Layers of Perception

Much of my writing, teaching and directing focuses on how identities are conceived, performed, and policed. Over the past year, I have, as I will explain, found myself coming and going between writing, teaching and directing more rapidly and choppily than ever before. The now often hourly back and forth from classroom to rehearsal to computer—an experience I am sure several of you have shared—has, not surprisingly, concentrated my mind on continuities between performing, spectating, teaching and writing. All aspects of my work seem to have been struck by the tremors of a concept that has radically affected how I see, and encourage my students to see, identity in theatre. It is a concept which can be summed up in the phrase: "residues of perception." By "residues of perception," I mean the accumulated impressions that form in a person's consciousness and, in doing so, mutate their consciousness; the mental decisions and judgements we make, often without realizing we have made them; the powerful and often unconscious identifications that people engage in, again often unconsciously. As a medium which, fundamentally, enacts the compression of time and space, theatre is well placed to peel away accreted layers of perception to reveal "choice-histories;" to unfreeze the individual's past impressions, choices and identifications; to show how perception dovetails with enculturation. In short, theatre is well equipped to play the development of social mores against the forgotten fuel of that development. I am in my second year as a lecturer at John Moores University in Liverpool, England, prior to which I spent seven years in the United States—as a high school teacher in New York state, a counselor on summer drama programs in Maryland and Michigan, and as a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having studied dramatic literature, theory and criticism at Madison, I have taught these things—but have spent about half my time helping to produce what John Moores is renowned for: "new work." The term "new work" is often used at John Moores in opposition to the slicker productions