 So far, this entry has treated theatrical performance and performance art as fundamentally the same. But that is regarded as a contentious standpoint by some theater and performance theorists. And the distinction between theater and performance, even if only alleged, has been a growing concern in theater studies and performance theories since at least the beginnings of the twentieth century, when Spingarn and Matthews debated whether one should emphasize either the “theatricality” of theater or the adherence of a performance to a written script (Matthews 1910; Spingarn 1911 [1931]). Their debate concerned text-based theater, and they each thought of “performance” in terms of theatrical performances of texts. But the wrinkle is that if there is a profound difference between performance as an art and theater as an art, then before one can describe an instance of theater, one has to know it is one and not an instance of performance art instead.