Anderson gets Coger Award for performance studies

John Dennis Anderson, associate professor and interim chair of the Communication Studies Department, has been named a winner of the 2013 Leslie Coger Award for Distinguished Performance by the National Communication Association’s Performance Studies Division.

A performance study scholar, Anderson regularly performs one-person shows nationally as authors Henry James, William Faulkner, Washington Irving, Lynn Riggs, and Robert Frost.

John Dennis Anderson, interim chair of Communication Studies, in costume as William Faulkner. (Courtesy photo)

The NCA award coincides with Anderson preparing for performances September 20 and 21 at 7:00 pm in the Multipurpose Room of Emerson’s Max Mutchnick Campus Center, where he will adapt scenes from The Mutual Friend, a biographical novel about Charles Dickens. The same performance will take place at Kennesaw State University in Georgia September 26–28.

Anderson as Henry James (Courtesy photo)

Anderson won the Coger Award with D. Soyini Madison, a performance studies professor at Northwestern University.

The NCA said in a letter to Anderson that he and Madison were each recognized for “extraordinary contributions as a teacher, performer, and scholar. Together, they represent the strength of our future through their enactments of historical texts, voices that would otherwise be lost, and creative achievements based on discipline and a deep understanding of aesthetic form.”