Rebecca Struch: Social Transformation through Embodied Performance
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December 2024: Social Transformation through Embodied Performance
with Rebecca Struch
This workshop invites participants to experience play and performance as critical methods that contribute to social transformation. Together, we will consider how ongoing coloniality (and its many modes of domination) strives to delegitimize the body as an expressive site of knowledge and a resource for cultivating liberatory relations in community. We will then turn toward embodied practices that seek to counter these delegitimizing logics, with an emphasis on praxes rooted in critical Black and Indigenous feminisms, anti and decolonial justice, working class liberation and anti-capitalist critique, and collective healing. The session will combine mini lectures, interactive discussions, and embodied practice to support a variety of learning styles and to encourage participants to build understanding together as a temporary ensemble. Participants will leave the workshop with a deepened sense of how to shift from being cultural consumers to being cultural producers – those who skillfully and collaboratively contribute to making the world(s) otherwise through the power of play and performance.
My work begins from the premise that play and performance belong to everyone! Therefore, no prior experience with theatre or performance is needed. Please wear comfortable clothes that allow you to move your body (no special clothing needed), and, if possible, please join from a location that will allow you to move beyond the frame of your screen. Please also bring a notebook and writing utensil for workshop notes and reflections.
Rebecca Struch (she/her) is a theatre maker, educator, and performance studies scholar focused on the politics of race and space in performances both on and off the stage. Her work is driven by a passion for community engagement and a commitment to social and cultural transformation. Rebecca takes every opportunity to create vibrant, accessible, and inclusive learning spaces that center performance and facilitate collective visioning for more just futures. She holds an MA in Applied Theatre Arts and is currently completing a PhD in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley.
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