DRAM 336 - Seminar in Performance Studies

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2024/25a: Intercultural Performance. Twentieth, and early twenty-first, century performance theory and practice has been incontrovertibly shaped by the intercultural imagination. From the foundational writings of Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud, to the avant-garde experiments of Eugenio Barba and Jerzy Grotowski, and the post-colonial provocations of Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Ong Keng Sen, theater and performance have become sites of cultural contact, dramatizing not just discrete elements of performance practice or narrative, but often the conflict of contact itself. In this seminar, students will read intercultural performance theory alongside seminal theory on the formations of modernity, nationality, and cultural identity, in order to situate both the directionality of exchange (the inter-) and its materiality (the ever elusive ‘culture’). Alongside theory, students will consider intercultural theater practice, looking to the output of artists like Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine, Tadashi Suzuki, Julie Taymor, Maya Krishna Rao, and more. Amanda Culp.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS