Working Group:

“Age and Performance: Expanding Intersectionality” (2021)

As aging populations expand, increasing attention is paid to the fact that systemic cultural inequities restrict and repress older people. This has been highlighted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Normative cultural expectations surrounding age not only limit older people, but impact all ages across the life course. In comparison to other aspects of identity such as gender and race, age often remains ignored, “entrenched in implicit systems of discrimination without adequate movements of resistance to oppose them” (Gullette 15). This working group takes an intersectional approach, addressing the relationship of theatre and performance to understandings and constructions of age identity across the lifecourse. In this our fourth and final year, participants will prepare and share brief statements on "aging, performance, and the pandemic.” We will then as a group choose an output format, and using a range of collective creation techniques we will combine our statements to create a shareable product. We will also give a preview our TRiC/RTAC Special Issue on Age and Performance due out in Fall 2021, which the WG Chairs have edited (along with WG member Nuria Casado Gual) and to which other WG members have contributed.

Works Cited:

Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. Aged by Culture. University of Chicago Press, 2004.