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TH988 - New Directions in Theatre and Performance Research
Week 1 – Introduction
Welcome
The Facilities IOur technician, Ian O’Donoghue ([email protected] - Room F01) will give an induction to the studio facilities, including the lighting grid and desk and the sound equipment.
The Facilities IITim White ([email protected] - +44 (0)24 7657 2534 - Room G24) will give you an overview of the video production facilities – cameras and edit suites – walking you through the basics of shooting, ingesting and editing material.
ProvocationsThree of the tutors on the module – Tim White, Jim Davis ([email protected] - +44 (0)24 7657 4842 - Room G27) and Silvija Jestrovic ([email protected] - +44 (0)24 7657 3100 - Room F04) will offer up short video excerpts that speak to current concerns and possibilities within the filed of Theatre and Performance research
LunchWe will be ending the first session at 1400 in order to have lunch with staff and other PG students within the department.
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Schedulehttp://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/applying/postgraduate/ma-theatre-performance-research/option_modules/th988/schedule/
For scanned readings, please see http://readinglists.warwick.ac.uk/lists/3D97F18F-A4D7-E7A0-50BA-9619A8BF8EE7.html
Week 1 - Introduction - Jim Davis ([email protected]) & Tim White ([email protected])
Week 2 - Who am We? - Tim White
This session explores the braiding of social and personal in the context of social networks, the blurring of public and private and the implications this has for the way in which we locate ourselves as performers and audience. Works considered in this session will include Dries Verhoeven's Wanna Play and Life Streaming, The Builders Association'sContinuous City and Lucy Prebble's The Sugar Syndrome.
Reading
Manovich, Lev. "The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass Consumption to Mass Cultural Production?" Critical Inquiry 35.2 (2009): 319-31. Print.
Marwick, Alice E., and danah boyd. "I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience." New Media & Society 13.1 (2011): 114-33. Print.
McNeill, Laurie. "There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography." Biography 35.1 (2012): 65-82. Print.
Westlake, E. J. "Friend Me If You Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance." TDR (1988-) 52.4 (2008): 21-40. Print.
Week 3 - DigiMockracy - Tim White
We will explore the promise of digital democracy and the extent to which it gives voice to the disenfranchised or perhaps conversely entrenches existing divides. Practicioners considered will include the Electronic Disturbance Theatre, Anonymous and Tim Price (Teh Internet is Serious Business).
Reading
Lane, Jill, and Ricardo Dominguez. "Digital Zapatistas." TDR (1988-) 47.2 (2003): 129-44. Print.
Marshall, Andrew. "Power of the Imob." The World Today 68.3 (2012): 8-14. Print.
Shirky, Clay. "The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change." Foreign Affairs 90.1 (2011): 28-41. Print.
Week 4 - A Farewell to Arms? - Tim White
In the concluding session we seek out the posthuman and postorganic topia proposed by a collection of artists, writers and practitioners, including Jennifer Hayley (The Nether), Stelarc, Eduardo Kac and Guillermo Gomez-Pena.
Reading
Becker, Barbara. "Cyborgs, Agents, and Transhumanists: Crossing Traditional Borders of Body and Identity in the Context of New Technology." Leonardo 33.5 (2000): 361-65. Print.
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Causey, Matthew. "Posthuman and Postorganic Performance: The (Dis)Appearance of Theatre in Virtual Spaces." Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture: From Simulation to Embeddedness . Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies. London: Routledge, 2006. 47-67. Print.
Garoian, Charles R., and Yvonne M. Gaudelius. "Cyborg Pedagogy: Performing Resistance in the Digital Age." Studies in Art Education 42.4 (2001): 333-47. Print.
WEEKS 5-7 Gendered Citizenship (Dr Sylvija Jestrovic – [email protected])
This section explores the relations and tensions between gender and citizenship unfolding through a variety of social, performative, and legal scenarios. It is concerned with issues such as performances of migration, labour, human trafficking, minority rights and forms of representation and agency. The aim is to familiarise students with key concepts and current debates concerning theories of citizenship as they apply to the filed of performance studies; to examine ways in which performance theories and practices provide a lens through which to critically engage with these issues and develop students’ abilities to work in an interdisciplinary research context within the framework of performance studies.
Week 5 - Citizenship Theories and Practices of Belonging
Class structure: mini Lecture ‘Performing Citizenship’; + introduction of the learning exchange process with JNU and brief telematic introduction to JNU students and staff;
Reading:
J. Reinelt, ‘Performance at the Crossroads of Citizenship’, TkH 19, 2011
H. Sparks, ‘Dissident Citizenship: Democratic Theory, Political Courage, and Activist Women’, Hypatia, Vol. 12. 1997. pp 74-110
Post-class: Blogging with JNU PGs on the topic of performing citizenship (sharing your own thoughts, case studies, images, questions, provocations via the blog that will be set up)
Week 6- Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performances (guest co-lecturers Prof. Byshnuprya Dutt, JNU & Professor Janelle Reinelt, Warwick)
Preparation:
Reading: From the special issue of the Lateral Journal on ‘Leveraging Justice’ edited by J. Reinelt and Maria Estrada Fuentes(the journal is coming out in a months time and links to article will be provided)
Post-class: Create a non-discursive response to the material, record it and post for sharing (detailed instructions will be given in Week 5)
Week 7- Interventions - Silvija Jestrovic
Telematic classroom with JNU PGs and colleagues; sharing of non-discursive responses to the material as a point of departure for discussion on various aspects of performing citizenship and how performance practices could serve as means of intervention
Weeks 8-10: Intercultural Theatre (Dr Yvette Hutchison, [email protected])
The unit on Intercultural Theatre will explore key theoretical concepts and practical approaches and considerations to contemporary intercultural theatre practices.
Please read in advance Ric Knowles, 2010. Theatre & Interculturalism. (Palgrave Macmillan)
The unit on Intercultural Theatre will explore key theoretical concepts and practical approaches and considerations to contemporary intercultural theatre practices.
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Week 8: ‘Intercultural theatre’ in the context of globalization
In this session we will be situating personal identity in relation to culture. We will then consider how this affects approaches to cross-cultural engagement with ‘others’, and what we should be mindful of in the context of globalisation.
Reading
hooks, bell, “Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness” in The Applied Theatre Reader, (eds.) Prentki, Tim & Preston, Sheila, Routledge, 2009, 80-85.
Pavis, Patrice, Introduction, “Towards a theory of Interculturalism in Theatre?” in The Intercultural Performance Reader. Routledge, 1-21.
Schipper, Minneke, Introduction to Imagining Insiders: Africa and the Question of Belonging. Cassell, 1-12
Wilkinson & Kritzinger: “Representing the other”, in The Applied Theatre Reader, (eds.) Prentki, Tim & Preston, Sheila, Routledge, 2009, 86-93.
Please Bring to class
Things that you think define you as a person – objects, clothes, anything …Examples of what you consider to be interesting intercultural performances
Come prepared to discuss different aspects of identity and culture, the differences between key terms outlined by the various readings, and ready to discuss how the universality and post-colonial approaches to interculturalism compare with one another.
Further reading: Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Torsten Jost and Saskya Iris Jain (eds.). The politics of interweaving performance cultures: beyond postcolonialism. Routledge, 2014.
Week 9 - How Interculturalism Performs the Self as an Other (Dr Yvette Hutchison)
In this class we will focus on Said’s formulation of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘other’, and ask to what extent these are inescapably bound. How does the notion of performance impact on these engagements? How may gender and race intersect with these concepts?
Reading:
Extract from Edward Said, “On Orientalism”, in Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: a Reader, 132-149.
Fiona Siang Yun Sze, “How interculturalism Performs: Performativity, performability and the theatricality of interculturalism”, in Interculturalism: exploring critical issues, Diane Powell and Fiona Sze (eds.) Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2004, 127-133. [e-book]http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2074379__SInterculturalism%3A%20exploring%20critical%20issues__Orightresult__U__X4?lang=eng&suite=cobalt
Hwang’s M. Butterfly, in W. B. Worthen, (ed.) The Wadsworth anthology of drama (multiple copies in library)
See Mamela Nyamza in Hatched, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nid-0fN9PAA , 2.38 mins.
Write and bring to class
- an outline of your understanding of the difference/s between theatricality and performativity.
- Your sense of how performances of gender or race in everyday life and the play & clip intersect/ depart? How are these personal issues of identity related to interculturalism.
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Week 10- Curation of the colonised 'other' – bringing the past into the present (Dr Yvette Hutchison)
In this session we will consider the legacies of colonialism in the present, and thus the tension between post-colonial and intercultural theories and practices.
Watch
Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s controversial The Couple in the Cage (1992-93), and Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992–1994), video, https://vimeo.com/79363320 (30 mins)
Ecocentrix project, see http://indigeneity.net/ecocentrix/index.html
Read
Diana Taylor, ‘A Savage Performance, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco's "Couple in the Cage"’, The Drama Review, 42:2, (Summer 1998), 160-180. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146705
Yvette Hutchison, ‘Between word, image and movement: performative critiques of colonial ethnography’, Témoigner: Testimony Between History and Memory, Auschwitz Foundation International Quarterly, no.121 (Oct 2015), 121-132, see http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/71831/
Exhibitions revisited
'Miscast: Negotiating Khoisan History and Material Culture', curated by Pippa Skotnes with Jos Thorne in the South African National Gallery (14 April-14 September 1996), for review see http://0-www.tandfonline.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.1080/02582479608671250?journalCode=rshj20
Pascal Blanchard’s project on human zoos, launched at the Mémoire colonial: zoos humains? Corps Exotiques, corps enfermés, corps mesurés conference in Marseilles in 2001, culminated in the Exhibitions: L’invention du sauvage at the Quai de Branly Museum in Paris, (29th November 2011 - 3rd June 2012), Cf.http://www.thuram.org/site/exhibitions-linvention-du-sauvage/
European Attraction Limited’s restaged a human zoo in Oslo, Norway, to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Norwegian Jubilee Exhibition of 1914, May – August 2014. http://larscuzner.com/european-attraction-limited/
Ghent’s 2013 revisiting of the 1913 World Fair in Ghent - Exposition universelle et internationale de Gand, which included a Philippino and Senegalese village, see ‘Ghent, 1913-2013’, the century of Progress, for reconstrcution seehttp://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/a-virtual-reconstruction-of-the-1913-world-fair-at-stam-ghent-city-museum/ , accessed 3 October 2016.
Göran Hugo Olsson documentary Concerning violence, which premiered in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at 2014 Sundance Film festival on 17th January. Dogwoof
Interculturalism Bibliogaphy
Balfour, Michael, Penny Bundy, Bruce Burton, Julie Dunn & Nina Woodrow. Applied theatre: resettlement: drama, refugees and resilience. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015.
Balme, C & Stummer, Peter O. (eds.) 1996. Fusion of cultures? Rodopi, 1996.
Bharucha, Rustom. Theatre and the world: essays on performance and politics of culture. Manohar, 1990
Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Torsten Jost and Saskya Iris Jain (eds.). The politics of interweaving performance cultures: beyond postcolonialism. Routledge, 2014.
Gilbert, Helen & Gleghorn, Charlotte (eds.) Recasting Commodity and Spectacle in the Indigenous Americas. London: ILAS, 2014.
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Knowles, Richard Paul. Theatre and interculturalism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Pavis, Patrice (ed.) The intercultural performance reader. Routledge, 1996.
Said, E (1993) ‘Orientalism’, in Williams, P. Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: a reader. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, Chpt.6, pp.132-149.
Schipper, Mineke. ‘Insiders and Outsiders’, in Imagining Insiders: Africa and the Question of Belonging, London: Cassell, 1999, pp. 1-12.
Sponsler, Claire and Xiaomei Chen (eds.) East of West: cross-cultural performance and the staging of difference. Palgrave, 2000.
Tan, Marcus Cheng Chye. Acoustic interculturalism: Listening to performance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Trencsényi, Katalin and Bernadette Cochrane (eds.) New dramaturgy: international perspectives on theory and practice. Bloomsbury, 2014.
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Assessment
1. Essay40% - Essay 2000 words (Week 6)Deadline: Tuesday 8th November 4pmEsubmission Link: https://tabula.warwick.ac.uk/coursework/module/th988/ffc5ffff-0b86-4222-bcb9-5319be49998f
What we are looking for1. Strength of response to the title (see Appendix – Grade descriptors)2. Coherent and clear structure3. Consistent use of citations - we use MLA (see PG Handbook for details)4. Consistent Bibliography _ MLA (as per above)
This essay will respond to the provocations of the first strand of New Directions (weeks 2-4) and essay titles will be made available during the week 2 session. The submission is made electronically (see link above) and, in line with University policy, unauthorised late submissions will incur a 5% per working day penalty. If you do need to request an extension, a button to do so is on the submission page.
2. Proposal and Presentation60% - Proposal (Week 9) & Presentations tbcDeadline: Thursday December 1st 4pmEsubmission link: https://tabula.warwick.ac.uk/coursework/module/th988/0b31a305-5f31-4a18-b80f-61fdadda2d18
Write a proposal for a project that has emerged form an aspect of the course outlining aims, objectives, modalities of work, with a bibliography of material that has informed the development of your ideas. It also needs to specifically indicate how much technical assistance you would need for the project,and also for the mini-version you pitch for the presentation
Presentation Either as individual or in groups of 2 - 3, lead us through a 30-45 minute interactive presentation (structured workshop, exhibition, performance lecture) which illustrates how this project might work as a full performance or written research project.
Criteria for assessment
evidence of significant research on your chosen topic/ issue
sufficient problematising of the concepts for and with your audience
good interaction with your audience, evidence that you have considered them in the content
and form of your presentation (i.e. facilitated discussion)
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EsubmissionBelow is the submission page.
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The extension request form is shown below, including the grounds upon which an extension should be made.
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University of Warwick local grades and descriptors
Warwick marks are based on standard UK Higher Education marking schemes, as follows:
‘Marks’ Valuation
80+ Special distinction
70-100 Excellent
60-69 Good to very good; similar to a grade range of B to C+
50-59 Satisfactory but not strong
49 and below Failure
The Department of Theatre and Performance distinguishes between skill sets for traditional scholarly work and practice-based or group work with two sets of descriptors: Description of the Qualities of Written Work for each Mark:
80+ (Distinction) Work which, over and above possessing all the qualities of the 70-79 mark range, indicates a fruitful new approach to the material studied, represents an advance in scholarship or is judged by the examiners to be of a standard that could be developed into a publishable article for a peer-reviewed publication.
70-79 Methodologically sophisticated, intelligently argued, with some evidence of genuine originality in analysis or approach. Impressive command of the relevant literature, an ability to situate the topic within this field, and to modify or challenge received interpretations where appropriate. Excellent deployment of a substantial body of data, texts and examples to advance the argument. Well structured, very well written, with proper referencing and extensive bibliography.
60-69 Well organised and effectively argued, analytical in approach, showing a sound grasp of the relevant literature. Demonstrates an ability to draw upon a fairly substantial body of data, texts and examples, and to relate these in an illuminating way to the issues under discussion. Generally well written, with a clear sequence of arguments, and satisfactory referencing and bibliography.50-59 A lower level of attainment than work marked in the range 60-69, but nevertheless demonstrating a standard of work qualitatively superior in approach and insight to undergraduate degree-level work. Some awareness of the relevant literature. Mainly analytical, rather than descriptive or narrative, in approach. An overall grasp of the subject matter, with a few areas of confusion or gaps in factual or conceptual understanding of the material. Demonstrates an ability to draw upon a reasonable range of data, texts and examples, and relate them accurately to the issues under discussion. Clearly written, with adequate referencing and bibliography.
49-- Fail Poorly argued, written and presented. Conceptual confusion, weak organization and demonstrates limited knowledge of the relevant literature. Failure to address the issues raised by the question, derivative, very insubstantial or very poor or limited deployment or data, texts and examples. Insufficient referencing and bibliography.
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5.2. Description of the Qualities of Collaborative or Practice-based Creative Work for Each Mark:
The underlying principle, as with all assessment of theatre and performance creative practice within the school, is that you are assessed on the demonstration of your understandings through practice. Key criteria of assessment are:
Good practice. Your response to the basic principles and demands of project-based, collaborative group work: attendance, punctuality, commitment and willingness to share responsibility with other members of the group.
The initiation, negotiation and realisation of performance events in a collaborative group process. In this context there may also be an assessment of the execution of specific responsibilities allocated by the tutor or agreed between the tutor and the group.
Your demonstration, in your practice, of an understanding of the specific interests, issues and/or practices towards which the course or module directs and focuses your attention.
5.3. Practical Grade DescriptorsWhilst practical work takes many forms its general grading subscribes to the following criteria. These are divided into two basic categories whose functioning interlocks in practice.
5.4. Initiation, negotiation and realisation of performance material
Practice will be evaluated on the basis of:
the competence and understanding shown of performance convention and form the appropriate and imaginative use of performance techniques as a means by which to
explore materials and processes the ability to select and synthesise materials and processes arising out of a practical
creative work the ability to select appropriate means of communicating performance materials and
processes to specified audiences the ability to produce a performance event suitable for its context/environment evidence of
an engagement with relevant processes of reflection and analysis
Engagement with process and performance
Participants in practical work will be assessed on the basis of:
individual initiative and contribution within a collaborative group process commitment to the development and articulation of materials and processes offered by
other group members the ability, within a group process, to offer and respond to constructive reflection,
criticism and analysis of the work in progress the ability to contribute to the development of the overall discipline of the work, in
particular in the allocation of appropriate time and resources
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