Fiona Gregory Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 26 2 Visit Journal Homepage Crossing Genre, Age and Gender: Judith Anderson as Hamlet Fiona Gregory By Published on May 29, 2014 Download Article as PDF In 1970 Judith Anderson, doyenne of the classical American stage, fulfilled a long-held desire to play the title role in Hamlet. Employing a heavily cut text and minimalist setting, the production relied on the power of voice to illuminate Shakespeare’s poetry. Yet most viewers were unable to see past Anderson’s seventy-three-year-old female body to the spirit of her Hamlet, and her performance was widely criticised. Anderson later described the experience as a “heartache and a tragedy.”1 Despite its disappointing reception at the time, Anderson’s performance merits recognition, and re-examination, as a notable event in theatrical history with significant aesthetic and social implications. Anderson’s Hamlet was an extraordinary exercise in boundary crossing—rejecting conventions of Shakespearean performance alongside those of age and gender. Furthermore it refused to be aligned with either classical theatre or avant-garde performance, existing in a state of otherness and demanding to be assessed on its own terms. Australian-born Anderson began her Broadway career in the 1920s, later balancing her stage work alongside steady employment as a character actress in film. Her career was transformed when she appeared as Medea in Robinson Jeffers’s adaptation of Euripides’s play. Anderson’s intense and archly theatrical performance met with popular and critical acclaim and enhanced her status, positioning her as “first lady” of the American stage. In the 1950s and 1960s she cemented this identity, touring both the full production of Medea and her program of excerpts from Medea and Macbeth in America and abroad. Although she continued to appear regularly on film and television, Anderson repeatedly figured the stage as her true metier. As well as lauding the performative freedom of the theatre, she expressed an understanding of the stage as a site that enabled communion with “genius:” “That’s why I like to do great plays—to be a part of greatness.”2 In the 1960s and 70s, Anderson became increasingly disillusioned not only with film and television but with the contemporary theatre. Her solution was to retreat into the classics: “There’s so little that is good. I would rather fail as Hamlet than succeed in something less worthy.”3 Anderson’s Hamlet, directed by William Ball and produced by Paul Gregory, performed predominantly at university theatres but also appeared at venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall. Anderson’s performance, Ball’s direction, the supporting cast, and the design were all repeatedly deemed weak and ill-conceived by critics, but the production proved a commercial success: the two nights at Carnegie Hall sold out before rehearsals even commenced. [caption id="attachment_1124" align="alignnone" width="420"] Figure 1., Hamlet program, signed by Judith Anderson, in Author’s collection.[/caption] Anderson’s popularity suggests a nostalgic longing for the grand theatre of the past amongst some sections of the community during a period of immense change in America. The consequences of involvement in the war in Vietnam, the rise of second wave feminism and the civil rights movement, and the emergence of the gay liberation movement transformed American society during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These issues were explored in the work of avant garde troupes such as Richard Schechner’s Performance Group, Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theatre, and Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatre Company, as well as in more mainstream forms such as the rock musical Hair. Judith Anderson was removed from these trends; from the early 1960s, she repeatedly conveyed her distaste for modern theatre. In 1969, she told a journalist: “[there] isn’t anything that I want to see today. You hear about Hair and Oh Calcuatta! (sic) and it’s all disgusting to me. There is no quality or imagination in the theatre today [and] I object to the nudity.”4 She also raised her objections to “thrust” stages that brought the actors into the audience: “For her it’s too much reality . . . and not enough left to the imagination.”5 Anderson articulated a preference for performance that occurred inside the pictorial frame of the proscenium and maintained its distance from the audience. Yet despite her conservative outlook, her Hamlet was read as potentially radical, and she was obliged to deny that it held feminist intent or was an experiment in “camp.” Female Hamlets The desire to play Hamlet had been experienced and fulfilled by many women before Anderson, including Mrs. Furnivall, Sarah Siddons and Elizabeth Inchbald during the eighteenth century.6 These women were led, Tony Howard suggests, by the desire to claim ownership over a role that was becoming identified as the greatest work of England’s greatest poet.7 Female Hamlets proved particularly popular in the Romantic age, a move attributable in part to changing conceptions of Hamlet’s character. Robin Headlam Wells notes the “age of sensibility invented a new Hamlet—sensitive, delicate, distressed,”8 and Elaine Showalter suggests this feminisation of the character opened the role to women.9 According to Tony Howard the first woman to essay the role in an American theatre was likely the touring English actress Mrs. Bartley at New York’s Park Theatre in 1819, closely followed by Fanny Wallack, Charlotte Barnes and, most notably, Charlotte Cushman.10 Departing from earlier models, Cushman privileged Shakespeare’s text in her production—she reinstated much of the play that was typically cut, as well as restoring her understanding of emotional “truth” to the Hamlet role, in a “conscious critique of what many men had done with it” before her.11 Anderson drew attention to the long tradition of actresses in the role and particularly cited Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet, which the actress premiered in 1899 at the age of fifty-four, as a precedent for her own performance. Bernhardt performed her Hamlet within the tradition of “travesti” performance popular on the French stage. Actresses in travesti sought to create a stylised masculinity that male actors were thought to be unable to achieve in their representations of young men and boys. Gerda Taranow notes the object of travesti was not “androgyny.” Despite its insistence on the feminine within the masculine and vice versa, the aim of travesti was not to unite the sexes but to highlight difference through the contrast of female body and male attire. Female travesti “did not seek to intermingle opposite sexualities, but to emphasize, with delicate insistence, the feminine presence [of the actress in the male role].”12 Anderson, in contrast, would seek to direct attention away from her gendered identity and body when playing Hamlet. While many French critics applauded Bernhardt’s depiction of masculinity, some questioned the suitability of Hamlet for travesti performance, as they believed Hamlet’s feminine soul needed to be contrasted with a masculine body.13 English critics also objected to Bernhardt’s performance in terms of the body, finding it impossible to read this Hamlet as anything but a woman—specifically a very famous French woman named Sarah Bernhardt. In Max Beerbohm’s analysis, Bernhardt’s Hamlet “betrayed nothing but herself, and revealed nothing but [her] unreasoning vanity . . . her Hamlet was, from first to last, très grande dame.”14 The actress’s body and, more particularly, her celebrity, prevented critics from seeing the “real” Hamlet. The same phenomenon would attend Anderson’s appearance in the role. From Anderson’s personal scrapbooks, she appears also to have been interested in two lesser-known female Hamlets: Asta Nielsen and Esmé Beringer.15 These actresses demonstrate radically different readings of Hamlet by women in the twentieth century, and provide a counterpoint to Anderson’s own approach to the character. Nielsen played Hamlet in the German film, Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance (1920), directed by Svend Gade. The plot followed Edward P. Vining’s 1881 monograph The Mystery of Hamlet in suggesting Hamlet had been born female but was raised as a boy for political reasons. As the title suggests, this adaptation rejected the passive protagonist of Romanticism for an active avenger. Nielsen’s Hamlet is a young “man” of intellect and honour, troubled by “his” (inexpressible) love for Horatio and grief at the death of “his” father. The film disrupts traditional readings of Hamlet’s delay, or resistance to revenge, as a “feminine” trait. Nielsen had become renowned for playing freedom-seeking new women and enigmatic prostitutes, and Lawrence Danson contends that she brought the memory of these roles to her Hamlet, thereby aligning the character with sexual transgression. In Danson’s analysis, this Hamlet thus became a spectacle of simultaneous liberation and containment: “In Nielsen’s polymorphous sexuality a viewer could read the strong image of a conceivable freedom from gender restrictions, crossed with the pathos of that freedom’s bafflement by actual social conditions” as represented in the material circumstances of the play.16 Nielsen’s Hamlet demonstrates the radical potential of cross-gender casting in Shakespeare, a potential that would also circulate around Anderson’s Hamlet. Esmé Beringer played Hamlet in London in 1935 at the age of sixty-three, and later published an article in which she justified actresses playing Hamlet. She repeatedly figures the character in emotional terms: prior to the catastrophe he is “happy,” “highspirited” and “in love;” following it he is “grief-stricken,” and “runs the gamut of love, scorn and despair.” Beringer does not explicitly comment on the implications of cross-gender casting, but the aspects of the character to which she draws attention are those that seem particularly suited to female performers. She stresses Hamlet’s sensitivity, and finds his interpersonal relationships with Ophelia, Horatio, and Gertrude amongst “the most vital themes of the play.”17 Even within a normative reading of the play, and a conservative approach to theatre, Beringer implicitly validated actresses playing Hamlet. As an older woman performing Hamlet, Beringer also functioned as a precedent for Anderson. Had Anderson read the Times’s review of Beringer’s performance she would have seen that the actress’s age was ignored by the critics, but her ineffectual representation of masculinity and male behaviour, and her “monotonous, sing-song intonation,” were openly criticised.18 Anderson decided not to attempt a representation of masculinity in her reading, and to focus her performance on her greatest asset—her powerful and flexible voice. Anderson on the road to Elsinore In 1954, Anderson told an American journalist she wished to play the role of Hamlet.19 She reiterated this desire in the press that attended her appearance in Medea in Epidaurus in 1955.20 The opportunity to do so did not arise until 1969, a delay she attributed to the difficulty of finding a suitable director.21 Bernhardt had also stated that her desire to play Hamlet was long-standing but she had been delayed by production difficulties—in her case the search for an appropriate translation.22 This discourse of desire thwarted by circumstances beyond the actresses’ control has a number of effects: it foregrounds the actresses’ professionalism; inhibits reading their decision to play Hamlet as a “whim” or rash act of folly; and frames their eventual appearance in the role as in some way “destined.” Anderson’s trouble finding a director also suggests the limited commercial potential of a female Hamlet on the American stage in the late twentieth century. Anderson did eventually find someone to guide her Hamlet: William Ball, founder and director of the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), based in San Francisco from 1965. Under Ball’s vigorous leadership, ACT presented modern classics by authors such as Chekhov, Pirandello and Tom Stoppard, rising to become “one of the most active and prosperous resident repertory companies in the country.”23 During the 1960s, Ball also directed John Gielgud, Edith Evans and Margaret Leighton in A Homage to Shakespeare, and worked at a number of America’s major Shakespeare festivals. The venture was produced by Paul Gregory, who had worked in Hollywood and the music industry in addition to the theatre. In 1953, he had produced John Brown’s Body, a dramatic reading starring Anderson, Tyrone Power, and Raymond Massey. In this production, Anderson had demonstrated two things above all else: her range, and her ability to build characters through voice—she created, through recitation, “anything from a great Southern hostess to a child of the woods.”24 In the Hamlet program, Gregory and Ball are described as initiators of the production and, if this was the case, it may have been Anderson’s creation of diverse characters through voice in John Brown’s Body that inspired the project.25 The program notes state Gregory and Ball have (like the actress herself) lived with the idea of Anderson as Hamlet for a long time: “It has been a long cherished dream of [Gregory and Ball] to bring Dame Judith back to the stage as the doomed heir of Elsinore, and when she became available, they lost no time in bringing it to fruition.”26 This comment “authorises” Anderson’s performance by framing it as the “brainchild” of two respected and experienced theatre practitioners, and forestalling its being read as the whim of an aging actress. The idea of Anderson as Hamlet held a popular appeal few might have anticipated. The actress herself stated she originally intended the play for university audiences (a decision she framed in part as a pedagogical exercise27), but Lewis Funke noted that when “the big city managers heard that she would be going out in the production they “demanded” that she play for them too, hence Carnegie Hall.”28 Anderson’s desire to remove the production from Broadway and other avenues of “high status” theatre suggests she was conscious of the risky nature of her venture. The managers’ insistence that she play Carnegie Hall shows the actress remained tethered to a position of status within the American theatre. This status meant Anderson was obliged to present herself as an item of consumption to the critics and patrons that would descend on Carnegie Hall—some of whom then read the “failure” of her Hamlet as a transgression of her status. While some reviewers (especially those from regional and university papers) supported Anderson’s performance, most were critical of her interpretation and of Ball’s production in general. Dan Sullivan, of the Los Angeles Times, found Anderson’s performance “so far off the mark in conception and execution that it is hard to know where to start to describe it.”29 Chris Curcio, of the California State University at Hayward, described the performance as “misconceived,” “monotonously boring,” and “awkward and contrived.”30 Nathan Cohen, of the Toronto Daily Star, suggested Ball had “done nothing to benefit Dame Judith or the play,” and the New York Times’s Mel Gussow described Ball’s Hamlet as “a bloodless production, with no power, poetry, or humour.”31 The reviews indicate the voice was the focus in this Hamlet. As Nick Milich noted in the Watsonville Register, the “point” of this production was “Shakespeare’s poetry, not action, not swordfights.”32 Indeed Milich and Cohen referred to the production as a “recitation,” and Gussow felt “it was almost like a concert reading.”33 In A Sense of Direction, his manifesto on directing, Ball lists “language” as one of the five basic elements of a play, alongside “theme,” “plot,” “character,” and “spectacle.” In any production, writes Ball, a director should identify one of these as the “predominant element;” this element then becomes the focus of the work.34 In keeping with a focus on language, Ball devised a minimalist production: “There are no props, and red velvet backdrops take the place of sets. All the characters except Hamlet wear variations of the same costume, deep red velvet and silk. In vivid contrast, Hamlet is garbed—boots, tights and vest—all in black.”35 Such costuming of Hamlet in black can be read as a further effort to erase the body, but with the set and remainder of the cast in red it is likely that it highlighted not only Hamlet’s body, but also the character’s singularity and Anderson’s star status. [caption id="attachment_1123" align="alignnone" width="606"] Figure 2., Judith Anderson as Hamlet, production still. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.[/caption] A number of critics went so far as to describe the production as “stylised.”36 The actors used gestures rather than realistic movement, and there was little “action.”37 These factors enhanced the sense of a recital, although Ball also incorporated some more striking production choices, such as when “the ghost makes its entrance to the sound of amplified heartbeats.”38 The performance text was cut to run under two hours; it was in fact so abbreviated that one critic suggested “a more honest title would be ‘Gems from Hamlet.’”39 Anderson’s degree of input into the performance text is difficult to determine. In Ball’s 1985 manifesto on theatre, A Sense of Direction, he states that his preferred method was to cut the text himself and distribute the arranged script to the cast at the first rehearsal.40 Such a method was unlikely to appeal to Anderson, and Lewis Funke in the New York Times notes “[some] of the original pruning wasn’t to Dame Judith’s liking.” However, the text developed in performance, and Funke added that “things are better now [in November] than when the tour started out [in October].” Anderson later admitted: “[Hamlet] wasn’t done the way I wanted it done.”41 Yet, despite the friction between them, Ball and Anderson actually held the same vision for the production: the desire to focus on language, and a belief in the power of the voice.42 Anderson had played Gertrude opposite John Gielgud’s Hamlet on Broadway in 1936, and this actor’s reading is likely to have influenced her. Gielgud evoked the character’s grief, sensitivity, intellect, and emotional connectivity to those around him. The actor himself described his Hamlet as “introverted,” and located his voice as his focus during the performance: “[I was] more worried about the inflection, the phrasing, and the diction [when I played Hamlet].”43 Anderson also used “grief” as a keynote of her reading, and one critic pejoratively described her as the “Melancholy Dame.”44 The actress conveyed grief through vocal effect: reference was made to her “frequent sobbing voice.”45 While some reviewers criticised her “blubbering” and “sobs,” another admitted, “nobody hovers on the edge of tears so thrillingly” as Anderson.46 In one of the few interviews discussing her interpretation of Hamlet, Anderson suggested she would “be a more emotional Hamlet than, say, Gielgud or Olivier. I might cry.”47 This seemingly innocent comment provides a clue to the critical reception of Anderson’s performance. As Tom Lutz notes, “the meanings assigned to tears are always compounded by the age and sex of the crier.”48 The performance of Hamlet by an elderly woman held the potential to radically destabilise the play’s accepted meanings. James W. Stone has explored Hamlet in terms of its ordering and expulsion of the feminine through language and action. In Stone’s analysis, the feminine is represented in the play in images of dissolution, of movement into water, and therefore in tears: “Whether tears . . . represent Niobe’s sincere expression of grief or Gertrude’s masquerade of seeming, they serve variously to define the bifurcated feminine.”49 Stone describes Hamlet’s journey in the play as a movement away from the feminine. Anderson’s decision to make Hamlet more emotional, to cry noticeably and often, had the potential to instead show him collapsing into the feminine. Such a reading of the text would unsettle critics by its unconventionality, and by its disturbance of the play’s symbolic function: the ordering and expulsion of the feminine. And while the focus on the voice in this production was to draw attention away from the body, the act of crying—a manifestation of the feminine—may have actually underscored the presence of the actress in the role. “She is Judith Anderson” Critic Dan Sullivan described Anderson in Hamlet as the “victim of three obdurate facts. She is a woman. She is a rather short woman. She is Judith Anderson.” For Sullivan, the actress’s association with performative evil through her appearances in Rebecca, Macbeth, and Medea prevented her from becoming Hamlet.50 Frank Hains found Anderson’s Hamlet in conflict with her celebrity, rather than her performance identity. He found he “was never able to associate in any way that Great Lady of the Stage before me with the character which my program told me she was playing.”51 In his review, Hains divides “Judith Anderson” into two personae: “Miss Anderson” and “Dame Judith.”52 “Dame Judith” is linked with Sarah Bernhardt, connoting celebrity, wilfulness, and performative excess. In contrast, “Miss Anderson” is linked with roles such as Lady Macbeth and Medea, which signify tradition, professionalism, and the craft of acting. Lady Macbeth and Medea are described as Anderson’s “property,” suggesting these roles form the basis of her “authentic” performance self. The appearance as Hamlet is a transgression of this self, or as the critic himself puts it, “madness.”53 We can also read Anderson’s Hamlet as a transgression of her status and established identity in Chris Curcio’s response to her performance as “grotesque,” and Bernard Grebanier’s description of it as a “strange [undertaking].”54 For Grebanier, Anderson’s Hamlet became “strange” when considered alongside her “brilliant” performances in Medea and Macbeth.55 Like Medea, Hamlet explores the protagonist’s desire for revenge that leads to murder, but does so via contemplation rather than hasty action, and through lyric, philosophic musings instead of raw and bloody dialogue. It is, paradoxically, a more “feminine” role than was usually associated with Anderson. In addition, unlike the wicked and wilful Medea and Lady Macbeth—Anderson’s most famous roles—Hamlet aims to do good and is obsessed with “right.” Hamlet thus exists at a considerable distance from Anderson’s trademark roles. Anne Davis Basting’s analysis of another actress’s return to Broadway helps us appreciate the transgressive effect of Anderson’s Hamlet. In 1995, at the age of seventy-four, Carol Channing played Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly!, a role she originated in 1964, and with which she was strongly identified. Basting suggests the popularity of Channing’s 1995 performance resulted in part from its performance of “authenticity”—its nostalgic affirmation of a much-loved actress’s identity, and of a golden, “lost” period in Broadway’s history.56 Anderson’s Hamlet, in contrast, denied her authentic self, and was compromised not by the lingering presence of Medea or Lady Macbeth, but by their very absence. While critics figured Anderson’s Hamlet as a transgression of her status and performance identity, I would like to suggest Anderson herself perceived it as an escape from her performance identity—an identity epitomised by the emotion and arch theatricality of Medea. Emerging as it did in the early 1950s, Anderson’s desire to play Hamlet arose in the midst of her journey with Medea. In 1969, Anderson reflected that playing Medea had been a physically and emotionally draining experience: “Medea consumed every bit of me . . . I saw nobody and did nothing, other than concentrate entirely on my work. It took everything out of me, including all my blood. I had to have a blood transfusion.”57 Anderson read Hamlet in distinctly cerebral terms and perhaps Shakespeare’s sensitive, reasoning Danish prince appeared to her here as a tantalising retreat from the physical onslaught of Medea. The body and its sufferings were at the centre of Medea, but Anderson’s vision for Hamlet virtually elided the body: the actress told Robert Feldman that the production “will be in chiaroscuro with lots of shadows,” and the “shadows will include everything from the waist down.”58 Anderson made this comment ten months before the production opened and it is not clear from the reviews and still photographs if her vision was realised in performance. What is apparent is that in Anderson’s approach to the text (she focussed on the poetry); in her performance style (she privileged the voice); and in her proposed design (she hoped to mask the body), she turned away from the mode that the physical had been configured in her landmark role, only to have it reinscribed by the critics. During the tour, Anderson expressed frustration at the media’s interest in her age. As she told the New York Times: “Sure I’m old . . . but I am sick and tired of you writers who keep dwelling on that. I want people to see me and not be thinking of how old I am.”59 In this conceptualisation of her identity, Anderson distinguishes between her essential self and her physical self. She spoke of Hamlet in similar terms: figuring the character as a “soul” rather than a “body.” In her vision for the production, Anderson denied Hamlet a physical identity, but she also denied him a gender identity. Lewis Funke noted that “she doesn’t think of [Hamlet] as being a man . . . She sees the role as asexual.”60 Anderson refused to align Hamlet with either male or female subjectivity. She asked a student reporter: “‘Well, what did you think of me as while watching the play? Did you think of me as a woman or as Hamlet?’” The student replied: “‘At first I thought of you as a woman . . . [but later] I thought of you as Hamlet.’”61 Hamlet is here not female but is also, perhaps, not male. For Anderson, Hamlet appears to have been simply “human” and “his” experience “universal,” and there is a suggestion here that at least one viewer shared her vision. Despite the negative criticism, there were other viewers who approached the play on Anderson’s terms. Nick Milich suggested the majority of critics were searching for the wrong production: “[this Hamlet] is very hard for a modern audience to take . . . [For the players] offered nothing else but the poetry; their production was stripped down to essence, to a dreamlike state.”62 Prior to its opening, Variety predicted Anderson’s Hamlet would dismay theatre purists.63 Most reviews suggest this prediction was realised, as does Bernard Grebanier in Then Came Each Actor, his 1975 history of Shakespearean performance, in which he lists Anderson’s Hamlet as a “total failure.”64 Yet for Milich, Anderson’s Hamlet did not fail. Rather it affirmed the significance of Shakespeare’s poetry and the power of performance to transform the written word. In addition, for several viewers it provided a glimpse of some universal human “essence” that transcended age, gender, celebrity and the body. It was for such transcendence that Anderson had essayed the role: to escape her seventy-three year old body and the yoke of established celebrity and performance identities, and become “part of Shakespeare’s riches and poetry.” Anderson seems to have received the most positive responses from students, her intended audience. The audience at La Crosse University, for example, was described as “rapt” in the production; they gave Anderson a standing ovation.65 Anderson told the New York Times she regularly received letters from appreciative students: “I had a three-page letter only the other day from a girl thanking me, saying ‘Thank God you exist, thank God I saw you’.”66 Grebanier refers to this letter in Then Came Each Actor. It had prompted him “to wonder whether or not the college girl had not already been enlisted in that branch of the woman’s lib movement which would like to see men unsexed.”67 He was not the only writer to suggest Anderson’s performance held some affinity with contemporary feminism. The New York Times told its readers not “to go running over the landscape in praise of Women’s Liberation . . . [as Anderson is] not the first and surely not the last of her sex to essay the Dane.”68 Chris Curcio admitted, “Women’s Liberation proponents may be astatic [sic] that Dame Judith Anderson is playing Hamlet, [but] theatre aficionados were dropping in the aisles.”69 In common with much contemporary media commentary on the women’s movement, these critics’ alignment of the production with feminism was done jokingly and/or disparagingly. Anderson herself denied any feminist agenda in her work, and described “Women’s Lib” as “a lot of tommy-rot.”70 And yet, although she seems unaware of it, Anderson’s Hamlet performed a destabilisation of gender distinctions that, like the discourse of women’s liberation, questioned gender boundaries. “I’m Not Going to Camp it Up”71 When Anderson announced her desire to play Hamlet, the media recognised the camp potential of such a project: a syndicated newspaper article published throughout America “predicted that [Anderson] would camp up the role.”72 “Camp” had entered the American mainstream with the publication of Susan Sontag’s influential essay, “Notes on Camp,” in 1964.73 Fabio Cleto notes that “within weeks” of this essay’s appearance, camp “exploded as a mass media keyword.”74 In 1970, as a consequence of Sontag’s essay and its application by the mass media, the word “camp” signalled excess, incongruity, and theatricality, and while recognised as an important part of gay culture was not thought of as exclusively “homosexual.”75 In “Notes on Camp,” Sontag describes an enormous variety of cultural moments, objects and persons as “camp,” and her essay has been criticised as “unsystematic” and “inconsistent.”76 Yet, due to its influence, Sontag’s essay provides a useful insight into how camp was perceived at the time of Anderson’s Hamlet. For Sontag, the “essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.”77 Camp is thus found in excessive and/or incongruous displays of gender, age, class, or style. A number of Anderson’s performances prior to Hamlet can be identified as camp in their excess. In films such as Salome (1953) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and in Hallmark Hall of Fame television productions, “Elizabeth the Queen” (1968) and “The File on Devlin” (1969), Anderson’s overt theatricality could not be contained by the camera. Her performances in the above productions were characterised by emotionalism and exaggerated gestures and movement. In his review of “The File on Devlin,” George Eres described Anderson’s “dramatics” as “out of all proportion” to the script and the medium.78 The implication here is that Anderson’s performance is not only “excessive” but also “passé,” belonging to an earlier, and superseded, style of performance. As Andrew Ross notes in an important definition, the “camp effect” is created “when the products . . . of a much earlier mode of production, which has lost its power to produce and dominate cultural meanings, become available, in the present, for redefinition according to contemporary codes of taste.”79 Ross notes that the distance between contemporary and historical performance was highlighted by the “recirculation of classic Hollywood films on television.”80 Repeated screenings of Anderson’s intense emotionalism in Rebecca and Salome, and the theatricality of her television appearances, rendered her anachronistic in a culture influenced by the understatement of the Method. These performances, and Anderson’s performance and celebrity identities, were liable to be received as camp in Ross’s terms. The idea of such an actress playing Hamlet, especially at the age of seventy-three, was so incongruous that some sections of the media automatically presumed her performance would become camp. However, as Anderson had shown in films such as Laura and The Red House, she could produce restrained and realistic performances when necessary, and her relatively measured Hamlet did not become camp solely on the grounds of “excess.” Nor was its old-fashioned style purely to blame, despite Bill Marvel’s description of Anderson as “out of her depth” in “attempting to make the Bard come alive for members of the Woodstock generation.”81 Indeed, as discussed earlier, some of the most appreciative viewers of the production were university students. Anderson’s Hamlet is more completely read as an example of what Sontag terms “naïve” or “pure” camp, the “essential element” of which is “seriousness, a seriousness that fails.” Sontag goes on to note that “not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.”82 This Hamlet was expressive of each of these elements: “exaggeration” in its style; the “fantastic” in its casting of a seventy-three year old woman as a young man; “passion” in that woman’s intense desire to play the part; and “naivety” in her belief it could work. Ultimately Anderson’s experiment with Hamlet stands as an audacious, boundary-defying act, yet one that also demonstrates the very fixity of the boundaries it was attempting to cross. ------------------------- Fiona Gregory lectures in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University in Melbourne. Her research on issues of celebrity representation and performance identity has appeared in New Theatre Quarterly, Australasian Drama Studies and Affirmations: Of the Modern. She served on the editorial board for Twenty-First Century Drama: The First Decade (Gale, 2012). She is currently undertaking a major research project on representations of the actress and mental illness from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. ------------------------- Endnotes: [1]“A Heartache and a Tragedy,” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 April 1973. [2] Michael Clowes, “Dame Judith Anderson,” Adelaide Advertiser, 19 February 1966, 8. [3] Barbara Cloud, “Judith Playing Hamlet,” Pittsburgh Press, 3 January 1971, 19. [4] Louis Calta, “Judith Anderson Plans to Play Hamlet,” New York Times, 19 November 1969, 44. [5] “A Theatre Great is Still ‘A Country Girl,’” Sydney Morning Herald, 24 April 1973, 2. [6] For a fascinating analysis of the history of actresses in the role into the twenty-first century see Tony Howard, Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). [7] Ibid, 36. [8] Robin Headlam Wells, Shakespeare on Masculinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 81. [9] Ibid.; see also Elaine Showalter, “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism,” in Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman, eds., Shakespeare and the Question of Theory (London: Methuen, 1985), 79. [10] Howard, Women as Hamlet, 43. [11] Ibid, 49. [12] Gerda Taranow, The Bernhardt Hamlet: Culture and Context (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 83. [13]Ibid., 85. [14] Max Beerbohm, Around Theatres (New York: Greenwood Press, 1930), 36-7. [15] Anderson’s personal scrapbooks, boxes 10-11, Dame Judith Anderson Collection, PA Mss 6, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). [16] Lawrence Danson, “Gazing at Hamlet, or the Danish Cabaret,” Shakespeare Survey 45 (1993): 45. [17] Esmé Beringer, “Woman’s View of Hamlet,” 15 October 1953, unidentified fragment, UCSB. [18] “Miss Esmé Beringer in Hamlet,” Times, 22 January 1938, 8. [19] New York Herald Tribune, 18 October 1954, Judith Anderson Clippings file, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (NYPL). [20] Fragment from unidentified article dated 4 July 1955, NYPL. [21] Morning Telegraph, 11 August 1970, NYPL. [22] Sarah Bernhardt, The Art of the Theatre (London: G. Bles, 1924), 139. [23] Gerald M. Berkowitz, New Broadways: Theatre across America: Approaching a New Millennium, rev ed. (New York: Applause, 1997), 78. [24] Power’s opening speech, page from Anderson’s script of John Brown’s Body, UCSB. [25] Nick Milich states Anderson “selected Ball to direct her,” in “Critics Missed the Point,” Watsonville Register, 13 October 1970, DJA. This does not preclude the possibility that Gregory initiated the project. [26] Hamlet program, in author’s collection. [27] Ibid. [28] Funke, “Dame Hamlet.” [29] Dan Sullivan, “Dame Judith in Hamlet Role,” Los Angeles Times, 1 October 1970, UCSB. [30] Chris Curcio, “Anderson’s Hamlet: A Fiasco,” Daily Pioneer, 6 October 1970, UCSB. [31] Nathan Cohen, “Female Hamlet Never Satisfying,” Toronto Daily Star, 27 October 1970, UCSB; Mel Gussow, “Stage: A Lady ‘Hamlet,’” New York Times, 15 January 1971, 18. [32] Milich, “Critics Missed the Point.” [33] Ibid; Cohen, “Female Hamlet;” Gussow, “A Lady ‘Hamlet.’” [34] William Ball, A Sense of Direction: Some Observations on the Art of Directing (New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1984), 27-8. [35] Bill Marvel, “Hamlet’s Mother Plays Him,” National Observer, 5 October 1970, 17. [36] Frank Hains, “Dame’s Dane: Madness in Great Ones Must Now Unwatched Go,” Jackson Daily News, 17 November 1970, DJA; Milich, “Critics Missed the Point.” [37] Sullivan, “Dame Judith in Hamlet Role,” Los Angeles Times. [38] Marvel, “Hamlet’s Mother.” [39] Sullivan, “Dame Judith in Hamlet Role.” [40] Ball, A Sense of Direction, 99. [41] Robert Berkvist, “When a Great Role is Passed Along,” New York Times, 2 May 1982, NYPL. [42] Anderson referred to the “friction” between herself and Ball in an interview with Clyde Packer, in No Return Ticket (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1984), 67. [43] Richard L. Sterne, John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in Hamlet: A Journal of Rehearsals (New York: Random House, 1967), 294. [44] Hains, “Dame’s Dane.” [45] Milich, “Critics Missed the Point.” [46] Curcio, “Anderson’s ‘Hamlet;’” Gussow, “A Lady ‘Hamlet;’ Sullivan, “Dame Judith in Hamlet.” [47] Robert Feldman, “The Dame from Rose Park, Adelaide,” Bulletin, 27 December 1969, 54 [48] Tom Lutz, Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 151. [49] James W. Stone, “Androgynous ‘Union’ and the Woman in Hamlet,” Shakespeare Studies 23 (1995): 76. [50] Sullivan, “Dame Judith in Hamlet Role.” [51] Hains, “Dame’s Dane.” [52] Ibid. [53] Ibid. [54] Curcio, “Anderson’s ‘Hamlet;’” Bernard D. N. Grebanier, Then Came Each Actor: Shakespearean Actors, Great and Otherwise (New York: McKay, 1975), 262. [55] Grebanier, Then Came Each Actor, 262. [56] Anne Davis Basting, “Dolly Descending a Staircase: Stardom, Age, and Gender in Times Square,” in Kathleen Woodward, ed., Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 251. [57] San Fernando Sun, 19 November 1969, UCSB. [58] Feldman, “The Dame from Rose Park.” [59] Funke, “Dame Hamlet.” [60] Ibid. [61] Fragment of article by Melinda Wojtasiak, circa 1971, UCSB. [62] Milich, “Critics Missed the Point.” [63] Variety, 30 September 1970, NYPL. [64] Grebanier, Then Came Each Actor, 262. [65] Grant Blum, “Dame Judith Triumphs,” La Crosse Tribune, UCSB. [66] Funke, “Dame Hamlet.” [67] Grebanier, Then Came Each Actor, 263. [68] Funke, “Dame Hamlet.” [69] Curcio, “Anderson’s ‘Hamlet.’” [70] Wojtasiak, “Dame Judith Anderson.” [71] Show, 20 August 1970, NYPL. [72] Kernan, “Dame Judith.” [73] Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” was first published in Partisan Review in 1964 and reissued in Sontag’s Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966). It is reprinted in Fabio Cleto (ed.), Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 53-65. [74] Fabio Cleto, “Introduction to Section One,” in Cleto, Camp, 46. [75] See points 50-53 in Sontag’s “Notes on Camp,” in Cleto, Camp, 64. [76] Mark Booth, “Campe-Toi!: On the Origins and Definitions of Camp” (1983), in Cleto, Camp, 67. [77] Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” 53. [78] George Eres, Long Beach Independent, 25 November 1969, UCSB. [79] Andrew Ross, “Uses of Camp” (1988), in Cleto, Camp, 312. [80] Ibid., 310. [81] Bill Marvel, “One View of Will Shakespeare: Let’s Respect the Stories,” National Observer, 23 November 1970, 20. [82] Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” 59. ----------- The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 26, Number 2 (Spring 2014) Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Guest Editor: Cheryl Black (University of Missouri) With the ATDS Editorial Board: Noreen C. Barnes (Virginia Commonwealth University), Nicole Berkin (CUNY Graduate Center), Johan Callens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Jonathan Chambers (Bowling Green State University), Dorothy Chansky (Texas Tech University), James Fisher (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Anne Fletcher (Southern Illinois University), Felicia Londré (University of Missouri-Kansas City), Kim Marra (University of Iowa ), Judith A. Sebesta (The College for All Texans Foundation), Jonathan Shandell (Arcadia University), LaRonika Thomas (University of Maryland), Harvey Young (Northwestern University) Managing Editor: Ugoran Prasad Editorial Assistant: Andrew Goldberg Circulation Manager: Janet Werther Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director References Footnotes About The Author(s) 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 The Border that Beckons and Mocks: Conrad, Failure, and Irony in O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon Alternative Transnationals: Naomi Wallace and Cross-Cultural Performances Transgenero Performance: Gender and Transformation in Fronteras Desviadas/Deviant Borders Crossing Genre, Age and Gender: Judith Anderson as Hamlet YoungGiftedandFat: Performing Transweight Identities Hot Pursuit: Researching Across the Theatre/Film Border 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 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian By Namrata Verghese Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF REVIEW: LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian. Central Stage, Richmond. December 7, 2024. By Namrata Verghese “For this being is yours, my love, it is no longer me / In giving myself to you, my love, I am at last free.” — Majnun, Leili & Majnun Torange Yeghiazarian’s lush reimagining of Leili & Majnun injects the ancient Persian epic with new life. From the soundscape that marries the rhythms of Iranian, Arabic, Kurdish, and western music to the visual language of graffiti art and Persian miniature painting, the production celebrates the hybridity of Iranian diasporic storytelling. Produced by Central Stage, the Bay Area’s only production company founded and operated by Iranian artists, Yeghiazarian’s Leili & Majnun updates the twelfth-century epic for a globalized audience. It also spotlights its enduring resonance: although separated from Nizami by many millennia and miles, those temporal and spatial coordinates collapse when Leili & Majnun opens, and we are simply another audience, like the thousands that came before us, listening to Nizami’s poetry with bated breath. Like many people of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage, I grew up with the story of Leila [1] and Majnun. It is, as Yeghiazarian notes in her program note, “the most popular love story in the Middle East and the many cultures influenced by the region’s literary treasures.” It is even rumored to have inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , a similarly tragic tale of star-crossed lovers. Yeghiazarian’s adaptation is based on Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi’s epic, which itself is based on the fabled love story between seventh century Arabic poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his lover, Layla bint Mahdi. Still, even within the parameters of the well-known story, Yeghiazarian’s voice shines through in the play’s balancing of old and new, tradition and innovation. As an audience member, part of the thrill of the genre of the adaptation is tracking the director’s negotiation between familiar and novel elements. Yeghiazarian keeps us guessing as to which elements of the story remain the same and which she tweaks, delivering both nostalgia and freshness in equal measure. Leili & Majnun opens with the naqqal , or narrator, reciting Persian poetry, while a taut drumroll thrums in the background. In keeping with the play’s overarching theme of blending the old with the new, Yeghiazarian casts a woman in the role of naqqal , which is traditionally performed by a man, putting a fresh, feminist twist on an ancient tradition. The directorial decision to begin with Persian, without English translation, is striking. The play does not cater to a western audience; rather, we sit with the Persian, transported to another world. Soon, the ensemble chimes in, moving us into English with the lines: “We open our story in your name, the greatest name of all, never would I begin, without your name in my call / Your name is the key to all that’s locked, the solution to whatever is blocked / O maker of our thoughts and origin of our soul, being and nothingness are equally in your control.” The choice to blend Persian poetry with an English invocation is emblematic of Yeghiazarian’s embrace of diasporic hybridity. It did not seem to alienate the audience; rather, I watched many audience members, some of whom may be familiar with Nizami’s poetry and some who certainly were not, sit up, lean forward and catch their breath. The poem’s affective power transcended language. Image 1: The Naghal (Dina Zarif); photograph by Diaspora Arts Connection In a cheeky tribute to the original epic, once again demonstrating her deftness in drawing together the ancient and the contemporary, Yeghiazarian casts Nizami as a character in his own epic. The poet walks onstage, brandishing a comically large feather pen, sparking hoots and hollers from the crowd. At the behest of his son and the king, Nizami begins to recite the “cherished Arab love poem,” that “tasty Arab tale … made even more delicious when you tell it,” as his son tells him. The following tale melds the naqqal tradition of Persian storytelling with the contemporary form of musical theater. The first song, “It Is a Celebration,” which spotlights the community’s exuberance at Qays’s birth, beautifully captures the hybridity of this reimagining. “It is a celebration / a joyful congregation / The nobleman of the Aumerian clan / has a son,” the ensemble sings, palpable delight in their voices. “At last, at last, at last!” Each “at last” is accompanied by a clap, lending the song a folksy sound. The piece brings together Arabic rhythms and English lyrics in a way that does not require translation. Even the costuming feels like a nod to this hybridity—the actor who plays Leili, for instance, wore shalvar trousers with white tennis shoes. Image 2: The ensemble (right to left: Ameen Safi, Roeen Nooran, Dina Zarif, Behzad Golemohammadi, Yasaman Asgari, Adrienne Shamszad, and Brandon DiPaula) celebrating the birth of Qays; photograph by Diaspora Arts Connection Yeghiazarian’s adaptation hits many of the canonical notes: the staging is set in the “ancient Najd Desert of Arabia,” where Leili, the “moon-faced beauty,” and Qays, pride of his father’s Bedouin clan and poet whose “ruby lips … spread pearls,” meet in school. They’re immediately smitten with each other: “Do you ever feel like your heart is about to burst?” Qays asks Leila, to which she responds, “Like a pomegranate?” The actors do a wonderful job of portraying the shy glances and nervous smiles of a burgeoning crush. The two soon fall in love— “With one sweet smile from Qays,” the ensemble narrates, “Leili was lost”—but are forcibly separated. The separation is staged poignantly: Leili tells Qays, “They’re going to take me out of school.” The light, romantic music turns darker, more dissonant. The two protest; Qays cries out, “She has a thousand curls in her hair; how could I not get tangled up?” Leili responds, “His eyes are full of poetry; I need a thousand more days to read them.” [2] As the two recite poetry professing their love, the other cast members circle the pair, stomping their feet, hissing, “Shame. Shame. Shame.” Sharp staccato notes accompany the words, filling the atmosphere with dread. Unable to bear their separation, Qays unravels. The staging of this moment adds to its affective intensity: Qays, clad in a plain white tunic, pulls the cloth from his chest. The entire garment falls apart into tattered rags that represent the character’s unraveling mental state. Qays runs into the audience, wandering up and down the stairs, searching for his lover—a particularly effective directorial choice, as audience members get to witness, up close, his visceral devastation. Eventually, Qays flees to the desert. “He wandered the dusty pathways among the tribal tents,” the ensemble laments, “Longing for Leili. Searching for Leili. Every day. Everywhere.” Because Central Stage is a volunteer-run theater, the set design is sparse, but extremely thoughtful: we transition from the community into the desert through the simple addition of a large tree in the corner of the stage, under which Qays rests during his self-imposed exile. The tree’s long, wispy tendrils simultaneously shade him and obscure him from our gaze. Here, in the desert, Qays becomes “Majnun,” the eponymous “mad” lover of the original epic. The ensemble narrates, “The clan folk were unkind … To them, he was but a cad / And so, they declared him mad: Majnun! Majnun!” He spends his days writing love poetry on scraps of paper that he throws into the wind. When travelers encounter them, they are so moved by the beautiful verse that they spread the tale of Leili and Qays far and wide. From here, the play progresses to its canonical end: the lovers, separated for decades, reunite just once more before they die, heartbroken and alone. The play ends on a bittersweet note of hope: “This earthy world is ephemeral, the other eternal and pure,” the ensemble recites, “Leili and Majnun were unified in heaven, we are assured / Their love story immortalized and spread across the world.” Image 3: Majnoon (Roeen Nooran) praying to the starry night; photograph by Diaspora Arts Connection Despite its adherence to the narrative contours of the epic, Yeghiazarian’s reimagining nevertheless bears her authorial stamp. The play is distinctive in its diasporic hybridity, both in form, as the discussion of language and music above indicates, and its content. With wry humor, Yeghiazarian often references contemporary events and locations. For instance, when describing Leili’s beauty, a cast member translates: “In the Bay Area, one might say ‘her Middle Eastern good looks swooned American hearts.’” During an intense battle scene, the stage glowing with ominous red light, a cast member pauses, stands up, and says, in the highfalutin style of a BBC reporter, “The death toll was unexpectedly high,” parodying media approaches to conflicts in the Middle East. When the battle ends, the ensemble describes it as a “triumph,” and then quips, “Although, given the description of the massive death and destruction, one wonders if Master Nizami is being facetious in describing this as a triumph.” These surprising bursts of humor are striking in their playfulness. Because the poem is, famously, a tragic love story, most of its adaptations come off somber and heavy. But the lighter moments of levity in Yeghiazarian’s adaptation distinguishes the play’s tone from other tellings and break up the gravity of the narrative. Such choices allow the audience to catch their breath and eventually make the more difficult moments hit even harder. They also underscore the play’s relevance to a contemporary audience, as these direct ties to ongoing events make the romantic epic feel current and urgent. Connecting the past and present was part of Yeghiazarian’s goal for the play; she writes in a press release that celebrating “one of the most beloved Middle Eastern love stories” felt particularly prescient “as we face heightened political volatility in the Middle East.” Ultimately, Leili & Majnun is a luminous tribute to the Nizami epic. The care invested into the production from every angle, from the cast to the creative team, feels tangible. It is a true celebration of centuries of Iranian storytelling, from the ancient to the modern. At the same time, Yeghiazarian reimagines the epic for a globalized audience, attending, in particular, to the generative creative possibilities of hybridity. In its deft braiding of traditional and unconventional elements, Leili & Majnun accomplishes what the form of the adaptation can do, at its best: make the old feel new again. [1] I use “Leili” to refer to the protagonist of Yeghiazarian’s play, entitled Leili & Majnun , and “Leila” to refer to the character in the epic. [2] As anchored in the tradition of orality as this play is, the repetition of the word “thousand” in these lines reads as an intertextual gesture to another folktale from the region that began as an oral story cycle: One Thousand and One Nights . Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Namrata Verghese is a PhD candidate in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University, and a JD candidate at Stanford Law School. Her research spans postcolonial studies, queer and trans theory, and the legal humanities; her dissertation project, Litigating Desire: Queer Literature on Trial in Twentieth Century India , locates encounters between British colonial law and queer literary production in the decades bookending Indian Independence. She was the winner of the Postcolonial Studies Association’s Postgraduate Essay Competition , and the Jeffrey S. Haber Award Prize for Student Scholarship . Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Law & Literature ; the Journal of Postcolonial Writing ; Law, Culture, and the Humanities ; the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities ; the Dukeminier Awards Journal of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law ; and the Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation . Her public scholarship has appeared in Teen Vogue , The Los Angeles Review of Books , The Millions , and elsewhere. Her work is supported by the Ric Weiland Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities and Sciences, the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis Digital Humanities Fellowship, the McCoy Center for Ethics Fellowship, the Stanford Center for South Asia Graduate Student Research Fellowship, and the Mellon Centering Race Consortium Graduate Fellowship. 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.

Benjamin Gillespie Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Benjamin Gillespie By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Playwright Jordan Tannahill. Photo: Hunter Abrams Since the early 2010s, Jordan Tannahill has emerged as one of the most provocative and adventurous queer voices in North America. A Canadian playwright, novelist, and director, Tannahill’s work consistently probes the intersections of sexuality, intimacy, and spectatorship, often asking audiences to confront how desire and authority circulate among bodies and institutions of power. Across his many novels, plays, and performance installations, he has built a body of work that occupies a distinctive position in today’s theatrical and literary landscape. Tannahill is a two-time winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays (2014) and Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom (2018). His debut novel, Liminal , won France’s 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires, and his second novel, The Listeners , was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize. His work has been translated into twelve languages and presented at venues in Toronto, New York City, London, Avignon, Berlin, Vienna, and Montreal. From 2008 to 2016, Tannahill wrote and directed plays through his Toronto-based theatre company Suburban Beast, staging work in theatres, art galleries, and found spaces, often collaborating with non-traditional performers such as night shift workers, frat boys, preteens, and employees of Toronto’s famed Honest Ed’s discount emporium. From 2012 to 2016, in collaboration with William Ellis, he ran the alternative art space Videofag in Kensington Market, an influential incubator for queer and avant-garde work in Toronto Most recently, Tannahill’s play Prince Faggot —his first to have a major production in New York—premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons before transferring to Studio Seaview, running for seven months. Prince Faggot imagines a future in which a queer heir to the British monarchy becomes the object of public fantasy—and suspicion. Since its premiere, the play has sparked significant attention for its unflinching examination of queer sex, class dynamics, and the voyeuristic impulses of theatrical spectatorship and nudity. And, of course, there’s the title. Interrogating the perceived limits of queer visibility, Prince Faggot explores the cost of being made legible within systems of power that claim to celebrate difference while simultaneously erasing or consuming it. At a moment when LGBTQ+ bodies are increasingly politicized, commodified, and legislated against, Tannahill’s work insists on the messiness of queer desire and the ethical stakes of looking. His writing resists narrative closure, foregrounding ambiguity and discomfort as central aesthetic strategies. In doing so, he challenges audiences to consider not only what we are watching but also why and how we watch. This interview was conducted on Nov 3, 2025 via Zoom. It has been edited for clarity and brevity. Benjamin Gillespie : Are you in New York now? Jordan Tannahill : Yes, I’m in the East Village. I’ve been here for a little over a year. Before that I lived in London, and before that, Toronto. BG : I’m also Canadian and have followed your work since I left Toronto more than a decade ago. JT : It’s always exciting to meet people who know Canadian theatre. BG : Do you miss Toronto? JT : It really is a great city. I was very much shaped by the theatre community there, especially the spirit of collaboration and making work for friends. There was never really a sense of a mass or commercial audience. Instead, artists were pushed by their peers and pushed each other to keep going. BG : I know what you mean. I was just in NYC last week to see Prince Faggot again at Studio Seaview. It’s such a beautiful play. Congratulations on another extension. JT : Thank you so much—and thank you for coming back. I really appreciate it. BG : I also just watched your MSNBC interview with Jeremy O. Harris. JT : [ Laughs ] I can barely remember what I said on MSNBC. I was so nervous. My inner monologue was just relieved that Jeremy was talking. I still can’t bring myself to watch it. John McCrea as Prince George; Mihir Kumar as Dev Chatterjee in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG : Prince Faggot opens with performers sharing childhood photographs and reflecting on queer childhood. Could you talk about how that image of Prince George became the seed for the play? JT : A lot of my thinking around queer childhood comes from Jon Davies, a Canadian curator and writer. In 2012, he hosted an event called “Sissy Boy YouTube Night” at Videofag, a space I ran in Toronto with William Ellis. Jon was interested in the then-emerging genre of YouTube videos made by preteens and young adolescents filming themselves in their bedrooms, often lip-syncing to pop songs or engaging in private rituals of expression that were deeply queer-coded. Watching those videos alongside an adult queer audience was joyful because we recognized ourselves in these kids. Many of us had done similar things in private before YouTube existed. At the same time, I felt protective of these kids. Posting these videos was brave, and the responses ranged from hateful comments to extraordinary outpourings of love and community. It raised the question of how we talk about pre-sexual queer expression and give it language. Looking at childhood photos of ourselves, many of us had that moment of recognition: we were gay kids. I mean, so many of us have stories of dressing up in our mom’s clothes, or dancing to pop music like Aqua or Ace of Base, copying music video choreography, being fabulous in these very private rituals. Suddenly, those kinds of moments became public, and that shift felt both exhilarating and, for me as an adult gay man, slightly alarming. It triggered a kind of protective response as a gay man. When I saw those photographs of Prince George online back around 2017, a lot of the above came to mind. Once again, it was a very public moment in which people experienced recognition and perhaps even self-identification through these images. For me, it raised questions such as: How do we give language to queer childhood? How do we talk about it in a way that is rooted in our own personal experiences of seeing ourselves reflected but that also has some kind of public utility? Seeing those photographs of George produced a powerful moment of self-recognition for me, but it also prompted a kind of thought experiment. If the future heir to the British throne were to be gay, what does that mean for the monarchy as an institution, for the queer community at large, and, more importantly, for this individual child? That question became a vehicle for me, and for this ensemble of performers, to interrogate our own relationships to power, colonization, and queerness, and to examine how these systems of oppression and histories of power play out on our bodies and our sexualities. BG : We see that journey in the play as we move very quickly from that initial image to Prince George as an adult. Were you worried about pushback or controversy by representing the Royals in this way? JT : Absolutely. The play is constantly walking a fine line. We are careful not to assign a sexuality to a real child. The Prince George we depict is entirely fictional and hypothetical, and in many ways a deeply autobiographical foil for me. Much of what happens to him in the play reflects my own experiences. One of the central provocations of the piece is this question: Can I dare to imagine that the future heir to the British throne might have a life that resembles my own, that he might encounter the same challenges I faced growing up as a gay man? BG: And I think you posted about this on social media, right? You shared an image of yourself that was inspired by finding that photograph of Prince George. JT: Yeah, exactly. Mihir [Kumar]’s opening monologue at the top of the show is really me working through my reactions to that photograph through him. It’s a text I wrote for him specifically that encapsulates my own journey with that image and what ultimately grew out of it. I wrote Prince Faggot in the early days of lockdown while I was living in London, and at the time my hope was that it would be produced there. That turned out to be very difficult. There was one theatre company that was genuinely excited about the play—they programmed it as their next production, and the artistic director was fully behind it—but once it moved up to the board and through legal review, it essentially stalled. They wanted me to change all the names, to fictionalize the Royal Family entirely. I had to hold firm. The stakes of what the play is trying to do are fundamentally removed if the Royal Family becomes fictional. Once you’re in a made-up world, the political and historical weight disappears. It becomes meaningless, for example, for a trans woman to be Queen of England if that England no longer carries the histories of race, class, empire, and sexuality that define the real institution. What matters is that someone like Rachel Crowl, a trans woman, is stepping into the role of Kate Middleton and embodying that figure within our actual world. That gesture allows the play to critique and dissect the lived differences between those experiences. Rachel Crowl as Catherine (Kate), Princess of Wales; K. Todd Freeman as William, Prince of Wales in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG: It takes the teeth out of it if you remove that context. The stakes disappear. JT: Exactly. The play has to exist in our world with all of its histories and political baggage intact. I became very resistant to what I felt was fear-based dramaturgy. I was talking with Jeremy O. Harris about it, and he said, “Send me the play.” He read it, loved it, and said, “Let’s do it in New York.” He saw those risks as attributes rather than liabilities, and that’s proven to be true. The play has really found its audience here, which has been incredibly affirming. BG: I’ve also wondered how the reaction might differ in Canada or the UK as opposed to the US, whether the reception would shift in significant ways as it relates to the monarchy. This production hasn’t been entirely without controversy, of course, but it’s also been clearly embraced, given the extensions and the remount at Studio Seaview. JT: Yeah, I think there are different cultures of sensitivity at play. The thresholds in Canada are different from those in the UK as well, and both are different from the US in that sense. New York really was the ideal city to introduce this piece to the world. Having it received here first helped set the tone for the broader discourse around the play. BG : Did you revise the play much between Playwrights Horizons and the Studio Seaview run? JT : Not significantly. There may have been small trims or wording changes but nothing substantial. We adjusted the staging for the new larger space at Seaview. That was it. BG : How long did it take you to write the play initially? I know you were writing it back in 2020, but then it was a while before its premiere, so did you revisit it a number of times between then and now? JT: The initial draft came fast, and then I spent years revisiting and revising it. Not full-time, of course, but returning to it again and again at different stages and between other projects. BG: It’s like the Tennessee Williams impulse, to keep going back and rewriting plays, that desire to never quite let them settle. JT: For me, though, most of the revisions happen before a play opens. Once it’s out in the world, I’m less inclined to return to it. At some point, the play becomes the play. If you revisit it years later, you’re really just writing a new work. During the development of Prince Faggot , we had workshops supported by Jeremy and his company, BB². From the very first draft, the play had a metatheatrical framework: the ensemble stepped out, broke the fourth wall, and spoke as themselves. What shifted over time was how much space that material occupied within the overall runtime. The play-within-a-play ultimately functions as a vehicle for the ensemble to articulate our relationships to power, colonization, and queerness. The monologues are fictional. I wrote them for these actors, but they are not their personal stories. I’m always reluctant to ask actors to perform that kind of emotional labor, to divulge intimate personal details for my work. That’s the power of fiction and storytelling; they can sometimes get us closer to a truth. That said, the final monologue, performed by N’yomi Allure Stewart, is almost verbatim a story she shared in the rehearsal hall, drawn from a conversation the two of us had there. I removed my own voice from it and shaped her words into a monologue, but it remains her story. She is credited in the text as the author of those words. It’s a singular moment in the piece where nonfiction punctures the fiction. That rupture feels important to me. It’s a very potent moment, one that allows the play to land on something grounded, lived, and undeniable. N’yomi Allure Stewart as Charlotte, Princess of Wales; John McCrea as Prince George in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG: I love that. It’s such a beautiful connection, tying ballroom culture in New York to ideas of dynasty and the Royal Family. JT: I think the question becomes: What would queer royalty actually look like? And the answer is that it already exists among us. We are our own royalty. It’s about reframing where power resides within our community. That power isn’t inherited; it’s earned. To paraphrase N’yomi, it’s measured by how you show up for your community, how you mother and father, how you care for others, and how you move through the world as a queer person. When that idea emerged in the rehearsal hall, I remember thinking, “Okay, this is it, the dramaturgy is complete. This is how the show culminates.” BG: It really is a beautiful ending, and it wraps up the piece in such a provocative way. I also want to ask about casting. You’ve mentioned the ensemble and the work that developed through those workshops, but the casting itself feels crucial. You have trans actors, queer actors of color, and a wide age range onstage. The representation spans a broad spectrum. Was that an intentional choice from the beginning? JT : The profiles of the ensemble were really baked into the text from the very beginning. There was always a desire to work with an intergenerational, diverse group of queer and trans performers. The idea was that they would both imagine themselves into positions of power they don’t occupy and, at the same time, explore how that power reflects back onto their own lives. Some of the monologues actually emerged quite late in the process. David Greenspan, for example, didn’t have a monologue until about a week before tech. Jeremy and Adam Greenfield, the artistic director at Playwrights Horizons, kept pushing me, saying, “He really does need a monologue.” John McCrea, as Prince George, maybe doesn’t need one in the same way, but the rest of the ensemble really did. David Greenspan as Edward II in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG : I agree. It was a memorable monologue, and it makes sense dramaturgically too. JT: At first, I understood the dramaturgical logic of adding the monologue, but I couldn’t quite see where it would land or how it wouldn’t interrupt the flow of the piece. Then it finally clicked. It felt essential to bring an intergenerational perspective on AIDS into the play. The absence of AIDS, particularly in relation to the older cast members, had started to feel conspicuous, especially given how central sex and sexual liberation were to our conversations in the room. David had brought this up a few times in relation to his own long-term relationship with his partner, and there was also a story that had been lodged in the back of my mind for years about how lesbians taught gay men how to fist, holding fisting workshops in bars and bathhouses in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. That story always struck me as such a beautiful example of queer kinship, resource sharing, and pleasure as a survival strategy. I had always wanted to write about it. Once I recalled that, it became very clear that this was what David’s monologue needed to be about. It also helps resolve the journey the play takes through fetish. For audience members who don’t have a relationship to fetish, or whose only frame of reference might be shock or titillation, the monologue grounds those moments in a personal, political, and historical context. That grounding helps give the fetish scenes greater emotional stakes. BG : That makes sense. I didn’t experience it as having shock value. It felt fully integrated into the narrative and dramaturgy, especially in what the play is saying about queer culture and queer shame. I also love the scene with the ghosts, when they all appear for Prince George like in Shakespeare’s Richard III . It’s such a powerful image. There are so many striking images in the show, but that one really stuck with me. JT: The show is very much about overcoming queer shame. That’s been a central journey in my own life, really over decades, but especially during the period when I was working on the play. That half-decade leading up to it was a time of reckoning for me in that regard. I was definitely feeling my Caryl Churchill oats in that scene, but it’s also one of the moments that comes closest to autobiography or, maybe more accurately, self-portraiture. There’s that image of Prince George being hooded with my actual latex pup hood. It’s a hood that I’ve worn to raves over many years. That moment felt like a very direct way of placing my own body, history, and desire inside the work. BG: Your hood is the actual prop used in the show? JT: Yes, I was very specific about that. It couldn’t be just any hood—it had to be that exact one from this particular store in Berlin called Blackstyle, which doesn’t even make it anymore. For the few people who know me personally, it’s a hood I’ve worn a lot and been photographed in, so it carries personal significance for me. For me, it embodies this transformative state of abandon that Prince George is reaching for but can never fully attain because of the strictures he lives under. It’s a state I’ve pursued in my own life as well as a sense of freedom and liberation, both sexual and spiritual. But it can also be self-obliterating. In the effort to remake oneself, that pursuit can involve a great deal of destruction. I was writing the play during lockdown, at a time when I had no income from my art because everything was shut down. I was working primarily as a fetish sex worker, focusing on BDSM and extended role play scenarios. Writing the play felt like a personal charge to myself that my lived experiences couldn’t be more radical or interesting than the art I was making. I needed to bring something to the stage that approached what I was actually living at that moment. That’s what I hope audiences, and especially queer audiences, can connect to in the work. BG: You’re really giving something of yourself to the work, and that comes through. JT: Yeah, totally. The struggle with identity that interested me here was one that moves beyond the familiar question of “Am I gay or am I not?” or “Will my parents accept me?” I wanted to push past those more traditional coming out narratives. The coming out struggle still matters. There’s real value in articulating that experience for people for whom it remains urgent. But for me, that hasn’t been the central question for a long time. As a gay man, I’ve had the privilege of spending many years where that wasn’t the primary site of struggle. A more active struggle for me now is trying to navigate the pull between a normative life and one oriented toward radical freedom. That includes grappling with pleasure, desire, and sometimes more difficult terrain like chemsex or dependencies. Those tensions feel much closer to my lived reality than the binary of disclosure or acceptance. BG: So many narratives frame coming out as this moment of transformation or liberation. But often that transformation isn’t really for the person coming out. It’s for others. It functions as a kind of confessional moment, in the Foucauldian sense, where society pressures you to declare yourself. Rather than freeing you, it can actually pull you more deeply into systems of regulation and expectation. Althusser’s idea of hailing comes to mind—it’s less a moment of emancipation than one of being interpellated into a structure that already exists. Coming out is often celebrated as empowerment, but it’s also— JT : —not real. BG : Exactly. It’s not that for a lot of people; it’s sort of forced. John McCrea as Prince George; Mihir Kumar as Dev Chatterjee in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. JT: Speaking purely from my own experience, I came out as a teenager, and I was embraced fairly quickly by my family and community. That initial coming out wasn’t the primary rupture for me. But there’s a different journey that follows learning what it means to be sexual for the first time, to have a sexuality at all. For me, there was a second awakening later, a kind of reckoning that arrived in my late twenties, when I realized just how expansive my sexuality actually was. It opened onto dimensions I hadn’t previously imagined—spiritual, narrative, even economic. It involved fetish, the transformative power of sex, and an engagement with the abject. It radically altered how I understood my body and what it could do. That period was marked by expansion, by raving, experimenting with drugs, having sex in different ways and with different kinds of people. It felt like an extraordinary widening of possibility. That second awakening, rather than the initial coming out, is what I was really trying to capture in this play. I wasn’t especially interested in making a work about that initial moment of coming out. I wanted to write something for the adults in the room, for people who have gone through, or are still reckoning with, that second awakening within their sexuality. For me, that reckoning has less to do with shame itself and more to do with shedding expectations imposed by family, by culture, by ideas of what a “healthy” sexuality or a “healthy” life is supposed to look like. BG: And the repressive force of heteronormativity shows up in the play too, especially in the double standards around queer and straight childhoods. There’s this refusal to sexualize the photograph of Prince George, but, at the same time, children are constantly subjected to forced heterosexual narratives. Buying a baby a “Lady Killer” onesie isn’t seen as troubling, but queerness is immediately framed as inappropriate or suspect. JT: Exactly. That double standard is very much one of the discourses the play engages with. Rather than shying away from it, the choice was to lean into it and name it directly. At this particular moment in American politics, queer and trans people talking about childhood feels charged and loaded. Instead of retreating into respectability politics, the play insists on confronting that discomfort head on and saying, “Let’s actually talk about it.” BG: Absolutely. That opening really sets the terms for the audience in a beautiful way. I wanted to ask you about the title of the play, because it’s obviously drawn a lot of attention. When I saw the production at Studio Seaview, I was standing outside waiting for a friend and watching people walk by the marquee billboard. Some of them almost refused to read it. One person started to read it out loud, saying “Prince Fay-go,” like pseudo-French or something—like he didn’t want to believe that was actually the word he was reading. I also noticed a lot of people referring to it as Prince F in the media as well . I’m curious about the tension around the title and the reactions you’ve seen to what’s often treated as a controversial term. JT: Totally. The play was always called Prince Faggot , from the very first moment I opened the Word document to write it. It just felt inevitable. The title captures the two seemingly incompatible identities at the center of the play, and the friction between them is really the engine of the piece. I knew the title had a certain brazen quality, and I hoped that would ultimately work in the play’s favor. What’s been interesting is that many people are surprised by the degree of nuance and humanity in the work, especially if they come in expecting something designed purely for provocation or shock. It’s definitely not a broad satire, which I think some people assume based on the title or what they’ve heard about it. BG: And the people with the strongest negative reactions are probably the ones who haven’t actually seen it. I love that “Prince Faggot” is emblazoned in ten-foot letters at 43rd and 8th. For all the Port Authority commuters. Brilliant. JT : That billboard still amazes me. Jeremy and I genuinely didn’t know whether we’d even be able to print the title on a marquee, or whether publications like The New Yorker or The New York Times would print it. Jeremy actually went back and researched every instance where the Times had used the word, most famously in relation to Larry Kramer, but also in other contexts. There was even a play in 1973 by Al Carmines called The Faggot , unrelated to Kramer’s book, that ran off-off Broadway and was reviewed in the Times . He pulled a review of it as proof that there was precedent. What interests me is that the audience’s relationship to the work begins before they ever see the play. It starts with how they talk about it with friends and colleagues. Many of my straight colleagues, including agents, default to calling it “ Prince F” out of respect, which I don’t mind. I’m honestly not sure I have a firm preference. Context matters, obviously. I don’t personally flinch when straight people use the word in reference to the title, but that’s not universally true. In a way, the title is the first provocation you encounter. I’m really interested in artists like Julius Eastman, whose compositions had deliberately provocative titles using slurs. Who chooses to say those titles, and who doesn’t, becomes part of the work itself. That relationship changes over time. People may have felt more comfortable saying those titles in the 1970s than they do now. That evolution is interesting to me. And honestly, it feels like a testament to New York City that, in this moment, we can have a giant marquee that says Prince Faggot . It’s right across from Chick-fil-A, which feels like a perfect showdown. It’s drama. Also, a lot of queer people have complicated relationships with saying the F word. Even within the cast, there are generational differences. Some of the older gay actors identify strongly as gay men rather than queer, and they fought hard for that word. For them, faggot hasn’t been reclaimed and still carries a lot of pain. So, the title participates in a politics of reclamation, but not one that’s universally shared. That tension, across generations, is very real. BG: Like any good play, it provokes. My last question is about influence. When I was watching the play, I kept thinking about Jean Genet, especially his play The Balcony . I’m curious whether there were specific playwrights or works shaping this piece. You mentioned Caryl Churchill earlier. JT: Definitely Caryl Churchill and Tony Kushner. And yes, Genet has been a huge influence on me. Structurally, one of the most important touchstones while I was writing was Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon . The way that play relates to the audience, how it explodes its own frame, how scenography becomes part of the dramaturgy—all of that had a major impact on me. That was also true for our director, Shayok Misha Chowdhury. We talked a lot about An Octoroon in the early stages of development. It’s funny: years after I wrote the first draft, the play ended up being produced by Soho Rep where An Octoroon premiered. That connection feels less like coincidence and more like destiny. BG: That lineage really makes sense to me. I hadn’t thought about the connection to An Octoroon . JT: It’s in the DNA of the piece. In that sense, it all feels very fortuitous. BG : Thank you, Jordan. References Footnotes About The Author(s) BENJAMIN GILLESPIE is Assistant Professor of Theatre History & Performance Studies at Santa Clara University. He is co-editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre and Performance Review Editor of Theatre Journal . His essays have appeared in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Performance Research , Theatre Research in Canada, and HowlRound . He has also has contributed numerous chapters to scholarly volumes on queer and feminist theatre. He is editor of Split Britches: Fifty Years On (University of Michigan Press, 2027) and co-editor of Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging (University of Michigan Press, 2026) and The Routledge Companion to LGBTQ+ Theatre and Performance in North America (Routledge, 2027). 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 Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 212. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century. Marlis Schweitzer. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020; Pp. 276. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272. The Brothers Size Dead Outlaw 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival ZAZ Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25 Politics Take Center Stage in the Berkshires, 2024-25 Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Shilarna Stokes Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 3 Visit Journal Homepage Choreographies of the Great Departure: Building Civic Bodies in the 1914 Masque of St. Louis Shilarna Stokes By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF Over the course of five evenings in May 1914, more than eight thousand St. Louisans dressed up as Indians, Pioneers, and a host of allegorical figures—Gold, Poverty, and Imagination among them—to perform two versions of their city’s history before over a half million spectators. Hailed by George Pierce Baker as the crowning achievement of the early twentieth-century pageantry movement in the United States, The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis proved “what this drama of the masses may do for the masses.” [1] As the most prominent Symbolist dramatist in the U.S., the Masque’s creator, Percy MacKaye, enjoyed a well-established reputation for plays in which “time is a dream” and in which “the real and the ideal, the substance and the show, the actor and the audience, the poet and the figment of the poet’s imagination” are all interchangeable. [2] A friend and advocate of modernist theatre pioneer Edward Gordon Craig, he echoed Craig’s attack on realism in his own writings and advocated instead for the use of emblematic design elements, allegorical plots, and figurative choreographies. [3] In his view, these were essential to what he called “rituals of democracy,” mass masques cultivating “the half-desire of the people not merely to remain receptive to a popular art created by specialists but to take part themselves in creating it.” [4] By enjoining his fellow theatre artists “to illumine and body forth the life of the people in perennial symbols of power and beauty,” MacKaye pointed to a convergence of Symbolist aesthetics and nationalist sentiment that distinguished his unique contributions to the pageant movement in the United States. [5] The Masque was an elaborate work of verse drama, written in an erudite style and meant to be heard as well as seen. Nonetheless, like other pageants of its time, its narrative and its visual impact depended on the collective movement of large numbers of performers. Mass dances, pantomimes, and gestures allowed Masque performers to communicate its complex story to vast audiences that included spectators hundreds of yards from the stage. In U.S. pageantry, all scenes were, in some sense, crowd scenes. Due to their scale—with hundreds or thousands of citizens performing local histories for hundreds or thousands of their fellow citizens—mass pageants claimed an unambiguous correspondence between the actors and characters onstage, and the spectators in the audience. In doing so they were able to generate performative arguments about civic engagement, citizenship, and democracy on a grand scale, to promote certain kinds of collectivities over others, to incorporate communities seen as vital to the development of the social body, and to exclude communities that were regarded as dangerous to its integrity. To date, David Glassberg’s American Pageantry (1990) is the only published work to offer a substantive discussion of The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis . [6] Though he notes the Masque’s significance as a work of theatre, he is mainly interested in how it reflects Progressive Era conceptions of public history. As such, he steers clear of performance-based analytical approaches. By contrast, I offer here a close analysis of the Masque as a multi-layered performance that sought to shape St. Louisans’ conceptions of collectivity through embodied practices of dance, gesture, and pantomime, as well as the embodying practices of casting and puppetry. In what follows, I discuss how MacKaye’s Masque performed processes of civilization and Americanization that were designed to influence the newly expanded white population of the city. I draw on archival materials, MacKaye’s published works, contemporary secondary sources, and the text of the Masque to demonstrate how its three distinct choreographic modes sustained these processes. Its first and second modes of “playing Indian”—the ritualized and the savage—demonstrated for audiences the difference between rational forms of collective self-organization and wild expressions of collective fervor. The third mode, “Playing Pioneer,” gave shape to an ideal civic body that was consistent with the political and economic vision of city officials. The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis and its audience, courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. Reaching its peak of influence in 1914, the American Pageantry movement, as it was called by its supporters, sought to achieve the complete transformation of society through the nationwide production of large-scale pageants: vast open-air historical dramas in which hundreds or thousands of local amateur performers participated. [7] Pageants could be fitted to almost any purpose, though they were nearly always associated with Progressive Era causes and themes. Whereas some reformers saw pageants as civic rituals that would, in time, give shape to a genuine democratic social order, others saw them as an efficient means of achieving immediate political reforms and modernization schemes. Given the wide range of aesthetic and social ideals to which pageants aspired, and the variety of communities that created them, it is not surprising that current scholarship concerned with the American Pageantry movement is similarly varied, tending to ground itself in matters specific to locality and history, and to organize itself around discrete social problems. [8] For MacKaye, pageantry was an antidote to the problem of commercialized leisure and its effect on the white urban working classes. In The Civic Theatre in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure (1911), MacKaye’s sweeping proposal to reform theatre in the United States, he writes that “The use of a nation’s leisure is the test of its civilization. How then does [this gigantic producer America] organize his night leisure? Into what hands of public trust does he commit this most precious engine of national influence? Ignored by the indifference of public spirit, [it] has been left to be organized by private speculation—the amusement business.” [9] For MacKaye, only the symbolist theatre’s refusal to reproduce reality, its utopian insistence on transformation, and its emphasis on universality were powerful enough to redirect the gaze of spectators past motion-pictures, vaudeville, and burlesque shows, and towards a “nobler theatre” existing “not primarily for the boards” but “in the mind of man.” [10] It is on that imaginary stage, MacKaye believed, that human beings may play their proper roles and begin to envision better forms of social organization. The St. Louis Pageant Drama Association (SLPDA), organizers of The Pageant and Masque , had two interrelated aims: to inspire a sense of civic unity in a city with a rapidly growing and increasingly heterogeneous population, and to use this sense of civic engagement to convince voters to pass a new city charter calling for the construction of a downtown plaza and bridge. Three years earlier, Civic League members who had led the charter campaign represented it as a boon to business owners and real estate developers. When the campaign failed they blamed ethnic divisions that, from their perspective, kept residents focused on the growth of their own neighborhoods rather than on projects benefitting St. Louis as a whole. Reinvented as the SLPDA in 1914, former Civic League members argued that The Pageant and Masque would “influence and control the emotions of the masses that their civic activity will be along proper lines,” thereby convincing voters to pass the charter. [11] Whereas MacKaye drew on the language of art, spirituality, and the social good to explain the purpose of his masques and pageants, the SLPDA expressed its aims in terms of progress, efficiency, and the social order. Both, however, operated on the same collective subject: white St. Louisans whose collective mind needed redirection and cultivation, and whose collective body needed redefinition and reorganization. By 1914 St. Louis had already been the site of several monumental celebrations including the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition and Olympic Games, the 1904 Democratic National Convention, and the 1909 Centennial of the city’s incorporation. Whether to surpass its own recent history of mass performances or to outdo other U.S. cities that had recently hosted mass pageants, the SLPDA made a bold decision when it agreed to MacKaye’s plan for a colossal double-feature. Thomas Wood Stevens’s naturalistic pageant would present historical episodes performed during daylight hours. Beginning at nightfall, MacKaye’s masque would reinterpret Stevens’s play in the mode of symbolism, employing allegorical mass characters, abstract design, and sequences of symbolic mass movement. MacKaye’s frequent collaborator, Joseph Lindon Smith, would direct and choreograph the Masque , which in the end took more than five hours to perform. [12] The American Pageant Association defined the masque as a subgenre of pageantry in which the balance between realism and symbolism favored the latter. [13] The differences were more significant, however, for MacKaye. Whereas the function of a pageant is to reenact the past, the aim of a masque, according to MacKaye, is to point to the future progress of civilization. Unlike other pageants of the period, which MacKaye regarded as “tending [too much] toward the static,” his Masque sought to represent the dynamic energies of modern life with its crowded cities and its seemingly endless flows of people by means of “large rhythmic mass-movements of onward urge, opposition, recoil and again the sweep onward”—crowd movements that were part of the script and integral to the plot. [14] The plan to produce both a pageant and a masque solved what MacKaye described as “a special problem in crowd psychology.” [15] Because “a huge, half-socialized, modern multitude [is] unused by experience to imagining,” the unique function of the Masque was to “lead the attention of [the] large masses” from the realistic images presented in the earlier Pageant towards symbolic forms representing the theme of the Masque : “the fall and rise of social civilization.” [16] The idea that civilizations, like organic species, must evolve or suffer extinction, was one to which MacKaye subscribed. Like many among the intellectual elite, he believed that European civilization was in a state of irreversible moral and physical decline because of increasing political unrest and urban overcrowding, plagues that threatened to reach U.S. shores via the mass migration of Europe’s working classes. The Masque took place at the height of the “Great Departure,” historian Tara Zahra’s term for the period between 1846 and 1940 when more than fifty million Europeans moved to the Americas, the majority from Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. [17] Between 1900 and 1910, St. Louis’s foreign-born white population increased nearly 35%, leading to an overall population increase of nearly 20%. Because St. Louis’s rapid growth was directly attributable to recent immigration, city officials recognized the need to communicate with a greater variety of immigrant communities than the city had seen in its history. The SLPDA claimed The Pageant and Masque would break down divisions between the city’s ethnically diverse communities. However, the eventual result of the six-month long casting process was to expand the definition of who counted as a St. Louisan by implicitly establishing whiteness, rather than duration of residency, as the only essential criterion. Although black St. Louisans outnumbered all but the city’s German and Irish populations, and although the overall percentage of black residents was increasing at a much higher rate than that of white residents, only one Black St. Louisan appeared in MacKaye’s Masque —in the allegorical role of Africa. St. Louis’s Indigenous community was small by comparison with other ethnic groups. Nonetheless, when a Chippewa group proposed to perform in an exhibition baseball game for a fee the SLPDA declined their offer. [18] Not one Indigenous person appeared in MacKaye’s Masque. As one example of the “rituals of race” described by Alessandra Lorini, the Masque of St. Louis proposed to gather as many as possible under the sheltering canopy of whiteness in order to answer the question of how to create cohesive civic bodies in an age of racial and ethnic conflict. [19] Although the SLPDA’s refusal to allow the Chippewa to participate was only one of many acts of exclusion from the pageant’s history, the number and variety of Indigenous communities represented in the Pageant by white performers (Mississippians, Osage, Missouri, and more), in contrast to the total invisibility of black communities, invites questions concerning why “Indians” were so heavily represented in the Masque . For the majority of its performers, participation in the city’s largest civic spectacle meant covering one’s face and body with copper greasepaint and “playing Indian,” a concept Philip Deloria has used to describe performances of nativeness by non-native peoples that serve to negotiate contradictory models of U.S. national identity. [20] In the Masque , the symbolic value of Indian bodies is so great that actual Indigenous bodies, as persistent reminders of colonial violence, are rendered invisible. MacKaye himself blamed the “reverted social state” of “the Indian race” on the invasion of the hordes of the bison. [21] Building on Deloria’s work, Shari Huhndorf provides additional context for an interpretation of the Masque through her focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century examples of “going native” that contributed to “the regeneration of racial whiteness and Euro-American society,” particularly during “moments of social crisis that [gave] rise to collective doubts about the nature of progress.” [22] In keeping with Huhndorf’s assessment of the kinds of social malaise that “going native” has habitually addressed, representations of Indians in the Masque in fact bore little resemblance to other contemporary attempts to portray Indigenous peoples, such as those that took place in Wild West shows or World’s Fairs. Rather, “playing Indian” in the Masque was a way to engage and represent white urban workers to themselves—the same leisure-seekers who MacKaye’s Civic Theatre plan proposed to re-educate. That pageants often linked the bodies of Indians to those of white urban workers can be seen in countless images that represent workers and Indians mirroring one another in costume or in gestures of submission. In cartoons like one from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat , Masque participants perform gestures involved in Indian work and ritual on a mound “built by Moundbuilders Local no. 6,” and discuss “working class” themes such as baseball, lumbago, and the need for tobacco. The Masque’s representation of Indians was both a continuation of and an exception to the modes of “playing Indian” that took place in Wild West shows or in World’s Fairs, both of which had begun to attract massive audiences well before the pageant movement began. Like the Wild West shows in which Indigenous performers “[observed] traditional spiritual and cultural practices, [and] simulated hunting, shooting, and fighting back,” the Masque’s red-face performers engaged in similar activities for an audience. [23] Like the 1904 World’s Fair that took place in St. Louis, in which a model Indian school operated alongside a model ethnological village, the Masque aimed to articulate differences between “progressive Indians” and “primitive Indians.” [24] Unlike both the Wild West shows and the World’s Fairs, however, no Indigenous performers appeared in the Masque. As such, the Masque’s Indians did not aim at authenticity and were not subjects of an anthropological gaze. Rather, they offered an example of red-face performance that wholly consumed and expelled the bodies of Indigenous persons in order to re-present them as a collective symbol of a vanished past. Mass masques like MacKaye’s were spectacles that claimed to be anti-spectacle, and commercial enterprises that claimed to be anti-commercial. Defined as gatherings of the people and as events performed by the people (rather than as entertainments performed by paid professionals) the exclusion of Indigenous performers in pageants and masques was consistent with the contradictions inherent in an art form that sought to give shape to ideas of “the people” by excluding so many of them. To participate in a pageant not only meant “going native” but “becoming native,” in the sense of performing one’s affective belonging to a place in which one was not born. Indigenous peoples stood apart from the structures of belonging that the pageants and masques offered to others because, being neither white nor able to become white, they could only ever be foreign. Poster for A Pageant of Progress in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1911), courtesy of Dartmouth College Library, and “Sidelights on the Pageant.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat , May 29, 1914. The Prelude to the Masque depicted an invented lamentation ritual of the Mississippian or “moundbuilding” peoples, the eleventh-century inhabitants of the middle Mississippi river valley known for their creation of colossal earthwork mounds. In MacKaye’s mass pantomime, the Moundbuilders performed ceremonial dances, acrobatic feats, and prayers in honor of a deceased leader. Employing a ritualized mode of “playing Indian,” the Masque offered spectators a demonstration of a self-governing civic body that supported both MacKaye’s theatrical vision and the SLPDA’s economic vision, a body that achieved physical excellence through ritual dances imitating the geometrical forms of the city’s sacred architecture. Although few St. Louisans were familiar with them, MacKaye was so enchanted by his visit to the “Mounds” in nearby Cahokia, Illinois that he decided to recreate them in St. Louis’s Forest Park. The densely populated urban center of Mississippian culture, also called Cahokia, was composed of a vast central plaza, surrounded by mounds of differing geometrical shapes that may have corresponded to different civic functions. [25] The plan of this ancient city, with its monumental buildings, vast causeways, and interconnected plazas, correlated well with the city-of-the-future envisioned by the SLPDA. It also suited MacKaye’s goal, which was to imbue his Masque with classical values of form, beauty, and serenity. Despite the depiction of Moundbuilder rituals in the Globe-Democrat cartoon, the participants in the Prelude were not middle-aged men, but Boy Scouts and girls from local athletics clubs as well as young leaders of these organizations. Baker described the choreography of the scene: “Slowly and exquisitely, figures walking, swaying, dancing, filled the great stage [with] right arm extended before them and right knee raised high like figures in Assyrian bas-reliefs , [. . .] their bodies stained a yellow-brown.” [26] Ernest Harold Baynes added, “They represent the race at the very height of its civilization—a people beautiful of form and dress, lithe and graceful of movement, rejoicing in the strength and skill of their bodies which have been brought to a wonderful state of perfection.” [27] As described by Baker and Baynes, the athletic bodies of the Masque’s young performers provided the model material from which great civilizations may be built; moreover, their callisthenic acts confirmed that bodies can be “brought to perfection” through the performance of civic rituals such as the Masque . The Moundbuilders’ tightly choreographed ritual, designed by Joseph Lindon Smith, demonstrated their ability to create complex patterns without the instruction of a visible leader. [28] Instead, their movements were directed by the geometrical motifs of the emblematic setting: the cubic altar, the circular shrine, and the pyramidal mounds. Photographs taken during rehearsal and in performance indicate that although both male and female Moundbuilders entered in winding lines imitating the shape of a river, the boys soon began to dance in a rectangular pattern around the center altar while the girls danced towards them, eventually forming circles on stage left and right. The men playing older priests arranged themselves symmetrically at the edges of the largest central mound, creating a triangle while younger boys imitated their elders by making human pyramids on top of the two smaller mounds at stage left and stage right. In Smith’s choreography, the Moundbuilders were represented as a people who have so thoroughly incorporated the architectural shapes surrounding them that they need no leader to guide their movements. They performed as a self-governing civic body, whose rational and efficient movements corresponded in every detail to the design of their city. Moundbuilders rehearsing the Prelude , courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. As the Moundbuilders’ ritual faded from the audience’s view, an enormous puppet called Cahokia was revealed sitting on the center mound. Waking from a long sleep, he explained to the audience that the preceding Prelude enacted his dreaming memory of the glorious city in which he was once a revered priest. Now, Cahokia lamented, his people have vanished. MacKaye lovingly called Cahokia “my Über-marionette.” [29] Although the convention of beginning a pageant with a soliloquy delivered by an Indian was already well-established, MacKaye’s decision to use a giant puppet was unusual. Cahokia’s majestic presence not only underscored the extent of Edward Gordon Craig’s influence upon MacKaye’s ideas for reforming US theatre, it provided an aesthetic form through which MacKaye communicated his understanding of the relationship between the creative artist and the people in the socio-aesthetic work of pageantry. MacKaye’s profound reverence for Cahokia is unmistakable in numerous photographs that show him gazing up at the puppet and holding his hand. Conversely, photographs showing MacKaye rehearsing with actors tend to betray the posture of a stern disciplinarian. The different attitudes displayed in these photographs suggest that, for MacKaye, as for Craig, the human body was less suitable material for art than the Über-marionette. Unlike the “half-formed” people of St. Louis, who “provide[d] in themselves [the] creative material” for the poet-dramatist to shape and control, Cahokia’s puppet-body was an already complete work of art exemplifying MacKaye’s ideal civic body—his limbs, head, and hands moving in harmony with each other and with the music of the hidden orchestra. [30] MacKaye professed disagreement with Craig’s idea to banish from the theatre all “the personal elements implied in the work of the actor.” [31] However, his repeated descriptions of Masque participants as materials to be harmonized through performance suggest that MacKaye relished the opportunity to transform the individual bodies of St. Louisans as well as the civic body of St. Louis into works of art that might move with as much grace and precision as a puppet. MacKaye holds Cahokia’s hand. MacKaye directs Raymond Koch. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. Although the Moundbuilders, like Cahokia, embodied physical perfection, they did not speak. Consequently, it was left to Cahokia to speak as the last member of his once-civilized tribe: [. . .] Ai-ya, my people! Where are the tribes of Cahokia? Lo, where the trails of twilight Hide them, naked and scattered, Luring them backward—backward Deeper in primal darkness, Masking with brutes, and mating In lairs of the jungle.[32] With these lines Cahokia bewailed the de-evolution of his people into the beast-like Wild Nature Forces, a group of characters that allegorized all the allegedly savage Indigenous communities descended from the Moundbuilders. A brief glance at the text of Stevens’s Pageant helps makes this clear for its opening scenes trace the de-evolution of the Indian from a supposedly single, distinct culture (that of the Moundbuilders) to a passel of nomadic hordes whose degenerate habits are easily repelled, then reeducated through the heroic efforts of European colonists. In Stevens’s Pageant the Osage and the Missouri are represented as homeless, cowardly thieves who survive by means of begging and stealing. Those St. Louisans who played Osage and Missouri in Pageant scenes were double-cast as Wild Nature Forces in the Masque. [33] MacKaye’s stage directions indicate what has become of them: “ Below [Cahokia], mysterious, half-seen, at the foot of the mound—crouched on its sides and lurking in the dark background–brute-headed forms of the “Wild Nature Forces” move and mingle with glimmering limbs of savages .” [34] Recognizing the Masque’s Indians as a representation of the city’s rapidly expanding white working-class population, it becomes apparent that the transition from “playing Moundbuilders” to “playing Wild Nature Forces” signified a descent from civilization into savagery, and from culture into nature, that was resonant with contemporary fears about urban overcrowding and the corrupting influence of urban life. Like the denizens of modern cities, which sociologist E.A. Ross described as scenes of “mingling without fellowship and [. . .] contact without intercourse,” of “wolfish struggle, crimes, frauds, exploitations and parasitism,” the tribes of Cahokia, the puppet-priest explained, were lured away from their ancestral grounds. [35] No longer heeding Cahokia’s prayers, the Wild Nature Forces began to obey gods of Chaos who urged them to give into their basest animal instincts towards lust, greed, and violence. In all their aspects, the Wild Nature Forces illustrated the savagery of the modern city. Their movements consisted of lurking, crouching, crawling, mingling, mating, leaping, rushing and, unsurprisingly, crowding. Unlike the Moundbuilders, the Wild Nature Forces exhibited only groping, half-formed motions or rowdy, uncontrolled dancing. They gestured in multiple, arbitrary directions, all at the same time. They remained close to the ground where it was darkest and their shapes, which are described in the text of Masque as “half-seen” or “half-hidden,” were indistinguishable from one another. When the allegorical character named Saint Louis first entered the Masque , he appeared as a four-year-old boy, dragging behind him an immense sword that was too heavy for him to lift. Sensing his weakness, the Wild Nature Forces attacked the child, attempting to kidnap him. At the moment Saint Louis miraculously heaved the sword high above his head, the Wild Nature Forces suddenly froze, stunned into stasis and silence, “the beast faces [. . .] startled, glowering, murmurous.” [36] Then, all at once, they “swarm[ed] down the mound sides, rush[ed] into the darkness and vanish[ed].” [37] Saint Louis’s first victory in the Masque was one in which the mere appearance of a symbol of European conquest possessed the power to bring savage bodies to order and banish them from the stage. Having cleared the stage of actual Indigenous persons, stage Indians, and allegorical Indian figures by the end of the first act, the remainder of MacKaye’s Masque followed the actions of an equally complex representation of the urban masses: the Pioneer. Like the Indian, the Pioneer was familiar from earlier public celebrations. Scenes of pioneers marching with the tools of their various trades or symbolically clearing the land in front of them with axes had been a staple of US civic parades since the eighteenth century. [38] Participants in such performances embodied the nation’s pursuit of manifest destiny and the conquest of the frontier. In the Masque of St. Louis , however, the Pioneer was adapted to reflect twentieth-century concerns. Whereas the Masque’s Moundbuilders illustrated a vanished preindustrial and proto-national collective subject, the Pioneers of the second act represented an emerging national and progressive collective subject, one that must repeatedly confront the problems of participatory democracy in an age of industrialization and mass immigration. The first of the Masque’s Pioneers entered a theatrical space from which the ritual center, the sacred altar fire of the Moundbuilders, had been removed. The only remaining light on stage emanated from the small shrine at the apex of the center mound. “Marching [forward] in widespread numbers” with spades, scythes, axes, and rifles, the Masque’s Pioneers were unlike their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forebears. [39] Carrying useless tools that clear no land, they presented themselves as lost and leaderless bands of men, desperately in search of a place to make camp or a direction in which to move. As if suddenly recognizing the urgent need for guidance, one Pioneer cried out: “Our trails blaze with desire and danger and hope born of to-day. For tomorrow is dim and yesterday–dead. Now lead us to-day! Lead us, St. Louis!” In unison the others echoed: “Lead us, St. Louis!” Emerging from a nearby shrine, Saint Louis suddenly appeared as a young knight clad in white armor with a brilliant white sword. The sword, as tall as the actor, animated the immense spaces of the pageant stage, directing the Pioneers onstage and the spectators’ attention. From this scene onward, the Pioneers did not move or act unless directed to do so by Saint Louis and his sword. As the Masque’s promptbook reveals, the leaders of each of the three Pioneer groups were given typewritten sheets that explained where their groups should assemble and provided precise instructions for movement and choral speech. When read together, and in conjunction with the text of the Masque, they demonstrate the degree to which the Pioneers functioned as an automatic onstage audience, one formed by a reflexive, nearly involuntary instinct to applaud the actions of civic leaders. [40] Though the Pioneers were unable to move forward on their own, they were able to pledge their obedience to new leadership without hesitation. By performing spontaneous consensus and by demonstrating their willingness to be guided by familiar symbols of Anglo-European culture, the Pioneers provided an onstage model of the kind of civic responsiveness SLPDA members hoped St. Louisans would emulate offstage. Throughout the Masque’s Second Act, the Pioneers displayed their boundless energy. The prompt sheets instructed them to move swiftly from mound to mound and between various parts of the stage, often for no reason connected to the action of the scene. [41] Though their movement rarely indicated any achievement, it nevertheless performed the dynamism of modernity MacKaye sought to represent. Whereas the measured, ritualized group movement of the Moundbuilders expressed the rhythms of ancient, civilized collectivities, the velocity and urgency of the Pioneers’ numerous flights across the stage expressed the rhythms of the modern city. Though they did not represent a self-organizing collective body on the model of the Moundbuilders, the Pioneers were no less attuned to the necessity of precision, repetition, and rhythm in their collective movements. Once they arrived at their appointed positions on the stage, their vocabulary of gestures was even more restricted than that of the Moundbuilders. Confined to gestures of deference and supplication, the prompt sheets instructed them to stand, half-kneel or kneel, to extend their arms up or out, and to point towards symbols as they appear on stage. Perhaps one of the only opportunities for creative self-expression came in the form of a repeated request, appearing in almost every prompt sheet, for the Pioneers to “make a great show of interest” through audible noises and visible gestures whenever any astonishing action occurred onstage. The Pioneers provided an onstage audience for the allegorical Saint Louis that was intended to serve as an exemplary model for the Masque’s actual audiences. Their prescribed range of movement suggests that in the Masque’s view, being an active participant in modern civic life meant being an appreciative and impressionable spectator. It meant performing one’s patriotism by recognizing symbols, manifesting visible and audible signs of reverence for them, and agreeing to be led by those who employ them. Saint Louis and the Sword, courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. If MacKaye hoped that audiences would concentrate on the mass symbols and choreographies performed by their fellow citizens, the St. Louis press was more focused on the masses of spectators themselves. Local newspapers attempted to give readers an experience of the Masque’s scale by printing panoramic photographs of its audiences, which by the end of its run comprised more than a half-million individuals. Many more saw the Pageant and Masque during its week of rehearsals prior to opening day. The test of any pageant’s success was the degree to which it could hold the attention of its vast crowds. As such, newspaper accounts remarked on the degree to which St. Louisans paid attention to an event that so many had presumed they could not understand. Spectators reportedly sat silent through sizzling summer days just to watch rehearsals, stood in the rain for many hours to gain access to the pageant grounds, and climbed dangerously high into trees to get the best viewing spots. Sitting amongst the minority of spectators who paid for their seats, Baker described several of his co-spectators chattering through the Prelude. From his perspective, they chatter because they are leisure-seekers, unaware that they are participating in a civic ritual. Eventually, however, the Masque worked its magic; the group became quiet and still as the performance continued. Before they left, he explained, they turned back to look at the stage once more before silently walking away. For Baker, this transformation proved that the Masque had succeeded in sparking a moment of collective attention that might be mobilized for social purposes if repeated often enough. [42] Despite Baker’s insistence on its singular social and cultural significance, MacKaye’s Masque , like so many previous civic entertainments, was absorbed into the urban spectacle it promised to transcend. Local papers reported everything from women overcome by heat, children lost in crowds, horses run astray, and water boys mobbed by thirsty spectators. Far from the ideal of civic enlightenment MacKaye describes in The Civic Theatre , spectators at one performance broke through seating barriers and caused a brawl. Rather than diverting attention away from the city’s commercial entertainments, some members of the Pageant and Masque’s chorus performed onstage at one of the city’s vaudeville houses immediately after an evening performance of the Masque. Although the Masque ’s critical and popular success was unsurpassed by any previous or subsequent event to emerge from the American Pageantry movement, its legacy remains fraught. On the one hand, the Masque’s success directly contributed to the passing of the charter, which in addition to its construction projects ensured stronger concentration of authority in the mayor’s office, fewer elected and more appointed positions, and rezoning provisions that narrowed participation in the political process. On the other hand, it also led to the establishment of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company, the expansion of St. Louis’s public arts programs, and the construction of a permanent outdoor amphitheater in Forest Park. Despite MacKaye’s belief that large-scale participation in the Masque would encourage St. Louisans to work together for reforms that grew out of their own desires and imaginations, he misunderstood the extent to which the SLPDA’s interpretation of the Masque as well as its definition of popular participation predetermined its potential social meanings. Luther Ely Smith, who saw the Masque as evidence of “the [same] civic spirit which will build our bridge, pass our charter, [and] stretch a plaza from 12th Street to Grand Avenue” was but one of many voices echoing the official interpretation. [43] In the end, MacKaye’s Masque may have taught St. Louisans more about collectively performing towards the aspirations of its leaders, than about collective action or even collective dreaming. It stands as an unusual cultural experiment, and as a reminder that greater participation by citizens in the social and cultural work of performance neither equates nor necessarily leads to greater participation in official political processes. The work of coalition-building requires more sustainable performance practices than pageant-makers like MacKaye tended to have in mind. Acts of inclusion, when performed on a monumental scale, have the power to make a positive impact on communities, and even to instantiate processes of engagement, but their long-term efficacy depends on how they cultivate the meaning and the practice of collective participation before, during, and after the crowds go home. References [1] George Pierce Baker, “The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis.” World’s Work , vol. 28 (Aug 1914), 389. Though known primarily for pioneering the study of playwriting in the United States, Baker was a prominent advocate of pageantry as well as a pageant writer and director. [2] Thomas Dickinson, Playwrights of the New American Theater (New York: McMillan, 1925), 19. Despite his lack of popular success, Dickinson and others considered MacKaye one of the most important playwrights of his day. His most well-known plays are The Canterbury Pilgrims (1903), Jeanne d’Arc (1906), Sappho and Phaon (1907), The Scarecrow (1911), and Yankee Fantasies (1912). [3] Directly quoting Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre (1912) in his own book, MacKaye described realism as “the blunt statement of life, something everybody misunderstands while recognizing,” (Percy MacKaye, The Civic Theatre in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1912: 28). Despite their occasional disagreements, MacKaye and Craig were lifelong friends and correspondents. On their relationship, see Susan Valeria Harris Smith, Masks in Modern Drama (Berkeley: UC Press, 1984): 49-84. [4] Percy MacKaye, quoted in Joyce Kilmer, Literature in the Making, By Some of its Makers (New York: Harper, 1917), 314. [5] Letter from Percy MacKaye to Grenville Vernon, March 12, 1907, courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. MacKaye’s work in the masque genre predated the rise of the pageantry movement. The Saint-Gaudens Masque , performed at the Cornish Art Colony in 1905, was MacKaye’s first critical success. His first pageant was performed at Gloucester, Massachusetts in August 1909 and, though it never materialized, he developed a pageant for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1910. After The Masque of St. Louis MacKaye created his most well-known and most often studied masque, Caliban by the Yellow Sands, based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It was produced both in New York and Boston in 1916. MacKaye remained a member of the American Pageantry Association’s Board of Directors until its dissolution in 1930. [6] David Glassberg’s American Pageantry: the Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990) currently serves as the starting point for scholarship on MacKaye’s Masque . Two dissertations also consider the event in some detail from different perspectives: Kenneth Graeme Bryant, “Percy MacKaye and the Drama of Democracy,” (PhD diss., Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1991), ProQuest AAT 9200131, and Michael Peter Mehler, “Percy MacKaye: Spatial Formations of a National Character,” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2010), ProQuest AAT 3417299. [7] A bibliography of contemporary works on American pageantry can be found in Caroline Hill Davis, Pageants in Great Britain and the United States: a List of References (New York: New York Public Library Association, 1916). The American Pageant Association (APA), founded in 1913, was organized for the purposes of protecting the new genre from commercialization, disorganization, and low aesthetic standards. Its founding and development is discussed in Naima Prevots, American Pageantry : a Movement for Art and Democracy (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1990). [8] For examples of the variety of forms that current pageant scholarship takes, see the following: Karen Blair, “Pageantry for Women’s Rights: The Career of Hazel MacKaye, 1913-1923, Theatre Survey , Vol. 31, no. 1: 23-46; Brook Davis, “Let the children speak: The ‘Pageant of Sunshine and Shadow,’ a child labor pageant by Constance D’Arcy Mackay,” Theatre Studies , 1997, Vol. 4: 33-44; Brian Hallstoos, “Pageant and Passion: Willa Saunders Jones and Early Black Sacred Drama in Chicago,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre , 2007, Vol. 19, no. 2: 77-97; Hannah Hammond, “A Masque on Behalf of the Birds,” New England Theatre Journal , Vol. 27: 41-62; Jenna L. Kubly, “Staging the Great War in the National Red Cross Pageant,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre , 2012, Vol. 24, no. 2: 49-66. [9] Percy MacKaye, The Civic Theatre in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure , 30-31. In the Civic Theatre MacKaye draws heavily on Jane Addams’s Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909) and Michael D. Davis’ Exploitation of Pleasure (1911) for support for his ideas. See also, George Elliott Howard, “Social Psychology of the Spectator,” American Journal of Sociology , vol. 18, No. 1 (July 1912): 37-41. [10] Percy MacKaye, “On the Need of Imagination in the Drama of To-day,” Harvard Advocate , vol. 63, no. 10 (June 30, 1897): 140. [11] Luther Gulick, quoted in Glassberg, American Pageantry , 199. [12] Percy MacKaye, Saint Louis: A Civic Masque (New York: Doubleday, 1914), xi-xii. [13] Anne Throop Craig, “Pageantry,” Encyclopedia Americana (Encyclopedia Americana Co., 1919): 101. [14] Percy MacKaye, “Worcester Address on Pageantry,” February 26, 1912, courtesy of Dartmouth College Library; MacKaye, Saint Louis , xiv. [15] MacKaye, Saint Louis , x. [16] Ibid., xvi-xix. [17] Tara Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), 4. For demographic data see The Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910: Statistics for Missouri , 602-622. [18] My description of the casting process is based on Glassberg, 178-181, and upon documents in the Dartmouth College Library. [19] Alessandra Lorini, Rituals of Race: American Public Culture and the Search for Racial Democracy (Charlottesville: Virginia University Press, 1999), 236-243. [20] Glassberg, American Pageantry , 178; Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 5. [21] MacKaye, Saint Louis , xix. [22] Shari Huhndorf, Going Native (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001): 3, 14. [23] Rosemarie K. Bank, “Show Indians/Showing Indians: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and American Anthropology,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , vol. 26 (Fall 2011): 152. [24] L.G. Moses, “Indians on the Midway: Wild West Shows and the Indian Bureau at the World’s Fairs, 1893-1904,” South Dakota History, vol. 21 (Fall 1991): 24. [25] Sally A. Kitt Chapel, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 142-145. [26] Baker, 391. [27] Ernest Harold Baynes, “The Biggest Show Ever Staged,” Boston Evening Transcript , undated, courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. [28] Joseph Lindon Smith was a painter known primarily for the skill with which he recreated ancient artifacts discovered on archaeological expeditions in Egypt. My description of his choreography for the Prelude is based on more than fifty rehearsal and performance photographs in the Dartmouth College Library, as well as dozens of newspaper accounts from MacKaye’s scrapbook on the Masque , also in the Dartmouth College Library. [29] MacKaye wrote this on the back of a photograph of Cahokia in the PMK Papers. Edward Gordon Craig explains his theory of the Über-marionette in On the Art of the Theatre (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008), 54-94. Both Robert Edmond Jones and Thomas Dickinson regarded the Masque as the only theatrical work to successfully explore the possibilities of the Über-marionette on the US stage. [30] MacKaye, Saint Louis , x. [31] MacKaye, The Civic Theatre (fn.), 27. [32] MacKaye, Saint Louis , 7-8. [33] Program of the Pageant and Masque of St. Louis , PMK Papers. [34] MacKaye, Saint Louis , 5. [35] Edward Alsworth Ross, Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order (New York: MacMillan, 1901), 19. Highly influential during his lifetime (1866-1951), Ross wrote twenty-seven books and over 300 articles on social psychology, history, and urban reform. [36] MacKaye, Saint Louis , 22. [37] Ibid. [38] See, for examples, Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1986), David Waldstreicher , In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: the Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1997), and Simon P. Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). [39] MacKaye, Saint Louis , 42. [40] Promptbook of The Masque of St. Louis , courtesy of Dartmouth College Library. [41] Ibid. [42] Baker, 391. [43] Luther Ely Smith, “Pageant to Make City Better Place to Live In,” Bulletin of the Pageant and Masque of Saint Louis , No. 2 : 7. Footnotes About The Author(s) SHILARNA STOKES is a Lecturer in Theater Studies at Yale University. Her research centers on how mass theatrical events give shape to ideas about public space, collectivity, and political life. Editorial Board for Special Issue: David Bisaha Meredith Conti Leah Lowe Inga Meier Robert Vorlicky 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: Embodied Arts Collective Choreography for Weathering Black Experience: Janelle Monáe and The Memphis "Tightrope" Dance Unruly Reproductions: The Embodied Art of Mimicry in Vaudeville "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies Choreographies of the Great Departure: Building Civic Bodies in the 1914 Masque of St. Louis Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Hawaiian Performance. Stephanie Nohelani Teves. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018; Pp. 220. Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Cindy Rosenthal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017; Pp. 198. In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement. La Donna L. Forsgren. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 200. Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina. Noe Montez. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017; Pp. 239 + xi. Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical. Kevin Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; Pp. 368. Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018; Pp. 399. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

David Pellegrini Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 1 Visit Journal Homepage The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Edwin Wong. Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press, 2019; Pp. 363. David Pellegrini By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF In 2019, the Langham Court Theatre in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada inaugurated the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition, awarding top prize ($8,000 Canadian) to In Bloom by Brooklyn-based playwright Gabriel Jason Dean. Selected from 182 new play submissions from 11 countries, In Bloom focuses on a “well-intentioned, but ultimately reckless documentary filmmaker in Afghanistan” whose actions led to the death of an Afghan boy—a tragedy he lies about in his award-winning memoir. This 21st century competition for tragic playwriting began as a partnership with classicist Edwin Wong, who lays out a blueprint for playwrights (and the competition’s rules) in The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Wong exalts three golden eras—ancient Greece; the English Renaissance; and German Romanticism—noting that after Eugene O’Neill, whom he cites as the last “true” tragedian in the Aeschylean tradition, tragic art largely vanished. That tradition is premised on a fairly simple formula, albeit with myriad variations: each dramatic action is also a gambling act involving varying degrees of unforeseen or unexpected risks. Wong’s goal with this book, like the contest, is to revivify this tragic principle for our contemporary age in which “low-probability, high consequence events lie in wait” (xxv). Although tragedy may have trafficked in uncertainty since its inception, Wong emphasizes the moral exigencies of examining the upside and downside values of risk and unintended consequences in an era in which there is an over-reliance on technology, nuclear energy, and the variabilities of global economic exchange. Wong’s overall argument in The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy is erudite, elucidated with extensive passages from canonical and lesser-known works and a wide range of theoretical citations. He is partial to the troika, apropos of ancient trilogies, and efficient in outlining the tripartite structure by which characters confront temptation, make wagers, and cast dice. In the first three chapters, Wong elaborates on the gambling metaphor and constructs a lexicon of qualifying terms. His first major categorization is premised on “tempo”; specifically whether the three gambling acts are presented gradually over the course of a play; backloaded, in which time lapses between wager and die-cast to build suspense; or frontloaded, in which the wager occurs early with the bulk of action depicting the ensuing chaos. Nestled within these categories is the frequency of the wager, e.g., standalone, if it occurs once as in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus; parallel-motion, in which several characters confront multiple risk events as demonstrated by O’Neill’s Strange Interlude; or perpetual-motion, whereby one wager generates subsequent wagers as in the Oresteia. Together, these first three chapters become a kind of periaktoi, the ancient, multi-surfaced scene-changing device conjectured by Vitruvius, underpinning Wong’s structural analysis. This first section grounds the third, “A Poetics of Tragedy: How to Write Risk Theatre,” providing playwrights with a comprehensive, formal analysis of the genre and a toolbox of dramaturgical strategies from which to choose. These “commonplaces” include the following features: a range of heroic types all driven by “white-hot” passions and best represented by elites since they have the most to lose; the interference of unreliable confidantes and meddlers; and dangerous, unstable environs, including, if necessary, the supernatural. As a writer, Wong’s associative style is entertaining, tempering what might appear to be an overly schematic approach. Moreover, when employing a wide range of ideas from social theory to the physical sciences to elucidate his foundational metaphor, Wong manages some impressive hypothetical risk-taking of his own. This audacity emerges most clearly in the book’s second and fourth sections in which Wong expounds on the philosophy of tragedy and galvanizes his case about risk theatre’s relevancy to modernity, respectively. For example, Wong poses an original paradigm (“the myth of the price you pay”) in which he traces how tragedy developed as a counter-force to the commodification of life via labor, when the psychic and existential dimensions of humanity such as camaraderie, desire, and honor became objects for philosophical contemplation. Tragedy, therefore, emerged when it became necessary to demonstrate that “what is worth possessing cannot be monetized” (107). Relatedly, Wong’s paradigm of “counter-monetization,” refers to the human costs of the wager depicted in tragedy—its irrevocability, gravity, and frequent culmination in death and destruction. The final, equally compelling strand of his argument surveys the time-bound parameters of tragic theories from the French Academy through Hegel and Nietzsche to arrive at our own “risk age,” in which “the scale of technology to do good or to do evil has increased, and continues to increase, by powers of ten” (262). There is much to admire in Wong’s argument, and it is remarkable how much the language of so many tragedies explicitly allude to gambling, economic costs, and risk-related values, both monetary and existential. Still, there are numerous counter-arguments advanced in the seemingly inexhaustible body of tragic theory that are noticeably absent or side-stepped in this study. For example, Wong’s opinion that the best tragic heroes come from a nobler breed legitimates the aristocratic bias rebuffed by practitioner/theorists from Lessing to Miller. Also, since he devalues the artificiality of the deus ex machina, Sophocles fares far better than Euripides, even though scholars have long argued that the latter’s subversion of tragic structure served to critique Attic social hypocrisies and cosmological fallacies. Further, feminist scholars will certainly reject the phallocentrism and linearity of what is, at base, a reformulation of Aristotelian and neoclassical models; it is noteworthy that Wong does not discuss any plays written by women. Relatedly, although Wong’s aim to rejuvenate tragic theatre is valiant, some consideration of film and, especially, any number of episodic television programs that veer towards tragedy would perfectly illustrate his parallel- and perpetual-motion categories since the cliff-hanger is predicated on temptation, wagers, and risks—and sometimes all three at once. Still, the fact that there were over three-hundred entries in the Langham Court Theatre competition in its first two years and that the top prizewinners, including most of the nine runners-up, are American suggests that risk theatre may well be a fitting response to an era in which the United States confronts improbable, (perhaps) unforeseeable, and oftentimes catastrophic events. References Footnotes About The Author(s) David Pellegrini Eastern Connecticut State University 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 Performance and the Disney Theme Park Experience: The Tourist as Actor. Jennifer A. Kokai and Tom Robson, eds. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; Pp. 292. The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Edwin Wong. Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press, 2019; Pp. 363. Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion. Emeline Jouve. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2017; Pp. 258. Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. Soyica Diggs Colbert. New Haven: Yale, 2021; Pp. 273. The Mysterious Murder of Mrs. Shakespeare: Transgressive Performance in Nineteenth-Century New York “What Will Be Changed?”: Maxwell Anderson and the Literary Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti Theatre of Isolation “A Certain Man Had Two [Kids]”: Tragic Parables, “The Prodigal Son,” and Edward Albee's The Goat “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells [Her] Story”: An Intersectional Analysis of the Women of Hamilton Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be by Andrea Kleine at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. In December 2020, Andrea Kleine and Bobby Previte moved into The Chocolate Factory Theater and lived alone in the pandemic-shuttered New York City venue for two weeks. They arrived with an air mattress, a toaster oven, a cooler of frozen Trader Joe’s meals, and an inflatable kiddie pool to bathe in. Every night they performed on stage for no one. Completely unscripted, the result is a hilarious and heart-breaking film about what it means to be a performer without an audience. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Andrea Kleine Theater, Documentary, Film, Performance Art This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country United States Language English Running Time 82 minutes Year of Release 2022 In December 2020, Andrea Kleine and Bobby Previte moved into The Chocolate Factory Theater and lived alone in the pandemic-shuttered New York City venue for two weeks. They arrived with an air mattress, a toaster oven, a cooler of frozen Trader Joe’s meals, and an inflatable kiddie pool to bathe in. Every night they performed on stage for no one. Completely unscripted, the result is a hilarious and heart-breaking film about what it means to be a performer without an audience. A film by Andrea Kleine. Featuring Andrea Kleine and Bobby Previte as “themselves.” Music by Bobby Previte. Lighting Design by Madeline Best. Commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional funds provided by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant Program. An official selection of the 2022 Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. About The Artist(s) Andrea Kleine is a performance artist and the author of the novels, CALF, a Publishers' Weekly Best Fiction Book of 2015; and EDEN, named one of "Summer's Smartest and Most Innovative Thrillers" by Vanity Fair and a finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award in LGBTQ fiction. Her work includes fiction, essays, performances, and, most recently, films. She is a five-time MacDowell fellow, a Ucross fellow, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. Her critically acclaimed performance works have been presented extensively since the 1990s, and for which she has received numerous commissions, grants, and awards. She has been described as an "enigmatic and eccentric" (The New York Times), "brainy, allusive Downtown artist" (The Village Voice), whose work is "wry, poignant" (The New York Times), "something like genius" (ArtVoice), and “fiercely engages with the complexities of the cruelty we impose on each other as individuals and as a society” (Bomb). Get in touch with the artist(s) andrea@andreakleine.com and follow them on social media https://www.andreakleine.com , https://www.instagram.com/andreaandreakleine Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Patrizia Paolini Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 2 Visit Journal Homepage How Can an Artist Respond to Censorship? The Dilemma That Faces Contemporary Creatives in the UK Patrizia Paolini By Published on July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF In April 2023, my work became the object of censorship—both indirectly and a posteriori . The precipitating incident involved a late middle-aged male performer appearing in a vest, a pair of cowboy boots, and a slightly grubby yet arguably innocuous pair of Y-fronts. The body reveal of such a character had been carefully constructed. It was informed by an aesthetic I share with my ensemble Jesus Paolini Park (JPP), and which makes satirical and critical reference to the biased perception of female versus male and young versus senior bodies. I am a theatre and live performance practitioner who has been based in the UK since 1997. Since 2016, my practice has been linked to Hoxton Hall, an original music hall in the East End of London. At Hoxton Hall, JPP and I developed Ms. Paolini’s Phantasmagoria Cabaret , a “deconstructed cabaret” and the focus of my doctoral research on “Post-Variety & Cabaret,” a theoretical, self-made term describing what I do: a form between genres. Extracts from that work, including the “Y-fronts,” were chosen by the artist and producer Margot Przymierska for inclusion in a programme designed to animate an evening in April 2023 at the Polish Cultural Institute in London. The adverse reaction of The Polish Cultural Institute (“a part of Polish diplomatic mission, dedicated to nurturing and promoting cultural ties between the United Kingdom and Poland”) to the material contrasted strongly with Margot’s judgment and with the work’s reception at numerous showings in Hoxton Hall. It was described by the event’s organizers as “obscene.” It was claimed, by the same organizers, that it had triggered a “recurring nightmare.” The sight of a mature male in Y-fronts was labelled as indecent. As a consequence, Margot was banned from the Institute and her fee significantly reduced. The ramifications of this night, a detailed account of which appears in Cabaret and Decency: How Contemporary Definitions of Cabaret are Shaped By Censorship have not just landed me in the thick of a continually evolving debate on censorship and propelled me into wider-ranging research on the correlation between contemporary censorship and the perennial “high versus low” cultural divide in the UK,(1) but have also caused me to reflect on how the experience may resonate globally, more particularly with the readership of JADT , as well as with the wider theatrical community of the U.S. Philip Fisher’s remark that “excessive behaviour [in the U.S.] is likely to be mirrored by equivalent extremists [in the UK] before too long” prompts the question as to whether the two countries could be mirroring each other, and therefore potentially learning from each other.(2) As Arjun Appadurai’s concept of “global cultural flows” has taught us, the phenomenon of globalization means that theories and ideas are spreading worldwide, from one place to another, with ease.(3) We are both countries where free expression is supposed to be enshrined in law. As a slew of recent articles in the British press point out, in both countries, censorship is creeping in and disturbing arts and artists, causing them to wonder how, or if, to act.(4) What, if anything, can the U.S. learn from the UK? Perhaps the relevance and potential usefulness of my own experience for the American artistic community is to be found in the insights that my reflection offers and the ensuing conversations that were held, rather than in a particular strategy or solution that should be immediately adopted by artists and scholars in the U.S. Any reaction to censorship, it could be argued, is particular to the context and may be dependent on a specific funding situation. Can we afford, in other words, to speak out? As Nicholas Serota told the Financial Times , “the role of Arts Council England is to act as a protector of artistic freedom, and if we don’t have that freedom, then we move towards living in a country where liberty of both thought and voice is constrained,”(5) adding that “we see plenty of places – look at the US now – where direct funding can be withdrawn as a result of a change of government.”(6) The unexpected reaction to what I call “the Y-fronts episode” has led me, both as a researcher and practitioner, to reflect on the current dynamics of censorship in all societies and how: “What we believe about censorship often reveals how we understand society and the self.”(7) In this regard, it would be useful to summarize at the outset the salient aspects of contemporary censorship discourse centered around New Censorship Theory (NCT). In Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After , Matthew Bunn offers a critical analysis of NCT. Emerging in the latest decades of the twentieth century, NCT’s central objective has been “to recast censorship from a negative, repressive force, concerned only with prohibiting, silencing, and erasing, to a productive force that creates new forms of discourse, new forms of communication, and new genres of speech.”(8) Bunn argues that in this way the controlling effect of censorship [conceived to prevent offences] has been shifted from state control of production and distribution [of speech], onto self-censorship and its dependence on the “market.” It is my hope that by raising questions and offering reflections, the conversations that follow with fellow practitioners and professionals will draw attention to the current censorship discourse and its significance to practitioners and the wider sector. The interviewees introduced below were each asked about censorship as part of the process of my questioning about what actually happened on that April evening in 2023.(9) TESTIMONIES The interviewees responded identically to two aspects of the subject.(10) Firstly, the word “censorship” itself provoked a whole series of hesitations: “Oh! Umm…”, “Oh, dear!”, “Umm!”, “Well... in which sense?”, “Really?”, “Hemm!” and “What do you mean?” This unanimous reaction to the term suggests censorship is not an appealing subject for discussion. Secondly, none of the interviewees were familiar with NCT. Both these reactions seem to indicate that arts professionals in the UK are reluctant to engage with notions of contemporary censorship. While leaving it to the reader to consider the questions that could follow on from this initial observation, it seems significant to note that, before proceeding with the interviews, I received the distinct impression that censorship was not their favourite subject. Interviewees were all asked identical questions. Rather than transcribe the full interview of each interviewee, I report each interviewee’s most distinctive approach to the issue. I have grouped together those who shared the same approach and highlighted similar and contrasting views. Benevolent Approach Expressed no concerns about censorship. John Callaghan British musician, writer, and performance artist. PATRIZIA: Have you ever been censored? JOHN: I don't think my stuff is susceptible to censorship, particularly because…I'm not swearing. I'm not attacking any particular government. I'm just being me.(11) Kieron Jecchinis Classically trained English actor. Graduated from Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1979. Film: Full Metal Jacket (1987). Theatre: West End. Member of JPP ensemble, played Y-front character. PATRIZIA: What do you think about censorship? KIERON: When I go and see some theatre I just find it so refreshing. You just think. Oh, ****. They can say that! And to be able to say that…it's just so affirming. PATRIZIA: …And the Y-Fronts? You’ve become a recurring nightmare to some staff. KIERON: I think there must have been some misunderstanding between the Institute and Margot.(12) Sarcastic Approach Approached the conversation with sarcasm. Margot Przymierska Performer, writer, facilitator and creative producer born in Białystok (Poland) and based in London (UK). Producer of PolBud Cabaret, commissioned by Polish Cultural Institute, leading up to the indirect and a posteriori censorship April 2023 . PATRIZIA: Do you think it makes sense to implement censorship in whatever capacity? MARGOT: …it makes complete sense to have censorship if you want to own the narrative or perspective on a particular thing. And if you want to silence the artist, maybe all the voices that disagree with your point of view. So it's a very useful tool. And, less sarcastically, MARGOT: I think if you want to have censorship, you have to put in place a clear mechanism. As Margot, was the direct recipient of the Y-fronts a posteriori censorship, our conversation expanded: PATRIZIA: What do you think about how the Polish Cultural Institute treated you? MARGOT: A real exercise of power and authority…they needed to appear like they're taking the complaints from the audience members seriously and they have to show to them that they have punished the person who's responsible … They told me – “You breached the contract…if I went to you and I've ordered something and you gave me a different product, you wouldn't have a leg to stand on. We would then refer to that contract. Like we didn't order this.” – Yeah, but, I don't make sausages in Tesco.(13) You cannot order something off the shelf because it doesn't exist. I'm making it fresh, fresh performance and it's not as finite as a sausage.(14) Reactionary Approach Strongly disapprove of censorship. Claire and Roland Muldoon Artists, entrepreneurs, partners in work and in life. Core members of CAST (Cartoon Archetypical Slogan Theatre), UK counterculture and alternative comedy pioneers. PATRIZIA: NCT sees censorship as a positive tool to be used in society, as it facilitates the best way of expressing something without offending anyone… CLAIRE (in a gentle yet direct manner): It can hurt…It hurts people who are the right people to hurt. It is important to express what has to be expressed. ROLAND: I can't imagine it [NCT] working, really. Referring to their long career: PATRIZIA: So, you really were quite troublemakers? ROLAND and CLAIR (finishing each other’s sentence): Oh yeah, usually yeah. Performing, I mean, what else is there? Otherwise there is no point … that's the function (of performing) otherwise…You know, it turns into Hollywood.(15) Subtle, Necessary Approach The following interviewees are both heads of arts and cultural organizations. Stuart Cox Current director of Hoxton Hall, the music hall in Shoreditch, London, originated in 1838, and which has hosted my work since 2016 . PATRIZIA: Since state censorship had been abolished (in the UK), in 1968, who should decide how to control expression these days? STUART: You have to do it….Or the audience will let you know…the artist has to be cautious and question very honestly what might be the impact of their work. PATRIZIA: How do you approach circumstances related to censorship in your role as chief director of Hoxton Hall? STUART: … that basically is my role, in every aspect. So like you know … Do I pay this person this amount of money? What's the impact of that? Do I take this piece on? What's the impact of that? I'm looking at this piece and I see something that had caused me a worry about whether that is right…I have to really think about the decision around things, and that includes why you're telling a person they can't do that at this stage and just be very…true to who you are and those decisions…And I think I would hope that always when I'm facing those decisions, I try to do it with thought. And consider everyone in that process. Inspired by the Muldoon’s opposing view, I say: PATRIZIA: Maybe, rightly or wrongly, I'm sure, it may happen that there may be the need to…or maybe the feeling that it would be right… like we need and want to “break” something. They, the artist wants to do something that…it is a risk because it could…in fact, offend somebody, because it may be important to do so… STUART: You know, I get what you're saying. But…I still think that you have to kind of talk to everyone. You kind of like involve the artists themselves in this conversation…There has to be, I think…to move on something in the centre…and then make the kind of decision about that … In a positive way…(16) Karena Johnson Former Artistic Director and CEO of Hoxton Hall. Since 2022 Head of Creative Collaboration & Learning at the Barbican.(17) PATRIZIA: What’s your thought about current censorship? KARENA: I think it's a tricky time … the Internet and all that … although we might be in a live performance space, actually we still work within a digital landscape and the digital world allows you to say anything you want uncensored. And so the idea that you can behave as you would digitally in real life is not really … A tenable thing to do. PATRIZIA: Did you ever have to enforce censorship? KARENA: I think no, I've never really had to censor anything. Because, I think the work finds the audience that it speaks to… no one is going to come and pitch me something that’s going to be, like racist or sexist or homophobic, because all the organisations I've ever worked in are very clear about that and my politics have aligned very clearly with those institutions. However, it's only in bigger institutions … It's because of visibility. It has other things to deal with like, you know, like funders, like sponsors, like patrons ... Yeah. And I think that conversation, comes up when you have to deal with the bigger institutions... PATRIZIA: Who exercises control, censorship these days? Institutions or culture itself? KARENA: Yeah … big institutions, maybe are controlling or looking after or leading their culture, having different level of responsibility than you do when you've got a fringe venue … Also, I think that there's a very big difference between what an institution and what and artist might think is censorship or not. Is censorship saying you can't do that thing? Maybe, … or … It's not for me. I would say that's just a choice. But for the individual artist … [it] is important … that nobody should ever say no, and that if you're saying no, it's censorship. But I don't think that is actually censorship.(18) Within the industry, Cox’s and Johnson’s professional roles differ from the other interviewees (all artists), in that they operate in a realm between artists and institutions. This seems to influence their similar approach to censorship. To counterbalance the Cox-Johnson approach, we’ll look at another professional in a leading role at a cultural organization: Will Gompertz. The former artistic director of the Barbican Cantre and a former BBC arts editor clarifies his position on censorship by identifying “cancel culture as the greatest challenge facing the arts.”(19) In an interview in Prospect magazine, he responds to the question “What is the greatest challenge facing the arts industry today?” by saying: … it has to be cancel culture. The purpose of the arts is to question, challenge, reflect and enlighten. Great art reveals a truth, and debate and disagreement about the nature of that truth is a function of art. But such is the rallying power of social media, debate is being stifled by self-censorship and fear of disagreeing with the prevailing orthodoxy. Previous generations have fought hard for free speech; so must we.(20) Gompertz held his position as director of the Barbican Centre, from 2021 to autumn 2023. His appointment and resignation were surrounded by controversy. The beginning of his time at the Barbican, when the Centre was dealing with serious accusations of racism within the organization coincided with the need of a “long journey of cultural change at the Barbican”(21) as indicated by The City.(22) Dex reports: “The Centre’s director of Arts and Learning, former Tate and BBC man Will Gompertz, has been hastily elevated to ‘joint interim managing director’”, which lead to Gompertz’s final appointment as artistic director. Shortly before his departure, the Barbican cancelled Resolve Collective’s exhibition in the wake of “anti-Palestinian censorship.”(23) As reported, collective artist Yto Barrada’s statement, “We cannot take seriously a public institution that does not hold a space for free thinking and debate, however challenging it might feel to some staff, board members, or anxious politicians,”(24) indicates the complexity of the event. In a joint statement with Claire Spencer, Gompertz said: “During the run of their exhibition, Resolve Collective and their collaborators have been subject to a number of unacceptable experiences...…we are taking this situation extremely seriously and are currently working with the broader Barbican team to understand the details of what happened.”(25) A few months later Will Gompertz left the Barbican Centre for a much less prestigious position. Official declarations on the reasons for his sudden departure are unavailable. Gompertz’s relevance to this observation is his clear position on censorship, as reported by Prospect in 2023, a position not commonly shared or expressed by people of his profile. Coincidently, Will Gompertz, with the aim of making the Barbican a more inclusive and diverse center for art, education and enterprise, created the position of Head of Creative Collaboration & Learning at the Barbican to which the last interviewee, Karena Johnson, was appointed. Conclusion By bringing together the interviewees’ testimonies, this piece has raised several questions. On the one hand, we have The Muldoons encouraging a self-censorship that aims to protect the “trouble making” nature of the material; “otherwise there is no point.” On the other hand, we have Cox insisting on the importance of self-censorship as a way of being in control of the impact of what the practitioner says, in respect of all involved. Consequently, self-censorship could promote or have an adverse effect on what would be expected to be a controlled outcome. Is it possible, then, contra NCT, that what is called self-censorship could promote unwanted reactions? As a practitioner, it seems necessary to remark on the noticeable division between the Cox-Johnson approach and that of the other interviewees. The preoccupations and responsibilities of heads of arts and culture organizations seem closely correlated with the person in charge of these organizations. Gompertz’s case is a good example of the complexity of control at that level. The Y-fronts episode has unveiled artists’ inability to predict all possible reactions to their work. Also, applying self-censorship could paralyse the artist’s practice altogether if all possible offences should be considered by the artist. The vivid testimony of the final interviewee would perfectly elucidate my thinking. Factual Approach Ridiculusmus A multi award-winning theatre company led by David Woods and Jon Haynes that has been producing seriously funny theatre since 1992. PATRIZIA: What do you think about the Y-fronts episode? And what about censorship currently defined by NCT? JON: It makes me think about a walkabout act David and I did in Dublin in the 1990s. I think he’d nicked the idea from somewhere else. We walked through the streets following each other, joined by a rope tied in a noose around each of our necks. It seemed to be going well. Then a woman sidled up to me and said, “I find what you’re doing offensive because my brother committed suicide the other week.” How could you have applied NCT to that? Just not to have done the act, I suppose. One has to go about one’s practice under the assumption that with anything you do there is always going to be someone somewhere who will find what you do offensive (“And not in a good way,” as the saying goes). But then, following on from that, there will always be someone somewhere who finds the watered down, safe and possibly more insipid version of your original (or nicked) idea offensive as well. Which means that in the end you’re frozen and can’t do anything.(26) References Patrizia Paolini, “How Contemporary Definitions of Cabaret are Shaped by Censorship,” Comedy Studies 16, no. 1 (2025): 118-133. Philip Fisher, “Censorship Rears its Ugly Head”, British Theatre Guide , February 17, 2023, accessed June 4, 2025. https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/features/censorship-rears-its-ugly-head-592 . Arjun Appadurai. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”. Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2-3 (1990): 296. Natasha Tripney, “Cancel Cultures: Theatre Censorship Around the World”, The Stage , March 8, 2024, accessed June 3, 2025, https://www.thestage.co.uk/long-reads/cancel-cultures-theatre-censorship-around-the-world ; Lyn Gardner, “How Will Artistic Freedom Endure as Political Tides Shift?” The Stage , April 28, 2025, accessed June 3, 2025, https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/how-will-artistic-freedom-endure-as-political-tides-shift-arts-council-lyn-gardner ; Kate Maltby, “Artistic Freedom in our Theatres is Being Lost to Fear and Self-Censorship,”’ The Guardian , October 12, 2024 accessed June 3, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/12/artistic-freedom-in-theatres-lost-to-fear-self-censorship . Arts Council England is a UK government-funded body. Founded in 1994, it is dedicated to promoting the performing, visual and literary arts in England. Nicholas Serota, quoted in Franklin Nelson, “Axing Arts Quangos Risks ‘Liberty of Thought’ Says Nicholas Serota,” Financial Times , April 18, 2025, accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/4229bcfe-80a4-4a62-b5f8-ec8f11d99976 . Matthew Bunn, “Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After,” History and Theory 54, no. 1 (2015): 29. Bunn, “Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After,” 26. The interviews were conducted in accordance with the ethical requirements put in place by the University of Kent. The interviews included in this essay were conducted with ethical approval through the University of Kent, UK. Each participant provided written consent for their names and interview contributions to be published in this essay. John Callaghan, interview by Patrizia Paolini, August 27, 2024 Kieron Jecchinis, interview by Patrizia Paolini, December 7, 2023 A renowned UK superstore. Margot Przymierska, interview by Patrizia Paolini, October 8, 2023. Claire and Roland Muldoon, interview by Patrizia Paolini, August 28, 2024. Stuart Cox, interview by Patrizia Paolini, November 3, 2023. The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London. It is owned, funded, and managed by the City of London Corporation. Karena Johnson, interview by Patrizia Paolini, February 2, 2024. Harriet Sherwood, “Will Gompertz to Become Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum,” Guardian , August 4, 2023, accessed November 20, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/04/will-gompertz-to-become-director-of-sir-john-soanes-museum . Prospect Team, “Will Gompertz: Cancel Culture is Stifling the Arts,” Prospect , May 10, 2023, accessed November 19, 2024, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/music/61326/will-gompertz-barbican-cancel-culture-arts . Robert Dex, “Racism Row at the Barbican - How Did It Start and What Happens Next?,” Evening Standard , November 15, 2021, accessed November 19, 2024, https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/racism-row-barbican-centre-what-happens-next-b966025.html . The City of London Corporation is the governing body of the Square Mile, dedicated to a vibrant and thriving City. The Barbican Centre is in part of this governing body. Garreth Harris. 2023. “Barbican Exhibition Cancelled in Wake of 'Anti-Palestinian Censorship' Row,” The Art Magazine , June 23, 2023, accessed November 19, 2024, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/22/barbican-exhibition-cancelled-in-wake-of-anti-palestinian-censorship-row . Lanre Bakare, “Two Artists Withdraw Work from Barbican Show in Row Over Gaza Talk,” Guardian, March 8, 2024, accessed November 19, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/mar/08/two-artists-withdraw-work-from-barbican-show-in-row-over-gaza-talk . Garreth Harris, “Barbican Exhibition Cancelled in Wake of ‘Anti-Palestinian Censorship’ Row,” The Art Magazine , June 23, 2023, accessed November 18, 2024, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/22/barbican-exhibition-cancelled-in-wake-of-anti-palestinian-censorship-row . Ridiculusmus, Jon Haynes, and David Woods, interview by Patrizia Paolini, November 28, 2023. Bibliography Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”. Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2-3 (1990): 295–310. Bakare, Lanre. “Two Artists Withdraw Work from Barbican Show in Row Over Gaza Talk.” Guardian , 8 March 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/mar/08/two-artists-withdraw-work-from-barbican-show-in-row-over-gaza-talk . Bunn, Matthew. “Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After.” History and Theory 54, no. 1 (2015): 25-44. Callaghan, John. “On Contemporary Censorship.” Interview with author, 27 August 2024. Cox, Stuart. “On Contemporary Censorship.” Interview with author, 3 November 2023. Dex, Robert. “Racism Row at the Barbican - How Did It Start and What Happens Next?’. Evening Standard , 15 November 2021. https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/racism-row-barbican-centre-what-happens-next-b966025.html . Fisher, Philip. “Censorship Rears its Ugly Head.” British Theatre Guide . 17 February 2023. https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/features/censorship-rears-its-ugly-head-592 . Gardner, Lyn. “How will artistic freedom endure as political tides shift?” The Stage . 28th April 2025. https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/how-will-artistic-freedom-endure-as-political-tides-shift-arts-council-lyn-gardner . Harris, Garreth. “Barbican Exhibition Cancelled in Wake of ‘Anti-Palestinian Censorship’ Row.” The Art Magazine , 23 June 2023. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/22/barbican-exhibition-cancelled-in-wake-of-anti-palestinian-censorship-row . Jecchinis, Kieron. “On Contemporary Censorship.” Interview with author, 7 December 2023. Johnson, Karena. “On Contemporary Censorship.” Interview with author, 2 February 2024. Itzin, Catherine. “CAST (Cartoon Archetypical Slogan Theatre).” In Stages in the Revolution , Routledge, 1980 Maltby, Kate. “Artistic freedom in our theatres is being lost to fear and self-censorship”. The Guardian . 12th October 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/12/artistic-freedom-in-theatres-lost-to-fear-self-censorship . Muldoon, Claire, and Roland Muldoon. “On Contemporary Censorship.” Interview with author, 28 August 2024. Nelson, Franklin. “Axing Arts Quangos Risks ‘Liberty of Thought’ Says Nicholas Serota.” Financial Times , 18 April 2025. https://www.ft.com/content/4229bcfe-80a4-4a62-b5f8-ec8f11d99976 . Paolini, Patrizia. “Cabaret and Decency: How Contemporary Definitions of Cabaret are Shaped by Censorship.” Comedy Studies 16 (2024): 118-133. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2040610X.2024.2404298?src= Prospect Team. “Will Gompertz: Cancel Culture is Stifling the Arts.” Prospect , 10 May 2023. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/music/61326/will-gompertz-barbican-cancel-culture-arts . Przymierska, Margot. “On Contemporary Censorship.” Interview with author, 8 October 2023. Ridiculusmus, Jon Haynes, and David Woods. “On Contemporary Censorship.” Interview with author, 28 November 2023. Sherwood, Harriet. “Will Gompertz to Become Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum.” Guardian, 4 August 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/04/will-gompertz-to-become-director-of-sir-john-soanes-museum . Tripney, Natasha. “Cancel Cultures: Theatre Censorship Around the World.” The Stage , 8 March 2024. https://www.thestage.co.uk/long-reads/cancel-cultures-theatre-censorship-around-the-world . Footnotes About The Author(s) PATRIZIA PAOLINI (she/her) is a theatre maker and live performance practitioner with over twenty-five years’ experience. Currently, she is working on a practice-based research PhD project, ‘Post Variety & Cabaret,’ at The University of Kent. Her broad career includes many original productions and collaborations. Since 1999, she has been an associate of Ridiculusmus, the award-winning theatre company that has produced, among other acclaimed works, The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland . Since 2016, her deconstructed cabaret, Ms. Paolini’s Phantasmagoria Cabaret, has been regularly programmed at Hoxton Hall, London. Her practice is the invaluable, rich terrain, base of her research which focuses on popular performance, the ‘high - low’ cultural divide, and social class dominance’s dynamics. 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 Censorship/Public Censure and Performance Today: Special Issue Introduction Remembering Censorship in the World Premiere of Seán O’Casey’s The Drums of Father Ned: Lafayette, Indiana, 1959 The Stage as Networked Battleground: Dissent and Censorship in Contemporary Canadian Theatre and Performance Censor/Censure: A Roundtable Which of These Are Censorship? The Divide Between Prior Restraint and Soft Censorship How Can an Artist Respond to Censorship? The Dilemma That Faces Contemporary Creatives in the UK The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project: A Roundtable Conversation Life is Drag: Documenting Spectacle as Resistance An Interview with Rachel Rampleman Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists. Michael Malek Najjar. Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2021; Pp. xvi + 237. Lessons from Our Students: Meditations on Performance Pedagogy. Stacey Cabaj and Andrea Odinov. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 126 Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene. Angenette Spalink. Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance Series, no. 3. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 116. Fauci and Kramer Our Town Frankenstein Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Shauna Vey 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 Staging Family: Domestic Deceptions of Mid-Nineteenth Century American Actresses Shauna Vey By Published on November 6, 2019 Download Article as PDF Staging Family: Domestic Deceptions of Mid-Nineteenth Century American Actresses. Nan Mullenneaux. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018; Pp. 400. In Staging Family: Domestic Deceptions of Mid-Nineteenth Century American Actresses, Nan Mullenneaux looks at significant figures of American theatre in a new way. From actresses active on the US stage in the mid-nineteenth century, she has selected those whose words remain in published memoirs, press interviews, or private correspondence. A comparison of their extant writings to the known facts of their lives reveals numerous deceptions, both large and small, by the actress-authors. What were they trying to hide? Mullenneaux organizes her interdisciplinary study around themes that emerge in the writings including motherhood, beginning a career, theatre work, family, moral refinement, marriage, mobility, and patriotism. Although each women’s experience is idiosyncratic, their tales coalesce into a fascinating picture of one cohort’s experience of, and reaction to, being a working woman of the American stage between 1830 and 1870. Virtually every aspect of these actresses’ lives put them at odds with nineteenth-century ideals, as the book argues. They worked, conducting business and exercising agency, while an “ideal” woman was dependent and docile. They continually traveled when it was generally accepted that a woman’s proper sphere was the home, and they sought acclaim when motherhood was considered a woman’s highest calling. In other words, their careers and life choices “threatened … the prescriptive gender roles” of the day (292). What Mullenneaux exposes in these proto-feminists is an unwillingness to claim their heterodox identities. Instead, in writings that adopt a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach, the actress-authors strove to disguise themselves as non-ambitious, patriotic homebodies. According to their self-reports, as Mullenneaux notes, none of these actresses entered the theatre ambitious for fame. Of course not. Only an urgent calling to rescue destitute fathers (or other kin) forced these dutiful women from the warmth of the hearth to the glow of the footlights. As we read multiple versions of this tale — from Fanny Kemble, Anna Cora Mowatt, Charlotte Cushman, Olive Logan, Mrs. Charles Calvert, Clara Morris, Kitty Blanchard, and others — the constructed nature of the actress persona becomes self-evident. Mullenneaux contrasts this assemblage of female testimony with that of contemporaneous male actors who readily claimed talent and ambition as their motivation. Mullenneaux seals her argument by introducing contradictory facts from the biographies of her female subjects. A particularly compelling instance is the collision between Laura Keene’s personal life and the nine-year legal battle she waged over intellectual property rights to Our American Cousin . Mullenneaux argues that Keene ultimately withdrew the suit for fear that testimony would “unmask her domestic deception” (290). Never having divorced her first husband, Keene had presented their children as orphaned nieces while covertly cohabitating with her business manager. Mullenneaux’s insightful analysis of the barely-averted scandal illuminates a larger history. While the pre-copyright entertainment industry was being modernized by the long-running single-play format, legal restrictions still prevented a woman, even a savvy business manager, from testifying in court. In addition to presenting themselves as ideal mothers and wives, this nineteenth-century cohort needed to appear all-American. Hence, they masked their origins and international travels with an aggressive patriotism that fit the age of nation-building and celebrated refined whiteness. Olive Logan supported the “looming genocide against the Native Americans” (158); Fanny Kemble described the black population of New York as “beyond description, grotesques” (156); and in Egypt, Rose Eytinge contrasted the subjugation of women in that “heathen territory” with the American woman “born and reared in freedom,” blithely glossing over millions of enslaved women in the US (156-7). Mullenneaux allows that “conformity to white supremacist views” may have been sincere, but might also have enacted a strategy for social acceptance (156-8). The book briefly discusses the African Grove actresses and some touring singers, highlighting that few non-white women had opportunities for acting careers in this era; Mullenneaux notes that no members of her cohort evidenced concern over this racial exclusion. By the mid-nineteenth century, actresses were often using photography for publicity and Mullenneaux’s astute analysis of their poses and costuming (and the commonalities among them) enhances the book. Another useful asset is an appendix with short biographies of sixty-five actresses mentioned in the text. The author’s choices of actresses give her work both focus and limitations. The women discussed do not represent a cross-section in any scientific sense, but rather the availability of documentation. Thus, the more verbose ladies-in-print, notably Clara Morris, Rose Eytinge and Olive Logan, dominate the conversation. We cannot guess how representative they were, but Mullenneaux is resourceful in seeking evidence and expands her cohort when she can. Furthermore, while she notes the difference between a memoir published at career’s launch and one written after decades in the public eye, she doesn’t adequately factor their differences into her analysis. The plays written by these actresses are also missed opportunities for additional insights. A closer focus on the women’s’ chronological relation to one another would be useful, and the book index should include entries for patriotism, photography, slavery, and each actress discussed. However, the book’s critical strategy is also its major strength. By examining the actresses’ own verbal and visual choices, Mullenneaux restores to them a degree of the agency they sought to obscure. Their biographies attest to their talent and courage; the accumulated evidence of their deceptions convincingly reveals the absolute and unforgiving nature of the gender-based strictures under which they labored. Each woman seems to have independently reached the same conclusion: violating the code would end career and livelihood. How they maneuvered is appropriate reading for an age when working women still face a constellation of questions about when, where, and if to compromise in order to persevere. Staging Family’s dense, panoramic depiction of the era is a treat for theatre historians and nineteenth-century scholars. The focal actresses are situated within the web of familial and professional interconnections that constituted the period’s theatre industry. Over the course of this book, we repeatedly cross paths with individuals as they might have crossed paths with each other. Ultimately, Mullenneaux paints a latitudinal picture, thoroughly contextualized and packed with detail. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Shauna Vey New York City College of Technology City University of New York 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.

Courtney Ferriter Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 1 Visit Journal Homepage Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Courtney Ferriter By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF In his recent book Democracy in Black (2016), Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. argues that for Americans, “collective forgetting is crucial in determining the kind of story we tell ourselves. Ours is the chosen nation, the ‘shining city upon a hill,’ as Ronald Reagan called it. America is democracy. . . . To believe this, we have to forget and willfully ignore what is going on around us.” [1] While Glaude is particularly concerned with the distortions and fairy tales Americans continue to tell ourselves about race, Tony Kushner’s epic two-part play Angels in America tackles this same theme of conveniently forgetting and willfully ignoring so as not to disrupt the American self-image with respect to sexual orientation and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play received much acclaim from critics and scholars alike for many years following its initial publication—resulting in initial runs on Broadway and the National Theatre in London in 1992-1993 and an award-winning 2003 HBO mini-series starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson—but more recently, it seems to have fallen out of favor among scholars, despite a successful 2010 revival at the Signature Theatre and a 2017 production at the National Theatre that transferred to Broadway in February 2018. Indeed, many (although not all) scholarly articles that discuss Kushner and Angels in recent years focus on how AIDS functions in the play, [2] with scant consideration of Kushner’s portrayal of democracy. I argue that Kushner is especially relevant in the socio-historical moment in which Americans currently find ourselves—one marked by political polarization and distrust of those who think differently than we do. The 2016 election was symptomatic of these problems and brought them into full view for any who still harbored doubts about how deep this divide runs, but Kushner’s play proves instructive for how to build an engaged democratic citizenry. In the epilogue to Part Two of Angels in America , Prior leaves the audience with an optimistic vision for the future, stating, “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.” [3] He then offers a blessing of “more life,” and the play concludes with the same phrase that appears at the end of Part One: “The Great Work Begins” ( Perestroika , 146). As David Kornhaber has observed, many scholars and critics are dissatisfied with the play’s conclusion due to “the reconciliationist politics it seems to espouse,” [4] which for them provides “a too-easy gloss on more intractable problems” [5] that continue to plague society. Thus, Kornhaber reasons, “a lot must depend on how one figures what seem to be the two key concepts of Kushner’s conclusion: citizen and blessing.” [6] Like Kornhaber, I believe that individual understanding of the term “citizens” as well as broader notions of what constitutes citizenship figure heavily in interpretation of both the epilogue and Angels as a whole. Furthermore, I contend that Kushner’s idea of citizenship is necessarily linked to the beginning of the “Great Work” invoked at the end of both parts of the play. In Angels , “citizens” are those who are part of a Deweyan community, made up of diverse people with sometimes conflicting opinions who listen to each other and who are nonetheless connected by their desire to enact positive change in the world, to progress toward a more ideal and inclusive democracy. This is what Prior (and by extension, Kushner) means by “Great Work.” Individualism and undemocratic communication—represented by Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt—fall away by the end of Angels in America , making room for what Atsushi Fujita calls a “a new model of community,” [7] consisting of Belize, Hannah, Louis, and Prior, who value inclusivity and democratic communication. John Dewey argues in Freedom and Culture (1939) for a distinction between “society” and “community.” Society arises from the politics of individual nations, how a particular country governs, and what policies are enforced, whereas community is unrestricted and made up of individuals or groups who share a common solidarity. He explains, “[F]or a number of persons to form anything that can be called a community in its pregnant sense there must be values prized in common. Without them, any so-called social group, class, people, nation, tends to fall apart into molecules having but mechanically enforced connections with one another.” [8] Thus, for Dewey, one characteristic of community lies in shared values. Furthermore, Dewey adds democratic communication to his idea of community, arguing that “there is a difference between a society, in the sense of an association, and a community. . . . Natural associations are conditions for the existence of a community, but a community adds the function of communication in which emotions and ideas are shared as well as joint undertaking engaged in.” [9] In the case of Americans, our joint undertaking is the democratic experiment, and for this reason, we should likewise strive to embody democratic ideals of communication. In the vein of Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy, Kushner emphasizes the importance of inclusive, democratic community in Angels in America . The play models Deweyan communities while also highlighting models that are anti-Deweyan: there is no great community—no solidarity between different groups of Americans—and thus, there is no realized democracy. Kushner writes in the Afterword to Perestroika that Americans “pay high prices for maintaining the myth of the Individual,” [10] which he contrasts with the idea that “the smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction.” [11] This juxtaposition of individualism with community, illustrated in the play by Roy and Joe as opposed to the community envisioned in the epilogue, is central to Kushner’s understanding of democratic progress and what it means to be a citizen. Some leftist critics may bemoan the ending of Angels as “turn[ing] away from the kind of collective action demanded by Marx and staged by Brecht,” [12] but as Hussein Al-Badri has observed, the play’s main flaw in this regard is merely presenting “a different politic[s] than its detractors would like it to be.” [13] Kushner is ultimately more concerned with how to enact Deweyan democracy and community—which he believes will lead to real and lasting social change—than he is with envisioning an America based around socialism or Marxism. In recent years, John Dewey’s notions of community and his pedagogy have come under scrutiny from critics who rightly cite the ethnocentrism that undergirds much of his early philosophy in these matters. [14] Thomas Fallace notes that because pragmatism is “a self-correcting theory of knowledge,” [15] by 1916, Dewey understood that “a plurality of cultures was necessary for democratic living and intellectual growth.” [16] Nevertheless, Fallace argues, “ethnocentrism was built right into Dewey’s early pedagogy and philosophy.” [17] This ethnocentrism troubles Dewey’s notion of community; he conceived of community as “not merely a variety of associative ties which hold persons together in diverse ways, but an organization of all elements by an integrated principle.” [18] If Dewey believed that white people represented a more advanced form of civilization that people of color had not yet achieved, then how would it be possible to form a community in which “all elements” are organized by the same principle? As Glaude has noted, democracy for Dewey “is a form of life that requires constant attention if we are to secure the ideals that purportedly animate it.” [19] Likewise, Scott Stroud emphasizes that a “real amount of openness is implicated in the [pragmatist] habits of democracy.” [20] In other words, democracy is a process, one which must continually be reexamined to ensure that we are increasing democracy and participation among citizens, creating a more inclusive community rather than excluding or marginalizing certain voices, as Dewey was guilty of doing in his early career. As Dewey himself put it, “only when we start from a community as a fact, grasp the fact in thought so as to clarify and enhance its constituent elements, can we reach an idea of democracy which is not [merely] utopian.” [21] One particular benefit to considering the vision of Deweyan community and democracy in Kushner’s Angels is that, several generations removed from Dewey, he is interested in how to incorporate citizens from different backgrounds with vastly different life experiences into the great community Dewey envisioned, particularly African Americans and people who identify as queer. Thus, Kushner’s reexamination of community and inclusive democracy as demonstrated in Angels is itself pragmatic in its consideration of the conditions and context of American life and democracy in the 1980s and ‘90s, revising Dewey’s idea of community by incorporating more and varied groups and voices into it. Fallace argues that an important part of Dewey’s pragmatism was context: “all knowledge was context-bound; it served a purpose in a particular situation and its usefulness was dependent upon that context.” [22] Kushner speaks to a particular historical moment in his work on community, examining the anxieties and shortcomings of American democracy in light of black/white and gay/straight relations. Thus, reading Kushner as a pragmatist increases our understanding of what an ideal community might look like, taking into account the experiences of those who are often pushed to the margins of society by the not-so-silent majority. A consideration of how Kushner treated the power disparities he observed at work in society may also prove instructive for how the U.S. might address current forms of oppression and marginalization in society. I argue in the remainder of this essay that the “Great Work” to which Kushner refers at the end of both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika is, in part, a call to the greater democratic community reflected in the play’s epilogue, which is championed over the closed views of community embodied in Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt. Kushner’s vision of Deweyan community emphasizes inclusion and listening to marginal voices, for characters in Angels in America who ignore the voices of the other do so at their peril. Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt are representative of undemocratic communication in the play—Roy because he dominates those around him, and Joe because he cannot be truthful with others or see beyond himself. Dewey writes that in a democracy, “both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other.” [23] For Roy, suppression of the other in communication is par for the course. One early example of this occurs in Act One, Scene 9 of Millennium Approaches when Roy’s doctor Henry diagnoses him with AIDS. Roy then tries to force Henry to call him a homosexual, finally threatening, “No, say it. I mean it. Say: ‘Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.’ And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do” ( Millennium , 44). When Henry gives him the diagnosis of AIDS, Roy counters, “No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer” ( Millennium , 46). Roy forcefully suppresses Henry from telling anyone that Roy is gay by threatening his career, and he even manages to suppress the diagnosis of AIDS. The next time Henry appears is in Perestroika to facilitate Roy’s admission to the hospital, where even his medical charts, as Belize reads them, say “liver cancer” ( Perestroika , 21). Roy’s relationship with his nurse Belize in Perestroika is similarly domineering, as Roy makes racist and homophobic remarks, goads Belize into using an anti-Semitic slur in one scene, knocks over pills he is supposed to take, and generally proves to be an insufferable patient. Roy also makes it clear that even though he is somewhat dependent on Belize, he does not consider him an equal in any way. Bemoaning his imminent disbarment in Act Four, Scene 1 of Perestroika , Roy says, “Every goddam thing I ever wanted they have taken from me. Mocked and reviled, all my life” ( Perestroika , 87). When Belize identifies and responds, “Join the club” ( Perestroika , 87). Roy says, “I don’t belong to any club you could get through the front door of. You watch yourself you take too many liberties” ( Perestroika , 87). Shortly after Roy has a series of violent spasms, Belize says that he almost feels sorry for him. Roy is quick to remind him, “You. Me. No. Connection” ( Perestroika , 88). Thus, Roy suppresses Belize any time Belize attempts to identify with him in the slightest. If democracy is characterized in part by open communication, then Roy’s constant desire to “win” or conquer in conversations with others exposes him as a totalitarian at heart. Roy’s totalitarian communication is a natural result of his individualism. He relishes his status as “the dragon atop the golden horde” ( Perestroika , 55), maintaining that “Life is full of horror; nobody escapes; nobody; save yourself. Whatever pulls on you, whatever needs from you, threatens you” ( Millennium , 58). This philosophy clearly runs counter to Kushner’s belief in the smallest indivisible unit as two people. Nevertheless, Kushner includes Roy in the play, explaining in an interview that he is “a part of the gay and lesbian community even if we don’t really want him to be a part of our community.” [24] This indicates a capacity for inclusivity in his democratic vision that Roy himself disdains in the play. This inclusive community is similarly emphasized when Louis, aided by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, recites the Mourner’s Kaddish for Roy, thus accepting him into the greater Jewish community of which they are part (albeit in death). While Joe is not like Roy in his communication in the sense that he has to win or dominate others in conversation, his general dishonesty and unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions make him undemocratic in his dealings with other characters in the play. Kushner has sometimes been criticized in scholarship on Angels in America for being too hard on Joe. Hussein Al-Badri, for example, asserts that Kushner’s omission of Joe from the community included in the epilogue runs counter to Kushner’s “own political ideology of inclusion and inclusiveness.” [25] However, this dramatic punishment seems more fitting when Joe’s undemocratic communication and individualism are taken into consideration, for then it is clear that like his mentor Roy, Joe too spurns community and democratic communication. Dewey argues for truthful communication in “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” writing, “knowledge of conditions as they are is the only solid ground for communication and sharing.” [26] Joe lies about his identity as a gay man to his wife Harper, he keeps from Louis the fact that he is a Mormon, and he repeatedly tells Harper that he is not going to leave her, only to abandon her anyway. Because Joe lacks a foundation of truthfulness with people who are important to him, open, democratic communication is not possible. Like Roy, Joe also acts with the individual—himself—in mind, rather than considering community or the circumstances and experiences of others. Following an irreparable fight with Louis in Perestroika , Joe tries to return to Harper, not because she needs him but because he is thinking of himself. He tells her, “I don’t know what will happen to me without you. Only you. Only you love me. Out of everyone in the world. . . . Please, please, don’t leave me now” ( Perestroika , 139). Joe is unable to sustain a community or communicate democratically with others because he never considers the experience of the other person and only considers his own needs and desires. In fact, Joe even tells Louis that “sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be,” ( Perestroika , 73) a notion that serves as Joe’s modus operandi throughout the play. Deweyan communication requires what Hongmei Peng calls sympathetic thinking, the ability to “step outside of [one’s] own experience and see it as the other would see it by putting [oneself] in the place of the other and using imagination in order to assimilate the other’s experience.” [27] Since Joe proves incapable of imagining the other’s experience, he necessarily excludes rather than includes others in his would-be community, particularly Harper and Hannah. His unwillingness or inability to change in this regard is why he is not included among the democratic “citizens” in the epilogue, since undemocratic communication and exclusive community building stand in opposition to Kushner’s Deweyan model of community. Although Roy and Joe form a community of sorts in Angels , it proves to be undemocratic and representative of anti-Deweyan communication. In spite of the father/son-type relationship that Roy and Joe maintain throughout most of the play, there is much that they keep from one another, and their relationship is marked as much by silence as it is by the closeness and warm feelings for one another as mentor and mentee. This silence comes to a head in Act Four, Scene 1 of Perestroika , when Joe visits Roy in the hospital. When Joe reveals that he left his wife Harper and has been living with Louis, Roy forcefully silences Joe: JOE : Roy, please, get back into… ROY : SHUT UP! Now you listen to me. [. . .] ROY : I want you home. With your wife. Whatever else you got going, cut it dead. JOE : I can’t, Roy, I need to be with… ROY : YOU NEED? Listen to me. Do what I say. Or you will regret it. And don’t talk to me about it. Ever again. ( Perestroika , 85) Roy not only silences Joe in this particular moment of the play, but he commands him never to speak of his relationship with Louis or to make any allusion to homosexuality again. Thus, Roy’s silencing of Joe is distinctly undemocratic and unrepresentative of the kind of communication expected in a democratic community. Far from being an outlier, this is not the first time Roy has stifled Joe’s communication with him. Rather than being open to hearing what Joe wants to express (even if he disagrees with it), Roy chastises him in Millennium Approaches for having ethical reservations about interfering with the disbarment committee hearing, calling Joe “Dumb Utah Mormon hick shit” ( Millennium , 106) and “a sissy” ( Millennium , 107). As for Joe, he claims to love Roy, but is unwilling to go to bat for him when the chips are down. Although this is a legal as well as an ethical quandary, it demonstrates that Joe’s love for Roy is more theory than practice. He asserts, “I’ll do whatever I can to help,” ( Millennium , 66) but those are empty words, since he ultimately refuses the job in Washington he is offered and fails Roy. Joe and Roy cannot agree on a shared ideal toward which they can work together, and thus, their efforts at community building are doomed to fail. Given Dewey’s assertions that community involves “communication in which emotions and ideas are shared” [28] and that such community is “a pressing [concern] for democracy,” [29] Roy and Joe fail at both democratic communication and maintaining a community even with one another. In addition to their undemocratic communication, Roy and Joe are devoted to exclusion rather than inclusion and to individualism rather than community, qualities that are distinctly anti-Deweyan, and for which (along with their undemocratic communication) they are dramatically “punished” by Kushner. Roy succumbs to his illness, while Harper leaves Joe for good and Joe is nowhere to be found in the democratic community of the play’s epilogue. Unlike Roy and Joe, Louis is able and willing to change, demonstrating by the end of the play a commitment to open communication and revising harmful beliefs and actions. While Louis initially abandons Prior when the effects of AIDS become more than he can handle, he eventually sees the error of his ways and atones for his past misdeeds. Prior tells Louis when they meet after Louis’s month-long absence in Perestroika that when he cries, he “endanger[s] nothing. . . . It’s like the idea of crying when you do it. Or the idea of love” ( Perestroika , 83). Similarly, Belize remarks to Louis in Millennium Approaches , “All your checks bounce, Louis; you’re ambivalent about everything” ( Millennium , 95). For much of the play, Louis claims to support things in theory, but his practice reveals his own ambivalence on the subject, from his alleged love for Prior to his support of the Rainbow Coalition. However, following a conversation with Belize in Act Four, Scene 3 of Perestroika in which Belize observes that Louis is “up in the air, just like that angel, too far off the earth to pick out the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you love,” ( Perestroika , 94) Louis realizes that theory and practice must be joined, both in love and in democracy. This is confirmed for him when he researches Joe’s legal decisions written on behalf of Justice Wilson and finally understands that Joe, who wants to be “a nice, nice man” ( Millennium , 107)—as Roy aptly puts it—has rendered legal decisions that have real and damaging consequences for children and gay people. Dewey argues for praxis in democracy, asserting that democracy is “a personal way of individual life. . . . Instead of thinking of our own dispositions and habits as accommodated to certain institutions we have to learn to think of the latter as expressions, projections, and extensions of habitually dominant personal attitudes.” [30] Joe thus expresses a clearly undemocratic viewpoint when he tells Louis of his legal decisions, “It’s law not justice, it’s power, not the merits of its exercise, it’s not an expression of the ideal” ( Perestroika , 109). The discrepancy between Joe’s theory and practice in multiple areas of life, including love and democracy, causes him to think that he must accommodate himself to institutions—like “legal fag-bashing” ( Perestroika , 109) or heterosexual marriage, for example—rather than viewing such institutions democratically, as potential sites for expressing his own experiences and habits. Louis recognizes his own behavior in Joe’s habits, and after their fight, Louis finally understands the extent to which he has failed Prior. He later asks to come back to Prior and tells him, “Failing in love isn’t the same as not loving. It doesn’t let you off the hook, it doesn’t mean you’re free to not love,” ( Perestroika , 140) indicating a respect for praxis that he previously lacked. In addition, Louis gains “expiation for [his] sins” ( Perestroika , 121) through his recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish for Roy Cohn. Although he had previously refused to identify with Roy in any way, calling him “the polestar of human evil … the worst human being who ever lived, he isn’t human even,” ( Perestroika , 93) with some coaxing from Belize and help from Ethel Rosenberg’s ghost, Louis recites the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, thus affirming Roy as part of the Jewish community. Framji Minwilla argues that the coming together of Belize, Ethel, and Louis to say Kaddish for Roy “invent[s] a more complex yet exact sense of self and a more expansively conceived idea of community.” [31] This community is a democratic one, in which people who have ideas and beliefs differing from the mainstream (like Roy, for whom this is the case not in life nor in the Reagan years of the play, but within the politics espoused by Kushner and the characters in the epilogue of Angels ) are nevertheless included and acknowledged as part of the larger community. Based on his joining together of theory with practice and expanding his idea of community by praying for Roy, Louis is able to participate as a “citizen” in the epilogue: he argues at points with Belize about politics, but he is ultimately able to listen and value the presence of differing opinions in his community. Prior also makes a few missteps, but like Louis, he ultimately “succeeds because he is willing to change,” [32] to become more democratic in his communication with others and his vision of community. For instance, when he first meets Joe’s mother, Hannah, he assumes that because she is Mormon, she must be trying to convert him when she helps him to the hospital. After they arrive at the hospital, Prior tells Hannah about his visit from the Angel, and she says he had a vision, drawing a comparison with Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and Prior once again rushes to make assumptions about her because of her Mormonism: PRIOR : But that’s preposterous, that’s… HANNAH : It’s not polite to call other people’s beliefs preposterous. He had great need of understanding. Our Prophet. His desire made prayer. His prayer made an angel. The angel was real. I believe that. PRIOR : I don’t. And I’m sorry but it’s repellent to me. So much of what you believe. HANNAH : What do I believe? PRIOR : I’m a homosexual. With AIDS. I can just imagine what you… HANNAH : No you can’t. Imagine. The things in my head. You don’t make assumptions about me, mister; I won’t make them about you. ( Perestroika , 102) This is the first moment of democratic communication between Prior and Hannah. He acknowledges her point, listening and taking to heart her experiences. This openness serves him well when Hannah advises, “An angel is just a belief, with wings and arms that can carry you. It’s naught to be afraid of. If it lets you down, reject it. Seek for something new” ( Perestroika , 103). Prior takes her advice, struggling with the Angel of America and returning the Book of the Anti-Migratory Epistle to Heaven. He previously identified with the Angels—their abandonment by the Almighty and desire to go back—but ultimately he insists upon progress and forward movement. Additionally, Prior’s vision of community becomes more expansive and inclusive by the end of the play. He tells Louis in Millennium Approaches that if Louis walked out on him, he would hate him forever. While he does not take Louis back as a partner in Perestroika , he forgives him, tells him he loves him, and Louis remains an important presence in Prior’s life based on their interaction in the epilogue. In Hannah’s first appearance, she does not seem particularly inclusive or capable of democratic communication given her outrage at Joe’s admission that he is gay, however she experiences a transformation in Perestroika and shows more concern for others, particularly Prior and Harper. Despite Hannah’s somewhat gruff manner—she is described by Sister Ella Chapter in Millennium Approaches as “the only unfriendly Mormon [she] ever met” ( Millennium , 82)—and her claim that she “[doesn’t] have pity,” ( Perestroika , 101) she tends to both Prior and Harper, both of whom have been abandoned by the person closest to them. Hannah explains her actions by claiming, “I know my duty when I see it,” ( Perestroika , 66) which suggests that unlike Joe, she is willing to take the needs and experiences of others into consideration before acting. Much like Dewey, Hannah acknowledges that communication and community require cooperation, “understanding, learning, [and] other-regarding thinking.” [33] Given her sympathy and concern for Prior and Harper as well as her advice to Joe to reflect on his actions and beliefs by asking himself “what it was [he was] running from,” ( Perestroika , 96) Hannah has become a Kushnerian “citizen” in the epilogue, musing about the “interconnectedness” ( Perestroika , 144) of people in the world and providing hope for Prior to keep moving forward. Her advice to Prior that he should “seek for something new” ( Perestroika , 103) if his beliefs fail him demonstrates her own willingness to revise previous assumptions and incorporate new knowledge into her experience, an essential quality in a member of a democratic community. As for Belize, who has been described in scholarship as the moral center of Angels in America , [34] his actions toward Roy and Louis show a commitment to inclusivity in line with Deweyan democratic community. Belize empathizes with Roy and Louis as fellow gay men, despite his outright hatred for some of their actions and ideologies. He advises Roy about the best course of treatment for late-stage AIDS, contra the opinion of Roy’s “very qualified, very expensive WASP doctor,” ( Perestroika , 26) and warns him about the double-blind AZT trials. Despite the fact that Roy is a terrible patient and person who, as mentioned previously, takes every opportunity to remind Belize that Roy considers him beneath him, Belize feels, as he puts it, a sense of “solidarity. One faggot to another,” ( Perestroika , 27) and reminds Louis that Roy “died a hard death” ( Perestroika , 122). With Louis, Belize embodies the democratic value of believing in human nature’s capacity for change. Dewey argues in “Creative Democracy” that democracy is “a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature.” [35] Although Belize disdains Louis for his abandonment of Prior, he meets with Louis in both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika and offers him some moral guidance, indicating that he has not given up on Louis and retains some hope that he will change for the better. Belize’s inclusivity is unsurprising considering his description of Heaven as encompassing “voting booths … everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion” ( Perestroika , 76) with gods who are all “brown as the mouths of rivers” ( Perestroika , 76). This utopic vision eradicates all of the obstacles to justice and democratic participation of marginalized groups in the United States; everyone has gained suffrage, wealth inequality has been destroyed, and racism, sexism, and transphobia have all been tempered by mixed-race divinities and blurred gender boundaries. Belize’s idea of Heaven is aligned with Kushner’s philosophy on freedom; he argues that freedom “expand[s] outward” [36] and the most “basic gesture of freedom is to include, not to exclude.” [37] This sounds remarkably like Dewey, who concludes in “Creative Democracy” that the task of democracy is always to create “a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.” [38] Belize’s vision of Heaven and Kushner’s understanding of freedom express Dewey’s practical ideal for democracy. The four characters included in the epilogue to Angels in America —Belize, Hannah, Louis, and Prior—represent democratic community either because they have demonstrated a willingness to change, listen to others, and revise previous beliefs/actions in the course of the play, or (in Belize’s case) because that kind of inclusivity and democratic communication had already been attained. Michael Cadden argues that the epilogue to Angels “leaves us with the image of four individuals who, despite their very real differences, have chosen, based on their collective experience, to think about themselves as a community working for change.” [39] Similarly, Ron Scapp suggests that Kushner’s ending embraces “the hope of democracy.” [40] For Kushner, the “hope of democracy” is embodied in these characters who have become “citizens” ( Perestroika , 146) with differing thoughts and opinions who are nevertheless capable of working together to accomplish the “Great Work” ( Perestroika , 146) of expanding democracy. Roy and Joe, who were neither inclusive of dissenting voices nor able to form democratic communities, are incapable of acting as citizens and thus omitted from the epilogue, even as Kushner includes them in the greater community of the play itself. The epilogue to Angels in America ultimately advocates for a more ideal democracy, which must begin with individuals who act as citizens. This is the kind of democracy envisioned by Dewey, where all citizens believe “that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable cooperation … is itself a priceless addition to life.” [41] Such a community stands in stark contrast to the exclusive, undemocratic, and homophobic legislation and political rhetoric of the Reagan years as portrayed in the play and embodied by Roy and Joe. Kushner’s small democratic community at the end of Angels reminds the audience that democracy is a process, one toward which we must constantly work to ensure we are applying the democratic method of expanding rights and freedoms outward, revising beliefs or actions based on experience and new information, and opening ourselves to democratic communication with others. Kushner begins from the premise that including marginalized voices is not only beneficial but essential to democracy. This revises some of Dewey’s early notions, which had been grounded in ethnocentric thinking, and provides a foundation for what including others in a democratic community looks like. The inclusivity Kushner portrays in Angels in America demonstrates that democracy does not mean that all voices are considered to be equally valid; rather, Kushner highlights voices that are similarly committed to democracy as method. Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt provide examples of voices that are too partisan and too committed to their own individualistic and undemocratic ways of thinking. However, it is important to note that such people are not irredeemable; they have the capacity to change, as we see Louis do over the course of the play. As a result, such individuals deserve to be included in the larger community (as Kushner includes Roy) even if their ideology is itself anti-democratic. Kushner cautions, however, that such individualism and anti-democratic thinking is harmful to democratic inclusivity and communication. Thus, anti-democratic ideology must not be allowed to dominate at a legal level, as we see its harmful consequences in the exclusive, homophobic legislation of the Reagan administration. In addition, democratic communication is encouraged on a personal level, too, otherwise relationships and communities run the risk of being torn apart, as evidenced by Roy and Joe or Joe and Harper. Like Dewey, Kushner believes that it is necessary to revise our methods to become always more democratic and more inclusive—like the “citizens” referred to in the epilogue—progressing slowly but ever closer to true democratic communication and community with one another. In our present political moment in the United States, democratic communication and community seem like essential tools to cultivate as we work together toward a future like the one Kushner envisions in his epilogue rather than resigning ourselves to undemocratic rule by the Roy Cohns of the world. References [1] Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (New York: Broadway Books, 2016), 48. [2] See, for example, Alexander Peuser, “AIDS and the Artist’s Call to Action,” Lucerna 11 (2017): 10-22; Dennis Altman and Kent Buse, “Thinking Politically about HIV: Political Analysis and Action in Response to AIDS,” Contemporary Politics 18, no. 2 (2012): 127-140; Laura L. Beadling, “The Trauma of AIDS Then and Now: Kushner’s Angels in America on the Stage and Small Screen,” Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance 5, no. 3 (2012): 229-240; and Claudia Barnett, “AIDS = Purgatory: Prior Walter’s Prophecy and Angels in America ,” Modern Drama 53, no. 4 (2010): 471-494. [3] Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part Two: Perestroika [1992] (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004), 146. All subsequent references to the play will be indicated parenthetically, e.g. ( Millennium , 64) or ( Perestroika , 75). [4] David Kornhaber, “Kushner at Colonus: Tragedy, Politics, and Citizenship,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 728. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid, 729. [7] Atsushi Fujita, “Queer Politics to Fabulous Politics in Angels in America : Pinklisting and Forgiving Roy Cohn,” in Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays , ed. James Fisher (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 125. [8] John Dewey, Freedom and Culture [1939] in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 , vol. 13: 1938-1939, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988): 71. [9] Ibid, 176. [10] Tony Kushner, “With a Little Help from My Friends,” [1993] in Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004), 149. [11] Ibid, 155. [12] Kornhaber, “Kushner at Colonus,” 736. [13] Hussein Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre: A Study of Political Discourse (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 73. [14] See, for example, Shannon Sullivan, “From the Foreign to the Familiar: Confronting Dewey Confronting Racial Prejudice,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18, no. 3 (2004): 193-202; Frank Margonis, “John Dewey’s Racialized Visions of the Student and Classroom Community,” Educational Theory 59, no. 1 (2009): 17-39; and Thomas D. Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895-1922 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011). [15] Thomas D. Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895-1922 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 4. [16] Ibid. [17] Ibid. [18] John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927), 38. [19] Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 6. [20] Scott R. Stroud, “The Challenge of Speaking with Others: A Pragmatist Account of Democratic Rhetoric,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2015): 100. [21] Dewey, The Public and Its Problems , 149. [22] Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race , 9. [23] John Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” [1939] in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 , vol. 14: 1939-1941, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988): 228. [24] Charlie Rose, “Tony, Tonys, and Television,” in Tony Kushner in Conversation , ed. Robert Vorlicky (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998): 46. [25] Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre , 93. [26] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 229. [27] Hongmei Peng, “Toward Inclusion and Human Unity: Rethinking Dewey’s Democratic Community,” Education & Culture 25, no. 2 (2009): 82. [28] Dewey, Freedom and Culture , 176. [29] Ibid, 177. [30] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 226. Emphasis in original. [31] Framji Minwilla, “When Girls Collide: Considering Race in Angels in America ,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 110. [32] Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre , 101. [33] Peng, “Toward Inclusion and Human Unity,” 82. [34] See, for example, Minwilla, “When Girls Collide,” 104-105; or Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre , 96. [35] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 226. [36] Tony Kushner, Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995), 6. [37] Ibid, 7. [38] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 230. [39] Michael Cadden, “Strange Angel: The Pinklisting of Roy Cohn,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 88. [40] Ron Scapp, “The Vehicle of Democracy: Fantasies toward a (Queer) Nation,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 98. [41] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 228. Footnotes About The Author(s) COURTNEY FERRITER is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Georgia. Her research interests include American pragmatism and 20th century Jewish and African American literature. She has published articles in James Baldwin Review and Education & Culture . She is currently at work on an article about Harryette Mullen’s poetic wordplay as a form of resistance against white supremacy. Editorial Board: 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 Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism. Kirsty Johnston. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 240. Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. Amy Cook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Pp. 198. The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. Patricia A. Ybarra. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 247. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch MUSE by Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. An intimate journey with the founder of a one-of-a-kind circus space hanging on by a thread in Brooklyn, NY. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents MUSE At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films Theater, Circus / Movement, Documentary, Performance Art This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks, and it will also be screened in-person on May 20th. About The Film Country United States Language English Running Time 10 minutes Year of Release 2024 An intimate journey with the founder of a one-of-a-kind circus space hanging on by a thread in Brooklyn, NY. Director/Producer/DP: Pete O'Hare Editor: Raven Dahlin Score: Forest Christenson About The Artist(s) Pete O’Hare is an Emmy-nominated Director and Cinematographer based in New York City, born and raised in Cleveland, OH. Coming from a musical background, he loves how a well-composed frame can transport you to another place. Pete directed the mini documentaries "A Day In September" and "Baby Boy A", and has filmed for ESPN+, Netflix, McDonald’s, General Electric, 3M, New York Knicks, NBC, MTV, National Geographic, Samsung, Verizon, Sprint, Whole Foods, and Vogue Italia, among others. Get in touch with the artist(s) pete@warehousefilms.com and follow them on social media https://www.peteohare.com/, https://vimeo.com/peteohare, https://www.instagram.com/pete_ohare/ Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Erin Rachel Kaplan Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 2 Visit Journal Homepage Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s Erin Rachel Kaplan By Published on May 27, 2018 Download Article as PDF Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s . Chrystyna Dail. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016; Pp. 194. In Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s , Chrystyna Dail reveals a significant piece of theatre history and asserts its rightful place in the canon of American drama. Dail begins the book by arguing that the claim often made by theatre historians such as John Gassner that social activist theatre died in the 1930s, only to resurface in the 1960s is a false one. Engaging with Douglas McDermott’s political performance continuum, Dail contends that the group Stage for Action (SFA) created a new kind of socially conscious theatre that served as a propaganda machine for the progressive left, as well as a megaphone for civil rights, workers’ rights, the fight against fascism, and more. For Dail, SFA did more than raise awareness about these issues; it was “diligently involved in theatrical praxis,” demanding and proposing solutions to social justice problems of the day (22). Dail breaks down her historical study of SFA clearly and concisely containing just enough cultural, political, and economic history to contextualize fully the work of SFA. Dail first offers a chronicle of its creation, arguing that SFA became a “reimagining of progressive performance, both during the War and after, and as an underappreciated model for social activist theatre in the United States” (15). Founded by four young women—Perry Miller, Donna Keath, Berilla Kerr, and Peggy Clark—SFA began as a tool to support the War effort in Europe and to bring attention to the “menace of native fascism” (33). In its brief three years, SFA amplified the voices of the some of the most radically anti-racist, anti-fascist, and pro-union thinkers of the era; was one of the earliest racially integrated theatre groups in the US; and became an integral part of Henry A. Wallace’s failed 1948 presidential campaign. Dail argues that what started as a small New York-based volunteer theatre group became the breeding ground for a multitude of progressive causes nationwide. To buttress this argument throughout the book, Dail highlights particular plays within the SFA canon that exemplify the progressive politics of the group. For the second chapter, Dail “explicates the relationship between Stage for Action and labor unions during and following World War II ” (45). Dail argues that Arthur Miller’s That They May Win put SFA in the spotlight. Eleanor Roosevelt discussed the play in her nationally syndicated “My Day” column, and it played to sold-out audiences in New York and around the country. For Dail, Miller’s “missing years” (1945-1946) were spent pouring “himself into revolutionary work and leftist theatrical criticism” (47). He ultimately became the playwright in residence of the SFA. That They May Win existed in multiple versions and called for better military wages, state-sponsored childcare, and the political activism of everyday Americans. Dail also critically analyzes Les Pine and Anita Short’s satirical musical Joseph McGinnical, Cynical Pinnacle, Opus II . Dail claims that “August 1946 through November 1948 saw SFA producing work that substantiated its position as the premier social activist theatre group of the late 1940s” (69). Chapter three examines specific SFA plays that adopted progressive views on racial politics including Charles Polacheck’s Skin Deep . The play was written to advocate for racial equality and address the anti-black violence and race riots making their way across the nation. In addition, Dail includes a detailed analysis of Ben Bengal’s 1946 play All Aboard , which dealt with transportation segregation, as well as Dream Job by Arnold Perl and Talk in Darkness by Malvin Wald. Performed as a part of the Wallace campaign, which fiercely advocated for full civil rights, universal healthcare and childcare, a robust social safety net, federal minimum wage laws, and equality for women in the workplace, among other policies, these SFA productions forced Truman to take up the cause of civil rights (though not as fervently as Wallace did) in order for him to win the 1948 presidential election. In her fourth chapter, Dail looks at yet another project of the SFA—its fight against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Based on close readings, she argues that Miller wrote The Crucible after Sidney Alexander’s Salem Story , noting that “the plays share the same basic plotline and major characters” (112) and that “too many parallels exist between these two artists for the overlap in their plays to be mere coincidence” (116). Finally, she chronicles the red-baiting that several members of SFA suffered. She observes that “during the decade of 1946-1956 informants ‘named’ 40 percent of Stage for Action membership as Communists or subversives” (139) and that several SFA members were called to testify in front of HUAC. Due to the outcomes of these hearings, some lost their careers and even their lives. In her final chapter, Dail somewhat undercuts her argument that HUAC brought an end to SFA. While the group formally disbanded, several socially activist theatres and productions rose in its place. She offers in-depth readings of the post-SFA plays Open Secret by Robert Adler, who addressed the horrors of the atomic bomb, as well as We Who Are the Weavers by Joseph Shore and Scott Graham Williamson, who strongly critiqued the colonization of Puerto Rico. Dail closes her analysis and argument by making the point that the professionalism and dedication to social justice found in the SFA directly links the workers’ theatres of the 1930s with the companies founded after its disbandment such as the Free Southern Theater and El Teatro Campesino. Stage for Action serves as a fascinating and incredibly well-researched and well-written exploration into an important and oft-forgotten piece of theatre history. Given SFA’s commitment to the notion that “entertainment should have a purpose…and that purpose must be exerted to prevent war, stamp out race hatreds, combat poverty” (151) and more, I cannot think of a more appropriate time to revisit and revive their works. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Erin Rachel Kaplan University of Colorado Boulder 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 Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s Samuel Beckett’s Theatre in America: The Legacy of Alan Schneider as Beckett’s American Director The Contemporary American Monologue: Performance and Politics Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left Introduction: Mediations of Authorship in American Postdramatic Mediaturgies Kaldor and Dorsen's "desktop performances" and the (Live) Coauthorship Paradox Ecologies of Media, Ecologies of Mind: Embodying Authorship Through Mediaturgy Dropping the Needle on the Record: Intermedial Contingency and Spalding Gray's Early Talk Performances #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS: Weaponizing Performance of Identity from the Digital to the Physical Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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.

Kevin Byrne 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 Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Kevin Byrne By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF African American theatre history scholarship has always wanted to commit untold stories to print and it values performance on a rubric which balances artistic impulses with cultural considerations. The work is sometimes overtly political, but always politically leaning. This scholarship gives close consideration to the un- or under-represented: the missing, forgotten, overlooked, removed, ignored, or erased. In the past, the discipline focused on individual playwrights, a collection of thematically linked dramatic texts, or a specific era such as the Harlem Renaissance or Black Arts Movement. In recent years, though, black performance scholarship has moved beyond clean, assumed definitions of racial and theatrical categorizations. This development has allowed the field to expand its reach while continuing to honor the original political impetus which drove it at its founding. The methodological lenses and historical scope of black theatre scholarship have changed considerably because the underlying definitions of race, racism, and racial categorization have shifted too. It emphasizes race as a cultural product, a mutable definition that shifts and contorts over different eras due to outside social pressures. As Harvey Young cogently summarizes these ideas in his recent Theatre & Race (2013): Although race is an invention, a convenience that encapsulates perceived (or imagined) difference, it should not be dismissed as either a mere fiction or an anachronism. Its broad acceptance, seeming materiality, and staying power are anchored in its ability to provide a narrative that unifies a collective social history with the variances in individuated social perspectives. (6) Two fraught concepts—the performativity of identity in everyday life and the fluidity of racial difference—create radical alternatives to how black theatre is analyzed. These feelings of malleability and performativity allow new considerations of contemporary theatre and the reevaluation of past events. This has also helped in the reassessment of theatre events or theatre theory based in erroneous notions of racial fixity, particularly the binary of black and white. Unmooring African American racial definitions and fully committing to the cultural underpinnings of race classification is thrilling but also unnerving. Unsuccessful scholarship in this vein reduces black identity to mere artifice, or style; such works are reductive, subjective, and random. More convincing African American theatre scholarship acknowledges a dialectically opposable concept which stabilizes black performance historicizations. This opposite pole is the materiality of the African American body: its physical presence, place onstage, or reproduction in print. This equation balances the physical markers of blackness with the cultural, experiential, and historical aspects of personality. A shift from theatre to performance is a central means of historicization which expands the variety of evidence that scholars use. Uncategorizable examples are central and cross-disciplinarity is common to many investigations, upending text-focused, time-and-location-based histories. With the fluidity of race categorizations complimented by the materiality of bodies, each work is structured along thematic concerns and racial considerations. They trace trajectories amongst the evidence, even when there is no explicit (to the participants) connections between them. I am thinking, for example, of Nicole Fleetwood’s 2011 Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness , “a study of how blackness becomes visually knowable,” and the 2012 anthology The Methuen Drama Book of Post-Black Plays , which highlights racialized work from the Age of Obama by both black and non-black playwrights. All of this changes the who or what that is studied, and how it is studied. The why remains the same, though: a leftist political bent with the desire to correct the historical record and celebrate the formerly forgotten. Tavia Nyong’o’s 2009 Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory and Harvey Young’s 2010 Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body have a variety of examples and conclusions but similar racial theorizations and historical trajectories. Strikingly, both have chapters in which the authors themselves are visiting, traversing, and commenting upon museums and museum exhibits. Nearing the close of each volume, a tension and reckoning occurs in these sections that also clearly articulates the concerns felt by scholars in black theatre history today. The past and present, of course, are in these museums. So is the display and erasure of stories and narratives. Fact and supposition blend. And, inevitably, each scholar has to account for his own physical presence and personal response while navigating these spaces. In both literal and metaphorical ways, this is how African American theatre scholars nowadays approach their roles as recorders of history and interpreters of artistic legacies. A pair of recent additions to the discipline further highlight these concerns and trends: Marvin McAllister’s 2011 Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance and Faedra Carpenter’s 2014 Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance . They share some basic connections of investigations and methodology, and the fact of their near-simultaneous arrival signals a new direction within the field. What makes these books such clear indices of recent trends is that, in them, black artists interrogate white positionality/privilege (a political goal) to undermine the very idea of racial binaries or categorizations (a social/cultural goal). The books skip forward in time and between genres: McAllister discuses the late–nineteenth century musical A Trip to Coontown and Richard Pryor routines while Carpenter moves from plays to Dave Chappelle’s TV show to African American performance artists. At the core, each is an analysis of black identity. Better yet, they discuss black identities: the multiplicity of perspectives that self-identify as black. From the titles the works may seem to be about binaries of black/white but, in reality, they are about the variety of viewpoints that open up a dizzying array of possibilities for mapping connections. Whiting Up and Coloring Whiteness are interesting, innovative, scholarly rigorous examples of that potential. The most exciting and empowering aspect of contemporary African American theatre scholarship is the opportunity for new “black and…” voices to be heard—female, gay, lesbian, and others—and put in conversation with each other on the common ground of race. Importantly, this can help the discipline respond quickly to new social developments which can be incorporated into larger narratives of identity, community, and performance. May the Black Lives Matter movement allow for deeper investigations into the meanings of blackness, the black community, and black political action! From the depths of the Rachel Dolezal case, let a thousand dissertation chapters spring forth! Here’s hoping George Wolfe’s adaptation of Shuffle Along provides the right punctuation mark to the final year of the Obama presidency! Current social, cultural, and theatrical developments cause scholars to constantly reevaluate of the past, still searching for those plays, events, and people who whisper their meanings to us. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Dr. Kevin Byrne is an Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson. His recent investigations concern the materiality of blackface performance and the circulation of racist ideology. 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.

Watch Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence by Bettina Böhler at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE focuses on Christoph Schlingensief as a “family person” (Schlingensief on Schlingensief) who dealt equally with his relationship to his parents and his relationship to Germany in his work. The film traces his development from pubescent filmmaker with an artistic bloodlust to revolutionary stage director in Berlin and Bayreuth, and, ultimately, to Germany’s “national artist”, who was purportedly venerated by all and invited to create the German Pavilion for the 2011 Venice Biennale. SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE explores Schlingensief’s untiring, and ultimately inexhaustible, love-hate relationship to Germany, to its high culture, and to its petite-bourgeoisie sentiments – which he attributed to himself more than anyone else – via scenes of East Germans being made into sausage, shouts of “Kill Helmut Kohl!” (documenta X) and an attempt to rehabilitate Wagner (PARSIFAL). The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Bettina Böhler Theater, Documentary, Film, Multimedia, Opera, Performance Art This film will be screened in-person on May 18th and also be available to watch online May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country Germany Language German with English subtitles Running Time 122 minutes Year of Release 2020 SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE focuses on Christoph Schlingensief as a “family person” (Schlingensief on Schlingensief) who dealt equally with his relationship to his parents and his relationship to Germany in his work. The film traces his development from pubescent filmmaker with an artistic bloodlust to revolutionary stage director in Berlin and Bayreuth, and, ultimately, to Germany’s “national artist”, who was purportedly venerated by all and invited to create the German Pavilion for the 2011 Venice Biennale. SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE explores Schlingensief’s untiring, and ultimately inexhaustible, love-hate relationship to Germany, to its high culture, and to its petite-bourgeoisie sentiments – which he attributed to himself more than anyone else – via scenes of East Germans being made into sausage, shouts of “Kill Helmut Kohl!” (documenta X) and an attempt to rehabilitate Wagner (PARSIFAL). Director, Screenplay, Editor: Bettina Böhler / With: Christoph Schlingensief, Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Volker Spengler, Alfred Edel, Udo Kier, Sophie Rois, Bernhard Schütz, Kerstin Grassmann, Helge Schneider, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Susanne Bredehöft, Tilda Swinton, Artur Albrecht, Achim von Paczenzky, Helga Stöwhase, Sebastian Rudolph a.o. / Script Counselling: Angelina Maccarone / Research and Assistant: Lydia Anemüller / Sound Design: Daniel Iribarren / Sound Mixer: Adrian Baumeister / Producer: Frieder Schlaich, Irene von Alberti / Produced by Filmgalerie 451 / In Coproduction with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (Rolf Bergmann) und Westdeutscher Rundfunk (Jutta Krug) / Founded by Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Deutscher Filmförderfonds About The Artist(s) BETTINA BÖHLER was born in Freiburg in 1960 and is one of Germany's premier film editors. She has edited over 80 feature films, documentaries and TV movies and has worked with Christian Petzold, Valeska Grisebach and other filmmakers of the Berlin School. She also has also long been associated with influential directors such as Christoph Schlingensief, Angelina Maccarone, Oskar Roehler and Margarethe von Trotta. She started her career in film at the age of 18 as an assistant editor and has been an editor since 1985. In 2007 Bettina Böhler was awarded the Bremer Filmpreis for Lifetime Achievement in European Cinema ("Bremen Film Award"). She was nominated for the Deutscher Filmpreis for Best Film Editing twice: in 2012 for her work on BARBARA (Christian Petzold) and in 2017 for WILD (Nicolette Krebitz). Bettina Böhler lectured at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB). She is a member of the European Film Academy, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Get in touch with the artist(s) kino@filmgalerie451.de and follow them on social media https://www.filmgalerie451.de/en/films/schlingensief-voice-shook-the-silence# Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Meredith Conti 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 Community Circles and Love Triangles: Gun Violence and Belonging in Oklahoma! and West Side Story Meredith Conti By Published on November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF As the national tour of Daniel Fish’s critically acclaimed Oklahoma! crisscrossed the United States in 2022, company members found themselves in unfamiliar territory. Instead of the stunned silences and standing ovations that typified the production’s reception at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, the national tour’s audiences offered an unexpectedly prickly bouquet of responses, including walkouts, boos, taunts, “thumbs down” gestures, refund demands, social media rants, and in one case, “vomiting in the balcony.” ( [1] ) Of course, Oklahoma! had its share of detractors since the production’s pre-Broadway days at St. Ann’s Warehouse, just as the national tour’s hostile reception was neither comprehensive or invariable; still, in cities across the country, the revival inspired tonally different audience responses to its New York City run. In a 2023 HowlRound article, Jud Fry actor Christopher Barrow suggests some likely triggers in Fish’s Oklahoma! for the tour’s audiences, including its aesthetic boldness, its identity-conscious casting, and its refusal to treat its source material as canonical, precious, and unchanging. ( [2] ) (It is worth noting, too, that the production’s original deep thrust staging was flattened to fit the US’s network of proscenium theatres). While I, like many non-coastal Americans, bristle at generalized depictions of our theatregoers as less open-minded or equipped to handle experimental or challenging performances, I do suspect that Bannow missed a potential trigger for heartland audiences: the revival takes direct aim at the nation’s ever-hungry gun culture and those who continually nourish it through word and action. ( [3] ) A buoyant, nostalgic, and unproblematically patriotic musical Fish’s Oklahoma! is not. But was Oklahoma! ever? The theatre of post-Newtown America (or post-UVA, post-Pulse Nightclub, post-Las Vegas, post-Tops Market….) has yet to fully reckon with a discomfiting, perhaps inconvenient reality: the industry and its artists have long been active, direct participants in the country’s gun culture. Indeed, many of the theatre’s cumulative products, from anti-gun docudramas and Annie Get Your Gun revivals to vaudevillian William Tell tricks and Wild West Show battle reenactments, are not just embodied responses to gun culture, they are gun culture. While the term itself has become something of a partisan battleground, “gun culture” is an omnipresent, self-reinforcing system of beliefs, values, and feelings about firearms and their usage, as well as the behavioral actions and socioeconomic, cultural, and political transactions that inspire or sustain them. Gun cultures exist anywhere guns circulate, and therefore “gun culture” as a term lacks specificity until contextualized by the society in which it functions. In what follows, I treat the phrase “US-American gun culture” as neither neutral nor strictly pejorative or celebratory, though I favor Pamela Haag’s assertion that gun companies have long exerted a behemothic and tactical influence on how Americans regard guns. ( [4] ) Despite the relative youth of the nation’s gun culture, it is a maddeningly complex, enduring, and variform organism. It whispers in myths; it shouts at the gun range. It operates simultaneously on the personal and institutional levels and engages manifold publics. It is animated by patrolling border militias and simulated gunfights at the OK Corral, and it is embodied by gun control activists and the twelve-year-old girl cradling her first shotgun in the glow of the Christmas tree. It meticulously sutures guns to American identity, and American life to guns. And whether or not we like it, the theatre regularly supplies the thread. Onstage gunplay not only disturbs audiences by surrogating actual gun violence or reenacting trauma, however; it also delights, astounds, amuses, and disarms. Nowhere is this capacious narrative and affective flexibility more apparent than in the American musical canon, where firearms serve a startling variety of functions while sliding easily along spectrums of genre, style, and tone. They are the go-to props of musicals set or staged in wartime, symbolic of hostile environments, courageous heroes, and desperate aggressors. They are the accoutrement of comedy and the drivers of tragedy. And, of course, they persist as ambivalent, malleable, and unpredictable indexers of political schisms, social inequities, and the empire-building violence required by Western patriarchy, colonization, and capitalism. As a vehicle for propelling questions of US-American gun culture(s) into the popular consciousness, the musical is a uniquely equipped performance form. Mounted to the notes of soaring harmonies, transported on the limbs of undulating, often virtuosic bodies, or underscored by elaborate landscapes and soundscapes, gun narratives intensify, stretch, transmute, and become unsettled in the musical medium. Despite their thematic and aesthetic heterogeneity, however, American gun musicals tend to press guns into service as potent indicators of belonging or marginality—often by distinguishing natural or paradigmatic Americanness through authoritative gun use or by harnessing guns as tools that induct characters into or expulse them from meaningful relationships, identity groups, or communities. ( [5] ) Indeed, with few exceptions, a gun musical’s firearms help compose, fortify, alter, and/or destroy human connections, be they romantic couples, love triangles, family units, friend circles, or communities organized by place, politics, religion, race, and other social or material conditions. To trace the guns in Hamilton (2015), for example, is to see guns violently regulate American identity/ies. ( [6] ) The mainspring of 2000’s The Wild Party ’s climactic gunfire, to cite another, is a love triangle that materializes and dematerializes in a single evening. And while The Wild Party is fictional and Hamilton fictional ized , intimate partner and intra/inter-community gun violence in the US is real, persistent, and documented. According to the John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, over half of all intimate partner homicides in the US are committed with firearms, and “a woman is five times more likely to be murdered when her abuser has access to a gun.” ( [7] ) In addition, the Deputy Police Commissioner of Buffalo, New York argued in 2021 that an “overwhelming number of shootings and murders in Buffalo stem from revenge, retaliation and escalating beefs,” many of them now fueled by social media. ( [8] ) American gun violence carves up communities along and across categories of identity and culture: Black Americans are ten times more likely to die by gun homicide than white Americans;( [9] ) 4.5 million US women alive today report being threatened with a gun;( [10] ) firearms were used in 73% of trans American homicides between 2017 and 2021;( [11] ) current or former members of the US military make up a disproportionately high number of gun suicides;( [12] ) and “gun deaths recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children,” making the US an “extreme outlier” in gun fatalities in minors. ( [13] ) Still the country’s gun culture continues to thrive, buoyed by a formidable supply of ideologies, narratives, factoids, slogans, and figureheads that operate both within and far beyond gun-positive spaces. Germane to this essay is the recurring deployment of gun industry propaganda that reinforces an insider/outsider binary of American life. This includes mythic depictions of gun ownership that imply gun-handling is an endower of true, unassailable Americanness, and that personal firearms enable US-Americans to safeguard their loved ones and communities from external threats (despite data that concludes that guns in homes increase the risk of gun injury and death). ( [14] ) In this essay, I analyze how guns and the people who carry them shape and reshape two of the American musical’s classic human groupings: the community circle and the love triangle. I engage in close readings of two Golden Age musicals, Oklahoma! (1943) and West Side Story (1957), as well as their recent, gun-heavy Broadway revivals, in order to illuminate how firearms arbitrate or exacerbate race- and class-based conflicts within the depicted communities and “solve” the musicals’ imbalanced love triangles¾either facilitating a community-sustaining union or preventing a community-conjoining union from occurring. Indeed, in assessing these musicals and their twenty-first-century revivals as gun musicals, distinctive patterns in the gendering, racializing, and classing of American guns and gun violence become evident. These patterns, not surprisingly, are directly tethered to and expressive of the gun cultures and the wider sociopolitical landscapes in which the productions were created. As I argue, the original musicals reified conventional notions of the appropriate US-American gun handler as the white, Christian, cishet man, presenting their gun possessions as uncomplicated, necessary, and intuitive within the plays’ white supremacist patriarchies. The revivals, however, attempt to adapt the musicals’ guns to the country’s hyper-violent present, both by amplifying the gun’s role in catalyzing domestic and community violence and inculcating more participants into gun culture systems, including through the increased representation of skillful women, Black, and Latine gun handlers. In manifesting this provocative transferring of power, the revivals variously challenge and fortify the mythic triangulation of firearms, white masculinity, and Americanness. Shotgun Weddings and Handgun Honeymoons: The Guns of Oklahoma! (1943) and West Side Story (1957) Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway two years before World War II’s Allies and Axis powers laid down their arms. West Side Story ’s Broadway opening occurred one day after the Little Rock Nine, surrounded by heavily armed National Guardsmen, integrated Arkansas’s Central High School. While mapping both musicals onto a timeline of US gun events is a useful task, it is more meaningful to determine how Golden Age gun musicals reflected and upheld prevailing firearm discourses and representations. Following a brief primer on the material and metaphorical contours of midcentury America’s gun culture, I will assess Oklahoma! and West Side Story ’s guns—and, more importantly, gun handlers—as chief arbitrators of belonging or marginality within the musicals’ imagined communities. By the 1940s and 50s, US-American gun culture bore only a partial resemblance to its nineteenth-century predecessor(s). As homegrown demand for firearms dried up following the American Civil War, the US gun industry attempted to stem the tide by pursuing foreign military contracts, especially in Europe, and by popularizing civilian gun ownership and use in North America. Late-1800s ads from Winchester, Ithaca Gun Company, and other manufacturers increasingly appealed to modern women and family men, recommending shooting sports—hunting, target shooting, and trapshooting—as healthful, safe, character building, suitable for women and children, and implicitly American (despite the sports’ much longer history in Europe). ( [15] ) Meanwhile, the newly founded National Rifle Association (NRA) promoted the creation of rifle clubs, training courses, and competitive shooting matches with an eye toward advancing marksmanship in the general public and, by extension, deepening the country’s reserve of skilled shooters. ( [16] ) In the twentieth century’s early decades, increasing numbers of white middle-class women took up shooting sports, while gun manufacturers and conservative commentators intensified their use of fear-based rhetoric to present personal gun ownership as the effective defense against home invasions and violent assaults. The latter exploited white Americans’ anxieties around race, immigration, and the specter of “urban crime” and reified whiteness as a prerequisite for proper gun ownership in the United States. Such rhetoric persisted through the mid-twentieth century as the civil rights movement re-enlivened debates about which Americans had (or should have) uncontestable gun rights. Some civil rights leaders, for example, proclaimed the right to bear arms as essential both to protecting Black communities from violent white mobs and to fully enfranchising African Americans as US citizens. As historian Nicholas Johnson notes, Rosa Parks, T.R.M. Howard, Daisy Bates, and other Black activists whose families were terrorized by firebombs and burning crosses “embraced private [armed] self-defense and political nonviolence without any sense of contradiction.” ( [17] ) As a weary but victorious America emerged from two World Wars, flush with good-guys-with-guns narratives, the gun industry endeavored to amend US history by inserting firearms at every page turn. According to Haag, midcentury ads “retroactively fetishized” guns and boasted “[c]asual assertions…that Americans had ‘always’ loved guns, or that they had a ‘timeless’ tradition of gun fluency, a ‘priceless tradition’ in firearms, or had ‘long known how to shoot,’ with ‘every boy’ trained as a marksman.” ( [18] ) Of especial importance in this historical re-envisioning was the mythologizing of the Wild West. Colt’s ads “rehabilitated the cowboy” into a “steely-eyed” and courageous icon of white American masculinity, while Winchester marketed its Model 1873 rifle as The Gun that Won the West. ( [19] ) Mythic depictions of the American West swept through 1940s and 50s popular culture like wildfire. Taking a page from the dime novels, frontier melodramas, and Wild West Shows of the nineteenth century, midcentury movies, magazines, and television series invited American audiences to visit an Old West of unparalleled danger, bravery, and beauty, with expert gun handling serving as the coin of the realm. ( [20] ) It was within this gun culture that Oklahoma! and West Side Story ’s original productions operated. In an essay illogically asserting that politics are “absent” in American theatre, political theorist and theatre writer Benjamin Barber concedes that “on second inspection” the dual love plots in Oklahoma! “emerge as emblems of a powerful social context”: No less than Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle , whose social context is a struggle between goatherds and vintners over the right to use a contested valley, Oklahoma! puts the question of whether the territory can unite as a state around a common civic faith and a common political identity, or will be allowed to fracture and disintegrate along the fissures opened up by the competition of its economic factions. ( [21] ) These adversarial populations—farmers and cowmen, settlers and nomads—coalesce (if only outwardly) as the Indian and Oklahoman territories become one state. ( [22] ) As Bruce Kirle explains, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! “historicizes the isolationist/ interventionist conflict that preceded and shadowed America’s participation in World War II” and argues for unity in the face of a common enemy: the spread of fascism. ( [23] ) Yet national belonging in Oklahoma! is determined not just politically or geographically, but also socioeconomically and racially, as Andrea Most and Warren Hoffman have ably illustrated. ( [24] ) Furthermore, the musical’s male characters employ violence (or the threat of violence) as a way of formalizing the community’s boundaries, with firearms often accelerating the admissions process or keeping outsiders at bay. Indeed, the firearm’s vital role in US settler colonialism is plainly wrought in the musical. Though the original libretto contains no staged or referenced gun deaths, it also notably contains no Indigenous characters, suggesting that the settlers’ rifles have already succeeded in ejecting Native communities from their lands (“Oklahoma” comes from the Chocktaw “okla humma,” meaning “Red People”) and denying their identities as US-Americans. ( [25] ) Because Rodgers and Hammerstein “erased [the] indigenous complexity” of the musical’s source material, Lynn Riggs’s 1930 play Green Grow the Lilacs , and whitewashed its frontier community, Oklahoma! ’s guns persist as the designated material and symbolic deliverers of Manifest Destiny. ( [26] ) In more recent productions—at DC’s Arena Stage (2010), the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2018), and Broadway’s Circle in the Square (2019)—multiracial casts reconstitute Oklahoma! ’s typically homogeneous community, “unsettl[ing] preconceptions of the frontier as white,” as Donatella Galella argues. ( [27] ) However, in Oklahoma! ’s first Broadway run guns appeared predominantly in the hands of white men, though some scholars read farmhand Jud Fry’s sexual savagery as representative of a stereotyped class- and race-based Otherness that “cannot be whitened.” ( [28] ) (Curly’s description of Jud as “bullet-colored, growly man,” indicating, perhaps, a tanned, dirty laborer’s bronzy skin tone, nevertheless leaves open the possibility that Jud is not white). ( [29] ) The only woman to touch a gun is Aunt Eller, Oklahoma! ’s no-nonsense matriarch; in the spontaneous brawl between farmers and cowboys at the top of Act Two, Aunt Eller “ grabs a gun from some man’s holster and fires it, ” putting an abrupt halt to the fighting. She then points the gun at groups of men, coercing them to rejoin the singing. They do. Within Oklahoma! ’s strict gender binary, Aunt Eller is unique. “She is an uncommonly public woman who mediates between male and female culture,” notes musicologist Susan C. Cook, but “[h]er public power comes at a cost; widowed, she is a desexualized crone, who stands apart from the other women[.]” ( [30] ) Gun handling, then, is a mark of Aunt Eller’s singularity. If Oklahoma! ’s guns exclusively belong to white men, what do they signal about the men’s belonging within the musical’s real and aspirational American communities? Two scenes offer clues: cowboy Curly McClain and antisocial farmhand Jud Fry’s private meeting in Act One, and Act Two’s box social. In the first, Curly and Jud converge in Jud’s lodgings, the farm’s defunct smokehouse, where Curly goads Jud into imagining killing himself (the better to live on in the memories of his mourners). On the smokehouse’s walls, Rodgers and Hammerstein specify, hang the accoutrements of manual farm labor and images of nearly naked women. Below them sit limited furnishings: a “grimy” and unmade bed, a spittoon, and a table and chairs. ( [31] ) Within this hypermasculine space, a remote and decommissioned site of work that now hosts the community pariah, each of Jud and Curly’s gun acts—for they are acts in the theatrical sense—exteriorize the men’s identical objectives: to triumph over their competitor, win Laurey and her farmland, and through these conjoined possessions achieve a level of community integration and security that presently evades them both. The acts escalate in intensity as the scene progresses. Jud seizes his pistol as Curly approaches the smokehouse and begins to methodically clean it; following a spate of Curly’s insults, Jud “reflex[ively]” pulls its trigger and blasts a bullet into the ceiling; Curly demonstrates his shooting skill by firing a bullet through knothole in the smokehouse wall. Due to their solitude and emotional intimacy, Jud and Curly’s forced displays of heteronormative frontier masculinity reverberate with both violent and homoerotic potential. But rather than the smokehouse containing the men’s armed antagonism, the guns audibly broadcast it, drawing Aunt Eller, Ali Hakim, and several others to their spot. “’S all right!” Aunt Eller assures those who have gathered. “Nobody hurt, just a pair of fools swapping’ noises.” ( [32] ) The box social is a community-sanctioned pageant of territorial masculinity masquerading as a charity auction. Like the display behaviors of male peacocks and harbor seals, Oklahoma! ’s men flaunt their authority, capital, and sexual devotion, but unlike the female peacocks and harbor seals in the market for a mate, the eligible women whose lunch hampers (and selves) are up for auction lack the agency to choose or refuse bidders. “ Oklahoma! thus embodies what Erin Addison calls an ‘American secular ideology’ of individualism and freedom for men and romance/marriage for women,” offers Cook. ( [33] ) Within this frontier thunderdome of cishet male competition, guns are enlisted as valuable commodities and tools of intimidation. In negotiations as part of the box social’s transactional politics are Oklahoma!’ s two love triangles. Curly and Jud are in pursuit of Laurey, who understands she must choose a man to help manage the farm she has inherited. The flirtatious Ado Annie, meanwhile, is torn between sweet but featherbrained cowboy Will Parker and the “Persian peddler / Lothario” Ali Hakim, the latter of whom is an ethnoracial outsider “typically played broadly and theatrically—for laughs—via the conventions of vaudeville,” writes Kirle. ( [34] ) Given that Ali’s interest in Ado Annie is carnal rather than marital, Will and Ali’s battle over Ado Annie’s hamper is an asymmetrical affair. Its lopsidedness is also engendered by violence, as Ado Annie’s father Carnes forces Ali to participate at gunpoint, prodding the peddler in the back with the tip of his gun to ratchet up the bidding. Though Will loses the hamper to Ali, he “gets” Ado Annie by satisfying Carnes’s demand that his daughter’s husband-to-be be financially solvent. Later, Ali marries the universally irritating Gertie Cummings in a shotgun wedding, consequently abandoning his nomadic lifestyle and assimilating into the territory folks’ white Christian community, his amorous ways and his Otherness curbed by the promise of gun violence. In Oklahoma! , the fathers’ firearms orchestrate unions that are advantageous for the community’s survival but not necessarily for marital harmony. Sung by the musical’s bachelors with Ali singing lead, Act One’s “It’s a Scandal! It’s a Outrage!” lampoons the men’s “entrapment” by armed fathers and their supposedly eager daughters: MEN: It’s gotten’ so you cain’t have any fun! Every daughter has a father with a gun! It’s a scandal, it’s a outrage! How a gal gets a husband today!( [35] ) Winning Laurey’s hamper (and presumably her hand in marriage) also requires considerable capital. In an effort to best Jud—who eventually bids “all I got in the world,” two years of savings from farm work—Curly sells off the vital assets of a cowboy: first his saddle, then his horse, and finally his gun. As the coup de grâce of the men’s acrimonious bidding, Curly drawing his gun is read first as a physical threat, frightening the crowd and inspiring Jud to retreat. For Scott McMillin, Curly’s capacity with a gun appeals to Laurey because it keeps Jud’s violence in check: “The cowboy-hero handles a gun so well that even the hired hand has to worry about him—that is one of the hero’s desirable attributes.” ( [36] ) Even after his gun sells, Curly secures Laurey’s hamper, her hand, and newfound respectability as a chosen caretaker of colonized Oklahoman land. Of the three guns in Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story , the famed musical that transports Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to a hot and claustrophobic Manhattan neighborhood in the 1950s, two tellingly belong to law enforcement officials. Lieutenant Schrank and Officer Krupke are white supremacist authority figures who enforce an inequitable set of rules for rival street gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the (traditionally) white ethnic Jets. The officers never draw their guns, at least according to the Broadway libretto. Schrank is a plainclothes cop whose weapon is presumably concealed by his suit jacket; Krupke’s sidearm, however, is always a visible part of his police uniform, indexing his simultaneous, conflated roles as neighborhood protector and aggressor. The third gun, and the only one that discharges within the course of the musical, is extracted from its apartment hiding place in Act Two, Scene One by Chino, a young Shark desperate to avenge the death of the gang’s leader, Bernardo. Chino unwraps the gun, which the stage directions specify has been stored in a cloth “the same color as BERNARDO’s shirt,” and jams it into his pocket before exiting, affiliating West Side Story ’s sole civilian firearm with two Puerto Rican immigrant men. ( [37] ) At the musical’s climax Chino finds his target, former Jet member Tony, and fatally shoots him as he runs into the arms of his lover Maria, Bernardo’s sister and Chino’s intended wife. As “CHINO stands very still, bewildered by the gun limp in his hand,” the lovers sing fragments of “Somewhere,” the musical’s utopic ballad of freedom and inclusion, before Tony succumbs to his gunshot wound. In the action that follows, Maria silently beckons for Chino’s gun and then turns it on Sharks and Jets alike, who at the report of the gunshot have amassed in a “ritual assembly” around Tony’s body. “How many bullets are left, Chino? Enough for you? And you? All of you? WE ALL KILLED HIM; and my brother and Riff. I, too. I CAN KILL NOW BECAUSE I HATE NOW. How many can I kill, Chino? How many – and still have one bullet left for me?” Unable to pull the trigger, Maria throws the gun away and collapses on the ground, sobbing. In the musical’s final moments, Tony’s body is carried away by Jet and Shark boys, a procession forms, and Maria follows in its wake, “lift[ing] her head proudly and triumphantly.” The neighborhood’s adults, including Schrank and Krupke, remain onstage, “bowed, alone, useless” as the curtain falls. ( [38] ) The importance of this gun, as a material node in which the musical’s themes of racialized violence, urban youth culture, and generational discord seem to converge, has largely gone unacknowledged in the existing literature, likely because the gun is introduced relatively late in the play, after Bernardo and Jet leader Riff die by knife-wounds in the gangs’ late-night rumble. However, even in the pre-van Hove world of West Side Story , a world that Brian Herrera describes as “characterized by the constant threat of incipient violence,” guns are conspicuous. ( [39] ) Consider the Jets’ first conversation about rumbling with the Sharks. Riff suggests that the Sharks “might ask for bottles or knives or zip guns,” inspiring a worried “Zip guns…Gee!” from Baby John, the youngest of the group. ( [40] ) Guns are named again at the gangs’ war council, not by Riff or Bernardo but by Tony, who attempts to mitigate mounting tensions by urging the leaders to agree to a fair fight, sans weapons. “Bottles, knives, guns! What a coop full of chickens!” he baits. ( [41] ) In both conversations, the Jets are depicted as reluctant to arm themselves with guns as a way of holding their turf: “I wanna hold it like we always held it, with skin!” Riff assures his gang in Act One. ( [42] ) And yet, in Jerome Robbins’ choreography the Jets habitually map onto their bodies gestures of guns and gun violence. Jets wannabe Anybodys responds to A-Rab’s insults about her appearance by shooting him with her finger, prompting Baby John to ask about the maiming power of zip guns. No one answers. Similarly in “Cool,” a frenetic dance in which the Jets attempt to regulate their volatile, pre-rumble energies, A-Rab shapes his hand into a gun, pantomimes firing it, and shouts “pow!,” a close mirroring of Anybodys’ finger shot. In a choreographic replication of cycles of violence, A-Rab is now no longer the victim but the shooter. Ying Zhu and Daniel Belgrad note in their study of dance in West Side Story ’s 1961 film adaptation that “Over the course of the dance, this [gun] gesture is not eliminated, but is disciplined and integrated into the emotional fabric of coolness, so that Action, at the dance’s end, can control it and use it.” ( [43] ) The Jets’ pretend gunplay, Zhu and Belgrad argue, can be situated within the musical’s larger motif of subversive “play [as] the bodily assertion of vitality in the face of adult regulation.” ( [44] ) Of course, this simulated battleground of finger pistols and vocalized “pows” —itself a reflection of popular mid-century children’s games pitting cops against robbers, cowboys against Indians—fails to prevent real gun violence from materializing. As Herrera, David Román, Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, and Frances Negrón-Muntaner have all forcefully argued, West Side Story ’s message of racial tolerance comes at an ironic cost: the perpetuation of Latine stereotypes and the faulty association of urban US-American crime to rising rates of immigration. ( [45] ) In the original lyrics to “America,” Shark girl Anita paints an unseemly picture of her native island, depicting Puerto Rico’s inhabitants as disease-ridden, oversexed, poor, and prone to unrestrained bursts of gun violence: “Always the hurricanes blowing, / Always the population growing, / And the money owing, / And the babies crying, / And the bullets flying.” ( [46] ) The fact that the only gun that takes a life in West Side Story is owned by one Shark and fired by another is neither inconsequential nor unrelated to Bernardo and Chino’s Puerto-Ricanness and their shared status as racialized outsiders who, if Anita’s lyrical tirade is at all based on reality, brought the problems of their homeland with them. The lie Anita tells Tony after being sexually assaulted at Doc’s store—that Chino has fatally shot Maria—is not only plausible, given Chino’s armed state; it also accords with the feud’s escalating violence and anticipates the ballistic trauma to come. In contrast to the white police officers’ holstered weapons, Bernardo’s gun was unsecured in the home and becomes uncontainable on the streets. With Maria’s seizure of the gun, its relationship to the Latine community is solidified. Though she is clearly unaccustomed to handling the gun, its scriptive thingness immediately instructs her how to channel what the libretto terms her “savage” rage. ( [47] ) America Reloaded: Gun-Centric Revivals of Oklahoma! (2019) and West Side Story (2020) In the midst of its direct transfer from St. Ann’s Warehouse to Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, Daniel Fish’s revival of Oklahoma! grabbed headings in early 2019 by announcing it would be Broadway’s first “Gun Neutral” production. For every visible gun onstage, Oklahoma! ’s producers donated to “organizations working to destroy illegal guns” as well as to those providing arts and STEM programming to communities disproportionately impacted by US-American gun violence. Speaking on the production’s partnership with the non-partisan Gun Neutral Initiative, lead producer Eva Price remarked: “[j]ust because a particular story calls for the presence of a particular weapon, that doesn’t mean that we have to remain complacent in America’s gun-violence epidemic. Helping to destroy firearms that shouldn’t be in circulation is both a privilege and a responsibility.” ( [48] ) Implicit in this gun neutral pledge is an acknowledgement that even prop firearms cannot claim neutrality in 2019 (if indeed they ever could). Furthermore, monetary pledges concede that gun cultures and politics are inextricably bound up in economic transactions and therefore tend to capacitate the financially privileged. Much like carbon offsetting, a gun neutral pledge operates from an assumption that even simulated gunplay has the potential to cause harm; it attempts to mitigate possible negative effects, even as it admits the perceived inevitability of theatrical and mediatized guns in popular culture. Shortly after the news went viral, the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action characterized the production’s move as “‘smack[ing] of antigun political pandering.’” ( [49] ) There is much to attend to in Fish’s Oklahoma! and Belgian auteur Ivo van Hove’s revival of West Side Story (not the least of which are van Hove’s casting of a sexual predator in the role of Bernardo and staging of Anita’s assault as a penetrative rape). ( [50] ) But rather than comprehensively review the productions or summarize their critical receptions—the latter no small task, given the strikingly polarized opinions of Fish’s and van Hove’s work—I wish to compare the productions’ transformative treatments of guns with those advanced by their source productions. ( [51] ) Historically, the guns of Oklahoma! and West Side Story have operated as connotatively ambiguous objects until they are lifted into service by their handlers. That is, Curly, Jud, and Carnes’s guns are expected accessories for “territory folks” that become threatening with use. Fish and van Hove’s guns, by contrast, persistently and independently menace, from the racks of guns hanging on Oklahoma! ’s auditorium walls, always in view and materially and spatially inculcating theatregoers into the production’s culture of guns, to the pistol tattoo above Chino’s hip, a symbol of his early indoctrination into a gun-saturated world (he is now forever “armed”) and a foreshadowing of West Side Story ’s tragic climax. The revivals’ guns not only consummate the violent impulses of their operators, they engender personal and systemic violence. Of Fish’s Oklahoma! Soraya Nadia McDonald asserts, “social order is enforced and maintained by guns,” a description easily transferrable to van Hove’s New York. ( [52] ) In a conspicuous extension of the original musicals’ gun narratives, the revivals’ community circles and love triangles are contoured or irrevocably broken by armed characters and gun violence. Fish and van Hove take different tacks in mining and reframing their source material. Fish retains Hammerstein’s book almost in its entirety, embedding his major interventions interstitially or via bespoke stagings of scenes and songs. In its most dramatic departure from the libretto, Fish’s Oklahoma! reconceptualizes Jud’s killing as a deliberate gun death. On Curly and Laurey’s wedding day, Jud kisses the bride and presents the couple with a gift: his gun, and an opportunity to end his life. It is an earnest plea with a subtle “gotcha” undertone, for if granted, Jud’s slaughter will forever haunt their wedding day memories. Curly, with Laurey’s wordless blessing, accepts Jud’s offer and shoots him. Husband and wife are sprayed by blood as Jud crumples to the ground. ( [53] ) By replacing Jud’s accidental stabbing with the close-range gunning down of an unarmed man (however consensual the victim), Fish renders the impromptu trial that exonerates Curly of criminal culpability distressingly perfunctory. Curly’s acquittal, writes The Atlantic ’s Todd S. Purdum, “feels less like justice and more like rough complicity in vigilantism.” ( [54] ) West Side Story ’s single, fatal gunshot remains as scripted, though van Hove’s fixation on US-American gun violence is manifest throughout the production. Moreover, with a compressed run-time of 105 minutes and no intermission, the revival hastens toward Tony’s gun death without West Side Story ’s customary flashes of levity: “I Feel Pretty” has been cut and “Gee, Officer Krupke” refashioned. Though Fish began developing Oklahoma! in 2007 at Bard College, its 2019 Broadway iteration and the 2020 West Side Story revival hum with unmistakable nowness, dialoguing directly with US-American gun politics in the Trumpian age. Both stories are set in an unspecified present and feature multiracial casts, with gender expansive ( West Side Story ) and disabled actors ( Oklahoma! ) further diversifying the depicted communities. ( [55] ) Fish’s reimagined frontier boasts an interracial love triangle (Rebecca Naomi Jones’s Laurey, Damon Daunno’s Curly, and Patrick Vaill’s Jud) and a Black federal marshal (Anthony Cason as Cord Elam), the latter’s powerlessness during the murder trial suggestive not just of the community’s fervor to exonerate Curly but the precariousness of Cord’s endowed authority, even when armed. The antagonistic outsider Jud Fry is no longer a brutish farmhand, but a brooding, wiry, plaid-and-hoodie-wearing blonde, “a repository of loneliness and disconnection” who seeks community belonging and validation through Laurey. ( [56] ) Developed by Vaill and Fish over years of collaboration, this Jud oozes a despondent vulnerability that adheres his villainous acts¾including sexually assaulting Laurey and attempting to kill Curly with a switchblade masquerading as a kaleidoscope¾to his ‘victimization’ by an insular, cliquish community. “[It is t]he act of someone who feels pushed into a corner,” Vaill claims of Jud’s foiled murder plot. “This is someone who feels he does not have control, which is scary.” Of Jud’s role as the story’s villain, Vaill is quick to qualify: “He’s cast as the villain …. At the end of the day, he’s guilty of being in love with someone that people don’t think he should be in love with.” ( [57] ) Fish and Vaill’s apologist approach to Jud sets the character, and his assisted gun suicide, adrift in murky cultural waters. “Sympathy for the Incel?” wonders Catherine M. Young from the title of her HowlRound essay on Oklahoma!. In it, Young records a handful of the disparate public responses: Journalist Alison Stewart couldn’t tell if Jud was more like a fragile, vulnerable “Kurt Cobain type” or a school shooter. Sarah Holdren and Elisabeth Vincentelli both describe him as an incel, the involuntarily celibate men who resent (and occasionally kill) women who won’t sleep with them. Frank Rich was enthralled by Jud’s anguish. Such ambiguity has political implications. ( [58] ) Ambiguities there may be, but for Fish and Vaill, Jud is a distinctly American product: a seething, unstable concoction of “virulent misogyny,” toxic (white) masculinity, and lone-wolf reclusiveness that finds affirmation through the nation’s gun culture. ( [59] ) But here another troubling narrative metastases. If Jud represents “the role of the outsider that the community can create,” as Fish indicates (emphasis added), then the blame for Jud’s ostracism lies not with him, but with those charged with nurturing and binding communities together: the play’s women. ( [60] ) In van Hove’s New York, the Jets encompasses white and Black “native” Americans who together rail against the immigrant Puerto Rican Sharks, transforming the Jets’ racial animus from blatant white supremacism to a sort of qualified nativism with irreconcilable outcomes. “Mr. van Hove’s casting misrepresents the real solidarities that form at the margins of U.S. citizenship,” notes writer and translator Carina del Valle Schorske of the blended Jets. “‘Inclusion’ here is code for willful colorblindness.” ( [61] ) The gang’s new composition enables van Hove to broach stereotypes of African American gun use , as well as more fully confront the injustices of race-based police brutality. Baby John’s fear of the zip-gun’s ballistic power, for example, is now voiced by a Black teenager (Matthew Johnson). Later, after a brief squabble with the Jets, Officer Krupke (Danny Wolohan) draws his weapon and aggressively pushes it into the temple of one of its Black members, prompting several Jets to draw their smartphones and film the altercation. Krupke backs off, but the event propels the gang into a revamped rendition of “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Once a vaudevillian take-down of domineering and inept authority figures, the song is now a humorless “indictment of the carceral state,” with white and Black Jets striking ‘don’t shoot’ poses in front of “a bleak video montage of young men being humiliated and abused by the police.” ( [62] ) Branded “harrowing” by Los Angeles Times ’s Charles McNulty, an “overreach” by Newsday ’s Rafer Guzmán, and “pandering” by The New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz, “Gee, Officer Krupke” (with choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker) functions as an embodied condemnation of systemic racism, police violence, and the prison-industrial complex—and one of the revival’s most overt bids for political relevance. ( [63] ) Audiences consume the productions’ gun acts via unmediated and mediated witnessing. Van Hove’s imagistic theatre routinely includes the use of video to bring the “characters closer to the audience” and “create subjective worlds on stage,” the director himself explains. ( [64] ) In West Side Story, the characters’ smartphones, pre-filmed footage, and live video from handheld cameras¾all projected onto a mammoth, stage-spanning screen¾together constitute an omnipresent surveillance apparatus that is in turns covert and intrusive. At intervals, the films decelerate into slow motion as the stage action unfolds at regular speed, a techno-theatrical “time warp” (to use Sarah Taylor Ellis’s term) that often prolongs the audience’s encounter with violence, as in Tony (Isaac Powell) fleeing from the rumble in a blood-soaked shirt. ( [65] ) Of one on-location shot that moves through a dead-end street, Schwartz remarks, “The camera advances in a slow dolly shot, producing the weightless, gliding momentum of a first-person shooter game.” ( [66] ) Indeed, the footage collectively documents a story of interchangeable hunters and prey. Cameras invade enclosed spaces—several interiors are pocketed behind the projection screen, including Doc’s store—and capture private and imagined interactions. ( [67] ) In one of the video design’s most unsettling interventions, Tony’s mental picture of Maria’s gun death fills the screen, her head blasted open by Chino’s close-range shot. Tony’s own death, however, is left unmediated. Chino approaches, fires his pistol, and Tony’s body registers the bullet’s impact; no extreme closeups linger on his bloodied torso or Chino’s inscrutable expression. Fish’s Oklahoma! employs live video and projections far more sparingly, notably when handheld video cameras penetrate the cramped environs of Jud’s smokehouse. At first, Jud and Curly’s tête-à-tête is plunged into total darkness, a drastic shift from the “aggressive brightness” employed elsewhere in the production’s lighting design. ( [68] ) The blackout, which amplifies the dramaturgical work of the scene’s soundscape, is later softened by live video tightly trained on Jud’s face—tormented, longing for connection—projected onto the stage’s backdrop. The scene vacillates in tone between a hushed, erotic intimacy (the men, faces mere inches from each other, whisper their lines into handheld microphones) and the unrelenting menace of cyberbullying, as Curly’s disembodied voice calmly extols the virtues of suicide. ( [69] ) Notes Ben Brantley of the smokehouse scene, “the lines of sex and violence…blu[r] in this gun-toting universe[.]” ( [70] ) When, after singing “Pore Jud Is Daid” and still blanketed by darkness, the men fire their guns at a knothole, the loud reports startle and unnerve. Sound and sight decoupled, the invisible weapons index their presence sonically. Though only men suffer gun deaths in Oklahoma! and West Side Story , the stories’ women together absorb much of the gun-related violence and trauma. Armed men (fathers, law enforcers, lovers, and stalkers) perambulate the playing space in Oklahoma! , pistols holstered and rifles clutched under armpits; Aunt Eller, by contrast, is accoutered with a wooden spoon for stirring cornbread. But if we simply track Oklahoma! ’s guns as they pass through men’s hands, we risk losing sight of Jones’s Laurey and Ali Stroker’s Ado Annie, outspoken women of intelligence and agency who must nevertheless navigate the complexities of a materially and psychically hostile landscape. Ado Annie’s life choices are under near-constant monitoring by her armed father, while landowning woman of color Laurey “resolute[ly] refus[es] to be thought of as someone’s possession” even as she’s caught in the crosshairs of rival suitors. ( [71] ) The production’s dream ballet and wedding scene lay bare Laurey’s conscious negotiations with Oklahoma! ’s gun culture¾and the men that drive it. In choreographer John Heginbotham’s postmodern dream ballet, Laurey’s avatar (Gabrielle Hamilton) moves with within a growing minefield of cowboy boots that are dropped one by one from the rafters. “[T]he sound they make as they hit the stage is as explosive as . . . gunshots,” pronounced The New Yorker ’s Sarah Larson in her 2018 review of the Off-Broadway production. ( [72] ) Less abstract is Laurey’s endorsing of Jud’s murder/suicide. In an extended moment of silent contemplation, Laurey spatially maps her inner conflict. She leaves Curly’s side to peer searchingly into Jud’s face, and then slowly returns to Curly. ( [73] ) We can only speculate on why Laurey sanctions “prairie justice,” Jud’s violent and permanent excision from the community, but as a Black woman and a survivor of sexual assault and stalking, Laurey is all too aware of how violence operates at the margins. ( [74] ) West Side Story ’s gun culture is likewise androcentric and hierarchical, but the women exhibit manifest signs of inculcation. Whereas Jerome Robbins’ choreography restricted the use of gun gestures to his male dancers and Anybodys, De Keersmaeker democratizes the movement by setting it onto the Sharks girls’ bodies in “America.” The aggressive gesture¾fingers shaped into a gun, straight arm tracing an arc from low to high like a protractor¾runs counter the women’s buoyant lyrics (“I like to be in America! / O.K. by me in America! / Everything free in America”). Violence continues to reach West Side Story ’s Black, white, and brown women in ways unprescribed by Robbins, Laurents, Sondheim, and Bernstein, including Anita’s attempted gang rape, Maria’s graphic head wound, and the rain-soaked rumble, where several feminine-presenting Jets and Sharks fight. ( [75] ) One need only witness the distraught Maria’s actions after Tony’s shooting to comprehend how versant the women are in West Side Story ’s microcosmic culture of violence. Silently, Maria (Shereen Pimentel) gestures for Chino’s gun. Unlike Marias past, who handle the gun with trepidation and difficulty, Pimentel’s Maria racks the handgun’s slide with speed and skill, advancing the next round of ammunition as she asks, “How do you fire this gun, Chino? Just by pulling this little trigger?” It’s a rhetorical question. She is well-acquainted with guns, even if this is the first she’s handled, and the Jets and Sharks take her threats seriously. The gun changes hands several more times: a Jet gently disarms Maria as she faces the audience and holds the pistol to her head; later, she reclaims the gun and passes it to Anita. In entrusting the gun to Anita, Maria effectively bars Jets and Sharks alike from accessing it, effectively removing the weapon from circulation¾at least temporarily. Guns are instruments of revolution and disruption, but they are also instruments of a sort of brutal petrification, of holding in abeyance those who might act counterculturally and preventing new, transformative associations from solidifying. The Golden Age Oklahoma! and West Side Story ’s firearms police the perimeters of homogenous human groups, simultaneously restricting access into and thwarting departures from them. In reinforcing the community circle’s curved boundaries and transforming a love triangle with three vertices into a straight line with two points, guns and their handlers are bold, convenient catalysts for the American musical’s conservative endings. They help the boy get the girl; forestall any integrative or conciliatory pacts between rival street gangs; and fortify the settler-colonialist claims on stolen lands. In their twenty-first-century adaptations of Oklahoma! and West Side Story, Fish and van Hove present guns as the most responsive, convenient deliverers of modern violence, but their contemporary anti-gun, pro-diversity messages strain uncomfortably beneath the musicals’ constrictive Golden Age fabric, fabric that engages firearms in ways that unequivocally benefit white heteronormative America. After seeing Fish’s reimagined Oklahoma! , Johnny Oleksinksi of the right-leaning New York Post sardonically declared: “everything you cherish about this classic has been taken out behind the bar and shot, replace by an auteur’s bag of tricks and a thesis on gun control and westward expansion. Here, the West was won by a culture of violence and toxic masculinity— what fun! ” ( [76] ) In all his rhetorical outrage, Oleksinski fails to recognize that Oklahoma! has always told this story. What he is detecting, however, are the heightened political stakes of the contemporary gun musical. Staged in the midst of partisan debates over Second Amendment gun rights and alarming rates of US gun injuries and deaths, the majority of twenty-first-century gun musicals, including Fish’s Oklahoma! and van Hove’s West Side Story , proceed from three assumptions. First, they regard gun violence as a public health crisis in the United States. Second, they implicate all Americans as active perpetrators or passive abettors in the country’s gun violence epidemic. Third, rather than depict gun handling as a prime signifier of national belonging, they suggest that merely persisting within the country’s omnipresent gun culture is a uniquely American act. Oleksinski’s “auteur” jab is likewise somewhat founded. In their searing critiques of US-American gun violence and its impact on disenfranchised communities, Daniel Fish and Ivo van Hove undertake crucial (if imperfect) work. And yet, as progressive white men of privilege, they perhaps cannot help but ventriloquize rather than possess the perspectives voiced by frontline populations. References 1. Christopher Bannow, “Surviving in the States: Audience Rejection on the Road with Oklahoma!,” 3 April 2023, https://howlround.com/surviving-states-audience-rejection-road-oklahoma . 2. Ibid. 3. According to musical theatre scholar Bryan M. Vandevender, the touring production featured less visible guns in its scene design than its Broadway counterpart. 4. See Pamela Haag’s analysis of gun companies’ influential tactics in The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 5. As I theorize, a “gun musical” focalizes firearms—and their provocative meaning-making—as essential objects in the musical’s dramaturgy and physical world. Put another way, just as a perfect Aristotelian plot would unravel with the removal of any scene, a gun musical could not function without their signature weaponry and the human conditions they engender. 6. For a fuller examination of Hamilton’s guns, which contextualizes the production’s weaponless Tony Awards performance, see my article “‘What if This Bullet is My Legacy?’: The Guns of Hamilton,” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (June 2018): 251-56. 7. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, “Domestic Violence and Firearms,” https://efsgv.org/learn/type-of-gun-violence/domestic-violence-and-firearms/ . 8. Kimberly King, “Gun Violence Crisis: With Revenge and Retaliation on the Rise, How Police Are Responding,” 17 February 2021, https://wlos.com/news/local/gun-violence-crisis-with-revenge- retaliation-on-the-rise-how-asheville-police-are-responding. 9. Marissa Edmund, “Gun Violence Disproportionately and Overwhelmingly Hurts Communities of Color,” Center for American Progress, 30 June 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- violence-disproportionately-and-overwhelmingly-hurts-communities-of-color/. 10. Ibid. 11. Nicole Moeder, “Number of Trans Homicides Doubled over 4 Years, with Gun Killings Fueling Increase: Advocates,” ABC News, 12 October 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/US/homicide-rate-trans- people-doubled-gun-killings-fueling/story?id=91348274. 12. Eugenio Weigend Vargas and Marissa Edmund, “Gun Suicides Among Former and Current Military Members,” Center for American Progress, 3 March 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- suicides-among-former-and-current-military-members/. 13. Robert Gebeloff, Danielle Ivory, Bill Marsh, Allison McCann, and Albert Sun, “Childhood’s Greatest Danger: The Data on Kids and Gun Violence,” New York Times, 14 December 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html . 14. Beth Duff-Brown, “Californians Living with Handgun Owners More Than Twice as Likely to Die by Homicide, Study Finds,” 4 April 2022, https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/handguns- homicide-risk.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDespite%20widespread%20perceptions%20that%20a,of%20health%20p olicy%20at%20the 15. For histories of the gun industry’s attempt to domesticate US firearms through white women consumers, see Laura Browder, Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Meredith Conti, “Hired Guns: Whiteness, Womanhood, and Progressive-era Shooting Promoters,” Theatre Journal 73, no. 4 (Dec. 2021): 511-532; and Andrea L. Smalley, “‘Our Lady Sportsmen’: Gender, Class, and Conservation in Sport Hunting Magazines, 1873–1920,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4, no. 4 (October 2005): 355–80. 16. The NRA was founded in 1871 in New York. 17. Nicholas Johnson, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014), 13. While magistrates and legislators banned or significantly curtailed Black and Indigenous gun ownership from the colonial period onward, marginalized communities of color had their own traditions of arms that variously conformed to and resolutely rejected governmental interference. 18. Haag, The Gunning of America, 357 and 356. 19. Ibid, 354. 20. Ibid. 21. Benjamin Barber, “Oklahoma! — How Political Is Broadway?” Salmagundi 137/138 (2003): 3-11, 9. 22. To be more specific, the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906 permitted “the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory to enter the union under a single-state constitution.” Michael Schulman, “Two Broadway Shows Dismantle the American Myth,” The New Yorker, April 16, 2019. 23. Bruce Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!’ in American Consciousness,” Theatre Journal 55, no 2 (May 2003): 251-274, 251. 24. See Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004) and Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014). 25. As Warren Hoffman notes, the show’s refrain, in which the company repeatedly chants “Oklahoma!,” can ironically be translated to them shouting “Red People!” Hoffman, The Great White Way, 66. 26. Donatella Galella, America in the Round: Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington DC’s Arena Stage (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019), 202. 27. Galella, America in the Round, 197. Galella describes three modes of understanding multiracial Oklahoma! casts that both producers and spectators could adopt: multiracial-conscious, whitened, and postracial (200). 28. Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 262. 29. The Theatre Guild Presents Oklahoma!: A Musical Play Based on the Play ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ by Lynn Riggs, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (New York: Williamson Music, 1943). 30. Susan C. Cook, “Pretty like the Girl: Gender, Race and Oklahoma!” Contemporary Theatre Review 19, no. 1 (2009), 35-47, 43. 31. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. 32. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. 33. Cook, “Pretty like the Girl,” 37. 34. Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 251-274, 259 and 261. 35. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! 36. Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions Behind Musical Shows from Kern to Sondheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 27. 37. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, based on a conception of Jerome Robbins, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (New York: Musical Theatre International, 1960), 86. 38. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 119-120. 39. Brian Eugenio Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009,” Theatre Journal 64 (2012), 231-247: 236. 40. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 6. 41. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 56. 42. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 7. 43. Zhu and Belgrad, “This Cockeyed City,” 86. 44. Ibid, 90. 45. Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009” and Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015); David Román, “Comment — Theatre Journals,” Theatre Journal 54, no. 3 (Oct. 2002), https://www.jstor.org/stable/25069090 ; David Román, Paula Court, and Richard Termine, Performance in America: Contemporary U.S. Culture in the Performing Arts (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, José, Can You See? Latinos on and off Broadway (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999); and Frances Negrón-Muntaner, “Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,” Social Text 63, vol. 18, no. 2 (2000), 83-106. 46. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 43. 47. Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,” Social Text 24, no. 7 (2009), 67-94. 48. Greg Evans, “‘Oklahoma!’ to be Broadway’s First ‘Gun Neutral’ Production: Lauded Musical Joins Hollywood Initiative: Sundance, Deadline, January 28, 2019, https://deadline.com/2019/01/oklahoma- broadway-musical-gun-neutral-sundance-daniel-fish-1202543741/. 49. Qtd. in Charles Passy, “‘Oklahoma!’ Takes Aim at Gun Issue,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2019. 50. Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai have edited the first essay collection on van Hove’s work entitled Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie (London: Methuen Drama, 2018). For coverage of the protests of Amar Ramasar’s casting, see Julia Jacobs, “‘West Side Story’ Stalemate: Bernardo’s Staying. So Are Protestors,” New York Times, February 19, 2020, and Adrian Horton, “‘We can’t stand by this any more’: Inside the West Side Story Premiere Protest,” The Guardian, February 21, 2020. 51. An inventory of West Side Story’s reviews was created by Playbill’s Dan Meyer on February 20, 2020. http://www.playbill.com/article/read-reviews-for-the-west-side-story-revival-on-broadway . 52. Soraya Nadia McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” The Undefeated, September 16, 2019. https://theundefeated.com/features/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-oklahoma-on-broadway/ . 53. A cleverly installed blood cannon delivers the graphic stage effect. 54. Todd S. Purdue, “Culture: Oklahoma! Gets a Dark, Brilliant Remake,” The Atlantic, April 8, 2019. 55. Of van Hove’s “austere aesthetic” Helen Shaw wryly observes: “he automatically modernizes everything he touches, from Shakespeare to O’Neill.” Helen Shaw, “In the New West Side Story, When You’re Onstage You’re Onscreen All the Way,” New York Magazine/vulture.com, February 20, 2020. https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/theater-review-a-new-west-side-story-onscreen-all-the-way.html . 56. Tim Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway: Creator and Cast Reveal How to Reimagine a Classic,” The Daily Beast, thedailybeast.com , April 15, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-on-broadway-creator-and-cast-reveal-how-to-reimagine-a-classic . 57. Laura Collins-Hughes, “For 13 Years, He has Humanized the Villain of Oklahoma!,” New York Times, January 20, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/theater/patrick-vaill-oklahoma-broadway.html . 58. Catherine M. Young, “Sympathy for the Incel? On Oklahoma! and Jud Fry in the #MeToo Era.” Howlround.com , June 26, 2019. https://howlround.com/sympathy-incel . 59. McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” Bryan M. Vandevender queered Vaill’s portrayal of Jud in a compelling paper delivered at the 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference. 60. Qtd. in Teeman, “Oklahoma! on Broadway.” 61. Carina de Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die,” New York Times, February 24, 2020. 62. Alexandra Schwartz, “Theatre: A Grim Take on ‘West Side Story,’” The New Yorker, February 21, 2020. 63. Charles McNulty, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ Blasts Back to Broadway – Kinetic, Bloody and Modern to the Core,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2020; Schwartz, “A Grim Take”; and Rafer Guzmán, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ on Broadway Gets a Dark Update, Loses Some of its Cool,’ Newsday, February 21, 2020. 64. “Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai, “Ivo van Hove: An Introduction,” in Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie, edited by Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai (London: Methuen, 2018), 1-16, 7. 65. See Sarah Taylor Ellis‘s Doing the Time Warp: Queer Temporalities and Musical Theatre (London: Methuen Drama, 2022). 66. Schwartz, “A Grim Take.” 67. Jan Versweyveld designed West Side Story’s sets and lights, and Luke Hall designed the video; Laura Jellinek designed Oklahoma!’s set and Joshua Thorson designed projections. 68. McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!.” Scott Zielinksi was the production’s lighting designer. 69. “When the camera turns and shows us both Daunno’s and Vaill’s profiles,” notes Sara Holdren, “stretched out huge across a wall where a black-and-white vista of fields and ranch houses is painted, we get a nasty jolt: Here is the country inside of these men, and here are their brutalities laying the foundations for the country.” Sara Holdren, “Theatre Review: An Oklahoma! Where the Storm Clouds Loom Above the Plain,” New York Magazine/Vulture.com, October 8, 2018. 70. Ben Brantley, “Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id,” New York Times, April 7, 2019. 71. Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway.” 72. Sarah Larson, ”Daniel Fish’s Dark Take on ’Oklahoma!’” Ariel Nereson analyzed the choreographic work of the re-envisioned dream ballet in a 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference presentation. 73. Laurey is effectively muzzled by Hammerstein’s book, which provides no dialogue during Curly and Jud’s struggle and Jud’s accidental stabbing. 74. Jesse Green and Ben Brantley, “Review: There’s a Dark Golden Haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!,’ New York Times, October 7, 2018. Green and Brantley’s joint review is responding to the 2018 Off- Broadway production. 75. Of watching Anita’s attempted gang-rape (and its replication on the enormous projection screen) as a Puerto Rican woman, Carina del Valle Schorske surmises, “[Mr. van Hove] may not feel the oppressive repetitions of the history of violence against brown women bearing down on his body. But for many of us, it’s the umpteenth time we’ve seen Anita assaulted for dramatic effect, each time under the guise of greater authenticity.” De Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die.” 76. Johnny Oleksinski, “‘Oklahoma!’ Review: Anti-gun Revival of Classic Shot to Hell,” New York Post, April 7, 2019. Footnotes (1) Christopher Bannow, “Surviving in the States: Audience Rejection on the Road with Oklahoma!,” 3 April 2023, https://howlround.com/surviving-states-audience-rejection-road-oklahoma . (2) Ibid. (3) According to musical theatre scholar Bryan M. Vandevender, the touring production featured less visible guns in its scene design than its Broadway counterpart. (4) See Pamela Haag’s analysis of gun companies’ influential tactics in The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2016). (5) As I theorize, a “gun musical” focalizes firearms—and their provocative meaning-making—as essential objects in the musical’s dramaturgy and physical world. Put another way, just as a perfect Aristotelian plot would unravel with the removal of any scene, a gun musical could not function without their signature weaponry and the human conditions they engender. (6) For a fuller examination of Hamilton’s guns, which contextualizes the production’s weaponless Tony Awards performance, see my article “‘What if This Bullet is My Legacy?’: The Guns of Hamilton,” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (June 2018): 251-56. (7) Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, “Domestic Violence and Firearms,” https://efsgv.org/learn/type-of-gun-violence/domestic-violence-and-firearms/ . (8) Kimberly King, “Gun Violence Crisis: With Revenge and Retaliation on the Rise, How Police Are Responding,” 17 February 2021, https://wlos.com/news/local/gun-violence-crisis-with-revenge- retaliation-on-the-rise-how-asheville-police-are-responding. (9) Marissa Edmund, “Gun Violence Disproportionately and Overwhelmingly Hurts Communities of Color,” Center for American Progress, 30 June 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- violence-disproportionately-and-overwhelmingly-hurts-communities-of-color/. (10) Ibid. (11) Nicole Moeder, “Number of Trans Homicides Doubled over 4 Years, with Gun Killings Fueling Increase: Advocates,” ABC News, 12 October 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/US/homicide-rate-trans- people-doubled-gun-killings-fueling/story?id=91348274. (12) Eugenio Weigend Vargas and Marissa Edmund, “Gun Suicides Among Former and Current Military Members,” Center for American Progress, 3 March 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- suicides-among-former-and-current-military-members/. (13) Robert Gebeloff, Danielle Ivory, Bill Marsh, Allison McCann, and Albert Sun, “Childhood’s Greatest Danger: The Data on Kids and Gun Violence,” New York Times, 14 December 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html . (14) Beth Duff-Brown, “Californians Living with Handgun Owners More Than Twice as Likely to Die by Homicide, Study Finds,” 4 April 2022, https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/handguns- homicide- risk.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDespite%20widespread%20perceptions%20that%20a,of%20health%20p olicy%20at%20the (15) For histories of the gun industry’s attempt to domesticate US firearms through white women consumers, see Laura Browder, Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Meredith Conti, “Hired Guns: Whiteness, Womanhood, and Progressive-era Shooting Promoters,” Theatre Journal 73, no. 4 (Dec. 2021): 511-532; and Andrea L. Smalley, “‘Our Lady Sportsmen’: Gender, Class, and Conservation in Sport Hunting Magazines, 1873–1920,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4, no. 4 (October 2005): 355–80. (16) The NRA was founded in 1871 in New York. (17) Nicholas Johnson, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014), 13. While magistrates and legislators banned or significantly curtailed Black and Indigenous gun ownership from the colonial period onward, marginalized communities of color had their own traditions of arms that variously conformed to and resolutely rejected governmental interference. (18) Haag, The Gunning of America, 357 and 356. (19) Ibid 354. (20) Ibid. (21) Benjamin Barber, “Oklahoma! — How Political Is Broadway?” Salmagundi 137/138 (2003): 3-11, 9. (22) To be more specific, the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906 permitted “the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory to enter the union under a single-state constitution.” Michael Schulman, “Two Broadway Shows Dismantle the American Myth,” The New Yorker, April 16, 2019. (23) Bruce Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!’ in American Consciousness,” Theatre Journal 55, no 2 (May 2003): 251-274, 251. (24) See Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004) and Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014). (25) As Warren Hoffman notes, the show’s refrain, in which the company repeatedly chants “Oklahoma!,” can ironically be translated to them shouting “Red People!” Hoffman, The Great White Way, 66. (26) Donatella Galella, America in the Round: Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington DC’s Arena Stage (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019), 202. (27) Galella, America in the Round, 197. Galella describes three modes of understanding multiracial Oklahoma! casts that both producers and spectators could adopt: multiracial-conscious, whitened, and postracial (200). (28) Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 262. (29) The Theatre Guild Presents Oklahoma!: A Musical Play Based on the Play ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ by Lynn Riggs, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (New York: Williamson Music, 1943). (30) Susan C. Cook, “Pretty like the Girl: Gender, Race and Oklahoma!” Contemporary Theatre Review 19, no. 1 (2009), 35-47, 43. (31) Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. (32) Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. (33) Cook, “Pretty like the Girl,” 37. (34) Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 251-274, 259 and 261. (35) Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! (36) Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions Behind Musical Shows from Kern to Sondheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 27. (37) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, based on a conception of Jerome Robbins, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (New York: Musical Theatre International, 1960), 86. (38) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 119-120. (39) Brian Eugenio Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009,” Theatre Journal 64 (2012), 231-247: 236. (40) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 6. (41) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 56. (42) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 7. (43) Zhu and Belgrad, “This Cockeyed City,” 86. (44) Ibid 90. (45) Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009” and Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015); David Román, “Comment — Theatre Journals,” Theatre Journal 54, no. 3 (Oct. 2002), https://www.jstor.org/stable/25069090 ; David Román, Paula Court, and Richard Termine, Performance in America: Contemporary U.S. Culture in the Performing Arts (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, José, Can You See? Latinos on and off Broadway (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999); and Frances Negrón-Muntaner, “Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,” Social Text 63, vol. 18, no. 2 (2000), 83-106. (46) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 43. (47) Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,” Social Text 24, no. 7 (2009), 67-94. (48) Greg Evans, “‘Oklahoma!’ to be Broadway’s First ‘Gun Neutral’ Production: Lauded Musical Joins Hollywood Initiative: Sundance, Deadline, January 28, 2019, https://deadline.com/2019/01/oklahoma- broadway-musical-gun-neutral-sundance-daniel-fish-1202543741/. (49) Qtd. in Charles Passy, “‘Oklahoma!’ Takes Aim at Gun Issue,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2019. (50) Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai have edited the first essay collection on van Hove’s work entitled Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie (London: Methuen Drama, 2018). For coverage of the protests of Amar Ramasar’s casting, see Julia Jacobs, “‘West Side Story’ Stalemate: Bernardo’s Staying. So Are Protestors,” New York Times, February 19, 2020, and Adrian Horton, “‘We can’t stand by this any more’: Inside the West Side Story Premiere Protest,” The Guardian, February 21, 2020. (51) An inventory of West Side Story’s reviews was created by Playbill’s Dan Meyer on February 20, 2020. http://www.playbill.com/article/read-reviews-for-the-west-side-story-revival-on-broadway . (52) Soraya Nadia McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” The Undefeated, September 16, 2019. https://theundefeated.com/features/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-oklahoma-on-broadway/ . (53) A cleverly installed blood cannon delivers the graphic stage effect. (54) Todd S. Purdue, “Culture: Oklahoma! Gets a Dark, Brilliant Remake,” The Atlantic, April 8, 2019. (55) Of van Hove’s “austere aesthetic” Helen Shaw wryly observes: “he automatically modernizes everything he touches, from Shakespeare to O’Neill.” Helen Shaw, “In the New West Side Story, When You’re Onstage You’re Onscreen All the Way,” New York Magazine/vulture.com, February 20, 2020. https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/theater-review-a-new-west-side-story-onscreen-all-the-way.html . (56) Tim Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway: Creator and Cast Reveal How to Reimagine a Classic,” The Daily Beast, thedailybeast.com , April 15, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-on-broadway- creator-and-cast-reveal-how-to-reimagine-a-classic. (57) Laura Collins-Hughes, “For 13 Years, He has Humanized the Villain of Oklahoma!,” New York Times, January 20, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/theater/patrick-vaill-oklahoma-broadway.html . (58) Catherine M. Young, “Sympathy for the Incel? On Oklahoma! and Jud Fry in the #MeToo Era.” Howlround.com , June 26, 2019. https://howlround.com/sympathy-incel . (59) McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” Bryan M. Vandevender queered Vaill’s portrayal of Jud in a compelling paper delivered at the 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference. (60) Qtd. in Teeman, “Oklahoma! on Broadway.” (61) Carina de Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die,” New York Times, February 24, 2020. (62) Alexandra Schwartz, “Theatre: A Grim Take on ‘West Side Story,’” The New Yorker, February 21, 2020. (63) Charles McNulty, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ Blasts Back to Broadway – Kinetic, Bloody and Modern to the Core,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2020; Schwartz, “A Grim Take”; and Rafer Guzmán, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ on Broadway Gets a Dark Update, Loses Some of its Cool,’ Newsday, February 21, 2020. (64) “Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai, “Ivo van Hove: An Introduction,” in Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie, edited by Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai (London: Methuen, 2018), 1-16, 7. (65) See Sarah Taylor Ellis‘s Doing the Time Warp: Queer Temporalities and Musical Theatre (London: Methuen Drama, 2022). (66) Schwartz, “A Grim Take.” (67) Jan Versweyveld designed West Side Story’s sets and lights, and Luke Hall designed the video; Laura Jellinek designed Oklahoma!’s set and Joshua Thorson designed projections. (68) McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!.” Scott Zielinksi was the production’s lighting designer. (69) “When the camera turns and shows us both Daunno’s and Vaill’s profiles,” notes Sara Holdren, “stretched out huge across a wall where a black-and-white vista of fields and ranch houses is painted, we get a nasty jolt: Here is the country inside of these men, and here are their brutalities laying the foundations for the country.” Sara Holdren, “Theatre Review: An Oklahoma! Where the Storm Clouds Loom Above the Plain,” New York Magazine/Vulture.com, October 8, 2018. (70) Ben Brantley, “Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id,” New York Times, April 7, 2019. (71) Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway.” (72) Sarah Larson, ”Daniel Fish’s Dark Take on ’Oklahoma!’” Ariel Nereson analyzed the choreographic work of the re-envisioned dream ballet in a 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference presentation. (73) Laurey is effectively muzzled by Hammerstein’s book, which provides no dialogue during Curly and Jud’s struggle and Jud’s accidental stabbing. (74) Jesse Green and Ben Brantley, “Review: There’s a Dark Golden Haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!,’ New York Times, October 7, 2018. Green and Brantley’s joint review is responding to the 2018 Off- Broadway production. (75) Of watching Anita’s attempted gang-rape (and its replication on the enormous projection screen) as a Puerto Rican woman, Carina del Valle Schorske surmises, “[Mr. van Hove] may not feel the oppressive repetitions of the history of violence against brown women bearing down on his body. But for many of us, it’s the umpteenth time we’ve seen Anita assaulted for dramatic effect, each time under the guise of greater authenticity.” De Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die.” (76) Johnny Oleksinski, “‘Oklahoma!’ Review: Anti-gun Revival of Classic Shot to Hell,” New York Post, April 7, 2019. About The Author(s) Meredith Conti is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, SUNY (UB) and a historian of nineteenth-century theatre and popular culture in the United States and Britain. Her research variously explores the intersections of theatre and medicine; nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular entertainment forms (including world fairs, vaudeville, Wild West shows, and fancy shooting exhibitions); gender and race in the Victorian period; and guns and gun violence in 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. 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Michael P. Jaros Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Michael P. Jaros By Published on December 10, 2020 Download Article as PDF Appearing within the first iteration of the Black Lives Matter movement and the fraught national conversations over the legacies of the American Civil War, Suzan Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts 1-3 is her first full-length play set during that war, focusing specifically on the final period of American chattel slavery and the moment of Emancipation. [1] The work remains timely within a contemporary political environment where both racism and resistance to it are resurgent. It also departs in a number of structural and thematic ways from her previous works for the stage. Scholars have examined Parks’s plays that indirectly explore the period’s contemporary resonances, specifically her two works about black Abraham Lincoln impersonators, The America Play (1994) and Topdog/Underdog (2001), in some detail. [2] Her main characters in those works—The Found ling Father of the America Play and Link and Booth of Topdog/Underdog —both always already exist in the shadow of the Civil War President and signer of the Emancipation Proclamation. The figures they cut are perpetually perceived through Lincoln’s own cut out (which even features as a prop in The America Play ). However, the range of focus of Father Comes Home is considerably broader, indeed epic, in scope, as Parks radically revises Homer’s Odyssey to place it in the Civil-War-Era South. [3] In moving her emphasis off Lincoln or his imitators, a chorus of varied voices takes center-stage. Asked about her play’s topicality at the American Repertory Theatre in 2015, Parks was quick to point out that all her characters’ lives mattered: You know, [the characters in the play] were human. That’s the thing…I would say…that is one of my charges as an artist. And that is the only way that I am interested in, really, addressing what people call the race question…is just that reminding people that my people are people. And under that comes everything.[4] The expansion of focus of one or two persons to people helps contextualize Parks’s comments about the race question and her characters’ humanity: as we witness the existential traumas of enslavement, Parks reminds us that all her staged people are people, not just her hero. In doing so, she addresses a critical need in contemporary representations of slavery to eschew the classic heroic narrative, allowing for a broader structural critique of the systems of valuation and ranking by which slaves were perceived. Parks has her character Smith memorably allude to this idea of marketplace measurement in Part Two of her play: Maybe even with Freedom, that mark, huh, that mark of the marketplace, it will always be on us. And so maybe we will always be twisting and turning ourselves into something that is going to bring the best price. [5] With the staging of Father Comes Home, Parks engages in an ongoing cultural argument about this “mark of the marketplace” in contemporary notions of African American identity. In so doing, she confronts larger structural systems of racism and the current economic system (capitalism) that sustains it. Smith’s quote highlights an issue Parks touched on before in her two Lincoln plays and further refines in Father Comes Home , specifically black participation in this game of self-appraisal, of buying into this idea of the ranking of life. Private Smith’s words about “always twisting and turning our selves into something that is going to bring the best price [my emphasis],” highlights the communal economic trauma of slavery and its resonances in the present for black communities as a whole. Such a collective emphasis helps to resurrect this communal history, ending what Erica Edwards calls an historical “silencing” of the many agents involved in the struggle for freedom in favor of the “implicit valorization of singular, charismatic leadership” [6] which itself “values” certain persons more than others. Existing scholarship on Father Comes Home from the Wars contains little critical examination of the radical implications of her choral characters. Nadine Knight’s examination of notions of home, nostos, and Parks’ reconfiguration of the Homeric epic primarily discusses the protagonist of all three parts, Hero. Similarly, Paula Guerrero provides a deep, sustained reading of Hero’s contradictory nature, fitting him within a larger group of anti-heroic characters appearing in Parks’s oeuvre. However, the Choruses receive less critical attention: they are described as somewhat “homogenized,” and notable in their absence from Part Two of the work. [7] Paul Carter Harrison goes so far as to suggest that the Choruses in fact revert to the worst elements of blackface minstrelsy in an anodyne offering which ultimately amounts to a toned down, less-then-traumatic view of slavery for predominantly white audiences. [8] What I propose to argue here is that Parks’s two Choruses are considerably more radical than previous scholarship has suggested. Two different choral groups appear in her play—a “Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves” in Part 1 and “The Runaway Slaves” in Part 3—yet the two Choruses are comprised of the same actors. [9] In so naming them, Parks stages the transition from property (in the form of exterior valuation, they are “less than desirable”) to freedom: (they are agents stealing themselves and thus gaining some measure of self-determination as runaways). Their embodiment shifts from being reactionary to radical. Furthermore, Part Two, which includes no Chorus, is a necessary step in this shift in thinking about heroism, capitalism, and valuation that Parts One, Two, and Three collectively undertake. My line of departure involves thinking specifically about Brechtian Epic form, especially as formulated by Liz Diamond’s readings of the gestus and alienation effect. Through a series of performative interventions primarily involving the Choruses, Parks directly equates heroism with marketplace value. Responding to Harrison’s critique that the mythic form and the Choruses make the deprivation of slavery more “palatable,” I argue that Parks’s use of epic form allows the spectator to instead, in Diamond’s words “see and hear [about] it afresh,” [10] and in a way that is not palatable but confrontational. Specifically, we are confronted with the larger, structural implications of slavery on a mass of people when we deemphasize the singular, heroic protagonist, thus giving way to a more substantial criticism of bondage, self-valuation, and the economics of capitalism that sustained the peculiar institution and in turn survive well beyond it. A wealth of scholarship details how the development of the modern system of international capital and slavery were inextricably intertwined, and—along with it—ideas of individual competition and self-valuation. These “proprietorial notions of the self,” as Saidiya Hartman terms them, suffused black life and continued to do so after Emancipation. [11] Edward Baptist argues that the “expansion of slavery and financial capitalism [became] the driving force in an emerging national economic system” in the Antebellum US. Slaves’ financial worth was meticulously calculated via a complex network of valuation established by professional slave traders. [12] This price, as Caitlyn Rosenthal demonstrates, varied directly with “usefulness” on the market. Babies had low value, as did older slaves. Price topped out in the mid-twenties for both men and women. “The prices for enslaved people changed for many reasons,” she remarks, “age, sickness, or health. The acquisition of skill, or changes in the market” but also for disobedience or attempts at escape. [13] Most insidious was the way in which slaves internalized this fiscal language, this “mark of the marketplace,” even using the term “depreciation” do describe their own changes in value when they themselves faced potential sale. [14] Consequently, self-measurement and assessment are part and parcel of her characters’ dialogue in the play. “Mark it” is a constant refrain, which, as Laura Dougherty remarks, is all to close in pronunciation to “market” to be lost on the audience. [15] Opposing this system of competition and individual valuation were forms of collective resistance by a variety of means, especially via performance. After the war, and well into the twentieth century, these arose to combat structural racism and the economic inequalities that accompanied them. As Cedric Robinson describes it in his seminal work Black Marxism, the black radical tradition was borne out of a need to “imaginatively re-create a precedent metaphysic while being subjected to enslavement, racial domination and repression,” and this was most consistently, effectively done via collective action. [16] Fred Moten elaborates that such performances had a radical ability, especially via the improvisation of an ensemble, to cause a momentary “break” in the ideology of bodily commodification which “passes on the material heritage across the divide that separates slavery and ‘freedom.’” [17] The first example he gives of such radical action is in fact a chorus of singers that Frederick Douglas hears shortly after the infamous beating of his Aunt Hester in the Autobiography, a group that challenges, through its vocalized revisions, the violent performance of power that is the master lashing Hester and her screams in response. [18] Parks’s Choruses likewise point towards radical action, towards a break away from the heroic ideals which are all too tied to capitalist notions of individualism, self-valuation, and competition. This is a timely move, as heroic slave narratives remain resilient in contemporary culture. Soyica Diggs Colbert and Robert Patterson reflect on the lack of contemporary critical insight afforded by such traditional narratives. Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, which features Jamie Foxx as a black, avenging superhero let loose on southern slaveholders, offers what Colbert terms “unfettered individualism for its male protagonist as a remedy for the burdensome legacy of slavery,” which is at once “a comforting and deceptive remedy.” [19] Similarly, Patterson asserts in his analysis of 12 Years a Slave that protagonist Solomon Northrup’s own narrative, with its heroic idealization of “self-help and individual success” reinforces the dominant order, namely white, Protestant, capitalist notions of rugged self-reliance. Each narrative’s emphasis on the exceptional individual fails to address the “larger pattern of black suffering” of the vast majority of those under the yoke of slavery, as well as slavery’s link to contemporary structural racism and continued black self-appraisal in financial terms. [20] Parks de-centers the original Homeric hero, a character she simply dubs Hero in Parts One and Two, and Ulysses (invoking two white men, both Homer’s protagonist’s Latin name and the name of the leader of the Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant) in Part Three. Despite the hopes of the Chorus and other characters that he is and should remain exceptional, that he should both be measured and valued as such, Hero instead proves to simply be human and unable to personally overcome the ontological negation resulting from his enslavement and its dependent valuation. [21] In the transition from Part One to Three, it is to the Chorus and the secondary characters Homer (his foil) and Penny (his partner) that we must increasingly look to for some collective, future possibility of freedom. A MEASURE OF A MAN From the moment the curtain rises, measurement dominates the dramatic action. Part One, aptly titled A Measure of a Man, opens with the Chorus Leader “measuring the night by holding a hand up to the sky.” [22] This gest by which time is marked recurs throughout the act, and is often accompanied by Parks’s signature “Spells,” in which a character’s name is repeated in the text without being accompanied by any dialogue: Chorus Leader Chorus Leader Chorus Leader Second How much time we got?[23] Spells transpire outside language, and in this case function as a Brechtian gestus of appraisal. The gestus, Diamond remarks, is “a gesture, a word, an action, a tableau by which, separately or in series, the social attitudes encoded in the playtext become visible to the spectator.” The gestus thus “opens [the audience] up to the social ideologies that inform its production.” [24] Here, the social ideology involves measurement, marking, and assessment. Collectively, such gests engender spectatorial alienation from the event at hand. We gain enough aesthetic distance to see a familiar exchange in a new, critical light. In these exchanges, night and the coming day are assessed in slave-time: with the day shall come the end of their pseudo-freedom, the end of their limited, stolen time as people and the beginning of their time as chattel. As Part One proceeded in the ART production, more and more orange light flooded the stage as this inevitable moment of daybreak approached. The ever-approaching day will also bring with it Hero’s decision as to whether he shall follow the Boss-Master to war as his aide-de camp in the Confederate army. If he does so, his master has promised him freedom upon his return. If he refuses, he will have to stay behind and face his punishment, a punishment that all the other characters must also endure. These first few moves set the dramatic tempo of Part One. All the dominant actions of A Measure of a Man involve sizing up, and it is the Chorus, not Hero, that determines the dramatic action. In betting on Hero’s choice, they are monetizing the dramatic stakes of the play, and in so doing are drawing our attention to the fact that we as an audience have done the same thing: we have paid to see this spectacle and also to assess Hero’s choice. As Diamond puts it, these betting and marking gests force the spectator to “engage with her own corporeality” in looking and assessing the black bodies onstage for their respective measures, particularly Hero’s. Harvey Young examines an earlier manifestation of Parks’s use of Choruses in Venus , whose protagonist is Saartjie Baartman, a nineteenth century South African woman who was toured across England and France as “The Venus Hottentot,” due in no small part to white audiences’ obsession with the size of her posterior. That play’s Chorus “continually reminds the audience that the play is about looking at [her],” ensuring that our compassion for her “anchors itself in our own complicity in her spectacularization.” [25] We can only feel sympathy for the protagonist after we objectify her as much as the Chorus does. In Father Comes Home, the Chorus’ need to size up Hero also goes hand in hand with the audience’s, yet what Young terms spectacularization is even more overt: not only is the Chorus betting money themselves on Hero’s actions, but Hero is literally a slave, and his measure in that sense has an exact number (his selling price). They and we are participating in a system that reinforces such financial objectification. Moreover, the Chorus of Father Comes Home exists within the same world as Hero. Whereas in Venus the Chorus often stands outside the dramatic action and comments on it, the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves are decidedly within the play and suffer along with Hero, if not more than him. Their shared world of appraisal is reified in the exchange that ensues as the other Chorus members (Third and Fourth) join the first two onstage. The productions at ART and the Public Theatre, both directed by Jo Bonney, reinforced the choral synchronicity by placing the first, second, third, and fourth in a strong line cheating upstage; we see each arriving in turn to imitate the next at measuring the night, and all use the same gest. Though they all admit that the Leader is best at night-measurement, their appraisal of Hero himself is different: Fourth You may be the best at measuring the Night But that don’t make you the best at measuring Men. Third Early risers have their say but we gotta make our own choices on this Each of us gotta make a measure of the man We gotta choose for ourselves (Rest) I got a brass button I might be betting that Hero is– Going to the War.[26] Parks’s “Rests,” another consistent feature in her dramaturgy, afford a slightly more restrained moment of reflection or distancing than the Spell. The above Rest occurs immediately before the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves arrange their bets with their varied prized possessions (spoons, buttons, etc). These people, themselves property, are betting their own scant properties, reinforcing the system of exchange, property and assessment—of marking—in which they are themselves caught. The forms of resistance open to the Less than Desirable Slaves are, as Moten notes, “always already embedded in the structure they would escape,” [27] namely these proprietorial notions of the self. Neil Patel’s barren stage-space for the ART production reinforces the structural desolation within which these choices transpire: it is a vast, rust-colored expanse with only a short stump downstage right and a withered tree-trunk stage right of the tiny slave cabin placed center stage. The choice to be—indeed the seeming inevitability of doing so (“we gotta”)—is foregrounded by the Rest, the stage-space within which the betting transpires, and the resulting false implication that there is some sort of real, meaningful “choice” to be made. Alienation allows us to parse out these symbols. Ultimately, their bets and their choices, along with Hero’s, are existentially meaningless in this desolate space: they contribute nothing towards changing their current position of enslavement. Nevertheless hero-betting remains, as Colbert maintained of Django Unchained, “a comforting but deceptive remedy”: “There is a kind of sport to be had,” the Chorus Leader remarks, “In the consideration of someone else’s fate.” [28] This sport is the distraction that the Rest highlights; this pregnant pause troubles the preceding words. In betting on Hero’s decision, the Chorus members avoid confronting their own stark situation as being one without any real choice. Just as betting on the length of the night will not stop the arrival of day, betting on Hero’s choice shall not result in any change in their own condition. Moreover, in so doing they acquiesce to being inscribed as undesirable so that Hero might become individually exceptional. “Prime hands” like Hero were historically set up as an ideal against which all other slaves were assessed vis-à-vis labor performance and (as a result) financial worth. [29] All are caught up in these acts of appraisal, and we are continuously made aware of the contradictions lurking within the heart of these “choices,” as well as our own complicity in spectatorial appraisal. The slave Homer brings the futility of such sport home soon after arriving onstage. Homer shall not bet, he says, because he realizes the choice is meaningless: Homer Ain’t no game, Hero. Cause you shouldn’t be doing neither. Cause you shouldn’t stoop To do neither Cause both choices, Hero, To stay here and work the field To go there and fight in the field Both choices are Nothing more than the same coin Flipped over and over Two sides of the same coin And the coin ain’t even in your pocket.[30] Homer, with his vision of an oscillating coin that is not even Hero’s to spin, breaks in upon the small world within which the Chorus and Hero have lived until this moment. The talk of heroism and the resulting bets are suddenly revealed for what they are: someone else’s stories, stories that don’t apply to the people onstage and will do no one there any good. Each side of the coin means collective suffering: staying means mass-punishment for all the slaves on the plantation, and leaving means helping ensure slavery’s national continuation (by aiding the armies of the Confederacy). The Chorus’ belief in Hero begins to falter immediately after Homer’s monologue. They become more assertive, stepping in and prompting Hero to make some choice. When he initially announces that he shall not go to war, the Chorus steps in to remind him that they shall be punished far worse than he shall be for his choice: Leader That’s right. He’ll beat him hard and He’ll beat us twice as hard. Second For his 10 lashes we’ll get 20. Third For his 20 we’ll get 40. Fourth For his 50 we’ll get 100. Hero I won’t go. I can’t. My heart’s been set against it from the start. Chorus Hero Chorus Hero (Rest) Old Man So you’ll have to harm yourself in some way To take the edge off Boss’ anger.[31] The Chorus must remind Hero that his decisions have trickle-down effects on the bodies of the Less-Than-Desirable Slaves, who are quick to calculate the amplification of punishment that shall be inflicted on them due to their subordinate value to Hero. A series of Spells and a Rest alienate us from the action so that we have space to reflect upon this moment. It is Hero’s adoptive father, the Oldest Old Man, who must prompt him towards an action that takes the others’ fates into account. Hero’s exceptionalism is founded upon a competitive individualism that operates at the collective’s expense. Consequently, he does not take into account the collateral damage that his choice shall inflict on everyone else. Far from Carter’s vision of the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves as reanimated blackface minstrels or Guerrero’s reading of the “stereotypical roles” which they serve in the drama, what we witness as they begin to challenge Hero is an assertion of their own, collective identity. Although the first Chorus and the second are not the same , they are composed of the same actors and thus remain corporeally connected. The Runaway Slaves are the embodied successors of the Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves, who take these first steps towards agency at the end of Part One. As Moten attests, the improvisation of such ensembles is integral to any comprehension of the black, radical tradition. Such choral questioning forces a “revaluation or reconstruction of value.” [32] The ensemble, deprived of their hero, are forced to improvise. Homer proposes an alternative to this choice-less choice, something the Choral Leader agrees represents a viable “third way”: Freedom, for Homer, cannot be given; it must be taken. Freedom means stealing yourself and taking others with you. The aptly named Homer thus gives voice to one of the central ideas of the entire work: just as much as slavery is collectively endured, Freedom [33] must also be collectively, clandestinely acquired. Hero, however, views such an act as property theft: “A Stolen-Freedom?” he remarks, “That ain’t me.” [34] Running off quite literally means stealing himself and stealing Freedom would deprive him of the central choice he must make as a hero in act one, a choice Homer implies does not really matter. Moreover, stealing one’s self represents a radical exit from the status quo. Since criminality is the “only form of slave agency recognized by law,” Hartman attests, “agency of theft…challenged the figuration of the black captive as devoid of will.” [35] Running off is a radical choice that opens up the possibility of further choices. It becomes a choice that in fact matters. The problematics of Hero’s individualism are reinforced by the last significant development of Part One. Homer reveals to the Chorus that he and Hero had both, previously planned to escape together and that Hero betrayed Homer to the Boss-Master in exchange for an earlier promise of Freedom. Homer’s foot was taken as punishment, and Hero was forced to cut it off himself. Homer’s missing foot, and his limp, remain indelible onstage markers of this legacy of dehumanizing violence, and also of Hero’s failure to act heroically in the face of such terrible choices. Confronted with Hero’s un-heroic actions, the Chorus then makes their own choice, removing Hero’s name from him just as his crucial moment of choice arrives, along with the sun, at the end of the act. Leader And we can’t call you Hero. Penny That’s still his name. Third Maybe we won’t call you anything at all. The Sun Rises Chorus Penny Hero Homer Chorus Second The sun us up. Hero And my need to leave is clear. Not run off, Homer, Although I can see there’s value in it, But it’s not my road. I’ll go trot behind the Master The non-Hero that I am.[36] As the sun rises over the stage, Homer, Penny, and the Chorus’ Spells surround Hero’s, suggesting a shift in the dramatic hierarchy of the scene. We, along with the other figures onstage, await Hero’s response. It is finally the Second who must prompt Hero that the moment of choice has arrived. His resulting decision to leave is decidedly anti-climactic; it is only a default reaction to the revelation of his betrayal of Homer and the larger community. It would be unfeasible, now, for him to stay. In both the Public and ART productions, Hero slowly exits up a vast ramp, which slants down, stage right, across the entire backstage area. This afforded an extremely elaborate entrance for Hero earlier in the work, high above the others, yet it is now all of the Less than Desirable Slaves who escort him up it for his antiheroic exit. The collective mourns the loss of faith in Hero’s heroism, yet we are at once confronted with the stark, impossible nature of the choices put before him within the context of slavery. Parks thus gives the play its tragic resonance, but also opens up the possibility of Homer’s “third way” towards salvation: relinquishing the need for heroes and striking out for Freedom as a group. “The significance of becoming or belonging together in terms other than those defined by one’s status as property, will-less object, and the not-quite human.” Hartman maintains, “should not be underestimated.” [37] Such radical acts are certainly worthy of memorialization, as they transpired against immense historical odds put in place by a system set up to directly oppose communal resistance. The actions the Chorus takes here represent the beginnings of what she terms a “latent political consciousness,” [38] one more radically developed by the Runaway Slaves in Part Three. A BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS As Part Two: A Battle in the Wilderness, opens, we quickly realize that it contains no Chorus; the choral measurement of a man is replaced by the singular, appraising measure of the white slaveholder. Whereas Parts One and Three Occur in the same locale—”a slave cabin in the middle of nowhere. Far West Texas.”— A Battle in the Wilderness , transpires on the frontier of the war itself, in “a wooded area in the South. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere.” [39] We might well assume that it is here that Hero shall distinguish himself before “coming home from the wars.” The “battle” that is depicted is more existential than actual, however, as the fighting is only heard in the far-off distance; we remain “pretty much” off the historical map, in the middle of nowhere. Just as Hero’s ability to be a hero—with actual choices —was challenged by the Chorus in A Measure of a Man, his ownership of his own self is called into question in A Battle in the Wilderness . He is physically objectified as chattel by the only white character in the play, his master the Colonel, in what Hartman has described as form of “coerced theatricality” associated with the spectacle of the auction block, what she terms the “theatre of the marketplace.” [40] The measurement and bidding of the auction block replaces the measuring of the night and the choral betting on Hero’s choice in Part One. The difference between the two plays’ forms of measurement is minimal; one follows naturally from the other, as the Chorus learned its sport of determining Hero’s measure through the language and the performative conventions of the slave auction. The pull-away from the Chorus in Part Two allows for a sustained focus on such valuation via performance, preparing the way for the complete break from it which the Runaway Slaves accomplish in Part Three. Consequently, the central assessing event of A Battle in the Wilderness is a mock-slave auction. In staging such a spectacle, Parks taps into a macabre form of performance with a long, sordid history, whose primary purpose was to mark black bodies with a marketplace value, as Joseph Roach so memorably shows in his examination of such auctions in Antebellum New Orleans. “The staged exhibition of bodies for the purpose of selling them,” he maintains, “marks those bodies publicly as not possessed of themselves as property.” [41] Moreover, the mark of the marketplace was often applied to black bodies as a performance. Slave auctions became, Roach attests, a popular form of entertainment, even for those not actually participating in the bidding. [42] Those on the auction block were frequently dressed in evening wear and made to promenade, and even dance, before later being stripped down by buyers for the final inspection. In staging such coerced theatricality, Parks again challenges our complicity in an even more stark assessment of Hero’s measure. For Diamond, such alienation allows a way to put that historicity on view, specifically “in a sign system [western commercial theatre] governed by a particular apparatus, usually owned and operated by men for the pleasure of a viewing public whose major wage earners are male.” [43] Although Diamond speaks about the gendered body here, it is equally applicable to the white, masculine appraising view of the theatre of the marketplace, and how its historicity is re-staged in a contemporary commercial theatre viewing black bodies, specifically Hero’s body, onstage. The setup for this performance occurs early on in Part Two as the Colonel converses with his captive, Smith, a mixed-race private in a colored regiment of the Union army who has successfully passed as a white Captain by taking the dead man’s uniform, thereby avoiding death at the hands of the Colonel. Hero, Smith, and the Colonel have become separated from their respective armies in the aftermath of a battle. While Hero is collecting firewood, the Colonel assures his captive that Hero shall not attempt to escape: You might have commanded them but I own them. And because I own them I have an understanding of them that you don’t have and never will. Hero knows his worth to the penny, and, well, the poor thing is honest. Meaning he won’t run off not now not ever. He told me one day: “Master,” he said, “running off, well that would be the same as stealing, he said. [44] Choral watching and assessing are replaced in Part Two by the direct assessment of the white slaveholder. We witness this assessment’s ideological internalization in both Hero and Smith: whether or not one can, or should, steal one’s self—something Hero did in fact refuse to do in Part One—becomes the internal battle in the wilderness of Part Two’s title. Smith is subsequently coerced into visually assessing Hero in a mock, two-part slave auction that the Colonel initiates to follow up on his claim about how well he “understands” Hero, which for the Colonel means Hero’s attachment to his own financial value. The Colonel collateralizes Freedom, something he has already done to Hero at least twice thus far: he promises that if Smith can guess Hero’s actual price, he will free both of them, and Hero may return with Smith to the Union lines. Despite initial protestation, Smith ultimately agrees to participate, as the chances of freeing another man are too hard to pass up. In so doing, however, Smith plays the Colonel’s game and according to his rules; he replaces the Chorus in their measuring game of Part One. The Colonel’s line, “We’ll school him, just for sport,” echoes the Choral Leader’s remark about the “sport to be had” in betting on another’s fate in Part One. Like the Chorus before him, Smith now measures and assesses worth as attached to the black body, a collective, projected “them” that includes his own body. In accepting the wager of freedom and the rules of the game, Hero agrees to be the spectacle and Smith agrees to be the appraising audience. Both play into Hero’s spectacularization, as do we, again, by watching and guessing at his financial measure. The spectator is forced, as Diamond puts it, to “engag[e] with her own temporality. She, too, becomes historicized…her material conditions, her politics, her skin, her desires.” [45] It is impossible for us to avoid considering the material conditions of this spectacle as we sit watching it in the theatre. As the mock-auction begins in the ART production, Hero is made to stand on the downstage stump and be inspected by Smith as if on the auction block. [46] He occupies the center of this stage-image, keenly reinforcing a series of groupings Bonney created in the first play in which the Chorus, Penny, and Homer surround the center-stage Hero, yet now in Part Two Hero is so centered as chattel to be sold. Taking his role as auctioneer, the Colonel describes Hero as “hardworking, trustworthy, [and as] smart but still compliant.” [47] Smith-as-bidder is forced to demean Hero by inspecting the inside of his mouth to make sure he is not getting a bum deal. Ultimately, Smith places Hero’s worth at one thousand dollars, which, we learn, is two hundred too high. Although Smith has been coerced into participating in this act of valuation, it is Hero who must conclude the inspection: the Colonel forces him to name his own price. Despite this act of shame, Hero rebels against the Colonel by remarking that he might, in fact, be worth more now and, if the Confederacy loses the war, he might be worth much more. Smith agrees, calling this “good thinking.” Such self-assessment was historically key to the auction process. If a slave refused to help sell himself for the highest price possible, whipping would ensue. [48] Hero, and to a certain extent Smith, remain incapable of conceiving of their own worth outside of a given fiscal value, even when imagining a post-emancipation future. Hero can rebel only by placing his valuation higher; thinking outside the mark of the marketplace remains impossible. Hero’s rebellion pushes the auction to the edge of the point of no return. The Colonel orders Hero to “undo himself” and stand nude before them for his final inspection. One of the largest Spell-interruptions in the script follows: Colonel Undo yourself Hero. Hero Hero Hero is thinking, no fucking way. Smith Stop. Colonel Undo yourself I said. Smith Stop. Colonel Hero Smith Colonel Colonel Alright. For his sake. We wouldn’t want the Yankee to die of fright. The Colonel approaches Hero and, quickly raising his riding crop, strikes him across the face.[49] Hero steps down from the stump and the Colonel’s control over the performance ends, yet its effects on Hero reverberate through Parks’s silent architecture: the Colonel’s own final Spells frame the two other characters’ experience of whatever transpires there. Parks also gives a rare, authorial reading of what Hero’s long solo Spell entails ( Hero is thinking, no fucking way ), deviating from her earlier suggestion in her essay “Elements of Style,” that directors and actors should interpret a Spell “as they best see fit.” [50] No fucking way, it seems, must this moment be left to chance: Hero’s “undoing himself” would be a point of no return; it is and must remain unstageable. Yet the threat of the Colonel being able to take away any semblance of Hero’s humanity, to reveal him as merely meat, saturates the air. It is just before this “no fucking way” moment becomes real that the Colonel ends the performance, so that the “Yankee,” and the audience, shall not “die of fright.” Yet after this seeming release of performative tension, the mock-auction concludes with one of the only significant onstage acts of violence in all three parts of the play. The threat of physical punishment, torture, or death that guarantees slavery is quickly, tersely realized with the Colonel’s brief movement. [51] The auction block act is powerful enough to cause Smith to momentarily drop his own performance of passing: “you don’t know anything about us,” he remarks to the Colonel, before catching himself and suggesting that “us” means “Yankees.” [52] Seeing Hero on display is all too close to Smith’s own remembered trauma of being sold at auction. Parks deftly demonstrates that this spectacle reinforces how Smith and Hero see each other, the real “us.” The performative residue of the auction act hangs over the two men even after the Colonel leaves the stage to check on the armies’ movements. Left alone, Smith reveals to Hero that he’s really a Private in a Union colored regiment, not a Captain, and therefore a mixed-race, former slave himself. We must quickly reassess our understanding of all that has just transpired. It is implied that Smith gave his own price as his guess for Hero’s worth, as he later tells Hero that he cost around the same price as Hero did when he was last sold. Smith’s estimation of Hero is thus tied to the former’s own perceived fiscal value. Smith, however, goes on to oppose their prices and attendant value with the oft-debated and enigmatic term, “Freedom.” Echoing Homer in Part One, Smith holds out Freedom as something that exists outside of valuation: Smith There’s more to Freedom than I can explain, but believe me it’s like living in Glory. Hero Who will I belong to? Smith You’ll belong to yourself. Hero So when a Patroller comes up to me, when I’m walking down the road to work or to do what-have-you and a Patroller comes up to me and says “Whose Nigger are you Nigger? I’m gonna say, “I belong to myself?” Today I can say, “I belong to the Colonel” Imagining being confronted by a Patroller, Hero holds up his hands. Reminiscent of “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Hero “I belong to the colonel,” I says now. That’s how come they don’t beat me. But when Freedom comes and they stop me and ask and I say, “I’m on my own. I’m on my own and I own my ownself.” You think the’ll leave me be? Smith I don’t know. Hero Seems like the worth of a Colored man, once he’s made Free, is less than his worth when he’s a slave. Smith Is that how come you don’t run off? Hero Maybe. I’m worth something so me running off would be like stealing. Smith Seems to me like you got a right to steal yourself.[53] In imitating the gesture of “Hands up Don’t Shoot,” Hero’s motion links his own ontological uncertainty (will his life have value in a post-slavery world?) to the modern Black Lives Matter protests. Parks maintains that the move developed organically in rehearsals when the actor playing Hero in the premiere, Sterling K. Brown, made this gesture and Parks recognized its resonance immediately, enough for it to subsequently be published as a stage direction. [54] This recognition certainly transferred to the audience, as was demonstrated in the talkback discussion I attended at the American Repertory Theatre production in 2015. Benton Greene, who played Hero in the ART production, maintained the gesture. “The gestic moment in a sense explains the play,” Diamond asserts, “but it also exceeds the play, opening it to the social and discursive ideologies that inform its production.” [55] Members of the audience remarked that they clearly connected Hero’s gesture to the modern protest movement and certainly felt it made the work resonate in the present moment. [56] Hero’s “hands up” gest directly demonstrates the relationship between his potential plight and the larger, institutional systems that encourage and sustain white hegemony both then and now. Smith’s vision of Freedom prepares the way for Hero’s one truly heroic act. When the Colonel leaves the stage to scout ahead once more, Hero lets Smith go, to atone, he attests, for a “horrible wrong” he has done, namely his previous betrayal of Homer. Before he leaves, however, Smith gives Hero his own Union Private’s coat, which the latter then puts on under his own Confederate coat. Paula Guerrero reads this as another moment of Hero’s embrasure of whiteness, as “his inherited soldier’s clothes come to substitute his body, as the power they imply eclipses his black skin, making it invisible.” [57] Alternatively, I contend that it is a communal act of subversion, a rehearsal for more radical acts of resistance that the Chorus shall undertake collectively in Part Three. [58] The coat gest transpires after each man has shown the other his brand, his literal mark of sale. It is instead a restorative moment of what Hartman terms a “belonging together,” a collectively enacted performance that might “redress and nurture the broken body,[offering] a small measure of relief from the debasements constitutive of one’s condition.” [59] Hero has gotten where he is with Smith, not alone, and their moment of cooperation is commemorated via a subversive, hidden costume-piece that Hero shall carry with him. THE UNION OF MY CONFEDERATE PARTS In the final play, The Union of My Confederate Parts, [60] Parks opposes the collective nature of Freedom with Hero’s tragic lack of recognition of the need for others as he relentlessly clings to his heroic identity, even in the face of its implicit connection to marketplace price in Part Two. Nadine M. Knight writes that throughout the three parts of the play, Parks hews to the line of the original Odyssey inasmuch as “freedom is won through the hero’s self-interest, infidelities and delay and does not apply to others.” [61] Conversely, I suggest that throughout Part Three, Freedom is both sought and potentially earned by the more radical Chorus and the influence they excerpt over Penny and Homer, who ultimately leave with them to steal their own Freedom at the play’s conclusion, leaving Hero behind. In The Union of My Confederate Parts, Parks returns us to the slave cabin “in the middle of nowhere,” but there are marked changes to both the characters who populate the stage and to the context within which their performance transpires. Most significantly, the Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves have been sold off, we learn, and are replaced onstage by The Runaway Slaves. The word “Chorus” is dropped from their name, and within their own ranks there is no choral leader, merely three equal figures. They are also played by the same actors. These are the first signs of a more radical shift away from the only nascently assertive Chorus in The Measure of a Man . In Part Three their tone becomes more collective and radical, representing what Douglas Jones, Jr. dubs a “shift from black grief to grievance.” Such collective, choral performances were vital, he notes, in the transition from slavery to freedom in order to create a “collectivist (cultural) politics that positioned the group over the individual.” [62] The Runaway Slaves map this transition in Part Three, consistently challenging Hero’s heroic individualism and winning Penny and Homer to their ranks. Their collective story, and the alliance they forge with Penny and Homer (who ultimately leave with them) forms the spine of Act Three, not Old-Hero’s long-awaited “Return From The Wars” with news not only of the death of the Colonel in the war but also of Lincoln’s far-off signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Runaway Slaves’ time, and by extension they themselves, are no longer commoditized within the measure of the Boss-Master’s workday. The Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves measured how much darkness was left until sunrise and work, but the Runaway Slaves wait for darkness to arrive so that they can run. No time-measuring gestus therefore exists in Part Three. What matters above all else to the Runaway Slaves is Freedom. Freedom from slavery is not the master’s to grant, but can only be attained with others clandestinely, by stealing one’s self. Moten terms this radical stance “fugitivity,” equating blackness itself with a fugitive state, one which represents “a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed.” [63] Consequently, the Runaway Slaves do not occupy the same physical or ideological space as Hero. In the ART production they constantly lurk in the stage-shadows, and do not focus stage-images around the erstwhile protagonist, as they did in Part One. As the action of Part Three proceeds, they become the new, collective protagonist; their interactions with Hero consistently challenge his gests of heroic return and the mark of marketplace which informs them. Appearing onstage, Hero remains, despite his encounter with Smith, heroically stuck, unable to relinquish this role and steal himself. Moreover, in choosing his new name, Ulysses, he links himself even more securely to white heroism. The long ramp again affords him his elaborate entrance into Part Three and as soon as he arrives, Ulysses performs a series of homecoming gests for Penny, Homer, and the Runaway Slaves, ones which seem fitting (to him) for a hero who has returned from the war. However, The Runaway Slaves consistently interrupt these performances from the outset, highlighting their staleness as inherited performances, as well as Ulysses’s own lack of awareness about the actual hopes and dreams of the community to which he has returned. He performs the first of these shortly after arriving: Ulysses kneels on the ground. He gets up. He kneels again. Ulysses This is what I seen them do. When they get home. It just follows but it feels right.[64] This onstage, repeated miming of the heroic return of the soldier, which “they do,” invokes its inherited, white origins (both in the Odyssey and in the Civil War itself): This gest demonstrates Ulysses’s own alienation from himself as well as from the community for which he was supposed to be a hero. His separation from the newly forming onstage community is reinforced by his immediate reaction to the Chorus when they interrupt Ulysses’s homecoming gestures by announcing their presence, emerging from the shadows around the center-stage cabin: The Runaway Slaves First : We’ll be gone by nightfall Second : In case you’re wondering Third : We’re good honest people First : Just like you Ulysses We can’t help you but much[65] Deprived of the Less than Desirable Slaves, for whom he has brought gifts, Ulysses has lost a great portion of the intended audience for his heroic return. “Just like you” implies an equality Ulysses is reluctant to acknowledge. The Chorus splits the lines into their constituent parts, each in turn interrupting Ulysses’s performance. Moreover, “good” and “honest” replace heroic deeds here as merits. Such “ordinary virtues” were part and parcel of the sort of caretaking that went on as bloodlines were continuously broken and remade on antebellum plantations. “Kindness,” remarks Baptist, led slaves to “create families of all sorts, and to care for them, feed them, and teach them.” [66] Far from merely bringing superficial gifts, the Runaway slaves bring fugitivity, this desire for freedom outside the given rules of the stage-world. They are teaching Homer to write, one of great illegalities under slavery, and they will go on to convince Penny to “break the chain” binding her to Ulysses and leave with them. Ulysses’s oppositional gests continue as he gives Homer his gift, a white alabaster shoe-last [67] to somehow replace his missing foot. Ulysses found the shoe-last in a burnt-out store and he assures Homer that it is expensive: Ulysses Homer, this here’s for you From his satchel, he pulls out a foot, more like a shoe last, made of white alabaster. Homer A foot. The Runaway Slaves First : not dark enough Third : not yet Second : Not dark enough to jet.[68] The Runaway Slaves again interrupt, cutting into Ulysses’s gift-giving performance and underlining its absurd shortfall. They in fact repeat to Homer a refrain that was his own earlier in the scene (“it’s not dark enough yet/to jet”), again inciting him to be true to their shared convictions to escape. “It’s not dark enough” becomes a double entendre that cements the collective defiance of Ulysses’s white heroism. Since the alabaster shoe last is “expensive,” Homer is supposed to be happy with the white foot. Ulysses is blind to this disparity, expressing genuine surprise when Homer is not thrilled with this token gesture, clearly meant to assuage Ulysses’s personal guilt. “It’s not dark enough” refers not only to the foot itself, but also to the fading light of the day and its potential for transgression, for fugitivity, one in which Homer himself is becoming keenly invested. The Runaway Slaves, Penny, and Homer are in fact in the midst of forming a collective that is “dark enough” to escape to Freedom; they are giving a value to blackness outside of its marketplace price. They begin to articulate a fugitive culture that is what both Hartman and Jones term oppositional, “a culture [which] resists dominant ideologies, values, and action,” [69] here most specifically an individualism associated with capitalist valuation. “Dark enough/to jet” suggests that blackness may soon become radically black (jet), which will allow the Runaway Slaves (along with Homer and Penny) to steal themselves together. Ulysses’s desire to be a hero ultimately ensures his own tragic downfall. He cannot escape the equation of the hero with value, and, this idea of value insidiously affects how he sees his fellow slaves, including even Penny. Following his “heroic” gests, Ulysses prepares to read a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation which he has brought with him when he suddenly “ decides to discuss another matter instead. ” He announces after a Spell and a Rest that he has “brought something home for [himself]” [my emphasis]. [70] This “something” is in fact his new wife, Alberta. [71] He explains to Penny that he decided to marry someone else since they could not have children (he assumes it is her issue and is unaware that Penny has in fact become pregnant with Homer’s child in his absence). He even suggests that Penny might stay behind to help Alberta tend the house; the gift he has brought for Penny is, quite bluntly, a gardening spade. This misogynistic, dehumanizing vision of Alberta as a gift, as “something” for himself, specifically a thing that might allow him to sire children, and — together with Penny and her new spade — work his little piece of land, is alarmingly close to the Boss-Master’s own views of slaves as interchangeable property, as marketplace flesh to be bred. Moreover, as Paula Guerrero points out, he even withholds telling the slaves about their own proclaimed freedom to discuss a personal matter. [72] Despite his encounter with Smith and his momentary consideration of the radical stance of “belonging together,” he decides, ultimately, to remain a hero. As Penny retreats into the tiny cabin, the Runaway Slaves once more intervene. Moving out of the shadows, they come into the full lights of the scene as night begins to fall over the stage and the stage-light turns increasingly blue: Third : Inside, Penny makes up the marriage bed And in doing so she takes her place in a long line of the Wronged Come out of the house, true wife, true love, Second : Come with us First : Come with us Third : Come break the chain. (Rest) First : I wish it was dark enough Third : I wish it was dark enough Second : Dark enough to jet. First, second and third : Not yet Not yet Not yet Not yet. Homer It will be soon.[73] It is precisely this “collectivist yearning for liberation” remarks Jones, that directly “fueled black resistance to enslavement” [74] The Chorus implores Penny to break the long chain of inherited wrong and Homer, hearing his own refrain once more, provides a resounding affirmative that it is almost time to do so, ending the choral ode. [75] The messianic future tense of the ultimate line brings the ode into our own time, where it is still not “dark enough” but “will be soon.” We, too, are being asked to imagine a world otherwise. It is Penny, upon returning, who makes the final, resounding choice of the act, permanently rejecting the passive role of the original Penelope: she leaves Ulysses behind to head north with Homer and the Runaway Slaves. Ulysses has come home from the wars, but no audience remains, save his talking dog, for his heroism. Moreover, his first act of Freedom is to bury his former master, who never actually freed him. His plight remains resolutely tragic, and his tragic choice amounts to refusing to renounce his perceived exceptionalism. Yet even Ulysses ultimately retains a trace of this collectivity and the moment he shared with Smith in Part Two: he keeps Smith’s coat. This “truth” is the war-story Ulysses may one day tell his children, the truth of how he came to possess the coat, and it shall perhaps be a story about his one actually heroic act, which involved solidarity with another former slave. [76] Parks employs a series of strategic, gestic performances across all three parts of Father Comes Home from The Wars : all her characters are marked by the marketplace, and we witness performances that both reinforce that marking but also those which demonstrate collective, performed resistance to it. “The black radical imagination,” Robin Kelley remarks, “is a collective imagination…it is fundamentally a product of struggle, of victories and losses, crises and openings, and endless conversations circulating in a shared environment.” [77] Father Comes Home from The Wars consistently confronts its audience with these crises, but also points towards openings, towards a potential for transcendence: one may, in fact, steal one’s self and run with others, embracing fugitivity and a radical, collective improvisation in the face of the pervasive mark of the marketplace. One may also simply wear another man’s coat to remind one’s self of Freedom and its possibilities. We are forced to consider both choices. Parks’s use of her own, revised Epic form allows for a broad cultural critique about how the mark of the marketplace and its lasting legacies dehumanize all of her characters. If we need heroes to resolve the action, this says a lot about both the past and present state of things. “The heart of the thing won’t change easy or quick,” [78] as Private Smith opines, but Parks provides a space for fugitivity, allowing the audience space within the shared environment of the theatre to question the mark of the marketplace’s enduring legacies, perhaps engendering a radical blackness that is “dark enough” to destabilize them References [1] Several short plays in 365 Days/365 Plays do address the Civil War and its contemporaneity. Suzan-Lori Parks, 365 Days/365 Plays (New York: TCG, 2006). The genesis of Father Comes Home actually began with 365 Days/ 365 Plays , which features eleven different works with the title “Father Comes Home from the Wars.” Each features a series of fathers returning from various wars. The premiere production of Father Comes Home took place at the Public Theater in New York on 28 October 2014. The design and production personnel then transferred to the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, with a predominantly new cast. This was the production which I saw myself in Feb. 2015. Subsequently, it has been performed at various professional and non-professional venues both in the United States and abroad. [2] Many scholars have discussed both Lincoln works. See especially the chapter “Resurrecting Lincoln: The America Play and Topdog/Underdog in Deborah Geis, Suzan Lori Parks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008): 97-125; Verna Foster, ““Suzan-Lori Park’s Staging of the Lincoln Myth in The America Play and Topdog/Underdog,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 17, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 24-35. Works that discuss the two plays in tandem tend to focus primarily on the figure of Lincoln as opposed to the broader historical context of which he is a part. [3] Parks has remarked that the play will have a total of nine parts; the other two sections shall transpire during other wars. Suzan-Lori Parks, “The ART of Human Rights with Suzan-Lori Parks,” American Repertory Theatre, 18 February 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmB3fJRAroo . Harvard University streamed this talkback session after the play, which I also attended. [4] Parks, “ART of Human Rights.” [5] Suzan-Lori Parks, Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1,2 and 3 (New York: TCG, 2015), 98. [6] Erica R. Edwards, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2012), 20-21. [7] Paula Guerrero, “Reformulating Freedom: Slavery, Alienation and Ambivalence in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3 ) , ” Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media, no. 2, (2018): 46. [8] Paul Carter Harrison, “Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars: An Arrested Development , ” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 15, no 2 (Fall 2015): 33. [9] In Part three there are only three choral members and no leader. At least in the Public Theater and American Repertory Theatre productions, in part 3 the fourth choral member instead plays Hero’s talking, cross-eyed dog, Odd-See. [10] Elin Diamond, “Brechtian Theory/Feminist Theory: Towards a Gestic Feminist Criticism,” TDR 17, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 84. [11] Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6. [12] Edward Baptist, The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 33, 245. [13] Cailtyn Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 126. [14] Rosenthal, 135. [15] Laura Dougherty, “ Father Comes Home from the Wars, by Suzan-Lori Parks,” Theatre Journal 67, no. 3 (Oct. 2015): 562. [16] Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 309. [17] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003), 6. [18] Moten, In the Break, 21. [19] Soyica Diggs Colbert, Black Movements. Performance and Cultural Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017 ), 2. [20] Robert Patterson, ““12 Years a What? Slavery, Representation and Black Cultural Politics in 12 Years a Slave, ” The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 24-25. [21] Hartman writes: “what are the constituents of agency when one’s social condition is defined by negation and personhood refigured in the fetishized and fungible terms of object or property?” Scenes of Subjection, 52. [22] Parks, Father Comes Home, 5. [23] Parks, Father Comes Home, 5. The character names are in bold in the original script. [24] Diamond, 90. [25] Harvey Young, “Choral Compassion: In the Blood and Venus, ” Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, ed. Kevin J Wetmore and Alycia Smith-Howard (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007): 41,44. [26] Parks, Father Comes Home, 10. [27] Moten, In the Break, 2. [28] Parks, Father Comes Home, 11. [29] Rosenthal 144. [30] Parks, Father Comes Home, 42. [31] Parks, Father Comes Home , 34. [32] Moten, In the Break, 89, 21. [33] To emphasize its importance, Parks consistently capitalizes Freedom in her text, so I am following that style in this essay. [34] Parks, Father Comes Home, 47. [35] Hartman, 69. [36] Parks, Father Comes Home, 51. [37] Hartman, 59, 61. [38] Hartman, 48. [39] Parks may be referencing the historical battle in fact called the Battle of the Wilderness , which was fought between Union and Confederate forces from 5-7 May 1864, and was inconclusive in its outcome. [40] Hartman, 37. [41] Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 211. [42] Roach, 215. [43] Diamond 89. Douglas Jones Jr. also elaborates on this theatre of the marketplace, which he calls the “shared communion in the rites of the slave market – the looking, stripping, touching, bantering and evaluating [in which] white men confirmed their commonality with the other men with whom they inspected the slaves.” Douglas Jones, Jr, “Slavery and the Design of the African-American Theatre,” The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre (Cambridge: UK, Cambridge University Press, 2013), 20. [44] Parks, Father Comes Home , 67. [45] Diamond, 90. [46] This was the same stump upon which Hero’s own foot was almost cut off in Part One of the ART production, to “take the edge off Boss’ Anger” when Hero at least initially decides he shall not go to the war. We can only assume it was also the stump upon which Homer’s own foot was cut off by Hero earlier. [47] Parks, Father Comes Home, 75. [48] Hartman, 38. She quotes L.M. Mills, a former slave: “when a negro was put on the block he and to help sell himself by telling what he could do. If he refused to sell himself and acted sullen, he was sure to be stripped and given thirty lashes.” [49] Parks, Father Comes Home , 79-80. [50] Parks, “Elements of Style,” 16. [51] Parks refusal to stage such violence on a larger scale is tactical. “If the scene of the beating readily lends itself to an identification with the enslaved, notes Hartman about Douglas’ description of the beating of Aunt Hester in the Narrative, “it does so at the risk of fixing and naturalizing this condition of pained embodiment,” 20. Parks distances us from the shallow empathy of seeing Hero stripped and beaten in favor of a more complex engagement with the material conditions of slavery. Additionally, Edward Baptist remarks that the slave auction was designed to “destroy the façade of negotiation with the enslaved and established a community of right-handed power,” 98. The Colonel’s brief, violent action helps to shatter this façade. [52] Parks, Father Comes Home, 80. [53] Parks, Father Comes Home, 96. [54] Michelle Norris, “Suzan-Lori Parks’ New Play, ‘Father Comes Home from the Wars,’” NPR, 5 Dec 2014, www.npr.org . www.npr.org/2014/12/05/368640540/suzan-lori-parks-new-play-father-comes-home-from-the-wars . [55] Diamond, 90. [56] Parks, “ART of Human Rights.” [57] Guerrero, 52. [58] Parks frequently employs such subversions within more monumental versions of white history. Perhaps the most well-known is the blonde beard the Foundling Father introduces into his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in The America Play , as “his fancy.” Parks, The America Play and Other Works (New York: TCG, 1994), 163 [59] Hartman, 61. [60] The title references Parks union of the varied strands of her play together, specifically the anticipated reunion of Penny and Hero (akin to Penelope and Odysseus/Ulysses in the Odyssey ), as well as the reunion of the country at the war’s conclusion. [61] Nadine M. Knight, “Penelope Gone to the War: The Violence of Home in Neverhome and Father Comes Home from the Wars, New Voices in Classical Reception Studies , no. 11 (2016): 37. [62] Jones, 25. [63] Moten, Stolen Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 131. [64] Parks, Father Comes Home, 141. [65] Parks, Father Comes Home, 143. [66] Baptist, 282. [67] a shoe-last is a foot mold used in making and repairing shoes. [68] Parks, Father Comes Home , 145. [69] Jones, 23. [70] Parks, Father Comes Home, 146-147. [71] Parks reminded the audience during a talkback at the American Repertory Theatre that Troy, the protagonist of August Wilson’s landmark 1985 play Fences , had a mistress named Alberta. Parks picked the name Alberta as Ulysses’ new wife without immediately realizing what she had done, but quickly ascertained that her own protagonist and his plight were “so woven into the groundwater of [her] personal cultural experience,” that the name and the associations it might call to mind in the audience had to stay. Parks, “The ART of Human Rights.”. Also a victim of historical circumstance, Troy never got to play baseball in the major leagues due to the color line. His own fall echoes Ulysses’s, as a series of choices he makes to play within the system as it is, but also to play selfishly, alienates him from his own family. [72] Guerrero, 52. [73] Parks, Father Comes Home, 152. [74] Jones, 20. [75] Edward Baptist speaks to the choral power of work-songs to literally save slaves from death by despair. Lucy Thurston remarked eighty years after her enslavement that when she was considering dropping down and dying, when “she could not bring herself to go on living by herself,“ her fellow slaves begin singing to her in a chorus. “I got happy,” she remarked, “and sang with the rest,” 147. [76] Parks remarked in the talkback that the idea for the play had begun with Hero possessing the two coats. She then wrote backwards to determine how he came by them. “ART of Human Rights.” [77] Robin Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon, 2002), 150. [78] Parks, Father Comes Home, 98. Footnotes About The Author(s) DR. MICHAEL JAROS is Associate Professor of English at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in dramatic literature. His research and publications focus primarily on Irish culture and performance in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as contemporary American drama. He holds a PhD from The University of California, San Diego. 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 "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

L. Bailey McDaniel 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 Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation. Julius B. Fleming Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2022; Pp. 301. L. Bailey McDaniel By Published on May 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation . Julius B. Fleming Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2022; Pp. 301. Julius B. Fleming Jr.’s Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation is an invaluable contribution to, among other fields, civil rights historiography, theatre studies, Black performance studies, and African American history. With painstaking documentation supporting shrewd analyses, Fleming maintains that the Civil Rights Movement was more than a fight for social justice, but additionally a conflict over temporality—a battle whose victors often violently decide(d) who must wait, for how long, and under what threat. Fleming provides an important rethinking of civil rights studies by locating Black theatre and performance as central to “the cultural and political fronts” of the movement (2). Including but also moving beyond understandings of performance as an abstracted concept encompassing marches, speeches, sit-ins, or media, Black Patience reveals how Black theatre functioned as an effective instrument with which artists and activists redefined a racialized notion of time, a framework shaped by the anti-Black projects of white supremacy. Rather than a neutral backdrop to history, Fleming’s construct of racialized time denotes deferral, delay, and gradualism, a chronology that dictates a “waiting” that is “weaponized as a technology of anti[B]lack violence and civic exclusion” (1). 1 Fleming’s central claim is that the Civil Rights Movement’s focus on immediacy — a theoretical and acted-upon notion of “Freedom Now” — is more than just a demand for equality and justice; it is a direct confrontation with a white supremacist temporal order he terms “[B]lack patience.” The ecology of [B]lack patience encompasses the long history of enforced waiting, deference, and all forms of endured suffering imposed on Black bodies from the Middle Passage to twenty-first-century Liberals’ calls for moderation. Black patience warrants attention, Fleming writes, because “the overriding ambition that drives the racial project of black patience is its singular desire for Black people to suffer, and to do so without complaint” (241). Black Patience confidently demonstrates how Black theatre achieved victories in the Civil Rights Movement’s (contingent and incomplete) battle by staging “now” not as a stagnant passage to an always-deferred future, but an immediate place to act, without waiting, and without patience. Working deeply across broad archives, Fleming considers Black theatre and cultural production across diverse geographies and theatrical spaces illuminating how Black theatre enabled civil rights audiences to feel political time differently and — at its best — cultivated collective action. Among the valuable sources included in his archive are the Free Southern Theater; works from Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Alice Childress, Douglas Turner Ward, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, and Duke Ellington; and ephemera such as programs, oral histories, and reviews. Fleming’s Introduction establishes the book’s terminology and its multi-disciplinary stakes while unpacking a compelling methodology. He begins with an examination of Fannie Lou Hamer’s inspiring response to a 1964 performance of Waiting for Godot, during which “Hamer and . . . the actors used the body in performance to unsettle modernity’s racialized logics of waiting” (3). Fleming invokes a crucial theatrical moment that crystallizes the book’s arguments: anti-Blackness functions through forcible delay, and the theatre acts as a critical tool for rejecting white supremacist sanctions of Black patience. Chapter One effectively reframes the Emancipation Proclamation’s one-hundred-year anniversary as a temporal and political battleground. Investigating Emancipation’s centennial, Fleming argues that the 1963 commemorations revealed the white supremacist preference for deferral. Relying on a rich body of evidence that includes presidential speeches, pageants, and theatrical works, this chapter demonstrates how the centennial simultaneously 1) proclaimed freedom and 2) demanded Black restraint. In exposing this contradiction, Fleming argues that civil rights activism must be understood as a struggle over time itself . Building on his historicization of Emancipation as incomplete and temporally deferred, Fleming's second chapter performs a compelling case study in its examination of the Free Southern Theatre (FST) and productions across the south. Founded in 1963, the FST performed in churches, fields, and community centers under dangerous conditions of state and civilian surveillance/threat. Fleming reveals how the FST effectively redrew the spatial and temporal map of the Civil Rights Movement by bringing theatre directly into organizing spaces. He further outlines the ways that the FST productively reduced the space between art and activism in ways that presaged the political work of the Black Arts Movement that would follow and, as a result, enabled audiences to inhabit a revolutionary present. This chapter also provides a meaningful meditation on Fleming’s understanding of Afro-presentism . Alongside the call for “freedom now,” Afro-presentism concretizes a “refusal to accede to the temporal demands of [B]lack patience” (26). Fleming points out that “far from a cure-all for the violences of [B]lack patience,” Afro-presentism instead conjures “seizing and enjoying the good life in the here and now, knowing that in the context of anti-[B]lackness the future is always a zone of precarity” (128). Fleming impressively complicates his established analyses of racialized time with his third chapter, asking us to consider whose time counts more than others. Providing a needed intervention into queer temporalities within civil rights scholarship, Chapter Three rightly maintains that the temporal politics of the Civil Rights Movement cannot be separated from gender, sexuality, and embodied desire. With its consideration of Baraka and Paul Carter Harrison, among others, Fleming demonstrates how queer temporalities disrupted the respectability scripts that more typically accompanied anti-Black/white supremacist appeals for patience. Considering how desire, vulnerability, and intimacy potentially complicate, if not intensify, the (hoped for) immediacy of liberation, this chapter expands the archive of civil rights performance beyond heteronormative narratives. Turning to the “territory of erotic desire,” Fleming recognizes “that [B]lack patience not only engenders anti-Blackness but also (re)produces the cultural and political logic of heteropatriarchy” (133). Insightfully contrasting theater with photography and television, Chapter Four argues that the present tense of theatre can productively disrupt the (false/misleading) narratives of gradual progress that visual documentation can unintentionally reinforce. In addition to its stunning contribution to theorizations of racialized feeling, theatre, and visual culture, this chapter also identifies a parallel phenomenon to Black patience taking place as Black people are urged to be patient: white impatience — a tetchy temporal intolerance that can be seen in white critical reception, photography, and spectatorship. Fleming successfully maps the ways that white publics express irritation, fatigue, or hostility toward Black demands for immediacy. Or, as Fleming savvily explains, by reframing “the problem of race” as “a problem of whiteness,” Black theatre artists “recalibrated the visual economy of the Civil Right movement . . . and shift[ed] their audiences’ gazes from injured [B]lack bodies to white people” (37). Alongside its consideration of Hansberry, Baldwin, Childress, and Ward, this chapter reveals how Civil Rights theatre made racialized affect visually legible while it simultaneously critiqued the policing function of white impatience. With a performance analysis previously applied to live theater in earlier chapters, Black Patience 's final chapter examines the performance of waiting in live political events such as sit-ins. This (productively) strategic waiting seizes back temporal control and weaponizes the (deferred) time meant to discipline, exclude, and control Black bodies. With this pivot, Fleming maintains, Black protest effectively transformed patience into a consciously-employed, tactical practice during sitins, freedom songs, and jailins. This determinedly-invoked patience converts the notion of waiting into a mode of pressure and endurance that exposes the anti-Black violence of statemandated, white supremacist delay. In pointing out how activists also weaponized stillness/duration to force public confrontation with anti-Black racism, Fleming’s final chapter re-presents Black patience as performance that can both dismantle and repurpose temporal categories off the stage as well as on. Black Patience skillfully reframes the Civil Rights Movement as a performance-driven struggle over time, a struggle shaped by questions of how long equality and justice will take and how demands for patience (if not enforced waiting) work as tools in a white supremacist control of time. Challenging historiography that heavily credits civil rights momentum to photography and television, Fleming instead foregrounds the liveness, risk, and collective spectatorship of live performance as powerful engines driving political feeling and action. The book’s successful theoretical synthesis of dramaturgy, theatre history, geography, affect, and temporal theory offers a model for studying performance within social movements that will benefit educators, their syllabi, and scholars far beyond theatre or civil rights studies. Footnotes: 1. Throughout this review I capitalize the word “Black” when it refers to the culture, history, and people of a shared racial identity, as opposed to a color; any changes to Fleming’s original are noted with brackets. References Footnotes About The Author(s) L. BAILEY MCDANIEL is an Associate Professor at Oakland University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses from anti-racist and anticolonialist contexts. Her pedagogy and scholarship focus on African-American drama and performance, while also considering intersectional explorations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and (dis)abilities. Her first book (Re)Constructing Maternal Performance in Twentieth-Century American Drama (Palgrave Macmillan) explores the discursive and material intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and performances of motherhood in US Drama. Her second book (in progress) investigates the furtive interconnectedness of trauma, resilience, and recovery as explored in African-American performance. 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.

​The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is an annual event showcasing films drawn from the world of theatre and performance. ​​ The Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is an annual event showcasing films drawn from the world of theatre and performance. 2026 Festival Read More Segal Film Festival returns for its 10th edition from May 28–June 5 in NYC, presented with Anthology Film Archives, featuring global performance films and a Robert Wilson retrospective. Film Festival 2026 10th edition View Festival Lineup Film Festival 2022 7th edition View Festival Archive Film Festival 2025 9th edition View Festival Lineup Film Festival 2024 8th edition View Festival Lineup About The Festival The festival presents experimental, emerging, and established theatre artists and filmmakers from around the world to audiences and industry professionals. From its inaugural edition in 2015 to its present-day hybrid avatar, The Segal Film Festival for Theatre and Performance (FTP) has served as a platform for recorded works that span the length and breadth of the performing arts. Festival Founder and Executive Director of the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, Frank Hentschker shares his inspiration for creating the festival: “Film and digital media are an integral part of theatre and performance. I am surprised that there is not a film festival out there right now focusing on theatre and performance. I thought ‘why not create one’?” In the time before Corona, the Segal Film Festival had evolved into the premier US event for new film and video work focusing on theatre and performance. Its mission was to invite experimental and established theatre makers to present work created for the screen – not filmed archival recordings – to audiences and industry professionals from around the world. Now, after a year and a half of digital and hybrid theatre offerings, the festival must take on a new meaning. The festival has held on to its mission of being a free and open-to-all event accessible to everyone. The 7th edition of the festival was held digitally in March 2022, and featured 80 films from 30 countries, whilst the 8th edition was held in a hybrid format in May 2024 with in-person screenings in NYC and digital streaming.

By Claudio Tolcachir, Jean Graham-Jones | Collection of plays from Claudio Tolcachir’s Timbre 4 company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. < 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 Timbre 4: Two Plays by Claudio Tolcachir Claudio Tolcachir, Jean Graham-Jones Download PDF Claudio Tolcachir’s Timbre 4 is one of the most exciting companies to emerge from Buenos Aires’s vibrant contemporary theatre scene. The Coleman Family Omission and Third Wing, the two plays that put Timbre 4 on the international map, are translated here into English for the first time. Edited by Jean Graham-Jones Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Watch Resilience by Juan David Padilla Vega at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2025. Globally renowned drag, circus, performance, and dance artists share their personal stories of resilience through captivating manifestos. From a French aerialist’s life-saving journey of gender euphoria through circus to a Canadian dancer’s defiant resistance against shadeism, and a Colombian queer refugee artist’s poignant revelation of silenced asylum struggles, these inspiring artists come together to share stories that not only positively transformed their lives but also greatly impacted their communities. Blending documentary and art film, 'Resilience' captures vibrant performance manifestos born from a shared creation residency. Through visceral movement and powerful words, the film invites viewers to contemplate the beauty of human strength.. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Resilience At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2025 A film by Juan David Padilla Vega Screening Information This film will be screened in-person at The Segal Centre on Thursday May 15th at 1pm and also be available to watch online on the festival website till June 8th 2025. 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. You may RSVP above to get a reminder about the Segal Film Festival in your inbox. Country Canada, Colombia Language Spanish, English, French Running Time 70 minutes Year of Release 2025 About The Film Globally renowned drag, circus, performance, and dance artists share their personal stories of resilience through captivating manifestos. From a French aerialist’s life-saving journey of gender euphoria through circus to a Canadian dancer’s defiant resistance against shadeism, and a Colombian queer refugee artist’s poignant revelation of silenced asylum struggles, these inspiring artists come together to share stories that not only positively transformed their lives but also greatly impacted their communities. Blending documentary and art film, 'Resilience' captures vibrant performance manifestos born from a shared creation residency. Through visceral movement and powerful words, the film invites viewers to contemplate the beauty of human strength. About The Artist(s) Juan David Padilla Vega is a Canadian-Colombian transdisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose versatile portfolio spans film, photography, and video installations intertwined with performing arts such as circus, dance, drag, and music. Based in Montreal, his artistic practice explores the challenges faced by visible and invisible minorities, the emergence of new diasporas, self-exploration through inherited memories, and human movement. Among his most notable works is Resilience, a project supported by the Canada Council for the Arts (CAC) and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). Initially conceived as a social art initiative, it evolved into his first experimental documentary feature, which had its world premiere at Montreal's International Festival of Films on Art (Le FIFA) in 2025. His latest project, the multimedia installation Titre de Voyage, debuted as a solo exhibition at the Council for the Arts in Montreal and was later showcased at the Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée during the Festival LatinArte, as well as on St-Hubert Street for Latin American Heritage Month, reaching an audience of 38,000 spectators. Additional highlights include Betty Garcés, the Voice of the Pacific Littoral, a documentary short about Afro-Colombian opera singer Betty Garcés, and Nostos, Urniator & Dor, a multimedia art installation presented at Cali’s International Dance Biennale and the Teatro Colón Bogotá. Get in touch with the artist(s) distributionresilience@gmail.com and follow them on social media SOCIAL MEDIA PRODUCTION COMPANY Insondable Studio IG: @insondablestudio Urniator Studio IG: @UrniatorStudio FB: https://www.facebook.com/urniatorstudio SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR Juan David Padilla Vega IG: @juandavidpadillavega FB: https://www.facebook.com/juandavidpadillavega LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-david-padilla-vega-4b5b301a2/ SOCIAL MEDIA PRODUCER Philippe-Alexandre Jacques IG: @paj_philippe FB: https://www.facebook.com/philippe.jacques.505 SOCIAL MEDIA DISTRIBUTOR Lucía González García IG: @luciagoga FB: https://www.facebook.com/achsoluciag/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luciagonzalezg/ Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2025 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here His Head was a Sledgehammer Richard Foreman in Retrospect Moi-même Mojo Lorwin/Lee Breuer Benjamim de Oliveira's Open Paths Catappum! Collective Peak Hour in the House Blue Ka Wing Transindigenous Assembly Joulia Strauss Bila Burba Duiren Wagua JJ Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, Lucie Brux Acting Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film PACI JULIETTE ROUDET Radical Move ANIELA GABRYEL Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread Jean-Baptiste Mathieu This is Ballroom Juru and Vitã Reas Lola Arias The Jacket Mathijs Poppe Pidikwe Caroline Monnet Resilience Juan David Padilla Vega The Brink of Dreams Nada Riyadh, Ayman El Amir Jesus and The Sea Ricarda Alvarenga Grand Theft Hamlet Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls Theater of War Oleh Halaidych Skywalk Above Prague Václav Flegl, Jakub Voves Somber Tides Chantal Caron / Fleuve Espace Danse

Get In Touch For inquiries, feedback, or any other information, please don't hesitate to contact us: Telephone: 212-817-1860 Email: mestc@gc.cuny.edu Address: The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5303New York, NY 10016-4309 Send Thank You for Contacting Us!