22 SOCIAL SCIENTIST established by one particular medium, and about combating the homogenisation of culture through which this monopoly seeks to perpetuate itself. Safdar here looks at the possibilities of performance as a democratic activity seeking direct engagement with its audience and thus questioning cultural forms which seem to be imposed from the top. This , of course, is not to say that performative forms as forms are immune from patterns of political-economic domination. A performative form is the locus of an often silent but continuing struggle for hegemonic appropriation like other cultural forms. But the specificity of a performative form-the mode of use of theatrical space and time, the presentation of spectacle, the trajectory of the movements of the actors across the stage, the vocalisation of words - determines the parameters of this struggle. Theatrical performance, unlike the television, cannot reproduce the same programme ad infinitum to different audience communities; it cannot install itself inside individual homes as the television does. But precisely for this reason, it may emerge as a more open-ended form in which it is much more possible to introduce debate or dialogic activities. A performance has to be produced, that is, it requires a certain deployment of labour-power. This means that there is a political economy of performance, a history of its evolution through the contradiction between the ownership of the means of production and the pattern of dissemination of the product. In the era of capitalism, there is a dominant tendency towards producing a performance as a commodity with wide circulation. The protection afforded and the limits set by aristocratic patronage are removed. A socialisation of the production of theatre takes place. At the same time, however, there is a much stronger need to control the production of performance to ensure its profitability. The proscenium-theatre, with its separation of the audience from the performers, its professisonalism and its technology of presenting 'a slice of life' on stage, represents this newcontrol, arising out of the command over capital of a handful of people. The theatre-houses and the technology needed for them are in private control and used for profit, although to make profit, the masses must be involved both in the production and in the consumption. On one hand, actors, technicians, directors, stagehands have to be engaged; on the other hand, large and varied audiences must be found and wooed. Thus, even in the theatre in the era of capitalism, even on the proscenium-stage, the contradiction between