Performance Studies is:
a major at Northwestern and a field of study that is about performance in all its forms
Performance Studies is:
Performance Studies is:
Metamorphoses, a performance created by Professor Mary Zimmerman, at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York, originally conceived as a production titled Six Myths in the Performance Studies Department at Northwestern.
Recent graduate Amanda Provost, who
has taught theatre in India, and English in China and describes her
experience as a Performance Studies major in this way: "From the
beginning, I knew it was what I wanted to do, and gave a name to my
lifework. I was able to combine my various interests in people,
cultures, research, literature, dance, music, and theatre in a way that
I had not known was possible."
Performing the American 50s, more commonly known as "the paranoia class", the legendary class taught by Professor Paul Edwards,
in which students are introduced to and create performances based on
this period of posterity, the atomic bomb, and fear of communists, with
the help of such film classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Rear Window.
Performance Studies freshman Maggie Killacky performing Anne Sexton's "For My Lover, Returning to His Wife" in her Analysis and Performance of Literature class.
A discussion of the film Twilight: Los Angeles in the department's introductory course 103 The Analysis and Performance of Literature.
The film is by scholar/performance artist Anna Deavere Smith; in it she
transforms herself into dozens of individuals -- using only their words
and duplicating their speech patterns, mannerisms and dress -- based on
interviews she conducted following the 1992 Rodney King trial and
verdict in Los Angeles.
Professor Patrick Johnson's one-man performance Strange Fruit, performed on campus and nationally, examining issues of race, gender and sexuality.
Recent graduate Gwendolyn Warnock, performing in an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, as part of an international theatre festival in Beirut, Lebanon.
Alumni Sophia Skiles completing her MFA at Columbia University, Martha Donovan completing her MA
at Emory University, Patrick Anderson completing his PhD
at the University of California-Berkeley and now teaching performance studies at UC-San Diego, Jane Barnette completing her
PhD at the University of Texas-Austin and now teaching performance studies at Kennesaw State University,
Performance studies majors Cheley Young, Ana Teixeira and Rebecca Knickmeier performing in the departmental production Perishable Harem,
a performance piece incorporating dance and narrative created by PhD
student Oyku Potuoglu, examining women's roles in 19th century Turkey,
as reported in the letters of two British noblewomen.
Performance Studies major Nicole Frantilla spending her winter quarter working with Theatre de la Jeune Lune of Minneapolis as assistant stage manager for their interpretation of Euripides' Medea.
Molly Bloom's soliloquy from Ulysses, performed by a student in the class Studies in James Joyce, taught by Professor Carol Simpson Stern.
The larger-than-life statue of a man with 3 hands walking through a wall,
overlooking the path between the old Victorian building in which the
faculty have their offices and the modern Theatre and Interpretation
Center in which the Department's performances and performance classes
take place and where students find themselves engaged in rehearsals at
all hours of the day and night.
Performance Studies is entirely unique, is
different for each person, is experienced differently at different
moments, in different places, not unlike the recent Performance Studies
staging of Eleven Rooms of Proust, in which Marcel Proust's 3000-page novel Remembrance of Things Past
was brought to life in an old Chicago mansion, with different
performances taking place simultaneously in each of 11 rooms, each one
independent of the others, with different groups of performers
performing sections of the novel, each essential to the full narrative
and the event as a whole, experienced by the viewers as they move from
one space to the next.
