Archives 1996-97
Graduate Student Performance Hour
September 10
Our graduate students offered an evening of intrigue and delight in solo pieces that ranged from Ross Louis’s performance of “Two Quatrains” by Rumi, to excerpts from Sartre’s cookbook performed by Lisa Swartzel, to Mindy Fenske’s performance from “No Choice: Redefining Sexual Boundaries in Bi-Politics” by Dajenya, Susan Conrad, and Sheilah Mabry.
N Motion: The Mind's Eye
Directed by Jacque Burleson
September 24-27
Informed by the work of Grotowski, Burleson and her performance troupe of six undergraduates developed three related performances that explored some of the myths and archetypes of (western) thought and expression. In performance, the main agency was the body in space – the troupe drawing on diverse techniques such as acrobatics, different dance styles, and the abstraction of everyday movement through isolation, contrast, repetition, and stillness. For each piece, Burleson altered the staging arrangement and, thereby, the audience’s relationship to the material and its performance – beginning with a straight-on proscenium and concluding with a large arena platform that the audience was urged to circumnavigate (‘n motion) as the performance proceeded.
Not unlike the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first piece journeyed from the creation/evolution of man and woman through to their development and use of current technologies. The forward moving history was contrasted by the sustaining theme of archetypes, “we all belong to one tribe,” which was implied through cyclical movement and re-cycled imagery.
N Motion: Beyond the Mind's Eye
Directed by Jacque Burleson
October 22-25
The second piece extended the aforementioned content and theme to alternative possibilities – the troupe drawing on surreal techniques to discover and find expression for their fears and desires, nightmares and dreams in response to the noted subject matter.
N Motion: The Gate to the Mind's Eye
Directed by Jacque Burleson
November 19-22
Armageddon and Rebirth (as forecast by certain theologies and, so too, science fiction) were explored in the final piece, which was set in 2075 and included texts such as Ai’s “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction,” excerpts from The Colored Museum by George Wolfe, and Edward Bond’s The Tin Can People. In her program, Burleson drew on E. P. Thompson to articulate the main thrust of the piece and the N Motion series as a whole. Thompson writes, “. . . all that alien hardware is [but] ourselves wheeling about ourselves.”
2040 Performance Hour
December 3
The diverse predilections of students in the introductory course were particularly evident in this performance hour as the students’ selections ranged from Dorothy Parker’s “A Telephone Call” to Erica Jong’s “Penis Envy” to Susan Musgrave’s “I Am Not a Conspiracy Everything Is Not Paranoid The Drug Enforcement Administration is Not Everywhere.” The noted selections were performed by Kelli Brian, Dyonne Butler, and Catherine Hunter.
Graduate Student Performance Hour
February 20
Again, our graduate students find the time to grace the stage with their inventive explorations of poetry, prose, compiled pieces, performance art, and the collected anecdote, “My Friend Missy: AAAH GERL WHOOO LOOVES TO make people happy,” performed in her ever-reflexive way by Lisa Swartzel.
Rage Within/Without
Adapted and performed by Kathy Randels
March 4
Randels’s solo performance centered on interviews she conducted with women incarcerated for retaliatory acts against abusive spouses or partners and included excerpts from texts by or about battered women – both those who “rage within” and “without.”
The piece was a collage of spoken narrative, song, dance, and repetitive imagery that aimed to confront the societal conditions that contribute to abuse, particularly as experienced by the victim/offender. Randels’s appearance at LSU was co-sponsored by the Performance Studies area in the Department of Communication Studies, the Department of Theatre, and the LSU Women’s Center.
She Goes Out
Adapted and directed by Patricia A. Suchy
March 13-20
Tooth,” and “Pillar of Salt” were adapted and staged by Suchy for She Goes Out. Set in prosperous but nervous New York City in 1949, the stories offer a darkly comic view of the US drive toward greater productivity and cheerful conformity, which un/masked the cold war paranoia of the period. Ironically, Jackson’s view is voiced through the icon of postwar values, the ordinary housewife. Suchy and her cast highlighted the noted perspective and themes through repetitive gestures and movements, multiple pop culture references, and stunning vocal work. Throughout the piece, projections served to context the period and the performance in an unstable time and space of shifting light and shadow.
White Noise
Adapted & directed by Joni Butcher
April 23-26
With comic aplomb, Butcher and her cast presented DeLillo’s disturbing satire of the dehumanization of the American Family as it adopts a reality that is completely artificial, mediated as it is through the mass media and its technologies. Drawing on Brecht’s techniques of alienation, the performers maintained distinct gests for each of their characters, which served to highlight their (sit-com) TV construction/ production and, so too, supplement the 2-D style of staging Butcher used in her stage pictures, blocking, and pasteboard set and props. Hilarious and harrowing.
2040 Performance Hour
April 29
A celebration of the superb work and accomplishments of students in the introductory course.