Lectures and Events

 

UW events

The Rite of Spring Centennial Lecture Series – “Music of Today”

When: Thursday, May 16, 2013 - 7:00 PM Details
Where: Henry Art Gallery

The Rite Centennial Lecture Series explores how the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring had a lasting impact on Western culture and aesthetics, from the original Nijinsky choreography performed by Ballets Russes and subsequent reconstructions and re-imaginations of this ballet, to today’s composers and their own revolutionary visions for the future of music. In this lecture, Cuong Vu (Music) and his guests perform and discuss the avant-garde, free improvisation, and experimentation/innovation he uses to create his forward-thinking music.

Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) Introductory Workshop

When: Wednesday, May 22 - 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Where: Hutchinson Hall #202

Framed by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and informed by postcolonial theory and trends in global activism and healing, Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) invites a sense of authentic artistry in all people. Participants in this brief two hour workshop will first engage in simple dialogue to get to know each other and their desires, and then participate – using theatre of the oppressed techniques – to learn the history, theory, and practice of TO. The overall goal of the workshop is to invite people to engage and understand how to eventually apply various TO techniques to turn communities into authors and actors of their own destiny, not just readers or spectators at the mercy of oppressive systems.

Brent Blair
Brent is founding director of the USC MA / Applied Theatre Arts program, founder of LA Liberation Arts and Community Engagement (LACE) Center, a Linklater and TO practitioner. He has trained counselors, educators, leaders, and cultural fieldworkers in popular theatre for therapy, education and social change all over the world.

Please wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing and arrive 15 minutes early so we can start on time.

The Rite of Spring Centennial Celebration

When The Rite of Spring debuted in 1913, a riot ensued. The audience was enraged by the provocative ballet performed by Ballets Russes, which featured dissonant music by Igor Stravinsky and modernist choreography by Vaslav Nijinski. A century later, The Rite of Spring remains a touchstone in the arts world. To celebrate the centennial of this groundbreaking work, the UW will offer a series of events – both performances and lectures – throughout spring 2013.

Rite of Spring Centennial Celebration web site

Interactive Theatre as Pedagogy

The UW's Center for Teaching and Learning, in collaboration with Memory War Theater, invites you to participate in the Interactive Theater as Pedagogy (ITP) Project, a Winter-Spring 2013 opportunity to build skills in Theater of the Oppressed techniques, facilitate and promote community dialogue around issues of oppression and privilege, and discuss applications of interactive theater approaches in the classroom and beyond.  UW faculty members, staff educators, and graduate students with teaching or leadership responsibilities are welcome to participate in this unique opportunity. The ITP group meets over two quarters in various venues around campus.  Attendance at all group meetings is required.  Participants need not have any previous theater or performance training.   More information (PDF).

 

Recent past cps events

The FBI Files: Artists Under Surveillance

Dr. Jay Ball
Central Washington University

When: May 17th, 1:30pm
Where: Hutchinson Hall 154

Jay Ball (Assistant Professor) received his PhD in Theatre History & Performance Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009 and has taught theatre history, literature and dramaturgy at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and the College of Charleston. A member of the American Association for Theatre Research, Dr. Ball's research is focused on the international dimensions of 20th-century political theatre, with a special emphasis on South Africa, Northern Ireland and the former Czechoslovakia. Teaching emphases include World Drama, the history of dramatic theory, reception theory and the practices of adaptation/devised theatre.

Performance Study, à la 1856

When: Friday, April 19, 2013, 1:30pm
Where: Hutchinson Hall 154

Tracy C. Davis, from Northwestern University, is a specialist in performance theory, theatre historiography, and research methodology. She edits the book series Cambridge Studies in Theatre and Performance Theory. She is Director of the Graduate School's Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring initiative and Chair of Northwestern University Press's Editorial Board. She has served as President of the American Society for Theatre Research and is a member of the Board of Directors for Performance Studies International. Her monographs include Actresses as Working Women (1994), George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (1994), The Economics of the British Stage, 1800-1914 (2000), and Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense (2007). Her edited volumes include, among others, Playwriting and Nineteenth-Century British Women (co-edited with Ellen Donkin, 1999), Theatricality (coedited with Thomas Postlewait, 2003), and The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies (2008).

Performing the Post:
Gender, Racialization and Sexuality After the Collapse

By Sue-Ellen Case, UCLA

When: February 22, 2013

A past editor of “Theatre Journal,” Professor Sue-Ellen Case has published widely in the fields of German theatre, feminism and theater, performance theory and lesbian critical theory. She has published over 30 articles in journals such as “Theatre Journal,” “Modern Drama,” “differences” and “Theatre Research International,” and in many anthologies of critical works.

Her books include “Feminism and Theatre” and “The Domain-Matrix: Performing Lesbian at the End of Print Culture.” Her work has received several national awards. Her most recent book is entitled “Performing Science and the Virtual,” published by Routledge.

This event was presented by the UW Center for Performance Studies, with special thanks to the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

 

Why 'Live'? The Value of Live performance in a Digital Age

Tuesdays, October 2, 16 and 30, 7:30pm
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
This series of lectures considers the presence, power, and authenticity of the live and the real in the arts. Lecturers include School of Drama Professors Odai Johnson and Andrew Tsao and English Professor Emeritus Herbert Blau.

Theatre and Social Efficacy
Odai Johnson, School of Drama
Tuesday, October 2, 7:30pm
This lecture explores the response time of artists of various media to national crisis. Using events of some magnitude it charts how various media engage in times of crisis. Professor in Theatre History and Head of the Ph.D. program at the University of Washington School of Drama, Dr. Odai Johnson is the author of Rehearsing the Revolution and Absence and Memory on the Colonial American Stage.

Virtually Yours: Presence, Liveness, Lessness
Herbert Blau, Emeritus, English Department and School of Drama
Tuesday, October 16, 7:30pm
Though "bots and bytes" may be seen in performance (or appear to be), without the presence of a living being there's something palpably missing — the smell of mortality and the mystery of its vanishing, "liveness" is not living. English Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, Dr. Herbert Blau has had a distinguished career in the professional theatre. He helped introduce American audiences to avant-garde drama in some of the country's first productions of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter.

Beyond the Uncanny Valley
Andrew Tsao, School of Drama
Tuesday, October 30, 7:30pm
This lecture explores the convergence of actual and virtual time and space in theatre. Associate Professor Andrew Tsao is a director for stage and screen. His work ranges from network prime-time comedies to Shakespeare and cutting-edge original performances. He heads the undergraduate drama program at the University of Washington. Professor Tsao leads summer drama programs at the Edinburgh Festival and is artistic director of The Drama Collective, a European theatre studies creative lab in Pontlevoy, France.

 

 

• Dance Program events
• Meany Hall for the Performing Arts events
• School of Drama's mainstage season
• Simpson Center for the Humanities Calendar of Events

 

Past Lecturers for the Center For Performance Studies have included:

• Jane Brown and Eric Ames on Opera and Film
• Paul Atkins on the performance of Seppuku or hara-kiri
• Juliet McMains on the history of Mambo and Salsa dance