By Abdelkader Alloula, Jalila Baccar, Fatima Gallaire, Tayeb Saddiki | A collection of dramatic texts from the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa. < 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 North Africa Abdelkader Alloula, Jalila Baccar, Fatima Gallaire, Tayeb Saddiki Download PDF As the rich tradition of modern Arabic theatre has recently begun to be recognized by the Western theatre community, an important area within that tradition is still under-represented in existing anthologies and scholarship, and that is the drama from the Northwest of Africa, the region known in Arabic as the Maghreb. We hope that this first English collection of drama from this region will stimulate further interest in the varied and stimulating theatre begin produced here. It engages, in a fascinating and original way, with such important current issues as the struggle for the rights of women and workers, post-colonial tensions between Maghreb and Europe, and the challenges faced in Europe by immigrants from the Arab world. Plays contained in this collection include: The Veil by Abdelkader Alloula (Algeria) Araberlin by Jalila Baccar (Tunisia) House of Wives by Fatima Gallaire (Algeria) The Folies Berbers by Tayeb Saddiki (Morocco) Edited with an Introduction by Marvin Carlson Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

By Valère Novarina, Frank Hentschker | This volume contains two new American translations of works by Valère Novarina < 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 An Incomprehensible Mother Tongue Valère Novarina, Frank Hentschker Download PDF This volume contains two new American translations of works by Valère Novarina, one of the major voices in avant-garde theater of the past forty years. Novarina is celebrated for his unique theatrical writing, exploring language beyond the conventional limits of communication, while pairing buffoonery with incantatory mysticism in the traditions of François Rabelais and Antonin Artaud. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Watch STATIONS + LA FEMME À LA CAFETIÈRE + LA MORT DE MOLIÈRE by Robert Wilson at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. A triple program of video works by Robert Wilson, spanning three distinct creative phases. STATIONS (1982, 56 min) An enigmatic and hauntingly vivid work in which Wilson envisions the inner life of an eleven-year-old boy — his daydreams and fantasies rendered as a universe both magical and sinister. The tape's pivotal image is a young boy looking through a large kitchen window, which becomes the portal for a series of dramatic, often startling inner visions. Fire, metal, wind, glass, and water serve as points of departure for elegant pictorial compositions and evocative metaphors. Unfolding without dialogue or spoken language, STATIONS articulates the fear and mystery of a child's interior world and his relation to the outside world beyond. A characteristic Wilson work: precise, controlled, deeply strange. LA FEMME À LA CAFETIÈRE (1989, 7 min) In this brief and exquisite collaboration, Robert Wilson and dancer Suzushi Hanayagi bring to life Paul Cézanne's painting La Femme à la Cafetière. The work exemplifies Wilson's ability to translate a static visual image into living tableau — a transformation of painting into performance, flattening time and depth into a new kind of presence. LA MORT DE MOLIÈRE (1995, 24 min) A collaboration between Robert Wilson and playwright Heiner Müller in which they imagine the death of Molière — representing it as a series of tableaux, with text passages recited by Müller himself. "Cinema watches Death at work," wrote Wilson of the piece. Müller's commentary adds another layer: "The poem watches a dying man at work, his name is Molière. The poem is not a film. The film watches an actor playing a dying man called Molière." The piece sits at the intersection of theater, film, and literary elegy — a meditation on mortality and artistic legacy made by two of the defining figures of 20th-century avant-garde performance. Total running time: approximately 90 minutes. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents STATIONS + LA FEMME À LA CAFETIÈRE + LA MORT DE MOLIÈRE Robert Wilson At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This program will be screened on May 31 at 5:30 PM, and June 2 at 6:30 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 / Germany Language English, French, German Running Time 90 minutes Year of Release 1982 / 1989 / 1995 About The Film A triple program of video works by Robert Wilson, spanning three distinct creative phases. STATIONS (1982, 56 min) An enigmatic and hauntingly vivid work in which Wilson envisions the inner life of an eleven-year-old boy — his daydreams and fantasies rendered as a universe both magical and sinister. The tape's pivotal image is a young boy looking through a large kitchen window, which becomes the portal for a series of dramatic, often startling inner visions. Fire, metal, wind, glass, and water serve as points of departure for elegant pictorial compositions and evocative metaphors. Unfolding without dialogue or spoken language, STATIONS articulates the fear and mystery of a child's interior world and his relation to the outside world beyond. A characteristic Wilson work: precise, controlled, deeply strange. LA FEMME À LA CAFETIÈRE (1989, 7 min) In this brief and exquisite collaboration, Robert Wilson and dancer Suzushi Hanayagi bring to life Paul Cézanne's painting La Femme à la Cafetière. The work exemplifies Wilson's ability to translate a static visual image into living tableau — a transformation of painting into performance, flattening time and depth into a new kind of presence. LA MORT DE MOLIÈRE (1995, 24 min) A collaboration between Robert Wilson and playwright Heiner Müller in which they imagine the death of Molière — representing it as a series of tableaux, with text passages recited by Müller himself. "Cinema watches Death at work," wrote Wilson of the piece. Müller's commentary adds another layer: "The poem watches a dying man at work, his name is Molière. The poem is not a film. The film watches an actor playing a dying man called Molière." The piece sits at the intersection of theater, film, and literary elegy — a meditation on mortality and artistic legacy made by two of the defining figures of 20th-century avant-garde performance. Total running time: approximately 90 minutes. Director / Artist: Robert Wilson LA MORT DE MOLIÈRE: In collaboration with Heiner Müller Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 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

Karl G. Ruling Milford, Connecticut 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 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Karl G. Ruling Milford, Connecticut By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Adil Mansoor in Amm(i)gone at Long Wharf Theatre. Photo: Curtis Brown Photography Black Trans Women at the Center Eva Reign, Elisawon Etidorhpa, Simone Immanuel, Asteria LaFaye Summers, Indie Johnson (28 Sept. online, then streamed through 1 Oct.) The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion, adapted by Jonathan Silverstein (8 Nov. – 10 Dec., various locations) A View from the Bridge Arthur Miller (10 Feb. – 10 Mar., Canal Dock Boathouse, New Haven) Sanctuary City Martyna Majok (28 Mar. – 21 Apr., TheaterWorks Hartford) Darren Criss Benefit Concert (13 May, Lyman Center for the Performing Arts) Amm(I)gone Adil Monsoor (28 May – 23 Jun. Yale Theatre and Performance Studies Black Box) Long Wharf Theatre used two marketing slogans during the 2023-24 season: “Theatre is for Everyone” and “Theatre of Possibility.” The two themes come together in the statement on the theatre's home page, “We are committed to revolutionizing the power and possibility of live theater [sic] as a catalyst to bring people together and   fulfill our promise of 'theatre for everyone.'” The themes came together in Long Wharf's four in-person dramatic productions, which were presented in a variety of venues, exploring where it is possible to do theatre, and bringing people together to experience stories representing the diversity of New Haven's communities. Three of the four shows were co-productions with other East Coast theatres, connecting these theatre communities. The Year of Magical Thinking, produced in partnership with the Keen Company, was an adaptation by Jonathan Silverstein, the director, of Joan Didion's book, performed by Kathleen Chalfant. Last year Long Wharf left the theatre space it had occupied since 1965 and adopted a mobile theatre model; The Year of Magical Thinking took that to an extreme by being performed in Long Wharf supporters' living rooms and public libraries around New Haven. In a New Haven Register article, Kit Ingui, Long Wharf's managing director, explained that the show is designed to be staged in intimate spaces. Indeed, the show I saw was simply Kathleen Chalfant, as Joan Didion, talking to us, the audience, about the year during which both her husband and daughter died. The staging at the Milford Public Library was minimal: a low platform, two side tables, a chair, and a table lamp at one side of the library's meeting room—space enough for a grieving woman to tell us her loss. Anshuman Bhatia was credited with the lighting design, but there was no stage lighting. It was a simple, powerful piece. A View from the Bridge was performed on the top floor of the Canal Dock Boathouse, a carpeted room with a curved wall of windows looking out at the New Haven Harbor and Long Island Sound. The setting was composed of planked platforms, three free-standing doorways, a row of coat hooks, furniture, and a hanging lamp in a corner of the room, with the audience in seating banks wrapping the playing space by 90 degrees. Stage lighting equipment was hung on a black truss grid. The open deck outside the windows was used for street scenes, and the fateful knife fight was staged there. Microphones and speakers brought the noise and dialog inside for the audience, but it was easier to hear the action than to see it. The show tapped themes important to Long Wharf Theatre—immigration, gender roles, and homophobia—and probably had resonance for New Haven's large Italian-American community. However, the casting muddied the message. Alfieri, Eddie's lawyer and the narrator, was played by Patricia Black, a woman wearing a man's suit. It was hard to believe that Eddie, who worries that Rodolpho is homosexual and who has trouble dealing with the two female characters as his equal, would confide in a woman. Sanctuary City was a coproduction with TheaterWorks Hartford and was performed in TheaterWorks's theatre. It was co-directed by Jacob G. Padrón, Long Wharf's artistic director, and Pedro Bermúdez. Set in Newark, starting shortly after 9/11 and running through late 2005, it's a three-character piece about two undocumented alien teenagers—girl G and boy B—trying to stay in the USA, and B's lover, who complicates G and B's relationship. It's a compact story about the struggles of two Dreamers, well-acted by Sara Gutierrez and Grant Kennedy Lewis, but a tight playing space made it hard for me to see them. Emmie Finkel designed a setting with translucent panels for video projections by Pedro Bermúdez. The panels forced the action downstage where audience members and support columns blocked my view. Some of the projections were pretty but slowed the show. The show's opening was a video of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. That attack triggered tighter rules and suspicion of immigrants—part of the play's background—but I doubt anyone in the audience needed to be reminded of what happened on 9/11. For the final show, Long Wharf Theatre presented Amm(i)gone , a Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and PlayCo show produced in association with Kelly Strayhorn Theater and presented in the Theater and Performance Studies Black Box at Yale University. It was a one-person show created and performed by Adil Monsoor, supported in his storytelling by recorded video, live video, and audio recordings in a setting of Ramadan lanterns, cubes, and panels with mashrabiya lattice work. It was an intensely personal story about coming to America from Pakistan, Adil's relationship with his mother, and the tension between familial love and religious duty. His mother has become extremely religious and struggles to accept Adil’s queerness. To connect with her, Adil engaged with her by phone on a project to translate Sophocles' Antigone into Urdu. Antigone is often viewed as a conflict between Antigone and Creon over civil law and religious duty, but Adil emphasized the love between Ismene and Antigone, which endures despite Ismene's concern that Antigone is making a terrible mistake. During the post-show talk-back, one audience member identified herself as a gay Asian woman who came from an extremely religious family. This was the first time she'd seen her story on stage, and she was grateful. I thought about my own Catholic grandmother struggling to reconcile Church Law with her daughter's remarriage after divorce. It was a show about being gay, Muslim, and an immigrant, but it spoke to many. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Long Wharf Theatre has announced the 2024-25 season with the marketing slogan “Building our future together”: Artistic Congress, the 5th Annual Black Trans Women at the Center: New Play Festival , She Loves Me , El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle Of Doom,  and Unbecoming Tragedy: A Ritual Journey Toward Destiny . The Artistic Congress will be a conference, held a little more than a week before the US presidential election, to discuss theatre and democracy, consider the intersection of creativity and civic engagement, and create a broad network of artists amplifying the impact of collective effort—building our future together. References Footnotes About The Author(s) KARL G. RULING is the technical editor for Protocol , the journal of the Entertainment Services and Technology Association. Prior to that position, he was the technical editor for Theatre Crafts and Lighting Dimensions magazines, and a contributor to Stage Directions . He has an MFA in theatre design from the University of Illinois, and a BA with majors in Dramatic Art and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has designed scenery, lighting, special effects, or sound for over 100 productions. 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.

Benjamin Gillespie and Bess Rowen Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage Introduction Benjamin Gillespie and Bess Rowen By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF This Fall 2025 issue of the Journal of American Drama & Theatre is once again brimming with compelling topics in the form of articles, book and performance reviews, interviews, and roundtable discussions. Teya Juarez leads the issue with a pressing query into the use of fat suits on stage, particularly in Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale . Her analysis of the harms of costuming actors in fat suits is particularly resonant in the current moment shaped by the proliferation o f Ozempic and other weight loss drugs. Jewel Pereyra's article offers a fascinating deep dive on the importance of the Afro-Filipina American jazz singer and dancer Maggie Calloway’s "performances of aggregation." As Pereyra states, Calloway both preserved a form of Filipino culture and addressed the pressures of American cultural influence by “staging these political conflicts in front of popular audiences.” In keeping with our interest in expanding the range and scope of materials featured in JADT , the issue features a roundtable with members of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. Heather Nathans and Javier Hurtado curate this discussion titled “What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre.” The participants include artists and scholars in the field who have dedicated their careers to telling the stories of marginalized communities : Benny Sato Ambush, Henry Bial, Kristoffer Diaz, Kim Marra, and Harvey Young. These major voices speak to the complexity of issues surrounding diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in U.S. theatre. Our ongoing “Queer Voices” series explores the state of contemporary LGBTQIA+ theatre and performance through interviews. In this issue, Alex Ferrone talks to storied performance artist Carmelita Tropicana on her recent show Give Me Carmelita Tropicana !, the final performance at Soho Rep’s longtime theatre space; Benjamin Gillespie speaks to Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill to discuss the major success of the controversial Prince Faggot in New York; and Jen-Scott Mobley and Maya Roth ask playwright Jen Silverman about intimacy, paradox, and provide an update on Silverman’s wide range of writing projects. This issue also features four book reviews from our Book Review Editor Stephanie Lim. Lauren Friesen reviews Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage , edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter (Routledge, 2024); Henry Bial reviews Ben Spatz’s Race and Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research (Northwestern University Press, 2024); Eileen Curley reviews Marlis Schweitzer’s Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 2020); and Sierra Rosetta reviews Bethany Hughes’s Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity (New York University Press, 2024). If you are interested in reviewing a book, send a query to jadtbookreviews@gmail.com . We are thrilled to welcome JADT ’s new Performance Review Editor, Jennifer Joan Thompson. After adding this section to the journal two years ago to provide more space for scholarly reviews in the field, we are grateful to now have a dedicated editor to run this section. This issue’s performance reviews feature The Shed’s production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size by Isaiah Wooden; Audible Theater’s production of Dead Outlaw by Elliot Lee; a roundup up the 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival by Lindsey Mantoan; and a multi-author review of the dance piece ZAZ from the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, directed by Ryan K. Johnson. We encourage our readers to submit their review pitches to jadtperformancereviews@gmail.com . Finally, JADT continues its ongoing commitment in providing a home for the New England Theatre In Review, formerly housed within the New England Theatre Journal . Editor Martha S. LoMonaco has curated a collection of New England-based theatres and seasons including Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres by Paul E. Fallon, theaters in the Berkshires by Steven Otfinoski, and the Long Wharf Theatre by Karl G. Ruling. In these uncertain times, it is remarkable to see the range of scholarship in our field capturing the vitality of theatre and performance practices and studies across the Americas. We hope you enjoy reading the issue as much as we did. References Footnotes About The Author(s) BENJAMIN GILLESPIE   is Assistant Professor of Theatre History & Performance Studies at Santa Clara University and co-editor of the  Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT) . He is editor of  Split Britches: Fifty Years On   (University of Michigan Press, 2027) and co-editor of  Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging  (University of Michigan Press, 2026) and  The Routledge Companion to LGBTQ+ Theatre and Performance in North America  (Routledge, 2027). BESS ROWEN is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University. She is also affiliate faculty for both Gender & Women's Studies and Irish Studies. She is a member of Actors' Equity and an intimacy choreographer. Her first book, The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment (2021) focuses on affective stage directions. Her next book project looks at the theatrical archetype of the “mean teenage girl.” She also serves as the President-Elect of the American Theatre & Drama Society and co-editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT) . 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.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 21, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Polyphonies of the Present: The Pulse of the Almada Festival Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF By Savas Patsalidis Image Credits: Article Returning to Almada As I have done in recent years, this July (2025) I returned once again to Almada, drawn not only by the calibre of its annual festival, one of Portugal’s most significant theatrical events, but also by the atmosphere it cultivates: warm, relaxed, and almost familial in its sense of coexistence. In contrast to larger, often impersonal festivals with their endless parallel events and hurried transitions from venue to venue, the Almada Festival offers a markedly different experience. Here, one feels at home. The experience is more embodied, more communal, and, in a subtle yet clear sense, quietly anti-systemic. There is no imperative to engage in relentless networking, business cards at the ready, pressure to "see everything." Instead, there is time, time to watch, to listen, to feel, to reflect, to write, to encounter the city and its people. For me, this constitutes a form of cultural resistance: an alternative to the dominant festival logic of overproduction and consumption, what we might describe as the “festival-as-supermarket” model. Under the artistic direction of the energetic Rodrigo Francisco, the Almada Festival has organically embraced a philosophy of community , not merely as a thematic or managerial motif, but as the core of its artistic practice. Its programming does not cater to any particular aesthetic ideology or social elite, nor does it play into the dichotomy of "experts" versus "the masses." Instead, through its inclusive framework, it opens aesthetic proposals to a wide-ranging public, aiming not simply to disseminate the art of Dionysus, but to cultivate spectatorship itself, exposing audiences to a plurality of theatrical quality languages and stylistic vocabularies. One particularly emblematic gesture is the festival’s annual invitation to audiences to vote for the performance they would most like to see return the following year. This is not merely symbolic; it re-enacts a genuine form of co-curation, an authentic dialogue rather than a token gesture of “participation.” Staged in Restraint, Anchored in Emotion : Marius (Directed by Joël Pommerat) The first performance I attended was Marius , drawn from Marcel Pagnol’s emblematic Marseille Trilogy , directed by Joël Pommerat and staged on the main stage of the Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite. The plot is relatively straightforward, some might even call it predictable: a young man (Marius) is torn between the dream of escape and the pull of romantic love. Life unfolds in a small café owned by his father, César, near the Marseille harbour, a place of routine, familiar encounters, philosophical banter, quarrels, and laughter. It serves as a communal hub, a kind of agora or informal tribunal, where everyday lives are continuously staged and restaged. For Marius, who longs to become a sailor and flee toward the unknown, the tightly composed and almost claustrophobic stage design by Éric Soyer becomes a metaphor for entrapment. Marius (Michel Galera). the dreamer of Marcel Pagnol’s Marius. Compagnie Louis Brouillar. Stage design: Éric Soyer. Cast: Damien Baudry, Élise Douyere, Michel Galera, Ange Melenyk, Redwane Rajel, Jean Ruimi, Bernard Traversa, Ludovic Velon. Photo: Agathe Pommerat. Courtesy of Almada Festival Into this enclosed world enters Fanny (Elise Douyere), Marius’ great love. Yet, as is often the case in narratives of departure, it is the dream, rather than the love, that ultimately prevails. Marius departs secretly at night, chasing the freedom promised by the sea, forsaking the stability and emotional security his relationship offers. Pommerat’s direction adopts an everyday, almost anti-theatrical rhythm, one that allows silences, hesitations, and tentative confessions to generate atmosphere. The staging resists melodrama; emotional charge emerges organically through dialogue, through the cadence of the local dialect, through understated humour tinged with melancholy, and through small, restrained gestures: a glance, a touch withheld, two bodies falling in love without ever fully closing the physical distance between them. Particularly in the scenes with Fanny, the physical detachment intensifies the spoken word, as the absence of bodily expression lends weight and space to language itself to perform its acoustic “physicality.” Fanny (Elise Douyere), thoughtful and troubled, at César’s café where her beloved Marius works. Photo: Agathe Pommerat. Courtesy of Almada Festival A striking aspect of this production is its origin in carceral space. Marius was first developed and staged in a high-security prison (2014–2017), with most of the current cast composed of formerly incarcerated individuals. Only the actress playing Fanny is a trained professional. This choice lends the production not only a profound social resonance but also a form of raw authenticity. Even the occasional performative imperfections or technical inconsistencies do not weaken the work’s power; on the contrary, they enhance its credibility and emotional depth. As noted earlier, thematically, Marius does not tread new ground: the sea as desire, love as dilemma, the conflict between duty and longing, father and son, these are familiar tropes. One might even be reminded of Eugene O’Neill’s sea plays, written during roughly the same period as Pagnol’s trilogy. Nor is the portrayal of Fanny, patient, compassionate, self-sacrificing, foreign within the representational codes of early 20th-century patriarchy. And yet, Pommerat’s direction holds the viewer’s attention through emotional restraint and formal discipline. The intensity is not on the surface, but it is there, quiet, unmistakable. In a world driven by acceleration and spectacle, Marius reminds us of the power of waiting, of deliberation, of the understated. Behind the Curtain, Beyond the Gaze: Teatro Delusio (Familie Flöz) At the open-air theatre of Escola António da Costa, we watched Teatro Delusio by the internationally acclaimed German ensemble Familie Flöz, a wordless performance imbued with the atmosphere of silent cinema and the precision of corporeal theatre. Its narrative centre is not the stage, but rather its backstage, that liminal zone where the dream of theatricality collides with the muted, repetitive routines of its unseen labourers, electricians, stagehands, ushers. Teatro Delusio . Opening scene with the three puppeteers presenting the star of the show to the audience. Cast: Andre Angulo, Johannes Stubenvoll, and Thomas Van Ouwerkerk . Direction & Scenography: Michael Vogel. Masks: Hajo Schüler. Costumes: Eliseu R. Weide. Lighting: Reinhard Hubert. Sound Design / Music: Dirk Schröder. Photo: Eckard Jonalik. Courtesy of Almada Festival At the heart of the piece are three theatre technicians, Bob, Bernd, and Ivan (played by Andre Angulo, Johannes Stubenvoll, Thomas Van Ouwerkerk), who emerge as emblematic figures of a world both invisible and essential. Through a sequence of slapstick-inflected episodes, we follow their backstage frictions, aspirations, vanities, and unspoken dreams. While the "front stage" dazzles with lights, applause, and spectacle, the backstage unfolds as a silent tragedy, the tragedy of waiting, invisibility, and failure, the tragedy of an unacknowledged life. Movement and mask convey the energy of Teatro Delusio . Photo: Eckard Jonalik. Courtesy of Almada Festival The three performers portray a total of 29 characters, ranging from conductors and dancers to eccentric directors and narcissistic stars. Their performance displays remarkable technical precision, choreographic clarity, and performative dexterity in their seamless transitions between roles, bodies, and tasks. This is physical acting par excellence, where the mask, intricately designed by Hajo Schüler, becomes a living surface, capable of transmitting fear, joy, awkwardness, and despair. Rather than concealing, the mask reveals. Backstage, a crew member longs for the spotlight of the star’s attention, while she prepares to dazzle her adoring audience. Teatro Delusio . Photo: Eckard Jonalik. Courtesy of Almada Festival Using purely visual means, without a single line of spoken dialogue, Teatro Delusio manages to explore themes of human solitude, the yearning for recognition, jealousy, love, and fulfillment. It is a dramaturgy of silence, where laughter and poignancy coexist in a fragile equilibrium. One does not laugh at the characters, but rather through them, recognising in their gestures the viewer’s own minor failures, deferred desires, and the barely perceptible weight of obscurity. Love of fame and recognition won’t take long to lead the members of the backstage crew into conflicts, confrontations, and absurd quarrels that spark laughter with their gags, but also evoke a deep sense of sympathy. Teatro Delusio. Photo: Eckard Jonalik. Courtesy of Almada Festival The absence of linguistic barriers explains why Teatro Delusio has toured in 34 countries to this day. Though meticulously structured, the performance might have benefited from a slightly tighter dramaturgy, particularly in the final twenty or so minutes, where the repetition of certain motifs risked narrative dilution. The birth scene, for instance, felt inventive but dramaturgically unanchored, an idea left unexplored. Nevertheless, this is a profoundly hybrid and meta-theatrical work where puppet theatre, mime, physical comedy, slapstick, tragedy, and farce are woven into a fluid structure that dialogues with the tradition of theatre within theatre . It is, in many ways, a reflexive homage to theatre itself, and especially to the mask, both as material object and as metaphor for identity, secrecy, duplicity, and existential disappointment Familie Flöz turns our attention to the invisible processes of stage-making, evoking resonances with productions like Ellie Dubois’ No Show (the Herald Award recipient at Edinburgh Fringe, 2017) in which the audience watches what does not happen when a performance collapses before their eyes, or Constanza Macras/Dorky Park’s Open for Everything (2012) , which centres on marginalised performers (from Roma communities), giving voice to those who remain in the shadows. Most notably, it echoes Michael Frayn’s ageless Noises Off (1982), an ingenious meta-farce that reveals the chaos behind the scenes of a matinee performance. In all these cases, gaze shifts from centre to margin, from performance to infrastructure, from protagonist to technician or outsider. What emerges is a commentary on theatrical visibility and the politics of spectatorship: Who is seen and thus rendered a subject of the gaze? And who remains unseen? What does it mean, literally and metaphorically, to be offstage, in theatre and in life? The closing moments offer no catharsis, only a bittersweet image of a world perpetually left behind. The characters remain there, in a space with no curtain, no lighting, no applause, only their breath, and their gaze, fixed upon an audience that does not see them. The performance does not speak.But it is loudly heard. A Classroom Against Oblivion: El mar. Visión de unos niños que no lo han visto nunca (Concept Xavier Bobés & Alberto Conejero) This Spanish documentary-style performance, El mar. Visión de unos niños que no lo han visto nunca (“The Sea: As Seen by Children Who Have Never Seen It”), performed by Xavier Bobés and Sergi Torrecilla, is based on the true story of Antoni Benaiges, a teacher in a remote village school in Bañuelos de Bureba (Burgos) in 1936. It is rooted in an act of historical remembrance and poetic reconstruction, a gesture of tender resistance through memory and education. Xavier Bobés and Sergi Torrecilla (in red shirt) on stage. Of the two, Torrecilla is the one who performs and narrates excerpts from the children’s writings, Conejero’s text, and Benaiges’ own words and Bobés the one who activates memory through the use of objects. Photo: Alberto Conejero. Courtesy of Almada Festival The story begins in 1934, when Benaiges, using his own savings, purchased a gramophone and a printing press for his rural classroom, encouraging the children to express themselves creatively. Two years later, his students produced a small booklet titled El mar. Visión de unos niños que no lo han visto nunca , in which they described how they imagined the sea, though none of them had ever seen it. Benaiges promised to take them to the coast that summer. However, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and his execution (July 25, 1936) at its onset rendered this promise tragically unfulfilled. Jou Serra and Mario Andrés Gómez’s lighting score, combined with Albert Coma’s projections and Julià Carboneras’s soundscape, creates an immersive and suggestive atmosphere that brings the audience closer to the space and time of the story enacted by the two actors. Photo: Alberto Conejero. Courtesy of Almada Festival The performance treats this historical episode with emotional delicacy, ethical clarity, and narrative restraint. Built around the aesthetics of documentary theatre and object theatre, the piece deploys minimal theatrical resources. Objects do not simply support the storytelling; they act as catalysts of emotion, charged relics that summon the affective memory of a vanished world. Through the use of live cameras, the children's perspective is expanded and brought into the visual field, layering the adult narration with the imaginary gaze of childhood. There is nothing ostentatiously innovative about the staging. On the contrary, the production is deliberately unassuming, almost “non-theatre” in its visual economy. It pivots around empathy, emotional presence, and the quiet beauty of relationality. Though it occasionally borders on melodrama, the performance maintains its composure, evoking emotion for the right reasons. It creates a subtle oscillation in which the spectator feels at times like the teacher, and at others, like the child. On stage, the two performers, Xavier Bobés and Sergi Torrecilla (wearing the red shirt), engage in a complementary enactment of memory: Bobés through the material activation of objects, and Torrecilla through the performative narration of texts drawn from the children’s writings, Alberto Conejero’s script, and Antoni Benaiges’ own words. Together, they articulate the dialectic between the “here-and-now” of theatrical presence and the “there-and-then” of historical absence, thereby bridging past and present with nuanced subtlety. With humility and clarity, they share the story and the memories it holds, honoring the legacy of Benaiges while elevating the values of hope, education, and human dignity, all conveyed through the fragile yet enduring voices of children. It is unsurprising that the piece has been presented widely across Latin American countries. Originally premiered at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in February 2022, it has since been nominated for several Max Awards, including Best Play, Best Direction, and Best Actor (Bobés) for its performance at Teatro Corral de Comedias. To Move Is to Survive : Zugzwang (Concept and Performance Le Galactik Ensemble) Presented in the outdoor space of Escola D. António, Zugzwang (2021) marks the second collective creation of the French company Le Galactik Ensemble, following their earlier piece Optraken (seen at the same venue the previous year). Borrowing its title from the chess term zugzwang , a situation where any move leads inevitably to disadvantage or loss, the performance transforms this concept into an explosive physical allegory of human precarity and imbalance in a world of constant destabilisation. The set of Zugzwang (by Mathilde Bourgon) at the end of the performance : a bombed-out landscape, a pile of construction materials that would regain their shape and “threatening” role in the very next show Photo: Martin Argyroglo. Courtesy of Almada Festival Five acrobats encounter one another in a volatile scenographic landscape, somewhere between workshop, construction site, and laboratory. For sixty minutes, they compose a narrative of survival, not through language or plot, but through somatic confrontation with risk. The body becomes a storytelling device, contending with gravity, collision, imbalance, and fear. Each movement appears to be dictated by an environment that resists trust. The performers live, quite literally, in a constant state of zugzwang. Le Galactik Ensemle in action. Mathieu Bleton, Mosi Espinoza, Jonas Julliard, Karim Messaoudi, and Cyril Pernotrelo engage in a continuous struggle for survival in a world of unexpected obstacles and difficulties. Reacting and moving quickly is not a matter of choice but of necessity. Photo: Martin Argyroglo. Courtesy of Almada Festival The set design by Mathilde Bourgon, a kinetic, fragile mechanical architecture, populated by rails, pulleys, ropes, collapsing doors, and unpredictable surfaces, plays a pivotal role. It is not a passive backdrop but an active opponent, reactive, obstructive, sometimes deceptive. Visually, the piece evokes the mechanical traps of silent cinema, yet it resonates with a distinctly contemporary anxiety: the instability of material systems and environments. The performers do not merely move upon it, they survive within it. Struggling with the collapsing set. Photo: Galactik Ensemble. Courtesy of Almada Festival Everything falls apart. They have to do something to get out of the mess. Photo: Galactik Ensemle. Courtesy of Almada Festival For those unfamiliar with Le Galactik Ensemble, it is worth noting that their work specializes in what they call “situational acrobatics,” a form of real-time physical risk-taking, in which safety is never entirely guaranteed and failure is always a possibility. Nothing is wholly predetermined. The tension derives from this very volatility: perpetual edge, where everything could go wrong, and often nearly does. It s precisely at this threshold that theatricality emerges. Humour plays a crucial role, not as comic relief, but as a mechanism of resistance. It is the humour of despair and survival. The figures on stage are not superhumans but clowns, fragile, fallible, exposed. The grotesque, the comedic, and the existential coexist in a performative poetics of insecurity. As in the work of Aurélien Bory’s Compagnie 111 [i] or Cirque Inextremiste, [ii] physicality here is not for spectacle, but a necessary language for articulating the inexpressible. The ensemble performs with remarkable collective precision. There are no individual protagonists; the group functions as a single, interdependent organism navigating a hostile world. Acrobatics, choreographic tension, and acting discipline converge, not to showcase virtuosity, but to reveal necessity. This is a dramaturgy of survival rather than display. Zugzwang offers no resolution. There is no comfort, no catharsis. It presents a world that remains unstable, where every move carries the risk of collapse, and yet... stillness is not an option. One must keep moving, because to stop is simply to cease to exist. Listening to Absence: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Directed by Teresa Gafeira) Staged in the experimental venue of Teatro Joaquim Benite, this production by Companhia de Teatro de Almada is based on Peter Handke’s deeply personal novella A Sorrow Beyond Dreams , written in the aftermath of his mother’s suicide. The work resists conventional, plot-driven dramaturgy, opting instead to trace the inner rhythms of grief, and the writer’s struggle to render them communicable through language. Scene with the two protagonists (Duarte Guimarães and Pedro Walter) in Handke dramatized novella. Photo: Rui Mateus. Courtesy of Almada Festival Set in rural Austria between the two World Wars, the narrative unfolds against the backdrop of Handke’s mother’s life, her marriage, her disillusionment, her psychological collapse, and eventual death by overdose. Handke offers no sentimental embellishments. His narration oscillates between clinical observation and introspective inquiry, not aiming to provoke emotion, but to understand: How does one do justice to a life that disappeared in silence? The actors Duarte Guimarães and Pedro Walte share the text on stage, seamlessly voicing passages from Handke's novella. They embody the narrator’s internal monologue rather than portraying discrete, fully developed individual entities. Photo: Rui Mateus. Courtesy of Almada Festival This very question forms the basis of Teresa Gafeira’s directorial approach. The piece is delivered as a dual vocal monologue, wherein two performers do not “act” but testify, functioning as emissaries of an internal elegy. Their delivery is austere emotionally contained, eschewing outbursts of sentimentalism in favour of restraint. However, the absence of surtitles made the work significantly less accessible for non-Portuguese speakers. Despite prior familiarity with the source text, the live experience lacked linguistic and emotional immersion. It became difficult to apprehend how the words carried their weight, how silences sculpted their resonance, or how the performers physically processed the inner landscape of grief. While the vocal interpretation remained faithful to Handke’s style, the visual and spatial potential of the stage was left largely underutilized. The projected images functioned more as atmospheric backdrop than dramaturgical interlocutors. As a result, the possibility of a multimodal dialogue with memory remained underdeveloped. The performance lingered in a liminal space, powerful in speech, but theatrically rather undercharged. And yet, the ethical core of the work remained intact. The performance did not “display” grief, it remembered it. It whispered sorrow through language. That act alone carried immense weight. Mourning was not an emotional identification but a form of justice through articulation. Handke does not ask the audience to empathise but to reflect: How can theatre represent a life shaped by silence? How does theatre speak when the other no longer can? In this regard, the production aligns with other theatrical meditations on mourning, not as pathos, but as remembrance of absence. From Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape , where the voice of a cassette becomes the medium of grief, to Theodoros Terzopoulos’ Antigone , where loss is rendered as somatic burden and vocal repetition, theatre becomes not a mirror of life, but a ritual of memory. Such performances do not scream. They do not shock. They demand attention, silence, and time. They ask us to listen to what is never fully said. And the very fact that they continue to exist, and to insist, in an age of speed and information saturation, is itself a political gesture of interiority. A quiet monument to theatrical dignity in the face of erasure. A Language of Gesture, A Geometry of Motion: Quatro Cantos num Soneto and The Look (Choreography Fernando Duarte and Sharon Eyal) Fernando Duarte’s Quatro Cantos num Soneto undertakes an ambitious project: to translate Luís de Camões’ sonnets into the language of dance, capturing not only their semantic content but also their rhythm, texture, and contemplative depth through bodily gesture. Rather than illustrating the poetic text, the choreography treats it as a score for corporeal expression. The dancers of the Portuguese National Ballet (Ana Lacerda, Inês Amaral, Isabel Galriça, and Paulina Santos) do not narrate; they transcribe. Their movements become elliptical stanzas, undulations, and gestures that evoke musical interpretation more than dramaturgical action. Quatro Cantos num Soneto premiered at the Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite, July 17, 2025. Music: Selections from John Dowland and Diego Pisador, curated by Ricardo Leitão Pedro. Costume Design: Ana Lacerda. Lighting Design: Fernando Duarte. Photo: Hugo David. Courtesy of Almada Festival The sonic landscape, enriched by precise vocal recitations of the sonnets, intensifies the performances’ multisensory atmosphere. The result is less a conventional dance narrative and more a case of "poetry in motion." However, this multilayered approach risks fragmenting the spectator’s experience. The continual interplay of speech, sound, and movement situates the piece in an intermediate space, neither pure dance theatre nor lyrical portraiture, demanding sustained attention, openness and patience from the viewer. Absent is a dramaturgical climax. The work foregoes linear progression and emotional crescendo. Instead, it offers introspection, poetic silence, and an invitation to contemplative observation of the body as a vessel of language. This is a piece that resists facile visual consumption. It does not seek to move the audience emotionally but to attune it. It is an “anti-spectacle,” an embodied reminder that silence, too, possesses rhythm. The Look Immediately following was The Look , choreographed by Sharon Eyal and originally created in 2019 for the Batsheva Dance Company. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s quote, “Nobody can hurt me without my permission” ( Time Out/ Israel, Feb. 24, 2019), this masterful work delicately balances group movement with individual expression, and mechanical synchronization with organic flow, maintaining an exquisite tension throughout. The dancers, dressed identically, move en masse , as if forming a single body, yet never surrender their individuality to the anonymity of the collective. Each body retains its uniqueness. The Look . Costume Design: Alon Cohen. Lighting Design: Daniel Nørgren-Jensen. Music: Ori Lichti. Photo: Hugo David. Courtesy of Almada Festival Whether moving as solitary units or as coordinated formations, their ceaseless motion and repositioning releases an atmosphere that is hypnotic, mesmerizing, and almost trance-like, an effect intensified by the cold, geometrically regulated lighting. Movement patterns unfold in relentless cycles: mechanical repetitions that mirror the steady pulse of the human body. These motions are intricately shaped and sometimes provoked by Ori Lichtik’s precise and nuanced musical score. Together, they create a physical rhythm where the dancers’ bodies transcend their materiality, taking on the quality of fleeting shapes or abstract concepts rather than solid forms. The Look . Photo: Hugo David. Courtesy of Almada Festival Compared to Eyal’s other works, such as the emotionally charged Love Chapter II (2017) or the hybrid 2 Chapters Love (2022), The Look adopts a rather more formalist and abstract choreographic language. While Love Chapter II and 2 Chapters Love emphasize raw emotion and narrative complexity, The Look strips movement down to its essential elements. Here, the dancers function more as vessels of energy and repetition, articulating phrases in an algorithmic dance vocabulary of movement . The Look stands as a significant addition to Sharon Eyal’s artistic corpus. Structurally rigorous and aesthetically entrancing, it probes the very essence of “looking,” of perceiving movement as meaning. The gaze of the dancer becomes inseparable from the gaze of the spectator. This very sense of disciplined sensitivity was realized by the dancers of Companhia Nacional de Bailado. They did not “perform” the choreography; they embodied it. Without exaggeration or unnecessary embellishment, they delivered a performance of unity and aesthetic discipline. Their aim was not to impress, but to articulate, as a single organism, the expressive potential of the work. Broken Images, Breathing Bodies: Extra Moenia (Conception and Direction Emma Dante) My recent visit to the Almada Festival concluded with Emma Dante’s polyphonic performance Extra Moenia (Latin for Outside the Walls ) , which once again confirmed her unique theatrical method: a choral mosaic of bodies and voices, in which the traditional notion of plot gives way to the dramaturgy of coexistence. The opening scene of Extra Moenia . Photo: Roselina Garbo. Courtesy of Almada Festival Extra Moenia is not a conventional performance. It is a living body in motion, a collective choreography of everyday gestures and fractured social realities. Fourteen performers from Dante’s company Sud Costa Occidentale awaken within a set resembling a makeshift shelter. As they dress and begin to move through the performance space, they confront a world beyond the safety of its walls, a world marked by crisis, war, destitution, and displacement. Extra Moenia, premiered in March 2025 at Teatro Bellini in Naples.The production is a collaboration between Teatro Biondo Palermo, Atto Unico – Carnezzeria, and Sud Costa Occidentale. Photo: Roselina Garbo. Courtesy of Almada Festival The rhythm of the performance constantly shifts. Scenes alternate like snapshots: a railway station, a marketplace, a congregation in prayer, a beach turned into a site of shipwreck. Dante composes a palimpsest of contemporary wounds, embodied by emblematic figures: a refugee from Ukraine, a migrant from Congo, an Iranian woman removing her veil, a conservative family, a group of football players from Palermo. Each character carries trauma, but each also contains a sliver of hope. Extra Moenia. Costume Design: Mariella Gerbino. Movement Assistant: Davide Celona. Production Assistant: Daniela Gusmano. Sound Department Head: Giuseppe Alterno. Artistic Coordination: Giuseppe Baiamont. Photo: Roselina Garbo. Courtesy of Almada Festival Aesthetically, the narrative evokes the logic of social media: brief, rapidly shifting images that allow no time for sustained reflection. Thematically, war, displacement, patriarchy, and ecological collapse are introduced more as reference points than as subjects of in-depth exploration. This fragmentation risks aesthetic overload but simultaneously reflects with accuracy the disorienting experience of contemporary social disintegration. Dante’s primary tool is the body, not the idealized, but the socially worn body that bears tension, fear, and desire. A body that does not enact roles but reveals its political weight as a record of violent coexistence, a container of memory, and a site of survival. The tone oscillates between the satirical and the tragic, from the noisy market scenes and station announcements to monologues about rape, war, and displacements. The finale, featuring a "sea of plastic," is visually and emotionally powerful. It symbolizes a collective shipwreck, a space where the body becomes an archive of trauma. At times, the multiplicity of themes results in aesthetic saturation. The accumulation of images and messages leaves little room for reflective engagement; nothing fully settles. The rapid pace of the performance allows little space for depth or contemplation. In a way, the direction seems primarily concerned with creating a kaleidoscope of impressions, with inclusivity as its dominant image. Despite the fragmentation and underdeveloped elements, the performance as a whole manages to transcend the limitations of its elliptical narrative. It draws the audience into a theatrical experiment that breathes with History, a collective ritual devoid of heroics or final applause, yet filled with bodies that persist. And in an era marked by aesthetic fatigue, that very persistence becomes a vital necessity. Epilogue: Listening to the Present This year’s festival, with its 20 productions, local and foreign, each with its own style, managed as a whole to shape a diverse ensemble that powerfully highlighted urgent issues concerning contemporary theatre: how can human experience be conveyed in an age of acceleration, instability, and global rupture, where the world seems to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions? How can contemporary theatre speak again in a voice that is neither obsolete nor overloaded, but capable of listening to the present and articulating possibilities for the future? From the sparse, introspective study of the body as a medium of language in Quatro Cantos num Soneto and The Look , to the fragmented, overwhelming polyphony of Extra Moenia , the precarious balancing act of Zugzwang , and the sharp-witted comedy Les Gros Patinent Bien—Cabaret de Carton by the French company Compagnie Le Fils du Grand Réseau , created by Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin-Salvan, where the only stage props were dozens of cardboard boxes, the performances did not merely depict reality; they sought to reconstruct it, interrogate it, and resist it. They offered no easy answers, no closure and no comfort. Instead, they acted as mirrors and warnings. They invited vigilance, critical attention, and an openness to complexity. Perhaps this is the essential quest: to sustain our relationship with theatre not as an escape, but as a confrontation, a space of reflection, conflict, and creation. A space where light and darkness, past and present, art and life breathe together. A space that still believes in the necessity of meaning. References [i] This is a Toulouse-based performance company founded in 2000 by director and scenographer Aurélien Bory. The environment plays a significant role in storytelling. It is an active force. See Plan B (2003), Plus ou moins l'infini (2005), Sans objet (2009), and Plexus (2012), among other works. [ii] Cirque Inextremiste is a French contemporary circus company founded in 1998 by director and performer Yann Ecauvre. It blends physical theatre, circus arts, street performance, and often risk-taking acrobatics. Extrêmités (2012), Extension (2014), Exit (2017), Warning (2022) are among their most notable productions. References About the author(s) Savas Patsalidis is Professor Emeritus in Theatre Studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he has taught at the School of English for close to 35 years. He has also taught at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Hellenic Open University and the graduate program of the Theatre Department of Aristotle University. He is the author of fourteen books on theatre and performance criticism/theory and co-editor of another thirteen. His two-volume study, Theatre, Society, Nation (2010), was awarded first prize for best theatre study of the year. In 2019 his book Theatre & Theory II: About Topoi, Utopias and Heterotopias was published by University Studio Press. In 2022 his book-length study Comedy’s Encomium: The Seriousness of Laughter , was also published by University Studio Press. In addition to his academic activities, he writes theatre reviews for various journals. He is on the Executive Committee of the Hellenic Association of Theatre and Performing Arts Critics, a member of the curators’ team of Forest International Festival (organized by the National Theatre of Northern Greece), and the editor-in-chief of Critical Stages/Scènes critiques , the journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Theatre in Poland, Fall 2025 Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 21 Robert Wilson’s Moby Dick at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Summer 2025 Dramas of Separation at Festival d’Avignon 19th Edition Polyphonies of the Present: The Pulse of the Almada Festival Summer 2025 in London, England The Tragic Ideal of Eternal Youth: Folk Myth on the Modern Stage International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition Review of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa by Ópera do Castelo Radu Afrim and his House Between the Blocks Report from Berlin Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 20, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage The Puzzle: A new musical in the Spoleto Festival, Italy presented by La MaMa Umbria Published: July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF By Alex Lefevre Image Credits: Article The Puzzle is a new original musical with music and lyrics by Alex Lefevre, Assistant Professor of Theatre at Coastal Carolina University and libretto by Marybeth Berry, Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of South Carolina: Lancaster and received its European premiere in the Spoleto Festival in Spoleto, Italy as a part of the La MaMa Spoleto Open curated by La MaMa Umbria International in June 2025. The musical debuted in a developmental reading at Coastal Carolina University as a part of their new works series in May 2024. This production in Spoleto, Italy marked the first fully staged production of the musical. The Puzzle takes place in Berlin, Maryland and tells the story of Jenna Adams, her mother Nanette, her six-year-old son Jake, and his two aunts Erica and Susan. In the opening number, “One Day”, the characters go through their daily routines until Jake’s father and Jenna’s husband, Scott, is killed in a car crash. Jake, overwhelmed by grief, is unresponsive until Jenna creates a song to accompany an old puzzle of Scott’s which serves as a breakthrough for the young boy. Nanette, the town busybody, sets up Jenna on a blind date with Taylor, a florist new to town. All goes well until Nanette suddenly bursts into their date and proclaims that her dog Mitzi has been injured by one of Jake’s puzzle pieces striking her in the eye. As a result, Nanette throws the puzzle in the trash, sending Jenna and Taylor on a date in the dumpster to successfully retrieve it. At the town’s fall festival, Jake begins to play the puzzle song by ear at the keyboard which Jenna attributes to the musical ability of her late husband and seeing it as a sign to move on. Through the course of the song “I Can Teach You”, Jenna and Susan convince Erica to teach piano lessons to Jake and over a decade passes highlighting major events including Taylor’s proposal to Jenna, the death of Mitzi, and Jake’s acceptance into NYU. At the end of Act I, it is revealed that Susan will be taking Jake to New York City and moving there herself as a part of a separation from Erica. Act II begins with a married Taylor and Jenna now working together at the flower shop and Jenna sharing a secret passion: writing children’s books. Jake, a sophomore music major at NYU, is unsure that he wants to continue studying music as he feels he is living in the shadow of his deceased father. Susan travels with Jake to Maryland for spring break and is served divorce papers by Erica. At an explosive family dinner, chaos ensues when the impending divorce is revealed to the family along with Jake’s plan to take a gap year in Africa. Erica and Jenna storm out with Susan and Jake following behind. Susan takes responsibility for leaving and the couple vow to find a way forward, while Jake apologizes to Jenna who gives her unconditional love to her son. In the final scene, five years have passed, and Jake is now married with a child on the way. Erica and Susan are living in New York together, Jenna is a successful writer, Taylor has hired a new store manager, and Nanette has tragically passed away. Susan speaks at the opening of her latest art exhibit based on her family, gathered in support, entitled “The Puzzle”. Marybeth Berry and I began writing The Puzzle in January of 2021. COVID-19 had crippled the theatre industry, and the world, and writing this show became our creative escape. We would meet weekly on Zoom to work and create weekly writing goals. We would start by discussing the characters and what we would ideally like to happen during a scene. The next meeting, we would read through the newly written scene, and I would choose moments that I felt would “sing” and began work on crafting a song. As our show is entitled The Puzzle , we attempted to shine the light equally on our different characters so that it was a true ensemble piece with each one of the characters representing a piece of our figurative puzzle. In the words of librettist Marybeth Berry, “It had been years of laboring to create the characters, the relationship dynamics and ultimately the story. Similar to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, The Puzzle focuses on life, loss, grief, love pain, triumph and survival. We can all see ourselves in this piece and we can all relate to a character, relationship, or simple moment because, in the words of the show, ‘it’s often in the mundane that we find the momentous.’” Songs and scenes were constantly being tweaked but by the start of 2024, we had a strong working draft of the libretto and score. Coastal Carolina University selects a new musical every May to be developed as a reading in their New Works Series and The Puzzle was honored to be the selection for 2024. Adam Pelty, Associate Professor of Theatre, helmed the reading as the director and Micah Young was the Music Director. Through the course of one week of rehearsals, new songs and scenes were implemented and seeds of ideas for the Spoleto production were planted. In the original CCU reading, the character of Scott had already passed as we started our prologue. Pelty suggested that there would be great power if the audience could experience the death first-hand. After being accepted into the Spoleto Festival, a new opening number was written with the car crash and funeral embedded in the opening number. While the original lyrics of the opening number “One Day” were kept for the start with each of the characters describing their everyday routines, it now ends after the funeral with the characters singing lines like “One Day is just like the others until one day it’s not” and “One day I will wash his coffee mug, right now I can’t put it away”. For the production in Spoleto, three new songs were implemented as well as significant cuts to the book to streamline our storytelling. While The Puzzle runs two hours and 30 minutes including a fifteen-minute intermission, with our Friday night Spoleto performance starting at 9:30pm, ensuring that we were maintaining our running time was essential. Reflecting on the process of putting up this production, Shelby Sessler who played Erica says “Watching pieces get moved, added, and cut from the reading to the production itself was fascinating to watch. We were experimenting with how each scene read even up to our opening to find the right tone to tell the story. It felt like a whirlwind of creativity.” There was no better place to experience this whirlwind than La MaMa Umbria. Full Cast of The Puzzle La MaMa Umbria is described on their website as a “non-profit cultural center and artist residence founded in 1990 by legendary theatre pioneer, Ellen Stewart.” Even with seeing all the photos available online, nothing can prepare one for the sheer beauty of this remarkable theatre space. Lisa Neal Baker who played the role Nanette shares “Every time we would return from an outing or a day of work, it felt like we were walking back into a serene fairytale- flowers blooming, birds chirping, butterflies everywhere with majestic mountains as your backdrop. With only eight days to come together to put this incredibly touching story together, having the calm, quiet serenity of La MaMa made it that much easier to focus, create and develop our characters and how their individual stories touched each other.” Actor Zach Hathaway, who played Jake, had previously performed at La MaMa Umbria in another production with Marybeth Berry. He states “Returning to La MaMa Umbria for the second time has been an incredibly special and fulfilling experience. There’s something truly magical about being in a space so deeply committed to nurturing artists and celebrating the craft of performance. Ever since my first time here three years ago, I’ve longed to return to that creative atmosphere, where collaboration and artistic exploration are at the heart of everything.” The staff of La MaMa Umbria ensured that our experience would be a positive one. They welcomed us with open arms, provided phenomenal meals with ingredients often plucked out of their on-site garden, and even splashed our bus with buckets of water as we pulled out of their driveway as a symbol of safe travel and hopefully an eventual return. Kenley Juback, who played Susan, echoes this sentiment: “Not only is the scenery irrevocably beautiful but so are the people. The love, friendship and artistry that finds you here from the La Mama Umbria staff is rare.” In fact, our performances of The Puzzle were filled with staff from La MaMa Umbria who came to support our work and promote new musical theatre. Known primarily for producing experimental theatre, La MaMa Umbria embraced our show in an astounding way. Director Jason Trucco, who was also in residence at La MaMa Umbria with us stated “I think the most experimental thing that can be done at an experimental theatre today is a Broadway musical.” Performing in a festival brings its own set of unique challenges, especially when it comes to the technical aspects of performance. In order to create the different locations, present in The Puzzle , we decided to turn to projections to set the scenes in addition to basic set pieces. According to Hans Boeschen, our stage manager and technical director, “The idea of projections arose from the challenge of visualizing the final scene which reveals an art gallery. The idea of this gallery installment is so unique that a projection was really our only option to capture the symbolism and heart of the moment. Using various A.I. tools, I worked to create backgrounds that not only helped identify the setting, but, hopefully, reflected the aspects of the characters and underlying themes of the book.” The use of A.I to create backgrounds was not a simple process as rarely did the computer outputs match what we as a team had in mind artistically. However, there were some happy accidents that occurred in the creation of the projections. Boeschen explains “Unintended interpretations from the computer could lead to some interesting deeper symbology. For example, Susan’s character struggles to connect with her art early in the production. I had asked A.I. to include blank canvases lying against the wall. Instead, it gave me an image where all the canvases were turned away and all we saw were their backs, almost as though Susan couldn’t bear to look at them.” The final projection of Susan’s art gallery display proved be the most difficult. No matter how precise the description we provided the computer, it could not produce anything with the necessary heart to culminate our piece. In the end, it was the original paintings of our cast member Shelby Sessler who played Erica, that we were able to scan into the computer to create the final images of Susan’s art instillation. Even with a simplified set, transitions between scenes still proved to be a challenge. We initially had our actors dragging tables and chairs from backstage before and after every number. Not only did this prove to be laborious, but also time consuming. Director Jared McNeill, also in residence at La MaMa Umbria, came to one of our early runs and provided the suggestion that we leave the set pieces on the side of the stage and allow our audience to see the actors putting together the set as they would put together the pieces of a puzzle. This brilliant suggestion not only helped us to facilitate our transitions in a more efficient way, but it also aided in our storytelling. Our actors began to see the transitions not just as necessary stage business but as extensions of their characters. Actor Alex Cowsert who played Taylor says “It was important for me to continue the story forward when assisting with scene transitions by remaining in the correct time period for the show. For example, if I was helping with a transition in the second act, I wanted to keep my older Taylor’s glasses on so it wouldn’t seem I was ‘out of character’.” Being at La MaMa Umbria allowed us as a creative team to get input from international directors like Jason Trucco and Jared McNeill. Their creative questions and ideas sparked many conversations about the next iteration of this musical for which we as authors are incredibly grateful. Kenley Juback performs “Something To Fix” The final piece of the puzzle of any theatrical work is always the audience, which in the case of this production, was Italian. While there is a song with a chorus in Italian, “Bambola Mia”, The Puzzle is a musical that is performed in English. Adriana Garbagnati, part of the La Mama Umbria family and an enormous supporter of our show, suggested that we write a synopsis of the show and provide copies to the audience much as one would receive at an opera. Blaize Berry, son to librettist Marybeth Berry and technical assistant for the production, wrote a thorough synopsis of the show that I then translated into Italian. Though most of our audience had a basic facility with English, the synopsis proved to be useful as we noted many of our audience members following along as the show progressed. Even with the added challenge of the show being performed in English, our audiences were still able to be moved by the show as was evidenced by the sniffles and tears present during our run. Librettist Marybeth Berry states “The themes in this show resonate with all walks of life and all cultures. The language barrier taught us that our show has more to offer than just entertainment. It touches others deeply and profoundly. Audience members recognized their own loved ones and own life experiences in our creation. It was a gift that transcends all typical barriers because of its simplicity.” Katie Gatch and Alex Cowsert perform “Dumpster Diving” The Puzzle has had an incredible journey from our living rooms in South Carolina on Zoom to the stage of La MaMa Umbria as a part of the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Actor Katie Gatch who played Jenna, said that working on a production of a new musical “felt like a door popping into existence in front of me, the threshold uncrossed, and I get to be the one to see what’s on the other side.” With the support of La MaMa Umbria, we certainly were able to see what’s on the other side, and it was thrilling. Writing and producing a new musical is a complicated process, but one that is ultimately highly rewarding. After this run, The Puzzle , or Il Puzzle as it was called in Italy, has only just begun to have its pieces assembled. References References About the author(s) Alex Lefevre (composer/lyricist The Puzzle) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC. He has played on Broadway in the orchestras of Aladdin, Anastasia, Beetlejuice, Cats, Newsies , and White Christmas , along with work Off-Broadway including The Fantasticks and Avenue Q and on national tour with Anastasia, Hairspray, and Irving Berlin’s I Love a Piano . An avid proponent of new musicals, Lefevre has music directed productions in both the New York Musical Theatre Festival and New York Fringe Festival as well as at 54 Below, The York Theatre Company, Primary Stages, and Ars Nova. As a composer, his work has been featured in the NEO Concert at the York Theatre Company celebrating New, Emerging, and Outstanding musical theatre writers as well as in the San Diego Fringe Festival, the Scranton Fringe Festival, the New Works Series at Coastal Carolina University and La MaMa Umbria. For the past three years, Lefevre has served as an opera coach for Varna International both in the United States and Italy, working on Mozart’s Don Giovanni , Puccini’s Suor Angelica , and Weill’s Street Scene . European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents The 2025 Festival International New Drama (FIND) at Berlin Schaubühne Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 Willem Dafoe in conversation with Theater der Zeit The Puzzle: A new musical in the Spoleto Festival, Italy presented by La MaMa Umbria Varna Summer International Theatre Festival Mary Said What She Said The 62nd Berliner Theatertreffen: Stories and Theatrical Spaces That Realize the Past, Present and Future. Interview with Walter Bart (Artistic Leader, Wunderbaum Collective & Director, Die Hundekot-Attacke) from the 2024 Berliner Theatertreffen Duende and Showbiz: A Theatrical Odyssey Through Spain’s Soul Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Martha S. LoMonaco, Editor, New England Theatre in Review 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 Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Martha S. LoMonaco, Editor, New England Theatre in Review By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Welcome to the new incarnation of New England Theatre in Review , the performance review section of the late lamented New England Theatre Journal which ceased publication last year. The kind editors of JADT made space for us last fall when I had a section brimming with news on the New England theatre scene but no place to publish it, and they further offered us a continuing gig in subsequent Fall issues. This issue features three articles that provide thoughtful interrogations of political theatre in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts; highlight noteworthy productions at five small independent theatres of Greater Boston; and provide a window into Long Wharf Theater’s self-reinvention: Long Wharf abandoned its physical theatre space two years ago and is now peripatetically performing in and around New Haven, Connecticut, in hopes of reaching new audiences and new theatrical possibilities. All three give insights into how American regional theatre is thriving post-pandemic, beyond the boundaries of New York City, and in addressing the needs and entertainment desires of their local communities. Since Long Wharf is now straying a bit beyond New England’s boundaries—its 2025-26 theatre season opens with a co-production exclusively performed in New York City—I’m wondering if future issues of NETIR might take a similar tactic. I invite readers to consider writing about performance that has some base in New England—perhaps it originated there or is about some area or personality associated with or inspired by New England—but you may have seen elsewhere. Or you want to profile a particular production, series of related productions, or theatre within the six New England states that is doing noteworthy work that demands to be documented. Please send your suggestions for articles to me at: unit12msl@yahoo.com . References Footnotes About The Author(s) MARTHA S. LOMONACO is a theatre director, dramaturg, historian, and writer. She is Professor Emerita of Theatre and American Studies at Fairfield University, where she was resident director and ran the theatre program for thirty-four years. She is the author of two monographs Every Week, A Broadway Revue: The Tamiment Playhouse, 1921-1960 and Summer Stock: An American Theatrical Phenomenon and an edited collection, Theatre Exhibitions , volume thirty-three of Performing Arts Resources . She has been editor of New England Theatre in Review since 2010. 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.

Michael Y. Bennett 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 James Purdy as Playwright: A Retrospective Reading of A Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus Michael Y. Bennett By Published on March 5, 2015 Download Article as PDF James Purdy (1914-2009)—a prolific American writer of fiction, drama, poetry, and essays—has been known almost exclusively as a novelist, recognized for his early portrayals of gay characters and themes. Accordingly, scholarship has focused almost entirely on his well-respected novels. Purdy’s most notable contribution to the theatre is indirect, by way of adaptation of his novel, Malcolm (1959), by Edward Albee in 1966. This article considers two of Purdy’s minor plays that span a large swath of his career. Why Purdy now? And why two of his minor plays? There has been a recent turn in Purdy scholarship that has been gathering steam to examine his plays, which have been mostly ignored by academia. In addition to the publication of James Purdy: Selected Plays in 2009, since 2000, four of the seven articles published on Purdy have been about his plays. Douglas Blair Turnbaugh documented Purdy’s career as a playwright and recounts how Purdy told Turnbaugh that he “would just as soon write plays as novels.” [1] Though Turnbaugh does not comment on this statement, this suggests that Purdy scholars should give his plays continued prominence. Turnbaugh claims that Purdy has an inherent theatricality and a flair for dramatic dialogue. [2] This is particularly evident in Albee’s adaptation of Malcolm . Similarly, Matthew Stadler writes, “Talk, in Purdy’s world, is the instrument of revelation.” [3] Purdy does not dwell on scene-setting exposition, character background, or speculative psychological depth. [4] Purdy focuses, instead, on “the awkwardness and abruptness of real speech.” [5] Like Stadler, Michael Feingold argues that Purdy does not pay much attention to plot. [6] Feingold discusses Purdy’s non-traditional dramatic style, which is characterized by anecdotal drama, and explains how the plays are about “why life is so full of suffering and why human beings cause each other so much pain.” [7] Purdy’s reputation as a playwright has historically suffered for two reasons. First, the success of his novels has turned the finite amount of attention towards his novels (and, therefore, largely away from his plays). And, second, what scholarship that has been written about Purdy’s plays has focused almost solely on the structure of his plays (and, largely, in comparison to the structure of his novels). While it is important that academic journals have begun to publish work on Purdy’s plays, the fact that these articles do not really consider the content of the plays, has not done much to further his reputation as a serious playwright to be studied . Besides his prolific output of novels (and poems), James Purdy wrote, in total, eleven full-length plays and twenty shorter plays during his many-decade career. While many of Purdy’s plays were produced in non-notable theatres with limited runs—between the 1966 publication of his first short play, Mr. Cough Syrup and the Phantom Sex , and the 2009 publication of his fifth collection of plays, Selected Plays , published only months after Purdy’s death—, most of Purdy’s plays were published either in book collections or in literary journals/magazines during his lifetime.Unlike other scholars, I do not focus on structure, but instead, read his two plays about circuses and clowns through the idea of “clowning around,” playing off of the well-studied and complex idea of the carnivalesque, as theorized by Mikhail Bhaktin. This essay focuses on one of Purdy’s earlier published plays, A Day After the Fair (written in the early 1970s and first published in 1977), and one of his plays first published in a recent anthology, The Paradise Circus (written in 1991 and published in 2009). Though their dates of publication vary by almost thirty years, interestingly enough, both of these plays revolve around the circus. The figure of the clown haunts the pages, offering a unique opportunity to assess a change in Purdy’s thinking with similar characters occupying similar environments in both plays. While reading these plays, we may ask, what is a clown? and what is a circus? This line of inquiry gets us far; however, there is a much larger issue at stake when we examine the figure of the clown: Purdy’s characters only become themselves when they don the mask of another. Using the figure of the clown in such a manner is a sophisticated technique to explore this (above) idea—an idea that is not entirely without precedent in the history of theatre (e.g., becoming the “brother” in Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan and “Bunburying” in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest ). In the earlier play, A Day After the Fair , as Joseph Skerrett says in “James Purdy and the Works: Love and Tragedy in Five Novels,” tragedy is “played out against a backdrop of more than vaguely symbolic chaos in the natural order and/or disruption of the social order” [8] as the younger destroys the older in order to reverse the hierarchy. Love is a dangerous and destructive force here, as in Purdy’s earlier novels, because the characters cannot conceive or pursue it purely. [9] However, in the later play, The Paradise Circus , though the social order is disrupted in the beginning of the play as Arthur sells his sons and Arthur is incapable of pursuing love in the correct manner, the boys come back and the witch doctor becomes the doctor once more—restoring the social order—and Arthur does learn how to love, even though he quickly dies thereafter. Circuses are scary places in Purdy’s early works: the clowns are outcasts, and their makeup cannot hide the pain. However, by the time we get much later in his career in The Paradise Circus , life, in the end, can produce smiles. As these two plays represent his earlier and later career and both contain clowns, they offer a unique opportunity to see Purdy contemplate similar ideas and characters, but arrive at a different conclusion, demonstrating a fundamental change in Purdy’s outlook over the years. In interpreting the content of these two plays by Purdy through investigating the complex characters of the clowns, this essay aims to legitimate Purdy as a playwright and deserving of further scholarly inquiry. In A Day After the Fair , there are two grown-up brothers who are clowns. The older brother, however, will not let the younger very innocent brother assume the role of a clown (not letting him put on his makeup or costume), because the older brother feels as though he is the master clown. Like the younger brother’s lover who is a hired killer, the younger brother must become a killer, must become cold and calculating like his older brother. Only in killing his older brother, can the younger brother put on his makeup and finally become a clown. Like The Good Person of Szechwan , the previously-innocent younger brother must don another personality to live the life that he wants. The Paradise Circus , set in 1919, is about the relationship between a father and his two sons. Arthur Rawlings is mourning the death of his son Rainforth, a captain in WWI. Arthur forsakes his two younger sons, Joel and Gregory, because they do not live up to the memory of their older, now dead, brother. Joel and Gregory spend their lives working on merry-go-round wooden horses. When Senor Onofrio of the Paradise Circus meets the two boys, he propositions Arthur, who is known to be a miser. For ten thousand dollars, Onofrio will buy the two boys for the circus. If it does not work out and the boys return, he will have to return the money. At first, Arthur is shocked, but then he reasons that his sons do not love him as much as Rainforth did and agrees to the deal. After a number of years, he misses his son and wants them to return. Spurning the advice of the country doctor, Arthur turns to a witch doctor, Alda Pennington, for advice. She convinces Arthur that he must burn the ten thousand dollars, which he does. A little later the two sons miss home and run away from the circus and return home. They have grown up and claim to have hearts of stone when their father greets them again. Onofrio comes to Arthur to get his money back, but when Arthur tells him that Alda burnt it, Onofrio goes to Alda. Alda tells him that ever since he bought those boys he has not been able to perform with women. Alda says that if he ever wants his manhood back, he must leave town, forget the money and never return. Soon after Joel goes to Alda to find out if his father really burnt the money. She gives the remaining ashes to Joel. By the time Joel returns he is too late to hear what his dying father said to Gregory. Arthur told Gregory that he loves them and his dying wish was to see the stone removed from their hearts. Both sons are touched and they have appeared to regain their emotions, ending the play in an embrace. Many of Purdy’s other plays also feature types/variations of complex role-reversals. Dangerous Moonlight (unpublished to date) is a hauntingly sadistic, cold, and calculating play about making the best of a no-win situation. The action between mother and daughter, who have grown up in the lap of luxury, revolves around Val Noble, a Stanley Kowalski-like brute who lacks even the pride that Stanley exhibited in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire . Val is merely satisfied and accepts who he is—a veritable animal, a practical beast, whose needs are quite basic: first sustenance (taking the form of a large roast of beef) and then sex. By the end of the play, the three have made an agreement that the daughter will remain Val’s wife, while the mother will take the place of the daughter and become Val’s lover. In True (1977), Chester, a thirteen year old boy who witnessed his brother commit a murder ends up killing his brother, to demonstrate to him that he is not a liar and is true; that, “he will not grow up to be like his brother.” Here, Chester must become his brother, a killer, in order to become himself. Or Jack, in Down the Starry River (unpublished to date), is a washed-up drag performer. By the end of the play, Jack discovers that in order to make himself happy, he needs his costume to become his daily outfit; he needs to wear dresses not as an act, but in order to be himself. Donald Pease writes that Purdy laces his fiction with orphans, abandoned children, foundlings and outcasts. [10] In A Day After the Fair , the two brother-clowns are circus folk: certainly societal outcasts. Joel and Gregory in The Paradise Circus , are symbolically orphaned as Arthur sells them to the circus. The play A Day After the Fair has a pessimistic ending as the younger brother can only turn to violence in order to become what he wants. This holds true with what Pease writes when he says that there is an irreconcilable gap in their world and the world that cannot “adopt” them. [11] However, there is a very different ending in The Paradise Circus . The two brothers, who were symbolically orphaned, are reunited with their father at the end of the play as each party seems to forgive and love the other. This focus on outcasts and innocents is found throughout Purdy scholarship. Part of the reason for this reoccurring theme is that, as Skerrett documents, as a gay man, Purdy identified with a socially marginalized race. In an interview Skerrett cites in “James Purdy and the Black Mask of Humanity,” Purdy—aligning and/or identifying himself with what he sees as a powerless and stigmatized member of society—discusses that in dealing with his landlord, he felt like an oppressed black person: “They treat you like an old nigger tramp. . . . I feel like an old nigger after I’ve talked with him. I just feel like saying, ‘Well, white boss, you sho got to me.’” [12] Purdy expressed the same sense of oppression when he talked to Christopher Lane in a 1998 interview based on his sexuality. Purdy felt that his lack of recognition, stemmed from his perception of The New York Times as homophobic. [13] Reed Woodhouse writes how Purdy also felt personally attacked by members of the gay movement for not being “gay enough.” [14] Because of this, Purdy could most likely identify with his characters, and as Frank Baldanza says in “James Purdy on the Corruption of Innocents,” “A prominent feature in the microcosm of James Purdy’s six novels and numerous short stories is the relationship between a young innocent and the corrupt adult world in which he must make his way.” [15] The social outcast and orphan figure prominently in his two plays that I discuss here. In A Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus , Purdy captures the human in the guise of a clown-suit. In order to live life, one must clown around in a world that we know to be a circus. Like a clown, Purdy’s characters must assume another self in order to be true to their own selves. In order for Purdy’s characters to live the lives that they want, they must assume the role of another: they must become another to become oneself. Though full of obvious play and humor, Purdy’s circuses, however, are no laughing matter. These transformations are painful to all involved; even clown makeup cannot hide the pain, and when the clowns fall, or get hit on the head, they really get hurt. In makeup, clown performers exaggerate their bodily expressions, and clowns take on almost universal guises. It is an easy leap to imagine a modern day circus as a Bhaktinian carnival: The body and bodily life have here a cosmic and at the same time an all-people’s character; this is not the body and its physiology in the modern sense of the words, because it is not individualized. The material bodily principle is contained not in the biological individual, not in the bourgeois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed. This is why all that is bodily becomes grandiose, exaggerated, immeasurable. [16] It is the body of the clown that becomes the focal point and not the speech. We focus on their makeup and actions. And it is in their action that the clowns grow and renew themselves. Clowns operate through degradation, but also by overcoming degradation until they do it correctly. As Bhaktin says, “the material bodily principle is a triumphant, festive principle.” [17] In the face of degradation, clowns triumph over folly. Bhaktin explains how regeneration comes out of degradation: Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one. To degrade an object does not imply merely hurling it into the void of nonexistence, into absolute destruction, but to hurl it down to the reproductive lower stratum, the zone in which conception and a new birth take place. Grotesque realism knows no other lower level; it is the fruitful earth and the womb. It is always conceiving. [18] At the moment when Purdy’s characters face degradation are they renewed. By permanently donning the mask of another, by degrading themselves and reducing their existence to a new bodily existence, by directly dealing with their orphaned status, they become themselves. The short play A Day After the Fair begins appropriately with the scene being set: “ A dilapidated unfurnished room in a lonely city near which loom up enormous skyscrapers and bridges .” [19] Immediately we think of the degradation that the two clown-brothers, Neil and Arnold, encounter every time they look out of the window. Their surroundings are indicative of success and human progress, though of the lonely sort, and the two live in a dilapidated room, reflecting their failures and the process of continual worsening conditions. The play begins with Neil playing cards by himself and wishing that he is allowed to once again put on his clown suit, which his older brother, Arnold, forbids. Instead of listening to Arnold, Neil puts on the clown makeup: “I’ll put on my Clown’s face too, though Arnold’s forbidden it. . . . And it will make me lose the blues. . . . ” (3). There is something about his ordinary state that saddens Neil, and this may be in part due to. Maybe part of it is the reminder of his poverty-stricken state. The assumption of the carnivalesque being cheers him up, but also makes him feel more like himself. “I was a Clown just like him,” Neil states (3). For reasons not entirely clear to the audience, Neil was stripped of his Clown title by the Clown Master. Neil and Arnold come from a family of clowns: I said I was a clown at heart, and I need to live with Arnold. . . . We are the only clowns! My father was a clown, and his father. And before him my great grandfather was a juggler. We have always followed the circus. (5) They have a heritage, but Neil’s clown identity was stripped away. Neil is in the precarious position of both returning to his old identity—one that no longer exists—and creating a new identity. The plot of the play is a series of complex love triangles. Oswin is married to Elga, who promised Neil’s mother to take care of Neil, but Oswin loves Neil, offering to take Neil away from his overbearing older brother, Arnold. Neil loves Oswin, but also feels the same, at least obedient, love for his brother, Arnold. Elga is in love with both Arnold and Oswin (and has a weird motherly love for Neil). Arnold is in love with Elga, but has a demanding love for Neil. And wrapped up in this series of intertwining love triangles, the Clown Master seems to have had relations with all of the characters, too. The basic action of the play has Oswin, in some sort of revenge for Arnold, kill the Clown Master. Meanwhile, Neil poisons Elga and in turn, Neil kills Arnold. The love triangles afford the characters the ability to take on different roles, ones not determined by obligation. Oswin is obliged to be Elga’s husband, but Neil offers Oswin the possibility of being a lover. For Elga, too, she is obliged to be Oswin’s wife, but Arnold offers her the possibility of being a lover, as well. Neil is Arnold’s brother, but Oswin also offers Neil the possibility of being a lover. In a sense, all characters are trying to become lovers, trying to shed their obligatory mates. These characters become emboldened through love and held back by obligation. In assuming the roles of lover these characters can be free of the parts of themselves that is wrapped up in obligation. But it is not just the idea of taking on another role that frees the characters from obligation. Instead, the assumption of these other roles is only successful with an accompanying degradation. As Bhaktin says, it is only through degradation that there can be a birth. Actually, in the case of Oswin, there is a rebirth. Oswin is described as an assassin, and Oswin is in a similar situation as Neil. In assuming the role of assassin, Oswin is returning to an old identity that no longer exists. Does he return to an old self, or is he reinventing himself once more by once again becoming an assassin? It is an obligatory act, though. Arnold, through force and persuasion convinces Oswin to assassinate the Clown Master. For Oswin, killing the Clown Master, and literally degrading his body as he cuts out his tongue, frees Oswin of Arnold’s overbearing demands. Once Oswin accomplishes this task, he expects to find himself free to pursue Neil. Through assuming the role of an old/new self, degradation is allowed to occur, paving the way for freedom from obligation. The ultimate act of degradation and birth or rebirth comes from Neil’s character. Neil’s obligation to his brother is the one most firmly established. One can always divorce a wife, but a brother will always be a brother. By killing Arnold, Neil destroys part of his natural-born lineage as a clown. Like Oswin, Neil cuts out Arnold’s tongue: this degradation raises the question of whether Neil is returning to clownhood or is reinventing himself as a clown . But what it, ultimately, determines is that Neil will be the only clown. He assumes the privileged position of that title. And, finally, in the murder of his brother, Neil becomes the overbearing brute that his brother was, bullying Oswin. Neil, in freeing himself from his brother, has, in part, assumed the role of his brother. What is it about being a clown that metaphorically fits the play? First off, clowns represent both social outcasts and misfits. Not being satisfied with their role as outsiders, they yearn to become a part of society. However, clowns have a subversive means of achieving their desired goals, and they are successful through roundabout ways. For instance, they stumble until they find a certain, usually wacky, method of success. For Neil, degradation offers a way of subverting the natural order of birth and hierarchy. By toppling his brother, Neil is able to assume his old/new true and free self. The Paradise Circus opens up with an author questioning Arthur about his son, Rainforth. The author is writing a book about soldiers from the American Revolution up until WWI. Rainforth received many citations and won many medals and, as the author says, deserves to be in the book. Arthur describes Rainforth only in opposition to his two younger sons. He says, “My two youngest boys can’t hold a candle to their brother, that’s certain . . .They’re retarded boys. Never finished school . . .” [20] Arthur really has nothing to tell the author about his son except about his name: “The world wants everything ordinary. And both his name and character were extraordinary. Rainforth was right for him, whether people like it or not” (88). This sets up a classic case of a parent favoring one child and forsaking others. As a result of Arthur’s preferential treatment, his two sons, obviously, are detached from him. And because the boys are detached from Arthur, he agrees to “sell” his sons. The rest of the play, then, concerns Arthur’s attempt to buy back his sons’ love. The situation is simple; the resolution is complex. Before Arthur “sells” his sons to Onofrio, he meets with the family doctor, Dr. Hallam. Dr. Hallam is both the raisonneur , the critical outside observer, and a confidant to Arthur, much like James Herne’s famous homeopathic doctor, Dr. Larkin, in his classic play, Margaret Fleming (1890). Hallam correctly diagnoses the problem: Sometimes young men can get sick for sheer want of a little encouragement and downright affection, Rawlings. . . . And all they hear from you, if you will pardon my frankness, is a steady diet of praises for Rainforth. (91) If Arthur could follow Hallam’s simple prescription, the conflict in the play could have been avoided. But the memory of Arthur’s perfect son haunts him. In the face of Rainforth’s supposed perfection, everybody would be a disappointment. As soon as Onofrio offers to “buy” his sons, Arthur hits upon this point: “they have been a bitter disappointment to me, both of them” (95). And so three years have past and Arthur is dying to see his sons. It is not for another year until he actually sees them. Hallam warns Arthur how much they have changed. They have grown beards and have become much stronger even though they still use Arthur’s last name. Their meeting is short and polite. As Joel says, “we weren’t sure you would want to see us” (103). After the boys leave, Arthur tells Hallam, “I wouldn’t have knowed them from Adam” (103). The boys have transformed and indeed look like the “first son.” The boys have taken on a “magisterial” aura (102), and have supplanted Rainforth in might and in Arthur’s mind. Arthur’s sole preoccupation, which used to be his “grief for Rainforth” (96), is getting his two sons to love him. Arthur cannot accept the prescription that Dr. Hallam gives him. Because of Arthur’s unwillingness, or inability, to follow the doctor’s orders,we get the first of two degradations that produce growth. In Purdy’s circus, even the raisonneur and confidant must don a different guise. The “doctor” becomes a “witch” in order to be a doctor. Arthur says that he has had enough of doctors and decides to visit the local witch doctor to see if she can help him get his sons back. The traditional remedy for the situation, giving his children encouragement and showing more love, gives way to an untraditional remedy from an untraditional healer, a witch doctor. The audience must be weary of Alda Pennington before she even says a word. The stage directions read, Antique furniture everywhere, beautiful carpets and mirrors. Fresh flowers. An air of restrained wealth and comfort, not the house one would associate with a midwife or “witch.” (104) We know that Alda must be good at what she does, or at least good enough to trick people out of their money and make enough to buy antique furniture and beautiful carpets. But we might also look at it in another way. This is a person in touch with reality. We do not see the normal collection of ghastly thingamabobs that a “witch” would collect. Instead her decorations are sensible, even refined. She has one foot in magic, but the other is in a life of privilege. Her magic, then, is less foreign. And the pills that she prescribes are easier to follow than if she was a prototypical witch doctor. Like Dr. Hallam, she is both raisonneur and confidant. She quickly assesses the situation: RAWLINGS : They did come to see me . . . But without wanting to . . . They were cold as the brook after snowfall . . . Hardly said a word. ALDA : Just as they were trained. (106) After years of paternal neglect, Joel and Gregory naturally have nothing to say to him. They were, in fact, trained not to love Arthur. Dr. Hallam’s medicine would have worked it seems, if Arthur worked in usual ways. But he sold his boys. And an unusual medicine is needed to remedy that. Alda tells him, The very first thing you must do in order to regain your hold on life and in fact bring back the boys you have lost, is to burn Onofrio’s money . . . Here, before my eyes . . . (109) Alda, then, becomes a carnivalesqe doctor, one who deals in performance and bodily gestures. Her medicine is one of exaggerated excess, where the action is degrading and almost self-destructive. But these actions are done to re gain a hold of one’s life. It is not enough that Arthur gets rid of the money. Alda tells him that he cannot donate the “blood money” to charity (34). He must burn it. He must symbolically rid himself of the “bargain” that was reached with Onofrio, who freed him of his sons, and will thereby free him from his own guilt, actions and despair. Arthur’s change as initiated by Alda, leads to the second of two degradations. Arthur must burn his own fortune and that of his sons’. Arthur is a miser, who, in part, defines himself by his money. He must destroy that part of himself. Alda says, “I would have staked everything on your not returning” (114). She thinks it impossible for him to take on this challenge. “I thought you at least would go on being yourself, resisting everything and everybody, that not even the lightning would touch your pride” (114). By becoming another, by becoming the opposite of a miser, one who would literally burn his own money, Arthur has become the man he always could be, a good father. In this destruction, something burns anew. When Arthur burns the money, he burns the intangible to make room for the tangible, his sons. Once the two degradations take place, that is, the degradation of a doctor to a “witch doctor” and Arthur burning his precious money, the end of the play features the rebirth of the Arthur. Arthur, paradoxically, is dying. But there is still time for this new Arthur to make an impact on the lives of his sons. And with this, Dr. Hallam returns. Now that the unnatural deed of selling his sons has been remedied by the unnatural act of burning the money, traditional medicine can once again take over. On his deathbed, Arthur says to Hallam, Greg and Joel. What can I say, what can I give them. HALLAM : You want my opinion? RAWLINGS : Oh I suppose, though your opinions always take the wind out of my sails . . . Well, go on give it to me, give me your unvarnished say, so why don’t you, though, I’ll probably choke on the words when I hear them. HALLAM : (pacing the room, his head lowered) I can only tell you what I think I’d say if I had two fine boys like you have, if also I had done to them what you have done. RAWLINGS: Sold them like cattle you said once. HALLAM : Did I now? Ah, well . . . RAWLINGS : And what would you say if you was in my stead, Doc. HALLAM: I would say . . . ( hesitates ) I would hope one day they would find it in their hearts to overlook my failings, and that when they were my age they would understand how hard it is to tell those we love how much we love them. (143) And this is exactly what Arthur tells Gregory (Joel was at Alda’s at the time). Even in the act of dying, something is reborn, not just in Arthur’s heart, but the stones are lifted from the hearts of his sons. As the Passover saying goes, “Our story begins with degradation, our telling ends with glory.” As evidenced by these two plays, maybe there was a softening in Purdy’s heart over the course of the years. A Day After the Fair is utterly pessimistic and tragic. However, there are signs of hope and the possibility of love, albeit brief, at the end of The Paradise Circus . In Purdy’s early novels and plays, there are numerous instances of “orphans” as societal outcasts who will never fit in and will always grasp for the love of family. This holds true in A Day After the Fair . The tale of the orphan is, as Frank Baldanza says in “Playing House for Keeps with James Purdy,” “a recurrent Ur -fable of the lonely, desperate orphan, cut off from any family intercourse in childhood, who spends his brief career ‘playing house’ with intense, doomed seriousness, frustrated in his search for metaphorical family relationships that will provide the authority, security, and warmth of familial feeling.” [21] But The Paradise Circus is different. Most of the play follows this same pattern, but forgiveness and love are ultimately shared among the characters at the end. However, maybe the more elegant way to explain this shift is to return to the idea of Bhaktin’s carnivalesque. Early in his career, Purdy hurled his orphans “down to the lower reproductive stratum.” There, in the “fruitful earth and the womb,” Purdy’s orphans could incubate and experience a “new birth,” so that years later these orphans are “continually growing and renewed.” References NOTES: Though much expanded here in this essay, some of the arguments about clowns and, especially, the section on The Paradise Circus come from my short article “Clowning Around in James Purdy’s The Paradise Circus ,” Notes on Contemporary Literature 38.3 (May 2008): 7-10. Earlier versions of this chapter were also presented at two conferences: “Clowning Around in James Purdy’s The Paradise Circus .” 16 th Annual American Literature Association Conference. Boston, May 28, 2005 and “Role-Reversals in Purdy’s A Day After the Fair.” 18 th Annual American Literature Association Conference. Boston, May 26, 2007. [1] Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, “James Purdy: Playwright,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 20.2 (1998): 73. [2] Ibid. 73-74. [3] Matthew Stadler, “The Theater of Real Speech,” The James White Review 17.1 (Winter 2000): 7. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] Michael Feingold, “The Basic Question: James Purdy’s Plays,” The James White Review 17.1 (Winter 2000): 40. [7] Ibid. 40-41. [8] Joseph Taylor Skerrett, Jr., “James Purdy and the Works: Love and Tragedy in Five Novels,” Twentieth Century Literature 15.1 (April 1969): 25. [9] Ibid. 26. [10] Donald Pease, “False Starts and Wounded Allegories in the Abandoned House of Fiction of James Purdy,” Twentieth Century Literature 28.3 (Fall 1982): 335. [11] Ibid. 335-36. [12] Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., “James Purdy and the Black Mask of Humanity.” MELUS 6.2 (Summer 1979): 81. [13] Christopher Lane, “Out with James Purdy: An Interview,” Critique 40.1 (Fall 1998): 72. [14] Reed Woodhouse, “James Purdy (Re)visited,” Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review 2.2 (Spring 1995): 16. [15] Frank Baldanza, “James Purdy on the Corruption of Innocents,” Contemporary Literature 15.3 (Summer 1974): 315. [16] Mikhail Bhaktin, Rabelais and His World, Trans. by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 47. [17] Ibid. [18] Ibid. [19] James Purdy, “A Day After the Fair,” in Two Plays (Dallas: New London Press, 1979) 3. All subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. [20] James Purdy, “The Paradise Circus,” in Selected Plays (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publishers, 2009), 87. All subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. [21] Frank Baldanza, “Playing House for Keeps with James Purdy,” Contemporary Literature 11.4 (Autumn 1970): 488. Footnotes About The Author(s) MICHAEL Y. BENNETT is Associate Professor of English and affiliated faculty in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he teaches courses on modern drama. He is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to the Absurd (forthcoming 2015); Narrating the Past through Theatre (2012); Words, Space, and the Audience (2012); and Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd (2011/Pb 2013). He is the editor of Oscar Wilde’s Society Plays (forthcoming 2015); with Benjamin D. Carson, Eugene O’Neill’s One-Act Plays: New Critical Perspectives , (2012/Pb 2014); and Refiguring Oscar Wilde’s Salome (2011). In addition, he is also Editor of The Edward Albee Review . 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. 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Michael Osinski 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 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 Michael Osinski By Published on May 1, 2023 Download Article as PDF September 3, 2017. It’s the day Twin Peaks: The Return reached its gut-wrenching conclusion and seared a hole in my heart and my brain. I’d seen my fair share of David Lynch’s work before. I knew how impossible it can be to explain the narratives and describe the visuals. Lynch himself has resisted attaching words to his work, stating “A film should stand on its own. It’s absurd if a filmmaker needs to say what a film means in words.”[i] I still haven’t found the words to describe the feeling I had watching that finale, but at that moment, I knew I had to make a piece of theatre that recreated that feeling for others. Almost exactly two years later, I presented Red Lodge, Montana [ii], co-created with an ensemble of performers and Twin Peaks enthusiasts, at the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Billed as an unapologetic love letter to David Lynch, the production felt like a live-action nightmare where audience members traveled through the abandoned locker room of an old South Philly high school. One reviewer called it “a bizarro fusion of indolence, violence, nudity, sex, and dance.”[iii] I’m proud of the work we did. I also know that co-creating, directing, and producing a site-specific theatre piece in a found space took its toll on me (and my bank account). So in the interest of preserving the mental and physical health of other creative artists out there, I’m sharing some of the lessons I learned from the experience. (Unfortunately none of these lessons involve fundraising. That remains a mystery to me.) Lesson 1: Start with structure. Contrary to popular belief, theatre artists don’t really create something from nothing. There has to be a spark, an impetus, a burning question. And if you want to stay organized and foster greater creativity, you need scaffolding. You need Anne Bogart and Tina Landau’s third “basic building block for devised work” – structure.[iv] This may seem antithetical to Lynch’s aesthetic. As a director he insists “the only way we make heads or tails of [life] is through intuition” and believes “there’s an ocean of consciousness inside each of us…an ocean of solutions.”[v] But how do you communicate that to a team full of artists who aren’t swimming in your own personal ocean? Saying that I wanted to create an homage to David Lynch helped, but it didn’t provide enough of a framework. Especially if we wanted to create more than just a carbon copy of what he’s already made. So I asked my team to generate a list of “ingredients.” We watched Lynch’s film and television work and took note of all the elements that recur throughout his oeuvre. This established our scaffolding and gave us a checklist to return to as we made the piece. Do we have a few excruciatingly slow and drawn-out conversations? Check. Are we featuring music and costuming from a bygone era (usually the 1950s)? Check. Have we staged any moments of terrifying yet unexplained imagery? You tell me. (See Figure 1.) Figure 1: (l-r) Terrill Braswell, Amanda Schoonover, Geremy Webne-Behrman, and Megan Edelman in RED LODGE, MONTANA . Scenery by Dylan FitzSimons. Lighting by Sydney Norris. Sound by Daniel Ison. Stage Management by Eleanor Safer. Photo by Emilie Krause (Glass Canary Photography). I also brought back my “hybrid method” for inventing characters. I start almost every devising process by looking at a canonical text, because it gives us a narrative model to draw from. In this case I chose Bus Stop by William Inge. When the time came to build characters, I asked each actor to select 1 character from Bus Stop and 1 character from Lynch’s work and form a hybrid character from the two. They would list specific traits and circumstances of each character interchangeably – using a questionnaire I’ve borrowed from The Viewpoints Book [vi] – and mold their character around these attributes. These profiles provided the foundation for composition work, where each cast member created a short movement-filled piece to introduce us to their character. The pieces then fueled a series of structured improvisations with preset given circumstances and objectives. Many of these improvs turned into scripted scenes, but even the ones that didn’t make it to the final script helped to establish the mythology for our fictionalized town of Red Lodge. I wasn’t the only one who found this structure useful. Performer and co-creator Kelly McCaughan told me that “limiting what can happen within an improv helped flesh out something specific each time. And being able to pitch our ideas within that structured prompt created a really collaborative room.”[vii] Lesson 2: Stay flexible. Found spaces always sound like a cool idea, until you have to stage a show in one. When I first met with the representative from Bok Building in South Philadelphia, she showed me an old dusty room FILLED with rows and rows of lockers and benches. Talk about creativity coming from limitations! My brain instantly filled with images of actors hiding inside lockers for dramatic reveals, scampering in between the rows to frighten audience members, and even climbing atop the lockers to act out scenes above the audience’s heads. (See Figure 2.) Figure 2: The former girls’ locker room at Bok in South Philadelphia in early 2019. Photo by Michael Osinski. The next time I saw the space, almost all the lockers had been inexplicably removed. (See Figure 3.) Figure 3: The same former girls’ locker room at Bok in South Philadelphia in summer 2019. Photo by Michael Osinski. A big empty room felt less like limitless possibility and more like a huge hindrance to me. How could I create the same locations and effects without constructing a set? I had to adjust. I itemized the physical attributes and environmental effects I needed for each scene and figured out how to use the existing architecture to achieve it. For instance, we had originally envisioned one drug-fueled scene taking place on a rooftop. We were going to create a small plywood supported staging area across the tops of several banks of lockers. But without those lockers, I had no way of achieving this. I knew the scene needed some height, and it couldn’t take place in a room with doors and walls. The space had to feel liminal or transitory. Suddenly our rooftop scene became a stairwell scene. (See Figure 4.) Figure 4: (l-r) Amanda Schoonover and Kelly McCaughan in RED LODGE, MONTANA . Scenery by Dylan FitzSimons. Lighting by Sydney Norris. Sound by Daniel Ison. Stage Management by Eleanor Safer. Photo by Emilie Krause (Glass Canary Photography). We had also staged a rather intimate and claustrophobic scene involving full nudity and demonic possession. (It is David Lynch, after all.) But how do you make an audience feel trapped in a big empty room? I decided to stage this scene in the room’s entryway, with only 3 instruments lighting the space, and the EXIT sign and double doors in full view. It allowed the audience to crowd around a small area, and it created a terrifying moment when one of the characters pounded on the doors to escape. (See Figure 5.) Figure 5: (l-r) Josh Hitchens and Geremy Webne-Behrman in RED LODGE, MONTANA . Scenery by Dylan FitzSimons. Lighting by Sydney Norris. Sound by Daniel Ison. Stage Management by Eleanor Safer. Photo by Emilie Krause (Glass Canary Photography). Performer and co-creator Amanda Schoonover remembers another adjustment we made: “David Lynch often has characters that simply disappear from a scene, and we were stumped about how to make that happen without the magic of film. Once we got into the space, we discovered there were all these pillars that actors could hide behind, so with a little lighting trick, they could simply appear or disappear. It was always satisfying to hear the audience gasp when an actor seemed to appear out of thin air.”[viii] Staying flexible ultimately saved the production. If I had forced my original staging on the found space, it would have been disastrous. In true David Lynch fashion, I had to listen to what the walls were telling me. Lesson 3: Stand in your audience’s shoes. No instruction manual exists for understanding David Lynch’s work. But when you’re leading three dozen audience members through a promenade style fringe piece in a dark echoey room, you gotta make a few signs. The work itself should terrify the audience, not the possibility of running face-first into a concrete pillar. You can’t throw your audience into your deep ocean without a flotation device – you have to take care of them. I put more focus on logistics than I ever have for a piece I’ve made – at times I felt more like an engineer than an artist. Yet I didn’t want to mar the phenomenological experience of walking through a Lynch-inspired nightmare. How could I physically guide audience members in a way that kept them tuned into the show and still blended with our existing aesthetic (i.e. without turning on a bunch of harsh overhead fluorescents)? The answer was threefold. To map out a clear path, we did what any college dorm resident would do – we strung up holiday lights. It sounds silly, but it really has become human instinct to “follow the light.” Every time one scene ended, a new strand of lights would turn on and direct audience members to a different section of the room. Did we rely on a super clumsy system of turning on and off power strips throughout the room to make this happen? We sure did. (See Lesson 2: Stay flexible.) Because at the end of the day, no theatrical experience – no matter how thrilling – is worth risking a lawsuit. Even my years as a tour guide at college did not prepare me for how difficult it is to herd a group of people through a dimly lit medium-sized room. To keep people on the path and position them for maximum visibility, we employed “docents.” We asked two of our artist friends to dress up as two peripheral yet enigmatic Twin Peaks characters – The Giant and Lil[ix] – and communicate with gestures to physically (and mysteriously) walk the audience through the nightmare. Finally, to give our audience some narrative guidance, we filmed a series of short teaser videos[x] that introduced the characters and acted as a prologue. We released the videos weekly leading up to the opening performance to build anticipation and to guide our audience without providing too many answers. The world we’d created made total sense to us, and we wanted people to be weirded out, but we also wanted them to care about what (and whom) they were watching. Lesson 4: Trust your gut and your collaborators. There’s no such thing as a doubt-free creative process. I think we asked ourselves “Is this any good?”, and “Will anyone like this?”, and of course “Will this make any sense?” countless times. In a weird way, though, embracing the work of an artist like David Lynch gave us some freedom. He never worries about whether his work will transmit a singular message to the audience. He’s just translating the ideas inside his head to the screen. When Lynch made Blue Velvet , the ideas came to him “in fragments…it was red lips, green lawns, and the song – Bobby Vinton’s version of ‘ Blue Velvet .’ The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it.”[xi] He didn’t question what it all meant. He trusted his intuition. I wondered, can we apply this attitude or approach to other work? Can we free ourselves of this burden when we’re creating something with more verisimilitude? We are making art after all, and art is neither good nor bad. It exists for others to appreciate, critique, reject, embrace, dissect. As much as we may have fretted over the narrative logic of our piece, we made something that made sense to us. We created art for others to interpret. And as long as we’re taking care of our audience and being socially responsible in our storytelling, why should we fret so much over how others will interpret the work? I can’t say that I’ve succeeded at this yet. I still find myself fretting. But I’d like to think there’s an answer here somewhere. As theatre artists we can choose to embrace or deny the increased digitization of our world. If we embrace it, we risk losing the immediacy of a live in-person experience. If we deny it, we ignore our future audiences. I propose we strive for something in the middle. I believe creating a site-specific film-inspired theatrical experience like Red Lodge, Montana accomplishes this. I also know crafting experiences like this can be difficult. I hope these lessons encourage you, inspire you, and prevent you from making too many mistakes…or at least from drowning in your own creative ocean. References [i] David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (New York: TarcherPerigree, 2016), 19.[ii] https://www.findtheantidote.org/red-lodge-montana [iii] Kathryn Osenlund. “ RED LODGE, MONTANA (The Antidote): 2019 Fringe review.” Phindie. http://phindie.com/20057-20057-red-lodge-montana-the-antidote-2019-fringe-review/ (accessed October 21, 2022). [iv] Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005), 154. [v] Lynch, 45. [vi] Bogart and Landau, 129. [vii] Kelly McCaughan, e-mail message to author, March 8, 2023. [viii] Amanda Schoonover, e-mail message to author, March 8, 2023. [ix] https://tinyurl.com/yckx4hfe [x] https://vimeo.com/showcase/6242247 [xi] Lynch, 23. [xii] https://www.michael-osinski.com/ [xiii] https://open.spotify.com/show/6aWe8gTL3tFH2b6Fwve6ul?si=5827da219b474b70 [xiv] https://www.youtube.com/@thisonegoesto11podcast Footnotes About The Author(s) MICHEAL OSINSKI [xii] (he/him) directs theatre because he likes solving puzzles. He manages his self-producing collective The Antidote, and he was co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of Flashpoint Theatre Company in Philadelphia. He received his MFA in Directing from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, and he was a Drama League Directing Fellow in 2014. He is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance at St. Lawrence University, where he will devise another show in Fall 2023, and he produces and co-hosts a music podcast called This One Goes to 11 (on Spotify[xiii] and YouTube[xiv]). 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.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage “Regietheater:” two cases Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF By Ivan Medenica Image Credits: Article It is well known that the main characteristic of Middle and East European theatre during the past century has been the so-called “directorial theatre” (the most familiar formulation being in German,“Regietheater”), quite unlike the mainstream of British and American theatre. In this text I review productions of two highly regarded directors from this part of Europe, whose work is clearly in this tradition: Czech director Dušan David Pařízek and his Bulgarian colleague Alexander Morfov. The Moscoviad . Photo: Patrik Borecký. The performance The Moscoviad , based on Yuri Andrukhovych’s novel and staged by Dušan David Pařízek, was performed within the PQ+, a show-case of contemporary Czech theatre offered as a side program to the 2023 Prague Quadrennial. Andrukhovych is a contemporary Ukrainian writer, and this novel about the collapse of the Soviet Union was written in 1993. Pařízek is one of the foremost Czech directors of the middle generation, mostly working in German speaking countries. Unlike other performances in the PQ+ program, all of which were productions of leading Prague institutional theatres, The Moscoviad was produced by an independent platform,Theatre X10, which seeks to create critical thinking that reflects social reality. Audiences familiar with Pařízek’s earlier work will most certainly recognize the main features of his directorial poetics in The Moscoviad. In terms of stage design, and in general, in terms of its visual aspects the performance is marked with noticeable minimalism and reduction of stage devices. In the middle of the non-theatre space of TheatreX10 (originally a gallery in the basement of a modernist high-rise built in 1936) Pařízek put a wooden platform resembling a stage on a stage. The actors play around it, on it and, also, with it—transforming it, moving it and rearranging its densely arranged planks which cover and thus bridge the desks. When put together, the desks and the planks form the said platform which is at the same time the functional space of the performance and an independent visual installation (Pařízek himself is credited for the stage design). Visual, performative, but most of all, metaphorical climax in space utilisation happens when the actors disassemble the platform energetically and vociferously, leaving just separated desks as performance space. They then stab the planks between the desks, amplify them with light, projecting their shadows on the walls, thus creating a stunning abstract installation. However, the installation is not as abstract as it seems at first, because it can be interpreted as a rather direct and blunt metaphor. The collapse of the stage world is equivalent to one of the central topics in Andrukhovych’s novel which Pařízek himself dramatized: the equally vociferous and violent collapse of the Soviet Union. Those familiar with his much awarded production of Wolfram Lotz's The Ridiculous Darkness at the Burgtheater Vienna will recognize his directorial signature: a wooden wall composed of planks which disintegrates vociferously at the most important moment in the performance and is scattered across the stage. The Moscoviad . Photo: Patrik Borecký. The novel The Moscoviad seems realistic at first. It is about a day in the life of a young Ukrainian poet Otto von F. who is spending the last weeks of the Union in an “artists’ residence” at the institute of Soviet writers in Moscow. There, he is in the company of equally drunk and disheartened writers from other regions of the dying empire. They spend their time arguing and quarrelling about nationalism, communism, democracy, god and all else that preoccupies Slavs’ poetic souls. The context of the literature institute, vivid descriptions of Moscow and, as we shall later see, certain fantastic elements—all form intertextual links with another novel by another renowned writer also originating from the Ukraine, Mikhail Bulgakov and his famous novel The Master and Margarita . The story is only just realistic. In essence, it is really a foundation for a grotesque, fantastic, macabre parable, including the descent into the underground world, concerning Russia’s profound blindness regarding the direction in which the whole of Europe was heading at the beginning of the 1990s. One of the main topics in both the novel and the performance are Russian political and police elites’ insincere and unsuccessful attempts to adapt to these circumstances, while in reality they continue to fantasize about not only of upholding the Soviet/Russian empire but also of expanding it westwards, to Western Europe. One needs not emphasize how strikingly real and painful this story is today, even more so at the time of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Yet, in my opinion, the real value of both the novel and the performance lies elsewhere, in something just a shade different. Despite being uncompromisingly criticizing of Russian imperialism, neither Andrukhovych’s novel nor Pařízek’s production are mere propaganda. Quite the contrary, they are interwoven with subtle (auto)irony and genuine humanity. The auto-irony stems from, most of all, the text itself. In his letters/dreams the main character, already mentioned (fictional) Ukrainian poet Otto von V., addresses the, also fictional, heir to the throne of what one might call the “Ukrainian world.” This, in itself, may not be significant to Anglo-Saxon audiences. Yet, those from Central and East Europe are all too familiar with these national confabulations and cannot but at least smile (if not laugh due to respect for the tragedy happening in Ukraine) upon recognizing them. This subtle irony is maintained in Pařízek’s work with four great actors appearing in different roles: Gabriela Míčová, Stanislav Majer, Václav Marhold and Martin Pechlát. Besides the ironic and grotesque, their amazing performances showcase other registers as well: strong emotionalism, igneous energy, clearly differentiated characters and their relationships, skillful improvisation … Such an acting approach combined with fitting poetics employed by both the writer and the director result in an artistically relevant and politically balanced performance. In conclusion, I would like to stress that although uncompromisingly critical towards Russian imperialism, the performance of The Moscoviad does not fall into the trap of Russophobia, which today is, sadly, often the case even in the matters of arts. The 70th anniversary of the Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica was celebrated with a premiere of The Visit , a performance based on a well-known play by Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Visit of the Old Lady (Der Besuch der alten Dame) , written in the 1950s. The performance was directed by one of the foremost Bulgarian, and European directors Alexander Morfov. The Visit . Photo: Dusko Milhanic. Although it belongs to what one might call “contemporary classics,” Dürrenmatt’s play is not so well known today, thus requiring further illumination before proceeding to the analysis of the performance itself. The play may be classified as “theatre of the absurd,” “tragic farce” or any similar genre in which, as Dürrenmatt himself points out, the tragic stems from the comic, surfacing as “a moment of utter despair, a gaping abyss.” The story is comical in the sense that one economically and in every other way devastated town is expecting a visit from its most affluent citizen ever, and in doing so they perceive her visit as their last chance of salvation. Clara Zachanassian, living abroad for decades and changing husbands (at the beginning of the play she has seven ex-husbands, but as the play progresses the number increases) has become a billionaire. Her appearance is comical, with her entourage of bizarre servants, a litter, a panther, ever new husbands, cynical and eccentric behavior, but also comical are the citizens of Güllen in their cowardice, servility and readiness to do anything to improve their conditions. The tragic begins to surface with her request that in view of her willingness to donate a billion to her hometown, she wants “one head” to be delivered to her: she wants her once lover, grocer Alfred, to be killed because after he had impregnated her and ascribed his responsibility to others, he forced her into a vagabond lifestyle which started with prostitution. The feeling of the tragic is crystalized in the theme of “buying justice,” and in succumbing to the criminal demands of big capital. Although the offer is at first rejected with strong moral indignation, the citizens of Güllen, including Alfred’s own family, will, quite expectedly, finally accept paying for a higher standard of existence (loans are being taken before the billion is deposited) with somebody’s life. When writing about two performances in one review, points of comparison impose themselves as a sort of tedious itching even if, as is the case here, there are no real grounds for them. In that respect, while Pařízek’s production features strong visual symbolism, minimalist staging and is charged with energy, Morfov’s is visually decorative, marked with lushness of stage and energetically diluted. Without radical adaptation, Dürrenmatt’s text requires the presence of a large number of actors and stand-ins on stage. Morfov skilfully groups, moves, and rearranges numerous actors, as if making a composition for a painting or a film shot. His “stage stills” are based upon actors’ playing in several planes and levels for which effect he uses stage technology (stage podium drops), elements of stage design (the balcony of Clara’s hotel room), separating close-ups from wide-shots by light, and shaping choreographically particular scenes (Alfred’s murder, for example). Such combining of stage elements creates the association—maybe because we know subconsciously that The Visit of the Old Lady has been turned into a musical—that we are watching a Broadway spectacle that requires skillful technical and artistic orchestration of a large number of actors, dancers and singers. Just to make things clear: from my aesthetic perspective, this Broadway association--and which is highly conditional—is not a compliment. Still, as if all of that were not enough for Morfov, to this densely packed stage he adds full-size mannequins that sometimes appear in isolation or are scattered, and at times are densely grouped. The use of mannequins representing citizens of this small town is both redundant and unjustified simply because there already is a large enough number of live performers. In terms of their symbolic meaning, it is superficial if the objective was to signify loss of individuality, transformation of people into big capital’s marionettes or anything similar. That said, I do not reject the possibility that the use of mannequins is purely decorative in purpose and holds no special meaning. Considering all of the above, one gets the impression of an old-fashioned and somewhat conventional theatrical style, and not just a self-complacent one. Scenes with mannequins are a good illustration of the performance’s central feature: stage attractiveness overshadows dramatic action, thereby glossing over feelings and meanings that this action should incite. In addition, one of the consequences of the underdeveloped dramatic action is the overwhelming feeling of boredom. All of this is the result, at least one gets such an impression, of the director’s greater focus on stage stills instead of on his work with actors who seemed as if left to themselves. For this reason, Clara, played by a leading Montenegrin actress, Varja Djukić, lacks that sharp transformation of a comic, grotesque character into a mythical revengeful figure that looks as if she is appearing out of a tragedy. Throughout her performance the actress is shaping and developing her character, emphasizing psychological motifs and thus totally missing the point of both the play and her character. Such an approach dilutes the very comicality of the first part of the play, but also the anxiety and tragic perception of the world when Clara asks the citizens to sell her justice which, she believes, belongs undisputedly to her. The comic effect is subdued further by the fact that the actors, it seems, have either failed to recognize the very lucid and bitter humor of the play or they just lacked confidence in it. Because of this they “covered” it with their own forced, and thereby, unconvincing comical skills. However, the tragic and critical view of the world ensuing from the awareness that money is the absolute ruler of our lives—which is the point that makes this 1956 play relevant today and the reason why it is still played—is clearly delivered at the end of the performance. The performance ends with a bleak song that through association links the citizens of Güllen with today’s populist and right-oriented forces. The Visit . Photo: Dusko Milhanic. It is a pity that this disquieting, critical attitude is just “glued on” at the very end of the performance by a directorial intervention. Pity, because this attitude should have been present and readable throughout the entire performance, and especially throughout its second half. Yet, in terms of production and artistic choice, including the financial investment, this project of Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica deserves to be supported. It suggests that in the seasons to come this theatre will try to raise its artistic ambitions and step out of its local context. References References About the author(s) A native of Belgrade, Ivan Medenica studied at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, where he completed his PhD thesis entitled “Actualization and Deconstruction as Models of Directing Drama Classics.” He is an associate professor at the FDA, where he teaches history of world drama and theatre. He regularly publishes articles in national and international journals. He chaired or co-chaired three of the international symposia of theatre critics and experts organized by the prestigious Serbian theatre festival Sterijino Pozorje in Novi Sad and the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC). He has participated in a number of international conferences, such as in St. Etienne, Moscow, Vienna, Budapest, Avignon, Thessaloniki, Sofia and Lisbon. He has received a number of national awards for his theatre criticism and was the artistic director of Sterijino Pozorje. Medenica is one of the editors of the theatre magazine Teatron, and he holds the post of Adjunct General Secretary at the IATC. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

LESLIE CUYJET, FRANCESCA D'UVA, MORIAH EVANS + KATIANA GONÇALES RANGEL presents Group Date: a conversation at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Group Date: a conversation LESLIE CUYJET, FRANCESCA D'UVA, MORIAH EVANS + KATIANA GONÇALES RANGEL 6-6:50 pm Thursday, October 17, 2024 Elebash Recital Hall RSVP Join us for a conversation between Prelude 2024 artists Leslie Cuyjet, Francesca D’Uva, Moriah Evans, and Katiana Gonçales Rangel. Prelude 2024 features artists working in different corners of the New York performance scene. These Group Date conversations present an opportunity to foster connections, new and otherwise, between the festival’s featured artists. 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). Leslie Cuyjet is a performer, artist, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. More information at lesliecuyjet.com 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. Moriah Evans positions choreography as an expansive social process. Drawing on somatic choreographic practices and feminist critiques of dance and visual culture, her works expand dance beyond the visible, to explore different ways of sensing both ourselves and our relationships to one another. In Evans’ practice, one work leads to the next, each project forming a chapter in her ongoing process to inspire transformation–both physical and psychosocially–through action. Evans creates site-specific performances, theater-based productions, gallery and museum-based participatory installations, symposiums, theoretical texts, and curatorial projects. Recent works include: Remains Persist (MOCA LA, CA, 2023; Performance Space New York, NY, 2022); Out of and Into: PLOT (Museion, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, 2023); Rehearsals for Rehearsal (Public Art Fund, NY, 2022); RESTOS (Espacio Odeon, Bogota, Colombia, 2021); REPOSE (Beach Sessions, ΝY, 2021); Be My Muse (Pace Live, NY, 2021; Hirshhorn Museum, DC, 2018; FD-13 Minneapolis, 2017); Configure (The Kitchen, NY, 2018) and Figuring (SculptureCenter, NY, 2018). Evans has been honored with (among others): a 2023-2024 Hodder Fellowship, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists. Evans initiated The Bureau for the Future of Choreography (2011-ongoing)—a collective investigating participatory performance. She was Editorial Director, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of Movement Research Performance Journa l (2013-2022); Tanzkongress Curatorial Advisor (2017-2019); Dance & Process Co-Curator (The Kitchen, 2016-2023). Evans has a BA in Art History & English, Wellesley College, and MA in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from UCSD. Katiana Gonçales Rangel is a performer, director and educator from Brazil based in NYC. They have been creating independent theater work since 1998. Their most recent work Ama The Diver (2023/2024), in collaboration with Jim Fletcher and the cellist Lori Goldston, was performed in NYC, Portland and Seattle. Katiana has been creating documentary theater work with immigrant New Yorkers since 2014 with Incoming Theater Division (ITD), a branch of the company New York City Players, and has been ITD director since 2020. In 2024, the group performed La Casa de Bernarda Alba in Spanish language directed by Richard Maxwell. Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

George Potter Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 26 2 Visit Journal Homepage Alternative Transnationals: Naomi Wallace and Cross-Cultural Performances George Potter By Published on May 29, 2014 Download Article as PDF In summer 2002, the paths of war crisscrossed American public discourse. The war in Afghanistan had continued for over half a year, and the Bush Administration was beginning to lay the groundwork of lies and misinformation that would form the justification for invading Iraq. Meanwhile, Naomi Wallace led a group of six playwrights, along with Kia Corthron, Tony Kushner, Robert O’Hara, Lisa Schlesinger, and Betty Shamieh into occupied Palestine to meet with theater artists there and learn about the conditions under which Palestinian artists and people worked and lived during the Second Intifada. The following year, American Theatre published a series of responses from the playwrights, remarkable in the different ways in which they constructed the narratives of their contacts with occupied Palestine. Tony Kushner, for one, filtered the experience through an analysis of his Jewish American identity, with considerable attention to the copy of Gershom Scholem’s letters that he carried with him, concluding, “Because I went with a diverse group of people, I saw things I might have missed, and because I am a Jew I think I saw things others didn’t see.”1 Similarly, in a comparison of human rights abuses against Palestinians and his own African American experience, Robert O’Hara wrote the word “I” fifty-one times in responding to the conditions of Palestinians.2 And Palestinian American Betty Shamieh created parallel narratives between her own life growing up in America and the life she didn’t feel she would be strong enough to endure had her parents stayed in Ramallah.3 This is not to say that any of these are invalid responses. Personal responses to traumatic conditions are greatly varied in form and substance. However, they are a stark contrast to the closing narrative in the article, that by Naomi Wallace. She is the only one of the writers to use an Arabic word, referencing the debka, a traditional dance; the only one to draw from the literary heritage of Palestine, quoting now-deceased poet Mahmoud Darwish; and one of only two, alongside Lisa Schlesinger, to quote someone that the group encountered, providing the words of a twelve-year-old girl who told Wallace, “Yes, I throw stones at tanks. But I would rather play . . . When I grow up, I want to be a doctor.” Perhaps this is why Wallace wrote not only of her reaction as an American, but her obligation as an American: To visit the Occupied Territories, the West Bank and Gaza as theatre writers is not simply an exercise in forging links between ourselves and the Palestinians. Rather, it is to realize that we, as Americans, are, on an intensely intimate level, already fused, through the overt involvement of our government, with the history of these people . . . We are not, I thank the gods, only ourselves and our own personal experience. We are also what happens to one another.4 There is much to commend such a statement, both in its departure from the inward focused statements of Wallace’s fellow travelers—and the inward focused writing of much American theater—and in her commitment to making Americans aware of their role in perpetuating the occupation, and all of its itinerant conditions, of Palestine. Additionally, the idea that “We are also what happens to one another” would also seem like a modus operandi for the playwright, whose oeuvre stretches not just from performances around the world, but also to the American-Mexican border to the wars in Iraq and Palestine and to the struggle of union organizers. As such, Wallace’s work, particularly The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East—and the ideas that support it—serves as a strong example of what it means to be a meaningfully transnational artist. This analysis will thus begin with an examination of the deployment of the term “transnational,” as well as an exploration of how this concept is deployed in explorations of contemporary theater productions. This transnational frame will then illuminate how Wallace’s practice of theater moves beyond notions of international economic movement toward an argument for an intimate understanding of a diverse range of lives, and a personal contact—both in artistic and activist engagements—between those lives. In its most basic sense, the term “transnational” is not the subject of much debate. As Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden write, “the transnational can be understood as the global forces that link people or institutions across nations. Key to transnationalism is the recognition of the decline of national sovereignty as a regulatory force in global coexistence.”5 While this would imply that one aspect of transnationalism is the various multinational systems of economic, political, and communicative arrangements that make up the contemporary era, John Carlos Rowe also notes that the concept of transnationalism has come to include “a critical view of historically specific late modern or postmodern practices of globalizing production, marketing, distribution, and consumption for neocolonial ends.”6 Thus, the transnational consists of both the multinational influences on contemporary life and the multinational resistances to those influences. In the realm of the arts, much early scholarship on transnationalism came from the field of film studies, which existed at the intersection of both the economic and political debates over influences of transnationalism. As Ezra and Rowden write, “Cinema has from its inception been transnational, circulating more or less freely across borders and utilizing international personnel. This practice has continued from the era of Chaplin, Hitchcock, and Fritz Lang up to contemporary directors like Ang Lee, Mira Nair, and Alfonso Cuarón.”7 However, in the modern era, this movement of capital and labor has been expedited and expanded, and alongside it has developed an alternative cinema—by artists such as Ken Loach, Zhangke Zia, and Jafar Panahi—that explore the political, economic, and cultural impacts of such movements. Theater, however, as an embodied art form, does not transport with the expediency of a DVD, and discussions of transnationalism have taken on a different shape in theater studies, focusing more on the latter question of representational concerns. To the extent that structural elements have been discussed, they have tended to focus on international lines of influence on contemporary artists. The collection Not the Other Avant-Garde, for example, argues for a decentering of the avant-garde outside of the European experience, claiming that “the first- and second-wave avant-gardes (pre- and post-World War II) were always already a transnational phenomenon, and that the performative gestures of these avant-gardes were culturally hybrid forms that emanated simultaneously from a wide diversity of sources rather than from a European center.”8 In the same collection, Marvin Carlson advocates for the necessity of understanding the indigenous influence on Middle Eastern theater, rather than merely looking for European influences.9 All of this is, undoubtedly, important scholarship. However, none of it asks what it means to think across borders, rather than to merely be influenced by multiple traditions. There is, then, very little attempt to use theater, as Yan Haiping argues for in her discussion of Asian theater, to explore how “globalization dictated by capital can be traced and contextualized through the various social formations of the human lives that it changes and interconnects and how those specific social beings actively inhabit the present global change that not only conditions their functions but also threatens to overdetermine the very constitution of their existence and signification.”10 While there is some theater work that attempts to do this, the nature of live performance, and the economics of performance, often do not allow critiques of transnational economics to function transnationally. Thus, when the Young Vic staged Clare Bayley’s The Container, a play about refugees attempting to smuggle themselves into Britain, the performance occurred inside a shipping container on a street in London. However, while this content presented a critique of those abandoned by the international flow of capital, in form, the work still presented a British writer, theater, and cast discussing issues of British concern in front of a predominantly British audience.11 Meanwhile, many works that travel internationally with international casts often replicate the economic paradigms that The Container interrogates. Thus, most critical discussions of the transnational content of theater have tended to merely use the term as a means of discussing cross-border content. In this context, Sara L. Warner has discussed Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus as a transnational work because it deals with the cross-border transport—both past and present, alive and dead—of Saartjie Baartman’s (“The Hottentot Venus”) body.12 Similarly, Jerry Wasserman writes of the Canadian play Ali and Ali and the aXes of Evil as “transnational agitprop” because of the diasporic nature of the stars and its engagement with the American influence on Canadian culture.13 These works, of course, contain transnational content, as well as critiques of transnational exploitation, but there is nothing particularly transnational about their form or the audiences that they perform before, although Ali and Ali did at least go on the road, with a variable script. In the end, though, if critiques of local political and economic policies are to significantly involve the effects of those policies on distant peoples, there must be some way for theater to meaningfully contact the people discussed. This challenge returns this discussion to Naomi Wallace, an artist whose work has attempted to overcome physical and mental borders. Years before the previously discussed trip to Palestine, she crafted what remains her most famous play, In the Heart of America, the story of a white American and a Palestinian American soldier during the first Gulf War, which touches on issues of race, class, and sexuality not often mixed on American stages, where Palestinian bodies are rarely present in any form. However, this play remains within the bounds of those works discussed above that exist as transnational merely in their content. More recently, her play Twenty-One Positions, a Cartographic Dream of the Middle East involved working with Jewish and Palestinian artists to construct “a kind of Brechtian musical about the illegal Wall,” as Wallace explains it, thereby moving toward a more transnational process to match the content of the work.14 However, it is in a work between the two of these, the lesser known The Fever Chart, that Wallace has embodied the idea of critical transnationality in artistic production. In terms of content, The Fever Chart represents a true attempt to think across the fault lines of occupation in the Middle East. Consisting of three “visions,” the work has two short plays about Palestinian-Israeli relations, and one monologue by an Iraqi man about the devastation in his country. Thus, like In the Heart of America, it is a rare American work that juxtaposes Palestinian and Iraqi conditions of occupation. In fact, in this way its ideology—though not its representations of Israelis—stands much closer to theater found in the Arab world than North America, where Palestinian and Iraqi issues have historically been severed from one another. Perhaps this is why it is one of the few plays about the “war on terror” to have been performed in both Cairo and New York, as well as London. As such, the work, and the artist, who splits her time between America and Britain, and traveled to Egypt for the Cairo production, exemplifies the idea of a personalized transnational critique that knows the spaces in which those forgotten by occupation and globalization exist, and the production history of The Fever Chart demonstrates the challenges of trying to communicate such knowledge. One of the visions in The Fever Chart, “Between This Breath and You,” tells the seemingly impossible story of an Israeli woman that has been given the lungs of a Palestinian youth killed by an Israeli soldier. However, though Wallace’s play speaks to a seemingly impossible coming together of her characters, the play was based on an actual event, as Nehad Selaiha noted in her review of the Cairo performance. In fact, The Guardian, whose story on the event was projected between segments of the Cairo production, quoted the Arab family involved as stating “that peace and a desire to alleviate the suffering of others was uppermost in their minds. But looking exhausted and still stunned by the twin demands of Ahmed's death and the Israeli embrace, they also speak of their decision as an act of resistance.”15 [caption id="attachment_1128" align="alignleft" width="606"] Figure 1., Mourid (Basil Daoud) Sami (Hassan Kreidly), and Tanya (Amina Khalil) in Between this Breath and You at the AUC. Courtesy of Frank Bradley.[/caption] In Wallace’s play, however, the seemingly impossible moves to another level, when the father (Mourid) of the dead boy (Ahmed) meets the woman (Tanya) who has his son’s lungs inside her in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem. There, Mourid mysteriously unravels details of Ahmed’s life beside what he knows of Tanya’s life, asking her, “How often do you stay behind to lock up? To play with the stethoscope? To talk with a patient after hours, pretending you can be of service?”16 Mourid then explains that Israeli soldiers had made his son clean dirt from their tanks with a broom because children had been throwing dirt. Then, they shot him in the back of the head and the pelvis, saying Ahmed had been carrying a gun.17 There are many ways to write about the occupation of Palestine, and many plays have been written on the violence inherent in occupation. Few have shaped as intimate a metaphor as having an Israeli living through the air drawn through the lungs of a Palestinian killed by the Israeli military; few are willing to write that an Israeli lives through drawing breath from a Palestinian. Even fewer would have such a character look into the eyes of the father of him who gives her breath to live. However, this intimacy, the speaking of the child’s death, is broken when Mourid tries to explain to Tanya that his son’s lungs were transplanted inside of her, an idea that Tanya works hard to reject. Thus, Mourid explains to her the situation in detail: The donor organs had to be transplanted within six hours after being removed. While you were under general anesthesia, the surgeon made an incision across your chest, beneath the breast area and removed your lungs. Then the surgeon placed the new lungs into your empty chest cavity and connected the pulmonary artery of the new lungs into your vessels and airway. Drainage tubes were inserted to drain air, fluid and blood out of your chest for several days to allow the lungs to reexpand. With oxygen. Sweet, cold oxygen. And here you are, beautiful Tanya. (Beat) My son is inside you.18 Initially, Tanya responds to this story with outright denial, and, as Mourid continues to insist that it is Ahmed’s lungs inside Tanya, she turns to revulsion, spitting on him, and later telling him, “Had your son’s lungs been inside me, I am sure, absolutely sure, that I would have rejected them.”19 Finally, she attempts to disgust Mourid, declaring, “When I laugh, your son laughs. When I sing, your son sings . . . But that would also mean your son was present last night . . . I picked a stranger up after work. A sweet, eager young man. He fucked me so hard I thought he’d break me in half,” continuing on after Mourid tries to interrupt her, “Don’t worry. Things went smoothly. Your son gave me good air when I sucked cock. Good Jewish cock.”20 In this way, Tanya attempts to invert the intimacy expressed by Mourid, using the fact of Ahmed’s lungs not to show the closeness of their lives, but to try to sicken and repel Mourid. Just as the bullet from the Israeli soldier took the beauty of Ahmed’s life to try to stop Palestinian resistance, so too does Tanya try to use the beauty of the gift she was given to try to end Mourid’s words. In the end, though, just as the Israeli state has not been able to expel all the Palestinian bodies from its system, no matter how many have been killed, Tanya learns that she must also depend on Mourid to learn to breathe again after an asthma attack: [MOURID:] You must slow your breath down. Let it gather its force again. Like this. (Mourid breathes in a long, slow breath.) As though the air has become fluid and you are drinking it in. (Mourid breathes in again, demonstrating.) TANYA: I can’t. (Beat) I can’t. . . . TANYA: Mourid Kamal. Why do you want to help me? MOURID: Because you are. My son. (TANYA looks at Mourid. Mourid raises his head slightly; Tanya copies him. It is clear that he is leading this breathing lesson.)21 The remarkable aspect of the work is that Wallace understands at once the power dynamic in play in the Israeli occupation of Palestine,22 but, at the same time, that on either side of that dynamic are human beings intimately related to one another, at the most intrinsic of levels. Thus, while Tanya is dependent on Mourid in order to draw breaths, it is her choice—and for five years, she lived without any awareness of him. Mourid understands what is necessary for him and Tanya to live peacefully together, but Tanya alone is the one responsible for choosing to overcome her biases, to set her structured power aside, and to choose to allow Mourid to help her to breathe, to live.23 And until she chooses to risk her own self, she has no hope of healing herself. This sort of intimacy between the occupier and the occupied is at the heart of all the other visions within The Fever Chart. In “Retreating World,” an older piece from Wallace repackaged in the triptych, an Iraqi man delivers a monologue that weaves his love of books, his hobby of raising pigeons, and the devastation that war and sanctions—the play is set in 2000—have left behind in his nation. Thus, early on, his advice on raising pigeons dovetails into the state of Iraq after nearly a decade of sanctions: “Never name a pigeon after a member of your family or a dear friend. (Beat) For two reasons: pigeons have short lives—and when a pigeon named after an uncle dies, this can be disconcerting. And second: these times are dangerous for pigeons—they can be caught and eaten.”24 This style of mixing the intimacy of books and birds from his personal life, with the violence unleashed on an entire nation continues throughout the play, such as when Ali begins to speak of the Gulf War, saying, We hid in bunkers for most of those weeks. Cursing Saddam when our captain was out. Cursing the Brits and the Yanks the rest of the time. And I missed my birds. But birds were prohibited in the bunkers. Prohibited. Prohibited by the laws of nations as were the fuel-air explosive bombs, the napalm—Shhh!—the cluster and antipersonnel weapons. Prohibited, as were the BLU-82 bombs, a fifteen-thousand-pound device—Shut up!—capable of incinerating every living thing, flying or grounded, within hundreds of yards . . . And me, I missed my birds. The way they looked at me, their eyes little pieces of peace sailing my way.25 Similarly, after Ali eats part of one of his books, he declares, Books can also, in extreme times, be used as sustenance. But such eating makes for a parched throat. Many mornings I wake and I am thirsty. I turn on the taps but there is no running water. A once-modern city of three million people, with no running water for years now. The toilets are dry because we have no sanitation. Sewage pools in the street. When we wish to relieve ourselves, we squat beside the dogs. At night, we turn on the lights to read the books we have forgotten we have sold, but there is no electricity.26 [caption id="attachment_1127" align="alignnone" width="606"] Figure 2., Waleed Hamad as Ali in The Retreating World at the AUC. Courtesy of Frank Bradley.[/caption] What these passages reveal is how deep into the intimate corners of individual lives political and economic devastation can reach. The last section particularly underscores this idea, as Baghdad had once been one of the major centers of Middle Eastern arts and culture, with a remarkably high literacy rate, before the wars with the United States began.27 And though the sanctions regime and wars have weakened the Iraqi educational system, UNICEF still estimated total adult literacy between 2003 and 2008 at 74 percent.28 Thus, being forced to eat a book in a culture that values literature so much, and for a man who loves books so profoundly, becomes a stark marker of the degree to which Iraqi society, down to the most personal levels, had been undercut by the sanctions during the nineties. For Ali, the violence and devastation, and not the artifacts of a life he had once known, have become the normative structures. Perhaps this makes sense, as he continues to explain that when his unit of soldiers tried to surrender to the Americans in 1991, the U.S. unit fired an anti-tank missile at a single man, a friend of the narrator: “Out of hundreds, thousands in that week, a handful of us survived. I lived. Funny. That I am still here. The dead are dead. The living, we are the ghosts. We no longer say good-bye to one another. With the pencils we do not have we write our names so the future will know we were here. So that the past will know we are coming.”29 As Ali moves into the heart of his trauma, even the memories of the books and birds from better days disappear from his monologue, replaced only by violence and loss, by the devastation that has steadily pushed all other beauties out of his life, by the death of the man he had earlier described by saying, “If love is in pieces, then he was a piece of love.”30 A piece of love, turned to pieces of human devastation by the violence of war. Too often, discussions of war violence are separated from a direct understanding of what that violence entails. The number of bodies are given in an abstract frame, one that does not see the inability to feed or educate one’s children any longer, the inability to bring a glass of water to an ailing parent, the inability to walk down the road beside one’s lover, the inability to love. In “The Retreating World,” Wallace brings such personal details painfully close to her audience, staging the destruction brought by large weapons on the smallest, most private level. And the play also ends in a moment of intimacy, when Ali picks up a bucket and holds it up for the audience, declaring, “These are the bones of those who have died, from the avenue of palms, from the land of dates. I have come here to give them to you for safekeeping. (Beat) Catch them. If you can.”31 As he lifts the bucket out over the audience, they are not met with bones of dead Iraqis, but “hundreds of white feathers.”32 Thus, instead of fully horrifying an audience that helped construct Iraqi suffering, he, like Mourid, provides a gift of beauty, a moment to breathe and hope together, to know that the space between the lives of the oppressor and the oppressed is thinner than the space between feathers falling from the sky. And this also holds true in the third, and most dreamlike, vision in The Fever Chart, “A State of Innocence.” This final, though typically first performed, vision tells the story of an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian woman meeting in a zoo in Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip, alongside the architect of the zoo. As with “Between This Breath and You,” “A State of Innocence” tells the story of a meeting between two intimately related people from either side of the Israeli occupation. And, once again, it begins with tension between the two parties, brought by their preconceptions of one another: YUVAL (Threatening): [ . . . ] Are you a terrorist? UM HISHAM (Playfully): Paletinorist. Terrestinian. Palerrorist. I was born in the country of Terrorist. I commit terrible acts of Palestinianism. I eat liberty from a bowl on the Wall. Fanatic. Security. Democracy. YUVAL: Don’t get playful with me. You want to throw me in the sea. UM HISHAM: I just might. But I can’t get to the sea. Seventeen and a half checkpoints keep me from it.33 [caption id="attachment_1126" align="alignnone" width="606"] Figure 3., Yuval (Ahmed Omar) crawling to Hisham (Amira Gabr) in A State of Innocence at the AUC. Courtesy of Frank Bradley.][/caption] Set in the middle of the Second Intifada, the play begins with the tension between the people on either side of the occupation, tensions that cause a young soldier to believe that even a middle-aged mother is a threat to him because she is Palestinian. However, the structure of occupied violence returns when Um Hisham explains to Yuval how she knows who he is, telling him that soldiers in his unit beat her husband because they could not find weapons in Um Hisham’s house. Yuval stopped the beating, and, to thank him, Um Hisham made him a cup of tea. However, as he put the cup of tea to his lips, a single bullet from a sniper pierced his head. When he dropped to his knees, he looked to Um Hisham and said, “Hold me,” which she did, telling him in the zoo, “Three minutes. It took you three minutes to die. Everything I have despised, for decades—the uniform, the power, the brutality, the inhumanity—and I held it in my arms. I held you, Yuval. (Beat) But it should have been your mother. We should hold our own children when they die.”34 Um Hisham continues to explain that because Yuval died in her house, the Israeli military bulldozed the house and arrested her husband, and that the zoo they are in is the one that lives on in their minds, where she can visit Yuval as she visits her daughter. This dream-like aspect was underscored in the Egyptian production, which used a minimalist set, with only a few stairs and wooden latticework behind the characters to emphasize the unreal world they were in, as well as the openness of the possibilities before them in such a space. In this way, “A State of Innocence” also explores the closeness between the occupier and the occupied, and how their lives, and deaths, are inextricably linked to one another and are even tied together after death. And, as with the other plays, it provides an image of the oppressed providing comfort to the oppressor, showing humanity in spite of the occupation; in this play, though, the Israeli soldier had also shown a moment of compassion to Um Hisham, a moment that would cost him his life, as crossing the borders of political divide, sadly, too often does. However, as Wallace writes, it is only in those moments of crossing, in the creative transgressions, in the most intimate forms of transnational community that a better world can be imagined, that that vision can exist, in the mind, on stage, or in life. The inverse of this is an idea that Wallace understands when she states, “What could be more intimate or personal than the fact that we get up in the morning, kiss our loved ones, go to work, come home, pay our taxes—and those taxes from our daily labor are used to kill you and you and you, and I never saw your face nor knew your name.”35 If the violence of occupation is formed from the product of our daily lives, the resistance to such violence needs to take an equally personal form. Unfortunately, writing such visions comes with its own cost as well. As Wallace has revealed about attempts to stage her collaborative work Twenty-One Positions, a Cartographic Dream of the Middle East, “before Lisa, Abed [the co-writers], and I had set foot in the Guthrie Theatre, the dramaturg there accused us of writing in a way that supported terrorism.” According to Wallace, “The conversation about Israel and Palestine is the most censored conversation in the U.S. today. And it’s not an easy conversation to have in Britain either.”36 Furthermore, The Jewish Chronicle, writing of the British production of The Fever Chart, ended with the note that “plays about this conflict have to deliver more than a depiction of mutual suffering.”37 And, as with the Guthrie’s decision to forego a production of Twenty-One Positions, most non-academic theaters avoid Wallace’s work, just as the American press largely chooses to ignore the few productions of her work that are mounted. However, it is not in the West alone that this conversation has met challenges. When The Fever Chart was first performed at the American University in Cairo, as Wallace and director Frank Bradley took the stage for the post-show QA, four of the actors in the play came to the front of the stage and rejected the play for, as they saw it, equating the oppressor with the oppressed and creating lives in a vacuum, finally stating “no coexistence without preceding existence.”38 Interestingly, the critical responses to the performance took a decidedly different tone. Joseph Fahim stated, “The four actors’ statement and the criticism Wallace was bombarded with reflects an intolerance for any work that portrays the ‘enemy’ in a non-barbaric light. The Israeli characters never appear sympathetic, and that’s one of the very few dramatic flaws of the play. Wallace doesn’t offer any kind of resolution, or ‘reconciliation,’ for her characters, which renders the actors’ statement all the more puzzling.”39 Meanwhile, Nehad Selaiha noted, “That some of the audience found it hard to swallow such a message is, perhaps, understandable and could be predicted. One wonders if there ever will come a time when such brave plays would be properly appreciated . . . They [Wallace, Bradley, and the AUC] gave me a taste of real political theatre as I understand it: challenging, disorienting and thought provoking.”40 It would also seem strange that, given the AUC’s upper-class demographic, the students did not have a problem with their university training the heirs to Egypt’s political and economic elite who remain complicit in the occupation. Ironically, though, equating the roles of occupier and occupied is how the one published Western critical response to Wallace’s play positions the work. In the article, “Enough! Women Playwrights Confront the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Amelia Howe Kritzer surveys female responses to Israeli occupation in the wake of the controversy over Caryl Churchill’s play Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, and positions The Fever Chart as an alternative to “the tone of anger and impatience common to other plays about the conflict.”41 For Kritzer, the majority of plays about Palestine create a “pattern of emphasizing the viewpoint and experience of one side [that] limits their potential for bridging the deep divisions between Palestinians and Israelis,” while Wallace’s work “feature[s] a trio of characters, a choice that undermines the either/or pattern of the binary opposition between Palestinian and Israeli positions.”42 While I agree that Wallace’s work contains an uncommonly humanistic approach to the issue, assuming that Wallace does not take sides requires Kritzer to consistently erase Arab subject positions in her analysis. Thus, she does not note the disproportionate number of dead Palestinians versus dead Israelis, including two Palestinian children, in Wallace’s play, an imbalance that mirrors the actual occupation. Additionally, by focusing on Palestine and ignoring the Iraqi segment, Kritzer avoids Wallace’s implication of the structural and American-funded nature of violence and occupation in the Middle East, an erasure amplified by her consistent references to “conflict,” rather than the more accurate and specific terms “occupation,” “apartheid,” and “settler-colonialism.”43 Finally, she writes of British and American productions of Wallace’s work, ignoring that it played in Cairo before New York and ignoring the different resonances in the productions. In this way, she creates an argument for a “balanced” understanding of the “conflict” that obscures the reality of Wallace’s writing, how it has been performed, and Palestinian life under occupation. Instead of replicating similar rhetorical choices, The Fever Chart always maintains a clear structure of understanding the difference between occupier and occupied, while, at the same time, showing the intimate connections between human beings on either side of that line. True, this may be hard for many to view, but, at the same time, it is impossible to end oppressive political and economic structures without understanding that the ideological failures that create them are human. Just as suffering should not be disembodied, neither should the structures that create oppression. They are equally human, and must be understood as such. And this humanity must be understood in dialogues that move across borders both ideologically and physically. At one point in “Between This Breath and You,” Mourid tells Tanya, “Did you know, Tanya—may I call you Tanya?—that wind has no sound? What makes the sound are the things it touches—branch, cliff, roof. All that rushing is the contact between one thing and another. Without that meeting point between two worlds, the harshest wind is silent.”44 So too are abstract forms of political resistance, those that do not understand the intimate details of the lives they mean to help, equally voiceless. True, in the contact that creates voice, there is friction, and there are moments of tension. However, in the silencings of the Guthrie, of state and public censorship, of those who would not see those whom they oppose (or, in some cases, support) as human, there is also no chance for progress, for a better means of living together. It is only when transnational humanism risks the pain of intimacy and the burns of friction that it will have a voice, a hope, and a possibility for a better world. ------------ George Potter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Valparaiso University. His research focuses on visual culture and national narratives in Jordan. A United States Fulbright grant and a Taft Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Cincinnati funded his study of theater about the “war on terror” in Cairo, London, and New York. His research and translations have appeared in a number of journals and edited collections, including Arizona Quarterly and Proteus: A Journal of Ideas ------------ [1] Kia Corthron, et. al., “On the Road to Palestine,” American Theatre (July/August 2003), 31. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid., 71. [4] Ibid. [5] Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, eds., Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006), 2. [6] Qtd. in James M. Harding and John Rouse, eds., Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundation of Avant-Garde Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 31. [7] Ezra and Rowden, Transnational Cinema, 2. [8] Harding and Rouse, Not the Other Avant-Garde, 15. [9] Marvin Carlson, “Avant Garde Drama in the Middle East,” in ibid., 125-44. [10]Yan Haiping. “Other Transnationals: An Introductory Essay,” Modern Drama 48, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 226. [11] Stephen Moss, “The Container’s Captive Audience,” The Guardian 7 July 2009. [12] Sara L. Warner, “Suzan-Lori Parks’s Drama of Disinternment: A Transnational Exploration of Venus,” Theatre Journal 60, no. 2 (May 2008):181. [13] Jerry Wasserman, “Bombing (on) the Border: Ali and Ali and the aXes of Evil as Transnational Agitprop,” Modern Drama 51, no.1 (Spring 2008): 126-44. [14] Naomi Wallace, “On Writing as Transgression,” American Theatre (January 2008), 100. [15] Qtd. in Nehad Selaiha. “Politics Centre-Stage,” Al-Ahram Weekly (20 Mar. 2008), http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/889/cu2.htm (accessed 5 May 2010). [16] Naomi Wallace, The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East (New York: TCG, 2009), 37. [17] Ibid. [18] Ibid., 45. [19] Ibid., 46. [20] Ibid., 50. [21] Ibid., 52-3. [22] A brief and accessible overview of the conditions in occupied Palestine can be found in the film Occupation 101 (Dir. Omeish, Abdallah, and Sufyan Omeish, DVD, YouTube, and Vimeo). [23] Similarly, Ali Abunimah has noted that economic exploitation was built into the Oslo process, which allows Israel to control Palestinian imports and exports and divert development into international industrial zones that export the profit. See Ali Abunimah, “Economic Exploitation of Palestinians Flourishes under Occupation,” Al-Jazeera English 13 September 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/20129128052624254.html, (accessed 8 February 2014). [24] Wallace, Fever, 58. [25] Ibid., 61. [26] Ibid., 64. [27] “In 1989, school enrollment in Iraq was higher than the average rate for all developing countries.” (PBS. “Iraq—Truth and Lies in Baghdad. Facts and Stats,” Frontline World (November 2002), http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq/facts.html, (accessed 3 September 2010). [28] Ibid. [29] Wallace, Fever, 66. [30] Ibid., 62. [31] Ibid., 67. [32] Ibid., 68. [33] Ibid., 9. [34] Ibid., 23. [35] Wallace, “On Writing,” 102. [36] The production would eventually be staged at Fordham University, instead of the Guthrie. Qtd. in Claire MacDonald, “Intimate Histories,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Arts 28, no. 3 (2006): 100. [37] John Nathan. “Review: The Fever Chart,” Rev., The Fever Chart, 18 March 2010, The Jewish Chronicle Online, http://www.thejc.com/arts/theatre-reviews/29596/review-the-fever-chart, (accessed 5 May 2010). [38] Frank Bradley, dir. The Fever Chart, writ. Naomi Wallace, perf. Falaki Theatre, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt, 17 March 2008, Undistributed DVD. Also Personal Interview, 26 October 2008. [39] Joseph Fahim, “Visions of War, Loss and Humanity,” The Daily News Egypt (17 March 2008), http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=12524 (accessed 5 May 2010). [40] Selaiha, “Politics Centre-Stage.” [41] Amelia Howe Kritzer, “Enough! Women Playwrights Confront the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Theatre Journal 62, no. 4 (December 2010): 624. [42] Ibid. [43] Part 2, Article 7, of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002) defines apartheid as inhumane acts of a character similar to crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Even a cursory knowledge of the Israeli occupation would make clear that this is a more appropriate term than “conflict,” which implies a balanced struggle. See “Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” United Nations, 2002, http://legal.un.org/icc/statute/romefra.htm (accessed 7 August 2013). [44] Wallace, Fever, 34. ----------- The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 26, Number 2 (Spring 2014) Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Guest Editor: Cheryl Black (University of Missouri) With the ATDS Editorial Board: Noreen C. Barnes (Virginia Commonwealth University), Nicole Berkin (CUNY Graduate Center), Johan Callens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Jonathan Chambers (Bowling Green State University), Dorothy Chansky (Texas Tech University), James Fisher (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Anne Fletcher (Southern Illinois University), Felicia Londré (University of Missouri-Kansas City), Kim Marra (University of Iowa ), Judith A. Sebesta (The College for All Texans Foundation), Jonathan Shandell (Arcadia University), LaRonika Thomas (University of Maryland), Harvey Young (Northwestern University) Managing Editor: Ugoran Prasad Editorial Assistant: Andrew Goldberg Circulation Manager: Janet Werther Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue The Border that Beckons and Mocks: Conrad, Failure, and Irony in O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon Alternative Transnationals: Naomi Wallace and Cross-Cultural Performances Transgenero Performance: Gender and Transformation in Fronteras Desviadas/Deviant Borders Crossing Genre, Age and Gender: Judith Anderson as Hamlet YoungGiftedandFat: Performing Transweight Identities Hot Pursuit: Researching Across the Theatre/Film Border Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Nicholas Orvis 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 Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Nicholas Orvis By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF PLAYING REAL: MIMESIS, MEDIA, AND MISCHIEF. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Lindsay Brandon Hunter’s Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief offers valuable insights into the practices and problems of mediatized performances that play with and against conventional notions of “the real.” Hunter wisely eschews both the well-trod liveness debates of Performance Studies and, more challengingly, the many anxieties attendant on media’s increasingly destabilized relationship to reality. Instead, she embraces these performances’ playful construction of the real as a means to make mischief—particularly, mischief with the dominant paradigms within which such performances exist. The book proves a fruitful contribution to interdisciplinary theater and performance studies, applying its analysis in equal measure to the fields of broadcast theater (such as the well-known NT Live), reality television programming, and alternate reality games (ARGs). Each of these fields, as Hunter discusses, is “tethered in some way to an imaginary of the real” (xvii-xviii). Her six core chapters are neatly divided into three pairs, one for each of the creative fields under discussion, and move from performances with which theater scholars are likely to be familiar (broadcast performances in chapter one, the Wooster Group’s 2007 Hamlet in chapter two) through a deeply theatrical slice of television (reality television in chapter three and particularly “scripted reality” in chapter four) and, then, into the growing critical terrain exploring intersections of theater, performance, and game-playing (through the particular lens of ARGs in chapters five and six). Each set of chapters offers a helpfully polyvalent reading on its source material, with the initial chapters in each pair (one, three, and five) doing the work of theorizing a medium’s relationship to the real while the subsequent chapters (two, four, and six) offer deep dives into case studies that provide nuance which complicates the previous discussion. Hunter’s writing displays an impressive command of the existing scholarly literature of what might be considered three distinct fields, in particular, drawing upon the work of Sarah Bay-Cheng and Philip Auslander, to consider these mediatized performances as not distanced from, but rather engaged in the construction of, reality. Hunter offers fruitful provocations in her close readings and theorizing. She begins by examining the ways broadcast theater, beginning with the 1964 Electronovision capture of Richard Burton’s Hamlet , have striven to “translate” the supposedly ineluctable liveness of theater to the cinema or television screen—and in so doing, she proposes, have revealed “liveness to be less theater’s ontology than its brand ” (12, original emphasis). It’s the brand of a certain kind of theater, at the very least: the well-funded, nationally acclaimed, artistically conservative institutions that can afford to finance these undertakings, such as the National Theatre in London or New York’s Metropolitan Opera. As Hunter rightly observes, these organizations are engaged not only in transmitting their performances but to didactic work that, by dictating the viewer’s focus, enforces “a particular skill of ‘reading’ theater” in accordance with the directors’ and producers’ intentions (18). Hunter suggests that through such direction, this broadcast work has the potential to disrupt, or at least inflect, the dominant norms of theatergoing (19). I wonder, however, whether in practice such disruption will come to pass or whether this medium will remain the province of artistically conservative (sometimes conservational) institutions—the ones most consistently able to muster the funds needed to create the broadcasts discussed. While Hunter’s second chapter focuses on the Wooster Group’s remixing of that 1964 Hamlet , the third and fourth chapters expand her horizons dramatically, taking in the realm of reality TV with a focus on the performance of romantic love. Hunter skillfully weaves together existing analyses and critiques from the field of media studies with her own theater-grounded theorizing; of particular note is her explication of “unreceived acting,” an inversion of Michael Kirby’s theory of “received acting” articulated in “On Acting and Not Acting.” Reality TV performers, Hunter suggests, may be read by their audiences as specifically not acting—even when their performances are clearly embedded in the histrionic conventions of reality television (53-54). This concept offers, I think, a useful way of reading not only reality TV performances but other performance approaches broadcast on social media platforms or live-streaming sites such as Twitch, as well. Hunter’s final chapters tackle alternate reality games. These games—often lengthy explorations of another world—offer exciting ground for a performance scholar, and Hunter adroitly brings both performance theorists and some notables of game studies (particularly Jane McGonigal) to bear on these performative acts of play. McGonigal’s own World Without Oil seems to offer a hopeful case study in chapter five, suggesting that ARGs can help players engage critically with the world around them. Unfortunately, this optimism is immediately undercut by chapter six’s dissection of a (somewhat sinister) 2010 game encouraging players to embrace surveillance technology when it’s in the “right hands,” Conspiracy for Good —an ARG funded in part by Nokia and featuring its then-new image recognition technology. The dichotomy of chapters five and six points to an unresolved tension in Hunter’s monograph: although she consistently returns to an optimistic view of the “mischief” these performances create, there seems to be almost as much evidence in favor of such disruption serving ill ends. Hunter acknowledges these concerns briefly in her epilogue, and it’s fair to say that this volume—begun before both the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic—is an opening salvo in the discussion of this mischief’s role in contemporary society rather than a final statement. Ultimately, Playing Real is a well-researched and valuable monograph, skillfully speaking across multiple fields to consider the ways we use theatrical artifice not only to tell stories about our reality but to construct and play with it, as well. Playing Real will be of greatest interest to researchers in performance and media studies, yet scholars—or classrooms—examining broadcast theater, intermedial theater, reality television, or ARGs will find it valuable. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) NICHOLAS ORVIS (he/him) is a doctoral candidate at the School of Drama at Yale. From 2014-2019 he was Literary Associate and Resident Dramaturg at Premiere Stages at Kean University. Other dramaturgical work includes Yale Repertory Theater, Portland Stage Company, the Tank, and the Yale Cabaret. He is a former managing editor of Theater magazine, and his critical writing has appeared in Theater , 3Views on Theatre , and HowlRound . He co-produces (with Percival Hornak) Dungeons + Drama Nerds , an ongoing podcast. His research interests include game-based performances, immersive theater, and early modern European drama. 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.

Phoebe Rumsey Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 3 Visit Journal Homepage Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical. Kevin Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; Pp. 368. Phoebe Rumsey By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical. Kevin Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; Pp. 368. Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical by Kevin Winkler offers educators, students, and Bob Fosse enthusiasts a history of the choreographer’s early life, creative influences, apprenticeships, and Broadway and film successes. Winkler interrogates how Fosse’s passionate and often tumultuous relationship with collaborators, personal partners, and the musical theatre genre, in general, came together to create his indelible style and legacy. Big Deal is part of the Broadway Legacies series edited by Geoffrey Block that includes Carol Oja’s Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War and Todd Decker’s Show Boat : Performing Race in an American Musical . Big Deal is the second book in the series devoted to a choreographer, the first being Agnes de Mille: Telling Stories in Broadway Dance by Kara Anne Gardner. Prior to his twenty-year engagement as a curator and archivist for the New York Public Library, Winkler had a career as a professional dancer, and he danced in Fosse’s 1982 Broadway revival of Little Me . His bodily understanding of dance and keen attention to historical detail bring a fresh perspective to Fosse’s work and illuminate why Fosse privileged the dancing body above all else. To achieve this analysis, Winkler’s book traces Fosse’s career chronologically across three trajectories: the transformation of the Broadway musical over forty years, the women in his life and their influence on his aesthetic, and “the social and political climate of his era” (2). The first chapter provides an overview of Fosse’s dance training and early performance career that shaped his style. Winkler succinctly explains, “While his later work could display touches of sentimentality and pathos, it was the triangulation of vaudeville, burlesque, and nightclubs that formed the basis of Fosse’s aesthetic DNA” (17). Chapter two encapsulates Fosse’s apprenticeships as a Broadway choreographer, including his work and relationship with Jerome Robbins. Winkler is very insightful in this area as he details how Robbins watched over Fosse and, in turn, Fosse took on this role later in his career with other emerging choreographers. In chapter three, Winkler analyzes how Damn Yankees (1955) and Redhead (1959) established Fosse and his lifetime muse Gwen Verdon as forces on Broadway. He then charts Fosse’s quest for total control over a production through discussions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Sweet Charity (1966), and Pippin (1972) in the next two chapters. The book then moves to an investigation of Fosse’s work as a film director. Winkler claims “film is the ideal medium for Fosse’s perfectionism” (149) and supports this argument by describing, from chapter six and onward, how Fosse worked to incorporate the choreographic on camera. Winkler devotes considerable time to probing the physicality of the bizarre choices that Fosse made (i.e. abrupt moves from reality to fantasy and up-close camera footage of open-heart surgery) to create All That Jazz (1979), a film of his life story loosely disguised by name changes. The book closes with the titular show Big Deal (1986) and the legacy that Fosse leaves behind. It is in these final chapters where Winkler explicitly articulates one of the main interventions of the book that has been simmering throughout—how the dancers Fosse worked with, such as Gwen Verdon, Ann Reinking, and Chet Walker, are the embodiment of his work. Winkler contends that, for all of Fosse’s tangible achievements and awards, the Fosse style is ultimately about the bodily repertoire and how the technique has been passed down through generations of dancers. Fosse’s legacy consists of “the dancers who hold within their bodies his unique choreographic language” (275). Overall, the text is well written and thoroughly researched. Winkler’s description and analysis of Fosse’s choreography and creative strategies are the book’s key contributions, particularly given the minimal amount of scholarship that delves deeply into what dance is doing in musical theatre. By providing a glossary of dance terms in the preface of the book, Winkler makes a concerted effort to model a method of critically examining dance in musical theatre. Some moments in the body of the text when defining terms, such as “the concept musical” or “Brechtian” are slightly abrupt but much appreciated. There are many backstage tidbits sprinkled throughout the entire book, but Winkler is at his best when exploring Fosse’s choreographic process through descriptions of the body in motion. For instance, he describes the dancers in the now famous “Hey! Big Spender” number in Sweet Charity as “Undulating and lunging in all directions, they travel like a giant Medusa across the stage before breaking out for a final exhortation” (120). Pointedly, Winkler identifies how Fosse borrowed, revised, and tweaked previous movements as part of his process and, through this sense of repurposing over innovation, the Fosse style solidifies. At his most critical, Winkler explains Fosse’s singular vision: “That he was not aware of, or chose to ignore, innovations by his peers that he now claimed for himself made Fosse appear disengaged from what was happening elsewhere in the theatre” (268). Towards the end of the book, Winkler alleges that Fosse cast dancers regardless of race or ethnicity, an unusual practice for the time. Though this topic is not a major throughline to the book, it is worthy of mention in this current era of attempts to diversify casts. This book will be helpful to students, researchers, and educators seeking to trace the historical chronology of choreographers into director-choreographers. For scholars of musical theatre, this book rethinks Fosse’s dedication “to redefine not only how a dancing chorus looked but how it functioned” (73). Big Deal also joins the larger conversation that surrounds theatre about the collaborative process and the artistic consequences of turning away from collaboration in search of ultimate control. References Footnotes About The Author(s) PHOEBE RUMSEY The CUNY Graduate Center Editorial Board for Special Issue: David Bisaha Meredith Conti Leah Lowe Inga Meier Robert Vorlicky Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Embodied Arts Collective Choreography for Weathering Black Experience: Janelle Monáe and The Memphis "Tightrope" Dance Unruly Reproductions: The Embodied Art of Mimicry in Vaudeville "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies Choreographies of the Great Departure: Building Civic Bodies in the 1914 Masque of St. Louis Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Hawaiian Performance. Stephanie Nohelani Teves. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018; Pp. 220. Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Cindy Rosenthal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017; Pp. 198. In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement. La Donna L. Forsgren. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 200. Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina. Noe Montez. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017; Pp. 239 + xi. Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical. Kevin Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; Pp. 368. Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018; Pp. 399. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 15 Spring 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey By Malek Najjar Published: June 15, 2024 Download Article as PDF Photo courtesy of Malek Najjar When asked by Arab Stages Book Review Editor George Potter about five books that shaped my thinking about Arab American drama, I immediately thought about the fact that there were no full-length books available about the genre when I began my doctoral dissertation on the topic. As a matter of fact, the very reason I focused my attention upon this bourgeoning theatre form was because of the paucity of information available up to that time. We must remember that, although the first Arab American play, Ameen F. Rihani’s Wajdah , was written in 1909, prior to that point, the entire history of Arab American drama consisted of one-off productions and publications. Like other immigrant communities, our theatre was not considered legitimate because it had no major playwrights with large bodies of work, it had no Broadway productions, it had no anthologies of plays, and it had no major prizes associated with it. Instead, Arab Americans have been creating theatre independently, and with little or no means of production, since the first recorded Arab American theatrical group, the Syrian Youth Society, staged the play Andromak in 1896.(1) The early plays by Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy, and Ameen F. Rihani were published in Arab American newspapers, but were never staged in their lifetimes. This might have prompted Edward W. Said to lament to Gregory Orfalea that, in terms of Arab Americans having any influence on the dominant culture, “the Arab American simply plays a very tiny, marginal, unimportant role.”(2) Said’s words rang true in his lifetime, but the burgeoning of this artform over the past decades has proven that this situation has changed over time. No serious discussion of Arab American history, arts, or letters can begin without mentioning Edward W. Said’s seminal work. Even though his book Orientalism is, of course, a masterwork, his essays “The Arab Portrayed,” which appeared in the 1970 book The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective , edited by the late Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, and his “Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Volume” of Orientalism were the foundation for my study of Arab American drama. In “The Arab Portrayed,” Said crystalized the very notions I had been wrestling with my entire life as an Arab American as I watched Arabs being perniciously misrepresented in films by filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, and John Frankenheimer (to name only a few). In the films I watched by these directors, Arabs were always portrayed as evil, violent, terroristic, stupid, sex-crazed, and sadistic. This contrasted greatly from the films I grew up watching at home starring Omar Sharif, Fairuz, Farid Al Atrash, Faten Hamamah, and others. The Arabs I knew watching my parents’ VHS tapes sang, danced, played musical instruments, loved, laughed, cried, and mourned. By contrast, the Arabs in the movie theatres were Nazi collaborators, ruthless terrorists, vile letches, and scimitar-wielding villains worthy only of a brutal death. Said’s essay begins with the two offensive caricatures of Arabs he encountered: the stupid and offensive Arab with their hands above their heads in a gesture of surrender, or the treacherous, sex-mad Arab intent on violating Western women and killing Western men. Said attributes these to British and French colonialist writings and the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War coverage, which pitted white Europeans facing off against a horde of native savages. He wrote, “As an intelligible unit in the mind, the Arab has been reduced to pure antagonism to Israel. The sheer mass of his numbers—against which, it seems, any injustice counts for very little—has been abstracted into unitary order, the better to deal with the uncomfortable moral demands his history and actuality might make.”(3) He continues by stating that the sympathy one might feel for Africans or Vietnamese, Balkan nationals or Irish nationalists, simply cannot be extended to the Palestinian Arabs. “In the mind’s syntax, then, the Arab, if thought of singly, is a creature without dimension. His history is obscure, for it is written neither in terms of institutions the Americans can recognize nor in a language he can read… What is most telling about Western consciousness of the Arab is how few ordinary categories of human existence seem applicable to him. Suffering and injustice, it seems, can never be his lot.”(4) Said critiques scholars such as I.F. Stone, Theodore Draper, Joel Carmichael, Michael Walzer and Martin Peretz. In works like these, Said, states, “It is no accident, I think, that in America the representation of the Arab in accounts of the modern Near East relies so heavily on a simple, though to my mind seriously defective and malicious, conception of fact.”(5) Said also blames “regional studies” programs that also diminish Arabs into factual statistics, rigid categories, and psychological conditions. Said ends his essay with the following notice: “There are signs, however, that with much of the Third World, the Arab has now fully recognized this as his predicament: he is demanding of the West, and of Israel, the right to reoccupy his place in history and actuality.”(6) In his “Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition” of Orientalism , Said, speaks both of his advancing age and “diminutions in expectations,” and his faith in emancipation and enlightenment. He wrote, “My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silences and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated, so that ‘our’ East, ‘our’ Orient becomes ‘ours’ to possess and direct.”(7) This radical notion of unmaking history and rewriting it melded perfectly with what I observed in Arab American dramas that recast and restaged the Middle East from our Arab American point of view, not the point of view of those outside of our community who wished to distort and misrepresent us. Given the horrors of the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, Said’s essay was a reminder that, for as much progress as we have made in this country, we were still basically viewed the same by the hegemonic powers that governed our nation. Said also wrote, “Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.”(8) The plays and playwrights I read, studied, and witnessed, were the ones subverting stereotypes by providing the American theatre with fully dimensional Arab and Arab American characters who were not, by any means, perfect, but were just as fallible and wonderful as any humans might be. That humanism is what Said valued most in his essay when he wrote, “humanism is the only, and I would go so far as to say, the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”(9) That was what I saw in these plays—resistance against the inhumane films major filmmakers created that disfigured our Arab and Arab American histories. In my desire to piece together this lost history, I turned not to books but to essays. The first important essay I found was by Ala Fa’ik, titled “Issues of Identity: In Theater of Immigrant Community” found in Ernest N. McCarus’s book The Development of Arab American Identity (1994). Here, Fa’ik explores how Arab American theatre has shaped the identity of Arab Americans. He examines “theater of different types: plays in Arabic by and for Arab-Americans, bilingual productions for wider audiences of both Arab-Americans and non-Arab-Americans, and professional productions in English for the general U.S. public.” (10) For Fa’ik, the roots of Arab American theatre grew from Arab communities grappling with how to preserve their cultural heritage, such as the plays that were staged by the early Arab American immigrants. Although he cites the fact that there were some Arab American theatre troupes that preceded the 1970s, in this essay Fa’ik focuses upon the plays produced in the 1970s and the 1980s. He cites that Arab Americans came to the United States for many reasons: the pursuit of a better life and the flight from political persecution and war. Arab immigrants who settled in larger U.S. cities, therefore, also fulfilled the cultural needs of these communities by creating cultural and entertainment events. The amateur groups, mainly concentrated in urban centers like Detroit, Chicago, San Diego, and Los Angeles, presented plays in Arabic with various Arabic dialects, but in Fa’ik’s opinion, despite the commercial success these productions achieved, they were artistically lacking. Some of the plays which dramatized life in the United States were based on assumptions and misunderstandings which, in Fa’ik’s opinion, “perpetuates ignorance and misinformation.” (11) Fa’ik’s article introduced me to the various amateur theatre groups that had been creating theatre of all sorts: political plays, social commentary plays, social justice plays, children’s theatre, and his own playwriting. In his summary he wrote, A study of the Arab-American theatrical movement does not reveal a high literary and artistically enduring quality right now, but it mostly does reveal attitudes, values, ideals, and aspirations of immigrants developing a community. It brings to light a new dimension to understanding the growth and development of the self-identity of an immigrant community in the United States. As a theater practitioner and scholar, I find the movement of evolving cultural character material of great value to be recorded and studied further… Arab-Americans in their developing theater are bringing their past and their values to the U.S. culture of which they are now a part while at the same time they struggle to maintain their own identity and to define for themselves what that identity is. To be an Arab-American, say these plays, is to be both Arab and American and, for the time being at least, to be neither. (12) Fa’ik’s essay provided a template for me, as an Arab American scholar and practitioner myself, for how to move forward in the discussion of these disparate works of art created by this vibrant artistic community. Unlike Fa’ik, I was writing in a time when there was a larger body of works by extremely accomplished playwrights like Betty Shamieh, Yussef El Guindi, Leila Buck, and Jamil Khoury. What was most exciting for me was recording the progression of Arab American theatre from the chamber plays of Gibran, Naimy, and Rihani, to the semi-professional work of S.K. Hershewe, to the amateur productions of the playwrights Husam Zoro, Hammam Shafie, and Fareed Al-Oboudi. What was also evident was the reflection of these works on the various “waves” of Arab American immigration from the early first-generation Syrian-Lebanese playwrights, to the plays of the first-generation playwrights in the 1970s and 1980s, to the second-generation Arab American plays of the 1990s and 2000s. I saw a longer trajectory of Arab American plays that was overlooked by Fa’ik, and one I wanted to explore in greater depth with my book-length project. Another important essay that was published by Dalia Basiouny and Marvin Carlson titled “Current Trends in Arab-American Performance,” was published in the 2009 edited volume Performance, Exile and ‘America’ , edited by Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon. The essay begins with the history of Arab migration to the United States, the development of distinct immigrant communities, and the early theatre offerings they presented. The essay then turns to the post-9/11 situation and Arab American artists’ response to negative media portrayals, the wars in Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan, and the need to express hybrid identities. They note that the majority of the artists creating work during this time were women, saying: “Thus, even on this most basic level, current Arab-American theatre and performance is working to present a more accurate picture of Arab-American culture by contradicting the standard Western stereotype, according to which Arab women are widely if not universally oppressed and not allowed any voice or outlet for expression within Arabic culture.” (13) The article discusses several Arab American artists and groups including Yussef El Guindi, NIBRAS, and the Arab-American Comedy Festival, but the focus is primarily on women artists including Faiza Shereen, Etel Adnan, Heather Raffo, Betty Shamieh, Leila Buck, Elmaz Abi Nader, Soha Al Jurf, Rania Khalil, Kathryn Haddad, Lena Rizkallah, and Maysoon Zayid. “The majority of the plays and performances of these artists deal in one way or another with the negotiations of being Arab in America today,” they write. (14) The authors examine plays like Shamieh’s Roar, Khalil’s Flag Piece , Rizkallah’s Layla’s Sahra , and Haddad’s With Love from Ramallah . They also focus attention on female solo performances such as Al Jurf’s Pressing Beyond In Between , Buck’s ISite , Abi Nader’s Country of My Origin , and Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire as works of “autobiographical solo performances.” They define this genre as, “a particularly popular medium for women theatre and performance artists, particularly for the exploration of the forces that encourage or discourage the formation of identity.” (15) They conclude the article by stating that these varied performances are making a significant contribution to American theatre, utilizing theatre to explore the tensions and identity formations of the Arab American community in the United States. “Their work has a therapeutic and educative dimension for themselves and their community,” they write, “but it has even more widespread therapeutic and educative work to do in the American culture within which it is created.” (16) This final statement is one that landed most with me as I immersed myself in Arab American theatre and performance. While first-generation Arab audiences are drawn predominantly to plays and performances in Arabic that primarily feature humor and music, such as the works of Dearborn theatre makers Najee Mondalek’s AJYAL Theatrical Group , second-generation Arab Americans gravitate more toward the English-language productions of these second-and-third generation playwrights and performers of Arab descent. However, the largest audiences for Arab American plays and performers are actually non-Arabs. For them the plays are translations of the Arab experiences through the lens of Americans of Arab descent. That speaks directly to what Basiouny and Carlson refer to as the “therapeutic and educative work” in the American culture. Another important scholar, Jack G. Shaheen, provided two major resources for my understanding about Arab and Arab American representation in his books Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People and Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11. Shaheen was a vociferous advocate for Arab and Arab American representation, especially when it came to Hollywood filmmaking. In his seminal book Reel Bad Arabs , he critiques nine-hundred films by major Hollywood directors, screenwriters, and producers that malign and misrepresent Arabs and Arab Americans. The introduction to this incredible study focuses on what Shaheen called “The New Anti-Semitism.” He explains, “I call it ‘new’ not because stereotypical screen Arabs are new (they aren’t) or because anti-Semitism against Jews is dead (it isn’t). I use the word ‘new’ because many of the anti-Semitic films directed against Arabs were released in the last third of the twentieth century, at a time when Hollywood was steadily and increasingly eliminating stereotypical portraits of other groups.” (17) For Shaheen, malicious stereotypical portrayal of Arabs on screen was not just an aesthetic matter—it had real-world implications in the way Arabs were treated in society and in world affairs. What I appreciated most was that Shaheen was not calling for a blanket approach that would only praise Arabs onscreen. To the contrary. He wrote, “I am not saying an Arab should never be portrayed as the villain. What I am saying is that almost all Hollywood depictions of Arabs are bad ones. This is a grave injustice. Repetitious and negative images of the reel Arab literally sustain adverse portraits across generations. The fact is that for more than a century, producers have tarred an entire group of people with the same sinister brush.” (18) He breaks down the categories of the “reel” Hollywood Arabs into villains, sheiks, maidens, Egyptians, Palestinians, and gratuitous scenes and slurs. Like Said before him, Shaheen traces the beginnings of the pernicious stereotypes of Arabs in the media to the conflict between Israel and the Arab countries dating back to the late 1940s. The anti-Arab sentiment only grew over the successive decades and, by the time he wrote the book Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11 , Shaheen writes, “Today, the stereotype’s power to inflict damage on innocent people is much greater than before 9/11. During times of armed conflict, stereotyping meets the least resistance; its mendacity most convincingly masquerades as truth, and it is most vigorously defended and justified as truth. Arabs have been so demonized that it has become impossible for some world citizens to believe they are real people; they are perceived only as the enemy, as terrorists, as the ‘other.’” (19) In that book, he also challenges other stereotypes such as “Arab=Muslim”, Post-9/11 images, “Reel Bad Omnipresent Arabs”, and “Reel Political Implications.” He likens these films to the German propaganda of the 1930s, furthering governmental strategies to enforce stereotypes in an attempt to influence foreign policies. One of the most impactful chapters in this book is one titled “Real Solutions” whereby Shaheen calls upon us in the Arab American community to eradicate these stereotypes by breaking into the industry and becoming a key part of the production of these films, to major and excel in media studies, and to learn more about Arab American plays, to create documentaries that focus on Arab lives, and to hold an “Arab American Entertainment Summit” where creatives can gather to “recognize, contest, and correct images of the reel evil ‘others’” of Hollywood films. (20) Shaheen ends this book on a hopeful note, stating: “Change will come—one summit, one college film course, one character, one movie, one TV show, and one courageous imagemaker at a time… Keep the faith: New films will lead the way, illustrating that regardless of color, creed, or culture, we are bound together.”(21) Shaheen’s optimism inspired me, yet, after struggling as an out-of-work director in Los Angeles for years, I must say that my own experience proved otherwise. I hope this brief essay about the scholars and essays that shaped my understanding about Arab American theatre, film, and performances has been helpful. All our scholarship lies on the shoulders of those Arab Americans before us who took the time and effort to document the important and creative work artists in our community have been creating for over a century. Scholars like Edward. W. Said, Ala Fa’ik, Marvin Carlson, Dalia Basiouny, and Jack G. Shaheen are but a few of those who have guided my path as I’ve attempted to analyze, understand, and disseminate the works of these extraordinary individuals. Over time, I’ve had the opportunity to publish manuscripts, anthologies, journal articles, and play reviews as well as teach classes and direct plays to educate and enlighten others to the powerful and impactful work that is consistently produced in this country. Other incredible scholars are now adding to the understanding of Arab American theatre including Roaa Ali, Evelyn Alsultany, Dina Amin, Hala Baki, Waleed F. Mahdi, Somaya Sami Sabry, and others. Before I wrote my book, someone asked me “is there such a thing as Arab American drama?” My hope is that our collective works can prove once and for all that this question is ridiculous. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes 1. Michael W. Suleiman, The Arab-American Experience in the United States and Canada: a Classified, Annotated Bibliography (Ann Arbor, MI: Pierian Press), 488. 2. Quoted in Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: A History (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press), 175. 3.Edward W. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,” in The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of 1967: An Arab Perspective . ed. 1970. Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (Evanston: Northwestern University Press), 3. 4. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,” 4. 5. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,”, 8. 6. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,”9. 7. Edward W. Said, “Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition,” in Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), xviii. 8. Said, “Preface,” xxiv. 9. Said, “Preface,” xxix. 10. Ala Fa’ik, “Issues of Identity: In Theater of Immigrant Community” in The Development of Arab-American Identity, ed. Ernest McCarus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 107. 11. Fa’ik, “Issues of Identity,” 111. 12. Fa’ik, “Issues of Identity,” 117-118. 13. Dalia Basiouny and Marvin Carlson, “Current Trends in Arab-American Performance,” in Performance, Exile and ‘America’, ed. Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 209-210. 14. Basiouny and Carlson, “Current Trends,” 211. 15. Basiouny and Carlson, “Current Trends,”213. 16. Basiouny and Carlson, “Current Trends,” “Current Trends,”219. 17. Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (New York: Olive Branch Press), 6. 18. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs , 11. 19. Jack G. Shaheen, Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11 (Northampton: Olive Branch Press), XII. 20. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs , 77. 21. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs , 89 References About The Author(s) Malek Najjar is a Professor of Theatre Arts with the University of Oregon. He is the author of Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures and Creators and Arab American Drama, Film and Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present. He edited Heather Raffo’s Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said, The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi , and Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader . He is co-editor of Mona Mansour: The Vagrant Trilogy (with Hala Baki) and Six Plays of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (with Jamil Khoury and Corey Pond). He has directed mainstage productions with Silk Road Rising, Golden Thread Productions, and New Arab American Theatre Works. Malek is currently working with Hala Baki on the edited volume The Selected Plays of Ismail Khalidi . Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Carving a Path: Desiring-Production in Displaced Syrian Theatre Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad by Babak Rahimi Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey Five Arab American Plays Everyone Should Read MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) Previous Next Attribution:

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

By Hugo Claus, David Willinger, Luk Truyts, Luc Deneulin. | A collection of dramatic texts from the Flemish writer and playwright Hugo Claus. < 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 Works for the Theatre Hugo Claus, David Willinger, Luk Truyts, Luc Deneulin. Download PDF Edited with an introduction by David Willinger Hugo Claus is the foremost contemporary writer of Dutch language theatre, poetry and prose. Flemish by birth and upbringing, Claus is the author of some ninety plays, novels, and collections of poetry. He is renowned as an enfant terrible of the arts throughout Europe. From the time he was affiliated with the international art group, COBRA, to his liason with pornographic film star Silvia Kristel, to the celebration of his novel, The Sorrow of Belgium, Claus has careened through a career that is both scandal-ridden and formidable. Claus takes on all the taboos of his times. Translated by David Willinger, Luk Truyts and Luc Deneulin. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Rob Silverman Ascher Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Rob Silverman Ascher By Published on April 17, 2023 Download Article as PDF Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances . Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. The overlap of performance and evangelical Christianity is typically limited to analyzing preachers and passion plays. In Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances , Jill Stevenson extends the language of performance studies to immersive evangelical experiences she refers to as “End-Time Performances.” These performances, including Hell House , Judgement House , and Tribulation Trail , are semi-professional performances that explicitly preach to audiences that a sincere belief in Christ is the way to avoid the apocalypse in the End of Days. The bulk of Stevenson’s analysis, over five chapters and a coda, is built around the question of how a “dramaturgy of threat [produces] the future End of Time” through interactive performance and staging. The first chapter, “The Landscape of the End: Time, Affect, Threat, Absence” functions as both a sourcebook and a roadmap, effectively introducing the lenses through which Stevenson wants her audience to analyze the productions used as evidence. Stevenson provides a crash course of sorts on theological concepts such as pre- and post-millennial dispensationalism, performance studies concepts like affect theory, and the history of non-denominational American evangelical Christianity. This section is sufficiently informative on its own, enmeshing figures like Cyrus Scofield, author of the Scofield Reference Bible, and Jill Dolan, whose seminal writing on utopian performatives informs Stevenson’s analysis of the role of time in End-Time Performances. While Dolan’s utopian performative is a sunny and aspirational future proposed by the 1960s counterculture, Stevenson notes that the ‘utopian performative’ and evangelical Hell House alike ask their audiences to consider, in Dolan’s language, “that beyond this ‘now’ of material oppression…. Lives a future that might be different.” The biggest difference argues Stevenson that an Evangelical future must take place in the afterlife. The core of Stevenson’s book uses three different End-Time Performances and the stand-alone Ark Encounter Museum as case studies. Nearly all of these are performed on or near church property annually. Hell House is the exception, as it has been licensed by churches and theatre groups across the country, including the New York City-based Les Freres Corbusier. That company performed a “sincere staging” of Hell House , following kits published by Pastor Keenan Roberts, leader of New Destiny Christian Center in Colorado. This homegrown ethos is central to the ethnographic work that Stevenson puts at the core of Feeling the Future . Stevenson, who writes in detail about her experiences as an attendee at the End-Time Performances, takes care to note the age ranges and racial makeup of audiences at these performances. Stevenson notes that the majority of End-Time performance attendees are white and between the ages of 18 and 36, with the exception of Tribulation Trail . This piece had an age-diverse audience comprised primarily of Black and Latine attendees, which fits some creative choices. Notably, in Tribulation Trail , a Black performer portrayed Jesus in the portion depicting the slaying of Satan, aligning with the largely-Black congregational makeup at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church, the producers of Tribulation Trail . Many of the performances with predominantly white audiences take on a much more political bent. Attendees are rushed through an apocalyptic landscape besieged by a One World Government with technocratic ideals, installing the Mark of the Beast in the form of microchips. Stevenson keenly observes the political contexts through which she and her fellow audience members receive the dramaturgical information woven into these apocalyptic landscapes. After all, these End-Time Performances are proselytizing tools. Nearly all of them conclude with a moment of prayer and an invitation to their audience to accept Christ as their savior. Some of these calls to action are profoundly intimate and offer their audience members opportunities to speak with a member of the ministry, while others merely warn the audience to keep Christ in their hearts in the face of the coming Rapture. Stevenson slyly juxtaposes the political context and ticket price of a given show with how intense these proselytizing moments are, quietly casting doubt on the theological integrity of various ministries. Stevenson’s central argument on the dramaturgy of threat and futurity asks readers to hold the content of these performances alongside the emphasis on futurity inherent in evangelical Christianity. A message of Christ’s power as a savior immediately follows vivid images of lakes of fire, piles of clothes, and scenes of abortion and grotesque violence. If, she supposes, the audience is given the opportunity to accept Christ as their savior after being inundated with the End of Days and sins of man, they will take scripture less out of sincere belief and more out of panic regarding “impending futurity.” A focus on the inevitability of Christ’s return or some sort of holy deliverance has roots in medieval British theatre, to which Stevenson devotes a section of her first chapter. Statement of belief is not always sufficient, however, as several of the End-Time Performances feature purportedly Christian characters who were not raptured due to a lack of sincerity. The book concludes with a two-part Coda, written in June 2020 and January 2021, analyzing, in brief, the beginning of the COVID epidemic, the 2020 election, and the January 6th insurrection through the lenses Stevenson has set up for these contemporary End-Time Performances. Shockingly, much of the imagery baked into the apocalypse narratives she has been analyzing has since become central to life in 2021, as COVID is treated as a hoax and evangelicals proudly storm the Capitol. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances is a compelling text for casual readers, not only scholars, as Stevenson’s writing is clear, concise and vivid in description. Yet, it is also valuable as an educational text, shedding light on the dramaturgical integrity of a mode of performance ignored by the theatrical establishment. Stevenson makes a compelling case for End-Time Performance as a uniquely American form of performance, with roots in the York Mystery Plays, aesthetic references to zombie movies, and a clear sense of theological didacticism. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances applies theological and performance-theoretical frameworks to an underexplored form, leaving its audience of readers with a dense and rewarding dramaturgical text. This work is important for an array of fields, including Theater and Performance Studies, American Studies and Religious Studies. References Footnotes About The Author(s) ROB SILVERMAN ASCHER University of Iowa Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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