he/him

Associate Professor

Theatre & Dance

 

What is Performance Studies?

What would you get if you imagine theatre as something other than plays? In a word, performance. And then, performance studies.Performance studies is a subfield founded in the eighties and nineties as an alternative to the predominance of dramatic literature in university theatre programs. Following the lead of thinkers like Richard Schechner and Dwight Conquergood, my approach at CC embraces performances on and beyond the stage. In my courses, students learn about performance art/new plays/contemporary dance alongside events from everyday life, including festivals, protests, sports, and games. To help students explore this expanded notion of theatre, I introduce three key concepts from performance studies: ritual, play, and performance.

 

Performance Studies at Colorado College

Ritual, play, and performance are woven throughout my courses at CC. These courses examine out-of-the-box theatre practices (Contemporary Performance), anti-capitalist interventions into high consumerism (Spectacle, Art, Society), and performances of gender and sexuality in art and everyday life (Queer and Feminist Performance). In keeping with the unorthodox spirit of performance studies, these courses dispense with the longform essay as a primary teaching mechanism. Instead of writing essays, I ask students to learn by jumping into artistic exercises that combine theoretical ideas with creative experimentation. Additionally, I am pleased to be a founding member of a one-of-kind science-arts course with MB Professor, Sara Hanson, and visiting artist, Sister Sylvester. In this course, students learn about biotechnology and feminist science studies in tandem with theatre history and practice. CC students should also look out for my new course on comedy that will cover new plays, performance art, standup, and improv.

 

Research in Dance and Media

My scholarly research likewise focuses on artists working outside the tradition of dramatic literature, especially movement and sound. My interest in movement inspired a body of writing on contemporary dance, one of my long and abiding passions. This research drew on philosophy and media theory to analyze how groundbreaking choreographers (Yvonne Rainer, William Forsythe, Trajal Harrell, to name a few) challenged the premium placed on immediacy in “live” performance. I examined how walking and other special categories of movement worked to short-circuit the progressive, goal-oriented impulses of high modernism, thereby generating new types of presence and visibility. This project started off in search of exemplary instances of such alternative performance practices and ended up asking larger questions about the shaky status of life and liveness in the biopolitical era.

 

Research in Performance

My recent research turns to performance in the culture of advanced capitalism, following what Randy Martin calls “the financialization of daily life.” Drawing on themes like debt, precarity, and failure, I explore how the complex, virtual abstractions of global finance impact the conditions of artmaking. Going beyond contemporary art, this project ventures into cultures of performance that thrive on the cheap and lowbrow: stunts, tricks, pranks, and jokes. Instead of dismissing stunts and other commodified forms as gratuitous instances of false consciousness, I approach them as compromised, but necessary means for an urgent task: surviving and transforming the emaciated lifeworld of crash-and-burn capitalism.

 

Interested readers may find my writing on dance and performance in Dance Research Journal, PAJ: A Journal of Art and Performance, Theatre Journal, Performance Research, and The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism.

 

 

Regular Courses

 

CC 120 Playing & Plays

TH/DA 107 Art, Spectacle, and Society

MB 100/TH 200 Experimenting with Biotechnology in the Lab and Gallery

DA/TH 204 Feminist & Queer Performance

DA/TH 224 Contemporary Performance

DA/TH 303 Creative Research Seminar