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

Philip Wiles Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Philip Wiles By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF APPLIED IMPROVISATION: LEADING, COLLABORATING, AND CREATING BEYOND THE THEATRE. Edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure. London: Methuen Drama, 2018; Pp. 304. More than forty years since Keith Johnstone published Impro and more than sixty years after Viola Spolin’s seminal Improvisation for the Theater , there remains a paucity of literature concerned with either “impro” or “improv.” In this context, the scholarly rigor in Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre , a collection of essays by practitioners/facilitators as edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure, is refreshing. “Applied Improvisation,” here, refers to the use of the theories, techniques, and teachings of Spolin and Johnstone (and quite a bit of Augusto Boal) as applied outside of traditional theatrical performance contexts — often with the goal of training intrapersonal skills. While it might commonly be considered a subcategory of the broader “applied theatre,” an explicitly stated goal of this collection “is to establish AI as a field of study worthy of independent investigation” (3). While the viability of “AI” as an acronym for something other than Artificial Intelligence may be questionable in a post-ChatGPT world, the book does provide a foundation for further inquiries and can serve as a resource for practitioners and educators. As in the practice of improvisation, this collection emerges from the disparate contributions of a diverse set of practitioners and scholars. The book begins with a foreword by improvisers Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson, and an introduction by editors Dudeck and McClure that gives a brief history of the theory and practice of improvisation. Dudeck returns in the concluding chapter, moderating a conversation between comedian Neil Mullarkey and creativity and learning expert Keith Sawyer. The body of the book consists of autoethnographic essays; each chapter functions essentially as a postmortem of an applied improvisation project reflecting on successes, limitations and discoveries. Except for the introduction and conclusion, every chapter ends with a “workbook” detailing instructions for between one to three of the exercises referenced in that chapter. Application remains the editors’ central concern, and thus the book is tailored for practice in the field. The collection is divided into four parts that highlight the diversity of this field. The first, “Bringing Brands Back to Life,” consists of two essays describing how improvisation techniques were used to develop intrapersonal skills amongst service workers at a Pacific Northwest fast food chain, and to enliven market research in Karachi, Pakistan. Part 2, “Resilience and Connections,” looks at applications of improvisation in more humanitarian contexts: training resilience amongst Baltimorean oncology nurses, juvenile refugees in San Antonio, and in the wake of a typhoon in the Philippines. Part 3, “Leadership Development,” returns to a corporate environment with contributions describing how improvisation was used to modify the management culture at Tiffany & Co., coach executives in leadership skills in Hong Kong, and shake-up the organization of a real estate agency in Portland, OR. Part 4 “Higher Education,” includes chapters detailing the use of applied improvisation within the academy, including to facilitate conflict resolution at Portland State University, social justice initiatives at the Catholic University of America and communication with non-academics at Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis and the Indiana University School of Medicine. The contributors to the collection are all knowledgeable about and committed to the theory and practice of applied improvisation. However, readers should be forewarned that many of the authors have continuing relationships with their corporate clients and sometime their prose can slip into what is essentially ad-copy. “Charles Lewis Tiffany would have been amazed that 174 years after founding his stationery and small goods store in New York City, the name Tiffany & Co. would still be synonymous with quality, craftsmanship, and extravagance…” (141). That passage from Caitlin McClure’s “Tiffany & Co. Says Yes, And,” comes from one of the stronger contributions to the collection, despite a handful of sentences that read like advertisements. In her case study, McClure details how she used techniques and exercises developed by Johnstone as part of a broader effort to shift Tiffany’s management team from a theory of an “organizational culture” to an “organizational climate .” While such a distinction might appear inane, McClure ably identifies how this shift in management theory mirrors the practice of improvisation and illustrates how her workshops helped to facilitate a meaningful shift in behavior at the company. It is a highlight of the collection. Both McClure and Dudeck are heavily influenced by Johnstone—Dudeck has written a biography of Johnstone and is his literary executor—but other contributors draw on the work of Spolin, Boal and other improvisation theorists, often mixing and matching across these different and distinct traditions of improvisation. As scholarship, the book misses an opportunity to flesh out these separate genealogies and explicate how discrete strains of improvisation practice circulate and intertwine in contemporary workshops. Instead Dudeck and McClure flatten history and blur the distinctions between Spolin, Johnstone and Boal. They argue that the terms “impro” (the title of Johnstone’s book) and “improv” (closely associated with Chicago theatres like The Second City) are interchangeable (10). Neither their reasoning, nor the Facebook survey they marshal to support their claim is convincing. It is disappointing that a collection that aims to establish a new field of study would inadvertently erase complexity from that same field. Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre will interest practitioners of applied improvisation who are looking to see the cultural, practical and global range of the field as well as educators who want to demonstrate the uses of improvisation beyond theatre. The contributing essays are all written in a readable style and function as essays independent of the collection; this makes the volume easily digestible by undergraduate students. The exercises at the end of every chapter are thoroughly explained and should be easy to reproduce in studio classrooms. For these reasons and more, this volume very well may establish itself as a mainstay on the shelves of improvisation instructors. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre. Edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure. London: Methuen Drama, 2018. Footnotes About The Author(s) Philip Wiles is a scholar/actor/improviser from Houston, Texas who comes to the CUNY Graduate Center by way of Oklahoma and Los Angeles. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, he maintains his improv practice in the various improv comedy theatres sprinkled through the city. He holds a BFA in Drama from the University of Oklahoma, and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! 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Watch The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be by Andrea Kleine at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. In December 2020, Andrea Kleine and Bobby Previte moved into The Chocolate Factory Theater and lived alone in the pandemic-shuttered New York City venue for two weeks. They arrived with an air mattress, a toaster oven, a cooler of frozen Trader Joe’s meals, and an inflatable kiddie pool to bathe in. Every night they performed on stage for no one. Completely unscripted, the result is a hilarious and heart-breaking film about what it means to be a performer without an audience. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Andrea Kleine Theater, Documentary, Film, Performance Art This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country United States Language English Running Time 82 minutes Year of Release 2022 In December 2020, Andrea Kleine and Bobby Previte moved into The Chocolate Factory Theater and lived alone in the pandemic-shuttered New York City venue for two weeks. They arrived with an air mattress, a toaster oven, a cooler of frozen Trader Joe’s meals, and an inflatable kiddie pool to bathe in. Every night they performed on stage for no one. Completely unscripted, the result is a hilarious and heart-breaking film about what it means to be a performer without an audience. A film by Andrea Kleine. Featuring Andrea Kleine and Bobby Previte as “themselves.” Music by Bobby Previte. Lighting Design by Madeline Best. Commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional funds provided by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant Program. An official selection of the 2022 Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. About The Artist(s) Andrea Kleine is a performance artist and the author of the novels, CALF, a Publishers' Weekly Best Fiction Book of 2015; and EDEN, named one of "Summer's Smartest and Most Innovative Thrillers" by Vanity Fair and a finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award in LGBTQ fiction. Her work includes fiction, essays, performances, and, most recently, films. She is a five-time MacDowell fellow, a Ucross fellow, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. Her critically acclaimed performance works have been presented extensively since the 1990s, and for which she has received numerous commissions, grants, and awards. She has been described as an "enigmatic and eccentric" (The New York Times), "brainy, allusive Downtown artist" (The Village Voice), whose work is "wry, poignant" (The New York Times), "something like genius" (ArtVoice), and “fiercely engages with the complexities of the cruelty we impose on each other as individuals and as a society” (Bomb). Get in touch with the artist(s) andrea@andreakleine.com and follow them on social media https://www.andreakleine.com , https://www.instagram.com/andreaandreakleine Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

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Shelby Brewster Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 29 2 Visit Journal Homepage Food Futures: Speculative Performance in the Anthropocene Shelby Brewster By Published on May 14, 2017 Download Article as PDF A new food cart appeared on Rivington Street in Manhattan in May 2015, serving up a brand-new confection. Living up to their reputation for pursuing the latest food trends with unbridled passion, here New York City residents encountered a new culinary delicacy: smog meringues. Using a combination of scientific techniques and culinary processes, chefs whipped up a number of egg meringues infused with sulfur, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and hydrocarbons, all air pollutants. Visitors could choose from three smog varieties; different combinations of chemicals replicating the air quality of several global cities, each meringue infused with the taste of Mexico City, Los Angeles, or Beijing. An installment of the ongoing performance piece Smog Tasting , this food cart is the invention of the artist think tank Center for Genomic Gastronomy. Since its founding in 2010 by artists Zach Denfeld and Catherine Kramer, the Center has worked internationally, creating lectures, performances, exhibitions, and publications. Each of their pieces is designed “to map food controversies, to prototype alternative culinary futures, to imagine a more just, biodiverse and beautiful food system.” [1] Casting themselves as “food phreakers,” Center artists are committed to open access, operating under the principle that food technology and culture should be open and available to all, not kept secret within scientific laboratories or corporate offices. I turn to the work of The Center for Genomic Gastronomy in order to examine how a politics for the Anthropocene, a practice of ecological thought and radical coexistence, might be approached through performance. Geologist Paul Crutzen suggested in 2000 that the weight of human action on Earth has been so massive that it has altered the geological record, necessitating the delineation of a new geological era. The essential definition of the Anthropocene, as indicated by its etymology, is the age of the human. However, as Jedediah Purdy rightly claims, “to define the Anthropocene is to emphasize what we think is most important” in the relationship between humans and nature. [2] Some have pushed back against a perceived universalization of the human within scientific discourses of the Anthropocene. For example, Christophe Bounneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argue that depicting the Anthropocene as “the new epoch of humans, the age of man,” simplifies the diversity of humanity and glosses over the complex historical, social, and economic processes that compose and create ecological change. [3] In particular, Bounneuil and Fressoz point to the sharp increase in income inequality and take so-called anthropocenologists to task for not adequately including discussions of wealth disparity in their analyses. [4] Others, such as Donna Haraway and Jason W. Moore, have favored the term “Capitalocene” over Anthropocene as a mechanism to foreground the contributions of capitalism to environmental change. [5] Although capitalism is inextricably bound up in the Anthropocene, Haraway and Moore’s formulation of the Capitalocene is not sufficient to address its effects. As Dipesh Chakrabarty eloquently demonstrates, any critique of the Anthropocene that solely addresses global capitalism remains lacking: “these critiques do not give us an adequate hold on human history once we accept that the crisis of climate change is here with us and may exist as part of this planet for much longer than capitalism or long after capitalism has undergone many more historic mutations.” [6] A history of the Anthropocene must also take the long view of deep history and consider humans as a species. The challenge of such a history, as Chakrabarty explains, entails holding together “intellectual formations that are somewhat in tension with each other: the planetary and the global; deep and recorded histories; species thinking and critiques of capital.” [7] A politics for the Anthropocene, then, necessitates both a practice of critiquing capital while also pursuing species thinking. Recognizing the impact of manmade economic systems on the infinitely interconnected global ecological system, paired with an epistemological shift that reconceives humans as species, might begin to address the urgencies of the current ecological and historical moment. The exigencies of the Anthropocene demand not just a new political party plank or proposal. What we need, as Bruno Latour writes, is “the total transformation of what it means to do politics (so as to include nonhumans) and what it means to do science.” [8] But how might such a transformation be accomplished? What does this politics look like? Latour’s particular instantiation of politics involves taking the agency of nonhuman agents seriously, and allowing for their participation in the political process. Unsurprisingly, this is a difficult concept to imagine: how can entities as dissimilar (and nonhuman) as Artic foxes, the Pacific Ocean, and electrical grids equally participate in a political process? While I do not profess to have an answer to this dilemma, Latour’s focus on composition can also provide a useful beginning place for imagining a new politics for the Anthropocene. In Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy , Latour defines politics as “the entire set of tasks that allow the progressive composition of a common world.” [9] Under the threat of global warming, shrinking polar ice caps, and food and water scarcity, the common world, that shared by humans and nonhumans alike, must be collectively composed anew to ensure the continuation of life on the planet. This common world should take seriously the agency of nonhuman entities, not merely for their use value for human progress, but as deserving of surviving and thriving. In tandem with the recognition of the value of the nonhuman should be a reconceptualization of the position of humans within the global ecological system and the scale of deep history. This is what Chakrabarty calls species thinking. Thinking humanity as a species helps destabilize the long-held nature-culture divide. Casting Nature as pristine, green, and largely undisturbed by human intervention prior to the Industrial Revolution is neither productive nor accurate. As Purdy explains, “Because we shape everything, from the upper atmosphere to the deep seas, there is no more nature that stands apart from human beings. There is no place or living thing that we haven’t changed.” [10] Any politics for this new geological epoch will necessarily involve rethinking the place of humans within the global ecological system and the very meaning of nature. Throughout his work, Timothy Morton has argued for replacing nature with ecology, particularly because the idea of Nature as “a holistic, healthy, real thing” actually prevents environmental justice. He advocates for replacing Nature with ecology, with “radical coexistence.” [11] Ecological thought, then, means thinking through the sheer interconnectedness of the global ecological system—Morton refers to this as “the mesh.” [12] A practical politics for the Anthropocene must begin with the realization that humanity does not stand outside of the environment, but rather is a species woven into this mesh. As “a practice and a process of becoming fully aware of how human beings are connected with other beings—animal, vegetable, or mineral,” thinking ecologically can begin the political project of balancing human flourishing with that of the planet as a whole. [13] The question of what non-anthropocentric environmental justice will look like in practice, and on the global scale which the crises of the Anthropocene necessitate, is only beginning to be explored. These Anthropocenic crises can be difficult to apprehend because of the scales of deep history and global ecology. For example, Morton calls global warming a “hyperobject,” something withdrawn from humans because of its massive space and time scales. Therefore, hyperobjects “exhibit their effects interobjectively ; that is, they can be detected in a space that consists of interrelationships between aesthetic properties of objects.” [14] For example, I cannot feel global warming directly . I cannot touch it or taste it. But I can feel the unseasonably warm February temperatures recently recorded in Pennsylvania. Both thinking ecologically, a recognition of the interconnectedness of humans as a species within the global ecological mesh, and apprehending hyperobjects, entities with spacetime scales so massive that they cannot be directly encountered, can be achieved through art. Through their particular aesthetic characteristics, the performances created by the Center for Genomic Gastronomy enact ecological thought and reveal the hyperobject of climate change. By questioning contemporary capitalist consumption and gesturing toward radical coexistence, the performances I consider here point to a future in which humans, as individuals and as species, might inhabit the world differently in the Anthropocene. Specifically, the Center addresses the challenge of a politics for the Anthropocene through food. Simultaneously an individual and social practice, eating is one of the most evident ways in which human activity is wrapped up in global ecologies. We all have to eat. More than simply the relationship between food producers and consumers, as researchers Lisa Chase and Vern Grubinger have argued, global food systems involve a “much more complex and broad-reaching set of interactions that go far beyond the production, processing, and distribution of food to include the connection of food to the health of people and the environment.” [15] Particularly in the last 150 years, food systems have become increasingly industrialized. Food has become a commodity produced and controlled by a small number of corporate entities with a vested economic interest in marketing particular (often processed) foodstuffs to global markets. [16] The industrialization of food systems, coupled with the exponential growth of the human population, is a major cause of climate change. G. BeVier of the Gates Foundation reported in 2012 that global agriculture, including both crops and livestock, use approximately seventy percent of fresh water resources. [17] Livestock agriculture constitutes the single largest use of land on Earth, occupying “30% of the world’s ice-free surface, contributes 40% of global agricultural gross domestic product…all while using vast areas of rangelands, one-third of the freshwater, and one-third of global cropland as feed.” [18] At the same time, ecological change has contributed to food insecurity for some populations, particularly in the global south, as the effects of climate change result in the reduction of certain crops like wheat. [19] In spite of the very real agricultural impacts of climate change, environmentalist movements advocating for sustainability have proven unable to provoke large-scale political action. For Eduardo Mendieta, politics describes, “that which has to do with the creation of collective possibilities through deliberation, in which a collectivity addresses itself both as subject and object of its deliberations.” [20] The political is “about projecting and making possible collective or communal futures. The future is always the product of politics. But there is no future that is not projected from some actuality, some present.” [21] A politics for the Anthropocene, then, must apprehend the present to project a possible collectively composed future. Crucial first steps to this political project include recognition of the urgencies of global ecological change (global warming is real), consideration of nonhuman entities beyond their usefulness as resources for human activity, thinking ecologically, and taking the long view of deep history through species thinking. While they do not advocate a complete overhaul of current politics, the Center’s performances enact these first steps, showing us a glimpse of a politics for the Anthropocene through performance, a glimpse through a projection of the future from the present. Following Mendieta’s provocation, I will explore three of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy’s performances: De-extinction Deli (2013), Planetary Sculpture Supper Club (2011-3) , and Smog Tasting (2015) . These pieces both reveal the operations of current global food systems and imagine what future ones might look like. As what I term speculative performances, they call forth and embody possible ecological futures and alternative culinary presents. I take inspiration for this term from the genre of speculative fiction, most often popularized as science fiction or sf. As science fiction scholars have demonstrated, the critical capacity of speculative fiction lies in its ability to juxtapose the familiar and the strange. Darko Suvin, following Brecht, called this cognitive estrangement in his seminal 1979 work Metamorphoses of Science Fiction . Works of speculative fiction are “always already critical theory,” encapsulating both the realistic, or cognitive, and the marvelous, or estranging. [22] Gerald Alva Miller has argued that via cognitive estrangement, science fiction narratives create virtual spaces in which critical discourses are not only illuminated or explicated, but enacted and performed. [23] Science fiction critic L. Timmel Duchamp postulates that the significant distinction between works of narrative science fiction and philosophy is the process of “fleshing out the experiment,” making social, political, and scientific changes “personal, intimate, and emotionally authentic.” [24] If, as Duchamp argues, speculative narratives can flesh out critical discourse for readers, speculative performances, like those created by the Center, quite literally give critical discourse flesh. Through performance, the interactions and encounters of bodies in action, the Center gestures toward the critical futures of the Anthropocene, enacting a practice of species thinking and capitalist critique. By navigating the complexities of current food systems through performance, the Center for Genomic Gastronomy projects multiple possible futures through gastronomic interventions, asking participants what their place within those futures might be. Ultimately, through these performative imaginings, the beginnings of a more connected, more just, more thoughtful politics for the Anthropocene might emerge. “Yesterday’s Meat Tomorrow:” The De-extinction Deli A neat wooden market stand sporting a black and white striped bunting is the centerpiece of the Center’s performance De-extinction Deli (2013) and its second incarnation De-extinction Deli (To-Go) (2016). Reminiscent of a butcher’s counter or a food cart, the De-extinction Deli is “a fantastical market stand designed to highlight the emerging technologies, risks, and outcomes of the growing movement to revive, rear, and possibly eat, extinct species.” [25] Visitors to the stand have the opportunity to learn about and engage with the discourse of de-extinction in a number of ways. Center artists, co-founder Zack Denfeld clad in a butcher’s apron in particular, attend to the market stand and answer questions about this newly emerging scientific endeavor. Butcher paper take-aways featuring infographics and artistic renderings of extinct species also serve to inform visitors of various ongoing de-extinction efforts. The Deli also displays several glass vials of “Certified De-Extinct Habitat,” samples of the foodstuffs and botanical species necessary for several extinct species to survive. Visitors can cast their votes in a public poll consisting of three questions: Should humans revive extinct organisms? Would you eat a de-extinct organism? If so, which of tomorrow’s specials would you choose: Passenger Pigeon, Aurochs, or Pyrenean Ibex? The votes are publicly tallied on a chalkboard, and visitors receive a small button bearing the image of their preferred de-extinct culinary special to display on their lapels. The De-extinction Deli features a number of paper placemats explaining the various methods of de-extinction currently employed by scientists and the various species that they target in their efforts. These methods include the modification of existing species with genetic material from extinct species and the use of genetic material to breed clones of species that have more recently disappeared. The most popular de-extinction endeavor, spearheaded by Dr. George Church and the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team, seeks to introduce particular genetic traits to Asian elephants to “revive” the extinct Woolly Mammoth and repopulate the Siberian tundra. In 2014, the team successfully spliced mammoth DNA into the genome of an Asian elephant, a significant step toward creating a mammoth embryo. Other de-extinction groups are working on so-called Revive and Restore projects under the auspices of The Long Now Foundation. Specific projects include The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback, ongoing since 2012, and the Heath Hen Project, in progress since 2014. [26] Efforts such as these tout potential benefits for biodiversity and conservation by casting these particular animals as keystone species essential for the survival and/or restoration of their ecosystems. Praised as a particularly fashionable conservation effort, with its science fiction resonances, de-extinction is attractive. As ecologist Josh Donlan explains, de-extinction may be successful precisely because it has the support of “average citizens.” As many as fifty percent of Americans believe that scientists will bring back an extinct animal via cloning by 2050. [27] By focusing on “charismatic” species like the Woolly Mammoth or Passenger Pigeon, however, the de-extinction discipline seems to ignore the long history of extinction and the human actions that contributed to it in the first place. The growth of the human species at the beginning of the Holocene, about 12,000 years ago, coincided with the mass extinction of megafauna, including the Woolly Mammoth. While scientists remain divided on the exact role of human hunting practices in this extinction, some scholars have cited these events as the beginning of the Anthropocene itself. For example, in Extinction: A Radical History , Ashley Dawson argues that the extinction of megafauna marks the beginning of humanity’s significant alteration of the planet. Approximately 60,000 years ago, as the rapidly increasing human population spread across the globe’s landmass, facilitated by the invention of language, they hunted megafauna into extinction. [28] Of course, the Woolly Mammoth extinction predates the institution of global capitalism. However, rapid population and industrial growth has resulted in an increase in species extinctions. In 2014 the World Wildlife Fund announced that half of the planet’s animals had disappeared in the previous forty years. The same report found that to sustain the current rate of global consumption, one and a half Earths would be needed. Four planets are needed to match the U.S. rate of consumption. [29] De-extinction Deli, by advertising mammoth meat for future consumption, forces participants to consider the purpose of reviving extinct species or reinvigorating disappearing populations. I do not mean to suggest that Dr. Church intends his resurrected Woolly Mammoths to become the latest culinary trend. But by casting them as such, the Center prompts the question: if the social, cultural, and economic practices that lead to extinction persist, why revive and restore extinct species at all? Through speculative performance, the Center exposes these practices and opens up the rhetoric of de-extinction to critical interrogation by “average citizens” who are not necessarily part of the de-extinction discipline, but who are part of the global food system. The past, present, and future of human food systems collapse within this small market stand, as De-extinction Deli draws from the evolutionary past to envision a culinary future through contemporary practices of consumption. As yesterday’s meat, each of the species on offer once served as a food source, not just for humans but for other species. By advertising them as soon-to-be available for human consumption, this performance strikes at critiques of capitalism that de-extinction rhetoric ignores. Practices of consumption are intricately entwined with extinctions, one of the most visible consequences of massive ecological change. Precisely because they were yesterday’s meats, targeted for consumption by the human population, several of the species showcased at the De-extinction Deli were destroyed. Scientists behind the de-extinction movement, like Dr. George Church, while rightly advocating for the ecological importance of said species, do not address the potential impact of contemporary consumptive practices on any de-extinct species. By asking participants not only whether species should be de-extincted, but also if they would consume such an animal, the Center brings human culinary practices into the debate. One of the takeaways the Deli provides visitors is a butcher paper infographic depicting a Woolly Mammoth as a butcher’s chart, delineating the twenty-two different cuts of meat that could be taken from a single animal. Casting the present practice of butchering cattle onto the past species of the Woolly Mammoth, the Deli performs a possible culinary future in which once-extinct animals not only re-inhabit the Earth but also embody a new gustatory possibility. As “tomorrow’s special,” de-extinct species become analogous to products like Kobe beef: relatively rare, prohibitively expensive, and only available to those with the resources to pay for them. By asking participants to place an order one for the species and publicly display that order with a badge, the Center opens up space for critical examination of de-extinction rhetoric in light of human consumption. Moving the de-extinction discourse out of the realms of scientific possibility and conservation into niche gastronomic production foregrounds the contemporary consumptive capitalist impulse that continues to contribute to species extinction. Moreover, by professing their desire to consume a future de-extinct species, participants become implicated in the flow of capital intertwined with the Anthropocene. If scientists are successful in their efforts to undo thousands of years of human action that contributed to extinction, and the Woolly Mammoth, Aurochs, and Pyrenean Ibex reappear, “will they have a place on deli shelves?” [30] With the inclusion of samples of “Certified De-Extinct Habitat,” De-extinction Deli also prompts questions of the resources necessary to maintain possible populations of Mammoths and Aurochs. Will the future ecological system be able to support any de-extinct species, particularly in light of currently disappearing habitats that are a major cause of the current uptick in loss of animal species? Might market demand for these new culinary delicacies result in destruction of other species’ habitat, reminiscent of the domination of cattle production within the United States, a major contributor to a number of ecological challenges, including water scarcity and air pollution? In its future-oriented speculative form, the De-extinction Deli both educates participants and complicates the discourse of de-extinction by bringing in questions of capital, consumption, and consumers. The Deli made another appearance several years after its debut as De-extinction Deli (To Go) inside London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. All of the components of the original market stand remained, with the addition of another interactive piece. Visitors could choose to write and mail a postcard to researchers within the de-extinction field. The postcards featured images from the Deli’s butcher paper infographics and photographs of hypothetical dishes made with de-extinct species: the Passenger Pigeon accompanied by a banner reading “See why they went so fast the first time,” the Pyrean Ibex by “(B)Raising the Dead,” and the Heath Hen by “Revive and Reheat.” [31] Visitors checked a box indicating whether they believed we should not de-extinct these species, de-extinct, or de-extinct and eat them. Additional space was provided for visitors to explain their choice. Postcards were addressed to The Long Now Foundation, Revive and Restore, the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team, San Diego Frozen Zoo, and the North East Science Station. [32] The Center borrows this tactic from Stewart Brand. In 1966 Brand led a postcard campaign that targeted NASA and demanded they release satellite images recently taken of the whole Earth. Brand is now President of the Board of Directors of The Long Now Foundation, one of the organizations leading de-extinction efforts. The Center claims to parallel Brand’s “hopeful/paranoid” question by asking exactly who de-extinct species are for and why they are being revived. [33] By sending these postcards, the Center provokes both critical thinking about human consumption and direct political intervention into de-extinction discourse, facilitating an interaction between scientists and citizens, a divide that has proven difficult to bridge. The De-extinction Deli uses present culinary practices to interrogate the possibilities for de-extinct species in global food systems. As a speculative performance, the Deli entails hypothetical rather than actual consumption, projecting a gustatory future from the actualities of the present. Although each of the future specialties at the De-extinction Deli is hypothetical, the performance interrogates the possible act of consuming them: the ethical, social, scientific, and political ramifications at the intersection of de-extinction and consumption. Through De-extinction Deli , in the absence of actual eating of food, Center artists and Deli visitors enact critical thought on the practice and meaning of human food systems. In light of the ecological changes we are currently witnessing, what will sitting down to dinner in the Anthropocene look like? Coming to the Table: The Planetary Sculpture Supper Club The Center’s recurring performance installation The Planetary Sculpture Supper Club first convened in July 2011, in Portland, Oregon. Center artists collaborated with Special Snowflake Supper Club and Gorilla Meats Co. to create an eight-course meal designed to point toward the numerous ways that humans sculpt the planet and the biosphere. Since its debut, the Supper Club has been convened in Bangalore, India (2011); Leiden, Netherlands (2012); Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2013); Portland, Oregon (2013); Lisbon, Portugal (2013). Although the menus featured at each performance vary, the questions the Center claims guide their design inspire all the meetings of the Supper Club : “What preferences, constraints, biases or assumptions determine the genomes that comprise our food system? Which food system? How big is it? What role should individuals, communities, governments, or businesses have in determining the genomes that make up our food systems and ecological-systems?” [34] Reminiscent of De-extinction Deli’s butcher paper infographics, the menus and placemats given to participants of the Supper Clubs explain the ingredients of each dish and, perhaps more importantly, the culinary and scientific discourses they are imbricated in. At some meetings of the Supper Club Center artists (including Zach Denfeld in his ubiquitous apron) guide diners through their experience of the meal as a supplement to the detailed menus also provided. As explained on the Planetary Sculpture Supper Club placemat, these dinners are “an opportunity to explore the co-evolution of gastronomy and larger ecological, technological and political systems.” [35] Venues for the Supper Club have included museum spaces, festivals, dining halls, and pop up restaurants. No matter the venue, each convening of the Supper Club has a similar dramaturgy: participants sharing a meal around one or several large tables in a communal experience. I will focus on the 2013 performance at Pittsburgh’s Center for PostNatural History. The supper was held within the Exhibit Hall at a large table placed amidst the Center for PostNatural History’s collection of photographs, taxidermic animals, and other ephemera cataloguing humanity’s various interventions into the natural world. [36] Like each Planetary Sculpture Supper Club menu, the Pittsburgh menu was designed to reveal attitudes toward food and to lay bare the often invisible ways that scientists, farmers, and consumers have altered the genomes of our food. Center artists worked with students from Richard Pell’s PostNatural Art Studio at Carnegie Mellon University to design the following menu: Apéritif: Three Milks: Alive, Dead & Resurrected Tasting Flight : A Selection of Five Sugars Amuse bouche: Invisible: Root Vegetable Stew with Waxworm Roux, Imposter: Lumpia ‘Wax Moth’ atop a Honey-Chile Sauce, Immaculate: Waxworm Soft Shell Taco with Chile Marrón Main: Producer: Seaweed Salad, Primary Consumer: Boiled Shrimp Tossed in an Old Bay Blend, Secondary Consumer: Pan-Fried Catfish, Secondary Consumer: Seared Lemon-Pepper Pike, Tertiary Consumer: Blackened Alligator in a Citrus Honey Sauce Digestif: Frackfluid and Baileys Dessert : Lemon Curd, Avocado & Sour Cream Tartlet served with a Miracle Berry. [37] Through the act of consuming these dishes, coupled with the pedagogical tool of the menus, the Center strives to recast humans as “agents of selection,” revealing the ways in which food choices, even on an individual level, can impact global ecology. Whereas the De-extinction Deli performed the possibility of the new culinary specialty of de-extinct species in the absence of any actual consumption of food, the Supper Club performs a speculative gastronomy by reassembling actual ingredients in new combinations. None of the ingredients here are hypothetical. Instead, via techniques of cognitive estrangement in which familiar foodstuffs are reshaped via strange, unusual culinary techniques, the Center aims to provoke diners to see themselves as a part of a global ecological system, rather than outside or superior to it. The Center takes advantage of a recent trend in high-end dining, an intense focus on the scenography and dramaturgy of the dining experience. As Joshua Abrams explains, “few encounters are simultaneously as intimate and as social as eating.” Because they “[draw] focus to taste through a Brechtian process of making-strange alongside a conscious engagement with the visual arts of design,” chefs challenge diners to actively engage with their experience of eating and reconsider what it really means to fulfill a biological need as basic as eating in the Anthropocene. [38] The scenography of the Pittsburgh Supper Club in particular contributes to the kind of estranging effect that Abrams identifies. It is precisely this estrangement that the Center deploys to provoke questions about humanity’s role in the global food system through this performance. The meal takes place among a plethora of ephemera that represent how humanity has changed the natural world. One of the Center for PostNatural History’s primary specimens, for example, is the taxidermic body of a BioSteel goat genetically modified to produce spider silk in its milk for the purpose of manufacturing pharmaceuticals. This mise-en-scène, by foregrounding the degree of human action in the biosphere, will hopefully spark a similar interrogation of the courses being served. The meal’s second course particularly reflects the Center’s focus on food changes on a molecular scale. A tasting flight of five sugars, this course pairs the natural sweetener sucrose, derived from plants like sugar cane, with the artificially created aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin. Each of these substances is created by molecular manipulation within scientific laboratories. Tasting them alongside naturally derived sucrose ideally forces consideration of how scientific technology is changing our food, not only on the visible scale of which varieties of vegetable are available year-round, but also on the invisible, molecular level. The tasting presentation includes the brand names under which these substances can be found in grocery stores (Sweet’N Low, Equal, Splenda, Truvia), recognizing the role that capitalist free markets play in this food system. As the Pittsburgh Supper Club ’s scenography highlights humans’ interventions in the food system on a molecular scale, some of the dishes themselves prompt diners to recognize how they are interwoven into the macrocosm of the planetary ecological system. By creating the food chain, the Pittsburgh meal’s main course facilitates the self-recognition the Center calls for, accepting the impact of our food choices on the global ecosystem: “ Producer : Seaweed Salad, Primary Consumer : Boiled Shrimp Tossed in an Old Bay Blend, Secondary Consumer : Pan-Fried Catfish, Secondary Consumer : Seared Lemon-Pepper Pike, Tertiary Consumer : Blackened Alligator in a Citrus Honey Sauce.” [39] This course itself encapsulates the structure of the food chain into a single plate, reinforced by its description on the menu. Beginning with the producer species, in this case seaweed, the course follows the chain of links between producer and consumer species. A culinary microcosm of the food web, the synthesis of seaweed, shrimp, catfish, pike, and alligator within a single course is a gastronomic manifestation of the macrocosmic ecological system. The links of the food chain are revealed through the practice of cooking and underlined by the explanation of the course on the menu. In the act of consuming this course, producer and consumer species alike, the human participant becomes the quaternary consumer, the apex predator. I argue that participants’ consumption of this course, accompanied by the menu description that underscores the ecological connections between these particular species as part of the food web, is an exercise in “species thinking.” Dipesh Chakrabarty aligns species thinking with deep history, recognizing that as a particular kind of species, humans, “in the process of dominating other species, acquire the status of a geologic force.” [40] By positioning humans as species in relation to others, the Pittsburgh Supper Club, and the main course in particular, facilitates species thinking. Through the consumption of all of the links in this particular food chain the diner’s place in it becomes clear: seaweed->shrimp->catfish->pike->alligator->human. At the same time, other courses in the Supper Club highlight the disproportionate impact humans as a species have on the biosphere. Humans are both like other species (they are part of the food chain) and not like other species (they exercise massive influence at all levels of the biosphere). Bruno Latour describes this particular condition of the Anthropocene: “micro- and macrocosm are now literally and not simply symbolically connected.” [41] The ecosystem of the seaweed plant which composes the Supper Club’s Seaweed Salad no longer simply contains its habitat and consumers—shrimp, catfish, pike, alligator. Now the economic pressures of the global seafood industry, market demand, environmental activists, and governmental regulatory policies are part of that ecosystem. In this particular dish, capitalism shows itself in the trademarked Old Bay Seasoning, a blend of seafood seasoning manufactured by Fortune 1000 company McCormick & Company. As captured by this particular dish, the realm of human action does not sit above or outside of ecological systems. Instead, human tastes and choices, both on the individual and corporate scale, are entangled within the ecological structures of the food chain. The Center underscores these connections through the dinner’s menus and placemats, and the artists’ presence at the event. By recasting meals in this way, the Center prompts questions central to ecological change: how do humans, as individuals and species, influence the genomes of the global food system? Once this question is considered, diners can then begin to determine whether their roles are effective for the continued survival of the global ecosystem, or not. Through the microcosm of the dinner table, Planetary Sculpture Supper Club interrogates food systems on both the micro and the macro scale, from the minutiae of sugar molecules to the intricacies of the food chain. As an exercise in species thinking, participants in the Planetary Sculpture Supper Club might reconceptualize themselves as agents of selection that are part of the food chain, not outside of it. Both De-extinction Deli and The Planetary Sculpture Supper Club take on the politics of human food systems through speculative performances, as practices of consumption and culinary choice have played a central role in the ecological change that marks the Anthropocene. In the Center’s particular speculative style, food can also become a tactic to intervene in the discourse of climate change. Tasting Smog In their 2011 Smog Tasting project, Center artists took culinary techniques out of the kitchen, making egg meringues in areas with high air pollution. Center artists Zack Denfeld and Catherine Kramer were on location in Bangalore, India, when they were inspired by Harold McGee’s seminal culinary book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. McGee describes meringues, a light dessert made from beaten egg whites and sugar, as up to ninety percent air. Any particulate matter hovering in the air becomes trapped inside the meringue. Armed with egg whites and whisks, Center artists went out into the streets of Bangalore and whipped up meringues flavored with the air pollution from several locations around the city. In 2015, the Center built a Smog Synthesizer, an “experimental food cart” that used scientific techniques to recreate the air pollution from a number of cities and times to infuse them into meringues. Scientists often replicate the atmospheres of different locations within the lab for research purposes. This process is achieved by injecting precursor chemicals into a chamber and exposing them to UV light. The Smog Synthesizer food cart features several such chambers. By whipping the egg whites into a meringue within them, the manufactured air becomes infused into the dessert. With support from the Finnish Cultural Institute and the New Museum’s IDEA CITY festival, this cart debuted at the 2015 meeting of the World Health Organization in Geneva, followed by an appearance on New York City streets for the Ideas City Festival. Center artists, with collaborator Nicole Twilley of Edible Geography, recreated a London peasouper, a 1950s Los Angeles photochemical smog, and present-day Atlanta under an air quality warning. Each of these smogs has a particular chemical makeup as well as contemporary resonances as they have come to represent particular types or genres of pollution that scientists use to categorize air quality. The London fog, with a high sulfur content, is quite common in present day Beijing, and the Los Angeles smog resembles the air quality of contemporary Mexico City. [42] Center artists took the Smog Synthesizer cart out onto New York City streets and served up these three unique meringues to festival-goers and passersby. Here, rather than performing a speculative future of food, the Center deploys a gastronomic device, the egg meringue, as a tactic in an act of speculation. What if we ate air pollutants instead of breathing them? Would there be further action to ameliorate the effects of air pollution? Via the culinary vehicle of eggs, air, and sugar, in Smog Tasting the Center makes visible the complex and often invisible consequence of major global industry. Through the whipped eggs and sugar, the hyperobject of air pollution is captured and tasted. Smog Tasting opens up the space in which the hyperobject can be seen, thought, experienced, and tasted. The relationship between the “aesthetic properties” of the meringues and the air, to use Morton’s term, captures the hyperobject, making it intelligible to human participants. The most common reaction that people participating in the smog tasting cart performance have had, according to Center co-founder Zack Denfeld, has been a questioning one: are the meringues safe to eat? He responds by asking whether it is safe to breathe. [43] Because the medium of air is largely invisible, and the hyperobject of climate change difficult to grasp, the question of whether the air is safe becomes obscured in daily life. The properties of the meringue, its composition as ninety percent air, renders it an aesthetic object capable of gesturing toward the hyperobject that is climate change. As a bodily function, breathing is largely unconscious, automatically controlled and regulated by the brain. Eating, however, is a conscious act. Smog meringues remove pollution from the air, the medium of the unconscious physical process of breathing, and infuse it into a consumable object, revealing the pervasiveness of air pollution through the act of eating. And through the performative action of consuming a smog meringue participants taste the consequences of climate change. This performance in particular takes on a DIY flavor. On their website the Center encourages students or community groups to use egg meringues to capture the air quality in their own environs. The materials necessary to create a smog meringue are readily accessible: eggs, sugar, bowl, whisk, oven, and polluted air. Hypothetically, anyone could hypothetically create their own smog meringues. The batter can be tested for its pollutants and then mobilized as a sort of “Trojan treat.” By mailing the confection to politicians and business magnates, the smog meringues can secret the consequences of air pollution to those bearing more responsibility for climate change, or with more power to fight it. [44] The Center hopes that the gustatory experience of tasting smog can spur critical self-examination on the part of those in power. By recreating location-specific air outside of their original contexts in the Smog Tasting Cart, the Center also performs a speculative geography, asking what if the air in New York or Geneva was as polluted as the London peasouper? This speculative geography reveals one of the most complicated aspects of the Anthropocene: climate change is simultaneously local and global. While its causes are tied to global economic systems, and its effects are entwined within the global ecosystem, the consequences of these massive environmental changes are not distributed equally across the world’s locations or populations. As major metropolitan centers both Geneva and New York City have their own issues with pollution. State and national governments monitor air quality daily and will issue warnings about traveling outside. Consuming an egg meringue with the taste of other cities’ air pollution draws attention to local air quality as well as necessitates consideration of the states of other, more distant, locales. The Smog Tasting Cart collapses the local and global, gesturing toward a critical pitfall in the idea of the Anthropocene that must be addressed in the pursuit of ecological justice and any politics for the Anthropocene: unequal distribution of effects and responsibility for climate change. The ecological and economic consequences of the pervasion of capital into nature, of which air pollution is just one example, are unequally distributed to lower-income populations. Bringing the air quality of Mexico City to New York City via the vehicle of an egg meringue lays bare the sometimes-invisible network of capital, in this instance between the United States and Mexico, making visible its ecological effects. Recreating the air from one locality to another provokes the question of whether it is safe for the people of Atlanta, Beijing, and Mexico City to breathe as well. Regardless of whether the International Union of Geological Sciences decides to officially declare that we are living in the epoch of the Anthropocene (as of this writing that designation has not been officially made), the realities of massive ecological change cannot be denied. In Bonneuil and Fressoz’s words, “we have passed the exit gate from the Holocene. We have reached a threshold.” [45] Many of the changes we are currently witnessing are potentially irreversible. The Arctic ice is melting. Species are disappearing, whether or not scientists might resurrect them, along with their habitats. Fossil fuel extraction continues largely unabated. The question becomes, then, how to survive in the Anthropocene, and what a politics for this new era looks like. While a complicated and complex thing that is difficult to apprehend and comprehend, like climate change or quantum physics, this politics begins with thinking of or speculating about alternative ways of being. Or, in the case of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, alternative ways of eating. Their subversive use of culinary customs first implicates audiences in their participation within flows of capital. By playing with possible food futures in De-extinction Deli, revealing the enmeshment of the human species within the food web in Planetary Sculpture Supper Club, and discovering what air pollution tastes like in Smog Tasting , the Center’s performances expose their participants’ place within global systems so that they might renegotiate that place in the future. Their speculative performances encapsulate a multiplicity of possible food futures, twisting existing culinary practices to project different ways of seeing the connectivity, the mesh, of global ecology. Not simply an intellectual exercise, not just thinking of interconnectedness, but an embodied practice of species thinking that opens up critical questions of how humans and nonhumans alike might survive the Anthropocene. In 1973, prolific science fiction novelist Ursula K. Le Guin urged the need for more speculative cultural production, because “an improbable and unmanageable world is going to produce an improbable and hypothetical art. At this point realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.” [46] The Anthropocene is nothing if not improbable and unmanageable. Speculative performances, like those created by the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, can not only make sense of the immensity that is global ecological change, in all its manifestations, but also point the way toward a politics of the Anthropocene. And perhaps, as Donna Haraway has written, “make possible partial and robust biological-cultural-political-technological recuperation and recomposition.” [47] By simultaneously encapsulating anti-capitalist and species thinking, as a move toward a politics for the Anthropocene, performance can begin that process of recomposition. References [1] “About,” The Center for Genomic Gastronomy , accessed December 2, 2016, http://genomicgastronomy.com/about/. [2] Jedediah Purdy, After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 2. [3] Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History, and Us, trans. David Fernbach (London: Verso, 2015), 4. [4] Ibid., 70-1. [5] Both Jason W. Moore and Donna Haraway have developed this term. See Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Environmental Humanities 6 (2015): 159-165; and Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism , ed. Jason W. Moore (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016). [6] Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 212. [7] Ibid., 213. [8] Bruno Latour, “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto,’” New Literary History 41 (2010): 476. [9] Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy , trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 53. [10] Purdy, After Nature, 2-3. [11] Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 10. [12] Ibid. , 5. [13] Ibid., 7. [14] Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 1. [15] Lisa Chase and Vern Grubinger, Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems (Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2014), 1. [16] See Anthony Winson, The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and the Struggle for Healthy Eating (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013). [17] G. BeVier, “Global Food Systems: Feeding the World,” Reproduction in Domestic Animals 47, suppl. 4 (2012): 77. [18] Mario Herrero, et. al., “Biomass use, production, feed efficiencies, and greenhouse gas emissions from global livestock systems,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 110, no. 52 (December 24, 2013): 20,888. [19] See Bonneuil and Fressoz, Shock of the Anthropocene , 24. [20] Eduardo Mendieta, “Globalization, Cosmopolitics, Decoloniality: Politics for/of the Anthropocene,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Political Philosophy, ed. Andrew Fiala (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 217, emphasis mine. [21] Ibid., 217-8. [22] Gerald Alva Miller Jr., Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 3, 15. [23] Ibid., 16. [24] L. Timmel Duchamp, “How to Do Things with Ideas,” in Sci Fi in the Mind’s Eye: Reading Science through Science Fiction , ed. Margret Grebowicz (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 2007), 69. [25] “De-extinction Deli,” The Center for Genomic Gastronomy, access November 23, 2016, http://genomicgastronomy.com/work/2013-2/deli/. [26] See http://reviverestore.org. [27] Josh Donlan, “De-extinction in a crisis discipline.” Frontiers of Biogeography 6, no.1 (2014): 27. [28] Ashley Dawson, Extinction: A Radical History (New York: OR Books, 2016), 34-5. [29] Carrington, Damian. “Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the last 40 years, says WWF.” The Guardian . September 30, 2014. [30] “De-extinction Deli.” [31] “De-extinction Deli (To Go),” The Center for Genomic Gastronomy, accessed January 2, 2017, http://genomicgastronomy.com/work/2016-2/de-extinction-deli-to-go/. [32] Each of these organizations participates in the de-extinction movement in some way. Under the auspices of The Long Now Foundation, Revive and Restore contributes to biodiversity and conservation specifically through genetic rescue of species. The Northeast Science Station, led by director Sergey Zimov, oversees the Pleistocene Park, a conservation habitat for species like reindeer and bison. Zimov hopes to eventually populate this area with revived Woolly Mammoths (see http://www.pleistocenepark.ru/en/). The San Diego Frozen Zoo, part of the Beckman Center for Conservation Research, houses over 10,000 different samples of genetic material from approximately 1,000 species groups. The True Nature Foundation, a loosely associated group of scientists and local research groups, is spearheading the project to de-extinct the Aurochs out of their office in The Netherlands. [33] “De-extinction Deli (To Go).” [34] “Planetary Sculpture Supper Club: Portland,” The Center for Genomic Gastronomy, accessed November 30, 2016, http://genomicgastronomy.com/work/2011-2/supper-club/. [35] “PSSC: Dublin Grow Your Own,” The Center for Genomic Gastronomy, accessed January 2, 2017, http://genomicgastronomy.com/work/2013-2/pssc-dublin-grow-your-own/. [36] See http://postnatural.org. [37] “Planetary Sculpture Supper Club: Pittsburgh,” The Center for Genomic Gastronomy, accessed November 30, 2016, http://genomicgastronomy.com/work/2013-2/planetary-sculpture-supper-club-pittsburgh/. [38] Joshua Abrams, “Mise en Plate: The Scenographic Imagination and the Contemporary Restaurant,” Performance Research 18, no. 3 (2013): 11. [39] “Planetary Sculpture Supper Club: Pittsburgh,” emphasis mine. [40] Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History,” 214. [41] Latour, “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto,’” 481. [42] Nicola Twilley, “Smog Meringues,” Edible Geography: Thinking Through Food, May 30, 2015, http://www.ediblegeography.com/smog-meringues/. [43] Ibid. [44] “Smog Tasting,” The Center for Genomic Gastronomy, accessed December 8, 2016, http://genomicgastronomy.com/work/2011-2/smog-tasting/. [45] Bonneuil and Fressoz, Shock of the Anthropocene, xiii. [46] Ursula K. Le Guin, “1973 National Book Award Acceptance Remarks” (speech, New York City, April 12, 1973), K.U. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Ursula-K-Le-Guin_NationalBookAward-Speech_1973.pdf. [47] Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene,” 160. Footnotes About The Author(s) SHELBY BREWSTER is a doctoral student in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and a 2015-16 Provost Humanities Fellow Predoctoral Fellow. She is interested in science and technology studies, digital performance, and science fiction studies. She has presented work at ATHE, ASTR, CATR, and Comparative Drama. Her current research explores how theatre and performance artists use speculative strategies, usually confined to science fiction literature, to critique the relationship between humans and their environments, as well as to imagine new ways of being human. Guest Editor for Special Issue: Bruce McConachie Editorial Board for Special Issue: Meredith Conti Allan Davis John Fletcher Ju Yon Kim Scott Magelssen Julia Walker Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to American Theatre and Performance in the Anthropocene Epoch Searching for Solutions: Humanizing Climate Narratives in an Age of Global Change and Connectivity Towards a Synthesis of Natural and Human History: Situating the Municipal and Ecclesiastic Viceregal Arches of 1680 Mexico City within the Lacustrine The Anthropo(s)cenography of Ricardo Monti's Marrathon Food Futures: Speculative Performance in the Anthropocene Tú eres mi otro yo - Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy & the AnthropoScene Ruth Maleczech at Mabou Mines The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. Directing Shakespeare in America: Current Practices. By Charles Ney. London UK, New York NY: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Pp. 362. Acting in the Academy: The history of professional actor training in US higher education. Peter Zazzali. London, New York: Routledge, 2016; Pp. 219. 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Watch The Making of Pinocchio by Cade & MacAskill at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. A true tale of love and transition told through the story of Pinocchio. In this hybrid of theatre and film, shot and edited all in one take, you are invited to go behind the scenes of Cade & MacAskill’s creative process and their relationship, and question what it takes to tell your truth. Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill have been creating The Making of Pinocchio since 2018, alongside and in response to Ivor’s gender transition. In this digital edition of the work, their tender and complex autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy’. With an ingenious scenography designed by Tim Spooner, layered with sound by Yas Clarke, lights by Jo Palmer and cinematography from Kirstin McMahon, the show employs split-screen, forced perspective and intimate close ups to constantly shift between between fantasy and authenticity, humour and intimacy, on stage and on screen. The Making of Pinocchio joyfully embraces the importance of imagination in queer worldmaking and the idea of transness as a state of possibility that can trouble fixed perspectives and inspire change. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents The Making of Pinocchio At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Cade & MacAskill Performance Art This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks, as well as screened in-person on May 17th. About The Film Country Scotland Language English Running Time 90 minutes Year of Release 2021 A true tale of love and transition told through the story of Pinocchio. In this hybrid of theatre and film, shot and edited all in one take, you are invited to go behind the scenes of Cade & MacAskill’s creative process and their relationship, and question what it takes to tell your truth. Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill have been creating The Making of Pinocchio since 2018, alongside and in response to Ivor’s gender transition. In this digital edition of the work, their tender and complex autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy’. With an ingenious scenography designed by Tim Spooner, layered with sound by Yas Clarke, lights by Jo Palmer and cinematography from Kirstin McMahon, the show employs split-screen, forced perspective and intimate close ups to constantly shift between between fantasy and authenticity, humour and intimacy, on stage and on screen. The Making of Pinocchio joyfully embraces the importance of imagination in queer worldmaking and the idea of transness as a state of possibility that can trouble fixed perspectives and inspire change. Commissioned by Fierce Festival, Kampnagel, Tramway & Viernulvier with support from Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Battersea Arts Centre, LIFT and Take Me Somewhere. Produced by Artsadmin. Funded by Creative Scotland, Arts Council England and Rudolf Augstein Stiftung with development support from The Work Room/Diane Torr Bursary, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, National Theatre of Scotland, Live Art Development Agency, Gessnerallee, Mousonturm, Forest Fringe, West Kowloon Cultural District & LGBT Health & Wellbeing Scotland. Created by Rosana Cade & Ivor MacAskill Performed by Rosana Cade, Ivor MacAskill, Jo Hellier & Moa Johansson, Tim Spooner & Ray Gammon Set, Prop & Costume Designer: Tim Spooner Sound Designer: Yas Clarke Sound/AV Technician and show operator: Riwa Saab Cameras: Jo Hellier & Moa Johansson Lighting Designer: Jo Palmer Relighter: Meghan Hodgson, Marty Langthorne Cinematographer: Kirstin McMahon & Jo Hellier Produced by Dr. Nora Laraki & Nene Camara for Artsadmin Creation produced by Mary Osborn for Artsadmin Production Manager: Sorcha Stott-Strzala Assistant Stage Manager: Ray Gammon Outside Eye: Nic Green Movement advisor: Eleanor Perry Captioning: Collective Text, Rosana Cade, Ivor MacAskill & Jamie Rea Caption Design: Yas Clarke & Daniel Hughes About The Artist(s) The duo holds the audience with a brand of mischievous humour that’s provocative and reassuring in equal measure.’ Exeunt Cade & MacAskill are Rosana Cade (they/them) and Ivor MacAskill (he/him): renowned queer artists and facilitators based in Glasgow, Scotland. Their work, together and individually, straddles the worlds of experimental contemporary theatre, live art, queer cabaret, film, children’s performance, site specific, and socially engaged practices. Their collaboration is born from a shared love of subversive humour, experimentation with persona and text, playful theatricality, and the joy they find in improvising together. They also share a passion for LGBTQIA+ rights and culture. They create strange, rich aesthetic worlds on stage, with unique sonic elements embedded into their work due to ongoing collaboration with sound artist and designer Yas Clarke. In 2017 they were commissioned by Fierce - Birmingham, The Marlborough - Brighton, and The Yard - London, to create Moot Moot which premiered early 2018. This was then selected as part of the British Council Showcase and the Made in Scotland Showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019, where it enjoyed a sell-out run at Summerhall, and they began to tour this show across Europe before the pandemic hit. Since 2018 they have been working on ‘The Making of Pinocchio’, which was supported though residencies at Gessnerallee in Zurich and Mousonturm in Frankfurt, as well as The Diane Torr Award bursary. They also regularly perform across club, music and performance contexts as their experimental concept band ‘Double Pussy Clit Fuck’. Footage from these gigs has inspired the creation of two new video works during the Covid Pandemic: ‘Taps Aff’, and ‘Presenting Our Selves’. The latter was commissioned by The Place - London for Splayed festival 2020, and selected as part of Scottish Queer International Film festival 2021. They are both experienced facilitators and trained volunteers with LGBT Youth (Glasgow). They are currently in the process of setting up a co-operative to open a new LGBTQIA+ second-hand shop / community space in Glasgow. Get in touch with the artist(s) nora@artsadmin.co.uk and follow them on social media Artists: @cademacaskill (Twitter and Instagram)Producer: @artsadm (Twitter and Instagram), @Artsadmin (Facebook)Fierce Festival @fiercefestivalKampnagel @kampnagel_hamburg (Instagram) @kampnagel (Twitter)Tramway @GlasgowTramwayVIERNULVIER @viernulvier.gent (Instagram) @VIERNULVIERGent (Twitter)Attenborough Centre of the Arts @AttenboroughCtrBattersea Arts Centre @Battersea_ArtsLIFT @LIFTFestival Website: https://www.cademacaskill.com/ https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/project/the-making-of-pinocchio/ Social media handles Twitter and Instagram: Commissioners and supporters: Take Me Somewhere @TMsomewhere Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

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

Thomas F. Connolly Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 1 Visit Journal Homepage “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Thomas F. Connolly By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Robert E. Sherwood’s biblical source for the title of his play There Shall Be No Night is useful for establishing context for the contemporary controversy the play was part of, as well as the lack of subsequent commentary it has received. Sherwood dearly wanted to create something profoundly relevant. The inherent paradox in such an ambition is something any writer who wishes to be a contemporary voice must contend with. The play was presented by the Theatre Guild and originally ran from 29 April 1940 to 9 August 1940, re-opening 9 September 1940, closing 2 November 1940. It dramatizes the collapse of Finland between 1938 and 1940, and concerns a Nobel Prize-winning Finnish scientist (played by Alfred Lunt), and his American-born wife (played by Lynn Fontanne). He is a renowned pacifist who refuses to believe that war will overtake his country. When the war does come, their son Erik (played by Montgomery Clift) joins the Finnish army, and after he is killed, the father joins the fight. It is possible now though, to consider a larger question that the play and its production raises. Can an “up-to-the-minute” play survive a long run? What is more, Sherwood’s play crystalizes an Horatian dilemma: does the play “enlighten” or “entertain”? It also raises decidedly post-classical issues. The work of Carlo Ginzburg (b. 1929) can assist us in assessing the pitfalls that may beset a playwright who relies too much on current events and enable us to consider the microhistorical concerns that this production may address. Ginzburg is one of the most important microhistorians; significantly, he originally wanted to study literature and Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis has always been a starting point for him. In Ginzburg ’ s approach, literature precedes history. So using Ginzburg to consider a play about its own time that is of greater historical than literary interest provides a useful twist. Sherwood takes such an approach dramatically in his World War II play by drawing on the Finnish Winter War and subsequently in a revision, the invasion of Greece. There Shall Be No Night ’s urgency precludes history in no small measure because the play is primarily a polemic. Thus, there is only one perspective in it, as noted earlier, that the United States should join the war against Germany. It has no use as a means of fathoming the greater complexity of the alliance with the Soviet Union or what the United Nations [2] would become, to mention but two issues confronting Americans after they entered the war. By failing to comment on his own revision, Sherwood also offered only one perspective towards it. The question of perspective takes us to one of Ginzburg’s favorite concerns. He has revitalized the microhistorical approach through a, perhaps ironic, expansion of its focus. His recent work has expanded via discursions rather than monographs. [3] Challenging aesthetic history, Ginzburg has called out art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892-1928) as an exemplar of method to be challenged, questioned, and indeed resituated. Ginzburg takes issue with Panofsky’s foundational assumptions about iconography (relating the subject matter of a work of art contextually to symbolic meaning drawn from literature and other art works). [4] The notion of perspective as an immutable is something theatre historians have challenged in recent years, yet recalling the “invention” of scenographic perspective as an evolutionary phenomenon is also an example of how Ginzburg’s work may inform our more skeptical inquiries. Theatre historians who remember Alberti’s 1435 text outlining the “rules” for drawing with a three-dimensional perspective will be interested in the way that Ginzburg’s discussions of Alberti call into question the idea of precise “sight-lines” through history. [5] Noting how quickly Sherwood’s drama inspired by a wartime broadcast so quickly dated instructs us here. What is more, when Ginzburg references Erich Auerbach as an ultimate authority due to Auerbach’s disregard for generic distinctions between “history” and “literature,” he may lead theatre theorists and historians to see past such false dichotomies as “theatre” and “drama” or “stage” and “performance.” Auerbach’s Mimesis [6] is itself a legend of scholarship (and a testament to a scholar’s memory in the literal sense, considering the circumstances of its composition). [7] The ongoing use to which Mimesis is put in the 21 st century also allows us to enter into the discourse of a work such as There Shall Be No Night and consider the importance of the performances of the famous acting couple Alfred Lunt (1892-1977) and Lynne Fontanne (1887-1983). “The Lunts,” as they were known, were a mainstay of the Theatre Guild and were best known for their work in comedy, though their reputation was somewhat belied by their performances in plays by O’Neill and Chekhov. Without the Lunts, the play would have been inconceivable. They were at the crest of their fame and reputation. They had also starred in Sherwood’s Reunion in Vienna (opened 16 November 1931, ran for 264 performances) and his anti-war play Idiot’s Delight (opened 24 March 1936, ran for 300 performances). Two star performers at the height of their careers, a playwright renouncing his own pacifism, and a nation riven by controversy over intervening in the war are the elements behind the play’s contemporary triumph. Thus, we have before us, the current events that Sherwood dramatized, the historical moment of Finland’s Winter War with the Soviet Union, and the theatrical phenomenon of the production starring the Lunts (and directed by Alfred Lunt) that would not have been successful without these factors. Sherwood wrote the play in response to the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland. It opened 29 April 1940, went on a month’s hiatus while Sherwood rewrote it in August for a September re-opening, and it closed 2 November 1940. It then went on tour through the United States and Canada. It crossed the Atlantic and opened in Liverpool 1 November 1943, toured England and opened in London 15 December, running until 30 June 1944, thence for another month on tour. An interventionist polemic and star vehicle for a celebrated acting couple, nevertheless the play was also mired in politics; Sherwood was attacked by right and left as a “war-monger” and “capitalist stooge,” respectively. Irrespective of these accusations, Sherwood closed it when the United States entered the war, believing that the play’s heroic depiction of Finland, which had become Hitler’s ally by then, was bad for the war effort. Some accounts have President Roosevelt himself asking Sherwood to close it down. [8] Before considering Sherwood’s discontinuities, a brief review of Sherwood’s career is necessary as he is largely unknown today. Sherwood reveals in the preface that he was so eager to serve in the First World War that when the United States army rejected him because of his height, he crossed the border to join a Canadian Black Watch regiment in 1917. He was severely wounded and suffered for the rest of his life from his wartime injuries. Thereafter, he was an avowed pacifist for several years. While his serious political interests seemed not to jibe with his literary reputation as a charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, the celebrated circle of Broadway wits that included including Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Franklin P. Adams, and others, Sherwood was the only one of that group to have consistently made a serious literary career. Kaufman was a most successful playwright and director, but no other Algonquin Round Table member had anything like Sherwood’s level of success. (Sherwood’s 1948 joint biographical history, Roosevelt and Hopkins won the Pulitzer Prize, his third, and almost every other literary prize, as well as the Bancroft Prize and many other awards for history writing.) Robert Benchley, one of Sherwood’s Algonquin confreres, with whom he had shared an office at Vanity Fair in the 1920s, was a beloved comic writer and performer whose final Hollywood years were marked by alcoholism and depression. He eventually could not bear to be in the same room with Sherwood. Benchley grimly remarked after walking out of a party where he had seen his old friend, “Those eyes, I can’t stand those eyes looking at me. He’s looking at me and thinking of how he knew me when I was going to be a great writer—and he’s thinking, now look at what I am!” [9] Benchley was excoriating himself, for Sherwood was a remarkably generous writer who was doubtless more concerned with slaying his own inner dragons of despair than looking daggers at Benchley. Years later, Sherwood even wrote the foreword to Nathaniel Benchley’s biography of his father. For his own part, Sherwood continually lamented the fact that he always seemed to start out with something serious only to end up with lighthearted entertainment. Nevertheless, after There Shall Be No Night opened, another of Sherwood’s erstwhile Algonquin comrades, Alexander Woollcott, wrote to Lynne Fontanne about his talent, “Not one of the Algonquin crowd has made such good use of the stuff he has in him.” [10] Sherwood’s success as a writer and public servant and his relatively uncomplicated personal life obscure his inner conflicts. The lingering physical pain from his war wounds was exacerbated by his own self-doubt and sense of failure. He may well have suffered from depression, and there is even the thought that his war service may have left him with more severe mental scars than the shrapnel he carried in his legs. With these issues in mind, There Shall Be No Night is the culmination of Sherwood’s playwriting ambitions; it is the play he had been trying to write for his entire career. Even so, it betrays the plight of the commercial playwright in service to a cause. Sherwood had to write the play as quickly as possible in order to insure its relevance; thus, while Sherwood made a theatrical milestone, he fell short of creating a dramatic landmark. If Sherwood is remembered, it is for The Petrified Forest (1935) , which provided Humphrey Bogart with a career-making role and was made into a successful film the following year that also established Bette Davis once and for all as an A-List star for Warner Brothers. Less well-known today is the fact that its original Broadway star, Leslie Howard stipulated that he would only act in the film if Bogart were cast as well. It is perhaps amusing that those who grew up watching films on television probably remember it as a 1930s “gangster” movie. In his preface to the published version of There Shall Be No Night Sherwood notes the influence of his earlier plays. Sherwood carefully traces the play’s genesis, and his introduction is an exculpation of his transformation from pacifist to interventionist. He begins by recounting how he was accosted in the lobby after the first try-out of the play by a “young man” who “accused” Sherwood of having become a “War-monger.” [11] He adds that many critics continue to echo that accusation. After a lengthy review of his playwriting career, he concludes: It seems to me as this Preface is written, that Doctor Valkonen’s pessimism concerning man’s mechanical defenses and his optimistic faith in man himself have been justified by events. The Mannerheim and Maginot Lines have gone. But the individual human spirit still lives and resists in the tortured streets of London.[12] Sherwood defends his vision, but curiously makes no mention of the “Greek” re-visioning of the play. Sherwood subsequently relocated the play to Greece (“re-righting” history via dramatic setting). [13] Sherwood had to do so in order to maintain a coherent liberal, democratic vision of the Allied war effort that America could rally behind. Finland’s alliance with Germany was an issue even for non-Stalinists. Sherwood’s choice of Greece was both “historically” accurate and appropriate. The Greeks fought valiantly against the Italians and the Germans. There was no chance of a Soviet invasion there that might necessitate any political or military realignment. Drawing on the irresistible heritage of “the glory that was Greece,” Sherwood found a perfect way to maintain the political message of his play and its urgency for its audiences. Location and ideology merged perfectly, indeed instantly, for no one would need any explanations about which country “Greece” was or which side Greece was on. The play won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Institute of Arts and Letters’ Gold Medal, and the Lunts successfully transferred the play to London, where it was even more highly acclaimed. Most observers agreed that their performances were tremendously moving and that it was a great production, in spite of signs of hasty composition. [14] In Sherwood’s papers the typescripts reveal that he completed the play in less than three months and, as mentioned above, revised it in three weeks. [15] He chastised himself for “sloppy writing.” [16] Reconsidering the play as an emblem of problematic liberal bourgeois decency allows us to question whether it was the play or its performance that was so effective. Its protagonist is Dr. Kaarlo Valkonen, a Nobel-prize winning pacifist physician, who is married to Miranda, an American woman. The introductory scenes allow Dr. Valkonen opportunity to espouse his philosophy that the world has gone mad because of too much scientific and technological success. He argues humanity has grown complacent. Nonetheless, Sherwood offers a vision of a liberal and humane Northern European paradise. This is shattered with the Russian invasion. Valkonen’s son, a soldier, leaves his inamorata just after getting her pregnant (albeit he does not know it), though he does manage to marry her from his hospital bed before dying from his wounds (providing emotional melodrama alongside the political). After the invasion, Dr. Valkonen joins the medical corps but after his son’s death joins the partisans, tearing off his Red Cross armband and strapping on a revolver as he exits. There are additional debates among secondary characters, English and American volunteers who are Spanish Civil War veterans, about fighting the good fight and what will happen after the war. After learning of her husband’s death, Mrs. Valkonen escapes with her pregnant daughter-in-law to America. The play is no masterpiece, but it remains moving. The problem lies not with its success as melodrama, but with its failure as ideological explication. The play’s “dramatic” and “historical” problems will be discussed when the London production is taken up. Now the question of the success of a production of a given play in the midst of World War II, vis-à-vis the relative failure of that play , in itself may not seem crucial to one’s understanding of either the war or American drama as a whole. Nevertheless, if we consider the problem of Sherwood’s expansive vision of the role of the playwright as a player on the field of history with the contractive nature of “timeliness” we can come to an understanding of the microhistorical usefulness of both the text and the production of There Shall Be No Night. Auerbach’s notion of mimesis pertains here only indirectly. We should not look to Sherwood’s play for a “realistic” depiction of wartime Finland (or Greece), but for a recapitulation of American attitudes towards World War II. Eight decades later, Sherwood’s work appears to be a theatrical monument that memorializes the playwright’s belief in his audience’s capacity for liberal, humanist idealism. By studying the reaction the play inspired we gain insight, not into the front lines, but the home front. We observe the impossibility of a play “recreating” battlefield issues. Yet, we may note the possibility of understanding why a contemporary audience would want to believe in the possibility of a genuine dramatization of wartime perceptions and sensations. It is not Sherwood’s play per se that offers us this insight. It is recognizing how the combination of the play, its preface, its revision, and its production history (including audience and critics’ reactions) reflect their historical moment that entails our attempt to discern this wartime mentalité. The ephemeral nature of performance is dismissed by the historical record of There Shall Be No Night. Drawing on Siegfried Kracauer’s levels of history, we can balance the putative timeliness of the play against the timelessness of the Lunts’ achievement and consider that their artistic achievement transcends their own or Sherwood’s humane or patriotic ambitions. It is aesthetic ambition that endures here. The Lunts took a hastily-written, topical melodrama and made it into an icon of United Nations idealism. What the play offered was an enactment of what the allies were fighting for. Sherwood asserts his right to express in public the ideology of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms; Sherwood had already given Roosevelt the powerful term, “arsenal of democracy.” He was involved with the moment, though his historical reach exceeded his playwriting grasp. For Sherwood there was a particular urgency here. He had chastised himself for not being able to sustain a serious dramatic situation, even if he does manage to maintain acute tension with this play. It is misleading that latter-day critics have lumped the play with Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine (opened 1 April 1941); distance may make the plays seem similar, nevertheless, Thomas P. Adler goes so far to argue that Sherwood’s play “actually helped shape and alter the opinions of Americans about entrance into the war.” While the contemporary critical debate was lively, subsequent scholarly commentary is limited. The play is discussed more in terms of Sherwood’s turning away from pacifism and as somehow adjunct to his work for the Roosevelt administration than as part of his playwriting career. Bigsby devotes as much space to Sherwood’s war work as he does to the play. Wertheim mostly discusses it as part of Broadway’s march toward wartime awareness. [19] As noted, Adler makes even stronger claims for the play’s contemporary impact. What the critical commentary lacks is an appreciation for the play’s production. By limiting their approach to a reading of the play, Bigsby, Adler, and Wertheim overlook an indispensable aspect of the play’s success: the Lunts’ performance. In terms of Sherwood’s literary career it is seen as a sort of sequel to Idiot’s Delight, dramatizing the war that that play presaged. The aesthetic dilemma that this play presents is daunting. Particularly in light of its liberal ideology: it is a life lesson in the humane. But the Lunts and their audiences found they could not sustain their own line of defense when confronted with V-2 rockets. Sherwood defended his work (and interventionism) in the preface, [20] and Roosevelt supporters praised the play more for its message than for its dramatic soundness. The play was a box-office hit, and Sherwood donated some of the profits to war relief. After their Broadway success, the Lunts were eager to bring the production to London, where they were equally successful. In spite of this seeming triumph though, even before it closed in 1944, some argued that the play had already become dated. [21] Additionally, the London production was literally stopped by bombs. The Aldwych Theatre suffered a direct hit. In an excruciating example of art and history colliding, Lunt himself believed the play’s resonance had become too strong. Audiences had begun to thin and the other actors found performing difficult to endure. Such lines as “the enemy is near” while bombs were falling outside the theatre seemed to have nearly choked up Lunt’s ability to act. [22] There are many war plays, and Wertheim’s study considers American World War II plays in particular, but he writes almost entirely about plays being performed on Broadway. One cannot neglect the unique London production of There Shall be No Night . Historically, there have been plays about wars being fought as the plays themselves were being performed. Lysistrata is probably the most famous example. Yet, Aristophanes’s play was originally written for a single performance and the Spartans were not yet at gates of Athens at that time. Nineteenth-century examples might include the Battle of Little Big Horn recreated in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show or Philip Astley’s hippodramatic military spectacles presented during the Boer War. None of these were performed under fire, nor were any performed for anywhere near the number of consecutive performances as was There Shall Be No Night in London (15 December 1943 to 30 June 30 1944). Even so, a play such as There Shall Be No Night, whose least significant aspect is its script, offers a cautionary tale for the playwright who wants to be timely. The ephemeral “performance” of the current events taking place in Finland is eclipsed by the “great performance” of the Lunts; both elide over the text of the play itself. Current event and performance phenomenon are washed over by the tide of history. Commenting on the original production, George Jean Nathan, usually unabashedly caustic, seemed reticent plowing under Sherwood’s hallowed ground, but was prescient: If the Federal Theatre Project gave us what with considerable exactness was called The Living Newspaper, Sherwood is giving us what with at least a measure of exactness may be called the Living Editorial. Neither, however, is in form the least like the other and both differ further and widely in the fact that, whereas the former was contrived with plan and deliberation, the latter is the hapless consequence of dramaturgical insufficiency.[23] Nathan sums up the play’s central problem. There Shall Be No Night is not so much concerned with drama as it is with amplifying a call to arms. I would add that when Nathan’s colleague, drama critic John Mason Brown, embarked on the second volume of his biography of Sherwood, he made it clear that this play summed up Sherwood’s career. Indeed, Brown died before he completed the volume and the entire text of the play was included when the biography was published posthumously. Brown’s failure to assimilate this assertion with his own vision as a writer demonstrates the collapse of genteel liberalism’s aesthetic consciousness. [24] I also wonder if the Lunts being the production’s stars had an impact on the seriousness with which the play was taken. Even though their performances were praised, the Lunts had long been associated with light comedy. This would be a problem for them in their final years; the London production of The Visit (opened 23 June 1960) was advertised as a sparkling comedy and this had a negative effect on its initial reception. In the context of Sherwood’s work and There Shall Be No Night , the Lunts had performed in Sherwood’s Reunion in Vienna (opened 16 November 1931) and Idiot’s Delight (opened 24 March 1936) , so were established as regulars with his Playwrights’ Company productions. By the 1940s, in spite of their performances in O’Neill and Chekhov, the Lunts had seemingly turned their backs on serious drama. This would become more of an issue in their post- Their Shall Be No Night careers. The Lunts as a couple were the arbiter elegantarium of the American theatre, and in the post-war years would continue as leading stars, but would not take part in any of the groundbreaking work of the 1940s and 1950s—until their final performance in The Visit in 1959 directed by Peter Brook (who still maintains that Alfred Lunt was one of the greatest actors he ever worked with). For their part the Lunts later expressed regret that they were not considered for plays such as Death of a Salesman or Long Day’s Journey Into Night . One wonders if they had performed in an American classic rather than in an adaptation of a Duerrenmatt play as their finale whether they might be better remembered. Ultimately though, they served their public, which limited their artistic range but won them a huge and devoted following in their lifetime. Looking back on them, it is most unfortunate that the American theatre could never have had the means to provide them with a living legacy, but something only memorialized. [25] Tradition is not something that American culture has ever been able to sustain. The play’s critical reaction discussed earlier gives us insight into the split the American left was undergoing in the final days of the Roosevelt administration. [26] The cause of the dissension was whether to revive the New Deal or focus on America’s new place in the world, with the additional issue of the United Nations: what would be the role of the United States in this international organization? By the 1948 presidential election, the Democratic Party would splinter into three factions: the mainstream party that nominated Harry Truman; the leftist Progressive party whose candidate was FDR’s former vice-president and secretary of agriculture, Henry Wallace; and the so-called Dixie-crats who ran Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina on their states-rights platform. Sherwood’s politics were comfortably mainstream, and he supported the United Nations. While Sherwood was never a “red-baiter,” he became a Cold Warrior because he was convinced that Communism presented the same threat to the world that Fascism had been. Thus, in the context of its time we may see that There Shall Be No Night was never really considered for its dramatic value; it was always part of an ideology. Judging from two contemporary observers, it was from the rise of the curtain, the sort of play that forward-thinking patriots or citizens-of-the-world could not help but admire. Noël Coward was among the Broadway first-nighters and provides testimony for this. He was moved to tears throughout the performance, and he said after the curtain fell that his entire trip to America would have been worthwhile if he had had no other reason for making it than seeing There Shall Be No Night . [27] Former drama critic Alexander Woollcott considered the first night the final proof of Sherwood’s worth as a high-minded playwright. [28] When Sherwood published the play in 1940, he used the original version set in Finland, but after 1944, neither the Finnish nor the Greek version was ever performed again on Broadway. An adaptation by Morton Wishengrad was performed on television in 1957 two years after Sherwood’s death. Starring Katharine Cornell in a rare screen appearance, Wishengrad’s version was set during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Charles Boyer co-starred. It is interesting to consider the double-phenomenon of the published text set in Finland and the performance text set in Greece. The play’s theatrical/historical relocation queries how a war/time[ly] drama that is a response to an immediate conflict ultimately becomes an historical monument rather than a play, as mentioned earlier. Given Sherwood’s apologia for the play’s ideology in his “Preface,” and that the second version earned praise for its even closer connection to the Allied war effort, one would think that Sherwood would have used the revision as the final version. Sherwood’s publication of the original version suggests that Sherwood’s theatrical vision does not cohere. This is so because the revision was made in order to keep the play pertinent, yet it was largely discarded when Sherwood published it. Sherwood retained his added references to Pericles, but the slightly longer discussions of democracy and its future were not retained. [29] Sherwood’s “present” dramaturgy is contradicted by his reversion to the original Finnish setting. Resituating the play to Greece appears expedient. Carlo Ginzburg’s reading of Siegfried Kracauer’s idea of the discontinuity of reality is useful here. [30] I would amplify this by turning to Ginzburg directly and noting that what he describes as “estrangement, detachment, the interweaving of micro- and macrohistory, a rejection of the philosophy of history” applies here. In other words, “the search for a comprehensive sense in human history” is an essential quality of a perspective which oddly enough stems from a key modernist literary antecedent, L’education sentimentale . [31] I say “oddly” because this line of argument allows a post- modern perspective to consider how more than half-a-century after the play was presented, Sherwood’s unified vision now appears skewed. I would argue that Sherwood believed he was dramatizing Finland’s Winter War and offering a macrohistorical perspective. His politically liberal and psychologically realistic dramaturgy was the product of his own personal struggle to overcome pacifism and embrace interventionism. Even so, Sherwood’s vision was challenged before the war(s) ended (the Finnish Winter War and World War II as a whole). [32] The play was an artifact of liberal idealism even before its run concluded. The preface to the play and much of the speechifying of the characters reveals that Sherwood believes he is dramatizing the ultimate battle for civilization. [33] He does this through the use of characters such as a radio reporter who initially sets up the radio broadcast for Dr. Valkonen’s disquisition about human progress and degeneration, but returns throughout the play to “update” the other characters on Nazi aggression. Valkonen’s life story stands as a précis for Finland’s 20 th century history: he served in the Russian army’s medical corps, even met his future wife in St. Petersburg, thence returning to his native land. He engages in philosophical debates with the pessimistic Uncle Waldemar and with Dr. Ziemssen, a cynical German diplomat, who early in the play blithely asserts that the neutrality of the United States is part of the Herrenvolk’s master plan for world domination. Sherwood punctuates the play with news from the front and characters’ speeches about the indomitable spirit of the human race. Thus, it would seem to be a sweeping dramatization of the world, or at least Europe, in extremis. Ultimately though, it is a pièce à thèse in which liberal faith in humanistic ideals is given pride of place. The play’s only ideological development is Dr. Valkonen’s rejection of pacifism. In his summative study of history, Siegfried Kracauer’s point about the “micro dimension” suggests Sherwood’s drawing room wartime drama is not a macrohistorical work: In the micro dimension a more or less dense fabric of given data canalizes the historian’s imagination, his interpretative designs. As the distance from the data increases, they become scattered, thin out. The evidence thus loses its binding power, inviting less committed subjectivity to take over.[34] Sherwood’s play is neither an adequate reflection of une mentalité nor a depiction of un événement . It is in Kracauer’s term a “close-up shot or establishing shot.” There Shall be No Night is an index of Kracauer’s “law of levels”: contexts established at each level [that] are valid for that level but do not apply to findings at other levels; which is to say that there is no way of deriving the regularities of macrohistory, as Toynbee does, from the facts and interpretations provided by microhistory.[35] The characters in the play offer sweeping historical and cultural summaries or sociological pronouncements, but even though Dr. Valkonen makes an international radio broadcast, shortly after the play begins, and is something of an international figure, the moment of the play is contained by the play itself. It does not resound beyond the ovations it inspired during its performance. Sherwood never takes the play beyond the immediate liberal ideology that seeks to justify America’s entry into the war. Thus it even negates both its European settings; it is really a dramatic debate by an American for and about Americans. This is why I would argue that to attentive critics it seemed dated by 1943. It had only the “committed subjectivity” of 1940 to offer the more complex situation of the latter part of the war. Its “facts” and interpretation were inadequate for contemplating a post-war world. After Finland joined the Axis, Sherwood rapidly rewrote the play, but the only substantial change Sherwood made was substituting lines from Pericles’ funeral oration for those from the Kalevala . [36] It is also worth mentioning that he located the penultimate scene in “a classroom near Thermopylae.” [37] He saw no reason to significantly revise a play that was a “[report] of current fact that the human race was in danger of going insane,” as one of Sherwood’s characters, an American radio correspondent, describes the play’s protagonist’s recent book: The Defense of Man . Sherwood was in England during the London run where he received a commendation from the exiled King of Greece and playwriting advice from Winston Churchill, who suggested that he add a scene in which the characters would discuss the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Churchill said to the playwright, “I want to know what those people thought and said about that.” Sherwood had to suppress laughter at Churchill’s dramatic criticism. [38] As noted, the second version was brought to London, where it would collide with history. (The production literally suffered a “direct hit.”) This version remained a conversation play about liberal values; ironically the off-stage combat that was discussed on stage was horrifically reified by the air raid that ended the play’s London run. The London performances had been continually endangered by the Germans’ renewed bombing campaign. The Lunts insisted on performing even during air raids. The raids made lines such as, “The enemy is not very far away” resonate with the London audience who reacted to the play with more tears and sobs than even New Yorkers had. Fontanne commented that even though they had “drenched” many theaters in North America, Londoners wept with even greater abandon. Alfred Lunt maintained Londoners let their emotions out in the darkened theatre because they would not do so in public or even in their homes. [39] One night bombs fell so close to the theater that the scenery wobbled, the fire curtain descended, and a blast hurled one actor out the stage door. [40] The London run of the play ended on 30 June 1944 as a result of damage done to the playhouse by a V-1 rocket attack, which killed a member of the air corps who was buying a ticket at the box office. Adjacent current events coming so fatally close to the performance of wartime casualties is a morbid continuity revealing the unintended yet omnipresent hubris behind any artistic endeavor that attempts to dramatize war on stage synchronously with contemporary combat, thereby creating a discontinuity. Audiences diminished during the play’s final London performances while people were experiencing warfare. Stage pictures of characters cowering during bombardments became paltry. Under the circumstances, how could such an enactment meet any Horatian requirements? Any question of “delight” in such scenes is superfluous. Nevertheless, what of an audience not threatened by war (the original American one) listening to dialogue exhorting them to accept the virtues of the struggle against the enemy? Apparently, it worked up to a point in London, but when the war came to the theatre itself, the best intentions of playwriting faltered. Late in the London run, the company gave a performance in a private home. Performers and spectators were in the midst of each other and the extraordinary discipline of the Lunts and their company created a performance that “was almost too painful to watch.” Contrary to dismissals of their work as purely external, they used any device they could, even elements of so-called emotional memory. [42] Such dedication to their art is best evidenced by the powerful impact of their extraordinarily “close” performance in a private home. Sherwood’s own preface makes it clear that the play is primarily about America. It details the connections between The Petrified Forest and There Shall Be No Night . Specifically, Sherwood argues that both are representative American plays because they confront contemporary complacency: The Petrified Forest achieves this on a domestic level ; There Shall Be No Night on a foreign one. As the “Finnish” drama is a play about the 1940s, The Petrified Forest is about the previous decade—thereby making it a fascinating social document of the 1930s, but it is also timelessly American in a way that There Shall Be No Night is not. Sherwood identifies The Petrified Forest as the play that “pointed him in a new direction.” [43] There Shall Be No Night is only ostensibly “existential” in the way that it addresses the pacifist scientist hero’s dilemma of how to live in a war-torn world that could not care less that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize. Of course, ironically, Alfred Nobel’s fortune was founded on dynamite and munitions; he established his foundation after one of his brothers was killed in an accident at their factory and when an obituary for another brother mistaking this Nobel for Alfred seemed to gloat that “the merchant of death” was dead. Sherwood’s character remarks on this in the first scene when Dr. Valkonen and his family toast Nobel’s memory sarcastically. [44] Sherwood was fascinated by apocalyptic violence, which is evident in Idiot’s Delight , written a year after The Petrified Forest. Idiot’s Delight is a strange pacifist satire that concludes as Europe plunges into war—indeed, its finale seems to be Armageddon. The play blends serious anti-war statements with vaudeville jokes and jabs at ethnic identities and national rivalries. Sherwood’s next play, which he wrote just before his Finnish play and which was still playing when There Shall be No Night opened, was Abe Lincoln in Illinois, a drama about Lincoln’s early career. It is a simple, if slightly romanticized vision of the Great Emancipator. Unsurprisingly, the play, which concludes with Lincoln’s departure for Washington, foreshadows Lincoln’s death: a sacrifice made for the Union and the abolition of slavery. In a fitting parallel the conclusion of There Shall Be No Night shows that fighting and dying for freedom is necessary if civilized humanity is to survive . Though it predates Sartre’s post-war usage, Sherwood saw himself as an American écrivain engagé from the outset of fascism. Indicative of Sherwood’s status as an activist writer, he was a film critic, editor, speechwriter, biographer, historian, soldier and pacifist, always supporting liberal points of view, and yet was one of the most self-effacing writers our nation has produced. One could also say he sacrificed his career for his country. Few now remember that he was the nation’s leading commercial playwright at the time of the New Deal, but his devotion to the cause of Roosevelt and his fury at the wrenching events of the Second World War caused him to disdain the Broadway box office and attempt to awaken the consciousness of his fellow citizens. Sherwood was at the height of his career when he became a speechwriter for President Franklin Roosevelt, thereafter joining the Roosevelt administration as head of the Office of War Information. Fortuitously, he chose to write about Finland—almost always called “Brave Little Finland” then. He was inspired to write the play while listening to a wartime Christmas broadcast direct from Finland, “Come In, Helsinki” featuring Bill White, the son of the famous editor of the Emporia Gazette . Sherwood had been struggling with the idea of a sequel to Idiot’s Delight, and also felt that he had let earlier events pass him by. One rather outré attempt to write about contemporary political issues was a play called Footsteps on the Danube , which featured a group of Jewish refugees fleeing from Vienna in an overcrowded boat. They are about to give up hope when they are hailed by another refugee, a bearded man dressed in white who walks across the water to their boat and offers solace. Sherwood quickly put that attempt aside. After he settled on the idea of a play set in Finland, he used the same title as the radio broadcast (“Come In, Helsinki”). According to the manuscripts at the Houghton Library at Harvard, some time after February 1940 he changed the title to “Revelation.” The title Sherwood ultimately chose was taken from the Book of Revelations 22:5: And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.[45] As mentioned earlier, Sherwood clearly sought biblical resonance for his latest play. The 1939-40 Broadway season paid some dramatic attention to the war with several plays about it being produced. A headline in The New York Times of 12 May 1940 declared: “The Broadway Stage Has Its First War Play.” The reporter Jack Gould quoted Sherwood’s assessment of the state of the nation using a phrase that President Roosevelt himself would adapt for the pre-war effort, “this country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies.” Indeed, the fact that Europe was at war was not quite lost on Broadway in the first two years of the 1940s, but Robert Sherwood’s Pulitzer winning There Shall Be No Night was really the first play to seriously depict the war. Sherwood generously donated his proceeds from the play to the American Red Cross and the Finnish War Relief Fund to further their resistance to Russia. Lillian Hellman’s anti-fascist Drama Critic’s Circle winner, Watch on the Rhine , opened one year later. In October of 1941, a second performance of this play was scheduled after the evening’s performance and broadcast in German to the people of Germany. Another example of Broadway’s war work was when The American Theater Wing volunteered its services and was serving as an auxiliary to British War Relief (Lynne Fontanne declared she was “knittin’ for Britain”). It is sometimes hard for twenty-first century Americans to recall how controversial it was to support any kind of intervention in Europe before Pearl Harbor. The rise of the “America First” movement had galvanized Sherwood’s determination to do something. For instance, he was profoundly disturbed by Charles Lindbergh’s speeches broadcast on the radio in September and October 1939, in the two months before the Russian invasion of Finland. Sherwood believed this was proof “that Hitlerism was already powerfully and persuasively represented in our own midst.” [49] As a result, Sherwood was criticized from both the right and the left for his support for Finland. The playwright himself was convinced the attack on Finland was the beginning of the end for Scandinavia. He believed Norway and Sweden would fall if nothing was done to help Finland. American Communist sympathizers, such as Lillian Hellman attacked Sherwood for writing about the Finns sympathetically. Hellman was an unrepentant apologist for Stalin and never repudiated her stance. Contrarily, she fabricated an image of herself as liberty’s greatest defender. Sherwood’s opposition to Hellman and her ilk shows his consistently humane idealism. Nevertheless, Sherwood’s reputation for sometimes dark comedy and social satire had stretched the Broadway audience’s sensibility to its limits. In spite of his self-criticism, Sherwood’s style of writing was suited to the mainstream audience. He never deviated far enough from their expectations to experience outright rejection. An anecdote of Sherwood’s about himself reveals the essence of his place in the theatre of his time. On the eve of writing his Finnish play, in spite of his raised consciousness, Sherwood felt particularly conflicted because he wanted to escape from the crushing anxiety provoked by European crises. He told the film producer Alexander Korda that he wished he could write a “sparkling drawing-room comedy without a suggestion of international calamity or social significance or anything else of immediate importance.” Korda scoffed at his escapist ambitions, “Go ahead and write that comedy and you’ll find that international calamity and social significance are right there in the drawing room.” [50] It seems as though Sherwood absorbed Korda’s comment and applied it to his play about a Finnish family trying to live their lives in the face of invasion and guerilla war. There Shall Be No Night is not a drawing-room comedy, and though in the long run Sherwood’s dramatic ambitions were daunted, his political and humane aims were met, if only briefly. In spite of the play’s limits, the Lunts’ performance enabled a brilliant staging. Yet even with a great production, Sherwood’s liberal perspective could not be sustained in performance. The bombs falling around the theatre eventually struck the theatre and stopped performances. History itself intervened and time ran out on the playwright. Sherwood’s overarching concern with timeliness in a real sense made the play time-sensitive, in that its message and merits expired. Finally, recalling the microhistorical approach and considering these issues from a 21 st century perspective demonstrate that There Shall Be No Night is very much one of Ginzburg’s “normal exceptions,” an amplified example of what Ginzburg discusses as “anomalous evidence that casts light on a widespread, otherwise undocumented phenomenon.” [51] The ephemeral nature of performance is a phenomenon that cannot be documented. Even so, the record of Sherwood’s now dated playwriting that fleetingly influenced his own time combined with the timeless success of the Lunts’ performance, becomes a document in its own right. Revisiting what happened when this play depicted and then came under enemy fire, shows us how art and history can collide, if not cohere. References [1] “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”Revelation 22:5. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Revelation-22-5 [2] Here and elsewhere by “United Nations” I mean the allied nations of World War II. This term was introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. [3] Carlo Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive , trans. Anne C. Tedeschi (Oakland: University of California Press, 2012). [4] Among Panofsky’s major works are, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory (1924), Perspective as Symbolic Form (1927), and Studies in Iconology (1939). [5] Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1990). Ginzburg discusses his interest in “figurative evidence as historical source, but also…forms and formulae outside the context in which they had originated” (ix). He elaborates on this in the second chapter “From Aby Warburg to E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method.” 17-59. [6] Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard Trask, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). [7] Driven from the University of Marburg in 1935, Auerbach famously wrote Mimeis while in Istanbul where he had taken up a post at the university there. Drawing only on primary literary sources it is a work without footnotes, informed only by Auerbach’s erudition. [8] Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 77. [9] Billy Altman, Laughter’s Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 331. One of Benchley’s greatest disappointments was that, unlike Sherwood’s great success with his history, he failed to produce his long-projected history of England during the reign of Queen Anne. One suspects Benchley never did anything more than talk about it. [10] Quoted in Harriet Hyman Alonso, Robert E. Sherwood: The Playwright in Peace and War (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 212. [11] Robert E. Sherwood, “Preface,” There Shall Be No Night (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), ix. [12] Ibid., xxx. [13] Ilkka Joki and Roger D. Sell, “Robert E. Sherwood and the Finnish Winter War: Drama, Propaganda and the Finnish Winter War Context 50 Years Ago,” American Studies in Scandinavia XXI, (1989): 51-69. This article goes into great detail about the differences between the two versions. [14] Robert E. Sherwood Papers. Houghton Library. Harvard University. There Shall Be No Night. TS. (carbon copy) with A.MS. revisions; [n.p., ca. 1940]. The file folders in the Sherwood papers are arranged chronologically. He began the first draft on 28 December 1939 and finished it 28 January 1940. On 31 January he began typing the second draft and completed this 10 February. [15] Robert E. Sherwood Papers. Houghton Library. Harvard University. There Shall Be No Night. TS. (carbon copy) with A.MS. revisions; [n.p., ca. 1943]. [16] John Mason Brown, The Ordeal of a Playwright: Robert E. Sherwood and the Challenge of War (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 67. [17] Thomas P. Adler, Mirror on the Stage: The Pulitzer Plays as an Approach to American Drama (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1987), 61. [18] Ibid. [19] C.W.E. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to 20 th Century American Drama, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 145. Bigsby sums up the scholarly assessment of Sherwood’s 1940s career. Albert Wertheim, Staging the War: American Drama and World War II (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 22-25. [20] Sherwood, “Preface,” xi-xii. [21] Joki and Sell review contemporary reactions in the press as the urgency of current events receded. 61, 64. [22] In a letter dated 25 August 1944 Lunt expressed his and Fontanne’s “relief” that the bombing of the theatre caused the London run to end. He added that the play was “too close” and neither the cast nor the audience could take it any longer. Letter of Graham Robinson quoted by Margot Peters in Design for Living (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 212. [23] George Jean Nathan, The Entertainment of a Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), 25. [24] Thomas F. Connolly, Genus Envy: Nationalities, Identities, and the Performing Body of Work (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010). See the chapter on John Mason Brown, 41-65. [25] Jared Brown cogently summarizes the Lunts’ career and legacy. Of particular interest is the testimony of actor John Randolph, who worked with the Lunts and with Lee Strasberg. Randolph’s contrasting of their work with Strasberg’s is a case study in the limitations of “the method” as practiced by Strasberg, The Fabulous Lunts (New York: Athenaeum, 1986), 462-65. The efforts of the Ten Chimneys Foundation must be noted here: “Ten Chimneys Foundation preserves and shares the Lunts’ historic estate, serves American theatre, and offers public programs in keeping with the Lunts’ interests and values.” http://www.tenchimneys.org [26] Alonzo reviews the praise the original New York production received (211-12), and the reviews I have cited: Nathan and Conlin offer counterpoints. Nathan’s relative disdain for the play may have kept it from winning the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Prize. John von Szeliski writing in Tragedy and Fear: Why Modern Tragic Drama Fails (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971) reduces the play to a “tragedy of social disintegration,” which is of course the opposite of what Sherwood thought he was writing. [27] Alonso, 82-83. [28] Quoted in Alonzo, 212. [29] Robert E. Sherwood Papers. Houghton Library. Harvard University. There Shall Be No Night. TS. (carbon copy) with A.MS. revisions; [n.p., ca. 1943]. [30] Ginzburg, Threads and Traces , 208. [31] Ibid., 189. In addition to Ginzburg, Robert Darnton, Natalie Zemon Davis, Clifford Geertz, Mark Kurlansky, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, and Jonathan D. Spence, among many others, have been identified as “micro historians.” Ginzburg identifies the first use of the term occurring in 1959 with George R Stewart’s Pickett’s Charge: A Microhistory of the Final Charge at Gettysburg, July 3 1863 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959). See Ginzburg, Threads and Traces, 193-214. [32] See Joki and Sell. [33] See the play’s third scene, 79-80 and 86-90. Sherwood, There Shall Be No Night . [34] Siegfried Kracauer, History: The Last Things Before the Last (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 123. [35] Ibid, 134. [36] Richard Conlin, “London Theatre,” America 70, no. 23 (1944):633-634. Conlin praises the London version for being more “cogent” in its depiction of civilization versus barbarism. [37] Robert E. Sherwood Papers. Houghton Library. Harvard University. There Shall Be No Night. TS. (carbon copy) with A.MS. revisions; [n.p., ca. 1943]. [38] Alonso, 255-256. [39] Brown, 357. [40] Alonso, 255. [41] Brown, 312. [42] Peters, 284-85. See also Brown, 462-65. [43] Sherwood, “Preface.” xxi. [44] See the play’s opening scene, 31-32. [45] The English Bible: King James Version , eds. Gerald Hammond and Austin Busch (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2012), 604. [46] Among such plays were Another Sun by the celebrated journalist Dorothy Thompson and Fritz Kortner, which lasted eleven performances. It depicted a German acting couple who protest anti-Semitism by fleeing to America, but ultimately the wife cannot resist a personal invitation from Hitler to return to Berlin. A revision of Ernest Hemingway’s The Fifth Column emphasized Fascism as a present danger. Key Largo is Maxwell Anderson’s verse drama about Americans who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and discover moral corruption when they return home (John Huston’s 1948 film adaptation makes major changes to Anderson’s original script). Clare Boothe’s Margin for Error was a whodunnit set behind the scenes at the German consulate in New York. (Expatriate Austrian actor Otto Preminger, soon to be famous as a film director, played a lead role). Henry R. Luce, the playwright’s husband, opined in his introduction to the play that she had “half-succeeded where all others had failed in dramatizing the Nazis. No doubt the strangest theatrical offering was “The Devil is a Good Man” a one-act comedy by William Kozlenko, a protégé of the drama critic George Jean Nathan. The Devil, an upstanding family man, sends his son up to earth armed with a rabbit’s foot where he meets “Adolf Schukelgruber” and is subsequently arrested as a pickpocket. [47] Jack Gould. “The Broadway Stage has its First War Play.” New York Times (1923-Current file) : 133. May 12 1940. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2008). Web. 22 Aug. 2012 . [48] The 1943 film Stage Door Canteen (dir. Frank Borzage) depicts one aspect of Broadway performers’ war relief efforts. It is also a rare chance to see the Lunts on screen. Most interesting is Katharine Cornell’s poignant performance as “herself” in which she plays a brief scene from Romeo and Juliet with a young soldier. It offers a glimpse of her talent; not only in her “performance” as Juliet, but in her silent and poignant expression of concern for the soldier’s fate quickly juxtaposed with self-deprecation of her own stardom. [49] Quoted in Brown, 48. [50] Quoted in Brown, 36. [51] Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries , trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), xi. Footnotes About The Author(s) Thomas F. Connolly is Professor of English at Suffolk University. His most recent book is Genus Envy: Nationalities, Identities, and the Performing Body of Work. Connolly is a former Fulbright Senior Scholar and the recipient of the Parliamentary Medal of the Czech Republic. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Comment New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Musical Theatre Studies “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Performing Anti-slavery American Tragedian Murder Most Queer The Captive Stage Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Nehad Selaiha, Marvin Carlson | Volume 4 of Nehad Selaiha's analysis of Egyptian Theatre focuses on cultural relationships. < 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 Selected Essays: Cultural Encounters 1 and 2 Nehad Selaiha, Marvin Carlson Download PDF Volume 4 and Volume 5 Nehad Selaiha’s (1945-2017) Egyptian Theatre series tries the answer the following questions: What happens to plays when presented in cultural contexts other than their own, to dramatic texts in translation, or when adapted to suit a different culture? How are they approached by directors and perceived by spectators? What expectations do audiences bring to the, or to visiting performances in alien languages? How are these expectations formed? Through what agencies? And how do they affect reception? Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

By Ernesto Caballero, Guillem Clua, Cristina Colmena, Mar Gómez Glez, Borja Ortiz de Gondra, Alfredo Sanzol, Emilio Williams | This selection of plays offers insight into the evolution of Spanish art and culture in the context of the country’s current situation. < 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 New Plays from Spain Ernesto Caballero, Guillem Clua, Cristina Colmena, Mar Gómez Glez, Borja Ortiz de Gondra, Alfredo Sanzol, Emilio Williams Download PDF Eight Works by Seven Playwrights Spanish theatre has experienced a remarkable renaissance in recent years. On the occasion of the 2013 PEN World Voices Festival in New York, eight plays by seven Spanish playwrights were brought together by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, the Spanish Consulate in New York, Fundación Autor, and the Instituto Cervantes for a two-day festival of readings and discussion at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY. Representing the most innovative and respected voices working in contemporary Spanish theatre, this selection of plays offers insight into the evolution of Spanish art and culture in the context of the country’s current situation. This anthology, published on the occasion of these readings, brings together the voices of Ernesto Caballero, Guillem Clua, Cristina Colmena, Mar Gómez Glez, Borja Ortiz de Gondra, Alfredo Sanzol, and Emilio Williams. Presented together, these plays represent the rich and varied landscape of contemporary Spanish theatre. Three of the eight plays included in this volume appear in both Spanish and English, and may therefore serve as a study in translation for artists, scholars, and translators. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Jewel Pereyra Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya Jewel Pereyra By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Actress Maggie Calloway (date unknown). Photo courtesy Robin Raymundo. Introduction [1] A curious performance occurred at The Stadium, Manila’s premier bodabil stage, on 4 January 1927. According to the Manila Times, in this jazz and kundiman Championship Contest, the leaders of two chorus groups, the “lady kundimans” and the “jazz girls,” were Filipina starlet Honorata Atang da la Rama and multiracial Afro-Filipina American jazz singer and dancer Maggie Calloway. [2] A staged conflict between the two cultural forms arose: kundiman, the Filipino national genre of love songs, which allegorized Filipino resistance against Spanish colonization—and African American jazz songs and dance styles, including the Charleston and Black Bottom. Indeed, this contest between the jazz and kundiman dance styles parodied an imperial drama of political tensions between the colonized (Philippines) and the colonizer (United States) to potential theatregoers through a performance: the preservation of the Philippines’ national culture (kundiman) versus the pressing influence of American culture (jazz). The chorus girl played a role in staging these political conflicts in front of popular audiences. These scenarios were common in Philippine bodabil theatre productions at the turn of the twentieth century where chorus girls helped to popularize bodabil —the Philippine adaptation of vaudeville—which encompassed multi-genre live performances that adapted American and European vaudeville variety acts, ranging from comedy sketches, poetry, songs, and dances to boxing competitions and acrobats. According to journalist Luningning B. Ira, “ Vodavil was a gaiety. It was jazz-snappy, bawdy, alive-sounding after generations of the languid kundiman, balitaw, and slow waltzes of a moribund Spanish era. Vodabil was feminine pulchritude and, most of all, female legs exhibited for the first time on the Philippine theatrical stage.” [3] While many chorus girls danced in ensembles onstage, others danced one-on-one with paying patrons. Their live and intimate acts, performed in front of large audiences of various classes and ages at venues located in the center of Manila’s commercial districts, entertained audiences in between silent film showings at theatres like The Stadium or Rivoli Theatre, or at cabarets and dance halls at the Savoy Hotel. This article analyzes the performing routes and moves of Maggie Calloway, who participated in creating the “first Philippine blues style” in colonial Manila and British Malaya’s (Singapore and Malaysia) theatres and cabarets in the 1920s to 1940s during U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946). Analyzing her transcultural dance styles, vocal experiments, and fashion choices, I argue that Calloway and her chorus girls reinvented modern ideas of Filipina and Black femininities when religious and Philippine independence movements nationalized the “Filipina” figure as pious, asexual, and devoted to man, church, and the nation. Rather, Calloway’s performances focused on pleasure and shifting racial and gendered formations as she popularized various racialized dances like the Black Bottom, Charleston, and Hawaiian Hula during the interwar period as part of burgeoning transpacific performance circuits from Manila to Singapore, China, and California. In both the Philippines and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, the Filipina and Black American chorus girl was a controversial figure. On one hand, she was praised for her beauty, exuberance, and mastery of different dance forms onstage. On the other, she was often seen as unruly, aberrant, and immoral, particularly within conservative and religious Philippine movements for independence from American colonial rule . Domingo N. Casiño, a leader of the Filipino Christian youth, wrote of vaudeville, “This modern show is immoral; it is a menace to society for various forms of Satan’s act are shown which in turn is greatly appreciated by the youth. Vaudeville turns our youth into irreligious men… [and] our youth become Godless; for a man without religion is no better than an animal.” [4] The chorus girl often reflected the nation’s desire to allegorize docile and pious Filipina femininity as the symbol of Philippine independence and religious devotion. Similarly, on the East Coast in the United States, African American chorus girls were seen as what Jayna Brown terms “Babylon girls,” and as “embody[ing] the modern condition as an illness of spirit and a cultural death” and as hedonistic excess. [5] For example, in his poem “Cabaret,” African American writer Sterling Brown “pathologizes the young [chorus girls], directly situating them as willful and uncaring urban courtiers against their poor rural brethren” after the Stock Market crash in the late 1920s. [6] Multiracial Filipina and African American chorus girl, Magdalena “Maggie” Calloway, gained stardom and acclaim for her mastery of varying performance styles in bodabil. In the first half of the twentieth century, Calloway was one of the only celebrated African American women performers and socialites in Manila. As a child of Mamerta de la Rosa, a Filipina woman from a family of rice farmers in Central Luzon, and Sergeant John W. Calloway, an African American Buffalo soldier who served in the Philippine-American War, her itinerant career led her to study dance in the United States and Manila and to help train and choreograph many different styles of dance, from jazz dances like the Charleston and Black Bottom to the Spanish Revue, Scottish Dance, and Hula. Her performances drew on and assembled various cultural traditions across overlapping empires in the Pacific, from Manila and Shanghai to Singapore and San Francisco, where she permanently settled after World War II. With her working connection to John C. Cowper, a prominent American director of Philippine variety shows in Manila, Calloway was contracted to work in a transpacific performance circuit in Southeast Asia that connected Manila to British Malaya and cities across China. [7] After World War I, many performers from Asia and across the diaspora took part in shaping Western and indigenous performance styles, displaying racial and gendered stylized acts across international arenas. In one of her first performances in Singapore in 1928 at the City Opera, the press wrote, “Miss Maggie Calloway, ‘star of the aggregation,’ was as usual the life of the performance.” [8] I draw on the reviewer’s use of aggregation as a useful analytic to situate her importance as a multiracial performer who syncretized both Filipino and Black performers and performance styles. Aggregation refers to a “formation of a number of things into a cluster.” [9] In concert with Saidiya Hartman’s theorization of the “chorus,” aggregation attends to the “radical hope of living otherwise” and collective possibility for Filipina and African American performers in the Philippines during the interwar period. [10] Calloway contributed to the makings of an interracial Afro-Filipina chorus through what I call performances of aggregation, which she created as a soloist, and as an ensemble member and choreographer. As a multiracial soloist, she aggregated various racial identifications and performance genres throughout her career. For instance, Calloway embodied multiple racial identifications, including Black, Filipina, and Hawaiian both in the Philippines and Singapore. As a chorus girl and choreographer, she also aggregated interracial performances in ensemble formations. Singing and dancing live in the bodabil cabarets became sites of spectatorship and enjoyment, and people from all racial, gendered, and classed backgrounds socialized in these spaces. In all these roles, she spectacularized feminine pleasure and sexuality, troubling the national symbol of the modern Filipina woman. Scholarship on the Black Pacific and relationships between Filipinos and African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century has tended to focus on African American and Filipino male soldiers and musicians who played in constabulary bands. [11] Expanding upon this work, I examine Calloway’s ephemeral traces—poetry, photoplay films, photographs, and newspaper reviews—in archives across the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia during the interwar period to elucidate her role in forging these Philippine and African American performance genealogies. Assembling this performance archive demonstrates the significance Calloway had as a multiracial performer in embodying these aggregated performance styles during the interwar period. This article also reads against the grain of accounts that argue that these cabarets were segregated and that women lacked creative choice in performance, as Isidora Miranda, Dough Ancheta, and Vernadette Gonzalez have argued. [12] Indeed, Calloway’s presence in these cabarets and dance halls contests W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of the segregated “global color line” in the midst of American occupation in Manila and the burgeoning political struggles for African American racial progress in the United States. This Afro-Filipina aggregation performed new versions of femininity and the modern Filipina woman by appearing in and adapting various media and popular technologies available to them, like the bodabil theatre space, silent photoplay films, and broadcast radio. As Denise Cruz writes on “transpacific femininities,” at the first half of the twentieth century, defining the Filipina woman became a “cultural obsession” and debates about Filipina femininity over time and space was shaped by multiple and overlapping Spanish, American, and Japanese imperial presences. [13] In the first part of this article, I historicize Calloway’s life and her family history. I also trace the forces that compelled both interracial Filipino and African American disaggregation and aggregation with the presence of African American soldiers and performers during American occupation (1898-1946) in the Philippines. While African American soldiers and performers formed affinities with Filipinos, there were also intensified divisions across race, gender, and class. In the second part of the article, I focus on Calloway’s performances of aggregation as sites of interracial collectivity and pleasure-making in bodabil across colonial Manila and Singapore. Maggie Calloway and Interracial Anxieties and Affinities in Colonial Manila Maggie Calloway was born in 1910 in Manila and had a prolific performance career in Asia. Her family lived in the Quiapo neighborhood in Manila, in a center of vibrant social and cultural change during the American colonial period. In addition to his military service, Sergeant Calloway was an ardent fan of the arts and wrote to Black intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois about the importance of African American racial progress through music, theatre, and dance. [14] Maggie Calloway similarly followed her father’s affinities for the arts; however, rather than perform opera and other European “high art” forms that her father and African American bourgeois intellectuals argued would “uplift the race,” Calloway often choreographed popular African American jazz songs and dances, like the Black Bottom and Charleston in her repertoires. [15] While the origins of the Black Bottom and Charleston have been contested, scholars conclude that African Americans in the South first performed both dances and these styles migrated to theatres and popular music recording circuits in the North during the Jazz Age. Tim Ryan writes that the lively and syncopated Black Bottom dance style may have first premiered in the 1924 staging of Dinah in Harlem. [16] However, white Broadway performers, like Ann Pennington in George White’s Scandals , and Tin Pan Alley songwriters appropriated and recorded the “Black Bottom” in 1926. [17] Similarly, African American workers in Charleston, South Carolina created the notable Charleston dance style, including the “feet twisting and rapid forward and backward kicking steps,” that African American stars Josephine Baker and Ada “Bricktop” Smith garnered praise for. [18] As Matthew McMahan asserts, “the language surrounding the Charleston consistently depicted it as a liberating force in contrast to the stolid quality of European dances.” [19] The novel and rebellious appeal of both dance styles attracted international performers and audiences. Calloway, who learned these performance styles in the United States, gained her start as a chorus girl in Manila with the Savoy Nifties and Varieties Company that were managed by theatre manager J.C. Cowper. Named the “Tala ng Bodabil” (star of bodabil ), Calloway was praised in the press for her dancing and singing of both Filipino and American popular songs. During the Philippine-American War, government officials, journalists, and people in the sound recording industries often justified the occupation of the Philippines through the racial co-affiliations of Filipinos with African Americans and Native Americans. In many political cartoons in satirical magazines like Puck and Judge, Filipinos were depicted as Black minstrel characters. In addition, the music industry intensified these racial anxieties, especially of Filipino and African American romantic and sexual unions. For instance, in the Tin Pan Alley recording industries in the early 1900s, songwriters like Charles K. Harris wrote the song “Ma Filipino Babe,” which illustrated a Filipina woman as racially Black in the songbook’s images. The lyrics also racialized the Filipina woman as Black and detailed her romance with an African American soldier. African American intellectuals, writers, and musical composers in the United States responded to these interracial Black and Filipino dynamics in the Pacific. African American intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells outwardly spoke out against U.S. intervention in the Philippines. Writers and performers also used comedy and “brown face” to introduce complex portrayals of Filipino and African American relations to popular audiences. For instance, in 1902, the Black Patti Troubadours staged a parody and musical comedy The Filipino Misfit: A Farcical Skit in One Act that cast Black actors and actresses as Filipino/as . According to Marta Effinger-Crichlow, the actors were “lumped into a generic Asian or foreign body, with no regard for the cultural, language, and historical differences.” [20] Similarly, African American playwrights Bob Cole, Rosamond Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson’s 1907 play Shoo-Fly Regiment featured African Americans performing in “brown face” of Filipino characters, highlighting the contradictions of African American participation of empire, as well as their critique of global anti-Black racism through such productions. [21] During the war, African American military men like Sergeant Calloway forged relationships with Filipinos in the Philippines. During his ten years of service in the Army, Sergeant John W. Calloway wrote numerous letters about his stay in the Philippines and the reception of African Americans by way of Filipino perspectives. He informally interviewed Filipinos about their perspectives on the war, including a physician named Señor Todorica Santos who stated, Of course, you [Black and White Americans] are both Americans, and conditions between us are constrained, and neither can be our friends in the sense of friendship, but the affinity of complexion between you and me tells, and you exercise your duty so much more kindly and manly in dealing with us. We can not help but appreciate the differences between you and the whites. [22] These accounts demonstrate the Filipinos’ affinities towards African Americans in the Philippines despite the racial segregations that African American soldiers experienced. Indeed, during his service, Sergeant Calloway befriended Filipino families, like the Consunji family of San Fernando, Pampanga. While forming relations with the Consunji family, Calloway was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army over suspicions that he was a “well known sympathizer with the insurrectos” during his service. [23] In Sergeant Calloway’s case, these interracial affinities created racial anxieties that were deemed dangerous and risky. These fears of racial intermixing and proximity often punished African Americans, creating distance and disaggregation during the Philippine-American War. These perspectives illuminate the complex tensions of U.S. imperialisms and U.S.-Philippine relations. In his study of the Black Pacific, Vince Schleitwiler theorizes the “Black transpacific culture” as the mode by which “African Americans would imaginatively and materially access new degrees of imperial privilege by crossing the Pacific as ambivalent participants in U.S. imperialism, while simultaneously contemplating the emergence of a militant Asian champion of the darker races against white worl d supremacy.” [24] On one hand, soldiers like Sergeant Calloway and David Fagen—another celebrated African American Buffalo soldier during the Philippine-American war who defected from the U.S. causes—participated in military operations in the Philippines. On the other hand, they also critiqued anti-Black and anti-Filipino sentiments enforced by white American colonial officials. In performance cultures in the Philippines during U.S. occupation, blatant forms of anti-Black sentiments also existed, particularly from the upper-class Spanish Tagalog elites. In colonial Asia, jazz singing and dance styles like the Charleston and Black Bottom were racialized and acquainted with African American popular dance forms. Peter Keppy writes about Filipina jazzista performers who performed jazz dances like the Black Bottom and the Charleston: “From an elitist perspective these dances were particularly suspicious, if not dangerous to society as they originated from the ranks of the lower classes, and even worse, from the descendants of slaves.” [25] Keppy argues that elite Hispanicized Filipinos harbored racial antagonism toward Black slaves and sought to ensure that the emerging Philippine nation was not associated or identified with Blackness. These dances often were classed and critiqued as “low art” in comparison to “more respectable and refined” Euro-American dance and singing styles like waltzes and operas. However, performers like Calloway performed the Charleston and Black Bottom dances, altering normative notions of race, gender, and sexuality in the cabaret spaces. Through her performances of aggregation, Calloway took on the persona of popular Black women performers like Josephine Baker, whose rendition of the Charleston exhibited a multiplicity of racialized surfaces, or what Anne Cheng calls as “second skins.” [26] These alternative and aggregated performance styles also flourished in these interracial cabaret spaces that challenged the Jim Crow logics of racial segregation and interracial intimacies, even as these repertoires became increasingly commodified and staged for white audiences. As Shane Vogel argues, performers in cabarets in Harlem demonstrated how the “interplay of close and distance, acceptance and refusal, connection and disconnection, concentration and distraction” coincided. [27] As a result of these racial affinities, anxieties, and antagonisms in the early 1900s, multiracial Filipino and Black Amerasian identities and anti-Blackness were and, today, are fraught in the Philippines. Anti-Blackness in Filipino communities both in the Philippines and in the diaspora perpetrate white supremacist structures and “colonial mentalities,” especially against indigenous groups like the Aeta peoples. Despite these contradictory interracial socialities and relations, after World War II and onwards, Manila would see more performances by other famous Black cultural performers like Marian Anderson, Muhammad Ali, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, and Donna Summer, all of whom all made appearances at the famous Araneta Coliseum. Moreover, today in the Philippines, hip hop and other major African American cultural figures are celebrated in the archipelago. “I Want”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure Calloway’s career in entertainment started in an era of rapidly growing commodity cultures, trade, and industrialization in the United States, the Philippines, Shanghai, and British Malaya during the interwar period. Henry Jenkins theorizes this interwar technological period as “pop cosmopolitanism” and “the ways that the transcultural flows of popular culture inspire new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency.” [28] As the phonograph, 78 RPM vinyl records, radio, and silent films gained popularity as commodities, so too did bodabil performances. [29] With electrical recording booming in Manila and Singapore, global protests and musical movements by subaltern subjects in the colonies also responded to Euro-American colonial presence. Michael Denning calls these responses as global “noise uprisings” after World War I where musicians in entrepôt cities, like Manila, Jakarta, Honolulu, Goa, Shanghai, Havana, and Rio De Janeiro, formed a “world musical revolution.” Performers adapted vernacular musical forms that became “fundamental to the extraordinary social, political, and cultural revolution that was decolonization.” [30] For instance, transcultural music practices, like the kundiman encountered jazz and blues styles and crossed over and circulated. The novelty and global appeal of Filipino bodabil led to the creation of transpacific tours and circuits where these Afro-Filipina aggregations took shape. In addition to Calloway’s background in jazz singing and dancing, she also performed traditional Philippine dances like the sword dance, Moro Moro, and Cariñosa. As she traveled within these circuits, she was exposed to different transcultural music and dance styles like jazz, the rhumba, kundiman, Hawaiian hula, the Scottish dance, the New York flapper, and the Spanish revue, which she also learned and choreographed in their own shows. Spectacularizing her body through the aggregation was part of her transcultural dance styles. Calloway’s performances of aggregation brought together kundiman and jazz-blues forms that became their own cultural phenomena. This demonstrates how Filipina and Black women transformed these practices into hybridized dance and singing styles, while also establishing relations with one another through the ephemeral socialities that emerged in the cabarets. Women performers on stage explored the contradictory and shifting gender dynamics in the Philippines during the U.S. period. Women challenged monolithic ideals of feminine respectability and stars like Atang de la Rama and Katy de la Cruz’s performers and songs focused on women’s pleasures and commented on conservative gender norms. For instance, Atang de la Rama performed in the silent film Dalagang Bukid ( Country Maiden ) and her song “Nabasag ang Banga” (The Clay Pot Broke) commented on the preservation of women’s virginity through the metaphor of a broken jar. Katy de la Cruz, who was named the “Queen of Jazz,” used humor throughout her jazz and blues performances to comment on women’s pleasures. Her song “Balut” (Fertilized Duck’s Egg) from the 1930s allegorizes women’s sexual desires. The popular plays on the notion that the balut delicacy is said to “not only allude to strength and general good health but refers to sexual robustness and stamina.” [31] In addition, her song “Ang Manok” (The Chicken) references cock fighting and alludes to ideas about men’s infidelity. These outwardly sexual themes in her songs contended with the conversative ideas of women as the virginal, pious, meek, and devoted Filipina figure. These mythologized women, like the Maria Clara figure who was popularized in Filipino writer Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tángere, became pious symbols of the Catholic church, family, and education systems that espoused these moral and nationalist politics. [32] Indeed, women in bodabil challenged representations of modern femininity in the Philippines. Filipina women during the Spanish colonial period commonly worked as cigarette rollers, seamstresses, domestic workers, teachers, nurses, performers, and as prostitutes. [33] With the emergence of Filipino bodabil in Manila in the early twentieth century, young, independent, and working-class chorus girls sought out employment in the cabarets and dance halls. Women in bodabil and their reception were met with contradictions: on one hand, they were celebrated for their displays of modernity and adaptations of American cultural forms. On the other hand, chorus girls were castigated in society, especially by religious and conservative politicians, and were often associated with prostitution. For instance, Manila’s City Mayor, Justo Lukban, who was elected in 1917, disbanded the Gardenia District, Sampaloc’s former red-light district in Old Manila. Filipino cultural critic Nick Joaquin writes “when [Lukban] tried to abolish the cabarets too, the bailarinas, a more spirited tribe, rose in revolt and marched on City Hall. The mayor backed down and the cabarets remained to color the lives of all the wild bucks of the era.” [34] Cabarets in Manila continued to flourish until talking pictures emerged in cines and nightclubs were introduced in the 1930s. Nick Joaquin was one rare writer who documented the pleasures of bodabil and of Calloway’s authorial voice within the interracial and multi-expressive aggregation. In his long poem “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird,” Joaquin captures the spirit of bodabil in the height of its appeal in the 1920s . In contrast to Sterling Brown’s vilification of the “Babylon girls,” which is also apparent in Filipino writer Jose Garcia Villa’s 1927 short story “The Bailarina,” Joaquin centers the erotics of the cabaret, and especially women’s pleasure. Published in 1979, “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird” is a poem written in a documentary style that offers images from the bodabil scenes through Joaquin’s perspective as a journalist and cultural critic. As Joaquin did not grow up in the 1920s and 30s when Calloway performed, his poetic work contends with the limits of the performance archive as he dramatizes the events at the cabarets. The poem draws us in into the sensual atmosphere of the vaudeville scene with “King of Jazz Piano,” Porfirio “Ping” Borromeo, and his contemporaries. Borromeo served as the piano player and bandleader for the Savoy Theater vaudeville company. He performed his signature “stride bass” ragtime jazz style alongside the popular Filipina starlets of the time, including Nena Warsaw, Grace Darling, Katy de la Cruz, and Isabel Rosario Cooper, who experimented with “modern” jazz dances like the “Charleston” and “Black Bottom.” They performed in front of diverse audiences and, at times, segregated white-only spaces like the Army and Navy Club, the Manila Polo Club, and the Tiro Al Blanco. At places like the Rivoli Theater, audiences racially intermixed. Joaquin writes, Shift the scene to Manila Late in the 1920s. Vaudeville tops show-biz. It’s cash with class. On Plaza Goiti is the Savoy with its Nifties. Plaza Santa Cruz Nightly shines with the rainbow hues Of the Rivoli Theater, which has the Varieties. And our princely boy Stars there now as King of Jazz Leading the band. He stabs the keys As leggy high-kicking Nena Warsaw Knocks her knees against her torso. His piano groans as the sailors howl. Hot has Maggie Calloway got ‘em While she shimmies her Black Bottom. [35] Joaquin’s poem captures his impressions of the cabarets as he homes in on the pleasure-filled atmosphere that the cabaret girls elicit, particularly for their “sailor” audiences who “howl.” American military men and Filipinos of various social classes frequented the cabarets and dance halls. Fritz Schenker writes about the “imperial whiteness,” where white men patrons asserted their racial dominance in juxtaposition to the Filipina jazz dancers. [36] While conservative writers, political officials, and religious figures disparaged the morality of dance halls, as venues subject to adultery, prostitution, and disease, Joaquin invites readers into the glamour, the wild aesthetic gestures, the novel techniques of these women performers, and sexuality in the cabarets. Borromeo leads the jazz band as he “stabs the keys” and “his piano groans.” Nena Warsaw “knocks her knees against her torso” while “hot has Maggie Calloway got ‘em / while she shimmies her Black Bottom.” Joaquin’s attention to these erotic gestures energizes the performing bodies that are too extra, intense, and incontrollable. Moreover, Calloway’s performance s of aggregation and the Black Bottom demonstrate how performers and audiences coming together in the cabaret was a site of pleasure. The Black Bottom was a radical act that presented African American popular culture in front of audiences despite the Spanish and Tagalog elite’s racial prejudices against such dances. In addition, the Black Bottom, as popularized by African American blues songstresses like Ma Rainey, depicted Black women’s pleasures publicly. Towards the end of the poem, Joaquin ends with Calloway again, But the last tune on the tape is the sweetest of all, as new today as when first given shape and shiver. Life was a smile when [Porfirio Borromeo] wrote it (circa mid-1920s), the first blues Philippine style. And because it never went to market it hasn’t lost novelty, is as fresh as when Maggie Calloway first sang it on the Rivoli stage: “ I want, I want, I want I want a little lovin’ …” [37] While this final stanza honors Borromeo indelible “first Philippine blues style,” Joaquin also ends the poem with Calloway declaring a desire: “I want.” Presumably, Joaquin here is listening to a recorded performance of Calloway’s singing, one that is no longer accessible in present archives. And yet, he highlights Calloway’s pleasures which repeat, “I want, I want, I want,” a simplicity that stands as its own complete thought: “I want.” Whereas the opposite, the refusal of “I don’t want,” establishes a boundary and enclosure, the lack of specificity in Calloway’s “I want” is an opening, an improvisational jazz break, and open-ended refrain as the long poem ends. Fred Moten has theorized the possibility of the break as a place of improvisation for African American performers. [38] As the audience members rile with passion in the poem, Calloway declares this refrain significantly as a testament to her wants within the cabaret and dance hall scenes that were often organized and socialized for Filipino and foreign men’s desires, wishes, and wants. Moreover, Calloway’s repetition of “I want” reflects her subjectivity as a soloist within the male-dominated space. “I” re-asserts the cabaret space as a place solely for men’s pleasures and complicates the hierarchies of “imperial whiteness” and social dynamics between men and the chorus girls. This moment in the poem is significant and demonstrates not only as an important interracial and transcultural moment of the Philippine blues style, but also a significant moment of Afro-Filipina women’s pleasure in creating and fashioning this cross-genre aesthetic. As Maureen Mahon writes, African American women in rock, blues, and jazz have long participated in experimenting with musical categories and genres across the twentieth century, often exposing how these imposed categories have been racialized and gendered. [39] Indeed, Joaquin notes that this moment “hasn’t lost its novelty,” as indeed, these two singing and performing together at the Rivoli was novel for audiences. Furthermore, Calloway’s expression of “I want” attends to how pleasure and desire were important in her popularity and career and—with Joaquin’s ending of this poem with her—she featured significantly in Filipino bodabil cultures. “Mood of Ecstasy”: The Filipina Josephine Baker in Colonial Singapore Calloway’s first appearance in Singapore on September 27, 1928 featured her dancing the Charleston and Black Bottom, which received positive reception from audiences. In an interview with the Malaya Tribune, Calloway characterizes her impressions of her performance, On my first night, after singing one or two, I thought I would see if they liked the Black Bottom, for they kept insisting I should come out for some more. I struck off with a delicate cadence to suit their apparent reserve and decorum. As the orchestra swept along in its interpretation of the playful moods of the dance, I increased their interest in my movements by ‘speeding up’ a little. First a smile of pleasure, then a light ripple of applause broke over the audience. This gave the director his cue and he led his orchestra from the mood of delight in the dance to the mood of ecstasy. Here I swung from the Black Bottom to the Charleston a la Josefina Baker. Well, all I can say is the English for once came dangerously near losing their studied reserve and the natives lost theirs completely, if they ever had any. [40] Calloway’s first-hand account gives an intimate insight into the audiences she performed in front of and her own authorial vocal and choreographic experiments. Audiences were attracted to Calloway’s unique singing and dancing and often gave her encores. Calloway details how she captivated audiences through her “playful moods,” “smile of pleasure,” and “mood of ecstasy.” Through these hyperbolic descriptions, Calloway’s performance also overcame the “studied reserve” of both British and Malayan audiences. She notes that she “increased their interest” by responding through tempo, facial gestures like smiling, and competing with the big band. This was met through their applause. Similar to Joaquin’s “Bye Bye Jazzbird” poem, Calloway delivered an authorial voice and risqué gestures that were not common at the time, nor looked fondly upon. In this way, Calloway developed a pleasure politics on stage that negotiated with the desires of the audiences and her own. In this performance, Calloway also compares herself to Josephine Baker who was performing dances like the Charleston and Black Bottom in Paris. Baker was a prominent African American dancer and singer born in Saint Louis, Missouri. She immigrated to Paris during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, contributed to the makings of a global Black feminist performance style. While stars like Atang da la Rama were named the “Queen of Kundiman” and Katy de la Cruz was heralded as the “Queen of Jazz” and was compared to Mae West and Sophie Tucker, Calloway likened herself as the Josephine Baker of the Philippines. African American women performers were seldom written about in the Philippine and British Malayan presses. Thus, Calloway’s claiming of herself as Baker, a Black woman dancer who popularized the Charleston and Black Bottom, forged an affinity between her. Rather than continue to promote the elite Spanish Tagalog racial and classed hierarchies, Calloway chose to perform popular dances like the Black Bottom and Charleston as an act of proximity and affiliation. Indeed, Calloway becomes part of this Black women’s performance genealogy and instrumentalized this Afro-Filipina chorus. In the austere British Malaya venues City Opera and Victoria Hall, like Baker, Calloway demonstrated creative risk in front of British and Malayan audiences. In her performance of the Charleston, Calloway delivered an exuberance that countered typical comportments of Filipina femininity and shifting racializations. Like Baker, Calloway’s performances of the Black Bottom, Charleston, and other racial types interacted with and challenged the colonial primitivist views of African Americans on these international stages and asserted a Black Amerasian feminine pleasure and politics on the stage. As Anne Cheng argues, Baker was the definition of modernity in the 1920s and 1930s. Through her performance of “second skins,” which she displayed through different organic and inorganic materials (coal, bananas, glitter, and shimmering ensembles), she mastered the artifice of surfaces and masks through performance. [41] Similarly, Calloway’s performances of aggregation across British occupied-Malaya embodied a multiplicity of Filipino and Black women racial presentations and masks through her dancing and singing of Black popular dances in Singapore. After her first performances of the Black Bottom and Charleston at the City Opera and Victoria Theatre, Calloway also performed the Charleston at the Moonlight Hall at the New World Shows. One reviewer wrote, “ Maggie Calloway was in great demand. Indeed, the audiences were cruel in their calls for encores. Maggie pleased immensely in “The Roof Blues,” charleston-ing and singing on top of the piano with that ease and abandon only expected of an accomplished artist.” [42] The New Orleans Rhythm Kings wrote the song “The Rooftop Blues,” or “Tin Roof Blues,” in 1923 and it is considered a jazz standard about New Orleans. Louis Armstrong sang a popular version in 1955. The reviewer notes Calloway’s exuberant and pleasurable performance as exhibiting “ease and abandon” and the moods and delights she displayed through her performances. I read the “ease” of her performances as pleasures that Calloway articulated on these stages. While many of these blues songs were commissioned and selected on behalf of Calloway by the company managers, she also had the authorial voice and choreographic capacities to express her mastery, skill, and pleasure through jazz and the blues. These kinds of pleasures countered the invisible labor of Black women performers and singers, who were often exploited and vilified. For instance, the Black Bottom was popularized by “Mother of Blues Singer” Gertrude “Ma” Rainey’s “Black Bottom,” which she recorded in 1927 in Chicago, Illinois. According to Rainey’s accounts and theatre productions such as August Wilson’s 1984 Broadway play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom , Rainey performed under conditions of duress. She was not compensated for her labor as an in-demand African American women performer. The Black Bottom was a major hit in the United States and because of Calloway’s training in the US, she participated in popularizing and transferring this dance style to chorus girls and audiences in Manila and Singapore. Calloway returned to British Malaya during World War II in the 1940s where there was a pronounced shift in her image in advertisements in the press. Calloway’s comeback career in Singapore occurred in the 1940s, perhaps one of her last performances that she danced in and choreographed during World War II and before the declaration of Philippine independence in 1946. In the 1940s Singaporean press, there is a notable shift and attention to women’s bodies and sexual economies with the heightened presence of British and Japanese military in Singapore. Calloway’s image started to change, especially with the kinds of performances and visualizations she participated in. Rather than perform her regular jazz Charleston and Black Bottom numbers, she started to perform as racial types like the hula girl and harem girl. Cabarets featured the hula girl racial type across the world, not only in the Philippines and Singapore, but across cabaret venues in port cities across the Pacific. The hula girl fantasized “imagined intimacies,” what Adria Imada argues “brokered the process of incorporation and integration” of Hawai’i into the United States empire. [43] Hula girls performers performed the fantasy of Hawai’i as a site of rest, relaxation, and hospitality for their audiences. In one advertisement of her performance of a Special Dinner-Dance and Cabaret at the Sea View Hotel, a popular resort outside Singapore’s urban city center, Calloway poses as a hula girl. [44] She wears a tropical Hawaiian influenced look with a bikini top that bears her midriff and a sheer grass skirt. She has a hibiscus flower in her hair and a lei around her neck. These full-body images in The Straits Press and Malaya Tribune contrast her public appearances in the press in Manila, which were exclusively headshots. In Manila in the 1920s and 1930s, she typically adorns Philippine and American attire in the 1940s, and her body is not the focal part of the advertisement. In contrast to her prior visualizations in the press, these photographs are full-body and elicit racial, gendered, and sexual desires. Indeed, these changes of “moods of ecstasy” became more sexually explicit and geared towards military audiences during the 1940s when the British occupied Singapore and Penang. Indeed, Calloway’s adaptation of this solo performance of the hula at the Sea View Hotel performed a localized form of hospitality through the British colonial integration of Malaya. Through these subaltern’s performances, women’s bodies specifically became sites of hospitality that brokered these imperial intimacies. As part of these shifting racial and gendered performances amongst women performers, Calloway’s performances of aggregation responded to the larger presence of military men who frequented the cabarets in the 1940s. Military men from the Royal Arm Forces (RAF) were stationed in Seleta r in Singapore. Pre-World War II photographs depict the Royal Arms Forces (RAF) servicemen and Yacht clubs as well as the leisure places they frequented. Many of these military men were nostalgic for entertainments, so they joined sailing and yacht clubs and watched boxing and sporting events. Like the hula girl, Calloway’s performances of these racial types and transition to more explicit performances demonstrate how the cabaret catered more to men’s desires as women also negotiated their place and authority in the cabaret scenes during World War II. Conclusion Mirroring the imperial drama that I opened this article with, I end with another encounter between choruses and popular dances fifteen years later at the Cabaret Tea Dance at Singapore’s Cathay Café in 1941. The press advertised for the “Philippine Islands Folk Dance for Singapore Cabaret Show” to take place at the Victoria Memorial Hall. Calloway served as the choreographer at this event and trained the cariñosa dancers, as well as those who danced the conga, “the newest American craze,” and the rhumba. The People and Places” advertisement reads “Preparing for Feb. 9 Floor Show: Miss Maggie Calloway, who is training the dancers who will take part in cabaret items at the Cabaret Tea Dance to be given by the Singapore Filipino Association at the Cathay Café.” [45] Next to the advertisement is a portrait of Calloway. She wears a sheer lightweight dress in a modern Filipiniana style with terno sleeves that reflects the traditional attire that Atang de la Rama wore in her kundiman performances. In the portrait, Calloway poses by touching a vine of flowers. Her short hair is well-kept as she smiles towards the camera. In this portrayal, one of the last visual depictions of Calloway in Singapore’s archives, she does not masquerade as American, African American, Asian Hawaiian, Middle Eastern racial type. Rather, she is represented as a professional woman choreographer. I read this last visual representation as another performance of aggregation meant to situate Calloway’s professional credibility as a dancer amidst her varied representations. While Calloway’s performances of aggregation participated in the cabaret’s masculinist and militaristic desires towards the end of her performance career in Asia, she also continued to demonstrate her creative authorship by choreographing choral arrangements with the cariñosa and rhumba dancers in Singapore. Calloway was a master of improvisation and like Josephine Baker, she continuously modulated her image. With her performances of aggregation, along with popularizing jazz and the blues in Manila and British Malaya, she also translated different choreographic dances and articulated varying racial and gendered performances across her repertoires. In addition, Calloway’s choreography and continuous training of Filipina chorus girls transferred cultural forms—from the Charleston and Black Bottom to the cariñosa and rhumba—through repetition and body-to-body knowledge across these various locales in the Pacific. These performances of aggregation became cultural and formalistic experimentations. They offered places of improvisational pleasure and bodily reinvention for Filipina and Black chorus girls. Ultimately, this article charts Calloway’s presence and formations of performances of aggregation in the emergence of Filipino bodabil in colonial Manila and Singapore. On one hand, the presence of Filipino and African American collaborative performances demonstrates how American modernity and jazz styles promoted a sajonista American modernity and capitalist profit in the entertainment industries in Manila. During this time, fear of intermixing and proximity between Filipinos and African Americans was also a concern and produced racial and classed antagonisms formed by white American colonial officials and Spanish Tagalog elites. On the other hand, Calloway’s appearances in bodabil also revised modes of respectable racial and gendered comportments with her jazz performances and choreographic arrangements of pleasure. Bailarinas and jazzistas in bodabil adapted jazz as modes to experiment, play, and comment on pleasure in their aesthetics, and Calloway’s performances added to the complexity of these pleasure politics within Colonial Manila and British Malaya’s performance cultures. Specifically, I contend that Calloway’s vocal and choreographic gestures asserted a pleasure politics that responded to the nationalist, racialized, and gendered ideations of Filipina women. Centering her pleasure in her oeuvre, Calloway’s performing body and spectacularized gestures, even ephemerally, rearranged the contours of her itinerant life and imagined otherwise her confined conditions as a young actress. Calloway’s career and the aggregation tell a reverberating story and legacy of how subalterns interacted, contradicted, strategized, and negotiated with dominant cultures, as they emphasized the creation of vibrant transcultural music and musical practices that resulted from such encounters. After Calloway moved to the U.S. permanently in the 1940s during World War II, other multiracial Filipina and Black stars and comedians like Elizabeth Ramsay made their vibrant presence in Philippine performances in the 1950s and 60s. An intimate study of Calloway’s life gifts us with interracial and transnational lenses through which to study diasporic Philippine and Black American performance genealogies as not separate, but as intertwined and aggregated histories, of which more is yet to be made known. References [1] I thank Arwin Q. Tan, Isidora Miranda, and Frederick “Fritz” Schenker for their keen feedback and encouragement on earlier versions of this article. Thank you to the librarians at the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Music, the Miguel De Benavides Library at the University of Santo Tomas, and the Rizal Library at Ateneo de Manila University for your help with accessing these archival sources. Lastly, much gratitude to the Calloway family, including John Calloway, Rebecca Calloway Mosley, Robin Lee Raymundo, Tedi Raymundo, and Deborah Calloway for sharing your stories, archives, and costumes of your auntie/grandmother Maggie. Maraming salamat! [2] “At the Stadium Tomorrow,” Manila Times, January 4, 1927. [3] Luningning B. Ira, “Two Tickets to the Vod-a-Vil,” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 (Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978), 2510. [4] Domingo N. Casiño, “The Evil Influences of Vaudeville,” The Independent, July 31, 1926, pg. 7. [5] Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 236. [6] Ibid. [7] There were other circuits that connected the Philippines to Japan, Hawai’i, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia. The performance circuit depended on the managers and their vaudeville companies. [8] Hollandus, “The City Opera,” Malaya Tribune , September 28, 1928. [9] “Aggregation,” New Oxford American Dictionary, accessed May 3, 2023. [10] Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021), 299. [11] For scholarship on military histories and relationships between Filipinos and African American soldiers and the constabulary bands, see Scot Ngozi-Brown’s “African-American Soldiers and Filipinos: Racial Imperialism, Jim Crow, and Social Relations” (1997) in The Journal of Negro History ; Rene G. Ontal’s “Fagen and Other Ghosts: African-Americans and the Philippine-American War,” in Vestiges of War (New York: New York University Press, 2002); E. San Juan’s “African American Internationalism and Solidarity with the Philippine Revolution” (2010) in Socialism and Democracy ; and Mary Talusan’s Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021). [12] Maria Ancheta, “The Rise of the Naughties: Humor in Katy de la Cruz’s Bodabil Songs,” ed. José Buenconsejo, Philippine Modernities: Music, Performing Arts, and Language, 1880-1941 (Quezon City: University of Philippines Press, 2017); Isidora K. Miranda, “Creative Authorship and the Filipina Diva Atang de la Rama,” Journal of Musicological Research, vol. 40, no. 4 (2021); and Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Empire’s Mistress: Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021). [13] Denise Cruz, Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 5. [14] Letter from J. Calloway to W.E.B. Du Bois, November 14, 1927, MS, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers 312. Spec. Coll. And University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Library. [15] Ibid. [16] Tim A. Ryan, “‘Music That Breathes and Touches’: The Implications of 1920s Blues and Jazz in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, ” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 48, 1 (Spring 2023): 11-12. [17] Ibid. [18] James S. Olson and Mariah Gumpert, “Charleston,” The New Era of the 1920s: Key Themes and Documents (New York City, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), 35-36. [19] Matthew McMahan, “‘Let me see you dance:’ Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith, the Charleston, and Racial Commodification in Interwar France,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 29, 2 (Spring 2015): 51. [20] Marta Effinger-Crichlow, Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones (Louisville, KY: University Press of Colorado, 2014), 96. [21] Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2013). [22] Gill H. Boehringer, “Imperialist Paranoia and Military Injustice: The Persecution and Redemption of Sergeant Calloway, ed. Hazel M. McFerson, Mixed Blessings: The Impact of the American Colonial Experience on Politics and Society in the Philippines (Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 2002), 330. [23] Gill H. Boehringer, “Imperialist (In) Justice: The Case of Sergeant Calloway,” International Association of Democratic Lawyers, 3. [24] Ibid, 324. [25] Peter Keppy, Tales of Southeast Asia’s Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians, and Popular Culture, 1920-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 43. [26] Anne Anlin Cheng, Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). [27] Shane Vogel, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, and Performance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 70. [28] Henry Jenkins, “Pop Cosmopolitanism,” 114. [29] Arwin Tan writes on the political economy Philippine bodabil and how “Filipino musicians responded to the capitalist imperative of a growing market and audience while also maintaining a space for the negotiation of relations between the divergent cultures of the hegemonic empire and the colony” (85). See Arwin Q. Tan, “ Bodabil Music and the American Empire,” Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, eds. Adil Johan & Mayco A. Santaella, 2021. [30] Michael Denning, Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution (New York: Verso Books, 2015) , 6. [31] Ancheta, “Rise of the Naughties,” 338. [32] Ibid, 336. [33] Maria Luisa Camagay, Working Women of Manila in the 19 th Century (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1995). [34] Nick Joaquin, “Pop Culture: The American Years,” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 (Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978), 2734. [35] Nick Joaquin “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird,” Collected Verse (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila Univeristy Press, 1987), 80. [36] Schenker, Empire of Syncopation, 256. [37] Nick Joaquin “Bye-Bye Jazz Bird,” 81. [38] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). [39] Maureen Mahon, Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020). [40] Maggie Calloway, “Impressions of Singapore,” Malaya Tribune , 27 September 1928. [41] Anne Anlin Cheng, Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). [42] “Public Amusements,” Malaya Tribune, February 22, 1929, pg. 7. [43] Adria Imada, Aloha America: Hula Circuits Through the U.S. Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 6. [44] Other vaudeville artists performed in Hawaii for Philippine Ilokano laborers in the 1920s, including Atang de la Rama and Toytoy. Oftentimes they performed traditional kundiman in front of Philippines audiences. In addition, Isabel Rosario Cooper also performed as the “racial type” of the hula girl in her live performances and films. [45] “Philippine Islands Folk Dance for Singapore Show,” Morning Tribune, January 29, 1941, p. 4. Works Cited Ancheta, Maria. “The Rise of the Naughties: Humor in Katy de la Cruz’s Bodabil Songs,” ed. José Buenconsejo. Philippine Modernities: Music, Performing Arts, and Language, 1880-1941. Quezon City: University of Philippines Press, 2017. “At the Stadium Tomorrow,” Manila Times, January 4, 1927. Burns, Lucy Mae San Pablo. Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Boehringer, Gill H. “Imperialist Paranoia and Military Injustice: The Persecution and Redemption of Sergeant Calloway. ed. Hazel M. McFerson, Mixed Blessings: The Impact of the American Colonial Experience on Politics and Society in the Philippines. Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 2002. Brown, Jayna. Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Calloway, Maggie. “Impressions of Singapore,” Malaya Tribune , 27 September 1928. Camagay, Maria Luisa. Working Women of Manila in the 19 th Century. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1995. Casiño, Domingo N. “The Evil Influences of Vaudeville,” The Independent, July 31, 1926. Cheng, Anne Anlin. Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Cruz, Denise. Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina. Durham: Duke UP, 2012. Denning, Michael. Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution. New York: Verso Books, 2015. Effinger-Crichlow, Marta. Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones . Louisville, KY: UP of Colorado, 2014. Gonzalez, Vernadette Vicuña. Empire’s Mistress: Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper. Durham: Duke UP, 2021. Hartman, Saidiya . Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. New York: W.W. Norton, 2021. Hollandus, “The City Opera,” Malaya Tribune , September 28, 1928. Imada, Adria. Aloha America: Hula Circuits Through the U.S. Empire. Durham: Duke UP, 2012. Ira, Luningning B. “Two Tickets to the Vod-a-Vil.” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 . Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978. Jenkins, Henry. “Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence.” Eds. M.M. Suárez-Orozco & D.B. Qin-Hillard, Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Joaquin, Nick. “Bye-Bye Jazzbird.” Collected Verse . Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1987. —.“Pop Culture: The American Years.” Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation, Vol. 10 . Manila: Lahing Pilipino, 1978. Keppy, Peter. Tales of Southeast Asia’s Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesians, and Popular Culture, 1920-1936. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Mahon, Maureen . Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll Durham: Duke UP, 2020. McMahan, Matthew. “‘Let me see you dance:’ Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith, the Charleston, and Racial Commodification in Interwar France,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 29, 2 (Spring 2015): 43-61. Miranda, Isidora K. “Creative Authorship and the Filipina Diva Atang de la Rama.” Journal of Musicological Research, vol. 40, no. 4 (2021): pp. 297-322. Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2003. Ngozi-Brown, Scot. “African-American Soldiers and Filipinos: Racial Imperialism, Jim Crow, and Social Relations,” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 82, no. 1 (1997): pp. 42-53. Olson James S. and Mariah Gumpert. “Charleston,” The New Era of the 1920s: Key Themes and Documents . New York City, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017. Ontal, Rene G. “Fagen and Other Ghosts: African-Americans and the Philippine-American War. Eds. Angel Velasco Shaw and Luis Francia, Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. New York: NYU Press, 2002. “Philippine Islands Folk Dance for Singapore Show,” Morning Tribune, January 29, 1941. “Public Amusements,” Malaya Tribune, February 22, 1929. Ryan, Tim A. “‘Music That Breathes and Touches’: The Implications of 1920s Blues and Jazz in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, ” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 48, 1 (Spring 2023): 1-23. San Juan E. “African American Internationalism and Solidarity with the Philippine Revolution.” Socialism and Democracy vol. 24, no. 2 (2010): pp. 32-65. Schenker, Frederick J. Empire of Syncopation: Music, Race, and Labor in Colonial Asia’s Jazz Age, PhD Dissertation. University of Wisconsin—Madison, 2016. Talusan, Mary. Instruments of Empire: Filipino Musicians, Black Soldiers, and Military Band Music during US Colonization of the Philippines . Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 2021. Tan, Arwin Q. “ Bodabil Music and the American Empire.” Eds. Adil Johan & Mayco A. Santelli, Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, 2021. Vogel, Shane. The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, and Performance. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 2009). Footnotes About The Author(s) JEWEL PEREYRA is a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Her first book project, Dreamed Dwelling: A Memory Reconstruction of Afro-Filipina Relational Aesthetics, re-orients scholarship on Afro-Asian social movements and military histories of the Black Pacific by amplifying Filipina and Black feminist and queer performance genealogies across the long twentieth century. Her research was awarded the 2024 American Studies Association's Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize and has been supported by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her writing also appears or is forthcoming in MELUS, Post45, and Beyond the X: Queer and Trans Filipinx Studies, and in exhibitions in affiliation with Little Manila Queens and Tufts University Art Galleries. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 212. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century. Marlis Schweitzer. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020; Pp. 276. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272. The Brothers Size Dead Outlaw 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival ZAZ Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25 Politics Take Center Stage in the Berkshires, 2024-25 Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

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

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

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

Dr. Kimmika L.H. Williams Witherspoon Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater Dr. Kimmika L.H. Williams Witherspoon By Published on May 13, 2023 Download Article as PDF On, (May 25, 2020), for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the world watched the callous murder of George Floyd at the hands of members of the Minneapolis police department in Minnesota and Black Lives Matter protests erupted—not just in the United States; but, in Ireland the UK and across the globe. Two years earlier, thanks to a $50,000 Lumina Foundation for Racial Justice and Equity grant, the Temple University Theater department worked with a team of faculty, administrators and staff researchers to collect data, conceive and then mount the devised theater piece, called From Safe to Brave. That play was created from a series of Interactive Community Conversations (or, ICC’s), auto-ethnography, body-mapping and poetic ethnographies that pulled together all that research on the effects of race and hate crimes on college campuses across America. It was that research and devised performance—along with the subsequent racialized and polarizing political ecology that led to the development of the Performance Social Justice Model (PSJR) for devised theater. Methodology In response to the rise in hate crimes generally and specifically on college campuses in the US, in the context of a political moment, where a nation has been made to grapple with questions around white supremacy, police violence, Black Lives Matter and socio-political and health care inequities for their BIPOC citizenry, a Temple University team of scholars, staff and administrators, came together to apply for and were awarded a $50,000 Lumina Foundation for Racial Justice and Equity grant. Out of a pool of over 312 proposals, 12 were awarded; and the Temple University project, entitled Moving from Safe to Brave Spaces through Interactive Community Conversations , was one of them (2018-2019). Fifty-seven participants took part in those community conversations over a four-month period and, out of that research, scores of auto-ethnography, body-mapping and poetic ethnographies were created and collected that would become the devised theater piece From Safe to Brave . As PI, playwright and director of just one of the principal deliverables of the grant, that performance piece, From Safe to Brave , was originally produced for Temple University’s Randall Theater (April 23-24, 2019). Playing to standing-room-only crowds for its limited 2-day run, from its conception as a devised theater ecology, the From Safe to Brave project helped us develop a model for digging deep and exploring the impact of race and racism on the relationships of individuals on and through a community like Temple University— a large, urban, educational institution, deeply embedded in what was once, a predominantly Black and Latinx community. And then, there was George Floyd! As protests emerged around the world, the Temple Theater department wanted to remount that piece following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 for a virtual audience to contribute to the discourse and encourage healing. Ethnographies In the Performative Arts and Humanities, conducting and collecting ethnography that can become “performed research” can be an effective tool for mediating difficult conversations and diving deep into the various stakeholder perspectives while capturing community for the non-threatening, non-confrontational performance space. Engaging members of the community in research that results in performance oftentimes tempers and/or defuses their usual defensiveness to publicly discuss the, oftentimes, issues of contention. Instead, these kinds of devised performances can promote a willingness to s hare the other side of the story when convinced that their views will have equal platform and voice . This devised community performance grew out of research with an intergenerational tapestry of fifty-seven community voices made up of students, faculty, administrators and resident participants from the Temple University community, that used memory, narrative, song, poetry, and dance to speak to notions of race, racism , and the impact of hate crimes on college campuses. Performed Social Justice Research (PSJR) Model PSJR Model Model Phase Items Component Parts Purpose Challenges Outcomes ICC’s Akin to Focus Groups Interactive Community Conversation 5-15 participants per ICC Information, Consent Pre and Post Surveys Packing the ICC. Never reached full capacity. Demographic data; consent, Developing a shared lexicon Reflexivity Memory Writing Prompts Identifying Stakeholder Positions. Creation of auto-ethnography and personal narratives. We slotted an hour and one half for this portion. Needs 2-hour minimum Auto-ethnography, personal narratives, & poetic ethnography Visual Model Embodied memory Body Mapping exercises Creation of Body Maps as visual ethnography. Recorded explanations of map and key–– Additional ethnography. Slotted time: 1 ½ hours. Needs to be a minimum of 2 hrs. Creation of Body Maps as visual ethnography Recorded explanations of map and key— Additional ethnography. Data Analysis Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative data Reviewing and curating auto-ethnography Transcription, Data-mining Archival footage; Body maps Reviews the data; Audio and video ethnography Script development Framed Body Maps Dissemination of “Applied,” research data Devised Theater Auditions Casting Rehearsals Developing a DUI signage Turn-around time from rehearsals, to mounting the production. All the participating researchers should be invited to the performance. Performed Social Justice Research (PSJR) Model Following the murder of George Floyd (May 25, 2020), not long after the start of the pandemic, I was asked by my chair to remount that initial performance of From Safe to Brave . In the initial face-to-face version, my colleagues and I had used the PSJR model that we developed to collect and distill ethnographies from a wide swath of participants as they grappled with an incredibly complex racialized political ecology. As mentioned, that work became, first, From Save to Brave (2019) and then, remounted for a virtual audience, From Save to Brave Redux (November 2020). This PSJR model allows us to expand the understanding and definitions of ethnography and encourages us, as artists/activists to explore the importance of validating community stories in our work to improve social justice outcomes. Interactive Community Conversation (ICC) Relying on focus groups to inform our data collection on the efficacy of interventions, policies and procedures has been part of our work for years. Incorporating the Interactive Community Conversations or (ICC’s) into the model, relies heavily on storytelling and body-mapping. Using Interactive Community Conversations as the first phase of the Performance Social Justice Research, offers a creativity-centric tool that grounds our work in storytelling, theater and performance studies that can be employed to enhance the effectiveness of the kinds of ethnographic data that we capture that might not otherwise be gleaned from any other typical focus group. The ICC’s should still include information about the impetus for the research and mechanisms to consent to the research, as well as options as to whether they will or will not consent to the use of their auto-ethnographies, ethnographies and body maps to be used in the resulting performance. For our research, all of the reflexive auto-ethnographies that were prompt-driven were written in blue books that we provided participants at the start of each ICC. While all of the participants had the option to take part in all of the activities, at the end of each ICC, participants always had the option of keeping their Blue Books to themselves and not contributing their auto-ethnographies to the overall project. Participants could also opt to allow us to transcribe their auto-ethnographies anonymously. The PSJR model still incorporates some of the more traditional focus group components. Our project utilized pre and post-surveys. While optional, these surveys attempted to collect demographic, education and social science data, as well as to evaluative data to quantify the participants’ understanding of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion terminology and theories on race and anti-racism—both, before and after, each new activity would be introduced throughout the ICC’s. The post-surveys helped our research team evaluate the efficacy of the Reflexive Auto-ethnography and Visual Ethnography phases of the project. Cultural Competency: Developing a Shared Lexicon Following the pre-survey, to develop and encourage a shared lexicon, we introduced a discussion of terms that included words like: Power Privilege Racism Prejudice Institutional racism Violence Activism For those who will, likewise, try implementing the PSJR model, whatever your project is, identifying and defining the terms and theories that are integral to the subject matter and your research; then, reviewing and discussing those collectively with each group of participants evens the playing field , reduces the occurrences of misunderstanding and limits the instances whereby one or more participants who already know the terminology (or, terminologies) to then adopt and take on the role as specialists—and, thereby, potentially, intimidating the others. Reflexivity Model Phase Because PSJR operates as “applied performance research”, to promote community understanding and to expand the social justice ecology of the project, allowing participants to craft auto-ethnographies that speak to their own identity as one of the first reflexive exercises gives participants, not only a voice, but also gives them a sense of agency. Later, in the rehearsal process, these auto-ethnographies can be referenced to help mark and solidify how the work should be embodied. Poetic Ethnography Prompts Reflexive Writing Activities provided an easy, structured way to craft quick auto-ethnographies. For this project, we used several Poetic Ethnography prompts that I regularly use in classroom and workshop settings that are meant to operate as easy access points to promote creativity. Poetic Ethnography Prompts One Line on Identity Seven Squared Haiku on Race Happiest Memory free write Saddest Memory free write Using these reflective exercises, seemingly, made crafting and developing the auto-ethnographies easier. While some of the memories that participants wrote about and shared were indeed, rich—full of sights, sounds, feelings and emotions—some were, in fact, triggering and traumatizing. In our project, the prompt sequence allowed participants to quickly access the sometimes, difficult and challenging memories of race and racism and to expeditiously talk about those instances that so impacted their lives. If your project, likewise, tackles sensitive or triggering issues or trauma-informed memories, using auto-ethnography prompts offers a strategic way to briefly gain access to some of those challenging thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The key to collecting meaningful reflections is to keep the prompts focused, short, quick and easy and to give individuals an appropriate amount of time to share their reflections (or not to share , depending upon their comfort level.) Because the prompts are timed, individuals don’t get bogged down in over-thinking any one memory; and because they are being asked to reflect on their own individual stories, the research team has already assured them that they are already invested in each, individual participant’s positionality, personal narrative, participation and input. Visual Model Phase Rethinking Rene Descartes’ notion of Mind/Body Dualism (Rene Descartes, 1993) the Visual model phase of the PSJR work transforms Descartes’ ideas “I think therefore I am ” to one that acknowledges the importance of the emotional connections in our work as artist/activists and social justice advocates. I feel therefore I am (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020) builds on the research of people like Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and others, who acknowledge, that by “triggering moments of deep reflection, when people are thinking deeply about things that are really meaningful to them, they are triggering neurobiological connections.” (Immordino-Yang, 2016: 18) In other words, “reflection promotes deep thinking.” (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020, Performing Race : 45) Body Mapping For our project, we used Body mapping. My colleague Dr. Elizabeth Sweet, led study participants in the creation and collection of visual ethnographies . The body mapping provided for “a more kinesthetic accompanying narrative about how racism impacts the body.” (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020: Performing Race : 38) Participants were asked to think deeply about the answers to the following four questions: Draw how and where racism feels on or in your body. Draw the emotions that you feel when you observe racism. Draw the long-term impacts of racism on or in your body Draw on or in your body where you have strength to fight racism. (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020: 38 Performing Race ) In their creation of the 7-foot-tall body maps , these maps added another layer of texts that visually spoke to the trauma of racism in some spaces. (Williams-Witherspoon, 2020: 38) Before ending the body mapping activities, participants were asked to explain the Body Map Key for each map. These video-taped segments became the filmed ethnographic material and, some of the longer monologues in the final devised performances. The Interactive Community Conversations (ICC’s) validated participant’s thoughts, feelings and poetic ethnographies that would later become the devised or applied research data theatre. (Cohen-Cruz, 2010: 5) Data Analysis Model Phase Before reviewing and curating auto-ethnographies from the Reflexive Writing Activities, they needed to be transcribed. Transcription is one of the most important steps in the analysis process because so much of our communication strategies are tied to cultural competencies—gestures, eye movement, body language. In addition to the quantitative data collected from the pre and post-surveys administered to participants during each Interactive community conversation, the qualitative data gleaned from the transcripts will become the basis of the devised theater piece. From Script to Performance The transcription phase is the longest step in the performed research process. The more accurate and thorough the transcription process, the easier the step to distill the personal narratives, poetry and auto-ethnographies into a devised performance script with ensemble characters based on the real-life research participants from across the community. In performance, it is vital that everyone’s voice is acknowledged and a portion of everyone’s story becomes part of the scripted performance. In this way, we acknowledge the complexity of political ecologies and we contribute to social justice solutions by elevating and expanding community conversations. Because of COVID-19, in response to a world-wide pandemic, by Spring 2020, most of the world had experienced some manner or method of quarantine and sequestering. Many theaters were forced to cancel or reschedule performances—others, simply closed their doors. Following the murder of George Floyd and the season of summer protests that ensued, many of our nation's theaters were prompted to address growing concerns and to investigate and utilize digital and video technologies to continue to create, and to contribute to the expanding public discourse on violence and the racial reckoning. With that in mind, Temple Theaters revised fall season, included both some plays that would be performed as zoom performances along with some offerings that were intended to provide students and audience members alike with a safe in-person experience as well. As COVID numbers continued to rise, our Fall 2020 season needed to happen on Zoom ®. To speak to the racial reckoning following George Floyd’s murder, some new monologues, poems and songs were added to the original script. Actors, quarantining in their homes across the country, were sent ring lights, instruction on how to use them, and, in addition to regular zoom rehearsals, were also given blocking and tips on how to enhance their individual video-taped performance on Zoom. Using green screen technologies designed by Temple Theater graduate students and innovative video and sound editing by my colleagues, Jason Norris and Nick Gackenbach, From Safe to Brave Redux premiered on November 20th through December 7, 2020 on YouTube ®, Facebook ® and Temple Theater’s streaming links. Conclusion Ultimately, because of COVID-19, theater artists/activists, researchers and theaters had to become even more creative and entrepreneurial—for many of us, by using the PSJR Research model and dabbling and using some of the latest cutting-edge technologies to continue to tell our stories—even in a pandemic when our communities were hurting the most and needed to be separated from one another. As hate, injustice, racism, sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and oppression continues to raise its ugly head(s) and dominate our collective struggle for equity and justice, Social Activist theater will continue to rise in importance as a vehicle to advocate for social change. Because of the challenges of 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, theater as we knew it, had to transform and reimagine itself. For those of us already working with devised performance as community engagement, theater during the pandemic necessitated new theatrical devices to continue to do the work important to us as social justice artists/activists. As we have discussed in this work, Performed Social Justice Research (PSJR) is reality-based theater and instruction. It is participatory. It constructs knowledge and aligns history with more inclusive truths . By using the PSJR model, with the Interactive Community Conversations component, applied arts researchers can collect more nuanced ethnographic data beyond the more traditional focus-group studies. By using some of the methods outlined here in the PSJR model to collect, transcribe, analyze, then curate and disseminate Performance research, these same research methods can be used to extend some of the new theatrical devices we all had to develop during the pandemic and to expand our definitions of devised theater. Giving community members “voice” and allowing the ethnographies to speak for themselves, through the art and its text, as applied artists/scholars, we can contribute to our nation’s most challenging problems and to those conversations in the public discourse by providing a “genuine exchange between artists and community”(Cohen-Cruz: 3). In that way, we will not only “act as a witness” (Albert Camus, cited in Charlesworth, 1975:32); but we will also, be a catalyst for change. References Charlesworth, Max. The Existentialist and Jean-Paul Sartre. St Lucia. Queensland University of Queensland Press. 1975. Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy , edited by Stanley Tweyman. Routledge. 34–40. London and New York. 1993. Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen. Emotions, Learning and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience . W.W. Norton Company. New York. 2016. Williams-Witherspoon, Kimmika L. H. "Performing Race: Using Performance to Heal the Trauma of Race and Racism on College Campuses." In Storytelling, Self, Society. Wayne State University Press. (16:1, Spring 2020), https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/storytelling/ Williams-Witherspoon, Center for the Advancement of Teaching, (CAT) Lecture Breakout Session, January 7, 2020. “Performing SHOT: Personalizing North Philly, Poverty and Performance Poetry.” In Ethnographic in Pan Pacific Research: Tensions and Positionings. Routledge: New York. 2015. 36-55. Williams-Witherspoon. “On SHOT!: A Rationale for Research and Dramas Depicting Violence in the ‘Hood.” In Theatre Topics 23, no. 2 (2013): 167-183. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PX7H8mAoz0 Footnotes About The Author(s) KIMMIKA WILLIAMS-WITHERSPOON , Ph.D. (Cultural Anthropology), MA (Anthropology), MFA (Theater), Women's Studies (Graduate Certificate), BA (Journalism); is an Associate Professor of Urban Theater and Community Engagement. Recipient of the 2013 Associate Provosts for the Arts Grant; a 2008 Research and Creative Seed Grant Co-recipient, a 2003 Provost's Arts Commission Grant; a 2001 Independence Foundation Theater Communications Group Grant, the 2000 winner of the PEW Charitable Trust fellowship in scriptwriting, and the 1999, winner of the DaimlerChrysler "Spirit of the Word" National Poetry Competition. Author of Through Smiles and Tears: The History of African American Theater (From Kemet to the Americas) (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011); T he Secret Messages in African American Theater: Hidden Meaning Embedded in Public Discourse (Edwin Mellen Publishing, 2006). She has had over twenty-three of her plays produced. Her stage credits include thirteen productions and she is a contributing poet to twenty-six poetry anthologies. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Collin Vorbeck Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 32 2 Visit Journal Homepage Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies Collin Vorbeck By Published on June 12, 2020 Download Article as PDF Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies . Edited by Rhonda Blair and Amy Cook. London: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 243+xii. Rhonda Blair and Amy Cook’s co-edited volume Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies advances the cross-disciplinary discourse inspired by the cognitive turn by interrogating the ways practitioners and audiences make meaning through our varied encounters with theatre. Buoyed by their individual groundbreaking scholarship in the field, the editors curate a complex collection of American and international perspectives that how “the implications of embodied, embedded, enacted and extended minds” impact engagement with a variety of performing arts (3). Their volume invigorates the intersection of theatre and cognition with incisive case studies that partner physiological and psychological research to expand our awareness of how we generate understanding of performance. Blair and Cook argue that our embodied experiences shape the meanings we draw from theatrical encounters, and they structure their book to explore the three cognitive relationships evoked by their subtitle: interpretation of the text, communication through action, and synergy of performance and environment. This structure subtly mirrors a production process and moves organically from script analysis through the rehearsal process to engaged performance, exposing cognitive revelations with each progression. The editors provide a salient overview of the current landscape of cognitive studies, and they succinctly introduce each section to frame their selected essays. Blair and Cook augment their cross-disciplinary emphasis by concluding each section with a response from a preeminent cognitive scholar. Culminating in an inventive After Words section, this invitingly conversational volume offers practitioners and scholars fresh perspectives on how theatre and performance create meaning on the page and on the stage. Blair and Cook’s first section explores the way language creates and sustains realities onstage by applying cognitive linguistics and metaphor theory to dramatic texts. Barbara Dancygier investigates how the materiality embedded within the script influences reception. She outlines what she calls the “dramatic anchors” in Julius Caesar and Richard II that trigger deeper meanings and layered connections throughout each play, directly citing Caesar’s mantle and Richard’s mirror as material elements that activate understanding (32). Laura Seymour’s essay also draws from Julius Caesar , focusing on the behaviors of the conspirators prior to the assassination. Seymour studies the act of kneeling and other bodily-situated references to address how these seemingly acquiescent actions engender metaphorical associations in readers and audiences. Vera Tobin moves away from specific dramatic texts to inspect the inherently theatrical elements of irony. She borrows from conceptual blending theory to illustrate how comprehending irony requires the activation of multiple mental spaces derived from “how we move around within a particular viewpoint configuration” (66). Cognitive linguist Mark Turner responds to this section by praising its interdisciplinary endeavors and outlining methodologies that will bolster future partnerships between cognition and performance. The second section examines the ways the enacted body creates and sustains meaning through a wide variety of artistic engagement, partnering performance strategies with neuroscientific research to investigate the power of perception. Neal Utterback’s essay proposes a theatre training model, for instance, that draws from the psychological and physiological rigors of Olympic competition to create an actor-athlete regimen. To prepare his student actors for sustained engagement in their performances, Utterback developed a process that uses “power posing combined with mental imagery and positive self-talk” to connect the benefits of cognitive perception to embodied results (80). Dance scholar Warburton surveys ArtsCross , an international collaborative event, and zooms in on the psychophysical experiences enacted during the rehearsal process. He compares the physical and mental output utilized when marking versus dancing full-out and concludes that the compression and compartmentalization of marking “reduces the multi-layered cognitive load used when learning choreography” (102). Christopher Jackman furthers the discussion of memory and suggests “an enactive model of cognition” that attempts to avoid the hurdles of self-consciousness in performance (108). Jackman’s mindful approach to training at times feels overcrowded, but his goal to build and maintain the skills of acting through neuroscientific methods is intriguing. Cognitive psychologist Catherine J. Stevens responds to this section by citing recent interdisciplinary studies that seek to deepen understanding of the embodied experiences explored by these essays, specifically attuned to dance and movement. The final section of Blair and Cook’s ambitious book considers how cognition evolves dynamically through engagement with the environment, stressing the importance of accounting for spatiotemporal realities when assessing potential meanings of a given event. Evelyn Tribble’s essay provides a broad overview of these relationships, using television cooking shows, the English Restoration theatre system, and copious cross-disciplinary sources to support her argument. Tribble contends that “distributed cognition” makes possible the “overwhelming cognitive load” required to perform, and that structures external to the body – a theatre, a school, or a familiar kitchen set-up – play a crucial role in understanding how to navigate a given situation (134). Similarly, Sarah McCarroll parallels the cultural signification of fashion with historical stage performances to argue that conscious “body images” and pre-cognitive “body schemas” coalesce to form what she calls the “body map” (144). Her fascinating study of the costume choices in J.M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton illustrates how clothing combines with the environment to both enable and restrict embodied action. Shifting modalities, Matt Hayler introduces a new approach to digital technologies and asks readers to actively engage online with his chosen examples. He argues that such engagement results in “reflexive relationships” that impart circular cognitive meaning by continually informing the experience through feedback loops (162). Philosopher Shaun Gallagher responds to this section by applying his “prenoetic” theory of human cognition to each essay, demonstrating the subconscious ways the body interacts with environments, clothing, and technology to make meaning (175). Blair and Cook further their cross-disciplinary endeavor by crafting a unique After Words section that provides deeper insights into the existing scholarship undergirding the emerging field. Through personal essays and interviews with a wide range of theatre practitioners, Blair and Cook reveal how pervasive cognitive studies has become to scholars and creators alike. Their conversation with Deb Margolis is particularly illuminating as the performing artist, teacher, and playwright discusses her own understanding of the important connection between the physical and cognitive limitations of the body. In a time when gathering for live performance is no longer an option due to pandemic, Theatre, Performance and Cognition finds a way to ingeniously engage with elements of the embodied experience that are simultaneously obvious and revelatory, and its essays speak to all levels of cognitive curiosities. What is more, the editors curate an excellent balance of dense but illuminating neuroscientific data and complimentary theatre-making examples. Blair and Cook’s thoughtful commentary throughout this book provides theorists and practitioners alike with inventive methods to approach current work and to create new scholarship, cognizant of the dynamic processes within our bodies that shape our understanding. Interest in cognitive/theatrical scholarship shows no signs of waning, and this volume further demonstrates the value of addressing complex aspects of performance with interdisciplinary lenses. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Collin Vorbeck Texas Tech University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography Introduction: Local Acts: Performing Communities, Performing Americas The Architecture of Local Performance: Stages of the Taliesin Fellowship “La conjura de Xinum” and Language Revitalization: Understanding Maya Agency through Theatre Exploring the History and Implications of Toxicity through St. Louis: Performance Artist Allana Ross and the “Toxic Mound Tours” Finding Home in the World Stage: Critical Creative Citizenship and the 13th South Asian Theatre Festival 2018 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jen-Scott Mobley and Maya E. Roth Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 1 Visit Journal Homepage Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Jen-Scott Mobley and Maya E. Roth By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF Playwright Jen Silverman. Photo: Joseph O'Malley and R. Masseo Davis. Playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and essayist Jen Silverman (they/them) won the Jane Chambers Prize for Excellence in Feminist Playwriting in 2012. Since then, Silverman has added nearly a dozen full length plays, several novels, and multiple screenwriting credits to their body of work . Before the pandemic, Silverman was pegged as a “downtown playwright” for works such as Phoebe in Winter, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties , and The Moors, among others . Most recently, Silverman’s play The Roommate ran on Broadway featuring Patti Lupone and Mia Farrow in 2024, and their adaptation of Strindberg’s Creditors ran at the Minetta Lane Theatre this past summer. Silverman’s work has been produced widely across the United States (Steppenwolf, The Goodman, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Huntington, Writers Theatre, among others) and internationally in Australia, the UK, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Spain, and elsewhere. Their books include: We Play Ourselves, The Island Dwellers , and There’s Going to be Trouble (Random House). Their essays have been published in The New York Times , The Paris Review , and Vogue . Honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim. More information can be found at: https://www.jensilverman.com/ Co-coordinators for ten and twenty years, respectively, of the Jane Chambers Prize, Jen-Scott Mobley (East Carolina University) and Maya E. Roth (Georgetown University) were delighted to connect with Silverman to discuss their trajectory as a writer and collaborator . An avid reader and wicked smart conversationalist, Silverman embraced our invitation to jump into the heart of discussion via two rounds of written questions-and-answers while they worked on a television project in LA. This interview was conducted via email in July and September 2025. It has been edited for brevity and clarity. · Maya E. Roth: We first encountered your work when you won the Jane Chambers Prize for Feminist Playwriting in 2012 for your beautiful, early and unexpected play, S TILL — which centers a distinctive array of complex relationships, ruptures and reinventions after a forty-year-old woman’s homebirth results in stillbirth . The imagery remains with me still: an irreverent single woman who cradles a pumpkin like her dead infant , her winsome still born adult-sized baby who roams for three days in search of his mother, a queer punk teen dominatrix who crushes on the older woman and paints toenails with the unborn son, a masked midwife-turned-dominatrix unleashing her rage at being scapegoated. When my college students read this play at Georgetown, they are simultaneously shocked, moved, and exhilarated. Likewise so when I taught Witch , your 2022 revisioning of the 17th century The Witch of Edmonton . While their subjects are so different, tonally both plays mix heartbreak, dark humor, disparate cultures, eclectic characters and audacity of storytelling. What are the cultural wellsprings that you are drawing from—What inspires any given project for you? Is there something you ask of yourself every time (a representational challenge, for instance) or is it unique from piece to piece? Jen Silverman : In my earlier work, I was drawn to wellsprings that were defiantly absurdist, places of juxtaposition and defamiliarization. My characters were struggling with intimacy and violence—systemic as well as interpersonal—but inside containers that refused what I saw as the well-ordered cleanness of realism. S TILL is a very early play—so much so that I rarely grant production rights to it anymore—but it definitely exemplifies some of those early touchstones. In more recent years, my plays have grown out of questions that I can’t shake, that I live alongside until the intensification of the question finds its way into a narrative structure. Then I try to interrogate that structure, without any preconception about what it should be and how it should move. This past year, Sonia Friedman commissioned me to do a new adaptation of August Strindberg’s Creditors. The play takes place between three people, in a sea-side hotel, across one night. It’s Scandinavian realism: emotionally heightened, lyrical, but realism nonetheless. And yet Creditors was the perfect container for the questions I had been living next to, about how we carry with us legacies of damage, when we choose tenderness in the face of violence, whether we can we rewrite our histories . . . and what happens to us when we can’t. I don’t think Strindberg shared my exact theatrical preoccupations—he thought of Creditors as a revenge play, and he had a particular soon-to-be-ex-wife in mind when he wrote it—but the specificity of that form was the perfect vessel for what I wanted to explore, in a way that it might not have been ten years ago. MER : This was one of the featured first productions of TOGETHER’s collaboration with Audible, right?! JS : Yes! TOGETHER is a new company formed by Sonia Friedman, Hugh Jackman, and Ian Rickson, and The Creditors was part of their first season at the Minetta Lane, along with Hannah Moscovitch’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes . MER : So those of us who didn’t see it playing in repertory with Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes can listen to Creditors (or teach or research it) via Audible X Together. How different is the audio version of your play compared to the stage one—or how does it work differently? JS : It’s the same text, but of course the format relies on sound to give what were previously visual cues: a door opening, an object being set down, and so on. Before the recording session, Ian and Jeremy Blocker and I had a really interesting conversation about one scene in which it might be hard to translate a visual cue into an aural one, and whether we might need to supplement with more text. I gave them a few extra words, but I’m not sure we ended up using them. MER : What did you think of that producing model? Chamber theatre, spare production values onstage, big names, dual releases on stage and A udible ? It’s one of those post-pandemic experiments in staging theatre and trying to make it accessible to a wider range of audiences: Beyond the audio releases, TOGETHER also offered a percentage of free tickets to community groups and steeply discounted ones for same-day purchases, right? D id the audiences indeed diversify? H ow so, if so, and what changed about the value and/ or reception from stage to audio, and from full-price tickets to disparate community groups? JS : I really loved being part of that first season. And it did feel a little Wild West-y in a fun way—stripped down, moving fast. Sonia and Ian came to me in December 2024, and we started rehearsals in April 2025. We did get a really diverse audience every night, not just in terms of the most obvious factors like age and race, though there was absolutely that. But it seemed like every audience was comprised of multiple audiences in terms of cultural reference points and their relationship to theatre. It made for an audience reaction that was pretty unpredictable in ways that were largely exciting and occasionally terrifying. Every night during the first week of the show, I would sit in the back row and feel like basically anything could happen, including disaster. And then if, by the end, the entire audience had become one organism, one creature breathing and moving together, it would feel like more of a miracle than ever. Jen-Scott Mobley : More directly, do you think these two experiments are helping theatre to successfully reach more widely? Any other innovative models you are excited by currently? JS : I do. And I’m also excited by the site-specific theatrical experiments that are repopulating the landscape more and more. One of my favorites is Nick Westrate and Lucy Owen’s The Streetcar Project. They built a four-actor version without changing the original text, and they’ve been performing it in different venues. The play changes when you see it in a Rachel Comey store vs someone’s backyard vs a church. They’ll be at ACT San Francisco this winter, and it’s exciting to think what a wide and varied life their production has had before it ever landed in a theatre. JSM : In your essay “My Gender is Masha Green,” you write “I’m hungry to witness queer health & success… & cheeky glamour as well.” Do you identify as a queer writer? How and why does that shape your plays? JS : Without being too fussy about semantics, I would say I identify as a writer, and also, I’m queer. Meaning, a queer lens is inextricable from the way I reflect the world through my experience, and therefore how I think about story and structure. But I am also white, I am also someone who was raised itinerantly and internationally, I am also a younger sibling, and the child of two scientists, among other things. These are all overlapping, equally inextricable lenses that shape my outlook and therefore my plays. I’m not sure that one is more consciously dominant than another. That said, in certain contexts, different parts of my identity become important to the person who is responding to the work. I’ve heard from younger people who feel very attached to the ways in which they see queerness in my work, and that response is deeply, personally meaningful to me. When I was younger, I also encountered work in which the kinds of queerness I saw expanded my sense of possibility and let me feel less alone, and so it is incredibly moving to me when other people have that experience with my writing. JSM : I can attest that your work has been eye-opening and empowering to my students who identify variously as queer or non-binary, female identifying, or feminist. Your work inspires them to read plays! What work(s) expanded your sense of possibility early in your career? JS : Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill, first. I read their plays in the first few months of freshman year at university—not having grown up going to the theatre, not really having seen any theatre—and I felt like they were talking to me. Paula Vogel and Sarah Ruhl also. Later, in grad school, the playwright Basil Kreimendahl and I went to Chicago to see Sylvan Oswald’s Pony —a genderqueered Woyzeck —and I remember an electric feeling: something was happening on that stage that reminded me that I existed. Or maybe that created a theatrical context in which my existence was part of a shared fabric. MER : Whose art inspires you now ? JS : A very short list (too short!) of playwrights & poets & novelists would include David Adjmi, Kaveh Akbar, Traci Brimhall, Alexander Chee, Helen Garner, Sheila Heti, Lucas Hnath, Donika Kelly, Basil Kreimendahl, Young Jean Lee, Rebecca Lindenberg, Mona Pirnot, Max Posner, and Richard Siken. But there are so many others! JSM : I love to teach The Moors . It never fails to thrill my script analysis students with the strong-willed heroines, the rock ballad, and Mastiff and the Moor Hen. You write a lot of non-human characters (the Mastiff & the Moor Hen, Wink, the PMS-ing Hippos, The Devil) who are at times mysterious, hilarious, charming, and dangerous, but importantly wonderful roles for actors. What does that dramaturgical choice enable you to express? JS : There’s a permission to speak the truth that comes when you’re putting words in the mouth of a dog or a devil. People have done this long before me—it’s not for nothing that the Devil is the most vivid character in the Gounod opera Faustus . Or that Shakespeare did this with his fools. They’re human, of course, but their distance from status makes them phenomenally observant and ruthlessly insightful. It’s been a while since I’ve worked that way theatrically, but I’m still exhilarated by the kind of brutal truth-telling that can happen by letting the least obvious characters speak from the margins. Playwright Jen Silverman. Photo: Zack Canepari. JSM : Among the reasons to celebrate your work is that your plays present remarkable opportunities for women and genderqueer actors, for example T he 5 Betties, and the “women of a certain age” in The Roommate . How deliberate is that for you when conceiving of a play? JS : I’ve never really sat down and thought about who should be in a play, without having first thought long and hard about what the play is, what it is attempting to do, what it requires. The Roommate was inspired by a story my mother-in-law told me, and as I chased down what had haunted me inside that story, I found myself writing a play about two women. Collective Rage was born of an overheated pressure-cooker of a summer in which, everywhere I turned, I encountered gendered expectations about what I should be doing with my body, my voice, my mind. In both cases, I was writing about what felt urgent to me, and it found form with those casts and characters. JSM : We’ve noticed that several of your most recent plays, including Spain , have more men in them. Is that a strategic choice to help get works staged or produced, or is there something else going on here? JS : Ha! No, not at all. I’m drawn to the play I need to write for a myriad of reasons and then I discover which characters need to populate that story. Sometimes when a play is a commission for a particular theatre, I’ll need to keep in mind certain realities like the actual space, or what cast size is even possible for them, but the gender breakdown of my characters has never been a strategic consideration for me. MER: I am struck by the disparate sources you adapt theatrically. Obviously Still , which was inspired by—and radically reimagined — the lived experience of one of your professor’s friends at Iowa during graduate school , and Creditors and Witch , which rework classic dramas in inventive new ways, but also your award-winning adaptation for narrative podcast (during the pandemic?) produced and featuring Rachel Brosnahan . I believe the latter springboard ed from the Vanity Fair article “ Miranda Obsession ” —about a woman who uses the persona “Miranda” to seduce an array of powerful men (industry executives) over the phone in the 1980s. What draws you to a text and inspires you to adapt found material from another time, place or form, in unique ways for performance? Commissions? Collaborators? Your own instincts? A writer’s habit? JS : Sometimes I stumble across a story, and I know right away that it’s saying something to me and that I have something to say back. Generally, that’s the key part—the adaptations around which I’ve had the most immediate certainty are ones where it really feels like I’m being talked to across space and time, and I want to reply. Sometimes a collaborator will bring me something that gives me this immediate spark—most often in the TV or film space—but in theatre and novels, I’m more often just wandering around until I bump into something thrilling. I’m a voracious, nearly pathological reader, though, so there’s also that. JSM : What makes for a good creative collaboration for you? JS : I’ve learned that if there’s a real synchrony in what we think is funny, we’re likely to be strongly aligned in other ways too. There’s something about the way humor and playfulness function that shows our relationship to much deeper core values—how we place ourselves in relation to our community, to history, to absurdity. Even relatively granular things like timing and pace matter deeply to a collaboration and are instantly legible in what someone laughs at and why. When I find that kind of alignment with a collaborator, we usually end up building ongoing bodies of work, often across multiple genres. MER : You have a knack for bending genre, time/space, representation, tone, and in a sense, you are queering form. What does that help you to express or achieve onstage, for storytelling, and/or the world? JS : My experience of time and space is a little warped, I think. I grew up switching countries and continents, moving between time-zones and languages. Cultural rules shifted as quickly as I learned them. The world for me is a fundamentally unstable place with all the gifts of that instability—the thrilling potential for transformation—and all of the dangers of sudden slippage. Surprise lives alongside pleasure lives alongside grief. In addition, I’m a genderqueer person who uses they/them pronouns; my history was shaped by partnerships with people who occupied a series of very different places on the gender spectrum. I believe in the power and pleasure—let’s even say the divine gift—of self-determination. And I guess that can’t help but affect what I make, both its content and its form. My characters are often striving for transformations of all kinds; my theatrical worlds are places where we are taught the rules, and then the rules shift and slip and break open. What we were, what we are, how we are in the process of becoming. Juxtapositions that we might not expect but that speak truth to each other. MER : The power and pleasure of self-determination. Transformation. Insights that arise from paradox and juxtapositions: This is the kind of storytelling and theatre that I love! In recent years you seem to have written more explicitly about cultural politics and ethical currents, too—perhaps reluctantly. We are thinking of works like your play Spain , your novel There’s Going to be Trouble , your op-ed in The New York Times , “Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable” (April 2024), where you argued that stories should not serve as “instruction manuals” for morals, but rather conduits for artfully exploring complexities and paradoxes . These seem to respond to our changing times . JSM : W hat is the role of art relative to society in your mind? Has that role, or your vision of it, changed or heightened, given the U.S today? JS : I’m drawn to art that contributes to my sense of possibility. Art that opens previously invisible doors inside my head and sends me toward new ways of understanding myself and my context. Maybe not even new , just ways that trigger the exhilaration of newness because they come at me via unexpected pathways, so I don’t have defenses against them. Clichés are defenses, bulwarks shored up against unexpected thinking. Some of the most destructive political moves that I’m seeing right now are inherently, violently cliché, coming out of threadbare self-consuming ideologies. I value art that pulls down the defense-system and goes: Oh look . In small subtle delicate ways or in larger bolder ones. Art doesn’t have to be “political” in the most blatant forms in order to be conducting these operations. Often it’s more effective if it sort of comes in sideways. Either way, the more it can inject possibility into our thinking, the more we can see ourselves and each other with new capacity. And change occurs where there is capacity. MER : Your body of work is so diverse! Novels, essays, plays. There’s something radical in how you move across genres, borders and formats, shapeshifting as a writer. How does your fiction writing and your TV and film work connect to your work for the stage? Does this connect to what you have called an “aesthetics of fluidity” when we spoke a few years back? JS : What draws me to a story doesn’t necessarily change with the genre or medium. But each form provides a different access point for a reader, or viewer, or audience member. So part of what interests me when I’m turning a new project over in my mind is the question of intimacy. How much do I need a visual language, or duration, or physical proximity, or the ability to read a character’s mind? What are the tools that will best serve the story? And then from there, the form coalesces, and as the story progresses, it tries to make the best use of its form. MER : Oh, that makes so much sense! Creating intimacy and responding to, even exploring, legacies of damage, and paradox through inventive storytelling recurs across your body of work, often landing powerfully in final moments of the narrative and medium in new ways: How do you create intimacy with audiences for performance in particular? JS : That’s a great question. I think it’s an ongoing investigation, for each piece, always. My overall sense is that you do it by inviting an audience into the theatre and making them feel that the invitation is a real one. Humor is an invitation. Rich, compelling characters are an invitation. Pleasure and honesty are different kinds of invitations. There are lots of ways to do it, but I’m not interested in making an audience uncomfortable in a hostile way—pointing a punishing finger at them, or something. If someone has actually left their home to come and sit with us, I want them to feel like the play really wants them there. And from there intimacy can occur—even if the play ends up taking them into places where they’re less comfortable. JSM : What piece from your body of work would you recommend theatre scholars, artists, and educators engage with beyond your works for the stage? JS : My second novel, There’s Going To Be Trouble , engages with the theatrical and the political in the form of two seductions. It tells the story of a young man enmeshed in the Harvard student protests of the late 60s and, fifty years later, his daughter in the roiling street protests of Paris. Both fall in love with radical activists, inside very different frameworks of belief, and find themselves drawn toward the euphoric urgency of radicalization. And eventually, father and daughter are forced to encounter each other in the present, across an ideological divide: a man who’s given up on the world after having committed a horrifying and shameful act in the name of progress, and the daughter who is falling in love with the idea of changing the world, no matter the cost—but who finds herself increasingly proximal to the violence that comes with that phrase, “no matter the cost.” MER : Thank you for your extraordinary writing, your intelligence, your range. It’s been a gift to talk about your work, discover what you’re up to, and how you think about writing for the stage, queer writing, and the value of paradoxes. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JEN-SCOTT MOBLEY is an Associate Professor at East Carolina University. She has co-curated the Jane Chambers Award alongside Maya Roth since 2015, previously serving as a reader and prior to that stewarding the Student Jane Chambers Award for several years. In addition to her work in dramaturgy, play development, and feminist playwriting, Mobley’s scholarship also studies embodiment onstage and screen. Her 2014 monograph Female Bodies on the American Stage: Enter Fat Actress was among the earliest to explore fat bodies in representation through the interdisciplinary lens of performance and fat studies. MAYA E. ROTH is a Professor at Georgetown University. An artist-scholar, she specializes in new work development, plays that fuse psychic and social stakes, contemporary feminist playwrights and cross-cultural adaptations of classics. T ogether with Jen-Scott Mobley she coedited Lesbian and Queer Plays from the Jane Chambers Prize (2019, No Passport Press) . Across her career, she has developed innovative models for pedagogy, curation and collaborative research, weaving creative practice into teaching and scholarship. Her research has appeared in disparate contexts, including academic presses such as Routledge, Bloomsbury, Palgrave and McFarland, and arts venues including Shakespeare Theatre, HowlRound and international festivals. Maya was honored to serve as founding artistic director of the Davis Performing Arts Center. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale “The Star of the Aggregation”: Maggie Calloway’s Performances of Aggregation and Pleasure in Colonial Manila and British Malaya What’s at Stake? Sustaining DEIJ in U.S. Theatre "The Gift That Keeps on Giving": An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana Saying The F Word: A Conversation with Jordan Tannahill Staging Intimacy and Paradox through a Queer Lens: A Conversation with Jen Silverman Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Edited by Carolyn M. Dunn, Eric Micha Holmes, and Les Hunter. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 212. Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research. Ben Spatz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2024; Pp. 314. Bloody Tyrants & Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth Century. Marlis Schweitzer. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020; Pp. 276. Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity. Bethany Hughes. New York: New York University Press, 2024; Pp. 272. The Brothers Size Dead Outlaw 2025 Oregon Shakespeare Festival ZAZ Introduction: New England Theatre in Review 2.0 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres, 2024-25 Politics Take Center Stage in the Berkshires, 2024-25 Long Wharf Theatre, 2024-25 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

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

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