Justin’s blog “hoopdedoo” is an excellent instance of
practical application for the theories and questions we’ve been discussing and
reading in class. His most compelling posts link a quote or two from a theorist
with a situation that counters or challenges the theorist’s argument. It
reminded me a bit of our first reading by Shannon Jackson and the tense
conversation about the term “performativity” that occurs between both dramaturg
and director and the academic. On his blog, Justin is staging these questions
of tension between theory and practice that opened our course. The end result
is a blog that raises some very important questions for both sides of the
argument.
Quotes from our readings make up the bulk of earlier posts
on Justin’s blog, which makes for an interesting initial read. I’m still
grappling with how productive this method is in terms of a personal scholarly
archive. From my most immediate point of view as a fellow class member, because
I know where Justin’s getting these quotes from and why he’s using this
particular trajectory of choices, I would really like to see more of him as the
writer of the blog within these earlier posts. The quote choices are good ones
and could be really telling but, because we don’t generally get a response from
the author of the blog on why these particular quotes were chosen or what about
them is particularly enticing to Justin, the result is an archive without a
body connected to it. These choice quotes seem to be working as scriptive
things for Justin, but I would really love to see more of the “dance,” to use
Bernstein’s term. However, if I were a reader stumbling upon this blog, not
having a framing context for these quotes, the choices of quotes on their own
would probably be more than enough to start building thoughts about the writer.
The tension here suggests a parallel to the delineation from Barthes between “studium”
and “punctum” in Wexler’s article for this week. No matter what the
perspective, the quotes on Justin’s blog offer a useful glimpse of various
historical moments within performance studies and, thereby, present a
compelling archive. But, for a more objective reader, the quotes could also
leap off the screen as particularly sensitive or significant for the blog
writer. The choices of authors used and the sequential trajectory would, no
doubt, more successfully give an outside reader a glimpse into the writer’s scholarly
network.
More recently, though, Justin has posted thoughts on Cavell
that are much more compelling because choice quotes are coupled with insightful
and suggestive questions and analysis. These are the posts where I really started
to get a sense of the body and mind behind this blog. I especially liked a recent
post where he squared off Cavell’s theory about character with a quote by
David Mamet. Pinning the theories of a playwright against a performance studies
theorist is a very productive exercise and I would love to see more of it when
and/or if the occasion ever calls for it. Squaring off a playwright with a
theorist speaks directly to Justin’s apparent interest in the dialectic between
the theory we’ve been reading and more practical applications, more closely
associated with the realm of performance than with performance studies. The
post immediately following the Cavell vs. Mamet piece is another fascinating
inquiry into the practical application of the theory we’ve been dealing
with in class. Justin writes about a recent conference discussion on the social
uses of interactive theater – specifically, one instance where role playing and
performance are used for ethical training sessions for ER doctors. Justin asks
an astute question that seems to have important implications for performance –
“how truly separate are actor and character?” This question and his discussion
are framed with a quote from Cavell, making this post a useful microcosm of some
of our course’s larger questions about the ethical implications of performance
and the limitations of social/political uses of theatricality.
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