Associate
Professor of Performance
and Communication Arts Kirk Fuoss likes
to create communities.
Fuoss, who earned his undergraduate degree
at Baylor and his graduate degrees at the University and North Carolina
and the University of Louisiana, says his most rewarding experience
as a teacher occurred in fall 2004 when he directed Mary Zimmerman's
adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
“What set
that experience apart was the quality of relationships that
emerged as we collectively labored on the production,” he explains. “We
were transformed--if only temporarily--by our willingness to open ourselves
up both to Ovid's timeless tales of love and loss and to each other. We
became less cynical and selfish, more open and loving. That, I believe,
is the essence of community.”
Fuoss enjoys working with students
at all levels, but especially with students in introductory classes. “The
growth and the breakthroughs that occur in those classes are seldom matched in upper-level
courses,” he
says. “I can leave my classroom feeling that no one in the world
has a job half as wonderful as mine.”
Fuoss
defines performances as “heightened occasions involving display.” He
is a scholar of what he calls “a particularly horrific set of performances--the
thousands of lynchings that occurred in the U.S. between 1880 and 1935.” Through
his award-winning scholarship he contends that lynchings were “not
merely extralegal executions but carefully choreographed theatres
of violence in which the display of putting to death
the victim was every bit as important as the act.”
In his leisure time, Fuoss enjoys tennis, scuba diving and working
on the hobby farm he shares with his partner of 22 years.
