The Department of Dramatic Art Changes Its Name to the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies

By Genevieve Turcotte

July 23, 2001

Dance majors Kai Medeiros, Ben Levy, and Brian Duck. Crow Comoda Photo/Design

Beginning this month, the Department of Dramatic Art is known as the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. The interdepartmental graduate group now is named the Ph.D. in Performance Studies. This important name change announces Berkeley's traditional commitment to a varied education in the fields of theater and dance: a commitment that includes critical studies in the history, literature, theory, and cultural impact of performance, and meaningful opportunities to engage in performance across a wide variety of forms. The Department has always pursued the practice of performance in the context of a broadly based education in the liberal arts and humanities. Renaming the Department to include dance, and performance studies, as well as theater in the official title embodies that fundamental vision.

The Ph.D. program was reorganized in 1998 to reflect the interdisciplinary character of advanced research in the field: research which characteristically combines the methods and insights of literary and cultural studies, of film and media, of history, and of concerns drawn from social sciences like anthropology, ethnography, and communications. In the past 30 years or so, "Performance Studies" has become the accepted term for this dynamic field of inquiry; at the same time, the institutional identity of "Performance Studies" has been shaped very differently at different universities in the United States and throughout the world. At UC Berkeley, Performance Studies emerges from the Department's traditional strengths in drama and theater history, in combination with the University's unrivalled intellectual resources in adjacent departments which share a commitment to the study of performance: literature departments, Film Studies, African American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Rhetoric, Women's Studies, Anthropology, Music, and more.

Undergraduate majors and minors in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies are well prepared for the future. The flexibility and integration with the humanities characteristic of the major programs in Theater and Performance Studies and in Dance and Performance Studies make our majors excellent candidates for graduate and professional schools as well as for continued professional work in the performing arts. Through the course of their studies, students in the Department pursue intensive work in acting, critical studies, design, directing, technical production, choreography, and modern dance, in a major program that emphasizes the methodological rigor of the study of performance, and that sets the literary, historical, theoretical, and cultural traditions of performance in dialogue with other arts and humanities disciplines. The faculty teach at all levels and students have ample opportunity to study with important scholars and practitioners in theater, dance, and performance studies.

Many of the Department's students have gone on to pursue professional careers in acting: television and film actors Stacey Keach, Michael Lerner, Karen Grassle, Harry Hamlin, Roxann Biggs-Dawson; Bay Area stage actors Lorri Holt and Maureen McVerry. Others pursue careers as writers, designers, producers and directors. Students studying in the dance program—founded by David Wood, a former principal dancer with the Martha Graham company—have joined such prestigious companies as the Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Dance Theater of Harlem, the Elizabeth Streb Company, Twyla Tharp's touring ensemble and many others. Internationally renowned choreographer and dancer Daniel Ezralow, whose collaborative work Aeros was recently performed at Cal Performances, was also a student in the Department.

The Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies produces its own dance and theater season, and also sponsors performances by a range of visiting artists and companies. Last year, the Department presented nationally acclaimed performance artist Tim Miller in Glory Box, the celebrated lesbian performance company Split Britches, the Bay Area all-female Shakespeare company Women's Will in Hamlet, and a number of other visitors. Making Theater, a series of free lectures and discussions with dance and theater luminaries and important scholars in the field of performance studies, has recently included Miami City Ballet Artistic Director Edward Villella; playwrights Mary Zimmerman and Cherríe Moraga; choreographers Pina Bausch and Trisha Brown; theater artist Rhodessa Jones; Canadian performance artist Robert Lepage; and performers from The Gate Theater of Dublin, among others. The Department's annual season of theater and dance productions includes both new and classic works, directed or choreographed by UC faculty and students as well as by invited artists.

For more information call 510-642-8268 or visit the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies website.