Conveners:
Dorota Dutsch, Classics (ddutsch@classics.ucsb.edu)
Suk-Young Kim, Theater and Dance (skim@theaterdance.ucsb.edu)
Research interests of the group:
This group brings together faculty and graduate students
from numerous disciplines who share an interest in questions
of performance. Banning together under the popular moniker
“performance studies,” this group enacts
the historical convergence of disciplines that has long
characterized this dynamic field. In addition to its
interdisciplinary, the field of performance studies
is known for fostering an intercultural dialogue among
actors, directors, playwrights, and scholars that has
been fundamental to the development of new approaches
to the analysis of ethnicity, gender, national identities,
and global issues. One story of origin says performance
studies was the child of a collaboration between theatre
scholar Richard Schechner and anthropologist Victor
Turner. Turner’s book From Ritual to Theatre (1982)
and Schechner’s Between Theater and Anthropology
(1985) are inaugural texts in an interdisciplinary conversation
notable for its porousness. Among the questions performance
studies asks are: How is “performance” a
more inclusive term than “theatre” or “drama”
to describe a range of human behaviors across cultures?
How can the methodological tools and theoretical frameworks
from ethnomusicology, theatre, sociology, literature,
and anthropology help us to understand a variety of
activities, from ritual and theatre to judicial trials,
sporting events, social protest, and performance art?
How can performance studies embrace the practice of
live performance, which is itself as a mode of understanding
and research? The Performance Studies Group at UCSB
presents seminars, lectures and events in this emergent
field.
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