Performance Studies Commons^™

"Let Your Body Do The Talkin'": An Investigation Of Aesthetic Experience Through Phenomenological Psychology, Tone Roald, Anders Essom-Stenz

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

How does the experience of one’s own body contribute to aesthetic experience? This article answers the question from the point of view of phenomenological psychology by portraying how the body is lived from within in intense experiences with works of visual art. Based on descriptions of aesthetic experiences juxtaposed with phenomenological insights about the body and, in particular, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts on concrete and abstract movement, it is shown how the lived body gives form to the experience. The experience of one’s own body reflects the expressions of the works of art and comprises not only movement, and with it …

Emotions As Work Material: On Dancers' Refined Use Of Affectivity, Camille S. Buttingsrud

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

As part of their professional practice, dancers allow their affectivity to enhance their kinesthetic work. Their intentional and disciplined use of personal, emotional resources ensures both creativity, interpretation, absorption, and connections in ways that extend beyond the traditional phenomenological understanding of affectivity as pre-reflectively based. The affective regulations dancers employ can be seen as an “artistic epoché,” and their layered performance awareness corresponds with Edmund Husserl’s descriptions of “image-consciousness.” Through qualitative interviews with three professional dancers, phenomenological theory, and additional supportive literature, this article shows how affectivity can be experienced through high-order levels of Leib, constituting states of “bodily …

Participatory Presence In Aesthetic Experiences Of Performance, Sophie Morrissey, Shaun Gallagher

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

In the context of the performing arts, presence can generally be thought of as an experienced connection between performer and audience that heightens the affective impact of the performance. Explorations of how presence is experienced during live performance contribute to our understanding of the relation of presence to participants’ overall aesthetic experience and participation in the performance. However, they also reveal the complex phenomenology of presence and the challenge of offering a unified framework that can account for its various phenomenal manifestations. In this article, we conceive of presence as a recursive dynamical feedback loop that emerges through and modulates …

Rapture "At A Distance": Searching For Pathic-Atmospheric Aesthetics, Tonino Griffero

Duquesne Studies in Phenomenology

The paper proposes a rethinking of the role of aesthetics as a theory of sensory experience as it is encountered in the lifeworld (and only secondarily in relation to art). Accordingly, pathic and atmospheric (bottom-up) aesthetics, which centers on the ability to expose oneself to intense experiences without attempting to control them and conceives feelings as atmospheric powers that permeate a particular space without being reduced to projections of the perceiver’s moods, should replace the idealistic (top-down) approach.

A Burlesque: The Shimmering Body Of Revealing, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

A Burlesque: The Shimmer Manuscript is a hybrid critical–creative work that examines burlesque as an embodied methodology and a mode of knowledge production. Drawing from my two decades as a performer–scholar, the work reframes glamour, desire, and adornment as epistemological practices rather than theatrical ornamentation. The project is significant in that it expands understandings of performance studies, autotheory, and feminist aesthetics by foregrounding the performer’s body as an intelligent, sensing, world-making apparatus.

The methodology is creative practice research and archive-driven, integrating backstage documentation, AI-assisted photomontage, and theoretical reflection. The work draws from poststructuralist and feminist frameworks (Irigaray, Deleuze & Guattari, …

From Ghorer Golpo To Global Voices: Digital Storytelling As A Decolonial Pedagogy For English Language Learning In Bangladesh, Tamanna Sharmin Kabir

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

From Ghorer Golpo to Global Voices: Digital Storytelling as a Decolonial Pedagogy for English Language Learning in Bangladesh highlights how Digital Storytelling operates as a culturally sustaining and technologically supported approach within Bangladeshi undergraduate English education. Informed by my own navigation of Western and South Asian narrative traditions, the study responds to a longstanding challenge in English instruction: exam-focused, Eurocentric pedagogies often marginalize learners’ cultural identities and lived experiences. The research investigates how participants engaged with Digital Storytelling as a multimodal, technology-enhanced practice that supports language development, identity expression, and intercultural communication.

The study employed an arts-informed case study design …

Movement Lab Lunchtime Presentations: Hunter Whitaker-Morrow | Poster, Hunter Whitaker-Morrow, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Movement Lab Fellow Lunchtime Presentations: Patrick Buhr | Poster, Patrick Buhr, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Julieta Lanteri And Political Caricature: The Democratic Reach Of Commercial Theater And The Expansion Of The Public Sphere, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kristen Mccleary

International Journal on Responsibility

In the early twentieth century, popular theater in Buenos Aires appealed to a diverse audience, including immigrants, men, and women from all social classes, workers, as well as the most elite members of the oligarchy. By analyzing one work in particular, La doctora de Lantera, by Armando B. Rillo and Victor Dolard, one of the most well-attended plays of 1919, this article focuses on how theater reveals the social tensions surrounding the role of women in society during an era of dramatic change. It also shows how theater provides an outlet from which to identify, negotiate, and, at times, …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Between Sound And Theology: Timbral Performativity In Brazilian Religious Musicking, Marcell Silva Steuernagel

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article explores the performativity of timbre, summarizing key perspectives from the English-language scholarship on the topic and setting them in conversation with Latin American perspectives on timbre. In addition, it examines a performance of “500 Graus” (500 degrees), a song performed by Brazilian Pentecostal artists Cassiane and Shirley Carvalhaes, to demonstrate how the performativity of timbre unfolds within a particular expression of Latin American religious musicking. In doing so, it investigates the phenomenon of timbre between music and sound studies, and theology and church music studies, providing insights relevant to the study of timbre and the study of religious …

The Trojan Women, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025-2026 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Mary Victor And The Monster, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025-2026 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Urinetown: The Musical, Otterbein Theatre And Dance Department

2025-2026 Season Productions

No abstract provided.

Dust To Dust, Emma Ask

SPARK Symposium Presentations

"Dust to Dust" is a small group dance composition inspired by Genesis 3:19 and other passages referring to the human experience as that which is Earthly (dust). In this piece, the scripture is used as a framework for telling the story of life and the cyclical nature of being molded and created by God, the interweaving pathways of life in Creation and the eventual return to that which we were created from. In this piece, we are offered a chance reflect on the juxtaposition of the intricacy of our individual lives and the vastness and beauty of the collective human …

Augusto Boal’S Forum Theater In Language And Culture Courses A Reflective Documentation, Mona Eikel-Pohen, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This documentation is the revised and translated version of the 2024 article Augusto Boals Forumtheater im Deutschunterricht (Eikel-Pohen 2024). It features new observations from the second iteration of a Forum Theater project in a GER 202 language and culture class from 2025 and is again based on autoethnographic notes (Rodriguez-Mejia 2023: 71). It documents the revised application of Augusto Boal’s Forum Theater applied to language and cultural teaching in a socially critical, holistic, cooperative, intercultural, and practical way. Boal’s method aims at exposing structural oppression and allows individuals to explore options for action through play. The instructor followed Boal’s model …

The Onnagata: A Note Regarding The Male Actor Of Female Roles In Japanese Theatre, John M. Metcalf

The Ozark Historical Review

This paper discusses the influence of the Kabuki onnagata, male actors portraying female characters, on Japanese culture.

Restorationland: The Lost And Found Objects Of Atlanta's Doll's Head Trail, Thomas Fish

Faculty Articles

The Doll’s Head Trail is a grassroots, low-art installation nestled within a Southeast Atlanta wildlife preserve. Constructed by volunteers and visitors from decades of environmental debris, the trail converts waste into folk art-inspired “junk” displays. The creative upcycling ranges from a miniscule shrine to “Toxic Masculinity” to a stark shoe pile commemorating child gun violence. This article details how queer theory’s “temporal turn” provides insights into material performance as collaborative regeneration. The curious vignettes playfully invert hierarchies, revealing the merits of small-time memorialization. Through these defiantly unofficial grassroot performances, the Doll’s Head Trail both remembers and restores community ruins, demonstrating …

Interspecies Responsivity In Early Modern Drama And Animal Performances, Taylor C. Culbert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation proposes an expansive, interspecies definition of performance that uses behavior rather than cognition as the decisive feature and illustrates how such a definition can reshape our approach to theatre and performance history. Using the concept of responsivity, which refers to the embodied and affective ways that humans and non-human animals acknowledge and react to one another, I trace human–animal interactions across a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance genres, from the aristocratic stag hunt and entertainments involving trained animals to the plays of Molière and Shakespeare. Drawing on my experience training animals, I offer a new perspective on …

Class Act

DePaul Magazine

As The Theatre School at DePaul University turns 100, past and present administrators and faculty and illustrious alumni comment on the school's enduring legacy of hands-on learning, collaboration and critical dialogue.