WINNER! 2019 American Alliance for Theatre Education Research Award
This award honors scholars whose research contributes significantly to the field of drama/theatre with or for young people.
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Published under a CC BY-NC-SA license
The field of performance studies involves much more than actors on a stage. It is based on the idea that nearly everything we do is related to performing. We’ve called this book The Web of Performance because, like a spider’s web, performance connects at multiple points to everything around it. Once you begin to understand how it all works—how performance is connected to all aspects of our lives.
For Students
If you love being involved in theatre and you’re also searching for opportunities to make a positive difference in your community, this workbook was written for you. You may think that theatre and all the other things you are passionate about represent different directions in your life, but they don’t have to be separate. They can converge in performance studies, a category of theatre based on the idea that nearly everything we do is related to performing. Once you begin to understand how performance is connected to all aspects of our lives, you can use that knowledge to invent, create, and build performance based activities that you can integrate into all the other interests that define who you are and what you want to do in your life.
For Educators
This workbook has been designed and written for students in high school and university who may be interested in how performance works. The chapters cover broad topics drawn from the field of performance studies, an academic field developed out of theatre studies, anthropology, sociology and cultural studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Web of Performance covers key topics in performance studies: Performance as a form of Play, Ritual, Healing, Education, Power, Identity and Everyday Life. Each of these topics works like a web, inviting students to explore in multiple directions, across many threads.
Dr, Prendergast
Dr. Monica Prendergast, Professor of Drama/Theatre Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Victoria. Her research interests are varied and include drama-based curriculum and pedagogy, drama/theatre in community contexts, and arts-based qualitative research methods. Dr. Prendergast’s books include Applied Theatre and Applied Drama (both with Juliana Saxton), Teaching Spectatorship, Poetic Inquiry, Staging the Not-yet, Drama, Theatre and Performance Education in Canada and Poetic Inquiry II. Her CV includes over 50 peer reviewed journal contributions, numerous chapters, book reviews and professional contributions. Monica also reviews theatre for CBC Radio Canada and writes a column on theatre for Focus Magazine.
Dr. Will Weigler
Dr. Will Weigler is an award-winning theatre director, playwright and producer based in Victoria, British Columbia. He often works in collaboration with communities to co-create plays about the issues that matter to them. He received training in physical theatre, circus arts, and character mask at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts; Dell ‘Arte International; Odin Teatret; and Jared Sakren, among others. Will is a graduate of both the National Theatre Institute in the US, and Oberlin College. He holds a PhD in Applied Theatre from the University of Victoria. Will is also the author of several books on theatre, including The Alchemy of Astonishment: Engaging the Power of Theatre (University of Victoria, 2016); Strategies for Playbuilding:Helping Groups Translate Issues into Theatre (Heinemann, 2001); From the Heart: How 100 Canadians Createdan Unconventional Theatre Performance aboutReconciliation (VIDEA, 2015); Laughing Allowed! —A How-to Guide for Making a Physical Comedy Show toBuild Neighbourhood Resilience [co-author] (Building Resilient Neighbourhoods, 2016); and, Web of Performance: An Ensemble Workbook [co-editor/co-author] (University of Victoria, 2018).