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Drew Barker Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator Drew Barker By Published on May 16, 2023 Download Article as PDF Between this interview (edited for length and clarity from October 2022) and the publication of this issue, Gancher and Mezzocchi’s 2020 production of Russian Troll Farm won an OBIE Award. Since it was one of three productions to be given such an honor in the category of “Digital+Virtual+Hybrid Production,” all of which were reviewed over the last three seasons due to the pandemic, one wonders how such recognition will impact and inspire other digital+virtual+hybrid projects in the future. Regardless, it can certainly be argued that Gancher and Mezzocchi’s production (co-directed by Elizabeth Williamson) met the historical moment better than most digital theatre productions. The play satirically addresses the weaponization of misinformation via social media during a presidential election season that mirrored not only the prior presidential election season, but also the weaponization of misinformation in other parts of the world. Ultimately, using satire and a suite of digital technologies allowed the production to feel familiar and dangerous at the same time. If new times demand new forms, what will we miss if we hesitate to embrace the progress made in terms of theatrical creativity and audience engagement? We should remember what Barbara Fuchs declares: “At its most elaborate, digital theater does more than simulate the real: it complicates and remixes it, foregrounding the artifice and conventionality in how we think about production, performance, audiences, and theater itself.” [1] Playwright Sarah Gancher and multimedia creator Jared Mezzocchi collaborated on the critically-acclaimed, digital production of Russian Troll Farm in late 2020, and are now working on a new project — even as other productions of Russian Troll Farm continue their success. In this interview by Performing Arts Librarian, Drew Barker, Gancher and Mezzocchi discuss how their creative process has evolved. Barker: Your 2020 production of Russian Troll Farm was a benchmark for digital theatre during the pandemic. Now you’re both teaming up again, and the word “epic” has been tossed around. What can you tell us about this new project you’re working on? Gancher: We are working on an epic about deep time that is set throughout all the different eras of history present in one Brooklyn bar — Sunny’s in Red Hook. It has been in continuous operation since 1890. And of course, there’s a lot of history on that spot before that point, and there will be a lot of history on that spot after this time. We are asking the question: What would you learn if you were able to see all of the history in one spot superimposed on top of all the moments of history superimposed on top of each other? If you were able to hop back and forth between them, remix and match them? What would we find out about ourselves, and what will we find out about the patterns that we live? We’re hoping that when superimposed that they all add up to make a giant question that none of them make individually. I think that it’s going to be a massive participatory art project sort of made by the community, consisting of a film shoot at Sunny’s with snippets of video that are like scenes or seamless moments from across all the different eras of Sunny’s, and then after playing their part in that people can walk down the street to this big warehouse where there will be an installation showing everything that’s being shot at Sunny’s superimposed on top of each other and allowing people to hop back and forth between them and see the composite story as it begins to emerge. And there’s bluegrass involved because of the famous bluegrass jam that happens at Sunny’s. It will also have an on-line component. It’s very cool, but it’s currently hard to explain. Mezzocchi: I would add that it’s a two-part process for an audience member to participate in the scene, and then go into an entirely different space, and see how that participation plays a role in a much wider, larger container of time and space. And now you’re both the viewer of a kind of a gallery installation of live mixed video, while also seeing yourself reflected inside of it. And so, you’re kind of unlocking the history of the place, but also you’re participating in a new part of the history of the place. What does it mean when we are aware of our own immediate footprint in time? It’s like a widening of the consciousness of the participant. And I think that’s the big question for me — what does that do to a person when they know that they’re a part of the history of a place? Gancher: It’ll be an experiment and obsession, and it’s sort of in two senses: one where we’ll literally have people playing music and jamming, and then also there’s going to be a kind of like a visual jam session as people, essentially solo with images taking turns, matching the images to the music, finding and making meaning in the connection between these different moments. Mezzocchi: So, perhaps we can create a jam session, both audibly and visually. All of those things are for me, as a technologist, taking the discoveries of Russian Troll Farm which made that thing feel more full of breath in life. Because the editor was present, the editor was doing the thing live. Now in this residency [at Bethany Arts Center] working with Sarah, watching Sarah now take the reins, I don’t think our collaboration would have led to this without Russian Troll Farm . I also don’t think that my technological inventions would have brought me where I am today without Russian Troll Farm . Gancher: I think that we both — if I may speak for Jared and I certainly intend to — we found Russian Troll Farm so thrilling because we were making up something that nobody had ever done before, and that we weren’t sure whether or not it was going to work, or how it would work. And so we had to also invent a process, and we both got really into that. I mean, it’s painstaking, it’s slow. It’s frustrating. But it’s also so fun. And so cool, because you feel like you’re making a new form. Mezzocchi: And I think that, I don’t know, the older I’m getting, the more rare I’m realizing it is to find people that you can kind of run around in the dark with. And the pandemic felt like the darkest time. And I felt so fortunate with Sarah, with Elizabeth [Williamson], with that cast, that we all in the middle of a pandemic found each other and said, “Let’s keep playing tag for a second” I wanted to hold onto that accidental joy that was found in the middle of horrific trauma, because that was a joy that I’ve never felt before, ever. Barker: Sarah, you’ve written that as a playwright you’re obsessed with questions of how history shapes us. How has the pandemic shaped your storytelling process? Gancher: My main experience of the pandemic was as a parent trying to raise a five year old, who became a six year old, and then a seven year old, all while in a shoebox apartment. I went from being a full time playwright, writing a minimum of 40 hours a week to virtually having no writing time at all, and kind of going insane. It was a nightmare, watching all of the things that I had planned that I was so excited for all fall apart and crumble. But I do think those ashes have turned out to be very fertile for me, because there have been multiple things that I never would have done, never would have tried, had life continued on its original trajectory. Russian Troll Farm in particular created an appetite to try new things more. So, I just finished the first draft of lyrics for my first musical book, where I’m also writing the music. Considering this new project with Jared, which I’m so hyped on now, I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to attempt it before. And I don’t think that anybody would have thought about offering me that opportunity before Russian Troll Farm . If we’re considering the pandemic as a whole politically, the themes continued to resonate with Russian Troll Farm — disinformation, mass delusion, echo chambers, mass hysteria, and the fact that our collective unconscious seems spiraling into a deep depression — and I don’t know, we should probably get on that. Barker: Indeed. Things were different for you, Jared, but it was still an upheaval, right? Mezzocchi: Yeah, I feel like everything changed for me. I look back on the very beginning, when we did She Kills Monsters [at the University of Maryland in April 2020]. Because I decided to call the chair and say, “Don’t cancel it, we have an opportunity to do research here.” And I made that call to her while I was in a panic down in Arkansas after a regional theatre production of Curious Incident of the Dog in Nighttime that I was directing had just shut down. It had been a moment of real, positive, directorial growth for me that was stripped away the day before tech. And so I look back on that and I don’t know why I made that phone call. And I also don’t know why that same day, I called my board at Andy’s Summer Playhouse and said, “Cancel the summer. Because if we cancel now, then we don’t spend any more money preparing for a summer season that won’t happen, and therefore we have more money to deal with what this brings. And let’s go weird.” I remember the thrill of being in a support system at UMD and at Andy’s that allowed me to take a risk, because the safety net was more educational in both of those realms. And that put me in different shoes, so then I felt more courageous when walking into my freelance life and calling Sarah, which happened about two weeks later. And so, I think that being in two educational environments allowed me — and I’m really saying this for the first time — allowed me the courage and to say, “Fuck it. Like, it’s research.” The flip to using the term “research” was a big thing for me, and that hasn’t changed. And I think that getting the recognition, sharing the lessons learned, getting the positive press, and then making more connections made me realize the power of being an experimenter who could produce things, produce things quickly, and vocalize the flaws of each experiment. Suddenly the power of discovery was the thing, and I’m not ever going to forget that. Barker: How do words and design influence you both now during your creative process in terms of dramaturgy? Is it like asking about the chicken and the egg? Or, how is the story influenced by the format? Gancher: I think it’s both chicken and egg. And nobody knows where either one came from. One of the nicest things that anybody’s ever said to me in my life was when Jared said much of what he technologically invented for Russian Troll Farm only happened because of the demands of the script. A lot of people presumed that it was written for Zoom, but in fact it was barely adapted for that format. In my brain it had always been for the stage. Now in this latest residency, as we began to iterate, I start thinking about the story. What is the event? Sometimes I write “scratch drafts,” like sort of pre-writing, like scenes, but they don’t even have character names yet, you know? I’ve never shown anybody in my life work that early, but I showed it to Jared. And then that sort of kickstarted him thinking from the container and also asking, “What is the event?” What will the tech for this need to look like? And, as we ping pong back and forth, we influence each other. Mezzocchi: I would add to that if you’re coming from content, and I’m coming from form, we’re both kind of saying, “Here’s how I would take your offering and make it function inside of my brain,” and vice versa. If the text is the content constant, and the tech is the variable, here’s how function can form and then flip it and say, if the tech is the constant, and the text is the variable, here’s what happens there. Tech is a tool, and function is the space that we’re kind of finger painting in. That to me feels pretty subversive to the industry standards. Gancher: It’s more related to the sort of experimental devising world that we actually both come from — nobody knows that we’re both musicians, and nobody knows that we both come from the world of devising and experimental stuff. It’s actually quite key to the way that we work together, and it reminds me of my favorite Suzan Lori Parks quote: “Form is content.” And I think that I’m trying to work with Jared not like a playwright traditionally works with the designer, but like the other half of my brain, or like I’m the other half of his brain. Also, his live video editing skills responded to hearing the rhythm in the words, which totally amplified the humor and timing in Russian Troll Farm in a unique way. Barker: Jared, among many other things on Twitter you’ve talked about mediaturgy. Can you comment on how you position that in your current theatrical practice? Mezzocchi: That idea was actually based on a course I teach. It’s not about just telling stories on digital terms. We ask questions like: Why and how are we using technology to drive the story forward? What’s its point of view for the story? How is it used differently for each character? It’s not just spectacle. Mediaturgy informs choices which then contributes to the overall dramaturgy. Ideally, it allows for more collaboration, with the actors understanding a new language within a new process, too. Digital storytelling should be seen as a scene partner. Gancher: I would add that mediaturgy makes you consider new questions as well. For example, how are you casting the audience? Are they spying on the characters? How does the story move in digital theatre? It’s a bit of a filmic question, too, of course. Does it move in jumps, does it move in fades? Does it root us down in one spot, or does it disorient us? But more importantly, does it live up to our vision? Mezzocchi: It was helpful that the world slammed to a halt, and we had to interrogate how we use and connect through technology. As a society, and as a theatre community, in order to get to the necessary technological solutions we must also address the problems of how we use technology. We’re continuing to learn how to use the tech as a tool, not have the technology use us. Gancher: In this new process, the whole team is writing with you. As someone who teaches writing, I want to encourage that kind of collaboration even though it’s scary and difficult. We need to find the people who can make that work. www.sarahgancher.org www.jaredmezzocchi.com (Twitter: @jaredmezzocchi) References Footnotes [1] Barbara Fuchs, Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a Time of Pandemic . (London: Methuen Drama, 2022), 25. About The Author(s) DREW BARKER is the Performing Arts Librarian at the University of Maryland at College Park. As a dramaturg he has worked at Triad Stage (NC), Round House Theatre (MD), Center Stage (MD), and Theatre J (DC). He was the curator for the exhibits The Art & Craft of Puppetry (2022), Remembrance & Resilience (2021) and The Triumph of Isabella: Exploring Performance Through Art (2018-19) at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. His research and creative projects include information design and literacy, the U.S. Civil War, and the working relationship between playwright Naomi Wallace and historian Marcus Rediker. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Dan Colson 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 “What Will Be Changed?”: Maxwell Anderson and the Literary Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti Dan Colson By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF The stage directions for Clifford Odets’s 1935 Awake and Sing! call for a “picture of Sacco and Vanzetti” to be hung in Jacob’s room. [1] The picture signals the play’s investment in 1930s radical politics and foreshadows Jacob’s role: the aging Marxist who hopes to pass his communism onto his grandson. Placing Sacco and Vanzetti as a physical image that haunts the entire play is, of course, unsurprising for perhaps the most prominent radical dramatist of the period. Even eight years after their deaths, Nicola Sacco (1891-1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888-1927) stood as symbols for the Left. The two men were arrested for an April 1920 burglary and murder in Braintree, Massachusetts. They spent more than seven years in prison as their trial and appeals played out and were executed in August 1927. The story of these two Italian anarchists captured the world’s attention, sparking widespread outrage. Many believed the men to be innocent and far more believed the guilty verdict emerged from a flawed legal process—in the midst of the era’s anti-radical environment, Sacco and Vanzetti were punished for being anarchists, not for any crime they committed. The two immigrants became a cause célèbre for the literary Left, as their perceived mistreatment intersected with the interwar era’s interest in radical politics. In the late 1910s, radical politics were a dangerous proposition: the First Red Scare—culminating with the infamous Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920—saw mass arrests and deportations that sent many American socialists, communists, and anarchists to prison or back to their home countries. [2] This anti-radical environment set the stage both for Sacco and Vanzetti’s arrests and for the outrage that followed: as anarchists, they risked being arrested (and sent back to Italy) at any time, so their arrest for a burglary only a few months after the Palmer Raids appeared to many as too convenient. As their trial unfolded and their lives hung in legal limbo for years, the Left saw in these two purportedly innocent anarchists a rallying cry: their prolonged ordeal reinvigorated the Left, as ardent radicals and soft-hearted liberals found common ground. Amongst those drawn to their plight, we find a large number of the period’s well-known writers: Odets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mike Gold, Lucia Trent, Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos and countless others wrote about Sacco and Vanzetti. These writers—from a range of political positions—all cast doubt on the perceived justice of their conviction and eventual execution. While Sacco and Vanzetti were still alive, many writers focused their attention on immediate goals: delaying their execution, winning a reprieve from Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller, calling attention to the trial’s injustice, and swaying public sentiment in ways that might influence the powerful figures who were still in the process of determining the two anarchists’ fate. In short, authors writing up to August 1927 mostly sought to help Sacco and Vanzetti—two men’s lives were at stake. After their deaths, however, writers’ goals shifted. It was too late to save Sacco and Vanzetti, but many Left-leaning writers saw in their ordeal a potent symbol of what was wrong with the United States. This process of interpretation—of establishing the lasting meaning of these events—left us with a number of texts that lament the failures of the American legal system and call for major changes to ensure such a tragic miscarriage of justice would not occur again. None of these works, however, embrace the politics of their subjects. Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists; they believed the government was irredeemably broken and that no amount of reform could ever remedy the flaws of American democracy. In fact, they were followers of Luigi Galleani, an Italian anarchist who openly espoused violent anti-government actions. [3] As radical and progressive writers interpreted the significance of Sacco and Vanzetti’s plight, however, their anarchism tended to disappear—sublimated to other political agendas that rejected the extremes of anarchism. Despite the fact that many people believed Sacco and Vanzetti were treated unfairly precisely because they were anarchists, authors writing after their deaths minimized their politics, turning them into symbols for the writers’ political and artistic visions. In this essay, I focus on Maxwell Anderson, who wrote two plays about Sacco and Vanzetti: Gods of the Lightning in 1928, just after their execution, and Winterset in 1935, when the two men’s legacy had been almost entirely sublimated to others’ political agendas. Anderson is an interesting figure within the body of Sacco-Vanzetti literature. On the one hand, scholars have rightly recognized Anderson’s dalliance with radicalism which makes him a natural author to take up the topic. On the other hand, Anderson underwent a dramatic, yet prolonged, political transformation—a significant shift toward the Right. His two Sacco-Vanzetti plays appeared in the midst of this transition, as Anderson—like many Left-leaning authors from the period—responded to the rise of fascism and began to drift away from the more strident forms of American radicalism. The plays, then, were written in moments when Anderson still saw Leftist politics and economic policy as potential answers to social injustice, yet they were subsequently inflected by a playwright who gradually distanced himself from the Left. Interpretation of Gods of the Lightning and Winterset have been complicated by Anderson’s political transformation (and, in fact, by Anderson’s own understandings of the plays vis-à-vis radical politics). In what follows, I argue the plays—while different in key respects—demonstrate a consistent political fatalism that can help us better understand Anderson’s relationship to the radical Left. In them, he finds little hope for radical politics, as the plays’ plots turn away from anarchism to other, more personal matters and, in the process, tend toward hopelessness. These two plays thus portend Anderson’s disillusionment with the Left, which does not offer the answers he seeks and cannot redress the injustice he laments. At the heart of this fatalism, however, are his thinly veiled representations of two executed anarchists. Anderson builds his fatalistic political vision on Sacco and Vanzetti, an ubiquitous symbol of the nation’s failures. Doing so required, to a certain extent, abjuring their radicalism. As anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti rejected the nation outright. To them, there was no remedying legal injustice; the law itself was injustice. Gods of the Lightning and Winterset minimizes this anarchism, offering instead a mélange of vaguely Leftist politics and individualized, largely apolitical, personal strife. According to many, Anderson makes the anarchism that explained Sacco and Vanzetti’s execution impotent, if not irrelevant, in the plays. In this respect, Anderson’s portrayal of the men distills the broader evolution of their literary depictions: stripped of the specificity of their radicalism, Sacco and Vanzetti become generic symbols, manipulated for the political and literary visions of the authors who deploy their image. Ultimately, analysis of anarchism’s appearance in Gods of the Lightning and Winterset reveals a fundamental rejection of their subjects’ politics. Their anarchism is replaced by a sense of hopelessness, and then by a revisioning of the plays’ import: these are not plays about anarchism or anarchist plays; they are plays that happen to be about anarchists. My argument here thus offers us a better understanding of Anderson’s oeuvre (and the role his politics play in it), but also a clearer look at the ways in which Sacco and Vanzetti were deployed by the era’s literary Left as strikingly non-anarchist symbols of the nation’s shortcomings. Anderson’s Uncertain Politics Anderson’s father was a railroad-worker-turned-itinerant-minister, so Anderson’s childhood was marked by frequent moves, an uneven education, and a large dose of Protestantism (which he almost entirely rejected). Though his family often struggled financially and Anderson himself held a number of working-class jobs in his early adulthood, there are no meaningful radical influences in his social sphere during his formative years. He was early drawn to Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, from whom he learned a “distrust for ‘big’ government” and a “sometimes errant individualism.” [4] Then, while at the University of North Dakota, he studied Thorstein Veblen under a socialist professor. [5] In 1912, Anderson, then 23, declared, “I have become a Socialist.” [6] A few years later, in a letter to his life-long friend Upton Sinclair, he describes himself as “Bolshevistic.” [7] During this period, it appeared the “champion of liberty and justice” might embrace the radical Left. [8] Only a few years later, while working for The New Republic , Anderson seemed uninterested in “politics, national or international.” [9] In the 1920s he was a “staunch” liberal “against monopolies and for organized labor.” [10] By the late 1930s, however, he felt forced to choose between “the evils of capitalism” and the “evils of collectivism.” [11] He chose capitalism, and by the beginning of WWII he believed “Communism [was] dangerous,” and a threat to “democratic government.” [12] Eventually, Anderson aligned with Joseph McCarthy and others who contended that “any American member of the Communist Party was a criminal dedicated to overthrowing the government by force.” [13] In Anderson’s authoritative biography, Alfred S. Shivers describes the dramatist as an “individualist and a rebel,” a man with “wide-ranging sympathies.” [14] These sympathies intersected with the Left at moments, but they hardly suggest a man who would write multiple plays about arguably the most famous anarchists in American history. Like many fellow-travelers—individuals who flirted with radicalism, yet never fully embraced the more extreme Leftist politics that largely define “radical literature” from this period—Anderson’s politics transformed as he aged and as his political environment changed. In fact, Anderson’s political journey makes him a paradigmatic example of one type of fellow traveler: he came to socialism early in the twentieth century, when it was the most prevalent brand of American radicalism; he approved of and was drawn to the rise of communism in Russia; he associated with Leftist playwrights such as Odets and the Group Theatre during the 1930s, the heyday of radical literature and theater; he dropped his pacifism during the anti-fascist, pre-WWII era; he turned to American democracy during WWII; [15] and he fully rejected communism during the Cold War. Perhaps predictably then, during the interwar period Anderson’s politics are difficult to define at any given moment. His views were predominantly a mix of American individualism—an anti-institutional, yet malleable distrust for anything that intruded upon one’s “liberty”—and progressive economic ideas (i.e., his prolonged, if incomplete, infatuation with socialism and communism). In some, these dual concerns might combine into an anti-statist, economically egalitarian anarchism (as they did for Sacco and Vanzetti and numerous others from the turn of the century to WWII), but in Anderson, they generated a pendulous politics swinging from radical to reactionary based on the historical moment’s ideological climate. If there is any consistency in Anderson’s political stances, it comes from being “deeply distrustful of all institutional authorities.” [16] At times, this inclination manifests as a belief that the “American government is steadily encroaching on the individual’s rights and independence.” [17] Anderson’s Both Your Houses (1933), for instance, was “intended to be a blast at the Hoover administration.” [18] A critically acclaimed play that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it offers relatively overt commentary on the era’s political milieu—especially the rejection of Hoover’s volunteerism and the increasing sense, amongst radicals and progressives alike, that major changes to the American economy were necessary—even if was not staged until after Hoover left office and the nature of the conversation had changed significantly. Anderson’s anti-authoritarian stance has even led some to label Anderson a “libertarian” and an “anarchist.” [19] But even Anderson’s peers were confused by his politics, with Odets once calling him “‘a damned reactionary, a fascist!” [20] By that time, Anderson himself self-protectively embraced detachment from organized politics, claiming merely, “I vote Democratic or Republican as I please.” [21] To this day, scholars continue to struggle to locate Anderson’s politics. As I detail below, some claim he was a socialist, others an anarchist, while others avoid the question altogether. Russell DiNapoli offers the lengthiest consideration of Anderson’s relationship to anarchism, linking the playwright’s politics to William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and, most strongly, early-twentieth-century American anarchist Benjamin Tucker. [22] In doing so, however, DiNapoli almost entirely distances Anderson from the major threads of American anarchism prevalent during his career. By the 1920s, Tucker’s influence had waned significantly as he turned away from anarchism as a viable political solution. Rather, figures like Galleani, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman held sway in American anarchist circles—they and their followers became the target of anti-radical sentiment because they were the most visible anarchists, and their punishments, in turn, increased their standing within radical circles. This “violent” anarchism, as DiNapoli calls it, achieved ascendency, [23] which is precisely why Sacco and Vanzetti presented such a threat: they were not philosophical anarchists; they advocated for the overthrow of US governance. DiNapoli concludes that anarchism appears in Anderson’s plays more as a “personal philosophy” than an “ideology,” and that “nowhere does the playwright uphold anarchism as it was defined” by prominent anarchists (past or present). [24] In short, Anderson was interested in anarchism, but his politics never reified around it or any other single radical position. Ethan Mordden perhaps sums it up best: “Anderson’s affiliation was anarchist, though he conceded that anarchy [was] out of reach and democracy was flawed but useful.” [25] In keeping with other scholars, Mordden suggests that Anderson was an anarchist who did not really accept the basic premises of anarchism! [26] Ultimately, Anderson is an example of the persistent difficulty in writing about literary radicalism from this period: a dramatist linked to radical and progressive political causes, writing in an era of radical literary politics, but with views detached from the dominant threads of radicalism. Anderson’s plays and his politics embody a not uncommon generic radicalism: though never fully embracing any of the era’s radical ideologies, he was often labeled as radical, and thus is emblematic of intellectuals and writers who drifted left during the period, many of whom were called radical, even when their politics resembled those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt more than Emma Goldman. Like many, the Sacco-Vanzetti affair attracted Anderson, but the motivation for his attraction remains ambiguous. Consequently, scholars who discuss Anderson’s purported radicalism sometimes fall into a type of circular reasoning: they argue that he was drawn to the case because he was a Leftist; therefore, he was a Leftist because he was drawn to the case. His two plays about Sacco and Vanzetti, Gods of the Lightning and Winterset , do not define the complexity of his political journey, nor do they establish him as a staunchly radical playwright. These plays do, however, provide insight into the floating, generic literary radicalism of the 1920s and 1930s. The plays deploy Sacco and Vanzetti as political symbols representative of anarchism, but the nature of these symbols is fragmented and detached from the men’s own lived anarchism. Anderson’s First Anarchists: Gods of the Lightning Gods of the Lightning , which Anderson co-wrote with Harold Hickerson, has been largely forgotten. [27] The play was completed in the spring of 1928, only a few months after Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, staged later that year, and published in early 1929. The play immediately prompted a variety of negative responses to its perceived political transgressions and aesthetic shortcomings: “The Chief of the Licensing Division of the City of Boston, J. M. Case, ruled that [it] was practically ‘anarchist and treasonable’ and should not, therefore, be licensed for presentation in that city”; [28] it was dubbed “a failure” precisely because it was based on the Sacco-Vanzetti case and thus “missed a chance to [be] a decidedly finer play”; [29] and it has since been called “an indignantly one-sided and propagandistic account of social injustice that is practically devoid of literary interest.” [30] Nevertheless, it ran at the Little Theater in New York City for 29 performances in October 1928, and the Group Theatre revived it in 1934, signaling some acceptance from Leftist dramatic circles. Anderson and Hickerson attempt to create a one-to-one corollary to Sacco and Vanzetti in Gods of the Lightning : “Vanzetti becomes Dante Capraro, the gentle and humane Anarchist” while “Sacco is greatly transformed into the native-born American James Macready, a militant International Woodsmen of the World leader.” [31] Jennifer Jones argues that Sacco and Vanzetti “are combined in the character of Capraro, a pacifist organizer,” [32] but Macready clearly also reflects elements of their story and their politics, functioning as a rough amalgam of the two anarchists. While the play does privilege the “American man of action,” [33] Vanzetti’s labor organizing mirrors Macready’s union work, and the similarities between the case and the play favor reading Capraro and Macready as representations of Sacco and Vanzetti, even if their reproduction is inexact and overlapping. The plot similarly veils the Sacco-Vanzetti case in the thinnest veneer, reproducing the Left’s widespread message about the men by depicting the arrest, trial, and execution of Capraro and Macready as a heinous injustice in which the mechanisms of law are distorted and misused to eliminate a radical threat. Certainly, the play attacks the legal system’s failures, but it does not offer a cohesive “left wing message.” [34] Jones and others imagine Anderson set out to write a socialist play—they begin with the assumption that Anderson was a radical. [35] They then analyze the play and find it is not particularly radical in comparison to its radical author. This reading, though, is symptomatic of Anderson’s conflicted politics and his concomitant untidy representation of Sacco and Vanzetti. In addition, these critics’ efforts to evaluate a play about two anarchists by comparing it to the author’s purported socialism, inevitably pushes anarchism to the margins. Gods of the Lightning emerges in the historical moment that Sacco and Vanzetti are transformed from living victims to potent symbols: it marks a politically wavering playwright’s articulation of anarchism to a similarly diffuse, and increasingly generic, vision of radicalism. The unsettled role of anarchism in the play occurs initially through Capraro and Macready who each reject government for different reasons. Macready says “government’s nothing so important. It’s a police system, to protect the wealth of the wealthy.” [36] Though linked to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), his critique of government is purely economic. [37] Macready parrots Vanzetti’s economic ideology without embracing his anti-government stance. Capraro’s political views, on the other hand, are simple anti-state anarchism, as revealed by his testimony during the play’s version of the trial: Salter: Do you believe in capitalism?Capraro: No.Salter: You believe that all property should belong to the workers?Capraro: Property should belong to those who create it.Salter: You are a communist?Capraro: I am an anarchist.Salter: What do you mean by that?Capraro: I mean, government is wrong. It creates trouble.Salter: You would destroy all government?Capraro: It will not be necessary. I would rather wait till it was so rotten it would rot away . . .Salter: You are against this government of ours?Capraro: Against all governments. [38] He denies being a communist, rejects government regardless of its implication in economic oppression, and, elsewhere, eschews all violence: “When you take violence into your hands, you lower yourself to the level of government, which is the origin of crime and evil.” [39] Both Macready and Capraro contain elements of Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s specific lives and political beliefs, yet they “represent the gamut of nonviolent anti-government philosophy and action,” [40] a major deviation from the two Galleanists on which they are based. Perhaps reflecting his own conflicted politics, Anderson juxtaposes non-anarchist Leftism with strict anti-government anarchism (while excluding violence almost entirely), creating a field of indeterminacy. Were the play fully dedicated to a propagandistic retelling of Sacco and Vanzetti’s plight, it likely would end with their execution, or perhaps with a reiteration of the anarchist statements the men (primarily Vanzetti) made as their deaths approached. The play, however, does not end with an execution. Rather, it interprets the events for its audience, recasting the meaning of these purportedly unjust deaths. With the anarchists dead, the play’s final lines are given to Rosalie, Macready’s lover. She expresses the drama’s closing sentiment. The remaining living characters wait in the restaurant while Capraro and Macready are executed. There Rosalie speaks the play’s concluding words: Don’t whisper it! Don’t whisper it! Didn’t you hear me say not to whisper any more? That’s what they’ll want you to do—whisper it—keep quiet about it—say it never happened—it couldn’t happen—two innocent men killed—keep it dark—keep it quiet— No! No! Shout it! They’re killing them . . . Mac—Mac—my dear—they have murdered you—while we stood here trying to think of what to do they murdered you! Just a moment ago you had a minute left—and it was the only minute in the whole world—and now—now this day will never end for you—there will be no more days . . . Shout it! Shout it! Cry out! Run and cry! Only—it won’t do any good—now. [41] All but the last line of Rosalie’s monologue gesture toward martyrdom—a bold call to ensure Macready’s death is not forgotten—but her final sentence turns to fatalism: the deaths have no meaning. “It won’t do any good” to shout of this injustice. Rosalie’s despondency has two ramifications. One is political: if Gods of the Lightning is a propaganda piece, a socialist (or anarchist) play (failed or otherwise), her fatalism contradicts the men’s politics and denies Sacco and Vanzetti any legacy. Contrary to Marxian theory and the lived politics of these two anarchists, nothing can be done; all is hopeless, revolution is impossible. The other is personal: the drama is a tragedy playing out against the backdrop of a politicized trial, not a political tragedy. In this case, sharing the tragedy of their unjust deaths is meaningless, because they are still dead, and Rosalie’s individual sorrow will not be assuaged by any political action. As Michael Schwartz argues, the play evokes “the anger and the fatalism” many felt after Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. [42] This “ultimate grimness,” [43] however, speaks more about those left to process their deaths than about the two anarchists themselves. By doing so, Anderson recast the men’s potential martyrdom as a reason for despair rather than action. And, he ignored Vanzetti’s own words before his execution: “Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as how we do by an accident.” [44] Despite his looming death, Vanzetti did not give into fatalism, and Gods of the Lightning need not either—Anderson’s politics recast the meaning of these events. Anderson chose to write about two anarchists, but he creates characters who espouse pacifistic anarchism and those who speak for radical labor. He links these two positions through their placement within a legal system that is subject to the play’s critique, yet he concludes by questioning the meaning and the lasting significance of Sacco and Vanzetti’s martyrdom. Anderson chose Sacco and Vanzetti as subject matter, but by exploring their politics through a pseudo-Leftist play that ends on a note either of political fatalism or apolitical loss, he sublimates anarchism. Though his ambiguous political agenda may be tied tenuously to Leftist ideologies, it is clearly not anarchist—it bears little resemblance to its real-life protagonists’ radicalism. Anderson’s Anarchist Trial: Winterset Unlike Gods of the Lightning , Winterset , written and published in 1955, was an immediate critical success, winning the Drama Critics Circle Award, and it continues to hold a secure position in the Western dramatic canon. [45] This success, though, tends to detach all political content from the play. [46] Anderson conceived of Winterset as “an experiment, an attempt to twist raw, modern reality to the shape and meaning of poetry.” [47] In his introduction to the play, he discusses his yearning for a “great theatre in this country,” one that has “outgrow[n] the phase of journalistic social comment and reache[d] . . . into the upper air of poetic tragedy.” [48] While outlining these ambitions, he fails to mention Sacco and Vanzetti. Setting out to write a tragic verse play and thus “establish a new [dramatic] convention, Anderson imagine[d] himself to be participating in a purely literary endeavor with little political import.” [49] According to DiNapoli, Anderson saw the Sacco-Vanzetti subject matter as a sure way to receive publicity in the politically charged 1930s, “and he judged that if he handled the subject in a way that did not infuse the potentially explosive event with newfound political life, a financial success might be achieved.” [50] Steven Richman more generously suggests, “Anderson, long a champion of individual liberties [was] clearly offended” by Sacco and Vanzetti’s plight. [51] Regardless of Anderson’s intent, the notion that Winterset is not a political play has retained remarkable traction: in the seventy-five years since it was written, scholars have focused on the play’s dramatic sources, conventions, and innovations, while frequently minimizing the historical event at its center. [52] It seems that when writing “propagandistic” plays, Anderson established a reputation for “Leftism” that was suspended temporarily when he wrote “pure literature.” [53] Put differently, when considered in the context of dramatic innovation, Winterset is granted a reprieve from the taint of radicalism, but given the overall context of Anderson’s work (including Gods of the Lightning and Both Your Houses ), it is strange to ignore the obvious political overtones in the play. [54] In 1935, Anderson had not yet fully rejected radical politics and he still associated with and was produced by Left-leaning theatre groups. Despite its subsequent sterilization, Winterset no more directly addressed the Sacco-Vanzetti affair and radicalism than did Gods of the Lightning . [55] In Winterset , Anderson again thinly veils his characters. Mio, the play’s protagonist, is the son of Bartolomeo Romagna, a radical fish peddler. Romagna is a conflated image of Sacco and Vanzetti, combining Vanzetti’s vocation (fishmonger) with Sacco’s fatherhood (Vanzetti had no children.). Notably, Romagna never appears in the play’s action: he haunts the text’s dialogue but is not a character; he establishes the link to Sacco and Vanzetti yet is a generic amalgam of both men’s anarchism. Winterset also includes Judge Gaunt, an obvious analog to Webster Thayer, the judge who presided over Sacco and Vanzetti’s trial, rejected several appeals and regularly defended the verdict, and, thus, was subject to particular ire from those who saw the entire ordeal as an injustice. In addition, Garth, Trock, and Shadow represent the real-life Morelli gang who may well have committed the crime for which Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted. [56] Set thirteen years after Romagna’s execution, the play depicts Mio’s search for the truth: he refuses to believe his father capable of murder and having sought the guilty parties for years, he eventually learns of and seeks out Garth, who witnessed Trock kill Romagna. This quest is paralleled by Trock’s efforts to kill anyone who might implicate him in the crime and by Judge Gaunt’s aimless, insane wanderings as he attempts to justify his court’s verdict. These three paths converge on the night of the play’s action, the same night on which Mio meets Miriamne and falls in love, providing a romantic plot which Anderson privileges over the Sacco-Vanzetti backdrop. Radicalism appears early in the play. Trock has come to see Garth, worried that continued interest in the case will lead Garth to confess and implicate him. Garth asks: who wants to go to trial againexcept the radicals? . . .Let the radicals go on howlingabout getting a dirty deal. They always howland nobody gives a damn. [57] Here, Garth gestures toward the continued interest in the Sacco-Vanzetti case but reduces this interest to the “radical” element; many may still take a voyeuristic interest in the case, but only the radicals are still interested in pursuing justice. Mio is aligned with this sustained “radical” interest because he too seeks the truth: No other love,time passing, nor the spaced light-years of sunsshall blur your voice, or tempt me from the paththat clears your name. [58] He seeks the truth because he must: Will you tell me how a man’sto live, and face his life, if he can’t believethat truth’s like a fire,and will burn through and be seenthough it takes all the years there are? [59] Mio does not believe the legal system’s findings, so he rejects them and seeks truth elsewhere; he wants to clear his father’s name, which is all that can be accomplished since Romagna is already dead. At the same time, the judge roams the streets, defending the legal system: Judge Gaunt’s gone off his nut. He’s gotthat damn trial on his mind, and been going roundproving to everybody he was right all the timeand the radicals were guilty—stopping peoplein the street to prove it—and now he’s nuts entirelyand nobody knows where he is. [60] The combination of Mio’s quest for truth contrary to the one produced by the legal system and Gaunt’s insane defense of the trial resemble Gods of the Lightning , suggests a substantive critique of the system that convicted Sacco and Vanzetti. Thirteen years after Romagna’s death (and eight years after Sacco and Vanzetti’s), however, Anderson suspends this critique, reducing it to context for the burgeoning romance between Mio and Miriamne (Garth’s sister), who meet and immediately fall in love. At this point, Winterset ’s attack on the legal system fades as Anderson redirects the action: [61] the play shifts from a pursuit of truth to an establishment of truth secondary to the pursuit of love. Suddenly, the Judge is no longer described as insane and he begins to sound cruel, yet reasonable in his defense of the verdict: I know and have knownwhat bitterness can rise against a courtwhen it must say, putting aside all weakness,that a man’s to die. I can forgive you that,for you are your father’s son, and you think of himas a son thinks of his father. Certain lawsseem cruel in their operation; it’s necessarythat we be cruel to uphold them. [62] As Mio, Garth, Trock, and Judge Gaunt interact, critique of the trial comes to the fore, with the tenement turning into a courtroom: Gaunt slips into his role as judge, calling for Order, gentlemen, order! The witness will rememberthat a certain decorum is essential in the court-room. [63] The fictive Judge Thayer, Morelli gang, and Sacco-Vanzetti family all reenter the legal system, and in this surreal recreation of the courtroom, Mio finds the truth he seeks. Romagna’s innocence and Gaunt’s complicity in the legal injustice are revealed, yet Gaunt still defends the verdict: [64] Suppose it known,but there are things a judge must not believethough they should head and fester underneathand press in on his brain. Justice once renderedin a clear burst of anger, righteously,upon a very common laborer,confessed an anarchist, the verdict foundand the precise machinery of lawinvoked to know him guilty—think what furorwould rock the state if the court then flatly said;all this was lies—must be reversed? It’s better,as any judge can tell you, in such cases,holding the common good to be worth morethan small injustice, to let the record stand,let one man die. For justice, in the main,is governed by opinion. Communitieswill have what they will have, and it’s quite as well,after all, to be rid of anarchists. Our rightsas citizens can be maintained as rightsonly while we are held to be the peersof those who live about us. [65] The romantic plot requires the resolution of critique, so Anderson dramatically retries the case. In the seemingly obvious climax of Mio’s life story, he confirms his father’s innocence, learning that the legal system failed him by succeeding in its main goal, the maintenance of social order. As in Gods of the Lightning , Anderson takes aim at the legal system and finds it corrupt. Mio’s beliefs are confirmed, and he can now spread word of Romagna’s innocence: Wherever menstill breathe and think, and know what’s done to themby the powers above, they’ll know. [66] Just like Rosalie in Gods of the Lightning , Mio calls for the truth to be spread—again dissemination momentarily appears to be the necessary step for redressing legal injustice. Yet Mio does no such thing. From the time he learns the “truth” until the end of the play, Mio’s love for Miramne triumphs over his pursuit for the truth, and the fatalism of Gods of the Lightning reemerges. Winterset ’s fatalism operates on two levels. First, after Mio learns the truth, the value of this truth—and its dissemination—are called into question. Miriamne’s and Garth’s father Edras questions the value of pursuing the issue: What will be changedif it comes to trial again? More blood poured outto a mythical justice, but your father lying stillwhere he lies now. [67] He then fundamentally denies the value of what Mio has learned: “there is no truth.” [68] This dismissal of the play’s revelation intersects with Miriamne’s desire that Mio not reveal Garth’s guilt. She asks Mio to keep their secret and he agrees: I tried to say itand it strangled my throat. I might have knownyou’d win in the end. [69] Second, Mio’s choice of Mariamne over his life-long goal of clearing his father’s name proves meaningless when both characters die at the play’s end. Mio abnegates the hope of “learn[ing] to live like a man . . . to live and forget to hate” and the “truth” for Mariamne, only to lose his life at Trock’s hand. [70] In Winterset , Anderson attacks the American legal system much as he does in Gods of the Lightning , but once again closes on a dual note of personal tragedy and political hopelessness. Any radicalism is sublimated to other concerns. In the earlier play—with its gossamer radicalism mirroring Anderson’s shifting, indeterminate politics—anarchism becomes pacifist, irrelevant, and impotent. In the later one, Sacco and Vanzetti linger as the nearly invisible background for dramatic innovation and poetic tragedy. In both cases, Anderson deploys the anarchists as neutered symbols of injustice: anarchism is sublimated, which in itself is not surprising, nor profound, but in the context of other literature from this period, Anderson’s choices resonate more powerfully. Twice he structured a play around Sacco and Vanzetti; twice he tentatively attacked the legal system’s failures; and twice he minimized the significance of this critique by ending with fatalism. The mere appearance of anarchists in Anderson’s plays does not make him an anarchist. He may have found some aspects of anarchism appealing, but neither of these plays nor his statements about politics suggest that Anderson aligned with the more radical forms of the era’s Left. Rather, he appears as another fellow traveler: someone who flirted with radical politics, yet ultimately sublimated them to his personal, political, and literary vision. Ultimately, Gods of the Lightning and Winterset distill the transformation of Sacco and Vanzetti into potent, yet disarticulated symbols: they continued to signify well after their deaths, but their signification was fully separated from their politics. Their appearance in literature functioned as radical bona fides : touching on the Sacco-Vanzetti affair’s injustice (even briefly) signified attachment to the broadly Leftist movement of the late 1920s and 1930s. Anderson’s plays, though—like much of the literature that shaped the meaning of Sacco and Vanzetti’s legacy—essentially strip anarchism of its power and specificity. Their image is no longer meaningfully anarchist; it simply marks a pseudo-radical shell that could be filled with literary and political content. References [1] . Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty and Other Plays , ed. Harold Clurman (New York: Grove Press, 1993), 40. [2] . For a brief history of anti-radical sentiment and laws from this period (with particular focus on anarchists like Sacco and Vanzetti), see Dan Colson, “Erasing Anarchism: Sacco and Vanzetti and the Logic of Representation,” American Quarterly 66, no. 4 (2014): 179-196. [3] . For a detailed analysis of Sacco and Vanzetti’s politics see Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991). Avrich convincingly argues the two men were Galleanists. Even amongst radicals, Galleani stood out as particularly extreme, so Sacco and Vanzetti were neither the naïfs some have claimed nor merely philosophical anarchists—they were aggressively opposed to all state governance and believed violence was justified to achieve an anarchist society. [4] . Alfred S. Shivers, The Life of Maxwell Anderson (New York: Stein and Day, 1983), 26. [5] . Ibid., 39. [6] . Anderson to John M. Gillette, 15 September 1912, in Dramatist in America: Letters of Maxwell Anderson, 1912-1958 , ed. Laurence G. Avery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 3. [7] . Anderson to Upton Sinclair, June 1919, in Dramatist in America , 13. [8] . Shivers, The Life , 111. [9] . Ibid., 61. [10] . Ibid., 63. [11] . Anderson to Brooks Atkinson, 21 August 1939, Dramatist in America , 90-91. [12] . Anderson to Donald Ogden Stewart, 11 March 1941, Dramatist in America , 110. [13] . Shivers, The Life , 238. [14] . Ibid., 56, 1. [15] . Shivers argues that “Anderson . . . believe[d] that under any conditions except wartime, government was the natural enemy of the average citizen” ( The Life , 198). According to Shivers, “[t]he exigencies of total war had compelled him to reach a truce within his own democratic government” ( The Life , 198). Note the rejection of pacifism linked to the anti-fascism: Anderson was willing to accept both government and war to fight fascism. Like many radicals and progressives from the era, he appears to have accepted the Popular Front logic that moderates, liberals, and radicals must all come together to fight the immediate enemy: the fascists. [16] . Shivers, The Life , 7. [17] . Shivers, Maxwell Anderson (Boston: Twayne, 1976), 137. [18] . Shivers, The Life , 125. [19] Russell DiNapoli, “Fragile Currency of the Last Anarchist: The Plays of Maxwell Anderson,” New Theatre Quarterly 18, no. 3 (2002): 277, 282. [20] . Hal Cantor, “Anderson and Odets and the Group Theater,” in Maxwell Anderson and the New York Stage , eds. Nancy J. Doran Hazelton and Kenneth Krauss (Monroe, NY: Library Research Assoc., 1991), 34. [21] . Anderson to the editor, November 1944, Dramatist in America , 192. [22] . Russell DiNapoli, The Elusive Prominence of Maxwell Anderson in the American Theater (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2002), 56. [23] . Ibid., 53 [24] . Ibid., 54. [25] . Ethan Mordden, Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 1930s (New York: St. Marten’s Press, 2005), 230. [26] . Turning to Mordden, who does not write extensively about Anderson, captures the ubiquity of this seemingly contradictory view: the notion that Anderson was an anarchist—but one who did not really embrace anarchist views—saturates much scholarship on his plays. [27] . Calling the play “minor,” Shivers’s biography of Anderson almost entirely ignores Gods of the Lightning , and—in a suggestion of how scholars have struggled to deal with the appearance of Sacco and Vanzetti in Anderson’s plays—notes merely that it was “based on an internationally famous legal trial” (Shivers, The Life , 112). [28] . Shivers, Maxwell Anderso n, 106. [29] . Barrett H. Clark, Maxwell Anderson: The Man and His Plays (Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1976), 17-18. [30] . Shivers, Maxwell Anderso n, 106. [31] . Ibid. The play also includes Celestino Medeiros, a convicted murder who confessed to the Braintree crime and claimed Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent. Medeiros’s execution was delayed while Governor Fuller and the Lowell Commission considered his confession alongside other evidence, but ultimately they did not believe his story and he was executed the same night as Sacco and Vanzetti. In the play, “Madeiros [ sic ] is changed into the bleak-minded and fatalistic restaurant owner Suvorin” (Shivers, Maxwell Anderson , 106). [32] . Jennifer Jones, “A Fictitious Injustice: The Politics of Conversation in Maxwell Anderson’s Gods of the Lightning ,” American Drama 4, no. 2 (1995): 83. [33] . Ibid. [34] . Ibid., 107. [35] . Jones, for instance, reads the play as a “socialist drama” that merges “political protest with instinctive American worship of the individual” (89, 83). By claiming Capraro is a condensation of Sacco and Vanzetti and arguing that Capraro’s politics always come second to Macready’s, Jones attempts to demonstrate that the play “eviscerated the beliefs [Sacco and Vanzetti] died for” (94). She builds this argument, however, on the claim that “Sacco and Vanzetti were pacifists,” misreading their anti-war stance as the rejection of all violence (88). Ultimately, she accuses Anderson of focusing on an “American protagonist” at the expense of the “socioeconomic forces of race and class oppression that brought about the death of Sacco and Vanzetti” (93). [36] . Anderson and Harold Hickerson, Gods of the Lightning (London: Longman’s, Green, and Co., 1928), 26. [37] . Jones interprets Macready as an unabashed, liberal individualist who overwhelms Capraro’s anarchism, but Macready is linked to the IWW: he speaks from a political position similar to the one Jones attributes to Anderson. [38] . Anderson and Hickerson, Gods of the Lightning , 78. [39] . Ibid., 26. [40] . Michael Schwarz, Class Divisions on the Broadway Stage: The Staging and Taming of the I.W.W. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). [41] . Anderson, Gods of the Lightning , 106. [42] . Schwartz, ch. 5. [43] . Ibid. [44] . I quote here from John Dos Passos, The Big Money (Boston: Mariner, 2000), 372. Dos Passos regularized the spelling from a reporter’s transcription that originally appeared in the New York World on 13 May 1927. [45] . Winterset was first staged at the Martin Beck Theatre in 1935 and was a “smashing success at the box office” (Shivers, The Life , 149). Its original run lasted 179 performances. The play then toured nationally before returning to Broadway for 16 additional shows. It was turned into a film (directed by Alfred Santell and starring Burgess Meredith) in 1936. The play has not been revived frequently, though it was staged for short runs in Chicago in both 1991 and 2016. [46] . The long-standing tradition of foregrounding Anderson’s purported aesthetic triumphs may well explain the tendency to minimize his play’s political import. [47] . Anderson, “Acceptance Speech for the Drama Critics’ Circle Award to Winterset ,” in Dramatist in America , 295. [48] . Anderson, introduction to Gods of the Lightning , x, vi. [49] . Ibid., xi. [50] . DiNapoli, “Maxwell Anderson’s Misuse of Poetic Discourse in Winterset ,” in Staging a Cultural Paradigm: The Political and the Personal in American Drama , eds. Barbara Ozieblo and Miriam López-Rodríguez (Bruxelles: P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2002), 101. DiNapoli contends that “[Anderson] knew the topic would entice audiences to see the play” (101). He claims that Anderson’s attention to Sacco and Vanzetti “exploited the Sacco-Vanzetti issue for other than artistic reasons” (101). [51] . Steven M. Richman, “ Winterset and the Recrudescence of Ressentiment,” Nova Law Review 18, no. 3 (1994): 1882. [52] . The body of scholarship on Winterset is quite small given the play’s critical reception in the 1930s. What little research there is largely ignores the play’s focus on anarchism in favor of other theatrical/dramatic concerns. The most common trope is to look at source materials and influences. As early as 1946, Samuel Kliger examined “Hebraic lore” in the play (“Hebraic Lore in Winterset ,” American Literature 18, no. 3 [1946]: 219-232). Explorations of other Biblical influences (Howard D. Pearce, “Job in Anderson’s Winterset ,” Modern Drama 6 [1963]: 32-41), Shakespearean elements (Jacob H. Alder, “Shakespeare in Winterset ,” Educational Theatre Journal 6 [1954]: 241-248 and John B. Jones, “Shakespeare as Myth and the Structure of Winterset , Educational Theatre Journal 25 [1973]: 34-45), and classical references (Frances Abernethy, Winterset : A Modern Revenge Tragedy, Modern Drama 7 [1964]: 185-189 and J. T. McCullen, Jr., “Two Quests for Truth: King Oedipus and Winterset ,” The Laurel Review 5, no. 1 [1965]: 28-35), amongst other allusions and inspirations, followed over the next few decades. After about 1980 work on Winterset is virtually non-existent, excepting the scholars I engage with in this essay. [53] . Shivers, The Life , 148 [54] . In part, Winterset ’s reputation emerges from the contradictions of post-WWII literary scholarship. During the Cold War, anti-communist backlash, scholars were forced to reconcile the play’s reputation as one of the best from the 1930s with its subject matter (Sacco and Vanzetti) and Anderson’s dalliance with the Left. Anderson’s rejection of communism makes the reconciliation possible, but scholars who wished to study Winterset were wise to ignore any political significance in the play that might appear radical. Thus, they focused on the fiction of apolitical formal characteristics. This scholarly juggling act may account for the seemingly disconnected reputations of Anderson (still viewed as a Left-leaning fellow-traveler) and Winterset (long considered a brilliant, yet apolitical play that just happens to be about two anarchists). [55] . Shivers claims “the passage of years since Gods of the Lightning gave [Anderson] the aesthetic distanced he needed in handling the Sacco-Vanzetti case” (Shivers, The Life , 148). In other words, Shivers reads Winterset as an aesthetic object worthy of consideration almost in spite of its subject matter, unlike the earlier play which he virtually ignores. [56] . In his confession, Medeiros implicated the Morelli gang, and many of Sacco and Vanzetti’s other defenders insisted the Morelli gang committed the Braintree robbery as well. Winterset obviously taps into this accusation, as its fictionalized Morellis try to avoid the exposure of their crime. [57] . Anderson, Winterset (Washington: Anderson House, 1935), 14. [58] . Ibid., 50. [59] . Ibid., 70. [60] . Ibid., 15. [61] .Richman rightly argues “the play stands for the proposition that a developed legal system may be seriously flawed” (1869), but after establishing its flaws, the play shifts significantly. [62] . Winterset , 73. [63] . Ibid., 95. [64] . Richman claims Gaunt’s depiction is open to a “sympathetic interpretation” (1882), but such an interpretation would have been difficult to sustain at the time, as outrage lingered almost a decade after Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. [65] . Winterset , 98-99. [66] . Ibid., 99. [67] . Ibid., 109. [68] . Ibid., 117. [69] . Ibid., 125. [70] . Ibid. Footnotes About The Author(s) Dan Colson is Associate Professor of English at Emporia State University. His work has appeared in American Quarterly , American Studies , Radical Teacher , Studies in American Naturalism , Philip Roth Studies , and the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom , amongst other journals. 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.

Ariel Nereson 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 Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting Ariel Nereson By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. Amy Cook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Pp. 198. Amy Cook’s Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting argues that casting, as artistic practice and necessary strategy for everyday life, is a performative act related to human cognitive tendencies to organize a large number of stimuli into characters. Our understanding of characters happens within categories that shape assumptions about a character type's behavior and desires. Cook claims, "The process by which we build a character from the inputs of context, memory, text, and the physical properties of the body playing that character is far more powerful than has been acknowledged" (6). Because she works with a contemporary understanding of situated (also called “embodied”) cognition, inputs like context, memory, and text are just as connected to the experiential embodiment as are the physical properties of the body. Cook uses second generation cognitive science in her theoretical matrix, and I would argue that this text is part of another second generation, that of the cognitive turn in the humanities. Cook's overall goal is a back-and-forth conversation between cognitive science and theatre studies wherein “a cognitive approach to theatrical character” and “a theatrical understanding of a central component of cognition – characterization” are analyzed together under the term of casting (15). Cognitive humanities scholarship can be easily critiqued as simply slapping cognitive science onto an analytical object and allowing scientific conclusions to become primarily prescriptive, thus circumscribing the scholar’s interpretive work. Cook foregrounds a more difficult, subtle, and ultimately useful process here whereby epistemological models from theatre studies help elucidate cognitive scientific findings, not solely the other way around. Building Character is structured pedagogically (though not pedantically). Chapter one, “Building Titus,” introduces concepts that continue to deepen and pay off in each subsequent chapter. “Building Titus” focuses on the cognitive processes of compression. Cook argues that character building is a process of stimuli compression; characters exist only as “we create them to make sense of our perceptions” (38). Chapter two, “Building Characters,” focuses on how and why “[S]ome bodies…do not seem to disappear as easily as others into their parts” and includes a compelling engagement with celebrity studies (32). Cook takes up the work of Eve Ensler and Anna Deavere Smith in the third chapter, “Multicasting,” exploring the dynamic and embedded nature of building characters. Chapter four moves Cook’s observations about casting into the roles of our everyday lives, including the casting process involved in Barack Obama’s presidency. Cook ends her book with a necessary gesture toward the implications of her argument and the cognitive scientific research upon which it rests for social change. The final chapter, “Counter Casting,” contends that because the cognitive processes behind casting undergird both theatrical and everyday phenomena, their “creativity…suggests ways we might reimagine our selves and our ecosystems” (33). Cook’s array of examples is appropriately capacious given that her thesis depends upon the omnipresence of casting as a tool for sense-making. She examines film trailers, rap music lyrics, advertising, and senate debates; her analysis is particularly strong when the object is dramatic performance. Chapter three includes several illuminating readings of much-discussed material, such as The Taming of the Shrew, the creative methods of Anna Deveare Smith, and Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More. Throughout the text, Cook responsibly owns her positionality and her “casting” by the world, which, as in cognitive scientific studies, both increases precision (her analysis of Shrew) and limits findings (her account of listening to Dr. Dre’s 1992 album The Chronic). When she turns her attention to dramatic examples, she clarifies her participation in disciplinary stakes; Cook effectively critiques the Method school of acting as reliant upon outdated models of psychology that prize the unconscious over more current understandings of networked consciousness and cognition, a theatre-based example of a larger critique throughout the cognitive humanities of psychoanalytic theory. The cognitive turn in the humanities can result in difficult prose; accounting for the specificities of scientific studies and the many caveats of their conclusions can often read as watering down the humanities scholar’s argument and muddying their writing. Cook’s writing suffers no such fate. She is remarkably clear in her descriptions of cognitive scientific concepts and their application to cultural phenomena. She also attends to the dynamics of live performance as a making or becoming process, simpatico with cognition as a set of situated processes. Consider Cook’s compelling analysis of Katherine’s final speech in Act Five as staged in Phyllida Lloyd’s 2016 production of Taming of the Shrew: “the all-female casting disrupts our protocols of character interpretation because we cannot find the categories of sex and gender the play insists on and thus the ensemble stages a character breakdown” (108, italics in the original). As an example of clear humanities writing within the cognitive turn, Cook’s text is a welcome addition to graduate and advanced undergraduate classrooms, as well as her peers’ bookshelves. Cook attempts an urgently necessary task if the cognitive turn is to become a flexible theoretical tool in our field, namely, the responsible synthesis of implications from this research with theoretical frames that share an investment in embodiment as epistemology, such as critical race theory, queer theory, and feminist theory. Cook’s claim, supported by second generation cognitive science, that “We do not just think differently because of the bodies we have, we think with and through the bodies we have” is an arrival at the same destination but by an alternate route from many theoretical models found in the traditions listed above (29). Cook models such a synthesis in her engagement with the work of Angela Pao and Brandi Wilkins Catanese. As Cook states, this book is a starting point. It serves as a useful tool for further investigation of, in particular, non-normative bodies and their possibilities in everyday life and on stage and screen. Indeed, claims of normativity, as Cook shows, partially result from cognitive “processes by which we jump to powerful conclusions that it is our duty to challenge” (33). Investigating the relationship between normative brain structures and neural processes that may be cross-cultural and transhistorical as well as social norms of gender, class, race, and sexuality remains a critical need. I would like to see future work engaging with the cognitive turn do more to interrogate and historicize its own theoretical frame. The selection of research areas, funding, and subjects within scientific study is hardly a neutral enterprise. Cook’s text demonstrates the value of engaging with these theories in sharpening our analytical precision using empirical evidence; yet scientific theories are still theories, and they deserve the same rigorous investigation of their cultural commitments and values that we now apply, de rigeur, to other theoretical tools. Ariel Nereson University at Buffalo, State University of New York The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 1 (Fall 2018) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2018 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center 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 Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting The Late Work of Sam Shepard Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Bodies and Playwrights Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Ellen Gillooly-Kress Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 2 Visit Journal Homepage #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS: Weaponizing Performance of Identity from the Digital to the Physical Ellen Gillooly-Kress By Published on May 29, 2018 Download Article as PDF Introduction A quiet, yet hopeful group of young people gathered in front of the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens on January 22, 2017. They heard rumors that some of their favorite celebrities, including Jaden Smith and Shia LaBeouf, were participating in an activity that included a broadcast to the internet. This select group would soon balloon to include hundreds of individuals, as the news of this particular performance and installation spread like wildfire over social media channels such as Twitter and Reddit. Luke Turner, Shia LaBeouf, and Nastja Säde Rönkkö launched the live stream of #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS after a short planning period of a few weeks and released it to the public to coincide with the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States of America on January 20, 2017. The project was hosted by the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, and consisted of live audio and video streams to the website HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US. [1] Billed as a “participatory performance,” it invited, “the public […] to deliver the words “HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US” into a camera mounted on a wall outside the Museum of the Moving Image, repeating the phrase as many times, and for as long as they wish.” [2] Initially conceived as a way to bridge divides and act as a physical and digital gathering space, the project quickly became a logistical headache for those who ran the installation and for the museum itself. Crowds of people gathered at nearly all hours of the day to participate in this 24-7 live stream. The project was forced to shut down after only ten days at its initial home, yet this was not the only controversy to befall this performance project. Those who lived near the museum feared for their safety as the general camaraderie initially encouraged by the project gave way to a gathering place for those who self-professed their identity as the “alt-right,” a term coined to mask the white supremacy of Richard Spencer and others who use the internet to disseminate their caustic and ultra conservative ideas. [3] Within less than twenty-four hours of its opening, the live stream had been co-opted and molded into a physical manifestation of the internet–a living socio-technical assemblage. [4] What had started out as a participatory performance in a physical space had transformed into what Joseph Bernstein of Buzzfeed described as the “physical incarnation of social media,” with the ugliest parts of identity creation, authorship and maintenance heavily featured on this non-moderated feed for any denizen of the internet to witness. [5] Media outlets picked up and amplified bizarre stories of “Nazi milk parties” and generally disruptive behavior, further adding to the mayhem of the internet feed. [6] Some of the feigned frivolity and strange behavior attracted more members of this ultra conservative group to the activities surrounding this performance, both online and off. This project represents an example of the perfect storm of threats to the idealized cognitive model of the hegemonic political experience in America, containing all the elements that those who identify as far-right or white supremacist claim to be against. [7] Here were three artists using a public institution to disseminate their ideas to the internet at large. The message, “He will not divide us,” coincided with the inauguration of a president who had become the symbol of the public power of these far-right groups, who felt they were being left behind in politics. This participatory event reveals the inner workings of these far-right groups’ pursuit of creating what Teun A. Van Dijk describes as an “ideological square.” [8] These groups create an in-group and an out-group, “prototypically represented by the ideological pronouns Us and Them .” [9] Digital personas and memes are employed in pursuit of establishing an in-group and an out-group. This particular performance exposed these processes by forcing participants in the live stream to step from their highly insulated online communities into a sphere of performance that reflected the public at-large. The cooperation between members of far-right groups to sabotage this performance for their own needs constitutes a type of counterpublic, a term coined by Sarah Jackson and Brooke Foucault Welles while observing other social media co-option efforts by underrepresented communities in the past. [10] Instead of countering the dominant hegemony and narrative, “alt-right” individuals employ these tactics to enforce political norms in both the virtual public spaces created by social media and in the space delineated by the participatory performance. Identity creation and manipulation is cooperatively authored by this group, born and incubated on the internet, and portrayed through physical performance of online memes. Among many memes, some of the most frequently performed memes referenced Pepe the Frog, and the ability to consume milk in massive quantities, partly due to the feedback effect of both digital and traditional media. Online Identity Creation Disagreements flared between the museum and the creative team of #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS about issues of security and crowd control. A New York City Council member, Jimmy Van Bramer, pressured Carl Goodman, the museum’s director, to shut down the piece. [11] In response, on January 30th, LaBeouf sent an email to the American Civil Liberties Union, alleging political misconduct and undermining of artistic integrity: we have been denied a seat at the decision making table of an artwork we created – we are being used as a political hockey puck – I am seeking help in maintaining our integrity as artists & securing my rights as an American [12] Ten days after the appeal to the ACLU and no response from the organization, the piece at the Museum of the Moving Image was closed down, with the museum staff citing security issues over growing crowds and disruptive behavior. Disappointment was apparent for not only the creators, but the “alt-right” group that had co-opted the stream to spread messages to those both inside and outside of their ideological group. A little over one week after the shutdown, on February 18, 2017, the piece of art moved to downtown Albuquerque, NM relocating to a wall outside of the El Rey Theater. The project in its new location also faced a number of security issues, including reports of gun shots near the location. [13] The website and live feed went dormant for a few weeks, only to reappear again on March 8 as a video of a flag emblazoned with the words “HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US” in simple black script in an undisclosed location. In a matter of days, however, internet trolls and the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Workers Party were able to determine the location of the flag and steal it. [14] Subsequently, as of March 22, 2017, the project had been adopted by the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool. The final adopter of the project, Le Lieu Unique, has hung the flag above an art museum in an old biscuit factory in the French city of Nantes, and has a camera filming the flag at all hours of the day. These online actors employ several strategies—secret argot, often referred to as dog whistles, impersonating the opposing groups’ performance of identity, and taking advantage of the unique isolating structure of the internet—all in pursuit of what Teun A. Van Dijk describes in his cognitive-sociological work as the “ideological square.” [15] These identity performance tactics are meant to establish an in-group and reinforce the idea that those who are outside of the group will never penetrate the boundaries of the in-group. Further, individual attitudes are also controlled by those within the group, “mental models formed by individual members of a social group may be ideologically controlled by socially shared group attitudes about a specific issue.” [16] Language and symbolic behavior plays a key role in establishing this type of in-group behavior and attitude, often without one central member of the group controlling or authoring the attitude. [17] In this case, digital language has been expanded from the face-to-face communication of those of the “in-group” to the choice of memes that incorporate visual media. This type of visual communication has become the preferred medium in which to transmit these messages between members of the group. One key example that demonstrates the power of identity creation through these visual media is the fact that groups choose to imitate each other on social media. Impersonation and performance of identity is not a new tactic in the book of factions and groups competing for the hearts and minds of those in public spaces. This type of ideological warfare is not even necessarily a new concept; there are documented cases of Communists impersonating Nazi officers in the Weimar Republic in the events leading to World War II. [18] These impersonators received their own code name, often being referred to as “beefsteaks”—those that looked like Nazis on the outside, yet would bleed Communist red once cut. [19] This infiltration and explicit identity impersonation was undertaken for at least two reasons. The first reason was that impersonation was undertaken to discredit those on “the other side” of the argument. That is to say, the impersonator would commit acts that made the other side appear inhuman, cruel, and untrustworthy. By impersonating the “bad actor” (defined by those who are in-group), impersonators may instigate and sow discord both within the group and outside of the group. The “bad actor” simultaneously destroys trust networks within-group and delegitimizes the group for those outside of the nucleus of the group. An example of impersonation in action includes several “alt-right” groups creating fake Twitter profiles in May 2017, impersonating chapters of the Anti-fascist movement (often abbreviated as Antifa). The issue of impersonation has always plagued social media from its inception, yet the goal of these impersonations is to weaponize the identity of the competing ideological groups. [20] These Twitter profiles appeared to coincide with the Memorial Day holiday weekend, and claimed to celebrate photos of vandalized graves of veterans in cemeteries. [21] To combat this action, intrepid social media users used Google’s reverse image search option to discover that the images and Twitter accounts featured were not part of the Antifa movement, nor were the vandalized graves particularly recent examples. The double cross and identity impersonation had served its purpose to discredit the actions of these anti-fascist groups. In contrast to these online impersonations, performers on #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS would find it nearly impossible to accomplish this type of impersonation, due to the non-anonymous nature of the live video stream, as opposed to the anonymous membership of online social media communities. A second reason for identity impersonation is to gather intelligence about the plans and actions of the “other side.” Beefsteaks in the Weimar Republic infiltrated Nazi officer circles to not only discredit the regime, but also to gather intelligence on the plans of their enemy. [22] Groups on either side of the political spectrum seem to be highly aware of this tactic; journalists, who have an interest in reporting on these groups, must legitimize their authority and convince the interviewed party that they are not “working for the other side.” Traditional media offers both opportunity for publicity of the cause of these groups, but also opens these groups up to critical scrutiny. [23] Journalists are not the only force influencing the authorial power of identity creation on the internet. Algorithms serve a large role in the authorship of the types of memes that get disseminated throughout the network. The term “filter bubble” was first popularized by Eli Pariser in his 2011 eponymous book. [24] Pariser raises serious issue with algorithms that have been created to deliver the most relevant information for each user on the internet. Pariser first became concerned when he observed his friends with conservative viewpoints had all but disappeared from his timeline on Facebook. At first glance, this appears to be a benevolent feature of the internet. After all, with hundreds of hours of video footage being uploaded just to YouTube every minute, how are users expected to sift through all of this information? Social media companies have become increasingly aware of users’ attention spans and work very diligently to maximize their time on various platforms. The insidious nature of these relevance algorithms appears when individuals begin to exhibit homophily. For instance, on Twitter, individuals will follow those whom they support and with whom they feel an affinity. [25] This feeling of homophily leads users of social media to believe that their viewpoints are shared with a majority of those around them, since their self-selected social media circles also exhibit similar views. The perception expands Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the public sphere to a new networked public sphere, accounting for these social interactions governed by these networks enabled by the internet. [26] Still, the sense of public space is obscured by the fact that these spaces are far from public, and are in fact hyper-individuated by the algorithms that govern social media. The dream of the internet of the 1990s—a vast, open, and transparent structure that democratizes all information—has slowly been dying, and not all users understand this concept. [27] The misunderstanding of this concept is evident in the “fake news” crisis that permeated the 2016 United States Presidential election. [28] Demeaning mainstream media and vilifying journalism is a large part of the “complex meta-strategy” of creating the ideological square, where “group members tend to speak or write positively about their own group, and negatively about those outgroups they define as opponents, competitors, or enemies.” [29] Tarleton Gillespie cautions against vilifying the algorithms themselves in the creation of this filter bubble crisis, as filters are reflections of the social ideologies of their creators. [30] Users may further socially construct with the affordances of these algorithms individuated publics that may not reflect the lived experience beyond social media and the internet. These toxic technopublics then leech out from online creation in unexpected ways, as performances in #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS demonstrate. In the face of this phenomenon, Nieman Journalism Lab journalist Joshua Benton explains that he had been once a skeptic of the dangers of “filter bubbles.” [31] His observation, after what he and other journalists—including Craig Silverman of BuzzFeed —witnessed in this election, is that relevance algorithms on social media pose a very real and certain danger to shaping the ideologies of the millions of daily users of these services. Memes, neatly packaged and easily replicated and disseminated through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, are the perfect media for group identity creation and communication. The word “meme” was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene . [32] A meme, in this instance, acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, values, and meanings that can be easily duplicated and transmitted. Dawkins gives several cultural examples that include song, aspects of architecture, and even the concept of God. [33] The internet is the perfect breeding ground for these ideas that are often compared to a virus, as social media is purposely designed for the transmission of ideas between users. For example, total war rhetoric has become intimately entwined with this meme-y mode of performance, leading to dangerous beliefs about how society ought to be constructed. This war-like rhetoric is then reflected in the traditional media (news sources online, popular blogs, and television), thus legitimizing and reinforcing the original message that these groups are at war for the very hearts and minds of all participants on the internet. This identity performance as part of this “Great Meme War” that is being waged between groups, manifests itself in different ways with different goals. Maintenance of the ideological square, meme transmission, networked public spheres, and identity creation all intersect with one another in the performance of #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS , with several spoken memes that directly reference the war-rhetoric of Nazis, Hitler, and his Third Reich. [34] Bodily performances included salutes, and the display of white supremacist tattoos for the live feed. That these performers in New York gathered in groups served to embolden these performers in a series of escalating public displays, including drinking milk, as will be discussed in more detail later in this article. Performance of Memes Visual and verbal memes are coded within performance of identity and spill over into the physical sphere in different ways. In a complex nod to the existence of these memes as entities themselves, participants in the digital creation of memes must physically share these memes through their mobile devices. In this case, the medium is the message. [35] The fact that the message exists as a serious of pixels on an iPhone makes neither the medium nor the message any less “real” to those who use it as a part of a performance of their identity. The meme continues to be treated as an object with the virulence and cultural power that conveyed the message in the ephemeral moment. The act is then replicated several times and disseminated through social networks as both video and a moving Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) attached to tweets and Facebook posts. The level of performance varies wildly and serves to demonstrate for both intended audiences outside of and inside the established group. In an attempt to explain the appeal of the use and dissemination of memes, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson introduced the phenomenon of schematization and semantic frame building, a psychological phenomenon where humans create patterns by fitting their perception of their experiences into large embodied metaphors. [36] These embodied metaphors that govern human perception are referred to as “Idealized Cognitive Models,” in which a central stereotypical member exists. [37] The idealized cognitive model that drives conservative viewpoints may in part be responsible for the organization of groups that lean the farthest towards conservatism on the political spectrum. It is embodied experience of some form of lived metaphor that shapes the ideas of those who live in a specific culture. In this instance, the generally embodied experience of alt-right or ultra-conservative individuals includes perceptions of dehumanizing experiences of insufficiency in the patriarchal and economic structure in which they find themselves. [38] Online, individuals like Richard Spencer use this point of view to craft a digital environment that addresses these feelings of insufficiency, while providing a structure through a paramilitary or militia-like organization. Members of this group feel fulfilled through online participation and begin to embody the structures fed to them. This paramilitary stance achieved two things: creating a schema through which individuals may frame their individual experience, and establishing legitimacy of belligerent status, should individuals who may oppose these ideas decide to take action against this group. This construction of identity condones use of force and military tactics both online and off. A shared identity construction means rewriting the rules of this kind of militaristic identity for the new networked public sphere in which the discourse is found. Historically, the legitimate authority regarding warfare that had been enjoyed by state entities has been shattered or corrupted by intra-state actors, also vying for legitimate recognition of belligerent status. A just war requires legitimate authority for the war-like activities undertaken by states in traditional warfare. Increasingly, however, warfare in the 21st century does not include traditional state entities at war with one another. The new warfare includes factions within and without borders and the oversight of governments. A.J. Coates, quoting J. Keegan, argues in The Ethics of War that “The increasing predominance of internal over external or interstate warfare has led some to conclude that in the future war is likely to consist in ‘a fight for civilization—against ethnic bigots, regional warlords, ideological intransigents, common pillagers and organized international criminals.’” [39] An overwhelming fear is that this prescient quote from the early nineties has come true and that militaristic factions have chosen the internet as their “battlefield.” There are abundant pieces of evidence that intra- and extra-state actors are driving war on digital fronts specifically, taking advantage of technological opportunities presented by features such as YouTube’s relevance algorithms and general lack of oversight of content to advertise to individuals susceptible to their messaging. The overarching framing of the contentious language and symbolic behavior that “alt-right” groups employ has been to treat the digital antagonism as a type of “great meme war.” [40] The use of memes highlights both the embodied war metaphor, and the joke-like atmosphere in which memes are created. This levity provides plausible deniability when participants encounter opposition to their negative rhetoric dressed as a joke. The opening line in an article on Wired about the physical organization of far-right movements, shows just how ingrained in militarism and military language these groups have become. “Nathan Damigo moves through rioting crowds like a soldier, and for good reason.” [41] This 2017 article by Emma Grey Ellis explores how quickly and how deeply the symbology of either group (specifically the “alt-right” group) can shift and crystalize around certain objects and moments, including an infamous moment like the “punch in Berkeley” of a Antifa activist, or Pepe the Frog, or even the Expendables. [42] Van Dijk describes how individual attitudes can be captured by media and are also controlled by those within the group, manipulating the mental models of all who receive the message. In this case, socially shared group attitudes amount to easily packaged and shared memes that proliferate through a social network such as Twitter or Facebook. All of these acts carry meaning larger than the original meaning of the cultural artifact. To Ellis, “over the last few years, sharing a meme has become as much about defining your in-group as it is about abusing it.” [43] She goes on to make the distinction between right and left usage of memes, as “Antifa memes tend toward honoring the punch rather than the puncher. Some of that, of course, is because black bloc tactics prize anonymity, but the focal point is the act of resistance, rather than the agent of it.” [44] Ellis quotes Tim Highfield, a digital media researcher at the Queensland University of Technology, who warns that this kind of meme-ifying might also normalize the behavior, while flattening and cartoonifying the acts of violence on either side and simultaneously providing coherent identity formation, “The problem isn’t that these memes are out there, in other words—it’s that the internet is getting used to them.” [45] A part of mounting a successful campaign for the hearts and minds of the public is appealing to the legitimate authority of the movement. In order to claim that legitimate authority, actors within groups must strive to create a cohesive identity for the group and the philosophies that govern the group, which is aided in part by the creation of the ideological square. [46] Part of this cohesion is the consistent performance of identity, which includes the public persona exhibited by these groups. By extension, contemporary identity performance often includes digital performance on various social media platforms. The performativity of such acts appeals through affect to those who are susceptible to messages that appeal to their lived experience. These acts of identity are reflected through dissemination and result in a kind of mass authorship of identity. Enterprising and influential members of the movement will manipulate these identities to update and echo shared experience with in-group members. Brian Massumi, in his 2002 book Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation , discusses the use of socially shared sign posts as a shared experience of affect. [47] Massumi primarily focuses on affect and develops the theory that corporeal sensation connects with “exoreceptive sense perception.” [48] As the body folds both infinitely and without itself, increasingly, the exoreceptive sense perception is extending to online persona creation. The emotions and actions of the body affect the environment in the same way that the environment affects the body. This reciprocity of affect, then, expressly connects bodies in networks of shared experience. War rhetoric literally creates what Judith Butler declares is performativity, “the power of discourse to produce what it names.” [49] The performance of a war-like identity, through self-established identity performance, along with the framing reaction of the media, creates quite literally, a war-like scenario in digital space, i.e. an affect of war-like preparation. The ultimate concern is when this digital affect spills into the physical space, with real world consequences for those who recognize this war-like affect and oppose it. Pepe the Frog’s Debut Performance The live feed #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS opened with the help of Jaden Smith (the famous son of Will and Jada Smith). He stood for five hours on the opening day of the live stream, chanting and reciting the mantra, “He will not divide us.” [50] The momentum and celebratory atmosphere of the first day was soon replaced by members of far-right groups co-opting the feed to share their messages, coded with dog whistles (secret code words that signal in-group belonging), all in a general atmosphere of intimidation. The media picked up the story and framed it as a kind of anti-Trump protest, even though Rönkkö, Turner, and LaBeouf did not make any such explicit claims in their art installation. [51] Since media outlets echoed the story through their channels, the live feed became a sort of physical social media incarnate, stepping through digital affect to a space bound by physical dimensions and time. Those who profess far-right ideologies, white supremacists, and users of 4chan and Reddit were not the only participants in the feed. Plenty of people appeared out of the woodwork, grabbing their fifteen seconds of fame on the internet, often advertising their own social media accounts and asking all those who had been witness onto the live feed, which was available to any who had the URL. This nexus of social media transcended the highly individualized filtered digital spaces found online and entered into a true physical public space bound in time and place in ways that the internet is not usually bound. The live feed itself captured and preserved the video, archived by the website itself, yet within hours of the site’s launch, there were several dedicated YouTube and other feeds capturing and preserving the video that was broadcast from the space of the performance. The interplay between real time and the ephemeral performance of social media identity was captured and amplified by the very interface that made its existence possible. This setup became a version of a hyper-mediated haunted stage, complete with the mechanical memory of auto-capturing the live feed and preserving the video to YouTube. [52] This video and audio archive provided a stock of recycled images that remained rife with the possibility of becoming the next meme in the process of creation and authorship. Truly the idea of authorship shifted from ownership of the conception of the project by Rönkkö, Turner, and LaBeouf to the mediation of the project through a multi-faceted authoring reflective of content creation on the internet. One of the first memes emerging from the alt-right came the day after the inauguration, when one participant stood behind Shia LaBeouf and briefly flashed the screen image on his phone of a green character well known to many in the sub-group. Pepe the Frog, a character drawn by Matt Furie on his web comic and first appearing on MySpace in 2005 as a part of a series titled “Boys Club,” had been used quite heavily in the past as a kind of in-joke among “alt-right” leaders. According to the original cartoon author, Pepe “is a mellow dude getting stoned with his friends, regularly engaging in gross-out humor.” [53] While the author maintains that Pepe was created as a benevolent figure, it was an insidious mix of cultural stereotypes meant to reinforce negative views of Latinx people in the United States. Pepe the frog was a foul-mouthed pot-smoking character that could easily be co-opted by a group attempting to vilify immigrants in order to serve their ideologies of racial purity. It was a small logical leap for this character to be appropriated by the online far-right “meme militias” and promoted into an unofficial mascot for white supremacists who inhabit the subreddits r/pol and r/altright. The author was so horrified by the abuse of his figure as hate symbol, that he tried to “kill” off the character of Pepe in a 2016 cartoon. Of course, one cannot kill an idea or a meme, once it has been hijacked as an identity marker by an in-group. Figure 1. Twitter’s self-referential meme demonstrating the social construction of media, (Tweet from unknown author, 2017). The selection of a particular symbol is semi-arbitrary, yet the meaning behind the symbol is what holds the social and political power. This seemingly complicated concept is not lost on these internet-based groups, since several examples of self-referential media exist and are disseminated through different social media, using the same apparatuses available to all social media users. The above example was found with a simple Twitter search of the hashtag #hewillnotdivideus and #hwndu and appeared in the “top” tweets, according to Twitter’s relevance algorithms. At least a few members of these groups are aware of the power of their collective identity performance, and the irony is not lost on them. In fact, the co-option of the hashtag, meant as a way for users to collate and quickly organize vast amounts of data, demonstrates conscious use of the social apparatus on Twitter. Part of identity creation includes the assumption of the “enemy’s” identity through their available modes of performance. This effect has been documented previously, where oppressed minority groups co-opted hashtags such as #MYNYPD to expose the injustices perpetrated by oppressive regimes. [54] These minority groups create what Jackson and Foucault Welles call “counterpublics” that run counter to the overarching narrative in an effort to disrupt it. In a reversal, relatively small groups of “alt-right” members, who benefit from hegemonic norms, employ the same hijacking techniques as these minority groups, flooding well-intentioned social media movements with vitriol and their war-like rhetoric. This type of culture jamming instead creates a toxic technopublic that serves to continue to benefit those who already benefit the most from political hegemony. The use of Pepe the Frog as a part of this hijacking forms a calculated attempt to co-opt the narrative and bend it to the will of a handful of “alt-right” individuals. Pepe makes an appearance not only online, but several times physically throughout the public performance of #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS . Milk Drinking as Meme One of the most popular and often recreated performances of physical memes on the #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS feed is the drinking of copious amounts of milk. Here I want to contrast two different performances of white supremacy exhibited in two separate locations of the #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS feed. Both incidents involve the specific performance of the visual meme of milk drinking. This performative and nearly ritualistic act of milk drinking, to those who run in white supremacy circles, has become a dual symbol. Folk beliefs, as evident in online discussion, trace performative or ritualistic milk drinking to the superior lactose tolerance of those of the Aryan race, as opposed to those whose genetic makeup does not allow for such consumption. [55] Many also appeal to the more iconic significance of the “pure white” color of milk as a symbol for racial purity. The symbolic milk drinking is a divider between in-group and out-group (those who possess lactose intolerance and literally cannot partake in the activity), while simultaneously serving as a visceral example of Butler’s understanding of performativity, where discourse produces literally what it names. By ingesting the material support of the movement’s racial symbol, these milk drinkers supposedly come to incarnate the “purity” which they strive for. There is no doubt that some extreme white supremacist circles already used milk as a symbol before the live stream of #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS . [56] However, the popularity of this meme as means of identity creation sky rocketed after performance and documentation of this ritual on screen. After the live stream milk-as-white-supremacist symbol began to propagate more quickly, it culminated with an article posted by People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and drawing clear connections between milk drinking and white supremacy, even animal cruelty. Appeals to wider popular culture opens this article: “As when Christoph Waltz’s character in Inglorious Bastards drinks a glass of milk and a character in a pivotal scene of Get Out sips the cow secretion, dairy milk has long been embraced as a symbol of white supremacy.” [57] Traction by traditional news sources led to a harpooning of the practice by PETA, which in turn was touted as a victory on Twitter and mocked by chants of “down with the vegan agenda.” The transference of milk drinking from in-group activity to identity performance for the out-group was complete. It is hard to nearly impossible to predict the path of memes like this performative act, created as a symbol of identity by white supremacist and hate groups, mediated through #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS and subsequently re-distributed through white supremacist networks that were taking part in the liminal public space of real-time live performance. As a reaction to the popularity of these videos, Richard Spencer changed the frog emoji in his Twitter name (broadcasting his knowledge of Pepe the Frog) to that of a glass of milk. [58] Many other members of far-right groups changed their Twitter names to follow suit. A cursory check on Twitter’s emoji search function reveals thousands of Twitter accounts that also feature the frog emoji, along with evocative hashtags such as #deplorable (which was co-opted from an electoral insult presidential candidate Hillary Clinton produced during a hot-mic incident), and #MAGA (an acronym for Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”) serving as signposts to their far-right ideologies. In the original New York City milk drinking performance featured on #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS , several shirtless men gathered in front of the live stream camera at night in the Northeastern winter weather for what would later be called a “Nazi party” by several sources, including clips found on YouTube. [59] Each man was holding and drinking from gallon-sized milk containers. Yet, they were boisterous in their mannerisms and emboldened by the numbers of participants both physically present and on the stream, loudly and proudly declaring their identities, yelling profanities and yelling, “down with the vegan agenda.” In the video, many shirtless participants showed off their physique and tattoos that included white supremacist imagery. This performance was meant to be witnessed by not only those who were physically at the location of the live stream, but the millions more who had tuned in to watch the live stream as a result of traditional media coverage. Their audience, in this case, was a combination of in-group white supremacists who knew of the symbol and the out-group due to the public nature of their performance; these white men were defiantly performing who they were for everyone to see, both online and off. The main video, titled He Will Not Divide Us ( ” Nazi ” Party FRIDAY NIGHT ) hwndu hewillnotdivideus racist milk was posted on February 5, 2017, and at the time of writing had garnered 175,209 views. Figure 2. Screen shot from video of “Nazi Party” captures a group of men drinking milk and chanting (YouTube video from Wyatt Pahr, February 2017). The visage of Ted Cruz (upper left corner) is used by Pahr as a watermark for his particular YouTube channel. [60] A separate incident of identity performing milk drinking appeared weeks after the initial “Nazi party,” from the second location of the stream in Albuquerque, NM. In contrast to the boisterous party bolstered by conversation that ensued from the first performance, one young man stands among a quieter crowd in broad daylight. This was on one of the first days of the second iteration of the stream which, like the initial performance, had attracted fairly peaceful protest. This crowd of about twenty were following the instructions of the piece and were chanting “He will not divide us” into the camera. This young man, placing himself centrally within the camera range, slowly slipped a half gallon of milk from a plastic bag to drink without bringing overt attention to his act. He seemed also to be aware of other participants in the stream, as he stopped his activity of drinking when another approached the camera to take up the entire field of vision. After the other participant had left, the first man resumes his activity of milk drinking, fully aware that those around him might not have let him continue his act had they known that this was a white supremacist meme for others who might be watching the stream. This young man was perhaps afraid that his presence in a physical public space stripped him of the anonymity that accompanies performances of identity on the internet. This forms a direct contrast to the boisterous party of the New York performance, where the number of members in the group offered relative safety from confrontation. At least one other stream participant of the in-group was watching, as he captured the live-streamed video and uploaded the video on YouTube. Titled Sneaking a Swig of Milk in during HWNDU (2017) and garnering less than 3,000 views, this video was not nearly as popular as the performative acts captured in New York City for the original stream. [61] However, curiously, the act of sneaky milk drinking was re-captured and converted into an animated GIF image for use and dissemination on other social media sites such as Twitter, Reddit, Imagur, and 4chan. This GIF image became a short hand symbol, much in the way that Richard Spencer co-opted the milk glass emoji in his Twitter name. Figure 3. Screen shot from “Sneaking a Swig of Milk” captures one man sneakily drinking milk on camera (YouTube video from H Drone, February 2017, used with permission from LaBeouf Rönkkö & Turner). In this case, the actual act of drinking the milk was less important than the performance of the affect of milk drinking and possessing the sign that pointed towards the act of converting a symbol into a performance act. Drinking milk, as a bodily sensate activity, extends past the visceral experience, oscillating between the act itself and the meaning for which it stands. Added is the digital environment in which consuming the milk was witnessed, captured and disseminated over vast networks of social participants. That dissemination was part of the affective nature of the symbol itself, demonstrating the cooperative authorship of identity for internet trolls on 4Chan to white supremacists organizing elsewhere in different digital spaces on the internet. Conclusion The performance of identity has often been used by opposition groups to galvanize both in-group solidarity and out-group exclusion. These tactics have existed as a social method of identity construction as part of Van Dijk’s “ideological square.” [62] The meme is a convenient package for virulent messages that carry meanings larger than themselves. The addition of the digital to the performance of identity means two seemingly opposing ideas: the world-wide dissemination of these memes to as many people as possible, and the closed off dissemination in a personalized web governed by relevance algorithms. Memes are used in identity creation and then employed in identity manipulation as part of a creation of war rhetoric that has emboldened this group to act in tangible ways. Performance, often conceptualized as an agent for progressive social change and good, is vulnerable to being used as a tool to promote dangerous ideologies. The performances of identity that the live stream #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS captured digitally demonstrate the power of these memes to continue to perform identity—even the identity of those on the far fringes of the political spectrum. The war rhetoric in identity creation, used to convince many to take up a mantle and fight for a righteous cause, translates and spills over into real-life consequences and radicalization of theses internet groups. Clearly, the anonymity of the internet allows for people to author some truly insidious creations. Constructing a toxic technopublic in real time, participants in #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS demonstrate that performance of identity is not just reserved for positive social change—identity performance is reserved for the trolls, as well. References [1] Shia LaBeouf, Luke Turner, and Nastja Säde Rönkkö. #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS , accessed June 11, 2017. http://www.hewillnotdivide.us . [2] Ibid. [3] Emma Grey Ellis, “Don’t Look Now, But Extremists’ Meme Armies Are Turning Into Militias,” Wired . Last modified April 20, 2017. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/meme-army-now-militia/ . Throughout the article I spell “alt-right” with scare quotes to mark my refusal to legitimize or normalize the white supremacists’ self-invented euphemism. I also use the phrase far-right to designate individuals with highly conservative views who may not formally take part in organized groups professing to be “alt-right.” [4] Tarleton Gillespie, “The Relevance of Algorithms,” Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society 167 (2014). [5] Joseph Bernstein, “The Public Square Belongs to 4Chan,” Buzzfeed News . Last modified May 18, 2017. https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-public-square-belongs-to-4chan?utm_term=.gijxZ6zmB#.tiMGDJZEm . [6] Jack Smith IV, “Shia LaBeaouf’s Anti-Trump Live-Stream has Devolved into a Neo-Nazi Broadcast Network,” Mic . Last modified February 9, 2017. https://mic.com/articles/168026/shia-la-beouf-s-anti-trump-livestream-has-devolved-into-a-neo-nazi-broadcast-networ [7] George Lakoff, The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014), 56. Lakoff frames all political arguments in terms of a national conception of family. In his introduction, the conservative conception of family is defined as the strict father model, where the preferred method for obedience is physical punishment. [8] Teun A. Van Dijk, “Discourse and Ideology,” Discourse and Society 9 (1998): 307-308. [9] Ibid., 397. Original emphasis. [10] Sarah J. Jackson, and Brooke Foucault Welles, “Hijacking #myNYPD : Social Media Dissent and Networked Counterpublics,” Journal of Communication 65, no. 6 (December 2015): 932–52. [11] Bernstein, “The Public Square Belongs to 4Chan.” Through personal communication, Luke Turner had this to say about working with the museum, “It was the institution in Queens, however, that did most to misrepresent, misframe and hijack the work, not least by holding a local politician’s partisan political rally in front of our artwork. As a result, the media and the ‘alt-right’ at large represented the artwork as something it is explicitly not, in order to make it a target and fabricate some kind of enemy.” [12] Bernstein, “The Public Square Belongs to 4Chan.” [13] Adrian Gomez, “’He Will Not Divide Us’ Video Stream Taken Down After Report of Gunshots,” Albuquerque Journal . Accessed February 23, 2017. https://www.abqjournal.com/955762/labeouf-takes-down-anti-trump-stream-due-to-reported-shots.html . [14] Bernstein, “The Public Square Belongs to 4Chan.” [15] Van Dijk. “Discourse and Ideology.” [16] Ibid., 390. [17] The oft-cited and biblical example of soldiers using the pronunciation of the word “shibboleth” to distinguish between friend and foe, is an example of the “ideological square” in action, demonstrating the exclusionary/inclusionary nature of language employed in this way. Linguistic or symbolic markers that are characteristic of a certain group of people are used to the exclusion of other groups, often with severely negative consequences. [18] Timothy Scott Brown, Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009). [19] Ibid., 15. [20] danah m. boyd and Nicole B. Ellison, “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007): 210–30. [21] Craig Silverman, “Fake Antifa Twitter Accounts Are Trolling People And Spreading Misinformation,” Buzzfeed News . Last modified May 30, 2017. https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/fake-antifa-twitter-accounts [22] Timothy Scott Brown, Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance, 110. [23] Recently, journalists have uncovered cracks in the constitution of “alt-right” groups as they are being torn apart by domestic disputes, witness the work the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has done to uncover these groups. Matt Parrott, a high-level leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party designated a hate group by the SPLC, himself admitted “SPLC has won. Matt Parrott is out of the game. Y’all have a nice life.” Qtd in Erin Keane, “Infighting tears apart a modern hate group, just as it did for the Klan.” Salon . Last modified March 14, 2018. https://www.salon.com/2018/03/14/infighting-tears-apart-a-modern-hate-group-just-like-it-did-for-the-klan/ [24] Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: How The New Personalized Web is Changing What We Read and How We Think (New York: Penguin, 2011). [25] Thomas Zeitzoff, “Does Social Media Influence Conflict? Evidence from the 2012 Gaza Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 16, no. 1 (2016): 29-63. [26] Lewis A. Friedland, Thomas Hove, and Hernando Rojas. “The Networked Public Sphere.” Javnost – The Public 13, no. 4 (2006): 5–26. [27] Pariser, The Filter Bubble , 12. [28] Joshua Benton, “The Forces that Drove this Election’s Media Failure Are Likely to Get Worse,” Nieman Journalism Lab . Last modified November 9, 2006. http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/11/the-forces-that-drove-this-elections-media-failure-are-likely-to-get-worse/ [29] Van Dijk, “Discourse and Ideology,” 397. [30] Gillespie, “The Relevance of Algorithms,” 167. [31] Benton, “The Forces That Drove This Election’s Media Failure are Likely to Get Worse.” [32] Richard Dawkins, “Memes: The New Replicators,” in The Selfish Gene (1976): 203-15. [33] Ibid., 204. [34] These symbols are deeply embedded codes that include the use of 14, for the 14 words slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and 88, which stands for “Heil Hitler” since H is the 8th letter in the alphabet. Definitions are provided on the Anti-Defamation League’s Hate Symbols Database: https://www.adl.org/education-and-resources/resource-knowledge-base/hate-symbols [35] Marshall McLuhan, and Quentin Fiore, “The Medium is the Message,” New York 123 (1967): 126-128. [36] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008 [1980]). [37] Ibid., 69. [38] “Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump | PRRI/The Atlantic Report.” n.d. PRRI (blog). last modified May 9, 2018. https://www.prri.org/research/white-working-class-attitudes-economy-trade-immigration-election-donald-trump/ . While many Trump voters certainly do not identify as “alt-right,” many “alt-right” individuals have constructed their identity around their affinity for Donald Trump as president and will indicate so in their social media profiles. [39] Anthony Joseph Coates, The Ethics of War (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016). Coates is quoting from Keegan’s A History of Warfare (Random House, 1993). [40] Bernstein, “The Public Square Belongs to 4Chan.” [41] Emma Grey Ellis, “Don’t Look Now, But Extremists’ Meme Armies Are Turning Into Militias,” Wired . Last modified April 20, 2017. https://www.wired.com/2017/04/meme-army-now-militia/ [42] Ibid. As a counter to the video of an Antifa activist punching Richard Spencer on Inauguration Day, alt-right internet users were quick to capture and replay a video of an Antifa activist in Berkeley receiving the same treatment. “The Expendables” are a group of para-military left-behind action heroes led by Sylvester Stallone in a movie that premiered in 2010. Pepe the Frog will be discussed in depth in a later portion of this article. [43] Ellis, “Don’t Look Now, But Extremists’ Meme Armies are Turning into Militias.” [44] Ibid. [45] Ibid. [46] Van Dijk, “Discourse and Ideology,” 380. [47] Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). John Lutterbie employs the use of proprioception in his conceptualization of role creation and acting in Towards a Theory of Acting: Cognitive Science and Performance (London: Palgrave, 2011). [48] Ibid., 60. [49] Judith Butler, “Critically Queer,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1, no. 1 (1993): 17-32. [50] LaBeouf, Turner, and Rönkkö. http://www.hewillnotdivide.us . [51] Ibid. [52] Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). [53] Shaun Manning, “Pepe the Frog Is Dead: Creator Kills the White Supremacist-Hijacked Icon.” CBR.com . Last modified May 6, 2017. http://www.cbr.com/pepe-frog-creator-kills-white-supremacist-icon/ . [54] Sarah J. Jackson, and Brooke Foucault Welles, “Hijacking #MYNYPD : Social Media Dissent and Networked Counterpublics,” Journal of Communication 65, no. 6 (2015): 932-952. [55] Nikhil Sonnad, “What the rise of ‘its OK to be white’ says about the alt-right,” Quartz . Last modified December 7, 2017. https://qz.com/1144783/the-rise-of-the-alt-rights-catchphrase-its-ok-to-be-white/ . [56] Debate over the origins of this practice continues, with some scholars and journalists pointing towards the internet’s obsession with a 2011 photo of a woman bathing another woman’s feet with milk. The photo is also rife with Nazi symbolism and imagery. Other scholars date this practice as far back as a U.S. National Dairy Council pamphlet from the 1920s, “The people who have used liberal amounts of milk and its products are progressive in science and every activity of the human intellect.” Tracing the complex history of milk as a white supremacist symbol merits a more in-depth study which exceeds the scope of this article. The above theories are found in Andrea Freeman, “Milk, a Symbol of Neo-Nazi Hate,” The Conversation (August 30, 2017), http://theconversation.com/milk-a-symbol-of-neo-nazi-hate-83292 . [57] Zachary Toliver, “Why Cow’s Milk Is the Perfect Drink for Supremacists,” Peta . Last modified March 7, 2017. https://www.peta.org/blog/cows-milk-perfect-drink-supremacists/ . [58] Ellis, “Don’t Look Now, But Extremists’ Meme Armies Are Turning Into Militias.” [59] Wyatt Pahr, “He Will Not Divide Us ( ” Nazi ” Party FRIDAY NIGHT ) hwndu hewillnotdivideus racist milk.” Filmed [February 2017] YouTube video, 11:49. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTy6f_HyuQU” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank” [60] Another example of the complications of online authorship: I had to untangle the permissions for these stills from YouTube. This still represents my screen shot of a YouTube video copied from another YouTube video that was a screen capture of a video feed of the live event. This image is used with permission from LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner. [61] H Drone. “Sneaking a Swig of Milk in during HWNDU.” Filmed [February 2017] YouTube video, 01:55. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiTxH-7ZziI [62] Van Dijk, “Discourse and Ideology,” 390. Footnotes About The Author(s) Ellen Gillooly-Kress is a PhD student in the Theatre Arts department at the University of Oregon. Her work focuses on performance and the internet, and cognitive processing of language in theatrical performance. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s Samuel Beckett’s Theatre in America: The Legacy of Alan Schneider as Beckett’s American Director The Contemporary American Monologue: Performance and Politics Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left Introduction: Mediations of Authorship in American Postdramatic Mediaturgies Kaldor and Dorsen's "desktop performances" and the (Live) Coauthorship Paradox Ecologies of Media, Ecologies of Mind: Embodying Authorship Through Mediaturgy Dropping the Needle on the Record: Intermedial Contingency and Spalding Gray's Early Talk Performances #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS: Weaponizing Performance of Identity from the Digital to the Physical Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

Sarah Courtis Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 1 Visit Journal Homepage The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical; Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity Sarah Courtis By Published on November 17, 2022 Download Article as PDF For a relatively young form, musical theatre carries a long history of racism and white supremacy (among many other issues of identity and representation). Indeed, musicals often reflect the society in which they are written and performed, complicating the often naïve view of what the musical means or does by their expression of deeper political frameworks of creation, production and reception. The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical was first published in 2014 in an effort to address the racially-coded history of American musical theatre as a form “by white people, for white people and about white people” (5). The second edition, published in 2020, builds upon this provocation by adding a new chapter on more recent blockbuster shows: The Book of Mormon and Hamilton . An important contribution to musical theatre scholarship, The Great White Way seeks to identify and combat white supremacy in musicals by tracing issues of race historically from Show Boat to Hamilton with a focus on ‘normative’ whiteness, which is often left out of the discussion in musical theatre literature. In an attempt to reveal and (eventually) deconstruct racist notions of white supremacy, Hoffman first endeavours to make it visible, noting that this is just the “ initial step ” to be taken. He acknowledges the context of this book being specifically about the American musical, joining many preeminent scholars in this narrow focus (particularly as he narrows it further to only successful Broadway musicals), leaving a rather large gap to be addressed elsewhere. The overture lays out the premise, challenging preconceived notions of the way race is constructed in musical theatre, particularly in works which don’t appear to be about race at all. Indeed, he notes that “their silence about race speaks volumes” (4) and that “community really means white community, while people of colour are often absent from the utopia that musicals represent” (6). Hoffman complicates the idea of race “revealing that racial meaning is sometimes located in the space between the text and the performers” (26). He interrogates and problematises the concept of ‘universality’ and addresses several myths of musical theatre which uphold normative whiteness, while critiquing nostalgia for ‘simpler times’ which can be found in the revivals of ‘Golden Era’ texts. Act One of The Great White Way consists of three chapters, with case studies of Show Boat , Oklahoma! , Annie Get Your Gun , West Side Story and The Music Man . These chapters consider the early classics which shaped the American musical, while acknowledging the wide field of criticism available and gaps still to be filled. Hoffman provides a close reading of each of these productions, often juxtaposing their use of stereotypes (as in Show Boat and Annie Get Your Gun ) and their silences on race (as in Oklahoma! and The Music Man ). These early texts don’t just portray “the creation, negotiation and consolidation of Caucasian identity” (56), they enact them and solidify normative whiteness through their silences on the topic. Hoffman challenges readers to take note of their own internalised prejudices by noting that “race is a category that affects everyone, whites included, regardless of whether they see themselves implicated in the discussion” (80). These case studies reveal the importance of historical and political contexts in the creation and reception of the original productions and their revivals, outlining the rise and fall of musical theatre through American culture over the last century. The second “act” consists of five chapters, tracing the history of Black and Interracial productions of white musicals and considering the inherent racism of nostalgia. It also includes case studies on A Chorus Line , The Book of Mormon and Hamilton : productions which take clear stances on race and casting practices. Hoffman considers the trend of Black versions of classic white musicals (most notably Hello, Dolly! ) and how they revealed “the way in which the supposed normativity of whiteness was made visible when non-white performers played roles assumed to be the domain of white actors” (112). He suggests that ignoring colour can be a form of whitewashing, and that more diversity in new shows is required. The American political context continues to be traced in the case studies, as A Chorus Line portrays a naïve expression of the American Dream; revivals and revisals are seen to have an economic rather than artistic focus and many of them reflect a nostalgia for ‘simpler’ times (which Hoffman connects to Trump’s slogan: ‘Make America Great Again’). Finally, Hoffman notes the inherent whiteness in The Book of Mormon and Hamilton , both of which (on the surface) appear to be race-conscious. Notions of colonialism and neoliberalism surface within the shows, however, they are subsumed with the musicals’ rather hopeful suggestion that these “are necessary steps on making the Broadway musical a more inclusive and democratic artform” (224). Reframing the Musical, a recent collection edited by Sarah Whitfield, picks up on many themes of The Great White Way , filling some of the gaps left by Hoffman. Whitfield brings together a series of essays by preeminent scholars in the musical theatre field, each focussing on reframing different productions through the lenses of race, culture and identity. In this more democratic format, multiple authors come from diverse backgrounds and bring fresh perspectives on popular musicals as well as shows which had limited runs (and perhaps a more limited impact). Whitfield frames the anthology’s approach by considering who is left out of the “cool white guy narrative” (xvii) consciously centering Critical Race Theory in order to challenge “expectations of default whiteness” (xix). Part one provides three chapters under the theme of reframing identity/identities. The first chapter, by Donatella Galella, considers The Fortress of Solitude (2014) and the power dynamics inherent in a text which “relies upon white authorisation” (4). Her chapter is a call to arms (often cited and taken up by the other authors) for white people to use “racial privilege to do anti-racist work” (5). Galella centralises the Black experience through this case study and notes the way the text mirrored the life of the creative team who were attempting systematic change, while benefitting from a racist system. Broderick Chow provides a personal account of viewing Here Lies Love (2014) as a Filipino, considering the impact of distancing for many audiences in contrast to his more personal gaze. Brian Ganger presents a moving analysis of The Lion King (1997) as both a Black and white musical. He complicates the ‘double event’ by considering the predominantly white creative team and Imperialist story being told by Black bodies, to a Black sound. Part two provides a more historical approach via five chapters aimed at challenging historiographies. Maya Cantu utilizes an approach of ‘recovery’ and “cultural acts of resistance” (67) by recognising the historical and cultural significance of Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith. Arianne Johnson Quinn examines the legacy of Oscar Hammerstein II in Britain, while critiquing the white saviour complex. Sean Mayes calls for justice for the ‘invisible’ roles and contributions, particularly those of Musical Directors and Black people. He calls for more diversity in all shows as well as utilization of the Practice as Research methodology. Alejandro Postigo considers the history of musical theatre in Spain, focussing on the forms of zarzuella and revista . Phoebe Ramsy returns to the concept of ‘recovery as resistance’, highlighting the importance of choreography in Shuffle Along – Or The Making Of The Musical Sensation Of 1921 And All That Followed. This set of scholarly essays establishes the volume’s cross-cultural scope, as well as its activist contributions. Part Three moves away from race in order to interrogate musical structures in identity and social change over the final four essays. Rebecca Applin Warner discusses the musematic relations in Fun Home as a way of analysing Allison’s relationships with her family. Sarah Browne considers the counterculture musical Hair (1967) , providing two calls to action: firstly, to revisit and question older texts, and secondly, to develop and adopt approaches from other disciplines when analysing musical theatre texts. James Lovelock calls for a more nuanced approach to sexuality, noting the lack of representation of Bisexual, Asexual and transgender stories after analysing The Colour Purple, Yank!, Fun Home and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Wind Dell Woods concludes this volume through a provocative critique of Hamilton, focussing on the casting choices and the conflation of ‘immigrant’ and ‘slave’. These two volumes— The Great White Way and Reframing the Musical— complement each other well, taking up different approaches to topics of white supremacy and racial identity in musical theatre. While there are gaps in each, they are acknowledged; indeed it would be difficult to provide a comprehensive treatise on race in musical theatre (even forgetting the other intersectional identities discussed) in one, or even two, volumes. Each testifies to the centrality of this form of popular theatre in America, while raising important questions for scholars, for artists and for audiences. Their provocations are boldly presented for a new generation of artists and academics to continue building upon—so the initial step of making white supremacy and other issues of discrimination visible will no longer be the only step taken. References Footnotes About The Author(s) SARAH COURTIS Murdoch University/Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts 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 “An Art for Which There Is as Yet No Name.” Mobile Color, Artistic Composites, Temporal Objects The Anti-Victorianism of Victorian Revivals Tricks, Capers, and Highway Robbery: Philadelphia Self-Enactment upon the Early Jacksonian Stage “The Spirit of the Thing is All”: The Federal Theatre’s Staging of Medieval Drama in the Los Angeles Religious Community The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Loisaida Rise Up! Broadway and American Society from Angels in America to Hamilton Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical; Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity Previous Next Attribution:

Deric McNish Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 29 2 Visit Journal Homepage Directing Shakespeare in America Deric McNish By Published on June 4, 2017 Download Article as PDF Directing Shakespeare in America: Current Practices. By Charles Ney. London UK, New York NY: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Pp. 362. Charles Ney’s Directing Shakespeare in America: Current Practices is an illuminating and much-needed resource for directors, scholars, students, and Shakespeare aficionados. Between 2004 and 2015, Ney interviewed a veritable “who’s who” in the American Shakespeare scene. He selected 65 directors to participate in this study, an impressive feat as these are among the most prolific practitioners and artistic directors in the United States. Any of the interviewees in Charles Ney’s book could be the subject of an entire monograph, but Ney demonstrates a remarkable ability to curate this wealth of wisdom in a way that is compelling and easy to follow. Rather than presenting the interviews as self-contained essays, he has taken the much more useful approach of extracting and collating advice from each interviewee and organizing it based on topic. He identifies common approaches and creates convincing categories in which each director can be viewed. The book is engaging as a straight read-through, but it’s equally useful for the reader that wants to skip ahead and explore concise essays on various topics, such as approaches to table work, or how to navigate tech and previews. These practices are invaluable for directors of Shakespeare, but can be more broadly applied as resources for directing any kind of live theatre. A prolific director himself, Ney no doubt has his own informed opinions about how to approach directing Shakespeare, and yet he manages to serve as a fair and impartial conduit for each interviewee’s ideas. He transmits a variety of approaches without prejudice, saying “… there is more that can be learned by setting those judgements aside” (28). He is present in this work, not as a director, but as a keen scholar organizing a chaotic cacophony of ideas. Still, his underlying tone in this book is that of a person with great reverence for the artistic process and great respect for a diversity of approaches. Part I includes an introduction to each director’s career and attempts to identify their major beliefs and aesthetic sensibilities. Part II focuses on preproduction, how the director prepares to work with designers and actors. Part III explores the various approaches to rehearsal, with focuses on table work, staging, speaking the language, and middle stage rehearsals. Part IV, titled “Finishing the Production,” explores tech and dress, as well as the added element of the audience. Ney intends this book “to be a framework in which to view an individual’s work” (1). It accomplishes that and much more. A director can read Ney’s book and apply this framework to their own process. For example, a “Shakespeare as a Contemporary” director takes artistic license to promote the text’s relevance to the present. Conversely, an “Original Practices Director” works as a “director archeologist,” using Elizabethan staging practices to reveal possibilities in the text (31). The “Invisible Director” aims to “erase the traces” of the director (31) while the “Interpretive Director” actively attempts to collaborate with Shakespeare while putting forth a strong artistic vision for the play. For each of these approaches, Ney provides examples of specific directors’ processes. Categorizing directors based on their theoretical or practical approaches is challenging, but Ney makes convincing arguments for his breakdowns, while acknowledging that any individual director will defy those at times, based on the practical demands of their production or the nature of collaboration. These approaches are sometimes contradictory in a way that feels invigorating, as Ney creates a dialectic between powerful voices. The book then presents a breakdown of the common elements of production – selection, casting, concept, table-work, rehearsals, tech, previews, performance, etc. – and each section offers reflective advice from a number of directors. Ney doesn’t allow the discussions to become a collection of disconnected essays, but curates this information, extracting relevant information and placing it in appropriate sections. He develops useful categories and identifies major themes in each chapter. He sometimes identifies which approach is dominant, but never which approach is right. One can assume, based on the success of the interviewees, that every approach delineated has merit. The reader is invited to pick and choose. He manages to contextualize without getting in the way. These directors’ voices shine through. Ney’s contribution is unparalleled, in part because of his specific focus on the rich community of directors in the United States. A 1990 book by Ralph Berry called On Directing Shakespeare featured 12 interviews, including Trevor Nunn and Peter Brook, with no specific geographic focus. The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare, edited in 2008 by John Russell Brown, includes interviews with 31 directors (4 of which were American), and each chapter focused on a different director’s approach. Nancy Taylor’s 2005 book, Women Direct Shakespeare in America, focused on feminist performance theory in practice during the 1990s. Elizabeth Schafer took a similar approach in 2000 with her Ms – Directing Shakespeare: Women Direct Shakespeare. Countless instructional books exist that focus on directing Shakespeare, but each of those only focuses on one author’s specific approach. Ney’s book astonishingly avoids privileging one approach over another. This is a study that attempts to truly capture diverse approaches and contextualize them. Each interviewee generously throws open the doors to their process and the result is instructive. There were moments when I craved more examples from specific productions to illustrate points, or to more clearly set up the contrast between directors, but I understand this would have made things lengthier and perhaps cumbersome. This book is an effective snapshot of an incredibly diverse body of work and a must read for Shakespeare directors, scholars, and enthusiasts. Deric McNish Michigan State University The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 29, Number 2 (Spring 2017) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2017 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center 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 Acting in the Academy The Theatre of David Henry Hwang Ruth Maleczech at Mabou Mines Directing Shakespeare in America Writing, Acting, and Directing Searching for Solutions: Humanizing Climate Narratives in an Age of Global Change and Connectivity The Anthropo(s)cenography of Ricardo Monti's Marrathon Towards a Synthesis of Natural and Human History: Situating the Municipal and Ecclesiastic Viceregal Arches of 1680 Mexico City within the Lacustrine Food Futures: Speculative Performance in the Anthropocene Tú eres mi otro yo - Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy & the AnthropoScene Introduction to American Theatre and Performance in the Anthropocene Epoch 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 by Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 2 (Winter 2019) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2019 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center 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. 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, VR 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. [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. "Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre" by Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 2 (Winter 2019) ©2019 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center 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 Table of Contents: "Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre" by Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler "Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003)" by Konstantinos Blatanis "Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy" by Nathalie Aghoro "'Take Caroline Away': Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change" by Joanna Mansbridge "The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America" by Julia Rössler "Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a ‘Lesbian Suicide Musical’" by Maureen McDonnell www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Yu Chien Lu, Administrative Producer ©2019 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 Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy "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 Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Black Performance and Pedagogy 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.

Kristin Leahey with Joseph Ngo Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Kristin Leahey with Joseph Ngo By Published on May 23, 2022 Download Article as PDF When Lauren Yee approaches a new play, she considers the historical events she wants to address in her work. Yee contemplates, “What are the moments and people that have been forgotten?” Yee gathers copious research and identifies the primary icons of these periods. She then disregards these surrogates of the times: her plays are not historical renderings of the lives of the famous or infamous, such as Mao Zedong or Pol Pot. Her plays are stories of the people whose narratives have often been omitted from the archive and whose lives have been marginalized. She probes histories of Asians and Asian Americans. As a writer, she acknowledges their communities by conceiving plays based on the lives of fictional individuals from the communities themselves. By reclaiming history, Yee constructs main characters in the form of common people who refuse to accept their plights and choose instead to challenge overwhelming obstacles in order to construct divergent futures for themselves and subsequent generations. Ultimately, through contemporary dialogue, Yee explores paradigms of largely forgotten pasts, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre in The Great Leap and the Cambodian genocide in Cambodian Rock Band . In this article, I, one of Yee’s primary dramaturgs, will share the dramaturgical processes for the development, production, and audience and community engagement for two of her most produced works, which both premiered in 2018: The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band . Additionally, Joseph (Joe) Ngo, an actor with whom Yee collaborates, contributes thoughts in the form of an interview I conducted with him over the past several months. Ngo reflects on his dramaturgical contributions as an actor and Cambodian American in the new play development process. By performing an analysis of these plays and sharing specifics of their development trajectories, I provide access to the dramaturgy of one of our most influential twenty-first century writers, unpack why these works about Asians and Asian Americans are so widely produced at PWIs (primarily white institutions, i.e., US regional theatres and off-Broadway institutions), and describe how Yee’s work and playmaking processes add to the discourse on Asian American dramaturgies. Figure 1. Joseph Steven Yang, Linden Tailor, Bob Ari, and Keiko Green in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Seattle Rep co-production of The Great Leap (2018). Photo by AdamVisCom. The Great Leap In Yee’s works, fathers are often protagonists, which is true, too, of the The Great Leap . Set in 1989, The Great Leap follows Manford, a Chinese American high school student from San Francisco, as he plays in an exhibition game in Beijing against the Chinese men’s national basketball team. Over the course of the play, the audience discovers that Manford’s father Wen Chang—a devoted, ranking member of the Communist Party—is the Chinese team’s coach. Manford’s mother, Zhang Li, rebelled against the Party after the Cultural Revolution, and she miraculously defected to the United States early in her pregnancy. Wen Chang refused to join her at first and was subsequently unable to because of immigration laws in China and the US. Ultimately, Wen Chang defies the Party and protects his son, who has been unknowingly photographed with the student protestors in Tiananmen Square. He then allows Manford, a member of the University of San Francisco team, to take the last shot in the game, which enables the Americans to win, displeasing the Party. In his final monologue, delivered as a fax to his son, who has hopefully returned safely to California, Wen Chang states: “they are dealing with their most immediate threats. soon they will get to me. they suspect, i suppose, that i will not run.” [1] Wen Chang is the character in the play who experiences the greatest transformation and moves to action from stasis. As her dramaturg on the play from 2016 to its New York opening in June 2018 at the Atlantic Theatre Company, I discussed with Yee some of the variations of the title of the play in connection to who the protagonist of the play is: Manford at the Line , Manford at the Line or The Great Leap , and eventually, simply, The Great Leap , after the 2017 Denver Center for the Performing Arts Colorado New Play Summit Workshop. During the workshop, Wen Chang was played by Francis Jue who, like Ngo, serves as a consistent inspiration for Yee. With Jue, there was casual conversation about identifying the main character: Manford or Wen Chang. Manford was onstage throughout most of the play, and he traversed both of the play’s settings of the Bay Area and Beijing. But Manford didn’t change. Although he is the youngest character (and might be, therefore, most likely to change), his motivations are consistent: to discover his family, to reach his goals, and to honor basketball—the sport he loves. By contrast, Wen Chang renounces communism and looks to the US democracy as a place for his son to find a better life. He writes, “and if i have done my job properly, you are on your flight now, minor injuries, back to a country that will hopefully see you for the man you are. either way, my story ends here. and yours is still to begin.” [2] Wen Chang regrets the loss of his individualism, particularly the loss of his life with his family, for his belief and love of the Communist Party. In the end, retaining Manford’s name in the title didn’t make sense for either the rhythm or the meaning of the play, as he ultimately isn’t the protagonist. Additionally, Yee wanted to capitalize on the witticism of the title The Great Leap : it simultaneously alludes to the sport of basketball and the 1958–1962 economic and social campaign by the Communist Party to industrialize an agrarian economy, which led to famine, brutalization, and the deaths of 45 million people. Using The Great Leap as the title was a linguistically sophisticated, though controversial, play on words. In addition to the process of deciding the title, we practiced sensitive research in the form of primary source interviews. Yee and I conducted a number of anonymous interviews with Chinese expatriates living in Seattle and Denver. They informed our work, in terms of everyday life, competitive sports, and education in Communist China from the 1970s onward. One source said that a colleague, also Chinese and working in the US, asked them, after I initially contacted them, without their having made any public mention of working on the show, what they were doing working on a piece with this title. A different source stated that the closer you traveled to Beijing, the more you must omit about the protests to the point of pretending they never happened. One interviewee claimed that they knew the identity and narrative of the man in the “tank man” photo and that this was common knowledge in certain circles, but was unwilling to share more information. This image serves as the culminating moment in Yee’s play because is the surrogate for the Tiananmen Square Massacre for the West, while it remains unknown in much of Communist China. In her foundational work On Photography , Susan Sontag writes that “Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation.” [3] Yee further moves audiences to empathy, or a form of “participation” with an iconic photograph by transforming Wen Chang into “tank man.” In The Great Leap , audiences hear Wen Chang describe himself as the figure in the photo while he changes his clothes, and then they see him against the backdrop of the famous image. At this moment, every audience I have seen the play with across the country gasps. This final scene of Wen Chang’s journey is connected to grief, as it epitomizes the affect of much of Wen Chang’s journey in The Great Leap . In The Melancholy of Race , Anne Anlin Cheng writes about the transformative act of moving from “grief to grievance, from suffering injury to speaking out against that injury.” [4] Cheng describes a “racial grief” elicited from a a history of indifference, social injustice, and psychological or even physical injury. Applying theory from Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia,” Cheng explores a type of grief—melancholy—which I argue Wen Chang exudes throughout the play. Melancholy is a condition of “endless self-impoverishment” or the tendency to remain in an interminable state of mourning. [5] Wen Chang’s melancholia is an example of racial abjection experienced by Asian Americans that Yee imprints on the characters of Wen Chang and Manford because they both live in a liminal space between belonging and being ostracized by the US. A scene that conveys Wen Chang’s immense grief is “letter 3/pick and roll: 1971.” Wen Chang writes: “and her absence was noted in my dossier, ensuring that i would never leave this country. every year i applied for a visa, and every year, like the movement of a clock: denied. i was the pick. and she was the roll. and together we could have done so much. but she could not be patient and i was too much so.” [6] In the co-world premiere productions in Denver and Seattle (at Seattle Repertory Theatre) in 2018, not seeing Zhang Li onstage made the character omnipresent and became a significant production choice. The everlasting emotional and geographic separation between the couple spurred Wen Chang’s grief and eventually this melancholy is compounded when he learns that Zhang Li died from cancer just before the beginning of the play. Both Manford and Wen Chang mourn her loss throughout the narrative and seek “grievance,” as Cheng defines it, at different points on their journeys. The characters are called to action; they express and enact a search for voice, justice, and change through “grievance,” or overcoming their grief. Manford fights to join the University of San Francisco team immediately after the funeral of his mother, creating an impetus to live through grief and demonstrate his grievance by making the team. He expresses his anger for the death of his mother through his system-defying actions. He’s angry at the US health care system for not providing proper care for his mother. He’s angry that because she was a poor immigrant, she was forced to take taxing, manual labor-intensive jobs to survive that ultimately accelerated her death. Wen Chang expresses his grievance through protest and joins the students in Tiananmen Square. Yee intentionally bookends The Great Leap with these men, first Manford and then Wen Chang, essentially wearing the same costume: a white button-down collar shirt and black pants. In their matching attire, Manford restlessly insists on joining the basketball team, and Wen Chang protests for change in Tiananmen Square. Off-Broadway and regional audiences around the country experienced The Great Leap as it became one of the most-produced plays in the US, and Yee became the second most-produced playwright in 2020. [7] While working at one of the PWIs that premiered the play—Seattle Rep (as the Director of New Works)—I heard what was attracting many theatres to the work: it has a cast of four or fewer; it is a comedy; it is a father-son story; it is about a historical period and creates an iconic image; it is extremely well-written; it is ostensibly linear with flashbacks that are easy to follow; and it includes a popular sport in it, but doesn’t require a set with a full court. Because of these features, the primarily white audiences and subscribers of these theatres, also found this play interesting. However, unsurprisingly, many were shocked by the vulgarity of the language (i.e., “all right, you masturbating horsefuckers: i know you’re tired. i know you’re still jetlagged from last night. i know you’d rather be jerking off into a nice hot bowl of noodles than sitting in traffic this early in the morning.”) [8] which theatres such as Seattle Rep and Denver Center for the Performing Arts anticipated by sharing content warnings in advance through pre-show emails, on the show’s webpage, and in the program. In my dramaturgy, I learned that an inspiration for the play was Larry Yee’s (Lauren Yee’s father) investment in basketball. In the early 1980s, Larry Yee played on a team representing San Francisco in these types of exhibition games throughout China. He noted that the Chinese players from these very competitive teams were extremely tall, often at least 7 feet. In the play, they become coach Wen Chang’s “Tall Trees.” [9] I added images of Larry Yee (who is 6 feet) to the lobby display. I attended all the previews in Denver and Seattle, and I led talkbacks in both cities, where the director and the entire company were completely different. In every location, diverse audiences of white, Asian American, and other people of color seemed enthralled by the play’s climatic game in Beijing. They seemed equally captivated by the narrative of Manford and Wen Chang finding each other on the court and a history that is still forbidden in part of the world. In Denver, watching the first readings, sitting next to Lauren Yee, hearing her laugh along with the audience, then experiencing their immediate standing ovation, the company knew we had created a unique work. Fig. 2. Brooke Ishibashi, Joe Ngo, Jane Lui, Raymond Lee and Abraham Kim in South Coast Repertory’s world premiere production of Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee. Photo by Jordan Kubat/SCR. Cambodian Rock Band The band Dengue Fever and actor Joe Ngo brought a formidable dramaturgical voice to the development of Cambodian Rock Band , a 2015 commission from South Coast Repertory Theatre in Southern California. Yee partially developed the work at Seattle Repertory Theatre during a closed workshop, curated by me and performed with Ngo, where Yee learned that Ngo’s Cambodian parents survived the regime of the Khmer Rouge and the genocidal forced labor camps of the late 1970s. Ngo said in our interview: I think it came as [a] surprise to Lauren to discover that I was actually Cambodian-Chinese. When in the room, during the feedback session, I mentioned how much it meant to see that Lauren was aiming to tell a story so close to my family experience. For a play that Lauren had admittedly shelved for some time, it was as if in me she had found a match to light her dynamite, or perhaps vice versa and upon this discovery of my family history, Lauren had found a source. After that we headed to the Thai restaurant across the street for dinner, and [for] at least an hour … I shared my family stories… As someone who doesn’t believe in fate, it is rather difficult to swallow all the fantastical, it seems, coincidences that ended up making Cambodian Rock Band : the two looming the largest being Lauren and my meeting and the fact that Lauren realized that’d she wanted to have a band onstage and that I play the electric guitar. [10] Ngo describes his initial work as always aimed at authenticity in building the voices for the characters and advocating for that work beyond the page. Because he is one of Yee’s primary partners for Cambodian Rock Band , his personal family history added layers of anecdotal dramaturgy. He contributed family stories and song choices. For instance, his parents crossed the Thai border twice under extreme duress, which the character Chum describes. Ngo’s mother, who is based in Los Angeles, served as the language coach for the South Coast Repertory production. As the city Battambang is a setting in the play, Ngo suggested “Champa Battambang” in honor of his parents’ birthplace. While the cadence and style of Yee’s language is ultimately hers, it was his enactment of his father, uncles, and other Khmer community members that led Yee to solidify his portrayal of Chum. Ngo articulates, “In building the life journey of my character Chum, I consider this a transformation of grief to grievance; reflecting on the challenges, pain, loss, and grief my family endured and overcame and my subsequent embodiment of their grievance through my own performance.” [11] For the premiere at South Coast Rep in 2018, Yee, Ngo, the rest of the originating acting company, lauded director Chay Yew, and resident dramaturg and current Director of New Works Andy Knight thoroughly examined the historical context of the play’s world. In Cambodian Rock Band , Yee reminds audiences of the history of the genocide and how the US strategically ignored its existence. In A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson describes this “imperial amnesia,” [12] which led the US government to ignore reports of the killing fields and refugee accounts of the death camps. Under the Nixon Administration, in March of 1969, the US attempted to bomb North Vietnamese trade routes in Cambodia, resulting in the deaths of 100,000 Cambodian civilians. This action further fueled pro-communist factions, such as the Khmer Rouge, in Cambodia. Following the devastating loss of the American War in Vietnam and hundreds of thousands of American lives, the US found no imperialistic value in Cambodia or interest in continued involvement in another Southeast Asian conflict. Western media largely neglected to cover the genocide, as the Watergate scandal dominated headlines. Yee informs audiences of this omitted history through flashbacks with Chum, the character that links the two historical worlds of the play and the band, and with monologues delivered by characters such as Duch, who have a wry sense of humor: genocide genocide genocide. boo.(DUCH clicks off the slides)you think of everything that came after, once the shit hit the fan. the khmer rouge, pol pot, and two million dead. [13] Thus far, Cambodian Rock Band has been produced by PWIs with predominantly white audiences. Minneapolis’ Jungle Theater, in collaboration with Theater Mu, the second largest Asian American theater in the country, will coproduce the play this June and July. Having performed the show more than a hundred times, Ngo described how shocked audiences seem by the genocide: It’s odd to say, but more often than not, it seemed as if audiences weren’t prepared to see the brutality of the Khmer Rouge enacted onstage (which, to be honest, is only half as bad as most of the cruelty documented) and so, the general feeling I so often was able to discern from audiences was one of disbelief. It was not surprising to me that whenever our cast participated in talkbacks, we’d receive fewer questions and more of what seemed like condolences for what had happened, expressions of helplessness, statements that affirmed that older audiences “just didn’t know this was happening, Cambodia was a blackzone,” refutations from other older (typically white) folks asserting that our country just chose to turn a blind eye to the damage that it caused…all of it in a restrained cacophony cloaked in civility. The expression of disbelief indicated to me that they felt some amount of shame or guilt of responsibility (whether acknowledged or not). [14] Ngo shares his family’s story through not only Yee’s play but also extensive audience outreach. For Cambodian Rock Band , Yee and her team of artists launched Herculean efforts to promote and encourage Cambodians and other Asian and Asian Americans to attend the show because of the work’s subject matter. Yee and the cast created and sold tee-shirts. Also, Yee attended as many of the shows as possible, facilitated community engagement events, hosted Asian American nights, worked with student groups from local colleges and universities, emceed music nights with members of the cast playing songs from the show’s Dengue Fever catalog, and participated in massive press campaigns. Ngo contends that the attraction for audiences with Cambodian Rock Band is the rock music, the interpretation of story connected to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the intrigue of how the seemingly unrelated items are tied. What audiences—Asian and Asian American but truly all diverse audiences—receive is a deeper understanding of a culture, people, and history through this theatrical platform, which ends with a celebration of their humanity. Ngo says, “I believe we achieved something special when we had younger audiences at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and they, too, danced in the aisles, celebrated, and seemed to deeply absorb all the rawness of the characters, having survived their youth. And, with arms flailing and sweaty, they would then hug each other and cry, seeming to feel the immediate understanding of just having survived themselves.” [15] Dramaturgy is not a delicate art for a Lauren Yee play. When Yee writes, she mouths her characters’ words. She bangs on her computer keys with a ruthlessness. She becomes consumed by her subjects, reading an excess of texts, then putting them aside to structure the building blocks of her plays. With superpower speed, she writes 200 to 400 pages in a week and just as easily slashes pages upon pages of dialogue. She requires the same ferocity and fight in her collaborators, which Ngo and I can confirm. Audiences will often find a narrator in conflict with the past and a geopolitical power struggling to draw a map of their own future. She examines epic, world-building and (hopefully) change-for-the better historical moments, but always from the perspective of an ordinary person. References [1] Lauren Yee, The Great Leap (unpublished final manuscript, 2018), 112. [2] Ibid., 112. [3] Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Classics, 2008), 7. [4] Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3. [5] Ibid., 8. [6] Ibid., 84. [7] Diep Tran, “The Top 10* Most-Produced Plays of the 2019-20 Season,” American Theatre Magazine , 18 September 2019, https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/18/the-top-10-most-produced-plays-of-the-2019-20-season/. [8] Yee, Great Leap , 68. [9] Ibid., 88. [10] Joseph Ngo, interview with Kristin Leahey, 3 January 2022. [11] Ibid. [12] Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 176. [13] Lauren Yee, Cambodian Rock Band (unpublished final manuscript, 2018), 7. [14] Ngo, interview with Kristen Leahey, 3 January 2022. [15] Ibid. Footnotes About The Author(s) Kristin Leahey served as the Director of New Works at Seattle Repertory Theatre, and prior to that post, as the Literary Manager at Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, among other places. She has freelanced as an artist nationally and internationally. Her publications include articles in Theatre Topics , Theatre History , and Theatre Studies . Leahey is an Assistant Professor at Boston University. Joe Ngo is an Obie Award-winning actor, who has worked at South Coast Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in New York City. As a writer, his work has been primarily geared toward solo performance and audio narratives with pieces such as Words, Words . Joe is a graduate of the University of Washington, Seattle’s MFA/PATP, and is based in Los Angeles. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Ariel Nereson Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Ariel Nereson By Published on May 22, 2022 Download Article as PDF In fall 2021, after three semesters of Zoom instruction, I returned to the classroom to teach my Advanced Dramaturgy course for graduate and advanced undergraduate students at the University at Buffalo – SUNY (State University of New York). As a practicing choreographer and dramaturg, I teach across dance and theatre undergraduate and graduate curricula, and many of my courses focus on composition through both textual and kinesthetic modes. As I continue learning, developing, and implementing antiracist and culturally responsive teaching practices, I connect these principles to how I generally teach script and movement analysis via a method that emphasizes the imbrication of form, content, and means of production. [1] I offer here a reflection on teaching an Asian American dramaturgies unit within my Advanced Dramaturgy course in order to practice critical self-reflection; model the composition of this unit and acknowledge its limits and affordances; and advocate for the use of theoretical contributions like Dorinne Kondo’s “reparative creativity” as pedagogical tools. I am chagrined to admit that though I taught this course previously in 2015, it took the anti-Asian violence in the US during the COVID–19 pandemic for me to incorporate and name Asian American dramaturgies in the course. I shared this with my students as evidence of my complicity with racism and its impacts on my pedagogy (was it the prevalence of the model minority myth that led to the absence of Asian Americanist critique in my 2015 syllabus?) and to model solidarity and justice as pedagogical tactics in need of constant energy and commitment. I share it here to practice accountability as a white educator. Kondo’s reparative creativity, a theory of performance’s worldmaking capacities toward liberation, is developed through her own artistic practice as both a dramaturg and playwright. In Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity , Kondo includes a variety of writings, from reflections on her experiences as a spectator and artist, to scholarly analyses of racial capitalism, to her full-length play Seamless . Thinking across these modes allows students to integrate script analysis with sociocultural structural analysis, to understand stakes as not only present in a script as a matter of dramatic structure but also vital to our decisions about season selection, marketing and promotion, educational programming, and audience outreach—to the myriad ways that performance functions as worldmaking. Kondo’s work has inspired this special issue of JADT , the summer 2022 Association for Theater in Higher Education (ATHE) conference theme, and my own research on racialization and embodiment. I wanted to give students this concept as one of their theoretical tools to think and make with as dramaturgs. Part of my responsibility as an educator, as I have learned from Felicia Rose Chavez’s teachings on antiracism in the creative classroom, is to clarify and name explicitly for my students that we are tracing power dynamics and their impacts on the historical development of dramatic theatre as we move amongst units. [2] While in this reflection I single out our unit on Asian American dramaturgies, I want to clarify that my approach to structuring the syllabus names each unit out of a desire to counter what Kondo characterizes as “power-evasive liberalism” and its “cousins,” “humanist multiculturalism” and color blindness. [3] My approach may, at first glance, appear as cultural tourism, where we spend a couple of weeks on each identity category and leave whiteness unmarked. [4] Instead, our class analyzed racialization as a project of all production, for example how Lisa Kron, Jeanine Tesori, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home engages with whiteness. This structure intends to counter a traditional drama pedagogy in higher education wherein, as Kondo writes, “the majority of plays are white but rarely marked as such.” [5] My goals for our collective thinking through this unit were threefold: to introduce more contemporary Asian American playwrights to myself and my students, to model some kinds of research that a dramaturg working on a production of a particular text might need to do, and to locate theatrical production in a vibrant practice of Asian Americanist critique. Our contemporary Asian American dramaturgies unit comprised four sessions addressing the following materials: Lauren Yee’s 2008 play Ching Chong Chinaman ; Kat Chow’s journalism on the history of “Ching Chong” as a racial slur; Faedra Chatard Carpenter’s chapter “Reading and (re)directing racial scripts” in our textbook, The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy ; selections from Cathy Park Hong’s 2020 memoir Minor Feelings ; Kondo’s play Seamless and her chapter “Racial Affect and Affective Violence”; and Donatella Galella’s essay “Feeling Yellow: Responding to Contemporary Yellowface in Musical Performance.” [6] As a way of establishing the experiential knowledge in the room, I asked students to reflect individually, by writing, on two sets of questions: What do you “know” about Asian Americans? How do you know it? What stereotypes have you encountered? How have you participated in stereotyping? [7] Can you name an Asian American playwright? Have you seen an Asian American playwright’s work produced? If so, who, where, and when? Have you encountered Asian American characters onstage? If so, who, where, and when? Students were given the choice regarding the first cluster of questions as to how much of their individual reflection they wanted to share in the group discussion. I also participated in the reflection and sharing. No students in this course self-identified as Asian American. Had this been otherwise, I would rethink this exercise – not eliminate it, but consider possible harms to Asian American folks in the room and reconsider the format given my own whiteness and its impacts. I did instruct students that if they wanted to share with the group, they needed to share through “I” statements. I emphasized that while in their personal reflections racial slurs may be part of their experience of Asian American stereotyping, we would not voice those slurs in our group discussion, a continuation of a class policy we had used all semester based on Koritha Mitchell’s teachings about discursive violence. [8] I found that the first set of questions produced predictable responses in the sense that racialized minoritarian identities are perpetuated through resilient stereotypes, here of Asian Americans as the “model minority,” as non-conforming to white US American ideals of masculinity and femininity, as linguistically “other,” and as pursuing academic achievement no matter the cost. Students had quite a bit to say in response to this first set of questions, which made the relatively short discussion of the second set of questions stand out. In our brief discussion of the second set of questions, two concerns for me as the instructor emerged: the first was a general conflation of Asian with Asian American. [9] Given the paucity of Asian American representation on US stages, I wasn’t exactly surprised that my students listed any Asian character they had encountered in a US production. The vast majority of characters on this list were defined through the violence of colonial encounter and compulsory heterosexuality, such as King Mongkut from The King and I and Kim from Miss Saigon . My second concern resulted from the dominance of male playwrights on the students’ lists: David Henry Hwang and Qui Nguyen were the two most frequently cited playwrights. One student mentioned Young Jean Lee, but otherwise female Asian American playwrights were not represented. Through this discussion, I realized that I had organized our Asian American dramaturgies unit without consciously attending to gender dynamics, so my selections provided a serendipitous, but nonetheless necessary, corrective that, in the future, I would be more intentional about framing. Rather than giving a sequential account of how these four sessions went, I want to emphasize some unexpected, rich, and welcome connections that emerged through the confluence of these readings. I firstly note that these authors, while all identifying as female, represent a range of Asian American identities (with the exception of Carpenter) that are taken up in their respective texts, including Chinese American, Japanese American, and Korean American communities. This turned out to be a particularly needed intervention into the generalization of “Asians” that students had experienced. The pairing of the two dramas—Yee’s Ching Chong Chinaman and Kondo’s Seamless —demonstrated the breadth of dramatic possibility that Asian American dramaturgies explore, and both plays read wonderfully on the page. Yee’s play is a laugh-out-loud comedy, filled with linguistic and physical humor, that moves at a rapid clip through the Wong family’s expert assimilation into US American tropes of “Chineseness.” Kondo’s play, a family drama, proceeds at a steady, more meditative pace, and takes up painful histories of Japanese American incarceration, as it stages the lead character’s confrontations with familial and national pasts. While Yee’s play is more realistic, both texts incorporate stylistic tactics of realism and non-realism and allowed for comparison with other texts throughout the syllabus. I felt it was important to begin this unit with a comedy in order to continue our discussions of the importance of affirming the right of minoritarian actors to have fun onstage, to appear and labor without the necessity of staging trauma. Both of these plays open with the staging of a family portrait (another connection to previous texts in our course like Fun Home ). In Yee’s comedy, the Wongs are attempting their annual Christmas card portrait as they deliver rapid-fire dialogue satirizing the US cultural hegemony of Christmas. The characters freely stereotype Chinese Americans, white Americans, and Christians in hyperbolic prose; the scene ends with a camera flash, directly preceded by patriarch Ed Wong’s line, a cue to racial alienation: “Everyone open their eyes nice and wide now.” [10] Kondo’s play likewise stages a family portrait that ends with a camera flash. Unlike Yee, Kondo opens with direct address to the audience, as the characters introduce themselves and provide a running commentary on each other’s characterizations. Characters occasionally share sentences, each speaking a fragment, in contrast to Yee’s realistic dialogue. The scene ends: KEN: Because you see. MASAKO: We’re a very. BEN: Happy. DIANE: Family. [11] Paying attention to the opening beat of a script is standard script analysis training for the dramaturg. Comparing Kondo and Yee countered the collapsing of distinct Asian American identities into a homogenous group as we traced how these playwrights depart in their dramatic structures following their shared set-up in order to articulate differential experiences of US racial projects. Another serendipitous cluster of inquiry emerged around critical race theory and affect theory as tools the dramaturg might bring to bear on structures of composition and representation. Our initial discussions about Asian American stereotypes on- and offstage were paired with discussion of Faedra Chatard Carpenter’s chapter “Reading and (re)directing racial scripts.” In this essay, Carpenter introduces the term “racial scripts” to indicate the interconnectedness of racial projects, i.e., plays ostensibly “about” race, with racial projects , i.e., the systemic distribution of resources according to racialized hierarchies of identity as defined by critical race theorists Michael Omi and Howard Winant. [12] Carpenter’s work affirms Kondo’s dramaturgical approach wherein “Instead of asking what race is , I ask what work it is doing, when, for whom?” [13] Carpenter’s account of dramaturging Kwame Kwei-Armah’s 2012 production of Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man at Center Stage in Baltimore compellingly models how the dramaturg navigates both kinds of racial projects. This reading became critically important to how our Asian American dramaturgies unit unfolded because Carpenter’s terminology of racial scripts allowed our class to reflect back on our initial discussions about stereotypes and characterization, to see how systemic critique is often pushed aside in favor of psychological critique (particularly in the US American theatre and its obsession with psychological realism), and to acknowledge how an incessant focus on individualized racial identity avoids recognizing the structural workings of racial projects. A second cluster of ideas around feeling was another example of an effective, though accidental, compositional choice for our unit. I included, respectively, Donatella Galella’s essay “Feeling Yellow” in order to tie back to our previous unit on musical theatre, Dorinne Kondo’s “Racial Affect and Affective Violence” because of its readability and complexity, and selections from Cathy Park Hong’s memoir Minor Feelings to engage with contemporary Asian Americanist critique written for a general audience. These readings shared an investment in feeling, or affect, as evidence of racial projects and formed a primer in affect theory for our class that was sited in the seats of the theatre. They also share a grounded, first-person address that is integrated with textual analysis and cultural critique. Our discussion of these texts emphasized another of the course’s through-lines: that artists are not geniuses whose creative production is somehow above or below the political and the social. We are responsible for our content and to our audiences. I’d like to offer a teaching tool related to sharing dense scholarly texts. For Galella’s essay, I asked students to prepare a 3-2-1 assignment: identify 3 main points, choose 2 significant quotations, and propose 1 question to the class based on the insights of the reading. [14] Shared with permission, here are a few of their insights: There is a lot of hidden emotional labor that we ask of people…amplified through the work of marginalized groups—white folk need to take on educating themselves, rather than asking those within the group to explain. Why has it taken this long for creators, designers, and writers to notice the problem in this industry? It seems like all of a sudden every regional theatre developed a “new plan of action” for equal opportunity and diversity on stage, which is fantastic, but it seems like they are only doing it because everyone else is. Commonly selected quotes included: “A theory of feeling yellow makes visible how white supremacy preserves pleasure for the privileged in order to preserve hierarchy” and “While quiet dissent may not move the majority, loud laughter moves the minoritized. Racialized representation can make the spectator of color painfully conscious of racism even in anticipation of a performance.” [15] When I reviewed the students’ 3-2-1s, I observed that moving from Carpenter to Galella, as we moved through the plays, helped students identify connecting personal responses to dramatic material to structural critiques of US culture as dramaturgical work. We turned this theoretical discussion toward the concrete realities of season selection at our institution. Season selection was happening concurrently with our course and discussing a hypothetical season proposal that included both Kondo’s and Yee’s plays made space for students to be self-reflective, in terms of considering their roles and investments in our department, and also to engage in institutional critique, particularly of the commonplace, incorrect, and violent excuse of not selecting particular texts because “we don’t have the actors for that.” [16] Students noted the reappearance of this logic in our discussions, as we had previously analyzed texts that called for primarily Black and African diasporic casts and primarily Indigenous casts, in relation to the demands placed on minoritarian playwrights if they wish to see their plays regularly produced. Rather than lumping together racialized “others” through our course units, we used our tools from this unit’s authors, particularly those of systemic critique, to understand these plays as being in a relation of solidarity within racial projects that structure performance-making in North America. In this way Drew Hayden Taylor’s Berlin Blues and Yee’s Ching Chong Chinamen are similar not because they are comedies centered on people belonging to particular minoritarian identities written by playwrights belonging to these communities (and thus checking a set of diversity boxes) but because they are composed, produced, and received in a white supremacist theatrical environment that seeks to constrain their meanings. As I prepared this reflection for publication in early 2022, the Public Theater in New York produced Out of Time , a monologue project “written by five Asian American playwrights for Asian American actors over age 60.” [17] Days later, an Asian American performer who was headed to the Public to perform as part of a Lion Dance program before the first preview of Lloyd Suh’s drama The Chinese Lady was assaulted in a public act of anti-Asian violence. [18] This assault was a material consequence of anti-Asian racism experienced simultaneously with increased visibility for Asian American theatrical production within white cultural hegemony. This concurrence, as both a contemporary outcome of white supremacy and as related to long histories of violence against racialized “others” in the US, reflects the urgent stakes of the classic dramaturgical question “why this play now?” Asking this question of each play on our syllabus and in our season points to the necessity of centering minoritarian artistic production as an ethical pedagogical and dramaturgical practice. How does this play serve our students, our audience, and our worldmaking, be they harms or reparations? Kondo’s reparative creativity, as well as its intersection with other theoretical tools like critical race theory and affect theory, gives students language with which to answer these questions. I hope that readers who do not already engage with Asian Americanist dramaturgies will incorporate these readings into not only their own courses (and they certainly resonate beyond the dramaturgy classroom) but also the systems we teach with and inside of, like auditions, admissions, casting, season selection, internship placement, hiring, and guest artist residencies, among others. References [1] This tripartite focus (form, content, means of production) is inspired by the “grid of politicality” theorized by Ana Vujanovi´c, after Randy Martin, as the multidimensional space where we might register the politics of performance. For this theorization, see Vujanovi´c, “Notes on the Politicality of Contemporary Dance,” in Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity: Current Perspectives on Politics and Communities in the Arts, Vol. 1 , ed. Stefan Hölscher and Gerald Siegmund (Zurich: Diaphenes, 2013), 181-191. [2] In her book The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), Chavez writes, “It’s our responsibility as workshop leaders to verbalize our anti-racist agenda for them [students], in clear, unapologetic language, language that opens doors instead of closes them” (24). [3] Dorinne Kondo, Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 131. [4] I am grateful to the anonymous peer reviewer who encouraged me to better clarify the structure of the course and the possible reading of cultural tourism. [5] Kondo, Worldmaking , 169. [6] Faedra Chatard Carpenter, “Reading and (Re)directing Racial Scripts On and Beyond the Stage” in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy , ed. Magda Romanska (London: Routledge, 2015), 145-150; Kat Chow, “How ‘Ching Chong’ Became the Go-To Slur for Mocking East Asians,” Code Switch , New York Public Radio, NPR, New York, NY: WNYC, 14 July 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/07/14/330769890/how-ching-chong-became-the-go-to-slur-for-mocking-east-asians (accessed 18 August 2021); Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings (New York: One World, 2020); Donatella Galella, “Feeling Yellow: Responding to Contemporary Yellowface in Musical Performance,” The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 32, no. 2 (2018): 67-77; Dorinne Kondo, Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity ; Lauren Yee, Ching Chong Chinaman (New York: Samuel French Acting Edition, 2011). [7] The emphasis on stereotyping in this set of questions relates to a broader throughline in the course about how identity-based stereotyping impacts dramaturgy as both composition and representation, and builds on prior discussion in the course about gender stereotypes in musical theatre and colonial stereotypes about Indigenous peoples in a previous unit on Indigenous dramaturgies and comedy. [8] Mitchell’s ideas and policies about discursive violence in the classroom are also available as a podcast at http://www.korithamitchell.com/teaching-and-the-n-word/. [9] I thank Donatella Galella for drawing my attention to Lisa Lowe’s formulation of “forever foreigners” to characterize this common racist experience ( Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996]). [10] Ching Chong Chinaman , 8. [11] Worldmaking , 242. [12] Carpenter, “Reading and (Re)directing,” 145-146. [13] Kondo, 169. [14] This tactic revises a popular K-12 teaching strategy wherein at the end of a class, students complete an exit ticket and identify 3 things they learned, select 2 things they want to learn more about, and formulate 1 question. [15] Galella, “Feeling Yellow,” 71, 73. [16] In future iterations of this course, I plan to include additional reading around the casting conversation, including the work of Brian Eugenio Herrera in his essay “‘But Do We Have the Actors for That?’: Some Principles of Practice for Staging Latinx Plays in a University Theatre Context,” Theatre Topics 27, no. 1 (2017): 23-35. [17] Matt Stevens, “Shared Stories in Asian American Voices,” New York Times , 20 February 2022, AR9. [18] Leah Putnam, “Asian American Artist Attacked During Commute to Perform at The Public,” Playbill , 25 February 2022, https://www.playbill.com/article/asian-american-artist-attacked-during-commute-to-perform-at-the-public. Readers can find ways to take action against anti-Asian violence at www.StopAAPIHate.org. Footnotes About The Author(s) Ariel Nereson is Assistant Professor of Dance Studies and Director of Graduate Dance at the University at Buffalo – SUNY. She is the author of Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past (University of Michigan Press, 2022). A recent Dance Research Fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, she researches racialization, embodiment, and movement-based performance. She is also a choreographer and dramaturg. I thank Donatella Galella and the anonymous peer reviewers for their generous challenges and affirmations provided in their feedback. I thank my students for being in conversation with me and for understanding our classroom as a space of worldmaking. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Benjamin Gillespie 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 Scene Partners Benjamin Gillespie By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF Eric Berryman, Kristen Sieh, Carmen M. Herlihy, and Dianne Wiest in Scene Partners. Photo: Carol Rosegg. Courtesy Vineyard Theatre Scene Partners By John J. Caswell, Jr. Directed by Rachel Chavkin Vineyard Theatre New York, NY November 8, 2023 Reviewed by Benjamin Gillespie Scene Partners , written by playwright John J. Caswell, Jr. (author of the critically acclaimed play Wet Brain ), is a non-linear exploration of memory and trauma that riffs on both the hopes and fears of its aging protagonist, Meryl Kowalski. Developed during the COVID-19 pandemic (while Caswell was in residence at the Vineyard Theatre), and directed by Rachel Chavkin, the play centers on the journey of 75-year-old Meryl, who attempts to become a Hollywood movie star as a septuagenarian—an unlikely feat considering the movie industry’s notoriously ageist reputation, especially toward older actresses. Over the course of the play, Meryl travels from Milwaukee to Los Angeles, finds an agent, and ends up in the starring role of a movie about her own life. Embodied by a (then) 75-year-old Dianne Wiest, actress and character are the same age, significant for a play that, in many ways, is about the resilience of aging. Wiest brought a wisdom and strength to the role that helped to center a purposefully fragmented, though often perplexing, production which celebrated the possibility of an artistic third act for its determined heroine. Meryl’s backstory is told piecemeal to set up the play’s present tense in 1985. Meryl was born around 1910 in Los Angeles. At a young age, her parents separated, and she lived with her insensitive mother who relocated them to Wisconsin, where her mother then remarried. As we come to find out, Meryl’s stepfather repeatedly raped her as a child, but neither her mother nor stepsister, Charlize (played as an adult by Johanna Day), acknowledged this pattern of sexual abuse. Around 1930, Meryl married another abuser named Stanley Kowalski (“I know what you’re thinking” Meryl says. “I have no idea who’s responsible for feeding the details of my life to Mr. Williams for his little play! But my Stanley, he was so much worse, in every possible way”). Her ungrateful daughter, Flora (played by Kristen Sieh), is a drug addict dependent on her mother’s support to survive. The play begins just after the death of her husband (“that motherfucker!” she exclaims), at which point Meryl has had enough and decides to head west to become a Hollywood film star. But this is only the backstory, with the action of the play taking place in the present tense of 1985, but also (at least partially) in Meryl’s imagination. Dianne Wiest in Scene Partners . Photo: Carol Rosegg. Courtesy Vineyard Theatre. The play presents the often painful, albeit revelatory, journey of a woman trying to process a lifetime of hardship in order to discover herself for the first time after spending three quarters of her life in abusive relationships. The fragmented reality of her mind (and consequently, the play) often leaves audiences with more questions than answers. But in a way, this is the point. The poetic, dream-like world of Scene Partners is contrasted by the harsh realism of Meryl’s life; anchored by the strength and tenacity of its aging central character, played expertly be Wiest, Meryl is akin to the great female roles of Tennessee Williams (who, as mentioned above, is directly evoked in the play several times). Deciding whether what’s happening in front of us is “real” or not misses the point: the focus here is rather for audiences to see Meryl telling her own story in the way that she (finally) wants and gets to tell it. But memory is a funny thing, and Meryl’s is as fragmented as it comes, not only blocking out experiences of trauma but also facing an unnamed neurological disorder that suggests she is losing cerebral control. “Is this like a memory play?” asks one of her acting classmates who Meryl recruits to act in her life story. “Do you want realism or should it be more like whoa! ?” “All of the above” answers her director/acting teacher. “It’s a work in progress” Meryl replies. Work in progress is an apt description for the play and production as it often loses its footing in between worlds, sometimes taking on the air of a rehearsal. But this does not detract too much from the beauty of Wiest’s performance or the stylish and dynamic staging by Chavkin, supported by a superb design team. The fragmentation of the play was emphasized through the innovative scenic and video designs by Riccardo Hernández and David Bengali, respectively, who utilized shifting screens and projections to illustrate the fluidity of Meryl’s memories. The use of large, moving screens not only bifurcated scenes but also served as a visual metaphor for Meryl’s fragmented, layered remembrances. However, while visually striking, this design choice occasionally created navigational challenges for the actors: on the night I saw the performance, one moving screen ran into Wiest mid-scene, though the seasoned stage actress hardly flinched and kept going without missing a beat. Eric Berryman, Kristen Sieh, Carmen M. Herlihy , and Dianne Wiest in Scene Partners . Photo: Carol Rosegg. Courtesy Vineyard Theatre. Scene Partners seems to be a memory play, but not a traditional one: the world is split between “real” (or perhaps more appropriately live ) performance sequences along with pre-filmed screen performances. Sections of the play are created with projected films on the large screens that shift in and out of frame to represent different environments on Meryl’s journey. In fact, the production opened with an enormous projection of Wiest’s face on screen introducing herself, reassuring audiences, “This is exactly how it happened!” But we are never sure if the play is supposed to be perceived as being composed in the present tense, or if this is a more traditional memory play. “My life starts now!” she says. And perhaps it is through Meryl’s newfound artistic license that we should understand it all. The facial projection of Meryl shifts to black as words populated the screen with character names, like a script being written in real time, which is then read in voiceover as changes and corrections happened “live” in front of us. A sudden crash brings the lights up on Weist as Meryl descending from the heavens in a white chair before getting stuck in what seems like a chairlift (from where, no one knows) so that Wiest’s body could only be seen from the waist down. Stuck halfway between a dream and reality, in hindsight, this signaled where we would remain for the entire play. We later find out this process of getting stuck is a recurring dream Meryl has that she is performing for the film, but perhaps also dreaming. Half the fun of Scene Partners is putting together who is really there and who is only imagined by Meryl. In fact, the generic title of the play is a reference to metatheatrical roleplay, as we never fully understand when characters are just roles inside Meryl’s head or if they are actually there. The audience’s collective logic is often challenged when characters appear and disappear at pivotal moments in the production—is that really her sister in the interview scene or a figment of Meryl’s imagination?—not dissimilar to Florian Zeller’s award-winning play The Father . One thing is sure: Meryl is hellbent on being a great actress, but the trauma of sexual and physical abuse from the men in her past haunts her throughout the play. Again, Scene Partners is highly metatheatrical, beginning with Meryl’s first entrance, reminiscent of Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days (a role Wiest played at Theatre for a New Audience in 2017). This initial scene sets the tone for a production that constantly questions the boundaries between reality and fiction. The play-within-a-play and film-within-a-play structure allows for a complex narrative that keeps the audience questioning what is real and what is imagined throughout. Indeed, Caswell’s directive in the script that “people and things should seem to suddenly materialize and vanish” adds to this sense of disorientation and surrealism. Determined to tell her story on her own terms, Meryl faces ageism and skepticism on her journey to Hollywood from those around her. She is told by all (including her daughter and would-be agent) that she will only play old women in stereotypical roles. “I have been acting all my life. It’s time to get paid for it!” she replies. “There’s a market for durability. I’ll play a queen! Those roles are mine!” After receiving a suggestion to improve on her acting from her agent, Meryl enrolls in acting classes where her teacher “discovers” her and decides to help her develop a series of monologues that will be the basis for her life story in a series of films, each representing a different decade in her life. “I’m a maximalist at heart!” she says, which could also be a mantra for the expressionistic approach to Caswell’s writing, which created mixed reactions from viewers. Scene Partners is a compelling exploration of a woman’s struggle to reclaim her own narrative and identity against the backdrop of Hollywood’s unforgiving landscape, and society more broadly. A rich and multi-layered theatrical experience, the play is a significant contribution to contemporary theatre focusing on age and aging outside of the typical narratives of decline we see so often in mainstream culture. While the production was, at times, a little wayward, Wiest’s portrayal of Meryl was both poignant and powerful, capturing the character’s complexity and depth, her humor and kindness, but also her confusion and sadness. Her interactions with other characters, including her abusive deceased husband Stanley (who keeps returning in Meryl’s nightmares) and her over-the-top acting teacher-cum-director, highlight the various challenges she faces with unwavering resolve. Performance Review: Scene Partners © 2024 by Benjamin Gillespie is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International References Footnotes About The Author(s) Benjamin Gillespie (PhD) is Doctoral Lecturer in Communication, Gender Studies, and Theatre at Baruch College, City University of New York. His essays and reviews have been published in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, Performance Research, Canadian Theatre Review , and a wide range of scholarly anthologies. He is currently editing two volumes: Split Britches: Fifty Years On and Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging , both to be published by the University of Michigan Press. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Mia Levenson and Heather S. Nathans Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 1 Visit Journal Homepage The Mysterious Murder of Mrs. Shakespeare: Transgressive Performance in Nineteenth-Century New York Mia Levenson and Heather S. Nathans By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF It began, as it so often does, with a passing remark. Journalist Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underground , which offers a colorful and anecdote-driven account of nineteenth-century urban life, makes a fleeting reference to the gruesome 1891 Jack the Ripper style killing of a woman known to her compatriots as “Shakespeare.” According to popular legend, she had been famous in the city’s seamiest neighborhoods for her drunken recitations of the major female roles from Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Merchant of Venice . [1] Who was this woman who performed Shakespeare’s most notable female roles of Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, and Portia on the margins of American society—presumably for an audience as intoxicated and destitute as herself? Her moniker of “Shakespeare”—as well as her supposed murderer, the notorious Jack the Ripper—have helped to hold her place in the headlines and in history, [2] when tens of thousands of other impoverished women in New York have vanished from the record books—if, indeed, their names were ever known to any beyond their immediate circles. Her story invites historians to consider how apparently isolated incidents become history, and the ways in which archives can perform for researchers. In drunkenly declaiming passages from the Bard, Mrs. Shakespeare, also known as Carrie Brown, did no more than Edmund Kean, Junius Brutus Booth, and other male performers before her. Her association with Shakespeare’s work somehow tinged her demise with an additional touch of pathos. Here was a woman who supposedly mastered the poetry of the Bard, yet who, according to contemporary accounts, had fallen into a life of petty crime and debauchery. The manner of her murder, which echoed the sensational killings in London’s Whitechapel district only three years before, also became inextricably intertwined with her putative link to the sex workers and other women targeted by Jack the Ripper. Many US newspapers mentioned the “low” women or “drunkards” questioned in connection with her death, and the police investigation of her murder revealed anew the scabrous underbelly of New York’s most poverty-stricken areas. According to one newspaper, “the habitués of Water Street (the neighborhood of the murder) turned out in force [at the inquest].” [3] Amongst the many rumors circulating around the identity of her killer, ultimately a penniless Algerian immigrant, Ameer Ben Ali, stood accused of her murder. Would-be observers thronged the trial (supposedly hundreds of men and only five women) whom the court turned away from the “strangest criminal trial America has yet produced.” [4] But the performances around Mrs. extended beyond her penchant for the Bard. Her killing inspired its own series of performances. Only days after the murder, wax stagings depicting the grisly scene appeared in multiple city dime museums. Authors churned out pulp fiction, comic book style stories of that fateful night. The trial for her murder, meticulously recorded in newspapers around the country, revived “Shakespeare” for another role. Since police never caught the original London Ripper, the public craved a reason for his senseless crimes. Thus, crowds greeted the American trial with eager expectation, imagining it as an opportunity to mete out justice, bring calm to the chaos created by Mrs. Shakespeare’s murder, and to resolve the troubling questions about urban poverty exposed by her killing. But the trial soon degenerated into a racist spectacle when police charged Ben Ali with her murder and newspapers across the country vilified him as a Moor and an “Arab,” heaping religious and ethnic slurs on his head. Descriptions of Ben Ali’s ethnic and racial otherness echoed the speculation in London that their Ripper was a foreign Jew. [5] The spectacle of “Shakespeare’s” murder continues today, through internet forums run and inhabited by “Ripperologists,” amateur true crime investigators who scrutinize the details of her murder for evidence that Jack the Ripper killed her, or one of the many suspects responsible for grotesque crimes during the Ripper’s heyday. Across space and time, “Shakespeare” finds a theatrical afterlife as her body was produced, performed, and transformed for its audience. [6] This essay explores the spectacular print, stage, and public performances around Mrs. Shakespeare’s murder. Her case offers opportunities to unravel a complex tangle of questions: How did the identities of working woman, actress, and alcoholic play out alongside familiar nineteenth-century notions about gender roles and middle-class respectability? How did race, racial science, and racism intersect with the ways in which the trial unspooled for public consumption, so that it became a kind of parodied Othello with a Moorish assailant attacking this unlikely Desdemona? How does her connection with the mythological Jack the Ripper continue to produce new and eager spectators in the digital age? Theatrically speaking, the rhetoric around Mrs. Shakespeare’s murder sits at the tipping point in a genre shift from melodrama towards realism. Newspapers told her story using the familiar sentimental tropes of melodrama, particularly with its emphasis on transgression, redemption, and retribution. Melodrama framed addiction and poverty as evidence of moral weakness, while offering temperance, prosperity, and respectability as rewards for aspiring to white middle class values. [7] The tableaux—as part of the milieu of nineteenth-century family friendly entertainment—continued this narrative. In the hands of museum managers, the scene of her grotesque murder became representative of the seedy underbelly of New York City, a place for onlookers to gaze in wonder and repulsion. As the murder trial reshaped the theatrical performance, Shakespeare’s body shifted from a focus of pity to a site of empirical analysis. The influence of nineteenth-century forensic scientists Alphonse Bertillon and Cesare Lombroso legitimated criminology as a science, one that focused on the born criminal and bolstered racist theories about criminal appearance and behavior. That changing discourse extricated her murder from a romanticized narrative and resituated it in late nineteenth-century (racial) science. If mid-century melodramas had offered faith and compliance as “cures” for social ills, the emerging scientific language of realism and naturalism turned audiences’ attention towards new problems and new potential “solutions,” albeit based in racist and nativist assumptions of criminality that would imprison Ameer Ben Ali for eleven years before he was pardoned, released, and allowed to return to Algiers. [8] More than a century after her murder, modern day investigators figuratively exhumed “Shakespeare’s” body—sutured to the cultural mythology of Jack the Ripper—into the “annals of true crime” and “the imagination of modern horror.” [9] On internet forums such as “Jack the Ripper Forums”(jtrforums.com) [10] and “Case Book: Jack the Ripper” (casebook.org), self-identified Ripperologists share primary evidence material, revel in her autopsy, and speculate as to the murderer’s true identity, extending and expanding the spectacle of Carrie Brown’s brutal homicide. In her exploration of the true crime media genre, Jean Murley describes the emergence of modern true crime in the mid-twentieth century as “a new way of narrating and understanding murder—one more sensitive to context, more psychologically sophisticated, more willing to make conjectures about the unknown thoughts and motivations of killers.” [11] Internet communities formed around Jack the Ripper have democratized the discourse around “Shakespeare.” Any forum member can create threads, post evidence, share their research (both the highs and lows) and theorize about her murder while interacting with and sustaining the Ripperologist community. Her association with the cultural icon has enabled the spectacle of her murder to move into the twenty-first century—as of 20 December 2021, the most recent post on jtrforums.com about Carrie Brown had been made just a day earlier. In writing this essay, we acknowledge that we are contributing to the continued speculation and spectacle around “Shakespeare” and her gruesome demise. Yet, the speculation and spectacle become proof of how her theatrical afterlife moves through different mediums and genres (now into theatre history and performance studies). By examining the ways in which her performances have reverberated in popular culture, we explore how historical moments are shaped and reformed through theatrical interpretations. We use the name “Shakespeare” to invoke a character, a cultivated stage presence for the lower millions of the city, whether created by herself or bestowed upon her by others. We use the name “Carrie Brown,” the name identified in the press, to indicate the person, whose murder and subsequent undoubtedly impact her living descendants to this day. “Death lies on her like an untimely frost” Asbury’s fleeting mention of “Shakespeare’s” murder in Gangs of New York describes a horrific slaying that took place sometime on the anniversary of William Shakespeare’s own death. Reconstructing the circumstances around “Shakespeare’s” murder proves no easy task. Its sensationalism means that details vary among different accounts. What is known is that on 25 April 1891, police announced the murder of a woman the night before at the East River Hotel in the city’s Fourth Ward. [12] Newspapers from New York to Omaha reported that the victim had been strangled, stabbed, and then disemboweled. [13] Identical crosses were carved into the flesh of her back and on the wall. [14] She was naked except for an apron and another unnamed article of clothing that were both wrapped around her head so tightly the coroner had to cut them off. [15] Some of the garments found in the room were recognized as those worn by prisoners at Blackwell’s Island, suggesting that she had recently been released from one of her many terms of imprisonment for drunkenness, vagrancy, and other petty crimes. [16] Who launched the rumor that linked her murder with Jack the Ripper remains unknown, but early reports from the New York Herald and Evening World connected the crime to the London killer based on the body’s mutilated state and the marks on the wall. [17] Fig 1. John Jacob Riis, c. 1895. “A Fourth Ward Colony,” image owned by the Museum of the City of New York ( https://collections.mcny.org/ ). The murder immediately caused a sensation. The coroner’s delay in coming to the hotel allowed “curious crowds” to gather outside in hopes of getting a glimpse of the horrid scene. When the coroner finally arrived, enough people had assembled that the police had to physically push them back as the coroner brought down Carrie Brown’s body in a pine coffin and made his way to the morgue for examination. [18] There, the autopsy became its own spectacle. Conducted by Deputy Coroner Dr. William T. Jenkins, its audience included a group of seven doctors from Bellevue Hospital as well as a reporter from The Evening World . [19] The examiners posited strangulation as the cause of death, with the mutilation following. The details are horrifying. The body showed multiple cuts in addition to the cross-like etching on her back and parts of the intestines were missing. In a shockingly clinical tone, the newspaper noted that “the left ovary . . . was completely torn away.” The Evening World also felt compelled to remark that “there was no evidences [ sic ] of wounds or injuries on the breast.” [20] As Karen Halttunen notes, this kind of “sexual autopsy” circulated in the public sphere had become more and more pervasive since the mid-1830s (particularly after the notorious 1836 murder of New York prostitute Helen Jewett and escalating after the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888). [21] The public’s appetite for intimate and gory details grew as well. Halttunen chronicles the perceived escalation in “sexual narratives of murder . . . popular tales . . . extensively explored issues of sexual nature, development, and impulse, and attributed significant causal power to sexuality .” [22] Yet, these highly sexualized, clinical, and often grotesque accounts of female murder victims (which often included descriptions of sexual assault, sexual promiscuity, or failed abortions) were frequently juxtaposed with familiar tropes of fallen women whose romantic disappointments, innocence, or temporary lapses in judgement had led them into sin and thus to a violent end. For example, George Ellington’s 1869 study The Women of New York: Or, The Underworld of the Great City offers a chapter entitled “Women of Pleasure” that describes how a “nice girl” might have found herself stranded as a sex worker in an urban slum: Heartsick and utterly miserable, she left her home and entered on a life of sin in the metropolis. At first she was happy. She made plenty of money and gratified a long-cherished ambition to dress well. The gay society she was in pleased her. . . . But soon the taste for all these things began to fail. . . . And not knowing what this want was, she plunged wildly into dissipation. . . . And then she went down rapidly. All self-respect was lost. She was found drunk on the street, and taken to the station-house, and sent to the island. [23] Two decades later, these same tales about women’s descent into the dark side of city life persisted. The New York Herald made a similar claim about Mrs. Shakespeare herself, saying that after her husband died she, came to New York to dissipate [her money]. . . . She attracted a great deal of attention at once from the dissolute people she chose to associate with because of her superior intelligence. She was fairly good-looking, exceedingly vivacious, and spent her money with a free hand as long as it lasted. . . . When the woman’s money was spent, she went headlong into the gutter, and for many years she had revolved around the boozing dives, the Island [prison] and public institutions [workhouses]. [24] The paper’s account sets up the now-familiar tale of the innocent woman, led astray by her foolish choice to leave the safe shelter of a peaceful domestic setting for the unbridled license of the city and its anonymous encounters with strangers. Fig 2. An article on the slums of New York published weeks before Carrie Brown’s murder: “New York’s Inferno Explored by the Booths. Commissioner Ballington Booth and Mrs. Booth, of the Salvation,” New York Herald (New York, New York), no. 74, 15 March 1891. Relatively little seemed known of Mrs. Shakespeare at the time of her death. Rumors swirled through newspapers that she claimed at various points to have been an actress in Britain and the wife (or mistress) of a Broadway businessman. According to one witness, “Shakespeare” boasted that she received an allowance of thirty dollars a month from a wealthy Broadway man who had threatened to “have her mouth stopped” because she had become a liability. Another witness claimed that “Shakespeare” had been living with an Italian at the lodging house of “One-eyed Tony” and had had an argument with this man shortly before her death. [25] Soon after her murder, other narratives began to come out, claiming that she was Carrie Brown (possibly born in Liverpool as Caroline Montgomery) and that she had been a sea captain’s wife in Salem, Massachusetts. [26] Stories emerged about her marriage to Captain Charles Brown (who had abandoned her or whom she had deserted, depending on the storyteller). Some tales alleged that Brown had died and left her a wealthy woman, but that she had squandered her fortune. Others said she had been in service but dismissed for “riotous living.” By the time of her murder, she had supposedly been arrested at least twenty-eight times for drunkenness. [27] The coroner’s report supposedly confirmed her intemperate habit: the state of her kidneys and liver showed that she likely suffered from alcoholism. According to an officer who had detained her numerous times, she once told him, “I could have been one of the finest ladies in the world instead of what I am, and I suppose I’ll be a tramp until I die.” [28] Modern day amateur genealogical investigations of Brown’s life suggest that she was indeed born in Liverpool around 1834 as Ellen Caroline Montgomery. Census data puts her in the US by 1860, suggesting that if she had been an actress in England, she had immigrated to America comparatively early in her career, since she appears established in New England by age twenty-six. [29] To date, we have been unable to locate evidence of her work onstage in the US or England under variations of her maiden or married name. One contemporary account referred to her as a “failed” actress, so she may have either spread the story of her time in the theatre herself or made an abortive attempt at a career (and possibly under a different name). There is some circumstantial evidence that she knew a brief period of domestic stability in Salem, MA, married to one Captain Charles Brown. She had at least two children: Mary Ella Brown (born when Carrie was roughly twenty years old) and Charles E. Brown (born when Carrie was about twenty-three). The only widely-known photograph (supposedly) taken of her in life shows a modest-looking woman, apparently dressed in mourning—or at least in a very dark dress—with her hair covered by a white cap and wearing a white apron. She is posed against an ivy-covered balustrade with a rustic scene painted in the background. A sketch of her in profile appeared in W. B. Lawson’s sensational dime novel Jack the Ripper in New York in 1891. The face in the profile bears some resemblance to the photograph and is noteworthy for its demure appearance. [30] Despite these respectable, well-groomed images, it appears that by the time of her murder (at around age fifty-seven) she lived as a sex worker in New York City, far away from either her home in England or her family in Massachusetts. [31] Fig 3. Image reported to be of Carrie Brown (also known as Ellen Caroline Montgomery) that is widely circulated on Ripperology websites. It can also be found on FindaGrave.com , which sources some biographical information from casebook.org and jtrforums.com . Members continue to leave virtual “flowers” for her at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/89386829/carrie-brown . “When beggars die, there are no comets seen” The grisly circumstances of her death led many at the time (and since) to speculate that the notorious Jack the Ripper, whose 1888 crime spree in London’s Whitechapel district had left a series of unsolved murders and terror behind, had come to New York. [32] Officials in charge of the case fueled these rumors. Before Brown’s murder, New York City police Inspector Thomas Byrnes had taunted his London counterparts with their inability to solve the Ripper case. Based on the circumstances surrounding her death, some New Yorkers imagined that the Ripper had taken Byrnes’s “dare” and crossed the Atlantic to continue his crime spree in America. Investigators heightened public curiosity by refusing to deny the possibility that she might have been murdered by the Ripper. When asked if he believed that “Jack the Ripper” had killed “Shakespeare,” the lead coroner on the case responded, “I believe this case is the same as those of London. . . . I do not see any reason to suppose that the crime may not have been committed by the fiend of London.” [33] After Ben Ali’s conviction, Byrnes reveled in his success, even claiming that he had “documentary evidence” that Ben Ali lived in London during the time of the Ripper murders: “I do not say that he is the London Ripper, but this has a tendency to indicate that he may be.” [34] Indeed, within one week of her untimely death the association between “Shakespeare” and Jack the Ripper would be cemented in the public imagination. On 29 April 1891, Doris’s Eighth Avenue Museum publicized an exhibit featuring, “a wax group representing the murder of Carrie Brown by Jack, the Ripper.” [35] An advertisement announced that the tableaux would present “The Tragedy Just as It Occurred” with the “Lifelike figure of Carrie Brown, known as Shakespeare, also Frenchy the supposed murderer, in the act,” and “the very room furniture.” [36] As the New York Herald reported, “The enterprise shown by Manager Doris is, perhaps praiseworthy, but the subject appeals rather to the morbid or perverted taste, and it is doubtful if the expense incurred in the affair will be offset by corresponding box office returns.” [37] Despite the Herald’s skepticism, the exhibit ran for months, drawing horrified spectators to this terrifying effigy of Mrs. Shakespeare’s final performance. Mark Sandberg has described these kinds of wax effigies as modeling cautionary tales for women through their “pedagogical bodies,” and indeed, tableaux of wax figures depicting the dire fates that awaited those who strayed from paths of rectitude were popular among both middle-class and working-class theatre managers. [38] Doris’s Museum featured a veritable buffet of these pedagogical bodies alongside Mrs. Shakespeare’s. A 13 September 1891 advertisement promises spectators tableaux of the “History of Crime,” including scenes of robbery and murder and “The Drunkard’s home,” described as a “scene of dirt and squalor.” In “The Drunkard’s Home,” the advertisement notes that, “Father, mother, and children are drunk,” and the paper guarantees that, “One look at this scene is worth more to the youth of this city than a score of temperance lectures.” [39] Spectators might stroll from their viewing of the “History of Crime” and “The Drunkard’s Home” past one labeled “Jack the Ripper and his victim, Old Shakespeare.” [40] Fig 4. The Evening World (New York), 29 April 1891, BASEBALL EXTRA, 3. We want to acknowledge that we first found this image digging through jtrforums.com . Doris’s Museum also helped spectators to draw contrasts between the “normal” and what lay beyond. In addition to his standard fare of enfreaked bodies (such as Maury the human pin cushion and Congo, the leopard man), Doris’s Museum featured fat shows and beauty contests – thus opening a forum for audiences to gauge appropriate vs. freakish female appearances. His space also became home to actress Fanny Herring, known as the Sarah Bernhardt of the Bowery. Herring had begun by performing with the likes of Edwin Booth and had been known for her breeches roles but ended her career as one of Doris’s resident actors. [41] In fact, this Bernhardt of the Bowery shared a stage with the Shakespeare of the Bowery—Herring appeared in shows at Doris’s Museum while the Mrs. Shakespeare murder effigies were still on display. [42] Andrea Dennett’s study of American dime museums characterizes John B. Doris’s downtown locale as a particularly lively specimen of the genre. By the end of the nineteenth-century, the Fourth Ward where Shakespeare/Brown enjoyed her final “performance” had become one of the most noisome and crime-ridden parts of the city. Observers described it as “the only rival of the Sixth (5 Points) in its triple distinction of filth, poverty, and vice.” And another observer noted, “Generally speaking, Water Street was a thoroughfare of vice and iniquity to challenge the imagination of the most graphic Victorian preacher.” [43] It proved the site of multiple murders, including those chronicled in Gangs of New York , and the showdowns between thugs with vivid nicknames such as Patsy the Butcher and Slobbery Jim. [44] As Dennett notes, the dense concentration of saloons and brothels in New York’s lower wards made such areas ripe for the kinds of spectacles Doris had on offer. [45] Yet by the late nineteenth century these crime and disease-ridden streets had also become a perverse kind of attraction for elite white spectators. The craze for “slumming” began in England, but had recently caught on in New York, and one city paper described it as a “fashionable form of dissipation,” through which wealthy citizens could experience the novelty of poverty, drug abuse, and alcoholism for an evening, before returning to the safety of their everyday lives. Fig 5. Cover of W. B. Lawson’s “Jack the Ripper in New York; Or, Piping a Terrible Mystery.” Image available through “Casebook,” a site dedicated to collecting “Ripperology.” View the dime novel in its entirety at “Jack the Ripper in New York; Or, Piping a Terrible Mystery,” Casebook: Jack the Ripper, https://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.dime1.html (accessed 22 October 2021). This same spectacle of poverty appears in Lawson’s 1891 novel about Carrie Brown’s murder. Jack the Ripper in New York uses the narrator as a vehicle to bring the reader into the seedy slums of the Fourth Ward. In lurid detail, the story follows a detective who is looking for “Shakespeare” when she is killed and then proceeds to investigate her murder. While the white upper class could visit the Fourth Ward as tourists, Lawson brought the slums into the home, illustrating the streets Carrie Brown frequented as places where “crime and sin flaunt their ugly heads,” and “debauchery runs riot,” describing it as a “hell-hole that will ever remain a black spot on a fair city.” Brown herself is described as merely “one of the great class of unfortunates to be met with in this Whitechapel of Gotham.” [46] Although the novel concocts and hypothesizes a number of suspects drawn from press reports and the author’s imagination, the story leads the audience to familiar conclusions: invoking the Ripper murders through the comparison to Whitechapel and implying that the perpetrator is a dubious, dark-skinned foreigner. [47] “Blood Will Tell” Ameer Ben Ali was not considered a murder suspect at the time of his arrest on Friday 24 April 1891, the night following the killing. According to the police, Ben Ali was the cousin of the man last seen with Carrie Brown as she entered the East River Hotel on that fateful night, and it was that man whom the police considered the primary suspect for her murder. [48] According to witnesses, the unknown man (who signed his name “C. Knick”) had a “small light brown mustache and light brown hair. [49] By contrast, Ben Ali—also known under the aliases George Frank, George François, and George Francis, but familiarly called “Frenchy”—was “a dark complexioned man with a black mustache and black hair.” [50] Unable to locate “C. Knick” a week into the murder investigation, the police changed their story. On 1 May, the Herald reported that police believed that Ben Ali, who had remained in police custody, was actually the man they had been looking for all along. While Carrie Brown had entered the hotel with a blond, fair-skinned man, Ben Ali also had a room at the hotel that night, across the hall from Brown’s. Although not noted in the original report, detectives claimed they had found blood in Ben Ali’s room and on his person, which they sampled and sent to microscopists for analysis. [51] Ben Ali found himself in a dangerous position. He had difficulty speaking English and his cousin, an early suspect, had been arrested but released since he had a “fair reputation” and had an alibi, unlike Ali who possessed “a savage disposition.” [52] The phrases used to describe Ali offer an eerie echo of those used in London in the 1880s to characterize Jack the Ripper. London police initially grabbed a number of Jewish men for the Ripper murders. They—like Ali—had “dark complexions, black hair . . . and heavy foreign accents.” [53] As Sara Blair points out, in Ripper narratives, Jack the Ripper became “representative of a deviant civic agency whose virulent corruption threatens the purity of native ‘Anglo-Saxon’ institutions and character.” [54] Noted cultural historian Sander L. Gilman theorizes that the image of the Ripper as a Jewish “ritual butcher,” or a shochet , arose from Anglo-Saxon conspiracies about Jews as sexually mutilated and diseased. [55] Not only did the United States import the Ripper sensation; it imported the xenophobic rhetoric along with it. Upon the New York Police Department’s proclamation that they had the Ripper in custody, the Herald remarked, “It is soothing to national pride to believe that we can catch our ‘Rippers’ on this side of the ocean.” [56] The Patriot in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania even dubbed Ben Ali, “The New York Ripper.” [57] Ameer Ben Ali’s conviction of second-degree murder on Independence Day of that year allayed the anxieties of white Americans, and further cemented the dogma of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Criminal profiles of Jack the Ripper festered with more than just malignant fears of violent immigrants. The rising field of criminology infused descriptions of the Ripper with scientifically supported racist understandings of the natural born criminal. The history of scientific criminology begins with Belgian statistician Lambert Quetelet, who in 1835 developed a statistical method to calculate the qualities of the “average man” (including body mass index, etc.) This “average man” was based on white-European notions of intellectual and physical capabilities. In the 1880s, French police officer Alphonse Bertillon applied Quetelet’s ideas to criminal investigations. Using eleven key physical measurements, he created an identification and categorization system for known criminals in Paris . Historians also credit him with creating the modern-day concept of a mugshot, using a face front-on and a profile view to give clear images of the skull. [58] In England, the search for the “criminal type”—that is, the biologically-determined criminal—was spearheaded by scientists such as Francis Galton (the cousin of Charles Darwin and the leader of the turn of the century eugenics movement) and Havelock Ellis, whose 1890 book, The Criminal , brought the theories of Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso to English readers. Lombroso’s foundational text, Criminal Man (1877), used ancient theories of physiognomy combined with contemporary phrenology to explain behavior and personality types through skull measurements and facial features. “In general,” Lombroso argues, “born criminals have projecting ears, thick hair, a thin beard, projecting frontal eminences, enormous jaws, a square and projecting chin, large cheek-bones, and frequent gesticulation. It is, in short, a type resembling the Mongolian, or sometimes the Negroid.” [59] The Herald ’s description of Ben Ali certainly echoes this racist phenotype: “Nothing certainly in his physiognomy, his history, so far as it is known, or his characteristics makes it at all improbable that he would commit even such a horrible crime as this.” [60] The trial theatricalized the racist science undergirding early criminology, with newspapers paying close attention to Ben Ali’s appearance and behavior. Various papers described him as having a “small head” with a “sharp projection” in the back, a “long and thin” nose, and a “weak” chin. A lawyer for the prosecution insisted, “Ben Ali is an ignorant Arab, an Arab of the lowest type, ‘as low in the scale of intelligence as a fellah of the Egyptian rice fields, or a sikh or se poy soldier [ sic ]’.” In a dramatic finale, Ben Ali closed the trial with a passionate defense of his innocence, “The long, stoop shouldered, brown man raised himself as high as he could in his chair. A torrent of words broke from him. He threw his head far back and looked upward while he threw his long arms swiftly aloft and then crossed them on his gaunt breast.” [61] Accompanying these descriptions of his theatrical gestures are several sketches of these de facto tableaux vivants. Fig 6. “‘I Implore God!’ Cries Ben Ali,” New York Herald, 3 July 1891, 3. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of the medical gaze, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr coined the term “diagnostic gaze,” to describe how in the late-nineteenth century, scientific developments and theatrical innovation were encouraging audiences to focus on biological and psychological reasons for behavior, both onstage and off. [62] This anatomization of both spectator and performance coincided with the rising of the naturalist theatrical genre. In his manifesto on naturalism, playwright Émile Zola stated that, “Naturalism, in letters, is equally a return to nature and to man; it is direct observation, exact anatomy, the acceptance and depiction of what is .” [63] Thus, in the trial reports, the cloaking of racist discourse in scientific language (and influenced by scientific rhetoric) presented to an audience a definitive claim of “what is”: that Ameer Ben Ali was biologically predetermined to be Jack the Ripper. The seeming obsession with Ben Ali’s appearance points to this diagnostic gaze at work. It also appears in a spectacularly theatrical moment of the trial. On the second day of the trial, 1 July 1891, “two blue print photographs” of Carrie Brown’s mutilated corpse were shown to the courtroom. The autopsy photographs displayed the body of a relatively slender woman with her organs (intestines) protruding from a gash several inches long just below her abdomen, down her thigh, and around to her buttocks. [64] Rather than noting what the images depicted, court writers paid particular attention to Ben Ali’s gaze as he looked at them. The Herald observed, When the pictures came into Lawyer House’s hands Frenchy gazed at them with much interest. His forehead was lined with many wrinkles and his eyes showed intense speculation as he gazed—but that was all. Not one sign was there upon him of fear or remorse. If the man be a criminal he has a most marvelous faculty of self-control. [65] Patricia Cline Cohen notes that early colonists tried suspected murders by having them touch the corpse and if it “bled fresh blood,” that proved the suspect guilty. [66] In her extensive study of the 1836 murder of Helen Jewett, she remarks how the gaze had flipped; juries no longer focused on the murdered corpse but rather, scrutinized the suspect’s reaction as reflective of guilt. Towards the end of the century, the influence of criminal anthropology dictated that a suspect’s appearance reflected not only his propensity to commit crime, but his biological predisposition to criminal behavior. Without the man who was last seen with Carrie Brown, a witness to the murder, or a strong motive for Ameer Ben Ali, the prosecution rested its case on circumstantial forensic evidence. Prominent physicians Dr. Austin Flint, Dr. Cyrus Edson, and Dr. Henry Formad testified that amongst twenty specimens sampled from the crime scene and from Ben Ali’s person, all of them contained mammalian blood. Several specimens (including that from under Ameer Ben Ali’s nails, the sleeve of his shirt, and the sheet from Room 31) showed bile mixed in the blood that contained matter that examiners speculated to be the contents of Carrie Brown’s small intestine. [67] According to witnesses, she had eaten nothing for days before her murder until that night when a friend gave her corned beef sandwiches, cabbage, and some cheese. [68] Her last meal, according to the microscopists’ findings (summarized by Dr. Flint in the New York Medical Journal ), explained the presence of “partially digested muscular tissue” and “the hard residue of spiral and other vegetable cells” in the blood-bile admixture. [69] During the trial, the physicians’ testimony became a live-action scientific serial. Both Dr. Formad and Dr. Flint were given writing utensils and blackboards to use on the stand, with Dr. Flint drawing out diagrams of intestinal fluid cells to show the jury how to recognize them under a microscope. While the invention of the microscope dates back to the Renaissance, the latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed major developments in technology as well as increasing medical specialization and the subsequent rise of microbiology, which made microscopy a prestigious science. As the diagnostic gaze in the theatre invited audiences to gaze inward, the microscope allowed spectators to go even further. However, the novel technology made the science out of reach for the average audience member. [70] During the trial, however, the inner life of “Shakespeare’s” cells and viscera were presented for lay spectatorship to prove that Ben Ali’s criminality was surely more than skin deep. Ultimately, Dr. Formad’s insistence that he would “stake his life” on the fact that the blood on Ali’s garments and on Carrie Brown’s bed were the same proved “the strongest thing said against Frenchy’s innocence.” [71] According to Dr. Flint, the case marked the first time a guilty verdict resulted from circumstantial blood evidence. [72] However, The Medical and Surgical Reporter later disputed the validity of this claim, arguing that “it would seem a little hazardous to convict a man on the microscopically established identity of minute collections of blood and intestinal matter” and that “at present there seems to be a feeling that the accused was made a scape-goat for the reputation of the Police Department.” [73] As a lawyer present at the sentencing pointed out, “the Police Department was on trial just as much as the prisoner was—that they stood or fell in popular estimation by reason of the verdict this jury should find.” [74] The eagerness of the New York police to prove themselves over their London counterparts amidst an increasing reliability on racist criminology enabled them to pin the gruesome crime on an innocent man. [75] In a surprising twist, Ameer Ben Ali received a pardon for Carrie Brown’s murder in 1902. Affidavits submitted by reporters Jacob Riis and Robert Butler claimed that when they had initially viewed the crime scene, they did not note any blood stains in Ben Ali’s room that the police officers swore were there. Furthermore, the key to Carrie Brown’s room—which had yet to be located by the time of the trial—was reportedly found in Jersey City in 1901, left behind by a Swedish boarder whose whereabouts were unknown. [76] The sensationalism of the story, bolstered by invocations of Jack the Ripper, nationalist pride, and racist/nativist notions of criminality, pushed the conviction of a man that would be overturned eleven years later. “She should have died hereafter” As Ben Ali’s trial and eventual pardon suggest, the fetishized afterlife of Brown/“Shakespeare” exposed the systemic racism that pervaded the growing field of medical criminology. To some observers, Ben Ali’s humiliation, terror, and abuse at the hands of the New York police must have seemed justified by the new “science” that supposedly gave credence to long-held prejudices. In Ben Ali’s story, Brown/Shakespeare’s body becomes the accusing prop—like Desdemona in Othello . After Ameer Ben Ali’s release, “Old Shakespeare” all but disappeared from popular culture. [77] In the contemporary era, she has found new resonance as the archive continues to perform her afterlife. Susan Stabile argues that museums such as Kimball’s, Barnum’s, and others juxtaposed sensationalism with “disciplinary systems of decorum, law, and order,” which “both perform and undermine heteronormative fictions of white womanhood.” [78] By the standards of her day, Shakespeare’s/Brown’s transgressions against the respectable middle-class female behaviors of her era appeared legion: She left her home and children to strike out on her own; she consumed alcohol; she refused to be rehabilitated into a temperance/Christian culture; she claimed to have been an actress; and she used her sexuality for profit as a sex worker. The relentless post-mortem re-norming of every transgressive aspect of Mrs. Shakespeare’s/Carrie Brown’s career appears in each of the spectacles constructed around her murder. It appears in the fixed tableaux at Doris’s Museum that erased her identity and subsumed it under the pseudonym of “Shakespeare” and tucked the tale of her life behind Jack the Ripper’s legend. The re-norming surfaces in each newspaper report that re-dissected her body for the public gaze, just as it was anatomized on the autopsy table. It creeps through the moralizing tone of the trial testimony and pulp fiction accounts that hold her up as a cautionary tale of how far a once-respectable woman might fall. For subsequent generations of archivists, her body performs as a puzzle to Ripperologists debating the Ripper’s identity. Ironically, both Brown and Ben Ali become supporting characters in these dramas, rather than central figures—and like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they “go to’t” [79] —their deaths moved offstage and attributed largely to their own faults and follies. On websites such as casebook.org (self-described as “the world’s largest public repository of Ripper-related information” [80] ) and jtrforums.com (“Ripperology For The 21st Century” [81] ), Ripperologists act as detectives, sharing and scrutinizing all bits of evidence regarding Carrie Brown’s murder. While their stated purpose is a gathering of primary evidence to deduce if Ameer Ben Ali or some other suspect could be Jack the Ripper, these forums serve another function. True crime can be found on a number of mediums, but on the internet, “true crime offers opportunities for audience-producer interactivity that changes the relationship between the consumer and the content.” [82] In Cornel Sandvoss’s illumination of performance in fandom, he observes that while fans are “consumers of (mediated) performances,” they are also performers “as others acknowledge their consumption.” [83] In the mediated universe of Ripperologists forums, their communal identification as Ripperologists performs and consumes their extensively curated collections of Ripper-related artifacts and information. It is through this medium that Carrie Brown/ “Shakespeare” again becomes a spectacle. In a way, these forums present a new kind of dime museum where the users are both the managers of the museum and the spectators. In the anatomical dime museums of the nineteenth century, “the boundaries between graphic sex education and pornography were blurred” as the public vied for any glimpse of the hidden body. [84] Similarly, as Jean Murley explains, “True crime is obsessed with full-on visual body horror.” [85] One notable interaction appears on the thread, “Photographs of Carrie Brown,” started on casebook.org in February 2003. Users shared their excitement over finding Brown’s autopsy photographs. Questions about the wounds and their similarity to other Ripper victims abounded, culminating in the final post of the thread, where a user posted a gruesome analysis of the photographs, linking the placement of the body and its wounds to various sexual positions. [86] Other less graphic posts include speculating where the East River Hotel would be located today, sorting fact from fiction in Brown’s case, and supporting the genealogical research being done by one of her descendants. [87] The extensive amount of time that regular users will spend interacting with other Ripperologists has cultivated a niche community. [88] While true crime enthusiasts are rigid about sticking to “just the facts,” there are moments in the threads where a user will comment on how long it had been since they had seen another user or to compliment someone on their writing (always Ripper-related, however). [89] New users are welcomed gracefully into the community, simply by announcing their interest in the Ripper. Sleuthing through primary source material that is posted in these online niches, Ripper enthusiasts recreate, reproduce, and recirculate knowledge about and through Carrie Brown. However, unlike other media such as novels, magazines, blogs, and podcasts that invoke Brown’s presence (through her deceased and mutilated form), these forums are not meant for mass consumption. Forums shape and sustain communities that are peripheral to Carrie Brown herself, yet are deeply invested in her presence. Critical analysis of her autopsy photographs imagines her body as a route to a different and novel answer to who Jack the Ripper might have been. Along the way, the community is maintained around the spectacle and speculation of Brown’s body. [90] References [1] Herbert Asbury, Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underground , 43. There actually seem to have been two women in the Bowery known locally as “Shakespeare,” which can make untangling the tale of the murdered “Shakespeare” even more challenging. Several sources also said that she had a second name, Jeff Davis, whose origins only the New York Times reports: her support for the “lost cause.” However, this would seemingly contradict another rumor that her supposed husband was in the Union navy during the Civil War. “Byrnes Says He Has a Clue,” New York Times , 26 April 1891, 2. [2] The Albany Law Journal waggishly (and callously) suggested that “Old Shakespeare” had not been murdered by Jack the Ripper, but by Bacon’s ghost. Albany Law Journal , 9 May 1891. [3] Troy Weekly Times, 14 May 1891. [4] New York Herald , 30 June 1891. [5] Ali (also known as George Frank), was referred to in some reports as “Frenchy” and in others as an “Arab.” It is not within the scope of this essay to unpack the racism and emerging eugenics in the press’s treatment of Ali, whom some papers labeled a “creature of strange and unnatural desires,” and as “little above a monkey in intellect,” but it certainly merits further exploration. According to the Wheeling Register (West VA) on 3 July 1891, Ali claimed, “By the garment of Allah, I am innocent.” The New York Tribune reported that he spoke Arabic at his trial and questioned why he had taken his oath on the Bible rather than the Koran (see 4 July 1891). Also see the Star and Herald (Panama), 16 May 1891 and the New York Herald , 30 June 1891. There was also speculation about his religion—primarily because of his tattoo of a cross: “‘Frenchy’s’ behavior since his arrest has shown that he is not a Moslem [ sic ], for he doesn’t pray at the rising and going down of the sun. Besides, a Moslem would not have a cross about him.” “Is it the Same ‘Frenchy’,” New York Herald, 4 May 1891, 4. Comparatively new (and untested) forensic methods were used to link Ali to the crime scene, including traces of blood and bodily fluids from the victim. [6] The term, “theatrical afterlife,” is drawn from Mechele Leon’s Molière, the French Revolution, & the Theatrical Afterlife (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009), which explores the ways that Molière’s work echoed in the years following his death. Similarly, we use “theatrical afterlife” here to denote how Carrie Brown/Shakespeare’s murder reverberated across popular and theatrical culture. [7] Scholarly discussions about the histories and legacies of US melodrama have continued to shift over the last half-century. Foundational studies in the field include David Grimsted’s 1968, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theatre and Culture, 1800–1850 ; Bruce McConachie’s 1992 Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820-1870 ; Jeffrey D. Mason’s 1993 Melodrama and the Myth of America ; and Rosemarie K. Bank’s 1977 Theatre Culture in America, 1825–1860 . More recent studies include John Frick’s 2003, Theatre, Culture, and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America ; Amy Hughes’s 2012 Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America ; Jeffrey H. Richards and Heather S. Nathans, eds. 2014, The Oxford Handbook of American Drama (which contains several chapters on melodrama, including those by Scott C. Martin, Amelia Howe Kritzer, Mark Mullen, and Mark Hodin); as well as recent works by John L. Brooke, Douglas A. Jones, Jr., Sarah Meer, Laura Mielke, Tavia Nyong’o, and others who have offered works that link the melodrama form to specific political issues in nineteenth-century America. [8] Ariela J. Gross further explains how eugenics, when it emerged in the late nineteenth-century, brought with it the empirical language about how racial science could enshrine white citizenship into law. Near Eastern and North African immigrants would be caught in the midst of this racist legal conundrum, with how to classify their whiteness debated heavily within state and federal court systems. This would begin to be litigated several years after Ben Ali’s trial but was firmly cemented in American consciousness by the time he was released. See Ariela J. Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 230–5. For evidence of Ben Ali’s pardon, release, and departure from the US, see “‘Frenchy’ Pardoned,” Daily People (New York, New York), 17 April 1902, 3; “Departure Of ‘Frenchy.’ to Bring an Action for Damages Against the State,” Daily People (New York, New York) 25 April 1902, 2. [9] Jane Caputi, “The New Founding Fathers: The Lore and Lure of the Serial Killer in Contemporary Culture,” Journal of American Culture 13, no. 3 (1990): 3. [10] Jtrforums.com is currently in a state of transition (the tribulations of digital archives!) and threads referenced in this essay are in the process of being archived. The site’s previous administrator is also uploading much of the research shared on the forum to CarrieBrown.net, although as of 22 October 2021, it is still very much a work in progress. [11] Jean Murley, The Rise of True Crime: 20th-Century Murder and American Popular Culture (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2008), 2. [12] Boston Herald, 25 May 1891. [13] The Patriot (Harrisburg, PA), 27 April 1891. British newspapers also picked up news of the murder, some reporting it only days after the fact. See Reynold’s Newspaper (London), 26 April 1891 and the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle , 2 May 1891. [14] “Ghastly Butchery by a New York Jack the Ripper’” New York Herald , 25 April 1891, 3. [15] New York Herald , 30 June 1891. The New York paper People complained bitterly that Shakespeare’s murder was yet another demonstration of police incompetence since they seemed unable to track down her killer. People , 26 April 1891. “Murder in the Second Degree,” New York Herald , 4 July 1891, 3. [16] “Ghastly Butchery by a New York Jack the Ripper’” New York Herald , 3. [17] New York Herald , 25 April 1891, 3; The Evening World , 25 April 1891, 1. [18] “Ghastly Butchery by a New York Jack the Ripper’” New York Herald , 3. [19] Other newspapers record an account of the autopsy, but The Evening World ’s account is the most complete, as well as the most clinical in its language. [20] The Evening World , 25 April 1891, 1. [21] Karen Halttunen, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 192. For more on the notorious Jewett case, see Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1999). [22] Halttunen, Murder Most Foul , 181. Italics original. [23] George Ellington, The Women of New York: Or, the Under-World of the Great City (New York: The New York Book Company, 1869), 295. [24] New York Herald , 26 April 1891, 17. [25] Ibid. [26] Some papers initially claimed that the “real” Carrie Brown had not been murdered and that the victim was an unknown woman. This story faded quickly however. [27] Omaha World Herald , 26 April 1891. Note that the paper has several misstatements about the case, including the location of the crime and the names of the initial suspects. They also claim that her husband’s first name was James, not Charles, and that she had two daughters, not a daughter and a son (though it should be noted that one of her daughters might have died). [28] Omaha World Herald , 26 April 1891. Mrs. Shakespeare may have been working as a sex worker during this time and it was also tacitly acknowledged (though not stated explicitly in the various newspaper reports we have reviewed) that there may also have been evidence of sexual activity. The coroner’s report also showed that she was anemic and that was reported in the paper, along with the physical evidence of her alcoholism, see New York Herald , 30 June 1891. [29] Note that this site offers census data as well as grave site location information for Brown: “Carrie ‘Old Shakespeare’ Brown,” Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=89386829 (accessed 22 October 2021). [30] Of her appearance, the narrator notes “Ordinarily I would pass her without much notice.” W. B. Lawton, Jack the Ripper in New York , 1891, 2. See cover image below. [31] Note that her body was returned to her remaining family in Salem on 15 May 1891, according to the Star and Herald (Panama), 16 May 1891. [32] Indeed, the largest cache of present day information on Brown survives on websites devoted to Jack the Ripper that mention Brown’s killing as an attempt to place the Ripper in the US. [33] “Many Arrests: But No Identification of ‘Jack the Ripper,’” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle , 25 April 1891, 8. Italics added. [34] “Frenchy Found Guilty,” Pittsburgh Dispatch , 4 July 1891, 6. [35] George C. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage , vol. 14: 1888–1891 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 687. [36] Tableaux Advertisement, The Evening World , 29 April 1891, BASEBALL EXTRA, 3. Obviously, the furniture was probably not authentic and was likely to be a reproduction. The titillation of the crime scene also found its way into the theatre. One theatre in Pittsburgh restaged a popular show, advertising that the scenery had been altered to look like the East River Hotel and replicated the murder. See New York Herald , 3 May 1891, 10. [37] Odell, Annals of the New York Stage , vol. 14, 687. The wax tableaux were also available at the Gaiety Museum and the Eden Musée in New York City starting the week of 3 May 1891. See Odell, 739–740 and New York Herald , 3 May 1891, 10. One commentator in the Pennsylvania-based newspaper the Patriot wrote, “The morbid curiosity of the people was never more fully or disgustingly illustrated than in the announcement of a New York museum manager that all the details of the recent ‘Ripper’ tragedy will be re-reproduced [ sic ] in wax for the edification of his patrons. The person who can find any gratification in such a sight most assuredly has a peculiar twist in his mental structure.” Patriot , 27 April 1891, 4. [38] Quoted in Stabile, “Still(ed) Lives,” Journal of Material Culture 14, no. 2, 375. [39] New York Herald , 13 September 1891. For more on this topic, see John Frick, Theatre, Culture, and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) . [40] Note that the tableaux retained that label even after Ameer Ben Ali’s trial and conviction for the murder. [41] Andrea Dennett, Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 60. [42] It might be interesting to explore Herring’s career juxtaposed against Brown’s “performance” for Bowery audiences. Herring was roughly the same age as Brown (Herring was born in England in 1834), and Herring was described as “hoydenish” and became known for her success in breeches roles. [43] Michael Batterberry and Ariane Batterberry, On the Town in New York: The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking and Entertainments (New York: Routledge, 1998), 104. [44] Ibid., 106. [45] Dennett, Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America , 61. Interestingly, Dennett adds that sites like Doris’s were often interspersed with dime museums that featured anatomical or medical exhibits, which were, in fact, thinly veiled quack clinics for patrons suffering from syphilis. [46] W. B. Lawson, “Jack the Ripper in New York; Or, Piping a Terrible Mystery,” in Log Cabin Library no. 115 (1891): 2. [47] For more on how crime fiction positioned race in its narratives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Maureen T. Reddy’s Traces, Codes, and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003). [48] “New York’s ‘Ripper’ Known to the Police,” New York Herald , 26 April 1891, 17. [49] “Ghastly Butchery by a New York Jack the Ripper’,” New York Herald, 25 April 1891, 3. Some other reports have his name as “C. Niclo” or “C. Nichols.” [50] The “Ripper” Left a Fairly Plain Trail,” New York Herald, 27 April 1891, 3. [51] Ameer Ben Ali claimed that the blood found on his shirt and stockings was menstrual blood from a sex worker he had visited. The expert physicians who analyzed the blood testified that there were no epithelial cells found in the blood samples from his person, indicating that it was not menstrual blood. See Austin Flint, “Some Medico-Legal Points in the ‘Frenchy’ Murder Trial,” New York Medical Journal 54 (July 1891): 39–41. [52] “Is This New York’s ‘Jack the Ripper?’” New York Herald , 1 May 1891, 3. [53] L. Perry Curtis, Jack the Ripper and the London Press (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 30. [54] Sara Blair, “Henry James, Jack the Ripper, and the Cosmopolitan Jew: Staging Authorship in ‘The Tragic Muse,’” ELH 63, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 490. [55] Sander L. Gilman, The Jew’s Body , (New York: Routledge, 2009), 490–2. [56] “Not the Same ‘Ripper,’” New York Herald , 1 May 1891, 6. [57] The Patriot , Harrisburg, PA, 15 May 1891, 1. [58] Nicole Hahn Rafter explores the impact of European innovations in scientific criminology on American criminal anthropologists, including the adoption of Bertillon’s methodologies in the United States. See Nicole Hahn Rafter, “Criminal Anthropology: Its Reception in the United States and the Nature of Its Appeal,” in Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective ,” eds. Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell, 159–82 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). [59] Havelock Ellis, The Criminal (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1890), 84. Interest in phrenology in the mid-nineteenth century drove a demand for lecturing on criminality by displaying skulls from the cadavers of executed criminals, see Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 25. [60] “Is This New York’s ‘Jack the Ripper?’” New York Herald , 1 May 1891, 3. [61] “Implore God!’ Cries Ben Ali,” New York Herald , 3 July 1891, 3. [62] Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr, “The Diagnostic Gaze: Nineteenth-Century Contexts for Medicine and Performance,” in Performance and the Medical Body , eds. Alex Mermikides and Gianna Bouchard (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 37-8. [63] Emile Zola, “Naturalism in the Theatre,” in Documents of Modern Literary Realism , ed. George J. Becker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 201. Italics added. [64] Autopsy photos from the New York City Municipal Archives (see below). [65] “Blood Stains May Prove Frenchy Guilty,” New York Herald , 1 July 1891, 3. The supposed images of her autopsy have circulated around internet forums See “Carrie Brown a.k.a. ‘Old Shakespeare,’” Casebook: Jack the Ripper, https://www.casebook.org/victims/carrie.html(accessed 22 October 2021). [66] Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett, 13. Interestingly, William Shakespeare invokes the same method in Richard III when Henry VI’s wounds supposedly reopen and bleed as his coffin is carried past Richard. [67] A definitive test for distinguishing human from animal blood would not be found until 1901. See “A New Forensic Method of Differentiating Human and Animal Blood,” Journal of the American Medical Association 36, no. 16 (20 April 1901): 1118. [68] Reports also note that roundworm eggs were found, which are not uncommon in people living in extreme-poverty and have poor hygiene practices, although this went unremarked. [69] Austin Flint, “Some Medico-Legal Points in the ‘Frenchy’ Murder Trial,” New York Medical Journal 54 (July 1891): 40. [70] For more about naturalistic theatre and microscopy, see Kari Nixon, “Seeing Things: The Dilemma of Visual Subjectivity at the Dawn of the Bacteriological Age in Strindberg’s The Father ,” Configurations 24, no. 1 (Winter 2016): 25-52. [71] “Frenchy Breaks Down and Weeps” New York Herald, 2 July 1891, 3. [72] Flint, “Some Medico-Legal Points,” 40. [73] “The Medico-Legal Aspect of the Jack-The-Ripper Case,” The Medical and Surgical Reporter, 15 August 1891 65: 279. [74] “‘I Implore God!’ Cries Ben Ali,” New York Herald , 3 July 1891, 3. [75] Ameer Ben Ali’s case is discussed in Yale Law Professor Edwin M. Bouchard’s Convicting the Innocent: Errors of Criminal Justice (New Haven: Yale University, 1932). [76] New Evidence for “Frenchy,” Daily People (New York), 24 May 1901, 3. [77] Two books in the 1930s reference her murder. The first is Edwin M. Bouchard’s Convicting the Innocent: Errors of Criminal Justice (1932) and the other is Alexander Woollcott’s short story “It May Be Human Gore: V MURDER FOR PUBLICITY” in his 1934 collection While Rome Burns . The short story recounts Old Shakespeare’s murder and the subsequent trial. Leaning heavily on the sensationalism of the story, Woollcott describes Brown as a “raffish sexagenarian prostitute” and a “dilapidated and jocular hag.” “The Frenchy case, famous in its day forty years ago but since largely forgotten,” Wollcott writes, “should, it seems to me, have a prominent place in American murder annals, if only for the felicitous proper names, ideal for melodrama, which were involved in it.” For more see, Alexander Woollcott, While Rome Burns (New York: The Viking Press, 1934), 220–3. A book has also recently come out that reexamines the case in detail and disagrees with Bouchard’s perspective that Ameer Ben Ali was innocent. Curiously, the author does not consider the racial dynamics at play and the rise of racist criminology in his argument. See George R. Dekle, Sr., The East River Ripper: The Mysterious 1891 Murder of Old Shakespeare (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2021). [78] Stabile, “Still(ed) Lives,” 375. [79] William Shakespeare, Hamlet , V, ii. [80] “Casebook: Jack the Ripper,” https://www.casebook.org/index.html (accessed 21 October 2021). [81] “Jack the Ripper Forums – Ripperology for the 21 st Century Statistics,” http://jtrforums.com (accessed 21 October 2021). See 10n. [82] Murley, The Rise of True Crime , 133. [83] Cornel Sandvoss, Fans: The Mirror of Consumption (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 45. [84] Dennett, Weird and Wonderful , 64. [85] Murley, The Rise of True Crime , 5. [86] On Tuesday November 29, 2005 at 6:48pm, an unregistered guest (that is, not an official member of the forum) with the username sickard posted this explicit and graphic message that will not be reproduced here to a casebook.org thread discussing the wounds seen on the autopsy photographs. See “Photographs of Carrie Brown,” Casebook: Jack the Ripper, https://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4921/5374.html (accessed 21 October 2021). [87] Key examples of interesting threads about Carrie Brown include (but are certainly not limited to) a dissection started in 2016 about where exactly the hotel she was murdered in was located (“Carrie Brown Murder in the New York Times,” Jack the Ripper Forums, https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/the-victims/other-possible-victims/carrie-brown/27051-carrie-brown-murder-in-the-new-york-times?t=26525 [accessed 6 June 2021].), a “Shooting the Breeze Thread” from July 2020 to casually discuss aspects of her murder (“Carrie Brown: Shooting the Breeze Thread,” Jack the Ripper Forums, https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/the-victims/other-possible-victims/carrie-brown/34855-carrie-brown-shooting-the-breeze-thread?t=34156 [accessed 6 June 2021].), a thread from 2008 that questions whether or not she was a victim of Jack the Ripper where the original poster notes that they had made a separate post to acknowledge the anniversary of her death, but felt it inappropriate to begin the discussion there (“Was Carrie Brown A Ripper Victim?,” Casebook: Jack the Ripper, https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/victims/non-canonical-victims/carrie-brown/726-was-carrie-brown-a-ripper-victim [accessed 22 October 2021].), and a 2011 thread that begins with parsing through the contradictory details of Brown’s biography before moving to a discussion of the location of her grave in Salem, Massachusetts (and how several commenters had visited and been told to leave). A supposed descendant of hers interrupts the chat to state that he has no issue with anyone visiting the cemetery where she’s buried (“Carrie Brown: UK Background,” Jack the Ripper Forums, https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/the-victims/other-possible-victims/carrie-brown/12639-carrie-brown-uk-background/page2 [accessed 6 June 2021].). Interesting to note, there is some, although not complete, overlap between users of the forums. See 10n. [88] There’s also been a recent migration of jtrforums.com members to a private Facebook group called, “The Carrie Brown File.” See 10n. [89] In this thread from 2003, a forum user, Tom Wescott, writes of how he is happy to see a fellow user and even reveals that he knows about the other user’s work outside of the forum (although, still Ripper-related). (“Photographs of Carrie Brown,” Casebook: Jack the Ripper, https://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4921/5374.html [accessed 22 October 2021].). In a 2014 thread, a user asks if a frequent poster, Wolf Vanderlinden, is still working on his book about Carrie Brown and congratulates him for a “well done” article in a Ripperologist magazine (“Forthcoming book?”, Casebook: Jack the Ripper, https://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4921/12087.html [accessed 22 October 2021,].). [90] It is interesting to note that the theatre is tangential to the work of Ripperologists, as this recent thread on Ameer Ben Ali’s attending a minstrel show during his time at the Matteawan State Insane Hospital demonstrates (“Ali at a Minstrel Show at Matteawan,” Jack the Ripper Forums, https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/the-victims/other-possible-victims/carrie-brown/576659-ali-at-a-minstrel-show-at-matteawan [accessed 6 June 2021].). See 10n. Footnotes About The Author(s) Mia Levenson is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at Tufts University. Her research lies in the intersection of biomedical science, race, and performance, and her dissertation will explore the proliferation of eugenic science in American popular performances of the early 20th century. You can find her work in Theatre Journal , as well as two forthcoming anthologies. Heather S. Nathans is a professor in the Tufts University Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies and is the Alice and Nathan Gantcher Professor in Judaic Studies. Her publications include: Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson (2003); Slavery and Sentiment on the American Stage, 1787-1861 (2009); and Hideous Characters and Beautiful Pagans: Performing Jewish Identity on the Antebellum American Stage (2017). She is also the editor of the Studies in Theatre History and Culture series with the University of Iowa Press. 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.

Benjamin Gillespie and Bess Rowen Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Editorial Introduction Benjamin Gillespie and Bess Rowen By Published on June 6, 2024 Download Article as PDF We are honored and delighted to be the incoming co-editors of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . We have a long connection to the journal through our mutual alma mater at The Graduate Center, CUNY where the journal is housed at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and supported by the work of students in the PhD Program in Theatre and Performance. We would like to thank James F. Wilson and Naomi Stubbs for more than a decade of stewardship of the journal and for their editorial guidance and labor to keep the journal positioned at the forefront of issues facing American theatre. We will do our utmost to not only continue, but also build upon their legacy and those that came before them. The journal’s association with the American Theatre & Drama Society is also significant as we are both active members of the society and strongly believe in its mission. We are also grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers who make scholarly publication possible. The field of drama, theatre, and performance in the Americas continues to expand in scope, form, style, representation, and content. We are deeply invested in continuing to support work that covers the entirety of the Americas while exploring intersectional issues of identity and history within this vast geographic area and ensuring diversity in both authorship and subjects covered in the journal. We welcome articles with a primary basis in history and/or theory that explore issues of identity across race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and age. JADT's publication schedule consists of two issues per year: one general issue co-edited by us, and another special themed issue curated by a guest editor. We will continue with this model moving forward. We accept articles on a continuous basis and encourage authors to reach out to us with ideas for articles in advance. All full-length articles go through the traditional peer review process. We remain committed to keeping the journal open access and digitized through the generous work of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center directed by Frank Hentschker. In addition to submitting articles, we hope you will support the journal by reading it as we welcome feedback from all sources. This issue features the first collection of articles, interviews, and reviews that have fallen entirely under our purview. We begin with Valerie Joyce’s analysis of Rags , a short-lived Broadway musical meant to be a successor to Fiddler on the Roof . By looking at the way choreography tells the story of immigrants, assimilation, and acculturation, Joyce makes a case for the importance of choreography in the process of creating audience empathy for immigrant characters, which is clearly an important topic to this day. Next, we move to Danielle Rosvally’s exploration of TikTok as an important digital archive of performance, particularly of performances during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rosvally likens the proposed bans and restrictions of TikTok to theatre fires and other major losses of archival information in the pre-digital age, deftly weaving this digital performance archive together with more traditional brick and mortar theaters of the past and present. The following article, by Thomas Arthur, chronicles Jamaican actor Sidney Hibbert’s life in terms of his post-colonial experiences performing in a variety of different national contexts. This microhistory both highlights and contextualizes Hibbert’s extraordinary abilities among the transitional period of history his life spanned. Our final article is a roundtable conversation between Jim Nicola, Tanya Elder, and Daniel Diego Pardo about the archival materials left by noted theatre critic, translator, and historian Michael Feingold who died in 2022. Nicola, Elder, and Pardo discuss and work through a small sliver of the material left in boxes after Feingold’s death. In doing so, they peer into Feingold’s legacy and uncover often-overlooked pieces of queer history he engaged in, the backstory of downtown theatre, and the founding of yale/theatre which later became Theater magazine. The issue also features four book reviews that mark the end of Maya Roth’s tenure as our book review editor. We thank her for her years of service and careful curation of the book review section. We are also delighted to feature our first collection of performance reviews in this issue. Performance reviews will continue to be a feature of the journal going forward, and we are happy that this section will continue to support our mission of spotlighting performance throughout the Americas. We hope our readers enjoy all of the excellent contributions in this issue and we welcome submissions of articles, interviews, book reviews, and performance reviews. Reach out to us at jadtjournal@gmail.com . This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Benjamin Gillespie (PhD) is Doctoral Lecturer in Communication, Gender Studies, and Theatre at Baruch College, City University of New York. His essays and reviews have been published in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, Performance Research, Canadian Theatre Review , and a wide range of scholarly anthologies. He is currently editing two volumes: Split Britches: Fifty Years On and Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging , both to be published by the University of Michigan Press. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Bess Rowen (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University. She is also affiliate faculty for both Gender & Women's Studies and Irish Studies. She is a member of Actors' Equity and an intimacy choreographer. Her first book, The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment (2021) focuses on affective stage directions. Her next book project looks at the theatrical archetype of the “mean teenage girl.” Other recent work can be found in Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders & Sexualities , Theatre Survey , and The Eugene O'Neill Review , among other publications. She also serves as the LGBTQ+ Focus Group Representative at ATHE and as the Co-Editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Dohyun Gracia Shin Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii Dohyun Gracia Shin By Published on January 11, 2021 Download Article as PDF Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft presents an ambitious compilation of interviews with twenty-seven contemporary women stage directors, while archiving and reflecting on relatively underrepresented women stage directors in the US and the UK. Tracing the past two decades, Marty notes that few published books focus on female stage directors. She points to two volumes by Anne Fliotsos and Wendy Vierow as rare examples. Marty distinguishes her project by focusing on mid-career women stage directors—who she argues are not featured enough by Fliotsos and Vierow. This volume provides readers the rare chance to hear disparate, highly-active women directors’ reflecting in their own words about their experiences, insights, styles, labors, and vision. Based on her experience working both as a theatre researcher and practitioner (dramaturg/director), Marty also provides a window on the contemporary theatre industry, opening far beyond how gender intersects with artistic lives. What makes this book unique in structure is that Marty directs, in effect, her book. Interview-based books deploying question-and-answer structures often feature a handful of interviewees in a chapter or section. Instead, she divides chapters, as if splitting beats, and places quotes and excerpts from her interviewees in each chapter according to its theme, as if casting speakers in dynamic dialogue. She aligns thematic chapters like scenes that build into a larger narrative: this journey of women directors pursuing their careers begins with incubating projects and concludes with each director’s own vision of today’s theatre. Although the book’s organizational structure does not provide a clear, holistic profile of each individual director, as Marty acknowledges in the introduction (9), this thematic approach instead distinctly guides readers to respect a director’s role and labor. Marty also provides a series of inspiring models, amplifying the influence of women directors working at an array of theatre venues in the US and UK. In the first two chapters, Marty sheds light on the directors’ incubating process. Chapter 1 opens by laying out how individual directors choose a particular piece of work. For example, Lear deBessonet, the founding director of the Public Theater’s Public Works project, explains that she stages classics since “no one is the authority” (24) which thereby opens up collective imagination. Marty also considers how varied directors and artistic directors actually scaffold their work: finding their niche, planning seasons, choosing collaborators, and mounting their plays in a theater. Chapter 2 demonstrates her subjects’ labor of engaging with scripts and ideas prior to rehearsals. She emphasizes each director’s signature style of analyzing the play, for instance. Further, she expands our grasp of the directorial role by examining how her subjects collaborate with playwrights, play multiple roles besides that of a director, prepare for rehearsals, and communicate with audiences. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on how these directors shape performances, starting from conceptualization of the visual and acoustic, and then moving into the rehearsal room, and, ultimately, the stage. Chapter 3 highlights how the chosen directors envision theatrical worlds visually and acoustically, collaborating with designers. Here, Marty approaches relationships between directing and designing theatre horizontally. Inspired by her subjects, she analyzes spectacle and sound beyond servers of directorial messages, conveying a comprehensive picture of the theatrical process to readers. In Rachel Chavkin’s words, it is a director’s process of “discovering the world with designers and actors” (99).True to the volume’s subtitle, Chapter 4 presents a “conversation on craft,” guided by these leading directors’ invaluable experiences and advice on the rehearsal process. Using quotes, Marty covers the practical process of rehearsal: casting actors, setting the tone for rehearsals, empowering actors, shaping the process, and using research in rehearsals. For instance, Maria Aberg, who is known for “her innovative, feminist productions of Shakespeare and other classics at the Royal Shakespeare Company” (2), introduces points she considers in the casting process when she changes the gender of a character. Readers will find many gems and tips. In the final chapters, Contemporary Women Stage Directors focuses on how each of these experienced directors develop their careers and navigate the US and UK theatre scenes. Chapter 5 considers how the directors sustain their projects, dealing with concerns such as “financial security, community, quality of life, and relationships” (159). Pursuing the theme of work-life balance, Marty places quotes from Leah Gardiner, Kimberly Senior, and Lucy Kerbel together to cover issues such as motherhood, labor and pressure. In particular, Kerbel explains that “the loop of visibility” (190) exposes directors to critics’ attention which sustains their projects. She elaborates on gendered inequality in the field by mentioning how maternity leave easily drops women directors from that loop. If Chapter 5 extensively covers their individual lives and career arcs, Chapter 6 specifically focuses on their diverse experience with systemic challenges tied to their gender, racial and/or ethnic identities in the theatre industry. The 6th chapter analyzes obstacles and disparities in the field through her array of case studies, integrating an intersectional perspective. For instance. Leah Gardiner, Paulette Randall, and KJ Sanchez tell their stories of experiencing misogyny and racism in the field. Importantly, Marty pays attention to how these women directors navigate systemic obstacles. For example, Roxana Silbert and Nadia Fall emphasize that diversity opens up more diversity and brings an alternative gaze to the field, which is dominated by white male directors. Marty concludes her book with the directors’ insight on theatre today and their expectations as working professionals. In the conclusion, Marty summarizes her interview research in two categories: what she did not find and what she did. What is notable here is her picture of a director as a relationship builder. Marty explains that “the director’s role is to build and facilitate relationships , specifically (1) between a play and an audience and (2) among members of the collaborative team” (288). Likewise, Marty, as the director of this book, builds a relationship between these women directors and her contemporary readers. She creates a bridge for these mid-stream women directors —who struggle for their comparatively underrepresented stories and insights to be heard— bringing their voices and methods as accomplished practitioners to readers, both artists and scholars. By providing many substantial examples of brilliant, motivating women stage directors from the US and UK in the early 21st century, this significant study will benefit theatre researchers and our future generation of women (and other) theater directors, artistic directors and, one hopes, producers. References Footnotes About The Author(s) DOHYUN GRACIA SHIN The Graduate Center, CUNY 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 Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202 Twenty-First Century American Playwrights Encounters on Contested Lands and Provocative Eloquence Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jenna Gerdsen Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Jenna Gerdsen By Published on May 23, 2022 Download Article as PDF When I left Hawaiʻi for college on the continent, I was in for quite a shock. As a mixed Asian woman born and raised in Hawaiʻi, I was used to being a part of a dominant majority. When I arrived in Washington, I lost the comforts that came with being a part of a majority and was eager to find an Asian community. I hesitantly joined the Asian American Student Association. Though I had never identified as Asian American, I assumed the group could replicate some of the comforts of home. Yet I did not feel at ease. I felt distant from the other students. My Hawaiian Pidgin and love for Hawaiian plate lunches set me apart. When someone suggested I check out the Hawaiʻi Club, I began to realize that Asianness looked and sounded differently outside of Hawaiʻi. I share this personal anecdote to illustrate that stories have triggered discussions around categorical schemas, representation, and historical fissures between Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. In The Cultural Capital of Asian American Studies: Autonomy and Representation in the University, Mark Chiang asserts Blu’s Hanging, the controversial novel by popular Japanese writer Lois-Ann Yamanaka, challenged fundamental assumptions of Asian American Studies and demanded new theorizations of Asian American cultural politics. [1] At the 1998 Association for Asian American Studies conference, Yamanaka received a fiction award, but a motion to revoke the award was initiated due her stereotypical depictions of Filipinos. The novel demonstrated the dominance of East Asians in Hawaiʻi and the prevalence of an ethnic hierarchy. In Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawaiʻi, Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Okamura assert that East Asians of Hawaiʻi often use “Local,” the pan-ethnic label unique to Hawaiʻi, to build a Pan-Asian nationhood and obscure Native Hawaiian history. [2] In less dramatic fashion, plays by Asian and Hawaiian playwrights of Hawaiʻi have reignited the urgency to reconceptualize Asian Americanness. Eager to assimilate in the continent, I turned to Esther Kim Lee’s A History of Asian American Theatre . Before reading her work, I assumed that theatre of Hawaiʻi would be a part of her study. I learned that merging theatre of Hawaiʻi with Asian American theatre comes with complications, just like my attempts to blend in at student gatherings. Lee made the strategic decision to limit her foundational study to the continent. She stated, In my view the inclusion of Hawaiʻi would necessitate a shift in the paradigm of Asian American theatre history, and the nature of this shift would hinge on whether Asian American theatre is considered as part of the larger Asian diaspora of theatre. Indeed, as Josephine Lee points out, the inclusion of Hawaiʻi in Asian American theatre history would “illuminate the fault lines” in how we, as theatre historians, have imagined Asian American culture. [3] Just as I was surprised that Esther Kim Lee’s study on Asian American theatre excluded theatre of Hawaiʻi, undergraduate students are often disappointed when Asian American theatre classes do not include Pacific Islander theatre. For instructors of Asian American theatre, the question becomes how to represent equitably both Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders without making them a monolith. Pedagogy should follow the recommendations of scholars such as J. Kehaulani Kauanui and Lisa Kahaleole Hall who argue that the label “Asian American Pacific Islander” privileges the experiences of Asian Americans over Pacific Islanders. [4] Despite its use in social justice conversations, “inclusion” in this context is an act of settler colonialism. The absorption of the Hawaiian Islands within the US empire and Americanist scholarship has obscured the identities, cultures, and histories of the various peoples of Hawaiʻi. Due to the illegal overthrow of Queen Lili’uokalani that led to the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands in 1898, Hawaiʻi has long been associated with the United States, been regarded as a strategic military base, and been a profitable appendage to the empire. The Hawaiian Islands have also been an appendage in a scholastic context. Information regarding theatre in Hawaiʻi has historically been included within Asian American theatre. The inclusion of theatre of Hawaiʻi in Asian American theatre demonstrates that the United States has played a large role in how we have come to understand Asianness. In the early 1960s, the label and genre “Asian American” were created as a way to assert that Asians have been essential members of the United States and replace the problematic descriptor of “Oriental,” which reduced Asians to foreign objects. [5] While many Asians of the continent were determined to demonstrate a sense of belonging in the United States, other Asians in Hawaiʻi were determined to demonstrate a sense of alienation from the United States. Plays written by Asians from Hawaiʻi that explore the realities of living in Hawaiʻi should be separate from but in conversation with Asian American theatre. My work is a direct response to Lee, and is also informed by the dissertations of Hawaiʻi-based scholars and theatre practitioners Tammy Haili’ōpua Baker, Sammie Choy, and Stefani Overman-Tsai that call for theatre of Hawaiʻi to be recognized as its own form and examined outside of an Asian Americanist lens. [6] I interviewed Asian and Hawaiian theatre artists and educators born and raised in Hawaiʻi to determine why theatre of Hawaiʻi should be studied separately from Asian American theatre. I concluded that it is debatable whether Hawaiʻi can be considered a part of the larger Asian diaspora considering its indigenous history and cross-racial alliances developed on sugarcane and pineapple plantations. I assert that dramatic literature of Hawaiʻi, particularly the work of Hawaiian-Samoan playwright Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, makes these fissures visible and audible. Her large body of work dramatizes interracial alliances and conflicts of Hawaiʻi. This essay features an excerpt of an interview I conducted with Kneubuhl on July 22, 2019. Our conversation about her work and its categorization demonstrates that the foundations and future of Asian American theatre rest on and are guided by understanding the nuances of Asian and Pacific Islander identities. I use my conversation with Kneubuhl to claim that it is possible and necessary to separate Asian American and Pacific Islander dramaturgies while still keeping them in conversation. Because some of Kneubuhl’s work has represented both Hawaiians and Asian settlers and their alliances and conflicts, her work has been categorized under several labels, including Asian American theatre and Pacific Islander theatre. In our conversation, Kneubuhl revealed that she embraces all of the labels assigned to her work because that allows her to more accurately characterize individual plays. Kneubuhl’s body of work resists exclusive characterization because each play’s themes, setting, and characters vary greatly. With Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in both Hawaiian culture studies and theatre, Kneubuhl bridges Hawai‘i state archives, community theatre, and the Hawaiian Renaissance movement. Kneubuhl’s work has been locally, nationally, and internationally recognized. She won the Hawai‘i Award for Literature, and her plays have been commissioned and performed in Hawai‘i, the continental United States, Asia, and Britain. When Kneubuhl emerged as one of Hawai‘i’s representative playwrights during the 1980s and 90s, she was one of the only Native Hawaiian playwrights active in Hawai‘i’s theatre scene. Today, she continues to represent Native Hawaiians and produces work that teaches Hawaiian history and celebrates Hawaiian culture from a Hawaiian perspective and advocates for Hawaiian sovereignty. Kneubuhl has been a major contributor to the repertoire of Kumu Kahua Theatre, the institutional home of Local theatre. The genre demonstrates how those who identify as Locals, a wide umbrella term unique to Hawai‘i that includes Native Hawaiians and other ethnic immigrant groups who descended from sugarcane and pineapple plantation workers, regard themselves vis-à-vis Hawai‘i’s plantations. Her work is informed and inspired by both the Hawaiian Renaissance movement and the plurality of Local culture. Inspired by those in the Hawaiian community who were reclaiming and reviving Hawaiian culture during the early 1970s, several of Kneubuhl’s plays retell Hawaiian women’s history through a contemporary, retrospective lens. Kneubuhl’s highly regarded historical pageant play January 1893 replays the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and allowed the Honolulu community to revisit a pivotal moment in Hawai‘i’s history. Written, produced, directed, and sponsored by Hawaiian activists and artists, January 1893 represented the mission of the Hawaiian Renaissance to revive Hawaiian history and culture on a state and national level. The play debuted in 1993 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the overthrow. Staged as an elaborate parade, January 1893 is still considered to be one of the most theatrically ambitious nonprofessional productions ever staged in Hawai‘i. January 1893 was performed on and around the grounds of ‘Iolani Palace, the home of the Hawaiian monarchy and the site of Lili’uokalani’s house arrest after the overthrow. As an anniversary event, the production exemplified all that remained after the annexation: ignorance and amnesia around the event, a pan-ethnic solidarity between Hawaiians and other ethnic groups in Hawai‘i, and a desire to reinstall a sovereign Hawaiian monarchy. The production reinforced the bonds between Hawaiians and other ethnic groups formed during the early days of Hawai‘i’s plantations, and rallied people in support of Hawaiian sovereignty. The play is an act of redress that fortifies Hawai‘i’s history as a legitimate, sovereign nation and challenges hegemonic interpretations of Hawai‘i’s history that characterize US imperialism as a positive force that shaped Hawai‘i into a utopic multicultural paradise. [7] Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl was one of the very first people I interviewed. Her words guided my research and offer tremendous insight for instructors and students who are eager to engage with both Asian American and Pacific Islander theatre. JG: How did you find your way to theatre? VNK: The Hawaiian Renaissance. At the time people were really interested in Hawaiian history and culture. We were attracted to the theatre because it allowed us to express who we are and where we came from in different ways. When hula and all kinds of traditional Hawaiian practices made a huge comeback, there were better plays and bigger audiences. Theatre, performance, history, and the street all came together for me. In the ’80s I participated in and wrote some of the early living history theatre in Honolulu. Now that performance type has really taken off in Hawai‘i. There’s all kinds of places and groups that are doing living histories now. When we started, a lot of academic historians were frowning on what we were doing. But the truth was that living history got people interested in Hawaiian history, in their personal history. People in Hawaiʻi need to be more aware of the colonial history. I don’t think enough people know. JG : Can you tell me about your involvement with Kumu Kahua Theatre? VNK: . I was in the right place at the right time. Kumu Kahua was new and I was new. They were hungry for scripts. I invested myself in Kumu Kahua because I really wanted to produce things that were written locally. Kumu Kahua didn’t always produce Local theatre because there just weren’t enough scripts. Sometimes they did Asian American plays that were written by Asian people who aren’t from Hawaiʻi. I was invested in a kind of theatre that was by and for the Local community and didn’t reflect the larger American theatre, popular theatre scene. I was hungry for things that reflected who I am and where I came from. I am still supportive of and invested in giving voice to our island stories or things that are relevant to our island communities. Now, there’s a whole bunch of young people and a much larger community that is invested in Local theatre. Other theatres are now just starting to do productions that have Local themes and are looking for really good locally written plays. There’s so many more people interested in our theatre. It is really rewarding to see that. JG : What would you call what you write? Would you call that Local theatre or Hawaiian theatre? VNK: People used to call my work Asian American theatre because when I started writing there was no Pacific Island theatre. I was really conflicted about that. You want people to read your plays and that was all that mattered to me. I wanted my plays out there. Some of my plays could be called Hawaiian theatre, but some are not. I’ve never quibbled over labels. I want the freedom to write whatever really touches and interests me and whatever I feel passionate about. I like to think of myself as a Pacific Island writer. Some of my plays could be categorized as Hawaiian theatre and some of them could be Local theatre and some could be neither. JG : I’ve seen your plays in anthologies by women of color. But I’ve also seen them in postcolonial anthologies. The label I’ve seen most often is either Asian American or Hawaiian. VNK : I think that people in academia need categories. Labels make it easier for them to teach. But as a writer, you’re not sitting at home thinking, “Am I a Hawaiian writer or am I a Local writer?” You’re just writing. You’re writing what comes into your head. And so I just kind of leave the labels to other people. I’ll just write the plays and they decide what they are. JG : How would you define Local theatre? VNK : That’s hard because Local theatre includes Hawaiian theatre, but Hawaiian theatre doesn’t necessarily include Local theatre. I guess you could say Hawaiian theatre is anything that has Hawaiian characters or Hawaiian issues as its main theme. Local theatre includes Asian and Asian American theatre. But out of all the labels out there, I like Pacific Island theatre the most because it’s so inclusive. Labels are hard because there’s always something left out and there’s always a gray area. It is really tricky because all these questions have come up for me for a long time. And so what I’m trying to do is not necessarily make hard and fast boundaries between things because that’s just impossible. JG: So would you say there are multiple, overlapping genres at play here? VNK: Yeah. The Local, Hawaiian, and Western. They overlap. They are not really separate from each other. I do think that there are certain kinds of colonial undertones and attitudes and certain dynamics that play out between the three. Colonialism permeated the arts in Hawaiʻi. When I was first involved with Kumu Kahua, I was just starting out in theatre. I remember I was at a party and I was talking to this woman. I said I was a theatre major, and she goes, “Oh, have you been in plays?” I said, “I’ve been in a few Kumu Kahua plays.” She looked at me and she said, “No, I mean, a real play.” Theatre in Hawaiʻi is something really special. But the problem is people have a certain idea of what Hawaiʻi is. I don’t think our island theatre really fits into that. [8] When we look at Hawaiʻi, particularly its contemporary theatre scene, we see insightful tensions that arise from the distinct yet overlapping categorical schemas of “Asian American,” “Asian,” “Pacific Islander,” “Local,” and “Hawaiian.” Kneubuhl’s remarks echo J. Kehaulani Kauanui’s essay “Asian American Studies and the ‘Pacific question’” that calls upon Asian American Studies to actively engage Indigenous and Pacific Islander Studies rather than passively absorb Hawaiian and Pacific Islander history and culture into Asian American culture. [9] Kneubuhl’s embrace of the label “Pacific writer” signifies the ongoing transpacific turn of Asian American Studies and a way to recognize holistically the many voices that make up Asian and Pacific diasporas. Decentering the United States highlights the inherent liminality and multidimensionality of Asian identities and cultures that exist across the Pacific. A transpacific, rather than a US-centric approach, can help us understand how theatre of Hawaiʻi and Asian American theatre are related but distinct from each other. Transpacific Studies, which draws from Asian American Studies, Asian Studies, Indigenous Studies, Pacific Island Studies, and American Studies, illuminates the flow in peoples, cultures, capital, ideas, and labor across the Pacific. [10] Theatre of Hawaiʻi and Asian American theatre are distinct representations of the people, cultures, and histories of the Pacific that directly inform each other and provide a model on how the field of Asian American Studies can produce new theorizations on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Kneubuhl’s work is a model for how to create equitable representation out of tremendous cultural plurality. References Footnotes [1] Mark Chiang, The Cultural Capital of Asian American Studies: Autonomy and Representation in the University (New York: New York University Press, 2009). [2] Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura, eds. Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008). [3] Esther Kim Lee, A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3. [4] Lisa Kahaleole Hall, “Navigating Our Own ‘Sea of Islands’: Remapping a Theoretical Space for Hawaiian Women and Indigenous Feminism,” Wicazo Sa Review 24 no. 2 (2009): 15–38; Kauanui, J. Kehaulani, “Where are Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders in Higher Education?” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education , 7 September 2008. [5] Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989). [6] Tammy Haili’ōpua Baker, “The Development and Function of Hana Keaka (Hawaiian Medium Theatre): A Tool for Empowering the Kānaka Maoli Consciousness” (Dissertation, University of Waikato, 2019); Sammie L. Choy, “Staging Identity: The Intercultural Theater of Hawai‘i” (Dissertation, University of Hawai‘i, 2016); Stefani Overman-Tsai, “Localizing the Islands: Theaters of Place and Culture in Hawaii’s Drama” (Dissertation, University of Hawai‘i, 2015). [7] Craig Howes, “Introduction,” in Hawai’i Nei: Island Plays (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002); Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, January 1893 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i at Manoa Press, 1993). [8] Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, interview by Jenna Gerdsen, June 2019. [9] J. Kehaulani Kauanui, “Asian American Studies and the ‘Pacific question,’” in Asian American Studies After Critical Mass , ed. Kent A. Ono (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 121-143. [10] Janet Hoskins and Viet Thanh Nguyen, Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014). About The Author(s) Jenna Gerdsen is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the School of Theatre at Florida State University. She is an emerging scholar whose work examines the racial formation of contemporary theatre of Hawai‘i and investigates how settler colonialism and immigration shape this theatre tradition vis-à-vis Indigenous and Asian American cultural production. Her research was featured in the curated panel “New Directions in Theatre and Performance” at the 2021 American Society for Theatre Research conference. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jordan Schildcrout 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 Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Jordan Schildcrout By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF I consider it a sign of the vibrancy of queer theatre scholarship that publications over the past few years contain a greater variety of subjects, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives than ever before. I would hope for no less from a field that celebrates transgression, categorical slippage, intersectionality, and the inability to follow a single “straight and narrow” path. At the most recent ATHE Conference , I attended a panel where scholars—many of them involved in the creation of the LGBTQ Focus Group 20 years earlier—spoke about the field’s early years, when pursing queer theatre scholarship could endanger one’s career and reputation. Since the emergence of seminal works such as “We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians” (1987) by Kaier Curtin and The Feminist Spectator as Critic (1988) by Jill Dolan, much has changed for LGBTQ people in America. Even though such work now has a more esteemed position in the academy, new queer theatre scholarship at its best continues to be bold—and maybe even a little dangerous. I still remember the thrill of being a college student and, on a trip to New York City, purchasing Curtin’s book on “the emergence of lesbians and gay men on the American stage” from a gay bookstore. Along with books like John Clum’s Acting Gay (1992), it allowed me to understand a history of the representation of my own cultural identity. Later, as a graduate student, I acquired theoretical frameworks for comprehending various relationships between gender, sexuality, performance, and society from books by scholars like Dolan , Sue-Ellen Case , Judith Butler , and Peggy Phelan . I remain drawn to scholarship that creates insightful readings of plays and performances, grounded in historical context and activated by original theoretical perspectives. So my bookshelf has been happily full of late, with a number of excellent volumes published over the past five years that enrich the field of queer theatre and performance scholarship. One key goal continues to be the preservation and illumination of what might be deemed the heyday of queer theatre from the 1960s through the 1980s. Kate Davy’s Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers (2011) is an excellent historical analysis of the seminal dyke theatre, the WOW Café, and it now has the perfect companion in the recently released Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Café Theater , edited by Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jill Dolan. Robert Schanke, whose previous books include excellent anthologies of queer theatre history co-edited with Kim Marra, also celebrates the life and work of a pioneer in Queer Theatre and the Legacy of Cal Yeomans (2011). The revolutionary fervor of that era can feel distant as LGBTQ cultural and political goals seem to move toward the mainstream and the “normal.” In opposition to that trend, Sara Warner’s Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure (2012) focuses on anti-normative plays and performances, celebrating the gleefully subversive. The interrogation of homonormativity, which informs my my own study of “ negative representations ,” is a major strain in queer theatre scholarship, evident most recently in Jacob Juntunen’s Mainstream AIDS Theatre, the Media, and Gay Civil Rights: Making the Radical Palatable (2016). While anti-normativity leads some queer scholars to look primarily at alternative systems of theatrical production, others dive into the mainstream, offering queer readings of popular culture. Broadway plays and musicals have been rich subjects for scholars like D.A. Miller , David Savran , and David Roman , and now Stacy Wolf has made a significant addition to the field with Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (2011). Brian Eugenio Herrera, in Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (2015), brings a critically astute and refreshingly queer perspective to his examination of mainstream cultural representations. José Esteban Muñoz, whose passing was a great loss to our community, helped bring greater interdisciplinarity and intersectionality to performance scholarship . It’s heartening that these goals are pursued by an increasing number of scholars, including Ramón Rivera-Servera, author of Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics (2012) and co-editor with E. Patrick Johnson of important contributions to black and Latino/a queer performance scholarship: solo/black/woman: scripts, interviews, and essays (2013) and the forthcoming Blacktino Queer Performance (2016). I’m also a fan of James Wilson’s Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies (2011), an impressively researched look at queer performance in the Harlem Renaissance, as well as Marlon M. Bailey’s Butch Queens in Pumps (2013), an ethnography based on Bailey’s own experiences with contemporary African-American ballroom culture in Detroit. If recent journal articles and conference presentations are any indication, then theatre and performance scholarship is trending toward a firmer commitment to exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and other identities. As we cultivate greater diversity in the systems that produce theatre and performance—and in the systems that produce theatre and performance scholars—I look forward to the publication of more books that represent a wide range of perspectives on a variety of different kinds of queer performance, particularly those focusing on trans* artists and representations. With all these exciting books published over the past five years, perhaps the most notable trend is the changing position of books in our culture. The gay bookstore where I bought that copy of “We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians” ? It closed years ago . The Internet has now become a dynamic site for those writing about queer theatre and performance, potentially engaging with a broader and more diverse readership. I enjoy both new and old media and believe they can intersect in productive ways, which is why I’ve bookmarked Jill Dolan’s blog and have a copy of the published collection of her blog articles, The Feminist Spectator in Action (2013), on my shelf. Now that the Journal of American Drama and Theatre has “gone electric,” I’m looking forward to having another online source for articles and book reviews on queer theatre scholarship. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Jordan Schildcrout is an Associate Professor of Theatre & Performance at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (University of Michigan Press). 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 American Tragedian Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Performing Anti-slavery The Captive Stage Musical Theatre Studies Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Murder Most Queer New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy “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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jordan Schildcrout Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 1 Visit Journal Homepage Legitimate: Jerry Douglas's Tubstrip and the Erotic Theatre of Gay Liberation Jordan Schildcrout By Published on December 11, 2017 Download Article as PDF From 1969 to 1974, after the premiere of Mart Crowley’s landmark gay play The Boys in the Band (1968) and before the establishment of an organized gay theatre movement with companies such as Doric Wilson’s TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), there flourished a subgenre of plays that can best be described as gay erotic theatre. While stopping short of performing sex acts on stage, these plays featured copious nudity, erotic situations, and forthright depictions of gay desire. In the early years of gay liberation, such plays pushed at the boundaries between the “legitimate” theatre and pornography, and in the process created the most exuberant and affirming depictions of same-sex sexuality heretofore seen in the American theatre. Some of these works were extremely popular with gay audiences, but almost all were dismissed by mainstream critics, never published, and rarely revived. The most widely seen of these plays was Tubstrip (1973), written and directed by Jerry Douglas, whose career in the early 1970s was situated squarely at the intersection of legitimate theatre and pornography. An analysis of Tubstrip and its groundbreaking production history can illuminate an important but often overlooked chapter in the development of gay theatre in America. Tubstrip (which can be read “tub strip” or “tubs trip”) is a risqué farce set in a gay bathhouse, written by “A. J. Kronengold” and directed by “Doug Richards,” both pseudonyms for a single person: Jerry Douglas, a graduate of the Yale School of Drama who later became a popular and award-winning director of pornographic films. Infused with a post-Stonewall sense of gay identity and sexuality, the play ran for 140 performances off-Broadway in 1973, then toured to eight cities over nine months, and opened on Broadway for a five-week run in 1974. By the producer’s own estimate, Tubstrip played approximately 500 performances to an audience of 50,000. This article argues that this remarkably successful play is emblematic of a significant moment in gay culture, when the fall of stage censorship and the rise of the sexual revolution and gay liberation created an unprecedented surge of gay erotic theatre, beginning with Gus Weill’s Geese (1969) and David Gaard’s And Puppy Dog Tails (1969), and reaching its pinnacle with Jerry Douglas’s bathhouse comedy. [1] During the early years of gay liberation, other forms of queer theatre included elements of gay eroticism: Charles Ludlam’s Bluebeard (1970) and Andy Warhol’s Pork (1971) reveled in carnivalesque excess and carried the critical imprimatur of hip theatrical art, and British imports such as Butley (1972) and Find Your Way Home (1973) depicted gay relationships with the bleakness seemingly expected in “serious drama” of the era. In contrast, gay erotic theatre often appropriated light middlebrow genres, such as romantic comedy and farce, to create fantasies of same-sex romance and sexuality. To varying degrees, Tubstrip and its ilk imagined the possibility of a happy homosexual and a healthy sexuality based on mutual desire, liberated from the guilt and shame of the closet. Critics of these plays, however, often saw only lewdness and exploitative sensationalism, which, they argued, did not belong in the legitimate theatre. The plays of gay erotic theatre may have appealed primarily to gay men who aspired to see their identities and desires, long closeted, finally reflected and affirmed in the culture. Audiences, however, were not exclusively gay, and the battles fought over sexuality and legitimacy in the theatre had repercussions beyond this subculture of gay men who, while marginalized, had a degree of cultural and economic power denied to women and other minority groups. An examination of the “homosexploitation” plays of gay erotic theatre can further illuminate the ethos of the bourgeoning gay sexual culture, providing an opportunity not just to indulge in nostalgia for the liberation era, but to reflect on how our experiences and fantasies of sex and romance are constructed in our own cultural moment. Tubstrip and other “sex positive” plays of gay erotic theatre invite the audience to find pleasure in theatrical depictions of sexual liberation, which is itself an act of liberation. Frank Queerism: The Intersection of Gay Theatre and Pornography The 1960s witnessed the emergence of what we now call “gay theater,” with gay theatre artists—informed by a contemporary understanding of gay cultural identity—creating representations of gay lives, often (but not exclusively) for an audience presumed to be gay. Most historians trace the genre to the seminal work of off-off-Broadway playwrights like Robert Patrick, Doric Wilson, and Lanford Wilson at the Caffe Cino, and then recognize the crossover commercial success of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (1968) as a crucial turning point. While the plays of gay erotic theatre must be understood in relation to these previous gay plays, broader changes in gay sexual culture also influenced their production and reception. Gay erotic theatre thrived for many of the same reasons as the pornographic cinema of the era, as described by historian Whitney Strub: A confluence of forces, including gay activism and its push for increased visibility, the rapidly diminishing scope of obscenity laws (historically disproportionately aimed at queer expression), the market demands of a gay consumer base, and the broader spirit of sexual revolution, all worked in tandem to open a new space for gay erotic expression. [2] While many regarded pornography as both a cause and symptom of the urban decay of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Strub argues that the supposed “decline” of the city provided increased freedom for queer people, who were now less subject to such surveillance and control. . . . As the straight, white middle class fled for suburbs specifically designed for procreative heterosexual families, urban opportunities beckoned for gay communities. [3] The 1969 Stonewall Riots helped to create a more visible political movement for LGBT people at the same time that changes in censorship laws created opportunities for a more visible sexual culture, both gay and straight, on both stage and screen. However, as Elizabeth Wollman notes, “Many members of the commercial theatre industry worried” that sexually explicit theatre productions like Oh! Calcutta! (1969) and Che! (1969) “were not terribly distinct from the live sex shows and pornographic films that had begun to proliferate in New York City.” [4] Scholars such as Thomas Waugh have discussed the history of post-World War II gay pornographic films as a progression from beefcake models posing in pouches to softcore gay erotica with full nudity to hardcore narrative feature films with performers engaging in sex acts. [5] The emergence of hardcore cinema in the early 1970s precipitated the trend of “porno chic,” which Jennifer C. Nash describes as the “mainstreaming” of pornography, with “elaborately plotted, narrative-driven feature-length films that consciously effaced the boundary between the pornographic and the mainstream,” playing in “regular” movie theatres, reviewed by mainstream critics, and attended by millions of men and women. [6] One of the earliest entries in this phenomenon was the feature length hardcore gay film Boys in the Sand (1971), directed by Wakefield Poole, a former Broadway dancer. The film became an unprecedented commercial success and made a star out of blond and handsome Casey Donovan. [7] While occasionally intersecting with porno chic, the gay erotic theatre produced between 1969 and 1974 is most comparable to softcore erotica, which did not depict explicit sex acts. Richard Dyer, writing in 1985, endeavored to distinguish between pornography and erotica for gay men, although these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, and at other times have simply marked cultural privilege, with “erotica” being what Ellen Willis called a euphemism for “classy porn.” [8] Dyer creates a distinction by asserting that pornography “is supposed to have an effect that is registered in the spectator’s body,” and this goal dictates the structural form of the genre, since “the desire that drives the porn narrative forward is the desire to come, to have an orgasm.” Pornography, then, is characterized by the way in which its form follows its presumed function, to stimulate not just arousal but physical orgasm. Of course, it’s impossible to determine exactly how a work of art functions in different circumstances with different audiences, but Dyer’s point about narrative structure still holds: the dramatic narratives of gay erotic theatre, while they might arouse, are not structured to bring the audience to orgasm. Instead, erotic theatre places emphasis on the psychological, social, and aesthetic aspects of sex. Nevertheless, productions that offered gay eroticism for a paying audience were often accused of pornographic “gaysploitation.” [9] In a 1977 article titled “Theatre: Gays in the Marketplace vs. Gays for Themselves,” Don Shewey criticized plays, often by straight playwrights, that “exploit gay characters and gay themes for sensationalism or cheap comedy” like Norman Is That You? (1970) and Steambath (1970). [10] But he recognized that this sort of exploitation was different from what he called “semiporno gay celebrations like David Gaard’s And Puppy Dog Tails , A. J. Kronengold’s Tubstrip , and Gus Weill’s Geese ,” which he saw as emerging from “the nascent gay activist movement and an increasingly public gay populace.” [11] Jerry Douglas recalls that the first play he saw containing nudity and homosexuality was Geese by Gus Weill, produced at the Players Theatre in January 1969. [12] Consisting of two one-act plays—the first with a male couple, the second with a female couple— Geese broke new ground in the depiction of sexuality, with one outraged critic proclaiming the plays to be “shockers even by today’s permissive standards. The dialog is raw and unfettered, and there is emphasis on nudity, including homosexual and lesbian lovemaking.” [13] Both plays juxtapose the newfound pure love of a young same-sex couple with the bitter relationships and hypocritical sexual mores of their parents’ generation. [14] Critics accused Geese of engaging in “fast-buck-ism” and “frank queerism,” [15] risking “the reinstitution of stage censorship in New York,” [16] and performing “a faggot propaganda piece” [17] for an audience of “prurient peeping Toms” [18] and “flagrant pederasts.” [19] Gay erotic theatre aggravated the anxiety, always present in the professional theatre, over whether theatre aspires to the “higher values” of art or functions as a commercial product in a marketplace. Were plays such as Geese a) sincerely pursuing the cause of sexual liberation or b) offering cheap thrills in hopes of making a profit? The answer, of course, often seemed to be c) both. Wollman asserts that for every radical committed to using stage nudity toward social change, there were two or three entrepreneurs who were just as interested in the money that could be made by hiring young, good-looking people to show a little skin. . . . Most ended up with feet in both camps. [20] For example, the program bio of one of the actors in Geese states, with a combination of conviction and nonchalance, “Nudity or homosexuality, or whatever, is a product of life and it’s about time it got on the stage.” [21] Not all theatre artists shared this perspective, as evidenced by an actor’s departure from Robert M. Lane’s Foreplay (1970), which prompted the Variety front-page headline, “Won’t Depict A Nude Homo, Actor Quits.” [22] When industry papers featured banner headlines such as “NY LEGIT GOING SEX-HAPPY” and “NUDITY SELLS TIX?” in 1969, [23] the underlying consternation was the difficulty of objectively distinguishing between theatrical art and exploitative sensationalism in plays as varied as Marat/Sade , The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie , Fortune and Men’s Eyes , Oh! Calcutta! , Paradise Now , Scuba Duba , and Geese . As British critic John Elsom argued in 1974, “One man’s decadence is another man’s sexual enlightenment.” [24] Despite negative reviews, Geese was commercially successful, playing off-Broadway for 336 performances through November 1969 (and thus during the Stonewall Riots in June), with subsequent productions in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Geese was inevitably mentioned as a point of comparison when David Gaard’s play And Puppy Dog Tails opened off-Broadway in September 1969. In this domestic comedy, John lives with his lover, a Southerner named Carey-Lee, but his head is turned by a visit from his straight friend Bud, a Navy man with whom he “fooled around” in his adolescence. [25] Forced to choose between the closeted sexuality of his macho buddy and a loving gay relationship with Carey-Lee, John chooses the latter. Most critics derided the play as nothing more than a poor excuse to get “a glimpse of male musculature and—briefly—male genitals” [26] and “a crudely devised apology for the right to be gay.” [27] Newsday worried that The Boys in the Band had created “an epidemic” of imitators, [28] while Variety registered homophobic horror over “a rising tide of limpwrist-oriented plays.” [29] Nevertheless, and despite not liking the play, Clive Barnes of the New York Times acknowledged that And Puppy Dog Tails was doing something new, which was reflected in the review’s slightly ironic subheader: “Homosexuals Depicted As Happy, A Novelty.” He wrote, “While we have had scenes before of homosexual sex and even declarations of homosexual love, this is the first play in my experience to show demonstrations of homosexual affection.” [30] He then parenthetically confesses that he found such displays of affection “embarrassing” because of his own “hang-ups.” But the necessity of such displays is precisely the point of And Puppy Dog Tails . Indeed, the play is not primarily concerned with the supposed battle between hetero and homo, as certain critics thought, but in the divide between a homosexual culture that eroticizes straightness as a masculine ideal and a gay culture that valorizes a romantic relationship based on mutual desire. Just as John does not need a straight lover, perhaps Gaard’s play did not need the approval of straight critics. And Puppy Dog Tails recouped its cost during previews and ran for 141 performances. Geese and And Puppy Dog Tails set the stage for Jerry Douglas’s entrance into the production of gay erotic theatre. Douglas studied playwriting and directing at the Yale School of Drama before moving to New York in 1960, and he spent the decade writing off-Broadway musicals, directing plays, and serving as the casting director for the Coconut Grove Playhouse. In 1970, he had his first experience directing a play containing nudity, Gerry Raad’s Circle in the Water , which dealt with repressed homosexuality and sadism amongst cadets in a military academy. Later that same year, he directed his own play Score , an example of “bisexual chic” avant la lettre , about a sophisticated married couple who compete with each other in seduction, battling for the greatest number of conquests—including those with partners of the same sex. [31] The production, which featured Sylvester Stallone in a supporting role, was dismissed as “one of the rash of sexploitation shows which have followed the easing of stage restrictions here” [32] and closed after 23 performances. [33] Jerry Douglas’s next endeavor was writing and directing the hardcore feature film The Back Row (1973), starring Casey Donovan as a New Yorker who attracts the attention of George Payne, a sexual neophyte from Wyoming who has just arrived at Port Authority. The film shows Payne learning “how to be gay,” including a meta-cinematic scene in which Payne, having followed Donovan into an adult movie theatre, watches the action on screen and imagines himself and Donovan taking the place of the actors. The scene encapsulates the ethos behind much of Douglas’s work: pornography has a pedagogical function, instructing gay men on how to fulfill their desires, not just as a technical matter of physical positions, but by diminishing the inhibitions created by a homophobic society and liberating their erotic imaginations. Douglas used the pseudonym “Doug Richards” for The Back Row , hoping to keep his career in porn separate from his legitimate theatre career, but the film became one of his most critically acclaimed and commercially successful creations. Jeffrey Escoffier lists The Back Row , which was filmed on location in New York City, as the first of the “homorealist” porn films, which “created a synthesis of a documentary-like view (in this case focusing on the gay sexual subculture) and the more psychopolitical themes of sexual liberation,” using “actual locations where public sex took place.” [34] Douglas’s next work continued his exploration of the gay subculture in one of the emblematic locales of sexual liberation: the bathhouse. The Boys in the Baths: Sexual Exuberance and Romantic Longing in Tubstrip Jerry Douglas recalls that producer Ken Gaston approached him with the initial idea for Tubstrip : “I want you to write a play about the baths, and I want it to be a love story.” Gay bathhouses like New York’s Continental and Everard Baths—colloquially knows as “the tubs”—occupied a unique position in urban gay life, which many remember as a sexual utopia. [35] In the documentary Gay Sex in the ’70s , activist and author Arnie Kantrowitz recalls: You could do everything. . . . You could eat in the restaurant, you could go swimming in the pool, you could have a massage—to orgasm if you preferred, you could dance on their dance floor, and you could have more sex than most people would consider having in a year. [36] But Kantrowitz also emphasizes that “Even during the days of the most advanced and reckless promiscuity, it was still a search for someone,” and he met his long-term romantic partner at the baths. This combination of sexual exuberance and romantic longing informs both the dramaturgy and ethos of Tubstrip . The play takes place in the central lounge of a popular New York City bathhouse, but the establishment is sparsely attended this particular Tuesday evening because “there isn’t a self-respecting faggot in this city who isn’t home watching the Academy Awards” (16). [37] Although it will eventually crescendo into the frenzy of farce, Tubstrip begins with a pensive silence, as the young attendant Brian, the play’s main character, sits alone in a suspended bamboo cage chair “in a fetal position. . . his thoughts a thousand miles away” (2)—an image used in much of the publicity for the show [Figure 1]. The opening tableau hints at the journey to come, with Brian leaving the nest of his egg-shaped chair and metaphorically taking flight—but toward what? Brian’s appearance is contrasted with the entrance of a patron named Darryl, emerging naked from the pool (installed below stage level, in the orchestra pit), splashing the audience in the front row. Before the first word is spoken, Douglas’s staging juxtaposes above and below, air and water, the mind and the body, the romantic and the erotic, and (as Darryl tries to gain Brian’s attention by arranging himself in sexually provocative poses) the desired and the desiring. Figure 1. Poster for 1973 off-Broadway production of Tubstrip at the Players Theatre, featuring Larry Gilman as Brian. Used with permission of Jerry Douglas, from his personal collection. Each of Tubstrip ’s nine characters comes to this bathhouse with his individual sexual and romantic desires, and the play culminates in the formation of different kinds of relationships. The denizens include Richie, a romantic and naïve young man who is searching for his lover Darryl, who has surreptitiously come to the baths in search of sexual variety; Andy, a witty black queen infatuated with Brian; Tony, a sadist, and his lover Kevin, a masochist; Dusty, a sweet-natured hustler; Wally, a middle-aged skin-flick mogul searching for new talent; and Bob, a Viet Nam veteran who knew Brian in high school. The stage is filled with young and attractive actors, almost all of whom, at one point or another, will be naked. Even 59-year-old Wally, although never naked, was actually played by a 26-year-old actor (Jake Everett) who shaved his hair and constructed a “fat suit” for the role. The play presents a fantasy version of a bathhouse; yet, even as it celebrates sexual liberation, Tubstrip dramatizes many of the tensions evident in the emerging gay sexual culture, between sex and romance, promiscuity and monogamy, sadomasochism and consent, competition and community. As Kevin Winkler has noted, the bathhouse was a theatrical space, not just for professional entertainers like Bette Midler, who famously got her start performing at the Continental Baths, but for the men cruising and engaging in sex. [I]t was always showtime. You just had to find your follow spot, be it in the steam room, the showers, the orgy room, or take your act on the road through the winding hallways. If your act flopped once, you could try it out again right down the hall, altering a bit of business, tightening up your dialogue (or maybe you preferred pantomime), and experimenting with a different characterization. [38] Much of the comedy of Tubstrip comes from an awareness of the theatricality involved both in the presentation of self and the pursuit of sexual fantasy at the baths. The bathhouse, like the playhouse, is a location in which people might wear masks and play roles, but it is also ultimately a place where truths are revealed, and by the end of Tubstrip , many of the characters see each other—and themselves—with greater honesty and clarity. Over the course of its twenty-one months of performances, advertisements for Tubstrip proclaimed that it was “Better Than a Trip to the Baths” (indicating erotic pleasure) and “Better Than The Boys in the Band ” (indicating theatrical legitimacy). The latter boast hints at the extent to which early gay liberation theatre artists were performing in the shadow of Mart Crowley’s hit play—and also reacting against it. [39] The Boys in the Band presented an ensemble of gay characters—including the bitter host Michael, the “fairy” Emory, the token African American Bernard, and the hustler known only as Cowboy—gathered for a birthday party that implodes in a swirl of alcohol, verbal attacks, and manipulative games. In Act II, characters play a game in which they phone their high school crushes and relive their rejection, while Alan, the play’s supposed straight man, denies his homosexuality and flees the party. As J. Todd Ormsbee observes, “The target of Michael’s party game is the failure of gay love, its pain and humiliation, perhaps its impossibility.” [40] The central plot of Douglas’s Tubstrip reverses this dynamic. We learn that Brian, as a gawky high school freshman, had a crush on the macho heterosexual athlete Bob. While he was at war, Bob received letters from Brian, which piqued his sexual interest in a kid he barely remembered. Now Bob, entering the bathhouse in full Green Beret uniform, has come searching for Brian, and he is impressed to find that the “short, skinny, uncoordinated” freshman (89) has grown into a desirable young man. The act one curtain falls on Bob passionately kissing Brian, which Douglas recalls was “daring” for the time. Tubstrip would seem to enact a homosexual wish fulfillment: the handsome straight prince desires the gay boy who was once an ugly duckling. Imagine how different Crowley’s play would be if “nelly” Emory’s high school crush confessed that he desired him in return. But Douglas goes a step further: once Brian learns that Bob is married, closeted, and won’t commit to more than a secret weekend fling with him, he rejects Bob—and also quits his job at the bathhouse. Instead, Brian leaves with the monogamously inclined Richie, who has just broken up with his lover. Throughout the play, the flirtation between Brian and Richie has been boyish and playful, as opposed to a “heavy cruise,” most evident in their second act water fight in the pool. Rather than consummating an affair with the “stud” of his adolescent fantasies, Brian chooses the naïve and sincere young man who perhaps reminds him of himself as that awkward, yearning freshman. The contrast between physical pleasures and emotional fulfillment was also evident in the casting of the roles of Bob and Richie, with Brian rejecting the character often played by porn stars (such as Jim Cassidy) in favor of the character played by actors (such as Tom Van Stitzel) who won critical praise for giving nuanced performances. Hinting at a life of domestic happiness, Brian and Richie discuss cooking breakfast for each other as they head out into the sunrise. The bathhouse functions in a manner similar to the Shakespearean forest where erotic desire is unleashed and lovers, liberated from social restraints, can meet their proper match. But in order to maintain that romance, the lovers must then leave the forest behind and return to the “civilized” world. (Wally, as the play’s most erudite character, makes this connection, ironically extoling the “midsummer madness” that exists at the baths all year round.) The central plot of Brian and Richie valorizes traditional notions of romantic fidelity, which necessitates leaving the bathhouse, but Tubstrip does not condemn characters who remain and seek what we might now call a “no strings attached” hook-up. Bob and Darryl, as the lovers rejected by Brian and Richie, respectively, are quite clear about their longing for purely sexual adventure and variety, and the play ends with them following each other into the steam room. They, too, can have their desires fulfilled at the bathhouse, and the play does not disparage them for doing so. The character most pulled by the tension between sexual exuberance and romantic longing is Andy, described by critics as “a chatty flirt” and “a black queen” who has some of the play’s best comic lines. Contemporaneous accounts of the baths illustrate the ethnic diversity of the patrons, but Andy is the sole person of color on stage, potentially putting him in the same tokenistic position as Bernard in The Boys in the Band . At the start of the play, Andy endures a couple of racist zingers from his friend Wally, but in contrast to The Boys in the Band , in which the racial disparagement of Bernard grows uglier as the play goes on, Tubstrip shows Andy and Wally moving toward deeper friendship and mutual support. While given to incisive “reads” and witty rejoinders, Andy is not a neutered commentator, but very much part of the sexual action of the bathhouse. His romantic pursuit of Brian and his flirtations with other patrons are often played for comedy, but they are also rooted in his genuine need for affirmation in a community that too often leaves gay black men out of its romantic and erotic fantasies. Most memorably, when Andy feels he is not getting enough attention, he emerges wearing an enormous Afro wig. According to Douglas, Walter Holiday, the actor who played Andy in every performance of Tubstrip , contributed a great deal to the creation of his character, including this visual assertion of Black Power and Angela Davis fabulousness. Andy is dejected when he does not end up with Brian at the end of the play, but his friend Wally assures him that someday he, too, will find love. In a final gesture of bold self-assertion, Andy removes his towel and nakedly strides into the steam room once again. The possibility of having both sexual variety and romantic fulfillment is realized in the sadomasochistic couple of Tony and Kevin, who also provide some of the play’s most sexually explicit sequences. Douglas recalls that one of the greatest laughs of the evening came when Tony, entering in conservative business attire, whips off his Brooks Brothers suit in one swift flourish to reveal the leather harness underneath. Tony then proceeds to unpack his attaché case, which contains a number of increasingly outrageous sex toys, from cock rings and handcuffs to chocolate syrup and bananas. His “pretty-boy” lover, Kevin, soon joins him, and the script shows them as an affectionate and caring couple who enjoy playing the roles of an abusive master and humiliated slave. In this, the play participates in the debate among early gay liberationists over the psychological and political ramifications of S&M, siding with Lyn Rosen’s defense of sadomasochism: Too may people confuse S&M with bad relationships in which one person dominates another or treats another badly. S&M is a sexual act in which both partners treat each other well. [41] Many of the play’s characters do not understand this distinction and show concern over the abuse Tony heaps on Kevin, including handcuffing him naked and face down on the pool table. Good-hearted Richie attempts to “rescue” him from this humiliation, but is taken aback when Kevin exclaims, “Look, prick, you do your thing, let me do mine. Now, fuck off ” (76). Later, when Kevin easily slips out of his predicament without a key, Richie is upset to learn that the cuffs weren’t actually locked. Kevin explains, as though it should be obvious, “Suppose there was a fire—” (82). [42] The joke points to Douglas’s metatheatrical understanding of S&M as a sexual act , complete with its own costumes, props, lines (“Yes, sir !”) and roles, enacted with the consent of all the performers. Yet Tubstrip also pushes at the limits of sadomasochism when the couple involves a non-consenting participant, the hustler Dusty. Unlike the sex worker known only as “Cowboy” in The Boys in the Band , Dusty has a name and his own desires, and the audience even learns a bit about his sexual journey. [43] When Wally, one of his clients, spots him in the bathhouse and snarkily berates him for previously passing himself off as straight, Dusty replies with simple sincerity, “I never lied to you. Things change” (45), indicating his growth into gay self-acceptance. [44] He initially agrees to a threesome with Tony and Kevin, but when Tony tries to pierce Dusty’s nipple without his consent, a violent fight and then a chase through the bathhouse ensues. While played for farce, this situation also involves a touch of Ortonesque menace, which only abates when Brian, in his authoritative role as bathhouse attendant, puts a stop to the fight and banishes Tony and Kevin from the premises. In a further show of ambivalence about Tony’s sadism, the play reveals him to be Wally’s psychoanalyst, a member of a profession that, in its role of arbiter of “sanity” and “normalcy,” had a history of causing great harm to homosexuals. Nevertheless, the play ultimately shows Dusty to be unharmed, and Tony and Kevin return to their affectionate and mutually supportive romantic relationship. At the age of 59, Wally is older than any character in The Boys in the Band , a play that paints a grim picture of gay men clinging to youth. Wally takes a more philosophical perspective on his status as “dirty old man,” since, as he explains, “there’s always someone a little older, a little dirtier” (79). Wally is comic because of his grand duchess affectations, and the play creates some farcical bits out of the other characters avoiding Wally sexually, such as when four men come running out of the steam room as soon as Wally goes in (51). One way that Wally deals with this rejection is by retreating into his profession as a pornographer, imagining the world as if it were a movie, commenting on the action around him by proclaiming, “It’ll make a gorgeous film” (28). When he learns that Brian’s high school crush has come to find him, Wally becomes effusive with purple prose: “Childhood Sweethearts—doing it with jock straps and football helmets! Separated by cruel fate—reunited by a twist of circumstance! Love conquers all!” (63). He’s excited by watching and creating fantasies, and his role as voyeur puts him in the same position as the audience. Wally is not “matched” with anyone at the end of the play, but he is not alone, in part because he is reunited with Veronica, his cat who happens to be in heat and has been lost in the bathhouse, adding to the farcical shenanigans. [45] Moreover, while his bitchy barbs might indicate his frustration with the sexual competition of the bathhouse, he ultimately achieves a sense of community, exchanging friendship with characters like Andy and Dusty, whom he previously disparaged. In Wally, we see that the bathhouse can facilitate not just sexual encounters, but also friendship and a larger experience of community. The play’s function as “community portrait” is reflected in the photograph featured in the center of the off-Broadway program, showing all nine men (and one cat) as an affectionate ensemble [Figure 2]. Figure 2. Centerfold photo from program for 1973 off-Broadway production of Tubstrip. Back Row: Jamey Gillis (Tony), Jake Everett (Wally) and Veronica, Larry Gilman (Brian), Tony Origlio (Richie), Richard Rheem (Kevin); Front Row: Bob Balhatchet (Darryl), Walter Holiday (Andy), Jim Tate / Dean Tait (Dusty), Richard Livert (Bob). Photo: Christopher Studios. Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. When Time Magazine reviewed The Boys in the Band , they highlighted its depiction of “rejection, humiliation, and loneliness,” [46] which were presumed to be the lot of all homosexuals, in part because Crowley’s characters assert such generalizations (e.g., “Show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse”). Tubstrip makes no such generalizations, in part because the greater amount of queer representation post- Boys relieves it of the burden of representing all homosexuals. Instead, Jerry Douglas’s play creates a fantasy in which characters connect—as sexual partners, as romantic lovers, as friends, and as a community. The play does not dwell on the trauma of the closet, no one agonizes over what “made them” gay, no one is forced to pretend to be straight, no one drowns himself in alcohol, and even the characters who do light drugs (pot and poppers) seem motivated by sexual enhancement rather than self-destruction. Like Geese and And Puppy Dog Tails , Tubstrip depicts gay love, sex, and affection (which can be intertwined or not, depending on your desire) as exciting, fulfilling, and achievable. While this might be a sentimental fantasy, it’s a fantasy that proved immensely popular with gay audiences—and affronted many mainstream critics. Tubstrip on Stage: Audiences, Critics, and the Road to Legitimacy Tubstrip began performances at the 199-seat Brecht Theatre in the Mercer Arts Center on 17 May 1973. Suggesting the play’s location at the intersection of legitimate theatre and gay sexual culture, the cover of the program featured a drawing of two nearly naked blond boys, smiling and lounging in relaxed poses. Inside were advertisements for the boutique sex shop the Pleasure Chest, “metal inhalers” (for amyl nitrite), nude male photography, and hardcore pornography. Posters and flyers for the show did not include the words “gay” or “homosexual,” instead borrowing a phrase from pornographic cinema and touting the play’s “all male cast.” In gay magazines, advertisements for the play appeared next to those for porn films and bathhouses. These marketing tactics drew an audience, allowing the production to recoup its investment within five weeks. It played for a total of 100 performances, before the 103-year old Broadway Central Hotel, which housed the Mercer Arts Center, collapsed, leaving Tubstrip temporarily homeless. [47] The production reopened less than two weeks later at the Players Theatre, running for 40 more performances, from 14 August to 16 September, but never officially opening to the mainstream press. Instead, the producers took advantage of the fact that gay culture had grown more self-sufficient since the days of Geese and And Puppy Dog Tails , with a marked increase in gay-owned publications, bars, shops, and restaurants. Most writers invited from gay publications like The Advocate , Gay Scene , Michael’s Thing , and Where It’s At enjoyed the nudity and eroticism of Tubstrip, yet even when photos of semi-naked actors accompanied their reviews, they tended to focus on the overall quality of the play, particularly its wit and comic structure, as well as what they saw as its liberationist ethos. Lee Barton of the Advocate saw it as a welcome departure from “what’s been passing for gay theatre” and plays that “exploit, degrade, insult, or distort what it’s like to be gay.” He praised Tubstrip as “funny, sexy, [and] important,” but wondered whether mainstream critics could “tolerate anything gay that is so open and healthy.” [48] In his diary, Donald Vining was effusive about the play and highlighted the sense of recognition experienced by a gay audience member, describing the set as “a wonderful evocation of the Continental Baths.” I was so glad I had recently been there so that the hanging basket chair, the pool table, the steam room doors, and the mattresses on the floor all had meaning. I said to Ken, “They’ve got everything but the swimming pool” and lo and behold two actors emerged naked and wet from some kind of tub at the front of the stage. . . . We had nine naked men, eight of them quite attractive, and lots of hilarious lines. The play would be of no interest to anyone not a homosexual but it is actually very well crafted, the several plots skillfully managed, the laughs beautifully built up to, the characters nicely differentiated, and everything highly professional. . . . I found the whole thing a hoot and my sentimental nature was pleased when the two romantics, disappointed in their lovers for different reasons, found each other at the end. [49] Vito Russo, however, wrote that he was “more furious” at plays like Tubstrip than at Boys in the Band “because they pretend to be a product of our liberated culture” but actually just “exploit the situation to make a buck” from members of the gay community who will “pay any price” to see nudity on stage. [50] But Vining’s response indicates that Russo misjudged the desire of the ticket-buying gay audience. The nudity is one element of the larger theatrical fantasy, which also includes the pleasure of seeing one’s world represented, of being an insider who understands the meaning of that world, and of seeing gay romance and eroticism validated in a manner still rare in mainstream culture. The marketing of Tubstrip may have exploited sexuality in order to sell tickets, but the play itself offered much more to audience members like Vining, who saw no conflict between the erotic and the legitimate theatre. Indeed, he found pleasure in seeing the erotic within the legitimate. In a rare move for a sexually explicit gay play, Tubstrip then hit the road, travelling to eight cities over nine months in 1974. Jerry Douglas was with the production for the entire tour, making revisions to the script and rehearsing new actors, since only two actors remained constant through the entire run: comic duo Walter Holiday (Andy) and Jake Everett (Wally). The stops for the first leg of the tour were Boston (4 weeks), Washington, DC (5 weeks), Philadelphia (2 weeks), Toronto (3 weeks), Detroit (1 week), and Chicago (5 weeks). The only hint of trouble came in Detroit, where residents of the hotel in which the theatre was located covered up the poster, and the Free Press sounded alarm bells about the possibility of obscenity. [51] In general, critics who liked the play tended to downplay the significance of the nudity, while negative reviews accused the play of “homosexploitation.” [52] A common theme was determining whether the play could appeal to “open-minded straights” or was strictly for “a specialized audience.” [53] In Washington and Philadelphia, critics highlighted the “newness” of Tubstrip and discussed it as a first. Washington’s NBC station announced, “This may be our first ‘X’ rated theater review. . . so if you’re under 17, please go to bed. Gay theatre has come to town,” [54] while a local magazine expressed the hope that Tubstrip would encourage more gay theatre, since “there is a large gay community and others in the Washington area who no doubt would support quality productions.” [55] The critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer regarded Tubstrip as a sex comedy, one of many that have been produced off-Broadway but the first of its kind to reach Philadelphia. . . the tour being something of an event in the history of gay liberation. . . asserting as it does not the sickness but the validity of homosexual affection and homoerotic appeal. [56] The show won praise as “a comic statement about love” [57] and “an outrageously witty farce,” [58] and even the critics who panned the play grudgingly acknowledged that it “seems to please its special audience” [59] who “responded with great relish” [60] and “seemed to love every minute of Tubstrip , which must mean something.” [61] When the production reached Los Angeles, Tubstrip transformed from a successful play into a cultural phenomenon. Casey Donovan, star of the porn films Boys in the Sand and The Back Row , as well as the recently released film version of Score (1974), joined the cast in the lead role of Brian—but he used his “legitimate” name, Calvin Culver. Like Jerry Douglas, Culver worked both in the legitimate theatre and in hardcore pornography, known by different names in each realm. But Tubstrip , existing at this particular moment of gay liberation and porno chic, blurred the lines between these realms. Advertisements for Tubstrip promoted their star as “Calvin (Casey Donovan) Culver,” literally inserting the pornographic into the legitimate. Douglas recalls that the goal was for Culver to achieve respectability as an actor while not neglecting Donovan’s porno fan base, and Culver told the San Francisco Examiner , “I’m not the least bit ashamed of those films I made, but I hope my career will take off now in a more serious and legitimate direction.” [62] Having a celebrity in the show created more publicity for Tubstrip than ever before. Culver appeared on front covers and in photo spreads in magazines, the show scheduled “meet the cast” parties with local bars and bathhouses, famous actors including Shelley Winters and Larry Kert ( West Side Story , Company ) came to the show, Reverend Troy Perry of the gay-affirming Metropolitan Community Church attended three times, and the company appeared in the 1974 Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade. Douglas remembers, “There were gaggles of fans at the stage door every night. And Cal signed every autograph that was asked of him.” The production was enormously successful over the 11-week run in Los Angeles, but the new casting seems to have altered the critical reception of the play. Unlike actors who previously played Brian, 30-year-old Culver was no moony-eyed youth gazing into the romantic distance; in promotional photos, Culver glares directly at the viewer in a sexual come-on [Figure 3]. His co-star Jim Cassidy, newly cast in the role of Bob, was also a porn performer but had little acting experience, which seemed to contribute to the perception among some critics that the show was merely an opportunity to see porn stars in the flesh, with one review noting that some audience members “literally oohed and aahed when [Cassidy] stripped.” [63] For the first time, some expressed disappointment that the actor playing Brian did not engage in full-frontal nudity, since that was now the expectation with Culver in the role. Figure 3. Advertisement for 1974 touring production of Tubstrip in Los Angeles, featuring Calvin (Casey Donovan) Culver as Brian. Used with permission of Jerry Douglas, from his personal collection. Tubstrip concluded its tour with a seven-week run in San Francisco, where the city’s two major newspapers savaged the play, but the local gay press celebrated it as an exemplar of gay liberation and a “positive statement” that successfully captured gay life. One headline announced “No Suicides in This Homosexual Play,” [64] and one writer quipped, “When is the last time you walked out of a play or film about gays and felt good?” [65] Jerry Douglas (still operating under the name Doug Richards) had a more public profile in San Francisco, giving a press conference with Culver. Perhaps with an eye toward the planned Broadway production, Douglas asserted that, though a “gay play,” Tubstrip was not “about homosexuality” and appealed to a broad audience: It’s interesting the same pattern in every city we’ve played; the first week we get the dirty old men with binoculars in the front row, the second week we get the younger gay set, and by the third week it’s 50-50 mixed straight and gay. [66] After successfully running for over 400 performances off-Broadway and around the country, Tubstrip would now test its ability to reach a diverse audience in the commercial center of the American theatre. Tubstrip opened on 31 October 1974 at Broadway’s Mayfair Theatre (previously known as Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe) under what was known as a “middle theatre contract.” [67] For the first time, Jerry Douglas used his own name as the director (but not as the playwright), and Calvin Culver no longer had Casey Donovan splitting his name in two. But Tubstrip ’s desire for success on Broadway was a bit like Brian’s desire for heterosexual Bob: the big guy might be open to a fling, but he wasn’t about to make a commitment. New York critics took pains to warn heterosexual audiences that this play was not for them, up to and including dialogue that “might be virtually a foreign language.” [68] Mel Gussow in the New York Times was especially dismissive, and the Associated Press critic acknowledged that while the play might have “a nationwide gay housekeeping seal of approval,” he felt like a “straight intruder.” [69] In a positive review that praised “a uniformly superb cast,” Debbi Wasserman of Show Business attempted to dismantle the homo-hetero divide imagined by her fellow critics by redrawing the lines: “ Tubstrip is not for everyone, but it comes pretty close. It’s not for the prejudiced puritan, but it is for the romantic.” [70] Tubstrip had found extraordinary success as a gay play for primarily gay audiences, a reciprocal relationship based on mutual desire, but the straight trade of Broadway refused to see it as legitimate, and the production closed after 37 performances. [71] Tubstrip had a return engagement in Washington, DC, in January 1975, and has not been produced since. [72] Two months after Tubstrip closed, another comedy set in a gay bathhouse found greater success on Broadway. The Ritz by Terrence McNally had started at the Yale Rep with the title The Tubs . On the way to Broadway, the play not only changed its name (to avoid confusion with Douglas’s play), but also changed the sexual desires of its main character. In New Haven, the play concerned a married sanitation engineer from Ohio who has come to the baths to have a gay affair. In New York, the play concerned a married sanitation engineer from Ohio who has come to the baths unwittingly, and the greatest source of comedy is this straight man’s confusion and embarrassment when faced with the gay goings-on of the kooky patrons. In a stage direction regarding the “men endlessly prowling the corridors” of the bathhouse as though they are “on a treadmill,” McNally indicates that “Even though they never speak, these various patrons must become specific.” [73] But the playwright does not bother to make them specific, and they function as little more than part of the scenery for a comedy about straight people. Reconstructed to cater to non-gay audiences, The Ritz ran for 400 performances and won a Tony Award for Rita Moreno. Interestingly, Larry Gilman, who had first played Brian the attendant in the off-Broadway production of Tubstrip , was hired as a replacement in the role of an attendant in The Ritz , and Culver, performing as Casey Donovan, starred opposite Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn in a short-lived 1983 revival. After making the bisexual porn film Both Ways , Jerry Douglas spent the next chapter of his career working as a writer and editor in pornographic publishing. He returned to pornographic cinema in 1989 and steadily produced a series of popular and highly regarded films—including More of a Man (1991), Flesh & Blood (1996), Dream Team (1998), and Buckleroos (2004)—that won numerous industry awards for best picture, best screenplay, and best direction. The sexual exuberance and romantic longing that inform Tubstrip are evident in many of Douglas’s films, which have maintained their popularity in a way that his theatrical works have not. In the midst of gay liberation and looking ahead to the future, the actor John Bruce Deaven, who played Dusty and served as Equity Deputy, kept a record of Tubstrip ’s production history. He completed the document in 1975 with a fantasy—clearly inspired by the Sondheim musical Follies (1971)—that on 4 July 2001: Tubstrip casts from all the years (thousands) reunite at broken down Mayfair Theater in New York prior to the day it is torn down. All wear “year” they were in Tubstrip and what part! [74] This “reunion,” of course, never occurred, and many of the men involved in Tubstrip did not live to see 2001. Although largely forgotten, plays like Geese , And Puppy Dog Tails , and Tubstrip are significant for their role in opening the theatre as a venue for the expression of gay romantic and sexual desire. What was once condemned as “homosexploitation” has persisted in one form or another for over 40 years, often at the intersection of legitimate theatre and pornography, from staples of the “purple circuit” like Robert Patrick’s T-Shirts (1979), with porn star Jack Wrangler in the original production, and the erotic plays of Cal Yeomans and Robert Chesley; through a resurgence in the mid-1990s with works like David Dillon’s ensemble comedy Party (1995), Ronnie Larsen’s Making Porn (1996), and Robert Coles’s Cute Boys in their Underpants… series; to the long-running musical revue Naked Boys Singing (1999), the meta-pornography of Thomas Bradshaw’s Intimacy (2014), and the ménage à trois soap opera Afterglow (2017). By engaging in cultural battles with the theatrical establishment and critical gate-keepers, the erotic theatre of the gay liberation era also helped to create a cultural landscape where later Broadway plays as esteemed as Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy (1982), Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1993), Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994), and Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out (2002), all featuring nudity and/or depictions of gay sex, could be seen as legitimate. Gay sexuality in the 21 st century is quite different than it was in the era of sexual liberation. The AIDS crisis, the legalization of same-sex marriage, and the use of apps like Grindr as a tool for meeting sexual partners have radically changed the ways that queer men experience their sexuality. The internet has facilitated renewed interest in “vintage” porn from the era of gay liberation, with films of 1970s restored, rereleased, and posted by aficionados on video sharing websites. These “classics,” along with contemporary documentaries about Gay Sex in the 70s and porn stars like Jack Wrangler and Peter Berlin, offer the viewer a nostalgic fantasy of an era of gay sexual abandon. It’s more difficult for “vintage” plays to maintain a place in the culture, particularly when critical disdain caused them to go unpublished. Yet revisiting erotic plays of the gay liberation era can do more than offer the pleasures of nostalgia. They illuminate how our experiences and fantasies of sex and romance are constructed by our changing social realities, allowing us to reflect more clearly on how we experience desire in our current moment—and to imagine ways in which we might experience it in the future. Acknowledgements: This scholarship would not have been possible without the generous friendship and well-preserved personal archive of Jerry Douglas. I’m indebted to David Román and Michael C. Oliveira at the University of Southern California, and grateful for the insights and contributions of Kevin Lustik, Stan Richardson, Richard Sacks, Paula Shaw, David Zellnik, and the peer reviewers and editors of JADT . References [1] Other plays in this subgenre, containing nudity and depicting gay relationships, often structured as romances and informed by the ethos of gay liberation, include: War Games (1969) by Neal Weaver, Foreplay (1970) by Robert Lane, Score (1970) by Jerry Douglas, Georgie Porgie (1968/1971) by George Birimisa, Minus One (1971) by Lawrence Parke, Brussels Sprouts (1972) by Larry Kardish, Mercy Drop (1973) by Robert Patrick, and Stand by Your Beds, Boys (1974) by John Allison and Ray Scantlin. Beginning in 1969 in Los Angeles, the SPREE (Society of Pat Rocco Enlightened Enthusiasts) Theatre Company staged performances of original gay plays, often comedies containing nudity, with titles like The Casting Couch and The Love Thief. While not necessarily featuring romantic relationships or liberationist ideologies, Sal Mineo’s 1969 revival of Fortune and Men’s Eyes by John Herbert and Jerry Douglas’s 1970 staging of Circle in the Water by Gerry Raad also featured nudity and homosexuality. [2] Whitney Strub, “Hey Look Me Over: The Films of Pat Rocco,” UCLA Film and Television Archive, https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/collections/inthelife/history/hey-look-me-over-films-pat-rocco . Accessed 8 September 2017. [3] Whitney Strub, “From Porno Chic to Porno Bleak: Representing the Urban Crisis in 1970s American Pornography,” Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 40. [4] Elizabeth Wollman, Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 2. [5] Thomas Waugh, Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 269-273. [6] Jennifer C. Nash, “Desiring Desiree,” Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s, eds. Carolyn Bronstein and Whitney Strub (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 86. Among the most famous (heterosexual) films associated with porno chic are Deep Throat (1972) and Behind the Green Door (1972). [7] Along with Poole and Douglas, another theatre artist who created gay porn in the early liberation era is counter-culture playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie, who wrote and directed the hardcore film American Cream (1972) under the name Rob Simple. [8] Richard Dyer, “Gay Male Porn: Coming To Terms,” Jump Cut 30 (March 1985), 27-29. [9] The term echoes the more prevalent phenomenon of “blaxploitation,” which functioned under a very different set of circumstances in regard to class, gender, cultural power, and, obviously, race. But both terms point to the concurrent burgeoning of previously underrepresented or disempowered voices in American culture. For more on instances of crossover between these cultural trends, see Joe Wlodarz, “Beyond the Black Macho: Queer Blaxploitation,” The Velvet Light Trap 53 (Spring 2004), 10-25. [10] Don Shewey, “Theatre: Gays in the Marketplace vs. Gays for Themselves,” in Lavender Culture, Revised Edition, ed. Karla Jay and Allen Young (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 236. [11] Shewey, 243. Shewey mentions these three erotic plays in the same context as Jonathan Ned Katz’s activist documentary play Coming Out (1972), as coming from and speaking to the gay community. [12] Personal interview with Jerry Douglas, 23 January 2017. All subsequent references to Douglas’s memories or assessments of the past come from this interview. [13] Richard Hummler, “Off Broadway Reviews,” Variety, 29 January 1969, 75. [14] My description of the play is based on contemporaneous reviews and articles, since an exhaustive search has yet to turn up a copy of the script. [15] “Off-B’way Geese Plugs Nudity, Frank Queerism,” Variety, 22 January 1969, 57. [16] Hummler. [17] “Sex Downtown: An Off-Broadway Review,” Screw, 7 March 1969, n.p. [18] William Glover, “Review,” AP Service, 12 January 1969, clipping. [19] John Simon, “Theatre Chronicle,” Hudson Review, Spring 1969, 102. [20] Wollman, 14. Wollman also notes the “relative tameness” with which adult musicals depicted gay sexuality compared to straight sexuality (52). The “straight plays” of gay erotic theatre were much bolder. [21] Dan Halleck, Geese Theatre Program, Players Theatre (New York, 1969), 2. [22] “Won’t Depict A Nude Homo, Actor Quits,” Variety, 25 November 1970, 1. Robert Jundelin’s departure caused a delay in the Broadway opening of the production, which received mixed-to-negative reviews and closed after 38 performances. [23] Richard Hummler, “NY Legit Going Sex-Happy: Off-B’way Porny May Reach B’way” Variety, 21 May 1969, 1, 70; Charlotte Harmon, “Nudity Sells Tix?: Bare Facts Still Not Totally Clear,” Backstage, 7 February 1969, 28. [24] John Elsom, Erotic Theatre (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1974), 2. [25] David Gaard, And Puppy Dog Tails, manuscript, New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theatre Collection. [26] Walter Kerr, “For Homos and Heteros Alike, A Swindle,” New York Times, 26 October 1969, D3. [27] Daphne Kraft, “Off-Broadway: Puppy Dog Tails,” Newark Evening News, 20 October 1969, 16. [28] George Oppenheimer, “And Puppy Dog Tails, Or How to Make Boys,” Newsday, 20 October 1969, n.p. [29] Richard Hummler, “Off-Broadway Reviews: And Puppy Dog Tails,” Variety, 29 October 1969, 70. [30] Clive Barnes, “Theater: And Puppy Dog Tails Opens,” New York Times, 20 October 1969, 60. [31] It’s important to note that male playwrights, directors, and producers created the lesbian eroticism seen in both Geese and Score. Women generally have had less cultural power than men, so the history of lesbian eroticism created by lesbians in the theatre had a very different path, which was also informed by arguments in feminism throughout the 1970s and 1980s over sexual representation, with different camps described as “anti-pornography” and “pro-sex.” Lesbian theatre scholars like Jill Dolan, Sue-Ellen Case, and Kate Davy have celebrated the eroticism in the groundbreaking plays of Split Britches and Holly Hughes at the WOW Café in the 1980s, as well as the plays of the Five Lesbian Brothers produced off-Broadway in the 1990s. More recently, lesbian eroticism has been seen on Broadway in productions of Paula Vogel’s Indecent and the musical Fun Home, adapted for the stage by Lisa Kron from Alison Bechdel’s memoir. See Jill Dolan, “The Dynamics of Desire: Sexuality and Gender in Pornography and Performance,” Theatre Journal 39:2 (May 1987), 156-174; Sue-Ellen Case, Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance (New York: Routledge, 1996); Kate Davy, Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers: Staging the Unimaginable at the WOW Café Theatre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011). [32] Dick Bruckenfeld, “Review,” Village Voice, 5 November 1970, 49. [33] Score was more successful in Radley Metzger’s 1974 film version, for which Douglas wrote the screenplay. The film, featuring Casey Donovan, was financially successful, leading the producers to take a full-page ad in Variety announcing “Score Scores at the Box Office,” 28 August 1974, 23. [34] Jeffrey Escoffier, “Sex in the Seventies: Gay Porn Cinema as an Archive for the History of American Sexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 26.1 (January 2017), 91-92. [35] Leo Bersani, however, does not. He describes the gay bathhouse as “one of the most ruthlessly ranked, hierarchized, and competitive environments imaginable.” Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” October 43 (Winter 1987), 206. [36] Gay Sex in the ’70s, directed by Joseph Lovett, Lovett Productions/Frameline, 2005. [37] Citations refer to the manuscript available in the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive at the University of Southern California, currently the only accessible version of the play. However, the archived version is an early draft, not reflecting changes made over the course of rehearsing and performing the play, which appear in the final version in Jerry Douglas’s possession. While all textual citations are for the archived earlier version, this essay will also reference plot details that exist only in the final version of the script. [38] Kevin Winkler, “The Divine Mr. K.: Reclaiming My ‘Unruly’ Past with Bette Midler and the Baths,” Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater, ed. Robin Bernstein (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 69. [39] Although Douglas’s play expresses a very different perspective on gay identity and sexuality, he remembers finding Crowley’s play “brilliant” when we saw the original production. For a production history of the play and analysis of its complicated cultural impact, see James Wilson, “‘Who Does She Hope to Be?’: Celluloid Ghosts, Queer Utopias, and The Boys on Stage,” Matt Bell, ed., The Boys in the Band: Flashpoints of Cinema, History, and Queer Politics (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016). [40] J. Todd Ormsbee, “The Tragedy and Hope of Love Between Gay Men: The Boys in the Band and the Emotionality of Gay Love in the 1960s and 70s,” The Boys in the Band: Flashpoints of Cinema, History, and Queer Politics, ed. Matt Bell (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016), 282. [41] Lyn Rosen, “Forum on Sadomasochism,” Lavender Culture, Revised Edition, ed. Karla Jay and Allen Young (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 88. [42] Sadly, on 25 May 1977, the Everard Baths was destroyed in a fire that killed nine people. Laurie Johnston, “9 Killed in Bath Fire Identified by Friends,” New York Times, 27 May 1977, 17. [43] For more on the “object-ification” of the Cowboy, see Matthew Tinkcom, “‘A Credit to the Homosexual’: The Boys in the Band and the Appearances of Queer Debt,” The Boys in the Band: Flashpoints of Cinema, History, and Queer Politics, ed. Matt Bell (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016), 261-263. [44] Dusty was initially played by Dean Tait, a professional body builder who was also in Circle in the Water. Tait was featured in beefcake photo spreads promoting Tubstrip, and he would later appear in Jerry Douglas’s film Both Ways (1975) and the popular erotic musical revue Let My People Come on Broadway in 1976. [45] The production used a live cat on stage. Douglas recalls that when the production toured, “In every city we went to we got a different one, a baby kitten, and left the old cat behind.” [46] “New Plays: The Boys in the Band,” Time, 26 April 1968, 97. [47] The collapse occurred on 3 August 1973, at 5:10pm, when the play was not in performance, and most people were able to evacuate the building, used primarily as a welfare hotel, before it fell. Because the performance complex was on the east side of the structure, the theatres were not severely damaged, and the production’s cast and crew, after obtaining a court order, were allowed to rescue the set and props from the space. Newspapers reported the deaths of four people and the injury of a dozen more in the collapse. Murray Schumach, “Broadway Central Hotel Collapses,” New York Times, 4 August 1973, 1; Fred Ferretti, “Two More Bodies Found in Rubble,” New York Times, 11 August 1973, 23. [48] Lee Barton, “Tubstrip’s a Grand Hotel with Steam,” The Advocate, 20 June 1973, n.p. [49] Donald Vining, A Gay Diary: Volume Four, 1967-1975 (New York: The Pepys Press, 1983), 324-325. [50] Vito Russo, “Tubshit: A Parade of Tight Asses,” Gay, 18 June 1973, 14. [51] Chuck Thurston, “Staid Hotel Preparing For Gay Play,” Detroit Free Press, 24 March 1974, 8-D. [52] Lawrence DeVine, “Tubstrip: A Play for Posterity?” Detroit Free Press, 28 March 1974, 9-C. [53] Louise Lague, “It’s a Steam Bath, and the Gays Have It,” Washington Star-News, 5 February 1974, C-3. [54] Lou Robinson, “Review: Tubstrip [Transcript]” WRC-TV 4 (NBC), n.d. [55] Teddy Vaughn, Memo Magazine [typed advance copy, no title/date], collection of Jerry Douglas. [56] William B. Collins, “Tubstrip Made For Gay Audience,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 February 1974, 15. [57] Lague. [58] Vaughn. [59] Richard Christiansen “Tubstrip is Soggy,” Chicago Daily News, 10 April 1974, n.p. [60] David McCaughna, “Tubstrip Cashes in on Gay Mannerisms,” Toronto Citizen, 15-28 March 1974, 13. [61] Gregory Glover, “Tubstrip Sequel to Boys in the Band,” Toronto Sun, 8 March 1974, 24. [62] Jeanne Miller, “Gay Theatre that Draws Straight Voyeurs,” San Francisco Examiner, 16 August 1974, 29. [63] “Rub a Dub Dub, All Men in a Tubstrip,” UCLA Summer Bruin, 5 July 1974, 7. [64] Anitra Earle, “No Suicides in This Homosexual Play: The Porno Film Star of Tubstrip,” San Francisco Chronicle, 20 August 1974, 43. [65] Pola Del Vecchio, “Stepping Out,” Kalendar, 30 August 1974, 5. [66] Donald McLean, “Meet Calvin Culver,” Bay Area Reporter 4:17, n.p. Clipping, Jerry Douglas personal collection. [67] The goal of this contract, offered by the League of Broadway Theaters, was to bring plays from off-Broadway to Broadway, allowing lower production costs but also restricting capacity to 300-800 seats—not the full Broadway house. Industry commentators seem to have made no distinction over this contract, with both Variety and Otis Guernsey categorizing Tubstrip as a Broadway play. See Stewart W. Little, “The Lively Arts: Upward Mobility in the Theatre,” New York Magazine, 11 May 1970, 47. [68] Madd. “Review: Tubstrip,” Variety, 6 November 1974, 62. [69] William Glover, “Theater,” Associated Press, 1 November 1974, clipping, Billy Rose Theatre Collection. [70] Debbi Wasserman, “Review: Tubstrip,” Show Business, 7 November 1974, 6. [71] Most sources (including Theatre World, Otis Guernsey’s Best Plays of 1974-1975, the Internet Broadway Database, and the Playbill Vault) incorrectly state that the play ran between 22 and 25 performances, listing October 29 as the date of the first preview. However, advertisements and “Theater Directory” listings in the New York Times show that Tubstrip had its first preview on October 18, opened on October 31, and closed on November 17. The timeline created by the actor John Bruce Deaven (who also served as Equity Deputy for the production) corroborates these dates. [72] In 1975, Ken Gaston produced and took credit for writing the script of Hustlers, another play by “A. J. Kronengold,” which performed in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York. Jerry Douglas had nothing to do with this production. David Richards, “The Producer, And Playwright, Is Hustling, Too,” Washington Star-News, 22 January 1975, C1/C3. [73] Terrence McNally, The Ritz and Other Plays (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1976), 6. [74] John Bruce Deaven, "History of Tubstrip," unpublished personal document, 1975, collection of Jerry Douglas. Footnotes About The Author(s) Jordan Schildcrout is Associate Professor of Theatre & Performance at Purchase College, SUNY. He is the author of Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (University of Michigan Press), “Drama and the New Sexualities”(Oxford Handbook of American Drama), and “Refusing the Reproductive Imperative: Sex, Death, and the Queer Future in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s boom” (JADT). His article “Envisioning Queer Liberation: The Performance of Communal Visibility in Doric Wilson’s Street Theater” will appear in Modern Drama (Spring 2018). Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. 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Eileen Curley Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Eileen Curley By Published on December 11, 2020 Download Article as PDF In 1901, David Belasco sued Harrison Grey Fiske and Minnie Maddern Fiske over the Manhattan Theatre’s production of Mrs. Burton Harrison’s play, The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch. Harrison, an established novelist and essayist by 1901, had worked with Belasco in the 1880s on amateur and professional productions of her plays, and she consulted with him on this play as well. After publishing a successful short story by the same title, Harrison revised the script and shopped it around, quickly reaching an agreement with Belasco’s rivals, the Fiskes, after months of dallying by Belasco. Shortly before the Fiskes’ production was to open, Belasco sued, arguing that he was “the sole and exclusive owner and proprietor of the play.” [1] The injunction to stop the production simultaneously seeks to disrupt the Fiskes’ production and undermines Harrison’s authorial power. Belasco claimed that the idea was his and the script was his property, even though Harrison wrote it, but instead of simply and easily disproving these claims, materials produced by the Fiskes, Harrison, and their lawyer speak at length and rather defensively about the nature of collaborative writing. These extant archival documents suggest that they feared Belasco might have a case for unremunerated collaboration, and they focus on what was then, and still sometimes is, a hazy area of copyright law. The dynamics in the case also speak to the nature of theatrical collaboration between playwrights and producers and competition between producers. Woven amid these legal and theatrical concerns is the familiar story of a woman’s labor being co-opted by a man and a woman’s capacity for professionalism being questioned by all around her. At base, Belasco claimed a woman’s work as his own and appears so confident in his right to her labor that he sued. Profit distribution from a collaboration is a legal matter, but the erasure of women’s voices from collaborations was and is so routine that this case was not immediately thrown out despite the glaring lack of a contract between the pair. Accordingly, this article analyzes the legal implications of this play’s collaborative writing and revision process, while situating that process and the resulting lawsuit in the competitive world of early twentieth-century New York producers and exploring the impact of these production conditions on aspiring female playwrights. The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch’s Ongoing Evolution through Collaboration The archival materials and press at the time often describe Harrison as an amateur playwright, but by the turn of the century, Constance Cary Harrison’s writing career seemed decidedly no longer amateurish; writing under the name Mrs. Burton Harrison, she had established herself as a novelist and essayist, publishing novels, memoirs, advice books, short stories, and columns on contemporary society. Harrison had been publishing for over two decades and was working with the agent Alice Kauser when she began work on The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch at the turn of the twentieth century. Harrison published three different versions of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch : as a short story in Smart Set magazine in March 1901, as a play which was first produced by the Fiskes in November 1901 and also published later that year, and as a short novella in the Novelettes De Luxe series in 1903; Daniel Frohman also later produced the story as a silent film in 1914. Thus, while the papers may have credited Kauser, “the introducer of unknown playwrights,” as having launched Harrison’s career, [2] it is difficult to conceive of an author with more than 15 published novels or short story collections as an amateur. Certainly, she had not had many plays professionally produced, but the rhetorical use of “amateur” in this case seem designed to disempower her when used by Belasco, to play up her feminine naiveté for benefit when employed by the Harrisons and the Fiskes, and to gender and exploit the situation for good press by the newspapers. Harrison had worked with David Belasco in the past, notably in the 1880s when she translated a number of plays, including short French comedies for amateur productions and an adaptation of a Scribe play that was produced by amateurs and professionals under the title A Russian Honeymoon . These plays were also produced under Belasco’s guidance; Harrison, notably, is the uncontested author. At the time, Belasco had recently arrived back to New York from California and was working as the stage manager at the Madison Square Theatre. Belasco assisted Harrison and the amateurs mounting these and numerous other plays at the Madison Square, which rented its facilities to amateur theatrical groups with some regularity. Belasco and Franklin Sargent also directed the professional debut of A Russian Honeymoon in April 1883, and Harrison speaks positively enough about their working relationship on this show in her 1911 memoir, Recollections Grave and Gay . She acknowledges that “largest portion of our success was owing to his training and extraordinary skill in devising pictures and effects from material that lent itself readily to lovely grouping and vivid color.” [3] Clearly, she also credits her own writing here as giving him a good foundation. The overall style of this sweeping memoir renders it difficult to tell whether there was lingering resentment ten years after the lawsuit or if she just chose to focus elsewhere; regardless, Minnie Maddern Fiske warrants a longer and much more obviously glowing recollection. [4] After their successful collaborations in the 1880s, it is perhaps no surprise that in 1900, when Harrison began working on The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , she once again turned to Belasco as she and so many others had done, looking for his assistance with staging and plot development, as well as potential production opportunities. The ensuing work resulted in the lawsuit. Some elements are clear: the two did communicate and collaborate on the drafting of an early version of the play. Belasco did work with Harrison on the script in the spring of 1900, at the Harrison’s house on East 29 th Street in New York, before the short story version was published in 1901. Harrison communicated with Belasco repeatedly, and yet she did not always incorporate his suggestions. Belasco seems to have been a much more reluctant communicator, particularly throughout 1901. Indeed, Belasco’s interactions with the script seem to have stopped in 1900, and there is little disagreement that the script, as it stood at that time, had some significant weaknesses. Letters submitted to the court from both Harrison and Belasco reveal that she attempted to contact Belasco repeatedly between the spring of 1900 and the fall of 1901 to make progress, set a contract, and get her draft manuscripts returned. Her husband, the lawyer Burton N. Harrison, also began contacting Belasco in summer 1901. Throughout, Belasco would occasionally reply directly or via his business manager, Benjamin Roeder, but significantly fewer responses from Belasco and Roeder were submitted into evidence. The extant evidence, while contradictory and at times subject to spin and to charges of being fabricated or heavily edited by Belasco, shows that the pair worked together on a script with the unwritten understanding that Belasco might produce it in the future. There was, however, no contractual agreement to do so. As the months passed in 1900 and early 1901 with no contact from Belasco, Harrison seemed to realize that she needed to finish the play, fully sever ties with Belasco, and get him to return her manuscript. Indeed, the Harrisons sent a significant number of requests to Belasco and Roeder requesting the return of various manuscripts that Harrison sent for his perusal, including but not limited to The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch . In part, the success of the short story sparked her renewed attempts to contact Belasco, attempts which appear to increase with frequency in the spring and summer of 1901. His silence clearly aggravated her, and she seemed to be demurring by claiming that she wanted to work on it, even though she still had a copy. [5] Underneath her feigned desire to just finish the project, Harrison seems, at long last, to have realized the danger that Belasco presented to her intellectual property. In May 1901, Harrison lacked any concrete commitment from Belasco. Her agent, Alice Kauser, sent the script to the Fiskes, who worked with Harrison to revise it and finally offered her a contract in October 1901. It appears that the review, acceptance, and offer process transpired quite quickly, despite the play needing and receiving revisions. Kauser confirmed receipt of the play from Harrison on the 15 th of May and Harrison Grey Fiske replied to her on the 18 th with his critique. [6] He asked to keep the manuscript to show it to Minnie Maddern Fiske, who then decided to work with Harrison throughout the summer on revising the piece before putting the script under contract, just as Belasco had done in early 1900, minus the contract. [7] The letter announcing the contract for the now revised play contract is dated 12 October 1901, two days before rehearsals began and approximately six weeks before the show opened. [8] In the intervening months between first reading and opening night, the Fiskes and Harrison continued working together on the script. When advance press for the production appeared in the papers in late October, Belasco contacted Harrison Grey Fiske, claimed ownership that he could not prove, and requested an injunction against the production, suing the Fiskes – but notably not Harrison. The Fiskes, in their amended answer to the injunction, also clearly saw that Belasco’s complaint – be it ownership, contractual, or collaborative – was with Harrison: “Constance C. Harrison is a necessary party defendant for the complete determination of the questions involved in this action.” [9] This curious decision is never addressed by Belasco in extant documents. By arguing that he owned the piece, Belasco logically would have sued the Fiskes for producing it without his approval. Given his ongoing producers’ battle with the Fiskes and others, one reasonable interpretation for why he was going after the Fiskes is that, financially, he could wound the Fiskes by interrupting rehearsals and obtain royalties from their production if it continued under an agreement. Indeed, Harrison Grey Fiske estimates the amounts the company spent preparing the production to be “about sixteen hundred dollars ($1600) a week” in salaries for the 51 company members, $8,000 in scenic and costume investiture, and “the gross expenses per week of the company and the Manhattan Theatre aggregated nearly $5,000.” [10] Yet, the omission of Harrison from the injunction also suggests that Belasco did not give credence to her work or input, a perception reinforced by his discussion of her throughout his affidavit as an employee in need of his supervision rather than as a creator or equal: “Mrs. Harrison immediately took a fancy to the story and told me that she would be able, under my supervision and in collaboration with me, to make a good play out of it.” [11] Indeed, his argument that the play was his own idea and property relies upon his presentation of Harrison as little more than someone who “molded these ideas of mine into shape and wrote out the dialogue under my supervision;” [12] the gendered bias towards and discounting of her skills is necessarily intertwined with his refusal to grant her ownership of her ideas, much less active participation in the creation of the script. Responses to the suit counter this perception thoroughly – with the Fiskes, Harrison, her husband, and Charles Lydecker, the Fiskes’ lawyer, giving Harrison credit for her work; yet, they, too, traffic in gendered perceptions of her naivete to make their case. While Belasco ultimately withdrew the suit after the Fiskes’ production had opened under a cloud of ironically profitable publicity, this overall timeline is vital for establishing that there were at least two collaborative writing relationships which produced this play, and that reality becomes a key point in the legal case. Harrison and the Fiskes worked on the piece for at least four months in 1901, through visits and letters, prior to contracting the piece for production in October. They also continued working on the piece during rehearsals. This method of writing paralleled how Harrison had been interacting with Belasco in the spring of 1900, including uncontracted jointly undertaken revision work, but the key difference is that Belasco never signed a contract with Harrison, despite communications between Roeder and the Harrisons about a potential contract. Manuscripts and Authorial Control At the time of the Belasco suit, copyright and theatrical law in the United States was still governed by the Copyright Act of 1790 and being solidified through court cases, but the type of collaboration which produces theatrical scripts was not well addressed by this law; the US legal system is still grappling with theatrical collaboration in its various permutations. Indeed, in 2012, Ryan J. Richardson remarked that “[a] few notable scholars in the legal community, however, have alleged a more systemic problem-the inability of American copyright law to adequately reward and protect the uniquely collaborative expression that is live theatre.” [13] Richardson traces through how writing and production collaborations present conundrums which parallel some of those raised in this case. Throughout her affidavit, [14] Harrison argues for ideas that Douglas Nevin also notes are the cornerstones of contemporary and historical copyright law – originality and creativity, [15] treating collaboration as merely part of the single author’s creative process. Belasco chose to focus on contracts and ownership – despite having no supporting material to suggest a claim to ownership nor any signed agreement with Harrison which permitted him to produce her play. Seemingly, the Fiskes and Harrisons feared there was sufficient grey area on the nature of collaboration and its impact on authorship – and by extension, on ownership – that they created a substantial counter-argument to this point. Indeed, Harrison may have potentially created an ownership conundrum by providing Belasco with manuscript copies of her plays. The volume and intensity of documentation about the physical manuscript suggests a deep concern regarding physical control of the manuscript versions, for a variety of possible reasons. As Derek Miller discusses, in this period where nuances of copyright law were still being actively developed in the courts, “[m]anuscripts – or in later decades, scripts printed for private use – remained important for controlling uncertain rights, particularly for playwrights whose work was valuable on both sides of the Atlantic.” [16] Belasco’s injunction notice was delivered to the Fiskes, informing them that “on the hearing of the motion for an injunction in this action, we will hand up to the court the original manuscript of ‘The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch,’” [17] which certainly seems to validate the Harrisons’ concerns. Further, the Complaint notes that the play has not yet been published or performed in public, [18] relying upon nineteenth-century notions that publication, performance, and copyright were means by which ownership could be established. [19] By submitting an original manuscript of the still unpublished text, he could argue ownership of the play. The copyright registration process at the time also complicated matters; as per typical process, Harrison sent in the title page on 8 October 1901 to copyright the title, but two copies of the script, published by the printer CG Burgoyne, were not submitted until 26 November 1901, which was the day after the show opened. [20] The title, thus, was the only part of the play that was under copyright when the injunction was issued, although Belasco seems unaware of this as the 8 November 1901 Complaint argues that “said play and title are original and […] no other play has been written or produced having said title”; [21] the play was still being revised. As will be discussed later, this timing may well have given Harrison and the Fiskes sufficient warning to alter any elements they may have attributed to Belasco. The materials also include extensive discussion of the typist, which Belasco submitted as part of an argument that since he paid to have the piece typed, he owned it. [22] Harrison does not dispute the copy of Harrison’s letter that Belasco submitted into evidence detailing these arrangements, so it is clear that the script was typed and that Belasco paid for it. Harrison’s letter reveals that she asked the typist to charge Belasco for the “Hatch” script and charge Harrison for typing another of her scripts, “His Better Half;” she also asked the typist whether the original copies of the last acts had been sent to Belasco or not because they had not been returned to her. [23] Belasco argues that this payment clearly indicates his ownership of the manuscript. Meanwhile, Harrison claims that: “Belasco expressed an eager desire to have the work of typing this play, so as it had been then finished in a rough way, done in a hurry, so as to enable him to take it with him on the voyage to Europe, sailing at the end of March [1900] – and so he requested me to send it to his typewriters (as he called them) who, he said, were very familiar with that kind of work.” She also remarks that she usually uses the “typewriters down town employed by my husband” for her own work and that she had not sent the text to them because it was not yet ready. [24] The posturing by both here is clear: Harrison is laying the groundwork to argue that the script wasn’t finished, as she does throughout her affidavit, and that it was only typed because Belasco demanded it before leaving for Europe. Belasco, meanwhile, is claiming that the fact that he paid for the Hatch script and Harrison paid for the other script clearly indicates perceived ownership of the individual scripts on the part of both parties. A third interpretation, however, is possible, when the typing note is read alongside another letter Harrison wrote to Belasco, submitted by Belasco as Exhibit 3: “Here is ‘Mrs. Hatch,’ and I send her to you with a goodspeed for her, and for you, upon your voyage!” She also included “His Better Half,” the other play that was typed. And, Harrison continues, “My husband thinks you had better send me a memorandum about the play to-morrow, so that we can look over it, before I sign anything.” [25] Harrison does not dispute this letter, either, but she also does not directly reference it in her affidavit. She does, however, acknowledge that she and her husband met with Roeder in April 1900 to discuss terms, but no contract was ever signed. Given that Harrison clearly assumed that Belasco would be producing her play at some point in the future, his decision to pay for the typing seems, perhaps, logical for a future producer who wished a copy of the play to continue their collaborative writing. The sheer number of times Harrison points out that this March 1900 encounter was the last active engagement between the two about the script suggests a strategy to establish a collaborative relationship that failed and was never solidified under contract. After all, by mid-May 1901, the Fiskes had a version of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , and Harrison may have been feeling pressure to get revisions fully underway to ready the script for possible production by them and to be clearly and fully in control of her work, physically and intellectually. Throughout the court documents, reference is made to how much work the May script needed, which may again have been a legal maneuver as well as a statement of fact. Harrison admits, for instance, in a 23 May 1901 letter that the play “is deficient in the elements of success in its present form,” [26] and her husband notes on 4 October 1901 that “the play was left unfinished a year ago last spring.” [27] The latter, presumably, is an attempt to discredit any claim Belasco may have made by establishing the length of time that had passed since his active participation in the collaboration. This 23 May letter, however, is peculiarly timed and indicative of some of the documentation challenges in this case. The Fiskes expressed interest in the script a week prior to when Harrison pleaded “I can’t bear to lose that I have already done, and I therefore appeal to your kindness to send me back your copy of the play, also my two other plays “Bitter Sweet” and “His Better Half,” which I asked you to read.” [28] On the surface, she writes in a manner which exploits numerous gendered tropes, undermining her own “deficient” work and fawning over Belasco who has his “hands full of important and successful ventures.” Given that the Fiskes are now working with her on the script and considering a production of it, however, it seems clear that Harrison’s desire to “make it better for my own satisfaction, if with no other result” is overt gendered cover for her real intent: to have the script produced by the Fiskes with no intervention by Belasco and to get the manuscript returned. Harrison claims in her affidavit that this letter was written in 1900, which does not make sense since it clearly mentions that she has “now waited for a whole year with patience and courtesy,” which correctly dates the letter as 1901. She also accuses him of changing her words in a letter submitted into evidence to be “projected collaboration” instead of “proposed collaboration,” but does not take issue with the rest of the language in the letter, leading readers to assume her date of 1900 is perhaps a typo or perhaps an attempt to obfuscate the timing of her relationship with the Fiskes. [29] Devaluing Women’s Labor Belasco’s reputation for suing competitors and being generally obstreperous was well known publicly and professionally at this point. This characterization seems to have to been accepted by all involved in this case from the very start, except for Mrs. Harrison, who appears naïve throughout the extant documents, though she is presumably playing at that gendered obliviousness by the time of the 23 May 1901 letter discussed just above. Jeannette Gilder, co-editor of The Critic and publisher of Harrison’s work, told her that she was “having the same experience with Mr. Belasco that many others have had.” [30] Her husband reports that he “was apprehensive” about Harrison’s initial contact with Belasco, “warning her of his reputation of unscrupulous dealing and for general inveracity.” Yet, Harrison reportedly “replied by reminding [him] that she had seen much of him long ago, had put him under obligations in her dealings then with him, had received repeated expressions of his gratitude, adding that she did not think he would act towards her otherwise than uprightly and with consideration.” As he notes, “[t]his sequel tells its own story.” [31] Throughout the legal materials, the Fiskes and Burton N. Harrison appear to be carefully, though not overtly, pointing towards Constance Harrison’s naiveté in dealing with Belasco. The narrative suggests that Harrison still chose to view him as the younger man who had been so helpful early on in her career; she is depicted as a trusting and ultimately exploited amateur female playwright. Clearly, other producers were willing to work with her, but it is unclear whether she was meek and trusting, or whether the legal documents wished to depict her as meek and trusting in order to play upon the judge’s sympathies. After all, it seems entirely reasonable that Harrison went to Belasco in hopes of getting her play produced by him because of their past connection; he was now in a position to make her a successful playwright. During the whole Mrs. Hatch episode, she sent him two other plays and also some sketches, about which she asked: “Can you suggest to me how I can get them produced in vaudeville or otherwise without my name? I should be so glad of an opportunity to see them played.” [32] Such decisions may reflect a calculated agency and desire to expand her writing career into the professional theatre, but they also can play into the narrative the Harrisons and the Fiskes created. This manipulation of her gendered position of power, or lack thereof, also extends into some of Belasco’s more problematic claims and her defense against them. He argued that one of the reasons why he supposedly worked with Harrison was her class and gender: “Being a society woman, familiar with the ways of society, that fact was one of the considerations that influenced me to give her the work.” [33] In doing so, Belasco could have capitalized on contemporary trends to appeal to audiences by employing society women, a strategy successfully deployed by his competitor Augustin Daly. Author’s Rights, Contracts, and Co-Authorship Belasco’s ownership concerns form the starting point for Charles Lydecker’s arguments in his “Memo in Opposition to Motion for Injunction,” which include four main points about authors’ rights and co-authorship, which he details in varying degrees and supports with citations to case law and practice. First, he notes that authors should be able to benefit from their work; he also points out that Belasco admitted that Harrison contacted him to ask for advice, implying that she was the author. For Lydecker, “[t]he turning point in all cases rests upon the rights of the author. If Mrs. Harrison is the author of the play, the right on injunction rests with her.” [34] The issue, then, becomes one of authorship and authors’ rights. The parties do not appear to be at odds on this particular point. Lydecker expands upon the issues of manuscript possession and authorship in a structured counterargument which begins with an acknowledgement that rights can be assigned by the author to another party, as in the case of Harrison granting production rights to the Fiskes. Here, Belasco is called out for clearly understanding that this is how rights work and for having no contracts to support his claims. Indeed, Lydecker notes that Belasco’s professed desire “to make arrangements to bring out the play in 1902 is a subterfuge and shows abandonment;” [35] by claiming that future plans should prohibit the Fiskes from producing the play immediately, Belasco reveals an acceptance that Harrison is the author, a desire to relate to the play as a producer in the future, and a general goal to prevent the Fiskes from profiting off of the piece. Nothing would prevent Belasco from obtaining the rights to produce the show later; indeed, he did so in 1903, where Alice Kauser reported that it “played the first week to very large business. They are going to continue it for this week (the second week) and may be for a third week if the popularity of the play continues on.” [36] Lydecker and Fiske both argue that Belasco’s failure to obtain any kind of contract with Harrison at any point during 1900 or 1901 as a key element of his lack of standing in the case. Belasco’s arguments conveniently skate past any acknowledgement that there is no signed paperwork, but they do provide another fascinating window into the complex performance of gender which floats just beneath the surface of the case. Ironically, Belasco appears to grant Harrison more agency to enter into a contract than anyone on her side of the courtroom, even though he is simultaneously trying to claim that she couldn’t possibly have written the piece herself. In some documents, Belasco claims that the Harrisons were stalling on writing an agreement, [37] but he also attests that Constance Harrison, Belasco and Benjamin Roeder, his business manager, came to terms on a contract on their own, in the Harrison’s house, while Burton Harrison was in another room. [38] The Harrisons staunchly deny his claim that they were to draw up the contract and even moreso vociferously contest that Constance had negotiated a contract without her husband’s input. [39] Extant letters from Harrison’s agent about her publishing support the Harrisons’ claim that Burton handled her contractual matters. For instance, all correspondence about the production contract was between Burton, the Fiskes, and her agent Kauser, even though later letters about the weekly grosses are addressed to Constance. This arrangement enables the defense to present an image of Mrs. Harrison as a woman unschooled in business matters, but it also undercuts the logic of Belasco’s claims. Societal expectations may well have provided a convenient defense, no matter any degree of guilt, and the Fiskes and the Harrisons appear to have exploited these social constructs when convenient. Ultimately, Lydecker argues for the same interpretation of the relationship between contract and copyright law as the Second Circuit eventually does in 1991 in Childress v. Taylor, 945 F.2d 500, 502 (2d. Cir. 1991), which notes that “In the absence of a contract, the copyright remains with the one or more persons who created copyrightable material.” [40] Lydecker notes early in the memo that “[n]o facts alleged sustain the claim that the plaintiff is an assignee of the author’s property” [41] and then returns to this point later while remarking that the contemporary case law supports the notion “that copyright vests in the employer only by agreement.” [42] Recall that at the time of the suit, Harrison had filed the title with the copyright office on 8 October 1901, [43] but the script was not submitted until after the injunction was filed and the show opened. Thus, Harrison was left to prove that she was the sole author of the piece. The legal precedents regarding joint authorship, working relationships, and collaboration are the areas which may have provided the most potential for Belasco to have a winnable argument, even if his affidavit does not make these points particularly clearly or effectively. While it should be noted that Belasco claimed full ownership rather than joint authorship, a detail which perhaps speaks more to his intention to shut down the production and a general megalomania, the case still raises numerous issues with regards to how authorship and collaboration are defined, and thus rewarded, through copyright protections and ensuing potential profitability. Lydecker establishes that if the piece were “the joint product of the minds of the plaintiff and Mrs. Harrison,” then “under a proper agreement,” the two would be legally bound to provide rights to both authors. [44] Belasco, again, has no such proof of such an agreement, but their collaboration certainly was treated as a potential problem due to this concept of “joint product.” This notion of co-authorship gets expanded further in Lydecker’s final point, which quite extensively cites case law for the various nuances of his arguments about authorship, ownership, and injunctions. After acknowledging that there was a collaboration, he argues based on contemporary understanding of copyright that “[t]o constitute joint ownership there must be a common design.” [45] Joint authorship requiring intent to create a joint work remains a hallmark of US copyright law through much of the twentieth century, though it gradually becomes complicated by questions about the degree of contribution, “work for hire” rights, and related concerns, [46] many of which are visible in this case as well. Lydecker continues by expanding on the notion of “common design,” citing a case between Levi and Rutley, wherein a playwright hired to write a play retained authorship rights. [47] This explication quite clearly responds to Belasco’s claim that Harrison worked for him. [48] Harrison’s presumption that she could receive feedback from Belasco without incorporating all of it casts further doubt on Belasco’s claims that she was working for him, rather than he providing advice to her; he did not control the content. Belasco’s own claims that he hired Harrison to write for him also undermine any potential argument about joint authorship, based on the case law Lydecker raises as well as simple logic. Harrison quite clearly believed their collaboration to be one where Belasco was to help her with her writing, presuming that Belasco would then produce the play; the Amended Answer from the Fiskes notes that Harrison was willing to pay Belasco for any consulting expenses incurred. [49] A contract to that effect might well have helped Belasco, insofar as it would have proved that Harrison had agreed to write jointly with him or for him, while also clarifying whether he had the rights to produce the play. The Confusion of Collaborative Writing Processes In addition to the confusion about establishing theatrical rights at a time when the legal systems are still responding to production developments, [50] the theatrical scripts under consideration did not come into existence in a clean process, a reality which underpins much of the legal consternation and debate around collaboration in this case. The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch followed standard procedures then as now as ever in a collaborative art: Harrison brainstormed, wrote, and revised over the course of many months with input from a wide variety of parties including potential producers, and by the time the Fiskes offered her a contract in October 1901, none of these collaborators made any claims for co-authorship. As was normal for their publishing relationship, Harrison received input from her agent, Alice Kauser, throughout the process. She also consulted her lawyer husband, Burton N. Harrison, for advice on the legal aspects of the play. Furthermore, as Fiske and Harrison both note in their affidavits, a stage manager would often provide advice to a playwright in advance of staging a play; indeed, that is how Belasco and Harrison had worked in the 1880s on plays that were considered her works, despite his input and assistance. Harrison’s correspondence archive at the NYPL does contain numerous exchanges with producers about a wide variety of her works, including The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch . [51] Kauser notes that when she sent the play to her agent in London – after the Fiskes’ production was already running – the response was positive but included a request for a happy ending and a different title. [52] And, given the collaborative work that occurred with the Fiskes both before and after their contract had been signed, it appears that pre-emptive work on a rough script was the norm. For instance, Fiske’s first reply about the play expressed some interest but noted specific revisions that would need to be made, namely that “the predominating motive of the play as found in its leading character would require, it seems to me, some relief in the amplification of the subordinate interests as they are at present. The element of maternal love is dwelt upon so continuously now that it may be monotonous.” [53] Likewise, a 1902 letter from William H. Kendal, wherein he declines to produce the play in London, also offers feedback to Harrison, suggesting that she “[reconstruct] the play giving equal prominence & interest to the man” and noting that he would look at it again if those changes were made. This letter, notably, was written after the play had already been successfully produced in New York; such notes speak both to the collaborative nature of the profession and the assumption that texts can always be updated as needed for successful production. [54] Harrison’s engagement in a collaborative writing process is not cast as any critique on her skills; indeed, the normalcy of such an approach appears to be a given. Yet, much of the discussion of the process and her naivete enables the defense to cast Belasco as a bully and her as the innocent victim. Harrison Grey Fiske, in particular, points towards Harrison’s unimpeachable moral character and naivete as a woman while taking numerous opportunities to insult Belasco as he explains the collaborative writing process. The amended answer to the injunction moves quickly from a statement of facts into a barbed gauntlet “deny[ing] on information and belief that the plaintiff [Belasco] is an author and writer of plays,” though Fiske does “admit that plaintiff has been manager of various dramatic enterprises.” [55] The slights appear throughout the affidavit, too, where Harrison Grey Fiske depicts Belasco as an unskilled man who takes credit for others’ work: “I know Mr. Belasco’s capabilities and limitations with respect to play writing, and that I know how he engages people to write plays for him and then presents them to the public as his own.” [56] This line of defense calls into question Belasco’s veracity, but it also enables Fiske to imply, throughout, that Belasco assumed he could manipulate Harrison in this fashion as well. Fiske demotes Belasco, claiming he only “rendered her certain aid and assistance as a dramatic manager and as a stage manager.” Further, he argued that Harrison was “a woman of social position and high personal character” whereas “Belasco’s claims to authorship [have] frequently been questioned in the press and through legal proceedings.” [57] Harrison’s accomplished writing career is overshadowed by her class and gender here, rhetorically, to simultaneously attack Belasco and gain the sympathies of the court. Collaboration and U.S Law While plays are often the result of this type of collaborative process, collaboration resides, then and now, in a vague legal territory, particularly as pertains to this case. Indeed, the state of current case law and legislation underscores how dependent the parties in Belasco v. Fiske were on their own argumentation and evidence. Nevin, in his argument that current copyright law should be expanded to better accommodate theatrical production processes, notes that “copyright law lacks a proper mechanism to acknowledge the single most defining characteristic of the form—collaboration.” [58] Richardson concurs, describing “a more systemic problem–the inability of American copyright law to adequately reward and protect the uniquely collaborative expression that is live theatre.” [59] He notes, however, that proposed current solutions in legal discussions insufficiently address the concerns of theatrical collaboration because of their attempts at universality and that they may indeed hinder creativity. [60] Protections afforded through joint authorship were added to the 1976 Copyright act as a result of “a series of notable cases n156 following the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1909, which conspicuously contained no express provisions governing joint authorship.” [61] In their defense documents, thus, Harrison and the Fiskes addressed legal debates which the courts still have yet to fully resolve. Additionally, Anne Ruggles Gere’s assessment of collaborative writing in women’s groups at the end of the nineteenth century provides another potential, and gendered, avenue for considering Harrison’s approaches to collaboration and concerns about the intersection between collaboration and authorship. As copyright law was being solidified, women’s groups, Gere argues, were working in various ways which “resisted dominant concepts of intellectual property and authorship. Collaboration played a major role in writing.” [62] The processes of sharing, receiving feedback, adapting texts from other sources, and generally collaborating on writing products parallels the processes used in theatrical script development. Harrison’s prior theatrical experiences included developing scripts with a group of amateur performers and, notably, Belasco; those productions appear to followed some of the models of collaborative development that Gere discusses. Many of her scripts, including The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , draw on or overtly adapt other texts in a manner which, while legal at the time, reveals a more fluid approach to writing, authorship, and ownership than the law would eventually settle upon. Gere argues that the clubwomen were subverting norms through a variety of literacy activities including collaborative writing and adaptation, [63] and while Harrison is not obviously working with a club, Gere’s presentation of alternate views of authorship and the impact of collaboration thereon provide another potential avenue for understanding Harrison’s focus on collaboration in her affidavit. These practices question the fixed nature of authorship and textual development that copyright law relies upon for clarity. 6[64] Little in Lydecker’s memo directly cites case law specifically about collaboration, but the avenue that he took – the need to establish authorship and the nature of the rights granted to authors – may well have inspired Harrison to expend a great deal of time in her affidavit discussing their collaboration and possibly make some late changes to the text. Taken as a whole, the defense materials reveal concerns that Belasco would and could argue collaboration and thus, perhaps, joint authorship as a means of arguing co-ownership. Interestingly, Belasco only raises collaboration twice – once while describing the initial idea for the project and later while discussing the work that they did on the piece. Harrison, conversely, discusses the nature of collaboration endlessly in her affidavit, directly countering the belittling presumptions in Belasco’s affidavit by keeping the focus on her authorial power, positioning Belasco as her assistant at times and as a potential producer at others. She explains “I said to him that I had sent for him because I thought he could, and perhaps would, assist me by collaborating and staging and bringing out the play I might write.” [65] Throughout, the dispute again comes down to contracts and input on the script. Harrison points out that “[i]t is not true that, at that interview or at any time, an arrangement for collaboration with him was suggested, except as I have here above stated – collaboration with him having been suggested only as part of a suggested entire arrangement which included staging and production by him.” [66] Collaborative Writing Processes Harrison’s assessment of Belasco’s contributions to the piece as a means of collaboration form the bulk of her counter-argument and shed further light on the collaborative writing process. Belasco claims in his affidavit that “I would sometimes remain at her house from six to seven hours collaborating with her.” [67] In addition to denying the length and number of times they met, Harrison pointed out the many months between his departure for Europe in March 1900 and the suit in October 1901, “during all of which time he had utterly failed and neglected to do anything whatever in the way of collaborating.” [68] She defines collaborating as having a “share or participation in the creation of the story or in the design or plot or general structure or construction of the play,” and goes on to classify Belasco’s involvement with the script as akin to that of a stage manager. [69] While demoting Belasco here, she also neglects to mention in this section that the input he seems to have given her was quite similar in type and perhaps scope as the input given by the Fiskes. She further remarks that he had “the opportunity” to collaborate on the script since he had requested the typed version in March 1900, but that he had chosen not to do so. [70] Indeed, their descriptions of the collaborative process they used provide a fascinating look into how they both viewed each other and the work. Belasco, throughout his affidavit, discusses how he “gave her the story and the plot” and similarly dictated other elements. [71] The notes on the script which he submitted are, indeed, quite dictatorial in their presentation: the pages are merely new pieces of text with no context or elaboration. Minnie Maddern Fiske, by contrast, explained and contextualized her suggestions and requests in the extant notes. Both Belasco and Harrison acknowledge sessions where lines were read. Belasco claimed he would read the lines and Harrison would take notes. Harrison, however, describes these meetings in a way that can best be described as a thinly veiled excoriation of his talents: though it is true that, whilst I wrote he sometimes walked about the room and pulled his hair in apparent excitement, sometimes with his hands before him and trembling, as he said, in a low and agitated voice, in real or assumed emotion over what I had read him. “Ther-rills (thrills) – ther-rills, I can see the audience in their ther-rills” – and though it is true that I remember, he once sat at my desk and did the dumbshow of the “business” he said would be appropriate for the detective […] As to Mr. Belasco’s speaking a “dialogue,” he always was difficult and slow of utterance – appeared to be unable to articulate except with effort and very tediously, and in mere explosives.[72] Where neither side disputes that work was completed on the play with both parties in attendance at Mrs. Harrison’s house, the challenge then becomes establishing degree of collaboration, which even the courts still struggle to determine. Curiously, Harrison appears to have been proactively asking about collaboration – seemingly before the lawsuit even occurred. The archive includes a tantalizingly incomplete letter to Harrison which was clearly written in response to Harrison reaching out to ask if the illegibly named correspondent remembered exchanging letters about the play and about collaboration. The letter’s author replies to her inquiry: “So – my recollection of that correspondence upon matters dramatic is extremely vague. However, your statement of it seems entirely accurate. I think you wanted to know out my experience what the relations and TERMS were between collaborating dramatists, and I was obliged to confess that what should have been my experience was lodged in the bosom of THE CENTURY COMPANY who had made all the arrangements.” The letter writer continues: “I do not remember that you mentioned the name of the play, for, it seemed quite fresh to my recollection when I saw the story in the ‘The Smart Set;’” [73] the short story version of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch appeared in March 1901. While the letter writer claims to be unsure of many details, if we trust that that the conversation occurred, as implied, before the publication of the short story, then Harrison was asking about how collaborations worked in the spring of 1901 or in 1900 – long before the lawsuit and before the Fiskes became involved. Whatever sparked the original conversation, the inquiry which prompted this particular reply seemingly was meant to establish a defense – Harrison wanted to know if her correspondent had kept any of their initial set of letters, presumably to use them at trial. Tests of Originality and Plot Machinations In this particular case, the multiple collaborations may have enabled Harrison to better prepare to counter Belasco’s claims of originality, which may well have been problematic and hard to disprove legally. Originality is a key component of United States copyright law since the Copyright Act of 1790, which drew on similar ideas in English law. Belasco’s main points of contention in his often-rambling affidavit are that the plot and the storyline were his original idea and that he hired Harrison to write that particular story with significant oversight and supervision by him. Harrison claims that the story is her version of a Sardou play, Seraphine , where a father is reunited with his daughter. [74] While establishing provenance is impossible, it should be noted that some in the press claimed a third source, as they saw the story as a loose adaptation of the hit East Lynne . [75] The storyline draws on popular narratives of the time, no matter the initial inspiration. The plot, in brief, concerns a young married woman who learns that her husband is having an affair; she leaves him and has a short dalliance with a male friend in retribution, is sued for divorce and loses; she moves to California, leaving behind her young daughter, and sets up shop making lampshades as Mrs. Marian Hatch. Just as her new love interest proposes, Mrs. Marian Hatch learns of her daughter’s upcoming marriage, and so she sells everything, spurns her suitor, and moves back to NY to see her daughter, pretending to be a stitcher working on her daughter’s wedding dress to gain access. She continues to nobly suffer in silence, and after the daughter returns from her honeymoon, she learns the true identity of the stitcher, just in time for her long-lost mother to die of a weak heart. The short story was published during Harrison’s period of work with Belasco, providing Belasco with the plot and dialogue to compare to the draft manuscript which he had in his possession. What should have helped him potentially prove part of his case, however, also gave Harrison and the Fiskes a clear roadmap of what they might want to change. And changes, they made. While early drafts of the play have not been located, the major differences between the play and the short story appear to have been written in collaboration with the Fiskes rather than with Belasco. And, the substantive nature of those alterations between short story and play may well have undercut any claim of joint authorship of the play that Belasco might have made. Numerous major and minor changes were made during the process of adaptation from short story to play, and little of Belasco’s input seems to have survived the revision process, which may well have continued after the injunction was filed. Extant correspondence about the revisions is generally brief and undated, limiting our ability to parse which changes might have been happening when. Additionally, numerous short undated letters from the Fiskes request her presence at the theatre and notify her of their visits to her house, some specifically mentioning the play and others simply confirming times and dates. [76] Quite a few letters between Harrison and the Fiskes discuss the play and its development, in particular the last act, which is significantly changed from the short story version, as well as the Paul & Lina scene, the Paul & Marian scene, and Mrs. Hatch’s character. Paul Trevor, Mrs. Hatch’s love interest, is an entirely new character for the play, and the plot alterations necessary to accommodate him were quite substantial; this love interest permits Mrs. Hatch to be more sympathetic, perhaps accounting for the character imperfections which Burton Harrison recommended so that the judge’s decision is believable. Belasco and Harrison had considered making Mrs. Hatch purely innocent, but Burton Harrison objected because a judge would never have taken away an innocent society woman’s child. Harrison followed this advice, telling Belasco: “my husband says our latest scheme to make Marion innocent, except of rash impulse, has simply robbed the play of all of its strength, and made it a tissue of improbabilities. He says no judge or referee in New York would ever have condemned a woman upon such a letter […] the matter of innocence simply takes the backbone out of the play, and makes it inverterbrate.” [77] Yet, given that the Fiskes and Harrisons had nearly a month between the notice of the lawsuit and opening night, it is possible that some of the minor details that survived the short story-to-play revision process were cut, just in case. Indeed, Belasco’s complaint gave them a map of potential changes to make by submitting a typed copy of feedback on the first three acts with his affidavit as Exhibit 13; the press also ran the contents of the suit in great detail, with at least one paper reprinting the letters entered in as exhibits. [78] Remarkably few of those suggestions were in the final version of the play, perhaps because of artistic differences, but perhaps to assist with the defense. Numerous minor differences exist between the play and Belasco’s notes – instead of Adrian’s parents visiting, it’s his sister; when the lawyer enters, Mrs. Hatch says “I haven’t forgotten you” rather than Belasco’s suggested “Yes… I remembered you;” a boy is replaced by a telephone; etc. In one noticeably awkward substitution, a young boy at a May festival who had a balloon in the short story was instead given a toy boat in the play and told, “Hold fast Johnny boy. If Bobby gets it away from you, you’re gone.” The short story version was “Take care Johnny boy. […] Hold very fast to your string. If it gets away from you, you’re gone.” Belasco wrote a whole bit about balloons going up, one child losing one and crying, and Mrs. Hatch talking to the child, saying, “You can get another! My balloon went up, long ago; and I couldn’t!” None of that remains – balloons aren’t mentioned at all. [79] Johnny’s illogical need to hang onto his boat rather than his balloon seems to suggest the Fiskes and Harrison either were not quite so innocently being attacked by Belasco or were unsure of their legal standing and decided to make sure that play was sufficiently different to withstand scrutiny. One tantalizingly unclear letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Harrison suggests that they might have been editing out parts which might give Belasco grounds to argue for collaboration, unless, of course, they were worried about the critics. Fiske writes, “Do you not think it would be well to cut, in Gladys’ 2 nd Act scene – all reference to her mother so that the nasty and unfriendly ones won’t have a chance to say that we are forcing a situation!” [80] In the published version of the script, Gladys remarks periodically about her mother (Mrs. Hatch) in Act 2, but there’s only a brief reference to the off-stage Mrs. Lorimer, who is introduced as far more of the stereotypical social-climbing wicked stepmother in the short story pages which parallel Act 2. Belasco’s script notes, meanwhile, advise that an abbreviated version of the short story’s stern conversation between Mrs. Lorimer and Gladys remain, complete with the carriage arriving upstage. [81] Whether or not the Fiskes and Harrison are guiltless in this endeavor or simply covering their bases is unclear, muddied by the paper trail and the long-standing animosity between the producers. The Fiskes do seem to have been playing a little fast and loose with the truth at times, for Harrison Grey Fiske’s affidavit implies a distant, past, notion that “a collaboration with Mr. Belasco and a production of the play by him was once contemplated” [82] and he tells the press “I knew that in some sort of a way Mr. Belasco had known of the writing of the play.” [83] Yet, Minnie Maddern Fiske’s correspondence suggests that she knows the backstory and its implications. She tells Harrison in an 8 th September 1901 letter “Do not let Mr. Belasco know that I wish to present the play. The little man would hold to it with his last gasp if he thought that. I shall be so glad when it shall be finally in our hands.” [84] Whether Fiske expects a competitive battle from Belasco or whether she understands that Harrison had been working with him and was attempting to extricate herself from that relationship is unclear. Belasco was at a serious disadvantage while building his lawsuit because he did not have access to this latest version of the script, nor did he appear to know that Harrison had been working with the Fiskes since May. He reportedly told her – in July 1901 — that he wouldn’t be able to produce the show in the 1901-1902 season; [85] this document’s authenticity is questioned by Harrison, who denies ever receiving it. [86] Regardless, it still does not constitute a contractual agreement to produce the play, and in reality, by July she was already substantially revising the play based upon suggestions from the Fiskes; accordingly a whole section of Belasco’s argument falls apart. [87] His silence and failure to obtain a written contract enabled her to go elsewhere with the script, be it due to busyness or a devaluation of Harrison’s work until it was deemed stage-worthy by a competitor. He was fond of suing his competition, so it simply may be that he had no legal case and was on a deadline; he had less than a month to shut down the production, so ownership was the only logical power play that might result in a production delay and payout. Whether Harrison and the Fiskes would have been able to make a case about theatre’s collaborative writing history not constituting ownership, authorship, or joint authorship remains unknowable. The Predatory Producer and the Female Playwright The difficulties of establishing the extent of a collaboration, and thus of being able to make a case for joint authorship, rest in part on intent, as Lydecker discusses, and in part on contributions to outcome, which has become a foundation for modern legal interpretations. While the law was not settled then (or now), [88] all sides spent a significant amount of time presenting the case for their contributions to the piece in a messy and protracted collaborative process – Belasco claiming ideas and inspiration, Harrison denying his input was used in the piece, and Fiske and the Harrisons both, seemingly, working to remove any remnants of Belasco’s imprint on the piece. Layered atop this was Belasco’s bravado and the willingness of the entire defense team to cast Constance Harrison as a somewhat gullible woman for their benefit. In the end, the suit was dropped, without clear explanation, but the extensive legal archive and press coverage certainly suggest that all parties were concerned that Belasco might well have had a case despite not having a written contract with Harrison and that the rhetorical positioning of Harrison as a naïve and manipulated woman might not have been sufficient as a defense. The complexities and legal uncertainty surrounding extent of and intent to collaborate continue to appear in contemporary case law. The playwriting process of the early nineteenth century, particularly when a predatory producer encounters a female “amateur” playwright with enough skill to write a hit and a willingness to trust him despite others’ concerns, was a messy enough collaboration that the law may have granted Belasco some compensation for his input, if the script sufficiently resembled the earlier version. One wonders if Belasco’s obviously thin evidence was taken seriously simply because Harrison was a woman and “amateur” playwright and Belasco was granted immediate authority and credence as a professional man. While the case is rooted in the competitive turn-of-the-twentieth century world of producers who were fighting to establish themselves and resist the Syndicate, the implications of this case and the historical outcomes for women and their labor remain all too familiar. The legal system still grapples with defining collaboration, but women’s contributions to work products are ignored or undermined with the same unquestioned ease seen in Belasco’s affidavit. Harrison, doubly challenged as a woman and a wrongly perceived amateur author, spends years trying to work collaboratively with Belasco in a playwright-producer relationship. Belasco, who cannot be bothered to reply to her letters despite their working relationship, appears in his affidavit to be incapable of imagining that a woman would collaborate with him rather than work for him. Harrison’s capacity to function in a professional realm without male input is quite obvious in her archive – Harrison, Minnie Maddern Fiske, and Kauser are the three women who make this production happen through negotiation and collaboration. And yet, throughout the legal and press archives, Harrison’s skills and professional capacity are constantly questioned. A century later, women’s voices in collaborative work are still continually ignored, discredited, and questioned. Actual amateurs are systematically exploited for their labor through an industry that relies on underpaid positions, while experienced women are presumed amateurish, their work products and ideas claimed and turned into profit opportunities by men. That the law struggles to define collaboration reflects the messiness of creative processes; that teams still erase women’s contributions to collaborations is symptomatic of a pernicious societal ill that led Belasco and Harrison to court. References [1] Abram J. Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske . Para 4. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [2] Mary A. Worley, “Alice Kauser, Playwright, A Woman of Ideas,” Los Angeles Herald , 8 Feb 1903, 7. See also “Interview with Alice Kauser, 1904” excerpted from “Alice Kauser: A Chat with the Woman who Presides over the Largest Play Business in the World,” New York Dramatic Mirror , 31 December 1904, in Theatre in the United States: A Documentary History. Volume 1: 1750-1915 Theatre in the Colonies and the United States , ed. Barry B. Witham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 188. [3] Mrs. Burton Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay , (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 333. [4] Harrison, Recollections , 325-327. [5] “Exhibit 11.” Copy of Letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, 23 May 1901. In Affidavit of David Belasco . Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [6] See, Letter from Alice Kauser to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 15 May 1901; Alice Kauser to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 17 May 1901; Letter from Harrison Grey Fiske to Alice Kauser, 18 May 1901; among others, in: Mrs. Burton Harrison, Correspondence re Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch, 8-MWEZ x n.c. 19,567 [Cage], Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library. [7] See, among others, Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, 8 September 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [8] Letter from Alice Kauser to Mr. Burton Harrison, 12 October 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [9] Amended Answer , 2/3 Dec. 1901, Para. 11. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [10] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske , 15 Dec. 1901. Para. 26. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [11] Affidavit of David Belasco , 8 Nov. 1901. Para. 4. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [12] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [13] Ryan J. Richardson, “The Art of Making Art: A Narrative of Collaboration in American Theatre and a Response to Calls for Change to the Copyright Act of 1976,” Cumberland Law Review , 2011/2012. 42 Cumb. L. Rev. 489. Lexis-Nexis Academic. 492. [14] It also should be reiterated that her husband was an experienced lawyer by the time of the suit. [15] Douglas M. Nevin, “No Business like Show Business: Copyright Law, the Theatre Industry, and the Dilemma of Rewarding Collaboration,” Emory Law Journal , Summer 2004: 53.3, 1537. [16] Derek Miller, Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1790-1911 . (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2018), 195. [17] Injunction . 6 November 1901. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 6. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [18] Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para 10. [19] See Miller, Copyright and the Value of Performance, 195-235, for an in-depth discussion of the intellectual traditions surrounding manuscripts, copyright performances, and related ways of establishing ownership in the nineteenth century. [20] Library of Congress, United States Copyright Office. Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870-1916. Vol. 2. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), 2448. Copyright number 48453. Issued October 8 1901, 2c Nov 26 1901. D: 935. [21] Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para 10. [22] Whether or not he did submit the manuscript to the court is unclear. The draft script is in neither Lydecker’s nor Harrison’s files on the case. [23] “Exhibit 4.” Copy of Letter from Mrs. B. Harrison to Mr. Nash, 2 April. Affidavit of David Belasco . [24] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 38. 13 November 1901. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 8. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [25] “Exhibit 3.” Copy of Letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Sunday. Affidavit of David Belasco . [26] “Exhibit 11.” Affidavit of David Belasco . [27] “Exhibit X.” Copy of Letter from Burton N. Harrison to David Belasco, 4 October 1901. In Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison . 13 November 1901. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 6. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [28] “Exhibit 11.” Affidavit of David Belasco . [29] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 44. [30] Letter from Jeannette L. Gilder to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 10 October 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [31] Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison , 13 November 1901, Para 5. [32] “Exhibit 1,” Copy of letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Wednesday. Affidavit of David Belasco . [33] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [34] Charles Lydecker, Memo. in Opposition to Motion for Injunction , 15 Nov. 1901, Part 1. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [35] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 2. [36] Letter from Alice Kauser to Constance Cary Harrison, 14 September 1903. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [37] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 12-21. [38] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 13-14. [39] Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison , Paras. 6-10; Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Paras. 47-53. [40] Qtd. In Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 517. [41] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 2. [42] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. [43] United States Copyright Office, Catalogue of Title Entries of Books and Other Articles , Fourth Quarter 1901, Volume 29 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), 1470. [44] Lydecker, Memo., Part 3. [45] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. [46] For a general assessment of the complications and history of notions of joint authorship in US Copyright law, see Edward Valachovic, “The Contribution Requirement to a Joint Work under the Copyright Act,” Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review , 12.1 (1992): 199-219. [47] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. He cites Levi v. Rutley, Law Reports 6 C.P., 523, Smith J. Later cases and updates to the copyright law on joint authorship move towards a clearer definition of “work for hire” rights residing with the employer. [48] Again, these are issues with which contemporary copyright cases still grapple, though Richardson notes that work-for-hire has generally been settled as inapplicable now for contemporary production conditions: “Courts, more or less, have embraced this narrow definition of authorship, holding that because playwrights and composers initiate (and occasionally complete) the vast majority of their work before a producer is solicited to fund a production, they are considered “independent contractors” and are not subject to the work-for-hire doctrine.” Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 510. [49] While this claim is made in the Amended Answer , Para. 10, Harrison herself avoids explicitly mentioning remuneration in her affidavit. [50] See Miller throughout. [51] See Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [52] Letter from Alice Kauser to Constance Cary Harrison, 10 December 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [53] Letter from Harrison Grey Fiske to Alice Kauser, 18 May 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [54] Letter from William H. Kendal to Mr. Day, 1 July 1902. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [55] Amended Answer , Para 2. [56] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske, Para 20. [57] Amended Answer , Para 4. [58] Nevin, “No Business like Show Business,” 1534. [59] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 492. [60] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 493 [61] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 508. [62] Anne Ruggles Gere, “Common Properties of Pleasure: Texts in Nineteenth Century Women’s Clubs,” in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature , eds. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 391. [63] Gere, “Common Properties of Pleasure,” 397-399. [64] For a general assessment of the historical development and complications of collaborative work, see Peter Jaszi, “On the Author Effect: Contemporary Copyright and Collective Creativity,” in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature , eds. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 29-56. [65] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 10. [66] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 16. The lack of an agreement on collaboration also appears in Para. 45, where she also accuses him of changing her words in a letter submitted into evidence to be “projected collaboration” instead of “proposed collaboration.” [67] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [68] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 20. [69] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 28. [70] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 41. [71] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 7. [72] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Paras. 29-31. [73] Letter from Unknown Author to Constance Cary Harrison, [1901]. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [74] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 7. [75] See, for example, J. Ranken Towse, “The Drama,” The Critic 40 no. 1 (January 1902): 39-40; “The Stage,” Town Talk 11 no. 575, (5 September 1903): 21. [76] See Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [77] “Exhibit 2.” Copy of letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Thursday Evening, Affidavit of David Belasco . [78] Clipping. Robinson Locke Scrapbook. Volume 203 Reel 18, page 61. Robinson Locke collection, NAFR+. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. [79] Mrs. Burton Harrison, The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch (New York: C.G. Burgoyne, 1901): 22; Mrs. Burton Harrison, “The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch,” The Smart Set (March 1901): 14; “Exhibit 13.” Note 2, Affidavit of David Belasco . [80] Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, undated. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [81] Harrison, Unwelcome , 32-33; Harrison, “Unwelcome,” 25-37. “Exhibit 13.” Note 7, Affidavit of David Belasco . [82] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske , Para. 11. [83] Clipping. Robinson Locke Scrapbook. Volume 203 Reel 18, page 61. BRTC. [84] Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, 8 September 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [85] “Exhibit 12.” Copy of letter from David Belasco to Constance Cary Harrison, 15 July 1901. Affidavit of David Belasco . [86] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison . Para. 56 [87] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 29-31. See also Abram J. Dittenhoefer, Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para. 9. [88] The current standard is that “the independent contributions of each putative joint author must be independently copyrightable; it is not enough that only the finished product be copyrightable.” Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 516. Footnotes About The Author(s) DR EILEEN CURLEY is Chair and Associate Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she teaches a wide range of theatre and drama courses. She is also the Editor in Chief of USITT’s quarterly journal Theatre Design & Technology. Her research on nineteenth-century amateur theatre has appeared in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Popular Entertainment Studies, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Symposium, Performing Arts Resources, and edited collections. Dr. Curley has also designed props, scenery, or projections for more than 50 productions in Indiana, New York, and Iowa. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Theatre History, Theory, and Literature from Indiana University and a B.A. in Theatre from Grinnell College. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202 Twenty-First Century American Playwrights Encounters on Contested Lands and Provocative Eloquence Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Lucas Skjaret 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 Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Lucas Skjaret By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF ANOTHER DAY'S BEGUN: THORNTON WILDER'S OUR TOWN IN THE 21ST CENTURY. Howard Sherman. London: Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury Publishing Place, 2021; Pp. 268. Another Day’s Begun, Howard Sherman’s first full-length book, centers theatre-makers and how they approached Our Town from 2002 to 2019. Sherman is known for his work with the American Theatre Wing, which co-produces the Tony Awards, and his numerous high-profile administrative positions with significant arts organizations, leading to his large social media presence and frequent writing about the industry. His pulse on the American theatre zeitgeist situates his approach to exploring a play such as Our Town . Scholars consider Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as seminal within the American literary and dramatic canon—and Sherman argues effectively for its legacy. Having opened on Broadway in 1938, it explores themes of American life and mortality in the bucolic, fictional New England town of Grover’s Corners from 1901 to 1913. The play ends with Wilder’s spin on the dance macabre ; we learn about the fates of the townsfolk, following Emily as she reflects upon her life as a departed soul. The play was revolutionary for many reasons, as Sherman argues, particularly its infamous opening stage direction: “No curtain. No scenery.” Besides using a bare stage and mimed properties, Our Town is recognized for its narrator-turned-psychopomp, The Stage Manager. Since its premiere, numerous high schools, community theatres, professional producing houses, universities, and audition rooms have visited Grover’s Corners. While Sherman is not a conventional scholar, Another Day’s Begun presents a robust examination of the continued influence of Our Town on storytellers across mediums and genres. Sherman divides his book into two main sections: the history of Our Town , and then a series of interviews with artists who have worked on productions since 2000. Chapter 1, “Building Grover’s Corners,” chronicles the play's development and original reception. Sherman’s writing balances clarity with curation, connecting the play to Wilder’s life and the historical context in which the thrice Pulitzer prize-winning dramatist wrote. The chapter emphasizes the play’s early impact in the United States and abroad post-World War II, noting that it was the first American play produced in Berlin after the war’s end in 1946. Sherman explains the Department of State pushed to produce American plays “vigorously” in both Germany and Japan during the war, with the Army negotiating directly with playwrights rather than through their agents. He quotes Variety describing this move to use “theatre as a means of bringing democracy to presumably truth-starved German teen-agers.” (15) Sherman considers the play’s life from mid-20th century into the 21st century. Chapter 2, “Expanding Grover’s Corners,” analyzes the play’s impact on a much broader scale. Sherman explores its cultural legacy through numerous adaptations, parodies, derivative stories, and references that spread across almost every storytelling medium. While Sherman includes aesthetically similar adaptations (such as the television musical version starring Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra in 1955) and other more robust re-imaginings — including ballet and opera adaptations — he argues for Our Town’s strong influence in popular culture. One example is his analysis of sitcoms such as Cheers , The Nanny , and Growing Pains , which included diegetic performances of Our Town . Sherman notes that these popular citations require the audience’s knowledge to make sense. He cites contemporary references too, like Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s television hit Riverdale, whose first episode has a “decidedly Wilderian feel” and how, in a later episode Veronica Lodge, a character, mutters, “I feel like I am wandering through the lost epilogue of Our Town’ ” as a “throwaway aside.” (40) Sherman smartly traces changing receptions of the play and does not shy away from negative responses, presenting a healthy balancing of perspectives on Wilder’s seminal work. Chapter 2 evidences the ubiquity of Our Town in creative output since its premiere. The book's primary contribution to scholarship sharpens in its second half, titled “ Our Town : Production Oral Histories 2002-19.” Here, Sherman archives interviews with artists who have worked on the play since the turn of the millennium. While he conducted most interviews, the author also includes artist statements transcribed from a 2006 video interview with Paul Newman, who played The Stage Manager in 2002 at Westport Country Playhouse (251). These oral histories, which serve almost as case studies, begin with David Cromer’s groundbreaking 2002 production. Despite its “utter simplicity and lack of artifice,” signaled by having actors wear contemporary street clothes, Cromer carried out a “ coup de théâtre ” on the audience: the Stage Manager, played by Cromer himself, revealed a detailed vintage kitchen with real bacon cooking and full period-specific costuming for Mr. and Mrs. Webb as their daughter, now deceased, visits this memory. (46) Another notable production discussed is Michel Hausmann’s interpretation at Miami New Drama, which incorporated Spanish, English, and Creole – the “three dominant languages of the city.” (167) The book’s strength derives from this variety of focal productions; from professional to educational productions to more avant-garde interpretations, Sherman ensures a diverse portfolio of perspectives. Having interviewed many theatre-makers over his career, Sherman knows to allow the artists to speak directly to readers about their experiences and approaches to Our Town . These interviews are not only archival but insightful about the craft of theatre-making. Sheryl Kaller, who directed Deaf West and Pasadena Playhouse’s 2017 production, for instance, which centered American Sign Language (ASL) and English, noted that their costume design was period-appropriate but “stayed in hues of blue, gray, and white,” a color palette designed to make the actors’ signing more visible. (198) The interviews reflect on disparate practices and contexts of production; readers directly observe how artists of differing backgrounds, resources, and notoriety discuss their artistic approaches to Wilder’s (nearly) century-old play. In his “Epilogue: 11 O’clock in Grover’s Corners,” Sherman summarizes his experiences of researching and writing the book. Beyond words that often came up in the interviews—universal, mundane, favorite, White, greatest, cheesy, and sacred— he was most surprised by how many interviewees confessed they never read it until they worked on it. Our Town, he argues, has thus “permeated the collective consciousness” of American theater and served as a conduit for American cultures. (247) Howard Sherman’s debut publication is well-researched and well-structured. For those who teach American drama, Wilder, or Our Town , the book has pullable sections that one can assign to add context and perspective to a play that many students might see as antiquated, or unrelatable. Another Day’s Begun provides the perfect dramaturgical companion for any director, scholar, or producer about to visit Grover’s Corners. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Sherman, Howard. Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century. London: Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury Publishing Place, 2021. Footnotes About The Author(s) Lucas Skjaret (he/him) is a third-year MFA Theatre Directing candidate originally from Minnesota. Before his journey south, he worked as a director, costume designer, dramaturg, and teaching artist in the Twin Cities. At Baylor University, he directed Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker; Sam Shepard’s 4-H Club ; Under the Compass Rose , a devised piece; and Men’s Intuition by Itamar Moses. Additionally, he directed the staged reading of Joseph Tully’s new play Mythos of Autumn and co-directed the workshop concert of Favor: The Musical. In Minnesota, Lucas was the founder and artistic director of Market Garden Theatre, in which he directed Another Revolution , My Barking Dog , On The Exhale , and Public Exposure , as well as curated and directed their new works festival, Fresh Roots. He also worked with companies such as Lyric Arts Main Street Stage, Freshwater Theatre, History Theatre, Walking Shadow Theatr Company, Little Lifeboats, The Children's Theatre Company, Park Square Theatre, Artistry, Teater Neuf in Oslo Norway, and others. Lucas received his double B.A. in Theatre Arts and Scandinavian Studies from The University of North Dakota and studied at The University of Oslo’s Ibsen Centre. Lucas is an alumnus of the Directors Lab North in Toronto, Canada and the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive. He has also studied actor pedagogy at The Stella Adler Studio in New York City as well as intimacy direction with Tonia Sima and Theatrical Intimacy Education. As scholar, he has presented work at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, The Comparative Drama Conference, and MidAmerica Theatre Conference, where he also serves as the graduate student representative for the Playwrighting Symposium. His writing has been published in the Texas Theatre Journal and The Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal . His scholarship focuses on exploring performance as identity, translation & adaptation theory, directing practices, arts pedagogy, and Nordic dramatic literature. Lucas is a proud associate member of The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. 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.

David Pellegrini Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 1 Visit Journal Homepage The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Edwin Wong. Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press, 2019; Pp. 363. David Pellegrini By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF In 2019, the Langham Court Theatre in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada inaugurated the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition, awarding top prize ($8,000 Canadian) to In Bloom by Brooklyn-based playwright Gabriel Jason Dean. Selected from 182 new play submissions from 11 countries, In Bloom focuses on a “well-intentioned, but ultimately reckless documentary filmmaker in Afghanistan” whose actions led to the death of an Afghan boy—a tragedy he lies about in his award-winning memoir. This 21st century competition for tragic playwriting began as a partnership with classicist Edwin Wong, who lays out a blueprint for playwrights (and the competition’s rules) in The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Wong exalts three golden eras—ancient Greece; the English Renaissance; and German Romanticism—noting that after Eugene O’Neill, whom he cites as the last “true” tragedian in the Aeschylean tradition, tragic art largely vanished. That tradition is premised on a fairly simple formula, albeit with myriad variations: each dramatic action is also a gambling act involving varying degrees of unforeseen or unexpected risks. Wong’s goal with this book, like the contest, is to revivify this tragic principle for our contemporary age in which “low-probability, high consequence events lie in wait” (xxv). Although tragedy may have trafficked in uncertainty since its inception, Wong emphasizes the moral exigencies of examining the upside and downside values of risk and unintended consequences in an era in which there is an over-reliance on technology, nuclear energy, and the variabilities of global economic exchange. Wong’s overall argument in The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy is erudite, elucidated with extensive passages from canonical and lesser-known works and a wide range of theoretical citations. He is partial to the troika, apropos of ancient trilogies, and efficient in outlining the tripartite structure by which characters confront temptation, make wagers, and cast dice. In the first three chapters, Wong elaborates on the gambling metaphor and constructs a lexicon of qualifying terms. His first major categorization is premised on “tempo”; specifically whether the three gambling acts are presented gradually over the course of a play; backloaded, in which time lapses between wager and die-cast to build suspense; or frontloaded, in which the wager occurs early with the bulk of action depicting the ensuing chaos. Nestled within these categories is the frequency of the wager, e.g., standalone, if it occurs once as in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus; parallel-motion, in which several characters confront multiple risk events as demonstrated by O’Neill’s Strange Interlude; or perpetual-motion, whereby one wager generates subsequent wagers as in the Oresteia. Together, these first three chapters become a kind of periaktoi, the ancient, multi-surfaced scene-changing device conjectured by Vitruvius, underpinning Wong’s structural analysis. This first section grounds the third, “A Poetics of Tragedy: How to Write Risk Theatre,” providing playwrights with a comprehensive, formal analysis of the genre and a toolbox of dramaturgical strategies from which to choose. These “commonplaces” include the following features: a range of heroic types all driven by “white-hot” passions and best represented by elites since they have the most to lose; the interference of unreliable confidantes and meddlers; and dangerous, unstable environs, including, if necessary, the supernatural. As a writer, Wong’s associative style is entertaining, tempering what might appear to be an overly schematic approach. Moreover, when employing a wide range of ideas from social theory to the physical sciences to elucidate his foundational metaphor, Wong manages some impressive hypothetical risk-taking of his own. This audacity emerges most clearly in the book’s second and fourth sections in which Wong expounds on the philosophy of tragedy and galvanizes his case about risk theatre’s relevancy to modernity, respectively. For example, Wong poses an original paradigm (“the myth of the price you pay”) in which he traces how tragedy developed as a counter-force to the commodification of life via labor, when the psychic and existential dimensions of humanity such as camaraderie, desire, and honor became objects for philosophical contemplation. Tragedy, therefore, emerged when it became necessary to demonstrate that “what is worth possessing cannot be monetized” (107). Relatedly, Wong’s paradigm of “counter-monetization,” refers to the human costs of the wager depicted in tragedy—its irrevocability, gravity, and frequent culmination in death and destruction. The final, equally compelling strand of his argument surveys the time-bound parameters of tragic theories from the French Academy through Hegel and Nietzsche to arrive at our own “risk age,” in which “the scale of technology to do good or to do evil has increased, and continues to increase, by powers of ten” (262). There is much to admire in Wong’s argument, and it is remarkable how much the language of so many tragedies explicitly allude to gambling, economic costs, and risk-related values, both monetary and existential. Still, there are numerous counter-arguments advanced in the seemingly inexhaustible body of tragic theory that are noticeably absent or side-stepped in this study. For example, Wong’s opinion that the best tragic heroes come from a nobler breed legitimates the aristocratic bias rebuffed by practitioner/theorists from Lessing to Miller. Also, since he devalues the artificiality of the deus ex machina, Sophocles fares far better than Euripides, even though scholars have long argued that the latter’s subversion of tragic structure served to critique Attic social hypocrisies and cosmological fallacies. Further, feminist scholars will certainly reject the phallocentrism and linearity of what is, at base, a reformulation of Aristotelian and neoclassical models; it is noteworthy that Wong does not discuss any plays written by women. Relatedly, although Wong’s aim to rejuvenate tragic theatre is valiant, some consideration of film and, especially, any number of episodic television programs that veer towards tragedy would perfectly illustrate his parallel- and perpetual-motion categories since the cliff-hanger is predicated on temptation, wagers, and risks—and sometimes all three at once. Still, the fact that there were over three-hundred entries in the Langham Court Theatre competition in its first two years and that the top prizewinners, including most of the nine runners-up, are American suggests that risk theatre may well be a fitting response to an era in which the United States confronts improbable, (perhaps) unforeseeable, and oftentimes catastrophic events. References Footnotes About The Author(s) David Pellegrini Eastern Connecticut State University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Performance and the Disney Theme Park Experience: The Tourist as Actor. Jennifer A. Kokai and Tom Robson, eds. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; Pp. 292. The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Edwin Wong. Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press, 2019; Pp. 363. Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion. Emeline Jouve. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2017; Pp. 258. Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. Soyica Diggs Colbert. New Haven: Yale, 2021; Pp. 273. The Mysterious Murder of Mrs. Shakespeare: Transgressive Performance in Nineteenth-Century New York “What Will Be Changed?”: Maxwell Anderson and the Literary Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti Theatre of Isolation “A Certain Man Had Two [Kids]”: Tragic Parables, “The Prodigal Son,” and Edward Albee's The Goat “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells [Her] Story”: An Intersectional Analysis of the Women of Hamilton Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.