MA in International Performance Research (MAIPR)
Warwick ST 1 Syllabus, Autumn 2015
Below you will find a brief description of the MAIPR syllabus at Warwick for the
autumn 2015. Most of the reading assignments will be posted as scanned copies on
the MAIPR website teaching pages for 2015-16, but some lecturers may prefer to
distribute hard copies. The rest will be posted on the website or distributed to you one
week in advance of the session for which they are intended. You are expected to be at
all regularly scheduled lectures and workshops and screenings; research seminars and
performances will also be described here.
Overview:
 The instruction for your first term has been structured around some of the key
issues of international performance research and artistic practice including the
following topics: re-thinking/re-positioning the canon in contemporary theatre
and performance; postcoloniality and intercultural performance practice; the
relationship between performance, identity and historical memory; as well as
the fields of practice/performance as research (PaR) and curation.
 Your work will include an intensive period of lectures and workshops in
weeks 1-6 in which you will be acquiring new knowledges. In the rest of term,
you will mainly be working in small groups to create a final project using one
of the modalities (scholarship, creative practice or curation) and one or more
of the thematics. Lectures/workshops are two hours on Mondays and
Thursdays, and three hours on Friday mornings (unless indicated otherwise).
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings and Friday afternoons you will
have studio space available for independent group work.
 Your assessment will be based on a 3000 word essay on some aspect of the
course thematic (40%); a portfolio on modalities (30%), and your final
presentation and written component (30%).
 Learning outcomes: This MAIPR module will equip you with the theoretical,
practical and methodological tools necessary for an in-depth understanding of
international performance making and reception. You will interact with
theatrical systems in the UK and study many others; you will operate in light
of an identified EU arts perspective and yet operate cross-culturally in a
comparativist mode; you will interact with leading academics in your field
from around the world. This exposure will prepare you for Ph.D work or for
work among the growing international professional opportunities in curation,
organization, and communication concerning international performances.
Class Sessions (unless otherwise indicated):
M
T
W
Lecture/Seminars
*Student-led Wkshops
*Student-led Wkshops
10:00am-12noon Editing Suite
6pm-10pm
G53 (studio)
6pm-10pm
G 53 (studio)
*Screenings
1.30 pm-3pm
*Department research seminars 4-6pm
G56
G56
TH
Lecture/Seminars
*Student-led Wkshops
10:00am-12:00am
6:00pm-10:00pm
F
Lectures/ Wkshops
*Student-led Wkshops
10.00am-1.00pm
4.30pm-8.00pm
Editing Suite
G53 (studio)
G55 (IATL)
G55 (IATL)
*Student-led Workshops are independent, unsupervised sessions organised amongst
yourselves. They are also to be used later on for preparations/rehearsals for your
practical assessment.
* Screenings – will take place on Wednesday mornings when indicated, there may not
be a screening every Wednesday.
*Departmental Seminars – there are usually 2-3 in the Fall Term. We will announce
dates and topics soon. So, they are not happening every Wednesday.
Assigned Readings:
Please complete the readings for each day before class. Readings may be accessed online. See website pages: TBA
SCHEDULE AND READINGS (subject to change)
WEEK 1 Exploring Modalities of International Performance Research
5. Oct (Monday): 10:00-12:00 Introductory MAIPR Session: The Shape of the
Field (with Silvija Jestrovic )
10:00 –10:45
Welcome address
Course overview; projects and assignment instructions; student share their research
interests and previous educational experiences
11:00-12:00
-- Theatre and Performance Studies definition and issues
-- Performance Analysis: from signs to senses and back
-- Final discussion + key words blog assignment for Thursday
READ:
Jon McKenzie, Heike Roms, and C.J.W.- L.Wee, “Introduction: Contesting
Performance in an Age of Globalization,” Contesting Performance: Global Sites of
Research, eds. McKenzie, Rom, Wee (Palgrave 2009), 1-22.
6 Oct (Tuesday): 16:00-17:00 Library Orientation Session
***The Seminar Room on Floor 2 of the Main Library: Library induction with
the theatre librarian Richard Perkins (R.Perkins@warwick.ac.uk ) [info about
finding basic material on the catalogue, access to resources online, how to find good
quality articles etc.]
6.30pm Theatre Outing: Hecuba (Royal Shakespeare Company) (the coach leaves
from campus at 6.30pm, the show starts at 7.30pm and lasts until 9.20pm; the coach
will take you back to campus)
7 Oct. (Wed.): 1:30pm-3:00 pm Screening Broom Stories
+ Response to keywords (blog)
8 October (Thursday): 10:00-12:00 Introducing the Modalities of Curation
(with Silvija)
Defining the terms
Exercises in Unknowing: the Broom and the Ready-Made Art
Overview of emerging keywords + assignment for non-verbal response to key words
for Friday
9 Oct (Friday) – 10:00-13:00 Modalities of Creative Practice (PaR) +Key words
exercises presentation/discussion; session with ‘old’ MAIPRs (in G55, Milburn
House) (with Silvija Jestrovic)
10:00-11:30 PaR/ Curation Workshop Paradox of Hospitality
11:30 – 12:30 Review of the week; key words presentations and discussion
12:30-13:00 Session with ‘old’ MAIPR students
13:00-14:00 Lunch (‘old’ and ‘new’ MAIPR students)
Recommended books on PaR:
Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter, eds., Mapping Landscapes for Performance
as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies (NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
2009).
Ludivine Allegue et al, eds. Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean, eds., Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice
in the Creative Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
Robin Nelson, Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies,
Resistances (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
10 (Oct) Saturday 7.00pm Theatre outing: Encounters (Complicite), Warwick Arts
Centre (WAC)
WEEK 2 Encounters & Others: Approaches, Challenges and Possibilities of
Interculturalism
12 Oct (Mon) 10:00-12:00 Ethnic Drag: Guillermo Verdechia’s Fronteras
Americanas (Silvija)
Read: “Subversive Body Acts” excerpt from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble;
G.Verdechia’s Fronteras Americanas
14 Oct (Wed) 2:00-4:00 TBA
15 Oct. (Thur)10:00-12:00 Intercultural Performance (with Yvette Hutchison)
Read/ see:
Wilkinson & Kritzinger: “Representing the other”, in The Applied Theatre Reader,
(eds.) Prentki, Tim & Preston, Sheila, Routledge, 2009, 86-93.
hooks, bell, “Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness”, in The Applied
Theatre Reader, (eds.) Prentki, Tim & Preston, Sheila, Routledge, 2009, 80-85.
Schipper, Minneke, Introduction to Imagining Insiders: Africa and the Question of
Belonging”, Cassell, 1-12
Pavis, Patrice, Introduction, “Towards a theory of Interculturalism in Theatre?”, in
The Intercultural Performance Reader, Routledge, 1-21.
If you have time, see also, Said, Edward, “On Orientalism”, from Colonial discourse
and post-colonial theory : a reader, 132-149.
Please Bring to class
Things that you think define you as a person – objects, clothes, anything …
Examples of what you consider to be interesting intercultural performances
16 Oct. (Fri) 10:00-13:00 PaR workshop: Food Maps, Identities, Encounters
(Tim White )
READ/SEE: TBA TIM to add readings
WEEK 3 Spaces and Mappings
19 Oct (Mon) 10:00-12:00 Stranger and the City: Spatial Concept (Silvija)
Screening: Daniela Kostova, Body Without Organs
Readings:
K.Wodiczko “Open Transmission”
E. Soja “Thirdspace: Expanding the Scope of the Geographical Imagination”
M. Foucault “Of Heterotopias”
22 Oct (Thursday) Free (The seminar session with Michael Pigott is taking place on
Friday morning, followed by his workshop in the evening)
23 Oct (Friday):
10:00-12:00 Cities and Projection (with Michael Pigott)
Read: Tom Gunning, “The Long and the Short of It: Centuries of Projecting
Shadows, from Natural Magic to the Avant-Garde” in Art of Projection, ed. Stan
Douglas and Christopher Eamon (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009)
18:00-23:00 Urban Projection Workshop (with Michael Pigott)
Read:
Sean Cubitt, “Projection: Vanishing and Becoming” in MediaArtHistories, ed. Oliver
Grau (London: MIT Press, 2007)
WEEK 4 Making the Familiar Strange: Text, Performance, Music
26 Oct (Monday) 10:00-12:00 Historiographical Approaches I: from John Gay’s
Beggar’s Opera/ B. Brecht’s Threepenny Opera (Jim Davis)
Reading:
Historiography
Jim Davis, ‘Researching Theatre History and Historiography’, in Baz Kershaw &
Helen Nicholson, eds. Research Methods in Theatre and Performance. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2011. 86-110. (Photocopy to be provided)
Tom Postlewait, ‘Historiography and the Theatrical Event: A Primer with Twelve
Cruxes’, Theatre Journal Vol. 43:2 (May1991), 157-178 (available on-line from
Library)
Brecht
B. Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (available on-line from the Library)
Gay
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (available on-line from the Library)
27 Oct (Tuesday) 7:30pm Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs), Warwick
Arts Centre (WAC)
28 Oct (Wednesday) 2:00-4:00pm (screening) The Threepenny Opera film, dir.
G.W. Pabst
29 Oct (Thursday) 10am-12:00pm Historiographical Approaches I: from John
Gay’s Beggar’s Opera/ B. Brecht’s Threepenny Opera (Jim Davis)
Reading:
Brecht
Stephen Mcneff, ‘The Threepenny Opera’ in Peter Thomson & Glendyr Sacks, The
Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 5667. (available on-line from Library)
Gay
Dianne Dugaw, ‘The Beggar’s Opera in the Twentieth Century’, ‘Deep Play’: John
Gay and the Invention of Modernity. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001.
(Photocopy)
Calhoun Winton, ‘The Beggar’s Opera: A Case Study’, in Joseph Donohue, ed. The
Cambridge History of British Theatre Volume 2 1660 to 1895. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004. 126-144. (Photocopy)
29 Oct (Friday) 10:00am – 13:00pm Performing music workshop (with Tim
White)
Reading: TBA
WEEK 5 Writing/ Performing Self
2 Nov (Monday) (afternoon time TBA) Autobiography and Authenticity (Anna
Harpin)
Reading:
Tim Crouch, An Oak Tree
Terry Eagleton, ‘Truth, Virtue, and Objectivity’ in After Theory
Stuart Hall, ‘The Work of Representation’ in Representation: Cultural
Representation and Signifying Practices
4 Nov (Wednesday) 1.30 – 3pm screening TBA?
5 Nov (Thursday) 10:00-12:00 Bobby Baker: Cooking as Performing Self (Tim
White)
Readings: TBA
6 Nov (Friday) 10:00-13:00 Performing Self creative practice workshop (with
Natasha Davis)
Read: Deirdre Heddon, “Introduction” from Autobiography and Performance
(Palgrave, 2008)
WEEK 6 reading week
WEEK 7
ASSIGNMENT DUE:
**Portfolios to be handed in by Friday, Nov 20th (end of week 7)
Gendered Citizenship (in conversation with JNU)
16 Nov (Mon) 10:00-12:00 Maya Rao’s “Walk” and Issues of Gendered
Citizenship and Performance (Silvija)
See: excerpt from the Walk
Read:
Janelle Reinelt, “Performance at the Crossroads of Citizenship”, lead essay in TkH
Journal of Performing Arts Theory 19 (2012): 6-15 in Serbian; 98-107 in English.
Special issue on Politicality. See on line at http://www.tkh-generator.net
Bishnuprya Dutt, “Protesting Through Gestures: Maya Rao in Dialogue with Dance
and Theatre” (2014 IFTR Keynote address)
18 Nov (Wednesday) Theatre Outing The Oak Tree (WAC)
19 Nov (Thursday) 10:00-12:00 Gender and Citizenship: Focus on South Africa
(with Yvette Hutchison)
READ and SEE:
Yael Farber, Molora (Ashes) (London: Oberon Books, 2008)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaLnLckySio (Trailer, 1.25 min)
Lara Foot-Newton, Tshepang (Witwatersrand University Press, 2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhylO7_pWzo (Trailer, 2.50 min)
Lara Foot-Newton, Karoo Moose (London: Oberon, 2009)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q7KZnylhPE (Trailer, 1.20 min)
Recommended reading:
Robert Apperbaum, “Notes Toward an Aesthetic of Violence”, Studia Neophilologica
85:2 (2013) 119-132
Miki Flockemann, “Getting Harder? From Post-Soweto to Post-Election: South
African Theatre and the Politics of Gender”, Contemporary Theatre Review, 9:3
(1999): 37-53
Helen Moffett. “ ‘These Women, They Force Us to Rape Them’: Rape as a Narrative
of Social Control in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of South African Studies
32:1 (March 2006) 129-144
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25065070?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
20 Nov (Friday) 10:00-13:00 Creative practice workshop: Exile, Gender,
Migration (with Natasha Davis)
Read:
Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma – Geography’s Visual Culture (Routlidge 2000) 1-13
Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 2000. pp 173-186
WEEK 8 Gendered Citizenship con’t
ASSIGNEMNT DUE: Written plan for the preparation of your final project (see
“Final Group Project Instruction and details”). Each group should email Silvija the
copy of the proposal by Wednesday morning, Nov 25 (feedback will be received by
Friday, Nov 27)
23 Nov (Monday): 10:00-12.00 Gendered Citizenship: rioters, representation and
social abjection
(with Nadine Holdsworth)
Reading: Imogen Tyler 'The Kids Are Revolting' in Revolting Subjects: Social
Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain (Zed Books, 2013) pp. 179-206
Gillian Slovo, The Riots (Oberon, 2011)
Viewing:
Karen Therese's The Riot Act https://vimeo.com/22227085
You may also be interested to look at Anna Deavere
Smith's https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chromeinstant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=fires+in+the+mirror+youtube
26 Nov (Thursday) 10am -12:00am Both Abject and Absent: The Gendered
Body’s Role in Building New Citizenship in Northern Ireland (with Wallace
McDowell)
Read:
R. Prokhovnik, “Public and Private Citizenship: From Gender Invisibility to Feminist
Inclusiveness”, Feminist Review, 60 (1998) 81-104
Gary Mitchell, In the Little World of Their Own (play)
27 November (Friday): 10:00-13:00 Gender and Citizenship; Telematic session
with staff and students from JNU (with SJ, ND)
***Discussion of the materials on gender, citizenship and performance covered in
weeks 3 and 4 as well as of the blog exchanges with JNU
WEEK 9
(November 30, Monday): 10:00-12:00 MAIPR Dissertation Session (with Silvija)
Rest of the week: preparation/ rehearsal for the final project
WEEK 10
7 December (Mon): 10:00-12:00 Preparation for the final project presentation
(with Ian, Silvija) + afternoon slots
8 December (Tuesday): All slots available to MAIPR Preparation for the final
project presentation
10 December (Thur.): (all slots available to MAIPR) Preparation for the final
project presentation
11 December (Friday): 10:00-13:00 Presentation of group projects and
discussion (with all core MAIPR staff available)
13:00 LUNCH – ALL MAIPR students and Staff
***ASSIGNMENTS DUE:
18 Dec. (Friday): Group Critical Review + VIDEO of your final project presentation
due
Friday 15 January, 2016: ASSIGNMENT DUE – ST 1 essay due to be submitted
electronically
CORE INSTRUCTORS: Jim Davis, Natasha Davis, Nadine Holdsworth, Yvette
Hutchison, Silvija Jestrovic, Wallace McDowell, Michael Pigott, Tim White
For Warwick staff web pages go to:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/staff/
SJ: s.jestrovic@warwick.ac.uk ext.73100
TW t.white@warwick.ac.uk ext. 72534
Placements: Natasha Davis natasha@natashaproductions.com
PROGRAMME AMINISTRATOR: Sarah Shute sarah.shute@warwick.ac.uk