Jennifer Goodlander 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 Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band Jennifer Goodlander By Published on May 23, 2022 Download Article as PDF For many, Cambodia and Cambodian American identities remain “unrepresentable.” [1] Jonathan H. X. Lee troubles the relationships between Southeast Asian, American, and specific national identities to suggest a rethinking of identity that might “arise from calibrating subjectivities and internal-alchemies of memories, histories, and visions.” [2] For people from Cambodia, questions of citizenship or status further come into play when considering how the United States shares responsibility for genocide because its policy of bombing the Cambodian-Vietnamese border instigated the political situation that allowed Pol Pot to come to power. Additionally, recent US immigration policy has resulted in the deportation of hundreds of Cambodian Americans to Cambodia, even though many of them have no memory of their “home” land. How then does Lauren Yee in her new play Cambodian Rock Band ( CRB ) craft a moving story of a father and daughter in Cambodia while complicating discourses about Cambodian and Cambodian American identities and responsibility? One of the top ten most-produced plays in 2019 in US professional theatres, CRB will go on a highly anticipated national tour in 2022. The play tells the story of Neery, who is working in Cambodia to help bring the top villains of the Khmer Rouge to justice, and her father, whom she discovers is one of the few survivors of the regime’s infamous prison, S-21. Although physical violence is not completely absent from the play, it is not the focus of emotional or narrative impact. [3] Music moves the play from family drama into larger discussions of truth and healing, memory and politics. Cathy J. Schlund-Vials names this complicated relationship “Cambodian Syndrome,” “a transnational set of amnesiac politics revealed through hegemonic modes of public policy and memory.” [4] The often illusionistic play destabilizes truth through music. Jill Dolan describes the limits of illusionism and focuses on primarily the visual and textual apparatus of representation that might be used to destabilize hegemonic readings. [5] I am proposing using music outside the limits of Brechtian tactics; it is music, not the bodies onstage, that offers the dramaturgical means for representation. Musical dramaturgy examines the way music functions, beyond invoking emotion or creating atmosphere, within a theatrical production; “what music does , rather than what is .” [6] Often, within musical dramaturgy, the focus is primarily, or even solely, on how music lives within or creates the dramatic text. [7] I expand this notion, because music, like the stage itself, is “haunted,” to borrow Marvin Carlson’s term. [8] In CBR , lyric, melody/harmony, cultures, and histories inform what we hear and what that sound means. The play opens with a live band on stage playing two songs before the house lights dim and the dialogue begins. The bouncy, joyful sound of “Cyclo” (both the name of the song and of the band) begins in the diatonic scale commonly used by American rock bands. This is in contrast to the opening refrain of the next song “Uku,” which features a pentatonic scale, the five-note scale that often suggests an “Asian” sound to the listener. A haunting flute dances lightly against the rhythm of the guitar and is complemented by percussion that invokes sounds of distant thunder or gunfire. A female singer adds another level of sound, as her voice invokes a feeling of longing. The words are in Khmer, but the sound suggests the meaning, even without translation: The windy season makes me think of my villageI think of the old people, young people, aunts and unclesWe used to run and play, hide and seekBut now we are far apart [9] This pair of songs challenges and supports various misconceptions of Asian identities as Other and complicates global connections between Asia and the United States. Music serves as a backbone for the play and a significant element of the story; the songs are a mix of Cambodian and American radio-hits from the past and new compositions by the California-based group Dengue Fever. The audience experiences the music in the immediate present, but the music invokes the past and another culture through language and sound. Just as the music jumps across time and locale, the story of Cambodian-born Chum reconciling his relationship with his American daughter Neery explores different cultural values and intertwined histories. Yee’s deep obsession with the music of Dengue Fever inspired her to write the play, but as the play developed, the music also became central to the play’s dramaturgy. The songs do not always propel the action forward, as it would in a musical, but director Chay Yew explains, “the music is actually another character in Lauren’s play.” [10] Discussions of the play often mention that the music makes the play accessible because rock music would be familiar to an audience generally unfamiliar with Cambodia—“music is universal and defies borders.” [11] I argue that the music does more than make the play accessible. In this essay, I use CRB as a case to explore how musical dramaturgies might articulate complex Asian identities that complicate the limits of visuality. Similarly, recent scholarship on Asian and Asian American identities also focuses on the aural. [12] I use music, as Daphne Lei describes, to move identity from a binary of Asian/Asian American to a neither/nor state where “the past is ‘forgotten’ but the future is not yet reached,” and ends with the hope that “interlinked Asian and American ethnicities can be created, negotiated, and performed.” [13] I argue that the music within the play offers an alternative means to engage some of the complex relationships between Southeast Asia and the United States and mirrors a similar need for engagement within scholarship between Asian performance and Asian American performance. From the beginning, the play establishes the limits between visual versus aural regimes of knowledge. As the opening music concludes, everyone is seated and the house lights dim. A man appears onstage to thank and introduce the band. He says, “From their first, last, ONLY album, recorded in Phnom Penh, April 1974. A tape that—like so much of Cambodia’s music of the time—no longer exists,” then he changes his tone, “but that’s not what you think of when you think of Cambodia, is it? YOU think of something a little more like this.” [14] The man clicks through several slides of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge that the stage directions describe as “Black and white. Gruesome.” [15] The images are from Cambodia in 1975-1979, when the Khmer Rouge, the name commonly given to Cambodia’s Communist Party, attempted to turn the country back to Year Zero. They emptied the cities, abolished the currency, dismantled education, and sought to eliminate any reference to the past or foreign influence. More than two million Cambodians died, some from starvation or illness, but many were also killed for petty crimes, such as stealing food. The country’s elite prisoners, including artists and intellectuals, were held at detention centers where they were tortured, forced to confess their “crimes,” and driven out of town to dig a shallow grave before they were killed. More than 20,000 people are thought to have been tortured and executed at Tuol Sleng (commonly called S-21), a former high school in Phnom Penh. When the Vietnamese liberated the city, only seven people were left alive in the prison. [16] Now a museum, Tuol Sleng represents both the power and limits of visual representation. This site of both horror and later attempts at reconciliation is one of the most popular tourist sites in Cambodia. When I visited in 2016, I was overwhelmed by the hundreds of photos hanging on the walls—mug shots of victims and documentation of the torture they endured. Scholar and Khmer Rouge survivor Boreth Ly describes how “the Khmer Rouge was very visually focused. It was a scopic regime that enforced visual surveillance on its victim and deliberately traumatized and destroyed their vision.” [17] When he was twelve years old, he and his grandmother finally returned to their home after four years of forced labor. The house was empty, and they searched for any photographs of their relatives, but they were all gone. He contrasts this loss with the multitude of photos at Tuol Sleng, documenting the prisoners who were executed. [18] These photographs have circulated globally in museums, books, and online as the primary representation of the genocide. Michelle Caswall, describes how, “a complex layering of silencing is revealed” [19] and “Because of both the transformative power of the creation of these mug shots and the complete oppressiveness of Tuol Sleng as a total institution within a totalitarian state, there are no whispers of the victims in these records; the photographs, like the dead they depict, remain frustratingly silent.” [20] The problem is that the images confound the viewer and render the victim silent. Yee engages the problem of visual representation through the many overt mentions of photographs and seeing in the play. The man in the opening is Kaing Guek Eav, or Comrade Duch as he was known, the head officer of S-21. [21] He taunts the gruesome images of the genocide—“boring,” “tragique,” “genocide, genocide, genocide, boo,” and threatens that he is always “watching watching always watching.” [22] Later, Neary realizes that her father, Chum, is likely the eighth survivor featured in a photograph. She confronts him; he confirms his identity but refuses to testify. Chum argues that the truth cannot be found in a photograph, and that if Duch is guilty, so is he. In a flashback, Yee suggests that the photographs that really matter are the ones that never existed. Chum delayed his family’s escape so his band could record the last song on their album. They want to take a photograph, but they forgot to bring a camera; there was no photo and there was no escape. These examples illustrate the complicated ways that visual evidence is threatening, unreliable, and incomplete. Another method is required to sort through the various relationships between Cambodia and American identities in the play and music offers that means. Two songs played within the prison space towards the end of the play are especially effective at dramatizing this history. Chum is eventually arrested and brought to S-21. He tries to hide his identity by claiming he is a banana seller, but he eventually ends up in a room with Duch himself. Duch asks about some words that Chum wrote and learns that they are the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” Duch orders Chum to play the song, but Chum requires a guitar because, “I just want you to hear how it’s supposed to be played. So you know the absolute truth,” and for the first time in months, the sound of music calms Duch and allows him to sleep. [23] Chum’s words echo Dylan’s own feelings that a song is more than its lyrics; “they’re meant to be sung, not read.” [24] Dramaturgically the insertion of this quintessential American anti-war song echoes perceptions about the futility of the American effort in Southeast Asia, and especially Cambodia. Even though Dylan conceived of this song as a big statement to unite the civils rights movement and folk music, many critics dismissed it as an “empty gesture” with “little political relevance.” [25] Perhaps Duch is lulled to sleep by this reminder that likewise America has little relevance and is unlikely to come save the suffering people in Cambodia. While in prison, Chum writes, and on the night of his scheduled execution, he plays one last song, “Hammer and Nail,” the first half of which is in English: Something old Something new Something borrowed And something blue Couldn’t keep me from trying and fighting Doing everything I can To somehow end up with you again. You can call me a fool And I know that I am Won’t let you slip through my fingers Just like sand [26] On the surface, the song is about a pending wedding and a possible break-up, but the singer promises to fight for his love. Musically it bridges the sound of American folk and Cambodian surfer rock. From the first line, “Something Old,” until “just like sand,” the chord progression moves slowly up the scale, and structurally is not unlike the Dylan song. The second part repeats the lyrics in Khmer, but this time with back-up singers adding an angelic, otherworldly quality. In the context of the scene, it is about fighting for life, about fighting for something bigger than oneself. The play ends with Chum and his daughter playing “I’m Sixteen,” originally by Ros Serey Sothea, together in the prison/museum. Sothea was one of the most beloved singers of Cambodian rock before the Khmer Rouge, and “I’m Sixteen” functions as an anthem connecting Cambodians to the past. Also, this mesmerizing anthem both inspired and is featured on Dengue Fever’s first album. [27] The song and the moment onstage combine to create a kind of, to borrow Sean Metzger’s term, “temporal folding,” where “subjects emerge in a relation of figures through one another, through actions in the present associated with those in the past” that allows for a simultaneous representation of past/present and Asian/Asian American. [28] The staging reinforces the power of music, as the stage lights shift to indicate that the sun is coming up and the stage directions read “behind them, the sun rises higher and higher, blinding us. We see the bandmates’ silhouettes as they rock out to one last song.” [29] Sight is obliterated, and representation happens in the music alone. Postscript Since the world premiere of CRB in 2018, the context of the show and even this article has changed, making the play’s message even more imperative, and music continues to be the crux of representation. On July 20, 2020, in response to cancelled productions due to Covid–19 shutdowns and the growing Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd, Lauren Yee and Joe Ngo [30] announced the #CRBChallenge . Ngo articulated a debt to the Black civil rights movement and the intertwined histories of rock music: “Who hasn’t borrowed Afro-Caribbean beats?” [31] The challenge called for singers around the world to recreate songs from the show or Cambodia more generally in order to raise awareness about and to fundraise for organizations working for both Black and Cambodian American communities. The resulting videos, with #CRBChallenge , demonstrate a multi-faceted connection to the play, its story and music, and the depth of talent among Asians and Asian Americans. References [1] Ashley Thompson, “Forgetting to Remember, Again: On Curatorial Practice and ‘Cambodian Art’ in the Wake of Genocide,” diacritics 41 no. 2 (2013): 82-109. [2] Jonathan H. X. Lee, “Southeast Asian Americans: Memories, Visions, and Subjectivities,” in Southeast Asian Diaspora in the United States: Memories and Visions, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow , ed. Jonathan H. X. Lee, Cambridge Scholars Publisher (Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom: 2014), 1. [3] The script calls for several scenes of torture and violence, however, I have read hundreds of reviews and these scenes are not the focus and rarely mentioned. [4] Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 13. [5] Jill Dolan, Feminist Spectator as Critic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 1-3. [6] Kim Baston, “Not Just ‘Evocative’: The Function of Music in Theatre,” Australasian Drama Studies 67 (2015), 5. Emphasis in original. [7] Carl Dahlhaus and Mary Whittal, “What is a Musical Drama?” Cambridge Opera Journal 1, no. 2 (1989): 95-96. [8] Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). [9] Lauren Yee, “Cambodian Rock Band,” American Theatre 35, no. 6 (July/August 2018), 49. The songs used in the production are written by Dengue Fever. In my descriptions of the music, I am relying on my memory of the 2019 production at the Victory Gardens, Chicago, IL, directed by Marti Lyons, and the cast album that was released in May 2020. [10] Donatella Galella, “Listening to Cambodian Rock Band: An Interview with Lauren Yee and Chay Yew,” Performance Matters 6, no. 2 (2020), 127. [11] Ibid., 130. [12] For more on Asian American identities and accents see Shilpa Davé, “Racial Accents, Hollywood Casting, and Asian American Studies,” Cinema Journal 56 no. 3 (2017): 142-147. Also for insight on performing race and the music of Dengue Fever see Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America (New York: New York University Press, 2013), especially chapter 5. Spoken word as music, which playwright Chay Yew calls the “nonmusical musical,” is also key to identity in Stephen Hong Sohn, “Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew’s Wonderland ,” The Journal of American Drama and Theatre 29, vol. 1 (2016). [13] Daphne Lei, “Staging the Binary: Asian American Theatre in the Late Twentieth Century,” A Companion to Twentieth Century American Drama , ed. David Krasner (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 301-317. [14] Yee, CRB , 49. [15] Ibid. [16] David P. Chandler, Voices From S-21: Terror and History In Pol Pot’s Secret Prison (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). [17] Boreth Ly, “Of Performance and the Persistent Temporality of Trauma: Memory, Art, and Visions,” positions: east asia cultures critique 16, no. 11 (2008), 118. [18] Ibid., 115-116. [19] Michelle Caswell, Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 7. [20] Ibid., 158. [21] For a history about Duch and his trial, see Alexander Laban Hinton, Man Or Monster?: The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). [22] Yee, CRB , 50. [23] Music as a tool of survival is perhaps taken from the real-life story of Arn-Chorn-Pond whose life was saved because he played music for the Khmer Rouge. This story is retold by Patricia McCormick in the novel Never Fall Down (New York: Balzer + Bray, 2012). [24] Dylan quoted in Larry Starr, Listening to Bob Dylan (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 1. [25] Starr, Listening , 34. [26] Yee, CRB , 65. [27] Nic Cohn, “A Voice from the Killing Fields,” The Guardian , 19 May 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/may/20/worldmusic.features (accessed 25 January 2022). [28] Sean Metzger, “At the Vanishing Point: Theater and Asian/American Critique,” American Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2011), 279. [29] Yee, CRB , 69. [30] Ngo, whose parents are Chinese Cambodian and survived the Khmer Rouge, played the original Chum in CRB and has recreated the role for numerous productions. [31] “Welcome to the CRB Challenge! #CRBChallenge ,” Facebook, 5 July 2020, https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=282008519582298 (accessed 20 January 2022). Footnotes About The Author(s) Jennifer Goodlander is an Associate Professor at Indiana University in the Department of Comparative Literature. Jennifer has published numerous articles and two books: Women in the Shadows: Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali (Ohio University Press, 2016) and Puppets and Cities: Articulating Identities in Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018). Her current research looks at transnational Southeast Asian identities as expressed in performance, literature, and art. 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.

David Coley 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 The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. David Coley By Published on June 4, 2017 Download Article as PDF The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. The work of David Henry Hwang represents an intersection of many of the most prominent concerns of late 20 th century and early 21 st century drama. His plays tackle numerous facets of identity politics, such as race, gender, sexuality, and ancestry. Esther Kim Lee’s extensive survey of Hwang’s theatrical output traces all of these themes through his successes, failures, and participation in cultural discourse. Combining her own work with that of three other scholars in the final chapter, Lee’s work functions as history, analysis, and criticism, providing a portrait of one of American theatre’s most notable dramatists. Hwang is best known for his Tony Award-winning play M. Butterfly , and though it does occupy its own chapter, much more room in this text is devoted to his other works, some of which are rather obscure. This attempt at a comprehensive survey is somewhat undercut by the relative absence of discussion of his work on musicals, most of which, with the exception of Flower Drum Song , are summed up in a couple of pages. Hwang’s position on these projects as a script doctor, rather than as primary author, may contribute to the scant attention Lee pays to them. Still, despite some gaps, Lee deftly covers most all of Hwang’s plays in an accessible and thorough manner. Lee’s approach with each text is to summarize the major plot points, but then delve into the subtext of each work and how it connects with the overall concerns of Hwang as a dramatist. She starts with a trio of plays from the beginning of Hwang’s career that reflect his early grappling with some of the themes listed above as well as the culture of his home state of California. FOB (an acronym for Fresh Off the Boat) shows Hwang exploring different types of immigrant and minority experiences in America through two contrasting Chinese American characters. Lee explores the influence of Sam Shepard on this work, as well as Hwang’s wrestling with the “dilemma of assimilation” (12). The other two plays in that first (informal) trilogy, The Dance and the Railroad and Family Devotions see Hwang dramatizing the immigrant experience through its dual challenges: fitting into a new culture while maintaining one’s own. Lee follows Hwang as he expands his thematic vision to include other cultures and ideas, incorporating Japanese stories and settings in The House of Sleeping Beauties and The Sound of a Voice . The reason for this is not just a sense of interculturalism, but also to explore gender. As Lee writes, “The Japanese tradition provides the cultural underpinnings for more rigid gender divisions, which Hwang uses to examine how gender is embodied and performed in the game of power and love” (38). She also discusses Rich Relations , one of Hwang’s notable failures that saw him turn from ethnicity as a theme before returning to it in his most famous play, M. Butterfly . Lee spends the entirety of her third chapter on that text, reviewing the scholarly, critical, and commercial responses to the play. The play would launch Hwang to a new level of prominence that would drive his career in unexpected ways. The book chronicles how Hwang’s notoriety led to him being drawn into protests over whitewashing in the casting of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon . His experiences with that controversy would make its way into his play Yellow Face , which Lee covers in the fifth chapter. Before that, the fourth chapter is devoted to Hwang’s 1990s output, consisting of Bondage , Face Value , another notable failure which closed during Broadway previews, Trying to Find Chinatown , and his successful return to Broadway in Golden Child . In his recent works, Hwang has continued to explore the intersecting concerns of race, gender, and globalization, as Lee notes, in texts that draw on the personal experiences of himself and his family. Hwang’s metatheatricality evolves to provide multiple perspectives on a given plot or character, with the combination of fiction and nonfiction exemplifying his style in several of his plays. Golden Child and Yellow Face , in particular, manifest this tendency. Lee writes that in Yellow Face , “…the characters wear multiple masks, and it is impossible to tell which mask is the ‘real’ one, or whether ‘realness’ exists at all” (114). The last two productions Lee covers, Chinglish and Kung Fu , a play about Bruce Lee, both deal with travel and communication between the United States and China, though the former brings together most all of the themes present in Hwang’s work more potently than the latter. After Lee reaches the end of Hwang’s oeuvre, she brings in three other scholars to give further critical analysis on previously discussed texts. The final chapter contains three short essays in which Josephine Lee compares Hwang’s 2001-updated script of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song to its 1958 original, Dan Bacalzo examines multiple versions of Golden Child , and Daphne Lei explores the globalized context of Chinglish . Esther Kim Lee’s prose deftly mixes biographical information with textual analysis, crafting a highly readable study that should be useful to both new and seasoned scholars. The breadth of the textual analysis is impressive, with the authors analyzing multiple versions of certain texts to trace Hwang’s evolution as an artist. Those interested in Hwang’s work will find plenty to enrich their understanding, while those studying Asian American theatre will find his work placed within that discourse. Details about specific productions are also found throughout, though the focus remains on the written texts. Those hoping for a larger analysis of production aesthetics and the ways in which Hwang’s texts have inspired particular design choices may find it lacking, but the book will certainly lead devotees of the author to further study of his contributions to the American stage. References Footnotes About The Author(s) DAVID COLEY St. Gregory’s University 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. 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Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 16 Fall 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. By Areeg Ibrahim Published: November 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967. By Tiran Manucharyan. Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2024; pp. 270. Tiran Manucharyan’s Of Kings and Clowns: Leadership in Contemporary Egyptian Theatre Since 1967 is an important addition to the literature on theatre and leadership. Manucharyan who is a Lecturer of Arabic as well as Comparative Literature at the University of St. Andrews, Scottland is a budding scholar of Egyptian theatre. Composed of 270 pages, this monograph is a rewriting of the author’s PhD dissertation and is comprised of a preface, an introduction, seven chapters and a conclusion. The book deals with the transformations of Egyptian theatre since 1967 until the 2011 revolution through theoretical discourses, essays and plays of Yusuf Idris, as well as the analysis of the plays of Abul-‘Ela El-Salamouny, Lenin El-Ramly, and Fathia El-‘Assal, along with some theatre makers of the younger generation such as Sondos Shabayek, Mahmoud Gamal Hedeny, and Magdy El-Hamzawy. In the preface, Manucharyan explains that the book explores the development of Egyptian theatre since the period following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, shedding light on political and cultural leadership. The author maintains, “The book observes the ways Egyptian theatre has negotiated its place within the socio-political environment in which it operates, not only transforming itself but also inciting transformation” (xi). The author also proposes that this book is innovative as a monograph in English that provides an examination of the progress of theatre as well as a detailed analysis of plays, focusing on leadership and taking gender into consideration, especially in the dramatic and theatrical works of women playwrights and theatre makers. In the introduction, the author begins by exploring the way in which events on stage can integrate with real-life events, and recalls the essays of iconic Egyptian playwright Yusuf Idris who proposed removing the boundaries between stage and audience, in order to emphasize theatre’s role in society. After going through the relationship between leadership and theatre, Manucharyan refers to the works of some of the major Egyptian playwrights of the period, referring to Idris, El-Salamouny, El-Ramly and El-‘Assal. In chapter one, “ Tamasruh : Between Theatricalisation and Carnivalesque,” the author link’s Yusuf Idris’ tamasruh , a coined term which refers to dissolving the boundary between audience and spectator, with Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalesque. The chapter links these concepts to the overarching theme: the relation of clowns and jesters to the carnivalesque. By extension, intellectuals/playwrights represent such archetypes, especially when they assume their role as leaders in the society. Idris’ vision of theatre, which is informed by indigenous popular forms of Egyptian theatre, such as the shadow theatre ( khayal al-zill ) and open-air rural performances ( samir ), calls for the stage as a space for public and collective participation (21). The chapter explores such concepts in relation to the plays of El-Salamouny, El-Ramly, and El-‘Assal. Each of the next four chapters takes up individual playwrights. Chapter two continues to explore Yusuf Idris’ ideas about establishing a uniquely Egyptian theatre, and then brings the discussion back to the clown and the role of women, with some references to plays of the aforementioned playwrights. (Since both this chapter and the previous engage in Idris’ thought, one wonders why they were not integrated into one chapter.) Chapter three focuses on the role of theatre and explores representations of leadership in the plays of Abul-‘Ela El-Salamouny. Similar to Idris’ ideas, El-Salamouny integrates indigenous forms of performance and theatricalization in his plays in order to have an open dialogue with the audience (63). The plays are discussed in relation to what they present about leaders, kings, clowns and women. Chapter four explores Lenin El-Ramly’s use of comedy as “the art of cunning” to satirize the socio-political milieu. Despite El-Ramly’s slightly different stance on the use of indigenous popular forms in theatre, his use of meta-dramatic techniques also offers a space for theatricalization. As in many of his plays, El-Ramly makes use of foolishness and madness to explore authoritarianism and institutionalization versus leadership and social change. Chapter five links silence and carnivalization while discussing the plays of Fathia El-‘Assal, as representative of Egyptian women playwrights. Manucharyan opines, “She makes female characters central to the action, yet still silent and muted to start with, making them seen and heard within the silence” (158). El-‘Assal’s plays thus portray leadership, women rights and societal inequalities. The final two chapters take up the 2011 revolution and the theatre it inspired. In chapter six, “Of Times and Spaces,” the author begins by referring to the 2011 revolution and then sheds light on the realities of the revolutionary change. The chapter discusses the time and space of the discussed plays (a part that could have been integrated into the previous chapters) before moving to explore how public spaces played a role during revolutionary times. The chapter then relates the revolution to the carnivalesque and the emergence of verbatim theatre, or public spectacles that are based on lived testimonies of the revolution. Some women theatre makers also had a paramount role in producing such kind of theatre. Chapter seven, “Theatre and the Revolution,” focuses on the post-2011 plays. It explores the relationship between theatre and the 2011 revolution in relation to the plays of the younger generation of theatre makers as well as some post-revolution plays by the previously-discussed dramatists. The chapter suggests that the 2011 revolution had its impact on theatre in allowing for the emergence of new forms and new voices (213). For instance, Sondos Shabayek and team’s Tahrir Monologues presented verbatim documentary theatre that narrated testimonies of the revolution’s participants. Mahmoud Gamal Hedeny and Mohamed Gabr’s 1980 Onwards dramatized the uncertainty of Egyptian youth after the revolution. As for Magdy El-Hamzawy’s Report on Revolutionary Circumstances , it was a staged play about the role of an underprivileged Kid in supporting the revolution. To sum up, Tiran Manucharyan’s Of Kings and Clowns: Leadership in Contemporary Egyptian Theatre Since 1967 provided an encyclopedic study of Egyptian theatre from the last third of the twentieth century onto the 2011 revolution. The book is a good read both for an average reader as well as scholars and students of theatre and Arabic studies. The strength of the book lies in its survey and analysis of leadership, carnivalization, and the search for a theatrical national identity in the plays of three established playwrights, as well as three theatre makers of the younger generation. The book uses these phenomena as lenses to look at the plays El-Salamouny, El-Ramly, and El-‘Assal both individually and in relationship to one another. The book also clearly uses the ideas of Egyptian playwright Yusuf Idris as part of the theoretical literature about the discussion. It is unclear as to whether the analysis of Idris’ plays is central to the book’s arguments about these phenomena or simply helps clarify the playwright’s theoretical concepts. The book also could have benefited from using some of the topical literature in leadership studies. Overall, t he book engages both the specialized and average reader in a journey with bits and pieces of enjoyable information and analyses about Egyptian theatre and representative plays. The book closes with a profound analysis of the 2011 revolution and highlights the role Egyptian theatre performances narrated, documented, and came to terms with that event. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Areeg Ibrahim is Professor and Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Arts in Helwan University, Cairo and was the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Effat University, KSA. She has published widely in both Arabic and English on Arabic and international Drama. She is the co-editor of a Routledge volume, Rewriting Narratives in Egyptian Theatre . She has also translated a number of Theatre books for the National Center for Translation. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Review: GUERNICA, GAZA: VISIONS FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. By Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi Performance Review: The Tutor Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Robert Wilson Yearbook Volume 1 Visit Journal Homepage They Asked Me to Draw a City: Postdramatic Imaginings in Robert Wilson’s Direction of Strindberg’s A Dream Play John P. Bray By Published on May 1, 2026 Download Article as PDF In his online presentation on Zoom in 2021, as part of the Georgia Summit of Theatre Innovators, Robert Wilson took a marker and explained to his viewers that he was once asked to design a city as an assignment for an architecture class taught by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy at the Pratt Institute. He drew an apple with a crystal cube inside. He explained: “the crystal cube is the core of a community. It can reflect the universe, the world.” Wilson equates the crystal cube with a space such as a cathedral in the middle of a medieval village, a place for communal and personal reflection. “A cathedral is a place where if you are rich or you are poor you could enter. It was a place where composers showed music, played music. Painters showed paintings. [...] It was the center, the core of the apple.” [i] As quoted in Cathy Turner’s book Dramaturgy and Architecture, Wilson says “What I learned from her was to apply order and disorder in a way that was meaningful. I think that’s my fascination with architecture. An architect can design a structure, but within that structure, you can let your imagination run free.” [ii] He continues, During her [Sibyl Moholy-Nagy] lectures she presented us in rapid succession with a car from 1950, a Renaissance painting, a Baroque chandelier, a Byzantine mosaic, a chair by Frank Lloyd Wright, a shoe from the early 19 th Century – so that I could hardly avoid grasping the inherent correlation between architecture and theatre. [iii] This correlation between architecture and theatre would speak to Wilson’s process, his vision, for theatrical creation, and by “theatrical creation,” I mean his dance plays and silent operas, as well as his approach to scripted plays and established stories. He creates a visual book (the elements of design and movement) and audio book (spoken text and so on) separately, so that, as he says, “when I put them together, they are running in opposition, but I find moments of shifting so they are in line.” [iv] He furthermore notes, “My work is not arbitrarily placed. At the end, when they come together, it is not a collage. I consciously construct the dualism between what I am hearing and what I see [...] and how they reinforce each other.” [v] It is with Wilson’s direction of established, Modernist plays that this essay is primarily concerned. I am going to focus on his 1998 production of Strindberg’s A Dream Play which I had the opportunity to see at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in November of 2000. The piece has stayed with me for over twenty-four years. My argument is Wilson, through his process, was able to penetrate an impenetrable play. I will begin with a brief overview of August Strindberg’s view of A Dream Play ( Ett drömspel )—sometimes translated as The Dream Play — and his suggestions for staging what many felt was unstageable at the time. I will then move into an overview of Wilson’s approach to the work, followed by an analysis of Wilson’s production. I will contrast Wilson’s approach with Strindberg’s suggestions, placing focus on a midpoint sequence in the work where I will argue that Wilson—by not having strict fidelity to the text— has found a way to make an impenetrable play easily understood through his use of the postdramatic techniques of playing with time, removing the primacy of the written text, and foregrounding the play as a meditative question rather than a problem that has been solved. [vi] In other words, with A Dream Play, Wilson has offered audiences a privileged seat inside the crystal cube. August Strindberg The Swedish playwright, painter, poet, and essayist August Strindberg is often mentioned in the same breath as Norwegian competitor Henrik Ibsen and Russian contemporary Anton Chekhov. Strindberg cemented his status as a great writer of Naturalism with Miss Julie in 1888, but he would move towards abstract, Symbolist works that would anticipate Expressionism. To sum up his biography, in his life, Strindberg would marry and divorce three times. He was an atheist, a Catholic, a spiritualist, an occultist, a misogynist, a champion of women’s rights, a painter, a photographer, and a deep sufferer from paranoia and a persecution syndrome. Contradictions abound. Put succinctly by Linda Haverty Rugg: “Strindberg was insane,” and the evidence she lists for his insanity range from his “imagining someone is trying to electrocute him through his hotel wall,” to his belief “that he has inadvertently caused his child to fall ill by sending telepathic messages to her via photograph.” [vii] One only needs to read his numerous essays to understand that Strindberg lived in a perpetual state of paranoid agony. His life was that of a tormented seeker, driven by madness, lust, wonder, and despair. By 1890, Strindberg had moved to Paris and would later move to Germany (though he remained very itinerant, in part due to a somewhat founded belief he would have been institutionalized if he returned to Sweden). During this period, Strindberg became involved with artists and thinkers, such as Edward Munch, who believed truly that there was something beyond the physical, natural world. As Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams notes, Strindberg had come in contact with ground-breaking works on the subconscious in neurology and psychiatry by such names as Jean-Martin Charcot, Théodule Ribot, and Hippolyte Bernheim. Strindberg referred to his Ockulta Dagboken ( Occult Diary ), which he started in February of 1896, as “Min journal öfver drömmar” (“My diary over dreams”), perhaps as a reply to Swedenborg’s Dream Diary (“drömdagbok”), which he had become acquainted with in the 1890s. [viii] Some of the lectures he attended were also attended by Sigmund Freud, who would be inspired to develop his science of dreams. [ix] This is contrary to a popular assumption that Strindberg was reading Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams while plotting his Inferno plays; on the contrary, both To Damascus I and II were written in 1898, one year prior to Freud’s publication. Rather, Strindberg and Freud both found their inspiration in the lectures they had attended. [x] Based on these new discoveries and theories about dreams, Strindberg would reject Naturalism in the theatre and move towards writing plays that would foreground the inner spirituality of the unconscious mind. [xi] The Damascus trilogy imaged, as Rugg states, an associative logic in a dreaming consciousness, a logic that disregards ordinary constructs of space and time, a logic that disregards distinctions between persons, a logic that argues for a vast unknown territory of mind beneath the light of consciousness [xii] Strindberg was not only seeking signs that there was something outside of the natural world, but he was also in a way seeking himself through different media of artistic expression. Harry Carson, a Strindberg translator and scholar, argues that through his photographic and painted works Strindberg was attempting to find himself via a process of control and surrender of the vision confronting him. [xiii] This act of seeking through dreams, through spirituality, via a process of control and surrender speaks to the central character Daughter’s (or Agnes’s) plight in A Dream Play , as she climbs down to understand why humans suffer, what makes them suffer, and perhaps, how by living as a mortal she may ease suffering, hoping to gain not just an understanding of despair but control, ultimately learning the futility of such hopes but gaining compassion. When discussing the origins of the A Dream Play , Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams notes that it “was based on two shorter drafts or fragments “Korridordramat” (“The Corridor Drama”) and “Bosättningen” (“Setting up House”).” [xiv] These dramas dealt with the agony of married life and a loss of life’s meaning if the ontological will was surrendered or ignored. As a result, the finished version, A Dream Play, feels fragmented, dreamlike, ponderous, and utterly humorless. The structure of A Dream Play emulates that of a medieval morality play, in which a central protagonist (in this case Agnes or Daughter, the daughter of the Hindu God Indra) meets allegorical characters who, even if they have given names stated in the dialogue, are known by their work or position: Officer, Poet, Glazier, etc. As she journeys, her father Indra warns of humans in which “Complaint is their mother tongue.” [xv] Agnes befriends a soldier, kept prisoner in a castle built on manure adorned with a chrysanthemum bud, who pines for an actress named Victoria. He will age, age backwards, and wait. Time and space have no meaning in this journey. She marries Lawyer, a pragmatic man who works for the poor and is tormented by the anguishing repetition of life’s tasks—once the handkerchiefs are clean, they need to be cleaned again. A maid takes care of their house, pasting the cracks in the windows and the walls, saying “I paste, I paste.” Towards the close of the play, the various allegorical characters gather outside of the castle near a high, closed-door upstage. There is a fire. Each character casts an object that represents who they are—the fisherman’s net, the glazier’s diamond, the soldier’s roses—into the flames. Behind the large door is the answer to the mystery of life. The learned men debate the theological, scientific, and political ramifications of opening the door which has always remained closed. The door is opened and there is nothing behind it. Daughter returns to the heavens, recognizing that humans have spiritual hopes, spiritual reflections, awakenings—but lack the potency to affect real change. She declares with compassion, Oh, now I know all the pain of being, this is what it’s like to be human.... You miss even things you didn’t value, even wrongs you didn’t commit, You want to go, and you want to stay...and so the heart is divided. [xvi] The last image Strindberg leaves us with is the castle burning, the wall behind being made of human faces “questioning, grieving, despairing,” as the chrysanthemum blooms. [xvii] Strindberg considered A Dream Play “My most beloved drama, the child of my greatest pain.” [xviii] In dreams, Strindberg writes, “Anything can happen; everything is possible and probable; time and space do not exist . . . imagination spins and waves new patterns made up of memories, experiences, unfettered fantasies, absurdities, and improvisations." The notion that “time and space do not exist” seem to speak to Wilson’s postdramatic sensibility. [xix] Strindberg notes that the people that inhabit the play are “split, doubled, multiplied, evaporated, are condensed, float away, assemble. But one consciousness stands above it all, that of a dreamer: for it is there there are no secrets, no inconsistency, no scruples, no law. He does not judge, does not repudiate, only relates.” [xx] With the play as written, one gets the sense that it is Strindberg himself who is the dreamer. In Wilson’s production, the dreamer is the audience. Staging A Dream Play as written is a daunting task. As Sue Prideaux writes in her substantial biography of Strindberg, he had initially “wanted to use a magic lantern in order to create a set of dissolving images like a dream in which the action takes place, but the technology could not be mastered so he stipulated the scenery must be stylized, not naturalistic.” [xxi] In the end he suggested abstract drops to be quickly moved to not break the flow of action—another near impossible task. The play was staged for the first time in Stockholm in 1907 by Victor Castegren (starring Strindberg’s then-wife Harriet Bose). It was not a success, in part due to the technological innovations that had not yet been created. (Had Strindberg lived into the 1930s, his desire for multimedia would have been fulfilled.) As Adams notes, Strindberg asks for the following in his stage directions: “The wings, which should remain unchanged throughout the play, are stylized wall paintings, suggesting interiors, exteriors/buildings and landscapes simultaneously;” and in his Preface to the 1907 production, Strindberg writes that the play should move “as a symphony, polyphonic, now and then a fugue with a constantly recurring main theme, which is repeated in all registers and varied by more than thirty voices.” [xxii] Since its original staging, A Dream Play has enjoyed numerous productions helmed by the likes of Max Reinhardt, Ingmar Bergman, and Robert Wilson. Ingmar Bergman has the distinction of directing the play four times, including once for television in 1963. Prior to mounting it a final time in 1986, he wrote, I had been dissatisfied with my previous three productions of the seminal play. The Swedish TV version had come to grief over technical disasters (video tapes couldn’t be edited in those days); the performance on the small Stage (Lilla Scenen) turned out poor despite excellent actors; and the German adventure had been ruined by overwhelming sets. [xxiii] For his fourth production, he had determined to be true to every word of Strindberg’s text, including the passage in Fingal’s Cave: “How to create Fingal’s Cave so that it doesn’t sabotage itself? How shall I maneuver the Writer’s great lament directed at Indra? It consists largely of complaints. How shall I create that storm, the shipwreck and, most difficult of all, Christ walking on water?” [xxiv] His solution was to stage the sequence as a play within a play, in which the Writer assigns roles, adorns a Crown of Thorns, and commences with the lament. [xxv] Bergman’s approach, to try to capture every moment to the letter, is an approach to dramatic literature that many (what we will call) “literal” or “translator” directors (insofar as directors translate a script to the stage) may take, and it certainly has its rewards. I argue, however, that the most effective way to stay true to the spirit of Strindberg is to ignore his stage directions completely. This is how Robert Wilson was able to solve the riddle of the staging of the work, all the while asking the unanswerable question, “What is it?” Robert Wilson If one is reading this essay, then one is already familiar with Robert Wilson’s work, the effect that the happenings of Cunningham and Cage as well as the choreography of George Balanchine had on his sensibility. In sum, Cunningham and Cage’s happenings were improvisational, with the music and movement not necessarily following each other, but had moments of congruence. Many of Balanchine’s ballets did not necessarily follow a plot and relied on minimal technical values to create abstract lyrical visuals with bodies in space. These are names frequently mentioned by Wilson himself when he discusses his earliest pieces, which have been codified as postdramatic works (though Wilson sees himself as a Classicist). The term postdramatic theatre , coined and defined by Hans-Thies Lehmann, provides a new way to discuss theatre as a total event that is not intrinsically tied to the study of the playscript-as-theatre. Lehmann writes: Theatre and drama seem so closely related and quasi identical to many (even to many theatre studies scholars), a tightly embracing couple, so to speak, that despite all radical transformations of theatre, the concept of drama has survived as the latent normative idea of theatre . . . spectators will say after a theatre visit that they liked the ‘play’ when they possibly mean the performance and, in any event, do not clearly distinguish between the two. [xxvi] In other words, audiences, scholars, and critics are so accustomed to considering drama and theatre event as the same object, the term postdramatic theatre is a necessary interruption to this monologic way of thinking. [xxvii] Lehmann also uses the term postdramatic theatre to demonstrate how directors such as Wilson create forms of theatre rather than performance art with each functioning according to their own different guidelines. This approach, in turn, demonstrates how the “post” in postdramatic reminds us that there is and has been theatre before and after the dramatic text on the page ( predramatic may include the earliest works of Greek playwrights, or the chorus that created the dithyramb to Dionysus). Prior to his staging of Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken (1991), Wilson worked primarily outside of scripted plays. As Maria Shevtsova argues, “For Wilson, the autonomy of a production was beyond question: a production was a work in and of itself not merely an animated text.” [xxviii] In other words, the established practice of the director serving as translator of the literary canon was at odds with Wilson’s process. Any utterances in his dance operas ( Einstein on the Beach, CIVIL warS, and so forth) were not in the service of a cause-and-effect fabula . However, his interests would develop over the 1980s. When considering a move towards staging established texts, Wilson said: The creation of new works is what I do best, but I also think it’s important to do other things, and so I want to interpret other people’s works. I’m doing a new opera with Gavin Bryars, an English composer, which is based on Euripides’ Medea. . . . I liked the architecture of the story. . . . I also plan to do Parsifal in 1986 or 87, and then a King Lear, yes, to Shakespeare’s text, and maybe later I’ll do some contemporary works. [xxix] During his work on Medea (1984) , Heiner Müeller (as Maria Shevtsova notes) gave Wilson his play Despoiled Shore Media Landscape with Argonauts to use as a prologue to the opera. [xxx] Müeller would also give Wilson Description of a Picture to be used as a prologue for Alcestis, an opera featuring music by the performance artist Laurie Anderson. It was through these collaborations with Heiner Müeller that Wilson would become open to staging not only operas but established plays. To quote Shevtsova, Wilson “no longer saw language solely as a sonic effect . . . but as a vehicle for dramatic structure,” even if Wilson “continued to bypass language as a medium for semantic meaning.” [xxxi] Through Müeller and other collaborators, Wilson would soon recognize the power of the spoken word. In 1991, Wilson directed Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken , the first of three Ibsen plays he would stage, the others being The Lady from the Sea (1998) and Peer Gynt (2005). In her considerations of Wilson’s work with Ibsen, Giovanna Zanlonghi’s thoughts tally with those of Shevtsova. Writing about Wilson’s direction of The Lady and the Sea, Zanglonghi states: It is the opposition of the word against the image, depth against surface, a plunge into darkness against the transparency of light, the density of the human psyche and pulsions against the geometric rendering of gesture and body language. The fact is that Wilson’s visual theatre is based on silence and on evocative sensations, and hardly tolerates the intrusion of the spoken word, which disturbs the contemplation of the eye. . . . And yet the meeting between Bob Wilson and Ibsen’s plays seems to be by now—after three stage renderings—far from improvised or incidental.” [xxxii] Strindberg is also quite verbose in his plays. When reading the play, one gets the sense there is very little air in any of the conversations. As various productions of Strindberg’s plays sought to find the meaning of the work, few would pare down the language. Zanlonghi offers that Wilson intentionally focuses on Ibsen’s plays that are not of the “drawing room” variety, “for Wilson has chosen those plays where he could single out his favourite key themes—mystery, silence, the process of interior liberation, a utopian identification between man and nature—and in which he could express his peculiar stage language, at the same time crystal-clear and symbolic.” [xxxiii] A Dream Play also offers mystery, but perhaps not silence, and a less than ideal identification between humanity and its own nature. As with Ibsen, Strindberg was interested in “plumbing the depths” of humanity’s psyche either through material realities or the fragments of dreams. For Strindberg, the dream-life became key to recognizing the pain and misery of the human story, something that could not be achieved either through positivist thought or Naturalistic theatre which offered surface representations posturing as depth. Wilson, however, does not seek to understand human behavior in his works, rather he creates aesthetic experience. He is not intending to plumb the depths but rather present the surface. The surface (the total theatre experience) becomes a space, a cube inside of an apple, where the audience, situated as dreamer, can question the aesthetic experience they have just encountered—what is it?—rather than their own humanity. This is not to say there is not an affect. On the contrary, the dance between Strindberg’s words and embodied philosophies, paired with Wilson’s consciously slow yet pregnant direction, becomes a spiritual experience. This is where the metaphor of the crystal cube becomes necessary to an analysis of the production. I will return to this point in the next section. When Wilson directs modernist stage plays, Shevtsova says, “the point, for Wilson, was not to accommodate his methods to these principles [of drama, spoken and sung], but to shape them to his staging methods.” [xxxiv] Wilson’s methods with his dance plays, operas, and established plays are similar. He is both improvisational and classicist. There needs to be a form. “Formalism,” Wilson has said, “means looking at things from a distance; like a bird who looks into the vastness of the universe from a branch of its tree—in front of it spreads infinity, whose temporal and spatial structure it can nevertheless recognize.” [xxxv] His works, therefore, are more mise-en-scene and less montage. We receive the entirety of the picture rather than short, fragmented scenes (as often is the case with Western drama). There is a clear structure to Wilson’s theatre events, but the structure is visual rather than dramatic. He explains, I made a twelve-hour [silent] play in seven acts. One and seven are related. Two and six are related. Three and five are related. And it spirals in the middle of the fourth act and it spirals out. This is the same structure as Shakespeare’s King Lear. This part [early parts] the King is in the Man-Made World. This part [the later parts] he goes into Nature. The center line—“I shall go mad,” says the King – is the turning point. [xxxvi] This approach to structure—with scenes spiraling towards a center (the turning point) and then spiraling out—is important to note as we discuss his approach to A Dream Play. Wilson’s A Dream Play Robert Wilson begins his process by asking his co-directors and dramaturgs to summarize each scene, so he can begin a movement score and create the visual book for the piece. His dramaturgs for A Dream Play were Holm Keller and Monica Ohlsson. His co-directors for the play were Giuseppe Frigeni and Ann-Christin Rommen, the latter of whom (at the time of the production) had worked with Wilson for fifteen years. In her conversation with Maria Shevtsova, Rommen described Wilson’s process thus: The work usually has three stages. The first stage is called the table workshop, which means sitting with a group of people who are going to work on a piece—the dramaturg, set designer, musician, Bob, and me—all round a table and talking through the piece. This means we tell Bob its content, not by reading it to him, but just telling him. [xxxvii] As part of this first stage, Wilson would “draw” the set (even in interviews, Wilson is always drawing). From there, his set designer (or in the case of A Dream Play, his scenic assistant, Gordana Svilar) would “look for images and materials.” [xxxviii] The images for Wilson’s visual book for A Dream Play were inspired by photographs taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston, a turn of the century American photographer. Johnston had received a commission from The Hampton Institute, a vocational school for Inuit and African Americans, to be used to “illustrate contemporary African American life” for the 1900 Paris Word Exhibition. [xxxix] Johnston had taken more than 150 photos which were shown at the Exposition Nègres d'Amerique (American Negro Exhibit) pavilion, which, according to MOMA, “was meant to showcase improving race relations in America.” [xl] The opening tableau in Wilson’s production, for example, was an image recreated from Johnston’s photo titled “Stairway of the Treasurer’s Residence at Hampton Institute: Students at Work” (1899-1900). [xli] The photograph shows six student workers building (or possibly fixing) a staircase that moves up from the left to a platform and then continues to the right. The students are dressed in button-down shirts, some in overalls, some in vests, with a couple wearing hats. These students would become the choral bricklayers in Wilson’s production. Another photograph by Johnston that inspired Wilson was “A Hampton Graduate’s Home” (1899-1900), in which two girls are standing outside of a white, two-story American farmhouse. The house had three windows upstairs, four on the side (two upstairs, two downstairs), a front porch with a small awning, and a front door to the left (rather than center). A recreation of this farmhouse would be projected during Scene One: The Rising Castle and Scene Thirteen: The Burning Castle (structurally, the first and thirteenth scene are visually connected). It seems appropriate that Wilson worked from photographs from the turn of the twentieth century. After all, Strindberg himself was a photographer. He had created a series of self-portraits (which Carlson and Rugg have both suggested was his attempt to find himself), and he also created a process he called “celestography,” or “writing the stars.” As described in The Public Domain Review, Strindberg’s process was to lay out “a series of photographic plates on the ground,” thereby “[r]emoving the ‘middle-man’ of a camera (and even lens), using the light-sensitive plates directly, he was attempting to capture images of the night sky above;” and while he believed himself to be successful, the images he created were in actuality the result of chemical exposure on the plates. [xlii] Through both naturalistic and experimental photography, Strindberg was attempting to find himself and to unmask secrets from the unseen universe. Whether by coincidence or not, Wilson had tapped into another artform of Strindberg’s when creating his look for A Dream Play, blending the natural images of Johnston’s photographs with the celestial blue lighting evocative of Strindberg’s attempt to photograph the heavens. For the second phase, Wilson creates a “silent play” with the actors to create the overall movement and physicality for each scene, without consideration of the spoken dialogue. For this production, Wilson worked with the resident company at Stockholms stadsteater (Stockholm’s City Theatre) and the play was performed in Swedish. Rommen said the company was “very well prepared” for Wilson’s process, having “seen a lot of videos and read books about Bob’s work.” [xliii] The creation of the overall movement of the piece is what Shevtsova calls “the movement score,” which is learned through repetition. [xliv] When creating the silent play, Rommen says that Wilson, [L]ooks at his drawing, at the space he has drawn for the scene. Then he directs the actors, puts them in relation to each other, and finds their position and movement. Or else he will step into a character himself. He “feels” a scene for someone and will ask him or her to reproduce his movement, like a dance, a choreography. Many times, a piece of music will help him to find the right “mood” for a scene. [xlv] This focus on mood and movement is incongruous with Western theatre training, in which actors are asked to find psychological motivations for the characters. Because his approach is abstract, Rommen acted as an intermediary. In her own words, Rommen says, “In many cases I tried to help them find subtexts for movements so they had a ‘reason’ to do them. Bob never wanted to know what actors were thinking about—‘Don’t tell me’—but they had to tell someone, so that was my part.” [xlvi] The marriage of movement and the photographs used for the tableaus became Wilson’s visual book for the rest of the production, and the incorporation of the movement and sound becomes the third phase of his process. In the first scene, for example, Agnes walks down a diagonal platform that evokes a seesaw or possibly part of a hobbyhorse or workstation for the five choral builders. The projected image is reminiscent of the large staircase captured by Johnston. The blue lighting gives the world a sleepy, dreamy quality. Jessica Lieberg as Agnes is still, pausing, moving ever so slightly, evoking the notion of Craig’s Übermarionette married with the contemplative nature of Noh theatre. One gets the sense we are watching a photograph slowly come to life. In Strindberg’s script, this is Agnes’s journey from the Heavens to the Earth. Strindberg’s stage directions are elaborate, in which he asks for backdrops with “clouds that resemble crumbling slate mountains with ruins of castles and fortresses,” noting that “constellations of Leo, Virgo, and Libra can be seen. Between them is the planet Jupiter, shining brightly. Indra’s daughter is standing on the highest cloud.” [xlvii] Liedburg’s Agnes also holds a shoe, which Robert Brustein notes, is “a symbol of the earthly possessions that she, along with the others, will divest herself of in the final scene.” [xlviii] Her movement is controlled; there is a formal stillness; every little motion is noticeable, resembling a Noh-styled dance. In her review for Theatre Journal, Judylee Vivier observed that Liedberg demonstrated “the exquisite physical control of a slow-moving gymnast.” [xlix] Again, Brustein notes: “nowhere has the influence of George Balanchine been more manifest than in the physical twists and turns of this production.” [l] Indeed, Wilson cast this piece (as with his other pieces) not in terms of how performers can speak a text, but rather “by how accurately they can count time.” [li] This opening moment takes time, allowing the viewer to think about what they are experiencing as it happens. The text metamorphosizes into a part of the movement, the controlled formalized dance of the actor. The actors, meanwhile, each found a way to make the moment their own; they “filled out” the movements ascribed by Wilson, as if performing stylized choreography. “The movement of actors,” Lehmann states, which is in slow motion always produces . . . an experience that undermines the idea of action . . . These figures remain solitarily spun into a cosmos, into a web of lines of forces and—quite concretely through the lighting design—"prescribed”paths. The figures (or figurines) inhabit a magical phantasm that imitates the ancient heroes’ enigmatic path of fate drawn by oracles. [lii] With A Dream Play, the movement of the performers, and their sounds, created (along with the lighting, music, and so forth) the rich, mesmerizing dreamlike space over the course of the entire production: the Glazier with his squinted eyes and chuckle, the milking maids who, when each opened their mouth, let out a sound, including glass being broken. Jai-Ung Hong notes that in the production, “the actors did not look anybody in the eye on stage . . . , all actors on stage looked as if they were playing for themselves,” rather than for each other or for the audience. [liii] Soldier sings some of his lines, and when the characters gather by the fire to burn their precious objects in effigy, Wilson, rather than have them stand around a fire, has the characters sit on bleacher-like stairs in front of the farmhouse, holding their objects, including Agnes’s shoe, a rose, a hat, a scarf, a book, and a box. As the characters let go, each object raises up, floating center stage, as if becoming the smoke. This is one of the most striking moments of the production—there is a hushed quiet, as if we in the audience are not just watching but experiencing something sacred. In short, by blending the visual images from Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photos with verbal images from Strindberg’s play and the very controlled movement of the performers, Wilson metamorphosizes Strindberg’s A Dream Play into a dream experienced entirely by the audience. In terms of his visual dramatic structure, Wilson’s production begins and ends with the tableau of the same staircase. Because we understand the first tableau will tie in with the last, the play will end with Agnes journeying back up the see-saw in the opposite direction, but without the shoe. As Wilson described earlier, each scene in the first half is married to a scene in the latter, with a turning point in between. The scenes are in fact reflections, with every moment in the first half spiraling towards a center and each moment spiraling outward after. The seventh scene of the play as written is the turning point. In this scene, the Lawyer laments to Agnes (Daughter) that he has been refused doctoral wreaths at a ceremony in town. The setting is described as a church chancel. Agnes, speaking with Lawyer, says she will plead his case to the heavens to ease his misery. In their fragmented conversation, she says when she looks into a mirror, she sees as the world as it really is. Lawyer suggests that life is the false copy, the reflection the real. This is important for how Wilson will stage the scene. Church bells are heard, and Daughter entices Lawyer to marry her. As she does so, Strindberg tells us the background will transform into Fingal’s grotto, with water crashing behind them, “producing a sound ensemble between winter and waves.” Lawyer laments “But I’m poor.” Daughter: What does that matter as long as we love each other? A little beauty costs nothing. Lawyer: Maybe the things I like you’ll dislike Daughter: Then we’ll compromise Lawyer: And if we tire of each other? Daughter: Then a child will come and bring us delights that are always new! Lawyer: And you’ll have me, an outcast: poor, ugly, and despised? Daughter: Yes, let us join our destinies. Lawyer: So be it then. [liv] In Wilson’s presentation, we have an arch created by bricks upstage, with a shorter wall of bricks downstage. The bricklayers/chorus members are working, while the music swells beneath them. The entire scene is played twice: the first time, if memory serves, the lighting in the backdrop was red, with the bricklayers’ work being more gestural, each holding onto a brick of their own, placing it, and bringing it back up, representing the building of a wall. The second time, the background was blue, with the bricklayers all sitting and singing under the spoken text (longtime collaborator Michael Galasso created the beautiful music for this play). We are watching both the original and the mirror, the first and the copy. The second time, the lights in the audience pulsed as we in the theatre became both the copy and the original, entwined with what we were experiencing onstage. We were inside the cube inside the apple. The space for reflection. This moment also encapsulates Wilson’s own thoughts on the entirety of the play itself. In his words, What he called A Dream Play— in a sense, it’s very concrete. . . . You just blinked your eyes. What did you see. You don’t know, but it’s a part of seeing. It’s a negative image. Maybe for a fraction of a second you were dreaming? I don’t know—but this interior image was there. We see both interior and exterior things all the time. [lv] Metaphorically speaking, inside the crystal cube we are both the original and the reflection. We are fragmented, and we are whole. Wilson offers Strindberg’s contradictions in a way that is remarkably concrete while retaining the quest of the spiritual aspirant. As Joseph Melillo, the former Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, states: “I think it’s magical how a playwright and Wilson coming together reveals itself in unique, distinct ways. When Wilson put on Strindberg’s Dream Play . . . , the surprise was that you found yourself saying ‘oh, yeah! He made sense out of this obtuse play.’” [lvi] Or, to borrow from The Guardian critic Michael Billington who was moved by Wilson’s production, “If life, as Strindberg suggests, is a meaningless dream, it is one to be suffered with maximum grace.” [lvii] Critic Robert Brustein also lauded the production. He writes, Wilson solves the insoluble problems of the play largely by ignoring them completely. There are, in this production, no Faustian prologues in heaven between Indra and his daughter, no contrasting views of Fairhaven and Foulstrand, no quarantine stations, no flaming castles flowering into chrysanthemums. . . . Wilson, in short, is not uniting with the play as much as running along side it. It is as if he were dreaming A Dream Play, adapting its subterranean melodies to his own unheard music. [lviii] Brustein also notes that Wilson’s production has a sense of play, a humor that allows the audience entrance into the work, rather than the tortured visions of an author begging for redemption. As an audience member, this was also my experience with the production: there was a humor, a joy, an understanding that life is suffering, but there is still music, still the hope for love, still a question behind the door (rather than an answer) that not even the learned could begin to appreciate, to behold. Time and space did not exist; I was aware of my own contemplation, my own feeling of harmony. I surrendered any sense of control over to the production. Wilson’s process was ideal for this play, as Wilson and Strindberg together created the most wonderful and haunting dream. Echoing Strindberg’s introduction again when he writes: “[O]ne consciousness is superior to them all: that of the dreamer.” [lix] And while the dreamer for Strindberg is Daughter, for Wilson’s production, we in the audience are the dreamer, which is what makes Wilson’s postdramatic production sublime. Giovanna Zanlongnhi notes that a crystal is “something that both encloses and reveals.” [lx] Robert Wilson offers audiences the crystal cube through his production, seating us within his own reflective theatron , and through his process Wilson finds the play, creating Strindberg’s desired space for personal reflection and compassion. Endnotes [i] Robert Wilson, Lecture: Georgia Summit of Theatre Visionaries, January 27, 2021. [ii] Catherine Turner, Dramaturgy and Architecture: Theatre, Utopia and the Build Environment, (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 126. [iii] Ibid., 127. [iv] Robert Wilson, Lecture: Georgia Summit of Theatre Visionaries. [v] Ibid. [vi] I should note, I have a secondary reason for discussing this work. I am a playwright, and I have noted (with some alarm) that there has been a tendency with both playwrights and scholars in the burgeoning field of Playwriting Studies in the US to consider every word of the playwright as sacrosanct. Indeed, The Dramatists’ Guild (the open-shop union for US-based playwrights) in recent years has used the hashtag #DontChangeTheWords to warn directors and actors of the contractual violations of altering stage direction or dialogue without the author’s consent. The notion is any change whatsoever will damage the playwright’s intention. And yet, Wilson’s approach to A Dream Play gets to the heart of the intention, indeed, makes Strindberg’s impenetrable play lucid, playful, and rich with meaning (even if Wilson himself suggests the work is a question, not an answer), that he can capture the essence of both the play and the playwright by ignoring the stage directions completely in the creation of his visual book. While there isn’t space in this essay to unpack this argument, I do feel it necessary to make a note for possible future research. [vii] Linda Haverty Rugg, “August Strindberg: The art and science of self-dramatization,” The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg, edited by Michael Robinson, (Cambridge University Press: 2009), 8. [viii] Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams, “From Dream Play to Doomsday : Enter LePage, Wilson, Ek. Exit Strindberg. Stagings of A Dream Play 1994-2007, Northwest Passage 6 (2009): 40. [ix] “'Strindberg: A Life' Author Sue Prideaux Interviewed by Yale Books.” YouTube. Nov. 7, 2012, accessed July 22 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRyTFcJhZyo [x] So pervasive is this assumption, even New York Times critic Bruce Weber implied Strindberg was influenced by Freud is his unenthusiastic review of Wilson’s A Dream Play. See: Review, Bruce Weber, “Strindberg, Influenced by Freudian Slip,” review of A Dream Play , by August Strindberg, directed by Robert Wilson, Howard Gilman Opera House of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Times , November 30, 2000. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/30/theater/theater-review-strindberg-influenced-by-freudian-sleep.html [xi] Rugg, 16. [xii] Ibid. [xiii] Harry G. Carlson, “Strindberg and Visual Imagination , ” Strindberg and Genre, edited by Michael Robinson, (Norwich: Norvik Press, 1991), 258. [xiv] Adams, 39. [xv] August Strindberg, A Dream Play, translated by Harry G. Carlson, in Drama and Performance: An Anthology, edited by Gary Vena and Andrea Nouryeh, (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 670. [xvi] Strindberg, 692. [xvii] Ibid. [xviii] Erland Josephson, Program Note, The Dream Play, directed by Ingmar Bergman, Royal Dramatic Theatre Stockholm, March 14, 1970, 5. [xix] Robert Brustein, “Dreaming a Dream Play,” Review of A Dream Play by August Strindberg directed by Robert Wilson, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, January 15, 2001, The New Republic, 21. [xx] Josephson, Program Note, The Dream Play, directed by Ingmar Bergman, 5. [xxi] Susan Prideaux, Strindberg: A Life, (New Haven: Yale UP, 2012), 86. [xxii] Adams, 40. [xxiii] Ingmar Bergman, “Reflections on A Dream Play, ” originally published in The Magic Lantern, reprinted in Drama and Performance: An Anthology, edited by Gary Vena and Andrea Nouryeh, (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1996), 666. [xxiv] Bergman, 666. [xxv] Ibid., 667. [xxvi] Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, translated by Karen Jürs-Munby, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 33. [xxvii] A larger semiotic reading of a theatre event should include the bodies in motion, the ways in which space exerts its influence. Ric Knowles has argued, a material semiotics approach to a theatrical production would also consider the conditions of rehearsal, the training of all artists involved, the front of house, and so forth. The material semiotics approach is in stark contrast to “play” and “theatrical event” meaning the same thing; rather, the script (if there is one) may be one part of a theatrical event, but it is not foregrounded as with traditional western stagings. See Ric Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre, (Cambridge University Press, 2004). For a longer discussion on how space exerts its influence on both the audience and the theatre artists, see Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture, (Cornell University Press, 1993). [xxviii] Maria Shevtsova, Robert Wilson, (New York: Routledge, 2007), 35. [xxix] Laurence Shyer, “Robert Wilson: Current Projects,” in Robert Wilson: The Theater of Images, (New York: Harper & Row), 108. [xxx] Shevtsova, 31-32. [xxxi] For a longer list of Wilson’s adaptations from prose works as well as his approaches to Shakespeare and the Classics, please see Shevtsova, 31- 36. [xxxii] Giovanna Zanlonghi, “The Crystal and the Flame. Robert Wilson’s Interpretation of The Lady from the Sea, ” North-West Passage, ” 5, (May 2008), 173. [xxxiii] Ibid.,174. [xxxiv] Maria Shevtsova, “Robert Wilson Directs When We Dead Awaken, The Lady from The Sea, and Peer Gynt, Ibsen, Studies , 7:1 (2008), 84-85, accessed July 21, 2024. DOI: 10.1080/15021860701488975 [xxxv] Quoted in Lehmann , 127. [xxxvi] Robert Wilson, Lecture. [xxxvii] Ann-Christin Rommen, “Ann-Christin Rommen in Conversation with Maria Shevtsoka Experiencing the Movement: Working with Robert Wilson, ” New Theatre Quarterly, 23.1 (2007), 59. [xxxviii] Ibid, 59. [xxxix] Adams, 45. [xl] “Frances Benjamin Johnston, American, 1864–1952,” MoMA, accessed November 15, 2024, https://www.moma.org/artists/7851 . [xli] Adams, 45. [xlii] The images were not of the sky but were a mix of chemical reactions that seemed like imagined celestial bodies. See: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/august-strindberg-s-celestographs-1893-4/ [xliii] Rommen, 61 [xliv] Shevtsova, “Robert Wilson Directs,” 88. [xlv] Rommen, 60. [xlvi] Ibid. [xlvii] August Strindberg, A Dream Play, translated by Harry G. Carlson, 670. [xlviii] Robert Brustein, Review: “Dreaming a Dream Play ,” The New Republic, (January 15, 2001), 22. [xlix] Quoted in Jai-Ung Hong, Creating Theatrical Dreams: A Taoist Approach to Molander’s, Bergman’s and Wilson’s Production of Strindberg’s A Dream Play, (Doctoral Dissertation, Stockholm: University, 2003), 279. [l] Brustein, “Dreaming a Dream Play ,” 22. [li] Ibid. [lii] Lehmann, 78. [liii] Jai-Ung Hong, 280. [liv] Strindberg, 676-77. [lv] Jai-Ung Hong, 290. [lvi] Joseph V. Melillo, “Of Bob and BAM,” Robert Wilson from Within, edited by Margery Arent Safir, (The Arts Arena: The American University of Paris Press, 2011), 148. [lvii] Michael Billington, Review: “ A Dream Play,” The Guardian, May 30, 2001, accessed July 5, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2001/may/31/theatre.artsfeatures , [lviii] Robert Brustein, 22 [lix] Harry Carlson, “Author’s Note, A Dream Play by August Strindberg,” 669. [lx] Zanlonghi, 192. About The Author(s) Dr. John Patrick Bray is a Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of Georgia 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.

Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Robert Wilson Yearbook Volume 1 Visit Journal Homepage Robert Wilson's Oedipus: The Postdramatic Journey of the Oedipus Story from Sophocles through Freud Antal Bókay By Published on May 1, 2026 Download Article as PDF Oedipus and Wilson Robert Wilson' s Oedipus is a major Wilsonian production that presents all the elements of Wilson's magical theatre—its soul, theory, and postdramatic theatrical character. It is Schauspiel , the director's “show game” with himself, with us, with the audience. On July 5, 2018, it was first performed in Pompeii at the Teatro Grande Scavi, followed in fall 2018 by the early Baroque Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, and then Naples on the traditional stage of the Teatro Mercandante. I saw it in a traditional stage space in 2021 at the National Theatre of Budapest. Why is Oedipus Rex interesting? The significance of Sophocles' drama lies in the fact that 2,500 years ago it articulated an experience, a knowledge of life, which for centuries had preoccupied us, forcing us to repeat and reflect on the nature of personal life, that is, on ourselves. Sophocles put the process of the formation of the individual, of the creation of personal life, into a play, making it perceptible and articulate. A kind of genetic primacy is thus conferred on it; the drama is an arche-écriture which, despite all its factual absurdity, enchants the spectator and reader. Wilson's theatrical presentation was always titled as Oedipus , not Oedipus Rex , not Oedipus Tyrannus , just Oedipus , the man himself, without rank, without social position. Everywhere, the prior announcement of the theatrical event emphasizes that it is not the Sophocles drama that will be on stage but that what we are seeing is only “based on Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex .” The primary purpose of my writing is to interpret this “based on.” For in these words lie the secret, the essence of Wilson's theatre. For Wilson, the work of Sophocles is a borrowed narrative and structure, an associative possibility, a connection, which makes the director's (and, because of the elemental effect of the process, the spectator's) expression a theatre of cruelty, his visual and textual experience of trauma, which is doomed to repetition, articulable in fragments. There is a radical difference between the theatrical, dramatic representation of Sophocles' drama and Wilson's postdramatic Oedipu s. According to Lehmann, "Wilson's theatre is a theatre of metamorphoses. He leads the viewer into the dreamland of transitions, ambiguities, and correspondences," [1] and this, on the postdramatic viewer's side, "leads to another mode of theatrical perception in which seeing as recognition is continually outdone by a play of surprises that an order of perception can never arrest.” [2] The production, through the metonymies of the Oedipal scene, showers the audience with a flood of images and sounds, engaging them in the event, the creation, and the effect of the performance, taking on an essentially therapeutic character. Wilson does not seek to make the audience “understand” the performance in the traditional sense but to evoke a radical compulsion to participate. Oedipus' story, the representational interest of dramatic theatre, is absent, erased by postdramatic theatrical techniques. Umberto Eco asked: if Wilson turns off the story, what is the audience responding to? Wilson replied, “I think that figures like Sigmund Freud, Joseph Stalin, and Queen Victoria are the gods of our time. They are mythic figures, and the person on the street has some knowledge of them before they enter the theatre. We in the theatre do not have to tell the story because the audience comes with a story already in mind. Based on this communally shared information, we can create a theatrical event.” [3] The important phrase "based on" is present in Wilson's answer. There is, however, an intermediate layer in Wilson's reading of Oedipus : it is now impossible to read the Greek drama without including in the reading the Oedipus complex idea of psychoanalytic interpretation. [4] Oedipus Rex suggested to Freud a personal and general human background that creates an unconscious narrative of individual life, one that appears in psychoanalytic therapy, one whose metapsychological term becomes the Oedipus complex. Freud confronted the story of the drama's protagonist with his own personal fate. Still, beyond this, or extending it from his own fate, he also recognized and created psychoanalytic therapy as a performance re-enacting the Oedipal conflict. Referring to the Oedipus play Andre Green states that "There is a mysterious bond between psycho-analysis [sic] and the theatre," [5] and that is why, he continues, "Sophocles tragedy has become for a whole civilization the very essence of tragedy." [6] With genius sensitivity, the Greek playwright conceived the primary, at that time, hardly visible traumatic event and process of the creation of the individual. I suppose it would have been impossible to read Sophocles in 2018 without Freud; it would have been impossible even more for Wilson, who, in 1969, with his production of The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud , came into close proximity with the creator of psychoanalysis. Wilson was always sensitive to psychoanalysis. The 1969 Freudian play was a product of Wilson's first period, in the "florescence of vision." The theatrical logic was markedly different from that of the second period, which began after 1974, and which was at the heart of the “Assault on speech. Decline of the theatre of visions.” [7] Holmberg, under a subtitle "How To Do Things with Words" [8] places Wilson's fourth creative period as the director's turn towards Sprachteater with the Orlando monologue of 1989 . Oedipus is a late production in which speech “blossoms.” “In theatre no one has dramatized this crisis of language with as much ferocious genius as Robert Wilson.” [9] The discourse of Wilson’s theatre is extraordinary: its form is a multiplicity of languages, from sound to word and back again, and the translation of meaning into action into performative. It is a technical sign that the texts in Wilson's Oedipus are extremely abbreviated excerpts of Sophocles' drama, and they are almost identical to what Freud evokes in The Interpretation of Dreams. More importantly and more relatedly, Wilson constructs the same therapeutic theatrical happening in the public space through free associations, as Freud used in his self-analysis and his transference in therapies. Hans-Thies Lehmann called Wilson, with absolute aptness, not a director, not an author, but (like the choreographer) a “scenographer.” [10] Wilson’s theatre is scene "writing” in the écriture sense that Derrida speaks of. But Freud was also a scenographer, the performative, therapy-structuring activity he developed and followed in response to King Oedipus : stage space writing, scenography. But the original scene ( the arche écriture ) is always "somewhere" else, "the scene of dreams is a different one" [“ dass der Schauplatz der Träume ein anderer sei ” ] [11] because it is essentially linked to the unconscious. Freud's theatre, like Wilson's, is a theatre of metamorphosis, a play that is never fixed, a transition between the unconscious and the conscious. It is not unconscious because it is ineffable, nor is it conceptual-conscious because it is partially meaningless. This in-betweenness is a key characteristic of Wilson's theatre and psychoanalytic therapy. Freudian self-analysis taps into it, and two-person analytic therapy acts out the copies of this other scene, the in-betweenness of the imagination available at the moment. It is worth looking at the more general strategic features of Freud's theatre of Oedipus, for in his own more conceptual and simplistic way, Freud also turns drama into postdramatic theatre. Freud’s postdramatic Oedipus Freud's first encounter with King Oedipus is the most straightforward and earliest example. On October 15, 1897, in a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in Berlin, he writes: “My self-analysis [ Meine Selbstanalyse ] is, in fact, the essential thing I have at present and promises to become of the greatest value to me if it reaches its end.” [12] In this “other scene,” an unconsciously based childhood story, a mini-play, emerges, pointing towards a long-repressed mother-element: Thereupon, a scene occurred to me which, in the course of twenty-five years, has occasionally emerged in my conscious memory without my understanding it. My mother was nowhere to be found; I was crying in despair. My brother Philip (twenty years older than I) unlocked a wardrobe [Kasten] for me, and when I did not find my mother inside it either, I cried even more until, slender and beautiful, she came in through the door. [13] Freud turns to the drama of Sophocles that he had seen earlier: A single idea of general value dawned on me. I have found, in my own case too, [the phenomenon of] being in love with my mother and jealous of my father, and I now consider it a universal event in early childhood. If this is so, we can understand the gripping power of Oedipus Rex, despite all the objections that reason raises against the presupposition of fate; the Greek legend seizes upon a compulsion that everyone recognizes because he senses its existence within himself. Everyone in the audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy, and each recoil in horror from the dream fulfillment here transplanted into reality... His conscience is his unconscious sense of guilt. [14] The drama of Oedipus evokes associations that create a story with its own unconscious roots without directly stating the unconscious content. A mini theatre is thus born. In the next step, Freud takes this own experience out of the personal frame, speaks of it as a general human experience—this is done in The Interpretation of Dreams — and narrates the plot of the Greek drama in detail suggesting that this is something that everybody lives through. [15] But there is no word here of the “Oedipus complex”; the presentation takes place in the chapter "Typical Dreams.” The "Oedipus complex" as a metapsychological concept had not yet been invented; that happens much later, in 1910. From our point of view, the third step in inventing Oedipus is essential, and the Oedipus complex becomes a defining element of all psychoanalytic therapy. Psychoanalytic therapy is a scenic, theatrical event; it is a theatrical performance of two people. In it, imagined or real memories of early childhood are elaborated as scenes, imagined stories, created and relived through associations. The same creative-cognitive event occurs in Freud's self-analysis, the psychoanalytic therapeutic situation, and even in dreaming and dream interpretation. My hypothesis is that Wilson's theatrical creation is patterned on precisely this process, using this strategy. What then is the essence of this staged spiritual activity? The complexes of unconscious energy and imagery, the desires banished into the unconscious, are repressed and, therefore, cannot be expressed directly, and the everyday or scientific referential language cannot reach these inner energies and images. Psychoanalysis, however, makes use of discursive techniques that can create a “substitute for the repressed” ( Ersatzbildung ), a substitute to fulfill a desire. There are two discursive mechanisms involved: free association and dream-work. Free association, independent of the limitations of logical language, can represent themes and contents related to unconscious energy and image constructs using this substitution. Dream-work, which we might more generally call "psychic work," assembles and directs the process of free association through formal, figurative, and performative constructions. Freud's self-analysis quoted above also produced a scene from a formally constructed series of free associations exploring memory. This duality is essential, both free association and, alongside it, a formal organizing force, a technique that constructs a narrative. The associations are directed towards hidden meaning, but the images, fantasies, and dreams that emerge in this way cannot reach the memory of energy plus images once stored in the unconscious. Free associations, however, if not directly expressing the repressed contents of the unconscious, create a mediating mechanism that works with the background of the unconscious, transforming its energies and images into dreams, fantasies, and hallucinations. "Free association is memory in its most incoherent and therefore fluent form; because of repression, the past can only return as disarray in de-narrativized fragments. And the analysis reveals the patient's unofficial repertoire of incoherence.” [16] Free association is like a collage, adds Adam Philips. Dream-work, often intertwined with free association, is a linguistic-visual activity (dream, joke, fantasized or real memories) that can activate and translate the related unconscious contents. The elements and processes of dream-work are condensations, displacement, image substitution, and, finally, secondary elaboration. The dream-work "does not think, calculate or judge in any way at all; it restricts itself to giving things a new form" Freud warns. [17] The dream-work, which Freud considered increasingly important throughout his work, is a set of formal, predominantly rhetorical (metaphorical and metonymical) and/or performative procedures. About its nature in 1925, Freud added a critical note to the text of The Interpretation of Dreams. He writes: [The psychoanalysts] seek to find the essence of dreams in their latent content and in so doing they overlook the distinction between the latent dream-thoughts and the dream-work. At the bottom, dreams are nothing other than a particular form of thinking made possible by the state of sleep. It is the dream-work which creates that form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming. [18] Freud then, in 1925, made dream-work a central activity at the expense of free association. Yet in 1900, when the book was published, in the analysis of the Irma dream, the specimen dream, the steps of interpretation were born around free associations. Free association is a meaning-giving action, while dream-work is a meaning-editing activity. Creating Theatre – Free association and dream work What does all this have to do with Wilson's theatre? My hypothesis is that Wilson's Oedipus , in an act of genius, draws Sophocles' drama into a therapeutic, dream-like discourse that can be connected to spectators simultaneously. Oedipus of Wilson excludes all traditional dramatic elements: no story, no characters, no dialogue. What we see on the stage consists of Wilson's free associations with Sophocles’ drama and the dream-work [19] formalizations linked to them. Lehmann has already very sensitively indicated that Wilson creates a scene by projecting a dream-like vision, i.e., free associations. This dream-like quality has a definite formal, even sometimes mathematical (i.e., dream-work) character: A definite connection exists between the dream-like certainty with which Robert Wilson's theatrical images and figurations are chosen and Wilson's ability to allow himself to be guided by the impulses and memories that beckon to an adult from childhood. (...) A deep-rooted association with, even a regression to, early childhood experiences are so closely linked with radical mathematization and composition that they produce the paradox of a profoundly reflected infantility that excludes any vague sense of self-sufficiency. Some elements of the free-associative projection, the images of the stage and the objects and persons appearing on it, are sometimes decipherable allegories and sometimes childhood traumas unknown to the audience. What is interesting, however, is that Wilson regularly and willingly talks about these overwhelming childhood traumas in his many interviews, about life in a small Texas town, about a firm, abusive father and an unavailable mother, and about the agonies of his own growing up. Wilson's associative background is his own childhood memories, which are excluded by the movement, the dance, and the dream-work of the fragmented text. But the selection, as I will show later, is very personal. Concrete memories of his own, many of them repressed, are woven into the sequence of images and texts we see on stage. In this discourse, the director is both the analyst and the analyzed. [20] We, the audience, identify with this self-analytical original production. At the same time, we glimpse the secrets of our own Oedipal life management, transformed by Wilson into a 21st-century one. Wilson consciously uses free association, as a basic acting technique for himself and to influence the audience's behavior. In an interview with Holger Teschke in 1997, he precisely defined the function of free association as a basic staging technique. In his youth, long before a career in the theatre, Wilson studied architecture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He says the following about the lecture style of his "most important teacher," Sibyl Moholy Nagy: You could not take notes during his lectures. There was only a light on it, and behind it were three screens on which images were projected in rapid succession: a car from the 1950s, a Renaissance painting, a Baroque candelabra, a Byzantine mosaic, a chair by Flloyd Frank Wright, a shoe from the early 19th century, different artistic and utilitarian objects from different centuries, and these images changed very quickly, so that there were 100 in a single lecture. But there was nothing to connect the images to the performance, and that was very confusing at first. After a while, however, our thinking changed, as we started to associate freely both what we saw and what we heard. The course was announced for five years, and after five years and five years, one was able to put together for oneself a wide variety of information and images, and I was surprised again and again at the conclusions I drew from all this material. I think this had a huge impact on my theatre firstly because the visuality was completely independent of what I was hearing, and secondly because so many unexpected connections could be made through free associations. Audiences and critics often go to the theatre trying to find meaning in a performance, even though the performance in question, at least in the logical sense of the word, has no meaning except in terms of free associations with a theme or a very personal experience. [21] However, this is only one side of Wilson’s theatrical technique. Lehmann's study of Wilson as scenographer also indicates another process, the role of the dream-work in giving form: “Wilson could be echoing Artaud's words: ‘I yield the fever of a dream, but my aim is to obtain new laws.’” [22] Free associations lead to a dream-like regression, "regression to the experiences of early childhood," but this process also "implies the strictest formalism, geometric construction, and aesthetic calculation." Wilson regularly returns to the definition and emphasis of this formalism in his interviews, and it is to this that his work as a visual artist is linked. Wilson's artistic performance is strongly formalized; the way he wants it to be perceived is highly informal. His images and sketches for theatrical performances are always formal, indicating structures. Dream-work is exactly this; it is "an operation which transforms the raw materials of the dream . . . so as to produce the manifest dream.” [23] Wilson’s favorite painter is Cézanne. In an interview, he states: Cézanne is my favorite painter. My work is closer to him than to any other artist. My production of Hamletmachine is like a Cézanne painting in its architecture. Cézanne simplified and purified forms to reveal classical structure and composition. I learned everything from Cézanne, including his use of color, light, diagonals, and space - how to use the center and the edges. His images are not framed by the boundaries. [24] Cézanne's key concept is “realization,” an analytical-structural projection of reality that avoids the lightness of the surface, which is misleading for the modern, and it reveals an often-destructive structural depth behind this surface. Wilson also projects a structured plane onto the stage. The figures—shapely, usually masked, strange, often in geometric shells and costumes—play in a two-dimensional space, not in contact with each other. The planes of the stage are separated by bright lines, which no one crosses. Structure and Narrative Wilson (through free associations and the dream-work activities) deconstructs the play by Sophocles, disrupts all the elements of a dramatic, coherent referential play, and creates a postdramatic double-faced visual-verbal sequence. He does not stage the play but recreates it through fragmented visual and verbal associations. "In the first period, Wilson ignored language; in the second, he deconstructed it," writes Holmberg. [25] The purely visual plane precedes speech. The beginning and end of the play (the prologue and the epilogue) are speechless visual-dance performances, a series of visual associations. In the intervening passages, the parallelism of the two discourses dominates. The visual events of the scene, however, are usually not connected to the themes of the speech; very rarely, for a flash, is there a connection between them. In his introduction to the Budapest production of Oedipus , Wilson briefly outlines the structure of the play: The performance is structured in a classical way: five parts and a prologue, the first part being echoed in the fifth part, the second in the fourth. The third part, a wild pagan wedding ceremony, is the centrepiece. Each part is defined by the materials of scenic elements used onstage: wooden planks, leafless branches, steel paper and sheets of galvanized metal, green branches, contemporary folding chairs, tar paper, and vegetable woven fabrics with silk. Music plays a central role. [26] This logic does not belong to the speech level. (There is always the theme of the prophecy and the repetition of events that connect with it). Wilson’s description refers to the image level where it is a little bit easier to sense a narrative sequence. Moreover, the logical listing of the five parts in Wilson's reference does not really prevail. The events of the drama are mixed on the stage. Oedipus' self-blinding occurs once in the middle of the play but is followed by earlier events like the patricide and the incest scene, and only at the very end of the play does blind Oedipus return. The individual episodes are built, like the shells of an onion (see Peer Gynt) , around the enigmatic, never shown but always suspected center. This center is the unconscious energy of desire. The individual parts are different, heterogeneous examples and spaces of Oedipal desire-realization. The sketch, told in Wilson's voice, is both illuminating and concealing, both helpful and misleading. The structure Wilson asserts and confesses is a construction of the dream-work of theatrical performance. But speech is crucial to the production. The spoken text, however, never follows the drama's narrative; its fragmented representation brings an unmarked and immeasurably repetitive mixing of different speakers and linguistic positions in the past story. Moreover, all this is done in different languages—ancient Greek, modern Greek, German, French, and English. Wilson's voice and announcements separate the parts and the scenes; he is the master of the time structure of the formal theatre world. In the beginning, his announcements seem logical, but "Part One" is spoken twice, and immediately after the second, we hear the distinct sound of "Headline A," but there is no Headline B or Headline C; only in the later part are “Headline D” and “Headline E” spoken. But at the two-thirds mark of the play, between two scenes on a completely dark and silent stage backdrop, Wilson retells the text of the adult Oedipus' Corinthian escape and the prophecy given to him. In addition to him, three narrators—Witness 1, Witness 2, and Woman—speak in Budapest and Epidaurus. Witness 1 and Woman narrate the prophecy and its consequences in different styles. Witness 1 is intense and often aggressive, representative of the unconscious part of the superego, speaking from the lower level of the scene. Woman talks in a soft voice, but she is objective with Oedipus’ situation and also often reacts with ironic laughter. She is always on the upper part of the middle level of the stage. No character position is owned by any of them, they all mix the sentences of Oedipus, Iocaste, Tiresias, and the Chorus. Witness 2 narrates the father-murder, the text of the Iocaste-Oedipus dialogue; she is kinder, more maternal, unsuccessfully trying to talk Oedipus out of his search for the past. An additional voice is inserted into the text of Witness 2, Christopher Knowles's destructive-deconstructive speech; this spoils the meaningful speech and shows language in its materiality. The Oedipal Edifice of Existence In his introduction to the Budapest theatre, Wilson states the absolute essence of the performance: The main theme of the story of Oedipus to me is darkness. He vows to shed light on the murder of Laius in order to free the city of Thebes from the plague. But can he bear the light when it finally shines on him? Is he able to confront his own past, his origins? As Tiresias, the blind seer, puts it: as long as Oedipus has eyesight, he is blind. When he starts to see the truth, he blinds himself. Can we bear to look at the truth today?" [27] For Wilson, the scene, the living, performative scene, the natural-objective environment in light, was always of absolute importance and priority. The prologue, drawn into this duality of light and dark, marks out, even without words and speech, the foundational being and story-position of the play. But the text, the speech, is already present here; obviously, every spectator knows who Oedipus was, what happened to him, where he started, and where he ended up. Therefore, the scene that begins before the play depicts three allegorical-metonymic, easily understandable themes. One is the sun, Apollo himself, Phoebus the Sun-God, the source of the blinding light, the source of the prophecy, in whose light a definite responsible self of Oedipus (never fulfilled here, only realized in death in Colonus) is born from the many and varied, confused desires. With Apollo's allegory, the Sun, we are confronted not only by Oedipus but also by us, the spectators, while everyone else who will appear on stage does not perceive it, only Oedipus and us, the spectators. The role of the Sun/Apollo is decisive in the construction of the self and the construction of Oedipus' life. He is the gaze whose existence and self-creating/destructive capacity were described by Sartre and Lacan in this concept. Man looks at the world and believes he exists as a coherent, reliable and powerful center. This was Oedipus' mode of existence, his relation to the world and Thebes, until the beginning of the drama. In Wilson’s project (unlike in Sophocles’), however, there is the power of the gaze, the danger of the otherness of desire, the impossibility of the organization of one's own desire into life, from the very first moment. This is on the visual level (and shortly after the prologue, in the text too). The gaze is such a view of ourselves, says Lacan, from where we never see ourselves and never want to see ourselves. In Wilson's theatre, this gaze has a decisive effect; this is the blinding light in which the subject is absorbed. Figure 1 The allegorical establishment of the Oedipal scene. Oedipus is blinded by the sun, and by the darkness into which he stares, but by too much light. He begins blind and ends blind. Photo credit: © Lucie Jansch. The other allegorical-metonymic element of the opening image is a knotted rope in a ring, sharply (blindingly?) illuminated (put into the light), the rope with which the father (Laius), under the influence of the prophecy, pierced the legs of the three-day-old infant, tied his ankles, wanted to make Oedipus' growth, his life, impossible. Neither in Sophocles nor in Freud is this severe, fate-defining event, experienced after birth, a fundamental central component. Wilson, on the other hand, makes it a dominant visual message. The rope is an allegorical metonymic symbol of trauma. The trauma is an event, a memory that is imperceptible when it happens; Oedipus, the infant, freed from the rope, becomes a successful man, a royal successor in Corinth, and has no memory of his origins or early fate. As an adult, however, this traumatic past returns in a fate-turning way (Freud described it in terms of Nachträglichket ); his, in that time, unknown past helps him in solving the riddle given to him by the Sphinx. Later, in the course of the revelation of his own fate, he fully understands his own history. In Sophocles and Freud, this event, the attempted infanticide, is not mentioned, but it is of crucial importance in Wilson's stage, and it is an important component of his personal past, his childhood. Figure 2 The complete structure of the Oedipal space (here from Vicenza). Light strips separate the space of the scene. Photo credit: © Lucie Jansch. The third, much less clearly allegorical and perhaps more symbolic-metonymic pictorial component of the introductory image component is the gap, the dark entrance between the walls. The gap, in my interpretation, is the body of the mother, the abjected place of birth and the place of the incest. It is the rightful realm of the Father, Apollo (and Laius). But after arriving to Thebes it is a great joy of jouissance and a disgusting horror at once. The purely visual prologue happens very slowly; it is impossible for the viewer not to be drawn into the event; it is not a spectacle; it is happening. In the black gap, in the closed, darkened mother body, the light appears, the sun, the ancestor, shedding rays, sometimes fading, sometimes intensifying to unbearable sharpness, blinding the spectator. Meanwhile, there is a confused confusion of annoying noise emanating from stringed instruments, which fade away as the color darkens and the sun disappears. Quietly turns into soft, embracing music. The sun reappears in this black, total darkness. Oedipus moves exceptionally slowly toward the light; his clothing is a translucent shroud, and his body remains a dark drawing with no shadow. He is standing in an absolute light, and his entire upper body (hands laden with sin, the bodily part of sex) disappears, absorbed in the light, leaving visible in the sun’ blinding light only the two legs, the once cruelly bound legs for which he is named. That was the prologue. The pictorial vision is essentially figurative, working in a very mixed dream-work, rhetorical modality. At times, it is hermeneutic, symbolic-metaphorical-allegorical (sun=Apollo and rope=pictures of infantile trauma); at other times, it is metonymic-catachrestic, without any reference to meaning, literally unintelligible, “displaced” to something else. The series of images, the vision of the scene, works in such a way that the director freely associates (in a psychotherapeutic way) certain parts and fragments of Sophocles' drama. The free association breaks up the logos and opens up the subjective, receptive dimension of the text. Still, the meanings are organized and arranged by the rhetorical, performative machinery of the dream-work. As a next step, the space is transformed and furnished with Oedipal figures and objects. Figure 3 Another element of the allegorical setting of the scene, the infant Oedipus and the rope that sends him to his death, piercing his legs. Photo credit: © Lucie Jansch. Sometimes, one or two horizontal light lines divide the space into two or three parts. The stage, divided into these planes and layers, is a typical stage technique of Wilson. This was already done for Freud in 1969, and Wilson mentions it in his 1969 Speech before Freud : The stage is divided into zones - stratified zones one behind another that extend from one side of the stage horizontally to the other. And in each of these zones there's a different "reality"-a different activity defining the space so that from the audience's point of view one sees through these different layers, and as each occurs it appears as if there's no realization that anything other than itself is happening outside that particularly designated area. People might associate this with Freud and the layers of consciousness-different levels of understanding-but that kind obvious intention has been erased or eradicated from this production. I see it more simply as a collage of different realities occurring simultaneously like being aware of several visual factors and how they combine into a picture before your eyes at any given moment. [28] Oedipus , however, is a tragedy of the inner soul, and the tripartite division here is definitely Freudian. The lower level is the unconscious, the ancestor. This level is forbidden even to Oedipus, and he does not enter it. In the middle is the world of the self, the performative actions and gestures, the conscious human world. Up on the top is the superego, the divine presence of Phoebus, the Sun, and Apollo. In the opening scene, which remains valid for the whole performance, Oedipus stands under the sun, a shepherd to the left, telling the authentic story, with another narrator, an elegant black woman in mask-like make-up (she later tells the prophecy in French), Iocaste in a strange cloak-like costume, Oedipus in the middle, and a saxophonist to the right, who wrote and plays the music. Then, the narrator of the lower level disappears, and the event is shifted up to the top, to Oedipus and the sun. A young female figure running through the stage appears; she is then absorbed into the light. Forms of Narration Image and language occur in parallel, side by side, against each other, or even building on each other after the prologue. The narration is referential, it is a storytelling, as opposed to the figurative level of the image. However, the speech is systematically deconstructed, and in a hermeneutic sense, clear meaning is excluded by various means. The text is not narrated by the characters, for example, not by Oedipus, but only by narrators. The classical dramatic position of the "actor" ceases to exist. There are no actors; Oedipus appears in the form of one actor or dancer or another. Sometimes, there is more than one Oedipus on the stage at the same time, the adult confronted with Apollo, who is already in the prologue, a nearly naked dancer dancing with the rope; there is also an actor with a face distorted by a glass plate, all are of course mute. There is no dialogue, only narration in a proclamatory mood; Oedipus never speaks; his lines, like those of Iocaste and the chorus, are spoken by narrators. The narrators' texts are not linked to a person; each narrator's speech is interspersed with the characters' sentences in the drama, sometimes the chorus is spoken, sometimes Oedipus is quoted, and quite a lot of Iocaste's text is spoken. The text is very sparse, and the same theme and the exact text are repeated many times. Wilson deconstructs the narrative in its very form, in that the language the narrators speak is often echoed, noisy, and indeed unusual because of the mixture of languages. Sometimes, a single narrator speaks in several languages, switching from one to the other sentence by sentence. It is a real Babelian situation; a kind of "untranslatability" prevails. The audience will not understand a large part of the text. For them, the spoken word is a material sound, with only its accents indicating moods. A gesture helps the situation (I wonder if Wilson required it) at the Budapest performance; translations in English and Hungarian were displayed above the stage. The costumes of the narrators are interesting. Witness 1, who speaks at the lower, unconscious level, appears in a black cloak with mask-like face paint; the narrator, who is called Woman, is in a colorful floor-length dress, her repeated ironic laughter emphasizing his white teeth and the white paint around his eyes, which is similar to Iocaste's. Finally, Witness 2 is wearing ordinary clothes with a small cap on her head, which resembles a contemporary housewife. Wilson's procedure for the reductive representation of the indicated text shows another interesting poetic character. At the center of the text is the oracle, which is not constative and does not refer to a situation; it is an action prescribed by language. The oracle is performative; it is a speech act. The space of Oedipus' existence, of his coming into being, is performative; he cannot create his life, but the oracle creates it. Language can act; it is not referential or imitative but has something powerful: a subjective plus and an energy of action. This purified, aggressive performativity is itself an Oedipal story. The prophecy is of divine origin, coming from Apollo himself. Apollo does not appear on the scene in person, but only through his allegory: the sun, in the form of blinding light, is almost ever-present. He himself does not even make a prophecy. His semi-divine agents, Pythia and Tiresias tell the oracle. In the case of the performative, contextual (i.e., subjective, personal, and at the same time relational, communal-social) expectations, traditionally accepted communal mechanisms must operate behind the validity of the act of illocution. In Sophocles and textually in Wilson, it is the scene of the Delphic oracle, a transcendental scene, a strange theatrical event with sacral and creative powers. In psychoanalysis, the super-ego is in place of Apollo. In Oedipus's life, this initially unconscious superego forces itself into real life, “blinding” compulsion. The oracle also provides the structure of the play, the two significant actions created in the prophecy, the murder of the father and the incest with the mother. The prologue and the first long section, which sets up the oedipal situation, present the fate and life of a determined self cursed by gaze and trauma. The third and fourth sections bring the two most important moments and performances of the oedipal fate, patricide, and incest, to the stage. The Patricide On the stage, dance and noise from the iron plates are given while the female voice, recorded text, repeatedly retells the killing. On the visual level, there is dancing on metal plates. Five men, Oedipus in the middle. The harsh sound of the metal plates may evoke the beats of the patricide event, the projection of aggressive unconscious anger. Besides them, we see a single woman, Witness 2, Angela Winkler; her recorded voice evokes what really happened at the time. The text spoken is primarily a fusion of the dialogue of Iocaste and Oedipus. Figure 4 The wedding scene of Oedipus and Iocaste. Photo credit: © Lucie Jansch. There are five, Witness 2 says of the event, and Oedipus is the sixth. But here on the stage with Oedipus, there are only five: Oedipus facing the light, facing Apollo, and the other four victims facing the audience, with their backs to Apollo. I assume (and this can be an important Wilson message) that the fifth is none other than the Sun, Apollo. Is he Laius? Is Apollo punishing the rebellion against the father, that is, against him, by the oracle? The images weave an associative web, a translation of the prophecy story, breaking through from the text's conscious level to the emotional-intellectual performance of the unconscious. The images tell a story through their associative compulsion, but this story is fragmented and hermeneutically indecipherable. The viewer is compelled to make associations, to invent something; it is so shocking. Incest Headline E – announced by Wilson, Iocaste, and Oedipus are standing in the middle level of the stage facing the audience. Above them, the sun. A single statement is repeated many times, first in Greek and then in various languages: "Oedipus marries Iokasta, King Laius's widow. They have four children.” Figure 5 The murder of the father. "There were five of them,” Iocaste tells the story. Photo credit: © Lucie Jansch. Wilson's voice joins the narrators here, saying the sentence in English. The pictorial association mixes allegorical and indecipherable catachrestic figurativity. Oedipus's face and head are not visible, and his whole head is covered with a giant mask. The mask, however, has a phallic form, showing the acorn of a penis. Oedipus has a metallic tree branch in his hand that he sometimes moves before Iokaste; at this point, she reacts by raising her hands in a defensive gesture. Then, the lower, unconscious level of the stage opens up. It is, probably, the level of sexual pleasure of jouissance. Male dancers in masks similar to Iokaste's face painting, holding green tree branches, dance to the forbidden desire. Above them, in the superior self, is the sun watching. The linguistic plane is monotonous, an annoying repetition, the same sentence repeated several times in different languages, thus spoken in the present tense. Closing scene It starts in total darkness, and then, with the arrival of the light, we see Witness 2, Andrea Winkler, sitting on a chair. Her speech is not live but in a recorded, replayed voice; she sits silently and speechlessly in the chair. The text recalls the confused, disjointed conversation between Oedipus and Iocaste. But the whole text is told by Andrea Winkler: The wise seer told me horrible things! I have no idea what to think of this. What can I say? Laius was killed by thieves, at a three-way cross road. What height what age was Laius? Tall; He looked quite like you do now. I look at you, and I am terrified. There were five of them Laius was in a carriage. As I got to that spot, both, man and driver came and tried to push me out of the way. In a very rough manner. Oh, Zeus! / Ó, Zeusz! What do you have in store for me next? There were five of them Laius was in a carriage. I got so angry that, in the fight, I hit the charioteer. And the old man. O Zeus, / Ó Zeus! what have you planned for me? With these very hands I had gripped at the man whose wife I hold now. I killed them all The narration mixes the texts of Iocaste and Oedipus. This is the moment when Oedipus discovers the truth: he killed the old man and that he was his father. Another important theme in this narration is the early history of the infant Oedipus. The key question is: Who am I, and how did I become me? "Tell me who my father was. Who was my mother?" The Corinthian king and queen? Or Laius or Iocaste? Figure 6 Chairs. Two women illuminated by light. On the left, Witness 2, narrating in German, retells events, the story, in a low voice with maternal accents. The other is Iocaste in silent scream. Photo credit: © Lucie Jansch. Meanwhile, more modern folding chairs arrive on the stage; the chair on which Andrea Winkler is sitting multiply, and unlit shadows, man and woman dancers bring them in, sometimes looking at the seated woman, who does not perceive them but tells the story. In Pompeii, Iocaste, her face contorted into a scream, appears sideways. And, of course, the sun comes out in the gap between the walls. The German-Italian monologue is interrupted by the ragged, disordered voice of Christopher Knowles, repeating in English, "My name is Oedipus, Oedipus, Oedipus, my name is known to, who can be confident, how can be, Creon, my old trusted family friend, I ask you to stand by, words, words..." The speech and language here revert to the preoedipal, the meaning, the Lacan sense of symbolism disappears, the Father's Name is bracketed, and the speech slips back to an earlier phase of a life in turmoil. Wilson is known to have been "obsessed with collecting chairs since he was young" and recalls his mother as saying that "no one could sit like her." [29] In his conversation with Umberto Eco, Wilson returns to chairs twice. He says: "I think chairs are sculptures. They are pieces that you can sit on, or be seen sitting on, or imagine someone sitting on. They create their own personality, they evoke associations and thoughts." [30] In the play's penultimate scene, Oedipus appears at the end, destroys the row of systematically arranged chairs, and for a moment seems to be contemplating a deadly revenge on his mother. But (unlike killing Laius) he does not. This scene is Wilson's own personal therapeutic arena, his self-interpretation, and it carries forward and comprehensively extends the model of psychoanalytic therapy onto the stage. The therapeutic performance takes place. Indeed, analytic therapy is the activity of the self-creation of the pathological self, the performativity of the self, a life activity that is also a fundamental deconstructive process of personal existence. This is the subject of Wilson's staging, his figurative-textual transcription. A parallel process is the dismantling of language, the symbolic, the denunciation of the power of the father's name. Christopher Knowles’s fragmented text, sometimes wholly devoid of symbolic logic, indicates that "who am I" is absolutely inexpressible because "I" becomes identical with what the gaze, the Apollonian light, demands. And from this gaze, from the influx of monsters, one can only protect oneself by losing sight. Apollo's prophecy is fulfilled, yet the gaze he has created is eradicated by Oedipus' blinding, castrating himself. In the final scene, monsters enter, and a disharmonious flood of sound is heard while the lone mother figure continues to sit motionless on her chair, still oblivious to everything. In the final minutes, Oedipus emerges from the monsters, now blind but as naked as a baby. Once again, two iterations of Oedipus are present, as the shepherd leads the dancer who plays the naked infant by the hand. Oedipus crawls on all fours, returning to the moment he is pierced through the leg and thrown out on the mountain. Blindly, he turns around, climbs to his feet, and walks towards the increasingly bright sun, just as he did at the beginning of the play—the lifeway returns to itself. But the light has a different role, a different potential here. The light does not blind a blind man; Apollo's power of light fades into nothingness. We do not know, however, what happens in the end, whether the blind Oedipus can enter Apollo's light because before this happens or not; the play ends. Endnotes [1] Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre (London: Routledge, 2006), 78. [2] Ibid., 77. [3] Robert Wilson and Umberto Eco, “A Conversation,” Performing Arts Journal 15, no. 1 (January 1993), 89. [4] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 305–331. [5] André Green, The Tragic Effect: The Oedipus Complex in Tragedy (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 1. [6] Ibid., 188. [7] Stefan Brecht, The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson (London: Methuen, 1994), 41. [8] Arthur Holmberg, The Theatre of Robert Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 28–40. [9] Ibid., 41. [10] Hans-Thies Lehmann, “Robert Wilson, Scenographer,” Mercury: German Journal of European Thought 7 (1985): 554–63. [11] Sigmund Freud, Traumdeutung (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1996), 527. [12] Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams , vols. 4–5 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud , trans. and ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1985), 270. [13] Ibid., 271. [14] Ibid., 272. [15] Ibid, 260–64. [16] Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 67. [17] Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams , 506. [18] Ibid., 506. [19] Holmberg has an entire chapter titled “The Dream Work” in The Theatre of Robert Wilson (19960. This dream work concept, however, connects only to this psychoanalytic concept's very surface. [20] The biographical component often returns in Wilson's work. See Egri (2022.) [21] Robert Wilson, “Listening with the Body, Speaking with the Body,” in Drive b: Brecht 100. Workbook. Theater der Zeit 1997/10 / The Brecht Yearbook , ed. Marc Silbermann (Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 1998), 47. [22] Hans-Thies Lehmann, “Robert Wilson, Szenograph,” Pittura/teatro (1998): 50, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, e-periodica, https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=ptt-001:1988:0::983#266 [23] Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis , trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 12. [24] Holmberg, 79. [25] Ibid. 9. [26] Robert Wilson, quoted in Ildikó Gáspár, “(Szem)tanúk – Witnesses,” Szinhaz.net , September 28, 2021, https://szinhaz.net/2021/09/28/gasparildiko-szemtanuk-witnesses [27] Wilson, quoted in Gáspár, “(Szem)tanúk – Witnesses.” [28] Robert Wilson, “From Speech Introducing Freud,” in Twentieth Century Theatre: A Sourcebook , ed. Richard Drain (London: Routledge, 1995), 60. [29] Ildikó Gáspár, “(Szem)tanúk – Witnesses,” Szinhaz.net , September 28, 2021, https://szinhaz.net/2021/09/28/gasparildiko-szemtanuk-witnesses [30] Robert Wilson and Umberto Eco, 89. About The Author(s) Antal Bókay is a Professor of Theatre at the University of Pécs, Department of Modern Literature and Psychoanalysis, PhD Program in Hungary. 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.

By Valeria Orani, Frank Hentschker | A collection of contemporary Italian plays presented in English. < 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 New Plays from Italy Volume 3 Valeria Orani, Frank Hentschker Download PDF Italian and American Playwrights Project is curated by Umanism’s Artistic Director Valeria Orani in collaboration with The Martin E. Segal’s Director Frank Hentschker. The project brought together some of the brightest, innovative, and most engaging Italian contemporary playwrights, developing their pieces through translation into English. Italian Playwrights Project restarted an artistic dialogue between Italy and US adding continuity to what had been an on-off relationship between the two countries for the last decades. This book has been translated thanks to a grant by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. ELISA CASSERI - EVENT ORIZON (TRANSLATED BY ADRIANA ROSSETTO) Olga is stuck in a studio apartment, she cannot figure out what has happened, she only knows that she cannot escape. When she tries to open one of the doors on the wall, she immediately comes back from another one and continues to stay there. Marco is her boyfriend but sometimes he isn’t, her father is alive but later dead, her mother left when she was a little girl but she is suddenly back. Olga struggles to understand and does not know what reality is and what she can do to change what happened and what didn’t happen. She cannot surrender to the real time, to past events, to those journeys into a grief which is too true to be science fiction. GIULIANA MUSSO - MY HERO (TRANSLATED BY PATRICIA GABORIK) My Hero is made up of three distinct monologues. Three mothers of as many Italian soldiers who took part in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan during the years 2008-2010. The three women are very different from each other for social extraction, geographic origin, cultural level and personality, but they share the experience of having a soldier's son. Characters are inspired by existing people and real-life events ARMANDO PIROZZI - A NOTEBOOK FOR WINTER (TRANSLATED BY ADRIANA ROSSETTO) A Notebook for Winter is a two-actor-piece which in three acts and tells the story of an introvert professor of literature who finds a burglar on his way back home. The knife-wielding burglar wants something unexpected from him: it is a question of life or death. FABRIZIO SINISI- THE GREAT WALK (TRANSLATED BY THOMAS SIMPSON ) The president of the International Monetary Fund, Frederic Jean-Paul, is arrested and kept in an anonymous New York police station: he’s accused of sexual violence inflicted on a waitress. His two bizarre jailers, Donald and Frank, have been ordered to guard the prisoner until the following morning, when he will be brought to a safer location. However, things don’t go as planned EDITED BY FRANK HENTSCHKERWITH VALERIA ORANI Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) By Thamir Az-Zubaidy Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Thamir R. S. Az-Zubaidy Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) depicts the life of an Iraqi young widow, Nour, from Basra who lived through the US occupation (2003-2011). The play delves into the sociopolitical context of the province during one of the drastic historical junctures of Iraq’s modern history, portraying the clash between the local and foreign narratives about Iraqi women’s rights. The Widow resists both epistemological violence that represents monolithic images of Iraqi women and the patriarchal violence that obscures women’s agency. The figure of Nour, who despite her social fragility as a young widow with a child and later on as an abandoned pregnant woman, is able to (re)create her destiny. Nour is a semi-fictitious character that Al-Azraki developed based on his early experience as a translator for international news agencies (2003-6), her late husband was killed while combating the invading troops, leaving her with a two-year-old daughter, Nour is left alone to endure the hardships of this tragic loss and also the confining societal and patriarchal norms. Arguably, in this play, Al-Azraki critiques the hypocrisy of Arabic patriarchal societies like Iraq by examining the concept of “ghira”, a local term encompassing notions of courage, honor, and men’s responsibility to guard women’s honor (Al-Azraki, 169). Notable examples of this in the play are male protagonists including Samir, a young university lecturer who runs away to Canada after getting Nour pregnant, and Samir’s father, a 65 years old man and the head of an oil company in Basra, who proposes to marry Nour temporarily (outside any legal obligations) under the pretext of protecting her and her daughter. Based on thematic analysis of the play, this paper investigates the role of Iraqi theatre in resisting gender roles in war times by centralising women’s agency in the war story. Starting from the premise that male literary writers’ works about female characters are often targeted by feminist scholars as either perpetuating stereotyping or failing to present convincing female characterization (Az-Zubaidy, 2024), I argue that despite that fact that The Widow is written by a male playwright, the play depicts details and facts that show the strong side of women like Nour. Iraqi theatre scholars argued for the specificity of gender when it is depicted by Iraqi male theatremakers. Alyaa Naser and Majeed Midhin argue that male literary figures “own the power and the authority, as well as the voice, to speak of the unspeakable for women, which may not only be acceptable, but rather more comprehensible, since society would rather listen to them, being men, than to women” (2025, 304). Paul Ricoeur’s premise of how employing narration in identity constructing is able to constitute an identity that is dictated by character itself rather than being imposed from outside. Ricoeur notes that the plot of any literary work is “an integrating process,” that gets its “dynamic identity” from and “is completed only” in the presence of “the living receiver of the narrated story” such as the reader or the audience (1991, 21). Emphasizing the role of narrative identity, Ricoeur maintains that “it is in this way that we learn to become the narrator and the hero of our own story, without actually becoming the author of our own life.” (32) Ricoeur’s argument finds its resonance in Jane Bacon who, acknowledging the affinity between language and body, proclaims that “in language the body quickly becomes gesture, a metaphor, a personification of personhood” (quoted in Parker-Starbuck & Mock 2011, 229). Thus, once the narrator, and this applies to literary genres including drama, starts narrating a story to the listener, they become the heroes of the constructed identity on stage away from the control or the authority of the author. Accordingly, what the audience watches on stage is the female character who has full control of her story. The play problematises the rhetoric of “liberating” Iraqi women which was employed prior the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Lindsey Mantoan posits that one of the major narratives of invading Iraq was “to liberate, or had already liberated, Iraqi women” from the dictator’s patriarchal grip (2018, 105-106). Yet, official reports, amongst those by international institutions, assert that, following the US-invasion of Iraq, women’s rights witnessed ongoing deterioration (Az-Zubaidy, 159). The Widow articulates these tensions between the US narrative and social reality through the exploration of the precarious situation of widowed women like Nour, the politics of male gaze, as represented by Samir’s father, and the confining societal and patriarchal norms. The US-invasion, as stated in the play, caused the death of Nour’s husband. Instead of ensuring security and peace where liberty and prosperity would thrive, the American invasion turns Iraq into a site of confrontation whose frontlines entail even the domestic spheres, fostering an environment for civil tensions. Such a socio-political landscape threatened the expression of liberal views, restricted women’s freedom and encouraged political violence, both physical and verbal. Al-Azraki’s play is divided into 18 scenes, and preceded by a prologue that casts light on Noura’s loss of her husband, Hatem, who was killed while defending the country against the invading troops. This violent incident evidenced the fact that Iraqi women received the heavy toll of successive wars since the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988). In this prologue, which recalls a similar scene in Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man , when Raina and Bluntschli met each other for the first time, the stage is overwhelmed with darkness and the sounds of “aircraft, explosion, heavy weapons” (Al-Azraki 2017, 173). Although brief, those four words adequately depict the horrific atmosphere of war, indicating the big number of casualties. Then, the figure of a “heavy-set” soldier, “mainly in silhouette”, appears on stage (173). The lights cast on Nour, who is “veiled in the Iraqi Abaya”. She addresses “the silhouetted figure”, representing her deceased husband, who was killed two years ago, saying: It has been two years, and I’ve been faithful to your memory, but there is a young man that I like, he teaches at the college where I’m taking night courses again, like you wanted me to. And I think he likes me. I make him nervous. He’s so young. He thinks I’m “an Older Woman.” ( Pause. ) Would it make you very sad? (173) In response to her inquiry, Hatem’s “ silhouetted figure rises, kisses her on the forehead, and exits ”, suggesting his love and also approval of both: her studies and love to Samir, the young teacher (173). Then, the setting changes suddenly to the present time where we see Nour inside the class, a remarkable employment of the technique of heterotopic space. Investing this technique in drama and theatre is important for examining significant issues because beyond the actual locations of performances that members of the audience observe, Joanne Tompkins argues, there are “additional sites that were evoked” to generate a thoughtful understanding of past, present and the future (2014, 58). It is worth noting that in this play, Al-Azraki presents the stage as a medium comprising imagined, as depicted in the prologue, and concrete, as portrayed in scene 1, locations. Accordingly, the employment of this technique conveys the role theatre can play in forming a connection, Tompkins proposes, between “the concrete entity” of the venue, and “an imagined location” that has to “be rendered visible” (179). Through this intersection between the two sites, Al-Azraki opens up the space in his play, I argue, to provide the widow, Nour, with the opportunity to love again, which is often resisted by societal norms. In scene 1 of the play, Samir appears at the end of a lecture, addressing the audience, as his students, asking them to prepare a play by the Iraqi-American playwright, Heather Ruffo’s Nine Parts of Desire (2006), and express their opinions of her “representation of Iraqi woman” (173). The class's reading of Rafoo establishes a background of Iraqi women’s war experiences offstage. Further, it underscores the impact of war against Iraq on both diasporic playwrights; Rafoo and Al-Azraki. In addition to introducing a feminist approach to the US- invasion, the reference to Raffo’s play serves as an analogy to The Widow as this scene presents Nour, a young woman who can reject social restrictions which will bring her under the tension of the two protective and provocative forces soon. Nour and a male student Ali started a debate about one of Raffo’s character who was portrayed as an Iraqi women who had several sexual relations: NOUR : I think the play is far from being authentic. Who is Amal? […] Like she’s Sinbad? Maybe this is believable for an American audience but for us it’s absurd. She ignores the majority of the Iraq women who suffer unbearable conditions […]. . . . ALI : I kind of agree with Nour. I think her representation of Iraqi women is too selective. She tries to challenge the stereotypical, orientalist image of the Iraqi woman, but it’s not an accurate portrayal. (179) The employment of the ‘play within a play’ technique which triggered the debate about women's rights, sexual freedom and western gender codes opens a fierce debate about religion also. Samir could not control the discussion about women’s freedom of choice and the class ended by accusing him of blasphemy and Nour of being immoral because of his critique of divine texts. Samir confirms his opinion that any text, including the Quran, is subject to free interpretation. Shocked by such a claim, Ali replies that “this is blasphemous. There can be one truthful interpretation of the Quran” (180). When the discussion turns to religious texts, Nour rushes to support Samir, her teacher and lover. While women’s situation in Basra is described in Nour’s statement “...and now we have many killers. Every day the body of a woman is thrown into the river. Rumours spread: indecent, prostitute, a traitor working for the occupation, honour killings” (176), she decides to approach her ‘young’ and “very attractive” (174) drama teacher, and express her love for him and agrees to marry him under a temporary marriage, mut’ah (1). In Scene 1, Nour tells Samir “I can’t understand you in class because I’m distracted by my feelings towards you.” It is a bold expression of her emotions and sexuality, especially in a place such as the class and by a student to her teacher. At home, she calls her sister Rana and tells her that her professor “tried to be really angry and proper, but I know he likes me, really. Guess what? I think he's a virgin” (174). The above excerpts, loaded with the pronoun “I,” signifies a strong sense of individuality, where Nour believes that she is entitled to approach and choose Samir as her lover. Nour, in this scene, not only resists patriarchal traditions set in Basrah, but also subverts the traditional male gaze. Most significantly, mut’ah marriage was performed in secrecy, and does not provide legal or social support or protection for women which shows Nour’s defying personality in a lawless atmosphere where women’s honor and sexual behaviour can determine the value of their lives as casualties of their traditions or the American troops. Bold and romantic, Nour resists these practices of violence by creating her own codes. “Is this your first time?” she asks Samir as they are about to have sex, “Have you never had a woman? Don’t worry. Come. Undress me” (177). Ketu H. Katrak notes that female sexuality, which is located within the cultural tradition, is often controlled by confining women, especially widows, within the perception of “guardians of tradition” (2006, 11). In this sense, widowed women are expected to care for their children and sacrifice their sexuality for the sake of motherhood. Katrak observes this as a process of colonizing women “within their bodies,” that they resist by attempting “to transmute the controls of their female bodily spaces from patriarchal hands into their own hands” (2006, 11) . Commenting on body representations in Iraqi literature, Hanan Jasim Khammas notes that “female sexuality was a scene for social critique whereas male sexuality represented a claim for subjectivity” (2018, 3). Sexuality is an integral element in power relations and Nour embraces it to support her agency as a young woman. However, her desire is driven by love for Samir. Ironically, when Samir’s father, who is Nour’s manager in the oil company of Basra, proposed a mut’ah marriage, she refused. Nour chooses to resist social realities that had been shaped not only by social gender restrictions, but also by political chaos: “Good people are either silenced or have escaped the country. Meanwhile hypocrites have seized the chance to take power. This used to be a secular society. Now suddenly religion has become fashionable again. Fundamentalism has become mainstream” (178). Iraqi lives transformed from living under one dictator who silenced them to a shapeless context where Iraqi people had limited choices to survive like fleeing the country. Nour’s sense of her surroundings and the reflections she provides that compares between past and the present reveals a clear side of her identity as an aware woman which I can relate to Ricoeur’s notion of constituting identity. This is further expressed in scene 7, where Nour asserts that she does not “need a sexual partner”, but “a man who can love me, and protect me, and be a safe haven for me and my daughter” (185). However, when the discussion turns to religious texts, Nour rushes to support Samir, her teacher and lover. The discussion in class leads to how heaven and hell are interpreted, where Samir observes that the description of heaven in the Quran was meant to persuade “Arabs who lived in the desert, to make them believe in God and leave their savage manners and pagan beliefs” (180). Nour backs Samir by saying: “adultery or sodomy or even stealing or lying”, are “trivial” issues compared to the eternal punishment in hell (180). Infuriated by this, Ali accuses Nour of “immodest woman”, who always supports her teacher’s “immoral, atheistic ideas” (181). Yet, Samir is threatened and warned to leave Basrah due to the secular opinions that he expressed in the class. An envelope is pushed under his door, with a letter and a bullet. The final line of the letter discloses that his open opinions about religion and women are unacceptable and he either had to leave or he will be killed, the letter ends with “And if they do not, then seize them wherever you find them and slay them” (186). This part of the Quran verse asserts that Samir is now considered a renegade. It is evident that fleeing Iraq is the sole option left for him. As Nour is now pregnant with their child, Samir asks help from his mother who suggests that the only solution is that they should get married in the court, but Samir does not have time, so he decides to leave Nour behind. Nour is strong, her resistance and resilience occur almost consecutively, and she is far from being vulnerable and submissive. Rather, she asserts her freedom of choice. That is why she refuses when Samir’s father proposes a mut’ah marriage to preserve her honor. Although Nour was punished due to her rejection by being sent to "the farthest location in the desert of Basra, Majnoon oil field” (199), she did not keep silent. An institutional and patriarchal violence against Nour is so evident in the decision of her male manager to confine her to a three- hour destination from Basra. While the manager was trying to shut her mouth “Please! Calm down, and lower your voice” (198), Nour raised her voice high attracting the attention of the office to his sexual harassment. As daring and fearless as ever, Nour’s voice becomes an expression of defiance and agency, the loud voice confirms that no one has an authority over her choices. Nour’s assertion of individuality and freedom of choice is an instance of resistance in which women, quoting Katrak’s words, attempt “to transmute the controls of their female bodily spaces from patriarchal hands into their own hands” (11). The play begins with the loss of Nour’s husband, Hatem, who died while defending Iraq against the US invasion in 2003, and ends with Samir’s murder shortly after his return to Iraq. He was shot by one of the militia members who threatened him earlier. Samir’s return is meant to compensate for his guilt of forsaking Nour behind, when she was pregnant with their child. During their last meeting, following his return from Canada, Samir tells Nour that he has returned so that they will have a “permanent, public, normal marriage” (203). Hatem and Samir are both casualties of the US invasion which caused dire impacts not only on Iraqi women, but also children. Through Nour’s storytelling which took place three years post the invasion of Iraq, the play shows that no progress had been achieved regarding Iraqi women’s status. By referring to the three females, Samir’s mother, Nour, and Yasmine, her daughter, I contend that the play underscores the transgenerational trauma encountered by female characters in the play. As Samir’s mother approaches Samir’s body, Nour hugged her, indicating solidarity and understanding of loss and bereavement. The presence of the two women near Samir’s body is another indication that it is no longer an individual traumatic incident. Samir’s mother's reaction to her son’s early unmanly behavior discloses an aspect of female solidarity which was returned when Nour hugged the mother while they both were close to Samir’s dead body. This solidarity enhances female agency as both Samir’s mother and Nour who belong to different generations were trying to achieve justice and secure women’s rights and safety. This solidarity was also projected through Yasmin, Nour’s daughter, who despite being absent from the stage, resembled the new generation of Iraqi women who will grow up under the complexities of the US- invasion, the transgenerational trauma and the transhistorical political unrest. Perpetuating the neocolonial impacts of this invasion through the emergence of armed groups extends the traumatic experiences of Iraqi people, and that of Iraqi women in particular. However, the image of two women standing together at the final scene signals their courage and resistance, not only to violence, but also to stereotyping of Iraqi women, and confinement to the domestic sphere. Al-Azraki’s The Widow is a compelling critique of the patriarchal and socio-political forces that operate to marginalize and oppress women in war-torn Iraq. While exploring the volatile environment of their personal experience, the article asserts Iraqi women’s resilience and agency. Nour’s story defied two types of violence; stereotyping and patriarchy. Despite multiple traumatic experiences of a profound psychological trauma due to the loss of her two husbands, Nour achieves her agency, succeeds in supporting herself and her daughter financially, and opposes male characters’ control over her quotidian life, body, and sexuality. Iraqi widows like Nour were able to create their journeys amid destruction and chaos. Nour, and other women who share with her similar stories, humanised war stories by sharing their intimate details, romantic side and sexual desires during times of fire and blood. Iraqi theatre in the diaspora is connected to the homeland. Portraying Iraqi stories about women who resisted violence and negation under invasion and occupation disrupts dominant narrative and representation of Iraqis as mere casualty figures and numbers. Indeed, theatre is instrumentalised to recreate history and centralise Iraqi voices, experiences and agency to tell their own stories. Telling stories means knowledge and knowledge becomes power and that is what Iraqi theatre is doing–it achieves balance through performing stories of Iraqis, not only about war, destruction and death. Rather, theatre depicts our stories of love, permanence and continuity. It is only in this way, the colonised can defeat colonisers, through storytelling. Endnotes: (1) It is achieved with a certain agreement between a man and a woman for a fixed dowry and duration. Emotional, social, and financial needs are the main reasons for conducting this form of marriage rather than a regular or a long-term commitment. Zena Al Safar notes that Mut’ah is mostly known among Shia Muslims, especially in Iran and Iraq, where they constitute the majority. Al Safar maintains that, in the last four decades, wars and conflicts had negatively influenced the “socioeconomic and security situation” in Iraq and led to “the emergence of temporary marriage in Iraq” (2025, 4-5). During those four decades many Iraqi women were left widowed or divorced (Al Safar 5). As such, their financial, and emotional needs push them to be involved in this form of marriage. (2) فَإِن لَّمْ يَعْتَزِلُوكُمْ وَيُلْقُوا إِلَيْكُمُ السَّلَمَ وَيَكُفُّوا أَيْدِيَهُمْ فَخُذُوهُمْ وَاقْتُلُوهُمْ حَيْثُ ثَقِفْتُمُوهُمْ) Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes Al-Azraki, A. (2017) “Introduction to ‘The Widow’”, in Al-Azraki, A. and James Al-Shamma, (eds) Contemporary Plays from Iraq . London: Bloomsbury. _________. (2017) ‘“The Widow”, in Al-Azraki, A. & Al-Shamma, J, (eds) Contemporary Plays from Iraq. London: Bloomsbury. Al Safar, Z. (2025). Temporary marriage in Iraq: Views and perceptions [Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1546/ Az-Zubaidy, T. R. S. (2024) “Empowering Iraqi Woman’s Voice and Revolt in Muhsin Al-Ramli’s ‘I Killed her Because I Loved her’”, Journal of Diaalfekr , (3), pp. 154-167. https://ojs.diaalfekr.com/index.php/sjlb/ article/view/55/67 Katrak, K. H. (2006) Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World . New Brunswick, London: Rutgers University Press. Khammas, H. J. (2018) “Overcoming sexuality. Ideology & Masculinity in Iraqi Fiction before and after 2003”, TRANS- , (23), pp. 1-10. Doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/trans.2037 Mantoan, L. (2018) War as Performance: Conflicts in Iraq and Political Theatricality . London: Palgrave Macmillan. Naser, A., A. & Midhin, A., A. (2025) “Honour and Reputation as Gender Politics in Ali Abdel-Nabi Al Zaidi’s Rubbish (1995) and Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017)” Theatre Research International , (49:3), pp. 299-316. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S030788332400021X Parker-Starbuck, J. and Roberta Mock. (2011) “Researching the Body in/as Performance”, in Baz Kershaw and Helen Nickolson (eds), Research Methods in Theatre and Performance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press , pp. 210-235. Raffo, H. (2006) 9 Parts of Desire . Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1991) “Life in Quest of Narrative”, in David Wood, (ed.) On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation . London and New York: Routledge, pp. 20-33. Tompkins, J. (2014) Theater’s Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space . Palgrave Macmillan. References About The Author(s) Thamir Az-Zubaidy 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 Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. 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Stephen Hong Sohn Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 29 1 Visit Journal Homepage Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland Stephen Hong Sohn By Published on December 16, 2016 Download Article as PDF While playwright Chay Yew has garnered praise for his more than a half dozen plays, few scholars have completed any sustained critical engagements of his large body of work. [1] Yew’s productions commonly address queer Asian American experiences and associated themes, including the struggle to survive amid hostile familial ties and exclusionary social contexts. My article explores such issues through an extended analysis of Wonderland , a dramatic production involving four roles. Three of the roles—a Man, a Woman, and a Son—comprise an Asian American nuclear family. The fourth figure, a Young Man, primarily comments on scenes in which he does not take part. At the conclusion, however, it becomes clear that the Young Man plays another role: the Son as an adult. Wonderland roughly tracks the life trajectories of the three primary figures, allowing Yew to stage the challenges related to achieving success, fulfillment, and belonging, especially within the minority family. Wonderland ’s 1999 La Jolla Playhouse premiere was notable since two of its cast members, Alec Mapa (Son) and Sab Shimono (Man), are queer-identifying Asian American actors, and accordingly reveals an important alignment between performance and social identity. [2] Given the relative invisibility of queer Asian American actors in general and the restrictions still attached to this historical period (i.e., pre-same-sex marriage laws), the actors’ participation in this production encourages the audience and scholars alike to consider the roles beyond the prescribed heteronormative boundaries of the nuclear family. This critical practice, informed by queer and racial perspectives, is perhaps most apt for reading the role of the Man, who as the reproductively fertile father nevertheless engages in some non-normative social dynamics and practices at various points in the play. How an Asian American role is brought to life in a performance space always undergirds my analyses, especially with respect to the racialized and queer body as part of a larger family unit. [3] Each role bears the burden of expanding the audience’s vision to include the queer Asian American as part of a domestic social construct that better integrates non-normative sexualities as part of its core foundation. My article shows how Wonderland diagnoses this problem through its thematic depictions and offers an intriguing intervention through its deployment of form—what Yew describes as a “nonmusical musical.” I investigate the “nonmusical musical” as a quintessentially queer racial performance form that employs what I term as calculated cacophonies , which elucidates how Wonderland uses dialogic, sonic, and thematic relationalities to undercut the portrayed destruction of the Asian American family. The presence of calculated cacophonies allows Wonderland to spotlight some guarded optimism: there may be a sustained possibility for the queer Asian American son to find a place in the heteronuclear family. I begin my analysis by situating the play within broader historical, cultural, literary, and dramaturgical discourses, which the play’s post-1965 time period emphasizes directly. Prior to the Immigration Act of 1965, restrictive immigration, property, and marriage laws severely impacted the expansion of Asian American families. The obstacles they faced are apparent in numerous cultural productions set before 1965. Bachelors loom large, romantic relationships are often transitory, [4] and the possibility of marrying within one’s ethnic group remains challenging given the gender imbalances perpetrated by selective entry policies that favored men for their labor. In many plays and fictions, the Asian American family itself is under constant threat of dissolution. [5] We need not look too much further than Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea [6] to see the precariousness of the family even in the post–World War II period and in the latter stages of legislatively supported Asian American exclusion. Fortunately, that book’s protagonist, Ben Loy, recovers from impotency to impregnate his wife, Mei Oi, and therefore solidify a new Chinatown future, full of generative families who will fruitfully multiply. In cultural productions set in the post-1965 period, the emergence of this social formation is more assured. The heternormatively grounded “reproductive future” [7] is finally offered as a more sustainable possibility as evidenced by the proliferation of nuclear families, however functionally or dysfunctionally rendered, and accordingly depicted in a wide range of dramas and novels. [8] These many works admittedly do show clear fractures in the Asian American nuclear family and generate instabilities concerning the future of ethnoracially specific kinship formations. But what distinguishes these dramas and fictional narratives from the ones set in earlier periods is precisely the fact of the law: Asian American families can theoretically come into existence without the barriers formed by immigration policy or citizenship dilemmas. Practically, however, these works reveal that the formation of the contemporary Asian American heteronuclear family remains fragile. The family formations we see in the post-1965 productions are also made tenuous by other social dynamics. In literary critic erin Khuê Ninh’s estimation, depictions involving the Asian American family often involve daughters who are burdened with impossible expectations; they are supposed to bring honor to the family, marry the proper partner, and achieve a high professional status. So strict are these regimes that Asian American daughters will even engage in self-destructive acts to gain personal agency. [9] While Ninh concentrates specifically on the predicament of Asian American daughters in this exploitative economy undergirding the nuclear family, her conceptualization of filial debt applies to other cultural productions and their representations of intergenerational social formations. The battleground appears on the mind and body of the Asian American child who must be properly monitored, controlled, and perhaps even programmed to guarantee future economic and familial success. But Ninh’s argument presumes the heterosexuality of the daughters. The implicit question that her research and argument bring up is: Is the Asian American child who does not procreate inherently disobedient? The answer is almost certainly yes, meaning that queer sexuality becomes diametrically opposed to Asian American family. [10] Queer Asian America, the Nonmusical Musical, and Calculated Cacophonies Wonderland vividly demonstrates the ways in which queer sexuality cannot be fully acknowledged in the Asian American family in the post-1965 period. [11] On the thematic level, Wonderland disrupts the developmental narrative of the heteronormative, nuclear Asian American family, which relies on its children’s strict obedience. In an exchange with her son at the play’s inception, the mother tells him, “Coming to this country / A big sacrifice / Don’t forget / You must be survivor / Must be what again?”; the mother supplies the only apparent correct answer: “Must be success.” [12] The family’s reputation partially lies in this generational extension, as the Son makes good on his mother’s apparent sacrifice related to her uprooting and migration from Singapore. While the play follows the expected narrative by endowing the Son’s future with a burden of the heterosexual reproductive future, it undercuts the myth of the ever-sacrificial parental generation, while attending to the need for reconfiguring familial formations and expectations, especially in light of the queer Asian American’s expulsion from the home. In the context of post-1965 Asian American literature, Min Hyoung Song argues, “If queers are reproductive future’s negation, . . . then a select group of children of Asian immigrants are its objects of veneration.” [13] To be sure, the Son in Wonderland exists in the position of “veneration,” but his position becomes precarious once his queer sexuality is revealed. Additionally, Wonderland operates on the contextual level as part of a wave of theatrical productions focused on the Asian American family that surfaced in light of the success of East West Players, Pan Asian Repertory, and other pioneering companies that first arose in the period following the Civil Rights Movement. I earlier cited a dozen or so productions involving familial social dynamics that are set in the post-1965 moment; most were staged around or after 1990 and spotlight the far more expansive array of theater companies supporting Asian American productions. As Esther Kim Lee notes, [14] the proliferation of Asian American theater in this period came with more experimental and thematically unique productions. [15] Dramas concerning the Asian American family correspondingly boast inventive staging methods and dynamic aesthetic approaches, departing from the more realist conventions that characterized earlier productions. [16] Yew’s Wonderland operates in this same fashion, especially toward its conclusion, a surrealistic tonality that I consider in more detail later. Finally, on the formal level, Wonderland ’s staging and production gesture to the necessity of an innovative aesthetic approach to depict the queer Asian American family. At first glance, Wonderland might be described as a chamber play, which Heath Diehl notes “is a minimalist form in both dramaturgy and performance.” [17] Though Wonderland has been produced with some use of sets, including a view of the Pacific Ocean and a “wood-paneled stage,” [18] the play is meant to highlight the performances of the four actors. The sets themselves remain fixed, while a coordinated use of lighting helps mobilize a particularly dreamlike quality through the use of “aqua tones.” [19] Diehl’s reading of another of Yew’s works, Porcelain , advances that its form, the chamber play, is essential to enhance a particular thematic issue being staged: “the current impossibility of representing gay Asian identities and the need for alternative identity formations within Asian America.” [20] The sparseness of the stage, the longer silences in that particular production all emphasize the isolation and sense of futility experienced by Porcelain ’s central character. Wonderland accrues another level of formal complexity due to Yew’s description of the drama as a “nonmusical musical” in which the “monologues and dialogues” become “arias” and “duets.” [21] Though Wonderland uses no music, the play’s stage directions encourage actors to consider their lines rhythmically. Yew’s cascading script and creative use of indents spur the actors to engage their lines with musical inflection. For the most part, the invocation of nonmusical arias and duets in Wonderland reflects the ways that spoken words (and their potential musical intonations) contain some of the chaos inherent in Wonderland ’s content through a kind of mellifluous speech patterning. But in three distinct places Yew subverts the general sonorousness attached to the speaking roles. I designate these moments as calculated cacophonies because they (1) involve overlapping dialogue and argumentative language to emphasize the catastrophic deconstruction of the Asian American family, but at the same time (2) exhibit word and phrase repetitions, dialogic relationalities, and subtextual thematic connections to cohere the characters. These interlocking sequences, I contend, remind us that though the Asian American family becomes violently fractured, there exists a latent desire to find unity among its exploding parts. In this sense, the play’s nonmusical musical form employs an aesthetic construct to help accentuate one central theme: the desire to make a place for queer identity within the structure of the Asian American heteronuclear family. Therefore, one may ask what is it about the nonmusical musical that makes it the appropriate form for a performance focused on the potential but eventual impossibility of the queer Asian American family? To answer this question, I turn to the scholars engaged in both race and queerness as they arise in the musical form. Stacy Wolf, D. A. Miller, and John M. Clum respectively reveal the need to engage musicals by unveiling subtexts and subtle social arrangements that constitute queer desire as they emerge in performance-based cultural productions. [22] At the same time, such scholarship is limited because it focuses on sexuality as the element that requires a kind of spectatorial un-closeting. Asian American studies and performance scholars help expand how we read performance, especially musicals, for their veiled meanings and significations. [23] For instance, Celine P. Shimizu has reconsidered Miss Saigon through the resistant acts performed by Asian American actresses who are cast as the bar girl-prostitutes. [24] Though the musical has been vilified for stereotyping Asian women as hypersexual, Shimizu’s analysis reveals the subtle ways that actresses command their roles to articulate a space of performative agency. [25] While Shimizu focuses on the intents of actresses in those roles, her approach can be expanded to consider the ways we must engage what cannot always be directly seen. I am influenced by these critical interventions in the ways that Yew’s nonmusical musical catalyzes calculated cacophonies to emphasize a different form of spectatorial un-closeting: the desire to create a stable place for the queer child in the heteronuclear Asian American family. But if there can be no actual home for the queer child in this traditional social construct, then we can at least turn to formal and thematic hybridities to engender other relational possibilities for such fugitive belongings. I thus turn to some key scenes that hallmark how calculated cacophonies function in the nonmusical musical. Babble / Babel The first scene of calculated cacophony occurs at the conclusion of part 1. The Man, an architect, has reached the pinnacle of his career after constructing a megamall called Wonderland. At the end of part 1, however, we learn that the mall has collapsed due to shoddy construction. In this scene, Young Man, Woman, and Son all “surround Man” and “batter him with an endless barrage of questions” (366). This scene seems to break the realist conventions of the play to a certain extent because the Young Man and the Son appear on stage together at the same time and place. But it is more logical to read this moment as a rendering of accusatory discourses levied at the Man from different entities, not only from the direction of his Asian American family but also legal and occupational institutions. Phrases such as “charges of negligence” and “a fatal miscalculation” (366) suggest that the Young Man, Woman, and Son also embody the legal rhetoric that emerges in the wake of such a catastrophic architectural failure. At the same time, the Man’s family questions his integrity. The Young Man asks him whether he is a “murderer”; the Son asks whether the construction of the mall with cheaper materials was “a bad judgment call”; and the Woman repeatedly asks questions that are clipped off (366). We might call this scene a nonmusical climax moment for the drama, as it jumpstarts the second part of Wonderland : the Man and his family must grapple with the fallout of this event. This scene is the first of three in which overlapping dialogue is specifically emphasized in both the actual staging and textual directions. This moment obviously deviates from the more harmonious scenes that predominate in Wonderland . The nonmusical musical incorporates calculated cacophony here to critique the Man’s single-minded focus on the Wonderland mall as the categorical architectural symbol of his status as the ideal multidimensional family man: the good corporate son who builds an expansive consumer paradise, the filial Chinese American biological child who achieves, and the successful heterosexual husband and hardworking father. This moment is critical to stage as a calculated cacophony because it undercuts a common feature of musicals that involve group numbers meant to celebrate the success or the recognition of a central romantic relationship and compulsory heterosexuality. [26] In Wonderland , the Man’s varied familial investments, which are sublimated into the construction of the megamall, are shown to be illusions not only through the play’s narrative details but also through the use of form, as nonmusical arias and duets give way to this calculated cacophony in which voices overlap and yell over each other. The Young Man, Man, Son, and Woman cannot seem to find a common social formation to endorse in the final scene of part 1. Another level of structure to this initial scene of calculated cacophony bears scrutiny. All four actors appear on stage together, with three seemingly accusing the fourth, the Man, of negligence as an architect. All four roles are given lines with an important refrain, “you know,” which appears in an interrogative context. Even as the staging and the spoken words suggest outright hostility among the characters, the repetition of this phrase “you know” provides some dialogic unity: there is a desire for a unity based on some shared understanding. At the same time, the staged chaos of this scene makes communication sometimes unintelligible. Though the script gives the characters specific words to say, the actual production involves several minutes in which a multipronged babbling predominates among the actors. This moment of calculated cacophony brings into great relief a longer discourse coded into the early sections of part 1 related to the Wonderland mall, its relationship to spectacle, religion, and the Man’s reenvisioning of his place in a corporate family. Consequently, I move to a brief consideration of the ways that the mall’s collapse and the babbling family coheres through these interrelated themes and discourses. The drama is set at a time of heightened consumerism in Los Angeles, a space that urban studies scholars such as Edward Soja, Fredric Jameson, and Mike Davis effectively read as the quintessential postmodern city. [27] Los Angeles is perhaps the perfect location for this play, as it is associated with simulacrum, a place in which image exists above substance. The architect is hired to build a number of strip malls, which stands in direct contrast to his aesthetic aspirations to “birth / tomorrow’s concert halls / cathedrals museums skyscrapers monuments” and that such buildings would be “bold / gargantuan / towering over cities and peoples / reaching / touching the heavens” (290). His company describes these strip malls as “the new city centers / The future town squares of America / where people can come together / commune socialize fraternize” (288) and adds that “These malls will dot all over America / and no matter where you are from / where you are / when you come to a mall / you’ll feel right at home” (288). The utopian description of these locations rewrites the consumer center as the home, somehow engendering a multicultural milieu, able to embrace and include individuals from varied backgrounds, races, ages, genders, and sexualities and construct this new mall-based family. In a certain sense, then, the drama depicts the Southern California strip malls as “commodified landscapes designed to satisfy fantasies of urban living.” [28] The “fantasies of urban living,” of course, are limited in their realizations, especially since American families with higher disposable incomes and class status would be more likely to find metaphorical homes in the mall. [29] The architect buys into this line of mall-based consumerism and lets it reflect in his work. And, at first, his diligence is rewarded. Upgrading from strip malls to enclosed shopping centers, he is commissioned to build Wonderland, the sort of megamall that becomes a common site throughout Southern California in the latter half of the twentieth century. [30] This structure embodies the pinnacle of the consumer’s paradise. [31] Even more than the strip mall, the shopping mall enables the sense of a family-oriented environment, replete with clean hallways, visual diversions, and communal eating spaces. In addition, the architect believes Wonderland is the conglomeration of all his hard work and will allow him to finally pursue building his own aesthetic creations. He muses, “Surely / after this / this Wonderland / the company will give me / their favorite son / on a silver platter / more responsibilities / more projects / more buildings / of stature / of rank / that join rank / rival those of / Gehry Wright and Pei” (324). Most central is that he compares the company to a family in which he is “their favorite son.” By reconstructing the corporate world as his home, the architect promotes the idea that his compromise to do as his “parents” tell him will grant him the possibility to follow his actual dream. In some sense, Wonderland emerges as a kind of reproductive product of the Man. After having completed the Wonderland megamall, he calls it “My creation / My latter-day Tower of Babel / touching / kissing the heavens” (324). The architect’s self-congratulatory proclamation recodes the mall as something he has given birth to, giving himself godlike powers that can, at least metaphorically, transform buildings into humanlike entities, replete with the capacity to lock lips with the heavens. Unfortunately, the analogy strikes as portentous since the Tower of Babel, according to the Bible, was the very structure that engendered the linguistic pluralities that divided people. His desire to create is simultaneously too prideful, a twisted version of corporate construction and reproduction based on the flawed language of capitalist consumption. Now we can return to the climactic scene of part 1’s conclusion, as a calculated cacophony that bears out the babble that follows the Tower of Babel’s emergence. The play sources Asian American familial division in the focus and emphasis on capitalist constructs of community, which prevail over and above competing social forms. Certainly innovative in its configuration, the capitalist family nevertheless promotes superficial attachments and structures, especially as noted by the Man’s own building practices, which emphasize ornamentation and façade over integrity and foundation: “I chose / I imported / more expensive materials / Italian marble teak wood titanium / I skimmed / compromised on the rest” (396). Nonsensical speech becomes the appropriate formal and contextual mode of communication by which to root this scene in which all four actors appear at the same time on the stage with “overlapping” voices and dialogue. You Couldn’t Be / You Couldn’t Be! The second scene of calculated cacophony occurs not long after the Son comes out to his parents as queer. The dialogue appears in the script as two columns, a format that encourages the actors to speak over each other, as in the first calculated cacophony scene. This two-character scene portrays a conflict being waged between an Asian American mother and her queer Asian American son: Son “You couldn’t be” Woman You couldn’t be! “No” No! “Can’t” Can’t! I hear Not possible! every word No son of mine! (388) This pivotal dialogue clarifies the Son’s expulsion from the Asian American home, as he becomes a casualty of his own truth-telling by divulging his queer sexuality. But this scene is further notable because it emphasizes familial discord rather than the harmonious unions found in the latter stages of traditional musicals. [32] Note that the first three words are basically the same: the Son parroting back what his mother is yelling. As with the first scene of calculated cacophony, the word repetition unites the characters’ roles through oral discourse, even while the spoken words connote disharmony. In other words, the calculated cacophony shows a measure of sonic structure and alignment that ties these two characters together even amid their apparent antipathy for each other. In this sense, their inability to communicate even as they speak the same words reveals both the impossibility of and longing for a queerly informed Asian American family. We cannot call this scene a traditional duet by any means, yet nevertheless an oral subtext binds mother and son as a necessary pairing. On the thematic level, Wonderland makes an important intervention here in its portrayal of the queer Asian American who cannot coexist within the framework of the nuclear family. The play’s depiction of the Son’s repudiation by his mother follows the established work of numerous scholars. As Ski Hunter notes, “If children make disclosures, parents may regard this as an act of treason against the family and culture.” [33] After all, “traditional expectations for an Asian man, especially an eldest son, are to get married and have children, especially sons, to carry on the family name. Asian American gays and lesbians face tremendous parental pressure to fulfill their traditional roles.” [34] And the price of being perceived as treasonous to the “traditional role” can be very high, encouraging some to remain in the closet for fear that they will be “disowned, or have their identity negated / denied.” [35] Wonderland perfectly showcases the ways that coming out of the closet is a communicative act fraught with psychological and material peril. As with the first scene of calculated cacophony, the overlapping dialogue makes it likely that some audience members will misunderstand the characters’ words. This aural confusion, though, is necessary given the situational context. At the same time, the full scene continually references the failure of dialogue and what is spoken versus what is understood. The mother asks: “What will people say? / What will neighbors / say? /. . . Ay, you [Son] deaf or what? / Ay, you listening or / not?” The Son responds: “I hear / every word / yelling / saying / Every word / Sentence phrase” (388). Recall that in the first scene of calculated cacophony, language becomes a kind of babble, not necessarily conducive to a meaningful conversation. In a similar manner, this second scene shows us two figures who cannot understand the other, despite their lives being more alike than they comprehend or are willing to admit. To fully flesh out this line of reasoning, I move to short readings of other moments in Wonderland that bring into relief how this particular scene accrues deeper meaning and how the two figures appear as imperfect reflections of each other. I then go on to argue that this scene of calculated cacophony calls out to other portions of Wonderland to situate how these two figures must be considered as part of a queer Asian American genealogy. As a young woman living in Singapore, the mother meets her future husband, the Man, through her work as a bargirl. The Man relates his first impressions: “And / there she is / A woman of twenty-two / Wrapped tight / in a delicate silk cheong sam / Sipping a bright red umbrella drink / gin sling / Sitting / at the Long Bar” (284). Not surprisingly, she strikes up a conversation with the Man that night, and soon after they have sexual intercourse. While no evidence within the play ever suggests directly that she or any of the other “sarong party girls” are prostitutes, references abound that they use sexual allure to achieve their own goals. The Woman, for instance, admits to the audience that she lied about her first pregnancy to persuade the Man to marry her, a ruse that works. Based on this falsehood, the architect decides that the right thing to do is to marry her and return with her to the United States. Tellingly, the Woman distances herself from the other bargirls who expressly target who they perceive is the dim-witted “white man,” duping him into believing that their engaged performances indicate their devotion and love; their true goal, of course, is to get the valued “Green Card” (311). In contrast, the Woman believes she truly loves the Asian American architect and morally justifies deception rather than couching it within a framework of citizenship gain. That the Woman is unable to directly admit what she has done, instead calling it “motivation,” further demonstrates the screens that she places over her language, a way in which the audience then is invited to look into her divulgences for subtextual significations. Her tirade, then, concerning what neighbors might say strikes as particularly hollow given her tactics in pursuing marriage with an American transnational. I read against the content and context of the scene to reconsider the mother and son through the lens of their unity on stage, as a kind of fractured duet. The pair shares the stage with overlapping dialogue that is spoken in relative temporal unison, even if the words are not exactly the same. Additionally, the script equally emphasizes their pairing through its bifurcated structure and appearance on the page. But this connection, primarily rendered through form and overlapping dialogue spoken in rhythm—that is, this calculated cacophony—is not simply a clichéd desire for rapprochement between mother and son, but a deeper understanding of the importance of their shared, but not necessarily twinned experiences, each having a complicated connection to his or her sexuality. This second scene of calculated cacophony accordingly accrues another level of meaning because of the Son’s mocking of his mother’s accent. While he purports to listen to every word his mother says, he also states that “she speaks an endless / soundtrack of broken English / Embarrasses the fuck outta me” (388). As language fractures and communication breaks down, the nonmusical musical emphasizes these calculated cacophonies further through the problem of acculturation after transnational movement. After initially arriving in the United States, the mother’s status as a foreigner directly impacts her dreams to work as a Macy’s salesperson, as she is turned away due to her accent. The Son’s derisiveness over his mother’s English language faculties hallmarks an internalized form of racial shame, which he uses as a weapon to strike back at the mother who disowns him. In a telling twist, however, the Son metaphorically becomes the mother he has denigrated when he attempts to establish an acting career. In the Son’s final extended monologue, given during a Hollywood audition, he is asked to improvise two film scenes in which he plays a racialized Asian subject. In the first, he must “Speak broken English / Deliver Thai food” (426). The customer asks him to wait inside while he retrieves payment for the food. Spying dirty magazines on the coffee table, the delivery boy becomes aroused. When the customer returns, he reveals he is Vietnam War veteran and thinks that the delivery boy is “Cambodian Vietnamese something,” later admitting that “[Asians] all look alike” (426). Later, the delivery boy is asked whether he has “ever watched The Killing Fields ” (426); he responds in the affirmative by saying “yes / It was exactly like my life” (426). After that point, the veteran becomes sexually interested in the delivery boy, and they begin to touch each other. The power differential is made apparent on multiple levels as the delivery boy waits to receive cash and willingly submits to the veteran’s erotic advances, even after being reduced to a prototypical racial phenotype. This audition requires the Son to be a foreign subject whose English is far from proficient. This role is largely more indicative of the plight faced by actors, who are hampered by a Hollywood casting system that perpetrates the image of the Asian who speaks only broken English. In an ethnographic study of Asian American actors, Joann Lee notes that many of her interviewees believe that “Asian specific roles are fine,” but the chance to do much “beyond that” is extraordinarily limited. [36] Asian American actors are too often cast as “villains, gangsters and immigrants or filler roles such as professionals, or side kick to the leading role.” [37] Wonderland emphasizes the problems brought up by Lee, as the Son takes on roles that are racially insensitive and far from the lead roles he might have dreamed of as a youth. Given that the Son is probably not more than a twenty-something at the time of the audition, we know the period is sometime in the 1980s, a cultural moment in which the Asian American registered in martial arts films such as The Karate Kid . [38] Also during this period, dozens of major Hollywood films were set in the Vietnam War era. Though perhaps offering Asian American actors more work, these films largely cast the Vietnamese figures in unspeaking civilian roles. Knowing that this audition is one of few chances for him to break into the industry, the Son tactically chooses to remain invested in the casting process, even when it involves sexually and racially reductive roles. Further still, the conclusion of the audition scene suggests the possibility that the entire process may have been a variation of the proverbial casting couch, as it is implied that the Son and the director are engaging in drug use together. The Son’s original reference to the “soundtrack” that accompanies his mother’s accented English is ultimately a prophetic and apt word choice as the son’s and mother’s connection in this scene accrues more meaning as the nonmusical musical continues onward. In its most basic definition, the soundtrack functions as a key accompaniment to a visual cultural production. The soundtrack is typically structured to operate with synchronicity, aligning with particular dialogue, visual, and other such cues in a performance. The Son’s use of “soundtrack” to describe “broken English” seems at first strange given his derisive attitude, but underlying this use of the word is perhaps an unconscious desire to remain connected to his mother, however foreign she may be. Though they cannot find a time and place to be together in that stage and at that moment, their pairing emphasizes their lives as imperfect mirrors of each other. On the one hand, the mother cannot embrace the Son for his queerness, even though she, too, is attached to what might be categorized as a deviant sexuality through her tactical entry into the United States. On the other, the Son cannot embrace his mother for her lack of English fluency, even though he, too, is attached to what might be categorized as linguistic foreign-ness when he seeks a career in Hollywood. Conditional Probabilities If the first two scenes of calculated cacophony render language as a site of miscommunication but provide formal and dialogic relationalities as a temporary salve over such chaos, then the final one offers a very different directive. The third scene of calculated cacophony appears toward the end of Wonderland , not long before the Man kills himself. At this point, the Man is touring on a sort of lecture circuit in which he speaks about architectural issues. He is forced to lecture because he cannot find other work: Young Man Given Man The function of the dire most buildings is financial straits to protect people he is swimming in from the weather (429) This scene is intriguing because it presents the bifurcated structure of the “You couldn’t be!” scene between mother and son, but diverges in one key way: the Young Man’s lines are presented in the more musical cascading format while the Man’s are not. The Man’s lines connote the monotonous circumstances under which he must lecture to “make ends meet” (429). Here, calculated cacophony appears in the guise of the staging context: only one figure is aware of the other. The Young Man appears as a kind of omniscient narrator, giving us the circumstances behind why the Man must lecture at all. But the cascading lines suggest a desire for direct musical engagement: that is, a duet (or even a playful dialogue) might be possible, but the Man, for some reason, cannot understand the impact of his words beyond their most literal meanings. In particular, he explains how “[t]he structural / components / of a building / assure that the / elements required / to fulfill / its function / to stand up” are somehow met (429). These words resonate for the Man only because he failed to uphold the “function of most buildings” in his construction of the megamall, but the larger import of the Man’s lecture is far more relational: as an architect he is tasked to protect people through structural integrity, but, as a father, he seems to have abandoned a similar duty entirely. At the precise moment he is giving the lecture, the Man’s son is turning tricks in Hollywood to survive. If the Man is forced to employ his architectural skills to make lectures about how he failed to keep him and his wife solvent, then so too is his Son pushed to instrumentalize his sexuality to endure outside of the Asian American home space. As with the second scene of calculated cacophony, the father and the son accrue another level of connection through the shared but not necessarily twinned experiences concerning spectacle, deviancy, and limited occupational options. The father is put on display on a lecture circuit to spotlight what not to do when constructing large buildings. Fittingly, the Young Man calls the father’s work something that stems from his “new found celebrity” (429). Almost concurrent with the father’s appearance at universities, the Son struggles to live independently. He takes a job as a stripper, becomes a prostitute living on the profits of his regulars, and later attempts to break into the Hollywood acting industry. The Son often has to perform, especially in sexually suggestive ways, to finance his life. These sequences involving the Son’s trials outside the home all occur just before the third scene of calculated cacophony and hence inform the way in which the Young Man and the Man cannot connect with each other, even as they appear on stage together speaking lines at the same time. Because the Young Man is who the Son eventually becomes, his presence is meant to reinforce how the Son and the Man face similar dilemmas in the period following the mall’s collapse. At the same time, the Man cannot see beyond his own myopic perspective and cannot engage the Young Man in a meaningful pairing, disrupting the possibility of a harmonious duet. As in the previously described scene between the Son and mother, the Young Man and the Man are not functioning in unison. Yet this scene also appears structured through a subtextual relationality. The Young Man’s language is rooted in the discourse of conditional probabilities. According to Alan Hájek, “In general, conditional probability is probability given some body of evidence or information, probability relativised to a specified set of outcomes, where typically this set does not exhaust all possible outcomes.” [39] This definition clarifies another elliptical connection between the Young Man and Man, as the Young Man changes the conditions of a probable outcome. In this case, the Young Man provides specific conditions, the outcome of which is the Man’s appearance on the lecture circuit. The use of the conditional probability in this context is intriguing because it can only emerge as the relationship between two elements. This scene accrues a level of unity on the basis of this conditional probability: though these characters are not seen engaging in a musical duet, they nevertheless find an associative connection through the vocabulary of statistics. As with the previous scene, this kind of subtextual link appears again as the method by which calculated cacophony operates. This scene brings to mind whether or not there may have been a different outcome: did the father necessarily have to lecture in order to make ends meet? This question seems relevant in this context precisely because of the marital instability that arises in the wake of the mall’s collapse and the Son’s expulsion from the family home. Additionally, the Young Man adopts language from a quantitative discipline, gesturing in part to the very occupational path of his father. The use of language denoting conditional probabilities would have been familiar to the father given the necessity of eliminating risk factors in building constructions. In this sense, again, there is a desire to find a connection, even if the two do not appear on stage as a concordant duo. The Memory Play and the Im/possible Queer Asian American Family The shadow that continually shrouds these frustrated nonmusical duets and group numbers appears in the guise of the fractured family unit, which requires some sort of greater unifying thread. The three scenes spotlighting what I call calculated cacophonies signal the queer child’s yearning to be accepted by his Asian American parents. If circumstances make the queer Asian American son’s embrace by his parents impossible, then the nonmusical musical operates with subtextual dialogic links that provide some measure of order amid these discordant dynamics. Further still, these scenes and their various levels of thematic and formal relationalities reveal how the child’s so-called queerness is not so alien from the ways that his parents have instrumentalized their bodies and their skills to achieve and to survive. The final scene of the nonmusical musical leads us to the image of the “golden carpet” to contest a conclusion otherwise completely devoid of promise. This moment is not one of calculated cacophony, as the actors do not confront or oppose each other. But a problem equally as obvious as that encountered in the three earlier scenes—that is, the inability to communicate—does emerge in this final scene’s collection of characters on stage. The Young Man arrives to find his mother looking out over the ocean. The Young Man tells the Woman: “Dad used to say / He’d look out and wait” (453) for an image of the setting sun that looked like a “golden carpet” (453). At first the Woman does not see this image, but then the Man appears, who by this time has killed himself, and then later the Son appears, who by this time has grown up (and whose “role” is now given over to the Young Man). Only when the Young Man, Son, and Man all appear together can the Woman see the image. This final sequence of the nonmusical musical we might reconsider in light of the earlier scenes of calculated cacophony precisely because all four characters can see the same image, but cannot actually exist in the same time and space. The “golden carpet” functions as an appropriate symbol given its suggestive connotations of homely welcome and of the path that would lead the queer son back to his family. Here, we can say that Wonderland takes some inspiration from the memory play. Epitomized by The Glass Menagerie , [40] the memory play typically uses more surrealistic and subjective staging that includes projections, stylized music, and subtle lighting to generate a production focused on “moods, a study in futility and frustration constructed on incidents rather than on a consecutive plotline, using as material the trivial happenings that can throw such huge shadows in the lives of decent yet desperate people.” [41] Yew’s Wonderland draws on these stylizations, formal and staging conceits, and nonlinear plotlines, but diverges from the traditional genre conventions precisely because a memory play is typically situated from the perspective of one character or his subjective recounting of the past. [42] Instead, Wonderland quite squarely depicts the disintegration of dreams for multiple characters, eschewing a surrealistic filter for the majority of the play while accentuating the dissolution of the Asian American heteronuclear family. Further still, the meta-theatricality inherent in the memory play is not suggested in Wonderland until the concluding arc. [43] If Wonderland can be marked as a memory play at all, then this labeling is most apt in the final pages when the Son and Young Man merge on stage. Here, realism is partly eschewed as the division between time periods collapses. [44] And memory is itself the very topic of this moment, as the past comes crashing into the present, reminding the audience that the Son and Young Man still harbor that same intimate view of the ocean, though each must reflect on it with a different parent. To consider Wonderland as a memory play at this juncture is crucial precisely because it provides a necessary countermeasure to one thematic related to the traditional musical’s finale, which operates in the mode of “celebrating romantic love and American courtship ties.” [45] The memory play, with its emphasis on the importance of what has already occurred, undercuts any future-oriented ethos suggested by the successful completion of a courtship narrative with its proverbial “happily ever after” conceit. Wonderland encourages us to look back to enable a different thematic to take center stage, one related to social formation. In this sense, the memory play begins to align more seamlessly with a different feature of the musical finale: a concluding group number that functions to “celebrate community.” [46] Anne Beggs argues that “the finales [in West Side Story and Les Misérables ] . . . engage with the spirits of the dead . . . , musically reiterating their messages of hope and love.” [47] We can apply Beggs’s reading to Wonderland ’s final scene, as the four actors come together as a family, united through their ability to see the “golden carpet.” Even the dead Man comes back to life to provide “messages of hope and love.” A memory is resurrected, and a family is thus reconstructed. Second, the power of this finale is also made apparent in its racializing impulses. We can turn to Lei Ouyang Bryant to consider how the musical form operates with respect to themes of race and associated social differences, as they appear in a finale. Bryant analyzes The Walleye Kid: The Musical , which involves “the story of a young Korean American adoptee named Annie and her experiences” [48] in her rural white Minnesotan home. Bryant argues that the musical, adapted from Philip Gotanda’s play of the same name, “requires a resolution where we return to the trigger incident when Annie is teased by her peers, and have the kids come back to apologize to Annie so that the company can come together as a cohesive community.” [49] As Bryant notes, the musical’s concluding group number functions to show how the Korean American adoptee can find a place among her primarily white peers, transforming the racial homogeneity that might have been predominant in a school’s culture. This reading applies equally well to Wonderland because it complicates the notion of community, as the queer Asian American family remains on stage, although without a larger group surrounding it. The isolation of the queer Asian American family suggests its radical disarticulation from structural support systems that might help to sustain a fledgling and fragile social formation. Not surprisingly, then, the surrealistic nature of this scene—the Man’s magical resurrection, the Son’s temporally anachronistic presence—undercuts its actuality and tangible materialization. Here, the actual staging of Yew’s production is most salient, especially as the use of lighting helps generate the luminescence that colors the pathway to the horizon point, resulting in a “moody” and “deceptive” atmosphere. [50] As reviewer Pat Launer notes, “The ocean is almost a palpable presence in Rachel Hauck’s dramatic set design.” [51] The word “almost” is the key, as the queer Asian American family unit cannot unify their perspectives on one “golden carpet” unless somehow magically reunited. In this sense, I extrapolate from the work of Stacy Wolf, who has argued in relation to the musical Wicked that its conclusion “unifies the community, but with irony and a critical slant.” [52] Wolf’s intervention clarifies how we might reread the promise of Wonderland ’s group collective as one tempered by its ultimate impossibility. Wolf’s reading, of course, is couched in relation to the queer undertones that go unresolved: “ Wicked ’s queer ‘marriage’ is private, spoken only between the women and impossible to be revealed publicly. The principals must permanently separate because the community refuses to tolerate their union.” [53] Not unlike Wicked , then, the only reunion possible in Wonderland is an unrealistic one, due to the heteronormative demands placed on racialized family formations. But at least in this moment, the cacophony that comprised earlier scenes is overshadowed by this chimerical convergence, a solidarity prescribing the need for a time and place that can promote the emergence of the queer Asian American family. Wonderland ’s greatest dream is the desire to form a sustainable kinship system, one that exists alongside rather than beyond the heteronuclear Asian American home. Wonderland leaves us there with a gleaming “golden carpet,” coalescing features of the memory play and the nonmusical musical, to remind us that even with such a problematic conclusion, a queer Asian American family must still be made possible. Acknowledgments: First off, I want to thank the editors of JADT , Naomi J. Stubbs and James Wilson, as well as the journal’s editorial staff for their unflagging support. I very much appreciate the Herculean efforts of my readers, who include the indefatigable Lisa Wehrle and Donatella Gallela. References [1] Chay Yew’s plays have been published in two omnibus editions: Porcelain and A Language of Their Own: Two Plays (New York: Grove, 1997) and The Hyphenated American (New York: Grove, 2002). My research has yielded just a small handful of critical studies on Yew, only one of which is partially based on Wonderland : Caroline De Wagter explores the play in relation to cultural memory in “Re-configuring Cultural Memory in Chay Yew’s Wonderland and M. J. Kang’s Blessings ,” in Signatures of the Past: Cultural Memory in Contemporary Anglophone North American Drama , ed. Marc Maufort and Caroline de Wagter (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 273–90. Heath A. Diehl and Jordon Schildcrout respectively engage in critical analyses of Porcelain , which is another play that focuses on queer Asian diasporic themes; see Heath A. Diehl, “Beyond The Silk Road : Staging a Queer Asian America in Chay Yew’s Porcelain ,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 37, no. 1 (2004): 149–67; and Jordan Schildcrout, Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Schildcrout, in particular, does note the influence of musical forms on his production, as one of the primary roles involves an individual with a fondness for Puccini. [2] Both actors have been out for some time. Mapa discussed his queer sexuality in his one-man performance, “I Remember Mapa,” in O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance , ed. Holly Hughes and David Roman (New York: Grove, 1998), 199–228. One reference in which Shimono publicly addresses his queer sexuality occurred in 2010 in a post to Matthew’s Place, a site run by the Matthew Shepard Foundation; see Sab Shimono, interview by Thomas Howard, Voices (blog), 6 April 2010, http://www.matthewsplace.com/voice/sab-shimono/. [3] In this respect, my article honors the work of performance studies scholars such as Karen Shimakawa, Josephine Lee, and Esther Kim Lee, who have been attentive to the techniques of production, staging, and drama to their analyses and studies. See Karen Shimakawa, National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Josephine Lee, Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); and Esther Kim Lee, A History of Asian American Theater (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). [4] For several prominent examples of these transitory relationships, see Genny Lim, Bitter Cane , in The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women , ed. Velina Hasu Houston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 163–204; Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973); and David Henry Hwang, The Dance of the Railroad , in FOB and Other Plays (New York: Plume, 1990), 51-86. [5] Two examples that concern Japanese American families are Wakako Yamauchi, And the Soul Shall Dance , in Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir (New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1994), 153–208; Wakako Yamauchi, 12-1-A , in The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women , ed. Velina Hasu Houston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 45–100. [6] Louis Chu, Eat a Bowl of Tea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976). [7] Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 147. [8] Ayad Akhtar, The Who & the What (New York: Back Bay Books, 2014); Wajahat Ali, Domestic Crusaders (San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2011); Jay Antani, The Leaving of Things (Seattle: Lake Union, 2014); Frank Chin, Chickencoop Chinaman/The Year of the Dragon: Two Plays (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981); Julia Cho, Durango , in Version 3.0: Contemporary Asian American Plays , ed. Chay Yew (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2011), 327–92; Julia Cho, 99 Histories , in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas , ed. Esther Kim Lee (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 21–84; Sung Rno, Cleveland Raining , in But Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise: New Asian American Plays , ed. Velina Hasu Houston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 227–70; Lloyd Suh, American Hwangap , in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas , ed. Esther Kim Lee (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 85–150; Sung J. Woo, Everything Asian (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2009). [9] erin Khuê Ninh, Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 1-18. [10] David Eng argues the ways in which the Asian American is historically rendered as a queer subject through laws that have regulated sexuality and the development of families; see The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); and Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 204–28. [11] Some important publications do offer a number of important interventions, but are primarily rooted in social scientific analyses; see, e.g., Rosalind C. Chou, Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality , 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); and Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger, “Introduction: Embodying Asian/American Sexualities,” in Embodying Asian/American Sexualities , ed. Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 1–21. In specific studies of queer Asian American cultural productions, the emphasis has tended to remain on film, cinema, and television; see, for instance, Nguyen Tan Hoang, A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). [12] Chay Yew, Wonderland , in Hyphenated American , 312. All subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. Unless noted, typestyles and formatting are from the original. [13] Min Hyoung Song, The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, As an Asian American (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 168. Song’s reading is placed in the context of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (New York: Houghton, 2003). [14] Lee, History , 200–224. [15] For another useful consideration of East West Players, see Yuko Kurahashi, Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players (New York: Routledge, 2013). [16] Julia Cho’s 99 Histories and Sung Rno’s Cleveland Raining , for instance, include stage directions that emphasize dream-states and the fluidity of memory. [17] Diehl, “Beyond The Silk Road ,” 151. [18] Michael Phillips, “Haze Obscures the Landscape in a Troubled Wonderland ,” Los Angeles Times , 6 October 1999, http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/06/entertainment/ca-19230. [19] Ibid. [20] Diehl, “Beyond The Silk Road ,” 151. [21] Yew, Hyphenated American , 281. [22] Stacy Ellen Wolf, “‘We’ll Always Be Bosom Buddies’: Female Duets and the Queering of Broadway Musical Theater,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 3 (2006): 351–76; D. A. Miller, Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); John M. Clum, Something for the Boys: Musical Theater and Gay Culture (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999). For other useful sources on queerness, performance, musicals, and associated genres, see Steven Cohan, Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); and Judith Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). [23] More recently, cultural critics have explored how popular musicals have been revised using purportedly race-blind casting considerations, which have included Asian American actors and performers; see, e.g., such as Angela C. Pao, “Green Glass and Emeralds: Citation, Performance, and the Dynamics of Ethnic Parody in Thoroughly Modern Millie ,” MELUS 36, no. 4 (2011): 35–60; and Donatella Galella, “Redefining America, Arena Stage, and Territory Folks in a Multiracial Oklahoma! ,” Theatre Journal 67, no. 2 (2015): 213–33. [24] Celine P. Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). [25] Ibid., 51. [26] Wolf, “Bosom Buddies,” 352. [27] See Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (New York: Verso, 1989); Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991); Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage, 1992). [28] Michael Dear and Steven Flusty, “The Iron Lotus: Los Angeles and Postmodern Urbanism,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 551 (May 1997): 155. [29] Additionally, the Man must adhere to certain boundaries in the construction of these malls due to his status as what John Chase terms a “[C]onsumerist architect.” John Chase, “The Role of Consumerism in American Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education 44, no. 4 (1991): 211. [30] Timothy Davis, “The Miracle Mile Revisited: Recycling, Renovation, and Simulation along the Commercial Strip,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 7 (1997): 93–114, esp. 97. [31] For some important studies on the American shopping mall (and variations such as the shopping center), see Jon Goss, “The ‘Magic of the Mall’: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83, no. 1 (1993): 18–47 and Lizabeth Cohen, “From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America,” American Historical Review 101, no. 4 (1996): 1050–81. [32] For a compelling case for rereading popular musicals through the lens of queer spectatorship, see Wolf, “Bosom Buddies.” [33] Ski Hunter, Coming Out and Disclosures: LGT Persons Across the Life Span (New York: Routledge, 2012), 110. [34] Nang Du, Hendry Ton, and Elizabeth J. Kramer, “New Immigrants,” in Praeger Handbook of Asian American Health , ed. William Baragar Bateman, Noilyn Abesamis-Mendoza, and Henrietta Ho-Asjoe (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009), 1:338. [35] Cirleen DeBlaere and Melanie Brewster, “Diversity across the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Community,” in Creating School Environments to Support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Students and Families: A Guide for Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth and Families , ed. Emily S. Fisher and Karen Komosa-Hawkins (New York: Routledge, 2013), 77. [36] Joann Lee, “Asian American Actors in Film, Television and Theater: An Ethnographic Case Study,” Race, Gender & Class 8, no. 4 (2001): 182. [37] The problem of racialized casting is further exacerbated by the simple lack of representational diversity in film, television, and elsewhere. Margaret Hillenbrand, “Of Myths and Men: Better Luck Tomorrow and the Mainstreaming of Asian America,” Cinema Journal 47, no. 4 (2008): 50. [38] The Karate Kid , dir. John G. Avildsen, perf. Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, Elisabeth Shue (Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1984). [39] Alan Hájek, “Conditional Probability,” in Philosophy of Statistics , ed. Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay and Malcolm R. Forster (Amsterdam: North Holland, 2011), 7:99. [40] Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (New York: New Directions), xix–xxi. [41] Patrick O’Connor, “Theatre,” Furrow 15, no. 3 (1964): 166. [42] According to R. B. Parker, the memory play functions primarily through the subjective viewpoint of a narrator figure: “[W]e not only see exclusively what the narrator consciously wants us to see, but also see it only in the way he chooses that we should.” R. B. Parker, “The Circle Closed: A Psychological Reading of The Glass Menagerie and The Two Character Play ,” Modern Drama 28, no. 4 (1985): 519. [43] For a consideration of the memory play through the lens of meta-theatrical elements, see Philip Kolin, “ Something Cloudy, Something Clear : Tennessee Williams’s Postmodern Memory Play,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 12, no. 2 (1998): 35–55. Parker also considers the meta-theatrical character of the memory play by calling it a “box-within-box structure” (Parker, “The Circle Closed,” 519). [44] Diana Sandars and Rhonda V. Wilcox, “Not ‘The Same Arrangement’: Breaking Utopian Promises in the Buffy Musical,” in Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer , ed. Paul Gregory Attinello, Janet K. Halfyard, and Vanessa Knights (New York: Routledge, 2010), 206. In this sense, Wonderland does gesture to the central thematic of aging in the memory play and how this process necessary impacts how we look back on past events. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb, “Performing the Aging Self in Hugh Leonard’s Da and Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa ,” Comparative Drama 47, no. 3 (2013): 286. [45] Andrea Most, “‘We Know We Belong to the Land’: The Theatricality of Assimilation in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! ,” PMLA 113, no. 1 (1998): 79. It must be noted that Sandars and Wilcox, “Not ‘The Same Arrangement,’” provide this articulation of the musical in their context of Buffy . [46] Andrea Most specifically makes this argument in the context of Oklahoma! Most, “We Know We Belong.” [47] Anne Beggs, “‘For Urinetown is your town . . .’: The Fringes of Broadway,” Theatre Journal 62, no. 1 (2010): 46. [48] Lei Ouyang Bryant, “Performing Race and Place in Asian America: Korean American Adoptees, Musical Theatre, and the Land of 10,000 Lakes,” Asian Music 40, no. 1 (2009): 4. [49] Ibid., 9. [50] Pat Launer, “ Wonderland at the La Jolla Playhouse,” KPBS, October 8, 1999, http://www.patlauner.com/review/wonderland-at-the-la-jolla-playhouse. [51] Ibid. [52] Stacy Ellen Wolf, “‘Defying Gravity’: Queer Conventions in the Musical Wicked ,” Theatre Journal 60, no. 1 (2008): 17. [53] Ibid., 17–18. Footnotes About The Author(s) STEPHEN HONG SOHN is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Racial Asymmetries: Asian American Fictional Worlds (NYU Press, 2014), the co-editor of Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits (Temple University Press, 2006), and the editor of Karen Tei Yamashita’s Anime Wong: Fictions of Performance (Coffee House Press, 2014). 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: Curtis Russell Editorial Assistant: Christine Snyder 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 Editorial Comment Historical Subjectivity and the Revolutionary Archetype in Amiri Baraka's The Slave and Luis Valdez's Bandido! Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays. Edited by Sandra G. Shannon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016; Pp. 211. Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law: A Theatre of Undocumentedness. By Gad Guterman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; Pp. 236. Kitchen Sink Realisms: Domestic Labor, Dining, and Drama in American Theatre. By Dorothy Chansky. Theatre History and Culture Series. Series editor Heather Nathans. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015; Pp. 620. Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being. Edited by Nicola Shaugnessy. London: Bloomsbury, 2013; Pp. 300. Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience. Edited by Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia, and Victor Iacono. Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues Series. Series editors: John Lutterbie and Nicola Shaugnessy. London UK, New York NY: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 260. 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 SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL … SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL …SHAKESPEARE AS YOU LIKE IT. IN CRAIOVA, ROMANIA, FOR 30 YEARS NOW Published: November 25, 2024 Download Article as PDF By Kalina Stefanova Image Credits: Article A Story of Will and Love of Will (Shakespeare) Yes, We Will was the motto of the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova this year. It could well have been the same one 30 years ago, in 1994, when the Festival took off to a daring start. The incredible will to make Craiova a city of Shakespeare – on an international scale at that! – belonged then, as well as ever since, to Emil Boroghina – the irresistibly charismatic actor, director and manager of the Craiova National Theatre, who exudes the special aura of modesty characteristic only of the truly wise. Importantly, in the beginning of the 1990’s, it was in Craiova and at its National Theatre “Marin Sorescu,” where the Romanian theatre at large could dream big and could turn its dreams into reality. It was there and then, where the director Silviu Purcarete, now an artist of highest world renown, started his career. His second show, Ubu Rex with Scenes from Macbeth (1990), got invited to the Edinburgh Festival, in 1991, and became such a hit there that was immediately invited to Japan, Germany and Israel. “All of a sudden, Purcarete’s name became known, respected, sought after,” as the critic and scholar Octavian Saiu notes his essay on the director in the 2021 collection 20 Ground-Breaking Directors of Eastern Europe. Purcarete’s next productions – Titus Andronicus (1992) and Phaedra (1994) – followed suit, bringing high acclaim to him, to the Craiova National Theatre, and to the Romanian theatre alike, both at home and around the world. It was exactly during the tour of that Titus Andronicus in Tokyo, in 1992, where Emil Boroghina first shared in public, and on the international arena, the ambitious goal that the Craiova National Theatre had set up for itself: to organize an international festival devoted to Shakespeare. Very symbolically, this announcement transpired in no other place but the local Globe theatre. Mind you, this was a time, when nearly everywhere in Eastern Europe theatre was losing ground. On multiple levels at that: in terms of its audiences, status, repertoire, and, most importantly, main focus. It was in search for a new face – a process which took, in some countries, nearly half a decade to be completed. The Craiova National Theatre obviously stood out as a glaring exception in this overall rather bleak picture and, thus, presented the most propitious conditions for putting into practice Boroghina’s conviction, as stated in the 1994 Festival Program, that “as actors test their mettle by doing Shakespeare, so do theatres.” As You Like It. Photo © John Haynes The first edition of the Festival was rather cautious: it consisted of six productions only, of which just one was foreign. However, the latter was no other but the all-male As You Like It of the British Cheek by Jowl Theatre – one of the hottest shows of the time which was in a process of traveling and introducing to the audiences around the world the typical finesse and inconspicuousness of Declan Donnellan’s directing signature style. It was not going to be a one-off visit of Donnellan and his Cheek by Jowl in Craiova. He remained truly involved with the International Shakespeare Festival there throughout the next decades. In 2006, he brought to Craiova his ephemerally beautiful Twelfth Night , done as a co-production between Cheek by Jowl and the Moscow International Chekhov Festival. The 2008 edition featured his Troilus and Cressida and the 2018 one – his Measure for Measure , another co-production between Cheek by Jowl and a Russian theatre institution, this time the Pushkin Theatre. And now, the Festival’s jubilee 30th year had as one of its highlights his Hamlet , done especially for the occasion with the cast of the very host – the Craiova National Theatre. Meanwhile, in 2014, one of the productions included in the “Shakespeare’s Contemporaries” line of the Festival was Donnellan’s too: ‘ Tis a Pity She’s a Whore , by John Ford. In 2008, the Festival cracked its door open for exceptional fully non-Shakespearean productions, not related to his time either. And the two exceptions then were, indeed, exceptional: Peter Brook’s The Grand Inquisitor , after Dostoyevsky’s novel (with Bouffes de Nord Theatre), and Robert Wilson’s Lady from the Sea , by Ibsen (with the Berliner Ensemble). Appropriately, the edition was entitled Great Shows, Great Directors. The brilliant late Romanian-French critic George Banu had remarked earlier that the Craiova Festival was “extremely courageous and extremely radical” and suggested that “if the festival in Sibiu were one of opening, the one in Craiova was one of focus.” The two aforementioned “detours” did not at all mean that the Festival had betrayed its focus. They rather indicated that there was already a two-way focus phenomenon: i.e. in five editions only, the Craiova Festival had managed to draw the attention of the biggest names in the world theatre. In the next editions, Robert Lepage, the Quebec director- extraordinaire, was the other rare exception in the program: with his Needles and Opium , in 2018, and with his stunning one-man show 887 , in 2022. The 2008 edition introduced yet another novelty: the International Shakespeare Festival Prize. Unsurprisingly, it went first to Declan Donnellan, and then, over the next years, has gone to the directors Silviu Purcarete (in 2010), Eimuntas Nekrosius (in 2012), Krzysztof Warlikowski (in 2018) and Robert Lepage (in 2022). So far the only non-directors among the Prize recipients have been Sir Stanley Wells (2014), the Shakespearean scholar and Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Michael Dobson (2020), director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-on-Avon. These choices are not surprising either. For, the Festival is not only an artistic endeavor but is also a platform for critical and scholarly discourse, focused, naturally, on Shakespeare. The high-level conferences, gathering Shakespearean scholars from around the world in Craiova, have become a part of the Festival’s trademark and have acquired the patronage of the UNESCO chair of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). In 2010, the Shakespeare in Performance Seminar was launched there and later on it got the aegis of the European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA). In addition to all that, in 2010, the Festival became a co-founder of the European Shakespeare Festivals Network whose meetings regularly take place there. And, in 2016, its high-level international status was further asserted by the fact that the one week of events accompanying the Europe Theatre Prize, the most important theatre award on the whole continent, was organized in the framework of the 10th Festival edition. Given all these developments, high-end additions, and already fully cemented reputation as a the atre institution of world-wide clout, a question naturally arises: could the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival get possibly further enriched in terms of content and format? The 2024 jubilee edition provided a firmly positive answer. 2024: New Entries in the Festival’s Profile The Festival celebrated its jubilee with several substantial innovations which – notably! – were organically intertwined. In the first place, it acquired a new co-organizer: The National University of Theatre and Film Arts (UNACT) “I. L. Caragiale” (based in Bucharest), in addition to the Shakespeare Theatre Foundation, established by Boroghina in 1994. This enforcement of the organizers’ ranks has brought a whole new strand to the program, so far routinely consisting mainly of indoor and outdoor parts: UNITER performances and events. Their number was, indeed, startling: 106 altogether, ranging from theatre to film, to installations, research workshops, exhibitions, etc., and mounted in 22 alternative spaces throughout Craiova. An interesting detail of the jubilee Festival edition was that some of the participating students were accommodated in a camping place, especially created for them in the biggest park of the city. This was not an ordinary camping place per se but part of another major new development of the Festival: the Shakespeare Village. Built as a traditional Elizabethan-era village, it was an alternative place for performances, workshops, children’s activities during the day, and concerts and parties during the night; with overall 70 events happening there during the 11 festival days. In turn, the Shakespeare village was not just a new entry in the jubilee program. It was a part of the most important change of the Festival that transpired already on a conceptual level. Namely, the very scope of the Festival’s audiences, or rather addressees, was substantially expanded to encompass not just the spectators of the invited shows but, in an equal measure, the local communities of Craiova. As Vlad Dragulescu, the person to whom Boroghina has meanwhile handed the baton – the current director of the Festival – put it in the catalogue: “This time, perhaps more than ever, we will understand that most of all, Shakespeare is not about theatre, but about people. A Shakespeare for everyone.” Lady from the Sea. Photo © A.J. Weissbard The emphasis on the local communities’ involvement and on the two-way relations between the festival and the people outside of the theatre halls was best reflected in the Pop-Up Shakespeare strand of the program. “Festival Communities Build the Festival” was its motto. Together with the Outdoor strand, they involved 50 locations in the city, where shows and improvisations took place. As the catalogue described it, “Our actors have the mission, at this edition, to talk to the people who live there and to involve them with the actual production. With a ladle, with a pot, with a chair, with a table, with a hanger. This year, the whole of Craiova is a stage and all the people are actors.” In brief, the aim was to transform Craiova from a city with a festival to a full-scale fes tival city. The new, communities-oriented, concept was actually put into practice long before the Festival started, in something like a prelude to it, with the so- called Shakespeare caravan. It brought for the first time The Complete Works of Shakespeare (in the shape of a 45-minute open-air show) to 30 cities in Romania and drew over 1200000 spectators. After all this, how could one not eagerly anticipate what the Craiova Festival had prepared for the audience for its jubilee? The 2024 Highlights Out of the overall more than 300 events and nearly 30 main indoor shows, the Festival organizers had taken out of the brackets several names: Peter Brook, Robert Wilson, Declan Donnellan, Robert Lepage, Andrei Serban. It was with Wilson’s Tempest , a production of the National Theatre “Ivan Vazov” of Bulgaria, the jubilee edition took off. The show met the expectations of all the incorrigible fans of the famed director’s oeuvre. It is a manifestation of impressive moving images, created with impeccable taste, in terms of colors and composition, and animated via stylized acting, where actors are more like puppets, clad in correspondingly imposing costumes and bringing in a pinch of a special humor – somewhat from a distance and, to be frank, not readable to everyone. In brief, beauty as from another planet, to a la rge extent warmth-free, and humor that is rather a form of a shield lest we dare try to penetrate underneath the striking surface of all we see on stage in search for something else there. While Wilson’s show could not be considered a surprise either for better or for worse, Donnellan’s Hamlet with the Craiova National Theatre was, for me, a true disappointment. Although I was in fact somewhat prepared by his Spanish Life Is a Dream , which visited Sofia a year ago and which was not a sample of his best directorial work. The springboard concept of Donellan’s Hamlet is actually very worthy. The action takes place in a very intimate environment. The spectators are seated on two parallel amphitheatre constructions on the big stage itself. The space for the actors’ movement is further narrowed by placing of several sorts of cubes between them and the audience. It is on one of these cubes where Hamlet’s Father sits throughout the action, thus, becoming a witness of everything. The other characters who meanwhile pass away, sit then on the other “chairs,” forming altogether a special territory in-between the living in the real world – the viewers – and the living in the play. i.e. there is a two-layer audience of what transpires in this Hamlet . Importantly too, the living in th e real world are at an arm’s length from both the alive and the dead of the characters. Yet, it is this very closeness that proves to be a double-edged weapon, as most of the acting is, alas, very superficial, which could hardly be hidden at such a short distance. So, most of the time, the characters seem like computer-generated, i.e. without true emotions, trepidations, development. That applies especially to Hamlet himself who gets mad rather abruptly, almost within a second, and the expression of his madness is via a quite worn-out cliché – he puts on red high-heel shoes and bright red lipstick, and stays like that nearly throughout the action. The madness of Ophelia is not very persuasive either: she bangs with a spade on the metal wall on the side of the back wings. Polonius, in turn, inexplicably is played by an actress in a tremendously padded man’s suit and with a moustache. All of this doesn’t mean that Donnellan’s Hamlet doesn’t have its concrete excellent moments too. Such is the genuinely moving first encounter of Hamlet with the ghost: he touches his hands, shoulders, head, in an attempt to find out if his father is real, and then, being happiness itself, he embraces him. Gertrude slapping Hamlet is also in a very truthful scene which, alas, gets spoiled quickly by the manner in which he gets mad. Then, his smelling of the poison on the tip of the sword and in the wine is an interesting detail. There are other powerful moments, yet, on the whole, as the case with the bulk of conceptual theatre, this show gets exhausted quite early on, since it is not persuasive on the level of human presence, relationships, and emotions. So, in the end, I didn’t feel touched or transformed by it. Much more integral was Twelfth Night , created by the Romanian director of world fame Andrei Serban with the actors of the State Theatre of Constansa, Romania. It was a sample of a fully organic mix of an unobtrusive, yet very clever and elegant, directing style and a very functional set-design (a small and narrow stage, turned into a shiny box by the fringe curtain that surrounded it). Talking about the Romanian highlights of the Festival, I will take the liberty to include among them a book that was launched there and that is dedicated to the National Theatre of Craiova, to Boroghina and Purcarete. These three names form its title, while the subtitle tells the rest: Pilgrims of the Great Theatre of the World. Created by Ljudmila Patlanjoglu, the doyen of the Romanian theatre critics and scholars, this book was the best present to the Festival for its jubilee. An equally awesome and elegant volume, it contains all the important data about the main developments of this remarkable institution as well as splendid large photos of the main productions, events, and the champions of the Festival. The Romanian connection was also to be traced as far as to one of the highly acclaimed Asian entries in the main indoor program: a non-verbal King Lear of Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio from Hong Kong, with a mixed local and Romanian cast, which, alas, I didn’t get to see. From among the shows I did see, I was most struck by The Tempest Project of Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne, the Spanish Hamlet, the Dance of the Melancholic of the Jesus Herrera Flamenco Ballet, and The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark , staged as a ballet by Robert Lepage and Guillaume Cote. They were actually more than merely distinctive. They were rather the most spectacular and unforgettable theatre fireworks in tribute to the Festival’s jubilee. Moreover, they rather complemented each other as an overall effect bringing out three aspects of Shakespeare’s oeuvre: its profound spirituality, its visceral side, and its strong potential for visual expressiveness. The Tempest Project of Peter Brook and Marie-Helene Estienne or When Theatre Transcends Theatre The thrill of expecting an encounter with the extraordinary charged the air around the National Theatre of Craiova already before the show. The building was as if under siege: there were more than twice as many people in front of it as there were seats inside its main hall. And, as the routine practice is in this part of the world, all students and ardent theatre aficionados, who hadn’t managed to get hold of a ticket, were let in and allowed to sit on the steps of the rather large and steep staircase-aisles on the two sides of the seats. In the end, the hall was literally full to the brim. Still, at the moment the lights started to go down, an extraordinary silence fell over the packed theatre, as if all these people, like one, held their breath in awe of the greatest theatre maestro of our time, humbled by the privilege to see his last work. When the lights were fully dimmed, the silence became even more special, as the stage responded in the same language of quiet – like an echo that can not be heard but can be felt with both body and soul. Prospero, standing on a Persian carpet on the proscenium, started slowly to twist and turn in his hands a big wooden stick, slightly curved at one of its ends, like a shepherd’s crook. In full quiet. It was as if time slowed down and stopped. Our time, the time we know, that is. And the space too started to change. As if, with every move of this crook, the very air around it, around Prospero, and around us, was changing: like its invisible molecules were getting rearranged and, at the end of the next several fully quiet minutes, the hustle, the vanity, the pettiness of our life not simply disappeared, but rather got cleaned up, as mere spots get cleaned up, and everything around us and even in us became crystal and clear, and full of tranquil joy. And this purity felt so natural as though we were back to normal, back to where we belong. The next hour and twenty minutes of this unique theatre piece transpired in this other, yet so naturally ours time and space. No matter that speech makes its appearance too, soon after the beginning. The atmosphere on and off stage retain that extraordinary blissful charge of peace and harmony – the feeling of becoming freed from the ordinary and of recognizing the extraordinary as our natural home. Importantly, the arrival of speech was not followed by any special effects, already so inseparable from theatre today. Until the end of The Tempest Project, on stage there are only several more carpets and several more sticks – only smaller than that in Prospero’s hands and some of them being in small piles on the floor. Magic carpets and magic wands? This thought may cross one’s mind, but only briefly. To me, they were much more than that. And this became crystal clear in a scene that was a stroke of genius. Ferdinand takes several of the small sticks and lays them out on the floor, forming a line – a path – between himself and Miranda. Then he carefully puts one stick on her head and one on his own, and they start treading the path towards each other very carefully, lest the sticks fall down. So, maybe the carpets and the wooden crook in Prospero’s hand are, indeed, the well known symbols of the fairy tales. We are humans, after all, and are in need of familiar vehicles for our imagination to take off. Yet, here the “flight” is not to somewhere distant else but it is rather the “flight” of a revelation – of getting to see through about the essence of here and now, and realize how different this here and now is, in effect, from our usual perception of it. And that it takes only one thing for our eyes to get open for this other reality: to get to follow the paths set up for us and enshrined within us. Which is to say: to see the here and now with “the eyes of the heart.” From that scene with the path outlined with the sticks on, I couldn’t stop thinking about several lines from Psalm 25 of the Book of Psalms : “Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths.” (Psalm 25: 4) And then: “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.” (Psalm 25:10) Of course, minimalism in terms of stage means of expression is not at all a surprise in Brook’s theatre. I will never forget The Valley of Astonishment , again created by him and Marie-Helene Estienne. It had the effect of a drawing by a genius painter, made on a napkin – just few strokes and the essence of a face, person, relations… is there. Yet, in The Tempest Project this utmost simplicity that zeroes in on the quintessential is on a much deeper level: about our communion with the other world – the invisible one which resides both outside and inside us, and which, for centuries already, has been sneered at and entirely dismissed as non-existent. No wonder Brook went back exactly to The Tempest (for a third time) when the end of his life was approaching. “There is a word that chimes through the play: free”, he wrote about the play. “…As always in Shakespeare, the meaning is never pinned. It's always suggested like in an echo chamber. Each echo amplifies and nourishes its sound. Caliban wants his freedom. Ariel wants his freedom, but it's not the same freedom. For Prospero, freedom is undefinable. It is what he is looking for throughout the play. The young Prospero, plunged into his books, searching for the occult, was a prisoner of his dreams. On the island, we may think he became free because he had acquired all the magical powers a man can acquire. But a magician plays with powers that do not belong to humanity. It is not for a man to darken the midday sun, nor to bring the dead out of their graves.” With The Tempest Project Brook dispenses nearly fully from the material, from nearly everything that constitutes what we accept now as ordinary, both in life and in theatre. As a result, we can fully concentrate on the nature of freedom as the first and foremost prerequisite for our communion with the invisible – the world of the Spirit. The show italicized in my mind yet another line of the sacred texts which, paraphrased, reads like this: all the taking care of the material life has chased us from paradise. The Tempest Project also reminded me of something another great director of our time, the late Eimuntas Nekrosius of Lithuania, said, “We have empty years, empty days and empty months alike in our lives. We only have a handful of real life. Almost everything is wasted time. However, we all imitate that we are in a hurry, that we do not have time, and that we are and will be very busy for a few years ahead. This is not true. This is how we deceive ourselves and others.” The Tempest Project of Brook and Estienne is, to me, exactly about that “handful of real life” – life that is free from the material, from the imitation of substance via its so contemporary substitutes – the haste, the cult for adrenalin, and the ubiquity of many-ness. In brief, life that is sync with the Spirit, and is, thus, harmony and peace itself. A distant serene song resounds from one point on in The Tempes t Project – coming and going, as if in waves; a song, which at times seems as simply part of the air. The people on stage – and I deliberately don’t say actors, lest I ruin the wonder – are somewhat like that song: at times they talk, at times they are simply there, yet, apart from the rare funny scenes, they too feel like a part of the air. You can probably say that Brook and Estienne have managed to bring us as closest as possible to one of the core themes of the play: “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.” I dare say again that The Tempest Project is much more than that: it rather makes us feel like in heaven, or, even more to the point, in what heaven could feel like here on Earth – during the “handful of real life.” Actually, Nekrosius himself tried to create Paradise on stage, in his adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy at his Meno Fortas Theatre in Vilnius, Lithuania. And he did manage to a large extent. Yet there were some illustrative moments there which grounded the overall effect of the show. While seeing The Tempest Project is truly like experiencing a life-changing revelation. Joe Martin begins his essay on Peter Brook “The Invisible Made Visible” in the 2015 SUFI “Peter Brook's life work for theatre constitutes a journey on a path upon which the spiritual traveler's quest is inseparable from that of the artist.” Indeed, experiencing The Tempest Project is equally an eye- opening experience in terms of theatre too, i.e. of what theatre could be like. In the 2023 program of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Peter Brook wrote, in reference to the Tempest Project: “Today, Western actors have all the qualities necessary to explore in Shakespeare's plays; all that concerns anger, political violence, sexuality, introspection. But for them it is almost impossible to touch the invisible world. To play a character who is not real, for a Western actor, requires real acrobatics. For the actor who has been raised in a world of ceremonies and rituals, the way that leads to the invisible is often direct and natural . The Tempest is an enigma. It is a fable in which nothing can be taken literally, because if we stay on the surface of the play, its inner quality escapes us. For the actors as well as for the audience, it is a play that reveals itself by playing it. It's like music.” In The Tempest Project the actors not only do manage to touch the invisible. They manage to become humble mediums between it and us, willfully dispensing from everything acting is usually associated with. The whole Tempest Project feels like being set free from everything ordinary theatre is associated with. It is a genuinely extraordinary piece – a piece of theatre that transcends theatre. It is as if, with this last show of his, Brook nods us from heaven and, by letting us experience a feel of it, reminds us that both life and theatre could be indeed holy. Hamlet “Translated” into the Language of Flamenco Another extraordinary prism for viewing, or rather feeling, Hamlet in Craiova was offered by the Spanish Jesus Herera Flamenco Ballet. Entitled Hamlet, the Dance of the Melancholic , this show is, to a large extent, at the other end of the pure spirituality of The Tempest Project: it dwells in the territory of the visceral, having simply skipped the one of the merely physical. All the same, it is an equally unforgettable and truly unique experience, as the work of Brook and Estienne. Indeed, as the Festival catalogue assured us, “For the first time ever, one of Shakespeare’s most iconic tragic plays is being turned into a Flamenco production.” The very logical motivation for this so unlikely undertaking was immediately pointed out there: “Hamlet is a tale of family, revenge, power and murder – and it is these aspects that make the story perfect for a Flamenco adaptation with their intensity and passion.” Importantly, in Hamlet, the Dance of the Melancholic , the passion of the Flamenco language is not limited to the well-known ingredients – the dancing, the singing, the live music (here provided by a guitar,drums, flute and sax) and the rhythm of hands-clapping and feet-tapping. On stage, there are also a piano with a piano-player and a six-person choir. The choristers are in cloaks with hooks and with painted white faces, as if with masks. All the participants in the show are all the time on stage but, in effect, we rarely do see them altogether. Because of the light – another major partner in this stunning dance of passion: it brings in and out of the action not only the concrete characters and musicians, but also the choir. So it is a surprise when we first get to see it and it continues to be so further on in the action. The choir not only adds the might of an oratorio type of a recital to the whole sound texture of the show but it does dance too – with the main dancer and artistic director of the company Jesus Herrera. Herrera’s performance is literally a tour-de-force. An unlikely Hamlet – very tall and solid – he manages to transform his body into a whirl of passion. So it is not anymore human flesh but the very energy of all the extreme emotions that take hold of the character – and human beings at that matter. Interestingly, but at once rather appropriately to the language of the show, the familiar plot is not followed in its entirety. Rather than that only separate lines unfold and not so much in an intertwined manner but one after another until each one exhausts itself. Thus, Hamlet’s mother (as Gertrude is billed) – the mesmerizing Lola Jaramillo – when taking center stage, plays the part from the beginning to the end, with the poisonous wine, before, for instance, Ophelia’s plot line starts unfolding. It is a part played at one gulp – one impossible gulp, that is– and one holds one’s breath, amazed by the energy of the passion Jaramillo exudes and also, from one point on, by how she doesn’t drop down fully exhausted. Although of a lesser overall might, the performance of Ophelia – Begona Arce – is also very persuasive. Only her drowning in a small pool is rather illustrative and, to me, unnecessary. Her dance there right before that, making the flying splashes of water become part of the show’s rhythm and dense texture, would have been a much more impressive end of her plot line. The figure of The Death – Hugo Sanchez – most of the time literally in the shadows or in a hook, charges the three-dimensional darkness on stage with sinister vibrations and, thus, with another layer of figurative blackness, and makes one palpably feel the threat for light to be overwhelmed. “The culmination of any dancer, of any performer, is when they know that choreography is no longer necessary,” the catalogue quotes Juan Vergillos. This fully applies to the whole stunning piece too. It takes a few minutes at the beginning, so that the viewer stops being preoccupied with the ingenuity and precision of the movement itself, with the overall dance of the bodies, light, shadows, melodies, and rhythm. Then, I dare say, all this becomes one entity – a bigger pulsation of the air in the theatre – and we, the spectators, get drawn into it and transformed into a part of it. This pulsation has nothing to do with the one experienced at contemporary concerts or anything of the kind. It doesn’t “erase” your ability to think. On the contrary, while your body and feet move in rhythm, in an inexplicable way, with your cells vibrating, you get not only to experience the exaltation of passions but you also realize what they mean in terms of temptations, downfall, disaster… This Hamlet causes an unlikely catharsis reverberating in the spectators long afterwards. There was yet another surprise show in Craiova that Shakespeare’s main masterpiece had inspired, an unexpected and surprising contribution by Robert Lepage: a ballet version of Hamlet . Lepage has created for himself a reputation of a stage sorcerer who mixes with ease theatre genres and forms, traditional means of expression and new technologies, but – more importantly! – manages to always subject all this amalgam to a truthful and emotional storytelling having at its core the human being. I have been following his oeuvre, since his first international break-through with Seven Streams of the River Ota back in the mid 1990’s, and as a critic I’ve never stopped being amazed by Lepage’s impeccable professionalism and ingenuity. Again more importantly, though, I’ve never felt failed by him in my capacity as a human being. Not only hasn’t he succumbed to the ills of our time theatre wise, like letting multimedia overwhelm and dehumanize his shows, but he’s never let the ubiquity of egocentrism take over his stage stories. An excellent example of the latter is his solo piece 887 which I have had the delight to see many a time. Although formally devoted to his growing up, it is, in effect, the least about his own persona. He acquaints the audience with a diverse range of people who inhabit his childhood and teenage years, as well as his nowadays. We get to know his relatives, his neighbors – the world around himself, what the society in Quebec experienced over the years he grew up, while he retains the position of a witness-narrator who, despite being all the time there, is rarely in the limelight. This stands out so much at the background of all the one-actor shows which are usually predominantly about their creators. In Craiova, however, I have to admit, I was initially rather disappointed, as The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark , staged by Lepage and Guillaume Cote, was more or less just a ballet and, to a large extent, illustrative at that. Namely, it was by and large following the plot and the canon for the characters, without ingenious “tricks” that would cast a new light on some familiar details and relations, and, thus, inspire startling insights. It looked like an abridged and illustrated Hamlet with no words but few sparse surtitles, as if in a silent movie, just announcing the main scenes that would follow by indicating who of the main characters is about to enter. Only in the very beginning and few times later on, the surtitles were more complex and formed ingenious pans, when the places of words or letters got to be written and changed in front of us. In the same vein, the ballet dancing seemed to be only slightly enhanced by a pinch of modern dance elements. All in all: nothing to do with the Lepage who has changed the face of world theatre with his panache, inventiveness and so fine and profound understanding of the human nature. However, more and more time has been passing since I saw this Hamlet, I’ve come to realize I can’t stop thinking of it. Moreover, it has very often been coming to my mind during other shows, where deliberate ugliness and/or repugnancy is being manifested on stage – a rather strong trend on the festival circuit and on main European stages too for the last several seasons. So not only have I changed my initial opinion of Lepage’s and Cote’s Hamlet, but it has become like a life-belt for me, charging me with its beauty as a shield against the arrogant march of physiology against spirituality on stage. There are three scenes in this Hamlet which are at once paragons of beauty, of profundity of the meaning and of ingenuity embedded in simplicity. The first one is of the very process of Ophelia’s getting mad – something which we rarely do get to see anyway in the interpretations of the play. Lepage and Cote place her in front of three mirrors, where she starts getting confused by seeing herself threefold. The rest of the characters too are around her and around the mirrors, and the feeling of her losing touch with reality becomes truly palpable: the integrity of her mind and her body starts falling apart in all these pieces of her in the mirrors, she tries hard to keep herself whole, but soon stops being in control altogether. And the next scene, right afterwards: her drowning. A blue curtain falls down and whirls and curls around her, moved by the other characters. She dances towards it, “diving” in and then managing to get out, and taking a breath, and then back into it, and again “to the surface”, and then again, until the vertical blue waters engulf her. The third scene is the duel at the end of the play: the swords of Hamlet and Laertes end with long, red and white ribbons respectively, like those of the gymnasts. So the fight becomes like a beautiful 3D painting, drawn and changing in front of us. These ribbons reminded me of the long sleeves of the characters in traditional Chinese operas that fly away and draw curved strokes in the air, creating an ephemeral feeling, as if the action takes place between the earth and the sky. So, has Craiova, with the 30th anniversary of its main theatre event over, been definitely transformed from a city with a festival into a festival city, and a city of Shakespeare at that? Here is a true story instead of an answer: With Spectators Like That… (a true story) At the Lepage show, the staircases were again packed with students and theatre-lovers, who were not among the lucky ones with tickets but were magnanimously allowed inside the theatre. When the show was about to begin, the seat next to me was miraculously still empty. One of the men standing on the staircase parallel to my row made a sign to me, asking if I was still expecting someone there. I nodded negatively and, as the lights started to dim, made a sign back to him to quickly get in and sit there. After the show I realized that I had spotted his face either in the audiences or among those eagerly waiting to get in despite the tickets were sold-out. I told him so and he answered that, yes, indeed, he was trying to make sure he wouldn’t miss a show. Naturally, I asked him if he was connected with the theatre by his profession. “Not at all,” he answered and told me he’s a math’s teacher but he’s infatuated with Shakespeare. He went on to share with me that, some years ago, when he unexpectedly got some inheritance money, he went to London and spent most of it for some very old editions of the Bard’s plays, which later on he lent to the Festival for a special books exhibition. I expressed my amazement and admiration, to which he responded that this was simply normal – why would I go from my country and as far as from Sofia, at that, to Craiova if it were not worth it?! With spectators like that and with the genuine respect and interest among the world-wide theatre brethren, it is then no surprise that the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova, that took off as a triennale and went on to be a biennale for a while, will start its fourth decade in a new, denser rhythm: it will become an annual event from 2025. Moreover, another anniversary is approaching exactly then: the National Theatre of Craiova will celebrate 175 years of its opening - on the 29th of June 1850. So we don’t have to wait for a long time for our next helping of this truly special Shakespearean theatre feast – only till next June. References References About the author(s) Kalina Stefanova , PhD, is author/editor of 14 books (12 books on theatre, four of which in English, launched in New York, London and Wroclaw; and two fiction ones, published in nine countries, in two editions in China). She has been a Visiting Scholar/Lecturer world-wide. In 2016 she had the privilege to be appointed as Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Arts School of Wuhan University as well as a Distinguished Researcher of the Chinese Arts Criticism Foundation of Wuhan University. She served as IATC’s Vice President for two mandates (2001/2006) and as its Director Symposia for two mandates (2006-2010). Since 2001 she has been regularly serving as an evaluation expert for cultural and educational programs of the European Commission. Currently she is Full Professor of Theatre and Criticism at NATFA, Sofia. 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.

Catherine Heiner Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Catherine Heiner By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Kaneisha lets out a scream that sends the gag falling out of her mouth and her body shivering from groin to skull. Kaneisha: Starbucks! Starbucks! Starbucks! Kaneisha falls off the bed and begins to cry. It is a full-bodied, all-hands-on-deck type of cry. Jim looks at Kaneisha, not sure what came over him, not sure why he did what he did, as the last light of the Virginia dusk begins to fade away, and a slight breeze knocks their window against the pane. Jim begins to crawl over to Kaneisha slowly when suddenly the all-hands-on-deck cry becomes a guttural laugh. Kaneisha is overcome. Slave Play (1) “What moment made you want to say ‘Starbucks’?” The question verges toward the silly, even in this context. Within Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play though, “Starbucks” resists our caffeinated associations. It functions here as a sexual safe word—a way for the characters to immediately stop their role play and return to reality. During what initially appears in the first act as a series of racially charged sexual exploits on a slave plantation—including a white mistress taking advantage of the young Black man working in her household, and an overseer awkwardly seducing a Black woman—“Starbucks” reveals that the whole scenario is a setup constructed by a pair of Yale graduate students to help three interracial couples work through their relationship issues. These characters spend the play parsing out baggage unique to these interracial relationships through an unconventional variation of therapeutic role play while attempting to name and interrogate complications around race. As the play hurtles toward the climactic third act—which includes an ambiguous and violent sexual interaction between Kaneisha, the central Black female character, and her white male partner, Jim, described in the stage direction excerpted above—whatever meaning this exchange and the use of “Starbucks” produces seems ambiguous and uncertain. This unsettled question remained in the air as the show concluded and facilitators turned the attention of remaining participants toward thoughtful reflection and discussion. From its inception, Slave Play encouraged discourse with and for audiences, originating with informal interactions with trained moderators available in the lobby (designated with “talk to me about the play” buttons) at the New York Theatre Workshop, to more formal post-show talkbacks with some members of the cast and creative team on Broadway.(2) By the time I encountered Slave Play at the Taper Forum, audiences were invited to stay after the show for brief conversations with facilitators immediately afterwards. For our conversation, facilitators focused on a structured format scaffolded by the language of the play—in this case, using “Starbucks” to encourage us to contemplate moments of discomfort. As I sat in the mostly empty auditorium of the Taper Forum in Los Angeles, I set aside my own tangled reactions to the play in favor of hearing from other audience members—given the play’s notoriety for its “shocking” material, I was curious how this self-selected community interpreted it. The premise of Slave Play , frequently alluded to in critical reviews and word-of-mouth reactions alike had been intriguing, but the humor seemed to land unevenly on the audience as the story swerved away from absurdity like a slow-motion car wreck towards the assault in act three. The conversation the play depicts involving gender, race, sexuality, and power, seemed to require a constant negotiation of audiences’ identities (in my case, white, queer, cis woman, as well as graduate student, theatre scholar, and dramaturg) in relation to the conflict, but as a whole the play resisted easy or prescriptive conclusions. For the bulk of the post-show talkback, the two facilitators led us through direct questions about these initial reactions, revelations, and what had stuck with us. Most responders prefaced their comments by clarifying that their responses “[weren’t] about the race thing, really,” and generally the conversation reflected how the discomfort of race, sexuality, and power intersected while watching the story. I noticed how these comments echoed larger observations about the play that I had seen in reviews and other publicity material,(3) identifying moments that appear “shocking” or “risky.” Finally, an older Black woman seated near the back of the auditorium raised her hand. “I would say I’m disappointed,” she began. “There was nothing here that was shocking, or…daring as everyone said this play would be. It was pretty typical. A white man having sex with a Black woman like she’s a slave? That’s expected.”(4) While there are numerous points of entry into critical analysis of Slave Play , I emphasize this moment in the post-show audience discussion to highlight the tensions of satire, empathy, and the play’s dynamics of race. Slave Play toys heavily with expectations, ultimately breaking with the initial conceit as the characters reveal the circumstances of their role play. This reveal may produce a shocking and unexpected twist for audiences, but it also cultivates an empathetic gap where any initial feelings toward these characters evaporate upon realizing the situation is not what it seems. The humor at this twist nearly carries the second act, but the unpredictability makes it difficult to interpret the threat of harm toward Kaneisha in the final act. Indeed, much of the post-show discussion focused on the individual emotional experiences of audience members in relation to discomfort and knee-jerk reactions. While this approach offered participants a chance to self-reflect, the questions center around moments of shock, surprise, or unexpected emotion, effectively side-stepping what made the humor in the first two acts effective or necessary. In examining this shift, I inquire: at what point does Slave Play cease to function as a comedy? I suggest that the initial framework of satire and humor for the first two acts significantly alters how this final moment of violence is understood in the context of its racial dynamics. All production choices of the first act lean into the comedy, including exaggerated movement that echoes the melodramatic. Given the sexual context, this blocking adds to the humor, with the wildly ridiculous postures heightening the sadomasochistic erotics. By the time the arc shifts to act three, the physical reaction of witnessing Kaneisha and Jim’s altercation seems to move from the humorous to the dangerous. In many ways, this particular altercation opens up potential for kinesthetic empathy, an “automatic, involuntary, kinesthetic response of one body to another” that produces a “feeling of sharing another person’s movement.”(5) Instead of strengthening an empathetic connection to a performance however, kinesthetic empathy can create an even further gap, since it is “limited by our own first-person experience,” where “what we simulate is our own experience of the movement, not the experience of the other. There will always be a gap between what we receive and what we experience.”(6) In negotiating this gap between a kinesthetic reaction to a staged act of violence and the use of satire, I build on Heather LaMarre’s framework of the cognitive load in satire—wherein audiences must refocus between what a satirist says and what message they initially intended.(7) In this case, Slave Play combines multiple components (including conversations on sexuality, race, and power) that increase the cognitive load to a such a point that it blurs the possibility of significant cultural critiques. (The focus of the post-show discussion highlighted this, as significantly more time was spent allowing audiences to self-reflect than to extrapolate toward larger thematic discussion.) Given the play’s portrayal of Kaneisha, this satirical imbalance reiterates rather than counteracts the hyperinvisibile status of Black women. In charting this trajectory, I position Slave Play within a larger context of satire to discuss the play’s use of humor and critique, followed by a more pointed analysis of Kaneisha addressing how her constellation of sexuality, gender, and race operates in conjunction with this satire. “A comedy of sorts” “The moment you know [Slave Play] has no consideration for black women is in act 3 when kaneisha sys something like ‘the ancestors don’t mind that we lay with demons cuz they laid with demons too” - @theeashleyray(8) Ashley Ray, a Los Angeles-based polyamorous Black queer comedian/actor/writer,(9) received a significant amount of praise for her critique of Slave Play , especially the treatment of Kaneisha, as followers noted how Ray articulated their own similar distaste. Although responses to Slave Play seem to suggest a deep concern with the final violent act, numerous critical reviews focused on the discomfort of those watching and witnessing rather than empathizing with Kaneisha. “This is a demanding play,” wrote Constance Grady for Vox in her 2018 review. “[O]ne of the things it demands is the audience’s discomfort. But that discomfort is productive—and in the end, it brings its own satisfactions.”(10) Charles McNulty, who reviewed the Taper Forum production, noted that “each time I’ve seen the work, I’ve had a different reaction, which to me is a sign of the work’s complexity.”(11) These reviews contrasted heavily with Ray’s critiques, particularly as Ray focused much of her perspective on Kaneisha’s lack of involvement as a larger observation on Black women. Ray pointed to Kaneisha’s silence as an example of this lack of consideration, noting instances where “when we think we Kaneisha’s actual motivations might be revealed, a Rihanna song plays instead.”(12) Indeed, the fact that Kaneisha cannot articulate her emotions through words functions as a primary plot point, with musical interventions representing her experience of alexithymia. (Alexithymia, a condition where an individual has trouble identifying, experiencing, and understanding their own emotions, also seems to be a common experience for most of the Black characters in this play.) Indeed, throughout much of the “process” of act two, Kaneisha’s dialogue primarily consists of defining terms, concepts, or sensations for her fellow participants rather than investigating her own experience. By including the bulk of Kaneisha’s dialogue and action in the first act through role play, the understanding of her character is based heavily in the humor and satire framed in those moments—further complicating the reading of the final scene. Indeed, beyond the comment that Kaneisha and Jim’s relationship was “expected,” very little of the post-show discussion I attended even referenced Kaneisha or the violence at the end of act three, seeming to confirm Ray’s initial critique of her treatment. In his introductory “Notes on Style,” Harris describes the world of the play as “a comedy of sorts” that “should be played as such.”(13) Harris does not include any additional guidance on this comedy, although many of the reviews include references to the “satiric” elements of the play, particularly within the overly academic second act. Sara Holdren’s Vulture review indicated that the play remained “ultimately humane,” even with its use of satire.(14) Amauta M. Firmino, who served as dramaturg for Slave Play from its origins at the Yale School of Drama through its Broadway premiere, recounted that this troubling between humor and discomfort served as an origin point for the play as well: “[Jeremy] was at a dinner party, and there’s…this conversation about a couple who, these two white people… They had been getting into role play in sex, and he had wanted to sort of…scare her or…surprise her or something. And people were joking at the dinner table about, like, pretending to rape his wife in a way, in role play, right?(15) This initial conversation led to questions of how power dynamics become visible in these moments, particularly if one partner is Black, as “[s]uddenly the power dynamics shift radically,” Firmino notes that “everyone is completely off their footing, right? And they’re no longer sure if they should be laughing or not, right?”(16) Unlike the first act, which elicited laughter through staging a sexual role play bordering on the ridiculous, the second act gets caught up in language and rhetoric, particularly as Téa and Patricia dance around buzzwords like “processing,” “interventions,” and “unpacking” as they lead the group therapy session. As the story moves into more emotionally charged dynamics in the third act, it seems to recreate this sensation of being “caught off foot,” uncertain of whether laughter is deserved. The slippery quality of satire only adds to the complicated nature of Slave Play —amid all the humor, the moments of critique get obscured. In her studies on satire and political humor, Heather L. LaMarre defines it as a genre that “uses laughter as a weapon to diminish or derogate a subject and evoke towards it attitudes of amusement, disdain, ridicule, or indignation.”(17) At its heart, satire relies on mimicry in order to exploit other existing literary genres.(18) LaMarre’s initial study included categorizing two primary forms of satire: Horatian, which mimics comedy and comments on social and ethical problems by “[telling] the truth, laughing,” and Juvenalian, which mimics tragedy, and therefore includes a more definitive, bitter approach.(19) The goal of Horatian satire seeks to evoke laughter, which “calls audiences to laugh at the folly of political circumstance without giving much credence to arguments.”(20) This laughter can quickly reduce any commentary to “just a joke,” or “not serious,” in what LaMarre refers to as message discounting. Message discounting also exists in Juvenalian satire. However, the complexity of this genre makes interpretation more difficult. Juvenalian satire can create a stronger sense of urgency for the audience in processing and understanding the material—to reconcile the humor, the audience must negotiate a larger gap between what the satirist says and what they mean.(21) The challenge for Slave Play comes in large part from Harris’s comedy—engaging with both Horatian and Juvenalian satire creates a sense of whiplash in attempting to understand how to read the emotionally charged situations. The description Harris provides suggests that some elements can (and perhaps should) emphasize the possibilities for comedy. Part one, which finds all characters in an elaborate antebellum sexual role play initially comes off as Horatian, allowing characters to “tell the truth” within their relationship dynamics “while laughing.” The second and third acts get decidedly more complicated, as it’s increasingly unclear whether Slave Play remains satirical, and if so, what exactly it satirizes. In this manner, Slave Play appears to move closer toward a Juvenalian satire. Mirroring the same pitfalls that LaMarre illuminated in her comparison of the two, Slave Play requires more input and discernment for individual interpretation. Based on her studies in media and communication, LaMarre notes that “Horatian satire leaves agency in the hands of the message recipient while Juvenalian satire places most of the agency in the hands of the message producers.”(22) The more interpretation an audience must process to understand the argument, the less ability they have to properly analyze various angles of the critique. As the characters move through their “Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy” experience, they shift from Horatian satire to Juvenalian—from humor that audiences can write off as “just a joke” to interactions so steeped in ambiguity—making it unclear whether we should laugh with a character or at them. By including an intense and visceral assault on Kaneisha in this context, Slave Play seems to trouble what actions exist under the umbrella of Horatian satire’s “just a joke.” Throughout her study, LaMarre identifies that the heavier cognitive load of Juvenalian satire makes it difficult to differentiate between humor and meaning. Ultimately, the audience becomes so preoccupied attempting to negotiate what the satirist says versus the actual intended message, they cannot fully articulate and analyze the actual arguments presented. As a result, LaMarre argues that these forms reduce the public’s motivation or ability “to think about the issues, assess the strength of relevant arguments, and attend to the political issues being presented,” and that consequently, “we are entering a world where opinion, sarcasm, innuendo, parody, and satire may have more influence on our democracy than facts and relevant truths.”(23) The stakes that LaMarre lays out become useful in examining Slave Play to understand both critical responses and the discourse the play seeks to engage. By moving from Horatian satire to Juvenalian satire to realism in such quick succession, Slave Play makes it difficult for audiences to parse out where one ends and another begins—and similarly, what the play considers “just a joke,” and what elements audiences should take seriously. In this way, contextualizing Slave Play as satire also relies on the imagined contemporary “postrace” America. Ralina L. Joseph defines postrace as “a term used by race commentators to sometimes describe, sometimes decry, and sometimes imagine another racialized world. Postrace is far from neutral; indeed, as a racial ideology, it is so loaded and powerful that it delimited the iterative space for race critics in the Obama era.”(24) Joseph points to the pitfalls of imagining America as “postrace,” as the term suggests that race is no longer significant, implying that we have moved past discrimination based on race. Instead, Joseph argues that “postraciality remains embroiled in precisely what it claims not to be,” as it both contains the immediate awareness of racial difference and an acknowledgement of that race.(25) The implication that American politics and culture are beyond—or even past—race allows the discussion of race to seemingly disappear from the conversation. The conceit that these characters have arrived to unpack the dynamics of their interracial relationships hinges on this concept of postrace, as it both obscures and emphasizes racial power dynamics to underscore its satire. For Kaneisha, this creates a position where her race simultaneously becomes the central focus in this dynamic while avoiding her particular challenges of Black womanhood. Kaneisha exists at the difficult intersection for Black women that Ralina Joseph describes as being “both hypervisible—objects of desire and scorn—and invisible entities who fail to register as significant.”(26) The hypervisibility that Joseph defines evolves further, as Amber Johnson argues that “stereotyping the body so much that the stereotypes become more visible, and thus believable,” to the point where these stereotypes even replace bodies in interpersonal interactions, rendering them hyperinvisible.(27) Recognizing this hyperinvisibility echoes the sentiments from the comment from the post-show discussion, pointing out what is “expected” in Kaneisha’s position. Kaneisha’s hyperinvisibility becomes another feature to question in negotiating satire—rather than addressing the actual harm represented, the question of what messages the play offered and what meaning it intended dominates the cognitive load. Harris has described in interviews that his intention for the play centers on its function as “a litmus test for the audience that was engaging with it.”(28) Harris’s original goals included getting the audience talking about the relationships and dynamics they witnessed, which would seem to make it an excellent opportunity for dialogic empathy through this dramatic “litmus test.” Should the audience view Slave Play as a satire, it becomes necessary to identify the intentions of the satirist and the actual message. Extrapolating from LaMarre’s work, the audience’s attention redirects in an attempt to analyze what they just saw rather than engaging with the actual themes present. For instance, rather than considering the emotional impact of racial inequalities, the audience gets preoccupied trying to discern if Jim assaulted Kaneisha. Returning to Ray’s observations, this shift makes it difficult to determine whether the play has any consideration for Kaneisha, and by extension, Black women generally, particularly as the action moves closer and closwer to realism. “I always see Slave Play as a tryptich,” Firmino described. “The first act is the artifice of the thing, right? It’s the role playing. And then the second act is a comedy of manners…that unmasks the role play and kind of talks about all of the issues behind it, and the third act is reality, right, the third act is the most real.”(29) In the realm of satire, especially satire that draws on sexual dynamics and kink, the line between assault and humor gets troublingly blurry. “Why is whiteness so central to her identity?” Kaneisha exists as both hypervisible and invisible in the space of the play, particularly by attempting to negotiate power in these moments of sadomasochistic roleplay. Sadomasochism broadly references relationships based on giving and/or receiving pain, ultimately relying on a binary power dynamic such as teacher/student, nurse/patient, or in the case of Slave Play , slave/master. Initially, Kaneisha’s participation (and Jim’s, for that matter) should allow her to “reengage intimately with white partners for whom they no longer receive sexual pleasure,” as Teá describes in act two.(30) The sadomasochistic dynamic between Jim and Kaneisha may edge toward a historical reenactment, where Harris evokes the actual legacy of Black women raped by white masters, but as many critics have pointed out, he does so in a way that reaffirms the structures of white supremacy. In an interview with Harris, Cate Young, a Black woman from the West Indies who articulates her racial identity alongside her history as a descendant of slaves, mentioned how Kaniesha’s lines during this interaction “bumped” for her, leading to questions about Kaneisha’s relationship to whiteness. “If it’s about whiteness in general,” Young described, “why is whiteness so central to [Kaneisha’s] identity? Why is interacting with whiteness in this intimate way so central to [her] identity that [she] can’t just not do that anymore when it doesn’t work for [her]?”(31) Ray followed a similar line of questioning in her review, noting that whatever liberation could exist through utilizing sadomasochism and kink occurs only “when it is removed from systemic structures of whiteness and traditional power dynamics,” a situation that does not exist in the world of this play.(32) As this scene appears as the closest to reality, it would seem that Kaneisha’s behavior affirms white supremacy rather than creating a liberatory act that critiques it. In further exploring Kaneisha’s hyperinvisibility in this context, her roleplay highlights the difference between flesh and body as analyzed by Hortense Spillers. According to Spillers, the ability to differentiate between flesh and bodies allows for an expansion of understanding personhood. The flesh, which exists prior to the body, functions as “that zero degree of social conceptualization that does not escape concealment under the brush of discourse, or that reflexes of iconography.”(33) The categorization of individual as body allows for the obscuring of violence, whereas the category of flesh allows for recognition of the marks and remembrances of the violence.(34) Spillers also suggests that the dynamic of body and flesh remains in flux throughout this narrative of enslavement, allowing space to exist as either a captive body, or as a site of crimes against the flesh. Each term offers separate possibilities in justifying racialized violence and the commodification of human life. The way that Harris evokes enslavement, both in the content of Slave Play and the title itself, suggests a bleeding between these categories. (Although during my encounter in the post-show discussion the topic of race was generally touched on in conversation, many comments suggested discomfort and avoidance of discussing the evocation of enslavement outright.) Ray similarly noted how “some people seemed to think it was a play about actual slavery which sparked the ‘I’m tired of slavery time stories!’ debate. ( Slave Play is not, technically, about ‘slavery times.’)”(35) Utilizing the history of enslavement both as a foundation for exploratory kink and for the humor of satire further adds to the cognitive load—after all, these sexual exploits seem to indicate that the power dynamics of enslavement can be laughed at as “just a joke” in this context. Leaning on Horatian satire not only leaves Kaneisha in an ambiguous place between flesh and body, but also between assault and “a joke.” This troubling of bodies, flesh, enslavement, and kink contributes heavily to the hyperinivisibility of Kaneisha due to the intersections of identities she inhabits. Kaneisha-as-body becomes hypervisible as a subject for her white partner, Jim, but Kaneisha-as-flesh remains invisible and he cannot bring himself to sexually satisfy her. In discussing how Black femininity has been understood as an excess of flesh, Nicole R. Fleetwood argues that it becomes “ a performative that doubles visibility: to see the codes of visuality operating on the (hyper)visible body that is its object . Excess flesh does not destabilize the dominant gaze or its system of visibility. Instead, it refracts the gaze back upon itself.”(36) Kaneisha’s engagement in S/M, particularly a historical scenario rooted in an unequal racial power balance, becomes an attempt to render both her Blackness and her sexuality-as-flesh visible. Black women face the most significant consequences based on this dynamic between flesh and/or body due to occupying a constellation of racialized and gendered categories. During the era of enslavement in the US, from approximately 1619 through the nineteenth century, Black women were categorized and recognized as flesh to support their position within the economic system, but not flesh capable of experiencing “fleshly” desires. Black women continued to hold this space of ambiguity—flesh unable to experience fleshly desire, only bodies in terms of labor production—in the same way that Spillers describes the captive personality as “unmade.” Saidiya V. Hartman similarly indicates that the conditions of slave agency express an oxymoron given that enslaved social existence is defined by lack of agency, asking, “What are the constituents of agency when one’s social condition is defined by negation and personhood refigured in the fetishized and fungible terms of object of property?”(37) Kaneisha’s initial appeals to Jim in act one illustrate desire of the flesh, particularly as she encourages him to dominate her in ways he finds degrading. By viewing Kaneisha as separate from her flesh (which includes her sexuality and her Blackness), Jim makes her both an object of desire and an invisible entity that fails to register as significant—he participates in her hyperinvisiblity. To bring this back to my earlier analysis on comedy, I return to my inquiry to understand when Slave Play ceases to be a comedy to further illustrate the risk of this hyperinvisibility regarding Kaneisha. Not only does she exist at a site of ambiguity between flesh and body, but between humor and critique as well. In his discussion of physical humor, John Wright identifies that staging scenes based in typicality is much more useful to humor, where “the vast majority of our comedy is based on recognition. We laugh because we can see ourselves in that situation. We laugh because we understand and we can share that understanding.”(38) Indeed, the first act allows for this recognition and understanding at the intersection of sex, desire, embarrassment, and the ridiculous . Moving into the third act, however, and an increasingly charged interaction between Kaneisha and Jim, the laughter remains. It would be impossible to conclude what exactly laughter from the audience might signify in that moment as it would require extensive generalization across multiple audiences in multiple cities and years. Still, Wright’s description of laughter as recognition is insightful—how is this situation of dominance recognized? And, to echo the comment from the talkback at the opening of this essay, does this recognition perpetuate what have (predominantly white) American audiences come to expect for Black women? Drawing on LaMarre’s conclusions, the cognitive load of balancing satirist’s intentions versus interpretations, Slave Play focuses predominantly on understanding what should be read as humor, leaving less cognitive capacity to properly analyze Kaneisha’s hyperinvisible status. Further, by utilizing sexuality as a means to explore this intersection of race, gender, and hyperinvisibility under the guise of satire, this cognitive load becomes even more challenging to fully process. In their analysis of Slave Play ’s exploration of these sexual encounters, Kari Barclay argues that this play functions as an erotic return, a performance that “restore[s] an imagined time and place of historical trauma and reconceptualize[s] it as a site of potential pleasure.”(39) While the inclusion of kink and sexual roleplay does suggest potential pleasure, as Barclay notes, the ambiguity of satire goes further to frame this pleasure as also humorous and verging on comedic. Regarding the violence of the final scene, Barclay goes on to note that “the play’s reenactment of sexual violence, even under consensual circumstances, may not have been paired with the context needed to shepherd audiences through an encounter with difficult history. […] …audiences may not have always had such a supportive environment in the theatre.”(40) I agree with Barclay’s observation on the challenges of “shepherding” the audience through these moments, and I extend this concern for Slave Play ’s audiences to address how the context of satire resists the supportive environment to engage with this difficult history while effectively reaffirming Kaneisha’s hyperinvisible status. “There sure are a lot of white people here.” The heavy cognitive load that results from layering satire, critique, and humor produces multiple instances where any given audience (or, in LaMarre’s terms, message receivers) potentially focuses excess energy on understanding the intent of the message rather than analyzing the argument itself. Given the overt nature of the play’s sexually explicit content, I suggest that this can produce situations where Slave Play unintentionally reproduces white supremacy. In her work on the subject, Dani Snyder-Young observes that white theatre audiences often desire to present themselves as “ good white people ,” which significantly impacts their conclusions about whatever performances they are viewing. She described that these white audiences “misrecognized realistically drawn white characters who perform their whiteness in ungraceful, hurtful ways as bad, racist white people, and find ways to distance themselves from these characters,” without reading these characters as representative of a generalized class of white people.(41) By denouncing racist white characters, “good white people” can distance themselves from racism without personal interrogation. In this context, the recognition of comedy within the satire allows for audience members to potentially categorize themselves as “good white people” based on the recognition of humor. Not only does the category of “good white people” resist intervention to break down white supremacy, but the movement between Horatian satire, Juvenalian satire, and realism challenges how “good white people” should interpret the action of Slave Play . Returning to his analysis of the play as a triptych, Firmino pointed out that the third act feels “the most real,” functioning predominantly as a reflection of reality rather than a satirical interpretation. Still, there is little information provided to help contextualize this transition. Indeed, the third act functions as the only time when the “Starbucks” safe word is evoked, but it lacks the immediate breakage as seen in the first act. In its first use, used by Kaneisha’s partner Jim, “Starbucks” severs the audience from the antebellum setting, creating an anachronistic dissonance that immediately hints these encounters are not what we initially believed them to be. As the play moves toward a sensation of “the most real,” the use of “Starbucks” relates to the more grounded portrayal of BDSM safe words—a term or signal that ends the sexual encounter immediately to protect those involved, particularly with rough or violent scenarios. The ambiguity of how Kaneisha uses the term at the end of the play and whether the encounter actually stops has been a point of discussion in many reviews and reactions attempting to determine if the play’s final moment should be categorized as assault or merely a specific type of sexual encounter. Actress Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, who both originated the role at Yale and performed as Kaneisha on Broadway and the West Coast, emphasized in one interview that “at the point [Kaneisha] says, ‘No,’ it stops. How it gets there is up to the interpretation of the audience.”(42) In her review, Ray reflected that on both occasions she saw the performance she thought she heard the actor playing Kaneisha say “stop,” and that she “realized [Kaneisha] uses the safeword when I read the script later.”(43) Positioning an indeterminate sexual encounter alongside extensive satire challenges precisely how the category of “good white people” gets defined, particularly when it comes to humor. I recognized this desire to align with “good white people” during my own attendance at Slave Play in 2022. I went into the experience with significant background knowledge of the play and the playwright, and upon arrival at the Taper Forum in Los Angeles felt an overwhelming wave of anxiety about how my white, female body might be interpreted in relation to the play. Unlike other aspects of my background (my theatre research, my experience as a dramaturg, etc.), the visual reading of my race and gender became more deeply felt throughout the performance. A line from Ashley Ray’s review kept swimming through my head, an observation that “there sure are a lot of white people here.”(44) I became self-conscious of my reactions (or lack thereof), and I noticed my row included a small pocket of silence while the rest of the auditorium filled with loud laughter and guffaws at the first act. This internal tension and anxiety only intensified as the play went on and I found myself repeatedly wondering how I was supposed to be implicated in relation to the characters. The weight of the cognitive load gets distracting—I could not find the humor because I was so tangled up trying to understand what I was supposed to be laughing at, or whether that laughter was permitted. My experience highlighted this site of tension between satire and critique, while recognizing that my reaction was heavily informed by my particular intersection of identities. My preoccupation with understanding how to read the humor onstage became my primary focus in an attempt to track when the story shifted from “a comedy of sorts” toward the “most real,” a process which highlighted the extent of this cognitive load. It came to a head in the final moments of act three, excerpted at the beginning of this essay—in watching Kaneisha yell “Starbucks” over and over, I questioned what exactly I had been witnessing. Contextualizing this relationship—whether as kink, satire, or assault—felt deeply necessary in understanding Kaneisha as a character, and by extension, the play’s perspectives on Black women’s hyperinvisibility. In order to consider the consequences of positioning Kaneisha as hyperinvisible, I return to the gap between satire and cognitive load. Despite the fact that Kaneisha becomes a hyperinvisible figure throughout the narrative of Slave Play , the final encounter casts the audience as witness to a highly visceral moment of violence. The emotional experience of this witnessing, even alongside the potential comedic reading of satire, can evoke what Judith Herman describes with the dialectic of trauma. “It is difficult for an observer to remain clearheaded and calm, to see more than a few fragments of the picture at one time, to retain all the pieces, and fit them together,” Herman stated. “It is even more difficult to find a language that conveys fully and precisely what one has seen. Those who attempt to describe the atrocities that they have witnessed also risk their own credibility. To speak publicly about one’s knowledge of atrocities is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims.”(45) Further, it is the victim who requires more from the witness. Herman continues that “the victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”(46) Herman’s indication that the bystander share in the burden of pain returns to Sara Ahmed’s description of the ethics of pain. The action, engagement, and remembering demanded of the witness implicitly requires that they “act about that which [they] cannot know” as Ahmed prompts, and to be “moved by what does not belong to [them.]”(47) The assault that audiences witness at the end of Slave Play may similarly move them, but Kaneisha’s hyperinvisibility further challenges the role of the witness. As Herman describes, the role of the witness comes with its own difficulties in articulating, processing, and engaging empathy—when aligned with satire, these burdens are colored by potential humor and discounting, further reinscribing Kaneisha as hyperinvisible. In acknowledging the relationship between pain and history, Ahmed indicates that the two come together through the body. She observes that “harm has a history,” and that “pain is not simply an effect of a history of harm; it is the bodily life of that history .”(48) The potential for pain that exists at the core of Slave Play could potentially offer an exploration of America’s relationship to enslavement. This approach, however, would require an acknowledgement of the specifics of this pain, rather than the ambiguity that takes place. Empathy cannot always access pain (as Ahmed argues), and the call of this pain “is a call not just for an attentive hearing, but for a different kind of inhabitance,” that results in a politics “based not on the possibility of what we might be reconciled, but on learning to live with the impossibility of reconciliation, or learning that we live with and beside each other, and yet we are not as one.”(49) The call of pain demonstrated in Slave Play , particularly in relation to Kaneisha, seems to hinge on keeping her in a state of hyperinvisibility. Slave Play asks audiences and characters to witness Kaneisha throughout her arc to sympathize with her situation, however doing so alongside the context of satirical humor still underscores the hyperinvisibility of Black female bodies. What moment made you want to say “Starbucks”? At the end of the post-show conversation, the two facilitators gave one final audience member a chance to discuss what resonated or what they would take away from this production. The young woman selected to speak sat on the opposite side of the auditorium from me, and framed her reflection as more of a question than a statement. She mentioned that she was Asian-American, and noted the importance of identifying herself that way as the play highlighted a similar gap between how we self-identify and how the world interprets or reads us. Her question centered around this gap—wondering when self-identification was no longer empowering because it relied on overt explanation rather than how one is perceived.(50) I found myself pondering this thought in relation to Kaneisha—in many ways, it didn’t matter how she self-identified because the world of the play and by extension, the audience, interpreted her based on her hyperinvisibility. Similarly, viewing what happens to Kaneisha as “expected,” as described by an earlier audience member, suggests that this hyperinvisibility had become ubiquitous with Black womanhood. The safe word “Starbucks” can remove the characters from the role play, and the audience can leave the theatre, but Kaneisha can’t seem to escape her hyperinvisibility. If this is still a comedy, perhaps it’s time to stop laughing. References Jeremy O. Harris, Slave Play , Theatre Communications Group, 2019, 161. Amauta Firmino described that the New York Theatre Workshop partnered with an organization to provide mediators/moderators after each performance. These individuals had had conversations with the creative team about the play and had been trained in mediation, providing audiences with highly informal opportunities to ask questions about what they just saw. See also: Green, Jesse. “Review: ‘Slave Play,’ Four Times as Big and Just as Searing.” New York Times , 6 October 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/theater/slave-play-review-broadway.html Accessed 8 November 2024 .; Holdren. Sara. “Theatre Review: Slave Play Blends the Terrifying and the Tantalizing.” Vulture , 10 December 2018. https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/slave-play-jeremy-harris-review.html . Accessed 8 November 2024. ; Knowles, Hannah. “A Broadway-goer railed against a play as unfair to white people. The playwright responded.” The Washington Post, 1 December 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/12/01/broadway-goer-shouted-play-was-racist-against-white-people-playwright-responded/ . Accessed 8 November 2024. Excerpt from personal field notes during post-show discussion. Harris, Jeremy O. Slave Play. Directed by Robert O’Hara, performances by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Jonathan Higginbotham, Devin Kawaoka, Chalia La Tour, Irene Sofia Lucio, Paul Alexander Nolan, Jakeem Dante Powell, and Elizabeth Stahlmann. 19 February 2022, Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California. Wanda Strukus. “Mining the Gap: Physically Integrated Performance and Kinesthetic Empathy.” The Journal of Theory and Dramatic Criticism , Spring 2011, 89 Strukus, 103. Heather L. LaMarre, Kristen D. Landreville, Dannagal Young, and Nathan Gilkerson. “Humor Works in Funny Ways: Examining Satirical Tone as a Key Determinant in Political Humor Message Processing,” Mass Communication and Society , 17, no. 3, (2012), 405. Ashley Ray. @theeashleyray, 11 February 2022. Formatting in original. Ray has since taken down the original Twitter thread, although she provides a more thorough analysis and explanation of her thoughts on Slave Play and Harris in her publication “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice” published on her Substack. “About,” https://theashleyray.com . Accessed 27 July 2022. Constance Grady. “In Slave Play, audience and actors alike spar over who has the whip.” Vox, 17 December 2018. https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/12/17/18140950/slave-play-review-jeremy-o-harris-new-york-theatre-workshop . Accessed 25 March 2024. Charles McNulty. “Jeremy O. Harris’ ‘Slave Play’ awakens the Mark Taper Forum with a jolt.” Los Angeles Times , 17 February 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-17/review-jeremy-o-harris-slave-play-in-los-angeles . Accessed 20 March 2024. Ray. “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice.” Harris, np. Holdren, Sara. “Theatre Review: Slave Play Blends the Terrifying and the Tantalizing.” Vulture , 10 December 2018. https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/slave-play-jeremy-harris-review.html . Accessed 12 July 2022. Firmino, 18 August 2022. Firmino, 18 August 2022. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 402. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 402. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 402. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 405. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 405. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 421. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 422. Joseph, 7. Joseph, 8, 10. Joseph, 18. Johnson, Amber. "Straight Outta Erasure: Black Girl Magic Claps Back to the Hyperinvisibility of Black Women in Straight Outta Compton." National Political Science Review 19, no. 2 (2018): 36. Quoted by Cate Young. “Interview: Jeremy O. Harris Knows You Hate ‘Slave Play.’” Thirty, Flirty + Film. 11 March 2022. https://30flirtyfilm.substack.com/p/jeremy-o-harris-slave-play?s=r . Accessed 13 July 2022. Interview with the author, 18 August 2022. Harris, 75. Young, emphasis in original, np. Ray, “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice,” np. Spillers, 67 Spillers describes this in the atomizing of the captive body on page 67. Ray, np. Nicole R. Fleetwood “Excess Flesh: Black Women Performing Hypervisibility.” Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. University of Chicago Press, 2011, 112. Emphasis in original. Saidiya V. Hartman. Scenes of Subjection . Oxford University Press, 1997, 52. Wright, John. Why is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy . Nick Hern Books/Limelight Edition, 2007, 20. Kari Barclay. “Erotic Returns: Sleeping with Ancestors in Contemporary Plays about Sexual Violence.” Theatre Journal , vol. 75, no. 1, March 2023, 43. Barclay, 49-50. Dani Snyder-Young. Privileged Spectatorship: Theatrical Interventions in White Supremacy . Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2020, 124. Fitzpatrick, Felicia. “Antoinette Crowe-Legacy on Causing Conversation with Slave Play .” Broadway Direct , 7 December 2021. https://broadwaydirect.com/antoinette-crowe-legacy-on-causing-conversation-with-slave-play/ . Accessed 25 July 2022. Ray, “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice,” np. Ray, np. Herman, 2. Herman, 7-8. Ahmed, 31. Ahmed, 33-34. Emphasis in original. Ahmed, 39. Excerpt from personal field notes, 19 February 2022. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion . Second ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Barclay, Kari. “Erotic Returns: Sleeping with Ancestors in Contemporary Plays about Sexual Violence.” Theatre Journal , vol. 75, no. 1, March 2023. Chambers-Letson, Joshua. “The Body is Never Given, nor Do We Actually See It.” In Race and Performance after Repetition , edited by Soyica Diggs Colbert, Shane Vogel, and Douglas A. Jones. Duke University Press, 2020. Cummings, Lindsay B. Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance . London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Firmino, Amauta M. Personal Interview, August 18, 2022. Fitzpatrick, Felicia. “Antoinette Crowe-Legacy on Causing Conversation with Slave Play .” Broadway Direct , December 7, 2021. https://broadwaydirect.com/antoinette-crowe-legacy-on-causing-conversation-with-slave-play/ . Fleetwood, Nicole R. “Excess Flesh: Black Women Performing Hypervisibility.” Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. University of Chicago Press, 2011. Grady, Constance. “In Slave Play, audience and actors alike spar over who has the whip.” Vox, December 17, 2018. https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/12/17/18140950/slave-play-review-jeremy-o-harris-new-york-theatre-workshop . . Green, Jesse. “Review: ‘Slave Play,’ Four Times as Big and Just as Searing.” The New York Times , October 6, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/theater/slave-play-review-broadway.html Harris, Jeremy O. Slave Play . Theatre Communications Group, 2019. Harris, Jeremy O. Slave Play. Directed by Robert O’Hara, performances by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Jonathan Higginbotham, Devin Kawaoka, Chalia La Tour, Irene Sofia Lucio, Paul Alexander Nolan, Jakeem Dante Powell, and Elizabeth Stahlmann. Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California, February 19, 2022 Hartman, Saidiya V.. Scenes of Subjection . Oxford University Press, 1997. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery . New York, N.Y: BasicBooks, 1992. Holdren, Sara. “Theatre Review: Slave Play Blends the Terrifying and the Tantalizing.” Vulture , December 10, 2018. https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/slave-play-jeremy-harris-review.html . Johnson, Amber. "Straight Outta Erasure: Black Girl Magic Claps Back to the Hyperinvisibility of Black Women in Straight Outta Compton." National Political Science Review 19, no. 2 (2018): 34-49. Joseph, Ralina L. Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity. New York University Press, 2018. Knowles, Hannah. “A Broadway-goer railed against a play as unfair to white people. The playwright responded.” The Washington Post, December 1, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/12/01/broadway-goer-shouted-play-was-racist-against-white-people-playwright-responded/ . Kondo, Dorinne K. Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity . Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. LaMarre, Heather L., Kristen D. Landreville, Dannagal Young, and Nathan Gilkerson. “Humor Works in Funny Ways: Examining Satirical Tone as a Key Determinant in Political Humor Message Processing,” Mass Communication and Society , 2014, 17:3, 400-423. Larson, Stephanie R. What It Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture . Vol. 27. Penn State University Press, 2021. Lee, Ashley. “How the Radical Set of ‘Slave Play’ Transforms LA’s Mark Taper Forum.” The Los Angeles Times , February 16, 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-16/slave-play-set-transforms-la-mark-taper-forum . McDonald, Soraya Nadia.“The subversive ‘Slave Play’ peels back veneer of racial innocence in Northern whites.” Andscape, December 14, 2018. https://andscape.com/features/slave-play-theater-off-broadway-racism-peels-back-veneer-of-racial-innocence-in-northern-whites/ . McNulty, Charles. “Jeremy O. Harris’ ‘Slave Play’ awakens the Mark Taper Forum with a jolt.” Los Angeles Times , February 17, 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-17/review-jeremy-o-harris-slave-play-in-los-angeles . Musser, Amber Jamilla. Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism . Sexual Cultures. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance . Routledge, 1996. Pinkins, Tonya. “‘Slave Play’: Racism Doesn’t Have a Safe Word.” American Theatre Magazine , July 1, 2019. https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/07/01/slave-play-racism-doesnt-have-a-safe-word/ . Ray, Ashley. “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice.” tv i say w/ Ashley Ray. 12 March 2022. https://ashleyray.substack.com/p/why-i-saw-slave-play-twice . . Rowen, Bess. The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. Snyder-Young, Dani. Privileged Spectatorship: Theatrical Interventions in White Supremacy . Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2020. Strukus, Wanda. “Mining the Gap: Physically Integrated Performance and Kinesthetic Empathy.” The Journal of Theory and Dramatic Criticism , Spring 2011. 89-105. Wright, John. Why Is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy . Nick Hern Books/Limelight Edition, 2007. Young, Cate. “Interview: Jeremy O. Harris Knows You Hate ‘Slave Play.’” Thirty, Flirty + Film March 11, 2022. https://30flirtyfilm.substack.com/p/jeremy-o-harris-slave-play?s=r . Zillmann, Dolf. “Mechanisms of emotional involvement with drama.” Poetics , 1994, 23, 33-51. Footnotes About The Author(s) CATHERINE HEINER received her PhD in Theatre History and Performance Studies from the University of Washington. Broadly, her work considers empathy in conjunction with progressive political movements and the ways theatrical performances mobilize these affects. She has presented research at the American Society for Theatre Research annual conference, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, and the Comparative Drama Conference. As a dramaturg, she has worked on various productions, including The Oresteia (adapted by Ellen McLaughlin), The Importance of Being Earnest, American Idiot, The Lion in Winter, and the world premiere of An Evening with Two Awful Men . She currently teaches at Middle Tennessee State University. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. 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Watch Conference of the Absent by Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. There is a crisis! And in times of global crisis, it's all about global cooperation. Nevertheless, this time the crisis is being dealt with locally - on behalf of the world: at a conference that no one needs to book a flight or mount a train for. A performance to which the invited experts and speakers do not appear physically, but are represented by local people who only receive their script at the beginning of their presentation. In CONFERENCE OF THE ABSENT, the audience observes people from their own city as they take on the identity of an absent conference speaker. Completely without CO2-emissions and bad Skype or Zoom connections, but with all the performative means of the theater, the contributions and contradicting theses on the consequences of globalization will be delivered into the theater space - and settle them within it. The advantage of not being there - not having to be everywhere at all - becomes a joint play that can be experienced anew every evening. At the center of this game are people who become carriers of ideas and playfully acquire both biographies of experts as well as their thoughts. In this way, absence becomes an added value because it creates space for new enrollments and unexpected perspectives. Ghostwriters and speechwriters, co-authors and directors at the same time, Rimini Protokoll turns documentary co-authorship into remote directing. Concept / Text / Direction: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel Video- and Light design: Marc Jungreithmeier Sound design: Daniel Dorsch Research / Dramaturgy: Imanuel Schipper, Lüder Pit Wilcke with the voice of: Nadja Stübiger and thee prompting voices of: Henriette Hölzel, David Kosel, Hans-Werner Leupelt und Karina Plachetka Cooperation political-cultural education: Dr. Werner Friedrichs Production Management: Epona Hamdan Production Management touring: Vera Nau, Monica Ferrari Dramaturgy Assistance: Sebastian Klauke Directing Assistance: Lisa Homburger and Maximilian Pellert Stage Assistance: Maksim Chernykh Production Assistance: Federico Schwindt Technical Director Touring: Joscha Eckert, Bodo Gottschalk, Marc Jungreithmeier Sound Operator Touring: Aaron Ghantus, Fabian Tombers A production of Rimini Apparat In co-production with Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) and Goethe-Institut. The concept creation was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Conference of the Absent At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) Performance Art This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country Germany Language French, German, Portuguese and others, with English subtitles Running Time 107 minutes Year of Release 2021 There is a crisis! And in times of global crisis, it's all about global cooperation. Nevertheless, this time the crisis is being dealt with locally - on behalf of the world: at a conference that no one needs to book a flight or mount a train for. A performance to which the invited experts and speakers do not appear physically, but are represented by local people who only receive their script at the beginning of their presentation. In CONFERENCE OF THE ABSENT, the audience observes people from their own city as they take on the identity of an absent conference speaker. Completely without CO2-emissions and bad Skype or Zoom connections, but with all the performative means of the theater, the contributions and contradicting theses on the consequences of globalization will be delivered into the theater space - and settle them within it. The advantage of not being there - not having to be everywhere at all - becomes a joint play that can be experienced anew every evening. At the center of this game are people who become carriers of ideas and playfully acquire both biographies of experts as well as their thoughts. In this way, absence becomes an added value because it creates space for new enrollments and unexpected perspectives. Ghostwriters and speechwriters, co-authors and directors at the same time, Rimini Protokoll turns documentary co-authorship into remote directing. Concept / Text / Direction: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel Video- and Light design: Marc Jungreithmeier Sound design: Daniel Dorsch Research / Dramaturgy: Imanuel Schipper, Lüder Pit Wilcke with the voice of: Nadja Stübiger and thee prompting voices of: Henriette Hölzel, David Kosel, Hans-Werner Leupelt und Karina Plachetka Cooperation political-cultural education: Dr. Werner Friedrichs Production Management: Epona Hamdan Production Management touring: Vera Nau, Monica Ferrari Dramaturgy Assistance: Sebastian Klauke Directing Assistance: Lisa Homburger and Maximilian Pellert Stage Assistance: Maksim Chernykh Production Assistance: Federico Schwindt Technical Director Touring: Joscha Eckert, Bodo Gottschalk, Marc Jungreithmeier Sound Operator Touring: Aaron Ghantus, Fabian Tombers A production of Rimini Apparat In co-production with Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) and Goethe-Institut. The concept creation was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) About The Artist(s) Rimini Protokoll: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel founded the theatre-label Rimini Protokoll in 2000 and have since worked in different constellations under this name. Work by work they have expanded the means of the theatre to create new perspectives on reality. Rimini Protokoll often develop their stage-works, interventions, performative installations and audio plays together with experts who have gained their knowledge and skills beyond the theatre. Furthermore, they like to transpose rooms or social structures into theatrical formats. Many of their works feature interactivity and a playful use of technology. Expander Film Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky are co founder of the internationally operating Berlin based film label Expander Film. They aim is to produce documentaries and artistic projects which explore new paths in form and content. Besides their film and music video productions Expander works in close collaboration with various artists for video and film projects shown in exhibitions and museums around the world, accompanies projects for cultural institutions, contributes features for television, develops stage design and video in theatre plays. Get in touch with the artist(s) ferrari@rimini-protokoll.de and follow them on social media https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/de/ Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Ryan McKinney Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 3 Visit Journal Homepage Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018; Pp. 399. Ryan McKinney By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past . Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018; Pp. 399. A new addition to Hamilton scholarship, Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past marks another valuable collaboration between its editors, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter. Consisting of fifteen insightful essays, the book presents adroitly composed analyses of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as well as its surrounding historical, cultural, social, political, and racial implications. Constructed by historians from a wide array of fields ranging from American Studies and theatre studies to history and Africana Studies, Historians on Hamilton takes up “the challenge that Miranda himself made to us when he was just beginning to write the show, ‘I want the historians to take this seriously’” (6). The scholars herein rigorously examine the musical’s relationship to history and how history is made, the claim of Hamilton as a revolutionary musical, and the musical’s proposed theatrical innovations and historical omissions. Following the introduction that sets up the tone and content, the book is divided into three sections: “Act I: The Script,” “Act II: The Stage,” and “Act III: The Audience,” each consisting of five essays. The first part begins with William Hogeland’s essay, “From Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton to Hamilton: An American Musical ,” which posits that any historical inaccuracies in the musical are due, in part, to not only imprecisions in the source material (Ron Chernow’s biography), but also a lack of necessary criticism of Chernow’s work from professional historians. This section also features essays by Joanne B. Freeman, Lyra D. Monteiro, and Leslie M. Harris, who explore Alexander Hamilton’s politics, the complications associated with the casting of Hamilton , and New York City’s historical past with slavery, respectively. The section closes with Catherine Allgor’s illuminating essay, “‘Remember…I’m Your Man’: Masculinity, Marriage, and Gender in Hamilton ,” which introduces readers to “coverture, or the system of laws that defined women’s subordinate legal status” (96). Allgor showcases coverture’s absence from the musical and advocates for historians and theatregoers to use Hamilton ’s popularity as a means to understand coverture and its legacy in the contemporary political lexicon. “Act II: The Stage” begins with three essays that view the musical as both history and entertainment: Michael O’Malley explores Hamilton and money, as well as Hamilton’s policies as Treasury Secretary; David Waldstreicher and Jeffrey L. Pasley place Hamilton in the literary genre of “Founders Chic,” defined as “admiring individual portraits of major leaders of the Early Republic like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Hamilton” (140); and Andrew M. Schocket details how Hamilton follows a series of genre conventions that inform how this specific historical period is typically portrayed on stage and screen. Elizabeth L. Wollman’s and Brian Eugenio Herrera’s respective essays offer resonant conclusions to this section. Wollman smartly tempers Hamilton ’s status as a revolutionary musical by historicizing other uber-popular Broadway musicals while arguing that although Hamilton is innovative, it is also “a carefully honed product of musical theatre history” (215). Herrera’s essay considers Hamilton ’s theatrical context alongside other “presidential musicals” and notes both the importance of and the problems within the musical’s casting practices. Also recognizing the musical’s entrance into a “U.S. Latinx theater tradition” (238), Herrera highlights how the musical utilizes code-switching and signaling techniques to address Latinx audience members. The final section opens with Jim Cullen’s refreshing essay that recounts his development and teaching of a course on Hamilton and Hamilton , complete with a sample syllabus in the appendix. Act III continues with an essay by Patricia Herrera on Hamilton ’s use of Hip Hop through the lens of her family’s cross-country trip through the United States’ national parks. Next, by viewing Hamilton as a work of art rather than scholarly history, Joseph M. Adelman’s essay provides a necessary counterpoint to some of the other chapters. The collection’s co-editors author the two concluding essays. Renee C. Romano’s piece, “ Hamilton : A New American Civic Myth,” posits how conservatives and progressives in this country advocate for versions of American history that align with their differing politics, and that, in spite of this, Hamilton has still managed to strike a chord of agreement. Claire Bond Potter investigates Hamilton ’s social media life by documenting the vastness of #HamFam (the Hamilton Family) and its current and future site as a digital archive. The final pages of the book consist of an appendix that offers the aforementioned course syllabus as well as a Hamilton/ Hamilton chronology. This book is a worthy addition to popular culture studies, history, American Studies, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies and, of course, theatre and musical theatre studies. The book aims to serve students and fans of Hamilton , though ardent fans of the #HamFam may be less appreciative of the essays that are critical of the musical. Regardless, academics are certain to find value in this publication, and the book is very accessible for the general reader. Like the recent special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre devoted to an exploration of the musical across twelve articles, many of the essays herein investigate Hamilton primarily as a theatrical work. That said, true to its title, history reigns supreme in this collection, serving as the primary lens through which the majority of the essays explore Hamilton , as well as its greater cultural, political, and societal effects. Historians on Hamilton successfully meets Miranda’s challenge, presenting engaging essays in which accomplished historians do take Hamilton seriously and offer a range of perspectives on its place in, and depiction of, American history. References Footnotes About The Author(s) RYAN MCKINNEY Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York Editorial Board for Special Issue: David Bisaha Meredith Conti Leah Lowe Inga Meier Robert Vorlicky Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Embodied Arts Collective Choreography for Weathering Black Experience: Janelle Monáe and The Memphis "Tightrope" Dance Unruly Reproductions: The Embodied Art of Mimicry in Vaudeville "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies Choreographies of the Great Departure: Building Civic Bodies in the 1914 Masque of St. Louis Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Hawaiian Performance. Stephanie Nohelani Teves. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018; Pp. 220. Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Cindy Rosenthal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017; Pp. 198. In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement. La Donna L. Forsgren. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 200. Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina. Noe Montez. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017; Pp. 239 + xi. Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical. Kevin Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; Pp. 368. Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018; Pp. 399. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

Karl G. Ruling Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Karl G. Ruling By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Jason Sanchez and Xavier Cano in Long Wharf’s production of El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom. Photo: Curtis Brown Photography. “We’re still here,” is the declaration announcing Long Wharf Theatre's 25-26 season. It's a good lede for my review of Long Wharf's last season, too. Long Wharf Theatre is still here, but “here” is not fixed; it moves. Long Wharf's performances and events were held at venues throughout New Haven and as far away as Middletown, Connecticut. All the shows and events supported Long Wharf's goal to be a nexus “where bold storytelling and vibrant communities come together to shape the future of American theatre.” The shifting event locations also got audience members into communities and venues they'd perhaps never visited before. The season started with a three-day “Artistic Congress,” 15 consecutive sessions each scheduled for 1 1/2 to 2 hours that were talks, panel discussions, audience workshops, and short scenes at venues in New Haven, culminating with a staged reading of Anna Deavere Smith's work-in-progress, This Ghost of Slavery, in the Crowell Concert Hall at Wesleyan University in Middletown. The New Haven events were held at Gateway Community College, BAR (a nightclub), the New Haven Public Library, Yale's Schwartzman Center, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Long Wharf's signage—often sandwich boards on the sidewalk—was excellent for guiding attendees to the venues, and there always were smiling greeters to tell us we'd arrived at the right place. Long Wharf's publications often talk about how storytelling is essential for understanding ourselves, each other, and the world around us. The Congress touched on those ideas but also suggested that collaborative work (what theatre makers do) can be a way for our communities to address our common problems. One of the sessions, “Civic Scores #2 : 'Who has the pen to shift the housing crisis,'” had audience members in teams using Lego blocks to design ideal communities. What's ideal and for whom? There were interesting discussions among participants about the complexities of zoning and building codes. We didn't solve the housing crisis, but we got far beyond, “Somebody should do something.” Anna Deavere Smith's This Ghost of Slavery is an extension of her work in documentary theatre. Previous verbatim theatre works of hers have featured a solo performer (often herself) portraying a multitude of people with a script based on interviews she had with those people. This Ghost of Slavery is a bit different, being based on archival material as well as recent interviews. The 39 characters of the play, originally published in The Atlantic magazine's December 2023 issue, were portrayed by 17 performers, including two musicians, in a staged reading, arrayed across the platform at Crowell Concert Hall. The play, directed by Aneesha Kurdtarkar, is set in Baltimore and Annapolis, moves between the 1860s and the present, and explores the school-to-prison pipeline as part of the legacy of American slavery. Although published, the script was a work in progress, a bit long in performance, but an important exploration of how the past affects how we treat each other now. She Loves Me, with music and lyrics by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick and book by Joe Masteroff, was a wonderful holiday celebration, performed at the Lab at Conncorp in Hamden. Based on a play by Miklós László and set in Budapest in 1937, the plot revolves around the employees of Maraczek’s Parfumerie. Clerks Georg and Amalia loathe each other in the shop, while unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal who met through lonely-hearts ads. A lovely final scene had the lovers together under falling snow. Director Jacob G. Padrón, assembled an excellent singing company of actors of different races and ethnicities, different body types. The only nod to conventional American musical casting expectations was that the lead couple were thin people, young and lively. The performance space at the Lab at Conncorp was formerly a middle school gym. The staging, designed by Emmie Finckel, was tennis court style, with the audience on two facing sides, the main playing space in the middle, and the larger scenic elements at the ends. One end was the parfumerie shop. The other end, a comfortable 1930s living room, held the four-piece orchestra. Scenes outside the parfumerie, such as the restaurant, were played in the middle space with a few props quickly brought into place by the actors playing the minor characters. Changes of season were indicated by simple devices such as the delivery boy taking leaves from his pocket, tossing them into the air, and announcing “Autumn.” Later he took snow from his pocket and tossed it and announced “Winter.” The lighting, designed by Jiyoun Chang, shifted color to match. The show ran smoothly and the singing was beautiful. I found it enchanting. El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom had us visiting Southern Connecticut State University’s John Lyman Auditorium in New Haven for a show in the stage left wing. The Lyman stage is so big that the stage wing provided enough room for five rows of audience seating facing an end-stage. The setting, designed by Gerardo Diaz Sanchez, was a city block in Brooklyn: three brick building facades, a fire escape, a roll-up steel door, and a billboard facing a sidewalk, forming a wide but shallow playing space. The door rolled up and a wagon rolled out for interior scenes. The brick walls and the billboard were surfaces for projections by John Horzen. The play, written by Matt Barbot and directed by Kinan Valdez, is a mash-up of comic book superhero fantasy and Puerto Rican real-life in American capitalist economy. Alex, the main character, a young Nuyorican comic book artist, creates a comic book superhero, El Coquí Espectacular, a crime-fighter based on Puerto Rican folklore about a tree frog. Alex takes his invention further by creating an El Coquí costume and wearing it as a real-life protector in his neighborhood. His older brother Joe, a marketing exec for a major soda company, sees an opportunity to use Alex's help marketing to Puerto Ricans a spicy, sugary soft drink Voltage—so sugary it's unhealthy. The play at SCSU worked with the tensions between identity, responsibility to community, and making a living—and went off into fantasy with the appearance of the blood-sucking El Chupacabra and battles between it and El Coquí, punctuated with POW! and BAM! as seen in the Batman 1960s TV series projected on the setting. El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom was an interesting piece, but many scenes were played with the volume turned up to eleven. That intensity was amusing for the 25-minute Batman TV shows but wearying for a full-length play. However, it spoke to the audience. One person during the talkback said, “I am in a comic book,” and he seemed to like that. Another audience member said he appreciated seeing Puerto Rican folklore being taken seriously. Why can't there be Puerto Rican super-heroes? Unbecoming Tragedy: A Ritual Journey Toward Destiny was a one-person show written and performed by Terrence Riggins. It was presented at the Off Broadway Theater, behind the Shops at Yale—literally off Broadway, accessed via a footpath through the middle of the block. Unbecoming Tragedy was his own story of addiction and incarceration. The setting was the corner of a jail cell. The blank cell walls served as projection surfaces for fantastic images by designer Hannah Tran. In the playwright's notes in the program, Riggins calls his show a ritual, a confession, a rite of passage, a cleansing, a way through. I saw an exorcism. Riggins portrayed a tortured soul, trying to tear the shame of stealing his dying mother's opal necklace to support his drug habit out of his life. The director, Cheyenne Barboza, in her program note invited the audience members to “become more aware of the systems in our society that isolate and marginalize. And in that awareness, I hope we choose compassion.” An insert in the program listed thirteen local resources offering help for people and their families dealing with addiction, hopelessness, and problems with mental health, incarceration, and reintegration into society. “More than a theme, We’re Still Here is a statement of resilience,” said Long Wharf Theatre's 2025-26 season announcement. In early May, Long Wharf Theatre was notified that the National Endowment for the Arts had terminated four grants, totaling more than $170,000. Besides terminating these grants, the NEA issued new guidelines for grant applications prohibiting programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173, or promoting “gender ideology,” in keeping with Executive Order No. 14168. "Gender ideology" has no accepted definition but is used by opponents of gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. Unlike some major entertainment corporations, Long Wharf Theatre has not canceled shows to align with Executive Orders; DEI is integral to its vision. The season webpage promises the next chapter in this vision: “co-productions that reach beyond state lines, programming that uplifts historically marginalized voices, and performances that blur the boundary between art and civic action.” References Footnotes About The Author(s) KARL G. RULING is the technical editor for Protocol , the journal of the Entertainment Services and Technology Association. Prior to that position, he was the technical editor for Theatre Crafts and Lighting Dimensions magazines, and a contributor to Stage Directions . He has an MFA in theatre design from the University of Illinois, and a BA with majors in Dramatic Art and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has designed scenery, lighting, special effects, or sound for over 100 productions. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 212. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century. Marlis Schweitzer. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020; Pp. 276. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272. The Brothers Size Dead Outlaw 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival ZAZ Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25 Politics Take Center Stage in the Berkshires, 2024-25 Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Kevin Byrne Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 26 1 Visit Journal Homepage “One Live as Two, Two Live as One”: Bert Williams and the Uprooted Bamboo Tree Kevin Byrne By Published on July 2, 2013 Download Article as PDF As a black blackface entertainer and influential international star, Bert Williams has held a continuous fascination for theatre historians, in large part because Williams signifies the contradictions of blackface as much as he lived the history of African American minstrelsy. His work with George Walker starting in the 1890s, groundbreaking musicals of the 1900s, and career with Ziegfeld’s Follies in the 1910s have been detailed in numerous [ . . . ] [scribd id=211700023 key=key-27ewixcpatnsnjsq4a3n mode=scroll height=930 width=600] References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Between Blackface and Bondage: The Incompletely Forgotten Failure of The Underground Railroad's 1879 Midwestern Tour “One Live as Two, Two Live as One”: Bert Williams and the Uprooted Bamboo Tree Playwright as Publicity: Reexamining Jane Martin and the Legacy of the Humana Festival Feminist Periodization as a Structural Component of Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles Waiting for Triumph: Alan Schneider and the American Response to Waiting for Godot Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Devika Ranjan 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 Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress Devika Ranjan By Published on May 20, 2022 Download Article as PDF Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress. Elizabeth Son. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018; Pp. 267. Elizabeth Son’s Embodied Reckonings focuses on activism by and around “comfort women” in disparate settings in South Korea and internationally. Through four case study chapters, Son’s empathetic ethnography depicts how reparations need not be institutionalized but can thrive in the hands of everyday people—namely, the survivors of military sexual violence and their supporters. The first study of the embodied practices of “comfort women,” Son’s award-winning book demonstrates the power of performance to enact presence, protest, and acts of care as a means of social healing. Son’s interdisciplinary perspective draws on cultural studies, performance theory, and intersectional feminist analysis to create a powerful, multifaceted portrait of restitution. Between 1932 and 1945, the Japanese military enslaved about 200,000 girls and young women; the majority were between 14 and 19 years old. The girls and women were trafficked to rape camps to serve the Japanese military, where they were sexually abused by between 10 to 40 men daily. Even after the war, survivors faced shame, ostracization, chronic injury, and lifelong trauma. Son holistically analyzes the redress movement in Korea and survivors’ complex post-war identities as “victim, survivor, living witness, halmeoni, history teacher, and peace protestor” (17). Many “comfort women”—Son uses this term in quotes to indicate its euphemistic and problematic nature—advocate for the “Japanese government’s acknowledgement of Japanese military sexual slavery, an official apology, and reparations” (xviii). The survivors’ demand for apology goes beyond monetary reparations; they have committed to donating any money to international survivors of sexual violence (18). Rather, their advocacy works to resolve “han, the Korean concept for the knotted feelings of resentment, sorrow, indignation, and injustice that built over years of hardship and oppression” (11). Son argues that activist-survivors’ “redressive acts,” or embodied practices, center their self-narratives within public space for multiple audiences, restoring their social status and commemorating their history. Chapter 1 provides an in-depth ethnography of the Wednesday Demonstrations in Seoul, the “longest running political demonstration in South Korea and one of the longest ongoing protests in the world” (28). The Wednesday Demonstrations, which take place in front of the Japanese Embassy, enact a weekly protest to uplift the survivors and their demands for apology from the Japanese government. Although there has not been official redress since the protests started in 1992, Son argues that the Wednesday Demonstrations meaningfully allow survivors an “opportunity to express their visceral feelings of han and to join others in calling for justice (29)”; they also counteract societal shame around “comfort women” by providing a visible platform for recognizing the victims of sexual slavery in intergenerational settings. Through sonic and physical disruption, the Wednesday Demonstrations provide “redressive acts,” staging protest, education, release, rejuvenation, critique, and international solidarity. In Chapter 2, Son discusses the Women’s Tribunal, a “symbolic international human rights tribunal” (71) created by feminist and human rights organizations. Held in Tokyo in 2000, the Women’s Tribunal aimed to restore survivors’ political and social status and dignity by giving them a legitimized day in court. Centering the testimonies of 33 survivors from North and South Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and East Timor, international judges created a “legal case against Japan and produced a more complete history of Japanese military sexual slavery” (68). During the Tribunal, survivors challenged existing and limited legal frameworks through their embodied reactions such as fainting, revelations of scars, demonstrations of physical pain, and tears; their vulnerability and embodied practices prompted the court to consider “how to honor victims and their needs while judging guilt via traditional court processes that are not always friendly to victims” (68). The Women’s Tribunal attracted thousands of attendees who bore witness to the stories of the survivors, presenting redressive measures outside of normal state jurisdiction in legitimizing survivors’ experiences. It also created a model for a culture of public accountability for sexual violence during armed conflict, directly inspiring the 2010 Tribunal of Conscience for Women Survivors of Sexual Violence during the Armed Conflict in Guatemala (1960-96). In Chapter 3, Son compares three theatrical productions that focus on “comfort women” around the world. In Comfort Women / Nabi / Hanako (the name depends on the place and time of production), a grandmother must confront her repressed memories of being a “comfort woman” when her granddaughter introduces her to two survivors in New York. The play encourages transnational identification, indicates the ongoing nature of shame around “comfort women,” and suggests multiple survivors: some who hide their history from their own families, some who are public advocates. Trojan Women, a play by Bosnian-born director Aida Karic, brings Euripides’ tragedy in conversation with the “modern history of sexual violence against women and girls by the military of Imperial Japan” (121). The play used pansori, survivor testimony, movement, Euripides’ classic text, and ritualistic elements to invite European audiences to identify patterns of sexual violence throughout history. Finally, Bongseonhwa directly critiques Korean society for its silence, shame, and abuse of “comfort women” through its intergenerational story. Each performance emphasizes different aspects and cultural contexts of survivors’ experiences, yet all invite audiences to witness, reflect, and connect to how sexual violence against women recurs in wars and ripples across society. Chapter 4 analyzes international memorials to the survivors of military sexual slavery. The Bronze Girl, a statue that sits in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul highlights the age and vulnerability of the survivors who were abused in “comfort stations.” It also commemorates survivors’ years of activism for the Wednesday Demonstrations. The Bronze Girl is cared for by visitors who dress the statue for the weather, leave her gifts like shoes, flowers, and food, and touch her in reassurance. Son describes similar acts of care at memorials in the United States, including the Bronze Girl in California and a memorial in New Jersey, where visitors leave bouquets, tidy the lawns, or water shrubbery. These acts of care demonstrate international support, carrying on the protests against sexual slavery after the survivors pass away. While official apology from the Japanese government may never come to fruition, Son’s Embodied Reckonings demonstrates how redress can extend beyond state or institutional acts. This book’s transpacific lens considers how activism and performance, education, memory and community-building can teach subsequent generations about sexual violence, restore survivors’ dignity, and reimagine reparations, more broadly. In a world in which international politics often offers symbolic gestures in response to systemic and personal injustices, I am inspired by the embodied actions of “comfort women” to advocate, educate, and heal locally and internationally. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue 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.

Watch Ewa – The Last Lesson by Andrea Mura / Federico Savonitto at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. After sixty years of theatrical and performative research, Ewa Benesz decides to leave Italy and return to Lublin, the city she fled in the 1980s during Polish martial law. The advancement of age forces her to discontinue her workshops, which involve people from all over the world. Ewa Benesz must say goodbye to her students, some of whom have maintained a relationship with her that has lasted for decades. Ewa's theatrical practice and research draw from a tradition and methodology that can only be transmitted personally, so there is a strong risk that her knowledge will be lost forever. In her return to Poland, Ewa confronts the silent weight of a life spent away from home, in a journey that is simultaneously an ending and a return to her origins. Polish actress, holds a BA from the University of Lublin and a diploma of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Warsaw. She worked in the Instytut Aktora -Teatr Laboratorium managed by Jerzy Grotowski in Poland and she met Peter Brook. After fled the country due to the Martial Laws she collaborated with Rena Mirecka in the paratheatrical projects until 1996 – carried out in Europe, Israel and America. Since 1997 she has conducted her peculiar paratheatrical and theatrical workshops. She lives in the Sardinian mountains, where she conducts a practical research inspired by the ancient Sanskrit Vedic texts and cosmogonist myths. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Ewa – The Last Lesson Andrea Mura / Federico Savonitto At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This film will be screened on June 1, at 5:30 PM, at The Segal Theatre Center RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. Country Italy, Poland Language Italian, Polish Running Time 67 minutes Year of Release 2025 About The Film After sixty years of theatrical and performative research, Ewa Benesz decides to leave Italy and return to Lublin, the city she fled in the 1980s during Polish martial law. The advancement of age forces her to discontinue her workshops, which involve people from all over the world. Ewa Benesz must say goodbye to her students, some of whom have maintained a relationship with her that has lasted for decades. Ewa's theatrical practice and research draw from a tradition and methodology that can only be transmitted personally, so there is a strong risk that her knowledge will be lost forever. In her return to Poland, Ewa confronts the silent weight of a life spent away from home, in a journey that is simultaneously an ending and a return to her origins. Polish actress, holds a BA from the University of Lublin and a diploma of the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Warsaw. She worked in the Instytut Aktora -Teatr Laboratorium managed by Jerzy Grotowski in Poland and she met Peter Brook. After fled the country due to the Martial Laws she collaborated with Rena Mirecka in the paratheatrical projects until 1996 – carried out in Europe, Israel and America. Since 1997 she has conducted her peculiar paratheatrical and theatrical workshops. She lives in the Sardinian mountains, where she conducts a practical research inspired by the ancient Sanskrit Vedic texts and cosmogonist myths. With Ewa Benesz Directed by Andrea Mura, Federico Savonitto Produced by Chiara Andrich, Andrea Mura, Federico Savonitto Cinematography Andrea Mura, Federico Savonitto, Chiara Andrich Editing Jacopo Quadri, Nicolò Tettamanti Sound engineer Camilla Iannetti Camera operator Camilla Iannetti Sound design and Music Francesco De Marco Color correction Giada Di Fonzo About The Artist(s) Andrea Mura Italian director and producer with a background in Philosophy and a diploma from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. His documentary work, with works such as “Nodas” (2015) and “Transumanze” (2021), explores the dialogue between memory, popular traditions and contemporaneity. His films have gained recognition at numerous international festivals, including RAI Film Festival (Bristol), Primed (Marseille), See You Sound (Turin), Visioni Italiane (Bologna) and DocuMed (Tunis). As a producer, he has collaborated on Ginko Film projects, including François Xavier Destors and Alfonso Pinto's “Toxicily” (France-Italy, 2023) and Giulia Camba's “Oplà” (Italy, 2024). Since 2014, he has shared the artistic direction of the Sole Luna Doc Film Festival in Palermo with Chiara Andrich. Federico Savonitto Documentary director. A graduate of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, he has long held the position of teaching tutor at the CSC - Sede Sicilia, taught filmmaking, and made several documentaries such as La fine che non ho fatto (2011), La città sconosciuta (2013), Pellegrino (2017), In un futuro aprile (2019), Not Available - It's about Yann Keller (2022), An Invisible Enemy (2022) The Secret Plan (2024) that participated and won awards at several international festivals, such as Biografilm Festival, Giornate degli Autori, DOK Leipzig, Locarno Film Festival, Listapad, DOC- Cévennes, Festival dei Popoli, Trieste Film Festival, Trento Film Festival, Ortigia Film Festival, Asolo Art Film Festival. Get in touch with the artist(s) info@ginkofilm.it and follow them on social media https://www.ginkofilm.it/en/film/the-last-lesson/ Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2026 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here

Watch Peak Hour in the House by Blue Ka Wing at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2025. 《Peak Hour in the house》 illustrates a solitary woman who, while "enjoying" her private space, faces sudden surges of anxiety and learns to coexist with them. In the midnight, she enjoys her me-time, savoring moments of solitude. However, this is precisely when the hidden anxieties within her are most likely to visit. In the stillness of the night, the doorbell rings, akin to a nightmare striking during peaceful sleep. Gradually, she attempts to unveil her body like a diary, page by page. She uncovers not only the chaotic thoughts in her brain but also the internal organs carrying her personal history. The accumulated impurities over the years require her to untangle and digest them herself. By courageously confronting the sources of her anxiety and becoming someone capable of embracing negative energy, she gains the strength to make positive changes. Official selection of 《Peak Hour in the House》 - FIFTH WALL FEST Edition V (New Manila, Philippines) - Brighton Screendance Festival 2024 (Brighton, United Kingdom) - Together We Dance ! A 30-Year Journey: Dance Film Nights - PLUS by Hong Kong Dance Alliance (Hong Kong) - FIELDS by The Place and Studio Wayne McGregor (London, United Kingdom) - SHAPE 2 (Atlanta, USA) - The 5th Edition of the ROLLOUT Dance Film Festival (Macao, China) - The 43rd International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) (Québec, Canada) - Online platform ARTS.FILMS (Québec, Canada) - Cinedans FEST '25 (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - 2025 92NY Future Dance Festival (New York, United States) Award of 《Peak Hour in the House》 - Special Mentions from The 5th Edition of the ROLLOUT Dance Film Festival (Macao, China). The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Peak Hour in the House At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2025 A film by Blue Ka Wing Screening Information This film will be screened in-person at The Segal Centre on Saturday May 17th at 11am (as part of the Short Film program) and also be available to watch online on the festival website till June 8th 2025. RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. You may RSVP above to get a reminder about the Segal Film Festival in your inbox. Country United Kingdom Language No Dialogue Running Time 7:19 minutes Year of Release 2024 About The Film 《Peak Hour in the house》 illustrates a solitary woman who, while "enjoying" her private space, faces sudden surges of anxiety and learns to coexist with them. In the midnight, she enjoys her me-time, savoring moments of solitude. However, this is precisely when the hidden anxieties within her are most likely to visit. In the stillness of the night, the doorbell rings, akin to a nightmare striking during peaceful sleep. Gradually, she attempts to unveil her body like a diary, page by page. She uncovers not only the chaotic thoughts in her brain but also the internal organs carrying her personal history. The accumulated impurities over the years require her to untangle and digest them herself. By courageously confronting the sources of her anxiety and becoming someone capable of embracing negative energy, she gains the strength to make positive changes. Official selection of 《Peak Hour in the House》 - FIFTH WALL FEST Edition V (New Manila, Philippines) - Brighton Screendance Festival 2024 (Brighton, United Kingdom) - Together We Dance ! A 30-Year Journey: Dance Film Nights - PLUS by Hong Kong Dance Alliance (Hong Kong) - FIELDS by The Place and Studio Wayne McGregor (London, United Kingdom) - SHAPE 2 (Atlanta, USA) - The 5th Edition of the ROLLOUT Dance Film Festival (Macao, China) - The 43rd International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) (Québec, Canada) - Online platform ARTS.FILMS (Québec, Canada) - Cinedans FEST '25 (Amsterdam, Netherlands) - 2025 92NY Future Dance Festival (New York, United States) Award of 《Peak Hour in the House》 - Special Mentions from The 5th Edition of the ROLLOUT Dance Film Festival (Macao, China) About The Artist(s) https://drive.google.com/file/d/17Gegq0SmwG6MQfWj7imX2CZ5cSxTaZsU/edit Get in touch with the artist(s) bluekawing＠hotmail.com and follow them on social media https://www.facebook.com/bluekawing/, https://www.instagram.com/bluekawing/, https://www.youtube.com/@danzrainbow Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2025 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here His Head was a Sledgehammer Richard Foreman in Retrospect Moi-même Mojo Lorwin/Lee Breuer Benjamim de Oliveira's Open Paths Catappum! Collective Peak Hour in the House Blue Ka Wing Transindigenous Assembly Joulia Strauss Bila Burba Duiren Wagua JJ Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, Lucie Brux Acting Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film PACI JULIETTE ROUDET Radical Move ANIELA GABRYEL Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread Jean-Baptiste Mathieu This is Ballroom Juru and Vitã Reas Lola Arias The Jacket Mathijs Poppe Pidikwe Caroline Monnet Resilience Juan David Padilla Vega The Brink of Dreams Nada Riyadh, Ayman El Amir Jesus and The Sea Ricarda Alvarenga Grand Theft Hamlet Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls Theater of War Oleh Halaidych Skywalk Above Prague Václav Flegl, Jakub Voves Somber Tides Chantal Caron / Fleuve Espace Danse

Encounter | Cyn | M.A. Dennis | Manners and Respect | | Thomas Fucaloro |'s work Mixed Use in Staten Island, at this year's edition of the Prelude in the Parks festival by The Segal Centre, presented in collaboration with Roc-A-Natural Cultural Foundation, Staten Island. Prelude in the Parks 2024 Festival Mixed Use | Cyn | M.A. Dennis | Manners and Respect | | Thomas Fucaloro | Poetry, Music Saturday, June 8, 2024 @ 3pm Tappen Park, Staten Island Tappen Park is located at the intersection of Canal, Water, and Bay streets Roc-A-Natural Cultural Foundation, Staten Island Presented by Mov!ng Culture Projects and The Segal Center in collaboration with Presented by Mov!ng Culture Projects and The Segal Center View Location Details RSVP To Event Staten Island Artists explore their relationship to Tappen Park (named after WWI veteran James Tappen) among the oldest public parks on Staten Island, and a former village center that predates the borough’s annexation by the City of New York, and the effects of climate change on their beloved island. | Cyn | M.A. Dennis | Manners and Respect | | Thomas Fucaloro | Various artists based in and around the Statten Island borough will come together for this event. These include: Hailing from the concrete jungle of Staten Island, New York, Manners and Respect is a rap-reggae fusion duo that's been bringing the vibes since the early days of the millennium. Formed by brothers Imanuel I-AM-I Stennett and Jahfree Jah Jah Beats Stennett, their sound is a melting pot of their experiences growing up on the East Coast, heavily influenced by the golden age of hip-hop and the infectious rhythms of reggae blasting from local Caribbean shops. Thomas Fucaloro is the winner of numerous grants from the Staten Island Council of the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, NYC Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes and NYC Commission of Human Rights to name a few He has been on six national slam teams, holds an MFA in creative writing from the New School and is a co-founding editor of Great Weather for Media and NYSAI press. He is also an adjunct professor at Wagner College and BMCC where he teaches various poetry and literature courses, and the co-founder of Poetry in the Park, WORDPLAY, Creating Space, Poetry in Motion and Creativity Meets Geek. Thomas has released 2 full lengths: It Starts From the Belly and Blooms and Inheriting Craziness is a Soft Halo of Light by Three Rooms Press. He also has 4 chapbooks: Mistakes Disguised as Stars (Tired Hearts Press), Depression Cupcakes (Yes, Poetry), There is Always Tomorrow (Mad Gleam Press) and The Only Gardening I Do is When I Give Up by Finishing Line Press. Cynthia Rodriguez is a multi-talented artist who expresses herself through words and paint, often using both hands ambidextrously in her creations. Driven by a desire to inspire others, she seeks to encourage individuals to share their stories and embrace their authenticity, living life fully in their truth. You can see what Cyn is currently up to by visiting her Instagram @Cyn.is.Cyn and clicking on the link tree in her bio. M.A. Dennis contains multitudes. He is a National Black Writers Conference Emerging Poet, lover of free refreshments, and a survivor of homelessness. Johns Hopkins University Press Blog describes him as “a hilarious but also heartbreaking performance poet.” M.A.’s work has been published in many anthologies and a few public bathroom stalls. Dennis lives in Shaolin Island, NY with his four pet rocks (Chris, Fraggle, Gibraltar & Plymouth). IG: m_a_dennis575 Matt Figgz is an educator who loves reading, anime, and cold leftovers. He is also the co-founder of "Poetry in the Park" (@official_poetryinthepark), a free outdoor open mic series that started in response to the weight of Covid. Matt Figgz has a poetry collection, "Adolescence", that is available on Amazon. Visit Artist Website Location Tappen Park is located at the intersection of Canal, Water, and Bay streets Roc-A-Natural Cultural Foundation, Staten Island Roc-A-Natural Cultural Foundation Inc (RANCF) is dedicated to educating, empowering and inspiring the community in the areas of health, the arts, and culture. About five years ago Founder and President, Dorcas Meyers, had a vision to connect the neighboring 5 boroughs through "edu-taining" events; exposing the diverse culture of Staten Island's Northshore and sharing the talents of creatives that make up the uniqueness of New York’s residents. Ms. Meyers is a native Staten Islander, a businesswoman and cultural advocate. Under her leadership Roc-A-Natural Cultural Foundation has partnered with a number of nonprofits, entrepreneurs, creatives, and public and private agencies to bring great talent and epic events to the Northshore, branding it as a tourist destination. Launching in 2018, here are some of the cultural programs RANCF has sponsored and hosted that have drawn crowds of over 700 to 1,000 people from various boroughs to the Northshore. 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023: the JCC Beacon Program at I.S. 49 in collaboration with Alkebulan Consciousness Rising and Jason Price Celebrating Unsung Community Leaders Making A Difference, A Black History Month Black History Through Time and Sound Kwanzaa Celebration 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022: “Taking It To The Streets: Free Friday Night Films” Series in collaboration with Secta 5 Productions, First Central Baptist, Maker Park Radio, National Lighthouse Museum, Empire Outlets, National Jazz Museum in Harlem Taking It To The Streets: F-A-M-I-L-Y Day at Tappen Park, October 14, 2023 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024: Juneteenth Celebrations, Re-enactment & Parade in collaboration with First Central Baptist Church, Jubilee Collectives, Friends Who Think Pink, Shaolin Ryders, Universal Temple of the Arts, National Lighthouse Museum and Jeannine Otis 2022, 2023: Kwanzaa Celebration in collaboration with Alkebulan Consciousness Rising, Central Family Life Center, Janet G. Robinson aka "The Kwanzaa Lady" 2022: Black Lighthouse Keepers and Life Saving Service members in collaboration with the National Lighthouse Museum and Staten Island Black Heritage 2024: The Freedom Ball in collaboration with Friends Who Think Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Organization, Shaolin Ryders and Jason Price 2024: TappenTeers at Work Park Clean-up & Horticulture with Partnerships for Parks 2024: Art In The Parks in collaboration with NYC Green Fund, May 11, 2024 Visit Partner Website

Megan Grumbling University of New England, Southern Maine Community College Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Megan Grumbling University of New England, Southern Maine Community College By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Ashanti D.Williams and Robbie Harrison in Portland Stage Company and Dramatic Repertory Company's Angels in America. Photo: James A. Hadley Saint Dad Monica Wood (25 Oct.-19 Nov.) A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens (2 - 24 Dec.) The Play That Goes Wrong Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer & Henry Shields (31 Jan.- 25 Feb.) What the Constitution Means To Me Heidi Schreck (6 - 24 Mar.) Clyde’s Lynn Nottage (3 - 21 Apr.) Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches Tony Kushner, Co-Produced with Dramatic Repertory Company (1 – 26 May) Manning Benjamin Benne (5 - 16 Jun.) This 2023-24 season, Portland Stage Company celebrated its fiftieth anniversary onstage. The theatre opened the season triumphantly, having completed its $6.4 million “Making An Entrance Capital Campaign” for facility renovations, which bore fruit in a beautiful new box office and elevator, and featured an all-local cast and a collaboration with Portland’s Dramatic Repertory Company for one of the year’s most important productions, Angels in America. The season also found PSC returned to pre-pandemic theatre ways, with all in-person shows and masking “welcome but not required.” The theatre opened the season with another play by beloved Maine writer Monica Wood, Saint Dad, which had received a workshop reading at PSC the previous year. Saint Dad , set in a Maine camp on a lake, is a romp of a comedy about three siblings who sell their dad’s camp when he’s on his last legs, then try to keep this fact from him once he’s miraculously recovered. Sally Wood directed a wonderfully physical production of the play, which explores issues of family, gentrification, and being “from away,” with a standout comedic performance by local actor Moira Driscoll as the especially laconic sister. For its holiday show, PSC brought back its full-cast theatrical tradition of A Christmas Carol. Michael Dix Thomas directed a cast headed by PSC favorites Dustin Tucker as Bob Cratchit and the formidable Tom Ford as Scrooge. From there, PSC pivoted to meta-theatrical screwball comedy with The Play That Goes Wrong, about the foibles of an inept community theatre company’s production of a British murder mystery. Kevin R. Free directed a rollicking production of the show, rife with incredibly intricate set design as the play-within-a-play’s portraits, doors, walls, and floors all become hilariously compromised. The cast of eight had terrifically quick timing, and was funniest when performers let us see the community-theatre actors dropping their British characters in dismay or abandon. PSC will bring back the show this August as its summer theatre offering. March brought Heidi Schreck’s popular show What the Constitution Means To Me to the PSC stage, starring Portland actor Abigail Killeen. Brian Todd Backus directed a well-paced and emotional production, and Killeen’s nuanced and wide-ranging performance was by turns silly, tender, and enraged. The show also featured the excellent Matt Delamater, as a nuanced Legionnaire, and a rotating cast of “debaters” – young women from the local community, including Evangeline Cambria, Vagni Das, Lily Marie Jessen, Paige Scala, and the amiable and intellectually nimble Lyra Legawiec, who was onstage the night I attended. The company’s next show turned to theatre great Lynn Nottage’s recent new play, Clyde’s , about redemption, second chances, and beatific sandwiches (and an oblique sequel, of sorts, to Sweat ). Germán Cárdenas Alaminos designed a marvelous down-and-out diner kitchen set for director Dominique Rider’s production, which featured excellent rapport between the four down-and-out sandwich makers, played by Lance E. Nichols, Roland Ruiz, Tatrisha Talley, and Derek Chariton. And Breezy Leigh was a terrifying Clyde, the malevolent, deeply damaged boss lady, in her incredible, incredibly hued power outfits, including a gold and hornet-green wonder (terrific costume design was by Emily White). Up next was Tony Kushner’s theatrical powerhouse of imagination and grief, Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches , an all-local co-production with Dramatic Repertory Company, a Portland company long committed to staging new, overlooked, and challenging shows, and co-directed by Peter Brown and Keith Powell Beyland, DRC’s founder. The show featured arresting performances by Portland actors Joseph Bearor, Paul Haley, Robbie Harrison, Michela Micalizio, Denise Poirier, Nate Stephenson, Casey Turner, and Ashanti Dwight Williams. Haley’s fast-talking portrayal of Roy Cohn made him both pathological and pathos-ridden, while Harrison, as Prior, was marvelous in animating the dying man’s emotional range, between rage, terror, sadness, and fascination. PSC will stage part two of Kushner’s masterpiece, Perestroika , in 2025, again in co-production with DRC. As its regular-season mainstage closer, Portland Stage presented Manning, Benjamin Benne’s 2023 Clauder Competition Grand Prize Winning play, which was workshopped last spring as part of the 34th annual Little Festival of the Unexpected. Alex Keegan directed a cast of four in Benne’s show about two brothers who return home to their grieving father – and a supernatural zucchini – after the death of their mother. This May and June, Portland Stage presented its 35th annual Little Festival of the Unexpected, featuring a live reading of John Cariani's latest play, Not Quite Almost, another show of linked vignettes about love, hope, and being understood. Cariani is the author of the massively successful , Almost Maine, and his new show – which will take the PSC Mainstage in 2025 – is being billed as “It’s a prequel. And a sequel. You decide.” Portland Stage continues to vocally support anti-racism and the decolonization of the arts and public spaces. The theatre’s land acknowledgment encourages theatergoers to connect with Wabanaki REACH (a Maine organization that advocates for the self-determination of the Indigenous peoples in what is now called Maine) and also acknowledges Maine’s historical involvement in the slave trade. Next season will open with Conscience , a look at the relationship and political calculus between Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith before turning to Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika , in another co-production with DRC. PSC’s holiday show next season will shift to The Snow Queen , followed by an Agatha Christie murder-mystery comedy, Murder on the Links. Two Maine-grown plays, Bess Welden’s Madeleines and John Cariani’s Not Quite Almost (Or, Almost Almost, Maine) take the stage next spring, before closing with Albee’s toxically careening masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf— a terrifying classic of the canon. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Megan Grumbling is a critic, poet, and librettist. She is the author of the poetry volumes Booker's Point and Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, has written lyrics for musical compositions about octopuses and glaciers, and teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of New England. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch The Jacket by Mathijs Poppe at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2025. What begins as an intimate portrait of Jamal Hindawi — a Palestinian artist doing political theater in Beirut’s Shatila Refugee camp — transforms into a captivating journey. We discover a Lebanon rarely seen — one where hope persists despite hardship and where community transcends crisis. His story weaves together the profound connection to his Palestinian homeland with an intimate exploration of a country and its people learning to navigate an uncertain present.. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents The Jacket At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2025 A film by Mathijs Poppe Screening Information This film will be screened in-person at The Segal Centre on Friday May 16th at 3:55pm. RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. You may RSVP above to get a reminder about the Segal Film Festival in your inbox. Country Netherlands Language Arabic Running Time 71 minutes Year of Release 2024 About The Film What begins as an intimate portrait of Jamal Hindawi — a Palestinian artist doing political theater in Beirut’s Shatila Refugee camp — transforms into a captivating journey. We discover a Lebanon rarely seen — one where hope persists despite hardship and where community transcends crisis. His story weaves together the profound connection to his Palestinian homeland with an intimate exploration of a country and its people learning to navigate an uncertain present. About The Artist(s) Mathijs Poppe, born in 1990 in Ghent (Belgium), graduated in 2017 with great distinction from School of Arts Ghent (KASK) with OURS IS A COUNTRY OF WORDS. For this medium length documentary, he worked together with a couple of families in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, to tell a story that balances on the thin line between fiction and documentary. The film was selected for Visions du Réel, screened at numerous international film festivals around the world and got awarded with a Wildcard by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF). Since then, Mathijs has developed several film and video projects as a director, cameraman and editor. At the moment Mathijs is working on his first feature film, THE JACKET, in which he will continue and deepen his collaboration with the Palestinian community in Lebanon. Get in touch with the artist(s) rebecca@plutofilm.de and follow them on social media https://www.plutofilm.de/films/the-jacket/0092 Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2025 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here His Head was a Sledgehammer Richard Foreman in Retrospect Moi-même Mojo Lorwin/Lee Breuer Benjamim de Oliveira's Open Paths Catappum! Collective Peak Hour in the House Blue Ka Wing Transindigenous Assembly Joulia Strauss Bila Burba Duiren Wagua JJ Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, Lucie Brux Acting Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film PACI JULIETTE ROUDET Radical Move ANIELA GABRYEL Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread Jean-Baptiste Mathieu This is Ballroom Juru and Vitã Reas Lola Arias The Jacket Mathijs Poppe Pidikwe Caroline Monnet Resilience Juan David Padilla Vega The Brink of Dreams Nada Riyadh, Ayman El Amir Jesus and The Sea Ricarda Alvarenga Grand Theft Hamlet Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls Theater of War Oleh Halaidych Skywalk Above Prague Václav Flegl, Jakub Voves Somber Tides Chantal Caron / Fleuve Espace Danse