School of Theatre Lectures - Performing Nonviolence

The Graduate Programs in Theatre Studies presents
Dr. Paige McGinley
– Prize-winning author of Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism

“Performing Nonviolence: Sociodrama and Sincerity in the Civil Rights Movement”
Friday, February 24, 2017 1:00-2:30 P.M.
Room 249 – Fine Arts Building

Register online now or by email to avann@fsu.edu.
Registration will close Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017 at 5:00 PM.

PROGRAM INFORMATION: Dr. McGinley’s talk reveals the behind-the-scenes work of training for nonviolent direct action during the middle decades of the twentieth century. During this time, movement leaders deployed role-playing in order to prepare interracial groups for embodied protest. What kinds of knowledge were produced by these rehearsals? In considering the activist use of sociodrama, Professor McGinley offers a new point of view on mid-century debates surrounding the theory and practice of nonviolence.

Dr. Paige McGinley teaches in the Performing Arts Department at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Her research and teaching examines histories of American theater and performance in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on African American theater and popular entertainment. Professor McGinley’s first book, Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism (Duke University Press, 2014), is an exploration of the theatrical histories of blues performance; it was awarded the John W. Frick Book Award from the American Theater and Drama Society. Her current project, Rehearsing Civil Rights: Practicing the Law, 1938-1964, examines legal performance during the long civil rights era, and places paradigms of practice and rehearsal at the center of a study of court cases, nonviolent direct action, and theatrical events. With Dominika Laster, she edits the “Books” section of the journal TDR.