In the middle of campus, six students are displaying their disciplined bodies to the University community — their disciplined bodies of graduate research.
The focus of the Department of Communication’s fifth annual “Across Disciplines: Research and Response” are the positive and negative aspects of discipline and the body.
The performance is a program with students from different majors at the University playing in the HopKins Black Box Theatre in 137 Coates Hall from Thursday, March 31 to Friday, April 1 at 7:30 p.m.
The program shows the research of six graduate students, said Melanie Kitchens, a communication studies graduate student, performer and event producer.
Kitchens said she chose this year’s focus of discipline and the body.
“A lot of what we do in performance centers around our bodies in space,” Kitchens said. “We have to be conscious of how our bodies act and react — the show is a collage of our bodies and how we use them.”
The group began preparing for the project in October, Kitchens said.
The hour-long performance will feature six performers, then cross-disciplinary scholars will act as respondents to the performances, lead a question and answer period and tie the show together, Kitchens said.
“The respondents are there to create discussion,” Kitchens said. “The open forum will let the audience think and talk about what they saw, rather than going home and forgetting about it.”
Kitchens said the show will include performances from herself, Lisa Flanagan, a speech communication instructor, Bess Matassa, a geography graduate student, Ben Powell, a communication studies graduate student, Roger Pippin, a communication studies graduate student and Tiffany Walter, an English student.
Kitchens’ interactive photographic installation and slide show is a high technology piece, as are many of the performances, she said.
Pippin said his martial arts-influenced performance, which includes breaking bricks, is an idiom of how the human body can be disciplined — either by karate or by culture.
The performance gives student more latitude and room to play, Pippin said.
The program is a great idea, said Lillian Bridwell-Bowles, director of Communications across the Curriculum, English professor and program respondent.
“Interdisciplinary research is a great thing to support at LSU,” Bridwell-Bowles said.
The performance gives students the opportunity to claim performance as an intellectual activity and stage their research, Trish Suchy, director of audio-visual arts in the department of communication said.
“Performance is both the thing we study and the way we study,” Suchy said.
Graduate students tend to stick with their specialization, but interdisciplinary programs like this give them new perspectives and introduce them to amazing people, Suchy said.
“It’s very accessible, informative and thoughtful…and the performers are visually stunning,” Kitchens said.
The show’s audience has been full every year, Suchy said. Half the people are there for entertainment and half are there for the intellectual aspect, she said.
“The night isn’t about whether the show was executed well,” Kitchens said, “but what the ideas are in terms of theme and performance in general.”