Performance Art (Spring 2021)

Performance Art (Spring 2021)

Jun. 05 - Jul. 24
10:00am - 1:00pm Central Time

Instructor: Kestutis Nakas

Astonishing performance happens when the performer takes resolute action to resolve an overwhelming challenge and is thereby transformed . Discover the pleasures of rendering your distilled life experience into playable actions. Create a world of movement, sound and imagery that amplifies you message . Access your imagination and subconscious while embracing risk. In this course, writers will create and perform an original piece of performance art, suitable for a variety of venues: online, cabaret, theatre, film, gallery, and more. You will also mine varied performance traditions, (avant-garde, vaudeville, comedy, religious ritual, circus, pop culture, etc.) digging for valuable methods, insights and modes of presentation to enhance your message. Students will leave the class with an original performance work and the tools to create more. The course culminates with an online performance of student work on July 24.

Kestutis Nakas is a writer, performer, director, and teacher whose work has been presented at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Yale Rep, La Mama, Dixon Place, P.S. 122, St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, 8BC, The Kitchen, Highways, Prop Theatre and numerous other national and regional venues. Performance works and plays include RIP, No Bees for Bridgeport, Railroad Backward, Remembrance of Things Pontiac, My Heart, My President, Hunger and Lightning, and  The Andrew Carnegie Story. In the 1980's, he was active in New York's East Village performance scene and was Artistic Director of Gates of Dawn, which showcased New York performers. He has taught at NYU, UCLA, CUNY, and the University of New Mexico. He is Professor Emeritus of Theatre at The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University in Chicago. His performance text about urban beekeeping, No Bees for Bridgeport, was  published in Animal Acts, Performing Species Today, an anthology of new performance edited by Una Chaudhuri and Holly Hughes, University of Michigan Press. A bilingual edition of his critically acclaimed tragi-comic cycle: When Lithuania Ruled The World  was published by Aukso Zuvys (Gloden Fish), Vilnius , in February 2017. In December 2017, he presented Channel D a new solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In June 2018, in honor of the centennial of Lithuanian independence, he presented a staged reading of all four parts of When Lithuania Ruled the World  at HOWL Happening, New York City. Kestutis Nakas lives in Chicago with his wife and son.  
 

20% Early Bird Registration Discount Available when students register by March 31, 2021

Classes will be held via Zoom. Instructors will send out Zoom invites one day before class begins. We encourage students to set up a Zoom account for themselves before class if they have not already to ensure when class begins you are able to jump straight into the art!