TALK: Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Contemporary Performance
Petra Kuppers (Bryant College) & Carrie Sandahl (Florida State University)
Tuesday, October 12 / 4:00 PM / Free / Refreshments
HSSB 1105 (“Voice Room”), in the Performing Arts Wing*
(Download Flyer)

Physical impairments heighten our awareness of movement and reformulate conventions of locomotion. Petra Kuppers explores how the disabled body in performance challenges and extends the repertoire of expressive and choreographic possibilities. A professor at Bryant University, Kuppers is also the author of Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (Routledge 2004). Carrie Sandahl will be screening a video by performance artist Terry Galloway, “The Scary Lewis Yell-a-Thon,” a parody of charity telethons for the disabled. Through “crip” humor, Galloway confronts disability biases such as “cure over care,” low expectations, and latent eugenics messages that seep through telethon imagery. Sandahl, a professor of Theatre at Florida State University, has co-edited an anthology with Phil Auslander, Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, forthcoming (Michigan 2005). For more information, see www.ihc.ucsb.edu/research. Call 893-3907 for directions to venue.

Presented by the IHC’s Performance Studies Research Focus Group, and held in conjunction with the Santa Barbara performance of Catherine Cole and Christopher Pilafian’s dance theatre piece Five Foot Feat at the Marjorie Luke Theatre on October 13 at 8 p.m.

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