Fall 2005 & Spring 2006


September 29 - October 1 (Double Bill)
"It Takes Guts [colon] Spelling (with) Dis-ease"
Written by Nicole Defenbaugh & Co-Directed by Scott Irelan
After numerous break-ups with her doctors and late-night conversations with her colon, this performance invites you to take a linguistic journey of dis-ease where medicalese is learned, alternative healing is explored and embodied language is found within.

"Depleting Patriarchy"
Written and Directed by Diana Tigerlily
Depleted Uranium weapons are the Pentagon's radioactive dirty secret. This performance collage of narrative, mythology, and poetry exposes the United States military's current uses of weapons of mass destruction and manifests liberatory alternatives to the pervasive environmental contamination and oppression of earth body/human bodies.

October 10-15
"Erratic, Unauthorized, and Historically Accurate" * **
Stephanie Juno, Guest Artist in Residence
This internationally recognized per-formance artist presents a piece that is part careening art history travelogue, part idiosyncratic narrative of the creative process, and part action theater as she considers themes of disability, extreme environments, the rising socio-ecological tide, and the organic twinning/splitting /subtracting of body parts.

November 3-5
"Expression Pig: A Dancing Lucid Dream"
Written & Directed by Chris Collins & Jake Simmons
Expression Pig is the engagement of dreams as a postmodern site of knowledge production. This performance explores dreams from visual, auditory, and performative logics to disrupt modern thought about dreams and achieve a sort of "postmodern lucidity". Implicitly surveying classical dream analysis from Freud and Jung through postmodern thinkers such as States and Scarry, this performance challenges traditional modes of dream inquiry, such as a search for meaning, to move toward a surrealist conception of dreams.

December 1-3
"Shadowboxing: Myths and Miniatures of Home"
Written and Performed by Elyse Lamm Pineau & Co-Directed by Amy Pinney
This performance is an act of narrative homesteading. A sojourn through memory and imagination of a childhood home in the Canadian wilderness. An evocation of selves, drawn to scale in dramatic and diminutive proportions.

December 6
"Performing Culture Spotlight Performances" *
Selected performances from the Performing Culture classes that examine human communication in everything from everyday life to culture formation through performance.

December 8
"Advanced Classes Spotlight Performances" *
Featuring outstanding performances selected from our advanced under-graduate and graduate classes in Performance Studies.

February 9-11
"Metamorphosis: A Revolutionary Nomad Come Undone"
Written and Directed by Rachel Hastings
By engaging in the revolutionary act of looking within the self, four women turn to personal agency to fight for social change. Using imaginative poetry and drama rooted in African Mythology and diaspora, the characters in Metamorphosis: A Revolutionary Nomad Come Undone face personal fragmentation for collective unification. Ultimately, this show ponders the question: what are you willing to personally sacrifice for the balance of humanity?

March 2-4
"On the Line: Exploring Resistance and Possibility"
Directed by Janet Donoghue & Co-Directed by Alison Fisher
Can subversive humor show us where the trouble is? For every movement created to bring about change does a countermovement arise to sustain the social order? And if so, is activism only reactive, rather than proactive? Where is "the line" that turns non-action to action? This performance will use cast generated narrative, to consider these questions and how the answers to them shape our personal and political climate.

April 20-22
"The Phrenologist's Daughter"
Written & Directed by Craig Gingrich-Philbrook
Can the astronomer daughter of an ailing phrenologist find love with a singing ceramic head? Probably not, but she's willing to try in this pastiche of compiled texts, cast-generated performance art, and original media as wandering zombie troubadours search for perfect brains in the wake of the (first?) American Civil War. Mature Themes.  

May 3
"Performing Culture Spotlight Performances" *

May 6
"Advanced Classes Spotlight Performances" *
The Kleinau season draws to its traditional close with two evenings of featured student performances drawn from our introductory and advanced classes in Performance Studies.

(**) Supported by the Student Fine Arts
(*) All shows marked with asterisks are free