Events shared by performers and audience that vanish as they happen.
Ways in
Practice research, historical analysis, reception studies, textual analysis.
The longer story
Theatre and live performance create ephemeral encounters where performers and audiences share space and time. Documentation captures something, but not presence. Performance studies examines theatre within a broader frame of 'restored behaviour.' Research methods include practice-based approaches (knowing through doing), reception studies (audience experience), historical research (how theatre worked in other times), and archival work (scripts, reviews, records). The thing that makes theatre distinctive is also what makes it hardest to study.