Reading and Performance

Recommended Prerequisites

Level C1 in English.

Teaching Methods

Classes will take the form of seminars and workshops. They will be based on tasks previously assigned to students concerning selected texts and performances. Assessment will be continuous: besides in-class presentations and group assignments, all students are required to write a practice-based paper or conceive of a performative event addressing seminar topics.

Learning Outcomes

Students should:

1. Be able to make a critical reading of texts of various types.

2. To understand the complexities of the act of reading.

3. To show holistic and performative listening skills.

4. Be able to relate the word with the body, space, time and devices of technical mediation.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

This seminar describes and analyses the active and performative nature of reading, exploring its multiple dimensions. First, it focuses on the relation between text, voice and interpretation. It then looks at critical reading as a specific reading practice. In the second part of the seminar, the ocular and vocal regime of the word is extended to the aural dimension and to presence of the body, towards a phenomenology of the perception of space, time and technology. Reading and performance thus function as the two conceptual operators that we will use to reflect upon and experiment with the embodiment of language – in the self, on the page, on the stage, in media.

1. the act of reading

2. voicing and interpreting

3. listening language, listening the world

4. body and word

5. the body in space and time

6. technical mediation.

Head Lecturer(s)

Manuel José de Freitas Portela

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Presentations : 30.0%
Practice-based research project : 70.0%

Bibliography

Allsopp, Ric 1997 “Writing-Text-Performance” Performance Research, 2.1:45-52

André, João M. e Ribeiro, João M. 2014 O espaço cénico como espaço potencial: para uma dinamologia do espaço. Coimbra: CAPC/CA

Barba, E. 2009 Bruciare la casa. Origini di un regista. Milano: Ubulibri, 51-90

Cage, J. 1979. Empty Words: Writings '73-'78. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan.

Hall, J. 2018. "Performing, Writing". Performance Research, 23:4-5, 11-15.

McLaughlin, T. 2015 Reading and the Body: The Physical Practice of Reading. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Meisel, M. 2007 How Plays Work: Reading and Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Portela, M. 2018 “El sonido del lenguaje y el ruido del mundo: Finnegans Wake y Roaratorio.” Hispania: Déplacer, détourner, résister: la performativité artistique en jeu, 22: 103-116

Radosavljević, Duška 2013 Theatre-Making: Interplay between Text and Performance in the 21st Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Stein, M. 2009 Corpo e palavra. Porto Alegre: Movimento/Edunisc.