WEB OF PERFORMANCE
An Ensemble Workbook
By MONICA PRENDERGAST & WILL WEIGLER (Eds.)
2018
978-1-55058-622-0 (paperback)
978-1-55-58-623-7 (PDF)
155 pages
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International 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.
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.
Subjects: performance studies, theatre, high school, university, curriculum planning, performing arts
Monica Prendergast (Ed.)
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.
Will Weigler (Ed.)
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 Created an Unconventional Theatre Performance about Reconciliation (VIDEA, 2015); Laughing Allowed! —A How-to Guide for Making a Physical Comedy Show to Build Neighbourhood Resilience [co-author] (Building Resilient Neighbourhoods, 2016); and, Web of Performance: An Ensemble Workbook [co-editor/co-author] (University of Victoria, 2018).
The Web of Performance: An Ensemble Workbook for Youth
LIST OF IMAGES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 | PERFORMANCE AS PLAY/PLAY AS PERFORMANCE
Chapter 2 | PERFORMANCE AS RITUAL/RITUAL AS PERFORMANCE
Chapter 3 | PERFORMANCE AS HEALING /HEALING AS PERFORMANCE
Chapter 4 | PERFORMANCE AS EDUCATION/EDUCATION AS PERFORMANCE
Chapter 5 | PERFORMANCE AS POWER/POWER AS PERFORMANCE
Chapter 6 | PERFORMANCE AS IDENTITY/IDENTITY AS PERFORMANCE
Chapter 7 | PERFORMANCE AS EVERYDAY LIFE/EVERYDAY LIFE AS PERFORMANCE
This is a rich resource that highlights the role of performance in a range of curriculum areas. Any guide that suggests ‘ensemble’ work is noteworthy in my books. It’s not by accident that the authors chose to include the word ‘web’ since it helps educators to better consider community, connections and communication as we weave a web of performance creation into our work – Dr. Larry Swartz, OISE-University of Toronto, author of Dramathemes and Creating Caring Classrooms
I have introduced Dr. Prendergast’s performance program to pre-service teachers in my drama curriculum and instruction courses. They have found it both highly relevant and practical for the drama education contexts in which they imagining themselves eventually teaching. They envisioned multiple ways to incorporate aspects of it with the mandated provincial drama curriculum – Dr. Diane Conrad, Professor, Drama/Theatre Education, University of Alberta
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. Submissions are welcome from a wide variety of research traditions that explore any topic related to educational theatre / drama, applied theatre, and/or theatre for young audiences.
This text clearly represents excellence in applied drama/theatre and education research in that it initiates new connections between young learners age 16-20 and emergent as well as foundational research in theatre and performance studies. By reconceptualizing the place of performance studies in theatre curriculum, this work has the potential to revitalize theatre education practice as well as increase educators’ and students’ sense of the relevance of performance research and practice in their lives, potentially nurturing a new generation of performance researchers as well as bringing the considerable insights of performance studies to bear on new problems and issues. This book also opens the door to broader curricular innovation, most obviously the expansion of performance studies thinking and practice into curriculum aimed at younger learners. I am excited to see where this work might go next, and pleased to recommend it for this award. – Juror comment
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