Graduate Drama and Performance Seminars Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio 2:00-4:30pm 19th February 2020
Reading with Material:
A performance workshop with Sophie Seita
In this practice-based workshop, we will experiment with forms of live reading and performative explorations of text, movement, and objects in space. We will investigate what it means to read materially, to treat language as a material, or what changes when we read with/through/alongside/on materials (in other words, when text exists on and off the page, and in various translations). Interested participants are welcome to bring their own work or theoretical, historical, and literary texts they would like to engage with performatively. There will be a number of materials (e.g. paper, fabric, string, wire, clay), but everyone is invited to bring along other supplies, props, slides, images, recording devices, or music.
Sophie Seita works with text and sound on the page, in performances, lecture-performances, videos, and through translation and multi-media collaborations. She recently had a solo exhibition at [ SPACE ] in Hackney, and has performed at the Royal Academy, Bold Tendencies, the Arnolfini, Parasol Unit, Raven Row, the Serpentine, Royal Drawing School, Art Night, Taller Bloc (Santiago, Chile), SAAS-Fee Summer Institute of Art (Berlin), Company Gallery, Issue Project, and La MaMa Galleria (all NYC), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam), New Hall Art Collection, Kettle’s Yard, Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), and elsewhere. Her publications include (most recently): the artist book My Little Enlightenment: A Lecture Performance (Other Forms, 2019), the critical book Provisional Avant-Gardes (Stanford UP, 2019), a translation of Uljana Wolf’s Subsisters (Belladonna, 2017), and the magazine reprint of The Blind Man (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). Following her JRF at Queens’ College, she’s now an Assistant Professor at Boston University, and co-organises the Sound/Text seminar at Harvard. www.sophieseita.com
