The concepts of theatricality and performativity have been enormously productive sources of recent scholarship in the fields of theatre and performance studies. While the former term has a long history of use and abuse, the latter has gained contemporary currency in connection with the emergence of performance studies, on the one hand, and new interpretations and applications of J. L. Austin's 1950s philosophy, on the other. As scholars have reexamined theatricality and probed performativity, a number of new uses of these terms have developed, and depending on the scholar's viewpoint, a binary or sometimes hierarchical relationship between these terms has prevailed.