postperformance

Postperformance is a term used in performance studies and arts criticism to describe the activities, discourse, and material traces that surround a live performance after its conclusion. The concept foregrounds the afterlife of a performance—the ways in which meaning, memory, and value are produced once the event has ended. While not uniformly standardized, postperformance is applied across theatre, dance, music, and interdisciplinary works to analyze circulations of reception, documentation, and reuse.

Etymology and scope: Derived from post- and performance, the term signals a temporal shift rather than a single moment. It encompasses post-show conversations, critical reviews, scholarly analyses, audience feedback, documentary records, and digital traces such as videos, social media discussions, and online forums. It also covers the ways performances are re-staged, adapted, or sampled in later works.

Functions: Postperformance extends the life of a work beyond the venue, enabling broader access and ongoing interpretation. It can inform subsequent production choices, influence canon formation, and contribute to memory cultures around a performance. Documentation and archiving are often emphasized, with programs, scripts, recordings, and curator notes providing material evidence.

Media and technology: Digital platforms amplify postperformance by enabling rapid dispersal of reactions, reviews, and fan interpretations, and by preserving performances in archives and streams.

Criticisms: Critics caution that postperformance can privilege voices with access to publishing or online platforms, potentially marginalizing the immediate lived experience of the event itself.

See also: performance studies, reception theory, archive theory.