DRAM 336 - Seminar in Performance Studies

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Selected topics in Western and non-Western performance traditions and literatures. Weekly assignments include performative writing, and performance labs.

Topic for 2012/13a: The Question of the Animal. This course focuses on the complicated human-animal relationships at the very root of myth and theater (Greek tragedy originates in the “goat song”) and more generally in cultural performance and popular representation. Both classical and modernist theater are ripe with powerful animal metaphors, the circus is the ubiquitous metaphor for humanity and its discontents, and many brands of Performance Art and Extreme Performance have incorporated animals as sacrificial bodies. In brief, the animal has been - and continues to be - an important and fraught signifier on the stage of our cultural imagination. Why? And what are some of the ethical questions surrounding our appropriation of “nature” and the “natural” for aesthetic purposes? Whose interests does the human/animal binary serve? Why does the animal speak for us, and we for her? Through weekly readings culled from drama, popular culture, the social sciences, and a series of in-class workshops, we interrogate the most basic assumptions of humanist philosophy, and study the use and implications of performance ecologies in which the animal is central. The course culminates in the presentation of short theatrical responses to this material. Ms. Cody.

Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.