texts). The significance of theatre and performance within these practices has also been asserted (see, for instance, Shannon Jackson’s Social Works). I argue, however, that the specific use of the figure of the expert within the conjunction of pedagogy, research and performance has not been fully addressed. I further argue that looking at the expert in performance practices provides valuable insight into the broader contemporary dynamic of knowledge and power, as well as telling us much about the current state of performance itself. This is clearly a broad topic, with many possibilities for analysis. In this introduction, therefore, I will outline the rationale behind my choices of practices and critical resources, and I will discuss the rationale behind the geographical and temporal limits that I have chosen. I will also define my key terms, while noting that all of them are both contested and subject to change. I will discuss my methodology, including the various ways I have accessed the performance events and documentation that are included in this thesis, and my approach to the interdisciplinarity that necessarily underpins a project with such potentially broad scope as this one. Finally, I will briefly outline the six chapters which form the body of this study, again indicating reasons for the choices I have made, as well as drawing a few initial connections between practices and ideas.

Street performers have to create and manage their own performance events. This makes street performance an ideal type of situation for studying how an audience is assembled and sustained in practice. This thesis uses detailed video-based ethnographic analysis to investigate these processes in street performances in Covent Garden, London. Drawing on the performance literature, the role of the physical structure of the environment, the arrangement of physical objects within the environment and the physical placement of people are all examined. The argument of the thesis is that these analyses alone are insufficient to explain how an audience is established or sustained. Rather, an audience is an ongoing interactional achievement built up through a structured sequence of interactions between performers, passers-by and audience members. Through these interactions performers get people’s attention, achieve the recognition that what is going on is a performance, build a collective sense of audience membership, establish moral obligations to each other and the performer, and train the audience how to respond. The interactional principles uncovered in this thesis establish the audience as a social group worthy of studying in its own right, and are in support of a multiparty human-human interaction approach to design for crowds and audiences.

The development of Arts is an important sign of the evolution in a country. The arts accomplishment of the public can be observed by their attendance and support of the arts activities in their leisure lives. One¡¦s habit of participating in arts activities should be developed from the childhood. Accordingly, the goal of this study is to understand the influencing factors of children¡¦s willingness in appreciating arts performance and then to enhance their inclination and interests of admiring arts. This study sorts out related references about children¡¦s leisure activities and arts performances. The three independent variables are individual, family and school. Moreover, the dependent variables are volition, frequency and style in the behavior of appreciating arts activities. Firstly, the study begins with self- designed questionnaires to carry out quantity surveys. The mother groups are the public primary school students in Kaohsiung. Sixteen schools are drawn out from the mother groups, and the subjects are two classes of students from each school: one from the middle grade and one from the high grade. A total of 1024 questionnaires are sent out, and 923 of them are the valid ones to exam hypothesis by means of statistic analysis. Secondly, this research uses the content of the questionnaires as the interview outline. The five interviewees from the industries, governments and academic fields are interviewed as the quality study. At last, after contrasting the results of quality research with those of the quantity research, the conclusions are as follows. Lots of primary school students¡]62.1¢H¡^ in Kaohsiung are inclined to anticipate the arts activities. Most of them have these experiences one to three times in 2008. The art styles which they appreciate most often are music, dance, drama and traditional drama in turn. Among individual background factors, those that significantly influence students¡¦ appreciating arts behavior are ¡§gender¡¨ and ¡§interest in arts¡¨. Some influence are grade and experience of learning arts. Among the family background factors, ¡§background of family members¡¨, ¡§support from parents¡¨ and ¡§transportation convenience¡¨ have obvious influence on the students¡¦ willingness in appreciation of arts. Howerever, family social-economic background factor do not have much influence. Among the school background factors, factors that make an influence on the students¡¦ appreciation of arts performances are ¡§instruction of the teachers¡¨ and ¡§interaction between pupils¡¨. However, ¡§the location of the school¡¨ and ¡§arrangement of the courses¡¨ only make partial influence. At last, according to the results of the research, this study provides suggestion for schools , teachers , parents and performance groups.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Mary Beattie.

This thesis questions how sub-disciplines in theatre and performance negotiate ‘sitespecificity’ as an aesthetic practice and tool of urban governance that ‘sees’ and ‘performs’ social housing estates. As a practice that, predominantly, takes place beyond conventional performance spaces, applied theatre might be a paradigmatic form of socially engaged sitespecific activity. However, scholarship on the ‘social turn’ more readily cites Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’, or Bishop and Jackson’s critiques of ‘social practice’, which emerged in gallery and visual arts contexts. The ‘social turn’ poses problems for scholarly relations between ‘social practice’, ‘applied theatre’, the cultural economy and urban governance. I draw on socio-legal scholar Valverde’s ‘seeing like a city’, theatre scholar McKinnie’s ‘performing like a city’ and cultural economy as a theoretical framework, developing McKinnie’s concerns with ‘cultural equity’, and Harvey’s use of ‘fixed capital’ and ‘consumption fund’ in my analysis of relations between cultural and social realms. Consequently, this project hopes to contribute to an emerging area of research between socio-legal urbanism and performance studies, complicating ‘site-specificity’ as a descriptive category. Over five chapters I analyse site-specific works about estates staged in Lambeth and Southwark (inner-city London boroughs) since 2008. First, I examine relations between site-specificity and estate regeneration: the representations of overhead walkways in Delahay’s The Westbridge (2011) and Cotterrell’s Slipstream (2011) and the estate as ‘ruin’ in two Artangel interventions, Seizure (2008) and Pyramid (n.d.). I then shift to issues raised by legal and social boundaries in governance; I examine SLG’s partnerships with a neighbouring estate and ‘issue-based’ plays in two examples of theatre for young people. The final chapter draws out the project’s wider thematic concerns: the aesthetic implications of pedagogy and funding bodies on imaginings of site. This project calls attention to the complex cultural, socio-legal and economic structures that shape our cities, and the degrees to which they might be repurposed or re-imagined.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / Includes bibliography.