Anglophone scholarship in theatre/performance studies does not warm easily to the concept of ‘aesthetics’. To make publication in English possible, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s Ästhetik des Performativen (2004) had for its main title to be rebranded as The Transformative Power of Performance, a rendering which also loses ‘performativity’ as an aesthetic phenomenon separate from the materiality of the performance. The German interest in aesthetics tracks back to Enlightenment thinkers who posed the question, ‘How do I respond to a work of art?’ Fischer-Lichte responded to postmodern performance art and to amultiplicity of other eventswhich collapse the actor-audience relationship in an attempt todefineanewqualityof artistic experience. Hans-Thies Lehmann’s quest for ‘postdramatic’ theatre was driven by a similar search for a quality of experience that transcends rationalism.Anglophone scholarship tends to be much more squeamish in describing artistic experiences that are not simultaneously beneficial moral experiences, even though, in practice, judgements are constantly made on the aesthetic basis that the performance somehow ‘worked’, the actors were ‘in the moment’, they had ‘presence’ or what Joseph Roach has called ‘It’. Willmar Sauter is best known to anglophone scholars for his work on the ‘performance event’, and his concern with eventness has led him on to this very personal quest to try to understand what the thing called ‘presence’might be. Fischer-Lichte and Lehmann both played by the academic rules in describing a world of practice out there in the world, constructing where necessary a ‘one’ or a ‘we’ or ‘the audience’ as the subject of aesthetic experience. In a necessarily idiosyncratic book, Sauter bites the bullet and interrogates his own experience of ‘presence’. From the jumping-off point of a long-retained youthful experience of a stage silence created by actors in London’s Old Vic (in John Gabriel Borkmann), he weaves together other experiences that for himhad the same quality: watching an autobiographical film installation about suicide, mists clearing round a mountain in Lapland, gazing at a beautifully designed coat that he knows to be 5,000 years old. Sauter also turns his gaze outward to groups where he has been a participant, following an audio play in a multi-ethnic Stockholm suburb, or a festive re-enactment of Ulysses on the streets of Dublin. The argument is grounded in a body of theory from the German Enlightenment addressing sensory cognition, and in an investigation of ‘play’ sparked by Huizinga. The quest always is for the circular relationship that joins ‘A’ (the performer) to ‘B’ (the beholder), and in many ways the book is more ameditation upon this problem than an argument. The book circles as the phenomenon circles. The style is always clear and engaging and brings to the fore the question: what does this thing that we loosely call ‘theatre’ do to us (and us to it) to make us feel that life is somehow more worth living? As posed in this book, the question does not seem self-indulgent, but rather a valuable exercise in self-interrogation.

中文翻译：

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Aylwyn Walsh 监狱文化：表演、抵抗、欲望布里斯托：智力，2019 年。300 页。85.00 英镑。国际标准书号 978-1-7893-8105-4。

戏剧/表演研究中的英语奖学金并不容易接受“美学”的概念。为了使英文出版成为可能，Erika Fischer-Lichte 的 Ästhetik des Performativen (2004) 不得不将其主标题重新命名为 The Transformative Power of Performance，这种渲染也失去了作为一种审美现象的“表演性”，与表现。德国人对美学的兴趣可以追溯到启蒙思想家提出的问题，“我如何回应一件艺术品？” Fischer-Lichte 回应了后现代表演艺术和许多其他事件，这些事件破坏了演员与观众的关系，试图定义一种新的艺术体验质量。Hans-Thies Lehmann 对“后戏剧”戏剧的探索是出于对超越理性主义的体验质量的类似探索。尽管在实践中，英语学者在描述艺术体验时往往更加娇气, 判断是不断在审美基础上做出的，表演不知何故“奏效”，演员“在当下”，他们有“在场”或约瑟夫·罗奇所说的“它”。Willmar Sauter 最为人所知的是他在“表演事件”方面的工作，他对事件性的关注使他开始了这个非常个人的探索，试图理解所谓的“在场”可能是什么。Fischer-Lichte 和 Lehmann 在描述世界上的实践世界时都遵循学术规则，在必要时构建“一个”或“我们”或“观众”作为审美体验的主题。在一本必然与众不同的书中，索特咬紧牙关，审视自己的“在场”体验。从伦敦老维克（约翰·加布里埃尔·博克曼）中的演员创造的舞台沉默的长期保持年轻体验的起点，他将其他对他来说具有相同品质的体验编织在一起：观看一部关于自杀的自传电影装置，在拉普兰的一座山上，雾气消散，凝视着一件他知道有 5000 年历史的设计精美的外套。索特也将目光转向他曾经参与过的团体，在多民族的斯德哥尔摩郊区进行音频播放，或在都柏林街头重演尤利西斯的节日重演。该论点基于德国启蒙运动解决感官认知的理论体系，以及由 Huizinga 引发的对“游戏”的调查。追求的始终是连接“A”（表演者）和“B”（旁观者）的循环关系，在许多方面，这本书更多地是对这个问题的沉思，而不是争论。书像现象一样循环。风格总是清晰而引人入胜，并提出了一个问题：这个我们松散地称为“剧院”的东西对我们（以及我们对它）做了什么让我们觉得生活在某种程度上更值得过？正如本书所提出的，这个问题似乎并不是自我放纵，而是一种有价值的自我审问练习。追求的始终是连接“A”（表演者）和“B”（旁观者）的循环关系，在许多方面，这本书更多地是对这个问题的沉思，而不是争论。书像现象一样循环。风格总是清晰而引人入胜，并提出了一个问题：这个我们松散地称为“剧院”的东西对我们（以及我们对它）做了什么让我们觉得生活在某种程度上更值得过？正如本书所提出的，这个问题似乎并不是自我放纵，而是一种有价值的自我审问练习。追求的始终是连接“A”（表演者）和“B”（旁观者）的循环关系，在许多方面，这本书更多地是对这个问题的沉思，而不是争论。书像现象一样循环。风格总是清晰而引人入胜，并提出了一个问题：这个我们松散地称为“剧院”的东西对我们（以及我们对它）做了什么让我们觉得生活在某种程度上更值得过？正如本书所提出的，这个问题似乎并不是自我放纵，而是一种有价值的自我审问练习。这个我们粗略地称之为“剧院”的东西对我们（以及我们对它）做了什么，让我们觉得生活在某种程度上更值得过？正如本书所提出的，这个问题似乎并不是自我放纵，而是一种有价值的自我审问练习。这个我们粗略地称之为“剧院”的东西对我们（以及我们对它）做了什么，让我们觉得生活在某种程度上更值得过？正如本书所提出的，这个问题似乎并不是自我放纵，而是一种有价值的自我审问练习。