“Passion Flower” (oil on canvas) by John Francis Peters
Performance Studies MA Candidate Iván Espinosa's most recent essay "Landscapes and the Living" was published in NYU's Center for Experimental Humanities journal,"Caustic Frolic".
In this essay, Iván ponders what dramatic performance could look, sound, and feel like if the landscapes on stage were more than just scenery for human actors. A theater artist heavily influenced by Japanese Butoh dance, Iván argues that American drama needs to do a better job of recognizing the intelligence and consciousness of Earthly forces. Toward that end, Iván theorizes an ontology of the theater and of the body which he claims "could help shift the role that landscape plays in performance, and perhaps even awaken us to the other social, intelligent, living beings that are implicated, with us, in this earthly existence."