In this article I introduce and summarize Alexander’s theory of social events as performance and ask what it offers performance studies. I critique the theory as being grounded in a theatre dramaturgy of actors, characters and scripts and suggest that while it appears to open new theoretical ground to deal with performances, it omits crucial features, namely embodiment, creativity and imagination. I distinguish between the cultural category performance, the theoretical category performance, and actual performance events, and I differentiate these from (...) the theoretical notion of performativity. I go on to enquire into the relations between performance, performances, performativity and society. (shrink)

This article will explore a paradoxical dramaturgy. Last year I played Yahweh in a production entitled OT: Chronicles of the Old Testament. It was part of the 2007 Malthouse Theatre season in Melbourne, and directed by Christian Leavesley and Phil Rolfe. To embody Yahweh is to make manifest the divine, make material the ineffable, and yet allow the illusion that all is still spirit. How does one become God, if only for a moment? Well, for at least as long as (...) the play lasts. Given the atheist fundamentalism espoused recently by Dawkins, Onfray and Hitchens, in what spirit is a corporeal critique of the pervasive power of the Old Testament, and in particular it's vengeful, wrathful, forgetful, dancing God the Father, possible? (shrink)