Susan Bennett

Performance in Historical Paradigms

Organizer: Tracy C. Davis, Northwestern University

Framing Questions:

How do performance historians incorporate private experience, insight, or activism into research that addresses the past? How do the personal and the professional, or the present and the past, inform or impinge on each other?

Shift: “Horseback Views: a Queer Hippological Performance” (75 minutes)

o Kim Marra, Professor of Theatre, Chair of American Studies (University of Iowa)

Kim Marra’s autobiographical performance connects her embodied experience as a lifelong equestrienne to her historical research into “show women” and show horses on various stages in New York City around 1900. Embodied practice opens up the past, revealing the interrelationship between archive and repertoire.

Panel: “Our Research, Our Selves” (approx. 100 minutes)

What drives a performance historian to spend ten years investigating a question about performances in the past? What stokes this promethean fire, both as an intellectual and creative endeavor? A panel of performance historians discusses connections, impetuses, inspirations, and insights that connect their research inquiries to their lifelong passions and personal demons.

Panelists:

– Susan Bennett, Professor of English (University of Calgary)

– Jennifer Brody, Professor of African American Studies (Duke University)

– Tracy C. Davis, Barber Professor of Performing Arts (Northwestern University)

– Lesley Ferris, Professor of Theatre (Ohio State University)

– Kim Marra, Professor of Theatre, Chair of American Studies (University of Iowa)

– Rebecca Schneider, Professor of Theatre (Brown University)

– Suk-Young Kim, Associate Professor of Drama (UC Santa Barbara)

Moderator: Jill Dolan, Professor of English and Theatre (Princeton University)