Book review - Performance Research: On Cooking, by Richard Gough (Editor), Performance research – Volume 4, no. 1, Spring 1999, Routledge

Performance research is a specialist journal with a focus on performance, publishing studies from different contributors. With a frequency of 4 issues per year, each issue is dedicated to one theme expanding the field of performance: on line, On Shakespeare, On Civility etc.

Volume 4, published in the spring of 1999 dedicated to food, to the process of cooking (& related) and making theatre is a perfect introduction to concepts related to food performance. ``On cooking`` holds over 150 pages of essays, history research, artist pages and reviews on the theme of food and performance.

``Playing with the senses: Food as a Performance Medium`` by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is a waste introduction to the notion of food and performance: history of food, food and performance, performance artists and their shows it all relates to the sensory actions of preparing the food to the event which is consuming (not always by eating). The study is a perfect introduction to the concept of performing food.

There seems to be a particular link between food and fear. Emma Govan and Dan Rebellato deal with this subject in their ``Foddscare!`` article. We have security issues in relation to our food so we need reassurance about the origin, process of preparation, content etc of what we eat and respectively want to become part of us. They also present a case of political performance in close relation to food scares: John Selwyn Gummer feeding his daughter a hamburger during the Mad cow madness in the 1990s.

Food historians also make a case. Darra Goldstein presents theatrical elements of food habits in Russian history. Podacha is one such custom: ``If invited guests were unable to attend a royal banquet (…) their portions were delivered to them at home. (…) In a peculiarly form of Russian form of street theatre , presentations could occur up to several times a day, with hundreds of men filling through Moscow’s narrow alleys bearing food.``

``Blood and aprons``, ``On pickling``, ``On Cooking the Sunday dinner`` or ``A temperate Menu`` are sketches and plans from or for different performances enhancing or giving new intention and function to food and food related processes.

Among all sorts of interesting and / or important things the volume contains one statement I think I have been looking for a long time: ``Most theatre and performance art no longer satisfies anyone’s basic need, except perhaps the practitioner’s ego`` (John Fox).