« Performance studies is an academic discipline designed to answer the need to deal with the changing circumstances of the “glocal” – the powerful combination of the local and the global. Performance studies is more interactive, hypertextual, virtual, and fluid than most scholarly disciplines. At the same time, adherents to performance studies face daunting ethical and political questions.What limits, if any, ought there to be to the ways information is gathered, processed, and distributed? Should those with the means intervene in the interest of “human rights” or must they respect local cultural autonomy at whatever cost? Artists and scholars are playing increasingly decisive roles in addressing these ethical and political questions. One goal of this textbook is to help you think about and act on these questions. »

Richard Schechner, Performance studies, Londres : Routledge, 2013 [2002], p.26

« There are two main realms of performance theory: (1) looking at human behavior—individual and social—as a genre of performance; (2) looking at performances—of theater, dance, and other art forms —as a kind of personal or social interaction. These two realms, or spheres, can be metaphorically figured as interfacing at a double two-way mirror. From one face of the mirror persons interested in aesthetic genres peep through at life. From the other side, persons interested in the “social sciences” peep through at “art.” »

Richard Schechner, Between theater and anthropology, Philadelphie  : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, p 296