Theater & Anthropology Course Blog

Theater and Anthropology (10)
Theater and Anthropology

Amanda Palmer

Saturday, 12/6/2008, at 2:51 PM
Hello folks, Hope the paper writing is going well. Here are some links to videos of Amanda Palmer, the queen of “Brechtian punk cabaret.” In both her solo album “Who Killed Amanda Palmer?” and her involvement in the Dresden Dolls, she plays with her femininity and masculinity in very self-conscious ways. In her video for […]

Operation Atropos

Friday, 11/14/2008, at 12:45 AM
First off, real or fake, watching intense interrogation for an hour left me in a permanent cringing position. While one interrogator talks about how he is actually a “very nice person”, I begin to wonder where we can draw the line between contrived performance and internal revelations. Many performers can take on characters that are […]

BKG and the NYBC

Thursday, 11/13/2008, at 8:28 AM
Last Tuesday, we were asked to discuss one experience in a museum or musuem-like space and connect it to our readings of BKG’s “Ellis Island” and “Plymouth Plantation.” While I had planned on discussing the artificially and constructedness Colonial Williamsburg in VA, I completely re-shifted my focus to the National Yiddish Book Center after listening […]

flicks and fashion

Wednesday, 11/12/2008, at 9:02 PM
Movies have become a universal reference point. Following Victor Turner’s “figure-eight” of social and aesthetic drama, conduct in Coco Fusco’s study of interrogation demonstrates performance dictated by movies, whose characterizations have in turn been dictated by real life. A female interrogator reveals that the use of sexuality in her patriotic duty reminds her of Apocalypse […]

BKG and museum experience

Tuesday, 11/11/2008, at 1:07 AM
I’ve gone to a lot of museums in my life. Many I went to unwillingly, dragged along by my parents, but as an adult interesting exhibitions are now weekend activities. I wanted to talk about one museum in particular, the “Musee du Quai Branly” in France and relate it to some of the BKG reading. […]

Fusco, tourism, and multiculturalism

Thursday, 10/30/2008, at 12:18 AM
Continuing our discussion of multiculturalism, I think I might be just as confused as Claire is. The function of the multicultural center is unclear to me, because I think that the term “multiculturalism” should represent an integrated product of different cultures, as opposed to a forum for different cultures to display themselves side-by-side. Accordingly, at […]

One more thought – connection between Fusco and Spiderwoman

Monday, 10/27/2008, at 11:26 PM
Since we always like connections, I also wanted to point out a few similarities that Fusco and Gomez-Pena’s performance shared with Spiderwoman Theater. Both “Couple in the Cage” and the Spiderwoman show “Winnetou’s Snake Oil Show” present stereotypes to an audience (the assumption is, I think, that it will be a primarily “white” audience) of […]

Couple in the Cage – Reflections

Monday, 10/27/2008, at 11:03 PM
I do want to eventually blog about the Yuyachkani since I’m really interested in both Peru’s unique history and theater as a healing tool, but while I had the reading for tomorrow fresh in my head I wanted to write about that. Watching “Couple in a Cage” was a confusing experience for me. Obviously, as […]

Implications of language

Wednesday, 10/22/2008, at 10:02 PM
School Days, by Patrick Chamoiseau, is a loose autobiography of the author’s childhood in Martinique. While his family has raised him on the Creole language and tradition, formal schooling forces his native culture into the backseat. At this time, schools heralded Parisian culture as the admirable and refined standard for living, and aggressively imposed this […]

An artist to check out…

Wednesday, 10/22/2008, at 7:02 PM
James Luna’s work as a performance and installation artist resonates with Spiderwoman’s. Check it out: http://www.jamesluna.com/
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