Intertextuality Performance Process in "Love is Blind/Hate is Deaf,"
an original piece by Limestone College Theatre
This past spring, my Gender and Race as Performance class created and performed an original piece, entitled, “Love is Blind/Hate is Deaf.” During the first part of the semester, the students collected a wide variety of texts including, video clips, movie quotes, poems, songs, oral history interviews, political speeches, cartoons, and personal narratives. After making connections between these texts and analyzing the gender and race issues within these texts, we began the journey of creating a text from these pieces.
We used various intertextuality performance techniques to create the show, and here is one such example. I asked the students to bring in hard copies of their favorite song lyrics from texts we had collected throughout the semester. We cut up the lyrics randomly and scattered the pieces on the floor in a massive pile. The students were given one class period to put the pieces together silently to create an original poem on race. The result was an inventive, quirky, beautiful piece of original poetry.
This is but one example of the performance techniques we used to create the show. In our session at SCTA, I would like my students to perform selections from the piece and then lead students in an intertextuality performance technique exercise.
Our show received wonderful praise from KC/ACTF adjudicators (who have highly recommended the show to advance). We would like to share our production, experiences, and rehearsal techniques from this unique, rewarding performance process.
Please view the following link on youtube to view exerpts from the production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5OHepBQc6k
Or you can do a youtube search for “love is blind/hate is deaf” and the link will come up that way.
Thank you for your consideration of our proposed session!
Carrie Ameling, Ph.D.
Limestone College
1115 College Drive
Gaffney, SC 29340
864-838-8082