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MORIAH EVANS presents Sharing at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Sharing MORIAH EVANS 7-7:50 pm Friday, October 18, 2024 Elebash Recital Hall RSVP An assemblage, a mashup of recent performance practices—it might be described as painstaking, indulgent, myopic, esoteric, spiritual, psychosocial, activist, inert. No matter what it is—all the activities shared exist as tactics of refusal and offer an otherwise. Performed by Malcolm-x Betts, Maggie Cloud, Moriah Evans, Lizzie Feidelson, Lydia Okrent, and Anh Vo Photo: David Watson 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). Moriah Evans positions choreography as an expansive social process. Drawing on somatic choreographic practices and feminist critiques of dance and visual culture, her works expand dance beyond the visible, to explore different ways of sensing both ourselves and our relationships to one another. Malcolm-x Betts is a New York based visual and dance artist whose work is rooted in investigating embodiment for liberation, Black imagination, and directly engaging with challenges placed on the physical body. Maggie Cloud is a Brooklyn based performer and acupuncturist. Lizzie Feidelson is a writer and performer. Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer. Their work fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

In conversation about past and upcoming projects PRELUDE Festival 2023 ARTIST TALK Annie-B Parson Dance, Discussion English 30 minutes 3:30PM EST Saturday, October 14, 2023 Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All In conversation about past and upcoming projects Big Dance Theater Content / Trigger Description: Annie-B will give an artist talk. Choreographer Annie-B Parson is the artistic director of Obie award-winning Big Dance Theater, which she co-founded in 1991 with Paul Lazar and Molly Hickok. Parson has co-created over twenty large-scale works for such venues as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Old Vic/London, Saddler’s Wells/London, The Walker, The National Theater/Paris, Japan Society and The Kitchen. Outside of her company, some of the artists she has worked with include David Byrne, David Bowie, Lorde, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Anne Carson, Esperanza Spalding, Suzan-Lori Parks, Laurie Anderson, Salt n Pepa, Jonathan Demme, and the Martha Graham Dance Company. Parson choreographed and did musical staging for American Utopia, and she choreographed Byrne’s musical Here Lies Love which is currently on Broadway; as well as his tours with Brian Eno, and St. Vincent. Parson recently choreographed two operas: Candide at the Lyon Opera, and The Hours at The Met. Parson’s writing has been published in The Atlantic, and The Paris Review; her book The Choreography of Everyday Life is published by Verso Press. Upcoming, with Thomas F. DeFrantz, she is co-editing a book entitled: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study. bigdancetheater.org anniebparson.com Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Benjamin Miller 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 Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre Benjamin Miller By Published on November 12, 2015 Download Article as PDF When George Washington Dixon took to the stage in 1834 to perform “Zip Coon,” his latest incarnation of a blackface dandy, he most likely bent his knee a little more than in his previous portrayals of the dandy, garbled his speech a little more, and added some garish costume accessories. Dixon was twisting the dandy into something new and alien. The twisting of the dandy was a theatrical response to the real black dandies who had been present in the urban centers of America for several decades, and who provoked debates about racial classifications, white and black freedoms, and the American class system. Dixon’s participation in these debates—through the bending, distorting character changes he made—continued a process of transformation of the blackface dandy in early American theatre. The exact nature of this course of alteration, and the reasons for the blackface dandy's remodelling over time, are debatable, due to the array of influences on the character, contradictory primary texts and contemporary reviews of blackface performance, and contentious methodologies for investigating blackface entertainment. This article will draw on minstrel studies to analyse the character of the blackface dandy in three iconic songs of early American blackface theatre, “My Long Tail Blue,” “Jim Crow,” and “Zip Coon.” Arguably, the earliest popular representations of black dandyism on the American stage contained features and characteristics designed to diminish any threat posed by real black dandies to the white working class’ imagined white superiority, and these features were quickly amplified in the following years to repress the perceived challenge posed by discourses and performances of black liberty. The rapid transformation of the blackface dandy entrenched a narrative of white liberty that undercut any potential arguments for cross-racial working-class solidarity, abolition, cross-racial sexual relationships, or black rights. Within a decade of the first blackface dandy treading the boards in America, a destructive discourse of blackness—exemplified in the character of Zip Coon—eliminated the possibility that early blackface theatre could provide a theatrical response to social transformations in America that might champion the causes of equality and black liberty. Exactly how these discourses and causes are investigated has been brought into question lately. Recent methodological shifts in studies of blackness have provided an important intervention within minstrel studies, providing the occasion to reassess the figure of the blackface dandy and the role of such a figure within discourses of blackface theatre, blackness, and American liberty more generally. Methodological Shifts: The Four Stages of Minstrel Studies For nearly a century, minstrel scholars have debated the role of racial discourses in blackface performance. Mikko Tuhkanen has categorized minstrel scholars into three periods, with more recent work potentially constituting a fourth shift in approaches to minstrel studies. A common feature within twentieth-century blackface minstrelsy studies, so argues Tuhkanen, is the “repetitive dismissals of earlier studies as biased, insubstantial, or politically motivated.”[1] In the 1930s Carl Wittke and Constance Rourke theorized blackface as a process of “cultural borrowing” where white performers used performance styles of black people in creating a uniquely American form of cultural expression.[2] Responding to this reading of minstrelsy, from the 1950s through the 1970s Ralph Ellison, Nathan Huggins, and Robert Toll dismissed studies such as Wittke’s and Rourke’s, claiming they focused too intently on national formations and failed to understand the harmful racial ideologies circulating in blackface entertainment; for Ellison, Huggins, and Toll blackface was “a reflecting surface” in which white anxieties about race and politics are resolved through harmful racial stereotypes of blackness.[3] Thirdly, Eric Lott pioneered a revival in minstrel studies, followed by authors such as W.T. Lhamon, Dale Cockrell and William Mahar, attempting to balance the approaches of the first two periods of minstrel studies.[4] In Love and Theft Lott argued that Ellison, Huggins and Toll were “representative of the reigning view of minstrelsy as racial domination,” suggesting their work performs a “necessary critique [that] seems somewhat crude and idealist,” and that, instead, minstrel studies should present a “subtler account of racial representations” that reads blackface minstrelsy as a “distorted mirror, reflecting displacements and condensations and discontinuities . . . multiple determinations” of whiteness and blackness.[5] The third group condemn earlier critics who claim blackface performance to be “an unequivocally racist, antiblack practice, both in intentions and effects,” and instead, insist on a more nuanced reading strategy, one that highlights the multiple determinations of identity and political issues, intentional and unintentional, that lead to the possibility of both crosscultural affinity and antiblack sentiment in blackface performance.[6] The complication of intentionality is a feature of this third group of scholars, who re-animate rebellious, anti-bourgeois themes in blackface performance, and prioritize these themes over the oppressive, racist consequences of blackface. Tuhkanen remains neutral in the debate, concluding that the development of minstrel studies “like blackface performance itself . . . has evolved with the twists and turns of its own ‘lore cycle.’”[7] Since Tuhkanen’s 2001 article, a group of scholars have taken issue with the approaches and findings of the third group. In other words, to Tuhkanen’s genealogy of blackface minstrel studies can be added a fourth turn: scholars including Daphne Brooks, Tavia Nyong’o, and Douglas Jones who question the methodologies of previous studies in order to emphasize the way black people—audiences, artists, activists, and everyday people—shaped and responded to blackface performance over time.[8] Presenting an intervention that informs the approach taken to the analysis of blackface dandies in this article, the fourth turn in minstrel studies advocates for a methodological re-orientation that reveals historical blind spots in earlier histories and suggests ways to prioritize black experiences in an analysis of white performances of blackness. Brooks’ theorization of black performance after 1850 suggests that blackface stage characters can be read as responses by white performers to challenges issued by black people arguing against white authority and control. Brooks, in identifying how late nineteenth-century black performers intent on social, cultural and political transformation inhabited and transformed the stereotypes of blackness created by the early white minstrels, urges scholars to consider minstrelsy’s “strategy of alienating the body and ‘blackness’” and “how the practice of alienation participated in the making of a dissident theatrical figure that travelled the stage in the mid-to-late nineteenth century and found itself at the center of both hegemonic and resistant social and cultural ideologies.”[9] Brooks, that is, suggests that the racial stereotypes created in early blackface performance styles were used for both oppressive and liberatory discourses of blackness. The term “alienation,” for Brooks, refers to the “white minstrel performer’s production and navigation of a violently deformed black corporeality”—a physically and representationally twisted and gnarled form of blackness—that “shored up white supremacist ideology . . . grotesquely exposing the mutual constitution” of whiteness with blackness.[10] Such a stance reiterates the concerns of the scholars in the third turn of minstrel studies—such as Lott, who advocated for an analysis of how political and social concerns of the white performers and audiences (the constitution of whiteness) energized blackface performance—while emphasizing the fusion of social and racial themes in minstrelsy to create a unique discourse of blackness that ultimately asserts white superiority. But, importantly, Brooks adds another paradigm for analysis, examining how, particularly later in the nineteenth century, the discourse of blackness was re-appropriated and transformed by black performers, critics, and authors with an interest in black liberty. An exemplary demonstration of the methodological shift advocated by Brooks is Nyong’o’s study Amalgamation Waltz, which incorporates the performances, perspectives and responses of black people into an understanding of blackface theatre. Nyong’o recounts how an editor of the Colored American, Samuel Cornish, attacked blackface minstrelsy and chastised black members of the audiences at such performances. In 1841, recounting a friend’s experience of attending a blackface show, Cornish complained: he never saw so many colored persons at the theatre in his life, hundreds were there, and among whom were many very respectable looking persons. O shame! paying money, hard earned, to support such places and such men, to heap ridicule and a burlesque upon them in their very presence, and upon their whole class.[11] While Cornish’s attempts to convince black patrons to boycott such venues may not have been entirely successful, Frederick Douglass, in 1848, clearly thought the intended audience of blackface entertainment was white, and labelled blackface performers “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of the white fellow-citizens.”[12] Nyong’o’s methodological re-focussing—bringing contemporary black voices into a consideration of blackface performance—highlights historical inaccuracies in earlier studies of blackface, the blind spots in what has been labelled an “orthodox division of minstrelsy into an early radical phase followed by its co-optation by commercial and middle-class interests by the 1850s.”[13] The radical phase, according to scholars such as Lott, Cockrell, Lhamon and Mahar, occurred from the 1820s to the 1840s as blackface performers engaged in and promoted cross-racial solidarity—even amalgamation—in the hope of uniting a working class that opposed exploitation by the upper classes.[14] The commercial stage, according to such scholars, occurred as blackface minstrelsy transformed into a form of entertainment for white audiences, where working-class audiences would enjoy criticisms of the upper class and both working-class and upper-class white audiences shared enjoyment in an oppressive discourse of antiblack racism.[15] Suggesting this orthodox historical view “merely transposes the desire for mongrel authenticity onto the mythic origins of a popular style,” Nyong’o reviews early blackface performance through the lens of black critics.[16] Early blackface performers are repositioned as capitalising on anxieties over racial amalgamation, leading to responses by black activists and abolitionists, whose criticisms of blackface performers’ attacks on black dignity demonstrated “concerns over respectability that animate black responses to the amalgamation panic.”[17] The methodological prioritization of black experience in the work of Nyongo, and others such as Brooks, has the potential to improve understandings of, and theories about, early blackface performance. Drawing directly on the methodological shift promoted by Nyong’o, Jones breaks with earlier groups of blackface scholars to theorize what can be termed the “expropriationist twist” of early blackface performance. Jones reinterprets black performance traditions—such as the slave performers who danced, sang and joked for money and goods at Catherine Market near Brooklyn during the 1820s—that Lhamon has shown to have influenced early blackface performers.[18] While Lhamon reads the lines of influence, from black to white performers, as an example of cross-racial solidarity, Jones reads the exchange differently.[19] Taking Fred Moten’s theorization of the black avant-garde—which identifies a “liberty awaiting activation, the politico-economic, ontological, and aesthetic surplus” in work by black artists and about “blackness”[20]—Jones questions the consequences of white would-be blackface entertainers appropriating the liberatory surplus of black performance. Jones describes this theft as “a cutting, ultimately ghastly, twist” in the historical development of blackface performance: Call it the turn of expropriation: those who donned burnt cork and crafted minstrelsy recognized the potentiality of the surplus of black performance and used it to activate their “liberty waiting.”[21] The expropriationist twist theorized by Jones explains the ideological dimensions of what Brooks referred to as “alienation.” The deformed corporeality enacted by white performers in an attempt to alienate blackness from the source of its original black expression did more than separate blackness from black concerns, it transformed blackness into an object used to present white, working-class concerns, particularly concerns to do with white working class freedom from labor exploitation. This twist in the performance of blackness is mirrored in minstrel studies that ignore the role of black people in provoking and responding to blackface performance. A reorientation of blackface criticism along the lines suggested by Jones, Nyong’o, and Brooks redresses the twist in studies of blackness, a twist typified by the ignorance of black voices and concerns in re-telling blackface history. For Jones, the “vast majority of the literature on early minstrelsy” uphold the orthodox historical view of minstrelsy criticized by Nyong’o; the orthodox view is the result of a methodology whereby “scholars borrow the model of those who crafted minstrelsy itself by refusing black people except when they are advantageous to one’s particular narrative.”[22] In other words, Jones escalates the need for a methodological change by likening earlier blackface scholars to the exclusionary blackface performers they study. Jones demonstrates the new methodology by examining how “an increasingly assertive free black community in the North” agitated for social change in the 1820s and 1830s, where for anxious white communities “blackface became one way to regulate and attenuate” such pressures.[23] Such an analysis reveals how “Minstrelsy emerged as a conduit of white assertion and a buffer against black protest.”[24] Beginning with a close analysis of an early blackface dandy that utilized blackness to present white concerns on stage, and examining both how this early dandy figure was transformed as blackface entertainment’s popularity bloomed and black responses to blackface theatre’s popularity, this article examines the twisting of the dandy in a way that begins to redress the twisting of minstrel studies. Central to blackface performance’s responses to white anxieties about transformations in American culture was the figure of the black dandy. In her history of black dandyism, Monica Miller states that black dandies emerged in response to several changes in American society and culture, including the end of festivals where black people had used fancy dress in parodying upper class whites, the end of the international slave trade and the abolition of slavery in various states at different times.[25] According to Miller, newly freed black people and their families or communities were accumulating modest amounts of wealth as a result of more economic freedoms and began to use fancy dress to announce their arrival as a new American demographic. The arrival of the black dandy into America’s urban centres was almost immediately followed by attacks and criticisms: “Attempts to control the perceived impertinency of these newly emboldened, newly fashionable blacks ranged from the subtle to the outrageous. Excessive responses included ripping the new clothes off the backs of those blacks dressed beyond what whites could bear.”[26] More subtle responses occurred on American stages. The blackface dandy is a stage character developed and refigured from the 1820s on to respond to the actual emergence of black dandies in American society as well as other social and cultural concerns. Given that the advent of black dandyism coincided with the use of typically upper-class clothing by white Americans who used elaborate suits and accessories to distinguish American identity, society and culture from Europe, the history of the black dandy as an argument about class and race restrictions is entangled with the history of the white dandy as an argument about American nationalism. For Miller, blackface dandies, as caricatures, “became part of a cultural critique of perceived white decadence that becomes increasingly difficult to parse from concerns about black ‘striving.’”[27] Themselves the product of various traditions, including clowning, commedia dell’arte, and burlesque, the blackface dandy developed as a stage character that was embroiled with these theatrical traditions as much as with the various social and cultural traditions that had led white and black Americans to use refined ways of dressing as embodied forms of argument in the first place. Black dandies, and associated stage representations, are the product of multiple traditions and critiques and, thus, must be analyzed as indeterminate or multiplicitous: In his adaptability, the dandy figure is firmly ensconced within the flow of African American history, linking African traditions and black recognition and subversive play with white power in the colonial period to black statements of respectability and individuality in freedom. Blackface minstrelsy and other caricatures fought against this mobility even as they acknowledged the ability of the figure and its real-life counterparts to reinvent themselves.[28] Importantly, the blackface dandy can be read as an acknowledgement of the power and rebellious force of real black dandies and, simultaneously, as an attempt by white performers to redress the arguments made by real black dandies against racial and social norms. The transformations of the blackface dandy in the early 1830s reveal the tensions between acknowledgement and neutralization of black resistance in American society and culture. An Early Blackface Dandy: Long Tail Blue The best-known performer of blackface dandyism in the period of early blackface was Dixon, born to a poor family in Richmond, Virginia, probably in 1801. Of what little is known about his early life, Cockrell describes how a circus manager noticed Dixon’s potential as a vocalist at the age of 15 and he was apprenticed to West’s traveling circus as an errand boy; also, it is likely he first used blackface as a clown in the circus.[29] Citing the various formal influences on early blackface, Lott mentions the American clown, as well as the harlequin of commedia dell’arte and the burlesque tramp, as overlapping traditions “tending more or less toward self mockery on the one hand and subversion on the other.”[30] Such diverse traditions influenced the formation of the blackface dandy character. A proponent of the self-mockery and subversion typical of blackface clowning and commedia dell’arte, Dixon became known for his performances of the blackface song “My Long Tail Blue” as early as 1827.[31] Of Dixon’s “My Long Tail Blue” the S. Foster Damon songbook—Series of Old American Songs (1936)—states: “it remained for half a century one of the standard burnt-cork songs.”[32] Given it is rare to find versions of “My Long Tail Blue” with a post-1830 publication date (where they are provided), or in post-1840 song sheet collections, it is unlikely the popularity of “My Long Tail Blue” lasted more than a decade. Nevertheless, “My Long Tail Blue” did popularize the character of the black dandy, which certainly proved to be an enduring presence, though continually altered and adjusted to respond to white concerns and black responses and challenges, in blackface entertainment over the rest of the century. In a description of some of Dixon’s performances in 1829, Cockrell points to the constituency of the audience in early blackface performance: during a three-day, late-July span, [Dixon] appeared at the Bowery Theatre, the Chatham Garden Theatre, and the Park Theatre and at all three sang in blackface . . . performing for “crowded galleries and scantily filled boxes,” a solid indication of the heart of his audience.[33] Ticket prices ensured that, generally, working-class crowds populated the gallery and upper-class audiences patronized the boxes. Cornish’s concerns in the early 1840s about black audience members in blackface shows suggest Dixon’s audience may have included black and white workers.[34] In any case, Dixon’s blackface routines appear to have been disliked by upper-class people, but delivered him success through the general approval of working-class, gallery audiences. The story narrated in “My Long Tail Blue” reveals what it is that appealed to these working-class audiences. “My Long Tail Blue” tells the story of a black dandy who courts women and flouts authority. The narrator of the song describes his blue jacket with long tails, a mark of respectability and class. The dandy—named Blue—wears his blue jacket on Sundays, while (religiously) pursuing women. While audiences enjoyed hearing about the character’s sexual pursuits, they also wished to see the upwardly mobile dandy brought down a peg or two. The song doesn’t disappoint, describing an encounter between Blue and Jim Crow.[35] In “My Long Tail Blue,” Crow is an escaped black slave who is found courting a white girl named Sue when Blue intrudes. As Blue intervenes and Crow sneaks away, Blue is arrested and his jacket is torn in a scuffle with the authorities. Blue has his jacket mended upon his release from jail and the song concludes with him advising the audience to go and buy a jacket so they too can be like him, winning the ladies’ hearts, flouting authority, and rising up the social hierarchy. Many aspects of the performance—from the costume to the lyrics, to the advertisements and musical style—represent the first moves by a white performer to alienate the black dandy in the creation of a blackface dandy. In her article “Daddy Blue: The Evolution of the Dark Dandy,” Barbara Lewis reads Blue as a dignified character (unlike the more loathsome characters that would dominate the following decades). Further, Lewis states that Blue represented the condition of some black Americans in reality: Blue’s handsome, dignified image, the epitome of rationality and reserve, reflected the situation for a sizable and growing segment of [upwardly mobile] African Americans. . . . Blue emblematically expressed the assurance and achievement of this group.[36] Lewis bases her reading of Blue as a somewhat authentic representation of actual, well-dressed black men on the lyrics, but also on a lithograph of Blue that was printed on the front page of an early publication of the song’s sheet music. Regardless of whether “My Long Tail Blue” faithfully reproduced or radically altered the figure of the black dandy, Dixon’s portrayal and his audience’s endorsement were provoked by the presence of refined, dignified black men in American public life. The lithograph for the sheet music provides a glimpse into how Dixon’s performance was framed and received. Given the aspects of the image mentioned in her analysis, Lewis is likely referring to the lithograph published by Atwill’s and reproduced here in Fig. 1. Another typical lithograph published by Firth has been reproduced in Fig. 2. While Lewis reads Blue as a dignified and respectable man of property who is ready to put his equal citizenship with white men to the test by taking his place in a “teeming metropolis,”[37] she misses some revealing details in the lithograph of Blue, details that are amplified when compared with the second lithograph. It is true, as Lewis states, that Blue appears to be dignified and wealthy; however, he is also demonized. In the Atwill’s lithograph Blue’s hat brim curls upwards at either end, simulating devil’s horns (Fig. 1).[38] In the Firth lithograph Blue’s moustache provides the devil’s curls, while the tail of his jacket flows away from his body into sharp points, mimicking something snake-ish or devilish (Fig. 2).[39] In both lithographs Blue’s eyes are squinted and shifty; they bring his character further under suspicion. These details bring into question the authenticity of Blue as a representation of real black dandies, instead offering support to the suggestions of Nyong’o and Jones that the twisting of blackness for white purposes in early blackface performance may have occurred more rapidly than the orthodox retelling of blackface history presumes. Arguably, the fact that Lewis misses these details allows her to idolize the character—perhaps in an effort to find an accurate cultural representation of the real black dandies of the period, who were bravely challenging social boundaries and confronting the often violent treatment of dignified black people. The missed details might result from an over-reliance on orthodox readings of minstrel history that place “My Long Tail Blue” in an early, radical stage of the form’s development. And yet, the lithographs need not be read as accurate portraits of actual dandies in order to recognize the agency of black dandies at the time. As Miller suggests, while the elaborate costume of real black dandies was “a symbol of a self-conscious manipulation of authority,” it was tempered by the corresponding representations of blackface dandyism, “an attempted denigratory parody of free blacks’ pride and enterprise.”[40] In comparing the lithographs, then, Blue should not be read as an accurate representation of real black dandies, but as an early response to the anxieties white society felt toward real black dandies. The demonization, brought about by the embodied arguments of black dandies, reveal the expropriative twist enacted by white performers who would go on to craft various determinations of blackness to alleviate their own concerns throughout the rest of the century. Figure 1: “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Atwill’s, c.1827). The character of a dandy, Blue, with horned top hat, shifty eyes, and a straight, dignified stance. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. Figure 2: “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Firth, c.1827). The character of a dandy, Blue, with tailed coat, spiked moustache, shifty eyes, and a formal stance. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. The liberatory surplus of real black dandies was transformed through Dixon’s portrayal into an argument for increased white working-class freedoms. For example, Blue’s blackness serves as a synonym for social transgression. Blue does not obey rules; for this he is a character that many in the predominantly white audience—with desires to escape social regulations—would have admired. His pursuit of women was also appealing to white audiences, but any association of white audience members with black freedoms needed to be controlled. Lott reads the phallic “long tail” of Blue’s coat as representing “white man’s obsession with a rampageous black penis . . . invoking the power of ‘blackness’ while deriding it, in an effort of cultural control.”[41] Further, as Nyong’o powerfully argues, the affect of cross-racial sexuality was particularly important in the first debates throughout the 1830s over racial equality, abolition and amalgamation.[42] Any boisterous delights to be taken in Blue’s sexual exploits were accompanied by concerns about crossracial relationships and their political associates, equal rights and freedom. As such, the sexual freedoms and any suggestion of equality and amalgamation are closed down in the narrative of the song by a fantasy of black-on-black violence (Crow versus Blue), that resolves the tension and allows audiences to re-assume their position as civilized, restrained white men differentiated from the violent black buffoons in the song’s narrative. The cultural control of Blue’s crossracial freedoms occurred through his alienation, his demonization, released the uncomfortable realization of shared liberatory interests with a black character at the same time as it addressed the animosity many whites felt towards the class of real black dandies populating the urban centers of America. To demonstrate the animosity working-class white people felt toward real black dandies, Lewis describes riots in Philadelphia during 1828 when “white ruffians” (whose “mobocratic tactics” were endorsed by local papers) physically assaulted and verbally insulted many elegant and well-dressed black people who attended balls and dances.[43] The social presence among white workers of genuine animosity toward black dandies and strongly held beliefs in an essential difference between white and black people led performers to respond with racial characterizations that differentiated white audiences from troubling presences such as Blue so that audiences could feel both socially and culturally secure. The alienation of Blue, then, suggests the expropriation and twisting of blackness to white ends occurred, albeit more subtly than in later performances, in the earliest blackface shows. Dixon’s “My Long Tail Blue” signalled the emergence of the professional blackface entertainer, and in doing so paved the way for an almost ubiquitous expropriation of blackness in decades to follow. In fact, it was the regional folk character of Jim Crow, named in “My Long Tail Blue,” who became the most famous character of early blackface theatre. While Dixon was having success with “My Long Tail Blue,” Rice began composing a song and dance about Jim Crow to which Dixon would respond in turn. Rice’s “Jim Crow” displayed a particular brand of animosity toward black dandies that would become a feature of blackface performance for decades to come. Attacking the Dandy: Jim Crow and Zip Coon Rice was born around 1808 and grew up “in New York’s most ethnically mixed neighborhood—the Seventh Ward—along the East River docks.”[44] After time spent working as a carpenter’s apprentice, by the mid-1820s Rice had turned to acting and was appearing in “supernumerary roles” in plays and by 1828 he was on the road full-time with a performance troupe, still performing bit-parts in various plays.[45] It was not long before Rice had stolen the show in his minor roles at the Park theatre in New York during 1828, drawing criticism from his senior actors who felt he distracted audiences from their shows, and by late 1828 Rice was on playbills for comic songs during interludes.[46] In 1830 Rice debuted a routine involving a catchy song and a quirky dance, possibly learnt from black performers at Catherine Market before Rice adapted it to the stage. The routine defined his career. By 22 September 1830, he was listed on a playbill for his performance of “Jim Crow,” a song Cockrell claims to have been instantly popular.[47] Two years later Rice was headlining with “Jim Crow” in New York. Between 1836 and 1841 Rice performed the song to acclaim in England, Ireland, Scotland, and France, returning several times to the United States, each time more popular than before.[48] While Rice’s popularity should not be underestimated—he is often incorrectly described as the first blackface performer, Jim Crow is the most well-known character from the period, and various versions of “Jim Crow” remained in the repertoire of blackface performers and folk bands for over a century—his popularity needs to be contextualized. In Cornish’s boycott call of blackface theatres he mentioned Rice by name and described him as “that most contemptible of all Buffoons,” and claimed, according to Nyong’o, that Rice’s trans-atlantic success had garnered support among Europeans for the US slave industry.[49] In other words, Rice’s popularity was not absolute and his routine was not as enlightened as scholars such as Lhamon believe. In fact, the persuasiveness of Rice’s racism may have been enabled by the slipperiness—the open-endedness—of the textual traces of his performances. There are a number of versions of “Jim Crow.” Lhamon, in his collection of songs and plays performed by Rice, reproduces a version of “The Original Jim Crow” published in New York in 1832 (hereafter referred to as version A).[50] The version has no less than forty-four short, four-line verses, each followed by the chorus: “Weel about and turn about and do jis so, / eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.”[51] Another version, published in Philadelphia in the same year, contains nineteen verses (hereafter referred to as version B), only some the same as version A. Version B is subtitled “A Comic Song (Sung by Mr. Rice at the Chestnut Theatre).”[52] In both versions the chorus is the same, yet the verses differ. Early blackface songs were highly improvised and adapted to current affairs and the place of performance. There were, however, some constants in the performance, including the chorus, followed by a lengthy musical “turn around” in which the famous hopping and spinning dance-step would be performed, the twisted knee of the character, the raggedy costume, and the oscillation between stumbling soft-shoe shuffles and energetic, bounding leaps. The wheeling and spinning nature of Jim Crow suggests that the song is playing with themes of racial inversion. The chorus—which could constitute half the performance—is an obvious example. Version A contains several verses where Jim Crow pities white people because they are not black: Kase it dar misfortune, And dey’d spend ebery dollar, If dey only could be Gentlemen ob colour. It almost break my heart, To see dem envy me, An from my soul I wish dem, Full as black as we.[53] The narrator of version A continually slips between referring to the audience as white people (“I’m glad dat I’m a niggar, / An don’t you wish you was too”), and as black people (“Now my brodder niggars,” and, above, “as black as we”).[54] Version B—recalling Blue’s invitation to follow suit—invites the (white) audience to become (black) Jim Crows: Den go ahed wite fokes Don’t be slow, Hop ober dubble trubble Jump Jim Crow.[55] While these various audience affiliations are indicative of both black and white audience members, it is also an indication of how audiences were actually invited to simultaneously associate and disassociate with blackness, or, to cite Huggins: “one could almost at will move in or out of the blackface character.”[56] This dis/association is, arguably, essential to an expropriation of black liberty—a taking hold, and removal, of the aesthetic of freedom. Like the narrative of “My Long Tail Blue,” the antics described in “Jim Crow” invite white working-class audiences to envy black freedom, despise the bourgeois, and enjoy violence toward black dandies. The lithographs on the front covers of song sheets for “Jim Crow” show the character with one bent, twisted knee, emphasising a deformed version of masculinity that served to alienate blackness and differentiate it from the ideals of white manliness held by the predominantly white, working-class audience (see, for example, Fig. 3).[57] Far from any hint of dignity shown in the character of Blue, the physical deformity of Crow acts simultaneously to explain his strange, leaping dance and to mark blackness as physically inferior to the white working-class audiences of the time. “Jim Crow” is among the earliest cultural texts that are openly hostile to black dandies (a feature of Jim Crow’s character). In version A of “Jim Crow,” three verses relate Jim Crow’s encounter with a black dandy: I met a Philadelphia niggar Dress’d up quite nice and clean . . . . So I knocked down dis Sambo And shut up his light, . . . . Says I go away you niggar Or I’ll skin you like an eel.[58] The acclamation of such violence rests uneasily against the actual violence that was being directed against well-dressed black people at the time. And yet the jokes continued as Rice’s rocketing popularity led to his own star-vehicle play Oh! Hush! Or, the Virginny Cupids. Rice’s Oh! Hush! sees the character of a black dandy, Sambo Johnson, discovering the affair of his sweetheart when he enters the kitchen where she works (and where his rival suitor, Gumbo Cuffee, has hidden). Cuffee, played by Rice, was a veritable Jim Crow: an upstart, dandy-hating, field-working, anti-authoritarian man. No script of the original performance remains, though Lhamon has edited a later adaptation by Charles White. For the purposes of this discussion, the following joke from Oh! Hush! is certainly in the spirit of “Jim Crow”: CUFF: Excuse my interrupting you for I see you am busy readin’ de paper. Would you be so kind as to enlighten us upon de principal topicks ob de day? JOHNSON: Well, Mr. Cuff, I hab no objection ‘kase I see dat you common unsophisticated gemmen hab not got edgemcation yourself, and you am ‘bliged to come to me who has. So spread around, you unintellumgent bracks, hear de news ob de day discoursed in de most fluid manner. (He reads out some local items.) Dar has been a great storm at sea and de ships hab been turned upside down. CUFF: (looks at paper): Why, Mr. Johnson, you’ve got the paper upside down! (All laugh heartily).[59] The joke is clearly on the pretentious, unintelligent, black dandy, and Cuff (a.k.a Jim Crow) is his foil. The dandy, now transformed into a despicable figure, represents a turn to what Lott labels as the scapegoating of the black dandy, a character embodying “the amalgamationist threat of abolition” and allegorically revealing “the class threat of those who were advocating for it [abolition].”[60] Such attacks on black dandyism reveal how “anticapitalist frustrations,” such as animosity toward upper-class social reformists and the abolitionist bourgeoisie, “stalled potentially positive racial feelings” to uncover “the viciously racist underside of these frustrations.”[61] That is, the dandy represented working-class bosses as well as the educated elite, some of whom had become leaders of the abolitionist movement and raised the possibility that worried white working-class people: that amalgamation and equality could eliminate racial difference among workers. To hate the dandy was to hate white reformers, black reformers, and black workers. And Jim Crow most certainly hated dandies. Through his immense success, the figure of the black dandy had been transformed. Whether Rice’s extreme popularity forced a change in Dixon’s portrayal of the black dandy, or Dixon was a keen judge of social attitudes toward blackness, Dixon’s next song continued to alienate blackness with a performance that would strip the dignity of Blue completely. In 1834, Dixon first performed the song “on which his renown finally came to rest.”[62] It is debatable whether Dixon wrote the song, or whether various little-known singers had performed it for many years before, but, undoubtedly, it was Dixon who made “Zip Coon” the only song of the 1830s to compare in popularity with “Jim Crow.” “Zip Coon” is a monstrous song that mimics certain elements of “Jim Crow.” The lyrics are often nonsensical, with the chorus consisting of “Oh, zip a duden duden duden, zip a duden day” repeated four times.[63] The opening verse leads to the chorus with the line: “Den over dubble trubble, Zip coon will jump.”[64] This line echoes Jim Crow’s insistence that white people “hop ober dubble trubble / Jump Jim Crow,” just as other lines in the song appropriate other elements of “Jim Crow.”[65] Both songs, for example, reference the 1814 battle of New Orleans, where the working-class hero of the late 1820s and early 1830s, President Andrew Jackson, had previously defeated the British forces led by Major General Edward Packenham. In the lithographs for the two songs, too, Zip mimics Crow (See Fig. 3 and Fig. 4).[66] Zip’s bent knee and arms are almost exact copies of Crow’s, and despite the obvious costume differences, Zip’s costume, like Crow’s, is exuberant and disorderly, superfluous and mis-matched. Zip, the lithograph and various appropriations within the text suggest, is Blue with a twist of Crow. Zip mimicked Crow’s invocation of popular, working-class nationalism. Perhaps Zip, as he jumped “over dubble trubble,” even incorporated a spinning leap similar to the one that Rice had made famous. Figure 3: “The Original Jim Crow” (Riley, c.1832). The character of an escaped slave, Jim Crow, with bent knee and foot and ragged clothes. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. Figure 4: “Zip Coon” (Hewitt, c.1834). The character of a buffoonish dandy, Zip Coon, with gnarled limbs in a stance similar to typical portrayals of Jim Crow. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. The representation of blackness in “Zip Coon” is just as disjointed as in “Jim Crow,” where the narration continually oscillates between descriptions of and association with blackness. This disarray is present in the narrative voice, which slips from the first to the third person. Sometimes it is a narrator talking about meeting Zip Coon, or describing him; sometimes it is Zip himself talking about politics, his mother or a girl who loves him. The sexual pursuits and freedoms of Blue and Crow remain, but the disassociation is made all the easier by Coon’s more obvious buffoonery. As with the previous songs, “Zip Coon” allowed audiences to seize the liberties of a wealthy, sexually active, luxuriant dandy, envy those freedoms and release them with a narrative of racial deformity. The presumed political injustice of racial equality and amalgamation, then, is derided allowing white working-class audiences to fantasize about their own importance as the most manly and necessary national type. It was a belief that motivated many to protest against abolition. The twisting of the dandy—from Blue through Crow to Coon—was near absolute by the time anti-abolitionist rioters stormed a church, ransacked houses, and took siege of a theatre to disrupt a ritzy performance by renowned tragedian Edwin Forrest in 1834. Actors were driven off stage and the rioters threatened to destroy the premises until the theatre manager thought to subdue them by staging an impromtu performance catering to their ideals. He brought out an actor to sing none other than “Zip Coon.”[67] As the first three groups of minstrel scholars would have it, this riot and blackface resolution occurred at a time when early blackface performance was rebellious, encouraging cross-racial solidarity. And yet minstrelsy is here, as early as 1834 and just six years after Dixon revolutionized American theatre with “Long Tail Blue,” co-opted into an antiblack, anti-amalgamation pogrom. What was it about a blackface dandy that so calmed the crowd? Certainly not the suggestion of cross-racial affiliation. In fact, what the analysis of the blackface dandy in this article has shown is that, from the earliest representations on the blackface stage, the dandy was incorporated into a process of alienating blackness. And the dandy was rapidly twisted into a grotesque effigy to calm the minds of anti-abolitionist rioters. As Nyong’o and Jones have forcefully argued, the discourse of blackness under blackface saw the theft of potential narratives of black freedom and its transformation—disfigurement—into narratives to support white working-class freedoms.[68] But, following this expropriation and alienation, what of the potential “liberty awaiting activation”? The changes in representation of the dandy from “My Long Tail Blue,” through “Jim Crow,” to “Zip Coon” indicates a much broader shift in the representation of blackness between 1828 and 1834. The distortion of the characterization of blackness stripped the black dandy of subversive potential and had a significant impact in real life for some early nineteenth-century Americans. Lewis reads firstly Jim Crow and then Zip Coon as figures growing out of white working-class hostility towards dignified black people who were slowly accumulating wealth: If Crow served as the antithesis to Blue, Coon mixed their individual elements into a scoundrel composite, the gangling servant dressed in the master’s clothes. Coon combined the original and its reverse into a mockery of the former.[69] Lewis effectively maps the evolution of the dandy figure as it related to attitudes towards blackness in Jacksonian America. Testing Lewis’ argument, it can be seen that Lewis is correct to imply racist characters mirrored (perhaps even provoked) real violence that was occurring against black people at the time (be it through direct physical intimidation or the institution of slavery). But the analysis in this article shows that Crow was not simply the “reverse” of Blue, but a heightened form of the animosity towards black people that was actually inherent in the portrayal of Blue. Such an analysis, in tandem with Lewis’ and Miller’s analysis of the history of real black dandies, refutes claims that blackface performance was revolutionary and radical despite (or besides) its racism. Even as blackface entertainment articulated the desires of the white working class or arguments against white dandies and class traitors, blackface also represented the broader shift occurring in white social attitudes toward blackness. Seen clearly in the shift from Blue to Zip, between 1828 and 1834 the iconography of racism that permeated the popular imagination of working-class Americans amplified subhuman, demonic and grotesque features, and it did so to ease white audiences’ concerns about abolition, amalgamation and other discourses of black freedom. The figure of the blackface dandy became a cornerstone of professional blackface minstrelsy from the 1840s onward, and even into the nostalgic vaudevillian revivals of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The ways that the blackface dandy allowed for working-class animosity of the upper classes, for upper-class self-mockery, and for general mockery of black people proved popular for a more economically diverse audience than the rowdy working-class crowds of early blackface. For Lott, the diverse appeals of professional minstrelsy—many of them embodied in the character of the black dandy—closed down any cross-racial affiliation potentially inspired by blackface performance: Energies directed against the state apparatus might too easily join those focused on black people. . . . Class straits may energize interracial cooperation, but they are also often likely to close down the possibility of interracial embrace.[70] And yet, the re-readings of blackface minstrel history to account for black influences upon and responses to early blackface—applied in this paper to the blackface dandy—bring into question whether there was ever the potential for a social, inter-racial embrace with the blackface dandy as a catalyst. In fact, as the work of Brooks, Miller, and Barbara Webb show, it was not until black performers and activists such as George Walker and W.E.B. DuBois inhabited and transformed the blackface dandy stereotype that any possibility of overcoming, in a productive and unifying way, the white animosity toward black freedoms was possible.[71] Despite the best efforts of white performers to twist and alienate blackness, and despite the devastating impact of narratives of white supremacy staged through blackface performance for half a century, the surplus of black liberty was, and arguably still is, awaiting activation in these stage types, responses, and texts. Recognizing this is an essential step toward undoing the white racial privilege created in early minstrel representations. And framing early blackface texts and characters as responses to narratives of black freedom will expose them for what they are: illusions of white control. Benjamin Miller is a lecturer in the School of Letters, Art and Media at the University of Sydney. His research examines the relationship between representations of race in the US and Australia. He completed his PhD thesis in 2010 on representations of blackness and Aboriginality in American and Australian culture and has published on representations of Aboriginal people in Australian theatre, cinema and literature, and on the writing of Aboriginal author David Unaipon. [1] Mikko Tuhkanen, “Of Blackface and Paranoid Knowledge: Richard Wright, Jacques Lacan and the Ambivalence of Black Minstrelsy,” Diacritics 31, no. 2 (2001): 13. [2] See Carl Wittke, Tambo and Bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage (Durham: Duke University Press, 1930); Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931). [3] Tuhkanen, “Of Blackface,” 16. See also Ralph Ellison, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” [1958], in Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage, 1964), 45-59; Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974). [4] Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). See also W.T. Lhamon Jr., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); William Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Ante-bellum American Popular Culture (Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1999). [5] Lott, Love and Theft, 7-8. [6] Tuhkanen, “Of Blackface,” 16. [7] Ibid., 13-14. [8] Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (London: Duke University Press, 2006); Tavia Nyong’o, The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Douglas Jones Jr., “Black Politics but Not Black People: Rethinking the Social and ‘Racial’ History of Early Minstrelsy,” TDR: The Drama Review 57, no. 2 (2013): 21-37. [9] Brooks, Bodies in Dissent, 28. [10] Ibid., 27-28. [11] Quoted in Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 120. [12] Quoted in Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 123. [13] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 8. [14] W.T. Lhamon Jr., Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 8. According to Lhamon, “The [early blackface] scripts had enough play to make them particularly useful for organizing heterogeneous publics. In flocking to see Jim Crow, disparate types discovered their mutual affinities. Around Jim Crow’s mask the dispersed riffraff of a quickening industrialism began to act out their own parts in a new play in which the insubordinates were mixing among themselves but not melding with the previously dominant” (8). [15] Cockrell, Demons, 161. For Cockrell, as early blackface transformed into minstrelsy around 1843, “Caught in the middle, between class and race, white common people had to devise both upward and downward processes and rituals” (161). [16] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 8. [17] Ibid., 8-9. [18] Lhamon, Raising Cain, 34. [19] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 30. Lhamon suggests that the blackface characterization of Jim Crow provided the “template” for a “transracial affiliation [that] was virtually unprecedented” (30). [20] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 41. [21] Jones, “Black Politics,” 25. Emphasis in original. [22] Ibid., 27-28. [23] Ibid., 17. [24] Ibid. [25] Monica Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 101. [26] Ibid., 102. [27] Ibid., 101. [28] Ibid., 105. [29] Cockrell, Demons, 96. [30] Lott, Love and Theft, 22. [31] Barbara Lewis, “Daddy Blue: The Evolution of the Dark Daddy,” in Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Minstrelsy, ed. Annemarie Bean, James V. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 257. [32] Quoted in ibid. [33] Cockrell, Demons, 96. [34] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 120. [35] As an aside, it should be noted that the Jim Crow character here was drawn from regional, oral folk tales that had been circulating for decades before the character was appropriated and adapted into the exemplar early blackface character performed by T.D. Rice. Lhamon, Raising Cain, 180. [36] Lewis, “Daddy Blue,” 259-60. [37] Ibid., 258-9. [38] “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Atwill, c.1827). [39] “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Firth, c. 1827). [40] Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 81. [41] Lott, Love and Theft, 25-26. [42] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 72. [43] Lewis, “Daddy Blue,” 264. [44] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 1. [45] Cockrell, Demons, 62. [46] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 32-33. [47] Cockrell, Demons, 64. [48] Ibid., 65-66. [49] Nyong’o, Amalgmation Waltz, 121. [50] “The Original Jim Crow,” (New York: Riley, c.1832), republished in Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 95-102. [51] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 96. [52] “Jim Crow: A Comic Song (Sung by Rice at the Chestnut St Theatre),” (Philadelphia: Edgar, c.1832). [53] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 99. [54] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 98. It is also important here to make a note about the language of the sources I am quoting. I quote some hateful words in this article. In choosing to include these words I am following the argument of Jabari Asim in The N Word: “the word ‘nigger’ serves . . . as a linguistic extension of white supremacy, the most potent part of a language of oppression that has changed over time from overt to coded.” For Asim, the “N word” and other derogatory words are hurtful, but open identification of such language helps to identify moments of racism while also acknowledging the close relationship between language and privilege. For more, see Jabari Asim, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why (New York: Houghton, 2007), 4. [55] “Jim Crow: A Comic Song,” stanza 18. [56] Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 257. [57] “The Original Jim Crow,” n.p. [58] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 98. [59] Ibid., 150. [60] Lott, Love and Theft, 134. [61] Ibid., 135. [62] Cockrell, Demons, 99. [63] “Zip Coon: A Favorite Comic Song (Sung by G.W. Dixon),” (New York: Hewitt, 1834). [64] Ibid., stanza 1. [65] “Jim Crow: A Comic Song,” stanza 18. [66] “The Original Jim Crow,” n.p.; “Zip Coon,” n.p. [67] Lott, Love and Theft, 132-3. [68] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 122; Jones, “Black Politics,” 25. [69] Lewis, “Daddy Blue,” 259. [70] Lott, Love and Theft, 237. [71] Brooks, Bodies, 207-17; Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 137-45; Barbara Webb, “The Black Dandyism of George Walker: A Case Study in Genealogical Method,” The Drama Review 45, no. 4 (2001): 7-24. "Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre" by Benjamin Miller 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.

Peter Zazzali Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 1 Visit Journal Homepage Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Peter Zazzali By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF During the spring of 2013, Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy played to sold out houses recouping its producers’ initial investment of $3.6 million after a mere eight weeks, a remarkable feat for a Broadway drama. Whereas most successes on the Great White Way are splashy musicals with high production values (think Wicked and The Lion King ) so-called “straight plays” usually operate at a financial loss as part of a comparatively short run. Lucky Guy , however, was an exception in that Ephron’s play grossed over $1 million weekly while earning Tony Award nominations for its director, playwright, and most significantly, its leading actor: Tom Hanks. [1] Like Ephron, Hanks had never worked on Broadway prior to Lucky Guy , or anywhere else of note in the theatre, thereby begging the question: how can two relative novices of the stage achieve such critical acclaim and financial success on their first try? I argue that the reason for this is Hanks’s celebrity. With symbolic capital that included two Academy Awards and roles in Hollywood hits such as Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Hanks’s involvement ensured that Lucky Guy would find and affect its audience. As Guy Debord states in his seminal work, The Society of the Spectacle , celebrity is a “commodity [that] attains the total occupation of social life,” [2] a conceit that speaks to the fetishization of movie stars like Hanks who try their hand at stage acting. But what gets lost in this negotiation between celebrity film star and theatre artist? What causes the commodified frenzy that defines the relationship between an actor and his audience, a connection whose ramifications are as significant artistically as they are socio-economically? What is the spectator’s state of consciousness in this phenomenal exchange? Ultimately, what does society’s fascination with celebrity mean for theatre as an art form? This article positions celebrity as a socially induced phenomenon that causes regressive perceptions of stage acting, and by extension, the art of theatre. Relying on a combination of cultural materialism and modern psychology, I will examine the phenomenological connection between celebrity actors and their adoring “stage” audience. Thus, I argue the festishization of a celebrity such as Hanks produces a viable, if imagined, relationship between a “star” and his audience, a negotiation that has reductive implications for the art of the stage actor. Celebrity actors are directly associated with film and television, insofar as their image is distributed and consumed en masse towards forging familiarity with the public. Indeed, the term familiarity shares the same etymological root as “fame” and is a benchmark for becoming a celebrity. In fact, fame and celebrity are mutually inclusive concepts resulting from exposure through the media. From Facebook and Twitter to television and the Internet, today’s cultural consumer has unprecedented access to the lives and careers of famous people. [3] As such, a social phenomenon has ensued in which the fascination of celebrities becomes a self-fulfilling practice with consumers craving and following mediatized narratives that create and perpetuate household names. With respect to actors, again, film and television especially apply to this dynamic. While stage performers have occasionally garnered fame throughout theatre history, its scope and measure pale by comparison to film and TV stars today. Whereas the likes of Edwin Forrest and the Lunts, for example, were celebrities in their respective chronological contexts, they simply did not attract the worldwide attention that today’s film and TV icons do. Thus, on-camera performance mediums in conjunction with mass media are the root and cause of an actor’s fame and celebrity formation. Being famous and being skilled in one’s artistic craft as an actor, however, are not necessarily inclusive considerations. It would seem rather easy to identify the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Cruise as celebrities, for example, but a different matter altogether to recognize them as trained actors. Like Hanks, neither attended drama school or received any formal education in acting. Instead, they had fortunate career “breaks” as young men and have since burnished their fame starring in blockbusters such as The Terminator and Mission Impossible —movies that could hardly be considered demonstrations of virtuosic acting, insofar as the material is largely driven by action-packed plotlines, special affects, and two-dimensional characterizations, thereby calling for a performance style that lends more to a personality type than a skilled artist. To borrow again from Debord, it is sheer spectacle. As such, a celebrity is needed to complete the branding and distributional appeal of the film. Of course there are film and television productions with gifted performers. Yet on-camera acting is decidedly different from the stage, where an actor must possess the physical, vocal, and emotional heft to render a performance with size and presence worthy of arresting the audience’s attention for lengthy periods of time. There are after all no second takes when acting onstage. On-camera performance, however, requires an authenticity that is not needed for the stage. The adage “the camera does not lie” is a truism in that film/TV acting is steeped in verisimilitude, whereas the stage actor renders a theatricalized illusion of reality. Acting for the camera and onstage are distinct practices that require separate and select skills. It is no different from distinguishing the qualifications between a musical theatre actor and one who specializes in Shakespeare, or, to reference another field altogether, it can be likened to the difference between a violinist and a trumpet player—both are musicians, but neither would be expected to handle the other’s instrument with the same skill as their primary métier. To be sure, I am not arguing that theatre acting is superior to on-camera performance, but rather, that it requires a specialized skillset that takes years of training and experience to master. The expectation that someone who has not been onstage for decades (as was the case with Hanks) can convincingly and compellingly render a major role seems remote. While a fine and accomplished film actor, Hanks was at best under-qualified to hold the stage for two hours, as noted by the New York Times’ Ben Brantley who meekly described his performance as “honorable.” [4] Celebrity can be understood in a number of ways. First, it is a social phenomenon in which the structures and institutions of a given culture are determining factors. For example, in Europe a football star like Luis Suarez is well known to the general public, given the continent’s passion for the sport, but in the US he is hardly a household name because we are comparably disinterested in professional soccer. On the other hand, some celebrities have a scope of recognition that is worldwide: Madonna, Muhammad Ali, and Barack Obama, to name a few. With respect to the latter, the symbiotic relationship of celebrity and fame comes into play, insofar as global leaders—for reasons that are both intended and not—receive media attention that provides them the same widespread idolatry (and criticism) as those in the more commonly celebretized spheres of sport and entertainment. The current phenomenon of Donald Trump’s pursuit of the US presidency supports this point in that he wields his celebrity to generate media attention and dominate his opponents: as the Wall Street Journal reports, Trump is “sucking the oxygen” out of the campaign. [5] Despite the fact that he has never held public office and refuses to offer a single policy plan of substance, as of this writing he continues to lead in every national and state poll. Thus, his celebrity and media coverage can be seen as the signature reason for his popularity among prospective Republican primary voters. The second distinguishing aspect of celebrity is what Robert van Krieken calls “the economics of attention,” or the ways in which the “intersection between culture and commerce” become endeavors of capital exchange. [6] The grist of this process is the invocation and distribution of a highly visible image that serves as a branding mechanism for the purpose of generating economic, cultural, political, and/or symbolic capital. Here too Trump provides an excellent example in that his brand, and by extension, the capital it garners on behalf of his campaign and the media outlets that cover him is significant. Likewise, an actor is valued for his brand as defined by fame and notoriety, characteristics that do not necessarily equate with his artistry. As this article endeavors to demonstrate, an actor’s status in the entertainment industry is commensurate with his prestige and sociopolitical status. [7] His worth to a given production often comes down to how much attention he can bring to it, a value that is determined symbolically. Therefore, celebrity can be understood as a form of symbolic capital that lends recognition, credit, and legitimacy to a project’s exchange value . Consequently, the “buzz” and “charisma” that a revered celebrity such as Hanks brings to a theatrical production has unmistakable economic implications. In addition to providing credibility to Ephron’s play, his status as a famous, Academy Award-winning star assured producers that Lucky Guy had a chance of being that rare Broadway drama that turns a profit. What does this dynamic mean for the US theatre, and more specifically, the aesthetic of American stage acting? To the extent that producers are intent on treating their production as a commercial endeavor, we will continue to see celebrities such as Hanks appearing in roles and contexts for which they are under-qualified. For all his remarkable accomplishments in film and television, Hanks is unproven and untrained as a stage actor. Casting him in a major part on Broadway, a venue that is itself considered the apotheosis of US theatre, sends a clear message that an actor is valued not so much for his craft, but rather, the attention that he can bring a project vis-à-vis his celebrity. The New York Times drama critic, Charles Isherwood, makes this very point in his article, “Stage Acting: It’s Nice Work if You Can Afford It”: Big movie and television stars are the mega-corporations of the acting profession, and they seem to be acquiring an increasing measure of the industry’s rewards, leaving less for the vast number of fameless actors…. If performers’ attractiveness and fame are what studios and even theaters want to buy and market, talent and experience naturally become commodities with lesser or no value.[8] The film and television industry has come to determine the casting practices of the US theatre. Though the example of Hanks pertains to Broadway, where Hollywood stars amass cultural capital by burnishing their resumes with stage credits, the US not-for-profit theatre is also prone to the commodified underpinnings of the celebrity society. In addition to landing the occasional household name to tread their boards, regional theatres from San Diego to Chicago consistently ape the production practices of the commercial theatre, as indicated by American Theatre magazine, which reports that thirteen of the fourteen “most-produced” plays appearing on US stages in 2013 were either done “On” or Off-Broadway. [9] US actors are incentivized to become celebrities, or at least to pursue work in the sectors of the profession that supplement the celebrity society: film and television. Indeed, having a stage career is generally unfeasible today. Whereas forty years ago an actor could work year-round as part of a resident company at a regional theatre, today he must look to film and television to make a living. [10] Unfortunately, the mid-1970s and early-1980s witnessed a downturn in the US economy and a generational change of artistic directors, inauspicious developments that caused regional theatres to disband their resident companies and cast on a show-by-show basis. This trend has persisted ever since. For example, the accomplished actor Jay O. Sanders claims that having a theatre career today is “totally impractical” and admits being forced to seek employment in the entertainment industry for his livelihood: My goal has been to make it work so I can do the great classics and new plays on stage. I’ve done over 100 films, but I don’t think of them as my career. I am forced to diversify my work to make the money to support what I love and am trained to do.[11] It is not only the remuneration of on-camera employment that benefits actors like Sanders, but the symbolic credibility that comes with working on a high profile project. The economics of attention could not be clearer. If an actor can appear with celebrities in major Hollywood films—a feat Sanders has repeatedly achieved—he advances his professional legitimacy, a crucial characteristic in winning future employment. This sociocultural paradigm has serious ramifications for acting as an art form and the ways in which it is perceived. The symbolic value of celebrity manifests through a spectator’s intangible connection to certain thoughts, affects, and most significantly, feelings that are caused by—yet otherwise divorced from—the object (person) being fetishized. The Western Marxist Theodor Adorno articulates this phenomenal exchange in describing the fetishization of music. He argues that singers or instrumentalists are valued not for their ability to express a given composition, but for the ways in which they are marketed publicly: “For all contemporary musical life is dominated by the commodity form; the last pre-capitalist residues have been eliminated.” [12] Adorno goes on to depict the “fetish character” of music as a schism between the musician and the listener, as identified by the artist’s detachment from the materials of his labor. He uses NBC’s radio broadcasts of the celebrity conductor Arturo Toscanini to exemplify how radio and television detach the artist from the musical composition. [13] Both the artist and listener measure the cultural product’s value by its symbolic worth, which in this instance pertains to Toscanini’s prestige. At no point in the production and reception of the NBC broadcast is there a tangible connection between Toscanini, his musicianship, and the listener/consumer. Instead, the dynamic of cultural production, distribution, and consumption is defined by the fetishization of Toscanini as “the world’s best composer,” thereby rendering both him and his work commodities that adhere to what Adorno terms the “culture industry.” [14] Adorno claims the fetishization of singers also occurs at the expense of their artistry: “Musical fetishism takes possession of the public valuation of singing voices.” [15] The singer’s technical virtuosity and craft is eclipsed once he is mediated as a marketable commodity whose image and music fit the formula for success, which, again, is synonymous with the singer’s exchange value, a criterion determined by his status as a celebrity. We can see this socially induced phenomenon in today’s pop artists in that their image operates as a material good for mass consumption at the expense of vocal technique or musicality. From Justin Bieber to Lady Gaga, celebrity singers seem more intent on creating and safeguarding their image than enhancing whatever musicianship they might have. Gaga’s formulaic music, for example, is accompanied by her outlandish costumes and highly contrived iconoclasm, a strategy that is clearly advancing her brand according to starcount.com, which anoints her the world’s most famous person. [16] A similar case could be made of her predecessor, Madonna, whose “success,” as pop culture scholar John Fiske asserts, was “due at least as much to her videos and her personality as her music.” [17] In tracing Madonna’s fame to her socially constructed image, Fiske reminds us that her first album, Madonna (1983), was initially a commercial failure and that it was not until she made the video “Lucky Star” that her career began to take off. [18] The basis for this breakthrough, he argues, was to use mass media to deploy mythical signifiers to evoke a sexually empowered figure towards rendering Madonna a pop icon for adolescent girls and gay men, both of whom comprised her fan base during much of the 1980s. As Lady Gaga would do years later, Madonna represented a “fine example of the capitalist pop industry at work” and established a singing career that had little to with “what she sounded like.” [19] As such, both would-be artists exemplify what Adorno refers to as “the star principle.” [20] Adorno’s contemporary and colleague, Walter Benjamin, explains how the mass production and distribution of cultural goods as images causes artists to be alienated from their audience. Echoing Adorno’s concern for the social role of art during a time of unprecedented advancements in technology, Benjamin uses the actor to differentiate what he terms “cult” and “exhibition” values relative to theatre and film. In the case of the former, he argues stage acting possesses an aura that must be experienced live between the actor and his audience. This exchange can be likened to Jerzy Grotowski’s theorization and practice of “Poor Theatre,” an aesthetic devoid of spectacle and marked by the direct, ephemeral, and “holy encounter” defining the actor/spectator relationship. [21] Contrarily, film acting represents exhibition value, which can be synonymously understood as exchange value deriving from the technological mediation of art into objects that are reproduced en masse . Thus, a film actor’s celebrity is directly proportionate to the distribution and consumption of his image. Benjamin depicts this dynamic as the spectator “identifying with the camera,” or more specifically the image emanating from it, thereby causing the same schism between an artwork and its beholder that Adorno describes in the commodification of music. [22] The irony to this phenomenon is when a celebrity does theatre. When an actor of Hanks’s stature appears onstage, it begs the question: is the audience responding to Hanks the celebrity or the character he is representing? Are they there to see Ephron’s play, or are they star-struck spectators arriving to see a celebrity in the flesh strut his stuff? While it would be impossible to exactly know what an audience’s collective intention is for seeing a given production, we can apply what the philosopher/psychiatrist collaborators Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari term the philosophy of desire to analyze the consciousness of said audience in the context of the celebrity society. Some psychiatrists and social scientists suggest that the phenomenon of fandom is para-social in that a beholder forms a fictional bond with a celebrity. This connection exists in degrees ranging from causal followers to an obsessed worshiper. In both instances, an individual idolizes celebrities according to how his/her “consciousness is structured and organized in a particular way.” [23] These points of connection can pertain to a range of self-identifying characteristics, such as gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and personal ideals. One’s sense of self and belonging in the world are reinforced through an imagined relationship with a complete stranger. Thus, the production and distribution of celebrities through and within the various media constituting the entertainment industry can be seen as a grand marketing ploy intended to appeal to intended audiences. This practice is obvious in advertising campaigns, for example, where celebrity endorsements are made according to the buyer being targeted. The commercial theatre operates this way too, which explains why actors are cast in leading roles not because they are experienced stage performers but rather, because they have the star power, the symbolic capital, to appeal to a certain consumer base. Indeed, America’s crème de le crème of theatre, Broadway, has been deploying this strategy for decades: Madonna’s appearance in David Mamet’s Speed the Plow had teens flocking to the theatres in 1988, just as Sean P. Diddy Combs and Daniel Radcliffe would respectively do on behalf of A Raisin in the Sun (2004) and Equus (2007). Though the celebrification process exists in part at the level of the individual fan, it must be seen as a social phenomenon to understand its role in the commodification of US theatre and acting. As such, desire plays a significant role in the formation and sustaining of a given celebrity and how he can be utilized to market a theatrical production. At the core of classical theories of psychiatry is the concept of desire as per the parental/child relationship that then gets transferred onto another individual, usually a romantic partner. When considering this paradigm in the social sphere, desire must be seen as an abstraction, which in the context of capitalism means commodities, be they material possessions or symbols; the latter of course could be conceived as a celebrity. In this way desire is understood as the social unconscious constructing and conditioning consciousness vis-à-vis an imagined relationship with a famous person. This relationship varies according to the degree of emotional investment on the part of any given beholder, yet even for the more casual fan some form of socially induced phenomenon is at stake. Nothing is formed exclusively at the personal level. Raymond Williams refers to such a process as structures of feeling where “there is frequent tension between the received interpretation [a beholder’s fantasy] and practical experience,” otherwise understood as reality. [24] His theory suggests a social experience like an art movement or the idolization of an individual that takes on an unconscious presence within a certain cultural context, within which an individual’s perceptions of an object and/or experience becomes subsumed by the collective, thereby creating a “structure of feeling” that has significant implications along social lines. In the case of celebrities, dominant forms of social understanding jointly create and potentially sustain a person’s fame. The construction of Tom Hanks as a cultural icon proves as much. Since Hanks began amassing symbolic value for his cinematic achievements, especially dating back to his Academy Award winning work in Forrest Gump (1994), his prestige has continued to grow in US popular culture. His numerous starring roles in Hollywood blockbusters, his work as a producer of films and television programs, and as mentioned at the outset of the article, his debut on Broadway in a work penned by an unproven playwright—a project that would never have been produced had it not been for Hanks and his symbolic capital—all demonstrate the process and ramifications of celebrity formation. Desire is at the heart of the social unconscious and can be seen as the primary source of celebrity formation. As such, it can be likened to Adorno’s critique of the fetishization of cultural goods in that society at large succumbs to the trappings of the culture industry in ways that remain largely undetectable. Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of desire can further illuminate the formation and function of celebrity. Though their overarching argument is to locate desire as a catalyst for political revolution, their paradigm can also apply to the social unconscious’s role in the celebrification process. Deleuze and Guattari argue that human desire exists at the level of the unconscious and is the catalyst for production in a capitalist society. Claiming that desire is constantly “striving [to] become more” by “becoming other [or] different,” they define it as a “force composed” of abstract machines that become manifest in an individual’s conscious and unconscious perception of social codes operating at the level of his thoughts, emotions, and corporeal experience. [25] The abstract machine, or force, functions as a sociocultural phenomenon dictating the course and content of material production, within which the psychological and the social are closely linked. The process of celebrification mobilizes a collective desire towards commodifying a given object for consumption: the star. Unlike standard material goods, however, the celebrity’s value to a consumer is intangible. Whereas one could purchase a stylish article of clothing or a fancy car to satisfy one’s consumer needs, purchasing a ticket to see a celebrity in a Broadway show provides the buyer the ontological experience he seeks: seeing a famous person in the flesh. To crudely borrow from Shakespeare, “the play is [NOT] the thing,” but rather, being in close proximity to the object of desire, the celebrity, is what prevails. [26] Driven by the social unconscious, the doting patron buys his ticket to have an experience that he desires to be as “real” as it is unique. However, these characteristics in the context of performance are antithetical and merely a psychological ruse existing at the social level. Adorno’s schematization of mass culture makes this case in stating that the “difference between culture and practical life disappear.” [27] The beauty of an aesthetic given to the realm of the imagination and uniqueness regresses to what Adorno terms “empirical reality,” a pedestrian experience defined by “doing what everyone else does.” [28] In fact, there is nothing unique whatsoever about seeing a celebrity up close in a performance; quite the contrary, it is merely a socially induced product of mass culture masquerading as something special. Adorno addresses the issue of an artwork’s uniqueness relative to “empirical reality” by referring to the “spiritual essence” of the former, and can therein apply to stage acting and theatre. [29] Comparing aesthetic beauty to a fireworks display, he depicts art as a transcendent experience that can be identified as an “apparition.” [30] The apparition implies a spirituality that causes a phenomenological effect that is evanescent—evanescence reconceived as “liveness” is of course a distinguishing characteristic of theatre. Ultimately, Adorno does not use the term “spirit” in an ethereal manner, but addresses it relative to an artwork’s form. In arguing that “the spirit of artworks is bound up with their form,” he defines it as a sensual affect that is the product of a given piece’s constituent elements. [31] Contrary to supernatural associations with the term, Adorno describes spirit as an artwork’s “vital” and “substantial” essence, and not “a thin abstract layer hovering above” the selfsame work. [32] It is affective, if phenomenal, and the result of a process that can be objectively measured. Identifying art as jointly spiritual and tangible, Adorno dialectically analyzes the dynamic between a work’s phenomenal affect and its material form, which he terms its “thing-like” dimensions; in the case of the stage actor this would be the expressivity of his body, voice, emotions, and imagination. [33] The work’s spirit is thus generated by the artwork’s material form for the purpose of transcending that very form. While the artwork’s spirit is its defining attribute, it is created through a process that is contingent on the work’s constitutive elements, such as the dialectical connection between the sounds of a sonata relative to its paginal composition, or actors mediating a scripted drama into a character. It is near impossible, however, for a celebrity to achieve spiritualization in a theatrical performance. No matter how skilled he might be, the celebrity actor’s fame ultimately becomes his undoing in that the audience is likelier to be conscious of his personality at the expense of the character he portrays. In fact, there are some celebrities who have been trained for the stage and are quite gifted as such—Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, to name a few. Indeed, these three actors were the headliners for the New York Shakespeare Festival’s critically acclaimed production of The Seagull in 2001. Nonetheless, their familiarity to the average audience member compromised the significant criterion of losing themselves in the role, a point the headline of the New York Times review inadvertently underscored: “Streep meets Chekhov, Up in Central Park.” [34] The issue is not Ben Brantley’s praise for these three actors, which was consistent with nearly every critical account of their performances, but that their familiarity to the average spectator superseded the characters they played, and as Michael Quinn’s semiotic analysis of celebrity actors suggests: “exceeded the needs of the fiction [by] keeping them from disappearing entirely into the acting figure of the drama.” [35] Writing in 1990, Quinn’s prescient observation has never been more fully realized in US theatre. Today’s audiences are distracted by their preconceived perceptions of a celebrity’s personal life and/or former projects to the point of not being capable of “accepting” his performance at face value. [36] Moreover, this subliminal ghosting of a given performance is abetted by a show’s branding, as producers attempt to capitalize on the name recognition of their star performer(s). Unfortunately, the actor’s actual work gets lost in the exchange. The presence of the celebrity actor therefore has a potentially regressive effect on the theatrical production. To the extent that the performer takes attention away from the production, he can be seen as little more than a distraction, the source of which, again, comes from the social unconscious desire to be in the presence of someone famous. While it is altogether possible that some audience members can overlook these types of distractions, most cannot, as Ben Brantley suggests in his review of Julia Roberts in David Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain (2006): The startling conclusion of most of the critics seems to be that the Oscar-winning actress who can command $20 million for a role in Hollywood actually cannot act very well at all. At least, not when her audience is a flesh-and-bone one, rather than a sympathetic lens.[37] Brantley tellingly summarizes how Roberts’s celebrity dominated the production at the expense of Greenberg’s play: One of the three stars of the Broadway revival of Three Days of Rain, which opened last night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, is Julia Roberts, who is making her big-time theatrical debut…. There is no way that this show is not going to be all about Julia…. Ms. Roberts is the sole reason this limited-run revival has become the most coveted ticket in town.[38] The source of the theatrical production, Three Days of Rain , is overcome by the forces of socially manifested desire in which the material good, seeing Roberts perform live, becomes the selling point. While one might argue that casting Roberts has the benefit of widening the audience to include those who would not otherwise go to the theatre, her appearance onstage has reductive implications for US acting, and moreover, the role of art in society. The desire undergirding our social unconscious gives rise to the spectacle of celebrity, thereby causing society to consume a person’s image en masse at the expense of the actress’s work and the play in which she appears. The allure of Roberts in affect displaces her acting, and moreover, redefines the theatrical experience in her image. The irony of course is unmistakable in that Roberts’s fame negates any chance the audience will be capable of encountering her performance in the context of Three Days of Rain . Guy Debord argues that technologically generated spectacle formulates the phenomenon of celebrity. Similar to Benjamin’s description of an artwork’s “exhibition value,” Debord posits spectacles—and the images that constitute them—as “signs of the ruling production” that signify how people should live their lives. [39] Adorno makes a similar case in discussing the harmful effects of film and television, insofar as both mediums uphold potentially damaging and “nefarious” social stereotypes by evoking a “pseudo-reality” at the expense of a dialectical analysis of society, or put more simply, film and television tend to privilege conformity and discourage critical analysis. [40] The on-camera actor therefore feeds into a system of signs that simultaneously shapes and reinforces the “banal” status quo by offering cultural consumers “pseudo-enjoyment.” [41] Celebrity performers are particularly influential in this process, as Debord notes: The celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived; the star is the object of identification[42] Celebrity actors are therefore dominated by and contribute to society’s commodification of cultural goods, in which artistry loses its uniqueness and “everything” becomes “mediated by images” that separate people from themselves and others in favor of conforming to the capitalist social order. [43] Debord identifies the regression of fetishizing artistic goods for mass consumption, thereby reducing them to commodities that displace tangible human interaction. [44] The social unconscious is very much at play in this dynamic, as people unwittingly are led by desire in responding to technologically generated images and thus “the commodity attains the total occupation of social life.” [45] The acquisition of commodities relies on a process of “spectacular representation” that is marked by the peddling of sameness under the guise of autonomy, as the hocking of reproductions—such as an actor’s image—masquerades as “the real thing.” [46] The culture industry is at the center of this process, which in the case of acting can best be seen in the trappings of Hollywood, thereby causing what Adorno terms the “deaestheticization of art.” [47] The spectacular grip of celebrity on the American theatre persists. Every production of the 2013/14 Broadway season had at least one famous person among its ranks, a fact underscored by the commensurate Tony Awards telecast, when celebrities such as Samuel L. Jackson and Lucy Liu presented honors to the likes of Bryan Cranston (HBO’s Breaking Bad ) and Neil Patrick Harris ( How I Met Your Mother ). Guest appearances by Sting and Jennifer Hudson further demonstrated this practice. In Hudson’s case, she was pitching a song from the musical version of the hit film Finding Neverland , which was playing at the American Repertory Theatre at the time and later opened on Broadway that ensuing fall. It is ironic, however, that Hudson was hired solely for the Tony telecast and was never in the production. Other Hollywood stars that graced Broadway stages that season included Glenn Close ( A Delicate Balance ), Bradley Cooper ( The Elephant Man ), and Hugh Jackman ( The River ). Trying to bank on the symbolic capital of Hollywood, the Tony Awards telecast also featured Kevin Bacon, Rosie O’Donnell, Tina Fey, and Ethan Hawke, among numerous others. Perhaps the most incongruous star to appear was the iconic Clint Eastwood, who was so out of sorts that he butchered the name of the venerable stage director Darko Tresnjak and mistook the final titular word in the drama The Cripple of Innishman for “Irishman.” Two rather perplexing errors, given that Eastwood had the seemingly simple charge of merely reading the teleprompter and contents of the winning envelope, a two-minute action that a little bit of rehearsal could have adequately prepared him to execute. Unfortunately, the show was live and he had no chance to cut his flawed performance in favor of a second take. Perhaps the larger question is: Why was Eastwood presenting in the first place? He is not a theatre professional, a fact made all the more apparent by his bungled presentation. During the same telecast Rosie O’Donnell recalled her youth to describe how she first fell in love with theatre: “Hollywood was vague and an illusion, but Broadway was real.” Her privileging of “reality” can be read with unintended irony in that the illusory and imaginative essence of theatre, especially as it pertains to the work of actors, is often displaced by the spectacle of celebrity; theatre’s embracement of reality is—to borrow from Adorno—of the empirical or pedestrian variety, thereby discounting any chance to achieve a product steeped in wonder, spirit, and shared celebration. The unconscious desire of theatregoers—a drive that is socially induced—is projected onto the figure of the celebrity, whose presence therein is filtered through her image, which has been produced, distributed and consumed through the mass media. The object of desire is therefore not the play, its actors, or the theatrical event, but the star performer and her symbolic worth to an audience of doting fans. It is a phenomenon owed to the fetishized forces of capitalism and has precious little to with stage acting or the aesthetic of theatre. References [1] Adam Hetrick, “Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy , Starring Tom Hanks, Ends Broadway Run, July 3 rd ,” Playbill.com , http://www.playbill.com/news/article/179720-Nora-Ephrons-Lucky-Guy-Starring-Tom-Hanks-Ends-Broadway-Run-July-3 (accessed 15 January 2014). [2] Guy DeBord, The Society of the Spectacle (Detroit, MI: Black and Red, 1983), sec. 42. [3] For more on the cultural consumption of celebrities, see Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, Starstruck: the Business of Celebrity (New York: Faber and Faber, 2010); and Daniel Herwitz, The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). [4] Ben Brantley, “Old-School Newsman, After Deadline: Tom Hanks in ‘Lucky Guy’ at the Broadhurst Theatre,” New York Times , 1 April 2013. [5] Ben Zimmer, “‘Oxygen Out of the Room’: From Clever Cause to Cliché,” The Wall Street Journal , 31 July 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/oxygen-out-of-the-room-from-clever-clause-to-cliche-1438366552 (accessed 4 January 2016). [6] Robert van Krieken, Celebrity Society (New York: Routledge, 2012), 53. [7] For a useful analysis of the role of symbolic capital in determining the value of cultural goods, see Pierre Bourdieu, “The Market of Symbolic Goods,” in The Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 112-41. [8] Charles Isherwood, “Stage Acting: It’s Nice Work If You Can Afford It,” New York Times , 15 January 2006. [9] “Season Preview,” American Theatre , October 2013. [10] Steven DiPaola, “The 2012-2013 Theatrical Season Report,” Equity News (December 2013). [11] Jay O. Sanders, interview with author, 31 August 2013. Sanders received his training from the professional acting program at the State University of New York at Purchase during the 1970s. [12] Theodor Adorno, “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,” in The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (New York: Routledge, 1991): 37-38. Also, see Marx, Capital , vol. 1, chap. 1, sec. 4, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.” [13] Ibid., 35. [14] Ibid. [15] Ibid. , 36. [16] According to starcount.com, a site that uses Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube to measure a celebrity’s popularity, Lady Gaga has over 30 million fans. This site identifies her as the most popular individual in the US. http://www.starcount.com/all-platforms/Worldwide/Musician (accessed 12 July 2015). [17] John Fiske, “Madonna,” in Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies , ed. James L. Machor and Philip Goldstein (New York: Routledge, 2001), 246. [18] Ibid. [19] Ibid., 246-47. [20] Adorno, “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,” 35. [21] Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Routledge, 2002), 55-60. [22] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations (New York: Shocken Books, 1978), 220. [23] van Krieken, Celebrity Society, 73. [24] Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 130-31. [25] Phillip Goodchild, Delueze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire (London: SAGE Publications, 1996), 44-45. [26] Hamlet, ed., Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (New York: Arden Shakespeare, 2014), 2.2.566. Reference is to act, scene, and line. [27] Adorno, “The Schema of Mass Culture,” in The Culture Industry , 61. [28] Ibid. [29] Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 78-94. [30] Ibid., 85. [31] Ibid., 89. [32] Ibid., 88-90. [33] Ibid., 86-87. [34] Ben Brantley, “Streep Meets Chekhov, Up in Central Park,” New York Times , 13 August 2001. [35] Michael Quinn, “Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting,” New Theatre Quarterly 6, no. 22 (May 1990): 154. [36] Ibid, 155. [37] Quoted in David Usborne, “Critics Rain Insults on Julia Roberts’s Broadway Debut,” The Independent , 22 April 2006 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/critics-rain-insults-on-julia-roberts-broadway-debut-475125.html (accessed 15 July 2015). [38] Ben Brantley, “Enough Said About ‘Three Days of Rain.’ Let’s Talk About Julia Roberts!” New York Times , 20 April 2006, http://theater.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/theater/reviews/20rain.html (accessed 28 March 2011). [39] Debord, Society of the Spectacle , sec. 7. [40] Theodor Adorno, “How to Look at Television,” in The Culture Industry , ed. J.M. Bernstein (New York: Routledge, 1991), 158, 171. [41] Debord, Society of the Spectacle , sec. 59. [42] Ibid., sec. 60. [43] Ibid., secs. 1, 4. [44] Ibid., sec. 36. [45] Ibid., sec. 42. [46] Ibid., sec. 60. [47] Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , 16. Footnotes About The Author(s) Dr. Peter Zazzali is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Kansas. A specialist in actor training and the sociology of theatre, his work has appeared in Theatre Topics , PAJ , and The European Legacy , among other peer-reviewed journals. In April of 2016, Routledge will release his book: Acting in the Academy: The History of Professional Actor Training in US Higher Education . Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Comment New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Musical Theatre Studies “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Performing Anti-slavery American Tragedian Murder Most Queer The Captive Stage Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Meghan Duffy, Daniel Gerould | A bibliography of critical studies in english on the theory and practice of comedy in drama, theatre, and performance. < 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 Comedy: A Bibliography Meghan Duffy, Daniel Gerould Download PDF A Bibliography of Critical Studies in English on the Theory and Practice of Comedy in Drama, Theatre, and Performance “Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers,” declared the great dictionary maker Dr. Johnson, and the German novelist and aesthetician Jean Paul quipped, “Definitions of the comic serve the sole purpose of being themselves comic.” Accepting the challenge, the keenest minds have been drawn to the debate about the nature of comedy and attracted to speculation about its theory and practice. For all lovers of comedy, Comedy: A Bibliography is an essential guide and resource, providing authors, titles, and publication data for over a thousand books and articles devoted to this most elusive of genres. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 21, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition by Kalina Stefanova Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF “Thank you!” as a Theme, “Thank you!” as a Code (highlights of the International Theatre Festival of Sibiu and its 32 nd edition) “Let’s say “thank you” to God, to our friends, parents, children, to everyone, that we are alive, that we can smile, that we can love, that we can share; let us thank all those who help us make this festival happen…. this huge and spectacular family that wants goodness and beauty on earth.” This is how Constantin Chiriac, the founder, president and, in effect, main engine of the Festival since 1993, ends his address in the catalogue this year. The phrase “Thank you”, though, was not only a theme of the 32 nd edition. It is a code to the essence of the Festival in principle, an explanation, at least partial, of its transformation over the years into a phenomenon of a world scale – so far the third largest one, after those in Edinburgh and Avignon. In the same address Chiriac pinpoints the main reasons for the theme’s choice, yet one of them stands out: “… in a time of heightened conflict, when war and hatred bring so much destruction,” what was sought out was “… a theme that would make us more open, more thoughtful, and more beautiful…” – “a magic word” that can tame even “those who do us no good…” This is an excellent encapsulation of the broad-minded manner in which the Festival has been cut out from its very start. It is with the same broad-mindedness and extraordinary panache that its editions continue to be created over the years. It is the Festival that transformed Sibiu – the 15 th in size city in Romania, with a population of 134000 – into a very sought-out destination, with over 100000 visitors arriving there especially for the event. At the same time, despite the throngs of people and the numerous new, glossy buildings, Sibiu hasn’t lost its authentic atmosphere and spirit. And this too the city owes to the Festival, to its distinct respect for tradition – respect that characterizes many of its accompanying undertakings. Like the Walk of Fame. There are other such Walks around the world, yet what distinguishes the one in Sibiu – containing already 77 stars of stars – is its special whereabouts. It connects the place of the oldest theatre in Romania (built in 1788) with the place where the future new building of the National Theatre “Radu Stanca” – the organizer of the Festival – will stand. Yet, among the numerous such undertakings marked with the Festival’s “hats-off” to tradition and its focus on building bridges between the past, present and future, what stands out most is the main rubric in its program, entitled Heritage Performances . Initiated back in 2005, it presents emblematic productions of “Radu Stanca” Theatre. Importantly, the “set” selected for each year does not necessarily differ in full with the one of the previous Festival edition. There are shows which could be in the selection for many years. Such is the case with the famed and spectacular Faust of Silviu Purkarete, created back in 2007, which was the very first show in the rubric this year too; or another long-running Purkarete’s production – The Scarlet Princess, staged in 2018, which also featured there. 20 years after the start of the rubric, these heritage performances could be viewed as forming a special collection – something like a live theatre museum . Notably: a museum not only of the output of “Radu Stanca” Theatre and, thus, of Romanian theatre, but of world theatre as well. For, I dare say, these productions have changed the face of theatre at large. It has to be underlined that they are live shows, part of the repertoire of “Radu Stance”, not revived especially for the Festival. There are many theatre museums around the world – with important expositions of photos, set-designs, costumes, recreated offices of prominent playwrights, directors, and artists, with arrays of artifacts from emblematic productions, etc. Yet, the special “collection” formed by the heritage performances of the Sibiu Festival is reminiscent only of the Asian “living national treasures” – artists or genres. Here, though, the scale is different – it concerns a whole art form. And an art form in development at that! For, as the time goes by the heritage performances develop, improve; the very chance for the viewers to make a live comparison between them over the years also gets enriched. This gives the “collection” a special educational added value too, transforms it into a one-of-a-kind spiritual institution in the whole theatre world. Mind you: there is no bombastic title of this unique undertaking; it’s been unfolding to no fanfare. Simply, with the Heritage Performances rubric the Festival says a most humble and yet most inspired “Thank you!” to the Theatre and serves it with an astonishing devotion and dedication. With the this unofficial live museum of theatre Festival creates for the audience, the artists and the students alike a direct access to the assets of an idiosyncratic theatrical spiritual bank which get incessantly enriched and renewed. Among the shows included in the rubric this year, the one that stood out for me was Games, Words, Crickets… directed by Purkarete . Maybe because it reminded me of another face of Purcarete’s talent, so different from the one manifested in the monumental Faust and in the colorful The Scarlet Princess . Or simply because under this talkative title – seemingly very concrete, yet as though decided to not disclose what the show is about – there is so special gem of a production. It has already been separately covered for this magazine after its premiere in the illuminating review by the esteemed scholar and critic Ion Tomas. (vol. 18, 2023) Yet, I believe it deserves to be placed again and again under our spotlight for more readers to find out about it. The main character in Games, Words, Crickets… is the poetic word, the word with God’s sparkle in it – the word as a beginning, as a gift from above gathering heaven and earth, flesh and spirit, all in one, united by beauty, by love, by life. Poetry in this show is high and elevating, childish and jumpy, playful and full of joie-de-vivre. A hymn, a prayer, a fable, a story in white verse… A praise for poetry itself, a praise for the Holy Mother, a praise for the plum brandy as a gift sent to the man for help and for joy, a praise for the invincible Balkan spirit… In brief: a praise to God and all His creations… By Nazim Hikmet, Paul Verlaine, Shakepeare, Sergey Esenin, Radu Stanca, Mihai Eminescu, Marin Sorescu… As if all the world and all human life from days of yore till now, as it has been seen by the poets, is now gathered in the palm of one human being who presents it to us with such rapture, such joy, such trepidation as though he himself creates every word, every line, every image, every nuance before us and for each and everyone of us. Constantin Chiriac is the astonishing actor who savors the joy of sharing with us as if the very birth of all that poetry. I have seen him in many roles and have always wondered if there is any one he can not handle. Now I know the answer. For, this role is much more difficult than all the rest. Here there is no one person to impersonate so organically as if you are that very person. There is no one face, body, soul, behavior to enliven on stage and yet to remain your own self intact. Great poetry is to hand your soul to the others without leaving anything just for yourself so that you can find a shelter there. Great poetry is to give your eyes to the others so that they could see the world through them, to reach out to them as a small child, without fear and trust them with anything to hide. So that you could share the joy of the spring’s advent, the mystery of moon, the sky’s tenderness, the elusiveness of dream, the joy of the crickets’ song, love, happiness, gratitude to God, to nature, to life, the exaltation of dance … During this show one gets to live though all this in its pure form. Chiriac wakens all these feelings in us not only through the poets’ words but also through his own attitude to everything these words have to say, cry out, cover, shy away from, hide… At one point, he is as if a pure spirit, lost in nature’s beauty, in another, he gluttonously eats a piece of water melon while the juice flows freely down his arm; immediately afterwards, already on his knees and with head resting on the back of his hand – surely the only part of it not sticky then – he prays… And in all that he is so organic, not a hint of falseness cracking the air of full truthfulness he exudes. In his aforementioned address Chiriac recalls how when his parents made him happy and he didn’t know how to thank them, they would caress his head. Later on, he would regularly say “thank you” “with so much truth in my voice that it brought tears to their eyes.” In this shared memory, I believe, is the key to his acting approach in Games, Words, Crickets… as well as one more explanation of all he does for the Festival and the theatre in principle. Even in an address of just three paragraphs he needs the “anchor” of a concrete story – something that he has felt with his own heart; a need for enveloping the spirit in a body, for making the common feel personal, so that it doesn’t sound empty, so that it could touch, convince, feel true. This show does not narrate a single story, as it usually happens in theatre, or one big story, as it usually happens in the theatre of Purcarete. In it every poem is a story in its own right, shared as a first-hand experience, and at first glance these stories may seem small but it is exactly they that form the big story of our life. The very choice of the poems as well as the concrete collage of them makes this even more palpable. Exactly as it is said in one of them, “Words have their time. You can’t just throw them around when you want.” At times Chiriac steps aside, so that he could look at the words and everything they have to say from “the outside” – to see them together with us, the audience. For instance, when the air in the theatre hall is charged with rapture – our rapture with one of the poems – he looks at us and says, “Paul Verlain!” in such a manner as if asking, “How splendid it is, isn’t it?” At the same time, as if a conductor summoning the sound at the end of a rapturous music piece, he puts an exclamation mark instead of a dot. Chiriac’s masterpiece of acting in this show is not at all an unexpected tour de force. He has started his career with poetic recitals – a popular genre at that time in Romania – and has a formidable experience in this field. I myself have witnessed many a time how his speeches at international forums, where he’s in his capacity as a Festival head, all of a sudden soar into poetry, or he takes everyone by surprise reciting a famous monologue by Shakespeare, for instance. The hall then gets so quiet, as if people hold their breath, and the respective event immediately gets uplifted to another level. Even in such cases his poetical detours are not simply reciting of a beautiful text, they are an expression of his joy that this text exists and that he can share it with us. And again, at the end, when he tells us what the poem is, the way he pronounces the title and the poet’s name imply the same, “How splendid it is, isn’t it?”, unuttered with words but expressed with eyes, which accompanies the poetry in Games, Words, Crickets… Although it may not seem so from all already said Games, Words, Crickets… is a one-man show. Yes, it is only Chiriac who has the floor throughout it, yet he is not alone on stage. There are 17 more actors there and part of them are there quite before he makes his entrance. Clad in white shirts and light beige mid trousers, as if giant children, in the beginning they are snowmen, with just hinted most characteristic features; then, with the advent of spring, they “melt down”. Then they build crystal pyramids from transparent wine glasses – pyramids which start slowly gliding on a thin transparent belt horizontally on stage, at the background of sounds of water created before us with of a bucket and small plastic bottles. Further on, one of them would hold a long stick with a lantern and an etude about the moon follows. Then all of them grab umbrellas, wind blows, and it’s already autumn. Then they grab pillows and snuggle, and the night falls…. Not simply do these “grown up” children become the background of poetry on stage, Purcarete transforms them into the very atmosphere of the poetic images and feelings – an unusual Chorus who “comments” and “reacts” on behalf of nature. “What’s going on?”, Chiriac asks them at one point, when the night starts falling down, and they respond with the usual sounds of dusk. This is a dialogue with nature as a Chorus and, naturally, the answers do not come back in words. And again as a Chorus, these “grown-up” children, together with us, are also audience of all the poetry Chiriac endows us with – as it were our extension on stage. It would be so easy for a director to use multimedia instead as a background of such a show. But would even the most technically modern multimedia be able to substitute all these live eyes and hearts, all the different frequencies exuded by these 18 human bodies and souls? And would it be able to achieve such depth of the communion between the man and the world, such diversity of the nuances of this communion, as it happens in Games, Words, Crickets… ? It does great credit to Purcarete that he has chosen to achieve all this and, most importantly, to create the impalpable via the most authentically theatrical and yet most difficult way. Towards the end of the show, during something like a dance, while Chiriac, standing slightly aside, shares with us the n’th portion of beauty, suddenly it turns out that among the dancers there are two other Chiriacs – puppets of his size, attire, face and manners, each one of them led by several puppeteers. The three of them sit at a table: he en face to us, his doubles at the two sides. The doubles start repeating each gesture of his, each mimic, and the feeling gets to be surreal. Exactly as the watermelon minutes before that, or the ode to the brandy wouldn’t let the show stay on just one lyrical wave, and do balance it instead, now the two counterparts endow it with an additional dimension and make it even livelier. After the “talk” of the three (with a voice-over of Chiriac), another dance follows – the Zorba’s sirtaki. All 17 actors dance, including the doubles, only Chiriac, again aside, sets the rhythm with a bell and starts the last poem: “Oh, stay and sip from one more cup at the old crossroads of old rivers, for when it comes to love and wine all men become most joyous givers…” As he continues with the marvelous lyrics of Kazantzakis and other poets, he joins the dance and, although the lights soon go off, the music and his words keep on resounding – as a hymn of life – life that goes on even when the actors on its stage have already stepped down and new ones are soon to make their entrance there… “Poet of the stage, that’s how Silviu Purcarete was defined by Georges Banu, the late brilliant Romanian-French critic. Adriana Mocca, a Romanian actress, in turn, called him “a collector of beauty”. To me, Games, Words, Crickets… is a hymn of life exactly as poetry and beauty – life as it could be and as it is created to be. There is nothing ugly in it. The ugly and the evil are not invited there. Only the games, the words, the crickets, and everything the dots that follow in the title imply. To me this show is much more difficult and complex an endeavor than the mega-productions, like Metamorphoses, Faust, and The Scarlet Princess . Of course, they require a mighty directorial talent few others possess – a type of talent that has deservedly earned Purcarete a world-wide recognition as a master of exuberantly rich theatricality (if I may take the liberty to paraphrase another esteemed Romanian critic and scholar Octavian Saiu). Yet, to be able to create such an inseparable entity of poetry and beauty, as he does in Games, Words, Crickets… , and, moreover, to manage preserve its fine frequency vibrations for a whole hour and twenty minutes so that its integrity doesn’t fall apart is an even more extraordinary achievement. The fact that Purcarete is equally good at both the breath-taking spectacular and the intangible that makes one holds one’s breath, lest the spell gets broken, places him among the very few contemporary directors of such a strikingly wide diapason. Electra – a production by another revered Romanian director, Michai Manuitiu – was included in the Heritage performances too and stood out with its special status. Created back in 2005, it gained a cult status over the following years. In the beginning of 2025 it was revived in its fully original shape and even with some of its original actors. Of course, now, some of the young actors of “Radu Stanca” Theatre share the stage with them. It is exactly this passing of the acting torch before the audience’s eyes that not only makes the production unique but further underlines the importance of the rubric as a live spiritual territory. For, with Electra in the Heritage “collection”, this unique live theatre museum goes one step further: it manifests the possibility for organic upgrading of the theatre art within one and the same production in a “time lapse” of two decades. Notably too, Manuitiu’s Electra could serve as a point of reference, an idiosyncratic mirror in which major differences between theatre of 20 years ago and theatre of today stand out, alas, not always in favor of the latter. For instance, the distinct asceticism in terms of the material, like set-design, costumes, etc. stands in stark contrast with the many-ness that tends to overwhelm the nowadays stages. Also, Electra looks and feels like a stylized ritual and, with very few exceptions, doesn’t get into the literal illustrativeness when it comes to the elements of violence in the plot, unlike contemporary theatre which seems nearly obsessed with direct displays of violence. That is why Electra doesn’t look like a B-rated movie focused on close-ups of the very destruction of the human flesh’s integrity but feels rather like a dance or a painting. As for the regular theatre program, among the main accents was No Yogurt for the Dead , written and directed by Tiago Rodriguez, a production of the NTGent, Belgium (co-produced by Culturgest, Lisbon, Weiner Festwochen and Picollo Teatro di Milano – Teatro D’Europa). This show, to me, is like an unusual diary of a contemporary Scheherazade. A first-hand narrative, most of the time directly en-face to the audience, is the main approach for building the story. Importantly, again no multimedia interferes here – i.e. we are not being offered “to go to the movies” in the theatre, as often is the case these days. Moreover, theatre is especially emphasized. The audience is introduced to the story by one of the characters – a nurse. She is played by the only one of the three actresses in the show who plays just one role from the beginning to the end. The other two actresses assign themselves the roles of a father and a son, as well as two fake beards that will help us distinguish them – long and short (as their characters will be called, respectively – Long Beard and Short Beard). In the course of the action, they will not only openly exchange these roles, but will also get to play others, yet from the moment they “get into” all these roles, they are completely truthful, nearly without any detachment. This dance of realism and overt theatricality is a very good balancer for the story, as it doesn’t let it become merely documentary, although it is a true one, nor does it let it trespass into the territory of the sentimental and succumb to pain, although it is about the death of a dearest person. The story is about (and of) the director’s father – a respected journalist who writes his last reportage in the form of a diary in the hospital during his last days before his death. It is this diary which is the basic material for building the action – it is something like a magnet which draws together the fragmentary pieces of the story. However, it is not an ordinary diary but, exactly like Scheherazade, it sort of manages to win back from death another day and another day, and another day… And, like Scheherazade, this diary has its own secret: in the end, it turns out that in it there are only inarticulate scribbles – dashes and dots. Most of the action takes place around and in a hospital bed on the left of the stage. On the right, an uneven and fragmented hill rises, made of what looks like pieces of pressed cardboard with visible cracks between them, like in a glacier. There is another hospital bed on it – with a patient. However, he is most of the time in a half-back position or sitting sideways to us. So we don’t get to see him well, but we hear him almost all the time. For, his role is to “provide” the main musical background of the story – on a guitar. The major musical accents in the show, though, are the songs sang by the two actresses who play the father and the son. And their singing is remarkable, I dare say, it’s truly unforgettable! These songs, like the diary, are not ordinary ones. They too are like a magnet, even a stronger one than the diary. For, it is exactly they that gather the crumbling world of the dying man and restore not only the contours but as it were the very flesh of his slipping life. They are like the flickering of a fire which is about to go out, but, when it flares up again, it burns for a little while as if it was never about to die. Flare-ups that are sort of mirages, as if death is not coming and there is still plenty of time left for memories here, in this world, with those closest to us. These songs are the major strength of the show. Not only because of the way they are performed, but also because of the very choice of time and space, when the action should stop its horizontal course and fly up (or downwards, if that’s how we imagine the past). Most often this happens unexpectedly, as if out of the blue. Yet it is always exactly “on time”, when the story has fallen apart into too many pieces – because of the playing with roles and wigs, because of the strange use of two languages at the same time (the nurse speaks in Flemish, the father and son in Portuguese), because of the very fragmentary montage of the separate pieces… And then – then a song bursts forth and immediately brings everything together. And just as until then the characters (and even the story itself) have “acted like men” – iron, strong and cold-blooded – now they all of a sudden give way to their feelings and let their tears flow. The theatre at this moment is pushed aside and it is the human being in principle who remains on stage – the human being with everything that is a symbol of the heart – love, longing, tenderness, pain… The human being, like one big heart, fills the stage, the theatre, us. These songs decipher the dashes and dots in the father’s diary. They transform them into meaning, that is, into life. It is through them that death not only gets postponed, they make death pointless, even when the son finds his father’s bed already empty – waiting for the next patient. It is these songs that “make” the show. They contain the key to Tiago Rodrigues’ directorial talent: his fееl for the innermost human and his skill to fill the stage, the theatre, and us with this so elusive a “substance”; and, importantly, his ability to do so not the usual way, through familiar theatrical means, and, yet, paradoxically, to manage to achieve the oldest thing in the theatre – to move you to the bottom of your heart. I intended to write about the shortcomings of the show too. About its numerous endings, some of which it could easily do without. About the fact that some details of the story border on clichés, like the pen the son keeps forgetting to bring to his father and when he does so, he is already gone. Or that some contemporary performative clichés could have easily been avoided, like serving tea to the audience during the funeral, as if the viewers too are attending it… However, now, when time has passed since I saw the show in Sibiu, I find that the flows have faded and lost significance; that, when I think of this unique diary-reportage in songs, it grabs me by the throat as if it were my personal piece of memory. A memory of something the significance of which we find out much later after it happened, when time has erased the unnecessary little details. A memory which as if lifts us up, moves us away from the usual time-track, and extends our life each time when we remember it… I also think now what an amazing gesture of a son to his father’s memory this show is! The other production from the regular theatre program of the International Theatre Festival of Sibiu that struck me most was Jonah , at that time the newest directorial work of Silviu Purkarete . A co-production of the Romanian “Radu Stanca” National Theatre in Sibiu and the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, it steps on a Romanian play (by Marin Sorescu) which is, in turn, based on the famed Biblical story. The main performer is Asian (the Japanese star Kuranosuke Sasaki) and there are three speechless characters played by Romanians. “Why do people waste their time on things that are useless after death?” – wonders Jonah, the main character of the play, created back in 1968. This question, so topical in the nowadays world of excesses, is like a pitchfork both for the play and the production. The focus of both aligns according to this question. I.e. Jonah , as a play and as a production alike, is about all the rest: “… the spiritual communion that brings us closer to the primal energies of nature in which divinity manifests itself,” if I may take the liberty to quote the excellent description of the show in the Festival catalogue. Jonah , the show, is like a revelation. It is wise in a Biblical manner and luminous in a New Testament way. The first feature is a contribution of the playwright, the second – of the director. The play is a 26-page monologue, which I strongly recommend for reading – it brings a true literary joy. Jonah, like his namesake in the Bible, is in a big fish, but here the fish is in another, even bigger one, which in turn is in a third. However, notably, the direction of the “opening” of these, so to speak, Matryoshka type of fishes is the opposite of the way we do open Matryoshka dolls in reality, as here Jonah goes from the smaller fish to a bigger one and then to an even bigger one. I.e. the direction is vice versa. None of these fishes appear to be familiar with one of the main laws of life formulate by Jonah: “There should be a grid at the entrance of every soul. So no one can get inside it [armed] with a knife.” (He reaches this conclusion as a result of his personal observation after having managed to cut his way from fish 1 to fish 2.) I can’t help sharing yet another of Sorescu wisdoms presented as Jonah’s lines: “In the life of the world, I think, there must be a moment when all people think about their mother, even the dead. The daughter about the mother, the mother of her mother, the grandmother of her mother… until you arrive at the first mother great and good… What stillness then must be in the world! In that moment, if someone cried for help, he’s be heard by the whole earth.” Another unforgettable image is the dream Jonah has of building “a wooden bench in the middle of the sea. A grand construction of planed oak, so that the more cowardly seagulls could rest on it during a storm. … the wind to settle there from time to time [too], and, thinking of me, say, ‘He never made anything worthwhile in his life apart from this wooden bench, putting the sea all round it.’ I’ve given it a lot of thought, and that is what I’d really like to do. Oh, what a sanctuary, to sit head in hands, in the middle of the soul.” The so profound and so beautifully put insights Jonah comes up with do not make the play abstract. The poetical streak that goes through it intertwines with a splendid sense of humour and with the extraordinary ingenuity of the character in his attempt to talk with the world inside and outside of the fishes. For, “like any very lonely man, Jonah talks aloud to himself”, as Sorescu describes him in the beginning of the play. “He asks questions and gives answers, behaving all the time as if there were two characters on stage. He ‘splits’ and then ‘contracts’ himself back according to his inner life and stage demands.” This distinct dialogical nature of Jonah’s monologue – both as contents and as a manner of expression – is also a substantial strength of the text, as it doesn’t let the viewers’ attention get distracted from the stage for a single second. At one moment, two other fishermen enter the stage – they too have been swallowed by the fish – but they serve as just another spring-board for Jonah’s imagination. To handle the role of Jonah is a big challenge, indeed, since, apart from the concrete man, the actor has to be play as it were the whole world – the sea, the fishes, his wife, the wives of the other two fishermen in there, his mother, the cloud, whose shadow weighs in the fisherman’s net…. Sorescu very well knew this and he even suggested, “if the role is too difficult, another actor may play the last two scenes.” Purcarete’s decision to invite an Asian actor to perform Jonah further enhances the role, and considerably at that! In the first place, the main character, “his” world and “his” life, which at their very core are Romanian and, thus, also bear the distinct characteristics and mentality of the Balkans, get to be seen “from the outside” – through the eyes of a totally different culture in general – and get to be explored via a totally different sensitivity. Apart from that large cultural new viewpoint, there is also the personal new point of view of the actor himself. In interviews Sasaki mentions that before his work on the role he was not familiar with the Biblical story about Jonah and the whale, so he plays the role as the story of an ordinary fisherman. This, of course, doesn’t mean that the viewers familiar with the story would entirely forego searching for allegorical layers in the play. On the contrary! And this, in turn, adds yet another parallel viewpoint. Finally, the very organic disassociation of Sasaki from the Biblical story can be perceived as type of an estrangement in handling the character, adding one more perspective. This perspective might be perceived as a hint at the typical estrangement in the traditional Asian theatre. The effect of all that is very similar to the Matryoshka effect of the fishes in the play and on stage, each one opening up new perspectives towards Janah and the world. Sasaki is impressively economic in his choice of acting means of expression. During a considerable part of the time he sits or squats in the middle of the proscenium, and in the second case his hands are embracing his legs. This outside ascetics is coupled with the special inner finesse that humility and wisdom result in. This combination helps every detail of the text to stand out. So none of the words he utters, nor anything in-between the lines, gets lost en route to the audience; everything resonates with crystal clarity. In the beginning of the play Sorescu underlines that the role requires “great flexibility and simplicity”. This is exactly what Sasaki brings to it. Sorescu defines his play as “a tragedy in four scenes”. Indeed, in the original text, after Jonah manages to get out of fist 1 and then out of fish 2, and again doesn’t see the sun, at the very end, he gets out his knife again and “cuts open his own stomach”, pronouncing at the same time the final words, “Somehow we’ll find our way to the light.” Having decided not to follow these instructions and to cut the end and the final line of Jonah, Purkarete in effect changes the genre of the play and, thus, allows both the main character and respectively the whole show to dwell in the sphere of light – both literally and figuratively. He doesn’t follow Sorescu’s instruction for the set either. While in the original the milieu is predominantly naturalistic – inside the fishes, thus, very dark, the set-design in Purkarete’s Jonah is mainly in light, pastel tones. During the first part of the action, a large, slightly wrinkled, paper curtain in off-white plays the role of a back-wing of the proscenium, leaving the rest of the stage off-sight. It is right in front of it where Jonah sits with only a small aquarium with a red fish in it next to him. Then this curtain gets torn from behind at only several places, so that Jonah, already behind it, appears to be like a giant – with hands and legs far apart. Afterwards he cuts all of it, when he gets into the bigger fish. The overall feeling this curtain brings, together with most of the rest of the set, yes, could be of a vast water space, but could also easily be of a vast sky. For, Jonah and his whole world feel like being imbued and enveloped by that tenderness which exists only in the sky. Maybe he actually floats on a cloud, like in an Asian fairy-tale? And maybe this cloud is in another cloud, and it, in turn, is in another one…. In its colours – pastel in both literal and figurative sense, and in its inner light, Jonah resembles Games, Words, Crickets… The semblances continue in that both are one-man shows, yet there are other actors on stage – here, apart from the other two fishermen, we also get to see the actress who sings a beautiful melody as a music background. At the same time, the roles of the three speechless actors are not really big, unlike the role/s of the 17 actors in Games, Words, Crickets… To me, Jonah is even more difficult as a directing task than Games, Words, Crickets… On the one hand, it is very chamber-like. I first saw it during its visit to Sofia before the Sibiu Festival and the size of the National Theatre’s big stage and hall suddenly ceased to matter. Jonah managed to turn them into the most intimate chamber theatre – in terms of impact. At the same time, the production is monumental in a special way – so to speak, monumental from the inside – because of the revelatory feeling it evokes. I guess Jonah is a future “exhibit” in the Festival’s Heritage “collection”. A remarkable demonstration of how cultures could hug and understand each other on the stage, and how together they could hug, understand and love the human being. In other words, Jonah is another opportunity for the International Theatre Festival of Sibiu to say “Thank you!” to the theatre and to the audience . Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Professor Kalina Stefanova is an author or editor of sixteen books: fourteen books on theatre, and two narratives. She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the New York University and has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), Meiji University (Japan), and at the Shanghai Theatre Academy (China), among others. In 2016, she was appointed the Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Arts School of Wuhan University, China, as well as Distinguished Researcher of the Chinese Arts Criticism Foundation of Wuhan University. She served as IATC’s vice-president for 5 years (2001-2006) and as its Director of Symposia (2006-2010). In 2007, she was the dramaturg of the highly acclaimed production of Pentecost by David Edgar, directed by Mladen Kiselov, at the Stratford Festival in Canada. Since 2001, she has regularly served as an evaluation expert for cultural and educational programs of the European Commission. Currently she teaches at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Theatre in Poland, Fall 2025 Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 21 Robert Wilson’s Moby Dick at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Summer 2025 Dramas of Separation at Festival d’Avignon 19th Edition Polyphonies of the Present: The Pulse of the Almada Festival Summer 2025 in London, England The Tragic Ideal of Eternal Youth: Folk Myth on the Modern Stage International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition Review of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa by Ópera do Castelo Radu Afrim and his House Between the Blocks Report from Berlin Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Stuart J. Hecht, (former) Editor in Chief, New England Theatre Journal Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 Stuart J. Hecht, (former) Editor in Chief, New England Theatre Journal By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF How long should a scholarly journal continue? For how long can it function meaningfully? It is really a case-by-case question, determined by some combination of opportunity, support, and demand. This past December New England Theatre Journal lost its funding and was forced to cease publication after a thirty-five-year run. In the mid-1980s, years immediately prior to the founding of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), there was an organizational gap for those interested in publishing scholarly work on theatre in purely theatrical terms. Theatre Journal continued but had shifted toward European-based theory, leaving no setting for studies that considered theatrical practice from a historical context. [A few years later ATHE began Theatre Topics to correct this, though it only focused on practice, thereby creating a permanent schism between thought and practice between the two.] In 1952, legendary Boston theatre critic Elliot Norton helped establish the New England Theatre Conference (NETC) as a regional theatre organization designed to serve mostly local practice: youth theatre, professional theatre, community theatre, and secondary theatre were its primary focus. It offered prizes for playwriting, operated annual auditions for summer stock theatres nationally, and hosted a vibrant annual convention. In time, its board included faculty representatives from Tufts, Emerson, Boston University, Berklee School, Northeastern, Brown, and Boston College, as well as leading professionals and Elhi educators. Yet it did not offer much by way of opportunities for advanced theatre study. The NETC’s then-president, Joyce Devlin of Mt. Holyoke, led efforts to respond to this gap by working to develop a new scholarly publication, under the auspices of NETC, which would balance advanced theatre scholarship and practice. She assembled a team entrusted with developing a new publication titled New England Theatre Journal . It would be open to scholarship from the regional to the international, would include a Books in Review section, as well as a New England Theatre in Review section. In keeping with its NETC’s regional mission, efforts were made to ensure NETJ’s leadership would be drawn from the New England states. The planning team included Charles Combs, Jeffrey Martin, Mort Kaplan, Robert Colby, Arthur Dirks and Jack Welch of Baker’s Plays. A key influential advisor was Don Wilmeth. Charles Combs was named the first editor of NETJ with Jeffrey Martin serving as co-editor. I served as a reader on that first issue and then became “the other” co-editor by its third year. It was an annual publication and all submissions were vetted blindly by outside evaluators. We were fortunate in the quality of work submitted by authors such as J. Ellen Gainor, William Grange, Bernard Dukore, Kim Marra and Richard Schechner, to name but a few. Our pages have featured important work by established scholars such as Laurence Senelick, Felicia Hardison Londré, Rosemarie Bank, Frank Hildy, John Frick, Barry Witham, Bruce McConachie, Kim Marra, Odai Johnson, James Fisher, Anne Fletcher, Cheryl Black and Arnold Aronson. They also included young authors just beginning significant careers, like Heather Nathans, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Rob K. Baum, Amy Hughes, Stephen Bottoms, La Donna Forsgren, Michelle Granshaw, Maya Cantu and many more. Over two hundred full-length articles in all. Personally, having had my own articles unceremoniously rejected without explanation by another publications, I believed that it crucial to provide authors with quality feedback on their submission, whether accepted or not. This would give authors an explanation for our decisions, but would also provide guidelines on how to improve their work should they wish to submit it elsewhere. We hoped this would contribute to the health of our field overall, as well as provide realistic encouragement for each author. It was never the plan for me to serve so long a term as Editor in Chief of NETJ . Charles Combs gave way to Jeffrey Martin, causing me to bump up to first co-editor, with another colleague taking over the second co-editor slot. Then when I, in turn, took over the lead spot from Jeffrey, we lost both of our co-editors: one took over as lead editor for Theatre Topics and the other did not receive tenure. From then on we kept looking for replacements among the New England region, but were unsuccessful doing so, for one reason or another. In the meantime, I kept on as lead and was most fortunate that Jeffrey Martin decided to return to a co-editor position, alongside me, for all these many years. Because most academic journals are directly affiliated with major organizations, ours is not, which has afforded us a continuity of philosophy as well as core personnel. We also benefited for many years by the impeccable copy/format work of Tobin Nellhaus as well as a stable of outstanding outside evaluators, most notable for his many years of such assistance, Jonathan Chambers. Furthermore, while we have occasionally published work that reflects our New England roots, there have otherwise been no geographical restrictions on authors or topics. In fact, we welcomed being a site for work that often bucked current trends, where authors with new ideas or perspectives could find a home for non-mainstream work of still-meaningful value. A quick glance at past issues reveals that we published the last interview with Spalding Gray and an interview with Kenny Leon on directing August Wilson; theatre performed on American military bases and an article on theatre in Japanese internment camps; theatre in China, theatre in Nigeria, even though most articles centered on theatre in the Americas, there is much concerning race and gender to be found among them. Cultural trends have shifted and turned over the years of our existence and we have tried to navigate them as best we could, trying to maintain our commitment to ideas (rather than theory) in application (on stage for a live audience). Sympathetic to historical dynamics, it was always fascinating to find work where authors found parallels between the past and the present, noting how the fundamental dynamic of performance/audience tended to remain constant even as societal concerns might shift. For example, I loved how a recent issue of NETJ included a piece on new (!) discoveries of the original staging of the ancient Egyptian Abydos Passion plays, another on the “echoes of Cervantes” as found in Othello , alongside an article on Thornton Wilder’s cycles of history as well as another about a most recent feminist adaptation/production of Macbeth . A small journal such as ours is subject to chance when it comes to submissions; we usually cannot insist on a particular topic or approach, instead are dependent upon the vagaries of whomever happens to submit their work in any given year. And yet we were occasionally able to feature such more specialized sections over the years, rather than the usual eclectic mix: for example, our 2009 issue featured a subsection on Theatre and Undergraduate Education, edited by Nancy Kindelan; in 2013 Arvid Sponberg edited a subsection on the roots of contemporary Chicago theatre; Heather Nathans’ 2005 article on diasporic imagination led to her offer to support and edit an entire extra issue of NETJ in 2008, which focused entirely on the work of August Wilson. Still, we always celebrated the eclectic because it tended to reflect the variety of work being done in our academic and professional theatre world; hence our final 2023 issue of NETJ was composed of articles on Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, on the historical shifts in China’s classic play, The White-haired Girl , an essay on using theatre to combat AIDS in New York, and a study of feminist violence in a recent adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde. Add to this a subsection on musical theatre that included a piece on the use of traditional Fado performance in Bahai, another on how the Spiderwoman Theatre in New York remixed a performative treatise towards a queer politics of Indigenous femme existence, while our last article offered guidelines for introducing anti-Racist strategies when teaching a college-level musical theatre course. I wonder what subsequent issues of NETJ might have offered readers. It’s been a fascinating, informative journey! However, sad to say, in late 2023 New England Theatre Conference notified us that they no longer could afford to support NETJ , forcing us to close shop. It was a sad day, but perhaps inevitable. Hopefully our legacy will remain on paper and online. To all who contributed, past and present, I offer a mighty word of thanks. A key component of NETJ was our Theatre in Performance section. Rather than just offer a setting where reviewers could simply send in reviews of live performances, we hoped to establish an archive of professional, non-profit theatre work as done in the New England region during the course of each past year. Ideally, we hoped to make NETJ into an assemblage of the best regional work over a period of several decades, a source for future students,researchers, as well as fans. This section’s success relied upon whoever happened to be reviewing a given production, as well as whoever happened to be the Editor of this section; some years were better than others. While some Editors viewed this as a setting to promote those theatres uncritically, it was tougher to find those equipped to evaluate according to higher standards. While some Editors proved perhaps more effective than others, in recent years, this section of NETJ thrived under the stewardship and supervision of Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco, who built up a string of reviewers, expanded the number of theatres covered, and established high and consistent standards by which to assess their work. When we learned of the demise of NETJ this past December, Marti and her reviewers were already in the middle of reviewing the 2023-2024 New England theatre season. While the rest of the journal had not yet begun to process work, and hence not really impacted by the sudden and unexpected halt, it seemed a shame that the work of this arm of NETJ should not find readership. I made some inquiries of peer journals and was delighted when the editors of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre stepped forward, offering to publish this last remnant of NETJ’s work. Rather than being downcast, we were thrilled to find supportive colleagues willing to give us a more celebratory send-off. I think I speak for all the editors and authors of New England Theatre Journal when I say thank you to JADT for this generous gesture. Thanks also to our many contributors and readers who have enabled us to survive, grow and flourish. Your support has been more than appreciated. Below please find our NETJ 2023-2024 theatre in review section. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) STUART J. HECHT is Associate Professor of theatre at Boston College and also the long-standing Editor of New England Theatre Journal . In addition to publishing many scholarly articles and book chapters, Hecht authored Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation and the American Musical, a basis for the Peabody Award-winning documentary, “The Broadway Musical: a Jewish Legacy.” He also co-edited Makeshift Chicago Stages: a Century of Theatre and Performance . A Member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Hecht served on the artistic staffs of both the Goodman and Wisdom Bridge theatres in Chicago and was founding Chair of the Boston College Theatre Department. He is currently writing a book on Jane Addams’ Hull-House and its theatre. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

Philip Brankin Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Oh, Mary! Philip Brankin By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF Conrad Ricamora and Cole Escola in Oh, Mary! Photo: Emilio Madrid Oh, Mary! By Cole Escola Directed by Sam Pinkleton Lucille Lortel Theatre New York, NY March 5, 2024 Reviewed by Philip Brankin Thinking about Oh, Mary!–– a play set during the close of the American Civil War––I cannot help but conjure up a line from the comedic persona Philomena Cunk as she ruminates on the life of Abraham Lincoln in the BBC mockumentary Cunk on Earth. In her noted droll style, she deadpans, “Lincoln’s story didn’t have a happy ending. Five days after the North won, a terrible fate befell him. He was forced to go to the theatre to watch a play.” This is the level of dark-humored irreverence found in Cole Escola’s sold-out smash hit that opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City and is now about to open on Broadway. But in this play, Lincoln is not the subject, only the by-product. Everything about the play and its production is meant to center Mary and highlight its star’s feral talent. Cole Escola (they/them) has created a career-defining production after years of paying their dues on a spectrum of stages from YouTube to Joe’s Pub at New York’s Public Theater. The production of Oh, Mary! is seemingly an autobiographical study of sorts of Escola’s own self-perception as a fledgling cabaret talent told through the removed lens of a mock biography of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in the events leading up to the death of her husband, President Lincoln. The queering of this momentous history is enacted through turning the lens on the First Lady, re-positioning her as an ahistorical antiheroine, and essentially making every character/historical figure homosexual or utterly camp, particularly when revealing their true selves on stage. Escola’s gag is to make Mary’s super-objective to be a cabaret star, or rather, to make a comeback to the stage as the star she sees herself as. Escola’s artistic license is fully on display in this production as they present a queer revision of history. Mary’s boredom with her life, fueled by alcoholism and an inflated ego, are exacerbated by her husband’s barely veiled homosexuality. Lincoln is her distant, bewildered husband who we learn early on is more beleaguered by Mary’s obsessive fixation on stage stardom, fueled by alcohol, than the War. Abe indulges her by hiring an acting coach in the form of none other than his secret (and jealous) lover John Wilkes Booth. So, everything is in service of Mary. The program conspicuously lists the cast all not by their names but their relation to Mary (i.e. Lincoln is listed as “Mary’s husband”). Despite this, the casting is consequential. Both Lincoln and Booth are played by stars of the all-queer helmed film Fire Island , another recent entry for queer comedy. Booth convinces Mary that he has secured for her an audition for none other than the fateful production of Our American Cousin , the play the president would later be assassinated at while watching from his box seat. But this bit of history is immaterial to the audience as we are following Mary’s journey towards stardom or self-destruction. I have been following Cole Escola and their career since the early days of content creation on social media, the place I consider to be the birthplace of their dexterity as a character actor and comedy writer. Escola’s work has always focused on queering culture and historically minded camp sensibilities. After years of digital shorts, pithy tweets, and one-person shows in cabaret spaces, this production feels like the culmination of Escola’s ability to fully realize their singular vision. As Mary Todd Lincoln, Cole Escola sets the same tone for the play from her first line. She desperately cries to Washington’s portrait in the Oval Office, “Oh mother! Why did I marry him?” Oh, Mary! is as much concerned with queering sacred American history as it is with queering other deconstructions of history on Broadway, such as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton . Oh, Mary! is a testament to the current generation of mad, queer excellence and those who might find kinship with the idiosyncratic Escola. The play takes the historical subtexts of Mary and Abraham and blows them campily out of proportion, centering the marginalized aspects of their personalities, such as Mary’s mental health or Abraham’s sexuality. By showing these characters navigate those blatantly erroneous identities and making all the wrong choices, the production frees the audience of expectation or the normative urge to conceive that anything could or should be thought of as sacred. Conrad Ricamora and Cole Escola in Oh, Mary! Photo: Emilio Madrid Oh, Mary! might be one of the most offensive comedies to play Off-Broadway, but its subversiveness plays like a labor of love for the idea of the overshadowed and oft-misunderstood First Lady, or any woman that sits at the fulcrum of history. Though the play was delivered with a massive laugh greeting nearly every single line, in a work helmed by Escola there usually comes a moment when an earnest truth is allowed just enough room to peak through and catch the audience off-guard. Diehard fans of Escola will recognize this nuance from the recent digital short film Our Home Out West in which Escola plays a Gold Rush-era Madam, in Belle Watling drag––paradigmatic of the Escola oeuvre––and works as a felicitous, subdued counterpart to their high energy Mary Todd. At one point in the film, the brothel owner’s orphaned ward asks her, “Why do people hate you so much?” In contrast to Oh, Mary! ’s atmosphere of scatological farce comes an eschatological homily on the nature of bigotry. As Cole explains, “I think because life is basically not very fair and so people like to make up their own little rules… they believe that if they follow their rules nothing bad will happen to them. So, when they see someone who’s not following their rules and doing just fine makes them scared that their rules don’t really matter and when people get scared, they get mad.” Oh, Mary! harkens back to past texts of queer import like Charles Busch’s Die, Mommie, Die! (a drag, psycho-biddy send-up of Aeschylus’ Oresteia ) or Split Britches’ Belle Reprieve (a drag satire of A Streetcar Named Desire ). All of them share a similar approach to remixing history and the historiography of Western drama. The play has some structural similarities to Roxie Hart’s journey that leads to the final, triumphant stage number that rounds out the story in the denouement of Chicago . Yet, when watching the “madcap medley” of Mary ’s grand finale, the ludicrous joy of watching the play is more akin to seeing “Little” Edie Beale of Grey Gardens finally become the singer and dancer she always said she could be (technical talent be damned!). Little Edie and Mary are both characters steeped in American (presidential) history by association, yet who enjoy basking in their own self-made mythologies. The production is a celebration of an anachronistic, gonzo-style approach to historical fiction on stage. For one thing, the setting predates what we understand and refer to as cabaret, and the cabaret finale includes music from over one-hundred years later, including the kitschiest hits of the 1970s and 80s, all while twirling and dropping a baton. Though Escola and director Sam Pinkerton are not at all interested in fidelity to dramaturgical accuracy, the production creates a consistent vision of this pivotal moment in American history. That consistency is defined in the program as “the lens of an idiot.” Escola has stated that they “wrote the show from the point of view of the audience, which is our collective third grade understanding of who Mary Todd Lincoln was.” The curls in Mary’s wig are not meant to resemble the true style of the period, but are there to accentuate her every manic move. The set, by in-demand designer dots, is meant to resemble the Oval Office, yet evokes Our American Cousin pastiche in childlike, broad strokes with blown-up proportions and spurious designs contrived from a capricious imagination. For example, the books are all clearly not real, except for the one hollowed out and hiding the hooch. The saloon setting in the latter half could be pulled from a shooting gallery in a Western theme park. Did the DC-area have saloons with swinging doors and player pianos at this time? The answer is likely “Who cares?” but more importantly, “Look at Mary go!” Everything acts as a campy gesture to the past—right down to the mock gas footlights. But the gesture is always purposefully pointing in the wrong direction and with a middle finger. Tony Macht, Bianca Leigh, and Cole Escola in Oh, Mary! Photo: Emilio Madrid Everything feels very correct in its incorrectness —a kind of purposeful queer failure à la J. Jack Halberstam. The show embraces its own failure to grasp historical accuracy and dramaturgical dignity. The camp of Oh Mary! lies in its ability to resist the normative desire of biographical texts that prop up the sedate figure of sober greatness that stands behind every great man. There’s an alienation in camp fit for Brecht. But the Verfremdungseffekt is most potent for the queer initiated of the audience. We are meant to be alienated from canonical history. Escola’s success represents a generation of queer alt-comedians with origins from social media platforms like Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, or X (formerly known as Twitter). These queer performers have carved out spaces and followings for themselves that slowly but surely gained them due recognition that they could parlay into the more dominant or traditional spaces of culture. In a time when queer subculture and counterculture are becoming the culture, what’s lost along the way may be up for debate. But what is clear from Oh Mary! is that it is leading the queer vanguard and delivering mainstream audiences a high priestess of camp. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Philip Brankin is a Visiting Professor of Theater Studies at Emory University and a doctoral student in Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Georgia where he received an MFA in Dramatic Media. His research involves queer performance cultures in digital media, focusing on social media platforms as a locus for queer identity formation today. As a practitioner, he has worked as a director, producer, actor, dramaturg, writer, and media designer. A Chicago native, he has worked with Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Second City, The Piven Theatre Workshop, About Face Theatre, Bailiwick, Chicago Opera Theatre, and Nothing Without a Company, among others. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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 Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 By Steve Earnest Published: July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Editor’s Statement I am very grateful for the opportunity to continue the great work begun by Marvin Carlson with his foundation of EUROPEAN STAGES (formerly WESTERN EUROPEAN STAGES) in 1969. Devoted to the analysis and review of theatre in both eastern and western Europe, EUROPEAN STAGES remains one of the USA’s most important storehouses of European theatre history. Because of the emphasis on unique performances, directors, actors and styles of production, this publication focuses directly on the art of performance itself, with less emphasis on theoretical or external issues. It’s a great honor to take over this role from Dr. Carlson who has been, arguably, America’s most prominent theatre scholar for many decades. This edition, the first issue of EUROPEAN STAGES published in Spring/Summer since the period of COVID, includes articles that discuss productions and artists from Italy, France, Germany, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and Spain. Just as WESTERN EUROPEAN STAGES featured many of my early publications, I also hope to feature new and early career writers in addition to established writers from major world institutions in order to consider work that is produced or presented in Europe. To that end, this edition features work by both previously unpublished artist/writers in addition to other individuals who have regularly contributed to the journal. The Segal Center views it’s many journal publications as important centers for the preservation of knowledge about world performance. Many of these records of plays, musicals, operas, dance works, and other uncharacterized works of performance are not recorded in any other medium, therefore these records of works serve as primary information about the history of performance in our world. Commissioning, obtaining and maintaining these precious records of performance is central to the Center’s mission and I am excited to be a part of the continuation of this great task. It's wonderful to feature two works by outgoing Editor, Dr. Carlson in this issue and we look forward to publishing many of his works in the years to come. I am looking forward to creating two issues each year in the future and we are working to create an even greater profile for the journal as we move forward. Steve Earnest, Professor of Theatre Coastal Carolina University Image Credits: Article References References About the author(s) Steve Earnest is a Professor of Theatre at Coastal Carolina University . He was a Fulbright Scholar in Nanjing, China during the 2019 – 2020 academic year where he taught and directed works in Shakespeare and Musical Theatre. A member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA, he has worked professionally as an actor with Performance Riverside, The Burt Reynolds Theatre, The Jupiter Theatre, Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Birmingham Summerfest and the Riverside Theatre of Vero Beach, among others. Film credits include Bloody Homecoming , Suicide Note and Miami Vice . His professional directing credits include Big River , Singin’ in the Rain and Meet Me in St. Louis at the Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs, Musicale at Whitehall 06 at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach and Much Ado About Nothing with the Mountain Brook Shakespeare Festival. Numer ous publications include a book, The State Acting Academy of East Berlin , published in 1999 by Mellen Press, a book chapter in Performer Training, published by Harwood Press, and a number of articles and reviews in academic journals and periodicals including Theatre Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, Western European Stages, The Journal of Beckett Studies and Backstage West . He has taught Acting, Movement, Dance, and Theatre History/Literature at California State University, San Bernardino, the University of West Georgia , the University of Montevallo and Palm Beach Atlantic University. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre from the University of Miami, FL. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents 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.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 21, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Report from Berlin By Marvin Carlson Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF The company of Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller is widely regarded in Europe today, especially in Germany, as the most radical and boundary challenging company in contemporary Europe. Since 2006, they have been engaged in a monumental postmodern exploration of the works of Ibsen, most notably in their extended elaborations of The Wild Duck and John Gabriel Borkman, presented as part of the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2011 and 2012. Despite their continual challenge to traditional structures and regulations, so formidable is their reputation in Germany that in 2024, when René Pollesch, the director of the leading Berlin theatre, the Volksbühne, unexpectedly died, they were considered as an interim replacement. Such an appointment was hardly thinkable given the company’s long history of activities, which included physical damage to their venues and outraging critics, audiences, and authorities alike. In the event the Ministry of Culture appointed as the new director Matthias Lilienthal, a less revolutionary choice than Vinge and Müller, but an artist strongly associated with experimental work, having served as dramaturg at the Volksbühne under the legendary Frank Castorf and subsequently as director of Berlin’s HAU theatre, an important home for international experimental work. It was thus in many ways appropriate that the first major production of the new administration was the most recent offering in Vinge and Müller’s ongoing Ibsen-Saga, taking on one of Ibsen’s most challenging works, the monumental Peer Gynt . Given my long-time love of Ibsen and my more recent interest in these ground-breaking artists, I booked a trip to Berlin for one of the six performances. As usual in Berlin, I had little difficulty finding other attractive offerings to fill out a five-day trip. To begin with, Peer Gynt , however, for the first time in the Saga, the performance was announced for a specific period of time, beginning at four in the afternoon and ending at midnight. One of the most significant features of this company’s performance has always been its disregard for a set structure or time. Now for the first time, although the contents and their arrangement differed each night, the production stopped, as advertised, promptly at twelve. The plastic curtain often used during the evening was drawn closed, and Vinge (Peer) made a final appearance to write on it with a white marker the defiant “Eight hours is still not theatre.” Peer Gynt , by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Vegard Vinge, Ida Müller, Trond Reinholdtsen at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, 2025. Photo© Julian Röder In the past, the Company has often pushed back against attempts to limit its excesses by incorporating references to these attempts into the production, and this terminating gesture is in that tradition, but in my opinion, this was a significant capitulation, removing one of the most critical and distinctive elements of the company aesthetic. Each audience member must decide for themselves whether, given its aesthetic, a VM production willing to compromise on central issues is better than no VM production at all. It seemed to me that the production I attended, third in the series, carried this compromise throughout the evening. It was, on the whole, the safest, least challenging, and most conventional of any VM production I have seen. No excrements on stage or destruction in the house (the single modest invasion of the audience space would have been perfectly acceptable at Lincoln Center), and I feared that the capitulation on the running time was emblematic of a general softening of the company’s essential rough edges. Friends who saw the closing performance reported that a certain amount of more disturbing material was then included, but the evening still ended promptly on time. Peer Gynt , by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Vegard Vinge, Ida Müller, Trond Reinholdtsen at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, 2025. Photo© Julian Röder Comparatively tame as it was, the production I saw was unmistakably a VM creation. The interior public spaces of the Volksbühne, like those of the Prater, the space used by the company in previous years, were covered with giant graffiti-style posters featuring now primarily American action heroes and images of military aggression and destruction. These themes were repeated in the production, since although the Ibsen Saga imagery has been extremely wide ranging, geographically, culturally and historically, their Peer Gynt has a distinctly urban American feel with particular attention to guns, marching soldiers and military machinery (a constantly recurring motif is a squad of mindlessly marching soldiers moving lockstep across the upstage, an area also frequently crossed by large carboard cutouts of military vehicles, tanks, and jet fighters). It may be that this interest in connecting Peer Gynt to a particular cultural background may owe something to the memory of the last great monumental staging of this play in Berlin, that of Peter Stein in 1971 at the old Schaubühne on the Halleschen Ufer. Stein subtitled his interpretation “a play of the nineteenth century” and stressed the close ties of the work to the industrialization, colonialism, and capitalism of that era. It seemed to me, though, that Stein’s orientation was much better fitted to the play than a focus on militarism, but then much of the VM interpretation still remains to be seen. Peer Gynt , by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Vegard Vinge, Ida Müller, Trond Reinholdtsen at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, 2025. Photo© Julian Röder Perhaps the single scene in Ibsen’s play most directly tied to the military is that (often omitted) in which Peer oversees (with disapproval) a young man cutting off his finger to avoid the draft. The VM version of this scene is a film clip, showing a close-up downward view of a fist with the “fingers” extending from the knuckles replaced by frankfurters. These were slowly cut away from the tips backward into small rings of meat, which from time to time were splashed with spurts of ketchup, suggesting both blood and a culinary preparation. This was one of my favorite images in the production, and very typical in its imagination and shock of a VM presentation. The other sequence I found most memorable was an extended pursuit of Peer by a large cardboard cutout of a New York City police car, which, in its pursuit, created mayhem in the surrounding artificial urban setting, crushing a telephone booth and crashing through a display window to enter a military recruiting office where Peer had taken temporary refuge. Generally speaking, except for the set length the production contained the now familiar elements of the Ibsen Saga—the cartoonish costumes and settings, the grotesque rubber masks, the amplified sound tracks emphasizing the sounds of walking, marching and physical contact, the grotesquely distorted voices, the alternation of live and filmed action, and the general freewheeling style in which the unexpected, and often the shocking and outrageous, is regularly evoked. As in the earlier elements of the Saga, an Ibsen play provides the essential but completely negotiable framework. Although each evening offered different variations, all essentially covered Ibsen’s first act, from Peer’s opening story about the encounter with the stag until his departure from the village into the mountains, although hints of later events, scenes and even characters (like the malevolent bureaucrat/director Stockmann) from previous VW productions, and a huge variety of cultural refences, contemporary and historical, find their ways into the assemblage. Even though I found this one of the weaker VM productions, it was, like all of them, a memorable and thought-provoking theatre experience. One final note should be included. Vinge and Müller have now become an essential element of the German theatre scene, and to a lesser extent, the international one—the night I went, I encountered colleagues from the U.S., England, France, and Sweden. Combined with a limited run, this guaranteed that the 800-seat theatre would be completely sold out with record-breaking waiting lists. Ironically, however, this passion does not stimulate many to, in fact, undergo the actual ordeal of sitting through an eight-hour VM production. Indeed, the evening I attended, nearly half of the seats were empty after the first two hours. These can hardly have been people unaware of what was being offered, so I must conclude that VM have found or created an audience that applies to the process of spectatorship the same flexibility that Vinge and Müller apply to the process of artistic production. This being Berlin, I was able to attend a different Ibsen production at a major theatre the following evening, this time Hedda Gabler at the Berliner Ensemble. When it celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2017, the neo-baroque Theatre am Schiffbauerndamm, intimately associated with the work of Bertolt Brecht, still performed in its same elegant, neo-baroque and distinctly un-Brechtian traditional home. Two years later, however, it opened two smaller and more contemporary spaces, the Neues Theatre (180 seats) and the Werkraum (99 seats) at the rear of the courtyard behind the original house. I first attended the Neues Theater in 1922 to see Wagdi Mouawad’s powerful exploration of Middle Eastern tension, Vöge l, and to see Hedda Gabler (in an adaptation by Merelv called Hedda ). I visited for the first time the more intimate Werkraum. Hedda, directed by the young Norwegian Heiki Riipinen, who is also a professional drag queen, follows Ibsen’s original far more closely than the WM Peer Gynt , yet it is still a far more unconventional reworking of Ibsen than might be found on any major professional stage in the Anglosaxon world. Each year, the new Werkraum invites two young directors to work as Artists in Residence there for a year, during which they create two new productions each. This year’s artists are Norwegian Riipinen, whose first offering was a six-hour overnight piece called Insomnia, and Iranian Alireza Daryanavard. Hedda offers a decidedly queer reading of the Ibsen text, in which Pauline Knof’s center position as Hedda is seriously challenged by the cross-dressed dominatrix of Judge Brack, flamboyantly played by Nina Burns, and my particular favorite—Max Gindorff, as a charmingly winsome Thea and amusingly dotty Aunt Julia. Marc Oliver Schulze, though playing the gender appropriate role of Tesman, enters effectively into the campy cartoonish spirit of the whole. Paul Zichner as Ejlert does not seem to fit into the ensemble, though his lacey bouffant blue costume (one of the exaggerated and generally successful sartorial creations of Louise-Fee Nitschke) is one of the evening’s most extreme. The tone of the whole is set when the audience enters to witness the Tesman living room, its furniture still covered, but with Hedda already lying face up and dead downstage, the pistol by her outstretched arm, and a pool of plastic fake blood under her head. We will, of course, return to this image at the end, but here Hedda is ignored by the others until she enters the scene by simply getting up, putting away the gun, and entering the conversation while Gildorff, temporarily playing the maid, tidies up by carrying off the obviously fake pool of blood. A central moment in any production of the play is the burning of the manuscript, and Riipinen gives this special attention. Alone among the characters, Hedda interacts several times with spectators, asking them to provide or hold items (such as a bullet for the gun, for example). Here she pantomimes striking a match and was offered a lighter the night I attended. She then left the stage and the auditorium, and an onstage video followed her through the lobby and out into the Berliner Ensemble courtyard, where she burned the papers in front of a crowd of curious onlookers on the way to or from the theatre Kanteen. Returning to the stage, she tossed the lighter back to the spectator and continued with the play. Another striking addition to the role Knof provides is several extended pantomime sequences, a kind of silent soliloquy, such as the moment before she shoots herself. Facing the audience, she carefully considers and rejects a series of possibilities, first shooting herself in the breast, then the heart, then the womb, then (like Ejlert) the genitals, then the mouth and the temple, before finally deciding on the side of the head, thus recapitulating the arc of the play in this single sequence. After her death, the other characters gather upstage to observe her, the living to the left (the Judge now in an incongruous judicial wig, and the dead Ejlert to the left on a raised platform, but now with clearly fraudulent angelic wings and (at last) vine leaves in his hair. I was able to add one final classic work, Moliere’s The Misanthrope, at the Deutsches Theater. This is not a new piece, having entered the repertoire in 2019, but it remains an attractive one, due in part to the excellent translation in rhymed verse by Jurger Gosch, in part to a crisp and intelligent direction by Anne Lenk, and primarily to the formidable acting skills of two leading figures of the contemporary German stage, Ulrich Matthias in the title role and Franziska Machens as Célimène, his elusive object of desire. Despite Matthias’ strength, Lenk’s production keeps the dramatic focus well balanced between the two, and the others, excellent performers all, are rather eclipsed, even Manuel Harder, as Alceste’s long-suffering and remarkably tolerant friend Philinte. Ultich Matthes and Franziska Machens in The Misanthrope, directed by Anne Lenk at Deutsches Theater, 2019. Photo© Arno Declair The highly stylized neo-baroque costumes by Sibylle Wallum provide the main visual variety to the production, which is mounted in a setting that aroused much discussion when the work opened. The design, by Florian Lösche, was formally very simple, a three-sided box the walls of which were entirely composed of densely hung silver and black elastic ropes, pushed aside for entrances or exits, and occasionally wrapped around a body for a particular effect. Early reviews spent much time complaining that this set had been copied from various earlier productions of other works in Frankfurt and elsewhere, but the idea is a basically simple one and could easily have occurred to a number of designers. I remember seeing a Japanese production of a Mishima play with almost exactly the same configuration, and used, I might say, with vastly more variety on the part of the company. In any case, original or not, it did not seem to me particularly well suited to this play or this interpretation, other than providing a striking and essentially neutral background against which a company of extremely skilled actors could display their abilities. Manuel Harder, Ulrich Matthew and Lisa Hrdina in The Misanthrope, directed by Anne Lenk at Deutsches Theater, 2019. Photo© Arno Declair I had expected that one of these long-time favorite pieces would provide my most memorable theatre experience of this trip, but was surprised that this turned out to be a new work , K , based partly upon Kafka’s The Trial and partly on the author’s biography. The production was presented in the elegant neo-baroque main stage of the Berliner Ensemble and was the creation of one of Berlin’s most imaginative directors, Barrie Kosky. Kosky has recently returned to freelance directing after a decade as Intendant at the Komische Oper, where his productions were regularly among the most praised and discussed in the city. His interest in Jewish culture has always been strong (he is both Jewish and gay), and he was, in fact, the first Jewish director to create a production for Bayreuth. K is thus a work of particular importance to him, and his unconventional approach is clearly indicated by the subtitle, “A Talmudic Vaudeville.” Indeed, the production derives its material equally from conventional autobiographical and biographical sources and from the surrealistic slapstick of the Jewish vaudeville of Eastern Europe, which Kafka loved. It is this tradition that provides much of the staging detail—the costumes, makeup, wigs, scenery, and general acting style. In the vaudeville tradition, cross-dressing is essential, and Kathrin Wehlisch perfectly incorporates the Chaplinesque little man caught up in a world beyond his control or comprehension. Her bravura performance begins with carefree 1920s tap dancing abandon and moves seamlessly through a carnival of mixed farce and horror, typified by the marvelous Constanze Becker, who appears as the grotesque landlady Frau Grubach, wielding a formidable extermination apparatus, with a Kafkaesque cockroach displayed prominently on its side. After K’s arrest, the stage is transformed into an expressionistic forbidding synagogue, with candelabras, giant Hebrew letters, and an enormous Talmud ark dominating all. Oppressive Bach chorales echo in profoundly incongruous jazz rhythms in the background for the benefit of Christian observers (the ingenious musical direction is by Adam Benzwi), but the imagery is overwhelmingly orthodox. The deep voice of K’s never seen lawyer Huld (Gabriel Schneider) resounds from behind the Ark, like the voice of Jehovah himself, uttering gnomic observations in Hebrew, but the Ark emits other figures of clear secularity, and most memorably, a chorus of three vaudevillian Rabbis, whose mixture of Yiddish comic patter and songs and spirit folk dances is a guaranteed show stopper. The production does not end with a sentencing but continues with K’s punishment, presented by a half-naked K cringing downstage as he suffers the torment of Kafka’s here unseen writing machine, while the rich voice of Constanze Becker comes over the loudspeaker reading “In the Penal Colony.” Projected behind K are the characters presumably being etched into his body—a seemingly endless unrolling of Hebrew letters. The play ends with scenes from the final year of the terminally ill Kafka and continues to combine moments of joy with profound suffering. They are seen through the eyes of Kafka’s last love, Dora Diamant, beautifully played by the Komische Opera leading soprano Alma Sadé. She reads passages of Kafka’s final diary, and at last, as his suffering ends, moves into a warm and deeply moving singing (in Yiddish) of Robert Schumann's " Dichterliebe," a most appropriate conclusion to this fascinating and complex theatrical and musical evening. For my final evening in Berlin, I attended one of the city’s biggest (in every sense of the word) theatre attractions, a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar , presented by the Komische Oper in a hangar of the abandoned Tempelhof airport. In 2023, this theatre, one of Berlin’s most honored, closed for extensive renovations, its 1882 neo-baroque building having miraculously survived the bombing of World War II, but now much in need of updating. While this work continues, the theatre is housed at the Schiller Theater in Western Berlin, with occasional special spectacles in Hangar 4 of Tempelhof. A trip to Hanger 4 is an experience in itself, reminding me of other remote performance locations like Mnouchkine’s in Paris. Walking from the nearest subway to the rather remote and very large former airfield, one passes by the monument to the Berlin airlift, which was once a central symbol of resistance to a divided Berlin, with Tempelhof at the center of its lifeline. Arriving at the grounds, one follows a torturous path through the structures, first passing a small group of Christian protesters bearing signs denouncing this “blasphemy” while a few tonsured figures in monkish robes and rope belts worked their rosaries and provided a distinctly theatrical ambiance. The lobby was itself a gigantic hangar, open to a beautiful autumnal sky and well provided with comfortable sofas and concession stands for pre-theatre drinks. Between this area and the open runways, a large set of pink neon three-dimensional letters appropriately spelled out #allesaußergewöhnlich (everything extraordinary). The bell sounded, and the lobby crowd emptied into a neighboring hangar, a huge cube with metal grandstands rising up on three sides, an elevated runway stage thrust out into the empty center space, and leading to a huge illuminated cross composed of metal poles and struts. Along a higher platform on the fourth was the Komische Oper orchestra, fronted by three guitarists, a keyboardist, and a percussionist. The wildly idiosyncratic costumes of Frank Wilde ranged from billowing to form-fitting, and from the cartoonish capes and hats of the Jewish authorities, like the most bizarre at Oberammergau, to virtually authentic Roman armor or acid-based punk rock. The huge crowd, more of them later, wore various forms of simple earth colored, vaguely Biblical garments, allowing them to easily merge effectively into a seemingly homogeneous mass. Jesus (John Arthur Greene) was simply gowned in a white plaited robe, with the traditional beard and long hair, a strongly muscular build. Bal Arslan as Mary Magdalene combined sanctity and seduction in a scarlet red evening gown and shaved head. Both offered powerful voices and strong presences, but the crowd favorite was clearly the mercurial Judas of Sasha Di Capri, equally effective in a sardonic falsetto and a vibrant full-throated expression of both affection and rage. Another clear favorite was Jörn-Felix Alt as a camp Herod, the gyrations of whose multicolored billowing costume are a show in themselves. Despite the considerable talents of the soloists and the orchestra, and in spite of the occasional and perhaps inevitable eruption of high kitsch in the music, the score and the scenic design with its huge glittering cross, what made the evening truly memorable was the nearly 400 extras who formed a constantly moving mass surrounding and at times engulfing the main action. Director Andreas Homoki and choreographer David Cavelius have woven these hundreds of voices and gesticulating bodies into a visual fabric I will long remember. As a theatre historian in Berlin, I found myself almost inevitably recalling the legendary mass spectacles staged here over a century ago by Max Reinhardt at his Grosses Schauspielhaus. For the first time, I felt I understood the incredible performative power of such displays. 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 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 Theatre in Poland, Fall 2025 Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 21 Robert Wilson’s Moby Dick at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Summer 2025 Dramas of Separation at Festival d’Avignon 19th Edition Polyphonies of the Present: The Pulse of the Almada Festival Summer 2025 in London, England The Tragic Ideal of Eternal Youth: Folk Myth on the Modern Stage International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition Review of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa by Ópera do Castelo Radu Afrim and his House Between the Blocks Report from Berlin Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Courtney Ferriter Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 1 Visit Journal Homepage Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Courtney Ferriter By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF In his recent book Democracy in Black (2016), Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. argues that for Americans, “collective forgetting is crucial in determining the kind of story we tell ourselves. Ours is the chosen nation, the ‘shining city upon a hill,’ as Ronald Reagan called it. America is democracy. . . . To believe this, we have to forget and willfully ignore what is going on around us.” [1] While Glaude is particularly concerned with the distortions and fairy tales Americans continue to tell ourselves about race, Tony Kushner’s epic two-part play Angels in America tackles this same theme of conveniently forgetting and willfully ignoring so as not to disrupt the American self-image with respect to sexual orientation and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play received much acclaim from critics and scholars alike for many years following its initial publication—resulting in initial runs on Broadway and the National Theatre in London in 1992-1993 and an award-winning 2003 HBO mini-series starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson—but more recently, it seems to have fallen out of favor among scholars, despite a successful 2010 revival at the Signature Theatre and a 2017 production at the National Theatre that transferred to Broadway in February 2018. Indeed, many (although not all) scholarly articles that discuss Kushner and Angels in recent years focus on how AIDS functions in the play, [2] with scant consideration of Kushner’s portrayal of democracy. I argue that Kushner is especially relevant in the socio-historical moment in which Americans currently find ourselves—one marked by political polarization and distrust of those who think differently than we do. The 2016 election was symptomatic of these problems and brought them into full view for any who still harbored doubts about how deep this divide runs, but Kushner’s play proves instructive for how to build an engaged democratic citizenry. In the epilogue to Part Two of Angels in America , Prior leaves the audience with an optimistic vision for the future, stating, “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.” [3] He then offers a blessing of “more life,” and the play concludes with the same phrase that appears at the end of Part One: “The Great Work Begins” ( Perestroika , 146). As David Kornhaber has observed, many scholars and critics are dissatisfied with the play’s conclusion due to “the reconciliationist politics it seems to espouse,” [4] which for them provides “a too-easy gloss on more intractable problems” [5] that continue to plague society. Thus, Kornhaber reasons, “a lot must depend on how one figures what seem to be the two key concepts of Kushner’s conclusion: citizen and blessing.” [6] Like Kornhaber, I believe that individual understanding of the term “citizens” as well as broader notions of what constitutes citizenship figure heavily in interpretation of both the epilogue and Angels as a whole. Furthermore, I contend that Kushner’s idea of citizenship is necessarily linked to the beginning of the “Great Work” invoked at the end of both parts of the play. In Angels , “citizens” are those who are part of a Deweyan community, made up of diverse people with sometimes conflicting opinions who listen to each other and who are nonetheless connected by their desire to enact positive change in the world, to progress toward a more ideal and inclusive democracy. This is what Prior (and by extension, Kushner) means by “Great Work.” Individualism and undemocratic communication—represented by Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt—fall away by the end of Angels in America , making room for what Atsushi Fujita calls a “a new model of community,” [7] consisting of Belize, Hannah, Louis, and Prior, who value inclusivity and democratic communication. John Dewey argues in Freedom and Culture (1939) for a distinction between “society” and “community.” Society arises from the politics of individual nations, how a particular country governs, and what policies are enforced, whereas community is unrestricted and made up of individuals or groups who share a common solidarity. He explains, “[F]or a number of persons to form anything that can be called a community in its pregnant sense there must be values prized in common. Without them, any so-called social group, class, people, nation, tends to fall apart into molecules having but mechanically enforced connections with one another.” [8] Thus, for Dewey, one characteristic of community lies in shared values. Furthermore, Dewey adds democratic communication to his idea of community, arguing that “there is a difference between a society, in the sense of an association, and a community. . . . Natural associations are conditions for the existence of a community, but a community adds the function of communication in which emotions and ideas are shared as well as joint undertaking engaged in.” [9] In the case of Americans, our joint undertaking is the democratic experiment, and for this reason, we should likewise strive to embody democratic ideals of communication. In the vein of Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy, Kushner emphasizes the importance of inclusive, democratic community in Angels in America . The play models Deweyan communities while also highlighting models that are anti-Deweyan: there is no great community—no solidarity between different groups of Americans—and thus, there is no realized democracy. Kushner writes in the Afterword to Perestroika that Americans “pay high prices for maintaining the myth of the Individual,” [10] which he contrasts with the idea that “the smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction.” [11] This juxtaposition of individualism with community, illustrated in the play by Roy and Joe as opposed to the community envisioned in the epilogue, is central to Kushner’s understanding of democratic progress and what it means to be a citizen. Some leftist critics may bemoan the ending of Angels as “turn[ing] away from the kind of collective action demanded by Marx and staged by Brecht,” [12] but as Hussein Al-Badri has observed, the play’s main flaw in this regard is merely presenting “a different politic[s] than its detractors would like it to be.” [13] Kushner is ultimately more concerned with how to enact Deweyan democracy and community—which he believes will lead to real and lasting social change—than he is with envisioning an America based around socialism or Marxism. In recent years, John Dewey’s notions of community and his pedagogy have come under scrutiny from critics who rightly cite the ethnocentrism that undergirds much of his early philosophy in these matters. [14] Thomas Fallace notes that because pragmatism is “a self-correcting theory of knowledge,” [15] by 1916, Dewey understood that “a plurality of cultures was necessary for democratic living and intellectual growth.” [16] Nevertheless, Fallace argues, “ethnocentrism was built right into Dewey’s early pedagogy and philosophy.” [17] This ethnocentrism troubles Dewey’s notion of community; he conceived of community as “not merely a variety of associative ties which hold persons together in diverse ways, but an organization of all elements by an integrated principle.” [18] If Dewey believed that white people represented a more advanced form of civilization that people of color had not yet achieved, then how would it be possible to form a community in which “all elements” are organized by the same principle? As Glaude has noted, democracy for Dewey “is a form of life that requires constant attention if we are to secure the ideals that purportedly animate it.” [19] Likewise, Scott Stroud emphasizes that a “real amount of openness is implicated in the [pragmatist] habits of democracy.” [20] In other words, democracy is a process, one which must continually be reexamined to ensure that we are increasing democracy and participation among citizens, creating a more inclusive community rather than excluding or marginalizing certain voices, as Dewey was guilty of doing in his early career. As Dewey himself put it, “only when we start from a community as a fact, grasp the fact in thought so as to clarify and enhance its constituent elements, can we reach an idea of democracy which is not [merely] utopian.” [21] One particular benefit to considering the vision of Deweyan community and democracy in Kushner’s Angels is that, several generations removed from Dewey, he is interested in how to incorporate citizens from different backgrounds with vastly different life experiences into the great community Dewey envisioned, particularly African Americans and people who identify as queer. Thus, Kushner’s reexamination of community and inclusive democracy as demonstrated in Angels is itself pragmatic in its consideration of the conditions and context of American life and democracy in the 1980s and ‘90s, revising Dewey’s idea of community by incorporating more and varied groups and voices into it. Fallace argues that an important part of Dewey’s pragmatism was context: “all knowledge was context-bound; it served a purpose in a particular situation and its usefulness was dependent upon that context.” [22] Kushner speaks to a particular historical moment in his work on community, examining the anxieties and shortcomings of American democracy in light of black/white and gay/straight relations. Thus, reading Kushner as a pragmatist increases our understanding of what an ideal community might look like, taking into account the experiences of those who are often pushed to the margins of society by the not-so-silent majority. A consideration of how Kushner treated the power disparities he observed at work in society may also prove instructive for how the U.S. might address current forms of oppression and marginalization in society. I argue in the remainder of this essay that the “Great Work” to which Kushner refers at the end of both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika is, in part, a call to the greater democratic community reflected in the play’s epilogue, which is championed over the closed views of community embodied in Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt. Kushner’s vision of Deweyan community emphasizes inclusion and listening to marginal voices, for characters in Angels in America who ignore the voices of the other do so at their peril. Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt are representative of undemocratic communication in the play—Roy because he dominates those around him, and Joe because he cannot be truthful with others or see beyond himself. Dewey writes that in a democracy, “both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other.” [23] For Roy, suppression of the other in communication is par for the course. One early example of this occurs in Act One, Scene 9 of Millennium Approaches when Roy’s doctor Henry diagnoses him with AIDS. Roy then tries to force Henry to call him a homosexual, finally threatening, “No, say it. I mean it. Say: ‘Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.’ And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do” ( Millennium , 44). When Henry gives him the diagnosis of AIDS, Roy counters, “No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer” ( Millennium , 46). Roy forcefully suppresses Henry from telling anyone that Roy is gay by threatening his career, and he even manages to suppress the diagnosis of AIDS. The next time Henry appears is in Perestroika to facilitate Roy’s admission to the hospital, where even his medical charts, as Belize reads them, say “liver cancer” ( Perestroika , 21). Roy’s relationship with his nurse Belize in Perestroika is similarly domineering, as Roy makes racist and homophobic remarks, goads Belize into using an anti-Semitic slur in one scene, knocks over pills he is supposed to take, and generally proves to be an insufferable patient. Roy also makes it clear that even though he is somewhat dependent on Belize, he does not consider him an equal in any way. Bemoaning his imminent disbarment in Act Four, Scene 1 of Perestroika , Roy says, “Every goddam thing I ever wanted they have taken from me. Mocked and reviled, all my life” ( Perestroika , 87). When Belize identifies and responds, “Join the club” ( Perestroika , 87). Roy says, “I don’t belong to any club you could get through the front door of. You watch yourself you take too many liberties” ( Perestroika , 87). Shortly after Roy has a series of violent spasms, Belize says that he almost feels sorry for him. Roy is quick to remind him, “You. Me. No. Connection” ( Perestroika , 88). Thus, Roy suppresses Belize any time Belize attempts to identify with him in the slightest. If democracy is characterized in part by open communication, then Roy’s constant desire to “win” or conquer in conversations with others exposes him as a totalitarian at heart. Roy’s totalitarian communication is a natural result of his individualism. He relishes his status as “the dragon atop the golden horde” ( Perestroika , 55), maintaining that “Life is full of horror; nobody escapes; nobody; save yourself. Whatever pulls on you, whatever needs from you, threatens you” ( Millennium , 58). This philosophy clearly runs counter to Kushner’s belief in the smallest indivisible unit as two people. Nevertheless, Kushner includes Roy in the play, explaining in an interview that he is “a part of the gay and lesbian community even if we don’t really want him to be a part of our community.” [24] This indicates a capacity for inclusivity in his democratic vision that Roy himself disdains in the play. This inclusive community is similarly emphasized when Louis, aided by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, recites the Mourner’s Kaddish for Roy, thus accepting him into the greater Jewish community of which they are part (albeit in death). While Joe is not like Roy in his communication in the sense that he has to win or dominate others in conversation, his general dishonesty and unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions make him undemocratic in his dealings with other characters in the play. Kushner has sometimes been criticized in scholarship on Angels in America for being too hard on Joe. Hussein Al-Badri, for example, asserts that Kushner’s omission of Joe from the community included in the epilogue runs counter to Kushner’s “own political ideology of inclusion and inclusiveness.” [25] However, this dramatic punishment seems more fitting when Joe’s undemocratic communication and individualism are taken into consideration, for then it is clear that like his mentor Roy, Joe too spurns community and democratic communication. Dewey argues for truthful communication in “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” writing, “knowledge of conditions as they are is the only solid ground for communication and sharing.” [26] Joe lies about his identity as a gay man to his wife Harper, he keeps from Louis the fact that he is a Mormon, and he repeatedly tells Harper that he is not going to leave her, only to abandon her anyway. Because Joe lacks a foundation of truthfulness with people who are important to him, open, democratic communication is not possible. Like Roy, Joe also acts with the individual—himself—in mind, rather than considering community or the circumstances and experiences of others. Following an irreparable fight with Louis in Perestroika , Joe tries to return to Harper, not because she needs him but because he is thinking of himself. He tells her, “I don’t know what will happen to me without you. Only you. Only you love me. Out of everyone in the world. . . . Please, please, don’t leave me now” ( Perestroika , 139). Joe is unable to sustain a community or communicate democratically with others because he never considers the experience of the other person and only considers his own needs and desires. In fact, Joe even tells Louis that “sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be,” ( Perestroika , 73) a notion that serves as Joe’s modus operandi throughout the play. Deweyan communication requires what Hongmei Peng calls sympathetic thinking, the ability to “step outside of [one’s] own experience and see it as the other would see it by putting [oneself] in the place of the other and using imagination in order to assimilate the other’s experience.” [27] Since Joe proves incapable of imagining the other’s experience, he necessarily excludes rather than includes others in his would-be community, particularly Harper and Hannah. His unwillingness or inability to change in this regard is why he is not included among the democratic “citizens” in the epilogue, since undemocratic communication and exclusive community building stand in opposition to Kushner’s Deweyan model of community. Although Roy and Joe form a community of sorts in Angels , it proves to be undemocratic and representative of anti-Deweyan communication. In spite of the father/son-type relationship that Roy and Joe maintain throughout most of the play, there is much that they keep from one another, and their relationship is marked as much by silence as it is by the closeness and warm feelings for one another as mentor and mentee. This silence comes to a head in Act Four, Scene 1 of Perestroika , when Joe visits Roy in the hospital. When Joe reveals that he left his wife Harper and has been living with Louis, Roy forcefully silences Joe: JOE : Roy, please, get back into… ROY : SHUT UP! Now you listen to me. [. . .] ROY : I want you home. With your wife. Whatever else you got going, cut it dead. JOE : I can’t, Roy, I need to be with… ROY : YOU NEED? Listen to me. Do what I say. Or you will regret it. And don’t talk to me about it. Ever again. ( Perestroika , 85) Roy not only silences Joe in this particular moment of the play, but he commands him never to speak of his relationship with Louis or to make any allusion to homosexuality again. Thus, Roy’s silencing of Joe is distinctly undemocratic and unrepresentative of the kind of communication expected in a democratic community. Far from being an outlier, this is not the first time Roy has stifled Joe’s communication with him. Rather than being open to hearing what Joe wants to express (even if he disagrees with it), Roy chastises him in Millennium Approaches for having ethical reservations about interfering with the disbarment committee hearing, calling Joe “Dumb Utah Mormon hick shit” ( Millennium , 106) and “a sissy” ( Millennium , 107). As for Joe, he claims to love Roy, but is unwilling to go to bat for him when the chips are down. Although this is a legal as well as an ethical quandary, it demonstrates that Joe’s love for Roy is more theory than practice. He asserts, “I’ll do whatever I can to help,” ( Millennium , 66) but those are empty words, since he ultimately refuses the job in Washington he is offered and fails Roy. Joe and Roy cannot agree on a shared ideal toward which they can work together, and thus, their efforts at community building are doomed to fail. Given Dewey’s assertions that community involves “communication in which emotions and ideas are shared” [28] and that such community is “a pressing [concern] for democracy,” [29] Roy and Joe fail at both democratic communication and maintaining a community even with one another. In addition to their undemocratic communication, Roy and Joe are devoted to exclusion rather than inclusion and to individualism rather than community, qualities that are distinctly anti-Deweyan, and for which (along with their undemocratic communication) they are dramatically “punished” by Kushner. Roy succumbs to his illness, while Harper leaves Joe for good and Joe is nowhere to be found in the democratic community of the play’s epilogue. Unlike Roy and Joe, Louis is able and willing to change, demonstrating by the end of the play a commitment to open communication and revising harmful beliefs and actions. While Louis initially abandons Prior when the effects of AIDS become more than he can handle, he eventually sees the error of his ways and atones for his past misdeeds. Prior tells Louis when they meet after Louis’s month-long absence in Perestroika that when he cries, he “endanger[s] nothing. . . . It’s like the idea of crying when you do it. Or the idea of love” ( Perestroika , 83). Similarly, Belize remarks to Louis in Millennium Approaches , “All your checks bounce, Louis; you’re ambivalent about everything” ( Millennium , 95). For much of the play, Louis claims to support things in theory, but his practice reveals his own ambivalence on the subject, from his alleged love for Prior to his support of the Rainbow Coalition. However, following a conversation with Belize in Act Four, Scene 3 of Perestroika in which Belize observes that Louis is “up in the air, just like that angel, too far off the earth to pick out the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you love,” ( Perestroika , 94) Louis realizes that theory and practice must be joined, both in love and in democracy. This is confirmed for him when he researches Joe’s legal decisions written on behalf of Justice Wilson and finally understands that Joe, who wants to be “a nice, nice man” ( Millennium , 107)—as Roy aptly puts it—has rendered legal decisions that have real and damaging consequences for children and gay people. Dewey argues for praxis in democracy, asserting that democracy is “a personal way of individual life. . . . Instead of thinking of our own dispositions and habits as accommodated to certain institutions we have to learn to think of the latter as expressions, projections, and extensions of habitually dominant personal attitudes.” [30] Joe thus expresses a clearly undemocratic viewpoint when he tells Louis of his legal decisions, “It’s law not justice, it’s power, not the merits of its exercise, it’s not an expression of the ideal” ( Perestroika , 109). The discrepancy between Joe’s theory and practice in multiple areas of life, including love and democracy, causes him to think that he must accommodate himself to institutions—like “legal fag-bashing” ( Perestroika , 109) or heterosexual marriage, for example—rather than viewing such institutions democratically, as potential sites for expressing his own experiences and habits. Louis recognizes his own behavior in Joe’s habits, and after their fight, Louis finally understands the extent to which he has failed Prior. He later asks to come back to Prior and tells him, “Failing in love isn’t the same as not loving. It doesn’t let you off the hook, it doesn’t mean you’re free to not love,” ( Perestroika , 140) indicating a respect for praxis that he previously lacked. In addition, Louis gains “expiation for [his] sins” ( Perestroika , 121) through his recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish for Roy Cohn. Although he had previously refused to identify with Roy in any way, calling him “the polestar of human evil … the worst human being who ever lived, he isn’t human even,” ( Perestroika , 93) with some coaxing from Belize and help from Ethel Rosenberg’s ghost, Louis recites the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, thus affirming Roy as part of the Jewish community. Framji Minwilla argues that the coming together of Belize, Ethel, and Louis to say Kaddish for Roy “invent[s] a more complex yet exact sense of self and a more expansively conceived idea of community.” [31] This community is a democratic one, in which people who have ideas and beliefs differing from the mainstream (like Roy, for whom this is the case not in life nor in the Reagan years of the play, but within the politics espoused by Kushner and the characters in the epilogue of Angels ) are nevertheless included and acknowledged as part of the larger community. Based on his joining together of theory with practice and expanding his idea of community by praying for Roy, Louis is able to participate as a “citizen” in the epilogue: he argues at points with Belize about politics, but he is ultimately able to listen and value the presence of differing opinions in his community. Prior also makes a few missteps, but like Louis, he ultimately “succeeds because he is willing to change,” [32] to become more democratic in his communication with others and his vision of community. For instance, when he first meets Joe’s mother, Hannah, he assumes that because she is Mormon, she must be trying to convert him when she helps him to the hospital. After they arrive at the hospital, Prior tells Hannah about his visit from the Angel, and she says he had a vision, drawing a comparison with Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and Prior once again rushes to make assumptions about her because of her Mormonism: PRIOR : But that’s preposterous, that’s… HANNAH : It’s not polite to call other people’s beliefs preposterous. He had great need of understanding. Our Prophet. His desire made prayer. His prayer made an angel. The angel was real. I believe that. PRIOR : I don’t. And I’m sorry but it’s repellent to me. So much of what you believe. HANNAH : What do I believe? PRIOR : I’m a homosexual. With AIDS. I can just imagine what you… HANNAH : No you can’t. Imagine. The things in my head. You don’t make assumptions about me, mister; I won’t make them about you. ( Perestroika , 102) This is the first moment of democratic communication between Prior and Hannah. He acknowledges her point, listening and taking to heart her experiences. This openness serves him well when Hannah advises, “An angel is just a belief, with wings and arms that can carry you. It’s naught to be afraid of. If it lets you down, reject it. Seek for something new” ( Perestroika , 103). Prior takes her advice, struggling with the Angel of America and returning the Book of the Anti-Migratory Epistle to Heaven. He previously identified with the Angels—their abandonment by the Almighty and desire to go back—but ultimately he insists upon progress and forward movement. Additionally, Prior’s vision of community becomes more expansive and inclusive by the end of the play. He tells Louis in Millennium Approaches that if Louis walked out on him, he would hate him forever. While he does not take Louis back as a partner in Perestroika , he forgives him, tells him he loves him, and Louis remains an important presence in Prior’s life based on their interaction in the epilogue. In Hannah’s first appearance, she does not seem particularly inclusive or capable of democratic communication given her outrage at Joe’s admission that he is gay, however she experiences a transformation in Perestroika and shows more concern for others, particularly Prior and Harper. Despite Hannah’s somewhat gruff manner—she is described by Sister Ella Chapter in Millennium Approaches as “the only unfriendly Mormon [she] ever met” ( Millennium , 82)—and her claim that she “[doesn’t] have pity,” ( Perestroika , 101) she tends to both Prior and Harper, both of whom have been abandoned by the person closest to them. Hannah explains her actions by claiming, “I know my duty when I see it,” ( Perestroika , 66) which suggests that unlike Joe, she is willing to take the needs and experiences of others into consideration before acting. Much like Dewey, Hannah acknowledges that communication and community require cooperation, “understanding, learning, [and] other-regarding thinking.” [33] Given her sympathy and concern for Prior and Harper as well as her advice to Joe to reflect on his actions and beliefs by asking himself “what it was [he was] running from,” ( Perestroika , 96) Hannah has become a Kushnerian “citizen” in the epilogue, musing about the “interconnectedness” ( Perestroika , 144) of people in the world and providing hope for Prior to keep moving forward. Her advice to Prior that he should “seek for something new” ( Perestroika , 103) if his beliefs fail him demonstrates her own willingness to revise previous assumptions and incorporate new knowledge into her experience, an essential quality in a member of a democratic community. As for Belize, who has been described in scholarship as the moral center of Angels in America , [34] his actions toward Roy and Louis show a commitment to inclusivity in line with Deweyan democratic community. Belize empathizes with Roy and Louis as fellow gay men, despite his outright hatred for some of their actions and ideologies. He advises Roy about the best course of treatment for late-stage AIDS, contra the opinion of Roy’s “very qualified, very expensive WASP doctor,” ( Perestroika , 26) and warns him about the double-blind AZT trials. Despite the fact that Roy is a terrible patient and person who, as mentioned previously, takes every opportunity to remind Belize that Roy considers him beneath him, Belize feels, as he puts it, a sense of “solidarity. One faggot to another,” ( Perestroika , 27) and reminds Louis that Roy “died a hard death” ( Perestroika , 122). With Louis, Belize embodies the democratic value of believing in human nature’s capacity for change. Dewey argues in “Creative Democracy” that democracy is “a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature.” [35] Although Belize disdains Louis for his abandonment of Prior, he meets with Louis in both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika and offers him some moral guidance, indicating that he has not given up on Louis and retains some hope that he will change for the better. Belize’s inclusivity is unsurprising considering his description of Heaven as encompassing “voting booths … everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion” ( Perestroika , 76) with gods who are all “brown as the mouths of rivers” ( Perestroika , 76). This utopic vision eradicates all of the obstacles to justice and democratic participation of marginalized groups in the United States; everyone has gained suffrage, wealth inequality has been destroyed, and racism, sexism, and transphobia have all been tempered by mixed-race divinities and blurred gender boundaries. Belize’s idea of Heaven is aligned with Kushner’s philosophy on freedom; he argues that freedom “expand[s] outward” [36] and the most “basic gesture of freedom is to include, not to exclude.” [37] This sounds remarkably like Dewey, who concludes in “Creative Democracy” that the task of democracy is always to create “a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.” [38] Belize’s vision of Heaven and Kushner’s understanding of freedom express Dewey’s practical ideal for democracy. The four characters included in the epilogue to Angels in America —Belize, Hannah, Louis, and Prior—represent democratic community either because they have demonstrated a willingness to change, listen to others, and revise previous beliefs/actions in the course of the play, or (in Belize’s case) because that kind of inclusivity and democratic communication had already been attained. Michael Cadden argues that the epilogue to Angels “leaves us with the image of four individuals who, despite their very real differences, have chosen, based on their collective experience, to think about themselves as a community working for change.” [39] Similarly, Ron Scapp suggests that Kushner’s ending embraces “the hope of democracy.” [40] For Kushner, the “hope of democracy” is embodied in these characters who have become “citizens” ( Perestroika , 146) with differing thoughts and opinions who are nevertheless capable of working together to accomplish the “Great Work” ( Perestroika , 146) of expanding democracy. Roy and Joe, who were neither inclusive of dissenting voices nor able to form democratic communities, are incapable of acting as citizens and thus omitted from the epilogue, even as Kushner includes them in the greater community of the play itself. The epilogue to Angels in America ultimately advocates for a more ideal democracy, which must begin with individuals who act as citizens. This is the kind of democracy envisioned by Dewey, where all citizens believe “that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable cooperation … is itself a priceless addition to life.” [41] Such a community stands in stark contrast to the exclusive, undemocratic, and homophobic legislation and political rhetoric of the Reagan years as portrayed in the play and embodied by Roy and Joe. Kushner’s small democratic community at the end of Angels reminds the audience that democracy is a process, one toward which we must constantly work to ensure we are applying the democratic method of expanding rights and freedoms outward, revising beliefs or actions based on experience and new information, and opening ourselves to democratic communication with others. Kushner begins from the premise that including marginalized voices is not only beneficial but essential to democracy. This revises some of Dewey’s early notions, which had been grounded in ethnocentric thinking, and provides a foundation for what including others in a democratic community looks like. The inclusivity Kushner portrays in Angels in America demonstrates that democracy does not mean that all voices are considered to be equally valid; rather, Kushner highlights voices that are similarly committed to democracy as method. Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt provide examples of voices that are too partisan and too committed to their own individualistic and undemocratic ways of thinking. However, it is important to note that such people are not irredeemable; they have the capacity to change, as we see Louis do over the course of the play. As a result, such individuals deserve to be included in the larger community (as Kushner includes Roy) even if their ideology is itself anti-democratic. Kushner cautions, however, that such individualism and anti-democratic thinking is harmful to democratic inclusivity and communication. Thus, anti-democratic ideology must not be allowed to dominate at a legal level, as we see its harmful consequences in the exclusive, homophobic legislation of the Reagan administration. In addition, democratic communication is encouraged on a personal level, too, otherwise relationships and communities run the risk of being torn apart, as evidenced by Roy and Joe or Joe and Harper. Like Dewey, Kushner believes that it is necessary to revise our methods to become always more democratic and more inclusive—like the “citizens” referred to in the epilogue—progressing slowly but ever closer to true democratic communication and community with one another. In our present political moment in the United States, democratic communication and community seem like essential tools to cultivate as we work together toward a future like the one Kushner envisions in his epilogue rather than resigning ourselves to undemocratic rule by the Roy Cohns of the world. References [1] Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (New York: Broadway Books, 2016), 48. [2] See, for example, Alexander Peuser, “AIDS and the Artist’s Call to Action,” Lucerna 11 (2017): 10-22; Dennis Altman and Kent Buse, “Thinking Politically about HIV: Political Analysis and Action in Response to AIDS,” Contemporary Politics 18, no. 2 (2012): 127-140; Laura L. Beadling, “The Trauma of AIDS Then and Now: Kushner’s Angels in America on the Stage and Small Screen,” Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance 5, no. 3 (2012): 229-240; and Claudia Barnett, “AIDS = Purgatory: Prior Walter’s Prophecy and Angels in America ,” Modern Drama 53, no. 4 (2010): 471-494. [3] Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part Two: Perestroika [1992] (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004), 146. All subsequent references to the play will be indicated parenthetically, e.g. ( Millennium , 64) or ( Perestroika , 75). [4] David Kornhaber, “Kushner at Colonus: Tragedy, Politics, and Citizenship,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 728. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid, 729. [7] Atsushi Fujita, “Queer Politics to Fabulous Politics in Angels in America : Pinklisting and Forgiving Roy Cohn,” in Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays , ed. James Fisher (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), 125. [8] John Dewey, Freedom and Culture [1939] in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 , vol. 13: 1938-1939, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988): 71. [9] Ibid, 176. [10] Tony Kushner, “With a Little Help from My Friends,” [1993] in Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004), 149. [11] Ibid, 155. [12] Kornhaber, “Kushner at Colonus,” 736. [13] Hussein Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre: A Study of Political Discourse (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 73. [14] See, for example, Shannon Sullivan, “From the Foreign to the Familiar: Confronting Dewey Confronting Racial Prejudice,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18, no. 3 (2004): 193-202; Frank Margonis, “John Dewey’s Racialized Visions of the Student and Classroom Community,” Educational Theory 59, no. 1 (2009): 17-39; and Thomas D. Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895-1922 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011). [15] Thomas D. Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895-1922 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 4. [16] Ibid. [17] Ibid. [18] John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927), 38. [19] Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 6. [20] Scott R. Stroud, “The Challenge of Speaking with Others: A Pragmatist Account of Democratic Rhetoric,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2015): 100. [21] Dewey, The Public and Its Problems , 149. [22] Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race , 9. [23] John Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” [1939] in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 , vol. 14: 1939-1941, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988): 228. [24] Charlie Rose, “Tony, Tonys, and Television,” in Tony Kushner in Conversation , ed. Robert Vorlicky (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998): 46. [25] Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre , 93. [26] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 229. [27] Hongmei Peng, “Toward Inclusion and Human Unity: Rethinking Dewey’s Democratic Community,” Education & Culture 25, no. 2 (2009): 82. [28] Dewey, Freedom and Culture , 176. [29] Ibid, 177. [30] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 226. Emphasis in original. [31] Framji Minwilla, “When Girls Collide: Considering Race in Angels in America ,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 110. [32] Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre , 101. [33] Peng, “Toward Inclusion and Human Unity,” 82. [34] See, for example, Minwilla, “When Girls Collide,” 104-105; or Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre , 96. [35] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 226. [36] Tony Kushner, Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995), 6. [37] Ibid, 7. [38] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 230. [39] Michael Cadden, “Strange Angel: The Pinklisting of Roy Cohn,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 88. [40] Ron Scapp, “The Vehicle of Democracy: Fantasies toward a (Queer) Nation,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 98. [41] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 228. Footnotes About The Author(s) COURTNEY FERRITER is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Georgia. Her research interests include American pragmatism and 20th century Jewish and African American literature. She has published articles in James Baldwin Review and Education & Culture . She is currently at work on an article about Harryette Mullen’s poetic wordplay as a form of resistance against white supremacy. Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism. Kirsty Johnston. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 240. Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. Amy Cook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Pp. 198. The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. Patricia A. Ybarra. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 247. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler 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 Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF In Tony Kushner’s provocative play Homebody/Kabul (2002), Milton reassures his daughter Priscilla during their trip to Afghanistan where they investigate the disappearance of Pricilla’s mother and Milton’s wife, “we shall respond to this tragedy by growing, growing close. . . .” Priscilla blankly replies, “people don’t grow close from tragedy. They wither is all, Dad, that’s all.” [1] While Milton interprets their situation as a tragic story from catastrophe to future hope, growth, and communality, Priscilla’s view is focused on the concrete suffering, defeat, and regress that will not contribute to some higher purpose. At the heart of this brief exchange between Milton and Priscilla lies a profound paradox which speaks of Kushner’s shrewd placement of tragedy between the human subjects’ transcendence and his or her irrevocable defeat. Similarly, in her play Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief (1994), Paula Vogel, deeply disturbed by the fact that when seeing Shakespeare’s Othello she would rather empathize with Othello than with Desdemona, poses the question if Desdemona deserved death, had she indeed been unfaithful to Othello. In Vogel’s rewrite of this classic tragedy, she reflects on how our individual response to what we see, our pity and empathy, depend on the formal and structural properties of a play but also on our sense of the social legitimacy for these feelings. [2] She shifts the focus from Othello to Desdemona and from Othello’s “flaw” of rogue jealousy to the systemic suppression of women in a patriarchal society. Tony Kushner and Paula Vogel are two representative writers of contemporary American drama and theatre who exhibit a strong interest in tragedy from aesthetic and ethical perspectives. As the articles in this issue reveal, it is in particular the notion of the tragic that, as a mode of thought, presents the social, historical, and cultural predicaments of contemporary human existence. As the plays reconsider and renegotiate our understanding of human suffering, deadly defeat, irreversible conditions of existence, and the loss of hope, they are highly reminiscent of various core tenets of Greek tragedy. [3] Yet, tragedy seems to be an unlikely genre in American literature and theatre, as the dominant cultural narratives foster individualism, self-reliance, the belief in continual progress, speak of self-made men who realize their versions of the American dream, and even bestow the pursuit of happiness as one of the fundamental and “inalienable” rights on Americans. However, these ideals and dominant narratives relegate responsibility to the individual and thereby increase the sense of failure and suffering if they are not fulfilled. [4] Furthermore, they stand in stark contrast to the sense of precarity and vulnerability which Foley and Howard describe in their introduction to the PMLA special issue The Urgency of Tragedy Now as “a pressing sense that crucial social and political institutions are in danger, as is the planet itself.” [5] This feeling has, if anything, intensified over the last five years due to the rise of right-wing parties, the disregard of human rights, the erosion of democratic institutions in various countries, environmental disasters, the fear of a looming economic recession, political tribalism, and the resulting polarization of American society. In our everyday lives, we routinely encounter the ubiquity of the terms “tragedy” and “the tragic” in a wide variety of sad and sorrowful events and occasions. Steiner claims that the “semantic field” pertaining to these terms “remains as indeterminate as its origin . . . rang[ing] from triviality . . . to ultimate disaster and sorrow.” [6] The use of these terms in order to refer to suffering in the real world is reflected by our familiarity with tragedy as a literary genre. As Lehmann reminds us, the tragic is not a representation of reality but a “perspective,” a “mode of seeing” that is produced and facilitated by the “echo chamber of tragic art.” [7] At the same time, as Foley and Howard point out, a rhetoric of the tragic can veil “complicity” by framing events as inevitable instead of resulting from deliberate actions and personal responsibilities. [8] Beyond its colloquial meaning, tragedy refers to one of the most long-lasting dramatic genres. Its history is marked on the one hand by a “tradition of hostility to tragedy” from Plato to Steiner, but also by the recognition of its value from Aristotle to Felski. [9] For example, Steiner famously declared that tragedy as a dramatic genre loses its meaning in our contemporary culture because according to him, “the metaphysics of Christianity and Marxism are anti-tragic.” He concludes: “That, in essence, is the dilemma of modern tragedy.” [10] Even though Steiner was convinced that true tragedies can only exist under strictly limited conditions, looking at the history of the American drama and theatre, there is strong evidence that—despite the lack of academic attention at times—tragedy as a dramatic genre and theatrical practice has been a timely and expressive dramatic form to articulate and comment on the conditio humana in the contemporary world throughout the twentieth century—from Eugene O’Neill and Susan Glaspell, to Arthur Miller, David Mamet, and Suzan-Lori Parks. [11] In fact, during this period, tragedies written by American authors have expressed and thematized realities that dominant ideologies and systems of values have suppressed and marginalized. Steiner’s definition of tragedy does not “fit” these contemporary plays as they are not based on a belief in the metaphysical entities that defined the fate of the tragic hero in antiquity, Shakespeare’s time, and early modern France. However, from a theoretical point of view, over the last 20 years or so, tragedy as a genre has been reevaluated by scholars of various disciplines, [12] and Steiner’s book The Death of Tragedy has permanently shaped the discussion. [13] In this issue on the tragic in American drama and theatre, we offer reflections on the tragic in the tensional field between theory and practice and its potential to explore universal themes of human existence in relation to contemporary realities. Tragedy’s presence in the contemporary theatre landscape [14] —ancient, Shakespearean, or contemporary—gives expression to a “tragic sensibility” that is fueled by the complexities of life today but also by “the toxic matter bequeathed by the past to the present.” [15] In fact, tragedy as a literary and dramatic form has lost none of its creative, thematic, and aesthetic fascination and attracts dramatists, theatre practitioners, and philosophers alike. Tragedy and the tragic are often used interchangeably. Yet, what constitutes the idea of the tragic in American drama and theatre of today? Contemporary playwrights search for ways of expressing a sense of the tragic by exploring the inconsistencies of American myths with the individual’s situation. The essays collected in this issue explore these reflections on the tragic in contemporary American drama and theatre by combining an interest in aesthetics with a reference to current and local cultural, social, and political debates. They address in particular how American dramatists reflect on, rewrite, actualize, and interrogate the potential of the tragic and tragedy as a dramatic form in regards to the troubling question of what constitutes pain and suffering. The essays speak of a fascination with the tragic as a model of thought which manifests itself in a mode of writing, interpretation, and expression through which playwrights raise fundamental questions about the causes of human suffering. Some draw compelling connections to the state of national politics, the alarming generational traumas caused by wars fought by the US throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and oppressive and dehumanizing societal structures that allow for racism and discrimination. In this respect, many plays conceive of the tragic not as a metaphysical category but as a mode of interpretation and as a symbolic representation that correlates human suffering with particular moments and conditions in US American society and history. The tragic dimensions of human experience that the plays envision dispel an exile of responsibility, cause, and guilt to the metaphysics of fate, gods, and an indifferent universe. Instead, they reveal their particular potency as a mode of affect and formal experimentation and thereby invoke an ethics of self-reflexive confrontation. Almost all plays discussed in this issue (e.g. the plays by Kushner, Hudes, Rabe, and McLaughlin, and the stage adaptation of Bechdel’s book) draw on music, musical genres, and the return of the past through spectres and ghosts. On a formal level, they provoke the audience’s reflection on contemporary life conditions and renew “perceptions [which have] become increasingly habitual and automatic.” [16] As the essays in this issue show, the tragic offers strong images of making sense of human suffering, freedom, and will. Even though the authors often suggest that the failure of or resistance to human agency are central ideas that inform the sense of the tragic that contemporary plays envision, they also stress the dramas’ remarkable departure from tragedy’s metaphysical determination. Human suffering is captured no longer as inescapable but as a result of the paralyses, grievances, injustices, and negative developments within a society. Indeed, contemporary drama resonates with Christopher Bigsby’s view that, “rebellion ultimately lies at the heart of the tragic sensibility.” [17] This raises ethical questions of individual, collective and structural responsibilities, and “answerability,” but also focuses on agency and control. [18] In this respect, Toby Zinman’s claim that “tragedy demands more of us than tears,” is a reminder that tragedy is also a matter of our commitment and responsibility. [19] In contemporary drama, this recourse to action and agency as important mechanisms in the overcoming of injustices caused by socio-political and historical circumstance is relevant in order to envision alternative, contested, and open, but eventually less dogmatic and normative narratives of change and progress. In his essay “Rewriting Greek Tragedy/Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003),” Konstantinos Blatanis investigates two rewritings of Greek tragedies in the context of recent US American history, arguing that in The Orphan , David Rabe rewrites Aeschylus’s The Oresteia to address the relation between historical circumstance, trauma, and violence. Blatanis elaborates that in this self-reflexive gesture, the play appropriates its own means of interpretation and reflection as it speaks, of the “urgency of its own historical moment” to address the policies and politics of the Vietnam War not only by discursive but also by artistic-affective practices and means. He further argues that the “conscious theatricality through which the play interrogates its own position in history” relates directly to its intention to draw attention to “historical agency as well as . . . political accountability” in recent US history. In a continuation of the essay’s argument, Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003), which is also modeled on Aeschylean tragedies, acknowledges the interrelation between history and human tragedy. According to Blatanis, the process of rewriting ancient Greek tragedies speaks of the critical possibilities offered by the tragic form for dramatists to respond to the failing acknowledgment of historical agency during the Iraq war. Consequently, tragedy resurfaces as a model of reflection most apt for dramatists in order to negotiate the impact and effects of recent historical events. Reading these plays as a “historiographic venture” means viewing the tragic subject in concrete relation with history as a material and actual agent of human existence. In her article “Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy ,” Nathalie Aghoro discusses how the Elliot Trilogy (2012–2014) by acclaimed Latin-American dramatist Quiara Alegría Hudes unearths the tragic mark that US wars left on three generations of a Puerto-Rican family living in present day Philadelphia. Aghoro reads Hudes’s family trilogy as an exploration of the “isolated, tragic subject” that returns from war and his necessity to reconnect and reintegrate into the community. After his service in Iraq, Elliot, the tragic hero of the play, returns to Philadelphia and embarks on an emotional quest to reconnect with the past of his family as he tries to build new relationships in order to overcome a profound feeling of alienation and isolation. The play stages three years in Elliot’s life which are haunted by what Aghoro terms a “fatal error in judgment”: Elliot’s first shooting victim looms in the play as an unceasing, invisible presence. Yet, instead of conceiving of the Aristotelian hamartia as an exemplification of destiny and as an end of human agency, Hudes’s play links this fatal flaw to the inhumane forces of war in which agency itself reveals a highly precarious interrelation between human action and the attribution of guilt and responsibility. On a formal level, Aghoro points out, the expressiveness of a Bach fugue, jazz music, and Puerto-Rican folk music supplement the subject matter as an elemental dramatic force in all three plays and expresses the tragic fragmentation of its characters between disintegration and reintegration, isolation and communality, desperation and hope, and death and life. Aghoro views the trilogy’s rethinking of the tragic as a prism to unearth the play’s engagement with the actual realities of war in light of severe interpersonal alienation and isolation that are internalized by the tragic subjects. In line with its emphasis on the importance of the community as a vital “network of human connections,” the play symbolically represents and stages forms of recovery and healing. The essays collected in this volume show that contemporary American drama’s response to injustices, terrors, and dehumanization are not to be sought in metaphysical forces that are beyond human control, but result from actual material conditions and real historical circumstances. In her article “‘Take Caroline away’: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change ,” Joanna Mansbridge interprets the internalized subservience and reluctance to participate in change by the black maid and main protagonist Caroline Thibodeaux as a “tragic agency of non-performance.” Set in 1963 in the deep south of Louisiana, history is the one agential force that leads to tragic circumstance as the play stages the commodification of black female labor against the omnipresent symbolic legacy of structural oppression and racism. Caroline’s inability and refusal to participate in change draws attention to the play’s interest in the sources and circumstances of Caroline’s existence, which, according to Mansbridge, is marked by an inner rift as she “inhabits an ontological space of abjection—neither subject nor object.” Recalling Blatanis’s reading of contemporary plays, Mansbridge argues that Caroline rejects the unavoidability of human agony as the tragic condition of human existence in order to foreground that “suffering is not inevitable” but results from “larger social conditions” that “reverberat[e] as an ongoing historical present.” Tony Kushner’s preoccupation with theatre as a site to raise questions about the sources and circumstance of human suffering and agony in relation to actual economic, cultural, and political realities of US American society also centrally informs his landmark play Angels in America (1991). In her article “The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America ,” Julia Rössler explores how Kushner’s rethinking of the tragic condition is very much grounded in a political gesture that situates human suffering in relation to unjust and unequal material and historical circumstances that define contemporary American society in the 1980s as one of permanent struggle against the oppressive forces of utopian ideals, one-directional politics, racism, religion, and sexual discrimination. On the one hand, the “poetics of the tragic” that Rössler identifies in Angels in America refer to the play’s rethinking of the tragic condition outside the familiar notions of irreversible fate and finality as it links tragic necessity to the transformative powers of human will and agency. On the other hand, Rössler argues, Kushner develops a distinct dramatic style as the dynamic of interpersonal conflict and the constant clash of different world-views characterize the play’s unique oscillation between conflict and resolution, past and future, defeat and victory, self and other. This reveals the dialectical movement of the play as symbolically referring to the play’s vision of struggle as an elemental force in the striving for societal equilibrium which overcomes the paralyzing forces of tragic circumstance by foregrounding, according to Rössler, the “value of human will and agency.” The tragic as a mode of interpretation and affect is also central to Maureen McDonnell’s discussion of the Broadway musical Fun Home (2015), which is based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006). McDonnell explores in “Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home : Activism and the Advertising of a ‘Lesbian Suicide Musical’” how the marketing campaign dropped the musical’s main themes of suicide and sexual orientation in order to advertise the production as a musical about father-daughter relations, thus emptying the innate tragic dimension of the story of its relevance and meaning. McDonnell discusses how the erasure of the musical’s core subject matter of homosexuality and the fear of centralizing a strong masculine female shows the marginalization of pressing social issues in the genre of the musical, which, McDonnell adds, often offers accessible entertainment and life-affirming stories and is under high pressure to earn a profit. Moreover, McDonnell outlines how lesbian women are usually highly misrepresented and function as comic elements in musical productions rather than as human subjects worthy of serious contemplation: “By featuring a butch lesbian as its lead, Fun Home was culturally revolutionary, providing a cultural—and commercial—landmark for mainstream musical theater,” McDonnell writes. Lesbian women are often framed as essentially tragic figures who are “isolated, doomed, and suicidal.” Fun Home discards such a flat and one-dimensional depiction of a lesbian protagonist as abnormal and insane. Viewing Fun Home through the prism of the tragic reveals its resistance against consensual stereotyping as the tragic conditions of the protagonist’s life result from loss and stigmatization, supposed “normalcy,” and deviation from these arbitrarily set standards. As maintained by McDonnell, these experiences innate to everyday human existence establish the lesbian female protagonist as a more universal character and pave the way for a new and timely politicized tradition of musical productions (for instance mirrored in the legalization of equal marriage at the time of the musical’s run). The essays collected in this guest-edited issue add to the ongoing research and discussion of tragedy and the tragic in contemporary American drama and theatre, even though the limited scale of the project led to the exclusion and neglect of other relevant dramatists. [20] By adding to the debate reflections of concrete examples with regard to the tragic, these essays provide insights into a diverse selection of plays, and the ethical, cosmic, and civic structures they envision through the lens of human action in moments of crisis. As the “persistence of a tragic mode in modernity” pertains to human experiences in a universal way even today, it is increasingly determined by changes and upheavals in the political and socio-cultural dimension that change over time. [21] It is this simultaneity of permanence and variability that requires for the tragic to be continually historicized, rethought, and re-envisioned. This issue is a result of the conference “Tragedy in American Drama and Theatre: Genre—Mediality—Ethics,” held at the University of Augsburg in 2017, a project that was generously supported by the German Research Foundation, the Bavarian American Academy (Munich), Gesellschaft der Freunde (Society of Friends) and the research program Ethics of Textual Cultures (both Augsburg University). We are thankful for all authors who have agreed to publish their research in this issue. Furthermore, we would like to extend our thanks to the peer reviewers who have generously offered their expertise during the process, and in particular to the editors of JADT , Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson, for their support and interest in our project. Finally, we would like to thank Hubert Zapf for his insightful comments and support during the organization of the conference and Katharina Braun for meticulously proof-reading the essays. References [1] Tony Kushner, Homebody/Kabul (London: Nick Hern Books, 2002), 40. [2] Paula Vogel, Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief , in The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2013). [3] For a discussion of the aesthetic and formal dimensions of ancient tragedy in opposition to a “modern tragic sensibility” see Rita Felski, “Introduction,” in Rethinking Tragedy ed. Rita Felski (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2008): 10–11. [4] Compare with Rita Felski’s summary of Terry Eagleton’s argument in “Introduction,” 9. See also David P. Palmer, “Introduction,” in Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama: From O’Neill to the Twenty-First Century ed. David Palmer (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018), 8–9; and Peter Lancelot Mallios, “Tragic Constitution: United States Democracy and Its Discontents,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 708–72. [5] Helene P. Foley and Jean E. Howard, “Introduction: The Urgency of Tragedy Now,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 617. [6] George Steiner, “‘Tragedy,’ Reconsidered,” in Rethinking Tragedy , ed. Felski, 29. [7] Hans-Thies Lehmann. “Drama, Tragödie und Auslaufmodell Stadttheater,” interview by Arno Widmann. Frankfurter Rundschau, 26 August 2014, (our translation). [8] Compare with Foley and Howard, “Introduction,” 617. [9] Adrian Poole, Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 62. [10] George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1961), 324. [11] Compare with Palmer, ed., Visions of Tragedy ; Brenda Murphy, “Tragedy in the Modern American Theater,” in A Companion to Tragedy , ed. Rebecca Bushnell (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 488–504. [12] Compare with Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, reprint 2007); John D. Lyons, Tragedy and the Return of the Dead (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018); Stephen D. Dowden and Thomas P. Quinn, Tragedy and the Tragic in German Literature, Art, and Thought (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2014); Miguel de Beistegui and Simon Sparks, eds., Philosophy and Tragedy (London, New York: Routledge, 2000). [13] For a range of essays on the theorization of tragedy and the tragic before the 1960s see Laurence Michel and Richard B. Sewall, eds., Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963). [14] For example, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre), Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (Neil Simon Theatre), Paula Vogel’s Indecent (Cort Theatre). See also Eleftheria Ioannidou, Greek Fragments in Postmodern Frames. Rewriting Tragedy 1970–2005 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). [15] Poole, Very Short Introduction , 35. [16] David Savran, “Loose Screws: An Introduction,” in The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays , Paula Vogel (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1996), xi. [17] Christopher Bigsby, “Foreword,” in Visions , ed. David Palmer, xvii. [18] Felski, “Introduction,” 11. [19] Toby Zinman, “American Theatre since 1990,” in Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama , 213. [20] E.g. Robert J. Andreach, Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre (Lanham: University Press of America); Palmer, Visions ; Kevin J. Wetmore, Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy and African American Theatre. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003). [21] Felski, “Introduction,” 14. Footnotes About The Author(s) JOHANNA HARTMANN is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where she works on her second book project on the modernist short play. In her research, she is interested in American drama and theater, short literature, literature and politics ( Censorship and Exile , V&R 2015; co-edited with Hubert Zapf), literary visuality, and contemporary prose literature ( Literary Visuality in Siri Hustvedt’s Works: Phenomenological Perspectives (Königshausen & Neumann 2016; Zones of Focused Ambiguity in Siri Hustvedt’s Works (De Gruyter 2016; with Christine Marks and Hubert Zapf). She is one of the organisers of the international conference “Tragedy in American Drama and Theatre: Genre – Mediality – Ethics” and guest-editor of this issue. JULIA RÖSSLER works at the department for North American Literary and Cultural Studies at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt. In her dissertation, she considers the principal role of mimesis in contemporary Anglophone drama. She is one of the organisers of the international conference “Tragedy in American Drama and Theatre: Genre – Mediality – Ethics” and guest-editor of this issue. 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.

Meredith Conti Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 1 Visit Journal Homepage Community Circles and Love Triangles: Gun Violence and Belonging in Oklahoma! and West Side Story Meredith Conti By Published on November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF As the national tour of Daniel Fish’s critically acclaimed Oklahoma! crisscrossed the United States in 2022, company members found themselves in unfamiliar territory. Instead of the stunned silences and standing ovations that typified the production’s reception at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, the national tour’s audiences offered an unexpectedly prickly bouquet of responses, including walkouts, boos, taunts, “thumbs down” gestures, refund demands, social media rants, and in one case, “vomiting in the balcony.” ( [1] ) Of course, Oklahoma! had its share of detractors since the production’s pre-Broadway days at St. Ann’s Warehouse, just as the national tour’s hostile reception was neither comprehensive or invariable; still, in cities across the country, the revival inspired tonally different audience responses to its New York City run. In a 2023 HowlRound article, Jud Fry actor Christopher Barrow suggests some likely triggers in Fish’s Oklahoma! for the tour’s audiences, including its aesthetic boldness, its identity-conscious casting, and its refusal to treat its source material as canonical, precious, and unchanging. ( [2] ) (It is worth noting, too, that the production’s original deep thrust staging was flattened to fit the US’s network of proscenium theatres). While I, like many non-coastal Americans, bristle at generalized depictions of our theatregoers as less open-minded or equipped to handle experimental or challenging performances, I do suspect that Bannow missed a potential trigger for heartland audiences: the revival takes direct aim at the nation’s ever-hungry gun culture and those who continually nourish it through word and action. ( [3] ) A buoyant, nostalgic, and unproblematically patriotic musical Fish’s Oklahoma! is not. But was Oklahoma! ever? The theatre of post-Newtown America (or post-UVA, post-Pulse Nightclub, post-Las Vegas, post-Tops Market….) has yet to fully reckon with a discomfiting, perhaps inconvenient reality: the industry and its artists have long been active, direct participants in the country’s gun culture. Indeed, many of the theatre’s cumulative products, from anti-gun docudramas and Annie Get Your Gun revivals to vaudevillian William Tell tricks and Wild West Show battle reenactments, are not just embodied responses to gun culture, they are gun culture. While the term itself has become something of a partisan battleground, “gun culture” is an omnipresent, self-reinforcing system of beliefs, values, and feelings about firearms and their usage, as well as the behavioral actions and socioeconomic, cultural, and political transactions that inspire or sustain them. Gun cultures exist anywhere guns circulate, and therefore “gun culture” as a term lacks specificity until contextualized by the society in which it functions. In what follows, I treat the phrase “US-American gun culture” as neither neutral nor strictly pejorative or celebratory, though I favor Pamela Haag’s assertion that gun companies have long exerted a behemothic and tactical influence on how Americans regard guns. ( [4] ) Despite the relative youth of the nation’s gun culture, it is a maddeningly complex, enduring, and variform organism. It whispers in myths; it shouts at the gun range. It operates simultaneously on the personal and institutional levels and engages manifold publics. It is animated by patrolling border militias and simulated gunfights at the OK Corral, and it is embodied by gun control activists and the twelve-year-old girl cradling her first shotgun in the glow of the Christmas tree. It meticulously sutures guns to American identity, and American life to guns. And whether or not we like it, the theatre regularly supplies the thread. Onstage gunplay not only disturbs audiences by surrogating actual gun violence or reenacting trauma, however; it also delights, astounds, amuses, and disarms. Nowhere is this capacious narrative and affective flexibility more apparent than in the American musical canon, where firearms serve a startling variety of functions while sliding easily along spectrums of genre, style, and tone. They are the go-to props of musicals set or staged in wartime, symbolic of hostile environments, courageous heroes, and desperate aggressors. They are the accoutrement of comedy and the drivers of tragedy. And, of course, they persist as ambivalent, malleable, and unpredictable indexers of political schisms, social inequities, and the empire-building violence required by Western patriarchy, colonization, and capitalism. As a vehicle for propelling questions of US-American gun culture(s) into the popular consciousness, the musical is a uniquely equipped performance form. Mounted to the notes of soaring harmonies, transported on the limbs of undulating, often virtuosic bodies, or underscored by elaborate landscapes and soundscapes, gun narratives intensify, stretch, transmute, and become unsettled in the musical medium. Despite their thematic and aesthetic heterogeneity, however, American gun musicals tend to press guns into service as potent indicators of belonging or marginality—often by distinguishing natural or paradigmatic Americanness through authoritative gun use or by harnessing guns as tools that induct characters into or expulse them from meaningful relationships, identity groups, or communities. ( [5] ) Indeed, with few exceptions, a gun musical’s firearms help compose, fortify, alter, and/or destroy human connections, be they romantic couples, love triangles, family units, friend circles, or communities organized by place, politics, religion, race, and other social or material conditions. To trace the guns in Hamilton (2015), for example, is to see guns violently regulate American identity/ies. ( [6] ) The mainspring of 2000’s The Wild Party ’s climactic gunfire, to cite another, is a love triangle that materializes and dematerializes in a single evening. And while The Wild Party is fictional and Hamilton fictional ized , intimate partner and intra/inter-community gun violence in the US is real, persistent, and documented. According to the John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, over half of all intimate partner homicides in the US are committed with firearms, and “a woman is five times more likely to be murdered when her abuser has access to a gun.” ( [7] ) In addition, the Deputy Police Commissioner of Buffalo, New York argued in 2021 that an “overwhelming number of shootings and murders in Buffalo stem from revenge, retaliation and escalating beefs,” many of them now fueled by social media. ( [8] ) American gun violence carves up communities along and across categories of identity and culture: Black Americans are ten times more likely to die by gun homicide than white Americans;( [9] ) 4.5 million US women alive today report being threatened with a gun;( [10] ) firearms were used in 73% of trans American homicides between 2017 and 2021;( [11] ) current or former members of the US military make up a disproportionately high number of gun suicides;( [12] ) and “gun deaths recently surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children,” making the US an “extreme outlier” in gun fatalities in minors. ( [13] ) Still the country’s gun culture continues to thrive, buoyed by a formidable supply of ideologies, narratives, factoids, slogans, and figureheads that operate both within and far beyond gun-positive spaces. Germane to this essay is the recurring deployment of gun industry propaganda that reinforces an insider/outsider binary of American life. This includes mythic depictions of gun ownership that imply gun-handling is an endower of true, unassailable Americanness, and that personal firearms enable US-Americans to safeguard their loved ones and communities from external threats (despite data that concludes that guns in homes increase the risk of gun injury and death). ( [14] ) In this essay, I analyze how guns and the people who carry them shape and reshape two of the American musical’s classic human groupings: the community circle and the love triangle. I engage in close readings of two Golden Age musicals, Oklahoma! (1943) and West Side Story (1957), as well as their recent, gun-heavy Broadway revivals, in order to illuminate how firearms arbitrate or exacerbate race- and class-based conflicts within the depicted communities and “solve” the musicals’ imbalanced love triangles¾either facilitating a community-sustaining union or preventing a community-conjoining union from occurring. Indeed, in assessing these musicals and their twenty-first-century revivals as gun musicals, distinctive patterns in the gendering, racializing, and classing of American guns and gun violence become evident. These patterns, not surprisingly, are directly tethered to and expressive of the gun cultures and the wider sociopolitical landscapes in which the productions were created. As I argue, the original musicals reified conventional notions of the appropriate US-American gun handler as the white, Christian, cishet man, presenting their gun possessions as uncomplicated, necessary, and intuitive within the plays’ white supremacist patriarchies. The revivals, however, attempt to adapt the musicals’ guns to the country’s hyper-violent present, both by amplifying the gun’s role in catalyzing domestic and community violence and inculcating more participants into gun culture systems, including through the increased representation of skillful women, Black, and Latine gun handlers. In manifesting this provocative transferring of power, the revivals variously challenge and fortify the mythic triangulation of firearms, white masculinity, and Americanness. Shotgun Weddings and Handgun Honeymoons: The Guns of Oklahoma! (1943) and West Side Story (1957) Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway two years before World War II’s Allies and Axis powers laid down their arms. West Side Story ’s Broadway opening occurred one day after the Little Rock Nine, surrounded by heavily armed National Guardsmen, integrated Arkansas’s Central High School. While mapping both musicals onto a timeline of US gun events is a useful task, it is more meaningful to determine how Golden Age gun musicals reflected and upheld prevailing firearm discourses and representations. Following a brief primer on the material and metaphorical contours of midcentury America’s gun culture, I will assess Oklahoma! and West Side Story ’s guns—and, more importantly, gun handlers—as chief arbitrators of belonging or marginality within the musicals’ imagined communities. By the 1940s and 50s, US-American gun culture bore only a partial resemblance to its nineteenth-century predecessor(s). As homegrown demand for firearms dried up following the American Civil War, the US gun industry attempted to stem the tide by pursuing foreign military contracts, especially in Europe, and by popularizing civilian gun ownership and use in North America. Late-1800s ads from Winchester, Ithaca Gun Company, and other manufacturers increasingly appealed to modern women and family men, recommending shooting sports—hunting, target shooting, and trapshooting—as healthful, safe, character building, suitable for women and children, and implicitly American (despite the sports’ much longer history in Europe). ( [15] ) Meanwhile, the newly founded National Rifle Association (NRA) promoted the creation of rifle clubs, training courses, and competitive shooting matches with an eye toward advancing marksmanship in the general public and, by extension, deepening the country’s reserve of skilled shooters. ( [16] ) In the twentieth century’s early decades, increasing numbers of white middle-class women took up shooting sports, while gun manufacturers and conservative commentators intensified their use of fear-based rhetoric to present personal gun ownership as the effective defense against home invasions and violent assaults. The latter exploited white Americans’ anxieties around race, immigration, and the specter of “urban crime” and reified whiteness as a prerequisite for proper gun ownership in the United States. Such rhetoric persisted through the mid-twentieth century as the civil rights movement re-enlivened debates about which Americans had (or should have) uncontestable gun rights. Some civil rights leaders, for example, proclaimed the right to bear arms as essential both to protecting Black communities from violent white mobs and to fully enfranchising African Americans as US citizens. As historian Nicholas Johnson notes, Rosa Parks, T.R.M. Howard, Daisy Bates, and other Black activists whose families were terrorized by firebombs and burning crosses “embraced private [armed] self-defense and political nonviolence without any sense of contradiction.” ( [17] ) As a weary but victorious America emerged from two World Wars, flush with good-guys-with-guns narratives, the gun industry endeavored to amend US history by inserting firearms at every page turn. According to Haag, midcentury ads “retroactively fetishized” guns and boasted “[c]asual assertions…that Americans had ‘always’ loved guns, or that they had a ‘timeless’ tradition of gun fluency, a ‘priceless tradition’ in firearms, or had ‘long known how to shoot,’ with ‘every boy’ trained as a marksman.” ( [18] ) Of especial importance in this historical re-envisioning was the mythologizing of the Wild West. Colt’s ads “rehabilitated the cowboy” into a “steely-eyed” and courageous icon of white American masculinity, while Winchester marketed its Model 1873 rifle as The Gun that Won the West. ( [19] ) Mythic depictions of the American West swept through 1940s and 50s popular culture like wildfire. Taking a page from the dime novels, frontier melodramas, and Wild West Shows of the nineteenth century, midcentury movies, magazines, and television series invited American audiences to visit an Old West of unparalleled danger, bravery, and beauty, with expert gun handling serving as the coin of the realm. ( [20] ) It was within this gun culture that Oklahoma! and West Side Story ’s original productions operated. In an essay illogically asserting that politics are “absent” in American theatre, political theorist and theatre writer Benjamin Barber concedes that “on second inspection” the dual love plots in Oklahoma! “emerge as emblems of a powerful social context”: No less than Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle , whose social context is a struggle between goatherds and vintners over the right to use a contested valley, Oklahoma! puts the question of whether the territory can unite as a state around a common civic faith and a common political identity, or will be allowed to fracture and disintegrate along the fissures opened up by the competition of its economic factions. ( [21] ) These adversarial populations—farmers and cowmen, settlers and nomads—coalesce (if only outwardly) as the Indian and Oklahoman territories become one state. ( [22] ) As Bruce Kirle explains, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! “historicizes the isolationist/ interventionist conflict that preceded and shadowed America’s participation in World War II” and argues for unity in the face of a common enemy: the spread of fascism. ( [23] ) Yet national belonging in Oklahoma! is determined not just politically or geographically, but also socioeconomically and racially, as Andrea Most and Warren Hoffman have ably illustrated. ( [24] ) Furthermore, the musical’s male characters employ violence (or the threat of violence) as a way of formalizing the community’s boundaries, with firearms often accelerating the admissions process or keeping outsiders at bay. Indeed, the firearm’s vital role in US settler colonialism is plainly wrought in the musical. Though the original libretto contains no staged or referenced gun deaths, it also notably contains no Indigenous characters, suggesting that the settlers’ rifles have already succeeded in ejecting Native communities from their lands (“Oklahoma” comes from the Chocktaw “okla humma,” meaning “Red People”) and denying their identities as US-Americans. ( [25] ) Because Rodgers and Hammerstein “erased [the] indigenous complexity” of the musical’s source material, Lynn Riggs’s 1930 play Green Grow the Lilacs , and whitewashed its frontier community, Oklahoma! ’s guns persist as the designated material and symbolic deliverers of Manifest Destiny. ( [26] ) In more recent productions—at DC’s Arena Stage (2010), the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2018), and Broadway’s Circle in the Square (2019)—multiracial casts reconstitute Oklahoma! ’s typically homogeneous community, “unsettl[ing] preconceptions of the frontier as white,” as Donatella Galella argues. ( [27] ) However, in Oklahoma! ’s first Broadway run guns appeared predominantly in the hands of white men, though some scholars read farmhand Jud Fry’s sexual savagery as representative of a stereotyped class- and race-based Otherness that “cannot be whitened.” ( [28] ) (Curly’s description of Jud as “bullet-colored, growly man,” indicating, perhaps, a tanned, dirty laborer’s bronzy skin tone, nevertheless leaves open the possibility that Jud is not white). ( [29] ) The only woman to touch a gun is Aunt Eller, Oklahoma! ’s no-nonsense matriarch; in the spontaneous brawl between farmers and cowboys at the top of Act Two, Aunt Eller “ grabs a gun from some man’s holster and fires it, ” putting an abrupt halt to the fighting. She then points the gun at groups of men, coercing them to rejoin the singing. They do. Within Oklahoma! ’s strict gender binary, Aunt Eller is unique. “She is an uncommonly public woman who mediates between male and female culture,” notes musicologist Susan C. Cook, but “[h]er public power comes at a cost; widowed, she is a desexualized crone, who stands apart from the other women[.]” ( [30] ) Gun handling, then, is a mark of Aunt Eller’s singularity. If Oklahoma! ’s guns exclusively belong to white men, what do they signal about the men’s belonging within the musical’s real and aspirational American communities? Two scenes offer clues: cowboy Curly McClain and antisocial farmhand Jud Fry’s private meeting in Act One, and Act Two’s box social. In the first, Curly and Jud converge in Jud’s lodgings, the farm’s defunct smokehouse, where Curly goads Jud into imagining killing himself (the better to live on in the memories of his mourners). On the smokehouse’s walls, Rodgers and Hammerstein specify, hang the accoutrements of manual farm labor and images of nearly naked women. Below them sit limited furnishings: a “grimy” and unmade bed, a spittoon, and a table and chairs. ( [31] ) Within this hypermasculine space, a remote and decommissioned site of work that now hosts the community pariah, each of Jud and Curly’s gun acts—for they are acts in the theatrical sense—exteriorize the men’s identical objectives: to triumph over their competitor, win Laurey and her farmland, and through these conjoined possessions achieve a level of community integration and security that presently evades them both. The acts escalate in intensity as the scene progresses. Jud seizes his pistol as Curly approaches the smokehouse and begins to methodically clean it; following a spate of Curly’s insults, Jud “reflex[ively]” pulls its trigger and blasts a bullet into the ceiling; Curly demonstrates his shooting skill by firing a bullet through knothole in the smokehouse wall. Due to their solitude and emotional intimacy, Jud and Curly’s forced displays of heteronormative frontier masculinity reverberate with both violent and homoerotic potential. But rather than the smokehouse containing the men’s armed antagonism, the guns audibly broadcast it, drawing Aunt Eller, Ali Hakim, and several others to their spot. “’S all right!” Aunt Eller assures those who have gathered. “Nobody hurt, just a pair of fools swapping’ noises.” ( [32] ) The box social is a community-sanctioned pageant of territorial masculinity masquerading as a charity auction. Like the display behaviors of male peacocks and harbor seals, Oklahoma! ’s men flaunt their authority, capital, and sexual devotion, but unlike the female peacocks and harbor seals in the market for a mate, the eligible women whose lunch hampers (and selves) are up for auction lack the agency to choose or refuse bidders. “ Oklahoma! thus embodies what Erin Addison calls an ‘American secular ideology’ of individualism and freedom for men and romance/marriage for women,” offers Cook. ( [33] ) Within this frontier thunderdome of cishet male competition, guns are enlisted as valuable commodities and tools of intimidation. In negotiations as part of the box social’s transactional politics are Oklahoma!’ s two love triangles. Curly and Jud are in pursuit of Laurey, who understands she must choose a man to help manage the farm she has inherited. The flirtatious Ado Annie, meanwhile, is torn between sweet but featherbrained cowboy Will Parker and the “Persian peddler / Lothario” Ali Hakim, the latter of whom is an ethnoracial outsider “typically played broadly and theatrically—for laughs—via the conventions of vaudeville,” writes Kirle. ( [34] ) Given that Ali’s interest in Ado Annie is carnal rather than marital, Will and Ali’s battle over Ado Annie’s hamper is an asymmetrical affair. Its lopsidedness is also engendered by violence, as Ado Annie’s father Carnes forces Ali to participate at gunpoint, prodding the peddler in the back with the tip of his gun to ratchet up the bidding. Though Will loses the hamper to Ali, he “gets” Ado Annie by satisfying Carnes’s demand that his daughter’s husband-to-be be financially solvent. Later, Ali marries the universally irritating Gertie Cummings in a shotgun wedding, consequently abandoning his nomadic lifestyle and assimilating into the territory folks’ white Christian community, his amorous ways and his Otherness curbed by the promise of gun violence. In Oklahoma! , the fathers’ firearms orchestrate unions that are advantageous for the community’s survival but not necessarily for marital harmony. Sung by the musical’s bachelors with Ali singing lead, Act One’s “It’s a Scandal! It’s a Outrage!” lampoons the men’s “entrapment” by armed fathers and their supposedly eager daughters: MEN: It’s gotten’ so you cain’t have any fun! Every daughter has a father with a gun! It’s a scandal, it’s a outrage! How a gal gets a husband today!( [35] ) Winning Laurey’s hamper (and presumably her hand in marriage) also requires considerable capital. In an effort to best Jud—who eventually bids “all I got in the world,” two years of savings from farm work—Curly sells off the vital assets of a cowboy: first his saddle, then his horse, and finally his gun. As the coup de grâce of the men’s acrimonious bidding, Curly drawing his gun is read first as a physical threat, frightening the crowd and inspiring Jud to retreat. For Scott McMillin, Curly’s capacity with a gun appeals to Laurey because it keeps Jud’s violence in check: “The cowboy-hero handles a gun so well that even the hired hand has to worry about him—that is one of the hero’s desirable attributes.” ( [36] ) Even after his gun sells, Curly secures Laurey’s hamper, her hand, and newfound respectability as a chosen caretaker of colonized Oklahoman land. Of the three guns in Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story , the famed musical that transports Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to a hot and claustrophobic Manhattan neighborhood in the 1950s, two tellingly belong to law enforcement officials. Lieutenant Schrank and Officer Krupke are white supremacist authority figures who enforce an inequitable set of rules for rival street gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the (traditionally) white ethnic Jets. The officers never draw their guns, at least according to the Broadway libretto. Schrank is a plainclothes cop whose weapon is presumably concealed by his suit jacket; Krupke’s sidearm, however, is always a visible part of his police uniform, indexing his simultaneous, conflated roles as neighborhood protector and aggressor. The third gun, and the only one that discharges within the course of the musical, is extracted from its apartment hiding place in Act Two, Scene One by Chino, a young Shark desperate to avenge the death of the gang’s leader, Bernardo. Chino unwraps the gun, which the stage directions specify has been stored in a cloth “the same color as BERNARDO’s shirt,” and jams it into his pocket before exiting, affiliating West Side Story ’s sole civilian firearm with two Puerto Rican immigrant men. ( [37] ) At the musical’s climax Chino finds his target, former Jet member Tony, and fatally shoots him as he runs into the arms of his lover Maria, Bernardo’s sister and Chino’s intended wife. As “CHINO stands very still, bewildered by the gun limp in his hand,” the lovers sing fragments of “Somewhere,” the musical’s utopic ballad of freedom and inclusion, before Tony succumbs to his gunshot wound. In the action that follows, Maria silently beckons for Chino’s gun and then turns it on Sharks and Jets alike, who at the report of the gunshot have amassed in a “ritual assembly” around Tony’s body. “How many bullets are left, Chino? Enough for you? And you? All of you? WE ALL KILLED HIM; and my brother and Riff. I, too. I CAN KILL NOW BECAUSE I HATE NOW. How many can I kill, Chino? How many – and still have one bullet left for me?” Unable to pull the trigger, Maria throws the gun away and collapses on the ground, sobbing. In the musical’s final moments, Tony’s body is carried away by Jet and Shark boys, a procession forms, and Maria follows in its wake, “lift[ing] her head proudly and triumphantly.” The neighborhood’s adults, including Schrank and Krupke, remain onstage, “bowed, alone, useless” as the curtain falls. ( [38] ) The importance of this gun, as a material node in which the musical’s themes of racialized violence, urban youth culture, and generational discord seem to converge, has largely gone unacknowledged in the existing literature, likely because the gun is introduced relatively late in the play, after Bernardo and Jet leader Riff die by knife-wounds in the gangs’ late-night rumble. However, even in the pre-van Hove world of West Side Story , a world that Brian Herrera describes as “characterized by the constant threat of incipient violence,” guns are conspicuous. ( [39] ) Consider the Jets’ first conversation about rumbling with the Sharks. Riff suggests that the Sharks “might ask for bottles or knives or zip guns,” inspiring a worried “Zip guns…Gee!” from Baby John, the youngest of the group. ( [40] ) Guns are named again at the gangs’ war council, not by Riff or Bernardo but by Tony, who attempts to mitigate mounting tensions by urging the leaders to agree to a fair fight, sans weapons. “Bottles, knives, guns! What a coop full of chickens!” he baits. ( [41] ) In both conversations, the Jets are depicted as reluctant to arm themselves with guns as a way of holding their turf: “I wanna hold it like we always held it, with skin!” Riff assures his gang in Act One. ( [42] ) And yet, in Jerome Robbins’ choreography the Jets habitually map onto their bodies gestures of guns and gun violence. Jets wannabe Anybodys responds to A-Rab’s insults about her appearance by shooting him with her finger, prompting Baby John to ask about the maiming power of zip guns. No one answers. Similarly in “Cool,” a frenetic dance in which the Jets attempt to regulate their volatile, pre-rumble energies, A-Rab shapes his hand into a gun, pantomimes firing it, and shouts “pow!,” a close mirroring of Anybodys’ finger shot. In a choreographic replication of cycles of violence, A-Rab is now no longer the victim but the shooter. Ying Zhu and Daniel Belgrad note in their study of dance in West Side Story ’s 1961 film adaptation that “Over the course of the dance, this [gun] gesture is not eliminated, but is disciplined and integrated into the emotional fabric of coolness, so that Action, at the dance’s end, can control it and use it.” ( [43] ) The Jets’ pretend gunplay, Zhu and Belgrad argue, can be situated within the musical’s larger motif of subversive “play [as] the bodily assertion of vitality in the face of adult regulation.” ( [44] ) Of course, this simulated battleground of finger pistols and vocalized “pows” —itself a reflection of popular mid-century children’s games pitting cops against robbers, cowboys against Indians—fails to prevent real gun violence from materializing. As Herrera, David Román, Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, and Frances Negrón-Muntaner have all forcefully argued, West Side Story ’s message of racial tolerance comes at an ironic cost: the perpetuation of Latine stereotypes and the faulty association of urban US-American crime to rising rates of immigration. ( [45] ) In the original lyrics to “America,” Shark girl Anita paints an unseemly picture of her native island, depicting Puerto Rico’s inhabitants as disease-ridden, oversexed, poor, and prone to unrestrained bursts of gun violence: “Always the hurricanes blowing, / Always the population growing, / And the money owing, / And the babies crying, / And the bullets flying.” ( [46] ) The fact that the only gun that takes a life in West Side Story is owned by one Shark and fired by another is neither inconsequential nor unrelated to Bernardo and Chino’s Puerto-Ricanness and their shared status as racialized outsiders who, if Anita’s lyrical tirade is at all based on reality, brought the problems of their homeland with them. The lie Anita tells Tony after being sexually assaulted at Doc’s store—that Chino has fatally shot Maria—is not only plausible, given Chino’s armed state; it also accords with the feud’s escalating violence and anticipates the ballistic trauma to come. In contrast to the white police officers’ holstered weapons, Bernardo’s gun was unsecured in the home and becomes uncontainable on the streets. With Maria’s seizure of the gun, its relationship to the Latine community is solidified. Though she is clearly unaccustomed to handling the gun, its scriptive thingness immediately instructs her how to channel what the libretto terms her “savage” rage. ( [47] ) America Reloaded: Gun-Centric Revivals of Oklahoma! (2019) and West Side Story (2020) In the midst of its direct transfer from St. Ann’s Warehouse to Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, Daniel Fish’s revival of Oklahoma! grabbed headings in early 2019 by announcing it would be Broadway’s first “Gun Neutral” production. For every visible gun onstage, Oklahoma! ’s producers donated to “organizations working to destroy illegal guns” as well as to those providing arts and STEM programming to communities disproportionately impacted by US-American gun violence. Speaking on the production’s partnership with the non-partisan Gun Neutral Initiative, lead producer Eva Price remarked: “[j]ust because a particular story calls for the presence of a particular weapon, that doesn’t mean that we have to remain complacent in America’s gun-violence epidemic. Helping to destroy firearms that shouldn’t be in circulation is both a privilege and a responsibility.” ( [48] ) Implicit in this gun neutral pledge is an acknowledgement that even prop firearms cannot claim neutrality in 2019 (if indeed they ever could). Furthermore, monetary pledges concede that gun cultures and politics are inextricably bound up in economic transactions and therefore tend to capacitate the financially privileged. Much like carbon offsetting, a gun neutral pledge operates from an assumption that even simulated gunplay has the potential to cause harm; it attempts to mitigate possible negative effects, even as it admits the perceived inevitability of theatrical and mediatized guns in popular culture. Shortly after the news went viral, the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action characterized the production’s move as “‘smack[ing] of antigun political pandering.’” ( [49] ) There is much to attend to in Fish’s Oklahoma! and Belgian auteur Ivo van Hove’s revival of West Side Story (not the least of which are van Hove’s casting of a sexual predator in the role of Bernardo and staging of Anita’s assault as a penetrative rape). ( [50] ) But rather than comprehensively review the productions or summarize their critical receptions—the latter no small task, given the strikingly polarized opinions of Fish’s and van Hove’s work—I wish to compare the productions’ transformative treatments of guns with those advanced by their source productions. ( [51] ) Historically, the guns of Oklahoma! and West Side Story have operated as connotatively ambiguous objects until they are lifted into service by their handlers. That is, Curly, Jud, and Carnes’s guns are expected accessories for “territory folks” that become threatening with use. Fish and van Hove’s guns, by contrast, persistently and independently menace, from the racks of guns hanging on Oklahoma! ’s auditorium walls, always in view and materially and spatially inculcating theatregoers into the production’s culture of guns, to the pistol tattoo above Chino’s hip, a symbol of his early indoctrination into a gun-saturated world (he is now forever “armed”) and a foreshadowing of West Side Story ’s tragic climax. The revivals’ guns not only consummate the violent impulses of their operators, they engender personal and systemic violence. Of Fish’s Oklahoma! Soraya Nadia McDonald asserts, “social order is enforced and maintained by guns,” a description easily transferrable to van Hove’s New York. ( [52] ) In a conspicuous extension of the original musicals’ gun narratives, the revivals’ community circles and love triangles are contoured or irrevocably broken by armed characters and gun violence. Fish and van Hove take different tacks in mining and reframing their source material. Fish retains Hammerstein’s book almost in its entirety, embedding his major interventions interstitially or via bespoke stagings of scenes and songs. In its most dramatic departure from the libretto, Fish’s Oklahoma! reconceptualizes Jud’s killing as a deliberate gun death. On Curly and Laurey’s wedding day, Jud kisses the bride and presents the couple with a gift: his gun, and an opportunity to end his life. It is an earnest plea with a subtle “gotcha” undertone, for if granted, Jud’s slaughter will forever haunt their wedding day memories. Curly, with Laurey’s wordless blessing, accepts Jud’s offer and shoots him. Husband and wife are sprayed by blood as Jud crumples to the ground. ( [53] ) By replacing Jud’s accidental stabbing with the close-range gunning down of an unarmed man (however consensual the victim), Fish renders the impromptu trial that exonerates Curly of criminal culpability distressingly perfunctory. Curly’s acquittal, writes The Atlantic ’s Todd S. Purdum, “feels less like justice and more like rough complicity in vigilantism.” ( [54] ) West Side Story ’s single, fatal gunshot remains as scripted, though van Hove’s fixation on US-American gun violence is manifest throughout the production. Moreover, with a compressed run-time of 105 minutes and no intermission, the revival hastens toward Tony’s gun death without West Side Story ’s customary flashes of levity: “I Feel Pretty” has been cut and “Gee, Officer Krupke” refashioned. Though Fish began developing Oklahoma! in 2007 at Bard College, its 2019 Broadway iteration and the 2020 West Side Story revival hum with unmistakable nowness, dialoguing directly with US-American gun politics in the Trumpian age. Both stories are set in an unspecified present and feature multiracial casts, with gender expansive ( West Side Story ) and disabled actors ( Oklahoma! ) further diversifying the depicted communities. ( [55] ) Fish’s reimagined frontier boasts an interracial love triangle (Rebecca Naomi Jones’s Laurey, Damon Daunno’s Curly, and Patrick Vaill’s Jud) and a Black federal marshal (Anthony Cason as Cord Elam), the latter’s powerlessness during the murder trial suggestive not just of the community’s fervor to exonerate Curly but the precariousness of Cord’s endowed authority, even when armed. The antagonistic outsider Jud Fry is no longer a brutish farmhand, but a brooding, wiry, plaid-and-hoodie-wearing blonde, “a repository of loneliness and disconnection” who seeks community belonging and validation through Laurey. ( [56] ) Developed by Vaill and Fish over years of collaboration, this Jud oozes a despondent vulnerability that adheres his villainous acts¾including sexually assaulting Laurey and attempting to kill Curly with a switchblade masquerading as a kaleidoscope¾to his ‘victimization’ by an insular, cliquish community. “[It is t]he act of someone who feels pushed into a corner,” Vaill claims of Jud’s foiled murder plot. “This is someone who feels he does not have control, which is scary.” Of Jud’s role as the story’s villain, Vaill is quick to qualify: “He’s cast as the villain …. At the end of the day, he’s guilty of being in love with someone that people don’t think he should be in love with.” ( [57] ) Fish and Vaill’s apologist approach to Jud sets the character, and his assisted gun suicide, adrift in murky cultural waters. “Sympathy for the Incel?” wonders Catherine M. Young from the title of her HowlRound essay on Oklahoma!. In it, Young records a handful of the disparate public responses: Journalist Alison Stewart couldn’t tell if Jud was more like a fragile, vulnerable “Kurt Cobain type” or a school shooter. Sarah Holdren and Elisabeth Vincentelli both describe him as an incel, the involuntarily celibate men who resent (and occasionally kill) women who won’t sleep with them. Frank Rich was enthralled by Jud’s anguish. Such ambiguity has political implications. ( [58] ) Ambiguities there may be, but for Fish and Vaill, Jud is a distinctly American product: a seething, unstable concoction of “virulent misogyny,” toxic (white) masculinity, and lone-wolf reclusiveness that finds affirmation through the nation’s gun culture. ( [59] ) But here another troubling narrative metastases. If Jud represents “the role of the outsider that the community can create,” as Fish indicates (emphasis added), then the blame for Jud’s ostracism lies not with him, but with those charged with nurturing and binding communities together: the play’s women. ( [60] ) In van Hove’s New York, the Jets encompasses white and Black “native” Americans who together rail against the immigrant Puerto Rican Sharks, transforming the Jets’ racial animus from blatant white supremacism to a sort of qualified nativism with irreconcilable outcomes. “Mr. van Hove’s casting misrepresents the real solidarities that form at the margins of U.S. citizenship,” notes writer and translator Carina del Valle Schorske of the blended Jets. “‘Inclusion’ here is code for willful colorblindness.” ( [61] ) The gang’s new composition enables van Hove to broach stereotypes of African American gun use , as well as more fully confront the injustices of race-based police brutality. Baby John’s fear of the zip-gun’s ballistic power, for example, is now voiced by a Black teenager (Matthew Johnson). Later, after a brief squabble with the Jets, Officer Krupke (Danny Wolohan) draws his weapon and aggressively pushes it into the temple of one of its Black members, prompting several Jets to draw their smartphones and film the altercation. Krupke backs off, but the event propels the gang into a revamped rendition of “Gee, Officer Krupke.” Once a vaudevillian take-down of domineering and inept authority figures, the song is now a humorless “indictment of the carceral state,” with white and Black Jets striking ‘don’t shoot’ poses in front of “a bleak video montage of young men being humiliated and abused by the police.” ( [62] ) Branded “harrowing” by Los Angeles Times ’s Charles McNulty, an “overreach” by Newsday ’s Rafer Guzmán, and “pandering” by The New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz, “Gee, Officer Krupke” (with choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker) functions as an embodied condemnation of systemic racism, police violence, and the prison-industrial complex—and one of the revival’s most overt bids for political relevance. ( [63] ) Audiences consume the productions’ gun acts via unmediated and mediated witnessing. Van Hove’s imagistic theatre routinely includes the use of video to bring the “characters closer to the audience” and “create subjective worlds on stage,” the director himself explains. ( [64] ) In West Side Story, the characters’ smartphones, pre-filmed footage, and live video from handheld cameras¾all projected onto a mammoth, stage-spanning screen¾together constitute an omnipresent surveillance apparatus that is in turns covert and intrusive. At intervals, the films decelerate into slow motion as the stage action unfolds at regular speed, a techno-theatrical “time warp” (to use Sarah Taylor Ellis’s term) that often prolongs the audience’s encounter with violence, as in Tony (Isaac Powell) fleeing from the rumble in a blood-soaked shirt. ( [65] ) Of one on-location shot that moves through a dead-end street, Schwartz remarks, “The camera advances in a slow dolly shot, producing the weightless, gliding momentum of a first-person shooter game.” ( [66] ) Indeed, the footage collectively documents a story of interchangeable hunters and prey. Cameras invade enclosed spaces—several interiors are pocketed behind the projection screen, including Doc’s store—and capture private and imagined interactions. ( [67] ) In one of the video design’s most unsettling interventions, Tony’s mental picture of Maria’s gun death fills the screen, her head blasted open by Chino’s close-range shot. Tony’s own death, however, is left unmediated. Chino approaches, fires his pistol, and Tony’s body registers the bullet’s impact; no extreme closeups linger on his bloodied torso or Chino’s inscrutable expression. Fish’s Oklahoma! employs live video and projections far more sparingly, notably when handheld video cameras penetrate the cramped environs of Jud’s smokehouse. At first, Jud and Curly’s tête-à-tête is plunged into total darkness, a drastic shift from the “aggressive brightness” employed elsewhere in the production’s lighting design. ( [68] ) The blackout, which amplifies the dramaturgical work of the scene’s soundscape, is later softened by live video tightly trained on Jud’s face—tormented, longing for connection—projected onto the stage’s backdrop. The scene vacillates in tone between a hushed, erotic intimacy (the men, faces mere inches from each other, whisper their lines into handheld microphones) and the unrelenting menace of cyberbullying, as Curly’s disembodied voice calmly extols the virtues of suicide. ( [69] ) Notes Ben Brantley of the smokehouse scene, “the lines of sex and violence…blu[r] in this gun-toting universe[.]” ( [70] ) When, after singing “Pore Jud Is Daid” and still blanketed by darkness, the men fire their guns at a knothole, the loud reports startle and unnerve. Sound and sight decoupled, the invisible weapons index their presence sonically. Though only men suffer gun deaths in Oklahoma! and West Side Story , the stories’ women together absorb much of the gun-related violence and trauma. Armed men (fathers, law enforcers, lovers, and stalkers) perambulate the playing space in Oklahoma! , pistols holstered and rifles clutched under armpits; Aunt Eller, by contrast, is accoutered with a wooden spoon for stirring cornbread. But if we simply track Oklahoma! ’s guns as they pass through men’s hands, we risk losing sight of Jones’s Laurey and Ali Stroker’s Ado Annie, outspoken women of intelligence and agency who must nevertheless navigate the complexities of a materially and psychically hostile landscape. Ado Annie’s life choices are under near-constant monitoring by her armed father, while landowning woman of color Laurey “resolute[ly] refus[es] to be thought of as someone’s possession” even as she’s caught in the crosshairs of rival suitors. ( [71] ) The production’s dream ballet and wedding scene lay bare Laurey’s conscious negotiations with Oklahoma! ’s gun culture¾and the men that drive it. In choreographer John Heginbotham’s postmodern dream ballet, Laurey’s avatar (Gabrielle Hamilton) moves with within a growing minefield of cowboy boots that are dropped one by one from the rafters. “[T]he sound they make as they hit the stage is as explosive as . . . gunshots,” pronounced The New Yorker ’s Sarah Larson in her 2018 review of the Off-Broadway production. ( [72] ) Less abstract is Laurey’s endorsing of Jud’s murder/suicide. In an extended moment of silent contemplation, Laurey spatially maps her inner conflict. She leaves Curly’s side to peer searchingly into Jud’s face, and then slowly returns to Curly. ( [73] ) We can only speculate on why Laurey sanctions “prairie justice,” Jud’s violent and permanent excision from the community, but as a Black woman and a survivor of sexual assault and stalking, Laurey is all too aware of how violence operates at the margins. ( [74] ) West Side Story ’s gun culture is likewise androcentric and hierarchical, but the women exhibit manifest signs of inculcation. Whereas Jerome Robbins’ choreography restricted the use of gun gestures to his male dancers and Anybodys, De Keersmaeker democratizes the movement by setting it onto the Sharks girls’ bodies in “America.” The aggressive gesture¾fingers shaped into a gun, straight arm tracing an arc from low to high like a protractor¾runs counter the women’s buoyant lyrics (“I like to be in America! / O.K. by me in America! / Everything free in America”). Violence continues to reach West Side Story ’s Black, white, and brown women in ways unprescribed by Robbins, Laurents, Sondheim, and Bernstein, including Anita’s attempted gang rape, Maria’s graphic head wound, and the rain-soaked rumble, where several feminine-presenting Jets and Sharks fight. ( [75] ) One need only witness the distraught Maria’s actions after Tony’s shooting to comprehend how versant the women are in West Side Story ’s microcosmic culture of violence. Silently, Maria (Shereen Pimentel) gestures for Chino’s gun. Unlike Marias past, who handle the gun with trepidation and difficulty, Pimentel’s Maria racks the handgun’s slide with speed and skill, advancing the next round of ammunition as she asks, “How do you fire this gun, Chino? Just by pulling this little trigger?” It’s a rhetorical question. She is well-acquainted with guns, even if this is the first she’s handled, and the Jets and Sharks take her threats seriously. The gun changes hands several more times: a Jet gently disarms Maria as she faces the audience and holds the pistol to her head; later, she reclaims the gun and passes it to Anita. In entrusting the gun to Anita, Maria effectively bars Jets and Sharks alike from accessing it, effectively removing the weapon from circulation¾at least temporarily. Guns are instruments of revolution and disruption, but they are also instruments of a sort of brutal petrification, of holding in abeyance those who might act counterculturally and preventing new, transformative associations from solidifying. The Golden Age Oklahoma! and West Side Story ’s firearms police the perimeters of homogenous human groups, simultaneously restricting access into and thwarting departures from them. In reinforcing the community circle’s curved boundaries and transforming a love triangle with three vertices into a straight line with two points, guns and their handlers are bold, convenient catalysts for the American musical’s conservative endings. They help the boy get the girl; forestall any integrative or conciliatory pacts between rival street gangs; and fortify the settler-colonialist claims on stolen lands. In their twenty-first-century adaptations of Oklahoma! and West Side Story, Fish and van Hove present guns as the most responsive, convenient deliverers of modern violence, but their contemporary anti-gun, pro-diversity messages strain uncomfortably beneath the musicals’ constrictive Golden Age fabric, fabric that engages firearms in ways that unequivocally benefit white heteronormative America. After seeing Fish’s reimagined Oklahoma! , Johnny Oleksinksi of the right-leaning New York Post sardonically declared: “everything you cherish about this classic has been taken out behind the bar and shot, replace by an auteur’s bag of tricks and a thesis on gun control and westward expansion. Here, the West was won by a culture of violence and toxic masculinity— what fun! ” ( [76] ) In all his rhetorical outrage, Oleksinski fails to recognize that Oklahoma! has always told this story. What he is detecting, however, are the heightened political stakes of the contemporary gun musical. Staged in the midst of partisan debates over Second Amendment gun rights and alarming rates of US gun injuries and deaths, the majority of twenty-first-century gun musicals, including Fish’s Oklahoma! and van Hove’s West Side Story , proceed from three assumptions. First, they regard gun violence as a public health crisis in the United States. Second, they implicate all Americans as active perpetrators or passive abettors in the country’s gun violence epidemic. Third, rather than depict gun handling as a prime signifier of national belonging, they suggest that merely persisting within the country’s omnipresent gun culture is a uniquely American act. Oleksinski’s “auteur” jab is likewise somewhat founded. In their searing critiques of US-American gun violence and its impact on disenfranchised communities, Daniel Fish and Ivo van Hove undertake crucial (if imperfect) work. And yet, as progressive white men of privilege, they perhaps cannot help but ventriloquize rather than possess the perspectives voiced by frontline populations. References 1. Christopher Bannow, “Surviving in the States: Audience Rejection on the Road with Oklahoma!,” 3 April 2023, https://howlround.com/surviving-states-audience-rejection-road-oklahoma . 2. Ibid. 3. According to musical theatre scholar Bryan M. Vandevender, the touring production featured less visible guns in its scene design than its Broadway counterpart. 4. See Pamela Haag’s analysis of gun companies’ influential tactics in The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 5. As I theorize, a “gun musical” focalizes firearms—and their provocative meaning-making—as essential objects in the musical’s dramaturgy and physical world. Put another way, just as a perfect Aristotelian plot would unravel with the removal of any scene, a gun musical could not function without their signature weaponry and the human conditions they engender. 6. For a fuller examination of Hamilton’s guns, which contextualizes the production’s weaponless Tony Awards performance, see my article “‘What if This Bullet is My Legacy?’: The Guns of Hamilton,” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (June 2018): 251-56. 7. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, “Domestic Violence and Firearms,” https://efsgv.org/learn/type-of-gun-violence/domestic-violence-and-firearms/ . 8. Kimberly King, “Gun Violence Crisis: With Revenge and Retaliation on the Rise, How Police Are Responding,” 17 February 2021, https://wlos.com/news/local/gun-violence-crisis-with-revenge- retaliation-on-the-rise-how-asheville-police-are-responding. 9. Marissa Edmund, “Gun Violence Disproportionately and Overwhelmingly Hurts Communities of Color,” Center for American Progress, 30 June 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- violence-disproportionately-and-overwhelmingly-hurts-communities-of-color/. 10. Ibid. 11. Nicole Moeder, “Number of Trans Homicides Doubled over 4 Years, with Gun Killings Fueling Increase: Advocates,” ABC News, 12 October 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/US/homicide-rate-trans- people-doubled-gun-killings-fueling/story?id=91348274. 12. Eugenio Weigend Vargas and Marissa Edmund, “Gun Suicides Among Former and Current Military Members,” Center for American Progress, 3 March 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- suicides-among-former-and-current-military-members/. 13. Robert Gebeloff, Danielle Ivory, Bill Marsh, Allison McCann, and Albert Sun, “Childhood’s Greatest Danger: The Data on Kids and Gun Violence,” New York Times, 14 December 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html . 14. Beth Duff-Brown, “Californians Living with Handgun Owners More Than Twice as Likely to Die by Homicide, Study Finds,” 4 April 2022, https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/handguns- homicide-risk.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDespite%20widespread%20perceptions%20that%20a,of%20health%20p olicy%20at%20the 15. For histories of the gun industry’s attempt to domesticate US firearms through white women consumers, see Laura Browder, Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Meredith Conti, “Hired Guns: Whiteness, Womanhood, and Progressive-era Shooting Promoters,” Theatre Journal 73, no. 4 (Dec. 2021): 511-532; and Andrea L. Smalley, “‘Our Lady Sportsmen’: Gender, Class, and Conservation in Sport Hunting Magazines, 1873–1920,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4, no. 4 (October 2005): 355–80. 16. The NRA was founded in 1871 in New York. 17. Nicholas Johnson, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014), 13. While magistrates and legislators banned or significantly curtailed Black and Indigenous gun ownership from the colonial period onward, marginalized communities of color had their own traditions of arms that variously conformed to and resolutely rejected governmental interference. 18. Haag, The Gunning of America, 357 and 356. 19. Ibid, 354. 20. Ibid. 21. Benjamin Barber, “Oklahoma! — How Political Is Broadway?” Salmagundi 137/138 (2003): 3-11, 9. 22. To be more specific, the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906 permitted “the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory to enter the union under a single-state constitution.” Michael Schulman, “Two Broadway Shows Dismantle the American Myth,” The New Yorker, April 16, 2019. 23. Bruce Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!’ in American Consciousness,” Theatre Journal 55, no 2 (May 2003): 251-274, 251. 24. See Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004) and Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014). 25. As Warren Hoffman notes, the show’s refrain, in which the company repeatedly chants “Oklahoma!,” can ironically be translated to them shouting “Red People!” Hoffman, The Great White Way, 66. 26. Donatella Galella, America in the Round: Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington DC’s Arena Stage (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019), 202. 27. Galella, America in the Round, 197. Galella describes three modes of understanding multiracial Oklahoma! casts that both producers and spectators could adopt: multiracial-conscious, whitened, and postracial (200). 28. Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 262. 29. The Theatre Guild Presents Oklahoma!: A Musical Play Based on the Play ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ by Lynn Riggs, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (New York: Williamson Music, 1943). 30. Susan C. Cook, “Pretty like the Girl: Gender, Race and Oklahoma!” Contemporary Theatre Review 19, no. 1 (2009), 35-47, 43. 31. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. 32. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. 33. Cook, “Pretty like the Girl,” 37. 34. Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 251-274, 259 and 261. 35. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! 36. Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions Behind Musical Shows from Kern to Sondheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 27. 37. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, based on a conception of Jerome Robbins, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (New York: Musical Theatre International, 1960), 86. 38. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 119-120. 39. Brian Eugenio Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009,” Theatre Journal 64 (2012), 231-247: 236. 40. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 6. 41. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 56. 42. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 7. 43. Zhu and Belgrad, “This Cockeyed City,” 86. 44. Ibid, 90. 45. Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009” and Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015); David Román, “Comment — Theatre Journals,” Theatre Journal 54, no. 3 (Oct. 2002), https://www.jstor.org/stable/25069090 ; David Román, Paula Court, and Richard Termine, Performance in America: Contemporary U.S. Culture in the Performing Arts (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, José, Can You See? Latinos on and off Broadway (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999); and Frances Negrón-Muntaner, “Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,” Social Text 63, vol. 18, no. 2 (2000), 83-106. 46. West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 43. 47. Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,” Social Text 24, no. 7 (2009), 67-94. 48. Greg Evans, “‘Oklahoma!’ to be Broadway’s First ‘Gun Neutral’ Production: Lauded Musical Joins Hollywood Initiative: Sundance, Deadline, January 28, 2019, https://deadline.com/2019/01/oklahoma- broadway-musical-gun-neutral-sundance-daniel-fish-1202543741/. 49. Qtd. in Charles Passy, “‘Oklahoma!’ Takes Aim at Gun Issue,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2019. 50. Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai have edited the first essay collection on van Hove’s work entitled Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie (London: Methuen Drama, 2018). For coverage of the protests of Amar Ramasar’s casting, see Julia Jacobs, “‘West Side Story’ Stalemate: Bernardo’s Staying. So Are Protestors,” New York Times, February 19, 2020, and Adrian Horton, “‘We can’t stand by this any more’: Inside the West Side Story Premiere Protest,” The Guardian, February 21, 2020. 51. An inventory of West Side Story’s reviews was created by Playbill’s Dan Meyer on February 20, 2020. http://www.playbill.com/article/read-reviews-for-the-west-side-story-revival-on-broadway . 52. Soraya Nadia McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” The Undefeated, September 16, 2019. https://theundefeated.com/features/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-oklahoma-on-broadway/ . 53. A cleverly installed blood cannon delivers the graphic stage effect. 54. Todd S. Purdue, “Culture: Oklahoma! Gets a Dark, Brilliant Remake,” The Atlantic, April 8, 2019. 55. Of van Hove’s “austere aesthetic” Helen Shaw wryly observes: “he automatically modernizes everything he touches, from Shakespeare to O’Neill.” Helen Shaw, “In the New West Side Story, When You’re Onstage You’re Onscreen All the Way,” New York Magazine/vulture.com, February 20, 2020. https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/theater-review-a-new-west-side-story-onscreen-all-the-way.html . 56. Tim Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway: Creator and Cast Reveal How to Reimagine a Classic,” The Daily Beast, thedailybeast.com , April 15, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-on-broadway-creator-and-cast-reveal-how-to-reimagine-a-classic . 57. Laura Collins-Hughes, “For 13 Years, He has Humanized the Villain of Oklahoma!,” New York Times, January 20, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/theater/patrick-vaill-oklahoma-broadway.html . 58. Catherine M. Young, “Sympathy for the Incel? On Oklahoma! and Jud Fry in the #MeToo Era.” Howlround.com , June 26, 2019. https://howlround.com/sympathy-incel . 59. McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” Bryan M. Vandevender queered Vaill’s portrayal of Jud in a compelling paper delivered at the 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference. 60. Qtd. in Teeman, “Oklahoma! on Broadway.” 61. Carina de Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die,” New York Times, February 24, 2020. 62. Alexandra Schwartz, “Theatre: A Grim Take on ‘West Side Story,’” The New Yorker, February 21, 2020. 63. Charles McNulty, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ Blasts Back to Broadway – Kinetic, Bloody and Modern to the Core,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2020; Schwartz, “A Grim Take”; and Rafer Guzmán, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ on Broadway Gets a Dark Update, Loses Some of its Cool,’ Newsday, February 21, 2020. 64. “Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai, “Ivo van Hove: An Introduction,” in Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie, edited by Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai (London: Methuen, 2018), 1-16, 7. 65. See Sarah Taylor Ellis‘s Doing the Time Warp: Queer Temporalities and Musical Theatre (London: Methuen Drama, 2022). 66. Schwartz, “A Grim Take.” 67. Jan Versweyveld designed West Side Story’s sets and lights, and Luke Hall designed the video; Laura Jellinek designed Oklahoma!’s set and Joshua Thorson designed projections. 68. McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!.” Scott Zielinksi was the production’s lighting designer. 69. “When the camera turns and shows us both Daunno’s and Vaill’s profiles,” notes Sara Holdren, “stretched out huge across a wall where a black-and-white vista of fields and ranch houses is painted, we get a nasty jolt: Here is the country inside of these men, and here are their brutalities laying the foundations for the country.” Sara Holdren, “Theatre Review: An Oklahoma! Where the Storm Clouds Loom Above the Plain,” New York Magazine/Vulture.com, October 8, 2018. 70. Ben Brantley, “Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id,” New York Times, April 7, 2019. 71. Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway.” 72. Sarah Larson, ”Daniel Fish’s Dark Take on ’Oklahoma!’” Ariel Nereson analyzed the choreographic work of the re-envisioned dream ballet in a 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference presentation. 73. Laurey is effectively muzzled by Hammerstein’s book, which provides no dialogue during Curly and Jud’s struggle and Jud’s accidental stabbing. 74. Jesse Green and Ben Brantley, “Review: There’s a Dark Golden Haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!,’ New York Times, October 7, 2018. Green and Brantley’s joint review is responding to the 2018 Off- Broadway production. 75. Of watching Anita’s attempted gang-rape (and its replication on the enormous projection screen) as a Puerto Rican woman, Carina del Valle Schorske surmises, “[Mr. van Hove] may not feel the oppressive repetitions of the history of violence against brown women bearing down on his body. But for many of us, it’s the umpteenth time we’ve seen Anita assaulted for dramatic effect, each time under the guise of greater authenticity.” De Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die.” 76. Johnny Oleksinski, “‘Oklahoma!’ Review: Anti-gun Revival of Classic Shot to Hell,” New York Post, April 7, 2019. Footnotes (1) Christopher Bannow, “Surviving in the States: Audience Rejection on the Road with Oklahoma!,” 3 April 2023, https://howlround.com/surviving-states-audience-rejection-road-oklahoma . (2) Ibid. (3) According to musical theatre scholar Bryan M. Vandevender, the touring production featured less visible guns in its scene design than its Broadway counterpart. (4) See Pamela Haag’s analysis of gun companies’ influential tactics in The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2016). (5) As I theorize, a “gun musical” focalizes firearms—and their provocative meaning-making—as essential objects in the musical’s dramaturgy and physical world. Put another way, just as a perfect Aristotelian plot would unravel with the removal of any scene, a gun musical could not function without their signature weaponry and the human conditions they engender. (6) For a fuller examination of Hamilton’s guns, which contextualizes the production’s weaponless Tony Awards performance, see my article “‘What if This Bullet is My Legacy?’: The Guns of Hamilton,” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (June 2018): 251-56. (7) Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, “Domestic Violence and Firearms,” https://efsgv.org/learn/type-of-gun-violence/domestic-violence-and-firearms/ . (8) Kimberly King, “Gun Violence Crisis: With Revenge and Retaliation on the Rise, How Police Are Responding,” 17 February 2021, https://wlos.com/news/local/gun-violence-crisis-with-revenge- retaliation-on-the-rise-how-asheville-police-are-responding. (9) Marissa Edmund, “Gun Violence Disproportionately and Overwhelmingly Hurts Communities of Color,” Center for American Progress, 30 June 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- violence-disproportionately-and-overwhelmingly-hurts-communities-of-color/. (10) Ibid. (11) Nicole Moeder, “Number of Trans Homicides Doubled over 4 Years, with Gun Killings Fueling Increase: Advocates,” ABC News, 12 October 2022, https://abcnews.go.com/US/homicide-rate-trans- people-doubled-gun-killings-fueling/story?id=91348274. (12) Eugenio Weigend Vargas and Marissa Edmund, “Gun Suicides Among Former and Current Military Members,” Center for American Progress, 3 March 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun- suicides-among-former-and-current-military-members/. (13) Robert Gebeloff, Danielle Ivory, Bill Marsh, Allison McCann, and Albert Sun, “Childhood’s Greatest Danger: The Data on Kids and Gun Violence,” New York Times, 14 December 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-violence-children-data-statistics.html . (14) Beth Duff-Brown, “Californians Living with Handgun Owners More Than Twice as Likely to Die by Homicide, Study Finds,” 4 April 2022, https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/handguns- homicide- risk.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDespite%20widespread%20perceptions%20that%20a,of%20health%20p olicy%20at%20the (15) For histories of the gun industry’s attempt to domesticate US firearms through white women consumers, see Laura Browder, Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Meredith Conti, “Hired Guns: Whiteness, Womanhood, and Progressive-era Shooting Promoters,” Theatre Journal 73, no. 4 (Dec. 2021): 511-532; and Andrea L. Smalley, “‘Our Lady Sportsmen’: Gender, Class, and Conservation in Sport Hunting Magazines, 1873–1920,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4, no. 4 (October 2005): 355–80. (16) The NRA was founded in 1871 in New York. (17) Nicholas Johnson, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014), 13. While magistrates and legislators banned or significantly curtailed Black and Indigenous gun ownership from the colonial period onward, marginalized communities of color had their own traditions of arms that variously conformed to and resolutely rejected governmental interference. (18) Haag, The Gunning of America, 357 and 356. (19) Ibid 354. (20) Ibid. (21) Benjamin Barber, “Oklahoma! — How Political Is Broadway?” Salmagundi 137/138 (2003): 3-11, 9. (22) To be more specific, the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906 permitted “the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory to enter the union under a single-state constitution.” Michael Schulman, “Two Broadway Shows Dismantle the American Myth,” The New Yorker, April 16, 2019. (23) Bruce Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!’ in American Consciousness,” Theatre Journal 55, no 2 (May 2003): 251-274, 251. (24) See Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004) and Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014). (25) As Warren Hoffman notes, the show’s refrain, in which the company repeatedly chants “Oklahoma!,” can ironically be translated to them shouting “Red People!” Hoffman, The Great White Way, 66. (26) Donatella Galella, America in the Round: Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington DC’s Arena Stage (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019), 202. (27) Galella, America in the Round, 197. Galella describes three modes of understanding multiracial Oklahoma! casts that both producers and spectators could adopt: multiracial-conscious, whitened, and postracial (200). (28) Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 262. (29) The Theatre Guild Presents Oklahoma!: A Musical Play Based on the Play ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ by Lynn Riggs, music by Richard Rodgers, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (New York: Williamson Music, 1943). (30) Susan C. Cook, “Pretty like the Girl: Gender, Race and Oklahoma!” Contemporary Theatre Review 19, no. 1 (2009), 35-47, 43. (31) Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. (32) Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!. (33) Cook, “Pretty like the Girl,” 37. (34) Kirle, “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of ‘Oklahoma!,’” 251-274, 259 and 261. (35) Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! (36) Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions Behind Musical Shows from Kern to Sondheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 27. (37) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, based on a conception of Jerome Robbins, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (New York: Musical Theatre International, 1960), 86. (38) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 119-120. (39) Brian Eugenio Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009,” Theatre Journal 64 (2012), 231-247: 236. (40) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 6. (41) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 56. (42) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 7. (43) Zhu and Belgrad, “This Cockeyed City,” 86. (44) Ibid 90. (45) Herrera, “Compiling West Side Story’s Parahistories, 1949-2009” and Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015); David Román, “Comment — Theatre Journals,” Theatre Journal 54, no. 3 (Oct. 2002), https://www.jstor.org/stable/25069090 ; David Román, Paula Court, and Richard Termine, Performance in America: Contemporary U.S. Culture in the Performing Arts (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, José, Can You See? Latinos on and off Broadway (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999); and Frances Negrón-Muntaner, “Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,” Social Text 63, vol. 18, no. 2 (2000), 83-106. (46) West Side Story Libretto / Vocal Book, 43. (47) Robin Bernstein, “Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,” Social Text 24, no. 7 (2009), 67-94. (48) Greg Evans, “‘Oklahoma!’ to be Broadway’s First ‘Gun Neutral’ Production: Lauded Musical Joins Hollywood Initiative: Sundance, Deadline, January 28, 2019, https://deadline.com/2019/01/oklahoma- broadway-musical-gun-neutral-sundance-daniel-fish-1202543741/. (49) Qtd. in Charles Passy, “‘Oklahoma!’ Takes Aim at Gun Issue,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2019. (50) Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai have edited the first essay collection on van Hove’s work entitled Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie (London: Methuen Drama, 2018). For coverage of the protests of Amar Ramasar’s casting, see Julia Jacobs, “‘West Side Story’ Stalemate: Bernardo’s Staying. So Are Protestors,” New York Times, February 19, 2020, and Adrian Horton, “‘We can’t stand by this any more’: Inside the West Side Story Premiere Protest,” The Guardian, February 21, 2020. (51) An inventory of West Side Story’s reviews was created by Playbill’s Dan Meyer on February 20, 2020. http://www.playbill.com/article/read-reviews-for-the-west-side-story-revival-on-broadway . (52) Soraya Nadia McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” The Undefeated, September 16, 2019. https://theundefeated.com/features/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-oklahoma-on-broadway/ . (53) A cleverly installed blood cannon delivers the graphic stage effect. (54) Todd S. Purdue, “Culture: Oklahoma! Gets a Dark, Brilliant Remake,” The Atlantic, April 8, 2019. (55) Of van Hove’s “austere aesthetic” Helen Shaw wryly observes: “he automatically modernizes everything he touches, from Shakespeare to O’Neill.” Helen Shaw, “In the New West Side Story, When You’re Onstage You’re Onscreen All the Way,” New York Magazine/vulture.com, February 20, 2020. https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/theater-review-a-new-west-side-story-onscreen-all-the-way.html . (56) Tim Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway: Creator and Cast Reveal How to Reimagine a Classic,” The Daily Beast, thedailybeast.com , April 15, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/oklahoma-on-broadway- creator-and-cast-reveal-how-to-reimagine-a-classic. (57) Laura Collins-Hughes, “For 13 Years, He has Humanized the Villain of Oklahoma!,” New York Times, January 20, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/theater/patrick-vaill-oklahoma-broadway.html . (58) Catherine M. Young, “Sympathy for the Incel? On Oklahoma! and Jud Fry in the #MeToo Era.” Howlround.com , June 26, 2019. https://howlround.com/sympathy-incel . (59) McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!” Bryan M. Vandevender queered Vaill’s portrayal of Jud in a compelling paper delivered at the 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference. (60) Qtd. in Teeman, “Oklahoma! on Broadway.” (61) Carina de Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die,” New York Times, February 24, 2020. (62) Alexandra Schwartz, “Theatre: A Grim Take on ‘West Side Story,’” The New Yorker, February 21, 2020. (63) Charles McNulty, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ Blasts Back to Broadway – Kinetic, Bloody and Modern to the Core,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2020; Schwartz, “A Grim Take”; and Rafer Guzmán, “Review: ‘West Side Story’ on Broadway Gets a Dark Update, Loses Some of its Cool,’ Newsday, February 21, 2020. (64) “Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai, “Ivo van Hove: An Introduction,” in Ivo van Hove: From Shakespeare to David Bowie, edited by Susan Bennett and Sonia Massai (London: Methuen, 2018), 1-16, 7. (65) See Sarah Taylor Ellis‘s Doing the Time Warp: Queer Temporalities and Musical Theatre (London: Methuen Drama, 2022). (66) Schwartz, “A Grim Take.” (67) Jan Versweyveld designed West Side Story’s sets and lights, and Luke Hall designed the video; Laura Jellinek designed Oklahoma!’s set and Joshua Thorson designed projections. (68) McDonald, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Oklahoma!.” Scott Zielinksi was the production’s lighting designer. (69) “When the camera turns and shows us both Daunno’s and Vaill’s profiles,” notes Sara Holdren, “stretched out huge across a wall where a black-and-white vista of fields and ranch houses is painted, we get a nasty jolt: Here is the country inside of these men, and here are their brutalities laying the foundations for the country.” Sara Holdren, “Theatre Review: An Oklahoma! Where the Storm Clouds Loom Above the Plain,” New York Magazine/Vulture.com, October 8, 2018. (70) Ben Brantley, “Review: A Smashing ‘Oklahoma!’ Is Reborn in the Land of Id,” New York Times, April 7, 2019. (71) Teeman, “‘Oklahoma!’ on Broadway.” (72) Sarah Larson, ”Daniel Fish’s Dark Take on ’Oklahoma!’” Ariel Nereson analyzed the choreographic work of the re-envisioned dream ballet in a 2022 Mid-America Theatre Conference presentation. (73) Laurey is effectively muzzled by Hammerstein’s book, which provides no dialogue during Curly and Jud’s struggle and Jud’s accidental stabbing. (74) Jesse Green and Ben Brantley, “Review: There’s a Dark Golden Haze in This Reclaimed ‘Oklahoma!,’ New York Times, October 7, 2018. Green and Brantley’s joint review is responding to the 2018 Off- Broadway production. (75) Of watching Anita’s attempted gang-rape (and its replication on the enormous projection screen) as a Puerto Rican woman, Carina del Valle Schorske surmises, “[Mr. van Hove] may not feel the oppressive repetitions of the history of violence against brown women bearing down on his body. But for many of us, it’s the umpteenth time we’ve seen Anita assaulted for dramatic effect, each time under the guise of greater authenticity.” De Valle Schorske, “Opinion: Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die.” (76) Johnny Oleksinski, “‘Oklahoma!’ Review: Anti-gun Revival of Classic Shot to Hell,” New York Post, April 7, 2019. About The Author(s) Meredith Conti is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, SUNY (UB) and a historian of nineteenth-century theatre and popular culture in the United States and Britain. Her research variously explores the intersections of theatre and medicine; nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular entertainment forms (including world fairs, vaudeville, Wild West shows, and fancy shooting exhibitions); gender and race in the Victorian period; and guns and gun violence in theatre. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. 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.

Two friends in the after hours entertain ghosts in the kitchen and the bedroom. One friend takes a long walk to the grocery store. One young woman waits for her. This is a short play about locating and accessing one’s will when the will has begun to drift away. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE ANALOG INTIMACY Jess Barbagallo / Half Straddle Theater English 30 Minutes 6:00PM EST Tuesday, October 10, 2023 Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Two friends in the after hours entertain ghosts in the kitchen and the bedroom. One friend takes a long walk to the grocery store. One young woman waits for her. This is a short play about locating and accessing one’s will when the will has begun to drift away. Content / Trigger Description: Jess Barbagallo is an American writer, director, and performer based in New York City. He has toured internationally and domestically with Big Dance Theater, the Builders Association, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf (and its Dyke Division) and Half Straddle. Barbagallo has originated roles in plays by Joshua Conkel, Casey Llewellyn, Normandy Sherwood, Trish Harnetiaux and many others. He appeared as Yann Fredericks in the original cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway. His playwrighting credits include Grey-Eyed Dogs (Dixon Place), Saturn Nights (Incubator Arts Center), Good Year for Hunters (New Ohio Theatre), Karen Davis Does … (Brooklyn Arts Exchange), Joe Ranono’s Yuletide Log and Other Fruitcakes (Dixon Place), Sentence Fetish (Brick Theater), Melissa, So Far(Andy’s Playhouse) and My Old Man (and Other Stories) (Dixon Place). His writing has been published by Artforum, Howlround, Bomb Blog, New York Live Arts Blog: Context Notes, Brooklyn Rail and 53rd State Press. He is a 2009 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab alum, a 2012 Queer Arts Mentorship mentee, and a 2013 MacDowell Colony Fellow. Barbagallo has taught theater and writing as a guest artist and adjunct lecturer at Duke University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Brooklyn College, the Vermont Young Playwright’s Festival and The O’Neill Center. Kristina "Tina" Satter is an American filmmaker, playwright, and director based in New York City. She is the founder and artistic director of the theater company Half Straddle, which formed in 2008 and received an Obie Award grant in 2013. Satter won a Guggenheim in 2020. Satter was described by Ben Brantley of the New York Times as "a genre-and-gender-bending, visually exacting stage artist who has developed an ardent following among downtown aesthetes with a taste for acidic eye candy and erotic enigmas." Her work often deals with subjects of gender, sexual identity, adolescence, and sports. She won a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016), and a Doris Doris Duke Artist Impact Award in 2014. In 2019, she received a Pew Fellowship. Satter has created 10 shows with Half Straddle, and the company's shows and videos have toured to over 20 countries in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Asia. She made her Off Broadway debut as a conceiver and director in fall 2019 with Is This a Room at the Vineyard Theatre. A collection of three of her plays, Seagull (Thinking of You), with Away Uniform and Family was published in 2014. The text for her show Ghost Rings was published in 2017 by 53rd State Press along with a vinyl album of the show's songs. Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Encounter ID Studio Theater and Daniel Fetecua's work Dance in Connection in Bronx, at this year's edition of the Prelude in the Parks festival by The Segal Centre, presented in collaboration with ID Studio Theater. Prelude in the Parks 2024 Festival Dance in Connection ID Studio Theater and Daniel Fetecua Dance Saturday, June 8, 2024 @ 3pm Barretto Point Park, Viele Avenue, The Bronx Viele Ave. bet. Tiffany St. and Barretto St. Bronx ID Studio Theater 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 Indigenous, Afro & Contemporary dances to bring us closer to Mother Earth Performed by Pajarillo Pinta’o, presented by ID Studio Theater. Pajarillo Pinta'o Dance Company will perform traditional and contemporary dance works based on Colombian dances and their connection to Mother Earth, exploring indigenous influences in today's culture and the reconstruction of the MUISCA language—Mysk Kubun, lost for over 400 years and now being revitalized. This language originates from the Andes Mountains. Additionally, the company will showcase dances influenced by the African diaspora along Colombia's Pacific coast. ID Studio Theater and Daniel Fetecua Daniel Fetecua Soto New York-based Colombian dancer, choreographer, educator and producer. A soloist member of the Limón Dance Company for ten years and has appeared as guest artist in Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring and Tannhäuser. Mr. Fetecua is a master teacher of the Limón technique, reconstructor of Limón's repertory and Director of the Limón Professional Trainee Program. Founder and artistic director of two dance companies: Pajarillo Pinta’o, a dance company that preserves and promotes the Colombian traditional dances through dance performance, workshops and classes and D-Moves, a contemporary dance project that combines Colombian traditions, Modern Dance and German Tanz-Theater. Since 2008 Daniel has work with Native-American Choreographer DayStar/Rosalie Jones for her work "Wolf: A Transformation", from whom Daniel has the rights to the piece for the performance, preservation and promotion. Ongoing collaborations include C.A.V.E.S Project “Entre el Cuerpo y la Naturaleza” with world renown dancer Blakeley White-McGuire, Cumbia For Kids/Cumbia For All a longtime collaboration with Colombian composer and musician Pablo Mayor and Movement Migration an the international collective of seasoned dance artists directed by Kim Jones. Daniel has collaborated as a choreographer and guest teacher with REvolucionLatina and Salgado Productions both under Luis Salgado direction since 2011. Daniel is resident choreographer of ID Studio Theatre directed by German Jaramillo and Teatro SEA directed by Manuel Moran. Best choreography awards include the HOLA award for "La Gloria: A Latin Cabaret" and LATA award for “The Crazy Adventures of Don Quijote” Visit Artist Website Location Viele Ave. bet. Tiffany St. and Barretto St. Bronx ID Studio Theater ID Studio Theater The mission of ID Studio Theater is to advance the artistic and social development of immigrant communities through innovative work in the performing arts. Based in the South Bronx, ID Studio Theater is an immigrant arts organization committed to the empowerment of Latine communities through the arts. ID Studio unites artistic excellence with social justice, developing new artistic works through a deeply collaborative workshop process with diverse Latine community members. ID Studio utilizes the performing arts as a foundation for catalyzing community awareness, collective action and inter-community dialogue. In the past 20 years, IDS has developed over 25 bilingual theater and music productions within immigrant communities throughout NYC and beyond. Visit Partner Website

Philip Wiles Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Philip Wiles By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF APPLIED IMPROVISATION: LEADING, COLLABORATING, AND CREATING BEYOND THE THEATRE. Edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure. London: Methuen Drama, 2018; Pp. 304. More than forty years since Keith Johnstone published Impro and more than sixty years after Viola Spolin’s seminal Improvisation for the Theater , there remains a paucity of literature concerned with either “impro” or “improv.” In this context, the scholarly rigor in Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre , a collection of essays by practitioners/facilitators as edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure, is refreshing. “Applied Improvisation,” here, refers to the use of the theories, techniques, and teachings of Spolin and Johnstone (and quite a bit of Augusto Boal) as applied outside of traditional theatrical performance contexts — often with the goal of training intrapersonal skills. While it might commonly be considered a subcategory of the broader “applied theatre,” an explicitly stated goal of this collection “is to establish AI as a field of study worthy of independent investigation” (3). While the viability of “AI” as an acronym for something other than Artificial Intelligence may be questionable in a post-ChatGPT world, the book does provide a foundation for further inquiries and can serve as a resource for practitioners and educators. As in the practice of improvisation, this collection emerges from the disparate contributions of a diverse set of practitioners and scholars. The book begins with a foreword by improvisers Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson, and an introduction by editors Dudeck and McClure that gives a brief history of the theory and practice of improvisation. Dudeck returns in the concluding chapter, moderating a conversation between comedian Neil Mullarkey and creativity and learning expert Keith Sawyer. The body of the book consists of autoethnographic essays; each chapter functions essentially as a postmortem of an applied improvisation project reflecting on successes, limitations and discoveries. Except for the introduction and conclusion, every chapter ends with a “workbook” detailing instructions for between one to three of the exercises referenced in that chapter. Application remains the editors’ central concern, and thus the book is tailored for practice in the field. The collection is divided into four parts that highlight the diversity of this field. The first, “Bringing Brands Back to Life,” consists of two essays describing how improvisation techniques were used to develop intrapersonal skills amongst service workers at a Pacific Northwest fast food chain, and to enliven market research in Karachi, Pakistan. Part 2, “Resilience and Connections,” looks at applications of improvisation in more humanitarian contexts: training resilience amongst Baltimorean oncology nurses, juvenile refugees in San Antonio, and in the wake of a typhoon in the Philippines. Part 3, “Leadership Development,” returns to a corporate environment with contributions describing how improvisation was used to modify the management culture at Tiffany & Co., coach executives in leadership skills in Hong Kong, and shake-up the organization of a real estate agency in Portland, OR. Part 4 “Higher Education,” includes chapters detailing the use of applied improvisation within the academy, including to facilitate conflict resolution at Portland State University, social justice initiatives at the Catholic University of America and communication with non-academics at Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis and the Indiana University School of Medicine. The contributors to the collection are all knowledgeable about and committed to the theory and practice of applied improvisation. However, readers should be forewarned that many of the authors have continuing relationships with their corporate clients and sometime their prose can slip into what is essentially ad-copy. “Charles Lewis Tiffany would have been amazed that 174 years after founding his stationery and small goods store in New York City, the name Tiffany & Co. would still be synonymous with quality, craftsmanship, and extravagance…” (141). That passage from Caitlin McClure’s “Tiffany & Co. Says Yes, And,” comes from one of the stronger contributions to the collection, despite a handful of sentences that read like advertisements. In her case study, McClure details how she used techniques and exercises developed by Johnstone as part of a broader effort to shift Tiffany’s management team from a theory of an “organizational culture” to an “organizational climate .” While such a distinction might appear inane, McClure ably identifies how this shift in management theory mirrors the practice of improvisation and illustrates how her workshops helped to facilitate a meaningful shift in behavior at the company. It is a highlight of the collection. Both McClure and Dudeck are heavily influenced by Johnstone—Dudeck has written a biography of Johnstone and is his literary executor—but other contributors draw on the work of Spolin, Boal and other improvisation theorists, often mixing and matching across these different and distinct traditions of improvisation. As scholarship, the book misses an opportunity to flesh out these separate genealogies and explicate how discrete strains of improvisation practice circulate and intertwine in contemporary workshops. Instead Dudeck and McClure flatten history and blur the distinctions between Spolin, Johnstone and Boal. They argue that the terms “impro” (the title of Johnstone’s book) and “improv” (closely associated with Chicago theatres like The Second City) are interchangeable (10). Neither their reasoning, nor the Facebook survey they marshal to support their claim is convincing. It is disappointing that a collection that aims to establish a new field of study would inadvertently erase complexity from that same field. Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre will interest practitioners of applied improvisation who are looking to see the cultural, practical and global range of the field as well as educators who want to demonstrate the uses of improvisation beyond theatre. The contributing essays are all written in a readable style and function as essays independent of the collection; this makes the volume easily digestible by undergraduate students. The exercises at the end of every chapter are thoroughly explained and should be easy to reproduce in studio classrooms. For these reasons and more, this volume very well may establish itself as a mainstay on the shelves of improvisation instructors. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre. Edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure. London: Methuen Drama, 2018. Footnotes About The Author(s) Philip Wiles is a scholar/actor/improviser from Houston, Texas who comes to the CUNY Graduate Center by way of Oklahoma and Los Angeles. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, he maintains his improv practice in the various improv comedy theatres sprinkled through the city. He holds a BFA in Drama from the University of Oklahoma, and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! 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Paul E. Fallon. Cambridge, Massachusetts Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Paul E. Fallon. Cambridge, Massachusetts By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Jay Eddy in Boston Playwrights' Theatre Driving in Circles. Photo: Scornavacca Photography. The 2023-2024 Boston theatre season opened on a down note. After forty years, struggling through the pandemic and refocusing its mission to portray underrepresented voices, New Rep closed. Fortunately, theatre is regenerative, and newer companies are emerging. This compendium provides a snapshot of five of Boston’s independent theatre companies and highlights a representative production from their season. Moonbox Productions Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Sweeney Todd Music and Lyrics by  Stephen Sondheim , Book by  Hugh Wheeler (13 Oct. -5 Nov.) Legally Blonde Music and Lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin, Book by Heather Hach (8 Dec. -31 Dec. ) The Manic Monologues Zachary Burton and Elisa Hofmeister (16 Feb. -25 Feb.) Mermaid Hour David Valdes (26 Apr. -19 May) Boston New Works Festival 2024 (22 Jun.-24 Jun.) Moonbox Productions’ dual vision is to create exceptional theatre using local talent and connect audiences with extraordinary service organizations. Since 2011, Moonbox has staged over twenty productions, each highlighting a local non-profit. Their range is astounding, from mainstage musicals featuring large casts, live orchestras, elaborate sets, exquisite costumes, and exuberant choreography to black box intimacy where actors in street clothes on a bare stage reveal unadorned trials of the human condition. Mermaid Hour fused Moonbox’s range in a gorgeous production of an intimate drama. The arresting set featured bands of fabric swirling in a vortex of sea greens and blues toward the stage floor, where a curvilinear counter, a plinth, and a few stools anchored the unfolding family trials. Vi, a twelve-year-old trans girl, pushes every limit of her age and identity. But the play focuses on her working-class parents, struggling to do right by a child far beyond expectation. Director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary kept the family interactions tight—actors faced each other more than the audience—mirroring the circular set and reinforcing their private struggles. Speakeasy Stage Company Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 POTUS Selina Fillinger (15 Sep. -15 Oct.) The Band’s Visit Music and Lyrics by  David Yazbek , Book by  Itamar Moses (10 Nov.- 17 Dec. ), co-production with The Huntington A Case for the Existence of God Samuel D. Hunter (26 Jan. -18 Feb.) Cost of Living Martina Majok (8 Mar.-30 Mar.) A Strange Loop Michael R. Jackson (26 Apr. - 25 May) Speakeasy’s thirty-third season continued the company’s tradition of reinterpreting recent Broadway successes for a Boston audience. Their exquisite production of the 2022 New York Drama Critic Award-winning, A Case for the Existence of God , portrayed two earnest though flawed men struggling to navigate a world littered with obstacles. Can God exist within a mortgage broker’s cubicle in Twin Falls, Idaho? The two men never left their chairs in the harshly lit, tightly bound set. Quick blackouts indicated passing time and place. They moved closer as each man’s shrinking opportunity drew him to the unlikely other. Under Melinda Lopez’s understated direction, every element shrank until the set literally burst apart, and a case was made for the existence of God. Lyric Stage Boston, Massachusetts 2023-24 Assassins Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by John Weidman (15 Sep.-15 Oct.) The Game’s Afoot Ken Ludwig (10 Nov. -17 Dec. ) Trouble in Mind Alice Childress (12 Jan.-4 Feb.) Thirst Ronán Noone (23 Feb.-17 Mar.) The Drowsy Chaperone Music & Lyrics by Lisa Lambert & Greg Morrison, Book by Bob Martin & Don McKellar (5 Apr.-12 May) Yellow Face , David Henry Hwang (31 May-23 Jun.) Artistic Director Courtney O’Connor celebrated Lyric Stage Boston’s 50th season with a full season of theatrical variety. In honor of the anniversary, the Lyric’s lobby was redecorated with custom wallpaper featuring scenes from notable productions. The Drowsy Chaperone highlighted what this little theatre company does best: make big stage musicals sparkle in an intimate setting. A curmudgeonly theater maven, in the present, spins his angst and his turntable through the prism of a 1920’s-era musical that comes to life in his grungy apartment. Paul Melendy, as Man-in-the-Chair, perfectly maneuvered the transitions from exuberant production numbers to narrative commentary. Each of the fifteen musical characters is a cliché, but the clichés clicked magnificently. The energy whirling around the 244-seat theater saturated the audience with everything we love about musical theatre. Delightful costumes, especially the four-tier swimming suit that unraveled heroine Janet during “Show Off.” Abundant tricks: tap dancing, roller skating, ridiculous incognitos. Impeccable comic timing: I guffawed until my belly ached. Central Square Theater Cambridge, Massachusetts 2023-24 Angels in America, Part 2: Perestroika Tony Kushner (7 Sep. -8 Oct.) The Rocky Horror Show Richard O’Brien (28 Oct.-3 Dec.) Machine Learning Francisco Mendoza (25 Jan.-25 Feb.) Beyond Words Laura Maria Censabella (14 Mar.-14 Apr.) next to normal Brian Yorkey (30 May-23 Jun.) Central Square Theater (CST), under the consistent leadership of Executive Director Catherine Carr Kelly and Artistic Director Lee Mikeska Gardner, continued its focus on exploring social justice, science, and gender politics through theatre by producing five plays with unique perspectives. Beyond Words is a new play, produced in conjunction with Catalyst Collaborative at MIT, that tracks Dr. Irene Pepperberg and her work with Alex, an African Grey parrot, whom she prompts to meaningful communication and problem-solving. Smooth transitions and clever theatrical devices kept the audience engaged in the predictable, happy plot. Shyster scientists fixated on studying apes turn into them. Hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak no-evil muses create a Greek chorus of nay-sayers slow to appreciate Dr. Pepperberg’s remarkable science. A tennis match where Irene served up her findings was particularly satisfying. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre Boston, Massachusetts 2023-24 Fringe Festival 2023-2024 Isabelle Sanatdar Stevens, Brandon Zang, Tina Esper, and Maggie Kearnan (22 Sep. -14 Oct. ) Mr. Parent Melinda Lopez and Maurice Emmanuel Parent (10 Oct. -22 Oct.) Kill The Magistrate Abbey Fenbert (4 Dec.) Driving in Circles Jay Eddy (21 Mar. -6 Apr.) Boston Theater Marathon (5 May) Hoops Eliana Pipes (21 May) Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (BPT) has traditionally produced new plays written by students in Boston University’s MFA in Playwriting Program. This season, Artistic Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian expanded BPT’s focus by representing a wider range of the BU community. She grouped several plays by existing students into the Fringe Festivaland then offered full productions of new work by alumn i and faculty. The result was more opportunities for more voices. Driving in Circles is a new play by BU alum Jay Eddy. Writer, singer, and actor Eddy told their personal story of abuse and healing with more vitality than pathos. The pace was frantic as stand-up comedy. Two backup musicians anchored the action at keyboard and drums, while Jay was everywhere: center stage, in the audience, and bouncing off the highway that curved up and away along the rear wall. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Paul E. Fallon is an architect who spent over thirty years designing housing and healthcare facilities. A commitment to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake became the focus of his first book, Architecture by Moonlight . In 2015-2016, Paul bicycled through each of the 48 contiguous states and asked everyone he met the same question. How Will We Live Tomorrow? became his second book. Returning to Cambridge, MA, Paul continues to write blog essays, plays, and NETIR articles about Boston-area theatre companies. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Two friends in the after hours entertain ghosts in the kitchen and the bedroom. One friend takes a long walk to the grocery store. One young woman waits for her. This is a short play about locating and accessing one’s will when the will has begun to drift away. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE ANALOG INTIMACY (Second Showing) Jess Barbagallo / Half Straddle Theater English 30 Minutes 7:30PM EST Tuesday, October 10, 2023 Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Two friends in the after hours entertain ghosts in the kitchen and the bedroom. One friend takes a long walk to the grocery store. One young woman waits for her. This is a short play about locating and accessing one’s will when the will has begun to drift away. Content / Trigger Description: Jess Barbagallo is an American writer, director, and performer based in New York City. He has toured internationally and domestically with Big Dance Theater, the Builders Association, Theater of a Two-Headed Calf (and its Dyke Division) and Half Straddle. Barbagallo has originated roles in plays by Joshua Conkel, Casey Llewellyn, Normandy Sherwood, Trish Harnetiaux and many others. He appeared as Yann Fredericks in the original cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway. His playwrighting credits include Grey-Eyed Dogs (Dixon Place), Saturn Nights (Incubator Arts Center), Good Year for Hunters (New Ohio Theatre), Karen Davis Does … (Brooklyn Arts Exchange), Joe Ranono’s Yuletide Log and Other Fruitcakes (Dixon Place), Sentence Fetish (Brick Theater), Melissa, So Far(Andy’s Playhouse) and My Old Man (and Other Stories) (Dixon Place). His writing has been published by Artforum, Howlround, Bomb Blog, New York Live Arts Blog: Context Notes, Brooklyn Rail and 53rd State Press. He is a 2009 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab alum, a 2012 Queer Arts Mentorship mentee, and a 2013 MacDowell Colony Fellow. Barbagallo has taught theater and writing as a guest artist and adjunct lecturer at Duke University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Brooklyn College, the Vermont Young Playwright’s Festival and The O’Neill Center. Kristina "Tina" Satter is an American filmmaker, playwright, and director based in New York City. She is the founder and artistic director of the theater company Half Straddle, which formed in 2008 and received an Obie Award grant in 2013. Satter won a Guggenheim in 2020. Satter was described by Ben Brantley of the New York Times as "a genre-and-gender-bending, visually exacting stage artist who has developed an ardent following among downtown aesthetes with a taste for acidic eye candy and erotic enigmas." Her work often deals with subjects of gender, sexual identity, adolescence, and sports. She won a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2016), and a Doris Doris Duke Artist Impact Award in 2014. In 2019, she received a Pew Fellowship. Satter has created 10 shows with Half Straddle, and the company's shows and videos have toured to over 20 countries in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Asia. She made her Off Broadway debut as a conceiver and director in fall 2019 with Is This a Room at the Vineyard Theatre. A collection of three of her plays, Seagull (Thinking of You), with Away Uniform and Family was published in 2014. The text for her show Ghost Rings was published in 2017 by 53rd State Press along with a vinyl album of the show's songs. Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Artists and organizers from Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation (BIPAF), PERFORMANCY FORUM, and other mutualistic NYC performance communities debate tradition, change, and the ethics and politics of making work in response and relation to racial capitalism, climate collapse, and systemic eugenics. Is performance part of "immune systems" or resilience strategies? How can both artistic works and modes of production practice response-ability? The panel features Arantxa Araujo, Ayana Evans, Hector Canonge, Lital Dotan, and zavé martohardjono, and is moderated by Esther Neff. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PANEL Performing Response-Ability Esther Neff with others 6:00PM EST Monday, October 16, 2023 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Artists and organizers from mutualistic NY performance art communities, including PERFORMANCY FORUM, debate tradition, change, and the ethics and politics of making work in response and relation to racial capitalism, climate collapse, and systemic eugenics. There will be short performances followed by discussion. Is performance part of "immune systems" or resilience strategies? How can both artistic works and modes of production practice response-ability? Featuring Arantxa Araujo, zavé martohardjono, Hector Canonge, Ayana Evans, and Lital Dotan. Organized by Esther Neff. Content / Trigger Description: Esther Neff (organizer) is the founder of PPL (est. 2006), a thinktank, performance collective, and organizational entity. They are the organizer of PERFORMANCY FORUM (est. 2009), a platform for performance art and social arts practices that has involved hundreds of artists from all over the world in conferences, thinktanks, projects, and exhibitions. PPL's 7-year project as a physical lab site in Brooklyn culminated in the book Institution is a Verb (Operating System 2021, Edited with Elizabeth Lamb, Ayana Evans, and Tsedaye Makonnen). Neff/PPL's project Embarrassed of the (W)Hole, an operating manual for performance philosophy, was recently published by Ugly Duckling Presse and their theoretical and critical writing has been including in the Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy (with Yelena Gluzman), The Palgrave Macmillan Handbook of Queer and Trans Feminist Performance Art, and in PAJ, Performance Paradigm, CONTENT, AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, on cultbytes, culturebot, and elsewhere online and in print. Their solo and collaborative operas, performance art works, and other performance projects have been realized in NYC, across the USA, and various sites around the world. Neff is currently a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in Theatre and Performance and teaches at Hunter College. Arantxa Araujo is a Queer Mexican performance artist with a background in neuroscience and arts administrator. Her work is transdisciplinary, feminist, meditative and rooted in bio-behavioral research. Through multisensorial experiences, Araujo aims to catalyze awareness which then might result in a virtuous chain reaction for social justice and personal growth. Her work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, at the Radical Women Latin American Art Exhibit, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Grace Exhibition Space, The Queens Museum (NYC); RAW and Satellite Art Fair (Miami); Illuminus Festival (Boston), and SPACE Gallery (Pittsburgh); ExTeresaArte Actual Museum, and La Explanada del MUAC (Mexico); and Nuit Blanche Festival (Canada). Araujo is a Franklin Furnace Fund awardee, Brooklyn Arts Council and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council grantee and has received support through numerous residencies and fellowships including Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship, Creative Capital taller, ITP Camp and EMERGENYC. Araujo was awarded a full scholarship from Mexican Government Institution CONACYT. She holds an MA in Motor Learning and Control from Teachers College, Columbia University and a BA in Theater Studies from Emerson College. zavé martohardjono is a queer, trans, Indonesian-American artist working in performance, dance, installation, video, and poetry. Dwelling in their ancestors’ mythologies, with dreams of a more just future, they make work that contends with the political histories our bodies carry. zavé’s work is concerned with and prompted by inquiry into whether and how embodied healing, anti-colonial storytelling, and political education can de-condition the body, reconjure liberatory memory, and untangle entrenched assimilation. zavé’s dance improvisations, experimental works, multimedia works and writing address and subvert political histories. zavé has been presented at the 92Y, BAAD!, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Center for Performance Research, El Museo del Barrio, HERE Arts, Issue Project Room, The Kennedy Center, Storm King Art Center, the Wild Project, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Boston Center for the Arts, Tufts University, and elsewhere in the U.S. Internationally, they have shown films and performed in Amsterdam, Berlin, Glasgow, Zurich, Skopje, and Jakarta. They were a 2022 MRX/Movement Research Exchange program artist in Skopje, Macedonia, 2021 NYPL Dance Research Fellow, 2020 Gibney Dance in Process artist, 2019 Movement Research AIR, 2017-2018 LMCC Workspace Resident, and a 2011 EMERGENYC artist. Their work has been written about in BOMB Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, Culturebot, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times. Hector Canonge is an American artist of Catalan and Bolivian descent. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Canonge spent his childhood in Bolivia and grew up in New York City where he studied and developed his interdisciplinary practice. His projects in Conceptual Art, Social Practice, Media Arts, Performance Art, and Dance treat notions related to constructions of identity, gender roles, migration politics, and ancestral heritage. His interactive projects explore the use of commercial technologies in relation to social archetypes, while his site-specific installations repurpose discarded materials and objects from everyday use. Challenging the white box settings of a gallery or a museum, or intervening directly in public spaces, his performances mediate movement, endurance, and ritualistic processes. Some of his actions and carefully choreographed performances involve collaborating with other artists and interacting with audiences. Through his investigation of somatic expression, he has developed a corporeal theory for the practice of Performance Art presenting it in workshops and conferences around the world. In New York City, Canonge’s dance and performance art projects have been featured at Triskelion Arts, Green Space, Boston Center for the Arts, Movement Research at the Judson Church, La Guardia Performing Arts Center, Queens Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and La Mama among others. The artist has exhibited widely in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia. Canonge is the founding director of the performance art festivals: ITINERANT in NYC (2010-2019t), LATITUDES in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia (2017-present), and AUSTRAL in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2019-present). He is responsible for the initiatives: ARTerial Performance Lab (South America), TALKaCTIVE & LiVEART.US, NEXUS and IGNITION (United States), Performeando and Encuentro Latinoamericano de Performance Art Berlin (Europe), and the International Network of Performance Art, INPA. In 2020, while reflecting on the effects of the Corona pandemic, Canonge launched the virtuals program, CHRONICLES of CONFINEMENT, featuring artists from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. In 2022, Canonge launched and curated PAUSA, Performance Art USA, a new seasonal platform for live art and its various modalities of presentation. Canonge’s work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Art Forum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Hispanic Magazine, Turbulence, Art Card Review, and New York Foundation for the Arts’ bulletin NYFA News among others. The artist is currently at work in the development of new projects and programs for the exploration and experimentation of Live Art and its various manifestations. Ayana Evans is a NYC-based performance artist. Her guerilla-style performances have been staged at El Museo del Barrio, The Barnes Foundation, The Bronx Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Newark Museum, Queens Museum and a variety of free public locations. Her performances have been reviewed in The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet, Hyperallergic, and New York Magazine's The Cut. She was a 2017-2018 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance, 2018 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2021-22 Professor of the Practice at Brown University, and 2022 Chamberlain Award winner at Headlands Art Center. Her past residencies include Yaddo, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Evans' most recent projects included a performance in Simone Leigh’s Loophole of Retreat at the Venice Biennale and the development of a career fair and outdoor projection series that welcomed over 150 formerly incarcerated individuals and transformed the job hunting space into a fun environment. - complete with soul food, a live DJ, and green neon t-shirts for everyone involved. Evans was also featured in or editor of the following publications: "We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World," by Jasmin Hernandez with forward by Swizz Beats, 2020 - features interviews with 50 contemporary artists of color, "Institution as Verb," Edited by Elizabeth Lamb, Ayana Evans, Esther Neff and Tsedaye Makonnen, "Volume 11 Friend of the Arts" Edited by Thomas Flynn II, and "Re-Envisioning The Contemporary Art Cannon: Perspectives in a Global World" Edited by Ruth Iskin, 2017. Evans is currently a professor at Brooklyn College and NYU. Lital Dotan is a visual artist and curator. Her works include live work, video, sculpture and theater. She is the co-founder and artistic director of Glasshouse ArtLifeLab, an art-house currently based in Upstate NY. Co-founded with Eyal Perry in 2007, Glasshouse is an environment dedicated to performance in the domestic sphere, where she organizes and produces festivals, thematic exhibitions, durational performances, collaborations and residencies. In 2015 Dotan founded Que sal mah, a clothing brand that merges performance art, choreography and fashion, where clients book a one-to-one performance session culminating in a dress. Her immersive art works and performances were exhibited in museums and galleries world-wide such as the Israel Museum, National Museum Cracow, Queens Museum, Haifa Museum, Jewish Contemporary SF to name a few and was featured in magazines such as The NY Times, Hyperallergic, DNA Info, NY Mag, Paper Mag, ArtSlant, Haaretz, Huffington Post, VISION China, TAR Magazine and many more. Since early in her artistic career, she has collaborated with photographer Eyal Perry who is responsible for the photography in the majority of her work. An integration of installation, documentation and life her performance narratives examine structures and mechanisms of power across art and society; dissolving and re-imagining through harsh intimacy notions of privacy, audience, ownership, value and success. Dotan published two catalogues- The Glasshouse In Retrospective (2011) and '7 Invitations' (2014). In 2016, her essay about performance ecology in NY was published in TAR magazine, hosting artists, curators and organizers who are actively providing platforms for performance in New York. Photo credits: Building Bridges Not Walls (2018) Photo by Brandon Perdomo. Photo courtesy of Arantxa Araujo. zavé martohardjono. Photo courtesy of the artist. Hector Canonge (2023). Photo courtesy of the artist. Ayana Evans. Photo courtesy of the artist. Lital Dotan, Speaking Ice to Sheep (2023). Screenshot from videography by Eyal Perry. Esther Neff website> https://estherneff.wordpress.com/ | http://www.panoplylab.org/ - IG> @thefenserf | @panoplylab - Arantxa Araujo website> arantxaaraujo.com | IG> @ArantxaAraujo - zavé martohardjono website> https://zavemartohardjono.com/ - Hector Canonge website> www.hectorcanonge.net - Ayana Evans website> https://www.ayanaevans.com/ - Lital Dotan website> https://www.litaldotan.com/ Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Kristyl D. Tift Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 1 Visit Journal Homepage Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. Soyica Diggs Colbert. New Haven: Yale, 2021; Pp. 273. Kristyl D. Tift By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF Soyica Diggs Colbert’s Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry (2021) adds to the discourse on Black Radical Thought through its examination of the life and art of Lorraine Hansberry. This biography establishes her masterpiece A Raisin in the Sun (1959) as only part of Hansberry’s story. With its focus on a black family’s dream to acquire the fruits of capitalism, the play countered pervasive stereotypes of black people by humanizing the black nuclear family. Due to the play’s popularity and the conservatism of the 1950s, however, Hansberry is not widely considered a black radical writer. Colbert, however, proves that she was. The author’s in-depth analysis of Hansberry’s writings (published and unpublished) helps to tell a layered story of the playwright’s intersectional identity, radical activism, artistry, politics, and personal life. Colbert argues that Hansberry’s lifelong effort to “become free” in spite of racism, sexism, and homophobia has been overshadowed by her public persona as a pretty, passive, liberal, heterosexual, housewife compelled to tell the story of a black family’s struggle. Relying on archival materials, this book fills in gaps of the mainstream public’s perception of Hansberry. The introduction to this book highlights three significant events in Hansberry’s life—her father’s death (1945), the opening of A Raisin in the Sun (1959), and her divorce from Robert Nemiroff (1964). Notably, Colbert ascribes Hansberry’s personal growth and identity formation; political and artistic development; and commitment to the collective pursuit of freedom for black people, women, and queer people in the U.S. and abroad as processes of “becoming free.” This notion is further explored in Chapter 1 as Colbert establishes that Hansberry’s writerly practice was an act of becoming free. Taking as evidence the ideas and images in Hansberry’s short and longform writings in the decade before Raisin, Colbert unpacks the influence of mid-twentieth century leftist thought, existentialism, feminist materialism, and black internationalism on her politics. Hansberry’s work as a reporter for Freedom and for the Sojourners for Truth and Justice (STJ)—a woman-centered organization that situated black women’s experiences of oppression and resistance—are key. The author argues that Hansberry’s use of realism in her writing serves as an opportunity to represent everyday happenings while imagining change. Hansberry’s letters published in the The Ladder are offered as examples of her investment in her era’s gay and lesbian rights movement. Persuasively, Colbert asserts, “Analyzing Hansberry’s writing as both a practice of self-articulation and a political practice produces more nuanced and intersectional understanding of how to cultivate freedom and the self” (64). In Chapter 2, the author traces Raisin from idea to production. Colbert also addresses its critical reception. By providing ideological context for Hansberry’s playwriting choices, and by examining repeated instances in which she was misquoted in interviews, the author counters misinterpretations of the play and Hansberry’s intent—including Harold Cruse’s assertion that her positionality as a middle-class black woman in an interracial relationship led her to incorporate the theme of integration to forward a universal representation of the black family for white audiences. Revealing Hansberry’s pro-Black and Marxist thought, as established in other writings and interviews, Colbert argues that Hansberry’s focus on a black working-class family aimed to show the negative effects of racism on black economic growth and legacy, regardless of class. Chapter 3 foregrounds Hansberry’s boredom with Raisin and desire to resist the private and public (race, gender, sexual, economic, political) constraints that came with its success. Colbert writes, “In the three years following A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry created work that sought to invigorate once-degraded identities (Black, woman, lesbian) with potential. Her pursuit had personal consequences, as she continued to learn to live with her competing desires and commitments” (100). An analysis of the screenplay, The Drinking Gourd (1959), follows as an example of Hansberry’s critique of colonialism. The film was never produced because executives wanted to avoid controversy. While Hansberry’s success made it difficult to assert her political voice, she continued her activism. Hansberry’s active involvement in the Civil Rights Movement provides the focus of Chapter 4. Her work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) put her “commitment to mass and collective movement[s] for change” front and center (137). Hansberry and the SNCC created a photo essay called The Movement to show the horrors of American racism and the trappings of American exceptionalism for black people. Being a humanist and a radical, Hansberry believed that black people should pursue freedom at all costs while working across racial and class differences. The author shows how she experimented with these ideas and other existential questions in The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (1964). Chapter 5 recognizes Hansberry’s hope and despair as she fought cancer in 1964 at the age of 33. Having delved into her diary entries with a careful eye and critical ear, the author captures the stress of cancer, treatment, and the possibility of death that loomed over Hansberry. All this as she completed Les Blancs (produced posthumously in 1970), a play which features Tshembe, who must choose between diplomacy and revolutionary action. Colbert asserts, “The position Hansberry faced at the end of her life, confronting the failures of the civil rights movement (a movement that made her life worth living), the shortcomings of independence movements, and her impending death, mirrors Tshembe’s impossible position, teetering between violent and nonviolent action or some combination therein” (205-6). The author closes the chapter with a comparative analysis of Les Blancs with Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (1947) and After the Fall (1964) to highlight the similarities and differences in these post-War narratives. It seems fitting to position these two American Theatre masters of realism in conversation with one another. In the inspiring epilogue, the author asserts that by envisioning acts of fugitivity, self-determination, and transgression for racialized, queer, and gendered persons in her work, Hansberry was essentially “writing herself into being” (226). This book, reviewed by The New York Times, is a necessary addition to interdisciplinary discourse and contemporary re-evaluations of Hansberry. Like Imani Perry’s award-winning biography, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (2018), Radical Vision looks to Hansberry’s writing practice as a reflection of her radical, intersectional worldview. It contributes significantly to African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Feminist Studies, Queer Studies, and Theatre Studies by presenting Hansberry as an artist and activist whose realist work reflected an ongoing process of “movement.” Colbert argues that Hansberry’s art and activism reflected a desire to put focus on and ultimately change the state, communities, and cultures for the better. In this critical biography, Colbert effectively shows that Hansberry’s politics are written into the fabric of her writing; one need only read those works closely and intertextually to hear a black radical voice. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Kristyl D. Tift Vanderbilt University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Performance and the Disney Theme Park Experience: The Tourist as Actor. Jennifer A. Kokai and Tom Robson, eds. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; Pp. 292. The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Edwin Wong. Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press, 2019; Pp. 363. Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion. Emeline Jouve. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2017; Pp. 258. Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. Soyica Diggs Colbert. New Haven: Yale, 2021; Pp. 273. The Mysterious Murder of Mrs. Shakespeare: Transgressive Performance in Nineteenth-Century New York “What Will Be Changed?”: Maxwell Anderson and the Literary Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti Theatre of Isolation “A Certain Man Had Two [Kids]”: Tragic Parables, “The Prodigal Son,” and Edward Albee's The Goat “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells [Her] Story”: An Intersectional Analysis of the Women of Hamilton Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.