Performance Theory

Performance as a field of study is interdisciplinary and spread across theatre, dance, music, art, film, and others. This seminar, first and foremost, introduces students to a wide range of performance practices. Each week a different genre or category of performance is discussed. This course embraces wide regional, political and historical instances of performance to provide students with a global lexicon of aesthetic practice. To this end audio-visual media are extensively used throughout the course. Students are required to think critically and creatively of the relation between text, technology and the body by paying attention to the demands performance places on us as participants, spectators, scholars and commentators. Students are encouraged to think outside disciplinary boundaries and pursue the question of how the study of performance can enrich their own scholarship and artistic practice.