Topics in Acting for the Screen (369-0-20)
Topic
Out There: Performing Queerness in Public
Instructors
Joshua Wade Rains
Meeting Info
Wirtz 215 Instruct Black Box 3: Fri 12:00PM - 2:50PM
Overview of class
Queerness, in its limitless expressions and possibilities, has always troubled US-centric heteronormative culture. As part of this "trouble", an inescapable consequence of "queerness" is the tightrope in which queer bodies walk between the affirmation of being seen and the safety of going unnoticed. In this studio-based performance course, students will create work that explores both identity and visibility (or invisibility) within the context of performance art. Thinking through the work of performance pioneers like Adrian Piper and contemporary performance artists like Mark Aguhar and Patty Chang, students will utilize their body as a performative tool to infiltrate, invade, and make queer performance in unsuspecting spaces.
Taking these actions "into the streets", students will be asked to embody and explore otherness through the execution of their work in public to reclaim space for themselves. As students explore how their presence, actions, and body can become a site of queer intervention, they will also learn strategies to capture these ephemeral moments through various media such as photography, video, and firsthand narrative accounts in order to present their work post performance.
Registration Requirements
Contact the instructor for a permission number
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, students will have created several small performative works of their own in which they explore identity and visibility. Students will be asked to perform their work in a variety of settings to a variety of audiences (performing alone to spontaneous public performances) while exploring an array of documentation media.
Throughout the course, students will present their performances in class to cultivate conversations around the work and the experience of making the work itself. The class will culminate in a "screening" style event of each student's final project - a fully-realized and executed performance that embraces the ideas and actions covered throughout the course.
Class Materials (Required)
None. All reading/viewing materials will be supplied via Canvas by the instructor.