Chronology of a Controversy

Theatre Survey, 2004

Frakcija 55, 2010

Since its appearance in Singapore, the practice of performance artposed various questions. Why would artists feel motivated to work in atemporal art form, which does not result in the making of a material artobject? Given the temporal and ephemeral nature of performance art howdoes it continue to be represented? For those who had not seen the actualperformances presented in the past how can one continue to discuss therelevance and contexts of those performances today? Should the temporalephemeral works be preserved?My research will attempt as much as possible to follow an academicformat and research based on published materials. However, it is anendeavor embarked upon with the foreknowledge that there are very fewcomprehensive, analytical texts on contemporary art of Singapore andespecially in regard to performance art. My thesis therefore will alsodepend on personal interviews and interactions with the practicingperformance artists as well as based on my own personal work andexperience as a practicing artist.From this research we may reclaim performance art and its position asa valid fine art form in relation to more traditional media. It will alsointerrogate possibilities for future actions and directions to develop mywork in performance art and its contribution to contemporary art discourse.

Theatrical Colloquia, 2020

Drama writings and theatre performances have always been, in my opinion, the mirror in which our society reflects itself. If in the decades before the 90s our society witnessed a total or quasi-total lack of freedom and a lack of voices to be heard in theatres, in the 90s we have all been witnesses to an absolute freedom that has been constantly managed chaotically. Immediately after The Revolution, the long lost freedom has soon become confusing and has turned into a heavy tormenting issue. The new drama writing and theatre performance have needed more than 10 years to change into something new. The independent theatres and the new drama have arisen as a reaction to the crisis that our theatres underwent in the 90s. The new artist of the new millennium is often self-taught, he has to improve his organizational abilities, to think big when it comes to new projects, to see the bigger picture and not to remain stranded into his own piece of art.

Theatralia, 2021

Nigerian Theatre Journal , 2010

For any art form to be used for development, it has to first develop itself. In this paper, I intend to problematise inherited definitions of theatre which exclude emergent performance forms and show ways in which they keep theatre perpetually underdeveloped and less likely to reach its full potentials in catalysing development in Nigeria. This enquiry therefore will go beyond merely adducing economic downturn as the reason for the execrable nature of theatre-going in Nigeria to underscoring how conservative reading of theatre and obsolete theatre studies curriculum in schools have metamorphosed into major co-culprits in making theatre underdeveloped. By analogy, one cites the fact that rather than asphyxiating theatre in the west, the proliferation of theories and ―post-theories‖ has catalysed a polyphony of performance genres that has enriched the resultant meta-theatre. Thus, aboard a ―paper canoe‖ of interrogating emergent recondite texts in other climes, my critical navigation in this paper, will course through the murky waters of our present non-existent theatre to the shore of advancing a further liberalisation of our art to acknowledging the fact that the emergent performances we see as different could still be the same theatre we know. Hence, this paper examines the possibilities of incorporating all strands of emergent performance traditions in Nigeria—video film, stand-up comedy, city festivals/carnivals, music/song performances, road shows/processions and the likes—through a liberalising of scholarly definition of theatre which will in turn occasion an overhaul of the theatre curriculum in schools; with a view to charting a multi-artistic course to making our society a better one for every one.

In The Art of Theater I propose and explain a claim that many theater people hold true in some form but, so far as I can tell, have defended in a manner that has had almost no success outside discussions among themselves. 1 The claim proposed is that, in an unqualified way, theater is a form of art. By that I mean theatrical performances are what are created in the practice of theater and that theatrical performances are works of art because they can be picked out and appreciated in the same ways we appreciate other kinds of artworks. 2 The agenda I set for the book is to state and explain what that claim comes to-exactly and in detail. Accordingly, most of the book consists of explanations of what else must be true if the claim is true, together with arguments defending the truth of those entailments. some of the material consists of clarifying what the claim does not entail, and some passages contain arguments to show that alternative claims have problems that this one does not. Of these, I have allowed the explanation and clarification materials to carry the burden. Many philosophers and literary theorists are likely to find the claim incomprehensible because they have inherited, rather than critically accepted, a conception of theater as centrally dependent on literary texts. 3 Philosophers, literary theorists, and theater theorists are better served by the explanations and clarifications I offer, however, because they show the claim can withstand the immediate objections or worries likely to arise.

This single-day curated conference, following on from the first performance-as-paradigm conference in April 2013, explores the politics of acts of creativity and their consumption. Framing and staging have historically been powerful ways to negotiate collectivity, both metaphorically and in practice. This conference looks at ways in which performance is less about objects than the power of frames. Questions addressed will include: How do groups – both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic - imagine and perform themselves politically? Can something be performance without assuming a collective reception, and vice versa? In cultures that privilege the individual, how can systems be made visible? How do artworks deal with their situation of complicity with the political relations they seek to critique? How does creative behaviour interact with its various economic frames? How does performance subvert prevalent notions of ‘the work’? How do live and recorded performances respectively frame interaction between participants of all kinds? In this interdisciplinary conversation, we take the paradigm of performance as a mode of enhancing cultural critique. Featuring: Joe Kelleher, author of Theatre & Politics (2009) and (forthcoming) The Illuminated Theatre: Studies on the Suffering of Images. Georgina Born (Professor of Music and Anthropology, University of Oxford) Jen Harvie, Professor of theatre and performance, QMUL Selma Dimitrijevic (Artistic Director, Greyscale) The Voice Project (Sian Croose and Jon Baker, of Neutrinos fame) Lena Simic, performance artist and founder of the Free University of Liverpool and the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home METIS/World Factory Lucy Ellison, artist (Grounded, Gate Theatre, Notting Hill) Rafael Schacter on Independent Public Art, BA Postdoctoral Fellow, UCL Khadija Caroll, artist, Humboldt Foundation fellow, author Art in the Time of Colony New Art Club (Tom Roden and Peter Shenton) Helen Stratford, performance architect Eirini Kartsaki Vita Peacock, anthropologist and ERSC Postdoctoral Fellow on anti-austerity activism and the rise of ‘spectacular dissent’, UCL Rachel Beckles-Willson, Professor of Music, RHUL Once again a series of roundtables and performances throughout the day will be brought together in a summing up discussion at the Cambridge Junction, in a conference ‘dinner’ staged by live artists Hunt and Darton. Conveners Clare Foster (Classics, University of Cambridge) Floris Schuiling (Music, University of Cambridge) Zoe Svendsen (English, University of Cambridge) Jonas Tinius (Anthropology, University of Cambridge)

2017

This year, About Performance celebrates thirty years of the teaching of performance studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney-the journal's home. To mark the occasion, we have produced a special issue, a double issue, with an oversized sixteen articles. There have been thirteen issues of About Performance to date. The first appeared in 1995, and each edition has collected its papers around a special theme. Successive editors have explored the lives of actors (no. 13), risk and performance (no. 12), movement (no. 11), audiences (no. 10), politics and performance (no. 9), photography as/of performance (no. 8), sitespecific theatre (no. 7), rehearsal studies (no. 6), Body Weather (no. 5), performance analysis (no. 4), theatre (no. 3), crosscultural performance (no. 2), and translation (no. 1). Upcoming issues of About Performance, currently in the works, are on fashion, phenomenology, medicine, and the history of emotions. Although this anniversary issue, Performance Studies: Here, There, Then, Now, has no specific organisational theme, there are two things that bring the edition together: the subjects explored in each paper follow in the theoretical and methodological veins of our catalogue to date, adding to an image of the discipline as About Performance has explored it; and each papers' author has had, and in many cases continues to have, an association with the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. There are papers from established and emerging scholars: former and current students, visiting fellows, current and former academic staff, as well as research and artistic associates. As editors of this edition, Justine Shih Pearson and I cast the net wide in our call for abstracts; a shortlist was chosen by the Executive Editors of the journal, all current and former staff with the department, and together they collated an eclectic, yet representative, mix of papers which were peer reviewed by theatre and performance studies colleagues and fellow travellers. There are articles on butoh in Australia, immersive and site-specific performance in the United Kingdom, union parades in 1889, contemporary theatre in Ireland, phenomenology and performance, actors as manual philosophers, Body Weather and butoh, student theatre, fashion parades, Capetown music and patois, performance art in Detroit, and discussions about the