October 27, 2011

Kleinau Theater hosts performance art double bill

by Andrea Hahn

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Performance art comes to Southern Illinois University Carbondale this weekend as a double bill takes over Kleinau Theater.

The back-to-back performances run Oct. 27-29, beginning at 8 p.m.  General admission is $7, student tickets are $5.  Tickets are available beginning an hour before the performance at the door.

The performances feature work written and performed by graduate students in the performance studies program that is part of the Department of Speech Communication.

Doctoral student Joshua Potter presents “Orphan Annie Eyes: Overcoming Narratives of Cancer and Loss.”  Fellow doctoral student Nichole Nicholson directs this auto-ethnographic performance. 

Potter describes the performance as one that uses narrative and discourse to investigate how individuals deal with disease and disability in light of how medical institutions speak about disease, disability, and those suffering from them.

Graduate student Meggie Mapes presents “To Lay Brick,” a production she wrote and performs.  Doctoral student Rick Jones directs.

Mapes describes this performance as one about “affect, rhetoric, remorse, agency, confusion and hope.”  She uses narrative and memory to take a close look at abortion -- the ideas about it, the lines that divide, and the lines that blur.

Kleinau Theater is on the second floor of the Communications Building.