Troubling Performance: Local, National and International

This book chapter emerges from a University of California- Honored Guest, Multi-Campus lecture tour that Gough conducted in spring 2007. Three different lectures were delivered at seven UC campuses and this text is a transcription of elements of one spoken/performance text that mixed autobiographic and narrative material together with a reflection on located practice – the particular and peculiar emergence of a Welsh ‘tradition’ of performance studies advanced as performance research. The text itself was part of a longer paper entitled Back of Beyond (a performance lecture with objects) delivered at the Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw, Poland in December 2006 as part of their international conference Performance Studies and Beyond which proposed a Polish version of performance studies – ‘perspectives for development’ - and proposed Peformatyka (performatics) as a new nomenclature/neologism. That text that complements and expands this chapter can be found in the journal Performance Research 13:2 (June 2008) On Performatics (Eds Gough & Ziolkowski). The two texts should be read alongside each other., This chapter is evidence of Gough’s commitment to developing the discipline – performance studies – in parallel to encouraging and nurturing national and regional differences, variations and hybrids. As the founding President of PSi (the international association of Performance Studies) he enabled the discipline to travel and reach beyond its previously North American domain but he also wished to destabilize and problematize a USA (specifically NYU) command, authority and claim for the multiple and emerging variants of the discipline - and avoid a USA disciplinary imperialism and hegemony., This chapter captures a register and pitch to performance lectures that also advances the discipline through engaging with its performative and story-telling roots – playful, ‘live’ and nuanced. The text reflects on the policy, aspiration and ethos of the Centre for Performance Research and speaks of a commitment to place, rootedness and location.