Commentators have noted that during the 20th and the 21st century there has been an increasing tendency for artists and performers to try to make their work more authentic, more gritty, or otherwise more connected to the true nature of “the real” than those works which have gone before. Simultaneously, media organisations are seeking increasingly to shape and transform the “real” nature of events such as the 9/11 attacks or disasters into staged spectacular performances (Smelik, 2010). The rise of social media witnessing and reporting marks a similar desire to stage the “real”, while the growth of the “dark tourism” industry is testament to a desire to witness performatively “real” sites of suffering and atrocity. The Performance of the Real Research Theme investigates what it is about representations and performances of the real that make them particularly compelling and pervasive in our current age. At its core is the study of how performance/performativity, in its many cultural, aesthetic, political and social forms and discourses represents, critiques, stages and constructs/reconstructs the real. It is the first “centre” to examine critically the performance of the real in its broadest sense, involving national and international researchers from multiple fields in interdisciplinary dialogue/exchanges.
