Spring 2014

Imaging Performance
Art 5135
Mon/Wed 11:10AM-1:55PM
Hopkins 364
Prof. Robert Derr (derr.34@osu.edu)

“This everyday world affects the way art is created as much as it conditions its response.” Allan Kaprow

This interdisciplinary course will explore different methodologies of performance art and the strategies behind the visualizations of the performance for the second-­‐ generation viewer using photography, video, and other tools. The history and theory of performance will be introduced and discussed through slide lectures and readings.

Graduate and advanced undergraduate students from any discipline at OSU are welcome to contact Professor Robert Derr (derr.34@osu.edu) for further information and permission to take the class (which is required for registration).

Postcoloniality, Neocolonialism, and the Global Stage
Theatre 5771.06: International Theatre and Performance
Wed/Fri 12:45PM-2:05 PM
Drake Union 2038
Prof. Shilarna Stokes

Reading across plays and performance texts from India, Nigeria, Australia, Ireland, England, the Caribbean, and the United States, we will investigate the ways in which “colonial encounters” motivate the transformation of bodies and landscapes. We will ask how these works use performance to resist or to negotiate standard colonial and neocolonial narratives, as well as how they put pressure on conventional notions of character, genre, structure, and language. Attending to questions of production and reception, we will research how and where these works have been published and produced. How have such works circulated in the global marketplace, creating new kinds of “colonial encounters” as they travel?

Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students. Questions to stokes.217@osu.edu

Dance and Physical Theatre, 1900-present
Theatre 7899.05: Acting the Body/Dancing the Word
Tues/Thurs 3:00PM-5:05PM
Drake Union 2068
Prof. Karen Mozingo

In this seminar, we will study the performances of Western physical theatre and dance theatre artists and companies from the early twentieth century to the present. Topics will trace the development of modernist movements such as DaDa, Ausdruckstanz, and biomechanics; the mime work of Lecoq, Copeau, and Marcel Marceau; the Judson Chruch, European Tanstheater, and the American dance theatre movements of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s; to contemporary physical and dance theatre works by companies such as DV8, Anne Bogart’s SITI Company, Sasha Waltz, Goat Island, and Pina Bausch. Theoretical readings will include writings of Artaud, Grotowski, Merleau-Ponty, and others who have contributed to practices and theories of the “body” in performance. Teaching methods will include video screenings, readings, discussion, and a research paper and/or creative project. As part of this course, students will attend the Marcel Marceau Symposium to be held in April in conjunction with the MFA devised work directed by Jeanine Thompson.

Open to graduate students in any discipline. Questions to mozingo.3@osu.edu

Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Experimentation and New Media
Theatre 7704
Tues/Thurs 12:40PM-2:04PM
Drake Union 2068
Prof. Lesley Ferris

Advanced study of contemporary performance with particular focus on the Wexner Center for the Arts season, including New Works and New Media, theory and criticism.

This course will explore aspects of the ubiquitous term: ‘post’—-post-war, postmodern, post-colonial (post-humanism, post feminism, post emotionalism, post black. . . . .etc.) While primarily we will examine live performance, other considerations include some visual artists (Kara Walker, Judy Chicago, Ann Hamilton) and film/video artists (Chris Marker’s La Jetée, Bill Viola). We will start by reading some short provocations such as Jorge Borges’ Averroes’ Search, Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “Angel of History”, and Hélène Cixous’ Aller a la Mer. Playtexts used in the course include: Genet’s The Blacks, Müller’s Hamlet Machine, Cesaire’s A Tempest, Cixous’s Portrait of Dora, Fornes’s Fefu and her Friends, Kushner’s Angels in America (Parts 1 & 2), Churchill’s Top Girls, Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia, and Smith’s Fires in the Mirror. Concepts that emerge from these writers and others include documentary, site-specific, doubling, over-lapping dialogue, verbatim text, solo performance, simultaneity. Required texts include Mark Fortier’s Theory/Theatre, the last chapters of Marvin Carlson’s Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present, and final chapters of the theatre history text Theatre Histories: An Introduction (Zarilli, et al). We will also read several short essays including one by Johannes Birringer on technology and media (full list of essays for course will be available in early December), see the Wexner Spring Season, and other live performances, The course will use in-class discussion and student presentations as well as the occasional guest lecture.