Photo courtesy of The New Yorker
Performance Studies Alumni Kate Berlant (M.A. '11) was interviewed for a piece in the New Yorker where she talks about her show Kate and how Performance Studies has played a part in her career.
Berlant says of her time studying Performance Studies, "I got into it because, at the end of my undergrad, I got really into reading about Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, and the ritual process. I got really hooked on this idea, which really informed the way I approached my standup, of spaces of liminality, these in-between places and places of nonexisting. I was just lit up from that. I was, like, “Oh, that’s what I’m doing. That’s where I am onstage. I’m between identities. I’m here, I’m not there. I’m me, I’m not me.” I was never striving for any kind of cogent autobiographical presentation of self."
Kate is playing at the Connelly Theater now through February 10th.