“I Saw a Woman”

Performance, Performativity and Affect

Abstract

Drawing on Augusto Boal’s revolutionary deconstruction of the aesthetic space of theatre in preference for social action theatre existing beyond the proscenium, the article focuses on the concepts of performativity, emotion and embodiment as they occur in experimental forms of improvised performance and explores the relationship of affect to agency. It suggests that the symbiosis of affect and performance marks the shift to performativity, recognising performativity as a tool of agency. Integral to the argument is the recognition that, again drawing on Boal, people have a capacity to see themselves seeing themselves, prompting deeper understandings of self in relation to the social. Accordingly, the paper espouses an awareness of how improvised, community theatre projects shift participant understandings of emerging and liminal identities and argues that in order for the performance to become performative, there must be the taking up and nurturing of a contingent, discursively produced agency.