COCU 160: Performance and Cultural Studies
Spring 2012
Professor: Andy Rice (darice@ucsd.edu); OH: Mon. 2-4, Seq 216
Course Reader: Muni Citrin (mcitrin@ucsd.edu)
Outline of the course
This course is a survey of the interdisciplinary field of performance studies that integrates
performance practice and performance theory into its curriculum. We will focus on the
various expressive practices, aesthetic conventions, and mediums that have been central
to performance studies research, including those associated with theater, film,
performance art, and reenactment. In addition, we will read and discuss theories of
performance as constitutive of our everyday lives in digital culture, considering the
concepts of discipline, roleplaying, virtual identity, liveness, and performativity. Course
readings will be drawn from anthropology, sociology, film and media studies,
performance studies, play scripts, and art history.
Overall, the course will center on five interrelated questions. What is performance and
why study it? What kind of communication technology is a body in our media saturated
society and how might we think about its boundaries? How do recording technologies
influence the ways we make and perceive performance? How does performance relate to
the concepts of cultural identity and power? What role does performance play in shaping
our everyday lives in digital culture?
Course readings
The America Play and Other Works by Suzan-Lori Parks is available at the Price Center
bookstore (or online—where it’s probably cheaper!). All other course readings are online
and available through course reserves or the course Ted page (accessible at
https://ted.ucsd.edu).
Course goals and assignments
There are three central goals of this course. The first is to establish among us a common
set of concepts for thinking about the history, culture, and politics of performance in our
collective social world. This social world starts here, in San Diego, but draws from other
times and places for its inspirations, models, and questions of concern. To this end, we
will be looking closely at theories behind contemporary performance practice through
examples drawn from theater, film, and performance art. You will be expected to do at
least 8-10 hours of work outside of class time through a mix of writing, reading, and
producing your performance assignments.
The second goal concerns your own writing about the subject of performance. You will
be writing about performance both as a spectator to others’ work, and as a participant in
producing your own projects. We ask that you pay close attention to your own
experience of performance as a starting point for your writing. What components,
themes, or moments of a particular performance affect you in a particularly strong way?
How do you account for this? What of this response is specific to you, what might be
shared by others, and what is the cultural significance of this speculation? What
discourses and histories shape both the performance in its original context and your
response to it today? To help answer these questions, you should draw from weekly
readings. It is important to keep in mind that saying what you feel is not the end of this
kind of work. If done well, it may bring you to a starting point for analyzing the relations
between performance, identity, and culture, which is our central concern. Perform close
readings of key passages from course texts in weekly response papers and relate these to
your work on performance assignments. We will not grade these responses, but may
bring up points you make in lecture. We encourage you to use sections of your response
papers in other course assignments. In week 10 of the course, for example, you will be
given an essay format take home exam. You may draw from your weekly responses to
help you answer the questions it asks. Response papers are due through Turnitin on the
course Ted site before the start of the week’s lecture, Wednesday at 5 PM.
The third goal of the course is to design and participate in two collaborative performance
projects (see assignment prompts at the end of the syllabus for further details). One will
be a theatrical performance project that you design, rehearse, and stage for the rest of the
class. You will work in groups of seven on this project. The second will be a
“reperformance” of a prominent work by a performance artist whom we will have studied
in class, culminating in a presentation to the class on the artist, original work, and your
reperformance. You will work in groups of five on this project.
There will also be weekly quizzes in this class on course readings (except on week 8). If
you miss a class for any reason, you cannot make up the quiz. You may, instead, visit the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Downtown San Diego, watch Isaac Julien’s installation
video 10,000 Waves, and write a 1-2 page review. This may substitute for the quiz you
miss.
Attendance Policy
Attendance is mandatory for this course and will be tracked starting in week 2. It is your
responsibility to sign in on the attendance sheet that will be passed out at the beginning of
each class session. Given that we only meet once a week for three hours, one absence in
this class is missing the equivalent of a week of hour-long lecture classes.
Each unexcused absence will automatically drop your attendance and participation grade
by 50%. If you miss three or more classes, you cannot receive a passing grade for the
course.
If you are sick, you must email us before the start of class, and bring a doctor’s note the
next week for the absence to be excused. Other emergencies will be evaluated on a caseby-case basis. You will not be able to makeup that week’s quiz in either of these
scenarios.
Tardiness of more than 10 minutes will count as half an absence.
Grade Breakdown
Group Theatrical Performance: 25%
Group Reperformance and Presentation: 20%
Final Exam: 25%
Weekly response papers: 10%
Weekly quizzes: 8%
Attendance and Participation: 12%
Course Schedule
Week 1 (April 4): Introduction to the course
Boal exercise in class from Games for Actors and Non-Actors
Week 2 (April 11): What is Performance Studies?
Carlson, Marvin. 1996. “Introduction: What is Performance?” Performance
Studies: A Critical Introduction. 1-12.
Turner, Victor. 1982. “Dramatic Ritual/Ritual Drama: Performative and
Reflexive Anthropology.” From Ritual to Theater. 89-101.
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. “Broken symmetries: memory, sight, love.” Unmarked. 127.
Minh Ha, Trinh T. 2011. “The Paint of Music: A Performance Across Cultures.”
elsewhere, within here: immigration, refugeeism, and the boundary event. 85-94.
Read scripts for assignment 1, decide which you would most like to work on, and
fill out online survey by Sunday, April 8 at the following link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5QDTP92
Works: Cornered by Adrian Piper, Guerrilla Girls, Paris is Burning by Jennie
Livingston, Marguerite Duras, Robert Bresson, Hsieh
Form groups for performance assignment
Week 3 (April 18): Mimesis and Performance
Plato, Books III 386-403e, 413c-417b (60-80, 90-93) and X, 595-608e (264-280)
of The Republic.
Aristotle. 330 BC. The Poetics. Parts I-XVIII (14 pages). (find at:
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.html)
Benjamin, Walter. “On the Mimetic Faculty.” Reflections. 333-337.
Myerhoff, Barbara. 1990. “Transformation of consciousness in ritual
performances: some thoughts and questions.” By Means of Performance:
Intercultural Studies of Theater and Ritual, eds. Richard Schechner and Willa
Appel. 245-9.
Cheng, Meiling. Winter 2011. “Ai Weiwei: Acting is Believing.” TDR 55.4. 7-13.
Work: Oedipus, Rembrandt, Sherman, Sugimoto, Anna Deveare Smith and
Twilight Los Angeles, About Face!, Moore’s Ford Lynching Reenactment, Ai
Weiwei
1-2 page treatment of your performance due
Week 4 (April 25): Theatrical Performance
Davis, Tracy and Thomas Postlewait 2004. “Theatricality: An Introduction.”
Theatricality. 1-16.
Grotowski, Jerzy. (1996, from 1968-9). “Statement of Principles.” The Twentieth
Century Performance Reader, eds. Michael Huxley and Noel Witts. 187-194.
(find at: http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotows2.htm)
Brecht, Bertolt. “The Street Scene” (1930) and “A Short Organum for the
Theatre” (1948). 1-5, 1-8 (sections 1-43).
hooks, bell. 1995. “Performance Practice as a Site of Opposition.” Let’s Get it
On: The Politics of Black Performance. Ed/ Catherine Ugwu. 210-21.
Parks, Suzan Lori. 1995. The America Play and Other Works. 6-22.
Harari, Dror. 2011. “Laotang: Intimate Encounters.” TDR: The Drama Review
55:2 (T210). 137-149.
Works: Grotowski on YouTube, Yvonne Rainer, Wooster Group, The Living
Theater
Week 5 (May 2): The America Play by Suzan Lori Parks
Parks, Suzan Lori. 1995. The America Play and Other Works. 157-200.
Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Excerpt from “Finding Faux Fathers.” Performing
Remains. 61-70.
In class performances
Week 6 (May 9): Performance Art/Body Art
Westcott, James. 2010. When Marina Abromovic Dies. 1-5.
Finley, Karen. 1990. “The Family that Never Was.” Shock Treatment. 30-43.
Fusco, Coco. 1995. “The Other History of Intercultural Performance.” English
is Broken Here. 37-64.
Warr, Tracey and Amelia Jones. 2000. “Survey.” The Artist’s Body.
Anderson, Patrick. 2010. “How to Stage Self Consumption.” So Much Wasted.
85-109.
Works: Schneeman, Rosler, Ono, Finley, Adrian Piper, Mendieta, Couple in the
Cage, William Pope L., Vo, Marina Abromovic, Shelley Hirsch
Week 7 (May 16): Performativity and Documentary
Schechner, Richard. “Performativity.” Performance Studies: An Introduction.
110-142.
Auslander, Phil. 2006. “The Performativity of Performance Documentation.”
PAJ, 84. 1-10.
Friedrich, Su. 2008. “Seeing (Through) Red.” In Truth in nonfiction: Essays, ed.
by David Lazar. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. 152-162.
Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Excerpt from “Reenactment and Relative Pain.”
Performing Remains. 32-45.
Works in class: Time Indefinite, Seeing Red, Laid Off, Tarnation, Acconci, Ono,
Sick about Bob Flanagan
Week 8 (May 23): In class presentations on performance artists and reperformance
Week 9 (May 30): The State and the Performance of Discipline
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish. 3-24.
Conquergood, Dwight. 2002. “Lethal Theatre: Performance, Punishment, and
the Death Penalty.” Theatre Journal, 54. 339-367.
Anderson, Patrick and Jisha Menon. 2009. “Introduction: Violence Performed.”
Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict. 1-7.
Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. 310.
And pick one of the three articles below:
Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. 2958.
Colborn-Roxworthy, Emily. 2007. ""Manzanar, the eyes of the world are upon
you": Performance and Archival Ambivalence at a Japanese American Internment
Camp". Theatre Journal. 59 (2): 189-214.
Taussig, Michael. 2007. “Zoology, Magic, and Surrealism in the War on
Terror.” Critical Inquiry. s99-116.
Works in class: The Stanford Prison experiment, Full Battle Rattle, Standard
Operating Procedure, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Control Room.
Week 10 (June 6): Performance in Everyday Life
Goffman, Erving. 1959. Excerpt from “Performances.” The presentation of self
in everyday life. 51-76.
Lippard, L., & Piper, A. (March 01, 1972). Catalysis: An Interview with Adrian
Piper. The Drama Review: Tdr, 16, 1, 76-78.
Piper, Adrian. 1993. Excerpt from “Xenophobia and the Indexical Present II:
Lecture.” Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology, ed. by Jan
Cohen Cruz. 1998. 125-32.
Blau, Herbert. 2002. “The Human Nature of the Bot.” PAJ. 22-4.
Duhigg, Charles. Feb. 16, 2012. “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.” New
York Times. 1-14.
Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life. 3-16.
Works: The Yes Men, Bookchin’s Databank of the Everyday and Mass
Ornament, Ze Frank, Jorge Narvaez, Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public.
Take home exam due at the end of the exam period during finals week, Wednesday,
6/13/12 at 9:59 PM
Group Performance Assignment Prompts
Assignment 1:
Group performance (10 groups of 7 people, 10 minute performance)
1-2 page treatment due in class on week 3 (April 18)
Performance to take place in class on week 5 (May 2)
For this assignment, you and your group will be producing and performing a ten minute
theatrical play. You may choose from one of the five script options provided on the
course Ted site. They are excerpts from the following plays:
Waiting for Godot (1953) by Samuel Beckett
Genuine Bonafide Article (2005) by Caridad Svich
Man Red (2003) by Diane Glancy
Antigone, Falun Gong (2001) by Charlene Lee
The Peculiar and Sudden Nearness of the Moon (2004) by Velina Hasu Houston
In producing your play, your group must assign the following roles and responsibilities to
individual members (an individual may take on more than one of these roles in some
cases):
Director: The director is responsible for overseeing the integration of various elements of
the production, including acting, music, sound design, costume design, set design,
choreography (where applicable), and blocking (how the various characters move in
space).
Actors: Actors are responsible for memorizing and performing their character’s lines,
rehearsing with other actors and the director to work out timing, movement, gesture, and
voice inflection, and playing their roles during the in-class performance.
Visual Designers: The visual designers are responsible for planning, gathering, and
arranging furniture (this will be minimal in our case), media elements (like video
projections, photographs, and artwork), costumes (including hair, makeup, and body
markings), lighting, and props to create a set appropriate to the look, feel, and meaning of
the performance as a whole. They are also responsible for managing the timing of these
various elements during the performance itself, such as when lights and videos must be
turned on or off or furniture must be moved during a set change. As we will not be
performing on a theatrical stage, you are not responsible for a comprehensive lighting
design. You should think about how you want to use the lights in the classroom, and how
you might be able to use a small light or two to good effect within your group’s
performance.
Audio Designers: The audio designers are responsible for planning, creating, and
arranging a soundscape appropriate to the spirit and meaning of the production. This
soundscape may include a minimal amount of music IF you write and/or perform it rather
than using tracks from a preexisting album. If you feel that you must use a particular pop
song in your production, you must make a compelling argument in writing as to why this
is the case. Audio designers are also responsible for the timing of audio elements during
the performance itself.
Rules and guidelines:
1) You must turn in a 1-2 page statement at the beginning of class in week 3 that explains
how you plan to approach your production. This should serve as a guiding thesis
statement about your interpretation of the script. You should read several reviews of
your play and learn about your play’s author. Assess these first. Then say how and why
you will make your performance, drawing from one idea brought up in class discussions
or course readings. Provide details about how you plan to realize this concept in terms of
performance and design. Say, “By this date, we will have done…” so that you present a
practical, plausible timeline for completion. Also say who in your group will take on
each role in the production.
2) You must perform “off book.” This means that actors must memorize their lines. One
member of your group may cue lines from the script during the performance if need be.
3) You are encouraged to incorporate pauses, dance elements, movements, and other
audio-visual innovations into your production to help you achieve your concept. You
may creatively alter transitions or moments within scenes that require more actors, props,
or effects than could be reasonably managed in the context of our class. You may also
cut lines of dialogue. However, you may not alter the language of the script.
Grammatical and pronoun corrections are acceptable if you have cut lines.
4) You must stay within your 10 minute time slot, which includes one minute for the
transition between groups. Aim for 9 minute performances and work out how to “change
scene” with the group that follows you in 1 minute or less. If you go over your allotted
time, it will negatively affect the “technical execution” component of your group grade.
We must be strict with this in order to ensure that all groups receive an equal opportunity
to present their performance.
5) All group members are responsible for documenting their own work within their
group production project. You must be able to show us what you have done as an
individual within your group (see more details below).
Performances will take place during the first two hours of class in week 5 (May 2).
How we will determine your grade:
This project constitutes 25% of your grade, or 25 points of 100 available for the quarter.
Your grade on this project will be broken down into a group component, and an
individual component. Everyone in your group will receive the same group grade, out of
15 points. This will be based on your work process during planning and rehearsal and the
performance in class. We will evaluate this grade according to the creativity of your
interpretation of the script (6 points), technical execution of the performance (6 points),
and evidence of balanced collaboration amongst group members (3 points).
You will receive an individual grade, out of 10 points, based on the contribution you
make toward the group production, and the degree to which you fulfill the responsibilities
of your role, as outlined above. Document what you do.
For the director, this means keeping notes on blocking and acting as your rehearsals
progress (which may be written in part on a copy of the script), and perhaps even
videotaping some portion of rehearsals. Actors, likewise, should keep written records of
how they think about their characters in a diary form, and write notes in the margins of
their copies of the script. Visual designers should keep copies of sketches they make in
planning the various elements of the design, and timing sheets that they use to manage
the integration of these elements into the performance. Audio designers should create
and keep written annotations about what sound elements they plan to use, when they
should start and end within the play, and what effect they intend them to have. If they
write original music, keep the various iterations of the score as you proceed. In all cases,
you may draw from weekly response papers where appropriate.
Each individual should keep a log of the hours they spend working on this project both
individually and with other members of their group. The log should include date,
beginning and ending time, and a brief description (one to two lines) of what you
accomplished during each work session. If you meet with other members of your group
to rehearse, discuss, or plan out any element of your production, note the time that you
spend doing so and who was present at a particular meeting.
Assignment 2:
Group project on a performance artist (14 groups of 5 people, 11 minute presentations)
Due in class on week 8 (May 23)
This assignment has two components.
First, your group will reperform and video record a public intervention performance piece
originally performed by one of the performance artists we have studied in this class. Pick
something simple and practical to reperform. If elements of your reperformance might be
construed as transgressive in the location you choose, secure permission from the proper
authorities before you conduct the performance there, or choose a different location.
Please do not pick something that might get you seriously hurt or arrested. We encourage
you to interview audience members/spectators you encounter on their thoughts about
your reperformance.
Second, you will present to the class on the biography and work of the original artist, the
original performance that you chose to reperform, and the reperformance that you
undertook. This should be a tight, analytical presentation on the historical and political
significance of this work in its original context, and then in your reperformance context.
Your presentation must be no longer than 11 minutes in duration. Incorporate brief audio
and visual elements into your talk as appropriate. At the very least, you should include a
video clip of some kind from your reperformance to show to the rest of us.
This kind of project lends itself to horizontal forms of collaboration. You must determine
who is responsible for what elements as you proceed.
How we will determine your grade:
This project constitutes 20% of your grade, or 20 points of 100 available for the quarter.
Your grade on this project will be broken down into a group component, and an
individual component. Everyone in your group will receive the same group grade, out of
15 points. This will be based on your work process during planning and reperformance,
and the presentation in class. We will evaluate this grade according to the depth and
subtlety of your analysis (4 points), creativity in staging your reperformance (4 points),
technical execution of the reperformance and presentation (4 points), and evidence of
balanced collaboration amongst group members (3 points).
You will receive an individual grade, out of 5 points, based on the contribution you make
toward the group production.
As a group you are also responsible for turning in the following:
1) A 4-6 page, doubled spaced paper that you will use as the “script” for your
presentation to the class. This should contain three sections: 1. a contextual analysis of
the life and work of your particular artist; 2. an aesthetic analysis of the original
performance piece and an account of its reception at that historical moment; 3. an
analysis of your reperformance that includes sections on your decisions about how to
stage it, and the responses from spectators who encountered it.
2) Supplemental audio and visual materials pertaining both to your artist and your
reperformance. These may extend beyond what you include in your presentation to the
class. Include the full-length documentation of your reperformance, with a written log of
moments that you think are noteworthy for us to watch. You may turn this in as a DV
tape, DVD, or Mac compatible digital file.
As individuals you are responsible for turning in:
1) An hour log, as in assignment 1.
2) Written documentation of your work process, including notes and reflections that show
how your thinking about the work changed over time. These may be drawn from your
weekly response papers where appropriate.