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Site-Specific Performance. By Mike Pearson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; pp. 208.
Mike Pearson's Site-Specific Performance examines the connective thread linking theory and practice in site-derived projects. Pearson serves as a professor of performance studies at Aberystwyth University in the UK and is the author of In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape and co-author of Theatre/Archaeology, both of which explore the conceptualities and practicalities inherent within the site genre. In Site- Specific Performance, he illustrates his points almost exclusively through the work of three companies: Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (where he was an artistic director during 1973-80), Brith Gof (he served as an artistic director during 1981-97), and Pearson/Brooks (a continuing collaboration with artist and scenographer Mike Brooks, which began in 1997). By describing the processes of his work and those of practitioners within his immediate circle of colleagues, Pearson offers a pedagogical examination of site work that, while limited in scope, is intensive.
Pearson readily acknowledges the risks inherent in narrowing the focus upon his own artistic works and those of his colleagues, but does so, in part, to argue for a definition of site-specific performance based on an individual's own experience. Early on he points out that "although the search for a practicable, encompassing definition of site-specific performance has long claimed scholarly attention, it remains slippery" (7). Pearson presents many of those contemporary scholarly definitions and insights-both conflicting and complementary to his practices-throughout the book, while choosing not to favor or promote any particular definition of site-specific performance, inasmuch as he deems it a constantly evolving field.
Although a precise definition is avoided, the organization of the book seems to parallel the creation of the author's brand of site performance: theoretical concepts must come first, then site exploration, and, finally, dramaturgical examination. While the professed goal of encouraging the creation of site performance as a pedagogical mission is born out in chapters 1 and 2, Pearson's use of poetic expression to articulate abstract systems proves problematic for all but...