Rate My Professor Ryan Platt

Ryan Platt is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Colorado College. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College (2001), an M.A. from Cornell University (2007), and a Ph.D. from Cornell University (2010). Platt's scholarship centers on performance studies, emphasizing performances on and beyond the stage, such as performance art, new plays, contemporary dance, festivals, protests, sports, and games. Central concepts in his work include ritual, play, and performance. He explores contemporary dance through the practices of choreographers like Yvonne Rainer, William Forsythe, and Trajal Harrell, who interrogate the premium on immediacy in live performance via philosophy and media theory. Platt investigates movement categories, such as walking, that short-circuit progressive, goal-oriented impulses of high modernism to foster new forms of presence and visibility. His research addresses broader questions about the status of life and liveness in the biopolitical era, performance amid advanced capitalism—including themes of debt, precarity, and failure—and the financialization of daily life. Additionally, he examines cultures of cheap, lowbrow performance, including stunts, tricks, pranks, and jokes, as vital strategies for survival and transformation under capitalism.