Theory Theater Performance Reading Group
This Fall 2025 semester, we plan to meet every other Friday (roughly bi-weekly) from 2-3:30pm in the IAS conference room. Please see the reading schedule below. If you would like to join the TTP reading group, please contact Dr. Teresa Kovacs, Dr. Alberto Varon, and Nicole Rizzo.
TTP Reading Group Schedule
Every other Friday, 2-3:30 pm, IAS
- Dramatic Theory and Theater Practitioners
AUGUST 29: Session 1
- Meet and Greet
- Fischer-Lichte, “Introduction” to Routledge Introduction to Performance Studies, 1-29
SEPTEMBER 12: Session 2
- Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p 1-28, 39-45, 82-106
- Peter Szondi, Theory of Modern Drama, 7-10 & section 2, "The drama in crisis" pp. 12-44.
SEPTEMBER 26: Session 3
- Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, abridged version from Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts... edited by Daniel Gerould, p. 339-350
- Patrice Pavis , "Toward a Theory of Culture and Mise en Scene" from Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture, 1-26
- Antonin Artaud, “Theater of Cruelty: First Manifesto,” from Theater and Its Double, pp 89-100
- Zeami, Chp. 6 “Cultivating the Flower” from the Fushikaden, 112-123
- The Natyasastra, excerpt
- Nyoman Sedana on "Kawi Dalang" and theory of creativity
- Brecht, “Notes on the Opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” Brecht on Theater, pp 59-66
- “Performative Turn”
OCTOBER 10 : Session 4
- Richard Schechner, The Future of Ritual, “The Street is the Stage,” pp 57-93
- Victor Turner, “Frame, Flow, and Reflection”
- Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance, C 1-3, pp 11-74
- Bodies and Embodiment: Spaces of Performance/Audience
OCTOBER 24: Session 5
- Peggy Phelan, Unmasked, 7 “The ontology of performance: representation without reproduction”
- Rebecca Schneider, Explicit Body in Performance, ch 3-4, pp 66-125
NOVEMBER 7: Session 6
- Phillip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, from “Is it live,or…?” to end 2, pp. 23-60
- Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, “Innocent Amusements: The Stage of Suffering,” pp 17-78
NOV 10-13: Afterlives and Otherlives Conference
~No Meeting ~
DECEMBER 5: Session 7
- Diana Taylor, Archive and Repertoire, Chp. 1 “Acts of Transfer,” pp 1-52
- Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment, 1 or Ch. 4 ?
- Seeta Chaganti, Strange Footing, excerpt TBD
- Muñoz, Disidentifications
DECEMBER 19: Session 8/End of Semester Celebration