The 2017 session of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research, "Research, Pedagogy, Activism," was held from June 5-16, 2017 at Harvard University.

ABOUT

 Participants will work with an international faculty of distinguished scholars in one of two daily seminars on overarching theoretical and methodological topics related to the theme of "Research, Pedagogy, Activism." 

FACULTY

Una Chaudhuri (New York University)
Bonnie Honig (Brown University)
Carrie Preston (Boston University)
Martin Puchner (Harvard University)
Elaine Scarry (Harvard University)
Doris Summer (Harvard University)
Lawrence Switzky (University of Toronto)
Harvey Young (Northwestern University)

PARTICIPANTS

SEMINARS

SEMINAR 1: RACE, GENDER, PARTICIPATORY THEATER: WHAT DO AUDIENCES LEARN? (Carrie Preston)

Audience participation in what is often called interactive, immersive, or site-specific theater has become an obsession. The British Company Punchdrunk claims to have “pioneered a game changing form of theatre” and a “unique theatrical experience” with plays like the Macbeth-inspired, site-specific Sleep No More (2008). A production company calling itself Emursive formed to bring the play to New York City’s McKittrick Hotel (actually a converted Chelsea warehouse) in 2011. The McKittrick Sleep No More has become a tourist draw with ancillary attractions including a band, brunch, and the opportunity to book the space for corporate parties. In 2016 theatregoers could attend ten site-specific, participatory plays in and around New York City that, according to one reviewer, “rang[ed] in personal discomfort level from mildly embarrassing to horrifically mortifying.”

In this seminar, we will ask just how “game changing,” “unique,” and “mortifying” is this undoubtedly lucrative and trendy business of immersive theater, particularly when we focus on race and gender? Is audience participation a form of activism, a form of pedagogy? Does participatory theater have the power to intervene in our damaging racial and gender regimes? Has theater always been participatory, or do we need to set dramatic realism aside in order to make that claim?

We will read and discuss a sample of theoretical works that examine audience participation and consider performance texts and productions that have asked audiences to participate in ways that seek to trouble their understanding of race and gender. Authors/playwrights will include Bertolt Brecht, Elizabeth Robbins, Jean Genet, Eve Ensler, Paula Vogel, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Taylor Mac, and Anna Deveare Smith, among others. In keeping with the theme of participation, seminar participants will be asked to present a pedagogical exercise they have used or newly imagined.  

SEMINAR 2: THE ARTS OF AGENCY (Doris Sommer)

Arts and interpretation [the humanities] are essential partners in human agency; without them it is impossible to imagine development or to engage in the judgment required by civic life and professional challenges. Change implies disruption of existing practices and paradigms – which is what art does. And judgment requires the distance and the disinterested disposition that the humanities train through aesthetic exercises.

The seminar will explore the fundamental importance of creative and humanistic activities to address the opportunities for civic engagement and for professional development [in politics, medicine, science, business, etc.]. We take inspiration from arts projects that merit sustained reflection on their practical effects. The creative works in focus here, on grand and small scales, morph into institutional innovation. Reflecting on them is a humanistic assignment insofar as the humanities teach interpretation of art (to identify points of view, attend to technique, to context, to competing messages, and evaluate aesthetic effects). Part of the work is to train free, disinterested, judgment.  This faculty for pausing to step back and take stock is basic to all disciplines. But the best training ground for judgment is the carefree area of aesthetics.

From Classic to contemporary theory, from facing up to AIDS in the USA to confronting lawlessness in Colombia, performing and visual arts create a buzz and a budge beyond conventional interventions. Thinking about how and why they do so puts arts and humanities at the center of debates on development.  Readings to guide our thinking about cases include theoretical works by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Schiller, Dewey, Freire, Gramsci, Rancière, Mockus, Boal, Allen.