Abstract

The Will to Theatre is an analysis of the genre of conceptual performance art in its relationship to and difference from the history and mimetic practice of drama and experimental theatre. The method of analysis focuses on the interdisciplinary relationship between the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, psychoanalytic theory, Mikhail Bachtin's concept of the dialogic, experimental theatre and theatre history, art history, music and dance history, literary analysis and critical theory as they are applied to examples of Dada-based conceptual performance. ;Specifically, The Will to Theatre uses concepts of the indexical sign and the subjunctive mode to explore the dynamic of absence/presence operating in a total of 15 post-Dada performance pieces and two experimental plays. These concepts are initially developed in Part I, based in an examination of the 1970's performance work of Chris Burden, the 1960's Fluxus work of Ben Vautier, and the important and groundbreaking work by Dada master Hugo Ball at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916. Part II focuses on two experimental theatre pieces, Breath by Samuel Beckett and a piece from Augusto Boal's Invisible Theatre series. These are followed by an analysis of individual pieces by artists: John Cage ; Faith Wilding ; Vito Acconci ; Elizabeth Streb ; James Luna ; Karen Finley ; Diane Spodarek ; and Adrian Piper . Interspersed in the analysis of these pieces is commentary on and by artists Tristan Tzara, Bertold Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Alan Kaprow, Jackie Apple, Dick Higgins, Robert Morse, Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Cindy Sherman, Yoko Ono, and Joe Gould. ;The Will to Theatre attempts to construct a model for the consideration of an art form in which artists do not make art but become art through modes of contingency and direct address. This model argues, first, that post-Dada performance, based on the index, is functionally separate from the codes of theatre based on the icon of mimesis. Secondly, while theatre and performance share aspects of the subjunctive mode---the presentation of the conditional as-if---theatre concentrates on the as-if of character while conceptual performance presents the as-if of self