PPP: Work at UT

In February 2005, graduate and undergraduate students from the Theatre and Dance department performed two short living newspaper-inspired scenes in conjunction with the inaugural conference of the UT Law School's Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, entitled "Working Borders: Linking Debates about Insourcing and Outsourcing of Capital and Labor." These scenes, collectively titled "Living Boders," were the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Performance as Public Practice program and the Rapoport Center to integrate performance into a wider scholarly discussion about the global marketplace and human rights. PPP students Shannon Baley, Megan Sullivan, and Kevin Hodges, as well as director Claire Canavan, a MFA student in Drama and Theatre for Youth, worked with other graduate and undergraduate students in a variety of disciplines to devise, script, and stage two short scenes that dramatized the complex debates about labor's flow across borders and the very human costs that result. Using Federal Theatre Project-era living newspapers as their template, these students worked to bring articles from contemporary news sources (like the New York Times and the Washington Post) to dramatic life as well as demonstrate that performance can be a viable alternative venue for participating in a serious scholarly discussion of the insourcing and outsourcing of labor. These performances can be viewed at the Working Borders page.