Since the 1950s, a vast research and teaching field has developed around the notion of “Performance” in English-speaking countries. The multiplicity of publications in the past fifty years (still relatively unknown outside the U.K., U.S. and Australia, however) might lead us to believe that this domain has been thoroughly explored. However, it is still without a clearly defined scientific object, especially since theorists have accepted that performance should remain a “Contested Concept” for the sake of pluralism. Yet in practical terms, performance and spectation go hand in hand and cannot be studied independently. This co-existence, called the “Show as an Event,” emerges as the sole legitimate scientific object of research, which makes it possible to transcend the inherent limitations of both conventional drama studies and performance studies.