Naomi Bennett
Instructor
Affiliate Faculty, Women's and Gender Studies
Bachelor's Degree: Theater Directing, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2001)
Master of Fine Arts Degree: Television, Film, and Theatre Production, California State University, Los Angeles
(2015)
Doctoral Degree: Communication and Performance Studies, Minor Women's and Gender Studies, Louisiana
State Univeresity (2020)
Email: nbenn11@lsu.edu
Website: www.naomipbennett.org
ORCID: orcid.org
Office: 122A Prescott
Gender Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Research & Teaching
Naomi P. Bennett is a performance scholar and practicioner whose research and teaching interests include digital liveness, digitally-mediated performance, gendered performance in digital spaces, emergent pandemic performance, embodiment and disembodiment, installation art, immersive and interactve performance, physical devising, clown, gendered violence in films, and zombies studies. She teaches undergraduate introductory courses in communication and performance, as well as upper-level courses in digital performance in everyday life and zombie film studies. She has created numerous performance-as-research projects exploring intimacy, connection, and touch in both physical and virtual spaces.
Her teaching and pedagogy draw heavily on her own experience with un-schooling and democratic education, using a student-centered approach to incite curiosity and engagement in the classroom.
Bennett's current research and artistic practice is in the creation of interactive performance works that physically engage the audience-participant through technology. By an entangling of the physical and the virtual, Bennett’s work seeks to engage senses of touch, sight, and proprioception through traditionally disembodied mediums. Drawing on her training in physical theater, contact improvisation, and projection design, her work aims to re-centers the body and somatic experience in digitally mediated performance.
Undergraduate Courses
CMST 1061 – Fundamentals of Communication*
CMST 2040 – Introduction to Performing Literature
CMST 2060 – Public Speaking
CMST 3013 – Topics in Film Genres: Zombie Films
CMST 3040 – Performance Composition*
CMST 3900 – Digital Performance in Everyday Life
HNRS 2020 – Sex and Zombies*
HSS 1000 – Introduction to Research*
SCRN 4001 – Black Women in Film
WGS 2500 – Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies*
*Indicates courses certified as Communication Intensive
Awards & Honors
Outstanding Faculty/Affiliate Contribution, LSU Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Program (2023)
HopKins Black Box Award, Department of Communication Studies Graduate Student Organization, Louisiana State University (2017)
Southern States Communication Association Top Student Paper (2019)
Golden Eagle Film Festival, 2nd Place: Experimental Film (2014)
Publications
Bennett, Naomi P. “Telematic connections: sensing, feeling, being in space together.” International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, vol. 16, no. 3, Dec 2020, 245-268. http://doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2020.1827531.
McDonald, Bonny; Hamzehee, Joshua; Bennett, Naomi P.; and Smith, Montana. "Abbreviating Boal at the Louisiana Old State Capitol Museum: Using Image Theatre." Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal, vol. 5, Article 11, Nov 2020. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ptoj/vol5/iss1/11/.
Bennett, Naomi P. “‘aisthēsis’: Feeling Through the Skin of My Eyes.” Global Performance Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, June 2020, https://doi.org/10.33303/gpsv3n2a3.
Bennett, Naomi P. “Floating in Space: DisEmbodied Experiences of being Held Tightly by the Vast Emptiness in Turrell’s Perfectly Clear,” PARtake: Journal of Performance as Research, vol. 2, no. 2, article 5, February 2019.
Selected Creative Works
Rock Out with Your Schnoz Out: The COVID Play. HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory, March 2023, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 2023.
dist[Sense], devised with the ensemble. HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 2020. https://vimeo.com/showcase/7554297
(dis)embodied in space: an interactive art installation, devised with the ensemble. HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. 2019, https://vimeo.com/330611615
What is Carried by Clouds, video projection installation in conjunction with Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog x FLO/Fog x Beach, Emerald Necklace Conservatory, Jamaica Plain, MA, 2018. Made possible by a grant from Barbara and Amos Hostetter and Eugene M. Lang Foundation. Nominated for HUBweek’s Provocative Performance Art award (as part of local performance initiative).
Being Present, devised with the ensemble via long-distance communication (Cambridge, MA and Baton Rouge, LA). HopKins Black Box Performance Laboratory, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 2016. https://vimeo.com/249167463
Hold Me Tight, devised by the ensemble. Arena Theatre, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, 2014. https://vimeo.com/117528152
Wings, director. Written by Arthur Kopit. Complex Theatres, Hollywood Fringe Festival, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, 2013. Nominated for Best Dance and Physical Theatre.
Tearing the World Apart, devised with the ensemble and Barbara Ishida (writer). Complex Theatres, Hollywood Fringe Festival, Los Angeles, CA, 2012. Nominated for Best Dance and Physical Theatre.
pool, devised with the ensemble. Mobius Artist Group, Boston, MA, 2011.
Searching for Molly Pye. . ., devised with the ensemble. Green Street Studios, Cambridge, MA, 2010.