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Performance Studies

 

How is performance an active ingredient in the maintenance, negotiation, or possible change of social and cultural norms? How do multiple modes of performance and representation travel across borders to be “read” or “experienced” or “felt” in times or places far distant from their initial articulation? Is crossing borders a “given” for performance? How? Why?

These, and so many other questions, are basic to Performance Studies.

The Performance Studies concentration track in the Theatre Arts and Performance Studies concentration can offer a base for students interested in a variety of performance forms across cultures and across media. The central focus in Performance Studies can be contrasted to the central focus in Theatre Arts. The central emphases in Theatre Arts are the history, theory, and practical skill-sets required for a well-rounded student of global theatre practices. Performance Studies, in contrast, focuses on the multiple modes in which live performance articulates culture, negotiates difference, constructs identity, and transmits collective historical traditions and memories. Performance Studies is not primarily invested in theatre; it is equally invested in other modes of performance, such as dance. Performance Studies includes ritual, play, game, festival, spectacle and a broad spectrum of “performance behaviors” under its umbrella of inquiry. The study of performance behavior across mediums such as dance, theatre, ritual, and orature allows for great geographic and historical flexibility as not all cultures parse theatre from dance, nor, historically, genres of religious or political ritual from genres of entertainment, play, or game. Performance Studies intersects with the wide variety of course offerings in Music, Visual Arts, American Civilizations, Anthropology, Africana Studies, Modern Culture and Media, and Literary Arts, among others.

See the concentration track described in more detail in the Courses link on the left.

 

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