Graduation Spotlight: Hannah Bryant, Performance Studies
Hannah Bryant will walk across the Reed Arena stage on Dec. 16, holding her diploma in performance studies. It’s a major she didn’t know existed as a freshman coming from Palestine in East Texas.
Bryant will be among the first graduates of Texas A&M University’s School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts, which is wrapping up its debut semester. Two other performance studies seniors — Elena Krawczyk and Alex Cordova — are graduating, as are master’s students Patton Small and Vanessa Cepeda.
A love of music led Bryant to performance studies. She said she became immersed in her music classes and in more unfamiliar territory like dance science.
Bryant, who earned performance studies’ distinguished undergraduate student award, said her professors have prepared her to treat anything as research. She recalled an assignment early in her college career that involved watching someone apply duct tape on a wall, and then having to argue why that was performance. Now, she says she can see everything as performance.
“We are performers, and when we insert ourselves into the world, how can we view it as a lens to understand people better and understand cultures better?” she said. “That’s a big thing I learned — different cultures have different performance, but also how we interact with those performances. It taught me a lot about myself and who I am as a performer, but also that everyone is performing, even if they wouldn’t claim it.”
Among her favorite college highlights is performing in a small ensemble, a marimba duet that played in the courtyard outside of the Liberal Arts and Humanities Building. For her capstone performance, Bryant teamed with another student to create a film that brought together all they had done in college.
“It had a topic about the transactional qualities of love,” she said. “We had to write about the theories we had learned to perform, and incorporate that into what we are interested in.”
Bryant is creative arts associate at First Baptist Bryan, and works with photography, videography and communications. She said she hopes to pursue a “dream job” that combines performance studies and her Christian faith.
As one of the first graduates in the newly formed school, Bryant said she is eager to see an increased presence for the arts on campus.
“It’s exciting to see all of the arts working together and have this small, little community where we can encourage each other,” she said. “Even graduating, I’m really excited to continue following what they do. Hopefully I’ll see collaboration within different departments and majors, like visualization and performance studies or performance studies and dance.”
