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The immortality of Foucault’s thought makes yet another mark on English-language scholarship with the arrival of the most recent edition of his lectures. Under the Nietzsche-inspired title, “Lectures on the Will to Know,” this publication offers Foucault’s first annual lecture to the Collège de France, 1970-71. For those of you familiar with the impressive dynamism of Michel Foucault’s life work—much of which exists in English translation thanks to dedicated translators such as Graham Burchell, A. M. Sheridan Smith, Lysa Hochroth, and Catherine Porter, and to editors such as Paul Rabinow, James D. Faubion, Arnold I. Davidson, and, of course, Daniel Defert—you already know that any simple application of this French thinker’s work, or any single use to which you may put his thought, misses the mark. That is, despite the tendency for theatre and performance scholars to poach theories and concepts from other fields, Foucault’s ideas offer so much more than a one-off frame for a study of, say, disciplined bodies, or an easy citation for further reading into the paradoxes of Victorian culture. Foucault, the name and the body of work associated with it, constitutes a mode of thinking, a tactical map for grappling with the discontinuities of history. If you dive head deep into this particular body of work, as I did about nine years ago, then you might experience the wonderful sensation of discovering the art of thinking that Foucault honed over the course of a lifetime which was, in a certain sense, cut short with his early death in 1984; in another sense, however, the art of thinking he developed lives on in his work and can never die.

Now, here’s a bit of information that will offer you a glimpse of how important Foucault’s work is to me and, more importantly, how excited it makes me. I visit the Palgrave-Macmillan website regularly (like, once a month) to check on the process of the upcoming publications from this lecture series. Once I see that a book is ready for publication, I order it in advance from Amazon, and I do this so that I might forget about it, and then, one day, a box arrives at my house or my office (I switch it up) and I get a wonderful surprise. This particular publication actually motivated a re-appraisal of my home library because, I mean, where do you put Foucault’s work? Philosophy? Cultural Studies? Having decided to rearrange the books in my library by subject, I had to think about Foucault’s home and who his neighbors might be. Ultimately, I settled on placing the books, the count of which is now up to twenty-five, in the “historiography” section because, again, what we’re dealing with is a method of study, a plan of attacking numerous historical conundrums, and an art that, given the discipline required to learn it, we might call martial. To me, historiography names a specific thinking practice motivated by a drive to think through, not about, the past, and I have developed this understanding thanks in large part to the work of Foucault.

But why should you care about this art, this body of work, and this particular publication? The answer has to do with Aristotle and the problem(s) that the Poetics poses to scholars in our profession. Foucault has demonstrated his appreciation and respect for classical Greek tragedy in previous works, most notably in the lectures from 19 and 26 January 1983 dedicated to Euripides’ Ion, but this appreciation appears to have existed from an early stage in his career since the 1970-71 lectures revolve around the appearance and articulation of Truth in Classical Greek tragedy. I would like to invite all of you who plan to teach classes related to or touching upon Ancient Greek tragedy to check out “Lectures on the Will to Know,” because the argument leveled there provides a model for engaging with Aristotle’s Poetics and the possibility that plays such as Oedipus Tyrannus express a worldview that the Poetics, and its subsequent uptake by theatre historians, has obscured.

Here’s a brief breakdown of the argument, mixed with my own commentary linking Foucault’s claims to our situation as theatre historiographers:

• Aristotle’s Poetics cannot be understood without reference to all of his other treatises (Rhetoric, Politics, Physics, Metaphysics, etc., etc.) — AND YET, theatre scholars neglect this rule and like to ignore the material conditions of the Poetics
  • Namely, that it was written approx. 100 years after the golden age of Athenian drama and it was part of Aristotle’s scientific assessment of the world around him
  • This scientific turn marked Aristotle as distinctly different from his teacher, Plato, and that’s important because Plato’s philosophy was certainly linked to and motivated by the theatre of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, on the one hand, and steeped in a distinctly different sensibility from that of his student (Aristotle).
• On a deeper level: Aristotle’s understanding of the world and of TRUTH (like, the big concept of TRUTH) differs tremendously from the understanding of TRUTH that exists in the plays he talks about in the Poetics
  • In other words, according to Foucault: Aristotle seemed to think that Truth was something that all people necessarily wanted, and they wanted it because it was good for them and even pleasurable
  • BUT, again pace Foucault, take a look at a play like Oedipus Tyrannus and you will notice that the TRUTH of that play is not at all something old Swollen Foot wants. Philosophically speaking, we can say that Oedipus drives toward the truth, but he does so despite the fact that the TRUTH of his identity scares the hell out of him and all but kills him
• Foucault’s implicit conclusion (which he builds up to from 9 December, 1970, to 27 January, 1971) is that the philosophical stance toward TRUTH enacted by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides is altogether different from the philosophical stance adopted by Aristotle

–       Will’s historiographical conclusion: If we study Aristotle’s Poetics as a helpful tool for understanding Ancient Greek drama, then we first have to realize that Aristotle was trying to write history in his own way through his Poetics. It appears that he was trying to invent specific rules and goals for Ancient Greek tragedy, goals that help individuals of his time achieve Truth as he (i.e., Aristotle) understood it.

–       Add to all of this the fact that the Poetics is an incomplete set of notes transcribed by several students of Aristotle’s and then assembled years later, and we see that teaching Aristotle’s Poetics over and over again is quite problematic

Now, the thrust of this argument, which Foucault does not entirely flesh out but rather leads us toward, is that Classical Greek Tragedy was a kind of performance philosophy. Through theatre, the Ancient Greeks embodied and enacted Truth, one that, should we believe Foucault, we have a hard time viewing in the present because of the Poetics. Not only is our path to this Truth blocked, but so too is our view of the performance philosophy of the Ancient Greeks blocked because the practice of their theatre has been forgotten in favor of discovering the causes and/or (political) e/affects of said practice. But don’t take my word for it. Read Foucault.

Or for that matter, read any number of the exciting books out on this topic, such as Martin Puchner’s The Drama of Ideas, the collection edited by S. E. Wilmer and Audrone Zukauskaite titled Interrogating Antigone, or Freddie Rokem’s Philosophers and Thespians. But, and here’s my point, read these alongside Foucault’s work. We should fight the temptation to limit our understanding of Foucault’s work through the constant invocation of such terms as Discipline or The History of Sexuality, and reappraise the vast body of his life’s work as, perhaps, a form of performance philosophy in its own right, one that can offer tremendous insight into the teaching of theatre historiography and the doing of historical research.

Will Daddario is the Chair of the Performance and Philosophy Working Group within Performance Studies international and a core convener of Performance Philosophy.

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At the ATHE conference that convened in Orlando in August 2013, several of us met and explored the possibility of creating an ATHE focus group on Indigenous Performances  (Thank you to all who attended)!  During this meeting we considered whether there is a need for a focus group, how it might serve our discipline and the ATHE organization, and what the steps in trying to establish the group might be.  What came out of the conversation was an expressed desire to build a network first and re-visit the topic of a focus group once the network has grown, both in strength and numbers.

In discussing the network, we established that it would be useful in connecting scholars in order to discuss research, as well as to notify each other of conference and performance opportunities in which individuals may want to participate.  Furthermore, if there are several of us attending the same conference, we could connect beforehand to plan to meet up at the conference, support each others’ presentations, etc.  Finally, we discussed trying to organize panels to present at ATHE 2014.  This latter objective is one on which we are currently working.

We have created (with the much-appreciated assistance of Stefani’s husband!) a Google Group to host our network.  Here is the link to join the group: http://groups.google.com/group/IndigenousPerformanceResearchGroup.  Please feel free to encourage others to join!

Thank you for your interest and support in this endeavor.  We are excited about the support and desire you all have expressed in creating a network through which we may share and co-produce new knowledge, understandings, perspectives, and relationships.

Thank you!

Heidi L. Nees & Stefani Overman-Tsai

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This resource for prospective review authors was originally compiled by Julia A. Walker for the Book and Performance Review Writing Workshop at the 2013 Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference in Orlando, and includes contributions from Sarah Bay-Cheng, Chase Bringardner, Kim Solga, Keren Zaiontz, and Robert B. Shimko.

For Book Review inquiries—

•  Check the “Books Received” list to see if there are any recent titles of interest (in general, books should have been published within the last 2 years); OR check online press catalogues to see if a book in your field has been recently published/is scheduled soon for release.

•  Email the Book Review Editor, requesting a commission for that title and explain how your area(s) of research qualify you as a reviewer.

•  Attach a CV (with rank and affiliation clearly indicated) and a brief writing sample (e.g., a review or 2-3 pages of an academic paper).

N.B.: most journals commission reviews; they do NOT accept reviews that have already been written at the time the inquiry is made.

N.B.:  authors are NOT allowed to recommend reviewers for their books.

When preparing to write the review—

•  Familiarize yourself with the journal’s review format by consulting past issues,

•  Read with an eye toward the book’s argument as well as content,

•  Read with an eye toward the debates/scholarly conversations it engages,

•  Assume an objective perspective (i.e., don’t fault the book for not being the one you would have written on that subject; assess it on its own terms).

When writing the review—

•  Offer a clear and concise summary of the book’s contents, training your primary focus on the book’s core argument as demonstrated in individual chapter discussions.  (N.B.:  for edited collections, focus on the editor’s overall conception of the book, selecting representative essays that realize that vision or fail to do so. Depending upon the number of essays collected, weigh the balance between summarizing each contribution and offering a comprehensive sense of the collection as a whole.)

•  Identify the book’s strengths, focusing on its success or failure at meeting its own goals.  Acknowledge the contribution(s) it makes to the field(s) it engages and identify the implications and potential impact of its conclusions.

•  Note any weaknesses, identifying logical inconsistencies, gaps in research, factual errors, and/or gross typographical/editing problems that appear.  (N.B.:  a thorough and responsible review isn’t required to list faults if none merits serious attention.)

•  Stay within the targeted word limit (generally 1000 words for a single-title review; 1500 words for a double review).

•  Check quoted materials for accuracy and cite page numbers.  (N.B.:  given the short form of the review, quote only key terms or salient brief passages.)

•  Meet your deadline.  If you need to ask for an extension, contact the Book Review Editor as soon as possible to ask if such an arrangement is possible.

For Performance Review inquiries—

•  Familiarize yourself with the journal’s review format by consulting past issues,

•  Email the Performance Review Editor, requesting a commission to review a forthcoming performance and explain how your area(s) of research qualify you as a reviewer.

•  Attach a CV (with rank and affiliation clearly indicated) and a brief writing sample (e.g., a review or 2-3 pages of an academic paper).

N.B.  In general, university theatre productions and community theatre productions are not eligible for review.  Artistically significant professional touring productions that appear at university theatres, however, are likely eligible for review.

When preparing to write the review—

•  Take notes at the performance with an eye toward the documentary function of the review, recording as much detail as possible.

•  Reflect on the cultural/artistic significance of the performance, including its reception, setting and historical context.

When writing the review—

•  Be aware of your audience and its scholarly expectations, offering a detailed description of the performance, but also analyzing key elements that demonstrate its cultural and/or artistic significance.

•  Advance an interpretation of the performance in a clear, tightly focused argument.

•  Since up to a year will have elapsed between the performance and the publication of the review, use the past tense.  Do not quote sources external to the performance.

•  Stay within the targeted word limit (for TJ: 1000 words for a single performance; ≤ 2000 words for a festival; for PR: 2500 words).

When submitting the review—

•  Meet your deadline.  Because performance reviews are time-sensitive, an extension may be difficult to arrange.

•  Include a photograph (jpg; ≥300 dpi) and secure permission for its publication, submitting both at the time your review is due.

CONTACT INFORMATION for Book and Performance Review Editors, 2013-14:

JOURNAL OF DRAMATIC THEORY AND CRITICISM (books): Elizabeth A. Osborne <bethosborne@gmail.com>

MODERN DRAMA (books): Nicholas G. Salvato <ngs9@cornell.edu>

PERFORMANCE RESEARCH (both):  Keren Zaiontz <k.zaiontz@qmul.ac.uk>

TDR (books): Branislav Jakovljevic <bjakov@stanford.edu>

THEATRE HISTORY STUDIES (books):  Robert B. Shimko <rbshimko@central.uh.edu>

THEATRE JOURNAL (books):  Ryan Claycomb <tjbookreviews@gmail.com>

THEATRE JOURNAL (performances):  Daniel Sack <dsack@english.umass.edu>

THEATRE RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL (books) Stephen di Benedetto (USA) <sdibenedetto@miami.edu> Veronica Kelly (Australia) <v.kelly@mailbox.uq.edu.au> Lourdes Orozco (Europe) <L.Orozco@leeds.ac.uk>

THEATRE SURVEY (books):  Kim Solga <ksolga@uwo.ca>

THEATRE TOPICS (books):  Chase Bringardner <cab0013@auburn.edu>

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CTR 155 / Summer 2013

Edited by Pil Hansen with Darcey Callison and Bruce Barton

Taking the temperature of the field, this issue offers unprecedented insight into a broad range of dance and movement dramaturgy positions in Canada and beyond. The contributions are written by artists and artist-scholars from across the country who share a deep investment in dramaturgy, and whose voices are brought together for the first time to articulate strategies, approaches, and choices. Elizabeth Langley, Katya Montaignac, Jacob Zimmer, Heidi Taylor, Guy Cools, and Carol Anderson, among others, elaborate on the role of dramaturgs from within the lengthy and complex process of creating dance and movement-based material. Their reflections involve dramaturgs’ development of creative strategies, their awareness of the relationship between approaches to generation and emerging compositional possibilities, their grounding in the training, strengths, and limitations of the dancers, and their acute sensitivity to interpersonal relationships and modes of perception. Their insights are further enriched by two dramaturgy-driven performance recipes/texts: Adaptation Project by Michael Trent and Dancemakers and Transmission by Tanya Marquardt.

Click here for free access to the editorial and view the table of contents.

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Well Contested Sites is a 13 min non-narrative, movement-based film that looks at the issue of incarceration and evokes of the layers of experience faced by those who are incarcerated. The film is a collaboration between a group of men who were previously incarcerated, performing artists from the Bay Area, choreographer Amie Dowling and film maker Austin Forbord. It was developed and filmed on Alcatraz Island.

Well Contested Sites is working with Teachers 4 Social Justice to distribute the curriculum in High School and University classrooms. Click here for a copy of the curriculum guide.

View Well Contested Sites on Vimeo
Well Contested Sites on Facebook

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CTR 153 / Winter 2013

Edited by Laura Levin and Belarie Zatzman

This is the first issue of CTR to address the development and production of performances in Canada that are rooted in the Jewish experience. Artists and scholars re-imagine traditional representations of Jewish culture, history, and ritual and highlight the diverse forms that Jewish performance has taken in contemporary Canadian contexts: from plays on Jewish themes, to site-specific Jewish theatre, to Yiddish parades, to queer re-stagings of religious practice, to intermedia installations of mythic Jewish spaces. Many contributors explore Jewish identity as a performance that takes place both on and offstage; in so doing, they resist fixed understandings of what it means to be Jewish, and explore Jewish identity as it is formed through multiple affiliations, alliances, and communities. In narrating questions of self-definition, they ask how Jewish performance intersects with other diasporic communities to create new intercultural forms, and they investigate the importance of Jewish performance practices that actively negotiate cultural inequities and socio-political realities.

Click here to read the introduction and view the table of contents.

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Last year I submitted a course syllabus and accompanying (ir)rationale for “TH3171 – Theatre History from the Ancient Greeks to the Neo-Classical Age” to this forum. The (ir)rationale allowed me to elaborate on my choice to teach the canon against itself, as it were, by teaching skills for deconstructing the materials we encountered as we encountered them. I named my plan of action tactical failure: “I have chosen not to construct a radically global theatre history syllabus that can address [Steve] Tillis’s concerns and blaze new trails through the halls of the university, but, rather, one that allows me to perform the limitations of the traditional theatre history survey timeline along with, and for the benefit of, my students. This tactical failure takes a cue from Beckett’s motto in Worstward Ho, ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’”

I’m writing now to report on that experience. In the words of Lisa Le Feuvre, “Even if one sets out to fail, the possibility of success is never eradicated, and failure once again is ushered in.”* These words describe a paradox at the heart of failure pedagogy; namely, that the results of tactical failure will likely lead to great confusion. Did I succeed in failing? Is that even possible? What precisely have I succeeded in doing by performing the limitations of traditional theatre history survey courses? Did my performed failures elucidate anything for the students or were they just plain old infelicitous attempts at action—non-exciting failures (fizzles?), as opposed to productive failures? After reflecting on the highs and lows of that particular course, I came to two realizations:

1. Tactical failure [as described in my (ir)rationale] helps to teach students the value of self-reflexivity and the benefit of asking good questions: What is this source that I’m reading? Who translated this text? How much of my contemporary, U.S.-based, privileged viewpoint is shaping my reception of this medieval play (for example)? These questions are fantastic, and students recognizably appreciated grappling with them.
2. Tactical failure did not offer clear strategies for reading old texts, nor does it offer insight into the art of theatre scholarship, by which I mean the craft of doing research.

In short, tactical failure encouraged students to research topics on their own, but it did not teach them the skills to undertake that research. After reflecting on that experience, I decided to approach the 2012 version of TH3171 from a completely different angle. My main goal was to teach strategies for undertaking historical research, thereby introducing theatre history through the doing of historiographical inquiry. I divided the semester into three sections. Section one presented Ancient Greek tragedy, Sanskrit Drama, and Noh Theater as the foci of a case study on Ancient Theater. Through lectures and class discussion, I modeled strategies for learning about these historically specific theatrical practices and introduced students to how historians and theatre scholars have gone about studying these events that happened so long ago. Section two introduced the concept of comedy and asked students to track how comedy had changed from the time of Terence to Molière’s day, and from seventeenth-century France to the world of Aphra Behn and Restoration England. Section three presented a rigorous research project to students that challenged them to practice the ideas we have explored in the first two parts of the course. Guided by detailed prompts (available on the Faculty Club page), students generated research journals and blogs to share their research process; they locate diverse materials—texts, visual art, secondary sources—that lead to an in-depth understanding of an assigned topic such as Yoruban ritual, Russian Theatre pre-1750, and Tudor Drama (to name but a few). Distilling all of their information, students presented a lecture or a performance to the rest of the class that elucidated their specific topic and helped the class to understand how they went about their historical research. By asking them to construct an annotated bibliography while undertaking their research, I was able to collate all of their sources and distribute a lengthy bibliography to the class at the end of the semester.

The experience of teaching this syllabus called to mind the words of Margaret Werry and Róisín O’Gorman: “Failure is an argument for acceptance. To embrace failure is to surrender the will to control.”** Instead of revealing the inability of canonical works to illuminate the mysteries of the world through tactical failure, I found myself letting go of the reins to the class so that the students could collaborate with one another and inch towards their own discoveries. The relaxing of my grip on the class did not mean that I could not teach lessons. Reading Odai Johnson’s essay on Terence and genocidal memory (in Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions) during the first section of the course, for example, allowed me to turn the class’s attention toward the power of absence in the archive. It was only through the doing of the research project, however, that students could put the knowledge gleaned from that article into practice. The effort of completely remaking my theater history syllabus yielded great surprises and a sense of satisfaction among the students that they were learning skills they could transfer to other courses. I will happily re-deploy this syllabus in the future, and I invite you all to borrow from and adapt my assignment prompts to fit your needs.

Citation:

* Failure, ed. Lisa Le Feuvre, (Whitechapel Gallery, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010) 12.

** Margaret Werry and Róisín O’Gorman, “The Anatomy of Failure: An inventory,” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts vol. 17, no. 1 (2012): 110.

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While driving to the office on 25 January 2010, Megan was listening to a broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR) that was presenting an uncanny story from the recent earthquake off the coast of Haiti : “When the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. on January 12th,” said reporter John Burnett, “Signal FM [a radio station in Port-au-Prince] was playing ‘Hotel California.’ The Earth groaned and the building shuddered, but just before the DJ ran out, he had the presence of mind to hit the ‘repeat’ button…So for the first thirty minutes of Port-au-Prince’s descent into hell, the only thing you could hear on the radio was the Eagles’ standard—over and over and over.” Megan’s and Will’s recent article in Theatre Topics, “Hyperlinking and Hyperthinking through Theatre History: Haiti, Hotel California, Woyzeck, Hegel, and Back Again,” builds up around that bizarre story and culminates in an argument for Theatre History professors to embrace the power of serendipity.

When this story aired on All Things Considered, Megan and Will were in the opening weeks of the University of Minnesota’s TH3172, which traditionally covers a historical trajectory from the French Revolution to the present day. Slated for discussion that week in class was Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, but Megan couldn’t shake the complexity of thought and feeling that the news report instigated. The challenge became clear: how could we link from present-day Haiti to Georg Büchner? The stakes of this challenge were even clearer: to teach students to develop a critical, historically-savvy self-reflexivity requires teachers to fight against the urge to muscle through the syllabus and, instead, to embrace contemporary events of the size and scope of Haiti’s earthquake.

By hyperlinking across time, space, and ideas, we asked our students to engage in hyperthinking—a way of thinking about history (or theatre or any topic) that involves making connections among seemingly disparate entities, and justifying these links and leaps. Couched within a larger discussion of Theatre History curricula and the potentially productive role of failure within the classroom, this article will hopefully fuel conversations already sparked on theater-historiography.org. You can access it through your library’s subscription to Project Muse. The citation information is as follows: Lewis, Megan and Daddario, Will. “Hyperthinking through Theatre History: Haiti, ‘Hotel California,’ Woyzeck, Hegel and Back Again.” Theatre Topics vol. 22 no. 2 (September 2012): 183-194.

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