Performing meaning, translating thought

This one-quarter program explores music and writing. What happens when they are in dialog with each another (performing "writing" in "music", "music" in "writing" . . .)? In some cases, the boundaries between the media will become more obvious, in others, we will create combinations that do not yet have names. Through various juxtapositions and collaborations, we are looking to trans-late --- or rather, to trans-mogrify (change the shape of) --- one medium by giving it the fairy's kiss (or the witch's curse) of another.

What are the relationships between a work's structure and its medium? A writing can have a content that changes the mind of its audience. What happens when we make music out of the phonebook? How does the juxtaposition of one medium on another change the two? Is a text ruined if it is overlaid with a music that is "inappropriate" to the content? And how do we arrive at the conclusion of what is "inappropriate" music for a text? By understanding a second discipline, the limits of the first are revealed: in order to know one, you must know two. The goal to learn is that by over-reaching yourself, you learn what your reach is, but if you don't over-reach, you'll only retch, not reach, you poor wretch. The learning goal is: the life of self-directed change. And just as the 2nd is needed for the 1st, so too do we need others to realize what our-selves are: learning is becoming a social activity.

Students will elect to pursue either music or writing in depth through four hours of workshop time per week. They will also participate in shared lectures, seminars, writing workshops and collaborative performances during the course of the quarter. Total in-class time -- including participation in the Critical Investigations Cohort -- will add up to 15 hours, plus 3 hours for rehearsal and critique of the group performance projects.

Faculty will present examples of the difficulties and problems with the medium of performance: the resistance of audiences to learning, the perils of "talking down" to an audience, techniques of presentation of social problems, and the social function of language in the presentation of thought. These lectures and workshops, together with skills-based work on various modes of performance, will help frame and support students’ independent work. There will also be class trips to performances, and presentations by visiting artists. Readings may include works by Samuel Beckett, Dario Fo, Adrienne Kennedy, and William Shakespeare, as well as contemporary artists and thinkers working on hybridity and collaboration. This program will include a strong focus on critical writing. Students should be prepared to challenge the boundaries between critical and creative processes--which will be inextricably linked in all our activities--and to take intellectual risks with each other on a regular basis.