In addition to weekly public talks by Joseph Roach, the DeVane Lectures will also feature performances by various artists. The Civilians will be guests at a Sept. 26 class and will also perform a staged reading that evening at the Whitney Humanities Center.

DeVane Lectures to explore
impact of performing arts

The powerful impact of the performing arts on people and cultures will be both explored and demonstrated in the 2007 DeVane Lectures on “World Performance.”

The DeVane Lecture series is both the core of a course at the University and a program that is open to the public free of charge. Established in 1969, the series is named in honor of William Clyde DeVane, dean of Yale College 1939-1969.

This year’s DeVane Lecturer is Joseph Roach, the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater and English.  His talks will take place 11:35 a.m.-12:50 p.m. every Wednesday Sept. 5-Dec. 5 (except Nov. 21) in the auditorium of the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St. All are welcome.

The series will offer an introduction to the emerging field of performance studies. In the catalogue description of “World Performance,” Roach writes that the course “will be devoted to a study of those especially compelling events — in theater, dance, music, ritual and highlighted social practices — that bring together people from around the world as audiences and leave them changed by the experience.”

This year’s lectures will be coordinated with the 2007-2008 season of the World Performance Project at Yale. These will include special works by visitors and artists-in-residence, ranging from solos to ensembles and featuring MIND ( “Motion in Dialogue”), the dance-theater company directed by Emily Coates and Bronwen MacArthur. Coates is artistic director of the World Performance Project at Yale and a lecturer in theater studies.

In addition, the lectures will feature a sequence of performances organized in connection with the Yale Center for British Art exhibition “Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds,” which documents historic West Indian carnival. These events have been organized in cooperation with the Whitney Humanities Center, the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Divinity School, the Institute of Sacred Music and the Paul Mellon Center for British Art.

Roach, who is also professor of African-American studies, specializes in the history and theory of theater and dramatic literature. He has been a major force in developing the field of performance studies. In 2006, he received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to launch a research program in “World Performance” at Yale. His books and articles include “Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance,” which won the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association and the Calloway Prize from New York University; “The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting,” which won the Barnard Hewitt Award in Theatre History; and essays in Theatre Journal, The Drama Review, Theatre History Studies and other publications. His most recent book, titled “It,” explores the charismatic attraction exerted by abnormally interesting people.

Information about the individual talks in the DeVane Lecture series can be found in the Yale Calendar of Events (www.yale.edu/calendar) and on the World Performance Project website (www.yale.edu/wpp).

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DeVane Lectures to explore impact of performing arts

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