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Watch ORESTEIA by Carolin Mader at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. This short film is a 6.30 minute version of Aeschylus' ORESTEIA (original excerpts from part II COEPHORES by choir/choir leader/Electra/Orestes), spoken by a mysterious sea creature: „beamed“, apparently, into a very confined space near some very noisy street of Berlin, in order to complete the task of the ancient tragedy choir: to reflect and give advice. The dilemma is huge: a father murdered by the mother’s hand. Is the sin of matricide worth the revenge? Is repaying evil with evil worth it at all? Waiting for Electra and Orestes, their questions and possible answers are forshadowed in an inner monologue. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents ORESTEIA At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Carolin Mader Theater, Film, Performance Art, Spoken Word This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks, as well as screened in-person on May 20th. About The Film Country Germany Language German Running Time 6 minutes Year of Release 2022 This short film is a 6.30 minute version of Aeschylus' ORESTEIA (original excerpts from part II COEPHORES by choir/choir leader/Electra/Orestes), spoken by a mysterious sea creature: „beamed“, apparently, into a very confined space near some very noisy street of Berlin, in order to complete the task of the ancient tragedy choir: to reflect and give advice. The dilemma is huge: a father murdered by the mother’s hand. Is the sin of matricide worth the revenge? Is repaying evil with evil worth it at all? Waiting for Electra and Orestes, their questions and possible answers are forshadowed in an inner monologue. Directed/filmed/edited by: Carolin Mader, Siren: Marina Frenk, supported by: Philipp Engelhardt, Fabrik Osloer Straße, Frauenkulturbuero NRW About The Artist(s) Carolin Mader has studied Italian and German philology and Political Science in Italy and Germany and has worked as a theatre director, actress and musician at the municipal theatre of Dortmund and in Berlin, where she lives. Her production „Die Hamletmaschine“ (Heiner Müller) was shown at the supporting program of the NRW Theatertreffen; „Ithaka“ (Gottfried Benn) and „Medea“ (Euripides) have been awarded with the young director’s award of the Frauenkulturbuero NRW. Get in touch with the artist(s) carolin.mader@hotmail.com and follow them on social media https://www.facebook.com/carolin.mader.35 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

Donia Mounsef Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Stage as Networked Battleground: Dissent and Censorship in Contemporary Canadian Theatre and Performance Donia Mounsef By Published on July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Theatre and censorship have long been intertwined. From early Greek theatre to twenty‑first‑century performance art, political, cultural, and social powers have repeatedly sought to suppress the performing arts. Their reasons have ranged from legal restrictions to moral objections, sexual indecency, ideological conflicts, and efforts to silence work that negatively portrays certain targeted groups or communities. Following a brief overview of the legal and political history of censorship in the Canadian and American contexts, this article explores theatrical censorship, its corresponding dissent and embattled freedoms, and the way various regimes of restraints affect performative frameworks. It also considers specific cases of censorship in Canadian theatre: the case of Denise Boucher’s The Fairies are Thirsty (1978), as well as the question of cultural appropriation and pretendianism in the work of acclaimed Québécois director Robert Lepage ( SLĀV , 2018) and his collaboration with French powerhouse director Ariane Mnouchkine ( Kanata , 2018). Lastly, we will turn to an analysis of censorship of Christopher Morris’ play The Runner at the PuSh Festival (Vancouver 2024) and the way it pitted communities against one another occasioned by the Israel-Gaza War. By doing so, I demonstrate how the functioning of censorship has shifted—especially in the Canadian context—from state or institutional sanctions to self-censorship and community grounded suppression. In general, theatre tends to attract more threats to control it than other art forms, examples of which abound. One famous example is Emile Zola’s novel Germinal (1885), the only work adapted to the stage by its author. Zola used this adaptation to launch a campaign against censorship in France under the Third Republic; the play was finally produced at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1888. Other examples of censored photographs, paintings, sculptures, rarely receive the level of attention performance does. In recent years, performance art has drawn more ire and suppression than other forms, such as Ai Weiwei’s performances Drowned Child (2016) and Sunflower Seeds (2010). Feminist performance artists experience similar suppression such as Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll (1975), which was censored while her other visual art and installations were not. The reasons why theatre and performance seem to attract more censorship range from the obvious institutional regulation of a live and living art form that has the potential to better mobilize audiences, to reasons of religious, moral, political taboos that perceive theatre expression as more subversive and less controllable than film or media. Theatre may have the power to change the world or instigate political and social unrest by promoting transgressive actions that mobilize audiences. In a way it is not censorship that conditions what is censorable: it is what is censored that often redefines censorship in theatre. Judith Butler has explained how censorship is a productive and formative power that produces that which it regulates. Butler writes: Censorship is most often referred to as that which is directed against persons or against the content of their speech. If censorship, however, is a way of producing speech, constraining in advance what will and will not become acceptable speech, then it cannot be understood exclusively in terms of juridical power.(1) Butler echoes Foucault here who considered censorship as a productive rather than a strictly regulatory mechanism. Foucault writes: What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network, which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression.(2) In different ways, forms of censorship and restrictions today are welcome and tolerated, such as what can be shown on television at certain times of the day, film, video game, and program rating. This is what marks the shift from state and regulatory censorship to community directives. More recent theorizing of censorship widens the scope of definition to encompass any censorious activity that is “external, coercive and repressive,”(3) while other new assessments associate censorship with “any attempt to modify the integrity of the artistic work and its reception.”(4) The problem with wider definitions of censorship is that they do not account for more insidious forms of suppression such as self-censorship, pre-emptive censorship, or indirect censorship, prompted by community pressure, cancel culture, vandalism, digital and social media controls, press campaigns, doxing of artists, threats of prosecution or libel, etc. More recent definitions of censorship have to do with the yielding of power beyond a strictly legal framework. In this regard, Sue Curry Jansen’s position in her book Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge argues that recent censorship has shifted towards surveillance and control not only by the state, but also by actors in the market, which I unpack in more detail below. New and various mechanisms of censorship have shifted from state-based to market- and community-driven articulations that widen the scope beyond religious, political or moral grounds. Other reasons for censorship include: artistic policies, cultural and community pressures, customs and border control of artistic products, policing and surveillance action, populist opposition in the media or public sphere, community boycott and cancel culture, denial of funding (such as by the Canada Council for the Arts, or provincial and municipal Arts Funding bodies), just to name a few examples. Similarly, serious constraints in recent years have produced vehement censorship that has taken the form of violent attacks on artists, destruction of artwork, protests and riots at venues, attacks on audiences and creative teams, threats of violence, threats of damage or boycott of host venues, demonstrations to shut down productions, and so forth. These threats have raised the stakes on the question of censorship with more violent and lethal assaults on artists and art and entertainment venues, concert halls, auditoriums, often inflicting mass casualties. Censorious attacks have reached alarming levels with incidents such as the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (2004); the plan to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westegaard (2008); the Charlie Hebdo massacre (2015); the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida (2016); the attack at the Moscow Dubrovka theatre (2002); the terror attack on the Bataclan Music Hall in France (2015); the Manchester Arena attack in the UK (2017); the recent massacre at the Nova Music Festival in Israel (2023); and the sordid list goes on. Unmistakably, censorship in the twenty-first century has shifted in methods, severity, forms, and magnitude ranging from regulatory dictates imposed by the state or its agents to forms of silencing by the community. Theatre Censorship Legal statutes pertaining to theatrical censorship fall for the most part under “community standards,”(5) pushing the regulatory debate into the public arena as not all censorship is decided on the basis of the law but more on its impact on the community. More recent definitions of censorship have thus widened the scope beyond the legal framework. Sue Curry Jansen argues that a modern understanding of censorship extends to forms of “surveillance: a mechanism for gathering intelligence that the powerful can use to tighten control over people or ideas that threaten to disrupt established systems of order.”(6) For Jansen, censorship has shifted from state or official sanctions to corporate, social, and non-governmental entities exercising indirect power and control. In the first part of her book, entitled “Parables of Persecution,” Jansen argues that, despite the Enlightenment effort to separate power and knowledge, they remain inextricably linked where one ensures the functioning of the other.(7) Surveillance of dissent is a socially structured albeit arbitrary form of silencing that enables different forms of censorship such as market censorship to dictate what is acceptable and what is to be spurned in the so-called “free market of ideas.” The digital age has also expanded officially sanctioned procedures, or censorship based on propriety or community offense. With the speed at which information and material is disseminated to global audiences, social media networks, instant transmission, or quick sharing, it becomes nearly impossible to censor offending material in time. By the time the censors get a hold of the material, it has already circulated widely. Community standards have morphed into “cancel culture” and networked society pressure. Cancel culture is generally understood as canceling support for an event, a public figure, a work, or an artist if the public considers the person or the work objectionable or offensive. Social media in recent years has exacerbated the impact of such “call outs” as the public appoints itself the arbiter of what is right, wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. This point was made clear recently by Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders in The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship who explain “media exerts an influence that is just as powerful in shaping and amplifying a culture of censoriousness that not only rivals officially recognised methods of censorship but often supersedes them. This has resulted in conditions that have been termed ‘cancel culture.’”(8) Overall, conventional and historical censorship was based on sanctioning by state or state agents, what the British commonly call “statutory censorship” (in addition to other institutional agents: the Church or religious authority, the military, the courts, etc.) tasked with ridding the stage of offensive and grievous material in the name of the state. However, late twentieth century and early twenty-first century regarded censorship as a response to ideological, social, or political grievances independent of the state and motivated for the large part by offences to the community or the commons. The most important example of this is the wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson at the Superbowl (2004).(9) As such, censorship may no longer be understood in its strictly legal framework. Today, the laws can rarely contemplate objections on moral grounds for works that express for example heresy, blasphemy, offense, or even libel. Moral ground, public morality, decency, propriety, and bienséance —the neo-classical rule of good taste—are the reasons why many plays were censored can hardly regulate harmfulness. Theatre Censorship Cases in Canada I. The Fairies are Thirsty [Les fées ont soif] Québécois poet and journalist Denise Boucher is well known for her controversial militant and feminist writing. After Québec’s Quiet Revolution, artists confronted the Church and state in more forceful ways, armed with newfound public discontent and inspired by the American Civil Rights movement.(10) Boucher’s 1978 play Les fées ont soif ( The Fairies are Thirsty ) showcases women’s issues and breaks down the stereotypical representation of women especially the archetype of the Virgin Mary, used by the Church to suppress female sexuality. The play’s title is borrowed from nineteenth century French historian, Jules Michelet, who described the origins of the fairies’ myth in the legend of Satanism and witchcraft in his essay La Sorcière (1862). In the legend, the fairies were originally a group of women in ancient Gaul who refused to stop dancing upon the arrival of Christ and his apostles. For this sacrilege, they were shrunk and doomed to live, in miniature form, in the woods until Judgement Day. Although no one was miniaturized in Boucher’s play, the story brings us three women: the quintessential mother and housewife, Marie; the prostitute, Madeleine dressed in kinky leather and feather boas; and the Virgin Mary, daringly playing herself. In a series of poetic monologues, Marie and Madeleine discuss their oppressed conditions, abuse, battery, and rape at the hands of husbands and clients emboldened by the Church’s hegemony and the state’s patriarchy, while the Virgin Mary attempts to escape from the religious archetypes that body-shame her and lock her in unattainable images of piety and modesty. Well-known director Jean-Luc Bastien agreed to direct the controversial play. In June 1978, five months before its premiere, the Montreal Arts Council pulled the funding citing its “filthy, sacrilegious and blasphemous language.”(11) The artistic director of the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, Jean-Louis Roux, denounced censorship and promised that the play will go ahead. The entire city council was castigated in the media, while cultural, artistic, and labor organizations circulated petitions defending the work. Roux promised that the play would be staged on schedule whether arts funding was available or not. It opened on 10 November 1978 and ran for a month in front of full houses and garnered a lot of acclaim. Affronted, Montreal’s Catholic Archdiocese launched a campaign to denounce the show and encouraged congregations to picket the theatre while buying blocks of tickets to attend the performance and recite the rosary as disruption. Other groups threw medals of the Virgin Mary on the stage like confetti. The “crusade” against the play continued into January 1979, when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Famously, Judge Gabrielle Vallée asked the group representing the Catholic militants: “who do you represent”? When they responded that they represent “Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin,” the magistrate immediately threw the case out. Further court cases to suppress the publication of the play were launched against the work until the Supreme Court of Canada, again, refused to hear them in 1980.(12) After its initial production, the play was rarely staged in Canada (or elsewhere). Nevertheless, it remains a significant event of how community responses to censorship can change the course of theatre history. II. Kanata & SLĀV While the theatre community’s response in the case of The Fairies are Thirsty mobilized to defend the production, aided by a secular Supreme Court adamant on protecting artistic freedom at a time when Canada (and Québec) was defining itself in terms of civil rights, the following examples in some ways are based on the opposite response. By “opposite response” I mean one in which the community, instead of rushing to the defense of the work, mobilized against it and against the artists and functioned as the impetus for censoring and cancelling the work. In the following, I turn to an analysis of two plays dealing with settler-colonial contact, Kanata , and slave songs, SLĀV , as well as a corresponding complex community response that generated debates around appropriation and representation more than obscenity. Cultural and artistic appropriation has been central to the production of aesthetic forms in Western theatre, including Canada. Examples abound of cultural theft and appropriation of Indigenous art forms and traditions and a continued lack of awareness for the dynamic of race, ethnicity, cultural identity and representation. Culture is stolen, pilfered, appropriated and traded by those who have the privilege to usurp it. On this issue, it is useful to consider the objection to overtly appropriated work as a different kind of constraint where the community responds to artwork being stolen instead of remaining silent on centuries long colonial and neo-colonial practices. Canadian (Québécois) theatre director Robert Lepage’s SLĀV as well as Ariane Mnouchkine’s and Lepage’s censored play Kanata are perfect examples of appropriation that triggered a strong community response. The projects that have been surrounded by controversies for their defense of appropriation and the advocacy of their directors for the right to “othering”—ignorant of the discontent of the communities they purportedly speak for and about. SLĀV, A Play without Blacks Robert Lepage’s SLĀV was a project on Black slavery, a play with a predominately white cast, picking cotton and singing Black slave songs. The play was scheduled for June 2018, part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. It was widely condemned by members of Quebec’s Black and Indigenous communities. Protests erupted outside the theatre accusing Lepage of appropriating “black pain for profit.”(13) Lepage acknowledged “clumsiness and misjudgments” that led to the cancellation of the show, while he promised “to do better.”(14) Nevertheless, shortly after the cancellation, Lepage became more emboldened and denounced what he called an “angry far-left mob” for protesting and shutting down the show. He attempted to divide and conquer within the ranks of the protestors after he met with a group of them. He declared fervently: “Unlike the angry far-left extremists depicted in certain media, the people I met with were welcoming, open, perceptive, intelligent, cultivated, articulate and peaceful.”(15) Obviously, Lepage would rather deal with “perceptive, intelligent, and peaceful” protesters rather than face the legitimate anger of the “mob” he deplores. Either way the community response was justified, since, as Moses Sumney (an African-American singer-songwriter who cancelled his performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival in protest of the play) stated: there is no context in which white people performing black slave songs is okay. Especially not while they are dressed like poor field workers or cotton pickers. Especially not while they are directed by a white director and in a theater charging loads of money ... This kind of black imitation is very reminiscent of blackface minstrel shows. The only thing missing is black paint.(16) This controversy produced one of the most vehement community responses (after The Fairies are Thirsty ) as a legitimate criticism and denunciation based on ethical ground. The Montreal chapter of Black Lives Matter organized the protest and mobilized a large coalition against the work dubbed “the SLĀV Resistance Collective”. Protestors took to the streets with signs that read: “Racisme ordinaire” [“ordinary racism”]; “descendants of slaves against SLĀV”; and “Slave songs weren’t written for white people to profit from.” After the first round of protests and more meetings with the Collective, an attempt was made to revive the play, without success.(17) Kanata without Indigenous People In a similar fashion, but in a more forceful way, the play Kanata generated an even larger controversy in July 2018. The show was scheduled for staging in Paris in December 2018, and in Québec in 2020, as a co-production between Robert Lepage and Ariane Mnouchkine—director of Paris based Théâtre du Soleil. Kanata claimed to explore Canada’s history “through the lens of the relationship between white and Aboriginal people.” However, there were no Indigenous actors or creators involved in the production. The announcement of the play’s premiere sparked a letter to Montréal’s newspaper Le Devoir on 14 July 2018. The letter, titled “One more time our story will be told without us, Indigenous People,” was signed by a large group of people who are Indigenous artists and community leaders, allies, intellectuals, members of arts organizations, social justice activists, cultural workers, lawyers, theatre artists, actors and producers, and so on.(18) They protested the fact that no Indigenous artists were involved in the production and none were consulted as the play was getting ready for staging. Mnouchkine and Lepage may be well-intentioned in wanting to tell the story of settler-colonial contact with Indigenous people in Kanata (the native name of Canada from the Huron-Iroquois word meaning “village” or “settlement”), however, they miss the point by perpetuating the invisibility of First Nations or Indigenous artists. The letter concluded by saying that the signatories do not wish to censure the production, but preferred if Indigenous artists and talent were included, recognized and celebrated, because, as they say, “WE ARE.”(19) The show was cancelled for the Paris production in December 2018 after a few Lepage co-producers withdrew financial support from the production making it impossible to proceed. Lepage and Mnouchkine have maintained and fought for their right to say and do art whichever way they see fit, accusing their detractors of censorship and muzzling. The cancelled show in Paris was revamped in a shorter version carrying a new title: Kanata - Episode 1. La controverse . It opened 15 December 2018 at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, the home of the Théâtre du Soleil outside Paris, as part of the Festival d’Automne. It went on to be produced at the Naples Theatre Festival in Italy in June 2019, followed by the July 2019 production at the Epidaurus & Athens Festival. The play stopped touring after the Athens production, which is considered a much shorter run than the usual Théâtre du Soleil productions. A documentary video produced by Hélène Choquette entitled Lepage au Soleil: à l'origine de Kanata was made between 2016 and 2018 and shown in Canadian cinemas in 2019. After this documentary, the play was not talked about except in the context of critical analysis of its controversy.(20) I will now turn to the reception of the revised Paris production and the meaning of community-based censorship in response to the modified version that saw the stage at the Théâtre du Soleil, with Lepage as a guest director, marking the first time the company has invited a guest director to work for free. The revised version lasted two and a half hours and included a cast of thirty-three actors, with a revamped title and story. Mnouchkine insisted begrudgingly that there will be no actors from North America. The show ran until February 2019. The reception was, at best, mixed, and at worst, highly negative. Marianne Ackerman of the Montreal Gazette newspaper describes the opening scene with great reservation and significant disapproval: The opening scenes unfold like a dream. Flanked by a forest of perfectly cylindrical pillars, a man and a woman—museum curators—discuss the merits of 19th-century paintings of Indigenous people by European artists, then disappear into fog. Enter a drifting canoe paddled by a First Nations filmmaker capturing wilderness sounds on tape. A black bear ambles across the stage, two Mounties pass in ceremonial red jackets, the idyll broken suddenly by roaring chainsaws as a swarm of loggers reduce the woods to bare stage. A totem pole is wrecked. Mounties drag an Indigenous woman off screaming, and hand her baby to a priest.(21) Ackermann continues with her sceptical assessment as the series of horror stories play out on stage: There the dream ends, and a documentary nightmare begins, dissecting the daily tragedy of Canada’s Indigenous peoples at the dismal end of a wide spectrum: missing women found murdered, junkies desperate for the next fix, social workers and police burdened with inadequate resources, paralyzed by power wrangles. We’re taken to Robert Pickton’s pig farm, made to watch as he snaps handcuffs on a young Indigenous woman, drags her into his caravan, splashes her blood on the window. We follow the actor playing Pickton via film into a jail cell, where an actor posing as a fellow killer goads him into confession.(22) In the middle of these neo-colonial horrors, and Pickton’s terror, we are invited to witness and empathize with a French couple, Miranda and Ferdinand, an artist and a painter arriving in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, around the year 2000.(23) Ferdinand struggles to get acting roles, while Miranda paints portrait of the murdered Indigenous women much to the dismay and consternation of their grieving mothers. La Controverse (the controversy in the title), emerges from Miranda’s plan to exhibit her work at a local community center but, at the last minute, the center directors realize she didn’t ask the families of the victims for permission. This results in the cancelling of the exhibition. In this complex social setting, one Indigenous character in the play opines: “Our history has been stolen from us for 400 years…Expect some strong reactions.” Miranda replies: “I’m an artist! These women moved me as human beings, not Indigenous people.” The ending is equally clunky and unwieldy: Miranda painting an abstract piece in her studio while crying censorship as she laments: “Nowadays, to understand a black person, you have to be black! To understand a Jewish person, you have to be Jewish!”(24) The fact that Lepage and Mnouchkine put together such shows is not surprising: much of their work has had Orientalist and appropriative overtones in distinctive ways. Lepage’s Zulu Time (2002) had mainly white actors playing a cast of international and African characters; The Dragon Trilogy (1987, 1991, and 2010) was a six-hour epic that told the story of a Quebec family’s relationships with immigrants from China and Japan. The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1996) was set in Hiroshima and Terezin. As for the Théâtre du Soleil’s works: L’Indiade ou l’Inde de leurs rêves (1987) deals with India’s partition ; L’Histoire terrible et inachevée de Norodom Sihanouk roi du Cambodge (1985) retells the story of modern Cambodia through the eyes of the descendants of the victims of the Khmer Rouge ; Tambours sur la digue (1999) was a Bunraku play with human puppets that told the story of floods in China. Many of Lepage’s and Mnouchkine’s plays use borrowed forms to tell the story of the other under the guise of interculturalism. Without entering into a lengthy debate on interculturalism and its detractors, suffice it to say that interculturalism is no longer a valid excuse to appropriate the story of the “other” even if the masterpieces that Lepage and Mnouchkine produce regularly garner a lot of acclaim from international, mostly white audiences. Although the two prominent directors often claim that they are fighting injustices and speaking for disenfranchised groups, they continue to appropriate other cultural forms and speak for them. Can Lepage and Mnouchkine ignore the communities’ concerns and continue advocating for a post-racial, post-identitarian, world art in which the actor should be able to play anyone and become the other, as Mnouchkine says frequently? Is there any legitimacy for Lepage’s dismissal when he says: “When it is forbidden to identify with someone else, theatre becomes ‘meaningless’”?(25) One might ask: meaningless for whom? Is there ever an ethics of appropriation? Is there such a theatre that can be at the same time a guarantor of meaning making for disenfranchised communities, a safe, affirmative space for racialized or gendered identities without resorting to silencing, occupying, or appropriating? It is a fine balance between artistic freedom and the right to free speech and literal cultural theft—museums and collections are still full of pilfered art and artifacts by colonial powers (there would be no museums in the Western world without artefacts stolen from the colonies). White entertainers continue to profit off of Black musical styles while Black performers continue to be impeded by racism. I am not arguing for or against censoring appropriative work, nor am I claiming that these artists are being unfairly censored. I am simply exercising the questions that are missing in the debate around intercultural theatre. We need not ask if artists have the right to speak or represent any culture; rather, we should ask: What has intercultural theatre done to reduce the harm done by slavery, colonialism, othering, orientalism, stereotyping? Is casting a whole show on slavery without Black actors the postmodern version of blackface or a contemporary version of nineteenth century minstrel shows? Is doing an entire show on contact between Settlers and Indigenous people without any significant participation of the Indigenous community really that far removed from ethnological expositions , which literally put indigenous people as “savages” on display in the nineteenth century? Conversely, I am not justifying or condoning the censorship of these works, I’m proposing to look at them with a different lens that challenges their methods and interrogates the norms by which societies construct dominant culture and excludes, silences, or fetishizes the other. I will conclude this section with the words of Indigenous (Anishinaabe) writer and publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm who sums it up perfectly in an article in the Globe and Mail : if the past 30 years have taught us anything, it is that there is a powerful, loud bunch of privileged white settlers who do not want to learn about us or from us. They spew out their impressions of our experience and double down when confronted with research and data and our first-hand accounts. They want to “debate” appropriation, on their terms and make these demands as if it has not been done before. As if the past 30 years of our work is meaningless because they are unaware and do not have to bother doing the research. For us, to continue to debate at this point is nothing but a type of busy work that pulls Indigenous writers and publishers away from what we ought to be doing – namely, writing, telling and publishing our own stories.(26) III. The Runner I conclude this article with a brief analysis of the events surrounding Christopher Morris’s play The Runner at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver 2024. The Runner had its first production at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille in 2018, followed by six different productions in cities across Canada to much acclaim. It won three Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Toronto’s awards for excellence in theatre) for Outstanding New Play, Outstanding Production, and Outstanding Direction. The play was scheduled to open at the PuSh Festival in 2024. But in agreement with the playwright, the festival cancelled the play after it received an open letter of protest from a collective of Palestinian, Indigenous, and Jewish community members who expressed concerns about the play’s portrayal of Palestinian-Israeli relations in the current thorny context. The censorship of the play was complicated by another protest by Palestinian artist (based in England), Basel Zaraa, whose installation/performance Dear Laila was also scheduled to open at the same festival. Zaraa issued a statement that he would pull his performance if the festival went ahead with The Runner . The Runner tells the story of an ultra-Orthodox Z.A.K.A. member, Jacob, who decides to treat a young Palestinian woman instead of an injured Israeli soldier who the woman may have killed in an alleged attack. The Z.A.K.A. ( Zihuy Korbanot Ason , or Disaster Victim Identification) is an Israeli volunteer force comprised of paramedics and disaster relief workers who respond to scenes of violent attacks and collect the remains of the dead, including their blood, so they may receive proper Jewish religious burial. Jacob is torn between his duty to attend to Israeli victims and the decision he made to give the woman CPR even though she is suspected of carrying out the attack. The backlash against the play at PuSh was due in large part to the timing (a few months after the October 7 attacks) as audiences are more and more divided on the Israel-Palestine conflict. What interests me here is the consequences of the censorship as both artists and PuSh Festival put out a statement acknowledging the harm the play may cause to Palestinians and the disappointment and anger of some members of the community who supported Morris. Alongside Morris’s statement, saying that he is saddened and unsettled “when Canadian theatres cannot be a space for the public to engage in a dynamic exchange of ideas,”(27) a joint statement from the directors of PuSh, Gabrielle Martin and Keltie Forsyth, as well as Zaraa and Morris was issued. It reads: On January 2nd, we released a statement that expressed our hope that PuSh bring us together and inspire us to have complex and nuanced conversations; to challenge ourselves and each other not only to think differently, but to feel differently…Over the past two weeks, we have been in conversation with various members of our community. We have heard those who call to cancel The Runner, feeling it is a work that perpetuates the oppression of Palestinian people. We have heard the call to present it by those who feel the work provides an empathetic, and fundamentally humanist perspective. We have also heard from those who believe theatre is the right place for difficult conversations and want us to resist censorship. We have heard the call that now is not the right time…And we have felt the desire to uphold relationships with artists. We have felt the anger expressed to us. But most importantly, we have felt the words of Festival artist Basel Zaraa.(28) The festival also included a statement from Basel Zaraa: Dear Laila is an installation I created for my young daughter, which tells the story of our family’s ongoing trauma and struggle as Palestinians exiled by Israel, starting with the massacre in our village of Tantura in Palestine, in 1948. As Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues, I cannot agree for Dear Laila to be shown alongside The Runner, a play which reinforces dehumanising narratives about Palestinians. Palestinians appear in The Runner almost exclusively as perpetrators of violence. While the Israeli characters are vividly portrayed, the Palestinian characters don't even have names, and barely speak…While many voices are welcome, artistic endeavors on this subject have a responsibility to reflect the reality that there is an occupier and an occupied.(29) To add to the mix, a statement from Christopher Morris was also issued. It reads: The Runner is a fictional story about an Israeli man who saves the life of a young Palestinian woman and is ostracized by his peers for doing so. It is an award-winning, one-person play, told from the singular perspective of a man who confronts his community’s fear and their dehumanization of others. Criticised by his own people, his empathy never wavers. For me, The Runner is a nuanced play about the need to see the humanity of others. Basel Zaraa's voice is new to Canadians and his installation Dear Laila—also nuanced & award-winning— focuses on his family experience as Palestinians exiled by Israel. It is an extraordinary, important work. Holding space for other viewpoints is essential, particularly at this moment of trauma and division. I sympathize with the PuSh Festival’s distress when Basel shared that he’d withdraw his work if The Runner remained in the festival; and when they arrived at their difficult decision to prioritize one artist’s voice over another. PuSh’s leadership has navigated this complicated situation with transparency and care. If removing The Runner is the only way Canadians can hear Basel’s crucial voice, then there is value in stepping aside…(30) In light of Zaraa’s and Morris’ statements, the festival concluded that the Runner should be cancelled and Zaraa’s performance should proceed: As a Festival, we respect Basel’s perspective. We will honour the artist whose work reflects their lived experience and cancel the presentations of The Runner by Canadian playwright Christopher Morris, whose work is rooted in years of research but who has no religious or cultural ties to the region. . . .At the same time, we believe it is a necessary choice to prioritize the work of an artist whose perspective is grossly underrepresented in Canadian theatre and performance culture.(31) I choose to cite these statements whole and in block by the artists and the PuSH Festival producers to show the level of engagement in complex and ambiguous censoring and how oppositions and dichotomy do not always play out in predictable ways. What The Runner case (and other recent cases) shows us is that the centers of power that govern censorship have become diffuse, which hints to what Gilles Deleuze called a “society of control” in his Post-Script on the Societies of Control . Deleuze delineates contemporary forms of control by government, socio-cultural and administrative regulations as operating according to different mechanisms than the conventional “normative” modes of (Foucault’s) “disciplinary powers.”(32) Deleuze’s thesis is particularly relevant for an analysis of contemporary theatre censorship in the era of networked communications, social media, and decentered power. I return to Jansen to elucidate how these diffuse centers of power in liberal democracies operate using covert censorship where there is, on the surface, a guarantee of free speech, which also becomes a commodity, but in practice, there is self-inflicted or socially sanctioned suppression that reshapes public discourse with new imperatives.(33) In this context we may not know clearly whose interests censorship serves, but we are saddled with its consequences on social and cultural ambits as the battleground is no longer between the “questionable material” and official entities, but in a network pitting various socio-cultural values and communities against each other. Conclusion Is this cancel culture or “call out” culture that produces decentered censorship a danger to theatrical freedom? Certainly, this form of censorship may run the risk of shutting down conversations that we expect the performing arts to foster in the current chilling climate of division, fear, and bias. Conversely, under-represented communities in the theatre have taken up the fight and protested against the structures that organize their exclusion in the art. Their “call outs” may have become more effective at combating racism, sexism, silencing, and marginalization, since neoliberal identity politics—the so-called “dialogue of cultures” and the “right of anyone to play anyone”—are no longer suitable to address the imbalance of power occasioned by unfettered representability. Irrevocably, questions of community censorship underline the dichotomy between the ethical and the questionable, the center and the margin, the represented and the under-represented, the mainstream and the absented. But more importantly, it underscores the reciprocal awareness of the falsity of these dichotomies, necessitating a third term. The third term is perhaps the collective “we” that the theatre can endorse in its gathering albeit irreconcilable space. References Judith Butler, Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 128. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77 , ed. Colin Gordon (Harlow: Pearson, 1980), 119 Matthew Bunn, “Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After,” History and Theory 54 (2015): 29. Anne Etienne and Chris Megson, eds, Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe: Silence and Protest , (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2024).7. In general, Canadian law considers obscene, work “that is beyond contemporary standards of tolerance” with exceptions for work that is deemed to “have artistic, literary, scientific, or educational value; material that does not extend beyond what serves the public good; material that is not beyond what is acceptable by community standards.” (The Canadian Penal Code, https://www.criminalcodehelp.ca/offences/sexual-offences/obscenity/# ). Sue Curry Jansen, Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 14. Jansen, Censorship , 6-7. Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), 5. For an in-depth discussion of this incident see Donia Mounsef, “The seen, the scene and the obscene: Commodity fetishism and corporeal ghosting,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 15, no2 (2005): 243-261. The Quiet Revolution (La Révolution tranquille) marks Québec’s period of transformation, secularisation, and anti-religious influence. Inspired by the American Civil Rights Movement, it followed the election of the Liberals to power in the 1960s and the civil rights efforts to liberate education and culture from the hold exercised by the Catholic Church. “Le Conseil des Arts de Montréal exige du TNM la modification du texte jugé « sale, d’un langage ordurier, trop vulgaire ».” “Archives, Des fées dont la soif crée la controverse.” September 24, 2018. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1125808/fees-theatre-censure-quebec-histoire-archives Marilyne Brick. “La fonction sociale du théâtre. Étude de la polémique autour de l’affaire Les fées ont soif (1978).” 18. “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises ‘to do better’.” Global News , December 28, 2018, https://globalnews.ca/news/4799541/quebec-playwright-robert-lepage-says-controversial-slav-play-reworked/ “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises…” “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises…” Graeme Hamilton, “Montreal jazz fest comes under fire for a show based on slave songs — with a mostly white cast”, The National Post , July 8, 2018, https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/montreal-jazz-fest-comes-under-fire-for-a-show-based-on-slave-songs-with-a-mostly-white-cast . “Robert Lepage commits to changes as controversial SLĀV musical returns to stage.” CBC News December 28, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/robert-lepage-slav-update-1.4960627v “Encore un fois, l’aventure se passera sans nous, les Autochtones,” Le Devoir, July 14, 2018, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/libre-opinion/532406/encore-une-fois-l-aventure-se-passera-sans-nous-les-autochtones . My translation: [“ Nous ne souhaitons pas censurer quiconque. Ce n’est pas dans nos mentalités et dans notre façon de voir le monde. Ce que nous voulons, c’est que nos talents soient reconnus, qu’ils soient célébrés aujourd’hui et dans le futur, car NOUS SOMMES ”]. "Lettre ouverte : Odeiwin, la réplique à Ariane Mnouchkine," Radio Canada July 14, 2018, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/1112629/lettre-ouverte-odeiwin-la-replique-a-ariane-mnouchkine . The documentary “shows how, the 36 actors from 11 different countries, discover in their own stories an astonishing resonance with those of the natives. How, inspired by the cosmopolitanism of the troupe, Robert Lepage tries to get them to talk about their own stories through those of the Indigenous peoples of Canada. The documentary plunges into the heart of a theatrical creation in search of universality, but turned upside down by a media scandal even before its premiere.” “Lepage au Soleil: At the Origins of Kanata.” 2019. https://www.emafilms.com/en/film/lepage-au-soleil-at-the-origins-of-kanata/ Marianne Ackerman, “Robert Lepage’s controversial Kanata opens in Paris as a rehearsal.” Montreal Gazette . December 20, 2018, https://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment-life/article217779.html . Ackerman, “Robert Lepage’s controversial Kanata…” Robert Pickton (October 24, 1949 - May 31, 2024) known in Canada as the Butcher or Pig Farmer Killer, was a Canadian serial killer in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland who was accused of killing at least 49 women between 1995-2001, most of them Indigenous women. In 2007, he was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years. However, he was killed in prison by another inmate in 2024. Laura Cappelle, “Review: In Robert Lepage’s ‘Kanata,’ the Director, Too, Plays the Victim.” The New York Times , December 17, 2018. Rick Salutin, “Cultural Appropriation sees two Robert Lepage Productions Cancelled.” August 17, 2018. https://rabble.ca/columnists/cultural-appropriation-sees-two-robert-lepage-productions-cancelled/ Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, “The cultural appropriation debate is over. It's time for action,”, Globe and Mail , May 19, 2017. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-cultural-appropriation-debate-is-over-its-time-for-action/article35072670/ Janet Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels Israel-set The Runner after Palestinian artist's input.” January 11th, 2024, https://www.createastir.ca/articles/push-festival-cancels-the-runner . Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Gilles Deleuze, “Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle,” Pourparlers , (Paris: Minuit, 1990), 3. Jansen, Censorship , 168. Bibliography Ackermann, Marianne. “Robert Lepage’s controversial Kanata opens in Paris as a rehearsal.” Montreal Gazette , December 20, 2018. https://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment-life/article217779.html Akiwenzie-Damm, Kateri “The cultural appropriation debate is over. It's time for action.” Globe and Mail, May 19, 2017. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-cultural-appropriation-debate-is-over-its-time-for-action/article35072670/ “Archives, Des fées dont la soif crée la controverse.” September 24, 2018. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1125808/fees-theatre-censure-quebec-histoire-archives Boucher, Denise. Les Fées ont soif . Montréal: Typo, 2008. ---. The Fairies Are Thirsty . Translated by Alan Brown. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1982. Brick, Marilyne. “La fonction sociale du théâtre. Étude de la polémique autour de l’affaire Les fées ont soif (1978)." https://www.erudit.org/fr/livres/lart-en-proces/proces-polemiques-art-quebec-france-1978-2021/947li.pdf Bunn, Matthew. “Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After.” History and Theory 54 (2015): 25–44. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative . New York: Routledge, 1997. “The Canadian Penal Code.” https://www.criminalcodehelp.ca/offences/sexual-offences/obscenity/# Cappelle, Laura. “Review: In Robert Lepage’s ‘Kanata,’ the Director, Too, Plays the Victim.” The New York Times . December 17, 2018. Deleuze, Gilles. “Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle.” Pourparlers . Paris: Minuit, 1990. “Encore un fois, l’aventure se passera sans nous, les Autochtones.” Le Devoir, July 14, 2018. https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/libre-opinion/532406/encore-une-fois-l-aventure-se-passera-sans-nous-les-autochtones . Etienne, Anne and Chris Megson, eds. Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe: Silence and Protest . Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2024. Etienne, Anne and Graham Saunders, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship . Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality , New York: Pantheon, 1978. ---. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979. ---. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77 , Edited by Colin Gordon. Harlow: Pearson, 1980. Hamilton, Graeme. “Montreal jazz fest comes under fire for a show based on slave songs — with a mostly white cast”. The National Post , July 8, 2018. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/montreal-jazz-fest-comes-under-fire-for-a-show-based-on-slave-songs-with-a-mostly-white-cast Hunt, Lynn, ed. The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800 . New York: Zone Books, 1993. Jansen, Sue Curry. Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. “Lettre ouverte : Odeiwin, la réplique à Ariane Mnouchkine.” Radio Canada , July 14, 2018. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/1112629/lettre-ouverte-odeiwin-la-replique-a-ariane-mnouchkine “Lepage au Soleil: At the Origins of Kanata.” EMA Films, 2019. https://www.emafilms.com/en/film/lepage-au-soleil-at-the-origins-of-kanata/ Michelet, Jules. La Sorcière. (First Published 1862.) Paris: Flammarion, 1993. Mounsef, Donia. “The seen, the scene and the obscene: Commodity fetishism and corporeal ghosting.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 15, no. 2 (2005), 243-261. “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises ‘to do better’ after SLĀV controversy.” Global News , December 28, 2018. https://globalnews.ca/news/4799541/quebec-playwright-robert-lepage-says-controversial-slav-play-reworked/ “Robert Lepage commits to changes as controversial SLĀV musical returns to stage.” CBC News December 28, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/robert-lepage-slav-update-1.4960627v Salutin, Rick. “Cultural Appropriation sees two Robert Lepage Productions Cancelled.” August 17, 2018. https://rabble.ca/columnists/cultural-appropriation-sees-two-robert-lepage-productions-cancelled/ Smith, Janet. “Performing Arts festival cancels Israel-set The Runner after Palestinian artist's input.” January 11, 2024. https://www.createastir.ca/articles/push-festival-cancels-the-runner Footnotes About The Author(s) DONIA MOUNSEF (she/her), PhD, is Professor of drama and performance studies at the University of Alberta and Associate Dean, Access, Community, & Belonging (Faculty of Arts). A performance and media theorist, she is the author of Chair et révolte dans le théâtre de Bernard-Marie Koltès (l'Harmattan) and the co-editor of Toxic Media Ecologies: Critical Responses to the Cultural Politics of Planetary Crises (forthcoming) and “The Transparency of the Text” ( Yale French Studies ). She publishes widely on intermediality, visual culture, performance and politics. Her work appeared in Global Performance Studies, Contours Journal, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , Yale French Studies , Esprit Créateur , Yale Journal of Criticism , Women and Performance Journal , Féminismos , Journal of Global Studies and Contemporary Art , etc. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Censorship/Public Censure and Performance Today: Special Issue Introduction Remembering Censorship in the World Premiere of Seán O’Casey’s The Drums of Father Ned: Lafayette, Indiana, 1959 The Stage as Networked Battleground: Dissent and Censorship in Contemporary Canadian Theatre and Performance Censor/Censure: A Roundtable Which of These Are Censorship? The Divide Between Prior Restraint and Soft Censorship How Can an Artist Respond to Censorship? The Dilemma That Faces Contemporary Creatives in the UK The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project: A Roundtable Conversation Life is Drag: Documenting Spectacle as Resistance An Interview with Rachel Rampleman Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists. Michael Malek Najjar. Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2021; Pp. xvi + 237. Lessons from Our Students: Meditations on Performance Pedagogy. Stacey Cabaj and Andrea Odinov. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 126 Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene. Angenette Spalink. Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance Series, no. 3. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 116. Fauci and Kramer Our Town Frankenstein Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Iris Smith Fischer Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Iris Smith Fischer By Published on June 2, 2016 Download Article as PDF This special issue, sponsored by the American Theatre and Drama Society, explores forms of research and inquiry offered by theatre and performance in the age of STEM—that is, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. [1] The issue also presents developments in the scientific fields of information technology, biology, and medicine that employ techniques and approaches drawn from theatre practices. The issue poses a number of questions: What challenges and opportunities does this historical moment present for theatre to assert its relevance and necessity? How does theatre engage in alternate forms of inquiry? How does scholarship aid theatre, both by bringing theatre’s methods of inquiry into view or engaging in them itself? Can alternate forms of inquiry close the gap between practice and analysis in theatre, and counter claims that research occurs only in STEM disciplines? How can theatre offer an ethical perspective on STEM research, which claims to be value free? These are humanists’ questions, fueled by recognition that the arts themselves involve forms of research and inquiry, and that the concept of scientific objectivity, with its concomitant rejection of subjectivity, should be reexamined. Scientists, on the other hand, want to know how theatre and performance techniques can aid them in their research and teaching, or in the dissemination of results to colleagues, administrators, and the general public. For many scientists, valuable research is objective and ideology-free, separate from applications of already-produced knowledge, and clearly distinct from the creation of plays, the activities of performance artists, or the types of analysis and evaluation involved in theatre history or dramatic criticism. Yet some scientists question the exclusion of subjectivity, ideology, or empathy from STEM research and inquiry. These inquirers ask how the STEM disciplines can incorporate methods of learning borrowed from the humanities and arts, be opened more fully to participation by women, minorities, and the disabled, and teach students in the STEM disciplines to recognize, value, and use forms of embodied knowledge. The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes that the term research is not proprietary to the STEM disciplines, defining it as “systematic investigation or inquiry aimed at contributing to knowledge of a theory, topic, etc., by careful consideration, observation, or study of a subject.” Yet the OED also recognizes later disciplinary and institutional usages: “original critical or scientific investigation carried out under the auspices of an academic or other institution.” In a similarly broad fashion, the OED defines the term inquiry as “the action of seeking, esp. (now always) for truth, knowledge, or information concerning something,” and offers “search, research, investigation, examination” as related terms. [2] Theatre and performance inquire and investigate, often proceeding carefully and methodically, but offering knowledge through acts, processes, and conceptual lenses such as the mimetic, the epic, the postdramatic. These types of knowledge are often not recognized as knowledge of an objective world. The current cultural dominance of the STEM disciplines is driven both by economic exigencies and underlying ideological assumptions about what constitutes valuable research and inquiry. Identifying performance as research can be seen as a response by artists and scholars to institutional, political, and economic pressures, and as a corollary effort to break out of academic silos and loosen funding restrictions. Performance approached as research allows inquirers to recognize commonalities among disciplines and share their methodologies and techniques. This turn reflects in twenty-first-century fashion the moment in the late nineteenth century when higher education was being organized in institutions but disciplinarity had not yet taken on its more rigid twentieth-century forms. Inquiry in science was not so isolated from inquiry in philosophy or literary history. One thinks of the American pragmatists—Peirce, James, Dewey, Addams, and others—who sought to keep in view the connections between scientific advances and humanistic inquiry. A similar desire has emerged recently in many fields, among them complexity science, biosemiotics, and epigenetics, which encourage awareness of the role of embodied knowledges in research. In this regard Wendy Wheeler usefully distinguishes between conceptual, experiential, and tacit forms of knowledge. Tacit knowledge, or “creaturely skillful phenomenological knowledge,” is essential to human flourishing and artistic creativity but incapable of formulation in propositional language. Yet conceptual knowledge or “abstract intellectual knowledge that ” cannot by itself account for experiential knowledge or “phenomenological embodied knowledge how ,” i.e., readable acts created “in engagement with the world and other embodied creatures.” Biosemiotic methods of inquiry, Wheeler argues, allow access to necessary tacit knowledge through the reading of such acts. While applicable to many realms of life, human and otherwise, she notes, “Skillful being in cultural complex totalities is a specifically human skillful being in the world. Actions (especially, perhaps, political actions) driven mainly by abstract thinking, which forget embodied experience, local knowledge, and skillfulness, are always, almost by definition, dangerous.” [3] Research and inquiry should engage the phenomenological how along with the conceptual that . In an effort to claim the term research for performance practices, some have questioned the tendency in the arts to distinguish between practice and analysis, as Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter point out: While performance practices have always contributed to knowledge, the idea that performance can be more than creative production, that it can constitute intellectual inquiry and contribute new understanding and insight is a concept that challenges many institutional structures and calls into question what gets valued as knowledge. Perhaps the most singular contribution of the developing areas of practice as research (PaR) and performance as research (PAR) is the claim that creative production can constitute intellectual inquiry.[4] The movement known as Practice as Research (PaR) first developed in the United Kingdom, Riley and Hunter note, in response to government assessment tools introduced in the early 1990s to apportion funding based on departments’ research productivity. While humanities scholarship—as opposed to arts creation—more readily fits existing definitions of conceptual knowledge production (in the form of scholarly articles and monographs), arts departments in the U.K. faced the challenge of developing criteria for assessing creative activity as research, a process begun later at U.S. universities, and still ongoing. [5] Today embodied knowledges are being widely discussed at conferences and in publication. In their recent call for a working group on “Transfusions and Transductions: Science and Performance as Permeable Disciplines,” Vivian Appler and Meredith Conti argue, “As with the clinical laboratory and astronomical observatory, the theatre serves as a reflexive and generative site of transformations, a place to penetrate barriers and test innovative ideas, approaches, and practices.” [6] Also promising in closing the practice/analysis divide is the concept of situated knowledge, drawn in part from black feminist thought and summarized here by Lynette Hunter: Unlike scientific knowledge in which the effect of the observer is often a ‘problem’ and many experiments are devised in order to minimize it, in situated knowledge the whole point is that the observer is engaged. It is only through their engagement that knowledge can be manifested, and the observer is both the practitioner who makes things and the audience or respondent.[7] Calling such current developments “a moment of discovery and transition” in the long history of research in performance, Arthur Sabatini emphasizes that the training of performers is built upon considerable research into the capacities of the human body and mind. Use of the voice, breathing, manual dexterity, movement techniques, directing or choreographing for performance are all outcomes from highly proscribed and ever-evolving systems that have been researched, repeatedly tested, and advanced by practitioners worldwide.[8] Institutional pressures and burgeoning terminology may actually present opportunities to explore and document the need for embodied and situated knowledges that cross the institutional divide between arts and humanities on the one hand, and STEM disciplines on the other. Invested in both creativity and discovery, initiatives are coming from all sides to bridge that gap in terms of how research is conducted, students are trained, and knowledge is disseminated. * The articles that follow argue for the value of embodied knowledges from the nine contributors’ rich and varied backgrounds in theatre history, playwriting, both arts and science education (including science museum education), physics, molecular biology, medicine, engineering, information science and technology, feminism, gender and sexuality studies, acting, directing, and—not least—stand-up comedy. Each perspective contributes in its own way to this special issue. Bradley Stephenson, in “This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D. W. Gregory’s Radium Girls ,” approaches embodied knowledges offered by theatre in terms of disability studies, epic theatre, and recent theories of animacy. Building on Mel Chen’s concept of animacy as “the recognition that abstract concepts, inanimate objects, and things in between can be queered and racialized without human bodies present,” Stephenson argues that, in Gregory’s re-telling of the historical events involving young female workers poisoned by their interactions with radium-laced paint, “radium itself becomes an actor and character in the play.” Citing disability theory as an ally of performance and theatre studies, Stephenson explores the interactions of biological life with radioactive half-life in order to rewrite our medical understanding of radium’s effects on the body as a complex of transcorporeal agencies. Vivian Appler approaches science—in this case physics, astronomy, and engineering—as “a liberal cultural domain,” a formulation that recognizes the STEM disciplines’ roots in liberal humanism. “Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of The End of the Moon ” argues that scientists and artists alike have a social responsibility to “recognize how theatre and other representational modes of performance impact a cultural imaginary that contains both the sciences and the arts.” Appler calls for a “holistic cultural conversation” to bridge what C. P. Snow once termed ‘the two cultures divide’: “Interdisciplinary performance research can disrupt this biased cultural scenario by examining science-oriented performance artists who work from a feminist perspective.” Appler focuses on Laurie Anderson’s arts residency at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the resulting 2004 performance piece The End of the Moon : Anderson endeavors to instill in her audiences a sense of wonder at the world while also encouraging active participation in the larger culture in which the domain of astronomy is embedded. . . . [She] fills the space between wonder at scientific achievement and an active engagement with the socio-political criticism of those achievements through embodied and technologically transductive performance techniques. By means of transduction or “communication of information across different media,” Appler continues Anderson’s intervention, revealing in the performance a “cyborg system” that invites discussion of gender assumptions active both within science and outside of it. By documenting a woman performance artist embodying representations of gendered scientific research, Appler’s article shares concerns expressed by Eileen Trauth, Karen Keifer-Boyd, and Suzanne Trauth about the barriers women encounter in thinking of themselves as researchers and gaining access to the sciences. Suzanne Trauth’s play script iDream , based on Eileen Trauth’s research and documented by Karen Keifer-Boyd, is designed to “raise awareness and critique hegemonic social narratives regarding who [can] participate in the STEM field of IT [information technology].” The authors of “ iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change” have found that the scientific professions have difficulty creating gender balance. Just as scholarly publications on information technology are not written in language accessible for the general public, “the scientific model of research dissemination leaves little room for the expression of subtlety, nuance, emotion, and holistic representation.” The authors turn instead to girls, their families, and their teachers, to raise awareness of the cultural narratives at work. Transforming Eileen Trauth’s research findings into theatrical scenarios, the authors seek to “stimulate awareness, understanding, and activism about barriers to women in technological fields.” iDream employs several story lines to engage audiences during staged readings and the discussions that follow. In a work process resembling what Appler terms “interactional expertise,” albeit not in a full production or performance art but rather in a script-centered experience, the authors created an exploration of “science opportunities . . . and barriers . . . [focusing] not so much on overt barriers [but] rather the process by which a young woman might unconsciously internalize limits on her dreams.” Cindy L. Duckert and Elizabeth A. De Stasio also investigate theatre’s applications in the interaction between STEM researchers and the general public. Rather than raising awareness of constraining social narratives, the authors report on their use of Viola Spolin’s improvisation techniques to prepare undergraduate life science students to communicate complex concepts to non-experts. Duckert and De Stasio developed a required capstone course to rehearse students in performance skills they need as professionals and public intellectuals, i.e., to make their discoveries “accessible and understandable by linking scientific concepts to concepts the audience already knows.” Moreover, We want our graduates to be cognizant of their audience, to be able to react in real time to the cues the audience members send concerning their understanding of oral and visual communication, and . . . to channel their creative energy and enthusiasm for their work [in order] to communicate scientific information effectively and engagingly. Often initially resistant to engaging in theatrical improvisation, students find that even minimal awareness of performance circumstances improves their ability to communicate. While this would not surprise theatre majors, the incorporation of performance skills into a life sciences curriculum appears to leave life science majors with a new respect for the role that movement, gesture, and facial expression play in communication. The authors also note that, as teachers, they became more aware of public speaking’s embodied character, as well as physiological and neurological elements such as the linkage between mimicry (empathetic physical behaviors) and the action of mirror neurons in fostering an audience’s receptivity. Could performance techniques become part of the life sciences’ methods of disseminating discoveries? Duckert and De Stasio’s capstone course, embedded in their department’s curriculum, suggests that improvisational performance could assist STEM researchers in communicating more effectively with administrators, legislators, and the general public. This possibility also appears in “Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters,” in which George Pate and Libby Ricardo address the use of simulated patients in training medical students for clinical encounters. A relatively recent development, simulated patients—non-actors who volunteer their participation—do not learn a traditional standardized script but are given their characters’ medical and personal histories and also acting guidelines for behaving as their characters would in real-life consultations with their doctors. As the authors note, such “high fidelity” encounters rehearse the performance of empathetic responses to improvised, often unpredictable patient behaviors. The authors’ use of simulated patients follows “recent research suggesting that clinical skills are not ancillary to medical care but in fact affect healing and recovery in measurable ways.” In this regard, Pate and Ricardo’s project resembles that of Duckert and De Stasio, both in regard to the medical students’ initial reluctance to role-play and in the authors’ successful use of workshop exercises to integrate clinical skills with medical knowledge. Drawing a parallel to literary techniques of storytelling, Pate and Ricardo found that such improvisational exercises, like fictional narratives, helpfully “suggest responses without dictating them, urge behaviors without ordering them, illuminate values without oversimplifying them, and in general complicate the matters rather than clarifying or confirming them. . . . [Further,] improvisatory acting situations may offer a greater immediacy and a wider range of possible responses than a poem or story can.” Of all the activity going on in performance as research and research-informed theatre, this special issue presents only a sampling. Many other projects incorporating theatre and performance offer embodied and situated knowledges that can inform scientific research, suggest alternate forms of inquiry, and allow inquirers in the age of STEM to communicate effectively as public intellectuals. References [1] It has been a pleasure to work with JADT editors James Wilson and Naomi Stubbs, and managing editor James Armstrong. I extend my appreciation to them and also to the American Theatre and Drama Society for the opportunity to edit this special issue. My special thanks go to Cheryl Black, ATDS President, and the members of the special issue publications committee, ATDS members all, who both served as readers and provided me with excellent advice. [2] “Research,” “Inquiry,” Oxford English Dictionary (Online) (Oxford: Oxford University, Press, 2000-). http://www2.lib.ku.edu/login?url=http://www.oed.com . [3] Wendy Wheeler, The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2006), 49. [4] Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter, “Introduction,” Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), xv. [5] Ibid, xvii. Riley and Hunter distinguish among the relevant terms: “The acronym ‘PaR’ in the United Kingdom refers to ‘practice as research’ in its most inclusive sense to embrace music practices, the visual arts, dance, and theatre [while] ‘PbR’ refers to ‘practice-based research’ with a wider reach across the arts and sciences. . . . PbR is also well-established in the United Kingdom and Europe, and contributes to many areas, from the medical sciences to spectatorship studies. PbR emerges from different academic areas, but seems to have particular usage in the sciences. . . . In the United States, especially in the fields of performance and theatre studies, the acronym PAR is common shorthand for ‘performance as research’.” [6] E-mail communication from Meredith Conti, 23 May 2016. [7] Lynette Hunter, “Situated Knowledge,” in Riley and Hunter, Mapping Landscapes , 151. [8] Arthur Sabatini, “Approaching Knowledge, Research, Performance and the Arts,” in Riley and Hunter, Mapping Landscapes , 120, 118. Footnotes About The Author(s) Iris Smith Fischer is Professor of English at the University of Kansas, where she teaches modern drama, semiotics, literary and dramatic theory, and avant-garde performance. From 2007-2010 she served as editor of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. Her publications include Mabou Mines: Avant-Garde Theater in the 1970s (author, University of Michigan Press, 2011); Interrogating America through Theatre and Performance (co-editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); American Signatures: Semiotic Inquiry and Method, by Thomas A. Sebeok (editor, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). Her current book project, "Charles Peirce and the Role of Aesthetic Expression in 19th-Century U.S. Semiotics," examines the intertwined histories of theatre (Delsartist approaches to actor training and public speaking) and the still-emerging field of science-based semiotics. 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: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Encounter Keith Josef Adkins's work The Heat Will Kill Everything in Manhattan, at this year's edition of the Prelude in the Parks festival by The Segal Centre, presented in collaboration with Summer on the Hudson/Riverside Park Conservancy. Prelude in the Parks 2024 Festival The Heat Will Kill Everything Keith Josef Adkins Theater Saturday, June 8, 2024 @ 3pm Riverside Park South, Manhattan Performance on Locomotive Picnic Lawn @61st street on the Hudson River. Enter at 59th St, or 66th St and Riverside Boulevard Summer on the Hudson/Riverside Park Conservancy 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 A Black man’s daughter disappears during an extreme heat event. Excerpts will be performed by Francois Battiste and directed by Russell G. Jones. Keith Josef Adkins Keith Josef Adkins is a writer and artistic director. His plays have been produced around the U.S., and include The People Before The Park, about the 19th-century black community Seneca Village that was razed to create Central Park. Keith received Samuel French’s inaugural Award for Impact and Activism in the Theater Community, and a Helen Merrill Playwright Award. Keith is the co-founder and artistic director of The New Black Fest, dedicated to new and provocative playwriting and discussion from the African Diaspora. He has written for CBS’ The Good Fight, ABC’s For The People, and P-Valley on STARZ. Visit Artist Website Location Performance on Locomotive Picnic Lawn @61st street on the Hudson River. Enter at 59th St, or 66th St and Riverside Boulevard Summer on the Hudson/Riverside Park Conservancy Summer on the Hudson is Riverside Park and West Harlem Piers Park’s annual outdoor arts and culture festival that takes place from 59th Street to 181st Street along the Hudson River, from May to October. Events include concerts, dance performances, movies under the stars, DJ dance parties, children’s shows, educational workshops, special day-long festivals, wellness activities, and more. All programs and events are free to the public and no registration is required unless specifically noted. Visit Partner Website

Time is running out the Human kind before the earth goes into full self sedation. The trees have always been the guardians of the earth, but they now must conserve their strength to save themselves. Who will save the human kind from self destruction and all that is in their path? Is there someone, something that can speak for the trees, who speak for all things that inhabit this planet? PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Mud & Blood Maya Sharpe Theater, Music English 1 hour 8:00PM EST Monday, October 16, 2023 The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Time is running out the Human kind before the earth goes into full self sedation. The trees have always been the guardians of the earth, but they now must conserve their strength to save themselves. Who will save the human kind from self destruction and all that is in their path? Is there someone, something that can speak for the trees, who speak for all things that inhabit this planet? produced by The Brick Content / Trigger Description: Musician. Storyteller. Filmmaker. Maya Sharpe is multi-passionate maker and thinker. Maya's passion lies in exploring simplicity in humanity through composition. Using this tool to demonstrate there is more of a connection and love between everything than the politically derived disconnect and hatred. http://www.mayasharpe.com/ Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

By Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, Daniel Gerould | The first English-language anthology of Czech plays written after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution. < 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 Czech Plays: Seven New Works Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, Daniel Gerould Download PDF Czech Plays: Seven New Works is the first English-language anthology of Czech plays written after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution.” These plays explore sex and gender identity, ethnicity and violence, political corruption and religious taboos. Using innovative forms and diverse styles, they tackle the new realities of Czech society brought on by democracy and globalization with characteristic humor and intelligence. Edited by Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, Daniel Gerould Foreward by Daniel Gerould Introduction by Marcy Arlin Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Jessica L. Peña Torres  Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Jessica L. Peña Torres By Published on May 8, 2023 Download Article as PDF Zapateado, burlesque dancing, and a mix of mariachi, son jarocho, and electronic music combine to create the world for MÉXICO (EXPROPRIATED), a bilingual dance-theater piece that surveys three regions of México (Jalisco, Sonora, Veracruz) through a dramatization of the origins of ballet folklórico. With songs such as “Son de la Negra,” “La Bruja,” and “La Bamba,” the dancers of Coctel Explosivo present Mexico’s folkloric diaspora while inviting the audience to reflect upon a heritage that has been as appropriated as Carolina Herrera’s latest collection. MÉXICO (EXPROPRIATED) unearths the politics and history of ballet folklórico, which has been presented as authentic Mexican culture for decades and puts it under the microscope for the audience to decide: should we keep these dances in the repertoire, or should we re-choreograph them to reflect their complicated histories? My Desilusión with Ballet Folklórico I saw the Ballet Folklórico de México de Amalia Hernández live onstage for the first time at the Strathmore Theatre in North Bethesda, MD in 2015. Even though it was a reach, I dreamed about dancing for Hernández’s company. That night in Bethesda, I became enamorada of the colors, the technique, and the professionalism of the most famous dance company in Mexico. The female dancers, all tall, very thin, and, significantly, light-skinned, looked like Barbie dolls to me. For days, I daydreamed of their high battements in “Guerrero,” the lightness of their faldeo in “Jalisco,” and their pas de vals in “Revolución.” A few months later, I moved to Mexico City to audition for the company, but a quick visit to their website shattered my hopes in seconds. The section “Auditions” listed under “requirements”: “Estatura minima: mujeres 1.68 m” (Minimum height: women 5’5’’) [i] . I was four inches too short. I thought about the dancers I had seen perform and could not help but compare my short height to their statuesque bodies. A month or so later, I was dancing with the Ballet Folclórico Nacional de México de Silvia Lozano, a sixty-year-old-company founded by a former dancer of Hernández’s, Maestra Silvia Lozano. In rehearsals, it did not take long for me to start hearing chisme (gossip) about what it was like to work for other major folklórico companies in the city. I heard rumors that teachers and administrators in Hernández’s company bullied dancers if they had darker skin or were “overweight.” More interesting, however, was criticism about how Hernández’s works were not “authentic” or “traditional,” but, rather, highly stylized. All of this chisme reminded me of the dances I had witnessed in Bethesda. The cuadros (dance suites) were very beautifully executed, yes, but the technique, including the port de bras , the battements , the forward-carrying of the upper body, the lightness of the feet, the emphasis on turnout, and the precision of the turns, resembled that of classical ballet companies. The press deemed Hernández “La Emperatriz del Tesoro Mexicano del Folklor” (the Empress of the Mexican Treasure of Folklore) who brought to the world stage the “incomparable culture of Mexico” [ii] . How does Hernández’s use of Western, classical dance factor into these achievements? Moreover, how does Hernandez’s company sell the image of Mexico to the rest of the world? How does this legacy shape Mexican understandings of what it means to be Mexican? If her dances are not particularly “authentic,” then what claims to indigeneity, if any, does she have? And how did she acquire the indigenous dance material she has adapted to the stage? These and more questions started to pull apart a tapestry in my head, one I had constructed in my time as a ballet folklórico dancer with the images I believed to be a true representation of mexicanidad . Because I had performed with ballet folklórico companies in both Mexico and the United States, I thought of Hernández’s choreographic work as the footprint for folklórico dancers everywhere; her legacy extended across borders and with it, the way audiences perceived Mexican identity. This tapestry, however, was unraveling and to replace it, I was weaving together many ethical issues that this dance form brought up. As an artist-scholar, I began to question myself: how could I even begin to address these problem as a ballet folklórico dancer? Authoethnography México (expropriated) [iii] –– in Spanish, México (expropiado) ––is the result of an auto-ethnographic project that I began in 2019. [iv] An original evening-long piece of dance theatre, this work—which premiered as a web project in 2020, during the pandemic, and on stage in Mexico City in April 2022—is my attempt to rechoreograph the ballet folklórico form as established by Hernández through Practice as Research methodology (PaR) as delineated by Robin Nelson (2013) and Vida Midgelow (2018) [v] . Utilizing cabaret, contemporary dance, folklórico, zapateado (footwork) , flamenco, burlesque, and text, México (expropriated) seeks to re-appropriate ballet folklórico’s problematic images and characters of three different cuadros:“ Jalisco,” “La Danza del Venado,” and “Veracruz.” In this article, I will discuss the (re)creation of one of the characters featured in “Jalisco:” la china poblana . Following José Muñoz’s concept of disidentification as described in his book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics [vi] , I aim to complicate the politics of my mestizo body through my artistic work. Reflecting upon Muñoz’s theory on how identity has been “formed in response to the cultural logics of heteronormativity, white supremacy, and misogyny ––cultural logics that . . . work to undergrid state power,” [vii] I argue that these same notions have been thrust upon Mexican identity. Inspired by Muñoz’s theory, I explore the social imaginary of what it means to be Mexican and actively use choreographic and theatrical tools to disidentify from these hegemonic notions, specifically as they influenced the creation of the ballet folklórico form. Since disidentification is a “strategy that works on and against dominant ideology,” [viii] I use it to challenge the traditional elements of mexicanidad [ix] . By disidentifying from the ballet folklórico form, I am “working on and against” [x] the cultural structures that I learned from a discipline that trained my body and shaped my artistic practices during my time as a professional ballet folklórico dancer in Mexico and the United States. Throughout the process of creating México (expropriated) , my cast and I considered “what is it to dance Mexican?” [xi] By exploring tropes and characters of Mexican folklore such as la china poblana , el charro , el Venado , el Negrito , and la Mulata , we investigated what it means to perform authenticity and who, in reality, were the characters that contributed to the nationalist project of the postrevolutionary period, specifically as Amalia Hernández featured them in her world-famous repertory. Lastly, I sought to reclaim agency as a former ballet folklórico professional dancer by offering an alternative interpretation of these characters, one that would provide audiences with a playful yet cutting critique of the way we perform ballet folklórico within and outside of Mexico. Because ballet folklórico was created to consolidate a national identity, it serves to reinforce hegemonic notions of mexicanidad. México (expropriated) subverts stereotypes associated with Mexican identity, performatively unveils the unethical and inauthentic practices of ballet folklórico, and actively rejects heterosexist, racist, and homophobic gender roles embedded in both traditions. This article describes and analyzes the recreation of the character of la china poblana , while also reflecting on the changes the piece underwent in several versions of the project. Originally, I planned to present the work on stage in Austin, Texas in spring 2020, with a cast of Latinx performers. (See figure 1) . However the pandemic forced me to reconfigure the work as an interactive website. In 2022, I was able to stage the work (with a Mexican cast) at Teatro Benito Juárez in Mexico City as part of the City’s Department of Culture annual programming. (See figure 2) . Over the course of its production history, the piece transformed by way of medium, cast, audience, geographical location, language (English/Spanish to Spanish-only), and time [xii] . Left: Poster for Mexico (expropriated) by Jessica Peña Torres and the Ensemble. Photos by Juan Leyva. Design by Khristian Méndez Aguirre. March 2020. Right: Poster for Mexico (expropriado) by Jessica Peña Torres and Coctel Explosivo. Photo by Mona E. Avalos. April 2022 Synopsis It’s 1955 in Mexico City and Petra, a talented and well-connected dancer and choreographer, is starting a company to show the dances of Mexico as never seen before. In order to create her repertoire, she will need to teach the dancers of her company how to embody the characters that represent each of the different regions in Mexico. Jalisco Jalisco, a state in the Pacific coast, is the home of tequila, mariachis, and colonial histories. Besides being the “whitest” region of central Mexico, Jalisco’s folkloric dances have become the epitome of Mexican dance traditions. “El Jarabe Tapatío,” for instance, is one of the most frequently performed pieces in the repertoire of any ballet folklórico, from professional companies to amateur groups. Although these dances are certainly emblematic of Mexican identity, they perpetuate heteronormative gender roles through the characters of la china poblana and el charro. In this scene, we take these traditions and re-examine them through song and dance. Mexico City 2022 live performance script excerpt: PETRA David ¿Cuántas veces te tengo que repetir esto? ¿Qué es esto? Petra imita a David con movimientos burdos. PETRA Qué vergüenza contigo. Me hiciste pasar un momento muy difícil. El charro es macho. Con el pecho arriba. Firme. Seguro de su hombría. No con movimientos afeminados. Y Mary… ¿Sabes que estoy pensando? No. Claro que no lo sabes. Tantos años en un cabaret me hacen pensar que nunca podré sacar lo corriente de ti. La China Poblana es elegante, femenina… No me estés haciendo repetir las cosas. Ustedes saben muy bien lo que quiero. Quiero un baile bien ejecutado. No vulgaridades ¿No les da pena que los venga a ver un productor y ustedes bailen como amateurs de carpa? PETRA David, how many times do I have to repeat this to you? What is this? Petra imitates David with crude movements. PETRA How embarrassing of you. You put me through a very difficult time. El charro is macho. With his chest up. Firm. Sure of his manhood. Not with effeminate movements. And Mary… You know what I’m thinking? No. Of course you don’t. So many years in a cabaret make me think that I will never be able to get the ordinary out of you. La China Poblana is elegant, feminine… Don’t make me repeat myself. You know very well what I want. I want a well-executed dance. Not… vulgarities. Don’t you feel ashamed when a producer comes to see you and you dance like amateurs from a carpa? The choreography of folkloric dances in Mexico dates back to postrevolutionary times, specifically to the 1920s and 1930s. “Jarabe Tapatío,” known outside of Mexico as “Mexican Hat Dance” became Mexico’s national dance, with la china poblan a wearing tri-color hair bows (referencing the Mexican flag) and a colorful skirt embroidered with sequins depicting a national symbol (such as the eagle), and el charro in his mariachi hat. Most, if not all, professional and collegiate ballet folklórico companies have a version of the “Jarabe Tapatío” in their repertoire. The word “jarabe” means syrup, and “tapatío,” which comes from the Nahuátl word “Thapatiotl,” [xiii] is used to name people from the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital city. The dance originated from the “Guajolote,” a dance of the Huichol community where the male bird courts the female bird [xiv] . Similar to the “Guajolote,” in “Jarabe Tapatío” el charro , played by a male dancer, pursues la china poblana , played by a female dancer [xv] . “Jarabe Tapatío” is one of the works in ballet folklórico repertoires that perpetuates hegemonic gender roles in Mexican society. Maria del Carmen Vázquez Mantecón (2000) notes that la china poblana , as a symbol of Mexican identity, represented the “grace and virtue of the Mexican woman,” who served as the object of heterosexual male desire by balancing a dichotomy between wife or prostitute [xvi] . This character also appeared frequently in the writing of 19th-century authors who described her as a mestizo woman who did not conform to society standards but rather enjoyed the freedom of her love encounters. Similar to how la china poblana became a romanticized version of the Mexican woman, el charro became “the symbol of the ideal Mexican man” [xvii] . During the conquest, the Spanish brought horses to Mexico. Those who owned and knew how to ride these majestic animals were regarded as the upper class given their European ancestry. The hacendados (landowners) often knew how to break wild horses, ride them, and perform all sorts of tricks, a feat that reflected their male prowess and social standing. The patriarchal system of 19th century Mexico put men, regardless of class, in charge of women and children in the absence of the hacendado . As such, the vaqueros (horsemen) often learned how to execute these acts in spite of their socioeconomic class. This mixing of the upper, middle and lower classes in the charrería culture led to the formation of a male identity that denoted unity, an unbreakable code of ethics, and an unyielding bravery to defend the family and the hacienda [xviii] . After the revolution ended in 1920, a nationalistic discourse called for the romanticized construction of a specific image of el charro as a strong, skilled, hard-working man to represent male vigor. In ballet folklórico, this character came to represent masculine traits that were favored by the proponents of lo mexicano . As such, el charro often appeared “pursuing and ultimately capturing the woman” he partnered in the dance [xix] . To create material for my own iteration of the cuadro of “Jalisco,” specifically “Jarabe Tapatío,” the ensemble and I played with devised work. We created scenes that reflected the expectations that the social imaginary holds for Mexican women, especially as embodied by the character of la china poblana . The rehearsals led us into big and important discussions about the female body, as it relates to shape, size, and the color of the skin. For example, our work together inspired two of the 2020 cast members, Marina DeYoe-Pedraza and Erica Saucedo, to write a poem titled “Si yo fuera la china poblana” (If I was la china poblana ). Below is a short excerpt. MARINA Si yo fuera la china poblana I would… Go Wherever I want kill and eat whatever I find. Grow into una montaña alta y vasta Too dangerous to climb ERICA If you took all of our bones, Our bodies together … bones piled on bones. Bodies bodies cuerpos Bodies that …are not ours Que no han sido nuestros cuerpos for hundreds of years… (Breath) it’s been a long time since these brown bodies could walk down the street Soft supple MARINA Si yo fuera la china poblana I would be Un Escorpión. Defend myself by puncturing and poisoning those who try to smother me. Through vivid imagery, Marina and Erica explore the possibility of escaping stereotypes and reclaiming agency by becoming either a scorpion, a horse, or even a mountain, all too dangerous for men to dominate. Marina, for example, imagines her china poblana able to defend herself from all predators that mean to subdue her. Through this poem, the dancers overtly expresses their desire to be “whatever [they] wanted.” Embodying Marina and Erica’s words, the three women of the cast (who also included Venese Alcantar) dance solos that combine contemporary technique, footwork and tender yet assertive movement. They manipulate their skirts and play with the contrast of softness and coarseness through varied movements such as jumps and turns and small and big gestures. In the word “puncturing,” for example, the dancers put their foot down and squash one of la china poblana ’s metaphorical enemies. For the filmed version, we recorded the dancers’ voices reciting the poem and paired them with James Parker’s original music and filmed them dancing one at a time. We, then, played with video images of the three dancers (dancing as soloists), either one video of one dancer alone or sometimes two or three video/dancers superimposed. Since they often moved to the same choreography, the change from body to body, at times created the image of a palimpsest of the three women, generating the illusion that even though there were all different women, they shared common histories of oppression and a desire for freedom, and at times, revenge. (See figure 3). Marina DeYoe-Pedraza, Erica Saucedo and Venese Alcantar in México (expropriated) by Jessica Peña Torres and the Ensemble Photo still from video by Michael Bruner. The Vortex, Austin, TX. October 2020. For the 2022 staged version, I wanted to incorporate the new cast’s experiences around female agency. In rehearsal, we talked about their desires to be “whatever they wanted,” and everyone wrote what that prompt meant for them. I gathered their responses and sent them to a friend and poet, Mercy Medina Gonzalez, who wrote a new Spanish-language poem for the dancers to perform. Similar to the 2020 version, the dancers recorded their voices reciting the poem. For the live performances, the dancers moved to their own voices and words, poetically arranged by Mercy but embodied by them. It was their words, their voice, their bodies that we saw onstage. Below is an excerpt of the poem: TODAS Mujer. La Mujer Mexicana que ama y crea. Yo soy La China Poblana. La que entre las cortinas de sus temblores, busca el viento para alimentar sus alas. MARY Toma el suspiro del mundo por los cuernos, y conoce cómo llevarlo hasta las raíces del alma, a todas las esquinas que nos hacen hermosas. Si yo fuera ella, me enterraría bajo la tierra para crecer como mazorca blanda y aprender el nombre de los truenos. Sería curandera y bruja, el esperpento hecho verbo. Esa mujer canta conmigo. Yo soy La China Poblana ERICA La que escarba para hallar el murmullo de la tierra blanda y consume el ardor de los que se rindieron. No le teme ni a la sangre ni a los muertos y busca el aroma de las montañas más altas las cumbres del cielo que no toca; araña. Porque el mundo le debe plenitud y contento. LOLA La que es cuerpo mío y ajeno cuerpos de cuantas nos hemos caído la que nace de huesos y de ríos yo soy La China Poblana la serpiente que deja el cuello al pico de las águilas y el veneno de la araña cuando ataca un caballo que no se monta, un cuervo que arranca los ojos de quienes nos violentan. TODAS La que conoce la amargura de la luna y carga con la sombra de los ciclos. Con su cuerpo mustio es el canal del eterno ir y venir de los vivos. No se aguanta, se transforma en la fuerza de todas las cruces enterradas en carreteras y montes. ALL THE WOMEN Woman. The Mexican Woman that loves and creates. I am La China Poblana. The one that between the curtains of her tremors, seeks the wind to feed her wings. MARY She takes the sigh of the world by the horns, and knows how to take it to the roots of the soul, to all the corners that make us beautiful. If I were her, I would bury myself under the ground to grow as soft cob and learn the name of thunder. I would be a healer and a witch, the grotesque made verb. That woman sings with me. I am La China Poblana ERICA The one who digs to find the murmur of the soft earth and consume the ardor of those who surrendered. She is not afraid of blood or the dead and seeks the scent of the highest mountains, the peaks of heaven that she does not touch; scratches. Because the world owes her fullness and contentment. LOLA The one that is my body and someone else’s bodies of how many we have fallen. The one that is born of bones and rivers I am La China Poblana the serpent that leaves the neck of the eagles beak and the venom of the spider when it attacks a horse that does not ride, a crow that plucks out the eyes of those who violate us. ALL THE WOMEN The one who knows the bitterness of the moon and carries the shadow of the cycles. With her withered body, it is the channel of the eternal coming and going of the living. She doesn’t endure, she becomes the force of all the crosses buried in roads and mountains. (See figure 4). Andrea Rubí Santillán, Samantha Romero Peña, Miriam Garma, and Ileana Díaz Manzur in México (expropiado) by Jessica Peña Torres and Coctel Explosivo. Photo by Ricardo Antonio Ramos. Teatro Benito Juárez, Mexico City. April 2022 In both the 2020 and the 2022 version, our recreation of the character of la china poblana aims to provoke the audience’s affect by simultaneously reproducing visual and aural performances of female agency. Through the evocative descriptions pronounced by the women of the cast through their bodies and voices, we hoped to touch the audience’s sensibilities and make them wonder what it would be like if women could, in fact, be whatever they wanted. Utilizing text and contemporary dance, I sought to to dis-identify from folklórico dance traditions, specifically those inscribed in performances of the character of la china poblana. Conclusion Colorful lights, elegant costumes, presentational smiles and headpieces that not even Lady Gaga could dream of… ballet folklórico offers its audience a taste of Mexico’s regional and cultural diversity. Through my auto-ethnographical project that explores, among other themes, the politics of my mestizo body, I conclude that ballet folklórico desperately needs to be re-choreographed to reflect its colonial history of cultural appropriation and exoticization . I believe that professional, collegiate, and amateur companies of the form should revisit the way they incorporate the pieces of the canon into their repertory if they wish to stop perpetuating racist, heterosexist, classist, and unethical images of the diverse regions of Mexico. When audiences think about Mexico, they often think of the distinct mariachi music, the strong charros , the beautiful china poblana , and many other images that were conceived as components of mexicanidad in postrevolutionary Mexico. These images, however, continue to paint a romanticized vision of Mexico that has never existed. As a millennial coming of age in Reynosa, Tamaulipas ––known for making the headlines of major newspapers as an incubator for cartel violence and drugs–– I think of an alternative image of Mexico to the one painted through a full-length concert of ballet folklórico. Just in 2020, for instance, the number of femicides in my home country increased to an alarming 10 per day. Ballet folklórico does not present this reality, nor the one lived by the many marginalized communities in Mexico; there’s no room for the bad and the ugly in this form. Through Mexico (expropriated) , I aimed to re-choreograph three pieces in the folklórico canon and complicate hegemonic images of mexicanidad. By deconstructing stereotypes of the nation as they relate to gender, race, and class, I aimed to dis-identify from the ballet folklórico form to complicate the discussion of what it means to be Mexican in the 21 st century. Borrowing from contemporary dance, flamenco, jazz, hip hop, and burlesque, I reclaim the agency of my own body to re-choreograph cuadros such as “Jalisco ” and recreate characters such as la china poblana. References [i] “Audiciones,” Ballet Folklórico de México de Amalia Hernández, Accessed November 22, 2018. http://balletfolkloricodemexico.com.mx. [ii] TheCharlieRoll, “Amalia Hernández y el Ballet Folklórico de México – Entrevista y Documental de 1992,” YouTube, October 26, 2017, video, http://youtube.com/watch?v=hOPBBPR-G5Y [iii] My master’s thesis “México (expropriated): Appropriation, Representation, and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico,” which I authored in the Spring 2020 to graduate from the Performance as Public Practice program at the University of Texas at Austin, explored the ballet folklórico dance form in imagining lo mexicano by focusing on Ballet Folklórico de México, Mexico’s leading and most influential company. I argued that BFM has helped the state and the social elite shape an exoticized Mexico for the consumption of foreigners and tourists, and has, within Mexico, offered a problematic embodiment of mexicanidad that reflects racial, nationalistic, class, and gender biases. In addition, I considered Hernández flawed ethnographic methodology which included appropriating and stylizing folk dances through the infusion of ballet and modern dance techniques. The company presents these dances as “authentic” to its paying audiences, and does not offer any reciprocity, support, or acknowledgment to the communities from which Hernández “borrowed” these dances. In addition, her legacy has and continues to permeate many dance companies who imitate BFM’s dances, inadvertently reproducing a colonialist model of exoticization and cultural theft. [iv] Very much inspired by Astrid Hadad’s 2019 performance of Hecha in Mexico , I developed México (expropriated) to satirize stereotypical notions of mexicanidad as imagined by Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike. Like Hadad, I aim to make a feminist intervention in national discourses of mexicanidad as developed in the postrevolutionary period . [v] As Nelson explains, in PaR methodology the doing becomes the knowing . In other words, by dancing, choreographing, writing, and performing México (expropriated) , I am both researching and providing evidence of my research inquiry. As Midgelow suggests, a PaR approach allows artist/scholars to explore the process of creating work as just as significant as the performance of that work before a live audience. [vi] José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minnesota : University of Minnesota Press, 1999). [vii] Muñoz, “Disidentifications,” 5. [viii] Muñoz, “Disidentifications,” 11. [ix] In Chapter 5 “La Moda Mexicana: Exotic Women,” of Imagining la Chica Moderna : Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917-1936 (2008) Joanne Hershfield explores the concept of mexicanidad , the state’s attempt to construct a national identity at the beginning of the 20th century. Exploiting the richness of indigenous cultures, she argues that intellectuals and politicians forged an “authentic” image of Mexico, the “domestic exotic,” rooted in stereotypes of indigenous communities, which the nation then used for capitalist consumption. [x] Muñoz, “Disidentifications,” 11. [xi] I am influenced by my advisor and Professor Rebecca Rossen, whose book, Dancing Jewish (2014), includes three sections that describe an auto-ethnographic dance project for which she asked two of her subjects to make her a “Jewish” dance. Similarly, in México (expropriated) , I explore notions of mexicanidad, as I actively think over the question “what is it to dance Mexican?” Moreover, in Dancing Jewish , Rossen argues that Jewish choreographers negotiate ethnicity and gender in tandem, while challenging “traditional models for femininity (or masculinity); advance social and political agendas; and imagine radical new possibilities for themselves as individuals, artists, and Jews.” Similarly, I argue that mexicanidad is a construction of hegemonic images that contain complex syntheses of gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, and class. Through the process of creating and performing this work, we have been able to imagine new possibilities to stage mexicanidad . [xii] An important change from the filmed to the staged version is that we increased the number of roles from six to eight. For the filmed version, there were six performers including Venese Alcantar (“Veni”), David Cruz (“David”), Marina DeYoe-Pedraza (“Mari”), Jesus Valles (“EMCEE”), Erica Saucedo (“Eri”), and myself (“Pari”). For the staged version, we created three new characters, which featured Mexico City-based performers: José David Carrera Piñón (“Sebastian”), Miriam Garma (“Lola”), Daniel Losoya (”Narrador”), Ileana Manzur (“Veni” became “Vanessa”), Roberto Mosqueda (“David”), Samantha Romero (“Erica”), Andrea Rubí (“Mary”), and myself (“Pari” became “Petra”). Lastly, for the Mexico City live performance I was able to expand the creative team, which included costume designer Edurne Fernández, technical director Pedro Pazarán, and scenic designer Gisselle Gómez Rivera. Composer James Parker created the score for both versions. Another big change from film to stage was the narrative structure of the piece. The filmed version consisted of five separate viñetas (vignettes) following an episodic narrative form. Although the characters appeared through the different scenes, there was no unifying narrative between each separate viñeta. For the Spanish-only/staged adaptation, I worked with filmmaker and screenwriter Nina Chávez Góngora to re-develop the script for the staged version, which read more like a play with numerous dance pieces, often interrupted by the EMCEE, “Narrador.” Adapting the piece to include a unifying narrative throughout gave audiences a stronger chance to connect with the characters, which in turn led to a more effective way to communicate our critique. [xiii] Cashion, quoted in Lawrence Alan Trujillo, The Spanish Influence On the Mexican Folkdance of Yucatán, Veracruz, And Jalisco, Mexico. (Denver: Dart Publications, 1974), 55. [xiv] Lawrence Alan Trujillo, The Spanish Influence On the Mexican Folkdance of Yucatán, Veracruz, And Jalisco, Mexico. (Denver: Dart Publications, 1974), 58. [xv] Sydney Hutchinson, “The Ballet Folklórico de México and the Construction of the Mexican Nation through Dance,” in Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos . (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 209. [xvi] , María del Carmen Vázquez Mantecón, “La China Mexicana, Mejor Conocida Como China Poblana,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 22, no. 77 (2000): 124. [xvii] Gabriela Mendoza-García, “The Jarabe Tapatío: Imagining Race, Nation, Class, and Gender in 1920s Mexico,” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity , edited by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 319. [xviii] Olga Nájera Ramírez, “Engendering Nationalism: Identity, Discourse, and the Mexican Charro, ” Anthropological Quarterly 67, no. 1 (1994): 4. [xix] Nájera Ramírez, “Engendering Nationalism,” 7. Bibliography “Audiciones.” Ballet Folklórico de México de Amalia Hernández. Accessed November 22, 2018. http://balletfolkloricodemexico.com.mx. Hershfield, Joanne. Imagining La Chica Moderna Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917-1936. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Hutchinson, Sydney. “The Ballet Folklórico de México and the Construction of the Mexican Nation through Dance.” In Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos, edited by Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Norma E. Cantú, and Brenda M. Romero. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Mendoza.García, Gabriela. “The Jarabe Tapatío: Imagining Race, Nation, Class, and Gender in 1920s Mexico.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity , edited by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young, 319-343 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Midgelow, Vida. Practice-as-Research. United Kingdom: 2018. Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Nájera Ramírez, Olga. “Engendering Nationalism: Identity, Discourse, and the Mexican Charro .” Anthropological Quarterly 67, no. 1, (1994): 1-14. Nelson, Robin. Practice as Research in the Arts : Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances / Written and Edited by Robin Nelson, Director of Research, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Peña Torres, Jessica. “México (expropriated): Appropriation, Representation and Re- Choreography of Ballet Folklórico.” Austin: University of Texas at Austin, 2020. Rossen, Rebecca. Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. TheCharlieRoll. “Amalia Hernández y el Ballet Folklórico de México – Entrevista y Documental de 1992.” YouTube. October 26, 2017. Video. http://youtube.com/watch?v=hOPBBPR-G5Y. Trujillo, Lawrence Alan. The Spanish Influence On the Mexican Folkdance of Yucatán, Veracruz, And Jalisco, Mexico. Denver: Dart Publications, 1974. Vázquez Mantecón, María del Carmen. “La China Mexicana, Mejor Conocida Como China Poblana.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 22, no. 77, (2000): 123-150. Footnotes About The Author(s) JESSICA L. PEÑA TORRES (she/her) is a dance/theatre artist and emerging scholar focused on Mexican identity and performance. She graduated from The University of Texas—Pan American with a B.A. in Dance and Theatre and from the University of Texas at Austin with an M.A. in Performance as Public Practice, where she is now pursuing a Ph.D. At UT Austin, Peña Torres continues to study the intersection between nationalism and the performing arts in postrevolutionary Mexico. With her company, Coctel Explosivo, Peña Torres produces dance-theatre works that explore this intersection. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch QUEENDOM by Agniia Galdanova at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. Like a young David Bowie from another planet, the whole world is one giant catwalk for intrepid 21-year-old queer artist Gena. She grew up in the far reaches of Russia, in a town built on top of an old gulag camp. Today, she stages her radical performances in supermarkets, metro stations and in the middle of Moscow streets in an alternative protest against the way LGBTQ+ people are treated in Putin’s extremely conservative Russia. People shout at her, and Gena calmly responds. With never-failing support from her grandmother, she acts out all the creatures that live inside her through her spectacular costumes, which she often makes out of tape and junk. Agniia Galdanova’s beautiful and atmospheric film is not so much a portrait as it is a direct cinematic extension of Gena’s inner universe. In other words, a film in the field between art and activism, between documentary and science fiction, and between an old and a young Russia. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents QUEENDOM At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Agniia Galdanova Documentary, Performance Art This film will be screened in-person on May 16th About The Film Country United States / France Language Russian, English Running Time 98 minutes Year of Release 2023 Like a young David Bowie from another planet, the whole world is one giant catwalk for intrepid 21-year-old queer artist Gena. She grew up in the far reaches of Russia, in a town built on top of an old gulag camp. Today, she stages her radical performances in supermarkets, metro stations and in the middle of Moscow streets in an alternative protest against the way LGBTQ+ people are treated in Putin’s extremely conservative Russia. People shout at her, and Gena calmly responds. With never-failing support from her grandmother, she acts out all the creatures that live inside her through her spectacular costumes, which she often makes out of tape and junk. Agniia Galdanova’s beautiful and atmospheric film is not so much a portrait as it is a direct cinematic extension of Gena’s inner universe. In other words, a film in the field between art and activism, between documentary and science fiction, and between an old and a young Russia. In press notes About The Artist(s) in press notes Get in touch with the artist(s) igormyakotin@gmail.com and follow them on social media 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

Research The Martin E. Segal Theater Center is committed to supporting research about theatre and the performing arts in a myriad of ways, through written scholarly enquiries as well as audio-visual documentation of artist talks, performances, interviews, and more. Our rich archive includes practitioners from United States as well as international performing arts landscape. All material and media published by The Segal Center is made available for free on our website. Books The Segal Centre supports the creation, editing, translation and distribution of books that explore scholarly, practice and multifacted criticism of key areas and developments in the performing arts. Explore Books Visiting Scholars Program The fellowships offer theatre scholars 3-6 months of research in NYC. They get workspaces, library access, and opportunities to collaborate with other fellows, faculty, and students on their research. Explore Program Segal Talks Featuring conversations with performing arts professionals from all over the world, our Segal Talks aim to capture a cultural Weltzustand ie State of the World. Explore Talks Journals The Segal Publication Wing includes three open-access digital journals, namely Arab Stages, European Stages and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre. The journals are all available for FREE online to a global readership. Explore Journals

Elizabeth M. Cizmar Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 2 Visit Journal Homepage Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble Elizabeth M. Cizmar By Published on May 12, 2021 Download Article as PDF Ernie McClintock (1937–2003), director, acting teacher, and producer, grounded his work in the Black Power concepts of self-determination and community, but in pursuing a more inclusive theatre company, he departed from common practices of the Black Arts Movement. This departure can be attributed to his queer positionality, which has left him on the fringes of Black Arts Movement scholarship. McClintock founded four institutions: in Harlem, the Afro-American Studio for Acting & Speech (est. 1966), the 127 th Street Repertory Ensemble (est. 1973), and the Jazz Theatre of Harlem (est. 1986); and in Richmond, Virginia, the Jazz Actors Theatre (est. 1991). A landmark Black theatre institution, the 127 th Street Repertory Ensemble ran from 1973 to 1986, demonstrating that the spirit and work of the Black Arts Movement extended well beyond 1975, the generally accepted end date of the movement. Over more than four decades in socially and politically charged environments, McClintock established actor training rooted in Afrocentricity, [1] teaching Jazz Acting in the classroom and the rehearsal hall, which he considered an important training ground for actors. In this article, I argue that McClintock’s theatre subverted two established norms: the English repertory model and the male-dominated, heteronormative representations of the Black Arts Movement. McClintock’s legacy challenges assumptions that the Black Arts Movement was broadly misogynist and homophobic. Therefore, my work is in conversation with scholars who aim to dispel such assumptions including La Donna Forsgren, Khalid Yaya Long, Mike Sell, and James Smethurst. In the early 1980s, McClintock continued to produce Black revolutionary drama, such as Amiri Baraka’s one acts, while incorporating queer, womanist, and Afro-Caribbean voices into his seasons. The trilogy of plays performed in 1982, a pinnacle season for McClintock, exhibits progressive inclusion while upholding Black Power’s principles of self-determination and community. The 127 th Street Rep wanted to represent what Paul Carter Harrison calls the “kaleidoscope” of African diasporic memory. [2] By bringing queer, Afro-Caribbean, and womanist voices together into one space, McClintock’s theatre displayed a rich variety of Blackness. Black revolutionary drama stood side by side in his classroom and in his season planning with these more diverse voices, demonstrating that there was room for inclusive practices in the Black Power movement. These inclusive practices relate to his versatile season selection programming but also extended to his casting practices. McClintock employed actors from a variety of backgrounds and identities who were often left on the fringes of the Black Theatre Movement including queer artists, immigrants, and Harlem residents who, prior to joining McClintock’s company, broke the law to make ends meet. Rather than approaching his company as a monolithic representation of Blackness, he invited each actor to leverage who they were as individuals while simultaneously acknowledged overlaps of experience within the “kaleidoscope”. His productions answered the movement’s call to establish institutions outside the white gaze and use theatre as a mode of social change in Black communities. However, as an openly gay man, whose long-term partner, Ronald Walker, was also his technical director, McClintock stood as an outlier in the movement. Marc Primus, historian and co-founder of the Afro-American Studio, noted in an interview that he, Walker, and McClintock were “twice-marginalized” for being Black and gay. [3] Ernie McClintock’s legacy provides a history of early Black queer activism in the theatre within a movement that was not known for embracing the LGBTQIA+ community. Although homophobic attitudes were common in the Black Power movement, as they were across the United States, McClintock’s career and biography, relationships with other artists, acting technique, and groundbreaking productions dispel notions of monolithic homophobia in Harlem in the 1960s. The 1982 season emblematizes McClintock’s Afrocentric aesthetic, leveraging and revising the repertory model as a pathway for inclusion. McClintock made subversive choices, amplifying voices often left out of the Black Arts Movement, including Afro-Caribbean, Black womanist, and queer Black masculine ones. This essay uses the 127 th Street Repertory Ensemble’s 1982 season to analyze how jazz aesthetics upended the English repertory model. This season included Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967), Ntozake Shange’s Spell #7 (1979), and Peter Shaffer’s Equus (1973). “We Respectfully Challenge You”: Subverting the English Repertory Model Jazz Acting, a technique and directorial strategy, affords performers the opportunity to consider shared experiences while also celebrating individuality. William J. Harris identifies the jazz aesthetic as “a procedure that uses jazz variations as paradigms for the conversions of white poetic and social ideas into black ones,” [4] disrupting hegemonic structures and promoting Black modes of expression. Just as the jazz aesthetic converted white ideas, McClintock subverted the English repertory model, which allowed him to emphasize multiple Black perspectives in a given season, transforming a white institution into a Black one. Developed in the early twentieth century, repertory theatre is defined as “plays in rotation . . . offered to the public on a regularly changing basis.” [5] A company will typically perform a different play each night, supplemented by premieres of new plays. Repertory theatres in Europe and the United States did not typically produce plays by Black playwrights. Figure 1: 127th Street Repertory Ensemble’s 1982 season poster Source: Errol Hill Collection, Dartmouth College The plays produced at the 127 th Street Rep over twelve seasons [6] were discordant with white narratives; the 1982 season featured Afro-Caribbean, womanist, and queer voices. These representations were uncommon in both the white Western theatrical tradition and the Black Theatre Movement. Equus , for example, was written by a British playwright, but McClintock revised the story to center on Black queer sexuality in the US. Although other companies produced Walcott’s dream play and Shange’s homage to Black city life, it was rare to have all these voices represented under one roof, tying together themes of dreams, desperation, and desire (see figure 1). In publicity materials, McClintock states: We present theatre that is INTRIGUING, STIMULATING, PROVOCATIVE, RELEVANT, and TRUTHFUL. The same as most Black theatres. But, our way of presenting is the big difference. We give you BEAUTY, STYLE, DARING, SURPRISES, CONTROVERSY, SENSUALITY along with high artistic standards. In other words, our theatre is IMMEDIATE, TODAY, VITAL,VIVID, AND VIRILE. We respectfully challenge you to three (3) daring adult evenings of dreams, desperation and desire.[7] The plays from the period traditionally understood to frame the Black Arts Movement, 1965–1975, embraced a Black revolutionary philosophy advanced by Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal. Amiri Baraka’s The Revolutionary Theatre , published in 1965, foregrounds both the aesthetic and the tangible, calling for artists of African descent to come together and create art that connects to a Black cultural, spiritual, and historical dimension and works to destroy “the white thing.” [8] Neal famously quotes Don L. Lee, saying, “[w]e must destroy Faulkner, dick, jane [ sic ], and other perpetuators of evil. It’s time for Du Bois, Nat Turner, and Kwame Nkrumah…” A hypermasculine attitude began to overshadow the revolutionary acts of these artists, and much of the literature and theatre of the Black Arts Movement included homophobic slurs and violence against women. [9] Whatever the levels of misogyny and homophobia within in the movement, it is irrefutable that queer plays were largely absent from other well-known Black Theatre Movement institutions such as the New Lafayette Theatre, the New Federal Theatre, and the Negro Ensemble Company. McClintock’s queer positionality provided a unique vantage point to create space for Black actors of various backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations. The 1982 theatre season drew crowds to the Renny Theatre in Harlem, earning the ensemble nineteen AUDELCO [10] nominations (see figure 2). Dreams, Desperation, and Desire in Harlem Dream on Monkey Mountain takes place on a nameless Caribbean island where Makak, a prisoner, has been conditioned by colonizers to disparage his race. In the end, he beheads a white apparition that has been haunting him and frees himself from his infatuation with whiteness. Dream’s inclusion challenged monolithic notions of Black identity, but McClintock’s inclusive practices did not stop at play selection; they also extended to the makeup of his ensemble. McClintock’s production included Afro-Caribbean actors, who were not typically hired in peer institutions. Figure 2: 127th Street Repertory Ensemble’s 1982 AUDELCO Award nominations Source: Errol Hill Collection, Dartmouth College Lola Louis, an actor from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, earned several AUDELCO nominations during her tenure at the 127 th Street Rep, including best actress for Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (1957). In an interview, Louis emphasized that other directors did not typically include Caribbean plays in their seasons, let alone cast Caribbean actors. For Dream, McClintock asked Louis to devise a silent character so her perspective could be included in the story, which was written as an all-male cast. To prepare, Louis implemented Jazz Acting character observations, walking the streets of Harlem and observing homeless folks. She described the character she developed as constantly in motion, “fishing through things and looking at people.” [11] The audience recognized this character as belonging to Harlem, although the play was rooted in West Indian culture. To incorporate a female character on the margins of society further complicated and enriched Walcott’s play, and, for McClintock, was part of the “kaleidoscope” of his Harlem community. McClintock’s unorthodox vision of Dream yielded praise from the critics. Lionel Mitchell’s NY Amsterdam review stated, “‘Dream on Monkey Mountain’ reveals a fine rep company.” [12] He goes on to say that the ensemble is “an excellent group that has done a tremendous amount of homework, and who, despite slim grants and money problems, persists in doing some of the best theatre going!” [13] Mitchell’s review and the praise he received from critics and audiences demonstrated the success of McClintock’s directorial aesthetic. McClintock chose a play that provided an Afro-Caribbean perspective, cast actors not typically hired, and devised an additional character who was an outlier in society. By casting an immigrant actor to play a devised homeless character, McClintock instituted the inclusive practice of considering actors and figures typically left on the margins of society. His eccentric practices paid off, earning the 127 th Street Repertory Ensemble five AUDELCO nominations, including a nomination for Lola Louis for Best Supporting Actress. Womanist poet-playwright Ntozake Shange describes her play Spell #7 , which focuses on Black women’s experiences, as “in the throes of pain and sensation experienced by my characters responding to the involuntary constriction of their humanity.” [14] Shange’s piece centers on a group of nine young actors, dancer-singers, and writers guided by a magician in coming to terms with their identities in a white supremacist society and embracing the richness of their Blackness. During the height of the Black Theatre Movement, women playwrights were largely left out of neighboring theatres, but from his early days of teaching in 1966, McClintock saw immense value in bringing a womanist perspective to the Harlem theatre community. One of the most memorable aspects of McClintock’s production of Spell #7 is its focus on Black women’s relationship to beauty. In reaction against the trend of processed hair in the 1940s and 1950s, the 1960s saw a reawakening of Africanity as many women and men celebrated their African roots, fashioning dashikis and Pan-African styles along with natural Afros and textured hair. Shange explores this dilemma of beauty as it relates to Black authenticity and femininity. Yusef A. Salaam acknowledged this in his review: “an antidote which says that the African woman/African nation must look in the mirror and start liking what she/it sees.” [15] Jazz Acting asks actors to integrate their lived experiences into character creation so the performers enriched their characters with their own experiences as Black women. McClintock’s experience as both a queer man and a proponent of Black nationalism living in a white supremacist system helped him straddle these binaries. Trust is an essential component of Jazz Acting. Members of the ensemble must trust each other if they are to feel safe to bring their own lived experiences to their art. McClintock’s breathing and articulation exercises were designed not merely to teach actors how to project on stage but also to help them develop the self-confidence to access their individual voices. Bolanyle Edwards, who portrayed maxine in Spell #7 , explained that voice training “was part of his technique to loosen up the articulators and to breathe. It’s getting in touch with who you are.” [16] This approach countered commonly held ideas about what constituted “a good voice.” McClintock states, “Contrary to the beliefs of some, it is not ‘white’ or ‘European’ to speak well. At the same time, the Black idiom should be used as much as possible but the actor must theatricalize his vocal efforts.” [17] In McClintock’s production, the actors focused on finding rhythm and tempo from a place of individual truth to theatricalize vocal expression. As the third play in rep, McClintock’s production of Equus revised a white European play to tell a story of Black queer sexuality. The Black Theatre Movement offered a paucity of plays exploring Black queer sexuality, so McClintock reimagined Shaffer’s Broadway hit with a dual focus on the Black Power principles of self-determination and community. Equus became a story about Black repressed sexuality and, in certain moments, showed audiences the beauty of male queer sexuality and the inner struggle of a gay teenage boy in a fundamentalist household. The actors executed this vision through both ensemble work and self-expression. The bold choice to bring this taboo subject matter about a marginalized group to the stage astonished audiences, and theatre patrons made the pilgrimage to Harlem to witness Gregory Wallace play Alan Strang and see the six nearly naked Black men who played the ensemble of horses. Part of the production’s depth is attributed to the absence of a Black buck stereotype, [18] a stereotype that suggests Black men are barbaric, aggressive, and feral. As Cornel West explains, “White fear of Black sexuality is a basic ingredient of white racism.” [19] Instead, McClintock understood the relationship between Alan and his favorite horse, Nugget (played by Jerome Preston Bates), as a tragedy of repression and oppression interspersed with moments of reverence for the Black body. In an important departure from the Broadway version and in a move crucial to subverting the Black buck stereotype, the horses did not wear masks. By unmasking the horses and providing space for the actors’ self-expression, McClintock created nuance and humanity instead of a one-dimensional stereotype of sexual aggression. The staging of the production reflected jazz aesthetics by converting “white poetic and social ideas into black ones.” [20] An essential component of jazz is the work of creation, and this directorial style brought this into every aspect of the theatre. McClintock’s actors recall that this creative experimentation with the work never stopped, even in production. For example, in a rehearsal one week prior to opening, McClintock blasted jazz music to create a sexually charged environment. [21] The director also staged Equus in a way that maintained focus on the ensemble, having all the actors sit on the edge of the stage in plain sight of the audience. [22] This staging emphasized the collective rather than the individual, standing in opposition to the star-centric productions on Broadway. [23] McClintock’s aesthetic valued process over product, a stark contrast to commercial theatre that uses rigid blocking to ensure theatre goers have the same performance night after night. Conclusion The 127 th Street Repertory Ensemble’s productions in the early 1980s reveal that McClintock’s play selection and directorial approach modeled a more inclusive theatrical enterprise. Inclusion extended to Black women, queer folks, and Afro-Caribbean identities. Through jazz aesthetics and the revision of the English repertory model into a Black repertory theatre, McClintock brought together three plays representing three distinct Black perspectives while still remaining firmly rooted in Black nationalist precepts of self-determination and community. McClintock revolutionized the model to present a multiplicity of identities and challenged the actors to navigate the nuances of those identities through the practice of Jazz Acting. By featuring Dream on Monkey Mountain , Spell #7 , and Equus , McClintock expanded the possibilities of Black theatre and welcomed marginalized voices, offering artists and educators a model for our own artistic and pedagogical practices References [1] Molefi Kete Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, rev. and exp. ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), xiii. Afrocentricity is defined as placing African ideals at the center of any study of African culture and behavior, situating Africans as subjects rather than objects of human history. [2] Paul Carter Harrison, Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 7. [3] Marc Primus, Interview by Elizabeth Cizmar, August 25, 2015. [4] William J. Harris, The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), 13. [5] George Rowell and Anthony Jackson, The Repertory Movement: A History of Regional Theatre in Britain (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1. [6] Ernie McClintock Resume. 2000. Box 53, Folder 11. Barksdale Theatre Records, 1945–2006 (bulk 1954–2004). Accession 41088, Business Records Collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. [7] Publicity materials from the Private Collection of Geno Brantley. [8] Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement,” Drama Review 4, no. 12. (Summer 1968): 30, doi: 10.2307/1144377. [9] Scholars such as La Donna Forsgren have uncovered the critical contributions women made to the Black Arts Movement. Women such as Sonia Sanchez, Barbara Ann Teer, J. E. Franklin, Martie Evans-Charles, and others advanced Black feminist and womanist perspectives within the Black Nationalist movement. See In Search of Our Warrior Mothers and Sistuhs in the Struggle . [10] Vivian Robinson established the AUDELCO organization in 1973 to support the performing arts in Black communities, with annual awards acknowledging excellence in Black theatre. AUDELCO has continued to produce an annual award show in Harlem to honor African American achievements in theatre. McClintock was a co-organizer of the first AUDELCO ceremony, held at the Afro-American Studio for Speech & Acting. For more information, see www.audelco.org. [11] Lola Louis, Interview by Elizabeth Cizmar, September 2, 2015. [12] Lionel Mitchell, “Dream on Monkey Mountain Reveals Fine Rep Company,” NY Amsterdam , July 24, 1982, 36. [13] Mitchell, “Monkey Mountain,” 36. [14] Ntozake Shange, Three Pieces (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 69. [15] Yusef A. Salaam, “Spell #7 : Antidote for Abuse of Black Image,” NY Amsterdam , July 3, 1982, 34. [16] Bolanyle Edwards, Interview by Elizabeth Cizmar, August 25, 2015. [17] Ernie McClintock, “Perspective on Black Acting,” Black World May 1974, 79–85. [18] Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons , Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks (New York: Continuum, 2001), 10. Donald Bogle traces stereotypes from their inception to contemporary manifestations. Bogle argues that Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation cemented this stereotype in the social conscience. [19] Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 86. [20] Harris, Poetry and Poetics , 13. [21] Gregory Wallace, Interview by Elizabeth Cizmar, September 16, 2015. [22] Abiola Sinclair, “McClintock’s ‘Equus’ in Theatrical ‘Mane-Stream,’” NY Amsterdam , August 7, 1982, 50. [23] John Gruen, “Equus Makes a Star,” New York Times, October 27, 1974, 1. Footnotes About The Author(s) ELIZABETH M. CIZMAR Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf ISNN 2376-4236 Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Rosa Schneider Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 1 Visit Journal Homepage “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Rosa Schneider By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF A hush falls over the previously raucous crowd as the image projected across the wall of Theatre for a New Audience and onto the bodies of the actors on stage suddenly becomes clear. The famous photograph of the August 7, 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana, fills the space. Shipp and Smith hang from a tree in the background, while in the foreground a huge crowd of white spectators smile, point at the bodies, and make eye contact with the photographer. As the audience watches in mute horror, the projection is manipulated so that Smith and Shipp’s bodies appear to sway in the trees, bringing immediacy to a decades-old event. It is within and against this backdrop that BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant, the three most versatile characters in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (2014), attempt to stage a lynch trial on the docks of a Louisiana town for Wahnotee, a Native American accused of murdering a black child. The photograph of this particularly brutal twentieth-century lynching deepens the action on stage, occurring in the 1850s of the original play. These innovations force the audience to become complicit in the trial and its bloody aftermath and simultaneously bring the audience as close to a sensation of death as possible without burning the theatre down around them. [1] This eye-catching and difficult scene, which I call reconstruction, is a key part of Jacobs-Jenkins’ compilation of theatrical techniques. Collectively, these techniques teach Jacobs-Jenkins’s twenty-first-century audience to respond both on a theatrical and a racial level in order to work in a manner they would not have been able to otherwise. Jacobs-Jenkins manipulates melodramatic structures— such as the sensation scene, tableau, and what in this article I term melodrama’s gaze—that play upon and reimagine the history of melodrama in the United States. These changes not only alter the way slavery’s violence is portrayed on stage but make melodrama comprehensible to a twenty-first-century audience unused to the genre’s demands. These reconstructions allow Jacobs-Jenkins to transform Dion Boucicault’s wildly influential melodrama The Octoroon into his own version, An Octoroon . The two plays follow essentially the same plot, but Jacobs-Jenkins makes crucial changes to the universe of The Octoroon, particularly to the characters. Jacobs-Jenkins removes many of the white characters, notably the majority of Boucicault’s plantation owners, while consolidating those he keeps. George Peyton, the new owner of Terrebonne (the plantation on which both plays take place), is merged with Salem Scudder, the well-meaning but destructive Northern overseer of Boucicault’s original, who feels particularly protective of Zoe, the eponymous octoroon. [2] George inherits Scudder’s interest in technology, particularly photography, maintaining an important plot point and gateway to the sensation scene. [3] Cuts such as these are logical, as the removed figures emphasize previously established power structures. However, these changes then create a lack of economic diversity, as the white characters who remain all belong to the upper echelons of slave-owning society. That separation makes even starker the divisions between the enslaved and laboring African-American characters and the white leisure class. Further, the elimination of characters like Scudder, Judge Caillou, and Jules Thibodeaux narrows the universe of the melodrama. Rather than showing “life in Louisiana,” which is Boucicault’s subtitle, with Terrebonne as one of a network of plantations, Jacobs-Jenkins’ edits make the plantation a world unto itself. As we shall explore at greater length below, Jacobs-Jenkins also makes significant changes to the ending of The Octoroon . Thus, with changes to character, plot, and form, Jacobs-Jenkins walks a fine line in An Octoroon between rewriting a singular play and reconstructing an entire genre. It is difficult to overstate the importance of melodrama as a theatrical form in the nineteenth-century American landscape. Between 1820 and 1870, melodrama was ubiquitous in American culture, attracting diverse audiences “from elite males to urban workers and business- class women, by the time of the Civil War.” [4] Cutting across class and racial lines, melodrama served as a location for audiences to project their hopes and assuage their fears of a rapidly changing society. The theatres and the plots explored therein served as a training ground for business-class audiences to “acquire, rehearse, and perfect the manners of polite society.” [5] Knowing this history helps us to understand the effect of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstructions. As part of this reconstruction, Jacobs-Jenkins chooses several tools that are essential to melodrama, including the sensation scene, the tableau, acting styles, and staging methods, and then fundamentally changes their core by altering melodrama’s gaze. “Melodrama’s gaze” refers to what could be included on stage in these productions: the plotlines that were of interest to the consumers and creators, the characters who could embody those stories, as well as the tools and techniques used to actualize these narratives. Jacobs-Jenkins’s changes allow him to represent subjects—slaves and slavery—that nineteenth-century melodrama’s toward which practitioners were often happy to gesture but with which they refused to engage in any depth. Slavery was long a topic on the melodramatic stage in both England and the United States, as is evident from the multiple versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin playing simultaneously during the nineteenth century. As Linda Williams argues in Playing the Race Card , melodrama is “the fundamental mode by which American mass culture has ‘talked to itself’ about the enduring moral dilemma of race.” [6] The subjects of the stories and the stories themselves that the genre told, however, were not as capacious as one might expect. An example of this exclusionary effect is the way Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was adapted into melodrama, stripping away the agency of many of its female characters. While these plotlines were partly cut for time, as only so many plots and characters from a novel can be translated onto the stage, there is also a specific set of generic conventions that Stowe’s characters like Mrs. Shelby or Mrs. Bird could not fulfill. In discussing George L. Aiken and Henry J. Conway’s adaptations, Bruce McConachie explains that: both playwrights were necessarily drawing on production practices and theatrical conventions ill-suited to realizing Stowe’s matrifocal ideals in production. Strong-willed mothers rarely appeared on the antebellum stage; most stock companies would have been hard pressed to cast several such roles since companies generally contained two to three times as many male as female actors. [7] We can thus see melodrama’s gaze at work. While Stowe’s original included a character like Mrs. Shelby, who decried the slave system from a matrifocal, anti-capitalist point of view, the melodramatic form could not accommodate such a character. There is thus a space for Jacobs-Jenkins to expand the audience’s understanding of and experience with slavery. Jacobs-Jenkins’s weaving together of theatrical techniques from different eras creates a new genre, one that incorporates elements of performance styles from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries alongside each other rather than prioritizing one century’s vision over another. Through these techniques Jacobs-Jenkins reconstructs the violence of slavery, bringing it onto the stage in a manner that marks a significant departure from the ways the institution had been represented previously, which often emphasized and lingered on physical and sexual violence. Excessive violence is often depicted to evoke sympathy for its victims. However, the spectacle can have the opposite effect: not only leaving the audience with an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism but habituating them to the sight of a black body in pain. [8] On the other hand, just as reprehensible as overemphasizing the violence of slavery is pretending that violence didn’t exist or attempting to make it palatable. Jacobs-Jenkins takes a third route, and his reconstruction of certain elements of melodrama helps the audience see the institution’s violence in a new light. Jacobs-Jenkins’s interest in form is apparent in the way he mixes elements from the American and British versions of The Octoroon . In the American version, distraught over her inability to be with George and her fear of M’Closky, Zoe commits suicide, and the play ends with her death. In the British version, M’Closky is stopped by George, and the owner of Terrebonne marries Zoe. The British audiences were outraged at the separation of the lovers, which Mark Mullen, in “The Work of the Public Mind,” reads as a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of slavery. The audience in London didn’t understand why the Peytons could not just move to a state where the law forbidding George to marry Zoe did not apply. [9] As part of his amalgamation, however, Jacobs-Jenkins includes the onstage stabbing of M’Closky, an addition in the British production, but concludes An Octoroon with the bleaker ending of Zoe’s desire to kill herself rather than become M’Closky’s property, an element of the original American version. This blended production then concludes with Jacobs-Jenkins’s own interpolation into the narrative, giving the last words and emotional beats to the female slaves Dido and Minnie, who emerge as the real heart of the play. These various endings drastically change the impact of the play, as it is significantly different, for example, if Zoe is sold but then redeemed by her white lover than if she kills herself to avoid becoming property. His reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze through his elevation of the three female slaves, Dido, Grace, and Minnie, to the center of the play, is Jacobs-Jenkins’s most extensive and provocative alteration to Boucicault’s original. These women are reconstructed as desiring agents with distinct backgrounds and personalities, who challenge the melodramatic conventions regarding the representation of slaves, especially the violence of slavery. Dido, Minnie, and Grace’s conversations educate the audience about the emotional, familial, societal, and violent cost of slavery for its victims. They actively mold the performance of their enslavement, rather than functioning as passive signifiers of slave life as they do in Boucicault’s original. This shaping occurs not only at the verbal level, through their self-conscious commentary on their positions, but also through a physical level, as Dido and Minnie are the only characters who work. They sweep cotton in the opening moments of the play, as well as serve breakfast and clean up the messes left by the white characters. While An Octoroon does include male enslaved characters (an older slave named Pete, and his grandson, Paul, both played by the Assistant in blackface), Jacobs-Jenkins’s most significant generic reconstructions occur with the enslaved women. Jacobs-Jenkins’s focus on Minnie, Grace, and Dido is also a significant departure from the genre’s customary depiction of the institution and the people trapped within it. Typically, the “stage Negro” fulfilled the low-comedy stereotype, whose comedic value was derived from “his odd dialect and his misuse of words. His special characteristic was inflated pride in badges of rank.” [10] While The Octoroon partly broke this tradition by placing Terrebonne’s slaves at the forefront of the play and turning them into a constant visual presence, [11] it did use these slaves as comic relief, with Peter, Solon, and Grace performing minstrel-like routines. [12] Boucicault’s slaves also adhere to many of the character tropes proliferated by minstrel depictions of black life. Minnie, Grace, and Pete are happy and loyal to their masters and do not run away, as most slaves at Terrebonne do in Jacobs-Jenkins’s version. The slaves are so secure within the system that the oldest slave, Pete, corrects a neighboring planter and Captain Ratts regarding how much his grandson was worth before he died, monetizing Paul even as he is mourning him: “What, Sar! You p’tend to be sorry for Paul, and prize him like dat. Five hundred dollars!—Tousand dollars, Massa Thibodeaux.” [13] The genre’s traditional refusal to engage with slavery is surprising, as melodrama would seem perfectly poised to stage the sights of slavery as a method of critique. However, while melodrama frequently depicted the institution of slavery onstage, either as sensational material or for abolitionist purposes, the scenes had to fit into larger established narratives so that the story could achieve legibility, [14] and the genre used the institution as a “mere resting point in the rush to affirm order at the play’s close.” [15] Additionally, melodrama by necessity was reactionary rather than revolutionary: the structure of the form is generally an arc that describes a fall from, and restoration to, innocence. [16] This compulsion to return to stasis has a wide-ranging effect not only on the genre’s sensibilities but on its portrait of American society, which was by definition conservative. Jeffrey Mason writes that melodrama was ever in pursuit of “the restoration of a condition that had, unexpectedly, inexplicably, and unfortunately been altered . . . culture is constantly in the process of attempting to come full circle and return to its point of origin.” [17] This originary impulse undercuts any great social change the melodrama might show, such as a successful slave rebellion or abolitionist appeal. However, Jacobs-Jenkins directly opposes the generic conventions and representations discussed above, by means of the characters that actively participate in the plot through their speech and commentary upon the action. His reconstruction centers on Dido and Minnie and occurs on multiple levels, but it is particularly noticeable in the unexpected way the two house slaves, and to a lesser extent, the field hand Grace, speak when they are in private, as well as what they say. When the three women are not observed by the white characters, they use contemporary slang and jargon, and demonstrate modern opinions regarding the division between labor and self, encapsulated in Minnie’s advice to Dido: “I know we slaves and evurthang, but you are not your job. You gotta take time out of your day to live life for you.” [18] Essentially, these women speak their own language. While it is true that BJJ and Assistant use a similar elastic vocabulary, their speech appears less out of place, as it is primarily bracketed off in the metatheatrical scenes, such as the prologue or the introduction to the sensation scene. In both cases, BJJ brings the audience out of 1859 into a significantly more contemporary space. Thus, what is crucial about Dido and Minnie’s language is that there is a meaningful disconnect between their surroundings, the 1859 plantation of The Octoroon , and their dialogue. The intention behind this change is explained in the script, as a note at the very beginning of the melodrama section. Jacobs-Jenkins writes: “I’m just going to say this right now so we can get it over with: I don’t know what a real slave sounded like. And neither do you.” [19] What emerges from this ignorance is a language that rejects the stereotyped “black voice” accent most commonly associated with slavery in the popular media. In An Octoroo n this language particularly emerges when Dido and Minnie escape from the panoptic gaze of the white characters. Dido, Minnie, and Grace’s manipulation of language gains additional significance when we consider the history of the representation of slavery in the theatre and other genres, such as prose. In slaveholding societies like the United States and England, there was a long tradition of employing slave narratives to publicize and garner support for abolition. While some of these narratives were written by the subjects themselves, they were often channeled through white interlocutors, who changed events and attitudes to appeal to wider audiences and in the process monetized the slaves’ stories. Sometimes the attempt to include more authentic elements, such as the reproduction of accents recorded in the Slave Narrative Project conducted by the W.P.A. in the 1930s, resulted in more obstruction than illumination and reinforced the damaging stereotypes they aimed to combat. This heavy-handed imitation obscured any deep engagement with the personal lives of the enslaved. [20] The impact and importance of Dido, Grace, and Minnie’s modern language is especially apparent when these women interact with the white characters. When they are back under the disciplinary gaze of George and Dora, the daughter of the neighboring plantation owner, Dido and Minnie use the same black-voice accent as Pete and Paul, emphasizing deference and obedience: DIDO : Bless’ee here it be. Here’s a dish of hoecakes—jess taste, Masr George—and here’s fried bananas; jess smell ’em. [21] The artificiality of this devoted and obsequious slave is glaringly obvious especially when we consider Dido and Minnie’s introduction. At the beginning of the play, Minnie chats with Dido about their work, while Dido reluctantly sweeps cotton about the stage: DIDO and MINNIE are discovered. DIDO is sweeping laboriously. MINNIE is just sort of lying down somewhere, fanning herself. MINNIE ( eventually ): Do you need help or…? DIDO : Naw, girl, I got it. Beat, while DIDO sweeps. MINNIE : You know, if you sweep on a diagonal with lighter, faster strokes, it’s a little more efficient. DIDO : Girl, what are you talking about? [22] From this brief exchange, we learn that Minnie thinks critically about how to make her job easier, and that Minnie and Dido address each other with familiarity, even if that familiarity is tinged with annoyance. It is leagues away from the style of speaking reproduced above. From examining the form of their conversations, we now turn to the content, analyzing what they say. At the end of the show, Dido speaks to Zoe with the same obsequiousness that she showed with George. When Zoe steals away to visit Dido in the slave quarters to obtain some poison to kill herself so that she doesn’t fall into M’Closky’s hands, Dido delays Zoe with an exaggerated black voice accent: “Missey Zoe! Why are you out in de swamp dis time ob night? And you is all wet! Missey Zoe, you catch de fever for sure!” [23] Dido and Minnie’s self-conscious performance while under the panoptic gaze of the slave-owners is not surprising. What is surprising is that, as we can see, they reproduce those behaviors when in conversation with Zoe, who is not white, but is a member of the plantation aristocracy. Dido and Minnie’s interactions with authority figures, as well as their descriptions of their quotidian lives, is made possible by Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze. Dido and Minnie frankly discuss how various forms of slavery’s violence impact them, and this discussion is underlined with a specific brand of humor. In an interview with the Village Voice , Jacobs-Jenkins asserted that the goal of his writing is to make the audience “laugh and then you have to think about your laughter for a second.” [24] Jacobs-Jenkins achieves this goal, as the moments that are most distressing are also the most humorous, reaching a crescendo when the two women discuss the physical violence that plagues their lives. While Pete, Paul, and Wahnotee exchange threats of perpetuating physical attacks, [25] Dido and Minnie are subject to threats of sexual violence. Within the first few moments of their introduction, they discuss the reality of plantation life, and the constant threat of assault: MINNIE : You ever had to fuck him? DIDO : Who? MINNIE : Mas’r/Peyton DIDO : Oh, naw! You? MINNIE : Naw, he only like lightskinnded girls. But Renee, you know, who was fuckin’ him all the time . . . MINNIE : Would you fuck him [George]? DIDO : No, Minnie! Damn. Would you? [Beat] MINNIE : Maybe. DIDO : Yeah, well, I get the feeling you don’t get a say in the matter. [26] This exchange turns on a subtle humor, more understated than Dido and Minnie’s other revelations, such as their acknowledgment of forced illiteracy [27] or their reluctance to run away. [28] However, this discussion regarding the implicit and constant presence of sexual violence raises disturbing questions. It seems to endow Minnie and Dido with a measure of agency and suggests that they and Renee had a choice in whether or not to sleep with George. The implications of this conversation spiral outward quickly, asking the audience to consider who Zoe’s mother was; though Zoe is treated well by the Peyton family, she was most likely the product of some measure of sexual violence. This awareness of unspoken sexual violence in the punch line is the closest the play comes to using the word “rape.” The agency that the modern dialect seems to ascribe to Minnie and Dido reveals itself to be fleeting, and it is clear that they exist within a violent system. While Jacobs-Jenkins recognizes and represents the violence inherent in the system, Minnie and Dido’s conversation is an important departure from the method by which melodrama staged slavery’s violence. In his version of the seminal melodrama Uncle Tom’s Cabin , George Aiken greatly increased and stylized the brutality of Tom’s cruel owner, Simon Legree, against Tom. He brought onto the stage “an aestheticized paraphernalia of cruelty (long whips, cuffs, and chains),” [29] which were put to great affective use. However, this display of physical violence was not a condemnation of the institution of slavery, but a demonstration of the wickedness of Legree, certifying his status as a villain of melodrama. Indeed, all of Legree’s added violence and wickedness became attributable to his personality, in fulfilling his role as an “anti-man-of-principle.” [30] Because the focus of the melodrama was on character, and not the institution, Uncle Tom’s Cabin “presents not a dialectic of class and economics, but specific interactions between villains and victims.” [31] This collapsing of focus can also be seen in The Octoroon , as the abuses on the plantation can be attributed to M’Closky and the mismanagement of Northern interlopers, rather than the systemic corruption of an unfair practice. Abolitionist melodramas also relied on violence in an attempt to make the horrors of slavery real for an audience who may not have understood them. However, as Douglas Jones writes, this attempt to bring the brutality of slavery closer to the white audience depended on an empathy that “readily occludes the inimitability of the captive’s suffering as a means to confirm the onlooker’s freedom; as a result, it promotes stasis and erases the magnitude of the nation’s ordinary sin.” [32] The brutality of these representations was thus more about the effect they created in the white onlookers than the subjects of that violence. The saturation and highlighting of the black body in both physical and emotional torment was the most common path through which ex-slaves could claim humanity. [33] A secondary but no less important element of the reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze is that it shifts the representative world, exploring and acknowledging multiple types of violence beyond the physical and sexual. Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction highlights the institutional demands that the enslaved see themselves as property and participate in their own dehumanization. In conversations that are hidden from their masters but are heard by the audience, Dido tells Minnie that she “grew up at the Sunnyside place on the other side of the hills. Mas’r Peyton won me in a poker game like ten years ago.” [34] Dido’s blithe story of how she came to Terrebonne is startling, as is her disregard for the destruction of familial relationships that this narrative implies. But what is most unexpected is the casualness with which she describes a complicity that is revealed to be widespread: DIDO : And this one time, Solon was like, “Girl let me borrow your baby for a second?” And so Rebecca’s dumb ass like gave him the baby and then that nigga turnt around and fucking sold the baby. MINNIE : What? DIDO : Yes, girl. Apparently Massa was about to sell Solon and Grace’s baby, but then Solon switched Rebecca’s baby out for they baby at the last minute and Massa didn’t know the difference so he just sold Rebecca’s dumb-ass baby. [35] The humor carrying this exchange is complex. On one level, it is funny because there is an asymmetrical relationship between the form and the content: what Dido and Grace say and how they say it. This exchange is also comic because it is a rare moment of triumph: Solon and Grace are able to take advantage of Judge Peyton’s stupidity. However, Dido and Minnie’s discussion simultaneously gestures to a darker point: a Peyton family inability to see African-Americans as individuals. Zoe can’t distinguish between an older and a younger black woman, and her father, Judge Peyton, also thought that African-Americans were interchangeable. [36] While this exchange reflects badly on the Peytons, it also reveals Dido and Minnie’s complicity with and active participation in perpetuating this system. This willingness is apparent again when Dido and Minnie learn that they are to be sold to help pay the debts on the plantation. Rather than run away, they participate in the sale, manipulating the process so that they will be purchased by Captain Ratts rather than Jacob M’Closky, who has a reputation for beating his slaves. [37] Dido and Minnie dress in their best “slave tunics” to convince Captain Ratts, whom they “seduce,” into buying them. [38] Minnie describes living on his boat as though it were a vacation: Imagine: if we lived on a steamboat, coasting up and down the river, looking fly, wind whipping at our hair and our slave tunics and shit and we surrounded by all these fine, muscle-y boat niggas who ain’t been wit a woman in years? [39] For both Dido, who thinks that the situation still sounds dangerous, [40] and Minnie, this is a chance at a better life, although this new life still seems fraught with the potential for sexual assault. Minnie and Dido’s attitudes run counter to modern cultural expectations, which would have them run away for the possibility of a better life rather than accepting the confines of slavery. However, in the world of An Octoroon, this is one of the only opportunities Minnie and Dido have to take control of their situation and make decisions regarding their bodily autonomy. While the ending is played for laughs, when Minnie wonders if “something were to happen that somewhere rendered these last twelve hours totally moot,” it is an indication of the effect of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction that the audience really feels for Minnie and Dido and their lost autonomy. [41] In An Octoroon, Dido, Minnie, and to a lesser extent, Grace, are not the objects of the jokes, and the audience does not laugh at them or their situation. Rather, Jacobs-Jenkins manipulates the humor found in the distance between Dido and Minnie’s modern vocabulary and performance style and their nineteenth-century conversational topics. He makes their situation strange and unfamiliar at the same time as they sound as though they are standing on a street corner in twenty-first-century Brooklyn. [42] Instead of relying on overly familiar tropes, An Octoroon shows us anew the horrors of slavery, forcing us to consider the depth and diversity of the institution’s brutality. Jacobs-Jenkins continues to represent the diversity of the institution’s brutality in his next revision of melodrama’s gaze with his treatment of Zoe. While the majority of her dialogue emerges from The Octoroon , [43] Jacobs-Jenkins uses Zoe to juxtapose melodramatic convention with a modern understanding of racial performance. As we have seen, Zoe enthusiastically participates in the hierarchical structures of the plantation, holding herself above the house and field slaves alike. She insults Dido and kicks Pete, ordering him to “Wake up you, silly Nigger! Where’s breakfast?” [44] Not only does she place herself above the field hands and participate in the casual violence of her peers, but she also does no work aside from showing George the plantation. It is thus clear that Zoe is afforded freedoms as the daughter of Terrebonne’s owner. However, Jacobs-Jenkins indicates that despite her real privileges, Zoe’s status as an octoroon requires that she suffer within an institution that surrounds her and is responsible for her birth. Indeed, Jules Zanger argues that in the North, an octoroon “represented not merely the product of the incidental sin of the individual sinner, but rather what might be called the result of cumulative institutional sin, since the octoroon was the product of four generations of illicit, enforced miscegenation made possible by the slavery system.” [45] In fact, Zoe’s entire presence in the play, especially her heritage, reminds the audience of the reality of interracial desire and an uneven balance of power. [46] This attitude then helps us to understand Zoe’s response when she is forced to reveal herself as mixed race. When George confesses his love to her, Zoe racializes herself and teaches an unbelieving George how to recognize the signs of her African heritage. This scene is a crucial demonstration that, despite all her other advantages, she is still trapped within a system that is interested in controlling its victims’ minds as well as their bodies. [47] In a scene that is taken in its entirety from The Octoroon , Zoe shows George the signs of her African heritage, transforming her body into “an artifact of racial hybridity” [48] : ZOE : George, do you see that hand you hold? Look at these fingers; do you see the nails are of a . . . bluish tinge? GEORGE : Yes, near the quick there is a faint blue mark. ZOE : Look in my eyes; is not the same color in the white? GEORGE : It is their beauty. ZOE : No! That—that is the dark, fatal mark and curse of Cain. Of the blood that feeds my heart, one drop in eight is black—bright red as the rest may be, that one drop poisons all the rest. [49] George’s examination of Zoe’s physical features for signs that the audience cannot see is a deeply tragic image. Zoe reveals not only her self-hatred—she calls herself “an unclean thing” [50] —but also the extent to which she is trapped within the system of chattel slavery. Anyone who is able to read Zoe’s body will know how to classify her, thus endangering not only her body, but her education, upbringing, and social class. Zoe is trapped within a disciplinary system that limits her choices and her happiness and curtails her options. While this scene is remarkably affecting, there remains a significant disconnect between written text and what is seen, a discord not present in Boucicault’s original, and the potent emotion and danger behind Zoe’s confession seems misplaced. This disconnect is deliberately designed, as Jacobs-Jenkins stipulates that Zoe’s role be played by “an octoroon actress, a white actress, quadroon actress, biracial actress, multi-racial actress, or an actress of color who can pass as an octoroon.” [51] Jacobs-Jenkins thus seems to undercut the reveal of this scene: if the audience can read Zoe as mixed-race already, there’s no need for her to confess. However, I would argue, that these casting specifications demonstrate the insidious nature of racializing thoughts, which ascribe negative qualities to physical minutiae, rather than the revelation of Zoe as an octoroon. Because Zoe’s opinions on race and self-worth are directly imported from the melodrama, they are in direct contrast to the play’s other explorations of race. [52] Jacobs-Jenkins builds on his reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze with a re-engagement with elements of nineteenth-century melodrama: the tableau and the sensation scene, discussed below. The tableau manipulates several artistic practices, operating simultaneously on a visual, emotional, and auditory level. The technique allows the audience to pause, read, and absorb the emotional impact of a scene, much as one would do with a painting. Peter Brooks describes tableau as providing a “visual summary of the emotional situation” of a scene, in the process fulfilling “melodrama’s primordial concern to make its signs clear, unambiguous, and impressive.” [53] In nineteenth-century melodrama, the tableau appears in moments of crisis, wherein speech and narrative fail and the emotion of the scenes can only be understood through images. Typically, it works as a punctuation mark to a particular plotline, occurs at the end of a scene, and inspires an affective response. Jacobs-Jenkins primarily follows its usual placement as a punctuation mark at particularly emotionally-charged moments. The ends of the first three acts of each melodrama section includes a tableau: Jacob M’Closky triumphing at the end of Act One, Wahnotee mourning over Paul’s body at the end of Act Two, and Zoe’s auction at the end of Act Three. However, BJJ also draws particular attention to the extraordinary nature of this theatrical feature, engaging and exploiting it. As Act One nears its end, Jacob M’Closky sets in motion his plot to ruin the Peyton family and purchase Zoe. As he revels in his expected outcome, he dives into his tableau. The stage directions describe the scene: M’CLOSKY stands with his hand extended toward the house. Music. An attempt at a TABLEAU. He holds the TABLEAU for a while before DIDO walks in with a washing bucket and some laundry. [54] We see BJJ, the character-as-playwright, rewriting melodrama in real time as M’Closky poses uncomfortably on stage. M’Closky fulfills all the requirements for a tableau: he stops the action, allowing the audience to read his posture, establishing him as the villain. Rather than serving as a punctuation mark, or creating a moment of overwhelming emotion, however, M’Closky’s overtly performative pose never quite lands, and the life of the plantation quickly resumes around the frozen overseer. This change is signaled through a return to the constant, underlying musical accompaniment. [55] Furthermore, the reassertion of the quotidian is signaled by Dido’s entrance with the laundry, which startles M’Closky, and resets the scene to a normal theatrical time. However, a moment later, the tableau is attempted again, but this time it emerges from a moment of real violence: [M’CLOSKY re-enters, stalks over to DIDO] DIDO : Hi, Mas’r M’Cl— [M’CLOSKY strikes her violently] M’CLOSKY : And don’t you ever fuckin’ sneak up on me like that again, you nigger bitch! [An actual TABLEAU.] [56] The legibility inherent in this image is why the tableau works: because the audience can quickly grasp the power dynamics of a white-presenting man physically threatening a black woman, allowing the audience to read and understand an essential power dynamic of slavery, without lingering on Dido’s pain. This tableau also reveals how much is left up to the director in An Octoroon . The stage directions only suggest that a tableau occurs, but in performance, we see that M’Closky strikes Dido, then remains standing over her. Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of the tableau forces us to re-evaluate the genre’s ability to produce and manipulate our emotions. The tableau only works when it is connected to real emotion, rather than to the conventions of the drama. Jacobs-Jenkins’ reconstruction of the tableau helps the audience see anew the violence of slavery. Like the sensation scene, tableau insists on the audience’s attention. This demand for awareness is reiterated in Act Two’s tableau, which finds Wahnotee, in an expression of grief, bending over the body of the slain boy Paul: To his horror, WAHNOTEE finds him dead, expresses great grief, raises his eyes. They fall upon the camera. He rises with a savage growl, he seizes tomahawk and smashes camera to pieces, then goes to Paul, expresses grief, sorrow, and fondness. Maybe he starts to make a grave—sobbing and digging his hands? I don’t know. In any case, there’s a TABLEAU. [57] The violence against black bodies is an essential part of slavery, and the incidental way in which Paul is murdered, mentioned in the stage directions, but not noted in the dialogue, mirrors the Peytons’ inattention to the details of their slaves’ lives: “ M’CLOSKY strikes PAUL on the head. PAUL falls dead. During the following, a large pool of blood begins to gather around PAUL’S body and M’CLOSKY’S feet. ” [58] This tableau provides the audience with a rare moment of unbridled pathos that isn’t undercut by an attempt at humor. Indeed, this is a moment that deeply humanizes Wahnotee, who is otherwise, even in Jacobs-Jenkins’s version, a thinly drawn stereotype, addicted to rum, speaking a mishmash of various languages, and prone to violence. This tableau also defies stereotypes of Native Americans that were familiar from the so-called Indian plays of the early nineteenth century, where Native American characters often played upon racial fears, threatening white characters with the possibility of sexual and physical violence. But in this tableau, Wahnotee is given space to grieve. Although M’Closky may not take notice of Paul’s death, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of Wahnotee’s tableau requires the audience to realize that these characters are not disposable. Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of the first two tableaux links these highly performative moments more closely with the text of An Octoroon . These scenes join together emotion and the violence against black bodies on stage. The final tableau, appearing at the end of Act Three, continues this work, as it punctuates the auction of Terrebonne and Zoe’s sale to M’Closky. The slave driver’s interruption of the auction adds a layer of drama to an already spectacular venture, which “materializes the most intense of symbolic transactions . . . money transforms flesh into property; property transforms flesh into money; flesh transforms money into property.” [59] The practice of staging slave auctions has a long history as a method of creating pathos for the enslaved. Henry Ward Beecher, the famed Northern abolitionist preacher, raised money to liberate young biracial girls from slavery by transforming the pulpit of his Brooklyn church into an auction yard to “heighten the emotional power of his rhetorical appeal as he evoked . . . a form of ‘spectatorial sympathy’ to play upon the affective responses in his audiences.” [60] It was converted into a specifically theatrical spectacle, however, when in The Octoroon Boucicault represented it onstage for the first time. [61] Like its first-act cousin, the tableau that emerges from An Octoroon’s auction scene also results from a theatrical failure. The sale of Terrebonne is, as Lafouche the auctioneer describes it, “a shitshow,” [62] as the majority of the Terrebonne slaves have run away, and those that are left are either old and infirm like Pete, or three women, not nearly enough to save the plantation. The scene, which should be one of high tragedy, is turned uncomfortably comic, as Dido and Minnie request to be sold together, and spend time preening to attract the attention of Captain Ratts. Lafouche reports, “the, uh, the property has requested that it be sold along with another piece of property? . . . can it do that?” [63] While not part of the reconstruction of the tableau specifically, Jacobs-Jenkins’s modern intervention into the scene emphasizes the auctioneer’s dehumanizing language, turning what should be a moment for consternation into comedy. The momentum of the scene is further derailed by the spectacle of George and M’Closky, played by the same actor, fighting each other. While double casting is a cause for humor in this scene, it is part of a larger historical argument and an important feature of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of melodrama. These two types that George and M’Closky embody, the kind slave owner hero and the evil, scheming overseer villain, were common roles in American melodrama, and come with expected behaviors and performance histories. But because these characters are here contained in one body, all of their actions are collapsed into a single, interchangeable entity. The only differences between them are a broad accent and M’Closky’s mustache and hat: easily removable costume pieces. Jacobs-Jenkins thus erases any difference between these historical touchstones, suggesting that the authority figures in plantation culture were exactly the same. Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon, in their article “Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon,” also note that “by having one actor play both of these white male characters, An Octoroon illustrates the uncomfortable similarity between a desire to own, master, or marry the mixed-race heroine, Zoe, and the implicit similarity in both endings.” [64] Merrill and Saxon acknowledge that George’s desire to possess Zoe, while dressed in slightly kinder clothing, mirrors M’Closky’s. As the bidding war over Zoe escalates, and the other powerful members of the plantation class, including Captain Ratts and Dora Sunnyside, attempt to trump the slave driver’s bid, M’Closky and George’s animosity erupts in violence: “ GEORGE rushes M’CLOSKY, slash himself, who draws his knife .” [65] After a measure of order is restored by Lafouche, M’Closky exalts over the members of the established plantation class, and goes into his pose: “ M’CLOSKY jumps on up on his chair, throws money in the air, and makes it rain.” [66] M’Closky’s purchase of Zoe, and his subsequent flaunting of his wealth, results in a tableau that whiplashes the audience into a realization that Zoe has been commodified and dehumanized even more pervasively than when she identified her African features to George. Similar to the tableau in Act One, this frozen image quickly transmogrifies the humor of the scene to tragedy. Thus in this tableau, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction operates on two significant levels: first, the tableau’s sudden shift in tone draws attention to its violence, and second, it breathes new life into a nineteenth-century theatrical element. In both cases, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of the tableau forces the audience to absorb the quotidian violence of slavery, working through legible images and sensations rather than overwhelming scenes of physical violence. Just as the tableau operates through easily graspable images, so does the sensation scene. These two devices work on multiple levels of signification beyond the spoken word, revealing an unspeakable truth to the characters and audience. There are similarities between the way the tableau forces the audience to confront the ordinary violence of slavery and the operation of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstructed sensation scene. After a long, metatheatrical prologue, where BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant explain and walk the audience through the meaning and history of the sensation scene, they end up reciting the whole scene, with interjections and commentary. [67] As they approach the end of the scene, BJJ announces that he “tried to figure out the next best thing, something actually related to the plot. I hope it isn’t too disappointing.” [68] The actors give themselves a shake and dive right back into the scene. George delivers an impassioned condemnation of lynch law, attempting to persuade the surrounding crowd of angry sailors not to rush to judgment, with one crucial change: he stands in front of, and among, Shipp and Smith’s swaying bodies. [69] George’s plea catalyzes a series of revelations that culminate in the exposure of An Octoroon’s villain: the dastardly slave-driver Jacob M’Closky. The sensation scene unfolds as the villain is revealed, and the boat carrying the last shipment of cotton from Terrebonne plantation explodes, represented in this version by an expulsion of cotton into the audience. Due to casting restrictions that are enumerated at the top of the show, BJJ, the playwright of the frame narrative, confesses that he “grossly underestimated the amount of white men I actually would need here,” [70] and the mob that surrounds the action and heightens the stakes is played by the audience rather than actors. George’s commentary on justice and lynch law spills beyond the confines of the stage, and into the twenty-first-century crowd. Audience members were unsettled by George’s speech, made clearly uncomfortable with their sudden involvement in the story. This discomfort expressed itself in many ways: from strained and nervous laughter, to gasps and murmurs, growing stronger as they sat with the image that seemed to expand as the photograph extended beyond its frame and onto the bodies of the actors. The face of a man staring at the audience and pointing proudly at the bodies that hang in the trees was newly embodied as it was projected directly onto George’s shirt. It is through this alchemy of dialogue and image that George’s body, ambiguously raced to begin with as he is played by a black actor in whiteface make-up, becomes the medium for bringing the violence of the Shipp and Smith lynching onto the stage without exploiting it. As George and M’Closky debate Wahnotee’s innocence or guilt, the projection remains, hanging over the action. The photograph is not given any context and the actors do not refer to it, except when it needs to come down. [71] By projecting the image of the Shipp and Smith lynching above this fictional debate, Jacobs-Jenkins summons a sharper sense of danger to M’Closky and George’s argument, reminding the audience that the discussion of lynching taking place had real-life consequences. The use of this photograph, and the diverse feelings it provoked in the audience as it remained projected on the back wall, are crucial elements of Jacobs-Jenkins reconstruction of the sensation scene. In its original context, the sensation scene mixed pathos and action, often overwhelming the audience. These scenes were produced by “extraordinary theatrical effects, often featuring disasters such as shipwrecks, avalanches, volcano explosions and so forth.” [72] The scenes were exciting in their own right, but the nineteenth-century audience particularly marveled at “the technical feat involved in replicating aspects of life that seemed beyond the resources of the stage.” [73] These technical feats created perceptible physical reactions in the audience, forging a community out of the spectators. Lynn M. Voskuil describes the construction of this feeling community: what mattered most was not merely that spectators felt such responses, but that they believed they felt them in common . . . intrinsic to their play-going experience was not only the bodily sense of nervous shudders and quivers but also the sagacity both to cultivate and manage them. [Sensation theatre required] a sophisticated spectator, one practiced at decoding spectacle and awake to its mechanisms and bodily effects. [74] While the photograph of the Shipp and Smith lynching produced these feeling communities (and the most memorable moment of the play), the projection had other consequences. The maintenance of the photograph requires the stage to be darkened to appreciate the full effect, which in turns requires an unnatural cessation of movement by the actors, as well as plot. The action can only proceed to the point at which the three frame characters, BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant, described it in the metatheatrical prologue of the scene. [75] The photograph transfixes the actors and the audience, holding both in place and preventing them from looking away, either from the lynching that has already occurred or the threat of the lynching that is possibly to come. However, the focus on the Shipp and Smith lynching literally blocks out and overwhelms the situation on stage. The audience cares less about the trial of Wahnotee when its attention is focused on the Shipp and Smith photo. Thus, like the tableau, which can only be held for a short period of time, the sensation scene sets the stage, but needs to be removed for the plot to continue forward. However, once the photo is taken down and M’Closky is revealed as a villain, Jacobs-Jenkins offers us one more complicated result of his reconstruction of the sensation scene, as he stages M’Closky’s murder. Examining this moment in terms of the characters, we see a Native American planning to kill a white man in retaliation for the murder of a black child. But when we look at the bodies of the actors, a different image emerges: We see a white man dragging a bleeding black man off to be lynched, choking and screaming, “Help! Help! Help!” The stage directions note that the violence in this moment—Wahnotee and M’Closky’s fight, Wahnotee’s stabbing of the slave driver, and Wahnotee’s clear desire to lynch M’Closky—should seem “ incredibly real .” [76] The violence of the Shipp and Smith lynching, projected and overwhelming the debate on how to move forward, is repeated and recreated, as Jacobs-Jenkins wraps up the recreation of the sensation scene. After the emotional intensity of the sensation scene, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction ends on a deadpan note. Once Wahnotee drags a screaming M’Closky offstage and the audience is pelted with explosive cotton balls, Assistant is the only actor left on stage. He turns to the audience, and recounts the action: “And then the boat explodes ( beat) . Sensation.” [77] This impassive delivery undermines the traditional forms of the genre, as it points the way to new methods of representation and emotion. Jacobs-Jenkins’s subversion of the sensation scene is part of An Octoroon’ s larger effort to reconstruct the formal aspects of the genre so that it becomes increasingly capacious in its representation of slavery. It accomplishes this first by shifting melodrama’s gaze so that the play not only foregrounds characters Boucicault’s original treats as punch lines, but elevates them so that these two dark-skinned black women are the heart of An Octoroon . [78] By interjecting and juxtaposing modern dialogue and character development with dialogue that casually confirms the horrors of their quotidian existence, Jacobs-Jenkins makes slavery’s violence understandable in new ways. The changes in melodrama’s gaze also alter the way that we understand the damage slavery has done to Zoe, who, although she is privileged in some ways, is still bound both by the self-hatred and racialization that leads to her suicide. This article also argues that Jacobs-Jenkins takes on more traditional elements of melodrama, such as the sensation scene and the tableau. In both cases, his reconstructions allow a twenty-first-century audience to feel some of the same effects as their nineteenth-century counterparts. By using comprehensible images, the tableau and sensation scene insist on the audience’s attention. Simultaneously, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstructions rocket between emotional states: from comedy to tragedy, from overwhelming sensation to blunt statement of fact, reinventing before our eyes a core American theatrical tradition. And in the process, he provides new ways of viewing and understanding slavery. References [1] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon (New York: Onstage Press, 2014), 121. This article uses the published version of An Octoroon , as well as the recording of a performance of the Sarah Benson-directed production, recorded June 6, 2014, and housed at the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library. I will also refer to instances from the Theatre for A New Audience production of the same play. TFANA and Soho Rep’s productions were both directed by Sarah Benson, the artistic director of Soho Rep. BJJ: So for a while I was thinking maybe I could actually just set this place on fire with You inside— PLAYWRIGHT: bring you as close to death as possible. BJJ/PLAYWRIGHT: That would be amazing. BJJ: And then, of course, rescue each of you one by one, PLAYWRIGHT: And then perform the rest of the show out on the street. BJJ: But that would be crazy PLAYWRIGHT: And Soho Rep. doesn’t need that. BJJ: And also I would only be able to do this show once. [2] While the omission of Salem Scudder lessens the number of characters that Jacobs-Jenkins had to account for, his dismissal had other consequences, particularly that Zoe is less universally cared for. In An Octoroon , Zoe is beloved of the Hero and the Villain, but in The Octoroon , with Scudder’s feelings of protectiveness toward her, there is a greater sense that she is a desirable commodity. Scudder’s presence in Boucicault’s original, as a well-meaning, but ultimately harmful presence on the plantation—partly to blame for Peyton’s financial woes—is an indication of the “paternalistic, racist myth of a genteel plantation culture, threatened more by a villainous Yankee than by its own inherent injustices.” Harley Erdman, “Caught in the ‘Eye of the Eternal’: Justice, Race, and the Camera, from The Octoroon to Rodney King.” Theatre Journal 45, no. 3 (October 1993): 335. This kind of specific regional nuance is of less importance in Jacobs-Jenkins’ worldview. [3] Although The Octoroon’s plot hangs on photographic evidence that Scudder’s camera provides, BJJ and Playwright point out that twenty-first-century audiences are no longer impressed or even swayed by this type of evidentiary material. BJJ explains that “we’ve gotten so used to photographs and moving images that we basically have learned how to fake photographs, so the kind of justice around which this whole thing hangs its actually kind of dated.” (Jacobs-Jenkins, 120.) While we can still be shocked by the photograph of the Shipp and Smith lynching, the audience is less impressed by the evidence the photograph of M’Closky provides. [4] Bruce A. McConachie, Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre & Society, 1820-1870 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), ix. This monograph includes an excellent history of the American engagement with the melodramatic form. [5] Ibid., 228. [6] Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), xiv. [7] Bruce A McConachie, “Out of the Kitchen and Into the Marketplace: Normalizing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ for the Antebellum Stage,” The Journal of American Drama and Theatre 3, no. 1 (1991): 11. [8] Saidiya Hartman begins her seminal work, Scenes of Subjection, with a similar observation. Viewing the consequences of a slave’s body, ravaged by violence, she writes that “Rather than inciting indignation, too often they immure us to pain by virtue of their familiarity—the oft-repeated or restored character of these accounts and our distance from them are signaled by the theatrical language usually resorted to in describing these instances–and especially because they reinforce the spectacular character of black suffering.” Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3. [9] Mark Mullen, “The Work of the Public Mind,” Nineteenth Century Theatre 27, no. 2 (Winter 1999), 100. [10] David Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater & Culture: 1800-1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 190-1. [11] Mullen argues that the very visibility of the slaves was Bouicault’s nod to an anti-slavery position, “The Work of the Public Mind,” 98. [12] Dana Van Kooy and Jeffrey N. Cox. “Melodramatic Slaves,” Modern Drama 55, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 470. [13] Dion Boucicault, “The Octoroon.” In Early American Drama , edited by Jeffrey H. Richards (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 471. [14] Douglas A Jones, The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 140. [15] Van Cooey and Cox, “Melodramatic Slaves,” 462. [16] Ibid., 462. [17] Jeffrey D. Mason, “Staging the Myth of America,” in Melodrama and the Myth of America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 15. [18] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 137. [19] Ibid., 43. [20] For an excellent discussion of the difficulties of slave narratives and their staging, see Jones, Captive Stage , 139-141. [21] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 57. [22] Ibid., 45. [23] Ibid., 131. [24] Tom Sellar, “Pay No Attention to the Man in the Bunny Suit.” Village Voice . 28 September 2015. http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/pay-no-attention-to-the-man-in-the-bunny-suit-7189537 . [25] Pete threatens Minnie: “Drop dat banana fo’ I murdah you!” and “It’s dis black-trash, new Mas’r George; day’s getting too numerous round; when I gets time, I’m gonna have to murdah some of ’em fo’ sure!” (Jacobs-Jenkins., An Octoroon , 51, 52), while Paul threatens to “gib it to” Wahnotee if the boy finds the Indian drinking rum (ibid., 60), while Wahnotee destroys George’s camera and drags M’Closky offstage (ibid., 81, 128). [26] Ibid., 47-9. [27] Ibid., 83. Minnie: I couldn’t read that sign out front, because I can’t read. Dido: I can’t read it either. You know it’s illegal for us to read. Minnie: Yee-uh, but I was hopin’ you wuz one of them secret reading niggas. You know, like Rhonda. Dido: Rhonda can read?! Minnie: Shh, girl! It’s a secret! [28] Ibid., 50. Minnie: Haven’t she heard these slave catchers got these new dogs nowadays that can fly and who are trained to fuckin drag yo’ ass out of trees and carry you back? And then, even if you can outsmart these flying dogs, once you free, what you gonna do once you free? You just gonna walk up in somebody house and be like, “Hey. I’m a slave. Help me.” That kind of naiveté is how niggas get kilt. [29] Sarah Meer, Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2005), 119. [30] McConachie, “Out of the Kitchen and Into the Marketplace,” 15. [31] Mason, “Staging the Myth of America,” 119. [32] Jones, The Captive Stage, 141. [33] Ibid., 142. [34] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon, 46. [35] Ibid, 66. [36] When Zoe approaches Dido to ask her for poison at the end of the play, she clearly doesn’t recognize Dido, whom she calls “Aunty” and “Mammy.” Zoe invents an entire history between them: “my own dear Mammy, who so often hushed me to sleep when I was a child” (Ibid., 133), although Dido did not grow up on the Peyton plantation, and is in fact the same age as Zoe (Ibid., 134). Zoe cannot see Dido as an individual, but purely as a stereotype. In Minnie’s eyes, this ignorance arises from Zoe’s choice to align herself with the white characters, in her words “hang out wit all these damn white people all the damn time” (Ibid., 134). [37] Ibid., 100. [38] Ibid., 106. [39] Ibid., 102. [40] Ibid., 102. [41] Ibid., 138. [42] While this article focuses on Dido and Minnie’s ability to transverse the generic conventions of melodrama, the male characters also engage in temporal crossing. BJJ/Assistant/Playwright, in their various cross-racial guises, step out of character and transition seamlessly between the play and the frame. [43] Dora Sunnyside, the daughter of the neighboring plantation owner and Zoe’s friend (and rival), also does not move between the framing device and the main story. While this article is primarily focused on race rather than class, it might be worthwhile to consider how these two characters are united in class status. [44] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 56. [45] Jules Zanger, “The ‘Tragic Octoroon’ In Pre-Civil War Fiction.” American Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1966): 66. [46] Merrill and Saxon, “Replaying and Rediscovering,” 131. [47] Mullen, “The Work of the Public Mind,” 110. [48] Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon. “Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon.” Theatre Journal 69, no. 2 (June 2017): 130. [49] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon, 76-7. [50] Ibid., 77. [51] Ibid., 25. This type of open-ended yet specific stipulation is used for all of the actors and characters of color. It is also odd that the only explicitly mixed race character is asked to own and represent her identity in a way that no other character, including those who put on cross-racial make-up technologies, are asked to. [52] For the male characters, race is significantly more fluid. Although BJJ suffers as a “Black Playwright” — as his work is prejudged as a reflection of current racial issues or a retelling of African folktales, a situation he describes in the metatheatrical prologue “The Art of Dramatic Composition” — he is able to put on whiteface make-up and “become” white and much more socially mobile. While Assistant’s use of blackface, or Playwright’s use of redface do not afford them privileges (Paul is killed, while Wahnotee is nearly lynched), the two actors do not seem bothered by their transformations. [53] Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 48. [54] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 64. [55] The music for the TFANA production was composed by César Alvarez and played by the onstage cellist, Lester St. Louis. While the Soho Rep and Theatre for a New Audience productions had constant musical accompaniment as well as a particularly evocative closing song, no specific musical directions are mentioned in the script. There is often a stark division between what is described in the stage directions and what appears on stage in Jacobs-Jenkins’ plays. We find this intentional vagueness throughout An Octoroon , including, as we shall see, Jacobs-Jenkins’ descriptions of his tableau: “Maybe he starts to make a grave—sobbing and digging his hands? I don’t know ” (ibid., 81). However, this desire to leave the creation of the theatrical world up to the director is also included in his 2010 debut, Neighbors , at the Public Theater. Neighbors grapples with theatre history in much the same way as An Octoroon , re-engaging with the minstrel tradition rather than melodrama. Particularly fascinating are the stage directions in Neighbors that describe minstrel interludes, including many traditional characters like Sambo, Zip Coon, Topsy, and Mammy. These interludes are drawn in excruciating detail, describing outlandish physical and sexual situations. Sambo’s interlude, for example, includes an insanely large penis, which ropes a watermelon, and which he chews through. Jacobs-Jenkins, Neighbors , 358. Neighbors ’ stage directions are incredibly detailed, while those of An Octoroon are more suggestive. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, “Neighbors.” In Reimagining A Raisin in the Sun, edited by Rebecca Ann Rugg and Harvey Young (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 307–403. [56] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 67. [57] Ibid., 81. [58] Ibid., 80. [59] Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 215. [60] Lisa Merrill, “‘May She Read Liberty in Your Eyes?’: Beecher, Boucicault and the Representation and Display of Antebellum Women’s Racially Indeterminate Bodies,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 26, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 133. [61] Mullen, “The Work of The Public Mind,” 104. For further information on the performance history of slave auctions, see Jason Stupp, “Slavery and the Theatre of History: Ritual Performance on the Auction Block.” Theatre Journal 63, no. 1 (March 2011): 61-84. [62] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 106. [63] Ibid., 106. [64] Merrill and Saxon, “Replaying and Rediscovering,” 151. [65] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 110. In the Theatre for a New Audience production, this conflict became an extended scene, and a display of physical skill and comedic timing from Austin Smith, the actor who played BJJ/George/M’Closky. Smith rolled around on the ground before the auction block—where Zoe stood, gasping in horror—fighting himself. The characters shouted encouragement, and at one point, Dora kicked over George’s knife, which had gotten lost in the scuffle. The severe emotional shift, from a side-splitting scene to one of extreme pathos, was felt extensively in the audience, and carefully cultivated. [66] Ibid., 111. [67] Interjections with phrases such as: “Playwright: Anway, Pete’s like,” and commentary such as “This is actually a hole in Boucicault’s plot. Not mine.” Ibid., 119. [68] Ibid., 122. [69] Ibid., 122. [70] Ibid., 113. [71] The actors’ choice not to acknowledge the photograph is echoed in the stage directions. While Jacobs-Jenkins requires a lynching photograph, he does not specify an incident, or even a date range, that the production should employ, Ibid., 222. He leaves the choice to the director and designers. [72] Matthew Wilson Smith, “Victorian Railway Accident and the Melodramatic Imagination,” Modern Drama 55, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 508. [73] Michael Diamond, Victorian Sensation: Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking, and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Anthem Press, 2003), 219. [74] Lynn M. Voskuil, “Feeling Public: Sensation Theater, Commodity Culture, and the Victorian Public Sphere,” Victorian Studies 44, no.2 (2002): 250. [75] Ibid., 115-120. [76] Ibid., 128. [77] Ibid., 128. [78] Although approaching this scene from a different argument, Merrill and Saxon also pay close attention to Dido and Minnie’s final exchange, noting that it allows the audience to “refocus their attention on the material conditions and lives of ordinary black women rather than the eponymous octoroon.” Merrill and Saxon, “Replaying and Rediscovering,” 152. Footnotes About The Author(s) ROSA SCHNEIDER is a doctoral candidate in the Subcommittee on Theatre within the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia UnXiversity. Her research focuses on the performance of history, race, and cultural memory, on American and Caribbean stages. She has presented work at ASTR, where she serves as a member of Executive Committee of the Graduate Student Caucus, and she is also the resident dramaturge and co-artistic director of Strange Harbor, an experimental theatre company in Brooklyn. Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism. Kirsty Johnston. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 240. Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. Amy Cook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Pp. 198. The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. Patricia A. Ybarra. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 247. 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European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 20, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Mary Said What She Said By Marvin Carlson Published: July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF This report on a current work by Robert Wilson, will hardly come as a surprise to long-time readers of European Stages or its precedent journal, Western European Stages . Wilson’s work was noted in the first issue of WES (Fall, 1989) and the following issue contained not only a full essay on his recent work in Germany, but also a complete chronology of upcoming Wilson productions. Since then Wilson has been one of the artists most frequently mentioned in both journals, and although he was born in America, he has created the majority of his many works in Europe, as is the case with Mary Said What She Said . First presented at the Theatre de la Ville in Paris in 1919 and subsequently in Vienna, Amsterdam, Florence, Hamburg and South Korea. The work finally appeared at the Skirball Center in New York in March 2025. Its success has been great everywhere and in New York, the five productions at the 850 seat Skirball were totally sold out. Mary Said What She Said by Robert Wilson / Photograph © Lucie Jansch When the audience entered the theatre, they found the proscenium filled with the representation of an elegantly draped traditional red theatre curtain, with a rather odd addition, an ornately framed image high in the center, perhaps three by four feet, containing a continuously running black and white film loop of a small English bulldog chasing its tail and then pausing to look at the camera and be temporarily replaced by the silent film type title “You fool me. I am not too smart.” Carousel type music, seemingly unrelated to the Philip Glass type score for the rest of the production, composed by Ludovico Einaudi, accompanied this introduction, which did not actually begin until almost fifteen minutes after the announced curtain time. The scene occupied most of the audience’s attention for a strangely long time. Apparently, most reviewers found it as incomprehensible as I did, because I found it mentioned in only one report, that of Elisabeth Vincentelli in the New York Times, who boldly suggested the dog’s action represented the obsessiveness of Mary Stuart as a character, which to be honest makes as little sense to me as the dog does. Thankfully, the production contains few other interpellations of this sort but takes us into familiar Wilson territory. Wilson has worked with leading actress Isabel Huppert before, most notably in 1989 when they created a structurally and visually similar staging of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, with a performance text created by Darryl Pinckney, who also created the text for Mary Said , as well as for several other Wilson creations. The M ary text, like others by Pinckney, is extremely demanding, with frequent echoes and repetitions, text clusters, and unconventional arrangements of material. Rather than attempt to make the text more accessible, Huppert has done quite the opposite, employing the incredible range of her voice to constantly vary the pitch, volume, speed and intensity other lines. A common pattern is for her to begin a sequence in silence and then gradually increase the speech and intensity of her speech until she is pouring out upon a stunned audience an avalanche of verbal material, sometimes interspersed with strangled chocks and laughter or half-intelligible cries. This common pattern though is subject to infinite variation, resulting in as dazzling a display of linguistic virtuosity as I have ever seen on stage. From time to time this already mixed text is further complicated by laughter, cries and phrases apparently re-recorded by Huppert and now projected on top of or alongside her live voice from various locations in the auditorium. Of course, this means that early into the production even French-speaking audiences realize that they are not going to be able to follow the text, but must simply let it wash over them, relying upon key words and frequent repetitions to provide what orientation they need. Mary Said What She Said by Robert Wilson / Photograph © Lucie Jansch English speakers are even more challenged, despite the presumed aids of English supertitles above and to both sides of the stage. The normal problems of such devices are always present—the impossibility of accurately coordinating even moderately faithful translations with the timing and rhythms of stage speech and the necessity of focusing away from the stage action to read the translation—but here both problems are exaggerated. The complex text of Pinckney and explosive delivery of Huppert guarantee that the projected texts often flash by too quickly to be read and in any case often have no relation to the spoken one. In addition, the intensely bright Wilson backdrops overpower the relatively dim projected texts except in the rare blackout scenes. Wilson’s settings tend toward the minimalistic, and that is especially the case here. Aside from Mary herself (and at one point a silhouetted double of her upstage) the stage is totally devoid of scenery, consisting only of a large rectangular background, almost always divided into three blending layers, the middle one tending toward white, the upper and lower ones normally some shade of blue or grey, the hue often changing but the brightness fairly consistent except for complete backouts. Two narrow bands of horizontal white light complete the stage picture one running across the stage below the backscreen, the other at the front of the stage, about where footlights would be located, if used. The only object which appears other than the queen is a white Cinderella-type slipper which she picks up from the floor and briefly examines before discarding it. This being a Wilson production, it is picked out by a distinctive Wilsonian white mini spotlight as Huppert holds it up. Similar accents, virtually a trademark of Wilson’s theatre, are elsewhere used to pick out one of Huppert’s outstretched and posed hands or her enormously expressive face. The first such facial accent comes almost twenty minutes into this ninety-minute production and is particularly striking because up until that point Huppert has remained largely motionless as a striking black silhouette upstage center. The sudden focus upon her flowing white face and especially her brilliantly red outlined mouth created an impression remarkably like that of Beckett’s powerful Not I, which I had recently witnessed at the Irish Repertory. An even more striking visual echo occurred soon after, when Huppert’s expressive visage, now twisted in anger, for a brief and unique moment, turns green. For a New York audience at least, she momentarily became the wicked witch of the popular theatre and film. Huppert’s simple but elegant Renaissance costume, with flowing gown and puff should sleeves (designed by Jacques Reynaud) serves as a kind of ornate visual pedestal to her constantly changing face. Thie gown is so dark that even when she is in full light there is a suggestion of a silhouette. Around her neck, however, she wears an ornate lace collar which, especially when the tight spot is focused on her face, gives the appropriate if chilling impression of a severed head. Mary Said What She Said by Robert Wilson / Photograph © Lucie Jansch Huppert’s physical movements are far more restricted than her voice, and are often mechanical, even puppet-like, especially in the closing moments which suggest a slow and stylized period dance. Her first movement, from her long held post up center diagonally to far downstage right, is done so slowly and gradually that she seems to glide almost imperceptibly to this new position. As the evening progresses, however, she repeats this same downward cross, almost mechanically but it a very wide variety of ways, often quite frantically with slashing movements of her arms. These are also the sequences which are delivered with the most verbal force. The final fifteen minutes or so of the production are a series of brief scenes recapitulating, with slight variations, previous sequences, with one notable exception, which seems, like the dog clip in the opening sequence, to have dropped in from some other production. For the only time in the evening, the figure of Mary almost disappears, covered by a rolling cloud of stage smoke, while the action is carried on by three projected recorded voices. One is apparently Huppert’s, listing a series of historical names (all martyrs?), another is an American voice, perhaps Wilson’s, who repeats slowly and deliberately a series of short phrases in English, primarily “I am NOT not here.” A French child’s voice then apparently attempts to repeat the phases in French. A colleague helpfully suggested to me that this scene was meant to suggest Many’s concern with his son being forced to learn English. This certainly gives the scene more justification than the dog video and occasional other seemingly gratuitous directorial touches, but I still found the production essentially a memorable showcase of the formidable talents of one of the world’s greatest living actresses. Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature, and Middle Eastern Studies at the Graduate Centre, CUNY. He earned a PhD in Drama and Theatre from Cornell University (1961), where he also taught for a number of years. Marvin has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, Greece, the ATHE Career Achievement Award, the ASTR Distinguished Scholarship Award, the Bernard Hewitt prize, the George Jean Nathan Award, the Calloway Prize, the George Freedley Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the founding editor of the journal Western European Stages and the author of over two hundred scholarly articles and fifteen books that have been translated into fourteen languages. His most recent books are Ten Thousand Nights: Highlights from 50 Years of Theatre-Going (2017) and Hamlet's Shattered Mirror: Theatre and the Real (2016). European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents The 2025 Festival International New Drama (FIND) at Berlin Schaubühne Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 Willem Dafoe in conversation with Theater der Zeit The Puzzle: A new musical in the Spoleto Festival, Italy presented by La MaMa Umbria Varna Summer International Theatre Festival Mary Said What She Said The 62nd Berliner Theatertreffen: Stories and Theatrical Spaces That Realize the Past, Present and Future. Interview with Walter Bart (Artistic Leader, Wunderbaum Collective & Director, Die Hundekot-Attacke) from the 2024 Berliner Theatertreffen Duende and Showbiz: A Theatrical Odyssey Through Spain’s Soul Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Vivian Appler Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' Vivian Appler By Published on May 26, 2016 Download Article as PDF [T]aking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skillful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all our parts. -Donna Haraway [1] Imagination and Representation: Laurie Anderson and the Performance of Science Science, a liberal cultural domain, carries certain gendered expectations with it. [2] Science disciplines such as physics, astronomy, and engineering tend to be the most heavily laden with prejudices that continue to manifest in unequal hiring practices and disparities in wages within those fields. [3] In this special issue of JADT dedicated to “Scientific Research and Inquiry in American Theatre,” it is important to recognize how theatre and other representational modes of performance impact a cultural imaginary that contains both the sciences and the arts, and that gender bias exists at all points of our social spectrum. This interdisciplinary perspective reveals that problems of inequality apply to the domain of science as well as other cultural and economic domains such as art, business, and education. Theatrical performance has long been a popular mode of social critique, and when science is understood as a part of culture, not apart from it, the potential arises for theatre’s critical pen to address science issues as social. Representation of women as contributors to knowledge production within the domain of science is an important part of the critical power of theatrical performance. The use of the theatre as a laboratory to extend and create new knowledge about science is an exceptional quality of Laurie Anderson’s performance of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in The End of the Moon (2004). In this article, I offer an explicitly feminist analysis of one high-profile piece of science-integrative performance art that is implicitly feminist in its deconstruction of science practices and transparent representation of science ideas within the community of a general theatre audience. This article contributes to a body of scholarship that is growing to match an increasing amount of science-integrative theater on the twenty-first century stage. Laurie Anderson’s performance art tends to be critiqued within a non-representational framework. Moon is no exception: she embodies her own experience as a NASA resident-artist while performing science within the experiential context of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). However, the unfamiliar and unavoidably removed nature of the science objects central to her story must be considered within a somewhat representational context. The representational quality of her female body stepping into the domain of science onstage is a critical step towards expanding liberal notions of who has access to physics and astronomy careers. Her artist’s body is equally significant because it blurs the cultural boundaries that separate science discourse and practice from other cultural realms. Anderson’s embodied intervention into the arts-science divide suggests that science should be a part of a holistic cultural conversation, one that is equally accessible to all curious participants. Interdisciplinarity is central to the realization of feminist scientific discourse. Twentieth century science writer C.P. Snow infamously observed a “two cultures” divide that has long defined interdisciplinary discourse as antagonistic. Snow’s philosophical intervention into this cultural schism often (although perhaps not intentionally) situates scientists as better culturally read than their literary and artistic peers. [4] Snow’s binary question of “arts versus science” oversimplifies a much larger issue of empathy among cultural domains which have unequal levels of inclusivity and access. Interdisciplinary performance research can disrupt this biased cultural scenario by examining science-oriented performance artists who work from a feminist perspective. Artists such as Laurie Anderson, Lauren Gunderson, and Critical Art Ensemble are informed by feminist theory even when their science-integrative performances explicitly address other socio-scientific issues. Overtly feminist analyses of such arts-science hybrid performances expose a cultural imbalance in access to fields such as astronomy and physics even as they suggest alternative pathways to these apparently elite jobs. Science-integrative performance can reveal practical and theoretical interdisciplinary commonalities among diverse cultural domains. NASA Art Program Curator Bertram Ulrich observes of Anderson’s process, “her mind works very much the same way a scientist’s would. They’re both reaching out to try to understand what’s unknown.” [5] Moon was created as an outcome of Anderson’s arts residency at NASA; in it she uses performance art to invite the average theatre-goer into the space agency’s relatively closed ranks that she, an artist, has tenuously joined. Anderson shares her research with her audience, whom she imagines to be “a woman who would be sitting in Row K. I am trying to make her laugh.” [6] Randy Gener praises Anderson’s “faux-naif mutability, her techno-artist reputation and cross-wiring of art modes [that] are part of her idiosyncratic appeal—the reason she was selected by NASA’s Art Program.” [7] It may come as a surprise that NASA even has an art program, but artistic interpretation of the space agency has existed since its inception. The NASA Art Program was founded in 1962 as an attempt to make NASA’s enterprises more available to a popular American audience. The Program’s original director, James Webb, “wanted to convey to future generations the hope and sense of wonder that characterized the early days of space exploration.” [8] While many of the artists funded by NASA have been visual artists—alumni include Annie Leibovitz, Robert Rauschenberg, Terry Riley, and Norman Rockwell—Anderson was the first performance artist invited for a residency. [9] The selection of Anderson to participate in the Art Program reveals the agency’s desire for a more inclusive performance of science within traditional scientific spaces and an understanding that a theatrical performance artist is qualified to ease access to this elite domain in ways that other science outreach activities have been unable to do. Yet, Moon , the second in a trilogy of performance pieces that Anderson has devised in response to the post-9/11 cultural climate in the U.S., is not uncritical of NASA. [10] Anderson endeavors to instill in her audiences a sense of wonder at the world while also encouraging active participation in the larger culture in which the domain of astronomy is embedded. She gives the audience glimpses into elements of the monolithic science institution through sparse verbal narration, lyrical soundscapes, and iconic images. Anderson fills the space between wonder at scientific achievement and an active engagement with the socio-political criticism of those achievements through embodied and technologically transductive performance techniques. Her position as a woman artist engaging with science issues models a culture in which all citizens are empowered to participate in disciplines that have historically, and habitually, been restricted to professional scientists that physically resemble hegemonic figures of scientific authority: white, able-bodied, Euro-American men. Anderson’s Moon intervenes into this perennial limitation of American imagination with regard to inclusive practices in astronomy. Her storytelling is a proposal for citizen engagement with the process of exploratory and experiential astronomy as it was being practiced by NASA in the mid-2000s. Anderson’s combination of the human, the technological, and the animal—represented onstage physically, imagistically, and textually—constitutes a cyborg system intent on subverting culturally accepted notions of science that have come to be, she implies, accessible only to those agents performing almost exclusively within the secret domain of the military. [11] Anderson’s citizen-scientist performance opens with a pastiche of iconic twentieth century images that have come to define an American idea of the night sky. These images’ ubiquity in American pop culture contributes to an atmosphere of familiarity that enables an empathetic relationship between general audiences and science-oriented performance to transpire. The tableau is reminiscent of Clement Hurd’s illustration of the children’s book Goodnight Moon , by Margaret Wise Brown. Anderson is seated in the downstage right chair (where Wise’s mother bunny sits), surrounded by stars—tea candles—scattered across the stage, and the moon in its upstage left corner. Anderson’s moon is a fragment, indicative of the partial relationship that a human has with any piece of the universe. This synecdochal moon is a reproduction of the well-known photograph of Neil Armstrong’s lunar footprint. Taken in 1969 and projected onto a classroom-sized screen, Anderson’s deconstructed moon is nonetheless familiar to a general American audience in 2004. Anderson transduces NASA into a familiar object by isolating a sound that is a piece of a human: a voice. The tale begins with a description of a typical day in her studio in the company of her dog. The telephone rings. She describes the NASA representative on the other end of the line not as a person, but as a voice. “The voice said, ‘this is so and so and I’m from NASA and we’d like you to be the first artist-in-residence here.’ ‘You’re not from NASA,’ and I hung up the phone.” [12] Anderson continues to recount how the voice from NASA called back, and so her astronomy-integrative performance research began. Anderson’s choice to depict NASA as a voice renders the giant organization manageable. One voice can have a conversation with another voice on the telephone, but an individual might not as easily encounter a high-profile science institution such as NASA in its entirety. Feminism and The End of The Moon In this article, I draw primarily upon theories of the posthuman, performatics, and the cyborg in order to tease out the feminist aspects of Anderson’s performance of astronomy. N. Katherine Hayles’s [13] and Rosi Braidotti’s [14] approaches to posthuman theory help to articulate a line of thought that is at once socially aware and embodied. Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” playfully addresses the shifting roles of feminism, informatics, and hybridity within the domain of science even as she argues against notions of cultural boundaries. Diana Taylor’s use of performatics is also rooted in a desire to transcend geo-political borders. Taylor suggests the term “performatic” rather than “performative” when critiquing embodied performance, “to denote the adjectival form of the nondiscursive realm of performance… [b]ecause it is vital to signal the performatic, digital, and visual fields as separate from, though always embroiled with, the discursive one so privileged by Western logocentrism.” [15] Here, I extend Taylor’s term from its original “Americas” context and apply it to the analysis of performances that deliberately blend technics, politics, and informatics in order to disrupt liberal disciplinary boundaries. Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, whose performance theory in Cyborg Theatre is deeply inspired by Braidotti’s cultural criticism, asserts that, “arguments for alternate subjectivities—nomadic, non-unitary, hybrid, cyborgean—permeate a theoretical technological landscape reflecting a need for radical rethinking about human positioning in the world.” [16] Anderson’s performatic intervention into the problem of inclusive science access alters the positionality of critique—from without—that is vital if change in a cultural imagination of science and scientists is to transpire. Anderson’s narrative is overtly cosmopolitan and science-driven, but feminist principles are implicit to the science-integrative framework that makes her global critique possible. A feminist approach to the performance of science might include the identification of the following qualities: Transparency. As hybrid technologies make more of the universe detectable to the human, so the social machine that makes these new technologies possible must maintain open and inclusive environments. Hybridity. Feminist performances of science might acknowledge the networks over which the knowledge-productive elements of socio-scientific labor are distributed. Alignment with post-colonialist and post-human “insights about the importance of the politics of location and careful grounding in geo-political terms.” [17] Cultural position in relationship to access and authority within the domain of science is directly related to the liberal, humanist social contract of the West that post-colonialist and post-human theories seek to dismantle. Performances of science that transparently enact hybrid and inclusive knowledge production practices are a step towards the realization of an equitable culture across multiple disciplinary domains. Analyses that elucidate these qualities go hand-in-hand with the realization of theory as practice. Transduction—the communication of information across different media—is caught up in the feminist analysis of the performance of science because of its potential to equalize access to disciplinary-specific information. Citing James Berkley’s analysis of Edgar Allan Poe, Hayles invokes the power of mimesis to communicate data while also providing a framework for the transfer of power from one performing agent to another through mediated interactions: “Mimesis, in [Berkley’s] account, becomes a transducer transferring the power to evoke wonder and terror from one site to another, while the sublime sets up the transfer by presupposing that a connection exists between environment and system, stimulus and affect, externalized object and internalized subject.” [18] In a broad theatrical context, the performance process begins with information found in the world and that information is transduced through the dynamic body of a performing agent. Mimetic transduction moves information from one medium (the page) to another (the stage, screen, or other performance venue) so that audiences might understand that information differently than they would were they to encounter the same information via a different medium. Embodied transduction that occurs in a science-oriented theatrical context can empower audience members to participate in science concepts even when liberal social norms deny the non-scientist easy access to the domain of science. Theatrical transduction can encourage an empathetic audience response and therefore often results in the creation of an array of culturally imaginative possibilities for audiences of science-oriented performance. Anderson’s position as both resident of NASA and science-outsider allows her to empathize with NASA scientists as well as with general audiences. She establishes herself as an artist who is qualified to comment on science issues through her performed encounter with contemporary astronomy. Her feminist intervention is implicit; she, a woman artist performing science, is also fluent in scientific discourse and therefore challenges astronomy’s habitually exclusive practices. The kind of science mastery that Anderson exhibits falls into a category that philosophers of science Kyle Powys Whyte and Robert P. Crease, citing H.M. Collins’s and R. Evans’s 2007 study, refer to as “interactional expertise,” in which a non-scientist achieves “knowledge of a scientific field that is sufficiently advanced to understand and communicate within the discourse yet unable to contribute to research.” [19] But Anderson’s work is research. She uses her “interactional” expert position to conduct performance research that endeavors, at least in part, to discover what may be missing from the domain-specific attempts to diversify the laboratory. Anderson’s passion for astronomy and cosmology is infectious, and her performance craft transduces not only science concepts but also her enthusiasm for the subject. Her knowledge of NASA’s scientific processes grew through her residency, but her status as an outsider remains and necessitates the empathetic bridge-building of her science-integrative performance. Such interdisciplinary connections are needed if NASA and other physics and astronomy laboratories are to achieve the inclusive atmosphere that they purport to desire. Yet Anderson’s stakes are higher than the interests of a single government agency. The empathetic bridges she builds are also necessary for our society to function as a whole. Anderson and the Hubble Space Telescope [20] Historically, many scientists who began as astronomy outsiders made their most remarkable discoveries, in part, because of the field’s non-normative worldview that restricted outsiders’ access to mainstream spaces in which astronomy research had been conducted. These scientists were forced to introduce a new perspective if they were to perform science at all. American women such as Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) and Vera Rubin (b. 1928) made remarkable discoveries about the cosmos that were directly connected to their limited access to traditional methods of astronomical research and experiment. Like the introduction of women and other socially excluded groups to the observatory , the addition of each new component—including machines—to the hybrid project of knowing outer-space holds the capacity to radically alter conventionally held notions of humanity’s place in the world. This was the case with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which produces breathtaking images of the universe that are now readily available in a variety of contemporary media. [21] Anderson’s performance renders the HST’s process at once transparent and curious. History, astronomy, and technology are necessarily entwined enterprises because of astronomy’s methodological reliance upon the reference to and manipulation of many different visual representations of individual astronomical objects captured over long periods of time. [22] HST images add to an archive of telescopically transduced celestial imagery that has been accumulating around the globe for centuries. HST images have become a popular way for astronomers and curious amateurs to get an idea of the appearance and composition of objects in outer-space. In Moon, Anderson speaks for the non-expert as she performs her curiosity about the way that HST engineers manipulate images of celestial objects. She explores the knowledge-generative labor performed by the HST (and its team of astronomers, technicians, and astronauts) with her audience. Her performance of HST image transduction systems creates a metaenvironmental space in which spectators participate in NASA’s transductive processes. HST images are developed through networked transduction systems in a cyborgean enterprise designed to bring previously undetectable information about deep space objects into the optical spectrum. [23] Anderson illuminates this esoteric process for her audience, but she also indicates that the process is imperfect in its ability to align perception of distant objects with the spectral truth of those objects. In astrophotography, the distant celestial body may really exist, but it is also a product of the technology that detects it, the telescopic camera that captures previously unknowable information, and a transductive process that involves choices made by intentional human agents. [24] The original object—the Andromeda Galaxy, a mountain on the moon, the Great Nebula of Orion—disappears even as it is created for observation by a general, earthbound audience, and this presents a problem for Anderson. She voices a discrepancy between how celestial objects exist in their original environments and how those objects are represented to consumer-audiences of science media. Anderson brings her critique of technologically mediated images back to the human body: “We’re always fixing up photographs,” she remarks as she compares the work of HST engineers to photoshopping a “miserable family Christmas” photo. [25] “One of the things that really bothers me about photography,” she continues, “is that you never know how hot it is in the photograph.” [26] Anderson’s problem with photoshopped family pictures analogically grounds her critique of heavily mediatized HST images. Both types of images are fragmented, removed from first-hand experience, and therefore indicative of the posthuman condition necessary to the performance of astronomy. Mary Thomas Crane points out in her examination of early modern science that much of the experience of the laboratory (and, by extension, the observatory) counters “basic sensorimotor experience.” [27] Anderson describes her frustration with astrophotography’s incapacity to accurately convey the environment of a star or a galaxy in a two-dimensional image. HST pictures, she argues, are simply archives of data that document conditions that remain forever outside the experiential grasp of the human observer. A family photograph’s observer cannot distinguish the difference between the photographic subject’s embodied experience and the record of that experience. [28] The photograph is an index of original environmental conditions; the colors, texture, and size of the sweater, and who was wearing it are indicated by the photograph, but the embodied experience of wearing the sweater, as well as the circumstances surrounding the photographic event, is a much trickier experience to share with an observing agent across distances of time and space. For consumers of HST media images, this translates to an inability to sense data that does not normally appear on the human visual spectrum, such as ultra-violet rays and x-rays. Meanwhile, these inexact documents become iconic in their representation of events in cultural memory. Colorization is one way that HST engineers attempt to transduce spectrally invisible information collected by the HST into images that are meaningful for popular audiences and astronomy experts alike. Art historian Shana Cooperstein explains that colorization “encourages people to imagine links between photography and vision, as well as between ‘truth’ and visional perception.” [29] Elizabeth A. Kessler finds that ascriptions of authenticity and authority to colorized HST images depends “on a definition of truth that rests on human perception; but color carries a greater range of meanings. . . . [C]olor can be used to label, to measure, to represent or imitate reality, or to enliven or decorate. Furthermore, it incorporates both objective and subjective elements.” [30] Kessler describes the process of colorization as one that depends upon the variability of human perception as well as a number of possible choices that might be made by individual imagists working across history. Kessler discusses “false color” as “hues” that need not have any relationship to the visual appearance of the phenomena or the wavelengths of light registered by the instrument. Instead, different colors might indicate another dimension of the data….In addition to what the color indicates, false color has come to describe a particular color palette—flat, garish hues that do not resemble natural phenomena in our world.[31] A colorized image emotionally engages a general audience because of that audience’s memory of the familiar icon and subjective associations with the colors in the image. The process is creative in that some personal choice is involved on the part of the HST engineer, but these choices are constrained due to the indexical ends of the photography experiment. Such images are breathtaking, but Anderson is unsatisfied because of the HST’s inability to transduce celestial objects in their complete spectral splendor. She describes an encounter with some of the scientists who work on HST transduction. She performs the kind of expectation that the woman in “Row K” with a casual interest in science might share by asking NASA scientists, “Could you have used a whole different color range…. How did you arrive at these colors?” [32] By “these colors” she means pinks and blues instead of her suggested alternatives of brown and gray. The answer the scientists offer is simple: “We thought people would like them.” [33] She pauses as the audience laughs at the arbitrariness of human choice involved in the transduction of information that comes to us via the space telescope, is interpreted by human engineers who manipulate that data, and manifests in journalistic media images detectable on the visual spectrum. Anderson’s tone waxes lyrical and her text shifts back to the sublime as she muses, “It looks like a painting of heaven.” [34] Colorized HST photographs affect science media viewers in a manner similar to that of acting technique with regard to audiences of realist theatre: both are capable of engendering simultaneous states of curiosity and familiarity on the part of the spectator towards the observational object. Creators of HST outreach images must weigh factors of emotional connectivity, scientific objectivity, and personal memory in the subjunctive work of representing truthful information while also stimulating popular imagination towards distant celestial phenomena. Much like the unnatural techniques that actors deploy to convey a sense of realism in representational theatrical genres, HST astronomers isolate wavelengths that are not on the visible spectrum and ascribe an unrealistic color to them. The effect is a fantastic image that the unaided human eye could never see, but that nevertheless registers as realistic and familiar in the imagination of the observer. Neither realist acting techniques nor HST image manipulation replicate identical copies of the original object of observation, be it a fictional character or a distant star. In theatrical and photographic forms, a sense of familiarity with a scenario or an image is essential for spectators to empathetically engage with the representation of a novel object. Ultimately, it is the creative agency of the individual scientist that determines how distant astronomical events appear to a general public. The subjective memory of the scientist affects the color choices made, even when those color choices don’t represent the “true” color that the human eye would see. Cognitive theatre scholar Amy Cook claims, “[t]o represent the previously invisible, to perform the seemingly impossible, is vitally important to creating the visible and the possible.” [35] Such imagination is necessary each time astronomers reinvent a familiar celestial object with a new technology. In a similar way, Anderson reinvents the domain of astronomy through her critique of HST. Astrophotography distorts the truth while representing reality; it encourages audiences to learn something new about celestial objects through the process of composite imaging. [36] A composite photographic image is created by layering several negatives and thereby blending information of each to create a single image that represents the idea of a photographic object but does not reproduce visual information in a one-to-one manner. HST images are not only colorized, but composite, consisting of layers of captured spectra that have each been assigned colors representative of different aspects of the object’s qualia. Through HST composite, colorized imaging, astronomers create new pictures of familiar objects that index more information than ever before, but that continue to resemble the iconic images captured by earlier astronomers. Visual reference to earlier astronomical icons encourages non-scientist viewers of these images to access any memory they may have about what they already know of these objects, and thus to cognitively build upon previous memories in a continuous development of learning about the objects in question. In Anderson’s composite performance of NASA, she doesn’t work simply with color, but she blends cultural memories and impressions of NASA in order to elicit a simultaneously curious and critical audience response. While her inclusion of Armstrong’s footprint brings to mind a familiar moment in the history of science, it also conjures the Cold War context surrounding the space race. As discussed above, her female artist’s body might trigger a number of associations from different audience members. For those who work within the science industry, Anderson’s performance might signal the disciplinary exclusion of certain social groups from the field. Other audience members who remember Anderson’s previous performances as works of cultural critique may expect an unsubtle criticism of NASA’s affiliations with the military. Still others who have come to expect a spectacular array of high-tech gadgetry from a Laurie Anderson production might be disappointed by the apparently simple stage technology in a piece that deals with technics that are off-limits to the average American citizen. [37] In Moon , Anderson’s trademark electric violin solos create time and space for viewers to process her performatic transduction of NASA as it mingles with subjective associations among the audience. Defying Gravity (And Other Socio-Scientific Forces) In the midst of the multi-layered web of cultural memories that individual audience members experience when faced with the iconography embedded in Moon , Anderson deconstructs NASA even as she composes it. She questions whose bodies have the authority to occupy the subject position in a national conversation about science through her cyborgean relationship to culturally familiar objects that are commonly associated with Americans in space. Parker-Starbuck, in her discussion of the fragmentation of multimedia performance, states, “[a]bject and object bodies are both bodies at a distance, bodies outside of our ‘selves.’ These bodies triangulate around the ‘subject’ as those who are refused, rejected, desired, critiqued, or negotiated with. These are the bodies that reiterate who we think we are and where we fit in the world.” [38] On Anderson’s stage, Neil Armstrong’s body, invisible save for his footprint projected on the small screen, is at once abject and object. Anderson is the subject performing astronomy “in play with” the abjected object of the first man on the moon. [39] The physical and technological space created on her cyborg stage makes room not only for her, but for the witnesses to this feminist comment on representation and authority in the domain of astronomy, to join the cultural conversation. Further altering the triangular relationship she has established among herself as subject, audience as participatory witness, and abjected icons of American space exploration, Anderson playfully manipulates simple video technology in order to defy notions of a familiar physics concept: gravity. Her challenge to physics provokes audience members to increase their engagement with socio-scientific government actions. Towards this end, she performs a spacewalk that introduces NASA’s innovative space suits as war machines. In this sequence, Anderson uses a live-feed video camera to create a performance of weightlessness. She makes her illusory technics transparent to her audience by exposing her stagecraft even as she performs it, letting spectators in on the joke. “Our moon is just the moon,” she muses as she switches the camera on and focuses it toward herself, the audience visible within the camera’s frame. [40] The image of Armstrong’s historic footprint on the upstage left screen is replaced with a live projection stream from Anderson’s camera; now she occupies both subject and object positions on her cyborg stage. She holds the camera upside-down so that her projected image appears to be floating on the space of the stage, also upside-down, with a stage light shining like a sun behind her disembodied head, which bobs gently in accord with the movement of her live body. The camera captures some of the tea candle stars on the stage, and in an instant doubles the amount of “space” represented through the handheld projection device. Through this fragmented stage presence, Anderson raises the issue of gravity, verbally reflects on the experience of seeing old photographs of astronauts “suspended, floating in space” during her residency at NASA, and imagines what it must be like to walk on the moon. [41] As she begins to perform her spacewalk, Anderson describes the technology built into NASA’s new spacesuits that will, according to Anderson, “increase your strength, say, forty times.” [42] The suits contain all kinds of “liquids” and “entry points for medicine.” [43] Just as the audience starts to dream about space suits capable of transforming the human into the superhuman (posthuman?), she disrupts the audience’s reverie with news about the grim reality of war times. The super-suit project’s contract has been transferred from NASA to a “new joint team” between MIT and the U.S. Army. [44] The suits will not be worn by astronauts but will be sent “out into the desert. Out into the world.” [45] Like the touched-up family portrait and HST photographs, no matter how much a person learns about a thing—a physical force, a moon, a space agency—there is always something that remains outside the realm of immediate experience. What remains outside the grasp of the everyday American, Anderson suggests, is the end to which NASA puts its ingenious inventions. Her criticism resonates with Parker-Starbuck’s assertion that “how bodies are modified and by whom are the ethical concerns that surround what already is, and will continue to shape both humans and non-humans alike.” [46] Parker-Starbuck’s theatrical cyborg ethic echoes Haraway’s late twentieth century cyborg provocation: “Might there be ways of developing feminist science/technology politics in alliance with anti-military science facility conversion action groups?” [47] Anderson’s performatics model an alternative way of doing science—in public—that resists traditional power structures hidden within the practice of space exploration. While the spacesuits that Anderson describes resemble more conventional popular imaginations of the cyborg in their immediate melding of human body with technology, Anderson’s “reliance on corporeal-technological relationship” in performance is also cyborg in its technics and its critique. [48] She weaves her criticism into the fabric of transparent video-play about gravity, made strange within the space of the theatre. She proclaims, “Gravity is an illusion, a trick of the eye, not a force.” [49] In the metaenvironment of Anderson’s science-integrated theatre, imagination and illusion enable non-astronaut humans to participate in this rare aspect of the human experience and critique the politics within the institution that makes such experiences possible for a select few Americans. Saying “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?” [50] she segues into a musical interlude that provides the reflective space for her audience to ponder the experience of weightlessness and the role of the individual in the socio-technological tangle of post-9/11 culture. She raises her electric violin and now the image on the screen takes the perspective of the bow as it meets the instrument’s strings. The illusion of space persists as the audience is presented with the live Anderson playing her violin beside the projected, more intimate, close-up image of her face. Quantum Anderson twins are separated by the space of the stage and connected by the electromagnetic force that powers her performance technologies, all in support of the artist’s efforts to transduce the hidden nature of NASA for the general audience assembled at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Anderson’s performatics encourage her audiences to engage with the domain of science in order to stay informed and active in a culture that would apply detection-related technologies developed in the domain of science to the art of global warfare. She presents herself as a science outsider, shares her socio-political performance response in an empathetic manner, and thus multiplies the number of non-scientists participant to the process of astronomy in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, Moon can seem to be internally contradictory—should the non-scientist viewer love NASA or fear it? Seen as parts of a cultural whole, the balance between science and art, fear and wonder, becomes evident. This ability to isolate individual components in order to realize a whole system is integral to Anderson’s posthuman stage presence. Her doubled image—on the stage as well as on the projection screen—is an embodied metaphor for the ways that humans can hold contradictory opinions about one subject. She raises the social stases of war and peace as poignant examples for 2005. “Yes,” she says, “you can keep two things in mind.…[W]e can hold both at once without dropping.” [51] The show closes with a monologue in which Anderson imagines the end of time with a mixture of theories of quantum physics, dream sequences, and, of course, the haunting musical accompaniment of her electric violin. She offers a parting comment on the hybrid nature of human cognition at the dawn of the quantum age: “Sometimes, I think I can smell light,” a suspicion that resonates with her earlier human frustration with the inadequacy of transductive technologies to replicate original conditions of deep-space phenomena. [52] Here, she suggests that such previously undetectable information is accessible by means of our extended and imaginative posthuman state. Access to the previously inaccessible becomes a matter of a change in critical, embodied, and disciplinary perspectives. Feminist, posthuman, and cyborg criticisms of the domain of science in the space of the theatre model possibilities for non-traditional bodies to participate in interdisciplinary actions and conversations having to do with science. The representation of women performing scientist roles in performance is a critical move towards a culture that might imagine, accept, allow, and encourage the female body as normative for the task of practicing physics and astronomy. Anderson is transparent in her own creative process that also renders NASA a bit less opaque for non-scientists. Her presence as a woman onstage, performing science from the perspective of an artist, offers an empathetic bridge for other curious science-outsiders to critically participate in the experience of astronomy. References [1] Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991), 181. [2] This article was written, in part, during a Dibner Research Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California in 2015. Thanks also to the New York Public Library Performing Arts Research Collections for granting me access to review the archival footage of The End of the Moon . [3] The 2013 National Science Foundation (NSF) found that “the proportion of [science and engineering] degrees awarded to women has risen since 1993. The proportion of women is lowest in engineering, computer sciences, and physics.” National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2015 , accessed October 20, 2015, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15311/digest/ . There is much action that is currently being performed within astronomy in particular to emend these disparities. Blogs such as Women in Astronomy and Astronomy in Color are evidence of actions performed by women and racial minorities who work within the discipline of astronomy towards the end of equalizing access to astronomy. Women in Astronomy , accessed 14 November 2015, womeninastronomy.blogspot.com. Astronomy in Color , accessed 14 November 2015, astronomyincolor.blogspot.com. [4] “They [literary intellectuals] still like to pretend that the traditional culture is the whole of ‘culture,’ as though the natural order didn’t exist. As though the exploration of the natural order was of no interest either in its own value or its consequences. As though the scientific edifice of the physical world was not, in its intellectual depth, complexity and articulation, the most beautiful and wonderful collective work of the mind of man. Yet most non-scientists have no conception of that edifice at all.” C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures: and A Second Look: An Expanded Version of the Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 14. [5] Ulrich in Grossnov, Michael Joseph, “Inviting the Cosmos Onto the Stage,” The New York Times, 11 November 2004, http://www.nytimes.com , accessed 1 March 2016. [6] Anderson in Solomon, Deborah, “Post-Lunarism,” The New York Times Magazine , 30 January 2005, http://www.nytimes.com , accessed 1 March 2016. [7] Gener, Randy, “Fly her to the moon: what’s art got to do with NASA? Laurie Anderson listens to the cosmic pulse,” American Theatre 22, no. 3 (2005): 26+, accessed 2 December 2014, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA130570546&v=2.1&u=upitt_main&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=1d8012ba9f173f1b83d9bc51f4d0ad28 . [8] NASA ArtSpace , accessed 6 December 2014, http://www.nasa.gov/connect/artspace/ . [9] The Smithsonian recently curated an exhibit dedicated to the NASA Art Program’s history, documented in the book, NASA/ART—50 Years of Exploration . Selections from it may be seen on NASA’s website, https://www.nasa.gov . [10] Other pieces of the trilogy include Happiness (2001) and Dirtday! (2012). [11] Anderson has a history of connecting the dots between the domains of science, technology, and the military. Friedrich Kittler points out that she adapts the military technology of the vocoder for her representation of the voice of a pilot announcing a crash landing in the song, “From the Air” on the record Big Science (1982), also featured in the live performance, United States (1983). Mara Mills, “Media and Prosthesis: the Vocoder, the Artificial Larynx, and the History of Signal Processing,” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 21, no 1 (2012): 110, accessed 19 October 2015, http://muse.jhu.edu/article/491050 . [12] Laurie Anderson, The End of the Moon (New York: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvey Theatre, February 27, 2005), videocassette, New York Public Library, Performing Arts Research Collections, Theatre on Film and Tape. [13] N. Katherine Hayles, “Refiguring the Posthuman,” Comparative Literature Studies 41, no.3 (2004), accessed 11 May 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40247415 . [14] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). [15] Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 6. [16] Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 14. [17] Braidotti, The Posthuman , 39. [18] Hayles, “Refiguring the Posthuman,” 313. [19] Kyle Powys White and Robert P. Crease , “Trust, Expertise, and the Philosophy of Science,” Synthese 177, no. 3 (December 2010), 411-25, accessed 26 July 2015, 417. [20] The HST is a 2.4m-wide reflective telescope that is situated three-hundred and eighty-one miles above the Earth’s surface. On 24 April 1990 it was carried in the cargo bay of the space shuttle Discovery and placed into orbit. Its “improved wavelength coverage,” will come to bear on this article’s examination of the HST role in detecting invisible spectra in the accessible performance of astronomy as it appears in The End of the Moon. Robert W Smith, “Introduction: The Power of an Idea,” Hubble’s Legacy: Reflections by Those Who Dreamed It, Built It, and Observed the Universe with It , ed. Roger D. Launius and David H. DeVorkin (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2014), 3. [21] HST has its own website that is operated by NASA. Hubblesite , accessed 19 October 2015, http://hubblesite.org . [22] Repeated observations and visual documentations of celestial objects like stars and galaxies allow astronomers to track changes in an object’s location and appearance over time and therefore learn about the object’s distance, heat, and movement. [23] The visual spectrum refers to the small portion of the energy, emitted by all objects to some degree, detectable to the human eye. [24] In a discussion of mid-late nineteenth century photographs that contain extra-visual data, art historian Josh Ellenbogen states, “[p]hotography does not reproduce data in such images, but instead it produces them.” Josh Ellenbogen, Reasoned and Unreasoned Images: The Photography of Bertillon, Galton, and Maray (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 6. [25] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [26] Ibid . [27] Mary Thomas Crane, “Analogy, Metaphor, and the New Science: Cognitive Science and Early Modern Epistemology,” Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies , ed. Lisa Zunshine (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 107. [28] The relationship of experience to the documentation of experience is a recurrent trope in Anderson’s lifelong explorations of the connections that exist between science, culture, and the military: “Stand by. This is the time. And this is the record of the time.” Laurie Anderson, “From the Air,” in RoseLee Goldberg, Laurie Anderson (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 96. [29] Cooperstein’s case study is of the imagistic history of the Orion Nebula in which she compares nineteenth century astrophotography and the photography techniques used by turn-of-the-millennium astronomers. Shana Cooperstein, “Imagery and Astronomy: Visual Antecedents Informing Non-Reproductive Depictions of the Orion Nebula,” Leonardo 47, no. 2 (2014), 133, accessed 27 May 2015, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/len/summary/v047/47.2.cooperstein.html . [30] Elizabeth A. Kessler, Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 154. [31] Ibid., 157. [32] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [33] Ibid. [34] Ibid. [35] Amy Cook, “If: Lear’s Feather and the Staging of Science,” The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive ,” ed. Paul Cefalu and Bryan Reynolds (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 59. [36] Ellenbogen defines the composite image as “a synthesis of data—a condensed, abbreviative representation of the kinds of information one might otherwise derive from a binomial curve, or better, a series of binomial curves that measured the particular features a given composite shows” (Ellenbogen, 9) . [37] Most reviews remark upon the pared-down technology of Moon , when compared to the technological complexity of her earlier work. [38] Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre , 95. [39] Ibid. [40] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [41] Ibid. [42] Ibid. [43] Ibid. [44] Ibid. [45] Ibid. [46] Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre , 194. [47] Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women , 169. [48] Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre , 101. [49] Ibid. Gravity is (probably) a force, but one that physicists are still seeking to adequately explain. See Lisa Randall, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions (HarperCollins ebooks, 2009). [50] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [51] Ibid. [52] Ibid. Footnotes About The Author(s) Vivian Appler is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the College of Charleston. Her writing has been published in Theatre Survey , Theatre Journal , and the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq. A former Fulbright fellow, her current research focus is on feminist performances of science. 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: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. 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Jennifer Schmidt 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 Unruly Reproductions: The Embodied Art of Mimicry in Vaudeville Jennifer Schmidt By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF The Belle of Mayfair , a musical comedy composed by Leslie Stuart with book by Basil Hood, Charles Brookfield, and Cosmo Hamilton, premiered in London in 1906. The comedy was loosely based on Romeo and Juliet , which did not prevent it from including a number called “Why Do They Call Me A Gibson Girl?” commenting on the American fashion craze sparked by Charles Dana Gibson’s illustrations. The lyrics for the song instructed the listener on how to “affect” the Gibson style: And a monumental curl, And walk with a bend in your back, Then they will call you a Gibson Girl. … The girls affect a style As they pass by With down-cast eye, And a bored and languid smile, … They do their best, for they’ve seen the pictures. [Chorus: They’ve missed the point of the Dana picture,] Which are intended, don’t you see, For all in perfect type should be.[1] For the New York production, which ran from December 1906 through March 1907, Valeska Suratt, a milliner from Indiana, used the role and her dressmaking skills to launch her acting career. Commenting on the hit song for the production’s Baltimore transfer, a review in The Sun exclaims that “Miss Surratt…looks like she had just stepped out from one of Charles Dana’s $1,000 sketches.” The reviewer also notes that the chorus featured a different look than the typical “chubby chorus girls,” stating, “Their places were well filled by tall, willowy creatures, called Gibson girls, who wore the most stunning gowns imaginable and who lifted up their chins in preference to their toes.” [2] This new, aloof physicality and the uniformity sent up by the lyrics of the song—“for all in perfect type should be”—correspond to a general trend in depictions of women in the United States. In Imaging American Women , Martha Banta argues that “ the woman as image was one of the [Progressive] era’s dominant cultural tics.” [3] The allegorical figure of Columbia, for instance, the young attractive woman representing America, appeared with great frequency during this period in political cartoons or as a brand symbol, such as in Columbia Records and Columbia Pictures. Other female allegorical figures towered over the United States in the form of the Statue of Liberty and the 65-foot Statue of the Republic at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition or graced the facades of buildings like the Four Continents statues at the United States Customs House. [4] Matching these stately figures were Gibson’s pervasive drawings of narrow-waisted, large-busted women with upswept hair, button noses, and distant gazes. As Adams, Keene, and Koella discuss in Seeing the American Woman , the Girl was “unindividualized”: “she generally looked down or away…or she danced and promenaded in lines of similar beings.” [5] Thus, as the United States entered the twentieth century, the types of women presented to the public in mass media and entertainment were often idealized, generalized, and detached. With the cultural turn to the visual, “woman as image” became increasingly separated from the living, breathing, individual bodies of women. As images of the American Girl proliferated, however, solo female performers in vaudeville offered alternatives to the disembodied anonymity of these aloof female types. In particular, the practice of mimicry allowed performers like Gertrude Hoffmann, Cissie Loftus, and Elsie Janis to break the “girl” mold with their vividly individualized impersonations of celebrities. Hoffmann, Loftus, and Janis brought attention to the manufactured nature of womanhood in the public sphere through an embodied form of imitation, which allowed them critical, creative space to comment on the celebrity culture of their time. The malleability of their form, in which they embodied several figures at once, gave them an unusual freedom from the strict types and categories for female performers, and their abilities as shape-shifters emphasized a bodily rather than an artificial or mechanical means of reproduction. In response to the commercialization and replication of the female image in the Progressive Era female mimics in vaudeville countered the mass-produced, male-created depictions of women, seen in magazines and chorus lines, with their own unruly reproductions. [6] At the beginning of the twentieth century, mimicry became a highly popular act on variety stages, and while both male and female mimics thrived in vaudeville, women especially dominated the field. A retrospective Variety article from 1948, titled “Vaudeville: Mimics,” reveals the prevalence of female mimics. The author, Joe Laurie, Jr., recalls the “heyday” of mimicry on the vaudeville stage, claiming that “There was an epidemic of imitations in vaudeville from 1905 to 1930.” [7] In a list of the “great artists” of mimicry, the majority are women, and of the artists he mentions who created original material for their acts, all five are women: Cissie Loftus, Juliet Delf, Elsie Janis, Gertrude Hoffmann, and Venita Gould. These mimics “used their own special material,” and Laurie, Jr. considered this to be a superior practice than simply copying material from the acts they were imitating. The majority of imitations in vaudeville, however, like the Gibson acts, consisted of more direct copying. The success of Suratt’s Gibson act, for instance, lay primarily with the gown—in her ability (as a dressmaker) to copy, make, and wear the “$1,000” look. Thus, while the Gibson Girl moved from two-dimensions to three, the emphasis remained on the visual, a priority that was in keeping with the period’s image obsession. In her book, Women and the American Theatre , Faye Dudden discusses theater’s turn to the visual, arguing that the commercialized theater at the end of the nineteenth century was part of an entertainment industry that created a “new kind of public realm.” [8] This new public realm “was not concerned with politics or community interests, but rather aimed at private profit and derived its publicness from the breadth of its marketing ambitions.” [9] While female audience members made an enormous impact on the growth of the mass entertainment market, the period also saw the mainstream success of the “leg business.” This type of entertainment, designed for the male gaze and formerly prevalent only in entertainments for working-class men, became standard fare in vaudeville and on Broadway. Perhaps the best theatrical example of the new public realm and its exploitation of feminized bodies and images was Florenz Ziegfeld’s “Follies,” the annual musical revue that ran from 1907 through 1931 and centered on its spectacular displays of chorus girls. In Seeing the American Woman , Adams et al. discuss the chorus girl as an incarnation of the Gibson Girl, explaining that Ziegfeld “sought primarily the Gibson look for his chorus girl.” [10] Sharing the Girl’s elegant but undifferentiated appeal, these choruses likewise represented youthful beauty and vigor, were vehicles for displaying the latest fashions, and were meant for replication, requiring hordes of women to fill the ranks. Often the extravagant costumes worn by Ziegfeld’s choruses functioned more like scenery, explicitly framing the women as objects and set pieces. Further emphasizing their conformity, the choreography comprised precision line dancing and “geometric formations” that, Susan Glenn argues, “mirrored the early twentieth-century industrial culture” and turned the chorus into a “disciplined female mass.” [11] The “new public realm” also corresponded to the explosion of print media, which, like commercialized theater, increasingly relied on exploitation of the female image. Matthew Schneirov dates the beginning of the “new era” in magazine publishing from 1893, “the year S. S. McClure established McClure’s ” as well as “the year that Frank Munsey cut the price of his magazine to ten cents—well below the cost of unit production—and made his profit through advertising.” [12] Other magazines quickly followed Munsey’s example, and advertising became the chief means of profit, driving down prices for periodical publications and making weekly and monthly illustrated magazines affordable for a broad swath of consumers in the United States. Like the magazines they funded, advertisements became increasingly visual, cutting down on text and relying on imagery, especially that of young, attractive women, to sell their products. The replicable nature of the Gibson Girl led her to be the perfect tool for selling the latest fashions. The Girl, according to Martha Patterson, “created the first national modeling of the one right look ,” and walking down the streets of an American city in the early 1900s meant encountering a sea of Gibson Girls, wearing the uniform of the New Woman. [13] Some of the Girl’s attributes disseminated progressive ideas about womanhood; she was often shown as independent, athletic, and assertive. The popular magazines, in which the Girl appeared, sold women the possibility of refashioning themselves into these sophisticated beings. Of course, by exploiting this attractive image to sell products, the advertiser’s promise of greater freedom led to greater conformity through consumption. Moreover, it was clear that her independence lasted only as long as the period of single life before marriage, and as the model for white beauty and sophistication, she also perpetuated ideas of racial superiority. In the summer of 1907, after Suratt made a hit as a Gibson Girl in The Belle of Mayfair , several vaudeville bills featured imitations of her and the Gibson aesthetic. The Broadway Theatre featured “a new Gibson girl travesty,” and Eddie Foy’s show, “The Orchid,” at the Herald Square Theatre added “a new… imitation of Miss Valeska Suratt, the ‘Gibson Girl,’ by Miss Laura Guerin.” [14] Most notably, the well-known impersonator, Gertrude Hoffmann, added a Suratt imitation into her program. The common vaudeville practice of copying coupled with the viral commercial popularity of Gibson’s drawings—spreading from postcards, to calendars, to cigarette cases, and wallpaper—made the Girl’s appearance on stage rather inevitable. Responding to these trends, imitations in vaudeville and musical comedy both exploited and satirized the superficiality and conformity in the Girl’s appeal. For her Gibson imitation, Gertrude Hoffmann, who used elaborate costumes and make-up to create the effect of her impersonations, copied the gown made famous by Suratt. A review of her performance dwells on the look of her costume: Miss Hoffman [sic], whose eccentric dancing and imitations nightly win much applause, also costumes her part smartly….for the first, of The Gibson Girl, she wore a black velvet Princess of the design worn by Valeska Surratt [sic] in The Belle of Mayfair, with it’s [sic] tight fit and deep V cutout back and front, the fluffiest of fluffy Titian hair. As an exaggeration and burlesque of the type of girl with a kangaroo walk and outlandish poses it was great. [15] Although the review pays close attention to her dress and hair, it also describes her act in decidedly embodied terms. In addition to celebrity impersonations, Hoffmann was known for her elaborate imitations of dance, such as her famous version of Salome. [16] Whereas reviews of Suratt’s performance describe her, in passive, visual terms, as a “living Gibson picture” or “living replica,” [17] the Hoffmann reviewer notes the dancer’s exaggerated movements, which provide a burlesque of the Girl’s unnatural posture. Gibson drew his female figures with an “S”-shaped spine—the result of combining a narrow waist with a large bust and hips. The corsets of the period also emphasized these features, forcing a posture that humorists likened to the curved back of a kangaroo. [18] Hoffmann’s “kangaroo walk” and “outlandish poses” thus satirized the consequences of an actual woman’s body attempting to imitate an impossible ideal. Hoffmann brought further physicality to her imitations by making her costume changes a conspicuous part of the act. An October, 22 1907 review in The Sun describes her practice of changing in full view of the audience: She cavorts back of the scene and is revealed behind a web-like screen changing costumes for dear life with the help of several maids. In a moment she flashes out as George Cohan and gives a rattling good imitation. Behind the screen she goes anon, emerging in the glare of the spotlight as Valeska Suratt singing her ‘Gibson Girl’ melody. In a minute she is Anna Held singing her nonsensational ‘eye’ lyric, and then with another flip of skirt and change of wig she is funny Eddie Foy. [19] Making the frenzied mechanics of her quick changes visible to the audience, Hoffmann exposed the labor behind her visual transformations. This choice, Susan Glenn argues, allowed Hoffmann to “deliberately establish her own presence within each imitation.” [20] It also made a spectacle out of the process of becoming an Anna Held or Eddie Foy, belying any sense of ease behind the elaborate costumes, make-up, and personalities seen in vaudeville through a display of the physical effort behind the curtain. Much of this effort was expended in donning the various trappings of gender presentation. In the space of a few costume changes, Hoffmann represented the masculine figure of George Cohan, two feminine beauty idols, Suratt and Anna Held, and an imitation of the male comedian, Eddie Foy, in ballerina drag. Ending with Foy, as another reviewer comments, made for an effective finale: “to the surprise of the house in the last character, Eddie Foy, in pink tights, ballet skirts, the funny little hat and ostrich walk, with the Eddie Foy smile; she had it all down fine.” [21] After praising Hoffmann’s imitation of Foy’s comedic physicality, the reviewer cannot help but note that she also wore the costume better: “Foy…would find it difficult to imitate Miss Hoffman’s splendid figure.” By highlighting Hoffmann’s feminine physique, the reviewer rushes to reinforce the gender expectations which Hoffmann’s act disrupts. Despite the prevalence of drag in vaudeville, especially female drag, this indicates a discomfort with Hoffmann’s quick assumption of several, differing presentations of gender. Male impersonation by women on stage, such as in breeches roles, has primarily been acceptable as a way for actresses to show off their bodies. Hoffmann follows this rule by choosing Foy’s ballerina act to copy. Like the on-stage costume changes, however, her choice also problematizes artificial markers of gender, taking a typically feminine garment like pink tights and using them to signify a male performer. Moreover, Hoffmann’s athletic physical presence in these acts, which reviewers describe in zoological terms, makes her dangerously masculine. Like other fearfully athletic New Women, Hoffmann displayed an unnerving ability to take on male as well as female attributes. Femininity, of course, has often been equated with reproduction, and the prevalence of female mimics in vaudeville opened questions about the cultural assumptions surrounding women’s “natural” capacity for imitation. With the ingrained associations between mass culture and femininity, Susan Glenn argues, female mimics exacerbated the period’s anxiety surrounding authenticity: “The mimics on the vaudeville stage…could be seen as personifications of a feminized urban consumer culture where being and imitating were one and the same.” [22] Like with the Gibson Girl, advertising used the reproducibility of the female image as a promise to women that they could buy their way to “the one right look.” [23] By impersonating various stars, the mimics encouraged the imitative behavior fostered in celebrity product endorsements, for instance, which were growing in popularity at the time. Want to look like Lillian Russell? Buy Recamier cosmetics. Want to be like Sarah Bernhardt? Buy Pear’s Soaps. [24] Providing a model for successful imitation, the mimics reinforced these attitudes. They did not, however, imitate only the beauty idols of the day. Instead, they often went in the opposite direction, transforming from lovely young women into the absurd, excessive, or racially-coded personalities of the vaudeville stage. In their acts, mimics could play a range of roles, male and female, and surprise audiences with their transformation from a demure young girl into the brassiest of vaudeville personalities. A look at the careers of Hoffman, Loftus, and Janis indicates how the mimic, as solo performer, had artistic control over her performance, and though she based her act on the personalities of other performers, she was free to interpret them according to her own design. This, as Glenn contends, gave female mimics a powerful role: “that of the artist-intellectual who both participated in and critically evaluated the cultural practices of the day.” [25] Mimicry afforded these women the chance to work in a manner similar to the caricaturists of popular magazines, and like caricature they used exaggeration, distortion, and their own unique style to offer a critical and parodic perspective on popular culture. Unlike caricature, however, the mimics’ embodied form of parody went beyond surface-level depictions of women and in return, gave them an unlikely freedom from the restrictive image of the “Girl” in American culture. Hoffmann’s practices as a mimic demonstrate how, as opposed to the photographs of star performers in mass circulation, the portraits offered by mimics were living and breathing imitations—a manual form of reproduction in a mechanical age. Two of the most famous mimics of the time, Cissie Loftus and Elsie Janis similarly emphasized physicality in their acts. Unlike Hoffmann, they eschewed the use of make-up or costume, but highlighted their natural, bodily abilities as mimics. In an interview, Loftus explained that “the born mimic is very independent of such aids to art as costumes, wigs, and makeup,” and Janis, in a separate interview, agreed: “Make-ups do not trouble me. I rely entirely on the inflection of the voice and the copying of action and gesture. That to my mind is the true art of mimicry.” [26] The desire to defend mimicry as an “art” and to stress the inherent skills of the “born mimic” relate to the broader cultural unease associated with imitation. The readiness with which the personalities of other performers could be replicated, challenged the integrity of both live performances, star and mimic, and placed mimicry in an ambiguous relationship to authenticity. Indeed, the vogue for mimicry coincided with modernist cultural anxieties over the impacts of mechanical reproduction in the age of the machine. Inventions from the phonograph to the photograph to the ready-to-wear shirtwaist blurred the lines between imitation and authenticity in an urban, industrialized society. As Walter Benjamin would later theorize in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” the “criterion of authenticity,” central to the function of “art objects,” began to break down, as, with the advent of photography “to an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.” [27] Unlike mechanical forms of reproduction like film or photography, however, mimicry was a form of imitation that preserved some of the “auratic” quality Benjamin ascribes to the traditional art object. In interviews, Janis would “compare herself to a newspaper cartoonist,” Glenn notes, who “exaggerates certain characteristics in order to give a more striking air of reality to the finished picture.” [28] The caricaturist and critic Max Beerbohm also makes this comparison in his review of the mimic J. Arthur Bleackley. Beerbohm scoffs at the mimics who give “exact faithful reproduction[s]” of their subjects, because “an exact reproduction of the real thing can never be a satisfactory substitute.” Rather, he writes, the mimic should have a critical perspective: “The proper function of the mimic is, of course, like that of the parodist in words, or of the caricaturist in line, to exaggerate the salient points of his subject so that we can, whilst we laugh at a grotesque superficial effect, gain sharper insight into the subject’s soul, or, more strictly, behold that soul as it appears to the performer himself.” [29] Beerbohm’s insistence that mimicry can reveal the “soul” of both the mimic and the subject articulates the desire of his age to find art and humanity within reproduction and to validate mimicry as an art with “aura.” Moreover, mimicry constituted an embodied form of parody, and unlike most newspaper cartoons, the creators were likely to be women. While both Loftus and Janis had long and varied careers in entertainment, their practices and stage personas as mimics had many similarities. Cecilia “Cissie” Loftus was the daughter of famous performers on the British music hall stage, and in 1891, at the age of 15, Loftus began performing her imitations at music halls to instant acclaim. She made her New York debut in 1895 at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall, and although she continued to perform on both sides of the Atlantic, she centered her career in the United States. When Elsie Janis began performing, also at a very young age, she was hailed as “the American Cissie Loftus.” [30] With the encouragement and guidance of her mother Jennie, the quintessential stage-mother, Janis was touring the vaudeville circuits by ten and starring in musical comedies by sixteen. Both rising to fame as girls, Loftus and Janis’s effectiveness as mimics stemmed in part from their youthful, feminine personas, which served to heighten the transformation into their various subjects. Known for her astonishingly wide vocal range and deft physical caricature, Loftus would string together impressions of such myriad acts as the following from a 1908 program: Marie Dressler singing ‘A Great Big Girl Like Me,’ Hattie Williams and her ‘Experience’ song, Caruso as he sings in a phonograph, George Walker singing ‘Bon Bon Buddie,’ Ethel Barrymore reading the letter from the boys in ‘Sunday,’ Bert Williams singing ‘Nobody,’ and dancing the ludicrous figure that is appended, and finally Nazimova in a scene from ‘A Doll’s House’ follow in order. [31] With a range of impersonations from vaudeville, opera, and the legitimate theater, Loftus exhibited the flexibility of her voice, which could capture, for example, the specific quality of the opera tenor, Enrico Caruso, as recorded on a phonograph. That her voice stretched to low vocal ranges added novelty and transgression to her act. Reviews of her performances, however, stressed the simplicity of her acts. A notice in the Chicago Daily Tribune describes Loftus’s charm as stemming from her ingenue-like demeanor: “A dainty winsomeness, supplemented by a sense of genuine humor, the deft touch of the artist, and a mimicry that never in any analysis could be construed into coarseness, was the secret of her popularity.” [32] Despite the sometimes provocative subject matter of her impersonations—like minstrel songs or Nazimova’s Nora—Loftus, as the Tribune is eager to confirm, maintained an image of maidenly propriety. Her decision to perform without make-up played into her girlish appeal. Max Beerbohm notes this effect in his comments on Loftus: “It seemed so strange, that neglect of convention. To be behind footlights and not rouged! Yes, hers was a success of contrast. She was like a daisy in the window of Solomon’s.” [33] Beerbohm’s language evokes a striking comparison between Loftus’s simple, natural artistry—like that of a daisy—and the commercial spectacle of vaudeville likened to a flashy department store window. The critical response to Loftus reveals a difference between the superficial representations of the typical vaudeville act and the embodied nature of Loftus’s mimetic skill. Her style of mimicry surpassed artificial or technical means of imitation to get beneath the skin of her subjects, and thus, beyond the innocent appeal of Loftus’s unrouged face, her decision to forego makeup contradicted advertisements that sold the idea of transformation through consumption (i.e. buying the right beauty products). Moreover, her cultivation of a simple, “dainty” persona, gave her, conversely, significant career versatility, allowing her to experiment with more rebellious personalities as a mimic, or as an actress, to play androgynous roles, such as Peter Pan. Elsie Janis, one of the first American women to get her start in vaudeville through mimicry, similarly maintained a girlish persona to accompany her mimetic talent. From childhood, Janis displayed a natural capacity for capturing the voices and gestures of others. She was rumored to give excellent impromptu impersonations, a skill which she reportedly demonstrated before President William McKinley in 1898, when she was invited to perform at the White House. After performing a few songs, recitations, and imitations of Anna Held and May Irwin, Janis surprised the guests with an impersonation of President McKinley, followed by imitations of “members of the United States Senate, the Justices of the Supreme Court (tripping over their robes), and the stereotypical national mannerisms of some of the assembled ambassadors.” [34] As with Loftus, audiences responded to the contrast, both charming and subversive, of a young girl imitating the mannerisms of mature men and women. One reviewer of her early performances commented, “It might seem incongruous for a child to evoke mental portraits of buxom, beautiful women for an audience. But Elsie’s inflections, gestures, and postures, her duplication of the star’s mannerisms, created a perfect illusion every time.” [35] Despite his reassurance about Janis’s talent, the author’s tone reveals a certain unease with the effect of her impressions, and if the incongruity between a girl portraying buxom women was unsettling, then the difference between the young Elsie and the powerful men she caricatured could only be more so. Janis’s supposed innocence, however, also made her transgressions of power and gender easier to digest. A review of Janis’s September 10, 1923 appearance at the Palace indicates this effect. The author, Mark Henry, is filled with admiration, explaining that he “has reviewed Miss Janis many times, but the pleasure is all his, and if anyone should get a laurel wreath, a gold medal or any other recognition hereafter, it certainly is ‘Little Elsie.’” [36] Even though Janis was 34 at the time of this review, Henry still uses the nickname, “Little Elsie.” Because of the close relationship, both personal and business, between Janis and her mother, Elsie did not marry until after her mother’s death in 1931. Thus “Little Elsie” maintained the image of maidenhood well into maturity, and her act continued to rely on the pleasing transformation from “winsome” girl into crude and brash performer. Henry describes her as “the only woman in the world who can swear, do it with refinement, and make you like her,” [37] excusing her mannish behavior through her feminine charm. With her capacity for creative interpretation, Janis famously added “idiosyncratic combinations” of impersonations to her act. [38] These combinations included “[George M.] Cohan singing one of his songs out of the corner of his mouth; Eddie Foy doing a clog dance; Ethel Barrymore doing Fanny Brice; and Sarah Bernhardt singing ‘Swanee.’” [39] As this description from Armond Fields indicates, Janis’s comedic talent lay in jumbling the famous performers of the day into ludicrous juxtapositions. To do so, it is worth noting, she flexed her virtuosity as an embodied performer, mixing the already intertwined fields of song, dance, comedy, and theater on the vaudeville stage into further entanglement. The effusive Mark Henry of the 1923 Palace review provides another example of this kind of celebrity jumble. He considered her “rendition of ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas,’ as different artistes would sing it” to be “a masterpiece.” [40] Although this review may be hyperbolic, Janis clearly had a propensity for parodying the vaudeville stage, which thrived on the big personalities of its stars. Such pronounced types were ripe for mockery, and by easily mixing and matching the mannerisms of stars, Janis’s act highlighted the way in which the celebrity culture surrounding her rewarded strong personalities. For herself, however, she cultivated an image of the all-American girl; [41] she was a New Woman freed from the pages of a magazine to sendup the star-crazed culture. Especially for attractive young women like Loftus and Janis, simply the act of presenting solo, comic material on the vaudeville stage was a risky move. [42] There was a stark divide in the cultural ethos between beauty and comedy, and most female comedians in vaudeville compromised their femininity in some way in order to succeed as comics. For instance, Florenz Ziegfeld stated that his audiences expected “girls and laughter,” [43] but the subtext of that statement was, of course, that an act consisted of either “girls” or “laughter.” An act was either one of his spectacles composed for the male gaze or a comedy act in which the performer, if female, sacrificed any pretensions to beauty. Often this was achieved with a racial mask, such as Fanny Brice’s Yiddishisms and May Irwin’s “coon songs,” or by making reference to their failure to conform to beauty standards, such as the comedian Trixie Friganza’s jokes about her large build and failed diets. With mimicry, Loftus and Janis found a way to be both feminine and funny. Not only did they maintain reputations of demur womanhood while living public lives, they were also able to inhabit a range of more transgressive personalities in their acts while keeping a stable identity as “legitimate” actresses. They were not immune from the racism and xenophobia of the vaudeville stage: like May Irwin, whom she was imitating, Janis sang “coon songs,” taking advantage of the same racially-based humor. But the chameleon nature of her act gave her the privilege to separate herself from the performance. Indeed, Loftus and Janis exploited the difference between their identities as pretty white women and the ethnic stereotypes or outsized personalities they imitated to prove their skill as mimics. That they chose to capture their subjects without the artificial means of make-up constituted an unusual move to eschew superficial means of representation on the vaudeville stage. That they did it so successfully only further demonstrated the inherently artificial nature of cultural representation in vaudeville. Occasionally, battles broke out between vaudeville performers and their imitators, which exacerbated questions of authenticity. Hoffmann and Eva Tanguay, for instance, engaged in a well-publicized feud in 1908 over who could give the best performance of Eva Tanguay, the original or the imitator. [44] The interpretive flare that the mimics brought to each imitation also made it possible for the imitator to be imitated. At the beginning of her career, for instance, Janis always included of few of Loftus’s impressions in her act. Indeed, Loftus’s imitations were so well-known that several performers imitated Loftus’s imitations of themselves. This practice turned competitive when Loftus and Letty Lind became embroiled in a “dancing war” in London, which ended with Loftus adding an “impression of Lind imitating Loftus imitating Lind to her own act at the Palace” in 1894. [45] A similar battle of Loftus imitations occurred in Louisville in 1902 without the presence of Loftus herself. Since managers often liked to arrange programs so that a star would be performing in the same program as a mimic who impersonated her, it was not unusual that Elsie Janis was performing on the same bill as one of her frequent subjects, Josephine Sabel. Sabel, however, was also performing an impression of Loftus’s imitation of herself at the time. Janis took advantage of this by announcing that she would be giving an “imitation of Josephine Sabel in her imitation of Cissie Loftus giving an imitation of her.” [46] After receiving loud applause for this act, Janis brought Sabel back out on stage, and together they performed an encore of the “Loftus imitation” for the audience. With dueling imitations like these, the acts were no longer about best representing another star’s performance but about valorizing mimicry as a feat in itself. Their battle, therefore, became a virtuosic display of imitative embodiment, the movements back and forth demonstrating each star’s ability to maintain control over representations of herself. By copying themselves to a ridiculous extent, however, they also lampooned the reproducibility of popular performance, and, as each iteration of “Sabel” or “Janis as Sabel” or “Janis as Sabel as Loftus as Sabel” became further abstracted from the original performance, they pointed to the inauthenticity within forms of representation that replicated women’s bodies or images. Unlike the passive, uniform representations of women in magazines or chorus lines, they maintained agency over the act of replication, presenting themselves as accomplished parodists and critical participants in popular culture. Throughout their careers, mimics like Hoffmann, Loftus, and Janis displayed a canny understanding of women’s place in the culture of popular entertainment, and they used their imitations to undermine the expectations surrounding beauty, comedy, and women’s bodies. Perhaps the reliance on spectacle in Hoffmann’s case or the preservation of conventional femininity by Loftus and Janis limited their ability to make radical or political statements—their acts were light satires rather than biting critiques—but their careers demonstrated the opportunities that mimicry presented for experimenting with and embodying different types, personalities, and gender roles. Beyond the range of their performances, their creative interpretations also fought back against the superficialities of feminized consumer culture. Unlike the images of celebrities and the “American Girl” in magazines and advertisements, their mimicry pierced beneath the skin, destabilizing the artificial representations of women in mass media and entertainment by drawing three-dimensional portraits and caricatures with the body as image-maker. Their acts thus exemplified the cultural and political potentials of embodied performance, taking advantage of the live, moving body as a tool for creating original, critical, and “auratic” parodies of popular culture. References [1] “Why Do They Call Me A Gibson Girl?” The Bystander , October 10, 1906, Vol. 12 no. 149, 83, https://books.google.com/books?id=yvERAAAAYAAJ&pg=PT32#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed 29 January 2019). [2] “ ‘The Belle’ At Academy,” The Sun . (1837-1993) , Nov 13, 1906, https://search.proquest.com/docview/537283401?accountid=15172 (accessed 24 January 2019). [3] Martha Banta, Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History (New York: Columbia UP, 1987), xxviii. Emphasis original. [4] In Strange Duets (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009), Kim Marra discusses the Montana Silver Statue, another allegorical statue at the World’s Columbian Exhibition, which presented “Justice” modeled after the actress Ada Rehan. That these statues were sometimes modeled on famous actresses suggests a cycle of influence between theater and visual media, with the “American Girl” type moving from two-dimensional magazine prints, to living portrayals on stage, and back to three-dimensional images cast in metal and stone. [5] Katherine H. Adams, Michael L. Keene, and Jennifer C. Koella, Seeing the American Woman: 1880-1920 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2012), 84. [6] While in other contexts, the term “female mimic” might refer to a drag performer, such as Julian Eltinge, who mimicked females in his act, I use the term to refer to female performers. Throughout the essay then, “female mimics” refers to women who performed imitations of celebrities of all genders. [7] Joe Laurie Jr., “Vaudeville: Mimics,” Variety , Vol. 170, no. 11 (May 19, 1948): 52, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1285922332?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=15172 [8] Faye E. Dudden, Women in the American theatre: actresses and audiences, 1790-1870 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994), 182. [9] Dudden, Women in the American Theatre , 182. [10] Adams, Keene, Koella, Seeing the American Woman , 77. [11] Susan A. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000), caption to image 21. [12] Matthew Schneirov, The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America 1893-1914 (New York: Columbia, UP, 1994), 4-5. [13] Martha H. Patterson, Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895-1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 33. [14] “Beginning of Summer Season,” New York Times (1857-1922), May 26, 1907, https://search.proquest.com/docview/96730772?accountid=15172 (accessed 24 January 2019); “Roof Gardens Open,” New York Tribune (1900-1910), Jun 2, 1907, https://search.proquest.com/docview/571882732?accountid=15172 (accessed 24 January 2019). [15] Cady Whaley, “The Cohans,” The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), Jun 29, 1907, 10-11, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1031381111?accountid=15172. [16] For further discussion of Hoffmann’s dance impersonations see Glenn, Female Spectacle , and Sunny Stalter-Pace, “Gertrude Hoffmann’s Lawful Piracy: ‘A Vision of Salome’ and the Russian Season and Transatlantic Production Impersonations,” Theatre Symposium , Vol. 25 (2017): 37-48, 110. [17] “Modernized Romeo; Up-To-Date Juliet,” New York Times (1857-1922), Dec 04, 1906, https://search.proquest.com/docview/96609309?accountid=15172; “She Won’t Copy That Gown Again,” Detroit Free Press (1858-1922), Jun 06, 1907, https://search.proquest.com/docview/ 564061242?accountid=15172 (accessed 24 January 2019). [18] Ruth Turner Wilcox, Five Centuries of American Costume (Mineola, NY: Dover Publishers, 2004), 146. [19] “Vaudeville At Maryland,” The Sun (1837-1993), Oct 22, 1907, https://search.proquest.com/docview/537464261?accountid=15172 (accessed 24 January 2019). [20] Glenn, Female Spectacle , 76. [21] Whaley, “The Cohans.” [22] Glenn, Female Spectacle , 81. [23] Patterson, Beyond the Gibson Girl , 33. [24] Daniel Delis Hill, Advertising to the American Woman, 1900-1999 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002), 29. [25] Glenn, Female Spectacle , 95. [26] Loftus quoted in “The Art of Cecilia Loftus,” The Billboard , May 16, 1925; Elsie Janis, “Elsie Janis Tells the True Art of Mimicry,” The Sun (1837-1993), Aug 08, 1915, https://search.proquest.com/docview/534100838?accountid=15172 (accessed 29 January 2019). [27] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” trans. Harry Zohn, (Shocken/Random House ed. Hannah Arendt), https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm (accessed 1 February 2019). [28] Janis quoted in Glenn, Female Spectacle , 77. [29] Max Beerbohm, “A Play and a Mimic,” The Saturday Review , June 11, 1904: 749, https://search.proquest.com/docview/9532068?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=15172. [30] Lee Alan Morrow, Elsie Janis: A Compensatory Biography , Dissertation, 1988, 57. [31] “News of the Theaters,” Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1922), Apr 09, 1908, https://search.proquest.com/docview/173390463?accountid=15172. [32] “ ‘Cissie’ Loftus is More than ‘Cecilia’,” Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1922), Jun 22, 1902, https://search.proquest.com/docview/173068991?accountid=15172. [33] Max Beerbohm quoted in John Anderson, “Miss Cecilia Loftus,” Harper’s Bazaar 71, no. 2710 (June 1938): 52-53, 114-115, 120, 126. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1832505976?accountid=15172. [34] Morrow, Elsie Janis , 24. [35] Irene Corbally Kuhn, “Elsie Janis, the one-woman U.S.O. of World War I, is gone,” in Slide, Selected Vaudeville Criticism (Metchuen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1988), 111. [36] Mark Henry, “This Week’s Reviews of Vaudeville Theaters From Coast to Coast by Special Wire: B.F. Keith’s Palace, N.Y.” The Billboard , 35, no. 37 (Sep 15, 1923): 16-17, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1031707084?accountid=15172. [37] Henry, “This Week’s Reivews.” [38] Armond Fields, Women Vaudeville Stars (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 159. [39] Fields, Women Vaudeville Stars , 159. [40] Henry, “This Week’s Reviews.” [41] See Deanna Toten Beard, “A Doughgirl with the Doughboys: Elsie Janis, “The Regular Girl,” and the Performance of Gender in World War I Entertainment,” Theatre History Studies 33 (2014): 56-70, for a discussion of Janis’s cultivation of her image as an all-American Girl who could be “one of the guys” with soldiers in WWI. [42] Glenn, Female Spectacle , 43. [43] Glenn, Female Spectacle , 48. [44] Glenn, Female Spectacle , 79. [45] Catherine Hindson, Female Performance Practice on the Fin-de-Siecle Popular Stages of London and Paris: Experiment and Advertisement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 150. [46] Morrow, Elsie Janis , 61. Footnotes About The Author(s) JENNIFER SCHMIDT is a teacher, scholar, dramaturg, and performer. In 2018, she received a Doctor of Fine Arts degree in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama. Her research traces the history of the one-woman show in America, focusing on women who write and perform monologue-based solo shows. Schmidt received the American Theater and Drama Society’s Emerging Scholar Award in 2015 and has presented papers at ATHE, ASTR, Theatre Symposium, and the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Her writing has appeared in Etudes and HowlRound Theatre Commons. In the fall of 2019, she will be joining the faculty of Hanover College as Assistant Professor of Theatre. 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.

John Bray Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 32 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl John Bray By Published on June 12, 2020 Download Article as PDF The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl. Amy Muse. London: Methuen Drama Critical Companion Series, 2018; Pp. 215 + xv. Amy Muse’s The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl offers an insightful reading of the works of one of the U.S.’s most prolific contemporary playwrights. Since the premiere of Passion Play at Trinity Rep in 1997, Ruhl has won a number of accolades demonstrating her significance, including the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award (2003), the Fourth Freedom Forum Award from the Kennedy Center (2004), and a MacArthur Genius Award (2005). She has also twice been named a Pulitzer Finalist ( Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2005) and In the Next Room or the vibrator play (2009)). Ruhl began writing plays in Paula Vogel’s dramatic writing course at Brown in which she wrote Dog Play, where she was able to unpack her grief at having lost her father while making the focalizer of her play the family dog (“played by a person wearing a dog mask and an apron”) (xi). Thus, Muse situates Ruhl with the “artist-thinkers” that William Demastes labels the “new alchemists,” in Muse’s words, the “artists and scientists who are re-enchanting the world through a grounding in the world” (xiii). For Muse, Ruhl’s gift of re-enchantment lies in her ability to weave works that blend the empirical and the spiritual. While not the first critical book on Ruhl (that honor belongs to James Al-Shamma’s Sarah Ruhl: A Critical Study of the Plays , published by McFarland & Co. in 2011), The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl presents an important addition to critical examinations of Ruhl’s plays, even if her analysis could sometimes go further. In the Preface, Muse discusses why she structures the book not chronologically, but according to Ruhl’s “artistic and ethical concerns” (xv). Ruhl’s works, Muse argues, “call for a more phenomenological than ideological mode of analysis,” thus situating Muse as a guide through the ways in which Ruhl creates modes of feeling and transcendence by inviting audiences into conversations with the stage, rather than looking at the stage as a place for detached analysis (xiv). The next four chapters are each super-titled with a quote from Ruhl, reinforcing this sense of conversation. Muse’s first chapter deals with Ruhl’s influences, as well as her adaptations of Chekhov and Woolf, in order to demonstrate how Ruhl is more interested in writing about “Moments of Being” rather than presenting realistic representations for the stage (23). In chapter two, Muse considers four of Ruhl’s plays – Eurydice , Demeter in the City , Melancholy Play, and Scenes from Court Life or the whipping boy and his prince . She reads each work to activate an interplay with “the actual and magical” resulting in plays that on the surface feel “whimsical,” but are rather “philosophical comedies that plumb the depths with a light touch” (61). Chapter three deals more directly with Sarah Ruhl’s approach to dramatic structure; here Muse demonstrates that Ruhl, much like Maria Irene Fornes, is less interested in creating characters driven by psychological objectives and more in bringing characters into a room together where their reckonings are rich with pre-Freudian defined desire. In Chapter Four, Muse situates Passion Play, The Oldest Boy, To Peter Pan on Her 70 TH Birthday, and How to Transcend a Happy Marriage with medieval Mystery Plays and plays born out of rituals. As with the Mystery Plays, Muse argues, these works of Ruhl’s have less to do with preaching morality and serve better as invitations to experiences that are holy and invisible. Each of these four chapters ends with a “Coda,” rather than a conclusion, evoking the musicality of Ruhl’s plays. For Chapter Five, Muse departs from the layout of previous chapters and interviews two artists who are well acquainted with Ruhl’s works: Sarah Rasmussen and Hayley Finn. Rasmussen is the Artistic Director of the Jungle Theatre in Minneapolis and served as assistant director for the Broadway production of In the Next Room or the vibrator play . Finn is the Associate Artistic Director of the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis and a former classmate of Ruhl’s. She directed the first workshop production of Eurydice (129, 131). One resonant moment arises when Rasmussen describes how her childhood play impacted her views of directing: “I was entranced by how a small, made up story can sound out larger truths in our lives” (qtd. 135). Rasmussen’s notions of childhood make-believe feeds well into the sense of wonder, myth, and staging of the invisible truths that guide Ruhl’s plays. Chapter Six features three critical essays: “Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play and Contemporary Medieval Performance” by Jill Stevenson; “From Pontius Pilate to Peter Pan: Lightness in the Plays of Sarah Ruhl” by Thomas Butler; and “Arrested Dev-elopement: Myth-Understanding Father-Daughter Love in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice” by Christina Dokou. Each essay demonstrates different paradigms for nuanced, in-depth discussion of Ruhl’s plays. Muse closes with an Afterword, “I Had Hoped to Give Them Pleasure,” in which she considers how writing this book may be a little premature; after all, Ruhl is a midcareer writer who will likely continue having a rich and lustrous career. In the final paragraph, Muse avers that Ruhl’s plays “are not so much about love, intimacy, communion, and transcendence as they are vehicles which the audience and the theater makers experience these pleasurable states” (177). Following the Afterword, the book includes a Chronology of major milestones in Ruhl’s personal and professional life. Muse’s writing is infectious. It is much like listening to a die-hard fan unpack their thoughts and feelings and getting swept up in their unabashed love. The only drawback is that, at times, Muse ignores possibilities for further inquiry by foregrounding summaries of Ruhl’s plays rather than her own analysis. For example, Muse makes passing mention of criticisms of Ruhl being not political enough in her writing, and yet, Ruhl has written political plays. Indeed, as authors such as Lauren Gunderson have argued, simply writing a play can be seen as a political act given our historical moment. Nonetheless, Muse’s The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl will prove to be necessary and exciting reading for our next generation of dramatic critics and dramaturgs alike. References Footnotes About The Author(s) John Bray University of Georgia 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 Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography Introduction: Local Acts: Performing Communities, Performing Americas The Architecture of Local Performance: Stages of the Taliesin Fellowship “La conjura de Xinum” and Language Revitalization: Understanding Maya Agency through Theatre Exploring the History and Implications of Toxicity through St. Louis: Performance Artist Allana Ross and the “Toxic Mound Tours” Finding Home in the World Stage: Critical Creative Citizenship and the 13th South Asian Theatre Festival 2018 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Benito Ortolani, Samuel L. Leiter | This volume contains the proceedings of the “Zeami and the Nô Theatre in the World” symposium, held in New York City in October 1997 < 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 Zeami and the Nô Theatre in the World Benito Ortolani, Samuel L. Leiter Download PDF Edited by Benito Ortolani and Samuel L. Leiter This volume contains the proceedings of the “Zeami and the Nô Theatre in the World” symposium, held in New York City in October 1997, in conjunction with the “Japanese Theatre in the World” exhibit shown at the same time at the Japan Society and, in the spring of 1998, the Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany. The editors, Benito Ortolani and Samuel L. Leiter, both of Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, are internationally recognized scholars of Japanese theatre. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

LÉOH HAILU-GHERMAY presents Legally Bald at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Legally Bald LÉOH HAILU-GHERMAY 5:30-6:20 pm Thursday, October 17, 2024 The Segal Theatre RSVP This offering is a one-person staged reading exploring internalized biases. We’ll jump through time and space with a young artist/activist (and their child self and drag king alter ego) on a very important day for all three of them. Legally Bald is very much a WORK IN PROGRESS! Feedback/questions are so very encouraged. Written by Léoh Hailu-Ghermay Directed by Jake Regensburg LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Léoh Hailu-Ghermay is a first generation Tigrayan-American, Black queer artist, activist, and law student living on occupied Munsee-Lenape and Canarsie Land (Brooklyn, NY). Select theater/performance art credits: Phyllida in Galatea (Flea Theater), Euridike in Antigonick (Playwrights Horizons), Bonzai/Husband in The Good Person of Setzuan (Atlantic Stage 2), Soloist in The Rave Revue (Prospect Theater Co.), Newmama in Letters in the Dirt (The Brick), Kunty Kracker Kyle in Chaotic Good (The Tank), and Mrs. Jennings in Episode (Metropolitan Playhouse). They’re thrilled to be showing their Work in Progress at Prelude! Jake Regensburg is an NYC based actor/musician/director. Acting credits include: Playhouse on Park: THE SHARK IS BROKEN , Argyle Theatre: BUDDY: THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY , IRT: BIRD PLAY , Soho Playhouse: ANNIE BROWN , ArtHouse: THE RIP , Atlantic Stage 2: SUMMERTIME . Jake also works as a dramaturg and has served as a script-reader for Rattlestick Theater, Egg and Spoon, and The New Group. BFA: NYU. Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

Javier Hurtado Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. Javier Hurtado By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences . Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences testifies to the fact that “today’s theatre workers know the value and importance of the next generation,” as Jorge Huerta observes in the forward (9). The book brings together contemporary docudrama, solo performance, and plays with and without music written for young, Latina/o audiences by Latino/a playwrights. The anthology also includes six scholarly articles that conduct in-depth analysis of the plays in the collection; document conversations with leaders in the field; offer pedagogical tools; and ultimately model paradigmatic shifts in the ways Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) is produced, presented, and taught. In the introduction, José Casas writes that as an artist of color, he often feels like an “uninvited guest” in the greater landscape of TYA (9). Diane Rodriguez shares this sentiment. In an interview for the collection, she addresses what she calls “the gap,” a disconnection in the field that has not made TYA a means for “building audiences of color over the past 50 years” (88). This 581-page anthology is an attempt to address that gap, featuring plays by Josefina López, Guillermo Reyes, Lisa Loomer, and more. However, it is not a collection begging for an invitation; it is an affirmation of the work that Latina/o/x communities have already been doing for generations. By pairing these plays with essays that engage the themes of the plays in the collection as well as issues in the field of TYA, Palabras del Cielo provides critical tools for degree programs in TYA to center Latina/o plays in their classrooms and on their stages. University-driven efforts to train scholars and professionals in TYA have expanded; at thirty-one universities across the United States, there are six MFA programs, eight MA programs, seven BFA programs, and eighteen BA programs that offer degrees in educational theatre or TYA. Palabras del Cielo makes an intervention for Latina/o-specific studies in these programs. The texts within offer a unique opportunity to deepen conversations about Latina/o experiences in the United States and to interrogate the history of the craft of storytelling through the theatrical adaptation of Latina/o folktales. In turn, three of the included plays reimagine western canonical texts like Voltaire’s Candide and Dante’s Inferno . These plays allow young actors to perform a variety of acting styles and genres while maintaining a focus on the “young audience” aspect that is central to the form. Beyond the theatre classroom, this anthology could easily be used to explore how Latina/o identity and culture shifts over time, since the plays reflect issues in the community from the mid-1990s to 2014. In addition, the companion essays offer scholarly context that make the book a resource for those in the social sciences and humanities more broadly. For example, in her essay, “The Historical Developments and Emergence of Latina/o TYA: Towards a Mestizaje Theatre,” Cecilia J. Argón traces the specific trajectory of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences (LTYA) through the role of children in performance traditions from Indo-Hispanic rituals and indigenous ceremony to the Chicano Movement. Aragon concludes by affirming that “this anthology of plays recognizes the performance of regional specificity, migration, and transnationalism and global impacts on Chicana/o and Latina/o children and youth” (25). In the essay, “They Don’t Look Like Me: A Look at Representation of Marginalized Populations in TYA in the United States,” Kelly Fey uses a cultural studies framework to write about the impact that cultural representation has on identity formation and interpersonal relations. Fey also puts forth a framework to assess diversity and inclusion work being done at theaters across the United States and provides readers with a TYA Inclusivity Manifesto modeled after the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s work in audience development. Palabras del Cielo amplifies the voices of Latinos and Latinas equally throughout. However, the experiences of trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming youth and the works of playwrights who identify as Latinx are palpably absent. Despite this absence, some of the stories in this book do engage with young protagonists who challenge gender norms. Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans: A Salsa Fairytale (book and lyrics by Karen Zacharías, music by Deborah Wicks La Puma) is a great example. In this fantastic, fast-paced musical adaptation, the title character is a sixth-grade exchange student from Puerto Rico who comes to a new school to learn English. However, this fairytale is not about a young girl who goes to the ball, loses her shoes, and meets a prince; it is about two young girls who learn empathy and fairness, after tempers flare between them on the basketball court. This version of Cinderella makes a significant effort to counter the sexism of the original story. For instance, the girls compete to earn a spot on a national team with a celebrity coach, played by a fairy godfather, while his wife enjoys a day off at the spa. Like the rest of the titles in this collection, Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans is a strong play that can easily tour schools or hold an audience as part of any university or professional mainstage season. Meaning “words from heaven,” Palabras del Cielo is ultimately a stellar anthology of Latina/o TYA geared toward the classroom. It lends itself to production-based and historical survey classes at the university level, providing a necessary intervention with the potential to reverberate across stages and classrooms for generations. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JAVIER HURTADO Tufts University Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

NEEDY LOVER | ASHIL LEE + PHOEBE BROOKS | PAUL LAZAR + JERRY LIEBLICH / THIRD EAR presents Plays in Process at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Plays in Process NEEDY LOVER | ASHIL LEE + PHOEBE BROOKS | PAUL LAZAR + JERRY LIEBLICH / THIRD EAR 1:30-3 pm Saturday, October 19, 2024 The Segal Theatre RSVP LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that portable is a breeding ground for lobsters. ROOTING FOR YOU Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. Rooting for You! blurb: "It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization." THE BARBARIANS The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. LOBSTER Special Thanks: Meghan Finn, Johnny G. Lloyd, and The Tank; Erin Courtney, Zayd Dohrn, Thomas Bradshaw, and Northwestern University. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed or presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and a co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com. Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group, TAG, and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed) Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez. He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover and Mozart in the Jungle. Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido. In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

Christen Mandracchia 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 More than a Props List: Redefining Material Culture as Survival and Pleasure in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined Christen Mandracchia By Published on November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF A small mining town. The sounds of the tropical Ituri rain forest. The DemocraticRepublic of Congo. A bar, makeshift furnitureand a rundown pool table. A lot of effort has gone into making the worn bar cheerful. A stack of plastic washtubs rests in the corner. An old carbattery powers the lights and audio system, a covered birdcage sits conspicuously in the cornerof the room. ([1]) How might you approach these opening stage directions from Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Ruined ? Would you start by picturing specific pieces of furniture? Does the quality and type of sound come to mind first? How does your own positionality inform these choices? As a theatre and performance scholar who also serves as a production manager, designer, and professor, I am rarely able to separate a scholarly reading from the material conditions of production. Thus, I approach these stage directions through many different lenses. For example, as a sound designer, I notice that the first specific thing Nottage mentions is the “sounds of the tropical Ituri rain forest” followed by a reference to an audio system that is plugged into “an old car battery.” These details would impact technical and artistic choices I might make. Similarly, as a lighting designer, I notice that the same battery powers the lights, which means that a production would likely need practical lighting instruments to be hung around the set, in addition to the stage lights. A props-centered approach is particularly compelling because Nottage lists “makeshift furniture” – a phrase which sparks a larger conversation, not just about the logistics of acquiring or building these objects for the stage, but one which hails the production team into the world of the play and into the minds of the characters. Therein lies the challenge. Ruined is a 2011 drama which tells the story of Mama Nadi, a Mother Courage-like figure who owns and operates the described bar in the Congolese rain forest. Her patrons are often miners of the mineral coltan, used in cellular phones, and soldiers on both sides of a bloody civil war. What does “makeshift furniture” look like in the world of this play? What objects are available to these characters, and where do these objects come from? What were these objects originally intended for and what does their second life as “makeshift furniture” reveal about the objectives, survival, innovation, and pleasure of the characters? When members of a production team must put themselves in the place of the characters to make artistic decisions, other aspects of our positionalities manifest themselves as assets or limits in this theatrical process. For example, how would my experiences as a white-ethnic, middle-class, and queer theatre scholar/practitioner in the United States help or hinder my ability to access the world of the play and the lived experiences of the characters to make well-informed, ethical, and dramaturgically accurate production decisions? I begin with this discussion of props because I contend that delving into the specific material histories of objects in the text provides new avenues of nuance and complexity that can help bridge the gap between Western scholarly, practical, and personal lived experiences and those of the characters. An article like “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” by Chandra Talpade Mohanty establishes what is at stake when Western knowledge production relies on archetypes instead of the material realities of the “third world” — especially women. She describes this archetype of the “average third world woman” as falling into gendered stereotypes such as sexual constraint, and “third world” stereotypes of “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.” ( [2] ) She then argues that the victim narrative, in particular, reduces the complexities of the lives of “third world” women to socioeconomic or sexual terms, reinforcing the sexist stereotype of women as weak. ( [3] ) In focusing on the material objects listed in a play like Ruined , through an application of material culture theory as a methodology, this article outlines how Western theatre makers and scholars can approach plays set in the “third world” in a way that Mohanty argues would be more grounded in the “material and ideological power structures” which shape these women’s lives. ( [4] ) Toward this end, Ruined is a useful vehicle for the application of a material culture reading precisely because the play was created with the intent to “sustain the complexity” of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, knowing that her Western “first-world” audience would only know about the conflict through fragmented news clips. ( [5] ) Nottage wrote the play based on ethnographic testimony of real women who survived the war, but she also uses specifically-named material objects in the text to ground the character’s larger given circumstances in material reality. In the play’s first descriptive paragraphs, referenced above, Nottage paints a picture of a place that is “ worn ” but “ cheerful ,” “ rundown ” but “ tropical ”—evoking a comfortable place more than a war zone. As a play about what Mohanty terms the “third world” written for a “first world” audience, Nottage does not fully immerse the audience in the horrors of war immediately. I use the phrase “third world” in this context throughout this paper because it is the word that Mohanty uses to describe the groups of women who fall under this Western label. “Third world,” in its immediate context, refers to the Cold War language which identified the “first world” as the capitalist nations, who were in opposition to the Soviet Union and the expansion of communism. As Mohanty details, this term has taken on more cultural meanings than its technical use from the Cold War era—so that even words like “Western” are tied to the division between “first” and “third” world. I use the term, knowing that it is outdated and problematic in many ways, but also knowing that many of the perceptions associated with this word still exist. I use it with the knowledge that it is a cultural touchstone, conjuring a specific iconography which I hope to complicate. Hence, I will keep it in quotations to highlight the fact that it is a construction. The first allusion to violence happens five lines into the first scene, where Mama Nadi exclaims to her stock supplier Christian, a “ perpetually cheerful traveling salesman ” that she has been expecting him for three weeks. Christian explains that “Every two kilometers a boy with a Kalashnikov and pockets that need filling.” ( [6] ) Nottage begins to reveal the larger given circumstances of the play through specific mentions of an object: the Russian-made and distributed Kalashnikov, often referred to in American lexicon as an “AK.” ( [7] ) In his book on gun history aptly titled The Gun , CJ Chivers informs readers that More than six decades after its design and initial distribution, more than fifty national armies carry the automatic Kalashnikov, as do an array of police, intelligence, and security agencies. But its fuller terrain lies outside the sphere of conventional force. The Kalashnikov [culturally] marks the guerilla, the terrorist, the child soldier, the dictator, and the thug — all of whom have found it to be a ready equalizer against morally or materially superior foes. ( [8] ) Because the AK, especially the infamous AK-47, is often wielded by the NATO members’ military opponents, it is often viewed, in the American cultural archive, as a “bad guy” weapon. Conversely, it is often seen by those who wield them as a symbol of defiance against colonial powers and Western, capitalist values. For the characters in the first scene of Ruined , it represents their position as both citizens of a post-colonial, “third world” country and their vulnerability to violence at the hands of their own countrymen — thus complicating the “bad guy/good guy” or “Western/Anti-Western” binaries. Nottage’s specific mention of the Kalashnikov and other objects in the script serves as what the Combahee River Collective calls “the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” ( [9] ) Nottage’s ability to “sustain the complexity” of many topics has earned her much critical acclaim and scholarly attention. According to data from American Theatre , Nottage was the most produced playwright for the 2022-2023 theatre season in the United States. ( [10] ) Her play Clyde’s earned the top spot as the most produced play, with her Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat at number five. Intimate Apparel was the most produced play of the 2005-2006 season and the fifth most-produced play of the 2006-2007 season. ( [11] ) Ruined held the fourth spot in the 2010-2011 season. Poignantly, Intimate Apparel returned to the top-ten list in 2016-2017, and Sweat was second in the 2018-2019 season before returning to the list for 2022-2023. The data suggests that Nottage’s plays have enjoyed many “lives” beyond their initial premiere dates. As Nottage’s work continues to weave in and out of America’s top ten lists, it is necessary for scholarship to reexamine her work and the body of scholarly and dramaturgical literature dedicated to her plays. Each new “life” evidences a relevance or usefulness to public discourse in the United States on political issues of national interest including immigration, deindustrialization, globalization, and incarceration. Likewise, as national discourses now include robust discussions of the environmental and moral ethics of mining minerals in “third world” countries for electric vehicle batteries, Ruined offers readers and spectators a material methodology that can help to circumvent many of the traps of homogenization, reduction, or “Othering” that can too-often arise in public discourses on the “third world” and its women. Third World Feminism and Material Culture Theory Cultural theorist Celia Lury defines material culture as “ a culture of the use or appropriation of objects or things. ” ( [12] ) She continues: “The first half of the term — ‘material’ — points to the significance of stuff, of things in everyday practices, while the second half —‘ culture’ — indicates that this attention to the materials of everyday life is combined with a concern with the cultural, with norms, values and practices.” ( [13] ) A material culture theory reading of Nottage’s script follows what Mohanty insists that Western beholders should do every time we encounter stories of women in the “third world.” Material culture theory is an interdisciplinary way of analyzing the various ways that objects are connected to larger given circumstances and power dynamics. For marginalized groups who might be absent from the written archive, material culture theory is a way to give voice to the voiceless, or to highlight the everyday lives of people who never wrote about themselves. Material culture theory, however, is not to be confused with materialism or the Marxist tradition of historic materialism, which often only regards material objects in terms of their means of production, consumption, and the role they play in exploitation. In centering the systems of oppression in a discussion on “third world” Black women, there is a danger of falling into the “archetypal victim” that Mohanty warns against. Material culture theory considers the role that objects play in these negotiations: its production — particularly the unseen labor that goes into making it and maintaining it — but also its intended function, the ways that it participates in the creation of self-identity, its special relationships to people and other objects, and how these meanings change over time. ( [14] ) A study of objects in the script reveals the interlocking oppressions which affect the characters’ everyday lives, but also how these objects can be used as sites of agency, survival, resistance, or other negotiations of power within that structure. The play’s original director, Kate Whoriskey, states, “As a director committed to staging complexity, my task is to counter the drama with humor, spirit and wit, and to treat the stories collected in Central Africa with the understanding that at every moment the Congolese are determined to survive.” ( [15] ) I am interested in the way that role that objects play in the leveraging of these dramatic moments in favor of survival, as reflective of the way that real women in the Congo, such as the ones that this play is based on, do the same. Furthermore, material culture theory resists the anti-materialism (victim/passive) narrative that suggests that consumers are manipulated or subordinated into purchasing or gathering things. The production and consumption of material objects can just as much oppress an individual as it can empower one. Like “third world” feminism, material culture theory demands that a methodology be used to consider the individual circumstances of an object’s relationship to a person, time, and place to “sustain the complexity,” as Nottage would say. I’d like to push the conversation beyond mere survival into one of joy and pleasure. Mohanty warns that confining the “third world” woman to a survival narrative can perpetuate their image as “archetypal victims,” and “freezes” them into “objects-who-defend themselves.” ( [16] ) This essay thus considers how material objects can be used as both a means of survival and pleasure. This positioning comes in direct response to critics who have chosen to praise the play’s portrayal of sexual violence but decry the fact that Nottage wrote a romantic ending for her principle leads. Other scholars, such as Jeff Paden, have defended the play’s romantic ending in the name of its political potency. ( [17] ) Is the ending of a Black/postcolonial play predetermined to be sad or ambiguous? If so, who determines this? It is possible that this ending disturbed critics because it challenged preconceived Western notions of what the “third world” is supposed to be. And perhaps the justification of “third world” characters’ pleasure determined by its political efficacy. In the context of this paper, “third world” feminism manifests itself as both Black feminism and postcolonial feminism with an emphasis on self-definition, and how material objects are used to that end. A material culture theory reading of the text that considers how these objects contribute to the world-making that Nottage employs insists that the objects in the script are more than a props list. They are a means understanding the complex world contexts that a production has taken on the responsibility to portray. Fanta, Don’t You Wanna? The field of material culture theory has a plethora of methods for analyzing these relationships. Many are in the form of a series of questions which can be applied to an object. This section will use the questions developed by Igor Kopytoff to go through the objects in the script for Ruined to identify the characters’ material circumstances, which reveal their position in larger systems and “interlocking oppressions.” While detailing the material circumstances and synthesis of oppression is only a first step, it is a vital one. Kopytoff approaches the above considerations of a material object as a “cultural biography” of a thing. “In doing the biography of a thing,” he says, “one would ask questions similar to those one asks about people: What sociologically, are the biographical possibilities inherent in its ‘status’ and in the period and culture, and how are these possibilities realized?” ( [18] ) Kopytoff is working within an anthropological framework, however, this paper is not an anthropological treatment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the characters and events of the play are based on ethnographic testimony from real women from the DRC, Ruined is ultimately a theatrical script, and the material objects in this play exist within the larger given circumstances that Nottage has created for the stage. In this material culture reading, anthropology is replaced with script analysis and dramaturgical research, although the same questions that Kopytoff asks are used. Consider the opening stage directions of the play: “ A small mining town. The sounds of the tropical Ituri rain forest. The Democratic Republic of Congo. A bar, makeshift furniture and a rundown pool table. A lot of effort has gone into making the worn bar cheerful. A stack of plastic washtubs rests in the corner. An old car battery powers the audio system, a covered birdcage sits conspicuously in the corner of the room .” ( [19] ) These stage directions establish the immediate location of the play: a small mining town in the Ituri rain forest. But they also emphasize that the owner of the bar/brothel, who is about to be introduced as “ Mama Nadi, early forties, an attractive woman with an arrogant stride and majestic air ,” has recycled and repurposed items beyond their original functions. ( [20] ) She has put “a lot of effort” into curating these objects in a way that produces pleasure for her and her customers. The cultural biographies of the “ makeshift furniture ,” “ washtubs ,” and “ car battery ” have changed with time and with a new owner, and their positioning in this space speaks to Mama Nadi’s larger given circumstances as well as the ways that she uses objects to create her own space within those circumstances. Before Nottage mentions the Kalashnikov, she notes that Christian is drinking a Fanta soda. ( [21] ) Like the Kalashnikov, Fanta has a collective cultural meaning in “first world” material culture. While it would be difficult to impossible to track each individual audience member’s knowledge, recognition, and response to these objects in the script, Fanta’s massive American marketing campaign in the early 2000s offers clues to the audience’s possible associations. The 2001 Fanta television commercial, featuring the tropically themed female group of four, the Fantanas, and their catchy, Latinx-inspired, double-entendre jingle “Fanta, Don’t You Wanna” branded the soda as a fun and sexy party drink, associated with the Global South, where it was already incredibly popular. ( [22] ) At first glance, Christian’s choice to order a soda in a bar, specifically a Fanta, may evoke such cultural associations with fun and pleasure. The cultural biography of Fanta can serve to connect the image of the smiling African salesman character to the “first world” audience and help us understand the relationship between our material culture and the characters’. Because Fanta is specific, its biography is easier to trace as a first example. ( [23] ) The first question that Kopytoff would ask about a bottle of Fanta is, “Where does the thing come from and who made it?” A quick Google search can tell me that “Fanta is a brand of fruit-flavored carbonated drinks created by The Coca-Cola Company and marketed globally.” ( [24] ) However, Kopytoff’s question forces one to search deeper for the unseen labor and processes which created the beverage and brought it to Christian’s hands in Mama Nadi’s bar. Fanta’s presence in this space is evidence of globalization. The Coca-Cola Company is an American corporation, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, which works with local bottling partners all over the world. ( [25] ) In Africa, at the time that the play was written, the largest partner was SABMiller, a British brewing company based in London. ( [26] ) The bottling and brewing plants would be in African countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia, Comoros, Mayotte, Swaziland, Botswana and Zambia — but not the Democratic Republic of Congo. ( [27] ) In the DRC, the Coca-Cola bottling company is the Barlima Brewery, founded by Belgian businessmen during colonial occupation and owned, since 1986, by the Dutch Heineken Corporation. ( [28] ) The list of Coca-Cola products bottled at Barlima does not include Fanta, nor is it listed as being distributed in the DRC. Thus, the Fanta was made by African workers in plants owned by the Dutch, in partnership with an American company, and brought to Mama Nadi’s bar by the black market. ( [29] ) Like the exchange of the Kalashnikov rifles outside of conventional forces, Mama Nadi’s business exists outside of the standard market. She is simultaneously an avid capitalist and a disruptor of capitalist markets, defying simple or clean categories. By asking one simple question of a stage direction on the first page of the script, this methodology has yielded valuable information on the given circumstances of the play and the post-colonial, racial, and capitalist power dynamics of which the characters find themselves. Material Culture as Survival A strictly materialist reading of these circumstances related to Fanta would highlight the role that these systems play in oppressing characters like Mama Nadi. For example, the dialogue of the first scene explains that the movement of goods such as Fanta is difficult due to rebel checkpoints and taxes. A few lines after discussing the joys of his soda, Christian exclaims the quote from earlier about the Kalashnikov and pockets that need filling: “Toll, tax, tariff. They invent reasons to lighten your load.” ([30]) The material objects cannot be separated from the larger given circumstances of the piece. For example, Mama pours herself a Primus beer while Christian drinks his Fanta. Primus beer is brewed in the same Barlima Brewry which partners with Coca-Cola and is owned by the Dutch Heineken Group. Unlike Fanta, which does not distribute in the DRC, Primus has exclusivity deals with bars all over the country, and Heineken pays roughly one million dollars to the rebels to pass their checkpoints so that the beer can be distributed. ([31]) The connections between Heineken and the armed conflict in the DRC has yet to be explored in its entirety. Olivier van Beemen’s explosive book Heineken in Africa: A Multinational Unleashed exposes the company’s ties to corruption, sexual violence, human rights violations, and even genocide in the 1990s. ([32]) A material culture reading acknowledges these systems of oppression, but also asks what the object means for the characters themselves, thus centering them in the narrative, and not the multinational corporations. Here, for example, Primus beer is a significant portion of Mama’s revenue. When Mr. Harari discusses the interlocking oppressions of coltan mining and armed “two-bit militias battling for the keys to hell,” Mama responds to these factors by declaring, “True, chérie, but someone must provide them with beer and distractions.” ( [33] ) Primus is such a large part of Mama’s business that the parrot she keeps in the bar ends the play by squawking, “Mama! Primus! Mama! Primus!” ( [34] ) For Mama, her bar is more than a business, it is survival for her and the girls in her employment as prostitutes. Mama’s bar is established as a safe zone in the first scene when Christian brings his niece Sophie to work there: “I told my family I’d find a place for her . . . And here at least I know she’ll be safe. Fed.” ( [35] ) This fact is stated again in the second act when Mama asserts, “My girls, Emilene, Mazima, Josephine, ask them, they’d rather be here, than back out there in their villages where they are taken without regard. They’re safer with me than in their own homes.” ( [36] ) She describes how the interlocking oppressions which connect natural resources, multinational corporations, beer, and armed conflict also protect her: beer makes the soldiers happy and they protect her business. “Who would protect my business if [the Commander] turned on me?” she says. ( [37] ) This is emphasized when Mr. Harari exclaims to Mama, “Just, be careful, where will I drink if anything happens to you?” ( [38] ) The line emphasizes the fact that her bar is the only one in the area. By selling beer in the rainforest, she meets supply and demand for pleasure in their bleak circumstances. In this way, her business is useful to forces that would otherwise destroy her and the women she protects. Her usefulness, and therefore her financial and physical security, is symbiotically tied to Primus beer. A reading which only focuses on the means by which Primus is produced, distributed, and tied to rebel groups misses the complex material circumstances which tie it to the characters’ survival. Kopytoff asserts that a “cultural biography” of an object must consider the perspective by which one assesses an object. ( [39] ) Does one read the value of Primus beer based on how much Heineken profits from it, how much rebels profit from it, or how much Mama profits from it? The answer is to consider all of them, but to center Mama’s perspective to determine how the object is culturally marked within the world of Nottage’s script. What does her world look like without Fanta or Primus? Thanks to a report by The Economist in 2018, there is little need for speculation. In between 2009 — when Ruined was researched and written — and 2018, Heineken was forced to close two of its breweries in the DRC due to international pressures over their ties to Barlima Brewing Co. and business practices in those regions. The article explains that since 2016, “In western Congo, Angolan beer in cans—less tasty but cheaper than Primus or Tembo—has flooded the market. It is not sold at cost since the smugglers’ main aim is to acquire dollars to trade on the black market in Angola.” ( [40] ) The article also reports that “violence is worsening.” Imagining that this happened while Mama is trying to run her business, she would have to pay more money for beer, which is described as being lower quality. Furthermore, the commercial branding of Primus within the script, and in reality, is of the upmost importance. Kopytoff’s final question asks, “What has been [the object’s] career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognized ‘ages’ or periods in the thing’s ‘life,’ and what are the cultural markers for them?” ( [41] ) Both The Economist and Olivier van Beeman discuss how Primus is ingrained in Congolese culture as large sponsors of the music industry, and how Heineken sponsors campus fashion shows at universities, free nights in dance clubs, and music and sporting events. ( [42] ) This gendered meaning of the beer, and its connection to the music industry, is evident in Mama Nadi’s bar where she and Sophie sing songs about beer and about warriors. ( [43] ) In the script, when soldiers enter her bar, they immediately ask for one or two bottles of Primus, and at other times refer to themselves as “warriors” or perform hyper-masculinity. ( [44] ) What would happen if Mama told them that she does not have Primus beer in her stock? Because so much of her survival depends on the happiness of her customers, a negation of the culturally significant pleasure of drinking Primus beer could potentially result in the bar’s value decreasing. Again, the connection between Primus beer, the countries commercial and cultural institutions, and cultural markers for masculinity “sustains the complexity” of the material conditions of the characters’ lives as it also raises the stakes for what would happen if Primus were unavailable to Mama’s bar. The same can be said for mentions of the mineral coltan in the script, which is the one material object that has dominated many discourses in dramaturgy packets. From the first scene, Nottage establishes the importance of this object when Christian says, “All along the road people are talking about how this red dirt is rich with coltan.” ( [45] ) As the scenes progress, the audience is informed of the impact that coltan mining has had on the Congo, and the human rights violations which are connected to the mining and selling of this mineral for electronic devices. In fact, much of the first two scenes is dedicated to explaining this exposition, signaling that this material object is the lynchpin which connects the local economy, the armed conflict, and the sexual violence perpetrated against women. Nottage has positioned the action of the play a few months after coltan had been discovered in the rainforest. Mama says, “Six months ago it was just more black dirt,” ( [46] ) Mr. Harari informs Mama that, “in this damnable age of the mobile phone it's become quite the precious ore...” ( [47] ) Christian establishes that there are large groups of miners coming to the area: “Suddenly everyone has a shovel, and wants to stake a claim since that boastful pygmy dug up his fortune in the reserve. I guarantee there will be twice as many miners here by September.” ( [48] ) This makes Mama Nadi happy, because it means that she will have more customers, however, the character Salima connects the coltan mining to the armed conflict and atrocities, recounting how “fifteen Hema men were shot dead and buried in their own mining pit, in mud so thick it swallow them right into the ground without mercy. He say one man stuff the coltan into his mouth to keep the soldiers from stealing his hard work, and they split his belly open with a machete. ‘It’ll show him for stealing,’ he say, bragging like I should be congratulating him.” ( [49] ) Like Primus, the interlocking oppressions of coltan mining are clear, but so is the fact that Mama’s business depends on it. “Me, I thank God for deep dirty holes like Yaka-yaka,” Mama says of the local mine. ( [50] ) Since Ruined premiered in 2009, dramaturgy packets, study guides, and program notes have addressed the issue of conflict minerals, as they appear in the play, but most fail to address their importance to the characters’ survival. In a way, these dramaturgs have performed the first part of Kopytoff’s methodology on cell phones and other electronic devices that the audience might own, but do not complete the “cultural biography.” For example, Charlie Payne of the Almeida Theatre in London suggests a practical exercise for teachers and students titled “There’s no blood on my mobile!” He instructs his audience to read the context articles he has provided and “Brainstorm the supply chain, or ‘conveyor belt’, of coltan — how does it reach the consumer and what are the consequences of mobile phone consumerism in the West? Now think about this physically. Create six, eightbeat phrases — three relating to the use of coltan and three highlighting its impact in the DRC. Now try playing these all together — a literal conveyer belt from the mines to the consumer.” ( [51] ) Connected to a 2011 production, Berkely Rep Magazine featured a section entitled, “Coltan: From the Congo to you,” reporting that “In the 1990s and early 2000s, coltan emerged as a globally significant commodity essential to the production of digital technology. As world demand for mobile phones, laptops, PlayStations, and digital cameras exploded, tech industries came to increasingly rely on coltan from the Congo, which has an estimated 80% of the world’s reserves.” ( [52] ) A 2011 study guide from Arena Stage cites a United Nations study which reports that, “all parties involved in the conflict have been involved in the mining and sale of coltan. The money rebels and militias receive from these sales helps them buy more weapons and supplies for the war.” ( [53] ) These studies position the audience in relation to the events in the play, but in focusing on making the interlocking oppressions of coltan, cell phones, rebel militias, and sexual violence the sole narrative of the dramaturgy, it centers the victim narrative without adding the nuances of how coltan mining has become a means of survival for women in the DRC. As with Primus beer, the importance of coltan to survival in the DRC was highlighted in the real-world aftermath of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, section 1502, which requited “companies trading on U.S. securities exchanges to determine through supply-chain due diligence whether or not their products contain conflict minerals from DRC or neighboring countries, and report their findings annually to the SEC [Securities Exchange Commission].” ( [54] ) The Washington Post reported that, “In the fall of 2010, two months after the law’s signing, Congo’s government halted mining for six months — even at facilities not controlled by armed groups. The move had tremendous repercussions in a country where, by some estimates, a sixth of the 70 million inhabitants depend on artisanal mining.” ( [55] ) By 2014, the negative effects were felt in the Congo, where out of the nation’s hundreds of mines, only a handful were “tagged” as “conflict free.” ( [56] ) While the law was passed in an effort to curtail the stimulant role of the mining in armed conflicts, a follow up article from 2018 reports that “militias in eastern Congo have only proliferated. Miners are still working in pitiful conditions with little investment into tools and infrastructure. Much evidence points to the reality that minerals coming from mines controlled by militias are still making their way into the global market.” ( [57] ) While Ruined and the aforementioned dramaturgical packets were written without the hindsight of post-Dodd-Frank legislation, Mama Nadi’s lines suggest the immediate importance of the mine to her own survival. When Christian informs her that the violence is intensifying with the disappearance of a white pastor, her first instinctual response is to ask, “What about Yaka-yaka mine? Has the fighting scared off the miners?” ( [58] ) She is more worried about the mine closing than she is about the missing pastor. This is an example of how knowing the material circumstances, and having the hindsight of what happens when those circumstances are changed by external forces, can help contextualize and inform character objectives and value systems. Mama is putting her survival and the survival of the women in her care first in her priorities by caring about the mine’s closure. In “sustaining the complexity” of these objects in the characters’ lives, Nottage withholds the catharsis of an easy solution to the interplay of multinational corporations and violence in “third world” countries. Instead, she chooses to focus on the way that her characters not only survive, but find joy in their circumstances, and this endeavor is closely tied to material objects. Material Culture as Pleasure The importance of objects like Primus and coltan to the immediate survival of the women in the play informs the way that the characters interact with these objects and others which are listed like cigarettes and soap. ( [59] ) However, character interactions with objects are also informed by pleasure as well, and it is important to note that the beer drinking soldiers are not the only characters who derive pleasure from material objects in the script. While the men in the script enjoy a large amount of dominance and power over female pleasure in the context of this play, they do not have a monopoly on it, and they are not able to have full control over it. Unlike the archetypal victims that Mohanty describes, Nottage’s characters share joy and pleasure with male characters and enjoy pleasures of their own. The play’s opening line chooses to focus on Christian’s pleasure as he drinks his soda: “Ah. Cold. The only cold Fanta in twenty-five kilometers. You don’t know how good this tastes.” ( [60] ) The stage directions follow with, “Mama flashes a warm flirtatious smile, then pours herself a Primus beer.” ( [61] ) Knowing the complex relationship between their circumstances, the Fanta, and the Primus, it is worth noting that these characters not only profit from the sale of these objects, but they share in the pleasure of them as well. If a bottle of Fanta, for example, has made its way to Mama Nadi’s bar through a more complicated route, due to the fact that it is not distributed in the DRC, it might be considered something rare or special for the characters – signifying moments that are worth noting to the reader, viewer, in a character analysis by an actor, or in direction of the play. Christian’s line emphasizes the scarcity of Fanta, Mama’s own innovation in finding a way to refrigerate the soda in the middle of the rainforest, and Christian’s sensory enjoyment of the object. Her flirtatiousness is a recognition of Christian’s satisfaction with the Fanta before she pours herself a beverage so that she can share in the same kind of joy. “You sure you don’t want a beer?” Mama asks. “You know me better than that, chérie, I haven’t had a drop of liquor in four years,” Christian replies. The stage directions emphasize that Mama’s next line “It’s cold” is delivered “teasing.” ( [62] ) The objects become part of an improvised language of pleasure, desire, seduction, and satisfaction. This dynamic manifests itself with lipstick a few pages later: MAMA And my lipstick? CHRISTIAN Your lipstick? Aye! Did you ask me for lipstick? MAMA Of course, I did, you idiot!... Leave me alone, you’re too predictable. ( Turns away, dismissive ) CHRISTIAN Where are you going? Hey, hey what are you doing? ( Teasingly ) Chérie, I know you wanted me to forget, so you could yell at me, but you won’t get the pleasure this time. ( Christian taunts her with the lipstick. Mama resists the urge to smile .) MAMA Oh shut up and give it to me. ( He passes her the lipstick.) ( [63] ) Not only do Christian and Mama enjoy the objects individually, but the Fanta, the beer, and the lipstick are incorporated into their dynamic of pleasure. Harkening back to Kopytoff’s final questions, (“What has been [the object’s] career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognized ‘ages’ or periods in the thing’s ‘life,’ and what are the cultural markers for them?”), Fanta’s ideal career is to provide such sensory joy. The connection between beverages and flirtation is a common theme in Fanta marketing, when considering the way that the object’s career is culturally marked — or mark eted . ( [64] ) Therefore, its erotic meaning in the encounter between Christian and Mama Nadi is not necessarily contrary to its original meaning; but the raised stakes of the object’s presence in Mama Nadi’s bar signals that this encounter with the two characters is more than a reproduction of a Coca-Cola commercial. Their shared moment over two drinks indicates an early connection between the two, which will ultimately culminate in the controversial romantic ending where the two characters agree to a courtship. This ending was met with distain from critics who believed that the romantic ending undercut the tragedy of sexual violence and war present in the rest of the play, or worse, disrupted its realism. Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the ending “well shaped” and “sentimental,” ultimately deciding that “because of its artistic caution, ‘Ruined’ is likely to reach audiences averse to more adventurous, confrontational theater.” ( [65] ) Brantley’s back-handed compliment implies that Nottage’s ending is not risky enough for the subject of “third world” war. He says, “The play isn’t a form-shattering, soul-jolting shocker like Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted,’ another and more innovative study in wartime atrocities.” His strong implication is that sentimentality appeals to the lowest common denominator of audiences, who appreciate conventional happy endings. Robert Feldberg of The Herald News asserts that “Nottage succumbs to a desire to project hope and happiness both of which she’s established as extremely unlikely by having Christian playfully woo the reluctant Mama Nadi in a scene set out of an old-fashioned romantic comedy. It’s too trivial, a cuddly ending to an otherwise resonant, deeply felt evening of theatre.” ( [66] ) Jill Dolan, on her blog The Feminist Spectator , critiques the ending similarly by stating “Suddenly, the play becomes a heterosexual romance, in which Mama and her girls are redeemed by the love of a good man.” For Dolan, the heteronormativity of their relationship and the “reintegrating the nuclear family…compromises the rigorous, clear-eyed story Ruined otherwise tells.” ( [67] ) However, something that may seem “conventional” in the context of Western drama (i.e. a romantic ending) takes on new meaning in the circumstances of the play: a Fanta isn’t just a regular soda, and flirting over it is more than a reproduction of commercial images. What does a romantic ending mean in the material context of the characters? To speak directly to Dolan’s point, the circumstances of the play complicate the sexual component of the “heterosexual romance” between Mama Nadi and Christian. Mama reveals in the final scene that she is “ruined,” which means that she has been sexually abused to the point where she can no longer have children. ( [68] ) The specific details of this are left out of the play. It is unclear as to whether this factor limits her ability to have children or her ability to have penetrative sex entirely. The other “ruined” character, Sophie, has been raped with a bayonet — another stark reference to the Kalashnikov — leaving her unable to walk without pain, let alone have intercourse. ( [69] ) Despite the vague implications for Mama’s status as “ruined”, at the very least, it disrupts the “conventional” correlation between heterosexuality and procreation. Mama Nadi and Christian may be a male/female couple, but there is very little that is “normative” about their relationship. The happiness of this ending does not erase the circumstances which complicate it. Nor is it out of place, as these reviews imply. The connection between these two characters has been established since their first page encounter with the Fanta. A reading that centers what the objects mean to the characters suggests that Mama Nadi and Christian’s relationship is “erotic,” but not necessarily sexual — drawing from Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” which cites the erotic as “providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” ( [70] ) From the beginning of the play, Mama Nadi and Christian are joined by their love of material objects. Christian sells objects, Mama buys them, and this shared passion for things provides them with an improvised language of pleasure, desire, seduction, and satisfaction. As Lorde says, “Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives.” ( [71] ) Throughout the play, Mama Nadi carefully weighs each situation in favor of her own joy and pleasure. For Mama, material objects are extensions of herself. She says, “There must always be a part of you this war can’t touch.” ( [72] ) In this moment, she is talking about a raw diamond that a miner traded to her for four beers and one of her sex workers. Although the audience does not yet know that Mama Nadi is “ruined,” the fact that she equates a material object with the one part of herself that the war cannot touch is significant given the fact that her body has been violated. For Mama, the objects are extensions of her “self” as described by psychologist and material culture theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s essay “Why We Need Things.” According to him, the human psyche and sense of identity is vague, and material things help ground people by acting as touchstones. For Csikszentmihalyi, the objects perform: “They do so first by demonstrating the owner’s power, vital erotic energy and place in the social hierarchy.” ( [73] ) For Mama Nadi, the material objects around her represent the power that she has gained within the “interlocking” systems of oppression. She exclaims, “I didn’t come here as Mama Nadi, I found her the same way miners find their wealth in the muck. I stumbled off of that road without two twigs to start a fire. I turned a basket of sweets and soggy biscuits into a business. I don’t give a damn what any of you think. This is my place, Mama Nadi’s.” ( [74] ) Thus, everything in the bar is an extension of herself and plays a role in her self-definition — or re-definition. Therefore, the stage direction in the beginning that says that “a lot of effort” has gone into making the bar look cheerful suggests that pleasure is important for the character as well, and that these objects that she surrounds herself with speak to more than survival. Lorde describes the “erotic” in a similar way; that it is something internal [read: psychological and spiritual] and not physical. Although she and Csikszentmihalyi are writing from different disciplines, and are separated by age, gender, race, and nationality, both write about the erotic, and Lorde uses material objects to describe what happens inside her “self”: During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. . . I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience. ( [75] ) Thus, she, like Mama Nadi equates a material object with her own internal vital energy. Mama’s raw diamond can be taken away, but no one can take away what it represents: the fact that she has not only survived being “ruined” but has also prospered, thrived, and found joy. Decolonizing Efforts in American Theatre As American theatre, in both academia and the industry, commits itself to anti-racism and decolonization practices, let us not forget Patricia Hill Collins’s foundational text “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought,” in which she pays homage to the long tradition of resisting negative images of Black women and moving towards self-definition as independence, self-determination, self-reliance, and survival. ( [76] ) A material culture theory reading of Ruined yields significant information on the character’s material circumstances, interlocking oppressions, survival tactics, and pleasures. Each of these forces is connected to the other, and material objects are deeply interwoven into these dynamics. However, discussions of survival and pleasure are often left out of Western assessments of “third world” women, including those surrounding works of theatre like Ruined , as shown by dramaturgical and critical academic archives. In doing so, these conversations run the risk of reinforcing victim archetypes as discussed by Mohanty’s work, which can be potentially counter-productive to anti-racist and anti-colonial efforts. Material culture theory is a methodology that can be applied to both scholarly and practical theatrical projects and evidences the ways that scholarly methods are useful and relevant to the production process. In this case, material culture theory can be used not only for the props list, but also for the places where material objects intersect with scenic dressing, costuming, practical lighting instruments, sound effect and music choices, and, of course, directing and acting choices. What kind of objects decorate the set described in the opening stage directions? Where do they come from and who made them? What do they mean to the characters? What are the characters wearing and how did those clothes come into their possession? What kind of lights did Mama Nadi use to make her bar look “cheerful”? What would be available to her? How would sound be distorted if the equipment was powered by a car battery that was also powering the lights? These are many questions that designers already ask themselves based on the design processes. These are already the kinds of conversations that take place at production meetings. Material culture theory can help ensure that the answers to these questions are culturally specific, accurate, and precise. This is especially true when engaging with marginalized groups who are often omitted from or misrepresented written archives. What story do the objects tell? How do people in these groups use objects in everyday life towards self-definition? The importance of self-definition is also articulated by Mohanty’s work on decolonizing images of the “third world” woman in white, Western feminist hegemonies, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, which critiques the role of the Western imagination in the formation of the Other. Smith says, “I say that because like many other writers I would argue that 'we', indigenous peoples, people 'of color', the Other, however we are named, have a presence in the Western imagination, in its fiber and texture, in its sense of itself, in its language, in its silences and shadows, its margins and intersections.” ( [77] ) While Mohanty’s work is primarily a critique against academic constructions of the “third world,” Smith’s is an indictment of Western imagination for the role that it played in justifying the imperial exploitation of the “third world,” indigenous people, and people of the African diaspora for centuries. In the case of Ruined , and other theatrical representations of Black women, particularly those who live in what is considered the “third world,” material culture theory avoids the assumptions that are made in the Western imagination — and the historical baggage that comes with it – and allows one to study how the characters use material objects to define themselves. Both are vital decolonizing processes for the portrayal, or “re-presentation”, as Mohanty calls it, of Black, “third world” women on the American stage. References 1. Lynn Nottage, Ruined (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2009), 5. 2. Nottage, Ruined , 5. 3. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 200), 338. 4. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 345. 5. Nottage, Ruined , xi. 6. Nottage, Ruined , xi. 7. The Kalashnikov, like the designation between the “first”, “second,” and “third world”, is a product of the Cold War, and most-often culturally associated, by Americans, with conflicts that arose as results of those international tensions and their global aftermath. 8. C. J.,Chivers, The Gun . (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 9. 9. The Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement."Women's Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3/4 (2014): 271-80, 271. 10. Nicole Rosky, “Lynn Nottage's CLYDE'S Tops List of Most-Produced Play of the Season,” Broadwayworld.com , September 23, 2022. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Lynn-Nottage-CLYDES-Tops-List-of-Most-Produced-Play-of-the-Season-20220923. 11. American Theatre Editors, “Offscript: Most-Produced WithLynn Nottage & Lauren Gunderson,” American Theatre, September 27, 2022. https://www.americantheatre.org/2022/09/27/offscript-most-produced-with-lynn-nottage-lauren-gunderson/. 12. Celia Lury, Consumer Culture . 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 9. 13. Lury, Consumer Culture, 9. 14. Lury, Consumer Culture, 21-22. 15. Nottage, Ruined, xi. 16. Mohanty, 339. 17. Jeff Paden, “Hybridity of form and political potentiality in Ruined,” in A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2016),145-159. 18. Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 66. 19. Nottage, Ruined, 5. 20. Nottage, Ruined, 5. 21. Nottage, Ruined , 5. 22. Fanta was marketed globally before it was marketed in the US due to fears that it would compete too heavily with Coca-Cola. After enjoying some popularity in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Fanta—along with other sodas—lost popularity to its sister orange soda brand Minute Maid as consumers became more interested in heathy foods and drinks. Fanta had been a bigger market item globally, especially in Africa and South America. Because of the orange soda’s popularity in Latin America,The Journal Record reported in 2001 that Fanta was being reintroduced in American markets through “Hispanic-heavy test markets in Texas, Arizona and Southern California. Sales jumped from 24.4 million cases in 2000 to 42.2 million last year, according to Beverage Digest. The jump was due to the rollout in test markets.” In 2002, the iconic Fantanas commercial was released nationally in a huge campaign,which was revived in 2004, 2006, and so on. The Fantanas became very culturally recognizable in the US, and were even featured in satires on MadTV and Family Guy. It is possible that collective memory of this marketing campaign would be accessible to “first world” audiences of Ruined in the 2010s. Admin, “Remember Fanta?: Business World,”The Journal Record, March 6, 2002, Accessed October 26, 2023,https://journalrecord.com/2002/03/06/remember-fanta-business-world/. 23. Washtubs and batteries are a bit vague. If this happens while doing a material culture reading of a play, especiallyone which takes place in a “third world” country, I recommend doing as much research as possible. In the event thatresearch fails, and a“first world” theatre maker must fill in the “gaps”, so-to-speak with their imaginations, it isimportant to remember the aforementioned “baggage” regarding Western imaginations of “third world” locationsand peoples. 24. “Fanta,” Wikipedia.org . Accessed October 30, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta. 25. "The Coca-Cola System,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Our Company,” Accessed October 30, 2018.https://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/the-coca-cola-system. 26. “Coca-Cola Beverages Africa Begins Operations,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Press Releases,” Accessed October 30,2018. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations. 27. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations. 28. Maik Dünnbier, “Big Alcohol and The War In Congo,” in Alcohol Industry, Corporate Consumption Complex, Obstacle To Development, Sustainable Development , November 2013. Accessed October 30, 2018. http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/. 29. One aspect of the play, which is interesting considering the fact that Nottage writes for a first-world audience, isthe fact that there are no representatives of the first-world that ever appear onstage. Mama and Christian mention a white pastor missionary, a Belgian shopkeeper in Bunia, and Mama talks about “blue helmets”, UN peacekeeping forces in the final scene. The only physical presence of the first-world comes in the form of imported goods or the cultural remnants of the Belgian colonization, in the form of the French language and racial divide between blacks and whites. There are several possible reasons as to why Nottage has made the choice to keep the more fortunate first-world population out of her story, but the most powerful statement that arises from their absence is, of course, their absence. Nottage makes a point that there is little to no intervention from the outside world, and there is a sense of abandonment throughout the play. 30. Nottage, Ruined, 10. 31.“How Heineken beer survives in Congo Brewers are rare colonial-era holdouts in a notorious trouble spot.” The Economist. April 21, 2018. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo. 32. Olivier van Beemen, Heineken in Africa: A Multinational Unleashed, (United Kingdom: C Hurst & Company Publishers Limited, 2021). 33. Nottage, Ruined, 28. 34. Nottage, Ruined, 102. 35. Nottage, Ruined , 15. 36. Nottage, Ruined, 86. 37. Nottage, Ruined , 85. 38. Nottage, Ruined, 28. 39. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,”68. 40. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo . 41. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 67. 42. Van Beeman, 59. 43. Nottage, Ruined, 181-124. 44. Nottage, Ruined, 28, 42, 81. 45. Nottage, Ruined, 13. 46. Nottage, Ruined , 25. 47. Nottage, Ruined, 25. 48. Nottage, Ruined , 13. 49. Nottage, Ruined , 31. 50. Nottage, Ruined, 41. 51. Charlie Payne, “Ruined Study Guide.” London: Almeida Projects, 2010. Accessed October 2018, https://www.nightwoodtheatre.net/uploads/RUINED,_STUDY_GUIDE.pdf. 52. Rachel Steinburg, “Web of Violence Untangling ‘Africa’s World War,’” The Berkeley Rep Magazine 5, no. 1 (2010-2011), 23. Accessed October 2018, https://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/pdf/program-ru.pdf. 53. Julia DePalma, “Arena’s Page Study Guide.” Arena Stage. 2011, 4. Accessed October 2018. https://www.arenastage.org/globalassets/education/school-programs/study-guide--ruined.pdf. 54. Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, “Dodd-Frank 1502 and the Congo Crisis,” Center for Strategic and InternationalStudies, August 22, 2017. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.csis.org/analysis/dodd-frank-1502-and-congo-crisis. 55. Sudarsan Raghavan, “How a well-intentioned U.S. law left Congolese miners jobless,”The Washington Post, November 30, 2014. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e. 56. Adalbert Murhi Mubalama, one of the ministers of mines, told The Washington Post, “As of October [2014], there were only 11 mines out of more than 900 here in South Kivu where minerals were “tagged” as conflict-free.”Raghavan, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e. 57. Laura Kasinof, “An ugly truth behind ‘ethical consumerism’”The Washington Post. April 19, 2018. AccessedDecember 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/19/conflict-free/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6ea84da645e7. 58. Nottage, Ruined, 40. 59. Nottage, Ruined, 5. 60. Nottage, Ruined, 5-6. 61. The interconnectedness of Fanta, Primus, the armed conflict, the movement of goods intensifies Mama and Christian’s brief moment of flirtation over the cold soda, followed by the pouring of beer. Dünnbier, http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/and 62. Nottage, Ruined, 6. 63. Nottage, Ruined , 6-7. 64. Fanta’s advertising campaign in the early 2000s featured a group of flirtatious women called the Fantanas who would sing a song called “Wanta Fanta” and seduce men into drinking the soda in various tropical scenarios. 65. Ben Brantley, “War’s Terrors, Through a Brothel Window,”The New York Times, February 11, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/theater/reviews/11bran.html. 66. Paden, 145. 67. Jill Dolan, “Ruined, by Lynn Nottage.” The Feminist Spectator, March 13, 2009. Nov 4, 2018. http://feministspectator.princeton.edu/2009/03/16/ruined-by-lynn-nottage/. 68. Nottage, Ruined , 12. 69. Nottage, Ruined , 13. 70. Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” in Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), 56. 71. Nottage, Ruined, 57. 72. Nottage, Ruined , 53. 73. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Why We Need Things,” In History from Things: Essays on Material Culture . Ed. Lubar, Steven D, and W. D Kingery, (SmithsonianInstitution Press, 1993), 23. 74. Nottage, Ruined , 86. 75. Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” 57. 76. She cites Maria Stewart writing in 1833. Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought” and “Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought,” in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd editions (New York: Routledge, 2000 [1990]), 1. 77. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012), 14. Footnotes [1] Lynn Nottage, Ruined (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2009), 5. [2] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [3] Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 200) , 338. [4] Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 345. [5] Nottage, Ruined , xi. [6] Nottage, Ruined, xi. [7] The Kalashnikov, like the designation between the “first”, “second,” and “third world”, is a product of the Cold War, and most-often culturally associated, by Americans, with conflicts that arose as results of those international tensions and their global aftermath. [8] C. J., Chivers, The Gun . (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 9. [9] The Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement." Women's Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3/4 (2014): 271-80, 271. [10] Nicole Rosky, “Lynn Nottage's CLYDE'S Tops List of Most-Produced Play of the Season,” Broadwayworld.com , September 23, 2022. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Lynn-Nottage-CLYDES-Tops-List-of-Most-Produced-Play-of-the-Season-20220923 . [11] American Theatre Editors, “Offscript: Most-Produced With Lynn Nottage & Lauren Gunderson,” American Theatre, September 27, 2022. https://www.americantheatre.org/2022/09/27/offscript-most-produced-with-lynn-nottage-lauren-gunderson/ . [12] Celia Lury, Consumer Culture . 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 9. [13] Lury, Consumer Culture , 9. [14] Lury, Consumer Culture , 21-22. [15] Nottage, Ruined , xi. [16] Mohanty, 339. [17] Jeff Paden, “Hybridity of form and political potentiality in Ruined,” in A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2016), 145-159. [18] Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 66. [19] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [20] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [21] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [22] Fanta was marketed globally before it was marketed in the US due to fears that it would compete too heavily with Coca-Cola. After enjoying some popularity in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Fanta—along with other sodas—lost popularity to its sister orange soda brand Minute Maid as consumers became more interested in heathy foods and drinks. Fanta had been a bigger market item globally, especially in Africa and South America. Because of the orange soda’s popularity in Latin America, The Journal Record reported in 2001 that Fanta was being reintroduced in American markets through “Hispanic-heavy test markets in Texas, Arizona and Southern California. Sales jumped from 24.4 million cases in 2000 to 42.2 million last year, according to Beverage Digest. The jump was due to the rollout in test markets.” In 2002, the iconic Fantanas commercial was released nationally in a huge campaign, which was revived in 2004, 2006, and so on. The Fantanas became very culturally recognizable in the US, and were even featured in satires on MadTV and Family Guy . It is possible that collective memory of this marketing campaign would be accessible to “first world” audiences of Ruined in the 2010s. Admin, “Remember Fanta?: Business World ,” The Journal Record , March 6, 2002, Accessed October 26, 2023, https://journalrecord.com/2002/03/06/remember-fanta-business-world/ . [23] Washtubs and batteries are a bit vague. If this happens while doing a material culture reading of a play, especially one which takes place in a “third world” country, I recommend doing as much research as possible. In the event that research fails, and a “first world” theatre maker must fill in the “gaps”, so-to-speak with their imaginations, it is important to remember the aforementioned “baggage” regarding Western imaginations of “third world” locations and peoples. [24] “Fanta,” Wikipedia.org . Accessed October 30, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta . [25] “The Coca-Cola System,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Our Company,” Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/the-coca-cola-system . [26] “Coca-Cola Beverages Africa Begins Operations,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Press Releases,” Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations . [27] https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations . [28] Maik Dünnbier, “Big Alcohol and The War In Congo,” in Alcohol Industry, Corporate Consumption Complex, Obstacle To Development, Sustainable Development , November 2013. Accessed October 30, 2018. http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/ . [29] One aspect of the play, which is interesting considering the fact that Nottage writes for a first-world audience, is the fact that there are no representatives of the first-world that ever appear onstage. Mama and Christian mention a white pastor missionary, a Belgian shopkeeper in Bunia, and Mama talks about “blue helmets”, UN peacekeeping forces in the final scene. The only physical presence of the first-world comes in the form of imported goods or the cultural remnants of the Belgian colonization, in the form of the French language and racial divide between blacks and whites. There are several possible reasons as to why Nottage has made the choice to keep the more fortunate first-world population out of her story, but the most powerful statement that arises from their absence is, of course, their absence. Nottage makes a point that there is little to no intervention from the outside world, and there is a sense of abandonment throughout the play. [30] Nottage, Ruined , 10. [31] “How Heineken beer survives in Congo Brewers are rare colonial-era holdouts in a notorious trouble spot.” The Economist . April 21, 2018. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo . [32] Olivier van Beemen, Heineken in Africa: A Multinational Unleashed, (United Kingdom: C Hurst & Company Publishers Limited, 2021). [33] Nottage, Ruined , 28. [34] Nottage, Ruined , 102. [35] Nottage, Ruined , 15. [36] Nottage, Ruined , 86. [37] Nottage, Ruined , 85. [38] Nottage, Ruined , 28. [39] Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 68. [40] https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo . [41] Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 67. [42] Van Beeman, 59. [43] Nottage, Ruined , 181-124. [44] Nottage, Ruined , 28, 42, 81. [45] Nottage, Ruined , 13. [46] Nottage, Ruined , 25. [47] Nottage, Ruined , 25. [48] Nottage, Ruined , 13. [49] Nottage, Ruined , 31. [50] Nottage, Ruined , 41. [51] Charlie Payne, “ Ruined Study Guide.” London: Almeida Projects, 2010. Accessed October 2018, https://www.nightwoodtheatre.net/uploads/RUINED,_STUDY_GUIDE.pdf . [52] Rachel Steinburg, “Web of Violence Untangling ‘Africa’s World War,’” The Berkeley Rep Magazine 5, no. 1 (2010-2011), 23. Accessed October 2018, https://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/pdf/program-ru.pdf . [53] Julia DePalma, “Arena’s Page Study Guide.” Arena Stage. 2011, 4. Accessed October 2018. https://www.arenastage.org/globalassets/education/school-programs/study-guide--ruined.pdf . [54] Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, “Dodd-Frank 1502 and the Congo Crisis,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 22, 2017. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.csis.org/analysis/dodd-frank-1502-and-congo-crisis . [55] Sudarsan Raghavan, “How a well-intentioned U.S. law left Congolese miners jobless,” The Washington Post , November 30, 2014. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e . [56] Adalbert Murhi Mubalama, one of the ministers of mines, told The Washington Post , “As of October [2014], there were only 11 mines out of more than 900 here in South Kivu where minerals were “tagged” as conflict-free.” Raghavan, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e . [57] Laura Kasinof, “An ugly truth behind ‘ethical consumerism’” The Washington Post . April 19, 2018. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/19/conflict-free/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6ea84da645e7 . [58] Nottage, Ruined , 40. [59] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [60] Nottage, Ruined , 5-6. [61] The interconnectedness of Fanta, Primus, the armed conflict, the movement of goods intensifies Mama and Christian’s brief moment of flirtation over the cold soda, followed by the pouring of beer. Dünnbier, http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/ and Nottage, Ruined, 6. [62] Nottage, Ruined , 6. [63] Nottage, Ruined , 6-7. [64] Fanta’s advertising campaign in the early 2000s featured a group of flirtatious women called the Fantanas who would sing a song called “Wanta Fanta” and seduce men into drinking the soda in various tropical scenarios. [65] Ben Brantley, “War’s Terrors, Through a Brothel Window,” The New York Times , February 11, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/theater/reviews/11bran.html . [66] Paden, 145. [67] Jill Dolan, “Ruined, by Lynn Nottage.” The Feminist Spectator , March 13, 2009. Nov 4, 2018. http://feministspectator.princeton.edu/2009/03/16/ruined-by-lynn-nottage/ . [68] Nottage, Ruined , 12. [69] Nottage, Ruined , 13. [70] Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” in Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), 56. [71] Nottage, Ruined , 57 [72] Nottage, Ruined , 53. [73] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Why We Need Things,” In History from Things: Essays on Material Culture . Ed. Lubar, Steven D, and W. D Kingery, ( Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 23. [74] Nottage, Ruined , 86. [75] Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” 57. [76] She cites Maria Stewart writing in 1833. Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought” and “Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought,” Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment , 2nd editions (New York: Routledge, 2000 [1990]), 1. [77] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012), 14. About The Author(s) Christen Mandracchia is an Assistant Professor and Production Manager in West Chester University’s Department of Theatre and Dance. She earned her doctorate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research emphasizes material histories of theatrical labor, with a special emphasis on theatre professionals who venture into non-theatrical fields. Areas of research also include theatre architecture, queer theatre history, and musical 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.

Wu Wenquan with Chen Li and Zhu Qinjuan Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 3 Visit Journal Homepage Arthur Miller: Reception and Influence in China Wu Wenquan with Chen Li and Zhu Qinjuan By Published on November 19, 2015 Download Article as PDF Arthur Miller is one of the most influential contemporary American playwrights after Eugene O’Neill. In the 1940s and 1950s, he rose to fame with All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and other social problem plays. Since 1949, Death of a Salesman has been performed continually on Broadway and in many countries all over the world. Miller and his plays came to China when China reopened its door to the world after Mao’s reign, especially with the conclusion of “The Great Cultural Revolution” (“GCR”)[1] and when China was no longer producing powerful social plays. Chinese drama had fallen into crisis in both playwriting and performance, for it seemed to grow rigid and stagnant after so many years of restriction. In fact, these restrictions had been proposed by Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, and only a few so-called model plays were allowed to be performed during the GCR. Thus, the translations and performances of Miller’s dramas in China during the 1970s provided an enormous inspiration for and influence on Chinese playwrights, who later created many plays in a style that mixed realism and modernism. When referring to literary reception and historical relationship, Hans-Georg Gadamer says, “The literal meaning of scripture, however, is not clearly available in every place and at every moment. …all the details of a text were to be understood from the context and from the scopus, the unified sense at which the whole aims.”[2] Yue Daiyun, a well-known comparative literary critic at Beijing University, explains, “Literary influence is a sort of permeation, a sort of organic involvement presented in artistic works”[3], and “The emergence of the influence is often associated with social changes as well as the internal requirement within literary development. …Influence is usually a complex process of enlightenment, promotion or reinforcement, agreement, digestion, transformation, and artistic expression. This process tends to start when a certain writer is able to ‘tease’ another writer’s heart.”[4] Arthur Miller’s social problem plays are similar to those of Henrik Ibsen’s. Miller emphasizes the moral force and social critical function through drama in order to reflect the modern human being’s living conditions in a post-industrial and commercial society. Chinese spoken dramas, developed at the same time as social protest plays, bear a similar tradition with Miller’s drama, in the aspects of social criticism and human concerns. When China reopened its door after Mao’s era, Miller visited China, and his plays were soon introduced into China. Chinese audiences were attracted to Miller’s social tragedies as well as his modern dramatic devices. Since then, many of Miller’s plays have been translated into Chinese, performed, widely reviewed, and studied. In addition, influenced by Miller, many young Chinese playwrights and directors began to explore the modernist styles, powerful social criticism and keen insight into human life. The First Journey to China Arthur Miller’s first visit to China was in the autumn of 1978, immediately before the establishment of Sino-US diplomatic relationship. He was the first contemporary American dramatist to visit China, thus beginning the face-to-face interactions of the dramatists between the two countries. During his visit, Miller visited many Chinese dramatists, directors, actors, and other theatrical figures, watched Chinese spoken dramas, Beijing operas and Kunqu operas and at the same time, he got involved in extensive talks with Chinese scholars. After returning to America, Miller published some of his travel notes in an article entitled “In China,” published in The Atlantic Monthly, the 3rd issue of 1979. Later, he collected many beautiful pictures taken by his wife, Inge Morath, a photographer, and made them into a travelogue and published it with a new title: Chinese Encounters. As the development of dramas in America and China was unbalanced and there left a big gap between the two different cultures after so many years of separation, this imbalance was reflected clearly in the direct conversations between contemporary young writer Su Shuyang and Miller, “Talking with such a great American playwright who should be referred to as a master, I am more mentally disturbed as a fledgling and ignorant youth….”[5] This kind of nervousness preceded from his own ignorance of America and American drama as well as his shock from intercultural communication with foreign worlds and what’s more, it reflected Chinese literary men’s and artists’ uneasiness and disturbance for the incoming foreign culture. “People have lived under abnormal conditions so long that once life returns to normal, they are lost and stubborn, instead.”[6] Qiao Yu, a poet, and Su Guang, an interpreter who accompanied Miller, were more anxious when talking about their knowledge of American writers. However, little did Miller know about Chinese writers either and he called this separation from each other as “being covered with clouds and fog, separated from the world.”[7] Cultural differences were so great that collision and misunderstanding were inevitable. Miller was most surprised at Chinese writers’ working system that they were subordinate to government institutions and paid with monthly salaries. However, Su Shuyang was also perplexed that there was no Ministry of Culture in America. The consequences of these two different organizations were that Chinese writers “spare no efforts to maintain and establish a certain concept which our government exactly needs”[8] while those American writers such as Miller had to live on writing as his occupation and therefore serious American writers “are always unwelcomed as they are criticizing the society and moral values all the time.”[9] The difference between Chinese and American cultural concepts illustrates even more about thinking patterns since these two countries have undergone their own different historical progresses. For instance, China pays more attention to collectivism while America advocates individualism. When Su told Miller confidently that “we are optimistic and we believe that collectivistic spirit will make people warm forever,” Miller said with a smile, “I hope so.”[10] Hence, there seemed a great discrepancy which has been separating the two peoples for several decades. It is impossible to bridge the gap and to integrate to the harmonious realm. Moreover, Miller was still a “left and progressive writer,” compatible with Chinese perceptions in some respects. Beijing had been a glamorous place for Miller. As early as the 1930s, Miller was greatly concerned about Chinese Revolution (a communist revolution to overthrow Guomintang regime) and he knew some celebrated names like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, etc. who “were like flares shot into sky out of a human sea.”[11] He learnt these from Edgar Snow’s reportage on the Long March of Chinese Red Army (a great withdrawal of Chinese communist army from south to north) “Red Star over China,” and later the Anti-Japanese War. However, the forthcoming cold war between the two countries isolated one another by demonizing each other. He considered that “no one knows a country until he can easily separate its merely idiosyncratic absurdity from its real contradictions.”[12] Therefore, when China exerted open policy and Sino-US relationship was normalized, he came to visit Beijing, Nanjing, Yanan, Xi’an, Shanghai, Guilin, and Hangzhou and many other places for trips and interviews. As to informal discussions with Chinese writers, he sighed, “the gap caused by our mutual ignorance of each other’s real rather than reported culture seemed limitless one morning when we sat down to talk with some ten writers, movie directors, novelists, and one actress in a Peking hotel. …I felt a far more deeply depressing sense of hopelessness that such isolation could actually have been structured and maintained. … we emerged from darkness to confront each other.”[13] Long-term indifference as well as cultural barriers made both sides unacceptable and this sense of abrupt fainting at the sudden collision was exactly the cultural shock when two different cultures began to communicate again after long intervals. Apart from his travel experiences in Chinese Encounters, Miller discusses mainly his impressions on China after the catastrophes of the GCR: so many artists were persecuted that only eight model operas were left and economy was withered all over the country. Miller’s keen interest in Chinese traditional opera was manifested in his reflections when watching Beijing Operas as A Woman General of the Yang Family (a famous legend of Song Dynasty about Mu Guiying, a heroine, leading an army fighting against the foreign invaders), Wang Zhaojun (a sad story about a beauty in Han Dynasty who was sent to marry a Mongolian king for peace) and Kunqu Operas as The Tale of the White Snake (a southern love story about a white snake loving a young scholar). His evaluations were pertinent when watching spoken dramas Loyal Hearts (a play by Su Shuyang about a devoted scientist fighting against the Gang of Four), Cai Wenji (a play by Guo Moruo about a Han Dynasty official’s daughter being captured by Mongolian troops for 12 years and later coming back after paying a ransom), The Other Shore (an early absurdist play by Gao Xingjian, a Nobel Prize-winner, about contemporary Chinese people’s spiritual pursuit), etc. And he talked with Cao Yu (author of famous Chinese play The Thunderstorm, an O’Neill-like tragedy of a woman loving her step-son who loves his half-sister blindly). He discussed with Huang Zuolin about the theory of “Freestyle Theater” (Zuolin’s theatrical idea involving Chinese culture of space, in Chinese “Xieyi”) and his recommendation of The Crucible to Zuolin.[14] This visit allowed Miller to learn current situations of Chinese spoken drama. First, he thought Chinese and American people could undertake cultural communications through drama, “Chinese people’s emotions in theater are the same. Although there are great differences between eastern and western cultures, the roots which produce the cultures are absolutely identical.”[15] He praised the brilliant Chinese civilization and traditional operas. However, he had a deep impression on the political and conceptual tendency in problem plays, “Clearly, Loyal Hearts was fashioned as a blow and a weapon, and its force as a social document seems undeniable; … The tone is that of An Enemy of the People; the impulsion being preeminently social and moral, there is little or no subjective life expressed and the people have characteristics rather than character. While the dialogue manages to ring in all the main current slogans—“Learning from the facts,” “Don’t forget that all reactionaries will come to a bad end,” and so forth.”[16] He pointed out the platitude and vapidity of Cai Wenji with classical American straightforwardness, “the story was told four and possibly five separate times in the first hour. The only difference is that new characters repeat it, but they add very little new each time.”[17] He also hit the point of actors’ overacting performance, “A remark that might call for smile causes its hearer to laugh; a mild chuckle becomes a guffaw accompanied by deep, appreciative nods. What should be a wave of recognition to an acquaintance turns into a bang of the palm on his back and plenty of ha-ha-ha thrown in.”[18] His critique for contemporary Chinese playwrights, directors, and performers was pivotal. After Cao Yu exchanged views with Miller in this respect, he invited Miller to come and direct his dramas in China and this was the cause that Miller came to China again in 1983. The Translation and Reviews of Arthur Miller’s Plays in China As early as in 1962, Miller’s work was introduced into China by Mei Shaowu (son of Mei Lanfang, famous Beijing opera actor who visited America in the 1930s) whose article introduced six of Miller’s plays but had limited reading circle for the restriction of western cultures in Mao’s times, while the Chinese version of his plays didn’t appear until the end of the GCR. In 1980, Chen Liangting translated Miller’s All My Sons and Death of a Salesman (published in Foreign Drama Resources, Issue 1, 1979, and later included in Selected Plays of Arthur Miller, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1992). Chen had a high view on Miller in the afterword, “He [Miller] pursues meaning of human life contiguously, does well in analyzing humanity and rationality, shows solicitude for the whole humanity and takes it as his own mission to evoke audience and readers’ social awareness as well as people’s moral values and sense of responsibility.”[19] Mei Shaowu’s two articles introducing Miller and his eight plays were published Foreign Drama Resources (Issue 1, and 2, 1979). In 1981, Liao Kedui edited American Drama Collection (Chinese Drama Publishing House) including Yao Dengfo’s article On Arthur Miller’s Plays. The script of The Crucible (directed by Huang Zuolin in 1981) was interpreted by Mei Shaowu and published in Foreign Literature Quarterly (Issue 1, 1982) while Nie Zhengxiong translated it with the title of “Yanjundekaoyan” (Severe Trials, Chinese Drama Publishing House, 1982). Ying Ruocheng translated Death of a Salesman in 1983 and in 1999 it was reprinted by China Translation and Publication Corporation with a Chinese-English version. With the successful performance of his Death of a Salesman in China, other Miller’s plays entered China in succession. In 1986, The American Clock was translated by Mei Shaowu and was printed in Foreign Literature and Art (Issue 5, 1986). His completed collection was Selected Contemporary Foreign Dramas (Chinese Drama Publishing House, 1992) which included A View from the Bridge, A Memory of Two Mondays and After the Fall besides the above-mentioned three plays. His Death of a Salesman is compulsory in university courses as “Selected Reading of Foreign Literature” and “Selected Reading of English and American Literature.” There are two kinds of selected Chinese versions of essays written by Miller: The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (selected and translated by Chen Ruilan, et al, Shanghai Joint Publishing House, 1987) and Arthur Miller on Theater (translated by Guo Jide, et al, The Culture and Art Publishing House, 1988). In 1997, Ren Xiaomei translated Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and All My Sons (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press). According 2000 China Reading Weekly poll, Sun Weixin and Wu Wenzhi edited Abstracts of a Hundred Famous Chinese and Foreign Literary Works Influencing China in 20th Century (Lijiang Publishing House) in which Death of a Salesman is chosen. In 2000, Death of a Salesman entered New Chinese Text Book of High School (People’s Education Press, Volume Six). The Ministry of Education wanted to “break through previous limitations on selection that merely emphasizes critical realistic works, and introduce some foreign literary works of great influence in different respects.”[20] It can be perceived from the transmutation of above translation and introduction, Chinese passion for Miller and his works has been on the increase and his influence in China is also gradually far-reaching. Soul-Hunting: The Crucible in China The Crucible was recommended by Arthur Miller to Huang Zuolin, director of Shanghai People’s Art Theater. This play, bearing many similarities with “the GCR,” was staged in Shanghai People’s Art Theater in 1981. The story of The Crucible was derived from the historical “witch trials” as a result of which some 20 innocent people were hanged (Miller increased the number to seventy) and more people were put into jail. At the beginning of the play, a group of girls, who were obsessed by asceticism, danced nakedly in the forest under the leadership of Abigail. But they were found and scared. These girls were said to be bewitched and influenced by evil supernatural beings (devils). They were forced to accuse their villagers of being devil’s spokesmen. This case gave rise to a chain of reactions and more and more people were accused. Abigail, the heroine, had been once a farmer John Proctor’s assistant and in deep love with Proctor. Later their affair was discovered and dismissed by the Proctor’s wife Elizabeth. She was always hateful and vengeful to Elizabeth. Therefore, Abigail accused Elizabeth of practicing witchcraft while Proctor admitted his improper relationship with Abigail in front of the public in order to save his wife. The court burst into an uproar and Elizabeth was immediately required to testify for her husband while she denied the testimony to save his fame. Proctor was faced with a trial: either to retract his statements to ruin his own reputation or insist his statements (regarded as perjury by the court) to be executed. Finally, he went straightforward to execution gallows. The Crucible was written during an era of white terror when McCarthyism was prevailing. Coincidentally, Miller himself was called in 1957 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to force him name names of members of Communist Party. But he refused reasonably. Although the playwright always denied that The Crucible has direct connection with American McCarthyism in 1950s, we can infer their inner relationship clearly. First staged in America for 197 performances in 1953 and again for 633 performances in 1958, The Crucible has been always widely popular among audiences and has become part of the repertoire on Broadway. The first performance of The Crucible in Shanghai on September 4, 1981 raised great concerns immediately and got a big hit. Miller once said confidently before the Shanghai performance, “It (The Crucible) will obviously acquire Chinese audiences’ understanding.”[21] Cheng Yan said “it enormously shortens the distance brought by several decades’ gap as well as national difference”[22] The attention on history, politics, humanity as well as morality in The Crucible appealed to Chinese audiences after the GCR because they saw the similar situations as false-accusation, crime-involvement (innocent people being punished for their relatives’ crimes), persecution, under which everyone felt insecure and frightened. These feelings and experiences enabled Chinese audiences to understand and sympathize with characters in the play. Miller wrote in his autobiography Timebends: A Life, “The writer Nien Cheng, who spent six and a half years in solitary confinement and whose daughter was murdered by the Red Guards, told me that after she saw the Shanghai production she could not believe that a non-Chinese had written the play. Some of the interrogations were precisely the same ones used on us in the GCR.”[23] Chinese critics immediately expressed two different opinions on Abigail. Guo Jide said, “Abigail is the primitive evil power which causes the whole disaster, tells lies and creates a great deal of fraud. Proctor is the symbol of integrity and bravery as well as a heroic image which is standing erect and accepting ordeal in a fierce fire.”[24] However, the opposite opinion states, “although she is false to be deliberately mystifying, her sentiments towards Proctor are as real as true love.”[25] Another great significance brought about by the performance of The Crucible is the theatrical concept of “Freestyle Theater.” As early as in 1962, Huang Zuolin began to reform the then dominant theatrical idea of Stanislavsky style so he proposed “Freestyle Theater” concept which blended Bertolt Brecht’s theory and staging concept, emphasizing on the unreal scenes and presupposition of stagecraft rather than the reality of “illusionism.” The Crucible was the first American play after the GCR performed in China and directed with the idea of “Freestyle Theater.” “There are merely several wooden poles on the stage with all gloomy background under which crucifixes exist everywhere. These crucifixes give a sense of divinity. Although doors, windows, court, jail, etc. vary, crucifixes stand there all the time.”[26] Afterwards, other Chinese “Freestyle Theater” plays appeared on stage one after another such as The Chinese Dream (1985), Moth (1989), etc. When National Theater Company of China was established in May of 2000, it performed two foreign plays, one of which was The Crucible. Meanwhile, on the other shore it was also performed on Broadway. It more or less indicated both nations’ appealing to traditional dramatic culture of much historicalness and universal humanity. Many Chinese comment on the somber mise-en-scène atmosphere of this drama, “The director rendered the atmosphere of repression and distortion on the stage. Actually, entering into the theater, one could feel the ominous aura that ‘something’ would happen. ... The ropes, dangling overhead from the ceiling of the theater, were virtually questioning each of us, when we face the same situation that those people in the play face, how shall we choose?”[27] Soul-hunting in Chinese Drama After the GCR, searching for humanity became the main theme in plays as well as Chinese fiction and poetry. In the Chinese plays since 1980, honesty and trust were questioned and the persecuted victims experienced bloodier treatment than those in The Crucible. The representative among them is Sangshuping Chronicle (script by Zhu Xiaoping, born in 1952, who went to the border area as a student. The story is based on a titled novel by Chen Zidu and Zhu Xiaoping.), which was first performed in 1988, revealing northwestern Chinese peasants’ living conditions and feudal ideology precipitated from history and tradition in 1968. People at Sangshuping are both persecutors and victims. Caifang, a widow falls in love with a wheat reaper (like a seasonal migrant worker) who helps to do the seasonal harvest work. They are caught in elopement, lynched and beaten by the villagers. Caifang drowns herself in a well. In order to carry on the family bloodline, the parents of Fulin (an idiot) marry his sister in exchange for Qingnu as Fulin’s wife. Some youngsters put Fulin up to pull off Qingnu’s clothes in front of the public, which drives Qingnu mad. Wang Zhike is marginalized and persecuted by villagers after the death of his wife and finally is falsely charged with murder. He is driven away for his non-native identity. Their only farm cattle is reluctantly butchered by farmers who have raised it when some inspection officials want to eat it and they have to kill it themselves. Characters in this tragedy are all victims persecuted under feudal autocratic dominance. The Crucible expresses the destruction of human nature by rigid religious persecution and immorality while Sangshuping Chronicle shows the tragic life overburdened under traditional and feudal cultures and poverty. But people still show their brave pursuit for happiness. The vilification and persecution of virtuous human beings in The Crucible are fully embodied in Sangshuping Chronicle while the latter is more powerful than the former in many respects. And its exploitation of unenlightened humanity bears no difference from Miller’s calling for morality and justice. But both “hunting” scenes of Sangshuping and the Salem were rooted historically, relying on the similar events resulted from feudalism. Both of them criticize the human ignorance and backwardness, selfishness, narrow-mindedness and superstitious beliefs. Both plays employ wizard rituals to add supernatural and mysterious atmospheres. Dancing in the forest and exorcism ceremonies in The Crucible are the discourses of the middle ages. Sangshuping Chronicle exploits praying for rain, sacrificing cattle, man-hunting and other ceremonies as well as bass drum, chorus and other skills full of national characteristics that make the whole drama permeated with poetic significance just as Gao Huibin said, “association with poetic techniques and illusionary skills in artistic conception.”[28] Strong national characteristics, distinctive performance, and the mysterious mise-en-scène aura set up Sangshuping Chronicle as a banner of contemporary Chinese spoken drama. According to Xu Xiaozhong, its director, the staging of the play was a dramatic pattern of “combining Chinese and Western cultures. Reviewing the whole process, I clearly realize that no matter realism or romanticism, concrete or abstract, reproduction or expression, the artistic concepts and principles of drama may vary and the principal method of how to extract and abstract life may differ while all stage artistic creations come from life directly or indirectly.”[29] Selling Dreams in Beijing From March to May in 1983, invited by Cao Yu and Ying Ruocheng, Miller came to Beijing People’s Art Theater to direct his masterpiece Death of a Salesman. It got such a great success that it enters the theater’s repertoires. After returning home, he published his directing notes Salesman in Beijing (New York: Viking Press, 1984) which recorded the cultural and dramatic concepts and the conflicts as well as communication during the process of his directing Death of a Salesman. It also included all sorts of interesting episodes, anecdotes even disputes when transplanting this play in China. On the March 20, 1983, Beijing People’s Art Theater welcomed Arthur Miller, the ambassador of Sino-US cultural exchanges.[30] Miller obviously felt the atmosphere of China’s rapid economic development and the signs of social transformation. He was still fluttering with fear of the experience when he watched plays acted by Chinese actors in 1978: “How appalling it was to see actors made up with chalk-white faces and heavily ‘rounded’ eyes, walking with heavy, almost loutish gait as they think Europeans and especially Russians do, and worst of all, wearing flaxen or very red-haired wigs that to us seemed to turn them into Halloween spooks.”[31] Therefore, he began to utilize cultural transplanting principle of “adapting foreign things for Chinese use”. The first moment meeting the actors, he proposed that it should bear resemblance in spirit rather than in appearance, telling them to express common humanity instead of “specious acting”. He suggested, “The way to make this play more like American is to make it more like Chinese. … One of my main motives in coming here is to try to show that there is the same humanity. Our cultures and languages set up confusing sets of signals whuch prevent us from communicating and sharing one another’s thoughts and sensations, but that at the deeper levels where we are joined in a unity that is perhaps biological.”[32] Miller highlighted the cultural exchanging function of the drama, carrying on the comparison between Chinese and American cultures from different aspects such as the plot, characters, performing techniques, etc. Placed in a manifesting areas such as comparing Chinese salesmen, insurance, refrigerator, cars, family life with those of America’s; comparing father’s earnest expectation for his sons with Chinese father-son relationship, “great ambitions for one’s child” (Wangzichenglong in Chinese idiom),[33] discussing with actors about the character Charley, and Willy Loman’s mistress, scenes of kissing as well as the different understanding and expression of sex, etc. Through bilateral negotiations, Miller compromised in many aspects, for instance, the representation of sex with the Chinese actors dealing implicitly with their accustomed and traditional ways.[34] During the performances, conflicts and problems raised contiguously. Some officials were afraid that the favorable material conditions (refrigerator, car, house of Loman’s family) displayed on the stage would bring about negative effects for the then poor Chinese conditions while social critical significance of the play would be weakened for this. However, the fact that the performance of Death of a Salesman obtained a great hit proved that Miller’s practice of sinicizing his drama was the most successful interpretation of the original American work. It represented the essence of the Chinese culture, emphasized the resemblance in spirit more than in appearance, broke through the traditional realistic staging methods employed for decades in China and reflected the principles of integration of Chinese and Western cultures. The major newspapers published detailed reports on Miller’s direction of his own play in Beijing. Foreign Drama invited Miller to have a formal seminar, and published feature-length comments on the direction, acting and text analyses. All these made it rise to a hot trend of Miller and Death of a Salesman in China and the year of 1983 determinedly witnessed the successful cooperation between Miller and Beijing People’s Art Theater. Since then, cultural exchanges between China and America revived, breaking the ice of tight cultural relationship. From 30 tough years’ hostility and exclusion to face-to-face conversation, peoples of both countries could eventually open their mind and exchange as they like. When everyone was cheering for the great success of the performance, Miller said to himself, “America will need this country as an enrichment to our culture one day just as China needs us now.”[35] This reflected Miller’s modesty and wish for communication. Chinese people accepted and acknowledged this classical American drama. They speculated on human’s survival predicament brought about by modern society. Cultural misunderstanding was inevitable that there were many Chinese interpretations such as problems of the elderly, generation gap, problems of the rich and poor, success and failure and dream and reality. Many young people considered that Biff and Happy’s cynical values and philosophies were inadvisable. Although they lost much time for working in the countryside during the GCR, they could not be irresponsible for society and their country. Zhong Yingjie, a dramatist, said, “Chinese audiences can understand easily and resonate with love as well as hatred between parents and their children as expressed in the conflicts between Loman and his sons.”[36] Chinese audiences felt angry for Loman’s being dismissed and happy for China had no such unfortunate things then.[37] Afterwards, Miller recalled emotionally in his memoir Timebends, “Willy was representative everywhere, in every kind of system, of ourselves in this time. The Chinese might disapprove of this lies and his self-deluding exaggerations as well as his immorality with women, but they certainly saw themselves in him. And it was not simply as a type but because of what they wanted. Which was to excel, to win out over anonymity and meaninglessness, to love and be darling, and above all, perhaps to count.”[38] Many people thought the real purpose of China’s reform and opening up was to lead people to success and wealth as aroused in the play, “a young Chinese student said to a CBS interviewer in the theater lobby, ‘We are moved by it because we also want to be number one, and to be rich and successful.’”[39] Miller published his directing notes in a book, Salesman in Beijing, in America in 1983. Later he wrote his directing experience in his autobiographical memoir. Miller’s directing and the play’s performance were made into a documentary series by CBS which was broadcast in America, introducing the performance spectacle of Death of a Salesman in China. All these promoted Sino-US cultural exchanges forcefully.[40] Since 1983, the Chinese version of Death of a Salesman has been performed in Shanghai, Japan, Hongkong, Singapore and many other places, gaining a great popularity and an enormous success. Ying Ruocheng not only translated the script himself, but also acted the role of Willy Loman. He pointed out in his articles, “As an actor, I do my best to obtain the value of the person which I act.”[41] In Ying’s opinion, Loman remained in paradox of dilemma: affectionate but always breaking up in disagreement with his sons; alternately sober and absent-minded at whatever he does; his suicidal action was both passive and active, both terrified and conscious. In the end, the more delighted the deceased (Willy Loman) was, the more sorrowful the living people were. Zhu Lin, a renowned actress, starred a powerful and virtuous mother Linda. She represented Linda as a classical Chinese mother who was a obedient, hardworking, understanding wife and loving mother.[42] Zhu Lin recalled the cooperation with Miller, “Mr. Miller helped us continually enrich the understanding of the script and characters. ... He is one of the greatest directors whom I encountered and are good at enlightening actors. ... He is absolutely in the standpoint of the actors, respecting actors’ work and attaching great importance to the coordinating relationship between the director and actors. ... We established profound friendship with each other during the pleasant rehearsals.”[43] Zhu Xu, actor of Charley, discussed his cooperation and rehearsal with Miller from the perspective of understanding of the character as well as its sinicization during the whole processes of rehearsals and performances in an article in Theater Studies.[44] Zhu Xu thought of Charley as a sophisticated character. In his opinion, Loman didn’t understand the function of money but he believed such things like “popularity,” “personal loyalty,” “relationship” which showed his “innocence.” However, Charley lacked imagination and was pragmatic. Death of a Salesman has been most popular among the audiences and has become one of the most significant foreign repertoires of Beijing People’s Art Theater. As to the American culture reflected in Death of a Salesman, Miller thought Chinese cast’s “95% of the comprehension of the drama is right because they know American People’s lifestyles and customs.”[45] The audiences’ comprehension and appreciation of the play was due to these American cultural media, Ying Ruocheng and other crew members as “retransmitters.” They made great efforts to have this famous western play deeply rooted in Chinese soil. As Wang Zuoliang, a famous literary critic, commented, “Chinese translators have the good taste, Chinese actors have the ability and Chinese audiences have the spiritual sensitivity and expansive art interests. All these enable them to understand and appreciate all the excellent dramas from all over the world.”[46] Chinese Tragedy of "Stream of Consciousness" and "Success Dream" Since it was presented on Chinese stage, Death of a Salesman has always been drawing attention from all over the country. Its influence is mainly manifested in three respects. First, more and more Chinese tragedies began to deal with disillusioned dreams of common people. Secondly, realistic play-writing began to absorb the expressionist method of “stream of consciousness,” digging into characters’ inner worlds. Finally, all kinds of modernist techniques began to be widely used in performances rather than Stanislavsky method. The Success of Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana (written by Liu Jinyun, born in 1938, president of Beijing People’s Art Theater, first staged at Beijing People’s Art Theater) in 1986 was due to its realistic depiction of common people in the GCR. It was also a typical work of tragedy of success dream and realism integrated with modern expressionist techniques. The unsuccessful salesman in Miller’s commercial competition became a common Chinese peasant cherishing a dream for success in Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana. Uncle Doggie, two of whose wives either died or departed, often dreams of working hard to buy land and become a landowner. When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, he got some land for a few years in the land reform. But more political movements (Cooperative 1953-55, the Great Leap Forward 1958-1960 and the GCR 1966-76) to come, his land was deprived and his hopes for success became slimmer and slimmer. Uncle Doggie’s dream of possessing land and becoming rich vanished and he was getting crazy. Meanwhile the landowner Qi Yongnian, his fellow villager, was charged as an exploiting landlord and was criticized, denounced, severely persecuted and eventually died in the GCR. When the play begins, those things in his earlier life constantly appear in his mind and they flash back continually on stage. He often talks with the ghost of the deceased landowner Qi Yongnian, even dispute. When China reopened its door in 1978, Uncle Doggie got his land again under the new reform policy. His joy lasts only a short time for he is no long young and needs his son Dahu’s help. But Dahu and his wife decide to set up a factory instead of plowing land. Uncle Doggie burns himself in the end. Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana and Death of a Salesman bear many similar characteristics in respect of themes and techniques. Both plays take social, familial and moral problems as their themes. The essence of tragedy is the disillusion of dream of obtaining success or of getting rich. The two protagonists are both common people with merits and demerits: Loman is industrious, loves his family and sons but he likes boasting and gets an affair with another woman, while Uncle Doggie is a dutiful and kind farmer who is hardworking and persistent but owns a small peasant’s consciousness and is selfish. Two plays both end with the suicides of the protagonists. Their tragedies are spiritual and moral ones with the disillusion of dream as the main cause. They both employ symbolism and expressionism as artistic techniques: the high buildings and sowing vegetable seeds in Death of a Salesman, the “small box” (with seals in it) and the high gateway in Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana are symbols of identity and power. The utilization of lighting is similar to that of Death of a Salesman. They both have a special time span: Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana jumps from one period to another: the Cooperative Movement, the Great Leap Forward, the GCR, the Reform and Opening-up, and together with the protagonist’s obsession with land as the clues, employing flashbacks to narrate the story, while Death of a Salesman narrates a story within two days during which many anecdotes are carried out through fantasies and recalls. The playwright Liu Jinyun once said at a conference, “In recent years, modern Euramerican plays and performances have impressed me strongly. This feeling is just like opening the window and breathing fresh air, offering suggestions to me. I set sights on something ‘new’ ... Any methods can be employed for me. For example, I have never thought of such methods before like symbolism, expressionism, stream of consciousness, etc.”[47] During a symposium on Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana, Wang Yusheng said, “The appearance of Qi Yongnian, the landlord’s ghost is similar to the emergence of Salesman’s brother ‘Ben.’”[48] In the chapter “Experiment Drama in Twentieth Century Chinese Literature and Modernism Trend” of a college textbook, Tang and Chen said, “The drama of Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana is strongly influenced by western expressionistic drama which takes characters’ stream of consciousness, emphasizing externalizing characters’ deeper minds to visualized stage images. The ghost’s appearance in Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana is close to that of Karel Capek’s Mother and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.”[49] Ding Chunhua’s “The Comparison Between Death of a Salesman and Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana” (Zhejiang Business Technology Institute Journal, 2002, Issue 1) and Wu Ge’s “Chinese Dream and American Dream: Death of a Salesman and Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana” (Artistic Drama, 2002, Issue 4) have stated their opinions from their themes and artistic expressions. Before and after the performance of Death of a Salesman in China, many other playwrights undertook experimental techniques. For example, Ma Zhongjun (an avant-garde playwright born in 1957), and Jia Hongyuan’s Hot Currents Outside (the 1980 best play about a brother and sister quarreling about their deceased elder brother’s pension), employing transparent stage from which the dead could break through the wall with freedom. “This technique obviously stems from Arthur Miller’s famous play Death of a Salesman.”[50] Besides, there are many other plays using ghosts such as Gao Xingjian’s Alarm Signal (1983, a play about train robbers involving many modern techniques as recalls, mental imaginations and symbolist method) and Wild Men (1985, a play about an archaeologist looking for wild men with modern skills of inner thoughts and multitrack), Liu Shugang’s (a playwright born in 1940, president of the Central Experimental Theater) A Deadman’s Call On the Living (1983, a play about a passenger killed on a bus and the ghost coming back to reality to pay visits to the living), Su Shuyang’s Taiping Lake (1986, a play about the deceased famous writer Lao She returning to witness the world), as well as Wang Zifu’s (a play born in 1947in Beijing) Red River Valley (1996, a play about a victim of the GCR coming back to invest a business to cut down trees but interrupted and haunted by a ghost), etc. Conclusion Miller’s "tragedies of common man,” offering criticism of society and exploring character’s psychology, greatly broadened the horizon of Chinese dramatic circle immediately after his plays entered China. His two visits to China brought about brand-new concepts and atmospheres to Chinese stage. He draws more attention to society and family with conscience and responsibility, reevaluates the essence of humanity, combines modern techniques like “stream of consciousness” with realistic drama creation, explores characters’ inner changes, and criticizes social inequality through the disillusion of dream. The consistency between Miller and Chinese dramatists’ interest in social problem drama makes his plays much easier to be performed, understood, accepted and influential in China. Integrating with their own dramatic concepts, Chinese artists have created Chinese-style expressionist plays (such as Uncle Doggie’s Nirvana and Sangshuping Chronicle). However, influence is not unidirectional. “The communicativeness within literary receptive activities reflects mainly in the ‘backflow’ or feedback to writers of readers’ aesthetic experience.”[51] Miller found a lot worth learning during his stay in China, for instance, supposition and stylization in classical Chinese operas. Zuolin helped Miller understand “Freestyle Theater.” He even utilized these techniques of opera into his own plays as soon as he returned home. While directing Death of a Salesman, he employed the technique of “similarity in spirit” of Chinese opera. Through the repeated performances of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible in 21st century and more scholars reviewing Miller and his works, Arthur Miller’s influence in China has become more and more extensive.[52] Wu Wenquan is a Professor and PhD of English literature at School of Foreign Studies, Nantong University, Jiangsu, China. He earned his PhD in Nanjing University in the study field of contemporary American drama in China. He has published in journals like Foreign Literature Studies, Contemporary Foreign Literature and Drama in China. His current study is on Tennessee Williams and his works. Chen Li is a graduate student of English literature at School of Foreign Studies, Nantong University, Jiangsu, China. Zhu Qinjuan is a lecturer of English literature at School of Foreign Studies, Yancheng Teachers’ University, Jiangsu, China. [1]The Great Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) is a political movement led by Mao Zedong to mistakenly criticize bourgeois mentality and culture. Lin Biao (a general, and Mao’s successor, later died in an air crash) and the Gang of Four (including Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, Yao Wenyuan, Zhang Chunqiao, and Wang Hongwen) assisted Mao to put China into a disorder. During these ten years of upheaval, millions of students joined great parades and followed Mao’s order to work in poor border areas and countryside. And millions of officials and intellectuals were persecuted and Chinese traditional culture was greatly damaged. [2] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garpett Barden and John Cumming (Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House, 1999. Reprinted from the English Edition by New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1975), 154. [3] Yue Daiyun, Comparative Literature and Chinese Modern Literature (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1987), 44. [4] Ibid., 57. [5] Su Shuyang, “People Will Reach a Great Harmony: A Talk with American Playwright Arthur Miller,” Reading 1 (1979): 119-22, esp. 119. (Su Shuyang, born in 1938, is a Chinese writer who published his famous plays as Loyal Hearts and Taiping Lake and a novel Homeland.) [6] Ibid., 120. [7] Arthur Miller and Inge Morath, Chinese Encounters (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), 13. [8] Su Shuyang, 120. [9] Ibid., 120. [10] Ibid., 121. [11] Miller and Morath, Chinese Encounters, 8. [12] Ibid., 7. [13] Ibid., 15. [14] Soon after, Sun Huizhu and Gong Boan wrote an article (“On the Free-style Drama of Zuolin Huang,” The Art of Drama 4 (1983), 8) to describe the different understanding and conflicts on the idea of “Xieyi (Free-style) Drama” between the two dramatists, “Huang Zuolin explained, ‘The Chinese character of ‘drama’ is made up of two parts of ‘vacant’ and ‘spear’, being real and false should both be suitable. Being real is not drama and being not real is not art. Acquiring emotion and meaning is both drama and art.’ On hearing this, Miller was at a loss. Huang continued, ‘We must find the inner truth, the essence of the real world, their connections and feelings. Then take it out from the superficial matters.’ To enable Miller to know the real meaning of Free-style Drama, Zuolin invited Miller to watch traditional Kunju opera The Tale of the White Serpent. Sure enough, Miller appreciated the play and said to Zuolin that the west realistic drama was much less colorful and exciting.” [15] Dong Leshan. “Arthur Miller Reviewing Loyal Hearts, Cai Wenji and The Other Shore,” Reading 2 (1979), 77. [16] Miller and Morath, Chinese Encounters, 93. [17] Ibid., 94. [18] Ibid., 95. [19] Chen Liangting, “Words after Translation,” Selected Plays by Arthur Miller (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Press, 1979), 249. [20] Gu Zhichuan, “Replies on the New Senior High School Textbook of Chinese,” http://www.360doc.com/content/11/0328/05/503199_105231591.shtml (accessed 19 October 2008). [21] Cheng Yan, “The Appealing Art: On the Performance of The Crucible,” Shanghai Drama 5 (1981), 18. [22] Ibid., 19. [23] Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 348. [24] Guo Jide, “Arthur Miller and His The Crucible,” American Literature Special Issue (1981), 74. [25] Wu Peiyuan and Hu Chengyuan, “On The Crucible Directed by Zuolin,” Foreign Drama 2 (1982), 41. [26] Ibid., 42. [27] Liu Xiaochun, “The News in Spring,” Drama 2 (2002), 141. [28] Gao Huibing, “The Shangshuping Chronicles and the Mystery of Imagery,” in A Study of Xu Xiaozhong’s Directing Art, ed. Lin Yinyu (Beijing: Chinese Drama Publishing House, 1991), 188. [29] Xu Xiaozhong, “Changes in Combining and Connecting,” (Part I and II) Drama Journal 5 (1988), 43. [30] Ding Zhou, a journalist of China Construction reported on the visit of Miller, “The similar share of human feelings brought the aged American salesman from New York to Britain, Mosco, Rome, Oslo, Sydney, and Tokyo. And now, he comes to Beijing with heavy pace and same heavy case of commodity samples.” (Ding Zhou, “Review on the Spoken Drama Death of a Salesman,” China Construction 8 (1988), 25). [31] Ibid., 5. [32] Ibid. [33] The Chinese idea of Wangzichenglong (“high hopes for one’s child”) and the expectations for the sons in Death of a Salesman match each other. Miller often commented on this point, “What surprised me is that the parents’ expectations for the children are very Chinese way of thinking. They called it ‘high hopes for one’s child’, ie., hoping the children to succeed… Therefore, when Happy said life is a game, ie., to be No 1. Chinese audiences are the first to get the meaning of these words.”（See David Richards, “Arthur Miller, Survivor,” Manchester Guardian Weekly (Mar. 25, 1984), 17） [34] Yuan Henian expressed his counterviews on the sex scenes being too strict. He pointed out that the two sex scenes in the restaurant and hotel are restrained and sex is always a taboo in Chinese literature and art. (See: Yuan Henian, “ ‘Death of a Salesman’ in Beijing,” Chinese Literature (Oct., 1983), 108-9) [35] Ibid., 252-53. [36] “Stones Borrowed from Other’s Hills: A Forum on the Performance of Death of a Salesman,” Drama Newspaper 7 (1983), 42. [37] See: Tan Aiqing, “ ‘Death of a Salesman’ in Beijing,” China Reconstructs (August, 1983), 26. [38] Miller, Timebends: A Life, 184. [39] Ibid., 185. [40] Miller’s directing his Death of a Salesman in China and his Salesman in Beijing (a diary of his directing experience published in the US) received warm responses in the US. The Wall Street Journal reported Miller’s play and Miller’s Salesman in Beijing on April 26, 1984. Meanwhile, Broadway staged Death of a Salesman again, starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman. It was another big hit, bringing about more reviews and essays on the play. Next comes the 1998 performances of the play in Goodman Theater, Chicago, and the following year, it was moved to the Broadway. [41] Ying Ruocheng, “The Stage Image Creation of Willy Loman and Others,” Guangming Daily (June 3, 1983), 3. [42] Zhu Lin, “A Hard but Pleasant Performance: Experience of Acting Linda,” Drama Studies 1 (1984), 12-13. [43] Ibid. [44] See Zhu Xu, “I Act Charlie: Records of Rehearsing Death of a Salesman,” Drama Studies 1 (1984), 14-17. [45] Rui Tao, “Notes on Rehearsing Death of a Salesman,” The People’s Daily (May 8, 1983), 7. [46] Huang Zuoliang, “The Exciting Performance in May: After Seeing Death of a Salesman,” Drama Journal 6 (1983), 8. [47] “Exploring the New and Thriving the Drama Creation,” Literary Studies 1 (1988), 44. [48] “Five People on The Nirvana of Gouerye,” Drama Review 1 (1987), 9. [49] Tang Zhengxu and Chen Houcheng, 20th Century Chinese Literature and Western Modern Literature (Beijing: The People Publishing House, 1992), 609. [50] Wang Xinmin, The History of Contemporary Chinese Drama (Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2000), 216. [51] Zhu Liyuan, Aesthetics of Reception (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1989), 175-76. [52] Huizhu Sun and Bo'an Gong, "On the Free-style Drama of Zuolin Huang," The Art of Drama 4 (1983), 8. "Arthur Miller: Reception and Influence in China" by Wu Wenquan, Chen Li, and Zhu Qinjuan ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 27, Number 3 (Fall 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center 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: Jim Bredeson Editorial Assistant: Kyueun Kim Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Bill Demastes Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Table of Contents: “Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre” by Benjamin Miller “West of Broadway: the Rockefeller Foundation and American Theatre in the 1930s” by Malcolm Richardson “Arthur Miller: Reception and Influence in China” by Wu Wenquan, Chen Li, and Zhu Qinjuan www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 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 Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre West of Broadway: the Rockefeller Foundation and American Theatre in the 1930s Arthur Miller: Reception and Influence in China Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.