Cole Matson (PhD candidate)

Hometown
Houston, Texas, USA

Education
BFA, Drama & Psychology, New York University
BA, Theology, Oxford University

Thesis topic
Cole's dissertation, 'Towards a Eucharistic Theatre: Communion and the Moral Responsibility of the Theatre Artist" (under the supervision of Trevor Hart) looks at the ethics of the artist-audience relationship in the theatre, especially focusing on 20th-century performance art. It proposes the Eucharistic liturgy as a model for building both horizontal communion between artist and audience, and vertical communion between this theatrical community and God. The dissertation explores the ethical problems that arise from fundamental assumptions behind certain types of performance art - such as that art is a 'free space' outside the requirements of morality, that the artist must place himself outside society in order to be effective, and that the artist's primary responsibility is to express himself fully - and examines how they can lead to 'audience abuse', i.e., the intentional mistreatment of one's fellow human beings in their role as audience members. The dissertation argues instead that live performance is actually more effective when the artist understands himself to be part of a shared community with his audience, and that this understanding of shared community also leads to moral treatment of the audience. In addition, both artist and audience are drawn closer together as a community when they understand themselves to be subject to the same moral law and share, through the performance, an experience of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.

Other information
Before starting at St Andrews, Cole served as Master of Ceremonies at the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy, Docent and Scholar-in-Residence at the Kilns (C.S. Lewis's Oxford home), and Vice-President of the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. Before that, he worked as an actor and arts administrator in Baltimore for three years. Cole is active as an actor and producer with Mermaids, the University of St Andrews dramatic society, and is a regular contributor to Transpositions. He continues to serve as the Reviews Editor of the Journal of Inklings Studies, and occasionally writes on his own blog, The Unicorn Triumphant, where he enjoys exploring the idea of a monastic theatre community.

 

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