Matthew R Moore Associate Professor, Theatre |
Education
Teaching Interests
I teach a wide variety of courses in theatre history, theory, performance studies, directing and the first- year seminar program. Some of my favorite courses focus on collaborative performance creation, the 20th-century avant-garde, Irish theatre (a class that includes a three-week trip to Ireland) and the social construction of nature. All of my classes ask students to think about the impact theatrical practice can and does have on our ways of thinking and behaving as a society—from the processes we engage to make theatre to the bodies and voices that appear on our stages—every act of representation helps to form, not just reflect, a world. I try to cultivate the critical and creative tools necessary for you to make intentional and ethical choices as to how your artistic practice will contribute to our evolving reality.
Research, Scholarship or Creative/Artistic Interests
My dissertation was about the history of tragedy. I study Greek, Irish, and avant-garde theatre, but much of my recent scholarship has to do with the relationship between theatre and ecological ways of thinking. That is, I ask how theatre participates in the overlapping and mutually generative systems of human subjectivity, sociality and total environment. If how we interact with each other (and the rest of the nonhuman world) is a product of how we think, then I'm asking: what kind of thinking does our practice of theatre foster?
Creatively, my research is focused on group devising processes, site specific, and immersive theatre. Marx believed that our ways of making and consuming things determine our ways of interacting with each other. If theatre is a product, rehearsing a process of production, and performance an act of collective meaning-making, I am interested in productions that create new and politically charged communities engaged in the effort to articulate something about the real. In my production work and studio courses I strive to facilitate humane, ethical and empowering models of creation that open opportunities for social change.