Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Myhill, Nova

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

The medium of performance is a valuable means for engaging racial dialogue since its liveness draws attention to the performing body, allowing us to negotiate what social meanings culture has invested in bodies. However, attention to topics of race and racism in Western theatre has historically avoided confronting intersubjective dialogues about race in favor of objectifying otherized racial identities, most notably performances of blackness, to reaffirm White racial dominance. Black artists have historically worked to resist this by reframing the performance as a site of opposition. This study uses this point of tension to study the ways physicality in dance and dramatic performance can insert different racial narratives into the collective cultural perspective. The first chapter emphasizes technique and setting choreography on different bodies to argue how this knowledge is remembered and constructed through legacy. The second chapter marks an actor writing their self into a lineage in order to subvert the expectations of textual meaning cultivated by a select lineage. The result is a portfolio study which argues that the use of embodiment and physicality can activate the performance space as a site to perform a different possibility for understanding and perceiving racial difference.

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