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. Works Cited Ancheta, Maria. “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. “At the Stadium Tomorrow,” Manila Times, January 4, 1927. Burns, Lucy Mae San Pablo. Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Boehringer, Gill H. “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. Brown, Jayna. Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Calloway, Maggie. “Impressions of Singapore,” Malaya Tribune , 27 September 1928. Camagay, Maria Luisa. Working Women of Manila in the 19 th Century. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1995. Casiño, Domingo N. “The Evil Influences of Vaudeville,” The Independent, July 31, 1926. Cheng, Anne Anlin. Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Cruz, Denise. Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina. Durham: Duke UP, 2012. Denning, Michael. Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution. New York: Verso Books, 2015. Effinger-Crichlow, Marta. Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones . Louisville, KY: UP of Colorado, 2014. Gonzalez, Vernadette Vicuña. Empire’s Mistress: Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper. Durham: Duke UP, 2021. Hartman, Saidiya . Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. New York: W.W. Norton, 2021. Hollandus, “The City Opera,” Malaya Tribune , September 28, 1928. Imada, Adria. Aloha America: Hula Circuits Through the U.S. Empire. Durham: Duke UP, 2012. Ira, Luningning B. “Two Tickets to the Vod-a-Vil.” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 . Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978. Jenkins, Henry. “Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence.” Eds. M.M. Suárez-Orozco & D.B. Qin-Hillard, Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Joaquin, Nick. “Bye-Bye Jazzbird.” Collected Verse . Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1987. —.“Pop Culture: The American Years.” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 . Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978. Keppy, Peter. Tales of Southeast Asia’s Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians, and Popular Culture, 1920-1936. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Mahon, Maureen . Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll Durham: Duke UP, 2020. McMahan, Matthew. “‘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): 43-61. Miranda, Isidora K. “Creative Authorship and the Filipina Diva Atang de la Rama.” Journal of Musicological Research, vol. 40, no. 4 (2021): pp. 297-322. Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2003. Ngozi-Brown, Scot. “African-American Soldiers and Filipinos: Racial Imperialism, Jim Crow, and Social Relations,” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 82, no. 1 (1997): pp. 42-53. Olson James S. and Mariah Gumpert. “Charleston,” The New Era of the 1920s: Key Themes and Documents . New York City, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017. Ontal, Rene G. “Fagen and Other Ghosts: African-Americans and the Philippine-American War. Eds. 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.

Jordan Schildcrout Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 1 Visit Journal Homepage Refusing the Reproductive Imperative: Sex, Death, and the Queer Future in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom Jordan Schildcrout By Published on March 5, 2015 Download Article as PDF Apocalyptic narratives, based on fears and fantasies about the end of the world and the destruction of humanity, often turn on a character’s success or failure in producing or protecting a child. In such dramas, the survival of a child represents humanity’s hope for the future, and characters go to great lengths to ensure the existence of the next generation. As Lee Edelman has argued in his critique of the ideology underlying such narratives, “reproductive futurism” mandates that the fight for the child is the fight for the future, thus privileging reproductive heteronormativity and stigmatizing the non-reproductive or queer as “the negativity opposed to every form of social viability.” [1] Indeed, certain anti-queer ideologies, based on a loose mixture of biblical narrative and Darwinian theory, argue that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people are inherently detrimental to the survival of humanity. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that most apocalyptic narratives see queer people as, at best, irrelevant, and, at worst, to blame for the destruction of the human race. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s widely-produced comedy boom [with a small b] (2008) invokes the dictates of reproductive futurism but playfully subverts them, astutely “queering” the typical end-of-the-world fantasy by placing the fate of humanity in the hands of two characters who fail to reproduce. [2] This apocalyptic sex farce follows the travails of a gay male biologist and the female journalist who refuses to have sex with him, even though they are literally the last people on earth. Nachtrieb’s play was originally developed at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory in Providence, Rhode Island, and then premiered off-off-Broadway at Ars Nova in New York City in March 2008, directed by Alex Timbers. Nachtrieb’s 90-minute, one-set, three-character comedy soon had dozens of productions, from major regional theatres such as the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., to smaller alternative venues in Ithaca, Iowa City, Dallas, and Pasadena. The Theatre Communications Group (TCG) cited boom as the most-produced play of the 2009-2010 season, [3] and by the beginning of 2015, it had over 100 productions in the US and abroad—including Argentina, Germany, Malaysia, and Mexico. Most theatre critics reviewed boom enthusiastically, admiring its synthesis of farcical humor and apocalyptic themes. Many noted the “edgy” and sexy energy of the comedy, praising it as “screwball,” “oddball,” and “wacked-out,” but had difficulty articulating the play’s more thoughtful underpinnings. [4] Ben Brantley of the New York Times astutely recognized the play’s concern with “our enduring fascination with and need for myths about the beginning of life as well as its end,” while Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune myopically dismissed the play because he didn’t find it “credible.” [5] Critics tended to reference the fact that Jules is gay, but they did so parenthetically, as if his homosexuality were simply a funny obstacle to the goal of reproduction. In failing to understand how Jules’s homosexuality functions in the play, theatre critics overlooked the ways in which this wacky comedy presents a challenge to widely-held assumptions about reproduction and the role of queer people in creating the future. Staging the Apocalypse: A Future Without Queers and Queers Without a Future Stories about the end of the world appear in many societies and in many eras, and they inevitably bear the traces of the cultures that produced them, expressing anxieties over real world problems such as war, nuclear destruction, disease, environmental disaster, racism, and poverty. In plays, films, and novels about the apocalypse, the narrative’s optimism or pessimism about overcoming such problems often depends on whether a child, as symbol of the future, survives. For example, both Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) and Liz Duffy Adams’s Dog Act (2004) are apocalyptic comedies that contain hope for the future, concluding with the birth of a child or the promise of heterosexual mating. [6] In twenty-first century cinema, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), based on the novel by P. D. James, and John Hillcoat’s The Road (2009), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, both offer a grim but hopeful story in which a child survives in a hostile and decaying world, thanks to the sacrifices of a heroic father or father figure. [7] A bleaker future, marked by the failure of reproduction or the death of a child, is depicted in plays such as Endgame (1957) by Samuel Beckett, Marisol (1992) by José Rivera, and Fucking A (2000) by Suzan-Lori Parks. [8] In Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), a mother desperately tries and fails to save her young son from the coming apocalypse, and the film ends with the world evaporating in a blinding white light. [9] In these apocalyptic plays and films that focus on the fate of a child, LGBT characters are typically not central to the story of the future. The diminishment or absence of LGBT people within many fantasies of the future is not surprising, given the powerful rhetoric that situates queer people as antithetical to the future of families, the nation, and humanity itself. Such anti-queer rhetoric relies on three key arguments to create the link between queer sexuality and the end of humanity: 1) the wrath of God against a society that tolerates queer sexuality, 2) the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among men who have sex with men, and 3) the non-reproductive nature of same-sex relations. The struggle against such rhetoric can be seen in the political sphere, where the gay rights movement has fought for the decriminalization of same-sex relations, the health and dignity of those living with HIV/AIDS, and the rights of families headed by LGBT people. In the realm of culture, queer theatre artists have created plays that often ask more complex questions—and, in some cases, offer more subversive answers—about the queer future. In the American theatre, one can see how plays have responded to each of the three key anti-queer arguments that link LGBT people with the end of humanity. Certain religious leaders interpret the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19) as evidence that God will eradicate whole populations, not simply for being homosexual, but for tolerating homosexuality within the culture at all. Therefore, anti-gay forces have blamed the very existence of queer people within U.S. borders for everything from hurricanes and earthquakes to terrorist attacks—as prominent televangelist Jerry Falwell famously did in the days immediately following September 11, 2001. [10] In some cases, the “threat” posed by the existence of LGBT people extends to the destruction of life on this planet as we know it. Take, for example, Harold Camping, a Christian minister with a popular radio show, who predicted the end of the world would occur on 21 May 2011. As Scott James wrote in New York Times , Camping believed that this destruction would occur because “God has been angered by mankind’s sins, like the growing acceptance of homosexuality.” [11] In response to the use of religious ideology to vilify queer people, some plays have attempted to reclaim religious narratives for LGBT people, including Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi (1998) and Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told (1998). [12] Although both plays employ elements of camp, they also contain sincere attempts to undermine the religious rhetoric that imagines queer people as “abominations” who will bring about destruction. McNally’s play depicts a gay man whose life parallels that of Jesus Christ, ultimately bringing grace and salvation to other queer characters. Rudnick’s comedy imagines a gay couple, Adam and Steve, first in the Garden of Eden and then in modern-day New York City, with Adam eventually serving as a sperm donor for a lesbian who gives birth, allowing a lesbian couple and a gay couple to collectively raise the child. When Adam asks what destroyed Sodom, Steve simply answers, “Tourists.” [13] Both plays have proven popular in productions around the country, but they have also met with protests and even death threats. To reposition queer people on the side of creation rather than destruction within the biblical narrative is a subversive and therefore controversial act. The devastation caused by AIDS has also figured prominently in cultural narratives about apocalypse. During the relatively brief era between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Global War on Terrorism, Peter Coviello wrote that “AIDS unseated nuclear warfare as the defining apocalyptic threat to American health and security” and also brought about “the full-scale and unilateral vilification of homosexuality.” [14] Coviello emphasizes the political ramifications of this shift, noting that “the epidemic thus presents to the American public a threatened civic apocalypse whose undeniable menace tacitly sanctions the mobilization of any number of state forces.” [15] The most acclaimed and influential play to confront the relationship between AIDS, government, and the future is Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1992), which boldly imagined a gay man with AIDS at the center of a cosmic battle over the fate of humanity on earth. [16] Angels call on Prior Walter, a drag queen suffering from the effects of a weakened immune system, to become a prophet who will tell humanity to stop moving forward, but Prior refuses this prophecy and instead declares, “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens.” [17] It’s not people with AIDS, but rather greed and self-interest, that threaten the ideals of America, and Kushner imagines Prior Walter and other queer characters moving into the future as part of the national fabric. The third major argument that conflates queer sexuality and the apocalypse focuses on reproduction. Studies of LGBT families have shown that “37% of the more than 8 million LGBT adults in the United States report having had a child,” proving that, while queer sexuality may not be reproductive, many queer people are. [18] But anti-gay arguments assume that when it comes to the Darwinian drama of the perpetuation of the species, queer people—and the acceptance of queer people—will lead to a biological “dead end.” This rhetoric can typically be found in arguments against the political rights and social acceptance of LGBT people, as seen in a 2011 editorial by conservative columnist Jeffrey Kuhner in the Washington Times : By its very nature, homosexuality cannot fulfill the primary function of sex: procreation and the reproduction of the human race. It is inherently a socially barren act. A homosexual society is a childless one—doomed to extinction. [19] In the homophobic imagination, queer people are assumed to have no role in the future, and, indeed, they play an active role in destroying the very possibility of a future, because they do not bear children. The theatre has contradicted this notion of “childless homosexuals” by offering numerous representations of LGBT parents, many of them appearing in the most widely produced gay plays and musicals. In some cases, bisexual characters have children from previous heterosexual relationships, as in Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (1968); and many plays depict gay and lesbian lovers taking parental roles in relation to the other partner’s biological child, as in Jane Chambers’s Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1980), Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman’s La Cage aux Folles (1983), and James Lapine and William Finn’s Falsettos (1992). [20] Other plays depict gay characters as non-biological parents: as able helpers to their heterosexual friends, as in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958); as foster parents, as in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy (1982); and as adoptive parents, as in The Kid (2010), a musical based on a memoir by Dan Savage. [21] Some plays show queer families going through the biological process of pregnancy and childbirth, including Paula Vogel’s And Baby Makes Seven (1993) and Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… (2009). [22] All of these plays serve to construct queer people as reproductive and involved in nurturing children. But must queer people reproduce or raise children in order to be seen as legitimate members of society? Can non-reproductive people serve only to signify the end of humanity in our fantasies of the future? The future of queer people and the role of queer people in the creation of the future—known among cultural critics and scholars as “queer futurity”—have been much discussed in recent scholarship. In particular, queer theorists including Lee Edelman, José Estaban Muñoz, and Jack Halberstam have contributed new perspectives on our understanding of queer futurity. In No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), Edelman argues that, symbolically, queers are presumed to be outside the reproductive social order, and therefore stand in opposition to the innocence, goodness, and hope for the future that “the child” symbolically represents. [23] In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009), Muñoz, while acknowledging the need to resist the reproductive imperative, argues against the homonormative politics of pragmatism that simply demand a place at the existing table. [24] Instead, Muñoz looks to art and performance as inspiring utopian visions of a queer future that is neither heteronormative nor homonormative. In The Queer Art of Failure (2011), Halberstam ingeniously finds optimism in “queer failure,” since the queer’s lack of success by heteronormative standards, including reproductive sexuality, can create resistance and viable alternatives to the dominant culture and ideologies. [25] These theories of queer futurity will help illuminate how Nachtrieb’s boom wrestles with dominant ideologies about sex, reproduction, and the future. In this comedy, Nachtrieb subverts and rewrites the apocalyptic narrative by recasting the usual roles, creating an end-of-the-world play with no parents, no children, and no new-born infant. Instead, it gives voice to the queerly non-reproductive and examines their role in making—or unmaking—the future. Apocalyptic Sexuality: Exploding the Reproductive Imperative The play boom takes place at a museum existing in the distant future, where Barbara, a vivacious but rather harried middle-aged docent, welcomes us to her exhibit. Here we can watch two very lifelike automatons enact the historical struggles of Jules and Jo, a man and woman surviving in an underground research lab after the rest of human life has been destroyed by a giant comet hitting the earth. Standing behind her futuristic operating console, Barbara serves as emcee, stage manager, dramaturg, chorus, and musician for this exhibit-performance. She is, perhaps, an unreliable narrator, and her supervisors, displeased with the dramatic license she’s taken over the years, decide to shut down her exhibit. We are watching the final run of an exhibit about humanity’s final run on earth. Except that humanity clearly did not end, because Barbara stands before us, evidence of the survival of human beings into the future. She is simultaneously the mother-creator of this exhibit and the child-creation of the forbearers depicted in the exhibit. Near the end of the play, however, we learn that Jules and Jo did not reproduce. So how is it that Barbara exists in the future? At first boom seems to be a play about sex, but it soon reveals itself as a play about reproduction, which is not the same thing. Jules is a graduate student in biology who has discovered that human life is about to be destroyed by a giant comet hitting earth, but he is unable to convince his fellow scientists of his findings. Desperate to save humanity, he places an ad on Craigslist for a woman who is interested in “intensely significant coupling” (18). Jo arrives at Jules’s lab, which he has converted into a bunker stocked with food and baby supplies—and there are also four fish in a tank, which quietly bubbles away through the entire play. Jules, because he is socially awkward and terminally unhip, might be described as a “nerd,” and his role as the New Adam is further complicated by the fact that he is gay. Jules has never had sex of any kind before, but he identifies himself as homosexual—based on what he clinically describes as the “non-randomness of [his] erections” (19). Perhaps one of the reasons Jules has never had sex is that, as a biologist, he sees sex strictly as a matter of reproduction; indeed, he seems terrified when Jo first enters and demands the “world changing” sex promised in Jules’s ad. The comedy of the aggressive woman chasing the demure man is an inversion of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, in which the male is ardent and the female is coy. This transgression of normative gender roles indicates the play’s queer leanings, and Jo expresses a very queer understanding of utopia when talking about sex. She explains to Jules the thesis of her current journalism assignment: Random sex as the last glimmer of hope in a decaying society.… No past. No future. All that matters is the moment. [Two people] meet to fulfill each other’s carnal needs, to find a moment of freedom, release, of sensory bliss that makes them forget how motherfucked up everything is. In no-strings sex, hope is still possible. (19-20) As José Muñoz reminds us, “Utopia lets us imagine a space outside of heteronormativity,” and here Jo (a straight woman with a masculine sounding name) recognizes the limitations of the present, eschews what Muñoz calls the “pragmatic politics” of neoliberal progress, and finds hope in a “no-strings” sexual ethos usually associated with non-reproductive or queer sexuality. [26] Once Jo realizes that this gay man is not what she expected, she attempts to leave, but she is stopped by the sound of the apocalypse. As Barbara dramatically plays the timpani, a low rumble grows louder and louder, finally exploding in a deafening boom. The stage then goes completely dark and silent, with only the fish tank still lit and bubbling, until Jules’s generators kick on and we see that both Jules and Jo have survived. Now the play turns from sex to reproduction, since the future of humanity depends on it, and the roles are reversed as Jules pursues the reluctant Jo. “We have to rebuild the human race!” cries Jules (32). Jules has completely absorbed the mandates of what Lee Edelman describes as reproductive futurism. Edelman argues that The Child is the fetishized symbol of the heteronormative social structure, and that “queerness names the side of those not ‘fighting for the children.’” [27] Jules, even though he is a gay man, is fighting for the child who represents the future of humanity on earth, the comic version of Clive Owen’s character in the film Children of Men (2006), who heroically risks his life to protect the world’s only infant. But Jules is no Clive Owen. He’s a bumbling nerd who comes up with ridiculous ways to try to impregnate Jo, each of them laughable failures, involving turkey basters, a booby-trapped toilet, and scenarios employing alcohol and a Jake Gyllenhaal mask (39). Even while his crazy schemes to create a child are farcical, the comedy is darkened by the fact that Jules is trying to force Jo to have a baby against her will. Around the time that boom was frequently produced across the country, America witnessed a spike in attacks on women’s health and reproductive rights, which rekindled debates about a woman’s authority over her own body, especially when it comes to questions of sex and reproduction. [28] In depicting Jules’s treatment of Jo, this play gives us a woman who is essentially a victim of kidnapping, attempted rape, and what Margaret Sanger famously called “enforced motherhood.” [29] To comprehend why Jules, an otherwise affable loser, is doing these horrible things, it is helpful to understand him as the disciple and representative of biological science. Darwinian orthodoxy holds that men with all their sperm are supposed to be promiscuous, but women with precious few eggs are supposed to be choosy. As biologist Joan Roughgarden writes, the theory of sexual selection holds that “a male is naturally entitled to overpower a female’s reluctance lest reproduction cease, extinguishing the species.” [30] In other words, the importance of that great Darwinian goal, the perpetuation of the species, trumps a woman’s right to choose and her authority over her own body. Nachtrieb’s play puts Darwin to the test by taking its inherent fear about the death of the species at face value: if the perpetuation of the species literally depended upon an act of sexual coercion, would it be “natural” and morally acceptable? The play’s answer is clearly no. It satirizes Jules’s mania for reproduction, and the fact that he is a gay man shows how ideologically constructed (rather than “natural”) this mania actually is. He tries to play the role assigned to him by Darwin, but he fails in the act. Which raises the play’s trickier question: Why does Jo refuse to reproduce? Unlike Jules, she is heterosexual, but she won’t play the role assigned to her in the Darwinian scheme and instead takes on the role of Edelman’s anti-child queer. Jo bluntly states: “I hate babies. They bother me physically, philosophically, and symbolically” (33). In refusing motherhood, Jo embodies what Edelman calls “the negativity opposed to every form of social viability” or, in Freudian terms, the death drive. [31] After the boom of the apocalypse, her death drive goes into overdrive. Against Jules’s insistence on the continuation of the species, Jo argues that “Maybe it’s time to end our reign of terror and die and decay and become soil.… Look at all the acts humans commit across the planet with casual, unconscious cruelty. We deserve to be blown up” (34). Furthermore, faced with the end of the world, Jo actually wishes to die—but she has an over-developed self-preservation instinct that renders her unconscious whenever she is in physical danger, and therefore she cannot cause harm to herself. So Jules needs Jo to create life, and Jo needs Jules to end her life. In this fight between Jules and Jo, between reproductive futurity and the queer death drive, the audience can perhaps see the dramatization of an internal conflict. What is the role of the queer person in reproductive futurity? If you are the last man or woman on earth, do you accept or refuse the imperative to reproduce? That imperative is supported by strong forces, including scientific, religious, and political discourses, and Jules represents the acceptance of that duty. Jo, on the other hand, represents what, as José Muñoz reminds us, Herbert Marcuse called “The Great Refusal,” the protest “against the repressive order of procreative sexuality.” [32] One of the ironies of the play is that the expected social roles have been reversed: the gay man sides with reproductive futurity, while the straight woman declares the Great Refusal. This refusal to reproduce has long been a theme in Western culture, and even a cursory glance at a few key examples will show the wide range of possible significations that can be found in these repudiations, which might be sinful, mad, virtuous, or revolutionary. God slew Onan because he “spilled his seed on the ground” in order to avoid impregnating his dead brother’s wife (Genesis 38:8-10), and many early Christians, certain that the End of the World was at hand, believed there was no point in producing children, preferring instead to focus on spiritual salvation. [33] The women of Aristophanes’s classical anti-war comedy Lysistrata (411 BCE) declare a sex strike, refusing to create children “borne but to perish afar and in vain” in the war. [34] The melancholy prince of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1601) shuns Ophelia by telling her it would be better to be locked away in a nunnery than “be a breeder of sinners” (III.i.122). In modern drama, the heroine of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1891) chooses suicide over motherhood, and Tennessee Williams’s Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), despite his family’s desire for him to produce an heir, refuses to create new life with his wife, Maggie. Resistance to “enforced motherhood” has been important throughout the history of the feminist movement, with many battles fought over contraception, sex education, abortion rights, and women’s authority over their own bodies. But the significance of motherhood can be especially fraught within various feminisms. Some writers take an essentialist view of the ability to mother as a source of empowerment, often despite the oppressions of patriarchal “pronatalism,” while others have viewed pregnancy and child-rearing as enslavement within the patriarchy, as a hindrance to female agency and autonomy. [35] Scholar Joyce Meier illuminates this tension when she writes about the social conditions behind the refusal of motherhood in African-American drama and literature, from Angelina Grimke’s Rachel (1906) to Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). In these narratives, women choose “sexual abstinence, abortion, and infanticide as strategies of resistance” against a racist social order that subjects black children to slavery, lynching, and poverty. [36] Audiences attending boom may find their understanding of Jo’s refusal of motherhood shaped to some extent by their familiarity with the drama of non-reproduction as it has played out in history, religion, feminist theory, and fictional representations. Ultimately, the play validates Jo’s “queer” choice not to reproduce, and Jules relinquishes his agenda of reproductive coercion. Jules and Jo have spent the entire play fighting about their personal responsibility to perpetuate the species, and in the end Jo wins the argument. Knowing that they can survive for only so long on limited supplies, they open the lab door, letting in the floods created by the comet hitting the earth, and presumably they drown. The final twist of the play [spoiler alert] is that this suicidal act is what actually perpetuates the species. Those four fish, silently swimming in their bubbling tank throughout the whole play, are now liberated by the flood, becoming the ancestors of humans like Barbara, who will exist 65 million years later—which, not coincidentally, is the span of time between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the emergence of homo sapiens . So Jules and Jo did save the human race, each in their own inadvertent way, since he nurtured and cared for those fish, and she liberated them. But inadvertent is the key word here. Both Jules and Jo are Darwinian failures, but by chance their failures lead to Barbara’s future. This, then, is the play’s argument: the future itself is queer, and the line from Point A to Point B is not a straight path. In her final speech, Barbara reminds the audience that the existence of humanity depends upon “millions and millions of lucky coincidences” and that “the world will just keep on spinning and moving and changing and adapting” (52). Here Nachtrieb seems influenced by the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who argued in his best-selling book Wonderful Life (1989) that homo sapiens are “a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree.” [37] Gould notes that “small and apparently insignificant changes” can impact the future in substantial ways, [38] and his theory of contingency posits that evolution does not follow an inevitable path of “progress” but is instead the result of “a staggeringly improbable series of events… utterly unpredictable and quite unrepeatable.” [39] Although finding the dramatic and ironic potential inherent in this contingent view of human existence, Nachtrieb also contradicts Gould’s thesis by creating a fantasy in which millions of years of evolution are, in fact, repeatable, resulting in human beings who create museums, play musical instruments, and tell stories about their origins. Endings and Beginnings The play boom mocks our human arrogance for presuming that we could control the destiny of the species even if we tried, and while we are obsessing about the cataclysmic boom, it would be wiser to listen closely and appreciate the constant bubble of nature and life that either will or will not carry on, either with us or without us. Traditionally, tragedy wrestles with fate and ends in death, while comedy ends in (heterosexual) marriage and celebrates life. In its own way, boom mashes the two genres together, finally accepting fate and death, but also bringing together Jo and Jules as a non-reproductive “couple” who accidentally create new life. Nachtrieb crosses the fine line between tragedy and comedy by highlighting the slippage between endings and beginnings, and our inability, because we cannot know the future, to distinguish between them. Other plays about our fears of annihilation, including The Skin of Our Teeth and Endgame , are built with cyclical structures, ending as they began and promising, if not the hope for new life, at least the hope for one more day. One can also see the conflation of beginnings and endings in the popular misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar and its “prediction” of the apocalypse in 2012, which falsely imposed linearity on a cyclical system, seeing “the end” in what is actually a new beginning. [40] Similarly, that moment when Jules and Jo open the door is simultaneously the end of one world and the beginning of another. Barbara’s museum exhibit presents both a tragedy and a comedy, a tale of death and birth, of the end and the beginning. [41] Nachtrieb, who double majored in theatre and biology at Brown University, has written a play that tests conventional notions about the perpetuation of the species, and in doing so he also challenges the reproductive imperative that has often been used to hinder the social inclusion and political equality of LGBT people. Like much of the best science fiction, boom does not directly address political issues but creates an imaginary world that allows the audience to consider more clearly the ideology at work behind a defamiliarized reality. While many plays provide depictions of good gay parents in response to the accusation that homosexuality is a biological dead end, boom challenges the very premise of that accusation. In the process, it also addresses the situation of anyone, regardless of sexuality, who may not comply with the reproductive imperative. Perhaps this is one reason why the play has been particularly successful at smaller “fringe” and university theatres that tend to attract younger audiences, who may be questioning how sex functions in their own lives and what they may or may not “owe” to the future. Of course people who choose to reproduce or raise children are contributing to the future, and I don’t believe that this play (or this essay) is meant to diminish the important role of parents, no matter the sexuality or the relationship status of the parent. Instead, I believe the play expands our understanding of who contributes to the future, including those who do not biologically reproduce but may help to build the future in other ways. Jules, for all of his neuroses, is not selfish, and we see him nurture the fish in his lab, caring for them even under the most dire circumstances. Jo’s radicalism and commitment to her own liberation ultimately lead to the liberation of those fish, too. So within the play’s fantasy, the ideal is a combination of responsibility to others (Jules) and a commitment to individual liberty (Jo), and when these two characters finally unite, they inadvertently fulfill their “destiny” as the new Adam and Eve. It’s also worth noting that Jo’s journalistic habit of writing down all of her experiences in Jules’s lab leads to the creation of the documents that will serve as the historical basis for Barbara’s museum exhibit. Language, knowledge, and narrative are among the gifts that Jo gives to the future. Through this fantasy of apocalyptic doom and new beginnings, boom engages with arguments about the position of queer people in society and in the future, especially around the question of procreation. Nachtrieb’s play is ultimately a comedy because, while it threatens its non-reproductive characters with doom, it also liberates them from the burden of the reproductive imperative and exonerates them for their “failure” to procreate. Seen from this perspective, Nachtrieb’s utopian fantasy aligns with Halberstam’s view that “under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world.” [42] The play directly argues against the use of reproductive futurity as an ideological weapon to enforce conformity or oppress the non-conforming. If nature is indeed based on chaos and chance, then the burden of mandatory reproduction is lifted, and all our anxieties about our duties to Darwin and to the future vanish. Once they accept their failure, Jules and Jo can finally embrace each other and face the end—which is actually a new beginning—together. Unlike apocalyptic narratives that focus on the production or protection of a child, boom gives the stage to two non-reproductive characters who give voice to their fears and anxieties about reproduction, and then are ultimately relieved of them. Nachtrieb’s play argues that 65 million years in the future, the rhetoric of the reproductive imperative, which says that queers have no role in creating the future, is just so much insignificant noise. None of us can know our role in creating the future. The deafening boom of “the end” may not be as momentous as we imagine, perhaps not even meriting a capital B. Meanwhile, from the quiet but persistent bubbling, new worlds beyond our expectations may emerge. [43] References [1] Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 9. [2] Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, boom (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2009). All subsequent references are incidated in parentheses. [3] “Top Ten Most-Produced Plays,” Theatre Communications Group. http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/attopten.cfm (accessed 19 January 2015). [4] Nelson Pressley, “The Elements Unite to Create Woolly’s Boom ; Production Crackles with Quirky Writing, Earnest Characters,” Washington Post (12 November 2008), C4; Bert Osborne, “When A Blind Date Predictably Goes Boom : Comedy About Two Outcasts a Change for Aurora Theatre,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (23 September 2009), D1; Kerry Lengel, “Offbeat Boom Delivers Apocalyptic Belly Laughs,” Arizona Republic (1 November 2009), AE4, www.proquest.com , (accessed 19 January 2015). [5] Ben Brantley, “Meeting Cute on the Eve of Destruction,” New York Times (21 March 2008), E3. Chris Jones, “Not With a Bang at Next Theatre, but a Muddle,” Chicago Tribune (16 September 2009), 3.3, www.proquest.com , (accessed 19January, 2015) [6] Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth , in Three Plays (New York: Harper Perennial, 1985); Liz Duffy Adams, Dog Act: A Post-Apocalyptic Comedy (New York: Playscripts, Inc., 2009). [7] Children of Men , directed by Alfonso Cuarón (2006; Universal City, CA: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2007), DVD; The Road , directed by John Hillcoat (2009; Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2010), DVD. [8] Samuel Beckett, Endgame (New York: Grove Press, 1958); José Rivera, Marisol (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1994); Parks, Suzan-Lori, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. “Fucking A.” in The Red Letter Plays . (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004). [9] Melancholia , directed by Lars von Trier (2011; Los Angeles, CA: Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2011), DVD. [10] John F. Harris, “God Gave U.S. ‘What We Deserve,’ Falwell Says,” Washington Post (14 September 2001) C3. [11] Scott James, “From Oakland to the World, Words of Warning: Time’s Up,” New York Times , 19 May 2011,http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20bcjames.html (accessed 14 June 2012). [12] Terrence McNally, Corpus Christi (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1999); Paul Rudnick, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2000). [13] Rudnick, 85. [14] Peter Coviello, “Apocalypse from Now On,” in Queer Frontiers: Millennial Geographies, Genders, and Generations , ed. Joseph A. Boone et al. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 42, 50. [15] Ibid., 50. [16] Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994). [17] Ibid., 148. [18] Gary J.Gates, “The Real ‘Modern Family’ in America,” CNN, 25 March 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/24/opinion/gates-real-modern-family (accessed 10 January 2014). [19] Jeffrey Kuhner, “Obama’s Homosexual America,” Washington Times , 24 February 2011. < http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/24/obamas-homosexual-america/ > (accessed 13 June 2012). [20] Mart Crowley, The Boys in the Band (New York: Samuel French, 1968); Jane Chambers, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (New York: JH Press, 1982); Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein, La Cage aux Folles (New York: Samuel French, 1987); William Finn and James Lapine, Falesettos (New York: Plume, 1993). [21] Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey (New York: Grove, 1959); Harvey Fierstein, Torch Song Trilogy (New York: Samuel French, 1982); Patrick Healy, “A Gay Adoption Becomes a Musical,” New York Times , 6 May 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/theater/07kid.html (accessed 26 January 2014). [22] Paula Vogel, And Baby Makes Seven (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1993); Michael Feingold, “Review: The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism, with a Key to the Scriptures ,” Village Voice , 11 May 2011, http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-05-11/theater/the-intelligent-homosexual-s-guide-to-socialism-and-capitalism-with-a-key-to-the-scriptures/full/ (accessed 26 January 2014). [23] Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). [24] José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009). [25] J. Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). [26] Muñoz, 35. [27] Edelman, 3. [28] “Editorial: The Campaign Against Women,” New York Times . 20 May 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/the-attack-on-women-is-real.html (accessed 13 June 2012). [29] The entrapment and coercion of women for the sake of reproduction in a decaying future society was most famously imagined by Margaret Atwood in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), made into a film starring Natasha Richardson in 1990. In this dystopian future, a patriarchal fascist authority categorizes women as wives, whores, or handmaids, who must bear children in a form of reproductive servitude. [30] Joan Roughgarden, Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 168. [31] Edelman, 9. An interesting example of the refusal of motherhood in an apocalyptic narrative can be found in the 1967 Czech film The End of August at the Hotel Ozone . After a nuclear war which seems to have killed off the world’s male population, a band of feral young women roam the countryside, killing animals for food and vandalizing the remnants of a dead society. At an abandoned hotel, they come across an old man who represents culture, domesticity, and the possibility of reproduction. In the end, the women murder the man and continue on their way through the countryside. The film seems to be a horror show about men’s fear of empowered women, but I believe a resistant feminist reading is also possible. Thanks to Susan Stryker for bringing this film to my attention. [32] Muñoz, 134. [33] Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Celibacy (New York: Scribner, 2000), 48. [34] Aristophanes, Lysistrata , trans. Jack Lindsay (London: Fanfrolico Press, 1926), accessed through Project Gutenberg, < http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7700/7700-h/7700-h.htm >. [35] Ann Snitow, “Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading,” Feminist Review 40 (Spring 1992), 32-51; Katharyn Privett, “Dystopic Bodies and Enslaved Motherhood,” Women: A Cultural Review 18:3 (2007), 257-281. [36] Joyce Meier, “The Refusal of Motherhood in African-American Women’s Theater,” MELUS 25:3-4 (Autumn-Winter 2000), 117-139. [37] Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 291. [38] Ibid., 287. [39] Ibid., 14. [40] G. Jeffrey MacDonald, “Does Maya Calendar Predict 2012 Apocalypse?” USA Today , 27 March 2007, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm (accessed 15 January 2014). [41] This slippage between apocalypse and genesis is neatly depicted in the poster design for the Woolly Mammoth Theatre production in Washington, DC. The image shows a group of comets approaching the surface of the earth—or perhaps a group of spermatozoa approaching an egg. The “heads” of two comets/spermatozoa form the double “o” of boom , signifying both the end and the beginning in the same graphic. [42] Halberstam, 2-3. [43] I’d like to thank Nick Salvato and Sara Warner for inviting me to present an early version of this essay at the Resoundingly Queer Conference at Cornell University. I’m grateful to the editors Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson for their support, and to David Foley, Libby Garland, and the anonymous readers at JADT for their extremely helpful suggestions during the revision process. This article is dedicated to all the scientists in my family and to my partner in the fishbowl, David Zellnik. Footnotes About The Author(s) JORDAN SCHILDCROUT is Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at SUNY Purchase. He is the author of Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (University of Michigan Press), and his scholarship has been published in Theatre Journal , Journal of American Culture , and Journal of Popular Culture . He also works as a dramaturg, most recently on a revival of Paula Vogel’s And Baby Makes Seven at the New Ohio Theater in New York City. 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: Phoebe Rumsey Editorial Assistant: Fabian Escalona Advisory Board: Bill Demastes Amy E. Hughes Jorge Huerta Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Esther Kim Lee 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 Refusing the Reproductive Imperative: Sex, Death, and the Queer Future in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom "Just Saying Our Goodbyes": Elegies' Queer Interventions into the History of 9/11 James Purdy as Playwright: A Retrospective Reading of A Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus Sur la Pointe on the Prairie: Giuseppina Morlacchi and the Urban Problem in the Frontier Melodrama Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Daniel Gerould | A unique anthology playwrights from Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania in the backdrop of rebellion, war and revolution. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Playwrights Before the Fall Daniel Gerould Download PDF Eastern European Drama in Times of REVOLUTION. In this unique anthology playwrights from Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania examine the moral and psychological dimensions of the transformations taking place in society during the years of transition from totalitarianism to democracy. Written before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the five plays reveal the absurdities of an inflexible system based on belief in abstract ideology that sacrifices the individual to dogma. These authors bear witness to the ravages of communism and to the traumas of its disintegration and lend their voices to the frightened and manipulated whose lives were stunted by entropic regimes. Edited by Daniel Gerould Preface by Dragan Klaić Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Watch BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers by Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. "A free and intimate portrait behind the scenes of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's creative process. In front of the camera, she shares with today's young actors her memories of the Amandiers school in the 1980s and her training with Patrice Chéreau." The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon Documentary This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country France Language French Running Time 61 minutes Year of Release 2022 "A free and intimate portrait behind the scenes of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's creative process. In front of the camera, she shares with today's young actors her memories of the Amandiers school in the 1980s and her training with Patrice Chéreau." produced by Agat Films & Ad vitam About The Artist(s) none Get in touch with the artist(s) stemilon@gmail.com and follow them on social media https://www.simonelephant.com/stephanemilon Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

By Daniel Gerould | A volume of previously uncollected writings by Daniel Gerould from Comparative Literature, Modern Drama, PAJ, TDR, SEEP, yale/theater and other journals. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Quick Change Daniel Gerould Download PDF 28 Theatre Essays and 4 Plays in Translation A volume of previously uncollected writings by Daniel Gerould from Comparative Literature, Modern Drama, PAJ, TDR, SEEP, yale/theater and other journals. Quick Change includes essays about Polish, Russian and French theatre, theories of melodrama and comedy, historical and medical simulations, Symbolist drama, erotic puppet theatre, comédie rosse at the Grand Guignol, Witkacy’s Doubles, Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Mrożek, Battleship Potemkin, and other topics. Translations include Andrzej Bursa’s Count Cagliostro’s Animals, Henry Monnier‘s The Student and the Tart, and Oscar Méténier‘s Little Bugger and Meat-Ticket. Foreword by Richard Schechner Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Dr. Kimmika L.H. Williams Witherspoon 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 From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater Dr. Kimmika L.H. Williams Witherspoon By Published on May 13, 2023 Download Article as PDF On, (May 25, 2020), for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the world watched the callous murder of George Floyd at the hands of members of the Minneapolis police department in Minnesota and Black Lives Matter protests erupted—not just in the United States; but, in Ireland the UK and across the globe. Two years earlier, thanks to a $50,000 Lumina Foundation for Racial Justice and Equity grant, the Temple University Theater department worked with a team of faculty, administrators and staff researchers to collect data, conceive and then mount the devised theater piece, called From Safe to Brave. That play was created from a series of Interactive Community Conversations (or, ICC’s), auto-ethnography, body-mapping and poetic ethnographies that pulled together all that research on the effects of race and hate crimes on college campuses across America. It was that research and devised performance—along with the subsequent racialized and polarizing political ecology that led to the development of the Performance Social Justice Model (PSJR) for devised theater. Methodology In response to the rise in hate crimes generally and specifically on college campuses in the US, in the context of a political moment, where a nation has been made to grapple with questions around white supremacy, police violence, Black Lives Matter and socio-political and health care inequities for their BIPOC citizenry, a Temple University team of scholars, staff and administrators, came together to apply for and were awarded a $50,000 Lumina Foundation for Racial Justice and Equity grant. Out of a pool of over 312 proposals, 12 were awarded; and the Temple University project, entitled Moving from Safe to Brave Spaces through Interactive Community Conversations , was one of them (2018-2019). Fifty-seven participants took part in those community conversations over a four-month period and, out of that research, scores of auto-ethnography, body-mapping and poetic ethnographies were created and collected that would become the devised theater piece From Safe to Brave . As PI, playwright and director of just one of the principal deliverables of the grant, that performance piece, From Safe to Brave , was originally produced for Temple University’s Randall Theater (April 23-24, 2019). Playing to standing-room-only crowds for its limited 2-day run, from its conception as a devised theater ecology, the From Safe to Brave project helped us develop a model for digging deep and exploring the impact of race and racism on the relationships of individuals on and through a community like Temple University— a large, urban, educational institution, deeply embedded in what was once, a predominantly Black and Latinx community. And then, there was George Floyd! As protests emerged around the world, the Temple Theater department wanted to remount that piece following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 for a virtual audience to contribute to the discourse and encourage healing. Ethnographies In the Performative Arts and Humanities, conducting and collecting ethnography that can become “performed research” can be an effective tool for mediating difficult conversations and diving deep into the various stakeholder perspectives while capturing community for the non-threatening, non-confrontational performance space. Engaging members of the community in research that results in performance oftentimes tempers and/or defuses their usual defensiveness to publicly discuss the, oftentimes, issues of contention. Instead, these kinds of devised performances can promote a willingness to s hare the other side of the story when convinced that their views will have equal platform and voice . This devised community performance grew out of research with an intergenerational tapestry of fifty-seven community voices made up of students, faculty, administrators and resident participants from the Temple University community, that used memory, narrative, song, poetry, and dance to speak to notions of race, racism , and the impact of hate crimes on college campuses. Performed Social Justice Research (PSJR) Model PSJR Model Model Phase Items Component Parts Purpose Challenges Outcomes ICC’s Akin to Focus Groups Interactive Community Conversation 5-15 participants per ICC Information, Consent Pre and Post Surveys Packing the ICC. Never reached full capacity. Demographic data; consent, Developing a shared lexicon Reflexivity Memory Writing Prompts Identifying Stakeholder Positions. Creation of auto-ethnography and personal narratives. We slotted an hour and one half for this portion. Needs 2-hour minimum Auto-ethnography, personal narratives, & poetic ethnography Visual Model Embodied memory Body Mapping exercises Creation of Body Maps as visual ethnography. Recorded explanations of map and key–– Additional ethnography. Slotted time: 1 ½ hours. Needs to be a minimum of 2 hrs. Creation of Body Maps as visual ethnography Recorded explanations of map and key— Additional ethnography. Data Analysis Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative data Reviewing and curating auto-ethnography Transcription, Data-mining Archival footage; Body maps Reviews the data; Audio and video ethnography Script development Framed Body Maps Dissemination of “Applied,” research data Devised Theater Auditions Casting Rehearsals Developing a DUI signage Turn-around time from rehearsals, to mounting the production. All the participating researchers should be invited to the performance. Performed Social Justice Research (PSJR) Model Following the murder of George Floyd (May 25, 2020), not long after the start of the pandemic, I was asked by my chair to remount that initial performance of From Safe to Brave . In the initial face-to-face version, my colleagues and I had used the PSJR model that we developed to collect and distill ethnographies from a wide swath of participants as they grappled with an incredibly complex racialized political ecology. As mentioned, that work became, first, From Save to Brave (2019) and then, remounted for a virtual audience, From Save to Brave Redux (November 2020). This PSJR model allows us to expand the understanding and definitions of ethnography and encourages us, as artists/activists to explore the importance of validating community stories in our work to improve social justice outcomes. Interactive Community Conversation (ICC) Relying on focus groups to inform our data collection on the efficacy of interventions, policies and procedures has been part of our work for years. Incorporating the Interactive Community Conversations or (ICC’s) into the model, relies heavily on storytelling and body-mapping. Using Interactive Community Conversations as the first phase of the Performance Social Justice Research, offers a creativity-centric tool that grounds our work in storytelling, theater and performance studies that can be employed to enhance the effectiveness of the kinds of ethnographic data that we capture that might not otherwise be gleaned from any other typical focus group. The ICC’s should still include information about the impetus for the research and mechanisms to consent to the research, as well as options as to whether they will or will not consent to the use of their auto-ethnographies, ethnographies and body maps to be used in the resulting performance. For our research, all of the reflexive auto-ethnographies that were prompt-driven were written in blue books that we provided participants at the start of each ICC. While all of the participants had the option to take part in all of the activities, at the end of each ICC, participants always had the option of keeping their Blue Books to themselves and not contributing their auto-ethnographies to the overall project. Participants could also opt to allow us to transcribe their auto-ethnographies anonymously. The PSJR model still incorporates some of the more traditional focus group components. Our project utilized pre and post-surveys. While optional, these surveys attempted to collect demographic, education and social science data, as well as to evaluative data to quantify the participants’ understanding of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion terminology and theories on race and anti-racism—both, before and after, each new activity would be introduced throughout the ICC’s. The post-surveys helped our research team evaluate the efficacy of the Reflexive Auto-ethnography and Visual Ethnography phases of the project. Cultural Competency: Developing a Shared Lexicon Following the pre-survey, to develop and encourage a shared lexicon, we introduced a discussion of terms that included words like: Power Privilege Racism Prejudice Institutional racism Violence Activism For those who will, likewise, try implementing the PSJR model, whatever your project is, identifying and defining the terms and theories that are integral to the subject matter and your research; then, reviewing and discussing those collectively with each group of participants evens the playing field , reduces the occurrences of misunderstanding and limits the instances whereby one or more participants who already know the terminology (or, terminologies) to then adopt and take on the role as specialists—and, thereby, potentially, intimidating the others. Reflexivity Model Phase Because PSJR operates as “applied performance research”, to promote community understanding and to expand the social justice ecology of the project, allowing participants to craft auto-ethnographies that speak to their own identity as one of the first reflexive exercises gives participants, not only a voice, but also gives them a sense of agency. Later, in the rehearsal process, these auto-ethnographies can be referenced to help mark and solidify how the work should be embodied. Poetic Ethnography Prompts Reflexive Writing Activities provided an easy, structured way to craft quick auto-ethnographies. For this project, we used several Poetic Ethnography prompts that I regularly use in classroom and workshop settings that are meant to operate as easy access points to promote creativity. Poetic Ethnography Prompts One Line on Identity Seven Squared Haiku on Race Happiest Memory free write Saddest Memory free write Using these reflective exercises, seemingly, made crafting and developing the auto-ethnographies easier. While some of the memories that participants wrote about and shared were indeed, rich—full of sights, sounds, feelings and emotions—some were, in fact, triggering and traumatizing. In our project, the prompt sequence allowed participants to quickly access the sometimes, difficult and challenging memories of race and racism and to expeditiously talk about those instances that so impacted their lives. If your project, likewise, tackles sensitive or triggering issues or trauma-informed memories, using auto-ethnography prompts offers a strategic way to briefly gain access to some of those challenging thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The key to collecting meaningful reflections is to keep the prompts focused, short, quick and easy and to give individuals an appropriate amount of time to share their reflections (or not to share , depending upon their comfort level.) Because the prompts are timed, individuals don’t get bogged down in over-thinking any one memory; and because they are being asked to reflect on their own individual stories, the research team has already assured them that they are already invested in each, individual participant’s positionality, personal narrative, participation and input. Visual Model Phase Rethinking Rene Descartes’ notion of Mind/Body Dualism (Rene Descartes, 1993) the Visual model phase of the PSJR work transforms Descartes’ ideas “I think therefore I am ” to one that acknowledges the importance of the emotional connections in our work as artist/activists and social justice advocates. I feel therefore I am (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020) builds on the research of people like Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and others, who acknowledge, that by “triggering moments of deep reflection, when people are thinking deeply about things that are really meaningful to them, they are triggering neurobiological connections.” (Immordino-Yang, 2016: 18) In other words, “reflection promotes deep thinking.” (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020, Performing Race : 45) Body Mapping For our project, we used Body mapping. My colleague Dr. Elizabeth Sweet, led study participants in the creation and collection of visual ethnographies . The body mapping provided for “a more kinesthetic accompanying narrative about how racism impacts the body.” (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020: Performing Race : 38) Participants were asked to think deeply about the answers to the following four questions: Draw how and where racism feels on or in your body. Draw the emotions that you feel when you observe racism. Draw the long-term impacts of racism on or in your body Draw on or in your body where you have strength to fight racism. (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020: 38 Performing Race ) In their creation of the 7-foot-tall body maps , these maps added another layer of texts that visually spoke to the trauma of racism in some spaces. (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020: 38) Before ending the body mapping activities, participants were asked to explain the Body Map Key for each map. These video-taped segments became the filmed ethnographic material and, some of the longer monologues in the final devised performances. The Interactive Community Conversations (ICC’s) validated participant’s thoughts, feelings and poetic ethnographies that would later become the devised or applied research data theatre. (Cohen-Cruz, 2010: 5) Data Analysis Model Phase Before reviewing and curating auto-ethnographies from the Reflexive Writing Activities, they needed to be transcribed. Transcription is one of the most important steps in the analysis process because so much of our communication strategies are tied to cultural competencies—gestures, eye movement, body language. In addition to the quantitative data collected from the pre and post-surveys administered to participants during each Interactive community conversation, the qualitative data gleaned from the transcripts will become the basis of the devised theater piece. From Script to Performance The transcription phase is the longest step in the performed research process. The more accurate and thorough the transcription process, the easier the step to distill the personal narratives, poetry and auto-ethnographies into a devised performance script with ensemble characters based on the real-life research participants from across the community. In performance, it is vital that everyone’s voice is acknowledged and a portion of everyone’s story becomes part of the scripted performance. In this way, we acknowledge the complexity of political ecologies and we contribute to social justice solutions by elevating and expanding community conversations. Because of COVID-19, in response to a world-wide pandemic, by Spring 2020, most of the world had experienced some manner or method of quarantine and sequestering. Many theaters were forced to cancel or reschedule performances—others, simply closed their doors. Following the murder of George Floyd and the season of summer protests that ensued, many of our nation's theaters were prompted to address growing concerns and to investigate and utilize digital and video technologies to continue to create, and to contribute to the expanding public discourse on violence and the racial reckoning. With that in mind, Temple Theaters revised fall season, included both some plays that would be performed as zoom performances along with some offerings that were intended to provide students and audience members alike with a safe in-person experience as well. As COVID numbers continued to rise, our Fall 2020 season needed to happen on Zoom ®. To speak to the racial reckoning following George Floyd’s murder, some new monologues, poems and songs were added to the original script. Actors, quarantining in their homes across the country, were sent ring lights, instruction on how to use them, and, in addition to regular zoom rehearsals, were also given blocking and tips on how to enhance their individual video-taped performance on Zoom. Using green screen technologies designed by Temple Theater graduate students and innovative video and sound editing by my colleagues, Jason Norris and Nick Gackenbach, From Safe to Brave Redux premiered on November 20th through December 7, 2020 on YouTube ®, Facebook ® and Temple Theater’s streaming links. Conclusion Ultimately, because of COVID-19, theater artists/activists, researchers and theaters had to become even more creative and entrepreneurial—for many of us, by using the PSJR Research model and dabbling and using some of the latest cutting-edge technologies to continue to tell our stories—even in a pandemic when our communities were hurting the most and needed to be separated from one another. As hate, injustice, racism, sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and oppression continues to raise its ugly head(s) and dominate our collective struggle for equity and justice, Social Activist theater will continue to rise in importance as a vehicle to advocate for social change. Because of the challenges of 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, theater as we knew it, had to transform and reimagine itself. For those of us already working with devised performance as community engagement, theater during the pandemic necessitated new theatrical devices to continue to do the work important to us as social justice artists/activists. As we have discussed in this work, Performed Social Justice Research (PSJR) is reality-based theater and instruction. It is participatory. It constructs knowledge and aligns history with more inclusive truths . By using the PSJR model, with the Interactive Community Conversations component, applied arts researchers can collect more nuanced ethnographic data beyond the more traditional focus-group studies. By using some of the methods outlined here in the PSJR model to collect, transcribe, analyze, then curate and disseminate Performance research, these same research methods can be used to extend some of the new theatrical devices we all had to develop during the pandemic and to expand our definitions of devised theater. Giving community members “voice” and allowing the ethnographies to speak for themselves, through the art and its text, as applied artists/scholars, we can contribute to our nation’s most challenging problems and to those conversations in the public discourse by providing a “genuine exchange between artists and community”(Cohen-Cruz: 3). In that way, we will not only “act as a witness” (Albert Camus, cited in Charlesworth, 1975:32); but we will also, be a catalyst for change. References Charlesworth, Max. The Existentialist and Jean-Paul Sartre. St Lucia. Queensland University of Queensland Press. 1975. Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy , edited by Stanley Tweyman. Routledge. 34–40. London and New York. 1993. Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen. Emotions, Learning and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience . W.W. Norton Company. New York. 2016. Williams-Witherspoon, Kimmika L. H. "Performing Race: Using Performance to Heal the Trauma of Race and Racism on College Campuses." In Storytelling, Self, Society. Wayne State University Press. (16:1, Spring 2020), https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/storytelling/ Williams-Witherspoon, Center for the Advancement of Teaching, (CAT) Lecture Breakout Session, January 7, 2020. “Performing SHOT: Personalizing North Philly, Poverty and Performance Poetry.” In Ethnographic in Pan Pacific Research: Tensions and Positionings. Routledge: New York. 2015. 36-55. Williams-Witherspoon. “On SHOT!: A Rationale for Research and Dramas Depicting Violence in the ‘Hood.” In Theatre Topics 23, no. 2 (2013): 167-183. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PX7H8mAoz0 Footnotes About The Author(s) KIMMIKA WILLIAMS-WITHERSPOON , Ph.D. (Cultural Anthropology), MA (Anthropology), MFA (Theater), Women's Studies (Graduate Certificate), BA (Journalism); is an Associate Professor of Urban Theater and Community Engagement. Recipient of the 2013 Associate Provosts for the Arts Grant; a 2008 Research and Creative Seed Grant Co-recipient, a 2003 Provost's Arts Commission Grant; a 2001 Independence Foundation Theater Communications Group Grant, the 2000 winner of the PEW Charitable Trust fellowship in scriptwriting, and the 1999, winner of the DaimlerChrysler "Spirit of the Word" National Poetry Competition. Author of Through Smiles and Tears: The History of African American Theater (From Kemet to the Americas) (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011); T he Secret Messages in African American Theater: Hidden Meaning Embedded in Public Discourse (Edwin Mellen Publishing, 2006). She has had over twenty-three of her plays produced. Her stage credits include thirteen productions and she is a contributing poet to twenty-six poetry anthologies. 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.

Collin Vorbeck Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 32 2 Visit Journal Homepage Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies Collin Vorbeck By Published on June 12, 2020 Download Article as PDF Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies . Edited by Rhonda Blair and Amy Cook. London: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 243+xii. Rhonda Blair and Amy Cook’s co-edited volume Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies advances the cross-disciplinary discourse inspired by the cognitive turn by interrogating the ways practitioners and audiences make meaning through our varied encounters with theatre. Buoyed by their individual groundbreaking scholarship in the field, the editors curate a complex collection of American and international perspectives that how “the implications of embodied, embedded, enacted and extended minds” impact engagement with a variety of performing arts (3). Their volume invigorates the intersection of theatre and cognition with incisive case studies that partner physiological and psychological research to expand our awareness of how we generate understanding of performance. Blair and Cook argue that our embodied experiences shape the meanings we draw from theatrical encounters, and they structure their book to explore the three cognitive relationships evoked by their subtitle: interpretation of the text, communication through action, and synergy of performance and environment. This structure subtly mirrors a production process and moves organically from script analysis through the rehearsal process to engaged performance, exposing cognitive revelations with each progression. The editors provide a salient overview of the current landscape of cognitive studies, and they succinctly introduce each section to frame their selected essays. Blair and Cook augment their cross-disciplinary emphasis by concluding each section with a response from a preeminent cognitive scholar. Culminating in an inventive After Words section, this invitingly conversational volume offers practitioners and scholars fresh perspectives on how theatre and performance create meaning on the page and on the stage. Blair and Cook’s first section explores the way language creates and sustains realities onstage by applying cognitive linguistics and metaphor theory to dramatic texts. Barbara Dancygier investigates how the materiality embedded within the script influences reception. She outlines what she calls the “dramatic anchors” in Julius Caesar and Richard II that trigger deeper meanings and layered connections throughout each play, directly citing Caesar’s mantle and Richard’s mirror as material elements that activate understanding (32). Laura Seymour’s essay also draws from Julius Caesar , focusing on the behaviors of the conspirators prior to the assassination. Seymour studies the act of kneeling and other bodily-situated references to address how these seemingly acquiescent actions engender metaphorical associations in readers and audiences. Vera Tobin moves away from specific dramatic texts to inspect the inherently theatrical elements of irony. She borrows from conceptual blending theory to illustrate how comprehending irony requires the activation of multiple mental spaces derived from “how we move around within a particular viewpoint configuration” (66). Cognitive linguist Mark Turner responds to this section by praising its interdisciplinary endeavors and outlining methodologies that will bolster future partnerships between cognition and performance. The second section examines the ways the enacted body creates and sustains meaning through a wide variety of artistic engagement, partnering performance strategies with neuroscientific research to investigate the power of perception. Neal Utterback’s essay proposes a theatre training model, for instance, that draws from the psychological and physiological rigors of Olympic competition to create an actor-athlete regimen. To prepare his student actors for sustained engagement in their performances, Utterback developed a process that uses “power posing combined with mental imagery and positive self-talk” to connect the benefits of cognitive perception to embodied results (80). Dance scholar Warburton surveys ArtsCross , an international collaborative event, and zooms in on the psychophysical experiences enacted during the rehearsal process. He compares the physical and mental output utilized when marking versus dancing full-out and concludes that the compression and compartmentalization of marking “reduces the multi-layered cognitive load used when learning choreography” (102). Christopher Jackman furthers the discussion of memory and suggests “an enactive model of cognition” that attempts to avoid the hurdles of self-consciousness in performance (108). Jackman’s mindful approach to training at times feels overcrowded, but his goal to build and maintain the skills of acting through neuroscientific methods is intriguing. Cognitive psychologist Catherine J. Stevens responds to this section by citing recent interdisciplinary studies that seek to deepen understanding of the embodied experiences explored by these essays, specifically attuned to dance and movement. The final section of Blair and Cook’s ambitious book considers how cognition evolves dynamically through engagement with the environment, stressing the importance of accounting for spatiotemporal realities when assessing potential meanings of a given event. Evelyn Tribble’s essay provides a broad overview of these relationships, using television cooking shows, the English Restoration theatre system, and copious cross-disciplinary sources to support her argument. Tribble contends that “distributed cognition” makes possible the “overwhelming cognitive load” required to perform, and that structures external to the body – a theatre, a school, or a familiar kitchen set-up – play a crucial role in understanding how to navigate a given situation (134). Similarly, Sarah McCarroll parallels the cultural signification of fashion with historical stage performances to argue that conscious “body images” and pre-cognitive “body schemas” coalesce to form what she calls the “body map” (144). Her fascinating study of the costume choices in J.M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton illustrates how clothing combines with the environment to both enable and restrict embodied action. Shifting modalities, Matt Hayler introduces a new approach to digital technologies and asks readers to actively engage online with his chosen examples. He argues that such engagement results in “reflexive relationships” that impart circular cognitive meaning by continually informing the experience through feedback loops (162). Philosopher Shaun Gallagher responds to this section by applying his “prenoetic” theory of human cognition to each essay, demonstrating the subconscious ways the body interacts with environments, clothing, and technology to make meaning (175). Blair and Cook further their cross-disciplinary endeavor by crafting a unique After Words section that provides deeper insights into the existing scholarship undergirding the emerging field. Through personal essays and interviews with a wide range of theatre practitioners, Blair and Cook reveal how pervasive cognitive studies has become to scholars and creators alike. Their conversation with Deb Margolis is particularly illuminating as the performing artist, teacher, and playwright discusses her own understanding of the important connection between the physical and cognitive limitations of the body. In a time when gathering for live performance is no longer an option due to pandemic, Theatre, Performance and Cognition finds a way to ingeniously engage with elements of the embodied experience that are simultaneously obvious and revelatory, and its essays speak to all levels of cognitive curiosities. What is more, the editors curate an excellent balance of dense but illuminating neuroscientific data and complimentary theatre-making examples. Blair and Cook’s thoughtful commentary throughout this book provides theorists and practitioners alike with inventive methods to approach current work and to create new scholarship, cognizant of the dynamic processes within our bodies that shape our understanding. Interest in cognitive/theatrical scholarship shows no signs of waning, and this volume further demonstrates the value of addressing complex aspects of performance with interdisciplinary lenses. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Collin Vorbeck Texas Tech 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 Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography Introduction: Local Acts: Performing Communities, Performing Americas The Architecture of Local Performance: Stages of the Taliesin Fellowship “La conjura de Xinum” and Language Revitalization: Understanding Maya Agency through Theatre Exploring the History and Implications of Toxicity through St. Louis: Performance Artist Allana Ross and the “Toxic Mound Tours” Finding Home in the World Stage: Critical Creative Citizenship and the 13th South Asian Theatre Festival 2018 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jen-Scott Mobley and Maya E. Roth 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 Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Jen-Scott Mobley and Maya E. Roth By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Playwright Jen Silverman. Photo: Joseph O'Malley and R. Masseo Davis. Playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and essayist Jen Silverman (they/them) won the Jane Chambers Prize for Excellence in Feminist Playwriting in 2012. Since then, Silverman has added nearly a dozen full length plays, several novels, and multiple screenwriting credits to their body of work . Before the pandemic, Silverman was pegged as a “downtown playwright” for works such as Phoebe in Winter, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties , and The Moors, among others . Most recently, Silverman’s play The Roommate ran on Broadway featuring Patti Lupone and Mia Farrow in 2024, and their adaptation of Strindberg’s Creditors ran at the Minetta Lane Theatre this past summer. Silverman’s work has been produced widely across the United States (Steppenwolf, The Goodman, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Huntington, Writers Theatre, among others) and internationally in Australia, the UK, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Spain, and elsewhere. Their books include: We Play Ourselves, The Island Dwellers , and There’s Going to be Trouble (Random House). Their essays have been published in The New York Times , The Paris Review , and Vogue . Honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim. More information can be found at: https://www.jensilverman.com/ Co-coordinators for ten and twenty years, respectively, of the Jane Chambers Prize, Jen-Scott Mobley (East Carolina University) and Maya E. Roth (Georgetown University) were delighted to connect with Silverman to discuss their trajectory as a writer and collaborator . An avid reader and wicked smart conversationalist, Silverman embraced our invitation to jump into the heart of discussion via two rounds of written questions-and-answers while they worked on a television project in LA. This interview was conducted via email in July and September 2025. It has been edited for brevity and clarity. · Maya E. Roth: We first encountered your work when you won the Jane Chambers Prize for Feminist Playwriting in 2012 for your beautiful, early and unexpected play, S TILL — which centers a distinctive array of complex relationships, ruptures and reinventions after a forty-year-old woman’s homebirth results in stillbirth . The imagery remains with me still: an irreverent single woman who cradles a pumpkin like her dead infant , her winsome still born adult-sized baby who roams for three days in search of his mother, a queer punk teen dominatrix who crushes on the older woman and paints toenails with the unborn son, a masked midwife-turned-dominatrix unleashing her rage at being scapegoated. When my college students read this play at Georgetown, they are simultaneously shocked, moved, and exhilarated. Likewise so when I taught Witch , your 2022 revisioning of the 17th century The Witch of Edmonton . While their subjects are so different, tonally both plays mix heartbreak, dark humor, disparate cultures, eclectic characters and audacity of storytelling. What are the cultural wellsprings that you are drawing from—What inspires any given project for you? Is there something you ask of yourself every time (a representational challenge, for instance) or is it unique from piece to piece? Jen Silverman : In my earlier work, I was drawn to wellsprings that were defiantly absurdist, places of juxtaposition and defamiliarization. My characters were struggling with intimacy and violence—systemic as well as interpersonal—but inside containers that refused what I saw as the well-ordered cleanness of realism. S TILL is a very early play—so much so that I rarely grant production rights to it anymore—but it definitely exemplifies some of those early touchstones. In more recent years, my plays have grown out of questions that I can’t shake, that I live alongside until the intensification of the question finds its way into a narrative structure. Then I try to interrogate that structure, without any preconception about what it should be and how it should move. This past year, Sonia Friedman commissioned me to do a new adaptation of August Strindberg’s Creditors. The play takes place between three people, in a sea-side hotel, across one night. It’s Scandinavian realism: emotionally heightened, lyrical, but realism nonetheless. And yet Creditors was the perfect container for the questions I had been living next to, about how we carry with us legacies of damage, when we choose tenderness in the face of violence, whether we can we rewrite our histories . . . and what happens to us when we can’t. I don’t think Strindberg shared my exact theatrical preoccupations—he thought of Creditors as a revenge play, and he had a particular soon-to-be-ex-wife in mind when he wrote it—but the specificity of that form was the perfect vessel for what I wanted to explore, in a way that it might not have been ten years ago. MER : This was one of the featured first productions of TOGETHER’s collaboration with Audible, right?! JS : Yes! TOGETHER is a new company formed by Sonia Friedman, Hugh Jackman, and Ian Rickson, and The Creditors was part of their first season at the Minetta Lane, along with Hannah Moscovitch’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes . MER : So those of us who didn’t see it playing in repertory with Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes can listen to Creditors (or teach or research it) via Audible X Together. How different is the audio version of your play compared to the stage one—or how does it work differently? JS : It’s the same text, but of course the format relies on sound to give what were previously visual cues: a door opening, an object being set down, and so on. Before the recording session, Ian and Jeremy Blocker and I had a really interesting conversation about one scene in which it might be hard to translate a visual cue into an aural one, and whether we might need to supplement with more text. I gave them a few extra words, but I’m not sure we ended up using them. MER : What did you think of that producing model? Chamber theatre, spare production values onstage, big names, dual releases on stage and A udible ? It’s one of those post-pandemic experiments in staging theatre and trying to make it accessible to a wider range of audiences: Beyond the audio releases, TOGETHER also offered a percentage of free tickets to community groups and steeply discounted ones for same-day purchases, right? D id the audiences indeed diversify? H ow so, if so, and what changed about the value and/ or reception from stage to audio, and from full-price tickets to disparate community groups? JS : I really loved being part of that first season. And it did feel a little Wild West-y in a fun way—stripped down, moving fast. Sonia and Ian came to me in December 2024, and we started rehearsals in April 2025. We did get a really diverse audience every night, not just in terms of the most obvious factors like age and race, though there was absolutely that. But it seemed like every audience was comprised of multiple audiences in terms of cultural reference points and their relationship to theatre. It made for an audience reaction that was pretty unpredictable in ways that were largely exciting and occasionally terrifying. Every night during the first week of the show, I would sit in the back row and feel like basically anything could happen, including disaster. And then if, by the end, the entire audience had become one organism, one creature breathing and moving together, it would feel like more of a miracle than ever. Jen-Scott Mobley : More directly, do you think these two experiments are helping theatre to successfully reach more widely? Any other innovative models you are excited by currently? JS : I do. And I’m also excited by the site-specific theatrical experiments that are repopulating the landscape more and more. One of my favorites is Nick Westrate and Lucy Owen’s The Streetcar Project. They built a four-actor version without changing the original text, and they’ve been performing it in different venues. The play changes when you see it in a Rachel Comey store vs someone’s backyard vs a church. They’ll be at ACT San Francisco this winter, and it’s exciting to think what a wide and varied life their production has had before it ever landed in a theatre. JSM : In your essay “My Gender is Masha Green,” you write “I’m hungry to witness queer health & success… & cheeky glamour as well.” Do you identify as a queer writer? How and why does that shape your plays? JS : Without being too fussy about semantics, I would say I identify as a writer, and also, I’m queer. Meaning, a queer lens is inextricable from the way I reflect the world through my experience, and therefore how I think about story and structure. But I am also white, I am also someone who was raised itinerantly and internationally, I am also a younger sibling, and the child of two scientists, among other things. These are all overlapping, equally inextricable lenses that shape my outlook and therefore my plays. I’m not sure that one is more consciously dominant than another. That said, in certain contexts, different parts of my identity become important to the person who is responding to the work. I’ve heard from younger people who feel very attached to the ways in which they see queerness in my work, and that response is deeply, personally meaningful to me. When I was younger, I also encountered work in which the kinds of queerness I saw expanded my sense of possibility and let me feel less alone, and so it is incredibly moving to me when other people have that experience with my writing. JSM : I can attest that your work has been eye-opening and empowering to my students who identify variously as queer or non-binary, female identifying, or feminist. Your work inspires them to read plays! What work(s) expanded your sense of possibility early in your career? JS : Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill, first. I read their plays in the first few months of freshman year at university—not having grown up going to the theatre, not really having seen any theatre—and I felt like they were talking to me. Paula Vogel and Sarah Ruhl also. Later, in grad school, the playwright Basil Kreimendahl and I went to Chicago to see Sylvan Oswald’s Pony —a genderqueered Woyzeck —and I remember an electric feeling: something was happening on that stage that reminded me that I existed. Or maybe that created a theatrical context in which my existence was part of a shared fabric. MER : Whose art inspires you now ? JS : A very short list (too short!) of playwrights & poets & novelists would include David Adjmi, Kaveh Akbar, Traci Brimhall, Alexander Chee, Helen Garner, Sheila Heti, Lucas Hnath, Donika Kelly, Basil Kreimendahl, Young Jean Lee, Rebecca Lindenberg, Mona Pirnot, Max Posner, and Richard Siken. But there are so many others! JSM : I love to teach The Moors . It never fails to thrill my script analysis students with the strong-willed heroines, the rock ballad, and Mastiff and the Moor Hen. You write a lot of non-human characters (the Mastiff & the Moor Hen, Wink, the PMS-ing Hippos, The Devil) who are at times mysterious, hilarious, charming, and dangerous, but importantly wonderful roles for actors. What does that dramaturgical choice enable you to express? JS : There’s a permission to speak the truth that comes when you’re putting words in the mouth of a dog or a devil. People have done this long before me—it’s not for nothing that the Devil is the most vivid character in the Gounod opera Faustus . Or that Shakespeare did this with his fools. They’re human, of course, but their distance from status makes them phenomenally observant and ruthlessly insightful. It’s been a while since I’ve worked that way theatrically, but I’m still exhilarated by the kind of brutal truth-telling that can happen by letting the least obvious characters speak from the margins. Playwright Jen Silverman. Photo: Zack Canepari. JSM : Among the reasons to celebrate your work is that your plays present remarkable opportunities for women and genderqueer actors, for example T he 5 Betties, and the “women of a certain age” in The Roommate . How deliberate is that for you when conceiving of a play? JS : I’ve never really sat down and thought about who should be in a play, without having first thought long and hard about what the play is, what it is attempting to do, what it requires. The Roommate was inspired by a story my mother-in-law told me, and as I chased down what had haunted me inside that story, I found myself writing a play about two women. Collective Rage was born of an overheated pressure-cooker of a summer in which, everywhere I turned, I encountered gendered expectations about what I should be doing with my body, my voice, my mind. In both cases, I was writing about what felt urgent to me, and it found form with those casts and characters. JSM : We’ve noticed that several of your most recent plays, including Spain , have more men in them. Is that a strategic choice to help get works staged or produced, or is there something else going on here? JS : Ha! No, not at all. I’m drawn to the play I need to write for a myriad of reasons and then I discover which characters need to populate that story. Sometimes when a play is a commission for a particular theatre, I’ll need to keep in mind certain realities like the actual space, or what cast size is even possible for them, but the gender breakdown of my characters has never been a strategic consideration for me. MER: I am struck by the disparate sources you adapt theatrically. Obviously Still , which was inspired by—and radically reimagined — the lived experience of one of your professor’s friends at Iowa during graduate school , and Creditors and Witch , which rework classic dramas in inventive new ways, but also your award-winning adaptation for narrative podcast (during the pandemic?) produced and featuring Rachel Brosnahan . I believe the latter springboard ed from the Vanity Fair article “ Miranda Obsession ” —about a woman who uses the persona “Miranda” to seduce an array of powerful men (industry executives) over the phone in the 1980s. What draws you to a text and inspires you to adapt found material from another time, place or form, in unique ways for performance? Commissions? Collaborators? Your own instincts? A writer’s habit? JS : Sometimes I stumble across a story, and I know right away that it’s saying something to me and that I have something to say back. Generally, that’s the key part—the adaptations around which I’ve had the most immediate certainty are ones where it really feels like I’m being talked to across space and time, and I want to reply. Sometimes a collaborator will bring me something that gives me this immediate spark—most often in the TV or film space—but in theatre and novels, I’m more often just wandering around until I bump into something thrilling. I’m a voracious, nearly pathological reader, though, so there’s also that. JSM : What makes for a good creative collaboration for you? JS : I’ve learned that if there’s a real synchrony in what we think is funny, we’re likely to be strongly aligned in other ways too. There’s something about the way humor and playfulness function that shows our relationship to much deeper core values—how we place ourselves in relation to our community, to history, to absurdity. Even relatively granular things like timing and pace matter deeply to a collaboration and are instantly legible in what someone laughs at and why. When I find that kind of alignment with a collaborator, we usually end up building ongoing bodies of work, often across multiple genres. MER : You have a knack for bending genre, time/space, representation, tone, and in a sense, you are queering form. What does that help you to express or achieve onstage, for storytelling, and/or the world? JS : My experience of time and space is a little warped, I think. I grew up switching countries and continents, moving between time-zones and languages. Cultural rules shifted as quickly as I learned them. The world for me is a fundamentally unstable place with all the gifts of that instability—the thrilling potential for transformation—and all of the dangers of sudden slippage. Surprise lives alongside pleasure lives alongside grief. In addition, I’m a genderqueer person who uses they/them pronouns; my history was shaped by partnerships with people who occupied a series of very different places on the gender spectrum. I believe in the power and pleasure—let’s even say the divine gift—of self-determination. And I guess that can’t help but affect what I make, both its content and its form. My characters are often striving for transformations of all kinds; my theatrical worlds are places where we are taught the rules, and then the rules shift and slip and break open. What we were, what we are, how we are in the process of becoming. Juxtapositions that we might not expect but that speak truth to each other. MER : The power and pleasure of self-determination. Transformation. Insights that arise from paradox and juxtapositions: This is the kind of storytelling and theatre that I love! In recent years you seem to have written more explicitly about cultural politics and ethical currents, too—perhaps reluctantly. We are thinking of works like your play Spain , your novel There’s Going to be Trouble , your op-ed in The New York Times , “Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable” (April 2024), where you argued that stories should not serve as “instruction manuals” for morals, but rather conduits for artfully exploring complexities and paradoxes . These seem to respond to our changing times . JSM : W hat is the role of art relative to society in your mind? Has that role, or your vision of it, changed or heightened, given the U.S today? JS : I’m drawn to art that contributes to my sense of possibility. Art that opens previously invisible doors inside my head and sends me toward new ways of understanding myself and my context. Maybe not even new , just ways that trigger the exhilaration of newness because they come at me via unexpected pathways, so I don’t have defenses against them. Clichés are defenses, bulwarks shored up against unexpected thinking. Some of the most destructive political moves that I’m seeing right now are inherently, violently cliché, coming out of threadbare self-consuming ideologies. I value art that pulls down the defense-system and goes: Oh look . In small subtle delicate ways or in larger bolder ones. Art doesn’t have to be “political” in the most blatant forms in order to be conducting these operations. Often it’s more effective if it sort of comes in sideways. Either way, the more it can inject possibility into our thinking, the more we can see ourselves and each other with new capacity. And change occurs where there is capacity. MER : Your body of work is so diverse! Novels, essays, plays. There’s something radical in how you move across genres, borders and formats, shapeshifting as a writer. How does your fiction writing and your TV and film work connect to your work for the stage? Does this connect to what you have called an “aesthetics of fluidity” when we spoke a few years back? JS : What draws me to a story doesn’t necessarily change with the genre or medium. But each form provides a different access point for a reader, or viewer, or audience member. So part of what interests me when I’m turning a new project over in my mind is the question of intimacy. How much do I need a visual language, or duration, or physical proximity, or the ability to read a character’s mind? What are the tools that will best serve the story? And then from there, the form coalesces, and as the story progresses, it tries to make the best use of its form. MER : Oh, that makes so much sense! Creating intimacy and responding to, even exploring, legacies of damage, and paradox through inventive storytelling recurs across your body of work, often landing powerfully in final moments of the narrative and medium in new ways: How do you create intimacy with audiences for performance in particular? JS : That’s a great question. I think it’s an ongoing investigation, for each piece, always. My overall sense is that you do it by inviting an audience into the theatre and making them feel that the invitation is a real one. Humor is an invitation. Rich, compelling characters are an invitation. Pleasure and honesty are different kinds of invitations. There are lots of ways to do it, but I’m not interested in making an audience uncomfortable in a hostile way—pointing a punishing finger at them, or something. If someone has actually left their home to come and sit with us, I want them to feel like the play really wants them there. And from there intimacy can occur—even if the play ends up taking them into places where they’re less comfortable. JSM : What piece from your body of work would you recommend theatre scholars, artists, and educators engage with beyond your works for the stage? JS : My second novel, There’s Going To Be Trouble , engages with the theatrical and the political in the form of two seductions. It tells the story of a young man enmeshed in the Harvard student protests of the late 60s and, fifty years later, his daughter in the roiling street protests of Paris. Both fall in love with radical activists, inside very different frameworks of belief, and find themselves drawn toward the euphoric urgency of radicalization. And eventually, father and daughter are forced to encounter each other in the present, across an ideological divide: a man who’s given up on the world after having committed a horrifying and shameful act in the name of progress, and the daughter who is falling in love with the idea of changing the world, no matter the cost—but who finds herself increasingly proximal to the violence that comes with that phrase, “no matter the cost.” MER : Thank you for your extraordinary writing, your intelligence, your range. It’s been a gift to talk about your work, discover what you’re up to, and how you think about writing for the stage, queer writing, and the value of paradoxes. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JEN-SCOTT MOBLEY is an Associate Professor at East Carolina University. She has co-curated the Jane Chambers Award alongside Maya Roth since 2015, previously serving as a reader and prior to that stewarding the Student Jane Chambers Award for several years. In addition to her work in dramaturgy, play development, and feminist playwriting, Mobley’s scholarship also studies embodiment onstage and screen. Her 2014 monograph Female Bodies on the American Stage: Enter Fat Actress was among the earliest to explore fat bodies in representation through the interdisciplinary lens of performance and fat studies. MAYA E. ROTH is a Professor at Georgetown University. An artist-scholar, she specializes in new work development, plays that fuse psychic and social stakes, contemporary feminist playwrights and cross-cultural adaptations of classics. T ogether with Jen-Scott Mobley she coedited Lesbian and Queer Plays from the Jane Chambers Prize (2019, No Passport Press) . Across her career, she has developed innovative models for pedagogy, curation and collaborative research, weaving creative practice into teaching and scholarship. Her research has appeared in disparate contexts, including academic presses such as Routledge, Bloomsbury, Palgrave and McFarland, and arts venues including Shakespeare Theatre, HowlRound and international festivals. Maya was honored to serve as founding artistic director of the Davis Performing Arts Center. 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.

Jasmeene Francois Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Jasmeene Francois By Published on April 8, 2021 Download Article as PDF The Theatre of August Wilson . Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224 . In The Theatre of August Wilson , Alan Nadel critically analyzes the dramatic texts of August Wilson’s cycle of ten plays about African American life in the 20th century in relation to the concept of property rights and the law. In this first comprehensive companion to Wilson’s full cycle, Nadel continues his sustained scholarship and editorial contributions demonstrated in May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson (1994) and August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth Century Cycle (2010). The chapters in his latest study ground Nadel’s argument that “America has always suffered from a profound confusion of human rights and property rights” (2). Beyond presenting an accessible, nuanced study of Wilson’s drama, this volume serves to “underscore… the dimensions of privilege that have transparently enveloped America during what has been called the ‘The American Century’” (2). Nadel argues that throughout American history, law has been an instrument of privilege rather than justice and that the injustices suffered led African Americans to create artistic sites of innovation such as the blues—and Wilson’s theatre. The blues, Nadel claims, provided Wilson an “entry to this history” and serves a “psychic tableau of disrupted dreams and displaced passions…” (2). Nadel begins his valuable analysis with a brief biography of August Wilson (1945-2005), illuminating aspects of Wilson’s life as key to his multifaceted drama. Chapter one, “Becoming August Wilson,” highlights Wilson’s childhood as Fredrick Kittel and his transformation to working playwright; here, Nadel weaves in Wilson’s own words from personal interviews. Interestingly, he focuses on the playwright’s relationships with his parents, his Pittsburgh neighborhood, and his education, connecting these relationships with Wilson’s early career as a writer. Especially notable to Wilson’s artistry is his introduction to and love for the blues. The second part of the biography focuses on Wilson’s career in Minneapolis, his work at the O’Neill Theater Center (with Lloyd Richards) and then on Broadway. In chapter two, “History and/as Performance: The Drama of African American History,” Nadel argues that history is performative and that “History” creates rather than “describes events.” The production of narratives gets deemed factual through the method of performing them. Writing without jargon, he uses the example of a witness to an accident to explain his argument: the witness’s viewpoint is told and recorded and thus becomes part of the historical record. He connects this argument with Wilson’s work with characters such as Troy from Fences who “articulates his own version of history” in Nadel’s reading (19). In a sense, Wilson’s work “engages with history” through characters and by dramatizing the blues (19). The chapters are structured thematically using one or two plays as case study. Chapters three through nine each open with a different play’s production history and plot summary before developing analysis. This structure orients readers who may be curious about the development of specific plays in Wilson’s cycle, as well as those seeking to contextualize the plots. Chapter Three, for example, examines how history and elements of the blues are captured through dramatic structure and characters, using Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom . This chapter in particular considers the entirety of the cycle and its relationship to music. In thinking about the blues, Nadel sees the ten plays as “ten cuts on an album surveying the twentieth century African American blues” (38). Shifting back to Ma Rainy , set in the 1920s, Nadel argues that the play provides an introduction to American history and a decade when blues were central to Black life. Nadel emphasizes that Wilson’s work could be read as musical compositions and orchestrations: thus, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom becomes a “paradigmatic play in Wilson’s canon” (42). Chapter 4 provides a critical analysis of law and property in Gem of the Ocean and Jitney . The chapter considers how Gem of the Ocean , set in the 1910s, begins the Wilson cycle and introduces how capitalism creates the world of Wilson’s plays. Connecting it to Jitney , Wilson’s first piece written for the cycle (set in the 1970s in a black-owned unlicensed taxi service), Nadel examines how characters navigate in that very system where black communities are disenfranchised. Chapter Five examines property in Fences , set in the 1950s, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone , set in 1911. Nadel focuses on the fence as the “idea of property” (68). He argues that the “act of naming” in Fences enacts “fence building”, connecting with the idea of property within the United States (68). Later chapters continue to consider property and the law as they provide critical companions to specific Wilson plays, including: Two Trains Running , Seven Guitars , King Hedley II and Radio Golf . This compelling volume also includes contributions from scholars Donald E. Pease and Harry Elam Jr. who further critical analysis of Seven Guitars and King Hedley II . An Americanist, Pease’s chapter extends focus on the significance of the blues, giving a brief historical context of the genre, as well as interview material on Wilson’s approach to music. While Nadel examines the dramatic texts, Elam Jr’s chapter considers performance of these texts as theatre. Elam’s chapter analyzes director Bartlett Sher’s production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone in its 2009 revival on Broadway and Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s staging of Jitney for Broadway premiere in 2017. Elam’s chapter aims to situate these signal performances within the cultural and political context of their times of production, decades after Wilson wrote the plays. These valuable and insightful additions deepen our understanding of Wilson’s contributions to theatre and American history. In The Theatre of August Wilson , Nadel masterfully weaves theory and history with a thorough analysis of Wilson’s dramatic texts. Fittingly, he provides ample analysis of the blues as a storytelling device while the book’s unique lens considers the plays in relation to how law and property are portrayed. The monograph is useful for scholars from varying disciplines and theater practitioners seeking critical analysis of August Wilson’s cycle plays. Beyond connecting plays across the cycle, Nadel also gives specific evidence of how the plays speak to law and property rights, slavery and the forces of capitalism in America, and the incorporation of the blues by Wilson to illuminate the African American experience and creativity through the 20th century. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JASMEENE FRANCOIS Graduate Center, CUNY Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Pria Ruth Williams, Claire Syler, Amy Hughes, Karen Jean Martinson, David Bisaha Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 2 Visit Journal Homepage Censor/Censure: A Roundtable Pria Ruth Williams, Claire Syler, Amy Hughes, Karen Jean Martinson, David Bisaha By Published on July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF In an issue about censorship, we wanted to have a way to include a variety of voices and perspectives on the topic. With everything moving so fast when it comes to government censorship and fascist orders being enacted, gathering ATDS members to discuss some of the issues we were facing seemed the best way to go about this. Even so, this conversation was held on March 11, 2025, and, in the past few months, things have continued to change at a rapid rate and the full extent of government censorship has seriously degraded research and study in both the Humanities and STEM disciplines. The editors wish to reiterate our thanks for those who joined us for this conversation, and we hope that it serves as a starting point for other conversations within our discipline. Note: This record has been edited for clarity and length and all involved have had the opportunity to review the document to ensure it represents their words and thoughts clearly and accurately. Pria Ruth Williams (she/her) My name is Dr. Pria Williams. I am currently at the University of Mississippi as an Instructional Assistant Professor…I am shared between the Theatre & Film Department, and the Gender Studies Program. I teach online classes for both of those programs, and I am really concerned. My institution has gotten rid of the terms diversity, equity, and inclusion on their website. I was part of a committee that created a Diversity Statement and a Land and Labor Acknowledgement for the Department of Theater & Film for the Department of Theater and Film. So far, we have not been told to take those down. But I don’t know how long it will be before that.(1) I am [also] not allowed to use the women's rooms on campus because I’m a trans woman. And technically, that’s illegal in the state of Mississippi. So, when I do visit campus, that is an issue. And especially for all the trans and non-binary folks who are on campus all the time. So those are two of the key areas that are, that have been sort of more impactful to me over the last year. Claire Syler (she/her) In 2016, I came to the University of Missouri (MU) as an Assistant Professor and as an alumna. In fall 2015, MU had high-profile racial protests inspired, in part, by the events in Ferguson, Missouri (MO) following the killing of Michael Brown in 2014. MU’s protests in 2015 were led by a Black student movement who wanted the university to recognize that racism is not isolated, but structural and exists at MU. When I arrived on campus in 2016, I began collaborating with colleagues in Black Studies, Journalism, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity to explore how theatre and performance might contribute to the goals of the student movement. As a white woman who grew up in MO and has a background with the institution, I contributed by writing internal and external grants to commission a new play about MO’s civil rights history, bring guest artists from St. Louis and Kansas City to campus, and create new “diversity”-oriented curriculum; I also published about these performance-based projects to make the work legible to larger audiences. By 2019, however, university momentum for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity work began to wane and decreased until last summer, in 2024, when the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity was dismantled. As these changes occurred, I watched many colleagues leave MU and I considered it myself. What is currently happening at a national level feels a lot like what started happening at my local level a few years ago. Amy Hughes (she/any) I am a professor of Theater and Drama at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I'm also a faculty associate in the Department of American Culture. For the past six months, I've been one of the faculty associate directors of the ADVANCE Program, which is the university's 20-year-plus program originally founded to support and increase the representation of women in STEM fields. ADVANCE was first established through a federal grant program. Now, it is fully paid for out of university funds. Over that time, the program has grown to support faculty diversity and excellence in every form and every discipline. I'm the first person from an arts discipline to be in this space as a leader or administrator. It's a partial appointment and I still teach half-time. When I saw this call [for the roundtable], there were many reasons why I stepped up. I joined the University of Michigan five years ago, after thirteen years of teaching at Brooklyn College. The University of Michigan has a fascinating, long history of “push forward” and “push back” around diversity, equity, inclusion, excellence, belonging, accessibility, indigenous justice, and so forth. We're in a moment where a lot of decisions must be made to resist or comply, and to be aware of what is possible and what is not possible. I'm noticing the importance of collaborating in order to ensure that we all are aware of what is legal or illegal at this moment, and to encourage each other not to obey in advance or pre-comply in an anticipatory way. Because the University of Michigan does have this history– beginning, first and foremost, with the Anishinaabeg, who ceded land to US settlers in 1817 in exchange for a promise that the university would educate their descendants. Although the circumstances surrounding this “gift” were incredibly complicated, I like to think of the agency of these indigenous ancestors as activists for educational access. Then, the multiple Black Action Movements in the wake of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. And now, this history continues with Palestinian activists and allies on campus, some of whom have been brutally punished, including felony charges brought against 11 student protesters by the Michigan Attorney General. So, yet again, we're at a crossroads, where we can either continue this history of justice and advocacy, in spite of many forms of pushback over many, many years, or pre-comply, pre-obey, and so forth. Karen Jean Martinson (she/her) Thank you for getting this space together and everyone for sharing these stories. It's really nice to connect and just hear where everybody's at because I think we're all feeling a lot even though our circumstances might be different, or similarly different, or differently similar. I am an assistant professor of dramaturgy at Arizona State University. And the reason I responded to this call is [because] my work tends to be quite political. I write on dramaturgy, and I also write on the performance artist Robert Lopez, who performs as El Ves—the Mexican Elvis. My book is coming out in May, and it literally starts with his forward, where he makes fun of Donald Trump and calls him a would-be king, “but not in an Elvis way.” And the title, Make the Dream Real , comes from a song that he redid. It's a Morrissey song, “Margaret on the Guillotine.” He sang it as “George Bush on the Guillotine;” “make the dream real” is a line in the song. I bring that up to say [my book] is incredibly political and from the start. [I feel some] trepidation about that, releasing that in the world, even though I'm also of the mind that, for all the things that we do as professors, if we can't speak a truth, why are we even here? Yet, these little worries creep in. I'm also developing a class for going on two years, Theatre and U.S. Democracy, and it too is very political. I have forty students in the online course, and I have mostly students from outside the School of Music, Dance and Theatre where I'm housed. And that gives me a little bit of pause because Arizona is where Turning Point USA was founded, right? Charlie Kirk lives here. So, I don't know how students outside of the discipline are going to respond to it. And again, I'm sort of like, well, I'm just telling you some facts and interpreting them in the way that I do, but you're allowed to disagree. But still, again, sort of that doubt creeps in. I will say I do feel very protected by ASU. President Michael Crow just gave a speech. He addressed the Faculty Senate, and he specifically brought up the way we use DEI, specifically inclusion, because it is in our charter. I'm just going to read the first part of it: “ASU is a comprehensive public research university measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed.” That's literally etched in granite around our campus. So, the inclusion is right there. In his speech he confirmed that academic freedom is protected, and they're not going to ask us to change what we're teaching. But he also said the way that they're talking about DEI, who opponents of DEI are talking about inclusion, is not what we do. We bring people in who are qualified, and we help them succeed. Pure and simple. Which I think is really, really great. And so, it's that weird thing of like feeling pretty secure, but also feeling, “oh, I don't have tenure,” and “oh, I'm teaching things that somebody might not like.” David Bisaha (he/him) I'm an Associate Professor of Theater at Binghamton University, which is one of the university centers of the State University of New York (SUNY). And within that context, there is not a lot of obeying in advance or compliance that I see. New York State has its own sort of protections that it might offer to the university for its mission. I'm a co-editor with Pria on this issue and here I suppose partially as a facilitator. What interests me in the call, and in this conversation too, is the changing nature of censorship, particularly its public and digital nature. I was interested in the idea of public censure. Some of the other submissions and material that we've been looking at over the course of this editorial process talk about different vectors and modes of censorship, that engage with the public, however we conceive of that public. That [could be] a student public that gathers and protests performance because of the way it is cast or the way that it is being positioned within a department. We had a situation related to that: a production of Anna Deavere Smith's play Twilight: Los Angeles that we attempted to produce over the course of the pandemic. It was by no means perfect, but coming out of that there was something that transformed the project. The project was not censored, per se, but it was challenged by a studied campaign. Ultimately, the project was changed. That student campaign used a sense of the public and social media to connect its goals with other protest and resistance actions on campus. Binghamton is a quite active campus politically, and students have also used ways of gathering, in person or digitally, to shape a perception of public sentiment, or perhaps public sentiment itself, through those kinds of new means. And I also see in the new, top-down authoritarianism of the federal government an engagement with social media, a social idea of the public and public sentiment in some interesting ways. That's maybe more theoretical than practical, but those are sort of where I'm thinking in preparation for this discussion. Pria Ruth Williams I would love to reiterate something that Amy said that I think is really important and talk about how ATDS might be involved with this: the idea of working with each other to understand what is legal and what is illegal. How are we as faculty at these institutions becoming more responsible for knowing and gathering knowledge and information outside of our realms, our typical theater areas, to look at legality and how it works within universities and states and the federal level. I don't know how well I'm being prepared or given information by my university administration at the University of Mississippi they have been largely silent on all of these issues. When you brought that up, Amy, what are some of the things that you were thinking of in terms of those issues of the legality for things and maybe open it up for anybody to talk about their encounters with legality and their encounters with how we go about supporting each other with helping disseminate some of this information. Amy Hughes Thanks, Pria. I'm glad that resonated. I feel like I've been thinking about this a ton. There have been some interesting articles in, say, The Chronicle of Higher Ed recently, where they've been tracking universities that have scrubbed their websites or eliminated their DEI programs, when legislation is just introduced at the state level. We've got a lot of evidence of that. And it made me start thinking about this more deeply, because one way that power works is through performance, right? Performing its power and performing threats to people's livelihoods and safety. We see that with the executive orders. We see that with legislative efforts at the state level and federal level. We see that, too, at the level of institutions. At my institution in October [2024], the Regents (they're like our trustees, but they are elected by Michigan voters, so they are political positions) passed something that other universities have passed as well: an institutional neutrality bylaw. The problem—or rather, the interesting, horrifying thing—about this is that there is no such thing as neutrality. This bylaw, it's clearly intended to protect the institution by keeping its employees silent and afraid about “disobeying” this institution by defying “institutional neutrality.” It works, in other words, as a performance of intimidation rather than being a specific, transparent, and detailed policy. Another action that happened along these lines was the Regents called for a working group of faculty to examine the utility and effectiveness of DEI statements in faculty hiring. The working group produced a report. The group was told by the Regents to go back and reassess its report, which supported the use of DEI statements in faculty hiring – suggesting that the Regents had already decided they were against the practice. Ultimately, in December [2024], the provost made an announcement that DEI statements would no longer be used in faculty hiring. And yet there is no policy specifying what that means, how that works, what the consequences are. It was an announcement in the University Record , which is basically the institutional newsletter. And now, each of us on the ground has to decide and work together to figure out, well, how do we get the information we need about research and activities related to diversity, inclusion, and equity from candidates that we're considering and hiring? What are the methods and best practices in requesting that information? And that happens only through collaboration and talking to each other, because the institution isn't calling on us or investing resources in making that happen. So, as I was thinking about this and preparing for our discussion today, I started to type out all of these grassroots efforts that I'm noticing, because I wanted to acknowledge these exciting, dedicated, courageous people who are working together through emails and listservs and in-person events and meetings that aren't transcribed or recorded, to make sure that we hear from each other what's happening on the ground. And encourage each other to not be afraid, or at least to handle our fear in a more appropriate and honest way, as opposed to just bowing to it. And I was typing all that out, and then stopped and said to myself, “I should keep these folks protected and safe, despite how gloriously and brilliantly they are collaborating, because that's how people in grassroots efforts survive: by protecting each other.” Especially at a university like University of Michigan, which is intentionally segregated into autonomous units (and culturally, students and faculty really like that autonomy), it is all the more difficult to know what's going on across campus. So, at this moment, I'm really trying to lean into that reality. We are without a faculty union for tenure-track people, so I've joined AAUP, we have a local chapter. It's become a really great place for me. All of us who have local chapters, I hope we will consider joining or participating in them, and any other efforts of solidarity that might be available locally. That's how I think we'll be able to encourage each other, to really be attentive to whether something is possible or not and give each other the confidence to move forward. Karen Jean Martinson One thing that I am seeing as a tactic is having these conversations verbally, without issuing guidelines or memos. The idea is that, if we put our intentions in writing, then people who want to cause harm can take these things in bad faith and use them against us. Claire Syler This reminds me of Diana Taylor’s “the archive and the repertoire” and its different forms of knowledge. Right now, it seems, we've been asked to rely on the repertoire. And yet, as academics accustomed to working with texts, we seek, perhaps even crave, the archive: “Please give me a document!” I see this tension as being part of our larger profession. My academic husband has been very involved in the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at MU, and we've hosted many events at our home. Seeing the AAUP members work—watching them ask questions to protect academic freedom and shared governance—has been impressive. It has also helped me realize how we, as academics, are a group of people beholden to varying kinds of texts, work practices, and institutions, and how most academics—including me—have been trained to be obedient. Academics are really good at working with texts to pass that milestone or accomplish that goal. Within our own discipline, I think theater and performance studies people identify as scrappy and “alternative”, so we have that alterity going for us. But, as a professional category, I’ve come to see how obedience seems embedded in our established knowledge structures, ways of working, and institutional homes. Pria Ruth Williams I do think that of our structures that allow for somebody to get a PhD are designed to inculcate that kind of [attitude]. You don't want to rock the boat because you need to get your PhD. And then once you get a job, you don't want to rock the boat because you need to get your tenure. By the time you get tenure, do you have the muscle memory of disobedience? All of these things are practices, right? We know this from Theater of the Oppressed. We know this from Augusto Boal. We know this from any number of approaches in our field. We know that we need to practice things in the body in order to have a facility for those things. I think the way that the carrot and the stick work in academia makes [disobedience] harder. Certainly not impossible. And we all know people who are incredibly courageous in our discipline, in our field, and in our universities. And you will, you know, and I'm not necessarily one of those people. I have not developed that to the extent of some people. We all have different ways of addressing things and we don't all have to do the same kinds of things but finding ways to short circuit our own natural tendencies to be good students, because we all had to be to get where we were, is definitely something that requires practice. Other thoughts on this particular area? Does anybody want to sort of shift to something that somebody has said or shift to one of the more general questions that I emailed? Karen Jean Martinson President Crow operates out of an awareness of the realities of public education. We get very little money from the state at this point, less than 9%. And because Arizona politically is a purple state and it goes back and forth, but oftentimes it's fairly conservative and our legislature has opposed educational funding in general. So, the way to counter that is to attract international students and attract out-of-state students and online students. That's our huge growth area. So, we've had this longstanding edict to make big, super popular online courses that attract people from outside your unit because with the way they calculate what money goes where, your unit will get more when students are from outside majors. We also just switched our Gen Ed credits. So now we're operating on a new Gen Ed system. One of the critiques of our previous Gen Ed offerings is that there were too many courses being taught that could qualify as a Gen Ed credit that didn't actually meet the idea behind Gen Ed, of going out and exploring the big university and learning from experts not in your field. All of this lead up to say there was a new gen ed category of American Institutions, which is like a civics credits. And I was like, great, I could actually do this—because I don't really like online classes—but I could see how [Theatre in US Democracy] could work and work ethically because I wanted to get people from outside of the program, students who never thought about theater as democracy, even though I think we as theater scholars do quite a bit. And so that was the whole point in developing it. It took about two years of work, of making sample syllabi, and then filling out the gen ed requirements. It was approved in November just after the election. So, the way I had been thinking about it during those development years shifted; I suddenly felt like, “oh boy, this is a different reality that I'm now entering into.” But also, like I said, I didn't want to change what I was going to say. I started tactically with Hamilton because it's big but the very first lecture talks about the musical coming up through the Obama administration and then how the meaning shifted with Donald Trump. And then I just sort of end that lecture with like, what does it mean now? Who knows? I feel like most of my lectures end with what do you think? Who can tell right now? Because I don't really know how to conclude any of these thoughts that I'm having. I just don't know what to expect. The last time I taught a super large gen ed class here, it was during Trump's original administration. It was in 2019. And I brought up things like Black Lives Matters versus Blue Lives Matter and a lot of the students were fine with it. And then some of them, it's like the moment you say those words, they're angry. So, I guess I'm anticipating that in advance. But again, I keep telling myself, well, isn't that the point of what we're doing? Pria Ruth Williams I'm getting ready to launch an Intro to Gender Studies online class online and I just read the introduction to Judith Butler's Who's Afraid of Gender . One of the questions that I sent to the group was about experiences that are causing us to self-censor as teachers, as artists, as scholars. I think that Butler’s introduction is really powerful. I think they really frame the problem of gender in a compelling way. Butler is really addressing how the notion of gender has become kind of a phantasm and it's a repository for all kinds of fears and it's not so much that we need to just point out the facts, but that it is this kind of construct of story, construct of fantasy that is doing a lot of things. Unless we engage with it that way, it becomes really difficult to actually deal with it. I think that there's a lot in there that an introduction to gender could benefit from. But I'm also really struggling with the fact that she says true and demonstrable factual things about right-wing ideologues. And she names them that. And I'm really, really struggling with putting this into my materials. Butler is simply saying this is what these [right-wing idealogues] are doing. And it is factual that this is what they are doing and this is what they want to do. They say that. Right-wing people say this is what they want to do. This is what they are doing. And yet, because Butler uses that term “right-wing”, I keep getting really scared of using it in the classroom. I assume that that is happening all over this country. On different levels. Amy Hughes Thank you for sharing that. I was sitting with that question and, you know, I'm speaking only for myself, and I think each of us has to speak only for ourselves because the answer will be different regarding what we feel our power is. Materially, structurally: our power is different in different spaces, depending on how we're embodied. I've tried to really lean in, as I know others here have, into my whiteness – meaning, being absolutely mindful of my whiteness, being absolutely mindful of my tenure and full professor rank, my socioeconomic status, the benefits of education I have, especially at a moment when right-wing ideologues seem to be working together (for decades now) to basically destroy higher education and make it less and less accessible to people who can't afford it, or simply defaming it. And I keep reminding myself of my power because I still have acculturated fear, deep fear, that has been imposed upon me by people and institutions throughout my life. I'm always going to have to be mindful of that and continue dismantling those fears. And yet, as I deal with that, [I need to] speak up and encourage others not to be pre-compliant, in meetings and conversations, informal or otherwise. Being mindful of my privilege made me decide recently to devote more of my time in the ADVANCE space, especially my work with one of its programs, the STRIDE Committee, which helps search committees recruit and retain a diverse and excellent faculty. I sign every petition because I know I shouldn't be afraid to see my name on there. I remember, too, that my greatest freedom, because of my privileges, is in the classroom, actually. That I am called to continue integrating anti-oppressive pedagogies and ideals into every teaching setting I'm in, that I have a responsibility to do that, and to view student pushback or colleague pushback as a sign of success rather than as a threat or failure. The New York Time s did this huge exposé—I should say, a journalist at The New York Times did a big “exposé” [air quotes]—on the vast DEI programming at University of Michigan, back in the fall [of 2024]. A colleague, an incredibly wise, brilliant colleague, pointed out in the wake of that publication, “they're coming for us because we're so successful.” And yet I say that knowing, again, that for each of us, the answer to the question “how much power do I have and how vulnerable can I be” is going to be different. What's important is to do that investigation honestly and transparently with ourselves, and perhaps, hopefully, in community with others, supporting each other in that effort, so that those of us who need greater safety have that safety, and those of us who don't need that safety can let it go. Claire Syler Thank you so much for that Amy, it's really powerful. I read the NYTimes essay and wondered how folks at Michigan felt about it. You mentioned the word community and I'm going to suggest that sometimes I self-censor to keep information private until I go to another community group to check in before proceeding. I view such actions as community-based and working in coalition. My background is in community-based theater, serving as an education director for a regional theatre company. That work taught me to get to know the city I was working in (Nashville, TN) and its people—and it taught me how to connect with a wide range of arts-focused people and institutions and view them as vital resources to engage in a common pursuit. These coalitional tactics have been crucial for me in terms of IDE work. I’m constantly checking in with somebody who's a colleague on a particular program to ask, before sending an email, “would this idea be amenable to the group?” And then, even further, “how is a particular person doing today?” (before pressing send on the email!). This kind of relational work may sound like a lot of labor. But it is a lot like the feminist epistemologies that community organizers routinely use. It's the relational work I grew up watching my mother pursue in her community-building efforts. And that kind of private and dynamic “context knowledge” is an important way I navigate institutional worlds. It's about accessing social levers of power to establish a solid foundation and footing before doing public work. David Bisaha This conversation is making me reflect on the relationship of power. What influence you have is context dependent and audience dependent, and I'm connecting that back to what I was thinking about at the beginning, with regard to the digital and the sort of loud, broadcast nature of some digital social spaces: some more relationship and socially based, some more direct message or closed community social spaces. I think that might also be contributing to some of this feeling of self-censorship and indeterminacy of audience. Whether it's an online course that is synchronous or asynchronous, whether it's something that's recorded, to whom are you speaking? When you're writing in The New York Times , or you're speaking for your university, there is a pretty clear sense of audience. But when I'm speaking in the classroom, I feel I have a sense of audience, and that might be true in that moment, or it might not be true. And online teaching…I speak differently and think differently about what I'm putting out there when I know it's going to be online, whether that's pre-recorded or in Zoom land. I think one part of this is how do we think about audience and how is the idea of audience being turned back on itself in the context of censor or censorship? Pria Ruth Williams We see that in particular with Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia. He was attacked online by a specific organization that used online methods through Twitter, and they literally called people out to come get this person. One of the things that important for us, particularly in the field of theater and performance, is to really start appreciating how much power as performance and performance as power is shaping the world around us right now. We are not unique, but we do have a set of skills and a set of perspectives on performance, on audience, on the ways in which performance works materially that needs to be a part of our work moving forward. As members of ATDS, as people speaking to an audience who are going to be reading JADT , what ways can we provide community to allow for our, you know, our particular perspectives, our particular skill sets to be used in combating some of this self-censorship, some of the public censorship, the ways in which power is performed? [To help] our students and our communities, not necessarily just our universities, but our communities understand that sort of performance of power and critiquing that performance of power? Claire Syler I'm thinking that one performance of power is economic. This reminds me that when you can bring money to a university from an outside institution to support a project, you bring public and economic sanctioning to the project you want to do. I think there's performative power in that. By getting grant dollars from outside your institution to fund IDE work (because there are still institutions interested in IDE work) you help confirm the project's worth. Sure, it's more work to write the grant and form the relationship with the outside organization. But it's about bringing more stakeholders to the project and creating a literal and figurative “buy-in.” Amy Hughes I don't know if this fully addresses your prompt, Pria, which is a great one, but I'm thinking a lot about ATDS and how important this community has been to me through every stage of my career, and how much I value it, because of the various forms of support that it has offered folks at different career stages and in different institutional contexts (or extra-institutional contexts). When I say “ATDS,” of course what I'm actually referring to is a group of brilliant, courageous people who decide to gather together in various places, formally and informally, digitally or in person, to support each other in various ways. I definitely want to mention Dr. Donatella Galella and the work that she has done, especially as a leader of our organization for the past three and a half years, and before that. The programming that she and others have offered have really impacted us in many ways, both financially through grants, and also the community that's fostered – by the First Book Boot Camp, for example. Those relationships go in many different directions, beyond the stated purpose of the program. Of course, there’s also the anti-racism series of events, and the way it [anti-racism] manifests in the organization in various ways. In fact, the event that ATDS sponsored with Dr. Koritha Mitchell back during the lockdown period of COVID utterly shifted for me my thinking in my book that's coming out in September 2025 [ An Actor’s Tale ]. Thanks to Koritha Mitchell, her article and her wisdom that she shared with us about white mediocrity, and especially white male mediocrity, I was able to understand better what was fascinating to me about the subject at the center of my book, a very mediocre white male actor who worked in the mid 19th century, and how he participated in systems of oppression that continue to influence today's theater industry. And without ATDS and Dr. Mitchell, and so many other moments along the way, I wouldn't be who I am, or be doing what I'm doing, in the ways that I hope I'm advancing justice, in large and small ways. I felt like I needed to talk about ATDS there for a moment. And you, too, Pria and David, are part of that, making this special issue happen and inviting this conversation and encouraging us to be brave and share our experiences in this forum. You're a part of that, too. And I'm grateful to both of you for that. Karen Jean Martinson I think there's a power and a definite value of having these spaces to get together and say, “I don't actually know what we should do. What do you all think?” And it was funny because as you were speaking to me, I emailed Donatella [Galella, ATDS President] about something else. And I asked if ATDS going to be doing anything—I'm thinking of the postcard writing session that we did. And just having that space. And she's like, yes, we're going to figure something out. But I really did come to ATDS. It was one of my action places that I could trust. Even if we don't know what action we can take, there's a power of getting together and saying, how do we do this? What do we think? Let's see if we can find something, some way to respond, especially because I think we're all also feeling so much exhaustion. And it's like, I want to do something, but I don't want to just scream into the wind. I want it to have a landing point, too. And I don't know what that is yet, but maybe with all these bright, brilliant people that are around us, we can figure something out. David Bisaha One of the pieces of reading in relationship to the special issue has to do with alternate approaches to thinking about censorship. In particular, the generative qualities of censorship. So rather than thinking of censorship as only that which is negative or squashes, it strikes me after doing some of this reading that thinking about it only as the force of “no” is a disempowering place and it works against some of the skills that theater performance scholars maybe have, in particular. Ways of understanding how performance, scenography, environment, and embodied relationships produce effects that cannot be understood other than through the tools of performance studies or theater studies. So, what does censorship produce would be the question that comes out of that. What does it generate ? Some of it may be approaching a world that we don't want. That is a possible generative quality. But, also, censorship creates networks, ways of speech that we can observe and theorize that elliptically go around, or that aren't specific, or that don't record. And all of those are generative effects. So, censorship is not simply a “no, not that,” which is maybe a historical understanding that we carry with us, but rather a generative choice to make certain things and not others. And therefore, it maybe puts us more in the driving seat of being able to see what is being created, if we care to change it, or if we care to just to observe it as historians and thinkers. Generatively, because censorship is doing things in its imprecision and in its vagueness and in its power. Amy Hughes I love that, David, so much. It makes me think about how on the federal level, for example, at the NSF [National Science Foundation], the list of words that the staff are required to flag in grant applications. And then, of course, the weaponization of the words diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the executive orders, among other concepts. In one of the executive orders, or maybe more than one, it is said that DEIA activities shall be terminated “under whatever name they appear” [E.O. 14151]. It's made me think a lot about the power of these words, and how they're trying to make us believe that those activities, or even those words, are illegal or unacceptable. It does provide an opening, maybe – if we can think optimistically – for being more specific about what we mean [with these words] and why we care about [them] while also fighting for those beliefs, those ideals, those core values, in situ – diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, and so many others. Try to be very specific, transparent and thoughtful about what our goals are in championing those values, and not letting them [the words] go, because they have histories that are important, and complicated, and fraught. They include histories of disagreement – about the corporatization of those concepts, and the negative impact of that process. Take “disability.” I identify as someone with a dynamic disability, so I think about this a lot. I was just watching a video by a performer and disability advocate, Sofiya Cheyenne. She has a great video where she argues “disability is not a bad word” and . . . “we need to continue to have that word be spoken and speakable.” And we need to defend it because of the histories of advocacy and activism by people, many of whom are no longer here, who fought to have that word become visible, and to become visible themselves through it. So, as we think about censorship, it hits language . I'm thinking a lot about how to keep doing the work in a thoughtful, honest way without relying exclusively on terms that are now incendiary, and yet balance that with, you know, the reality that these words have histories, these ideals have histories that we don't want to disappear. Pria Ruth Williams It’s really important to note just how acronyms have become used by people who want to censor ideas. You don't hear people going “we're going to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Sometimes they do say those words but most of the time, it's “DEI.” Most of the time they use these acronyms because that's an easy target. And in part, because once we start using the acronyms, we stop using the terms that those acronyms are supposed to be providing. So perhaps one small thing that all of us can do and we can encourage is we can stop using “DEI” and start always calling it diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. And making people hear those words, making people say those words. I think resisting those small ways of using language the way that they frame it is [important]. And I think, but I think, David, to your point of that generative ability of censorship: one of the things that doing a search on the word “gay” for the military means that they are banning pictures of the Enola Gay, which has nothing to do with what they were banning. The generative part of that is also humor: making fun of and demonstrating their lack of seriousness, their lack of thought . I think the generative uses can emerge. And I think looking for those, is, again, a really important point that David brings up. Karen Jean Martinson I don't want to take us back because I think we're on this really interesting topic, but I also was thinking about what David said about new technologies. And then Claire bringing up the archive and the repertoire. And I realized that part of my concern about this class that's starting is because it is online. I think of teaching as existing in the repertoire, like we're having a conversation in the classroom, you know? And you can provide so much context in that. I had to record all of my lectures. I can update things around it, but there's a different feeling of permanence around that. An audio recording becomes an archive—one that can be extracted, potentially. Claire Syler I have thought of that, Karen. And I appreciate that so much, especially in terms of IDE efforts and accountability within theatre companies and universities. We do need accountability concerning IDE efforts in these institutional spaces. And yet, accountability—as a kind of metric—can be used against those companies and universities, as IDE programs are currently being swept away. Amy Hughes Maybe another way we can help each other as a community is by sharing strategies about how to mitigate or circumnavigate those technologies of archiving. Certainly I have those same thoughts – like I'm being recorded now in this moment, even though you've created a really safe space. Maybe each of us can, as individuals, think about that and share with each other what conditions are available to create safety as we continue doing work that we're passionate about and that we feel is necessary and feeds our souls. You know, for some of us, that will be moving more things in person. For some of us, that might mean shifting communications to other forums. For some of us, that's just reminding someone “don't make that call to your elected congressperson on your university-provided device.” You know, taking care of each other with those small reminders about the reality we're in. Educating ourselves and each other about FOIA requests and what we might put in writing versus not in writing, on the level of the quotidian. So this is another objective in the coming years that I have for myself, and the dear ones around me that I work and teach and collaborate with: making sure that we keep each other safe in this primarily digital environment that most of us now experience, especially in the wake of the lockdown period of COVID, where there’s a lot more remote work, a lot more use of devices, a lot less in-person interaction – which has made a huge impact on people being able to access opportunities, resources, and so forth. I don't want that to go away. “Both/And.” We need to be mindful of how powerful it can be when we're offline, too, as we struggle to maintain the safety of others and ourselves. Pria Ruth Williams That makes me think using ATDS to create a white paper or a committee to help with digital security and digital safety issues because so many of the tools that we have are great. But like I said, one of the reasons I don't want a transcript of this roundtable done in the cloud by Zoom is that means that it's going to be taking all of our voices to an “AI” and using that to do work. And, you know, Signal is much safer than most messaging things. But a lot of people don't know even what questions to ask. They see a shiny button that makes the labor a little less laborious, and we want to do that because we're humans, and that's what we do. We try to find the shortest path between us and some kind of work or some kind of thing. As somebody who is trying to be aware of security and safety and providing those spaces, I think that's something that ATDS can maybe help our membership just be aware of. References 1. Since this discussion, Mississippi has passed an anti-DEI bill (HB 1193) that targets public schools in the state, with one of the provisions being that no public school can “[m]aintain any programs, including academic programs or courses, or offices that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, endorse divisive concepts or concepts promoting transgender ideology, gender-neutral pronouns, deconstruction of heteronormativity, gender theory, sexual privilege or any related formulation of these concepts;” Mississippi House Bill 1193, Section 3.f. https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2025/pdf/HB/1100-1199/HB1193SG.pdf Footnotes About The Author(s) DAVID BISAHA (he/him) is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Binghamton University, SUNY. He currently researches theatre design history and the more recent history of immersive and participatory performance. His book American Scenic Design and Freelance Professionalism was published in 2022 by Southern Illinois University Press. PRIA RUTH WILLIAMS (she/her) is an Instructional Associate Professor at the University of Mississippi and teaches for both the Department of Theatre & Film and the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies. Her research has focused on the Living Theatre company's early period between 1947 and 1963, feminist critiques of theatre and film, and the work of playwright Mac Wellman through the lens of cognitive science. She also makes music as These Liminal Days and can be found on most streaming services and at https://theseliminaldays.com . AMY E. HUGHES (she/her/any) is a Professor of Theatre & Drama and (by courtesy) American Culture at University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. She is the author of Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Michigan Press, 2012); and coeditor, with Naomi J. Stubbs, of A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor (University of Michigan Press, 2018). Her latest book, An Actor’s Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States , will be published by University of Michigan Press in September 2025. KAREN JEAN MARTINSON (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her scholarly and creative work explores the intersection of contemporary USAmerican performance, consumer culture, neoliberalism, and the processes of identification, interrogating issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Her scholarship has been featured in many journals, and her monograph, Make the Dream Real : World-Building Performance by El Vez, The Mexican Elvis , was published in May 2025 by Intellect Books. She also writes and talks (constantly) about dramaturgy and dramaturgical thinking, and is active as a dramaturg, having worked on socially-engaged theatre that considers issues of race and racial oppression, the impacts of gun violence, intergenerational trauma, the Indian Industrial Boarding School System, and the climate crisis. Martinson teaches and mentors student in dramatic analysis, theatre history, theatre and U.S. democracy, and dramaturgy. She was awarded the Leon Katz Award for Teaching and Mentoring by the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) in 2023. Martinson currently serves as the co-VP of University Relations for LMDA, after serving two terms as VP of Advocacy for the organization. She also served two terms as Secretary of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). Martinson is also active in the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) and the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS). CLAIRE SYLER (she/her) is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the School of Visual Studies and the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Missouri (MU). After completing an MFA in Directing at the University of Memphis, Claire served as the Education Director for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival and then earned a PhD at the University of Pittsburgh focused on educational ethnography and performance studies. With Daniel Banks, she co-edited Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative (Routledge 2019) and has published widely in US journals and international outlets. In September 2025, she will direct What the Constitution Means to Me for MU Theatre and the Kinder Center for Constitutional Democracy. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Censorship/Public Censure and Performance Today: Special Issue Introduction Remembering Censorship in the World Premiere of Seán O’Casey’s The Drums of Father Ned: Lafayette, Indiana, 1959 The Stage as Networked Battleground: Dissent and Censorship in Contemporary Canadian Theatre and Performance Censor/Censure: A Roundtable Which of These Are Censorship? The Divide Between Prior Restraint and Soft Censorship How Can an Artist Respond to Censorship? The Dilemma That Faces Contemporary Creatives in the UK The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project: A Roundtable Conversation Life is Drag: Documenting Spectacle as Resistance An Interview with Rachel Rampleman Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists. Michael Malek Najjar. Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2021; Pp. xvi + 237. Lessons from Our Students: Meditations on Performance Pedagogy. Stacey Cabaj and Andrea Odinov. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 126 Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene. Angenette Spalink. Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance Series, no. 3. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 116. Fauci and Kramer Our Town Frankenstein Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Marvin Carlson, Safi Mahfouz, Robert Myers, Nada Saab | This collection contains four full-length works by Sa‘dallah Wannous, available in English for the first time. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Four Plays from Syria: Sa‘dallah Wannous Marvin Carlson, Safi Mahfouz, Robert Myers, Nada Saab Download PDF Sa‘dallah Wannous, generally considered the leading Syrian dramatist of the twentieth century, was selected in 1996 by UNESCO and the International Institute of Theatre as the first Arab playwright to deliver the keynote speech on International Theatre Day. This collection contains four full-length works, available in English for the first time: Rituals of Signs and Transformations, The Evening Party for the Fifth of June, The Adventure of the Mamluk Jaber’s Head, and The Drunken Days. Together they represent almost thirty years of Wannous’s remarkable career, and indicate the range of his political, social, personal, and metatheatrical contributions to modern drama. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

By Jan Fabre | Seven works from the Flemish-Dutch theatre artist Jan Fabre. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Jan Fabre: I Am A Mistake Jan Fabre Download PDF Seven Works for the Theatre Flemish-Dutch theatre artist Jan Fabre is considered one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his day. Over the past twenty-five years, he has produced works as a performance artist, theatre maker, choreographer, opera maker, playwright, and visual artist. Fabre, born in Belgium, is a total theater artist: writer, director, designer, and choreographer. “I am a mistake because I have too much desire more compelling even than hunger.” Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

By Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Daniel Gerould | An English-translation anthology of seven of Witkiewicz’s most important plays. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Witkiewicz: Seven Plays Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Daniel Gerould Download PDF Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould This volume contains seven of Witkiewicz’s most important plays: The Pragmatists, Tumor Brainiowicz, Gyubal Wahazar, The Anonymous Work, The Cuttlefish, Dainty Shapes and hairy Apes, and The Beelzebub Sonata, as well as two of his theoretical essays, “Theoretical Introduction” and “A Few Words about the Role of the Actor in the Theatre of Pure Form.” Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

L. Nicol Cabe 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 Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming L. Nicol Cabe By Published on May 14, 2023 Download Article as PDF On February 23rd, 2020, I performed my final in-person, physically co-present show of Effing Robots: How I Taught the A.I. to Stop Worrying and Love Humans , at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. I did not know that would be my last in-person run – I had festival dates lined up throughout the rest of 2020. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theatres for over a year. During the first pandemic year, performing artists and fringe festivals alike pivoted to online spaces, exploring online platforms as “stages.” Fringes preferred pre-recorded video for submissions, so I made a very low-tech digital video of Effing Robots and sent it to several now-digital festivals, thus maintaining my identity as a fringe artist. I am now able to participate in fringe festivals without the time and financial expenditure of travel, housing, and other upkeep; but, there are components of the original production which I have sacrificed or radically shifted into a static digital film. Making the transition from live, in-person work to the static filmed performance required digital dramaturgy skills that I was just beginning to navigate. Remediating the Stage with Digital Dramaturgy Digital dramaturgy grew out of production dramaturgy, which is the process of investigating and translating core aspects of a performance like costumes, performer movement, and lighting design; these components’ interaction with each other; and how a modern audience will interpret the show. To these components, digital dramaturgy adds computer-based technologies. The former Digital Dramaturgy Lab at York University, for example, lists some of these investigations as “TOGETHERNESS - respect, live and mediated performing bodies, collaboration, interactive strategies between performers and audiences … in-betweeness, reality, virtuality, queerness, multi-dimensionality …” (Digital Dramaturgy Lab 2014). Digital performances both before and during the pandemic triggered a shift-change in the theatrical understanding of meaning-making between performers and audience as physical co-presence, full liveness, and audience togetherness became individuated components of a theatrical work, rather than inseparably aligned with the experience of seeing a play. Digital dramaturgy engages the process of remediation, defined by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin: “we call the representation of one medium in another remediation” (p. 45). While there are boundaries placed between media formats – Bolter and Grusin particularly interrogate painting versus photography – they are concerned with the cross-pollination between these forms. New media, like hypertext, draw inspiration from older forms yet simultaneously invigorate those forms through competition and creativity. For instance, photorealistic still-life paintings of cameras compete with photographs of cameras while also demonstrating innovation in still-life painting and referencing multiple media formats. Similarly, during the acute phase of the COVID pandemic, the theatre experience was expressed through archival performance films released online by the National Theatre in the UK, a process in which film remediates theatre by adopting many of its aspects; and, on the other end of the liveness spectrum, Zoom became a stage to remediate filmic tropes while retaining temporal liveness in performances like Richard Nelson’s fifth Apple Family installment, What Do We Need to Talk About? Remediation relies on immediacy, or novel emotive reaction during the process of engaging with the medium. The experience of immediacy occurs from the audience’s perspective, not from the performer’s – an important point when considering the translation of theatre into film, as the actors will not experience the audience’s reactions to their performance. Immediacy occurs through the conjunction of two points: the transparency of the medium, i.e., how the frame disappears from consciousness; and hypermediacy, i.e., how media can layer atop each other as commentary on the media viewing experience (Bolter and Grusin 2000: p 21). Some online theatre experiments in 2020 attempted to become transparent by overcoming the barrier of the screen: for some shows, this meant performing over Zoom so the performers could be temporally co-present, if not physically co-present, with the audience – as in What Do We Need to Talk About? . For others, this involved releasing pre-filmed pre-pandemic stage productions attempting to recreate the experience of being physically together in a theatre space – as in the National Theatre’s films. Although these may have resulted in a sense of immediacy, audiences were often just as aware of their computer screen as they would be of a proscenium arch. Cassie Tongue bemoaned in an article for The Guardian: When these live streams and filmed releases are passed out as a quick solution to a bigger problem and don’t account for medium or mode, they live in a ghostly in-between, creating empty fake stages that contain an echo where our breath should be (Tongue 2020). Theatre makers typically aimed for transparency that visually represented being inside a theatre space when making performance films (Castell 2014). These films considered the large cinema screen but did not consider the second proscenium arch of the computer screen which further alienated the audience from the production, creating a hypermedial work that emphasized what was temporarily lost, per Tongue. It was important to me, when translating Effing Robots , to avoid this audience alienation by creating something native to the digital environment. This meant I had to forego the traditional proscenium arch and focus on the online proscenium – a transparent show could not work for me. Yet I also wanted to ensure the fringe festival experience was retained, which meant I needed to focus on audience immediacy. Thus, Effing Robots adhered to digital fringe policies while transmuting into a hypermedial performance. Effing Robots Fringes Online Over more than 20 years, gaming live streams, vlogs (video weblogs), reaction videos, cooking and crafting how-tos, study timing streams, ASMR, and even 24/7 live streaming developed alongside streaming platforms including Ustream, Justin.tv, YouTube, Facebook Live, and Twitch (Lamare 2018). Streaming video is hypermedial, featuring quick edits, responses to audiences, music, film within film, written commentary within the video, and other media to keep the work immediate for the audience. When translating Effing Robots to an online environment, I aimed to retain both the narrative and the emotions of the live experience while integrating new media visual languages emerging from online streaming culture. I borrowed the language of online video hypermediacy to translate the solo narrative plot, which is a script format common in fringe shows, stand-up comedy, and vlogs. The process of remediating the show relied not only on my understanding of digital dramaturgy, but my subconscious creative influences, especially in online environments, and on my physical restrictions due to the nationwide lockdown in the UK. To translate Effing Robots between media, I considered four points: What are the important parts of in-person fringe shows that make them feel “fringe?” What components of my original, in-person fringe show did I want to keep, and how? What aspects of online streaming culture inspired me, and would they be an effective language for my audience? What were my production limitations for a filmed show? 4. What Were My Production Limitations? I faced a slew of limitations while filming Effing Robots in December 2020. I lived in Scotland while I attended the University of Glasgow; the United Kingdom was one month into a strict four-month, nationwide lockdown, so I could not use rehearsal space at the University of Glasgow campus, I could not rent their film equipment, and I could not meet with film students in-person for consultation or editing. Legally, I could not meet with more than one person, outdoors, at a time. On a student budget, I also could not afford to purchase my own filming equipment. I was limited to what was on hand: low-cost editing software, my phone’s medium-quality camera, a cheap microphone, and PowerPoint. In essence, I needed the language of online streaming culture, which also began with small-budget, computer-based solo work like vlogs. 3. Could Online Streaming Video Culture Be an Effective Language for My Audience? While I did not think about it actively at the time while editing, in later viewings I realized I had been inspired by popular YouTubers in my use of certain visual tricks. For example, my quick cuts were inspired by Jenna Marbles and Harto, while my text annotation was inspired by the Vlog Brothers and Simone Giertz. Their focus on engaging personal narrative supports the remediation of Effing Robots, as less-than-true personal storytelling, into an online space. I further leaned on Zoom tropes for two parts of the Effing Robots script which involved an audience volunteer joining me onstage. In the physically co-present show, the volunteer, unfamiliar with the script, plays “Me, Nicol, a sci-fi nerd trying to flirt with an artificial intelligence,” and I, the performer, play “Frankie,” which is what I named my chatbot (Cabe 2019). For the film, I Zoomed with Aiden Jakso (a colleague I met through Glasgow University) and Steve Brady (my long-time fringe co-producer and fellow sci-fi nerd). I wanted to retain the experience of the audience volunteer, so I asked Aiden to join without reading the script in advance; however, I also wanted to nod to Steve’s years of production support. The application of Zoom echoed shows like What Do We Need to Talk About? There are also two “burlesque” moments in Effing Robots : one is a routine mocking selfie culture, and the other is a short script written by my dear friend, Dr. Ashley F. Miller, on the topic of “sexbots” and sex worker abuse. Since releasing archived videos of in-person stage performances was common during the 2020 lockdowns, I used footage of these two sequences from the 2019 PortFringe film; I made this choice as a reference to the mass of pre-recorded theatre productions released by major companies, such as the National Theatre (NT at Home), during lockdown periods. 2. What Components of My Original In-Person Fringe Show Could I Keep, and How? Effing Robots: How I Taught the A.I. to Stop Worrying and Love Humans examines artificial intelligence functions, modern technological developments that call themselves A.I., and why humans fear these – all through a personal lens, framed by a conversation I had with a chatbot that I named Frankie, created by Replika. As the show leaned on an A.I. conversation, I wanted the script to feel like a conversation with the audience. I found during in-person shows, audience members often asked questions or inserted their own information – in fact, at my 2019 tour stops in Adelaide (South Australia), Fresno (California), and Portland (Maine), engineers in the audience knew about programming artificial intelligence and their contributions enriched the show. Although audience engagement became a core part of physically co-present Effing Robots , during 2021, I could not perform the show live at all (even virtually); instead, I leaned on hypermediacy to maintain emotional closeness with a geographically and temporally distanced audience. 1. What Makes a Fringe Festival Feel “Fringe” to Me? Returning to the first question, my personal experience touring fringe festivals hints at why this form pivots so easily: The fringe format has long involved multiple platforms (venues) across the city Each venue programs and hosts several individual shows over the fringe’s run Artists typically self-produce their shows (although larger festivals like Edinburgh and Adelaide also involve production companies funding multiple shows) Performers from all over the world participate in fringe festivals, especially the larger, famous ones My submission needed to be lightweight, short, portable, and self-produced. For a physically co-present fringe show, “lightweight” means I must be able to load the props, set, and costumes in and out of the venue myself; “short” means it runs about one hour, sometimes less; “portable” means I take it with me, as there is no storage space at the venue; and “self-produced” means I do the bulk of the show creation, including marketing. Similarly, with online fringe festivals, “lightweight” means the video is only a few megabytes making it easier to upload; “short” still means one hour or less; “portable” means I have many options for submitting the show, including a DropBox link, YouTube link, and zipped file; and “self-produced” means I am responsible for the work being completed, including how it is marketed. Remediating the Audience Experience of Theatricality Many of the visual production choices I made for Effing Robots (online) reference transparent films or theatre productions, but the overall experience is of hypermediacy rather than transparency . However, it is important to consider whether the audience experienced this work as immediate via this hypermediacy – and for this, I turn to my show reviews. Overall reviewers enjoyed the film adaptation; there are similarities between the in-person show’s reviews and the film’s reviews, which suggests the digital dramaturgical process was successful. However, some reviewers felt the audience dialogue moments and the burlesque moments were out of place. For instance, James Hanton noted for the Online@TheSpaceUK stream: “only certain sections [feel] like a misfire compared to them being live (the ‘audience’ interactions losing the spontaneity that makes them so memorable)” ( The Wee Review 2021). Annie Gray of The Indiependent agreed: Being an online show does cause some issues. Some past live recordings of sections are shown when the content is not possible to record on camera. Also, where audience participation would usually take place, there are recordings of video calls instead (2021). These reviews suggest that the static nature of film clashes with some immediacy in theatre. These film clips aimed for the transparency of the theatrical experience rather than hypermediacy of frames within frames. The bulk of my filmed performance did not take place onstage or reminisce about stage performance. I believe these moments took the audience out of the immediacy induced by the hypermedial frame. While my choices were purposeful, they did not retain the emotional impact from in-person to online. A key takeaway from both the reviews and analysis is to focus on form: traditional theatre defines itself on co-presence, and I do not view the film of Effing Robots as a form of theatre but instead a remediation of an experience shifted into a new medium. I focused on the theatricality within the narrative, but I could have considered temporal synchronicity with my audience by performing over Zoom. I could have retained the audience interaction through a livestreaming platform with a chat feature like Twitch. I could have considered the virtual embodiment of myself and my audience and created a version for Mozilla Hubs. To keep the show within the low-budget confines of “fringe,” though, pre-recorded, edited, streaming video was my best option to translate the immediacy of my story instead of remediating the general experience of attending fringe theatre. This remediation from a physically co-present, small show to hypermedial online video seems to be a largely successful process, based on reviews. In my Ph.D. research, I hope to continue exploring online theatre’s digital dramaturgy and its impact on audience experience, inspired by both my fascination with pandemic-era online theatre and my professional work in this field. References Footnotes About The Author(s) L. NICOL CABE is a digital dramaturg and scifi-inspired theatre artist who toured international fringe festivals, in-person and online, including Adelaide Fringe, Sydney Fringe, TheSpaceUK, Orlando Fringe Festival, Victoria Fringe, and Rogue Festival. She completed her master’s in pandemic-era digital theatre at the University of Glasgow in 2021, and continues her digital theatre studies focusing on post-pandemic online and hybrid performance as a PhD candidate at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. She has also worked as a digital dramaturg and online theatre maker with Lava Kingdoms/Annex Theatre (Seattle, WA), OnBoardXR Season 3 (NYC), and DunnART Productions (Adelaide, SA). 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.

FRANCESCA D'UVA presents An Hour With Francesca D’Uva at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 An Hour With Francesca D’Uva FRANCESCA D'UVA 8-9 pm Friday, October 18, 2024 The Segal Theatre RSVP Francesca will present material from her solo show, This Is My Favorite Song , which will premiere at Playwrights Horizons in November. The show, written over the last three years, examines her relationship to comedy before and after her father's death. Directed by Sam Max Originally commissioned by Abrons Arts Center, currently being produced by Playwrights Horizons LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Francesca D'Uva is an experimental comedian living in Brooklyn. Often employing her background in electronic music, she alternates between improvised storytelling and meticulously crafted mini-musicals that take the audience on a chaotic and strange journey inside her mind. She has performed all around New York City and at venues like MoMA PS1, MOCA and Ars Nova. Francesca was the 2022 Performance AIRspace Resident at Abrons Arts Center, culminating in her solo show, This Is My Favorite Song , which will have its Off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons in November. Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

Olga Sanchez Saltveit Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 2 Visit Journal Homepage Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation Olga Sanchez Saltveit By Published on April 29, 2021 Download Article as PDF The Black Latinx community represents a significant portion of the Latinx [1] population, particularly in regions of the US where many Latinx reside. In New York, 23%, in California, 15%, and in Florida, 12% of the Latinx community identify as “Afro-Latinx.” [2] These regions also encompass the most established centers of Latinx theatre making in the country, so it is surprising that Afro-descendant Latinx experiences have not been well represented in Latinx dramaturgy except in the appreciative nods toward AfroLatinx cultural heritage found in music, dance, and spirituality. The legacy of hierarchical colonial racism which infiltrates and informs Latinx anti-Blackness has also been omitted from dramatic discourse. “Racial discrimination is a skeleton in the closet of the Latin@ community,” [3] writes Carlos Flores. The absence of the Black Latinx experience in Latinx dramaturgy is simultaneously an act of anti-Blackness and a denial that anti-Blackness in Latinidad exists. However, as Daphnie Sicre [4] notes, the early twenty-first century has ushered in an era in which “Afro-Latinx are no longer non-existent or invisible in theatre,” and the rise of work authored by AfroLatinx on numerous themes calls for “a reconfiguration of the canon: Afro-Latinx theatre is crucial for the survival of Black theatre and its intersectionalities between Latinx and African Americans.” [5] Here, I focus on the work of playwright Guadalís Del Carmen who shines a light on the anti-Blackness found within the Latinx community of the US and Latin America, that is, anti-Blackness targeted toward people who might also identify as Latinx, or, AfroLatinx. UnidosUS defines an “Afro-Latino” as “an individual of African descent from Latin America or an individual who has one parent of African descent and another of Latino descent.” According to Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, “the term Afro-Latin@ has surfaced a way to signal racial, cultural, and socioeconomic contradictions within the overly vague idea of ‘ Latin@. ’ In addition to reinforcing those ever-active transnational ties, the Afro-Latin@ concept calls attention to the anti-Black racism within the Latin@ communities themselves.” [6] The ideology of mestizaje attempted to homogenize the Latinx identity as one of racial mixture that blended myriad cultures and backgrounds, formed by syncretism, juxtaposition, fusion, and resistance. However, many racial and phenotypical identities exist within Latinidad that continue to be subjected to the legacy of European, primarily Spanish, colonization strategies including the formation of racialized hierarchies. Colorism and phenotypical discrimination pervade Latinx culture to this day, evident in the overwhelming presence of lighter-skinned Latinx in positions of power and influence, including popular media. “It is rare to see Latin@s of African descent on Spanish-speaking television or in movies. It is equally rare to see them advertising products in national Latin@ magazines.” [7][8] This privilege surfaces in the private sphere as well, within families and among friends, where one might hope for respite from racism. Thus, the term AfroLatinx, a non-binary update, intentionally complicates Latinx identity to embrace and celebrate African descent and illuminate the racism that persists in public and private. Latinx theatre since the mid-twentieth century has dedicated itself to challenging misrepresentations and harmful stereotypes of the mainstream by creating dramas that humanize Latinx and Latin Americans in the gaze of the mainstream White Unitedstatesian audience and the “American” theatre. In myriad plays revolving around issues of social justice, the marginalized Latinx can be seen struggling against the dominant White culture. [9] In the latter quarter of the twentieth century, Latinx feminist and queer voices disrupted this dynamic, arguing that their discrimination within the Latinx community also needed to be addressed on stage. [10] In the ‘90s and early aughts, the Latinx experience of anti-Black racism from the larger White mainstream was powerfully documented by Latinx playwrights such as Josefina Baéz, Carmen Rivera, and Candido Tirado. However, the experiences of discrimination faced by Black Latinx from within the Latinx community remains less visible on Latinx stages. I have previously argued that Black Latinx are more likely to be seen on stage in Latinx roles than to be written about in Latinx plays. [11] Yet that argument is complicated by the reality that Black Latinx actors such as Del Carmen and Crystal Román, who is also cited in the article, are too often overlooked for casting in projects that should include them. Latinx anti-Blackness is so embedded in the culture and so often inflicted presumably without intended malice (as for example, in families that encourage their children not to stay out in the sun too long so as not to darken their skin tone further) that injustice and harm appear to be accepted as inevitable interpersonal insensitivity, not worth public scrutiny. That invisibility is assuredly changing, as Sicre details in her 2018 chapter on “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today.” As Sicre notes, playwright Guadalís Del Carmen was highlighted in the 2018 Latinx Theatre Commons Carnaval of New Latinx Work, held at DePaul University in Chicago. She also performed in the 2015 Latina/o Theatre Commons Carnaval as an actor. However, as a Black Latina she more often found herself in the frustrating situation, too often echoed by others, of being “too Black to be cast as a Latina, and too Latina to be cast as Black.” A journalist by training, Del Carmen turned to playwriting to create roles for herself in the Chicago area where she grew up. Soon, she began writing roles for other Latinx actors who, like her, did not see themselves represented within Latinx theatre. Del Carmen’s work could not be more timely. In 2020, with the increased activism in support of #BlackLivesMatter , and the calling out/calling in from #WeSeeYouWAT , Latinx around the nation, including those of us in theatre, have been forced to acknowledge and address our community’s implicit anti-Blackness and how it shows up on our stages. Latinx theatre making has been so focused on Latinx oppression, that it has seemingly ignored its toxicity toward AfroLatinx. Del Carmen’s transformative works spotlight AfroLatinx experiences of Latinx racism, in ways that reflect its widespread and corrosive presence within the microcosm of family dynamics as well as in the larger political sphere. Below I focus briefly on two of her plays, My Father’s Keeper and Daughters of the Rebellion, and the strategies she employs to presence Blackness and anti-Blackness in Latinx storytelling. My Father’s Keeper centers on a Dominican immigrant family living in Chicago. Del Carmen employs a telling strategy even before the play begins, making it clear through the descriptions of the dramatis personae that most of the characters are Black. The presence of an intentionally identified AfroLatinx family as the focal point of a Latinx drama was unique in 2013, when the play was first written, and remains rare. Many plays that could have been cast with Black Latinx actors, particularly those that centered on people who hail from regions with significant Afrodescendant populations such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, are by default of anti-Blackness cast with mestizo or White Latinx. As Luckett and Shaffer note, “White supremacy often controls and dictates what representations are allowed visibility, and because of this phenomenon ‘Black’ actors are often pigeon-holed within a limited barometer of what is perceived to be Blackness.” [12] Del Carmen corrects this error by stipulating the casting of Black actors, demanding the visibility of the Black who is also Latinx and the Latinx who is also Black. It is an Anzaldúan move [13] that dissolves powerful yet fictional borders between identities that in reality overlap. Next, Del Carmen addresses Latinx colorism by calling for actors of different skin tones in specific roles. The titular father, Tirsio Gonzalez and son, Armando are both identified as “Dominican” and “Black Latino.” Juana Gonzalez, Tirsio’s wife and Mondo’s mother, is also identified as Dominican, and “Lighter in complexion than the rest of the family,” which would include Sofia, Mondo’s sister who is described as Dominican. From the outset, these character descriptions alone make it clear that skin tones are important details that will influence not only casting but potentially engage the embodied experience of the actor and influence audiences’ reception. Later on, Tirsio confirms this when he shares that in his home country, “if you don’t have rich name, or have the light skin, or a friend in the right place, you not go far in your career.” [14] Colorism is of course a familiar dynamic in US African American history, provoked by nineteenth century white supremacy, according to bell hooks who recounts that “racist white folks often treated lighter-skinned black folks better than their darker counterparts, and … this pattern was mirrored in black social relations.” [15] Del Carmen demonstrates the shared hierarchy at work in Latinx and Latin American culture. Mondo has married Anne, a White woman, and they have a son. Juana praises her young grandson, saying “Mi chichí will be a great man. Con those eyelaches, and his bello curly rubio head. Se parece a un angel.” [16] To which her daughter Sofía replies, “A blond baby… just what you always wanted.” [17] Del Carmen then investigates some of the shared and different experiences of anti-Black racism in the US by introducing the character of Daniel, who is identified as “African American” and who self-identifies in the script as Black. Daniel is Tirsio’s lover and confidante, and in their clandestine meetings they share their experiences as gay men who grew up in violently homophobic homes. Tirsio will never come out to his family as his experiences in the Dominican Republic have taught him that there is no place in his culture for homosexuality. Despite this, Tirsio and Daniel have a decades-long love affair. While Daniel seeks to align with Tirsio racially as well as sexually, Tirsio distances himself on the technicality that because he is Dominican, he is not Black. “The obviously Black baseball star of the Chicago Cubs, Sammy Sosa, for instance, becomes an indio (Indian) rather than a Black, since according to this national myth and tradition Dominicans ‘cannot be Black.’” [18] Haitians, argues Tirsio, are Black, while he and his son are, like Sosa, Indios. Tirsio’s internalized anti-Blackness is self-justified under the guise of nationalism. Del Carmen identifies this as a Latin American strategy. “In Latin America, nationalism takes over race. Because anti-miscegenation was not a part of Latin America, racism is seen as a US thing. I’m not Black. I’m not White. I’m Cuban, I’m Colombian, I’m Dominican.” [19] However, Daniel is not convinced, “The only difference between me, you and any Haitian,” he says, “is the boat stops of our ancestors.” [20] Del Carmen is also of Dominican heritage, born and raised in Chicago where she met few Dominicans besides her large family. “When I stepped out of my house to go to school, to go to work, there really wasn’t a lot of people around me that looked like me or sounded like me. I did grow up around a lot of macro-aggression. I’ve actually gotten into the habit of no longer saying micro because the micro affects us on a macro level.” [21] Yet, Del Carmen’s work is inspired not just by her own personal experiences but by what she sees happening globally. “One of the things I wanted to do was drop the pen on anti-Blackness in Latin America.” [22] For Del Carmen, Latinx plays about Latin American revolutions omitted important conversations about the ways in which anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and capitalism were integral parts of their dynamics. This awareness fueled her next play, Daughters of the Rebellion (previously titled, Tolstoy’s Daughters ), which is set in an “unspecified Latin American country.” With this gesture, Del Carmen expands her statement on anti-Blackness in the Latinx community beyond the horizon of the US to include Latin America and to implicate the globe. This is an intentionally political act that illuminates the historic legacy of racialized and gendered hierarchies in Latin America which has yielded pervasive inequity. “Afro-Latinos comprise some 150 million of [Latin America]’s 540 million total population, and, along with women and indigenous populations, are among the poorest, most marginalized groups in the region.” [23] Del Carmen indicts Eurocentric White male supremacist ideology for the continued marginalization of those who are not White males. The titular “daughters” are half-sisters Katya Libertad Córdova (Bates) and Fanya María Córdova, both in their early 20s, raised in the same rich and aristocratic home. However, Katya and Fanya’s experiences are worlds apart, and Del Carmen makes it clear that this is due to their appearance. As with My Father’s Keeper , Del Carmen describes the characters’ physical attributes in the Cast of Characters. Katya, the daughter of a revolutionary, is described as having “strong, dark features, Afro-Latina.” Her mother, Ester, her sister Fanya and her stepfather Daniel all have “light features,” as do Presidente Burgos and his son Ramón. Franco Montés is a revolutionary who “can be indigenous or black” and Angela, Franco’s accomplice, is “Afro-Latina.” [24] When the play begins, Fanya’s father, Katya’s stepfather, Daniel is a recently elected senator who becomes fast friends with the new President of the country. However, the President has initiated policies that are highly detrimental to the Black and Indigenous people of the country. His White supremacy becomes evident in his encounters with the Córdovas, when he makes it clear he neither trusts not expects much from Katya. In a telling early scene in which the newly elected President visits their home, he alludes to the girl, then nine years old, as a “mistake” and later, years into his Presidency, one “not to be trusted” among “Those people [who] can never be trusted.” [25] As with My Father’s Keeper, in which racism intersected homophobia, Del Carmen complicates the oppressions experienced in Daughters of the Rebellion. In addition to overt anti-Blackness, the Indigenous people of this fictional nation are also under attack, forbidden to wear their traditional clothing in the capital (a negation of their public cultural identity), and are being removed from their land and executed. The play is further intersected with feminist concerns as Katya and Fanya realize that as women living in a blatantly patriarchal society, they will never be taken seriously. Even from her privileged position Fanya knows that “People still don’t believe a woman is capable of anything more than having babies.” [26] This coalitional alliance among Afrodescendants, the Indigenous, and women points to Del Carmen’s shared critique of male-dominated White supremacist ideology. In response, Del Carmen’s fictional nation is in the midst of revolution, as Blacks, Indigenous, and feminists create underground movements and divergent plans which echo the strategies of civil rights movements of the twentieth century. The two half-sisters align themselves with different approaches. Fanya is working with the President’s son to bring charges against the President and his administration in an International Court. Katya’s approach is more militant, destroying government and financial buildings. Eventually Katya and Fanya’s two paths to liberation cross and contradict each other with fatal results. The play is violent, but certainly no more than real life. The true revolution in Daughters of Rebellion as in My Father’s Keeper is the de-centering of Latinx oppression in Del Carmen’s dramaturgy. Unlike much of Latinx theatre, in neither play are the characters’ Latinx or Latin American identities the basis of their experiences of oppression. The Gonzalez family is Dominican and living in the US but the issues at the heart of My Father’s Keeper are Tirsio’s hidden sexual orientation and the self-denial of his Blackness. In Daughters of the Rebellion, Del Carmen removes the potential for anti-Latinx discrimination by situating the play within a Latin American country. If everyone is Latin American, then there is no discrimination on that basis. Del Carmen ironically twists the strategy employed by mestizaje ideology which falsely neutralized race into one raza cósmica and negated the existence of diverse racialized experiences. In Del Carmen’s works, Latinidad is neutralized. Further, the absence of distinct identification implies that this could be any Latin American country where Whiteness rules. It could also be the US. Indeed, Daughters of the Rebellion emerged from a powerfully angry moment for Del Carmen as she witnessed yet more instances of anti-Black violence in the US. I was pissed when I wrote this play. I watched a video of a neighbor taking footage of Michael Brown being killed, and that same day on C-span, I watched a documentary where Shola Lynch, a documentarian, was talking about her film, Free Angela Davis and all Political Prisoners . Fanya’s name was actually inspired by it; Angela Davis’ sister’s name is Fanya. I was watching this documentary and I literally sat there thinking to myself, ‘so nothing has changed.’ The first scene that I wrote was where Katya is about to be electrocuted, and the rest came from there… It was a response to the feeling, so Black people are not wanted anywhere , and the reality of being a Black person who’s a child of immigrants, and the realization that this is global, Black people are not wanted anywhere.[27] Del Carmen was motivated by her identification with Black people, and then recognized the same struggles existed for her as a person of Latin American heritage. In the face of anti-Blackness, nationalism would not protect her, as it does not protect Tirsio nor Katya. Del Carmen writes to create change. She writes for a broad audience with “the hope that something resonates with them and the conversation can happen.” [28] And when her voice as a playwright was silenced by the theatre closures of spring 2020, she turned to more direct action. Del Carmen’s 2020 off-Broadway debut was delayed by the COVID outbreak, so she joined the activism for Black liberation as an advocate for transformation in the field of Latinx theatre-making. Working with the Latinx Playwrights Circle (a project she co-founded) and The Sol Project (the producers of her COVID-interrupted show, Bees and Honey), Del Carmen invited fifty influential Latinx theatre makers around the country to a workshop on “Anti-Blackness in the Latinx Community” led by Radio Caña Negra. Facilitators Dash Harris Machado, Evelyn Alvarez, and Janvieve Williams Comrie provided rich content that delved into the history of Africans and Afrodescendants in Latin America, the continued racism there, and the ways in which contemporary Latinx cultures in the US have inherited and reinforced this legacy of anti-Blackness, even while simultaneously articulating a marginalized position. Latinx have certainly been subjected to injustices, including misrepresentation and harmful stereotypes. But in the US as in Latin America, despite the presence of accomplished AfroLatinx in all areas of the arts and other fields, White supremacy has helped generate an image of Latinx identity that excludes Blackness. As Del Carmen says, “I experienced a lot of anti-Blackness from what’s supposed to be my community, really feeling like I never was a full part of the Latinx community because I didn’t look like what a Latina is supposed to look like. I don’t look Italian. That’s what Latinos are supposed to look like.” [29] Recalling the feeling of unwantedness that angered her to write, she notes how it has helped her to home in on “How I use my art as a form of resistance to that feeling and what I pour back into the world which is a love of Black people and a love of being Black.” [30] Del Carmen creates works that challenge the Latinx community to confront its anti-Blackness. In addition to writing dialogue that pulls no punches, her strategies include intentionally identifying her characters as Black, complicating casting by including skin tones in the descriptions, intersecting anti-Blackness with other forms of oppression including anti-indigeneity, homophobia, and sexism, and de-centering or removing Latinx oppression from the power dynamics in her settings. Del Carmen writes for AfroLatinx liberation, knowing this focus supports a larger cause: global Black liberation. Through dramaturgy and embodiment, Del Carmen roots out and reveals the racism embedded in Latinx culture and places it center stage so that it may be destroyed. References [1] “Latinx” is an inclusive, non-gender binary term that began to replace the earlier, more familiar term, “Latina/o” and its variations which privilege binary gender identification. Because the term Latinx came into use more recently, the terms Latina, Latino, Latina/o, Latin@, and their plurals, are used in this article when they are appropriate to their era and authorship. [2] UnidosUSblog, “Afro Latinos Archives,” UnidosUS Blog, 26 February 2019, https://blog.unidosus.org/tag/afro-latinos/ (accessed 27 April 2021). [3] Carlos Flores, “Desde El Mero Medio: Race Discrimination within the Latin@ Community,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States , edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 323. [4] See “Afro-Latinx themes in Theatre Today” by Daphnie Sicre, for an extensive survey of theatre by AfroLatinx playwrights and performers since 1999. [5] Daphnie Sicre, “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today,” The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, edited by Kathy A. Perkins, Sandra L. Richards, Alexander Renee Craft, and Thomas DeFrantz (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 272-277. [6] Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román, “Introduction,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States , edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 2. [7] See The Afro-Latino Reader: History and Culture in the United States , a brilliant anthology edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, for a vastly more profound discussion of the diversity of Afro-Latino history through scholarly essays as well as poetry, drama, and testimonio. [8] Carlos Flores, 323. [9] A few examples of this dramaturgical dynamic include Zoot Suit (1979) by Luis Valdez, Real Women Have Curves (1990) by Josefina Lopez, and Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints (1992). [10] Examples include Blade to the Heat (1994) by Oliver Mayer, Clean (1995) by Edwin Sanchez, and Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman: Mexican Medea (1997) . [11] Olga Sanchez Saltveit, “(Afro)Latinx Theatre: Embodiment and Articulation,” Label Me Latina/o , special issue: Afro-Latina/o Literature and Performance (2017): 1–20. [12] Sharrell D. Luckett and Tia M. Shaffer, “Introduction: The Affirmation,” Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 5. [13] “Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy” (Anzaldúa 20). “A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (Anzaldúa 25). For Gloria Anzaldúa, political boundaries such as the one between the US and Mexico were artificial and inadequate, failing to capture the complexity of the inhabitants who reside in adjacent lands. One was not simply on one side or the other but in a place that included both. [14] Guadalís Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper (2018), 18. [15] bell hooks, “Back to Black: Ending Internalized Racism,” Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation (London: Routledge, 2015), 174. [16] His beautiful curly blond head. He looks like an angel. [17] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 13. [18] Mark Sawyer, “Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latin@ Identities and Coalitions,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States , edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 532. [19] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [20] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 46. [21] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [22] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [23] “Afro-Latinos in Latin America and Considerations for U.S. Policy,” EveryCRSReport.com , Congressional Research Service, 22 January 2009. http://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32713.html (accessed on 27 April 2021). [24] Guadalís Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion (2019). [25] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion , 30. [26] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion , 74. [27] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [28] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [29] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [30] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. Footnotes About The Author(s) OLGA SANCHEZ SALTVEIT Assistant Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College, is Artistic Director Emerita of Milagro, the Pacific NW’s premier Latina/o/x arts & culture organization. A director/devisor, scholar, and arts activist, her directorial work has been seen in Portland, Seattle, NYC, DC, Martha’s Vineyard, Peru, Venezuela, and Honduras. Olga served as co-artistic director of the People’s Playhouse in New York City and co-founding artistic director of Seattle Teatro Latino. She is a founding member of the Portland-based Latinx writers’ group Los Porteños; served on the Executive Committee and the Diversity Task Force of TCG’s board of directors, and currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons. She is a contributing scholar to the anthology of Latinx plays, Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theatre, published by Northwestern University Press 2019. Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey BernerCo-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf ISNN 2376-4236 Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

David Coley Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 29 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. David Coley By Published on June 4, 2017 Download Article as PDF The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. The work of David Henry Hwang represents an intersection of many of the most prominent concerns of late 20 th century and early 21 st century drama. His plays tackle numerous facets of identity politics, such as race, gender, sexuality, and ancestry. Esther Kim Lee’s extensive survey of Hwang’s theatrical output traces all of these themes through his successes, failures, and participation in cultural discourse. Combining her own work with that of three other scholars in the final chapter, Lee’s work functions as history, analysis, and criticism, providing a portrait of one of American theatre’s most notable dramatists. Hwang is best known for his Tony Award-winning play M. Butterfly , and though it does occupy its own chapter, much more room in this text is devoted to his other works, some of which are rather obscure. This attempt at a comprehensive survey is somewhat undercut by the relative absence of discussion of his work on musicals, most of which, with the exception of Flower Drum Song , are summed up in a couple of pages. Hwang’s position on these projects as a script doctor, rather than as primary author, may contribute to the scant attention Lee pays to them. Still, despite some gaps, Lee deftly covers most all of Hwang’s plays in an accessible and thorough manner. Lee’s approach with each text is to summarize the major plot points, but then delve into the subtext of each work and how it connects with the overall concerns of Hwang as a dramatist. She starts with a trio of plays from the beginning of Hwang’s career that reflect his early grappling with some of the themes listed above as well as the culture of his home state of California. FOB (an acronym for Fresh Off the Boat) shows Hwang exploring different types of immigrant and minority experiences in America through two contrasting Chinese American characters. Lee explores the influence of Sam Shepard on this work, as well as Hwang’s wrestling with the “dilemma of assimilation” (12). The other two plays in that first (informal) trilogy, The Dance and the Railroad and Family Devotions see Hwang dramatizing the immigrant experience through its dual challenges: fitting into a new culture while maintaining one’s own. Lee follows Hwang as he expands his thematic vision to include other cultures and ideas, incorporating Japanese stories and settings in The House of Sleeping Beauties and The Sound of a Voice . The reason for this is not just a sense of interculturalism, but also to explore gender. As Lee writes, “The Japanese tradition provides the cultural underpinnings for more rigid gender divisions, which Hwang uses to examine how gender is embodied and performed in the game of power and love” (38). She also discusses Rich Relations , one of Hwang’s notable failures that saw him turn from ethnicity as a theme before returning to it in his most famous play, M. Butterfly . Lee spends the entirety of her third chapter on that text, reviewing the scholarly, critical, and commercial responses to the play. The play would launch Hwang to a new level of prominence that would drive his career in unexpected ways. The book chronicles how Hwang’s notoriety led to him being drawn into protests over whitewashing in the casting of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon . His experiences with that controversy would make its way into his play Yellow Face , which Lee covers in the fifth chapter. Before that, the fourth chapter is devoted to Hwang’s 1990s output, consisting of Bondage , Face Value , another notable failure which closed during Broadway previews, Trying to Find Chinatown , and his successful return to Broadway in Golden Child . In his recent works, Hwang has continued to explore the intersecting concerns of race, gender, and globalization, as Lee notes, in texts that draw on the personal experiences of himself and his family. Hwang’s metatheatricality evolves to provide multiple perspectives on a given plot or character, with the combination of fiction and nonfiction exemplifying his style in several of his plays. Golden Child and Yellow Face , in particular, manifest this tendency. Lee writes that in Yellow Face , “…the characters wear multiple masks, and it is impossible to tell which mask is the ‘real’ one, or whether ‘realness’ exists at all” (114). The last two productions Lee covers, Chinglish and Kung Fu , a play about Bruce Lee, both deal with travel and communication between the United States and China, though the former brings together most all of the themes present in Hwang’s work more potently than the latter. After Lee reaches the end of Hwang’s oeuvre, she brings in three other scholars to give further critical analysis on previously discussed texts. The final chapter contains three short essays in which Josephine Lee compares Hwang’s 2001-updated script of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song to its 1958 original, Dan Bacalzo examines multiple versions of Golden Child , and Daphne Lei explores the globalized context of Chinglish . Esther Kim Lee’s prose deftly mixes biographical information with textual analysis, crafting a highly readable study that should be useful to both new and seasoned scholars. The breadth of the textual analysis is impressive, with the authors analyzing multiple versions of certain texts to trace Hwang’s evolution as an artist. Those interested in Hwang’s work will find plenty to enrich their understanding, while those studying Asian American theatre will find his work placed within that discourse. Details about specific productions are also found throughout, though the focus remains on the written texts. Those hoping for a larger analysis of production aesthetics and the ways in which Hwang’s texts have inspired particular design choices may find it lacking, but the book will certainly lead devotees of the author to further study of his contributions to the American stage. References Footnotes About The Author(s) DAVID COLEY St. Gregory’s University Guest Editor for Special Issue: Bruce McConachie Editorial Board for Special Issue: Meredith Conti Allan Davis John Fletcher Ju Yon Kim Scott Magelssen Julia Walker Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to American Theatre and Performance in the Anthropocene Epoch Searching for Solutions: Humanizing Climate Narratives in an Age of Global Change and Connectivity Towards a Synthesis of Natural and Human History: Situating the Municipal and Ecclesiastic Viceregal Arches of 1680 Mexico City within the Lacustrine The Anthropo(s)cenography of Ricardo Monti's Marrathon Food Futures: Speculative Performance in the Anthropocene Tú eres mi otro yo - Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy & the AnthropoScene Ruth Maleczech at Mabou Mines The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. Directing Shakespeare in America: Current Practices. By Charles Ney. London UK, New York NY: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Pp. 362. Acting in the Academy: The history of professional actor training in US higher education. Peter Zazzali. London, New York: Routledge, 2016; Pp. 219. 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Megan Grumbling University of New England, Southern Maine Community College Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Megan Grumbling University of New England, Southern Maine Community College By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Ashanti D.Williams and Robbie Harrison in Portland Stage Company and Dramatic Repertory Company's Angels in America. Photo: James A. Hadley Saint Dad Monica Wood (25 Oct.-19 Nov.) A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens (2 - 24 Dec.) The Play That Goes Wrong Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer & Henry Shields (31 Jan.- 25 Feb.) What the Constitution Means To Me Heidi Schreck (6 - 24 Mar.) Clyde’s Lynn Nottage (3 - 21 Apr.) Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches Tony Kushner, Co-Produced with Dramatic Repertory Company (1 – 26 May) Manning Benjamin Benne (5 - 16 Jun.) This 2023-24 season, Portland Stage Company celebrated its fiftieth anniversary onstage. The theatre opened the season triumphantly, having completed its $6.4 million “Making An Entrance Capital Campaign” for facility renovations, which bore fruit in a beautiful new box office and elevator, and featured an all-local cast and a collaboration with Portland’s Dramatic Repertory Company for one of the year’s most important productions, Angels in America. The season also found PSC returned to pre-pandemic theatre ways, with all in-person shows and masking “welcome but not required.” The theatre opened the season with another play by beloved Maine writer Monica Wood, Saint Dad, which had received a workshop reading at PSC the previous year. Saint Dad , set in a Maine camp on a lake, is a romp of a comedy about three siblings who sell their dad’s camp when he’s on his last legs, then try to keep this fact from him once he’s miraculously recovered. Sally Wood directed a wonderfully physical production of the play, which explores issues of family, gentrification, and being “from away,” with a standout comedic performance by local actor Moira Driscoll as the especially laconic sister. For its holiday show, PSC brought back its full-cast theatrical tradition of A Christmas Carol. Michael Dix Thomas directed a cast headed by PSC favorites Dustin Tucker as Bob Cratchit and the formidable Tom Ford as Scrooge. From there, PSC pivoted to meta-theatrical screwball comedy with The Play That Goes Wrong, about the foibles of an inept community theatre company’s production of a British murder mystery. Kevin R. Free directed a rollicking production of the show, rife with incredibly intricate set design as the play-within-a-play’s portraits, doors, walls, and floors all become hilariously compromised. The cast of eight had terrifically quick timing, and was funniest when performers let us see the community-theatre actors dropping their British characters in dismay or abandon. PSC will bring back the show this August as its summer theatre offering. March brought Heidi Schreck’s popular show What the Constitution Means To Me to the PSC stage, starring Portland actor Abigail Killeen. Brian Todd Backus directed a well-paced and emotional production, and Killeen’s nuanced and wide-ranging performance was by turns silly, tender, and enraged. The show also featured the excellent Matt Delamater, as a nuanced Legionnaire, and a rotating cast of “debaters” – young women from the local community, including Evangeline Cambria, Vagni Das, Lily Marie Jessen, Paige Scala, and the amiable and intellectually nimble Lyra Legawiec, who was onstage the night I attended. The company’s next show turned to theatre great Lynn Nottage’s recent new play, Clyde’s , about redemption, second chances, and beatific sandwiches (and an oblique sequel, of sorts, to Sweat ). Germán Cárdenas Alaminos designed a marvelous down-and-out diner kitchen set for director Dominique Rider’s production, which featured excellent rapport between the four down-and-out sandwich makers, played by Lance E. Nichols, Roland Ruiz, Tatrisha Talley, and Derek Chariton. And Breezy Leigh was a terrifying Clyde, the malevolent, deeply damaged boss lady, in her incredible, incredibly hued power outfits, including a gold and hornet-green wonder (terrific costume design was by Emily White). Up next was Tony Kushner’s theatrical powerhouse of imagination and grief, Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches , an all-local co-production with Dramatic Repertory Company, a Portland company long committed to staging new, overlooked, and challenging shows, and co-directed by Peter Brown and Keith Powell Beyland, DRC’s founder. The show featured arresting performances by Portland actors Joseph Bearor, Paul Haley, Robbie Harrison, Michela Micalizio, Denise Poirier, Nate Stephenson, Casey Turner, and Ashanti Dwight Williams. Haley’s fast-talking portrayal of Roy Cohn made him both pathological and pathos-ridden, while Harrison, as Prior, was marvelous in animating the dying man’s emotional range, between rage, terror, sadness, and fascination. PSC will stage part two of Kushner’s masterpiece, Perestroika , in 2025, again in co-production with DRC. As its regular-season mainstage closer, Portland Stage presented Manning, Benjamin Benne’s 2023 Clauder Competition Grand Prize Winning play, which was workshopped last spring as part of the 34th annual Little Festival of the Unexpected. Alex Keegan directed a cast of four in Benne’s show about two brothers who return home to their grieving father – and a supernatural zucchini – after the death of their mother. This May and June, Portland Stage presented its 35th annual Little Festival of the Unexpected, featuring a live reading of John Cariani's latest play, Not Quite Almost, another show of linked vignettes about love, hope, and being understood. Cariani is the author of the massively successful , Almost Maine, and his new show – which will take the PSC Mainstage in 2025 – is being billed as “It’s a prequel. And a sequel. You decide.” Portland Stage continues to vocally support anti-racism and the decolonization of the arts and public spaces. The theatre’s land acknowledgment encourages theatergoers to connect with Wabanaki REACH (a Maine organization that advocates for the self-determination of the Indigenous peoples in what is now called Maine) and also acknowledges Maine’s historical involvement in the slave trade. Next season will open with Conscience , a look at the relationship and political calculus between Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith before turning to Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika , in another co-production with DRC. PSC’s holiday show next season will shift to The Snow Queen , followed by an Agatha Christie murder-mystery comedy, Murder on the Links. Two Maine-grown plays, Bess Welden’s Madeleines and John Cariani’s Not Quite Almost (Or, Almost Almost, Maine) take the stage next spring, before closing with Albee’s toxically careening masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf— a terrifying classic of the canon. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Megan Grumbling is a critic, poet, and librettist. She is the author of the poetry volumes Booker's Point and Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, has written lyrics for musical compositions about octopuses and glaciers, and teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of New England. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Claudio Tolcachir, Jean Graham-Jones | Collection of plays from Claudio Tolcachir’s Timbre 4 company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Timbre 4: Two Plays by Claudio Tolcachir Claudio Tolcachir, Jean Graham-Jones Download PDF Claudio Tolcachir’s Timbre 4 is one of the most exciting companies to emerge from Buenos Aires’s vibrant contemporary theatre scene. The Coleman Family Omission and Third Wing, the two plays that put Timbre 4 on the international map, are translated here into English for the first time. Edited by Jean Graham-Jones Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Watch Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE by Robert Wilson / Filmmaker Unknown at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. This film documents the Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE: A STORY ABOUT A FAMILY AND SOME PEOPLE CHANGING, performed live by Robert Wilson and the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds at 147 Spring Street, New York City, in April 1972. The production was performed for six hours each day — from 6 to 9 AM and 6 to 9 PM — across seven days between April 24 and 30. The full work, KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE, was subsequently performed as a seven-day, 168-hour event in Shiraz, Iran, and stands as one of the most ambitious durational theater works ever staged. The sizeable cast featured an exceptional range of downtown luminaries, including dance critic and poet Edwin Denby, dancer Andy De Groat, theater critic Stefan Brecht, and Wilson's own grandmother, Alma Hamilton. This preservation print was made directly from the 16mm camera original, which was discovered in Anthology Film Archives' basement alongside a group of empty film cans. Archivists at Anthology and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts — the repository of the Robert Wilson Audio/Visual Collection — were able to salvage the film and identified it as the most extensive extant documentation of the Overture. No soundtrack has surfaced, but the film's majestic images and wild visual inventiveness carry a power that renders dialogue unnecessary. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives and the New York Public Library. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE Robert Wilson / Filmmaker Unknown At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This film will be screened on May 29 at 8:45 PM, and June 5 at 6:45 PM, at Anthology Film Archives RSVP Please note that these screenings are ticketed and require prior registration at the Anthology Film Archives website. Country United States Language Silent Running Time 80 minutes Year of Release 1972 About The Film This film documents the Overture for KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE: A STORY ABOUT A FAMILY AND SOME PEOPLE CHANGING, performed live by Robert Wilson and the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds at 147 Spring Street, New York City, in April 1972. The production was performed for six hours each day — from 6 to 9 AM and 6 to 9 PM — across seven days between April 24 and 30. The full work, KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE, was subsequently performed as a seven-day, 168-hour event in Shiraz, Iran, and stands as one of the most ambitious durational theater works ever staged. The sizeable cast featured an exceptional range of downtown luminaries, including dance critic and poet Edwin Denby, dancer Andy De Groat, theater critic Stefan Brecht, and Wilson's own grandmother, Alma Hamilton. This preservation print was made directly from the 16mm camera original, which was discovered in Anthology Film Archives' basement alongside a group of empty film cans. Archivists at Anthology and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts — the repository of the Robert Wilson Audio/Visual Collection — were able to salvage the film and identified it as the most extensive extant documentation of the Overture. No soundtrack has surfaced, but the film's majestic images and wild visual inventiveness carry a power that renders dialogue unnecessary. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives and the New York Public Library. Performed by Robert Wilson and the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds Preserved by Anthology Film Archives and the New York Public Library About The Artist(s) Robert Wilson (October 4, 1941 – July 31, 2025) was an American director, playwright, and visual artist who fundamentally reshaped experimental theater over more than five decades. Born in Waco, Texas, he studied at the University of Texas before moving to New York, where he trained at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and founded the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, a performance collective that became the incubator for his early landmark works. Wilson's theater — often described as a "theater of imagery" — is distinguished by its radical reimagining of theatrical time and space, its use of exquisitely composed light and movement in place of conventional narrative, and its synthesis of visual art, music, dance, and text into unified stage pictures. His work sits at a radical distance from naturalism: performers move with ritualized, slow precision, language is treated as sound as much as meaning, and the stage itself functions as a living painting. His breakthrough came with Deafman Glance (1970), a six-hour silent opera that electrified Paris audiences and prompted the Surrealist poet Louis Aragon to describe Wilson as the fulfillment of Surrealism's deepest aspirations. Throughout the 1970s Wilson created a series of epic-scale works that redefined theatrical duration, culminating in his collaboration with composer Philip Glass on Einstein on the Beach (1976), a five-hour opera that premiered at the Avignon Festival and later played the Metropolitan Opera. It is widely regarded as one of the defining works of 20th-century performance. Over the following decades Wilson collaborated with an extraordinary range of artists — Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs, Heiner Müller, Lou Reed, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, Willem Dafoe, and Marina Abramovic, among many others — while also directing canonical texts by Shakespeare, Beckett, Wagner, Ibsen, and Ionesco. He staged productions at the world's leading theaters and opera houses, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Berliner Ensemble, the Thalia Theater Hamburg, La Scala, and the Salzburg Festival. Alongside his theater work, Wilson was a prolific maker of video art. Beginning in 1978 he produced a series of innovative television works including VIDEO 50, DEAFMAN GLANCE, and STATIONS, transposing his theatrical visual language into the moving image. He also created an extensive series of Video Portraits of figures including Lady Gaga, Brad Pitt, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. In 1991 Wilson founded The Watermill Center on Long Island, a "laboratory for performance" housed in a former Western Union research facility on the edge of the Shinnecock Reservation, which continues to host residencies, exhibitions, and productions. His drawings, sculptures, and installations are held in major collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Wilson received numerous honors throughout his life, including Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the Drama Desk Award, Obie Awards, and a 1986 Pulitzer Prize nomination. He died on July 31, 2025, at the age of 83. Get in touch with the artist(s) and follow them on social media Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2026 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here

Watch QUEENDOM by Agniia Galdanova at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. Like a young David Bowie from another planet, the whole world is one giant catwalk for intrepid 21-year-old queer artist Gena. She grew up in the far reaches of Russia, in a town built on top of an old gulag camp. Today, she stages her radical performances in supermarkets, metro stations and in the middle of Moscow streets in an alternative protest against the way LGBTQ+ people are treated in Putin’s extremely conservative Russia. People shout at her, and Gena calmly responds. With never-failing support from her grandmother, she acts out all the creatures that live inside her through her spectacular costumes, which she often makes out of tape and junk. Agniia Galdanova’s beautiful and atmospheric film is not so much a portrait as it is a direct cinematic extension of Gena’s inner universe. In other words, a film in the field between art and activism, between documentary and science fiction, and between an old and a young Russia. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents QUEENDOM At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Agniia Galdanova Documentary, Performance Art This film will be screened in-person on May 16th About The Film Country United States / France Language Russian, English Running Time 98 minutes Year of Release 2023 Like a young David Bowie from another planet, the whole world is one giant catwalk for intrepid 21-year-old queer artist Gena. She grew up in the far reaches of Russia, in a town built on top of an old gulag camp. Today, she stages her radical performances in supermarkets, metro stations and in the middle of Moscow streets in an alternative protest against the way LGBTQ+ people are treated in Putin’s extremely conservative Russia. People shout at her, and Gena calmly responds. With never-failing support from her grandmother, she acts out all the creatures that live inside her through her spectacular costumes, which she often makes out of tape and junk. Agniia Galdanova’s beautiful and atmospheric film is not so much a portrait as it is a direct cinematic extension of Gena’s inner universe. In other words, a film in the field between art and activism, between documentary and science fiction, and between an old and a young Russia. In press notes About The Artist(s) in press notes Get in touch with the artist(s) igormyakotin@gmail.com and follow them on social media Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou