JAKE TKACZYK: THE AESTHETICS OF AWE, MEANING, AND PLEASURE

Jake Tkaczyk, directing Die-Nasty the live, improvised, soap opera, Marc J Chalifoux

WEDNESDAY 22 JULY, 15:00-15:55

Lecture Room 2

This talk explores awe, pleasure, and meaning-making within contemporary performance practice. Moving through theatre, cabaret, improv, and postdramatic performance, Jake reflects on how humour, spectacle, contradiction, sentimentality, and excess can create powerful forms of collective experience and emotional resonance. Drawing from projects ranging from improvised soap opera to devised and experimental theatre, the presentation considers how audiences make meaning through laughter, confusion, beauty, irony, and emotional overwhelm… and what kinds of knowledge and connection emerge through those experiences. And we must not forget antipositivism… of course.