re/imagining performance

first year showcase 2020 * appalachian state university * department of theatre and dance

four student cohorts * four performance pages * click below

Director's Notes

Like so many, the implications of the Coronavirus pandemic sent us reeling in the early days. How will we do our good work, when we can't be together? Will we be able to approximate not only the act of performance itself, but the relationships often cultivated during the creative process that so feed our investment and growth in this work? With the inevitable start of a new and unprecedented semester before us, the need to find a way forward - not just as facilitators and champions of performance, but as people - was urgent. It still is.

It is often said that limitation can be a driver of creativity. If the limitations set in motion by the pandemic are any indication, the pieces found here are the stuff of a group of brave and curious imagineers. The FYS students have met the challenges of the pandemic head-on, while forging new possibilities for the way our department approaches the structure and scope of our season in a post-Covid world. Working with this group, more specifically, watching them work has been both joyful and profound. We leave this process full of hope, with ideas percolating.

Whether this is your first experience with multi-modal offerings like the ones created for you here, or you've been basking in the blue light of your screen and all the art now available to you there, you are sure to find a trove of daring experiments that will provoke, delight, and inspire.

Gina and Cara