Mary Anderson

Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar

Media Profile

"Charting the creative process from rehearsal to production and then archive, I analyse the shifts in performers’ use of languages and its effects on an audience’s relationship to the performance environment."

Mary Anderson a doctoral candidate in performing arts at the University of California, Davis, has won a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship to undertake research at the University of Tasmania in Australia in 2007-08. Mary will arrive in July to commence the final case study for her dissertation, entitled Interfacing with the Geographical Unconscious: Site Based Performance and the Making of New Metaphors to Live By.

In affiliation with the University of Tasmania and the Hobart Mountain Festival, Mary will explore the development and interaction of live web-casted performances between Hobart, Tasmania, and locations in the United States, including California, Hawaii, Florida and Wisconsin.

“My research will document how contemporary performance negotiates the historical metaphors defining the Tasmanian landscape, how this re-imagining of place is communicated to locations in the U.S., and what effects this intercultural exchange will have on relations between two countries.”

The research examines site-based performance practice created within an ecological environment. “It was clear that I needed to study in Hobart, not only to complete the final case study for my dissertation, but also to study the way that the Community, Place and Change research area at the University of Tasmania coordinates research between the arts and sciences, so that I might bring this knowledge back to the U.S.”

Mary has an MA degree from California State University, Sacramento (2003) and an MFA from the University of California, Davis (2007) and while completing these degrees spent time in Australia exploring the Australian arts scene.

“The case studies of my larger work offer an examination of contemporary performances in Alice Springs, Northern Territory and Hobart, Tasmania: geographic locations with complex histories of settlement; powerful ecological environments that bear the living legacy of those histories.”

She is an accomplished performer, both as an actor and dancer, and her achievements have been acknowledged through a number of grants, including UC Davis Cross Cultural Centre Grant (2006) and UC Davis Humanities Institute Grant (2006), as well at the University of California Office of the President Dissertation Fellowship (2006).

Mary’s future plans include completion of her PhD degree for publication, securing employment as a faculty member teaching Performance Studies and helping in the growth and building of the arts in the U.S.