Judie Christie, Richard Gough, Daniel Watt (eds.), A Performance Cosmology: Testimony from the Future, Evidence of the Past. London & New York: Routledge, published for the Centre for Performance Research, 2006.

Abstract

The term cosmology is helpfully aligned with ecology in these apocalyptic days of global warming. It also poignant (a word, with equal measures of regret and anger) that writing this review of such an extraordinary publication from the Centre for Performance Research (CPR) might also be a kind of ecological obituary. As I write, petitions are circulating to protest the closure of this vital centre.

A Performance Cosmology is testimony to nearly 35 years of performance and research instigated by, and/or connected to, the Centre for Performance Research, based first in Cardiff and now in Aberystwyth. The varied history of CPR and in particular its enunciation of performance research as expansive speculations is evident in the contents, layout and presentation of the volume. Performance research as it is recorded here is like an ecology of practice, reliant equally on ideas, cultural reflectivity and artistic intervention.