Final Prompt: Abstract for the work to come

As we've discussed, we would like you to compose an abstract for work inspired by the work you've done and the readings you've encountered this semester. This could be a conference paper, play, publishable essay, chapter in an edited collection, some form of digital expression, etc.

Consider this a document that is meant to persuade an advisor, a conference organizer, or a granting organization, to select your project. There are guidelines for this genre widely available on the net; you might want to consult them, but mainly we are interested to see a clear articulation of your object of study, your method of studying it, and how you are intervening in your field or discipline. Creative writers should follow the protocols of creative abstracts (but what you will be talking about and how you will be talking about it are clearly still important).

Please restrict your abstract to 300 words or fewer.

These must be posted by noon on Monday to give us all time to read them prior to Tuesday's class.

Prompt: Course Blog 20: Documenting the Cultural Performance of the Presidential Election

On Tuesday (tomorrow) we would like you to offer documentation of Election Day in whatever format(s) appeal to you. We have taken it as a shared perception that there is something both heightened and performed--and perhaps theatrical--about the way we conduct ourselves on this occasion, though we will certainly examine this presumption in more depth in class on the 13th.

By Sunday, November 11th at midnight, please post your evidence of the day, along with an account of how you might imagine curating or exhibiting this information in a History Center or Museum (you can decide the particular focus of the institution). Let our readings and your experience in Indianapolis inform what you think might be the most lively, effective, educational, and meaningful way(s) of both preserving this moment and bringing it across.

Note: since this is a thought experiment, money is no object.

Prompt 19: The Crowd-Sourced Review

This promises to be a noble experiment.

On Sunday, we will all be attending the dance department performance at the IU Auditorium (the event is unticketed and admission is free, so you should be able to just walk in).

By Monday at midnight, please post a 300 word 'review' of the production. I use scare quotes here because the formal requirements of a review are in flux in our digital age and I am happy to encourage that volatility. Write what you consider to be a substantive engagement with the production that ranges across these three categories: the true/factual, the meaningful, and the subjective (note: they are not necessarily discrete).

By Wednesday at noon, please cull from the full slate of reviews on the blog those claims that seem to you most true and meaningful. Cut and paste them into a separate blog post (you can call it Blog 19 Part 2 or something of that sort). You don't have to offer commentary here, but you should indicate which quotations seemed true to you and which seemed meaningful (or both).

Note: Worth thinking about as you write: Jennifer's critique of the reductiveness of Conquergood's usage of map/text. Can't texts/maps ever let us float free from the hegemony of text as (fixed/fixing) record or documentation? Isn't writing sometimes a zone or a conduit of multivocal open-endedness? Jennifer's fictional example would seem to say yes, notwithstanding writing's powerful inscriptive/prescriptive force. Try working out what this might look like in relation to Sunday's performance.

See you there.

NB: We will post a prompt for your election day ethnography on Monday.

Prompt Blog 18: Kealiinohomoku, Conquergood

This will be our last Group Blog assignment; let's go out with a bang if we can.

First responders:
What are the benefits of an ethnographic approach to performance? Use examples from anything we have read/seen thus far.

Second responders:
Particularly in light of what we have just read (not just Kealiihohomoku and Conquergood, but also Foster and Reason & Reynolds) what are the potential perils / blind spots of an ethnographic approach?

Talkers:
In response to what your colleagues have written, and in preparation for the dance performance we will see this Sunday, start forming your own account of best practices for writing about performance. Have at least three principles ready to discuss on Thursday.

Bonus work:
For those of you intrigued by the Indiana Historical Society / History Center archive, feel free to search about for an artifact to pull and look at on Friday the 9th.

Here is a link to the catalogue: http://catalog.indianahistory.org/

Prompt: Course blog 17 (Foster and Reason and Reynolds)

Group C: What is the argument and methodology of these two articles? What counts as evidence for these authors? How do we fit "empathy" into our pantheon of terms (trance, theatricality, enchantment, transport, alienation, stuplime, etc.)?

Group A: The sublime and the stuplime assume a particular subjectivity, a particular receptive agent. For Kant, the reasoning agent, at a careful remove from the infinite, transcends the vastness through a recognition of it. Ngai describes a subject opened up, through boredom and shock, to "an indeterminate affective state that lacks the punctuating 'point' of an individuated emotion" (284).   Do these essays on dance challenge or complicate either of the imagined subjectivities or perceiving agents imagined by Ngai or Kant? 

Group D:  What do we do with dance? How should it be included in discourse around performance, reception, etc? How does it frustrate our critical aims and how might it usefully enrich our thinking on performance? 

Prompt: Course Blog 16; Ngai

Group B:  What, according to Ngai, is the "stuplime"?

Group C: Can you think of any moments of the "stuplime" that we have come across over the course of the semester?

Group A: How can we transport Ngai's argument and/or methodology into our discussion from Tuesday about performance? She's steered away from performance as a medium (despite referencing theatrical texts) but how can we mobilize her idea of the "stuplime" for this purpose?

Course Blog #14--Richards

For this post we are recuperating the blog assignment originally listed for Tuesday. In other words, Group A (Dorothy, Iris, Cody) will post by Wednesday morning, Group C (Ming, Jenna, Jennifer, and Justin) responds by Wednesday midnight, and Group B (Sara, Kelly, Whitney) starts discussion on Thursday. 

To prepare the ground for Thursday's discussion/viewing, please watch the above 8 minutes of the start of McKellan/Loncraine's Richard III.  (Everyone should view the clip, even if you are in the "coast" group.)

Group A: Discuss the clip by focusing on one of the key terms (see below) from our readings so far.

Prop/Thing
Time/History/Tempo
Sentiment/Emotion/Estrangement/Irony
Body/Actor
Spectator
Mise en Scene
Authenticity/Sincerity
Memory/Memorial/Surrogation
Masterpiece
Spectacle
Theatricality
Performativity

Group C: Based on this clip, extrapolate the dramaturgical content behind one choice made by the production team. In other words, what kind of critical homework lead to one specific piece of the interpretation you saw? Be as precise as you can manage.

Group B: Think about the difference that film makes. Which of these key terms can we import into a discussion about a film loosely based on a theatrical production? By way of working out this question, you might want to look at some clips from some theatrical productions.

http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu

Course Blog 13 Prompt: The Call of the Archive

Just to recap: each group should write one post on its chosen Lilly object. The post should include an image or images of the object, an analysis of its relation to performance, and an account of the methods and practices that you have used to interpret it. This means there should be only four posts; you might want to create a single document that you each contribute to and edit before cutting and pasting it onto the blog. Each post should include a list of the members of the group.

P.S. We don't see notes posted from last Thursday's class. Whoever is responsible, will you please post? Thanks.

Prompt: Course Blog 11

First responders:  Find a photograph of a theatrical performance that involves a prop and talk about it in light of our readings (Sofer and/or Harris). (Please post the image with citational information.)

Second responders: Choose one of the posts of the first responder posts and analyze the photograph as you imagine Bernstein, Wexler, or Hodgdon might. How might it fit into or challenge her argument? 

Talkers: Come in prepared to discuss the readings and the posts. Please select one key quotation from each reading (Sofer and Harris) for us to mull over as a group.

Prompt: Course Blog 10: Personal Archives [whole class responds]

For Tuesday's class, we want you to read and think about one of your classmates' blogs as a de facto archive. The materials and concerns collected therein can be imagined as scriptive things for the blogger--they have commanded or invited interaction. In your blog post please think about the following questions:

• What questions seem to drive this blog's selection/organization/collection of materials?
• Which things, attended to by the blog, can be thought of as scriptive?  
• What kinds of performances do these things entail?

Think about this assignment as a way of offering helpful feedback to your colleagues about what compels them as scholars and practitioners of performance.

For simplicity's sake, we've arranged marriages.

Dorothy  responds to Sara:  http://writerlytext.tumblr.com/
Iris responds to Jess       http://athespianinacademia.wordpress.com/
Cody  responds to Courtney   http://courtneyfosterblog.wordpress.com
Sara     responds to Cody: http://sofarnameless-ortheunnamable.tumblr.com/
Kelly   responds to Andrea   http://whitacresaga.blogspot.com
Whitney responds to Justin   http://hoopdedoo.wordpress.com/
Ming   responds to Kelly    http://wannabeplaywright.tumblr.com/
Jenna respond to Whitney   http://spinningwiththebraine.wordpress.com
Jennifer respond to Iris    http://irisdauterman.blogspot.com/
Justin  respond to Jennifer  http://juszkiewicz.wordpress.com
Derek  responds to Ming   http://contextmessaging.tumblr.com
Jess  responds to Derek     http://explarmance.blogspot.com/
Andrea  responds to Jenna  http://thtr566johnson.wordpress.com/
Courtney responds Dorothy   http://broadwayindahomey.tumblr.com/

Prompt: Course Blog #9 (Groups); Robin Bernstein

First responders: Tell us what Bernstein is saying. What is her main argument and what are her key terms?

Second responders: What does she call on for evidence? Choose one of her examples and explain how she uses it to support her main argument.

Third responders/Discussion leaders: In class on Thursday, please start us off by addressing the implications of Bernstein's argument and showing how it speaks with or against our previous discussions.

Prompt: Course Blog 7

Levin argues that scholarship has been loath to take on operatic mise-en-scene, but we might say that the aversion in opera studies to operatic stage performance is embedded in the conventions of the form. What are the conventions of these two forms--that is, glam rock and opera? In particular, what are we asked to forget or not notice as consumers of these spectacles?

First responders, we recognize it's a lot to read in a few hours, but please post your response by noon on Wednesday. If that means you focus on one reading over the other, that's fine.

Second responders, please post your comments by midnight Wednesday.

Blog #6- Mockingbird Prompt

First responders: choose a moment from To Kill a Mockingbird that struck you either for its sincerity or for its theatricality (in Davis's sense).  For your post, try to recapitulate how that moment played out both onstage and in the audience.

This post is meant to move us in the direction of our unit on theatre and the archive and should serve as an opportunity to mine your memory of what happened and how it happened.  Please be as specific you can about the choices made to create this moment.

Second responders: after reading the posts of your colleagues, describe how their responses differ or cohere with your own experience.

Speakers: be prepared to talk both about the play--its relation to theatricality, sincerity, identification, catharsis, etc.--and also the relation between theatre and memory and the challenges of capturing the theatrical event.

Blog Prompt 5 (Groups): The Exonerated

Coming out of our discussion of 9/11, The Exonerated offers us an unusual case of theatre at the crossroads of actual, life-and-death experience. Our first question for you is: where especially do you think the play makes its sincerity felt?

Our second is this: given the play's gesture to authenticity and "reality," what is the impact of celebrity on the play's address of (or impact on) its audience.

NOTE:  The website of "Bios" for The Exonerated includes this list of past performers:

"Connie Britton, Eric Bogosian, Peter Boyle, Avery Brooks, Charles Brown, Jere Burns, Gabriel Byrne, Amelia Campbell, Robert Carradine, Schantelle Cason, Jill Clayburgh, Tim Daly, Kristin Davis, Polly Draper, Fran Drescher, Richard Dreyfuss, Cary Elwes, Mia Farrow, Peter Gallagher, Sara Gilbert, Jeff Goldblum, Tony Goldwyn, Mariska Hargitay, Anne Jackson, Penn Jillette, Sarah Jones, Robert Klein, Christine Lahti, Darrell Larson, Lyle Lovett, Bruce MacVittie, Andrea Martin, Andrew McCarthy, Frank McCourt, Dina Merrill, Esai Morales, Rob Morrow, Joe Morton, Bebe Neuwirth, Harold Perrineau, Aidan Quinn, Lynn Redgrave, Eric Roberts, Susan Saint James, Jay O. Sanders, Richard Schiff, Kyra Sedgewick, Ally Sheedy, Brooke Shields, John Spencer, Mary Steenburgen, Fisher Stevens, Lee Tergesen, April Yvette Thompson, Kathleen Turner, John Ventimiglia, Eli Wallach, Titus Welliver, Montel Williams, Debra Winger, Robin Williams."

As promised, this is the statue Ellen mentioned in class today. The artist is Eric Fischl and it's called
Tumbling Woman (2002).
This image is from http://www.werismyki.com/artcls/911_statue_of_falling_woman_coved.htm

 

Blog Prompt 4: Theatricality and 9/11

One of the hallmarks of 9/11 and its immediate aftermath was the banishing of theatre or performance from the community. The consensus was that we had entered a moment of sacred authenticity that could brook no illusion or spectacle. 

The moment of theatre's resumption was therefore clearly marked--you can read some account of this in the linked articles below and see some evidence of it in the Broadway Stars clip. Similarly, the return to air of late night entertainment, from Jon Stewart to David Letterman to Saturday Night Live, necessitated a kind of meta-commentary on the role of performance in the midst of national trauma. (see the Youtube link below for a recording of Jon Stewart's re-entry).

Now for your prompt: having read Taylor and parts of the TJ Forum on 9/11, what do you think is the most useful contribution theatricality / performativity, and / or performance and theatre studies can offer in this circumstance? Now, more than a decade later, what do the methods and terms we have been studying bring to the phenomenon of 9/11? 

Note: all posts are due by midnight on Monday, September 10th.

 http://www.tcgcircle.org/2011/09/the-theater-of-911/

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/aug/24/rupert-goold-decade-september-11

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/15/arts/15PERF.html

http://splitsider.com/2011/09/comedy-after-911-sincerity-and-irony/

Daily Show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boEAKeXDl4A 

Broadway Stars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWrM4kXbHIs