ATS1069 Exploring critical performance studies in the arts

This unit investigates the questions: What does performance do and How does performance help us understand and creatively engage our world? We will ask and answer these questions by exploring how performance practice in the arts (tools for doing such as performing, directing, writing and design) and performance theory (tools for understanding and creatively engaging) inform each other. Students will be introduced to key concepts such as ‘ritual’ and ‘myth’, ‘embodied knowing,’ ‘performativity’, ‘liveness’, ‘affect’ and ‘intersectionality’ and their application to performance practice. Students will work together to apply their explorations in theory and practice to a range of contexts such as identity, community and culture, enterprise and economics, social relations, politics, and futures.