
Studies in Mas & Carnival Performance 3
Studies in Mas & Carnival Performance 3
GENERAL INFO
Together, we will think about mas and Carnival performance as a practice, methodology, analysis, event, and object. How might our theorizing be thought of as performance? As a practice mas is embodied, social and relational - a corporeal activation and a theoretical method that moves toward analysis and way of being in the world. The event of mas extends its temporalities beyond Carnival and into daily life. As an object of study, mas is a signifying object that attests to and exceeds the materiality of mas performance. Taking flight from the late Tony Hall’s “Jouvay Process for Dancers”, emergent from Jouvay Popular Theatre Process, “discovered out of a desire to see and describe, in performance values, the mechanisms of awakening and self-realization that are embedded in the emancipation traditions”, this thinking invokes a Jouvay Process in which mas practice, storytelling, text, and theorization give breadth to the nuances, dynamics, and ethos of mas and Carnival performance. We will consider temporality, spirituality and religion, gender and sexuality in the context of the Caribbean and Carnival, and mas as a way of knowing, un-knowing, and being in the world. This study will be embedded with a “deciphering practice”- an embodied praxis to render possibilities of new strategies and new shapes in the "making" of mas and Carnival performance. All sessions will be recorded for independent viewing.

