Why should I go to the Northwestern Performance Institute this Summer?

I am applying to go to this amazing Performance Institute this summer at Northwestern University and I am so excited and I hav to write this letter about myself and the work I am doing or want to do. And I don't know how to start-so I turn to this Blog as I do with most things performance related to give me some inspiration or at least a jump-start.

Who am I? And Why do I deserve to be invited? I don't know answers both sufficiently and yet completely insufficiently at the same moment in time. I can tell you things I do-things I believe in very strongly-those might give you the best insights into both of those questions.

I am an M.A. student or more likely I perform the identity and role of graduate student on a daily basis. This graduate student also performs critical race consciousness, queerness, gender-rebel, class distortionist, preschool teacher, mother, lover, friend, and a multiplicity of other identities throughout the course of a day.

Why performance studies? There are so many reasons-but here are a few. Number one, I have never met a discipline that resonated so much with me before. I don't understand how someone who cares about social justice, who really cares and feels committed to human beings and is a scholar can not study performance. It is the discipline I see synonomously with social justice-although many other disciplines attempt to do this and succeed to an extent (Women's Studies, African/African American Studies etc) these disciplines privilege identities and to display them as a somewhat fixed and unifying thing. Instead, performance studies places the performance of a multiplicity of intersecting identities, daily negotiations, social justice, critical consciousness, reflexivity, reciprocity, accountability, and stake in a multiple and fractured menagerie to work together to produce analysis. In my mind this just makes a lot of sense. Instead of privileging an identity maybe we should instead think about performing those identities, communicating them to others? I don't know but this is something I am playing around with right now.

I will be going into my second year of M.A. work where I will be proposing my thesis topic in order to begin researching and writing it as well as applying to PhD programs. I am currently hoping to research a queer feminist theatre group that I have seen perform (well I actually saw the youth theatre version and am hoping to actually see them perform soon). I am curious to see how performance becomes a vehicle for social transformation and how a resistive group can both work through performance but also more individually between members of the cast. I think that these interpersonal actions on a daily basis can create smaller level social change for those involved while trying to make an even larger cultural impact on those who they perform for. I am very excited to work on a project that explores ideas of performance, intersectionality, queerness, etc in a theatre setting. I also think this has the potential of being an amazing space for my own reflexive participation-although I do not consider myself a performer I feel that mostly I will benefit from being involved in such a project while possibly being able to offer something (publicity, webhelp etc...)

In performance it helps to be committed and have a stake int he projects we decide to take on and to the peple we are interacting with. In this sense I love many pieces of what this group does and I want to be a part of it in someway anyway and I think their radical voices and stories need to be told as Thomas King says, "So that we may live our lives differently."

So these are the things that I do-sort of, I guess more of what I want to do someday. I do not know who I am or why I deserve to go except that I think it could be very helpful in getting more grounding for my thesis and what direction t take it in. I think this specific summit that is focusing on resistive performances and social justice will very much play into how to focus my work and I am excited to meet and interact with people who are working on similar topics with unique perspectives. In the end I don't deserve to go, I only hope that I will chosen so that I may learn ad grow as an academic and human being.