Performing Wales

This book uses ideas from performance studies to examine Welsh culture as performance. Focusing on three aspects central to the investigation – notions of people, memory and place, all of which are central to definitions of Welsh cultural performance – the book explores these aspects in relation to specific case studies taken from the museum, from heritage, festival, and theatre.

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Beginning from the premise that culture can be analysed as performance, this study approaches Welsh culture as performative practice and explores four distinct cultural areas – the Museum, Heritage, Festival and Theatre – concentrating on how they contribute to a shared sense of identity among participants. Through specific examples, the author traces the way cultural performance in Wales both creates and sustains specific relationships between people, memory and place, revealing reflections of ourselves and constituting our remembrances of others and of history. The discussion emphasizes the significance of performance in voicing issues of identity within a peripheral context – a position informed by the author’s own perspective as a bilingual Welsh and English speaker.