Infrastructural Dramaturgy and the Politics of Disability Art and Performance

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dc.contributor.advisorLevin, Laura
dc.contributor.authorJohnson, Megan Aileen
dc.date.accessioned2022-12-14T16:27:46Z
dc.date.available2022-12-14T16:27:46Z
dc.date.copyright2022-07-11
dc.date.issued2022-12-14
dc.date.updated2022-12-14T16:27:45Z
dc.degree.disciplineTheatre and Performance Studies
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation draws on performance studies, critical disability studies, and critical infrastructure studies scholarship to investigate the infrastructural politics of contemporary disability performance. Throughout, I show how disability performance enacts modes of infrastructural inversion that reveal the politics and ideologies embedded within built, interpersonal, and administrative infrastructures. These inversions highlight how infrastructures provide uneven forms of support across different populations and contexts. I also illustrate the potential of disability performance to reimagine inequitable infrastructures in service of a more inclusive, accessible, sustainable, and just world—a world that enables disabled bodyminds and disability culture to flourish. This dissertation presents a series of case studies that closely analyze works of disability performance and explore how these performances intersect with infrastructures in both theatrical and quotidian contexts. To conduct these analyses, I develop a methodology of infrastructural dramaturgy; an approach that mobilizes the analytical potential of dramaturgy and critical infrastructure studies to emphasize infrastructural elements by attending to the context and composition of a performance. Using the lens of infrastructural dramaturgy, this dissertation engages with works like Alex Bulmer’s May I Take Your Arm?, Kinetic Light’s DESCENT, and Hanna Cormick’s The Mermaid, among others, to investigate the infrastructural politics of sites and practices including sidewalks, access ramps, administrative protocols, and ways of organizing time. Ultimately, in this dissertation I surface the politics, priorities, and value systems embedded within infrastructures and query how they could be altered to better support disabled bodyminds and disability culture. I also illustrate how disability performance is a form of world building that can imagine and materialize worlds that are rooted in the tenets of equity, interdependence, and ethical care.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/40667
dc.languageen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectPerforming arts
dc.subject.keywordsPerformance
dc.subject.keywordsTheatre
dc.subject.keywordsDance
dc.subject.keywordsArts
dc.subject.keywordsDisability
dc.subject.keywordsImpairment
dc.subject.keywordsAccessibility
dc.subject.keywordsInfrastructure
dc.subject.keywordsSustainability
dc.subject.keywordsCulture
dc.subject.keywordsDisability justice
dc.subject.keywordsCrip time
dc.subject.keywordsSidewalks
dc.subject.keywordsRamps
dc.subject.keywordsAdministration
dc.subject.keywordsInterdependence
dc.subject.keywordsCare
dc.subject.keywordsAccess aesthetics
dc.subject.keywordsRelaxed performance
dc.subject.keywordsSupport
dc.subject.keywordsPerformance studies
dc.subject.keywordsCritical disability studies
dc.subject.keywordsCritical infrastructure studies
dc.subject.keywordsDramaturgy
dc.subject.keywordsInclusion
dc.subject.keywordsInfrastructural politics
dc.subject.keywordsDisability arts and culture
dc.subject.keywordsWorld building
dc.subject.keywordsInfrastructural inversions
dc.subject.keywordsInfrastructural dramaturgy
dc.subject.keywordsFuturity
dc.subject.keywordsEcological time
dc.titleInfrastructural Dramaturgy and the Politics of Disability Art and Performance
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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