PPP@20: Celebrating 20 Years of Performance as Public Practice

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PPP square box graphic 20 years
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Contributing to the fields of theatre, dance, performance, performance studies and arts leadership, "PPP" continues to support the next generation of leaders in arts, academia and beyond.

In 2022, the Performance as Public Practice area (M.A./M.F.A./Ph.D. in Theatre) program at The University of Texas at Austin marks its 20th anniversary. 

In its first two decades Performance as Public Practice (PPP) has significantly contributed to the fields of theatre, dance, performance, performance studies, theatre studies, dance studies and arts leadership on an international scale through its training of accomplished citizen-artist-scholars. Graduates of the program teach at major universities; publish books; produce new works for the stage; and run theatres, performances, spaces, and companies. They are arts leaders, academic leaders and civic leaders alike. 

To celebrate the program’s many accomplishments, the Performance as Public Practice program welcomes alumni, faculty and members of the public to an in-person series of events to commemorate the impact of PPP, featuring faculty, both past and present, distinguished alumni and current students. 

Schedule of Events
Friday, October 21, 2022 

ATTEND PPP@20 VIRITUALLY VIA ZOOM HERE

Breakfast and Welcome

Welcome | 8:00-9:00 a.m.
B. Iden Payne Lobby, 300 E 23rd Street

Breakfast tacos and coffee will be available to welcome guests.

Morning Panel Discussions | 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.  
WPC Student Activity Center 2.120 

Welcome from PPP faculty (9:00-9:15 a.m.)

Speakers: Rebecca Rossen, Charlotte Canning, Raquel Monroe, Madge Darlington and Paul Bonin-Rodriguez

Performance as Public Practice and Cultural Leadership (9:15-10:30 a.m.)
Moderator: Dr. Paul Bonin-Rodriguez

From the outset, PPP proposed that its students could provide cultural leadership from a variety of scholarly locations and experiences. In this panel, alumni speak about their roles in and outside the academy, and the relationship between their studies and their work as citizen-artist-scholar-leaders.

  • Heather Barfield, Adjunct Professor of Drama, Austin Community College
  • Susan Gayle Todd, former Producing Artistic Director/Executive Director, Austin Scottish Rite Theater
  • Thomas Graves, Co-Producing Artistic Director, Rude Mechs
  • siri gurudev, Doctoral Candidate, PPP
  • Marcus McQuirter, Department Chair, Professor of Drama, Austin Community College
  • Fadi Skeiker, Associate Professor, University of the Arts

Performance as Public Practice and Research (10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.)
Moderator: Dr. Charlotte Canning

How do PPP alumni build their practice and activism around their scholarship and return their scholarship back to practice and activism? The panelists speak of the trajectory from their studies at UT Austin to their current practice. 

  • Abimbola Adelakun, Assistant Professor of African and African Diasporic Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
  • Dotun Ayobade, Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies, Northwestern University
  • Clare Croft, Associate Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan
  • Michael J. Love, Princeton Arts Fellow, Princeton University
  • Chuyun Oh, Associate Professor of Dance, San Diego State University
  • Jack Isaac Pryor, Assistant Professor of Theater, The Pennsylvania State University

Lunch with the Oscar G. Brockett Center for Theatre History and Criticism
WPC Student Activity Center 2.410

By invitation only. To request to join the lunch discussion, please R.S.V.P. by emailing mmdarlington@utexas.edu or clicking the link below

R.S.V.P.

Afternoon Panel Discussions | 1:45-3:30 p.m.
WPC Student Activity Center 2.120

Welcome plenary with Dean Dr. Ramón Rivera-Servera, College of Fine Arts

Speaker: PPP alumnus and Dean of the College of Fine Arts Dr. Ramón Rivera-Servera.

Performance as Public Practice Origins (2:15-3:30 p.m.)
Moderator: Dr. Ramón Rivera-Servera

What key ideas, connections and commitments led to the creation of the Performance as Public Practice Program? On what terms did the program bring together the Theatre History, Theory, Criticism and Text Program in the Department of Theatre and Dance and the Performance Studies Program from the College of Communications? And what was the initial response? 

  • Charlotte Canning, Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor in Drama, UT Austin
  • Jill Dolan, Dean of the College, Princeton University
  • Omi Joni Jones, Professor Emerita of African and African Diaspora Studies, UT Austin
  • Stacy Wolf, Professor of Theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts and American Studies, Princeton University
Performance as Public Practice Connections | 3:45-4:45 p.m.
Patton Hall (RLP) 1.302B
Moderator: Dr. Rebecca Rossen

What programs, partnerships and innovations have resulted from PPP’s scholarly and artistic commitments, as well as the work of its students? 

  • Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Associate Professor of PPP, The University of Texas at Austin
  • Andrew Carlson, Associate Professor of Theatre, Carleton College
  • Eric Colleary, Cline Curator of Theatre and Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
  • Jill Dolan, Dean of the College, Princeton University
  • Laura G. Gutiérrez, Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, The University of Texas at Austin (via zoom)
  • Omi Joni Jones, Professor Emerita of African and African Diaspora Studies, The University of Texas at Austin 

Closing Reception | 5:00-5:45 p.m.
Patton Hall (RLP) 1.302B

 

After-party 
Co-hosted by Performance as Public Practice and the Rude Mechs

Guests are invited to join Performance as Public Practice and the Rude Mechs to an off-campus after-party the evening of October 21 from 7:30-10:30 p.m.

Crashbox
5305 Bolm Road #12
Austin, Texas 78721

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE AS PUBLIC PRACTICE AREA

 

These events are co-sponsored by the College of Fine Arts, The Oscar G. Brockett Center for Theatre History and Criticism, the LGBTQ Studies Program and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the College of Liberal Arts.

MEET THE PANELISTS

Abimbola A. Adelakun, Assistant Professor in the Department of African/African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, researches spirituality and performance in Africa. She obtained a PhD from the department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, along with a doctoral portfolio and Master’s degree from African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her academic articles have been published with The Drama Review and Journal of World Christianity. She is the author of Performing Power in Nigeria: Politics, Identity, and Pentecostalism (Cambridge 2021) and Powerful Devices: The Politics and Praxis of Spiritual Warfare (Rutgers 2022). She writes a weekly column for PUNCH Newspapers, Nigeria’s most widely-read newspaper. Her research has been supported by the John Templeton Religion Trust, the AAUW, The American Academy of Religion, The Henry Luce Foundation, Frances and Sanger Mossiker Research in the Humanities, and the John Warfield Center.
 
Dotun Ayobade holds a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He studies how embodied forms of popular culture shape the meaning of community, justice, and activism in late 20th century West Africa. He is currently working on the first book-length study of the storied lives of Nigeria’s Afrobeat Queens, an iconic collective of women that gave potency to the activism of famed Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti. Provisionally entitled Queens of Afrobeat: Gender, Play, and the Unmaking of Fela Kuti’s Music Subculture, this work examines how the women of Afrobeat fashioned performance strategies to negotiate agency and visibility when confronted with censure and authoritarianism.

Dr. Heather Barfield is adjunct professor of Drama at Austin Community College. Throughout her career, she worked as performer, scholar, director, producer, writer, archivist, and arts administrator. She was COO/CFO of Austin Creative Alliance as well as Associate Artistic/Development Director for VORTEX Repertory Theatre. Barfield is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to France. In Spring 2022, she directed world premiere opera, Eva and the Angel of Death, produced by Density512. Currently, she is devising new work with interdisciplinary company Corps Multiple. She volunteers as board member to Electronic Frontier Foundation–Austin and Alliance Française d'Austin. During quarantine, she studied Ableton Live and revels in creating sound and electronic music experiments with her band Key Hole. She is happiest wandering wild forests with her dog, son, and partner. She is a child of the stars and fantasizes about directing Waiting for Godot on the moon.*

* See NASA and the Artemis missions.

Paul Bonin-Rodriguez is an Associate Professor in the Performance as Public Practice Program, the Associate Chair of Theatre and Dance, and the Graduate Advisor. As a performance studies scholar, he researches contemporary arts policies and infrastructure, entrepreneurship, network-based organizing, and institutional support, as well as theatre and performance. His research and teaching focus on the systems of support and training for arts professionals and follows from his career as a producing artist and non-profit administrator. His book-in-process Groundwork: Race,Equity, and the Network Infrastructure for U.S. Artists draws on the case study of the National Performance Network (1985-Present) to assess on the relationship-based support systems that have emerged since the 1980s. Since 2018 he has been the editor of Artivate: a Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, the first and only enduring peer-reviewed journal for arts entrepreneurship.

Charlotte M. Canning is the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor in Drama in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas. She also serves as Special Consultant to the Vice President for Student Affairs on Faculty Relations and is the Secretary of the General Faculty. She is the author of multiple award-winning books and teaching awards. She is the author of Feminist Theaters in the USA: Staging Women's Experience, The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance which won the Barnard Hewitt Award for Excellence in Theatre History, and On the Performance Front: US Theatre and Internationalism which received the Joe A. Callaway Prize for Best Book on Drama or Theater. She co-edited with Thomas Postlewait, Representing the Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance and is currently editing The Routledge Companion to Feminist Performance with Nobuko Anan and Asiedu Awo Mana. Her contribution to the Theatre & series, Theatre & the USA will be published in 2023. She served as the head of PPP for fifteen years. In 2021 she received the Civitatis Award in recognition of dedicated and meritorious service to the University above and beyond the regular expectations of teaching, research, and service.

Clare Croft is a dance historian, theorist, dramaturg and curator. She is the author of Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford UP), the editor of Queer Dance (Oxford UP), and the founder/curator of the EXPLODE queer dance festival, which has featured 60+ artists on tours to Michigan, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Croft’s current work, made possible through a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, focuses on dance critic and lesbian feminist activist Jill Johnston, the central figure of her next book, under contract with Duke University Press. Croft is also the editor of the book series, Studies in Dance: Theories and Practices; and the founder of the curatorial platform Daring Dances, which considers how dance moves us into necessary, if difficult conversations. Croft is Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, and holds a PhD from the University of Texas-Austin.
 
A professional actor, dramaturg, and director, Andrew Carlson has worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Cleveland Playhouse, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, First Folio Theatre, ZACH Theatre, Austin Shakespeare, and Children’s Theatre of Madison. He is an artistic associate with The Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN where he has worked as an actor, director, and dramaturg for thirteen seasons, playing roles such as Hamlet (Hamlet), Edmund (King Lear), Jim O’Connor (The Glass Menagerie), Macbeth (Macbeth) and the Poet (An Iliad).  Andrew is a co-author of the 11th edition of The Essential Theatre textbook and has published essays in Theatre History Studies, American Theatre Magazine and the Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. An award-winning educator, Carlson received the 2016 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Texas. Andrew is a member of Actor’s Equity Association, the labor union representing professional actors and stage managers in the United States.
 
siri gurudev is a fifth-year doctorate candidate at the Performance as Public Practice program. Multidisciplinary artist with a focus on experimental theatre and performance, siri is a trans non-binary writer, performer, public speaker, and healer apprentice. In this lifetime, they were born in a place we know today as Bogotá, Colombia. 
 
A Co-Producing Artistic Director with Rude Mechs since 2008, Thomas Graves co-created and performed in The Method Gun, I’ve Never Been So Happy, Now Now Oh Now, Stop Hitting Yourself and Not Every Mountain.  Graves built-out and operates Crashbox—a performing arts space in East Austin.  He's been part of the creative team and dancer with queer punk performer Christeene since 2009. He is currently developing a new piece with Rude Mechs, Farewell Tour, circumnavigating the Eastern United States in a homemade boat.
 
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones' work rests on theatrical jazz aesthetics and Black Feminist politics. Her original performances include sista docta—a critique of the academy, and Searching for Osun—a performance ethnography around identity. Her most recent book is
Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àse, and the Power for the Present Moment.  Omi is founder of the Austin Project—a collective of Global Majority women and allies who use art for re-imagining societies. Omi holds a Ph.D. from New York University and an Embodied Social Justice Certificate from Transformative Change. She is Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, a mother, a Queer wife, and a curious sojourner.
 
Marcus McQuirter currently serves as chair of the Drama Department at Austin Community College where he teaches voice, acting, and theater appreciation.  He holds a BFA in Directing from Howard University, an MA in Theater from the University of North Texas, and earned his PhD in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin. He sits on the advisory board for ACC’s Interdisciplinary Studies Department, the ACCTV Network, and New Manifest Theatre Company. Professionally active as a stage director in Central Texas, his recent credits include Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven (Vortex Theater Company), She Kills Monsters (Southwestern University), Not This White Woman (Hyde Park Theater), and Jarrett King’s A War of the Worlds (Penfold Theater Company).  
 
Stacy Wolf is Professor of Theater and American Studies and Director of the Program in Music Theater at Princeton University. She is the author of A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical, and Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America, which was chosen as a finalist for Outstanding Book in 2020 by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.  Wolf is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical and has written about the musicals Hamilton and Fun Home, about college student productions of Sondheim’s musicals in the age of #MeToo, and contributed to Disney’s Study Guide for The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
 

Details, venues and times are subject to change. 

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