Tony Perucci

Assistant Professor
Performance and Cultural Studies

Current Research:
I am finishing a book on Paul Robeson, titled Tonal Treason: Paul Robeson and the Politics of Cold War Performance.  The book considers how discursive practices articulated theatricality, in conjunction with Communism, blackness, and psychopathology, as constituting a treasonous position.  However, in my reading of Robeson’s appearance before HUAC and at a concert in Peekskill, NY, I argue that Robeson and other activists mobilized performance as a means of challenging the emergence of Cold War American imperialism.  My current research is for a book titled Theatres of Rupture: On the Politics and Aesthetics of Presence.   This project approaches the notion of "rupture" from two directions.  On the one hand, I am interested in performances that rupture the aesthetic frame in theatrical productions.  Building on the work of Brecht, Artaud, and Chaikin, I am investigating how contemporary performance works engage the politics and aesthetics of presence by playing with the solidity of theatrical illusion.  This section begins with an investigation of the experience of presence in performance (that of the audience and of the performer).  Based on interviews with members of SITI Company, choreographer and viewpoints originator Mary Overlie, and on my training with SITI in Viewpoints and Suzuki, I argue that the phenomenon of presence (as a dynamic of time and space) enacts a rich political aesthetic.  This study also includes a chapter on my work with Opovoempé, a Brazilian performance collective based in Sao Paulo, with whom I collaborated in the summer of 2007.  In this section, I consider the staging of "rupture" in my work with Opovoempé, as in the work of contemporary theatre and performance artists, including Forced Entertainment, Holy Body Tattoo, Goat Island, Adrian Piper, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco.

Recent Publications:
“Guilty as Sin: The Trial of Reverend Billy and the Exorcism of the Sacred Cash Register.”  Text and Performance Quarterly.  Forthcoming, 2008.

“Performance Complexes: Abu Ghraib, Race, and the Culture of Military Globalism.” Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict.  eds. Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon.  Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.

“’Straight Down the Line’: Noir-ing the Stage with Double Indemnity.”  Performing Adaptations.  Eds. Michelle Macarthur, Lydia Wilkinson, & Keren Zaiontz.  Cambridge Scholars Press, Forthcoming.

Areas of Specialization:
Media and Performance
Performance Composition
Physical Theatre
Anti-Capitalist Activism
Avant Garde Theatre
Critical Race Theory
Cold War Culture

perucci@unc.edu

Office:  962-4944