DRAM 336 - Seminar in Performance Studies

Semester Offered: Spring
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 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 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.

Topic for 2024/25b: Paratheater. Richard Schechner wrote that “Performance Studies does not value purity. It is at its best when operating amidst a dense web of connections…Performance studies is open, multivocal, and self-contradictory.” It is fundamentally fluid and playful. In this course, we look specifically at the paratheatrical through the lens of performance studies. The paratheatrical being those activities we define as performative along with or beside theatre. These include play, ritual, and identity (the performance of gender, sexuality, and race). The class thinks critically about theories of performativity and what constitutes performance in contemporary society, looking for intersections and divergences between various performative practices. We examine the broad social, political, religious, and cultural context in which performance takes place. In the second half of the semester significant course time is devoted to student projects that deeply explore some aspect of the paratheatrical. Denise Walen.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS