Introduction

The idea and practice of performance in recent decades have been the broad focus of criticism, historiography and the theory of stage art. Given that the term “performance” is indistinct in its outlines, this introductory note and special issue, which contains the proceedings of the conference “The Time of Performance”, held at the Università Cattolica di Milano and which is intended to engage in preliminary reflection on the topic and the method of approaching it , begins by defining the field. It focuses on what is called “performative theatre”, whose characteristics are listed, still hypothetically, on the plane of its scoring for the stage, on the plane of its method of constructing the performance (tending moretowards presence), on the plane of audience reception and the plane of the relation to other media. The work also deals with foundational issues and the importance of this phenomenon in relation to the urgent questions that our age requires culture and art to face.