This collection of fourteen essays sets itself the ambitious challenge of analysing the state of performance research in an age of globalization. The editors acknowledge the direct impact of discussions held at a number of conferences in recent years: the Internationalism and Performance Studies symposium held at ATHE in New York (2003), the Glocalizing Performance workshop held at PSI in Singapore (2004), and the Stakes of Performance Research Seminar held at ASTR in Chicago (2006). The introduction outlines the collection's three aims: to foreground diverse locations of research, to analyse the global impact and decentring of performance research and to examine local contexts of production and inquiry. These objectives are reflected in the volume's three sections: ‘Institutionalizing Performance Studies’, ‘Contesting the Academic Discipline through Performance’ and ‘The Power of Performance Practice’. The overarching concern, it seems, is to challenge the perceived hegemony of performance studies (deliberately nuanced here as ‘performance research’) as a Western, and specifically North American, discipline. Indeed, the editors claim that they wish to identify genealogies other than those rooted in NYU's Department of Performance Studies.

McKenzie, Roms and Wee represent three different continents – North America, Europe and Asia respectively – and other contributors work in and write about their experiences in Australia, Japan, Slovenia, Germany, Croatia, Morocco, Indonesia, Israel and South Africa. This breadth allows a variety of insights to emerge. Diana Taylor's opening essay provides an account of the development of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU. It captures the book's structuring tension in aiming to decentre performance research while implicitly reaffirming a North American/NYU centre. Meanwhile, in chapter 7, Bojana Kunst provides an account of the development of Maska, the Slovenian magazine for contemporary performance. In her analysis, she maintains that performance in Slovenia in the 1980s was not as easily dissident as narratives of the shift from communism to capitalism tend to suggest. Rather, she highlights how the magazine has reflected more complex realities. Focusing on the Israeli tradition, Sharon Aronson-Lehavi and Freddie Rokem carefully discern the emergence of non-hegemonic voices in chapter 13, through a discussion of Ilan Ronen's production of Waiting for Godot (1952), among other performances. An essay by Loren Kruger concludes the collection, in which she argues against the principle of ‘theatrical exceptionalism’ as it affects the South African tradition. Kruger maintains that we must be attuned to the subversive potential of increasingly pervasive multimedia productions, including television and film.

The book is undoubtedly an important intervention in the organization and expansion of performance research in a global age, highlighting the power structures at play in disciplinary formation. As the editors acknowledge, the book comes with the risk of contributing to this ‘PS empire’ (p. 9), but even if it largely emerges from and speaks to the tradition it challenges, these risks are worth it in order to raise timely questions about hegemonic and counterhegemonic performance practices and their disciplinary and institutional formations.