Second Wave Avant Garde (Syllabus)

Performance Art is an elective course that explores alternatives to the traditional modes of performance, and explores the theory and practice of creating relevant works of performance art. This course will provide an introduction to performance art history and theory, contemporary modes of performance art, and the process of developing short performances for public presentation, including the creation of designed interactions of theatre, studio art, music, sculpture, movement, dance, and/or multi-media as site-specific events. Themes concerning liminality, performativity, participation, and embodiment are discussed throughout the course.

PLATFORM, 2013

This article argues that a turbulent and anarchic playfulness, termed paidia by Roger Caillois, lies at the heart of theatre for babies and toddlers. The genre of ‘Theatre for Early Years’ has blossomed since its beginnings three decades ago. Today, over 100 productions are staged each year around the world for audiences from birth to three years old. Performing arts experiences for the very young often permit spontaneous play as a discrete element of performance. This can be at specific participatory moments or, more commonly, in a post-performance exploratory play session. Some productions are wholly rooted in spontaneous play, whether solo, in collaboration with other children, or playing with adults as ‘co-actors’. This article explores what I regard as an inherently postdramatic process that transforms the natural expression of paidia into a theatrical event. Here, infant play interweaves with artistic practice to create unpredictable and unrepeatable hedonic experiences. Often wordless and without explicit narrative, they seem to challenge normative modes of performance for children, but the privileging of paidia, I argue, simultaneously ushers the audience into a postdramatic world and returns theatre to its primæval form as co-created play.