Theater and PerformanceTheater and PerformanceLaw is an immensely, overwhelmingly textual practice, characterized by a seemingly endless flow of paperwork. But law also depends on a wide range of performances: witness testimonies, pleadings, trials themselves. Whether one wishes to interrogate performance’s presence in law or to critique law’s textuality, one must always consider both performance and text together. Law’s performances live—sometimes hidden, sometimes overtly—in legal texts.
This essay explores how the law brings performance to book, drawing on the history of dramatic texts to help read legal texts as scripts that may precede or follow legal performances. I investigate the presence of performance in written law by focusing on the typographical and formatting conventions of legal documents and the performativity of law’s typographical devices. In so doing, I lay the groundwork for a new book history of law, by way of the book history of theatrical performances.
Derek Miller is a professor of English at Harvard University, where he has taught since 2013. His research focuses primarily on theater's relationship to law and economics and on how data-driven approaches revise performance historiography. You can find links to his work and more information at https://derek.visualizingbroadway.com.
LOCATION:Barker Center, Room 024 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20221115T220000Z DTEND:20221115T220000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR