Sean Metzger is Associate Dean for Faculty and Students and a professor in the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. He has published Chinese Looks: Fashion, Performance Race (2014) and The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization (2020) both with Indiana University Press. He has coedited six collections of essays and a volume of plays and authored more than 50 articles and reviews. He is the former president of Performance Studies international and the editor of Theatre Journal.

Conference Abstract

“Seascapes and the Utopic Horizons of Performance Studies”

What are the potential uses of seascapes as analytical tools for theatre and performance studies? This talk investigates several horizons of possibility in relation to the development of oceanic paradigms that might envision Nordic cultural production in new ways. Recent activities that concern the region, such as China’s plans for a polar silk road, will be considered alongside theoretical issues. The theoretical discussion is anchored in a series of provocations provided by such emergent methodologies as ecodramaturgy and performance climates in an effort to think through both utopic and dystopic visions of the sea as they pertain to and are shaped through performance.