 “I am passionate about the connections between the practice and scholarship of performance. I believe the study of and the creation of theatre creates dynamic possibilities to engage with world cultures, history, and politics in meaningful and engaged ways. I am excited to be joining the passionate team of theatre artists and educators at the University of Kentucky.”
BA – Kalamazoo College (theatre and women’s studies); MFA – University of Hawai'i at Manoa (Asian performance – directing); PhD – Interdisciplinary Arts from Ohio University focusing on theatre and performance studies with a certificate in Women’s Studies and concentration in Southeast Asian Studies. Jennifer has received many grants and fellowships for her performance work and research on Asian performance. Her dissertation research, on women and traditional performance in Bali, was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship to Indonesia. The dissertation, “Body of Tradition: Becoming a Woman Dalang in Bali,” is not only about her experience going through the training and ritual initiations to become a practicing dalang, or puppet-master, in Bali, but takes a critical look at the notion of tradition and the representation of gender in Balinese performing arts. The research intertwines interviews with other women dalangs, observations of performances, involvement in the culture, and the study of other Balinese arts such as dance and topeng. Jennifer received a seed grant from the Digital Asian Project at University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne and Asian Educational Media Services to record and produce part of her dissertation research as a documentary video. Jennifer has presented at national and international conferences, and has published in Theatre Journal, Puppetry International Magazine, and has a chapter in a book that was jointly published by the Yale Indonesia Forum and Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University Press.
In New York City and regionally she has worked extensively as a director and teacher with a special emphasis on new plays and physically based performance. She has combined Asian theatre into innovative productions of The Ghost Sonata, The Bacchae, and others. Other recent productions include the new play Hysterical: A Short History of the Vibrator at the New York International Fringe Festival, the musical Jane Eyre for Cornerstone University, and a play for children called The Puppet Princess that combined Balinese dance, music, and puppetry. She was a member of the 2005 Lincoln Center Director’s Lab that focused on new play development and working in collaboration. As part of the lab she taught a workshop on Viewpoints and directed a staged reading of a play by Japanese playwright Suzue Toshiro. Last spring she workshopped a multimedia puppet performance called Shriek! about a Balinese woman warrior at the Looking Glass Theatre in NYC.
Jennifer has taught acting, directing, theatre history, voice and movement at several colleges, universities, theatres, and schools. She has given invited talks and workshops on Asian performance at the Michigan Oriental Arts Society, Kalamazoo College, Notre Dame, and for the Shakespeare: Page, Stage, Engage at New York University. She has been active with Association for Asian Performance (AAP), American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and Mid-American Theatre Conference (MATC). Her research and teaching interests are: world theatre, performance studies, gender and performance across cultures, viewpoints, queer theory and performance, Asian theatre for Western actors, intercultural theatre, visual culture theory, and others. |
Academics
