Jon Foley Sherman
Professional Biography
Jon Foley Sherman is a teacher, scholar, performer, and director. A graduate of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama at Northwestern University, he was one of Jacques Lecoq’s last students at L’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq and has studied theatre at Middlebury College and BADA. His articles have been published by Performance Research, New Theatre Quarterly, and Theatre Topics, and his performance and book reviews appear in Theatre Journal and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. An award-winning actor and deviser, he has performed in Chicago, New York, Switzerland, and Washington, DC.
Jon teaches in the fields of performance histories, performance theory, acting, movement, devising, and directing. He has taught at Beloit College and at most of the colleges and universities in the Chicago area, as well as in Vermont and Switzerland. In addition to teaching at the university level, he gives workshops to professional performers and is one of the only teachers in the United States that uses the original neutral mask.
Education
- B.A. Middlebury College
- Diplôme, l’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq
- M.A. Northwestern University
- Ph.D. Northwestern University
Research Interests
Phenomenology, Ethics, Actor Training, Performance Theory
Publications
"Plural Intimacy and Micropublic Performances, "Performance Reserch 16.4, December 2011
“Steven Berkoff, Choral Unity, and Modes of Governance,”
New Theatre Quarterly 26.3, August 2010
“The Practice of Astonishment: Phenomenology, Devising, and Jacques Lecoq,”
Theatre Topics 20.2, September 2010
Stage Presence, book review, TDR: The Drama Review, 53:3 (T203), Fall 2009
Les Éphémères, performance review,
Theatre Journal, 61.1, March 2009
Multi-Media, book review,
Theatre Journal, 60:4, December 2008
Theatre of Movement and Gesture, book review,
TDR: The Drama Review, 52:2 (T198), Summer 2008
Presentations
JURIED CONFERENCE PAPERS
ASTR, Seattle (2010)
“Distance, Authority, Absolution: Rehearsing Insurrectionary Violence”
PSi, Toronto (2010)
“Plural Intimacy in Micropublic Performances”
ATHE, Los Angeles (2010)
“The Mediation of Perception: Real Space, Imagined Place, and Fake Lake”
ATHE, New York (2009)
“The Practice of Astonishment: Phenomenology,
Jacques Lecoq, and ‘A Pedagogy of Risk’”
Performing Presence: From the Live to the Simulated,
Exeter University (2009)
“Spaces of Presence”
PSi, Copenhagen (2008)
“Absent Touches: Space, Documentation, and Performance”
ASTR, Phoenix, AZ (2007)
“Falling Together: Steven Berkoff, Choral Unity,
and Modes of Governance”
Defining Space Conference, University College, Dublin (2007)
“Performing the Unseen: Space, Place, and
Imaginative Bodies on Stage”
Disciplining Interdisciplinarity Conference,
Columbus, OH (2007)
“Where We Disappear: Human Geography and
the Performing Body”
Course Information
Site-Responsive Theatre
Fundamentals of Acting
Staging War in the 20th Century
Directing
The Politics of Devised Performance
Script Analysis
Devising
World Theatre II: 1650 - 1945
Intermediate Acting Workshop: Realism
Intermediate Acting Workshop: Presentational Acting
Movement Intentionality for the Stage
Problems of Style: Bouffon
Presence in Western Postmodern Performance
Neutral Mask
The Body and Theatrical Space
Text and Theatrical Space
The Chorus in Theatrical Space
