This is a tutorial course in observing and analyzing performance-based arts (theatre, dance, certain forms of visual art, music; arguably architecture, film, and other forms) as well as semi-staged, performances ("acting out" history, gender identity, etc., in everyday life). Performance makes specific spatial and temporal demands on its audiences, existing in multiple dimensions at once: space, time, the material, the ideational, the imagistic, the linguistic, the perceptive, the political, and more. What kinds of performance can, and should, be studied, and why? How can we, as observers, describe that which seems to defy definition, and do so objectively, effectively, and ethically? How can we reconstruct performances at which we were not present, some hundreds or thousands of years in the past? How can we best explore performances from other cultures? Materials will include short readings by theatre and performance critics and historicists, and in-depth observations of staged and semi-staged performances. Format: tutorial. Requirements: frequent short written analyses of performance-historically-based, trans-culturally-based, staged, semi-staged, contemporary; weekly exchange with partners; presentations to the larger tutorial group. No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 10. Preference to Theatre majors. This course is writing intensive.

Hour: SALAMENSKY