HOW CAN NEW PERFORMANCE MODELS ENGAGE WITH CONTEMPORARY POLITICS?
The poet Askia Muhammad Tore asked whether Black music could become “a potent weapon in the Black freedom struggle.” Can we ask the same of theater and performance that we might identify as what playwright Naomi Wallace calls, “engaged” ? Wallace offers the term up through example rather than definition: “Engaged, for example, with questions of power and its myriad forms; questions of who has it and who doesn’t, and the reasons why. Questions of what happens to those who struggle with their disempowerment; who we are allowed to touch, what colour of skin articulates which desire; what orifices are worthy of worship; which of us is beaten to death for not following the rule book on acceptable sexual conduct – all these are questions intimately connected to our social contracts.”
This is a moment when what we formerly believed were necessary ontological qualities of theater and performance— meaning the things that make performance *performance* — including: presence, simultaneity, buildings, proximity, liveness, actors, and audiences – are not fully operative. So how can we use this aesthetic disruption to rethink the ethical possibilities and priorities of the practice and the field? What now can be done as theater? What can performance be now?
WHAT WILL WE BE DOING THROUGHOUT THE SEMESTER?
This is a research-based class. We will develop a partial snapshot of this historical moment in contemporary theater and performance. Our research is to sift through the overwhelming numbers of performance works, talks, TikTok manifestos, chats, debates, panels and archival materials uploaded to the internet and created after CoVID restrictions shut down face-to-face assembly in theatrical venues. We will identify works and project we think are both aesthetically compelling and politically “engaged.” And, at the same time, we will develop our criteria for choosing those works by reading cultural and performance theorists who insist that aesthetic forms of art and performance offer a way out of the impasse of present politics – writers who engage with artists and performers whose work offers strategies and alternatives to the grim reality of the historical now without losing the power of critical engagement with this moment.
OUR TASK:
FIND WORK WE THINK IS FORMALLY INNOVATIVE AND POLITICALLY ENGAGED
We will survey, locate, and assess where and how artists across the globe are creating new forms of engagement with performance, dance and theater, how they are inventing the “trappings and speech” in response to these historical times. We will collaborate on finding performances engaged with our present moment that can become the case studies we will watch and analyze. (Note – our task is not restricted to online work only!) Collectively we will ask and attempt to answer: why are these works still called “performance” or “theater” or “dance?” Why is that still important? And by posing these questions to each case study we identify, we will begin to develop a list of criteria a work may possess that still allows it to be categorized as performance.
We should consider a variety of performance models (including but not limited to) “rapid response theater,” trans-medial performance, socially distanced performance, performative political actions, socially engaged art, immersive online performance, and repurposed performance (among so many new designations). We are looking for work and for artists who have innovated in response to the pandemic’s restrictions on face to face assembly and that aim engage with the political contingencies of this contemporary moment.
ANALYZE THAT WORK
Class participants will be responsible for deconstructing the aesthetics and ethics of the performances and performance-based initiatives they bring to the class. We will teach what we learn to one another throughout the semester using the format of “teach-ins” (practical, participatory learning sessions that are action oriented).
You will spend a portion of your time each week surfing the internet to identify theater and dance performances, both live and archived that are formally inventive and socially engaged. In small groups each student will nominate one performance they have identified, and argue for its relevance. The performance has to demonstrate aesthetic innovation (looking at either process or final production) and political engagement. The small groups will together watch a portion (or all) of their members’ nominated works, and discuss the key elements that demonstrate the class’ criteria for formal innovation and social engagement. Groups will also identify and debate the qualities of the work that qualify it as “performance.”.
Students will have access to funds to pay artists or companies as guest speakers. Guest can be invited to speak to your group or to the full class so that you can further your research. We have a pool of $2500. As a class, we will determine how those funds are spent and an appropriate fee for artist compensation.
Depending on the numbers enrolled in the class, groups will remain assembled for three weeks or a month to identify and explore nominated works in depth. Each group will be expected to produce a co-written critical response to the group of works they have explored and should generate a group of keyword descriptors for the each of the nominated performances under consideration.
IDENTIFY AND DEFINE PEFORMANCE KEYWORD DESCRIPTORS IN THE WORK WE CONSIDER
In a variety of combinations (individual, pairs, small groups, full class) you’ll be expected to identify and define the descriptors/keyword that are pertinent to the work and add them to the class’ collaborative keyword glossary .
READ THEORY AND ANALYSIS THAT HELPS US UNDERSTAND WHAT WE ARE WATCHING
In order to analyze the work you find, you will need some theoretical and analytical texts to unpack the qualities of performance you identify. We also want to read cultural theorists who have considered the relationship between performance and social movements. When you or your group finds a work and thinks about the components that allow it to be considered performance, or think about the political engagement in the work, you need to identify and read and cite texts that inform that thinking. You can find some of the critical theory from texts listed in the resource section of the CoLLab website or you can consult with Debra or Leslie to find writing that would be useful for your analysis.
BUILD A DIGITAL BOOK IN TOME (A WORDPRESS THEME)
The final results of our research – primary source material, conversations, interviews, essays, keyword, will be recorded in a collectively authored digital book, a platform that allows for different formats of critical analysis to be staged alongside the rich media that served as our research archive. The book will document our collective reflection on the significance of each of the projects we have identified by co-writing an introduction and a conclusion.
ORGANIZE A PUBLIC TEACH IN
We will invite the artists whose work we examined to dialogue with our class at the end of the semester in lieu of a final exam — we will create a public teach in about the practices and performances with which we have engaged throughout the semester.
Why theatre?
Because every one’s phone’s off in the theatre.
Because I can hear others breathing.
Because we hold our breath together.
Because in theatre I cry about something that has nothing to do with me.
Because in theatre I’m not lonely.
Because theatre can happen anywhere.
Because the audience also has a role, even if it’s hidden in the dark.
Because a performance can be stopped by anyone at any time.
And because that never happens.
[…]
Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll)
Keywords: assembly, affective relations, kinesthetic empathy, autonomy
CoLLab Aims:
The goal and hope of this course is that by bringing a number of disparate individual projects together along with our commentary and analysis, we, as artists and scholars of performance, might reveal some commonalities of “engaged” performance in the age of CoVID, learn from other artists who are working on these questions, and identify some new or reinvented possibilities between aesthetic innovation and political solidarity.
Through our class discussions, we will identify key elements of theater, dance & performance that remain when the work migrates to digital platforms. We will note what is gained , what is lost, and what has changed when the components of face-to-face assembly (its ephemerality, its capacity to respond to embodied energy, its ability to stave off loneliness) are diminished or gone. We will provide a snapshot of what has become of theater and performance at this moment. And try to support our claim that the case studies we propose ARE performance – and not film or digital media.
Our research task is to find who is using the instability of theater and performance in this moment to challenge the terms of the how the practice can be thought, done and the ways in which it is in concert with social justice initiatives and movements. We will become researchers of the present and future of the art form, seekers of those who are experimenting with liberating artistic practice, as Robin D.G. Kelly writes, in order to “build community, establish fellowship, play and laugh, and plant seed for a different way of living, a different way of hearing.”