MST 222 Playing and Performing

Conventional theory likes to say that the essential quality of play is uselessness. Things that are "play," goes the theory, don't try to accomplish anything, don't have purpose, and don't create anything but themselves. Conventional theory's pretty lousy. Play has purpose and it certainly creates something in addition to itself. A lot of activity that we commonly address as play gives form to things that didn't have form. Yes, I mean to say that play per-forms. Conventional theory is worth some study, as is a variety of playing and performing activity, including, as one might expect, games and theatre, but also things one might not expect, like art, ritual, and political activism. Even what physicists do with things like the Large Hadron Collider. Studying theory and the phenomena that might, or not, illustrate theory is all well and good. I'm not doing a "playing and performing" class without doing some playing and performing.