Performance/School will work to bring Performance Studies to the forefront of theatre studies to promote educational opportunity and equality!

Performance/School is a full academic program at Ball High School in Galveston, Texas. There is an academic class titled Performance Studies, which covers the main ideas/concepts presented in Richard Schechner's text PERFORMANCE STUDIES: AN INTRODUCTION. Also, community- and school-based projects that build off of P/S members' interests and influences. The practical experience of these projects work hand-in-hand with the class to build skills important to performance and general education.

The Nature Of Our Project

Performance/School (P/S) will be Ball High School's new foray into the young academic field of Performance Studies. Post-secondary theatre education has taken a decisive step away from focusing solely on canonized Western theatre traditions to incorporate a more holistic, multi-cultural approach to theatre studies. This step reflects not only postcolonial and postmodern influences within academia but also new research uncovering the extent to which performance produces meaning.

Performance/School will be a complete yet dynamic program for the development of Performance Studies curricula in secondary school education.

COMPLETE: The program will consistently be filled with a complete list of resources including coursework, extracurricular activities, and community resources. Coursework will be developed in a new year-long class I will be leading called Performance Studies, an introduction to the field of Performance Studies. P/S will develop new activities and take part in relevant extra-curricular activities already in place at Ball High School. Throughout the year, there will be a number of community performances, which students will be able to perform in and patronize.

DYNAMIC: P/S, like Performance Studies, is new, dynamic, and looking for space to grow. It will not focus on one or only a few specific performance styles/traditions. Its list of performance practices will be fluid. It will constantly change to reflect the variety of interests and influences of P/S student participants, its school district, and its local community. Therefore, each year's multifarious activities and performances and coursework foci will be as distinct and varied as the students that will help create them annually.


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What is "Performance Studies" anyway?

Our Purpose

You'd be hard-pressed to find a clear-cut definition of Performance Studies. Actually, most scholars would say it has many definitions. By nature, it remains multi-disciplinary and open. Its openness, though creating a goldmine for future intellectual inquiry, creates a few problems. One major problem is the difficulty secondary school students have when moving from a hyper-structured or inadequate learning environment to this more creative, erudite, and dynamic field of inquiry. Developing a productive coexistence between the former and the latter to help students tap into the growing significance of Performance Studies is one of P/S's main goals. This will ultimately help Performance Studies and its students develop further at the post-secondary level. (For those secondary students not going to college, it will allow them to develop non-traditional performance styles/traditions relevant in to a diverse performance job market but not supported in most secondary school fine arts departments.)

Performance Studies uses aspects of theatre, cultural studies, critical and literary theories, and the social sciences to look at culture through the optic of performance. Since Performance Studies examines all parts of culture, it probes a wide array of subjects. This has a number of effects connected to secondary school students' general education. Students see the immediate relevance of a variety of subject matter to their performance work. This has the possibility of sparking the students' interest in countless pieces of information and developing skills important for general secondary education. Also, students find performances, which they may be closely involved in, whether intellectually or physically, given their proper respect in academic institutions as significant sources of meaning. Research has shown that supporting a student's academic interests can promote a healthier view and better performance in other academic subjects.

Even in my short time as a theatre teacher at Ball High School, the need to incorporate performance and other subject areas is evident. Numerous Ball High teachers have approached me about doing interdisciplinary projects. They see the value of performance to their subjects and of their subjects to theatre. P/S will not only provide a creative space where disciplines can work together to create knowledge and meaning but also give educational theatre a boost to reach a bit further outside its borders. Of course, high school theatre departments working with other departments is not a new idea, but P/S's creative space will promulgate that this cooperation is not only important and meaningful, but also expected.