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Lynn Deboeck Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Theatre of Paula Vogel: Practice, Pedagogy, and Influences. Lee Brewer Jones. New York: Methuen Drama, 2023; Pp. 194. Lynn Deboeck By Published on May 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF The Theatre of Paula Vogel: Practice, Pedagogy, and Influences . Lee Brewer Jones. New York: Methuen Drama, 2023; Pp. 194. Lee Brewer Jones’s monograph on Paula Vogel offers a comprehensive, largely admiring account of one of the most influential American playwrights and teachers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Structured chronologically and thematically, the book traces Vogel’s development from her early life and formative artistic influences through her emergence as a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and, finally, her enduring legacy as a mentor whose pedagogical reach has shaped contemporary American theatre. Jones’s study will be of particular interest to theatre historians, dramaturgs, and scholars of feminist, queer, and experimental performance, though it also raises questions about methodology, critical focus, and editorial cohesion. The opening chapter, “Early Life and Influences,” grounds Vogel’s dramaturgy in her biography, emphasizing how her upbringing shaped her theatrical worldview. Jones carefully details Vogel’s family history—her Jewish father’s abandonment, her Catholic mother’s complex influence, and her close relationship with her brothers—as foundational to her recurring themes of loss, survival, and fractured intimacy. Vogel’s coming out at seventeen and her deep connection to her gay brother Carl establish what Jones frames as an LGBTQ+ foundation that informs much of her work. This chapter also addresses Vogel’s early professional disappointments, particularly her time at Cornell University, where shifting faculty politics led to the rejection of her dissertation and what Vogel herself described as being “fired.” Jones characterizes this period as a “false start” (3), though the material reveals not failure but a nontraditional trajectory that resists the heteronormative, white, male model of theatrical success. Jones is particularly strong in his discussion of Vogel’s self-identified artistic “gods”: John Guare, María Irene Fornés, and Caryl Churchill. These figures serve not merely as influences but as lodestars for Vogel’s dramaturgical ethics: Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation and Fornés’s innovation (“No repeats!”) together illuminate Vogel’s commitment to defamiliarization, formal risk, and her use of negative empathy . This framework becomes central in Chapter 2, which examines Vogel’s developing voice through plays such as Desdemona: A Play about a Handkerchief , The Oldest Profession , and And Baby Makes Seven . Drawing on Brecht and Shklovsky, Jones persuasively shows how Vogel resists the comforts of positive empathy in favor of unsettling audiences into seeing, rather than merely recognizing, familiar narratives. The book’s third chapter, “Building an International Reputation,” marks a turning point with Vogel’s response to the AIDS crisis and the death of her brother Carl in 1988, with Jones’s analysis of The Baltimore Waltz among the book’s most compelling sections. By transforming AIDS into the fictional ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease), Vogel defamiliarizes both the illness and the cultural panic surrounding it, staging grief through denial, humor and imaginative excess. Jones deftly unpacks Vogel’s use of language as both concealment and revelation, though at times his analysis is diluted by extended references to external literary works—such as Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home”—whose relevance to Vogel’s creative process is tenuous. While these intertexts may reflect critical reception rather than Vogel’s authorial intent, their prominence occasionally distracts from Vogel’s own dramaturgical strategies. Jones continues this chapter with discussions of Hot ‘n Throbbing and How I Learned to Drive , the latter of which earned Vogel the 1998 Pulitzer Prize. His account of Vogel’s willingness to revise Hot ‘n Throbbing —even after publication—underscores her belief that “the play, not the text, is the thing” (59). This philosophy culminates in How I Learned to Drive , which Jones situates as both a personal and cultural reckoning with trauma, memory, and power. The chapter convincingly positions the Pulitzer as a moment of long-delayed recognition while also gesturing to Vogel’s ambivalence about institutional success. Chapter 4, “The House of Paula Vogel,” shifts focus from playwright to pedagogue, arguing that Vogel’s influence is most visible in the extraordinary success of her students. Jones chronicles Vogel’s role in mentoring figures such as Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Nilo Cruz and in creating initiatives like the 48-hour bake-off, which democratized playwriting and emphasized collective creation. Vogel’s assertion that her life’s work is “not about getting through the door alone; it’s about forming circles” (94) serves as a thesis for this chapter. However, the section suffers from noticeable repetition and uneven editing (including noticeable typos and errors), suggesting that the book would have benefited from more rigorous revision. The final chapters (5 and 6) extend Vogel’s legacy into the twenty-first century, highlighting Indecent , the Ubu Roi Bake-Off in response to the Trump presidency, and her pandemic-era “Bard at the Gate” readings centering marginalized artists. A concluding interview with Nottage reinforces the book’s central claim: that Vogel’s most enduring contribution may be her generosity as a mentor. The penultimate chapter, authored by Amy Muse, offers a comparative analysis of Vogel and Ruhl, productively contrasting Vogel’s sharper, more unsettling endings with Ruhl’s emphasis on enchantment and affect. While this chapter is insightful, its inclusion raises structural questions, as its sudden change in authorship and focus disrupts the book’s cohesion. Overall, Jones’s monograph makes a valuable contribution to theatre studies by offering a detailed, accessible account of Paula Vogel’s plays, pedagogy, and influence. Despite moments of analytical drift and editorial inconsistency, the book succeeds in situating Vogel within—and against—dominant theatrical traditions. I recommend it to scholars of contemporary American theatre, feminist and queer performance, and graduate students seeking to understand both Vogel’s work and her transformative role as a teacher. One might even read the book as a map for mentorship, or as a call to “practice more failure” (Halberstam) by resisting the linear, white, male, heteronormative model so dominant in American theatre—and turning instead to Vogel’s circular approach. References Footnotes About The Author(s) LYNN DEBOECK is an Associate Professor of Theatre and Lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Utah. Her research interests include gender performance, the representation of maternity, advances in pedagogy and feminist directing. Recently (2023) she co-edited an anthology:  (M)Other Perspectives: Staging Motherhood in 21st Century North American Theatre & Performance   with Routledge. 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 100 Years of Du Bois: “Principles of a Real Negro Theatre” and “Criteria of Negro Art” “One Great and Fine Mode of Expression”: On W. E. B. Du Bois and the Exigencies of Black Drama and Theatre Reflections on Fundamental Principles An Expansive “Us”: W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Pan-Negro” Theatrical Vision W. E. B. Du Bois’s Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement in Harlem and Beyond It Was All a Dream: Shifting Du Boisian Notions in Richard Wesley’s The Talented Tenth Teaching August Wilson in an Age of Democratic Decline: Du Boisian Imperatives and Black Pedagogy Across Campus and Community Debbie with a D Talks Theatre with a T The Wild Duck Picnic at Hanging Rock Last Call: A Play with Cocktails The Dinosaurs The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism. Catherine Burroughs and J. Ellen Gainor, editors. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 652. Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation. Julius B. Fleming Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2022; Pp. 301. The Theatre of Paula Vogel: Practice, Pedagogy, and Influences. Lee Brewer Jones. New York: Methuen Drama, 2023; Pp. 194. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

David Bisaha Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage Blue-Collar Broadway David Bisaha By Published on May 25, 2016 Download Article as PDF Blue Collar Broadway: The Craft and Industry of American Theater . By Timothy R. White. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015; Pp. 275. Blue-Collar Broadway: The Craft and Industry of American Theater adds a refreshing urban studies point of view to the increasingly interdisciplinary body of work on Times Square, alongside Marlis Schweitzer’s When Broadway was the Runway , Lynne Sagalyn’s Times Square Roulette , and Steven Adler’s On Broadway . Timothy White’s study is a history of the “craftspeople and proprietors” of theater-related business from approximately 1875-1980, including in this categorization scenery and costume shop workers, dance shoe and wig vendors, and rehearsal space managers, among others. The book is most successful in its deployment of methods particular to urban studies. For White, economic development is best measured by the number and proximity of theater-related businesses, an argument supported by useful maps of such businesses over the decades (4-5, 75, 128-133). Using these maps, as well as directories, building ownership records, and business listings, White crafts an engaging history of Broadway’s blocks and the workers walking its streets. The first three chapters support later case studies by discussing foundational developments: the nineteenth-century road company, the consolidation of production under producer-managers such as David Belasco, the establishment of Times Square, the rise of labor unionism, and the effects of theater rental by radio and film companies in the 1930s and ‘40s. On the whole these chapters are more synoptic than argumentative. Nonetheless White uncovers meaningful patterns in details, for instance, in scene shop tenancy on the western side of 47 th street (49). The proximate locations of shops, suppliers, and their customers afforded the informal advantages of an industrial district, maximizing collaborative networks and minimizing transportation costs. Where White keeps focus on individuals’ strategies and practices, such as the then-fading procedure of renting out Broadway houses for auditions and rehearsals during the other productions’ runs (110), the ad-hoc but mutually supportive arrangements between producers/management and craft labor is clearest. Three case studies form the core of the book. In chapter four, Oklahoma! ’s 1943 premiere finds craft artists at peak efficacy, yet this also presages the doom of centralized craft production; the production’s multi-year run actually deprived costume and scenic shops of regular and diverse work, White notes (100). Further analysis of the musical’s development launches his discussion of the century’s trends, such as reliance on Broadway’s “angel” investors, negotiations within costumers’ unions over bought rather than built productions, and the effect of protectionist regulation of truck transportation by the Interstate Commerce Commission. This case study is the most extensive of the book, and effectively explains the obstacles surmounted by Broadway businesses when working within a robust, localized theatre district. Chapter six features a longitudinal case study of the decline in theatrical business activity on the 100 block of West 45 th Street, and the resulting increase in crime and adult-oriented businesses. Through the study of this block in detail, and similar ones in a subsequent summary, White argues that the loss of theatre businesses and their “casual enforcement of sidewalk safety” contributed to Times Square’s transition into a dangerous and licentious landscape. This chapter also calls attention to crime by unearthing obscure news stories from the seventies and eighties, such as the grisly murder of James Eng. Here the connection between business and decline is somewhat overstated. While larger changes to the city, such as its inequitable development priorities, the effects of immigration and white flight, and the end of the postwar boom may not be apparent given White’s more focused methodology, their absence from White’s analysis of the “slide from craft to crime” puts inordinate blame on the reorganization of the theatre economy toward a resident and regional model. Chapter seven’s case study of Evita ’s 1979 New York transfer illustrates a globalizing production market. This production encountered difficulties in securing audition and rehearsal space, mastering sound and lighting, and the increased burden of designing, ordering, and shipping production components from a distance, which White explains in detail. It also provided a model for funding a global hit musical at the expense of local craft laborers, breaking what White identifies as the “feedback loop” of Broadway. This concept connects the three studies. Intact, the loop incentivized local producers to support nearby businesses, and to occasionally invest capital in necessary offstage spaces, such as Michael Bennett’s purchase of the mixed-use rehearsal, studio, and office space at 890 Broadway (210). Strained by the regional theaters, the loop finally broke when the globalized musical ( Evita , Les Miserables , Cats ) pivoted to internationally constructed components. Worse, “absentee” producers’ profit would not return to Broadway’s shops. This broken loop became the new normal, White notes, citing Maurya Wickstrom’s observation that Disney has also not invested in independently managed space or support for craft (226). The most engaging portions of this book identify individual workers and use their actions as telling indicators of larger shifts. For example, costumer Barbara Karinska and lighting designer Eddie Kook’s salaried employment at Lincoln Center illustrates the blow dealt to the industrial district by hiring in-house labor, a reduction in workers’ flexibility only compounded as jobs arose in resident theatres outside of New York. Another valuable connection made by this book is its discussion of theatre’s relationship to city development plans, first the Regional Development Plan of the 1930s (67-74) and, later, Mayor Lindsay’s establishment of the “Special Theater District” in 1967 (194). While these ideas are mentioned in other histories, White’s approach foregrounds the ways in which municipal policy changes shaped the fates of theatre’s backstage workers. However, due to its emphasis on business listings, the book equates the success of craft workers with a healthy crop of independently owned theatre-related businesses. The workers themselves periodically become lost in this history of business ownership, which cannot effectively track labor performed in larger institutions like regional theatres. More troublingly, the book doesn’t fully interrogate the concepts invoked by its title, using “blue-collar,” “craft,” and “industry” more or less interchangeably. Further research would benefit from investigating the social networks and class position of specific theatre workers. Nonetheless, solid in its understanding of the period and its urban geography, Blue-Collar Broadway is a good resource for scholars interested in Times Square history. By appropriately positioning theater as a small but important part of New York City’s developing economic power, White establishes the usefulness of urban history methods for the study of American theatre’s most influential urban landscape. References Footnotes About The Author(s) David Bisaha Binghamton University, State University of New York Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Eileen Trauth, Karen Keifer-Boyd and Suzanne Trauth Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Eileen Trauth, Karen Keifer-Boyd and Suzanne Trauth By Published on May 26, 2016 Download Article as PDF Introduction While an abundance of data clearly shows a gender imbalance in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, it is less clear how to motivate change regarding both overt and subtle barriers that hold women back. [1] This is particularly the case in the STEM field of information technology (IT). Since subtle gender barriers are transmitted through the cultural norms, values and gender roles of a society, creating a gender-balanced IT profession requires a way of addressing these emotional and implicit factors. The problem is that the scientific professions, on their own, are unable to do so. Information about structural barriers to social inclusion reported in scholarly publications is generally inaccessible to the lay person. Further, the scientific model of research dissemination leaves little room for the expression of subtlety, nuance, emotion, and holistic representation. Hence, artistic practice – specifically theatre for social change through relational aesthetics of transformative learning – can be employed to stimulate awareness, understanding, and activism about barriers to women in technological fields. It can also enable dissemination of research findings beyond the STEM academic community. In response to this opportunity, an original play, iDream , was written to communicate, in dramatic fashion, research results from an investigation of factors contributing to the under representation of women in the IT field. It did so by tackling the issues of experiencing, internalizing, and overcoming barriers to inclusion. The characters, plot, and dialogue of the play come from prior research that both developed theory and empirically applied it in over one hundred life history interviews with women working in the IT field. The characters in the resulting play embody the struggles of those who are marginalized in the IT field by virtue of gender but who seek inclusion and equality in the information society. Following staged readings of the play, audience feedback, and audience learning assessment, the play script was revised. The final version is now available to the public on the project website. This essay considers the challenges and opportunities of using theatre to address the important societal issue of exclusion in STEM disciplines. Backstory In 2007 Eileen Trauth sat at her computer having just sent her final report to the National Science Foundation (NSF) about a multiyear investigation into the gender imbalance in the STEM field of IT. She had developed and empirically tested a theory in the course of conducting life history interviews with women IT workers in the USA. During interviews that sometimes went on for three hours, these women willingly poured out their life stories – about their families, their communities, their schools, their hopes, and their dreams. They spoke about their interests and their passions, and about the people who helped or hindered their progression along a path that brought them to be participating in the interviews. She had already started publishing academic papers that added to cumulative scholarly knowledge about the problem of gender in the IT profession. But something was nagging at her. “How can I communicate what I have learned in this research in such a way that I can reach beyond my fellow academics? I want the results of my research to change the hearts and minds of parents, policy makers, educators, students and, ultimately, society,” she mused. Yet she recognized that scientific writing isn’t set up for such advocacy. This reflection and a fortuitous conversation the following year launched her on a journey through uncharted interdisciplinary waters. The conversation was with Suzanne Trauth, a playwright, who had just finished co-creating and presenting a play about Hurricane Katrina. The play was based upon interviews with residents of New Orleans and written in the genre of theatre for social change. Being aware of the interviews Eileen had conducted, Suzanne suggested a collaborative venture. Eileen’s research had revealed that the barriers to women entering and remaining in the IT field were not limited to those that are explicitly imposed on women, such as parents overtly discouraging their daughters from enrolling in computer science degree programs, or guidance counselors explicitly steering women students away from careers in computing. She had also found evidence of barriers that are implicitly internalized by young women themselves, when they receive messages from adults, peers, and the media about where they do and do not belong. As a result, they are sometimes unconsciously holding themselves back, which is being mistakenly diagnosed in the popular discourse as women “losing interest” in technology. Eileen was searching for a way to give voice to the powerful emotions expressed by the women she interviewed. There were times when she listened helplessly to the women express their feelings about isolation, exclusion from workplace socializing, being subjected to negative gender stereotypes, self-doubt, and being passed over for promotion. She wanted to communicate not just the facts she learned about the gender imbalance; she also wanted to communicate what it feels like to be on the margins. However, nuanced writing about subtle and unconsciously internalized barriers, writing that conveys what it feels like to be excluded, is the antithesis of scientific writing. Empirical research results that are published in scientific journals are expected to be presented in a straightforward manner, emphasizing objectivity and, typically, quantitative data. The emotion, nuance and subtlety that were an integral part of Eileen’s story of barriers did not fit with mainstream scientific research reporting. Consequently, she believed that her scholarly papers were telling only part of the story. She was also becoming increasingly dissatisfied with limiting the dissemination of her research results to fellow academics. Over the course of the project she had developed a growing desire to communicate to the broader public what she had learned about the nature of these gender barriers. She wanted to make a difference with this research and contribute to societal transformation. In recognizing that her research had taken her down the path toward advocacy, she was confronted with the limits of her discipline to effectively advocate for change. She acknowledged that art could pick up where science left off. Thus, this collaborative, cross-disciplinary project was born. This essay, about employing theatre to make a difference in STEM fields, recounts the process of enacting an NSF grant to develop and produce a play as an intervention to address the gender imbalance in science and technology. It also investigates some of the challenges associated with an effort to bring three different disciplines to bear on the enactment of societal change. That is, the play needed to satisfy the demands of playwriting in the relational aesthetics of theatre for social change. Performance arts can call people into relationship with each other and to objects, ideas, and places: a relational aesthetic , a term coined by Nicolas Bourriaud in 1988. [2] While doing so it needed to incorporate the results of scientific research and theorizing about gender barriers in the IT field into the characters and story line of the play. Finally, the play needed to evidence audience learning in the forms of awareness, attitude change, and intended behavior. Eileen Trauth is a professor of information science and technology, and gender studies, who conducts research on gender exclusion in the IT field. [3] She was principal investigator on this grant and co-wrote the play. She wanted to transform the findings from research interviews about gender barriers in the IT field into a medium that allowed for greater expression of emotion and subtlety than what is afforded by scientific journal articles. Karen Keifer-Boyd is a feminist arts educator and scholar of art pedagogy who served as the project evaluator; she wanted to assess the transformative learning that resulted as the playwrights, cast, and audience members experienced the performance of the play. Suzanne Trauth, a playwright, was a project consultant and co-creator of the play script. Her goal was to write a play script that would further societal transformation about barriers to achieving one’s dreams. Transformation: From Transcript to Play Script Theatre has frequently provided a venue for reaching audiences in order to achieve social goals beyond the purely aesthetic by healing, promoting action, encouraging community, and supporting transformation. [4] One articulation is called theatre for social change, which is enacted in times and places of crisis. [5] While theatre for social change has various understandings, our use of the term to describe our project is consistent with Thornton’s [6] depiction of theatre for social change as a set of five defining characteristics. The first characteristic is intentionality. Theatre is being used to alter the actual world, not just reflect it. In our project the intention is to create awareness, educate, and inspire action related to gender barriers in the IT field. The second characteristic is community, based on either geographical location or identity. The community shapes and informs the theatrical work. In our project the community consists of women IT workers whose voices are projected through the work to a potential community of IT workers in the audience. The third characteristic is hyphenation, the intersection of performing arts and sociocultural intervention. In our project the sociocultural intervention is awareness and education about gender barriers to IT careers. The fourth characteristic is conscientization: awareness leading to action. In our project awareness of gender barriers is intended to motivate behavior to resist them. The final characteristic is aesthetics. In theatre for social change multiple perspectives are often in evidence with the aim of giving voice to the voiceless. In our project two perspectives were employed (that of the playwright and that of a scientist) to give voice to an underrepresented group in the IT field: women. There are a number of current examples of theatre for social change. Katrina on Stage: Five Plays, [7] is a collection of works that employ theatre to promote awareness and activism about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Tim Robbins’ Dead Man Walking (2004) was written to promote activism about abolishing the death penalty. William Mastrosimone’s Bang, Bang, You’re Dead (1999) was written to increase public awareness about violence in high schools. Insofar as the intention of our work is to create awareness and understanding, it also shares a goal of applied theatre, which is to focus on the use of theatre to educate and engage with social issues. Applied theatre is also sometimes referred to as Applied Theatre for Social Change. [8] The project discussed here employs relational aesthetics in which actors, readers, and audience members experience qualitative research findings as theatre for social change, which highlights the issues associated with oppressive societal institutions. [9] One approach in theatre for social change is to transform research findings into an original play script. This approach has several labels, including: performed ethnography, research-informed theatre, and performed research. According to Tara Goldstein et al., Performed ethnography and research-informed theater are research methodologies that involve turning ethnographic data and texts into scripts and dramas that are either read aloud by a group of participants or performed before audiences.[10] They developed a framework of research-informed theatre to analyze the melding of research, theatre, and education to produce transformative learning. Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon employed performed research techniques in her performance piece SHOT! (2009) in order to reframe the discourse about an impoverished North Philadelphia community. [11] Intended as theatre for social change, the play script—when read, performed, or experienced as audience—brings awareness about gender barriers in the IT field and teaches how to challenge, change, and overcome inequities in IT fields. It shares with other forms of arts activism the goal of using “theatre in the service of social change.” [12] Other forms of activist theatre are: community theatre, popular theatre, grassroots theatre, agit-prop (from agitation and propaganda) or protest political theatre, participatory theatre, Freirean “Theatre for Development,” [13] or Boalian “Theatre of the Oppressed”—also referred to as forum or playback theatre. [14] While the staged readings of iDream were performed with professional actors in professional theatre venues, we expect that it might also be performed by schools or community groups and be followed by audience talkback sessions. Our study of attitudinal change for the actors and the audience members at staged readings suggests that the pedagogy of this play project works through embodied learning when performing the play script as a staged reading, or experiencing the staged reading as an audience member. While our learning assessment occurred for staged readings of the play script we believe it is reasonable to expect that a full production would also result in embodied learning. As theatre for social change it aims to remove social and institutional barriers that women experience in the IT field. Theatre, dance, films, and animations in STEM fields is typically used only for explanatory purposes; the arts help non-scientists visualize abstract science concepts as well as bio-physical processes invisible without specialized apparatus. For example, Vince LiCata wrote the play DNA Story (2009) [15] to teach non-scientists about DNA structure and X-ray crystallography. In contrast, our goal was not to explain scientific concepts but rather to raise awareness and critique hegemonic social narratives regarding who could participate in the STEM field of IT. As theatre for social change, iDream performs research about women’s experiences in the IT fields in order to heighten awareness and to advocate for change. The NSF grant scheme that funded this project to transform research findings into an original play script, and to assess it as transformative pedagogy, was directed at innovative ways to communicate research results to a public audience. [16] The original research upon which the play project was built was a qualitative field study of women working in the IT profession. [17] Eileen Trauth interviewed 123 women working in the IT field in the USA. The themes explored in the interviews were: the extent to which the IT field in is socially constructed as a man’s world; pressures on women in the IT field, and how these pressures affect their professional development and working lives; the relationship between working in the IT profession and a woman’s gender self-image; and, finally, how women in the IT profession cope with the challenges presented to them. During open-ended interviews that ranged from one to three hours in duration, women discussed their life stories that led them to their current position in the IT field. They discussed their demographics, the type of work they did, personal characteristics, significant others in their lives, and influences from the larger society regarding gender roles and working in a technical field. At the outset of each interview Eileen explained her interest in understanding variation among women in the ways that they were exposed to, experienced, and responded to gender barriers throughout their careers. [18] While this research was being conducted, Eileen had not envisioned developing a play script as a way to enact societal transformation regarding gender barriers. But she was conscious at the time of the evocative and emotionally compelling nature of the narratives. Hence, in 2008, when Suzanne Trauth proposed writing a play based on the research findings, Eileen was quite receptive to the idea. Two intended audiences were envisioned as the play was being developed. Teenagers constitute the primary audience for the play—those who are experiencing and internalizing barriers to participation in the IT field. While the research that informed iDream is primarily about factors influencing the underrepresentation of women in the IT field, it is also recognized that underrepresentation is an issue for men in certain racial, ethnic, socio-economic, and sexual groups, and that gender stereotypes are enacted by members of all genders. However, while the learning objectives of awareness and understanding, attitude change, and intended behavior about gender, race, ethnicity, and class stereotypes that are embedded in a culture could apply to men as well as women students, the focus of this particular project was on the factors affecting the underrepresentation of women in the IT field. The secondary audience for the play consists of significant adults in teenagers’ lives—parents, teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, and others who are in a position to influence them. Hence, while performances of this play are intended for younger audiences, in order to make the play appealing to adults as well some themes that were intended primarily for this secondary audience were also embedded in the play script. An example is an adult’s effort to hold a young person back from pursuing a dream out of a desire to protect her or him from the same trauma s/he experienced. A concern raised during review of the grant proposal was the need to demonstrate how the play would be compelling to the target audience. In response, at the initiation of the project Eileen Trauth conducted a focus group with undergraduate women currently enrolled in an IT degree program. As relatively recent high school students they were in a position to provide feedback on the story line and advice on techniques to engage the audience. For example, participants said that when they were in high school they lacked exposure to the range of IT educational options that were available in college; they believed that creating greater awareness and understanding about this would be valuable to high school students. As a result, the three main characters in the play and their respective stories relate to a range of IT careers. With respect to awareness and understanding about imposed and internalized barriers to women, participants recommended that the message be conveyed with subtlety. Consequently, promotional materials about the staged readings of iDream emphasized its focus on current issues facing today’s high school students: how to follow one’s dreams while coping with real world issues such as obtaining tuition money for college, and dealing with the expectations and advice of significant people in their lives (parents, boy/girlfriends, guidance counselors, and teachers). Making a decision about careers in the IT field was positioned as the setting for the exploration of these larger themes of concern to high school students. The focus group participants also recommended the use of humor and audience engagement to make the play appealing to high school students. To that end, the script incorporates the vernacular of 18-year-olds, their music and language, their relationships, concerns, and sense of humor. It also includes references to popular video games, and references to contemporary social media and texting. Further, some characters only appear in a technology-mediated way, such as through text messages: MOTHER: Have you done your homework? AMANDA: Duh. It’s Friday night. I have a date with Jimmy. ( She texts and laughs. Mother grabs the cell phone. ) MOTHER ( reads, confused ): What is this? OMG. MOS. 5. CTN. BBL8R. ILU. WYWH. It sounds like a foreign language. Like a…a code or something. Are you hiding something from me? ( Amanda takes the phone back. ) AMANDA: OMG you are so boring. MOTHER: I want to know what you’re talking about. AMANDA: I’m making plans with Jimmy. Though Amanda’s mother reads the text messages, she doesn’t understand their meaning. The scene operates on two levels: it is a humorous exchange that underscores the generational differences between mother and child while, simultaneously, emphasizing Amanda’s obsession with the coded language of texts. Later, Amanda’s teacher Ms. D uses her student’s preoccupation with texting as a means of engaging her interest in a technology career in cryptography. The goal of this project, as theatre for social change, was to create transformation on the part of audience members who experience the play—about intentional and unintentional barriers that can be imposed upon and internalized by young people in the pursuit of their dreams about careers in the IT field. Eileen Trauth was focused on ensuring that the characters and the story arc in the play communicated research findings about gender barriers in the IT field and embodied the theoretical constructs of a gender theory that she developed and that was used in the research that inspired the play. According to this theory, The Individual Differences Theory of Gender and IT, the underrepresentation of women and gender minorities in the IT field can be explained by the interaction of three sets of factors (theoretical constructs). The first is individual identity: demographic characteristics (such as age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic class) and type of IT work (such as computer hardware development, software design, or user support). The second factor is individual influences: personal characteristics (such as personality traits and abilities) and personal influences (such as role models and mentors). The third factor is environmental influences (such as cultural norms about gender roles). [19] Even though this project was undertaken to communicate the results of scientific research about gender barriers, the play had to satisfy aesthetic requirements as well. Suzanne Trauth had primary responsibility for writing the play script. She focused on ensuring that its aesthetic design created forward momentum with believable characters who live through a discernible story arc shaped by strong conflicts that force the characters to act to achieve objectives. The higher the dramatic stakes, the greater would be the audience engagement during a performance. Hence, a script was needed that would generate a high level of engagement during its performance in order to achieve the goal of societal transformation through awareness, attitude change, and intended behavior regarding gender barriers in the IT field. In the play, three girls—Khadi, Theresa, and Amanda—are high school students confronting an uncertain future: whether or not to go to college and, if they decide to, what they would study and how to make that happen. They are encouraged by Ms. D., the dynamic teacher of their Digital Design course, to explore the male-dominated fields of information and computer technology—computer science, computer engineering, and information science. In doing so, they begin to discover their places in the world while they struggle with the obstacles—personal, family, and academic—that might prevent them from following their dreams. The play focuses on the conflicts faced by all three protagonists: Theresa’s desire to attend college versus her father’s demand that she work in a hair salon with her cousin; Amanda’s blossoming interest in higher education versus her mother’s low expectations—and her boyfriend’s priorities—for Amanda’s future; and Khadi’s confusion about her choice of college versus the instability of her home life and lack of appropriate mentorship. iDream has a single plot with three threads that are woven together as the three friends face life decisions. By graduation day, Theresa has asserted her independence, Amanda has traded an early marriage for college, and Khadi has found her mentor in an empathetic boyfriend. In view of our goal, the interacting arcs of the three primary characters drove the narrative and textual foundations that held the production together. The integration of their three stories and the personal, academic, and familial barriers they confront as they face the challenges of planning for life after high school become the scaffolding upon which the moment-to-moment actions of the play unfold. Their objectives drive the narrative. The conflicts raised in the play reflect the range of obstacles discovered as a result of the research on barriers to careers in STEM for women and underrepresented groups. Theresa struggles with cultural and parental expectations. Her father is focused on the short term economic benefits of Theresa’s employment immediately after graduating high school. He does not see the long term economic benefits from Theresa remaining out of the labor force for four years while in college. Khadi confronts a lack of consistent mentoring about her future. And Amanda must tackle low parental expectations that affect her self-esteem. THERESA: Papi tells me to get my nose out of the books and learn to do something practical so I can earn money for the family. KHADI: Dad would say “yeah” but Mom is worried about money. I would need a scholarship or something. AMANDA ( mimics her mother ): Mom says, “I’m not wasting good money on college when I’m not sure you’ll even graduate high school.” All performance elements play a crucial role in the dissemination of the research findings. The story arcs of the characters express the results of the research: as the three girls confront personal and social barriers to achieving their goals, they embody the questions and concerns raised in the course of the interviews undertaken by Eileen Trauth. This storytelling, in turn, triggers audience engagement, via personal empathy during the performance and the public discussion afterward. Art and science converge in an exploration of career opportunities in the twenty-first century, and barriers that might hold people back. The focus is not so much on overt barriers that are imposed on individuals; rather the play dramatizes the process by which a young woman might unconsciously internalize limits on her dreams. Research-Informed Theatre Two forms of research were involved in this project. One form of research was the field study of women working with IT that produced the theoretical constructs and findings about the gender imbalance. These findings were, in turn, embodied in the characters and story line of iDream . The characters are a composite of the stories told by the adults about barriers they experienced and observed over the course of their lives, and the constructs of the theory used in the research. The other form of research was the process of obtaining and incorporating feedback into the writing and revising of the play script. Hence, the relationship of the audience to the performance was an integral part of this project. It was through audience engagement that this second kind of research was accomplished. The transformation of a scientific product into a theatrical process was intended to enact transformative learning through relational aesthetics in the experience of reading, performing, or viewing the play: to build awareness, change attitudes, and motivate behaviors and actions. The goal was to shift perspectives about individual, environmental, and social forces at work in creating barriers for women in technology fields. According to Juanita Johnson-Bailey, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies, and a professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy at The University of Georgia, societal transformation is a movement to change oppressive forces and begins with investigating the ways the forces form and operate. [20] Jack Mezirow notes: Transformative learning refers to the process by which we transform our taken-for-granted frames of reference . . . to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action.[21] The need for societal transformation is evident in the data about both the significant underrepresentation of women and gender minorities (e.g., black men and LGBTQ individuals) in STEM fields such as IT and in the hegemonic masculine culture that pervades the high tech world. [22] Two groups of individuals are the focus of the societal transformation: those who are experiencing and internalizing the barriers and those who are in a position to tear them down. The development of the play script involved the creation of an initial draft based on the results of Eileen Trauth’s fieldwork and her interactions Suzanne Trauth. This was followed by two workshopping sessions and a series of public staged readings of iDream . Following each of these, the play script was subsequently revised. The script was first workshopped with actors at a table reading with Suzanne Trauth, Eileen Trauth, the director, and the dramaturg in attendance. The goal of this session was for Suzanne, the director, and Eileen to hear the play being read for the first time. The second script workshop occurred a month later on a stage in front of a small audience comprised of teachers, college students, and high school students. The project team observed the script being presented in a staged reading format and gained initial audience feedback on the script. Six staged readings of the play with professional (i.e., Equity) actors in front of public audiences were then held in 2012. The first staged reading was in June 2012 for an audience of several hundred NSF-funded STEM researchers. In October 2012 the remaining five staged readings in front of public audiences were held, three in New Jersey and two in Pennsylvania. Each performance was followed by audience talkback sessions held immediately afterward. Following each event, the script was revised. The final version of the play was completed in 2013. The New Jersey performances were held at Premiere Stages in Union, New Jersey. The audiences for the two daytime performances were recruited from high schools in Jersey City, Elizabeth, and in and near Union. The students came from urban schools that have significant ethnic and socio-economic diversity in the student bodies. Suzanne Trauth and John Wooten, Producing Artistic Director of Premiere Stages (who was also a consultant on this project) invited theatre teachers in these high schools to bring their students. The third performance took place on a Saturday evening as part of a new playwrights series with an audience consisting of adults who came to see the staged reading of a new play; the subject matter of iDream was not the main motivator for attendance. The two Pennsylvania performances were held on a Saturday night and a Sunday afternoon at the State Theatre in State College, Pennsylvania. The audiences for these performances were recruited from newspaper announcements, posts to email listservs, and an interview by a local television station with Eileen Trauth, Suzanne Trauth, and the director. The performances were also listed among the upcoming events on the theatre’s website. Audience members at all five performances were presented with a pretest and an informed consent form to sign, both of which provided background information about the project. In addition, immediately preceding each performance, the director came onto the stage and gave a brief introduction to the project and the play. We achieved engagement with the target audience by writing the script in such a way as to build empathy with the characters, by relating the storyline to the audience members’ own experiences, and enabling them to “see themselves” in the unfolding drama. In this way, audience members were drawn into the circumstances in iDream . Audience members’ connection, in a visceral way, to the play provided the emotional energy moving the story along to the climactic moment. THERESA ( proudly ): My trigonometry exam. I got 99 out of 100. ( Father reluctantly takes the paper and studies it. ) FERNANDO: 99 out of 100. ( teases ) Why not 100 out of 100? But what will you do with 99 out of 100 in your cousin Maria’s beauty shop? This trigonometry will help you cut hair? ( He hands the paper back to Theresa. ) THERESA: I was thinking about college— FERNANDO: No, Theresita. You will go to beauty school. You will have a trade that you can be proud of. You will be able to help your family. In America we have a better life. It has been hard and I work many long hours. But I do it for you and Mami and Imelda and Juan. Theresita, I know you are smart. But you must do this for the family. THERESA: But things change and it is different here now. FERNANDO: Your family never changes. THERESA: I could get a scholarship. FERNANDO: No Theresa! You cannot give any information to the school about our family. You must NEVER talk about us to [outsiders.] Do not betray your family. THERESA: But Papi, this is our country now. They are not outsiders— FERNANDO: No. Come and set the table. No more talk of [outsiders]. And no more talk of numbers. ( He leaves. Theresa presses the exam to her heart. ) During the talkback sessions, audience members, who had experienced being devalued as a woman or person of color, were emotional in their responses; they related the characters to their own lives. Two sub goals were embedded in the overall goal of stimulating awareness, understanding, attitude change, and activism. One sub goal was to generate awareness about types of careers in a field that has been stereotyped as being the exclusive domain of men. The second sub goal was to create awareness about both overt and subtle barriers to participation in the IT field, which are experienced by members of underrepresented gender groups. Karen Keifer-Boyd was responsible for designing and implementing the learning assessment. Research-informed theater can be transformative learning if the relational aesthetic experience of a performance “exposes a discrepancy between what a person has always assumed to be true and what has just been experienced, heard, or read.” [23] Consequently, Karen designed an assessment to gauge changed assumptions and attitudes about women in the IT field by audience members who attended the staged readings of iDream . Three forms of data constituted the audience learning gains assessment. First, audience members were asked to complete a pre-survey form consisting of open-ended questions. Second, at the end of each staged reading, Eileen Trauth, Suzanne Trauth, the director, and actors responded to questions and comments from the audience members during a talkback session. Karen Keifer-Boyd and a graduate student attended the staged readings and took handwritten notes regarding audience responses during these sessions. A third form of data came from a follow-up online survey that was sent to audience members who had completed the pre-survey. Responses during the talkback sessions and follow-up survey consistently showed that iDream “speaks” to the audience. One mother revealed, “I didn’t know the computer field was so broad.” A Latino actor commented that one of the characters “behaved just as my mother did.” An adult Latina audience member said: “The play was telling my life.” Some women audience members related the play to their own experiences of gender stereotyping and being dissuaded from IT careers, or not being given the same opportunities as their male counterparts. One woman audience member “strongly identified with Theresa because it brought back memories of being the oldest in an Italian family and being expected to help the family [rather than undertake a career].” Audience members revealed that after experiencing the staged reading iDream they were now aware that the IT field is available to women and underrepresented minorities and showed some evidence of change in their perceptions of who can pursue IT careers. For example, an audience member stated, “The careers were presented as really accessible in the play.” One student stated, “Students play games but they don’t think about how they’re made. The play did a good job of presenting careers.” A 41 year-old woman responded on the post-survey, “After the play I know they [IT professionals] do more than just ‘develop software,’ which was my original answer.” The audience members also revealed awareness of implicit and explicit barriers that can be both imposed and internalized. They identified with the characters, or knew people and experiences reflected in the play. A mother in the audience stated, “My daughter is nine and when she was five she told me that other kids told her math is not for girls. This play showed the options in the computer field.” Another area of awareness was about resources, particularly the role of teachers in helping underrepresented groups overcome restrictive stereotypes. Nearly all of the respondents in the post-survey mentioned the significance of the teacher in the play as encouraging the three female characters to pursue college and careers in IT. A male audience member stated, “I am pleasantly amazed with the presentation of representing a message in art. … This play spoke to … a dream deferred because the barriers are there, but the story also presented opportunities.” We are aware that identifying the arts as a venue to articulate women’s experience of barriers in STEM might perpetuate a stereotype of the arts as a feminized discipline in contrast to the masculine STEM fields. Throughout the life of this project, which included talkback sessions following the six staged readings and seven presentations at a diverse set of conference venues, there were numerous opportunities for this issue to be raised. Yet it never was. But this doesn’t invalidate the concern. Indeed, Eileen Trauth, in her capacity as a scholarly journal reviewer, has encountered this arts-feminine/science-masculine stereotyping in manuscripts she reviews. For this reason, we believe that it is best to anticipate the potential for this issue being raised and to be prepared to address it in discussions and workshops that accompany future performances of the play. Enacting transformative learning through relational aesthetics in theatre for social change is not to prescribe or expect specific behavior changes. Rather, it is a pedagogical design of this play project that awareness and attitude change set in motion behavior changes specific to each individual’s life and circumstances. For example, one female high school student related the character of Theresa in the play to her brother, who has an interest in gaming and graphic design. She intends to tell her brother he could make a career out of developing video games. A high school teacher “appreciated seeing the struggles of students at home and the different cultures represented, so I can understand and help get students through graduation.” Several audience members recommended that all high school students should see the play. For example, a college professor recommended to all in attendance at one of the staged readings that all first-year college students should see the play because “there’s confusion about STEM—everyone thinks it’s too hard.” A student asked that the script be made available to schools “so they could perform it. Another asked about courses for her daughter to take that would help her “attack gender bias in the IT community.” Transformative learning, a goal of this project as theatre for social change, is “behaving, talking, and thinking in a way that is congruent with transformed assumptions or perspectives.” [24] Assessment of the impact of experiencing staged readings of iDream indicates pedagogical potential for transformative learning. The accessibility of the play script, not only literally by downloading from the play website, but also in the familiar dramatic aesthetics of its construction, lends it the potential for societal transformation through widespread education of high school students, parents, teachers, and counselors about the overt as well as the subtle barriers to participation in the IT field that confront women and other underrepresented groups. Postscript At the conclusion of the project a website was created to make the iDream play script available to those interested in reading and/or performing the play ( www.iDreamThePlay.com ). The final version of the play script became available to the public in 2014. The website also provides resource materials related to overcoming gender barriers in the IT field, such as a short video about the project and interviews with cast and production personnel. These materials offer an opportunity for both documenting and disseminating the performance, and for analyzing the performance process. Three questions accompanying the video convey the learning objectives of the play. How do we help people become aware of the subtle barriers that exist in our society, ones that are often unconsciously internalized, that hold young people back? How do we engage students in thinking about college and careers in science and technology? How do we awaken them to the possibility of creating their own individual dreams—and acting on them? As high schools, community groups, and universities perform the play or do in-class readings, these three questions can guide group discussion, providing a pedagogical design to be adapted to particular groups and places. The goal for the artist working toward relational aesthetics is to create an event or set in motion a social experience, which is the actors’ and audience’s experience of the art. In this project, the play script is the vehicle for creating art as experience. Groups can read and perform the script together and then work with the prompts and resources on the play’s website to reflect on their attitudes, perceptions, and positionality in relation to the IT field. The “Resources” section on the play website was created in response to audience members’ requests for a place to learn more about IT careers. Resources include information about information technology careers, organizations of underrepresented groups in information technology, and articles about theatre and STEM. The website is an important way for high school teachers to learn about the play and to produce a staged reading or full production in their schools. It provides a way to advance knowledge and practice, and enable others to build upon the results of the project. Through dialogue and research motivated by the play, further awareness, attitude change, and transformative learning with intended and actualized behaviors toward addressing gender barriers in STEM fields are the ultimate goals of the generative pedagogical design. From Karen Keifer-Boyd’s perspective as an arts educator who teaches students how to teach new media art, the benefit of working cross disciplinarily lies in the potential of the play script as education and art, to be used to challenge gender inequities in the IT field. Within her discipline she sees the potential for girls to be motivated to creatively play with technology as a mechanism for opening their minds to possible careers with technology. She believes society and institutions need to encourage such play. For Suzanne Trauth, a playwright, framing the issues of gender equality in the context of theatre reminds all involved in the process that these issues are not unique to the STEM fields. The American theatre has long struggled to establish gender parity with regard to the production of plays by female playwrights. That struggle is in the process of being addressed in recent years with the Dramatists Guild’s initiation of The Count, an ongoing study that explores the question of who is being produced in American theatres. In the November/December 2015 issue of The Dramatist , the organization presented for the first time three years of data from regional theatres across the country: only 22% of the plays produced from the regional sample were written by women. Meaningfully, playwright Marsha Norman, the author of the article, suggested that “if life worked like the theatre, four out of five things you had ever heard would have been said by men.” [25] Clearly, the American theatre has a distance to travel in achieving gender equality on its stages. In confronting the STEM issues, the artistic side of the collaboration is reminded that the goal of gender parity crosses disciplines. By the end of the project we came to see that it was really just the beginning. We had embarked upon this project with the goal of producing a play script as a way to disseminate Eileen Trauth’s research findings. The National Science Foundation funding supported development of a play script, and the production of a series of staged readings in order to obtain developmental audience feedback that would inform a subsequent revision of the script. That project is completed and the play script is currently available at the iDream website for those interested in reading or presenting a full production of the play. But we now view our original project as the inaugural steps of a longer-term mission. Eileen Trauth and Suzanne Trauth are currently exploring an expansion of this venture to broaden access to the story begun in iDream by using video story-telling and interactivity as options for greater engagement with the subject matter for a wider variety of audiences. References [1] This work was supported by three grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF #1039546 , NSF #0204246 , NSF # 0733747). We would like to thank, in particular, Dr. Jolene Jesse at the National Science Foundation for her encouragement to pursue this project. [2] N. Bourriaud, Esthétique Relationnelle/Relational Aesthetics , trans. by S. Pleasance and F. Woods (Dijon, France: Les Presses du Réel, 2002). [3] See, for example: Eileen M. Trauth, “The Role of Theory in Gender and Information Systems Research,” Information & Organization 23, no. 4 (2013): 277-93. Eileen M. Trauth, “Are There Enough Seats for Women at the IT Table?” ACM Inroads 3, no. 4 (2012): 49-54. Eileen M. Trauth, and Debra Howcroft, “Critical Empirical Research in IS: An Example of Gender and IT,” Information Technology and People 19, no. 3 (2006): 272-92. [4] See: Diane Conrad, “Exploring Risky Youth Experiences: Popular Theatre as a Participatory, Performative Research Method,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 3, no. 1 (2004): Article 2. Retrieved from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/3_1/pdf/conrad.pdf . Susan Denman, James Pearson, Deborah Moody, Pauline Davis, and Richard Madeley, “Theatre in Education on HIV and AIDS: A Controlled Study of Schoolchildren’s Knowledge and Attitudes,” Health Education Journal 54, no. 3 (1995): 3-17. Jeff Nisker, Douglas. K. Martin, Robyn Bluhm, and Abdallah S. Daar, “Theatre as a Public Engagement Tool for Health-Policy Development,” Health Policy 78, no. 2 (2006): 258-71 . [5] James Thompson, and Richard Schechner, “Why Social Theatre?” The Drama Review 48, no. 3 (2004): 11-16. [6] Sarah Thornton, “What is Theatre for Social Change?” in From the Personal to the Political: Theatre for Social Change in the 21 st Century with Particular Reference to the Work of Collective Encounters: A Review of Relevant Literature (Liverpool: Collective Encounters’ Research Lab). [7] S. M. Trauth, and L.S. Brenner, eds. Katrina on Stage: Five plays ( Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011). [8] Applied Theatre Action Institute. 2015. Retrieved from http://appliedtheater.org/ . [9] Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed (New York, NY: TCG Books, 1993). [10] Tara Goldstein, Julia Gray, Jennifer Salisbury, and Pamela Snell, “When Qualitative Research Meets Theater: The Complexities of Performed Ethnography and Research-Informed Theater Project Design,” Qualitative Inquiry 20, no. 5 (2014): 674-685, 674. [11] Kimmika L.H. Williams-Witherspoon, “On SHOT!: A Rationale for Resesarch and Dramas Depicting Violence in the ‘Hood’,” Theatre Topics 23, no. 2 (2013): 169-83. [12] Tim Prentki, and Sheila Preston, eds. The Applied Theatre Reader (New York: Routledge, 2009), 12. [13] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2007). [14] Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed. [15] Personal copy from the author. [16] National Science Foundation, Informal Science Education (#1039546). [17] National Science Foundation, “A Field Study of Individual Differences in the Social Shaping of Gender and IT” (#0204246). [18] For further explanation see: Eileen M. Trauth, “Odd Girl Out: An Individual Differences Perspective on Women in the IT Profession,” Information Technology and People 1, no. 2 (2002): 98-118. [19] See: Eileen M. Trauth, Jeria L. Quesenberry, and Haiyan Huang, “Retaining Women in the U.S. IT Workforce: Theorizing the Influence of Organizational Factors,” European Journal of Information Systems 18 (2009): 476-97. [20] Juanita Johnson-Bailey, “Positionality and Transformative Learning: A Tale of Inclusion and Exclusion,” in The Handbook of Transformative Learning: Theory, Research and Practice , edited by Edward W. Taylor, and Patricia Cranton (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 260-73. [21] Jack Mezirow, “Learning to Think Like an Adult,” in Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress , edited by Jack Mezirow & Associates (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 7-8. [22] Claire Cain Miller, “Technology’s Man Problem” The New York Times , April 2014. [23] Patricia Cranton, “Teaching for Transformation,” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 93 (2002): 63-71, 66. [24] Ibid, 66. [25] Marsha Norman, “Why the Count Matters,” The Dramatist , Nov/Dec, 2015. Footnotes About The Author(s) Eileen Trauth is professor of information sciences & technology, and women’s gender & sexuality studies at Pennsylvania State University. She conducts research on societal, cultural and organizational influences on the information technology profession with a special focus on gender and social inclusion. She held the 2008 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria, and served on the scientific advisory board for Female Empowerment in Science & Technology Academia (FESTA) , a European Union project to increase female academic participation in science and technology. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the Australian Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland. She is editor of the Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology and editor-in-chief of Information Systems Journal. ( www.eileentrauth.com ) Karen Keifer-Boyd is professor of art education and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Pennsylvania State University. She was the 2012 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Gender Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria, and received a Fulbright in 2006 for research in Finland on intersections of art and technology. Her writings on feminist pedagogy, visual culture, inclusion, cyberart activism, transcultural dialogues, action research, social justice arts-based research, and identity are in more than 50 peer-reviewed research publications, and translated into several languages. She co-authored Including Difference: A Communitarian Approach to Art Education in the Least Restrictive Environment (NAEA, 2013); InCITE, InSIGHT, InSITE [ amazon.com ] (NAEA, 2008); Engaging Visual Culture [ davisart.com ] (Davis, 2007); and co-edited Real-World Readings in Art Education: Things Your Professors Never Told You [ amazon.com ] (Falmer, 2000). ( www.personal.psu.edu/ktk2/ ) Suzanne Trauth is a playwright, novelist and screenwriter. Her plays include Françoise , which received staged readings at Luna Stage and Nora’s Playhouse and was nominated for the Kilroy List; Midwives developed at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey; Rehearsing Desire ; iDream , supported by the National Science Foundation’s STEM initiative; and Katrina: the K Word . She is a member of Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey Emerging Women Playwrights program and the Dramatists Guild. She wrote and directed the short film Jigsaw , nominated for best film in the shorts category at the PF3 Film Festival and screened at New Filmmakers, NY. Ms. Trauth has co-authored Sonia Moore and American Acting Training and co-edited Katrina on Stage: Five Plays. Her novels include Show Time and Time Out . ( www.suzannetrauth.com .) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Karl Kippola 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 American Tragedian Karl Kippola By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF American Tragedian: The Life of Edwin Booth. By Daniel J. Watermeier. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2015; Pp. 464. More has been written on Edwin Booth than any other American actor. Three popular biographies lionize Booth in the late-nineteenth century. Another four in the mid-twentieth century, one of which ( Prince of Players , 1955) was even made into a movie, perpetuate his tragic legacy. Charles Shattuck’s several, more scholarly, works on Booth, beginning in the late 1960s, revived interest. In the last quarter century, fascination with Booth has grown: Gene Smith’s American Gothic: The Story of America’s Legendary Family—Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth and L. Terry Oggel’s Edwin Booth: A Bio-Bibliography (both in 1992), Nina Titone’s My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy (2010), Arthur W. Bloom’s Edwin Booth: A Biography and Performance History (2013), the more popularly focused Good Brother, Bad Brother: The Story of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth (2005) by James Cross Giblin and The Assassin’s Brother: The Tragedies of Edwin Booth (2013) by Rebecca Wallace. With Between Actor and Critic: Selected Letters of Edwin Booth and William Winter (1971), Daniel J. Watermeier established himself as a formidable archivist and an authority on Edwin Booth. American Tragedian , dedicated to the memory of his mentor Shattuck, represents the culmination of Watermeier’s lifework on Booth and the American theatre. He effectively contextualizes the period, details the events, and explores the strengths, limitations, and temperament of “the last truly great American tragedian and Shakespearean actor” (362). Several recent works primarily and reductively view Edwin through the lens of his infamous brother. American Tragedian addresses the assassination in only six pages and wisely keeps the spotlight on the titular Booth. When Edwin returned to the stage a year after Lincoln’s death forced an early retirement, “It was as if the American psyche, scarred by years of war and then the shocking assassination of an esteemed president, needed to invest its collective suffering into a single individual. . . . Booth’s personal suffering . . . became emblematic of the nation’s suffering” (127). Watermeier honors the inescapable impact of John Wilkes’ act, but unwavering focus on Edwin encourages a more complex understanding of both the actor and the country. Previous Booth biographies often privileged limited aspects of his career, but Watermeier’s study is remarkably comprehensive. Readers finally experience Booth’s complete story, with scrupulous accuracy and documentation. Watermeier is at his best when he contextualizes and analyzes, fully capitalizing on the forty-year relationship with his subject and sources. Edwin as Hamlet wore his father’s portrait on a chain around his neck. When Watermeier posits, “It was as if his own father was King Hamlet, a tangible memento stimulating a complex emotional memory that fueled the believability of Edwin’s performance” (22), we receive genuine insight not only into Booth, but also into an acting process decades ahead of its time. Watermeier skillfully contextualizes the complex and often contradictory responses to Booth in his analysis of the “Joint Star” tour with Lawrence Barrett (a pair he convincingly identifies as pioneering “theatrical capitalists” [331]), which closely coincided with President Grover Cleveland’s own “Good Will Tour.” Cleveland had chosen not to intercede in the impending executions of anarchist assassins convicted in the 1886 Haymarket Riot, and “against these local events, Booth as Brutus [in Julius Caesar ]—whether heroic martyr or tragically misguided conspirator—may have had a special resonance with Chicago playgoers” (322), polarized in their response. If the book has a weakness, it lies in synthesis and interpretation. Too often Watermeier merely reports weekly theatres, roles, and box-office receipts, in lieu of complex analysis. Watermeier details the powerful connection that Booth shared with his audiences—an affinity that sometimes reached the level of obsession. Booth’s physical beauty, combined with his passionate and soulful portrayals, especially fascinated a number of young women and men who returned dozens of times to view his performances, to connect with him on a personal level, and to write voluminously and fanatically in their attempts to comprehend, if not demystify, his magical power. While Watermeier reports the fascination, he never truly grapples with the reasons behind it. Booth was born with a lucky caul, yet tragedy clung to him. Booth entered the profession when the first generation of serious American actors were in decline. Criticized for lacking tragic power, he aspired to a refined and intellectual approach that fortuitously matched temperament with the soon-to-be-dominant middle class and the sacred domain of the cultural elite. Booth consciously sought to elevate and ennoble audiences through repertoire selection, realistic stagecraft, and popular publishing of his acting texts. He built and managed Booth’s Theatre, arguably the finest in the world, to showcase his artistic ambition; yet, he was undone by bad choices and timing: “He did clearly put his trust too readily into the wrong partner and financial advisors, and, equally damaging, he overestimated his ability through hard work and substantial income to control the situation and unforeseen events—principally, the Panic of 1873” (175). In choosing his title, and in the focus of his study, Watermeier sees Booth as tragic, and tragedy did follow the actor in the death of his father, two wives, and infant son, as well as a crippling carriage accident, John Wilkes’ shooting of Lincoln, and an assassination attempt on his own life. Yet Watermeier frequently reveals playfulness, and often deliberate anti-intellectualism, in Booth’s private correspondence and poetry. Booth said of himself, “I was always of a boyish spirit. . . . But there was always an air of melancholy about me that made me seem much more serious than I ever really was” (358). Watermeier lets Booth’s self-assessment pass without comment or analysis, yet this contradiction between the man and his public perception seems key to a complete picture. While somewhat conservative and traditional, American Tragedian remains scrupulously researched and documented, accessibly written, and complete in scope. This comprehensive biography presents the clearest picture yet of its endlessly compelling and maddeningly elusive hero. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Karl Kippola American University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Comment New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Musical Theatre Studies “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Performing Anti-slavery American Tragedian Murder Most Queer The Captive Stage Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Laura Dorwart 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 Murder Most Queer Laura Dorwart By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater. By Jordan Schildcrout. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. Pp. 268. Jordan Schildcrout’s Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater should be used in classrooms as a prototypical example of the fundamental yet often disputed and underacknowledged interrelationship of theatre studies and the broader fields of performance studies and critical theory. Applying principles of queer theory to an in-depth, extensive case study of the figure of the LGBT murderer in American theatre, Schildcrout skewers the concept of “queer villainy,” in which violent (i.e., murderous) transgressions of social order are linked with nonviolent ones (i.e., queerness) in theatrical and other cultural representations, while eschewing the tendency on the part of critics to categorize such characters as either “positive” or “negative,” with no room for dynamism or the value of using said representations to plumb the messier side of human nature. In this vein, he notes, “Plays with homicidal homosexuals often defy easy categorization since they incorporate the realistic and the fantastic, the optimistic and the nihilistic, the reactionary and the progressive, the serious and the frivolous” (267). Accordingly, he addresses the topic from several angles, positing that 1) the queer, like the dramatic villain, is larger than life and exposes the socially transgressive underbelly of human desire, and is thus uniquely worth of artistic rendering and critical analysis; and 2) the figure of the “homicidal homosexual” onstage can be read, in various contexts (depending on, among other factors, who is in the audience, who is on stage, who controls the production financially, and the broader sociopolitical climate), as an attempt to: instigate social action, catalyze expressions of empathy, expose the evils of homophobia and queer criminalization, wrestle with societal ethical “demons,” temporarily switch the usual roles of victim and perpetrator in carnivalesque fashion, examine the pleasure innate to forms of “deviance,” and/or cathartize the justified rage that results from long-term oppression and communal trauma. Arranged in chronological order, Murder Most Queer’ s chapters each explore both a particular conceptual aspect of theatrical representations of “the homicidal homosexual”—a term Schildcrout cherry-picked precisely because of its clinical and pathologizing historical overtones—and a specific play or group of plays. This arrangement lends itself to a kind of precise yet expansive clarity that is reproduced by Schildcrout’s tone, which is at once accessible and critical. Schildcrout begins by examining the potential threat of gay love as opposed to mere same-sex sexual activity in his account of Mae West’s ill-fated 1927 play The Drag , and in Chapter 2 he juxtaposes public perceptions of real-life gay murderers with their theatrical counterparts, using Patrick Hamilton’s The Rope (later titled Rope’s End for its American production) as a case study. In Chapter 3 he reflects on the potentially violent implications of the necessity of queer closetedness alongside Ira Levin’s Deathtrap. Schildcrout unearths the woefully undertheorized figure of the lesbian killer in the next chapter while he explores the figure of the “good girl” and the complex dynamics, including misogyny both subtle and overt, within the 1960s/1970s queer theatre community. Chapter 5 unpacks the connections between camp, drag, queerness, and opera through readings of Chay Yew’s Porcelain and Terrence McNally’s Lisbon Traviata. He ties metaphysical notions of suffering to theatrical representations of queerness, drawing from theoretical notions of queer-as-universal-scapegoat, in Chapter 6, and finally makes a compelling case, paired with discussions of Joyce Carol Oates’ Zombie and Dennis Cooper’s Jerk, for the urgency of the connection between notions of queerness as embodied evil and the frequent recurrence of the figure of the gay murderer in American drama. Each chapter also examines cultural history alongside theatrical chronology; for example, the complex figure of the “fairy,” particularly in 1920s New York, plays a key role in the first chapter, while the “gay liberation” movement of the 1960s and 1970s are fundamental to his readings of the plays in the second and third chapters. Jeffrey Dahmer figures prominently in his reading of Oates’ play about a fey, frustrated serial killer of young boys. Perhaps most notable is his chapter on lesbian killers, as he examines in some depth the nuanced implications, and theatrical effectiveness, of seeing queer bodies in variously gendered romantic, social, violent, criminal, and sexual configurations and associations on stage in productions such as those mounted by the Five Lesbian Brothers, Holly Hughes, and Split Britches. This approach is deliberate and effective, as Schildcrout couches each of his theatrical analyses in a deep contextualization involving genre, sociopolitical climate, and the internal dynamics of queer culture at the time. Schildcrout’s text also exemplifies the efficacy of mirroring the principles of the theory with which one is wrestling in one’s own writing. He faces the daunting task of unpacking the complex figure to which he introduces us, and making the case for the theatricalized “homicidal homosexual” as valuable and rich with potential, if also deeply problematic. To do so, Schildcrout draws from Lee Edelman’s influential text No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive , arguing that representations are only worthy and both culturally and artistically genuine if they are also positive, life-affirming, and imbued with messages of “hope” and “optimism.” He also draws heavily from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s multilayered and rhizomatic approach to the definition and dissemination of concepts of queerness, the closet, and violence, all of which are reflected by and through Schildcrout’s own writing. Schildcrout’s aim, he claims, is neither to pass judgment on the figure of the homicidal homosexual in American theatre, nor to unqualifiedly redeem it. Rather, he states: “Instead of sentencing these characters to the prison of negative representation, Murder Most Queer analyzes the meanings in their acts of murder, confronting the real fears and desires condensed in those dramatic acts and recognizing the potential value—and even pleasure—of violence in the theater” (3). In his historical, theatrical, cultural, and critical analysis of “homicidal homosexuals,” Schildcrout achieves that analytic goal. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Laura Dorwart Antioch University 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 Editorial Comment New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Musical Theatre Studies “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Performing Anti-slavery American Tragedian Murder Most Queer The Captive Stage Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Michael Y. Bennett 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 New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Michael Y. Bennett By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF There has been rising interest in theatre studies in employing and turning to philosophy. Unlike previous trends in literary (and theatrical) studies over the past couple-plus decades that read literature via “Critical Theory” and/or “Cultural Studies”—a collection of thoughts, ideas, and texts (generally) from Continental Philosophy/the Continental tradition, taught most predominantly in English departments—currently, theatre studies has very successfully been reading theatre through philosophers who are routinely studied in philosophy departments, such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Wittgenstein. Representing major figures in classical, modern, and contemporary philosophy, theatre studies has done quite well in the past decade-plus, compiling a veritable (i.e., for academic work) barrage of noteworthy studies exploring the intersection between theatre and philosophy. ( NOTE : This is NOT A VALUE JUDGEMENT about “Critical Theory,” “Cultural Studies,” and Continental Philosophy!!! After all, my first book, Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd (2011), relies heavily on re-reading plays associated with the absurd through an up-to-date understanding of a major Continental philosopher, Albert Camus. I am just stating the simple fact that the philosophers in the Continental tradition are much less-likely to be taught in philosophy departments, especially in the United States, than philosophers not in the Continental tradition.) Philosophers in the analytic tradition have thought quite a bit, and for quite some time, about fiction/literature (and, often, the theatrical character, Hamlet, is used as an example) to pose and answer questions about, especially, the existence of fictional entities. Until very recently, however, there has not been that complimentary (mirror-image) approach taken by scholars in theatre studies (broadly defined) to think about issues of philosophy to answer questions posed in theatre. That is not to say that philosophy (broadly defined) has not influenced or been employed in theatre studies. Quite the contrary, in fact, as there have been, largely, two separate, but slightly overlapping “movements” within theatre studies that had employed/been connected to philosophy. First, in the late-1970s to early 1990s, there were a number of studies in theatre semiotics (most notably, Elaine Aston and George Savona, Theatre as Sign System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance ; Marvin Carlson, Theatre Semiotics: Signs of Life ; Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama ; Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Semiotics of Theater ; Marco de Marinis, The Semiotics of Performance ; and Patrice Pavis, Languages of the Stage: Essays in the Semiology of Theatre ). And, then, from the mid-1980s to the early-2000s, a number of studies in the phenomenology of theatre came out (most notably, Bert O. States, Great Awakenings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre (1985); Stanton B. Garner, Jr., Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama (1994); and Alice Rayner, To Act, To Do, To Perform ). These two “movements,” if you will, paved the way for the (current) third wave (or “movement”) of philosophy seen in theatre studies: the recent rise in studies, starting in the late-2000s, that rely (mostly) on the lenses of classic and modern philosophy and philosophical aesthetics through which to read theatre. This emerging discipline has been named “Performance Philosophy.” This emerging discipline has been strengthened by the online network of the same name of over 2,000 academics ( http://performancephilosophy.ning.com ); an online, peer-reviewed journal of the same name, which is connected to this online network; and a book series of the same name published by Palgrave Macmillan, also connected to this online network. Some of the initial titles in the book series are reflections of the continued dominance of thinkers from the Continental tradition (for example, Žižek and Performance (2014) and Adorno and Performance (2014) represent two of the book series’ initial five offerings). However, part of the reason that Performance Philosophy has emerged is due to its origins, if you will, in philosophical circles and also the number of recent books that successfully have studied theatre alongside philosophers from the classical, modern, and contemporary periods (not associated with philosophy in the Continental tradition). Much of this recent discourse exploring the overlap between theatre and philosophy began in philosophical circles, particularly in the field of philosophical aesthetics . In 2001, in a special symposium in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , David Z. Saltz, James R. Hamilton, and Noël Carroll all discussed the relationship between text and performance in theatre. In short, Saltz and Carroll argue that an element of interpretation is needed in order to create performance (and, therefore, the text is, something of, the original that that is interpreted in order to make the performance, which is a once-removed artistic expression), while Hamilton suggests that performance is a unique art form. The following year, in 2002, John Dilworth, in both American Philosophical Quarterly and the The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , suggests that the notion of “representation” helps explain the nature of both dramatic text and theatrical performance, where a play is a type and performance is a token of that type. These debates set the stage for the groundbreaking 2006 collection, Staging Philosophy , edited by David Krasner and David Z. Saltz, in which the essays explore a wide range of topics examining the intersection between philosophy and the theatre. This collection, in turn, paved the way for nine monographs exploring this intersection between theatre and philosophy. Hamilton’s The Art of Theater (2007) is a further-developed book of the above-mentioned essay that is rooted in analytic philosophy and makes an argument that theatrical productions are not re -productions of a dramatic text, but are their own art form. Paul Woodruff’s The Necessity of Theater (2008) is a philosophical meditation on how to make (good or bad) judgments about theatre, connecting these judgments to a larger question of ethics. Freddie Rokem’s Philosophers and Thespians (2010) explores specific, historical encounters between philosophers and those in the theatre arts. Martin Puchner’s The Drama of Ideas (2010) argues that a case can be made that drama extends from Plato, rather than from Aristotle (as has been the traditional argument). My book, Words, Space, and the Audience: The Theatrical Tension between Empiricism and Rationalism (2012) argues that in order to make meaning out of theatre, the epistemological tension between understanding a play empirically and understanding it rationally must be explored. Darren R. Gobert’s The Mind-Body Stage (2013) investigates how, after Descartes, the Cartesian mind-body duality and notions of subjectivity were explored in theatre. Tom Stern’s Philosophy and Literature (2014) is an introductory survey of the overlap between theatre and philosophy. Pannill Camp’s The First Frame (2014) explores how the rise in natural philosophy in France, which looked more to Isaac Newton’s theories of physics than Descartes’ metaphysical notions of subjectivity, contributed to re-imagining the theatre space. And Spencer Golub’s Incapacity (2014) reads drama and art (broadly defined) through Wittgenstein’s notion of “pain behavior,” which Golub adapts as “performance behavior,” to investigate the public expression of private experience. As these recent books demonstrate, the study of philosophy has become (appropriately so) the latest breakthrough in theatre studies. What is exciting about this, TO ME, is not that there is an interest in turning to philosophers not in the Continental tradition, but that a whole “new” 2,500-year-old-plus discipline is at our disposal and in our realm of consciousness. That means one thing: “new” ideas (to those of us in the theatre world)! This can only re-invigorate our excitement, our studies, and the possibilities of inquiry! This essay is an adaptation and an expansion of a short section in the following article: Michael Y. Bennett. “Theatrical Names and Reference.” Palgrave Communications 1, Article number: 14005 (2015). doi:10.1057/palcomms.2014.5: < http://www.palgrave-journals.com/articles/palcomms20145 > References Footnotes About The Author(s) Michael Y. Bennett is Associate Professor of English and affiliated faculty in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre and Literature of the Absurd (2015); Narrating the Past through Theatre (2012); Words, Space, and the Audience (2012); and Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd (2011). Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Comment New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Musical Theatre Studies “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Performing Anti-slavery American Tragedian Murder Most Queer The Captive Stage Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

grace shinhae jun 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 Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration grace shinhae jun By Published on May 20, 2022 Download Article as PDF Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration. SanSan Kwan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021; Pp. 136. SanSan Kwan’s Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration contributes a timely analysis of Asian American performance to the fields of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, fields in which the voices of Asian American scholars are needed. Love Dances studies in great depth a series of duet collaborations that center intercultural connection, grief, loss, and impossibility. Kwan’s personal experiences of love and loss, her own duet performances, and her reflections on her late husband serve as entry points to her observant and philosophical examinations of intercultural collaborations. Kwan situates her work among scholarship that questions the ethics and politics of intercultural performances. How do intercultural collaborations, she asks, heal the harmful effects of Orientalism and colonialism; lead to vulnerability and love in the presence of radical differences; and generate powerful connections in the face of losses in translations, refusals, and grief? While dance scholarship has identified the ways Asian aesthetics have been historically appropriated in Euro-American concert dance, Kwan also outlines the history of interculturalism in theatre that emerged from appropriation and exploitation. Kwan turns to theories of “new interculturalism” that better “tease out the complexities across multiculturalism, postcolonialism, ethnic and racial difference, intraculturalism, and interculturalism” (9). She looks to the duets not for what they represent but for what happens in the process of intercultural exchange and centering the emphasis on relationality. She looks at the dance collaborations as a means to discuss the themes of love, loss, vulnerability, refusal, third spaces, and pedagogy, finding that they provide something embodied and intimate that other expressive mediums cannot. The book features Kwan’s detailed descriptions and thoughtful reflections on a progressive series of intriguing intercultural duet performances. In Chapter 1, “Talking,” Kwan analyzes the performance Pichet Klunchun and Myself between classical Thai choreographer Pichet Klunchun and French choreographer Jérôme Bel. She argues that the performance, despite being an intercultural collaboration, reinforces and reproduces Orientalist logics. She is wary of its mostly verbal exchange, with occasional dance demonstrations, as it retains power dynamics and reveals where intercultural collaboration potentially fails. Reading Klunchun as the East and therefore the keeper of tradition and Bel as the West and therefore representative of individual innovation, Kwan shows the inequities that can arise in an intercultural exchange. However, Kwan notes that this failure also provides a pedagogical opportunity to delve into histories of racialized oppression and colonialism. In the second chapter, “Mourning,” Kwan analyzes two different duet collaborations: Flash and Simulacrum. In Flash, African American hip hop choreographer Rennie Harris and Japanese American butoh-based interdisciplinary dancer Michael Sakamoto both practice movement forms stemming from histories of racial and social violence and trauma, yet their intercultural textual and movement collaboration provides strategies for healing trauma and creating cross-cultural empathy. Harris resists intimacy initially in the creative process, but Sakamoto’s hospitality and generosity and Harris’s reciprocity transformed the rehearsal space into a space of truth devoted to surviving anti-Black racism and post-incarceration Japanese American life. In Simulacrum, Kwan explores the potential for empathy. In her analysis, she delineates the ways that care and vulnerability emerge in the process of cross-cultural collaboration between Argentinian contemporary and kabuki dancer Daniel Proietto and Japanese Flamenco dancer Kojima Shoji. Both the Flash and Simulacrum duets are predicated on themes of mourning, rendering loss as absence that can also be generative. “Commiseration,” for Kwan, “is a practice of mutual empathy” (62). Through empathy, the artists show that we can have a meaningful connection to another’s cultural-corporeal history, even if we cannot fully inhabit it. In the final chapter “Loving,” Kwan turns to Vietnamese French choreographer Emmanuelle Huynh who duets with Japanese butoh artist Kasai Akira in Spiel and with Japanese butoh-informed dancer Otake Eiko in Talking Duet. Restating her interest in Leo Cabranes-Grant’s concept of intercultural encounter as an “engine of emergence” and not solely a point of contact and meeting, Kwan looks to these duets as forms of pedagogy. These textual and movement performances create third spaces to encounter alterity and otherness and reveal the incommensurabilities and impossibilities of intercultural encounters. Spiel and Talking Duet expand on the prior chapters’ text and movement analysis by centering improvisational performance. Improvisation, she argues, demands interlocutors to be receptive, responsive, “submissive but also sovereign” in ways that deepen the intercultural collaboration (104). Improvisation becomes the method of vulnerability, openness, and willingness to change. Kwan concludes this highly original and compelling study by questioning what unites collaborators even when their intercultural encounters fall short. For Kwan, the collaborative process across and between cultures bears potentiality, the practice of empathy, and the act of loving. She grounds the significance of these intercultural encounters as models of how to love, and co-create, even in the face of misunderstandings and loss. Love is a guiding principle and a necessary condition for ethical intercultural exchange, and for Kwan love does not exist without loss. Ultimately love offers opportunities to begin again and again. Love Dances contributes significant insight to Dance, Theatre, and Performance Studies from the poignant perspective of a performer and a scholar. Accessible and nuanced, Love Dances is a necessary text for practitioners looking to collaborate ethically across cultural, racial, social, and gendered spaces. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Heather S. Nathans 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 Performing Anti-slavery Heather S. Nathans By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Performing Anti-slavery: Activist Women on Antebellum Stages . By Gay Gibson Cima. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 298. Gay Gibson Cima’s new book, Performing Anti-Slavery , should become a model for how to combine detailed historical research with activism. In her compelling study, she imaginatively links the struggle to end slavery in antebellum America with the larger issue of human trafficking. At once erudite and passionate, it is an exemplary piece of scholarship that will provoke discussions among scholars of American theatre, American Studies, Africana Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and other academic communities interested in how historical research can be imbued with a sense of immediacy for contemporary readers. And as the author promises, it engages with an impressive breadth of interdisciplinary methods, including performance studies, critical race theory, American studies, and feminist studies. As Cima observes in the introduction, female anti-slavery activists seldom had the luxury of presenting the kinds of public performances available to their male counterparts. So she invites her readers to consider a broader definition of what might constitute “performance” for women traditionally relegated to the domestic sphere. She examines a range of performances, from the gatherings of African American female literary societies, to the public appearances of noted escaped slave Ellen Craft, who made her way to freedom and international fame by impersonating a white slave owner. While these exist outside the realms of the playhouse proper, they nevertheless became effective sites for women to perform resistance and political consciousness. In this, the project echoes her award-winning book Early American Women Critics: Performance, Religion, Race , in which she examined how antebellum women redefined themselves as “host bodies” and their roles as cultural critics rather than mere passive observers. Performing Anti-Slavery is a natural extension of that earlier work, shifting the discourse into the realm of political activism. Cima is interested in the “stickiness” of the questions that surrounded how black and white women performed affect throughout the first half of the nineteenth century (17). She acknowledges the need for nineteenth century women to develop a wide and often subversive array of political strategies “that would enable them to reach their antislavery goals” (17). Cima pays particular attention to the question of spectatorship and how female antislavery performers such as Maria Stewart, Sarah Douglass, Ellen Craft, and Lucretia Mott, among others, conjured their imagined audiences. Rather than projecting a neutral spectator, Cima argues that activist women often invoked slaves as “the partisan, outlier spectators of their activism” (15). This paradigm shift refocused the audience’s awareness of their position, and, as Cima suggests, their understanding of their own complicity in the slave system. Cima’s study also posits what she describes as a “combination of performance strategies—working simultaneously within and outside of the state,” as a possible model for contemporary thinking about human trafficking, since “the tension . . . shows what is and what is not possible in the way of establishing human rights within a democracy” (14). Performing Anti-Slavery spans four chapters plus an epilogue that extends the discussion into the present day. In chapter one (which lays the theoretical foundation for the study), she underscores a critical distinction between sympathy and empathy, suggesting that empathy is both an ahistorical and inaccurate term to describe how nineteenth-century women engaged with enslaved women (both directly and indirectly). For Cima, the term empathy slips too easily into the realm Saidiya Hartman cautions against in her Scenes of Subjection , in which supposedly empathetic spectators displaced the slave’s body at the center of the abolitionist narrative. As Cima observes, sympathetic critical responses prompt the “second step to performing sympathy” (55). Cima also takes up the role of religion in abolitionism (as she did in Early American Women Critics ), this time turning her attention to metempsychosis, a belief in the transmigration of souls from one form to another at the time of death. As she notes, this somewhat loose adaptation of Hinduism and Buddhism was synthesized with contemporary Western writings on sympathy (68). Not content merely to witness passively, female anti-slavery activists who embraced metempsychosis openly derided women who imagined that tears could substitute for action. The concept of metempsychosis recurs throughout the study as a touchstone for how antislavery performers envisioned their activist work. Cima acknowledges that while common themes and discourses circulated among female anti-slavery activists, “anti-slavery women were fueled by wildly disparate objectives, so they generated different effects,” and indeed she returns to this theme in her epilogue in discussing present-day activist efforts (61). She reminds her reader that distinctions of class, color, and faith continued to divide women in the movement, no matter how closely their affective practices drew them together. Throughout her study, Cima pays careful attention to the ways in which female activists mobilized theatrical practices (e.g., the readings of scripted “conversations” at literary society meetings the convenings of aid societies, deliveries of public lectures, publishing of poems or jeremiads under pseudonyms designed to at once conceal and provoke). In one instance that reveals a nice attention to detail, she even points to the inherently dramatic beats or moments embedded in the cry of “oh!” that punctuate antislavery writings (for example, “with no hope to cheer them—oh!”). Cima interprets this as an “indignant shout” rather than a helpless lamentation (71). Chapters two, three, and four flow together smoothly as Cima explores the ways in which her black female subjects found compassion for themselves as well as others. For example, in chapter two she examines Sarah Douglass’s 1832 speech to the Female Literary Association of Philadelphia, in which Douglass helped to shift the rhetorical ground of abolitionist speech. As Cima argues, black women faced physical jeopardy not only for participating in antislavery gatherings, but on a daily basis as laws governing free blacks tightened in Northern states. For Douglass, feeling for the slave in bondage to the South had to be implicitly and explicitly joined to the danger facing free black women. As Cima notes, Douglass thus “created a sisterly bond, a community” (117). Cima links that recognition of compassion to the women’s ability to develop effective performative practices. The realization (which she describes as an epiphany) that outsiders did not distinguish between enslaved and free, wealthy or working class, but saw only race, helped to promote one of the most stunning episodes considered in chapter four of the study work: the escape of William and Ellen Craft and the “brilliant theatricality” that allowed Ellen Craft to perform and re-perform both black and white racial identities on a transatlantic stage in a kind of “disruptive hybridity” (182, 205). In her brief epilogue, Cima turns her attention to the urgent question of human trafficking in the twenty-first century. Quoting a report from the US “Trafficking in Persons” office, she notes that “12.3 million people exist within conditions of ‘forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution’ around the globe, and 56 percent of them are women and girls” (249). Asking, “How can artist-activists imagine interventions,” Cima cautions against the ‘new’ abolitionists whose debates over strategies and the links between slavery and the ideal democratic state risk reducing the enslaved bodies in question to the inert status of three centuries ago (247). At the end of the study, she invokes her own activist practice with the Humanities and Human Rights Initiative at Georgetown as a process that illuminated her own understanding of how the female antislavery activists of more than a century ago wrestled with the challenge of combining their sense of mission with the almost insurmountable obstacles around them. Framing the work of abolitionism as an ongoing process lifts the work of Cima’s subjects out of the past and places it firmly in our present. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Heather S. Nathans Tufts University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Comment New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Musical Theatre Studies “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Performing Anti-slavery American Tragedian Murder Most Queer The Captive Stage Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Cheryl Black Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage The New Humor in the Progressive Era Cheryl Black By Published on May 25, 2016 Download Article as PDF The New Humor in the Progressive Era: Americanization and the Vaudeville Comedian . By Rick DesRochers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. 187. Rick DesRochers’s exploration of vaudeville comedians and comediennes during vaudeville’s heyday is richly contextualized within a particular sociocultural moment, a crucial moment of rapid change in the history of the United States, when new technologies hurled the nation into the modern age, and a wave of immigration, primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe, alarmed native-born Americans with roots in Northern and Western Europe. It was a time when future President Woodrow Wilson warned Americans that “the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population” (quoted by DesRochers, xiii). It is also an era that seems profoundly familiar to our present moment. DesRochers looks critically at this nominally “progressive” era (circa 1880s-1920s) and the concerted efforts of primarily white, middle class Protestant reformers, who instituted a plethora of educational and social programs to solve the “problems” of the new immigrant and urban poor through assimilation/“Americanization.” Along with political and religious practices that the native population found Un-American, the new immigrants popularized a “New Humor,” first identified as such by vaudeville historian Albert McLean Jr., who defined it as “a humor that was more excited, more aggressive, and less sympathetic than that to which the middle classes of the nineteenth century had been accustomed” (quoted by DesRochers, 30). This new, satirical humor was attributed at the time to the “great influx of Latins and Slavs” who dared to laugh at, rather than with, the dominant culture (xiv). DesRochers’s purpose is to illustrate how this new and subversive sense of humor, which would be particularly, and gleefully, manifest in vaudeville, disrupted the Progressive agenda of assimilation. In addition to undermining the aforementioned attempts to “Americanize” a new generation of immigrants from “unfavorable” (3) foreign cultures, DesRochers argues, the new humor in vaudeville contributed to the making of a new America by blurring artistic distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, as well as blurring distinctions between cultural identities based on race, religion, gender, age, and class. The new humor confronted sensitive, volatile issues and situations head on and challenged authority on every level. It shocked the middle class bourgeoisie but ultimately, for its most talented practitioners, found a large and appreciative audience. DesRochers organizes the study in five chapters and an epilogue. His first two chapters provide an overview of the socio-historical context and explicate the nature and origins of the “New Humor.” Chapters Three and Four analyze three major and overlapping genres of vaudeville comic acts, each subverting the cultural status quo in its own way: ethnic acts challenged the stability of racial identity, family acts challenged patriarchal authority, and school acts challenged the educational system. A fifth chapter on female performers explores how they subverted conventional gender expectations by being wild, unruly, sexual, and most of all, funny. As one critic remarked of May Elinore: “she is one of those marvels Heaven seldom sends us – a truly funny woman who doesn’t mind making herself look ugly or ridiculous in order to make her audience laugh” (quoted by DesRochers, 71). The range of performers profiled include those who became legendary, like Buster Keaton, the Marx brothers, and Marie Dressler, those who are known to vaudeville aficionados, including Weber and Fields, Eva Tanguay and May Irwin, and those who are virtually unknown, like the Elinore sisters. The performance of ethnic and racial identities permeates all three genres; the Marx brothers, who were first generation Eastern European Jews, performed German, Irish, and Italian identities, among others. Weber and Fields lampooned German and Jewish identities in their “Double Dutch” act. May Irwin won fame as a “coon shouter” crossing both gender and racial identities with her imitation of African American male singers. Eva Tanguay created a sensation as the Sambo girl in an act that included her signature song, “I don’t care” (“what people may think of me”). Cringe-worthy terms like coons, micks, wops, and krauts appear in the titles of ethnic acts. Although the degree to which such performances may have sustained, rather than challenged, racist attitudes, is a vexing question, DesRochers argues that “no vaudevillian, whether in blackface, yellow face, or any of the myriad ethnic disguises ever entirely disappeared behind those masks, making it clear that ethnicity was performed and not to be taken literally” (55-56). For me, the absurd and self-aware ethnic impersonations of the Marx brothers, as described herein, seem to have more subversive potential than others. For example, in a scene in which a Russian-accented Groucho, threatened with a coconut pie by an Italian-accented Chico, drops character (and accent) to say to the audience: “There’s my argument. Restrict immigration” (1). This book links vaudeville, both aesthetically and ideologically, to modernism through its challenges to aesthetic and cultural as well as moral, categories, its speed and vitality, its irreverence and irony, and its self awareness. In his epilogue, DesRochers also highlights contemporary correspondence between Progressive era “New Humorists” and “current new humorists” Dave Chappell, Assif Mandvi, Key and Peele, Tina Fey, Larry David, and Sarah Silverman, arguing that their humor still responds to cultural shifts by “confronting and satirizing these irrational anxieties caused by the decline of Anglo-Christian hegemony in the United States” (141-42). In sum, The New Humor in the Progressive Era vividly illuminates a critical era in America’s social and cultural history that might also shed light on our own. DesRochers writes in clear, accessible prose, and this book will be of interest to those interested in America’s social and cultural history, as well as specialists in theatre history and popular entertainment. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Cheryl Black University of Missouri Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Henry Bial Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Henry Bial By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. The concept of artistic research travels under various names (practice as research, performance as research, creative research, etc.) through various national and institutional contexts. At the same time, performance studies scholars insist that art-making constitutes not just the preservation and transmission of culture, but the generation of new knowledge. “Yet,” as scholar-artist Ben Spatz notes in their introduction to Race and the Forms of Knowledge, “a wide gulf remains between this critical assertion and the activation of its implications, which in their implementation imply nothing less than an epistemic revolution” (3). The stakes of that revolution are the decolonization of knowledge itself, demanding a radicalized and reflective approach to artistic research that is informed by “black studies, critical race studies, critical indigenous studies, and critical whiteness studies, as well as feminist and queer theory” (11) [an Author’s Note (ix), explains Spatz’s choice to lowercase all identity designations]. An Introduction, “Materialities in Artistic Research” lays out the book’s intent “to reformulate and radicalize artistic research as an intervention into the racialized forms of knowledge” (23). This is accomplished through three chapters, each a lengthy meditation of fifty pages or more exploring how and why performance can and must challenge our concepts of knowledge, power, and identity. The introduction also announces the author’s desire “to avoid what I call ‘white writing’: the logocentric usage of alphabetic writing to inscribe a dominating sense of prior reason and truth” (21). Instead, Spatz offers sustained engagements with a range of ideas and practices both familiar and unfamiliar to performance studies scholars. These engagements, which unfold gracefully across each chapter, are as provocative as they are evocative, frequently gesturing at understandings that the text itself cannot contain. Chapter 1, “Molecular Identities,” begins from the premise that considering identity in performance solely through the lens of casting is inherently limiting, anchoring analysis to a fixed notion of identity as adhering only and always to an individual performer. “To think beyond casting,” Spatz writes, “is to bypass the individualist framing of identity as that which a given person is or is not and to think instead about how racial and other identities cut through a given moment, event, or practice, at levels both above and below the individual” (31). Instead, drawing on the work of dramaturgs Dorinne Kondo and Katherine Profeta, the chapter argues for greater attention to the lived process of performance-making, in which racial and other identities are continually explored, negotiated, and played with. In this context, suggests Spatz, “the individual performer is no longer taken for granted as a premise or starting point but is recognized as a nexus or site at which multiple layers of technique and identity intersect” (36). Building on the framework established in What a Body Can Do (Routledge 2015), the chapter offers a complex and radically interdisciplinary model in which elements of performance technique (gesture, melody, breath) are understood as “molecule[s] of gendered and racialized material” (60) that have both material and sociocultural significance. Significantly, this means shifting our attention from a finished public performance to the rehearsal room as the most active site of artistic research, as well as looking beyond the live performance to technologically-mediated audiovisual works. Chapter 2, “Whiteness and the Racialization of Knowledge,” provides a dense but masterful opening section (“White Writing,” 83) that synthesizes a wide range of theoretical perspectives from black studies, performance studies, and poststructuralist theory to argue that concepts such as “ knowledge, expertise, science, thought, rationality and research ” should be reframed “in the context of european colonialism and the ongoing global hegemony of european and eurocentric modes of thought, as artifacts of white writing” (101, emphasis in original). In response, the author calls for a critical whiteness practice, one that unmasks whiteness from its unmarked claim to universality. The chapter considers the post-theatrical work of Jerzy Grotowski as a possible model, noting that in his interculturalism and his move away from logocentrism, “Grotowski looked for techniques that could transform or even transcend identity” (131). Yet Grotowski’s work, Spatz argues, proved difficult, if not impossible, to scale beyond the individual, suggesting that more significant social transformation demands confronting institutional forms and structures of knowledge, i.e. the university. The latter part of the chapter then considers three approaches to artistic research developed in European and North American universities, “roughly glossed as those of inclusion, escape, and experimentation” (134). The inclusive approach seeks to make space within the research university for artistic work to be recognized and valued; such attempts, as illustrated by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), are well-intentioned but prone to co-optation by the corporate and political power of the institution. Escapist approaches take the opposite tack, positioning artistic research as “always in excess of the university, constantly fleeing and escaping its expectations and in this way radically unavailable to capture and co-optation” (140). This tactic, which looms large in contemporary performance studies, is illustrated through an analysis of Erin Manning’s Concordia University (Montreal)-based SenseLab. The third model, experimentation, takes more direct aim at the institutional structure itself, explicitly challenging the primacy of (white) writing. Though all three approaches have their merits, the author concedes, “It is only honest to admit that I find myself personally in closest alignment with pragmatist and experimental approaches: those that neither take prevailing institutions for granted nor seek to disappear from them but instead grapple with them through a kind of technics that is deeply engaged with matters of form” (134). This is vividly illustrated in Chapter 3, “Audiovisual Ethnotechnics,” which details some of the author’s own experiments in artistic research. Most of these examples are drawn from “The Judaica Project,” an extended multi-year series of investigations conducted at various sites in the US, UK, and Poland, and organized around “an embodied practice of singing or songwork in which jewishness is treated as molecular” (152). These examples are richly described, with particular emphasis on how strategic uses of audiovisuality, including both sound and video recording, can enhance the generative power of artistic research by capturing the dynamic relationship between identity and technique theorized in the first chapter. This is not simply a matter of documentation, but of using the potential of audio-visual media to juxtapose and layer sound and image in ways that explore new relationships between identity, temporality, and place. Importantly, Spatz’s explorations of “molecular jewishness” are based not only in practice, but in a deep engagement with major thinkers in Jewish cultural studies, such as Jonathan Boyarin, Shaul Magid, and Santiago Slabodsky. Along the way, the chapter makes a compelling case that critical theory itself can be understood as a counter-hegemonic mode of reading and writing that is specifically Jewish. Building on the work of other scholars who have highlighted the marginalized position of figures such as Marx, Freud, Benjamin, and Derrida, as well as the Talmudic tradition of learned disagreement that, some argue, anticipates poststructuralism, Spatz suggests that a critical Jewish studies might find common cause with critical Black studies, critical Indigenous studies, and other decolonial approaches to knowledge, if and only if it can acknowledge and overcome its “entanglement with whiteness” (136). While not the central focus of the book, this nevertheless represents an important contribution to Jewish studies, and I hope Spatz finds an opportunity to expand on this thesis in the future. Considered singly, each chapter of Race and the Forms of Knowledge makes a substantial contribution to conversations within theatre and performance studies about practice-as-research, about audio-visual media, and about the critical slipperiness of identity in performance. Taken as a whole, however, this ambitious and uncompromising volume poses a different kind of challenge to the field: to embody that which we profess, and to profess that which we embody. References Footnotes About The Author(s) HENRY BIAL is Professor and Chair in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Kansas. He is a past President of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and a Fellow of the Mid-America Theatre Conference. He is the author of Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen and Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage , and the editor or co-editor of Brecht Sourcebook, Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions, The Great North American Stage Directors, Vol. 4: Abbott, Carroll, Prince, and The Performance Studies Reader , now in its fourth edition. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 212. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century. Marlis Schweitzer. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020; Pp. 276. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272. The Brothers Size Dead Outlaw 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival ZAZ Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25 Politics Take Center Stage in the Berkshires, 2024-25 Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Alexander Miller  Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Wild Duck Alexander Miller By Published on May 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF The Wild Duck By Henrik Ibsen Directed by Simon Godwin Shakespeare Theatre Company, Klein Theatre Washington, D.C. October 29, 2025 Reviewed by Alexander Miller At a post-performance talkback on October 29, 2025, a question was posed to the assembled cast and crew of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck : “Why is this play not done more?” The question is not without merit. According to the IbsenStage database, there have been ninety-four previous productions recorded in the United States since the play’s premiere in 1885. A paltry number, even before being compared to the 667 productions of A Doll’s House since 1882. STC’s artistic producer Drew Lichtenberg was quick to point out that the last performance of The Wild Duck in Washington D.C. was in 1986 at Arena Stage. In his program note, Lichtenberg suggests that the play is “harder to get right” than Ibsen’s other works, explaining that the play is a complex clash of tones and themes that can challenge directors and designers. This tension ran through STC’s production, and director Simon Godwin used it to drive a picture-perfect modernist performance that wrestled with the dangers of idealism and the flaws of pragmatism. The Wild Duck follows the reconnection of two childhood friends, Gregers Werle and Hjalmar Ekdal. Hjalmar lives a satisfying life with his wife Gina and daughter Hedvig, while the ever-idealistic Gregers lives in self-imposed exile, feuding with his father over accusations of infidelity made by Gregers’s late mother. When Gregers moves into the Ekdal residence, he believes his friend’s happiness is built upon a foundation of falsehoods as he realizes that Gina, in her previous life as the Werle’s housekeeper, was one of the women with whom his father was accused of cheating. In a crusade driven by his “chronic righteousness,” Gregers begins a chain reaction that leaves the Ekdals forever changed. Unseen but always felt throughout these events is the eponymous wild duck, Hedvig’s pet who resides, injured and flightless, in a makeshift lodge in the Ekdals’ attic. Throughout the implosion of the Ekdal family, Ibsen and the STC ask their audience what price must be paid to live a truly happy life. The production casts idealism of all kinds in an unflattering light, whether it be a devotion to radical honesty or delusional happiness. At the same time, the play does not offer a meaningful compromise to idealism; Ibsen leaves no moral to neatly tie up the Ekdals’ tragic collapse. This leaves the audience with the complex work of synthesizing their own conclusions. Lichtenberg highlighted this complexity in his program note, emphasizing that The Wild Duck defies simple metaphor. Sure enough, the cast’s performances challenged audience expectation and refused to be simply defined. The actors committed to crafting deep backstories and inner lives for their characters, a process that paid off in their delivery. Alexander Hurt played the dangerously convicted Gregers Werle as a man certain he is the hero of his own story. fig. 1: Alexander Hurt as Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck . Photo by Hollis King. The desire to root against him is buffeted by Hurt’s impeccable comic delivery of some of the best laughs in the show. He is foiled by Matthew Saldívar’s Doctor Relling, the nihilist who stands as a competing influence on Hjalmar Ekdal. Saldívar created a profoundly sad Relling, who is committed to seeing others live happily no matter what. Standing between them is Nick Westrate’s Hjalmar, who captured the experience of a happy family man and betrayed husband in equal measure. Westrate’s performance demonstrated that despite the surety of both Gregers’s and Relling’s philosophies, the struggle between truth and happiness is far more problematic in practice. The practical cost of this fight is carried by Melanie Field’s Gina and Maaike Laanstra-Corn’s Hedvig, whose devotion to their family and love for their husband/father was tragic. The uplifting humor in the production was punctuated by explosions of conflict, the potential of violence, and desperate sadness, with each incident ringing out like a shot that foreshadowed the play’s tragic ending. The ensemble enacted Ibsen’s drama in a manner that was both authentic to the author’s intentions and immersive to a modern day audience. For all the layers of Ibsen’s characters that defy categorization, The Wild Duck also depended on a straightforward design language that faithfully captured a nineteenth-century modernist aesthetic. Photography sat as a running theme throughout the play; the Ekdals run a photography studio and are seen cleaning and adjusting their work for clients. A metaphor for the way Hjalmar’s life has been “touched up” by others, this theme echoed in the production’s lobby display, which featured daguerreotype style portraits of the cast in full costume. These costumes, designed by Heather C. Freedman, provided a consistent palate that evoked melodramatic archetypes: the conniving Gregers was always in an elegant black coat and suit, the innocent Hedvig in blue and white patterned dresses and sweaters, the nihilistic Relling in a worn grey suit, and the hardworking Ekdals in brown tweed and plaid. fig. 2: Maaike Laanstra-Corn as Hedvig, Melanie Field as Gina Ekdal, Alexander Hurt as Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck . Photo by Hollis King. Scenic designer Andrew Boyce and lighting designer Stacey Derosier crafted the Ekdals’ apartment as a well-lived space of wood and glass windows, complete with a staircase to the attic where the wild duck resides along with a small coterie of other animals. The attic door was decorated with a pastoral backdrop of firs and a bright sun, clearly drawn to capture Hedvig’s love for a natural world she cannot take part in. These design choices brought a clarity of thought to the production that threatened to undercut the profound inner complexities of the characters. It would do a great disservice to Ibsen to either flatten his characters into two-dimensional heroes and villains or to completely write off their actions in a haze of post-modern moral ambiguity. Simon Godwin and the Shakespeare Theatre Company masterfully walk that line, offering their audience a rare opportunity to The Wild Duck in flight. The importance of this production of The Wild Duck lived in the delicate tension between the complex inner turmoil of the actors and the clear imagery of the design. While at first glance Gregers might seem like a devil offering discord, Hurt did not reduce him to the mustachioed villain of a melodrama. But it is also impossible to ignore the real harm that Gregers’s actions do throughout the play, and this harm was emphasized by the clear design framework which gave Gregers a more sinister bend. Just as photography is an art form renowned for showing its subjects as they are, it can also be doctored to create an illusion of what is. Providing both clarity and nuance addressed the potential pitfalls of both approaches and allowed the audience to engage with the moral reckoning of The Wild Duck. To return to the question of why this play is not done more: I agree with Lichtenberg that is a play hard to get right because it asks so much of its audience. But the struggle between happiness and truth must be fought by every generation. In our current political climate, this struggle sits front and center in many people’s minds. So perhaps it is good that The Wild Duck has returned to the stage to remind us that simple idealism can be dangerous, and the best solutions are found through challenge and conversation. References Footnotes About The Author(s) ALEXANDER MILLER (PhD) is an independent theatre and performance scholar. As a dramaturg, he specializes in new play development and has worked with playwrights in Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Pittsburgh. His work has been published by Routledge 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 100 Years of Du Bois: “Principles of a Real Negro Theatre” and “Criteria of Negro Art” “One Great and Fine Mode of Expression”: On W. E. B. Du Bois and the Exigencies of Black Drama and Theatre Reflections on Fundamental Principles An Expansive “Us”: W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Pan-Negro” Theatrical Vision W. E. B. Du Bois’s Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement in Harlem and Beyond It Was All a Dream: Shifting Du Boisian Notions in Richard Wesley’s The Talented Tenth Teaching August Wilson in an Age of Democratic Decline: Du Boisian Imperatives and Black Pedagogy Across Campus and Community Debbie with a D Talks Theatre with a T The Wild Duck Picnic at Hanging Rock Last Call: A Play with Cocktails The Dinosaurs The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism. Catherine Burroughs and J. Ellen Gainor, editors. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 652. Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation. Julius B. Fleming Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2022; Pp. 301. The Theatre of Paula Vogel: Practice, Pedagogy, and Influences. Lee Brewer Jones. New York: Methuen Drama, 2023; Pp. 194. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Rob Silverman Ascher 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 Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Rob Silverman Ascher By Published on April 17, 2023 Download Article as PDF Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances . Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. The overlap of performance and evangelical Christianity is typically limited to analyzing preachers and passion plays. In Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances , Jill Stevenson extends the language of performance studies to immersive evangelical experiences she refers to as “End-Time Performances.” These performances, including Hell House , Judgement House , and Tribulation Trail , are semi-professional performances that explicitly preach to audiences that a sincere belief in Christ is the way to avoid the apocalypse in the End of Days. The bulk of Stevenson’s analysis, over five chapters and a coda, is built around the question of how a “dramaturgy of threat [produces] the future End of Time” through interactive performance and staging. The first chapter, “The Landscape of the End: Time, Affect, Threat, Absence” functions as both a sourcebook and a roadmap, effectively introducing the lenses through which Stevenson wants her audience to analyze the productions used as evidence. Stevenson provides a crash course of sorts on theological concepts such as pre- and post-millennial dispensationalism, performance studies concepts like affect theory, and the history of non-denominational American evangelical Christianity. This section is sufficiently informative on its own, enmeshing figures like Cyrus Scofield, author of the Scofield Reference Bible, and Jill Dolan, whose seminal writing on utopian performatives informs Stevenson’s analysis of the role of time in End-Time Performances. While Dolan’s utopian performative is a sunny and aspirational future proposed by the 1960s counterculture, Stevenson notes that the ‘utopian performative’ and evangelical Hell House alike ask their audiences to consider, in Dolan’s language, “that beyond this ‘now’ of material oppression…. Lives a future that might be different.” The biggest difference argues Stevenson that an Evangelical future must take place in the afterlife. The core of Stevenson’s book uses three different End-Time Performances and the stand-alone Ark Encounter Museum as case studies. Nearly all of these are performed on or near church property annually. Hell House is the exception, as it has been licensed by churches and theatre groups across the country, including the New York City-based Les Freres Corbusier. That company performed a “sincere staging” of Hell House , following kits published by Pastor Keenan Roberts, leader of New Destiny Christian Center in Colorado. This homegrown ethos is central to the ethnographic work that Stevenson puts at the core of Feeling the Future . Stevenson, who writes in detail about her experiences as an attendee at the End-Time Performances, takes care to note the age ranges and racial makeup of audiences at these performances. Stevenson notes that the majority of End-Time performance attendees are white and between the ages of 18 and 36, with the exception of Tribulation Trail . This piece had an age-diverse audience comprised primarily of Black and Latine attendees, which fits some creative choices. Notably, in Tribulation Trail , a Black performer portrayed Jesus in the portion depicting the slaying of Satan, aligning with the largely-Black congregational makeup at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church, the producers of Tribulation Trail . Many of the performances with predominantly white audiences take on a much more political bent. Attendees are rushed through an apocalyptic landscape besieged by a One World Government with technocratic ideals, installing the Mark of the Beast in the form of microchips. Stevenson keenly observes the political contexts through which she and her fellow audience members receive the dramaturgical information woven into these apocalyptic landscapes. After all, these End-Time Performances are proselytizing tools. Nearly all of them conclude with a moment of prayer and an invitation to their audience to accept Christ as their savior. Some of these calls to action are profoundly intimate and offer their audience members opportunities to speak with a member of the ministry, while others merely warn the audience to keep Christ in their hearts in the face of the coming Rapture. Stevenson slyly juxtaposes the political context and ticket price of a given show with how intense these proselytizing moments are, quietly casting doubt on the theological integrity of various ministries. Stevenson’s central argument on the dramaturgy of threat and futurity asks readers to hold the content of these performances alongside the emphasis on futurity inherent in evangelical Christianity. A message of Christ’s power as a savior immediately follows vivid images of lakes of fire, piles of clothes, and scenes of abortion and grotesque violence. If, she supposes, the audience is given the opportunity to accept Christ as their savior after being inundated with the End of Days and sins of man, they will take scripture less out of sincere belief and more out of panic regarding “impending futurity.” A focus on the inevitability of Christ’s return or some sort of holy deliverance has roots in medieval British theatre, to which Stevenson devotes a section of her first chapter. Statement of belief is not always sufficient, however, as several of the End-Time Performances feature purportedly Christian characters who were not raptured due to a lack of sincerity. The book concludes with a two-part Coda, written in June 2020 and January 2021, analyzing, in brief, the beginning of the COVID epidemic, the 2020 election, and the January 6th insurrection through the lenses Stevenson has set up for these contemporary End-Time Performances. Shockingly, much of the imagery baked into the apocalypse narratives she has been analyzing has since become central to life in 2021, as COVID is treated as a hoax and evangelicals proudly storm the Capitol. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances is a compelling text for casual readers, not only scholars, as Stevenson’s writing is clear, concise and vivid in description. Yet, it is also valuable as an educational text, shedding light on the dramaturgical integrity of a mode of performance ignored by the theatrical establishment. Stevenson makes a compelling case for End-Time Performance as a uniquely American form of performance, with roots in the York Mystery Plays, aesthetic references to zombie movies, and a clear sense of theological didacticism. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances applies theological and performance-theoretical frameworks to an underexplored form, leaving its audience of readers with a dense and rewarding dramaturgical text. This work is important for an array of fields, including Theater and Performance Studies, American Studies and Religious Studies. References Footnotes About The Author(s) ROB SILVERMAN ASCHER University of Iowa Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Bradley Stephenson Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Bradley Stephenson By Published on May 26, 2016 Download Article as PDF D.W. Gregory’s most famous and most produced play is Radium Girls (2003), which dramatizes the story of several young women from Orange, New Jersey who developed radium poisoning as a result of their employment with the U.S. Radium Corporation during the late 1910s and early 1920s.[1] The girls were dial painters, whose delicate fingers were required to paint watch dials with radium-laced, glow-in-the-dark paint. The story was the subject of Claudia Clark’s 1997 book, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935, which provided Gregory with much of the historical context for her play.[2] Scientific progress created a new industry of radium-based glow in the dark paint, yet the material consequences of those labor practices were poorly understood. The dial painters’ fight for justice was one of the first instances in the United States of a corporation being held legally responsible for the safety and well-being of its employees. Gregory’s Radium Girls focuses on the experiences of Grace Fryer, one of the original dial painters and a key plaintiff in the case against the U.S. Radium Corporation. The play takes place between 1918 and 1928, encompassing the time from when the women began getting ill to the settlement of their case. The radium poisoning suffered by the workers resulted in bone loss, debilitating pain, loss of physical mobility, and eventually death. At the start of the play, Grace is a plucky fifteen year old girl working as a dial painter. As her friends begin getting sick and dying, the girls’ quest to uncover the truth of the mysterious illness, and the corporation’s quest to hide the truth, slam against each other in a “cinematic, briskly-paced,” highly theatrical style.[3] The play utilizes many facets of Brecht’s epic theatre, including historicization and the juxtaposition of comic, presentational scenes with more serious, naturalistic ones, simultaneously calling attention to the politicized nature of the content while emphasizing the theatricality and performative nature of the play itself. Despite the authorial instructions for this kind of stylized simplicity, the play is often over-produced with elaborate theatrical sets and costumes, larger casts, and attempts at historical realism that run counter to the playwright’s stylistic intent. I have seen a similarly over-produced production, and the pace slowed down significantly, resulting in a grim and tedious performance that lost the “descriptive simplicity and graphic candor” noted by Robert Daniels in his Variety review of the original production workshop at the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey in 2000.[4] Despite a tendency towards elaborate production style and grim tone, the play still has great potential, if understood and handled properly, to make possible the transformation of actors’ and audiences’ intra-acting bodies. The labor practices dramatized in the play were born from scientific discoveries that opened up many new possibilities, products, and potentials for profit. The story itself may be novel to some readers, but the battle of the individual versus the corporate entity, enflamed by the media, is hardly new. The debilitating physical ramifications that resulted from the interaction of bodies and radioactive particles provide a fascinating avenue of inquiry which opens up new possibilities for understanding bodies, plays, performance, and the nature of life itself. Using a variety of disability theories in the analytical foreground of a close reading of the play, this essay suggests how accounting for the interactions of scientific materialities with diverse bodies in historical and performative realities can transform the way we see our intra-acting bodies in the world, and the world in our bodies.[5] It is pertinent to ask the extent to which the Radium Girls should be considered disabled subjects. Does chronic illness fall under the umbrella of Disability? Do they start out sick and then become disabled at a certain point? Is disability itself just a social construct that is more about institutions and obstacles than bodies and capacities?[6] For the purposes of this essay, it is helpful to resituate notions of disability away from the binary of disabled vs. non-disabled. Jasbir K. Puar reframes disability more as a spectrum or “an interdependent relationship between bodily capacity and bodily debility.”[7] She uses the concept of “slow death” in a robust theorization of debility and queer sexuality that exposes the capitalist ramifications of non-normative bodies in a contemporary context: Capacity and debility are seeming opposites generated by increasingly demanding neoliberal formulations of health, agency, and choice [that generate] population aggregates. Those “folded” into life are seen as more capacious or on the side of capacity, while those targeted for premature or slow death are figured as debility. Such an analysis re-poses the questions: which bodies are made to pay for “progress”? Which debilitated bodies can be reinvigorated for neoliberalism, and which cannot?[8] From this perspective, the ramifications for the Radium Girls are significant, both historically and within the play. Are their lives and bodies the cost of scientific progress and knowledge? Can their decaying bodies be made useful to society? Their “slow death” is certainly useful to the media industry that is always intervening to get exclusive rights and sell papers in the play. Debility can be very profitable to capitalism, and so is the demand to “recover” from or overcome it.[9] It is no coincidence that the character who spearheads Grace’s public campaign and is her most powerful ally, Katherine Wiley, is the executive director of the New Jersey Consumer’s League. Wiley says in her speech to a crowd of onlookers near the end of the first act, “We do not have to accept injustice. We can use our powers as consumers to influence the practices of those who would wish to profit from our patronage.”[10] In Radium Girls, this slow death and the desire to recover from it are closely related to ideas of consumerism and scientific progress. The power to purchase the products of these scientific advances ultimately provides the key to coercing corporations into accepting responsibility for the safety of their workers. Early in the twentieth century, radium was seen as a scientific miracle and cure-all. The discovery of radium facilitated the development of nuclear medicine and radiation therapy as a cancer treatment. Radium was also commercially popularized and used in hundreds of quack remedies and natural tonics from radioactive water to cigarettes to suppositories and bath salts.[11] A notable example of these quack cures receives some prominent product placement in the play. Radithor was a famous patent medicine that was manufactured in Orange, New Jersey, at the same time as the events of the play. Its inventor, William J. A. Bailey, makes an appearance in the play – giving out free samples and basking in the media attention of his business successes – that comes off to contemporary audiences more like an infomercial than a news reel. He says, “Radioactivity is one of the most remarkable agents in medical science. I drink Radithor myself and I can vouch for its power.”[12] This idea of the agency of the radium itself can provide an interesting avenue of exploration that can deepen our understanding of labor and disabled bodies within the play and within the wider fields of science studies and disability studies. Radithor famously contributed to the death of the wealthy New England socialite Eben Byers in 1932. Ron Winslow’s headline for his article recounting the event in the August 1, 1990, issue of The Wall Street Journal was “The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off.” In the play, even the complex antagonist Arthur Roeder, president of U.S. Radium Corporation, is convinced of the healing powers of radium, and he unquestioningly consumes Radithor daily with his wife: “Diane! I have documents—I have articles—People with tumors the size of baseballs. Radium therapy—the tumors disappear. Diane. […] We save lives. We make lives better—mild radium therapy—invigorates. You can’t really think I’m a liar.”[13] Roeder’s trust and naïveté, shared by the real-life Eben Byers, are symptomatic of a world view that relegates physical matter to mere objects, without agency or action, a product to be manufactured, sold, exploited, and utilized. But radium will not remain a passive object to be manipulated. Radium is an actor that responds. In Mel Chen’s groundbreaking 2012 book, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, she re-theorizes notions of animacy as an “often racialized and sexualized means of conceptual and affective mediation between human and inhuman, animate and inanimate, whether in language, rhetoric, or imagery.”[14] Chen’s work brings notions of agency and sentience to nonlife as well as life. “Animacy is built on the recognition that abstract concepts, inanimate objects, and things in between can be queered and racialized without human bodies present, quite beyond questions of personification.”[15] From this perspective, inanimate atoms are both actants and actors with which human beings must reckon. In this way, radium itself becomes an actor and character in the play. The opening scene of the young girls giggling and painting their teeth and faces with radioactive paint takes on new meaning if one considers the radium-laced paint to have its own animacy. As a joke, the girls turn off the lights to scare their supervisor, and “their faces [glow] like jack-o’-lanterns in the dark. A scream, laughter, and the lights go up again.”[16] No longer just a childish school girl prank, the scene takes a much more sinister tone. Many audiences are probably already primed for this response, if they have any knowledge of the story or the nature of radioactive material. In a sense, Gregory is already capitalizing on the theatricality of animacy. In the theatre, objects and bodies tend to be endowed with meaning and action that always have forward motion. The opening scene with the painted faces not only characterizes the girls and their relationships; it also propels the play forward towards its inevitable conclusion. The presence of the toxic radium necessarily influences that trajectory and adds multiple shards of meaning to the action. Moving from the metaphor of the toxic to the actual toxic creates “rapidly multiplying meanings.”[17] Like the radium-laced paint in the first scene, the Radithor that the Roeders consume on stage thus becomes a new character, an actor with significant impact on the outcome of the story and the lives of the other players. What then should be made of this silent character, this toxic and invisible but always active radium, and how does Gregory account for this toxic activity in the play? Chen says that “Toxicity straddles boundaries of ‘life’ and ‘nonlife,’ as well as the literal bounds of bodies, in ways that introduce a certain complexity to the presumption of integrity of either lifely or deathly subjects.”[18] While Chen’s theorization of toxicity is robust, she relies on a boundaried binary concept of living and non-living in her theory of toxicity. In the play, Grace’s fiancé, Tom Krieder, tries to deny what he calls “this in-between life” of Grace’s radioactive debility, yet his words betray an unconscious recognition that radioactive disability seems to defy the life-nonlife binary in several crucial, and theatrical, ways.[19] Like many great characters from the history of theatre, radioactive atoms are unstable and project parts of themselves outwards, projections that can create dramatic chain reactions. Radioactive atoms have a strong objective, to attain stability. Like the minds of these characters created from words on a page, radioactive atoms have a life of their own that attracts analysis, to more fully understand the mysterious inner workings deep inside them. While this radium-as-character analogy is far from perfect, through it one can explore how Chen’s complex presumptions of integrity are realized and dramatized on multiple levels: nuclear, personal, performative, and theoretical. A fuller account of radioactivity can thus help problematize the life-nonlife binary, illuminate Radium Girls and other dramatic forms, and also enrich our notions of lives, non-lives, and half-lives, of ability and debility. In an article in the journal Nature, J. Rondo describes radium as an example of the “long-lived bone-seeking radio-elements.”[20] Rondo’s 1969 meta-analysis gathers data from multiple studies from the 1950s and earlier that tried to describe the “biological half-life” of radium, i.e., how long it takes half of the radium to leave the human body once it has been taken in. While radium’s biological half-life is not precisely identified, somewhere around 15-28 years, its radioactive half-life is well known: 1601 years. Radioactive half-life refers to the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms in a given sample of radioactive material to undergo nuclear decay. So, after one half-life of time, there will be 50% of the original amount of radioactive material remaining; after two half-lives there will be 25% less; after three, 12.5%; and so on. To give some perspective on the activity of radium, its half-life is relatively short, about 1601 years, yet radium is almost three million times more radioactive than uranium-238, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. What is most interesting about these facts is not the numbers, but the language that science uses to describe the element. Radioactive elements have “life” (or at least “half-life”) as part of their definitive natures. This half-living nature of radioactive matter in general, and radium in particular, complicates conceptions of life and non-life that go beyond biology and chemistry and raises significant ontological questions that are explored in the play. Many news articles referred to (or spectacularized) the Radium Girls as “The Living Dead.” Taking up a third of the page above a photo of a frail woman being comforted by other women, the headline of the February 11, 1938 edition of the Chicago Daily Times reads “‘Living Death’ Quiz at Bedside.”[21] These girls are not dead yet, but they are no longer fully living. As Chen might say, the presumption of their “lifely” physical integrity is in question.[22] In the play, the Radium Girls also become associated with death while still alive. “That girl is still staring at me,” Roeder says at the trial. “She looks like death, Edward.” To which his lawyer, Edward Markley, replies, “They all look like death, Arthur.”[23] Even the Sob Sister, who usually pulls at the public’s sentimental heart strings, can’t help having a moment of glee at how many papers she will sell because of the girls’ ultimate demise. REPORTER: Radium Girls Go to Court Today! SOB SISTER: Radium Girls Knock at the Doors of Justice! Will they be heard? REPORTER: These poor, injured girls face pain! SOB SISTER: Disfigurement! REPORTER: Ruin! SOB SISTER: (cheerfully) And death! […] Read it in the Graphic! We care. Because you care.[24] As described above, radium is a “bone-seeking” element, due in part to its chemical similarities with calcium. When introduced to a biological system, radium becomes a kind of living actor with two objectives: to seek bone and settle there, and to seek nuclear stability by emitting alpha particles and gamma rays.[25] Ironically, just as life is made less-living by the addition of the half-life agency of radium, death is made more “lifely” as a result of the same. In Radium Girls, after the medical examiner exhumes the remains of Amelia Maggia, the first Radium Girl to die, the body (particularly the lower and upper jaws and the lumbar vertebrae) is found to be highly radioactive with no evidence of syphilis, initially said to be the cause of death. The Sob Sister and Reporter jump in immediately: “Body is Radioactive!” “Bones of Dead Girl Kick Off Gamma Rays!”[26] Even in death, the radium still lives. Conjuring images of the Valley of Dry Bones from Ezekiel chapter 37, the radium-infused bones are still kicking off gamma rays. It is as if the toxicity of the radium prevents life from being just life, and death from being just death. The interactions of radium and bodies will always be more than the binary of life and nonlife. Likewise, as Tom says in regard to Grace’s growing debility, disability itself can be thought of as a kind of “in-between life.” People with disabilities are often viewed as “less than” or lacking some aspect of “normalcy”, a kind of half-life to be anxious about. But what if, instead of this ableist perception of defective otherness, one thought of the “half-life” of disability in this more transcendent sense of an agency that brings something more to one’s existence, something that would not be possible or conceivable without the intersection of life and half-life, of ability with debility? For there is always an intermingling of ability with disability along the spectrum of our existence. There is something about the interactions of the agency of radioactivity and the agency of biological bodies that changes the very nature of materiality, agency, and life itself. In the case of the Living Dead Girls, the merging of life with half-life brings about an association with non-life. Conversely, in the case of Maggia’s exhumed jawbone, the blending of death with half-life evokes a kind of liveliness, kicking off gamma rays. Bodies and atoms are intertwined and interacting in ways that transcend the physical and the phenomenological. Stacy Alaimo’s theory of “trans-corporeality” emphasizes this interconnectedness of human bodies with the more-than-human world. Trans-corporeality looks at the “flows of substances” and theorizes “the often unpredictable and unwanted actions of human bodies, nonhuman creatures, ecological systems, chemical agents, and other actors.”[27] This hermeneutic approach can “account for the ways in which nature, the environment, and the material world itself signify, act upon, or otherwise affect human bodies, knowledges, and practices,” thus necessitating broader ways of thinking about the world, bodies, environments, and materiality.[28] Seen in this way, Radium Girls becomes a potent example of trans-corporeal space, “in which the body can never be disentangled from the material world.”[29] The simple cause-and-effect approach to understanding the debilitating effects of radium poisoning begins to break down in favor of a more inclusive understanding of intra-acting agencies. Thus, the debilities of the Radium Girls are no longer understood as additions to or deletions from a ‘normal’ body. Rather, bodies and lives exist on a spectrum possessing various degrees of half-life that are always already relational, a kind of “intra-active becoming” that is “always the very substance of ourselves.”[30] Thus, Gregory’s depiction of Grace Fryer is not so much an image of the progression of a disabled object, but rather an image of a new way of understanding bodies, abilities, and the intra/inter-actions of the material world. These new ways of understanding are played out most concretely in the way the play explores early twentieth century labor practices and the stylized representations of disability on stage. Radium Girls is set during the same time frame of the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. Tamsen Wolff has argued a connection between theatre and the eugenics movement, noting how both dramatists and eugenicists are concerned with visibility and truth: In eugenic theory, there is a vital tension between hidden truth […] and visible truth. […] For eugenicists, this tension creates a vacillation between an assurance about what can be seen on the body and an uneasiness about what lurks unseen in the body. Of course, in theatre, a tension between hidden truth and visible truth is not only a playwright’s natural playground, but is relevant to everything from the body of the performer, to dramatic form, to stage design, to the role of the audience.[31] Wolff’s argument explores how theatre was historically and politically used as a means of indoctrinating people into a eugenic way of thought. Some veins of scientific research at the time were working towards the goal of perfecting the human race, or rather, the elimination of those individuals who did not match the traits deemed desirable by certain authority figures. This eugenic obsession with appearances contributed to twentieth century atrocities such as forced sterilization, genocide, and xenophobic world wars. Although Radium Girls does not operate as a polemic for eugenic examination (as the plays analyzed by Wolff do), it nevertheless capitalizes on the same tension between visible and invisible truth in dynamic trans-corporeal ways that challenge rather than reify able-bodied understandings of performer, audience, and the world as a whole. Radium Girls’ central themes include the “peculiarly American obsessions with health, wealth, and the commercialization of science.”[32] This commercialization of science includes the girls wanting compensation and treatment for their acquired disability, their dentist extorting funds from the company and the girls, and the marketing exploits of various entrepreneurs and quack scientists portrayed in the play. This obsession is intrinsically related to notions of capital and labor, and Radium Girls provides an interesting exploration of pre-Social Security ideas regarding disability and the wage-labor system. Even though the Social Security Administration was not founded until 1935, seven years after the events of the play end, disability was not added as an insured contingency to the social security program until the 1950s.[33] In her book The Disabled State, Deborah Stone asserts that the idea of a ‘welfare state’ is founded on “the principle that certain characteristics – youth, old age, widowhood, and sickness – render people automatically incapable of participating in the wage-labor system.”[34] Though welfare programs were common in other industrialized nations around the world, the United States had not adopted any such program during the time of the Radium Girls scandal. The idea that there were any “categorical exemptions from the labor market” had not yet taken popular hold in the American psyche.[35] The beginning of act two provides an interesting perspective on these notions of labor and fitness: REPORTER: December 4, 1927! Jack Youngwood reporting for the Newark Ledger. SOB SISTER: Nancy Jane Harland for the New York Graphic! REPORTER: On the strange case of the Radium Girls. SOB SISTER: Who claim they were poisoned at the hands of their employer. REPORTER: And now seek their day in court! SHOPGIRL: Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. SOB SISTER: That’s the price tag on their suffering! MALE SHOPPER: Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars! STORE OWNER: Ask me, it’s all a sham! CUSTOMER: What do you mean? Those girls are very sick! STORE OWNER: Sicka workin’, sure! REPORTER: Doctors say… the Radium Girls have only a year to live![36] Here Gregory presents the Store Owner, the lone representative of hard work and entrepreneurship, in a sea of consumers flanked by media representatives, all questioning the validity of the girls’ claims. He thinks they just want a handout; therefore they must be lying. Stone notes how disability has so often been historically associated with deception, and therefore the very concept of disability is predicated on the need to prove its validity.[37] For the freak shows common to traveling entertainments at this time, that expertise was doled out by the hawking ‘professors’ and ‘anthropologists’ guaranteeing that the exhibits were indeed authentic. It was the medical doctor alone who could validate ‘legitimate disability.’ Disability had become a clinical concept.[38] In this scene, the Reporter trumps the entire debate about the ‘validity of the invalids’ by invoking the claims of the almighty “doctors.” As the eugenicists proposed, science appears to have the final say over the nature and ‘normalcy’ of atypical bodies. Gregory, however, is not content merely to portray this shift in perspective towards the medical model of understanding disability in Radium Girls.[39] On the contrary, she carefully chips away at the hegemony of the scientific medical industrial complex by challenging this assumed authority. The character of Dr. Knef, the opportunistic dentist, represents not only corruption and the medical gaze that continues to enfreak and marginalize people with disabilities, but also the capitalistic gaze that permeates the play. Even though characters like Dr. Knef explore the darker side of medical politics in the quid pro quo (he trades false diagnoses for corporate payments), the play is not simply satirizing a corrupt medical professional. Rather, Gregory takes a broader and more oppositional position to the part that the medical profession plays in the hegemonic authority that denies the visibility of the disabled, and indeed would deny the very existence of the trans-corporeal. It is the character of Grace with her unwillingness to accept the status quo that helps move the play beyond simply villainizing Knef and his ilk and into this more subversive and challenging arena. Early in the play, when news reaches the dial painters that the death of their friend and fellow dial painter, Amelia Maggia, was attributed to complications from syphilis, Grace challenges the decree, and Kathryn hesitantly follows suit. GRACE: But Amelia was ever so nice. IRENE: Guess she got around more than we knew. GRACE: Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe the doctor got it wrong. IRENE: Come on. GRACE: He coulda got it wrong. Doctors are wrong sometimes. KATHRYN: That’s true. Doctor was wrong about Aunt Ivy. IRENE: What’s Mama got to do with it? KATHRYN: Irene, don’t you remember? Up to the day she died, doctor said Aunt Ivy would be fine. Said take a cup a tea, get a good night’s rest. And two days later we was taking her to Rosedale cemetery.[40] By beginning to question the infallibility of scientific ‘doctor’s orders’, the girls also begin to take a stand against the company and file suit at the end of act one. However, when another dial painter, Kathryn, also takes ill and is waiting for surgery in the hospital, her resolve fails. Faced with her own acquired toxic debility, Kathryn turns back to the doctors for refuge from her fears and loses resolve in the legal battle, leaving Grace the lone soldier in her quest for justice: KATHRYN: (abruptly). What if we don’t win? GRACE: ‘Course we’ll win. KATHRYN: But what if we don’t? My father will lose his house. We’ll be on the street. You’ll be on the street, too. Yer father must owe thousands. And you and Tom, You won’t never get married. How can ya stand it, Grace— GRACE: Kathryn, please! KATHRYN: (more agitated). How can Tom stand it? Don’t ya ever wonder, Grace? I don’t never hear him complain— GRACE: Kathryn! As soon as the judge hears our testimony, he’s gonna rule for us. All they gotta do is take one look at us. It’ll be over in a day.” KATHRYN: Think so?[41] Soon thereafter, the Sob Sister joins them in the hospital room offering them a cash deal for exclusive rights to tell their story. Kathryn’s last words alive in the play are a concession to give up the lawsuit: “Grace, maybe we should do it.”[42] Everyone abandons Grace in her fight for justice and encourages her to give up and get on with what little she has left. The eugenicist notion that disability will inevitably lead to homelessness, poverty, and solitude is deeply entrenched, and, perhaps like an early disability rights activist, Grace seems to be the only one willing to fight, further developing her character as an image of trans-corporeality that has been enlivened in some way by her interactions with the deadly radium. The historical importance of this case is also the heart of the Radium Girls’ story: industrial health reform. But the story goes much deeper. Not only did the Radium Girls fight for their own bodies and health, but their lives and their debility also interacted with others in a catalytic manner. Claudia Clark’s account of the Radium Girls describes how: Industrial health bridges the history of labor and the social history of workers, the history of medicine and the social history of health and the environment, the traditional history of politics and the social history of politics. In the case of the dialpainters, we may also study the history of women.[43] Even the radium poisoning itself was not so much a scientific discovery as it was “a social product born of political negotiation.”[44] The Radium Girls are more than just a case study; they were a catalyst for recognition and reform of the impact of industrialization and corporatism on individuals and society. Their very bodies were a source of trans-corporeal transformation in the social/industrial/political landscape. Industrialization had gripped much of the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but the tangled relationship between factory, worker, science, business, and government was only beginning to be uncovered. The case of the Radium Girls was the first instance of industrial health reform to gain public recognition and to begin to turn the tide of reckless business practices.[45] For the Radium Girls, it was not just a fight for justice, but also for recognition and acceptance in the face of powerful men publicly denying their claims. Many lost heart. Many lost their lives. When D.W. Gregory portrays Grace’s solitary battle in Radium Girls, she emphasizes the poignant fragility of living in these crucial historical events, and how science and progress interact with bodies and lives, often exacting a steep and lonely price, and often at the expense of the disabled. Though the battle for justice is lonely, the war is filled with onlookers and opportunists looking to make a buck. While Gregory represents Grace’s lonely challenge to the medical hegemony on the interpretation and ‘care’ of bodies, she visibly spotlights the speculators and Johnny-come-latelys that try to capitalize on the hype and sensation of the story. The newspapers are not the only ones trying to make a buck riding upon the girls’ crumbling backs; many people and institutions attempt to capitalize on what Jasbir K. Puar calls the “profitability of debility.”[46] During the frenetic opening of act two, with the public prattling on about the case and what they would do with the money, Grace Fryer makes her first public appearance, mediated by the news media, as a plaintiff in the case for the explicit purpose of stirring up public sympathy. (Grace appears, walking with a cane.) GRACE. I’d use it to pay my medical bills. (Reaction from CROWD.) And pay off the second mortgage on our house. The one my father took out to pay for my last operation. (Reactions of sympathy.) SOB SISTER. Pretty Grace Fryer sits at home. REPORTER. …suffering bravely through this entire ordeal. SOB SISTER. …struggling valiantly to keep up her flagging spirits— REPORTER. …for the sake of her family and her friends. GRACE. It hurts to smile. But I try to smile. I know if I don’t smile—I’ll go crazy. (Approval from the CROWD.)[47] This sequence appears at first glance to be a problematic appropriation of disability images to evoke public sympathy. What makes this exchange remarkable is that the theatrical audience gets to see the “behind the scenes” moments that take place before and after this public interchange, revealing that it is in fact a rehearsed and planned performance. At the very end of act one, Grace agrees to fight publicly to shame the company into giving in to the girls’ demands for compensation and justice. Ms. Wiley, one of the girls’ advocates, claims here and elsewhere in the play that “public sympathy” is both their strongest weapon for justice and the engine of social reform.[48] The moment after Grace’s first public appearance, Gregory utilizes a crucial stage direction signifying that “Wiley congratulates Grace” as the crowds disperse, giving approval for the stylized performance of being pitiful and marking it as a performance. Even Grace’s allies are now putting her and her disability on stylized display with a cane, enfreaking her even more, towards the goal of social justice. Alison Kafer, in her discussion of disability images on billboards, notes that “We need to recognize and challenge this strategic deployment of disability, acknowledging that rhetorics of disability acceptance and inclusion can be used to decidedly un-crip ends.”[49] Is Grace’s performance of tragic pathos an example of Wiley’s exploitation of disability for the benefit of social reform? Like the models for medical textbook photographs, Grace is not being paid for her performance. Is it a necessary ruse for the greater good? Who pays the price of progress? This Brechtian moment in the play brings the profitability issue to the surface, holding it up for scrutiny, throwing critical light on the role of exploitation in producing social reform. Though Ms. Wiley seems to genuinely want to help Grace and hold the U.S. Radium Corporation accountable for their negligence, her methods seem to implicitly condone the exploitation of disabled bodies. To think in contemporary terms, if Wiley had hired an actor to play the same part that Grace played in this public presentation, that actor would have been paid. When using actual people with actual disabilities for a media campaign on their behalf, the same performance is not compensated or seen as labor. The irony is profound: if one of the goals is to help you, then you do not get paid; if you have nothing to do with the campaign, you would get paid.[50] Grace’s aloneness in her struggle is made all the more palpable in the final scene of the play during which Grace sits at Kathryn’s grave, spreading flowers and talking of watercolor paints. The scene at the grave recalls images from the previous scene with Kathryn in the hospital, with Grace sitting at her side and offering comfort. Grace is nearing the end of her own life and at this point is most likely unable to walk. She does not move from this position in the final scene. It is a scene that powerfully reveals how truly lonely the battle for justice is, with many casualties left along the way. This final moment also raises an important question about how the play is staged and why Gregory chose not to highlight Grace’s physical condition in the script itself. In terms of theatrical spaces, Radium Girls in performance further illuminates the complex web of intra-activity between matter and biological bodies. Performers and audience share the same space, breathing the same air and feeling the same sound wave vibrations. Slight variations in these vibrations, neurologically interpreted as timbre and pitch modulations, contribute to an emotional performance and can combine with the photons reflected off an actor to generate emotional and intellectual changes in the audience, which can then set up a feedback loop with the performer, who then “feeds” off the live audience’s energy and attentive focus, all mediated by these material environmental agents. Temperature, which is just the average kinetic energy of environmental molecules, has a profound impact on audience reception, as anyone who has sat through a show where the heat was turned up a little too high can attest. And of course, the more bodies that are in a confined space like a theatre, the more body heat generated and the higher the ambient temperature. Environment and bodies, actors and audiences, are always already intra-acting in theatrical spaces, changing each other in palpable and interactive ways that are unique to live performance. Perhaps theatre itself (and especially Brechtian theatre) can be thought of as a kind of trans-corporeal, intra-active half-life that connects and impacts people in ways that could not have been otherwise conceived. By focusing on Radium Girls as a trans-corporeal space in performance, one could tease out the nuances of toxic, radioactive animacies while engaging with trans-corporeal spaces both within the world of the play and the world of the play’s performance.[51] Unfortunately, such nuances rarely enter the sphere of production in regional and professional American theatre. Since Radium Girls is “one of the most performed plays in the 21st century,” an exhaustive list is probably impossible to gather, but I have found no evidence that a production has actually featured a disabled actress in the role of Grace.[52] This fact is perhaps unsurprising for many reasons, including the nature of the acting profession and the nature of actor training programs which tend to emphasize finding an idealized “normal” state of relaxation for an actor, what Carrie Sandahl has termed the “tyranny of the neutral” for its exclusion of non-normative bodies.[53] But what might be the nuanced implications of using visible markers of disability when staging the play, particular the final scene, and how might notions of trans-corporeality affect those moments? The trans-corporeal space of Radium Girls in performance engages what Victoria Lewis calls the “reciprocal relationship between performance space and performer” which raises questions of access for audiences as well as artists.[54] The final moments of the play, where Grace sits at the grave of her friend Kathryn while US Radium President Arthur Roeder looks on from the distance, demonstrate the engaging potential of these embodied, reciprocal interactions of disability, performers, text, and audiences. In the original workshop production, prior to the script’s publication, the final scene was staged with “a doomed young girl in a wheelchair wearing high heels,” a moment the reviewer felt was a “jarring and distracting note in a drama that follows a passionate and intelligent course.”[55] Whether the wheelchair was a stage direction that was ultimately cut from the script or a choice by director Joseph Megel is unclear. Yet the question remains, how might the use of a wheelchair in this final scene operate within the kind of analysis here proposed? The cane that Grace used at the end of act one was a theatrical prop, a meta-performance of disability to arouse pity and sympathy in the crowd within the world of the play. At the grave side, however, Grace is unaware she has an audience and there are no publicity directors orchestrating her performance like Ms. Wiley did at the end of the first act. Indeed, she does not move in the final scene, so the presence of the wheelchair, or any physical marking of disability, is external to the dramatic action and thus operates in the world of the production, a prop to indicate the physical condition of the character and ostensibly to arouse pity and sympathy in the theatrical audience. This is why, I believe, using disabled markers like the wheelchair in the final scene does not work theatrically or dramatically. Audiences are now being overtly manipulated by the production to feel a certain way, and the result is “jarring and distracting” for the audience. Not to mention how problematic and ableist it is to assume that the sight of a wheel chair would or should elicit feelings of pity in an audience. However, with an absence of physical markings of disability, it could be possible to read this final image of Grace as a problematic marginalization of disabled bodies being whitewashed and minimized. We know it is near the end of Grace’s life, and we know the physical toll that radium poisoning takes on bodies, so why leave Grace motionless on the ground without any other visible acknowledgement of her physical debilities? When staging this final scene, are you damned if you do and damned if you don’t, as it were? I believe this lack of “visible disability” marked on Grace’s body, in addition to being important for the dramatic action of the scene, is a manifestation of a cultural able-bodied gaze represented by Arthur Roeder. Roeder has returned to the grave site with his now-grown daughter, some fifteen years after the case was settled. He and Grace exist in the same space in different times when he finally has his moment of realization in the last line of the play. “Try as I might, Harriet, try as I might – I cannot remember their faces. (The irony strikes him.) I never saw their faces.”[56] He could not bring himself to look at the girls in the court room, when their marked bodies were placed on full display before him and the law, and now he cannot remember the faces that continue to haunt him. Here we see a palpable example of the complex interplay of the visible and the invisible as earlier described by Wolff. Roeder’s realization that persons with disabilities have their own lives and subjectivities comes too late for the girls in the play and is a potent reminder of the power of collective cultural denial that de-humanizes individuals with disabilities, rendering them invisible. Though the original workshop production with wheelchair and high heels may not have offered this possibility, understanding the play from this disability perspective holds the potential to shift the tragedy away from Grace and onto society in a Brechtian manner that implicates all of us, as we are all intra-acting in the material world. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson explains, “Disability studies reminds us that all bodies are shaped by their environments from the moment of conception. We transform constantly in response to our surroundings and register history on our bodies. The changes that occur when our body encounters the world are what we call disability.”[57] If disability is the change that occurs when bodies encounter the world, then scholars of theatre and performance have a particularly potent (if underutilized) critical ally in disability studies for examining performances and performance texts. In the case of this essay, treating radium itself as both actor and agent in the play Radium Girls engages with historical labor practices in what Stacy Alaimo might call a posthuman environmental ethics that is “not circumscribed by the human but is instead accountable to a material world that is never merely an external place but always the very substance of our selves and others.”[58] Contemporary critical thought is well aware of the power and agency ascribed to non-living or abstract entities such as class, gender, economics, and socio-politics. However, this exploration of Radium Girls demonstrates that accounting for the agency and animacy of material entities can transform the way we see our intra-acting bodies in the world, and the world in our bodies. A Disability perspective can transform how we think about and approach theatrical spaces as well, not just in terms of accessibility and access (for audiences and artists), but in terms of how bodies and spaces are always already intra-acting on each other. In this way, the personal responsibilities that are at stake in the play (to fight ignorance, exploitation, gender inequalities, etc.) are subsumed in the communal responsibility of that environmental ethic, a kind of universalizing aspect of debility that trans-acts within and among bodies, spaces, and even atoms. The in-between half-lives of disability always intra-act with environments, other bodies, and social forces in ways that can bring new insight to theatre and performance studies, disability studies, and other theories of scientific materiality. References [1] Events similar to the New Jersey Radium Girls also happened in Ottawa, IL and are dramatized in the play These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich (2010) which was adapted into a musical by Jessica Thebus, Andre Pluess, and Amanda Dehnert that premiered in 2015 at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre. [2] Claudia Clark, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). [3] D.W. Gregory, Radium Girls (Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2005), 8. [4] Robert L. Daniels, “Review: ‘Radium Girls,’” Variety, 23 May 2000, accessed 7 March 2016, http://variety.com/2000/legit/reviews/radium-girls-1200462095/ . [5] Despite the play’s popularity and hundreds of productions since its 2000 premier, Radium Girls has yet to receive scholarly attention, a fact which I here hope to change. [6] Though such an important debate about the nature and significance of disability and chronic illness is beyond the scope of this essay, many contemporary scholars such as Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Tobin Siebers, Robert McRuer, Anna Malloy, Lennard Davis, and others are thoughtfully engaging in how to adequately and appropriately theorize and understand disability and what it means in an evolving contemporary world. [7] Jasbir K. Puar, “The Cost of Getting Better: Suicide, Sensation, Switchpoints,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18, no.1 (2011): 149. [8] Ibid., 153. [9] Ibid., 154. [10] Gregory, Radium Girls, 54. [11] For more about radium quack cures, consult the Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ Quack Cures Collection at http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/quackcures.htm and Radium Historical Items catalogue at http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1008/ML100840118.pdf (accessed 4-30-2014). See also Paul Frame, “Radioactive Curative Devices and Spas,” The Oak Ridger, 5 November 1989. [12] Gregory, Radium Girls, 37. [13] Ibid., 78. [14] Mel Y. Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 10. [15] Mel Y. Chen, “Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17, no. 2-3 (2011): 265. [16] Gregory, Radium Girls, 13. [17] Chen, “Toxic Animacies,” 266. [18] Ibid., 279. [19] Gregory, Radium Girls, 86. [20] J. Rondo, “Long Term Retention of Radium in Man,” Nature 221, no. 5185 (15 March 1969): 1059. [21] This newspaper article is in reference to the radium dial painters from Ottawa, Illinois, a few years after the New Jersey story, but the comparison is the same. [22] Chen, “Toxic Animacies,” 279. [23] Gregory, Radium Girls, 105. [24] Ibid., 75-76. [25] Alpha particles, which are ionized helium nuclei (two protons and two neutrons), have limited penetrative ability and do not pose a danger to humans unless the alpha-emitter is ingested. Gamma rays, however are profoundly energetic and can penetrate deep into the body, altering the very DNA of cells. For the Radium Girls, the bone-seeking qualities of the element probably caused illness, debility, and death much faster than the cancerous radiation effects they would have developed had they lived long enough. This bone-seeking quality is also why the Radium Girls’ symptoms started in the mouth and jaw, since they pointed their paint brushes on their lips. [26] Gregory, Radium Girls, 82. [27] Stacy Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 9, 2. [28] Ibid., 7-8. [29] Ibid., 115. [30] Ibid., 4. Alaimo’s notion of trans-corporeality is based on Barad’s concept of “intra-active becoming” (i.e. things do not precede their relations but are always already relational). [31] Tamsen Wolff, Mendel’s Theatre: Heredity, Eugenics, and Early Twentieth-Century American Drama (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6. [32] Gregory, Radium Girls, n.p. [33] Deborah Stone, The Disabled State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 68. [34] Ibid., 21. [35] Ibid. [36] Gregory, Radium Girls, 59. [37] Stone, The Disabled State, 23. [38] Ibid., 91. [39] This medical understanding of disability is a uniquely modern phenomenon. Throughout most of history, disability was viewed from a moral or spiritual perspective, that disabilities were markings of sin or collusion with the devil, or some kind of punishment for moral turpitude. The different models of understanding disability is one of the many important contributions of disability scholars and theorists, too many to mention here. [40] Gregory, Radium Girls, 24. [41] Ibid., 65. [42] Ibid., 68. [43] Clark, Radium Girls, 5. [44] Ibid., 3. [45] Changes have been slow, particularly for women in the workforce, and industrial health is still a significant concern. Even today, approximately 100,000 Americans die each year from occupational diseases (Clark, Radium Girls, 11). The battle continues. [46] Puar, “The Cost of Getting Better,” 153. [47] Gregory, Radium Girls, 60. [48] Ibid., 58, 63. [49] Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 97. [50] While beyond the scope of this project, exploring and exposing such ironies is a critical task in the larger worlds of disability employment, performance, and the media. [51] At time of this writing, I am preparing to direct a production of Radium Girls that will attempt to capitalize on this trans-corporeal theory of half-life. Our production design will be minimalistic, and we will focus on the Brechtian elements that draw attention to the connections between performance and the world around the performance. I plan to work with my ensemble to explore the animacy of radium as an actor/character in a way that (I hope) will keep the pace and the tone both hopeful and thoughtful rather than grim and strident. A common concept image used for the show is a glowing clock face, ever reminding the audience of the girl’s impending death as a result of their radium poisoning. Such an image of time and death seems to put ankle weights on the performance, slowing the pace with a constant, dread-inducing reminder of death. Instead, the concept image from which my production will spring to life is that of a spinthariscope, a small child’s toy from the time period that contains a small (harmless) amount of radioactive material encased in a tube or small canister lined with phosphorescent material. Some were as small as rings and could be found as prizes in cereal boxes. When taken into a dark room, letting your eyes adjust, if you looked into the spinthariscope you could see tiny flashes of light every time a radioactive emanation struck the phosphorescent lining. I find this image particularly hopeful and engaging to the imagination, as well as quite beautiful. The image amplifies the light and lightness of the radium’s animacy, developing the trans-corporeal space in an upward and outward trajectory, rather than the downward and dreary trajectory of the ticking clock of doom. Dwelling on this story as merely or exclusively tragic misses the hope and benefits that arose from these events, the lives that were saved from the legislation that sparked public interest in industrial labor reform. An emphasis on the tragic is also problematic in the ways it can propagate the mindset that disability is the definition of personal tragedy and loss, rather than the trans-corporeal and generative sense that brings new perspectives and experiences to life that could not have otherwise occurred. The very first line of the show, spoken by Grace, is “So much light” (11). I see this line as the inflection point of the play: it will turn either downward and dark or upward and light, depending upon the nuances of one’s interpretation of the nature and significance of these toxic, radioactive animacies. [52] Mark Bretz, “The Sad, Tragic Tale of the ‘Radium Girls’: Theatre Review,” Ladue News, 1 April 2015, accessed 7 March 2016, http://www.laduenews.com/diversions/arts-entertainment/the-sad-tragic-tale-of-the-radium-girls-theater-review/article_ca20d23e-d8b8-11e4-86cc-7799675ff9c6.html . [53] Carrie Sandahl, “The Tyranny of Neutral: Disabililty and Actor Training,” in Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, ed. Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). While an exploration of disability and acting in the professional world is beyond the scope of this essay, such questions of access are among the most pressing on the contemporary theatrical world. [54] Victoria Lewis, “The Theatrical Landscape of Disability,” Disability Studies Quarterly 24, no. 3 (summer 2004): n.p. [55] Daniels, “Review: ‘Radium Girls,’” n.p. [56] Gregory, Radium Girls, 110. [57] Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Disability and Representation,” PMLA 120, no. 2 (March 2005), 524. [58] Alaimo, Bodily Natures, 158. Footnotes About The Author(s) Bradley Stephenson is an assistant professor of Theatre Arts at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC where he teaches theatre history, acting, improvisation, and playwriting. His scholarship has been published in Theatre Topics, Studies in Musical Theatre, Ecumenica, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and 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 Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

George Pate and Libby Ricardo Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters George Pate and Libby Ricardo By Published on May 26, 2016 Download Article as PDF In the Summer of 2010, the worlds of theater and medicine collided in Athens, Georgia. What was then known as the Georgia Health Sciences University and is now the Georgia Regents University (GRU), based two hours down the road in Augusta, was in the process of opening a new branch campus that fall in Athens attached to the University of Georgia (UGA). Dr. Stephen Goggans, the head of first-year clinical skills training, contacted Dr. David Z. Saltz, head of UGA’s Department of Theater and Film Studies, about creating a new training program for volunteers performing in simulated doctor-patient encounters as part of the first-year curriculum. These early meetings led to a collaboration which continues to this day and looks to continue to be profitable for both sides into the future. This essay will explain the nature of the collaboration and training and its implications for performance and actor training from the theater department’s perspective, particularly based on the experience of the authors. In narrating the brief history to date of this collaborative project, we hope not only to expose some of the potential issues in bringing together professionals from such disparate fields and suggest some possible solutions, but also to explore the practical applications of actor training and what these applications teach us about our methods. Before getting further into the specifics of the training program at UGA and GRU, we need to take a moment to look at the history and variety of simulated and standardized patients and understand the differences between those two terms. The use of standardized patients began in 1963 at the University of Southern California, under the direction of Dr. Howard Barrows. In some of the earlier tests, doctors unknown to the students being tested played the patients. The doctors were used both for the sake of accuracy in portraying symptoms of the simulated ailment and to provide immediate and interactive assessment on the students’ perceptiveness and diagnostic abilities. This type of encounter persists in the form of simulated patients who serve as “secret shoppers” in real practices to research such issues as access to care. [1] The standardized patient eventually became a fixture in many medical schools, primarily as an assessment tool. The most prevalent of these tools, the OSCE, or Objective Structured Clinical Examination, was first designed to assess medical students’ clinical skills, and continues to be used today. Medical students-in-training go to a test site and engage in encounters with actors trained as standardized patients and are evaluated on their clinical skills such as communication, relationship building, and ability to extract information. In fact, many of the encounters for which we trained actors served as preparation for the OSCEs for the medical students in Athens. The primary concern of the OSCEs is the mechanics of a hypothetical and neutral encounter, testing skills such as the medical student’s ability to read a chart or take a history. Additional obstacles, such as a patient’s anxiety or frustration, are taken into account only rarely and even then in a rehearsed, predictable way. The fact is, however, that the difficulties faced by doctors come not only in the form of complicated diagnoses and faltering treatments but also in the interaction with the patient in crisis. While little might prepare a student for the reality of a genuinely sick individual, medical schools now promote clinical skills to help the transition from theoretical to concrete. Traditionally, actors or volunteers who participate in the OSCEs or similar encounters have been known as standardized patients. Standardized patients follow a very specific script, often containing lines of dialogue and specific instructions on when to divulge certain information about the case. For example, a standardized patient may be instructed to mention their father’s heart condition the first time they are asked about family history, but only reveal their grandfather’s cancer if asked about family history a second time. Standardized patients are still used for evaluation at the OSCEs and for training at many medical schools all over the country, including GRU’s main campus in Augusta. Recently, however, some schools, such as GRU’s Athens branch, have been experimenting in a new and innovative kind of encounter by making the transition from standardized to simulated patients for the purposes of training. Unlike traditional standardized patients, simulated patients are not given a specific script. Instead, they receive all the details of a case including symptoms, medical history, patient’s education and socioeconomic status, and any other significant factors. Based on this information, they improvise their encounters with the medical students. Unless the case calls for a specific emotional challenge for the students, the simulated patients are encouraged to go with their own emotional response to the situation. Also, the simulated patients are encouraged to respond and react to the students as they would in a real doctor-patient encounter and to divulge information only as the medical students elicit it from them. In this way, simulated patients offer a higher level of fidelity to doctor-patient interaction than standardized patients offer. [2] While the use of standardized patients in the United States goes back to at least the 1960s, simulated patients represent a relatively recent development in medical training. Their rise can at least in part be attributed to recent research suggesting that clinical skills are not ancillary to medical care but in fact affect healing and recovery in measureable ways. [3] High fidelity simulated patient encounters provide practice in performing empathy. In a standardized encounter, empathy is a moot point. [4] The medical student more or less knows the game and knows that the ability being tested is whether or not they know the right questions to ask, how to take a history, or when to press a patient for a particular piece of crucial information. Not unlike the SATs, success in the OSCEs depends at least as much on an understanding of how the test works as it does on knowledge of the material. A simulated patient encounter, on the other hand, innovates on this process by demanding of a medical student that they pay close attention to the emotional responses of their patients, which may develop in ways they cannot anticipate. In other words, the simulated encounter demands more empathy from doctors in training. Empathy is not a new concern for the medical profession. In his lecture to Harvard Medical students in 1925, Dr. Francis Peabody states: The treatment of a disease may be entirely impersonal; the care of a patient must be completely personal. The significance of the intimate personal relationship between physician and patient cannot be too strongly emphasized, for in an extraordinarily large number of cases both diagnosis and treatment are directly dependent on it, and the failure of the young physician to establish this relationship accounts for much of his ineffectiveness in the care of patients.[5] Empathy is desirable not only in a holistic sense but also on a very practical level. A patient who trusts and respects their doctor as a human and confidant may be more likely to share crucial information and engage earnestly in discussions of treatment options, for example. Though the medical profession has long recognized the importance of instilling empathy in new doctors, the question of how to teach this skill persists. In “Medical Professionalism Crossing the Generational Divide,” Colin Walsh and Herbert T. Abelson address the overwhelming concern for the future of the profession: But recent medical graduates also cannot assume that earning a degree means they know what they need to know about earning a patient’s trust and providing the best care, even when therapeutic options beyond palliative care have run out. In the next 50 years, this professional schism must be negotiated. If it is not, doctors in 2050 may actually be no more than technicians, as patients become increasingly more interested in “what the test shows” instead of what the doctor has to say.[6] The doctor-patient relationship is inherently intimate, as the physician is charged with managing the physical well-being of his or her patient. This, however, must be coupled with the capacity for empathy. While it might seem like a small amendment, the use of the simulated patient from the onset of training forces the theoretical to become real. Physicians are never just dealing with hypothetical symptoms conveniently listed on a provided paper, but are rather constantly interacting with their patients. The simulated patient is a reminder, a harbinger, of what is to come post-graduation. And the medical students of GRU will be better prepared to face a patient and negotiate between their sometimes contradictory roles as scientist and caretaker. Both standardized and simulated patient encounters offer several unique pedagogical advantages for students preparing for the medical profession. These advantages arise from the opportunities created by applying performance and acting training to the sciences. The acted scenario lives somewhere between the textbook and the clinic. Unlike other simulation modalities such as high-tech simulation mannequins, acting scenarios are flexible, adaptive, and provide a much broader range of feedback than simply correct or incorrect. [7] They also give instructors the opportunity to see what doctors might be like in action. In our experience, many students who excelled in the classroom struggled when confronted with real (or simulated) patients. Without the encounters, their professors may not have recognized that they needed extra help in that area. To help identify the areas where students need to improve, many encounters, including ours at GRU, ask the standardized or simulated patients to fill out a form on a computer in the encounter room to provide feedback about how the students made them feel. [8] One of the major innovations that GRU is exploring in the longstanding practice of using simulated encounters is the stage at which these encounters are introduced into the curriculum. While many schools wait to introduce simulated encounters until the second year, GRU thought it necessary to integrate clinical skills acquisition as early as possible. Thus, simulated patients are used from the first semester on, not just as a means of assessment but also as a pedagogical tool. The use of the simulated patient early in the medical school curriculum emphasizes the importance of developing communicative skills necessary for the demands of the profession. Medical school is already notoriously demanding, yet academic prowess is not enough to fulfill the demands of a physician’s practice. The encounter offers real challenges in dealing with difficult social situations. The students were faced with an average of five encounters per semester in which they were expected to complete a range of tasks from something as routine as taking a patient’s history to something as challenging as delivering news of and taking responsibility for a botched procedure. Similarly, these encounters teach skills ranging from how to take a history to how to ethically approach difficult matters such as medical error, final directives, and confidential information. [9] The simulated patients were encouraged to behave as they would if they were in these situations in their own lives, bringing elements of emotional distress or physical discomfort to the room. Community volunteers who were recruited the summer before school began were required to attend a training session. These individuals were not professional performers but rather retired members of the University of Georgia community ranging in age from around 60 to over 80. [10] They largely came to us through their connection with the University of Georgia’s chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. While many served as ushers at the Performing Arts Center, they were admittedly more inclined to participate as audience than performers. Thus, we were confronted with a dilemma: how might we train simulated patients who lack knowledge of performance technique? After all, high fidelity encounters require the ability to respond to the given circumstances and allow emotion to evolve naturally. An impassive simulated patient would not challenge the students to empathize. Ricardo, who handled most of the actual actor training, found terminology to be vital in that process. Rather than try to translate theater terms into lay language, she implored the community volunteers to become comfortable using vocabulary familiar to anyone trained in Stanislavski-based acting techniques, words such as objective, obstacle, and tactic. Much of the training, then, resembled a freshman-level acting class in most American universities. We also developed some specific uses for words particular to the activity of the encounter such as scenario and background. This shared vocabulary promoted a more successful encounter in a number of ways. For one, it made the volunteers feel like actors. By encouraging the use of particular words specifically applicable to their work as simulated patients, the volunteers were more likely to take the experience of the encounter seriously. In the beginning, many of the older members of our volunteer pool wished to connect with the young doctors to the point of breaking character and trying to comfort their students. Acting terminology was the key to solving this issue. When we asked them what their objective was in the first encounter, many of them eagerly responded that their objective was to help the medical students learn. After talking about the idea of the objective as what the characters wanted to get out of their scene partners rather than what the volunteers were trying to accomplish as actors, they were able to identify objectives that increased the level of fidelity in the encounters. Instead of needing to help the students learn, they needed to understand their test results or to seek redress for a costly error. It wasn’t the retiree in a room with a nervous first year medical student, but rather an anxious 65-year old office worker with heart palpitations interacting with a doctor. By instituting our shared terminology, we were able to support encounters that would truly test the medical students. By keeping our conversations rooted in acting rather than medical or pedagogical vocabulary, we were able to move past the initial problems caused when our volunteers began training by asking what the medical students were supposed to learn in any given encounter. We expanded beyond objectives and added other concepts such as obstacles. What happens when the doctor does something that decreases the possibility of getting what you need or want? These terms placed emphasis on the needs of the patient character rather than the aid of the student. Obviously no simulated patient wanted to see a student fail; however, by attempting to help, they were in fact hindering their potential progress. Finally, using acting vocabulary helped to advocate more convincing emotional response, as opposed to forced or contrived reactions. As with any other actor we might coach, we never spoke of playing sad or playing frustrated. Rather, we encouraged the community volunteers to be diligent in creating a complete character. We implored each to create a backstory based on the medical history given in the encounter but also enriched with invented details distinct from their own experience and fueled by their imaginations. This fullness of character development helped to instigate or trigger particular emotional responses while also giving the volunteers a sense of ownership over the characters they created, thus heightening their stakes in the encounter. One of the cases detailed a medical error involving a missing blood test. The circumstances were that the test would indicate whether or not the patient had a cholesterol problem. Many volunteers asked for tips on how to “play mad.” We encouraged them instead to rely on the concepts of objective, obstacle, and backstory. We asked them to imagine that their character’s family history showed many heart problems. We also asked them to think of the hassle of going to the doctor, and even encouraged them to create a scenario that they were either unable to get to an appointment on their own and thus had to burden a loved one for a ride or that they had to travel a great deal of time to get to the office. By placing these seeds of thought in the mind of the volunteer, we never had to prompt visible frustration and annoyance; it sprouted organically within the encounter. Thus, the medical student was faced with a more realistic and devastating scenario, an unhappy customer. We found that different situations called for exercises drawn from various acting theories. Exercises based on Sanford Meisner’s work were used earlier in the training to instill a sense of dependence on the partner, or in this case, the medical student. [11] It is important that the simulated patient be able to read and respond to the student, and that these reactions are organic. Ricardo also speaks frequently about Konstantin Stanislavski’s magic if, entreating the community volunteers to consider what they might do if they were in the same situation specified by a case. Being that we work with predominantly older simulated patients, we sometimes adopt affective memory for our work. [12] In the case involving medical error, many of the patients were able to relate the irritating scenario to one that they had actually suffered themselves. This helped to bolster the reality of the encounter and imbued the case with a greater sense of import. In the Spring of 2011, Ricardo began to work not only with the community volunteers, but also a group of upper level undergraduates from the Department of Theater and Film Studies. The thirteen students admitted to the course had taken pre-requisite acting courses, and thus entered the training with a greater knowledge of acting methodology. The primary obstacle with the theater students was encouraging them to allow more introverted characters to evolve. Working in simulations is significantly different then stage work, as the audience is hardly visible. It is an improvisation with a partner whose stakes are very different than the actor’s. Working with a younger demographic posed a variety of new obstacles for the medical students. Before the semester began, we met with Dr. Stephen Goggans, the head of first year clinical skills, to discuss what might be accomplished with the new simulated patients. While we toyed with various possibilities, it became clear that a group of theater students in their early twenties would create an entirely different encounter than the retirees did. While some cases were difficult to alter, there was a strong attempt to fit the case to the age group. Both sides of the collaboration wanted the event to benefit everyone involved, meaning that the medical students should gain an understanding of working with a younger demographic, while the acting students should be challenged and learn from the encounters. The process of preparing our students for the role of simulated patient was slightly more comprehensive than the work with the community volunteers. For one thing, the cases assigned to the acting students were more complex, generally speaking, some anticipating extreme emotional response. For example, the first case of the semester dealt with alcohol abuse. The medical students not only had to identify the problem but also confront the simulated patient about his or her self-abusive behavior. While many of my students created characters that tended to be contentious, a number chose rather to play an individual humbled and shamed by the confrontation. In fact, one of my students was brought to tears, and in this moment, the medical student seemed uneasy and unsure of how to proceed. This creation of character served as an important example to the medical students. Patients can be combative at times, but they can also tend toward introversion and somberness. A doctor must relate to all patients, despite disease or demeanor. Finally, we turn to the question of the benefits of this kind of training program and of simulated patients in general. Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages to both the simulated and standardized patient approaches. Standardized patient encounters are more consistent and predictable. This makes them a good choice for assessment tools such as the OSCEs as their consistency makes creating standards for evaluation easier. However, the lack of flexibility also potentially allows medical students to behave in a rote manner without actually engaging with the patient. Simulated patients lead to a much less predictable but, ideally, higher fidelity experience. As a pedagogical tool, simulated patients force students to learn to adjust to changing situations. Though the unpredictability of these encounters creates certain risks, the benefits of being able to simulate high-stakes emotional situations with no chance of harming a patient seeking care more than compensates. On the other hand, one drawback of the simulated patient encounter is that, because of its flexibility, assessing it is much harder than in the case of standardized patient encounters where medical students’ responses are either correct or not according to a script and a rubric. This conflict between testing and training has been one of the biggest obstacles and also the most exciting grounds for discussion in collaboratively developing the training program. This conflict has centered around trying to negotiate the meaning of “failure” and its potential uses within the clinical skills curriculum. In an assessment situation such as the OSCEs, standardized patients are useful because any deviation from their scripts becomes a sign of failure, or at least shortcoming, on the part of the doctor. Going in to the project, we on the theatrical side were excited about the potential for encounters to “go wrong,” to veer off the planned and predictable course. Our excitement was born out of no ill will towards the doctors-in-training. In fact, we believed that building in the potential for the situation to fall completely out of their control was one of the key ways in which we could help train them more effectively with simulated rather than standardized patients. After all, if you build a flight simulator programmed never to crash, you are not doing future pilots any favors or really teaching them anything at all. This is also not to say that all failures are created equally. Early on in the training program, we had a number of situations in which the medical students were uncomfortable with a patient’s emotional reactions or not perceptive of physical and verbal cues to the point that they could not elicit the information they needed. This is the kind of “failure” we like to see. In training simulated patients to react to their medical students fluidly rather than simply following a script, we put more pressure on the students to really engage with their patients, to be aware of their mental and emotional states, and to develop multiple strategies for building trust with and gaining access to patients. Initially, some doctors from the medical school had difficulty with the fluidity of these encounters. They wanted our patients to stay on script so that they could tell whether or not their students were behaving “appropriately” or according to their own scripts. A specific example from early in the development process illustrates the complexity of the failure issue. In an early round of encounters, one community volunteer was given a situation in which the doctor was telling him to limit his physical activity, advice that would have kept his character from work, a situation he could not afford. His response was, based on the training he had received, fluid, justifiable, and realistic. He became quite agitated and demanded answers from the flustered young medical student, who, in turn, could not come up with a good response. After the encounter, the student was very upset, even to the point of tears. We on the theatre side at first considered it a great success. It was honest, unpredictable, and effectively simulated the kind of situations these medical students might face with upset patients. The doctors were initially less enthusiastic because, where we saw exciting flexibility, they saw our setting up their students to fail. And, to an extent, they had a point. While that situation may have been realistic and educational, it was perhaps too much for a first-year medical student’s second encounter. Moving forward, we have become aware of the importance of balancing our desire for realism in the encounters with the more local pedagogical needs of each particular scenario. Recently, the relationship between our departments has shown promise of developing in areas other than simulated patient training as well. The issues of empathy and communication in the medical profession are not limited to doctor-patient relationships. On July 11, 2011, The New York Times published an article entitled “New for Aspiring Doctors, the People Skills Test,” which chronicled the efforts of Virginia Tech Carillion to incorporate an assessment of the medical school candidate’s social skills. The school, however, seems less invested in improved bedside manner and more concerned with a student’s ability to interact with other medical professionals. While the ability to communicate successfully with colleagues is imperative, a doctor must also have the aptitude to relate to his or her patient one on one. Some may inherently have this skill set, but we believe that it might also be acquired through training and practice. While the article at least suggests that Virginia Tech Carillion is aware of the lack of social skills and empathy some of its students show in their medical practice, it offers no signs that they are being trained in these skills. Again, while simulation has long been used in medical and forensic as well as other fields as a means of testing or preparation for real-world scenarios, we believe that the kind of acting training we employed at GRU participates in an innovative push to actually train professionals in empathy as a skill. With this in mind, we decided to take our acting skills directly to the medical students, and engaged them in a day of workshops and improvisations designed to lay bare and begin to correct issues in their communication skills that might prevent them from fully engaging with their patients. One exercise we had them do, for example, dealt with the concept of high context versus low context. In this exercise, we had them tell the group about something they knew very well other than medicine as though they were addressing other insiders to that knowledge, and then tell the same information as though they were telling a sibling or friend who had little to no knowledge about the subject. One medical student described a round of Dungeons and Dragons . In the second telling, he occasionally found it very difficult to proceed without the use of some jargon. We discussed how these difficulties were similar to the challenge of respectfully and exhaustively informing patients without being condescending. Of course, we are not the first to suggest using skills traditionally found in humanities classrooms to help improve medical students’ clinical skills. Delese Wear and Lois LaCivita Nixon, co-authors of “Literary Inquiry and Professional Development in Medicine Against Abstractions” argue that literature, rather than simple abstracts of illnesses, would foster a greater understanding of professional development within medical trainees because students would be forced to acknowledge emotions and responses the detailed descriptions might invoke: Our approach is grounded in medical narratives written by physicians — memoirs, essays, and poetry — as they grapple with the daily challenges of medicine that involve altruism, duty, excellence, honor and integrity, accountability, and respect for others. Arising from the literary domains, these narratives suggest responses without dictating them, urge behaviors without ordering them, illuminate values without oversimplifying them, and in general complicate the matters rather than clarifying or confirming them.[13] While Wear and Nixon recognize the necessity for medical students to relate to the plights of both patients and fellow practitioners, it disregards the need for the fictional to become reality. A medical student must acknowledge a patient not just as a case, but something living, then navigate the difficulties of interacting with this real person. Wear and Nixon suggest that medical students read poems such as Allen Ginsberg’s “Line Drive” and Marc Straus’s “The Pause” to relate the importance of altruism within the profession. Unfortunately, these poems romanticize the duty of the doctor, and, while they may acknowledge the difficulty of the situation, a reader remains removed, the experience second hand, unlike the immediacy of an actual encounter. This is not, of course, to dismiss Wear and Nixon’s approach, but to suggest that improvisatory acting situations may offer a greater immediacy and a wider range of possible responses than a poem or story can. When a hasty move to immediate contact with a real patient would be detrimental to both parties, the use of simulation has emerged as a means of teaching clinical skills to medical students. The simulated or standardized patient is an individual who performs “the patient” in order to give medical students an opportunity to interact with a real human being. Whereas literature and art might help medical students better understand empathy as a concept, simulated patient encounters give medical students actual practice in performing empathy, in doing the act of empathizing. Our work with simulation has expanded beyond the medical community as well. While we were both still graduate students at the University of Georgia, some faculty in Social Work heard about our simulations and approached us to work on scenarios with their students as well. In the field of social work, the actors are known as simulated or surrogate clients (SCs). [14] Recently SCs have been used in social work to assess and improve the preparedness of future social workers for a variety of situations. One study used SCs to simulate encounters with families of veterans struggling with mental illness leading to domestic violence, finding that the encounters helped social workers learn the signs that might identify when real world clients might pose a “risk of harm to others … or to self.” [15] And another recent study found that “the best measure of students’ competence… is in their ability to effectively perform the core functions of the profession in practice situations.” [16] As in the medical field, social work educators use simulations both for training and assessment. In our case, we trained some of our actors to portray a family working through the kinds of domestic issues social workers regularly encounter. We both now teach at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort, where we are working with our nursing program to develop simulated encounters for their students—encounters ranging from simple clinical intake to mental health and alcohol withdrawal. [17] Because nurses are often the frontlines of patient interaction, simulations may have even greater potential application in nursing education than in training doctors, helping teach skills that improve the focus on “patient-centerdness in… nurse-patient interactions.” [18] In all of these encounters, we are guided by the large body of research on simulated patients and simulated clients from the fields of medicine and social work, our experiences and failures, and our deep belief that acting provides unparalleled opportunities for imparting interpersonal skills to professionals in service fields with a clinical component. The medical students’ response to these encounters evolved over the course of that first year. Initially, many students were skeptical of the encounters, fearing that they might lose precious time to study important medical, biological, or anatomical topics. However, as the encounters increased in complexity, the students became increasingly grateful and enthusiastic as they realized the range of clinical situations for which they were not prepared. The angry patient mentioned earlier, for example, initially shook that medical student’s confidence. Later, however, she expressed her gratitude, saying that she now felt more prepared to deal with an actual patient who was hostile in a real world setting. At a reception at the end of the year, this same student was one of several who spoke to express their enthusiasm for the program and the value of the simulations, saying they felt more prepared in general to deal with a wide range of patients. Of course, these informal responses do not prove the efficacy of the simulated patient program, but they suggest promise in terms of improving medical students’ interpersonal skills. References [1] See Karin V. Rhodes and Franklin G. Miller, “Simulated Patient Studies: An Ethical Analysis,” The Milbank Quarterly 90, no. 4 (2012): 706-724. [2] The medical literature uses “fidelity” to refer to the extent to which a simulation reproduces the conditions of a clinical encounter with an actual patient in an active practice setting. There are examples of this usage in almost every article from nursing and medical journals cited here. All simulation-based training starts from the precept that skills are transferrable. Much of the medical literature articulates this precept in terms of simulation-based training in other fields such as aviation or the service industry. For us, however, coming from a theater and performance studies background, this precept has resonated with concepts such as performativity and the possibility of enacting felicitous speech acts in constructed contexts. In fact the latter concept proved especially useful in recognizing that even the “real world” clinical encounter is nothing more than a constructed context with its own rules for speech acts and their felicity. Learning to perform those speech acts in the simulation, then, was not a case of trying to faithfully recreate a fictional version of a scenario, but of practicing the rules of a particular “game” of speech acts. We use “fidelity,” then, not only in the sense that the medical literature uses it to mean degree of adherence to “real” situations but also to suggest that the “real” encounters and the simulations actually operate under the same rules. A high degree of fidelity, then, simply means that the felicity conditions in the simulation and in the “real” situation are largely the same. Pate has explored the nature of speech acts under different “game” conventions in “‘This is a Real Gun’: 500 Clown and Speech Act Theory,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 27, no. 2 (2013): 31-41. [3] One recent study offered patients suffering irritable bowel syndrome acupuncture treatments. The treatments themselves, unbeknownst to the patients, were not based on actual acupuncture practices but were harmless. The patients who received the treatments from warm and empathetic practitioners showed much higher rates of improvement than those who received treatments from practitioners they believed to be competent but cold and distant. The practitioner’s clinical skills had a measurable outcome on the patients’ recovery. John M. Kelley et al. “Patient and Practitioner Influences on the Placebo Effect in Irritable Bowel Syndrome.” Psychosomatic Medicine 71, no. 7 (2009): 789. [4] Recent research even suggests that the iterability and consistency that encounters such as the OSCE strive for may be impossible because of the subjectivity of both the student and the standardized patient. Johnston et. al. found strong evidence for the “unfeasibility of the absolute objectivity or standardization” of the OSCEs. Jennifer L. Johnston, Gerard Lundy, Melissa McCullough, and Gerard J. Gormley, “The View from Over There: Reframing the OSCE through the Experience of Standardized Patient Raters,” Medical Education 47 (2013): 899-909. [5] F.W. Peabody, “The Care of the Patient,” JAMA 88. (Original address delivered in 1925). [6] Herbert T Abelson and Colin Walsh, “Medical Professionalism Crossing a Generational Divide,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 51, no. 4 (2008): 560. [7] See Stephanie Sideras, Glensie McKenzie, Joanne Noone, Donna Markle, Michelle Frazier, and Maggie Sullivan, “Making Simulation Come Alive: Standardized Patients in Undergraduate Nursing Education,” Nursing Education Perspectives 34, no. 6 (2013): 421-25; and Rebecca D. Wilson, James D. Klein, and Debra Hagler, “Computer-Based or Human Patient Simulation-Based Case Analysis: Which Works Better for Teaching Diagnostic Reasoning Skills?” Nursing Education Perspectives 35, no. 1 (2014): 14-18. [8] See Tonya Rutherford-Hemming and Judith A. Jennrich, “Using Standardized Patients to Strengthen Nurse Practitioner Competency in the Clinical Setting,” Nursing Education Perspectives 34, no. 2 (2013): 118-121. [9] For a deeper discussion of the concept of using simulated patientsto teach medical ethics, see Carine Layat Burn, Samia A. Hurst, Marinette Ummel, Bernard Cerutti, and Anne Baroffio, “Telling the Truth: Medical Student’s Progress with an Ethical Skill,” Medical Teacher 36 (2014): 251-259. [10] We initially made much of the volunteers’ age, thinking that working with an older segment of the population would significantly impact the way the medical students interacted in the simulations. Recent studies suggest that we may have underestimated students’ abilities to treat all patients equally. One study recently showed that medical students showed no significant differences between their interactions with female simulated patients with “normal” or “obese” Body Mass Indexes. The study found that “the body habitus of the [patient] did not significantly affect students’ performance” and that the students gave “advice about healthy diets” equally to both groups. Vanda Yazbeck-Karam, Sola Aoun Bahous, Wissam Faour, Maya Khairallah, and Nadia Asmar, “Influence of Standardized Patient Body Habitus on Undergraduate Student Performance in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination,” Medical Teacher 36 (2014): 240-244. [11] Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell, Sanford Meisner on Acting (New York: Vintage Books, 1987). [12] Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares (New York: Routledge, 2013). [13] Lois LaCivita Nixon and Delese Wear, “Literary Inquiry and Professional Development in Medicine Against Abstractions,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 45 no. 1 (2002): 106. [14] See Mary Ann Forgey, Lee Badger, Tracey Gilbert, and Johna Hansen, “Using Standardized Clients to Train Social Workers in Intimate Partner Violence Assessment,” Journal of Social Work Education 49 (2013): 292-306. [15] Ibid., 304. [16] Carmen Logie, Marion Bogo, Cheryl Regehr, and Glenn Regehr, “A Critical Appraisal of the Use of Standardized Client Simulations in Social Work Education,” Journal of Social Work Education 49 (2013): 66. [17] Using simulated patients to train nursing students to deal with patients with mental health issues is a new approach, the outcomes of which remain questionable. One recent study showed little statistical significance in performance between students who did and those who did not undergo simulations. The exception, however, was students who had been previously identified as “at-risk” or needing additional help and experience. The results of these students show promise for using mental health simulations as a kind of remediation in certain cases. Kirstyn M. Kameg, Nadine Cozzo Englert, Valerie M. Howard, and Katherine J. Perozzi, “Fusion of Psychiatric and Medical High Fidelity Patient Simulation Scenarios: Effect on Nursing Student Knowledge, Retention of Knowledge, and Perception,” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 34 (2013): 892-900. See also Theresa M. Fay-Hillier, Roseann V. Regan, Mary Gallagher Gordon, “Communication and Patient Safety in Simulation for Mental Health Nursing Education,” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 33 (2012): 718-26; and Louise Alexander and Amy Dearsley, “Using Standardized Patients in an Undergraduate Mental Health Simulation: A Pilot Study,” International Journal of Mental Health 42 (2013): 149-64. [18] Sally O’Hagan, Elizabeth Manias, Catherine Elder, John Pill, Robyn Woodward-Kron, Tim McNamara, Gillain Webb, and Geoff McColl, “What Counts as Effective Communication in Nursing? Evidence from Nurse Educators’ and Clinicians’ Feedback on Nurse Interactions with Simulated Patients,” Journal of Advanced Nursing 70 (2014): 1344-56. Footnotes About The Author(s) George Pate is a playwright, actor, standup comedian, director, and teacher who currently serves as Assistant Professor in Drama and Theatre at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort. His plays have been produced and read in New York, NY, New Orleans, LA, Columbia, SC, Greenville, SC, Charelston, SC, and Athens, GA. He won the 2008 Tennessee Williams National One-Act Playwriting contest for his play Indifferent Blue , now available from Next Stage Press. He was also a regional finalist for Comedy Central’s Open Mic Fight. In addition to his creative work, he has published works of scholarship in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , Theatre Symposium , and Theatre Journal . Libby Ricardo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Theater, and Liberal Studies at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort. Libby has worked professionally as an actor and director in Rhode Island, New York, Georgia and South Carolina. She has won multiple South Carolina Broadway World awards, including Best Director and Best Production, for her productions of Grease and Little Shop of Horrors with the Beaufort Theater Company. In addition to maintaining an active professional life as an actor and director, Libby’s research interests include practical applications of theater skills and ensemble-based pedagogy. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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.

kt shorb 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 Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed kt shorb By Published on May 22, 2022 Download Article as PDF A disembodied voice announces, “Places for T.L.M.,” prompting the two women holding fans to usher a man between them. The three unfurl their battered fans and begin waving them in rictus as the voice says, “Standby for telecast transmission in 5…4…3…” A jaunty introduction cues the three to bob up and down with the beat, while the two other ensemble members lie across their bunks desultorily fanning themselves. They sing, “Three little maids from school are we / Pert as a school-girl well can be…” [1] They bob and giggle behind their fans. They shuffle around the small stage in single-file, bowing and cow-towing. The music ends and the disembodied voice says, “Cut.” The ensemble members rub the forced smiles off their faces, and the man who evidently subbed in for a missing woman ensemble member nods approvingly to himself (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. Q-mates perform “Three Little Maids.” Photo by Kannou Aiana via Blue Inferno Creative. The Mikado: Reclaimed (Reclaimed) [2] uses the 1885 W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan operetta The Mikado: Or the Town of Titipu as source material to criticize anti-Asian racism inherent in both the text and present day yellowface productions. Set in a near future ravaged by a global viral pandemic, Reclaimed depicts life in an internment camp for people of Asian descent who have been deemed “carriers” of the virus. “Q-mates (short for ‘quarantine inmates’)” are forced to perform song and dance numbers portraying “happy camp life” in the national livecast, “Virus Times Live!” Produced by the Austin-based Generic Ensemble Company (GenEnCo) in partnership with The VORTEX, Reclaimed was directed by me and devised by a mostly-Asian American ensemble. Four years after closing this show, the so-called “Chinese Virus” of COVID–19 quarantines millions across the world, as anti-Asian violence escalates alongside protest against state-sanctioned anti-Black violence after the murder of George Floyd. In 2016, we could not have consciously anticipated COVID–19 and its accompanying scapegoating of Asian bodies as carriers of disease. Yet, unconsciously, we did. Through the creative devising process, collaborators not only divined elements of the future but also developed a community of resistive care that concatenated a COVID–19 futurity with a carceral past. To invite this community of resistive care, we enacted reappropriation through strategies of reparative creativity, seduction of stereotype, and feeling yellow. In this practice-as-research article, I provide the background to the impetus of Reclaimed followed by a synopsis of the show. Citing literature by Asian Americanist performance scholars, I show how our creative process interwove critical race theory with aesthetic considerations, leading to a project-specific process I call “reappropriation.” Finally, I reflect on how our process provided an opportunity for racial healing amongst the collaborators. Background and Genesis The Mikado has been produced in yellowface nearly every year since it debuted in 1885. A satire about British aristocracy set in a perceived-exotic locale, a “Japan” where flirting is illegal, the plot of Mikado is a ridiculous farce. Few elements signal a “real” Japan, like the “Mikado,” a rarely-used moniker for the Japanese Emperor. [3] Most character and place names are derisive, nonsensical words such as “Yum-Yum,” “Nanki-poo,” and “Titipu.” As an Asian American performing artist racially traumatized by Mikado since being exposed to it in college, I expressed my opposition to it in every place I lived over the span of two decades—garnering little notice or support. The Asian American community response to the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s Mikado in 2014 sparked perhaps the first mainstream awareness of yellowface in this operetta as anti-Asian racism. When the production published publicity stills of white actors in yellowface, many local Asian American theatre artists expressed their long-held outrage. This led to Asian American-centered social media campaigns that spread to coverage by mainstream outlets such as the Seattle Times and NBC News . The yellowface Seattle production still opened, but many were put on notice. When New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players (NYGASP) announced Mikado in 2015 with a yellowface production image, Japanese American playwright Leah Nanako Winkler sounded the call to respond. [4] I was part of a national groundswell of Asian Americans responding to Winkler’s call on Twitter that led to a postponement and re-imagining of the show in partnership with Asian American artists. In a moment of frustration and sheer bravado, I announced on Twitter that GenEnCo could do The Mikado in a thoughtful, anti-racist way. Our task was set. GenEnCo’s Reclaimed occurs in a larger context of multiple Asian American and Japanese treatments of Mikado . Doriz Baizley and Ken Narasaki’s 2007 The Mikado Project portrays an Asian American theatre company struggling through financial ruin by mounting a production of Mikado . [5] This play and the subsequent independent film based on it depict ambivalent Asian American actors critiquing the Orientalism of the original while embracing its musical elements and performing emotional and political acrobatics to justify the performance. [6] The Mikado Project manages to critique the racialized harm of yellowface as well as “camp plays” set during WWII Japanese American incarceration. The film starred Asian American veterans of stage and screen, including Erin Quill, who was also part of the Twitter groundswell around NYGASP in 2015. Quill has cultivated a “no-nonsense” persona leveling ongoing critiques of racism in New York theatre on her blog, fairyprincessdiaries . [7] Under the direction of Rick Shiomi in Minneapolis, Theatre Mu collaborated with Skylark Opera and set their Mikado in Edwardian England. [8] Shiomi’s 2013 production kept the broad narrative strokes as-is with significant cultural-political interventions. References to Japan were either excised or in a form of humorous wordplay; names and terms were changed to reflect early twentieth-century English mores. Perhaps most significantly, Shiomi cast Asian Americans in these English roles, thereby upending some historical baggage of yellowface. Meanwhile, The Chichibu Mikado (2006), directed by Kyoko Fujishiro and translated by Toru Sasakibara, was sung entirely in Japanese by a Japanese cast. [9] When the rural city Chichibu gained international fame as “The Town of Titipu” following the production, the residents of the city chose to believe it was based on their own town because Chichibu could also be transliterated to “Titibu,” although there is no concrete evidence that Gilbert and Sullivan had made such a connection. Re-contextualizing the plot through Japanese modern sensibilities mapped on Japanese proto-professional actor bodies speaking in Japanese, this version conveyed a means by which Japanese citizens could gain access to cosmopolitan trappings of Britain and other western contexts. These productions engaged in widely varying degrees of critique and deconstruction through adaptation. Our Reclaimed depicts the typical “day in the life” of quarantine inmates (or, Q-mates) incarcerated during a global pandemic. We follow the story of a Q-mate repeatedly summoned by a bell to change into a Lolicon outfit to perform non-consensual sex acts off-stage (JooHee) while she falls in love with another Q-mate (Rachel, Fig. 2). We witness denied physical autonomy by glowing red “chips” embedded in Q-mates’ arms that can shock and control them. Meanwhile, a surveillance state manifests in self-silenced soundscapes. Q-mates rarely speak, and when they do, it is in whispered Korean or Tagalog. When one Q-mate (Leng) speaks about freedom in English, her chip shocks everyone and then summarily impels her off-stage where her execution is broadcast for the entire cell-block to witness via video feed. Despite the draconian context, Q-mates enact the extraordinary, joyous, and mundane. Between bouts of boredom, they sing songs for one another to pass the time (“The Criminal Cried”) or to convey warnings or woe (“As Someday It May Happen,” “Here’s a How-de-do”) while periodically singing numbers for “Virus Times Live!” (“Miya Sama,” “Three Little Maids”). JooHee and Rachel join in an ad-hoc commitment ceremony (“On a Tree by a River”), which prompts a jealous Q-mate (Annie) to betray their affair to the authorities (“Alone and Yet Alive…Hearts Do Not Break”). When JooHee is summoned to perform sexual favors again, she refuses, leading instead to Rachel’s chip-shock removal and a subsequent beating, broadcast live. Rachel is released back to the cell-block, only to die in JooHee’s arms. During JooHee’s lament (“The Sun Whose Rays,” Fig. 3), the Q-mates in the entire cell-block signal to one another a refusal to continue the oppressive status quo. When the Q-mates are prompted to deliver another livecast, they abstain from song and instead reveal Rachel’s bloodied body. The show ends with a blackout and a “shock” sound, implying that everyone dies. Figure 2. Lovers’ kiss. Photo by Kannou Aiana via Blue Inferno Creative. Figure 3. Lamentation of a lover’s death. Photo by Kannou Aiana via Blue Inferno Creative. Reparative Creativity, Feeling Yellow, and Reappropriation As Dorinne Kondo argues in Worldmaking , theatre artists, through performative acts, unmake and remake race. [10] Kondo calls such processes “reparative creativity,” saying they “[offer] a way to remake worlds counter to the affective violence of minoritarian life” while also imagining something else. [11] Creative projects allow us to examine pain and transform it into different—though related—new artifacts. She further describes how reparative creativity can revisit “histories of affective violence” that can address the complexities of facing that violence. [12] Through theatre, theatre artists of color create new meanings of race and its representations with and in response to audiences of color. Devising Reclaimed , then, was a process by which both historical and contemporary notions of race were made and unmade. [13] In both the rehearsal room and onstage we have the capacity to name and rectify the affective and physical violence inflicted upon our bodies and communities. Coming together to confront yellowface as Asian Americans who have experienced its violence forms a central part of what Donatella Galella calls “feeling yellow.” [14] Galella uses Sara Ahmed’s discourse on happiness to highlight how encounters with yellowface create dichotomies where those in power find entertainment and joy, while those “feeling yellow” have to either feign joy or hide a combination of rage, disappointment, and alienation. Galella identifies two ways that feeling yellow sparks utopic hope. One is through the “impishly gleeful” process of “making another person feel awful for their enjoyment of and complicity with racist musicals… This act redistributes pain more equitably.” [15] The other is through acts of solidarity and collectivity: “By feeling together, Asian Americans can foster solidarity and use their affect to move others just as they are moved.” [16] As an imagined, strategic, and politicized community, Asian Americans must overcome historical divisions of national origin and immigration status; such opportunities for coalition are empowering if rare. Here I note a significant paradox: Reclaimed undoes racial violence through reparative creativity while the narrative of the piece ends with all the characters dead. This collective death was chosen by the ensemble deliberately to address issues of (il)legibility of Asian Americans and anti-Asian racism in the context of Austin, Texas in 2016. The piece confronted the invisibilized racial harm enacted upon bodies of Asian descent in the form of yellowface. In laying bare the hidden, Reclaimed unmade the violence of this erasure. Depicting resistance to carceral violence narratively onstage also cultivated a culture of care in the rehearsal room. In addition, while the specific stereotypes contained in Mikado were aimed at what Josephine Lee calls a Japan of “pure invention,” the production employed a majority non-Japanese ensemble of Asian Americans who had differing stakes in “Japanese-ness” but similar stakes in generalized Orientalism. [17] Though we could not articulate it at the time, the collaborative team for Reclaimed sought a space of healing and repair that could connect ensemble members’ experience of harm with the audience. If Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado is a prime example of appropriation, Mikado: Reclaimed is that of reappropriation. Reappropriation, broadly, is a process whereby a community whose cultural legacy has been defaced through harmful misinterpretation takes an object of that misinterpretation and transmutes it into something that furthers an identitarian strategic project. Lee takes up reappropriation in her treatments of works by David Henry Hwang and Philip Kan Gotanda where she notes the allure in the “excessiveness of the stereotype.” [18] She contends that reappropriation has the power to dissect stereotypes and its racialized histories, showing that it can have “the potential for its disruption.” [19] She goes further to illustrate that undoing the stereotype is not simple or easy, but the inherent theatrical power in the stereotype can serve as a potential tool for liberation. For the collaborators of Reclaimed and its audiences, reappropriation was a means of taking Orientalizing and white supremacist texts and transforming them. It was not reclamation. Reappropriation requires a breaking down of a text into components that still contain discernable referents to the original but re-create meanings different from—if not counter to—the text from which it draws. Keeping a musical number but setting it with different staging, design, and arrangement can not only excavate different implications from the original, but also reveal the political and cultural subject positions of those performing the reappropriation. Indirectness is key to how reappropriation works. To simply refute each element in the original would have repeated the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in relief, not transform it. We began the project by watching a recording of a yellowface production of The Mikado . [20] It left the cast angry. We fluctuated between revisiting the original and sharing childhood experiences of racial formation, not being taken seriously, and failed attempts at assimilation. From the super “woke” person who knew critical race theory to the “model minority” who announced that she “never encountered racism, just ignorance,” everyone expressed a sense of otherness they have felt in their lives. In order to mitigate the potential for re-traumatization, we devised a check-in/check-out process whereby collaborators could name what they wanted to “bring in from the world” or “leave in the rehearsal room.” We were committed to examining the pain as a means of healing. The actors’ initial anger brought on by having seen the original led to the ideas of overt resistance through visceral offense—eating Asian foods with strong smells such as durian or natto, enacting slasher fantasies on white effigies, and so on. We wanted to be, as Eve Oishi has called it, “Bad Asians.” [21] Our aversion, combined with knowledge of how Mikado is a part of popular culture, helped us narrow down the song list. While learning songs, we conducted parallel research. The “Muslim ban” had only been mentioned by one Republican candidate in passing during the 2016 primary campaign, and it frightened all of us, not just the sole Arab American member of the ensemble. It prompted us to examine images of Syrian refugees. These images felt familiar, echoing the detainment of people seeking asylum in border states. As Asian Americans confronting heightened yet casual racism in the form of yellowface, we were also keenly aware of how such representational violence could easily slip into yellow peril and detaining over 100,000 people of Japanese descent as potential enemy combatants. We realized that an internment camp was the requisite setting for our production. As the setting and tone became clearer, we began to imagine how we might find ourselves incarcerated again. Using the knowledge of a biologist in the cast, we created a detailed backstory around potential viral outbreaks that many scientists (rightly) considered inevitable. We then returned to the original operetta to poach as many elements as we could while homing in on what we wanted to say. Each actor chose a character they would emulate in devising their own character. We began criticizing subtler aspects of Mikado , such as the sexually-exploitative relationship between Yum-Yum and Ko-Ko and the casual treatment of death. One element specific to GenEnCo we deliberately included was a normalizing (but certainly not normative) existence of queer romance, sex, and friendship. GenEnCo was founded specifically to show bodies, aesthetics, and stories onstage that I—as a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Asian American—found to be everyday and “generic.” Our mission has always been to center queer people of color in our theatrical storytelling. I take inspiration from José Esteban Muñoz’s words that “[q]ueerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality.” [22] And that “[b]rownness is already here. Brownness is vast, present, and vital.” [23] We did however make one major textual revision that mobilized reappropriation to transform meanings in the original. Most productions of Mikado update the lyrics in “As Someday It May Happen” to reflect the undesirable subjects in the zeitgeist. In Reclaimed, these revisions provide plot context, diegetic rules, and analysis of how anti-Asian racism manifests and provides an example of reparative creativity: There’s the Centers for Disease Control who sounded the alarmThe epidemiologists, I’ve got them on the list!And the “cheap and chippy” chippers who installed these in our arms,Nanotechnologists, they never would be missed!Then the bigot who denounces with enthusiastic tone,Every race but his, and all religions but his own;And the Poo-Bah of the Quarantine, the boss man of “The Cage,”Who takes a shine to pretty girls who are less than half his ageAnd the lovers of Chinoiserie, the Asian fetishists,I don’t think they’d be missed, I’m sure they’d not be missed! [24] As we continued to create material, I asked the actors to explore mimicking white people performing yellowface. The actors were understandably disgusted at first. The disgust turned into ridicule, to rupture, then to catharsis. Through repetition of the original material, we somehow found a way to parse the past from the present, as if we were reverse engineering the racial trauma the original operetta symbolized. Rehearsing the classic earworm “Three Little Maids” was particularly informative. The song about three women “who, all unwary/ come from a ladies’ seminary” and who are “filled to the brim with girlish glee” is often performed with shuffling feet and giggles behind hands. [25] I associated this song with a falling-out with a white college friend. At first, as we rehearsed the piece, I was transported to my own past and the end of that friendship and the violent incidents around it. Due to the passing of time, I was able to manage potential emotional triggers. Partly to ground myself in the present, and partly in solidarity, I committed myself to learning all three sung parts with the actors. The repetition was at first very painful. Moving forward, however, my experience of the past began to shift. The pain became more manageable. Traumas slowly healed as the experiences of racial violence were merged with and overwritten by moments of being together as a community. We figured out a way to sing that very hurtful song while feeling yellow. The resistive care that GenEnCo created through reappropriation served as a balm to the ensemble. In hindsight, although one of the ensemble members was a trained psychologist, I would have provided more formal and robust mental health resources to examine racial trauma. That said, Reclaimed is an example of how employing reparative creativity and feeling yellow enabled minoritized theatre makers to transform both the art and the communal experience of racial trauma. References [1] Arthur Sullivan & W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado, Or, the Town of Titipu. (New York: G. Schirmer, 2002), 69. [2] Generic Ensemble Company, “The Mikado: Reclaimed,” Vimeo, 1 May 2016, https://vimeo.com/160895296. This performance featured the following actor-devisers: JooHee Ahn, Annie Kim Hedrick, Jonathan G. Itchon, Laura Khalil, Abigail Lucas, Rachel Steed, and Leng Wong. Additional collaborators on the workshop version of the piece were: Kanoa Michél Bailey, kubby, and Saray de Jesus Rosales. [3] Josephine Lee’s The Japan of Pure Invention provides an in-depth analysis of the myriad contexts of Mikado . Josephine D. Lee, The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan’s the Mikado (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). [4] Leah Nanako Winkler, “‘The Mikado’ in Yellowface Is Coming to The Skirball Center of the Performing Arts and We Should Talk About It,” Leah Nanako Winkler (blog), 15 September 2015, https://leahnanako.com/2015/09/15/the-mikado-in-yellowface-is-coming-to-the-skirball-center-of-the-performing-arts-and-we-should-talk-about-it/. See also: Victor Maog and Leah Nanako Winkler, “Leah Nanako Winkler, The Mikado , and This American Moment,” Howlround Theatre Commons (blog), 7 October 2015, https://howlround.com/leah-nanako-winkler-mikado-and-american-moment/. [5] Doris Baizley and Ken Narasaki, The Mikado Project (New Play Exchange, 2007), accessed 2 February 2022. [6] The Mikado Project , directed by Chil Kong, featuring Tamlyn Tomita, Allen C. Liu, Erin Quill, and Ryun Yu (New Cyberian, 2010), DVD. [7] Quill, Erin. fairyprincessdiaries (blog), https://fairyprincessdiaries.com/. [8] Diep Tran, “Building a Better ‘Mikado,’ Minus the Yellowface,” American Theatre , 21 June 2021, https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/04/20/building-a-better-mikado-minus-the-yellowface/; Rick Shiomi, “Director Removes Racism and Yellowface from Minneapolis Staging of ‘the Mikado,’” Star Tribune , 8 March 2019, https://www.startribune.com/director-removes-racism-and-yellowface-from-minneapolis-staging-of-the-mikado/506842272/. [9] The Chichibu Mikado , directed by Kyoko Fujishiro, translated by Toru Sasakibara, International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, Buxton, Derbyshire, England, 1 August 2006. [10] Dorrine K. Kondo, Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 25. [11] Ibid., 212. [12] Ibid., 212. [13] A note about tense: to differentiate between production and process, I refer to the performance in present tense and the process in past tense. [14] Donatella Galella, “Feeling Yellow: Responding to Contemporary Yellowface in Musical Performance,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 32, no. 2 (2018): 67-77, http://doi.org/10.1353/dtc.2018.0005. [15] Ibid., 74. [16] Ibid., 73. [17] Lee, The Japan of Pure Invention . [18] Josephine Lee, Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 91. [19] Ibid. , 96. [20] The Mikado , DVD, directed by Brian MacDonald (Canada: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1999). [21] Eve Oishi, “Bad Asians: New Media by Queer Asian American Artists,” Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism, eds. Darrell Hamamoto and Sandra Liu (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 221-241. [22] José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1. [23] José Esteban Muñoz, The Sense of Brown (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020), 121-122. [24] The Mikado: Reclaimed . [25] Sullivan and Gilbert, 69-73. Footnotes About The Author(s) kt shorb (they/them/their) is Assistant Professor of Acting and Directing at Allegheny College and the producing artistic director of the Generic Ensemble Company. Their current research focuses on anti-racist and anti-colonial rehearsal room practices and actor training. As a director, they focus on devised work by underrepresented communities and new play development as well as opera stage directing. kt is currently the Vice President for the Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists. They will be joining Macalester College this fall. Deepest gratitude to Rick Shiomi who sent footage and score copies of his adaption of The Mikado. Many thanks to James McMaster, siri gurudev, Margaret Jumonville, Priya Raman, and Alexis Riley for giving me in-depth feedback on drafts of this article. 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.

Carol Westcamp 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 The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. Carol Westcamp By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. The Late Work of Sam Shepard , by Shannon Blake Skelton, brings necessary attention to the later phase of Sam Shepard’s works, including his short prose, plays, acting performances, and screenplays. Previously published scholarship has tended to focus on Shepard’s most prolific period, roughly categorized as 1965 to 1985, as well as his family plays, such as Curse of the Starving Class (1976), Buried Child (1979), True West (1980), Fool for Love (1980), and A Lie of the Mind (1985). Skelton argues that with Shepard’s 1988 directorial debut in Far North and 1991 play States of Shock , Shepard transitioned to a “Late Style” that mixed genres and “resisted the clichéd notions that an aged artist in their autumnal period will offer gentle reflection” (3, 5). In the introduction, Skelton maps out the main points of the project from Shepard’s personality to the gender dynamics of his works. Each chapter corresponds with each key point, creating a thematically organized structure to the book. The first chapter studies the Shepard persona. Since Shepard was an actor, a writer, and even a celebrity, his image circulated widely during the height of his fame in the 1980s. Skelton argues that during his Late Style, Shepard adopted a paternal character due to his acting roles as well as his “status as an elder statesman of American theatre” (72). This new persona began to emerge when he was cast as law professor Thomas Callahan in the movie The Pelican Brief (1993) and was solidified in his role as father and husband Patrick Singer in the movie Safe Passage (1994). These father figure roles continued in subsequent films: Allie’s father Frank Calhoun in The Notebook (2004) and the elder mentor Tom in Mud (2012). This Late Style identity showed an artist who may have passed beyond his most popular period but stayed active in a variety of art forms. Skelton writes, “From acting and directing to writing, Shepard has seemingly made peace with himself, his art, his legacy, and his persona” (72). In the next chapter, Skelton examines Shepard’s self-reflexive exploration of authenticity and the artist in American culture. Much of Shepard’s earlier work probed how artists struggle with authenticity, trying to remain true to the art or the artistic self while facing a world of capitalism, which tries to change art to make it more commercially popular. Some plays such as Cowboy Mouth (1964), Angel City (1976), and True West may have represented this struggle, but they did not offer resolutions. During his Late Style, Shepard positioned the artist as older and wiser. Using close reading, Skelton focuses on two specific works and two solutions. Howard in the film Don’t Come Knocking (2005) achieves authenticity by forming relationships with others. For Hobart in the play Kicking a Dead Horse (2007), authenticity is ultimately unobtainable in life, so he finds it by embracing death. Chapter three explores the relationship between memory and trauma as demonstrated in the plays Simpatico (1993), The Late Henry Moss (2000), and When the World Was Green (1996), the latter of which was co-written with Joseph Chaikin. As with many of his earlier works, Shepard never offered easy answers but revealed characters struggling to comprehend a “past that consistently informs the present” (13). For instance, Buried Child and A Lie of the Mind address the personal dynamics of remembering and forgetting traumatic events in families’ pasts. But it was not until the Late Style works when Shepard revealed ways of “grappling with the past and its memories to transform the individual” (135). Sympatico demonstrates that one can achieve peace through confronting and then letting go of painful histories. Late Henry Moss and When the World Was Green show that one can reconcile with a past trauma by reenacting the event. Focusing on the two plays States of Shock (1991) and The God of Hell (2004), the fourth chapter addresses the politics of Shepard’s work during the Gulf War and the War on Terror. These two plays, unlike earlier ones, “unabashedly engage with political issues and offer commentary on broader concerns of the contemporary world” (137). Skelton argues that both plays show masculine, political conservatives attempting to change the minds of the other (potentially subversive) characters who question the supremacy of patriarchal narratives. Through these plays, Shepard suggests that “conservative ideology can be defeated through (1) direct action ( States of Shock ) (2) resistance by women ( The God of Hell ) and (3) the responsibility of one to be politically aware and engaged” (161). In the final chapters, Skelton analyzes how Shepard engages with the legacy of colonialism as well as gender dynamics. While the body of Shepard’s work has focused on the mystique of the American cowboy, his Late Style showcased the perspective of indigenous people, as in the plays Silent Tongue (1994) and Eyes for Consuela (1998). Shepard tried to move past romanticized notions of the Native American figure, showing instead more in-depth characters. Much of Shepard’s early work has been criticized for its lack of women and glorification of masculinity. However, during the Late Style, Shepard used the homosocial space in plays such as Ages of the Moon (2009) and Heartless (2012) to challenge patriarchal assumptions, tackle the collapse of masculine expectations, and address same-sex desire. Skelton’s book is an important contribution to the critical studies of Sam Shepard, offering discussion of Shepard’s major themes, stylistic changes, and late works. The book builds upon previous publications such as Stephen J. Bottoms’s The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis (1998) and Matthew Roudané’s The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard (2002). Roudané’s collection does offer two essays that address Shepard’s Late Style, but the essays do not provide the comprehensive insight of Skelton’s monograph. Skelton gives a personal touch to the striking impact that Shepard has had on American culture. References Footnotes About The Author(s) CAROL WESTCAMP University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism. Kirsty Johnston. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 240. Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. Amy Cook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Pp. 198. The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. Patricia A. Ybarra. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 247. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Becca Levy and Jared Rubin Sprowls 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 Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship Becca Levy and Jared Rubin Sprowls By Published on May 16, 2023 Download Article as PDF What began as a peer-reviewed research paper naturally grew into a dramaturgical adaptation of chevruta , a centuries old Rabbinic approach to interpreting Jewish texts. The style of this paper mimics our process of multiple voices in conversation. In chevruta , dialogue is necessary as one voice can’t capture the depth of a text; we can only approach understanding through discussion and interpretation. Through this lens, we push against prioritizing finality (a deadline, production, or publication) which dictates a linear process. Rather, we hold space to return again, offering a process that spans a lifetime as both the people and art deepen and unfold. We share authorship below, identifying the writer above each section. Though our names signify what we initially wrote, through revision, our voices continue to overlap, always in conversation. As we consider how this lens is valuable for new work development, both Jewish and non-Jewish, we invite you to engage in our reflection of Fringe Sects’ script development as a fellow chevruta partner: our voice, your voice, and the text. JARED In March 2020, I was finally ready to write my “Jewish play” based on a Buzzfeed article a friend sent to me a year prior: “Finding Kink in God: Inside The World Of Brooklyn Dominatrixes And Their Orthodox Jewish Clients.” [1] This article complicated the stereotype of Jewish sexuality I saw being portrayed on stage and screen: Jews as less sexual and less desirable. Expanding what a Jewish “man,” “woman,” or “relationship” looked like felt important to my own understanding of Jewish queerness and an inquiry I could share with my community. COVID interrupted that plan as Jewish sexuality onstage was no longer an urgent exploration, instead it was the last thing on my mind. What we thought would be a few weeks of mandated isolation became months. As Passover approached, I felt detached from my Jewish identity without the ability to invite friends over for Seder. The holiday traditions, rooted in community, didn’t feel the same with only me and my two roommates skimming through the Haggadah. In August 2021, I moved to Tempe, Arizona to pursue an MFA in Dramatic Writing. Fear of isolation continued, and I wondered what I’d do for the upcoming High Holidays. Rosh Hashanah felt like an opportunity for a new chapter in the desert, but I wondered if anyone would be there to join me. BECCA That’s where our Research Methods course comes in; it was my first semester of grad school as well, beginning the MFA program in Theatre for Youth and Community at ASU. I had also just moved to Tempe from Chicago, and much to my delight and surprise the old song “Wherever you go there’s always someone Jewish” [2] proved to be true. I overheard Jared talking about Jewish dominatrixes and had to learn more. JARED As I discussed revisions to my research question, I vividly remember Becca leaning over to join the conversation. Another Jewish woman to discuss Jewish womanhood and femininity? Baruch Hashem! On that day, I was paired with Clara, whose Hebrew necklace had sparked conversation a class prior. Marissa would soon ask what we were doing for Rosh Hashanah. She too had overheard the musings of Jewish study and wanted to join. We had all worried that we’d be the only Jew in the program and were relieved to have found each other so quickly. BECCA Jared and I requested to be paired for the final round of peer review. What was scheduled to be a brief meeting about our papers over coffee became a multi-hour conversation relating our artistry to our values and our values to our Judaism. We intuitively worked as chevruta: a non-hierarchical dyadic practice of Jewish text study rooted in traditional methods going back centuries. A chevruta partnership is a meaningful and holy relationship through which we understand text, and our relationship to text, more fully. The word chevruta comes from the Hebrew root chet, vet, reish, chaver , meaning “friend,” emphasizing that this relationship is between more than peers or colleagues. In fact, it’s not just a relationship between two voices, but three: two people and the text. Scholarly discourse around Fringe Sects was a catalyst for our partnership, while genuine friendship became central to our ongoing collaboration. Jared was researching about Jewish gender and sexuality while more deeply connecting with Jewish ways of being through his writing. JARED Where do the stereotypes, roles, and ideas of Jewish women come from? Who perpetuates them within our community and how does that differ from what we see in the media? BECCA In my initial notes, I wrote about the importance of discoveries, using this play to reveal Jewish challenges and provide space for healing while weaving the Jewish with the universal– JARED Questions and themes that simultaneously drew me into Becca’s research. BECCA What is the relationship between creativity, identity, and values in Jewish artmaking spaces? Grad school was the opportunity to further explore our embodied knowledge through research and practice. JARED Research and practice exist over coffee as much as they exist in conferences and classrooms. I got to know Becca through her research, and I better understood her research by getting to know Becca. BECCA We spent the next semester together in a graduate Dramaturgy Workshop course. One of our first readings was from Geoffrey Proehl’s Towards a Dramaturgical Sensibility ; I sent Jared a text, “Ok so I finally started the reading this morning and tbh I think a dramaturgical sensibility is just simply how Jews read Torah” [3] [4] . I quickly recognized in Proehl’s description of dramaturgical practice a kinship with Jewish ways of thinking, conversing, and analyzing. JARED “Isn’t there a Jewish thing about rehearing the Torah and the purpose of that? Helping me connect dramaturgy and Judaism again” [5] , I texted Becca as we continued to quip that “dramaturgy is Jewish.” It became our special segment in class where we reflected on how teachings from Jewish synagogue, camp, and school prepared us to analyze text as dramaturgs. Later that semester, I assembled a team for a staged reading of Fringe Sects at ASU: Marissa as director, Becca as dramaturg, and Clara, Matt (the only other Jew in our MFA program) and Sam (a non-Jewish MFA peer) as actors. The energy of the rehearsal room was immediately alive – BECCA Is the milk a reference to milk and honey? JARED I hadn’t even thought of that. BECCA What about the Binding of Isaac? JARED That sounds like BDSM. BECCA Our playful yet serious conversations around script development were contagious, or perhaps Jared had just gathered the perfect group for this week-long rehearsal process. We were more than Jewish artists chosen for a Jewish play; we were friends. In our first few months of grad school, we had already spent High Holidays, birthdays, and Chanukah together, discussed art that was important to us, and reflected on the ways our Judaism connected us even when it manifested differently. In fact, the different shades of Judaism were what we celebrated most: the variety of latke recipes, family and community traditions, or the way we pronounced “bimah.” Questioning, connecting, and respecting the multitude of text interpretations based on our diverse lived experiences were the foundation upon which the script could develop so significantly in such a short amount of time. Reflecting upon the process, it is clear that this ensemble intuitively worked from a place of shared values. JARED It was interpretive. It was direct. It was Jewish. BECCA Jared and I always bring these values into our creative practice. Through this process we affirmed that we practice those values creatively in specifically Jewish ways. Text Messages between Jared and Becca during Fringe Sects development. JARED Although I had been in a new work development space with other Jewish artists, I had never felt that a room was guided by a Jewish way of reading text in the way this process was. Sam’s active participation proved that anyone can engage with text in this way. Not only did this way of working benefit the script, but it was life-giving. I was no longer an isolated writer but an artist in the community. BECCA Going deeper into the etymology of chevruta, the Hebrew chaver (friend) derives from the Aramaic, chibor , meaning “to bind together.” In this process, chevruta partners’ understanding of text becomes bound together in discussion, creating something entirely new with what is on the page. Below is an example of a text study where a peer and I engaged with the very first Torah portion. The first translation you’ll read is a more standard version and the second is a collaborative translation discovered in shared study. While working with the text, I was drawn to the word “ ruach ” which translates to “wind” or “spirit” and my partner noticed “ pnei ” which can mean “surface” or “face.” We excitedly investigated more translations and read the text anew. Together, we uncovered a translation that neither of us would have found on our own. Hebrew words with multiple meanings are illustrated below in corresponding colors. I invite you to notice what is the same, what is different, and how these changes influence your understanding of the text. When God created heaven and earth, the earth was chaos and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God fluttering over the surface of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2) When The Universe began to create sky and land, the land was without form and void. Behold darkness over the face of the abyss and the spirit of Creation floating over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2) [6] Stereotypical depictions of dramaturgy seem so isolating– an image of a lonely scholar with their head in their laptop or a book comes to mind; it’s not so different from the rabbi locked in their study or b’nai mitzvah student up in their room, practicing their Torah portion alone. But these are all misrepresentations of reality. To be Jewish is to congregate. To make theatre is to congregate. In the process of working together we bond with one another and the work binds to the point where it’s sometimes hard to know where one person’s idea ends and another’s begins. Jared and I intuitively did this work with our research papers, with everything we read in Dramaturgy Workshop, and with our collaboration on Fringe Sects . JARED Below is a visual representation of our chevruta-inspired conversations analyzing a paragraph from the opening monologue of the play, Rabbi Moshe’s Rosh Hashanah sermon, which we’ve retroactively formatted in the style of rabbinic commentary of Talmud. Visual representation of chevruta-inspired conversation between Becca and Jared on Fringe Sects script text. BECCA Rabbi Adina Allen writes, “Like the parchment wound around the Torah handles, our reading of this story is not circular, but spiral. We move along the same axis, but drop in and down, unearthing new meanings in the cracks of our old stories” [7] . This concept of time provides repetition while acknowledging that with repetition comes a new depth of experience in the present. During our collaboration on Fringe Sects , Jared and I trusted each other to continue to drop in and down in the reading and re-reading, writing, and re-writing, talking and re-talking of the script. We built trust and a shared language through cultural understanding, shared values, and unearthing new meanings while the script developed. The play is set during The Ten Days of Awe, the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when we’re tasked with Tshuvah. Tshuvah means to “return:” to return to right relationship with one another, the world around us, and ourselves. We return to something old or familiar – an ancient practice, text, or question. We seek to find something new, not in hopes of the perfect answer or action, but to embrace the multiplicity of interpretations and meaning-making as part of the process. JARED Even in the process of writing this article, we return again. Remembering text messages we forgot we had sent, making notes for our next stage of development. BECCA (I still want Jared to add the shehecheyanu into that scene). JARED (I will). BECCA These conversations ground us because there’s always something new to uncover. JARED If chevruta is three voices, our process contains even more: playwright, dramaturg, director, cast, characters, script, research, prayer, Torah, and Talmud. If Jewish text, ancient and unchanging, contains such multitudes, we must listen to all possibilities as a new work finds its voice. To give a script agency is to understand that it will never actually be finished… BECCA …but it is always where it’s supposed to be. JARED Jewish values tell us that we too are not finished and that growth is a lifelong process. BECCA As the spiral continues to deepen, may we delight in moments of synchronicity and express gratitude for moments of divergence. JARED & BECCA As this article concludes, we invite you to bring yourself into our chevruta practice. In doing so you join us in community and together we begin again. References [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahfrishberg/dominatrixes-orthodox-jewish-haredi-kink-bdsm-brooklyn [2] Milder, Rabbi Larry. “Wherever You Go There’s Always Someone Jewish.” [3] Levy, Becca. Text message to Jared Sprowls. 23 Jan. 2022. [4] Proehl, Goeffrey. Towards a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey . Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008. [5] Sprowls, Jared. Text message to Becca Levy. 30 Jan. 2022. [6] This text study and my learnings on chevruta come from Becca’s time with the Jewish Studio Project . She has been participating in the Jewish Studio Process, a Jewish art-making and text study practice, with them since May 2020 and is currently part of their Creative Facilitator Training Cohort. [7] Allen, Rabbi Adina. “The Kernel of the Yet-to-Come.” My Jewish Learning , 21 Oct. 2022, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-kernel-of-the-yet-to-come/amp/ . Footnotes About The Author(s) BECCA LEVY is an arts educator and theatre artist who facilitates educational programs and theatrical productions that center community, celebrate culture, and foster creativity for people of all ages. Becca worked as a teaching artist, arts program manager, and stage manager in Chicago after earning her BFA in Stage Management from Western Michigan University. Currently studying for an MFA in Theatre for Youth and Community at Arizona State University, her praxis explores the relationship between creativity and values, drawing from many years of work and play in Jewish arts programming and theatre teaching artistry. www.beccaglevy.com JARED RUBIN SPROWLS is a Chicago-based playwright currently in Tempe, Arizona pursuing an MFA in Dramatic Writing at Arizona State University. His work has been produced Off-Broadway through the Araca Project, as well as at Northwestern University and the Skokie Theatre. He is a 2018 O’Neill NPC Semi-finalist and has been a part of Available Light’s Next Stage Initiative, the New Coordinates’ Writers’ Room 6.0, and Jackalope Theatre’s Playwrights Lab. He is a project-based staff member with Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training. He holds a B.A. with Honors in Theatre from Northwestern 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 Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Benjamin Gillespie Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Benjamin Gillespie By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Playwright Jordan Tannahill. Photo: Hunter Abrams Since the early 2010s, Jordan Tannahill has emerged as one of the most provocative and adventurous queer voices in North America. A Canadian playwright, novelist, and director, Tannahill’s work consistently probes the intersections of sexuality, intimacy, and spectatorship, often asking audiences to confront how desire and authority circulate among bodies and institutions of power. Across his many novels, plays, and performance installations, he has built a body of work that occupies a distinctive position in today’s theatrical and literary landscape. Tannahill is a two-time winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays (2014) and Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom (2018). His debut novel, Liminal , won France’s 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires, and his second novel, The Listeners , was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize. His work has been translated into twelve languages and presented at venues in Toronto, New York City, London, Avignon, Berlin, Vienna, and Montreal. From 2008 to 2016, Tannahill wrote and directed plays through his Toronto-based theatre company Suburban Beast, staging work in theatres, art galleries, and found spaces, often collaborating with non-traditional performers such as night shift workers, frat boys, preteens, and employees of Toronto’s famed Honest Ed’s discount emporium. From 2012 to 2016, in collaboration with William Ellis, he ran the alternative art space Videofag in Kensington Market, an influential incubator for queer and avant-garde work in Toronto Most recently, Tannahill’s play Prince Faggot —his first to have a major production in New York—premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons before transferring to Studio Seaview, running for seven months. Prince Faggot imagines a future in which a queer heir to the British monarchy becomes the object of public fantasy—and suspicion. Since its premiere, the play has sparked significant attention for its unflinching examination of queer sex, class dynamics, and the voyeuristic impulses of theatrical spectatorship and nudity. And, of course, there’s the title. Interrogating the perceived limits of queer visibility, Prince Faggot explores the cost of being made legible within systems of power that claim to celebrate difference while simultaneously erasing or consuming it. At a moment when LGBTQ+ bodies are increasingly politicized, commodified, and legislated against, Tannahill’s work insists on the messiness of queer desire and the ethical stakes of looking. His writing resists narrative closure, foregrounding ambiguity and discomfort as central aesthetic strategies. In doing so, he challenges audiences to consider not only what we are watching but also why and how we watch. This interview was conducted on Nov 3, 2025 via Zoom. It has been edited for clarity and brevity. Benjamin Gillespie : Are you in New York now? Jordan Tannahill : Yes, I’m in the East Village. I’ve been here for a little over a year. Before that I lived in London, and before that, Toronto. BG : I’m also Canadian and have followed your work since I left Toronto more than a decade ago. JT : It’s always exciting to meet people who know Canadian theatre. BG : Do you miss Toronto? JT : It really is a great city. I was very much shaped by the theatre community there, especially the spirit of collaboration and making work for friends. There was never really a sense of a mass or commercial audience. Instead, artists were pushed by their peers and pushed each other to keep going. BG : I know what you mean. I was just in NYC last week to see Prince Faggot again at Studio Seaview. It’s such a beautiful play. Congratulations on another extension. JT : Thank you so much—and thank you for coming back. I really appreciate it. BG : I also just watched your MSNBC interview with Jeremy O. Harris. JT : [ Laughs ] I can barely remember what I said on MSNBC. I was so nervous. My inner monologue was just relieved that Jeremy was talking. I still can’t bring myself to watch it. John McCrea as Prince George; Mihir Kumar as Dev Chatterjee in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG : Prince Faggot opens with performers sharing childhood photographs and reflecting on queer childhood. Could you talk about how that image of Prince George became the seed for the play? JT : A lot of my thinking around queer childhood comes from Jon Davies, a Canadian curator and writer. In 2012, he hosted an event called “Sissy Boy YouTube Night” at Videofag, a space I ran in Toronto with William Ellis. Jon was interested in the then-emerging genre of YouTube videos made by preteens and young adolescents filming themselves in their bedrooms, often lip-syncing to pop songs or engaging in private rituals of expression that were deeply queer-coded. Watching those videos alongside an adult queer audience was joyful because we recognized ourselves in these kids. Many of us had done similar things in private before YouTube existed. At the same time, I felt protective of these kids. Posting these videos was brave, and the responses ranged from hateful comments to extraordinary outpourings of love and community. It raised the question of how we talk about pre-sexual queer expression and give it language. Looking at childhood photos of ourselves, many of us had that moment of recognition: we were gay kids. I mean, so many of us have stories of dressing up in our mom’s clothes, or dancing to pop music like Aqua or Ace of Base, copying music video choreography, being fabulous in these very private rituals. Suddenly, those kinds of moments became public, and that shift felt both exhilarating and, for me as an adult gay man, slightly alarming. It triggered a kind of protective response as a gay man. When I saw those photographs of Prince George online back around 2017, a lot of the above came to mind. Once again, it was a very public moment in which people experienced recognition and perhaps even self-identification through these images. For me, it raised questions such as: How do we give language to queer childhood? How do we talk about it in a way that is rooted in our own personal experiences of seeing ourselves reflected but that also has some kind of public utility? Seeing those photographs of George produced a powerful moment of self-recognition for me, but it also prompted a kind of thought experiment. If the future heir to the British throne were to be gay, what does that mean for the monarchy as an institution, for the queer community at large, and, more importantly, for this individual child? That question became a vehicle for me, and for this ensemble of performers, to interrogate our own relationships to power, colonization, and queerness, and to examine how these systems of oppression and histories of power play out on our bodies and our sexualities. BG : We see that journey in the play as we move very quickly from that initial image to Prince George as an adult. Were you worried about pushback or controversy by representing the Royals in this way? JT : Absolutely. The play is constantly walking a fine line. We are careful not to assign a sexuality to a real child. The Prince George we depict is entirely fictional and hypothetical, and in many ways a deeply autobiographical foil for me. Much of what happens to him in the play reflects my own experiences. One of the central provocations of the piece is this question: Can I dare to imagine that the future heir to the British throne might have a life that resembles my own, that he might encounter the same challenges I faced growing up as a gay man? BG: And I think you posted about this on social media, right? You shared an image of yourself that was inspired by finding that photograph of Prince George. JT: Yeah, exactly. Mihir [Kumar]’s opening monologue at the top of the show is really me working through my reactions to that photograph through him. It’s a text I wrote for him specifically that encapsulates my own journey with that image and what ultimately grew out of it. I wrote Prince Faggot in the early days of lockdown while I was living in London, and at the time my hope was that it would be produced there. That turned out to be very difficult. There was one theatre company that was genuinely excited about the play—they programmed it as their next production, and the artistic director was fully behind it—but once it moved up to the board and through legal review, it essentially stalled. They wanted me to change all the names, to fictionalize the Royal Family entirely. I had to hold firm. The stakes of what the play is trying to do are fundamentally removed if the Royal Family becomes fictional. Once you’re in a made-up world, the political and historical weight disappears. It becomes meaningless, for example, for a trans woman to be Queen of England if that England no longer carries the histories of race, class, empire, and sexuality that define the real institution. What matters is that someone like Rachel Crowl, a trans woman, is stepping into the role of Kate Middleton and embodying that figure within our actual world. That gesture allows the play to critique and dissect the lived differences between those experiences. Rachel Crowl as Catherine (Kate), Princess of Wales; K. Todd Freeman as William, Prince of Wales in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG: It takes the teeth out of it if you remove that context. The stakes disappear. JT: Exactly. The play has to exist in our world with all of its histories and political baggage intact. I became very resistant to what I felt was fear-based dramaturgy. I was talking with Jeremy O. Harris about it, and he said, “Send me the play.” He read it, loved it, and said, “Let’s do it in New York.” He saw those risks as attributes rather than liabilities, and that’s proven to be true. The play has really found its audience here, which has been incredibly affirming. BG: I’ve also wondered how the reaction might differ in Canada or the UK as opposed to the US, whether the reception would shift in significant ways as it relates to the monarchy. This production hasn’t been entirely without controversy, of course, but it’s also been clearly embraced, given the extensions and the remount at Studio Seaview. JT: Yeah, I think there are different cultures of sensitivity at play. The thresholds in Canada are different from those in the UK as well, and both are different from the US in that sense. New York really was the ideal city to introduce this piece to the world. Having it received here first helped set the tone for the broader discourse around the play. BG : Did you revise the play much between Playwrights Horizons and the Studio Seaview run? JT : Not significantly. There may have been small trims or wording changes but nothing substantial. We adjusted the staging for the new larger space at Seaview. That was it. BG : How long did it take you to write the play initially? I know you were writing it back in 2020, but then it was a while before its premiere, so did you revisit it a number of times between then and now? JT: The initial draft came fast, and then I spent years revisiting and revising it. Not full-time, of course, but returning to it again and again at different stages and between other projects. BG: It’s like the Tennessee Williams impulse, to keep going back and rewriting plays, that desire to never quite let them settle. JT: For me, though, most of the revisions happen before a play opens. Once it’s out in the world, I’m less inclined to return to it. At some point, the play becomes the play. If you revisit it years later, you’re really just writing a new work. During the development of Prince Faggot , we had workshops supported by Jeremy and his company, BB². From the very first draft, the play had a metatheatrical framework: the ensemble stepped out, broke the fourth wall, and spoke as themselves. What shifted over time was how much space that material occupied within the overall runtime. The play-within-a-play ultimately functions as a vehicle for the ensemble to articulate our relationships to power, colonization, and queerness. The monologues are fictional. I wrote them for these actors, but they are not their personal stories. I’m always reluctant to ask actors to perform that kind of emotional labor, to divulge intimate personal details for my work. That’s the power of fiction and storytelling; they can sometimes get us closer to a truth. That said, the final monologue, performed by N’yomi Allure Stewart, is almost verbatim a story she shared in the rehearsal hall, drawn from a conversation the two of us had there. I removed my own voice from it and shaped her words into a monologue, but it remains her story. She is credited in the text as the author of those words. It’s a singular moment in the piece where nonfiction punctures the fiction. That rupture feels important to me. It’s a very potent moment, one that allows the play to land on something grounded, lived, and undeniable. N’yomi Allure Stewart as Charlotte, Princess of Wales; John McCrea as Prince George in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG: I love that. It’s such a beautiful connection, tying ballroom culture in New York to ideas of dynasty and the Royal Family. JT: I think the question becomes: What would queer royalty actually look like? And the answer is that it already exists among us. We are our own royalty. It’s about reframing where power resides within our community. That power isn’t inherited; it’s earned. To paraphrase N’yomi, it’s measured by how you show up for your community, how you mother and father, how you care for others, and how you move through the world as a queer person. When that idea emerged in the rehearsal hall, I remember thinking, “Okay, this is it, the dramaturgy is complete. This is how the show culminates.” BG: It really is a beautiful ending, and it wraps up the piece in such a provocative way. I also want to ask about casting. You’ve mentioned the ensemble and the work that developed through those workshops, but the casting itself feels crucial. You have trans actors, queer actors of color, and a wide age range onstage. The representation spans a broad spectrum. Was that an intentional choice from the beginning? JT : The profiles of the ensemble were really baked into the text from the very beginning. There was always a desire to work with an intergenerational, diverse group of queer and trans performers. The idea was that they would both imagine themselves into positions of power they don’t occupy and, at the same time, explore how that power reflects back onto their own lives. Some of the monologues actually emerged quite late in the process. David Greenspan, for example, didn’t have a monologue until about a week before tech. Jeremy and Adam Greenfield, the artistic director at Playwrights Horizons, kept pushing me, saying, “He really does need a monologue.” John McCrea, as Prince George, maybe doesn’t need one in the same way, but the rest of the ensemble really did. David Greenspan as Edward II in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. BG : I agree. It was a memorable monologue, and it makes sense dramaturgically too. JT: At first, I understood the dramaturgical logic of adding the monologue, but I couldn’t quite see where it would land or how it wouldn’t interrupt the flow of the piece. Then it finally clicked. It felt essential to bring an intergenerational perspective on AIDS into the play. The absence of AIDS, particularly in relation to the older cast members, had started to feel conspicuous, especially given how central sex and sexual liberation were to our conversations in the room. David had brought this up a few times in relation to his own long-term relationship with his partner, and there was also a story that had been lodged in the back of my mind for years about how lesbians taught gay men how to fist, holding fisting workshops in bars and bathhouses in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. That story always struck me as such a beautiful example of queer kinship, resource sharing, and pleasure as a survival strategy. I had always wanted to write about it. Once I recalled that, it became very clear that this was what David’s monologue needed to be about. It also helps resolve the journey the play takes through fetish. For audience members who don’t have a relationship to fetish, or whose only frame of reference might be shock or titillation, the monologue grounds those moments in a personal, political, and historical context. That grounding helps give the fetish scenes greater emotional stakes. BG : That makes sense. I didn’t experience it as having shock value. It felt fully integrated into the narrative and dramaturgy, especially in what the play is saying about queer culture and queer shame. I also love the scene with the ghosts, when they all appear for Prince George like in Shakespeare’s Richard III . It’s such a powerful image. There are so many striking images in the show, but that one really stuck with me. JT: The show is very much about overcoming queer shame. That’s been a central journey in my own life, really over decades, but especially during the period when I was working on the play. That half-decade leading up to it was a time of reckoning for me in that regard. I was definitely feeling my Caryl Churchill oats in that scene, but it’s also one of the moments that comes closest to autobiography or, maybe more accurately, self-portraiture. There’s that image of Prince George being hooded with my actual latex pup hood. It’s a hood that I’ve worn to raves over many years. That moment felt like a very direct way of placing my own body, history, and desire inside the work. BG: Your hood is the actual prop used in the show? JT: Yes, I was very specific about that. It couldn’t be just any hood—it had to be that exact one from this particular store in Berlin called Blackstyle, which doesn’t even make it anymore. For the few people who know me personally, it’s a hood I’ve worn a lot and been photographed in, so it carries personal significance for me. For me, it embodies this transformative state of abandon that Prince George is reaching for but can never fully attain because of the strictures he lives under. It’s a state I’ve pursued in my own life as well as a sense of freedom and liberation, both sexual and spiritual. But it can also be self-obliterating. In the effort to remake oneself, that pursuit can involve a great deal of destruction. I was writing the play during lockdown, at a time when I had no income from my art because everything was shut down. I was working primarily as a fetish sex worker, focusing on BDSM and extended role play scenarios. Writing the play felt like a personal charge to myself that my lived experiences couldn’t be more radical or interesting than the art I was making. I needed to bring something to the stage that approached what I was actually living at that moment. That’s what I hope audiences, and especially queer audiences, can connect to in the work. BG: You’re really giving something of yourself to the work, and that comes through. JT: Yeah, totally. The struggle with identity that interested me here was one that moves beyond the familiar question of “Am I gay or am I not?” or “Will my parents accept me?” I wanted to push past those more traditional coming out narratives. The coming out struggle still matters. There’s real value in articulating that experience for people for whom it remains urgent. But for me, that hasn’t been the central question for a long time. As a gay man, I’ve had the privilege of spending many years where that wasn’t the primary site of struggle. A more active struggle for me now is trying to navigate the pull between a normative life and one oriented toward radical freedom. That includes grappling with pleasure, desire, and sometimes more difficult terrain like chemsex or dependencies. Those tensions feel much closer to my lived reality than the binary of disclosure or acceptance. BG: So many narratives frame coming out as this moment of transformation or liberation. But often that transformation isn’t really for the person coming out. It’s for others. It functions as a kind of confessional moment, in the Foucauldian sense, where society pressures you to declare yourself. Rather than freeing you, it can actually pull you more deeply into systems of regulation and expectation. Althusser’s idea of hailing comes to mind—it’s less a moment of emancipation than one of being interpellated into a structure that already exists. Coming out is often celebrated as empowerment, but it’s also— JT : —not real. BG : Exactly. It’s not that for a lot of people; it’s sort of forced. John McCrea as Prince George; Mihir Kumar as Dev Chatterjee in Prince Faggot . Photo: Marc J. Franklin. JT: Speaking purely from my own experience, I came out as a teenager, and I was embraced fairly quickly by my family and community. That initial coming out wasn’t the primary rupture for me. But there’s a different journey that follows learning what it means to be sexual for the first time, to have a sexuality at all. For me, there was a second awakening later, a kind of reckoning that arrived in my late twenties, when I realized just how expansive my sexuality actually was. It opened onto dimensions I hadn’t previously imagined—spiritual, narrative, even economic. It involved fetish, the transformative power of sex, and an engagement with the abject. It radically altered how I understood my body and what it could do. That period was marked by expansion, by raving, experimenting with drugs, having sex in different ways and with different kinds of people. It felt like an extraordinary widening of possibility. That second awakening, rather than the initial coming out, is what I was really trying to capture in this play. I wasn’t especially interested in making a work about that initial moment of coming out. I wanted to write something for the adults in the room, for people who have gone through, or are still reckoning with, that second awakening within their sexuality. For me, that reckoning has less to do with shame itself and more to do with shedding expectations imposed by family, by culture, by ideas of what a “healthy” sexuality or a “healthy” life is supposed to look like. BG: And the repressive force of heteronormativity shows up in the play too, especially in the double standards around queer and straight childhoods. There’s this refusal to sexualize the photograph of Prince George, but, at the same time, children are constantly subjected to forced heterosexual narratives. Buying a baby a “Lady Killer” onesie isn’t seen as troubling, but queerness is immediately framed as inappropriate or suspect. JT: Exactly. That double standard is very much one of the discourses the play engages with. Rather than shying away from it, the choice was to lean into it and name it directly. At this particular moment in American politics, queer and trans people talking about childhood feels charged and loaded. Instead of retreating into respectability politics, the play insists on confronting that discomfort head on and saying, “Let’s actually talk about it.” BG: Absolutely. That opening really sets the terms for the audience in a beautiful way. I wanted to ask you about the title of the play, because it’s obviously drawn a lot of attention. When I saw the production at Studio Seaview, I was standing outside waiting for a friend and watching people walk by the marquee billboard. Some of them almost refused to read it. One person started to read it out loud, saying “Prince Fay-go,” like pseudo-French or something—like he didn’t want to believe that was actually the word he was reading. I also noticed a lot of people referring to it as Prince F in the media as well . I’m curious about the tension around the title and the reactions you’ve seen to what’s often treated as a controversial term. JT: Totally. The play was always called Prince Faggot , from the very first moment I opened the Word document to write it. It just felt inevitable. The title captures the two seemingly incompatible identities at the center of the play, and the friction between them is really the engine of the piece. I knew the title had a certain brazen quality, and I hoped that would ultimately work in the play’s favor. What’s been interesting is that many people are surprised by the degree of nuance and humanity in the work, especially if they come in expecting something designed purely for provocation or shock. It’s definitely not a broad satire, which I think some people assume based on the title or what they’ve heard about it. BG: And the people with the strongest negative reactions are probably the ones who haven’t actually seen it. I love that “Prince Faggot” is emblazoned in ten-foot letters at 43rd and 8th. For all the Port Authority commuters. Brilliant. JT : That billboard still amazes me. Jeremy and I genuinely didn’t know whether we’d even be able to print the title on a marquee, or whether publications like The New Yorker or The New York Times would print it. Jeremy actually went back and researched every instance where the Times had used the word, most famously in relation to Larry Kramer, but also in other contexts. There was even a play in 1973 by Al Carmines called The Faggot , unrelated to Kramer’s book, that ran off-off Broadway and was reviewed in the Times . He pulled a review of it as proof that there was precedent. What interests me is that the audience’s relationship to the work begins before they ever see the play. It starts with how they talk about it with friends and colleagues. Many of my straight colleagues, including agents, default to calling it “ Prince F” out of respect, which I don’t mind. I’m honestly not sure I have a firm preference. Context matters, obviously. I don’t personally flinch when straight people use the word in reference to the title, but that’s not universally true. In a way, the title is the first provocation you encounter. I’m really interested in artists like Julius Eastman, whose compositions had deliberately provocative titles using slurs. Who chooses to say those titles, and who doesn’t, becomes part of the work itself. That relationship changes over time. People may have felt more comfortable saying those titles in the 1970s than they do now. That evolution is interesting to me. And honestly, it feels like a testament to New York City that, in this moment, we can have a giant marquee that says Prince Faggot . It’s right across from Chick-fil-A, which feels like a perfect showdown. It’s drama. Also, a lot of queer people have complicated relationships with saying the F word. Even within the cast, there are generational differences. Some of the older gay actors identify strongly as gay men rather than queer, and they fought hard for that word. For them, faggot hasn’t been reclaimed and still carries a lot of pain. So, the title participates in a politics of reclamation, but not one that’s universally shared. That tension, across generations, is very real. BG: Like any good play, it provokes. My last question is about influence. When I was watching the play, I kept thinking about Jean Genet, especially his play The Balcony . I’m curious whether there were specific playwrights or works shaping this piece. You mentioned Caryl Churchill earlier. JT: Definitely Caryl Churchill and Tony Kushner. And yes, Genet has been a huge influence on me. Structurally, one of the most important touchstones while I was writing was Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon . The way that play relates to the audience, how it explodes its own frame, how scenography becomes part of the dramaturgy—all of that had a major impact on me. That was also true for our director, Shayok Misha Chowdhury. We talked a lot about An Octoroon in the early stages of development. It’s funny: years after I wrote the first draft, the play ended up being produced by Soho Rep where An Octoroon premiered. That connection feels less like coincidence and more like destiny. BG: That lineage really makes sense to me. I hadn’t thought about the connection to An Octoroon . JT: It’s in the DNA of the piece. In that sense, it all feels very fortuitous. BG : Thank you, Jordan. References Footnotes About The Author(s) BENJAMIN GILLESPIE is Assistant Professor of Theatre History & Performance Studies at Santa Clara University. He is co-editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre and Performance Review Editor of Theatre Journal . His essays have appeared in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Performance Research , Theatre Research in Canada, and HowlRound . He has also has contributed numerous chapters to scholarly volumes on queer and feminist theatre. He is editor of Split Britches: Fifty Years On (University of Michigan Press, 2027) and co-editor of Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging (University of Michigan Press, 2026) and The Routledge Companion to LGBTQ+ Theatre and Performance in North America (Routledge, 2027). Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 212. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century. Marlis Schweitzer. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020; Pp. 276. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272. The Brothers Size Dead Outlaw 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival ZAZ Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25 Politics Take Center Stage in the Berkshires, 2024-25 Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jewel Pereyra Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya Jewel Pereyra By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Actress Maggie Calloway (date unknown). Photo courtesy Robin Raymundo. Introduction [1] A curious performance occurred at The Stadium, Manila’s premier bodabil stage, on 4 January 1927. According to the Manila Times, in this jazz and kundiman Championship Contest, the leaders of two chorus groups, the “lady kundimans” and the “jazz girls,” were Filipina starlet Honorata Atang da la Rama and multiracial Afro-Filipina American jazz singer and dancer Maggie Calloway. [2] A staged conflict between the two cultural forms arose: kundiman, the Filipino national genre of love songs, which allegorized Filipino resistance against Spanish colonization—and African American jazz songs and dance styles, including the Charleston and Black Bottom. Indeed, this contest between the jazz and kundiman dance styles parodied an imperial drama of political tensions between the colonized (Philippines) and the colonizer (United States) to potential theatregoers through a performance: the preservation of the Philippines’ national culture (kundiman) versus the pressing influence of American culture (jazz). The chorus girl played a role in staging these political conflicts in front of popular audiences. These scenarios were common in Philippine bodabil theatre productions at the turn of the twentieth century where chorus girls helped to popularize bodabil —the Philippine adaptation of vaudeville—which encompassed multi-genre live performances that adapted American and European vaudeville variety acts, ranging from comedy sketches, poetry, songs, and dances to boxing competitions and acrobats. According to journalist Luningning B. Ira, “ Vodavil was a gaiety. It was jazz-snappy, bawdy, alive-sounding after generations of the languid kundiman, balitaw, and slow waltzes of a moribund Spanish era. Vodabil was feminine pulchritude and, most of all, female legs exhibited for the first time on the Philippine theatrical stage.” [3] While many chorus girls danced in ensembles onstage, others danced one-on-one with paying patrons. Their live and intimate acts, performed in front of large audiences of various classes and ages at venues located in the center of Manila’s commercial districts, entertained audiences in between silent film showings at theatres like The Stadium or Rivoli Theatre, or at cabarets and dance halls at the Savoy Hotel. This article analyzes the performing routes and moves of Maggie Calloway, who participated in creating the “first Philippine blues style” in colonial Manila and British Malaya’s (Singapore and Malaysia) theatres and cabarets in the 1920s to 1940s during U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946). Analyzing her transcultural dance styles, vocal experiments, and fashion choices, I argue that Calloway and her chorus girls reinvented modern ideas of Filipina and Black femininities when religious and Philippine independence movements nationalized the “Filipina” figure as pious, asexual, and devoted to man, church, and the nation. Rather, Calloway’s performances focused on pleasure and shifting racial and gendered formations as she popularized various racialized dances like the Black Bottom, Charleston, and Hawaiian Hula during the interwar period as part of burgeoning transpacific performance circuits from Manila to Singapore, China, and California. In both the Philippines and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, the Filipina and Black American chorus girl was a controversial figure. On one hand, she was praised for her beauty, exuberance, and mastery of different dance forms onstage. On the other, she was often seen as unruly, aberrant, and immoral, particularly within conservative and religious Philippine movements for independence from American colonial rule . Domingo N. Casiño, a leader of the Filipino Christian youth, wrote of vaudeville, “This modern show is immoral; it is a menace to society for various forms of Satan’s act are shown which in turn is greatly appreciated by the youth. Vaudeville turns our youth into irreligious men… [and] our youth become Godless; for a man without religion is no better than an animal.” [4] The chorus girl often reflected the nation’s desire to allegorize docile and pious Filipina femininity as the symbol of Philippine independence and religious devotion. Similarly, on the East Coast in the United States, African American chorus girls were seen as what Jayna Brown terms “Babylon girls,” and as “embody[ing] the modern condition as an illness of spirit and a cultural death” and as hedonistic excess. [5] For example, in his poem “Cabaret,” African American writer Sterling Brown “pathologizes the young [chorus girls], directly situating them as willful and uncaring urban courtiers against their poor rural brethren” after the Stock Market crash in the late 1920s. [6] Multiracial Filipina and African American chorus girl, Magdalena “Maggie” Calloway, gained stardom and acclaim for her mastery of varying performance styles in bodabil. In the first half of the twentieth century, Calloway was one of the only celebrated African American women performers and socialites in Manila. As a child of Mamerta de la Rosa, a Filipina woman from a family of rice farmers in Central Luzon, and Sergeant John W. Calloway, an African American Buffalo soldier who served in the Philippine-American War, her itinerant career led her to study dance in the United States and Manila and to help train and choreograph many different styles of dance, from jazz dances like the Charleston and Black Bottom to the Spanish Revue, Scottish Dance, and Hula. Her performances drew on and assembled various cultural traditions across overlapping empires in the Pacific, from Manila and Shanghai to Singapore and San Francisco, where she permanently settled after World War II. With her working connection to John C. Cowper, a prominent American director of Philippine variety shows in Manila, Calloway was contracted to work in a transpacific performance circuit in Southeast Asia that connected Manila to British Malaya and cities across China. [7] After World War I, many performers from Asia and across the diaspora took part in shaping Western and indigenous performance styles, displaying racial and gendered stylized acts across international arenas. In one of her first performances in Singapore in 1928 at the City Opera, the press wrote, “Miss Maggie Calloway, ‘star of the aggregation,’ was as usual the life of the performance.” [8] I draw on the reviewer’s use of aggregation as a useful analytic to situate her importance as a multiracial performer who syncretized both Filipino and Black performers and performance styles. Aggregation refers to a “formation of a number of things into a cluster.” [9] In concert with Saidiya Hartman’s theorization of the “chorus,” aggregation attends to the “radical hope of living otherwise” and collective possibility for Filipina and African American performers in the Philippines during the interwar period. [10] Calloway contributed to the makings of an interracial Afro-Filipina chorus through what I call performances of aggregation, which she created as a soloist, and as an ensemble member and choreographer. As a multiracial soloist, she aggregated various racial identifications and performance genres throughout her career. For instance, Calloway embodied multiple racial identifications, including Black, Filipina, and Hawaiian both in the Philippines and Singapore. As a chorus girl and choreographer, she also aggregated interracial performances in ensemble formations. Singing and dancing live in the bodabil cabarets became sites of spectatorship and enjoyment, and people from all racial, gendered, and classed backgrounds socialized in these spaces. In all these roles, she spectacularized feminine pleasure and sexuality, troubling the national symbol of the modern Filipina woman. Scholarship on the Black Pacific and relationships between Filipinos and African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century has tended to focus on African American and Filipino male soldiers and musicians who played in constabulary bands. [11] Expanding upon this work, I examine Calloway’s ephemeral traces—poetry, photoplay films, photographs, and newspaper reviews—in archives across the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia during the interwar period to elucidate her role in forging these Philippine and African American performance genealogies. Assembling this performance archive demonstrates the significance Calloway had as a multiracial performer in embodying these aggregated performance styles during the interwar period. This article also reads against the grain of accounts that argue that these cabarets were segregated and that women lacked creative choice in performance, as Isidora Miranda, Dough Ancheta, and Vernadette Gonzalez have argued. [12] Indeed, Calloway’s presence in these cabarets and dance halls contests W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of the segregated “global color line” in the midst of American occupation in Manila and the burgeoning political struggles for African American racial progress in the United States. This Afro-Filipina aggregation performed new versions of femininity and the modern Filipina woman by appearing in and adapting various media and popular technologies available to them, like the bodabil theatre space, silent photoplay films, and broadcast radio. As Denise Cruz writes on “transpacific femininities,” at the first half of the twentieth century, defining the Filipina woman became a “cultural obsession” and debates about Filipina femininity over time and space was shaped by multiple and overlapping Spanish, American, and Japanese imperial presences. [13] In the first part of this article, I historicize Calloway’s life and her family history. I also trace the forces that compelled both interracial Filipino and African American disaggregation and aggregation with the presence of African American soldiers and performers during American occupation (1898-1946) in the Philippines. While African American soldiers and performers formed affinities with Filipinos, there were also intensified divisions across race, gender, and class. In the second part of the article, I focus on Calloway’s performances of aggregation as sites of interracial collectivity and pleasure-making in bodabil across colonial Manila and Singapore. Maggie Calloway and Interracial Anxieties and Affinities in Colonial Manila Maggie Calloway was born in 1910 in Manila and had a prolific performance career in Asia. Her family lived in the Quiapo neighborhood in Manila, in a center of vibrant social and cultural change during the American colonial period. In addition to his military service, Sergeant Calloway was an ardent fan of the arts and wrote to Black intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois about the importance of African American racial progress through music, theatre, and dance. [14] Maggie Calloway similarly followed her father’s affinities for the arts; however, rather than perform opera and other European “high art” forms that her father and African American bourgeois intellectuals argued would “uplift the race,” Calloway often choreographed popular African American jazz songs and dances, like the Black Bottom and Charleston in her repertoires. [15] While the origins of the Black Bottom and Charleston have been contested, scholars conclude that African Americans in the South first performed both dances and these styles migrated to theatres and popular music recording circuits in the North during the Jazz Age. Tim Ryan writes that the lively and syncopated Black Bottom dance style may have first premiered in the 1924 staging of Dinah in Harlem. [16] However, white Broadway performers, like Ann Pennington in George White’s Scandals , and Tin Pan Alley songwriters appropriated and recorded the “Black Bottom” in 1926. [17] Similarly, African American workers in Charleston, South Carolina created the notable Charleston dance style, including the “feet twisting and rapid forward and backward kicking steps,” that African American stars Josephine Baker and Ada “Bricktop” Smith garnered praise for. [18] As Matthew McMahan asserts, “the language surrounding the Charleston consistently depicted it as a liberating force in contrast to the stolid quality of European dances.” [19] The novel and rebellious appeal of both dance styles attracted international performers and audiences. Calloway, who learned these performance styles in the United States, gained her start as a chorus girl in Manila with the Savoy Nifties and Varieties Company that were managed by theatre manager J.C. Cowper. Named the “Tala ng Bodabil” (star of bodabil ), Calloway was praised in the press for her dancing and singing of both Filipino and American popular songs. During the Philippine-American War, government officials, journalists, and people in the sound recording industries often justified the occupation of the Philippines through the racial co-affiliations of Filipinos with African Americans and Native Americans. In many political cartoons in satirical magazines like Puck and Judge, Filipinos were depicted as Black minstrel characters. In addition, the music industry intensified these racial anxieties, especially of Filipino and African American romantic and sexual unions. For instance, in the Tin Pan Alley recording industries in the early 1900s, songwriters like Charles K. Harris wrote the song “Ma Filipino Babe,” which illustrated a Filipina woman as racially Black in the songbook’s images. The lyrics also racialized the Filipina woman as Black and detailed her romance with an African American soldier. African American intellectuals, writers, and musical composers in the United States responded to these interracial Black and Filipino dynamics in the Pacific. African American intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells outwardly spoke out against U.S. intervention in the Philippines. Writers and performers also used comedy and “brown face” to introduce complex portrayals of Filipino and African American relations to popular audiences. For instance, in 1902, the Black Patti Troubadours staged a parody and musical comedy The Filipino Misfit: A Farcical Skit in One Act that cast Black actors and actresses as Filipino/as . According to Marta Effinger-Crichlow, the actors were “lumped into a generic Asian or foreign body, with no regard for the cultural, language, and historical differences.” [20] Similarly, African American playwrights Bob Cole, Rosamond Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson’s 1907 play Shoo-Fly Regiment featured African Americans performing in “brown face” of Filipino characters, highlighting the contradictions of African American participation of empire, as well as their critique of global anti-Black racism through such productions. [21] During the war, African American military men like Sergeant Calloway forged relationships with Filipinos in the Philippines. During his ten years of service in the Army, Sergeant John W. Calloway wrote numerous letters about his stay in the Philippines and the reception of African Americans by way of Filipino perspectives. He informally interviewed Filipinos about their perspectives on the war, including a physician named Señor Todorica Santos who stated, Of course, you [Black and White Americans] are both Americans, and conditions between us are constrained, and neither can be our friends in the sense of friendship, but the affinity of complexion between you and me tells, and you exercise your duty so much more kindly and manly in dealing with us. We can not help but appreciate the differences between you and the whites. [22] These accounts demonstrate the Filipinos’ affinities towards African Americans in the Philippines despite the racial segregations that African American soldiers experienced. Indeed, during his service, Sergeant Calloway befriended Filipino families, like the Consunji family of San Fernando, Pampanga. While forming relations with the Consunji family, Calloway was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army over suspicions that he was a “well known sympathizer with the insurrectos” during his service. [23] In Sergeant Calloway’s case, these interracial affinities created racial anxieties that were deemed dangerous and risky. These fears of racial intermixing and proximity often punished African Americans, creating distance and disaggregation during the Philippine-American War. These perspectives illuminate the complex tensions of U.S. imperialisms and U.S.-Philippine relations. In his study of the Black Pacific, Vince Schleitwiler theorizes the “Black transpacific culture” as the mode by which “African Americans would imaginatively and materially access new degrees of imperial privilege by crossing the Pacific as ambivalent participants in U.S. imperialism, while simultaneously contemplating the emergence of a militant Asian champion of the darker races against white worl d supremacy.” [24] On one hand, soldiers like Sergeant Calloway and David Fagen—another celebrated African American Buffalo soldier during the Philippine-American war who defected from the U.S. causes—participated in military operations in the Philippines. On the other hand, they also critiqued anti-Black and anti-Filipino sentiments enforced by white American colonial officials. In performance cultures in the Philippines during U.S. occupation, blatant forms of anti-Black sentiments also existed, particularly from the upper-class Spanish Tagalog elites. In colonial Asia, jazz singing and dance styles like the Charleston and Black Bottom were racialized and acquainted with African American popular dance forms. Peter Keppy writes about Filipina jazzista performers who performed jazz dances like the Black Bottom and the Charleston: “From an elitist perspective these dances were particularly suspicious, if not dangerous to society as they originated from the ranks of the lower classes, and even worse, from the descendants of slaves.” [25] Keppy argues that elite Hispanicized Filipinos harbored racial antagonism toward Black slaves and sought to ensure that the emerging Philippine nation was not associated or identified with Blackness. These dances often were classed and critiqued as “low art” in comparison to “more respectable and refined” Euro-American dance and singing styles like waltzes and operas. However, performers like Calloway performed the Charleston and Black Bottom dances, altering normative notions of race, gender, and sexuality in the cabaret spaces. Through her performances of aggregation, Calloway took on the persona of popular Black women performers like Josephine Baker, whose rendition of the Charleston exhibited a multiplicity of racialized surfaces, or what Anne Cheng calls as “second skins.” [26] These alternative and aggregated performance styles also flourished in these interracial cabaret spaces that challenged the Jim Crow logics of racial segregation and interracial intimacies, even as these repertoires became increasingly commodified and staged for white audiences. As Shane Vogel argues, performers in cabarets in Harlem demonstrated how the “interplay of close and distance, acceptance and refusal, connection and disconnection, concentration and distraction” coincided. [27] As a result of these racial affinities, anxieties, and antagonisms in the early 1900s, multiracial Filipino and Black Amerasian identities and anti-Blackness were and, today, are fraught in the Philippines. Anti-Blackness in Filipino communities both in the Philippines and in the diaspora perpetrate white supremacist structures and “colonial mentalities,” especially against indigenous groups like the Aeta peoples. Despite these contradictory interracial socialities and relations, after World War II and onwards, Manila would see more performances by other famous Black cultural performers like Marian Anderson, Muhammad Ali, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, and Donna Summer, all of whom all made appearances at the famous Araneta Coliseum. Moreover, today in the Philippines, hip hop and other major African American cultural figures are celebrated in the archipelago. “I Want”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure Calloway’s career in entertainment started in an era of rapidly growing commodity cultures, trade, and industrialization in the United States, the Philippines, Shanghai, and British Malaya during the interwar period. Henry Jenkins theorizes this interwar technological period as “pop cosmopolitanism” and “the ways that the transcultural flows of popular culture inspire new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency.” [28] As the phonograph, 78 RPM vinyl records, radio, and silent films gained popularity as commodities, so too did bodabil performances. [29] With electrical recording booming in Manila and Singapore, global protests and musical movements by subaltern subjects in the colonies also responded to Euro-American colonial presence. Michael Denning calls these responses as global “noise uprisings” after World War I where musicians in entrepôt cities, like Manila, Jakarta, Honolulu, Goa, Shanghai, Havana, and Rio De Janeiro, formed a “world musical revolution.” Performers adapted vernacular musical forms that became “fundamental to the extraordinary social, political, and cultural revolution that was decolonization.” [30] For instance, transcultural music practices, like the kundiman encountered jazz and blues styles and crossed over and circulated. The novelty and global appeal of Filipino bodabil led to the creation of transpacific tours and circuits where these Afro-Filipina aggregations took shape. In addition to Calloway’s background in jazz singing and dancing, she also performed traditional Philippine dances like the sword dance, Moro Moro, and Cariñosa. As she traveled within these circuits, she was exposed to different transcultural music and dance styles like jazz, the rhumba, kundiman, Hawaiian hula, the Scottish dance, the New York flapper, and the Spanish revue, which she also learned and choreographed in their own shows. Spectacularizing her body through the aggregation was part of her transcultural dance styles. Calloway’s performances of aggregation brought together kundiman and jazz-blues forms that became their own cultural phenomena. This demonstrates how Filipina and Black women transformed these practices into hybridized dance and singing styles, while also establishing relations with one another through the ephemeral socialities that emerged in the cabarets. Women performers on stage explored the contradictory and shifting gender dynamics in the Philippines during the U.S. period. Women challenged monolithic ideals of feminine respectability and stars like Atang de la Rama and Katy de la Cruz’s performers and songs focused on women’s pleasures and commented on conservative gender norms. For instance, Atang de la Rama performed in the silent film Dalagang Bukid ( Country Maiden ) and her song “Nabasag ang Banga” (The Clay Pot Broke) commented on the preservation of women’s virginity through the metaphor of a broken jar. Katy de la Cruz, who was named the “Queen of Jazz,” used humor throughout her jazz and blues performances to comment on women’s pleasures. Her song “Balut” (Fertilized Duck’s Egg) from the 1930s allegorizes women’s sexual desires. The popular plays on the notion that the balut delicacy is said to “not only allude to strength and general good health but refers to sexual robustness and stamina.” [31] In addition, her song “Ang Manok” (The Chicken) references cock fighting and alludes to ideas about men’s infidelity. These outwardly sexual themes in her songs contended with the conversative ideas of women as the virginal, pious, meek, and devoted Filipina figure. These mythologized women, like the Maria Clara figure who was popularized in Filipino writer Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tángere, became pious symbols of the Catholic church, family, and education systems that espoused these moral and nationalist politics. [32] Indeed, women in bodabil challenged representations of modern femininity in the Philippines. Filipina women during the Spanish colonial period commonly worked as cigarette rollers, seamstresses, domestic workers, teachers, nurses, performers, and as prostitutes. [33] With the emergence of Filipino bodabil in Manila in the early twentieth century, young, independent, and working-class chorus girls sought out employment in the cabarets and dance halls. Women in bodabil and their reception were met with contradictions: on one hand, they were celebrated for their displays of modernity and adaptations of American cultural forms. On the other hand, chorus girls were castigated in society, especially by religious and conservative politicians, and were often associated with prostitution. For instance, Manila’s City Mayor, Justo Lukban, who was elected in 1917, disbanded the Gardenia District, Sampaloc’s former red-light district in Old Manila. Filipino cultural critic Nick Joaquin writes “when [Lukban] tried to abolish the cabarets too, the bailarinas, a more spirited tribe, rose in revolt and marched on City Hall. The mayor backed down and the cabarets remained to color the lives of all the wild bucks of the era.” [34] Cabarets in Manila continued to flourish until talking pictures emerged in cines and nightclubs were introduced in the 1930s. Nick Joaquin was one rare writer who documented the pleasures of bodabil and of Calloway’s authorial voice within the interracial and multi-expressive aggregation. In his long poem “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird,” Joaquin captures the spirit of bodabil in the height of its appeal in the 1920s . In contrast to Sterling Brown’s vilification of the “Babylon girls,” which is also apparent in Filipino writer Jose Garcia Villa’s 1927 short story “The Bailarina,” Joaquin centers the erotics of the cabaret, and especially women’s pleasure. Published in 1979, “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird” is a poem written in a documentary style that offers images from the bodabil scenes through Joaquin’s perspective as a journalist and cultural critic. As Joaquin did not grow up in the 1920s and 30s when Calloway performed, his poetic work contends with the limits of the performance archive as he dramatizes the events at the cabarets. The poem draws us in into the sensual atmosphere of the vaudeville scene with “King of Jazz Piano,” Porfirio “Ping” Borromeo, and his contemporaries. Borromeo served as the piano player and bandleader for the Savoy Theater vaudeville company. He performed his signature “stride bass” ragtime jazz style alongside the popular Filipina starlets of the time, including Nena Warsaw, Grace Darling, Katy de la Cruz, and Isabel Rosario Cooper, who experimented with “modern” jazz dances like the “Charleston” and “Black Bottom.” They performed in front of diverse audiences and, at times, segregated white-only spaces like the Army and Navy Club, the Manila Polo Club, and the Tiro Al Blanco. At places like the Rivoli Theater, audiences racially intermixed. Joaquin writes, Shift the scene to Manila Late in the 1920s. Vaudeville tops show-biz. It’s cash with class. On Plaza Goiti is the Savoy with its Nifties. Plaza Santa Cruz Nightly shines with the rainbow hues Of the Rivoli Theater, which has the Varieties. And our princely boy Stars there now as King of Jazz Leading the band. He stabs the keys As leggy high-kicking Nena Warsaw Knocks her knees against her torso. His piano groans as the sailors howl. Hot has Maggie Calloway got ‘em While she shimmies her Black Bottom. [35] Joaquin’s poem captures his impressions of the cabarets as he homes in on the pleasure-filled atmosphere that the cabaret girls elicit, particularly for their “sailor” audiences who “howl.” American military men and Filipinos of various social classes frequented the cabarets and dance halls. Fritz Schenker writes about the “imperial whiteness,” where white men patrons asserted their racial dominance in juxtaposition to the Filipina jazz dancers. [36] While conservative writers, political officials, and religious figures disparaged the morality of dance halls, as venues subject to adultery, prostitution, and disease, Joaquin invites readers into the glamour, the wild aesthetic gestures, the novel techniques of these women performers, and sexuality in the cabarets. Borromeo leads the jazz band as he “stabs the keys” and “his piano groans.” Nena Warsaw “knocks her knees against her torso” while “hot has Maggie Calloway got ‘em / while she shimmies her Black Bottom.” Joaquin’s attention to these erotic gestures energizes the performing bodies that are too extra, intense, and incontrollable. Moreover, Calloway’s performance s of aggregation and the Black Bottom demonstrate how performers and audiences coming together in the cabaret was a site of pleasure. The Black Bottom was a radical act that presented African American popular culture in front of audiences despite the Spanish and Tagalog elite’s racial prejudices against such dances. In addition, the Black Bottom, as popularized by African American blues songstresses like Ma Rainey, depicted Black women’s pleasures publicly. Towards the end of the poem, Joaquin ends with Calloway again, But the last tune on the tape is the sweetest of all, as new today as when first given shape and shiver. Life was a smile when [Porfirio Borromeo] wrote it (circa mid-1920s), the first blues Philippine style. And because it never went to market it hasn’t lost novelty, is as fresh as when Maggie Calloway first sang it on the Rivoli stage: “ I want, I want, I want I want a little lovin’ …” [37] While this final stanza honors Borromeo indelible “first Philippine blues style,” Joaquin also ends the poem with Calloway declaring a desire: “I want.” Presumably, Joaquin here is listening to a recorded performance of Calloway’s singing, one that is no longer accessible in present archives. And yet, he highlights Calloway’s pleasures which repeat, “I want, I want, I want,” a simplicity that stands as its own complete thought: “I want.” Whereas the opposite, the refusal of “I don’t want,” establishes a boundary and enclosure, the lack of specificity in Calloway’s “I want” is an opening, an improvisational jazz break, and open-ended refrain as the long poem ends. Fred Moten has theorized the possibility of the break as a place of improvisation for African American performers. [38] As the audience members rile with passion in the poem, Calloway declares this refrain significantly as a testament to her wants within the cabaret and dance hall scenes that were often organized and socialized for Filipino and foreign men’s desires, wishes, and wants. Moreover, Calloway’s repetition of “I want” reflects her subjectivity as a soloist within the male-dominated space. “I” re-asserts the cabaret space as a place solely for men’s pleasures and complicates the hierarchies of “imperial whiteness” and social dynamics between men and the chorus girls. This moment in the poem is significant and demonstrates not only as an important interracial and transcultural moment of the Philippine blues style, but also a significant moment of Afro-Filipina women’s pleasure in creating and fashioning this cross-genre aesthetic. As Maureen Mahon writes, African American women in rock, blues, and jazz have long participated in experimenting with musical categories and genres across the twentieth century, often exposing how these imposed categories have been racialized and gendered. [39] Indeed, Joaquin notes that this moment “hasn’t lost its novelty,” as indeed, these two singing and performing together at the Rivoli was novel for audiences. Furthermore, Calloway’s expression of “I want” attends to how pleasure and desire were important in her popularity and career and—with Joaquin’s ending of this poem with her—she featured significantly in Filipino bodabil cultures. “Mood of Ecstasy”: The Filipina Josephine Baker in Colonial Singapore Calloway’s first appearance in Singapore on September 27, 1928 featured her dancing the Charleston and Black Bottom, which received positive reception from audiences. In an interview with the Malaya Tribune, Calloway characterizes her impressions of her performance, On my first night, after singing one or two, I thought I would see if they liked the Black Bottom, for they kept insisting I should come out for some more. I struck off with a delicate cadence to suit their apparent reserve and decorum. As the orchestra swept along in its interpretation of the playful moods of the dance, I increased their interest in my movements by ‘speeding up’ a little. First a smile of pleasure, then a light ripple of applause broke over the audience. This gave the director his cue and he led his orchestra from the mood of delight in the dance to the mood of ecstasy. Here I swung from the Black Bottom to the Charleston a la Josefina Baker. Well, all I can say is the English for once came dangerously near losing their studied reserve and the natives lost theirs completely, if they ever had any. [40] Calloway’s first-hand account gives an intimate insight into the audiences she performed in front of and her own authorial vocal and choreographic experiments. Audiences were attracted to Calloway’s unique singing and dancing and often gave her encores. Calloway details how she captivated audiences through her “playful moods,” “smile of pleasure,” and “mood of ecstasy.” Through these hyperbolic descriptions, Calloway’s performance also overcame the “studied reserve” of both British and Malayan audiences. She notes that she “increased their interest” by responding through tempo, facial gestures like smiling, and competing with the big band. This was met through their applause. Similar to Joaquin’s “Bye Bye Jazzbird” poem, Calloway delivered an authorial voice and risqué gestures that were not common at the time, nor looked fondly upon. In this way, Calloway developed a pleasure politics on stage that negotiated with the desires of the audiences and her own. In this performance, Calloway also compares herself to Josephine Baker who was performing dances like the Charleston and Black Bottom in Paris. Baker was a prominent African American dancer and singer born in Saint Louis, Missouri. She immigrated to Paris during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, contributed to the makings of a global Black feminist performance style. While stars like Atang da la Rama were named the “Queen of Kundiman” and Katy de la Cruz was heralded as the “Queen of Jazz” and was compared to Mae West and Sophie Tucker, Calloway likened herself as the Josephine Baker of the Philippines. African American women performers were seldom written about in the Philippine and British Malayan presses. Thus, Calloway’s claiming of herself as Baker, a Black woman dancer who popularized the Charleston and Black Bottom, forged an affinity between her. Rather than continue to promote the elite Spanish Tagalog racial and classed hierarchies, Calloway chose to perform popular dances like the Black Bottom and Charleston as an act of proximity and affiliation. Indeed, Calloway becomes part of this Black women’s performance genealogy and instrumentalized this Afro-Filipina chorus. In the austere British Malaya venues City Opera and Victoria Hall, like Baker, Calloway demonstrated creative risk in front of British and Malayan audiences. In her performance of the Charleston, Calloway delivered an exuberance that countered typical comportments of Filipina femininity and shifting racializations. Like Baker, Calloway’s performances of the Black Bottom, Charleston, and other racial types interacted with and challenged the colonial primitivist views of African Americans on these international stages and asserted a Black Amerasian feminine pleasure and politics on the stage. As Anne Cheng argues, Baker was the definition of modernity in the 1920s and 1930s. Through her performance of “second skins,” which she displayed through different organic and inorganic materials (coal, bananas, glitter, and shimmering ensembles), she mastered the artifice of surfaces and masks through performance. [41] Similarly, Calloway’s performances of aggregation across British occupied-Malaya embodied a multiplicity of Filipino and Black women racial presentations and masks through her dancing and singing of Black popular dances in Singapore. After her first performances of the Black Bottom and Charleston at the City Opera and Victoria Theatre, Calloway also performed the Charleston at the Moonlight Hall at the New World Shows. One reviewer wrote, “ Maggie Calloway was in great demand. Indeed, the audiences were cruel in their calls for encores. Maggie pleased immensely in “The Roof Blues,” charleston-ing and singing on top of the piano with that ease and abandon only expected of an accomplished artist.” [42] The New Orleans Rhythm Kings wrote the song “The Rooftop Blues,” or “Tin Roof Blues,” in 1923 and it is considered a jazz standard about New Orleans. Louis Armstrong sang a popular version in 1955. The reviewer notes Calloway’s exuberant and pleasurable performance as exhibiting “ease and abandon” and the moods and delights she displayed through her performances. I read the “ease” of her performances as pleasures that Calloway articulated on these stages. While many of these blues songs were commissioned and selected on behalf of Calloway by the company managers, she also had the authorial voice and choreographic capacities to express her mastery, skill, and pleasure through jazz and the blues. These kinds of pleasures countered the invisible labor of Black women performers and singers, who were often exploited and vilified. For instance, the Black Bottom was popularized by “Mother of Blues Singer” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey’s “Black Bottom,” which she recorded in 1927 in Chicago, Illinois. According to Rainey’s accounts and theatre productions such as August Wilson’s 1984 Broadway play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom , Rainey performed under conditions of duress. She was not compensated for her labor as an in-demand African American women performer. The Black Bottom was a major hit in the United States and because of Calloway’s training in the US, she participated in popularizing and transferring this dance style to chorus girls and audiences in Manila and Singapore. Calloway returned to British Malaya during World War II in the 1940s where there was a pronounced shift in her image in advertisements in the press. Calloway’s comeback career in Singapore occurred in the 1940s, perhaps one of her last performances that she danced in and choreographed during World War II and before the declaration of Philippine independence in 1946. In the 1940s Singaporean press, there is a notable shift and attention to women’s bodies and sexual economies with the heightened presence of British and Japanese military in Singapore. Calloway’s image started to change, especially with the kinds of performances and visualizations she participated in. Rather than perform her regular jazz Charleston and Black Bottom numbers, she started to perform as racial types like the hula girl and harem girl. Cabarets featured the hula girl racial type across the world, not only in the Philippines and Singapore, but across cabaret venues in port cities across the Pacific. The hula girl fantasized “imagined intimacies,” what Adria Imada argues “brokered the process of incorporation and integration” of Hawai’i into the United States empire. [43] Hula girls performers performed the fantasy of Hawai’i as a site of rest, relaxation, and hospitality for their audiences. In one advertisement of her performance of a Special Dinner-Dance and Cabaret at the Sea View Hotel, a popular resort outside Singapore’s urban city center, Calloway poses as a hula girl. [44] She wears a tropical Hawaiian influenced look with a bikini top that bears her midriff and a sheer grass skirt. She has a hibiscus flower in her hair and a lei around her neck. These full-body images in The Straits Press and Malaya Tribune contrast her public appearances in the press in Manila, which were exclusively headshots. In Manila in the 1920s and 1930s, she typically adorns Philippine and American attire in the 1940s, and her body is not the focal part of the advertisement. In contrast to her prior visualizations in the press, these photographs are full-body and elicit racial, gendered, and sexual desires. Indeed, these changes of “moods of ecstasy” became more sexually explicit and geared towards military audiences during the 1940s when the British occupied Singapore and Penang. Indeed, Calloway’s adaptation of this solo performance of the hula at the Sea View Hotel performed a localized form of hospitality through the British colonial integration of Malaya. Through these subaltern’s performances, women’s bodies specifically became sites of hospitality that brokered these imperial intimacies. As part of these shifting racial and gendered performances amongst women performers, Calloway’s performances of aggregation responded to the larger presence of military men who frequented the cabarets in the 1940s. Military men from the Royal Arm Forces (RAF) were stationed in Seleta r in Singapore. Pre-World War II photographs depict the Royal Arms Forces (RAF) servicemen and Yacht clubs as well as the leisure places they frequented. Many of these military men were nostalgic for entertainments, so they joined sailing and yacht clubs and watched boxing and sporting events. Like the hula girl, Calloway’s performances of these racial types and transition to more explicit performances demonstrate how the cabaret catered more to men’s desires as women also negotiated their place and authority in the cabaret scenes during World War II. Conclusion Mirroring the imperial drama that I opened this article with, I end with another encounter between choruses and popular dances fifteen years later at the Cabaret Tea Dance at Singapore’s Cathay Café in 1941. The press advertised for the “Philippine Islands Folk Dance for Singapore Cabaret Show” to take place at the Victoria Memorial Hall. Calloway served as the choreographer at this event and trained the cariñosa dancers, as well as those who danced the conga, “the newest American craze,” and the rhumba. The People and Places” advertisement reads “Preparing for Feb. 9 Floor Show: Miss Maggie Calloway, who is training the dancers who will take part in cabaret items at the Cabaret Tea Dance to be given by the Singapore Filipino Association at the Cathay Café.” [45] Next to the advertisement is a portrait of Calloway. She wears a sheer lightweight dress in a modern Filipiniana style with terno sleeves that reflects the traditional attire that Atang de la Rama wore in her kundiman performances. In the portrait, Calloway poses by touching a vine of flowers. Her short hair is well-kept as she smiles towards the camera. In this portrayal, one of the last visual depictions of Calloway in Singapore’s archives, she does not masquerade as American, African American, Asian Hawaiian, Middle Eastern racial type. Rather, she is represented as a professional woman choreographer. I read this last visual representation as another performance of aggregation meant to situate Calloway’s professional credibility as a dancer amidst her varied representations. While Calloway’s performances of aggregation participated in the cabaret’s masculinist and militaristic desires towards the end of her performance career in Asia, she also continued to demonstrate her creative authorship by choreographing choral arrangements with the cariñosa and rhumba dancers in Singapore. Calloway was a master of improvisation and like Josephine Baker, she continuously modulated her image. With her performances of aggregation, along with popularizing jazz and the blues in Manila and British Malaya, she also translated different choreographic dances and articulated varying racial and gendered performances across her repertoires. In addition, Calloway’s choreography and continuous training of Filipina chorus girls transferred cultural forms—from the Charleston and Black Bottom to the cariñosa and rhumba—through repetition and body-to-body knowledge across these various locales in the Pacific. These performances of aggregation became cultural and formalistic experimentations. They offered places of improvisational pleasure and bodily reinvention for Filipina and Black chorus girls. Ultimately, this article charts Calloway’s presence and formations of performances of aggregation in the emergence of Filipino bodabil in colonial Manila and Singapore. On one hand, the presence of Filipino and African American collaborative performances demonstrates how American modernity and jazz styles promoted a sajonista American modernity and capitalist profit in the entertainment industries in Manila. During this time, fear of intermixing and proximity between Filipinos and African Americans was also a concern and produced racial and classed antagonisms formed by white American colonial officials and Spanish Tagalog elites. On the other hand, Calloway’s appearances in bodabil also revised modes of respectable racial and gendered comportments with her jazz performances and choreographic arrangements of pleasure. Bailarinas and jazzistas in bodabil adapted jazz as modes to experiment, play, and comment on pleasure in their aesthetics, and Calloway’s performances added to the complexity of these pleasure politics within Colonial Manila and British Malaya’s performance cultures. Specifically, I contend that Calloway’s vocal and choreographic gestures asserted a pleasure politics that responded to the nationalist, racialized, and gendered ideations of Filipina women. Centering her pleasure in her oeuvre, Calloway’s performing body and spectacularized gestures, even ephemerally, rearranged the contours of her itinerant life and imagined otherwise her confined conditions as a young actress. Calloway’s career and the aggregation tell a reverberating story and legacy of how subalterns interacted, contradicted, strategized, and negotiated with dominant cultures, as they emphasized the creation of vibrant transcultural music and musical practices that resulted from such encounters. After Calloway moved to the U.S. permanently in the 1940s during World War II, other multiracial Filipina and Black stars and comedians like Elizabeth Ramsay made their vibrant presence in Philippine performances in the 1950s and 60s. An intimate study of Calloway’s life gifts us with interracial and transnational lenses through which to study diasporic Philippine and Black American performance genealogies as not separate, but as intertwined and aggregated histories, of which more is yet to be made known. References [1] I thank Arwin Q. Tan, Isidora Miranda, and Frederick “Fritz” Schenker for their keen feedback and encouragement on earlier versions of this article. Thank you to the librarians at the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Music, the Miguel De Benavides Library at the University of Santo Tomas, and the Rizal Library at Ateneo de Manila University for your help with accessing these archival sources. Lastly, much gratitude to the Calloway family, including John Calloway, Rebecca Calloway Mosley, Robin Lee Raymundo, Tedi Raymundo, and Deborah Calloway for sharing your stories, archives, and costumes of your auntie/grandmother Maggie. Maraming salamat! [2] “At the Stadium Tomorrow,” Manila Times, January 4, 1927. [3] Luningning B. Ira, “Two Tickets to the Vod-a-Vil,” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 (Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978), 2510. [4] Domingo N. Casiño, “The Evil Influences of Vaudeville,” The Independent, July 31, 1926, pg. 7. [5] Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 236. [6] Ibid. [7] There were other circuits that connected the Philippines to Japan, Hawai’i, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia. The performance circuit depended on the managers and their vaudeville companies. [8] Hollandus, “The City Opera,” Malaya Tribune , September 28, 1928. [9] “Aggregation,” New Oxford American Dictionary, accessed May 3, 2023. [10] Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021), 299. [11] For scholarship on military histories and relationships between Filipinos and African American soldiers and the constabulary bands, see Scot Ngozi-Brown’s “African-American Soldiers and Filipinos: Racial Imperialism, Jim Crow, and Social Relations” (1997) in The Journal of Negro History ; Rene G. Ontal’s “Fagen and Other Ghosts: African-Americans and the Philippine-American War,” in Vestiges of War (New York: New York University Press, 2002); E. San Juan’s “African American Internationalism and Solidarity with the Philippine Revolution” (2010) in Socialism and Democracy ; and Mary Talusan’s Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021). [12] Maria Ancheta, “The Rise of the Naughties: Humor in Katy de la Cruz’s Bodabil Songs,” ed. José Buenconsejo, Philippine Modernities: Music, Performing Arts, and Language, 1880-1941 (Quezon City: University of Philippines Press, 2017); Isidora K. Miranda, “Creative Authorship and the Filipina Diva Atang de la Rama,” Journal of Musicological Research, vol. 40, no. 4 (2021); and Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress: Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021). [13] Denise Cruz, Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 5. [14] Letter from J. Calloway to W.E.B. Du Bois, November 14, 1927, MS, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers 312. Spec. Coll. And University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Library. [15] Ibid. [16] Tim A. Ryan, “‘Music That Breathes and Touches’: The Implications of 1920s Blues and Jazz in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, ” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 48, 1 (Spring 2023): 11-12. [17] Ibid. [18] James S. Olson and Mariah Gumpert, “Charleston,” The New Era of the 1920s: Key Themes and Documents (New York City, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), 35-36. [19] Matthew McMahan, “‘Let me see you dance:’ Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith, the Charleston, and Racial Commodification in Interwar France,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 29, 2 (Spring 2015): 51. [20] Marta Effinger-Crichlow, Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones (Louisville, KY: University Press of Colorado, 2014), 96. [21] Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2013). [22] Gill H. Boehringer, “Imperialist Paranoia and Military Injustice: The Persecution and Redemption of Sergeant Calloway, ed. Hazel M. McFerson, Mixed Blessings: The Impact of the American Colonial Experience on Politics and Society in the Philippines (Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 2002), 330. [23] Gill H. Boehringer, “Imperialist (In) Justice: The Case of Sergeant Calloway,” International Association of Democratic Lawyers, 3. [24] Ibid, 324. [25] Peter Keppy, Tales of Southeast Asia’s Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians, and Popular Culture, 1920-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 43. [26] Anne Anlin Cheng, Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). [27] Shane Vogel, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, and Performance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 70. [28] Henry Jenkins, “Pop Cosmopolitanism,” 114. [29] Arwin Tan writes on the political economy Philippine bodabil and how “Filipino musicians responded to the capitalist imperative of a growing market and audience while also maintaining a space for the negotiation of relations between the divergent cultures of the hegemonic empire and the colony” (85). See Arwin Q. Tan, “ Bodabil Music and the American Empire,” Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, eds. Adil Johan & Mayco A. Santaella, 2021. [30] Michael Denning, Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution (New York: Verso Books, 2015) , 6. [31] Ancheta, “Rise of the Naughties,” 338. [32] Ibid, 336. [33] Maria Luisa Camagay, Working Women of Manila in the 19 th Century (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1995). [34] Nick Joaquin, “Pop Culture: The American Years,” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 (Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978), 2734. [35] Nick Joaquin “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird,” Collected Verse (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila Univeristy Press, 1987), 80. [36] Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 256. [37] Nick Joaquin “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird,” 81. [38] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). [39] Maureen Mahon, Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020). [40] Maggie Calloway, “Impressions of Singapore,” Malaya Tribune , 27 September 1928. [41] Anne Anlin Cheng, Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). [42] “Public Amusements,” Malaya Tribune, February 22, 1929, pg. 7. [43] Adria Imada, Aloha America: Hula Circuits Through the U.S. Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 6. [44] Other vaudeville artists performed in Hawaii for Philippine Ilokano laborers in the 1920s, including Atang de la Rama and Toytoy. Oftentimes they performed traditional kundiman in front of Philippines audiences. In addition, Isabel Rosario Cooper also performed as the “racial type” of the hula girl in her live performances and films. [45] “Philippine Islands Folk Dance for Singapore Show,” Morning Tribune, January 29, 1941, p. 4. 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Angel Velasco Shaw and Luis Francia, Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. New York: NYU Press, 2002. “Philippine Islands Folk Dance for Singapore Show,” Morning Tribune, January 29, 1941. “Public Amusements,” Malaya Tribune, February 22, 1929. Ryan, Tim A. “‘Music That Breathes and Touches’: The Implications of 1920s Blues and Jazz in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, ” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 48, 1 (Spring 2023): 1-23. San Juan E. “African American Internationalism and Solidarity with the Philippine Revolution.” Socialism and Democracy vol. 24, no. 2 (2010): pp. 32-65. Schenker, Frederick J. Empire of Syncopation: Music, Race, and Labor in Colonial Asia’s Jazz Age, PhD Dissertation. University of Wisconsin—Madison, 2016. Talusan, Mary. Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines . Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 2021. Tan, Arwin Q. “ Bodabil Music and the American Empire.” Eds. Adil Johan & Mayco A. Santelli, Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, 2021. Vogel, Shane. The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, and Performance. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 2009). Footnotes About The Author(s) JEWEL PEREYRA is a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Her first book project, Dreamed Dwelling: A Memory Reconstruction of Afro-Filipina Relational Aesthetics, re-orients scholarship on Afro-Asian social movements and military histories of the Black Pacific by amplifying Filipina and Black feminist and queer performance genealogies across the long twentieth century. Her research was awarded the 2024 American Studies Association's Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize and has been supported by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her writing also appears or is forthcoming in MELUS, Post45, and Beyond the X: Queer and Trans Filipinx Studies, and in exhibitions in affiliation with Little Manila Queens and Tufts University Art Galleries. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 212. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century. Marlis Schweitzer. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020; Pp. 276. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272. The Brothers Size Dead Outlaw 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival ZAZ Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25 Politics Take Center Stage in the Berkshires, 2024-25 Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Theresa J. May 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 Tú eres mi otro yo - Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy & the AnthropoScene Theresa J. May By Published on May 14, 2017 Download Article as PDF In 1994 Una Chaudhuri challenged theatre artists to provide new visions of what it means to be human within an ecological context, writing that the art of theatre must participate in “a transvaluation so profound as to be unimaginable at present.” [1] As the environmental crisis entered a new era of globalization in the 1990s, the embodied, immediate, and communal art of theatre became an apt site for illuminating the personal and social impact of significant ecological change. In the past two decades theatre artists and scholars have spun counter narratives and invented alternative forms that resisted environmental and cultural imperialism by exposing its mechanisms, amplifying the voices of those places and peoples it has silenced or ignored, and advocating ecological reciprocity between and among land and people. [2] When I first used the term “ecodramaturgy” in 2010, I sought to acknowledge and coalesce this praxis, and to emphasize the ways it might imaginatively intervene to forward environmental justice, sustainability and democracy. [3] Meanwhile, the fate of humans and other life forms on the planet continues on a trajectory of unparalleled risk. Scientists have suggested that we live on the cusp of a new epoch, the Anthropocene—in which human-caused changes to earth systems have outpaced all “naturally occurring” geologic, biologic, and atmospheric factors. Debate continues about whether the Anthropocene began with the age of colonization, the rise of extractive capitalism and the industrial revolution; or more recently, just after WWII when the planet saw an exponential increase in population, coupled with a rise in fossil fuel use, consumer consumption, urbanization, and nuclear radiation. This rise in CO2 in the planet’s atmosphere during the baby-boomer era is known as “the Great Acceleration.” The arts are vital in such times of crisis not only to imagine all that is at stake, but to enter feelingly into what Jeremy Davies calls “the predicament of living in the fissures between one epoch and another.” [4] In what follows I look first at Harvest Moon by José Cruz González (1994), which in many ways is emblematic of ecodramas that sought to expose the impacts of industrial and agricultural capitalism on land and communities. The play argues for environmental justice and affirms sustaining values of community, family and culture. I then turn to Burning Vision by Marie Clements (2003), an ecodrama reflective of the looming realities of the Anthropocene, which include trans-global interdependencies, irreversible exposures and losses, and generational breakage. The purpose of juxtaposing these two (separated only by a decade and which share much in common) is not to make predictions based on uncertain scenarios of “before” and “after” tipping points, but rather to search for what might become the stories of what Donna Haraway calls “ongoing and living worlds.” Stories and performances are the very expression of what she calls a necessary “tentacular thinking” that continuously reaches out, nurturing the “generative recursions that make up living and dying.” [5] Cruz González and Clements both employ a-chronological storytelling, moving freely and fluidly between times and places in works that demonstrate the shared vulnerability between people and land. Both expose environmental racism and capitalist imperialism; both reclaim people’s traditional rootedness in and rights to land; and both use theatre to presence the dead among the living, re-member lives lost, hearts broken, and histories forgotten. Both are instructive on ways to live in the fissures, but each envisions and embodies resilience differently. In Harvest Moon , hope resides in generational continuity as the play affirms the activist vision of a world in which sustainability and justice are possible. In Burning Vision , tentacular tellings embody what Haraway calls “co-presence”—neither hope nor despair, but a state of bearing witness to the breakage and living and loving through it. A Continuum of Shared Vulnerability: Harvest Moon The environmental justice movement of the 1980s and ‘90s represented the single most important conceptual gain in environmental thought of the late 20 th century. [6] In 1991 the Environmental Justice Summit redefined “environment as the places where people live, work, play and worship,” demanding attention and redress for those (women, children, communities of color, and the poor) who have been disproportionately impacted by the shadow sides of industrial/consumer capitalism, such as landfills, incinerators, toxic waste sites, and other “sacrifice zones.” [7] The EJ movement dismantled the longstanding conceptual binary of “nature” vs “culture,” asserting a human place in, not apart from, the natural world. It claimed urban environments as spaces worthy of environmental concern and ecological tending, and demanded that environmental organizations examine the white privilege of their most ardent proponents and heroes. In many ways the conceptual openings of the EJ movement were responsible for the recognition that theatre has been always/already rife with ecological ideologies and implications. Ecodramaturgy emerged to emphasize the intersectionality of community, identity, the body and the land, and to celebrate the power of communities and individuals to enact meaningful change in the creation of a more just and sustainable world. Many Chicano/a and Latinx playwrights had engaged ecological issues in their works long before ecotheorists ever articulated such a project, illuminating a continuum of shared vulnerability between lands and peoples, and revealing the complex ways that oppression and displacement from homeland, family, history, heritage, and language has had consequences for human and environmental health. Yet, with the exception of Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints and the work of Teatro Campesino, Latinx theatre has been underrepresented in studies of ecotheatre. [8] Harvest Moon is an act of remembrance, resistance and resilience through which José Cruz González tells the history of four generations of a Mexican-origin American family. [9] Their stories assert the presence and vitality of the family’s real-world counterparts in a century of North American environmental history. Developed and workshopped as part of the Seattle Group Theatre’s 1991 Multicultural Playwrights Festival, Harvest Moon premiered at the Group Theatre in 1994, at a time (like ours) of heated national debate about immigration Particularly in the western states, debates over bi-lingual education and citizenship for the children of undocumented workers were becoming increasingly polarizing and xenophobic. (Proposition 187, denying many basic services to non-citizen residents, had just been approved in California.) [10] The action begins as Cuauhtemoc, a contemporary young man of the early 1990s, returns to the mural his mother (Mariluz) painted before she died. [11] On a wall “near a harvest field” in “a valley filled with dozens of farms” so that it will “greet the farmworkers on their way to work and on their way home,” the mural, like the land itself, is an archive of his family’s history and cultural heritage. Cuauhtemoc “carries a backpack and a small tree seedling wrapped in burlap. He looks at the mural…searches for a place to plant the tree…begins digging a small hole but discovers something”—his mother’s paintbrush buried in the soil. In this moment Cuauhtemoc encounters his mother’s spirit, and what was “faded and overgrown with weeds” comes to life around him (11-14). Cuauhtemoc encounters his parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, and is able to forgive his mother (who died when he was a small boy) for spending so much time during her final days painting a mural rather than playing with him. [12] His ancestors’ stories of commitment, skill, cunning, and sacrifice become the ground on which he stands. Like the tree Cuauhtemoc plants for his mother, the play lives into and informs his life going forward, arguing not only that social, economic and environmental justice are integrally connected, but also that making sustainable and just choices requires us to remember our histories, listen to the stories of our ancestors and the land itself. Muralists like Mariluz helped transmit the stories that birthed the mythos of Aztlán, rooting the movimiento in a shared ancestral story, and siting that history in the neighborhoods, streets, alleyways, underpasses, and parks of the communities whose story they told. [13] Murals like Judith Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles or Chicano Park in San Diego function as a visual representations of oral histories, proactive and public assertions of presence that (re)claim both past and future. Inspired by a mural that he passed on the way to school as a young man, Cruz González suggests that theatre, like a mural, may be best understood as a visual form that can summon history much in the way that memory functions—associatively, anachronistically, emotionally—treating spaces and places of habitation as archives of memory and records of human action. [14] Throughout the performance, actor/characters move into and out of tableaus that bring to life the history that the mural represents, transforming history into flesh and blood presence on stage. As memory associates with memory, the story moves in and out of time periods, and characters appear at various ages in significant moments in their lives. As memories connect and collide in the space of the theatre, the audience also encounters the full arc of 20 th century American environmental history—a history in which Mexican-origin Americans are present and integral. Working the generations backwards from 1990, we might imagine that Cuauhtemoc was born in the late 1970s; his mother, Mariluz, was born in the early 1950s, growing up and coming of age during the movimiento and witness to the early years of the farmworkers’ movement in California. Her parents, Ruben and Gloria, were born during the Dust Bowl and Depression; Henry and Lupe, Cuauhtemoc’s great-grandparents, would have come to the United States from Mexico in the years following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, when economic and political turmoil caused many to emigrate in search of work and safety. Woven into this arc, other significant moments in the environmental history of the continent come to life. [15] A first generation US citizen, Ruben came of age during WWII, when the US government instituted the bracero program that sought Mexican guest workers for US fields, canneries, and slaughterhouses. Soto, Henry’s friend, and a kind of uncle figure in the play, remembers “an army of laborers. Hundreds of men attacked the harvest each day. There’s not enough work for us all and yet we come by the truck loads” (17). Laborers in the booming post-WWII California agricultural industry lived in barracks without adequate food, clean water or sanitation. “I’m surprised these old barracks are still standing. I can’t believe we ever lived in them. The Grapes of Wrath or what?” muses a 17 year old Mariluz. Her reference is a reminder to the audience that the hardships endured during the Depression and Dust Bowl by white families like John Stienbeck’s beloved but fictional Joads were also felt by Mexican-origin Americans. [16] Cesár Chavez’s family was one among many landowners in the southwest who lost land in the farm consolidations and liquidations precipitated by the drought of the 1930s, and who came to California looking for work in the growing agricultural industry. [17] In this way, Cruz González couples the experiences of Anglo American workers’ struggle to unionize for just wages and healthy living conditions in the 1930s with the farmworkers movement of the 1960s, and the experiences of economic immigrants in the 1990s. Union organizing in the 1930s resulted in labor laws that improved working conditions and wages across many industries, but farmworkers were excluded from guarantees and protections that white workers gained. Meanwhile, the influx of white farmworkers to California as a result of the Dust Bowl migrations displaced Mexican-origin workers. Many were deported to Mexico, including, ironically, families who had lived on and worked the land since California was part of Mexico. [18] It was not until 1978 that farmworkers won a minimum wage on par with other workers; and they are still not adequately protected from industry toxins. In 1994 Harvest Moon resonated with ongoing debates over so-called guest worker programs under H-2A, as well as larger questions about immigration, citizenship, and the economic migration that promises to increase as a climate change proceeds. [19] The generational perspectives of his mother, grandparents, and great-grandparents help Cuauhtemoc understand that the politics of unionizing, immigration, green cards, and the undocumented are personal, and shaped by the history his elders have lived through. In a scene set in the 1960s, some family members are inspired by the young Cesár Chavez and the organizers who have come to town. Ruben’s wife, Gloria, becomes a union organizer, but the older Henry warns against making trouble. “We have no papers,” he reminds Lupe. Henry’s fears are multiple and layered, including not only the immediate threat of deportation, which would separate great grandparents from children and grandchildren, but also a justified fear of violence. Throughout the 1930s and ‘40s, union organizing frequently was violently suppressed by state and local law enforcement who carried out the bidding of agribusiness. [20] Soto, on the other hand, is both a US citizen and a decorated WWII veteran, and his legal status allows him to stand up and speak out in a way that Henry and Lupe cannot. As he puts on his WWII uniform to proudly participate in a UFW rally (United Farm Workers of America), we learn that he supports an extended family in Mexico. Through these family elders, Cuauhtemoc learns the complicated ways in which each generation carries Mexico within them; the way each lives in the borderlands, regardless of citizenship. The environmental justice movement of the 1990s fueled public outrage over farmworkers’ exposure to pesticides. Companies like Monsanto sold miracle chemicals promising bigger crop yields, but the shadow of such harvests comes to rest in the bodies of farmworkers and their families. In a party scene (also set in the early 1960s), Soto arrives with tomatoes for Lupe. “ Hijole , those tomates are huge,” Henry exclaims. The harvest was good, Soto tells her, but while the patrons are vacationing in Europe and buying new trucks. The workers have only “a few centavos in our pockets, some tomates the size of grapefruit” (21-22). Post WWII agro-chemicals that made California the “breadbasket of the world” (and the 5 th largest economy in the world by century’s end) did not trickle down to farmworkers. Mariluz remembers that she and her brother Manuel worked alongside their parents and grandparent in the pesticide-laden fields. As the scene comes to life, Ruben shouts at the sun, exhausted from the heat. “This shit is robbing me!” Henry tells him to drink some water and get himself under control because the patron is watching. “I don’t need water! It’s dignity!” he shouts. “We live in an old bracero barrack. We bathe outside from a pipe. My children are always sick …” (31-32, my emphasis). Ruben’s rage at dehumanizing conditions is redoubled as the sound of an approaching crop dusting plane overtakes the scene. “Where are the children?” Gloria runs at the airplane, shouting the name of the grower, pleading for the safety of her children. “Don’t spray Mr. Matterson!” and then “It’s too late.” Exposures to pesticides and herbicides have been at the center of the UFW’s concerns since the beginning of La Causa . In 1969, Chavez testified before the House of Representatives about the grave dangers of economic chemicals—part of the increased mechanization of food production. His testimony cites the regular practice of spaying workers, including children, in an unregulated industry, and the illness, injury and death that occurred with regularity in the fields. [21] We later learn that Mariluz’ father Ruben died of heart failure while working in the fields, a reminder that farmworkers suffered increased health risks and shorter life expectancy as a result of labor and living conditions. Mariluz, who comes of age during the movimiento , is part of a growing Mestiza consciousness that prized newly reclaimed heritage. [22] Even after her diagnosis, Mariluz spends what little time she has left painting the mural, making sure her own son has a record of his history. Some key agricultural pesticides were regulated in the 1970s and ‘80s, including DDT (banned in 1972 in the US). But the then new Republican governor of California, George Deukmejian, refused to enforce regulations and hold growers accountable to the law, prompting Chavez to organize a second grape boycott with its goal to ban the “economic poisons” suspected of causing higher incidences of cancer in farmworkers when compared to the general population. Mariluz’ premature death from pesticide-related cancer in the early 1980s indicts the government’s disregard for the health impacts of pesticides on families like Cuauhtemoc’s. In another scene set in the 1970s, Mariluz’ brother, Manuel, announces he has joined the Navy. Mariluz worries he will be sent to Vietnam, a war in which Mexican-American soldiers took risks and gave their lives in higher numbers than Anglo soldiers, in part to signal their “American-ness” in the face of racism at home. In Vietnam they were exposed (together with others who served in combat) to chemical herbicides and pesticides. Defoliant weapons like Agent Orange used in Vietnam were not so different from chemicals used regularly in the fields. [23] Throughout the play Cuauhtemoc is haunted by the Jaguar Warrior, who appears in the play at moments when courage and ferocious resistance are required. Played by the actor who plays Ruben, the Jaguar Warrior connects Ruben’s anger at systemic injustice with the mythic fierceness of Aztec warriors who fought the conquistadors, and for whom his grandson is named. The Jaguar Warrior binds human and animal together with the story of Aztlán, rooting the struggles of the twentieth century in an older, sovereign, connection to the land on both sides of the border. The Jaguar Warrior entreats Cuauhtemoc to recognize himself, yet Cuauhtemoc demands, “What do you want from me? […] Who are you?” After his journey through his mother’s mural stories, Cuauhtemoc begins to understand the Jaguar’s answer: “ In Lak’ ech .” “ Tú eres mi otro yo ,” Mariluz translates. “You are my other self” (73). Mariluz’ impulse to paint a mural of her family history comes when she is diagnosed with cancer. Like the trees her family the mural will live on in real time and space, nourishing a community‘s future long after her individual death. The mural is “alive before you, transcending time and space just like the ancients did long before Einstein!” she explains to Cuauhtemoc (13). At the end of the play, Cuauhtemoc returns to his seedling. “I am planting a fruit tree for you….I now know why I’m planting it.” Mural and tree give flesh to the past in a way that changes the future. The mural is a message of empowerment and pride, and a reminder of a lineage of belonging, and like the tree, requires cultivation: It is meant to call forth a consciousness in Cuauhtemoc that will empower him in the world, and that he must tend within himself. In this way, painting the mural, planting the trees, and the performance of the play itself are acts of habitation : life-giving, sustaining actions that contribute to the vitality and ecological health of the community. But as Cruz González’ memory of the mural that had fallen into disrepair on his school route suggests, both the mural (community history) and the trees (ecosystems of that same community) need to be tended. Anchored in the counter-narrative of a Chicano/a imaginary that provided a foundation to the movimiento , Harvest Moon connects myth and history to geography and personal lived experience: Tú eres mi otro yo . We are bound to one another and to the land in ways that transcend time and national borders. The land is our other self; what we do to the land we do to ourselves. “Can the dead forgive the living?” Cuauhtemoc asks. Can the dead forgive us for making the same mistakes they made? In Harvest Moon , human destinies are linked to one another and to the planet in ways that will require not only a recognition that “ Tú eres mi otro yo ,” but also a reckoning with the costs of having ignored for too long our human interdependence with one another and with the more-than-human world. Enter the Anthropocene The interdependency celebrated in Harvest Moon as a kind of generational continuity between past, present and future is increasingly under threat. Our shared vulnerability with the natural world has ruptured into an entirely contingent, and in many ways random, chance of survival. Where is theatre’s efficacy in a world that has sown the seeds of its own destruction? In the section that follows I use Marie Clements’ Burning Vision , to illuminate an ecodramaturgy for the Anthropocene. In The Birth of the Anthropocene , Jeremy Davies follows argument and counter argument as stratigraphers struggle to agree on the epoch’s beginning. [24] Davies also weighs the “backlash” against the idea of the Anthropocene in light of its ethical, political and social implications. Cultural theorist Donna Haraway pushes back against dangerous cultural interpretations of the Anthropocene, arguing that naming this new epoch “Anthro” perpetuates a human exceptionalism that, ironically, may include our own extinction. Why quibble over a name? Once our collective bones and material remains of our varied dreams are laced into earth’s geologic tapestry of deep time as a thin strand of stone, what does it matter? Names matter because they privilege points of view and can accumulate imprecise meanings in the popular imagination, like debris settling into consciousness, and in this way, Haraway suggests, they may not only name but call forth a particular future. Naomi Klein, Jason W. Moore and others suggest that humans as a species are not the cause of climate change, certainly not all humans equally. It is not humans, but capitalism—that economic juggernaut that rides roughshod over the planet in ever increasing extractive speed and efficiency, gouging its “marks in earth’s rocks, waters, airs and critters” – that is the geologic force of epoch proportions. The Capitalocenes and the Anthropocenes are both counterfeit Haraway argues, because each tends to succumb “to abstract futurism and its affects of sublime despair and its politics of sublime indifference,” ignoring the grieving voices of mothers (human and non-human), and forgetting the work of spiders, microbes, rocks and moisture, for these too are working to “save” the planet. [25] Both terms, she argues, perpetuate and privilege those very aspects of collective human-ness that fueled the engines of climate change—technological supremacy, managerial science, western chauvinism and determinism, along with historicity that fails to account for, or even be concerned about, the lived experience of people, creatures, and places. [26] The annihilative forces of industrial capitalism, including fossil fuel use, nuclear testing and radiation, and consumption-based cultures, are products of colonization that has been (and still is) played out on and in human and other animal bodies, ecologies, and geographies. To be clear, Haraway does not take issue with the science (among scientists there is no debate that human-caused climate change will precipitate geologic shifts, marking the planet forever). Rather, she cautions against the Anthropocene’s seemingly implicit vision : scenarios of mass extinction, economic collapse, human death, and the end of so-called civilization as we know it. As these narratives layer into the popular imaginary, they naturalize catastrophe and invite an attitude of “game over,” which in turn nurtures dis-compassion, disconnection, and intellectual distance from lives and living that will be ongoing. It is precisely this aspect of her critique that has been useful in thinking through the potential contribution of theatre in the age of the Anthropocene, asking: what visions of our intermingled future will we call forth? Davies might dismiss Haraway’s quibbling as nonsense, and indeed such discussions may seem academic to those who attend community meetings to strategize in the face of rising seas. As Davies points out, the term has many uses and a wide girth of meanings that invite not only geoengineering trajectories, but philosophical and political ones. The term itself, he suggests, is a wake-up call that provides “an opportunity to comprehend the environmental calamity in its full dimensions.” [27] In the Anthropocene, he argues, “environmental movements will need to be concerned above all with environmental injustice and with fostering ecological pluralism and complexity in the face of the simplifying tendencies of the Holocene’s final phase.” [28] Urging a “living within the crisis” that parallels Haraway’s emphasis on earth systems kinship, Davies calls for “vigilant resistance against the searing away of multifaceted socioecological systems and their replacement by vulnerable, saturated monocultures” in order to insure that the “jerky crossing between epochs can be cushioned by upholding states of life—both ecosystems and human societies—that are variegated, intricate, and plural, one in such lively forces of all kinds contend with and interweave with one another.” [29] The Anthropocene also requires creative and critical methodologies for decolonizing (not just de-capitalizing); specifically for naming the ways in which climate change has been a product of historical patterns of white supremacy predicated on land taking, rapacious extractive practices, slavery, and rampant disregard for the rights of life and land. It will be some time before cultural theorists and scientists find cohesive ways of talking about the future of earthlings, and so this paper does not seek to reconcile the disparate and protesting voices that endeavor to chart a path of maximum compassion into the unknown. The tension between Haraway and Davies is useful, however, because it suggests an ecodramaturgy that not only foregrounds the disproportional effects of climate change, tracking the intersectional ways that gender, ethnicity, and economics inform the severity of impact, but also one that puts the shoulder of theatre to the wheel of envisioning a future, helping humans and non-humans inhabit the ambiguities and contingencies of relentless transition. While this direction is not terribly different from what I urged in 2006, when I wrote that ecodramaturgy must map “the connections between social injustice, human and other bodies, and environmental exploitation,” the urgency is greater in the face of recent political events. [30] Indeed, the usefulness of theatre has increased not only as a provocateur of activism, but as a means to engage in embodied and affective exploration of ways-of-connecting, coping and grieving. Stories that envision apocalypse, Haraway contends, are luxuries of the (yet) un-endangered. Her advice to dramatists is to heel close to the site of impact: the embodied experiences of creatures including humans living-with and dying-with one another. De-centering not only the human, but the primacy of biological notions of kindship, and taxonomies altogether, she urges envisioning kinship across all matter (“making oddkin”), and attending to our individual and collective response-ability in these times. In this way theatre can take a stance that Haraway calls “staying with the trouble”—neither driven by activist hope, nor elitist despair (despair is always a mark of elitism: elephants, refugees and coral reefs have no such luxuries), but “tuned to the senses” and mindful of “mortal earthlings thick copresence.” [31] Theatre can help us develop the kind of soulful muscle that staying with the trouble will require. Just such a poly-attentive a way-of-being-in-the-world is apparent in Marie Clements’ Burning Vision , as it illuminates a web of ecological, cultural and personal consequences of the atomic age. For some stratigraphers the birth of the Anthropocene, could be “set with unimprovable specificity on July 16, 1945, ‘at 05:29:21 Mountain War Time’…This is the moment of the Manhattan Project’s first nuclear weapon test, Trinity: white light in the pre-dawn New Mexico desert.” [32] Whether this geologic moment will ultimately be the “golden spike” matters less than the specter of annihilation that both the bomb and the Anthropocene have unleashed in the collective imaginary. Burning Vision is a tentacular story of the making of the first atomic bomb that foregrounds multiple and multiplying relationships across time, space, culture and species (including species of mineral). The action begins on August 6, 1945, with a countdown followed by the “sound of a long, far-reaching explosion that explodes over a long, far-reaching time,” and then a cascading flash of detonation (20). The arc of the play transpires in the split second between that first flash of light and its reign/rain of sudden death, and the stories of the play’s 18 characters are told by the light of the earth-shattering, history-destroying, human-made culmination of what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls the plundering of the planet. Clements’ Burning Vision presences and makes visible the lived experiences of humans whose bodies were plundered in the service of the forces that precipitated climate change. [33] Written in four “movements” like an orchestral score, Burning Vision is meant to be embodied, not read. Dramatic structures of beginning/exposition, middle/action, end/resolution are non-existent. This is a play about being in the middle. Like an Escher painting, the middle moment is a site of intersection where form is undone in a process of becoming. Local places, individual people and creatures, diverse and specific cultures across the globe, and different historical moments across time collapse into one another in a kind of double and triple exposure. The play blurs the boundaries of space/place and ruptures any sense of geographic logic, as characters in Japan emerge from the bottom of a lake in Northern Canada, or a factory worker from Pittsburgh descends into the belly of the earth where he meets a woman who works as a radium dial painter from the 1920s. Unfathomable time is both expanded and compressed. Like the “deep time” geologists assign to the Anthropocene, the bomb turns our gaze back on this moment of now, asking how we will be-in-relation as the world changes utterly. The play also insists on another kind of time: an intersecting, simultaneous time that bends upon and within itself, defying rational chronology in favor of the embodied present of the theatre. The voices and images of each movement emerge, overlap, intersect and collide. Between each movement, the sound of caribou hooves on tundra give voice to a time immemorial when traditional Dene communities follow the migration of caribou around Great Bear Lake in the Northern Territories. [34] Through the sounds of hooves and the voice of the Dene elder and prophet, the action of the play proceeds and comes round to where it began: the moment of “now,” the middle moment. Burning Vision presences a time-space that Laguna Pueblo poet and theorist Paula Gunn Allen explains as an “achronology” particular to indigenous authors: a “tribal concept of time [that is] timelessness.” Similarly, a tribal concept of space is multidimensional. Gunn Allen’s time-space is similar to contemporary physics in that the self is conceived “as a moving event within a moving universe.” [35] The play’s achronological structure allows a searing vision to rupture the hegemonic assumption that humans are separate from one another, other critters, the planet, or our collective earth-history. But it does something more, something essential to the project of living in the Anthropocene—affirming survivance even as evidence accumulates to the contrary. In Decolonizing Methodologies , Linda Tuhiwai Smith recognizes that scholarly and creative deconstruction of hegemonic systems (like those that precipitated climate change) provides “insight that explains certain experiences,” but does not “prevent someone from dying.” [36] Decolonizing, Smith argues, consists of (re)claiming (stories, lives, land); celebrating (culture, women, survivance); indigenizing, or “centring of the landscapes, images, languages, themes, metaphors and stories in the indigenous world”; and from that vantage point envisioning a different future, a way forward. Burning Vision carries out what Smith calls “indigenizing projects,” not only by dissembling the ideologies and systems of plunder that make all humans “test dummies,” but asserting improbable intimacies and incongruous solidarities. Burning Vision grew out of Clements’ desire to trace her First Nations/Dene family history in the Northwest Territory, a history which in telling reclaims stolen lands. “I had taken a trip to the Great Bear Lake region with my mother. I wanted to tell this story of my family’s genetic connection to the history of the land up there, and to the running of uranium.” [37] The play follows the hand-to-hand route of the “black rock”—from which both radium and uranium are harvested and plutonium is made—from the theft that set claim to it and the miners that unearthed it, to the Dene ore carriers, boatmen, stevedores, and “sandwich girls,” that worked along its watery passage across Great Bear Lake and down the Mackenzie River to Fort McMurray, where it was loaded on trains bound for Ontario refineries and, ultimately, the labs and test sites of the Manhattan Project. Staying with the trouble—that is, insisting on the primacy of relatedness—Clements accounts for the disproportional impact that uranium mining had (and climate change is having) on Dene communities. Weaving together the stories of those who worked on and in the mine with the stories of Japanese characters in Hiroshima, where the material stolen from Dene land was ultimately ignited, Clements challenges how we remember and whom we remember, creating a transnational countergeography that makes previously invisible relationships explicit. “What was extraordinary to me,” Clements said, is that “one person’s decision not only impacts that person and their community, but has an effect beyond, in this case, an effect that encompasses the whole world.” In a similar way, theatre can ground the abstraction of the Anthropocene in human decision, desire, and agency. The “money rock,” as the Dene called it, was claimed by the Labine Brothers, white prospectors who laid claim to the ore and founded El Dorado Mine on Great Bear Lake. According to the oral account of Dene elders (which carry the same authority as written eye witness accounts under Canadian law), the whites traded sacks of flour for the ore: “They say it was…Beyonnie, who first found the money rock at Port Radium. Beyonnie gave it to the white man, for which he received a bag of flour, baking powder and lard about four times.” [38] Signaling the land theft operative in their extractive capitalist exploits, the brothers thrash about in the dark of the theatre, collide with walls and objects, and discuss what to trade for their claim. “What’s an Indian gonna do with money? We’ll give him some lard and baking powder and he can bake some bread. Sure! What the hell! What the hell is an Indian going to do with a rock anyways, at least he can eat the bread.” [39] Meanwhile, in the center of the stage, the rock itself waits, fearing discovery. In Dene worldview the ore is a living being, personified in the play as Little Boy, a “beautiful Native boy…the darkest uranium found at the center of the earth.” Little Boy is “discovered”, chased, captured; then escapes and runs away, desperate to “go home”, back to his place in the earth. But once loose upon the earth he cannot return. Discovered in the beam of a flashlight, the boy runs for his life; like the many children who ran away from Canadian Indian boarding schools, his place in the world has been destroyed. His new place is not one he chose, rather one precipitated by the commodification of his rock-flesh as part of the first atomic bomb. Throughout the play’s tentacular weaving of a trans-national, trans-temporal, trans-species, inter-cultural community, Rose, a young Métis woman makes bread. A kind of payment for the ore from which the bomb was made, bread calls attention to the flesh of human bodies and that of the plants and animals we take for sustenance. She describes herself as a “perfect loaf of bread” that “is plump with a rounded body and straight sides. I have a tender, golden brown crust which can be crisp, or delicate. This grain is fine and even, with slightly elongated cells; the flesh of this bread is multi-grained” (58). Each of us is just such a grainy substance, and we make and unmake ourselves, Rose suggests, by the way we engage the elements of the earth. In the first Movement, Rose carries a sack of flour over her shoulder. As she walks, a thin stream of flour leaks out, inscribing a circle in the space of the stage—a circle in which the audience is implicitly included. She mixes the ingredients—a recipe learned from her mother. “Substances meeting like magic” she says (39). “Flour, yeast, salt, sugar, lard, liquid. Bread” (59). By the third Movement, the sacks of flour become indistinguishable from the sacks of uranium ore carried by Dene workers. The wind mixes the white flour leaking from Rose’s sack with the black dust that infects the environment. “The wind’s blowing it everywhere,” Rose observes, “The kids are playin’ in sandboxes of it, the caribou are eating it off the plants, and we’re drinkin’ the water where they bury it…I guess there’s no harm if a bit gets in my dough” (103). Both bread and ore are material aspects of the earth’s body-becoming-human-body, permeable, interwoven. Fat Man and Little Boy, non-human characters named after the actual bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, become oddkin to humans. Fat Man is a “test dummy” living in an above-ground Nevada test site, where mock homes, complete with foodstuffs, canned goods, appliances, and manikins representing the stereotypical 1950s nuclear family, were constructed to test the deadly effectiveness of “the gadget.” Fat Man animates the mindset that made the bomb; ideology incarnate, he is an all-American male, a “living room soldier” (94). Both Little Boy and Fat Man demonstrate Jane Bennet’s notion of “vital matter,” in which the distinction between life and non-life is dubious at best. [40] All matter, she argues, has a kind of life that can come to life, with which humans and other critters interweave, and to which humans have obligations as oddkin. By the fourth Movement, Fat Man realizes that, he too is expendable, one whose body and labor have been commodified in the military-industrial project of nuclear arms superiority. Even Fat Man is radicalized when he discovers that, like the ore, the lake, and the air itself, his life force has been mined. Finally aware of his connection to the others, outraged and embattled, he screams at the Brothers Labine: “This is my neighborhood, you hear me … you…you…liar. […] you are all a pack of goddam liars!” (115) Great Bear Lake is one of the largest and deepest freshwater lakes in the world, and its presence percolates through the soundscape of Burning Vision . The lake is the center of life for traditional Dene who depend on it for sustenance. Dene villages fished for trout and followed the seasonal migration of caribou herds around the lake. Clements draws on and bends a Dene legend that tells of a medicine man who journeys to the heart of Great Bear Lake. As the story goes, after a “trout steals the medicine man’s hook…he dives deep into the lake’s abyss” to retrieve his hook. There he “takes on the spirit of the loche” and finds the “living, breathing heart, called the Tudzé” that gives life to the world of plants, animals and human beings. In Clements’ play, Eldorado’s wet-mine tunnels become liminal passageways that extend to the other side of the earth. At the moment of the atomic blast in Hiroshima, a Japanese fisherman named Koji, holding a trout he has just caught, looks up and cries out, “Pika!”—the Japanese word for the brilliant flash of atomic detonation and meaning “the light of two suns.” Koji falls into darkness, journeys through the heart of the earth, and surfaces (like a trout) in Great Bear Lake. Two Dene stevedores aboard the Radium Prince haul him out of the water; Rose gives him dry clothing, and the possibility of new life. Koji’s path mirrors a 1998 journey taken by six Deline residents from Port Radium, Canada, to Hiroshima, Japan, on the anniversary of the atomic bomb to convey the Dene people’s regrets and sorrow that ore from their land was used in this destructive way. [41] Meanwhile, a Dene Widow keeps a vigil fire for the ore-carrier husband she has lost to cancer caused by radiation exposure. Foregrounding the ways humans are commingled with the land, as well as asserting the longstanding kinship of Dene with their traditional lands, Clements’ play suggests that ceremonial remembering and grieving in relation to loss of land and loved ones may be a right response to climate change.In “Climate Changes as the Work of Mourning,” Ashlee Cunsolo Willox argues that “grief and mourning have the unique potential to expand and transform the discursive spaces around climate change to include not only the lives of people who are grieving because of the changes, but also to value what is being altered, degraded, and harmed as something mournable.” [42] Traditional Dene practice is to burn the earthly possessions of those who die so that they may cross over, but the Widow cannot let go of her lover’s clothes, especially a jacket that she made and beaded. The Widow knows that the land resides in the fabric of our bodies: “I miss the smell of sweat on his clothes after a long day hunting. I miss how the land stayed in the fabric even when he got inside the cabin” (44-45). She pulls him to her in a dream, calling on their historic kinship with the earth, and resisting the doomsday change that her waking hours struggle to comprehend. “There are plenty of trout and caribou to last us till we die” (70). Yet, each day she wakes to his absence. Like the theory of the Anthropocene, Clements’ characters are concerned with remains—those traces that contain stories. “It is always the little things of his that take my breath away. The real things like a strand of his hair lying on the collar of a caribou hide jacket he loved…the real things like the handle of his hunting knife worn down from his beautiful hands that loved me. The real things…” (87-88). Koji also sites/sights the real, the “little things,” as his spirit roams the post-blast “landscape of notes.” “There are notes left on anything that still exists. On pieces of houses, on stones shivering on the ground, on anything that did not perish…hope remains nailed to what has survived…a tin box of pictures, a rock wall, a rice bowl…a chair, a typewriter, a neighbor, a woman” (51-52). Remains point both toward past and future. Both nuclear holocaust and the cataclysm of climate change provoke questions of what remains, but also what carries on? For philosophers and cultural workers, the questions of the Anthropocene also include, what is called forth ? For it is a vision, and as a collective imaginary has power to recast what it means to be a human. The danger, Haraway argues, in the apocalyptic vision of the Anthropocene (like the vision of nuclear annihilation) lies in forgetting that individuals, families, and communities of earthlings will live through the troubles ahead, even as many already have. After the bomb is dropped, Fat Man muses, “only Indians and cockroaches will survive”—a reminder to those who imagine the collapse of “civilization as we know it,” that indigenous people of North America have already lived through that particular cataclysm once to survive and thrive (83). Burning Vision invites a radical shift in world views, staging an anthropoScene that lives through and loves into the future. Rose, we implicitly understand, dies of cancer from the radioactive dust in her bread; but the child she conceived with Koji, the Japanese fisherman who fell through the world, lives on with the Widow, who tells him: “You look like her. You look like him. You are my special grandson. My small man now. My small man that survived. Tough like hope” (121). In this way, Burning Vision resists narratives of annihilation, and instead demands survivance, participating in what Haraway calls “threads of reciprocating energies of biologies, arts, and activisms for multispecies resurgence.” [43] In recent years ecodramaturgy has emphasized theatre as a way of knowing at once imaginative, affective, immediate, embodied, and communal, suggesting both new methodologies and meanings as scholars and artists work together to exercise a vigorous engagement with ecological ideas, communities and geographies. [44] This proactive ecodramaturgy moves beyond the call for new works and sustainable production practice to envision, as Chaudhuri writes, “putting the vast resources of lived embodied performance at the service of the program of radical re-imagination called for by the perilous predicament we find our species—and others—in today.” [45] What that theatre looks like, how it feels, and how it interfaces with the community it serves is an anthropoScenic task: to bear witness to the unfolding present and presence, making visible and palpable the interwoven ways, as Harawy writes, “we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. We become-with each other or not at all .” [46] Perhaps a significant aspect of theatre’s anthropoScenic leverage lies in the ways it can reimagine and revitalize the relationships between and among communities (human and otherwise) and places (material and imagined) even as they continue to be at risk. Going forward, anthropoScenic ecodramaturgy must not only foreground environmental justice, using theatre to illuminate the lived experience of people and non-human others feeling the disproportional impact of climate change, it must also forge theatre as a place of infinite enmeshment of us-ness, of unexpected intimacies across previously isolated differences with shared ecological vulnerabilities that enliven living through this epochal transition. Staying with the trouble includes understanding compassion as action, and offering a vision of how to inhabit a living-if-turbulent present. “[M]any different paths forward are possible,” Davies writes, reminding us that “the chaotic nature of the crisis means that the flap of any given butterfly’s wings might have disproportionate influence on the new world…” [47] This is time for butterfly wing theatre: conceived as a state of vigilance, a practice of humility, the work of mourning, the necessity of anger, a comic send up of the why-can’t-we-fix-this frustration of test dummies, and an invitation to honor our oddkin of radioactive rocks, caribou, sturgeon, and women pregnant with the future child of a future child who will see our marks and hear our voices across time, and like the Dene See-er, look back at a history that has not yet happened, saying in another tongue, “ Tú eres mi otro yo.” References [1] Una Chaudhuri. “’There Must Be A Lot of Fish in that Lake’: Toward and Ecological Theater,” Theater 25.1 (Spring/Summer 1994): 24. [2] . Ecodramaturgy is concerned with three interwoven aspects of theatre: 1) the lived experience of those represented in and present on stage (human and more-than-human), 2) the mode, means and methodology of production, and 3) the larger cultural context or historical moment of production, including theatre’s relatedness to the community it serves, and the politics into which it speaks. The first use of “ecodramaturgy” appeared in my “Kneading Marie Clements’ Burning Vision ,” Canadian Theatre Review , 144 (Fall 2010): 5-12. See also, “Beyond Bambi: Toward a Dangerous Ecocriticism,” Theatre Topics 17.2 (September 2007): 95-110; Wendy Arons and Theresa May, Readings in Performance and Ecology , eds., New York: Palgrave, 2011; “Ecodramaturgy and/of Contemporary Women’s Playwriting.” Contemporary Women Playwrights , eds. Lesley Ferris and Penny Farfan (New York: Palgrave MacMillian, 2013: 181-196. [3] The ecodramaturgy of the 1990s stressed theatre’s potential power to serve as a provocateur of change and a harbinger of transformation, and includes theatre making grounded in an activist ecological sensibility, as well as historiographic and critical projects that work to sharpen our ecological imagination. See May, 2007, “Some Green Questions to Ask a Play,” 96. [4] Jeremy Davies, The Birth of the Anthropocene (Oakland: University California P, 2016), 2. [5] Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham and London: Duke University P, 2016), 33. [6] Giovanna Di Chiro, “Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environment and Social Justice,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature , ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 298-320; Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (San Francisco: Island Press, 2005), Chapter 7. [7] See, for example, Joni Adamson, Mei Mei Evans, and Rachel Stein, eds. The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics and Pedagogy (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002); Ronald Sandler, and Phaedra C. Pessullo, Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007). [8] With the exception of Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints , Latinx plays and productions receive scant ecocritical attention—a gap that runs the risk of reinscribing the persistent “whiteness” of both mainstream environmentalism and theatre. See, for example, Cless, Downing. “Ecotheatre USA: The Grassroots Are Greener,” TDR 8.2 1996: 41-5; Linda Margarita Greenberg, “Learning from the Dead: Wounds, Women, and Activism in Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints,” MELUS 34.1 (2009): 163-185W; and Arons and May, 2014. [9] Here, I follow environmental historian Devon G. Peña, using Mexican-origin Americans to register the intersection of culture and shifting boundaries of nation states. Peña deploys this term as inclusive of those who claim American citizenship, but also those without papers but with a long-standing claim to the land, as well as those economic migrants who have “returned” to live and work on land that prior to 1849 was part of Mexico. Devon G Peña, Mexican Americans and the Environment: Tierra y Vida (Tucson: U Arizona Press, 2005). [10] See Herbert Dittgen, “The American Debate about Immigration in the 1990s: A New Nationalism after the End of the Cold War?” Stanford Humanities Review , 5.2 (1997). https://web.standford.edu Accessed 4 April 2017. [11] Cuauhtemoc was the Aztec warrior who ruled Tenochtitlan at the time of Spanish invasion and ultimate conquest (1520-21). The character name is itself indicative of the reclaiming of indigenous heritage that was foundational to the movimiento . [12] José Cruz González, Harvest Moon (Woodstock IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2002). All subsequent quotations from the play will be indicated in paraenthesis. [13] The Great Wall of Los Angeles , designed by Judith Baca, reclaimed the Tujunga Wash of the Los Angeles River; the murals of San Francisco’s Mission District by Juana Alicia and other muralistas throughout the 1970s and ‘80s reclaimed and renewed neighborhoods and alleyways; and Chicano Park in San Diego arose out of direct action by a community whose home-places had been destroyed in the construction of the Interstate 5 freeway and the Coronado Bay Bridge. See Lucy R. Lippard, Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (New York: New Press, 1990), 170-71. [14] Similar strategies are employed by playwrights addressing climate change and climate justice in their work. See, for example, the Howlround series on Theatre and Climate Change curated by playwright Chantal Bilodeau. www.howlround.com . [15] See Peña, Mexican American Environmental History ; Laura Pulido, Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest (Tucson: U Arizona Press, 1996, 1998). [16] See, for example: Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1996) [17] Ilan Stavans, ed. “Chronology,” in Cesár Chavez: An Organizer’s Tale: Speeches (New York: Penguin Group, Inc.), 2008: xxxvii. [18] Sarah Wald, The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Framing since the Dust Bowl (Seattle: University of Washington Press), 2016. [19] Useful analysis of the H-2A program and its historical context can be found in “No Way to Treat a Guest: Why the H-2A Agricultural Visa Program Fails U.S. and Foreign Workers” compiled by Farmworker Justice. www.farmworkerjustice.org . [20] See Pulido, Chapter. 3. [21] Stavans, An Organizer’s Tale, “Before the House of Representatives,” 65-74. [22] See Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books (1987), 2007). [23] Agent Orange and other herbicides were used against Vietnamese farmworkers—irony across geographies, cultures and nation-states that Luis Valdez ironizes and indicts in his play, Vietnam Campesino . See Jorge Huerta, Chacano Theater: Themes and Forms (Tempe, AZL Bilingual Press, 1982), 86-91. [24] For slightly differing narratives of the first use of the term “Anthropocene,” see Davies, 42-45; Haraway, 44-47; and Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Un-natural History (New York: Pacador / Henry Hold and Co., 2014), 107-110. [25] Haraway, 4. [26] See Haraway Chapter 2. [27] Davies, 194, and generally,“Conclusion: Not Even Past,” 193-209. [28] Davies, 6. [29] Davies, 6, 194; Haraway, 34. [30] May, 2007, 101. [31] Haraway, 4. [32] Davies, 102-104. [33] Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Speigel and Grau, 2015), 149-152. [34] See Kerry Abel, Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History (Montreal: McGill Queen’s U Press, 2005). [35] Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 69-70. [36] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (University of Otago Press, 1999), 3, and 142-162. [37] Personal interview. 12 Nov. 2009. [38] Cindy Kenny Gilday, “A Village of Widows,” in Peace, Justice and Freedom: Human Rights Challenges for the new Millennium , eds. (Gurcharan S. Bhatia, et al, Edmonton: U of Alberta P, 2000), 108. [39] Marie Clements, Burning Vision (Vancouver, BSL Talon Books, 2003), 37. All subsequent quotations from the play are from this edition and will be cited in parenthesis. [40] See Jane Bennett, Vital Matter: the Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press, 2010), 1-19. [41] Clements, 17. [42] Ashlee Cunsolo Willox, “Climate Change as the Work of Mourning,” Ethics and Environment , 17:2 (Fall 2012): 141. [43] Haraway, 5. Thank you to my quick-witted colleague, Tricia Rodley, for her trope of “anthropoScenic,” during my process of revision. [44] See Una Chaudhuri and Shonni Enelow, Research, Theatre, Climate Change and the Ecocide Project (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 1-21. [45] Chaudhuri and Enelow, 2. [46] Haraway, 4, my emphasis. [47] Davies, 200. Footnotes About The Author(s) THERESA J. MAY is Associate Professor at the University of Oregon. Her research explores intersections of ecology, cultural studies, and embodied performance. Previous publications include: Salmon is Everything: community-based theatre from the Klamath Watershed (OSU Press, 2014); Greening Up Our Houses (Drama Book 1994); co-editor of Readings in Performance and Ecology (Palgrave, 2011); articles in Theatre Topics , Canadian Theatre Review , Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , Journal of American Drama , Theatre Insight , American Theatre , and Howlround; chapters in Performing Nature (Peter Lang, 2005), Community Performance: A Reader (Routledge, 2007); Contemporary Women Playwrights (Palgrave, 2013). She is co-founder of Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS) ecodrama festival, and co-founder of ASTR’s Ecology & Performance working group. Guest Editor for Special Issue: Bruce McConachie Editorial Board for Special Issue: Meredith Conti Allan Davis John Fletcher Ju Yon Kim Scott Magelssen Julia Walker Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to American Theatre and Performance in the Anthropocene Epoch Searching for Solutions: Humanizing Climate Narratives in an Age of Global Change and Connectivity Towards a Synthesis of Natural and Human History: Situating the Municipal and Ecclesiastic Viceregal Arches of 1680 Mexico City within the Lacustrine The Anthropo(s)cenography of Ricardo Monti's Marrathon Food Futures: Speculative Performance in the Anthropocene Tú eres mi otro yo - Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy & the AnthropoScene Ruth Maleczech at Mabou Mines The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. Directing Shakespeare in America: Current Practices. By Charles Ney. London UK, New York NY: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Pp. 362. Acting in the Academy: The history of professional actor training in US higher education. Peter Zazzali. London, New York: Routledge, 2016; Pp. 219. 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