Since its inception as an institutionalized discipline in the United States during the 1980s, performance studies has focused on the interdisciplinary analysis of a broad spectrum of cultural behaviours including theatre, dance, folklore, popular entertainments, performance art, protests, cultural rituals, and the performance of self in everyday life. Performance Studies in Canada brings together a diverse group of scholars to explore the national emergence of performance studies as a field in Canada.

To date, no systematic attempts has been made to consider how this methodology is being taught, applied, and rethought in Canadian contexts, and Canadian performance studies scholarship remains largely unacknowledged within international discussions about the discipline. This collection fills this gap by identifying multiple origins of performance studies scholarship in the country and highlighting significant works of performance theory and history that are rooted in Canadian culture. Essays illustrate how specific institutional conditions and cultural investments – Indigenous, francophone, multicultural, and more – produce alternative articulations of “performance” and reveal national identity as a performative construct.

A state-of-the-art work on the state of the field, Performance Studies in Canada foregrounds national and global performance knowledge to invigorate the discipline around the world.

Laura Levin is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at York University. Her research focuses on contemporary theatre and performance art, performing gender and sexuality, and site-specific and urban performance. She is editor of a number of collections and her writing appears in several books including Performance and the City and Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research. She was recently awarded the Canadian Association for Theatre Researchâ??s Richard Plant Essay Award for her article, â??Can the City Speak? Site-Specific Art After Poststructuralismâ?? (2009).

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Marlis Schweitzer is associate professor of theatre and performance studies at York University.

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