Tom Grady. Bristol Community College Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Tom Grady. Bristol Community College By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Gabriel Graetz and John Hardin in Hangmen at the Gamm. Photo: Cat Laine Topdog|Underdog Suzan-Lori Parks (7 Sept. – 1 Oct.) Hangmen Martin McDonagh (2 – 26 Nov.) It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play adapted by Joe Landry (9 – 24 Dec.) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee (25 Jan. – 18 Feb.) Twelfth Night William Shakespeare (21 Mar. - 14 Apr.) Doubt: A Parable John Patrick Shanley (9 May – 2 Jun.) The 39th season of the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) was notable for its polished, self-assured productions. Their mission purports to “engage seriously with the most important issues of our time.” The use of “our time” is relative since this slate of plays was apparently less focused on shining a light, at least directly, upon current issues than bringing bankable titles to Rhode Island. Not a serious problem, but it is notable that two of the plays were recent Broadway revivals ( Topdog/Underdog won 2023’s Best Revival Tony Award, and Doubt: A Parable earned three 2024 Tony nominations). Certainly, the productions drew parallels to our cultural moment, but the connections were associative rather than direct. The issues are still important, but that is where their currency ended. And perhaps that was enough, especially given the quality of the productions. For the season opener, the Gamm offered a serviceable version of Suzan Lori Parks’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Topdog/Underdog . The performers in this two-hander, Anthony T. Goss and Marc Pierre, while compelling, had yet to find their way in acting and reacting in the same production. Most memorable was Michael McGarty’s stunner of a set, which completely gutted and transformed the Gamm’s interior into the world’s saddest rooming house. But first, the audience was funneled down a dim, David Lynch-y hallway, replete with scuzzy walls and electric candle sconces, one of which was fritzing on and off, only to open out to an elevated, square playing area, the audience seated on four sides. The boxing ring motif, replete with Klieg lights, pitted the play’s two brothers in the ring as they bobbed and weaved their way to the play’s inevitable knockout. While the play is almost 24 years old, its withering hopelessness for Black people’s access to the American Dream still resonated. Next up was Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, helmed by artistic director Tony Estrella. The lavish production values and impeccable casting made this a roundhouse of theatrical showmanship. The wraparound soundscape and noirish lighting gave weight to McDonagh’s black comedy about psychos and dum-dums meting out justice. McDonagh’s elliptical dialogue provided a platform for some serious showboating, and Estrella found just the right ensemble, led by Steve Kidd, who were put to the test with some elaborate stage combat as they charged up and down Jessica Hill Kidd’s sturdy, two-tiered set. It was this season’s highlight. The staged radio version of It’s a Wonderful Life is apparently enshrined as the Gamm’s annual holiday tradition and served an easy, lived-in feel. It’s just the story performed with the actors behind mic stands, peppered with some witty commercial breaks. The standout voice work belonged to character actors Fred Sullivan and Ernie Bishop, who often switched roles, sometimes midsentence. While Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is arguably one of the most important plays of the 20th century, it is also a long, relentless battering ram of invective, and in the wrong hands, it is torturous for all the wrong reasons. The Gamm has earned its stripes to take on this behemoth. Much credit must go to director Steve Kidd for creating such tight focus and momentum. Kidd positioned the subtext for these four characters to be in a fierce competition to be seen. He staged their desperation in restless stage movement without it ever looking like “blocking.” The two leads, especially Tony Estrella and Jeanine Kane, have deepened their craft over the years; they were inside their characters instead of pushing them. This highly energized production had an extended run. Next was the Gamm’s deliriously silly take on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night . There was a moment of dread, though. Early on, an audience member was dragged on stage for a quick two-step. This was a big uh-oh for seasoned Rhode Island theatergoers who don’t necessarily appreciate “interactive” bits, such as delivering a monologue about aging while patting the bald head of an unwitting and mortified audience member. Thankfully, this tactic was kept to a minimum. Instead, this more assured production drew upon the Gamm’s skills with live music and galumphing farce. The set itself, a pair of shipping containers with swinging crate doors, escalated the absurd and showstopping entrances and exits of Malvolio, Toby Belch, and company. The Gamm concluded its season with John Patrick Shanley’s masterpiece, Doubt . This production was an apotheosis for one actor’s career. Phyllis Kay played the imperious Sister Aloysius, and as they say, it was a part she was born to play. Kay is small in stature but booming in presence, employing her voice’s lower register to decimate anyone who challenges her surety. But there was vulnerability, too, eking its way out in the play’s quiet, final moments, and it was utterly shattering. Kay knows her subtext and was ready to parry in the many bouts that occur during this investigation of veracity. The remainder of the cast was less assured. Perhaps the choice to end this season with this play had less to do with the Gamm’s mission than it did with celebrating a local artist at the height of her craft. Season 39 demonstrated the promise of a sustainable future for the Gamm and its milestone 2024-25 40th season: The Effect by Lucy Prebble, Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, Girls & Boys by Dennis Kelly, Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis, Hamlet by William Shakespeare. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) TOM GRADY is a playwright whose work has been staged by notable companies like Trinity Repertory Company and The Drama League. He was a story consultant for David Henry Hwang’s Tony-nominated Flower Drum Song . His play An American Cocktail won the Clauder Competition, while Global Village earned the Dallas Theatre Critics Forum Award and was a finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. He wrote and co-directed Symposium , starring Oscar-nominated Margaret Avery, winning awards at fifteen festivals. Grady holds a BA in Film and a Master’s in English, and he teaches at Bristol Community College in New Bedford, MA. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Saviana Stanescu, Daniel Gerould. | The first anthology of new Romanian drama published in the United States < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu roMANIA after 2000 Saviana Stanescu, Daniel Gerould. Download PDF Five New Romanian Plays The first anthology of new Romanian drama published in the United States and introduces American readers to compelling playwrights and plays that address resonant issues of a post-totalitarian society on its way toward democracy and a new European identity. Stop The Tempo by Gianina Carbunariu Romania, Kiss Me by Bogdan Georgescu Vitamins by Vera Ion Romania 21 by Stefan Peca Waxing Wet by Saviana Stanescu Edited by Saviana Stanescu and Daniel Gerould. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Jorge Huerta Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 1 Visit Journal Homepage Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Jorge Huerta By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Much has happened in the field of Chicano theatre studies, both as praxis and theory since 1965 when the Teatro Campesino (Farmworkers’ Theater) was founded as the cultural arm of the farm workers’ union in California. The original aesthetic of the Teatro was commedia dell’arte-like sketches, termed “actos” by Luis Valdez. The Chicano theatre groups that followed in the footsteps of the Campesino collectively created their own actos exposing the many problems that plagued their communities. Paralleling the Chicanos’ theatrical rumblings from California to the Midwest were the Cuban, Puerto Rican and other Latinos on the East Coast, expressing their realities in the streets and on stages from the boroughs of Manhattan to Florida. There was some interaction between the politically-charged “Nuyoricans” and the equally politicized Chicanos but initially, the three major groups had distinct agendas. I was a high school drama teacher when I first witnessed the Teatro Campesino in 1968, an event that changed my life. I realized that I knew nothing about the history of Chicano or Mexican theatre and determined to pursue a doctorate in theatre in order to research the field. I began my graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1970 and discovered that the majority of articles and a handful of dissertations I located focused on the early Spanish religious folk theater of the Southwest; plays and performances that had been “discovered” in the 1930s by anthropologists rather than theatre scholars. There were articles and reviews about the then five-year old Teatro Campesino but little else. Not a single book, no plays in print and no anthologies of plays had been published. There was much archival work to be done. With my Ph.D. in hand (apparently the first Chicano to earn a doctorate in Dramatic Art) I joined the faculty of the Theatre Department at the University of California, San Diego in the fall of 1975 as a young assistant professor, eager to change the face(s) of the American theatre. Literally. I was very fortunate to have a supportive faculty and administration over the years as I witnessed the many changes in the field of Theatre Studies and used my academic affiliation to gain the attention and respect of the field. I had no idea what Life had in store for me and the communities of Chicanas, Chicanos, Mexicans, and other so-called minorities eager to see their realities portrayed on stages across the land. At the close of the 1970s Time Magazine declared that the 1980s would be “The Decade of the Hispanic,” a prediction that never came to pass. What did happen, however, was an influx of foundation, state, local and federal dollars, however limited, designed to enhance the growth and development of what was being called “Hispanic Theatre.” The 1980s and ‘90s saw a proliferation of projects aimed at enhancing the financial and aesthetic development of Hispanic theatre in mainstream regional theatres as well as in Chicano and Hispanic theatre companies. The era of professionalization had arrived and with it we saw Latinas and Latinos entering graduate programs in all aspects of theatre. Alongside the enhancement of the production of plays came the development of scholarship focused on the theatre and performance(es) by Chicana (read female), Chicano, and other Spanish-surnamed people living in the US. I called this incursion into theatre and performance studies departments “infiltration” which it was and which continues to resonate Also emerging were young scholars, the second generation of graduate students in theatre and performance whose focus was on all aspects of the Latina and Latino experience. The roster of young scholars began to grow and today we have scholars at all levels teaching in departments of theatre, performance studies and related disciplines in high schools, colleges and universities from coast-to-coast. The field has grown to such an extent that one cannot teach all of the plays that have been published by or about Latina/os in a year-long course. The scholarly books about Latino theater are still too few; there is much to be discussed and written about in terms of the breadth and scope of the scholarship as well as the myriad number of anthologies of plays that have been published. Further, every scholarly journal has published articles about Latina/o theatre including the one in your hand but we need more. The careful reader will note that I’ve gone from referring to “Chicano,” to “Hispanic” to the more common designation today, Latina/Latino because that is the demographic of most Latina/o theatre groups: a pan-American roster that includes Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and etc. These Latino theatre companies are bringing a diverse community of artists and audiences into their theatres, all interested in our common goals as citizens and “dreamers.” Enhancing this goal the Latino Theatre Commons was founded in 2014 as national coalition of Latino theatre companies, artists, scholars and allies under the auspices of Arts Emerson at Emerson College, Boston. The LTC has participated in the organization and fund-raising of a historic month-long national festival of Latino Theatre companies produced by the Los Angeles Theater Center in 2014; a “Carnaval, Festival of New Works” at DePaul University in Chicago in 2015 and several regional convenings. Further, I am thrilled that the scholars have been integral contributors to these events and gatherings documenting the events, people and teatros in Café Onda and the HowlRound website as well as other refereed publications. As evidenced in the many initiatives emanating from regional alliances across the country and the Latino Theatre Commons, it is clear that Latino theatre artists and scholars are continuing to challenge their audiences and students in ways that were unheard of in the 1960s. The times have changed, the technology has changed but the people remain people and I believe the playwrights and theatre companies are still attempting to determine who they are not only in this society but as members of the international communities in struggle. As the players become more and more diverse in their own legacies: African, Asian, indigenous and yes, European, they will seek new ways to define themselves. Judging from everything that is happening at the local, regional and national levels; in the academies as well as in the communities, I believe the future of Latina/o theater is in very good hands. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Jorge Huerta is Chancellor’s Associate Professor of Theatre Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is a professional director and a leading authority on contemporary Chicana/o and US Latina/o theatre. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Comment New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Musical Theatre Studies “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Performing Anti-slavery American Tragedian Murder Most Queer The Captive Stage Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF By Ion M. Tomuș Image Credits: Article The poetry recital in the Romanian performing arts landscape holds a special position which needs to be described in its general coordinates. First, before 1990 and the fall of the Iron Curtain, most poetry recitals given by Romanian actors were part of the job description of those with certain visibility. The poetry recital thus became, in most cases, a job obligation and part of the Communist party's propaganda. Of course, this situation meant that the relationship between the audience and those who recited poetry benefited from a special configuration, deeply marked by the social-cultural particularities of the period between 1947 and 1990. The patriotic poems that had to be recited by the Romanian actors were part of the communist propaganda and had nothing in common with real poetry. Socialist realism was expressed in the field of poetry in topics like outstanding crops, comrades who break new records in industrial production, or ones who work on the homeland’s great construction sites and compete with those around them. There was also the category of patriotic poetry in which the image of the supreme leader of the country and of the Communist party were praised. Moreover, during the last fifteen years of the Communist regime, there was a lot of insistence on the glorification of the presidential couple through poetry, a situation that now, almost 50 years later, seems completely ridiculous. Finally, the last major trend in the recitals of patriotic poetry before 1990 was represented by the reinterpretation of some of the great classical Romanian poets in a special key that served the purposes of propaganda. For example, in the work of Mihai Eminescu (the last great European romantic poet), the same propaganda identified certain elements that could be useful for its purposes, thus an important series of themes was diverted towards these ambitions. After 1990, Romanian society and the national artistic environment found themselves in a situation of total freedom of expression, and the transition was very sudden. The situation was similar in the whole of Eastern Europe and this new freedom was rather difficult for coping with not only for the artists but for the whole society. The world of theatre rightly tried to detach itself from the traumas during the Communist regime and establish a safe distance from the unfortunate clichés of the past, from the procedures and means of stage expression so well established during half a century of Communist propaganda. One of the genres that lost substantial ground, though, was exactly that of poetic recital. Most prominent Romanian actors avoided it because they wanted to evade the association with an outdated way of artistic expression which was for so long diverted from the true purpose of art - that of creating stimulating emotion. Of course, there were exceptions: those who understood the importance of poetry and emotion for the general audience. Several actors did not shy away from publicly reciting true poetry (as they did before 1990), insisting on artistic truth, emotion and value: Lucia Mureșan, Ovidiu Iuliu Moldovan, Ion Caramitru, Valeria Seciu, Ilinca Tomoroveanu, Traian Stănescu, Constantin Chiriac, Mircea Albulescu and others. Even more than others, Constantin Chiriac, from the very beginning of his career, understood the importance of “real” poetry in a society that responds to emotion and truth. Addressing the public through poetry and, thus, serving the community – this is the solid foundation on which he built his career as an actor. It is also crucial to note that he is the author of a doctoral thesis focused precisely on the act of interpreting and reciting poetry. His thesis has become a textbook for the poetry recital technique for students and professionals in the field of performing arts. Games, Words, Crickets... Photo: Dragos Dumitru. At Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu, the theatrical autumn of 2022 was marked by the opening of Games, Words, Crickets… , directed by Silviu Purcărete: a performance of poetry by Constantin Chiriac, with the support of more than a dozen of the company’s actors who performed a series of stage exercises that derived from improvisations led by the director. The text of the performance was based on fragments from a diverse and surprising selection of Romanian and international poets: Carl Sandburg, Nazim Hikmet, Serghei Esenin, William Shakespeare, Paul Verlaine, Mihai Eminescu, Marin Sorescu, Radu Stanca, and others. Silviu Purcărete is a director who has made his audience expect to see in his shows a special dynamic involving usually a group of actors on stage who are driven by the energy and emotion instigated by improvisational exercises. Gulliver's Travels, Faust, Metamorphoses and The Scarlet Princess are just a few of the performances staged by him in Sibiu in which a group of actors acquires the consistency of a real character that is in direct relationship with the central performer (or performers). The performance of the group of actors is usually accompanied by music or is itself a music generator, the stage, thus, becoming a space where Silviu Purcărete creates a functional, extremely colorful, and diverse world—a universe that works according to its own special rules where this collective (but also individualized) character evolves and develops organically in their relationship with the main performer and the particularities of the space on stage and the universe in the script. This is also the general context for Games, Words, Crickets... : At the beginning on stage there are the main elements of a naive and picturesque winter universe. The snowmen melt, the carrot used as a nose falls off, the snowbanks also melt, the birds chirp. Then the white and cold nature transforms, and comes back to life, as a sign of a new beginning. It is with this sign that the show begins because we feel a state of expectation and impatience--an emotion like that in childhood at the reawakening of spring. Gradually the group of actors breaks away from the theme of the end of winter and of the new beginning, and start an exercise of balancing several dozen glasses on top of each other, in a scenic expression of fragility and transparency and, of course, of the joy of building a spectacular foundation marked by these coordinates. Constantin Chiriac, in his first moment on stage, makes use of Carl Sandburg (the story about the king and the shah from The People, Yes ) to start a captatio benevolentiae exercise, based on the textual formula specific to telling stories: “Once upon a time...” In this way, he establishes the dramatic convention, opens the story, and initiates the magic of emotion. The script never aims to tell a story, which is a rarity for Silviu Purcărete, a director who has adapted some of the most important stories from world literature and drama: One Thousand and One Nights, Gulliver's Travels, Pantagruel , etc. This time, more than ever before, he uses the text as a pretext and the main intention is to create emotion. The protagonist of the show, Constantin Chiriac, is configured as an ordinary character in a light-colored costume, who stands out in the chromatics and the special configuration of the stage, as implemented by Dragoș Buhagiar, the set designer. Of course, the commonality of the character reciting poems is an element sought out by the director and well assumed and carried out by the actor. Through this artistic approach, the poetic text is emphasized in all its nuances and labyrinthine, deep, extremely differing substrata, both for the performer and the audience. In addition, the stage direction of the performance is extremely attentive to the means of expression of the character who recites the poems: his banality is not pushed into an existentialist zone, as is the one in which, for example, Ionesco's famous Béranger works. On the contrary, Silviu Purcărete places his actor, Constantin Chiriac, in a detached area, where the great questions raised by the text have a welcomed ludic counterpoint, assumed both by the role itself and by the group of actors on stage, who develop and continue their improvisations in parallel with the poetry in the text. Performing arts professionals know very well the fundamental difficulties related to expressing poetic texts on stage. The enunciation that reaches the audience must be precisely distilled by the performer and a truly interdisciplinary approach to the text is needed. Philology, as a field that is tangential to dramaturgy, is particularly useful in this sense, because it may offer a helpful set of theoretical tools that may help in this whole endeavor. The technique of the poetry recital requires the development of an activity that is, to a great extent, similar to that of a detective: good knowledge of all the nuances of the text and the entire work of the poet (for the best possible selection of texts), and also identification of several cores of the poetic text that will later be used by the performer and passed on to the public. In addition to all this, it is essential to establish a possible dialogue in the text that is spoken on stage, which can then be verbalized and delivered with theatrical means. This is, for example, why conceptual poetry is so difficult to recite on stage. Through the main performer and the group of actors who carry out the improvisation exercises, Games, Words, Crickets establishes a dialogue that works in several ways, all of which are suffused with emotion. First of all, the dialogue between the protagonist and the audience should be mentioned. The foundation on which it is built is the poetry recited by Constantin Chiriac, which does not communicate a precise content of ideas or facts, as the audience is used to when going to the theatre, but focuses on the delivery of emotion from the poetic text. The “sender” (the protagonist) may use means that are sometimes theatrically exaggerated and dissolve the fourth wall of the stage. Theatrical convention and the routines of watching a theatrical performance may make the audience see a character in the protagonist. However, the director's stage reality proposes a concept that uses poetry to convey not ideas and facts, but emotion. The script is not made up of a chain of events that link together to build up dramatic tension and reach a climax, but of successive emotions, which are communicated by the protagonist to the audience through often playful means and the goal is the creation and the stage configuration of a whole universe, with its special rules, in which not only those on the stage but the entire audience take refuge. Furthermore, also regarding the decomposition of the poetic text and the identification of dialogue vectors, it is essential to detail one of the most important moments of the performance: two life-size marionettes, copies of the protagonist, appear on stage, manipulated by the actors. The marionettes become part of the mechanism that configures the dialogue: the performer is in a communicative relationship with these marionettes. Questions are answered; answers generate new questions; the poetic text, loaded with deep philosophical meanings, becomes more and more accessible to the general audience, without its universe of meanings being altered. Moreover, for one of Mihai Eminescu’s poems, approaching the possible dialogue with ludic means on a theatre stage implies a happy adaptation to the horizon of expectations of the contemporary spectator. The world is now fast, communication has changed enormously in the last decades, and identifying new nuances and levels in the process of delivering the poetic text to the public through a (re)configuration of the dialogue may be a useful and rewarding approach. Finally, the two marionettes convey extra theatricality and fit perfectly into the characteristics of Silviu Purcărete's theatrical universe: the apparent grotesqueness of the images is augmented by dialogue, emotion, and playfulness. The music of the show is composed by Vasile Şirli and is a complex of sounds that accompany the stage actions and the emotions transmitted by the protagonist to the audience. The sounds are created spontaneously, on stage, under the gaze of the spectators, and in a close relationship with the text, which emphasizes the playfulness mentioned earlier. Furthermore, when the protagonist and the improvisations of the group of actors are accompanied by recorded music, it joins the general tones of an open and bright space. The playfulness that marks the whole show is accentuated by the set design signed by Dragoș Buhagiar: the space is wide open, referring to the universality of poetry, the colors are bright, so that the lights can provide nuances and brilliance, or even texture to all the images. Games, Words, Crickets... Photo: Dragos Dumitru. The group of actors behind the protagonist (seventeen of them) behaves as a parallel mechanism which associates with the poetic text, enhances its potential, and completes it, or ironizes the actions on stage. Their costumes are also light-colored (shirts and shorts with suspenders)—a reference to a possible eternal childhood associated with playfulness. The games primarily belong to the group of actors. This suggests a character that stands out from the crowd or, on the contrary, a comic-grotesque uniformity caused by the masks they wear at a certain point. In Games, Words, Crickets... , the seventeen who accompany the protagonist on stage have the precise role of increasing the playfulness of the whole artistic endeavor. Finally, one last thing to be emphasized: in an artistic and social context marked by a troubled and complex reality, Silviu Purcărete turns to true poetry in order to create a sensitive and emotional show. He has been known as a creator of poetry on stage through the images and energies of his performances. In Games, Words, Crickets... we have the opportunity to see how he uses a selection from the world's great poetry to enhance his own stage emotion. References References About the author(s) Dr. Ion M. Tomuș is a Professor at “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu, the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies, where he teaches courses in History of Romanian Theatre, History of Worldwide Theatre, Text and Stage Image and Drama Theory. He is member of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Field of Performing Arts (Cavas). In 2008 he received his PhD from the National University of Drama and Film, Bucharest, with a doctoral thesis entitled Realist and Naïve Picturesqueness in Vasile Alecsandri’s, I. L. Caragiale’s, and Eugene Ionesco’s Plays and Their Stage Adaptations. In 2013 he finished a postdoctoral study together with the Romanian Academy, focused on the topic of the modern international theatre festival, with case studies on the Edinburgh International Festival, Festival d’Avignon, and Sibiu International Theatre Festival. He has published studies, book reviews, theatre reviews, and essays in prestigious cultural magazines and academic journals in Romania and Europe. Since 2005, he has been co-editor of the annual Text Anthology published by Nemira Publishing House for each edition of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival. Since 2005, Mr. Tomuș is part of the staff at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (SITF is the third performing arts festival in the world, preceded by the ones in Edinburgh and Avignon). Ion M. Tomuș was Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies, in “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu (2011-2019), and now he is the Chair of the PhD School in Theatre and Performing Arts at the same university Since October 2016, Ion M. Tomuș is advising PhD students in the field of Performing Arts at “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu. Email: ion.tomus@ulbsibiu.ro European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By M.J. Yousefian Kenari, Marvin Carlson | A collection of the Ta'ziyeh passion play of Iran, one of the world's most elaborate, wide-spread and long-lasting traditions of religious drama. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Ta’ziyeh - Ten Contemporary Indigenous Plays From Iran M.J. Yousefian Kenari, Marvin Carlson Download PDF This present volume presents one of the most important but also much-neglected dramatic traditions of that region, the Ta'ziyeh passion play of Iran, one of the world's most elaborate, wide-spread and long-lasting traditions of religious drama. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 21, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage The Tragic Ideal of Eternal Youth: Folk Myth on the Modern Stage Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF by Ion Tomus Image Credits: Article In the contemporary cultural landscape, there is an increasingly urgent need to identify artistic forms capable of resonating with new modes of aesthetic and cultural sensibility. The accelerated transformations of the social and technological environment have altered not only the ways in which audiences engage with artistic expression but also their expectations regarding the dynamics and aesthetics of representation. In this context, the recovery and reinterpretation of traditional narrative material can no longer operate as a mere exercise in reconstruction; rather, it must be understood as a process of critical re-signification. Adapting canonical narratives to contemporary performative structures entails more than a scenic transposition—it involves repositioning theatrical discourse in relation to present-day experience. Such a practice aligns with broader tendencies in postdramatic theatre, privileging hybridity, intermediality, and the performative act over narrative linearity. This creative strategy enables the exploration of new reception models, opening a dialogic space between collective cultural memory and the aesthetic sensibilities of contemporary audiences, whose references are increasingly shaped by pop culture’s fluid reinterpretation of folklore, myth, and fairy tales. A relevant example of this approach is the performance Youth Without Age and Life Without Death , produced by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu & Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu, and later included in the repertoire of Radu Stanca National Theatre in Sibiu (RSNT). Choreographed by Ștefan Lupu, the production deliberately transcends the boundaries of classical choreographic conventions, embracing a complex artistic discourse situated at the intersection of tradition and contemporaneity. The project foregrounds embodiment, rhythm, and visual dramaturgy as primary means of signification, privileging a sensorial rather than purely narrative experience. The artistic endeavor of the students and faculty involved exceeds the framework of a pedagogical exercise, becoming an act of performative research with substantial theoretical and aesthetic implications for current performance practices. The stage reinterpretation of Youth Without Old Age infuses it with tragic dimensions, reshaping the themes and emotional impact to resonate with the fears, conflicts, and sensitivities of contemporary audiences. It is via the choreographic and theatrical language that the narrative message of the fairy tale is brought into the present. The main tension is between the ideal of eternity and its unattainability. Through all these artistic means, the tragic depth of the story is revealed, resonating with contemporary reflections on the human condition. Beyond the formal partnership between the two institutions mentioned above, their relationship has allowed the best student productions to enter the theater’s regular repertoire. This has been an extraordinary opportunity for the young artists, who thus benefit from increased visibility early in their careers. Perhaps the most eloquent example is the performance Antisocial , which I previously analyzed in volume 6 of European Stages. Now, history repeats itself. Youth Without Old Age , directed and choreographed by Ștefan Lupu, premiered in the early months of 2025 and has consistently played to sold-out audiences. It was also included in the student festival affiliated with Sibiu International Theatre Festival. The students—now professional actors—were guided by Lupu in an ambitious project that reimagines a famous Romanian fairy tale through dance, emphasizing its tragic dimensions. The performance is staged in the new LBUS performance hall, which has proven to be not only a generous educational space for the performing arts in Sibiu but also an open venue for experimentation and for a young audience willing to challenge (or at least postpone) the comforts of the petite bourgeoisie . It is also necessary to highlight the research dimension of this performance. The assistant director of Ștefan Lupu, Andrada Oltean, is a PhD candidate at LBUS and is writing a dissertation on the training of the modern actor and dancer. In this regard, the Youth Without Old Age project proved to be a perfect ground for research, as the rehearsals lasted several months and provided the framework for the practical investigation carried out by the doctoral student, which will resonate in her future PhD thesis. Moreover, this mix of practice and theory is the preferred strategy of the doctoral studies in theatre and performing arts at the university in Sibiu (Romania). As we all know, the fairy tale is a traditional narrative transmitted orally within a community, reflecting its collective imagination, cultural values, and moral codes. Unlike literary works, these tales have no identifiable author; they emerge through collective creation and evolve over time through multiple reinterpretations and retransmissions. The authorial context is therefore collective and cultural rather than individual, encompassing the historical, social, and cultural background of the community that created and preserved the story. The themes of the folk tale are universal: the struggle between good and evil, justice, or transformation. Fairy tales may also transmit specific traditions, beliefs, and norms of their place of origin. In this sense, they function both as artistic forms and as cultural documents, offering a valuable perspective on the worldview and identity of the communities that produced them. The Romanian fairy tale Youth Without Old Age and Life Without Death has a powerful tragic dimension that amplifies its resonance in the Romanian cultural imaginary. The quest for the absolute ideal proves to be impossible, and the protagonist (Făt-Frumos / Prince Charming) ultimately loses everything he wished to preserve forever. The impossibility of overcoming time becomes a meditation on the human condition and the fragility of existence. This tragic vision transforms the tale into a symbol of human aspiration and confrontation with inevitable destiny. The story begins with the wish of an unborn child who refuses to enter the world unless he receives the gift of eternal life. The emperor promises this gift, and when the child reaches maturity, he sets out in search of the pledged reward. After a long journey and battles with supernatural forces, he reaches the realm of eternal youth, where he lives happily for a while. Yet his longing for home and the past drives him to break the interdiction of leaving that place. Upon returning to the world, he discovers that centuries have passed and everything has changed. Death awaits him and embraces him, thus fulfilling the tragic destiny of the hero. Folk and fairy tales contain a strong element of theatricality: initially transmitted orally, the tales were not merely told but performed : the storyteller employed gestures, vocal inflections, pauses, and repetitions to build dramatic tension and capture the audience’s attention. The typological characters—the hero, the antagonist, the magical helper—are constructed schematically precisely to be easily recognizable and representable on stage. Its fixed narrative structure, with clearly defined moments (initial situation, trial, confrontation, triumph, and return), follows an almost dramaturgical logic, allowing for a natural transposition into theatrical forms. Moreover, European folk tales consistently possess a ritualistic and symbolic dimension, which adds depth to the scenic action. Through conventions, repetitions, and fixed formulas (“Once upon a time…”), they establish a recognizable performative framework, akin to the opening of a stage performance. Thus, the folk tale is not merely a source of inspiration for theater but carries within itself the seeds of theatricality, anticipating modern dramatic forms. Ștefan Lupu is a young theater manager from Bucharest (Teatrul Mic). He graduated acting and has focused his career on choreography and stage movement. In addition to his artistic work, he is also one of the most enthusiastic and dynamic movement and stage dance instructors in Romania. In the performances he choreographs, Ștefan Lupu is particularly interested in identifying a playful vein that he later explores on stage—developing, transforming, and refining it—to reveal to the audience that beneath this surface lies something profoundly serious and weighty. He pays extraordinary attention to detail and nuance and is a particularly active figure in the Romanian performing arts scene. As part of the “new wave” of dancers and choreographers, he undoubtedly brings fresh, dynamic energy and a revitalizing perspective to the field. Ștefan Lupu surrounds himself with very young and exceptionally talented artists, a fact that is evident in all his productions: they are filled with energy, courage, and an openness that resonates with an equally dynamic audience. The role of Lupu’s choreography in constructing the scenic language was both complex and precise. Having previously transformed Romanian folk tales into dance performances, the choreographer engaged in a process of decoding the tale’s key narrative nuclei and reassembling them on stage in a language that blends elements of Romanian folk culture with pop culture. This strategy is by no means superficial or simplistic. The fairy tale is a popular story, passed down through generations and addressed to the many. So in this particular performance it is therefore entirely appropriate that, for example, the traditional Storyteller is replaced by a hip-hop artist who communicates with the audience and frames the story, functioning as a kind of prologue. This opening moment sets the theatrical convention, energizing and captivating the audience. As in the original fairy tale, the Emperor and Empress are childless, which is a source of domestic tension. This is translated on stage through a stable physical proximity between the two performers, tinged with a slight distancing as they move in sync, attempting to prove something. Both dancers embody youth and royal status, but choreographically, the weight of responsibility and the shadow of a tragic destiny hover over the stage and the characters. The ensemble of dancers functions organically, but at key moments, individual performers step forward to shape the action. Right from the beginning, things are problematic at the emperor’s court. The baby cries inconsolably; the Emperor offers many difficult-to-attain gifts, including—humorously—a star on Sibiu’s Walk of Fame. Ultimately, the supreme promise that convinces the child is youth without aging and life without death. Choreographically, this harmony is reflected in fluid movements and balanced compositions. But everything changes when the young Prince Charming demands the promised gift and sets off to find the supreme ideal. As in any fairy tale, the hero must choose his loyal horse, face trials, and meet certain conditions—each moment choreographed with sensuality, wit, and meticulous attention to detail. The horses, for example, are embodied by two female dancers, their movements combining elegance, sensuality, and impeccable technique. Arguably the highlight of the performance is the encounter with Gheonoaia (The Forest Hag)—a supernatural creature, traditionally a witch-like or forest spirit figure, an adversary who captures, tests, or torments the hero. One of her strongest symbolic functions is to herald misfortune. In the performance, however, Gheonoaia is reimagined as a drag character who challenges Prince Charming to a dance battle to Sex Bomb by Tom Jones. The decision to include a drag performance in an adaptation of a Romanian folk tale is both bold and natural: bold because drag culture remains a niche in Romania, and natural because it heightens the contrast between past and present, central to Lupu’s staging. Moreover, this hypersexualized drag battle scene can also be read as a performative manifesto directed at a more conventional segment of the audience, challenging comfort zones and expectations. Indeed, the entire performance is built upon strong contrasts that need to be analysed. Old / new: the timeless world of the Romanian fairy tale forms the foundation for a performance using the expressive tools of contemporary dance. Tradition / modernity: traditional elements of the old Romanian world intersect with pop culture—for example, embroidery motifs on costumes are juxtaposed with pop aesthetics in Gheonoaia’s costume. The musical arrangement combines traditional Romanian music with modern beats, energizing group scenes and lending fluidity to more intimate moments. Another choreographic strategy worth noting is character doubling. While the fairy tale features a single horse, the performance employs two dancers to achieve a heightened choreographic effect. The final sequence of the performance naturally presents the most spectacular group choreography: the dance of death is a moment in which all the performers are on stage, moving in a synchronization that only appears to have a low level of energy. The central figure is once again Prince Charming, positioned at the center of the stage — the point where all the group’s energies intersect. The dance movements draw, at least in part, from traditional Romanian folk dances, yet they are reinterpreted — in keeping with the music — and paired with contemporary beats that open the piece toward the universal language of pop culture within the contemporary performing arts context. The musical phrases repeat themselves, not obsessively, but with the steady rhythm of a well-established refrain that lingers in the audience’s collective memory. Gradually, Death enters the stage, moving among the dancers, touching them one by one, contaminating them, and bringing them down (with a morbid tenderness) to the ground. Death is portrayed by an actress with very long hair, which she uses to touch and bring down those around her. What can be seen as a symbol of femininity becomes the touch of death. Prince Charming is, of course, the last to fall — the final remnant of a world once full of life, but which from this moment on will be nothing but ashes. Death’s touch does not bring death in the literal sense, but a void, an absence: after Death, there is nothing left; after Death, the performance is over, the rest is silence. The performance employs tragic elements through the way it stages the confrontation between destiny and individual freedom. The figure of Prince Charming becomes emblematic for the doomed hero, unable to escape the ending dictated by the very nature of the myth. Death does not appear as a violent force but as an inevitable, slow, and implacable presence, turning the finale into a moment of collective lucidity rather than a dramatic explosion. Thus, the tragic dimension arises not from external conflict but from the awareness of the inescapable. In conclusion, the contemporary staging of Youth Without Old Age and Life Without Death reveals the profound tragic resonance embedded in the original fairy tale. By reimagining this canonical narrative through a modern choreographic and theatrical language, the performance exposes the inevitable confrontation between human aspiration and immutable destiny. Prince Charming’s quest for eternity becomes a timeless reflection of humanity’s futile struggle against the passage of time—a struggle marked not by violent opposition but by the quiet, inexorable arrival of death. The choreography heightens this tragic inevitability, allowing death to emerge not as a destructive force, but as an implacable presence that slowly absorbs all vitality, culminating in silence. This dramaturgical choice shifts the focus from external conflict to inner awareness, turning the finale into a moment of collective recognition of human fragility. The tragic dimension is amplified through contrasts—youth and decay, desire and loss, movement and stillness—each reinforcing the inescapable tension between the ideal of eternal life and the reality of mortality. In doing so, the performance does more than reinterpret a folk myth; it transforms it into a powerful meditation on the human condition, where beauty, vitality, and longing ultimately yield to the unalterable certainty of death. Through this tragic lens, the story transcends its folkloric origins and becomes a universal, deeply affecting theatrical experience. Ultimately, this also represents a deliberate wager undertaken by the production team: the young actors and dancers, under the coordination of Ștefan Lupu, have demonstrated their ability to meet the complex challenges of transitioning from the protected environment of the university’s creative laboratory in theatre and choreography to the competitive landscape of the professional performing arts sector. The university provided them with an opportunity, which they successfully materialized, and the inclusion of the performance in the repertoire of a professional theatre stands as evidence that the wider public has likewise acknowledged and validated the artistic accomplishment of the ensemble. This work was funded by the EU’s NextGenerationEU instrument through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan of Romania - Pillar III-C9-I8, managed by the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization, within the project entitled Measuring Tragedy: Geographical Diffusion, Comparative Morphology, and Computational Analysis of European Tragic Form (METRA), contract no. 760249/28.12.2023, code CF 163/31.07.2023. Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Concept: Ștefan Lupu Assistant director: Andrada Oltean Choreography: Devised Costumes: Maria Constantin Musical illustration: Ștefan Lupu, Andrada Oltean Musical arrangement: Vlad Robaș Light designer: Dorin Părău Sound designer: Bobariu Cătălin Cast: The Emperor: Adrian Bumbeș The Empress: Maria Maftei / Andrada Oltean The Wizard: Eva Frățilă The Horse: Ada Bicflavi & Isabela Haiduc Prince Charming: David Cristian Gheonoaia: Mihai Mocanu Scorpio: Alberta Dima, Ana Ștefan, Andra Stoian Fairies: Ana Ștefan, Andra Stoian Little Fairy: Isabela Haiduc / Ada Bicfalvi Rabbit: Eva Frățilă / Fabian Toderică Death: Eva Frățilă Jokester: Ștefan Chelimândră Narrator: Fabian Toderică References References About the author(s) Dr. Ion M. Tomuș is a Professor at “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu, the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies, where he teaches courses in History of Romanian Theatre, History of Worldwide Theatre, Text and Stage Image and Drama Theory. He is member of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Field of Performing Arts (Cavas). In 2013 he finished a postdoctoral study together with the Romanian Academy, focused on the topic of the modern international theatre festival, with case studies on Edinburgh International Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Sibiu International Theatre Festival. He has published studies, book reviews, theatre reviews, and essays in prestigious cultural magazines and academic journals in Romania and Europe. Since 2005, he has been co-editor of the annual Text Anthology published by Nemira Publishing House for each edition of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival. Since 2005, Mr. Tomuș is part of the staff at Sibiu International Theatre Festival (SITF is the third performing arts festival in the world, preceded by the ones in Edinburgh and Avignon). As part of SITF, Ion M. Tomuș coordinates Aplauze, the festival’s official daily journal, and oversees two editorial projects: Cultural Conversations and the annual volume of Aplauze. Ion M. Tomuș was Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies, in “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu (2011-2019) and now he is the Chair of the PhD School in Theatre and Performing Arts at the same university. Since October 2016, Ion M. Tomuș is advising PhD students in the field of Performing Arts at “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu. Institutional Affiliation and Contact: “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu, Faculty of Letters and Arts, Department of Drama and Theatre Studies. 12 Banatului St, 550011, Sibiu. ion.tomus@ulbsibiu.ro European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Theatre in Poland, Fall 2025 Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 21 Robert Wilson’s Moby Dick at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Summer 2025 Dramas of Separation at Festival d’Avignon 19th Edition Polyphonies of the Present: The Pulse of the Almada Festival Summer 2025 in London, England The Tragic Ideal of Eternal Youth: Folk Myth on the Modern Stage International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition Review of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa by Ópera do Castelo Radu Afrim and his House Between the Blocks Report from Berlin Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Donatella Galella Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 32 1 Visit Journal Homepage Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity Donatella Galella By Published on November 6, 2019 Download Article as PDF Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity . Dorinne Kondo. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018; Pp. 376. Using dramaturgy, autoethnography, psychoanalysis, and critical race theory, Dorinne Kondo argues that performance shapes race in Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity . She stakes a claim to creativity as work that can imagine new ways of existing, but also reify the status quo and drain minoritarian life force. She builds on her previous book, About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater , by theorizing racialized reception; restructuring the normative form of academic manuscripts; and examining plays by Anna Deavere Smith, David Henry Hwang, and herself. Kondo critiques how liberal humanism evacuates the uneven power dynamics of theatre, yet she ultimately insists on possibilities for progressive change. Worldmaking resembles a drama that demystifies theatrical and academic labor. In the Acknowledgements, Kondo considers the embodied, emotional conditions of writing this book. She shows the work. She organizes her theoretical interventions, dramaturgical analyses, and personal stories into an overture, chapters within three acts, and three entr’actes, culminating in her own original play, Seamless . Early on, Kondo defines an array of key terms. Taking seriously Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s understanding of racism as group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death, Kondo theorizes “ racial affect , which enlivens some and diminishes others, and affective violence , especially in sites assumed to be far from racial violence,” like the theatre (11, italics in original). The unequal distribution of emotions accords with racial hierarchies. For instance, white spectators might laugh uproariously at Clybourne Park , Bruce Norris’s white reframing of A Raisin in the Sun , while spectators of color might shudder. Kondo cites psychoanalytical thinkers like Melanie Klein and Hanna Segal to theorize reparative mirroring, reparative criticism, and reparative creativity. In the first case, audience members of color can feel invigorated seeing representations of themselves on stage. Dramaturgs and other artists can enact reparative criticism and creativity by making plays more progressive and composing their own feminist, anti-racist artworks. Stressing collaboration, Kondo further offers the terms politics of affiliation and politics of agonistics to convey solidarity and struggle toward a more equitable world in and beyond the theatre. As Kondo lays out the field of theatrical production, she does not presume that readers already know details like how little playwrights earn for playwriting as opposed to screenwriting. She provides statistics and interview excerpts to demonstrate how resources go disproportionately to white men. Kondo speaks to scholars from a wide range of fields—Theatre and Performance Studies, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies—as well as practicing artists and students. In Act Two, Kondo applies her terms to her case studies, primarily Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1993) and Yellow Face (2007). She contextualizes Anna Deavere Smith’s and David Henry Hwang’s careers as well as her relationships with them; she served as dramaturg for three of Smith’s plays— Twilight , House Arrest (1997), and Let Me Down Easy (2008)—and she has dialogued with Hwang in person and in her scholarship. Kondo devotes one chapter to Smith’s artistic process and political project. Smith interviews and performs as subjects involved with a particular event or theme, in this case, the Los Angeles uprisings after police assaulted Rodney King and were mostly exonerated for their anti-black violence. By embodying subjects across various identities, Smith grounds their experiences, demonstrates their relationality, and represents minoritized voices too often silenced in the theatre. Because Twilight presents different perspectives and no easy solutions to systemic oppression, the play models a nuanced history. At the same time, Kondo recognizes that some critics praised Twilight due to their interpretation of the play as celebrating power-free, individual-based common humanity. A highpoint of Worldmaking is when Kondo details her experiences as one of four dramaturgs for Twilight . Her behind-the-scenes account distinguishes various versions of the text, from the premiere at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, to the transfer to Broadway, to the adaptation for television; she also explains how dramaturgs gave feedback on Smith’s performances of the interviews. For example, she discusses how they switched the play’s last monologue to avoid letting audiences presume racial equity to be inevitable. Exemplifying a politics of affiliation and politics of agonistics, Kondo describes how she fought for the inclusion of Asian Americans to disrupt the black-white binary, represent Korean Americans, and challenge stereotypes. She even brought Smith to tears. But what she greatly admires about Smith is her willingness to be challenged. Another distinct pleasure of Worldmaking is Kondo’s style of storytelling. She recalls unexpectedly seeing Smith perform as herself (Kondo) and voluntarily handing dramaturg-director-producer Oskar Eustis five single-spaced pages of notes on Yellow Face . And the book reproduces these notes! The book underscores the major contributions of dramaturgs. For Kondo, “Dramaturgical critique deploys research, theory, and scholarship for reparative ends” (197). In her chapter on Yellow Face , Kondo articulates how David Henry Hwang makes and unmakes race, and she suggests that she might have influenced the final script for the Public Theater. Set against the 1990s Miss Saigon protests and U.S. yellow peril, the comedic docudrama follows playwright DHH dealing with his immigrant father, who longs for the American dream, and his own accidental casting of a white man to play an Asian American character. In the original East West Players staging, the play ended with a melding of the Chinese father and white actor, evoking an ethereal racial equality. After Kondo offered critiques of this power-evasive liberal fantasy, the revised Yellow Face underlined that fantasy as such and firmly connected anti-Chinese persecution with the father’s death. Kondo concludes the book with reparative creativity: her play Seamless and a chapter covering her journey with the play, including the racialized challenges of trying to persuade a professional theatre to produce it. The play centers on Diane Kubota, a lawyer grappling with the extent to which she can know her parents and their experiences of Japanese American internment, and, too, how gendered generational traumas affect her. Combining realism, direct address, fantasy sequences, and flashbacks, Seamless draws from Kondo’s life and raises questions about Asian American epistemology and ontology. Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity joins new, necessary scholarship reflecting on the work of minoritarian art such as After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life by Joshua Chambers-Letson and Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization by Judith Hamera. In reading this book, I felt the reparative mirroring that Kondo theorizes, from her experiences of spectatorial affective violence to her centering of an Asian American woman in her play. Like DHH at the end of Yellow Face , Kondo reminds us, “And I go back to work, searching for my own face.” References Footnotes About The Author(s) Donatella Galella University of California, Riverside Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics Law and Sexuality in Tennessee Williams’s America Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze Staging Family: Domestic Deceptions of Mid-Nineteenth Century American Actresses Excavating American Theatrical History: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroon Mabou Mines Tries Again: Past, Present, and the Purgatory of Performance Space Rehearsing Bereavement with Laughter: Grief, Humor, and Estrangement Affect in Sarah Ruhl’s Plays of Mourning Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch Museum of the Night by Fermín Eloy Acosta at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. At the end of the 1960s, Argentine artist Leandro Katz participated in Theatre of the Ridiculous, an eccentric group linked to New York's queer underground. This film-essay moves between archives, testimonies, and specters of the past that question the present. Photography, film, video, and sound intertwine to approach, if only in brief flashes, that mythical past and raise questions about time, art, sexuality, death, and cinema. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Museum of the Night Fermín Eloy Acosta At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This film will be screened on May 30, at 4:00 PM, at The Segal Theatre Center RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. Country Argentina Language Spanish, English Running Time 88 minutes Year of Release 2025 About The Film At the end of the 1960s, Argentine artist Leandro Katz participated in Theatre of the Ridiculous, an eccentric group linked to New York's queer underground. This film-essay moves between archives, testimonies, and specters of the past that question the present. Photography, film, video, and sound intertwine to approach, if only in brief flashes, that mythical past and raise questions about time, art, sexuality, death, and cinema. Fermín Eloy Acosta About The Artist(s) Fermín Eloy Acosta (Argentina, 1990) is a screenwriter, writer, and audiovisual director. He directed the film Implantación (2016), alongside Sol Bolloqui and Lucía Salas. In 2023, he participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus Buenos Aires. He has received the Alec Oxenford Foundation Scholarship and the National Arts Fund Grant. In 2019, he won the Bienal de Arte Joven with the novel Bajo lluvia, relámpago o trueno (2019), which was translated into Portuguese by Editorial Peabirú. In 2024, he won the Hebe Uhart Novel Prize for Las visiones venenosas (2024). Museo de la Noche is his first solo film. Get in touch with the artist(s) fermineloyacosta@gmail.com and follow them on social media @fermin.eloy Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2026 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here

Joanna Mansbridge Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change Joanna Mansbridge By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF It’s a tragedy, I think, in terms of Caroline’s journey. – Tony Kushner , “Production: ‘ Caroline, or Change ’”[1] Little change, and strange to say, Yesterday came crashing in. Small domestic tragedies Bring strong women to their knees – The Dryer , Caroline, or Change [2] There is a foresight that is given in and as the unforeseen. Change is the anticipation, the unanticipated that anticipates us. . . . We are sent in history, history comes for us. We come as history to history. – Fred Moten , “Blackness and Nonperformance”[3] The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. – Karl Marx , “Theses on Feuerbach”[4] Introduction: History as Catastrophe “We are not looking for a new universal meaning of tragedy,” writes Raymond Williams in Modern Tragedy , “we are looking for the structure of tragedy in our own culture.” [5] The structure of tragedy in contemporary American culture is shaped, still, by the constitutional (and ontological) contradiction between promises of freedom and pursuit of happiness on the one hand, and the legacy of slavery and poverty on the other. This is not a static contradiction located somewhere back in the past but an ongoing process and conditioning experience. We might call it an extended catastrophe . In the tragic structure defined by Gustav Freytag, catastrophe refers to the section after the scene of total suffering has taken place; it is the final turning point in the tragic hero’s journey. [6] Walter Benjamin revised this term as one of his “basic historical concepts.” For him, catastrophe is the continuing action of failing to recognize history in the present and thus of maintaining conditions of suffering: “Catastrophe—to have missed the opportunity. Critical moment—the status quo threatens to be preserved.” [7] Catastrophe, in this sense, is a situation in time—a too-lateness that comes again and again. In a similarly Marxist vein and with Brecht’s late plays as his case study, Williams identified the emergence of a new tragic structure: “the recovery of history as a dimension for tragedy.” He writes, “we should try to see what it means to drama when in recovering a sense of history and of the future a writer recovers the means of an action that is both complex and dynamic.” [8] Playwright Tony Kushner, along with composer Jeanine Tesori, have recovered just such a “complex and dynamic” action in Caroline, or Change . [9] The sung-through musical recomposes “a sense of history and of the future” in order to complicate claims to freedom and to question the meanings, limits, and costs of change. When Caroline, or Change premiered at the Public Theater in November 2003, America was still reeling in the aftermath of 9/11. Terrorism was designated the dominant threat, and Islam the enemy to freedom and democracy. In Caroline , the death of JFK is the national crisis, and racial tensions and the Civil Rights movement the conflicts. The epoch bookended by 1963 and 2001 bears examining in relation to the question: What is the structure of tragedy in contemporary American culture? There are many possible answers, depending on where you look. In the finer-grained considerations of time, affect, and the material conditions of social change that Caroline develops, we can glean something of the tragic in US culture. Building from William’s definition of modern tragedy (which he sees paradoxically in Brecht’s rejection of tragedy) and drawing on Benjamin’s definition of catastrophe and Marx’s theory of alienation, I locate the tragic in Caroline in the relationship between the titular character’s suffering and alienation and the present’s failure to recognize her situation as part of a larger social condition that is neither fixed nor inevitable but rather reverberating as an ongoing historical present. Caroline Thibodeaux, a 39-year-old black maid and divorced mother of four, performs the domestic labor that sustains the conditions of the everyday, but refuses to perform either the affective labor that maintains an intimate public sphere or the gestures of change that uphold ideologies of progress and freedom in the United States. [10] In her refusals to change, care, and cater to our expectations of her character, Caroline asserts the tragic agency of non-performance. It is an agency, for it is an action that produces effects in and beyond her; it is tragic, for in her refusals to perform she lays bare the impasse between freedom and blackness in American culture. As Saidiya Hartman explains, “Blackness marks a social relationship of dominance and abjection and potentially one of redress and emancipation; it is a contested figure at the very center of social struggle.” [11] Here, in this space of suspended relationality, somewhere between abjection and emancipation, stands Caroline. If Caroline is a tragedy, it is one that emerges from history understood as a recursive process, perpetually open to interpretation and modification. The most salient connection between Kushner and Brecht, in Caroline and elsewhere, is not so much in their stylistic similarities but in their Marxism, specifically their dialectical thinking and shared affinity for a Marxist theory of history as a material process made (and remade) by human labor. Perhaps the feature most distinguishing Kushner from Brecht is their respective attitudes toward time and change: Brecht’s faith in teleological progress as the engine of change becomes, for Kushner, an insistence on social change as multidirectional and multiscalar, emerging from clashes and convergences between cyclical and teleological temporalities, moments and epochs, personal stories and collective histories. As Benjamin writes in “What is Epic Theatre?” Brecht sought the “untragic hero”—untragic because he wanted to depict the hero’s actions not as the result of tragic necessity but as the outcome of her own choices, which are formed from the conditions of capitalism and yet also changeable. Brecht’s task, according to Benjamin, was “to uncover those conditions. (One could just as well say: to make them strange [ verfremden ].)” [12] Gestus was the term Benjamin used to describe the mechanism in Brecht’s drama that disrupts tragic inevitability, reveals unequal social relations, and makes visible the forces of history. The tragic inevitability of poverty and suffering within capitalism is interrupted by the gestus , and the audience’s subsequent understanding that this suffering is not inevitable, but changeable through a transition to a different economic structure (i.e. socialism). Caroline’s tragedy is that she cannot change, “can’t afford change” (116), and thus she does not possess the agency of a full political subject. Yet Caroline’s refusal to change, in the ways expected of her, interrupts the logic that says social change is always positive, forward-moving, and open to everyone. Her story compels us to notice how deeply dominant understandings of change and freedom are rooted in teleological time—the time of progress when history is left behind and the future open for the taking. Foreclosing on the future, Caroline stands, instead, in the impasse of the present. The title, Caroline, or Change , posits a dialectic between the character at the center of this forceful story and the forces of change swirling around and within her. The setting is Lake Charles, Louisiana, 1963, a time marked by social change and a location marked ideologically as the still-segregated South and geologically as a Gulf town where “they ain’t no underground / . . . There is only under water.” [13] Caroline works as a maid in the basement of the Gellmans, a Jewish family adjusting to the loss of Betty Gellman, wife of Stuart, mother of Noah, and best friend of Rose Stopnick Gellman. Rose has left her liberal-Jewish Upper West Side life to come to the deep South and marry her best friend’s widower, finding herself the employer of a black maid who refuses to be her friend, the stepmother of a boy who “hate[s] her” (24), and the wife of a man in deep mourning and emotionally unavailable to her. In Noah’s 8-year-old mind, the loss of his mother and the death of JFK are conflated and cathected onto Caroline, whom he imagines as both the President (44) and his surrogate mother (63). The play-world is permeated by grief, loneliness, loss—and Caroline’s anger. But Caroline’s daughter, Emmie, embodies the spirited, hopeful revolutionary energy we associate with the Sixties and with American culture more generally. As Kushner has repeatedly stated, Caroline, or Change is his favorite work. [14] Based on his own childhood and dedicated to his childhood nanny, Maudie Lee Davis, the musical is not strictly autobiographical, but it does refract Kushner’s memories through the lens of a critical historical moment. As James Fisher explains, “the merging of the historical and the personal—in this case for Kushner the deeply personal—drives Caroline, or Change .” [15] The musical is an expressionistic staging of the inner life of its central character, who is trapped in a life of poverty and longing for the life she surrendered to economic necessity. Having lived and worked most of her life in a racially segregated country, Caroline suddenly finds herself living in a moment where conflict is everywhere and everything seems to be changing. It is 1963, the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It is also the year George Wallace was elected governor of Alabama on his infamous inaugural promise, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”; Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; Sam Cooke and his band were arrested at a “whites only” hotel in Louisiana, and their song “Change is Gonna Come” was released the next year; John F. Kennedy broadcasted his historic Civil Rights address on 11 June; Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers was killed two days later; and five months later, JFK was shot. Finally, the Moynihan report ( The Negro Family: The Case for National Action ), published in 1965, looms in the near future as a damning indictment against single black mothers, who were deemed the cause of the dissolution of the American family. Although these social tensions figure only as simmering subtext to Caroline’s story, JFK’s assassination punctuates the musical early on as the event that rips history open and the nation apart. Spaces of Change The main action of the musical takes place in the Gellman home. Upstairs, the Gellmans live in somber isolation; downstairs, Caroline keeps their home functioning. In the basement, animated objects—The Washer, The Dryer, The Radio, The Moon, The Bus—act as part Greek chorus, part historical consciousness, and part expressionistic extension of Caroline’s inner world. They give shape to a whole history of African American cultural production and voice to Caroline’s fantasies, grief, and disappointment (see figure 1). The Washer, played by a gyrating woman, swivels, “agitates,” and heralds “consequences unforeseen” (11). The Radio is played by a glamorous trio that visually recalls groups like Martha and the Vandellas and the Marvelettes. They perform sensually synchronous movements that contrast sharply with lyrics communicating Caroline’s broken situation: “How on earth she gonna thrive / when her life bury her alive?” The Dryer, played by a male actor, sings to the rhythms of Motown and blasts the dry heat of Caroline’s shame and indignation, singing “found your sinful self in hell / and the Pit of your abasement looks a lot like this basement” (16). [16] Figure 1. L to R: T’shan Williams (Radio 1), Ako Mitchell (The Dryer), Sharon Rose (Radio 2), and Sharon D. Clarke (Caroline) in Caroline, or Change at the Hampstead Theatre, London, March 2018. Photo: Alastair Muir. While the space of the basement and the embodied appliances express Caroline’s emotional world, they also visually recall the history of African American labor and possession of black bodies as objects of labor. Slavery, the most extreme form of alienation, divorces the worker not only from the objects of her labor and means of production, but also from her life and body. Caroline’s work as a maid is only a few small steps from this. By giving life to the machines of her labor, externalizing her emotional world, and staging the hidden, private space of her exploited labor, the musical materializes Caroline’s alienated life. In his 1844 “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” Marx developed his theory of alienation, outlining the four-fold process of this condition. Under capitalism, the worker is alienated from the objects of her labor; from the processes of production; from her relations with others; and from her own conscious, sensuous humanity (what Marx called “species-being”). [17] The more the worker produces, the less she has to consume; the more value she creates, the more valueless her own life becomes. Trapped in a state of alienation, Caroline is estranged from Noah, her daughter, her friend Dotty, the Civil Rights movement, and, finally, her self. As if describing the Gellman’s basement from Caroline’s point of view, Karl Marx narrates the mise en scène of alienation: “My labour . . . appears still as merely the expression of my loss of self and my powerlessness that is objective, observable, visible, and therefore beyond all doubt.” [18] And yet as poet and theorist Fred Moten writes, “The history of blackness is testament to the fact that objects can and do resist.” [19] In their hypervisibility and heightened theatricality, the animated objects accentuate the quotidian nature of Caroline’s labor, and we are meant to see both kinds of labor—commercialized and domestic, public spectacle and private servitude—as the roles performed by African Americans in the ongoing reproduction of American culture. The set design renders porous borders between inside and outside, above and below, public and private, underscoring the fact that social change is not only historical but also shaped by the spatial arrangements of everyday life. The overlapping stage spaces put into view interrelations between near and far, public and private, The Moon and the basement, the Gellmans and the Thibodeauxs. The musical gives particular value to the downward, below, and underground, invoking a spatial concept of change that is not quite “history from below,” but something more like what Moten and Stephano Harney call the “undercommon ground,” a “social capacity” formed from the history “of those who were not just labor but commodity, not just in production but in circulation, not just in circulation but in distribution as property, not just property but property that reproduced and realized itself.” [20] “Caught tween the Devil and the muddy brown sea” (116), Caroline stands center stage, down below, where her stasis crystallizes a history of broken intimacies and stifled desires. The musical suggests that reproductive labor—care giving, domestic work—anchors the social and sustains the broader changes that are recorded as history. Caroline’s acts of refusal to perform certain roles—to be a mother for Noah or to participate in struggles for black civil rights—interrupt our expectations of her character and the history that has given rise to those expectations, so that we might mark the multiple directions and unequal distributions of social change. Musicals traffic heavily in optimistic promises of change. As Raymond Knapp argues, the musical, as a genre of utopian transformation, has taken on “a formative, defining role in the construction of a collective sense of ‘America.’” [21] Kushner and Tesori invoke the legacy of the American musical in order to question the racial images and emotional attachments that hold together “a collective sense of America.” Caroline incorporates elements of from Porgy and Bess , Show Boat , Hairspray , and Dream Girls only to revise the stories of racial harmony that these have produced. Indeed, at every turn Caroline confounds our expectations of the musical, edging closer to opera in its affective texture. It unfolds in varying registers, styles, and scales, oscillating between domestic and national events, naturalism and expressionism. Its episodic structure of twelve scenes and an epilogue mimics both the structure of ancient tragedy and the movements of memory. Whose memory, however, is always in question, as the point of view shifts from Caroline to Noah to Emmie. The musical forms Caroline incorporates—spirituals, blues, klezmer, Motown, and Mozart—operate as extensions of the characters’ psychic states and emotional dispositions. Each character has their own rhythm—Caroline’s Delta blues, Stuart’s klezmer clarinet, Rose’s stilted staccato, The Moon’s classical refrains, and Emmie’s youthful pop and Motown beats. Exceptionally rich in its stylistic, formal, and emotional complexity, Tesori’s score connects characters through cross-pollinated melodies, which reflect the broader transformations, intersections, and appropriations that have shaped American cultural forms. [22] While African American culture has long functioned as the expressive element of American popular culture—emotional, theatrical, hyper-visible—Caroline gives to us nothing of herself. We cannot appropriate her or the emotions she attempts to keep at bay. Instead, Caroline/ Caroline reorients the affects and imagery associated with blackness and black female subjectivity, staging an anger and grief that explodes with the force of history, but that also withholds catharsis. Caroline ’s melodic structure directs the dramatic structure, illustrating the play’s theories of change, while Caroline stands as the stoic, unmovable center of a shape-shifting world. Rhythms of Change “All changes come from small changes” (69), The Radio announces midway through the musical. Change is the musical’s central conceit and a recurring leitmotif in Kushner’s work. For Kushner, change is a dialectical process that takes place somewhere between the material and the miraculous, the collective and the personal, the monumental and the minute. When The Bus comes on the stage, singing “ in a terrible voice of apocalypse ” (34), “the earth has bled! . . . the president is dead” (34), the seismic change of that historic moment serves as the backdrop to the more intimate interchanges we see unfold on stage. The Moon stands over the play-world as prophet and force of cyclical, yet unpredictable change, singing: “Inside, outside, / this ol world change with the tide. / Outside tears and disarray! Inside children disobey. / Change come slow, come right away!” (37). Grounded equally in natural cycles, everyday rhythms, and social movements, change is not defined here by any single theory, nor does it move in one direction toward the future; change is instead dynamic and multi-directional, proceeding at varying paces and consisting as much of small, intimate acts as of large crises and grand events. Crucially, change is developed in the musical to mean both social transformation and money, small money; these two connotations are inextricable. The plot pivots around a lesson that Rose teaches her step-son Noah about the value of money. Noah habitually leaves change in his pockets, which Caroline finds when she does his laundry. Rose is embarrassed and infuriated by Noah’s carelessness, which renders all too visible the economic disparity between maid and employer. So, Rose makes a household rule that if Noah leaves any change in his pocket, Caroline can keep it. Caroline is initially incensed by the unintended humiliation of this new rule, but she eventually reconciles with it, realizing that Noah’s spare change will allow her to feed and clothe her kids properly. When Noah leaves a twenty-dollar bill in his pocket and Caroline claims it, a climactic fight erupts between them. Change, the musical suggests, also means grief and loss. Caroline comes on stage for the first time humming a seemingly improvised strain, not fully identifiable as a style and never taking shape as a fully realized number. Stuart later echoes this refrain on his clarinet, suggesting the invisible connection between these two characters. Both Caroline and Stuart have lost their spouses and both vow to “never forget” (95, 97). Implicitly, this vow, “never forget,” connects historical memory of black and Jewish suffering. Their points of view contrast with characters who embody change as futurity and forward movement, such as Emmie and Dotty, Caroline’s friend and fellow maid. Noah is lost in his own grief—suspended, in a way, like Caroline—and he sees in her a possible source of comfort and consolation. He even fantasizes about becoming part of her family, imagining the Thibodeaux children narrating his story: “They talk about how my mama died / they talk about my tragedy / they wish that they could take me in / and I could live with Caroline” (63). But Caroline cannot afford to care for or comfort Noah. Her first song, her “I want” song, is permeated, as Stacy Wolf notes, by “exhausted despair.” [23] We hear enough of her story in this opening number to learn that Caroline has been cleaning for twenty-two years; makes thirty dollars a week; dreams of kissing Nat King Cole; and “wish every afternoon I die” (17-18). At the center of the play, in a scene titled “Ironing,” we hear an important part of Caroline’s story. She recalls a time, 1947, when “life [was] sunny” (70), and she was married to a “handsome navy man.” In this postwar period of ostensible prosperity, there was “no work for Negro men” (71), and things changed. Her husband took to drink and began beating Caroline, who still remembers the pain of his punch: “Pain is white, remember pain? Pain is white, that is its color, bright as sunshine” (72). “One bad day / he hit again,” Caroline remembers, but the Washing Machine takes over to recall, “You beat him black and blue. / Then / he disappear from view” (74). Caroline’s painful recollection is interrupted by Rose, who comes to the basement to tell Caroline that she can keep the change that Mr. Gellman leaves in his pocket, as well. Caroline responds with pride, saying, “I don’t want it. / I ain’t some ragpick. / Ain’t some jackdaw” (75), while The Washing Machine and The Radio caution her, “Talk like that, talk like that, / you won’t be a maid no more” (77). Caught between subservience and obligation to her kids, Caroline’s anger is interrupted by Emmie, whose exuberant reaction to the loose change jars Caroline into realizing that material needs take precedence over her own dignity. Caroline has little agency here, and no privacy or space of her own, except mournful memories and soothing fantasies of Nat King Cole. At the same time that Caroline grapples with the indecency of taking the Gellmans’ spare change, Noah joins the Thibodeaux children to play a game with The Moon. They fabricate a syncretic myth of Roosevelt Petrucius Coleslaw, who ascends to the heavens after his evil Amazon mother kills him, marries The Moon and becomes rich. Reciting the values of the culture in which they are coming of age, the kids formulate an allegory of romance and financial success that inspires them to reach into their pockets and “find me some.” The scene ends with the lines, “Free as the air” (66), sung in unison by Caroline and The Moon, Noah, Emmie, Jackie, and Joe. The word “free” is significant, for it foregrounds that change (as progress and money) and freedom go hand-in-hand as the ideological air America breathes. But who gains and who loses from change and whose freedom comes at the expense of progress are usually left out of the story. Caroline suggests that black labor is the devalued, abject border of America’s foundational values. Rose’s father, Mr. Stopnick, explains the law of capital at the Chanukah party, stating, “Money follows certain laws, / it’s worth how much it’s worth because / somewhere something’s valued less” (94). This principle defines the socio-economic relationship between Caroline and the Gellmans. For although Mr. Stopnick underscores the solidarity between Jews and African Americans in the Civil Rights movement, he also eats a Chanukah dinner prepared by Emmie and Caroline, in a house maintained by Caroline’s exploited labor. Acts of Refusal and Angry Eruptions In its central character, Caroline confronts the audience with a double-sided image of black female subjectivity: the angry black woman and the black domestic servant. The story unfixes these images, contextualizing them within Caroline’s story and within a historical situation. The visual image of an African American woman in a white maid’s uniform signifies powerfully on and off the American stage, a reminder/remainder of the servitude and emotional labor of slavery. Caroline’s anger disrupts the affective associations surrounding black domestic workers, who have traditionally been represented as smiling, long-suffering, and one-dimensional caricatures of a white imaginary. As Caroline tells Dotty, “Ain’t my job to mind that boy” (29). Aside from their shared ritual—a daily cigarette—Caroline refuses any intimacy with Noah, telling him, “go muse yourself / I got no use for you” (15). In a scene titled “Duets,” Noah, lying in his bed, interrupts Caroline’s thoughts, while she sits smoking on her front porch. Reminiscent of the imaginary encounters between Prior and Harper in Angels in America , these exchanges demonstrate the entanglements that form despite distance or estrangement: NOAH Wish me good night? CAROLINE That not my job. NOAH How come? ( Little pause ) How come you’re so sad and angry all the time? CAROLINE That ain’t your business, it just ain’t your business. You’s a nosey child. ( Little pause ) How come you like me, I ain’t never nice to you. . . . Noah, go to sleep. Stop bothering the night, All day I mind you, wash your things, And it ain’t right In the nighttime, my own time, I still think about you— I gots to think of rent overdue (45-46). Demanding privacy and rejecting Noah’s yearning for closeness, Caroline reorients our perspective away from the affective associations attached to her character and toward the material conditions of her situation. Even time is alienated from her. Here and earlier, Caroline points out, “In the nighttime, my own time, / I still think about you— / I gots to think of rent overdue” (12). Hers is not the private sphere of the middle-class Gellmans, but the rented home of an underpaid worker, whose leisure time and inner life are not her own and whose wage fails to cover basic needs: “Thirty dollars ain’t enough” (18), as she, The Washing Machine, and The Dryer proclaim in unison. Even as she resists the commodification of her emotional labor, Caroline’s service labor reproduces the conditions of everyday life that make possible Noah’s and her children’s futures. Literary critic Michael Hardt, along with cultural theorists such as Antonio Negri and Lauren Berlant, argue that, in our neoliberal era, affect has replaced ideology as the primary mechanism of hegemony. [24] Hardt takes affect as the pre-personal point of departure to develop a rich theory of social and political change. Following Foucault, who showed how power is productive, producing not so much repressions as regularities, Hardt traces the way power informs us—shapes us from within—and is mediated by and through affect (especially fear and hope, the primary affective dialectic of late-capitalism). He argues that affective, or “immaterial labor”—such as care-giving, health care, domestic work—holds “enormous potential” to transform society because it produces “collective subjectivities and sociality, and society itself.” Adapting Foucault’s term “biopower,” Hardt calls this immaterial labor “biopolitics,” or the “the power of the creation of life.” He adds, “biopolitical production is strongly configured as gendered labor ,” [25] and racialized. Caroline refuses care to the young boy who is attached to an idea of her—as a pseudo mother and care-giver. Withholding the affects he/we expect of her and expressing instead negative ones, Caroline also refuses to nurture a public that is invisibly raced (as white) and classed (as middle). For audiences of Caroline , the powerful imagery of the mammy worked, in performance, as an obstacle to seeing Caroline’s tragedy. Despite her stoic resistance to acting as an emotional surrogate for Noah, audiences nevertheless read her character through visual imagery and affective associations of “the mammy.” Kushner reports that hundreds of people have told him after performances, “I had a Caroline who raised me like a mother too,” ignoring the fact that Caroline is emphatically not “like a mother” to Noah. [26] Kushner reflects, It’s such a powerful image in this culture, the mammy, the maid who provides the emotional warmth to the, you know, frosty, cold white people. I mean that sort of thing that we’ve developed as a way of handling our terrible and deserved guilt about, you know, about race in this country. So people come to see the show, and they just rewrite it.[27] The revisions of Caroline suggest the powerful affective attachments that Americans have to images of black female labor and to the national body public those images construct. The willful deafness to Caroline’s anger and misrecognition of her relationship to Noah subsume her story within a white imaginary and allow her labor to remain invisible. Spending her days in the Gellmans’ basement, Caroline keeps her emotions “sixteen feet beneath the sea” (12), numbed by the relentless rhythms of her daily work. But her anger erupts in three pivotal exchanges with Emmie, Noah, and Dotty, each interrupting audience expectations of what both Caroline and a musical should be. [28] The fight between Emmie and Caroline takes place in the Gellmans’ kitchen during Chanukah and accentuates the different experiences of history between mother and daughter. Both dressed in white maid uniforms, Caroline and Emmie clash over gestures of subservience that Caroline sees as necessary, but that Emmie sees as submission to white authority. Rebellious and individualistic, Emmie rejects the past and craves the good life promoted by postwar US culture. She dreams of owning a car and a house with a TV in every room, singing confidently, “I’ll make it OK, / by myself, all alone” (96). Her ambition causes her to reject her mother as a model to emulate: “You tippy-toe till you get paid. / You the spoiled one. A maid! / I’ll never be a queen, that’s true, but I’m a damn sight better’n prouder than you! / Come on, teach me what you know! / Mama, teach me what you know! How to keep my head tucked low” (93). With this hurtful denouncement, Caroline slaps her daughter and leaves the kitchen. Emmie does not know that her mother wishes she were “doing something finer” (18) and that every day she waits for the night, when she doesn’t need to “be polite” (47). While their generational differences are evident, it is also clear that both mother and daughter are circumscribed within a capitalist logic that defines their bodies and labor. The musical’s climax is a shattering fight between Noah and Caroline over a twenty-dollar bill that Noah leaves in his pocket. He demands Caroline give back his money, a Chanukah gelt from his grandfather, but Caroline refuses, telling him, “Don’t leave your money all over the place! / Now I can take my boy to the dentist” (103). In Marx’s formulation, money is the externalization of labor, and as such “the externalized capacities of humanity.” [29] In Das Kapital, Marx deploys theatrical metaphors, such as the stage (i.e. market) and the dramatis personae (i.e. buyer-seller-money), [30] figurations that allow us to see Caroline ’s shape-shifting world of animated objects as a kind of phantasmagoric expression of Marx’s theories of commodities and alienation. As Marx points out, money is “the metamorphosed shape of all other commodities, the result of their general alienation.” [31] In its money form, a commodity, according to Marx, always performs two distinct roles as a “ measure of value ” and a “ standard of price .” [32] The measure of value is the social expression of human labor, in this case, the Gellmans’ household and Noah’s well-being; the standard of price is the quantified cost given to a commodity, in this case Caroline’s domestic labor. The twenty-dollar bill, in this way, works as Carolin e’s gestus , interrupting the course of action and making visible the social relations between the boy and his maid. The surplus value to which Caroline accidently obtains access is surplus only because her labor is devalued. In its most devastating implication, this confrontation is a clash between the value, under capitalism, of Caroline’s life and the value of Noah’s life. It is no accident, after all, that each wishes a violent death on the other over the misplaced twenty-dollar bill. When she refuses to give back the twenty dollars, Noah explodes, “CAROLINE! / I HATE YOU . . . / There’s a bomb! President Johnson has built a bomb / special made to kill all the Negroes! / . . . I hope he drops his bomb on you!” (104). Caroline fires back: “Noah, hell is like this basement, / only hotter than this, hotter than August, / with the washer and the dryer and the boiler / full blast. . . . Hell’s so hot it makes flesh fry. ( Little pause ) / And hell’s where Jews go when they die. / Take your twenty dollars baby. / So long, Noah, good-bye” (104). This encounter confronts the audience with a whole history of alienated relations between black people and Jews in America. [33] The breakdown of Noah and Caroline’s relationship in this scene powerfully links collective histories with the “small domestic tragedies” (79) that Caroline stages. Shaken and ashamed by the hate she expressed, Caroline stops going to work. However, as Wolf points out, “a careless little white boy has power over her. She must work; she has to go back.” [34] Caroline’s final break from social life is her rejection of Dotty. Unlike Caroline, Dotty is swept up in the swell of change around her, eager to participate. While she goes to school at night so that she can get better work, Caroline, who can barely read, continues her underpaid domestic work and turns away from the changes around her. Together with The Moon, Dotty reminds Caroline, “Things change everywhere, even here” (32), but a resistant Caroline insists on her refrain: “ Nothing ever changes / under ground in Louisiana” (34). But as Dotty points out, Caroline’s refusal to change has, nonetheless, changed her: “Once you was quick . . . / you losin your courage, you losin / light / lost your old shine, / lost Caroline” (33). In their final confrontation, Dotty pleads with Caroline, “let go of where you been,” “move on from the place you’re in,” and even though “it hurt to change / . . . folk do it. They do. / Every day, all the time, alone, afraid, folks like you” (115). But Caroline replies with an unarticulated need, followed by anger: “Dot, I need . . . / Dot. It too late. . . . When I talk to people, all that comes out is hate. / Cause I hate. That all. / I hate” (115). Caroline renounces her friend, insisting, “I need nothing from you. / I want you to go. / Out my yard” (115). Caroline rejects Dotty’s friendship, insisting that change, for her, is “too late.” This catastrophe of missed opportunities is the audience’s critical moment. Caroline’s situation illustrates the difficult relationship of blackness to subjectivity, which is “defined by the subject’s possession of itself and its objects.” [35] As Moten points out, subjectivity has been, in American history and in the philosophical tradition from Kant to Heidegger, “refused to the people who are called black, to the people to whom blackness is ascribed.” [36] Caroline’s self-abnegation in the penultimate scene is a “withdrawal from that subjectivity, which is not itself, which is not one, which only shows up as a thwarted desire for itself.” This subjectivity, which was constructed with blackness as its abject border and yet which black people are compelled to seek, leads to the maddening task in which, Moten explains, “we must keep on learning not to want. We have to keep on practicing not wanting.” [37] In a shattering scene of self-abjection, Caroline relinquishes her want, her desire to be a subject, so that she can continue to perform the labor that sustains the present. Catastrophe, or Change: The Case of Caroline [38] Caroline’s emotional journey culminates in “Lot’s Wife,” the musical’s eleven o’clock number and its most powerful statement on change, performed here as a violent act of surrender. The title of the song refers to the Old Testament story, in which Lot’s wife, defying God’s command, looks back at Sodom and is turned into a pillar of salt (Gen 19:26). Typically understood as tale of punishment for an act of disobedience, the story is transformed here so that Sodom is not a city of sin but Caroline’s own past and the command she defies is the command to move forward, pursue freedom, change. [39] Marx defines an alienated existence as one in which even human speech becomes ineffective as a method for overcoming an alienated form of life. He writes, “on the one hand [speech] would be seen and felt as an entreaty or a prayer and thus as a humiliation and therefore used with shame and a feeling of abasement, while on the other side it would be judged brazen and insane and as such rejected.” [40] Caroline has no access to speech beyond the poles of “shame and feeling of abasement” and an anger that “would be judged brazen and insane.” When she speaks, “all that comes out is hate.” Her only interlocutor left is God, since “only God can hear what my heart mean to state” (115). The audience, as silent witness, is challenged with knowing how to respond, ethically, to Caroline’s self-abnegation, as she prays to her God to “take Caroline away” (119). Caroline’s aria shifts in tone and rhythm from spiritual to jazz to blues to rock to gospel, expressing, at once, the depth and range of her emotions and the history of African American musical forms. Beginning with a kind of overture in a low, slow register, Caroline acknowledges how the money changed her, stirring up resentments and hopes that she had already foreclosed on: “That money reach in and spin me about, / my hate rise up, rip my insides out . . . can’t afford change / changin’s a danger for a woman like me / . . . I got to get back to the way that I been / God! / Drag me back to that basement again” (116). Building to the faster, syncopated rhythms of spirituals, she sings, “Always they’s been people who / hold they head high getting through / I can’t” (116). With a prescient gesture toward the future destruction of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, she rejects the false promise of a groundless hope: “Hope’s fine. Till it turn to mud” (117). Shifting to a driving rock beat, Caroline’s prayer turns into a violent act of self-destruction: “I’m gonna slam that iron / down on my heart / gonna slam that iron down on my throat / gonna slam that iron / down on my sex / gonna slam it / slam it down / until I drown / the fires out / till there ain’t no air left / anywhere” (117). [41] Both the weapon and the body parts it strikes conjure violent images of captivity. The “iron” metonymically invokes the iron brands, bits and collars used to mark and constrain slaves, while the “heart,” “throat,” and “sex” signify the emotion, speech, and sexuality that slavery restrained or disallowed. Associations between black female sexuality and violence persist in the imagery of American popular culture, but they are typically expressed through narratives of heteronormative desire or as a sacrifice for the sake of white absolution. [42] Adrienne Davis explains “how the unspeakability of slavery contains the seeds of the unspeakability, for black women, of our own sexuality.” [43] Moreover, the space of Caroline’s work, a basement that is hot as hell, located “under water” (11, 18, 34) and referred to as her “purgatory” (18) and the “pit of [her] abasement” (16), duplicates the conditions of the ship hold, where slaves were held captive during the journey across the Middle Passage. Hortense Spillers explains how the “undecipherable markings on the captive body” are translated over time into “a kind of hieroglyphics of the flesh,” that is, history inscribed onto black bodies and projected as ideas of blackness. Spillers wonders, “if this phenomenon of marking and branding ‘transfers’ from one generation to another.” [44] Caroline enacts this transferal of historical memory, turning her body into an object of history, an object subjected to the violence of history. It is an act of tragic agency performed as/at the limits of freedom: “SLAM go the iron / SLAM go the iron / FLAT! / FLAT! / FLAT! / FLAT! / Now how about that then? / That what Caroline can do! / That how she rearrange herself, / that how she change!” (118). Dissonant notes and driving drum beats amplify Caroline’s change. As her song softens to surrender, Caroline asks to be released from both her memories and her hope—to be unshackled from a past that returns, again and again, only to fuel and forestall the promise of a better future. Here, the slower, gentler melody contrasts with the visceral language of Caroline’s entreaty: Murder me God down in that basement, murder my dreams so I stop wantin murder my hope of him returnin strangle the pride that makes me crazy. Make me forget so I stop grieving. Scour my skin till I stop feeling. Take Caroline away cause I can’t be her, take her away I can’t afford her. Tear out my heart strangle my soul turn me to salt a pillar of salt a broken stone and then . . . Caroline. Caroline. From the evil she done, Lord, set her free set her free set me free. Don’t let my sorrow make evil out of me (119) With verbs such as “murder,” “scour,” and “strangle,” Caroline reinforces her “dreams,” “hope,” and “pride” as living and embodied. Hers is not an abstract wish for freedom in some undefined future; it is the urgency of material survival in the present, which necessitates forgetting her longings and desire for life. As Wolf incisively points out, here, her song “moves from a first-person address to third person and back to first, as Caroline at once struggles to articulate and simultaneously dissociate from her pain.” [45] Moreover, the trans-morphic movements from “skin” to “salt” to “stone”—from woman to organic substance to geologic object—simultaneously dehumanize Caroline and render her body part of earth’s history. In her metamorphosis, Caroline removes herself from history, removes history from herself, and at the same time becomes history. She inhabits an ontological space of abjection—neither subject nor object—which is the “obscene scene” of freedom. [46] Caroline’s refusals to perform forms of change, freedom, and subjectivity as they are defined under the normative logics of white supremacist capitalism lay bare the tragic impasse that Moten articulates, when he asks: What if freedom and slavery are the condition of each other’s possibility? . . . What if the condition of the slave in general or generally speaking is that she is chained to a war for freedom, chained to the war of freedom, to the necessity in freedom, which freedom imposes, of the breaking of affective bonds, the disavowal in entanglement of entanglement. . . . The paradox—if freedom is inalienable, then the freedom to relinquish freedom must also be—disappears when it’s discovered that slavery and freedom are not opposed to one another; the relation between freedom and slavery is not mutually exclusive but mutually metonymic. [47] Caroline withdraws from the “war for freedom” and the struggle for subjecthood, a withdrawal that “is obscenity—the nonperformance of freedom, consent not to be a single being.” [48] Turning away from everything she is supposed to want (change, freedom, individuality, desire), Caroline must also forget “what it is to want in the first place.” [49] With Caroline’s searing prayer still ringing in the air, the final scene, “How Long Has This Been Going On?,” poses a question of history. The Radio sings us into the scene by transforming Caroline’s pillar of salt into “Salty / Salty / Salty / Salty teardrops” (120). After watching the Gellmans establish new rituals of intimacy, we see Noah lean out his bedroom window to interrupt Caroline, who sits smoking on her porch: “Will we be friends then?,” Noah asks. Caroline replies, “Weren’t never friends” (123). These “secret little tragedies” and “costly, quiet victories” (123) gesture toward the larger historical narrative that Caroline stages. The experiences of loss and grief shared by these two characters is, paradoxically, both a point of connection and of irrevocable distance; it is an historical entanglement that keeps them apart, even as it links them together. As Caroline explains to Noah, “Someday we’ll talk again / but they’s things we’ll never say. / That sorrow deep inside you, / it’s inside me too, / and it never go away. / You’ll be OK. / You’ll learn how to lose things” (124). To this quietly devastating lesson, she adds: “When you stop breathing air you get / oh so calm, / no fire down there / so it’s calm calm calm / and there’s never any money / so it’s very very calm” (124). Money is, for Caroline, anti-life, alienated life. Change – both money and social progress – promises not freedom or a better future for her, but loss. Persisting in his search for a connection with Caroline, Noah finally finds it in their ritual of a shared cigarette. “Do you miss sharing a cigarette?’ he asks, to which she replies, in her final lines, “You bet I do, Noah / you bet, you bet” (124). Even as the distance between these characters is acknowledged, their uncertain futures hang together in the air. Kushner acknowledges that Caroline, or Change “comes from sorrow, from anger and grief, …our tragedies,” but he also sees the redemptive possibilities of history, which “has shown us both the terrors and also the pleasures of change” (xv). Those possibilities can be realized only if those who have been oppressed socially and economically are not seen as the “accidents” of history, Kushner insists, but as “historical agents.” [50] In an essay titled “Copious, Gigantic, and Sane,” Kushner writes, “I don’t know how any African-American, any person of color stays sane in this country, given that the whole machinery of racism seems designed to drive them crazy or kill them. I don’t know why every woman isn’t consumed every day by debilitating rage.” [51] At a time when African American anger is criminalized and Black Lives Matter attests to the profound difficulty of forming a black subjectivity, it seems urgent that we see Caroline’s anger and her suffering as, at once, expected and unnecessary. To do so is to recognize something of the tragedy of American culture. Williams defines this tragic structure as the recognition of suffering “that could have been avoided but was not avoided.” He writes, The recognition is a matter of history. . . . But while this is seen as a process it can be lived through, resolved, changed. Whereas if it is seen, even briefly, as a fixed position—an abstract condition of man or of revolution—it becomes a new alienation, an exposure stopped short of involvement, a tragedy halted and generalised at the shock of catastrophe. … It is the fixed harshness of a revolutionary regime . . . which finds, facing its men [and women] turned to stone, the children of the struggle who because of the struggle live in new ways and with new feelings, and who . . . answer death and suffering with a human voice.[52] Caroline’s refusals (to care for Noah or change like Dotty) and her angry eruptions (turned outward) and irruptions (turned inward) implicitly say “no” to an entire social order. But she finds no outside of that order. Our task is not to turn Caroline into stone, not to fix her as “a tragedy halted and generalised at the shock of catastrophe,” but instead to see her story as the counterpart to progress and freedom. Characteristic of Kushner’s politics, the musical ends on a redemptive note, with an epilogue featuring Emmie and her brothers, “the children of the struggle who … answer death and suffering with a human voice.” Caroline “giv[es] her daughter the stage” (125), and Emmie sings proudly, “I’m the daughter of a maid” (127). She then transforms her mother from a “broken stone” into a geologic force: “She stands alone where the harsh winds blow: / Salting the earth so nothing grow / too close; but still her strong blood flow . . . / Under ground through hidden veins, / . . . down the plains, down the high plateau / down to the Gulf of Mexico / Down to Larry and Emmie and Jackie and Joe. / The children of Caroline Thibodeaux” (127). Caroline becomes in “Emmie’s Dream” a more-than-human force of change, pulsing downward, through the land worked by her ancestors, into the lives of her children, and as “history [that] comes for us.” References [1] Tony Kushner, “Production: ‘Caroline, or Change’ (Working in the Theatre #322 ),” American Theatre Wing , CUNY TV, taped April 2004, uploaded to YouTube October 8, 2013. https://youtu.be/TyxZFf7zjRE [2] Tony Kushner, Caroline, or Change : A Musical (New York: TCG, 2004), 79. [3] Fred Moten, “Blackness and Nonperformance,” in Afterlives , Museum of Modern Art, 25 September 2015. Steamed live and uploaded on YouTube on September 25, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2leiFByIIg [4] Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings , 2 nd ed., ed. David McKellan. (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2000), 173. [5] Raymond Williams, Modern Tragedy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 1966), 62. [6] This definition of catastrophe comes from chapter two of Gustav Freytag’s Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art (1863/1894). Freytag’s theory of dramatic structure, though meant to define the structure of ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, influenced playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller. See Gustav Freytag, Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art , 3 rd ed, trans Elias J. MacEwan. (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1900, c1894). See especially 137–42. [7] Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project , trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 474. [8] Williams, Modern Tragedy , 202. Williams saw the emergence of this form of modern tragedy in Brecht’s mature plays, The Good Person of Szechwan , Mother Courage , and Galileo . It has often been noted that Tony Kushner has a markedly Brechtian aesthetic, in his use of episodic structures, his deployment of history as a device to question the present, and his penchant for a non-naturalistic presentational style. However, while both playwrights share a Marxist leaning, Kushner’s lush language, his flair for the hyper-theatrical, and his political optimism distinguish him from Brecht’s more anti-theatrical style. In Dramatists and Dramas , Harold Bloom characterizes Kushner’s drama as an aesthetic mélange of “Bertolt Brecht’s Marxist stage epics; the lyrical phantasmagorias of Tennessee Williams; and Yiddish theater in its long history from the earliest purimshpil .” Harold Bloom, Dramatists and Dramas (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005), 288. Any definitive index of Kushner’s influences is moot, however, since his theatre owes as much to Shakespeare and Corneille as to Yiddish melodrama as to Shaw and Brecht and Elizabeth LeCompte. [9] Caroline, or Change began in 1998 when Kushner was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to write a libretto. While that project never transpired, Kushner took his draft script of Caroline to his frequent collaborator and then-Artistic Director of the Public Theater, George C. Wolfe, and the two convinced Jeanine Tesori to come on board to compose the score. Workshops commenced in 1999 and Caroline was eventually staged at the Public Theater in November 2003, with Tonya Pinkins originating the role of Caroline. It moved to Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre in May 2004. Both productions were directed by Wolfe. My analysis of any performance details relating to Caroline, or Change is based on Wolf’s production, which I viewed at the New York Public Library’s Theatre on Film and Tape archive on 17 January 2016. The date of the recorded production is 30 January 2004. Caroline, or Change has since received revivals on Broadway and the West End. The most recent production, to date, was a critically acclaimed production in spring 2018 at Hampstead Theatre, directed by Michael Longhurst and featuring Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline. This production is set for a West End transfer beginning 20 November 2018. [10] In The Female Complaint (2008) Lauren Berlant defines an intimate public as “a porous, affective scene of identification among strangers that promises a certain experience of belonging and provides a complex of consolation, confirmation, discipline, and discussion about how to live as an x . . . . The intimate public…provides material that foments enduring, resisting, overcoming, and enjoying being an x .” Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), viii. [11] Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 57. Hartman writes, “blackness is defined here in terms of social relationality rather than identity. . . . Blackness incorporates subjects normatively defined as black, the relations among blacks, whites, and others, and the practices that produce racial difference” (56–57). [12] Walter Benjamin, “What is Epic Theatre? [Second version],” trans. Anna Bostock (London and New York: Verso, 1998), 17–18. [13] Kushner, Caroline, or Change , 11. Hereafter cited in-text. [14] See, for example, Kushner, “Production: ‘Caroline, or Change’” and Tony Kushner, “Tony Kushner: ‘Caroline, or Change’,” interviewed by Neal Conan, Talk of the Nation . NPR, 20 June 2006, audio, 16:59. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5498280 . [15] James Fisher, The Theatre of Tony Kushner (New York: Routledge, 2013), 205. [16] The songs of these and other black female groups sublimated a period rife with racial conflict into songs of romantic conflict. The oeuvre of these two groups, in particular, operates as an important intertext to Caroline’s situation and state of mind, with songs like “Come and Get These Memories,” “(Love is Like a) Heat Wave,” “Nowhere to Run” and “Quicksand” (Martha and the Vandellas) and “Locking Up My Heart” and “Too Hurt to Cry Too Much in Love to Say Goodbye,” (The Marvelettes) serving as the subtext of Caroline’s dreams and longings. The Motown girl group and pop music more generally were safe escape valves for black female desire in 1960s US culture—and still today. [17] Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings , 85-90. [18] Karl Marx, “On James Mill,” in Karl Marx: Selected Writings , 2 nd ed., ed. David McKellan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 133. Marx writes, “The separation of work, capital, and private property from each other and similarly the separation of work from work, of capital from capital and landed property from landed property, and finally the separation of labour from wages, of capital from profit and profit from rent, and lastly of landed property from ground rent permits self-alienation to appear both in its own form and in that of mutual alienation” (129). This index of estrangements illustrates the complexity of alienation as multifaceted and woven into every aspect of social life under capitalism. [19] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 1. [20] Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2013), 93. [21] Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 103. [22] Rock music’s debt to African American music is widely acknowledged. Likewise, since Jewish immigrants have arrived in America, klezmer music has been influenced by jazz and blues. And both African American and Jewish musical traditions have been readily absorbed into the machinery of American popular culture industry. See for example Mark Slobin, American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 17-21. [23] Stacy Wolf, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 178. [24] In his collaboration with Antonio Negri, Hardt elaborates on the potential of affective labor (referred to also as immaterial or biopolitical labor) to produce social change. Affective labor is “labor that creates not only material goods but also relationships and ultimately social life itself.” They argue that affective labor is a direct product of capital and the dominant form of labor in our neoliberal capitalist economy, producing the languages we use, the social practices we establish, the modes of sociality that define our relationships. Together, these factors make up the means and the results of biopolitical production. See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004). 109. [25] Michael Hardt, “Affective Labor,” in boundary 2 26, no.2 (1999): 98. [26] Kushner, interview, NPR. [27] Kushner, “Production: ‘Caroline, or Change.’” [28] Caroline’s anger and emotional distance from those around her often induced unexpected laughter from the audience at the 30 January 2004 performance at the Public Theater. Notably, the audience laughed whenever Caroline rebuffed Noah’s attempts at soliciting affection from her, perhaps a sign of surprise or even discomfort. These moments of laughter seemed to come when expectations were broken and unexpected encounters or affects were introduced. [29] In his 1844 manuscripts, Marx describes money as both “visible god-head” and “universal whore” – standing in at once for transcendent value and embodied labor. Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 118. [30] Karl Marx, Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy , vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2009), 68. [31] Marx, Das Kapital , 66. Marx is using gold as his example of commodity-money, not the fiat currency of bills nor, of course, the bitcoins of digital economies. His ideas are still entirely relevant in the way all of these money forms abstract labor from value. [32] Ibid. , 58. [33] There is a similarly explosive fight between Belize and Roy Cohn in Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika , in which racial rage bubbles forth from both characters and with it the parallel but incomparable histories of suffering of Jews and African Americans. [34] Wolf, Changed for Good , 180. [35] Moten, In the Break, 1. [36] Moten, “Blackness and Nonperformance.” [37] Ibid. [38] The word “case” is a gesture to Fred Moten’s important essay, “The Case of Blackness,” which responds to Franz Fanon’s “fact of blackness.” Moten uses the word “case” to attend to “the gap between fact and lived experience,” that is “between blackness and being black.” The “word ‘case’,” he writes, serves “as a kind of broken bridge or cut suspension between the two” (180). By creating some distance between the historical construction of blackness and experiences of being black, Moten troubles the categories of the individual, property, and freedom that structure American culture. See Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness,” in Criticism 50, no. 2 (2008): 177–218. [39] Fisher points out the connection between Caroline and Benjamin’s Angel of History, which Kushner referenced more explicitly in Angels in America . As Fisher notes, Kushner “has Caroline realize that Lot’s wife was warned not to look back, but only ahead at the ‘unruined future’.” This analysis drew from an early unpublished first draft of Caroline, or Change , dated 28 June 1998, and the quote “unruined future” comes from that version, but does not appear in the 2004 published version. This earlier version draws a closer parallel between Caroline and the Benjamin/Klee Angel of History featured in Angels in America . Fisher, The Theater of Tony Kushner , 204. In the later published version, however, Caroline fixes her gaze not on the “unruined future,” but on the present. Or more precisely, by turning herself into “broken stone” (Kushner, Caroline 118), she becomes part of a present scattered with the remnants of unrecognized pasts and as-yet unrealized futures. [40] Marx, “On James Mill,” 131. [41] The frequent references Caroline makes to lack of air and breath are eerily prescient of Eric Garner. [42] Examples visually linking violence and black female sexuality abound in American popular culture, and the visualization of The Radio as black female entertainers in Caroline is important in this regard. Consider such icons as Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, and Rihanna, whose private lives and sexuality is laced with real and fabricated images of masculinized violence. For an excellent analysis the connections between “erotic violence and desire in black heterosexuality” (421), see Nicole R. Fleetwood, “The Case of Rihanna: Erotic Violence and Black Female Desire,” African American Review . Special Issue: On Black Performance 45, no. 3 (2012): 493. [43] Adrienne Davis, “’Don’t Let No One Bother Yo’ Principle’: The Sexual Economy of American Slavery,” in Sister Circle: Black Women and Work , eds. Sharon Haley and the Black Women and Work Collective (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002) 104. [44] Hortense J. Spillers, Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 260. [45] Wolf, Changed for Good , 180. [46] Moten, “Blackness and Nonperformance.” Moten uses the phrase “obscene scene” to define a historical and interpretative space out of sight, off to the side of history and the law. He is reflecting in this lecture on the legal case of a slave named Betty, who declined her legal right to freedom, choosing instead to stay with her owners in Tennessee and remain a slave. He is presumably borrowing from folkloric definitions of obscene , which link it to the violence in Greek drama that was kept “off scene.” I use the term in that sense, as well, and as a counterpart to the notions of abjection and subjectivity, the latter broadly defined as a condition of agency and individuation. As Moten puts it, “While subjectivity is defined by the subject’s possession of itself and its objects, it is troubled by a dispossessive force objects exert such that the subject seems to be possessed—infused, deformed—by the object it possesses” ( In the Break , 1). That disruptive “dispossessive force” is the abject. The abject, following Julia Kristeva, is that which disturbs and also defines the borders between subject and object. The abject must be expelled in the formation of the “proper” subject, and yet it always remains as a disruptive force. See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection , trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). [47] Moten, “Blackness and Nonperformance.” [48] Ibid. [49] Ibid. [50] Tony Kushner, “Copious, Gigantic, Sane,” in Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness: Essays, A Play, Two Poems and a Prayer (New York, NY: TCG, 1995), 52. [51] Kushner, “Copious, Gigantic, Sane,” 52. [52] Williams, Modern Tragedy , 203–04. Footnotes About The Author(s) JOANNA MANSBRIDGE is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests span contemporary American drama, performance studies, visual culture, gender studies, and eco-criticism. Her book, Paula Vogel, is the first on the playwright, and her articles can be found in Theatre Research International, Theatre Topics, Journal of Popular Culture, Modern Drama, Comparative Drama, and Canadian Theatre Review, as well as in several edited collections. She is also a member of the international editorial board of the performance studies journal Performance Matters. Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 22, 2026 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Spring in Europe – Beyond the Theatertreffen Published: July 15, 2026 Download Article as PDF By Steve Earnest Image Credits: Article Featured Image: Die Physiker, directed by Bastien Kraft. Photo Credit: Eike Walkenhorst As the Berliner Theatertreffen takes place in May of each year, there are numerous quality productions taking place at the many theatre companies in Germany’s capital city. It is also very easy to visit nearby countries by rail or plane and take in some of the productions that Europe has to offer. Spring is the time when many companies are finishing their year-long repertory seasons so many productions are seeing their final showings, while others are just opening to prepare for the busy fall season. This article will consider productions in Germany outside of the Theatertreffen as well as shows in Luxembourg and Denmark. Additionally, two university training programs will be examined and a semester final project reviewed. The usually rich performance schedule at Deutsches Theater Berlin included a premiere during May of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Physicists , directed by Bastien Kraft. A graduate of the Applied Theatre Studies program in Giessen, Kraft is well known throughout Europe for his works at Vienna’s Burgtheater as well as Schauspielhaus Zurich. Loosely labeled a “criminal comedy,” The Physicists is set in a psychiatric hospital as Johann Möbius (played by Anja Schneider) has discovered a formula for a bomb that could destroy all of humanity. In order to make certain the formula does not get into the wrong hands, Möbius retreats to the sanitarium where he meets a pair of delusional individuals (Carmen Steinert and Mareike Beykirch) who believe that they are Sir Issac Newton and Albert Einstein. Guilty of the murders, the perpetrators are protected by the hospital staff who believe that their sickness renders them guiltless. The gender bending cast – all male roles were played by women and vice versa for the female roles - also included Ulrich Matthes as Fraulien Doktor Mathilde De Von Zahnd, the sinister figure in charge of the hospital. Cold and calculating, Matthes delivery and reactions provided many very funny scenes and the reckless, highly eccentric nature of Dürrenmatt’s script, written as a commentary on the Cold War, remains relevant in the 21 st Century with the rise of AI and the concept of “knowledge is power” as related to world control and domination. Visually the most striking feature of The Physicists was its use of the combined elements of shadow figures and video, created something of a film noir landscape for the first half of the production. Initially the large shadow figures were created in traditional shadow puppet style, with onstage practical instruments capturing 3-D human figures. However, this process was enhanced using video as multiple prerecorded versions of the shadow figures were projected onto the large white back wall. In the second act, designer Peter Baur creates a microscopic world that shrinks the hospital into a cramped tiny room where the characters are barely able to stand up straight, much less move. Two large muscular nurses (Caner Sunar and Alexej Lochmann) emerge as comedic replacements for the murdered females and the breakneck style of the comedy plays as a crime drama where everything is successfully covered up. Known for other “drag” versions of classics, such as The Visit and Pygmalion , at Deutsches Theater, director Kraft has a strong ability to reimagine classics with contemporary camp and humor. Die Physiker, directed by Bastien Kraft. Photo Credit: Eike Walkenhorst The Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz maintained a solid production schedule during May 2026, featuring works by Milo Rau, Robert LePage, Falk Richter and several plays directed by Artistic Leader, Tomas Ostermeier. Moliere’s Die Geizige (The Miser) featured long time Schaubühne actor Lars Eidinger in the leading role as Harpagon, the owner of an automobile dealership. With his two children in his employ, Harpagon attempts to pawn his daughter off to one of he auto salesmen, (Valere – played by Pablo Moreno), while attempting to seduce Marianne (Mano Thiravong) and take her away from his son Cleante (Damir Avdic) all within the confines of the dealership office. Harpagon attempts to hide his riches in the bag from an Uber Eats McDonalds order which is found and stolen by the wily servant/salesman La Fleche (Robert Beyer) but later recovered by Harpagon. Zany action takes place throughout, sliding off of showroom vehicles, father and son smoke weed together and the old man attempts to seduce Marianne throughout. Designed by Magda Willi, the massive set included two sets of stairs, a showroom vehicle (complete with a car alarm that kept getting set off) and multiple office spaces enclosed by glass windows. Several of the characters seemed to be reminiscent of historical figures as Harpagon simulated Groucho Marx and Anselme (Axel Wandtke) was spot on as Andy Warhol. The ending was very curious as there really was no resolution but instead something of a dialogue with the audience, asking questions about how the play might be resolved. A strobe-light dance scene concluded the work. One of Germany’s most prolific acting schools – the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” presented one of several final year end performances for a public audience on May 12, 2026. The select group of students, in the third year of their training at the Hochschule, presented a work entitled Vorspiel, a devised work guided by their semester guest artist teacher bob smith. For the project, the students had been required to walk the streets of Berlin for a prescribed 24-hour period. During that time, they would observe society, take notes on the type of people, animals, events and other elements of everyday life in the city. The result was a devised work that included monologues, songs, movement sequences, simulated intimacy and violence and involved musical instruments, a bicycle and an incredibly smart use of one of the three performance spaces available on the new campus. The work was loosely based on the concepts of both Brechtian gestus but also Anne Bogart’s theories in viewpoints. Speaking with the students, they felt this technique was very fresh and original, and helped them to connect with the real world that they would be asked to portray in their careers as actors. The Ernst Busch Schule has experienced something of a renaissance since it’s relocation to the center of (former) East Berlin and the new Zinnowitzestrasse Locatlon. The new campus has been a great change from the former Schoneweide Campus that was geographically distanced from the center of Berlin’s theatre scene. Now that the school is centrally located among Berlin’s most respected theatre companies, The third-year class of acting majors at the Ernst Busch Academy in Berlin, performing in Vorspiel. Exterior of the new Ernst Busch Schule campus in Mitte, the central area of Berlin The opportunity to visit the University of Luxembourg and their graduate program in Theatre came as a real gift. The program is co-sponsored by the University of Luxembourg and the University of Trier in Germany and offers M.A./PhD degrees in Dramaturgy. The campus of the University of Luxembourg reveals one architectural marvel after another and the program in Theater, technically a Master of Theaterwissenschaft und Inkulturalität (Theatre Science in Interculturality) has been able to place graduates at major cultural institutions throughout Western Europe, specifically in Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Students from the program have gained employment at the Grande Theatre de la Ville du Luxembourg, the National Theatre of Luxembourg, Saarlandisches Staatstheater of Saarbrucken and the Theatre de Liege in Belgium. While most of the 30 or so matriculated students in the program opt only for the Master’s Degree, a small percentage stay for an extra two years or so to complete the requirements of a Doctor of Philosophy. Generous financial aid resources in Luxembourg ensure that students do not leave the institution with a great deal of debt, if any. Modeled on the Applied Theatre program at Justus Leibig Universitat in Giessen, Germany, the Luxembourg program seeks to train students equally in the areas of theory and practice and looks to produced theatre artists with the ability to work in many areas of the industry. Professor Dr. Natalie Bloch, a major professor in the program informed me that several students had also received contracts as directors, stage managers, actors and other areas related to the performing arts. Campus of the University of Luxembourg that houses the MA/PhD Program in Dramaturgy. The Luxembourg Ministry of Culture’s 2026 budget was about 42.8 million euro and the Theatre National du Luxembourg received an operating grant of 3.4 million euro plus additional funding to be used for capital development. There are at least four other national theatres that receive state funding in addition to monies that fund festivals, cultural associations, independent artists and performing arts professionals as well as regional and municipal theatres and other public cultural institutions. Considering their relatively small population, Luxembourg theatre is among the highest funded in Europe on a per capita basis. The National Theatre of Luxembourg, which includes the Grand Theatre as well as the Theatre des Capucins presents an impressive yearly schedule to rival the best in Europe. This past season featured Pessoa , one of Robert Wilson’s final works as well as Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake , Christoph Marthaler’s The Summit , William Kentridge’s The Great Yes, The Great No but had just one original work on schedule during my visit there. Written and directed by Larisa Faber, The Land We Shared , was a series of stories told about the author’s life in Romania. Performed by a cast of 3, the play was literally a series of (mainly) monologues about the memories of Faber’s grandmother and her memories of family life just after the fall of the Soviet Union. The challenges of living under communism were explored in the play, that also featured a small two-person musical combo (drums and stand-up bass guitar) played by cast member Ovidiu Mihaita and sound designer/composer Alexei Turcan. Kristen Winters plays the role of Little L, or Larisa as a child, whose memories of life in Romania were both fond but at times a little painful. Thankfully the work was presented in English, but the heavy reliance on long, often painful stories with little technical support made the production a little tedious at times. Still the sold out audience showed great appreciation at the end and the rather large contingent of Romanian citizens in Luxembourg City generated a great deal of interest from the local population. Cast of The Land We Shared . Photo Credit: Jeannine Unsen. The National Theatre of Denmark made the bold choice to stage Frederico Garcia-Lorca’s Yerma during its Spring season at the Skuespilhuset, literally one of the most beautiful European theatre buildings I have ever seen. Located in the famous area of Nyhavn, the space was constructed in 2007 by Danish architects Lundgaard and Tranberg to include a mixture of steel, wood, brass, copper and custom-made black slate bricks. The larger theatre, Den Store Scene, is a stunning work of theatre architecture, and the use of the dark brick material is helpful both in the areas of lighting as well as sound. The experience one receives in the theatre itself is like none other and is a model of European architectural innovation. As presented in a contemporary adaptation by Australian playwright Simon Stone, Yerma was directed by Thomas Bendixen, with scenography by Jonas Fly, Balder NØrskav and Jonas Vest. The collaborative nature of the production team was noticeable, and the nature of the production was particularly cohesive from a stylistic standpoint. While it is most likely Lorca’s least well known and underproduced work, Yerma offers many possibilities as a viable work of theatre. Stone’s contemporary adaptation transported the work into a contemporary urban setting. Contemporary music and lighting embued the work with a style similar to one of many contemporary Netflix series television works. Cast of Yerma at the Skuespilhuset. Photo Credit: Maria Albrechtsen Mortensen The staging and physical use of the stage environment deserve consideration. The bulk of the play was staged on a center stage ramp – about 4 – 6 feet deep and elevated about 4 feet. The platformed approach forced the actors to perform in a very linear 2-D manner as upstage/downstage movements were made nearly impossible. Acting choices were also made more difficult, and even the seasoned Danish National Theatre actors were caught making poor choices of “gesturing” their way through scenes where they existed with their scene partners in a side-by-side relationship. Near the play’s end this formalized character relationship was changed as the platform rotated 90 degrees, and a mammoth lighting wall came into play. At that point actors moved into 3-D relationships with one another and the nature of the staging changed greatly. The use of text and images were useful when the stage setup was strictly 2-D but the abstract nature of the lighting wall provided a successful contrast. Additionally, the highly choreographed and expressionistic moments that took place between the scenes were thrilling and did much to establish the gradual breakdown of Yerma and her relationships with both her fiancé Jon (Mikkel Arndt) and her close friend Maria (Nanna Skaarup Voss). Yerma’s gradual breakdown leads her to commit a heinous act in the end. In a stark change from the original text, Stone’s dramaturgy borrows from Seneca’s Oedipus and Yerma drives a long knife into her barren womb, ending her miserable existence. Julie Agnete Vang as Yerma. Photo Credit: Maria Albrechtsen Mortensen As previously noted, these productions represent a small sample of what one might be able to witness as tertiary events in the midst of a major festival like the Theatertreffen. There are always gaps in the schedule that allow for outside shows and events to be seen and sites of theatre training and education to be visited. Sadly, this year marks the closing of the Humboldt Universitaet gastehaus, which, for the past 20 years, has made it possible for 2-3 week stays in Berlin at a fraction of what it might cost otherwise. References References About the author(s) Steve Earnest is a Professor of Theatre at Coastal Carolina University . He was a Fulbright Scholar in Nanjing, China during the 2019 – 2020 academic year where he taught and directed works in Shakespeare and Musical Theatre. A member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA, he has worked professionally as an actor with Performance Riverside, The Burt Reynolds Theatre, The Jupiter Theatre, Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Birmingham Summerfest and the Riverside Theatre of Vero Beach, among others. Film credits include Bloody Homecoming , Suicide Note and Miami Vice . His professional directing credits include Big River , Singin’ in the Rain and Meet Me in St. Louis at the Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs, Musicale at Whitehall 06 at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach and Much Ado About Nothing with the Mountain Brook Shakespeare Festival. Numer ous publications include a book, The State Acting Academy of East Berlin , published in 1999 by Mellen Press, a book chapter in Performer Training, published by Harwood Press, and a number of articles and reviews in academic journals and periodicals including Theatre Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, Western European Stages, The Journal of Beckett Studies and Backstage West . He has taught Acting, Movement, Dance, and Theatre History/Literature at California State University, San Bernardino, the University of West Georgia , the University of Montevallo and Palm Beach Atlantic University. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre from the University of Miami, FL. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Review of 'In The Heights' at the Teatro Variedades Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 Spring in Europe – Beyond the Theatertreffen Power, Shame, Vanity and Opportunism – Productions of the 63rd Berliner Theatertreffen “The more I give to thee, the more I have…” 15th edition of the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova Finding Lear’s Shadow: Compagnia de' Colombari's King Lear at the 2026 Craiova International Shakespeare Festival Robert Wilson Beneath a Cabbage Leaf: 7 Solitudes at the Nacionalinis Kauno Dramos Teatras NE:BITEF 2025: The Festival that Refused to Disappear Displacing the Orient: Postcolonial Negotiations in Purcărete's Adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights Staging Tradition, Testing Form: The Second Showcase of the National Theatre of Sofia Poetics of the Unfulfilled: The Seagull at the Jordan Hadji Konstantinov-Dzhinot Theatre, Veles, North Macedonia Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 21, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 21 Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF By Steve Earnest Image Credits: Article The Winter 2025 edition of European Stages features articles from England, Portugal, Germany, Poland, France and Romania. There is a fascinating mix of productions covered and an equally varied group of writers ranging from Marvin Carlson, one of America’s most respected theatre scholars to Amy Hamel, a university lecturer and former student of mine from Florida who appeared on Broadway and major regional theatres across the USA. It was amazing to publish this brilliant young woman’s first work, but Dr. Carlson had done me that favor many years ago in the 1990’s with one of my first articles, a (probably bad) review of Der Eismann Kommt at Deutsches Theater Berlin while I was completing my dissertation research on the Ernst Busch Schule. I know I tried very hard to be a good writer as Yvonne Shafer, one of my mentors and longtime contributors to Western European Stages , was instrumental in my submitting that review as well as helping me making the connections with the Ernst Busch Schule before that. Also included in the mix are long time contributors to European Stages like Kalina Stefanova and Philippa Wehle, both of whom covered important European festivals in Romania and France from Summer 2025. The Winter issue has generally included many works each year from the previous Summer, which allows readers to both reflect on past work but also to consider what possibilities the upcoming season may hold. The issue also features an article from first time European Stages contributor, Dr. Timothy Koch, a former colleague of mine at Coastal Carolina University now living in Portugal. Tim has a strong sense for European production, having taken numerous musical groups to Europe over his distinguished career. Savas Patsalidis also contributes a work on a the prestigious Almada festival in Portugal while Ion Tomus provides a glimpse into the Radu Stanca National Theatre in Romania and its collaboration with a Romanian University. The issue also looks at a few Polish productions in both Warsaw as well as Lublin, the city recently designated as the European Capital of Culture in 2029. Finally, I have included a review of Robert Wilson’s last realized work, Moby Dick at Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus in May 2025. Bob’s death in June created a void in our world that is not likely to be soon filled, and I was happy to attend the production with his co-director Ann-Christin Rommen. I think we will all be mourning Bob’s death for many years to come, but we will hope to see new works emerge that reveal his tremendous influence on world theatre. Wilson’s Moby Dick plays at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in late April/early May 2026 and opportunities to see Wilson’s work in the USA have traditionally been scarce. Personally, I am very happy that Marvin Carlson is continuing to make strong contributions to the journal that he founded in 1969. Marvin’s current article is particularly relevant as it covers Peer Gynt , the most recent work of the controversial yet brilliant Norwegian Director Vegard Vinge and his longstanding colleague Ida Müller. As we approach the vibrant European Summer festival season, it’s likely that some of the works mentioned in this article (particularly The Summit and Peer Gynt ) could end up in the lineup of the Theatertreffen this coming May. My trip is already booked! Steve Earnest and Ann-Christin Rommen at Moby Dick , Schauspiel Düsseldorf in May 2025 References References About the author(s) Steve Earnest is a Professor of Theatre at Coastal Carolina University . He was a Fulbright Scholar in Nanjing, China during the 2019 – 2020 academic year where he taught and directed works in Shakespeare and Musical Theatre. A member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA, he has worked professionally as an actor with Performance Riverside, The Burt Reynolds Theatre, The Jupiter Theatre, Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Birmingham Summerfest and the Riverside Theatre of Vero Beach, among others. Film credits include Bloody Homecoming , Suicide Note and Miami Vice . His professional directing credits include Big River , Singin’ in the Rain and Meet Me in St. Louis at the Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs, Musicale at Whitehall 06 at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach and Much Ado About Nothing with the Mountain Brook Shakespeare Festival. Numer ous publications include a book, The State Acting Academy of East Berlin , published in 1999 by Mellen Press, a book chapter in Performer Training, published by Harwood Press, and a number of articles and reviews in academic journals and periodicals including Theatre Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, Western European Stages, The Journal of Beckett Studies and Backstage West . He has taught Acting, Movement, Dance, and Theatre History/Literature at California State University, San Bernardino, the University of West Georgia , the University of Montevallo and Palm Beach Atlantic University. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre from the University of Miami, FL. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Theatre in Poland, Fall 2025 Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 21 Robert Wilson’s Moby Dick at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Summer 2025 Dramas of Separation at Festival d’Avignon 19th Edition Polyphonies of the Present: The Pulse of the Almada Festival Summer 2025 in London, England The Tragic Ideal of Eternal Youth: Folk Myth on the Modern Stage International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition Review of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa by Ópera do Castelo Radu Afrim and his House Between the Blocks Report from Berlin Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 16 Fall 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil By Kari Barclay Published: November 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil. Edited by Chris White. London: Methuen Drama, 2022; pp. 280 + xvi. This collection features six plays by the Palestinian-Irish writer Hannah Khalil, framed with supporting material by editor Chris White and Khalil herself. The plays, Plan D, Scenes from 76* Years, A Negotiation, A Museum in Baghdad, Last of the Pearl Fishers, and Hakawatis , experiment with forms ranging from naturalistic drama to solo performance to kaleidoscopic vignettes to a radio play. One of a few collections of Arab diasporic drama by a single author, the book shows the playwright’s range and how her work has shifted based on changing contexts. Alongside recent collections of plays by Mona Mansour, Heather Raffo, and Yussef El Guindi, Hannah Khalil adds a thematically rich and carefully crafted contribution to an emerging canon of published works by MENA playwrights. Chris White’s introduction situates each of Khalil’s plays in the context of Khalil’s biography and frames her work as intersectional feminist interventions, presenting “women telling stories the way they want to, ‘free as birds’” (xvi). A forward by actor and producer Alia Alzougbi similarly connects Khalil’s work with matrilineal storytelling traditions across generations of Arab women. Indeed, Khalil’s work often present Arab women protagonists trying to navigate the specifically gendered dimensions of colonization, warfare, and sexual violence and to survive through storytelling. Khalil herself adds intros and outros to every play in the collection, revealing how she developed each play and how responses to one production often led to the next. The book’s first play, Plan D, depicts a family of farmers fleeing violence when military bombardment leaves a crater on their land. The title alludes to Plan Dalet, the Zionist military campaign of 1948 that displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and killed numerous others leading up to the founding of the state of Israel, but Khalil avoids temporal or geographic landmarks. Instead, she is deliberately “non-specific” and lets the play resonate with various audience experiences (4). As Khalil emphasizes, the play’s first production at London’s Tristan Bates Theatre led audience members, both Palestinians and others, to confide in her their stories of war and displacement. These stories emerging from Plan D led directly to Khalil’s next play, Scenes from 76* Years. This series of interwoven vignettes depicts—among other scenes—women defiantly picnicking in front of IDF soldiers, a man returning to see his pre-Nakba home and discover its new settler inhabitant, and an Israeli activist teenager telling her family about her decision to reject university and join in Palestinian struggle. Khalil fragments these stories, and some of the most poignant scenes are wordless stage pictures of Palestinians waiting at checkpoints. Past and present collide, as Palestinian life continues in stops and starts. The title’s “years” reference the time elapsed since 1948, and its asterisk indicates that artists should update its title to reflect the ongoing count of years passed since the Nakba. The next two plays in the collection, A Negotiation and A Museum in Baghdad, are companion pieces reflecting on museums and colonial plunder. The first is a short solo play about an Iraqi English woman who comes face-to-face with the Mask of Warka, one of the earliest representations of the human face, in the British Museum. As she experiences wonder and gratitude that Britain has kept it “safe,” her father feels sorrow that his daughter overlooks its expropriation. The daughter starts to wonder if she, like the mask, has been removed from her Iraqi context. With its focus and scale, the play is one of the strongest in the collection and uses one person’s encounter to unpack conflicting interpretations of “ tarath ” [sic]—heritage (122). A Museum in Baghdad continues this reflection by focusing on two figures—Gertrude Bell, a real-life British archaeologist involved in founding the Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in 1926, and Ghalia Hussein, a fictional Iraqi archeologist trying to reopen the museum in 2006 following looting during the Iraq War. Co-commissioned by the Royal Lyceum Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, the play imaginatively collides timescales. Despite its high-stakes context, the play often leaves its characters’ tough decisions up to the flip of a coin tossed by Abu Zemen, a kind of Father Time figure. Although sometimes caught up in its ideas, the play spotlights women trying to preserve heritage as regimes rise and fall “through the hubris and mismanagement of men” (170). In Last of the Pearl Fishers, Khalil effectively uses the radio play format, which serves her writing style of quick jumps across space and time. Commissioned by BBC 4, this radio play is set in a community of wealthy ex-pats in Dubai, where Khalil grew up. The play follows Lillian, a white-collar English housewife, as she searches for her Filipina maid Celeste, who has disappeared without a trace. Khalil creates similar whodunnit structure to that found in Susan Glaspell’s 1916 classic Trifles, as gendered objects reveal clues to the mystery. However, instead of merely highlighting gendered solidarity, the play exposes Lillian’s inability to understand Celeste’s position. Through Lillian’s search, we witness the inequities of migrant labor in the UAE and the legal structures that uphold them. The final play, Hakawatis: The Women of the Arabian Nights, is a playful subversion of 1001 Nights. Leaving Scheherazade and King Shahryar offstage, the play imagines the king’s other would-be wives awaiting their execution and spinning stories to help Scheherazade hold Shahryar off. The play’s title refers to the Arab tradition of oral storytelling, and here women continue that tradition as a part of their survival. With stories ranging from dark to uproarious, Hakawatis is excellent, and it self-referentially comments on theater as a space of hope for women to build community, escape violence, and fight for their communities. Demonstrating range in form and content as well as insights from the playwright, Hannah Khalil: Plays of Arabic Heritage offers a beautifully intimate reading experience where one gets glimpses into a playwright’s journey and her artistic decision-making. Foregrounding stories about Palestine in Plan D and Scenes from 76* Years, the collection offers much-needed representation to complement anthologies such as Stories Under Occupation and Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora . Meanwhile, Khalil’s work models coalitional thinking with other struggles in the Arab world and depicts women, like Khalil herself, trying to navigate injustice with humor, care, and a belief in power of artistic imagination. The book will be of great service to scholars and artists interested in Khalil’s work, Palestinian and MENA diasporic drama, and plays that use history to explore our unwieldy present. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Kari Barclay (they/them) is a writer, director, and researcher who serves as Assistant Professor of Theater at Oberlin College. Their scholarship on theater, sexuality, and politics has been published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, among other journals. Their book Directing Desire, out from Palgrave Macmillan in 2023, charts the history and politics of intimacy choreography and consent in contemporary U.S. theater. kari-barclay.com . Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Review: GUERNICA, GAZA: VISIONS FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. By Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi Performance Review: The Tutor Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. By Marina Johnson Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF REVIEW: ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. Directed by Mohammad Basha. The Body Ensemble with the support of Al Hakawati Theatre, Jerusalem. September 9 & December 12, 2025, Marina Johnson Artificial Heart : Thinking into the Future at Al Hakawati Theatre in Jerusalem مش رح اسمحلك تقتل حالك وانا بتفرج ! ناجي ! فكرة خالك عن عالم منزوع السلاح مش حلم. السيدة الأولى, قلب صناعي "I won’t let you kill yourself while I watch! Naji, your uncle’s idea of a world without weapons wasn’t just a dream." - First Lady: Artificial Heart The sound of computerized scanning and the rumbling of bass fills the room as the lights rise on a futuristic laboratory. An anatomical scan of a human rotates on the projection screens against the upstage back wall as green coding and programming data pass along the screen. The Professor, stationed center stage, manipulates screens invisible to the audience, moving in quick, sharp gestures. He is dressed in a silver futuristic tunic, and black slacks, with wires passing over his face, prompting the question of man or cyborg. Behind him is a translucent white and silver cylindrical portal, the kind one might associate with a transportation chamber or other liminal laboratory space, and to his left and right are a couch and two chairs. This stylized beginning made my heart race; I had not seen anything like it before in Palestine and I was eager to go on a journey into the past, present, and future. Artificial Heart (قلب صناعي) was directed by Mohammad Basha and premiered on August 24th, 2024 on stage at Al Hakawati, the Palestinian National Theatre (PNT) in Jerusalem. I watched the play twice, once at Al Kasaba Theatre in Ramallah on September 9th, 2024, and again at the PNT on December 12, 2024. Artificial Heart was written and staged in Arabic, but at the performance I watched in December, supertitles were projected, and many foreigners packed the balcony of the PNT to have the best view of the stage and supertitles simultaneously. The play unfolds across three plotlines, each exploring humanity's reliance on technology and the emotional consequences of this dependence. Each vignette represents a group of people–young people who grew up with technology and use it as an innate part of their lives, an older family who have technology thrust upon them, and a government that sees an opportunity to use technology to maintain power. The storytelling goes back and forth between the three threads, creating an interwoven narrative of a world that, in many ways, eerily mirrors our own. The first thread focuses on an aging couple, Abu Omar and Um Omar, grappling with their failing robot helper. Their humorous and poignant interactions with the robot reflect a society heavily dependent on technology. The couple’s dialogue reveals their nostalgia for simpler times and highlights their desire to reconnect with family, especially their absent son, Omar. Their relationship with the robot mirrors their struggles with memory, aging, and loss, serving as a microcosm of a broader human experience overshadowed by mechanization. By the end of the play, it is revealed that their son Omar, whom they repeatedly mention waiting for, does not exist. In fact, they were not allowed to have a child by the governmental regime which deemed their genes unworthy. This eugenicist act has haunted their lives as they dream of the son they were never allowed to have. The second narrative thread focuses on Sami, a social media influencer obsessed with views and fame. His girlfriend Reema breaks up with him because he is so wrapped up in the promises of a life made easier through technology and cannot take her desire for authentic emotional connection seriously. Sami's infatuation with technological solutions leads him to acquire the robot Sasha, modeled after Reema, as a substitute girlfriend. This relationship showcases the emotional void created by prioritizing efficiency and artificial substitutes over human intimacy. Over time, Sami realizes that Sasha will never seek to connect deeply with him the way that Reema had. Sasha’s inability to return affection in an emotionally connected way is the technological limitation that causes Sami to terminate his relationship with the robot. Sami hosting a live video for his followers with Sasha in the background; Photograph by Mutaz Qawasmi; Courtesy of The Body Ensemble. In the last, and most politically charged storyline, the President collaborates with the Professor to develop a robotic version of himself to perpetuate his rule. The project involves suppressing citizens’ emotional data and memories of trauma to keep order and prevent them from becoming aware of the world's problems. As the Professor conducts lab research, the First Lady seeks him out to share revelations about her traumatic past that, unbeknownst to him, intertwines with his own. The Professor, Naji, actually is the brother of the First Lady, sharing a past as a refugee that he does not remember due to the government-mandated pills which cause people to forget and feel good. The First Lady challenges the Professor to confront his complicity in a system that trades humanity for power. At first, he begs her: Please, I’ve lived my whole life like this. I don’t want to remember. If the memories are that painful, it’s a blessing that they erased them. بترجاك ، انا عشت حياتي كلها بهاي الطريقة ، ما بدي اتذكر ، اذا الذكريات مؤلمة ، هاد بيعني انهم ساعدوني لما محوها. But, as seen in the epigraph to this review, the First Lady reminds him of the ambitions of their uncle, who aspired to see a world without weapons. While not seen explicitly in the play, there is an implication that the President is not only perpetuating his rule with technology, but that he is using the technology itself as a weapon. The Professor reveals he has been having nightmares about his past, illustrating his body’s inability to forget, even if the pills erase the details from his conscious mind. Eventually, he realizes: The idea of a world without weapons wasn’t impossible. Maybe human nature can’t give up violence, but it can avoid turning it into the biggest and most profitable trade—the trade of death. Sure, memories are painful, but no one can force what I remember and what I don’t. Revenge... revenge. How can revenge turn a person into a monster, devouring everything around them? How can we be born innocent children and learn to hate? And hate creates even greater hate! Until it drags us into a spiral, speeding us toward our end. And now, your nightmares will begin, Mr. President. فكرة عالم بدون سلاح ما كانت مستحيلة ، يمكن الطبيعة البشرية ما بتقدر تتخلى عن العنف ، لكن بتقدر ما تحوله لأكبر واربح تجارة ، تجارة الموت. صحيح الذكريات مؤلمة لكن ما حدا بقدر يجبرني شو اتذكر وشو ما اتذكر. الانتقام…. الانتقام. كيف ممكن الانتقام يحول الانسان لوحش يلتهم كل اشي حواليه ... كيف ممكن ننولد اطفال أنقياء ونتعلم نكره ؟! ، والكره يخلق فينا كره أكبر! لحد ما يوصلنا لدوامة تسحبنا وتسرع فينا لنهايتنا، وهلا رح اتبلش كوابيسك انت سيادة الرئيس. The Professor ultimately sabotages the project to reclaim his own agency. At the end of the play, the Professor accesses the project and the images projected are of wars, destruction, weapons, and the technology company, Vita’s, logo. By deleting these files, he takes his own “revenge” here against a fascist system intent on controlling citizens and keeping the arms trade on top. His actions invite the audience to question the roles of memory, morality, and resistance in our lives. These threads, interconnected by themes of loss, humanity, and the ethical dilemmas of technological advancement, collectively critique humanity's surrender to artificial solutions at the expense of emotional authenticity and moral accountability. From the moment the play began, the projections designed by Hayat Laban left me completely engrossed. Paired with Ramzi Sheikh Qassim’s lighting and scenic design and Ivan Azazian’s sound, the technological world was brought to life in a way I had yet to see on stage. The stage was spare, with few physical set pieces present, yet the design and acting filled the world, leaving nothing to be desired. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Mohammad Basha perform as an actor on stage in plays such as لا غبار عليه ( No Dust , 2022) and صالح وبسمة ، فسيفساء القدس ( Salah and Basma: A Jerusalem Mosaic, 2023 ), so it was especially exciting to see a play that he had co-written and directed. In an interview with Basha on December 21, 2024, he was quick to tell me that, despite the fact that Artificial Heart asks how much technology “contributes to nourishing our humanity” or “stripping us of it,” creating the play would not have been possible without technology. Some of Basha’s team had to travel during the creative process, and Zoom and other online communication made collaboration across distance possible. While the play does not touch much on the utility of technology, perhaps because it is assumed that the audience already brings those experiences to the table, the goal of the play was never to vilify technology. Rather, the point of the play is to bring attention to the ways that people use technology to replace their own humanity and governments use it to target citizen populations in ways that are often unknown or unquestioned. This point was made clear through the use of double casting, as each actor took on roles that created a thought-provoking counterpoint between each character. Reem Telhami, most recently seen in the Netflix television series Mo , did not disappoint with her sophisticated depiction of a First Lady who has been thrust into a privileged position as the wife of the President but refuses to disconnect from her past as a refugee. Her demands for a better future contrasted with her portrayal of the eager and nostalgic Um Omar with grace. Firas Farrah who co-wrote the script with Basha, shined as Sami, the Professor, and the elderly parents’ robot. His journey as Sami was both funny and emotionally wrought, going from a man obsessed with how technology could improve his life to realizing that a life void of human desires and love is not the answer. His physically nuanced performance as the Professor, navigating screens both visible and invisible to the audience, stole the show. Fatima Abu Aloul played both Reema and Sasha. She was especially hilarious in her role as the robot, as she embodied a character who, despite trying to please Sami, continued to make choices that left him angry and the audience laughing. Nidal Al-Jubeh played both the President and Abu Omar, embodying two men on either side of a harmful relationship. Al-Jubeh’s stern and unflinching dedication as President to the world he is working to establish stood in stark contrast to the world of Abu Omar whose life has been left wanting due to the actions of the President. The irony of this double-casting decision allowed the audience to reflect on two men of potentially the same generation and how they have shaped, or been unable to shape, the realities around them. In a world currently saturated with conversations about artificial intelligence and the ways that different world governments use it to surveil their citizens, I expected Artificial Heart to tackle the proliferation and dangers of AI. However, after the performance I realized that “artificial” and “heart” were meant to stand in contrast with each other, asking the audience to reflect on what meaning these two words hold in our own lives. The play’s triptych format allows it to tackle its themes from multiple angles. Each story brings a unique perspective, from intimate domestic moments to larger societal commentary, creating a rich narrative experience. Artificial Heart is a dynamic and thought-provoking theatrical exploration of humanity’s evolving relationship with technology, delivering profound commentary on the collision of tradition, progress, and human fragility. References Basha, Mohammad and Firas Farrah. Artificial Heart. Unpublished script in both Arabic and English, 2024. Johnson, Marina, and Mohammad Basha. Interview about Artificial Heart . Personal, December 21, 2024. Program Note, The Body Ensemble. Artificial Heart , 2024. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Marina Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in TAPS at Stanford University (M.F.A in Directing, University of Iowa). Her dissertation research focuses on Palestinian performance from 2015 to the present. Johnson is the co-host of Kunafa and Shay, a MENA theatre podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons, and they are also a member of Silk Road Rising’s Polycultural Institute. Johnson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Theatre/Practice , Arab Stages , Decolonizing Dramaturgy in a Global Context (Bloomsbury) , Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities (Routledge), Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance, Volume I: Performers (Bloomsbury). Prior to her Ph.D., she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Beloit College for three years. Select recent directing credits include: The Wolves (Stanford) The Shroud Maker (International Voices Project), Shakespeare’s Sisters (Stanford), The Palestinian Youth Monologues (Stanford), Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche (Beloit College), and In the Next Room (Beloit College). www.marina-johnson.com Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Bernth Lindfors Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 2 Visit Journal Homepage Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Bernth Lindfors By Published on April 30, 2021 Download Article as PDF The British Newspaper Archive continues to offer a fruitful research tool for scholars wishing to study reviews of performances by actors on the British stage. I used this remarkable resource extensively when preparing biographies of the famous Black performers Ira Aldridge and Samuel Morgan Smith, [1] and I go back to it from time to time whenever new microfilms of old papers from the nineteenth century are added to it in order to see if there are any reports or anecdotes about these two actors that I might have missed. Sure enough, I have found two documents that shed some new light on Aldridge, and I offer them here in tribute to Errol Hill’s pioneering research on black actors. The first of these accounts appeared in London’s Weekly Dispatch on February 10, 1828 as a contribution on “Metropolitan Oddities” focusing on “The African Roscius,” the name ironically bestowed upon Aldridge by the London Times in its racist review of his debut in the role of Oronooko at the Coburg Theatre on October 10, 1825. Aldridge had made his initial debut in London at age seventeen five months earlier in a condensed production of Othello at the smaller Royalty Theatre in the East End, performing under the pseudonym of Mr. Keene, a deliberately playful allusion to the surname of Edmund Kean, one of England’s greatest tragedians, famous for his portrayal of Othello. Aldridge kept this facetious stage name until the real Kean collapsed on stage while playing the Moor at Covent Garden Theatre on March 25, 1833, and managers called upon Aldridge to replace him in the same role in the same theatre two weeks later. He was then billed both honestly as Mr. Aldridge and dishonestly as “a Native of Senegal,” possibly a ploy to validate his identity as a true African performer. This charade led to a controversy so bitter that it kept Aldridge off the London stage for the next fifteen years. He had already spent eight years seeking to turn what was meant as a racial insult into a praise name, and he persisted in assuming this honorific title alluding to Roscius, a great Roman actor, for the remainder of his career. When he started appearing at the Royalty Theatre, advertisements described him as a “Gentleman of Colour from the New York Theatre,” [2] and press reports on his subsequent provincial tours spoke of him as having “attained considerable celebrity in America,” [3] a gross exaggeration. One playbill in Bristol went so far as to claim erroneously that he was “known throughout America by the appellation of the African Roscius, a performer of Colour, whose flattering reception at New York and throughout all the principal Theatres in America has induced him to visit England professionally.” [4] This was more media puffery. Later in 1826, when he was finding it difficult to secure engagements and had become nearly destitute, Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post and the Theatrical Observer; and Daily Bills of the Play actively sought to solicit funds that would enable him to return to America. [5] In these early years he was known to have moved to England from the New World, not directly from Africa. So the article in the Weekly Dispatch two and a half years later purported to clear up some of the confusion surrounding this unusual stranger. It may have been the first biographical article published on him in Britain and deserves to be remembered both for its errors as well as its truths. The author of this piece, identified only by his initials—W.L.R.—was William Leman Rede, the younger brother of Leman Thomas Rede, author of The Road to the Stage (1827). Both brothers enjoyed active careers in the theatre, William initially as a young actor and journalist who “speedily established himself in high favour as a critic on all matters connected with the drama. None better could distinguish between talent and pretension; none better adjust the intricate balance between the practiced charlatan and the unpractised man of promising merit.” [6] He had written a few early plays and novels and later became a very prolific playwright, specializing in popular farces and melodramas. At the time he wrote about Aldridge, he was only twenty-six years old, just six years older than Aldridge himself. Having seen so young an actor performed remarkably well in a variety of roles, Rede went to interview him in order to collect information on his background and previous experience. Here is his scoop on this surprising American African: THE AFRICAN ROSCIUS The London Stage has alternately presented every novelty that Europe can afford—we have had rope-dancers and wire-walkers, that performed all sorts of apparent impossibilities—we have had men-monkies, real dogs, horses, and elephants—even the less civilized quarters of the globe have supplied us with the phenomens [ sic ], and those lofty domes in which they profess to “hold the glass up” to nature, have been made the arena for tumblers. Novelty and merit are not twins, yet they are sometimes simultaneously produced, and the subject of my present article is one instance of this desirable conjunction. The visiters [ sic ] of the Coburg must all remember the genuine Oronooko [,] Gambia, &c., who appeared there about three years since—his late efforts have been made in the provinces, and, as it is said, he is shortly to appear at Covent Garden Theatre, a sketch of him and his adventures may prove acceptable. FREDERICK WILLIAM KEENE (the African Roscius) is the son of the Rev. W. Keene, who, though an African by birth, is a Protestant Minister in New York, and has the care of the souls of a large number of blacks; his wife (my hero’s mother) was a Creole, and the Roscius, I believe, the “first fruits” of their union, was born in New York (24th July 1807). His early days it would be difficult to describe, unless my readers were acquainted with the pastimes followed by the juvenile in the United States. At an early age, he shewed a predilection for the drama, and when about 15, joined some Gentlemen “of his own rank and complexion,” in a Theatrical scheme; they were a sort of a chess-board company—half black half white. The theatre was situated in Green-street, New York, and their first play was Richard the Third , the principal characters by four blacks, i.e. Duke of Gloster [ sic ], by the Roscius; King Henry , by Mr. Bates; Richmond , Mr. Hewlett; Buckingham , Mr. Jackson; Lady Anne (the fair Lady Anne)! by a negress , called Miss Sukey Stevens; and the Queen , by a brown fair one yclept Miss Dixon. These performers of colour were set off by the appearance of a white Tressel — (Mr. Lamb). The Roscius made a decided hit, and, after a few more trials, set out on a starring tour in Boston—where he played Othello , with a black Desdemona and a white Emilia . He then returned to New York and appeared at the Park-street Theatre as a star ; he ran through a round of characters in different parts of the United States, and then embarked for England—but, ere I follow him thither, another word of the Green-street Theatre. It was a desideratum in New York—where a large portion of the inhabitants are virtually, if not actually, excluded from the other playhouses on no plea but their colour; the prices were as follows—Boxes, 8s., (5s. English)—Pit, 4s.—Gallery, 2s. The company were most respectable—unlike some damsels of our drama—amid the black ladies there were no light characters. Mr. Mathews, in his piece of pleasantry, entitled “A Trip to America,” has described the performance of Hamlet at this theatre; now “I have been most accurate in my researches;” and finds that this story has only one fault; i.e.—that it is not true Hamlet was never performed at Green-street; it was, indeed, rehearsed for a Miss Johnson’s benefit, but never played. When Mathews visited the theatre, Pizarro was the play, and my hero was Rolla . One anecdote will suffice to show the genuine innocence (call it not ignorance) of the company. Fortune’s Frolic was got up, and Robin Roughhead (a Yorkshireman) played by a negro, who studied it from an Irishman, and went through the part with a fine Cork brogue: In this farce, there is one character who delivers some eight or ten lines—this part is marked in the cast as “a clown”—Messieurs of the somber hue, who had no notion of any clown but a pantomime one, such as they had seen at Price’s theatre, absolutely dressed this character a la Grimaldi! Some of the technical phrases of the drama, and portions of the texts, were perversely retained by them, though, in their mouths, they sounded paradoxical; for instance, Othello , bending over a Desdemona , as black as a crow, exclaimed— “Yet I’ll not shed her blood, nor scar That whiter skin of her’s than snow.” Let me return to the Roscius—he came to London, and drew crowded houses at the Coburg, where a piece, called The Negro’s Curse , was prepared for him by Milner. Since then he has been at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bath, and Bristol—at Manchester and Liverpool seven times, and he is now in Birmingham. Whilst in Scotland he met Mr. C. Kemble, who, I am informed, undertook to procure him an opening at Covent-Garden. The strongest point of his acting is intense feeling—not violent, but deep—there is a pathos even in his colloquial tones peculiar and affecting. Our first meeting was in High Holborn, where he had collected a mob round him by his extravagant laughter at the braying of a donkey, an animal he had never seen in America— Othello and Zanga are his favourite parts—but Mungo is, perhaps, his chef-d’oeuvre —his style of humour is totally different from that of any other performer—his drunken scene is a thing by itself—the very personification of liberty run mad—and presents a lively image of what we might conceive to be the folly of the Spartan slaves, when they had their one day of unrestrained freedom, both in speech and diet. The African Roscius (notwithstanding his faults and mannerisms) is an actor of great natural powers; he practices no tricks to catch applause, and rather under than over acts. His talents, and the singular circumstances in which he stands in the profession he has chosen, are claims upon kindness. His line is a limited one; and, I trust, if any prejudice arises on his appearance, it will be one favourable to him. He is a stranger, untaught, unaided, totally friendless in this country, and, with nothing to rely on but his talent, which is of an order that practice in the metropolis will render great. Some of the biographical details given here are known to be accurate; for instance, Aldridge’s date of birth, his father’s profession, his own predilection for the drama at an early age, and his involvement in a multiracial “Theatrical scheme” in New York. But his father’s name was Daniel, not a name that began with a W, and Rede wrongly assumed that Aldridge was the firstborn child in his family (he had a brother, Joshua, born seven years earlier). [7] However, Rede’s article contains one fact that has never before been mentioned by others: that Aldridge’s mother was “a Creole.” In those days the term spanned a range of different meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , a Creole could indicate someone white, black, or a person of mixed racial ancestry. A creole white was usually “a descendant of European settlers, born or naturalized in those colonies or regions [of the West Indies or America] and more or less modified in type by the climate and surroundings.” A creole negro was “a negro born in the West Indies or America, as distinguished from one freshly imported from Africa.” [8] Since the Manhattan Death Libers records that Aldridge’s mother Luranah, mistranscribed in this source as Lavinia, was born in Delaware and buried in the cemetery of the black church her husband served, theatre scholars may assume that she belonged in the latter category of creoles, but cannot be certain that she had no mixed blood. [9] After all, Aldridge himself, during his initial performances at the Royal Coburg, was often described as not very dark-skinned. The Times said “The gentleman is in complexion the colour of a new half-penny, barring the brightness.” [10] The British Press confidently declared “Mr. Keene is a Creole.” [11] And when he came back to London to appear at Covent Garden, there was a good deal of commentary on his color being light brown or dark olive, and of an “oily and expressive mulatto tint” which “seems to show that he has European blood in his veins.” [12] Rede had never been to New York, but he knew a little about the “African Theatre” where Aldridge had made his start as a professional actor because a year earlier he had watched the comedian Charles Mathews mock and mimic a ludicrously inept “African Tragedian” he claimed to have seen butcher the role of Hamlet there. This was one of the most memorable satirical character sketches he performed in his popular one-man show Trip to America , which opened at the English Opera House on March 25, 1824. Mathews’s African was not a caricature of Aldridge in performance. Rather, it was a parody of the acting style of James Hewlett, the principal actor at that theatre. But when Aldridge started performing at the Coburg, some theatergoers went there expecting to see the actor Mathews had famously lampooned. Rede knew better, having spoken with Aldridge, but for more details on his acting career, he had to rely on whatever Aldridge told him, some of which was more fanciful than factual. There has been some good research done on New York’s African Theatre in recent decades, including studies by Errol Hill, George Thompson, Shane White, and Marvin McAllister. [13] By comparing what these scholars have said with what Aldridge told Rede, contemporary scholars may gain a better understanding of how Aldridge chose to present himself to the public and how that public responded to what they saw in him. The African Theatre originally grew out of the African Grove, a cabaret or “public garden” intended for the enjoyment of New York City’s black community. Opened in the summer of 1821 by William Alexander Brown, a West Indian, it offered drinks, music, and dramatic entertainments to its patrons, who initially met at Brown’s Thomas Street home in Lower Manhattan. After neighbors complained about the noise, Brown moved thirteen blocks further north to his home at the corner of Bleeker and Mercer streets a few months later. However, the space offered seating for only fifty people and audiences proved thinner, so in November or December of 1821, Brown decided to move his troupe again, this time south to a tavern or hotel in Park Row facing City Hall Park and next door to the well-established Park Theatre. Unfortunately for Brown, Stephen Price, the business manager at the Park Theatre, did not like having such competitors on his doorstep, especially since they were now performing three times a week and drawing white as well as black audiences. He sent in hecklers to disrupt performances by throwing firecrackers onto the stage and even arranged for police to raid the theatre one night and arrest all the actors. In order to be released, the actors had to promise that they would never act Shakespeare again. This kind of harassment led Brown to lease an empty lot on the east side of Mercer Street near Broadway and build a proper playhouse with seating for hundreds that opened in mid-July 1822. (Greene Street, mentioned by Rede, sat one short block west of Mercer.) Unfortunately, the harassment resumed almost immediately. On August 10 th , a mob of white ruffians interrupted a performance, assaulted the actors, and vandalized the playhouse. Brown and his actors boldly fought back. Police arrested and charged eleven of the white rioters, some of them circus workers in the city, but the case against them was eventually dismissed. To make matters worse, a severe yellow fever epidemic had started to spread throughout the city, and by early October Brown’s theatre, now called the American Theatre, had to close. Brown took his players to Albany, where they performed for the rest of the year. Surviving playbills indicate that several performances were mounted at Brown’s new theatre in the spring and early summer of 1823, but by mid-July Brown was bankrupt. Several members of his troupe stayed together and gave scattered performances in 1824, but they had to find other venues for their entertainments. [14] What was Aldridge doing during these three years? At what point did he join the African Theatre company and take part in their performances? Theatre scholars cannot confirm this precisely. His name does not appear in any of the documents concerning the company, but he may have performed under a pseudonym since his father did not approve of such sinful behavior and wanted him to be a preacher rather than an actor. But statements made by others who knew him and also by Aldridge himself suggest that he was indeed attached to Brown’s theatre company for a time. Philip A. Bell, one of his classmates at the African Free School, recalled some years later that Aldridge left school in 1822 and joined Brown’s American Theatre in 1823 after seeing a Shakespeare performance there. [15] In an autobiography Aldridge published around 1848, he claimed that his first visit to a professional theatre, specifically the Park Theatre, had “fixed the great purpose of his life, and established the whole end and aim of his existence. He would be an actor.” [16] So he “fell to work and studied the part of Rolla, in the play Pizarro , and in that character he made ‘his first appearance on any stage.’ This was at a private theatre, where he was singularly successful, and all his fellow-performers were of his own complexion” [17] —in other words, Brown’s theatre. Brown’s troupe produced Pizarro at the Hampton Hotel next door to the Park Theatre in the winter or spring of 1822, but James Hewlett played Rolla (not Aldridge). However, a second performance of Pizarro staged by Brown’s company in Albany on December 19, 1823 may have given Aldridge the opportunity to replace Hewlett in that heroic role. [18] So Bell and Aldridge’s accounts may contain some elements of truth. Aldridge also reported that he had also once played a love-sick Ethiopian Romeo opposite an Ethiopian Juliet with the same supporting cast, but there remains no hard evidence in the extant literature on the African Theatre to support this claim. [19] How reliable was the information that Aldridge gave Rede? Richard III was among the first plays ever performed at the African Grove, the pleasure garden that Brown had created for the black community. Brown staged it three times in September and October 1821 and a fourth time in January 1822, but in at least two of the performances Hewlett played the leading role supported by Mr. Bates and Mr. Jackson but not by any of the other actors and actresses Rede names in his account. In fact, none of the female performers, except Miss Dixon who later appeared in The Poor Soldier , appear to have been employed by Brown, and it seems extremely unlikely that Aldridge (thirteen years old and still at school at that time), would have been recruited to play a major role in a Shakespearean play. However, he could have become an active member of the troupe while still young, for James McCune Smith, who also had gone to school with him, reported years later that upon graduating, Aldridge, “being of a roving disposition,” had briefly shipped out on a brig. “Shortly after his return home, Brown’s theater was opened, and Ira, with his brother Joshua, took to the stage; but their father, finding it out, took them away from the theater.” [20] It remains tempting to speculate that the two actors, listed as Hutchington and J. Hutchington, performing as Buckingham and Lord Stanley in at least one of the African Theatre’s productions of Richard III , might have been these two delinquent youths. Hutchington also earned a part as a Castilian Soldier later in the African Theatre’s first performance of Pizarro . [21] In any case, Aldridge subsequently defied his father and rejoined Brown’s troupe. The rest of what Aldridge told Rede about his career in the United States appears the kind of inflated fiction that P.T. Barnum famously called Humbug or Bunk. He had never performed before Charles Mathews at the African Theatre. In fact, Mathews had never attended a production there; instead, James Hewlett had performed privately for him in the spring of 1823, inspiring Mathews’s skit of an ignorant African Tragedian in Trip to America . Aldridge also never appeared as a star at the Park Theatre, nor is there any record of him playing Othello in Boston or running through a round of characters in different parts of the United States. Aldridge could tell funny stories about other black actors at Brown’s theatre, one of whom had imitated a Yorkshireman with an Irish brogue, and another who botched lines as Othello, but these too may have been little more than highly embellished anecdotes. But Rede’s recitation of Aldridge’s impressive string of previous appearances on stage on his provincial tours seems very accurate. Indeed, over a twenty-month period after leaving London in December 1825, Aldridge had performed not only at Brighton, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Birmingham—the major cities Rede mentions—but in at least seventeen smaller towns and villages along the way. During this time, rumors circulated that he planned to appear at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in London, but in mid-1826 his nemesis Stephen Price had become lessee of Drury Lane and remained there for the next four seasons, depriving Aldridge of that opportunity. Charles Kemble ran Covent Garden as an actor-manager and proprietor, but from 1826 to 1829 the theatre struggled with serious financial difficulty, so he probably could not have afforded to take a risk on a black actor. Rede’s article suggests that he saw that this young actor had talent and merited public attention. The last paragraph of Rede’s report in which he describes watching Aldridge perform offers a shrewd, insightful assessment of his salient abilities and minor defects. Later eyewitnesses confirm Aldridge possessed “great natural powers” as a tragedian and comedian, and one who might with further practice become still greater. But Rede need not have pitied him for being “totally friendless in this country” because Aldridge was happily married to a British woman, and two British actors he had met in New York, Henry and James Wallack, had encouraged him and helped launch him in London. Plus, by this time Rede himself had become his good friend. [22] Actually, Rede had already become so good a friend that when Aldridge announced his decision to experiment as the lessee of a theatre in Coventry on March 3, 1826 (three weeks after the publication of Rede’s essay), he said he had invited Rede to serve as his stage manager. Their collaboration included acting as well as managing the motley crew of performers and musicians they hired. Their brave experiment in running a theatre lasted barely two months, for by the end of April and beginning of May each had moved on to performer elsewhere, Aldridge in Worcester, Rede in York. I found a second source of new biographical information on Aldridge in the Carlisle Journal of April 16, 1889. It comes in the form of an amusing eyewitness report by a gentleman who recalled having seen Aldridge perform a scene from Othello at his school forty-one years earlier: Looking last week over a collection of old play bills which was in the library of the late Mr. John Clarke Ferguson, I noticed one which referred to the performance of Ira Aldridge, “the African Roscius,” in the Theatre Royal at Carlisle in the year 1848. Ira Aldridge was a man of colour—a veritable “black man”—who could assume the part of Othello without the use of burnt cork, and I have often laughed at an incident that occurred during his visit to Carlisle. He came to our school to give some recitations. It was a hot summer’s evening, and the windows of the schoolroom, which looked upon the neighboring street, were thrown wide open for the purposes of ventilation, while the boys sat listening with rapt attention to the African Roscius while he gave some scenes from Othello . He was in the midst of his address to the Senate and describing the arts by which he had wooed and won the gentle Desdemona, when a noisy fellow in the street began a most terrible row by ringing a big bell and calling “Fresh herrings!” with a loud, hoarse voice. We tittered at the curious mixture of Shakespeare and costermonger; but Ira went manfully on. So did the fresh herring merchant. My story being done She gave me for my pains a world of sighs— continued the tragedian. “All alive! Just come in!” vociferated the costermonger. Ira hesitated a moment, but resumed— She swore, in faith, ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondrous pitiful, “Fresh herrings! Fresh herrings!” came booming through the window once more. The “dusky Moor,” already perspiring at every pore, with ill-concealed indignation made one final struggle— She wish’d she had not heard it— But the fresh herring man was noisier than ever— “All alive! Alive!” and the bell gave another loud clang. The blood of the African Roscius was now up. Unable longer to constrain himself he broke off in the middle of the sentence, rushed from the stage, and behind the wings we could hear him shouting—no longer the musical blank verse of the poet, but— “Stop that row, you rascal, or I’ll come and choke you with a mutton chop!” The coster was evidently taken aback for a moment by the apparition of the negro’s head through the open door; but he soon recovered his equilibrium and his voice, and the altercation which ensued helped—to the school, at least—give an amusing turn to the entertainment.[23] This prompted a response in the Carlisle Journal on 24 April the following week by another former schoolboy who remembered the same incident but also provided additional information on the black actor: A Kendal correspondent writes: — “Your notes on Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius, have interested me greatly as I knew that robustuous [sic] actor very well in Edinburgh many years ago when he played the part of Aaron, the Moor beloved by Tamora, in Titus Andronicus .[24] These remarks affirm that Aldridge made an indelible impression on audiences young and old. He could amuse schoolboys with a comical tirade and years later could remind them of the vigor with which he portrayed Aaron not as a villain but as a romantic hero. Such memories of Aldridge like the ones described in this essay, preserved in newspapers of the day, merit resurrecting and adding to the documentary record of his life and experiences. References [1] My biography of Aldridge was published in four volumes by the University of Rochester Press between 2011 and 2015. The one I wrote on Morgan Smith was published by Africa World Press in Trenton, NJ in 2018. [2] There was no theatre by that name in New York City. [3] Brighton Gazette , 15 December 1825. [4] Playbill held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. The same notice appeared in the Bristol Mercury , 20 January 1826. [5] Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post , August 31, 1826; Theatrical Observer; and Daily Bills of the Play , 2 September 1826. [6] “Recollections of Leman Rede,” New Monthly Magazine and Humorist , new series 80 (1847): 102-09. [7] Bernth Lindfors, Ira Aldridge: The Early Years ((Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011), 21. [8] These definitions are drawn from The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 601. [9] Lindfors, Ira Aldridge , 20. [10] London Times , 11 October 1825. [11] British Press , 11 October 1825. [12] English Chronicle , 11 April 1833; Morning Chronicle , 11 April 1833; Town Journal , 14 April 1833; the direct quotations are taken from the Globe and Traveller , 11 April 1833, and the Observer , 11 April 1833, respectively. [13] One of the first reliable accounts was given in Errol Hill’s Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors (1984). Then came A Documentary History of the African Theatre (1998) by George A. Thompson, Jr., a New York City librarian who tracked down 134 published and unpublished sources that told much of what was happening there. Next was Shane White’s Stories of Freedom in Black New York (2002) and Marvin McAllister’s White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentleman of Colour: William Brown’s African and American Theater (2003). Each provides insightful commentary on the significance of Brown’s theatre, White writing as a historian of black New York, McAllister as a theatre historian and performance theorist. [14] I have been following George Thompson’s chronology throughout this portion of the narrative. [15] Philip A. Bell, “Men We Have Known: Ira Aldridge (1867),” Elevator (San Francisco), 2, and reprinted in Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius , ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 49. [16] Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius (London: Onwhyn, [1848]), and reprinted in Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius , ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 13. [17] Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius , ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 14. [18] H.P. Phelps, Players of a Century: A Record of the Albany Stager (Albany: Joseph McDonough, 1880), 56. [19] Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge , 14. [20] James McCune Smith, “Ira Aldridge,” Anglo-African Magazine , 2, no. 1 (January 1860), 27-32, and reprinted in Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius , ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 37-47. [21] See George A. Thompson, Jr., A Documentary History of the African Theatre (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 70 and 228, for further details. [22] For further information on Aldridge’s theatrical activities in New York, London, and on his first tours of the British provinces, see Lindfors, Ira Aldridge and the books by Hill, Thompson, White, and McAllister cited in footnote 13. [23] Carlisle Journal , 16 April 1889. [24] An Edinburgh playbill shows that Aldridge performed as Aaron there on 24 July 1850. Footnotes About The Author(s) BERNTH LINDFORS Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf ISNN 2376-4236 Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Kristin Leahey with Joseph Ngo Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Kristin Leahey with Joseph Ngo By Published on May 23, 2022 Download Article as PDF When Lauren Yee approaches a new play, she considers the historical events she wants to address in her work. Yee contemplates, “What are the moments and people that have been forgotten?” Yee gathers copious research and identifies the primary icons of these periods. She then disregards these surrogates of the times: her plays are not historical renderings of the lives of the famous or infamous, such as Mao Zedong or Pol Pot. Her plays are stories of the people whose narratives have often been omitted from the archive and whose lives have been marginalized. She probes histories of Asians and Asian Americans. As a writer, she acknowledges their communities by conceiving plays based on the lives of fictional individuals from the communities themselves. By reclaiming history, Yee constructs main characters in the form of common people who refuse to accept their plights and choose instead to challenge overwhelming obstacles in order to construct divergent futures for themselves and subsequent generations. Ultimately, through contemporary dialogue, Yee explores paradigms of largely forgotten pasts, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre in The Great Leap and the Cambodian genocide in Cambodian Rock Band . In this article, I, one of Yee’s primary dramaturgs, will share the dramaturgical processes for the development, production, and audience and community engagement for two of her most produced works, which both premiered in 2018: The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band . Additionally, Joseph (Joe) Ngo, an actor with whom Yee collaborates, contributes thoughts in the form of an interview I conducted with him over the past several months. Ngo reflects on his dramaturgical contributions as an actor and Cambodian American in the new play development process. By performing an analysis of these plays and sharing specifics of their development trajectories, I provide access to the dramaturgy of one of our most influential twenty-first century writers, unpack why these works about Asians and Asian Americans are so widely produced at PWIs (primarily white institutions, i.e., US regional theatres and off-Broadway institutions), and describe how Yee’s work and playmaking processes add to the discourse on Asian American dramaturgies. Figure 1. Joseph Steven Yang, Linden Tailor, Bob Ari, and Keiko Green in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Seattle Rep co-production of The Great Leap (2018). Photo by AdamVisCom. The Great Leap In Yee’s works, fathers are often protagonists, which is true, too, of the The Great Leap . Set in 1989, The Great Leap follows Manford, a Chinese American high school student from San Francisco, as he plays in an exhibition game in Beijing against the Chinese men’s national basketball team. Over the course of the play, the audience discovers that Manford’s father Wen Chang—a devoted, ranking member of the Communist Party—is the Chinese team’s coach. Manford’s mother, Zhang Li, rebelled against the Party after the Cultural Revolution, and she miraculously defected to the United States early in her pregnancy. Wen Chang refused to join her at first and was subsequently unable to because of immigration laws in China and the US. Ultimately, Wen Chang defies the Party and protects his son, who has been unknowingly photographed with the student protestors in Tiananmen Square. He then allows Manford, a member of the University of San Francisco team, to take the last shot in the game, which enables the Americans to win, displeasing the Party. In his final monologue, delivered as a fax to his son, who has hopefully returned safely to California, Wen Chang states: “they are dealing with their most immediate threats. soon they will get to me. they suspect, i suppose, that i will not run.” [1] Wen Chang is the character in the play who experiences the greatest transformation and moves to action from stasis. As her dramaturg on the play from 2016 to its New York opening in June 2018 at the Atlantic Theatre Company, I discussed with Yee some of the variations of the title of the play in connection to who the protagonist of the play is: Manford at the Line , Manford at the Line or The Great Leap , and eventually, simply, The Great Leap , after the 2017 Denver Center for the Performing Arts Colorado New Play Summit Workshop. During the workshop, Wen Chang was played by Francis Jue who, like Ngo, serves as a consistent inspiration for Yee. With Jue, there was casual conversation about identifying the main character: Manford or Wen Chang. Manford was onstage throughout most of the play, and he traversed both of the play’s settings of the Bay Area and Beijing. But Manford didn’t change. Although he is the youngest character (and might be, therefore, most likely to change), his motivations are consistent: to discover his family, to reach his goals, and to honor basketball—the sport he loves. By contrast, Wen Chang renounces communism and looks to the US democracy as a place for his son to find a better life. He writes, “and if i have done my job properly, you are on your flight now, minor injuries, back to a country that will hopefully see you for the man you are. either way, my story ends here. and yours is still to begin.” [2] Wen Chang regrets the loss of his individualism, particularly the loss of his life with his family, for his belief and love of the Communist Party. In the end, retaining Manford’s name in the title didn’t make sense for either the rhythm or the meaning of the play, as he ultimately isn’t the protagonist. Additionally, Yee wanted to capitalize on the witticism of the title The Great Leap : it simultaneously alludes to the sport of basketball and the 1958–1962 economic and social campaign by the Communist Party to industrialize an agrarian economy, which led to famine, brutalization, and the deaths of 45 million people. Using The Great Leap as the title was a linguistically sophisticated, though controversial, play on words. In addition to the process of deciding the title, we practiced sensitive research in the form of primary source interviews. Yee and I conducted a number of anonymous interviews with Chinese expatriates living in Seattle and Denver. They informed our work, in terms of everyday life, competitive sports, and education in Communist China from the 1970s onward. One source said that a colleague, also Chinese and working in the US, asked them, after I initially contacted them, without their having made any public mention of working on the show, what they were doing working on a piece with this title. A different source stated that the closer you traveled to Beijing, the more you must omit about the protests to the point of pretending they never happened. One interviewee claimed that they knew the identity and narrative of the man in the “tank man” photo and that this was common knowledge in certain circles, but was unwilling to share more information. This image serves as the culminating moment in Yee’s play because is the surrogate for the Tiananmen Square Massacre for the West, while it remains unknown in much of Communist China. In her foundational work On Photography , Susan Sontag writes that “Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation.” [3] Yee further moves audiences to empathy, or a form of “participation” with an iconic photograph by transforming Wen Chang into “tank man.” In The Great Leap , audiences hear Wen Chang describe himself as the figure in the photo while he changes his clothes, and then they see him against the backdrop of the famous image. At this moment, every audience I have seen the play with across the country gasps. This final scene of Wen Chang’s journey is connected to grief, as it epitomizes the affect of much of Wen Chang’s journey in The Great Leap . In The Melancholy of Race , Anne Anlin Cheng writes about the transformative act of moving from “grief to grievance, from suffering injury to speaking out against that injury.” [4] Cheng describes a “racial grief” elicited from a a history of indifference, social injustice, and psychological or even physical injury. Applying theory from Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia,” Cheng explores a type of grief—melancholy—which I argue Wen Chang exudes throughout the play. Melancholy is a condition of “endless self-impoverishment” or the tendency to remain in an interminable state of mourning. [5] Wen Chang’s melancholia is an example of racial abjection experienced by Asian Americans that Yee imprints on the characters of Wen Chang and Manford because they both live in a liminal space between belonging and being ostracized by the US. A scene that conveys Wen Chang’s immense grief is “letter 3/pick and roll: 1971.” Wen Chang writes: “and her absence was noted in my dossier, ensuring that i would never leave this country. every year i applied for a visa, and every year, like the movement of a clock: denied. i was the pick. and she was the roll. and together we could have done so much. but she could not be patient and i was too much so.” [6] In the co-world premiere productions in Denver and Seattle (at Seattle Repertory Theatre) in 2018, not seeing Zhang Li onstage made the character omnipresent and became a significant production choice. The everlasting emotional and geographic separation between the couple spurred Wen Chang’s grief and eventually this melancholy is compounded when he learns that Zhang Li died from cancer just before the beginning of the play. Both Manford and Wen Chang mourn her loss throughout the narrative and seek “grievance,” as Cheng defines it, at different points on their journeys. The characters are called to action; they express and enact a search for voice, justice, and change through “grievance,” or overcoming their grief. Manford fights to join the University of San Francisco team immediately after the funeral of his mother, creating an impetus to live through grief and demonstrate his grievance by making the team. He expresses his anger for the death of his mother through his system-defying actions. He’s angry at the US health care system for not providing proper care for his mother. He’s angry that because she was a poor immigrant, she was forced to take taxing, manual labor-intensive jobs to survive that ultimately accelerated her death. Wen Chang expresses his grievance through protest and joins the students in Tiananmen Square. Yee intentionally bookends The Great Leap with these men, first Manford and then Wen Chang, essentially wearing the same costume: a white button-down collar shirt and black pants. In their matching attire, Manford restlessly insists on joining the basketball team, and Wen Chang protests for change in Tiananmen Square. Off-Broadway and regional audiences around the country experienced The Great Leap as it became one of the most-produced plays in the US, and Yee became the second most-produced playwright in 2020. [7] While working at one of the PWIs that premiered the play—Seattle Rep (as the Director of New Works)—I heard what was attracting many theatres to the work: it has a cast of four or fewer; it is a comedy; it is a father-son story; it is about a historical period and creates an iconic image; it is extremely well-written; it is ostensibly linear with flashbacks that are easy to follow; and it includes a popular sport in it, but doesn’t require a set with a full court. Because of these features, the primarily white audiences and subscribers of these theatres, also found this play interesting. However, unsurprisingly, many were shocked by the vulgarity of the language (i.e., “all right, you masturbating horsefuckers: i know you’re tired. i know you’re still jetlagged from last night. i know you’d rather be jerking off into a nice hot bowl of noodles than sitting in traffic this early in the morning.”) [8] which theatres such as Seattle Rep and Denver Center for the Performing Arts anticipated by sharing content warnings in advance through pre-show emails, on the show’s webpage, and in the program. In my dramaturgy, I learned that an inspiration for the play was Larry Yee’s (Lauren Yee’s father) investment in basketball. In the early 1980s, Larry Yee played on a team representing San Francisco in these types of exhibition games throughout China. He noted that the Chinese players from these very competitive teams were extremely tall, often at least 7 feet. In the play, they become coach Wen Chang’s “Tall Trees.” [9] I added images of Larry Yee (who is 6 feet) to the lobby display. I attended all the previews in Denver and Seattle, and I led talkbacks in both cities, where the director and the entire company were completely different. In every location, diverse audiences of white, Asian American, and other people of color seemed enthralled by the play’s climatic game in Beijing. They seemed equally captivated by the narrative of Manford and Wen Chang finding each other on the court and a history that is still forbidden in part of the world. In Denver, watching the first readings, sitting next to Lauren Yee, hearing her laugh along with the audience, then experiencing their immediate standing ovation, the company knew we had created a unique work. Fig. 2. Brooke Ishibashi, Joe Ngo, Jane Lui, Raymond Lee and Abraham Kim in South Coast Repertory’s world premiere production of Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee. Photo by Jordan Kubat/SCR. Cambodian Rock Band The band Dengue Fever and actor Joe Ngo brought a formidable dramaturgical voice to the development of Cambodian Rock Band , a 2015 commission from South Coast Repertory Theatre in Southern California. Yee partially developed the work at Seattle Repertory Theatre during a closed workshop, curated by me and performed with Ngo, where Yee learned that Ngo’s Cambodian parents survived the regime of the Khmer Rouge and the genocidal forced labor camps of the late 1970s. Ngo said in our interview: I think it came as [a] surprise to Lauren to discover that I was actually Cambodian-Chinese. When in the room, during the feedback session, I mentioned how much it meant to see that Lauren was aiming to tell a story so close to my family experience. For a play that Lauren had admittedly shelved for some time, it was as if in me she had found a match to light her dynamite, or perhaps vice versa and upon this discovery of my family history, Lauren had found a source. After that we headed to the Thai restaurant across the street for dinner, and [for] at least an hour … I shared my family stories… As someone who doesn’t believe in fate, it is rather difficult to swallow all the fantastical, it seems, coincidences that ended up making Cambodian Rock Band : the two looming the largest being Lauren and my meeting and the fact that Lauren realized that’d she wanted to have a band onstage and that I play the electric guitar. [10] Ngo describes his initial work as always aimed at authenticity in building the voices for the characters and advocating for that work beyond the page. Because he is one of Yee’s primary partners for Cambodian Rock Band , his personal family history added layers of anecdotal dramaturgy. He contributed family stories and song choices. For instance, his parents crossed the Thai border twice under extreme duress, which the character Chum describes. Ngo’s mother, who is based in Los Angeles, served as the language coach for the South Coast Repertory production. As the city Battambang is a setting in the play, Ngo suggested “Champa Battambang” in honor of his parents’ birthplace. While the cadence and style of Yee’s language is ultimately hers, it was his enactment of his father, uncles, and other Khmer community members that led Yee to solidify his portrayal of Chum. Ngo articulates, “In building the life journey of my character Chum, I consider this a transformation of grief to grievance; reflecting on the challenges, pain, loss, and grief my family endured and overcame and my subsequent embodiment of their grievance through my own performance.” [11] For the premiere at South Coast Rep in 2018, Yee, Ngo, the rest of the originating acting company, lauded director Chay Yew, and resident dramaturg and current Director of New Works Andy Knight thoroughly examined the historical context of the play’s world. In Cambodian Rock Band , Yee reminds audiences of the history of the genocide and how the US strategically ignored its existence. In A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson describes this “imperial amnesia,” [12] which led the US government to ignore reports of the killing fields and refugee accounts of the death camps. Under the Nixon Administration, in March of 1969, the US attempted to bomb North Vietnamese trade routes in Cambodia, resulting in the deaths of 100,000 Cambodian civilians. This action further fueled pro-communist factions, such as the Khmer Rouge, in Cambodia. Following the devastating loss of the American War in Vietnam and hundreds of thousands of American lives, the US found no imperialistic value in Cambodia or interest in continued involvement in another Southeast Asian conflict. Western media largely neglected to cover the genocide, as the Watergate scandal dominated headlines. Yee informs audiences of this omitted history through flashbacks with Chum, the character that links the two historical worlds of the play and the band, and with monologues delivered by characters such as Duch, who have a wry sense of humor: genocide genocide genocide. boo.(DUCH clicks off the slides)you think of everything that came after, once the shit hit the fan. the khmer rouge, pol pot, and two million dead. [13] Thus far, Cambodian Rock Band has been produced by PWIs with predominantly white audiences. Minneapolis’ Jungle Theater, in collaboration with Theater Mu, the second largest Asian American theater in the country, will coproduce the play this June and July. Having performed the show more than a hundred times, Ngo described how shocked audiences seem by the genocide: It’s odd to say, but more often than not, it seemed as if audiences weren’t prepared to see the brutality of the Khmer Rouge enacted onstage (which, to be honest, is only half as bad as most of the cruelty documented) and so, the general feeling I so often was able to discern from audiences was one of disbelief. It was not surprising to me that whenever our cast participated in talkbacks, we’d receive fewer questions and more of what seemed like condolences for what had happened, expressions of helplessness, statements that affirmed that older audiences “just didn’t know this was happening, Cambodia was a blackzone,” refutations from other older (typically white) folks asserting that our country just chose to turn a blind eye to the damage that it caused…all of it in a restrained cacophony cloaked in civility. The expression of disbelief indicated to me that they felt some amount of shame or guilt of responsibility (whether acknowledged or not). [14] Ngo shares his family’s story through not only Yee’s play but also extensive audience outreach. For Cambodian Rock Band , Yee and her team of artists launched Herculean efforts to promote and encourage Cambodians and other Asian and Asian Americans to attend the show because of the work’s subject matter. Yee and the cast created and sold tee-shirts. Also, Yee attended as many of the shows as possible, facilitated community engagement events, hosted Asian American nights, worked with student groups from local colleges and universities, emceed music nights with members of the cast playing songs from the show’s Dengue Fever catalog, and participated in massive press campaigns. Ngo contends that the attraction for audiences with Cambodian Rock Band is the rock music, the interpretation of story connected to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the intrigue of how the seemingly unrelated items are tied. What audiences—Asian and Asian American but truly all diverse audiences—receive is a deeper understanding of a culture, people, and history through this theatrical platform, which ends with a celebration of their humanity. Ngo says, “I believe we achieved something special when we had younger audiences at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and they, too, danced in the aisles, celebrated, and seemed to deeply absorb all the rawness of the characters, having survived their youth. And, with arms flailing and sweaty, they would then hug each other and cry, seeming to feel the immediate understanding of just having survived themselves.” [15] Dramaturgy is not a delicate art for a Lauren Yee play. When Yee writes, she mouths her characters’ words. She bangs on her computer keys with a ruthlessness. She becomes consumed by her subjects, reading an excess of texts, then putting them aside to structure the building blocks of her plays. With superpower speed, she writes 200 to 400 pages in a week and just as easily slashes pages upon pages of dialogue. She requires the same ferocity and fight in her collaborators, which Ngo and I can confirm. Audiences will often find a narrator in conflict with the past and a geopolitical power struggling to draw a map of their own future. She examines epic, world-building and (hopefully) change-for-the better historical moments, but always from the perspective of an ordinary person. References [1] Lauren Yee, The Great Leap (unpublished final manuscript, 2018), 112. [2] Ibid., 112. [3] Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Classics, 2008), 7. [4] Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3. [5] Ibid., 8. [6] Ibid., 84. [7] Diep Tran, “The Top 10* Most-Produced Plays of the 2019-20 Season,” American Theatre Magazine , 18 September 2019, https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/18/the-top-10-most-produced-plays-of-the-2019-20-season/. [8] Yee, Great Leap , 68. [9] Ibid., 88. [10] Joseph Ngo, interview with Kristin Leahey, 3 January 2022. [11] Ibid. [12] Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 176. [13] Lauren Yee, Cambodian Rock Band (unpublished final manuscript, 2018), 7. [14] Ngo, interview with Kristen Leahey, 3 January 2022. [15] Ibid. Footnotes About The Author(s) Kristin Leahey served as the Director of New Works at Seattle Repertory Theatre, and prior to that post, as the Literary Manager at Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, among other places. She has freelanced as an artist nationally and internationally. Her publications include articles in Theatre Topics , Theatre History , and Theatre Studies . Leahey is an Assistant Professor at Boston University. Joe Ngo is an Obie Award-winning actor, who has worked at South Coast Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in New York City. As a writer, his work has been primarily geared toward solo performance and audio narratives with pieces such as Words, Words . Joe is a graduate of the University of Washington, Seattle’s MFA/PATP, and is based in Los Angeles. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 14 Spring 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani By Suzi Elnaggar Published: May 1, 2023 Download Article as PDF Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price Review of Theaters of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt written by Sonali Pahwa Review: Decolonizing Sarah: A Hurricane Play written and directed by Samer Al-Saber “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani Review of MUKHRIJĀT AL-MASRAḤ AL-MIṢRĪ (1990-2010): DIRĀSA SĪMIYŪṬĪQĪYAH [Female Egyptian Directors (1990-2010): A Semiotic Study], written by Hadia Abd El-Fattah Review of Syrian Refugees, Applied Theater, Workshop Facilitation, and Stories: While They Were Waiting written by Fadi Skeiker Review: Layalina written by Martin Yousif Zebari, directed by Sivan Battat Up There by Wael Kadour, Introduction Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly Crossing Borders: A Theatre Practitioner’s Odyssey, An Interview with Hassan El Geretly On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh Performance Review: A FAMILY THAT HAS BEEN BLOCKED Performance Review: BETHLEHEM SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER FESTIVAL Performance Review: HOOTA. By Amer Hlehel Performance Review: LITTLE SYRIA Book Review: ACTING EGYPTIAN Book Review: MANSOUR, MONA. THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Previous Next Attribution:

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi, Amir Al-Azraki, Jeff Casey Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF Ya Rab! By Ali l-Zaidi, National Theatre, Baghdad, 2016. Printed with permission of the production staff O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Characters: Mother, in her fifties. Moses, in his sixties. A large valley surrounded by mountains on all sides, strange in its appearance, called the Holy Valley Tuwa. Mother enters, covering her body with an abaya, a black women's cloak, barefoot, carrying a large bag on her head. We hear her voice before she appears, speaking loudly on her mobile phone, then setting the bag aside . Mother ( Standing in the middle of the valley. ) Yes... I have arrived at the place. It seems terrifying. Tell all the mothers, I will not return without good news for them, cool water for their weary hearts. Yes, yes, I will call you later... ( She hangs up and surveys the valley. ) Everything here invokes fear: a valley of stone, my prayers made of stone, my fasts made of stone, and my supplications made of stone. ( She shouts. ) And I am a mother whose blood flowing in my soul has turned into stone! ( She raises her head towards the sky. ) I have come to you, O Lord, with a thousand tears and grievances in my heart. I blame you as if blaming my own soul. How can my soul not respond to my prayers?! I am your guest now, O Lord, and I have learned that the host hears even the breaths of his guests. And now what if I am both a guest and mother? Yes, a mother, alas for her! ( She shouts louder. ) O Lord... speak to me, as you spoke to Moses here in this valley. Respond to the heart of this mother who has lost her children one after another, heart by heart and laughter by laughter, only one son remaining, waiting for immigration and the sea's rafts of death... No third choice. ( Firmly. ) You can see, O Lord, that I have taken my sandals off out of respect just as I would in my own home, and I have come to your holy valley, Tuwa, knowing that you will speak to me. I know I am not a prophet, but the heart of a mother, as you know, equals a thousand prophets! The mothers have sent me to you, O Lord, and I am the most grief-stricken among them, the most insane. There must be a solution for the fate of our children, O Most Merciful of the Merciful! ( She screams. ) Shall I uncover my head? You will see how my hair has gone grey so that my children would grow up. But when they grew up, instead of their beloveds waiting for them, the rafts of hell waited for them in your seas, or explosions waited for them in the streets of madness. This killing, drowning, cannot continue. What fate is this that makes our children, who we protected when they were only tiny things, into fish food in the seas? What trifling fate is it that we wake up in the morning with nothing but the fragrance they left in their beds when they are gone? O Lord, we want them to grow up, not to die. I speak to you as the mother who has grieved the most, who buried her children without limbs, buried them in kilos, one kilo, two kilos, three! The biggest of them, I didn't find a single bone, so I slaughtered a lamb and buried its bones instead, and I visited its grave — I mean the lamb's bones, O Lord. What can I do? There is only one son left, and I want him to live and love and grow up and be buried whole. ( Takes out papers from her bag. ) O Lord! Where are you? These are the signatures of the mothers... look at them. I didn't forge a single signature. Thousands of signatures, whatever threshold we were supposed to meet to stop this, we have never had enough signatures, O Forgiving One. You must find a solution. ( Firmly: ) I will now say something important. ( She speaks forcefully. ) In my name and in the name of all mothers, we will give you a deadline, O Lord. You have twenty-four hours to command “it shall be so” and it will be, or we will declare a strike from praying and fasting. ( She shouts. ) Yes, that's what we have decided, we will strike from prayer and fasting, O Lord, and no mother will lift her hands in prayer to you after today, oh, closer to us than our own veins. Our conditions are clear... stop the killing that devours our children and stop their emigration away from our embrace. They leave our homes and don’t return while they are still in the prime of life dreaming of a spring that won’t come. ( Loudly :) We mothers want our children to reach at least fifty years of age. Fifty years... is that difficult for you, O Most Merciful of the Merciful? We do not ask for the impossible, and after that, do as you please. ( Madly :) Strange! ( She shouts: ) Aren’t You capable of everything as You say? Do something, O Lord, for I am in your holy valley, Tuwa. ( She cries. ) O Lord, O Lord, can you hear me, O Lord, my Lord, O Creator of the heavens and the earth, where are you? O Lord... Moses ( Enters, leaning on a staff, wearing old clothes. ) Don't shout. Enough, woman. What do you want? Mother ( Surprised. ) Are you... Are you... Are you God? Moses I seek forgiveness from Allah. Mother I thought you were Him. Moses You must leave the Valley of Tuwa. Mother What concern is it of yours? I took off my shoes and entered the valley. Moses You don’t have the right to enter… Mother It isn’t your right to give. Moses Silence is the master of this place. This is a sacred valley, only those permitted by the Most Merciful may enter! Mother I have waited my whole life for permission. Moses Then you must return to your home. Mother I won't return until God speaks to me. Moses He will not speak to anyone. Mother It's none of your concern. It's my Lord. Moses He has spoken to no one here except me. Mother Except you?! And who are you? Moses Moses. Mother And who is Moses? Moses ( Assertively. ) The Prophet! Mother ( In disbelief .) Prophet Moses?! You?! Moses I have lived in this sacred valley for a long time. Mother You live here? It's unbelievable. Prophet Moses living in a valley and leaving paradise? Moses This is my paradise, which God planted with the sweetness of His words, and suffused with the faint odor of His presence, spreading peace and love throughout. Mother It can't be. How can I meet a prophet who lived in a distant time? Moses Before God, it is all one time... A time where nothing exists except mercy, O mother. Mother O mother? And you know me too? Moses Yes, I know you... And I have been sent to negotiate with you. Mother Who sent you? Moses The Almighty God! Mother God? Negotiating with me? But I didn't ask for a prophet... I want only God to hear the prayers of mothers, and I am authorized by them... That's all. Moses You're a mother wearing the cloak of a madwoman. Mother Madness, O Moses... The killing of our children in the prime of their life. Moses You have the right to turn into a madwoman, but you have no right to incite mothers to madness. Mother ( Shouting. ) O Lord... I didn't ask for a prophet. I wanted You, the All-Hearing. Moses Be careful... The valley is monitored by cameras. Mother Cameras in the valley? ( Looking around. ) O Lord, I am a mother who came to this place with all her sincerity and devotion, with all her wails and mourning. Moses That's enough... You must stop immediately along with all the women striking from their prayers and fasting. Mother ( Firmly. ) We will proclaim our strike until our demands are met. Moses It's not right... You must seek God’s forgiveness. Mother ( Yelling at him .) Is it right that the blood of our loved ones is so cheap?! Moses And how can a creature stop loving their Creator who gave them everything?! Mother We love God more when we strike from prayer and fasting! Moses This is rebellion, not love. Mother God has given us the right to rebel in order to live with honor! Moses I take it as a conspiracy to overthrow... Mother ( Interrupting. ) I recognize that you are a prophet, but you have no right to stand between us and God. Moses ( Yelling at her. ) I just want to understand... What do you want? Mother Mercy! Moses He is the Most Merciful of the merciful. Mother I know... But not in our homeland. Moses His mercy is everywhere. Mother Where is it? Where? ( Firmly .) I’m in a hurry. Listen, O Prophet... Twenty-four hours is the deadline we gave to God, and then we declare our general strike. Moses Twenty-four hours? It's the worshipers' deadline for the worshiped. It's as if I live in the age of myths or hear a fable. ( Quietly. ) O mother... God cannot be threatened. Mother You understand it as a prophet as you wish, and we understand it as mothers as we wish... ( Her mobile phone rings, she answers. ) Yes, yes... What do you want? I'm still in the place. I'm negotiating. With whom? With the Prophet Moses. What's wrong with you? Yes, he's the prophet... God sent him to negotiate with me. ( Shouting. ) Don’t laugh, and leave your questioning now, your job is just to monitor comments on the mothers’ strike page on Facebook. Respond to all of the comments , do you understand?! ( She hangs up. To Moses :) Mothers can’t wait any longer. Moses The Mothers' Facebook page? What a mockery is this! This could evolve into a military coup. You don't understand what you're doing. This is an invitation to return to paganism or idol worship, like Pharaoh who said, "I am your supreme lord." Mother (Smiling.) Do demands for rights always turn into rebellion? Moses This is a dangerous development that could lead to the extinction of mothers from the Earth forever. Mother We will become extinct as long as the earth consumes our children every moment. Moses (Exclaims.) O God... Mother (Shouting.) Bags, bags, bags... Bags, O Moses! Nothing but luggage leaves with our children. Nothing remains here but their toys, their clothes, and the scribbles they left on our walls before they departed. (As if reading from a wall:) "Memory of my mother, father, siblings, and me on Eid." "The rose's fate is to wither, and our home's memories never fade." Moses (Raising his head.) How can I negotiate with all this pain? A mother plastered with memories of a home reduced to walls. (Strikes the ground with his staff.) Demands are rejected, O mother. Negotiations are over; you must leave from here. Mother Rejected? What's wrong with you? Cruelty doesn’t enter the heart of a prophet, as they say. Moses My heart contains nothing but purity. Mother (Looking at the staff.) Then try doing something with your staff, Moses. Moses My staff? It works by the will of God. Mother Tell it to split the earth in half... one half for murderers to live in, and the other half for us to live peacefully with our children. Moses (Points to the staff.) It seems to be out of commission right now. It always seems to need a Pharaoh. Mother ( Mockingly :) Even your staff has turned into scrap, O prophet! Moses I told you it works by the power of the one God, not by my power. Mother Try again... Chaos must stop in my homeland. Moses Rather, mothers must stop this chaos. Mother (shouting) Youbooee ! [i] Is there anyone who lives in peace and has never said "God is Great" [ii] ? What is happening, Moses? Say something. We are mothers who have nothing but the refrain "God is Great" since our children were born and our souls are longing for our children. What have we done to deserve all this hell? Moses Since Adam's soul was placed on this earth, that has been the question. Mother And no one answered it. Moses I object to the idea of a strike. Mother Did God send you to negotiate with me or to object? Moses The relationship with God is supposed to be without conditions and above assessment. . Mother We feel that God has lifted His hand from this land, turning it into hell. Moses Hell... It is a burning hospital to treat the disease afflicting all of you! Mother We will scream, refuse, and protest against this hell... Moses The sea will swallow you as it swallowed... Mother (Interrupting angrily.) Hasn't the sea swallowed us already, Moses? Haven't you seen or heard? Even the fish of the seas wept for them and were more compassionate and warmer than this homeland! We did not ask God for the impossible; we want our children to warmly sleep in our arms and dream dreams as innocent as they are. Moses (Painfully.) And I too... my mother found no place gentler than the sea to place me in. [iii] Mother ( Takes out a large mortar, grinding with it. ) Our children come out of our wombs and their heads are burning white... their hair all white, white, white... Do you understand? All of us have become insane in this country, a big hospital with nothing but mothers mad about their children. (Stops pounding with the mortar. Shouting :) Look at our misery, look at our wretched faces, O prophet... (Puts on one of the cloaks and performs the role of Mother 2. A group of people appears, bringing a coffin and exiting. Mother 2 looks crazy, sitting at a coffin with her son's remains, Moses is watching) Mother 2 (Crazily, ululating, laughing, dancing, approaching the coffin.) Finally, my eye, your mother told them you would come back, my son, and no one believed this crazy woman. Even the streets complained about her feet. [iv] (Screams : ) Come and watch my son return to my arms in the clothes of his wedding. (Ululates.) "Congratulations on your wedding, O son," they thought I was crazy, crazy, and now he returns to my soul... (Takes out a red dress from the sack, wears it over her clothes.) I vowed that when my son returns to my arms, I will wear a red dress the color of his blood, "Sweet, very sweet, amazing." (Recovers.) They brought his shirt with fake blood stains, and they said, “We found this on the edge of the sea.” I curse every sailor in the universe who stole my son's laugh... (Ululating, dancing around the coffin, then stops.) They finally brought you. ( Firmly with the coffin. ) Come on, wake up from your sleep. Be a man and rise. Rise and embrace your mother instead of this meaningless pampering. I will give you a new shirt without a single drop of blood. ( Shouting. ) They brought your shirt without your perfume, my life! ( A group of people appears, lifting the coffin and exiting. ) Where are you taking it? Wait! ( Shouting. ) They brought your shirt with nothing but sea salt, my soul... Congratulations on your wedding, my beloved... Here's joy, and another joy... ( She laughs and dances wildly . She stops performing the role of Mother 2 and takes off the red robe.) Mother Hah... What do you think? Moses Death is the norm of life... In your homeland there is nothing worth living a long life for, there is nothing but tears. Mother It's beyond our control, O Prophet, and it is God who destined us to be in this homeland. Moses I understand, but striking from prayer and fasting is rebellion against God's authority in this world. Mother I don't understand these terms, I don't know their meanings. I'm just a mother like all mothers, wanting to warm myself with the breath of my youngest child. Moses Beware, O mother, beware, for this place is monitored with cameras by Him, the Almighty. Beware... “And when We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam’; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.” [v] Mother Ask this land where we have been prostrated our entire lives … Yet in the end, we were expelled from Paradise because we prostrated to God alone! Moses “We have certainly created humankind into hardship.” [vi] God has said so. Mother ( Smiling. ) Why, why in hardship? Moses ( Exclaiming. ) The dust of your streets is kneaded with pain. Mother No human has lived on this earth in such hardship except us! What did we do to deserve this? Is there a solution, O Prophet? Say something, do not remain silent... ( Takes out her mobile phone, presses a button to show Moses a video .) Look, look at this tragedy... Look. ( Sounds of mothers screaming, mourning .) Did you see, O Prophet? Moses I did. ( Confused. ) Yes, I did. ( Withdraws. ) Oh... What is happening here? How can I be a reformer when all I possess is a staff abandoned by life and consumed by time? And this land, this homeland... needs a new miracle, one as big as the children’s laughter that has stopped, awaiting an all-clear signal that never comes. How can I sow hope in a land where nothing grows but graves? Lord... I found people here living in a vast graveyard they call a country. I am perplexed, or a bewildered Prophet who doesn't know what to do? How does one negotiate this grief in the guise of a mother? How? Mother You do not know what has happened to us! Moses ( Shouting at her. ) All the women of the earth will be punished because of your thoughts, and Paradise will not be under their feet. [vii] Mother We do not want Paradise under our feet... Let it be wherever it is, just let our children live their lives with their mothers. They are our flowers. Have you heard of a Paradise without flowers? Moses And who are you to speak for the mothers of your homeland? Mother Me? Wait a moment, O Moses, wait. I will show you a special permission of those mothers... ( Opens a large bag, takes out a large collection of women's cloaks. ) They sent their cloaks with me so that Allah might see them, poor women. ( Shouts while tossing the cloaks. ) This one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one... I will spread them here in the valley. ( Holds a cloak. ) This cloak belongs to Abdullah’s mother. Abdullah never slept except in his mother's arms. He slept until he was killed by the shell. ( Holds another cloak. ) And this cloak belongs to Saeed’s mother. [viii] Saeed was never happy. He lived with his mother in a clay room, and when his body was torn apart, his mother found no grave to shelter what remained of him. ( Holds another cloak. ) And this cloak belongs to Salem’s mother, the sanest mother in our city. They brought her son’s head to her, and this wise woman turned into the craziest woman in our city. ( Points to another cloak. ) And this one belongs to Jaber’s mother. O poor son, he left his mother's embrace to sleep in the embrace of the sea. And this one belongs to Ahmed’s mother, and this one belongs to Ali’s mother, and this one belongs to... Look, ( Shouts :) these are mothers in the form of cloaks, each cloak carrying the scent of their children who were torn apart by explosives here and suicide belts there. Moses Who is this mother, O Lord? There is nothing in her soul but sorrow, and I have turned from a prophet into a spectator who possesses nothing but tears and questions. I am all Yours, O Lord... Please grant me the ability to answer even one of her questions. ( Pauses, then pulls himself together. ) O mother... I cannot understand what prayer and fasting have to do with what has happened to you. Mother No one listens to the cries of our tears... We have found no one to protest against except God... Perhaps He will send rain to extinguish the fire in our hearts, O Prophet, and stop this farce. Moses God is not a party to your conflict. For your people, killing is a picnic adorned with blood and hollowed words, creating a thousand justifications in your minds. God has nothing to do with this. Mother God created the killers! Moses And He created you too. Mother He shouldn't have created those monsters and made them live with gentle souls. Moses There must be contradictions in creation... There must be hungry and satiated, there must be killer and slain. Mother Has killing not been chasing us for a thousand years, O Prophet? Moses ( Yelling at her. ) I told you, death is the norm of life. Mother ( Yelling back. ) Death is a norm, but not killing, not slaughter, not burning, not drowning. Death is a norm, but separating heads from bodies is not a norm. Moses ( Withdraws alone, looks at the staff, speaks to it in a whisper. ) Do something, please, anything. One movement from you might make these mothers reconsider their strike. What's wrong with you? ( Stops, raises his head. ) O Lord... Tell the staff to do something according to Your will and let it be anything, stopping killing for one day, or one hour, or one minute. I implore You. O staff... No use... ( Firmly with the mother. ) Return, O mother, to your homes before the Almighty swallows you in the land of this valley. Mother I will not return until I take an oath from God that there will be no more emigration or slaughtering of our children from today onwards! Moses I am here to negotiate with you. Mother Our conditions are clear. Moses ( Raising his head, shouting. ) O Lord... I can’t bear the words of the people of the earth. O Lord, I am overwhelmed by the fire that spews from this mother's mouth. O Lord... Could it be that You created life only for it to be a knife prepared to slaughter this world? Could it be that You destined sorrow to prevail over joy and reduced all colors to just one dark hue? I have long known that Your throne, glorified be You, trembles for the cry of a single orphan... What now makes it completely silent in the face of an orphaned homeland? ( Shyly. ) Glory be to You, we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Mother Silence... Nothing but silence. Moses Perhaps your hands can silently ask for something. Mother ( Gesturing with her hands. ) My hands are tired, O Moses! Moses Your stubbornness, O mother, will ensure that your prayers are never answered by God. Mother When were they ever answered before that they should be answered now? When? I forget my hands raised to the sky for hours, until they ache, and pigeons build their nests in the comfort of my palms. I forget my mouth for weeks as it pleads to keep my children safe from slaughter, and I forget my tears for years as they flow, hoping they would be dried by just one word from Him. ( She yells. ) Tell me, what should I do for God to answer my prayers? Moses Job endured afflictions for many years. [ix] Mother ( Shouting .) And we endure a thousand calamities while He is the Most Merciful of the Merciful! Moses Jonah lived, prayed, and fasted inside the belly of a whale. Mother It means nothing before great whales that have devoured all our young. Moses Jesus was crucified in the most horrible manner. Mother Every day, our streets are a ceremony of crucifixion for our loved ones in the most horrible manner! Moses And Jacob, whose eyes turned white from grief? Mother All mothers' eyes have turned blind, and their hearts and souls have turned gray together. Moses And the well of Yusuf... Mother ( Laughs. ) Much easier than this darkness. Moses O mother, I cannot comprehend the fire in your words. Mother O prophet, I cannot comprehend the coldness in your words. Moses I still carry my staff... It may work at any moment. Mother A sword of wood! Moses ( Rising, speaking to the staff. ) No, you will see it work. It will work at any moment. ( To the staff :) Speak, do something, by the permission of God stop the killing, stop the fires and bullets and smoke and explosions, O staff. Dry up the seas and bring their children out safely, unharmed. What is wrong with you? I do not want you to be a serpent crawling on the earth... [x] I want you to be a balm that soothes the hearts of those mothers. What has happened to you? ( Raising it high. ) O staff... I am Moses the prophet, commanding you to extinguish every fire on earth... ( Raising it higher, then stopping. ) Oh, how disappointed I am. Mother ( Sarcastically. ) Are you confident that you are the Prophet Moses? Moses You doubt everything, even my existence. Mother Then how come your staff isn’t working? Moses And who do you think I am? Mother I don't know. Moses ( Raising his voice. ) You must have faith and not let Satan strip it away, O mother. Perhaps God wishes to test your patience and that of mothers through the loss of their loved ones. Mother Did they ever tell you about a mother who sang or danced at her son's funeral? Have you heard of such madness? ( Shouting. ) We, the insane, did that... ( Her mobile rings, and she answers. ) Yes... What do you want? I am still in the Valley of Tuwa, His word... Yes, I spoke to Him, but He did not respond. What should I do? Be a little patient. Tell me, how many mothers are there now? Oh... more than a million mothers... Yes, yes, go now. ( She hangs up. ) It will be a strike of cloaks and black garments, tears. Worship will stop until further notice... Moses You stand in a sacred valley... You must speak with kind words, for God hears what He wills from His servants. Mother And when does He will? Tell me, please... When does He will? Moses I do not know. Mother Then go... Leave me here alone with those cloaks. Moses We haven't found a solution, O mother. Mother And we won't, O prophet. Moses I fear for you the anger of God. Mother There is nothing new... Anger is spreading in our streets in the form of explosive devices, designed to kill our children... And you come to warn me of impending anger? Moses How can I negotiate with this mother? What a dilemma! She's a stubborn woman, O Lord. ( Changing the subject. ) Perhaps your children are now in paradise. Mother ( Laughs. ) And what are they doing there? Moses They live a happy and luxurious life, rivers flow beneath their feet, wide-eyed maidens and eternal youths, food of their desire, and fruits... Mother ( Interrupting. ) You are wrong, O prophet... The true paradise for our children is in our warm embrace! Moses You must now pray to the mothers... and stop them from the idea of striking against prayer and fasting, for this contradicts the essential idea that the creature worships the Creator Mother The decision has been made by consensus between the mothers of the homeland and cannot be reversed. Cease the death of our children in this way or we strike until our demands are met. Moses You have removed God from your heart, and whoever does that turns their heart into nothing but a pump. Mother Our hearts left with our children who left without notice. Moses ( Raising his head. ) It is difficult to negotiate with a woman like this, O Lord. ( Calmly. ) Faith, O mother, is to thank God when He gives you nothing. Mother Say something else, Moses. Moses Faith is... Mother ( Interrupting. ) How can we continue to believe and resist the sight of our children turned into sheep slaughtered, skinned, roasted, and consumed every moment, while God Almighty watches our little sheep? Moses God Almighty is beyond what you describe, what kind of mothers are you? There is nothing in your bodies but your hearts, which speak, scream, cry, decide, and have left the mind dry, lifeless. What happens to this universe? God always wants good for His servants! Mother Where is this good, O prophet? Where? Where do I find it? In which market is it sold? Four children are all I have in this world, three of them burned by explosions, and the remains of their limbs scattered, and you simply speak of good? Moses Death in this way is a dramatic, affecting, but mothers' minds do not comprehend that God wants good by returning children to their rightful place! Mother We have turned from flesh and blood mothers into strange tales of sorrow and blood. Moses And I, too, my staff, have stopped working and turned into a spectator with nothing but applause! Mother You are an unemployed prophet. Moses And unemployed in negotiation. Mother You can watch more, wait, O spectator, watch me for a moment... Moses But I am unable to applaud. Mother Just watch, for free, let the one who does not buy watch our goods without applause... Moses withdraws, watching, the Mother wraps her cloak around her waist, performing the role of Mother 3, bringing a set of "cups" - containers - of water, placing them in at center. Mother 3 I have a thousand cups of water. [xi] Every day I sprinkle them behind my children, one cup so that they return safely from the homeland, one cup so that they walk on their feet in the streets of the homeland, one cup for their souls that the homeland wants to steal, one cup for their hearts, stopped every moment by the homeland's bullets, one cup for their faces, washed with the smoke of the homeland, one cup for their dreams that escape every day in the homeland. ( She cries out. ) All these cups are witnesses that I have never forgotten to sprinkle water behind my children so that evil is expelled from their path, and my heart cools and is reassured so that they return swiftly to my spirit. They haven't returned for years, but as long as their cups are here and I sprinkle water behind them, there must be joyful news that warms the heart. Oh, my sorrow... All the news has stopped... And turned: She mourns, hitting her head with her hands . O mother, remember me, Witnessing a wedding's spree, [xii] Deprived of wedding's glee, My henna turns to blood, tragedy I see. Candle of youth's bright fire, Who will quench its desire? My henna is my blood, My brow lies still in the mud. [xiii] She stops performing the role of Mother 3 . Mother Ha... What do you think, O spectator? Moses My soul hasn't heard of these water cups at all, nor seen the secret of those cloaks, nor understands all this pain! What is happening in this land where my staff has failed me and there are no other goals left for me? Split, O sea, to contain the worries of those mothers. [xiv] Mother ( Smiling. ) You were asleep in heaven, O Prophet, unaware... While we pray every day amidst a blaze. Moses ( Withdrawing. ) What prophecy in me is helpless to wake from its slumber? What dead manhood resides in my soul now? What remains of the dry heart beats within me? What story do I hear? What myth? What pain, what hell, what trivialities, what lies? What homeland? ( Stops. To the mother :) I feel the need to understand this death surrounding you. Mother Speak to God, tell Him to stop this farce. Moses And how will He stop it? Mother You ask me how He will stop it? Is He not God who says to death "Be," and it is, and to life "Be," and it is, and to our children "Return safe," and they return, and to killing "Stop," and it stops? What has happened? Don't tell me that God is no longer capable of everything! Moses ( Yells at her. ) These are the limits set by Allah, so do not approach them. He is capable of everything. Mother We don’t need everything, just one thing. Moses Stop, seek forgiveness and repent to God. Mother What have I done wrong to seek forgiveness? And what have I done to repent for? I have lived a long life as punishment in a prison where there is nothing but the forbidden, loss, hunger, bullets, and waiting. I seek forgiveness though I've done nothing, and I repent though I don't know what to repent for! My life has passed between seeking forgiveness and repentance. ( She cries out. ) I'm tired, do you know what it means to be tired? Wait a moment, please... ( Answers her phone. ) Do not ask me anything, O mother, and listen to me well. Tell all the mothers to prepare for a million-person protest where we call for a strike from prayer and fasting. Yes... we will declare sacral disobedience if our demands are not met by God Almighty! ( Raises her head. ) My Lord, forgiveness. ( Continues her call. ) This is the last solution, yes... and listen to me also: do not leave the Facebook page for a single moment, share all strike slogans with pictures because we are at a historic crossroads, a historic moment, do you know what 'historic' means? Oh, yes... I don't know either, never mind... yes, act now, O mother, act... ( Hangs up. ) Moses What historic moment are you talking about? Mother About today. Moses Yesterday was Pharaoh and his soldiers... Mother ( Interrupts him. ) Today, fear and his soldiers are here. Moses Perhaps my mother is one of those mothers! Mother ( Points to the cloaks. ) Yes... your mother, O Moses, is one of those cloaks. Moses ( Surprised. ) My mother? Mother They took you from her and placed you in the sea… They took away her life, O Moses, and you did not know. Moses I still smell her scent. Mother But our children did not get their fill of a mother's scent... because God did not save them from the sea as He saved you. Moses I suggest you pray here... and raise your hands to Him with a burning heart... and wait. Mother The last prayer you mean? Moses A final attempt. Mother I will pray. ( Stands to pray. ) I will try, so that you don't reproach me on Judgment Day, asking about my prayers and fasting. I will pray, and after that, I have nothing left for you, for I am weary, truly weary. I will try to say: La ilaha illallah ... [xv] but after that, I want You to dry my tears, Subhan Allah... but after that, You extinguish the fire of this heart with a single word from you, Alhamdulillah... [xvi] but after that... Moses ( Interrupts her. ) Pray, O mother... pray. Mother ( Bows down .) I am praying as you see... Moses Pray as people pray! Mother ( Prostrates. ) This is my prayer... I don't know anything else. Moses ( Yells. ) Stop, I've never seen anyone pray like this. Mother ( Stops. ) Only grieving mothers pray like this. Moses With all this madness. Mother Every mad person has their own prayer. Moses I will go mad too. ( Shouts. ) What is happening here? All streets throughout the world are valleys of Tuwa, sacred places that are tainted by even a single drop of blood. No, no, no... silence cannot prevail over a new history of slaughter, and Pharaoh is multiplying in your streets. I will speak to God. Indeed, I will plead with Him for the sake of the mothers... Mother This is the solution... speak to God, please, He hears from His prophets. Moses He has never denied me a request. Mother Go ahead, what are you waiting for? Tell Him about us, our waiting, our stations, our trains that never stop... Moses I will do that. ( Raises his head ) My Lord... I am Moses, the Prophet whom You spoke to in this valley, making me Your spokesman and prophet and Your sign on earth, and making my staff a miracle with which I conquered Your enemies. I come to You today imploring You to stop the river of blood in the land of mothers. Send Your rain upon the streets so it may cleanse and prepare for the prayer of love that You taught us. There is no salvation except through You, for the sake of those weary hearts. O Lord, stop this bleeding, give a sign or speak to me with a single word, tell me, "I will do it." I am Your prophet Moses, whose prayers You have always answered; it is inconceivable that You would not answer me now. It is inconceivable! O Lord, say something, please... O Lord. (Stops in disappointment. ) Mother What happened? Moses Nothing. Mother Even you, O Prophet? Moses Even I, O mother! Mother What do you mean? Moses He did not answer my prayer. Mother And you are a Prophet?! Moses Yes... and I am a Prophet. Mother So how about us, mere cloaks walking the earth? Moses I don't know. Mother Hasn’t Allah sent you to negotiate with us? Moses All in vain. I will abandon this task... it seems the curse of killing has settled here and won't stop. Mother You witness it, O Prophet... we have no choice but to strike from prayer and fasting. Moses ( To himself. ) No choice... death is a law of life but turned into a law for death! Azrael [xvii] no longer takes souls as usual... graves relinquished their boundaries, and Munkar and Nakir [xviii] ceased their lengthy questioning... It is inconceivable for them to question bodies whose souls have been torn into a thousand pieces. Mother ( On the phone .) Listen, O mother... unfortunate news: Allah did not answer our demands. Let's begin by declaring our strike from prayer and fasting until our rightful demands are met. Next Friday will be under the slogan: "O Lord: Save Our Children, Or No Prayer/Fasting." ( Hangs up. ) Moses ( To himself. ) O Lord: Save Our Children, Or No Prayer/Fasting! Mother Go, O Prophet, to your paradise and leave us alone with the, go... Moses I will not go. Mother What do you mean? Moses I will stay here. Mother But you are a Prophet living in paradise. Moses Paradise, as I see it, is to share in these cloaks' demands. Mother What do you mean to say? Moses I will be with you. Mother With us? How? Moses ( Raises his head. ) Your pardon, O Lord. I have spent my entire life close to those tormented souls on earth. I will not return to paradise until this pain ends. I cannot live in a paradise where rivers flow beneath it, [xix] while here is a homeland where hellfire runs below. It is not possible... ( Firmly to the mother. ) Listen... I will join you in striking from prayer and fasting! Mother How will you join us while you are a Prophet? Moses I will pause my prophethood for a while to stop this farce. Mother Aren't you afraid of Allah's anger upon you as a Prophet? Moses He will not be angry with me. He knows there is nothing in my heart and soul except Him. Mother ( On the phone. ) Yes... listen, O mother... the Prophet Moses will join us in the strike. ( Shouts. ) Moses will be with us! Post urgently on Facebook: Moses the Prophet joins the mothers in striking from prayer and fasting until the killing of our children stops... ( Hangs up. ) Moses ( Loud. ) O Lord, I plead to You to stop this killing. Mother ( Loud. ) Mothers want to stop the bloodshed. Moses O Lord, stop this darkness. Mother There is no one for us except You, O Lord. Moses There is no one for us except You. Mother and Moses ( Shouting together, scattering the cloaks around them. ) Stop this death, O Lord. Stop the fire, stop the sorrow, there must be a solution, we beg You. Stop the dismemberment of our children. O Lord, Your mercy, Your compassion, You who created us and are responsible for our protection. O Lord, O Lord, O Lord... ( They continue shouting, then they leave the valley, but their voices turn into thousands of voices, indicating a massive protest flooding the streets. ) The End [i] A wailing sound Iraqi woman make when hearing bad or sad news, especially death. [ii] "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) is a common expression used by Muslims in various contexts, including when receiving terrible or sad news. [iii] Similarly to the biblical story, in the Islamic tradition Moses’s mother leaves him in a basket on the Nile in order to protect him from the danger of the Pharaoh who killed new born Israelites, and the basket is recovered by the Pharaoh's wife, who adopts Moses. Quran 20:39 and 28:3-4, 7-9. Here and throughout the play Moses’s being cast into the river (imagined as the sea) in order to escape mass death and his forced separation from his mother are paralleled with the experiences of the mothers and their children. [iv] The grieving mother has wandered the streets waiting for the return of her son. [v] Quran, 2:34. Iblees (or Eblīs) corresponds with the biblical figure of Satan. [vi] Quran, 90:4. [vii] From Prophet Muhammad’s hadith, “Heaven lies beneath the feet of your mother.” [viii] In Arabic, Saeed means happy. [ix] While the story of Job in the Islamic tradition is similar to that of the biblical story of the Book of Job, in the Islamic tradition Job is steadfast in his suffering and does not entertain the same doubts that the biblical Job does. [x] As in the biblical story of Moses, in the Quran the staff of Moses miraculously turns into a serpent. Quran, 28:31. [xi] A practice among mothers in Iraq involves sprinkling water behind their children as they leave the house, believing it protects them from evil and misfortune and ensures they will return [xii] “Spree” here refers to the wedding procession and celebration, the Zaffe (or Zaffa), a Middle-Eastern tradition of bringing the newlyweds into their reception hall surrounded by music and dance. [xiii] These are famous verses written by poet Kadhim al-Karbala’i and recited in memory of Al-Qasim, son of Imam al-Hassan, who was killed in the battle of Karbala in 680 CE. The verses express his wish for his mother to remember him when she witnesses a wedding ceremony. He died young, and his mother did not have the chance to see him marry. Instead of the tradition of henna adorning his hands during weddings, his blood stains him, and his body rests beneath the soil. [xiv] Referring to the story of Moses in the Quran, 26:63. [xv] “There is no god but Allah”: a fundamental declaration of faith in Islam, known as the Shahada. Muslims recite this phrase to affirm their belief in the oneness of Allah and the central tenet of Islam that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah. [xvi] Subhan Allah means “Glory be to God” or “He be glorified and exalted,” declares God to be above any fault, shortcoming, corrupt notions, or false idea. Alhamdulillah means “Praise be to God.” [xvii] The Angel of Death is present and the name Azrael appears in both Christianity and Judaism. However, Azrael is more established in Islam, where he is one of the archangels alongside Mikhail (Michael), Jibril (Gabriel), and Israfil. [xviii] In Islamic belief, Munkar and Nakir are two angels who are tasked with questioning the deceased in the grave about their faith and deeds. [xix] A reference to Quran, 9:72. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Bios : Author: Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi was born in Nasiriyah in 1965 and graduated from the Teachers’ Institute of that city in 1987. His plays have been performed on stages across Iraq and the Arab world and internationally, earning him numerous national and international awards. His play collections include The Eighth Day of the Week ( Thāmin Ayām al-ʾUsbu’ ; 2000), The Return of the Man Who Has Not Been Absent (ʿ Awadat al-Rajul alladhi lam Yaghīb ; 2005), A Show in Arabic (ʿ Arḍ bil ʿArabi ; 2011), The Divine Plays (Al-ʾIlāhiyāt; 2014), and Plays of the Corrupt City ( Nuṣūs al-Madīna al-Fāsida ; 2021). Translator Amir Al-Azraki is a playwright, literary translator, Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, and Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Program at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. Among his plays are: Waiting for Gilgamesh: Scenes from Iraq , The Mug , and The Widow . Al-Azraki is the translator of Africanism: Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary , author of The Discourse of War in Contemporary Theatre (in Arabic), co-editor and co-translator of Contemporary Plays from Iraq , “A Rehearsal for Revolution”: An Approach to Theatre of the Oppressed (in Arabic), and co-editor and co-translator of Arabic poetry in Consequence , The Common , Poetry Foundation and Talking Writing . Amir Al-Azraki, PhD, (he/him) Program Coordinator, Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Associate Professor, Culture and Language Studies Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo aaliazraki@uwaterloo.ca 519-884-4404 ext. 28671 Editor of the English translation: Jeff Casey is Associate Professor of Theatre and Theatre Director at Norwich University. His scholarly articles have appeared in Theatre Topics , Quarterly Review of Film and Video , Modern Drama , and Ecumenica . He works extensively as a theatre director, producer, designer, dramaturge, and playwright. His directing credits include Cabaret , Chicago , Kafka’s The Trial , Voices from a People’s History of the United States , Harold Pinter’s Party Time and The New World Order , and Neil Simon’s Rumors. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 14 Spring 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works By Katherine Hennessey Published: May 1, 2023 Download Article as PDF Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price Review of Theaters of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt written by Sonali Pahwa Review: Decolonizing Sarah: A Hurricane Play written and directed by Samer Al-Saber “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani Review of MUKHRIJĀT AL-MASRAḤ AL-MIṢRĪ (1990-2010): DIRĀSA SĪMIYŪṬĪQĪYAH [Female Egyptian Directors (1990-2010): A Semiotic Study], written by Hadia Abd El-Fattah Review of Syrian Refugees, Applied Theater, Workshop Facilitation, and Stories: While They Were Waiting written by Fadi Skeiker Review: Layalina written by Martin Yousif Zebari, directed by Sivan Battat Up There by Wael Kadour, Introduction Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly Crossing Borders: A Theatre Practitioner’s Odyssey, An Interview with Hassan El Geretly On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh Performance Review: A FAMILY THAT HAS BEEN BLOCKED Performance Review: BETHLEHEM SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER FESTIVAL Performance Review: HOOTA. By Amer Hlehel Performance Review: LITTLE SYRIA Book Review: ACTING EGYPTIAN Book Review: MANSOUR, MONA. THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Previous Next Attribution:

Lynn Deboeck Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 1 Visit Journal Homepage Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print After 1900 Lynn Deboeck By Published on December 11, 2023 Download Article as PDF BEYOND TEXT: THEATER AND PERFORMANCE IN PRINT AFTER 1900. Jennifer Buckley. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019; Pp. 278. Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print After 1900 challenges the historiography of print media as we have known it and brings together text and performance practices as symbiotic, rather than mutually exclusive. Taking on the rich and contradictory history of “killing off the Book,” Beyond Text calls out anti-textual artists and their use of print media—not to emphasize hypocrisy, but rather to illuminate text’s enduring life in and around the performance art worlds. Jennifer Buckley highlights that the evolution of text has largely been recorded within essentialist narratives that have made trouble by assuming text to be the opposite of performance because it“ precedes, in time, the process of theatrical production; because writers accord it artistic precedence over production; and because its traditional medium is durable and static while performance is ephemeral and mutable” (10). The physical book of Beyond Text is hard-covered, with the image of Carolee Schneemann on the front, perusing a book with her cat, Kitch, on her lap. The binding of this tome creaks at its initial openings, almost as if it has the first line in our interactions. The nine-inch by six-inch pages, with their copious open margins, allow the reader easier access and a bountiful opportunity for note-taking—indeed, it seems to be encouraged. Rather than simply negating what has been documented about print media’s history and its relationship with performance, Buckley’s deep analysis of each performance artist or group she covers allows us as readers to make the journey beyond text with her by taking up how theatre makers have interacted with and made bookworks or engaged with text-based formats. Her arguments include that the avant-garde anti-textualist movement that is often brought forward in discussions of late twentieth century performance is not just limited but is actively limiting what we can know about our own histories because it has not“encompass[ed] the book arts, which are experiencing yet another boom in yet another era when print is supposed to be dying” (24). The book is divided into five chapters with an introduction and a coda. In her introduction, Buckley uses Big Dance Theater’s bookwork Another Telepathic Thing as an entry point for how we have understood the relationship (or, perhaps more accurately, disdain) between performance art mediums and print matter (she bristles at the exclusionist term ‘the book’). In so doing, she simultaneously calls out those of us who have historically ignored print practices and their role in performance and reveals that in fact, bookworks are experiencing yet another explosion in the here and now (one of many since 1900). Each chapter addresses, in chronological order, the evolution of performance-makers’ relationship with text and print. In chapter 1,“A Place for Seeing,” Beyond Text takes up Edward Gordon Craig’s vision of what the theatre could be and the bookworks he created. Buckley establishes the trajectory of text as non-linear with Craig’s banishment of playwrights and his contradictory use of much older media, such as wood engraving. She examines Craig’s written intentions to “exhibit" and “show” actors what he wanted in performance, rather than resort to speech since he saw words as having only “technical” status—though perhaps useful for notation. Chapter 2, “Scoring Theatre,” takes the notation idea from Craig and connects it to Lothar Schreyer’s ideas around how to score theatre in a way that others could reasonably emulate. Schreyer’s system, Spielgang , was an attempt to do this and Buckley dissects the technique, revealing how it was used in specific performances and how it affected art writ large in its elevation of the notation-system’s use to a spiritual endeavor intended to help create reproducible community works ( Gemeinschaftswerk ). Chapter 3 shifts forward in time yet again, but in this instance, Buckley pulls the thread of community works forward to look at a theatre collective in lieu of individuals. The Living Theatre and their publication negotiations are detailed in this chapter, highlighting how ironically Julian Beck and Judith Malina used the printed works they published commercially to establish their agenda of anti-texualist and anarchist performance principals. Chapter 4 returns to an individual, Carolee Schneemann, and is titled “The Body in the Book” for her ability to“see and articulate the conceptual and material intersections between her visual artworks, performances, and publications” (126). From Schneemann’s Interior Scroll to her work with the Beau Geste Press, Buckley traverses the evolution of print media through the microcosm of a single performer/art-maker to demonstrate a collaborative kinetic aesthetics that invites participation from the reader/viewer. Chapter 5 also investigates the use of participation of spectators in the immersive work of Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Códices . Buckley considers how his codices serve as border sites and kits for participants to encounter the “other” in “participatory identity rituals” as “good bordercrossers” and as “models for the usefully creative appropriation of others’art” (195). In her Coda, Buckley firmly asserts (which, by this point, she no longer has to) that print matter will have a future relationship with performance, the shape of which she does not wish to speculate about. It is telling that a full 15% of the book—the remainder after the Coda and before the bibliography—is notes. For those with the intention, time, and appetite to delve into this printed work further, Buckley provides fodder from her extensive archival research. Beyond Text teaches that text work and live performance are“no longer locked in a Darwinian struggle for precedence, [but] coexist under the rubric of the performatic...” (197) This monograph provides a valuable contribution to the fields of Performance Studies, Print Media and disciplines that straddle the two. As I closed this book, my thoughts drifted back to one of Craig’s performance descriptions:“‘And then a pause... a perfect balanced thought is poised before us, and all is still... All is accomplished. Silence. All rests...’” (36) Revelatory and well-researched, Beyond Text ends with so much potential energy vibrating within and beyond its covers and performance histories—waiting to be experienced again and again. References Buckley, Jennifer. Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print After 1900. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. Footnotes About The Author(s) Dr. Lynn Deboeck is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Gender Studies at the University of Utah. She earned her PhD in Theatre and a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies from the University of Kansas. Her research interests include reproductive women on stage, gender and representation in performance, pedagogy in higher education and feminist theatre. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Community Circles and Love Triangles: Gun Violence and Belonging in Oklahoma! and West Side Story Decommissioning the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field and Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline More than a Props List: Redefining Material Culture as Survival and Pleasure in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined The Politics of Trance: Victoria Woodhull and the Radical Reform of Platform Mediumship Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print After 1900 Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theatre Made Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Kristyl D. Tift Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 2 Visit Journal Homepage It Was All a Dream: Shifting Du Boisian Notions in Richard Wesley’s The Talented Tenth Kristyl D. Tift By Published on May 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF In “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926), W.E.B. Du Bois identifies what he called the “new stirrings” among young Black people of the time—“stirrings of the beginning of a new appreciation of joy, of a new desire to create, of a new will to be, as though in this morning of group life we had awakened from some sleep that at once dimly mourns the past and dreams a splendid future.” 1 Du Bois’s valuation of joy, creativity, consciousness, and futurity echoes the creative vibrancy and urgency happening during the Harlem Renaissance. Believing in the potential of younger generations of Black folk to use Art to establish the humanity and brilliance of the “race,” Du Bois, here, expands his research as a sociologist of African American life and culture to activism. Manning Marable notes that, after publishing The Philadelphia Negro in 1899—a first-of-its-kind sociological study of Black Philadelphians living in the Seventh Ward between 1896 and 1897—Du Bois “was especially convinced that careful sociological measurement, combined with a proper cultural and historical understanding of a social group, could lead to the construction of a social agenda for reform.” 2 In the groundbreaking study, Du Bois determines the need for Black communal “reform” based on his observations of a large section of the population who had limited or no access to decent wages, jobs, food, housing, sanitary living conditions, and education. These bleak outcomes, which directly resulted from American slavery and the failed Reconstruction era, required interventions. In "The Talented Tenth" (1903), Du Bois proposed a solution: encourage the Black middle class to take responsibility for helping lower-class Blacks become upwardly mobile (through hiring Black labor, for example). He believed that a new generation of educated Black elites, a group he called The Talented Tenth, would lead the race to full civil rights. Du Bois imagined that 10% of African Americans who excelled academically, socially, economically, and artistically were the chosen ones whose collective intellectual contributions, cultural production, and leadership would function holistically as an armor of resistance to systemic racism in the U.S. Theoretically, the emergence and institutionalization of the “tenth” would help not only those less privileged to become liberated, but it would liberate the entire community. While this call to action was notable for its emphasis on the moral duty and obligation of the middle class, it ignored the alluring benefits and exclusionary politics of capitalism, which reinforced the very class hierarchies that Du Bois identified as obstacles to racial uplift in his early studies. As Marable writes, “The Talented Tenth theory was a strategy to win democracy for all Black Americans. The burden of struggle resided upon those of the race best prepared, educationally and economically, to lead that fight.” 3 The problem with this theory is that while the “burden” seems a light load to carry for those with class privilege, for racialized people the load is still quite heavy regardless of class, and the weight can breed self-righteousness, self-loathing, and resentment that only deepens intraracial divisions. The African American class conundrum is one that generations of playwrights have explored at length in the theatre, 4 including Richard Wesley, who, having studied under Owen Dodson at Howard University, began his professional career at New Lafayette Theatre in the early 1970s under the mentorship of Ed Bullins. A number of Wesley’s plays, including The Mighty Gents (1978) and The Talented Tenth (1989), document the promise and disillusionment of Black American dreams—not only because of White racism but, more remarkably, because of intraracial class breakdowns. His works magnify the elusive pleasures and lingering anxieties and regret often associated with performances of superiority and dominance. The Talented Tenth recognizes, as Du Bois himself eventually did, the inherent classist assumptions and practical limitations of Black elitism. In this essay, I am concerned with Du Bois’s shift from the individualized theory of the “tenth” to an institutional conceptualization of “Negro Art”. 5 Reading Wesley’s The Talented Tenth , set in the 1990s, I explore the playwright’s use of dreams and memories as reflections of and responses to Du Bois’s shifting ideas about what constitutes Black advocacy, activism, and excellence. 6 In The Talented Tenth , the curtain rises on a beach in Negril, Jamaica. Bernard, a man in his forties, stands off to the side as his wife, Pam, and their three friends, Marvin, Ron, and Rowena—all of whom are former Howard University classmates—relax in the sun. Bernard is daydreaming about his first job interview with Mr. Griggs, who is in his fifties and the owner of a radio station. The daydream, which is shown onstage, takes place in the 1960s. The dialogue begins easily, with the two connecting over a mutual acquaintance, before quickly shifting into more direct speech (similar to a grilling rather than an interview). Their exchange, thereafter, exemplifies the kind of miscommunication that can occur between those of differing generations; it also captures the tension of the nationwide racial and political upheaval of that turbulent time. Griggs—a World War II veteran-turned-businessman—has achieved success through hard work, whereas Bernard has only recently graduated from Howard and is at the start of his career in business. While Bernard aspires to Griggs’ level of success, the older man is grumpy and condescending with a temperament that suggests that whether or not the young man gets the job, achieving and maintaining a spot in the mythical “tenth” will not (and should not, according to Griggs) be easy. Griggs holds the keys to the metaphorical gate between Bernard and his first job, but it is important to note that, although respectful, Bernard is not docile (a fact that leads him and Griggs to disagree on the direction of the radio station in the years that follow). Bernard has an activist past, including participating in protests as a college student and embracing a pan-Africanist worldview, which was strengthened by his relationship with his then-girlfriend, Habiba. After graduation, the general expectation was for him to secure a “good” job and put his radicalism aside for the betterment of the race. By doing this, he sacrifices his dream for Du Bois’s dream, which, as Zachary R. Williams summarizes it, was for “college-educated blacks to become race men and women [and] lead the race to social equality.” 7 Bernard represents a new wave of young, educated Black people invested in individualism and capitalism. 8 To Griggs’ annoyance, the young man has his sights set on the fruits of his labor (i.e., “[making] lots of money” and spending it) rather than the labor necessary to make money that would serve the needs of the company and, proximally, the needs of the race. To Griggs, young people of Bernard’s generation have a “duty” and “responsibility” to suffer and struggle for the next generations, just as he has. He instructs: It’s the first seven generations after slavery that will suffer the most. They’re the ones who have nothing to look forward to except struggle. They’re the ones who have to bear the pain, make the sacrifices, and fight the battles that have to be fought and won. Your trouble will always come when you begin to think that you deserve a good time; when you begin to think the world is your oyster. You’re generation number six, Mr. Evans. Your grandchildren can have the good time. 9 Griggs articulates a logic and ethic not uncommon among his generation, for whom lifetimes of sacrifice have resulted in more freedoms for their children than they were afforded. This strategy is reminiscent of Robin D. G. Kelley’s “freedom dreaming,” 10 which is, essentially, imagining liberty and justice through a love for the collective that exists beyond the boundaries of what is possible realistically and politically. The discourse on Black freedom through acts of dreaming and speculation is not new in Black Studies, but scholars such as Jayna Brown, reading Frantz Fanon, have discussed such acts in the context of utopia. Brown defines Black utopia as “the moments when those of us untethered from the hope of rights, recognition, or redress here on earth celebrate ourselves as elements in a cosmic effluvium.” 11 Embracing the present as a radical temporality, Brown writes, “In fact, I don’t think utopia needs hope at all. Hope yearns for a future. Instead, we dream in place, in situ, in medias res, in layers, in dimensional frequencies.” 12 It is within a dimensional frequency that nods toward the future but is situated in a past adjacent to the present that opposing Black male-centered utopic ideologies touch discursively in Bernard’s paradisaic dreamscape. Bernard and Griggs both have dreams rooted in economic success; however, Griggs’ dream is Blacker than it is green. Economics, for him, is a way to amass power that will inevitably advance Black people. Griggs is doggedly focused on racial uplift through ownership rather than what he reads as Bernard’s pursuit of economic gain for selfish reasons. This is a subtle yet important nuance: the men are similar, yet their generational positionalities leave them dreaming slightly different dreams, imagining slightly different realities, and pursuing those realities in slightly different ways. It is from this marginal difference that Griggs harshly scrutinizes Bernard. The tail end of the scene reveals Griggs’ paternalistic posturing for what it is: a performance meant to arouse obedience. The end of the scene is a reflective imagining, an annotation of sorts, in which Bernard tells Griggs that his words that day “frightened [him].” Griggs replies simply, “I know.” Then, Bernard admits, “I’ve been frightened ever since.” 13 The surrealism of this moment allows the two men to be honest, even vulnerable, with one another without being intimate or even present together. It is no coincidence that Bernard’s fear and Griggs’ intent are made evident in a daydream; it is a calmer frequency in which to tell the truth. Further, neither of them discusses affect or emotions in the realistic scenes between them that follow. Instead, those scenes are mostly centered on business discussions related to the radio station. As the scene shifts back to Bernard’s contemporary reality with his wife and friends on the beach, it is clear that he is at a crossroads directly shaped by his race, age, class, and gender. That first interview lingers in Bernard’s mind, and it is interesting that at a time and place when he should be relaxing and enjoying his money and leisure time, the memory of it haunts him. Bernard yearns for something missing or lost in his life—something reflective of the downside of assuming a class positionality “above” rather than “alongside” one’s people. Of the Bernards of the world who “now found themselves in their forties and successfully integrated into the American dream,” Wesley observes the material reality—the “spacious homes, the requisite expensive cars, overseas vacations, excellent pension packages, and political connections” 14 —that still leave them desiring something they relinquished to acquire the people, places, and things that keep them occupied, sedated, and blind to the needs of the collective. Wesley’s dramatic inquiry into what happened to the young activists of the 60s who shifted their talents in an alternative direction exposes a Talented Tenth whose roots in Black working-class communities were at best leggy. Reflecting on Du Bois’s idealistic dream of the “tenth” and his subsequent shift away from it, Wesley writes, “Realizing almost immediately how elitist this idea appeared, Du Bois abandoned it and never sought to promote it.” 15 This is a truth that, according to Joy James in Transcending the Talented Tenth (2013), is often underacknowledged. “Race memory,” James writes, “misleads as it fails to recall that the greatest promoter of black elite agency became, in time, its most severe critic.” 16 After the opening daydream ends, Wesley depicts this Du Boisian course correction through a sequence of stressful encounters that lead Bernard to a crisis point in his personal and professional lives. Bernard’s life has been an experiment in intraracial “double consciousness” which has manifested as class and color trouble. Understanding the complexities of double consciousness within the race, Wesley explores colorism in the love triangle between Bernard’s light-skinned wife, Pam, his dark-skinned former girlfriend, Habiba, and his dark-skinned mistress, Tanya. 17 Habiba is a memory that never materializes, yet she is very present. She represents a missed opportunity for Bernard to pursue a life and career path rooted in Black liberation and Black cultural practices of love and activism. He idealizes Habiba, lamenting what could have been had they not split up. Despite this, he applies principles of the Black Power Movement to his work at the radio station to positive effect. As Griggs’ partner, he does not have the power to make major decisions about the company’s direction, but he anticipates that his hard work over the years will lead Griggs to give him ownership of the company. Although it is never explicitly stated, ownership, to Bernard, is the consolation prize for carrying future generations on his shoulders. Griggs, however, intends to sell the company to a communications conglomerate called Pegasus International—a move which sparks frustration and resentment. Bernard believes this conglomerate will take advantage of his programming work in centering Black voices and music, which has, to this point, grown the station’s listenership. Although he has the option to continue as an employee, the buyout will likely disrupt the radio station's “controversial” aesthetic and other political elements that make it culturally Black. On top of this betrayal, his marriage to Pam and extramarital relationship with Tanya are crumbling under the weight of his ambition, apathy, and self-centeredness. Wesley’s play is Du Bois’s Talented Tenth theory in practice, and Bernard’s life is the foremost case study. The women in the play, especially Tanya and Pam, play supporting roles, representing Bernard’s desire and ambition. Wesley, highlighting their importance, gives them space to speak in monologues inserted between scenes or self-reflective moments within scenes; this is the only way their voices and perspectives are relayed without Bernard as their filter. When they speak, it becomes clear that they are successful, intelligent women defined by their proximity to a man and his dreams. Tanya, a journalist who graduated from Spelman College and Columbia University, grew up in a working-class family. While she fills the ever-present void of Habiba (in complexion only), it is clear by her incessant requests for Bernard to leave his wife that she is the anti-Habiba—she does not have the strength to leave him although she communicates a multitude of reasons why she should. Reading like Savannah in Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale , she considers herself to be a “woman of substance” rather than a “popular” woman (like Pam), which leads me to determine that Tanya is not fighting for Bernard, she is fighting against Pam—a placeholder for light-skinned women—who, in Tanya’s experience, have not had to be of substance to get the guy of their dreams. Patience, she believes, is the attribute that will make her the victor, overall; however, she does not factor in the other “other woman”—Habiba—as a potential obstacle. Pam, however, is well aware that Habiba (the memory of her) is both of their competition. Pam and Bernard’s marriage has always been more about optics than love. From a colorist perspective, she was the more pragmatic choice for a wife instead of a dark-skinned woman like Habiba or Tanya—a fact that Bernard never denies (because he cannot). Aesthetically, Pam exists in harmony with the quintessential picture of the African American family that he was sold; that is, the elitist imagining of Du Bois’s notion. In a conversation with Tanya, who is pressuring Bernard to decide between her and Pam, he reveals that his achievements—running a radio station, heading a household, being respected by his cadre of middle-class friends, and even having a loving girlfriend outside of his marriage—are unfulfilling. He admits, “Now, it’s all these years later and I’m scared and I’m angry because I want to change my life and do some things I’ve never had a chance to do. But, if I do I could hurt my wife and my children and everyone who depends on me, so I stay where I am and I dream. But I don’t dare act .” 18 Standing and dreaming alone while afraid is where we find Bernard at the beginning of the play and, although he appears in control, he remains in that state psychologically and emotionally. In this embodiment, he appears stuck in stillness on the sidelines as life moves around him; however, he has options. He can remain still or move forward, but he seems to be waiting for the right decision to occur to him or for someone else to make it for him. What is clear is that he is tired of gauging his choices by society’s metric. While Tanya’s concern is whether he loves her more than Pam, Bernard is on the precipice of making choices in his business and personal lives that put the security and respectability of those he is responsible for, even Tanya, at risk. As “talented” as he is, he is too human and too fallible to live up to unattainable standards. Thus, he stands and he dreams, evaluating his past in the present. The best decision eventually occurs to him. In fact, he divorces his wife and ends his relationship with Tanya. Some weight is lifted off of his shoulders, and he acts on his dreams by devising a plan to buy the radio station. In the final scene, parroting his interview with Griggs, Bernard interviews a “young man”—his son—“the seventh generation since slavery”—for a position at the station. The scene is similar to the first but, instead of completely reproducing the toxic dynamics between his younger self and Griggs, Bernard infuses hope in the conversation. Nearly verbatim, he repeats Griggs’ diatribe about generations, history, passivity, race, and struggle. As was his experience, the content of this monologue “scares” the young man. Then, Bernard follows up with a directive to dampen his son’s fear and help him take actionable steps forward—“Well, don’t be scared, young blood. Just be ready.” 19 This resolution is a full circle moment in which Bernard is now the empowered mentor; however, instead of playing Griggs’ role, he has taken the useful lessons he learned from him and adjusted them slightly, leaving room for a new generation to move. The Talented Tenth demonstrates how the theory that inspired it is handicapped by elitism and a lack of attention to the nuances of the intraracial politics that sometimes complicate Black American dreams. Be that as it may, a debt of gratitude is owed to W.E.B . Du Bois, the foremost Black intellectual of the twentieth century, for proposing an idea that has become a catalyst in dramatic narratives dating as far back as Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog (1938), Abram Hill's On Strivers Row (1939), and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959). It is difficult to imagine what the substance of Black Theatre would be without Du Bois’s polarizing concept. The Talented Tenth and contemporary plays that painstakingly scrutinize the inner workings and interpersonal impact of class on Black individuals and communities make clear that the discourse is as significant now as it was when Du Bois was most prolific. The Talented Tenth , as I read it, is more dream than theory. The century-old quandary of how best to cultivate and employ Black talent to elevate Black people is always already followed by unending ellipses that those of us within the collective, however privileged, must interpret and redefine as we progress between points along the margins of a surreal society…to the center…and back… References 1 W.E.B. Du Bois, Criteria of Negro Art (Crisis Publishing Company, 1926), 2. 2 Marable, Manning, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne, 1986), 26. 3 Emphasis mine. Marable, 51. 4 Dominique Morisseau’s Confederates (2022), Lynn Nottage’s Sweat (2017), Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop (2009), Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly (2008), Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman (2002), George C. Wolfe’s The Colored Museum (1986), Charlie L. Russell’s Five on the Black Hand Side (1973), Ed Bullins’s Clara’s Ole Man (1965), Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman (1964), Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), and Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind (1955) are but a few plays featuring Black characters wrestling with intraracial class conflicts. 5 Du Bois proposed the “talented tenth” theory at the turn of the twentieth century (known as The Progressive Era) during which time social and political reform were on the rise, while his Negro Theatre concept was unveiled in The Crisis during the Harlem Renaissance. 6 The point of this essay, as in the play, is not to criticize Du Bois or his early notion, but to unpack a mindset in Black society that continues to hinder the racial progress that he and many other thought leaders since have only dreamed of. 7 Zachery R. Williams, In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926-1970, 1st ed (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 17. 8 In 2006, as a graduate student studying at The New School/Actors Studio Drama School, I published a passionate essay that evinced my concern about the state of Black Theatre in the hands of Generation X and cuspy Millennials like myself. What I observed was a desire by twentysomething artists of my generation to assimilate to White Theater standards rather than familiarizing themselves with, valuing, and performing essential plays in the Black theatrical canon. It is validating to read Wesley’s play and interview transcripts in which he discusses a similar social phenomenon among his generation. See Kristyl D. Tift, “Black Theatre in the Hands of Generation X” (Bronx: Black Masks, 2006). 9 Richard Wesley, The Richard Wesley Play Anthology ( Milwaukee: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books , 2015), 174. 10 See Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). 11 Jayna Brown, Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 1-2. 12 Jayna Brown, Black Utopias , 1. 13 Wesley, The Richard Wesley Play Anthology , 174. 14 Wesley, The Richard Wesley Play Anthology , 168-69. 15 Wesley, The Richard Wesley Play Anthology , 171-72. 16 Joy James, Transcending the Talented Tenth : Black Leaders and American Intellectuals (London: Routledge, 2013), 28: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315022383 . 17 For more on the function of colorism in The Talented Tenth ideology before and after Du Bois, see Ronald E. Hall’s “The Du Boisian Talented Tenth: Reviewing and Assessing Mulatto Colorism in the Post-Du Boisian Era” (78-95) in Journal of African American Studies 24, 1 (2020): https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-019-09457-3 . 18 Wesley, The Richard Wesley Play Anthology , 186. 19 Wesley, The Richard Wesley Play Anthology , 219. Footnotes About The Author(s) Kristyl D. Tift is a performing artist, writer, director, educator, and scholar. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema, Media Arts, and Theatre at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include African Diaspora theatre and film, queer-feminist performance, theatre for social change, and performance theory. Her essay “Making  Colors : A Black Queer Feminist Experiment in Solo Performance” is published in  Applied Theatre and Racial Justice: Care, Community, Change . An article in  Theatre History Studies  is forthcoming. Other publications include articles and book reviews in  the Black Theatre Review,   Frontiers ,  Theatre Journal,  and the  Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Tift’s book,  A Conditional Embrace: Black Queer Feminism in Performance , is in production with The Ohio State University Press. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue 100 Years of Du Bois: “Principles of a Real Negro Theatre” and “Criteria of Negro Art” “One Great and Fine Mode of Expression”: On W. E. B. Du Bois and the Exigencies of Black Drama and Theatre Reflections on Fundamental Principles An Expansive “Us”: W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Pan-Negro” Theatrical Vision W. E. B. Du Bois’s Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement in Harlem and Beyond It Was All a Dream: Shifting Du Boisian Notions in Richard Wesley’s The Talented Tenth Teaching August Wilson in an Age of Democratic Decline: Du Boisian Imperatives and Black Pedagogy Across Campus and Community Debbie with a D Talks Theatre with a T The Wild Duck Picnic at Hanging Rock Last Call: A Play with Cocktails The Dinosaurs The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism. Catherine Burroughs and J. Ellen Gainor, editors. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 652. Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation. Julius B. Fleming Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2022; Pp. 301. The Theatre of Paula Vogel: Practice, Pedagogy, and Influences. Lee Brewer Jones. New York: Methuen Drama, 2023; Pp. 194. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Winners Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 2 Visit Journal Homepage Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Winners By Published on May 12, 2021 Download Article as PDF The Errol Hill Award is given by the American Society for Theatre Research in recognition of outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, as demonstrated in the form of a published book-length project (monograph or essay collection) or scholarly article. The book or article must deal with African American theater history, dramatic literature, or performance studies (research on dance, acting and directing, public performances, i.e., parades, pageants, etc.). 2020: Kemi Adeyemi, University of Washington, Seattle, “Beyond 90°: The Angularities of Black/Queer/Woman/Lean,” Women and Performance 29:1 (February 2019). 2019: Joshua Chambers-Letson, Northwestern University, After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer Color of Life, New York University Press Honorable Mentions Joanna Dee Das, Washington University in St. Louis, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora, Oxford University Press Christian DuComb, Colgate University, Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia, Michigan University Press Shane Vogel, Indiana University, Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze, University of Chicago Press 2018: Kellen Hoxworth, Dartmouth College, “The Many Racial Effigies of Sara Baartman,” Theatre Survey 58:3 (September 2017). 2017: Renee Alexander Craft, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in Twentieth-Century Panama (Ohio State University Press, 2016). Honorable Mentions Christen Smith, University of Texas at Austin, Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil (University of Illinois Press, 2016). T. Carlis Roberts, UC Berkeley, Resounding Afro Asia: Interracial Music and the Politics of Collaboration (Oxford University Press, 2016). 2016 : Uri McMillan, UCLA Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance (New York University Press, 2015). Honorable Mention Adrienne Macki Braconi, Harlem’s Theatres: A Staging Ground for Community, Class, and Contradiction, 1923-1939 (Northwestern University Press, 2015). 2015 : Paige McGinley, Washington University in St. Louis, Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism (Duke University Press, 2014) Honorable Mention Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2014). 2014: Kathleen Gough, Kinship and Performance in the Black and Green Atlantic (Routledge, 2013). Honorable Mentions E. Patrick Johnson & Ramon Rivera-Servera, Solo/black/woman: scripts, interviews and essays (Northwestern University Press, 2014). Macelle Mahala, Penumbra: The Premier State for African American Drama (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). 2013 : Diana Rebekkah Paulin, Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in US Drama and Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 2012 : Bernth Lindfors, Ira Aldridge: The Early Years 1807-1833 (University of Rochester Press, 2011). Honorable Mention Brandi Catanese, The Problem of the Color[blind] (Univesrity of Michigan Press, 2011). 2011: Harvey Young, Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body (University of Michigan Press, 2010). 2010 : Tavia Nyong’o, The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 2009: Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (Duke University Press, 2008). 2008: Cedric Robinson, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theatre and Film before World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 2007: Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Performing Race, Gender, and Nation in the Trans-Atlantic Imaginary (Duke University Press, 2006). 2006: Jill Lane, Blackface Cuba, 1840 – 1895 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 2005: Harry Elam, The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (University of Michigan Press, 2004). 2004: E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke University Press, 2003). 2003 : Thomas DeFrantz, Dancing Many Drums (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). 2002: David Krasner and Harry Elam, Jr., eds., African-American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader (Oxford University Press, 2001). 2001 : Kimberly W. Benston, Performing Blackness: Enactments of African-American Modernism (Routledge, 2001). 2000: George A. Thompson, Jr., A Documentary History of African Theatre (Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1998). 1999: Jill Lane, “Blackface Nationalism, Cuba 1840-1868.” Theatre Journal 50, no. 1 (1998). 1998: David Krasner, Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre, 1895-1910 (Macmillan Publishers, 1997). 1997: Annemarie Bean, James V. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara, eds., Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth Century Blackface Minstrelsy (Wesleyan University Press, 1996). References Footnotes About The Author(s) Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.