By Jalila Baccar, Fadhel Jaïbi, Marvin Carlson, Nabil Cherni | A collection of recent work by Tunisian playwright and actress Jalila Baccar and director co-author Fadhel Jaibi, capturing the complexity and depth of grand themes prevalent in Arab societies. < 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 The Trilogy of Future Memory Jalila Baccar, Fadhel Jaïbi, Marvin Carlson, Nabil Cherni Download PDF Edited by Marvin Carlson Translations by Marvin Carlson and Nabil Cherni. Tunisian playwright and actress Jalila Baccar and director co-author Fadhel Jaïbi are two of the most important voices in contemporary Arab theater. No theatre artists were more closely involved with the ongoing events of the Arab Spring nor more astute critics of the constantly shifting political scene and their plays are enormously helpful in understanding the cross-currents of a country like Tunisia at the opening of the twenty-first century. Baccar’s roles, acting and theatrical narratives, co-created by her director and husband Fadhel Jaïbi, are extremely intricate, psychologically multi-layered, and have the uncanny ability to capture the complexity and depth of grand themes prevalent in Arab societies. Baccar has performed in over twenty of her plays, including major theatrical productions that have been staged worldwide by Jaïbi: Junun (Dementia, 2009) at the Edinburgh Festival, Khamsoun (Captive Bodies, 2006) – the first Arab play to be performed at the Théâtre de L’Odéon in Paris, and Araberlin (2002), among many others. Together they founded Tunisia’s first private theatre company, Le Nouveau Théâtre in 1976, as well as (in 1994) Familia Productions, instrumental in modernizing Tunisian theatre and engaging it in contemporary political concerns. This collection of their recent work, The Trilogy of Future Memory, includes Khamsoun (2006), translated by Nabil Cherni, and Amnesia (2010), and Tsunami(2013) translated and Marvin Carlson who has also provided an introduction. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Amy Mihyang Ginther Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Amy Mihyang Ginther By Published on May 19, 2022 Download Article as PDF “I intended both to tell an impossible story and to amplify the impossibility of its telling.”—Saidiya Hartman [1] Using theatre to generate empathy for characters and narratives has been a longstanding goal in Eurocentric drama and a strong argument for this medium to be a tool for larger social change. In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, sparked largely by the unjust deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, theatre makers are exploring alternative ways to represent Black, brown and other historically excluded narratives, which are too often exploited as trauma porn. In this essay, I offer dramaturgy of deprivation, or 없다, as an alternative to dramaturgy of empathy. I contextualize this concept theoretically and practically, and use examples from my own practice to illustrate how 없다 is potentially effective in dramatizing narratives from my own positionalities as an Asian American and as a transracially adopted person from South Korea. Critique of trauma porn and sentimentalized narratives While white representation is afforded abundance and complexity, “ethnic and racial others live in an economy of narrative scarcity.” [2] Theatre has long had the power to disrupt this scarcity but often only in the form of providing the previously invisiblized or marginalized narrative for an audience to elicit empathy. Performance studies scholar/ethnographic theatre maker Nikki Yeboah asks in our current moment, “is empathy enough, or does our work reify power more than disrupt it?” [3] Particularly in relation to Black and brown suffering, how can we dramatize characters’ experiences in ways that do not re-traumatize people of color or leave white audiences feeling passively satisfied for having empathy, therefore perpetuating the white and colonial gaze of surveillance, voyeurism, fetishism, and possession, [4] something Yeboah critiques as “not an inherently radical act”? [5] Theorists from Black and decolonial studies indicate that highlighting the historiographical absence of people or obfuscation of narratives illustrates how forces such as white supremacy and colonialism have dehumanized or invisiblized them. Tapji Garba and Sara-Maria Sorentino argue that metaphoricity is a crucial part of Black enslaved identity and that its “political indecipherability … exemplifies the violence of slavery itself.” [6] If “what slavery-as-metaphor offers is an opening to tarry with unknowing, to increase frustration,” [7] then what impacts can this type of depiction have on a theatre audience? Can frustration and unknowing provoke stronger actions that will result in social justice after the performance? Yeboah argues for dramaturgy that leaves the audience with the kind of frustration Garba and Sorentino refer to because “collective action requires agitation. Collective action is fueled by feelings of unrest, anger, and dissatisfaction so strong that they cannot be contained. It emerges out of turbulence. It draws strength from a people unsettled.” [8] Saidiya Hartman seems to agree: “the loss of stories sharpens the hunger for them. So it is tempting to fill in the gaps and to provide closure where there is none. To create a space for mourning where it is prohibited.” [9] Hartman’s idea of narrative restraint as a way to “respect the limits of what cannot be known” [10] contrasts with the dramatic urge to present such narratives with explicit specificity and detail for contemporary white audiences as a way to compensate for their invisibilization. Although greater representation and embodiment of these stories and characters are still important, is there a dramaturgical alternative that complicates these depictions and denies audiences satisfaction? These questions inspire me to think about the Korean verb 없다, which roughly translates to “there are none; (to be) lacking; (to be) nonexistent,” [11] not dissimilar to faltar in Spanish. [12] How do we create dramatic experiences of loss or absence for an audience so they feel the grief and rage needed to take action towards a more just world, instead of feeling passively good about themselves for empathizing with victims/survivors of oppression? Rather than working to perform and prove my humanity for the audience, how can I compel them to feel the irreconcilable loss of self and/or history so we can be inspired to make collective change? Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview and Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop are excellent recent examples that engage with more complex representations around racialized trauma. As an audience member, I felt the unrest, anger, and hunger that Yeboah and Hartman hope to evoke in their work; both shows created strong desire within me to experience their characters and narratives more fully, and I felt a renewed urgency to fight for them offstage. In the next section, I will argue that the uniqueness of transracially adopted Asian American identity is suited for 없다 and provide examples from my own work. Racist Love : Asian American and adopted Korean representation This essay takes inspiration from a performative response on Zoom that I gave to Leslie Bow’s working introduction to her book, Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy . [13] Bow argues that the US’s racialized relationship with Asian American identity can be illustrated through its abstracted affection or desire for nonhuman proxies (such as objects) and that this partly stems from a “deliberate absence of Asian people.” [14] This resonated with me as both an Asian American and a person who was transracially adopted from South Korea. “Transracial” does not mean white women trying to pass as Black or brown. In this context, it means being adopted into a family whose race differs from theirs (often Black/brown folks being adopted by white folks), and it has been an established term in adoption studies for decades. [15] Directly following the Korean War in the 1950s, a time when the US was strengthening its anti-Asian immigration policies, [16] adoptions from countries like South Korea increased. I argue that this is because US society and its adoption industrial complex viewed adopted children as dehumanized objects that allowed them to project the same kind of abstracted affection and longing that Bow highlights. White US families often adopted South Korean children because they were deemed acceptable as a model minority [17] in ways that are consistent with Bow’s assertions that the US looks “outward to Asia for its ‘bit’ of the other, for the object that makes satisfaction possible while imperfectly concealing racial anxiety.” [18] The larger AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) immigrant community often fails to be in solidarity with transracially adopted people from Korea [19] (who make up 10% of the Korean-US diaspora) while their white parents disregard their racial identity often with the intention to assimilate them. [20] Because “adoption is a series of transactions—legal, social, and financial [and] … those with the most power get to define the terms and create the policies and practices that most benefit them,” [21] white parents as major actors in these transactions tend to further objectify adopted people as nonhumans. The Korean government and its counterparts in countries like the US that make up the adoption industrial complex commodify adopted people; they were a literal export, because “US adoptive laws were designed in the context of free market capitalism and based on children as property.” [22] Agencies duplicated, interchanged, and manipulated our records to make us more marketable/adoptable. I was one of likely thousands of adopted people whose status was changed to orphan on my paperwork, a lie to appease the US government’s scant overseas adoption policies at the time. Instead of wanting to prove my humanity as an Asian American and transracially adopted person, my impulse was to move in another direction: to depict myself as literal Asian objects. Utilizing the Zoom format, I used Snapchat filters that stir Western desire such as food, toys, and appropriative clothing/costume. I leaned into my own objectification and used filters that intentionally obscured most of my face in the hopes that the audience would strain to see more of my personhood and be present to this less comfortable sensation. Fig. 1. Screenshots of Ginther (taken by the author) during her Zoom performance, using Snapchat filters. Clockwise from left to right: 1. As a dumpling, 2. As an old-fashioned Orientalist doll, 3. As a Geisha in full makeup, 4. As a boba tea. As I presented using a boba tea filter, for example, I talked about how experts estimate that South Korea made somewhere between 15-20 million dollars a year at the height of Korean adoption. [23] Using my own birth year, 1983, and adjusting for inflation and the pricing for my favorite bubble tea place in Santa Cruz, I shared with the audience that I cost about 1,315 boba teas. I hoped that in highlighting the loss of my story and personhood through anti-Asian American racism and the international adoption industrial complex that I would generate hunger, agitation, and unrest in ways that Yeboah and Hartman imagined. Attendees described my performance as “playful,” “incisive,” and “disorienting.” Another reflected, “Mainstream representations of ‘Asian-ness,’ like dumplings, ‘Geisha’ makeup, and boba tea, seen all together in aggregate made for a compelling visual argument of how we consume and project, literally on our faces, cultural iconography and object.” These responses suggest that I effectively performed alienation and objectification. My work: between and No Danger of Winning My first solo show, between , explored Korean adopted identity through multiple characters that centered my search for my first family. [24] Many adoption narratives use reunion as a form of climax, [25] but I intentionally deprived the audience of this dramatic moment, telling them: There was no grand moment that led me to my family in Korea.Perhaps that’s what you were hoping to find here.Meeting my family in Korea did not complete me.Reunions are not ends. They are middles. [26] I did not consciously know it at the time, but I was exploring ways we can withhold representation from audiences for sociopolitical reasons. I remarked that I had intentionally resisted this type of resolution scene because “I think this dilutes the complexity and richness of the experience that the continuously progressing relationship demands and deserves.” [27] In addition to depriving my audience of a realistic depiction of my reunion, I realized that my inability to “authentically” portray a Korean woman also deprived Korean audience members in Seoul of the ethno-national identity that was taken from me through the trauma of my transnational adoption. This is particularly important because transracially adopted people “are seen as suspect in their communities of origin or seen as not authentic,” [28] so a more supposedly “accurate” depiction potentially misses an opportunity to convey a more complex truth. I reflected: I want the audience to fully believe that I am this Korean mother before them, but I have accepted the fact that, to a Korean-fluent audience, there really is no amount of voice work I can do to achieve this. … you’re not the only one to intimate that part of what is moving about this performance of Ki-Bum is how hard and perhaps how imperfectly I, as an adoptee, am trying to portray this character to audiences here in South Korea. [29] Being unable to achieve this character’s accent with believable mimesis originally felt like a failure in my performance. With between , I am interested in the impact of my inability to fully embody Koreanness for Korean audience members. In feeling deprived of this more authentic portrayal, perhaps they will be moved to support policies such as family preservation so as to not perpetuate this discomfort they feel. The theory I cite in this essay, my previous work like between , and pieces like A Strange Loop and Fairview have inspired the ways I am writing and dramaturging my current project, the book for No Danger of Winning , a verbatim musical based on my interviews with ten former contestants of color who were eliminated on The Bachelor/ette . It is a meta-musical where a character, Joy, based on me as the playwright, navigates the complex ethics of trying to represent the people she interviews in ways that are more humanizing than the reality television depictions. In some ways, she is exploring the same questions as this essay through a more dramatic, embodied medium. Originally, one of our major dramaturgical goals was to humanize the contestants in ways that the reality TV did not and to illuminate the ways they suffered as a result. When one Black audience member commented at our first workshop reading, “I don’t need an entire musical to tell me that these reality shows are racist,” [30] it became clear to me, the composer (Thomas Hodges), and our developmental director (Lisa Marie Rollins) that providing literal/mimetic depictions of the characters’ experiences simply to replace the racist televised versions was not sufficient representation. The musical needed to disrupt the conditioned white gaze of the audience. After six Asian/Asian American women were killed in a mass shooting in Atlanta in March 2021, the stakes of representation and its deadly consequences resonated with me in a deeply personal way, adding to the heightened despair and fear so many of us in the AAPI community were feeling since the pandemic and its racist consequences emerged. [31] I wanted to depict the way this event shifted my (Joy’s) making of our musical—but how? How can I represent the responses of my Asian American and transracially adopted Asian communities through my theatre making in ways that do not reify trauma or leave a white audience feeling sated with their empathy for us? There is a moment where my character, Joy, seeks comfort after the tragic news by having an intimate and romantic moment with the presumed Asian male contestant she interviewed from The Bachelorette. I offer this staging as a possibility of something because the scenario of two Asian people experiencing romantic love does not happen often on The Bachelor/ette . However, it becomes increasingly apparent through his lines that this Asian actor is actually playing Joy’s white boyfriend; along with Joy, the audience experiences this possibility of romantic love dissolve. No matter how much agency Joy has as a playwright, she is unable to generate this narrative in her real life. Using this reveal, I aim for the audience to feel deprived of what a romantic love story between Joy and an Asian American partner may look like and the ways whiteness can feel insufficient in supporting partners of color during/after racist trauma. Conclusion Adopted writer Mary Kim Arnold reminds us: “being visible is not the same as being seen.” [32] Too often, audiences leave shows “feeling good about feeling bad” [33] for a character of color who experienced oppression or trauma as part of the dramatic narrative. While representation is important, and this may be arguably better than continuing to exclude these narratives from our canon, I believe there are ways we can reimagine dramaturgy that can move audiences beyond a passive experience of empathy that does little to change power dynamics and the world at large. In my theatre making, I aspire to deprive the audience of my full personhood and its related narratives in an effort to generate feelings and experiences of irreconcilable loss: a traded commodity through cute Snapchat filters; a yearned-for reunion scene; an “authentic” Korean character; or a loving, healing, romantic relationship between two Asian Americans. I dream of emancipatory ways Korean adopted people and other people of color will be seen onstage. Perhaps one of the ways to do this is to deprive an audience of what could have been, to compel them to experience our grief, our losses, our irreconcilability, so they rage with us, fight for us, and do something in the world that generates actual justice. References [1] Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 11. [2] Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 203. [3] Nikki Owusu Yeboah, “‘I know how it is when nobody sees you’: Oral-History Performance Methods for Staging Trauma,” Text and Performance Quarterly 40, no. 2 (2020): 132. [4] Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York: Routledge, 2003), 6. [5] Yeboah, “Oral History Performance Methods,” 149. [6] Tapji Garba and Sara‐Maria Sorentino, “Slavery Is a Metaphor: A Critical Commentary on Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,’” Antipode 52, no. 3 (2020): 776. [7] Garba and Sorentino, 777. [8] Yeboah, “Oral History Performance Methods,” 46. [9] Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” 8. Hartman’s essay is known for laying the foundations of critical fabulation, the praxis of filling in the gaps of historical data with creative, semi-fictive accounts, particularly in relation to Black trauma in the US. This is already being referenced in dramaturgical processes in productions. See Calley N. Anderson and Holly L. Derr, “Using Critical Fabulation for History-Based Playwriting,” Howlround, 3 March 2021, https://howlround.com/using-critical-fabulation-history-based-playwriting. [10] Hartman, 4. [11] “Google Translate,” Google, https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=%EC%97%86%EB%8B%A4&op=translate. [12] “Google Translate,” Google, https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=faltar%20&op=translate. [13] Bow’s remarks and my response to them were part of the Writing for Living: Helene Moglen Conference in Feminism and the Humanities, sponsored by University of California: Santa Cruz, 2021. [14] Leslie Bow, Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022), 10. [15] For more on this, see: JaeRan Kim, “Race and Power in Transracial and Transnational Adoption: Historical Legacies, Current Issues, and Future Challenges,” in The Complexities of Race: Identity, Power, and Justice in an Evolving America , ed. Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe (New York: New York University Press, 2021), 104-125; Eleana J. Kim, Adopted Territory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); and Andy Marra, “An Open Letter: Why Co-opting ‘Transracial’ in the Case of Rachel Dolezal is Problematic,” Medium, 16 June 2015, https://medium.com/@Andy_Marra/an-open-letter-why-co-opting-transracial-in-the-case-of-rachel-dolezal-is-problematic-249f79f6d83c. [16] Kim, “Race and Power in Transracial and Transnational Adoption,” 109. [17] Kim, Adopted Territory , 28. [18] Leslie Bow, “Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy” (presentation, Writing for Living: Helene Moglen Conference in Feminism and the Humanities, Santa Cruz, CA, 19-20 February 2021). Bow said this as part of the draft she presented at the conference. It was later deleted for the final version of her book’s introduction. [19] Kim Park Nelson, Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 96. [20] Kim, “Race and Power in Transracial and Transnational Adoption,” 110. [21] Ibid., 104. [22] Ibid., 112-113. [23] Kim, Adopted Territory , 33. [24] I wrote between as part of my undergraduate thesis at Hofstra University in 2005. Its World Premiere was at the Edinburgh Fringe (Gilded Balloon) in 2006. Because of its themes and production locations, audiences were predominantly white and/or had some personal/professional interest in adoption. There were more Korean attendees when the show premiered in Seoul in 2011, but still many white audience members because the show was co-produced by an expat theatre company. [25] Family reunion is commonly used to resolve many media narratives in general that are not adoption related, spanning from Finding Nemo to Avengers: Endgame . One adoption-focused example of reunion being used as a resolution is the Netflix documentary, Found (2021). [26] Amy Mihyang Ginther, between (unpublished script, Club After Mainstage, Seoul, 9-17 April 2011). [27] tammy ko Robinson, “Korean Adoptee Explores Roots In One-Woman Show,” Imperial Family Companies, October 2011, https://charactermedia.com/october-issue-korean-adoptee-explores-roots-in-one-woman-show-2/. [28] Kim, “Race and Power in Transracial and Transnational Adoption,” 115. [29] Robinson, “Korean Adoptee.” [30] No Danger of Winning talkback , book by Amy Mihyang Ginther, music and lyrics by Thomas Hodges, Shetler Studios, New York, 11 July 2019. [31] Anti-Asian racism, violence, and xenophobia has a long history in the US; this has intensified significantly since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. [32] Mary-Kim Arnold, Litany for the Long Moment (Buffalo, NY: Essay Press, 2018), 29. [33] This phrases references Lisa Nakumura, “Feeling Good about Feeling Bad: Virtuous Virtual Reality and the Automation of Racial Empathy,” Journal of Visual Culture 19, no. 1 (2020): 47-64. This piece critiques the goal of empathy in virtual reality (VR) documentary work specifically, and is impacting my current VR project, Mountains after Mountains (산 넘어 산), which is about my illegal abortion in South Korea. Details about this are beyond the scope of this essay, but I anticipate publication about it in the future, along with its VR release in exhibition space. Footnotes About The Author(s) Amy Mihyang Ginther (she/they) is currently an assistant professor within the Department of Performance, Play & Design at UC Santa Cruz. She is a queer, transracially adopted theatre maker and accent designer who publishes and performs around themes of identity, embodied trauma, power, and representation. Ginther’s edited volume, Stages of Reckoning: Antiracist and decolonial actor training , is due 2023 (Routledge) and she is currently working on a musical, No Danger of Winning . Ginther is a Master Teacher of Acting and Singing with Archetypes, and is a certified teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork and Tectonic Theater Project’s Moment Work™ devising method. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre By Tiran Manucharya Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre . By Amina ElHalawani. London and New York: Routledge, 2024; pp. 170 + x. Reviewed by Tiran Manucharyan Amina ElHalawani’s monograph Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre is a detailed study of the transformative potential of theatre in the political development of a country through the examples of intersections between theatre and politics in Egyptian and Irish contexts. Clearly, an essential inspiration for the author is the unique place of the play Waiting for Godot (1952) by the Irish-born playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1959) in Egyptian theatre tradition. A notable example of Beckett’s influence in Egypt is the frequent comparison, including by ElHalawani, of one of the country’s most influential plays, The Farfurs (1964, Al-Farafir ) by Yusuf Idris (1927-1991), with Beckett’s masterpiece. References to Beckettian characters and scenes are abundant in the work of many of Idris’s compatriots of his time, some of whose work is incorporated into ElHalawani’s study. Today, too, Beckett’s work continues to speak to issues within Egyptian society, evidenced by the periodic revisits to his plays on Egyptian stages. The 2015 production of Waiting for Godot , directed by Ahmed Sobhi, or the 2024 production of Endgame (1957), directed by El-Saeed Qabil, both on the stage of Cairo’s E-Taliaa Theatre, are only a couple of such examples. This significant and ongoing influence of Beckett on Egyptian theatre indicates that the topic of ElHalawani’s monograph has the potential to make a timely and pertinent contribution to the study of Egyptian theatre. ElHalawani’s take on Beckett’s work is in line with the almost canonized perception of it among Egyptian playwrights and directors, interpreting Waiting for Godot as a play that turns theatre into “the arena in which rebellion is not only suggested but performed” (90). In this stance, the author is inspired by the highly prominent Egyptian playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim’s (1898-1987) experiments with the Theatre of the Absurd, in which life is depicted “as constant struggle” (75), and Michael Y. Bennett’s reading of Waiting for Godot as “a recast myth of Sisyphus” (76). Building on this standpoint, ElHalawani’s book narrates a convincing history of direct and indirect dialogue between the Irish and Egyptian theatres of rebellion. The monograph incorporates comparative analyses of the work of a handful of Egyptian and Irish playwrights. Egyptian theatre is represented with plays by Tawfiq al-Hakim, Mikhail Roman (1924-1973), Yusuf Idris, and Salah Abdul-Saboor (1931-1981), and Irish theatre with those by Brian Friel (1929-2015), Frank McGuinness (b. 1953), Christina Reid (1942-2015), and Samuel Beckett. Given the significant development and influence of Beckett’s work beyond Irish shores, the inclusion of his work in the scope of a book, which discusses specific national theatres, with a stress on the word ‘national’, is a bold decision by ElHalawani. Yet this is well argued: it is an attempt “to complicate the relation between the centre and periphery exactly through such ambiguous figures [i.e. Beckett and William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)]” (11). The study strongly emphasises the belief in theatre’s potential to “effect change” (5). As ElHalawani clarifies, her book “presents a gesture of reading global modernist texts in local contexts, which gives way to new approaches of understanding complex moments of social change entangled within global histories of colonialism and decolonization” (12). The book opens with the story of the Irish playwright and theatre manager Lady Augusta Gregory’s (1852-1932) visit to Cairo, and her acquaintance with and admiration for the Egyptian nationalist Ahmed ʿUrabi, the leader of the 1879-1882 revolt in Egypt against the political leadership of Egypt and British and French control of the country. As the author states, Lady Gregory and Yeats’ project of national theatre has been inspirational for similar endeavors among Egyptian cultural practitioners. In her introduction, the author specifically mentions the most prominent examples of such attempts in Egyptian theatre, undertaken by al-Hakim and Idris. She highlights al-Hakim’s emphasis on how indigenous Egyptian cultural forms were redefined by modernist cultural movements of the time. At almost fifty pages, Chapter One is the longest chapter of the book and makes up one third of it. Such length is necessary to provide the reader with the socio-political context to justify the comparative discussion of Irish and Egyptian theatres. Here, ElHalawani elaborates further on the development of cultural nationalism in Irish cultural production and Yeats’ involvement in it. The author stresses the difference between colonialist nationalism, which looks at “local cultures [of those colonized] as unworthy, primitive and backward”, and the nationalism of liberation movements, which attempt “to reassert themselves and the right of their nations to self-government” (23). In her analyses, ElHalawani incorporates references to and discussions of a wide range of examples from Egyptian and Irish literature, music, and theatre, placing the developments in theatre within the framework of the wider socio-political context and trends in the cultural production of the two nations. Among others, one of the most interesting sections in this chapter is that concerned with the involvement of women practitioners in the theatre scenes in Egypt and Ireland. The section starts by reflecting on the Egyptian playwright and director Laila Soliman’s (b. 1981) 2016 play Zig Zag , which returns to the attack carried out by the British army on an Egyptian village called Nazlit al-Shubak in 1919 and to the stories of the women raped by British soldiers during this attack. ElHalawani interrogates the absence of these women’s stories from Egyptian nationalist discourse—and their availability only in the archives of the British Foreign Office—as underscoring “issues of women’s rights and citizenship” (39). The author draws a parallel with the Irish director and playwright Louise Lowe’s 2011 play Laundry which revisits the infamous Magdalene Laundries, focusing on “the violence and oppression the women and children [in them] went through not only at the hands of the British Empire but even more painfully under the rule of the Irish Free State” (39). As she suggests, the disappearance of women’s narratives and names from the canonical narratives in history “brings to the forefront the question of the missing female names from the theatre canon itself” (41). The next three chapters analyze the key texts chosen by the author for her study. Chapter Three focuses on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot , al-Hakim’s Fate of a Cockroach (1965, Masir Sursar ) and Roman’s The New Arrival (1965, Al-Wafid ). Through this selection of plays, the author aims to investigate the Egyptian playwrights’ interpretation of Beckettian absurdist tradition. According to ElHalawani, the Egyptian writers approached the Theatre of the Absurd as a mode that allowed them to perform rebellion in an era of gradually growing disillusionment during the 1960s, which contrasted to the atmosphere of euphoria and hope that the 1952 revolution brought to Egypt in the previous decade. The overarching argument that ElHalawani develops is that the shared “sense of despair in an existing world order” in these plays does not equate to “a despair in life itself” and does not deny “the possibility for man to give it new form.” Moreover, according to ElHalawani, interpreting them as performances of rebellion inside the theatre suggests that “a sense of contagious collectivity pushes for a new world order to be negotiated” (90). In Chapter Three, the discussion is driven by ElHalawani’s attention to the self-reflexive quality of Idris’s The Farfurs , Friel’s Faith Healer (1980), and McGuinness’ Carthaginians (1988). The self-referential quality of these plays, as ElHalawani explains, allows her “to examine the vision of three overtly committed writers concerning [the] transformative nature of the performative act and the different ways in which it can be achieved” (92). Engaging with Idris’s masterpiece, ElHalawani revisits one of the central, almost eternal, questions in Egyptian theatre, which concerns its form and content: what makes theatre Egyptian? This question has long perturbed Egyptian theatre circles, most prominently since the 1960s thanks to al-Hakim’s and Idris’s preoccupations, but arguably since its beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century. As ElHalawani concludes, Idris’s play is in fact “a complex hybridity” that is “inspired by Western theories of theatre without denying its own authenticity as an Egyptian play” (94). ElHalawani’s conclusion regarding its content follows the same logic, suggesting that in it “the local is made global and then is reduced back to its specificity” (100). What unites these plays, according to the author, is that, through their self-reflexive essence, they enabled the playwrights to reflect on how they saw the role and the responsibility of theatre “to react to the past and present” and to “shape the future” (116). In Chapter Four, engaging with Reid’s Did You Hear the One About the Irishman…? (1985), Abdul-Saboor’s Musafir Layl (1969, Night Traveller ), and Beckett’s Catastrophe (1982), ElHalawani investigates “the correlational dynamics involved in performing oppression and revolt”, considering theatre’s power to turn its audiences into “a communal force” (119). The author argues that in these plays the playwrights are united in prioritizing “a more politically active audience” (121). As she explains, through their liminal quality and by breaking boundaries these plays bring reality and imagination together, turning theatre into “a space in which transformations are possible and where people can redeem their agency”. She goes on to conclude that the outcome is the transformation of theatre into “an interactive endeavour,” which empowers “the audience’s agency both in the theatre and in the public sphere” (137). As well as being a thorough study of the key texts from Irish and Egyptian theatre traditions, ElHalawani’s monograph is a rare example of scholarly writing with an engaging narration. This is enriched by the author’s inclusion of various theatre-related anecdotes, such as Lady Gregory’s above-mentioned encounter with ʿUrabi or Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s (in power 1954-1970) involvement in a school production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar . Thus, a valuable addition to the scholarship for researchers and students engaged with theatre, comparative literature, and the intersections between arts and politics, ElHalawani’s book can also attract readers curious about Irish and Egyptian theatres and the role of theatre in the resistance movements of the two nations. Lastly, the appendix of the book provides those who teach or study Egyptian theatre in English with much anticipated first translations of Idris’s opening remarks to The Farfurs and al-Hakim’s introduction to his Qalibu-na al-masrahi (1967, Our Form of Theatre ), a book in which the playwright manifested his vision of how a truly Egyptian theatre could develop. As a final note, I would like to highlight the recently rekindled encouraging interest of English language publishers in Egyptian and Arab theatre in general. One hopes this will result in additional publications on the subject, since—despite its not very long documented history—theatre in the Arabic language has produced a huge number of brilliant texts, many of which may help us to make sense of some of the crises we witness today, not only in the region but also beyond it. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Tiran Manucharyan is a Lecturer in Arabic at the School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews. Tiran holds a PhD in Arabic from the same university. His thesis looked at politically and socially engaged Egyptian theatre in the second half of the 20th and in the early 21st century. Published in 2024, his first monograph, titled Of Kings and Clowns: Leadership in Contemporary Egyptian Theatre since 1967 , builds on his PhD thesis, focusing on the work of the Egyptian playwrights Yusuf Idris, Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny, Lenin El-Ramly, and Fathia El-ʿAssal. Tiran is currently working on a British Academy-funded project devoted to the work of late-twentieth-century Egyptian women playwrights. 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.

Patrick McKelvey Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Patrick McKelvey By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization . Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Scholarship on the subject of performance labor has proliferated with renewed intensity over the past decade. This development is, in part, a response to the way that scholars across the humanities and social sciences have diagnosed transformations in the organization and practice of work in the past half century as a problem of “performance.” With Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization , Judith Hamera offers a contribution to these conversations that is both methodologically innovative and politically ferocious. Hamera argues that a performance studies analysis can register, recognize, and reimagine the racialized structures of feeling that attend deindustrialization in the U.S. She does so by attending to the overabundant and hypervisible representations of two deindustrial icons: Michael Jackson and Detroit. Three interrelated questions drive Hamera’s inquiry: 1) How does structural economic change feel? 2) What is the role of performance in these transformations? 3) And how have racist hierarchies shaped the performances, including the “promises and perils,” of deindustrial life (xiv)? She pursues these questions through both archival and ethnographic methods, engaging a sprawling performance archive that includes music videos, plays, documentary films, and art installations. Hamera wrests authority from economists as the experts best equipped to explain such structural transformations, modeling a performance theorization of political economy through the analysis of what she calls “figural economies.” Figural economies concern “material and historical entities” as well as the formal, representational, affective, and rhetorical currents through which those entities circulate (13). Performance theorists working across a broad range of contexts will find this notion of “figural economies” useful, even as I suspect most will be hard pressed to mine the “rhetorical, exemplary, and metaphorical potential” of “representations with uncanny persistence” that matches that of Jackson and Detroit (xii, 3). Following an introduction that orients readers to interdisciplinary scholarship on political economy, the racialized history of industrial nostalgia, and the notion of figural economies, Hamera has organized the book in two sections: Part 1, “Michael Jackson’s Spectacular Deindustriality” and Part 2: “Detroit’s Deindustrial Homeplaces.” Two chapters comprise each part. As Hamera herself would attest, this organizational logic is premised on something of a false distinction: Jackson and Detroit are part of a shared figural economy “of race and work within an arc that took them both from epic productivity through equally epic debt and contraction to efforts at fiscal and reputational recovery” (3). Chapter one exemplifies Hamera’s commitment to challenging the presumptive whiteness of the deindustrial imagination (think: Bruce Springsteen) by examining the trope of the human motor in Jackson’s dance repertoire. In her analysis, Jackson’s virtuosity – the intersection of the “musicality” and the “sharpness of attack” (37) – characterized his expanding repertoire of steps in the mid 1980s and produced industrial nostalgia by “offer[ing] a fantasy of unalienated labor in an industrial modernity that was and never was” (51). These moves, enacted when Jackson was at the apex of his career, mediated between “a vanishing US industrial moment” and the “cruel optimism” to come (24). For example, Hamera sees in Jackson’s Thriller music video (and its choreographic afterlife), a highly mechanized reproduction of late capitalism’s zombifying effects as well as the possibility that deindustrialization might be “outdance[d]” (48). The next chapter, “Consuming Passions, Wasted Efforts,” concerns the early 2000s when Jackson no longer owed his renown to his virtuosity and work ethic but to his status as a “prodigious spender and spectacular debtor” (54). Hamera moves across representations of Jackson’s “aberrant consumption” in the Life with Michael documentary, the trials for child molestation that linked Jackon’s debt to a broader set of moral economies, and his planned comeback in the 2009 This is It tour. Hamera draws upon the work of film theorist Linda Williams to read Jackson as a star in a racial melodrama in which he comes to embody austerity politics. In so doing, Hamera demonstrates how “both spectacular and banal” performances can render visible the otherwise invisible processes of financialization (59). In chapter three, “Combustible Hopes on the National Stage,” Hamera examines figurations of Detroit in three works of theatre and features Hamera’s delightful excoriation of Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit. Through a heuristic of “re-sitting/re-citing,” which redirects performance studies’ preoccupations with the substitution of bodies to a concern with the substitution of places , Hamera analyzes the entanglement of race, home, and work in order to assess these plays’ understandings of “Detroit-ness” (109). Ultimately, the chapter demonstrates how Detroit’s figural economy, including not only D’Amour’s play but Motown, The Musical and Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ’67 , has presented the city as “synecdoche not only for deindustrialization but also for the multisystem failures of late capitalism” (106). The fourth and final chapter, “Up from the Ashes,” considers the roles of the arts in a contemporary Detroit, refigured as being on the precipice of a comeback. Hamera shows how the “kunst washing” (“art washing”) practices of Detroit encourage entrepreneurs to invest in the city as an untamed avenue in need of creativity. Such practices, she argues, frame Detroit’s black population as impoverished with regards to creativity and risk management, blaming the city’s residents for the economic damages wrought by economic elites. In effect, these art-centered efforts have exacerbated the city’s racial and economic stratification implemented through other austerity programs that have privileged private capital over state investment. But she also locates ambivalent promise in specific collaborations, like The Heidelberg Project , that counter Detroit’s “phoenix narrative” while also “refusing melancholic resignation” (163). I suspect that chapter one, an exceptional chapter in a consistently outstanding work, might be the most likely to be excerpted for undergraduate syllabi. In addition to its modeling of figural economies, this chapter is further notable because of how Hamera enriches theorizations of virtuosity by putting theorists like Paulo Virno in conversation with the history of concert dance and music. This is also the chapter in which Hamera introduces Jackson as a “defiant compliant,” so-defined because of his simultaneous embrace of global capitalism and the challenge he posed to racist modes of production (15). Hamera joins the ranks of Margaret Werry and Elizabeth Povinelli in offering some of the most compelling accounts of agency under contemporary capitalism, accounts that are irreducible to tired rehearsals of complicity and resistance. Indeed, Unfinished Business is an urgent read for scholars already steeped in literature concerning performance and political economy, as well as for those who might be newly alerted to the work that remains to be done. References Footnotes About The Author(s) PATRICK MCKELVEY University of Pittsburgh Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

RIVEN RATANAVANH presents Ornamentalism at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Ornamentalism RIVEN RATANAVANH 4:30-5:50 pm Wednesday, October 16, 2024 The Segal Theatre RSVP Ornamentalism is a ritual that explores the gendered racialization of the Asian transmasculine body, using tattoo as a way to inscribe personal loss and collective histories onto the skin. Through the duration of this piece the audience is invited to witness the act of transforming the body as an act of adornment, adornment as transformation; and the ways in which the two respond to and rub up against the world. In collaboration with Zhiyu Lu. Photo: Mengwen Cao LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Riven Ratanavanh (b. 1996 in Bangkok, Thailand) is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist whose work spans performance, film, and visual art to investigate queer politics, diasporic memory, and trans imaginations. Exploring the embodied realms of power, gender, and race, his performances have been presented at Performance Space, the Poetry Project, and the Center for Performance Research. His work has also been featured at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, the London Short Film Festival, Seattle Trans Film Festival, Otherness Archive, and the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA). Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

Jennifer Joan Thompson Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 29 2 Visit Journal Homepage Acting in the Academy: The history of professional actor training in US higher education. Peter Zazzali. London, New York: Routledge, 2016; Pp. 219. Jennifer Joan Thompson By Published on June 4, 2017 Download Article as PDF Acting in the Academy: The history of professional actor training in US higher education . Peter Zazzali. London, New York: Routledge, 2016; Pp. 219. In Acting in the Academy, Peter Zazzali marshals some rather grim employment data provided by Actors Equity Association to argue that it is now harder than ever to be a stage actor in the United States (9). This is not only due to the decreasing number of jobs in theatre, but also to the increasing number of graduates of professional BFA and MFA programs entering the field every year. In light of this imbalance, Zazzali conveys the urgent need for educators within these programs to ask whether it is efficacious, and indeed, ethical, to continue training large numbers of actors for the stage. Acting in the Academy thus functions as a systemic critique of the current acting profession told through a history of mid-twentieth and twenty-first century actor training in US higher education and, ultimately, an argument for training programs to better address the realities of the current profession and equip students to transform it. Zazzali locates the origin of the imbalance in the acting job market in the historical relationship between regional theatre and actor training programs in US higher education. He traces this history through the formation, decline, and legacy of the League of Professional Theatre Training Programs—an organization established to develop curriculum, set standards, and hold accountable participating MFA and BFA programs training actors for professional theatre careers. He examines how the curriculums of League schools developed to meet the demands of regional theatres for resident companies of actors and charts how these programs and their pedagogies continued to proliferate, despite the eventual decline of these regional companies and the displacement of employment opportunities from stage to screen. In light of the shifting demands of the profession, Zazzali argues that training programs ought to embrace an “entrepreneurial” model aimed at giving actors the skills to create their own work and put themselves at the center of their careers. Though there have been many studies on the history and theory of US actor training, as well as a handful of studies on US not-for-profit theatre by practitioners and scholars such as Robert Brustein (2009) and Donatella Galella, Zazzali’s is unique in tracing the relationship between the two. Additionally, his work builds on projects such as Ellen Margolis and Lisa Tyler Renaud’s collection of essays, The Politics of American Actor Training (2011) , which examines the socio-politics of actor training, by situating these questions within a historical context and grounding them in archival and testimonial data. By employing sociocultural and institutional perspectives, Zazzali thus poses an important intervention into scholarship on actor training that has ramifications for the current state of the field. Although the majority of Zazzali’s investigation is historically grounded in the life of the League and its constituent programs (1965-1987), the long-term implications of his work are underscored by the study’s structure, which is bookended by chapters on the current state of the profession and actor training. In chapter one, Zazzali employs sources including employment statistics and interviews with actors, educators, and casting directors to argue that many programs perpetuate a training model that no longer equips students to navigate the realities of the profession. Saddled by debt and trained primarily for the stage, graduates confront a profession dominated by television, film, and celebrity. Though many of the educators he interviews thoughtfully seek to adapt their programs to better prepare students for these realities, they acknowledge that there is a kind of systemic crisis at hand (11). Zazzali proceeds to situate this crisis in the history of the League and its constituent training programs (chapters two through four). Arguing that the League is the “most important development in US actor training since the Group Theatre” (5), he contextualizes its emergence within the culture boom of the 1960s and the regional theatre movement that sought to employ an ensemble of actors capable of performing works in repertory. To meet these demands, universities established BFA and MFA programs, several of which organized to form the League in 1971. With financial support from the NEA, the League set standards of recruitment and developed a “psychophysical” pedagogical template—a combination of elements of Stanislavsky’s method with rigorous physical and vocal training that remains dominant in programs today. Zazzali’s study demonstrates that much of today’s training pedagogy emerged from the specific needs of regional theatres and the institutional structure of the League. However, Zazzali notes that the task of vocational actor training was not always a symbiotic match for bureaucratic university systems. Departing from W. McNeil Lowry’s assertion that they existed in “an uneasy dichotomy” (64), Zazzali examines the fraught field of institutional dynamics that shaped the development of these programs. In the third chapter, Zazzali focuses on three case studies in particular—Carnegie Tech, Juilliard, and the American Conservatory Theatre—to explore how administrative policies, funding structures, and bureaucratic infighting had an impact on these programs and their pedagogies Chapters five and six return to the profession. Zazzali examines the League’s dissolution alongside a consideration of the careers of alumni from each of the three case studies. Through the lens of these individual careers, Zazzali explores how the shift in job opportunities from stage to screen emerged in tandem with an increasing commercialization of the profession overall, including an emphasis on celebrity and a pressure for actors to “brand” themselves. Actors increasingly sought work in television and film—positioning their careers in a medium that required very different skills than had been provided by their psychophysical training. In the concluding chapter, Zazzali examines the ways in which former League schools have equipped actors to navigate this new landscape. Of particular interest to Zazzali are Juilliard’s initiatives to connect students and their work to community service organizations, as well as curricular modules—such as at Carnegie Mellon and NYU—that encourage students to cross disciplinary boundaries and create their own work. Deeming this an “entrepreneurial” approach, Zazzali posits that it can put actors at the center of their careers. The success of PigPen Theatre—which emerged out of CMU’s Playground program—is a testament to the long-term ramifications of this work on graduates’ careers. Acting in the Academy is both an institutional and sociocultural history of US actor training beginning in the mid-twentieth century, as well a systemic critique of the current profession. Ultimately, Zazzali argues that programs ought to embrace an entrepreneurial model that “promotes self-reliance, innovation, initiative, and most crucially, serving society” (184). This social focus is essential, he argues, because it could generate an increased demand for what actors do, and provide them with the tools to reshape the state of the profession. Though a shift in actor training alone will likely not create a wholesale restructuring of the profession, challenge the dominance of television and film, or reverse the industry’s commercialization, Zazzali makes an urgent and ethical case for training programs to respond to the changing demands of the profession and to give actors the tools to shape that profession themselves. This book will thus be of interest to historians of actor training and twentieth century US theatre, as well as anyone involved in the education of actors. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JENNIFER JOAN THOMPSON The CUNY Graduate Center Guest Editor for Special Issue: Bruce McConachie Editorial Board for Special Issue: Meredith Conti Allan Davis John Fletcher Ju Yon Kim Scott Magelssen Julia Walker Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to American Theatre and Performance in the Anthropocene Epoch Searching for Solutions: Humanizing Climate Narratives in an Age of Global Change and Connectivity Towards a Synthesis of Natural and Human History: Situating the Municipal and Ecclesiastic Viceregal Arches of 1680 Mexico City within the Lacustrine The Anthropo(s)cenography of Ricardo Monti's Marrathon Food Futures: Speculative Performance in the Anthropocene Tú eres mi otro yo - Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy & the AnthropoScene Ruth Maleczech at Mabou Mines The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. Directing Shakespeare in America: Current Practices. By Charles Ney. London UK, New York NY: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Pp. 362. Acting in the Academy: The history of professional actor training in US higher education. Peter Zazzali. London, New York: Routledge, 2016; Pp. 219. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Drew Barker Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator Drew Barker By Published on May 16, 2023 Download Article as PDF Between this interview (edited for length and clarity from October 2022) and the publication of this issue, Gancher and Mezzocchi’s 2020 production of Russian Troll Farm won an OBIE Award. Since it was one of three productions to be given such an honor in the category of “Digital+Virtual+Hybrid Production,” all of which were reviewed over the last three seasons due to the pandemic, one wonders how such recognition will impact and inspire other digital+virtual+hybrid projects in the future. Regardless, it can certainly be argued that Gancher and Mezzocchi’s production (co-directed by Elizabeth Williamson) met the historical moment better than most digital theatre productions. The play satirically addresses the weaponization of misinformation via social media during a presidential election season that mirrored not only the prior presidential election season, but also the weaponization of misinformation in other parts of the world. Ultimately, using satire and a suite of digital technologies allowed the production to feel familiar and dangerous at the same time. If new times demand new forms, what will we miss if we hesitate to embrace the progress made in terms of theatrical creativity and audience engagement? We should remember what Barbara Fuchs declares: “At its most elaborate, digital theater does more than simulate the real: it complicates and remixes it, foregrounding the artifice and conventionality in how we think about production, performance, audiences, and theater itself.” [1] Playwright Sarah Gancher and multimedia creator Jared Mezzocchi collaborated on the critically-acclaimed, digital production of Russian Troll Farm in late 2020, and are now working on a new project — even as other productions of Russian Troll Farm continue their success. In this interview by Performing Arts Librarian, Drew Barker, Gancher and Mezzocchi discuss how their creative process has evolved. Barker: Your 2020 production of Russian Troll Farm was a benchmark for digital theatre during the pandemic. Now you’re both teaming up again, and the word “epic” has been tossed around. What can you tell us about this new project you’re working on? Gancher: We are working on an epic about deep time that is set throughout all the different eras of history present in one Brooklyn bar — Sunny’s in Red Hook. It has been in continuous operation since 1890. And of course, there’s a lot of history on that spot before that point, and there will be a lot of history on that spot after this time. We are asking the question: What would you learn if you were able to see all of the history in one spot superimposed on top of all the moments of history superimposed on top of each other? If you were able to hop back and forth between them, remix and match them? What would we find out about ourselves, and what will we find out about the patterns that we live? We’re hoping that when superimposed that they all add up to make a giant question that none of them make individually. I think that it’s going to be a massive participatory art project sort of made by the community, consisting of a film shoot at Sunny’s with snippets of video that are like scenes or seamless moments from across all the different eras of Sunny’s, and then after playing their part in that people can walk down the street to this big warehouse where there will be an installation showing everything that’s being shot at Sunny’s superimposed on top of each other and allowing people to hop back and forth between them and see the composite story as it begins to emerge. And there’s bluegrass involved because of the famous bluegrass jam that happens at Sunny’s. It will also have an on-line component. It’s very cool, but it’s currently hard to explain. Mezzocchi: I would add that it’s a two-part process for an audience member to participate in the scene, and then go into an entirely different space, and see how that participation plays a role in a much wider, larger container of time and space. And now you’re both the viewer of a kind of a gallery installation of live mixed video, while also seeing yourself reflected inside of it. And so, you’re kind of unlocking the history of the place, but also you’re participating in a new part of the history of the place. What does it mean when we are aware of our own immediate footprint in time? It’s like a widening of the consciousness of the participant. And I think that’s the big question for me — what does that do to a person when they know that they’re a part of the history of a place? Gancher: It’ll be an experiment and obsession, and it’s sort of in two senses: one where we’ll literally have people playing music and jamming, and then also there’s going to be a kind of like a visual jam session as people, essentially solo with images taking turns, matching the images to the music, finding and making meaning in the connection between these different moments. Mezzocchi: So, perhaps we can create a jam session, both audibly and visually. All of those things are for me, as a technologist, taking the discoveries of Russian Troll Farm which made that thing feel more full of breath in life. Because the editor was present, the editor was doing the thing live. Now in this residency [at Bethany Arts Center] working with Sarah, watching Sarah now take the reins, I don’t think our collaboration would have led to this without Russian Troll Farm . I also don’t think that my technological inventions would have brought me where I am today without Russian Troll Farm . Gancher: I think that we both — if I may speak for Jared and I certainly intend to — we found Russian Troll Farm so thrilling because we were making up something that nobody had ever done before, and that we weren’t sure whether or not it was going to work, or how it would work. And so we had to also invent a process, and we both got really into that. I mean, it’s painstaking, it’s slow. It’s frustrating. But it’s also so fun. And so cool, because you feel like you’re making a new form. Mezzocchi: And I think that, I don’t know, the older I’m getting, the more rare I’m realizing it is to find people that you can kind of run around in the dark with. And the pandemic felt like the darkest time. And I felt so fortunate with Sarah, with Elizabeth [Williamson], with that cast, that we all in the middle of a pandemic found each other and said, “Let’s keep playing tag for a second” I wanted to hold onto that accidental joy that was found in the middle of horrific trauma, because that was a joy that I’ve never felt before, ever. Barker: Sarah, you’ve written that as a playwright you’re obsessed with questions of how history shapes us. How has the pandemic shaped your storytelling process? Gancher: My main experience of the pandemic was as a parent trying to raise a five year old, who became a six year old, and then a seven year old, all while in a shoebox apartment. I went from being a full time playwright, writing a minimum of 40 hours a week to virtually having no writing time at all, and kind of going insane. It was a nightmare, watching all of the things that I had planned that I was so excited for all fall apart and crumble. But I do think those ashes have turned out to be very fertile for me, because there have been multiple things that I never would have done, never would have tried, had life continued on its original trajectory. Russian Troll Farm in particular created an appetite to try new things more. So, I just finished the first draft of lyrics for my first musical book, where I’m also writing the music. Considering this new project with Jared, which I’m so hyped on now, I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to attempt it before. And I don’t think that anybody would have thought about offering me that opportunity before Russian Troll Farm . If we’re considering the pandemic as a whole politically, the themes continued to resonate with Russian Troll Farm — disinformation, mass delusion, echo chambers, mass hysteria, and the fact that our collective unconscious seems spiraling into a deep depression — and I don’t know, we should probably get on that. Barker: Indeed. Things were different for you, Jared, but it was still an upheaval, right? Mezzocchi: Yeah, I feel like everything changed for me. I look back on the very beginning, when we did She Kills Monsters [at the University of Maryland in April 2020]. Because I decided to call the chair and say, “Don’t cancel it, we have an opportunity to do research here.” And I made that call to her while I was in a panic down in Arkansas after a regional theatre production of Curious Incident of the Dog in Nighttime that I was directing had just shut down. It had been a moment of real, positive, directorial growth for me that was stripped away the day before tech. And so I look back on that and I don’t know why I made that phone call. And I also don’t know why that same day, I called my board at Andy’s Summer Playhouse and said, “Cancel the summer. Because if we cancel now, then we don’t spend any more money preparing for a summer season that won’t happen, and therefore we have more money to deal with what this brings. And let’s go weird.” I remember the thrill of being in a support system at UMD and at Andy’s that allowed me to take a risk, because the safety net was more educational in both of those realms. And that put me in different shoes, so then I felt more courageous when walking into my freelance life and calling Sarah, which happened about two weeks later. And so, I think that being in two educational environments allowed me — and I’m really saying this for the first time — allowed me the courage and to say, “Fuck it. Like, it’s research.” The flip to using the term “research” was a big thing for me, and that hasn’t changed. And I think that getting the recognition, sharing the lessons learned, getting the positive press, and then making more connections made me realize the power of being an experimenter who could produce things, produce things quickly, and vocalize the flaws of each experiment. Suddenly the power of discovery was the thing, and I’m not ever going to forget that. Barker: How do words and design influence you both now during your creative process in terms of dramaturgy? Is it like asking about the chicken and the egg? Or, how is the story influenced by the format? Gancher: I think it’s both chicken and egg. And nobody knows where either one came from. One of the nicest things that anybody’s ever said to me in my life was when Jared said much of what he technologically invented for Russian Troll Farm only happened because of the demands of the script. A lot of people presumed that it was written for Zoom, but in fact it was barely adapted for that format. In my brain it had always been for the stage. Now in this latest residency, as we began to iterate, I start thinking about the story. What is the event? Sometimes I write “scratch drafts,” like sort of pre-writing, like scenes, but they don’t even have character names yet, you know? I’ve never shown anybody in my life work that early, but I showed it to Jared. And then that sort of kickstarted him thinking from the container and also asking, “What is the event?” What will the tech for this need to look like? And, as we ping pong back and forth, we influence each other. Mezzocchi: I would add to that if you’re coming from content, and I’m coming from form, we’re both kind of saying, “Here’s how I would take your offering and make it function inside of my brain,” and vice versa. If the text is the content constant, and the tech is the variable, here’s how function can form and then flip it and say, if the tech is the constant, and the text is the variable, here’s what happens there. Tech is a tool, and function is the space that we’re kind of finger painting in. That to me feels pretty subversive to the industry standards. Gancher: It’s more related to the sort of experimental devising world that we actually both come from — nobody knows that we’re both musicians, and nobody knows that we both come from the world of devising and experimental stuff. It’s actually quite key to the way that we work together, and it reminds me of my favorite Suzan Lori Parks quote: “Form is content.” And I think that I’m trying to work with Jared not like a playwright traditionally works with the designer, but like the other half of my brain, or like I’m the other half of his brain. Also, his live video editing skills responded to hearing the rhythm in the words, which totally amplified the humor and timing in Russian Troll Farm in a unique way. Barker: Jared, among many other things on Twitter you’ve talked about mediaturgy. Can you comment on how you position that in your current theatrical practice? Mezzocchi: That idea was actually based on a course I teach. It’s not about just telling stories on digital terms. We ask questions like: Why and how are we using technology to drive the story forward? What’s its point of view for the story? How is it used differently for each character? It’s not just spectacle. Mediaturgy informs choices which then contributes to the overall dramaturgy. Ideally, it allows for more collaboration, with the actors understanding a new language within a new process, too. Digital storytelling should be seen as a scene partner. Gancher: I would add that mediaturgy makes you consider new questions as well. For example, how are you casting the audience? Are they spying on the characters? How does the story move in digital theatre? It’s a bit of a filmic question, too, of course. Does it move in jumps, does it move in fades? Does it root us down in one spot, or does it disorient us? But more importantly, does it live up to our vision? Mezzocchi: It was helpful that the world slammed to a halt, and we had to interrogate how we use and connect through technology. As a society, and as a theatre community, in order to get to the necessary technological solutions we must also address the problems of how we use technology. We’re continuing to learn how to use the tech as a tool, not have the technology use us. Gancher: In this new process, the whole team is writing with you. As someone who teaches writing, I want to encourage that kind of collaboration even though it’s scary and difficult. We need to find the people who can make that work. www.sarahgancher.org www.jaredmezzocchi.com (Twitter: @jaredmezzocchi) References [1] Barbara Fuchs, Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a Time of Pandemic . (London: Methuen Drama, 2022), 25. Footnotes About The Author(s) DREW BARKER is the Performing Arts Librarian at the University of Maryland at College Park. As a dramaturg he has worked at Triad Stage (NC), Round House Theatre (MD), Center Stage (MD), and Theatre J (DC). He was the curator for the exhibits The Art & Craft of Puppetry (2022), Remembrance & Resilience (2021) and The Triumph of Isabella: Exploring Performance Through Art (2018-19) at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. His research and creative projects include information design and literacy, the U.S. Civil War, and the working relationship between playwright Naomi Wallace and historian Marcus Rediker. 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 Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. 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 O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi, Amir Al-Azraki, Jeff Casey Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF Ya Rab! By Ali l-Zaidi, National Theatre, Baghdad, 2016. Printed with permission of the production staff O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Characters: Mother, in her fifties. Moses, in his sixties. A large valley surrounded by mountains on all sides, strange in its appearance, called the Holy Valley Tuwa. Mother enters, covering her body with an abaya, a black women's cloak, barefoot, carrying a large bag on her head. We hear her voice before she appears, speaking loudly on her mobile phone, then setting the bag aside . Mother ( Standing in the middle of the valley. ) Yes... I have arrived at the place. It seems terrifying. Tell all the mothers, I will not return without good news for them, cool water for their weary hearts. Yes, yes, I will call you later... ( She hangs up and surveys the valley. ) Everything here invokes fear: a valley of stone, my prayers made of stone, my fasts made of stone, and my supplications made of stone. ( She shouts. ) And I am a mother whose blood flowing in my soul has turned into stone! ( She raises her head towards the sky. ) I have come to you, O Lord, with a thousand tears and grievances in my heart. I blame you as if blaming my own soul. How can my soul not respond to my prayers?! I am your guest now, O Lord, and I have learned that the host hears even the breaths of his guests. And now what if I am both a guest and mother? Yes, a mother, alas for her! ( She shouts louder. ) O Lord... speak to me, as you spoke to Moses here in this valley. Respond to the heart of this mother who has lost her children one after another, heart by heart and laughter by laughter, only one son remaining, waiting for immigration and the sea's rafts of death... No third choice. ( Firmly. ) You can see, O Lord, that I have taken my sandals off out of respect just as I would in my own home, and I have come to your holy valley, Tuwa, knowing that you will speak to me. I know I am not a prophet, but the heart of a mother, as you know, equals a thousand prophets! The mothers have sent me to you, O Lord, and I am the most grief-stricken among them, the most insane. There must be a solution for the fate of our children, O Most Merciful of the Merciful! ( She screams. ) Shall I uncover my head? You will see how my hair has gone grey so that my children would grow up. But when they grew up, instead of their beloveds waiting for them, the rafts of hell waited for them in your seas, or explosions waited for them in the streets of madness. This killing, drowning, cannot continue. What fate is this that makes our children, who we protected when they were only tiny things, into fish food in the seas? What trifling fate is it that we wake up in the morning with nothing but the fragrance they left in their beds when they are gone? O Lord, we want them to grow up, not to die. I speak to you as the mother who has grieved the most, who buried her children without limbs, buried them in kilos, one kilo, two kilos, three! The biggest of them, I didn't find a single bone, so I slaughtered a lamb and buried its bones instead, and I visited its grave — I mean the lamb's bones, O Lord. What can I do? There is only one son left, and I want him to live and love and grow up and be buried whole. ( Takes out papers from her bag. ) O Lord! Where are you? These are the signatures of the mothers... look at them. I didn't forge a single signature. Thousands of signatures, whatever threshold we were supposed to meet to stop this, we have never had enough signatures, O Forgiving One. You must find a solution. ( Firmly: ) I will now say something important. ( She speaks forcefully. ) In my name and in the name of all mothers, we will give you a deadline, O Lord. You have twenty-four hours to command “it shall be so” and it will be, or we will declare a strike from praying and fasting. ( She shouts. ) Yes, that's what we have decided, we will strike from prayer and fasting, O Lord, and no mother will lift her hands in prayer to you after today, oh, closer to us than our own veins. Our conditions are clear... stop the killing that devours our children and stop their emigration away from our embrace. They leave our homes and don’t return while they are still in the prime of life dreaming of a spring that won’t come. ( Loudly :) We mothers want our children to reach at least fifty years of age. Fifty years... is that difficult for you, O Most Merciful of the Merciful? We do not ask for the impossible, and after that, do as you please. ( Madly :) Strange! ( She shouts: ) Aren’t You capable of everything as You say? Do something, O Lord, for I am in your holy valley, Tuwa. ( She cries. ) O Lord, O Lord, can you hear me, O Lord, my Lord, O Creator of the heavens and the earth, where are you? O Lord... Moses ( Enters, leaning on a staff, wearing old clothes. ) Don't shout. Enough, woman. What do you want? Mother ( Surprised. ) Are you... Are you... Are you God? Moses I seek forgiveness from Allah. Mother I thought you were Him. Moses You must leave the Valley of Tuwa. Mother What concern is it of yours? I took off my shoes and entered the valley. Moses You don’t have the right to enter… Mother It isn’t your right to give. Moses Silence is the master of this place. This is a sacred valley, only those permitted by the Most Merciful may enter! Mother I have waited my whole life for permission. Moses Then you must return to your home. Mother I won't return until God speaks to me. Moses He will not speak to anyone. Mother It's none of your concern. It's my Lord. Moses He has spoken to no one here except me. Mother Except you?! And who are you? Moses Moses. Mother And who is Moses? Moses ( Assertively. ) The Prophet! Mother ( In disbelief .) Prophet Moses?! You?! Moses I have lived in this sacred valley for a long time. Mother You live here? It's unbelievable. Prophet Moses living in a valley and leaving paradise? Moses This is my paradise, which God planted with the sweetness of His words, and suffused with the faint odor of His presence, spreading peace and love throughout. Mother It can't be. How can I meet a prophet who lived in a distant time? Moses Before God, it is all one time... A time where nothing exists except mercy, O mother. Mother O mother? And you know me too? Moses Yes, I know you... And I have been sent to negotiate with you. Mother Who sent you? Moses The Almighty God! Mother God? Negotiating with me? But I didn't ask for a prophet... I want only God to hear the prayers of mothers, and I am authorized by them... That's all. Moses You're a mother wearing the cloak of a madwoman. Mother Madness, O Moses... The killing of our children in the prime of their life. Moses You have the right to turn into a madwoman, but you have no right to incite mothers to madness. Mother ( Shouting. ) O Lord... I didn't ask for a prophet. I wanted You, the All-Hearing. Moses Be careful... The valley is monitored by cameras. Mother Cameras in the valley? ( Looking around. ) O Lord, I am a mother who came to this place with all her sincerity and devotion, with all her wails and mourning. Moses That's enough... You must stop immediately along with all the women striking from their prayers and fasting. Mother ( Firmly. ) We will proclaim our strike until our demands are met. Moses It's not right... You must seek God’s forgiveness. Mother ( Yelling at him .) Is it right that the blood of our loved ones is so cheap?! Moses And how can a creature stop loving their Creator who gave them everything?! Mother We love God more when we strike from prayer and fasting! Moses This is rebellion, not love. Mother God has given us the right to rebel in order to live with honor! Moses I take it as a conspiracy to overthrow... Mother ( Interrupting. ) I recognize that you are a prophet, but you have no right to stand between us and God. Moses ( Yelling at her. ) I just want to understand... What do you want? Mother Mercy! Moses He is the Most Merciful of the merciful. Mother I know... But not in our homeland. Moses His mercy is everywhere. Mother Where is it? Where? ( Firmly .) I’m in a hurry. Listen, O Prophet... Twenty-four hours is the deadline we gave to God, and then we declare our general strike. Moses Twenty-four hours? It's the worshipers' deadline for the worshiped. It's as if I live in the age of myths or hear a fable. ( Quietly. ) O mother... God cannot be threatened. Mother You understand it as a prophet as you wish, and we understand it as mothers as we wish... ( Her mobile phone rings, she answers. ) Yes, yes... What do you want? I'm still in the place. I'm negotiating. With whom? With the Prophet Moses. What's wrong with you? Yes, he's the prophet... God sent him to negotiate with me. ( Shouting. ) Don’t laugh, and leave your questioning now, your job is just to monitor comments on the mothers’ strike page on Facebook. Respond to all of the comments , do you understand?! ( She hangs up. To Moses :) Mothers can’t wait any longer. Moses The Mothers' Facebook page? What a mockery is this! This could evolve into a military coup. You don't understand what you're doing. This is an invitation to return to paganism or idol worship, like Pharaoh who said, "I am your supreme lord." Mother (Smiling.) Do demands for rights always turn into rebellion? Moses This is a dangerous development that could lead to the extinction of mothers from the Earth forever. Mother We will become extinct as long as the earth consumes our children every moment. Moses (Exclaims.) O God... Mother (Shouting.) Bags, bags, bags... Bags, O Moses! Nothing but luggage leaves with our children. Nothing remains here but their toys, their clothes, and the scribbles they left on our walls before they departed. (As if reading from a wall:) "Memory of my mother, father, siblings, and me on Eid." "The rose's fate is to wither, and our home's memories never fade." Moses (Raising his head.) How can I negotiate with all this pain? A mother plastered with memories of a home reduced to walls. (Strikes the ground with his staff.) Demands are rejected, O mother. Negotiations are over; you must leave from here. Mother Rejected? What's wrong with you? Cruelty doesn’t enter the heart of a prophet, as they say. Moses My heart contains nothing but purity. Mother (Looking at the staff.) Then try doing something with your staff, Moses. Moses My staff? It works by the will of God. Mother Tell it to split the earth in half... one half for murderers to live in, and the other half for us to live peacefully with our children. Moses (Points to the staff.) It seems to be out of commission right now. It always seems to need a Pharaoh. Mother ( Mockingly :) Even your staff has turned into scrap, O prophet! Moses I told you it works by the power of the one God, not by my power. Mother Try again... Chaos must stop in my homeland. Moses Rather, mothers must stop this chaos. Mother (shouting) Youbooee ! [i] Is there anyone who lives in peace and has never said "God is Great" [ii] ? What is happening, Moses? Say something. We are mothers who have nothing but the refrain "God is Great" since our children were born and our souls are longing for our children. What have we done to deserve all this hell? Moses Since Adam's soul was placed on this earth, that has been the question. Mother And no one answered it. Moses I object to the idea of a strike. Mother Did God send you to negotiate with me or to object? Moses The relationship with God is supposed to be without conditions and above assessment. . Mother We feel that God has lifted His hand from this land, turning it into hell. Moses Hell... It is a burning hospital to treat the disease afflicting all of you! Mother We will scream, refuse, and protest against this hell... Moses The sea will swallow you as it swallowed... Mother (Interrupting angrily.) Hasn't the sea swallowed us already, Moses? Haven't you seen or heard? Even the fish of the seas wept for them and were more compassionate and warmer than this homeland! We did not ask God for the impossible; we want our children to warmly sleep in our arms and dream dreams as innocent as they are. Moses (Painfully.) And I too... my mother found no place gentler than the sea to place me in. [iii] Mother ( Takes out a large mortar, grinding with it. ) Our children come out of our wombs and their heads are burning white... their hair all white, white, white... Do you understand? All of us have become insane in this country, a big hospital with nothing but mothers mad about their children. (Stops pounding with the mortar. Shouting :) Look at our misery, look at our wretched faces, O prophet... (Puts on one of the cloaks and performs the role of Mother 2. A group of people appears, bringing a coffin and exiting. Mother 2 looks crazy, sitting at a coffin with her son's remains, Moses is watching) Mother 2 (Crazily, ululating, laughing, dancing, approaching the coffin.) Finally, my eye, your mother told them you would come back, my son, and no one believed this crazy woman. Even the streets complained about her feet. [iv] (Screams : ) Come and watch my son return to my arms in the clothes of his wedding. (Ululates.) "Congratulations on your wedding, O son," they thought I was crazy, crazy, and now he returns to my soul... (Takes out a red dress from the sack, wears it over her clothes.) I vowed that when my son returns to my arms, I will wear a red dress the color of his blood, "Sweet, very sweet, amazing." (Recovers.) They brought his shirt with fake blood stains, and they said, “We found this on the edge of the sea.” I curse every sailor in the universe who stole my son's laugh... (Ululating, dancing around the coffin, then stops.) They finally brought you. ( Firmly with the coffin. ) Come on, wake up from your sleep. Be a man and rise. Rise and embrace your mother instead of this meaningless pampering. I will give you a new shirt without a single drop of blood. ( Shouting. ) They brought your shirt without your perfume, my life! ( A group of people appears, lifting the coffin and exiting. ) Where are you taking it? Wait! ( Shouting. ) They brought your shirt with nothing but sea salt, my soul... Congratulations on your wedding, my beloved... Here's joy, and another joy... ( She laughs and dances wildly . She stops performing the role of Mother 2 and takes off the red robe.) Mother Hah... What do you think? Moses Death is the norm of life... In your homeland there is nothing worth living a long life for, there is nothing but tears. Mother It's beyond our control, O Prophet, and it is God who destined us to be in this homeland. Moses I understand, but striking from prayer and fasting is rebellion against God's authority in this world. Mother I don't understand these terms, I don't know their meanings. I'm just a mother like all mothers, wanting to warm myself with the breath of my youngest child. Moses Beware, O mother, beware, for this place is monitored with cameras by Him, the Almighty. Beware... “And when We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam’; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.” [v] Mother Ask this land where we have been prostrated our entire lives … Yet in the end, we were expelled from Paradise because we prostrated to God alone! Moses “We have certainly created humankind into hardship.” [vi] God has said so. Mother ( Smiling. ) Why, why in hardship? Moses ( Exclaiming. ) The dust of your streets is kneaded with pain. Mother No human has lived on this earth in such hardship except us! What did we do to deserve this? Is there a solution, O Prophet? Say something, do not remain silent... ( Takes out her mobile phone, presses a button to show Moses a video .) Look, look at this tragedy... Look. ( Sounds of mothers screaming, mourning .) Did you see, O Prophet? Moses I did. ( Confused. ) Yes, I did. ( Withdraws. ) Oh... What is happening here? How can I be a reformer when all I possess is a staff abandoned by life and consumed by time? And this land, this homeland... needs a new miracle, one as big as the children’s laughter that has stopped, awaiting an all-clear signal that never comes. How can I sow hope in a land where nothing grows but graves? Lord... I found people here living in a vast graveyard they call a country. I am perplexed, or a bewildered Prophet who doesn't know what to do? How does one negotiate this grief in the guise of a mother? How? Mother You do not know what has happened to us! Moses ( Shouting at her. ) All the women of the earth will be punished because of your thoughts, and Paradise will not be under their feet. [vii] Mother We do not want Paradise under our feet... Let it be wherever it is, just let our children live their lives with their mothers. They are our flowers. Have you heard of a Paradise without flowers? Moses And who are you to speak for the mothers of your homeland? Mother Me? Wait a moment, O Moses, wait. I will show you a special permission of those mothers... ( Opens a large bag, takes out a large collection of women's cloaks. ) They sent their cloaks with me so that Allah might see them, poor women. ( Shouts while tossing the cloaks. ) This one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one... I will spread them here in the valley. ( Holds a cloak. ) This cloak belongs to Abdullah’s mother. Abdullah never slept except in his mother's arms. He slept until he was killed by the shell. ( Holds another cloak. ) And this cloak belongs to Saeed’s mother. [viii] Saeed was never happy. He lived with his mother in a clay room, and when his body was torn apart, his mother found no grave to shelter what remained of him. ( Holds another cloak. ) And this cloak belongs to Salem’s mother, the sanest mother in our city. They brought her son’s head to her, and this wise woman turned into the craziest woman in our city. ( Points to another cloak. ) And this one belongs to Jaber’s mother. O poor son, he left his mother's embrace to sleep in the embrace of the sea. And this one belongs to Ahmed’s mother, and this one belongs to Ali’s mother, and this one belongs to... Look, ( Shouts :) these are mothers in the form of cloaks, each cloak carrying the scent of their children who were torn apart by explosives here and suicide belts there. Moses Who is this mother, O Lord? There is nothing in her soul but sorrow, and I have turned from a prophet into a spectator who possesses nothing but tears and questions. I am all Yours, O Lord... Please grant me the ability to answer even one of her questions. ( Pauses, then pulls himself together. ) O mother... I cannot understand what prayer and fasting have to do with what has happened to you. Mother No one listens to the cries of our tears... We have found no one to protest against except God... Perhaps He will send rain to extinguish the fire in our hearts, O Prophet, and stop this farce. Moses God is not a party to your conflict. For your people, killing is a picnic adorned with blood and hollowed words, creating a thousand justifications in your minds. God has nothing to do with this. Mother God created the killers! Moses And He created you too. Mother He shouldn't have created those monsters and made them live with gentle souls. Moses There must be contradictions in creation... There must be hungry and satiated, there must be killer and slain. Mother Has killing not been chasing us for a thousand years, O Prophet? Moses ( Yelling at her. ) I told you, death is the norm of life. Mother ( Yelling back. ) Death is a norm, but not killing, not slaughter, not burning, not drowning. Death is a norm, but separating heads from bodies is not a norm. Moses ( Withdraws alone, looks at the staff, speaks to it in a whisper. ) Do something, please, anything. One movement from you might make these mothers reconsider their strike. What's wrong with you? ( Stops, raises his head. ) O Lord... Tell the staff to do something according to Your will and let it be anything, stopping killing for one day, or one hour, or one minute. I implore You. O staff... No use... ( Firmly with the mother. ) Return, O mother, to your homes before the Almighty swallows you in the land of this valley. Mother I will not return until I take an oath from God that there will be no more emigration or slaughtering of our children from today onwards! Moses I am here to negotiate with you. Mother Our conditions are clear. Moses ( Raising his head, shouting. ) O Lord... I can’t bear the words of the people of the earth. O Lord, I am overwhelmed by the fire that spews from this mother's mouth. O Lord... Could it be that You created life only for it to be a knife prepared to slaughter this world? Could it be that You destined sorrow to prevail over joy and reduced all colors to just one dark hue? I have long known that Your throne, glorified be You, trembles for the cry of a single orphan... What now makes it completely silent in the face of an orphaned homeland? ( Shyly. ) Glory be to You, we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Mother Silence... Nothing but silence. Moses Perhaps your hands can silently ask for something. Mother ( Gesturing with her hands. ) My hands are tired, O Moses! Moses Your stubbornness, O mother, will ensure that your prayers are never answered by God. Mother When were they ever answered before that they should be answered now? When? I forget my hands raised to the sky for hours, until they ache, and pigeons build their nests in the comfort of my palms. I forget my mouth for weeks as it pleads to keep my children safe from slaughter, and I forget my tears for years as they flow, hoping they would be dried by just one word from Him. ( She yells. ) Tell me, what should I do for God to answer my prayers? Moses Job endured afflictions for many years. [ix] Mother ( Shouting .) And we endure a thousand calamities while He is the Most Merciful of the Merciful! Moses Jonah lived, prayed, and fasted inside the belly of a whale. Mother It means nothing before great whales that have devoured all our young. Moses Jesus was crucified in the most horrible manner. Mother Every day, our streets are a ceremony of crucifixion for our loved ones in the most horrible manner! Moses And Jacob, whose eyes turned white from grief? Mother All mothers' eyes have turned blind, and their hearts and souls have turned gray together. Moses And the well of Yusuf... Mother ( Laughs. ) Much easier than this darkness. Moses O mother, I cannot comprehend the fire in your words. Mother O prophet, I cannot comprehend the coldness in your words. Moses I still carry my staff... It may work at any moment. Mother A sword of wood! Moses ( Rising, speaking to the staff. ) No, you will see it work. It will work at any moment. ( To the staff :) Speak, do something, by the permission of God stop the killing, stop the fires and bullets and smoke and explosions, O staff. Dry up the seas and bring their children out safely, unharmed. What is wrong with you? I do not want you to be a serpent crawling on the earth... [x] I want you to be a balm that soothes the hearts of those mothers. What has happened to you? ( Raising it high. ) O staff... I am Moses the prophet, commanding you to extinguish every fire on earth... ( Raising it higher, then stopping. ) Oh, how disappointed I am. Mother ( Sarcastically. ) Are you confident that you are the Prophet Moses? Moses You doubt everything, even my existence. Mother Then how come your staff isn’t working? Moses And who do you think I am? Mother I don't know. Moses ( Raising his voice. ) You must have faith and not let Satan strip it away, O mother. Perhaps God wishes to test your patience and that of mothers through the loss of their loved ones. Mother Did they ever tell you about a mother who sang or danced at her son's funeral? Have you heard of such madness? ( Shouting. ) We, the insane, did that... ( Her mobile rings, and she answers. ) Yes... What do you want? I am still in the Valley of Tuwa, His word... Yes, I spoke to Him, but He did not respond. What should I do? Be a little patient. Tell me, how many mothers are there now? Oh... more than a million mothers... Yes, yes, go now. ( She hangs up. ) It will be a strike of cloaks and black garments, tears. Worship will stop until further notice... Moses You stand in a sacred valley... You must speak with kind words, for God hears what He wills from His servants. Mother And when does He will? Tell me, please... When does He will? Moses I do not know. Mother Then go... Leave me here alone with those cloaks. Moses We haven't found a solution, O mother. Mother And we won't, O prophet. Moses I fear for you the anger of God. Mother There is nothing new... Anger is spreading in our streets in the form of explosive devices, designed to kill our children... And you come to warn me of impending anger? Moses How can I negotiate with this mother? What a dilemma! She's a stubborn woman, O Lord. ( Changing the subject. ) Perhaps your children are now in paradise. Mother ( Laughs. ) And what are they doing there? Moses They live a happy and luxurious life, rivers flow beneath their feet, wide-eyed maidens and eternal youths, food of their desire, and fruits... Mother ( Interrupting. ) You are wrong, O prophet... The true paradise for our children is in our warm embrace! Moses You must now pray to the mothers... and stop them from the idea of striking against prayer and fasting, for this contradicts the essential idea that the creature worships the Creator Mother The decision has been made by consensus between the mothers of the homeland and cannot be reversed. Cease the death of our children in this way or we strike until our demands are met. Moses You have removed God from your heart, and whoever does that turns their heart into nothing but a pump. Mother Our hearts left with our children who left without notice. Moses ( Raising his head. ) It is difficult to negotiate with a woman like this, O Lord. ( Calmly. ) Faith, O mother, is to thank God when He gives you nothing. Mother Say something else, Moses. Moses Faith is... Mother ( Interrupting. ) How can we continue to believe and resist the sight of our children turned into sheep slaughtered, skinned, roasted, and consumed every moment, while God Almighty watches our little sheep? Moses God Almighty is beyond what you describe, what kind of mothers are you? There is nothing in your bodies but your hearts, which speak, scream, cry, decide, and have left the mind dry, lifeless. What happens to this universe? God always wants good for His servants! Mother Where is this good, O prophet? Where? Where do I find it? In which market is it sold? Four children are all I have in this world, three of them burned by explosions, and the remains of their limbs scattered, and you simply speak of good? Moses Death in this way is a dramatic, affecting, but mothers' minds do not comprehend that God wants good by returning children to their rightful place! Mother We have turned from flesh and blood mothers into strange tales of sorrow and blood. Moses And I, too, my staff, have stopped working and turned into a spectator with nothing but applause! Mother You are an unemployed prophet. Moses And unemployed in negotiation. Mother You can watch more, wait, O spectator, watch me for a moment... Moses But I am unable to applaud. Mother Just watch, for free, let the one who does not buy watch our goods without applause... Moses withdraws, watching, the Mother wraps her cloak around her waist, performing the role of Mother 3, bringing a set of "cups" - containers - of water, placing them in at center. Mother 3 I have a thousand cups of water. [xi] Every day I sprinkle them behind my children, one cup so that they return safely from the homeland, one cup so that they walk on their feet in the streets of the homeland, one cup for their souls that the homeland wants to steal, one cup for their hearts, stopped every moment by the homeland's bullets, one cup for their faces, washed with the smoke of the homeland, one cup for their dreams that escape every day in the homeland. ( She cries out. ) All these cups are witnesses that I have never forgotten to sprinkle water behind my children so that evil is expelled from their path, and my heart cools and is reassured so that they return swiftly to my spirit. They haven't returned for years, but as long as their cups are here and I sprinkle water behind them, there must be joyful news that warms the heart. Oh, my sorrow... All the news has stopped... And turned: She mourns, hitting her head with her hands . O mother, remember me, Witnessing a wedding's spree, [xii] Deprived of wedding's glee, My henna turns to blood, tragedy I see. Candle of youth's bright fire, Who will quench its desire? My henna is my blood, My brow lies still in the mud. [xiii] She stops performing the role of Mother 3 . Mother Ha... What do you think, O spectator? Moses My soul hasn't heard of these water cups at all, nor seen the secret of those cloaks, nor understands all this pain! What is happening in this land where my staff has failed me and there are no other goals left for me? Split, O sea, to contain the worries of those mothers. [xiv] Mother ( Smiling. ) You were asleep in heaven, O Prophet, unaware... While we pray every day amidst a blaze. Moses ( Withdrawing. ) What prophecy in me is helpless to wake from its slumber? What dead manhood resides in my soul now? What remains of the dry heart beats within me? What story do I hear? What myth? What pain, what hell, what trivialities, what lies? What homeland? ( Stops. To the mother :) I feel the need to understand this death surrounding you. Mother Speak to God, tell Him to stop this farce. Moses And how will He stop it? Mother You ask me how He will stop it? Is He not God who says to death "Be," and it is, and to life "Be," and it is, and to our children "Return safe," and they return, and to killing "Stop," and it stops? What has happened? Don't tell me that God is no longer capable of everything! Moses ( Yells at her. ) These are the limits set by Allah, so do not approach them. He is capable of everything. Mother We don’t need everything, just one thing. Moses Stop, seek forgiveness and repent to God. Mother What have I done wrong to seek forgiveness? And what have I done to repent for? I have lived a long life as punishment in a prison where there is nothing but the forbidden, loss, hunger, bullets, and waiting. I seek forgiveness though I've done nothing, and I repent though I don't know what to repent for! My life has passed between seeking forgiveness and repentance. ( She cries out. ) I'm tired, do you know what it means to be tired? Wait a moment, please... ( Answers her phone. ) Do not ask me anything, O mother, and listen to me well. Tell all the mothers to prepare for a million-person protest where we call for a strike from prayer and fasting. Yes... we will declare sacral disobedience if our demands are not met by God Almighty! ( Raises her head. ) My Lord, forgiveness. ( Continues her call. ) This is the last solution, yes... and listen to me also: do not leave the Facebook page for a single moment, share all strike slogans with pictures because we are at a historic crossroads, a historic moment, do you know what 'historic' means? Oh, yes... I don't know either, never mind... yes, act now, O mother, act... ( Hangs up. ) Moses What historic moment are you talking about? Mother About today. Moses Yesterday was Pharaoh and his soldiers... Mother ( Interrupts him. ) Today, fear and his soldiers are here. Moses Perhaps my mother is one of those mothers! Mother ( Points to the cloaks. ) Yes... your mother, O Moses, is one of those cloaks. Moses ( Surprised. ) My mother? Mother They took you from her and placed you in the sea… They took away her life, O Moses, and you did not know. Moses I still smell her scent. Mother But our children did not get their fill of a mother's scent... because God did not save them from the sea as He saved you. Moses I suggest you pray here... and raise your hands to Him with a burning heart... and wait. Mother The last prayer you mean? Moses A final attempt. Mother I will pray. ( Stands to pray. ) I will try, so that you don't reproach me on Judgment Day, asking about my prayers and fasting. I will pray, and after that, I have nothing left for you, for I am weary, truly weary. I will try to say: La ilaha illallah ... [xv] but after that, I want You to dry my tears, Subhan Allah... but after that, You extinguish the fire of this heart with a single word from you, Alhamdulillah... [xvi] but after that... Moses ( Interrupts her. ) Pray, O mother... pray. Mother ( Bows down .) I am praying as you see... Moses Pray as people pray! Mother ( Prostrates. ) This is my prayer... I don't know anything else. Moses ( Yells. ) Stop, I've never seen anyone pray like this. Mother ( Stops. ) Only grieving mothers pray like this. Moses With all this madness. Mother Every mad person has their own prayer. Moses I will go mad too. ( Shouts. ) What is happening here? All streets throughout the world are valleys of Tuwa, sacred places that are tainted by even a single drop of blood. No, no, no... silence cannot prevail over a new history of slaughter, and Pharaoh is multiplying in your streets. I will speak to God. Indeed, I will plead with Him for the sake of the mothers... Mother This is the solution... speak to God, please, He hears from His prophets. Moses He has never denied me a request. Mother Go ahead, what are you waiting for? Tell Him about us, our waiting, our stations, our trains that never stop... Moses I will do that. ( Raises his head ) My Lord... I am Moses, the Prophet whom You spoke to in this valley, making me Your spokesman and prophet and Your sign on earth, and making my staff a miracle with which I conquered Your enemies. I come to You today imploring You to stop the river of blood in the land of mothers. Send Your rain upon the streets so it may cleanse and prepare for the prayer of love that You taught us. There is no salvation except through You, for the sake of those weary hearts. O Lord, stop this bleeding, give a sign or speak to me with a single word, tell me, "I will do it." I am Your prophet Moses, whose prayers You have always answered; it is inconceivable that You would not answer me now. It is inconceivable! O Lord, say something, please... O Lord. (Stops in disappointment. ) Mother What happened? Moses Nothing. Mother Even you, O Prophet? Moses Even I, O mother! Mother What do you mean? Moses He did not answer my prayer. Mother And you are a Prophet?! Moses Yes... and I am a Prophet. Mother So how about us, mere cloaks walking the earth? Moses I don't know. Mother Hasn’t Allah sent you to negotiate with us? Moses All in vain. I will abandon this task... it seems the curse of killing has settled here and won't stop. Mother You witness it, O Prophet... we have no choice but to strike from prayer and fasting. Moses ( To himself. ) No choice... death is a law of life but turned into a law for death! Azrael [xvii] no longer takes souls as usual... graves relinquished their boundaries, and Munkar and Nakir [xviii] ceased their lengthy questioning... It is inconceivable for them to question bodies whose souls have been torn into a thousand pieces. Mother ( On the phone .) Listen, O mother... unfortunate news: Allah did not answer our demands. Let's begin by declaring our strike from prayer and fasting until our rightful demands are met. Next Friday will be under the slogan: "O Lord: Save Our Children, Or No Prayer/Fasting." ( Hangs up. ) Moses ( To himself. ) O Lord: Save Our Children, Or No Prayer/Fasting! Mother Go, O Prophet, to your paradise and leave us alone with the, go... Moses I will not go. Mother What do you mean? Moses I will stay here. Mother But you are a Prophet living in paradise. Moses Paradise, as I see it, is to share in these cloaks' demands. Mother What do you mean to say? Moses I will be with you. Mother With us? How? Moses ( Raises his head. ) Your pardon, O Lord. I have spent my entire life close to those tormented souls on earth. I will not return to paradise until this pain ends. I cannot live in a paradise where rivers flow beneath it, [xix] while here is a homeland where hellfire runs below. It is not possible... ( Firmly to the mother. ) Listen... I will join you in striking from prayer and fasting! Mother How will you join us while you are a Prophet? Moses I will pause my prophethood for a while to stop this farce. Mother Aren't you afraid of Allah's anger upon you as a Prophet? Moses He will not be angry with me. He knows there is nothing in my heart and soul except Him. Mother ( On the phone. ) Yes... listen, O mother... the Prophet Moses will join us in the strike. ( Shouts. ) Moses will be with us! Post urgently on Facebook: Moses the Prophet joins the mothers in striking from prayer and fasting until the killing of our children stops... ( Hangs up. ) Moses ( Loud. ) O Lord, I plead to You to stop this killing. Mother ( Loud. ) Mothers want to stop the bloodshed. Moses O Lord, stop this darkness. Mother There is no one for us except You, O Lord. Moses There is no one for us except You. Mother and Moses ( Shouting together, scattering the cloaks around them. ) Stop this death, O Lord. Stop the fire, stop the sorrow, there must be a solution, we beg You. Stop the dismemberment of our children. O Lord, Your mercy, Your compassion, You who created us and are responsible for our protection. O Lord, O Lord, O Lord... ( They continue shouting, then they leave the valley, but their voices turn into thousands of voices, indicating a massive protest flooding the streets. ) The End [i] A wailing sound Iraqi woman make when hearing bad or sad news, especially death. [ii] "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) is a common expression used by Muslims in various contexts, including when receiving terrible or sad news. [iii] Similarly to the biblical story, in the Islamic tradition Moses’s mother leaves him in a basket on the Nile in order to protect him from the danger of the Pharaoh who killed new born Israelites, and the basket is recovered by the Pharaoh's wife, who adopts Moses. Quran 20:39 and 28:3-4, 7-9. Here and throughout the play Moses’s being cast into the river (imagined as the sea) in order to escape mass death and his forced separation from his mother are paralleled with the experiences of the mothers and their children. [iv] The grieving mother has wandered the streets waiting for the return of her son. [v] Quran, 2:34. Iblees (or Eblīs) corresponds with the biblical figure of Satan. [vi] Quran, 90:4. [vii] From Prophet Muhammad’s hadith, “Heaven lies beneath the feet of your mother.” [viii] In Arabic, Saeed means happy. [ix] While the story of Job in the Islamic tradition is similar to that of the biblical story of the Book of Job, in the Islamic tradition Job is steadfast in his suffering and does not entertain the same doubts that the biblical Job does. [x] As in the biblical story of Moses, in the Quran the staff of Moses miraculously turns into a serpent. Quran, 28:31. [xi] A practice among mothers in Iraq involves sprinkling water behind their children as they leave the house, believing it protects them from evil and misfortune and ensures they will return [xii] “Spree” here refers to the wedding procession and celebration, the Zaffe (or Zaffa), a Middle-Eastern tradition of bringing the newlyweds into their reception hall surrounded by music and dance. [xiii] These are famous verses written by poet Kadhim al-Karbala’i and recited in memory of Al-Qasim, son of Imam al-Hassan, who was killed in the battle of Karbala in 680 CE. The verses express his wish for his mother to remember him when she witnesses a wedding ceremony. He died young, and his mother did not have the chance to see him marry. Instead of the tradition of henna adorning his hands during weddings, his blood stains him, and his body rests beneath the soil. [xiv] Referring to the story of Moses in the Quran, 26:63. [xv] “There is no god but Allah”: a fundamental declaration of faith in Islam, known as the Shahada. Muslims recite this phrase to affirm their belief in the oneness of Allah and the central tenet of Islam that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah. [xvi] Subhan Allah means “Glory be to God” or “He be glorified and exalted,” declares God to be above any fault, shortcoming, corrupt notions, or false idea. Alhamdulillah means “Praise be to God.” [xvii] The Angel of Death is present and the name Azrael appears in both Christianity and Judaism. However, Azrael is more established in Islam, where he is one of the archangels alongside Mikhail (Michael), Jibril (Gabriel), and Israfil. [xviii] In Islamic belief, Munkar and Nakir are two angels who are tasked with questioning the deceased in the grave about their faith and deeds. [xix] A reference to Quran, 9:72. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Bios : Author: Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi was born in Nasiriyah in 1965 and graduated from the Teachers’ Institute of that city in 1987. His plays have been performed on stages across Iraq and the Arab world and internationally, earning him numerous national and international awards. His play collections include The Eighth Day of the Week ( Thāmin Ayām al-ʾUsbu’ ; 2000), The Return of the Man Who Has Not Been Absent (ʿ Awadat al-Rajul alladhi lam Yaghīb ; 2005), A Show in Arabic (ʿ Arḍ bil ʿArabi ; 2011), The Divine Plays (Al-ʾIlāhiyāt; 2014), and Plays of the Corrupt City ( Nuṣūs al-Madīna al-Fāsida ; 2021). Translator Amir Al-Azraki is a playwright, literary translator, Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, and Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Program at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. Among his plays are: Waiting for Gilgamesh: Scenes from Iraq , The Mug , and The Widow . Al-Azraki is the translator of Africanism: Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary , author of The Discourse of War in Contemporary Theatre (in Arabic), co-editor and co-translator of Contemporary Plays from Iraq , “A Rehearsal for Revolution”: An Approach to Theatre of the Oppressed (in Arabic), and co-editor and co-translator of Arabic poetry in Consequence , The Common , Poetry Foundation and Talking Writing . Amir Al-Azraki, PhD, (he/him) Program Coordinator, Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Associate Professor, Culture and Language Studies Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo aaliazraki@uwaterloo.ca 519-884-4404 ext. 28671 Editor of the English translation: Jeff Casey is Associate Professor of Theatre and Theatre Director at Norwich University. His scholarly articles have appeared in Theatre Topics , Quarterly Review of Film and Video , Modern Drama , and Ecumenica . He works extensively as a theatre director, producer, designer, dramaturge, and playwright. His directing credits include Cabaret , Chicago , Kafka’s The Trial , Voices from a People’s History of the United States , Harold Pinter’s Party Time and The New World Order , and Neil Simon’s Rumors. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Eileen Curley 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 Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Eileen Curley By Published on December 11, 2020 Download Article as PDF In 1901, David Belasco sued Harrison Grey Fiske and Minnie Maddern Fiske over the Manhattan Theatre’s production of Mrs. Burton Harrison’s play, The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch. Harrison, an established novelist and essayist by 1901, had worked with Belasco in the 1880s on amateur and professional productions of her plays, and she consulted with him on this play as well. After publishing a successful short story by the same title, Harrison revised the script and shopped it around, quickly reaching an agreement with Belasco’s rivals, the Fiskes, after months of dallying by Belasco. Shortly before the Fiskes’ production was to open, Belasco sued, arguing that he was “the sole and exclusive owner and proprietor of the play.” [1] The injunction to stop the production simultaneously seeks to disrupt the Fiskes’ production and undermines Harrison’s authorial power. Belasco claimed that the idea was his and the script was his property, even though Harrison wrote it, but instead of simply and easily disproving these claims, materials produced by the Fiskes, Harrison, and their lawyer speak at length and rather defensively about the nature of collaborative writing. These extant archival documents suggest that they feared Belasco might have a case for unremunerated collaboration, and they focus on what was then, and still sometimes is, a hazy area of copyright law. The dynamics in the case also speak to the nature of theatrical collaboration between playwrights and producers and competition between producers. Woven amid these legal and theatrical concerns is the familiar story of a woman’s labor being co-opted by a man and a woman’s capacity for professionalism being questioned by all around her. At base, Belasco claimed a woman’s work as his own and appears so confident in his right to her labor that he sued. Profit distribution from a collaboration is a legal matter, but the erasure of women’s voices from collaborations was and is so routine that this case was not immediately thrown out despite the glaring lack of a contract between the pair. Accordingly, this article analyzes the legal implications of this play’s collaborative writing and revision process, while situating that process and the resulting lawsuit in the competitive world of early twentieth-century New York producers and exploring the impact of these production conditions on aspiring female playwrights. The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch’s Ongoing Evolution through Collaboration The archival materials and press at the time often describe Harrison as an amateur playwright, but by the turn of the century, Constance Cary Harrison’s writing career seemed decidedly no longer amateurish; writing under the name Mrs. Burton Harrison, she had established herself as a novelist and essayist, publishing novels, memoirs, advice books, short stories, and columns on contemporary society. Harrison had been publishing for over two decades and was working with the agent Alice Kauser when she began work on The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch at the turn of the twentieth century. Harrison published three different versions of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch : as a short story in Smart Set magazine in March 1901, as a play which was first produced by the Fiskes in November 1901 and also published later that year, and as a short novella in the Novelettes De Luxe series in 1903; Daniel Frohman also later produced the story as a silent film in 1914. Thus, while the papers may have credited Kauser, “the introducer of unknown playwrights,” as having launched Harrison’s career, [2] it is difficult to conceive of an author with more than 15 published novels or short story collections as an amateur. Certainly, she had not had many plays professionally produced, but the rhetorical use of “amateur” in this case seem designed to disempower her when used by Belasco, to play up her feminine naiveté for benefit when employed by the Harrisons and the Fiskes, and to gender and exploit the situation for good press by the newspapers. Harrison had worked with David Belasco in the past, notably in the 1880s when she translated a number of plays, including short French comedies for amateur productions and an adaptation of a Scribe play that was produced by amateurs and professionals under the title A Russian Honeymoon . These plays were also produced under Belasco’s guidance; Harrison, notably, is the uncontested author. At the time, Belasco had recently arrived back to New York from California and was working as the stage manager at the Madison Square Theatre. Belasco assisted Harrison and the amateurs mounting these and numerous other plays at the Madison Square, which rented its facilities to amateur theatrical groups with some regularity. Belasco and Franklin Sargent also directed the professional debut of A Russian Honeymoon in April 1883, and Harrison speaks positively enough about their working relationship on this show in her 1911 memoir, Recollections Grave and Gay . She acknowledges that “largest portion of our success was owing to his training and extraordinary skill in devising pictures and effects from material that lent itself readily to lovely grouping and vivid color.” [3] Clearly, she also credits her own writing here as giving him a good foundation. The overall style of this sweeping memoir renders it difficult to tell whether there was lingering resentment ten years after the lawsuit or if she just chose to focus elsewhere; regardless, Minnie Maddern Fiske warrants a longer and much more obviously glowing recollection. [4] After their successful collaborations in the 1880s, it is perhaps no surprise that in 1900, when Harrison began working on The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , she once again turned to Belasco as she and so many others had done, looking for his assistance with staging and plot development, as well as potential production opportunities. The ensuing work resulted in the lawsuit. Some elements are clear: the two did communicate and collaborate on the drafting of an early version of the play. Belasco did work with Harrison on the script in the spring of 1900, at the Harrison’s house on East 29 th Street in New York, before the short story version was published in 1901. Harrison communicated with Belasco repeatedly, and yet she did not always incorporate his suggestions. Belasco seems to have been a much more reluctant communicator, particularly throughout 1901. Indeed, Belasco’s interactions with the script seem to have stopped in 1900, and there is little disagreement that the script, as it stood at that time, had some significant weaknesses. Letters submitted to the court from both Harrison and Belasco reveal that she attempted to contact Belasco repeatedly between the spring of 1900 and the fall of 1901 to make progress, set a contract, and get her draft manuscripts returned. Her husband, the lawyer Burton N. Harrison, also began contacting Belasco in summer 1901. Throughout, Belasco would occasionally reply directly or via his business manager, Benjamin Roeder, but significantly fewer responses from Belasco and Roeder were submitted into evidence. The extant evidence, while contradictory and at times subject to spin and to charges of being fabricated or heavily edited by Belasco, shows that the pair worked together on a script with the unwritten understanding that Belasco might produce it in the future. There was, however, no contractual agreement to do so. As the months passed in 1900 and early 1901 with no contact from Belasco, Harrison seemed to realize that she needed to finish the play, fully sever ties with Belasco, and get him to return her manuscript. Indeed, the Harrisons sent a significant number of requests to Belasco and Roeder requesting the return of various manuscripts that Harrison sent for his perusal, including but not limited to The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch . In part, the success of the short story sparked her renewed attempts to contact Belasco, attempts which appear to increase with frequency in the spring and summer of 1901. His silence clearly aggravated her, and she seemed to be demurring by claiming that she wanted to work on it, even though she still had a copy. [5] Underneath her feigned desire to just finish the project, Harrison seems, at long last, to have realized the danger that Belasco presented to her intellectual property. In May 1901, Harrison lacked any concrete commitment from Belasco. Her agent, Alice Kauser, sent the script to the Fiskes, who worked with Harrison to revise it and finally offered her a contract in October 1901. It appears that the review, acceptance, and offer process transpired quite quickly, despite the play needing and receiving revisions. Kauser confirmed receipt of the play from Harrison on the 15 th of May and Harrison Grey Fiske replied to her on the 18 th with his critique. [6] He asked to keep the manuscript to show it to Minnie Maddern Fiske, who then decided to work with Harrison throughout the summer on revising the piece before putting the script under contract, just as Belasco had done in early 1900, minus the contract. [7] The letter announcing the contract for the now revised play contract is dated 12 October 1901, two days before rehearsals began and approximately six weeks before the show opened. [8] In the intervening months between first reading and opening night, the Fiskes and Harrison continued working together on the script. When advance press for the production appeared in the papers in late October, Belasco contacted Harrison Grey Fiske, claimed ownership that he could not prove, and requested an injunction against the production, suing the Fiskes – but notably not Harrison. The Fiskes, in their amended answer to the injunction, also clearly saw that Belasco’s complaint – be it ownership, contractual, or collaborative – was with Harrison: “Constance C. Harrison is a necessary party defendant for the complete determination of the questions involved in this action.” [9] This curious decision is never addressed by Belasco in extant documents. By arguing that he owned the piece, Belasco logically would have sued the Fiskes for producing it without his approval. Given his ongoing producers’ battle with the Fiskes and others, one reasonable interpretation for why he was going after the Fiskes is that, financially, he could wound the Fiskes by interrupting rehearsals and obtain royalties from their production if it continued under an agreement. Indeed, Harrison Grey Fiske estimates the amounts the company spent preparing the production to be “about sixteen hundred dollars ($1600) a week” in salaries for the 51 company members, $8,000 in scenic and costume investiture, and “the gross expenses per week of the company and the Manhattan Theatre aggregated nearly $5,000.” [10] Yet, the omission of Harrison from the injunction also suggests that Belasco did not give credence to her work or input, a perception reinforced by his discussion of her throughout his affidavit as an employee in need of his supervision rather than as a creator or equal: “Mrs. Harrison immediately took a fancy to the story and told me that she would be able, under my supervision and in collaboration with me, to make a good play out of it.” [11] Indeed, his argument that the play was his own idea and property relies upon his presentation of Harrison as little more than someone who “molded these ideas of mine into shape and wrote out the dialogue under my supervision;” [12] the gendered bias towards and discounting of her skills is necessarily intertwined with his refusal to grant her ownership of her ideas, much less active participation in the creation of the script. Responses to the suit counter this perception thoroughly – with the Fiskes, Harrison, her husband, and Charles Lydecker, the Fiskes’ lawyer, giving Harrison credit for her work; yet, they, too, traffic in gendered perceptions of her naivete to make their case. While Belasco ultimately withdrew the suit after the Fiskes’ production had opened under a cloud of ironically profitable publicity, this overall timeline is vital for establishing that there were at least two collaborative writing relationships which produced this play, and that reality becomes a key point in the legal case. Harrison and the Fiskes worked on the piece for at least four months in 1901, through visits and letters, prior to contracting the piece for production in October. They also continued working on the piece during rehearsals. This method of writing paralleled how Harrison had been interacting with Belasco in the spring of 1900, including uncontracted jointly undertaken revision work, but the key difference is that Belasco never signed a contract with Harrison, despite communications between Roeder and the Harrisons about a potential contract. Manuscripts and Authorial Control At the time of the Belasco suit, copyright and theatrical law in the United States was still governed by the Copyright Act of 1790 and being solidified through court cases, but the type of collaboration which produces theatrical scripts was not well addressed by this law; the US legal system is still grappling with theatrical collaboration in its various permutations. Indeed, in 2012, Ryan J. Richardson remarked that “[a] few notable scholars in the legal community, however, have alleged a more systemic problem-the inability of American copyright law to adequately reward and protect the uniquely collaborative expression that is live theatre.” [13] Richardson traces through how writing and production collaborations present conundrums which parallel some of those raised in this case. Throughout her affidavit, [14] Harrison argues for ideas that Douglas Nevin also notes are the cornerstones of contemporary and historical copyright law – originality and creativity, [15] treating collaboration as merely part of the single author’s creative process. Belasco chose to focus on contracts and ownership – despite having no supporting material to suggest a claim to ownership nor any signed agreement with Harrison which permitted him to produce her play. Seemingly, the Fiskes and Harrisons feared there was sufficient grey area on the nature of collaboration and its impact on authorship – and by extension, on ownership – that they created a substantial counter-argument to this point. Indeed, Harrison may have potentially created an ownership conundrum by providing Belasco with manuscript copies of her plays. The volume and intensity of documentation about the physical manuscript suggests a deep concern regarding physical control of the manuscript versions, for a variety of possible reasons. As Derek Miller discusses, in this period where nuances of copyright law were still being actively developed in the courts, “[m]anuscripts – or in later decades, scripts printed for private use – remained important for controlling uncertain rights, particularly for playwrights whose work was valuable on both sides of the Atlantic.” [16] Belasco’s injunction notice was delivered to the Fiskes, informing them that “on the hearing of the motion for an injunction in this action, we will hand up to the court the original manuscript of ‘The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch,’” [17] which certainly seems to validate the Harrisons’ concerns. Further, the Complaint notes that the play has not yet been published or performed in public, [18] relying upon nineteenth-century notions that publication, performance, and copyright were means by which ownership could be established. [19] By submitting an original manuscript of the still unpublished text, he could argue ownership of the play. The copyright registration process at the time also complicated matters; as per typical process, Harrison sent in the title page on 8 October 1901 to copyright the title, but two copies of the script, published by the printer CG Burgoyne, were not submitted until 26 November 1901, which was the day after the show opened. [20] The title, thus, was the only part of the play that was under copyright when the injunction was issued, although Belasco seems unaware of this as the 8 November 1901 Complaint argues that “said play and title are original and […] no other play has been written or produced having said title”; [21] the play was still being revised. As will be discussed later, this timing may well have given Harrison and the Fiskes sufficient warning to alter any elements they may have attributed to Belasco. The materials also include extensive discussion of the typist, which Belasco submitted as part of an argument that since he paid to have the piece typed, he owned it. [22] Harrison does not dispute the copy of Harrison’s letter that Belasco submitted into evidence detailing these arrangements, so it is clear that the script was typed and that Belasco paid for it. Harrison’s letter reveals that she asked the typist to charge Belasco for the “Hatch” script and charge Harrison for typing another of her scripts, “His Better Half;” she also asked the typist whether the original copies of the last acts had been sent to Belasco or not because they had not been returned to her. [23] Belasco argues that this payment clearly indicates his ownership of the manuscript. Meanwhile, Harrison claims that: “Belasco expressed an eager desire to have the work of typing this play, so as it had been then finished in a rough way, done in a hurry, so as to enable him to take it with him on the voyage to Europe, sailing at the end of March [1900] – and so he requested me to send it to his typewriters (as he called them) who, he said, were very familiar with that kind of work.” She also remarks that she usually uses the “typewriters down town employed by my husband” for her own work and that she had not sent the text to them because it was not yet ready. [24] The posturing by both here is clear: Harrison is laying the groundwork to argue that the script wasn’t finished, as she does throughout her affidavit, and that it was only typed because Belasco demanded it before leaving for Europe. Belasco, meanwhile, is claiming that the fact that he paid for the Hatch script and Harrison paid for the other script clearly indicates perceived ownership of the individual scripts on the part of both parties. A third interpretation, however, is possible, when the typing note is read alongside another letter Harrison wrote to Belasco, submitted by Belasco as Exhibit 3: “Here is ‘Mrs. Hatch,’ and I send her to you with a goodspeed for her, and for you, upon your voyage!” She also included “His Better Half,” the other play that was typed. And, Harrison continues, “My husband thinks you had better send me a memorandum about the play to-morrow, so that we can look over it, before I sign anything.” [25] Harrison does not dispute this letter, either, but she also does not directly reference it in her affidavit. She does, however, acknowledge that she and her husband met with Roeder in April 1900 to discuss terms, but no contract was ever signed. Given that Harrison clearly assumed that Belasco would be producing her play at some point in the future, his decision to pay for the typing seems, perhaps, logical for a future producer who wished a copy of the play to continue their collaborative writing. The sheer number of times Harrison points out that this March 1900 encounter was the last active engagement between the two about the script suggests a strategy to establish a collaborative relationship that failed and was never solidified under contract. After all, by mid-May 1901, the Fiskes had a version of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , and Harrison may have been feeling pressure to get revisions fully underway to ready the script for possible production by them and to be clearly and fully in control of her work, physically and intellectually. Throughout the court documents, reference is made to how much work the May script needed, which may again have been a legal maneuver as well as a statement of fact. Harrison admits, for instance, in a 23 May 1901 letter that the play “is deficient in the elements of success in its present form,” [26] and her husband notes on 4 October 1901 that “the play was left unfinished a year ago last spring.” [27] The latter, presumably, is an attempt to discredit any claim Belasco may have made by establishing the length of time that had passed since his active participation in the collaboration. This 23 May letter, however, is peculiarly timed and indicative of some of the documentation challenges in this case. The Fiskes expressed interest in the script a week prior to when Harrison pleaded “I can’t bear to lose that I have already done, and I therefore appeal to your kindness to send me back your copy of the play, also my two other plays “Bitter Sweet” and “His Better Half,” which I asked you to read.” [28] On the surface, she writes in a manner which exploits numerous gendered tropes, undermining her own “deficient” work and fawning over Belasco who has his “hands full of important and successful ventures.” Given that the Fiskes are now working with her on the script and considering a production of it, however, it seems clear that Harrison’s desire to “make it better for my own satisfaction, if with no other result” is overt gendered cover for her real intent: to have the script produced by the Fiskes with no intervention by Belasco and to get the manuscript returned. Harrison claims in her affidavit that this letter was written in 1900, which does not make sense since it clearly mentions that she has “now waited for a whole year with patience and courtesy,” which correctly dates the letter as 1901. She also accuses him of changing her words in a letter submitted into evidence to be “projected collaboration” instead of “proposed collaboration,” but does not take issue with the rest of the language in the letter, leading readers to assume her date of 1900 is perhaps a typo or perhaps an attempt to obfuscate the timing of her relationship with the Fiskes. [29] Devaluing Women’s Labor Belasco’s reputation for suing competitors and being generally obstreperous was well known publicly and professionally at this point. This characterization seems to have to been accepted by all involved in this case from the very start, except for Mrs. Harrison, who appears naïve throughout the extant documents, though she is presumably playing at that gendered obliviousness by the time of the 23 May 1901 letter discussed just above. Jeannette Gilder, co-editor of The Critic and publisher of Harrison’s work, told her that she was “having the same experience with Mr. Belasco that many others have had.” [30] Her husband reports that he “was apprehensive” about Harrison’s initial contact with Belasco, “warning her of his reputation of unscrupulous dealing and for general inveracity.” Yet, Harrison reportedly “replied by reminding [him] that she had seen much of him long ago, had put him under obligations in her dealings then with him, had received repeated expressions of his gratitude, adding that she did not think he would act towards her otherwise than uprightly and with consideration.” As he notes, “[t]his sequel tells its own story.” [31] Throughout the legal materials, the Fiskes and Burton N. Harrison appear to be carefully, though not overtly, pointing towards Constance Harrison’s naiveté in dealing with Belasco. The narrative suggests that Harrison still chose to view him as the younger man who had been so helpful early on in her career; she is depicted as a trusting and ultimately exploited amateur female playwright. Clearly, other producers were willing to work with her, but it is unclear whether she was meek and trusting, or whether the legal documents wished to depict her as meek and trusting in order to play upon the judge’s sympathies. After all, it seems entirely reasonable that Harrison went to Belasco in hopes of getting her play produced by him because of their past connection; he was now in a position to make her a successful playwright. During the whole Mrs. Hatch episode, she sent him two other plays and also some sketches, about which she asked: “Can you suggest to me how I can get them produced in vaudeville or otherwise without my name? I should be so glad of an opportunity to see them played.” [32] Such decisions may reflect a calculated agency and desire to expand her writing career into the professional theatre, but they also can play into the narrative the Harrisons and the Fiskes created. This manipulation of her gendered position of power, or lack thereof, also extends into some of Belasco’s more problematic claims and her defense against them. He argued that one of the reasons why he supposedly worked with Harrison was her class and gender: “Being a society woman, familiar with the ways of society, that fact was one of the considerations that influenced me to give her the work.” [33] In doing so, Belasco could have capitalized on contemporary trends to appeal to audiences by employing society women, a strategy successfully deployed by his competitor Augustin Daly. Author’s Rights, Contracts, and Co-Authorship Belasco’s ownership concerns form the starting point for Charles Lydecker’s arguments in his “Memo in Opposition to Motion for Injunction,” which include four main points about authors’ rights and co-authorship, which he details in varying degrees and supports with citations to case law and practice. First, he notes that authors should be able to benefit from their work; he also points out that Belasco admitted that Harrison contacted him to ask for advice, implying that she was the author. For Lydecker, “[t]he turning point in all cases rests upon the rights of the author. If Mrs. Harrison is the author of the play, the right on injunction rests with her.” [34] The issue, then, becomes one of authorship and authors’ rights. The parties do not appear to be at odds on this particular point. Lydecker expands upon the issues of manuscript possession and authorship in a structured counterargument which begins with an acknowledgement that rights can be assigned by the author to another party, as in the case of Harrison granting production rights to the Fiskes. Here, Belasco is called out for clearly understanding that this is how rights work and for having no contracts to support his claims. Indeed, Lydecker notes that Belasco’s professed desire “to make arrangements to bring out the play in 1902 is a subterfuge and shows abandonment;” [35] by claiming that future plans should prohibit the Fiskes from producing the play immediately, Belasco reveals an acceptance that Harrison is the author, a desire to relate to the play as a producer in the future, and a general goal to prevent the Fiskes from profiting off of the piece. Nothing would prevent Belasco from obtaining the rights to produce the show later; indeed, he did so in 1903, where Alice Kauser reported that it “played the first week to very large business. They are going to continue it for this week (the second week) and may be for a third week if the popularity of the play continues on.” [36] Lydecker and Fiske both argue that Belasco’s failure to obtain any kind of contract with Harrison at any point during 1900 or 1901 as a key element of his lack of standing in the case. Belasco’s arguments conveniently skate past any acknowledgement that there is no signed paperwork, but they do provide another fascinating window into the complex performance of gender which floats just beneath the surface of the case. Ironically, Belasco appears to grant Harrison more agency to enter into a contract than anyone on her side of the courtroom, even though he is simultaneously trying to claim that she couldn’t possibly have written the piece herself. In some documents, Belasco claims that the Harrisons were stalling on writing an agreement, [37] but he also attests that Constance Harrison, Belasco and Benjamin Roeder, his business manager, came to terms on a contract on their own, in the Harrison’s house, while Burton Harrison was in another room. [38] The Harrisons staunchly deny his claim that they were to draw up the contract and even moreso vociferously contest that Constance had negotiated a contract without her husband’s input. [39] Extant letters from Harrison’s agent about her publishing support the Harrisons’ claim that Burton handled her contractual matters. For instance, all correspondence about the production contract was between Burton, the Fiskes, and her agent Kauser, even though later letters about the weekly grosses are addressed to Constance. This arrangement enables the defense to present an image of Mrs. Harrison as a woman unschooled in business matters, but it also undercuts the logic of Belasco’s claims. Societal expectations may well have provided a convenient defense, no matter any degree of guilt, and the Fiskes and the Harrisons appear to have exploited these social constructs when convenient. Ultimately, Lydecker argues for the same interpretation of the relationship between contract and copyright law as the Second Circuit eventually does in 1991 in Childress v. Taylor, 945 F.2d 500, 502 (2d. Cir. 1991), which notes that “In the absence of a contract, the copyright remains with the one or more persons who created copyrightable material.” [40] Lydecker notes early in the memo that “[n]o facts alleged sustain the claim that the plaintiff is an assignee of the author’s property” [41] and then returns to this point later while remarking that the contemporary case law supports the notion “that copyright vests in the employer only by agreement.” [42] Recall that at the time of the suit, Harrison had filed the title with the copyright office on 8 October 1901, [43] but the script was not submitted until after the injunction was filed and the show opened. Thus, Harrison was left to prove that she was the sole author of the piece. The legal precedents regarding joint authorship, working relationships, and collaboration are the areas which may have provided the most potential for Belasco to have a winnable argument, even if his affidavit does not make these points particularly clearly or effectively. While it should be noted that Belasco claimed full ownership rather than joint authorship, a detail which perhaps speaks more to his intention to shut down the production and a general megalomania, the case still raises numerous issues with regards to how authorship and collaboration are defined, and thus rewarded, through copyright protections and ensuing potential profitability. Lydecker establishes that if the piece were “the joint product of the minds of the plaintiff and Mrs. Harrison,” then “under a proper agreement,” the two would be legally bound to provide rights to both authors. [44] Belasco, again, has no such proof of such an agreement, but their collaboration certainly was treated as a potential problem due to this concept of “joint product.” This notion of co-authorship gets expanded further in Lydecker’s final point, which quite extensively cites case law for the various nuances of his arguments about authorship, ownership, and injunctions. After acknowledging that there was a collaboration, he argues based on contemporary understanding of copyright that “[t]o constitute joint ownership there must be a common design.” [45] Joint authorship requiring intent to create a joint work remains a hallmark of US copyright law through much of the twentieth century, though it gradually becomes complicated by questions about the degree of contribution, “work for hire” rights, and related concerns, [46] many of which are visible in this case as well. Lydecker continues by expanding on the notion of “common design,” citing a case between Levi and Rutley, wherein a playwright hired to write a play retained authorship rights. [47] This explication quite clearly responds to Belasco’s claim that Harrison worked for him. [48] Harrison’s presumption that she could receive feedback from Belasco without incorporating all of it casts further doubt on Belasco’s claims that she was working for him, rather than he providing advice to her; he did not control the content. Belasco’s own claims that he hired Harrison to write for him also undermine any potential argument about joint authorship, based on the case law Lydecker raises as well as simple logic. Harrison quite clearly believed their collaboration to be one where Belasco was to help her with her writing, presuming that Belasco would then produce the play; the Amended Answer from the Fiskes notes that Harrison was willing to pay Belasco for any consulting expenses incurred. [49] A contract to that effect might well have helped Belasco, insofar as it would have proved that Harrison had agreed to write jointly with him or for him, while also clarifying whether he had the rights to produce the play. The Confusion of Collaborative Writing Processes In addition to the confusion about establishing theatrical rights at a time when the legal systems are still responding to production developments, [50] the theatrical scripts under consideration did not come into existence in a clean process, a reality which underpins much of the legal consternation and debate around collaboration in this case. The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch followed standard procedures then as now as ever in a collaborative art: Harrison brainstormed, wrote, and revised over the course of many months with input from a wide variety of parties including potential producers, and by the time the Fiskes offered her a contract in October 1901, none of these collaborators made any claims for co-authorship. As was normal for their publishing relationship, Harrison received input from her agent, Alice Kauser, throughout the process. She also consulted her lawyer husband, Burton N. Harrison, for advice on the legal aspects of the play. Furthermore, as Fiske and Harrison both note in their affidavits, a stage manager would often provide advice to a playwright in advance of staging a play; indeed, that is how Belasco and Harrison had worked in the 1880s on plays that were considered her works, despite his input and assistance. Harrison’s correspondence archive at the NYPL does contain numerous exchanges with producers about a wide variety of her works, including The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch . [51] Kauser notes that when she sent the play to her agent in London – after the Fiskes’ production was already running – the response was positive but included a request for a happy ending and a different title. [52] And, given the collaborative work that occurred with the Fiskes both before and after their contract had been signed, it appears that pre-emptive work on a rough script was the norm. For instance, Fiske’s first reply about the play expressed some interest but noted specific revisions that would need to be made, namely that “the predominating motive of the play as found in its leading character would require, it seems to me, some relief in the amplification of the subordinate interests as they are at present. The element of maternal love is dwelt upon so continuously now that it may be monotonous.” [53] Likewise, a 1902 letter from William H. Kendal, wherein he declines to produce the play in London, also offers feedback to Harrison, suggesting that she “[reconstruct] the play giving equal prominence & interest to the man” and noting that he would look at it again if those changes were made. This letter, notably, was written after the play had already been successfully produced in New York; such notes speak both to the collaborative nature of the profession and the assumption that texts can always be updated as needed for successful production. [54] Harrison’s engagement in a collaborative writing process is not cast as any critique on her skills; indeed, the normalcy of such an approach appears to be a given. Yet, much of the discussion of the process and her naivete enables the defense to cast Belasco as a bully and her as the innocent victim. Harrison Grey Fiske, in particular, points towards Harrison’s unimpeachable moral character and naivete as a woman while taking numerous opportunities to insult Belasco as he explains the collaborative writing process. The amended answer to the injunction moves quickly from a statement of facts into a barbed gauntlet “deny[ing] on information and belief that the plaintiff [Belasco] is an author and writer of plays,” though Fiske does “admit that plaintiff has been manager of various dramatic enterprises.” [55] The slights appear throughout the affidavit, too, where Harrison Grey Fiske depicts Belasco as an unskilled man who takes credit for others’ work: “I know Mr. Belasco’s capabilities and limitations with respect to play writing, and that I know how he engages people to write plays for him and then presents them to the public as his own.” [56] This line of defense calls into question Belasco’s veracity, but it also enables Fiske to imply, throughout, that Belasco assumed he could manipulate Harrison in this fashion as well. Fiske demotes Belasco, claiming he only “rendered her certain aid and assistance as a dramatic manager and as a stage manager.” Further, he argued that Harrison was “a woman of social position and high personal character” whereas “Belasco’s claims to authorship [have] frequently been questioned in the press and through legal proceedings.” [57] Harrison’s accomplished writing career is overshadowed by her class and gender here, rhetorically, to simultaneously attack Belasco and gain the sympathies of the court. Collaboration and U.S Law While plays are often the result of this type of collaborative process, collaboration resides, then and now, in a vague legal territory, particularly as pertains to this case. Indeed, the state of current case law and legislation underscores how dependent the parties in Belasco v. Fiske were on their own argumentation and evidence. Nevin, in his argument that current copyright law should be expanded to better accommodate theatrical production processes, notes that “copyright law lacks a proper mechanism to acknowledge the single most defining characteristic of the form—collaboration.” [58] Richardson concurs, describing “a more systemic problem–the inability of American copyright law to adequately reward and protect the uniquely collaborative expression that is live theatre.” [59] He notes, however, that proposed current solutions in legal discussions insufficiently address the concerns of theatrical collaboration because of their attempts at universality and that they may indeed hinder creativity. [60] Protections afforded through joint authorship were added to the 1976 Copyright act as a result of “a series of notable cases n156 following the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1909, which conspicuously contained no express provisions governing joint authorship.” [61] In their defense documents, thus, Harrison and the Fiskes addressed legal debates which the courts still have yet to fully resolve. Additionally, Anne Ruggles Gere’s assessment of collaborative writing in women’s groups at the end of the nineteenth century provides another potential, and gendered, avenue for considering Harrison’s approaches to collaboration and concerns about the intersection between collaboration and authorship. As copyright law was being solidified, women’s groups, Gere argues, were working in various ways which “resisted dominant concepts of intellectual property and authorship. Collaboration played a major role in writing.” [62] The processes of sharing, receiving feedback, adapting texts from other sources, and generally collaborating on writing products parallels the processes used in theatrical script development. Harrison’s prior theatrical experiences included developing scripts with a group of amateur performers and, notably, Belasco; those productions appear to followed some of the models of collaborative development that Gere discusses. Many of her scripts, including The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , draw on or overtly adapt other texts in a manner which, while legal at the time, reveals a more fluid approach to writing, authorship, and ownership than the law would eventually settle upon. Gere argues that the clubwomen were subverting norms through a variety of literacy activities including collaborative writing and adaptation, [63] and while Harrison is not obviously working with a club, Gere’s presentation of alternate views of authorship and the impact of collaboration thereon provide another potential avenue for understanding Harrison’s focus on collaboration in her affidavit. These practices question the fixed nature of authorship and textual development that copyright law relies upon for clarity. 6[64] Little in Lydecker’s memo directly cites case law specifically about collaboration, but the avenue that he took – the need to establish authorship and the nature of the rights granted to authors – may well have inspired Harrison to expend a great deal of time in her affidavit discussing their collaboration and possibly make some late changes to the text. Taken as a whole, the defense materials reveal concerns that Belasco would and could argue collaboration and thus, perhaps, joint authorship as a means of arguing co-ownership. Interestingly, Belasco only raises collaboration twice – once while describing the initial idea for the project and later while discussing the work that they did on the piece. Harrison, conversely, discusses the nature of collaboration endlessly in her affidavit, directly countering the belittling presumptions in Belasco’s affidavit by keeping the focus on her authorial power, positioning Belasco as her assistant at times and as a potential producer at others. She explains “I said to him that I had sent for him because I thought he could, and perhaps would, assist me by collaborating and staging and bringing out the play I might write.” [65] Throughout, the dispute again comes down to contracts and input on the script. Harrison points out that “[i]t is not true that, at that interview or at any time, an arrangement for collaboration with him was suggested, except as I have here above stated – collaboration with him having been suggested only as part of a suggested entire arrangement which included staging and production by him.” [66] Collaborative Writing Processes Harrison’s assessment of Belasco’s contributions to the piece as a means of collaboration form the bulk of her counter-argument and shed further light on the collaborative writing process. Belasco claims in his affidavit that “I would sometimes remain at her house from six to seven hours collaborating with her.” [67] In addition to denying the length and number of times they met, Harrison pointed out the many months between his departure for Europe in March 1900 and the suit in October 1901, “during all of which time he had utterly failed and neglected to do anything whatever in the way of collaborating.” [68] She defines collaborating as having a “share or participation in the creation of the story or in the design or plot or general structure or construction of the play,” and goes on to classify Belasco’s involvement with the script as akin to that of a stage manager. [69] While demoting Belasco here, she also neglects to mention in this section that the input he seems to have given her was quite similar in type and perhaps scope as the input given by the Fiskes. She further remarks that he had “the opportunity” to collaborate on the script since he had requested the typed version in March 1900, but that he had chosen not to do so. [70] Indeed, their descriptions of the collaborative process they used provide a fascinating look into how they both viewed each other and the work. Belasco, throughout his affidavit, discusses how he “gave her the story and the plot” and similarly dictated other elements. [71] The notes on the script which he submitted are, indeed, quite dictatorial in their presentation: the pages are merely new pieces of text with no context or elaboration. Minnie Maddern Fiske, by contrast, explained and contextualized her suggestions and requests in the extant notes. Both Belasco and Harrison acknowledge sessions where lines were read. Belasco claimed he would read the lines and Harrison would take notes. Harrison, however, describes these meetings in a way that can best be described as a thinly veiled excoriation of his talents: though it is true that, whilst I wrote he sometimes walked about the room and pulled his hair in apparent excitement, sometimes with his hands before him and trembling, as he said, in a low and agitated voice, in real or assumed emotion over what I had read him. “Ther-rills (thrills) – ther-rills, I can see the audience in their ther-rills” – and though it is true that I remember, he once sat at my desk and did the dumbshow of the “business” he said would be appropriate for the detective […] As to Mr. Belasco’s speaking a “dialogue,” he always was difficult and slow of utterance – appeared to be unable to articulate except with effort and very tediously, and in mere explosives.[72] Where neither side disputes that work was completed on the play with both parties in attendance at Mrs. Harrison’s house, the challenge then becomes establishing degree of collaboration, which even the courts still struggle to determine. Curiously, Harrison appears to have been proactively asking about collaboration – seemingly before the lawsuit even occurred. The archive includes a tantalizingly incomplete letter to Harrison which was clearly written in response to Harrison reaching out to ask if the illegibly named correspondent remembered exchanging letters about the play and about collaboration. The letter’s author replies to her inquiry: “So – my recollection of that correspondence upon matters dramatic is extremely vague. However, your statement of it seems entirely accurate. I think you wanted to know out my experience what the relations and TERMS were between collaborating dramatists, and I was obliged to confess that what should have been my experience was lodged in the bosom of THE CENTURY COMPANY who had made all the arrangements.” The letter writer continues: “I do not remember that you mentioned the name of the play, for, it seemed quite fresh to my recollection when I saw the story in the ‘The Smart Set;’” [73] the short story version of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch appeared in March 1901. While the letter writer claims to be unsure of many details, if we trust that that the conversation occurred, as implied, before the publication of the short story, then Harrison was asking about how collaborations worked in the spring of 1901 or in 1900 – long before the lawsuit and before the Fiskes became involved. Whatever sparked the original conversation, the inquiry which prompted this particular reply seemingly was meant to establish a defense – Harrison wanted to know if her correspondent had kept any of their initial set of letters, presumably to use them at trial. Tests of Originality and Plot Machinations In this particular case, the multiple collaborations may have enabled Harrison to better prepare to counter Belasco’s claims of originality, which may well have been problematic and hard to disprove legally. Originality is a key component of United States copyright law since the Copyright Act of 1790, which drew on similar ideas in English law. Belasco’s main points of contention in his often-rambling affidavit are that the plot and the storyline were his original idea and that he hired Harrison to write that particular story with significant oversight and supervision by him. Harrison claims that the story is her version of a Sardou play, Seraphine , where a father is reunited with his daughter. [74] While establishing provenance is impossible, it should be noted that some in the press claimed a third source, as they saw the story as a loose adaptation of the hit East Lynne . [75] The storyline draws on popular narratives of the time, no matter the initial inspiration. The plot, in brief, concerns a young married woman who learns that her husband is having an affair; she leaves him and has a short dalliance with a male friend in retribution, is sued for divorce and loses; she moves to California, leaving behind her young daughter, and sets up shop making lampshades as Mrs. Marian Hatch. Just as her new love interest proposes, Mrs. Marian Hatch learns of her daughter’s upcoming marriage, and so she sells everything, spurns her suitor, and moves back to NY to see her daughter, pretending to be a stitcher working on her daughter’s wedding dress to gain access. She continues to nobly suffer in silence, and after the daughter returns from her honeymoon, she learns the true identity of the stitcher, just in time for her long-lost mother to die of a weak heart. The short story was published during Harrison’s period of work with Belasco, providing Belasco with the plot and dialogue to compare to the draft manuscript which he had in his possession. What should have helped him potentially prove part of his case, however, also gave Harrison and the Fiskes a clear roadmap of what they might want to change. And changes, they made. While early drafts of the play have not been located, the major differences between the play and the short story appear to have been written in collaboration with the Fiskes rather than with Belasco. And, the substantive nature of those alterations between short story and play may well have undercut any claim of joint authorship of the play that Belasco might have made. Numerous major and minor changes were made during the process of adaptation from short story to play, and little of Belasco’s input seems to have survived the revision process, which may well have continued after the injunction was filed. Extant correspondence about the revisions is generally brief and undated, limiting our ability to parse which changes might have been happening when. Additionally, numerous short undated letters from the Fiskes request her presence at the theatre and notify her of their visits to her house, some specifically mentioning the play and others simply confirming times and dates. [76] Quite a few letters between Harrison and the Fiskes discuss the play and its development, in particular the last act, which is significantly changed from the short story version, as well as the Paul & Lina scene, the Paul & Marian scene, and Mrs. Hatch’s character. Paul Trevor, Mrs. Hatch’s love interest, is an entirely new character for the play, and the plot alterations necessary to accommodate him were quite substantial; this love interest permits Mrs. Hatch to be more sympathetic, perhaps accounting for the character imperfections which Burton Harrison recommended so that the judge’s decision is believable. Belasco and Harrison had considered making Mrs. Hatch purely innocent, but Burton Harrison objected because a judge would never have taken away an innocent society woman’s child. Harrison followed this advice, telling Belasco: “my husband says our latest scheme to make Marion innocent, except of rash impulse, has simply robbed the play of all of its strength, and made it a tissue of improbabilities. He says no judge or referee in New York would ever have condemned a woman upon such a letter […] the matter of innocence simply takes the backbone out of the play, and makes it inverterbrate.” [77] Yet, given that the Fiskes and Harrisons had nearly a month between the notice of the lawsuit and opening night, it is possible that some of the minor details that survived the short story-to-play revision process were cut, just in case. Indeed, Belasco’s complaint gave them a map of potential changes to make by submitting a typed copy of feedback on the first three acts with his affidavit as Exhibit 13; the press also ran the contents of the suit in great detail, with at least one paper reprinting the letters entered in as exhibits. [78] Remarkably few of those suggestions were in the final version of the play, perhaps because of artistic differences, but perhaps to assist with the defense. Numerous minor differences exist between the play and Belasco’s notes – instead of Adrian’s parents visiting, it’s his sister; when the lawyer enters, Mrs. Hatch says “I haven’t forgotten you” rather than Belasco’s suggested “Yes… I remembered you;” a boy is replaced by a telephone; etc. In one noticeably awkward substitution, a young boy at a May festival who had a balloon in the short story was instead given a toy boat in the play and told, “Hold fast Johnny boy. If Bobby gets it away from you, you’re gone.” The short story version was “Take care Johnny boy. […] Hold very fast to your string. If it gets away from you, you’re gone.” Belasco wrote a whole bit about balloons going up, one child losing one and crying, and Mrs. Hatch talking to the child, saying, “You can get another! My balloon went up, long ago; and I couldn’t!” None of that remains – balloons aren’t mentioned at all. [79] Johnny’s illogical need to hang onto his boat rather than his balloon seems to suggest the Fiskes and Harrison either were not quite so innocently being attacked by Belasco or were unsure of their legal standing and decided to make sure that play was sufficiently different to withstand scrutiny. One tantalizingly unclear letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Harrison suggests that they might have been editing out parts which might give Belasco grounds to argue for collaboration, unless, of course, they were worried about the critics. Fiske writes, “Do you not think it would be well to cut, in Gladys’ 2 nd Act scene – all reference to her mother so that the nasty and unfriendly ones won’t have a chance to say that we are forcing a situation!” [80] In the published version of the script, Gladys remarks periodically about her mother (Mrs. Hatch) in Act 2, but there’s only a brief reference to the off-stage Mrs. Lorimer, who is introduced as far more of the stereotypical social-climbing wicked stepmother in the short story pages which parallel Act 2. Belasco’s script notes, meanwhile, advise that an abbreviated version of the short story’s stern conversation between Mrs. Lorimer and Gladys remain, complete with the carriage arriving upstage. [81] Whether or not the Fiskes and Harrison are guiltless in this endeavor or simply covering their bases is unclear, muddied by the paper trail and the long-standing animosity between the producers. The Fiskes do seem to have been playing a little fast and loose with the truth at times, for Harrison Grey Fiske’s affidavit implies a distant, past, notion that “a collaboration with Mr. Belasco and a production of the play by him was once contemplated” [82] and he tells the press “I knew that in some sort of a way Mr. Belasco had known of the writing of the play.” [83] Yet, Minnie Maddern Fiske’s correspondence suggests that she knows the backstory and its implications. She tells Harrison in an 8 th September 1901 letter “Do not let Mr. Belasco know that I wish to present the play. The little man would hold to it with his last gasp if he thought that. I shall be so glad when it shall be finally in our hands.” [84] Whether Fiske expects a competitive battle from Belasco or whether she understands that Harrison had been working with him and was attempting to extricate herself from that relationship is unclear. Belasco was at a serious disadvantage while building his lawsuit because he did not have access to this latest version of the script, nor did he appear to know that Harrison had been working with the Fiskes since May. He reportedly told her – in July 1901 — that he wouldn’t be able to produce the show in the 1901-1902 season; [85] this document’s authenticity is questioned by Harrison, who denies ever receiving it. [86] Regardless, it still does not constitute a contractual agreement to produce the play, and in reality, by July she was already substantially revising the play based upon suggestions from the Fiskes; accordingly a whole section of Belasco’s argument falls apart. [87] His silence and failure to obtain a written contract enabled her to go elsewhere with the script, be it due to busyness or a devaluation of Harrison’s work until it was deemed stage-worthy by a competitor. He was fond of suing his competition, so it simply may be that he had no legal case and was on a deadline; he had less than a month to shut down the production, so ownership was the only logical power play that might result in a production delay and payout. Whether Harrison and the Fiskes would have been able to make a case about theatre’s collaborative writing history not constituting ownership, authorship, or joint authorship remains unknowable. The Predatory Producer and the Female Playwright The difficulties of establishing the extent of a collaboration, and thus of being able to make a case for joint authorship, rest in part on intent, as Lydecker discusses, and in part on contributions to outcome, which has become a foundation for modern legal interpretations. While the law was not settled then (or now), [88] all sides spent a significant amount of time presenting the case for their contributions to the piece in a messy and protracted collaborative process – Belasco claiming ideas and inspiration, Harrison denying his input was used in the piece, and Fiske and the Harrisons both, seemingly, working to remove any remnants of Belasco’s imprint on the piece. Layered atop this was Belasco’s bravado and the willingness of the entire defense team to cast Constance Harrison as a somewhat gullible woman for their benefit. In the end, the suit was dropped, without clear explanation, but the extensive legal archive and press coverage certainly suggest that all parties were concerned that Belasco might well have had a case despite not having a written contract with Harrison and that the rhetorical positioning of Harrison as a naïve and manipulated woman might not have been sufficient as a defense. The complexities and legal uncertainty surrounding extent of and intent to collaborate continue to appear in contemporary case law. The playwriting process of the early nineteenth century, particularly when a predatory producer encounters a female “amateur” playwright with enough skill to write a hit and a willingness to trust him despite others’ concerns, was a messy enough collaboration that the law may have granted Belasco some compensation for his input, if the script sufficiently resembled the earlier version. One wonders if Belasco’s obviously thin evidence was taken seriously simply because Harrison was a woman and “amateur” playwright and Belasco was granted immediate authority and credence as a professional man. While the case is rooted in the competitive turn-of-the-twentieth century world of producers who were fighting to establish themselves and resist the Syndicate, the implications of this case and the historical outcomes for women and their labor remain all too familiar. The legal system still grapples with defining collaboration, but women’s contributions to work products are ignored or undermined with the same unquestioned ease seen in Belasco’s affidavit. Harrison, doubly challenged as a woman and a wrongly perceived amateur author, spends years trying to work collaboratively with Belasco in a playwright-producer relationship. Belasco, who cannot be bothered to reply to her letters despite their working relationship, appears in his affidavit to be incapable of imagining that a woman would collaborate with him rather than work for him. Harrison’s capacity to function in a professional realm without male input is quite obvious in her archive – Harrison, Minnie Maddern Fiske, and Kauser are the three women who make this production happen through negotiation and collaboration. And yet, throughout the legal and press archives, Harrison’s skills and professional capacity are constantly questioned. A century later, women’s voices in collaborative work are still continually ignored, discredited, and questioned. Actual amateurs are systematically exploited for their labor through an industry that relies on underpaid positions, while experienced women are presumed amateurish, their work products and ideas claimed and turned into profit opportunities by men. That the law struggles to define collaboration reflects the messiness of creative processes; that teams still erase women’s contributions to collaborations is symptomatic of a pernicious societal ill that led Belasco and Harrison to court. References [1] Abram J. Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske . Para 4. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [2] Mary A. Worley, “Alice Kauser, Playwright, A Woman of Ideas,” Los Angeles Herald , 8 Feb 1903, 7. See also “Interview with Alice Kauser, 1904” excerpted from “Alice Kauser: A Chat with the Woman who Presides over the Largest Play Business in the World,” New York Dramatic Mirror , 31 December 1904, in Theatre in the United States: A Documentary History. Volume 1: 1750-1915 Theatre in the Colonies and the United States , ed. Barry B. Witham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 188. [3] Mrs. Burton Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay , (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 333. [4] Harrison, Recollections , 325-327. [5] “Exhibit 11.” Copy of Letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, 23 May 1901. In Affidavit of David Belasco . Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [6] See, Letter from Alice Kauser to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 15 May 1901; Alice Kauser to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 17 May 1901; Letter from Harrison Grey Fiske to Alice Kauser, 18 May 1901; among others, in: Mrs. Burton Harrison, Correspondence re Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch, 8-MWEZ x n.c. 19,567 [Cage], Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library. [7] See, among others, Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, 8 September 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [8] Letter from Alice Kauser to Mr. Burton Harrison, 12 October 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [9] Amended Answer , 2/3 Dec. 1901, Para. 11. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [10] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske , 15 Dec. 1901. Para. 26. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [11] Affidavit of David Belasco , 8 Nov. 1901. Para. 4. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [12] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [13] Ryan J. Richardson, “The Art of Making Art: A Narrative of Collaboration in American Theatre and a Response to Calls for Change to the Copyright Act of 1976,” Cumberland Law Review , 2011/2012. 42 Cumb. L. Rev. 489. Lexis-Nexis Academic. 492. [14] It also should be reiterated that her husband was an experienced lawyer by the time of the suit. [15] Douglas M. Nevin, “No Business like Show Business: Copyright Law, the Theatre Industry, and the Dilemma of Rewarding Collaboration,” Emory Law Journal , Summer 2004: 53.3, 1537. [16] Derek Miller, Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1790-1911 . (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2018), 195. [17] Injunction . 6 November 1901. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 6. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [18] Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para 10. [19] See Miller, Copyright and the Value of Performance, 195-235, for an in-depth discussion of the intellectual traditions surrounding manuscripts, copyright performances, and related ways of establishing ownership in the nineteenth century. [20] Library of Congress, United States Copyright Office. Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870-1916. Vol. 2. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), 2448. Copyright number 48453. Issued October 8 1901, 2c Nov 26 1901. D: 935. [21] Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para 10. [22] Whether or not he did submit the manuscript to the court is unclear. The draft script is in neither Lydecker’s nor Harrison’s files on the case. [23] “Exhibit 4.” Copy of Letter from Mrs. B. Harrison to Mr. Nash, 2 April. Affidavit of David Belasco . [24] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 38. 13 November 1901. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 8. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [25] “Exhibit 3.” Copy of Letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Sunday. Affidavit of David Belasco . [26] “Exhibit 11.” Affidavit of David Belasco . [27] “Exhibit X.” Copy of Letter from Burton N. Harrison to David Belasco, 4 October 1901. In Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison . 13 November 1901. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 6. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [28] “Exhibit 11.” Affidavit of David Belasco . [29] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 44. [30] Letter from Jeannette L. Gilder to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 10 October 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [31] Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison , 13 November 1901, Para 5. [32] “Exhibit 1,” Copy of letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Wednesday. Affidavit of David Belasco . [33] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [34] Charles Lydecker, Memo. in Opposition to Motion for Injunction , 15 Nov. 1901, Part 1. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [35] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 2. [36] Letter from Alice Kauser to Constance Cary Harrison, 14 September 1903. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [37] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 12-21. [38] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 13-14. [39] Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison , Paras. 6-10; Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Paras. 47-53. [40] Qtd. In Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 517. [41] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 2. [42] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. [43] United States Copyright Office, Catalogue of Title Entries of Books and Other Articles , Fourth Quarter 1901, Volume 29 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), 1470. [44] Lydecker, Memo., Part 3. [45] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. [46] For a general assessment of the complications and history of notions of joint authorship in US Copyright law, see Edward Valachovic, “The Contribution Requirement to a Joint Work under the Copyright Act,” Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review , 12.1 (1992): 199-219. [47] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. He cites Levi v. Rutley, Law Reports 6 C.P., 523, Smith J. Later cases and updates to the copyright law on joint authorship move towards a clearer definition of “work for hire” rights residing with the employer. [48] Again, these are issues with which contemporary copyright cases still grapple, though Richardson notes that work-for-hire has generally been settled as inapplicable now for contemporary production conditions: “Courts, more or less, have embraced this narrow definition of authorship, holding that because playwrights and composers initiate (and occasionally complete) the vast majority of their work before a producer is solicited to fund a production, they are considered “independent contractors” and are not subject to the work-for-hire doctrine.” Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 510. [49] While this claim is made in the Amended Answer , Para. 10, Harrison herself avoids explicitly mentioning remuneration in her affidavit. [50] See Miller throughout. [51] See Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [52] Letter from Alice Kauser to Constance Cary Harrison, 10 December 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [53] Letter from Harrison Grey Fiske to Alice Kauser, 18 May 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [54] Letter from William H. Kendal to Mr. Day, 1 July 1902. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [55] Amended Answer , Para 2. [56] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske, Para 20. [57] Amended Answer , Para 4. [58] Nevin, “No Business like Show Business,” 1534. [59] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 492. [60] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 493 [61] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 508. [62] Anne Ruggles Gere, “Common Properties of Pleasure: Texts in Nineteenth Century Women’s Clubs,” in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature , eds. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 391. [63] Gere, “Common Properties of Pleasure,” 397-399. [64] For a general assessment of the historical development and complications of collaborative work, see Peter Jaszi, “On the Author Effect: Contemporary Copyright and Collective Creativity,” in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature , eds. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 29-56. [65] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 10. [66] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 16. The lack of an agreement on collaboration also appears in Para. 45, where she also accuses him of changing her words in a letter submitted into evidence to be “projected collaboration” instead of “proposed collaboration.” [67] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [68] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 20. [69] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 28. [70] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 41. [71] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 7. [72] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Paras. 29-31. [73] Letter from Unknown Author to Constance Cary Harrison, [1901]. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [74] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 7. [75] See, for example, J. Ranken Towse, “The Drama,” The Critic 40 no. 1 (January 1902): 39-40; “The Stage,” Town Talk 11 no. 575, (5 September 1903): 21. [76] See Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [77] “Exhibit 2.” Copy of letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Thursday Evening, Affidavit of David Belasco . [78] Clipping. Robinson Locke Scrapbook. Volume 203 Reel 18, page 61. Robinson Locke collection, NAFR+. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. [79] Mrs. Burton Harrison, The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch (New York: C.G. Burgoyne, 1901): 22; Mrs. Burton Harrison, “The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch,” The Smart Set (March 1901): 14; “Exhibit 13.” Note 2, Affidavit of David Belasco . [80] Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, undated. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [81] Harrison, Unwelcome , 32-33; Harrison, “Unwelcome,” 25-37. “Exhibit 13.” Note 7, Affidavit of David Belasco . [82] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske , Para. 11. [83] Clipping. Robinson Locke Scrapbook. Volume 203 Reel 18, page 61. BRTC. [84] Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, 8 September 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [85] “Exhibit 12.” Copy of letter from David Belasco to Constance Cary Harrison, 15 July 1901. Affidavit of David Belasco . [86] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison . Para. 56 [87] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 29-31. See also Abram J. Dittenhoefer, Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para. 9. [88] The current standard is that “the independent contributions of each putative joint author must be independently copyrightable; it is not enough that only the finished product be copyrightable.” Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 516. Footnotes About The Author(s) DR EILEEN CURLEY is Chair and Associate Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she teaches a wide range of theatre and drama courses. She is also the Editor in Chief of USITT’s quarterly journal Theatre Design & Technology. Her research on nineteenth-century amateur theatre has appeared in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Popular Entertainment Studies, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Symposium, Performing Arts Resources, and edited collections. Dr. Curley has also designed props, scenery, or projections for more than 50 productions in Indiana, New York, and Iowa. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Theatre History, Theory, and Literature from Indiana University and a B.A. in Theatre from Grinnell College. 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.

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

Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Robert Wilson Yearbook Volume 1 Visit Journal Homepage Thinking in Structures: Working as a Dramaturg with Robert Wilson Konrad Kuhn By Published on September 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Thinking in Structures: Working as a Dramaturg with Robert Wilson As a longstanding collaborator of Robert Wilson in the field of dramatic theatre and opera, I have always been amazed by his special approach to a given subject. Whether it be a classical or modern drama, a production based on a theme to be developed freely, or an opera, the first thing Bob examines or invents is the structure. One example is when Bob started working on Einstein on the Beach together with Philip Glass in the spring of 1975. All they had was the title. An intriguing title. It was clear that in some way this “opera” (I’ll come back to what the term opera means for Bob) was going to deal with Albert Einstein as a seminal figure. Einstein’s discoveries about the relation between time and space, known as the “theory of relativity,” undoubtedly changed the world. Among their consequences were the invention of the atomic bomb and the Apollo mission to the moon. Einstein would be the subject. Einstein was also a musician. There was no text, no plot, no biographical storyline. The character of Einstein was to be represented as a solo violinist in the orchestra pit. The role has often been interpreted by a woman, wearing a wig and mustache. The violinist, regardless of gender, would always be recognizable as Albert Einstein. The first thing Bob and Philip Glass did was set up a structure, asking “How many parts is our opera going to have? What will be the duration of each part?” They ended up with a design for the time structure, giving each part a precise length—the first act was to be, for instance, forty-two minutes long, the second one fifty-three minutes, etc. There would be what Bob called “knee plays” in between, which were short scenes that served as junctions between the acts. The next step would be for Bob to draw sketches of the set. Glass would then put the sketches on the music stand of his grand piano and start composing. Still no lyrics, no libretto, nor anything resembling the two. In fact, at some point in the completed score, the chorus was given only numbers to sing. No other text was available: “one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. . . .” It is only at this point that Christopher Knowles came into play, improvising stretches of text for certain scenes. They were cascades of words sounding much like the ones pioneering Dadaists like Hugo Ball or Kurt Schwitters invented. Another element that was added was choreography by Lucinda Childs. The result of all of these elements was a landmark production that would have a tremendous impact on western theatre. A word about the term opera : Bob would say: “ Opera comes from the Latin word for ‘work’: ‘opus.’ That’s what theatre is for me.” When Bob started creating his first works, they had no text nor music. He would call them “silent operas.” An example is his Deafman Glance , which premiered in 1971. When describing this form of opera, he would quote John Cage: “The most beautiful music can be found in silence.” During this period of Bob’s work, he declined all offers to stage existing plays. When he met Eugène Ionesco in Paris after the Deafman Glance made a splash in France (titled in French Le regard du sourd ), Ionesco asked Bob to stage his Rhinoceros . It would be forty years later that Bob would take up the proposal: a production in the Romanian city of Craiova in 2014. It was a production I had the privilege to be part of as a member of the team. To avoid what Bob would call “ping-pong dialogue,” he introduced the figure of a narrator who recited most of the text. Simultaneously, the actors played the scenes in silence. The desired result was a Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt or “distancing effect.” Brecht had always been a strong influence for Bob. It was not, therefore, unusual that he did so many productions at the Berliner Ensemble, the theatre Brecht founded in Berlin. Among these productions was his acclaimed The Treepenny Opera . A narrator figure breaks the fourth wall: he addresses the audience directly and doesn’t try to be in character. The same applied to another production I collaborated with Bob on: Sophocles’ Oedipus . The special challenge was to bring this ancient Greek tragedy to the Teatro Olimpico, the first roofed indoor theatre of the modern age, built by Italian architect Andrea Palladio in the city of Vicenza. The theatre opened in 1585 with a production of this very play by Sophocles. The set represented the city of Thebes with its seven gates—a set which is still in place. Of course, this set is now part of a museum; you are not permitted to come any closer to it than one meter. Bob staged a completely new version of Sophocles’ play on another stage that was positioned in front of the 1585 set. Since the Palladio theatre is modeled on the ancient Greek amphitheater, the decision was made to present the production first at the Teatro Grande of Pompey–a performance space dug out of the ashes of the Vesuvian eruption in 79 C.E. Later it was transferred not only to Vicenza, but also to the ancient amphitheater of Epidaurus in Greece. In order to avoid dialogue, I proposed reversing the dramaturgy of the tragedy. Instead of Oedipus discovering his past bit by bit through the questioning of people (the “ping-pong dialogue” Bob wanted to avoid), we told the story of the original myth chronologically starting with Oedipus’ childhood, followed by the oracle foretelling that Oedipus was going to kill his father, and so on. I took only Sophocles’ original text (in an early twentieth-century Italian translation) without adding a single word. The text was there but not used as dialogue. What Bob did first was to determine a structure. There were to be five acts; the duration of each was decided without knowing how the parts would correspond to each other in the overall structure. Then these five parts were ultimately placed in relation to each other: the first was echoed in the fifth, the second in the fourth, the third positioned at the center. The five acts were freely improvised during a staging workshop at the Watermill Center in New York. Only when the structure had been established did I suggest elements of the text for each scene, which again would be spoken by a narrator. The titular character was played by a dancer. A typical approach to designing the structure of a production involves determining some of the following features: Is a scene (or part) calm or vivid in relation to the others? Is it peaceful or violent? Bright or dark? Fast or slow? Does it accelerate or slow down? Is it crowded or solitary? Is the process deductive or additive? In one scene of Oedipus , for example, the dancers carried folding stairs onto the stage building several rows that were later destroyed by Oedipus in an outburst of despair: the climax of the show. Most dramaturgs, especially in the German-speaking countries, tend to concentrate first on the literary text, the musical genre and specific form, or the historical, cultural and artistic background of a subject. Robert Wilson takes a more abstract approach. What he always explores first is the basic structure of the production—visually, dramatically, and musically. In Bob’s words: “Many stage directors tend to study only the text, trying to stage a play or an opera from there. In Western culture, as André Malraux has put it, theatre ‘has been drowned by literature.’ Therefore, it is a shock for the audience if the other elements of theatre are treated as being equally important. Take Balinese theatre, the Indian Katakali, the Peking Opera or the Nô theatre of Japan: they’re all about form.” When conceiving a theatrical production, establishing a structure is a creative process in its own right. In the case of a new opera it can be discussed together with the composer. It precedes the content that this structure is going to be filled with. This may seem arbitrary, but it is always linked to a deep understanding of the subject. When we start discussing an existing work or a subject to draw a new work from, the one question Bob always puts forth is: “What is it about? Say it in one sentence.” A difficult task for a dramaturg like me. We tend to make long speeches. . . . This was not possible with Bob. There are exceptions to this process, however. I first met Bob back in 2010 at the Zurich Opera House. I had admired his work for decades, but never had the chance to work with him. I was appointed by the house’s management to act as his dramaturg for the production of Bellini’s Norma . Having heard that Wilson has a tendency of being shy with a new collaborator he doesn’t know yet, I resolved before the first meeting not to say a word. When we were all seated around a long table, together with the whole team, he put forth the question: “What is the overture of Norma about?” No one dared to answer. After a long silence, I plucked up courage and began to talk. I said, the whole story of this opera is a confrontation between the male principle represented by a beam of sunlight and the female principle metaphorically expressed by the moon—Norma’s famous prayer “Casta Diva” is addressed to the goddess of the moon, whereas the belligerent “Guerra” chorus conjures the help of the Sun, a male god. Musically, the basic contrast between the two can be found already in the overture. While I was pointing out which sections of the overture stood for the two different principles, Bob had taken his pencil and started drawing. After ten minutes I finished speaking. He passed over to me a series of sketches picturing what would happen in front of the closed curtain during the overture and asked: “Do you think this will work?” “Perfectly,” I said enthusiastically. He had translated what I had said into images. The male principle was represented by straight lines, the female principle by circles, with Norma in the center of it. Here’s another example from the theatre-with-music genre. In 2015, we did a production called Adam’s Passion . It was based on music by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The venue was the Noblessner Foundation in Tallinn, a former submarine shipyard: a hall measuring 40 meters by 60. An enormous space. Bob had met Pärt at the Vatican when they were both invited for an audience with the Pope. Bob said: “I’ve always admired your music. I would love to use it for a stage production.” Pärt answered: “I’ve always admired your theatre. Please feel free to use whatever you like of it.” During the workshop in Watermill, we listened to a variety of pieces by Pärt. I informed Bob of their structure. In fact, Pärt’s composing methods are strongly based on very abstract formal principles. One example is Tabula Rasa , a composition from 1977. It is structured, among other things, by a chord on the prepared piano that is played eight times—each section opened by this chord is twice as long as the previous. Accordingly, the moments when you hear the chord are stretched out in time. This is something Bob can immediately relate to. We also used a choral piece called Adam’s Lament based on a text by the Russian monk Silouan. The set consisted of a stage with a cyclorama as backdrop (typical for Bob) and a sort of narrow runway stretching out into the audience. The chorus was placed behind the audience in an upper floor gallery. The main character identified as “A Man” was again a dancer; in fact, it was the same artist who interpreted Oedipus : Michael Theophanous. He was naked. During the twenty minutes this section of the production lasted, he walked in slow motion from far upstage to the very top of the runway where he picked up a tree branch with leaves for the next part. Adam’s Lament tells the story of Adam after he has been driven out of paradise. The chorus expresses his feelings of guilt. Arvo Pärt attended both the final rehearsal and the opening night. Subsequently, he came to me, extremely upset, and asked: “Why did you change it? At the end of Adam’s Lament , Adam was kneeling down asking God for forgiveness—it didn’t feel like that tonight!” I said: “Well, all the actor does is pick up a tree branch—in the rehearsal, he did it the same way as he did it tonight.” Arvo, who is a man of profound Christian faith, said: “He was not asking God to pardon him?” “No,” I said, “he was picking up a branch.” And the composer answered: “Just as good.” This story shows how audience members have their own associations about what they hear and see. As Bob would say: “I never try to tell the audience what they are supposed to feel or think. I am not interested in psychology on stage. I have no ‘message.’ It’s not about ‘interpretation.’ I don’t want to impose an ‘idea’ on the spectator. It’s up to them what they experience. Experience is a way of thinking; Zen philosophy tells us this. I follow what I experience. And I try to stay open.” What a relief it was for the German playwright Heiner Müller when Wilson staged his drama Hamletmachine back in 1986. First presented in New York in English, then in Hamburg in the original German, both productions used students still in drama school. Müller had seen many interpretations of his play, which attempted to make sense of his text, which is full of allusions, full of latent meaning. A very dense text, it is highly concentrated. Most of these stagings merely illustrated the text without contributing anything new. What did Bob do? He invented a choreography of movements in a set with nothing but tables and chairs. And a tree. Then he had this pattern repeated three times, each time rotating the set by 90 degrees. The audience then could see the identical movements of the group of actors four times, but each time was from a different perspective. The production had a totally abstract structure; at first glance it appeared to have no relation to the play. Yet it resonated with the text in many ways, leaving the audience the freedom to pursue their own associations. Regarding the text, when Bob was asked by the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf to create a new piece based on Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , he approached US author Darryl Pinckney. Darryl had collaborated with Bob for many decades on different projects, among them a monologue in 1989 based on the novel Orlando by Virginia Woolf. Bob knew that it was out of the question to transform the plot of the novel into dialogue. Instead there was to be only one actor and that was Christian Friedel. Friedel was known in the US as a film actor in such movies as The Zone of Interest . Darryl drew phrases from the novel, turning them around in many ways. He also used extracts from Oscar Wilde’s letters and poems by Wilde’s lover Alfred Douglas. The general idea was to tell a story about the painter and his model. Bob also incorporated the story of the famous painter Francis Bacon and his lover George Dyer, a burglar he surprised when Dyer was breaking into his studio. Instead of calling the police, he asked him to become his model. The text Darryl created with Bob had three parts. In the first part, he used only sentences in the past tense and the third-person singular: “He fell through the window and it gave him new life.” In the second part, all sentences were in the present tense and the first-person singular: “I look in the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, looking for my maker.” And the third part, still in the present tense, was in the second-person singular: “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.” Thus these very basic structures—the grammatical syntax—came to define the text. To conclude my remarks, let me draw your attention to another aspect of Robert Wilson’s work. He stated: “My theatre is a formal theatre. For me, in theatre all elements are equally important: movement, dance, gesture, costume, make-up, architecture, sculpture, design, light, words, music . . . all the arts come together in theatre. You may call it Gesamtkunstwerk [total work of art] like Richard Wagner did.” This means that for Bob, each of these elements stands for itself and is treated independently. It also means: no illustration. What one element expresses does not have to be doubled by another element. If a scene is tragic, maybe the actor will play it with a smile and the lighting will be bright. As Bob says: “Black can only be seen against white.” Life consists of contradictions. A Wilson production is, therefore, much more “real” than the many performances aiming at “realism.” Often I have heard Bob say to his actors: “The stage is not a bus stop. You can’t stand or walk on it the same way you do in the street.” True indeed. About The Author(s) Konrad Kuhn studied in Berlin. He has served as a dramaturg, among others, in Vienna, Munich, Zurich and since 2015 to date in Frankfurt. He was invited to festivals in Paris, Salzburg and Bayreuth, or the State Operas in Berlin and Vienna. In 2010, he started working with Robert Wilson on numerous productions. Robert Wilson Yearbook The Robert Wilson Yearbook, published annually by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, offers a dedicated platform for scholarly and creative engagement with the life, artistry, and enduring legacy of Robert Wilson (1941–2025), one of the most original visionaries in contemporary theatre and performance. The Yearbook seeks to explore and expand upon Wilson’s groundbreaking approaches to staging, lighting, movement, and visual composition. Each issue will feature a diverse range of content—including original essays, critical commentary, archival materials, artist reflections, and photography—examining facets of Wilson’s multifaceted practice across genres, eras, and geographies. The Robert Wilson Yearbook is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - This Issue “Going on a Journey”: Space, Time, and Experience in Robert Wilson’s Installations and Museum Interventions Re-Viewing Stefan Brecht’s The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson from a (B.) Brechtian Perspective Towards a Formalist Ritualistic Theatre: An Artaudian Reading of Robert Wilson’s Aesthetics The Theatre of Autobio-hetero-thanato-graphic: The Life and Death of Marina Abramović Time’s Shadows: Crisis of Subjectivity and Reconciled Concord in Robert Wilson’s Performative Reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets They Asked Me to Draw a City: Postdramatic Imaginings in Robert Wilson’s Direction of Strindberg’s A Dream Play Robert Wilson's Oedipus: The Postdramatic Journey of the Oedipus Story from Sophocles through Freud Robert Wilson and Norway Robert Wilson’s Art of Senses and Emotions Listening to Deafman Glance Robert Wilson's Production of Henrik Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken Thinking in Structures: Working as a Dramaturg with Robert Wilson Bertolt Brecht and Robert Wilson: The Dialectical Triad of Playwright, Director and Berliner Ensemble Actors in Wilson’s The Threepenny Opera Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Bess Rowen Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month Bess Rowen By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte in It’s That Time of the Month at Soho Rep. Photos: Julieta Cervantes . Courtesy Soho Rep Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month By Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte Directed by Jess Barbagallo Soho Rep New York, NY December 3, 2023 Reviewed by Bess Rowen Right under the poster art for It’s That Time of the Month , which features a dripping red smiley face against a dark pink background, Soho Rep’s website includes a statement in large font that reads: “ Trigger Warning: There will be fluids! ” But this was the only preparation for what would transpire after I passed through the bright pink, fleshy folds that led me into the space for a unique meditation on menstruation. It’s That Time of the Month is part talk show, part game show, part variety show, and part stand-up routine written and performed by Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte, and directed by Blackwell’s frequent collaborator, Jess Barbagallo. The audience follows Blackwell’s Snatch Adams, an out of work (clown) vagina whose journey to Soho Rep is covered in an animated video (designed by Derek Rippe) that precedes Snatch’s entrance. After running from some scary laws targeting women and trans people, Snatch enters the theatre and is given the chance to make a wish. Snatch wishes for a talk show, which ends up being co-hosted by Duarte’s Tainty McCracken, a fellow comedian with the gender politics and misogyny level of an average shock jock. These two foils create an environment where improv and crowd participation are essential parts of a journey through the trails and tribulations of menstruating people, a topic that is still too rarely discussed, especially in mixed company. Before a word is ever spoken or a video played, Greg Corbino’s production design set the stage for both the “taboo” topic and the forthright approach of Blackwell and Duarte. Audiences enter through the aforementioned pink, vaginal canal into a space featuring a golden vulva—complete with clitoris—framed by an open pair of legs. Illuminated letters spell “It’s That Time of the Month” above the legs, while the area underneath each leg provides a seating area for each host. Tainty’s features a sign reading “Man Cave” while Snatch’s holds the video screen that also plays commercial breaks between each scene. Snatch and Tainty’s entrances reveal their visceral costumes, designed by Amanda Villalobos. Snatch is a six-foot-tall vagina that people can reach into—as the audience discovered when Blackwell asked audience members of different identities (e.g. gay man, lesbian, straight man) questions and then told them to take a treat out of their snatch. Tainty wears a furry coat with a puckered heart fascinator and a mantle of balls that Duarte often had to adjust throughout the performance. The layering of textures in both costumes during the performance was all the more impressive because of how much crowd interaction there was, meaning that the audience had the chance to see the details of these pieces up close. The layering of textures in each costume was yet another instance of mirroring form and content, as the structure of It’s That Time of the Month was also a purposeful mix of genres. Blackwell and Duarte were joined by Becky Hermenze and Amando Houser, who comprise the “Slit Crew,” a nod to the “Pit Crew” from RuPaul’s Drag Race . Hermenze and Houser are equally important members of this team, as it takes all four performers to accomplish all that this show requires. From cleaning up the unfortunate yeast infection that causes Snatch to spit up some mealy liquid to helping prepare the space for the special guest (Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael R. Jackson for this performance), the Slit Crew helps keep the tone consistent across the ever-shifting scenes. The performances re the most crucial component of It’s That Time of the Month since Blackwell and Duarte are the thread that ties everything together. Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte in It’s That Time of the Month at Soho Rep. Photos: Julieta Cervantes . Courtesy Soho Rep. Blackwell, a storied and respected downtown performer, has an easy-going stage presence that inspires trust. They are charming, but they are also incredibly intuitive, funny, and quick-witted. These qualities allowed for moments of gravitas and pathos that one might not expect from someone dressed as a six-foot-tall vagina. Duarte’s character is certainly more abrasive, as Tainty is meant to be a Me-Too’d comic, but she managed to use this persona to make fun of such people instead of simply recreating the type on stage. And her easy rapport with Blackwell made the two a truly dynamic duo. Within the framework of the show, Tainty was there to serve as the ignorant one, which was easier to watch because Duarte is also someone who has an experience of menstruation. Of course, one important lesson I took away from this show is that having a period does not make you an expert on one. I learned a great deal myself! Aside from the knowledge gained, I was also struck by how comforting it was to see menstruation treated as a topic that can be painful and difficult. This was possible because of Blackwell’s approach, particularly because of how their grounded, masculine energy encouraged participation from the cis men in the audience in ways that surprised and inspired me. Blackwell’s final monologue touched on some of the nuances of being a trans person who has a period, and about the differences they have noticed in how people react to them now versus how they did before their transition. Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month is a rare piece of theatre that focuses on a common bodily experience in a way that increases inclusivity and works against stereotypes and taboos through comedy. Having a trans performer lead a show about the monthly realities of periods across the gender spectrum proved an excellent model for how to push back against cisheteronormative expectations in discussions of health. And to do it in a way that included facts, prizes, puppets, and a splash zone only made it feel all the more relevant and fun. It’s That Time of the Month does indeed include the fluids it promises in its cheeky trigger warning, but those are only meant to w(h)et your appetite for what comes next. Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte in It’s That Time of the Month at Soho Rep. Photos: Julieta Cervantes . Courtesy Soho Rep. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Bess Rowen (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University. She is also affiliate faculty for both Gender & Women's Studies and Irish Studies. She is a member of Actors' Equity and an intimacy choreographer. Her first book, The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment (2021) focuses on affective stage directions. Her next book project looks at the theatrical archetype of the “mean teenage girl.” Other recent work can be found in Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders & Sexualities , Theatre Survey , and The Eugene O'Neill Review , among other publications. She also serves as the LGBTQ+ Focus Group Representative at ATHE and as the Co-Editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

MORGAN BASSICHIS, FREEDOME BRADLEY-BALLENTINE, ENVER CHAKARTASH, WILL DAVIS, CALEB HAMMONS, JILL RAFSON, TINA SATTER + TYLER THOMAS presents The School of New York: New Leaders and the Artists They Serve in Dialogue at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 The School of New York: New Leaders and the Artists They Serve in Dialogue MORGAN BASSICHIS, FREEDOME BRADLEY-BALLENTINE, ENVER CHAKARTASH, WILL DAVIS, CALEB HAMMONS, JILL RAFSON, TINA SATTER + TYLER THOMAS 5pm-6:30 pm Friday, October 18, 2024 The Segal Theatre RSVP All over New York, long-lived performance venues are in transition, and we're welcoming the biggest "class" of new artistic directors and associate artistic directors in memory. These leaders take their positions in a fraught moment for the field — they are also taking power with fresh ideas. Join us for a structured, two-part panel discussion, in which we'll hear first from a group of four "freshman" New York artistic leaders, who will share their ideas and solutions for the quandaries currently facing our field; then we'll hear from a respondent group of veteran artists, experts in New York performance, who will reflect on these innovations, explore their ramifications, and possibly offer their own. Can we talk about the theatrical "crisis" in a new, solution-oriented way? Can we marry idealism and pragmatism? Can institutions and the artists they serve arrive at solutions together? Helen Shaw from the New Yorker moderates a talk with Morgan Bassichis, Freedome Bradley-Ballentine, Enver Chakartash, Will Davis, Caleb Hammons, Jill Rafson, Tina Satter, and Tyler Thomas. This event will be livestreamed via Howlround Theatre Commons . LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Will Davis is a director and choreographer. His work has been seen off-broadway at Signature Theater, City Center, Roundabout Theatre, MTC, MCC, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, and Soho Rep. Regionally, his work has been seen at La Jolla Playhouse, Baltimore Center Stage, Shakespeare Theater Company, Long Wharf Theatre and ATC in Chicago where Davis previously served as Artistic Director. He received a Helen Hayes award for best direction for his work on Colossal at the Olney Theatre Center. He was nominated for a Lucille Lortel award for his direction of Men on Boats at Playwrights Horizons. Davis is the Artistic Director of Rattlestick Theater. Caleb Hammons (they/he) is a Tony and Obie Award-winning creative producer and curator of live performance. They are entering their second year as one of the three directors of Soho Rep, NYC’s premiere experimental Off-Broadway theater. Prior to returning to Soho Rep, Caleb spent ten years as Director of Artistic Planning and Producing at the Fisher Center at Bard, was the Producer at Soho Rep for two seasons, and was the Producing Director of Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company for four years. He is the co-organizer of the CATCH performance series, wore many hats for 13P, curated the Prelude Festival, and has generally floated around the downtown performance scene in various capacities. Jill Rafson took on the role of Producing Artistic Director at Classic Stage Company in June 2022. Previously, she worked with Roundabout Theatre Company since 2005, most recently serving as Associate Artistic Director as well as Artistic Producer for Roundabout Underground, an acclaimed program supporting productions from early-career playwrights. She has developed dozens of new plays and musicals for Roundabout, with highlights including Stephen Karam’s Tony-winning The Humans ; Steven Levenson’s If I Forget ; Joshua Harmon’s hit Bad Jews ; Adam Gwon’s musicals Ordinary Days and Scotland, PA ; Ming Peiffer’s Drama Desk-nominated Usual Girls ; and Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning English . Jill has been a dramaturg for several commercial musical projects and at institutions including the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Flea, The Playwrights’ Center, Fault Line Theater, and more. Jill received her BA from Johns Hopkins University and a Graduate Certificate in Fundraising Management from Boston University. Tina Satter is a writer and director for theater and film. Her debut feature REALITY was adapted from her play Is This A Room which opened at The Kitchen in 2019 and premiered on Broadway in fall 2021. With her theater company Half Straddle, Tina has written and directed 10 critically acclaimed plays including House of Dance , Ghost Rings , and SEAGULL (Thinking of you) and a number of shorter performances and video works. She has been a guest director at The Schaubühne and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award among other honors. Helen Shaw is the theatre critic for the New Yorker. Before joining the magazine in 2022, she was the theatre critic for New York magazine (and its online site, Vulture) and wrote at 4Columns, Time Out New York, the Village Voice, and others. Tyler Thomas is a New York-based theater director and Susan Stroman Directing Award recipient. Most recently, she directed new work at the Vineyard Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Geva Theatre. Tyler is a former 2050 Fellow with New York Theater Workshop, member of the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, and has been a Visiting Artist at the Athens Conservatoire (Greece), UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and NYU Tisch. She is currently the Associate Artistic Director of the national arts and health initiative, Arts for EveryBody, inspired by the Federal Theatre Project. Tisch: BFA in Drama, MA in Arts Politics. Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

Brian Eugenio Herrera Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance Brian Eugenio Herrera By Published on April 23, 2015 Download Article as PDF Casting — the process whereby actors are assigned to particular roles — has largely eluded historical and theoretical inquiry. Casting’s iterative impact lends it a peculiar ephemerality. Once a role is cast, the complex array of criteria informing that decision — not only the methods and techniques of talent assessment but also the interpersonal dynamics, rumors, reputations, and “business” considerations — recedes in importance as the work of performance-making ostensibly begins. Indeed, despite its inarguable centrality in the performance-making project, the inevitably idiosyncratic sequence of events that comprise the process of how this or that actor did (or did not) get the part routinely evades the archive. I contend that such archival evasions are enabled by what we might call a “mythos of casting,” a constellation of interconnected beliefs and assumptions that have evolved within American popular performance over the last century or so. This “mythos of casting” cloaks within mystery the historical practices – by turns material, creative and proprietary – that guide how an actor’s labor is (and is not) valued as a commodity. This “mythos of casting” simultaneously provides ideological rationale for the acknowledged inequities in the allocation of the paid and unpaid labor of actors while also sustaining faith that the apparatus of casting can (and sometimes actually does) work to identify the “best” actor for a given role. The “mythos of casting” also guides most academic conversations about casting, which typically operate within one of three discursive modes: the logistical, the (non) traditional, and the mystical. [1] Logistical discourses of casting might be found most frequently on the “practice” side of the theory-practice divide in theatre studies, with conversations about how to audition (or how to run auditions) eliciting conversation and study in the acting studio, the production meeting, or the rehearsal hall. Such discussions, and the written works engaging them, typically rehearse, explicate or strategize the nuances of disparate audition structures, and are often guided by the premise of “entering the profession.” [2] Traditional — or, more aptly, “Non-Traditional” — discussions emphasize how casting operates as a mode of what scholar Angela Pao calls “both social action and artistic exploration” in which the assignment of a particular actor to a role might “dislodge established modes of perceiving,” perhaps especially with regard to the enactment of cultural identity in performance. [3] Both the logistical and non-traditional discourses of casting prioritize how practitioners might intervene in casting’s machinery to achieve particular ends. By contrast, the third discourse of casting, perhaps the most ubiquitous of the three, fixates on casting as an almost mystical process that defies easy explanation. Such “mystical” accounts arrive in a variety of formulations but always with a fascination for a kind of magic at play within casting decisions. Some such accounts emphasize the “special sight” of creative intuition wherein an ineffable mix of circumstance, luck and discernment combine to guide the director (or teacher, or casting director, or whoever) to the inspired insight that a particular actor is “right” for the role. Often responding to what Joseph Roach describes as “the easy to perceive but hard to define quality possessed by abnormally interesting people” sometimes referred to as “it,” [4] this response informs an inspired confidence like that described by producer Arthur Hornblow recalling his casting Marilyn Monroe in her first featured film role, “As soon as we saw her we knew she was the one.” [5] Other mystical accounts proffer casting as a kind of alchemical mastery, usually on the part of the genius director, in which art manifests from a deftly assembled configuration of actors. As film director John Frankenheimer famously quipped “casting is 65% the battle.” Director Martin Scorsese later upped the ante, noting that “More than 90 percent of directing is the right casting,” while a recent textbook Fundamentals of Film Directing offered a more conservative assessment, noting that “Casting is 50% of the director’s work.” [6] Casting’s mystical discourses also take fantasy form in the myriad speculative fictions spun within the “what if” scenarios rehearsed in discussions of “miscasting.” From sensational lists like “12 Actors Who Almost Had the Part” and “What If? ‘Pulp Fiction’ Near-Miss Casting” to entire books dedicated to Hollywood’s All-Time Worst Casting Blunders , the fantastic genre of the “what if” casting tale stands among the most recurring in popular performance lore. [7] Most mystical discourses of casting, however, fixate upon the moment an actor is assigned a role as the signal moment wherein the magic of performance is conjured. Indeed, while logistical and non-traditional discourses of casting propose strategic interventions into the casting process, mystical discourses instead marvel at the ineffability of casting, fetishize the shrouds of secrecy that sustain casting’s unknowable mysteries, and wonder at the transformative power summoned by whoever happens to be the one deciding which actor is to become the role. Mystical discourses of casting hint that mere mortals can never truly know why this or that actor got the part and imply that occasional peeks behind the casting curtain will only ever reveal a partial story. These mystical discourses suggest that some greater power is at work in both the methods and madnesses of casting, and that ours is not to wonder why. The many mysteries of casting might explain why the topic of casting remains so captivating to so many. Indeed, casting’s purported unknowability — that no one can never truly know how casting happens — incites the most passionate conversations about the process, whether in speculative games about who would be better in the role, or in moments of aesthetic outrage (or schadenfreude ) over miscasting, or in impassioned outbursts of sometimes politicized fervor within critiques of incidents of exploitation, exclusion or unfairness in casting. Yet, even in such incisive and searching conversations, most assessments of casting controversies resolve with shrugging demurrals or simple judgments of the sort proffered by the author of one best-selling theatre appreciation textbook, who writes “There is good casting and bad casting and, of course, there is also inspired casting.” [8] The persistence of some version of this reductive good/bad/inspired matrix in even the most sophisticated conversations about casting might well reflect some awareness of the many interpersonal, proprietary, and contractual complexities that all factor into the invisible calculus guiding any casting decision. (Can anyone inside or outside the process ever really, truly or fully know why someone got a part?) Even so, this recurring fixation places too much emphasis on casting’s unknowability (its “mystery”) with too little attention to the power at play in any casting decision. As the default resolution for any and every conversation about casting, the good/bad/inspired matrix both sustains the mysterious power of casting even as it also contributes to the ongoing mystification of the material practices of casting — the mechanisms, techniques and assumptions routing the process to that final casting decision — rendering such practices beyond the archive and thus exempt from historical analysis. To discern casting’s archive and thus evince its history, performance historians and theorists might explicate the three principles most routinely invoked to explain, excuse or justify the capricious operations of the casting apparatus: equitable access to opportunity, artistic autonomy, and meritocratic achievement. Over the last century or so, these contradictory premises have come to operate in dynamic tension as a “mythos of casting,” which simultaneously sustains creative faith in the capacity of the casting apparatus to identify the best actor for a given role even as it cloaks the material practices of casting in mystery. As I take up each of these principles — equity, artistry, meritocracy — in turn below, I briefly detail how each principle guided the formation of the contemporary repertoire of casting practices as I also chart the enduring conceptual contours of the “mythos of casting.” Equity The peculiar notion that casting should be fair appears to have emerged from two distinctively twentieth century points of origin. On the one hand, the growing power of actor unions within the industries capitalizing on American popular performance amplified particular questions of equity. On the other, the extraordinary and rapid expansion of educational theatre programs at the secondary, post-secondary and pre-professional level intensified concerns about access. Over time, the belief that the casting process should be equitably accessible to all eligible or deserving performers became one of the guiding ideals of the American casting process and a foundational tenet of the mythos of casting. Concerns about fair and equitable access instigated the formation of actor unions in the United States in the nineteenth century, as producers started to hire actors to “play as cast” for only a particular production (and often without guarantee of compensation for rehearsals, truncated runs, or special wardrobes and skills). Worried that they might be shut out of their seasonal “lines of business” employment, professional actors agitated to protect their access to secure employment opportunities. As these nascent actor unions continued to fight for recognition in the early twentieth century (in both the theatre and in the emerging film industry), their organizing efforts shifted from equitable employment access and toward working conditions, wage scales and enforceability of contracts, concerns which animated the historic Actors’ Equity Association [AEA] strike in 1919. [9] In the decades that immediately followed AEA’s 1919 victory, concerns about equitable access to employment did occasionally reassert themselves within the union, perhaps most fractiously in the Depression years with the 1934 formation of the Actors’ Forum (an ad hoc pressure group of member actors who sought cooperative benefits and a minimum wage for all members) and the 1935-39 operation of the Federal Theatre Project (which rankled union leadership by employing non-union actors). [10] Yet it was not until the post-World War II years, and amidst growing national concerns about civil rights and desegregation, however, that actor unions – in what one historian has called a “gradual politicization” [11] – reasserted their inceptive investment in equitable access to employment. During the 1940s and 1950s, subcommittees within all the major actor unions began to advocate for fair and equitable access to employment opportunities for minority union members, especially actors of African descent. Through initiatives like the Negro Employment Committee in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Committee on Negro Integration in the Theatre in Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), these committees gathered and published data about the number and kind of roles available to minority actors, rehearsing and deploying strategies of advocacy that endure to this day. [12] Activist actors also, through such endeavors as AEA’s Integration Showcase (staged in 1959), argued for and demonstrated casting techniques that modeled ways of hiring actors of African descent for roles not specifically written with a black actor in mind. [13] This work by actor advocates within their unions in the 1940s and 1950s anticipated the work of AEA’s Non-Traditional Casting Project (which reanimated the premise of the Integrated Casting Committee by expanding it to also include Latina/o, Asian American, and Native American actors, as well as disabled actors). [14] This practice of assembling data and insisting that industrial casting norms adapt to rank and file realities also animated the institution of the “open audition.” The practice of the “open audition” was instituted in the 1970s to insure that all union (or union eligible) actors had access to at least one general audition for every production (or producing season) undertaken under union contract. Even though these “open call” auditions have often come over time to be regarded by many as cumbersome and hollow rituals of union compliance, the institutionalization of the open call, as well as the actor union advocacy that compelled it, not only derived from but also fortified a foundational ideal within the mythos of casting – that equitable and transparent access to the casting apparatus benefitted all actors. While midcentury actor unions worked within the entertainment industry for equitable access to opportunity for professional actors, the massive expansion of educational theater programs that boomed in high schools, universities and pre-professional training programs in the post-World War II era exerted an even more substantial influence on the idea that the casting process should be fair. Yet, in the 1940s and 1950s, no consensus existed among theatre educators about how to balance the competing priorities of fairness, efficiency and quality when assigning roles in a school or community setting. Most midcentury theatre educators advocated for some version of “tryouts.” The 1948 Play Production Primer (published in 1951 by the Mutual Improvement Association of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ) defined the “tryout” as “a method of selecting talent for a cast. Either parts read from the play, or [a] display of general ability.” [15] In the spring of 1948, a series of short essays in Dramatics Magazine (then a publication addressing both high school and university theatre programs) discussed a striking array of “tryout” strategies. Some, like Blandford Jennings of Missouri’s Clayton High School, instructed students to “come prepared to read anything of their choice for a minute or two” because “reading at sight from an unfamiliar text is no fair indication of the true ability of a young reader.” [16] Others, like Esther McCabe of New York’s Salamanca High School, approached the casting of a play as “a lesson in democracy, reliability and human relationships” and assigned roles by student vote, subsequent to a full reading and discussion of the play. [17] Sam Boyd of West Virginia University affirmed the merits of “competitive reading tryouts” for their “spirit” and the “salubrious, unprejudiced attitude” they encouraged, [18] while Carnegie Mellon’s Talbot Pearson scoffed at even trying to select a single best practice. “There are so many methods of trying out the available players,” Talbot insisted, “that no rules can safely be applied” and “to list the dozen or more differing approaches would serve no practical purpose.” [19] Perhaps notably, none of these educators used the word “audition” to describe their preferred casting method. Where the word “audition” does appear with some frequency at midcentury is in the advocacy work of organizations like the American Theatre Wing and Theatre Communications Group, especially as such emerging, non-commercial but professional organizations explained their affiliation with professional training programs. For Isadora Bennett, the publicity director of the American Theatre Wing from the later 1940s through much of the 1950s, the audition represented the most effective point of connection between the professional theatre and those aspiring actors emerging from university and other training programs (like the American Theatre Wing’s own Professional Training School which enrolled hundreds of students at the time, most under the GI Bill). In a widely referenced 1955 essay published in Educational Theatre Journal , Bennett affirmed the importance of centralized auditions for “trained” actors so that such actors might be introduced to what she termed the “machinery of casting” and “the ‘technique’ of job-hunting.” [20] For Bennett, such auditions — in which aspiring professional actors might offer a concentrated display of their ability using brief, prepared excerpts from well-regarded plays — promised to serve as “aptitude tests given by warm and friendly but severe experts.” By the end of the 1950s, the idea that a concentrated and pre-prepared demonstration of aptitude before a panel of experts might be the most efficient means of talent assessment had begun to circulate more broadly and had begun to be termed an “audition.” In 1964, Michael Mabry — then the Executive Secretary of the fledgling Theatre Communications Group (TCG) — advocated for the institutionalization of a national audition, to be held annually in Chicago, as the most effective means of “keeping visible on a national scale” all American actors, not only those actors based in New York or Los Angeles but also those “committed…to seasonal employment with resident companies” while also including the “outstanding graduates of educational theatre.” [21] Thus, the significant midcentury influence of actor unions, in tandem with the rise of the educational theatre industrial complex, rehearsed the perhaps incongruous but nonetheless deeply entrenched notion that casting should be fair, and thereby also anchored the ideal of equity as a central tenet within the mythos of casting. Artistry Still, at play in every conversation about providing equitable access to actors, the mythos of casting also activates the question of whose authority guides the assignment of actor to role. For the actor, the casting process is their opportunity “to be cast” in a production and thus be given the equitable opportunity to work; for the one doing the casting, however, the casting process can take on additional valences of creative authorship, artistic autonomy and freedom of expression. In his genre-defining college textbook Introduction to the Theatre (1954), Frank Whiting of the University of Minnesota argued for the “executive ability” of the director: “Many factors must be considered in casting [and] many systems of tryout have been evolved, ranging from well-rehearsed, memorized scenes to informal interviews. None are perfect. All have advantages and disadvantages.” [22] Most educators publishing in Dramatics through the 1950s agreed that the directorial discernment should balance the pedagogic and artistic ambitions in a school production and that such judgment should remain the primary guide the final assignment of actor to role. Even Esther McCabe, whose proposed model of electoral casting marked the most dramatic departure, affirmed that she as director “reserved the right to change an unsuitable choice” once the election results were tallied. [23] Toward the end of his career, iconic theatre director Harold Clurman saw few artistic merits, for either actor or director, in the midcentury turn toward what he called the “absurd” and “arduous” “‘open market’ method of casting” in American theatre. [24] Such critiques of the American casting apparatus had been foundational in Clurman’s theatrical philosophy since the late 1920s, when “he prophesied that ‘immediate future of the theatre is in the actor,’ who must reject ‘type-casting’ for ‘long painful self-training.’” In co-founding the influential Group Theatre, Clurman sought a permanent ensemble company in which there would be only small parts and no star actors. Within a decade, however, the challenges of casting proved an unexpected drag on the galvanizing vision of the Group Theatre’s ensemble structure, as the number interested actors persistently far exceeded the available roles. The situation inspired Clurman to exclaim, in 1939, “Every piece of casting in the Group is a tragedy.” [25] Even so, several decades later, in his widely taught 1972 memoir of the craft On Directing , Clurman maintained his faith in the transformative potential of the ensemble as he drew unfavorable comparisons between the atomizing mechanisms of American casting (in which the actor worked as a freelancer, playing only as cast) and those used by the permanent repertory companies of Europe. Because “the American theatre has no such companies,” Clurman railed, “We proceed on the basis of ‘piecework’: for every new production an entirely new cast must be found – somehow, somewhere.” He continued, “The main business of casting [in the United States] is accomplished by means of auditions or readings,” which Clurman characterized as “a species of theatrical shopping” wherein the actor is “reduced to a commodity and gradually comes to regard himself in that light.” [26] Clurman’s contemporary and sometime colleague Elia Kazan also disliked the American casting apparatus. When asked by an interviewer about his preference for prepared auditions or cold readings, the director retorted, “I don’t do it that way. Well, sometimes I do, if it’s for a bit, but… [it] usually gets you misinformation.” [27] Where Kazan dismissed the American casting apparatus for its ineffectiveness, Clurman disdained its disruption of the creative process and its imposition of artificial, inhumane and confining limits on the artistic autonomy of the director. By so emphasizing the intangible authority of creative and executive discernment as essential to directorial autonomy, Clurman and Kazan, alongside their less famous educational counterparts, also mystified casting a constitutive and sacrosanct feature of a director’s artistic expression. By the 1990s, however, the question of whether such casting decisions were an independent expression of a performance-maker’s creative authority garnered a different measure of critique. High-profile casting controversies (like that surrounding the 1991 Broadway production of Miss Saigon ) amplified how “traditional” casting habits rehearsed by the “open market” impinged upon employment opportunities available to minority and women performers. Legal scholars Jennifer L. Sheppard, Heekyung Esther Kim and Russell K. Robinson each separately examined whether a hypothetical plaintiff might challenge a particular casting decision as employment discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which held, in part, that employer prerogative was inadequate justification for favoring one identifiable group over another in matters hiring; in tandem, the scholars also assessed whether casting decisions might be considered protected speech under the First Amendment. Though their discussions remained in emphatically hypothetical (especially given the tricky and unresolved legal question of whether entertainers were rightly considered employees under federal law), all three scholars agreed that any legal challenge to a casting decision under employment law would certainly confront (and likely fail) the test of whether a director’s or producer’s casting decision might be considered a form of creative expression and, thus, a form of protected speech. For Russell K. Robinson, “our constitutional commitment to free speech does not exact a wholesale abandonment of antidiscrimination requirements,” [28] while both Kim and Sheppard advocated for voluntary shifts in casting practice and aesthetics so that, as Sheppard concluded, “employment opportunities for minority actors may be increased, while artistic freedom is preserved.” [29] (283). Thus, as casting became increasingly understood as a constitutive feature of a theatre-maker’s creative expression, claims of artistic authority, autonomy and freedom also animated the mythos of casting in American popular performance. Meritocracy The “open market” of American casting, which Isadora Bennett so celebrated and which Harold Clurman so loathed, was itself premised on the third core principle of the mythos of casting: meritocracy. Indeed, embedded in the mythos of casting is the promise that equitable access to the casting process permits the best performers to be seen, thereby presumptively enabling directors, producers and others to identify those performers best equipped to execute their artistic vision. Underlying this promise lay the ideal that, if the flow of supply and demand could be effectively marshaled, the best actor would certainly get the role. Indeed, this meritocratic ideal — matching the best actor to the role — bridged the democratizing impulse of equitable access to casting opportunities with the discerning exactitude of artistic autonomy. But even such an emphasis on finding the “best actor” for the role was itself a noteworthy, twentieth century turn. It is an intriguing historical coincidence then that the same years that remake the American casting process as something of an “open market” also mark the arrival of several high profile contests in which the notion of “best actor” falls into particular relief within the American entertainment industries. Beginning with the Oscars in the 1920s (continuing with the Tonys in the 1940s, the Obies in the 1950s and all the way through SAG’s “The Actor” in the 1990s), these notably ritualized, annual anointings of actors as “the best” emerge as a peculiarly hallmark facet of American popular performance. To be sure, competitions among actors were not an innovation of the twentieth century, with stories reaching all the way back to the acting competitions in fifth century Athens. Even so, most previous historical contestations among actors — whether between La Clairon and Madame Dumesnil in eighteenth century Paris or between Forrest and Macready in the New York of 1848 — also staged a contestation over distinctions of region, social class, aesthetics, and philosophy, with the embodied work of actors manifesting those particular divisions. Yet, in these twentieth century American contest, this multitude of best actors are so named not for enacting cultural values but for the cultural value of enactment itself. These many annual rituals also verify the meritocratic ideal of “best actor” that animates the American casting process. Within the mythos of casting, the anointing of “best actor” connects all segments in the great theatrical chain of being, drawing a connection between the tween actor pretending in her bedroom to the acclaimed icon accepting her trophy in a glittering televised ceremony. Arriving as a sort of post-dramatic conclusion to the ostensible performance, every “best actor” award tacitly ratifies the effective (and largely hidden) operation of a casting mechanism that first delivered this particular actor to the very role that then earned them the honorific of “best actor.” The “best actor” trophy then stands as a tangibly material symbol of the twined ideals of equity, artistry and meritocracy that mutually constitute the mythos of casting in American popular performance. The mythos of casting might be invoked to sustain aspiring artists in the leanest times; likewise, it might be summoned to sustain a perhaps illusory sense of affinity amidst a casting controversy. Even among those who maintain diametrically opposed points of view over the best way to determine who the best actor for the role might be, the mythos of casting affirms that the quest for the best actor remains an ideal worth pursuing. At once a lubricant and a palliative, as much a weapon as it is a shield, the mythos of casting works to provide assurance not only that there is a method to the madness of the casting process but also that the machinery of casting works. All the while, the mythos of casting continues to accomplish its primary purpose – to mystify the actual working conditions of actors, especially as they labor to find work. References [1] A noteworthy and productive departure from this pattern can be found in Daniel Banks, “The Welcome Table: Casting for an Integrated Society,” Theatre Topics 23 no. 1 (March 2013), 1-18. [2] The pioneering template of this genre is Michael Shurtleff’s Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part (New York: Walker Publishing, 1978); a more contemporary model might be Jen Rudin’s Confessions of a Casting Director: Help Actors Land Any Role with Secrets from Inside the Audition Room (New York: It Books, 2013). [3] Angela Chia-yi Pao, No Safe Spaces: Re-casting Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 2. [4] Joseph Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 1. [5] Claire Boothe Luce, “The ‘Love Goddess’ Who Never Found Any Love,” LIFE Magazine (August 7, 1964), 64. [6] Stephen B. Armstrong, ed., John Frankenheimer: Interviews, Essays, and Profiles (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013): 89; as quoted in Casting By , directed by Tom Donahue (2013; Brooklyn, NY: First Run Features, 2014), DVD; and David K. Irving, Fundamentals of Film Directing (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2010), 30. [7] Treye Greene, “12 Actors Who Almost Had the Part,” Huffington Post , 24 January 2013, accessed 5 December 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/actors-recast-in-movies_n_2543452.html; David Weiner, “What If? ‘Pulp Fiction’ Near-Miss Casting,” ET Online , 13 November 2013, accessed 5 December 2014, http://www.etonline.com/movies/140840_What_If_Pulp_Fiction_Near_Miss_Casting/; and Damien Bona, Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan: Hollywood’s All-Time Worst Casting Blunders (New York: Citadel Press, 1996). [8] Robert Cohen, Theatre, 5 th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), 535. [9] For usefully comparative summaries of early twentieth century actor union activity, see Sean P. Holmes, “All Work or No Play: Key Themes in the History of the American Stage Actor as Worker,” European Journal of American Studies 2 (2008), online; and Pamela Robertson Wojcik, “Typecasting.” Criticism 45 no. 2 (Spring 2003), 225-26. For an aptly detailed narrative account of the 1919 AEA strike and its impact on the union, see Robert Simonson’s Performance of the Century: 100 Years of Actors’ Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater (Applause: New York, 2012), especially 14-61. [10] An efficient overview of AEA’s conflicts with both the Actors’ Forum and the Federal Theatre Project can be found in the epilogue to Sean P. Holmes, Weavers of Dreams, Unite!: Actors’ Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America (University if Illinois Press: Urbana, 2013), 173-178. See also Simonson, 72-73. [11] Holmes (2013), 177. [12] Stephen Vaughn, Ronald Reagan and the Struggle for Black Dignity in Cinema, 1937-1953, The Journal of Negro History 77 no. 1 (Winter 1992), 8-9; “Committee on the Integration of the Negro in the Theatre,” Box 36 Folder 1, Actors Equity Association Records, Tamiment Library/Wagner Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. See also the “Equality” chapter in Robert Simonson’s Performance of the Century , 44-173. [13] “‘Integrated Showcase’ Well Performed, but Did Show Prove Its Point?,” Variety (22 April 1959): 78, 82; “Orson Bean Rebuts on ‘Integration’; Says Race Consciousness Is Brief,” Variety (29 April 1959), 69-74. [14] See Angela Pao’s account in tandem with that of Ana Deboo’s briefer summary in, “The Non-Traditional Casting Project Continues into the ’90s ,” The Drama Review 34 no.4 (Winter 1990), 188-191. [15] Play Production Primer: A Handbook for the Beginner or the Experienced Drama Director and All Who Are Curious About That Alluring World Behind the Footlights, Revised Edition. (Salt Lake City, UT: General Boards of the Mutual Improvement Association, 1948),185. [16] Blandford Jennings, “Rehearsing the School Play,” Dramatics Magazine (March 1948), 9-10. [17] Esther McCabe, “Casting One-Acts in a Small High School,” Dramatics Magazine (February 1948), 13. [18] Sam Boyd, Jr. “Techniques of Play Rehearsal,” Dramatics Magazine (April 1948), 6-7. [19] Talbot Pearson, “Rehearsal Procedures,” Dramatics Magazine (May 1948), 6-7. [20] Isadora Bennett, “The Training Program of the American Theatre Wing,” Educational Theatre Journal 7:1 (March 1955), 32. [21] Qtd. in Richard Schechner, “Ford, Rockefeller, and Theatre,” The Tulane Drama Review 10:1 (Autumn 1965), 35. [22] Frank M. Whiting, An Introduction to the Theatre (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 157. [23] McCabe, 13. [24] These quotations are drawn, variously, from Harold Clurman, On Directing (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 65-68. [25] Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics and Performance in the Depression Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 14, 252. [26] Harold Clurman, On Directing (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 65-68. [27] Elia Kazan, Kazan on Film: The Master Director Discusses His Films , ed. Jeff Young (New York: Newmarket Press, 2001), 130-131. [28] Russell K. Robinson, “ Casting and Caste-ing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms ,” California Law Review 95, no. 1 (2007), 4. [29] Heekyung Esther Kim, “Race as a Hiring/Casting Criterion: If Laurence Olivier was Rejected for the Role of Othello in Othello, Would He Have a Valid Title VII Claim?” Hastings Communication and Entertainment Law Journal 20 (1997-1998), 397-419; and Jennifer L. Sheppard, “Theatrical Casting – Discrimination or Artistic Freedom?,” Columbia-VLA Journal of Law & the Arts 15 (1990-1991), 267. Footnotes About The Author(s) BRIAN EUGENIO HERRERA ’s work examines the history of gender, sexuality and race within and through popular performance. He is author of Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in 20th Century US Popular Performance (Michigan) and The Latina/o Theatre Commons 2013 National Convening: A Narrative Report (HowlRound), as well as articles in Theatre Journal , Modern Drama , and TDR . Herrera is presently developing a scholarly history of casting in American entertainment. He is Assistant Professor of Theater at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Guest Editor: Jonathan Chambers 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: Phoebe Rumsey Editorial Assistant: Fabian Escalona Advisory Board: Bill Demastes Amy E. Hughes Jorge Huerta Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Esther Kim Lee 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 (JADT 27.2, 2015) The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men Capable Hands: The Myth of American Independence in D.W. Gregory's The Good Daughter Rooting Out Historical Mythologies; William Dunlap’s A Trip to Niagara and its Sophisticated Nineteenth Century Audience. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Leticia L. Ridley 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 “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells [Her] Story”: An Intersectional Analysis of the Women of Hamilton Leticia L. Ridley By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF The availability of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton (2015) on Disney+, the official streaming site of The Walt Disney Company, has offered musical theatre fans and other interested parties the ability to revisit the musical or experience it for the first time. Hamilton ’s rising popularity has influenced the increased concentration on the Black and Latino men at its center, and this is evident in mainstream publications such as Vox , The Undefeated , CNN , and The New York Times . [1] Even scholars’ and historians’ commentary on the musical, for the most part, has been solely focused on the men represented. [2] While these analyses create necessary discourse on the musical’s omission of slavery, erasure of Indigeneity, use of non-traditional casting, and impact in a post-Obama era, so much attention on Hamilton has been directed toward the men that it has eclipsed critical attention from the “werk” (to borrow a refrain from the show) that the women do within it. On the one hand, when the women performers of Hamilton have been examined in popular publications, they are celebrated because they acknowledge the presence of women in the historical record. [3] On the other hand, academic research has been much more critical of the musical’s inclusion of women, with many scholars interrogating what they see as its hollow feminist politics. [4] Both critics and scholars alike tend to overlook the way that race structures how these women’s bodies are read on stage and within the musical libretto, suggesting a universalization of gender that ignores the intersection of race . While I am encouraged by and appreciate the attention to the women of Hamilton , apparently the possibility that women of color spectators of the musical construct alternative meanings from the performances of Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Jasmine Cephas-Jones is not considered viable. In this article I complicate previous studies of the musical’s treatment of race and gender, arguing that the actresses’ embodiment in Hamilton disrupts normative, white gender constructions while highlighting the labor of women of color in musical theatre. I contend that the intersections of race and gender are vital to reading and analyzing the women of color performers in the musical and that failing to account for this erases the interconnected, racialized, and gendered histories that the actresses’ bodies bear. Throughout the article, I read Hamilton ’s casting of these women of color by applying Brandi Wilkins Catanese’s theorization of “colorblind” theatre, and I adopt the concept of “transgression” to “expose the moral limitations of transcendence as a viable strategy for social change by acknowledging the histories of social location that people wear on their bodies and that inform all of our interpretive frameworks.” [5] I employ Catanese’s framework in this article as I refuse to read the women of color in the musical through a single-axis framework (i.e., race over gender and/or gender over race). I do so to avoid foreclosing the nuances of women of color’s embodiment in Hamilton as demonstrated in its original Broadway cast and production. [6] The various restagings of productions in Chicago, London, New York, Puerto Rico, and the multiple tours running concurrently in the United States illustrate that Hamilton ’s creative team is committed to continuously casting the show with non-white actresses. For example, I attended a production of the musical at Washington D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center in which Asian American women portrayed all the principal roles, which facilitated a range of readings of the women characters that might be different from the original Broadway production. Any given theatre piece can be (re)shaped by varied performances; thus, conversations on embodiment remain central in how audiences receive messages in theatre. Despite the proliferation of global productions of the show, the availability of Hamilton via Disney+ has canonized the original Broadway cast as the standard to which all other future productions will be compared. As performance scholar Brian Herrera notes, casting is a term that “describes not only the process through which performers are assessed for and assigned to roles, but also the meanings, effects, and implications that are activated when the selected performers enact those roles.” [7] Keeping this in mind, one cannot and should not separate these women (and their racialized, gendered bodies) from their roles; to do so maintains a white supremacist paradigm that problematically centers white womanhood as a marker for women of color, thereby erasing the embodied realities produced by the actresses. I find it more pressing and productive to consider how the bodies on stage affect the musical’s ability to engage in feminist work; in the spirit of performance studies scholar Robin Bernstein, I am interested in the musical’s how , rather than its what . [8] By leaning into the nuances that the musical offers and recognizing how it actively engages with feminist principles (particularly from women of color feminisms), this article creates space for the existence and exploration for subtleties and contradictions of people of color. I do so, not to propose that Hamilton should not be critiqued, but rather to assert that analysis with women of color feminisms allows for new interpretations of the characters which contest the overwhelming whiteness in musical theatre scholarship. I use a Black feminist dramaturgical lens to search the gaps and margins of Lin Manuel Miranda’s award-winning Broadway musical Hamilton to locate the dormant meaning that is activated through the embodiment of the actresses of color. Black Feminist Dramaturgy Black theatre scholar and practitioner Michelle Cowin Gibbs argues that Black feminist dramaturgy “demands an audience to witness and affirm” the various modes of seeing that happen on stage. [9] In particular, Black feminist dramaturgy magnifies theatre’s interpretive possibilities which disclose the multiple layers of meaning that are activated not only by the bodies on stage, but also by the audience members who watch them. Crucial to Black feminist dramaturgy is the ability to offer analyses of theatre and performance that privilege the “outsider-within” position that Black women often occupy due to a prevalent focus on whiteness and/or maleness. [10] Black feminist dramaturgies invite us to search on and through the body of the actresses of color in Hamilton for the gap, the break, or the sites where other formations of knowing and being are happening. As many theatre scholars and practitioners are aware, dramaturgy encompasses many elements; however, it typically refers to the comprehensive study and understanding of a play’s historical, theatrical, and intellectual contexts. [11] My theorization of Black feminist dramaturgy is also significantly influenced by Black dramaturg and theatre scholar Faedra Chatard Carpenter’s dramaturgical orientation and practice. While “dramaturgical concerns” cover a range of different aims and interests when applied to the inner workings of a performance piece, among these concerns is the need and desire to design and guide the interpretative possibilities associated with a particular production. Accordingly, these considerations are also inclusive of the rationale behind specific casting choices. Carpenter proposes that one must acknowledge a play’s “time and context” and the site of production which informs how the play will be received by audiences. In addition, Carpenter notes that the awareness of “the embodied and enacted text, beyond its literary form” is vital to the dramaturgical process. In other words, the interpretative possibilities increase dramatically when performance is activated by bodies rather than remaining stagnant on the page. Further, Carpenter pays close attention to the audience, suggesting that the “consideration of audience reception and impact of artistic framing” is an important dramaturgical task; a dramaturg must predict how the audience will understand and read the bodies of the women on stage in tandem with the artistic elements, or else the framing could distract or create unintended interpretive themes. [12] To this point, Black feminist dramaturgy traces how the presence of racialized and gendered bodies on stage may reverberate beyond it. Furthermore, José Muñoz’s theory of disidentification expands the theoretical consideration of Black feminist dramaturgy. Muñoz’s theory of disidentification (a survival strategy he traces through the art, activism, and lives of queers of color) monitors “the ways in which identity is enacted by minority subjects who must work with/resist the conditions of (im)possibility that dominant culture generates.” [13] Disidentification attempts to rewrite the dominant script by maneuvering within dominant ideology and spaces in an effort to subvert it from the inside. [14] Muñoz’s insightful theorization also identifies a core component of how I situate Black feminist dramaturgy and how it challenges dominant ideological underpinnings. In the case of Hamilton , this means considering how the performances by women of color in the musical can (to a certain extent) disrupt racialized and gendered expectations. Therefore, Black feminist dramaturgy illuminates the way in which an actor’s embodied experience serves as a critical source of study, aids in disrupting historically stereotypical iconography, and promotes intersectionality as a concept that is vital to the entanglement of gender with whiteness and Americanness. Put another way, to apply a Black feminist dramaturgical lens to Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton is to magnify and complicate the analysis of the women of color in the musical. [15] Act One: Angelica Schuyler and Black Feminist Potential Angelica Schuyler, portrayed by Renée Elise Goldsberry in the original Broadway production of Hamilton , was the oldest child of Phillip Schuyler, a wealthy general in the Continental Army. [16] In Miranda’s musical, Angelica is depicted as a woman who is intellectually on par with (and even beyond) her male counterparts. Miranda describes her as the smartest character in the show, who demonstrates her intellectual prowess by reciting the most intricate raps. [17] In the musical, we first meet Angelica alongside her two sisters in the song “The Schuyler Sisters.” While it may be easy to classify Angelica as merely a source of inspiration for the men who actually do things in history, her character takes on additional significance when played by a Black woman. As a result, she is a character who is deemed equal in intelligence to men while overturning representations of Black women as innately promiscuous. In examining Goldsberry’s physical body within live theatre, it is important to also consider “flesh,” which Hortense Spillers, Black feminist scholar and cultural critic, differentiates from the body. Spillers asserts, “Before the ‘body’ there is the ‘flesh,’ that zero degree of social conceptualization that does not escape concealment under the brush of discourse, or the reflexes of iconography. . . . If we think of the ‘flesh’ as a primary narrative, then we mean its seared, divided, ripped-apartness, riveted to the ship’s hole, fallen, or ‘escaped overboard.’” [18] To this point, Goldsberry’s flesh serves as a witness to the wounds and scars experienced by Black people in American history. As she performs a show about the birth of America, her flesh carries the trauma of slavery that for hundreds of years this country maintained and from which it profited and built its economic foundation. Miranda makes visible her “flesh” within this story and in doing so, he signals the subversive potential that challenges spectators to consider how power and meaning function in the creation of gender for the Black body. This interpretation runs counter to scholars’ essays which have critiqued Hamilton for “whitewashing” the travails of Black Americans by failing to directly address the issue of American slavery in the show. While these critiques are necessary and should be addressed, I contend that the outright dismissal of Hamilton’s effort to disrupt and destabilize whiteness is overlooked. [19] The musical’s casting choice disrupts the notion of white normative gender constructions as the primary way to understand Goldsberry’s embodiment of this white historical figure. Theorizing the flesh (à la Spillers) in theatre and performance leads to conceptualizing Goldberry’s racial and gendered embodiment serves as an entryway to further engage with her actions in the musical that supersedes a white female subject position and/or gaze. The very first moment the audience encounters Angelica in the musical, she is standing by her sisters—not by a man. The character demonstrates her intellectual prowess in the song “The Schuyler Sisters.” She raps: I’ve been reading Common Sense by Thomas / Paine. / Some men say that I’m intense or I’m insane. / You want a revolution? I want a revelation / So listen to my declaration. / We hold these truths to be self-evident / That all men are created equal.’ / And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, / I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the / sequel! [20] As the only woman who raps in the musical, Angelica demonstrates and asserts a (Black) feminist position and shows she is intelligent and just as politically savvy as the men. In addition, she goes further to explain that she influences policy by manipulating men. Though this could be read as a promise of Angelica’s intellectual prowess—one that is never fulfilled—the use of hip hop provides a subversive inscription of the representation of Black women. As hip-hop feminists have argued, “Hip hop culture and rap music hold radical and liberating potential. . . hip hop provides a space for young black women to express their race and ethnic identities and to critique racism. Moreover, hip hop feminists contend that hip hop is a site where young Black women begin to build or further develop their own gender criticism and feminist identity.” [21] Therefore, hip hop serves as a practice of taking ownership of one’s underprivileged position. Furthermore, hip hop is a way Black women can own their stories and retell histories that have historically erased them. Angelica navigates her position, which she doesn’t let limit her ability to improve her status. Indeed, she disidentifies by “working on and against” her subservient role, to which she sometimes conforms, but also subverts by manipulating men into serving her own agenda. [22] Angelica’s relationship with Hamilton is influenced profoundly by that of circumstances, even as they both share equal affection for one another. As performed by Goldsberry, Angelica is “a headstrong society woman who loves Hamilton, but loves her sisters even more.” [23] In a similar vein, Angelica understands that she is limited by the demands placed on her as the eldest daughter, singing in “Satisfied,” “I’m a girl in a world in which / My only job is to marry rich. / My father has no sons so I’m the one / Who has to social-climb for one.” [24] Angelica is aware that if she wanted Hamilton, she could have him. However, her status in society requires her to “marry rich.” At the end of “Satisfied,” Angelica does not choose a sexual relationship with Hamilton, even though she desires him. Angelica explicitly performs and expresses sexual desire for Hamilton, but she does not pursue a physical relationship with him out of commitment to her sister Eliza. Angelica’s denial of her feelings for Hamilton takes on a new meaning in Goldsberry’s Black female body. This denial of romantic longing provides a counternarrative to the stereotype that Black women are overcome by their insatiable desire of sex. The expression of Angelica’s sexuality, embodied by Goldsberry, gestures towards historical embodiment of the Black female body, which Miranda subverts by reframing Angelica as simultaneously intelligent and sexually desirous. Notably, Miranda manages this subversive representation while avoiding oversexualizing or desexualizing Angelica, releasing the Black female body from “controlling images.” Thus, Goldsberry’s body serves as a host and traitor to American history and stage representations of Black femininity. Her character does not indulge in her desire for Hamilton nor is she relegated to the domestic sphere. Rather, Goldsberry embodies a character who is able to influence politics from her position yet is still seen as a woman who is sexually desirable. Notably, most critics have not weighed in on the alternative modes of labor inscribed by Angelica in the musical, the refusal of ontological categorization of Black women as asexual or hypersexual, and the recalibration of the Black woman as intelligent and desirable within a model of marriage. Additionally, Hamilton’s casting of Goldsberry and other women of color continues to challenge spectators of Hamilton to reconsider who can be a part of American history and what role they may play in it. [25] That the casting notice for Angelica Schuyler does not specify that the role be played specifically by a Black woman, but generally by a non-white actress, highlights the commitment of the Hamilton creative team to place dynamic and complex depictions of women of color on stage. Act Two: Maria Reynolds’s Deviant Possibility In “Say No to This,” Hamilton raps about his affair with Maria Reynolds, and the song is juxtaposed with Maria’s R&B influenced vocality as she provides her perspective of the events. As the affair progresses, her husband James extorts money from Hamilton; the men make a deal, ensuring that the affair is kept secret. Jasmine Cephas Jones, the mixed-race (Black and white) actress who originated the role of Maria, says, “On the page, her affair with Hamilton could be a mere scheme of extortion, a trap she sets because it’ll help her survive in her marriage. What makes ‘Say No to This’ interesting is the possibility that she’s also falling in love with him.” [26] Even though Jones’s claim that Maria is also falling in love is possible, Stacy Wolf observes that this position is not actually supported by the lyrics of the song. [27] Even though Jones’s interpretation of Maria’s feelings for Hamilton are not supported by the lyrics, Maria’s character is still more complex than she seems. Scholars such as Wolf may read Maria as falling into the jezebel trope (a controlling image derived from slavery that portrays African American women as having excessive sexual appetites), but this argument overlooks the ways that Jones’s embodiment of Maria subverts the trope. Put another way, categorizing Maria in this way obscures the power of Jones’s performance to upend audience assumptions about the sexuality of Black women as always already deviant. Maria, in Jones’s racialized body, utilizes the only capital she has—her body—to navigate her troubled life. Jones’s embodiment of Maria allows her to recalibrate and challenge the simplistic characterization of Maria, and Black women in general, as sexually deviant. Borrowing from Uri McMillian, the role of Maria reveals how performance allows “black women performers [to make] meaning within problematic representation structures.” [28] Performance, therefore, aids in addressing the construction and malleability of categories structured by race and gender. Rather than figuring Maria as depraved or framing her as simply a “whore,” Jones’s embodiment of Maria subverts expectations by illustrating how deviance can be a liberatory site, one where Maria harnesses a survival strategy, financial viability, and love. To gain insight into Maria Reynolds, I employ Black queer studies scholar Cathy Cohen’s politics of deviance as a means to examine “deviant practices and behaviors as productive…potential for resistance” for those who fall outside of the white heterosexual male, upper class position, particularly poor Black women. [29] Politics of deviance locates the agency of Black women who are deemed outside of normative sexual politics. Cohen proposes that poor Black women neither conform fully, nor wholly reject, the possibility of deviance as a strategy to improve their material conditions. Similarly, Maria may be seen as a “whore” and more complexly interpreted. Cohen’s politics of deviance is useful as it offers a theoretical lens to locate “the limited agency available” that Maria uses to “secure small levels of autonomy in [her] life.” [30] This is demonstrated in “Say No to This” when Maria, from the outset, informs the audience of her life, singing, “My husband’s doin me wrong / Beatin’ me, cheatin’ me, mistreatin’ me. / Suddenly he’s up and gone / I don’t have the means to go on.” [31] As the lyrics demonstrate, Maria is unfulfilled by her marriage and, as a married woman, she is unable to work to provide for herself; therefore, she must create an alternative way to survive. Maria reconfigures herself within her marriage, superseding the sexuality prescribed to white women of a certain class and position. Maria approaches Hamilton for her own financial and emotional needs with the means available to her as a woman in the eighteenth century. Classifying Maria as a sexual object, a body that is a tool used for sexual pleasure, inscribes the racialized female body as available solely for male consumption. However, Jones’s embodiment of Maria can be understood as a performance of disidentification, in which sexuality and desire are used as viable methods to shift power. Maria’s agency provides an alternative prescription for how Black women’s bodies can be read, especially in matters of sexuality. Racialization influences how sexuality is circulated and performed in Hamilton ; the musical counters this reading by positioning Maria as a figure in the historical record without faulting her for Hamilton’s downfall, and instead places the onus on Hamilton and her husband. Ultimately, Maria is not the reason for Hamilton’s eventual political downfall. Rather, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison use Hamilton’s affair to undermine him. This begins when Burr, Jefferson, and Madison accuse Hamilton of committing treason, and in an effort to clear his name, Hamilton informs them of the affair and his extortion by James Reynolds. Hamilton’s downfall is not due to Maria and her seductive prowess; instead, Burr, Jefferson, and Madison’s goal to prevent Hamilton from becoming president leads Hamilton to implicate himself by revealing his affair. Maria, as a minor character, is merely a pawn used in the political machinations to facilitate Jefferson and Madison’s overthrowing of Hamilton. It is important to note that none of the characters in the musical blame Maria for the affair: Hamilton never places the blame on her; Angelica Schuyler, once she learns of the affair, blames Hamilton not Maria; and even Eliza Hamilton, when she sings of the affair in her ballad “Burn,” does not blame her for what happened, but, rather, focuses on Hamilton’s domestic betrayal and failure. Reading Maria as the culprit of Hamilton’s political misfortune overlooks the musical’s narrative as a reputable source that informs the spectator, and instead, chooses to lean on Reynolds’s categorization of his wife as a whore. Accepting Reynold’s words—“You can keep seeing my whore wife/ If the price is right”—is siding with her abuser and discrediting her in the process. [32] Adopting this categorization offered by Reynolds, a figure that the musical establishes as a disreputable character, in effect, prioritizes the sentiments and worldview of Reynolds over Maria’s own account which troubles easy and judgmental assumptions about her sexuality and choices. Act Three: Eliza Schuyler’s Re-telling Phillipa Soo, a Chinese American woman, originated the role of Eliza Schuyler, the second oldest of the Schuyler sisters. [33] As Eliza spends the majority of the play in a marriage with Hamilton, Stacy Wolf has criticized the musical for Eliza’s lack of agency in the show, describing her as “more passive than active at every turn,” rendering her only as a romantic and domestic partner of Hamilton. [34] Eliza may seem to be the most submissive character in the musical due to her confinement in the domestic sphere after her marriage to Hamilton. Some could read this confinement of Eliza as reflecting a lack of desire to move beyond the expectations of women during the eighteenth century. It is important to note that reading Eliza in this way makes an assumption that mothers and wives cannot engage in feminist praxis. By doing so, this overlooks the socio-political work and labor that is done in the domestic sphere. Instead, I propose that Eliza embraces her role as a mother and wife while simultaneously subverting her position within the home to negotiate, as Muñoz proposes in Disidentifications , a “phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform.” [35] Eliza must navigate her position and status as a woman to elude consequences for more outward displays of non-conformity. For instance, when Eliza writes to George Washington that she is pregnant in order to prevent him from sending Hamilton into battle, she writes the narrative that then affects the rest of Hamilton’s political career. This moment is illustrative of how Eliza maneuvers the space given to her; rather than writing a letter to Hamilton, she writes to George Washington, the General of the Army. In doing so, Eliza sidesteps the patriarch of the family to achieve her own desires and needs. Including race in an analysis of Eliza’s agency shows how women of color feminisms, and specifically Asian American feminism, are uniquely different than those of white women and Black women. Soo’s race in the original Broadway cast serves as a means to grapple with Asian American women’s relationship to American citizenship and subvert stereotypical tropes of Asian American womanhood. [36] As literary scholar Traise Yamamoto explains, “The experiences of Asian American women have either been defined as identical to that of Asian American men or subsumed within the experiences of white women; both moves attest to the failure of representing Asian American women as sites of the complex intersections of race, gender, and national identity.” [37] Historically, Asian femininity has been portrayed as an idealized femininity. Since the politically insurgent feminist movement in the 1960s, images of Asian women circulated depicting them as hypersexual, de-vocalized, and subservient to white men. [38] At first glance, one might believe that the musical capitalizes on the stereotypical imagery of an Asian woman by pushing Soo’s character to the home and because of her performance of docility for Hamilton. [39] However, the musical counters potential readings of her body as hypersexual and submissive. When Eliza tells Hamilton that she wrote a letter to George Washington in the song “That Would Be Enough,” Hamilton immediately replies “No,” marking his disapproval with her action. [40] Nonetheless, Eliza is steadfast in her choice; in singing to Hamilton, “I’m not sorry,” she declares her own active participation in their life, even if she must go against societal norms. When Miranda speaks about this song, he gestures to a conversation with Hamilton director Tommy Kail during the workshop of Hamilton , where Kail challenged him to make “Eliza more active” in this moment instead of just having her express the sentiment to Hamilton. [41] Eliza literally and figuratively writes herself into history, not in an effort to resist her husband, but as a means to construct a narrative of legacy in which she is simultaneously an active participant and author. The recurring narrative-inscription motif woven throughout the musical further illustrates Eliza’s agency: she asks to be included in, removes herself from, and places herself in the narrative of Hamilton’s life. This motif is first represented in the song “That Would Be Enough,” in which Eliza announces to Hamilton that she is pregnant, singing, “Let me be a part of the narrative / In the story they will write someday.” [42] In Eliza’s second-act solo song “Burn,” [43] she learns of Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reyonlds and sings, “I’m erasing myself from the narrative / let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted.” [44] This moment in the musical, described by Stacy Wolf as the moment of agency for Eliza, is when she decides to leave Hamilton and obscure her own thoughts about the affair. [45] This moment signifies a rejection of the stereotype that Asian women are submissive. The musical motif comes full circle in the final song, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tell Your Story,” in which Eliza sings, “I put myself back in the narrative.” [46] In arguably the most powerful agentive moment in the entire show, Eliza reinserts herself back into the story, becoming an activist speaking against slavery, founding New York City’s first private orphanage, and raising funds to memorialize the men Hamilton fought beside. Alexander Hamilton may be the subject of Hamilton , but Eliza is the author. Eliza plays an active role in the construction of this narrative, a narrative that is as much hers as it is his. As the author, Eliza uses Hamilton’s legacy for her own political purpose; she makes the choices of what is deemed important or not. In the closing musical number, the lyric states that Eliza devotes the next fifty years of her life to sharing Hamilton’s legacy, but also to claiming her own place in it. Eliza, in tandem with Angelica, sings, “We tell your story,” referring to Hamilton’s history. [47] A few moments later, Eliza questions, “Will they tell our story?” [48] and the company queries, “Will they tell your story?” (emphasis mine). [49] In this moment, Eliza actively places herself in the narrative by making her retelling of this history a telling of her history, too. The ambiguity of the “your” sung by the company can be interpreted either as contemplating whether the world will tell Eliza’s story, or as a gesture toward a collective story that still needs to be told. Regardless of how one reads these lyrics, the ambiguity of who the company is singing about suggests that the individual story is indistinguishable or inseparable from the collective story. At the end of the musical, Hamilton and Eliza, along with the company, emphasize that Eliza’s story is just as important as Hamilton’s story. Eliza is not merely a teller of history, but a maker of history who was pushed to the margins because of her gender and race. As the musical questions if the audience will remember Eliza, Hamilton engages in a feminist mode of history writing and meaning making. This begs the bigger question of Hamilton : are the bodies that tell history just as important as what happens in history? Eliza’s story provides a resounding “yes.” The character of Eliza, who many claim has the least amount of agency, is the character who documents not only her husband’s story, but her own. This is particularly resonant because Soo’s Asian American body, as Karen Shimakawa theorizes, is marked by its constant oscillating relationship to American citizenship. [50] Placing Soo literally and figuratively within the nation-state, a site of tension for Asian American people, the musical encourages us to think about the limits of American citizenship. As Shimakawa reminds us, Americanness itself is defined by the “positioning of Asian Americans, as foreigners/outsiders/deviants/criminals or as domesticated/invisible/exemplary/honorary whites.” [51] Miranda recognizes the importance of Asian American women as central to America by positioning Eliza, embodied by Soo, a Chinese American actress, center stage to tell history from her perspective. Hamilton also challenges popular depictions of Asian American women on stage that only exist to serve the needs, desires, and journey of a white male character. Soo’s embodiment of Eliza is not merely an imitation of past stereotypical representations of Asian American women in theatre, such as in the musicals of Miss Saigon and The King and I. Instead, she is in control, wielding her own pen in her theatrical presentation, moving away from how musical theatre has scripted Asian American womanhood. Categorizing Eliza as merely a wife is limiting as it does not consider how the musical subverts and recalibrates Eliza’s role to incorporate the actress’s own embodiment. It also overlooks the importance of the wife’s role in male political figures’ lives and in politics in general. If one measures women of color to this standard of white womanhood, they will fall short every time. While women of color and white women may have some shared experiences of oppression, one must avoid generalizing in scholarly analysis to signal solidarity. Doing so erases the specific voices, experiences, and trauma of women of color. Hamilton combats this not only by positioning a woman as the final voice at the end of the musical, but a woman of color. Eliza’s act of writing history and telling Hamilton’s story—Hamilton and Eliza’s story—appeals to a feminist telling of history; as she tells her own story, she is simultaneously telling the story of the family, the nation, and, most importantly, of women of color. Even when Soo stands in the spotlight at the conclusion of Hamilton , she is not alone, nor is her presence divorced from the women who have shared the musical with her. It is noteworthy that in “The Schuyler Sisters,” when the three women are first introduced, they are identified as a collective. Also, of note: the actual song “The Schuyler Sisters” (which Miranda described as a “Destiny’s Child-esque” song) builds upon familiar “girl group” images, such as coordinated outfits and harmonies signaling a communal goal. Alongside the content of the song, “The Schuyler Sisters” illustrates how these three women, who bring different but equally important vocal styles, skills, and prowess to the musical number, are working together for the collective good. Our introduction to these women creates a purposeful contradistinction to the introduction of John Laurens, Marquis de Lafayette, and Hercules Mulligan. In “Aaron Burr, Sir,” the men are also introduced as a trio. But unlike the women, they all try to “one-up” each other during the hip-hop cypher. The hip-hop cypher, by definition, is simultaneously communal and competitive as rappers enter the space to illustrate their linguistic and performative prowess over one another, while also working to outlast the rest of the rappers in the circle. [52] In the musical, Hamilton is the one who is victorious in the cypher, which ultimately crowns him as the group’s leader. The format of the song, the staging of “Aaron Burr, Sir,” and the transition to “My Shot” demonstrate the deeply competitive nature of the men, who are overly concerned with individual legacy, and who almost exclusively work together to achieve their own personal goals. By contrast, the women ask us to consider the importance of sisterhood and investing in collective consciousness. Hamilton’ s grouping of the three principal actresses and their characters demonstrates a revolutionary call for women of color feminist collaboration. It asks that audiences consider how these women invest in modes of care for one another and challenges the role that patriarchy has in determining how they see each other. This is the major feminist work that the musical does. The collective investment in women of color’s coalition that the musical models, reiterates Chicana feminist Cherríe Moraga’s call for women of color to “create bridges of consciousness” by imagining women of color working together among, across, and in spite of difference. [53] It is these women of color’s embodiment on stage that signals women of color’s coalition building. Even if the musical does not always abide by this principle, the unified presence of Goldsberry, Soo, and Cephas-Jones and their laboring bodies on stage (as characters and as actors) urge us to consider the “work,” or “werk,” that women of color have done in the face of violence and erasure. Hamilton imagines and conceives white female historical figures as women of color, and while I have argued that Miranda’s casting subverts dominant racial and gendered expectations, I also recognize the limits of casting as a strategy in addressing the calls of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in theatre. While Hamilton is not the first show to use casting to address dominant societal and cultural values, it arguably sparked a resurgence of Broadway producers and fans celebrating Broadway revivals that adopt non-traditional casting methods to signal a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. [54] This trend relies on casting to fix the systemic issues that displace marginalized theatre artists from the Broadway stage. Miranda’s (and his creative team’s) casting choices differ in critical ways; the musical from its inception intentionally cast non-white performers in the roles of white historical figures. [55] The meanings from these choices may be read differently, but the casting choices are anything but circumstantial. In fact, the identities and bodies of the actors are central to performance meanings. Beyond Hamilton, casting choices made in theatre should not simply function as ornamentation to obscure the racist and sexist meanings of a show. Instead, dramaturgs must explore how the corporeality of performers change characters and stories. When theatrical production and, arguably, theatre criticism, critically examine the corporeality of actors as a meaning-making practice, we can destabilize whiteness in our theatrical imagination. In the case of Hamilton , audiences may be better off noticing the impact of raced and gendered bodies in their perceptions of shows, instead of maintaining that race and gender is irrelevant to their experience of the musical. Hamilton’s representation of women of color attempts to embrace the complexity and the contradictions that cause the audience to repeatedly interrogate themselves, as well as the history of racial and gender oppression in the United States. References [1] See Aja Romano, “ Hamilton is Fanfic and, Its Historical Critics Are Totally Missing the Point,” Vox Media, https://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11418672/hamilton-is-fanfic-not-historically-inaccurate; Ed Morales, “The Problem with the Hamilton Movie,” CNN Worldwide, https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/opinions/hamilton-movie-mixed-messages-black-lives-matter-morales/index.html; Stephanie Goodman, “Debating Hamilton as it Shifts From Stage to Screen,” The New York Times , 10 July 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/movies/hamilton-critics-lin-manuel-miranda.html; and Soroya Nadia McDonald, “Five Years Ago, Hamilton Turned a Revolution into a Revelation – what now?” ESPN Enterprises, https://theundefeated.com/features/five-years-ago-hamilton-turned-a-revolution-into-a-revelation-what-now. [2] See Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds., Historians on Hamilton : How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018). This anthology weighs the pros and cons of the Hamilton ’s representation of history. Notably, out of the fifteen essays included in the anthology, only two give critical attention to the women of Hamilton : Allgor’s “‘Remember…I’m Your Man’: Masculinity, Marriage and Gender in Hamilton ” and Patricia Herrera’s “Reckoning with America’s Racial Past, Present, and Future in Hamilton .” [3] See Aly Semigran, “The Women of Hamilton , Making Herstory on Broadway,” Legendary Entertainment, 1 September 2016, https://amysmartgirls.com/the-women-of-hamilton-making-herstory-on-broadway-e507820a319. Semigran’s review provides a short exposé on the actresses in Hamilton and praises the musical. Semigran exclaims, “They aren’t the women behind the Founding Fathers in this critical chapter in American history, they are the ones standing at their side, all the while standing up for themselves and making history all their own.” See also Michael Schuman, “The Women of Hamilton ,” The New Yorker , 6 August 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-women-of-hamilton. Schulman also praises the show, stating: “Miranda has placed a pair of vividly imagined female characters” in the musical. However, Schulman, then questions if Hamilton is feminist, and ultimately answers himself: “Almost.” He contends that Hamilton reiterates “that men do history, and women just tell it.” However, Schulman later retreats somewhat, giving Miranda recognition for positioning women in the musical alongside the men and not behind them. [4] See James McMaster, “Why Hamilton Is Not the Revolution You Think It Is,” Emerson College, 23 February 2016, https://howlround.com/why-hamilton-not-revolution-you-think-it. James McMaster interrogates the absent feminism in an essay for HowlRound. McMaster argues that the female characters’ desires, fears, hopes, and plans within Hamilton exist only in relation to Hamilton. See also Stacy Wolf, “ Hamilton ,” The Feminist Spectator (blog), 24 February 2016, https://feministspectator.princeton.edu/2016/02/24/hamilton. Shortly after the publication of McMaster’s essay, Wolf penned a guest blog on The Feminist Spectator in which she argues that each main woman in the musical is an archetype, categorizing Angelica Schuyler (sister-in-law of Hamilton) as a muse, Eliza Schuyler (Hamilton’s wife) as a wife, and Maria Reynolds (the woman with whom Hamilton has an affair) as a whore. For a more developed version of this argument, see Wolf, “ Hamilton ’s Women,” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (June 2018). Here, Wolf contends that Hamilton epitomizes a paradox for the feminist spectator, one that is structured by a love/hate relationship, or what she calls “dissonant pleasure.” Throughout this article, Wolf examines the choreography, musical numbers, and narrative arc of the women characters, arguing that Hamilton illustrates the potential of the women as socially and political engaged citizens, but ultimately fails in fulfilling this promise. See Indebted to Wolf’s critical engagement with Hamilton ’s women, in her chapter from Historians on Hamilton , “‘Remember…I’m Your Man’: Masculinity, Marriage, and Gender in Hamilton ,” Catherine Allgor reiterates Wolf’s sentiment about the positioning of women on the periphery in Hamilton . Allgor examines how gender operates in the musical alongside the historical record, noting that Hamilton fails to illuminate how gender is a significant organizing principle. For Allgor, this oversight hides the subordinate legal status that women faced and perpetuates the belief that women only played minor roles in history. Allgor ends by noting that Hamilton’s revolution relies on its attempt to “decenter history” and that this can inspire others to build upon Miranda’s work. [5] Brandi Wilkins Catanese, The Problem of the Color(Blind) Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 22. [6] It is important to note that this article focuses on the original principal actresses of Hamilton ’s Broadway production (performers that reprised their roles of Eliza, Angelica, and Mariah for the Disney+ version of the musical) and how the racial and gender identity of these performers influence potential readings of their respective characters. [7] Brian Eugenio Herrera, “Looking at Hamilton from Inside the Broadway Bubble,” in Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past , eds. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), 230. [8] Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,” Social Text 27, no. 4 (2009): 69. [9] Michelle Cowin Gibbs, “Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston,” The Journal of American Drama and Theatre 33, no. 2 (Spring 2021). [10] See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: Unwin Hynan,1990). Collins explores the intellectual tradition fostered by Black women scholars, non-academics, and artists. Tracing ideas and concepts propelled by Black women, most notably the term “outsider-within” and “matrix of domination,” Collins argues that Black women will always fall outside of “feminist and black social thought” due to their focus on whiteness or maleness. Yet, according to Collins this “outsider within” position produces a knowledge source that is more nuanced than feminist and Black social thought. [11] Bert Cardullo, What Is Dramaturgy? (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 3. [12] Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 13. [13] José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 6. [14] Ibid, 23. [15] While my primary analysis is through Black feminism, I recognize that women of color feminisms are distinct and different. Utilizing other women of color feminisms will also magnify new interpretative possibilities for the musical. [16] The Hamilton casting call describes Angelica Schuyler as a mix of Desiree Armfeldt and Nicki Minaj. [17] Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton: The Revolution (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016), 79. [18] Hortense J. Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 67. [19] See Lyra D. Monteiro, “Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton ,” National Council on Public History, 10 June 2016, https://ncph.org/history-at-work/its-not-just-a-musical; Annette Gordon-Reed, “ Hamilton , the Musical: Blacks and the Founding Fathers, 6 April 2016, https://ncph.org/history-at-work/hamilton-the-musical-blacks-and-the-founding-fathers; and Ishmael Reed, “ Hamilton , the musical: Black Actor Dress Up like Slave Traders…and It’s Not Halloween,” CounterPunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/hamilton-the-musical-black-actors-dress-up-like-slave-tradersand-its-not-halloween for their essential critiques of the musical’s erasure. [20] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 44. [21] Whitney Peoples, “‘Under Construction’: Identifying Foundations of Hip-Hop Feminism and Exploring Bridges between Black Second Wave and Hip-Hop Feminisms,” in No Permanent Waves Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 404. [22] Muñoz, Disidentifications , 6. [23] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 2. 4.y of Minnesota Press, 1997), 29.ect. istorical embodiment of the black female body, that I offer Miranda subverts through th [24] Ibid, 82. [25] In the essay, “On the Perfect Union of Actor and Role with Allusion to Renée Elise Goldsberry” in Hamilton: The Revolution , Miranda speaks about the first time that Goldsberry auditioned for the musical and how she was the perfect person for the role. Not only does this essay provide further insight into how character and actor are central to the musical, but it also highlights Miranda’s role in casting of the show. [26] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 175. [27] Stacy Wolf, “Hamilton’s Women,” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 176. [28] Uri McMillan, Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 24. [29] Mireille Miller-Young, “Preface: Confessions of A Black Feminist Academic Pornographer,” in A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography (Durham, NC; Duke University Press, 2014), x. [30] Cathy J. Cohen, “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics,” Du Bois Review 1, no. 1 (2004): 27–45, 30. [31] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 176. [32] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 177. [33] Phillipa Soo’s racial ambiguity had led some historians to read her as white, specifically Annette Gordon-Reed who asserts that Phillipa Soo is read and coded as white. While the audience may have difficulty fitting her into a racial category, I do not read Phillipa Soo’s embodiment of Eliza Schuyler as white. [34] Wolf, “ Hamilton ’s Women,” 169. [35] Muñoz, Disidentifications , 4. [36] As a reminder, because the casting breakdown specifices that a “non-white” actress should play the role, Eliza has been played by other non-Asian women of color; therefore, the meaning of the performance can and has changed depending on who portrays her. I analyze Soo’s performance because it has undoubtedly influenced later productions and it allows me to highlight that a generic (i.e., white) analysis will not serve the various meanings conjured by the bodies of the women of color who will embody this role in the future. [37] Traise Yamamoto, Masking Selves, Making Subjects: Japanese American Women, Identity, and the Body (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1999), 67. [38] Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws and Love (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997), 34. [39] For most spectators of the musical, Soo’s body signals a generic Asian-ness or mixedness, thus rendering her representative of all Asian Americans and denying her the particularities of her Chinese American identity. I refer to her as Asian American throughout the paper to point out how the United States’ systems of racial classification require Soo’s body to be easily consumable for the American public. In this way, Soo comes to stand in for the diverse population of Asian Americans, despite her desire or choice too. [40] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 110. [41] Ibid. [42] Ibid. [43] There is no historical record of Eliza Schuyler’s reaction to finding out about the affair; Miranda’s imagines what her reaction would be in this song. [44] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 238. [45] Wolf, “ Hamilton ’s Women,” 175. [46] Miranda and McCarter, Hamilton , 280. [47] Ibid. [48] Ibid, 281. [49] Ibid, 281. [50] Karen Shimakawa, National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2002), 3. [51] Shimakawa, National Abjection , 3. [52] H. Samy Alim, Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip-Hop Culture , (New York: Routledge, 2006), 97. [53] Cherríe Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color , ed. Gloria Anzaldúa (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981, reprint 2015), 16. [54] For example, the recent Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! cast the female lead as a Black woman. [55] Michael Paulson, “ Hamilton Producers Will Change Job Posting, but Not Commitment to Diverse Casting,” The New York Times , 30 March 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/arts/union- criticizes-hamilton-casting-call-seeking-nonwhite-actors.html. 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 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.

By Sarah Stites, Frank Hentschker | An examination of the censorship of LiIllian Hellman's The Children's Hour. < 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 Intermeddlers Sarah Stites, Frank Hentschker Download PDF Lillian Hellman's The Children’s Hour opened on Broadway in 1934. This drama about two schoolteachers falsely accused of having a lesbian affair was a popular and critical success—but the subject matter caused authorities to ban the play in many locations. This new work combines excerpts from Hellman’s controversial play and material from the 1936 case which sought to have the play banned. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Michael Y. Bennett 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 “A Certain Man Had Two [Kids]”: Tragic Parables, “The Prodigal Son,” and Edward Albee's The Goat Michael Y. Bennett By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF Edward Albee’s 2002 play, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? (Notes Toward a Definition of Tragedy) , centers around Martin—a very successful, 50-year-old Pritzker Prize-winning architect—and how his family (i.e., his wife of many years, Stevie, and his gay, teenage son, Billy) and his best friend, Ross, react to the fact that Martin has been having an affair with a goat named Sylvia. In short, Ross turns on and betrays the confidence of Martin, Billy is beyond embarrassed and angry, and the once-playful-and-witty Stevie, ultimately, kills Sylvia, dragging the dead, bloody goat across the stage at the end of the play in a scene befitting of Greek tragedy. With these three characters vying for Martin’s attention, this play contemplates the fact that one cannot look in two different directions at once. Humans have stereoscopic vision: we have two eyes, but we can only see one image. Love is being seen, and that is why it is so significant that the moment, according to Martin, when Martin locks eyes with Sylvia is the moment that he knew he was in love with her. And the moment their eyes locked, nobody else (neither his wife, nor his son, nor the familial unit as a whole) could be seen. So, too, in Jesus’s telling of the parable, “A Certain Man had Two Sons,” more commonly known as “The Prodigal Son,” the elder son does not feel seen. The elder son realizes that he is not being seen or heard not just in the moment when his father would not answer his question, but the elder son realizes then, too, the fact that he never was seen during all of his years of being a good son and responsible person. Unlike the other parables of Jesus (which are, largely, didactic ), and unlike the other plays of Albee (which are, largely, tragicomic ), I argue that both “A Certain Man had Two Sons” and The Goat are, ultimately, tragic parables , as love and attention can be focused on a single entity, with everyone and everything else left to fall, unloved and unseen, by the wayside. The following four ideas open up Edward Albee’s The Goat to a biblical reading: 1) the name “Jesus” and “Jesus Christ” are uttered numerous times in the play; 2) Martin’s best friend, Ross, is called “Judas”; 3) John Kuhn suggests that there is a “ leitmotif of religious imagery” [1] in this play; and 4) in his earlier play, Tiny Alice (1964), Albee critiques the illogical nature of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, Kuhn has called the baby-on-the-lap story in this play, a “parable.” [2] However, the baby-on-the-lap story is not just a parable; I argue that the play as a whole, is the parable. I am referring to the the most complete and complex of Jesus’s parables: “The Prodigal Son,” or as biblical scholars call it by its first line, “A Certain Man had Two Sons.” POOF! And then it hits you: Billy, the son, is not a reference, necessarily, to a “Billy goat,” but to the prodigal, “Billy the Kid.” In Albee’s retelling of the parable, all of the characters in the play vie for the father’s (Martin’s) love, a goat/kid is sacrificed, and the father has two “kids.” Albee’s play, then, is a modern adaptation of “The Prodigal Son,” or, rather, Albee’s play is A Certain Man had Two “Kids,” where the focus remains on the impossibility of loving two things at once. In short, both Albee’s The Goat and Jesus’s telling of “A Certain Man had Two Sons” are cautionary damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t tragic parables , where the only learning that occurs is to try to avoid that which cannot be avoided: both trying to love two things at once and loving just one thing, yields tragedy. Current Scholarship on The Goat The Goat premiered on Broadway on March 10, 2002, directed by David Esbjornson and led, most notably, by Bill Pullman (Martin). The play immediately garnered a tremendously positive critical response, racking up major nominations (e.g., a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize) and receiving major awards (e.g., 2002 Tony Award for Best Play and 2002 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play). European (Vienna’s English Theatre, 2003) and UK (Almeida Theatre, 2004) premieres quickly followed, directed by such notable directors as Pam McKinnon and Anthony Page, respectively. While The Goat is over fifteen years old, the field has yet to fully coalesce around a single, central issue involving Albee’s play. Although, in part, because of the title and subtitle (and its call to understand tragedy), scholarship has revolved around two general concerns: the relationship between animals and humans and the nature of different theatrical genres. Deborah Bailin examines the relationship between humans and animals in Seascape (1975) and The Goat to show that what is at stake in this ambiguous relationship is what it means to be human. [3] Brenda Murphy also discusses the relationship between humans and animals in relation to Seascape and The Goat to demonstrate the ways in which anthropomorphism allows The Goat to reverse generic expectations. [4] Tony Stafford deals with genre in invoking the American Pastoral tradition with a nod to the relationship between animals and humans. [5] In “Getting Albee’s Goat: ‘Notes toward a Definition of Tragedy,’” Kuhn argues that, with The Goat , “Albee’s definition of tragedy reaches an intricate fullness.” [6] I, too, make this argument, but Kuhn and I argue it in different ways. Kuhn carefully shows how The Goat fits within the model of Aristotelian tragedy. Kuhn makes seven key points: 1) “Calamity couples with heroic achievement in a tragedy”; 2) Martin is a falling hero whose behavior threatens the heroic acts of a lifetime; 3) the play is a “double tragedy” for both Martin and Stevie; 4) Martin and Stevie’s hubris was “blinding pride”; 5) the play has a classic structure; 6) Albee clearly had the ancient tragedies in mind as he references the “Eumenides” and includes phrases like “tragic farce” and “flaw,” and Martin the hero is always onstage; and 7) “The play generates intellectual and moral insight.” [7] Kuhn further argues that “Philosophically, the Absurd is that existential disconnect between cause and effect which both Stevie and Martin describe: ‘nothing has anything to do with anything.’” [8] Elsewhere I have suggested that the plays of the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd” are ethical parables that guide the viewer to make meaning of his or her own life, which, I later call “absurd tragicomedy.” [9] Kuhn and I have different takes on the absurd in Albee’s early, “most substantial tragedies,” as Kuhn calls them. [10] In The Zoo Story , even though it seems irrational to Peter, Jerry makes sense of his murder-suicide. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) George and Martha are in an absurd situation: they want children, but the world will not give them children. But the play is not (solely) tragic as George and Martha, ultimately, make sense out of their situation and realize that they have each other and that that might be enough. Here, I disagree with Kuhn and want to elaborate on my previous observations. I argue that The Goat is a tragic parable because Albee created a situation, too absurd , too hopeless, out of which meaning cannot be made , moving beyond contradictions that can be resolved, and, thus, the characters live with an unresolved tragic situation. Just like at the end of “The Prodigal Son”—when the father’s answer to his elder son does not rectify the feelings of unequal treatment—in The Goat , the situation cannot be resolved, even with the death of Sylvia. Albee’s play is not only a commentary on social mores and contemporary views of sexuality and the limits of those views, but The Goat also forces us to re-evaluate the parable, which is possibly the most influential piece of short literature in the Western world. But while this article will spend some time re-interpreting this biblical parable, it does so to help us understand, not necessarily “The Prodigal Son,” but to further illuminate Albee’s tragic parable in The Goat and his conception of tragedy. Shedding light on how the parable is tragic reveals how Albee similarly sees the story as tragedy in The Goat . “The Prodigal Son,” or The Elder Brother: Notes toward a Definition of Tragedy In Interpreting the Parables , Craig L. Blomberg summarizes the three main approaches scholars have used in analyzing the parable of “The Prodigal Son” or “A Certain Man Had Two Sons.” First, there are those—especially Wilcock and Arndt—that argue that there is one point coming out of the parable: sinners should repent regardless of the gravity of their sins. Second, scholars such as Danker and Talbert understand the end of the parable as an argument that one needs to celebrate the salvation of others. Third, in what Blomberg contends is the most common interpretation, Thielicke, Schweizer, and Marshall suggest that the parable speaks to the power of the father’s love and patience for both sons. [11] Brad H. Young, in The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation , reads the parable as a “crisis of broken relationships”: By dramatizing a family tragedy the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) focuses on the crisis of broken relationships between a human being and God. A person living without God is like the younger son running away to a far country. But the elder brother living at home with his father is no better off. He is much like a religious person who misunderstands the divine nature and lacks a meaningful relationship with God. The elder son does not show love for his father and struggles, perhaps unsuccessfully, to forgive his brother. He cannot share the joy of his father over the return of the runaway. [12] Young is right that this is indeed “a crisis of broken relationships,” but he places the blame on the wrong family member. He assumes that it is the elder brother who “misunderstands the divine nature.” However, is it not the father who grants the prodigal son his request, symbolically creating two “dead” beings? As David Wenham argues in The Parables of Jesus: Their Art and Use , since the son is “dead” and has lost his “sonship,” the prodigal son’s return is a rebirth: he is “born again,” which accounts for the joy at the return of the prodigal son. [13] What neither Wenham nor Young consider is that the return of the son is also the return of the father. [14] Because the allocation of a person’s belongings is usually saved for after his death—thus, the father commits a symbolic suicide [15] —the return of one’s progeny re-establishes the father as a father. The father, to use Wenham’s language, is symbolically “born again,” as well. The rebirth of the father solves the connective problem between the first and second parts of the parable and provides a cause and effect. The father symbolically declares himself “dead” when he gives away half of his goods and dies not just for his younger son, but for his elder son, as well. As the elder son explains, “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Luke 15:29). His father, in other words, was no father to him. The play on words with “kid” furthers this idea. In other words, thou never gavest me, not just a goat to eat, but you never gave me a brother to love and enjoy with my friends. The elder son did not know love from his own father, so how, in turn, can the father expect the elder son to love his younger brother, a “dead” son ? The elder son certainly did not bask in his father’s love, but in his father’s “commandments.” The rebirth of the father, with the return of the prodigal son, transformed the father from a law-abiding (or, rather, commandment-abiding) Pharisee to an open-armed and loving Christian. The key to this lies in the father’s symbolic “death” and “rebirth.” One wonders what exactly transpired during the father’s “death.” The elder son suggests that the father set up a series of commandments to be obeyed (“thy commandments”). The death of the fatherly impulse—the impulse to nurture—resulted in the birth of a Pharisaic being. Diverging from Young, then, this would suggest that it was the father who “[misunderstood] the divine nature.” The elder son, then, merely mirrors what he had seen and experienced. The parable raises the question of how one should rectify a bad situation. The standard interpretation of the parable’s answer to this question is through compassion and forgiveness. [16] However, the ending—the elder son’s silence—suggests that compassion and forgiveness do not solve all problems, and in cases such as this, create others. Forgiveness is not the be-all and end-all and responsibility is the foundation on which Christianity is built. In other words, forgiveness is a patch, but responsibility builds solid foundations. The younger son is irresponsible in kind with his youth. The father lacks foresight and, in turn, irresponsibly bestows enormous wealth upon a youth; he enables his son to become a profligate. Symbolically, both father and son become “dead” through the father’s bequeathment of his son’s inheritance. The prodigal son should have contrasted his father; instead, he mirrored him. When the younger son leaves, the father’s actions only confirm his own irresponsibility. If one chooses to be a father, he must accept the responsibility of nurturing his offspring, which the father never does. He never rewards the elder son for his good behavior. “The Prodigal Son” is a cautionary and tragic parable. The father’s irresponsibility causes two deaths: the prodigal son is reborn as a profligate and the father is reborn as a Pharisee. It took the younger son’s “rebirth” to jolt the father into responsibility. It is the younger son who first acts responsibly when he finds himself out of options and goes home and repent. The father simultaneously 1) greets the rebirth of his younger son through repentance and 2) is reborn himself by changing from a Pharisee to a loving Christian. The tale is cautionary in that because the father was not always ready to greet God (or the second coming—the rebirth—of his “son”), his elder son is affected by the father’s Pharisaic ways and may never be able to forgive first and experience the same rebirth that his younger brother and father experienced. Though both prodigal son and father are “born again,” the elder brother remains the parable’s lingering casualty because he has yet to be reborn. From Absurdity to Tragedy: Billy Goats, or Martin’s Two kids, or “Getting one’s goat” There are a number of possible allegorical readings of The Goat : one such possible reading being that, like Judas, Ross betrays of Martin’s confidence and friendship; Sylvia represents Jesus, as she dies for man’s (Martin’s) sins at the end of the play; and Stevie, similar to Pontius Pilate, crucifies Sylvia (Jesus). Of course, there is also a potential non-biblical allegorical reading which equates the forbidden love of a goat with a man’s once forbidden love of another man. As interesting as these allegorical readings are, they do little to help us better understand the play and, more specifically, understand tragedy, which is invoked in the subtitle of Albee’s play (i.e., Who is Sylvia? or [Notes Toward a Definition of Tragedy] ). Instead, I suggest that the intellectual thrust of The Goat and “A Certain Man had Two Sons” are similar, and that the nature of these plays is tragic. The Goat starts out, in typical Albee fashion, with a series of relatively mundane questions which are only answered by a roundabout and circuitous dialogue. And, of course, much like many of his plays, it takes place in “ A living room .” [17] Why is the living room significant here? I have recently argued that Albee comes from a line of great American living room tragedians (e.g., Hellmann, O’Neill, Miller, Williams, etc.), with Albee’s innovation being that he introduced the tragicomic worldview to this classic living room tragedy particularly in his 1962 play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [18] If we think back to this play, the talk and ethos of the living room in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is clearly tragicomic, much like the dialogue and ethos of this living room in The Goat . Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is sort of a reversal of the Oedipal complex, where the “son” is killed off by the father, in order for him to sleep with/love the mother. This death of the “son” allows George and Martha to produce happiness, or at the very least, a new world that is based on reality. In Albee’s plays, sacrifice—especially with religious overtones—is prominent, which produces an effect of absurd tragicomedy . In The Zoo Story (1958) Jerry is a Jesus-like savior who runs into the knife, killing himself to wake Peter up from his bourgeois illusion of comfort, hoping to yield enough knowledge and awareness in Peter for him to live a better and more meaningful life. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the “son,” or the “kid”—like Jesus—is sacrificed and dies for the sins of George and Martha, allowing for the rebirth, not of the son, but their marriage and life together. While there is pain from the sacrifice, it is for their souls, as there is now hope for salvation, or at least, for saving and/or salva(ging) their marriage. The end is painful, and Martha is scared and experiences emotional pain, but the sun is also rising, and it is both literally and figuratively a new day for George and Martha. The tragicomic ethos that has produces both laughter and pain throughout the night appropriately produces a bittersweet ending: sad, uncertain, but also filled with new possibilities. In contrast, in having sexual intercourse with Sylvia, it is not Martin who dies—his wife, Stevie, mentions numerous times how she is going to kill him—but his sexual death is accompanied by Sylvia’s actual death at the hands of Stevie. The bloody stage at the end of the play is more typical of a Greek tragedy. Here, Stevie kills off the “kid” to attempt to save/salvage her own marriage, but with this animal sacrifice, everyone involved loses innocence, and all are irrevocably changed, but unlike George and Martha and Nick and Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Peter in The Story , without any redemption or hope of a better future. Martin’s Death and Rebirth Martin first becomes a father through a sexual death with Stevie. Billy is the resulting son, the kid, who is at the pivotal age of seventeen—the last year before adulthood and, presumably, leaving for college. Billy, his kid, is not “prodigal” in the traditional sense of the word as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary : he is neither “extravagant; recklessly wasteful of one’s property or means” nor a “reckless or wayward person; a returned wanderer.” But Martin, and certainly Ross, approach Billy’s homosexuality with a mindset from another era, believing that he may grow out of his sexuality: ROSS: Passing phase. Have you had the old serious talk?MARTIN: The “You’ll get over it once you meet the right girl” lecture? Nah, I’m too smart for that, so’s he, so’s Billy. I told him to be sure. Says he’s sure; love it, he says. [19] There is an implication here that Billy is having sex, and a lot of it. Here, Billy is at fault for the two maxims—“nothing to excess” and “surety brings ruin”—that follow the famous inscription, “Know thyself” at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. But, here, Billy does know himself. Apollo is the judge and features prominently in the Eumenides and within one page of the first mention of “Eumenides,” Albee riffs on the famous inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, “Know thyself”: ROSS: OK? Ready? Ready Martin; here we go; just…be yourself.MARTIN: Really?ROSS ( A tiny bit testy ): Well, no; maybe not. Put on your public face. [20] This has the same tenor as a famous Jewish joke: A man goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doctor, I am so unhappy, I just do not know what to do. Can you give me some advice?” The doctor replies: “Just be yourself. Unless you’re a schmuck, though, then be someone else.” In the Eumenides , Orestes is being driven mad and wants the agony to stop: “I sing this song over the sacrificial victim, a frenzied, wild, song, injurious to the phrên , the hymn of the Furies [Erinyes], a spell to bind the phrenes , a song not tuned to the lyre, a song that withers mortals. Relentless destiny spun out our fate…” [21] Unlike Orestes, though, Martin does not want it to stop, and in many ways, the agony only really starts for Martin at the end of the play when Sylvia becomes the “sacrificial victim.” But with the death of the “kid,” Billy, the other kid in the play, no longer has competition and Martin is, in a sense, reborn as a father who can focus his attention on his single son. But the tragedy is two-fold: Martin appears to be a broken man and there needs to be a “sacrificial victim” for Martin to become a better father. In The Goat , the murder of Sylvia is tragic, and the tragedy of the act breeds further unhappiness for everyone. Nothing is going to improve, and every character is worse off. Unlike the deaths of the other so-called children in Albee’s plays, namely the “son” in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and “the baby” in The Play About the Baby (2000) which bring an end to illusions that obscure reality, Sylvia’s death in The Goat does not accomplish anything but death. There are loose ends, though: how will Martin, Stevie, and Billy function afterwards? But unlike in The Zoo Story , Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , or The Play About the Baby , neither the characters nor the audience learn anything from the death of Sylvia, and, thus, Sylvia’s death is meaningless. To Albee, it seems as though suffering can make sense, but only if it yields a newfound rationality to approaching life and the world. While the ending of The Goat provides no way to grow or learn from the tragedy—which makes the play is a tragic parable—for much of the play, Martin is simultaneously the most logical and most illogical character. Architecture happens, initially, by imagining the immaterial in one’s head, before transforming the immaterial to a material reality; builders and construction workers deal in the material, but Martin deals in the immaterial. Martin’s status as the youngest Pritzker Prize winner ever, indicates that Martin is something of a precocious genius. Martin’s youth (i.e., for a Pritzker Prize winner and for someone who thinks they may have Alzheimer’s), and his naiveté about his situation with Sylvia suggest that Martin is immature for his age. An immature male who deals in immaterial realities, however, describes most teenage boys, like Martin’s son, Billy, and Ross’s son, Todd, but does not often describe a 50-year-old man at the height of his career. Prior to the unraveling of the familial unit, Martin appears able to logically compartmentalize and understand all of the love and affection that he can dole out. This ability to bracket one’s emotions in a logical manner is a sign of nuanced thinking and maturity. Martin sees no contradiction in loving both Stevie and Sylvia. For Martin Stevie and Sylvia are not mutually exclusive lovers, not because he is polyamorous, but because Stevie and Sylvia are not in competition with one another. Each of his two lovers provides entirely different sorts of affection and worth. Stevie is a traditional spouse in that she is Martin’s best friend and lover. As Martin quips in a backhand compliment, Martin does not replace Stevie with someone else: STEVIE ( Quite matter-of-fact ): If you are seeing that woman, I think we’d better talk about it.MARTIN: ( Stops. Long pause; matter-of-fact ) If I were …we would .STEVIE ( As offhand as possible ): If not the dominatrix, then some blonde half your age, some…chippie, as they used to call them…MARTIN: …or, worst of all, someone just like you? As bright; as resourceful; as intrepid; …merely…new? [22] Sylvia is not a replacement; she supplements what Stevie does provide. Stevie gives Martin all the love, support, and intellectual stimulation that Martin needs. Sylvia, however, satisfies Martin’s love of female goats. Stevie will never be able to offer Martin what Sylvia provides; as Stevie rightfully observes later, “But I’m a human being; I have only two breasts; I walk upright; I give milk only on special occasions; I use the toilet.” [23] And the tragedy is Stevie is right. Though Martin believes that he and Sylvia fell in love with one another when they first locked eyes (“…and there she was, looking at me with those eyes…” [24] ), Martin and Sylvia are unable to lock eyes during their intimate acts. Martin is oddly correct when he says to Ross, “I’m seeing her.” [25] Sylvia, however, does not see Martin or any of this intimacy; Martin only sees the intimacy and not Sylvia. [26] While Martin believes that he and Sylvia are consensual partners—because Sylvia supposedly backs up into him, and not vice versa—during sexual intercourse, Martin (literally) can see only Sylvia’s backside, as she faces the opposite direction. The tragedy is that while everyone is jealous of Sylvia, Sylvia cannot even appreciate the love; she has no idea what love even is. This only adds insult to injury. Everyone is jealous of a goat, a being that cannot even process (or see) what she has. Conclusion In “A Certain Man had Two Sons,” Jesus tells a parable of the ultimate display of forgiveness through a father’s deep love of his son. Albee creates a parable that displays the capacity to immensely love, not just humans but any two beings who feel mutually seen by one another. But Martin misreads or, like a Greek tragic hero, blind himself to the situation: Martin never considers the base and simple emotion of jealousy. It is important that Billy is an only child, as until now, he has been the sole object of parental attention. But now there is another “kid” in the house, and everyone is jealous. Stevie is jealous of Sylvia. Billy is jealous of Sylvia. Even Ross may be jealous of Sylvia (since he loses his best friend because of her). Martin may be the smartest guy in the room, but he misses the most basic things (e.g., he forgets the name of his best friend’s son; he never even sat in the chair sitting right in his living room, etc.). So, too, our “certain man” justifies giving his younger son his inheritance and shows mercy is mercy by forgiving his son and welcoming him with open arms, but just like Martin, he never accounts for jealousy. The “certain man” of the parable cannot seem to fathom why his elder son is not excited by his brother’s return despite his failure to address the concerns of his elder. And the elder brother cannot imagine why the father does not understand his feelings because he twice asks why he has not been rewarded. And this is the tragedy of both parables: a display of love and attention begets jealousy. The greatest joy on earth, love, cannot exist without enacting pain on someone else, and this is the greatest tragedy of all: free love is never free. References [1] John Kuhn, “Getting Albee’s Goat: ‘Notes toward a Definition of Tragedy,’” American Drama 13, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 5. [2] Ibid. [3] Deborah Bailin, “Our Kind: Albee’s Animals in Seascape and The Goat: Or, Who is Sylvia?,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 18, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 5. [4] Brenda Murphy, “Who is Sylvia?: Anthropomorphism and Genre Expectation,” in Edward Albee and Absurdism, ed., Michael Y. Bennett (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 174-185. [5] Tony Jason Stafford “Edward Albee and the American Pastoral Tradition,” in Edward Albee and Absurdism, ed. Michael Y. Bennett (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 95-110. [6] Kuhn, “Getting Albee’s Goat,” 2. [7] Ibid., 3-29. [8] Ibid., 25. [9] See Michael Y. Bennett, Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Michael Y. Bennett, The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre and Literature of the Absurd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). [10] Kuhn, “Getting Albee’s Goat,” 1. [11] Michael Wilcock, The Savior of the World: The Message of Luke’s Gospel (Leicester and Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1979), 149-57; William F. Arndt, The Gospel According to St. Luke (St. Louis: Concordia, 1956), 350. Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (WestPoint, InterVarsity Press, 2012), 172; Frederick W. Danker, Jesus and the New Age: A Commentary on St. Luke’s Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 275; Charles H. Talbert, Reading Luke (New York: Crossroads, 1982), 147; Blomberg 172-3; Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father (London: J. Clarke; New York: Harper Bros., 1959), 17-40; Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Luke (Atlanta: John Knox; London: SPCK, 1984), 247-8; Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (Exeter: Paternoster; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 604; Blomberg 173. Working from the scholarship of Cadoux (A. T. Cadoux, The Parables of Jesus: their Art and Use [London: J. Clarke, 1930; New York: Macmillan, 1931], 123.) and Stock (Alex Stock, “Das Gleichnis vom verlorenen Sohn,” Ethische Predigt und Alltagverhalten, ed. Franz Kamphaus and Rolf Zerfass (München: Kaiser; Mainz: Grünewald, 1977), 82-6.), Blomberg argues that the parable makes a separate point with each character: 1) With the “prodigal son,” one can always return home and repent one’s sins, 2) The father is like God in that he forgives anyone as long as they are willing to accept it, 3) The older brother should have rejoiced in his brother’s “reinstatement.” Those “who claim to be God’s people” should take joy in the fact that God extends his grace to the “undeserving” (174). As Blomberg argues, parables, and this one in particular, have allegorical meanings. The characters are allegorical in that “each character clearly stands for someone other than himself” (Blomberg 175). [12] Brad H. Young, The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, LLC, 1998), 130. [13] David Wenham, The Parables of Jesus (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1989), 111. [14] This surface-level reading which poses the question: “Should children be given their inheritance when they are young?”—opens the story and leads us to deeper meanings. First, this question works as extended metaphor: it is a question of what a parent owes a child, when a parent owes a child, what a child deserves from a parent, and when a child deserves something from a parent. With this request, a practically impossible situation arises for both the son and the father. The exchange of money is possible. What is impossible is that the father can no longer give his son something when he dies. This is also a reversal of expectations and a paradox, at least in our culture. Fathers usually give to their sons (money, wisdom, love, etc., which is not to say that the sons do not return love to their parents); there is an implied hierarchy. Therefore, when the father gives half of what he has to his son, part of him will no longer exist after that he gives the money away. The balance of capital changes the balance of power. It also changes the burden of responsibility. The father can no longer be financially responsible for his son. This practical quandary raises an ontological quandary. In the end, the father decides to throw a feast for his returned son. This is when his other son gets angry: “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Luke 15:29). The father has been thrown into an impossible situation; how do you please one son while not offending the other, or how do you shower one child with affection when there is another child waiting to receive an equal amount of affection? How can a father be a loving parent and please two children at once? This question, like in many parables, is never answered. We are left with the moral injunction to forgive those who have sinned, but the question of how to love is still left up to the reader. The reader must decide how the father should act in this case, or how they should act with their children. [15] Bernard Brandon Scott argues that “The son’s division of the property kills the father” (Hear then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989], 111). Again, I see it more as a suicide since, although the idea was planted in his head by the son, it was the father who carried out and executed the plan. [16] In suggesting that “A Certain Man had Two Sons” is a tragic parable, I am not arguing the parable does not praise forgiveness: one only has to look to “The Unmerciful Servant” (Matthew 18:21-35) and “The Two Debtors” (Luke 7:41-43). What I am arguing is that in “The Prodigal Son,” Jesus says that forgiveness is necessary, but that responsibility is mandatory. If the father was responsible, neither son nor father would have been “dead.” And, maybe more importantly, the elder son would not have adopted the Pharisaic nature of the father. Though, of course, “The Prodigal Son” is closely aligned, thematically, with “The Unmerciful Servant” and “The Two Debtors,” this new reading also aligns “The Prodigal Son” with “The Ten Virgins” (Matthew 25:1-13), “The Faithful and Unfaithful Steward” (Luke 12:42-48; Matthew 24:45-51), and “The Householder and the Thief” (Matthew 24:43-44; Luke 12:39-40). These three parables focus on how one must be ready and responsible, so that one will be able to be judged well when God comes at his unexpected hour. [17] Edward Albee, “The Goat: or, Who is Sylvia? (Notes Toward a Definition of Tragedy)” in The Collected Plays of Edward Albee: 1978-2003 (New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2005), 538. [18] Michael Y. Bennett, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (London: Routledge, 2018). [19] Albee, “The Goat,” 551. [20] Albee, “The Goat,” 552. [21] Aeschylus, Eumenides, trans. Hebert Weir, rev. Cynthia Bannon, rev. Gregory Nagy, n.d., https://uh.edu/~cldue/texts/eumenides.html. [22] Albee, “The Goat,” 546. [23] Albee, “The Goat,” 575. [24] Albee, “The Goat,” 568. [25] Albee, “The Goat,” 568. [26] This does raise the question of whether or not Martin rapes Sylvia, as consent, for numerous reasons, is impossible to obtain from a goat. While it may be pertinent to some readings of the play, this question is beyond the scope of this essay. 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 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.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage “Regietheater:” two cases Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF By Ivan Medenica Image Credits: Article It is well known that the main characteristic of Middle and East European theatre during the past century has been the so-called “directorial theatre” (the most familiar formulation being in German,“Regietheater”), quite unlike the mainstream of British and American theatre. In this text I review productions of two highly regarded directors from this part of Europe, whose work is clearly in this tradition: Czech director Dušan David Pařízek and his Bulgarian colleague Alexander Morfov. The Moscoviad . Photo: Patrik Borecký. The performance The Moscoviad , based on Yuri Andrukhovych’s novel and staged by Dušan David Pařízek, was performed within the PQ+, a show-case of contemporary Czech theatre offered as a side program to the 2023 Prague Quadrennial. Andrukhovych is a contemporary Ukrainian writer, and this novel about the collapse of the Soviet Union was written in 1993. Pařízek is one of the foremost Czech directors of the middle generation, mostly working in German speaking countries. Unlike other performances in the PQ+ program, all of which were productions of leading Prague institutional theatres, The Moscoviad was produced by an independent platform,Theatre X10, which seeks to create critical thinking that reflects social reality. Audiences familiar with Pařízek’s earlier work will most certainly recognize the main features of his directorial poetics in The Moscoviad. In terms of stage design, and in general, in terms of its visual aspects the performance is marked with noticeable minimalism and reduction of stage devices. In the middle of the non-theatre space of TheatreX10 (originally a gallery in the basement of a modernist high-rise built in 1936) Pařízek put a wooden platform resembling a stage on a stage. The actors play around it, on it and, also, with it—transforming it, moving it and rearranging its densely arranged planks which cover and thus bridge the desks. When put together, the desks and the planks form the said platform which is at the same time the functional space of the performance and an independent visual installation (Pařízek himself is credited for the stage design). Visual, performative, but most of all, metaphorical climax in space utilisation happens when the actors disassemble the platform energetically and vociferously, leaving just separated desks as performance space. They then stab the planks between the desks, amplify them with light, projecting their shadows on the walls, thus creating a stunning abstract installation. However, the installation is not as abstract as it seems at first, because it can be interpreted as a rather direct and blunt metaphor. The collapse of the stage world is equivalent to one of the central topics in Andrukhovych’s novel which Pařízek himself dramatized: the equally vociferous and violent collapse of the Soviet Union. Those familiar with his much awarded production of Wolfram Lotz's The Ridiculous Darkness at the Burgtheater Vienna will recognize his directorial signature: a wooden wall composed of planks which disintegrates vociferously at the most important moment in the performance and is scattered across the stage. The Moscoviad . Photo: Patrik Borecký. The novel The Moscoviad seems realistic at first. It is about a day in the life of a young Ukrainian poet Otto von F. who is spending the last weeks of the Union in an “artists’ residence” at the institute of Soviet writers in Moscow. There, he is in the company of equally drunk and disheartened writers from other regions of the dying empire. They spend their time arguing and quarrelling about nationalism, communism, democracy, god and all else that preoccupies Slavs’ poetic souls. The context of the literature institute, vivid descriptions of Moscow and, as we shall later see, certain fantastic elements—all form intertextual links with another novel by another renowned writer also originating from the Ukraine, Mikhail Bulgakov and his famous novel The Master and Margarita . The story is only just realistic. In essence, it is really a foundation for a grotesque, fantastic, macabre parable, including the descent into the underground world, concerning Russia’s profound blindness regarding the direction in which the whole of Europe was heading at the beginning of the 1990s. One of the main topics in both the novel and the performance are Russian political and police elites’ insincere and unsuccessful attempts to adapt to these circumstances, while in reality they continue to fantasize about not only of upholding the Soviet/Russian empire but also of expanding it westwards, to Western Europe. One needs not emphasize how strikingly real and painful this story is today, even more so at the time of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Yet, in my opinion, the real value of both the novel and the performance lies elsewhere, in something just a shade different. Despite being uncompromisingly criticizing of Russian imperialism, neither Andrukhovych’s novel nor Pařízek’s production are mere propaganda. Quite the contrary, they are interwoven with subtle (auto)irony and genuine humanity. The auto-irony stems from, most of all, the text itself. In his letters/dreams the main character, already mentioned (fictional) Ukrainian poet Otto von V., addresses the, also fictional, heir to the throne of what one might call the “Ukrainian world.” This, in itself, may not be significant to Anglo-Saxon audiences. Yet, those from Central and East Europe are all too familiar with these national confabulations and cannot but at least smile (if not laugh due to respect for the tragedy happening in Ukraine) upon recognizing them. This subtle irony is maintained in Pařízek’s work with four great actors appearing in different roles: Gabriela Míčová, Stanislav Majer, Václav Marhold and Martin Pechlát. Besides the ironic and grotesque, their amazing performances showcase other registers as well: strong emotionalism, igneous energy, clearly differentiated characters and their relationships, skillful improvisation … Such an acting approach combined with fitting poetics employed by both the writer and the director result in an artistically relevant and politically balanced performance. In conclusion, I would like to stress that although uncompromisingly critical towards Russian imperialism, the performance of The Moscoviad does not fall into the trap of Russophobia, which today is, sadly, often the case even in the matters of arts. The 70th anniversary of the Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica was celebrated with a premiere of The Visit , a performance based on a well-known play by Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Visit of the Old Lady (Der Besuch der alten Dame) , written in the 1950s. The performance was directed by one of the foremost Bulgarian, and European directors Alexander Morfov. The Visit . Photo: Dusko Milhanic. Although it belongs to what one might call “contemporary classics,” Dürrenmatt’s play is not so well known today, thus requiring further illumination before proceeding to the analysis of the performance itself. The play may be classified as “theatre of the absurd,” “tragic farce” or any similar genre in which, as Dürrenmatt himself points out, the tragic stems from the comic, surfacing as “a moment of utter despair, a gaping abyss.” The story is comical in the sense that one economically and in every other way devastated town is expecting a visit from its most affluent citizen ever, and in doing so they perceive her visit as their last chance of salvation. Clara Zachanassian, living abroad for decades and changing husbands (at the beginning of the play she has seven ex-husbands, but as the play progresses the number increases) has become a billionaire. Her appearance is comical, with her entourage of bizarre servants, a litter, a panther, ever new husbands, cynical and eccentric behavior, but also comical are the citizens of Güllen in their cowardice, servility and readiness to do anything to improve their conditions. The tragic begins to surface with her request that in view of her willingness to donate a billion to her hometown, she wants “one head” to be delivered to her: she wants her once lover, grocer Alfred, to be killed because after he had impregnated her and ascribed his responsibility to others, he forced her into a vagabond lifestyle which started with prostitution. The feeling of the tragic is crystalized in the theme of “buying justice,” and in succumbing to the criminal demands of big capital. Although the offer is at first rejected with strong moral indignation, the citizens of Güllen, including Alfred’s own family, will, quite expectedly, finally accept paying for a higher standard of existence (loans are being taken before the billion is deposited) with somebody’s life. When writing about two performances in one review, points of comparison impose themselves as a sort of tedious itching even if, as is the case here, there are no real grounds for them. In that respect, while Pařízek’s production features strong visual symbolism, minimalist staging and is charged with energy, Morfov’s is visually decorative, marked with lushness of stage and energetically diluted. Without radical adaptation, Dürrenmatt’s text requires the presence of a large number of actors and stand-ins on stage. Morfov skilfully groups, moves, and rearranges numerous actors, as if making a composition for a painting or a film shot. His “stage stills” are based upon actors’ playing in several planes and levels for which effect he uses stage technology (stage podium drops), elements of stage design (the balcony of Clara’s hotel room), separating close-ups from wide-shots by light, and shaping choreographically particular scenes (Alfred’s murder, for example). Such combining of stage elements creates the association—maybe because we know subconsciously that The Visit of the Old Lady has been turned into a musical—that we are watching a Broadway spectacle that requires skillful technical and artistic orchestration of a large number of actors, dancers and singers. Just to make things clear: from my aesthetic perspective, this Broadway association--and which is highly conditional—is not a compliment. Still, as if all of that were not enough for Morfov, to this densely packed stage he adds full-size mannequins that sometimes appear in isolation or are scattered, and at times are densely grouped. The use of mannequins representing citizens of this small town is both redundant and unjustified simply because there already is a large enough number of live performers. In terms of their symbolic meaning, it is superficial if the objective was to signify loss of individuality, transformation of people into big capital’s marionettes or anything similar. That said, I do not reject the possibility that the use of mannequins is purely decorative in purpose and holds no special meaning. Considering all of the above, one gets the impression of an old-fashioned and somewhat conventional theatrical style, and not just a self-complacent one. Scenes with mannequins are a good illustration of the performance’s central feature: stage attractiveness overshadows dramatic action, thereby glossing over feelings and meanings that this action should incite. In addition, one of the consequences of the underdeveloped dramatic action is the overwhelming feeling of boredom. All of this is the result, at least one gets such an impression, of the director’s greater focus on stage stills instead of on his work with actors who seemed as if left to themselves. For this reason, Clara, played by a leading Montenegrin actress, Varja Djukić, lacks that sharp transformation of a comic, grotesque character into a mythical revengeful figure that looks as if she is appearing out of a tragedy. Throughout her performance the actress is shaping and developing her character, emphasizing psychological motifs and thus totally missing the point of both the play and her character. Such an approach dilutes the very comicality of the first part of the play, but also the anxiety and tragic perception of the world when Clara asks the citizens to sell her justice which, she believes, belongs undisputedly to her. The comic effect is subdued further by the fact that the actors, it seems, have either failed to recognize the very lucid and bitter humor of the play or they just lacked confidence in it. Because of this they “covered” it with their own forced, and thereby, unconvincing comical skills. However, the tragic and critical view of the world ensuing from the awareness that money is the absolute ruler of our lives—which is the point that makes this 1956 play relevant today and the reason why it is still played—is clearly delivered at the end of the performance. The performance ends with a bleak song that through association links the citizens of Güllen with today’s populist and right-oriented forces. The Visit . Photo: Dusko Milhanic. It is a pity that this disquieting, critical attitude is just “glued on” at the very end of the performance by a directorial intervention. Pity, because this attitude should have been present and readable throughout the entire performance, and especially throughout its second half. Yet, in terms of production and artistic choice, including the financial investment, this project of Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica deserves to be supported. It suggests that in the seasons to come this theatre will try to raise its artistic ambitions and step out of its local context. References References About the author(s) A native of Belgrade, Ivan Medenica studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, where he completed his PhD thesis entitled “Actualization and Deconstruction as Models of Directing Drama Classics.” He is an associate professor at the FDA, where he teaches history of world drama and theatre. He regularly publishes articles in national and international journals. He chaired or co-chaired three of the international symposia of theatre critics and experts organized by the prestigious Serbian theatre festival Sterijino Pozorje in Novi Sad and the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC). He has participated in a number of international conferences, such as in St. Etienne, Moscow, Vienna, Budapest, Avignon, Thessaloniki, Sofia and Lisbon. He has received a number of national awards for his theatre criticism and was the artistic director of Sterijino Pozorje. Medenica is one of the editors of the theatre magazine Teatron, and he holds the post of Adjunct General Secretary at the IATC. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 19, Fall, 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage (W)here comes the sun? Published: November 25, 2024 Download Article as PDF By Tamás Jászay Image Credits: Article It's almost a family atmosphere: we spectators, barely a hundred of us, sit around the empty space. Office lights hang high above, from which a cheap paper screen is lowered from time to time, projecting still or moving images. This projection is one of the essential elements of this refreshed, dusted-down, updated Ibsen production, Solness , which premiered on the studio stage of the Örkény István Theatre in Budapest in autumn 2022 and, due to great interest, has been performed at the Szkéné Theatre from February 2024. On the screen, we see the building plans of the master builder and his student, which were never realised, and which are commented on with admiration or hatred. The shadows of the characters projected sharply onto the screen inadvertently add comments and stories to the projected images. If you happen to be sitting on the other side of the screen, you can see the images indelibly projected onto the desperate, pleading, explaining faces, not just their shadows. The screen becomes a time gate. Plans that never materialize transport us to an imagined, idealized futur e, but as we approach the finale, the canvas also becomes a powerful means of bringing the past to life. Suddenly we are watching a family home video, a private documentary of the past half century; the period when Pál Mácsai, playing Solness, became one of Hungary's best known and most admired actors. We peek, we peep into his life, as we have done so many times during the performance, and the (self-)ironic audio commentary is provided at this point by the video's protagonist, Mácsai-Solness himself. Finally, the screen is the "protagonist" in the bombastic finale: we see a projection of Hilde Wangel, who entered previously Solness's ordered yet infinitely lonely life, taken by the master builder as a vampire. From the short introduction, it is clear that Solness , directed by Ildikó Gáspár, plays with different stakes than the usual interpretations of Ibsen's late drama. The director can do all this here and now because the theatrical reception of Solness , written in 1892, is negligible in Hungary. This is worth emphasizing because Henrik Ibsen is clearly the most Hungarian of the Nordic playwrights. The climaxes of his extensive oeuvre are an inescapable cornerstone of the Hungarian repertoire: A Doll's House , Hedda Gabler , The Wild Duck , and even Peer Gynt , which focuses on the totality of the world rather than on a family, regularly appear on stages in Budapest and the provinces. The Master Builder Solness , considered by many to be one of the finest achievements of Ibsen’s oeuvre, is a rare visitor to our region. Yet the first Hungarian-language premiere was already in 1905, relatively early on: part of the ars poetica of the very first Hungarian independent theatre group, the Thália Society, was to introduce contemporary foreign drama to Hungarian audiences. However, theatre memory records fewer than ten (!) Hungarian-language Solness performances in the more than a hundred years that followed, and none of these became canon-shaping performances. In this way, Ildikó Gáspár's production stands lonely in Hungarian theatre history, while loneliness is a prominent theme of the production. Solness. Photo © Judit Horvath This is by no means an over-interpretation: the performance plays with the thematization and problematization of the relationship between the dramatic text written by Ibsen, translated into Hungarian and shortened by the director herself, the reality/present time of the theatrical performance and the reality off stage. We are a long way from, say, Shakespeare's meta-theatre: here, the speech about the theatre does not become a stand-alone (performable) insertion. Instead, from the first to the last moment of the performance, the theatre as a phenomenon becomes an integral part of the plot written by Ibsen. This Solness speaks about the theatre as a political institution, about the perceived or real conflicts between the different generations that run the institution, about the challenges of maintaining the influence acquired in cultural life, about the proper management of a common legacy. It speaks about the Örkény István Theatre itself, its current and renewed artistic leadership, and the chances of young theatre-makers in an unsupportive environment. And it does all this while telling the story of Ibsen's master builder Solness virtually in full. In this sense, the performance is therapy. The psychologizing of Ibsen, of the family, is somewhat relegated to the background in order to make the spectator realize that it is possible, even necessary, to reflect on certain traumas of the community space through the tools of the theatre. Readers who have not seen the show might have reason to believe that Solness in Budapest is a show for gossip-hungry "experts" who are sensitive to the internal affairs of the theatre world, but they could not be more wrong. Since the context around the performance is as important as the text of the performance in this case, some further information needs to be shared before I get to the performance itself. The director Ildikó Gáspár has evolved from a successful and remarkable dramaturg and translator into a director known mainly in Hungary, but also in German and Scandinavian-speaking countries over the last decade. In her performances, she analyses classical and contemporary dramatic texts with both insight and sensitivity, leads her actors in an inspiring way, and always with a highly emphatic and meticulously elaborated visual and musical world. It is difficult to find a common denominator between the two dozen productions of her directing career that began in 2011. Regardless of the period of the drama and its author, the problem-sensitive interpretation of the text, always carefully crafted to bring it as close as possible to the viewer of the present day, is a characteristic of each of her productions. Ildikó Gáspár is a founding member of the Örkény István Theatre, which opened in downtown Budapest in 2005. She became a key member of the theatre as a dramaturg and made her debut as a director here. Örkény's situation is unique in many respects: of all the municipal theatres in Hungary with a permanent company, repertoire and venue, we can think of no other theatre that has undergone such a significant change in profile in such a short space of time. The theatre, which for decades until the early 2000s presented solely comedy and cabaret, has now become one of the capital's most important theatres, with a highly successful ensemble working with the best directors to build a profile that is mainly, but not exclusively, prose drama. The first 'master builder' of the Örkény's image is the actor-director Pál Mácsai, who has been the theatre's director since its foundation. Pál Mácsai in 2025 will hand over his position to Máté Gáspár after 20 years of management. The latter name is familiar to many in the context of another memorable ensemble: it was he who, together with Árpád Schilling, laid the foundations for the international success story of the Krétakör Theatre as manager in the early 2000s. Alongside Máté Gáspár, Csaba Polgár, the theatre's leading male actor, will take over the artistic directorship of the Örkény Theatre from January 2025. The same Csaba Polgár who plays Ragnar, the dreaded adversary of Mácsai's title character in Solness . Ragnar's mother, Bertha Brovik (originally a male character) is played by Judit Pogány. The actress has been a major figure in Hungarian theatre and film since the 1970s and 1980s. And although she turned 80 in 2024, she is still performing in ten different productions at the Örkény Theatre. They are joined by the fourth generation: as the haunting Hilde Wangel, we see Mária Szaplonczay, who graduated from the University of Theatre and Film in 2024. Ildikó Gáspár's direction does not directly talk about this system of relations, which may seem complicated at first sight and not necessarily transparent to the outsider. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that the above-mentioned relationships are evident to the regular theatregoer in Hungary even if they are not stated. Having mentioned before projection and the different layers projected onto the screen, by bringing these relations (theatrical and generational) into play, it is as if a new filter has been added to Ibsen's drama, showing more and different aspects of the familiar story. Let's return to the starting point. We, the audience, sit around an empty office or living space. In the first few minutes, we see the same brief scene play out four times in quick succession between Ragnar and his mother Bertha, and Ragnar's fiancée Frida. The old Brovik is not feeling well, and the young people, at first gently, then increasingly irritated and impatient, want to send her home, which the old woman clearly takes as an attack: she accuses the youngsters of wanting to get rid of her for good. The playful yet nervous opening (with an annoying background noise coming from the invisible speakers: like the sound of blood pounding in your ears in a particularly tense situation) identifies and sets the main theme of the performance: the communication gap between young and old. There is, of course, no small amount of didacticism in the way Ibsen arranges his formula: Solness, at the height of his career, has once pushed Brovik from her position, and now his daily life is filled with the dread of his disciple, Brovik's son Ragnar, rebelling against him. The performance does not support the latter, however: Ragnar probably 'just' wants to work, has a family and a decent living, and does not seem to be a man with world- conquering ambitions. But then, it's not him who's important here, but Solness himself: the performance seems to take place 'inside his head', where dreams, desires, memories, visions and hallucinations are lined up in a whimsical order. Solness is the center of the universe he creates and sustains: he is the sun (cf. sol), which shines in solitude (cf. soleness). Everyone is dependent on him: old Brovik, Solness's predecessor; her son Ragnar, Solness's disciple; Frida, Ragnar's fiancée, Solness's employee and lover; Aline, Solness's wife, with whom he has never been able to come to terms with the tragedy of their loss of their children. The family doctor circulates as a lonely satellite around them. And then the asteroid Hilde Wangel unexpectedly strikes, upsetting the delicate balance. The emphasis is on making the relationships between the characters as clear as possible: this is helped by the layout of the space. The actors sit between us, next to us: when they enter a scene, they speak from an intermediate position that subtly blurs the boundaries between stage and auditorium and then return to that position at the end of the scene. We sometimes feel as if we could be the characters ourselves, if only because the problems succinctly expressed are a strong reminder of our own concerns and questions. Apart from Bertha Brovik, who only appears at the beginning of the performance, all the characters are present in the space throughout. As is often the case with Ibsen, two characters usually share their thoughts about a third. The pair then almost provocatively stand in front of the 'object' of their conversation, while (s)he listens to them with silent attention. It is worthwhile for the viewer to observe the actors who are not acting, their expressions, their gazes, to discover their small reactions to what they see and hear: it is as if they were voyeurs, like us. The performance plays with this too: the family friend, a doctor, takes (seemingly) random shots with his old camera and flash. He is the one who, already in Ibsen, Solness accuses of secretly watching his every move. Solness. Photo © Judit Horvath The creation and maintenance of an everyday atmosphere is an integral part of Luca Szabados' simple(seemingly) visual world. Solness and his successor Ragnar wear the same black leather jacket: who is copying or imitating whom, who is adapting to whom, or whether it is the 'uniform' of the architect's office, is left unclear. The basic color of the other characters' costumes is brown or drape, all of them earthy - a nice rhyme with the constant, desperate preoccupation of Solness's wife Aline with her potted houseplants. The only one who stands out is Hilde Wangel, who unexpectedly enters: a slightly worn white ballet skirt, which soon turns out to be a wedding dress, peeks out from under a bright red hoodie covering her upper body. Let's take a close look at Hilde's arrival! This is one of the first episodes where the story is emphatically out of its original flow, and the viewer becomes suspicious. There is something unrealistic and erotically exhilarating about the meeting of the grey-haired Solness and the brash young Hilde. The girl no one expects, but who is known to almost everyone in one way or another, claims and demands to be a fairytale creature: ten years to the day before, Solness promised her a kingdom, and she has come to make that promise a reality. Throughout the performance, the strictly cut text follows Ibsen's original drama, but here it is enriched with a new element. When Hilde begins to talk about Solness kissing her several times when she was twelve, the architect goes into a fit of rage. He shoves her out of the room; while looking the mute spectators in their eyes, he explains that everything the girl says is a lie: he certainly doesn't kiss children. Suddenly Hilde reappears in the space, but by then everything has changed: Solness' carefully constructed statue has been destroyed in an instant. And the sensitive viewer is left with a vivid reminder of the way in which Hungarian public discourse has (not) dealt with #metoo issues - both in and outside the theatre. A typical he said/she said situation: the performance does not clearly state who is right, i.e. what really happened between the two. The scene written by Ibsen remains intact, but thanks to the sensitive dramaturgical and directorial intervention, it is enriched with a new, touchingly contemporary layer. (And we realize too that in the late 19th century, it was not shocking for an older man to have an intimate relationship with a child. In the 2020s it is impossible to ignore it.) Solness-Mácsai is aware of us, the audience, from the very first scenes, and while we know, in the spirit of the theatrical pact, that his utterances to us are not those of the actor but of the character, the dissonance of the boundary crossing is felt early on. When Solness says he is lucky, Mácsai could say the same. Or when he gazes dreamily at the women in the audience and then admits to the doctor that he has had many women in his life, whose "line" is that? The profile of the successful master builder is not only embossed on his portrait but is inseparable from the profile of the successful actor, director, theatre manager. And when he begins to speak condemningly of the young people who are demanding space for themselves at all costs (he even gets one of the spectators out of his seat), one cannot help thinking that Solness-Mácsai is (perhaps) talking about himself. For example, that in Hungary theatre directors are not appointed for a few years, but often for decades. Consequently, entire generations are left out of the theatre cycle without having gained any experience of leadership and without realizing their own vision of how a theatre or ensemble should operate. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this is not an accusation against Mácsai, who has built one of the country's most high-quality theatres, but merely an outline of the context. Mácsai Pál’s Solness is an acting masterpiece. He portrays a burnt-out, tired, cynical and self-reflective character who, despite his achievements and successes, lives on his enduring charm even after the age of sixty. He talks to everyone in a slightly condescending, lecturing way. He knows a lot and has seen a lot, which is why he is acutely aware that his time is coming to an end. The scapegoating, which has probably been going on for some time, has had a reassuring result: young people are to blame for everything. Solness's world is bewilderingly round: just as he got rid of Brovik, the new generation will want to get rid of him. A man of this type needs a 'court' that fears and adores him, and whose members are all weaker than he is. His narcissism knows no bounds: he even teaches the audience a song about himself. The old and sickly Brovik (Judit Pogány) is no longer a real opponent, just a toothless lion. His son Ragnar (Csaba Polgár) seems to be a more difficult case, but Solness is probably overthinking things: Ragnar does want a place for himself, but not against Solness, rather just beside him. Ragnar's fiancée Frida (Emőke Zsigmond) is impressed by Solness's interest and affection, but he sees her as a disposable object, a tool. Solness's wife Aline (Gabriella Hámori) seems to be a confused, introverted, lonely figure, but she sees and senses everything that happens around her. The loss of his children is the great tragedy of her life, which she tries in vain to explain away as God's will, but in reality, she blames herself. At the moment of the children's death, the relationship between Aline and Solness is at a standstill, and they are unable to move on from there: they have nothing more to say to each other. The doctor (Sándor Terhes) observes and registers: Solness considers him both his confidant and his enemy, sent by Aline to kill him. Young people are dangerous, Solness repeats again and again, and the most beautiful illustration of the theme is the intrusion of Hilde Wangel (Mária Szaplonczay) and her attempt to break the equilibrium. Yet she does nothing but take seriously an irresponsible statement, a promise made to a child ten years earlier. In his eyes, Solness is a hero, whom he endows with supernatural powers and from whom he expects to enliven his own ordinary, boring life. But Hilde can not only be a new beginning for Solness's empty marriage, she can also replace his dead children. Solness, a great manipulator, effectively involves his wife, Aline, in this game, who takes care of the girl immediately after Hilde's arrival and puts her in one of the old children’s rooms. In the first half of the hundred-minute performance, the sensitive relations of the Solness- universe are sharply depicted, before the focus narrows to the internal conflicts of the Solness-Mácsai figure and Solness's relationship with Hilde. The home video, mentioned at the beginning of the text, thus becomes a memorable inset to the performance. Selections from the video archive of the Mácsai family show Pál Mácsai's parents, his brother and, of course, himself as a child and young adult. And so we arrive at the spring of 1994, when Pál Mácsai recited the poem Highly Esteemed Overlords by the 19th century revolutionary poet Sándor Petőfi in front of 10,000 people in the Budapest Sports Hall. It is without exaggeration that this is the emblematic material of the Hungarian- language YouTube, which has more than one and a half million views, and Mácsai adds a self-deprecating audio commentary to his own recital from 30 years earlier. Hilde literally walks into the picture: she clicks repeatedly, the recording stops, starts again, while she re-enacts Mácsai's (Solness’s?) striking gestures in front of the screen. In the finale, when Solness, who has a fear of heights, climbs to the roof of the house to place the wreath, against the strong protests of her relatives and Hilde's insistence, the girl and the master builder are also placed in the center. The video spins again: climbing a ladder to the rooftop above Budapest, Hilde in her wedding dress and (Solness-)Mácsai, wearing a costume and make-up clearly evoking Bela Lugosi's iconic Dracula. The old master, terrified of the power of youth, yet morbidly attracted to it, sucking the blood of youth and drawing strength from it, reaches the top - but at what cost? The sun, known to have a harmful effect on vampires, shines over the rooftops at dawn, and the cast choruses the re-envisioned Beatles song—here comes the sun... Solness. Photo © Judit Horvath References References About the author(s) Tamás Jászay (45), theatre critic, editor, university lecturer, curator. Since 2003 he's been working as a freelance theatre critic: in the last 20 years he published more than 1200 articles (mostly reviews) in more than 20 magazines all around the world. Since 2008 he is co-editor, since 2021 editor-in-chief of the well-renowned critical portal, Revizor ( www.revizoronline.com ). Between 2009 and 2016 he was working as the co-president of the Hungarian Theatre Critics' Association. In 2013 he defended his PhD thesis on the history of Krétakör Theatre (Chalk Circle Theatre). He regularly works as a curator too: Hungarian Showcase (Budapest, 2013), Szene Ungarn (Vienna, 2013), THEALTER Festival (Szeged, since 2014), dunaPart (Budapest, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2023). Since 2015 he's been teaching at Szeged University, since 2019 as an assistant professor. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Between Dark Aesthetics and Repetition: Reflections on the Theatre of the Bulgarian Director Veselka Kuncheva and Her Two Newest Productions Hecuba Provokes Catharsis and Compassion in the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus (W)here comes the sun? Avignon 78, 2024. Imagining Possible Worlds and Celebrating Multiple Languages and Cultures Report from Basel International Theatre Festival in Pilsen 2024 or The Human Beings and Their Place in Society SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL … SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL …SHAKESPEARE AS YOU LIKE IT. IN CRAIOVA, ROMANIA, FOR 30 YEARS NOW Fine art in confined spaces 2024 Report from London and Berlin Berlin’s “Ten Remarkable Productions” Take the Stage in the 61st Berliner Theatertreffen. A Problematic Classic: Lorca’s Bernarda Alba, at Home and Abroad 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 19 Spring 2026 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Gen Z Theatre from Turkey Taps into Repertoires of Millennial Resistance: A Comparison of the Short Festival Plays 'Helezoni' and 'Orange' By Deniz Başar Published: May 11, 2026 Download Article as PDF Arab Stages ISSN: 2376-1148 Vol. 19 (Spring 2026), pp. 27-51 Gen Z Theatre from Turkey Taps into Repertoires of Millennial Resistance: A Comparison of the Short Festival Plays Helezoni and Orange Deniz Başar Abstract : This article traces the changes to the alternative theatre field in Turkey since the 2013 Gezi Park Resistance until today, documenting the reasons for and outcomes of the erosion of that field due to growing authoritarian neoliberalism. Through auto-ethnography, among other methods, the writer tries to meditate rhizomatically on the relationship between alternative theatre in Turkey and repertoires of resistance embodied in 2013, and re-embodied in protests triggered by the illegal imprisonment of elected İstanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on 19th of March 2025. Tracing the lineage of the 19th of March protests, a Gen Z-led movement, back to the millennial-led movement of Gezi, the article investigates the living heritages of the alternative theatre field in Gen Z theatre, which persist despite the strategic damage to the field which took place through the past decade. Arguing that these re-embodied, ever-growing repertoires of resistance are best archived in their sensibility by young people’s theatre works, the writer shares her insights into two short plays from 2025: Helezoni and Orange . Both plays were made by ensembles of emerging theatre practitioners, who were pushed into working in 2020s neoliberal spaces, due to the strategic and authoritarian erosion of the 2010s’ alternative theatre field, and both plays challenge the neoliberal authoritarianism policing their lives and censoring their work, in ways legible to people who have embodied knowledge of the local repertoires of resistance . Keywords : repertoires of resistance, Gezi Park Resistance, 19th of March 2025 protests in Turkey, alternative theatre, Gen Z theatre, queer theatre A Personal Introspection, in the Form of a Literature Review I have been teaching in various theatre conservatories in İstanbul, such as Bahçeşehir University and Maltepe University, as contract faculty, and as part of independent theatre workshops, such as Performance Ecologies , since 2022. Since 19 March 2025, I have encountered most of my students, and some of my own university professors from my BA degree in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University’s (MSFAU) Urban and Regional Planning Department, through the on-going protests. I feel unnamable things in my chest when I think about the fact that I was my students’ age when the Gezi Park Protests [1] happened in 2013, as I was writing my MA thesis on the alternative theatre field of İstanbul (Başar, 2014), and how that whole experience changed who I am today. A fellow theatre scholar working on the performance field of contemporary Turkey, Zeynep Uğur, notes the ways in which the alternative theatre field that emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s provided sociological foreshadowings of the Gezi Park Protests. Uğur then traces the aftereffects of Gezi on the alternative theatre field: [T]he Gezi movement can be traced back to the alternative theatre practice in Istanbul which was already in existence prior to the protests claiming autonomous spaces in the city for artistic creation and sociability. In other words, it provides an alternative history to analyse the sociopolitical transformation of citizens claiming their ownership in the city. Furthermore, alternative theatres become spaces of political resistance in the aftermath of Gezi (Uğur, 2022, 122). The logic of cause and effect is unapologetically ouroboros in contemporary Turkey. Gezi transformed my personal relationship to the city and independent theatres too, as a sense of urgency sneaked into all of my daily practices. The “here and now” of a revolutionary moment redefined the “here and now” of performance for me within my body as a “performing remains” (Schneider, 2011). It was the end of my first year in my master’s degree when Gezi happened, and I remember many things about June 2013 along with how I—miraculously—managed to write my graduate papers in between regularly being tear gassed in Taksim. Starting from late 2011 I was captivated by the alternative theatre scene which was introduced to me by a crush who was working as a volunteer dramaturg in this habitat. As life goes, this crush led to the other—the much, much bigger one—which redefined my life. I took it onto myself to make sure the world knew about it. I agree with Uğur’s reading above: alternative theatre—as a field—was a foreshadowing of Gezi (it was indeed one of the many [2] ). I underestimated the impacts of taking part in this kind of resistance, as many young people in their 20s do, but it caught up to me gradually: with immense waves of migraine and body pain (see Başar, 2022 for an academic reflection; [3] see Başar, 2025 for an artistic reflection), and in forms of chronic workaholism as I attempted to document, academically and artistically, what was happening (see Meerzon, 2024; and Ülgen, 2024 for semi-academic meditations on my artistic outputs). I wrote my MA thesis in Boğaziçi University (BU) between 2012 and 2014, a personal turning point in my career that made me the social scientist that I am today, if not the artist (for that, the real nod goes to MSFAU). BU, a historical, prestigious, landmark university, has been under heavy attack by the AKP government since 2021 (see Tekay, 2022; and, Altuğ et al., 2025), the year that I returned to Turkey to do my postdoc in BU through an FRQSC scholarship. My postdoctoral supervisor Emine Fişek was forced into quitting her tenure job after a long fight with AKP-enforced rectorate around the time my funding ended in 2023.[4] I produce most of my academic work in English, about the political performances and performativities of Turkey in the AKP era. I give into the colonial hegemony of Anglophone academia as strategic choice: I need other ESL scholars like me to learn about what has been happening here. [5] Yet I struggle about where to begin. How can I make the connections that are obvious for us—insiders—visible to outsiders? Here is my attempt. What Came Before and After 19 March 2025 On 19 March 2025, the elected mayor of İstanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was taken from his home for multiple alleged crimes, including “threatening and targeting persons involved in anti-terrorism activities” (Tecimer, 2025). A wave of nationwide protests started in the subsequent months, as more and more elected mayors were taken from their homes across Turkey for belonging to opposition parties against the 23-year rule of the AKP and Prime-Minister-turned-into-President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The preview of this authoritarianism was particularly tested in the 2019 elections, when İmamoğlu became mayor for the first time (see Felix, 2019; and Demiralp & Balta, 2021). Surely this episode of the history of Turkey will be written in detail in the near future, and after less than a year, the first academic articles are already circulating. Here is a quote from one: When he was detained on March 19 (he would be formally arrested a few days later), İmamoğlu was the presidential frontrunner of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which leads the political opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. While the next presidential election is not for another three years, İmamoğlu had been leading Erdoğan in opinion surveys. Now the 55-year-old mayor sits behind bars, facing the possibility of a long prison term (Esen and Gümüşçü, 2025, 106). As I revised this article at the end of 2025, citizens of Turkey were updated on this infamous case by learning through various media outlets that the “prosecutor seeks 2,352-year jail term for Istanbul's mayor” (Tuncer and Blackburn, 11 November 2025). Just as the timing gap between journalism and academic response has rapidly decreased in contemporary Turkey, the timing between journalism and artistic response has shortened too. Perhaps this is because many intellectuals of the country, artists, journalists, and academics, collectively feel the responsibility (and burden) of documenting what has happened, increasingly and overwhelmingly, over the past two decades. We don’t have the time to digest, and we almost always have to respond urgently. Perhaps this should be kept in mind as one reads this piece too, that Zeitgeist in contemporary Turkey is of urgency and urgency only. Then how does this Zeitgeist inform our lives? It means that hundreds of thousands of people live in a constant state of being ready for mobilization. As generative modes of activism have been directly attacked by the government since the early 2010s, and as they have been eroded through the daily reality of social and economic crisis of the early 2020s, our mode of action today is becoming more reactive. Like a fraudulent chess game, when the government makes a move, the people counter-move, en masse in at least the hundreds of thousands, and face the consequences. As Amnesty International reported on the 19 March protests: Following the CHP rallies, law enforcement officials used unnecessary and excessive force to disperse the crowds and according to the authorities, detained 1879 people, either at the location of the protests or from their homes, between 19-26 March across the country. By the end of March, over 300 people—mainly university students from different provinces including Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir—were remanded in pre-trial detention while hundreds of others were subjected to judicial control measures, including house arrest, foreign travel bans and reporting requirements. In Istanbul, seven journalists covering the protests in Saraçhane Square were detained in raids of their homes on 24 March (Amnesty International, 2025, 1). In the days that followed 19 March, many lecturers and professors in the university where I now work were left helpless as their students were detained without any legal procedure. We reorganized, pushed the authorities to start the legal process, tried to stay in solidarity, of course. Yet the burnout remained. Amnesty International documented several instances of unlawful use of force by law enforcement officials against peaceful demonstrators between 19 and 26 March, including beating, kicking and dragging protesters on the ground and the unlawful use of water cannon, pepper spray, tear gas, kinetic impact projectiles, often at close range directly targeting individuals at the head and upper body that led to numerous injuries and hospitalizations. All the information collected was assessed in accordance with international standards and the pertinent legal obligations the Turkish state has under the treaties it is a party to (Amnesty International, 2025, 2). Perhaps it was the morning of 21 March when a friend, who is an expert Ottoman historian, came to our shared office and cried her heart out as some of her students were detained and the legal support hadn’t caught up yet. What does this do to you, really? To people who are dissidents but also mothers, fathers, friends, teachers, Ottoman historians, and theatre artists. What does it actually do to your nervous system, to your dreams, to your understanding of what it means to be alive? My focus is very rhizomatic these days, and it is not out of choice. I regularly google how long Salazar ruled Portugal (36 years), Franco ruled Spain (36 years), Mussolini ruled Italy (22 years), Pinochet ruled Chile (17 years). I google how many years have passed since the so-called Islamic Revolution in Iran (47 years). I do statistics. I want to find a logical future projection as an academic. We call fortune telling “statistics” in academia. Fast Forward to June 2025 I get two invitations from my former students, current colleagues, to attend two different short play festivals. One is DasDas Theatre’s, which took place between 12-15 June (Image 1); and the other is Zorlu PSM Studio Shorts Festival, 14-15 June (Image 2), which is the final result of a seven-month long residency for young playwrights and directors. DasDas is a multi-functional venue with multiple black box performance spaces created by a group of well-established stage artists (actors and musicians), running since 2017 in the Metropol İstanbul shopping mall, aiming to cultivate new audiences within a particular upper-middle class. Zorlu PSM, designed as the first “performance center” of Turkey, is located in a luxury shopping mall, Zorlu Center, which was designed by starchitect Emre Arolat and opened in 2013. It was built through well-documented labor abuse [6] and the direct support of the government, which allowed the illegal building of the colossal shopping mall in the center of one of the busiest districts of İstanbul. Image 1: Memory ticket, DasDas Shorts Festival. 12-15 June 2025. Image 2: Instagram post , PSM Studio Shorts End-of-Year Performances. 14-15 June 2025. The structures of the two festivals are quite different: DasDas invites theatre students and new graduates living in İstanbul to showcase their new experimental and devised works, whereas Zorlu PSM Studio selects artistic interns in the beginning of an academic year and works separately with directors and writers to make meaningful artistic pairs who create a series of short plays at the end of the year. On 14 June 2025, at 9:15pm, I am at DasDas to watch Helezoni (Image 3) , a short play by new graduates and current students of Bahçeşehir Conservatory, having been invited by my former student Seray Üstündağ; and on 15 June 2025, at 8:30 pm, I am at Zorlu PSM to watch Orange (Image 4) , invited by the playwright, Baroj Nejdet Babat, whom I met through the Performance Ecologies project. I want to talk about these two pieces together because they are both created by theatre artists in their early 20s living and working in Turkey, and struggling to form their artistic voice in an atmosphere that is becoming more and more dreadfully oppressive and monopolized with each passing day. Image 3: Helezoni (poster) Project Design and Performance: Buse İlker, Seray Üstündağ, Yağmur Başak Text: Collective Text Supervision: Doruk Öztürk, Diyar Çiler Assistant Director: Diyar Çiler Sound Design: Buğra Nayir Lights: Alp Özer Video Design: Eray Devrenk Poster Design: Doğa Erdağ Date & Time: 14 June 2025, 9:15 pm Place: DasDas Stage Image 4: Orange (poster) Playwright: Baroj Nejdet Babat Director: Yasemin Kır Producer: Riyana Tufanova & Ekinsu Köse Assistant Director: Teo Chapdelaine Assistant Producer: Orçun Ertaman Performers: İpek Sobutay, Mizgîn Özel, Tuğba Sorgun, Aylin Çelikçi, Begüm Önerler, Merve Bayus, Nezahat Arkun Stage Design (SD): Cem Yılmazer, Yasemin Kır SD Realization: Zekeriya Ece, Riyana Tufanova Costume Supervisor: Hilal Polat Costume Design & Realization: Riyana Tufanova Light Design & Application: Güray Doğru Sound Design: Aylin Çelikçi, Begüm Önerler, Merve Bayus, Nezahat Arkun Poster Design: Can Akşit Date & Time: 15 June, 2025, 8:30 pm Place: Zorlu PSM These shows took place almost back to back, in two completely different parts of İstanbul, yet both inside luxurious shopping malls. I remember how in early 2010s my generation was proud of the bohemian nature of found spaces being turned into little black box stages in Beyoğlu [7] . In a palimpsest, I quote my (earlier) self: A significant episode in the contemporary theatre scene of Turkey began around 2008 (Başar 2014), when a generation of emerging young artists started renting small flats around the Beyoğlu district of İstanbul, which is known to be one of the most cosmopolitan, historical, and, possibly, the liveliest part of the city. These artists were locked out of institutional theatre settings because of the lack of formal theatre education (most of them were trained in universities’ theatre clubs while studying other things) or because of their ideological differences with the theatre institutions (Başar 2014, 152). In Beyoğlu, they began to create ensembles and write in the small black-box stages that they collectively made together. Only on these alternative stages and through their new plays, a variety of characters from contemporary Turkey (such as Kurds, LGBTI characters, and urban women wearing headcloths) started to appear on stage. This was a breath of fresh air in the theatre field of Turkey, circumventing the Leviathan-like bureaucracy of state theatres and municipality theatres, and the cheap populism of commercial comedy theatres and other private establishment theatres (Başar, 2021, 196). I remember both the vibe and the hype: Many of us were in our 20s or early 30s, some of us were emerging theatre professionals, some were either bachelors or graduate students in the diverse academic ecosystem of İstanbul (before the brutal attacks on academia after 2016, which aimed and partially succeeded in creating a monoculture [8] ), and there was a smell in the air that blended theatre and activism, and in return redefined both of these categories as immediate life itself. Yet I don’t mean to romanticize this era; it was a precarious heterotopia, just as Gezi was. But heterotopias, “[a]s a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation[s] of the space[s] in which we live” (Foucault, 1986, 24), die hard. In parallel to my above reading of the era, Zeynep Uğur comments on the same phenomenon as follows: In the early 2000s, the alternative theatre scene gained a new momentum with the increasing number of theatres spreading around Taksim. The founders of these theatres are commonly inspired by the avant-garde of the 1990s; however, their own personal trajectories are different. Almost all of them take their roots from university theatre clubs instead of conservatoires or theatre departments. Thus, socialisation emerges as a mobilising motor. To ‘create their own space to be able to make theatre as they want’ is an often-repeated phrase in the interviews that I conducted in Istanbul. A young audience profile, mostly college students, adhered to this emerging theatre (Uğur, 2022, 137). We used to look down upon the idea of moving into shopping malls (also see Aydoğan and Ayhan, 2026, to trace the sentiment). In a little more than ten years so much has changed, with so much trauma. [9] The bohemian and underground theatre infrastructure—built outside of state-governed institutional theatres and profit-oriented commercial theatres [10] —to which many people contributed with sweat, blood and tears has (mostly) collapsed under a regime that has become increasingly authoritarian. This regime has been very strategically targeting Beyoğlu, particularly since 2011, but the scale and insidiousness of the attacks has multiplied exponentially every year, as Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robbins, among others, point out: At first glance, the Beyoğlu Cultural Route (Beyoğlu Kültür Yolu Projesi) [a large-scale re-development project launched in 2020 by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism] may appear to be a good investment of resources, with the potential to enhance the cultural life of the city. […] What it represents is, in fact, an intervention on the part of the central state, intended to impose its own ideological priorities, both economic and political, on the cultural life of the city (Aksoy and Robbins 2023, 40). Meanwhile, hand-in-hand with the current regime, large corporations such as Zorlu Holding have started to invest in the performing arts in İstanbul, and as a miniscule compensation for this exploitative capitalist shift, these new organizations started creating spaces (extremely limited ones) for up-and-coming theatre artists. Yet, quite obviously, these spaces fail to make up for loss of the grassroots independent theatre scene of 2010s. That’s why I am burdened by history at age 36, when I come to see the shows of my former students in their early 20s; yet I also feel a complicated brew of emotions, knowing what they might be feeling since 19 March 2025. My internal compass oscillates between the joy of solidarity and mourning of the loss of innocence. But being in one’s early 20s means having hope, because that age group does not yet have the luxury of the 30s and 40s for being comfortably hopeless. A Brief Cross-Tracing of Repertoires of Dissident Performance and Protest Culture The two works that I watched back-to-back are stylistically and dramaturgically very different from each other. Helezoni , which is a made-up word based on the Turkish appropriation (‘helezon’) of the Latin word helix , is a devised work, fragmented in a 1990s-postmodern fashion, comfortable with being misunderstood. Orange , on the other hand, is much more structured: there is a text, there is a story, and there is even an invented folk tradition and ritual embedded into the performance. I go through my private mind-library of rhizomatic references, to see where I attach these performances in the global network of everything I know about theatre. Helezoni —interestingly, despite having an American gloss to it (à la Wooster Group and Tim Burton)—strictly lands in the German, especially Berlin-based, realm of theatre making: I reach and grab Robert Wilson’s Berliner Ensemble productions, Rimini Protokoll’s fragmented dramaturgies, and of course Bertolt Brecht’s pre-Second World War take on cabaret. In the realm of Turkish theatre, the only distant relative I can think of for Helezoni is Şahika Tekand’s body of works, which are also rooted in 1990s İstanbul (see Dinçel, 2023). A day later, Orange takes me to references from across Europe, and strictly avoids any feel of Americanness. I grab Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2009 movie Dogtooth , the 2023 book She That Lay Silent-Like Upon Our Shore by Brendan Casey, and–of course–García Lorca's last play before his assassination in 1936 during Spanish Civil War, The House of Bernarda Alba . The world that playwright Baroj Nejdet Babat and director Yasemin Kır created also reminds me of the aura of early 2010s in İstanbul; I am reminded of Şamil Yılmaz and Pelin Temur’s plays from Mek’an Sahne (see Onat, 2025) and M î rza Met î n and Berfin Zenderlioğlu’s works, performed in Kurdish with Turkish surtitles, from Şermola Performans. [11] Both pieces want to speak to the world they live in, and to the state of contemporary Turkey, but where Helezoni uses metatheatricality through 1990s-postmodern fragmentation to do that, Orange goes back to ritual to seek metatheatricality as a form of the sublime. These are both strategic dramaturgical choices to tap into the repertoires of resistance of Gezi, which was actually both a palimpsest and a transcendence of all previous left-wing resistance movements in Turkey (see Verstraete, 2019 & Başar, 2022); which is why the main title of this piece is “Gen Z Theatre from Turkey Taps into Repertoires of Millennial Resistance.” Helezoni Helezoni has four parts to it, strictly separated by a male voiceover that introduces the numbered sections, which are loosely connected. All sections are devised by the woman-majority team, which includes many queer collaborators, and the only prior information the audiences have about the show is that it is devised from the premise “fascism everywhere”. The first section is a Grimm-style tale, written mostly by Diyar Çiler, within the parameters the group decided on, a tale about a group of animals living happily in a forest, accompanied by AI-generated images which straightforwardly aim to tickle the cognitive response of the uncanny valley (reminding me of Rimini Protocol). The wording of the tale is tethered to the taboo themes of the repertoires of resistance of Gezi, which was partially reenacted in the 19 March protests. [12] For instance, the tale uses ‘pepper’ to stand in for ‘tear gas’, and the phrase ‘factory of emotions that produce hope,’ which can mean both ‘state propaganda’ or ‘revolution’, almost-alluding to many things, almost gesturing towards a creeping danger, but all in a purposefully ambiguous manner. As the tale goes on, stage creatures in the form of acting bodies start to occupy the stage, filling it with mundane acts of prepping for the performance, such as putting tape down to mark the exact boundaries of where the performance will take place. Their physicalities range from fairies to witches. Defining the boundaries is important, to be able to cross over them later. The second section starts with three Tim Burton-esque (or Robert Wilson’s take on the Faustian theme) stage creatures taking over the stage fully (Image 5), after listening to the same tale with us, while working and commenting on the tale, their sudden and explosive laughter echoing around us. These stage creatures move in a stylized manner and have choreographed movements and fragments of speech that they throw at us. In the darkness we hear a witchy voice yelling “catastrophe! nein!” which marks the beginning of this second part while introducing the linguistic heteroglossia of the piece. Adding German into the mix perhaps alludes to both the Brechtian aesthetic and the horrors of fascist propaganda’s aesthetic (such as Triumph des Willens [1935]). The vocabulary they break apart is embedded in our own political moment, and their gestures showcase a repertoire of the streets, of the military training that we all received as part of our compulsory physical education classes in Turkey, and of the acting education they all received, creating counterpoints. Then they locate us in an urban square through their scattered descriptions. Is it Taksim Square where the 2013 protests happened, located next to Gezi Park? Or is it Saraçhane Square where 29 March 2025 protests took place [13] ? Is it Tiananmen Square in 1989? Is it Tahrir Square in 2011? Is it Vali Asr Square in 2022? Where is this square? Why are they there? And more importantly, why are we here, with them? But we don’t stay in the square: a video is projected alluding to the now aged practice of zapping amongst TV channels, which always censor what happens in squares.[14] The TV glitches, and a quote from early 2010s leftist band Bandista intervenes with the commercials. After this oscillation between the lived reality of urban squares and censored TV, the third section reaches towards the internet as a public sphere, immediately interconnected to urban squares, which speak a different tune than the commercials on TV (because “the revolution will not be televised,” as Gil Scott-Heron once said). Image 5: Helezoni. Photo credit: Volkan Aykaç. The third section opens with video which showcases this realm of the internet, which is completely different from the AI-generated video in the first section. This video was made by Film and TV undergraduate student Eray Devrenk, with clear care and passion. It was interesting for me because this video, less than four minutes long, pulled out so much of my personal history—the burden of history I tried to unpack in the beginning of this article—along with other things that I didn’t know yet, but immediately recognized their meaning through the overlap of images. Banned LGBTQ pride walks in İstanbul, highlighted with police clashes; conservative Islamic ‘family’ protests, backed by the government, against LGBTQ pride walks; the suicide videos from 2014 and 2015 of kind individuals (like Mehmet Pişkin—see Başar, 2022, 181, n.10) and trans activists like Mehtap Zengin, who just said that they could not take it any longer; the 2016 military coup attempt which paved the way for the three-year-long state of emergency and legitimi-zation of human rights abuses; wild-fires; wars; more wars; the 6 February 2023 earthquake that turned into a massacre, due to corrupt planning decisions; world leaders lecturing cameras on their borders, their wars, their hierarchy of people, and all the things that I can’t, and perhaps don’t want to, remember, to be able to stay functional. The video ends with a pop culture twist, a short scene from The Hunger Games , where Jennifer Lawrence yells at us “if we burn, you burn with us.” The actors don and doff a variety of accessories—ropes, hair pins, etc.—at the front of the stage as this video rolls behind them (Image 6). We don’t hear most of the sounds of these videos, à la Thomas Ostermeier; a solo drummer playing from a recording keeps the beat of the performance going. The final section makes yet another metatheatrical move. The actors change their acting style completely: they are actors now in a rehearsal room, they play, and then they wash their makeup in front of the audience (Image 7), and conclude with movement choreography. Image 6: Helezoni. Photo credit: Volkan Aykaç. The stylistic break comes when Seray Üstündağ comments on the fact that her taping work in section 1 of the performance was indeed not a good job, as the tape is laid in a wavey nature. People laugh here; the gesture of this stylistic shift is a powerful one. Seray Üstündağ untapes the stage. Now the entire stage, even perhaps the back stage, even perhaps the foyer, and beyond the shopping mall, the streets and the squares, belongs to the actors. They perform a series of trust falls, an act of catching each other at the exact moment of falling, which is an acting practice, and a very necessary skill in a revolutionary moment. (We have learned very well in Turkey exactly what happens when no one catches you in a trust fall.) When they wash their makeup together, almost in a ritualistic manner, it is a moment of catharsis. Yet it is also an uncanny catharsis in this postmodern show with no conclusion, no predefined faith hovering over the characters, and/or the actors. The final choreography is of exhausted bodies, going through choreographed stage actions as they fall apart, and fall down in a lump on the ground, to—maybe—rest a little. In the talkback session after the performance of Helezoni , the group talks about what made them devise this play. I am humbled by the experiences they have survived in their young age, and especially shaken by learning that assistant director Diyar Çiler is a survivor of the 6 February 2023 earthquake. What they choose to tell, I am here to listen. I also think about how the name of the play gestures towards the psychedelic nature of living in this global Zeitgeist, how violence is so close, but how much we are alienated from the impact of it unless it hits us directly and immediately. Orange The day after Helezoni , Orange tells another story of our times. Playwright Baroj Nejdet Babat is a very young queer and Kurdish artist from Şırnak [15] , who received their BA in Munzur University, and was introduced to the Performance Ecologies team by our colleague Asst. Prof. Duygu Çelik. [16] They have a soft voice and gentle manner always accompanied with a kind smile, which might at first sight hide their deep theoretical knowledge on gender and queer studies, exceeding many of the theatre scholars I encounter regularly. Director Yasemin Kır does justice to this nuanced gem of a text, with all the performative areas she explores with the design team and performers. Image 7: Orange. Photo credit: Cem Gültepe. Orange takes place in an imaginary village that only grows oranges and nothing else (Image 8). No other fruits are allowed to grow in the village, and villagers (especially women and children, who are not allowed to leave) can only eat oranges. Only adult men are allowed to leave the village, and when they are gone, the village is ruled by a deep-cutting matriarchy that leans on a much deeper-cutting patriarchy. Mothers are the gatekeepers of the community; they indoctrinate their children about the importance and singularity of oranges, and tell fearful stories of wild boars that roam around the village [17] to make sure the children won’t go out, seeking a different fruit—or a different life (Image 9). The ecologically problematic idea of monocultures—i.e. growing a single crop in a large piece of land—as represented through the intense singularity of oranges in the play, also serves as a metaphor for fascism. Image 8: Orange . Photo credit: Cem Gültepe. Babat’s text is unapologetic when it comes to using ancient tools of theatre, such as the chorus. In Orange , the chorus is composed of the village women, who give life to land, who protect, who harvest oranges, but who also oppress through their gazes and exert intense control through shaming, gossip, and their collective power to break the will of young people. In this village of oranges lives a young girl whose name is Cennet (a real name in Turkish which means both Paradise and Heaven ). Cennet wants to break free from both the monoculture of oranges and from her oppressive mother, who forbids her from ever being curious about the outside world. This mother figure seems to have walked in from the world of Gabriel Garcia Lorca. She casts heavy curses upon women who dare to disobey the monoculture, and tells gruesome stories about what has happened to them outside the village. Supposedly, the wild boars that roam right outside the limits of the village do not necessarily kill young women; rather, the violence described by the mother sounds much more like kidnapping, rape, and forced marriage. The choice of animal is loaded too: pigs are haram /sinful in Islam. The mother acts like the head of the chorus in Greek tragedies, and the chorus sings with her, collectively cursing the unnamed and mythologized women who disobeyed once upon a time, and were doomed to unspeakable fates. All the while, their songs cherish the monoculture of oranges. Image 9: Merve offers Cennet an apple. Orange . Photo credit: Cem Gültepe. Just when Cennet is toying in her loneliness with the idea of escaping, an outsider comes, another young girl, from a neighboring village which only grows apples. This new friend, Merve, secretly sneaked out to take a long walk in the forest and discovered Cennet’s village of oranges, and she is curious to taste this new fruit. Merve starts visiting Cennet secretly and regularly after that first contact, and their friendship knowingly hints to the audience that a homoerotic romance develops between them. (I wonder how much more openly queer this performance could have been if we had been in an independent space, outside of this shopping mall, deep into Beyoğlu, surrounded by the dirty walls of found spaces turned into black box theatres, surrounded with will power and solidarity, maybe a decade earlier. Sure, the performance might have been less clean, less polished, but it would have not pulled back from naming things, as they should be named in honesty.) Merve also tells Cennet that the boars in the forest are not dangerous—it is the humans that are dangerous, and that she is particularly scared of orange-trading men. (Isn’t it always one of the most difficult confrontations to realize your community can be the big bad wolf in someone else’s story, and that they might be right to see you that way?) When Merve offers Cennet an apple (Image 10), she finally eats it—which is a direct allusion to the apple of Adam and Eve, which according to the three major monotheistic religions leads to the famous couple’s exile from heaven. Image 10: Orange . Photo credit: Cem Gültepe. From here on, there is a dramatic twist, one that is welcomed by the foreshadowing of the allusion of Adam and Eve’s apple—a twist that only early twentysomething artists can do, who are not beaten down by the dramatic structure, the dramatic canon and the conventional beauties of tragedy. After eating the apple Cennet goes back to her mother and village women and confronts them about their oppression, about their chosen and insistent ignorance, about their own evil (Image 11). She sings the prayer of the apple that she learned from Merve as she does this, and the chorus along with the mother try to silence her with the prayer of the orange village. Cennet sings longer and louder than them, and eventually leaves the monoculture of oranges with Merve, hand in hand, to find other fruits, together. Conclusion: An Interdisciplinary Introspection What does it mean to be in your early twenties in Turkey today? How does it differ from my early twenties? What is lost, what is gained in time? Below I quote my younger self, from a point in time when I was doing a first round of calculations for answering this question. I agree with Uruguayan political scientist Paulo Ravecca who claims that ‘situating disciplinary introspection through personal introspection may open fruitful paths to interrogate and unravel knots of experience made of knowledge, power, and politics’ (2019: 166). My own history is entangled in the history of contemporary Turkey: I was one of the protestors in the Gezi Park during June 2013 like many people I know, and the experience influenced—and perhaps shaped—me in multiple ways (Başar, 2022, 192). 19 March 2025 and its aftermath has shaped this generation of theatre makers. Many gestures of dissidence remained little-changed, yet meanings of these gestures shifted considerably over a dozen years: while we covered our faces in Gezi primarily to protect ourselves from the tear gas, this generation went to Saraçhane covering their faces primarily to protect themselves from government profiling. GenZ’s experience is different from ours as they try to fit their artistic and political perspective into a corporate institutional system that we managed to escape to some extent fifteen years ago, but that ecosystem is gone (for now). Today, answers escape me. Yet I stay with the questions as they grow and multiply like rhizomes, and wait for the right time, alongside my young colleagues. Because who knows? Formulating the right question could be the right answer to our times, by triggering the tsunami wave of a paradigm shift. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes Endnotes [1] For an overview of and commentary on the 2013 Gezi Park protests, see Özkırımlı, 2014; David & Toktamış, 2015; Gürcan & Peker, 2015; Koç & Aksu, 2015; Yücesan-Özdemir, 2016; Hemer & Persson, 2017; Tüfekçi, 2017; Ağartan, 2024 . [2] See Yücesan-Özdemir, 2016, for a survey of other events that foreshadowed the Gezi Park protests. [3] Also see Christina Banalopoulou's discussion of the government's "suffocation policies" and "politics of asphyxiation" (2024). [4] Emine Fişek has been the Research Associate and Project Leader of ERC Project: THEAGENT - Theatre and Gentrification in the European City in Austria since 2023. See Fişek, 2026. [5] The limitedness of translations of Turkish plays into English makes it a challenge to start a larger scale discussion in Anglophone academia about the theatre field in Turkey; this has directly impacted my career trajectory, developing me as a translator and a translation editor. For a survey of Turkish play anthologies available in English, see Ergil and Yanıkkaya, 2026. [6] Curiously, these Zorlu Center cases, well known to the Turkish-speaking public, are not translated into English. Let me offer a translation of a short news clipping from 2012: “At the Zorlu Center construction site, which has turned the Beşiktaş district into a massive construction zone, a tragic worker death occurred. According to eyewitness accounts, the worker fell from the 22nd floor of the building and was killed. The Zorlu Center, which was sealed off when the construction reached the 4th floor, and then obtained a permit in one day without the approval of the Beşiktaş Municipal Council and the Chamber of Architects, continues to be the scene of tragic events. […] It is unknown whether Zorlu Center officials obtained a work permit for working on Sunday [the day that worker’s death happened]. The Beşiktaş Municipality is also maintaining silence on the matter. According to claims by local shopkeepers and eyewitnesses, this tragic death is not the first at Zorlu Center. Local residents claim that there have been fatal work accidents at Zorlu Center before, but all of them were kept from the press.” Translated from the source: "Zorlu Center'da işçi ölümü!" [Worker death in Zorlu Center], Beşiktaş Postası, last modified May 14, 2012. For readers who know Turkish, see İş Cinayetleri Almanağı 2012 [Almanac of Worker Murders], BirUmut Yayıncılık, 2013. This book and its serials from the same activist publication house will allow readers to see what a large-scale issue this is in the construction-dependent economic development model of the AKP, where workers are seen as disposable, work safety measurements are consistently lacking, and the construction companies where work accidents repeatedly happen face no disincentivizing punishments. [7] See Şeyben, 2021 (especially “ Section III: Decentralized Theatres”) for a good discussion of the relationship between authoritarian urban transformation and alternative theatres. Also see Fişek 2018 on the representation of gentrification and capitalist investment on the stages of alternative theatres during the 2010s. Ironically, the venue discussed in this 2018 article, GalataPerform, was closed during the pandemic, though the ensemble continues to work. Additionally, see Fişek et al., 2026. [8] See Akıncı, 2018 to follow the reasoning of this claim. [9] For more on this claim, see Ejder, 2019. [10] See Şeyben, 2021 (especially “ Section II: Subsidized Theatres” ) to understand the impact of AKP on institutional theatres of Turkey. Also see Adak and Altınay, 2018, to have a sense of the historical cultivation of the current day theatre ecosystem of Turkey. [11] See Baş, 2015; Akar, 2018; Metîn, 2019; and Şeyben, 2021 (especially “ Chapter 6: Battle on Many Fronts: The Case of Şermola Performans ”) for an analysis of the Kurdish theatre scene in İstanbul during the 2010s. Beyond these works, to understand the general state of Kurdish theatre in Turkey, see the body of publications of Duygu Çelik, which are listed below. [12] It is telling that many of the banners in 19 March protests referred to Gezi. Here are some examples: “Biz Çapulcular Yeni Gelmedik Geri Geldik” [“Us Chapullers Didn’t Arrive Just Now, We Only Came Back”], “Gezi_2.0”, “Çapulcuların Çocukları Büyüdü” [“The Children of Chapullers Grew Up”] (Peker, 2025). “Chapullers” ( Çapulcular ) means “looters” in Turkish. Initially a pejorative that the government applied to the Gezi protesters, it was later adopted by protesters as a badge of honor. [13] See Akgöz, 2026 for a history of protests at Saraçhane Square. [14] Such as the infamous penguin documentary, broadcast on CNN Turk during the first days of the Gezi Protests, while people were being brutalized by the police almost immediately outside CNN Turk’s own corporate building (David & Toktamış, 2015, 19). [15] Another point of introspection: The main character (Toprak) of my first award winning play in Turkey, The Itch , was also from Şırnak. See Başar, 2024 for more on this play; and see Onat and Başar, 2025 for more insight on the nature the contest. [16] See works cited for a list of Duygu Çelik’s works on Kurdish theatre in English and Turkish. [17] The imagery here is reminiscent of the 2019 Turkish movie, Sibel, and its use of the wolf mythologies of the Black Sea region. ___________________ Works Cited Adak, Hülya, and Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay. "Introduction: Theatre and Politics in Turkey and Its Diasporas." In "Performing Turkishness," special issue, Comparative Drama 52, no. 3/4 (2018): 185-214. Ağartan, Kaan. Gezi: The Making of a New Political Community in Turkey . Edinburgh University Press, 2024. Akar, Bilal. "Transformation of the Kurdish Theater Field in Turkey between 1991 and 2017." Master's thesis, Koç University, 2018. Akgöz, Görkem. "LMT #142 : Saraçhane Square, Istanbul, Turkey." Laboratório de Estudos de História dos Mundos do Trabalho. Last modified March 5, 2026. Accessed March 7, 2026. https://lehmt.org/lmt-142-praca-sarachane-istambul-turquia-gorkem-akgoz/ . For the English version of the article: https://www.academia.edu/164967991/Saraçhane_Square_Istanbul_Turkey Akıncı, Özgül. "Performing Academia in Public Space in Turkey." Performance Research 23, no. 2 (2018): 44-48. Accessed 13 November, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2018.1464753 . Aksoy, Asu, and Kevin Robbins. "Beyoğlu in Istanbul: Whose Story is It?" In Culture in the Cities - Present and Future , edited by Franco Bianchini and Guy Saez, 40-53. İletişim Yayınları, 2023. Altuğ, Seda, Mert Arslanalp, Volkan Çidam, and Saygun Gökarıksel. "Repression and Resistance at Boğaziçi University: The Making of Counterpublic under Authoritarian Offensive." In Fragments of Repression and Resistance: A.K.P. Rule in Turkey , edited by Kumru F. Toktamış and Isabel David, 119-42. Peter Lang, 2025. Aydoğan, Kemal, and Emine Ayhan. "'Büyük PSM'lerin Önünde Garipsiyorduk'" ["We were finding ourselves weird in front of big PACs (Performance Arts Centers)"]. In "Bugün, Sahne Nedir? [What is the stage today?]," special issue, Cogito , no. 119 (2026): 139-57. Banalopoulou, Christina. "'Doesn't Every Dying Person's Last Breath Touch the Living?'" Performance Research 29, nos. 4-5 (2024): 49-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2024.2510855 . Baş, Elif. "The Rise of Kurdish Theatre in Istanbul." Theatre Survey 56, no. 3 (2015): 314-35. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0040557415000289 . Başar, Deniz. "Constructing A Fictional Skin Disease Pandemic as Political Allegory Based on First-Hand Experience: An Auto-Ethnography Trial on How I Wrote The Itch ." In The Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine , edited by Gianna Bouchard and Alex Mermikides. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2024. Başar, Deniz. "Faces of a Long Unspoken Collective Trauma: Theatrical Representations of Friendship, Love, Betrayal, and Pain in the Landscape of War in Contemporary Turkey." In The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race , edited by Osita Okagbue and Tiziana Morosetti, 195-217. Palgrave, 2021. Başar, Deniz. "From Repertoires of Resistance to Monuments of Absence." European Journal of Theatre and Performance 4 (June 2022): 160-97. https://doi.org/10.21827/ejtp.4.41720 . Başar, Deniz. "Kaşıntı [The Itch]." In Mitos-Boyut 6. Oyun Yazma Yarışması, 2014 . Mitos Boyut, 2015. Başar, Deniz. "Performative Publicness: Alternative Theater in Turkey After 2000s." Master's thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2014. Başar, Deniz. Tsunami . Edited by Mina Çakmak. Istanbul: Onagöre, 2025. Poetry. Çelik, Duygu. "Dengbejlik geleneği ve Türkiye'deki Kürt tiyatrosuna etkileri [Dengbêjî tradition and its effects on Kurdish theatre in Turkey]." PhD diss., İstanbul University, 2017. Çelik, Duygu. "The Impact of the Dengbêjî Tradition on Kurdish Theater in Turkey." In Kurdish Art and Identity: Verbal Art, Self-definition and Recent History , edited by Alireza Korangy and Philip G. Kreyenbroek. Walter De Gruyter, 2020. Çelik, Duygu. "Kilam as Theatre Music in Kurdish Theatre in Turkey." In Music and Sound in European Theatre: Practices, Performances, Perspectives , edited by David Roesner and Tamara Yasmin Quick. Routledge, 2025. Çelik, Duygu. "The 'Other' Karagöz: The Kurdish Qeregoz." In Race, Gender and Disability in Puppetry and Material Performance , by Laura Purcell-Gates, edited by Paulette Richards, Hazel Briar, and Alissa Mello. Routledge, 2026. Çelik, Duygu. "Otherness and Censorship in the Theatre of Turkey (1960s–70s)." In The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship , edited by Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. David, Isabel, and Kumru F. Toktamış, eds. 'Everywhere Taksim' : Sowing the Seeds for a New Turkey at Gezi . Amsterdam University Press, 2015. Demiralp, Seda, and Evren Balta. "Defeating Populists: The Case of 2019 Istanbul Elections." South European Society and Politics 26, no. 1 (2021): 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2021.1923639 . Dinçel, Burç İdem. "Biomechanical Resonances in Turkey: The Working Method of Studio Oyuncuları." In The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold , edited by Jonathan Pitches and Stefan Aquilina. Routledge, 2023. Ejder, Eylem. "Reports from the Field: Contemporary Performance Criticism in Turkey— Critical Endeavours: Experimental Searches in Contemporary Performance Criticism in Turkey." Platform 13, no. 1 (2019): 103-15. Accessed 13 November 2025. https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/media/11708/09_eylemejder.pdf.pdf . Ergil, Başak, and Zerrin Yanıkkaya. "Towards New Perspectives on Anthologizing and Representing Turkish Theater in the Anglosphere." Middle Eastern Literatures , March 13, 2026, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475262x.2026.2629937 . Esen, Berk, and Şebnem Gümüşçü. "How to Fight Turkey's Authoritarian Turn." Journal of Democracy 36, no. 3 (2025): 106-20. Fişek, Emine, Aurélien Bellucci, Regina Lissowska-Postaremczak, Joseph Prestwich, and Clio Unger. "Stages of Gentrification: An International Roundtable." Theatre Research International, March 4, 2026, 1-13. Accessed March 7, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1080/03078833.2026.2634146 . Fişek, Emine. "Palimpsests of Violence: Urban Dispossession and Political Theatre in Istanbul." In "Performing Turkishness," special issue, Comparative Drama 52, nos. 3-4 (2018): 349-71. https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2018.0015 . Fişek, Emine. "THEAGENT ÖAW." Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften [Austrian Academy of Sciences]. Accessed April 14, 2026. https://www.oeaw.ac.at/projects/theagent . Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces." Trans. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22-27. https://doi.org/10.2307/464648 . Gürcan, Efe Can, and Efe Peker. Challenging Neoliberalism at Turkey's Gezi Park: from Private Discontent to Collective Class Action . Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Hemer, Oscar, and Hans-Åke Persson, eds. In the Aftermath of Gezi: From Social Movement to Social Change? Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. İş Cinayetleri Almanağı. 2012 [Almanac of Worker Murders] . 2013 ed. BirUmut Yayıncılık, 2013. Koç, Güneş, and Harun Aksu, eds. Another Brick in the Barricade: the Gezi Resistance and Its Aftermath . Wiener Verlag für Sozialforschung, 2015. Meerzon, Yana, Art Babayants, and Deniz Başar. "Ethos of New Stockholm: A City Invented to be Staged." Critical Stages . Last modified December 2024. Accessed February 4, 2026. https://www.critical-stages.org/30/ethos-of-new-stockholm-a-city-invented-to-be-staged/ . Metîn, Mîrza. "Kurdish Resistance and the Dramaturgy of Fire." Theatre Research International 44, no. 3 (2019): 314-17. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0307883319000397 . Onat, Fatma. "Traces of a Lost Archive: Four Selected Theatre Criticisms by Fatma Onat from 2010s' İstanbul." Edited by Deniz Başar. Critical Stages . Last modified December 2025. Accessed February 4, 2026. https://www.critical-stages.org/32/traces-of-a-lost-archive-four-selected-theatre-criticisms-by-fatma-onat-from-2010s-istanbul/ . Onat, Fatma, and Deniz Başar. "In A State of Constant Migration: Conversation with Fatma Onat." Critical Stages . Last modified December 2025. Accessed 4 February 2026. https://www.critical-stages.org/32/in-a-state-of-constant-migration-conversation-with-fatma-onat/ . Onat, Fatma, Deniz Başar, and Ayşe Bayramoğlu. New Stockholm'de Sonbahar = Payîza New Stockholmê = Autumn in New Stockholm . Mitos-Boyut, 2023. Özkırımlı, Umut, ed. The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi . Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Peker, Dilara Bağcı. "Gözaltına Alınan Ekrem İmamoğlu'na Destek İçin Saraçhane'ye Akın Eden Halkın Açtığı Pankartlar" [Banners Unfurled by People Flocking to Saraçhane in Support of Ekrem İmamoğlu, Who Was Taken into Custody]. Onedio. Last modified March 19, 2025. Accessed 29 January 2026. https://onedio.com/haber/gozaltina-alinan-ekrem-imamoglu-na-destek-icin-sarachane-ye-akin-eden-halkin-actigi-pankartlar-1280979 . Ravecca, Paulo. The Politics of Political Science: Re-writing Latin American Experiences . Routledge, 2019. Schmidt, Felix. "'The aura of invincibility is gone.'" IPS. Last modified 25 June 2019. Accessed 29 January 2026. https://www.ips-journal.eu/interviews/the-aura-of-invincibility-is-gone-3562/ . Schneider, Rebecca. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment . Routledge, 2011. Şeyben, Burcu Yasemin. Struggle and Survival under Authoritarianism in Turkey: Theatre under Threat . Lexington Books, 2021. Tecimer, Cem. "The Arrest of Istanbul's Mayor is Textbook Lawfare." Verfassungsblog - On Matters Constitutional. Last modified March 28, 2025. Accessed 29 January 2026. https://verfassungsblog.de/the-arrest-of-istanbuls-mayor-is-textbook-lawfare/ . Tekay, Cihan. "#AşağıBakmayacağız ('We Will Not Look Down')." South Atlantic Quarterly 121, no. 1 (2022): 210-19. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-9561671 . Tuncer, Anıl Can, and Gavin Blackburn. "Prosecutor seeks 2,352-year jail term for Istanbul's mayor over alleged corruption." Euronews. Last modified 11 November 2025. Accessed 12 November 2025. https://www.euronews.com/2025/11/11/prosecutor-seeks-2352-year-jail-term-for-istanbuls-mayor-over-alleged-corruption . "Turkey: 'I Cannot Breathe' Allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in the context of mass protests between 19—26 March must be investigated" [Index Number: EUR 44/9471/2025]. Amnesty International. Last modified 19 June 2025. Accessed 12 November 2025. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur44/9471/2025/en/ . Tüfekçi, Zeynep. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest . Yale University Press, 2017. Uğur, Zeynep. "Reappropriation of Public Space Autonomous Space Making from Istanbul's Alternative Theatre Scene to the Gezi Movement." In "Activism and Spectatorship," ed. Pieter Verstraete and Agata Łuksza, special issue, European Journal of Theatre and Performance , no. 4 (May 2022): 114-59. Ülgen, Övgü. "'Wine & Halva:' Post-Migration and The Limits of Western Liberalism." The Theatre Times. Last modified July 26, 2024. Accessed 4 February 2026. https://thetheatretimes.com/wine-halva-post-migration-and-the-limits-of-western-liberalism/ . Verstraete, Pieter. "In Search of a New Performativity after Gezi: On Symbolic Politics and New Dramaturgies in Turkey." Theatre Research International 44, no. 3 (2019): 273-90. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0307883319000312 . Yücesan-Özdemir, Gamze, ed. The Road to Gezi: Resistance and Counter-publics in 21st Century Turkey . Red Quill Books, 2016. "Zorlu Center'da işçi ölümü!" [Worker death in Zorlu Center]. Beşiktaş Postası. Last modified 14 May 2012. Accessed 29 January 2026. https://www.besiktaspostasi.com/zorlu-centerda-isci-olumu-29556/ . References About The Author(s) Deniz Başar (PhD Concordia University ‘21) is a theatre researcher and playwright from Turkey, and a 2021-2023 FRQSC post-doctoral fellow in Boğaziçi University. She has published multiple articles on puppetry and political performativity. Her play Wine and Halva was staged in Montreal (2024) and remounted by Teesri Duniya Theatre (2026-27). Autumn in New Stockholm (2023), a play she co-wrote with Fatma Onat and Ayşe Bayramoğlu, was published in a trilingual edition (Turkish, Kurdish, and English), and a French translation was staged in Montreal in 2026. She currently works at the Foundations Development Directorate of Sabancı University. 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 Reframing the Past: Situating Mesopotamian Theatrical Traditions Within a Cross‑Cultural Performance Continuum Gen Z Theatre from Turkey Taps into Repertoires of Millennial Resistance: A Comparison of the Short Festival Plays 'Helezoni' and 'Orange' Performance Review: THE CLOWN, by Mariam Basha. Directed by Kamal El Basha. El Hakawati Theatre, Jerusalem. August 28, 2025 in person, September 11, 2025 via WhatsApp video. Performance Review: DODI AND DIANA, by Kareem Fahmy. Directed by Reginald L. Douglas. Mosaic Theater, DC. September 23, 2025. Performance Review: ALMONDS BLOSSOM IN DEIR YASSIN, by Hanna Eady. Directed by Hanna Eady. Cherry Street Village, Seattle. October 25, 2025. Book Review: Samer Al-Saber. A Movement’s Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestinian Theatre (Stanford University Press, 2025). Pp. 328. Hardcover, Paperback, E-book. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 20, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Mary Said What She Said Published: July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF By Marvin Carlson Image Credits: Article This report on a current work by Robert Wilson, will hardly come as a surprise to long-time readers of European Stages or its precedent journal, Western European Stages . Wilson’s work was noted in the first issue of WES (Fall, 1989) and the following issue contained not only a full essay on his recent work in Germany, but also a complete chronology of upcoming Wilson productions. Since then Wilson has been one of the artists most frequently mentioned in both journals, and although he was born in America, he has created the majority of his many works in Europe, as is the case with Mary Said What She Said . First presented at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris in 1919 and subsequently in Vienna, Amsterdam, Florence, Hamburg and South Korea. The work finally appeared at the Skirball Center in New York in March 2025. Its success has been great everywhere and in New York, the five productions at the 850 seat Skirball were totally sold out. Mary Said What She Said by Robert Wilson / Photograph © Lucie Jansch When the audience entered the theatre, they found the proscenium filled with the representation of an elegantly draped traditional red theatre curtain, with a rather odd addition, an ornately framed image high in the center, perhaps three by four feet, containing a continuously running black and white film loop of a small English bulldog chasing its tail and then pausing to look at the camera and be temporarily replaced by the silent film type title “You fool me. I am not too smart.” Carousel type music, seemingly unrelated to the Philip Glass type score for the rest of the production, composed by Ludovico Einaudi, accompanied this introduction, which did not actually begin until almost fifteen minutes after the announced curtain time. The scene occupied most of the audience’s attention for a strangely long time. Apparently, most reviewers found it as incomprehensible as I did, because I found it mentioned in only one report, that of Elisabeth Vincentelli in the New York Times, who boldly suggested the dog’s action represented the obsessiveness of Mary Stuart as a character, which to be honest makes as little sense to me as the dog does. Thankfully, the production contains few other interpellations of this sort but takes us into familiar Wilson territory. Wilson has worked with leading actress Isabel Huppert before, most notably in 1989 when they created a structurally and visually similar staging of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, with a performance text created by Darryl Pinckney, who also created the text for Mary Said , as well as for several other Wilson creations. The M ary text, like others by Pinckney, is extremely demanding, with frequent echoes and repetitions, text clusters, and unconventional arrangements of material. Rather than attempt to make the text more accessible, Huppert has done quite the opposite, employing the incredible range of her voice to constantly vary the pitch, volume, speed and intensity other lines. A common pattern is for her to begin a sequence in silence and then gradually increase the speech and intensity of her speech until she is pouring out upon a stunned audience an avalanche of verbal material, sometimes interspersed with strangled chocks and laughter or half-intelligible cries. This common pattern though is subject to infinite variation, resulting in as dazzling a display of linguistic virtuosity as I have ever seen on stage. From time to time this already mixed text is further complicated by laughter, cries and phrases apparently re-recorded by Huppert and now projected on top of or alongside her live voice from various locations in the auditorium. Of course, this means that early into the production even French-speaking audiences realize that they are not going to be able to follow the text, but must simply let it wash over them, relying upon key words and frequent repetitions to provide what orientation they need. Mary Said What She Said by Robert Wilson / Photograph © Lucie Jansch English speakers are even more challenged, despite the presumed aids of English supertitles above and to both sides of the stage. The normal problems of such devices are always present—the impossibility of accurately coordinating even moderately faithful translations with the timing and rhythms of stage speech and the necessity of focusing away from the stage action to read the translation—but here both problems are exaggerated. The complex text of Pinckney and explosive delivery of Huppert guarantee that the projected texts often flash by too quickly to be read and in any case often have no relation to the spoken one. In addition, the intensely bright Wilson backdrops overpower the relatively dim projected texts except in the rare blackout scenes. Wilson’s settings tend toward the minimalistic, and that is especially the case here. Aside from Mary herself (and at one point a silhouetted double of her upstage) the stage is totally devoid of scenery, consisting only of a large rectangular background, almost always divided into three blending layers, the middle one tending toward white, the upper and lower ones normally some shade of blue or grey, the hue often changing but the brightness fairly consistent except for complete backouts. Two narrow bands of horizontal white light complete the stage picture one running across the stage below the backscreen, the other at the front of the stage, about where footlights would be located, if used. The only object which appears other than the queen is a white Cinderella-type slipper which she picks up from the floor and briefly examines before discarding it. This being a Wilson production, it is picked out by a distinctive Wilsonian white mini spotlight as Huppert holds it up. Similar accents, virtually a trademark of Wilson’s theatre, are elsewhere used to pick out one of Huppert’s outstretched and posed hands or her enormously expressive face. The first such facial accent comes almost twenty minutes into this ninety-minute production and is particularly striking because up until that point Huppert has remained largely motionless as a striking black silhouette upstage center. The sudden focus upon her flowing white face and especially her brilliantly red outlined mouth created an impression remarkably like that of Beckett’s powerful Not I, which I had recently witnessed at the Irish Repertory. An even more striking visual echo occurred soon after, when Huppert’s expressive visage, now twisted in anger, for a brief and unique moment, turns green. For a New York audience at least, she momentarily became the wicked witch of the popular theatre and film. Huppert’s simple but elegant Renaissance costume, with flowing gown and puff should sleeves (designed by Jacques Reynaud) serves as a kind of ornate visual pedestal to her constantly changing face. Thie gown is so dark that even when she is in full light there is a suggestion of a silhouette. Around her neck, however, she wears an ornate lace collar which, especially when the tight spot is focused on her face, gives the appropriate if chilling impression of a severed head. Mary Said What She Said by Robert Wilson / Photograph © Lucie Jansch Huppert’s physical movements are far more restricted than her voice, and are often mechanical, even puppet-like, especially in the closing moments which suggest a slow and stylized period dance. Her first movement, from her long held post up center diagonally to far downstage right, is done so slowly and gradually that she seems to glide almost imperceptibly to this new position. As the evening progresses, however, she repeats this same downward cross, almost mechanically but it a very wide variety of ways, often quite frantically with slashing movements of her arms. These are also the sequences which are delivered with the most verbal force. The final fifteen minutes or so of the production are a series of brief scenes recapitulating, with slight variations, previous sequences, with one notable exception, which seems, like the dog clip in the opening sequence, to have dropped in from some other production. For the only time in the evening, the figure of Mary almost disappears, covered by a rolling cloud of stage smoke, while the action is carried on by three projected recorded voices. One is apparently Huppert’s, listing a series of historical names (all martyrs?), another is an American voice, perhaps Wilson’s, who repeats slowly and deliberately a series of short phrases in English, primarily “I am NOT not here.” A French child’s voice then apparently attempts to repeat the phases in French. A colleague helpfully suggested to me that this scene was meant to suggest Many’s concern with his son being forced to learn English. This certainly gives the scene more justification than the dog video and occasional other seemingly gratuitous directorial touches, but I still found the production essentially a memorable showcase of the formidable talents of one of the world’s greatest living actresses. References References About the author(s) Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature, and Middle Eastern Studies at the Graduate Centre, CUNY. He earned a PhD in Drama and Theatre from Cornell University (1961), where he also taught for a number of years. Marvin has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, Greece, the ATHE Career Achievement Award, the ASTR Distinguished Scholarship Award, the Bernard Hewitt prize, the George Jean Nathan Award, the Calloway Prize, the George Freedley Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the founding editor of the journal Western European Stages and the author of over two hundred scholarly articles and fifteen books that have been translated into fourteen languages. His most recent books are Ten Thousand Nights: Highlights from 50 Years of Theatre-Going (2017) and Hamlet's Shattered Mirror: Theatre and the Real (2016). European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents The 2025 Festival International New Drama (FIND) at Berlin Schaubühne Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 Willem Dafoe in conversation with Theater der Zeit The Puzzle: A new musical in the Spoleto Festival, Italy presented by La MaMa Umbria Varna Summer International Theatre Festival Mary Said What She Said The 62nd Berliner Theatertreffen: Stories and Theatrical Spaces That Realize the Past, Present and Future. Interview with Walter Bart (Artistic Leader, Wunderbaum Collective & Director, Die Hundekot-Attacke) from the 2024 Berliner Theatertreffen Duende and Showbiz: A Theatrical Odyssey Through Spain’s Soul Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.