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    apparently solid and three dimensional but able to walk through real objects. The effect was achieved by placing a large plate of inclined glass across the front of the stage at an angle, so that bjectson stage appeared normal, while light from the orchestra pit was strongly reflected into the “audience's line of sight. A facing inclined mirror was placed in the orchestra pit directly under the onstage glass, and an actor (or anything els} in front of the mirror appeared as a virtual image superimposed upon the view of the stage, transparent, and independent of the ma- terial realty behind the glass. The effect was popular at Pepper's Polytechnicon, which specialized in popular science entertain: ‘ment, was used to accompany “Dickens's readings from The Haunted Man, had a vogue in “music hall, and appeared in a number of plays written for its use atthe Britannia Theatre. Its acoustic and visual limitations were many, however, and it soon passed out of fashion, replaced by simpler techniques like the backlit skrim or gauze. Yet versions of the trick still appear occasionally in theatres that have a strong interest in stage rmagic—the Antenna Theater in “San Francisco, for example, See also 1.USI0N; VISION AND THE VISUAL; SPECIAL EFFECTS. iB PEPYS, SAMUEL (1633-1703) English diarist and government oficial. Repys's Diary, writen \6to-9, isa storehouse of information concerning the Resto ation theatre. As a regular theatregoer Pepys commented on plays, actors, “costumes, scenes, and “audiences. He inspected ‘stage machinery and visited the “tiring room. He inter viewed Thomas *Killigrew, the *manager of the Theatre Royal, Some of his comments on Shakespearian revivals and adapatons ar legendary: Romeo and juliet was the worst that ver heard in my life; Twelfth Night was‘asily play’: Macbeth ‘was ‘one of the best plays for a stage, and variety of “dancing and “music, that ever I saw’. RW PERAZA, LUIS (PEPE-PITO) (1908-74) ‘Venezuelan playwright and director. In the late 19308 and 19408 heestablished a number of companies and theatre societies, and his own “comedy Crist won an important “award in Caracas (2949) while he was director ofthe Teatro del Pueblo (1942-52) is work was rooted in the *costumbrista or “folkloric tradition of “costume drama. Of approximately twenty works, he is most remembered for Et hombre que se fue (The Man Who Left, 1938), Cecilio (1942), La gota de agua (The Drop of Water, 1942), and Manuelta Saenz (1960). LCL trans. AMCS PEREZ, COSME See Rana, JUAN. PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE ‘Aterm most commonly used in theatre to refer to the event in which a dramatic “text is physically realized before an “audi ence. The similar event orientation of music and “dance has caused these to be grouped traditionally with the theatre as the ‘performing arts. This quite straightforward relationship between theatre and performance became much more complex in the late twentieth century due to three related but distinct developments. First inthe artistic world, a type of event called a performance, often connected more with art galleries than theatres, began to appear in the early 1970s. Most early works of performance or *performance art simply displayed the ‘human body in action, usually as a solo piece. Later spoken, ‘often autobiographical material was added, but most perform: ‘nice remained solo, and could often be distinguished from trad- itional theatre by its rejection of conventional “mimesis. A very | important part of performance art throughout the 1970s and. 1980s was its use by minority artists fist by feminists and later by gays, lesbians, and members of ethnic minorities, to give voice to their social and cultural concerns (see ENMINIST THEATRE; (AY THEATIE; LSMIAN THEATRE). In the domain of theatre “theory, at about the same time, Richard *Schechner began to eal fora study of performance asa very broad range of human activity, of which conventional the- are was only a small part, using critical tools drawn not from aesthetics but from the social sciences. Thus the work of an- thropologists like Victor Turner, sociologists like Erving Goffman, and linguists like J. L- Austin were utilized not only to study traditional theatre topics, but to explore a wide variety of other performative activity: *rituals and religious cere- monies, “sports and games, public celebrations and festivals. Eventually Schechner's interests resulted in the establishment of the first programme in “performance studies, at New York University, an annual international conference on the subject beginning in 1994, and major field of study overlapping but ‘generally distinet from traditional “theatee studies. ‘The third development, related tothe other two in complex and sometimes contradictory ways, was the attempt of a num ber of theorists to develop the concept of performance as a post- structuralist alternative ch they held is dedicated sof “structuralism. Josette Féral in 1982 placed o theatre, wh to the operat performance in direct opposition to theatre, undoing and de constructing the “semiotic codes and competencies upon which, theatre is built and thus allowing the free flow of psychic en ergies and emotional desires. The denial of narrativty, of fixed ‘meanings, even of presence (which the poststructuralists, fol lowing Derrida, dismissed as a metaphysical illusion), created a concept of performance opposed not only to theatre but also to the concept of performance in performance art, which empha sized physical presence for phenomenological reasons and nar ratiity for political ones. Thus, hough united in ther ejection wor PERFORMANCE ART/ART PERFORMANCE ‘of theatre, these two ideas of performance created their own op- position, which inspired much theoretical speculation at the end of the twentieth century. See also rexronwariviy, MC Camson, Mann, Performance: a critical introduction (New York, 1996) Searcnien, Rictane,Esays on Performance Theory (New Yo 977) PERFORMANCE ART/ART PERFORMANCE sce page 1019 PERFORMANCE GROUP ‘American company, founded in 1967 by Richard “Schechner in “New York, an important force in experimental theatre in the 1970s. Schechner was interested in challenging the distintion between “audience and performer and between performance and ‘real life. The goal was an experience of transcendence for all present at the theatre event; Schechner believed in the po tential of theatre as “ritual. The Group's pieces were created in collage style and used existing “texts and found material as well, as the members’ personal contributions, As such the company formed part of a continuum of American “collectives that stretches back tothe “Group Theatre ofthe 1930s. The Perform- ance Group's most famous production was Dionysus in 69, based on "Euripides’ The Bacchae, which they created in 1968-9. The Dionysus actors were encouraged to interact withthe audience, ‘and some performances dissolved when the orgiastic experi tence overtook the theatrical one. The production is now con- sidered one ofthe prime examples of “environmental theatre, a classification Schechner coined. There were twelve founding ‘members of the Performance Group involved in Dionysus in 69; after one other production, Makbeth (1970), the original group disbanded. Schechner reformed the Group later that year and continued to create collage ike productions including Commune {begun in 1970), Many important experimental theatre artists worked with the Performance Group, including the founding _members of the Wooster Group, who took over the Performing Garage when Schechners troupe disbanded in 1980. KF PERFORMANCE STUDIES ‘A new discipline which emerged from drama and “theatre stu ies in the 1970s. The programmatic foundation for peeformance studies was outlined in 1966 by Richard *Schechner in his essay “Approaches to Theory/Criticism’ (in Essays on Performance Theory, 197). Here the New York-based academic and director proposed a concept of performance transcending. “textbased Vided the richest area of enquiry for performance studs at has brought forth a substantial body of research, Phenmaa such as tourist performances and theme pak, hitherto ig by theatre scholars and ethnologist alike, have been regi xd as important manifestations of contempaay ot ture (asin B.Kirshenblatt Gimblet’s Destination Cul. Often this work is undertaken in related disciplines suckasa tural anthropology, cultural studies, or “folklore studies ad therefore not specifically declared to be performance suits A second branch of enquiry and continued ints formed by what could be broadly termed “performance ae new “genresof performance created by “happenings Flamsi9 later “feminist performance artists, placed themselves intl ‘outside the purview of both art history and theatre sas Michael Kirby provided the first study with his anthology 5p penings (1965), The practice of performance artists fom 1960s, the postmodern (see MODERNISM AND rOSTMDOEENSY periments of the 1980s (such asthe *Wooster Group temporary “media explorations have remained acentalfns {continued np 5) ERFORMANCE hese two terms, and the more general term ‘Perform- ance’, emerged in the early 1970s to describe contem- porary work in Europe, North and South America, tralia, and “Japan which straddled the boundaries of the forming and visual arts, (In this entry the word ‘Perform. , when capitalized, is intended to convey the category of rk covered by ‘performance art’ and ‘art performance’) That ivity ofthe 1970s and after derived from a long “avantgarde dition, issuing from experiments in theatre, visual art, music, etry, and “dance, and from the various artistic movements in ich the separate forms coalesced and cross-ertlized. Per mance in this sense seems to defy definition, not only be- useit comes in so many forms and styles, but becauseit stakes its territory, as Michael Kirby has put it, ‘atthe limits’. This sistance to definition held a particular fascination for histor sand “theorists of Performance in the late 970s; as RoseLee ldberg wrote, ‘performance defies precise or easy definition fond the simple declaration that itis live at by artists. Introduction; 2. Art performance; 3. Performance art; Conclusion Introduction e Oxford English Dictionary defines “performance as ‘an ac- 2, act, deed, operation’. At frst ones struck by the active com: ations of that definition, Performance suggests something {and alive), as opposed to something static, like a painting, king associations with spontaneity and with the present ind in the 1970s this often suggested further associations with tions of authenticity. Performance seemed to traffic in activ- that was real, not fictive, often savouring the materiality of al objects and framing performers as authentic agents in real rather than as “characters in another time and place. But performance also has associations beyond spontaneous tivity. We also call the enactment of a ceremony or the ren tion ofa play ora piece of music a performance (and of course 1e wider meaning is the one generally used in this encyclope a). In this sense, to perform is not at all to act spontaneously, ut to play a role; performance becomes associated with the netaphor of life as theatre, and the idea of playing out a pre- bricated or preordained role, evoking connotations quite Poste to spontaneity and authenticity. Thus over the course the 19708 and early 1980s, Performance moved from a notion 9f authenticity, inherited from the culture of the 1960s, to a tion of the death of the self, of human life as a decentred ERFORMANCE ART/ART bundle of roles or ‘masks of the individual as a role player with multiple, disjunctive identities What differentiates Performance from other arts? Clearly itisnota matter of medium. Music, for instance, might be iden: tified asthe art form whose medium is sound, while literature can be identified as the art whose medium is language. But Per: formance makes use of every available medium, material, or even art form, inchuding “film, music, painting, sculpture, the atre, dance, architecture, photography, and so on. Many Per: formance pieces employ more than one medium, for instance Laurie "Anderson's use of music with technologically altered instruments and voices, choreographed actions, slide and film projetions, video, and holograms. But that does not imply that Performance is necessarily ‘multimedia. For example, perform- ances by ation artists and body artists like Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Otto Muehl, Joseph Beuys, and Ulay/Abramovie in the :mid+1970s involved the stark confrontation of bodies and ob- jects in social situations, without extraneous media, creating political metaphors and at times bordering on the violent with the simplest, most elemental of means. ‘One might think that Performance requites the presence of 4 performer, But even that broad generalization is thwarted ‘when we consider that a Performance piece may be comprised of the action of “puppets or automata, the movement of objects cormachinery (ike those of Survival Research Laboratories) oF a succession of slide images. Nor does Performance requite the presence ofan “audience, as Allan *Kaprow’s participatory per- formances, evolving out of “happenings. and Anna Halprin’s ‘movement “rituals show. Some have characterized Performance as involving non professionals, but Eric "Bogosian and Spalding *Gray, as well as the members of "Mabou Mines, are all profes- sional “actors. Can we say that a Performance piece organizes actions and events non-narratively? No, because that would ex clude the work of artists like Carmelita Tropicana, Robbie McCauley, and Tim *Milr. Even though an essential definition may never be found for Performance, there are other ways in which it may be portrayed as an interrelated body of activity, Its unity may be characterized historically or genetically or narratively. The cohesion of recent Performance activity is primarily a matter of inheritance—it is an evolving conversation whose narrative “unity is attributable in large measure tothe structure and pre- suppositions of the opening moves of the discourse. Contemporary Performance seems to emerge from two ‘dominant sources. On the one hand, it was reaction by certain, 101g en esr B v N oes cw em asens PERFORMANCE ART/ART PERFORMANCE painters and sculptors to what they believed to be the funda ‘mental theoretical imitations of gallery aesthetics inthe 1960s Call this dimension of Performance art performance. On the ‘other hand, at roughly the same time, practitioners of theatre Initiated a revolt against the dominant and prevailing forms of drama, Call this dimension of Performance performance art Although art performance and performance art arose in reac tion against distincly different art forms, the two movernents have at times crossferilized and overlapped with important effects. There are differences between Performance practitioners primarily involved in the gallerytelated polemics of art per formance and those involved more inthe avant-garde theatre Aebates of performance at. But the merging of these points of departure into a generic tradition has become increasingly salient. 2. Art performance ‘Art performance is the label for those Performance activities that originate inthe concerns ofthe fine arts, Many ofthe Euro- pean avantgarde art movements ofthe first haf ofthe twen- ‘eth century included paratheatrical auxiliaries, a did both American and Japanese avantgarde painting and sculpture ‘during the two decades following the Second World War. Per- Inaps the stage was set for this postwar activity by some of the rhetoric used to introduce abstract “expressionism. Harold Rosenberg, dubbed Jackson Pollock's work ‘Action Paintings and treated is canvases asthe tracery ofthe artist's performa tive act of painting. Although static. paintings were reconceived| {in action terms, rather than object terms under the category of performance. Thus in one sense the proponents of art perform ance literalized the notion thatthe goal of painting is an activity ‘ora performance. But there is another way of charting the emergence of art performance a break, rather than a continuity, with artworld polemics. While abstract expressionism was sometimes charac- terized as concerned with gesture and action, another inter ‘pretation, championed by Clement Greenberg, glossed abstract expressionism as an exercise in reflexive reduetionis which strove to reveal the essential conditions of panting. In this view, the abstract expressionist developed the cubist project of ae iknowledging the surface of the picture plane and asserting its flatness. Art performance grew out of the repudiation of this essentialist approach to art, the belief that each art form hha its own delimited nature, fixed by its medium. ‘While the essentialist paradigm for advanced fine art gained in stature during the 19508 and 1960s, a counter: movement of antiessentilism also gathered strength, often ‘employing art performance to articulate its anti essentials bias. ‘The most vividly remembered steategy of these 1960s art per formances isthe happening. One important precedent for hap- penings was a multimedia event staged by John Cage at Black Mountain College in 1952, in which a film was shown while choreographer Merce “Cunningham danced, Chares Oo ant 1M. C. Richards rected poetry, David Tudor played the pio, and painter Robert Rauschenberg displayed his work ant played music of his choosing on an old record player Theteaes Of this performance were disseminated in Cage's compost courses at the New School for Social Research in "New Yo. during the 1950s, where his students included such Figur Allan Kaprow, Dick Higgins, Larry Poons, George Bre, son Mac Low, and Jim Dine. The antiessentialst messages that anything could become art. Inspired by Cage, fine ass displaced their concerns from the canvas and embodied then is performative "genres like happenings and Fluxus. In push development, the Japanese groups Gutai Art Assocation ad Red Centre made art out of actions with objects. Visual artists looked to performance as a way 1 bask down distinctions between the atts, to free themselves fm igeneric rules and boundaries, inclading restive del tions between the performing and non-performing a. Thi antilinear, juxtapositional presentations (rather thin re presentations) putatively trafficked in the real. Their perfor ances were supposedly meant to be real events, rather tan representations of events, and they were related not ey to the antillusionism of gallery aesthetics (as in Robt Rauschenberg’ ‘combines’ but also to the emerging pki ‘of avantgarde theatre, in which, as Michae! Kirby noted las and characters were non-matrixed, nonfiction, and mo representational. In ome way, this view, as articulated by ity, converges on the essentialist view of psinting—that apa, {is areal object, paint on a flat canvas. But, in contrast ar pt formance makers were interested in asserting their works 3s 8 special kind of object but as an object like any othe kind f thing —something ordinary. Hence Fluxus delighted ino covering the world through street tours and maiart. Thisaypst of art performance links it to a democratiing impulse i he arts and culture internationally in the 1960s. ‘The antiessentialism of art performance led not ony 4 working out of aesthetic concerns in the gallery ant wa through “theatricality, but also to alliances with other perom- Wg artists—in particulae, musicians (like Cage, Robert Ay La Monte Young, Cornelius Cardew, and Paulie Olivers) ant ‘dancers (especialy, in the USA, those associated with hen Dance Theater, including Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton) At the same time, there was cross-fertilization among these ells since the visual artists studied with Cage, and dhe dancers influenced by both Cage's and the visual artists’ intrest inh real and the ordinary, and later, by minimalism and cnc alism. Their interest in the performative led several inal artists, such as Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, and Cake Sehneemann, 19 make dances, some of which, lke Mos’ ‘Site (1964), were concerned with visual perception and sett Jes. This concern finds its parallel inthe theatecal perfor art of Richard "Foreman, whose “mise-enscéne has been ph concerned with framing, “perspective, and perception (see also sacePTON). ‘A reaction against another aspect of mainstream gallery aestetics—its formalism—led, in another way, to body ar’ in the 1970s. Eschewing the flamboyant theatricality of happen- ings, body artists like Vito Acconi, Chris Burden, Stuart Brsley, and Gina Pane explored issues of risk, death, decision-making, and the psychosexual, often through an existentialist focus on the self through the insistent presence of the bady. Also in the 19705, the closely related movement of conceptual art arose, criticizing the commercial nature of the art world and the com- modity status of the art object. For example, in Catalysis If (0970), Adrian Piper walked through the streets with ‘Wet Paint’ printed on her shirt, suggesting the idea ‘don’t touch’ in away that conflated her rights to sexual autonomy with a gibe aimed at the art world’s elevation of the materiality of paint. As art performance matured in the 1960s and 1970s, it ‘became independent of the movements in the visual art ‘world that spawned it and began to ally itself with other move ments. By the 19805, postmodernism in gallery art, with its pro- gramme of exploring and interrogating representations, ‘specially in the “mass media and popular iconography, had, a performance component. Laurie Anderson's rock star image had the postmodern quality of both criticizing and participating in contemporary pop culture. And this connected to postmod- ernism in the theatre, which involved recycling plays, images, and genres, as in the work of director Peter “Sellars. If art per formance originally emerged in a cultural moment that valued authenticity and spontaneity, by the 1980s it participated in a cultural moment of anxiety about life as a hollow product of signs and signifying systems (see MODERNISM. AND POSTMODERN 1s; seatorics {An outgrowth or branch of postmodernism in gallery art was the punk movement of the 1980s, which took allusions to popular forms—movies, “television, cartoons, and graffiti—to new heights, while rejecting the polish and expertise of the catlier postmodernist (like Robert Longo). There was an ama- tear flavour to punk-inspired Performance, a sense of infantile pleasures combined with a feeling of los, arising, perhaps, from a nostalgia for a post-war period when life seemed simpler and ‘more predictable—a time when many of the younger art per formance makers were, in fact, children, The TV talk show, the comedy routine, the “cabaret format were all revived with post- ‘modem irony, not withthe loving camp sensibility of the 1960s but with a new sense of cynicism that had a flavour of eatly “futurist performance. The Kipper Kids’ excessive “parody of “musichall performance, energetically and aggressively assault ing the audience simultaneously with word wit, obscenity, and scatological ‘props, was a prime example of this branch of art performance, which also overlapped with a parallel emerging sensibility in avant garde the: of the Alien Comic. asin the anti-comedy routines PERFORMANCE ART/ART PERFORMANCE In the 19705 and 19805 Performance proved a fertile ‘ground for advancing and embodying “feminist politics, allow- ing an open space for the expression of feelings, fantasies, and political action. in “Los Angeles, Womanhouse, organized by visual artists including Judy Chicago, and the Woman's Build ing were the site of many installations and performances; dur ing the 1970s, also in California, several women's performance “collectives were founded. In the 1980s and 1990s the French artist Orlan’simpossible projectof using plastic surgery tomimic images of female beauty in various canonical works by male artists combined feminist social criticism and conceptual art with a new spin on the body art of the 1970s. Janine Antoni’s Loving Care (1992-6), in which she used her hair as a mop to ‘over a gallery floor with hair dye, parodically criticized the legacy of male artists lke Yves Klein and asserted the female arts’s agency. Beginning in 1985, the Guerrilla Girl, a group of ‘anonymous performers wearing gorilla masks, picketed Ameri can museums for discriminating against women artists. Their actions connected not only to other feminist movements in visual art, but also to art performances and artworks (for in stance, that of Russian artists Komar and Melamid and French artist Daniel Buren) that scrutinized artworld institutions. By the 19908 American art performance was dominated by identity politics, as not only women but artists of colour asserted their presence in museum exhibitions and in other ‘venues. Coco Fuseo and Guillermo *Gémex-Peia underlined the marginalization of Americans of colour and the politics of ex: hibition when they displayed themselves in art museums and natura history museums as caged exotic specimens ofa primi tive culture in Two Undiscovered Amerindians (1992-4). Toward ‘the end of the twentieth century, new works in art museums ‘were aslikely to use new media, such as video and computers, as pint and canvas (See MEDIA AND PERFORMANCE). A number of visual artists have explored the intersection of the possibil ities and drawbacks of intensifying technology through live performance, Palestinian-born British artist Mona Hatoum, a ‘though known primarily for her video and installation pieces, has worked with video in live performance to explore binaries like live bodies/tecorded representations, insidejoutside, and private/public, often dealing with themes of suffering and im- prisonment, while Australian artist Stelarc works with robotics to extend the capabilities of the human body. 3, Performance art If art performance emerged out of art world polemics, perform: ance att was initially a reaction to the polemics and practices of the theatre world in the 19508 and 1960s. Avant gardists criti cized the representationalism of Shakespeare and the modern classics, as well as of popular shows on Broadway and the West End, the spectatorial aspects of mainstream theatre, andits “text ‘orientedor verbal emphasis. nstead they proposed atheatre that, would be presentational, participatory (or at least challenging, PERFORMANCE ART/ART PERFORMANCE to the division between spectator and performer), and image oriented as well as kinesthetic. Theatrical performance art brought the performative aspects back to the theatre, One strat egy to achieve this goal was to install real events (rather than fictive ones) on stage. So, for different reasons, the art world and the theatre world moved in similar directions, forging a corres: pondence that has persisted now for over four decades. The first stage of performance art stemmed from an Artaudian vision of an antiliterary theatre, a view of theatre as a ‘concrete physical place’, as “Artaud put it, with ‘ts own con: crete language’. This view of theatre reverses the “Aristotelian ‘model that places “spectacle at the bottom of the hierarchy of theatrical elements. According to Artaud and those inspired by his vision, theatre should be emotional and visceral, rather than intellectual (see Crotty, THEATRE oF). The "Living Theatre, for ‘example, staged Mysteries and Smaller Pieces (1964) as a series of ritual games without ‘plot or characters. Asin the happenings created by their contemporaries, the Living Theatre breached divisions between spectators and performers in the name of the real. However, there was a difference between the art perform- ance and the performance art of the 1950s and 1960s. While happenings and Fluxus were anti-ssentialist, ironically, while employing similar strategies, the Living Theatre, the “Open The- atre, and the ‘poor theatre’ of Polish director Jerzy “Grotowski ‘were essentialist, searching for the core elements of theatre and theatricality and trying to purify theatre, to strip theatre down to its essence. The actor became a performer rather than a character. Artaud’s emphasis on spectacle led to a consideration of the physicality of the performance space. Not only did the hap- penings makers and postmodern dancers evince a special inter- fest in articulating space, but so did Foreman, the English director Peter “Brook, and the Hungarian émigré group Squat Foreman’s preoccupation with perspective, perception, and in- dexical devices, physicalized in production, connected his work in the theatre with the concerns of gallery artists/art perform- ance makers like Michael Snow and Robert Morris. Moreover, the emphasis on the visual generally and hence on the creation of imagery rather than the illustration of texts, moved perform- ance art toward the visual arts, strikingly in the work of Ameri- ‘cans Robert "Wilson, Meredith *Monk, and Ping "Chong, and Europeans such as Jan “Fabre (Belgium) and the company La *Fura dels Baus (Spain) in the 1970s and 1980s. The repudiation of mainstream theatre and even certain strands of avant-garde literary theatre led performance artists in the 19808 to seek out overshadowed, forgotten, or marginalized forms, just as earlier Artaud had been fascinated by Balinese theatre. Performance artists confounded distinctions between hhigh and low culture, reviving forms like “circus, “vaudeville, “magic shows, puppetry, storytelling, comedy routines, and nightclub "variety shows, which converged with the interest in *mass media and popular forms by art performance makers. 1022 Performance artists showed their work in clubs, rather thang leries. Stuart Sherman and Paul Zaloom, each in his owa vn created puppet spectacles for avant-garde adult audien, Spalding Gray appropriated the image of an avantgarde ong Carson in Interviewing the Audience, thus mirroring the os ‘modern turn in art performance. Perhaps it was a sense of weariness with 1986s perform, ance art as entertainment, divorced from the realities fds life, that led to the next wave of highly politicized perio, ance art in the 1990s. As in art performance, “feminism baj an impact on avant-garde theatre internationally for instance the many performances at "WOW Café in New York In Biz, Rose English and Sally Potter's ferninist performances tends toward cinematic imagery, before Potter moved into independ ent filmmaking, Bobby Baker makes visible and ironic the dai activities of ordinary housewives. Annie Sprinkle, form “pornographic actress, frankly celebrates women's sexuality with tales and demonstrations of eroticism as well as vuln: ability, while Karen “Finley speaks in a Cassandrelike vie of prophecy and possession about women’s oppression and abuse Feminism was by the 1990s only one branch of muitai- turalism, which also included the politics of ethnic identities, sexuality, and ability (see RACE AND THEATRE; GAY THEATRE Es BIAN THEATRE; QUEER THEORY). Multicultural performance an often took the form of autobiographical confessionals, sin Tim Miller's narratives of gay life in America and Rothe McCauley's stories of her African-American family. Ths gene was born partly of the widespread use of performance at by {feminists (especially in California) in the 1970s, partly ofthewse of the solo form, which lends itself to autobiography, and par of the changing, increasingly multicultural demographics ofthe avant-garde art and theatre worlds, not to mention the wordt large. With the expansion of ethnically diverse populations bth in the United States and Europe, as well as the intensificationaf economic and cultural globalization, by the 1990s artists raised questions about who we are, what made us this way, and whats to be done about it. Once again, then, the concerns of art pe formance and performance art overlapped and intertwined, this time on the terrain of multiculturalism, as they had earlier inthe quixotic pursuit of the real Not only were ethnic and cultural boundaries interogated by performance artists of the 1990s, but also the boundaries between media, Video and computer technologies have increas ingly attracted performance artists in the 1990s and aftr, js as they have attracted art performers like Mona Hatoum ani Stelarc. New technologies can extend the possibilities of bes space, imagery, and point of view in live performance, aswel contrast live and mediated events (see CYBER THEATRE) In the United States, performance art became notorious and was often censured in the popular press during the cultue wars’, especially when in 1990 the "National Endowment forthe ‘rts contravening the recommendations of peer panels, denied funding to four performance artists (Karen Finley, John “Fleck olly"Hughes, and Tim Miller), who, over the course ofthe next several years, pursued their cases through federal courts. In the 105 US funding shrank for both individual artists and pro

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