Course Blog 12 (from Derek)

1.

How does the object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) encompass an expressive volatility that resists domestication or that threatens an uncontrolled signification, and how is this expressive volatility either settled or unsettled through performance?

Inspired by Levin’s discussion of the tension between the settling force of conventional opera and the unsettling force of a dialectic or polylogical staging; see pages 26-27 and 32.

2.

How is the object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) being framed or mediated?

Inspired by Taylor’s discussion of how the windows of her apartment and then the TV screen framed the crisis of 9/11, and how she felt “the intensely mediatized seeing became a form of social blinding” (p.244) as the images of 9/11 were framed (ideologically) by the government and media, repeated and consumed endlessly, in the sense of a fixed masterpiece (Artaud, 253).

3.

How does the object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) nudge the spectator out of the realm of having an experience and into a position of being forced to make a (moral) choice, thus affecting society?

Inspired by Brecht’s discussion of what happens to the social function of the theater when “text, music and setting ‘adopt attitudes’” toward content”, when “illusion is sacrificed to free discussion”, and when the spectator is “forced…to cast his vote” (39).

4.

How does this object of analysis (opera|drama|scriptive thing|performance) function as culture, reproducing and re-creating itself by surrogation (i.e. by offering “a substitute for something else that preexists it”)?

Inspired by Roach’s discussion of memory, performance, and substitution, in which he argues that “performance…stands in for an elusive entity that it is not but that it must vainly aspire both to embody and to replace” (3).