Adaptation Unites Us! A call for performance studies and forensics interpretation to adapt with each other

Abstract

ABSTRACT I have experience adapting texts and subverting form because of my histories as a student, coach, instructor, scholar, and practitioner in both performance studies and forensics interpretation. I argue practitioners in each area can benefit by adapting with and to the other. This essay urges performance studies to embrace forensics interpretation because of potentials provided through consistent adaptive experimentation opportunities, exposure to texts and audiences, and feedback rooted in critical generosity. Applying a conceptual chiasmus, forensics gains by opening binders to performance theories, methodologies, and developed texts, to the diversity of forms performances take, and to insights experimental performance paradigms offer.