The value of literature in introducing performance studies

ABSTRACT

As Oral Interpretation broadened into Performance Studies, some introductory performance classes abandoned teaching performance of literature for more contemporary theory and practice. However, the shape of the course at Louisiana State University has held firm for decades. This essay theorizes the pedagogy of the "Introduction to Performing Literature" course at Louisiana State University. It provides a historical overview of the scholarship that shaped the philosophy of the course, describes the assignments in the current course (taking into consideration how those assignments accommodate innovations or trends in performance studies), and argues that the enduring shape of the course places it in relationship to the other communication areas represented in the department, emphasizes the communication thread in performance studies, and develops students to be better citizens by encouraging nuanced, empathetic, and critical performances of a broad array of literary texts.

KEYWORDS:

• Louisiana State University
• Performing Literature
• Oral Interpretation
• Performance Studies

Notes

1. www.lsu.edu/hss/cmst/about/history.php

2. Paul Edwards, “Unstoried: Teaching Literature in the Age of Performance Studies,” Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies 52.1 (1999), 121.

3. Don Geiger, “Oral Interpretation and the ‘New Criticism’,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 36.4 (1950), 508.

4. Ibid., 509.

5. Don Geiger, “A ‘Dramatic’ Approach to Interpretive Analysis,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 38.2 (1952), 194.

6. Wallace A. Bacon, “The Dangerous Shores: From Elocution to Interpretation.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 46.2 (1960), 152.

7. TPQ published a special issue devoted to revisiting Bacon’s Dangerous Shores metaphor. See the introduction, Wallace A. Bacon, “The Dangerous Shores: From Elocution to Interpretation.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 46.2 (1960), 152.

8. Beverly Whitaker, “Research Directions in the Performance of Literature,” Speech Monographs 40.3 (1973), 238–239.

9. Timothy Gura and Charlotte I. Lee, Oral Interpretation (Boston: Pearson, 2009).

10. Beverly Whitaker Long and Mary Frances HopKins, Performing Literature: An Introduction to Oral Interpretation (Englewoood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982), 4.

11. Robert Penn Warren, “Why Do We Read Fiction?” The Saturday Evening Post October 20, 1962.

12. In this quote, Long and HopKins cite Walter J. Ong, The Barbarian Within (New York: Macmillan, 1962).

13. Ronald J. Pelias and Tracy Stephenson Shaffer, Performance Studies: The Interpretation of Aesthetic Texts, 2nd ed. (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 2007), 88.

14. Ibid., 62.

15. Michael S. Bowman, “‘Novelizing’ the Stage: Chamber Theatre After Breen and Bakhtin,” Text and Performance Quarterly 15.1 (1995), 13.

16. Ibid., emphasis in the original, 15.

17. Ibid., 15.

18. Pelias and Shaffer, 11.

19. I take this quote directly from my introduction to the special issue entitled “Performance Tells It Slant.” See Tracy Stephenson Shaffer, “Performance Tells It Slant,” Text and Performance Quarterly 36:1 (2016): 1–5. This essay introduces Mary Frances HopKins, “Tell It Slant,” Text and Performance Quarterly 36:1 (2016): 6–17.