Chris Grobe's Avatar

Chris Grobe

@cgrobe.bsky.social

Theorist/historian of performance. ART OF CONFESSION (http://bit.ly/2BALZDt). Now writing on tech and the arts, politics and performance.

490 Followers  |  309 Following  |  821 Posts  |  Joined: 01.09.2023
Posts Following

Posts by Chris Grobe (@cgrobe.bsky.social)

Preview
Episode 8: Launch - Shell Game | iHeart <p>HurumoAI finally sets sail in the Season 2 finale, and we find out how the world responds to a startup led by AI agents. The company explores new financing avenues and charts the next course for th...

Fwiw, Graeber's book is central to this season-ending episode of a podcast about AI and the "minimal viable company." The podcast itself is ... a mixed bag. www.iheart.com/podcast/1119...

14.02.2026 15:14 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

That's an awful lot of drama!

13.02.2026 19:27 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Singing by Herself by Amelia Worsley | Hardcover | Cornell University Press Singing by Herself reinterprets the rise of literary loneliness by foregrounding the female and feminized figures who have been overlooked in previous histories of solitude. Many of the earliest recor...

Too bad Amelia Worsley isn't on here...

www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

13.02.2026 19:08 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Gosh, it sure would be nice to have a section about books and ideas, staffed with people who actually know things about this stuff...

08.02.2026 21:50 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

I want you to guess whether this article draws a single substantive connection to "19th-century philosophy."

08.02.2026 21:47 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1

β€œI promise” is always my favorite example to teach. People get the contingency and fragility of a promise, whereas they’re prone to exaggerating the absolute strength of other performatives (wedding vows, declarations of war, etc.)

02.02.2026 02:03 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
ASAP/17: Get It Together! Madison, WI | October 15-17, 2026

Happy February! Now’s a great time to submit your proposals for ASAP/17!

www.artsofthepresent.org/conference/3...

01.02.2026 13:20 β€” πŸ‘ 11    πŸ” 9    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
"Many of the large grants, including those to the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education, the University of Texas and the University of North Carolina, were noncompetitive, meaning the recipients were selected to apply, according to two people familiar with the applications."

"Many of the large grants, including those to the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education, the University of Texas and the University of North Carolina, were noncompetitive, meaning the recipients were selected to apply, according to two people familiar with the applications."

Trump's NEH: "Bring back merit! And by 'merit' we mean, of course, our handpicked allies receiving noncompetitive awards."

16.01.2026 03:45 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Look, I will die on this hill:

Podcasts are audio files distributed for free via RSS.

Videos are not podcasts. Streaming audio on subscription-based platforms is not a podcast.

16.01.2026 03:12 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I’m sure the press’s marketing team will have the same idea. 🀠

15.01.2026 19:14 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Today's the day I finally start writing a part of my book I've been working myself up to for months. It's about non-academic (esp. elite liberal) theories of political performance, and it's called...

"Ezra Klein, Performance Theorist."

15.01.2026 16:25 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Handing Out Free Tickets, Mamdani Says Theater Should Not Be β€˜a Luxury’

I did not have β€œFree Experimental Theater for All” on my political wishlist, but now … I might be a single-issue voter?

(The tickets being handed out here are for the Under the Radar festival)

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/t...

10.01.2026 13:02 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I promise this is not a scholarly version of that β€œhatred of AI is low-key racist” take

08.01.2026 23:32 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Botface | Critical Inquiry: Vol 52, No 2 Abstract Evidently, people love watching others pretend to be robots. This article uncovers hidden links between this practice and blackface performance, then theorizes the two as similarly metatheatr...

I just published a thing I’m proud of:

An article called β€œBotface” about (1) how humans behave when impersonating robots; (2) how it derives from blackface; and (3) how it contributes to the weird racialization of robots and AI.

Please read, please share!

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

08.01.2026 23:24 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
A cozy chair and ottoman sit in a light-filled window bay, where various cacti and succulents soak up the sun.

A cozy chair and ottoman sit in a light-filled window bay, where various cacti and succulents soak up the sun.

I love my reading nook so much.

07.01.2026 17:49 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0
The opening paragraph of "The Deep Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots"

The opening paragraph of "The Deep Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots"

Two concluding paragraphs from "The Deep Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots"

Two concluding paragraphs from "The Deep Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots"

Five years ago today, I was slated to teach theories of play in a course called "The Performance of Politics." Instead, we sat and watched rioters storm the Capitol.

A year later, I published "The Deep, Dark Play of the US Capitol Riots." I still stand by its conclusions.

doi.org/10.1080/1352...

06.01.2026 13:24 β€” πŸ‘ 18    πŸ” 7    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
The year politics became brainrot You don’t bring a persuasive argument to a gunfight.

Excuse me while I convene a performance studies conference entirely about this quote:

"For Kirk and for much of society today, words are not expressions with referents, but rather, performative speech acts with specific functions β€” in his case, owning the libs."

www.theverge.com/policy/84960...

31.12.2025 21:27 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

This is perfectly accurate as a representation of SLACs a half-century-plus ago, including the movement of star pupils into squishy faculty positions β€” but not, as you say, a representation of grad education anywhere ever.

But it DOES feature a top-notch cat performance, so … even Stephen?

30.12.2025 04:40 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

This is exactly the question being prepped for debate by the characters in Emmanuelle Mattana's fascinating play TROPHY BOYS.

... you know, just in case anyone boycotting CBS wants to read some drama: playlabtheatre.com.au/web/viewer.h...

21.12.2025 03:14 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image

We are so excited to reveal the ASAP/17 logo for our upcoming conference in Madison, WI, on Oct. 15-17! Stay tuned for the CFP!

17.12.2025 16:59 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1

Although an interesting exception (?) might be a production like ERS’s Gatz, which I think was toured and revived with identical sets and costumes for many, many years.

Broadway touring companies likely do the same, but without the stuff ever having gone into storage.

12.12.2025 19:55 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Holiday shows (e.g., annual productions of A Christmas Carol) typically reuse sets and costumes β€” or, at least, costume *designs* when the cast changes from year to year.

Other than that, I’m guessing it doesn’t happen

12.12.2025 19:51 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
Professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams A small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful AI platforms.

Credit where credit is due: this a thoughtful, non-doom-hype-y article on higher ed and AI. In the year of our lord 2025!

Bonus points for not mentioning a single Ivy. Colleges mentioned include: Wyoming, UCSD, Western Ontario, Vanderbilt, and Illinois State.

www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

12.12.2025 16:42 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

As Raymond Williams observed, β€œWe come to tragedy by many roads.”

26.11.2025 01:45 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Seconding this as a Mariners convert from Cubs fandom -- it was obviously the curse-breaking that cursed the nation, not the Cubs winning. Only the Cubs losing in the WS -- preferably to the Mariners -- could undo it. Curse lifted/restored!

10.10.2025 22:11 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

There’s a good poem about this:

www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

22.09.2025 12:46 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

(Nods sagely) The Three vs. The Many

25.08.2025 03:42 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

In a nutshell the modern actor is someone trying to ditch bad forms of β€œmechanicity” (basically, that of the clockwork automaton) in favor not of β€œorganic” β€œhuman” expression but in pursuit of a different, refined β€œmechanicity” (that of cybernetic, β€œresponsive” machines). Welcome to my TED talk…

20.07.2025 18:17 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0