Performance as Public Practice

The University of Texas at Austin's Performance as Public Practice (PPP) Program merges performance studies with theatre history and critical dance studies. Through transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives, PPP examines what performance is, what it does and how it makes meaning in distinct contexts, including theatrical and political stages, nontraditional sites and museums, festivals and everyday life. Our internationally renowned program admits approximately four to five applicants each year and offers three degrees: M.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. 

Students have access to world-class research centers such as the Nettie Benson Latin American Collection, the Harry Ransom Center and the LBJ Presidential Library. The Performance as Public Practice Program and the Department of Theatre and Dance have interdisciplinary associations with Center for Mexican American Studies, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and Texas Performing Art. Students have many opportunities to take courses across the university and can also pursue portfolio certification programs in such areas as African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino/a Studies and Women's and Gender Studies. The program is also an affiliate member of the Hemispheric Institute. 

Students also have the opportunity to work with local professional companies and departmental productions and collaborate and create performances for the biennial Cohen New Works Festival.

We center PPP around its three core concepts:

Performance

Performance is research, theory and methodology; it is a pedagogical approach and a site of analysis. Students examine a wide range of performances, texts and embodied practices in order to consider the myriad ways in which performance both reflects and produces cultural, historical, social and political knowledge and meaning.

Public

Public can refer to a place, space or site of performance; it can mean a group with whom a theatrical, identitarian or ideological performance is shared. Public can also be an adjectival modifier of performances, such as interventionist performances or ones that participate in structures of civic society. As such, public affords attention to all the ways that performance is engaged with the larger world.

Practice

Practice is process. It includes the daily doing of dancing, acting, performing, curating, dramaturgy, community engagement and more. It is thinking and writing. It may produce performances, but it always produces knowledge.

Students with only an undergraduate degree must apply to either the M.A. or the M.F.A. degree program; an M.A. or M.F.A. is required for admission directly to the Ph.D. Students who finish the M.A. or the M.F.A. program may apply to continue on to the Ph.D. program; decided on a case-by-case basis. All students in our program take specific core courses, but emphasis is placed on interdisciplinarity by requiring a variety of elective courses within and outside our department and at least one practice-focused course. Students determine their own research foci and goals in collaboration with their advisor and the faculty.