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Performance and Critical Social Praxis Working Group

The Performance and Critical Social Praxis Working Group at Performance Studies international (PSi) aims to support a critical praxis of socially engaged performance scholars. This praxis, to borrow Conquergood’s words, “struggles to open the space between analysis and action”. The group seeks to explore, stimulate and develop its members’ work through the sharing of practice, writing, ethical debate, collaborative research and embodied learning.

Why and How We Started

In 2016, PSi’s Dwight Conquergood Award (DCA) was in its 10th year. What does it mean to work “in the spirit of Dwight Conquergood”? This phrase shapes the criteria for how the Dwight Conquergood awardees are selected. But what is that ‘spirit’ exactly, and what critical, historical, mnemonic, affective and ethical landscapes and lineages coalesce to contour it? This working group provides a platform for exchange amongst DCA Laureates and other interested PSi members to explore ways of working together ‘after Dwight Conquergood’. The work of such scholars may be socially motivated, or take as its focus socially engaged theatre practices. However, it may also combine action and analysis through modes of ethnography, storytelling or performance practice that reflect a socially engaged methodology. We hope to provide mutual support in the areas we have in common: working with ‘disenfranchised communities’, and working across the disciplinary structures of performance and ethnography.

Conveners

Matt Yoxall (Chiang Mai University, Thailand)
Jazmin Badong Llana (De La Salle University, Philippines)
Ella Parry-Davies (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London)