Ethan Philbrick is a cellist, artist, and writer. His book, Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence, was recently published by Fordham University Press (April 2023). Recent projects include Slow Dances (with Anh Vo, Tess Dworman, Niall Jones, Tara Aisha Willis, nibia pastrana santiago, and Moriah Evans) at The Kitchen Video Viewing Room (2020) and Montez Press Radio (2022), DAYS (with Ned Riseley), Mutual Aid Among Animals at the Park Avenue Armory (2022), Song in an Expanding Field at The Poetry Project (2022), Case at Rashid Johnson and Creative Time’s Red Stage (2021), The Gay Divorcees (with Robbie Acklen, Lauren Bakst, Lauren Denitzio, Paul Legault, Joshua Thomas Lieberman, Ita Segev, and Julia Steinmetz) (2021), March is for Marches (with Morgan Bassichis) at Triple Canopy (2019), Disordo Virtutum at Museum of Art and Design (2020), 10 Meditations in an Emergency at The Poetry Project and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2019/2020), Choral Marx at NYU Skirball (2018), and Suite for Solo For Cello and Audience at Grey Art Gallery (2016). He holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University and has taught at Pratt Institute, Muhlenberg College, and New York University.
Graduate Courses 2024-2025
MFA Theatre
Performance Theory and Practice: Collaboration, Sex, Antagonism
Graduate Component—Year
7112
This year-long studio course turns to theories and practices of erotic and antagonistic collaboration as a way to expand and sharpen students’ approach to performance making. Students will engage with the work of performance artists (e.g. Linda Montano, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Piper, Julie Tolentino, Wu Tsang, and Autumn Knight) and theorists (e.g. Sigmund Freud, Audre Lorde, Lauren Berlant, Lee Edelman, and Fred Moten) to investigate the political dynamism of collaborative artmaking while also creating performances across a sequence of four units that increase in scale over the course of the year: “duo,” “collective,” “group,” and “party.” Students will read critical texts in preparation for most course sessions but all assignments will be creative and consist in making and showing interdisciplinary performances.