Watch Bob Wilson's Life & Death of Marina Abramovic by Giada Colagrande at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. This documentary film captures the creation of an experimental opera based on the biography of legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic, directed by Robert Wilson with music and performance by singer and composer Anohni, and featuring actor Willem Dafoe as a central figure. Director Giada Colagrande provides access to the process of making the piece through rehearsal footage and interviews with the artists as they work — revealing the complex dynamics, creative tensions, and moments of genuine discovery that accompany the development of a performance of this kind. The result is an intimate portrait of four major artists in collaboration: Wilson's exacting visual sensibility in dialogue with Abramovic's biography of radical durational endurance, Anohni's vocal presence, and Dafoe's physical precision. The film documents both the content of the piece — which treats Abramovic's life, her Serbian childhood, her decades of physical and conceptual performance, and the mythology that has grown around her — and the process of translating that biography into Wilson's distinctive theatrical language of image, light, and formalized movement. Rather than serving simply as a record of a production, the film functions as its own kind of portrait: of the making of art, the trust required between artists, and the particular vulnerability of creating something large and strange together. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Bob Wilson's Life & Death of Marina Abramovic Giada Colagrande At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This film will be screened on June 2 at 8:45 PM, at Anthology Film Archives RSVP Please note that these screenings are ticketed and require prior registration at the Anthology Film Archives website. Country Germany / Switzerland Language English Running Time 57 minutes Year of Release 2012 About The Film This documentary film captures the creation of an experimental opera based on the biography of legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic, directed by Robert Wilson with music and performance by singer and composer Anohni, and featuring actor Willem Dafoe as a central figure. Director Giada Colagrande provides access to the process of making the piece through rehearsal footage and interviews with the artists as they work — revealing the complex dynamics, creative tensions, and moments of genuine discovery that accompany the development of a performance of this kind. The result is an intimate portrait of four major artists in collaboration: Wilson's exacting visual sensibility in dialogue with Abramovic's biography of radical durational endurance, Anohni's vocal presence, and Dafoe's physical precision. The film documents both the content of the piece — which treats Abramovic's life, her Serbian childhood, her decades of physical and conceptual performance, and the mythology that has grown around her — and the process of translating that biography into Wilson's distinctive theatrical language of image, light, and formalized movement. Rather than serving simply as a record of a production, the film functions as its own kind of portrait: of the making of art, the trust required between artists, and the particular vulnerability of creating something large and strange together. Director: Giada Colagrande Featuring: Robert Wilson, Marina Abramovic, Willem Dafoe, Anohni About The Artist(s) Giada Colagrande is an Italian filmmaker and actress based in New York. She has directed several feature films including Febbre (2006) and A Woman (2010), as well as documentary projects focused on the intersection of performance and visual art. Her film Bob Wilson's Life & Death of Marina Abramovic offers an intimate account of the creation of an experimental opera bringing together four of the leading figures of contemporary performance: Robert Wilson, Marina Abramovic, Willem Dafoe, and Anohni. Get in touch with the artist(s) and follow them on social media Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2026 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here

M. Landon 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 Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. M. Landon By Published on April 17, 2023 Download Article as PDF Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. A decade after her TaPRA Research Award-winning monograph Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century challenged traditional modes of theatrical authorship, Yugoslavic-British dramaturg Dr. Duška Radosavljević delivers yet another groundbreaking intervention in performance research. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age , published by Routledge in October 2022, emerged from its namesake, the Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Post-Verbatim, Amplified Storytelling and Gig Theatre in the Digital Age Project (henceforth referred to as the A/OD Project). This project was an ethnographic, “creative and methodological departure into the unknown,” (35) involving the work of four A/OD Artists in Residence. The A/OD Project (a digital compendium taking place from 2020-2021, during the first wave of COVID-19) was developed to investigate post-verbatim performance, amplified storytelling and gig theatre—three popular British “trends” that Radosavljević believes resulted from the digital age—through dramaturgies of speech and sound. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies is split into five chapters, supplemented by the Lend Me Your Ears collection, the project’s digital archive accessible at https://www.auralia.space . The opening chapter, “Introduction(s): The Difficult Second Album,” is broken into Sides A and B, calling to mind old-school records. Radosavljević notes that the tracks of this introduction can be shuffled and listened to out of order, but that is not “crucial” to the experience of the book (39). Chapters two, three, and four are titled “Post-Verbatim,” “Amplified Storytelling,” and “Gig Theatre,” respectively. Radosavljević deploys Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field , Nic Green’s Cock and Bull , Kate Caryer’s The Unspoken Project, Rambo Amadeus’s 1991 music video, “Smrt popa Mila Jovovića,” and Wildcard’s Electrolyte as case studies to demonstrate how the myriad dramaturgies of speech, sound and technology amplify each form of performance discussed through their technicity. Radosavljević indicts the traditional dramaturgical maxim of “show, rather than tell” as a Western-central, logocentric way of knowing. Instead, she favors an aural and oral approach that considers the performance artist central in theatrical creation. Furthermore, Radosavljević refreshingly focuses on creative strategies and processes as opposed to simple critique of the final projects (although she offers these as well for interested readers). Not only seeking to shift away from a text-focused paradigm, Radosavljevič posits her work firmly within the Covid-19 pandemic, seeking to reckon with these pedagogical questions digitally. While Radosavljević admits that she is not proposing any “radically new ideas,” (25) the A/OD Project and the book’s myriad case studies draw on a wide variety of performance scholars and ethnographers to offer an alternative and accessible methodology for dramaturgically interrogating Western theatre’s obsession with written text and developing new “meta-discursive insights” (164). In the final pages, Radosavljević writes about dramaturgical layering – a methodology that is expertly woven throughout her narrative. She observes the resident artists’ engagement with three facets of layering: 1) metaphorically, “in reference to different types of performance material,” 2) dramaturgical methods “directly influenced by the workings of … software,” and 3) conceptually, “in relation to malleability of text enabled by… digital technologies” (167). While Radosavljević doesn’t make apparent the connection between this method and the organization of her own work, it underpins the ethic. In each chapter, she offers the reader variety in performance modalities and analysis of the effects of software and other digital variables on her examples —always grounded in a strong theoretical foundation which traces the larger genealogy of essential scholarly texts (e.g., Steven Feld, Fred Moten, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Dwight Conquergood). She also considers the artists, art forms, and negative connotations that fell beyond the scope of the A/OD Project. Importantly, Radosavljević often acknowledges the irony of her attempt at troubling the hegemonic standard of the written word by writing about it in this book. Even as she is pressured to write within the academic framework of logocentrism, Radosavljević shakes the dominant modes of theatrical critique by providing the reader with the Lend Me Your Ears collection, expertly curated and a vital companion to any scholar’s reading of Radosavljević’s work. Returning to the age-old dramaturgical maxim of “show, not tell,” Radosavljević concludes that theatre should be “show and tell” as performance is a “multimodal sensory perception” and a “mimesis of the thinking process itself” that together contributes to audience reception and engagement (170). Aural/Oral Dramaturgies presents a step forward in both performance and sound studies, appropriate for graduate students and academics familiar with the body of literature surrounding one or both of these fields. Additionally, any theatremaker with an interest in shifting their dramaturgical approach to the “ethos of DIY performance-making” (166) will find in this book not only a vast fountain of knowledge, but a generous guide for practice. References Footnotes About The Author(s) M. LANDON University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 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.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba By Hala Khamis Nassar Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba By Hala Khamis Nassar In such trying times and in the face of eradication, there is an urgent need to counter the Israeli-settler colonial hegemonic narrative. This article demonstrates how Palestinian theatre in recent years adamantly organized site-specific festivals to reclaim Nakba stories. These selected sites, all built before 48, have their own stories to tell, albeit ones that accentuate remembrance of the past. Concerning such site-based performance, McAuley writes, “the site becomes the dominant signifier rather than simply being that which contains the performance, as the theatre building does in traditional theatre practice. Site-based performance engages more or less deeply with its chosen site and as a result tends to be drawn into engagement with the social and political issues that seem inseparable from place” (McAuley 2005: 30). The combination of a Nakba story with pre-1948 sites evokes and highlights the Palestinian past, reminding the audience of its uninterrupted lineage. On the Palestinian stage, enactments of the Nakba and its ongoing significant repercussions are being revisited, dominating the cultural scene. A very recent example is al-Harah's experimentation with Site-Specific Theatre in Beit Jala. Site-specific theatre is not new to the Palestinian context. The late Iraqi director Awni Karumi introduced it to Palestine at the Palestinian National Theatre Festival in 1993. Ashtar Theater, based in Ramallah, embarked on experimenting with sites and produced Richard II in 2012 at Hisham Palace in Jericho. [1] In July 2021, Al-Harah Theatre, in cooperation with Grid Iron Theatre in Edinburgh and supported by leading EU countries, organised its first Site-Specific Theatre Festival in Bethlehem and Beit Jala [2] . Grid Iron Theatre conducted two weeks of rigorous workshops for aspiring young playwrights and directors in the winter of 2020. After the final selection, five plays were picked and developed into a performance under Grid’s mentorship. [3] In the festival’s First Edition, the play Dar 13 reflected the ongoing resistance against the Israeli eviction orders of Sheikh Jarrah residents; Al-Hosh lamented about destroyed sites and dispersal of its inhabitants due to 1948 War; The Perfect Crime investigated a murder that still hovers the corridors of an abandoned house; The Port recalled a lost culture and a country, and Buldozer shed light on Israeli house demolition orders in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The festival also included storytelling, some based on fairy tales, others like Animal with Plague subtly narrating the Nakba. Scouting locations in Beit Jala and Bethlehem, Dar-al Sabbagh Center played a crucial role in selecting sites for the festival and in performing the plays. [4] The chosen sites reveal their own stories. Some sites are already abandoned, with their inhabitants in the diaspora; others are dilapidated or being restored and renovated as part of Bethlehem’s two-thousand-year-old Cultural Heritage. [5] Yet, the selected buildings in the old cities reveal a unique style of pre-1948 architects. Large spacious houses, with cathedral windows, carpet design floor tilings, high ceilings, and green courtyards in the midst where there is either a well or a water fountain; a fitting atmosphere, and a space to tell a story. The plays in the festival portrayed life before and after 1948, the brutality of Israeli occupation, and the threats to Sheikh Jarrah residents against the backdrop of the Israeli onslaught on 10 May 2021, when Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip lasting eleven days. While Hamas called the ensuing conflict the Sword of Jerusalem Battle, the IDF officially dubbed the military campaign in the Gaza Strip Operation Guardian of the Walls. The aggression on Gaza comes after Hamas’s ultimatum to Israel to remove its security forces from the Temple Mount complex and from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. In this charged atmosphere, storytellers, independent artists, directors from the West Bank and Israel, and the Freedom Theatre were the main participants in the festival. The 2 nd Edition of the Bethlehem Site-Specific Theatre Festival took place from the 26 th to the 30 th of July 2023 in the cities of Beit Jala, Bethlehem. This time, it expanded its participation to the southern part of the West Bank, including the city of Hebron. Grid Iron Theatre in Scotland conducted a training workshop for a new cohort of aspiring directors and playwrights. However, the performances in the Second Edition of the festival were “based on personal stories of older people in Bethlehem and Hebron governorates being documented by the researcher and storyteller Sally Shalabi” (al-Harah Theater, 2023 Playbill). Shalabi collected memories and narratives by interviewing older people from different backgrounds and rewrote them in the form of stories. Through the Capacity Building Program for Young Artists implemented by al-Harah Theatre in collaboration with Grid Iron, six directors and three storytellers presented their productions during the festival in the three above-mentioned cities. On 26 July 2023, the old alleys of Hebron hosted the performances of The Almond Flower and Heaven Door is Open , and the storytelling of The Qazzazin Neighborhood Boy , and Struggle and Success based on interviews with refugees from the 1967 War with Israel. In the old hosh/alley compounds of Beit Jala, the plays and stories from Hebron were also performed in addition to the play Equivalent and storytelling of Boqja . As for Bethlehem and at the Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation, two other performances were added: The Freedom Fabric and I Was There . It is worth noting that at the end of each festival day, the interviewees were acknowledged by Al-Harah Theatre and presented with the theatre’s logo, carved from olive wood. One major difference between the first and the second editions of the festival is that the latter aims to “shed light on the importance of historical and heritage spaces in the old cities to show the richness of these cities that are full of stories since thousands of years” (ibid.). Nonetheless, one cannot overlook the fact that the most outstanding plays in both festivals are storytelling monodramas documenting Palestinian life pre- and post-1948 and 1967. The discerning illustrations of such enactments are biographical plays, for they never cease to be relevant, nowadays more than ever. Al-Harah’s Site-Specific festivals document memory accounts of the Nakba survivors. In Masalha’s words, “compiling and recording oral history and encouraging annual commemorations [is] designed to preserve the memory of the catastrophe, while emphasizing the link between refugee rights, collective identity, and the challenge to return” (Masalaha 2012: 254). The biographical stories Buqja and The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness draw the audience “into engagement” [6] with life under occupation. The stories document the Zionist aggression on historic Palestine, resulting in the erasure of entire villages, depopulating them and displacing their inhabitants, making them internal refugees or forcing them to migrate outside the geographical borders of Palestine. They document Palestinian life before 1948, the ramifications of refugee displacement, and the Judaization of the Palestinian landscape, villages, towns, and cities, particularly Jerusalem. The above selections delve into the collective memory of Palestinians and use it as a political weapon in the process of a national struggle when wars and peace agreements have proved to be ineffective. It also aims to remind, educate, politicize, and inform the public that the Zionist project is ongoing (Nassar 2023) Buqja Buqja ( Bundle ) [7] is based on the life of my mother, Faiza Tawfiq Nasser Nassar (Um Hanna), interviewed by the well-known Sally Shalabi and performed by Majeda Subhi. The performance took place on 26 July at Ma’an lil Hayat/L’Arche Bethlehem, and on 30 July 2023 at Khalilieh Arch/hosh in the old city of Beit Jala. Left to right, Sally Shalabi, Faiza Tawfiq Nasser Nassar, Hala Nassar in the audience for Bundle. Courtesy of al-Harah Theatre. The play begins with the narrator welcoming the audience and explaining that she is going to tell my mother’s story. Seated on the old hand-carved stone stairs in the Kahlilieh Arch Compound in the old city of Beit Jala, the narrator points to my mother in the audience, thanking her for agreeing to be interviewed and for the chance to tell her story. Subhi starts narrating, telling the audience that she wanted to tell Um Hanna’s story as she is also from the suburbs of Jerusalem. Um Hanna, born in Nazareth, grew up in an upper-class landowners’ family. Her father then relocated to Jerusalem to become one of the personal guards to the commissioner of the British Mandate in Palestine. They lived in what is now known as West Jerusalem on Saint Julian Street, a couple of streets down from the YMCA. In 1948, British forces started to withdraw from Palestine. [8] Um Hanna’s father, Tawfiq, received orders to deploy to Cyprus with the remaining British troops, which he flatly refused, insisting that Palestine “is my country, I live and die in it!” [9] fully knowing that his pension benefits would be stopped, and his British passport revoked (al-Harah 2023). The last troops left Palestine on 15 May 1948. On that day, “they heard a lot of shooting in Jerusalem and the Jewish loudspeakers telling the Arabs to surrender” (ibid.). Out of fear, they remained inside the house and comforted themselves with the fact that there were enough provisions to sustain them for some time. After “two days, the Stern and the Hagenah gangs come and surround the neighbourhood […] Faiza does not forget what they looked like” (ibid.). The Stern separates men from women. They blindfolded the men, loaded them into trucks, and drove away to an unknown destination. They tell the women to go home. Many families, at this point, start abandoning their houses and streets. Teta Christina, a neighbour, comes and stays with them. A month passes confined in the house then the gangs come again. Hearing the commotion in the house yard, Teta Christina asks Faiza’s mother, Haneh, “What are we going to do now?” Haneh responds, “sssh, pointing with her fingers to the mouth, be quiet, do not stir, let us wait it out” (al-Harah 2023). Majedah Subhi as the narrator. Courtesy of al-Harah Theatre. While they are standing silently against the wall, the gangs storm in through the door, they turn the house upside down, throw the oil and wheat on the expensive imported hand-made woollen Iranian carpets, gather the remaining food from the pantry, and force them to lock the door with clothes on their back and take the keys with them. They blindfold the women, load them onto trucks, and drop them off at Piccadilly Square in Jerusalem at 10 o’clock in the evening. The families are asked to ride the trucks, and after driving around for some time, they are again dropped off at the YMCA and into the gymnastics hall. Haneh is shocked to see so many people, some she knew, others not, from different backgrounds. Scared to death, she does not get a wink of sleep that night and hugs her three children until morning. The next day, trucks come to carry the families to locations outside Jerusalem, which will constitute the nucleus of refugee camps in the West Bank. As for Teta Christina Shiber, since she descends from one of the affluent families of Jerusalem at that time, the Red Cross arranges for her to join her family in Lebanon, leaving behind vast wealth and real estate all over the western part of the city only to be confiscated by the new state of Israel. Haneh asks Mr. Miller, the YMCA director at the time, to help her go to Nazareth to stay with her family, only to be told that Nazareth has fallen. [10] Relentless and depending on her social connections, Haneh manages to relocate to al-Jawzi’s office in the YMCA with her family, thereby evading relocation. The narrator, Subhi, takes a deep breath and continues to tell us how Haneh and her three children remain hidden in the YMCA. Then, she decides to go and check on her home. Haneh informs Mr. Miller, who refuses her request multiple times and forbids her from leaving the compound. Haneh is still anxious about the fate of her home, and she attempts to sneak out. Fire S hots are heard in the surroundings, but she decides to keep walking towards the house, only to be stopped by people running away while the body of Count of Wisborg, Folke Bernadotte is ushered into the YMCA. [11] Undeterred, Haneh secretly attempts a second dangerous venture towards home. There are shots fired; nevertheless, she makes it, collects whatever she can carry, and wraps everything in a bedsheet, making a bundle. As she is about to leave, she notices the sewing machine lying on the floor and picks it up. Walking in Jerusalem is dangerous as the city is already divided into zones, and one cannot cross from one to another without having the proper papers. “The more she runs on the streets towards the YMCA, the more gunshots are fired. As she is about to reach the YMCA, she counts eleven bullets aimed at her, but makes it to the front entrance. Her daughter, Faiza, sees her and runs to Haneh, screaming, ‘Mama mama.’ Faiza is hit with a bullet that scratches her arm” (al-Harah 2023). At this point, Faiza stops the storyteller, corrects her, and tells her: “It was not me, it was my older sister Aida who was shot” (ibid.). Such is an example of how the spectators engage with the site as the story is being told. As McAuley asserts when discussing Segments from an Inferno , “the way performance can impact upon a place, activating memories and permitting the past to resonate in the present, and of the way the spectator’s experience may exceed what the performer’s intended” (McAuley 43). Incidentally, Faiza was the only spectator who interrupted the performance and corrected the storyteller in the festival’s performances! Hence drawing the attention of the other spectators to the then and now, when the “aesthetic experience of the performance is always, for good or ill, embedded with the social reality,” (ibid 47) where the individual spectator, in this case, Faiza, experiences the performance in the company of other audiences. Being in the performance, Faiza becomes part of the performative experience, where “the aesthetic is enmeshed in complex ways within the social, the fictional within the real; but in site-based work […] the social reality is foregrounded” (ibid.). After Faiza’s correction, Subhi continues the story. Witnessing the incident, Mr Miller shouts at Haneh and says in a hoarse voice, “What if something happens to you? Who is going to take care of your children!” (al-Harah 2023). Subhi, as if reading from a book, continues to chronicle Faiza’s life story to a very attentive audience and describes how the Red Cross starts to collect the Christian families from the YMCA and distribute them among the churches in the Old City of Jerusalem. Faiza’s family is put up in the Lutheran Church. After spending six days on the benches of the church with little to nothing to eat, they are eventually given an empty room in the German Hospice in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. Faiza recalls how humiliating and painful it is to fall from grace. From a spacious multi-room in a two-floor villa, with lovely furniture, abundant food, beautiful clothes, and a private German school, to an empty room with no furniture, no food, and rags for clothes. She also recalls how her mother, Haneh, puts the sewing machine to work, making shirts for the refugees. “It did not pay much as all of us are now refugees and our pockets are empty” (ibid). In site-specific theatre pertaining to -Nakba, the engagement among the narrator, the audience, and the interviewee is immersive; the site and the story become one and the same. Subhi, at this point in the performance, looks towards my mother, Faiza, among the attentive audience, as if seeking approval to continue. She then recounts how the family receives a word through the Red Cross to go to the Mandelbaum Gate crossing. [12] Life of struggle, poverty, displacement, and survival continues in the storytelling of the play, as Subhi tells us another trauma in Faiza’s life: Tawfik’s return from detention. While they are standing at the checkpoint under the scorching sun, a tall skinny man appears, much like a vagabond with buried eyes, long hair, and a beard. Aida and Haneh run toward the man, but Faiza does not. When Tawfiq approaches her and says, “I am your dad, you do not want to hug me?” Faiza shrinks away, screaming, “I do not know you; you are not my dad!” Faiza recalls how Tawfiq squeezes her in a way only a father and daughter know; only then does she welcome her father’s hugs. Living in poverty and deprivation continues for Faiza, and it reaches a turning point in her life when the Lutheran Church offers to send one girl from each newly refugee family to a German boarding school, run by the nuns: Talitha Kumi in Beit Jala. Faiza cries her eyes out but is forced to go, as Aida, the older sister, is helping Haneh with the sewing. Also, Yoel is born in that lowly room, and Faiza’s departure leaves space for the newborn to be fed. Despite the harsh treatment, cold dormitory, measly food, strict nuns, and unkind teachers, Faiza studies hard, passes her GCE, and becomes a teacher at the same school. There, she meets the electric engineer Khamis from Beit Jala, and they marry. Another chapter of displacement occurs in the life of the key characters. Faiza’s story continues as her husband gets a job offer as the head of engineers in a newly built chemical factory in Amman, Jordan. The couple move to Jordan with their baby boy. During that time, they travel every month back and forth between Amman and Jerusalem until the 1967 War, when traveling over the bridges becomes too dangerous. Unable to visit her family in Jerusalem, Faiza is sad and anxiously waits for news. Political tensions between the Palestinians and the Jordanians escalate, leading to the bloody events of Black September in 1970. As the Palestinian fedayeen militant’s stronghold is in Zarqa, the Jordanian army runs house-to-house to search for them. Khamis and Faiza send the two older children to Aunt Angail’s house, and with the two younger ones, they stay with their neighbors, hiding in the basement under a table as the battle rages on outside. Faiza describes the screams of the fedayeen as they are being slaughtered in the streets. Afraid of being expelled from Jordan with the PLO, thus becoming, yet again, refugees in Lebanon, they remain in hiding until the Jordanian army discovers and interrogates them. Life becomes unbearable for the new family in Jordan, and they decide to move back to Palestine. Moving back home has not been easy since the 1967 Israel occupation of the West Bank, and they need a family reunion military permit, which is hard to obtain. After four years, the permit is issued, but for the West Bank only, while Faiza’s request to join her family in Jerusalem is denied. Such a denial of entry makes Faiza angry as “she always has held Jerusalem in her heart” (al-Harah 2023). As Edward Said eloquently describes, the Palestinian story is “not a narrative… but rather broken narratives, fragmentary compositions, and self-consciously staged testimonials, in which the narrative voice keeps stumbling over itself, its obligations and its limitations” (Said 1986, 38). Like many Palestinians, Faiza always defines her life in terms of major political events overshadowing Palestine since the Nakba of 1948. During the first Intifada of 1987, Faiza’s husband’s work deteriorates, and, as the children are already scattered across the Americas and Europe, Khamis decides to try his luck this time in Honduras. Reluctantly, Faiza is uprooted once again and goes to Honduras. Still, she studies Spanish and becomes a citizen. In 2009, due to Khamis’s declining health, they return to Beit Jala, only to witness the impact of the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993: the Separation Wall, the bypass road carving the landscape to make safe roads for Israeli settlers, the checkpoints, and the need for permits to move between zones A, B, and C. Refusing up till this moment to issue a biometric identity card and apply for permit to go to Jerusalem or Nazareth to visit her family, Faiza prefers being smuggled into Jerusalem. Up until now, Faiza refuses to acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel. Her act of defiance is loudly articulated when a priest in her Lutheran Church gives a sermon about forgiveness and reconciliation. When asked if she is willing to forgive someone, Faiza stands tall and says: “I will never forgive or reconcile with the Zionists. They have deprived me of my childhood, and they have expelled me from my home more than once. My family has led a harsh life of poverty, and as refugees because of them. During my lifetime, I will never forgive them.” Faiza’s parents lived and died in that room in the German Hospice, now turned into a hostel. They never went home. The keys to the house on Saint Julian Street are still with Faiza. My mother’s story is one of thousands of stories of Palestinians, who were driven out of their homes by force, with only the clothes on their backs. No trace of my mother’s parents’ house can be found today. Palestinian Nature and Settlers: The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness As Buqja documents the steadfastness against the Zionist aggression and Judaization of Jerusalem, The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness is hitherto another testimony of the ongoing Nakba in the southern regions of historic Palestine . In its Second Edition, al-Harah Theatre contributes to al-Makhrour’s festival and presents the biographical storytelling The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness , performed by Nicola Zreineh and Sally Shalabi about the life of Carlos Barham, Abu Saliba. It is a fitting choice, not only as a striking example of employing site-specific theatre but because al-Makhrour’s land is constantly under threat of being cordoned off to the adjacent settlement of Har Gilo, which is also built on illegal confiscation of Beitjalian’s lands and, as a consequence, strangling the town. [13] Inad Theatre in Beit Jala has organised its Second Edition of Al-Makhrour Festival to begin on 7 September 2023. The three-day program usually takes place after the harvesting of Al-Makhrour’s almonds, apricots, plums, pistachios, and grapes, and before the start of olive picking in late October. Al-Makhrour is a vast valley, and the peaky green hills belong to the people of Beit Jala. Since the Oslo Peace Accords, the area has been carved under Israeli control as it is surrounded by the large settlement of Har Gilo, hence confiscating Beitjalian’s fertile agricultural lands. Celebrating the harvest in Al-Marhrour and even with an Israeli settler seizing the highest hill, the festival’s program usually includes musical shows, stand-up comedians, theatrical performances, workshops, camping, guided walking tours, and storytelling. “ The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness ” is site-specific theatre in the strict sense of the word, given its location in al-Makhrour, for the storytelling “emerges from a particular place and engages with the history and politics of that place, and with the resonance of these in the present” McAuley, 32). Carlos’ story exists in the site where it is produced and performed. Shalabi starts telling us the story by saying, “If you search for Carlos, you will find him in his castle amidst the valley surrounded by the beautiful nature and accompanied by cats. From there, Carlos reminisces” (al-Harah 2023). Carlos remembers the good old days before 1948, when the townspeople of Beit Jala started the journey to al-Makhrour on the 5 th of May after celebrating Saint George’s Festival in the nearby village of al-Khader, named after the saint. The townsfolk bring furniture, bedding, food, and herds and remain in the green valley and hills until the first rain and the petrichor fill the air. Only the sickly and those who cannot walk to al-Makhrour stay back in town. Carlos recalls how every clan in Beit Jala owned at least a plot of land, which they planted with olives and fruit trees, including grapes, figs, almonds, apples, and plums. Such a tradition lasted until 1967, and to this day, Carlos can name the owner of each piece of land in the valley. In the summer, al-Makhrour is buzzing, as the townspeople build a small Qaṣr (a castle) to spend the season in the green valley. Usually, the castle is built out of hand-carved stones; it has two floors and a window called Ṭāqa . The family occupies the upper level, and storage and the livestock are kept at the lower level. Back then, families would put a lantern in the window so people in the valley could see the light and come over to visit during the cool summer nights. Remembering, Carlos stresses the fact that in the old days, the sky was full of stars, and you could even read the Milky Way. Now smog is filling the sky, and you can hardly spot any stars even on a clear night. Carlos enthusiastically explains how the remaining green area surrounding the city of Beit Jala is named al-Makhrour. It is due to the steepness of the valley connecting to the village of Batir’s valley and the abundant water springs, where you could hear the gurgle of the running water seeping loudly in the valley to Jaffa and into the Mediterranean Sea. Lamenting, Carlos says, the springs and groundwater have dried up, and the climate has changed; however, once the rain comes down, it fills some of it, and you can still hear the purl of water. Here, Carlos does not mention how the adjacent settlement of Har Gilo has installed water pipes in the valley and pumps the water all year round up into the settlement. Still evoking the past, Carlos spends time telling us how his grandfather built the Qaṣr and says, “We are a chain of a longer one. He built it and lived in it, my father did too, and I am only a caretaker of the land and trees, leaving it to my children… such is life” (al-Harah 2023). Since the signing of the Oslo Accords II in 1995, the city of Beit Jala has been divided into ABC areas. [14] Al-Makhrour is part of the C area; thus, Israel maintains full control of the valley and its hills. Therefore, it is forbidden to restore a ruined castle, a stone hedge, or even a well of water, since you need a special Israeli military permit for construction in the valley. Nonetheless, Carlos maintains the well and the small pond near the spring, which his father built. In the past, they used to water the trees and the plants from the spring. Now it has dried up. Although there is no electricity in the castle, and the well is only full of rainwater, Carlos prefers to stay on his land, taking care of the trees, running away from the hustle and bustle of Beit Jala and its congested air. At a young age, Carlos’ father not only taught him how to take care of the land, trim the fruit trees, harvest the olives, and sew all kinds of plants, but also how to use a hunting rifle. Pondering, Carlos recalls how Beit Jala’s residents used to hunt birds, and how the grandmother would wrap them in dough and cook them over a fireplace. Now, the “Israelis, if they spot you holding a slingshot, you are immediately arrested, so how about owning a hunting rifle? Decades ago, the skies were full of migrating birds; now we hardly see any” (ibid). Carlos sighs and says, “The country that loses its birds, loses its blessings” (ibid). Taking over the narrative from Shalabi, Zreineh tells us that in 1966, Carlos is drafted into the Jordanian reserve army. He is taken to Nuweihmeh Camp in Jericho for training. In 1967, and still in the training camp, Israeli aircraft bombs the trainees, and everything goes ablaze. After the airplanes fly away, Carlos notices something still glittering on the ground. He touches it and it burns his finger. He instantly realizes that they have been hit with Napalm bombs. Once the West Bank of the River Jordan falls from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan int Israeli hands, Carlos’s family starts to worry about their son’s fate. Zreineh keeps narrating Carols’ fate in Jordan. The family sends word to Hanna Salman to find Carlos. Salman moves from one camp to another until he finds himself in the city of Zarqa’s military camp. Once spotted, Salman tells Carlos to take off his military uniform, then rides in the car pretending to be a labourer. Salman hides Carlos in Amman; however, his name is on the list of the deserters. Later, he is moved to Madaba to avoid arrest. Although the fighting has stopped, the bridges between the two banks of the Jordan River are either closed or destroyed due to the 1967 War. Carlos’ uncle drives him to the border to be smuggled by a Bedouin, who carries people on his back and crosses the Jordan River. Zreineh, as the narrator, tells us it is an arduous journey and full of danger, as the river’s water is rapid, and if you do not know how to swim, you can easily drown. Carlos makes it to Jericho, seeks the Greek Orthodox Church, and hides. With the help of Orthodox clergymen, Carlos arrives home to Beith Jala, meets his friends and family. His father cries as he hugs him (al-Harah 2023). Zreineh continues narrating as Carlos. He goes back to the land after changing jobs, getting married in 1971, and building a family home. More than once, he is offered a job in Israel, as Carlos is known in Beit Jala for having a green thumb, but he always declines. Nothing deters Carlos from al-Makhrour, no siege of area A and B, or curfews imposed on Beit Jala and Bethlehem, nor the first intifada of 1986, the second intifada of 2001, or Covid -19, he always walks through the old alleys of the city, down the valleys of Beit Jala and up the mountain to go all the way to his castle. Now and then, the Israeli soldiers stop Carlos and ask for an identification card, his response to the occupation is always the same “Look at my grey hair, this is my identity, why would I need to carry one when I am going to my land” (al-Harah 2023). The soldiers always let him pass to al-Mkahrour. As I am writing this article, Carlos is still seen walking towards al-Makhrour. He recalls that now the road is paved and wide enough for cars to drive on, while before it was a narrow dirt pathway barely wide enough for one donkey to pass. Intervening in the narrative, Shalabi sighs and tells us that Carlos thinks “Oslo” has caused a lot of damage in terms of the land swap with Israel. Al-Makhrour is under Israeli control, area C, and “there is a settler, who seized a fertile plot of land on the top of the mountain four years ago, watching everyone’s movement. You cannot build, renovate, or even dig out the oak or fir trees, and if you leave your land unworked for five years, the occupation confiscates it under the absentees’ law of 48” (al-Harah 2023). To Carlos, the land is wealth as is his children to whom he taught the love of the land. Carlos conjures his father’s words “if you would ask the land how are you doing? The land could answer: I am doing well if you visit me. If you will stop visiting me, then there is woe!” (ibid.). The above performances, with storytelling and dramatic play, are based on interviews with elderly Palestinians who witnessed, survived, and are resisting the impact of the 48 Nakba and the 67 War. Additionally, experimenting with Site Specific Theatre and performing in spaces that predate 1948 is revealing as the Palestinian sites themselves also have stories to tell, and in the words of Pierre Nora (1996), the ‘site of memory’ ( lieux de mémoire ) is a site of trauma, dispossession, and anger. [15] Accordingly, the chosen locals are powerful stimuli to memory. For in site-specific performances, “telling and retelling stories of our own lives and of the lives of our forebears, telling the stories official society does not want told, listening to other people’s stories are foundational acts in the creation of personal and social identity” (McAuley, 49). Thus, in the Palestinian context, the political consequences of such Nakba storytelling are immensely profound because the settler colonial project is aware of the impact of memorialising the Nakba and is unwilling to let it find its own level. On the surface, Palestinian theatre might appear to be “trapped” in the Nakba narrative. Israeli settler colonialism’s enduring systematic appropriation of land, demolishing houses, expelling people, indiscriminate detentions and imprisonment, destroying infrastructure, academic institutions, and research centres, and denying people the right to enter Jerusalem to worship in the religious sites, are all measures to make life intolerable and to drive people to seek safety and refuge elsewhere. However, as I have argued elsewhere, those biographical monodramas also reflect the oral history and collective memory of Palestinians, who use it as “a political weapon in the process of a national struggle when wars and peace agreements have proved to be ineffective. It also aims to remind, educate, politicize, and inform the public that the Zionist project is ongoing” (Nassar 2023). Site-specific stories of the already-displaced refugees in historic homes and on lands facing ethnic cleansing have become a necessity to combat whatever the future may hold for Palestinians, who simply resist just to exist. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes [1] https://www.ashtar-theatre.org/richard-ii.html . Accessed 25 March/2024 [2] I have attended the two editions of Site-Specific Theatre Festivals organized by al-Harah Theater. In the last two years I have conducted interviews with a-Harah Theatre Director -Ms. Marina Barham-, the directors, and the actors. I also had a Zoom meeting with Grid Iron Theater on.I also would like to express my gratitude to Ms. Barham’s for her assistance and for sharing the scripts used in this article. [3] Zoom meeting with Grid Iron on 16 July 2021. Details about cooperation can be found here: https://gridiron.org.uk/2023/08/03/recently-returned-from-the-bethlehem-site-specific-theatre-festival/ . Accessed 19 March 2024. [4] To read more about Dar Sabagh Diaspora Studies and Research Center, refer to https://thisweekinpalestine.com/bethlehems-dar-al-sabagh/ , and to the center’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DarAlSabaghCentre/ . [5] “ The Bethlehem 2000 Project, implemented between 1997 and 2000, is one example of the exceptional initiatives that were carried out to protect heritage sites and create a more attractive destination for tourists. Its initiatives included updating the city’s infrastructure and emphasizing the significance of important cultural sites. The Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation (CCHP) is continuing this mission through its work on the rehabilitation of traditional buildings and sites. The center has restored several buildings in Bethlehem and adapted them for reuse by turning them into handcraft centers, visitor centers, and guesthouses. All these projects have helped increase Bethlehem’s appeal among both the local community and international visitors who can now better enjoy the built-up cultural heritage of Bethlehem” https://thisweekinpalestine.com/morcos-nassar-palace-bethlehem/ [6] McAuley, Gay (Published 2012) Site-specific Performance: Place, Memory and the Creative Agency of the Spectator . In The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association. Vol. 27 (2005) 27-51. [7] The scripts and interviews -originally written in Arabic- used in this article are the property of al-Harah Theatre in Beit Jala. The translation from Arabic to English is mine. [8] Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham a fter WWII he served as high commissioner in Palestine during the last years of the British mandate , from 1945 until the proclamation of Israel in 1948. [9] Since the scripts used in this article are not published, for sake of consistency I will refer to them as “al-Harah” [10] “ With very little resistance to speak of, the mayor, accompanied by religious leaders, surrendered the city [ Nazareth] on 16 July 1948 to the Haganah officer from Canada who commanded the occupying contingent.” https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/41376 . [11] Stanger, Cary David. The Swedish Count of Wisborg Folke Bernadotte, was the United Nations mediator for Palestine, was assassinated in Jerusalem on September 17, 1948. “Bernadotte sought to modify the provisions of the partition plan approved by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947 in order to create more contiguous and homogeneous Arab and Jewish states within Palestine. “A Haunting Legacy: The Assassination of Count Bernadotte” Middle East Journal , Vol. 42, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), pp. 260-272. Here 260. Also refer to https://www.palestinestudies.org/en/node/38640 . [12] Kobi Cohen-Hattab (2017): The border as bridge: an Israeli perspective on the Mandelbaum Gate in divided Jerusalem (1948–1967), Middle Eastern Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2017.1318378. Mandelbaum Gate was named for Mandelbaum House, built by “family patriarch Simcha Mandelbaum in 1929. Simcha and his wife Esther Liba were Jewish dealers in thread and materials. During the years in which Jerusalem was divided (1948–1967), the location was the only official crossing point between the city’s two sections. As it was close to the house’s ruins, it was called ‘Mandel- baum Gate’. With the end of the War of Independence, a truce was signed between Israel and Jordan in Rhodes on 3 April 1949”. (Page 2) [13] “ Following the 1967 Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Government had unilaterally expanded the Jerusalem municipal boundary to include lands from surrounding villages and cities. Beit Jala was among the Palestinian cities that had parts of its lands expropriated to the new illegal boundary of Jerusalem; hence, 3,147 Dunums; some 22% of Beit Jala's lands were included within the Israeli defined but illegal boundary of Jerusalem” http://poica.org/2008/04/the-strangulation-of-beit-jala-city/ [14] “ The Oslo Accords divided the Palestinian West Bank into three administrative zones: Area A (18%), where the Palestinian Authority (PA) administers civil and security matters; Area B (22%), where the PA administers only civil matters; and Area C (60%) where Israel maintains full control. Area C includes all Israeli settlements and two thirds of the West Bank’s fertile agricultural land. While Area C is a continuous territory, Areas A and B are fragmented into 166 separate enclaves. In spite of the breakdown of the Oslo process, Areas A, B and C remain in force today.” https://101.visualizingpalestine.org/resources/glossary/areas-a-b-c#:~:text=The%20Oslo%20Accords%20divided%20the,where%20Israel%20maintains%20full%20control . [15] Quoted in Masalha 2012. Here, page 4 References About The Author(s) Dr. Hala Khamis Nassar is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, at Bethlehem University in the West Bank, Palestine. From 2017 to 2021, she served as the Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning and as the Director of the Center of Excellence at Bethlehem University. Dr. Nassar holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies (Theatrewissenschaft) from the Free University of Berlin, an M.Phil. in Stylistics and Drama, and dual B.A. and M.A. degrees in Theatre and English Literature. Between 2003 and 2016, she taught at several universities in the United States, including UC Berkeley, The Evergreen State College, Columbia University, the University of Illinois, and Yale University from (2003-2016). Her peer reviewed publications focus on Palestinian literature, culture, and theatre. She is also the co-editor of Mahmoud Darwish, Exile's Poet: Critical Essays (Interlink 2007). Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Talya Kingston 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 Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Talya Kingston By Published on May 19, 2023 Download Article as PDF Patrick Gabridge at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Photograph by Corinne Elicone. 2018. Plays In Place is a Massachusetts-based company that collaborates with museums, historical sites and cultural institutions to commission plays that are fully produced in their space. While re-enactment on historical sites is not uncommon, this company contracts professional playwrights to pull historical information into fully realized stories that allow audiences to more fully engage with the human interactions that happened in different times and contexts. This engagement can bring new audiences in, and open new conversations, thus enlivening the site and making it more relevant in the life of its community. The commissioned playwright is similarly offered a fulfilling creative collaboration that they know from the outset will be both compensated and produced for an audience. It is perhaps unsurprising to learn that a company that centers writers, both creatively and in the budget, is run by a playwright. Producing Artistic Director Patrick Gabridge’s own work is often featured in the repertoire, but as the company has grown, he has commissioned a cadre of other playwrights (including me). Through the creative process he connects us with historical resources, strongly advocates for our creative freedom, and pays us at every stage of development. I sat down with Patrick to talk about his company’s process for developing new works of theater. I’m curious about your original inspiration for starting Plays In Place. Tell me the origin story of this playwright-led company. Plays In Place was inspired from the production of a play called Blood on the Snow that I was commissioned to write for the Bostonian Society for the renovated council chamber at the Boston Old State House. I’ve always loved writing historical work, and I’ve always loved doing site-specific work. This gave me a chance to do both together. It was clear there was a strong hunger from audiences, especially in New England. We sold out that first run before we even opened. We added a week and sold out that week. We came back in the second year for a twelve-week run. Years later, people are still calling that museum regularly asking when the show is coming back! Starting a company made it easier for me to approach other museums. Our goal is creating new site-specific plays in partnership with museums, historic spaces, and other institutions. I’ve founded theatre companies before, but in this particular case, I wanted to found a theatre company where we didn’t have to manage a space or raise money. I didn’t want a development department and I didn’t want a building. Speaking of raising money, can you describe the financial model for playwrights that you’ve developed through Plays In Place and how it differs from the traditional model of play development in this country? There are a few dozen playwrights who operate on commission for larger theatre companies, and they make money that way, and they get their plays produced that way and that’s great. It doesn’t happen for most of us – not all the time anyway! So, the typical model is you write a play on spec, you send it out to a lot of theatres and those may or may not get produced. It’s a scattershot approach to doing your work. It’s nice that you have a lot of control over what you are going to write, but your possibility of getting it in front of an audience, let alone getting paid for it, is pretty small. Even if you are in a position where a theatre company is commissioning you, they might be commissioning a bunch of different writers. They’ll do some development of your plays, and maybe they’ll pick one or two of those plays to fully produce, but maybe they won’t. So, it is good that you got paid and you still have a play that you can shop around somewhere else, but sad if the commission doesn’t end up in a production. What is different about our model is that the commission is part of the development process. We’ve learned to set up our contracts in multiple phases. Typically phase one is writers working with the institution on basic research, to come up with the storyline and structure. In this phase, the writer is paid upfront to come up with a proposal. This puts us in a good spot for phase two: the commissioning to write the plays and one or two in-house readings. And then phase three is rehearsal and production. In general, the institutions we’re working with are not developing a lot of different plays and starting the project because they intend to produce the work. This phased model allows them to raise the money in steps. It’s easier for the institutions to say yes to the partnership if I say to them that phase one is going to cost them $5000 – they might have that money, or a way to get it. Phase Two is significantly more money but it’s not a huge amount, and once we have scripts in hand, it’s easier to raise money for the rest, for the production. Plays In Place can commission playwrights at very competitive terms, especially for shorter plays. There are very few theatres commissioning one-act plays unless the playwrights are very famous. We don’t need our people to be famous, they just need to be good at what they do and willing to collaborate with the partner institution and keep their needs in mind when writing. For example, we are partnering with a historical site, so our production has to connect to the actual history. I like talking about money with writers because I think we don’t talk about it enough, and then we go into our conversations with producers a little ill-informed. Plays In Place mostly develops work in a community, which is different from the somewhat isolated traditional playwriting mode. Can you talk about the development process for writers and other artists, and how we work together with the sites? The process that you and I are involved in now [a partnership with Historic Northampton], as well as the National Parks Service’s Suffrage In Black and White , both involve three writers and we are all meeting somewhat regularly to talk about our work and to coordinate our presentations to the institutions. There is significant independence between each play, but also, I feel that it’s very important as a group to build that project together, so it has some liminal level of cohesiveness. They are plays that are going to sit together in an evening so whatever that meal is going to be for the audience it must be palatable and delivered in some stylistic framework. The model varies quite a bit from project to project. The Historic Northampton plays are shorter and all have the same director, so there will be a unifying feel between them. We are already talking about what shared actors we’re going to use and what the handoff is going to be between the plays. Whereas the Suffrage In Black and White pieces are full-length plays that will each have their own director. Plays In Place acts as a Creative Producer. We work with the teams to kind of tie them together and the writers are part of that tying things together so that we each understand what the other is doing. Having parameters for a writer can be a very stimulating part of the puzzle. We’re solving puzzles. In the traditional theatre the puzzle presented to us is pretty much “here’s a blank stage” and we act like all blank stages are the same, which I think is a fallacy, but it also causes us to create a somewhat generic version of our play. The business model in the traditional theatre is: get your play done at a professional company, have it be very successful, and have it be done by a bunch of other professional companies, and then have it be done by a bunch of community theatres, and then by a bunch of schools, and together that’s going to make you a bunch of money. Which is true when it works out, but you’ve also had to design a play that fits in all those different spaces. Our model is much less practical in some ways, in that if we do our jobs well the play can’t be done nearly as effectively in other places. For example, I just ran Moonlight Abolitionists , which is designed to be done under the full moon at Mount Auburn Cemetery as a concert reading in the dark. A friend of mine saw it and wanted to know if she could do it in her theatre in London. She could, of course, but it would lack the context that the cemetery brings and the atmosphere the moonlight brings. I wrote it for this place and time on purpose. The specificity of what we create as an artistic team is exciting to me. And I’m more interested in that than the ability of it to be done a thousand times elsewhere. It’s a tough question to ask yourself as a writer: would you be ok if this play was only ever done twice? Would it be worth the work? I will say so far, the answer has been yes. The production experiences are so intensely rich that it is worth it. Moonlight Abolitionists directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian. October 2022. Walking around the site at Historic Northampton before I even had a story was such an inspiration. As a writer, how is the development process different when you are writing for and from a specific place? It depends on what the place is bringing. The plays are still going to be driven by story and character, but how are those stories and characters related to this place? Often the physical action and visual nature, even the sonic nature of the play, is already influenced by the setting. The question I’m always asking as a dramatist is: what is active about this place? As opposed to just a setting. In the plays that we’re writing for Historic Northampton what is interesting is the historic homes, we are in someone’s yard and so there is a familial sense that is going to inform all our writing, as our characters inhabited this neighborhood. The plays that I did at Mount Auburn Cemetery were different. Cemeteries sound like great places to write plays, except for the fact that the things you know the people for are not things they did in that place. This makes it difficult to create present scenes in the space. I wrote ten plays for the cemetery, in two sets of five. The first set was about the natural world, so that involved things that were there like salamanders and mushroom hunters and birdwatchers, all really rooted in the place. The second set of plays tended to be about people who were buried there. So, there is a play that starts out at this giant sphinx monument that is a memorial to the Civil War, but the scene is between the sculptor and the man who commissioned that piece, Jacob Bigelow, who was old and blind at the time. The scene takes place at the arrival of the sculpture, and then the way we made it active is that we know when he arrived, he inspected it with his hands. So, we got permission to bring this old wooden ladder on and the actor is actually feeling the sculpture and asking all these questions and they are in conversation about this object that is there. Matthew C. Ryan and Ken Baltin in Man of Vision . Photograph by Corinne Elicone. The action of the play is strongly influenced by the physical environment, and that in turn determines the structure. A good example is Moonlight Abolitionists . I knew I wanted to write a play to be done under the full moon, and I knew I wanted to write about abolition. So those things come together but then under the full moon, it’s going to be dark, so structurally that sends it towards a concert reading. It wasn’t going to be safe to move people around in the dark. I decided that it was OK if the characters were static physically as long as it was dynamic relationally between them. This decision also allowed the play to encompass a broad range of times. It is performed in the dark and the characters are lit only by their music stands lights, which casts this really eerie glow on the giant sphinx behind them. Lisa Timmel, who was the Director of New Work at the Huntington when I was a Playwright Fellow there, used to say, “structure is destiny” and I think place informs the structure. My mantra is “Don’t fight the site”. Understand where the site is guiding you and use it because you have so much, but if you try to go against it, you can’t win. I could do a play at Mount Auburn Cemetery set on the moon, but why? The audience will have spent all their imagination jumping to this new place. There are things that I can do in these spaces that I could never afford to pay to do. In a theatre I could make a full moon but it’s not going to be the same as a real full moon with the wind blowing on you at 9 o’clock at night in the middle of a cemetery. We also did this play about the Armenian genocide in the Mount Auburn Cemetery and when someone died, they would exit and they would walk away from the action, but the exits would take five minutes! The play would be continuing, and these people would be just walking way off in the background. When we performed at dusk when characters died, they would just wander into the gloom and disappear, in a lighting effect that would take a huge amount of money to replicate in the theatre, but the earth was doing it for us! You also have the dramatic tension in the fact that these events happened in the same place that they are being reimagined and that your audience knows this. Yes! The audience has that feeling, but so do the performers. When we were at Mount Auburn, I knew one of the actresses had gone to visit the grave of one of the people that she had portrayed in the Armenian play, this young woman who had died in childbirth shortly after arriving in America. It’s impossible for that not to deepen your performance as an actor. There is this richness that you feel. When we did Blood on the Snow it was intense because the play depicts this meeting that happened the day after the Boston Massacre, but you’re in the room where this meeting took place 250 years ago and there are 50 audience members crammed in with a dozen cast members but they are all in the room and you can feel the bones of the place all around you. The people feel so alive, and the audience soaks it in. Amanda J Collins and Robert Najarian in Consecration. Photograph by Corinne Elicone. References Footnotes About The Author(s) TALYA KINGSTON is a playwright, dramaturg and educator working primarily in new play development and theatre for social change. She is the Associate Artistic Director at WAM Theatre in Lenox, Massachusetts. 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.

Maurya Wickstrom 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 Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Maurya Wickstrom By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Over the past couple of years, I have been increasingly taken with the question of temporality. Giorgio Agamben writes in Infancy and History that: Every conception of history is invariably accompanied by a certain experience of time which is implicit in it, conditions it, and thereby has to be elucidated. Similarly, every culture is first and foremost a particular experience of time, and no new culture is possible without an alteration in this experience. The original task of a genuine revolution, therefore, is never merely to “change the world,” but also—and above all—to “change time.” Although Agamben first published this astonishing recommendation in Italian in 1978 and in English in 2007, I first encountered it in a 2012 book by art historian Christine Ross. In her volume The Past is the Present: It’s the Future Too , Ross identifies characteristics-in-common of work by artists who she sees as participating in what she calls “the temporal turn.” It seems that in the visual arts (including video, performance and installation), artists have for awhile been attuned to and working specifically on alterations in common assumptions about, and the lived experience and capitalist formations of, temporality. Similarly, in queer studies, and in other analyses like that of the brilliant Cruel Optimism , by Lauren Berlant, both visions of changed time, and the identification of new forms of neoliberal time have been underway for some time. Although theatre as a medium is strikingly fluent in and fluid with temporality, we have not perhaps been as engaged with temporality in its own right as some other disciplines have been. This is not to say that there has not been brilliant work of lasting significance in theatre scholarship that has touched on temporality and time. At the risk of generalization, I would say that this work has tended to circulate around phenomenology, finitude, death, memory, hauntings and returns, as well as aspects of Delueze’s thought. And at the risk of generalization, I will repeat that most of this work has not been engaged with the question of temporality per se, with opening out the very meaning and practices of temporality itself. Increasingly, my interest, and the interest of a growing number of scholars and theatre artists, is in how theatre and performance are engaging with time in ways that do just this, guided by explorations undertaken through a variety of philosophical and theoretical apertures which influence political thinking in unfamiliar ways. I think we could say that, if not always explicitly stated, this work wonders how we might continue to open up new insights and practices in order to gesture toward forms of “revolution” initiated by changes to time. Matthew Wagner’s 2012 book Shakespeare, Theatre, and Time stands as one of the few monographs specifically on time currently available in theatre and performance studies. Although guided by some of the conceptual apparatus of phenomenology, Wagner’s book is an important step toward opening temporality and theatre as a significant sub-field within theatre studies in that it is explicitly and fully about time and its multiplicity and variations. I applaud his goal “to revitalize our temporal sensibilities in respect to theatre.” Although remaining committed to the familiar assumption that theatre is implicitly temporally bound to and limited by a passage through time that always must come to an end, Wagner insists throughout on the unruliness of time in the theatre, its refusal to obey the clock. The past few years have seen other work emerging that opens the field more radically, departing from phenomenology as the philosophical center for theorization and description. I will mention just a few of these in the short space that I have. The excellent 2014 issue of Performance Research opens an international and interdisciplinary scope for thinking about temporality and performance. The issue follows from the 2013 Performance Studies Conference at Stanford University entitled “Now Then: Performance and Temporality”—a conference which staged a plethora of emerging thought on time. The essays range from a consideration of cyclical time in a twelve-year Finish performance, to an exploration of translation and temporality through Anne Carson’s translation of Antigonik , to the Chinese concept of yu zhou (something like Einstein’s unified field of space and time), to the concept of dyssynchrony in performance in Bogota, Columbia, to name a few examples. Nicholas Ridout’s 2013 monograph Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love is for me an exemplary innovation in thinking about theatre and time. While the book engages most deeply with labor (in its amateur forms), part of Ridout’s work is to articulate the ways in which labor (capitalist and otherwise) is always caught up in time. In one chapter in particular he places Walter Benjamin front and center, reaffirming Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History” as the central text that it is, above and beyond the familiar (although endlessly rich), image of the angel of history. Agamben, in the quote above, forcefully reminds us that one must think about temporality in conjunction with history and vice versa. He reminds us thus, as Benjamin does, to problematize dominate conceptions of history by drawing them through time. One of the ways I have been investigating temporality is through historically introduced genres, especially tragedy. Two wonderful books are helping my own efforts and should be of note for our field. One is David Scott’s 2014 Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice , and the other is the 2016 The Black Radical Tragic: Performance, Aesthetics, and the Unfinished Haitian Revolution by Jeremy Glick. The latter is a constellation of a study moving among Brecht, Glissant, C.L.R. James, Paul Robeson, Eisenstein, Adorno, Brecht, Badiou, and Fanon among others to study in part the timeliness or untimeliness of tragedy. The former questions the temporal expectations implicit in revolutionary planning and puts those expectations up against revolutionary failure and devastation, suggesting a temporality of the tragic genre. Another work, Freedom Time , by Gary Wilder, includes a close examination of the political temporalities imagined and practiced by Aimé Césaire, with particular attention to his play about Toussaint Louverture. I cannot close this very partial overview without mentioning, at least in passing, some of the most striking theatrical work with temporality that I have seen in the past year. These include Andrew Schneider’s You Are Nowhere , Gob Squad’s Before Your Very Eyes and Western Society , William Kentridge’s Refuse the Hour , and, most recently, the counter-tenor, “Negro-gothic” performer, M. Lamar. Each of these works experimentally and courageously in modalities of time that seem to be invented before our eyes. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Maurya Wickstrom is Professor of Theatre at The Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Her newest monograph, Fiery Temporalities in Theatre and Performance: The Initiation of History , is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama’s Engage series. 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.

Jeanne Klein Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 1 Visit Journal Homepage Reclaiming Four Child Actors through Seven Plays in US Theatre, 1794-1800 Jeanne Klein By Published on December 12, 2017 Download Article as PDF I’ve done my duty, and I’ve done no more. Tom Thumb [1] Despite the burgeoning of childhood studies since the early 1990s, few theatre historians have investigated the considerable achievements of child actors in early US theatre. As Shauna Vey argues, child actors should be re-conceptualized as wholly competent professionals capable of exercising their agency and rights. [2] Back in 1806, fifteen-year-old John Howard Payne asserted their dramatic competencies by publishing “an accurate list” of admired British and Irish “infant prodigies” in his own magazine. [3] Little did he know that well over thirty child performers had already graced US public stages since 1752 when Lewis Hallam involved his three children and one niece in what became the monopolistic Old American Company (OAC). In this essay, I reclaim four child actors who performed extensively from ages six to twelve from 1794 to 1798 when new permanent theatres were built in several major cities. [4] Miss Mary Harding and Miss M. Solomon (I’ll call her Margaret) originated or popularized substantive child characters, and Master Samuel Stockwell and Miss Harriet Sully also reenacted these classic roles. As US-born or newly naturalized citizens, these four actors were especially cherished in a nascent nation founded on moral virtues, democratic rights, and civic responsibilities. To illuminate their debuts, early careers, theatrical competencies, and subsequent lives, I offer four different case studies that exemplify how these and other child actors entered and left the profession. Throughout, I document which child actors earned substantial roles at major companies in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Norfolk, and Richmond and later discuss how actor-managers adopted age-appropriate casting as a traditional acting convention before the nineteenth century. Most importantly, given that primary and secondary theatre history sources are remarkably silent on the achievements of child actors, I argue that these four actors in particular and several more introduced here should be recognized and valued for establishing acting, singing, and dancing as viable and respected child professions before the nineteenth century, similar to the extraordinary Billy Elliots of today. Given the lack of child-written records and scant accounts of their acting competencies, I examine the inherent challenges involved in their performances of pivotal child characters in seven British plays that premiered in the US during the auspicious 1794-96 seasons as follows: The Boy and Girl in The Children in the Wood ; the Page in The Purse ; Edward in Every One Has His Fault ; the title role in Tom Thumb ; Juliana and Narcisso in The Prisoner ; the titled Boy in The Adopted Child ; and, Little Pickle in The Spoiled Child . Significantly, these seven plays premiered most often in Philadelphia, the temporary US capital until 1800, suggesting that two actor-managers introduced these works to spotlight child characters as palpable representations of young citizens. Moreover, frequent productions of these particular plays further indicated the extensive popularity of child embodiments on stages along the eastern seaboard. As Jeffrey Richards proffers, the nine characters in these British dramas serve as a “fluid set of changeable signs whereby something British becomes American without being, exactly, either one.” [5] Their transnational and socio-economic identities signify transitional shifts toward middle and lower class children caught in familial conflicts within domestic contexts and away from such royal historical figures as the Duke of York in Richard III , Fleance in Macbeth , Prince Edward in The Battle of Hexham , and Gustava in Gustavas Vasa . As Romantic portrayals of late eighteenth-century childhood, the authentic naiveté of these nine varied characters serve to defy stereotypical tropes of childhood innocence through playwrights’ crafted mixtures of pathos and humor. The fact that child actors most often embodied these nine characters, initially in the US capital, implicates them as potential socio-political players on US stages. Given that each text required small-bodied actors to effectuate its Romantic sentiments, these embodiments of divergent childhoods may have assuaged political divisiveness between wealthy Federalists who funded and populated new permanent playhouses and “middling” Republicans who demanded more democratic repertoires. [6] As a result, recurrent performances of these noteworthy plays provided appreciable opportunities for child actors to showcase their acting, singing, and dancing talents as well as any adult stock actor. An examination of the following four actors explains how they attracted and sustained the attentions of actor-managers and critical spectators, thereby fulfilling their professional duties as disciplined actors under the mindful tutelage of their parents and guardians. [7] Four Child Actors Margaret Solomon debuted as a singer at age four in Newport in February 1792, then Boston in October, and resurfaced in Baltimore in June 1793 with her strolling parents, Mr. and Mrs. [Nathan?] Solomon. [8] When the Maryland Journal announced that her mother would present “three interesting Reasons for her Claims on Public Patronage,” perhaps one reason included support of her aspiring daughter. [9] Although the family’s whereabouts remain unknown after November 1793, they reappeared in Newport to perform with Harper’s OAC contingent in May 1794. In October, the family united with Hodgkinson’s OAC forces at Philadelphia’s Southwark Theatre where Margaret first appeared as an Apparition with Mary Harding as Fleance in Macbeth . One month later, these two girls originated the title roles in The Children in the Wood fifteen times through January 1795. [10] In New York, one critic emphasized that “too much praise cannot be bestowed on Miss Harding [the Boy] and Miss Solomon [the Girl], who, in speaking, in singing, and in action surpassed all we could have conceived of children their age.” [11] Another reviewer in Philadelphia elaborated on Margaret’s performance for personating “the little girl with singular propriety and grace. Her manner is easy and natural; her voice strong and articulate, and in her singing remarkably clear.” [12] Over the next three years, each actress would add over twenty roles to her repertoire, including various balletic pantomimes that required agile dancing abilities. Although Harding’s exact birth year, parentage, and citizenship remain a mystery, Dunlap described her as “Mr. Hodgkinson’s ward, a pretty, innocent, black-eyed girl, looking as if she might be destined to a life of purity and happiness.” [13] As a highly regarded actor-manager, John Hodgkinson determined her OAC casting and her $10 a week salary through 1802, as well as critical attention regarding her progress. [14] For instance, when pantomiming little Horatio in Madame Gardie’s Sophia of Brabant , a reviewer noticed that “Her action and expression of countenance were wonderful for one of her years” as a stage novice, and her “great improvement” as Little Pickle further justified his formative expectations. [15] When the Solomon family defected to Thomas Wignell’s Chestnut company in March 1795, Margaret extended her repertoire considerably through June 1796 in both Philadelphia and Baltimore. In June, her younger sister, Miss C. Solomon, made “her first appearance on any stage” as the Boy opposite her sister’s Girl in The Children in the Wood . [16] The family then joined Boston’s Federal Street Theatre where Margaret performed regularly from September 1796 through April 1799. [17] Meanwhile, for the April 1795 performance of The Children in the Wood , the New York Magazine introduced Samuel Stockwell as: A new candidate for public favour, in the person of a boy about six years old, who has taken the part of the little girl , since the departure of Miss Solomons [sic]. This child may really be considered as a phenomenon. He went through the part, though he had never before been on the stage, with surprising ease and propriety. The song of the ‘Waxen Doll,’ was sung with greater strength of voice, and with equal accuracy, as it had been by Miss Solomons; and we doubt not, that after being a little more accustomed to the stage, he will fully compensate us for her loss. [18] “Little Sam,” as he was called in a 1798 prelude that opened the Park Theatre, may have been the son of Constable Samuel Stockwell, initially hired to keep order at the John Street Theatre. [19] Over this small boy’s extensive career with the OAC, he played at least a dozen recorded roles through 1798 and earned a weekly salary of $4, the lowest salary among stock actors. [20] In 1792, Harriet Sully, the youngest of Matthew Sully’s nine children, made her stage debut at age three as her sister’s “tiny foot page” in Robin Hood with West and Bignall’s company in Richmond. [21] At “only five years of age,” she sang an operatic song and probably pantomimed with her siblings in Charleston. [22] After her mother’s death, she traveled with her sister, Charlotte, and her husband, Mr. Chambers, to perform with the OAC and Chestnut companies, as well as Rickett’s Circus. [23] In Boston, she played the Girl to Harding’s Boy in The Children in the Wood where she “appeared miraculously gifted. The sweet melody of her voice, and the justness and vivacity of her acting, were equally objects of wonder and applause.” [24] Although southern cast lists remain incomplete, she performed at least ten known roles through 1798. [25] Seven British Plays The remarkable acting careers of these four children were made possible by the US premieres of seven British plays selected (and usually altered) by actor-managers and orchestral maestros. The Children in the Wood by Thomas Morton, with music by Samuel Arnold and additional songs by Benjamin Carr, initiated the first major vehicle that mandated two short-stature bodies for adults to carry and hug with kisses by kneeling down to their level. [26] Seeing these affectionate moments and watching the older Boy support his tired sister during a thunderstorm in the woods surely affected family audiences. This hour-long afterpiece never failed to delight and, despite having been “hacked out of its novelty” by 1809, its child actors reminded one critic “of those times when the talents of their parents were in a similar way exerted for the public gratification.” [27] From its premiere in 1794 through 1810 alone, this classic play was performed over 130 times in ten cities until the Civil War. [28] Perhaps the fact that Morton was orphaned at age four attracted him not only to adapt but to revise this otherwise tragic story of a popular 1595 Norfolk ballad as a two-act comic opera for the stage. Rather than orphan two children, Morton keeps the parents alive (away in India) and joyfully reunites the family through the fortuitous heroism of Walter, a poor carpenter who kills the children’s would-be murderer, rescues the returning parents from ruffians, and critically wounds the evil, aristocratic, guardian uncle in the bargain. In addition to delivering dialogue within six scenes, this musical also required the Boy to sing one duet with Josephine, Walter’s fiancé, and the “very puny little” Girl to sing three solos (22). Throughout the play’s tension-filled progression, the children’s honest naiveté undercuts the sentimentality of their otherwise tragic oppressions through constant juxtapositions of serious and comic situations. [29] For example, when Walter drops his sword while fighting Oliver, the henchman, the Girl instinctively retrieves it for him. After an offstage pursuit, Walter reenters: Walter: I never knew I had so much pluck in me. Damme, how I laid his timbers. Come forth, my little tremblers, I am your champion. Girl: Have you kill’d Oliver? Walter: Dead as a door-nail. Boy: Go kill him again. Girl: Such a rogue as he cannot be too dead. (29) Likewise, in the final scene when Walter joyfully rediscovers these “poor innocents” (29) reunited with their parents, the Girl simply says, “I’m very hungry” (53). To conclude the children’s emblematic journey, the adult chorus sings, “Have we sav’d this Girl and Boy? . . . Are we out of the wood, sirs?” (56-57). These rhetorical lyrics appear to question whether Federalists and Republicans were able to save the nation’s children, especially during yellow fever epidemics that struck port cities in the 1790s. While dramatizing the triumph of innocence over villainy, seeing two children survive the treacheries of a sinister aristocrat likely affirmed the moral duty of both political parties to ensure children’s welfare at all costs. Moreover, the unlikely heroism of two children and a lowly carpenter may have fortified Republican’s defense of common laborers who were literally and figuratively building the nation’s prosperity. While The Children presented an ordinary carpenter, The Purse by James C. Cross with William Reeve’s music, introduced Will Steady, the Benevolent Tar of the subtitle, who spoke in sailors’ own lingo, thereby assuring its widespread popularity across the eastern seaboard. [30] This one-act afterpiece required the acting and singing services of our four actors as an eight-year-old Page. Considered the first nautical drama, productions also included Gothic scenic elements, having been based on “an incident said to have happened to a page in the service of the late King of Prussia.” [31] From its US premiere in January 1795 through 1815, over 160 performances were staged in major cities and towns. [32] After an eight-year voyage at sea and their escape from an Algerian slaver, Will Steady returns home with Edmund, the Baron’s son who has been presumed dead. Once inside the castle, Will sees a boy sleeping, reads an affecting letter from his distressed mother, and decides to leave one purse of his money in the boy’s pocket to alleviate their poverty. Upon reuniting with his faithful wife, Sally, he learns that she has been cruelly separated from their son who dutifully serves as the Baron’s page at the castle. Meanwhile, the Baron’s wicked steward, Theodore, seeking to hide his embezzlements, accuses the Page of stealing the purse found in his pocket. Pleading for his innocence, the Page “sobs bitterly [and] bursts into a flood of tears” (26). Just before the infuriated Baron banishes him, Will arrives in the nick of time to reveal the truth with Sally and Edmund on his heels. When Sally runs to embrace the Page, Will instantly realizes the boy is his own son and “catches him in his arms” (28). Yet rather than exile the actual thief, the benevolent Page, “a true chip of [his father’s] old block,” urges the Baron to reconsider: “Though Theodore has been bad, my Lord, if you’d forgive him perhaps he’d mend, and love and thank you for it” (29). The Baron agrees, happily reunited with his own son who leads the final chorus with Will and Sally proclaiming “Our dangers [are] o’er” (31-32). Indeed, as spectators well knew, had Will and Edmund not first escaped the actual US dangers of Algerian enslavements by Barbary pirates during this period, they would not have reunited with their families. Beyond this political premise, seeing a child-servant argue for clemency and overcome the dangers of an aristocrat’s misplaced blame may also have encouraged political partisans to practice benevolence toward their fellow citizens. The fact that a common sailor willingly shares his purse with less fortunate others could also have counseled elite spectators to share their privileged wealth more freely with hard-working indentured servants and sea-faring laborers. A New York reviewer praised “this little piece” for its “well-executed” songs, especially those sung by Hodgkinson’s Steady and Harding’s Page that “were encored loudly .” [33] In Boston, one critic found Harding’s Page “delicate and affecting,” believing she “promises future excellence,” while others argued over Hodgkinson’s alterations of his renamed American Tar . [34] In 1796, while Margaret Solomon edified Bostonians in October, Harriet Sully and Fanny L’Estrange competed within two December days across a Philadelphian street. [35] Misses Hogg, Arnold, and Gillespie also delighted audiences, respectively in Norfolk, Charleston, and Philadelphia, and Samuel Stockwell opened the new Park Theatre with his New York rendition in 1798. [36] Every One Has His Fault by Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald spoke more directly to aristocratic Federalists and Revolutionary War veterans by situating Britain’s and America’s failure to care for the worthy poor as a domestic matter in order to remedy economic inequalities. [37] Against a comic backdrop, this long-running, five-act tragi-comedy provided another cross-dressed opportunity for Harding, Solomon, and Sully to enamor audiences as Edward, a nine- to ten-year-old boy. [38] Its ensemble of domestic characters appealed to US spectators for its “faithful picture of the varied scenery of life” and its “judiciously alternate scenes of pathos and merriment.” [39] True to its title, each character displays his and her personal and social faults within contested marriages. Inchbald’s back story of a wise child, not without his own faults, presses the need for benevolent compassion among unforgiving aristocrats. Lord Norland has disinherited his daughter, Lady Eleanor, for marrying an impoverished Captain Irwin and vows never to pardon her. Nevertheless, eight years ago, he adopted a “half-starved boy,” his own grandchild, who was “forced” upon him by the child’s nurse (39). Before she died, she told Edward he was Norland’s grandchild, but Norland forbids him to speak of his parents. When Mr. Harmony remarks how much the boy is like his mother, Edward vaguely remembers her “kissing me, when she and my father went on board of a ship; and so hard she pressed me–I think I feel it now” (60). After their nine-year banishment in America, Edward’s parents return to London only to find that Captain Irwin’s gentrified friends refuse to lend him money to support his wife and other (offstage) children. Desperate to maintain his social status, Captain Irwin robs his father-in-law at gun point. Upon his capture, Edward reports to Norland that the deranged man’s “poor wife” begs him for mercy; but Norland rejects Edward’s “false conclusion” of equating the virtues of mercy and justice (61-62). To help the man’s wife, Edward exposes his fault by giving Lady Eleanor the retrieved pocketbook of bank-notes he has taken from Norland’s table and divulges his secret as Norland’s grandchild. Upon discovering her own lost child, Lady Eleanor begs her father’s forgiveness; but Norland, still cold-hearted, forces Edward to choose between them. After a moment’s hesitation, Edward takes his grandfather’s hand: “Farewell, my lord, –it almost breaks my heart to part from you; but if I have a choice, I must go with my mother” (76). Only after Harmony has reconciled others’ marital faults does Norland finally forgive his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson with joyful embraces. Having spread polite but contradictory falsehoods regarding each person’s opinions of others, Harmony has succeeded in restoring domestic peace, and “notwithstanding our numerous faults,” he sincerely wishes “that the world may speak well of us all–behind our backs” (88). Overall, this play reminded spectators that everyone has personal faults, regardless of age, class, and politics. Beyond this broad moral, hearing a virtuous child urge a callous aristocrat to practice merciful justice offered politicians a poignant model of striking compassion. Seeing this child give the aristocrat’s money to a distraught woman may have also struck spectators who knew of Revolutionary War officers’ inadequate pensions. By choosing his mother over a grandparent, this child’s decision also verified the strong maternal bonds of Republican motherhood. In New York, after “a young gentleman” attempted Edward in April 1794, Harding’s rendering was deemed “truly charming” in January 1795. [40] Subsequently, Misses Powell, Sully, Solomon, L’Estrange, and Gowen portrayed him, as did Masters Warrell and Shaw through 1798. [41] Upon seeing this “very excellent Comedy” in Baltimore, William Osborn Payne wrote that “Little Miss Hardinge [sic] as Edward played elegantly & astonishingly for so small a Child.” [42] The next child vehicle came from Henry Fielding who dramatized the Arthurian History of Tom Thumb as The Tragedy of Tragedies (1731), a literary satire on heroic dramas. [43] Long after eleven-year-old Adam Hallam introduced this folkloric dwarf to the colonial stage in 1753, Solomon, Stockwell, and Harding each starred in Fielding’s farce and/or Kane O’Hara’s more condensed burletta (1780) from April 1795 through February 1798. [44] As Phyllis Dircks explains, the burletta’s success resulted from O’Hara’s “outrageous exaggeration, the clever use of literary and musical allusion, and unexpected comic bathos.” [45] By 1815, over seventy performances of Tom Thumb the Great had been staged across the north and south. [46] Unlike chapbook versions of this nursery tale, Fielding’s and O’Hara’s plot foregrounds love triangles sparked by tiny Tom’s impending marriage to a full-size princess, aptly named Huncamunca. Having captured Glumdalca, Queen of the Giants, King Arthur welcomes Tom back to court and grants his desire to marry Huncamunca as a reward. Yet Queen Dollalolla loves Tom secretly and conspires with Lord Grizzle to prevent the unimaginable match. This rebellious suitor, already enraged that “Arthur wrongs me [and] cheats me of my Huncamunca!”, readily agrees to stop Tom at all costs (O’Hara, 9). When Tom learns that Huncamunca is promised to Grizzle, he vows to kill him; for “I tell thee, Princess, had I been thy help-mate, We soon had peopled this whole realm with Thumbs”; to which Huncamunca replies, “O fie! I shudder at the gross idea!” (O’Hara, 14; cf. Fielding, 66). Bathetic comedy ensues when, during a climactic battle, Tom kills Grizzle (who has just killed Glumdalca) and declares, “Rebellion’s dead, and now–I’ll go to breakfast” (O’Hara, 19; Fielding, 90). However, as the Ghost of Gaffer Thumb has foretold, Noodle announces that a huge red Cow has devoured the great Tom Thumb; whereupon each thwarted lover kills another for revenge in quick succession, leaving the stage in a ridiculous heap of dead bodies. [47] O’Hara’s burletta adds a happy ending, inspired by The Opera of Operas (1733) by Eliza Haywood and William Hachett, in which Merlin conjures Tom out of the Cow’s mouth and raises the dead. [48] In a final gleeful “vaudeville,” Tom sings another sexually provocative verse: Come my Hunky–come my Pet, Love’s in haste, don’t stay him; Deep we are in Hymen’s debt. And ‘tis high time we pay him. (21) While the sexualized characterization of this lilliputian man-child counters the presumed sexual innocence of child actors, audiences readily accepted the common convention of casting children as Cupids. [49] Rather than remark upon Tom’s sexual innuendos, a Philadelphian critic observed how “Miss Solomon as Tom Thumb excited astonishment at her memory and the ease with which she went through the part,” while Elihu Hubbard Smith found Stockwell’s portrayal “admirable.” [50] Despite Tom’s voracious sexual appetite, girls represented him in breeches opposite older women playing Huncamunca. For instance, Margaret was paired with Mrs. Oldmixon, Miss Willems, and her mother; while Mary and Samuel flirted with Miss Arabella Brett (Mrs. Hodgkinson’s youngest sister), whom Dunlap characterized as “a child in years, but a woman in appearance.” [51] To heighten and widen physical proportions further against a child’s diminutive size, grotesque men often embodied the giant Glumdalca. As one Baltimore reviewer observed, “the large masculine form of [William] Rowson, in female habiliments, his full manly voice, whining out love for the dwarfish conqueror” also provoked considerable laughter. [52] Thus, Tom Thumb’s very character necessitated casting child actors to effectuate the ludicrous humor of this afterpiece to its greatest advantage. From his first entrance when Arthur lifts up this “tiny hero [and] pigmy giant queller” and then “sets him down” (O’Hara, 7) to his preposterous exit from an artificially constructed “Cow’s Mouth” (O’Hara, 20), Tom’s fictional presence as an actual child layered the play’s metaphorical meanings. As a socio-political capstone, O’Hara’s final chorus urged quarrelsome couples to: Let Discord cease, Let all in peace Go home and kiss their spouses. (22) In these ways, stagings of little Tommy Thumb affirmed his place in children’s nurseries as the narrative author of numerous other tales well into the nineteenth century. Watching a small child perform Tom Thumb’s heroic feats may have suggested that, no matter one’s size, each citizen held a moral duty to help solve the nation’s gigantic problems, particularly as refugees fled revolutionary rebellions occurring in France, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and Ireland. O’Hara’s closing lyrics may have urged both political parties to cease their discordant debates over trade relationships with Britain and Caribbean colonies. If revenge-seeking spouses symbolized wars between Britain and France, then better to maintain US neutrality to ensure domestic peace at home. Having acquired Margaret Solomon, an invaluable child actor, the Chestnut company premiered John Rose’s The Prisoner; or, Female Heroism with Thomas Attwood’s music in May 1795. [53] To counter-balance its sentimental love triangles, this three-act musical romance featured the plucky heroism of the jailor’s children, Juliana and her younger brother, Narcisso, of unspecified ages. Wignell initially paired Margaret with “a young gentleman,” whereby her “astonishing powers never shone more conspicuously than as Juliana .” [54] The latter amateur was later exchanged for Miss Cassandra Gilaspie (or Gillespie), a petite, “little airy” dancer who had already played the Boy to Margaret’s Girl in The Children . [55] One year later, Mary teamed with Samuel in New York, and Miss Hardinge played with Harry Warrell in Philadelphia in 1798. [56] Although performed less than twenty times, primarily in northern cities, this afterpiece allowed child actors to showcase their physical prowess and strengthen their singing skills in three songs. [57] Within an unspecified military context (possibly some Spanish colony), Bernardo has imprisoned Don Marcos for two years for attempting to free “mutinous slaves” (1). Bernardo’s sister, Theresa, begs the jailor’s children to free her beloved Marcos from prison before her brother seeks his death for denying his marriage to Clara, Marcos’s sister. While their besotted French-speaking father, Lewis, preoccupies himself with more wine in a room adjoining the dungeon, the children steal his keys and release Marcos during a physically energetic scene done in pantomime (19). Upon recapturing Marcos and his servant Roberto, Bernardo discovers his beloved Clara and her servant, Nina, disguised as soldiers, and both men agree to exchange their sisters in marriage. In the final jubilant chorus, the two sibling cupids sing the following lyrics: Good humour, peace and glee return, Let each enjoy the rising bliss; And brushing up his ruby lips, Prepare alike to sip and kiss. (27) Watching children free a self-purported abolitionist may have resonated with northern spectators, particularly in Philadelphia and Boston, where slavery had been abolished since the early 1780s, and in New York where free and enslaved African Americans fought for their freedoms with white citizens. The unbridled patriotism of children freeing a wronged prisoner to unite him with his beloved may have affirmed abolitionists’ desires to keep African American families intact. In addition to Juliana’s heroism, seeing two young women disguised as soldiers could also have reminded spectators of women’s heroic roles at various encampments. Like previous lost-and-found-child dramas involving a lowly carpenter, a common sailor, and an impoverished captain, The Adopted Child featured Michael, a selfless fisherman who adopted a shipwrecked boy as his wealthy father, Sir Edmund, lay dying eight years ago. For this two-act musical drama by Samuel Birch and Thomas Attwood, Harding originated the titled child in May 1796, followed by Misses L’Estrange, Arnold, Solomon, Westray, Gillespie, and Sully through 1800. [58] Fifteen years later, this popular afterpiece had enjoyed well over 100 performances. [59] Like The Children and The Purse , this drama establishes its premise inside a Gothic castle where Mr. Record, an old steward, and a “childish” maid prepare for the arrival of Edmund’s suspicious relation to claim this titled estate. When Sir Bertrand and his steward, Le Sage, arrive at Michael’s ferry, Michael rejects their bribed offer to educate his already literate son who learns “Nature’s independence” through a seaman’s honest labors (17). Knowing that the Boy’s “life is fought secretly,” he finally divulges his eight-year-long secret to his wife, Nell, of how he came to adopt the “little boy” by promising not to open his trunk until Edmund’s officially declared death (13). Once Record confirms the baron’s death, Michael unlocks the trunk and reads a paper revealing his adopted son’s lawful claim to the estate. Upon learning that the evil-doers have stolen the Boy, Michael searches the forest and hears his son singing inside a convent, where Clara, Edmund’s daughter, has been “secluded from the hated passion of Sir Bertrand” (9) with her maid and now protects the captured Boy. He then procures Le Sage’s letter from the Boy’s would-be smuggler, dons his coat, and shows the letter to Clara, proving Bertrand’s deceitful plan. Before leaving with Michael in his “diabolical” disguise, the fearless Boy asks, “Where are we going? If you mean to kill me, let me tell my beads [his father’s rosary] first–“; to which Michael answers, “Kill you!–O, No!” (34) as they head for the castle. Upon reading the paper that Michael has accidently dropped, Clara discovers the Boy to be her long-lost brother. Inside the castle’s chapel, she confronts Bertrand with her father’s will on behalf of her brother’s “injur’d innocence” (35) and embraces the Boy, while Michael justifies the trunk’s additional documents delivered by Nell. In the play’s final moments, Record “asserts the right of our new Baron against injury and oppression” (38). With a metaphorical nod to political partisans, Michael reminds Nell: “it is enough for us to reflect that we have done our duty, and bore up so steadily against wind and tide to port, that we shall always find anchorage sure, and shelter from the storm” (38). The final obligatory chorus reinforces his analogical meanings “As loud huzzas unite” with spectators’ applause (38). Losing parents in recurrent shipwrecks forced many surviving orphans to wander port cities until wealthy citizens founded orphanages. Yet as Republicans well knew, common laborers also housed and educated orphans as apprentices in their respective trades. The Boy’s astute dialogue and songs not only substantiated his literacy and religiosity but also forecast his future independence as a virtuous democratic citizen. Finally, The Spoiled Child , a wildly popular, two-act farce by Isaac Bickerstaff, presents the outrageous antics of Little Pickle who wreaks havoc while home from his school holiday. [60] Miss Pickle chastises her widowed brother for failing to severely punish his son. Even after killing her parrot and crippling his father’s mare, Little Pickle always has some virtuous reason to explain his vicious actions and win back Pickle’s heart. When Miss Pickle threatens to leave her fortune to Mr. Tagg, Pickle agrees to her scheme–Little Pickle must be exchanged for Tommy, because his former nurse, Margery, has supposedly “confessed” to switching them at birth (15). Yet after colluding with Margery, Little Pickle reappears back home disguised as Tommy, a returning sailor wearing a carrot-colored wig. He resumes his insults toward his “granne” aunt (22) and plots further revenge with his younger sister, Maria, who agrees to play-act his lover. Upon discovering the young couple, Pickle disclaims Tommy to stop their unthinkable courtship, locks Maria in her room, and then receives his son’s letter of hearty repentance. Meanwhile, Little Pickle overhears Tagg plot his elopement with Miss Pickle to obtain her casket of jewels and surreptitiously sews their clothes together, forcing a farcical rupture when Tagg exits quickly to escape Pickle’s entrance and Miss Pickle leaves to retrieve her jewels. As Pickle conceals himself, Little Pickle returns in the guise of Tagg wearing a long cloak. As he about to take the casket from Miss Pickle, Pickle stops them; whereupon Little Pickle throws off his disguises and again wins his father’s forgiveness for having prevented his aunt’s elopement. However, in a brief Epilogue, Little Pickle confides to amused spectators that “I shall be tempted again to transgress” (36). As Anne Varty aptly deduces, “[Little Pickle’s] behaviour, governed by greed for instant gratification of desires, is a perfect model for the justification of Evangelically inspired notions that children manifested original sin and that their defiant will had to be broken to secure their redemption and their divinely ordered subservience to their parents.” [61] These themes likely resonated among US evangelists who baptized their children during the Second Great Awakening. Even among secularists, Little Pickle’s farcical frolics confirmed the inherent difficulties involved in raising dutiful children as virtuous citizens. In sum, the nine child characters in these seven plays evidenced divergent portraits of childhood that incorporated oppressed innocents, benevolent exemplars, moral philosophers, sexual lilliputians, patriotic heroes, recuperated barons, and scheming tricksters with overlapping traits. As suggested above, these child roles may have impacted adult spectators, based on concurrent socio-political events that affected children’s livelihoods during the 1790s. Above all, these British transplants cultivated emerging ideals of US democracy and greater equity among socio-economic classes with requisite poetic justice. After weathering dark and stormy conflicts, each text ended with calls for unified peace, harmonious love, and merciful justice for those individuals whose human faults earned them forgiveness. Significantly, the true identities of six lost-and-found children were restored and reclaimed by their rightful families, while the other three children united lost-and-found couples with warm embraces and blissful kisses. In turn, these familial themes counseled biological parents and adoptive guardians to protect and nurture US youth against all socio-political odds. To effectuate these sentiments, child actors needed to memorize and articulate pages of dialogue, master eighteen songs in six musical afterpieces, and prove their physical agility with disciplined ease–all before hundreds of spectators in cavernous playhouses. Somewhat patronizing reviews of their performances reveal astonished observers who simply could not believe that children could accomplish such feats. Yet achieve these successes they did, largely because adult actors, former novices themselves, firmly believed in and nurtured their competent capabilities. Cross-Gender and Cross-Age Casting Conventions Tracking the casting conventions used in these plays further explains the circumstances in which child actors earned their opportunities in relation to women. In 1759, when Lewis and Adam Hallam outgrew boys’ roles, their seven-year-old cousin, Nancy Hallam, introduced England’s breeches convention by playing two Shakesperean boys. [62] Thus, as boys’ voices changed upon reaching puberty, boys deferred to girls whose higher voices, and presumably shorter bodies, made them more suitable for particular child parts. With the rare exceptions of Masters Stockwell and Gray who played the Girl with her waxen doll in The Children , boys seldom embodied female characters. [63] For instance, in respective productions of Gustavas Vasa in Baltimore and Boston, Susan Wall and Cordelia Powell portrayed Gustava, the hero’s sister; but in Norfolk, Master Gray was renamed “Austava.” [64] For male servants in O’Keefe’s comic operas, Masters most often performed the Irish messenger in The Poor Soldier , Benin (“a Black”) in The Highland Reel , and Goliah in The Young Quaker until 1796 when Margaret and Mary assumed the latter two roles before Samuel earned Goliah in 1797. [65] Although Master Walsh first embodied the Adopted Child in London, it does not appear that boys assumed his role until 1803, when Master Joseph Harris represented him, ironically under the adoptive care of Mr. and Mrs. Francis. [66] For other boy roles, casting was often determined by the Jordanian demands of Mrs. Thomas Marshall, thereby denying advantages to some children. After twenty-nine-year-old Dorothy Jordan created a sensation in Dublin by making Little Pickle her signature role in 1790, actor-managers treated such “romps” as a virtual line of business solely for more experienced actresses. Charles Durang described Mrs. Marshall as an attractive, very petite, five-foot-tall woman “having a round face, an arch and sprightly expression of features, with sparkling eyes . . . . She possessed a melodious powerful and extensive soprano voice, which she used with skill and musical precision.” [67] Therefore, for the US premiere of Every One Has His Fault in March 1794, she initially adopted Edward at the Chestnut. [68] After Master Warrell played Edward in June for unknown reasons, Durang remarked that “It became necessary to change the performer to Mrs. Francis. Mrs. Marshall subsequently made a great sensation” in this role, because “The beauties of her Edward . . . were dwelt upon . . . as the perfection of the art. The impressiveness of the affecting scene between Lady Eleanor Irvine [sic] and Edward . . . drew tears from the most enlightened audience.” [69] Despite such plaudits for this “peculiarly affecting” scene, “Roscius” chastised the actress for a “defect in her attitude” by not walking “sufficiently erect” in a more dignified manner, perhaps “imputed to her bashfulness in appearing in male habiliments.” [70] After eight-year-old Miss Menage originated the Page in London, Mrs. Marshall donned his apparel for the US premiere of The Purse in Philadelphia in January 1795, one month before Mary introduced him to New Yorkers. [71] In July, Margaret appropriated the part from Mrs. Marshall, having proven her mettle to Wignell. [72] In addition to five other girls and two boys, Harry Warrell also earned this androgynous role in Baltimore in 1798. [73] While child actors sustained these parts, the titled boy of The Spoiled Child literally spoiled casting opportunities for at least three girls. Once again, the indomitable Mrs. Marshall premiered Little Pickle in March 1794 and controlled her “unequaled performances” through 1812 as Mrs. Wilmot. [74] When Margaret finally wrested this prize in June 1796, Mrs. Rowson’s prologue exhorted audiences to “Forget for this night the charming Mrs. Marshall.” [75] Yet Solomon and Eliza Arnold faced another Jordanian competitor in Mrs. Williamson who ruled Little Pickle from her US debut in Boston at age twenty-four in January 1796 through her untimely death in October 1799 under her husband’s management. When the Williamsons left Boston in April 1797, Mrs. Marshall resumed Little Pickle in May, although Margaret held onto Edward and the Page. [76] As for nine-year-old Eliza, she had recently played Little Pickle in Portland under her mother’s tutelage. Here, an observer felt astonished by the powers of “her youth, her beauty, her innocence.” [77] Despite such raptures, manager John Sollee cast Mrs. Williamson as Little Pickle and relegated Eliza to Maria for his northern company. [78] Beginning in August 1797, a contentious “war” erupted at two New York theatres between Sollee at John Street and Wignell at Greenwich Street a few blocks away. [79] Based on Odell’s extant cast lists, it appears that Sollee used Eliza very little, other than for a walk-on in his production of The Battle of Bunker Hill . Previous performances by Wignell’s child actors suggest that Harry Warrell may have played Tom Thumb, and Fanny L’Estrange likely repeated the Adopted Child and the Page. [80] However, Sollee did not cast Eliza in these latter two roles until his retreat back to Charleston. At the end of this bitter New York season, Mrs. Marshall reclaimed Edward to benefit Philadelphia’s yellow fever sufferers, and Miss Hardinge [sic] made her US debut as a page in The Orphan and may have been paired with Harry or Master Warren in The Children . [81] Only when a group of rebellious actors left Sollee to play in Wilmington and a renegade Charleston company was Eliza able to reprise Little Pickle under Mr. Edgar’s management. [82] Unlike Margaret and Eliza, Mary evaded these competitions, given Hodgkinson’s stalwart casting in which she maintained Little Pickle over his wife from March 1795 through 1804. [83] Meanwhile, across southern circuits, Mrs. Ann [Bignall] West held Little Pickle until Mrs. Williamson arrived in Charleston in November 1797. [84] When Mr. and Mrs. Chambers returned from Ireland in July 1799, Alexandre Placide hired them for his Charleston season and cast Harriet as Edward and the Girl in The Children later that winter. [85] In December, after playing Little Pickle in Philadelphia, Mrs. Marshall abruptly left the Chestnut over a casting dispute and assumed the roles Mrs. Chambers had taken after Mrs. Williamson’s death. [86] The following year, Harriet watched Mrs. Marshall play the Adopted Child and Little Pickle in January and February, until Placide cast her in these roles in March, perhaps with Marshall’s coaching. [87] With the exception of these contested roles, only plays calling for male and female siblings guaranteed the casting of child actors over older women, as in the cases of The Children and The Prisoner . In 1798, Stockwell and Miss Hogg played Mrs. Bland’s children in Dunlap’s short-lived production of André ; and, for his more successful adaptation of Kotzebue’s The Stranger , they were accompanied by four-year-old George H. Barrett. [88] In early 1800, Sully and Stockwell initiated Cora’s “infant” boy as a novitiate role for countless child actors in adaptations of Kotzebue’s Pizarro in Peru that never failed to inspire pathos for over six decades. [89] Subsequent Lives and Legacies Based on casting decisions initially made by Hodgkinson and Wignell, these acting conventions explain how and why Harding originated the Boy in The Children and the Adopted Child; while Solomon initiated the Girl in The Children , Juliana in The Prisoner , and revived Tom Thumb, with affirmative support from Stockwell and Sully. After successful portrayals of Edward, the Page, and Little Pickle, child actors added more solo and sibling roles to their repertoires in 1800. In these ways, our four actors established foundational legacies for concomitant and successive child performers into the nineteenth century. Having been tutored assiduously by their parents or guardians as salaried apprentices, they advanced their theatrical careers into adolescence. In early 1799, Mr. Solomon left his family to perform in Charleston, while Mrs. Solomon and her two daughters played in Boston through April and then rejoined Wignell’s company in December through November 1802. [90] In February 1803, Margaret reunited with her father in Charleston where she made her first appearance there as the Adopted Child. [91] She rejoined the Chestnut company in December for performances in Annapolis, Philadelphia, and Baltimore at least through June 1804 when she reprised Tom Thumb. [92] Whether she left the stage thereafter at or after age sixteen, possibly to marry, remains an ongoing mystery. Mary Harding remained in Hodgkinson’s household through mid-August 1802 until she married Mr. G. Marshall. [93] She later joined Placide’s company in Charleston under Hodgkinson’s management. [94] For her first appearance there in February 1804, Carpenter described her as a person who has “that delicate fragility which never fails to interest the male sex. Her face is expressive and strongly marked by the hand of Thalia. She seems to be adept (for her age) in lively comedy, and received and deserved the applause due to good acting.” [95] Sometime after Hodgkinson’s death from yellow fever in September 1805, she returned to the Park where his two daughters, Fanny and Rosina, memorialized him in The Children . [96] After meeting William Clark, a fellow actor, she married him in Charleston in January 1807; and, in June 1809, their daughter, Phoebe, debuted as Cora’s child in Norfolk. [97] In 1811, one month after Phoebe played Gustava at the Richmond Theatre, a disastrous fire erupted there on December 26, but the couple managed to escape through a backstage door and survived this tragedy. [98] Two years later, the family returned to the Park, where Phoebe played the Girl in The Children , and they continued to perform in various cities at least through 1823. [99] After playing numerous supportive boys in New York, Samuel was announced as Mr. Stockwell in 1806, while Fanny Hodgkinson played Tom Thumb. [100] He then joined Mary for two seasons in Charleston and subsequently performed in Providence and Boston. [101] In 1810, he married Catherine Henry in Boston; and their son, Samuel B. Stockwell, played Tom Thumb in 1824, among other child roles, and became a highly regarded scenic and panoramic painter. [102] From November 1799 through July 1800, Harriet Sully performed classic child roles in Charleston and Norfolk and again sang “I Never Will be Married” at age twelve. [103] Ironically, after spending time in Antigua with her sister, she returned to Norfolk in 1801 to live with her Aunt Margaretta Sully West “until she could be married.” [104] After performing there for another season, she announced her retirement from the stage in June 1802 at age fourteen and married Dr. Joseph Porcher three years later. [105] Conclusion Reclaiming the professional achievements of four major child actors validates their crucial significance not only as theatrical exemplars of late eighteenth-century childhood and performance but also as dramatic socio-political participants in US democracy. Despite childist or prejudicial attitudes toward children, child actors should be touted as equally important stars in US theatre. The foundational evidence in these four, necessarily detailed, case studies offers historians a dynamic model for investigating the continuities of successive child actors and other disruptions of age-appropriate casting through US premieres of additional dramas into the nineteenth century. Notably, this microhistory corroborates Dunlap’s claim made in 1832: “By those who have consulted the actor’s calling a good and reputable one, children have been trained to it, and are among the best and worthiest, as artists and members of society.” [106] Based on the theatrical conditions of the 1790s, all stock companies could have been defined as Theatres for Young Audiences, given the work of numerous child performers, local supernumeraries, call-boys, and other young assistants and servants who labored on and off stages for child and adult spectators. As Durang asserted, “The theatre was then a school” and a close-knit “family” where highly respected actresses “cultivated intellect and polished manners” among young members in the green room. [107] Like humble but great Tom Thumbs, child actors had done their duties but ever so much more as significant players who should be remembered in the annals of US theatre as verisimilar justifications for age-appropriate casting today. I extend my deepest gratitude to Heather Nathans for her astute scholarship and Caitlin Donnelly, Head of Public Services at KU’s Spencer Research Library, who generously shared and extended our mutual enthusiasms for Miss M. Solomon. References [1] Henry Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great , ed. Darryl P. Domingo (New York: Broadview Press, 2013), 30. [2] Shauna Vey, Childhood and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre: The Work of the Marsh Troupe of Juvenile Actors (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015), 7-9. [3] John Howard Payne, “An Accurate List of the Infant Prodigies. . . .” The Thespian Mirror 1, no. 8 (1806): 61. [4] See also my previous companion essays “An Epoch of Child Spectators in Early US Theatre,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 10, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 21-39; and “Without Distinction of Age: The Pivotal Roles of Child Actors and Their Spectators in Nineteenth-Century Theatre,” The Lion and the Unicorn 36, no. 2 (April 2012): 117-35. [5] Jeffrey H. Richards, Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 11. [6] Heather S. Nathans, Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). [7] All cast lists have been compiled from the following sources: George O. Seilhamer, A History of the American Theatre (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1969; repr. 1888-91), 3 vols.; David Ritchey, comp. and ed. A Guide to the Baltimore Stage in the Eighteenth Century: A History and Day Book Calendar (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982); Eola Willis, The Charleston Stage in the XVIII Century (Columbia, SC: State Company, 1924); Mary Julia Curtis, “The Early Charleston Stage: 1703-1798” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1968); George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage , vol. 1 and 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927); Thomas Clark Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre in the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933); Mary Ruth Michael, “A History of the Professional Theatre in Boston from the Beginning to 1815” (PhD diss., Radcliffe College, 1941); Joseph N. Ireland, Records of the New York Stage , vol. 1 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1968; rprt. 1866-67); Martin Staples Shockley, The Richmond Stage 1784-1812 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977); Lucy B. Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk, Virginia, 1788-1812” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1993); Richard P. Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide in Charleston, 1794-1812,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 1983); J. Max Patrick, Savannah’s Pioneer Theater from Its Origins to 1810 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1953); Charles Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage between the years 1749 and 1855 (originally in Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch , 1854-1860); Geddeth Smith, The Brief Career of Eliza Poe (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1988); and, George O. Willard, History of the Providence Stage, 1762-1891 (Providence: Rhode Island News Company, 1891). [8] Heather Nathans investigates the Solomon family in Hideous Characters and Beautiful Pagans: Performing Jewish Identity on the Antebellum American Stage (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), 89-97, 148-49. Although she cannot verify their Jewish identities with certainty, she speculates that Mr. Solomon may have been among the first Jewish American actors “from the South,” having first performed in Charleston in April 1785. Pilkinton identifies his first name as “Nathan” when he performs with his wife in Norfolk in early 1791, 542. See also O. G. Sonneck, Early Concert-Life in America (1731-1800 ) (Leipzig: Breitkopt and Härtel, 1907), 229, 146 and Early Opera in America (New York: G. Schirmer, 1915), 152. [9] Ritchey, A Guide , 123, 25, in Maryland Journal , 16 July 1793. [10] Seilhamer, A History , 3: 258-60, 105. [11] “Theatrical Register No. 3,” New York Magazine (January 1795): 1. [12] Aurora (20 March 1795), qtd. in Susan L. Porter, With an Air Debonair: Musical Theatre in America, 1785-1815 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 244. [13] William Dunlap, A History of the American Theatre from its Origins to 1832 (1832; repr., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 199. Billy Harbin notes that Harding had been his ward “over a year previously” with no source, in “The Career of John Hodgkinson in the American Theatre” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1970), 151, note 5. If true, Harding could have played boy servants in earlier OAC productions lacking complete cast lists. [14] John Hodgkinson, Narrative of His Connection with the Old American Company (New York: J. Oram, 1797), 15; Dunlap, A History , 277. [15] “Theatrical Register,” New York Magazine 6 no. 1 (January 1795): 1; Daily Advertiser , 13 February 1795, qtd. in Odell, Annals , 1:402. [16] Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 301. [17] Michael, “A History of the Professional Theatre in Boston,” 2:67-117; Dunlap, A History , 146. As an apprentice, “Croaker” also recalled seeing the family perform for two weeks in Greenfield, MA, in the Boston Courier , 12 November 1849, note, 3. [18] “Theatrical Register,” New York Magazine 6, no. 4 (April 1795): 194 (emphasis in original). [19] William Milns, All in a Bustle: or the New House (New York: Literary Printing Office, 1798), 15; William Duncan, The New York Directory and Register (New York: Swords, 1794), 178, 238. [20] Seilhamer, A History , 3:323-24, 393, 395; Odell, Annals , 2:6, 21; Ireland, Records , 1:134; Dunlap, A History , 277. [21] Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 64, 70, 76. [22] Willis, The Charleston Stage , 217. [23] Seilhamer, A History , 3:222-24, 270-71; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 328; Michael, “A History,” 1:100-01. [24] Federal Orrery , 12 November 1795, qtd. in Michael, “A History,” 1:109. [25] Gaps in children’s performance records here and elsewhere may also be explained by their attendance at schools to learn literacy skills. [26] Susan L. Porter, ed. British Opera in America: Children in the Wood (1795) . . ., vol. 1 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), xv-xvii (hereafter The Children cited in text from the OAC’s 1795 publication). [27] “Theatrical Register,” New York Magazine 6 no. 1 (January 1795): 1; “Theatrical Register,” The Ramblers’ Magazine (2 January 1809): 89. [28] Porter, British Opera , xv. [29] Barry Sutcliffe, introduction to Plays by George Colman the Younger and Thomas Morton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 32-36. [30] J. C. Cross, The Purse (London: William Lane, 1794), in Literature Online at www.literature.proquest.com (hereafter cited in text). [31] New York Magazine (Feb 1795). [32] Porter, With an Air Debonair , 413; Richards, Drama, Theatre, and Identity , 284-86. [33] New York Magazine (Feb 1795) (emphasis in original). [34] Federal Orrery (5 November 1795), qtd. in Michael, “A History,” 1:105, 103. [35] Michael, “A History,” 2:83; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 313-14. [36] Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 495; Smith, The Brief Career of Eliza Poe , 135; Ireland, Records , 1:174. Although Gillespie’s performance as the Page in June 1796 was announced as “Being her last appearance upon any stage” (Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 301), she continued to perform over the next four years with Mrs. West’s company before marrying Thomas C. West in 1800 (Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 478-79). [37] Mrs. Inchbald, ed. Every One Has His Fault , in The British Theatre , vol. 23 (London: Longman, et al., 1808) (hereafter cited in text); Katherine S. Green, “Mr. Harmony and the Events of January 1793: Elizabeth Inchbald’s Every One Has His Fault ,” Theatre Journal 56, no. 1 (2004): 55-58. [38] Seilhamer, A History , 3:119, 347. [39] The Portfolio (21 Feb 1801). [40] Seilhamer, A History , 3:119; New York Magazine (Feb 1795). [41] Michael, “A History,” 2:29, 45, 70, 490; Ritchey, A Guide , 215; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 349; Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 122. “Master Warrell” could have been James, the eldest of three brothers hired as dancers with their parents; or, more likely, Thomas who played around forty utility boys, including Augustus in Rowson’s Slaves in Algiers , from 1794 to 1798. Thomas was announced as “Master” or “Mr. T. Warrell” irregularly in 1797. Beginning in June 1797, Harry performed Tom Thumb, the Page, and the Boy in The Children and Narcisso with Miss Hardinge [sic], after first appearing as Leo the Lion in a harlequinade two and a half years earlier (Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 235, 366-67; Ritchey, A Guide , 219-20, 227). [42] An Unconscious Autobiography: William Osborn Payne’s Diary and Letters 1796 to 1804 , ed. Thatcher T. P. Luquer (New York: Privately Printed, 1938), 23. [43] Fielding’s potential source is no longer extant; in Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies , 97 (hereafter cited in text). [44] Seilhamer, A History , 1:61; Kane O’Hara, Tom Thumb , “A burletta . . . Altered from Henry Fielding,” (London: Barker and Son, 1805), in Literature Online at www.literature.proquest.com (hereafter cited in text). It remains unclear which version, or amalgamation, companies actually produced. Cast lists for the Chestnut’s productions in Philadelphia include Cleora and Mustacha, Huncamunca’s two maids, indicating Fielding’s original (Seilhamer, A History , 3:184; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 248, 267, 278, 391). O’Hara renames them Frizaletta and Plum and reduces their dialogue to one line each. For subsequent Baltimore performances, Seilhamer indicates O’Hara’s authorship (3:194) but with a cast change for Mustacha (3:200); and, Ritchey specifies Fielding’s “operatical farce” ( A Guide , 298, 315) or “burletta” (218) with his named maids (153, 160, 182, 199, 219). In Boston, Michael specifies O’Hara’s adaptation with Cleora and Mustachia [sic] (“A History,” 2:89). A January 1798 advertisement in New York’s Weekly Museum announces “a musical burletta,” albeit with Fielding’s full title (Odell insert after 1:476). See table inserts (n.p.) in Sonneck, Early Opera , which presume O’Hara’s version with music by Arne and Markordt. [45] Phyllis T. Dircks, The Eighteenth-Century English Burletta (Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, 1999), 99-100. [46] Porter, With an Air Debonair , 493; Willis, The Charleston Stage , 353; Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 185. [47] See drawing in V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, The Burlesque Tradition in the English Theatre after 1660 (London: Methuen, 1952), 60. [48] Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies , 145-50. [49] For example, when Harding recited an epilogue as Cupid, the New York Magazine thought “she looked indeed ‘the little God of Love’” (February 1795), an observation probably true for Stockwell’s Cupid in another pantomime (Seilhamer, A History , 3:324). [50] Qtd. in Seilhamer, A History , 3:175; The Diary of Elihu Hubbard Smith , ed. James E. Cronin (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973), 318. [51] Seilhamer, A History , 3:184, 200; Dunlap, A History , 151; Odell, Annals , 2:10. [52] Maryland Journal , 17 August 1795, qtd. in Ritchey, A Guide , 29. [53] John Rose, The Prisoner (London: Lowndes, 1792), in Eighteenth Century Collections Online at www.galegroup.com (hereafter cited in text). [54] Philadelphia Gazette (n.d.), qtd. in Seilhamer, A History , 3:175. [55] Seilhamer, A History , 3:183, 205-06, 209. [56] Seilhamer, A History , 3:323-24; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 366. [57] Porter, With an Air Debonair , 480. [58] Samuel Birch, The Adopted Child (Boston: Edes, 1798), in Eighteenth Century Collections Online at www.galegroup.com (hereafter cited in text). To characterize relational appearances between a marriageable sister and her much younger brother, adolescent or married women portrayed Clara, including Miss Broadhurst, Mrs. Hodgkinson, Mrs. Warrell, Mrs. Graupner, Mrs. Placide, and Miss Ellen Westray in Seilhamer, A History , 3:323; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 333; Curtis, “The Early Charleston Stage,” 398; Michael, “A History,” 2:91, 98, 117; Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 497, 546; Sodders, 2:455. [59] Porter, With an Air Debonair , 428. [60] Isaac Bickerstaff, The Spoiled Child (Dublin: Booksellers, 1792), in Literature Online at www.literature.proquest.com (hereafter cited in text); Porter, With an Air Debonair , 489-90. [61] Anne Varty, Children and Theatre in Victorian Britain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 114. [62] Seilhamer, A History , 1:144; Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix, Wearing the Breeches: Gender on the Antebellum Stage (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 35-38. [63] Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 99. [64] Ritchey, A Guide , 69; Seilhamer, A History , 3:235; Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 481. [65] Seilhamer, A History , 3:327, 395; Michael, “A History,” 2:73, 82. [66] Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage , 43. Stockwell may have played this boy in December 1798, but Seilhamer, Ireland, and Odell do not provide cast lists. [67] Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage , 40. Mrs. Marshall’s birth year is unknown. See entry for Lydia Webb in Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses . . . in London , vol. 15 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973), 314-17. [68] Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 204. Sixteen-year-old Harriet Grist originated Edward in London, based on Mrs. Inchbald’s recommendation, in James Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald (London: Bentley, 1833), 1:308. [69] Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage , 40, 44; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 217, 224; Ritchey, A Guide , 132; and see note 41. [70] Minerva , 20 February 1796. [71] Seilhamer, A History , 3:172, 183, 110, 115-16; Porter, With an Air Debonair , 480. [72] Seilhamer, A History , 3:193, 199. [73] Seilhamer, A History , 3:290; Ritchey, A Guide , 227. [74] Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage , 40; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 204, 206; Odell, Annals , 2:386. [75] Qtd. in Seilhamer, A History , 3:204-05; Ritchey, A Guide , 203. In September 1796, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall were hired by John Williamson as first singers at Boston’s Federal Theatre (Michael, “A History,” 1:138-39). [76] Michael, “A History,” 2:60, 70, 83, 87. [77] Qtd. in Smith, The Brief Career of Eliza Poe , 27. [78] Smith, The Brief Career of Eliza Poe , 33. [79] Odell, Annals , 1:445-70. [80] Ritchey, A Guide , 219; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 313, 333, 348. [81] Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 356; Ritchey, A Guide , 229. [82] Smith, The Brief Career of Eliza Poe , 39-42, 135. [83] Odell, Annals , 1:385, 424; Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 2:551. Mary deferred to Mrs. Williamson for one Boston night in July 1797; Michael, “A History,” 2:512. [84] Willis, The Charleston Stage , 206; Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 111; Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 786; Curtis, “The Early Charleston Stage,” 391-93. [85] Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 252, note 43. [86] William Wood, Personal Recollections of the Stage (Philadelphia: Carey Baird, 1855), 60-61; Pollock, The Philadelphia Theatre , 402; Curtis, “The Early Charleston Stage,” 392-93; Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 1:185-86, 2:551. [87] Following Willis (441-42), Sodders incorrectly identifies “Miss Sully” as thirty-year-old Elizabeth, who had eloped with Middleton Smith five years earlier (Willis, The Charleston Stage , 191), rather than Harriet, for child roles this season (“The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 2:435, 439, 443, 446, 448, 451, 455), per Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 252. [88] Odell, Annals , 2:18, 43. [89] Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 1:187-88, 2:448; William Dunlap, Pizarro in Peru (New York: Hopkins, 1800), in Literature Online at www.literature.proquest.com . [90] Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 1:165-66; Michael, “A History,” 2:101, 105, 106, 109, 111, 114, 115; Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage , 63, 68, 70. [91] Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 2:518. [92] Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage , 73; see Early American playbills, 1750-1812: Guide, Harvard University Library at http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou01711 . [93] Dunlap, A History , 298; Odell, Annals , 2:146. At this point, two Marshall couples create confusions. Patrick incorrectly claims that “Mrs. G. Marshall” played in Savannah in late 1800 when she was still in New York as Miss Harding (Patrick, Savannah’s Pioneer Theater , 38; Odell, Annals , 2:99-106). Lydia Marshall was in Europe during the 1803-04 season (Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 1:250), not Boston (Michael, “A History,” 1:350, 2:191). She reappeared as Mrs. Wilmot with her second husband in Washington in 1805 ( National Intelligencer , 19 July 1805) and then in Richmond (Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 213). [94] Sodders includes Mrs. G. Marshall in casts beginning in February 1804, but Harbin claims she did not join Hodgkinson until October (“The Career of John Hodgkinson,” 230). [95] Charleston Courier , 12 February 1804, qtd. in Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 246. [96] Ireland, Records , 1:232. [97] “Marriage and Death Notices from the City-Gazett [sic] and Daily Advertiser,” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 30, no. 4 (October 1929): 244; Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 460; Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 2:730. [98] Shockley, The Richmond Stage , 345, 355, 375. [99] Odell, Annals , 2:413, 424, 435, 438, 441; Ireland, Records , 1:120; Augusta Chronicle (6 February and 2 April 1823). I am unable to verify further accounts of Mary’s life, but see “Great Trial for Adultery, Divorce, &c.,” New York Herald , 24 November 1841; New York Daily Tribune , 11 January 1845; New York Times , 23 January 1862; “Died,” New York Times , 15 June 1870. [100] Odell, Annals , 2:261. [101] Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 2:626; Willard, History of the Providence Stage, 36; Michael, “A History,” 1:585. [102] Massachusetts Town Clerk Vital and Town Records, Marriages 1800-1849, vol. 2, K-Z, 282; “Green Room Intelligence,” Saturday Evening Post , 4 December 1824; “Letter from ‘Acorn,’” Spirit of the Times , 14 October 1854: 410; Ireland, Records , 1:134, 444. [103] Sodders, “The Theatre Management of Alexandre Placide,” 2:435, 443-55; Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 546; Ritchey, A Guide , 209. [104] Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 546, 550; Norfolk Herald , 25 April 1801, 1315, 1484. [105] Pilkinton, “Theatre in Norfolk,” 547; Willis, The Charleston Stage , 191. [106] Dunlap, A History , 407. [107] Durang, History of the Philadelphia Stage , 60. Durang also describes “two green rooms.” “One green room was used for musical rehearsals, dancing practices, &c., and it was a place where the juvenile members of the corps might indulge their freaks unrestrainedly.” The principal green room was a “polished drawing-room” where “perfect etiquette” was “always preserved” (34). Footnotes About The Author(s) Jeanne Klein (now retired) directed productions for children and taught Theatre for Young Audiences, US Theatre History, and Children and Drama, among other courses, for thirty years at the University of Kansas. Her numerous articles have been published in Youth Theatre Journal , Theatre Topics , Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , and Journal of Aesthetic Education , among many others. She is currently investigating African American child performers in the 1890s. 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 May Irwin American Musical Theater Musical Theatre Books New York's Yiddish Theater Chinese Looks Reclaiming Four Child Actors through Seven Plays in US Theatre, 1794-1800 The Illusion of Work: The Con Artist Plays of the Federal Theatre Project On Bow and Exit Music Legitimate: Jerry Douglas's Tubstrip and the Erotic Theatre of Gay Liberation Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Becca Levy and Jared Rubin Sprowls Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship Becca Levy and Jared Rubin Sprowls By Published on May 16, 2023 Download Article as PDF What began as a peer-reviewed research paper naturally grew into a dramaturgical adaptation of chevruta , a centuries old Rabbinic approach to interpreting Jewish texts. The style of this paper mimics our process of multiple voices in conversation. In chevruta , dialogue is necessary as one voice can’t capture the depth of a text; we can only approach understanding through discussion and interpretation. Through this lens, we push against prioritizing finality (a deadline, production, or publication) which dictates a linear process. Rather, we hold space to return again, offering a process that spans a lifetime as both the people and art deepen and unfold. We share authorship below, identifying the writer above each section. Though our names signify what we initially wrote, through revision, our voices continue to overlap, always in conversation. As we consider how this lens is valuable for new work development, both Jewish and non-Jewish, we invite you to engage in our reflection of Fringe Sects’ script development as a fellow chevruta partner: our voice, your voice, and the text. JARED In March 2020, I was finally ready to write my “Jewish play” based on a Buzzfeed article a friend sent to me a year prior: “Finding Kink in God: Inside The World Of Brooklyn Dominatrixes And Their Orthodox Jewish Clients.” [1] This article complicated the stereotype of Jewish sexuality I saw being portrayed on stage and screen: Jews as less sexual and less desirable. Expanding what a Jewish “man,” “woman,” or “relationship” looked like felt important to my own understanding of Jewish queerness and an inquiry I could share with my community. COVID interrupted that plan as Jewish sexuality onstage was no longer an urgent exploration, instead it was the last thing on my mind. What we thought would be a few weeks of mandated isolation became months. As Passover approached, I felt detached from my Jewish identity without the ability to invite friends over for Seder. The holiday traditions, rooted in community, didn’t feel the same with only me and my two roommates skimming through the Haggadah. In August 2021, I moved to Tempe, Arizona to pursue an MFA in Dramatic Writing. Fear of isolation continued, and I wondered what I’d do for the upcoming High Holidays. Rosh Hashanah felt like an opportunity for a new chapter in the desert, but I wondered if anyone would be there to join me. BECCA That’s where our Research Methods course comes in; it was my first semester of grad school as well, beginning the MFA program in Theatre for Youth and Community at ASU. I had also just moved to Tempe from Chicago, and much to my delight and surprise the old song “Wherever you go there’s always someone Jewish” [2] proved to be true. I overheard Jared talking about Jewish dominatrixes and had to learn more. JARED As I discussed revisions to my research question, I vividly remember Becca leaning over to join the conversation. Another Jewish woman to discuss Jewish womanhood and femininity? Baruch Hashem! On that day, I was paired with Clara, whose Hebrew necklace had sparked conversation a class prior. Marissa would soon ask what we were doing for Rosh Hashanah. She too had overheard the musings of Jewish study and wanted to join. We had all worried that we’d be the only Jew in the program and were relieved to have found each other so quickly. BECCA Jared and I requested to be paired for the final round of peer review. What was scheduled to be a brief meeting about our papers over coffee became a multi-hour conversation relating our artistry to our values and our values to our Judaism. We intuitively worked as chevruta: a non-hierarchical dyadic practice of Jewish text study rooted in traditional methods going back centuries. A chevruta partnership is a meaningful and holy relationship through which we understand text, and our relationship to text, more fully. The word chevruta comes from the Hebrew root chet, vet, reish, chaver , meaning “friend,” emphasizing that this relationship is between more than peers or colleagues. In fact, it’s not just a relationship between two voices, but three: two people and the text. Scholarly discourse around Fringe Sects was a catalyst for our partnership, while genuine friendship became central to our ongoing collaboration. Jared was researching about Jewish gender and sexuality while more deeply connecting with Jewish ways of being through his writing. JARED Where do the stereotypes, roles, and ideas of Jewish women come from? Who perpetuates them within our community and how does that differ from what we see in the media? BECCA In my initial notes, I wrote about the importance of discoveries, using this play to reveal Jewish challenges and provide space for healing while weaving the Jewish with the universal– JARED Questions and themes that simultaneously drew me into Becca’s research. BECCA What is the relationship between creativity, identity, and values in Jewish artmaking spaces? Grad school was the opportunity to further explore our embodied knowledge through research and practice. JARED Research and practice exist over coffee as much as they exist in conferences and classrooms. I got to know Becca through her research, and I better understood her research by getting to know Becca. BECCA We spent the next semester together in a graduate Dramaturgy Workshop course. One of our first readings was from Geoffrey Proehl’s Towards a Dramaturgical Sensibility ; I sent Jared a text, “Ok so I finally started the reading this morning and tbh I think a dramaturgical sensibility is just simply how Jews read Torah” [3] [4] . I quickly recognized in Proehl’s description of dramaturgical practice a kinship with Jewish ways of thinking, conversing, and analyzing. JARED “Isn’t there a Jewish thing about rehearing the Torah and the purpose of that? Helping me connect dramaturgy and Judaism again” [5] , I texted Becca as we continued to quip that “dramaturgy is Jewish.” It became our special segment in class where we reflected on how teachings from Jewish synagogue, camp, and school prepared us to analyze text as dramaturgs. Later that semester, I assembled a team for a staged reading of Fringe Sects at ASU: Marissa as director, Becca as dramaturg, and Clara, Matt (the only other Jew in our MFA program) and Sam (a non-Jewish MFA peer) as actors. The energy of the rehearsal room was immediately alive – BECCA Is the milk a reference to milk and honey? JARED I hadn’t even thought of that. BECCA What about the Binding of Isaac? JARED That sounds like BDSM. BECCA Our playful yet serious conversations around script development were contagious, or perhaps Jared had just gathered the perfect group for this week-long rehearsal process. We were more than Jewish artists chosen for a Jewish play; we were friends. In our first few months of grad school, we had already spent High Holidays, birthdays, and Chanukah together, discussed art that was important to us, and reflected on the ways our Judaism connected us even when it manifested differently. In fact, the different shades of Judaism were what we celebrated most: the variety of latke recipes, family and community traditions, or the way we pronounced “bimah.” Questioning, connecting, and respecting the multitude of text interpretations based on our diverse lived experiences were the foundation upon which the script could develop so significantly in such a short amount of time. Reflecting upon the process, it is clear that this ensemble intuitively worked from a place of shared values. JARED It was interpretive. It was direct. It was Jewish. BECCA Jared and I always bring these values into our creative practice. Through this process we affirmed that we practice those values creatively in specifically Jewish ways. Text Messages between Jared and Becca during Fringe Sects development. JARED Although I had been in a new work development space with other Jewish artists, I had never felt that a room was guided by a Jewish way of reading text in the way this process was. Sam’s active participation proved that anyone can engage with text in this way. Not only did this way of working benefit the script, but it was life-giving. I was no longer an isolated writer but an artist in the community. BECCA Going deeper into the etymology of chevruta, the Hebrew chaver (friend) derives from the Aramaic, chibor , meaning “to bind together.” In this process, chevruta partners’ understanding of text becomes bound together in discussion, creating something entirely new with what is on the page. Below is an example of a text study where a peer and I engaged with the very first Torah portion. The first translation you’ll read is a more standard version and the second is a collaborative translation discovered in shared study. While working with the text, I was drawn to the word “ ruach ” which translates to “wind” or “spirit” and my partner noticed “ pnei ” which can mean “surface” or “face.” We excitedly investigated more translations and read the text anew. Together, we uncovered a translation that neither of us would have found on our own. Hebrew words with multiple meanings are illustrated below in corresponding colors. I invite you to notice what is the same, what is different, and how these changes influence your understanding of the text. When God created heaven and earth, the earth was chaos and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God fluttering over the surface of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2) When The Universe began to create sky and land, the land was without form and void. Behold darkness over the face of the abyss and the spirit of Creation floating over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2) [6] Stereotypical depictions of dramaturgy seem so isolating– an image of a lonely scholar with their head in their laptop or a book comes to mind; it’s not so different from the rabbi locked in their study or b’nai mitzvah student up in their room, practicing their Torah portion alone. But these are all misrepresentations of reality. To be Jewish is to congregate. To make theatre is to congregate. In the process of working together we bond with one another and the work binds to the point where it’s sometimes hard to know where one person’s idea ends and another’s begins. Jared and I intuitively did this work with our research papers, with everything we read in Dramaturgy Workshop, and with our collaboration on Fringe Sects . JARED Below is a visual representation of our chevruta-inspired conversations analyzing a paragraph from the opening monologue of the play, Rabbi Moshe’s Rosh Hashanah sermon, which we’ve retroactively formatted in the style of rabbinic commentary of Talmud. Visual representation of chevruta-inspired conversation between Becca and Jared on Fringe Sects script text. BECCA Rabbi Adina Allen writes, “Like the parchment wound around the Torah handles, our reading of this story is not circular, but spiral. We move along the same axis, but drop in and down, unearthing new meanings in the cracks of our old stories” [7] . This concept of time provides repetition while acknowledging that with repetition comes a new depth of experience in the present. During our collaboration on Fringe Sects , Jared and I trusted each other to continue to drop in and down in the reading and re-reading, writing, and re-writing, talking and re-talking of the script. We built trust and a shared language through cultural understanding, shared values, and unearthing new meanings while the script developed. The play is set during The Ten Days of Awe, the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when we’re tasked with Tshuvah. Tshuvah means to “return:” to return to right relationship with one another, the world around us, and ourselves. We return to something old or familiar – an ancient practice, text, or question. We seek to find something new, not in hopes of the perfect answer or action, but to embrace the multiplicity of interpretations and meaning-making as part of the process. JARED Even in the process of writing this article, we return again. Remembering text messages we forgot we had sent, making notes for our next stage of development. BECCA (I still want Jared to add the shehecheyanu into that scene). JARED (I will). BECCA These conversations ground us because there’s always something new to uncover. JARED If chevruta is three voices, our process contains even more: playwright, dramaturg, director, cast, characters, script, research, prayer, Torah, and Talmud. If Jewish text, ancient and unchanging, contains such multitudes, we must listen to all possibilities as a new work finds its voice. To give a script agency is to understand that it will never actually be finished… BECCA …but it is always where it’s supposed to be. JARED Jewish values tell us that we too are not finished and that growth is a lifelong process. BECCA As the spiral continues to deepen, may we delight in moments of synchronicity and express gratitude for moments of divergence. JARED & BECCA As this article concludes, we invite you to bring yourself into our chevruta practice. In doing so you join us in community and together we begin again. References [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahfrishberg/dominatrixes-orthodox-jewish-haredi-kink-bdsm-brooklyn [2] Milder, Rabbi Larry. “Wherever You Go There’s Always Someone Jewish.” [3] Levy, Becca. Text message to Jared Sprowls. 23 Jan. 2022. [4] Proehl, Goeffrey. Towards a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey . Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008. [5] Sprowls, Jared. Text message to Becca Levy. 30 Jan. 2022. [6] This text study and my learnings on chevruta come from Becca’s time with the Jewish Studio Project . She has been participating in the Jewish Studio Process, a Jewish art-making and text study practice, with them since May 2020 and is currently part of their Creative Facilitator Training Cohort. [7] Allen, Rabbi Adina. “The Kernel of the Yet-to-Come.” My Jewish Learning , 21 Oct. 2022, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-kernel-of-the-yet-to-come/amp/ . Footnotes About The Author(s) BECCA LEVY is an arts educator and theatre artist who facilitates educational programs and theatrical productions that center community, celebrate culture, and foster creativity for people of all ages. Becca worked as a teaching artist, arts program manager, and stage manager in Chicago after earning her BFA in Stage Management from Western Michigan University. Currently studying for an MFA in Theatre for Youth and Community at Arizona State University, her praxis explores the relationship between creativity and values, drawing from many years of work and play in Jewish arts programming and theatre teaching artistry. www.beccaglevy.com JARED RUBIN SPROWLS is a Chicago-based playwright currently in Tempe, Arizona pursuing an MFA in Dramatic Writing at Arizona State University. His work has been produced Off-Broadway through the Araca Project, as well as at Northwestern University and the Skokie Theatre. He is a 2018 O’Neill NPC Semi-finalist and has been a part of Available Light’s Next Stage Initiative, the New Coordinates’ Writers’ Room 6.0, and Jackalope Theatre’s Playwrights Lab. He is a project-based staff member with Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training. He holds a B.A. with Honors in Theatre from Northwestern University. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Marvin Carlson, Safi Mahfouz | The first-ever English translation of three of Ibn Dāniyāl’s saucy puppet plays. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Theatre from Medieval Cairo: The Ibn Dāniyāl Trilogy (Egypt) Marvin Carlson, Safi Mahfouz Download PDF Irreverent readings from three of Ibn Dāniyāl’s saucy puppet plays, brought to you in their first-ever English translation by Safi Mahfouz (UNRWA University, Jordan, Fulbright postdoctoral Segal Center Visiting Scholar) and renowned theatre historian Marvin Carlson (The Graduate Center, CUNY). Discovered by German orientalist Georg Jacob (1862-1937), these texts are among the earliest secular plays known to humankind. With their English translations now forthcoming from Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications, Mahfouz and Carlson, together with Noor Theatre, offer us a glimpse into Dāniyāl’s spicy Cairo underworld of pimps, prostitutes, and dirty dealing, as well as the practice of street performance in medieval Cairo. Cover Image: Manuscript Illumination. Folio from a copy of Al-Jaziri’s Treatise Automata, Mameluk Dynasty, (1206 AD). Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Erica Stevens Abbitt Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 1 Visit Journal Homepage Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theatre Erica Stevens Abbitt By Published on December 11, 2023 Download Article as PDF EMILY MANN: REBEL ARTIST OF THE AMERICAN THEATRE. Alexis Greene. Guilford, CT: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2023; Pp. 391. Alexis Greene has written a timely, accessible biography of one of America’s greatest living theatrical icons, playwright,director and artistic visionary Emily Mann.The creator since the 1970s of a unique brand of documentary theatre featuring the contradictory, impassioned testimony of real people in crisis, Mann is also an award-winning director, and one of a handful of successful female theatre administrators in this country, recognized for her 30-year tenure asartistic director of Princeton’s McCarter Theater. As the title suggests, Greene argues that Mann’s allergy to preconceived assumptions and the status quo (both politically and theatrically) has been the engine of her achievement. For Greene, Mann’s career does not simply represent triumph over personal trauma, chronic illness and a patriarchal theatre establishment: it provides a testament to the power of radical resistance. In Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater , Greene has wisely used an approach akin to Mann’s own “theatre of testimony.” After hours of interviewing family, friends, associates and the artist herself, Greene uncovered a series of compelling (but sometimes contradictory) narratives. These rich conversations, woven into a deceptively simple chronological structure, provide the reader with a nuanced view of a complex artist and activist. Well-illustrated, with an excellent bibliography and index, the text is divided into a series ofshort, readable chapters. The first third of the book moves briskly through Mann’s family history and its Jewish roots, the influence of her activist parents, her coming-of-age in Chicago in the1960s, and her early theatrical experiments as a student at Radcliffe. In the next section, Greene provides a valuable overview of Mann’s evolution as a creative artist,as she developed techniques for representing real people threatened by forces larger than themselves. The arc of Mann’s early work, from Annulla: An Autobiography (regarding a Jewish woman in post-Holocaust Britain) to Still Life (featuring a Vietnam vet, his mistress and his abused wife) and the landmark drama Execution of Justice (exploring the 1978 assassination at San Francisco City Hall of Harvey Milk and George Moscone) reveals two key insights on Mann’s aesthetic and social praxis. The first insight involves the way Mann gradually widened her perspective and added characters to her plays, creating a vast, polyphonic and more explicitly political dramaturgy. The second is how Mann’s youthful experience of violence (as the victim of sexual assault) drove her need to represent both victim and perpetrator, and sharpened her emphasis on the process of reconciliation and recovery. The final third of Greene’s book hones in on Mann’s tenure as Artistic Director at the McCarter Theatre, her development of translations and new works exploring race and social legacies in America (such as Having Our Say and Greensboro: A Requiem ), and her forays as a director to regional and Broadway stages. Here, Greene gives readers a perceptive take on the patterns of failure and success that have marked Mann’s career— bruising challenges, including her struggles with multiple sclerosis and conflicts with her board, juxtaposed with artistic successes and national recognition. Greene reads Mann's career to exemplify ongoing gender inequity in theatre, despite many generations of women’s achievement and advocacy. But persistence is all, and that is what Mann has contributed. As Greene puts it, "Sometimes being a rebel simply means staying the course" (131). Well-documented and engaging, Greene’s Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater will appeal to a wide range of constituencies. Those concerned with identity and performance in an era of cancel-culture will find descriptions of Mann’s techniques reaching across divisions of race, class, gender and ideology to represent difference (including Blackness and queer experience) relevant in ongoing debates on a core issue of contemporary theater practice. In this, the book interacts with several recent publications on race, equity, diversity and performance,such as Casting a Movement (edited by Claire Syler and Daniel Banks), as well as the innovative"calling in” movement developed by educator/activist Loretta J. Ross. Unexpected tidbits in this biography will provide keen theatre-goers with lively insights, including descriptions of Mann’s encounters with Winnie Mandela, and her long-standing friendship with leading performers, activists and advocates, from John Spencer to Nadine Strossen and Gloria Steinem. Themes of advocacy, alliance building and mentorship run through the volume, furnishing the reader with a vivid sense of the generous, collectivist process that may be one of Mann’s least acknowledged, but most important accomplishments. Greene’s exploration of Mann’s experience with chronic illness during some of the most productive years of her career provides an important contribution to a growing scholarship on trauma, disability and theatre, as well. Her treatment of Mann’s work as part of a national conversation on truth and power should prove valuable to"discourse in the public square" (ix) and to those committed to the study of theatre as civic practice. For students and emerging artists, especially, Greene’s text is an excellent resource, providing a detailed critique of Mann’s major works and methodology in clear and accessible prose. The book’s depiction of the travails of a theatre administrator on the shop floor of the industry should prove enlightening to would-be producers and artistic administrators, especially those from under-represented groups. Indeed, this biography serves as both a cautionary tale and a blueprint for success, reminding outsider aspirants to positions of power the strategies they may need to transform a supposedly “liberal” theatre establishment. For theatre scholars in general (and feminist scholars in particular), Greene’s examination of this significant artist fills a gap in the literature, providing a much-needed comprehensive and updated appraisal of Mann’s career and legacy in the 21st century. Greene, author of Lucille Lortel: Queen of Off-Broadway , and a novelist, educator, critic and theatre practitioner in her own right, notes that one of the major goals in her work is to reveal the everyday lives (as well as the extraordinary achievements) of women in the field. In the end, Greene’s approach for this volume, sympathetic but never sycophantic, is resonant with Mann’s own process and vision. It reminds us that keen observation and empathetic representation are at the heart of effective theatrical expression. This volume validates the career of a woman whose focus on theatre as means of advancing social justice has never wavered—and it underscores, for theatre-makers, students and researchers alike, the potential of performance as a radical force for change. References Greene, Alexis. Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater. Guilford: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2023. Footnotes About The Author(s) Dr. Erica Stevens Abbitt is Professor Emerita in the School of Dramatic Art. From 2015-17, she also served FAHSS as director of the Humanities Research Group. A native of Montreal, Erica earned a BA in political science from McGill before training as an actor. Her theatre career in Canada, the US, New Zealand and the UK included the BBC series OPPENHEIMER, stage roles in London and Off-Broadway and directing, writing and producing credits in regional theatre. In 1999, she returned to her studies, receiving an MA in Theatre History from California State University, Northridge and a PhD in Critical Studies from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. Joining the University of Windsor in 2004, she focused on revitalizing the theatre studies curriculum to include contemporary thinking on race, nation, gender, power and identity, as well as 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 Community Circles and Love Triangles: Gun Violence and Belonging in Oklahoma! and West Side Story Decommissioning the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field and Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline More than a Props List: Redefining Material Culture as Survival and Pleasure in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined The Politics of Trance: Victoria Woodhull and the Radical Reform of Platform Mediumship Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print After 1900 Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theatre Made Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Arnab Banerji 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 Finding Home in the World Stage: Critical Creative Citizenship and the 13th South Asian Theatre Festival 2018 Arnab Banerji By Published on May 21, 2020 Download Article as PDF The South Asian Theatre Festival (SATF) is held annually in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The thirteenth edition of the festival was held on August 4th and 5th, 2018 at the George Street Playhouse. The festival featured seven one act plays in four Indian languages beside four short segments of improvised and devised performances. The festival, now an important fixture in the socio-cultural calendar of the Indian diaspora in the New York-New Jersey area, is not only a celebration of South Asian theatre, but also a confident stride made by the community to organize itself as a significant American subculture. The 2018 edition of the festival and the plays that it offered made it abundantly clear that the artists in the diaspora are ready to celebrate their identity distinct from and yet firmly intertwined with their home culture of the United States. This critical take on the festival offers an insight into the various layers of performance that were evident during the 2018 edition. True to the nature of any South Asian event in the diaspora, the SATF was not simply a theatre festival but became an extended community affair. Packed into the George Street Playhouse lobby were several vendors selling jewelry, clothing, and even insurance and finance products. One of the halls in the playhouse was temporarily converted into a cafeteria where patrons took a break between watching plays to sip on tea and feast on deep fried Bengali delicacies like the vegetable chop. [1] The fair-like atmosphere at the George Street Playhouse made one forget, after crossing the threshold of the auditorium, that this was not suburban India, where theatre festivals like SATF are a regular feature of the milder winter months. The SATF opens up room for the South Asian community to claim cultural citizenship in the United States. In doing so, it becomes an act of creative citizenship by the diasporic subject. In 2008 playwright Sudipta Bhawmik observed that, “[i]n parts of the [United States] , the South Asian population has reached the critical mass to be able to sustain a South Asian-only kind of theatre and arts”. [2] With a large concentration of South Asian Americans, the New York-New Jersey area certainly boasts the critical mass that Bhawmik describes in his comment. And the playwright’s prediction seems to have held its ground in the case of the SATF and the popularity that it has enjoyed over the last fourteen years. The festival by virtue of using the more inclusive South Asian in its title rather than Indian or Bengali has also been able to appeal to an audience and a group of performers that do not always and necessarily conform to those geographic, linguistic, and socio-cultural boundaries. In the discussion that follows I examine the SATF as a space for the South Asian diaspora to claim cultural citizenship and how the festival itself is an act of creative citizenship. I argue that each play presented at the festival and the festival itself are creative acts corresponding to various levels of cultural and creative citizenship substantiating the South Asian American claim to achieving cultural citizenship in the adopted homeland. Scholarship on South Asian American theatre is scant. The scholarship that exists is often focused on the more visible and public examples of South Asian theatre. Essays by Aparna Dharwadker (2003) and Sudipto Chatterjee (2008), while taking insightful peeps into South Asian community-based theatres, spend time examining artists who are crossovers in the American mainstream or on the cusp of breaking into it. While an analysis of recognized artistic voices certainly adds to the conversation on South Asian American theatre, it does so at the expense of the everyday creative acts that form the mainstay of the diasporic subject’s confident strides towards asserting cultural citizenship. Theodore Zamenopoulos, Katerina Alexiou, Giota Alevizou, Caroline Chapain, Shawn Sobers, and Andy Williams write in their 2016 article that, “[c]reative acts are […] expressions of originality and meaningfulness within a certain context”. [3] Overall, the South Asian Theatre Festival, as well as each performance within it hold specific meanings for specific sections of the community within the context of their diasporic experiences. Zamenopoulos, et al. continue to elaborate on one of the challenges surrounding any discussion of creative acts: conflating creativity with “an exceptional product, process, or person”. [4] Dharwadker and Chatterjee seem to have stepped into the same trap even as they set out to look at everyday acts of creativity in their analyses. The ensuing discussion, like the festival at its center of inquiry, recognizes that “creativity is also a general human capability”. Taking a cue from Jean Burgess’s “vernacular creativity,” Zamenopoulos et al add to the potential of creative acts, calling them acts “that help to unearth a hidden potential in a given situation”. [6] The SATF appears to be no more than a public event featuring plays on the surface. Yet a closer analysis of audience participation, festival curation, and the overall presentation of the festival reveals that there is significantly more at play than what meets the eye in a surface evaluation. Dharwadker and Chatterjee’s assessment of local community-based South Asian American theatres gets mired in contemporary dramaturgical concerns not addressed by these community-based theatres themselves. Both scholars seem to be searching for an exceptional product, process, or artist at the expense of evaluating the creative acts playing out in the local desi stage. Ashish Sengupta,on the other hand, erroneously conflates mainstream South Asian thespians like Ayad Akhtar with the large number of South Asian community theatres peppered across the United States as part of the same continuum. [7] Sengupta, of course, has the disadvantage of being at a geographical and therefore critical distance from the subject of his inquiry. A professor at the University of North Bengal in India, for Sengupta, the South Asian roots of Ayad Akhtar are no different than those of the anaesthesiologist Manoj Shahane, who dons a playwright and a director’s mantle outside of the operating theatre. In reality though, and as I hope to demonstrate, Shahane’s theatre is a far cry from those of artists like Akhtar. Akhtar and other artists like him (Asif Mandvi, Ranjit Chowdhry, Aditi Brennan Kapil etc.) are representative examples of what Royona Mitra refers to as the “New Interculturalism,” Shahane’s theatre is fueled by a completely different and distinct set of motivations. [8] Mitra studies British choreographer-dancer Akram Khan’s body of work and the ways in which it seamlessly integrates Khan’s astute understanding of the South Asian kathak and his formal training in Western modern dance. The resulting New Interculturalism, Mitra demonstrates, celebrates cultural similarities without discounting differences. [9] Akhtar, Mandvi, Chowdhry, Kapil, and others represent the New Interculturalism in American mainstream theatre. They are definitively moored in their South Asian milieus but taking confident strides to change the ways mainstream American drama represents the subcontinent. Although an intriguing subject unto itself, plays by seasoned and celebrated artists like the roster presented above, are representative of the exceptional that Zamenopoulos, et al. mention. Conflating them, as Sengupta does in his analysis, with everyday creative acts of cultural citizenship is therefore erroneous and misleading. Before delving into the particulars of how this suburban New Jersey festival galvanizes a community together, it is imperative to understand what I mean by cultural citizenship and what constitutes creative acts. Toby Miller writes, “the last two hundred years of modernity have produced three zones of citizenship, with partially overlapping but also distinct historicities”. [10] Miller’s “three zones of citizenship,” political, economic, and cultural, correspond to the history of the South Asian diasporic subject in the United States, which is a history that has its roots in the nineteenth century British system of indenture and immigrant labor, as discussed by Vinay Lal and others. [11] But for the present context, I will look at two pivotal historical episodes from the twentieth century that shifted the ways of South Asian immigration and integration into American society. In its 1923 verdict on the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind case, the Supreme Court, referring to Section 2169, revised statutes, had opined that the “Naturalization Act ‘shall apply to aliens, being free white persons, and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.’” [12] The following Immigration Act of 1924 further specified that, “no alien ineligible to citizenship shall be admitted to the United States”. [13] These two pieces of legislation effectively ended Indian immigration to the United States for nearly four decades. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 significantly altered this by declaring that “No person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of his race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.” The new legislation re-opened the doors for South Asians to claim legal and uncontentious political citizenship in the United States. Vinay Lal writes, “The vast bulk of Indians arrived in the US following the immigration reforms of 1965, and though they occupy a disproportionately significant and highly visible place in the professions, Indians also ply taxis in New York and dominate the Dunkin Donuts franchises around the country.” [15] In 2017, there were nearly 4.1 million South Asian Indians in the United States with seventy percent of the population above sixteen employed in, “management, business, science, and arts occupations” with a median household income of $114, 261. [16] As is evident from above, in the five decades since South Asians attained political citizenship, they have made significant strides towards economic citizenship too, becoming one of the most successful ethnic minorities in the United States. Yet the third zone of citizenship, cultural, has eluded the community for a long time. Cultural citizenship calls for “flexible citizens” who are able to navigate the transcultural and intercultural worlds that we inhabit today. [17] Miller says, “it does appear as though more and more transnational people and organizations now exist, weaving political, economic, and cultural links between places of origin and domiciles.” [18] Although South Asians are one of the most well-educated ethnic groups in the United States, the community has thus far fit itself smugly into the melting pot metaphor. This means that the community has chosen to not distinguish itself as a subculture, focusing instead on living up to Franklin Roosevelt’s insistence on the “swift assimilation of aliens” through the “language and culture that has come down to us from the builders of the republic.” [19] The SATF challenges the narrative of assimilation and opens up a space where the transnational/transcultural South Asian diasporic subject can counter the mainstream American cultural hegemony. In other words, the festival corroborates Miller’s observation that the United States cannot continue with its cultural nationalism of being a “Monolingual Eden.” [20] The SATF space for claiming cultural citizenship is facilitated through acts of creative citizenship involving the production, creation, and consumption of theatre that is aesthetically similar, yet culturally distinct from the theatre in the country of origin as well as the country of domicile. Before examining the acts of creative citizenship witnessed during the SATF and discussing how each performance in the festival fits into various levels of creative citizenship, it is imperative to understand the many layers of cultural citizenship at play within the South Asian community. In the South Asian context, cultural citizenship is itself multi-layered. Each generation of immigrants has their own version of cultural identity that they want to claim within the same space of the festival. For some, the festival and especially the plays performed in it represent a nostalgic hook, a reminder of the country left behind at the time of the start of the diasporic movement. For others, the festival is the opportunity to relive an idyllic irrecoverable past left behind in India. And yet for others, the festival is an opportunity to find themselves and their culture being valued, nurtured, and adapted to its current environment, that of the adopted homeland. These multiple levels of cultural citizenship are celebrated over the course of the festival through creative acts. These creative acts, as Zamenopoulos, et al. demonstrate happen at four levels: doing, adaptation, making, and creating. The festival itself is of course an example of doing which Zamenopoulos, et al. define as “acts with the purpose of ‘getting something done.’” [21] The various plays individually fit the other criterion of creative acts, making the festival an act towards claiming creative citizenship. In the examples that follow, I map the various levels of creative acts onto the layers of cultural citizenship that I outlined above. I have written elsewhere describing the beginning of the diasporic movement as a crisis that is eventually mitigated by social dramas of community events in the adopted homeland. [22] The older generation of South Asian immigrants, especially the first wave that arrived in 1965 or immediately thereafter, did not seem to have the recourse to resolve the crisis of their diasporic movement. These community members were pioneers of the new wave who created the diasporic version of “South Asian-ness,” themselves existing in what Victor Turner calls “an instan[ce] of pure potentiality,” allowing the generations that followed an avenue to mitigate their crises. [23] Certain performances at the SATF like A King’s Tale: Shiladitya , which draw on a well-known children’s book Rajkahini by Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), serve as a conduit for the older generation of South Asian immigrants to witness stories that connect them to a distant and yet beloved past left behind in India. A King’s Tale becomes the nostalgic hook from the structure outlined above for this section of the audience. Seeing younger members of the community, children born and raised in the United States, assume the roles of princes, princesses, and sages from the Indian folklore allow older immigrants to not only celebrate their presence in the United States but also the success and resilience of the community for having been able to pass on vital cultural knowledge intergenerationally. For the community, therefore, it does not matter that the performance of this particular play did not rise to a professional caliber or that an operatic piece was forcibly appended to it. All of these dramaturgical concerns, which bothered the critic and the theatre educator in this correspondent, were dwarfed under the celebration of children successfully embracing, albeit temporarily, their South Asian-ness. This play, directed by guest director Parthapratim Deb, from India, became an act of doing with some adaptation (the operatic addition) to cater to the section of the audience for whom the festival is the nostalgic hook to a distant past. For a different section of the audience the festival is itself a social drama, a set of redressive actions that facilitate social reintegration into the diasporic forms of South Asian-ness. This section of the audience, comprising students turned professionals, or professionals seeking a creative outlet, forms the largest spectator subgroup at the festival. Consequently, the material catering to this section of the audience is very often either sourced directly from, or owes serious allegiance to, the homeland. In other words, this is the section of the audience that is seeking to relive the irrecoverable past left behind in the homeland, in this case, South Asia. The homeland continues to hold a position of extreme significance for the South Asian consumers of festivals like the SATF. A large majority of the attendees are first generation immigrants and suffer from what Anita Mannur has described as “the desire to simultaneously embrace what is left of a past from which one is spatially and temporally displaced, and the recognition that nostalgia can overwhelm memories of the past.” [24] Strategies of negotiation with this in-betweenness have resulted in a longing for ethnic authenticity which has propelled diasporic subjects to turn towards the home to provide cultural markers of continued belonging. These take the form of tours by performers from the homeland which “add to the memory archive of the diasporic community and create a new bridge to ‘home.’” [25] Other coping strategies take the form of creating “social dramas.” These take the form of the annual Durga Puja amongst South Asian Bengalis or the Navaratri observation amongst Gujaratis, etc. These celebrations seek to restore the rupture caused in the continuum of performing ethnic identity by the diasporic movement from the homeland to the host country. [26] In SATF 2018, the Spotlight Columbus production of popular Bengali playwright Tirthankar Chanda’s Achin Doshor (The Unknown Partner) catered to this white-collared middle-class audience. Spotlight Columbus, or Spotlight, has been a longtime supporter of the SATF and since 2014 has been hosting their own version of the festival in Columbus, Ohio to cater to the burgeoning South Asian population in the midwestern town, a growing demographic that comprises of the second category of audiences mentioned above. [27] The performers at the 2018 Spotlight offering were all amateurs with a majority holding day jobs as software professionals and graduate students of the Ohio State University. The group invited noted Bengali actor Debshankar Haldar from Kolkata to direct this play. Haldar is a much celebrated and feted stage performer in Kolkata. This performance of Achin Doshor demonstrated Haldar’s astute understanding of Bengali Group Theatre and its characteristic qualities. [28] He directed a flawless albeit ordinary script with finesse and careful attention to specific comic moments. These moments punctuated the narrative at regular but never overbearing intervals, ensuring that the narrative’s forays into everyday middle-class “Bengaliness” and its pitfalls were highlighted, laughed about, and then ultimately glossed over. The play’s frequent jokes landed well with the Bengali-speaking audience while those unfamiliar with the language were invited to follow along with supertitles. It was interesting to observe the ease with which Spotlight has been able to recreate a performance culture in the American Midwest that comes remarkably close to the Bengali Group Theatre in Kolkata. The Bengali Group Theatre makes a virtue of its poverty and amateur status. [29] While Spotlight’s financial health was not available for scrutiny, it was evident that almost the entire group was comprised of amateurs with a passion for the stage. In fact, Haldar, now a successful stage professional, was an amateur himself when he made his first foray into performance nearly three decades back in Kolkata. Haldar’s shepherding of the 2018 Spotlight presentation was a rite of passage for this young performance company, one that mimics the redressive action of the Turnerian model towards mitigating the crisis of the diasporic movement. In this instance, the redressive action took the form of being able to successfully recreate a slice of urban India and its many foibles in America, thus allowing the dominant section of the audience to relieve their idyllic Indian past. Several other plays over the course of the two-day festival also targeted this section of the audience. The highlight of these offerings was the adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding , led by Indian thespian Mahesh Dattani, titled Rakt Phera . The Hindi adaptation of Lorca’s 1932 masterpiece Blood Wedding is a translation of the Spanish classic by Indian playwright Abhinav Grover. The performance was directed by the noted Indian-English playwright Dattani and presented by the Indian Cultural Society of New Jersey (ICS). Dattani, recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award,one of India’s highest literary recognitions, for his anthology Final Solution and Other Plays in 1998, is also an accomplished director. His films Morning Raaga , and Mango Souffle were critical successes. Dattani has been directing for some time with North American performance companies and on North American college campuses and this was the veteran thespian’s third presentation at SATF. Dattani’s directorial vision lived up to his reputation as a master craftsman. The audience trickling into the theatre were greeted with a haunting light scheme bouncing off smoke and haze on a stage space, empty except for a few small stools. Haunting music, part of Vikram Kumar and Aditya Datey’s original score for the piece, pervaded the environment. In this version of the play, the action shifts from the Spanish countryside to North West India, at the borders of the states of Rajasthan and Haryana. The socially conservative and deeply religious content of the play finds a perfect home in its new setting. Rajasthan and Haryana are notoriously conservative and are often the subject of national and international news thanks to their ignominious human rights and women’s rights records. [30] The ensemble excelled under the able guidance of the seasoned director. Rakt Phera revealed an imaginative directorial vision that encompassed every theatrical element, from lighting, to music, to scenic elements, to create a truly excellent if not always engaging theatrical experience. The adaptation of a foreign context to a completely novel one echoed the creative act of adaptation. Zamenopoulos, et al. define this creative act of adaptation as “acts with the purpose of ‘making things my own.’” [31] The ICS adaptation of Blood Wedding succeeded in transporting the Spanish classic to a new South Asian context while not compromising the narrative integrity of the original. Not unlike the Spotlight presentation of Achin Doshor , Rakt Phera was an attempt for South Asian immigrants, otherwise employed, to recreate a cultural space for themselves in their adopted homeland. It was an interesting choice to adapt a foreign text to cater to a South Asian milieu. The adaptation reverses the diasporic processes undergone by South Asians adjusting to life in a foreign land. The Spanish idiosyncrasies of the original are replaced with their Indian counterparts in the same way that the South Asian diasporic subject has to adapt to life in their adopted homeland. And yet the act of adaptation shifts the message of the Lorca original to address gendered violence in South Asia. The shift echoes the ways in which South Asians, or any other diasporic community, alters the adopted homeland ever so slightly with their presence. It was not clear how familiar the audience was to Lorca or his work, but it was evident from their response that Rakt Phera had succeded in transporting the audience to North West India. Lorca was not the only European author lending creative inspiration at the festival. The festival also featured Four Walls , a stage adaptation of novelist Dr. Rajeev Naik’s Manoos Ghar (A Doomed Home). Manoos Ghar is a freewheeling South Asian American adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House . Four Walls , the stage adaptation of Naik’s novel, was done by writer/director Manoj Shahane. Shahane, an anesthesiologist by the day, has been involved with South Asian American theatre in all imaginable capacities for more than a decade. The play, presented by the New Jersey-based Theatrix, took the story of Ibsen’s Torvald and Nora and located it in an upwardly-mobile South Asian diasporic residence in the United States. The content, context, and setting for the play fit well with current hot button issues in the South Asian diaspora community, including domestic abuse. The adaptations of Lorca and Ibsen represent the diaspora’s journey from the creative act of adaptation to that of making. The creative act of adaptation as defined by Zamenopoulos, et al. is akin to improving a ready-to-eat meal, by say, adjusting condiments, or adding a splash of lime. Whereas the making refers to creative acts undertaken “with the purpose of making things ‘with my own hands’ (such as cooking a recipe from scratch).” [32] Lorca and Ibsen’s original narratives serve as the recipes for Grover and Shahane’s theatrical adaptations. The theatrical adaptations (different from the creative act of adaptation) make the original narratives their own by situating them in a South Asian socio-cultural context. The final play that embodied the creative acts of adaptation and making was the finale performance of the festival. Nirastra (Unarmed) was presented by Epic Actors Workshop and directed by Golam Sarwar Harun and Gargi Mukherjee. The story takes its cue from the Magsaysay award-winning Bengali author Mahasweta Devi’s short stories on the denotified tribal communities of India. The play puts a special emphasis on the story “Draupadi,” which first appeared four decades ago in 1978 as part of a set of loosely connected political narratives Agnigarbha (The Womb of Fire). [33] In their freewheeling adaptation of this story along with others by Mahasweta Devi, Harun and Mukherjee took the specificities of the stories and gave them a more universal framework. In their version, the firebrand tribal woman Draupadi, or Dopdi Mejhen as she is colloquially known in the forested hinterlands of tribal India, stands in for a whole community of oppressed people. Dopdi and her husband Dulan, played emotionally by Harun and Mukherjee respectively, fight on behalf of the disenfranchised tribal people even as government forces aided by local money-lenders launch a severely repressive counter-strike to quell any rebellion. Eventually, Dulan is brutally gunned down while Dopdi is arrested. While under arrest, the Senanayak, the unscrupulous chief of the government forces, played admirably by Sajal Mukherjee, leads a gang rape of Dopdi. In a moment of severe retaliation, Dopdi strips her clothes and offers her body to her oppressors while screaming, “Are you a man? There is no man here to be ashamed of. I’ll not let anyone put a cloth on me. What more can you do? Kill me?” [34] Both Mukherjee and Harun are well-known names in the South Asian American theatre community in the New York and New Jersey areas. Both hold daytime jobs as advertising executives and have appeared in critically successful South Asian American films. The producers, Epic Actors’ Workshop, have nurtured South Asian theatre in its diasporic home over the last several decades. Although the group primarily produces work in Bengali, it has made concerted attempts to attract the larger South Asian community as supporters and stakeholders in the work of promoting and upholding South Asian theatre in the United States. Not unlike the performances of Achin Doshor and Rakt Phera discussed above, Nirastra was also aimed at audiences seeking reintegration into the diaspora version of South Asian-ness and reeling under the crisis of the diasporic movement. Mukherjee’s heart-rending disavowal of the hyper-masculinity of the state represented by the oppressive police chief Senanayak at the end of the play therefore takes on several more layers of meaning beyond a fearless heroine’s last act of resistance. At that moment, Dopdi Mejen rejects any and all state machinations, including those of repressive immigration regulations that continue to deny the South Asian diasporic subject unencumbered access to political and economic citizenship. The clarion call that emanates metaphorically from the hearts of the tribal hinterlands of India is also a firm affirmation that in spite of all odds, the South Asian subject is here to firmly celebrate their cultural ubiquity unfettered by the need to assimilate. The title of the play, Nirastra , meaning unarmed, is symbolic perhaps of resolute steps that the community has taken and continues to take to become equal stakeholders in the evolution of America as a modern nation-state. For the older generation of South Asians who use the festival as a nostalgic hook to connect with their South Asian-ness, plays that correspond to the Zamenopoulos, et al. model of adaptations and making (i.e. Achin Doshor , Rakt Phera , Four Walls , and Nirastra ), are opportunities to update their vocabulary on what constitutes the cultural ethos of the homeland since the beginning of their diasporic movement. As an audience, this generation responds to the dramatic ingenuity of the presentations, even if the content does not hold as much significance for them. In a similar vein for the white-collared audiences seeking redressive action through the festival and its contents, and arguably the largest section of the audience, a presentation like A King’s Tale is an indulgence to allow the second and third generation South Asians to regale the older members of the community. Not unlike the response outlined above, this section of the audience is hardly moved by the folklore but rather celebrate being able to offer the community elders the opportunity to celebrate intergenerational knowledge transfer. In addition to the above, the third section of the audience, drawn from a wide heterogenous cross-section of the community, use the entirety of the festival as an act of celebrating creative citizenship. For this section, the redressive action represented by SATF as a whole supersedes the dramatic merits (and demerits) of individual presentations at the festival. The mere act of being able to celebrate their South Asian-ness while soaking in the festive atmosphere of the occasion is a resounding reminder of the community taking confident steps towards cultural citizenship in their country of adoption. Aparna Dharwadker warned and reminded South Asian American theatre enthusiasts that a new theatrical language cannot emerge in the diaspora unless the theatre practice “distances itself from the culture of origin and embraces the experience of residence in the host culture.” [35] I contend that most South Asian American theatre artists have embraced the experience of being resident in the host culture. It is only that they have adopted a more circuitous route to celebrate their presence in the United States. Playwrights like Sudipto Bhawmik, amongst a few others, have tried including the diasporic experience in their vernacular plays. [36] However, the plays have continued to be written with, primarily, a South Asian audience in mind. It is so because, as the discussion above has demonstrated, the community is still grappling with achieving cultural citizenship while negotiating with the crisis of the diasporic movement. For the community, the performances and the festival become critical creative acts towards achieving cultural citizenship in their adapted homeland. To substantiate and complement the claim of creative acts towards cultural citizenship further, I now turn to the Subhasis Das-led “Theatre in Break” team, an experimental breakout performance component that continually accompanied the more traditional performances at the SATF. The team’s work took performances outside of the proscenium’s confines and into one of the banquet halls of the George Street Playhouse. The celebratory nature of this experiment was evident from the way the space had been set up to resemble a cheery children’s party. The performance segment (a total of four segments would be presented over the two days) was based on classic improvisational workshop modules and Augusto Boal exercises. Das drew on his experience of working with Badal Sircar and his company Satabdi in Kolkata to inform these routines and practices. [37] In the first segment, titled “Hamelin – a Musical Path,” Das and his crew of actors demonstrated basic improvisation exercises based on the prompt “Yes, And….” Audiences were encouraged to provide actors with prompts besides asking actors to use props creatively in their improv routines. The whole demonstration seemed to excite the audience, many of whom were perhaps being exposed to this kind of a performance rhetoric for the first time. The final segment of the Theatre in Break, titled, “Jukti Tokko Gaal Goppo – A Debated Path,” however, did inspire significant audience engagement beyond effervescent enthusiasm and evoked some strong inspired reactions from the audience. As opposed to the largely unscripted improvised bits of the previous three segments, this segment was planned more as a traditional play. Das and his team asked audiences to engage in on-the-spot conversations about marijuana legalization. The audience reflected the mood of the larger community, which is sharply divided on whether to support or denounce this legislation. Das beautifully navigated around the troubled waters of the argument to allow parties on both sides to present their cases without talking about which side of the spectrum he identified with. The conversation on marijuana was followed by a heartwarming presentation on transgender issues. Weaving together Tagore songs, contemporary poetry, and a brief but compelling narrative, actors Tandra and Aparna Bhattacharya created a beautiful moment on stage. While there was certainly some room and possibility for dialogue at the conclusion of this piece, Das chose to postpone that, suggesting instead that while the issue of trans rights was as relevant to the South Asian community as it is to any other, he would rather wait than take an immediate plunge. The Theatre in Break segments represented the fourth level of creative acts in the Zamenopoulos, et al. model, “creating.” Breaking through the imaginary mold of traditional South Asian performance and narrative drama, Das and his team showed the possibilities of a distinctly South Asian American theatre aesthetic, an aesthetic that relied as much on the South Asian-ness of the performers as it did on their American experiences. Filmmaker Jayasri Hart had lamentably written, “In our country of adoption, ours has long been an assigned identity,” an identity forcibly assigned by the American civic bureaucracy. [38] Das’ team demonstrated that the everyday regular South Asian American diasporic subject is finally ready to unfetter themselves and assert their own identity rather than accept any monikers arbitrarily assigned to them. The team successfully celebrated this assertion by showcasing improvisation techniques and by sharing stories that are idiosyncratically South Asian American. Over the last thirteen years, the SATF has certainly created a niche for itself. As I hope to have demonstrated, the festival has opened up a space for the South Asian community to engage in creative acts of cultural citizenship. For the 2018 festival, the Middlesex county of New Jersey formally endorsed the festival. This was evidenced by the two county advertisements in the festival brochure and by the attendance of a county representative at the opening ceremony. The presence of the official seal lent further credence to the idea that the festival is not simply a community event, but a formal stride towards cultural citizenship. Incidentally, South Asians are represented fairly strongly in all levels of the New Jersey administration. The formal endorsement and its presence at the festival signified the “osmosis” between first and second generations of South Asian immigrants and “their combined interaction with the U.S. mainstream,” which Chatterjee identifies as the marker of South Asian creative success. [39] At the time of this writing, the 2019 SATF has been held. The 14th edition of the festival, drawing on the critical mass of South Asians who call the New York-New Jersey area their home, continued to make definite and deliberate strides towards guaranteeing cultural recognition through the creative acts of doing, adapting, making, and creating. The SATF has scripted a success story for itself and has created the space for South Asian Americans to practice and hone their theatre skills and stake their claim as a unique American subculture. The 15th edition of the festival, scheduled for summer 2020, promises to be the biggest and the best edition of the festival and is slated to be held at the new facilities of the George Street Playhouse in downtown New Brunswick. The move to this more centrally located and easily accessible location would have signified the metaphorical move of the South Asian diaspora subject from the assimilative goo of the melting pot to a bright, vibrant, and unique presence in the cultural salad bowl of the South Asian experience in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic has however cast a spell of doubt over the future of the 2020 edition of the festival. In a recent conversation, the founder and the artistic director of the festival Dr. Dipan Ray mentioned, he was hopeful that the festival will be held sometime in the fall. In the meantime, Ray and his team are not sitting idle. In the cards is a virtual theatre platform, launching on May 23, 2020, that will bring together creative voices from India, Bangladesh, and the South Asian American theatre community to discuss the life and legacy of the recently deceased Indian director-manager-actor Usha Ganguly (1945-2020). Incidentally, Ganguly had served as one of the biggest supporters of the festival when it first started in 2005. She mentored both the New Jersey and the Columbus, Ohio festivals in their early years. Irrespective of whether the 2020 edition of the festival happens or not, the yeoman work that the SATF has done to foster a community of dedicated South Asian American thespians will undoubtedly allow it to return with more aplomb. The formidable groundwork that the festival has laid down bears the promise that it will continue to celebrate South Asian America’s confident stride to achieving cultural citizenship in America, their adopted homeland. References [1] A deep fried cutlet made of beets and other vegetables, see “Vegetable Chop,” YouTube video, 08:44, posted by BongEats, December 21, 2017, https://youtu.be/VOKgeZMwrv4 for more. [2] Sudipto Chatterjee, “South Asian American Theatre: (Un/Re-) Painting the Town Brown,” Theatre Survey 49, no. 1 (May 2008): 116. [3] Theodore Zamenopoulos, Katerina Alexiou, Giota Alevizou, Caroline Chapain, Shawn Sobers, and Andy Williams, “Varieties of Creative Citizenship,” in The Creative Citizen Unbound: How Social Media and DIY Culture Contribute to Democracy, Communities and the Creative Economy , eds. Ian Hargreaves and John Hartley (Bristol, UK; Chicago, IL, USA: Bristol University Press, 2016), 106. [4] Zamenopoulos, et al., “Varieties of Creative Citizenship,” 106. [5] Ibid, 106. [6] Ibid, 106. [7] Ashis Sengupta, “Staging Diaspora: South Asian American Theatre Today,” Journal of American Studies 46, no. 4 (November 2012): 831-854. [8] Royona Mitra, Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). [9] Arnab Banerji, “What lies Beyond Hattamala? Badal Sircar and his Third Theatre as an Alternative Trajectory for Intercultural Theatre, “ in The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance , eds. Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor (London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020), 56. [10] Toby Miller, “What is Cultural Citizenship,?” in Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 35. [11] Vinay Lal, 1999. “Establishing Roots, Engendering Awareness: A Political History of Asian Indians in the United States,” in Live Like the Banyan Tree: Images of the Indian American Experience , ed. Leela Prasad (Philadelphia: Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, 1999), 42-48; Brij V Lal, Peter Reeves, and Rajesh Rai, The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006). [12] Jayasri Hart, “Meet the Filmmaker,” Roots in the Sand . Accessed March 10, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/rootsinthesand/filmmaker.html. [13] “The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act),” United States Department of State Archive, accessed on March 8, 2020. https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/87718.html. [14] Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Pub.L. 89-236, 79 Stat. 911 (1968), accessed March 8, 2020. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-79/pdf/STATUTE-79-Pg911.pdf#page=7 [15] Vinay Lal, “Diaspora Purana: The Indic Presence in World Culture,” UCLA South Asian MANAS (n.d.), accessed on May 15, 2020. http://southasia.ucla.edu/diaspora/indic-presence-world-culture/. [16] “Selected Population Profile in the United States: 2017 American Community Survey 1-year Estimates,” United States Census Bureau, accessed on March 10, 2020. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_17_1YR_S0201&prodType=table. [17] Miller, “What is Cultural Citizenship?,” 50. [18] Ibid, 54. [19] Ibid, 52. [20] Ibid, 53. [21] Zamenopoulos, et al., “Varieties of Creative Citizenship,” 106. [22] Arnab Banerji, “The Social Drama of Durga Puja: Performing Bengali Identity in the Diaspora.” Ecumenica: Performance and Religion 12, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 1-13. [23] Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), 44. [24] Anita Mannur, “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora,” in Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 28. [25] Chatterjee, “South Asian American Theatre,” 114. [26] Banerji, “The Social Drama of Durga Puja.” [27] “Ohio Asian Americans.” Ohio Development Services Agency, accessed on March 12, 2020. https://development.ohio.gov/files/research/P7004.pdf. [28] Bengali Group Theatre is the dominant form of theatre in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. For a precise definition of this form of theatre and some of its distinguishing characteristics, see Ananda Lal, Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 139. The specific qualities reproduced in this performance were the sparse suggestive staging and the melodramatic tendency in individual performances. [29] Lal, Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre , 139. [30] Nishu Mahajan, “Honour killing continues unabated in Haryana,” The Pioneer , 27 August 2018, https://www.dailypioneer.com/2018/state-editions/honour-killing-continues-unabated-in-haryana.html; Dev Ankur Wadhawan, “Rajasthan’s shame: It’s paying a heavy price for killing the unborn girl,” Daily O , 28 February 2017, https://www.dailyo.in/politics/female-infanticide-rajasthan-sex-ratio/story/1/15896.html. [31] Zamenopoulos, et al., “Varieties of Creative Citizenship,” 106. [32] Ibid, 106. [33] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “‘Draupadi’ by Mahasveta Devi,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 2 (Winter, 1981): 383. [34] “13th South Asian Theater Festival,” (New Brunswick: Epic Actors’ Workshop, 2018). [35] Aparna Dharwadker, “Diaspora and the Theatre of the Nation,” Theatre Research International 28, no. 3 (October 2003): 305. [36] Bhawmik’s plays Ron, Taconic Parkway, Curious Case of a Casual Terrorist , and Nagorik come to mind. [37] Banerji, “What Lies Beyond Hattamala?,”43-59. Badal Sircar (1925-2011) is one of the most celebrated playwrights and directors in modern Indian Theatre. Sircar devised the third theatre borrowing extensively from Western avant-garde theatre practices. [38] Hart, “Meet the Filmmaker.” [39] Chatterjee, “South Asian American Theatre,” 112-113. [31] Dipan Ray, phone conversation with author. May 14, 2020. Dr. Ray became emotional while discussing the selfless guidance offered by Ganguly as a mentor, guest director, and performer to the New Jersey and Columbus, Ohio editions of the festival throughout their fifteen and six year journeys respectively. Footnotes About The Author(s) Arnab Banerji is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History, Literature, and Dramaturgy at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. His first monograph Contemporary Group Theatre in Kolkata, India (Routledge) was recently released. Arnab researches modern Indian theatre, performance by the South Asian American diaspora, Asian-American theatre, and translation of Indian plays into English. His articles and reviews have appeared in Theatre Topics , Studies in Musical Theatre , Ecumenica , Asian Theatre Journal , BOOM California , Sanglap , Theatre Symposium , Virginia Review of Asian Studies , SERAS , Theatre Journal , and TDR . He has also contributed chapters on modern Indian performance to various anthologies. A detailed publication list and information on his teaching and research can be found on https://arnabbanerji.weebly.com/ . Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue 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.

Interview with James C. Nicola, Tanya Elder, and Diego Daniel Pardo 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 Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Interview with James C. Nicola, Tanya Elder, and Diego Daniel Pardo By Published on June 6, 2024 Download Article as PDF Headshot of Michael Feingold from 1973. Photo: William Baker. Courtesy Feingold Archive. Art is of the artist, and the artist has to find and create it his own way, but art is for the audience, and to refuse to be relevant, to refuse to communicate, to refuse to make the attempt, on any grounds, is to be less of an artist. Art cannot exist for the past, for there is no past; and because we have serious doubts that there will be a future, it dare not exist for the future. To make art fully meaningful for the present is to absorb into it both the past and the future, to make them, in the minds of the audience, the now-serving continuum that they make in reality. —Michael Feingold, “Do We Need Greek Drama?” yale/theatre , Spring 1968 Introduction The 1968 journal precursor to Theater magazine, yale/theatre, asked whether modern audiences needed Greek theatre. Michael Feingold’s fellow editor, Ren Frutkin, wrote that they wanted to gather the “activities of the Yale School of Drama: the theatre, thought, discussion, dream, art, people through essays, plays, poems, reviews and graphics” in this new publication. The canon of Greek plays was relevant to their first issue because Greek theatre “resonates with people in the process of changing their way of thinking about themselves.” These young theatre students—with their provocative lower case journal title—were graduate drama students during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Bobby Kennedy. A changing world was around them as LBJ gave way to Nixon, and Michael Feingold, literary criticism major, was ready to tell the world that its theatre needed to reflect the past and the present in meaningful ways to impact an unknown future; “ancient civilizations are metaphors,” wrote Feingold, “like works of art, in the image of contemporary civilization.” Michael Feingold (1945-2022) wore a variety of hats in the theatre, though primarily known as a theatre critic for the radical Village Voice from 1971-2013 . Few know that he was an original editor at yale/theatre and the first literary manager (or dramaturg) of the Yale Repertory Theatre, as well as the Guthrie Theater and American Place Theatre. He was the General Editor of a set of groundbreaking experimental theatre publication known as the Winter Repertory . He spent summers nurturing playwrights such as Adrienne Kennedy and August Wilson at O’Neill Playwrighting Conferences. He wrote and published poetry, both original and translated. He translated Romance and Germanic Language plays into English including Brecht/Weill, Copi, Goldoni. His works were performed on Broadway and off-Broadway, in California, Norway, and Singapore. He was a director, a playwright, an adaptor, and while he had a caustic personal style, he knew theatre history, and would make sure everyone knew it. When Michael died in 2022, he left a large rental apartment full of books, albums, DVDS and audio-visual material, 18th through 20th century theatre memorabilia, art, and theatrical posters from Yale to Lincoln Center of shows he was involved in. In total, 109 bankers boxes of papers including correspondence, childhood photographs and actor headshots, scripts sent to him in press packets or authors seeking advice, as well as his own personal work at Columbia and Yale, the Winter Repertory, and his own reviews, which are currently neither digitized nor available to the public. This is the “Feingold Project,” as it is called by the team put together by preliminary estate executor, Daniel Diego Pardo, his husband, playwright Brian Quirk, and project archivist Tanya Elder. Pardo gathered a crew who had worked with or knew Michael, packed his belongings and transferred them to office space in Tin Pan Alley (an appropriate location, Feingold would say) where his collection was inventoried, and Pardo and Quirk began the impossible task of finding homes for what Feingold called, “his accumulations” in a New York Stage Review article from 2012 titled “Of Merch and Memorabilia.” The Feingold Project continues its search to place Michael’s rich collection of personal papers into an archive. In April 2024, Feingold’s long-time friend and collaborator, Jim Nicola—recently retired as beloved Artistic Director of the New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW)—spoke with Pardo and Elder regarding Feingold’s papers, his place in theatre history and scholarship (including the rich world of LGBTQ+ artists) in the American theatre for American audiences. They met at the Feingold Project offices, where Nicola was able to view some of the archival materials in the collection and reminisced about their own work together on Two Blind Beggars at the old WPA Theatre. Tanya Elder: When I first looked at Michael Feingold’s vast archive of posters, programs, correspondence, books, and art, one of the things I remember from when I studied experimental theatre at NYU is the journal yale/theatre , which was the precursor to the Theater magazine. yale/theatre had biting material about theatre and politics. And I think Yale is where Michael got a lot of his groundwork for life. It was the height of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Jim Nicola: When was he at Yale? Elder: He graduated with a BA from Columbia [English/Comparative Literature] from 1962-1966. And then he attended Yale from 1966 to 1972 for an MFA. Daniel Diego Pardo: He was there when critic and writer Robert Brustein was in his first year. He met Brustein at Columbia. When Brustein got a job at Yale, he brought Michael there. Elder: There are letters in the archive between Brustein and Michael. Michael writes “Can you get me in?” and Brustein writes back: “Read the newspaper tomorrow and you'll find out your answer.” Pardo: And they inaugurated Yale Rep. Michael was its first literary manager. Nicola: Yes, when it was still a relatively new form. Elder : We have the program and poster from the Yale production of The Frogs (1974). On the third page, you'll see cast members Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Durang, and the rest of the cast. Pardo: It is signed by the entire cast, including Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove, and Michael had a bootleg recording of the production as well. Elder: We spoke to the Sondheim Foundation and are waiting to hear back... Pardo: The production took place in a swimming pool! And you can hear the water on the recording. Elder: This began his relationship with actor Alvin Epstein. Pardo: [ Reading names on program.] Alvin. Carmen de Lavallade. Steve Lawson. Jeremy Geidt. Jeremy Dempsey. Jonathan Marks. These are incredible people! Pardo: We are hoping that the archive will find a home soon. But it’s a complicated process. Elder: The second thing I want to point out is that Michael was one of the most pivotal people in experimental theatre in New York. He was there at the beginning. He was the first person to publish Mad Dog Blues by Sam Shephard and other plays for his Winter Repertory series (Feingold, Winter Repertory 1970-1973), which included six other volumes from different playwrights including Tom Eyen, Rochelle Owens, Robert Patrick, María Irene Fornés, Amiri Baraka, Jim Jacobs, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, and Warren Casey. Nicola: Wow. Elder: One of the volumes was supposed to be Jean-Claude van Itallie’s India Journal which didn’t end up happening, but we have the copy that has both van Itallie’s notes and Michael's notes about publishing it. Michael was the first to publish Grease . Pardo: He wrote the foreword for Grease . I believe it might be the off-Broadway version. We have one Grease hardcover version with Jim Jacob’s autograph in it. Elder: One of the most incredible things about Michael is that he kept everything . Pardo: Yes, even if it was a random piece of paper with his production notes, or a program from an Off-Off-Broadway play that he saw. The archive is a little like a time capsule of history from the Off- and Off-Off Broadway Movement. Elder: He kept the flyers of every performance he went to, including obscure downtown theatre. There's a lot of stuff with David Greenspan, for example. Nicola: The Beggar's Opera ! Do you have any of the shows that he and I did together? Pardo: It's probably in here somewhere. Elder: He… Pardo: …saved everything. Nicola: He did a translation of an Offenbach one-act operetta called Two Blind Beggars . Elder: We have it. Nicola: I directed it. He brought it to me. We did it at the old WPA on Bowery on a double bill with Trial by Jury . Elder: We have everything that he ever wrote and everything he ever saw. Nicola: [ Pointing to headshot of Michael taped to wall. ] Oh, look at that wonderful picture! What year would that be? Pardo: 1973. That was just after his time at Yale. Nicola: I remember him then. Pardo: Remember this? It’s the Grove New American Theatre: An Anthology (Feingold, Grove New American Theater 1992) edited by Michael Feingold. It includes Mysteries and What’s So Funny by David Gordon; Sincerity Forever by Mac Wellman; The American Plan by Richard Greenberg; Theory of Total Blame by Karen Finley; Das Vedanya Mamma by Ethyl Eichelberger; and Dead Mother or Shirley Not All In Vain by David Greenspan. It was published in 1993. He was such an advocate of experimental theatre. Elder: He excoriated the theatre and politics, as he felt the theatre should impact the audience and use their collective memory to elevate the audience to react…. and he felt that these plays were necessary as the basis of good theatre that was politically active. Nicola: This is incredible. Elder: Here are the first four volumes of yale/theatre beginning in Spring 1968 with the question, “Do We Need Greek Theatre?”. The second was entitled “Crisis 1968: Politics and Imagination,” the Spring 1969 edition was dedicated to the Living Theatre, who appeared at Yale when they returned to the United States after a self-imposed and tax-related exile in Europe, and the fourth, “New Playwrights.” We have the full run of the journal, which included about eleven issues with two editions containing individual short plays. Michael was on the editorial board, with Ren Frutkin and Joseph Cazelet in the first volume, and David Copelin for the third volume with various editors. The publication ran to 1975. I believe Michael was involved until about 1972. Pardo: In 1972, he was already established in New York as a critic at the Village Voice . Elder: Yes. And he wrote for more than just the Village Voice . He also wrote for Mirabella , Plays and Players Magazine, if you remember that. Nicola: Yes, I have a stack of Plays and Players . Elder: The problem with publications like this is that many libraries already have the publications themselves, the same goes for a stack of Plays and Players . It’s difficult to move some of that stuff in the archive. But we have so much of it. However, Michael retained the source materials for yale/theatre and the Winter Repertory . Original copyedited material, correspondence, photographs for both publications. Nicola: This is incredible. I grew up just outside of Hartford. And I graduated from high school in ‘68. So, I lived the founding with Robert Brustein arriving at Yale. It was something I was excited about. It is my impression that Brustein and Michael created the notion of a dramaturg in American theatre practice. Elder: That is the job of an archive—to figure out where this stuff is going to go and get an overview of the impact it had then and now. Pardo: With this archive, a PhD student in theatre and performance could delve into it. This would be a beginning or a kind of a springboard into where and what was happening back then. Nicola: Was his MFA in Drama Criticism? Elder: It was in Literary Criticism. Nicola: Yes, because they didn’t have a “dramaturgical” focus yet at that time. It ultimately became “Criticism and Dramaturgy,” I believe. Elder: In this volume of essays editor David Copelin mentions at midnight on the day of the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the second yale/theatre volume on “1968: Crisis and Imagination” that “a group of drama school students was to attend the dress rehearsal of Sam Shepard’s Icarus's Mother at a New Haven playhouse.” And Michael also mentions in his essay in the issue that New Haven was burning. Pardo: What I would want as an outsider to the archive is a frame of entrance. When did Dramaturgy start to officially come into American theatre practice? And when did they start hiring Dramaturgs? There was a while there when it was called “literary manager.” Elder: This is what Michael was called in the early days. Pardo: He was the literary manager at the Guthrie. Nicola: In so many ways, he was a pioneer. Elder: Someone could search out Michael’s Yale-era papers to really think about that development. He did have many opinions, and he wrote about them very strongly, even at Yale. Nicola: He was inspired by the Russian and German theaters. Pardo: That could very well be a PhD thesis. Nicola: It could be a hook to so much to discover about that period. Growing up in Hartford in the 1960s, and being an adolescent then, I witnessed the birth of the Hartford Stage, Yale Rep, of Long Wharf, of the now defunct Stage West in Springfield. Goodspeed. The O’Neill. All of that within ten years. Michael was at the center of it. But he was also one of the observers and articulators of it all. Elder: Here are some of his papers from his undergraduate days at Columbia that kind of formed him. He got A’s on all of them. It’s his first year of college. He’s a sophomore here, or freshman. Pardo: [ Reading a title of one of Michael’s papers. ] “The Development of Tragic Characters in Richard the Third and Richard the Second: Hero and Anti-hero.” He is doing deep thinking at such a young age. Elder: He talks about Richard the Third a lot. I just found another play that he wrote as well. This was at Columbia. It’s called Marie Lafarge , a play in one act. “Good books, good old fashioned movie writing. But can you get Garbo?” That was the teacher’s comment on it. Nicola: ( Laughing. ) He writes all of these in longhand. It’s hard to imagine now. Pardo: Yeah, he was probably a senior at that point and getting ready to go to Yale. Nicola: Oh, there’s comments here. Carbon copy and a typewriter. Oh my God. Yes! Elder: We have materials by other playwrights as well that he worked on. Here is the play More War in Store with Peace as Chief of Police , a play by Lonnie Carter. I think Lonnie Carter also went to Yale. Nicola: Yes. Elder: His Yale graduate professional newsletters included some of his first reviews. Nicola: This reads like he’s speaking to today. Elder: He also has a ton of programs from Yale. There is a series of letters that he wrote about theatre and education which, I think, ended up in one of the yale/theatre issues. Nicola: This brings me back to my youth. Pardo: With your experience, how would you stimulate someone’s imagination that this is valuable for our life today? You know, not just as part of the history, but … Nicola: Just exactly the experience I had right now. This is a metaphor. Historical metaphor for what we are living right now. Pardo: Because he lived through Vietnam. Nicola: He commented on it. He was a part of it. Elder: His introduction to “Crisis 1968: Theatre and Imagination” in yale/theatre basically speaks to us now. How American theatre tries to reinvent itself every twenty years when we go through a political crisis. Pardo: And there's always a political crisis. I mean, historically, during his lifetime, there was the AIDS crisis, which killed a lot of theatre artists and Michael’s friends, but also the whole issue with the National Endowment of the Arts. Nicola: Yeah, that was a huge storm. That we still are feeling the effects of Jesse Helms. Elder: “Death, Or the Theatre” is one of the things that he wrote about, and he argues that when you lose a theatre artist too young, it’s not like losing a regular person or a film or television star. A theatre artist is only really there on the stage. There’s not a lot of video of them. So it feels like more is lost with no way to access what they did. But this archive points to some of that. Pardo: Yes, you also miss out on the growth of the artist if they die young. Michael wrote about this tragic reality. Elder: He also wrote two articles in a series called “Art and Sanity,” where he specifically talks about Jesse Helms, and around the time when Mac Wellman’s play Seven Blowjobs was going on. Pardo: He was also trying to bring attention to actual theatrical works. For example, he would write about the productions to encourage people to go. Nicola: What strikes me about Michael as we are talking is that he was present at, and a participant in, the forging of 20th century American theatre. Elder: People don't really know about the things he did outside of critical reviews. Pardo: He was very much engaged. And the theatre today would not be what it is had he not been around. [ Tanya shows political buttons from the collection .] Look at this button, it’s hilarious! “Vote the Motherfuckers Out.” Nicola: “Take a Playwright to Lunch.” Oh. That's good. “Carol Bellamy”. Wow, Carol Bellamy! Elder: Mind blowing from back in the day, right? She got nowhere near the Mayordom. Pardo: “I Read Banned Books.” Nicola: My god. We’re still having this fight about banned books. What strikes me when you look at the totality of who he is, or was , he was a participant in the creation of the structure and the aesthetics of modern American theatre—art theatre as opposed to commercial theatre. The forging of the not-for-profit theatre. The real theatre, in my opinion. And then he moved along to be more of a spectator and observer and marker or recorder of its progress. Elder: Yes, he was a cultural historian and commentator as well as a critic. Nicola: He was somebody who was engaged, who had a full knowledge of the field. I think his work still speaks to what we are going through now because we’re in a similar period of collapse. Pardo: Especially with funding. I mean, it’s ridiculous that an Off-Broadway theatre production is almost the same ticket price as a Broadway show. And Broadway is always going to win because they do big musicals. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it’s commercial theatre. Nicola: That’s America. That’s who we are. And that’s another element that I’ve always thought was powerful about the not-for-profit theatre: it's going against capitalism. It's rejecting those ideals and proposing an alternative idea. A way of being and being together collectively. But that’s who I think he really was, even if unconsciously. Using his gifts, to speak to another generation or to further generations as they start to contend with what is what, not only what is an art form, but what life is and what it means. Theatre is such a communal event. You can't do it by yourself. Pardo: It's true, it's a community. In drama school, you work together and you rely on each other. The director makes compromises, as does an actor, and a designer. You work together to present something. Elder: But that sometimes it failed, too. Nicola: Of course. Everything has moments of failure. Anything human does. Elder: Instances where he failed in this collection is highlighted when he was supposed to be the translator of Kiss of the Spider Woman . Starting about 1981 to 1986, there are letters from Manuel Puig saying, “Michael, where’s my translation? This movie is hinging on this [Broadway translation].” But that was also at a time when his mother was passing away. Also, there were a couple of years, maybe a decade, where he took on a little too much and couldn’t satisfy everyone, possibly even himself. He never really said why he didn’t do things. Pardo: And what about the gay plays? Elder: When it comes to gay and lesbian material, he wrote some original materials, translated others, nurtured performers. But he’s connected with Caffe Cino, and with tons of playwrights who were gay, straight, and otherwise, particularly Robert Patrick, John-Claude von Itallie, and Joe Chaikin. Michael’s translation of Grand Finale by Copi was published in Gay Plays: An International Anthology in 1989. Pardo: And he also loved the Ridiculous Theatre. Elder: And Robert Patrick, the playwright. He worked a lot with Patrick at the beginning. There’s an autographed copy of Patrick’s Truly Gay News . There is a folder for the Gay American Arts Festival in 1981. Here is Flatbush Tosca . He had a lot of correspondence back and forth with Harvey Fierstein as well. And here’s an interview he did with Sam Shepard on The Chairs in 1985. Pardo: It’s for WBAI radio. Is this Shepard and Joseph Chaikin in this recording? Elder: We should get this digitized. Nicola: Yeah, absolutely. The Gay American Festival was incredible. Everybody from the gay literary world is in here. John Rechy, who wrote the novel City of Night and the non-fiction book The Sexual Outlaw . Jonathan Ned Katz. Harvey Fierstein. “An Evening with Harvey.” A Gay Publishing Roundtable with Felice Picano, Joan Larkin, two major poets. And Michael Denny. And lesbian poets Susan Jordan, Joan Larkin, and Audre Lorde. Incredible. Pardo: He was very well connected. He knew everybody and everybody knew him. Elder: Here are the first or some of the first copies of Christopher Street Magazine. I’m not quite sure if he wrote for these, or if they were sent to him. Pardo: Does Christopher Street still exist as a publication? Nicola: No. Nor does Christopher Street as we knew it either. Pardo: Well-put, Jim. Richard Hauer, a poem. “Superwoman and the Wheelchair.” Elder: He had a lot of correspondence with Stanley Kaufmann as well. And we have Robert Patrick's Truly Gay News. Nicola: A gay humor magazine from 1967. And signed! Renee Richards autobiography, remember? “Renee Richards autobiography would definitely be titled ‘Better Off.’” “Rex Reed has a crack in his ass from sitting on the fence.” That’s hilarious. Elder: Here is Robert Patrick's Cheep Theatricks published in the Winter Repertory . The Winter Repertory was a series of seven published books of plays with Michael as general editor of the series, starting in 1971 with Kenneth Bernard’s Night Club and Other Plays. And here’s Maria Irene Fornes. Promenade , written with Al Carmines. So much of the New York experimental theatre is represented in this archive. He's got a few things in the archive from Al Carmines. Nicola: This is the history of American playwriting. Elder: The last thing I'll show you from the Winter Repertory is Mad Dog Blues and Other Plays by Sam Shepard. Here are photographs that were used in the publication taken by Gerard Malanga. Malanga was a Warhol photographer as well. And there's O-Lan Jones in here someplace, too, Shepherd's wife. O-Lan and Patti Smith in the same volume. One thing that blew me away is that Patti Smith, for this volume, wrote in her own way a history of her friendship with Sam Shepard. And she signed it, and she said “don’t edit it,” and then they edited it, since it needed a comma. So don’t tell Patti! Pardo: It’s here somewhere as part of the archive. Elder: When I was going through his stuff, I was shocked about the depth and range of his life. Everything I learned in the Experimental Theatre Wing at NYU came rushing back. Nicola: Quite a journey that Michael took that parallels the American theatre journey from 1960 to 2022 when he died. Elder: He was a nerdy theatre kid. So he’s got programs in here dating back to the 50s. Nicola: It's a generational perspective. Really informed. And I keep going back to it that he was both a participant and an observer/commentator. And not many people are that. It was part of what made him special, in my opinion, when he was working at the New York Theatre Workshop. Because other cultures that I’ve visited and got to visit, it was a surprise to me that people who were critics were also working artists or dramaturgs employed by theatrical institutions. He was both the critic at the Village Voice observing the work of Off- and Off-Off Broadway, and he was also part of that world as a playwright. And the rest of American culture is separated, like the people who are critical are often not “in” the community. They’re separated. But in German and French theatre, they’re part of the community. And it’s much healthier. I think he really displayed that dual role in his life, and his work and sets a good example for the future. Nicola: There is a paper from college where he quotes from Shaw... Pardo: It's a paper that he wrote when he was an undergraduate. Nicola: Yes [ Reading from paper .] “I stand for the future and the past. For the posterity that has no vote and the tradition that never had any. I stand for the great abstractions for conscience and virtue, for the eternal against the expedient, for the revolutionary appetite, against the day’s gluttony, for intellectual integrity, for humanity, for the rescue of industry from commercialism and of science, from professionalism. For everything that you desire as sincerely as I am.” That’s from The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw. Pardo: And this is early on, 1962. He’s so young, a new kid on the block. And he puts this quote from Shaw on the cover of this report. It tells you a lot of who he is at 18 or 19 years old. Nicola: And that didn't change. Elder: Around 1998, he wrote “Death, or the Theatre” for the Village Voice . I think this encapsulates his entire vision of what the theatre could be. The introduction is biting. But it’s not something that he hasn't written before. He’s very pessimistic, too. Pardo: At this point in time, we were dealing with AIDS and with the NEA mess. Elder: He didn’t really talk a lot about Judaism. He had a bar mitzvah. He grew up in the conservative tradition that he turned his back on, but I think a lot of it informed his politics and life. I work at the American Jewish Historical Society, so I don’t want to forget that he also grew up in that Judaic idea of fairness. Pardo: In his 1991 Miss Saigon review, he says something about blowing up the New York Times . “Every generation gets the theatre they deserve. And we get Miss Saigon .” Elder: His dad emigrated from Lithuania. His mom was born in Philadelphia. I don't know exactly when he emigrated, but I read somewhere that some of his family did perish in the Holocaust. He doesn’t really talk about it in his work to my knowledge, though he did write an unpublished script called The Hitler Play . Nicola: You know, I glanced at the Obie Awards in the collection. And that seems to me that he had a huge influence on what it became then. And it's not anything like that anymore. Elder: Yes, there is a connection between home grown theatres in New York City. HERE Arts Center is represented in the archive. So is New York Theatre Workshop, Theatre for the New Audience, and La MaMa. People who went in and out of downtown theatre flowed in and out, and it's incredible because you never really think of a critic talking to theatre people about actually crafting their work. Pardo: That's what a dramaturg does, isn’t it? I think this is why, every year, he went as the dramaturg at the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Center. It’s how you learn to craft a play. Nicola: This is breaking down those walls. Pardo: When they accepted August Wilson, he had sent in a play that was hundreds of pages long. But when Michael read it, he said something like, “this is an incredible thing. This guy has such an imagination. We must accept this guy and we'll cut it down. We'll turn it and make it into a presentable play.” Nicola: Was that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom ? I think it was. And then O’Neill developed three or four plays of his. Elder: It seems like people don’t really understand that Michael was more than a critic. I was surprised to learn that he was also a translator and an adapter. He was also a lyricist. He was a dramaturg, a literary manager. He had his hand in so many different aspects of crafting theatre. Pardo: One example of this is his work with The Kurt Weill Foundation. They found a song that had never been translated into English. And they had Michael do it. He also worked with the Cole Porter Foundation, and so many others. He also worked with the Cole Porter Foundation to re-write the book of Porter's Aladdin musical. Michael went through the lengthy process of creating a brand new Aladdin musical just before Disney released their version, not by Cole Porter. Alas, bad timing. Nicola: He did Happy End , right? Pardo: Yes. That was his first Brecht/Weill translation. It had Meryl Streep and Christopher Lloyd. It started at Yale and then it moved to Broadway. Elder: He also had like 10,000 albums and 8000 books. Pardo: He has a Threepenny Opera t-shirt autographed by Sting. Nicola: This archive, while the remnants of one person’s life, is actually the story of the American theatre of half a century, or more. This overlaps with my own rumination on the time, the life, that I’ve had in the theatre in America. The big, underlying thought that I wasn’t able to hold on to until now, now that I’m finished. Only now can I see a clear beginning, middle, and end to my professional life. What Michael’s accumulation is revealing to me is that this thing we have all been engaged in on the deepest possible foundational level has been trying to persuade this culture that the role of the artist has value. And you can see in those early years and the materials from Yale with people like Christopher Durang, Meryl Streep, Robert Brustein—you can see they were pushing this. The role, the value of the artist, not just their output. It’s the process of making art. It’s the thing. It's the enterprise, the commitment. Pardo: The remnants of a brilliant mind.... This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) James C. Nicola was the Artistic Director of New York Theatre Workshop from 1988 to 2022. Prior to that, he was first a National Endowment for the Arts Directing Fellow and then Producing Associate at Arena Stage (with Zelda Fichandler). He was a Casting Coordinator at Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. He worked as a director or assistant Off-Off Broadway, and in London at the Royal Court Theatre and The Young Vic Theatre. He is a graduate of Tufts University, and was awarded a Special Tony Award and a Lifetime Achievement Obie Award. Tanya Elder is the Senior Archivist of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS). She studied theater and archival management at New York University and helped organize the records of the HERE Arts Center, the Mark Amitin papers, and worked with the American Theater Archive Project (ATAP). At the AJHS, she re-processed and wrote on the Raphael Lemkin papers. She has also published essays in In Our Own Voices: The Changing Face of Librarianship . Diego Daniel Pardo is an actor who has worked in professional theatre, film, and television. He is also a professional dialect coach. He holds a Master’s Degree in Speech Pathology from CUNY (Lehman) and is an alumni of the Juilliard School Drama Division. He is the preliminary executor for the estate of Michael Feingold. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Teya Juarez 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 Fat Suits and Fat Futures: Ob*sity Drag in The Whale Teya Juarez By Published on January 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF In 2023, The Whale won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling: one of three films nominated for the category that year that featured performers wearing fat suits. (1) The 2022 film is an adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play of the same name, both of which tell the story of Charlie, a 600-lb gay English professor, as he struggles to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter, Ellie. The plot takes place over the course of one week from Monday through Friday. As the ending suggests, this is ultimately the last week of Charlie’s life. Considered his triumphant return to acting, Brendan Fraser starred as Charlie in the film adaptation, earning the 2023 Academy Award for Best Actor. (2) Since Fraser was not himself 600 pounds, the film utilized a fat suit, additional prosthetics, and computer-generated imagery (CGI) to build Charlie’s body, creating a fabricated representation of what most Americans would likely be conditioned to consider “morbid ob*sity.” (3) While the use of fat suits in lieu of casting fat actors can be theorized as “fat drag” (4) —slender bodies dressing up as fat ones for the sake of performance—I argue that The Whale is a unique case of “ob*sity drag,” a term introduced by Royce Best. (5) “Ob*se” (rather than “fat”) carries a specific pathologization and medicalization of fat bodies in U.S. society and has continually been the target of the so-called “War on Ob*sity.” (6) The Whale ’s story of fatness reveals how the theatre and film industries perpetuate the War on Ob*sity mentality that pursues the end of fat. With the future of fat in question, it is essential for the theatre and film industries to confront the fact that fat bodies are often not permitted to represent themselves in performance, especially in the production history of The Whale . In its journey from the stage to the screen, The Whale represents a doubling-down on the use of fat suits as a valid performance of fat embodiment, cruelly suggesting in its context and content that even as stories about fatness continue to be told, real fat bodies need not exist. For decades, the U.S. has been in an endless War on Ob*sity. Warning against the dangers of fatness, public health and government officials have declared an ongoing “ob*sity epidemic” in the U.S. (7) Through the lens of the War on Ob*sity, fatness is viewed as a disease that inherently comprises overall health, or a problem that needs to be cured. Paul Campos calls this the “ob*sity myth,” which relies on three primary assumptions: “that ‘excess’ weight causes illness and early death; that losing weight improves health and extends life; and that we know how to make fat people thin.” (8) Campos points out that the War on Ob*sity labels a significant portion of the U.S. population as targets, pathologizing their fatness as ob*sity. (9) Marilyn Wann describes that fat studies scholars and fat activists have denounced the use of “O-words” such as ob*se and “overweight” that “medicaliz[e] human diversity” and “inspir[e] a misplaced search for a ‘cure’ for naturally occurring difference.” (10) Because fatness has been repeatedly pathologized as an undesirable embodiment under the guise of ob*sity, U.S. society continually orients itself around slenderness as the ideal, obedient, and inherently healthy body type. Americans resort to fad diets, exercise trends, surgical interventions, and weight-loss medications in the pursuit of slenderness. Most recently, GLP-1 medications, such as Ozempic, have become an increasingly popular method of weight loss. The rapid adoption of GLP-1s, before extensive research on the long-term effects of using these medications for weight loss, suggests that the pursuit of slenderness is often about body size, not about lasting internal health. (11) The connotation of the word “war” implies that the end goal of the War on Ob*sity is the eradication of fatness, which inherently means the elimination of fat people . With this ongoing War on Ob*sity, what does the future of fat entail? As I will detail throughout the following essay, theatre and film industries subscribe to this War on Ob*sity mentality, particularly in the case of The Whale , which demonstrates the use of ob*sity drag described above. While theatre and film continue to depict stories about fatness, these industries have often deemed fat people unnecessary to include in doing so. In their introduction to the 2018 Fat Studies special issue on fatness and temporality, Tracy Tidgwell, May Friedman, Jen Rinaldi, Crystal Kotow, and Emily R.M. Lind explore the concept of “fat time.” (12) They describe fat time as “abundant and spacious,” identifying that it “moves bigger” and “resists containment.” (13) Notably, the authors suggest that the opposite of “fat time” is “no time,” which is “capitalist and lean in character.” (14) While no time “shrinks” and “compresses,” fat time “offers more” and “makes fatness more knowable.” (15) I suggest that this relationship between “fat time” and “no time” is significant for performances of fatness like The Whale and what these performances mean for the future of fat. Whereas fat time liberates fat bodies, allowing them to take up time and space, “no time” takes on the War on Ob*sity mentality that seeks the end of fat. No time is at the heart of The Whale . As a performance of fatness, and more specifically a performance of ob*sity, The Whale reinforces the societal belief that fat people are running out of time and that fatness must come to an end. The primary source of urgency that pushes the story forward appears to be Charlie’s inevitable death at the end of the play; Charlie is out of time. By pathologizing Charlie’s body as ob*se, rather than liberating it as fat, Charlie loses access to fat time and is instead given no time on stage or on screen. This distinction between the pathologizing nature of the word ob*se and the liberatory potentials of the word fat is critical to my argument that The Whale utilizes ob*sity drag rather than fat drag. Fat is one of many marginalized identities that has been fabricated and performed by normative bodies throughout the history of performance on stage and screen. (16) Royce Best’s term “ob*sity drag” is based on Tobin Siebers’ theory of “disability drag,” wherein able-bodied actors portray characters with disabilities in performance. Siebers explains that the “modern cinema often puts the stigma of disability on display,” but said disability is represented by those who are not themselves disabled, performing for an audience that is potentially unaware of this important distinction. (17) However, audiences that are privy to the performer’s underlying able-bodiedness are assured that the performer “will return to an able-bodied state as soon as the film ends.” (18) I suggest that ob*sity drag functions similarly in The Whale as the representation of another non-normative identity by normative bodies, with the added connotations of further pathologizing fatness as ob*sity for American audiences. For stage productions of The Whale , fat suits assure the audience that the actor playing Charlie will return to a slender (or otherwise smaller) body after the performance. Fatness is thus represented by a fabricated prosthetic that is removed when the performance is complete. Especially in the film adaptation, since Brendan Fraser is a well-known actor, audiences can rely on their knowledge that the fat body they are seeing is not Fraser’s actual body and that it will return to “normal” when the movie is over. Much like Siebers’ theory of disability drag, The Whale provides representation of a nonnormative embodiment, but it does so through a fabricated depiction of ob*sity. An actual fat body would not collapse into a normative state the moment the curtain drops or the credits roll. Perhaps putting a real fat person on stage/screen is to admit that the fat body will have more time, continuing to live in fat time past the context and confines of the performance. Fatness as Ob*sity & The Ob*sity Action Coalition Fat suits can refer to varying levels of prosthetics and makeup (and in the film version of The Whale , CGI) that have been used to make slender, normative bodies appear fat in performance. Amy Gullage states that fat suits are typically “full-body costumes” worn on their own or in combination with “latex pieces or full face masks and make-up in order to fatten up [performers’] faces, chins and necks.” (19) The use of fat suits to represent fat bodies in performance suggests that “fatness itself is merely a suit to be worn and changed at will,” as well as that “fatness can be represented removed from the realities and complexities of real life.” (20) Fat suits are used to tell stories about fatness without necessarily including actual fat people in the performance. The use of fat suits implies that even when fatness is part of a story being told on the stage or screen, these roles are not intended for fat performers. Instead, slender performers perform fat embodiment with the support of prosthetics. (21) Ryan Donovan explains in his 2023 book Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity that “[t]he fat suit itself reinforces stigma because it can be put on and taken off at will, an act unavailable to the fat person perceived as morally suspect for their inability to lose weight.” (22) In this way, fat suits can be used to tell fat stories without including socially transgressive fat bodies in the process. The Whale takes the fat suit to a new level, specifically depicting folks that, in the fat liberation community, might identify as “superfat” or “infinifat.” Some fat activists have identified a “fategories” spectrum of fat identity, ranging across “small fat,” “mid-fat,” “large fat,” and superfat/infinifat, reclaiming fat identity away from pathologizing terms like overweight, ob*se, or morbidly ob*se. (23) The fategories spectrum is used to acknowledge smaller fat bodies’ proximity to societal privilege, as well as to emphasize the increasing lack of access to clothing, healthcare, and fair treatment for fat folks at the higher end of the size spectrum. Fat activists who use these fategories typically use superfat/infinifat to refer to the largest members of the fat community; this category has no size cap. Bodies in this category might be considered ob*se or morbidly ob*se by those who medicalize fat identity. The difference in size between Charlie and the performers playing him is likely much greater than the usual discrepancy between a slender performer and their fat suit. (24) Charlie’s size, combined with the health conditions attributed to his weight, reflects the U.S.’s reductive and medicalized stereotype of what a morbidly ob*se body is. To my knowledge, every stage production of The Whale since its world premiere has included its own version of a fat suit, which suggests that the theatre industry has not seriously considered casting a superfat/infinifat person for this role. (25) A Google Image search for photos from past stage productions reveals a substantial collection of fabricated fat bodies. (26) The casting history of The Whale represents persistent ob*sity drag with bodies donning a fabricated fatness in order to perform conceptions of ob*sity. The Whale also perpetuates reductive and harmful understandings of fatness by adhering to this concept of ob*sity in its story. Overall, the plot relies on stereotypes that American society tout as intrinsic characteristics of fat people: the larger someone is, the closer they are to a premature death. Not only is Charlie fat, but he has compounding health issues that he refuses to seek medical treatment for, including difficulty breathing and a potential heart condition. Liz, Charlie’s only friend (and sister to his late partner Alan), is a nurse who uses her medical expertise and access to medical equipment to care for Charlie. Charlie is, of course, also represented as having a binge-eating disorder, playing into another stereotype that all fat people have become fat because of a lack of self-control with food. (27) Charlie’s ex-wife and Ellie’s mother, Mary, tells Charlie that he has “been eating [himself] to death for fifteen years,” reinforcing his troubled relationship with food, while also implying that his weight gain is akin to death by suicide. (28) The insinuation is that Charlie’s proximity to sickness and death is an inevitable part of his fatness, rather than a separate concern of other intersecting, compounding factors. As Campos identifies, the assumption that fatness is inherently linked to disease and death is a facet of the ob*sity myth, the driving force of the War on Ob*sity. These fears for Charlie’s proximity to death are confirmed when both the play and the film heavily imply that Charlie dies at the end. In her first scene with Charlie, Ellie cruelly demands that Charlie stand up and walk to her. When Charlie reaches for his walker to support himself, Ellie says, “Without that thing. Just stand up, and come over here.” Without his mobility aid, Charlie is unable to stand up. He lies back on the couch “ wincing from the pain ” and “ wheezing loudly .” (29) At the end of the story, Charlie stands up to walk across the room to Ellie, answering her request from before. He rips the oxygen tube out of his nose and “ with a huge amount of effort and pain, [ he ] manages to stand up. ” (30) The final stage directions of the playscript describe: “ Charlie looks up. The waves [sound effect of waves] cut off. A sharp intake of breath. The lights snap to black. ” (31) In the film’s depiction of this moment, the camera focuses on Charlie’s feet as they levitate off the floor. Charlie floats towards a white, heavenly light. After a brief flashback to Charlie and Ellie on the beach years earlier, long before Charlie gained the majority of his weight, the credits roll. (32) Both versions of the story imply that Charlie dies from ob*sity and its supposed inherently related health conditions. By refusing to seek medical treatment and refusing to pursue weight loss, Charlie’s story becomes a cautionary tale for what might happen if ob*sity goes untreated, supporting the American ob*sity myth. Another facet of the script that evokes a strong association with ob*sity rather than fat is Hunter’s specification that Charlie is “around six hundred pounds.” (33) First airing during the world premiere run of The Whale , the TLC (The Learning Channel) reality show My 600-lb Life has become a significant source for the medicalization and pathologization of superfat/infinifatness as morbid ob*sity. The show, now thirteen seasons strong, features people who weigh around 600 pounds as they pursue weight loss via bariatric weight-loss surgery. My 600-lb Life makes a spectacle of superfat/infinifat bodies. As fat studies scholar May Friedman describes, the show invites the audience to “gawk at super sized people, to see them as inherently abject and impossible.” (34) Prominent fat activist Aubrey Gordon explains that My 600-lb Life treats its subjects “as freakshows, displaying their bodies and medical struggles to fuel audiences’ disgust, revulsion, and sense of superiority,” reassuring those who are not superfat/infinifat: “ At least I’m not that fat .” (35) My 600-lb Life explicitly perpetuates the War on Ob*sity mentality. Melissa Zimdars says in her 2019 book Watching our Weights: Contradictions of Televising Fatness in the “Ob*sity Epidemic” that My 600-lb Life determines its subjects to be “medically ob*se” and “in need of help beyond the health and lifestyle recommendations of diet and exercise.” (36) Zimdars also points out that while many individuals featured on the show “do not yet have—and maybe never will have—most of the ‘ob*sity-related diseases’ discussed by doctors,” they are automatically depicted as “diseased” or “at risk for disease” simply for their size alone. (37) Weight loss and weight-loss surgery are deemed the only hope in the face of such a deadly disease. In her blog post titled “Our 600 Pound Lives,” Ash Nischuk of The Fat Lip recounts receiving an email from the My 600-lb Life casting office, despite being “vocally fat positive on the internet for over 15 years.” (38) The casting agent explains to Nischuk that the show “follows the lives of real people as they embark on a road to better health” and that, “[i]f approved by the show’s physician,” she could be one of the lucky “selected individuals” who also “receive Gastric Bypass Surgery.” (39) Nischuk asserts that the producers and doctors of My 600-lb Life insist to the fat subjects on the show that if they do not take this opportunity to change their lives, they will die: “Unequivocally. This is your only option to stay alive.” (40) In order for their lives to be saved, participants must “reveal [their] most vulnerable moments—[their] greatest emotional and physical struggles—to a national audience.” (41) This televised spectacle serves the War on Ob*sity mentality, “profit[ing] off of its audience’s fear of fatness and disability.” (42) Furthermore, as Zimdars puts it, the show “borrows more heavily from the documentary tradition and frames itself as more observational than reality shows.” (43) Gordon also comments on how the show “seems to consider itself an objective and tender documentary [emphasis added].” (44) In taking this documentary-style approach, My 600-lb Life tries to convince the viewer that the show provides an authentic and objective look at the lives of those in larger bodies rather than admit to manufacturing spectacle. This feigned objectivity normalizes and downplays the way the show treats its participants, implying that My 600-lb Life is simply reporting on the lives of real fat people (just as the casting agent who tried to recruit Nischuk posed it). Because the specific weight of 600 pounds is included in the title of the show, My 600-lb Life is often referenced, either intentionally or unintentionally, when discussing this category of size in other contexts or other media. By establishing Charlie as 600 pounds, The Whale inherently cites My 600-lb Life ’s depiction of this size as a fatal disease that needs extreme intervention, especially in more contemporary productions of The Whale . Any parallels between My 600-lb Life and The Whale act to legitimize Charlie’s representation of superfat/infinifatness as an extension of this “objective documentation” of the lives of real fat people. The Whale treats Charlie quite similarly to how My 600-lb Life treats its subjects, making a point to emphasize the parts of him that are supposedly disgusting and to show him eating large amounts of food throughout the play/film. Charlie is treated as a spectacle. Charlie taunts Elder Thomas (a Mormon missionary who visits Charlie throughout the story) with details about his body, including mentions of “mold,” “sores,” and “ulcers.” (45) One of the several times Liz brings him food, Charlie starts to choke while eating and Liz uses her entire body to dislodge the food and save him. The film also features a particularly upsetting scene of Charlie, in an emotional breakdown, forcing himself to eat most of the contents of his kitchen. (46) These scenes evoke the same voyeuristic dynamic as much of My 600-lb Life , treating these real bodies as spectacle in order to reinforce the notion that ob*sity is an undesirable and fatal condition. In fact, these moments are not essential to The Whale ’s core narrative but rather crucial to concocting what the playwright and creative team imagine real ob*sity to be. When The Whale ’s creative team considered their lack of personal knowledge of fat embodiment and expressed a desire to hear from lived experience, they established an exclusive relationship with the Ob*sity Action Coalition. The OAC is an ob*sity advocacy group that seeks to “create needed change for those who are living with and/or are affected by the disease of ob*sity.” (47) Brendan Fraser, director Darren Aronofsky, and playwright/screenwriter Hunter all “worked closely” with the OAC, speaking with people through the organization who were themselves “affected by ob*sity.” (48) A feature on the OAC’s website claims that the organization consulted with The Whale ’s team to ensure that the film achieved a “realistic and respectful” representation of “living with severe ob*sity,” rationalizing that these good intentions potentially justify the use of a fat suit instead of casting a fat actor. (49) Throughout the written feature and the two additional videos the OAC published on the collaboration, OAC members praise the film for its accurate portrayal of ob*sity and express their appreciation for the team’s willingness to learn from the organization. (50) For example, in the first of the OAC’s videos on The Whale , an OAC member describes how The Whale ’s team adopted people-first language for advertising the film, at the OAC’s recommendation. (51) Using people-first language means that fat people are referred to as “people living with ob*sity” rather than “ob*se people.” As the OAC explains, people-first language has been used in mental health and disability communities to avoid “labeling an individual with their disease.” (52) The OAC advocates for people-first language to support their goal of humanizing people affected by the disease of ob*sity. The OAC member in the video says: “[Brendan Fraser] is out there talking about people living with ob*sity. That we are not ‘ob*se people,’ that we are not ‘fat people,’ that we are actually ‘people living with the disease of ob*sity.’” (53) In celebrating the results of the collaboration between the OAC and The Whale , the OAC establishes that The Whale affirms the organization’s beliefs on fat. As Tigress Osborn, Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), puts it in her essay on the film, “[t]he OAC legitimizes this movie while this movie legitimizes the OAC.” (54) NAAFA is “the world’s first documented fat acceptance organization” that is “dedicated to protecting the rights and improving the quality of life for fat people.” (55) NAAFA represents those who have become liberated and empowered by their fatness while the OAC’s advocacy is based on the premise of fatness as a disease. Osborn explains that the fat liberation community believes the concept of ob*sity “has created tremendous harm to fat people in the name of ‘helping’ [them].” (56) By choosing to conduct research solely through an organization that treats fatness as a disease, The Whale ’s team assured that their understanding of superfat/infinifat identity would only be known through the lens of ob*sity. Osborn observes that in the ten years that Aronofsky and Hunter worked on developing the stage play into a film, there has been “no mention of ever consulting with any fat people other than those at the OAC.” (57) Notably, she asserts that to ignore NAAFA and the work of the fat liberation community in those ten years is to selectively engage with fat people “who wouldn’t protest [the film’s] fat suit and who wouldn’t interrupt [the film’s] plan to make the kind of tragedy the [Oscar’s] Academy loves to award.” (58) Osborn’s essay criticizes The Whale ’s unwillingness to engage with fatness on the terms of the fat liberation community. While the film adaptation of The Whale did not exclude all fat bodies, the team made a deliberate choice in working with an organization that would support a narrative of ob*sity. And though (specific) fat bodies were deemed important enough to consult with, they were not ultimately put on the screen. Ob*sity Drag as Fat Embodiment Fat suits have traditionally been used for comedy, making The Whale unique in its use of fabricated fatness for a drama. Fat suits in television and cinema history have often been used for comedic effect, making fat people the target of endless ridicule, including: Courtney Cox as “Fat Monica” in the 90s sitcom Friends ; Gwyneth Paltrow in Shallow Hal (2001); and Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor (1996). (59) Hunter and the additional members of The Whale ’s creative team sought to create a representation of fatness that did not rely on anti-fat comedy, a primary reason for their collaboration with the OAC. Hunter recognizes the past use of fat suits in film wherein “thin actors are put into entirely unrealistic bodysuits in order to be the subject of derision or the butt of a joke.” (60) The OAC’s feature on The Whale acknowledges the history of fat prosthetics used to “demean or ridicule people with ob*sity,” indicating that the OAC “would not have participated” in The Whale if the film was using prosthetics for the sake of anti-fat comedy. (61) However, despite the dramatic nature of its story—and perhaps even because of the dramatic nature of its story— The Whale still plays into anti-fat societal norms about how fat people are to be treated according to the War on Ob*sity mentality. Susan Bordo describes in Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (2003) that society does not permit fat people to inhabit a non-normative body size and be happy in their fat bodies. Only fat people “who are willing to present themselves as pitiable, in pain, and conscious of their own unattractiveness” are able to earn “sympathy and concern.” (62) Bordo adds that fat people’s pain is often demonstrated by sharing details about “intimate physical difficulties, orgies of self-hate, or descriptions of gross consumption of food.” (63) The Whale serves this function. In their dramatic tone, both the play and film establish the conditions in which audiences can pity Charlie and feel sympathy for his circumstances as a fat person. They include scenarios of Charlie struggling to move around his home on his own, expressing deep self-hatred, and multiple instances of eating large amounts of food, enacting each facet of Bordo’s argument. In this way, The Whale still affirms anti-fat societal beliefs even though it is not using a fat suit for comedic effect. Charlie is in great physical and emotional pain throughout the entire narrative, just how the American audience needs him to be to earn their attention and sympathy. Even though Charlie is not made the butt of fat jokes, his tragic narrative ensures that he is an acceptable, appropriately pitiable fat subject. This dynamic of sympathy is made more disturbing with the use of a fat suit to represent fatness; Charlie is a fabricated construction of the perfect fat subject for audiences to practice sympathy on. The way individuals from the film and theatre industries speak about these prosthetics in The Whale reveal further anti-fat sentiments, particularly from The Whale ’s playwright and performers. Throughout several interviews on the film, as well as his guest column for The Hollywood Reporter , playwright/screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter touches on his own relationship to fatness (and to Charlie). Hunter recalls growing up as an “ob*se child” and “self-medicat[ing]” his depression with food as an adult. (64) He describes that his “weight range is in a more acceptable place now”; he wears a size “Large Tal[l]” whereas he used to wear a size “XXL.” (65) Hunter explains that when he first began writing The Whale , he “didn’t think [he] was writing a story about a man who was, among other things, living with ob*sity.” (66) But, Hunter says, “somehow making the main character hugely ob*se allowed [him] to drop in emotionally as [he] wrote [Charlie],” calling Charlie “sort of the fun-house mirror version of [himself].” (67) Hunter implies that the larger Charlie’s character became, the more he was able to feel an emotional connection to him. While Hunter has probably dealt with anti-fat stigma in his life, referring to the fategories spectrum reveals that his own experience is undoubtedly different in many ways from someone in a superfat/infinifat body. Furthermore, Hunter’s experience adheres to the anti-fat dynamic that Bordo details. Hunter’s sense of empathy grew when he decided that Charlie was ob*se and the tragedy of Charlie’s life became attributed to his fatness. Hunter established a dynamic in which he could feel empathy and concern for his character through the picture of ob*sity he was creating. Hunter’s joke that Charlie’s body is a fun-house mirror version of his own, a comical distortion because of its size, does not reflect an empathy for larger bodies. Hunter uses Charlie’s superfat/infinifat body as a vessel for exploring his own emotions connected to fatness. He created a narrative of fat that has likely never been performed by a superfat/infinifat person and that conforms to harmful conceptions of fatness as ob*sity. In an interview, Hunter states that “this is not a story about everybody who grapples with ob*sity” and that it represents “how it presented in [himself].” (68) But for some, especially for the OAC members who consulted on the film, The Whale quickly became a representation of more than Hunter’s relationship to fatness. By gaining authority from the OAC, the film became responsible for representing the supposed lives of many fat people. From the beginning of The Whale ’s production history, fat suits were used to perform this story. The fat suit created for the 2012 Playwrights Horizons production of The Whale was built with “foam, padding, weighted beads and spandex” and weighed around fifty pounds. (69) In his New York Times review, Charles Isherwood called the suit “one of the biggest fat suits ever constructed for the theater.” (70) Shuler Hensley, who played Charlie in this production, describes thinking about how “unbelievably gross” he felt he looked in the fat suit. (71) He adds that in order to better connect with his character, he then had to ask himself, “What if I was in that situation? How much guilt would I have that I’m putting not only myself through this, but my family?” (72) In other words, Hensley admitted to his own internalized anti-fatness while playing this fat character and was able to connect with Charlie through pitying him and imagining him in pain, just as Bordo explains. He was disgusted by seeing his body as larger than it really is, even though the additional weight was not real flesh. Hensley also claims that because it was so labor-intensive to wear the fat suit for the role he “lost a good 15 pounds” playing Charlie, jokingly recommending wearing a fat suit as a “weight-loss strategy.” (73) While the statement was meant to be humorous, Hensley indicates that his normative body actually became more slender through portraying fatness, paradoxically describing how his body better conformed to societal body norms through performing a fabricated fatness. The production was well-regarded and was nominated for several awards, winning the 2013 Drama Desk Special Award for Significant Contribution to Theatre and the 2013 Lortel for Outstanding Play, among others. Hensley in particular was recognized for his portrayal of Charlie, winning the 2013 Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor and the 2013 Obie Award in Performance. The production was also awarded the 2013 Lortel for Outstanding Costume design: another award for a fat suit in The Whale ’s production history. (74) The film went through even greater lengths to turn Brendan Fraser into Charlie, aiming to be as real as possible without actually putting a superfat/infinifat person on the big screen. It took upwards of seven hours to get Fraser into full costume, makeup, and prosthetics, complete with skin airbrushing and hand-punched hair. (75) Due to the extremity of this transformation, an air conditioning system within the costume had to be fashioned to keep Fraser cool enough to perform through long days on the film set. (76) Fraser describes the fat suit as feeling like a “straight jacket” while also claiming that the suit was so “beautiful” and “arresting” that it belonged in a museum. 77 In addition to these extensive efforts, the film also relied on CGI, expanding the limits of how ob*sity drag can operate. Fraser explains that the final ensemble was meant to “obey the laws of physics and gravity, because we don’t see that in films.” 78 Fraser both admits that the film industry has been unwilling to put real fat bodies in movies and suggests that digitally enhanced representations of ob*sity are a valid answer to that lack of representation. The fat suits used over the course of the production history of The Whale , and especially in the film adaptation, have been treated by The Whale ’s creators and the OAC as a legitimate substitute for fat bodies. The actors who wear the fat suits appear to feel as though they have achieved some level of genuine understanding about what it is like to be superfat/infinifat, and, in the case of both the film adaption and the 2012 Off-Broadway production, are celebrated with awards for their innovation and dedication. While Fraser is not superfat/infinifat, much attention has been paid to his body throughout his career. In the 1990s, Fraser was considered a “heartthrob,” starring in films such as George of the Jungle (1997) where he showed off his hyperfit physique. (79) On an episode of the Variety talk show Actors on Actors , Fraser discusses his career with fellow actor Adam Sandler. Having worked together on the 1994 film Airheads , Sandler recounts watching Fraser go on to “get very jacked for George of the Jungle .” (80) “I was disappointed how good you looked in that,” Sandler jests, “You made us feel bad about ourselves.” (81) Here, Sandler expresses (though in a humorous tone) that he felt betrayed by Fraser’s body transformation and new heartthrob status. Fraser was celebrated for achieving a particularly conventionally attractive and muscular body, entering a new realm of celebrity. Though, this achievement did not come without sacrifice. Fraser describes being “starved of carbohydrates” to the point of experiencing memory loss while working on George of the Jungle in order to maintain his physique. (82) Fraser would eventually undergo several surgeries to address injuries he sustained while performing stunts for films such as The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001), pushing his body beyond its limits for the sake of his acting career. Fraser’s heartthrob status ultimately came at the cost of overworking and harming his body, negatively impacting his well-being for years after the fact. Despite continuing to act in film and television consistently through the 2000s and 2010s, Fraser seemed to fall into the periphery of the public eye. A 2018 GQ feature by Zach Baron titled “What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser?” acknowledged Fraser’s retreat from mainstream fame and reignited public interest in Fraser and his career. (83) Guy Webster, in a 2021 Kill Your Darlings article, notes that the new attention Fraser was receiving also reignited a “weird, though wholly unsurprising, preoccupation with [Fraser’s] body.” (84) In the GQ feature, Baron describes Fraser’s appearance, detailing the stubble on his “once mighty chin” and how his shirt “draped indifferently over the once mighty body.” (85) Webster was struck by Baron’s word choice, claiming Baron “focus[ed] this shared memory on Fraser’s body in a way that emphasises what has been lost.” (86) Fraser’s failure to conform to the Hollywood body ideals he once exemplified inevitably became a talking point around his “comeback.” Webster reports social media posts comparing images of Fraser’s current body with images from George of the Jungle “with unoriginal captions like ‘oh god, what happened?’” (87) Fraser’s body has inevitably and understandably changed since the 90s, due to (among other factors) his injuries, aging, and no longer starving himself to maintain his hyperfit figure. And this change—much like his first transformation—could not go without comment from the media. Moreover, Fraser intentionally gained weight in preparation for The Whale , a further bodily transgression as he entered proximity to Charlie’s fatness. While Fraser explains that his “weight has been all over the map,” he is still significantly smaller than Charlie is intended to be, even after gaining weight for the role. (88) In her essay on the film, Tigress Osborn calls Fraser “Hollywood fat,” recognizing that while he is “larger now than he was in his 1990s heartthrob heyday,” he is still “several hundred pounds smaller” than Charlie. (89) Fraser admitted that his weight gain did not result in him becoming Charlie’s size and, thus, he wore a fat suit; his body and the fat suit “worked together” to become Charlie, Fraser describes. (90) Fraser has faced anti-fatness for his “Hollywood fat” body, but he does not have the embodied experience of the anti-fatness that superfat/infinifat people face. If Fraser’s weight gain was part of his attempt to gain a better understanding of fat embodiment, earning some sense of authority to represent fat people, this blatantly disregards the nuance of experiences across different sizes that the fategories spectrum signifies. This conflation mirrors Hunter’s failure to acknowledge important differences along the fategories spectrum. Yet, Fraser’s performance as Charlie has been treated as a genuine and respectful representation of superfat/infinifat lives, and Fraser has been rewarded for his dedication. (91) While Osborn admits that Frazer “ooze[d] good intention” throughout his press tour, conveying that he “felt totally committed to getting this right,” his performance as Charlie did not challenge harmful, normative ideas about fatness. (92) This was still a performance of ob*sity drag. Queer/ed Fat Timelines In the article “Tempo-rarily Fat: A Queer Exploration of Fat Time,” authors Jami McFarland, Vanessa Slothouber, and Allison Taylor consider how fat bodies are “queer/ed” by their failure to conform to heteronormative timelines. (93) Fat bodies are rendered queer in their relationship to heteronormative time. The authors focus on the heteronormative milestones of “marriage, reproduction/childrearing, and death” to determine how fat bodies are “‘out of time’ in societies governed by heteronormative temporal arrangements.” (94) The authors also explore the “productive potential of positing fat subjects as chrononormative failures.” (95) In The Whale , Charlie’s queer sexual orientation intersects with the queerness of his fat body, specifically as it relates to achievements of successful heteronormativity. His relationship to heteronormative family is further complicated by his fatness. Thinking through fat as a chrononormative failure, Charlie’s fatness becomes the site of further transgressions of the heteronormative majoritarian sphere. The representation of Charlie’s transgressions through ob*sity drag demonstrates for U.S. audiences how queer/ed fatness fails to achieve a normatively successful family life, again adopting the War on Ob*sity mentality to further pathologize fatness. In the play/film, Charlie was initially married to Mary and together they had their daughter Ellie. But then Charlie met Alan, a student in one of Charlie’s classes (though he is described as “only a couple years younger” than Charlie). Alan was “the engaged son of a Mormon bishop” and Charlie “had a wife and kid at home,” but the two “couldn’t stand to be apart.” (96) Alan left his fiancé and Charlie left his family so they could pursue a relationship together. But Alan was unable to cope with his religious trauma while also being in a queer relationship and he ultimately committed suicide. Charlie indicates that his grief over Alan’s death caused him to gain weight. He tells Ellie, “Someone very close to me passed away, and it—had an effect on me.” (97) The last time Ellie saw Charlie was when she was two years old. Though Charlie claims that he “was always big,” Ellie’s response to seeing Charlie again emphasizes how much larger he is now. (98) In their second scene together, Charlie tries to learn more about Ellie’s current life, asking her, “Is your mother—with anyone now?” Ellie replies, “No. Why, you interested?” As Charlie stumbles over his words to respond (“Oh, no, I was just—”), Ellie says, “I’m kidding, Jesus. How could you be with anyone?” (99) While it was the queerness of Charlie’s sexuality that led to the end of his marriage with Mary, breaking up his heteronormative family unit, this exchange with Ellie demonstrates how Charlie’s queer/ed fatness has become a barrier to any potential romantic relationship on a heteronormative timeline. McFarland, Slothouber, and Taylor describe that in contemporary society “fatness and marriage are positioned” as “mutually exclusive”; they write, “In other words, fatties do not marry.” (100) Charlie is now fat, meaning that he does not have the proper slender embodiment required to successfully enter into a new relationship. Even if a potential partnership was not a queer one, it would still violate this societal belief that fat people are not meant to find long-term romantic partnerships. Society also dictates that obedient bodies are to “lose weight for each ‘straight’ time ‘achievement.’” (101) After said achievement, bodies are permitted to “indulge” but “not to the point of getting fat.” (102) The Whale ’s narrative adheres to these societal rules, punishing Charlie for leaving his heteronormative family life and determining that he is not worthy of another relationship in his current body. Furthermore, McFarland, Slothouber, and Taylor cite Francis Ray White to establish that fat people, specifically through the lens of ob*sity, are determined to be “sexual and reproductive failures, or ‘fucking failures.’” (103) In addition to a lack of romantic love, Charlie is not permitted to have a successful sexual life. Early in the plot, the stage directions indicate that Charlie is seen “ masturbating to gay porn .” (104) But he feels a pain in his chest and starts to hyperventilate, unable to continue. This scene insinuates that Charlie’s health conditions related to his fatness make him unable to fulfill his own sexual needs. Later, further establishing Charlie as a “fucking failure,” Ellie says to Elder Thomas, “What’s more surprising? That a gay guy has a daughter, or that someone found his penis?” (105) Charlie’s fatness is also implicated as a reason for his failure as a parent. First, the authors of “Tempo-rarily Fat” state that because ob*sity is “figured within a ‘personal responsibility frame’ as ‘a behavioral problem,’” fat parents are “understood as making the ‘wrong’ choices for both themselves and their children by being fat while parenting.” (106) Second, and of particular concern to the War on Ob*sity mentality, the authors explain that “fat parents are also charged with potentially (in the future) depriving their children of parents” because ob*sity is associated with “premature death.” (107) When Mary comes to Charlie’s apartment to confront him, Charlie expresses that he wants to know Ellie will have a good life after he is gone, especially because he has not been involved in most of her life. Charlie says that Mary “fought [him] pretty hard for full custody,” indicating that Mary (and the court) did not find Charlie to be a fit parent after breaking his heteronormative family unit. (108) Charlie pleads for Mary to not give up on Ellie, for her to be there for Ellie after he dies. Mary responds, “You’ve been eating yourself to death for fifteen years and you’re saying that I gave up on her?” (109) Mary explicitly addresses Charlie’s fatness as the reason he has failed as a father to Ellie. Mary also alludes to Charlie’s impending death which ultimately adheres to the prognosis that fat parents will leave their children in a premature death. The authors of “Tempo-rarily Fat” make clear that they offer this analysis of fat people as chrononormative failures not to “positio[n] these limitations as wholly oppressive” but in order to “conclude that queer/ed fat temporalities offer opportunities for reimagining ways of life and time.” (110) In other words, even as they point out how queer/ed fat bodies do not conform to “straight” temporalities, the authors desire to show the liberatory potentials of fat bodies existing and thriving in their own fat temporality/time. However, The Whale does not allow for Charlie to exist outside of the confines of heteronormative temporalities, or beyond the limits of “no time.” Charlie remains out of time : both out of sync with heteronormative temporality and with no time left in his life. The Whale denies the possibility of fat time by excluding fat bodies in performance and ensuring that Charlie’s character upholds the War on Ob*sity mentality. The Future of Fat From the first production of The Whale , superfat/infinifat performers have never been cast to play Charlie . For the Denver premiere, playwright Hunter expressed that it would not be possible to cast an actual person of Charlie’s size in the show. “Someone in that condition,” he said, “they were not doing eight shows a week.” (111) For the film adaptation, Aronofsky claims that the film’s team briefly considered casting a fat actor. However, Aronofsky also concluded that it would be “impossible” to cast a “real person dealing with [the] issues” that Charlie lives with. (112) Aronofsky was concerned that “an actor with severe ob*sity would struggle with the demands of a grueling production schedule.” (113) “From a health perspective,” he says, “it’s prohibitive.” (114) Aronofsky says both that most superfat/infinifat bodies will inevitably be plagued with fatal health concerns like Charlie and that they would not be able to endure or survive performing the role. Because of both Aronofsky’s and Hunter’s unwillingness to entertain the capabilities of fat performers, The Whale further cemented its legacy of ob*sity drag in the film adaptation. Though, the consideration of a fat performer in the role of Charlie presents an issue for further (and future) consideration: would the anti-fatness of The Whale be mitigated by casting a fat performer? In other words, even with a fat body in the leading role, does this story need to be told at all? In their 2020 HowlRound essay “Towards a Fat Theatre: Reimagining Bodies Onstage,” Jeff Bouthiette describes taking on the role of Charlie in a reading of The Whale on Zoom. Not knowing the play very well before the reading, Bouthiette recounts feeling “hopeful, since it contains one of the few theatrical depictions of someone living in a very large body.” (115) But when they engaged more deeply with the play they “became discouraged,” finding a fat character who was “a relentlessly sad individual in a relentlessly sad story.” (116) Bouthiette concludes: “The fact that this is one of the few examples of characters of this size is heartbreaking.” (117) Bouthiette’s experience with The Whale suggests that the theatre and film industries should be asking not if fat performers can survive the grueling conditions of playing Charlie but if fat performers can endure the conditions of a tragic script like The Whale . Asking fat people to tell this particular story of fatness is to ask fat bodies to perform a narrative of ob*sity. And the War on Ob*sity mentality consistently feeds on the premise of their fat bodies no longer existing at all. In order to support the future of fat in the face of a war against it, and to ensure the survival of fat bodies, both theatre and film industries must give more attention to the fat stories told by fat people. A fat future is one where fat bodies can exist on their own terms, abundantly expanding in fat time beyond the conceptions of no time. Fat futures are not to be determined entirely by bodies that are not fat or bodies that perform fabricated, dehumanizing fatness. The cycle of normalizing and celebrating slender bodies for their temporary proximity to fatness is what must ultimately come to an end. References The other two films nominated for the 2023 Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling that used fat suits were Elvis (Tom Hanks) and The Batman (Colin Farrel). Kelsey Castanon, “The Problem With 3 Oscar-Nominated Films Using Fat Suits,” PopSugar , last modified 13 March 2023, https://www.popsugar.com/beauty/prosthetics-makeup-fat-suits-hollywood-49111321 . “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: Actors on Actors,” posted 6 December 2022, by Variety, YouTube, 29 min., 23 sec., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XpAb11hqy4&t=1092s . Following the lead of fat activists like Tigress Osborn, the current Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), I use an asterisk in the word ob*se/ob*sity throughout to mark the word as an anti-fat slur that the fat liberation community and fat studies field generally denounce. All additions of asterisks are my own, save any reference to Tigress Osborn’s essay on The Whale . Ob*sity as a concept is antithetical to the efforts of all fat liberation activists and fat studies scholars. Fat is not a bad word. For more on this see: Marilyn Wann, “Foreword: Fat Studies: An Invitation to Revolution,” in The Fat Studies Reader , ed. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay (New York University Press, 2009), ix-xxv. Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health (Gotham Books, 2004), 83-86. Royce Best, “Making Obesity Fat: Crip Estrangement in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 ,” Disability Studies Quarterly 39, no. 4 (2019), https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v39i4.7149 . Tracy Tidgwell, May Friedman, Jen Rinaldi, Crystal Kotow, and Emily R.M. Lind, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Fatness and Temporality,” Fat Studies 7, no. 2 (2018): 118, https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2017.1375262 . The previous use of “Amercians” and all future references to “America” throughout refer to the United States. Campos, The Obesity Myth , xv-xvi. Campos, xxv. Campos, xvii. Wann, “Foreword: Fat Studies,” xii, xiii. Emma Beckett, “Drugs Like Ozempic Won’t ‘Cure’ Obesity But They Might Make Us More Fatphobic,” The Conversation , last modified 9 April 2024, https://theconversation.com/drugs-like-ozempic-wont-cure-obesity-but-they-might-make-us-more-fat-phobic-219309#:~:text=The%20Ozempic%20buzz%20isn't,who%20live%20in%20larger%20bodies .; Elizabeth Daube, “Are the New Weight Loss Drugs Too Good to Be True?” UCSF Magazine 13, no. 1 (2024), https://magazine.ucsf.edu/weight-loss-drugs-too-good-to-be-true .; Flora Oswald, “Anti-fatness in the Ozempic Era: State of the Landscape and Considerations for Future Research,” Fat Studies 13, no. 2 (2024): 128-134, https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2024.2307674 . Tidgwell et al., “Fatness and Temporality,” 115. Tidgwell et al., 115. Tidgwell et al., 115. Tidgwell et al., 115-116. For more on the history of fat suits and prosthetics, as well as the portrayal of disability, in theatre history (in this case, on Broadway) see: Ryan Donovan, Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford University Press, 2023). Tobin Siebers, “Disability as Masquerade,” Disability Theory (University of Michigan Press, 2008), 115. Siebers, “Disability as Masquerade,” 116. Amy Gullage, “Fat Monica, Fat Suits, and Friends : Exploring Narratives of Fatness,” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 2 (2014): 179, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2012.724026 . Gullage, “Fat Monica, Fat Suits, and Friends ” 186. I want to note that even when the performer pre-fat suit would not be considered particularly slender, their own body is still smaller than their body in a fat suit. The fat suit is used to portray a fabricated fatness. Additionally, even small(er) fat people can express anti-fatness towards other fat bodies, especially towards those larger than their own. Donovan, Broadway Bodies , 81. I identify as small fat. Ash Nischuk is credited with the coining of the term “infinifat” and identifies as such. Ash Nischuk, “Beyond Superfat: Rethinking the Farthest End of the Fat Spectrum,” The Fat Lip , last modified 20 December 2016, http://thefatlip.com/2016/12/20/beyond-superfat-rethinking-the-farthest-end-of-the-fat-spectrum/ .; Linda Gerhardt, “Fategories: Understanding the Fat Spectrum,” Fluffy Kitten Party, last modified 1 June 2021, https://fluffykittenparty.com/2021/06/01/fategories-understanding-smallfat-fragility-the-fat-spectrum/ .; Cherry Midnight and Max Airborne, “Community Origins of the Term ‘Superfat,’” Medium , last modified 2 December 2020, https://cherrymax.medium.com/community-origins-of-the-term-superfat-9e98e1b0f201 . Though, it is important to note that weight is used to determine Charlie’s size, and the same weight can look extremely different from body to body. The world premiere production of The Whale was presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company at the Ricketson Theater in Denver, Colorado, in early 2012. Tom Alan Robbins played the role of Charlie and, though he was described as “a bit overweight” himself, he wore a fat suit. Michael Mulhern, “BWW Reviews: Denver Center’s The Whale—A Heavy, Superb Drama,” Broadway World , last modified 26 January 2012, https://www.broadwayworld.com/denver/article/BWW-Reviews-Denver-Centers-THE-WHALE-a-Heavy-Superb-Drama-20120126 .; Ray Mark Rinaldi, “Theater Review: ‘The Whale’ a Drama of Gigantic Proportions,” The Denver Post , last modified 3 May 2016, https://www.denverpost.com/2012/01/23/theater-review-the-whale-a-drama-of-gigantic-proportions-2/ .; Ray Mark Rinaldi, “‘Whale’ Promises to be a Whopper of a Family Drama,” The Denver Post , last modified 1 May 2016, https://www.denverpost.com/2012/01/05/whale-promises-to-be-a-whopper-of-a-family-drama/ . “The Whale Charlie Stage Play,” Google Image Search, accessed 26 October 2025, https://www.google.com/search?q=the+whale+charlie+stage+play&sca_esv=8e61a810906f0d86&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS1113US1113&udm=2&biw=1440&bih=731&sxsrf=AE3TifN_h16QQMJ1UU9kzRTqtHZVJw1fpA%3A1761529337469&ei=-c3-aJavHMukiLMPu6jW-QE&ved=0ahUKEwjWj6-ToMOQAxVLEmIAHTuUNR8Q4dUDCBI&uact=5&oq=the+whale+charlie+stage+play&gs_lp=Egtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZyIcdGhlIHdoYWxlIGNoYXJsaWUgc3RhZ2UgcGxheUifI1AAWMUhcAV4AJABAZgBuAGgAYIZqgEFMjEuMTG4AQPIAQD4AQGYAhagAooQqAIKwgIKECMYJxjJAhjqAsICBxAjGCcYyQLCAgoQABiABBhDGIoFwgILEAAYgAQYsQMYgwHCAg4QABiABBixAxiDARiKBcICCBAAGIAEGLEDwgINEAAYgAQYsQMYQxiKBcICBRAAGIAEwgIEEAAYHsICBhAAGAgYHpgDCpIHBTExLjExoAftcrIHBDguMTG4B_APwgcIMC4xLjE3LjTIB4MB&sclient=gws-wiz-img . This is not intended to discount or invalidate the experience of those who are fat and do have a binge eating disorder, but the stereotype is often used as a way to discriminate against fat people rather than sympathize with their experience. Samuel D. Hunter, The Whale and A Bright New Boise (Theatre Communications Group, 2014), 85. All of the quotes from The Whale throughout are from the playscript; though, the playscript and film script are quite similar. Hunter, The Whale , 29. Hunter, The Whale , 99. Hunter, The Whale , 100. Darren Aronofsky, director, The Whale , A24, 2022, 1 hr., 57 min., https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.fcfefde7-0072-43a7-90ca-6f14e50fcfd7?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb , 1:50:00. Hunter, The Whale , 6. May Friedman, Fat Studies: The Basics (Routledge, 2025), 89. “Super sized” is another term that can be used to describe superfat or infinifat bodies; though, Midnight and Airborne explain that those who created the term “superfat” were replacing the use of “supersized” for themselves. See: Midnight and Airborne, “Community Origins of the Term ‘Superfat.’” Aubrey Gordon, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat (Beacon Press, 2020), 124. Melissa Zimdars, “Spectacle, Sympathy, and the Medicalized Disease of ‘Obesity,’” Watching Our Weights: Contradictions of Televising Fatness in the “Obesity Epidemic” (Rutgers University Press, 2019), 111. Zimdars, “Spectacle, Sympathy, and the Medicalized Disease of ‘Obesity,’” 115. Nischuk has both a blog and a podcast titled “The Fat Lip.” Ash Nischuk, “Our 600 Pound Lives,” The Fat Lip , last modified 21 March 2020, http://thefatlip.com/2020/03/21/our-600-pound-lives/ . Nischuk, “Our 600 Pound Lives.” Nischuk, “Our 600 Pound Lives.” Nischuk, “Our 600 Pound Lives.” Nischuk, “Our 600 Pound Lives.” Zimdars, 103-104. Gordon, What We Don’t Talk About , 123-124. Hunter, The Whale , 90. Aronofsky, The Whale , 1:32:53. “Why the OAC Exists,” Obesity Action Coalition, accessed 30 October 2025, https://www.obesityaction.org/about/purpose/who-we-are/ . Beatrice Verhoeven, “‘The Whale’ Producer on Criticism of the Film: ‘We Just Want to Be Honest and Truthful,’” The Hollywood Reporter , last modified 10 February 2023, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-whale-producer-film-criticism-brendan-fraser-1235319749/ . “Obesity Action Coalition and ‘The Whale,’” Obesity Action Coalition, last modified 8 December 2022, https://www.obesityaction.org/the-whale/ . “An Honest Conversation About ‘The Whale’: Fresh Perspectives,” video, posted 11 January 2023, by Obesity Action Coalition, YouTube, 17 min., 43 sec., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXcik2xfPOM .; “The Whale: Brendan Fraser Talks with OAC,” video, posted 17 February 2023, by Obesity Action Coalition, YouTube, 12 min., 16 sec., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ka4jLFrWVc . Obesity Action Coalition,“An Honest Conversation,” 12:18. “People-First Language,” Obesity Action Coalition, last accessed 30 October 2025, https://www.obesityaction.org/action-through-advocacy/weight-bias/people-first-language/ . Obesity Action Coalition, “An Honest Conversation,” 12:28. It is worth acknowledging here that “fat” is not a comfortable word for all people with larger bodies; the word fat can still also be used to cause harm. Tigress Osborn, “Hollywood’s Anti-Fatness Extends Beyond The Whale,” NAAFA, last modified 20 March 2023, https://naafa.org/newsletter-articles/hollywoods-anti-fatness-extends-beyond-the-whale . “About Us,” NAAFA, accessed 30 October 2025, https://naafa.org/aboutus . Osborn, “Hollywood’s Anti-Fatness.” Osborn, “Hollywood’s Anti-Fatness.” Osborn, “Hollywood’s Anti-Fatness.” Gullage, “Fat Monica, Fat Suits, and Friends .”; Niall Richardson, “‘But It’s Only a Fat Suit!’: Representing ‘Fake’ Fat in Popular Culture,” Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2010).; Katharina R. Mendoza, “Seeing Through the Layers: Fat Suits and Thin Bodies in The Nutty Professor and Shallow Hal ,” in The Fat Studies Reader, ed. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay (New York University Press, 2009). Samuel D. Hunter, “Guest Column: ‘The Whale’ Writer Samuel D. Hunter Says the Film is an Invitation to Experience Humanity,” The Hollywood Reporter , last modified 7 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-whale-writer-guest-column-samuel-d-hunter-1235276194/ . Obesity Action Coalition, “Obesity Action Coalition and ‘The Whale.’” Susan Bordo, “Reading the Slender Body,” Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body , 10th Anniversary Edition (University of California Press, 2003), 204. Bordo, “Reading the Slender Body,” 204. Scott Heller, “Characters Who Take Up More Than Their Share of Room in the Family,” New York Times , last modified 12 December 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/books/obesity-with-jami-attenberg-and-samuel-d-hunter.html .; Hunter, “Guest Column.” Heller, “Characters Who Take Up.” Hunter, “Guest Column.” Note the use of people-first language here. Heller, “Characters Who Take Up.” Brent Lang, “Brendan Fraser’s Triumphant Comeback: How Playing a 600-Pound Gay Man in ‘The Whale’ Resurrected His Career,” Variety , last modified 12 October 2022, https://variety.com/2022/film/features/brendan-fraser-the-whale-career-1235399057/ . Barbara Hoffman, “Broadway Goes Big,” New York Post , last modified 4 November 2012, https://nypost.com/2012/11/04/broadway-goes-big/ . Charles Isherwood, “The Enormity of a Man’s Problems, and Vice Versa,” New York Times , last modified 5 November 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/theater/reviews/shuler-hensley-in-the-whale-by-samuel-d-hunter.html . Rosalind Bentley, “Looking Past Heft, Finding Humanity: In ‘The Whale,’ Local Actor and Director Explore the Shrinking Orbit of a Large Man,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution , 24 November 2012, Gale General OneFile. Bentley, “Looking Past Heft.” Hoffman, “Broadway Goes Big.” American Theatre Editors, “20 Questions for Shuler Hensley,” American Theatre Magazine 30, no. 6 (2013): 88.; Gordon Cox, “Off Broadway’s Lortel Awards Like ‘Piano Lesson,’ ‘Whale,’” Variety , last modified 6 May 2013, https://variety.com/2013/legit/news/off-broadways-lortel-awards-like-piano-lesson-whale-1200464475/ .; “The Whale,” Concord Theatricals, accessed 28 October 2025, https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/12562/the-whale .; Andrew Gans, “Nominees Announced for 79th Annual Drama League Awards,” Playbill , last modified 23 April 2013, https://playbill.com/article/nominees-announced-for-79th-annual-drama-league-awards-com-204687 . Liam Kelly, “Brendan Fraser’s Seven-Hour Transformation for The Whale,” The Times , last modified 5 March 2023, https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/brendan-frasers-seven-hour-transformation-for-the-whale-7wtx7t20c . David Canfield, “Inside Brendan Fraser’s The Whale Transformation: ‘I Wanted to Disappear,’” Vanity Fair , last modified 31 August 2022, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/08/awards-insider-the-whale-brendan-fraser-darren-aronofsky-exclusive . Kelly, “Brendan Fraser’s Seven-Hour Transformation.” Canfield, “Inside Brendan Fraser’s The Whale Transformation.” Variety, “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: Actors on Actors,” 16:07. Kelly, “Brendan Fraser’s Seven-Hour Transformation.” Variety, “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: Actors on Actors,” 7:15. Variety, “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: Actors on Actors,” 7:20, 7:37. Variety, “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: Actors on Actors,” 7:47. Zach Baron, “What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser?” GQ , last modified 22 February 2018, https://www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser . This feature was also the first time Fraser had spoken publicly about his sexual assault allegations against former Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Philip Berk, another factor of Fraser’s career that most likely impacted his relevancy in the industry between the 1990s and the 2020s. Guy Webster, “An Ode to Brendan Fraser and Body Neutrality,” Kill Your Darlings, last modified 8 November 2021, https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/an-ode-to-brendan-fraser-and-body-neutrality/ . Baron, “What Ever Happened.” Webster, “An Ode to Brendan Fraser.” Webster, “An Ode to Brendan Fraser.” Variety, “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: Actors on Actors,” 17:13. Osborn, “Hollywood’s Anti-Fatness.” Variety, “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: Actors on Actors,” 17:26. It was predicted that Fraser was bound to win the Oscar for Best Actor after receiving a six-minute standing ovation at the world-premiere screening of The Whale . Ramin Setoodeh, Zack Sharf, and Elsa Keslassy, “Brendan Fraser Breaks Down in Tears as ‘The Whale’ Gets Huge 6-Minute Standing Ovation in Venice,” Variety , last modified 4 September 2022, https://variety.com/2022/film/news/brendan-fraser-cries-the-whale-venice-standing-ovation-1235337836/ . Osborn, “Hollywood’s Anti-Fatness.” Jami McFarland, Vanessa Slothouber, and Allison Taylor, “Tempo-rarily Fat: A Queer Exploration of Fat Time,” Fat Studies 7, no. 2 (2017): 2, https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2017.1376275 . McFarland et al., 2, 3. McFarland et al., 9. Hunter, The Whale , 48-49. Hunter, The Whale , 40. Reality shows centered on weight loss (such as My 600-lb Life and The Biggest Loser ) often exploit this trope of fatness being connected to grief or past trauma, requiring participants to divulge their pain for the audience. See: Friedman, Fat Studies , 88. Hunter, The Whale , 25. Hunter, The Whale , 40. McFarland et al., 3. McFarland et al., 2. McFarland et al., 2. McFarland et al., 6. Hunter, The Whale , 11. Hunter, The Whale , 42. McFarland et al., 6-7. McFarland et al., 7. Hunter, The Whale , 80. Hunter, The Whale , 85. McFarland et al., 3. Rinaldi, “Whopper of a Family Drama.” Lang, “Brendan Fraser’s Triumphant Comeback.” Lang, “Brendan Fraser’s Triumphant Comeback.” Lang, “Brendan Fraser’s Triumphant Comeback.” Jeff Bouthiette, “Towards a Fat Theatre: Reimaging Bodies Onstage,” HowlRound Theatre Commons, last modified 26 October 2020, https://howlround.com/towards-fat-theatre . Bouthiette, “Towards a Fat Theatre.” Bouthiette, “Towards a Fat Theatre.” Works Cited “About Us.” NAAFA. Accessed 30 October 2025. https://naafa.org/aboutus . American Theatre Editors. “20 Questions for Shuler Hensley.” American Theatre Magazine 30, no. 6 (2013): 88. “An Honest Conversation About ‘The Whale’: Fresh Perspectives.” Video. Posted 11 January 2023, by Obesity Action Coalition. YouTube. 17 min., 43 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXcik2xfPOM . Aronofsky, Darren, director. The Whale . A24. 2022. 1 hr., 57 min. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.fcfefde7-0072-43a7-90ca-6f14e50fcfd7?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb . Baron, Zach. “What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser?” GQ . Last modified 22 February 2018. https://www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser . Beckett, Emma. “Drugs Like Ozempic Won’t ‘Cure’ Obesity But They Might Make Us More Fatphobic.” The Conversation . Last modified 9 April 2024. https://theconversation.com/drugs-like-ozempic-wont-cure-obesity-but-they-might-make-us-more-fat-phobic-219309#:~:text=The%20Ozempic%20buzz%20isn't,who%20live%20in%20larger%20bodies . Bentley, Rosalind. “Looking Past Heft, Finding Humanity: In ‘The Whale,’ Local Actor and Director Explore the Shrinking Orbit of a Large Man.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution . 24 November 2012. Gale General OneFile. Best, Royce. “Making Obesity Fat: Crip Estrangement in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 .” Disability Studies Quarterly 39, no. 4 (2019). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v39i4.7149 . Bordo, Susan. “Reading the Slender Body.” Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body , 10th Anniversary Edition. University of California Press, 2003. Bouthiette, Jeff. “Towards a Fat Theatre: Reimaging Bodies Onstage.” HowlRound Theatre Commons. Last modified 26 October 2020. https://howlround.com/towards-fat-theatre . “Brendan Fraser & Adam Sandler: “Actors on Actors.” Posted 6 December 2022. By Variety, YouTube. 29 min., 23 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XpAb11hqy4&t=1092s . Campos, Paul. The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health . Gotham Books, 2004. Canfield, David. “Inside Brendan Fraser’s The Whale Transformation: ‘I Wanted to Disappear.’” Vanity Fair . Last modified 31 August 2022. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/08/awards-insider-the-whale-brendan-fraser-darren-aronofsky-exclusive . Castanon, Kelsey. “The Problem With 3 Oscar-Nominated Films Using Fat Suits.” PopSugar . Last modified 13 March 2023. https://www.popsugar.com/beauty/prosthetics-makeup-fat-suits-hollywood-49111321 . Cox, Gordon. “Off Broadway’s Lortel Awards Like ‘Piano Lesson,’ ‘Whale.’” Variety. Last modified 6 May 2013. https://variety.com/2013/legit/news/off-broadways-lortel-awards-like-piano-lesson-whale-1200464475/ . Daube, Elizabeth. “Are the New Weight Loss Drugs Too Good to Be True?” UCSF Magazine 13, no. 1 (2024). https://magazine.ucsf.edu/weight-loss-drugs-too-good-to-be-true . Donovan, Ryan. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity . Oxford University Press, 2023. Friedman, May. Fat Studies: The Basics . Routledge, 2025. Gans, Andrew. “Nominees Announced for 79th Annual Drama League Awards.” Playbill . Last modified 23 April 2013. https://playbill.com/article/nominees-announced-for-79th-annual-drama-league-awards-com-204687 . Gerhardt, Linda. “Fategories: Understanding the Fat Spectrum.” Fluffy Kitten Party . Last modified 1 June 2021. https://fluffykittenparty.com/2021/06/01/fategories-understanding-smallfat-fragility-the-fat-spectrum/ . Gordon, Aubrey. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat. Beacon Press, 2020. Gullage, Amy. “Fat Monica, Fat Suits, and Friends : Exploring Narratives of Fatness.” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 2 (2014): 178-189. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2012.724026 . Heller, Scott. “Characters Who Take Up More Than Their Share of Room in the Family.” New York Times . Last modified 12 December 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/books/obesity-with-jami-attenberg-and-samuel-d-hunter.html . Hoffman, Barbara. “Broadway Goes Big.” New York Post . Last modified 4 November 2012. https://nypost.com/2012/11/04/broadway-goes-big/ . Hunter, Samuel D. “Guest Column: ‘The Whale’ Writer Samuel D. Hunter Says the Film is an Invitation to Experience Humanity. The Hollywood Reporter . Last modified 7 December 2022. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-whale-writer-guest-column-samuel-d-hunter-1235276194/ . Hunter, Samuel D. The Whale and A Bright New Boise. Theatre Communications Group, 2014. Isherwood, Charles. “The Enormity of a Man’s Problems, and Vice Versa.” New York Times . Last modified 5 November 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/theater/reviews/shuler-hensley-in-the-whale-by-samuel-d-hunter.html . Kelly, Liam. “Brendan Fraser’s Seven-Hour Transformation for The Whale.” The Times . Last modified 5 March 2023. https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/brendan-frasers-seven-hour-transformation-for-the-whale-7wtx7t20c . Lang, Brent. “Brendan Fraser’s Triumphant Comeback: How Playing a 600-Pound Gay Man in ‘The Whale’ Resurrected His Career.” Variety . Last modified 12 October 2022. https://variety.com/2022/film/features/brendan-fraser-the-whale-career-1235399057/ . McFarland, Jami, Vanessa Slothouber, and Allison Taylor. “Tempo-rarily Fat: A Queer Exploration of Fat Time.” Fat Studies 7, no. 2 (2017): 135-146. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2017.1376275 . Midnight, Cherry, and Max Airborne. “Community Origins of the Term ‘Superfat.’” Medium . Last modified 2 December 2020. http://thefatlip.com/2016/12/20/beyond-superfat-rethinking-the-farthest-end-of-the-fat-spectrum/ . Mendoza, Katharina R. “Seeing Through the Layers: Fat Suits and Thin Bodies in The Nutty Professor and Shallow Hal.” In The Fat Studies Reader , edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay. New York University Press, 2009. Mulhern, Michael. “BWW Reviews: Denver Center’s The Whale —A Heavy, Superb Drama.” Broadway World. Last modified 26 January 2012. https://www.broadwayworld.com/denver/article/BWW-Reviews-Denver-Centers-THE-WHALE-a-Heavy-Superb-Drama-20120126 . Nischuk, Ash. “Beyond Superfat: Rethinking the Farthest End of the Fat Spectrum.” The Fat Lip . Last modified 20 December 2016. http://thefatlip.com/2016/12/20/beyond-superfat-rethinking-the-farthest-end-of-the-fat-spectrum/ . Nischuk, Ash. “Our 600 Pound Lives.” The Fat Lip . Last modified 21 March 2020. http://thefatlip.com/2020/03/21/our-600-pound-lives/ . Obesity Action Coalition. “Obesity Action Coalition and ‘The Whale.’” Last modified 8 December 2022. https://www.obesityaction.org/the-whale/ . Obesity Action Coalition. “People-First Language.” Accessed 30 October 2025. https://www.obesityaction.org/action-through-advocacy/weight-bias/people-first-language/ . Obesity Action Coalition. “Why the OAC Exists.” Accessed 30 October 2025. https://www.obesityaction.org/about/purpose/who-we-are/ . Osborn, Tigress. “Hollywood’s Anti-Fatness Extends Beyond The Whale.” NAAFA. Last modified 20 March 2023. https://naafa.org/newsletter-articles/hollywoods-anti-fatness-extends-beyond-the-whale . Oswald, Flora. “Anti-fatness in the Ozempic Era: State of the Landscape and Considerations for Future Research.” Fat Studies 13, no. 2 (2024): 128-134. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2024.2307674 . Richardson, Niall. “‘But It’s Only a Fat Suit!’: Representing ‘Fake’ Fat in Popular Culture.” Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture. Routledge, 2010. Rinaldi, Ray Mark. “Theater Review: ‘The Whale’ a Drama of Gigantic Proportions.” The Denver Post . Last modified 3 May 2016. https://www.denverpost.com/2012/01/23/theater-review-the-whale-a-drama-of-gigantic-proportions-2/ . Rinaldi, Ray Mark. “‘Whale’ Promises to be a Whopper of a Family Drama.” The Denver Post . Last modified 1 May 2016. https://www.denverpost.com/2012/01/05/whale-promises-to-be-a-whopper-of-a-family-drama/ . Setoodeh, Ramin, Zack Sharf, and Elsa Keslassy. “Brendan Fraser Breaks Down in Tears as ‘The Whale’ Gets Huge 6-Minute Standing Ovation in Venice.” Variety Last modified 4 September 2022. https://variety.com/2022/film/news/brendan-fraser-cries-the-whale-venice-standing-ovation-1235337836/ . Siebers, Tobin. “Disability as Masquerade.” Disability Theory . University of Michigan Press, 2008. “The Whale.” Concord Theatricals. Accessed 28 October 2025. https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/12562/the-whale . “The Whale: Brendan Fraser Talks with OAC.” Video. Posted 17 February 2023, by Obesity Action Coalition. YouTube. 12 min., 16 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ka4jLFrWVc . “The Whale Charlie Stage Play.” Google Image Search. Accessed 26 October 2025. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+whale+charlie+stage+play&sca_esv=8e61a810906f0d86&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS1113US1113&udm=2&biw=1440&bih=731&sxsrf=AE3TifN_h16QQMJ1UU9kzRTqtHZVJw1fpA%3A1761529337469&ei=-c3-aJavHMukiLMPu6jW-QE&ved=0ahUKEwjWj6-ToMOQAxVLEmIAHTuUNR8Q4dUDCBI&uact=5&oq=the+whale+charlie+stage+play&gs_lp=Egtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZyIcdGhlIHdoYWxlIGNoYXJsaWUgc3RhZ2UgcGxheUifI1AAWMUhcAV4AJABAZgBuAGgAYIZqgEFMjEuMTG4AQPIAQD4AQGYAhagAooQqAIKwgIKECMYJxjJAhjqAsICBxAjGCcYyQLCAgoQABiABBhDGIoFwgILEAAYgAQYsQMYgwHCAg4QABiABBixAxiDARiKBcICCBAAGIAEGLEDwgINEAAYgAQYsQMYQxiKBcICBRAAGIAEwgIEEAAYHsICBhAAGAgYHpgDCpIHBTExLjExoAftcrIHBDguMTG4B_APwgcIMC4xLjE3LjTIB4MB&sclient=gws-wiz-img . Tidgwell, Tracy, May Friedman, Jen Rinaldi, Crystal Kotow, and Emily R.M. Lind. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Fatness and Temporality.” Fat Studies 7, no. 2 (2018): 115-123. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2017.1375262 . Verhoeven, Beatrice. “‘The Whale’ Producer on Criticism of the Film: ‘We Just Want to Be Honest and Truthful.” The Hollywood Reporter . Last modified 10 February 2023. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-whale-producer-film-criticism-brendan-fraser-1235319749/ . Wann, Marilyn. “Foreword: Fat Studies: An Invitation to Revolution.” In The Fat Studies Reader , edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay. New York University Press, 2009. Webster, Guy. “An Ode to Brendan Fraser and Body Neutrality.” Kill Your Darlings Last modified 8 November 2021. https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/an-ode-to-brendan-fraser-and-body-neutrality/ . Zimdars, Melissa. “Spectacle, Sympathy, and the Medicalized Disease of ‘Obesity.’” Watching Our Weights: Contradictions of Televising Fatness in the “Obesity Epidemic.” Rutgers University Press, 2019. Footnotes About The Author(s) TEYA JUAREZ (she/her) is a scholar, dramaturg, educator, and current student in the Theatre and Performance PhD program at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) where her research focuses on fat studies and fat embodiment. As a small fat person, she is dedicated to critiquing and dismantling anti-fatness in theatre for all fat bodies, as well as highlighting the liberatory potentials for fat bodies in performance. She was the recipient of the 2024 American Theatre and Drama Society Emerging Scholars Award for her paper “‘How Dare You Presume I’d Rather Be Thin’: Origins/Iterations of Fat Activism & Performances of Fatness” featured in the 2025 volume of Theatre Annual . 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.

Watch WATERMILL 1993 + WATERMILL CENTER BYRD HOFFMAN SUMMER PROGRAM 2009 by Stefan Kurt / Tomek Jeziorski at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. A double program of short documentaries on The Watermill Center, the institution Robert Wilson founded on Long Island in 1991. WATERMILL 1993 (1993, 20 min) — directed by Stefan Kurt Shot in the Center's earliest years, this film documents The Watermill Center in its founding period, capturing the spirit and working methods of the institution as it established itself. Wilson founded the Center in a former Western Union research facility on the edge of the Shinnecock Reservation, and from the beginning conceived of it as a space distinct from conventional theater institutions — a "laboratory for creative experimentation, where artists can work at the intersection of disciplines, drawing inspiration from nature and Wilson's extensive collection of art and artifacts." This film preserves a record of the Center in its first phase, before it grew into the year-round residency space it would become. WATERMILL CENTER BYRD HOFFMAN SUMMER PROGRAM 2009 (2010, 38 min) — directed by Tomek Jeziorski Filmed during the 2009 summer program, this documentary captures the Center at a later stage of its development — by which point it had in 2006 become a year-round space for artists-in-residence. The summer program, named for the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds (Wilson's original performance collective), brings together students and established artists from across disciplines in a collaborative, multi-disciplinary environment. The film documents the work and energy of this gathering, conveying the ethos of exchange and experimentation that Wilson intended the Center to embody. Total running time: approximately 65 minutes. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents WATERMILL 1993 + WATERMILL CENTER BYRD HOFFMAN SUMMER PROGRAM 2009 Stefan Kurt / Tomek Jeziorski At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This program will be screened on June 3 at 8:45 PM, at Anthology Film Archives. RSVP Please note that these screenings are ticketed and require prior registration at the Anthology Film Archives website. Country United States Language English Running Time 65 minutes Year of Release 1993 / 2010 About The Film A double program of short documentaries on The Watermill Center, the institution Robert Wilson founded on Long Island in 1991. WATERMILL 1993 (1993, 20 min) — directed by Stefan Kurt Shot in the Center's earliest years, this film documents The Watermill Center in its founding period, capturing the spirit and working methods of the institution as it established itself. Wilson founded the Center in a former Western Union research facility on the edge of the Shinnecock Reservation, and from the beginning conceived of it as a space distinct from conventional theater institutions — a "laboratory for creative experimentation, where artists can work at the intersection of disciplines, drawing inspiration from nature and Wilson's extensive collection of art and artifacts." This film preserves a record of the Center in its first phase, before it grew into the year-round residency space it would become. WATERMILL CENTER BYRD HOFFMAN SUMMER PROGRAM 2009 (2010, 38 min) — directed by Tomek Jeziorski Filmed during the 2009 summer program, this documentary captures the Center at a later stage of its development — by which point it had in 2006 become a year-round space for artists-in-residence. The summer program, named for the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds (Wilson's original performance collective), brings together students and established artists from across disciplines in a collaborative, multi-disciplinary environment. The film documents the work and energy of this gathering, conveying the ethos of exchange and experimentation that Wilson intended the Center to embody. Total running time: approximately 65 minutes. WATERMILL 1993 directed by Stefan Kurt WATERMILL CENTER BYRD HOFFMAN SUMMER PROGRAM 2009 directed by Tomek Jeziorski About The Artist(s) Stefan Kurt is a Swiss actor and filmmaker who has worked extensively in theater and cinema, including as a performer in Wilson's productions. His short film Watermill 1993 documents The Watermill Center in its founding years. Tomek Jeziorski is a Polish filmmaker and photographer who has documented The Watermill Center's summer programs. His 2010 film capturing the 2009 Byrd Hoffman Summer Program provides a record of one of the Center's core annual events. Get in touch with the artist(s) and follow them on social media Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2026 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here

Mohamadreza Babaee 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 Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Mohamadreza Babaee By Published on May 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF fig. 1: The installation room for Global (re)Entry. 2D game and multimedia installation. “Unforgetting” exhibition, University of California, Santa Cruz, Apr. 2022. Photo by author. "Have you ever held a grenade in your hands?” The participants read on a monitor screen in a room with a view of the Pacific Ocean (fig. 1). A projector screen obstructs the view and displays the live footage of the participants from a bird’s-eye angle. With white walls, a desk, a chair, and a desktop computer and monitor, the room seems desolate. An ambient soundtrack is playing in the background, projecting various sounds that travelers usually hear in any US airport: the occasional announcements, suitcases being dragged on smooth floors, the beeping sound of various scanning machines, and the occasional roarings of airplanes taking off. If the participants sit behind the computer long enough, they could hear the ambient soundtrack of the airport fading into distant notes of a piano playing in an empty alley, birds chirping in a dim forest, and raindrops falling onto thirsty leaves. The question on the screen remains visible until the participants decide to use a “Cosmic” tool to change it. If they click on the cosmic tool icon on the right side of the screen, hover the mouse over the question, and hold down left-click, the question visually morphs into the same text, with one important difference (fig. 2): “Have you ever held a kitten in your hands?” fig. 2: The redesigned immigration form question. Global (re)Entry, 2D game and multimedia installation. And such is the core mechanic in Global (re)Entry , a video game-multimedia installation that gives the participants an opportunity to rewrite the racially presumptuous questions that immigrants need to answer in their change-of-status petition forms and in-person interviews. [1] Made in collaboration with recent University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) alumni, [2] the project was first on display as a part of “Unforgetting,” an MFA exhibition of digital arts and new media projects on display at UCSC from Apr. 22 nd to May 1 st , 2022. The different projects—ranging from video games to multimedia performances—seek to address the common themes of lost histories, hidden realities, and haunting. “The artists,” writes Yolande Harris, an artist-scholar and the exhibition’s curator, “are questioning and actively participating in the destruction of old systems of oppression by imagining new systems in their place.” [3] The system in question in Global (re)Entry is the US immigration system, particularly the process through which an immigrant can petition for residency in the US. While the legal pathway to becoming a permanent resident remains a privileged route to which many undocumented immigrants have no access, Global (re)Entry aims to point out the deficiency and impracticality of legal procedures in the US immigration system built upon historical prejudice and racial bias. In Global (re)Entry , I take a critical and parodic look at the Global Entry program designed by the US Customs and Border Protection agency. Similar to other Trusted Traveler programs, Global Entry allows “low-risk” US citizens and permanent residents to use an automated machine to receive their clearance for crossing international borders. The conditions through which Global Entry considers a traveler as low risk are not disclosed publicly and are open to interpretation and bias. My project borrows textual and visual assets from the US Department of Homeland Security’s (and the associated agencies’) online documents to simulate and repurpose the traveler screening program. The player needs to answer several questions in the game to receive their travel clearance card. However, their resistance to participating in state-sponsored security theatres unlocks a new gameplay branch that leads the player to a utopian way of reimagining the US immigration system. While players can play the game to learn more about unfair border control strategies and oppressive state policies targeting immigrants, they can also creatively redesign discriminatory US immigration forms and generate pro-immigrant, antiracist manifestos. Before discussing the conceptual development of Global (re)Entry in relation to my performance background, I need to elaborate on why I am discussing this project in the special issue of a theatre and performance studies journal. This issue invites reflections on new work development with attention to how theatre artists respond to the realities of the ongoing global pandemic. I designed Global (re)Entry as a playful digital intervention into discriminatory US border politics. Although the project represents my training as an artist in experimental game design, my current work is in continuation of my years-long practice as a theatre director. I started my journey as an artist by designing, directing, and supporting experimental theatre and performance pieces about the memories that immigrants leave behind, the human impact of financial sanctions on Iran, diasporic experiences of queer people of color, and fearmongering and Islamaphobia that ensued after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11 th , 2001. Over time, I moved away from traditional understandings of theatre to embrace postdramatic and multimedia ways of staging diverse immigrant experiences. Digital mediums and technologies play a central role in my recent projects, but I need to clarify that this digital turn in my practice is not an inevitable assimilation into the techno-utopian rhetorics hailed by megacorporate amalgamations around the country (and the world). Instead, I embraced digital methods of representation and creative intervention as I became increasingly weary of the limited access a live performance space offers to the audience. How could I make more performances about/for immigrants and refugees while many of them did not have the privilege of being in the performance space? The shortcomings of designing a performance around the physical notion of space led me to adapt digital forms of communication, representation, and intervention. Without a doubt, going through a global pandemic, which severely reduced social gatherings, contributed an additional layer to my rationale for opting for a digital sense of performance space as a site of potentials apt for facilitating human-computer interactions. [4] Global (re)Entry represents my investment in interactive digital art as a conditionally more accessible medium [5] while remaining strongly tethered to my experience as a performance maker and scholar. [6] In the following pages, I offer a brief description of Global (re)Entry as a collaborative work of art inspired by my learnings in performance theory. That is not to say that I consider the project a performance piece. Rather, I want to delineate my conceptual itinerary to clarify the significance of performance discourses in my current new work development in digital arts and new media. I am less concerned with disciplinary demarcations and more with the value of interdisciplinary creative production. The initial idea for Global (re)Entry arose from a simple question: What is a utopian vision of the US immigration system? José Esteban Muñoz’s foundational study of utopias informs my investment in utopian art making. Writing on the contemporary politics of queer of color identity formation, Muñoz believes that minoritarian individuals should imagine their lives beyond what he calls the “quagmire of the present.” It is the present-focused thinking that, according to Muñoz, stops the oppressed from imagining a better future outside the contemporary tyranny of systems. Muñoz proposes a “utopian modality” in which feelings, thoughts, and actions follow a utopian function for “fragmenting darkness” and illuminating a “world that should be, that could be, and that will be.” [7] Muñoz dismisses abstract ideas of utopia as they remain dormant in the realm of fantasy. Instead, he calls for concrete conditions of utopia that can invoke a “not-yet-conscious” potentiality, presenting the collective wish of a group that looks back at the “no-longer-conscious” past and renders hopeful “potential blueprints of a world not quite here, a horizon of possibility.” [8] Inspired by such ideas, I approached several immigrants of color that I knew personally and asked them about their utopian visions of the US immigration system. They all expressed a wish to replace the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) with a network of support that facilitates border crossing, not border policing. Concomitant to their utopian thinking was a wish for educating more US citizens about the gross flaws in the legal pathway to becoming a resident and the mental, emotional, and material toll the process could take. Global (re)Entry gives the participants an opportunity to take a critical look at the US immigration system and creatively redesign it in utopian ways. Therefore, the project represents what Claudia Costa Pederson calls “utopian ludology,” a critical-creative perspective that considers games as “places of the radical imagination,” sites that take playfulness as “enabling interactions that afford the necessary freedom to generate new kinds of thinking, feeling, and empowerment to concretize a future that dominant culture renders unthinkable.” [9] Games imbued by concrete ideas of utopia, Pederson asserts, can be “tools of persuasion,” which “open up the question of alternatives” and “reject the mimetic ideals… and commodity models of the video game industry.” [10] While I hesitate to label Global (re)Entry as merely a “persuasive game,” I am inspired by persuasive game designers who use video games for “cultural and social change” and “do so in recognition of the persuasive power of the medium, which is based on its appeal to fantasy and imagination.” [11] Utopian survival strategies of the queer of color, as theorized by Muñoz, shaped how I approached making the game. I could certainly try to make a live performance piece about border crossing (something that I had done in the past), but I could not comfortably make art for immigrants, fully knowing that many of them could not cross the myriad of borders to partake in the privilege of live physical co-presence. I remain cognizant of the ongoing debates in the field as to what constitutes liveness, namely Philip Auslander’s provocative assertion that live experiences are culturally and historically codified in relation to technological changes. [12] But if we allow ourselves to decenter our scholarly polemics in favor of making room for lived experiences of those with less transnational mobility, the question at hand might become as simple as who is in the room and who is not. As I mentioned before, digital liveness and digital spaces continue to be subject to the same question, as not everyone has equal access to entering a digital room, but I take the odds of more people worldwide having access to the internet to download a small-size, low-tech video game over US government easing up on admitting more immigrants to the country. fig. 3: Screenshot from a cutscene inside the game. Global (re)Entry. 2D game and multimedia installation. In addition to queer of color critique, I also used critical discussions of border surveillance to design Global (re)Entry . While I borrowed from scholars in different humanities fields, performance theory continued to play an essential role in my development process. Trusted traveler programs such as Global Entry are ostensibly designed to facilitate easier border crossing experiences, but in fact, they are just a ruse for easy screening of travelers and separating them into potential suspects and trustworthy users. [13] Since Homeland Security agencies are exempt from racial profiling rules, [14] race plays a vital role in designing and implementing border surveillance strategies. Writing on the surveillance of Blackness in the US, Simon Browne uses “racializing surveillance” as a term to describe systematic moments “when enactments of surveillance reify boundaries along racial lines, thereby reifying race, and where the outcome of this is often discriminatory and violent treatment.” [15] Browne contends that racializing surveillance is a “technology of social control” and suggests “how things get ordered racially by way of surveillance depends on space and time and is subject to change, but most often upholds negating strategies that first accompanied European colonial expansion and transatlantic slavery that sought to structure social relations and institutions in ways that privilege whiteness.” [16] Expanding her analysis into the racialized practices of surveillance at US airports, Browne uses the concept of “racial baggage” to identify situations in which certain acts and certain looks at the airport weigh down some travelers, while others travel lightly.” [17] Trusted traveler programs, Browne continues, are clear evidence of how racializing surveillance is practiced at airports to identify, separate, pat down, and investigate the racial baggage some travelers carry across borders. [18] In the racializing matrix of airports, questions of privacy become contested. The state watches travelers, but in that watching, not all travelers are equally suspect. As Jasbir Puar delineates, “the right to privacy is not even on the radar screen for many sectors of society, unfathomable for whom being surveilled is a way of life…the private is a racialized and nationalized construct, insofar as it is granted not only to heterosexuals but to certain citizens and withheld from many others and from noncitizens.” [19] Furthermore, Puar uses the Foucauldian notion of panopticon to suggest that the ever present surveillance technologies throughout borderlands forcefully encourage self-regulation of a sort that is “less an internalization of norms and more about constant monitoring of oneself and others, watching, waiting, listening, ordering, positioning, calculating.” [20] Performance, communication, and feminist studies scholar Rachel Hall similarly focuses on the notion of self-regulation at airports to frame airport security as a “collaborative cultural performance” that requires some passengers to continuously perform “voluntary transparency.” [21] Transparency, in Hall’s critical opinion, is a privilege, the “new white,” that if performed successfully, will grant the traveler with a moment of innocence. [22] However, Hall continues, not all travelers are given equal access to such privilege; within the post-9/11 context, military and security experts design “mediated spectacles of diabolical opacity” to produce “the stubbornly noncompliant, noncitizen suspects in the war on terror.” [23] In sum, there is a clear connection between how the state surveils populations and creates racial categories. Surveillance at airports is a racializing act that seeks to produce transparent travelers and suspect figures of the national adversary. The ubiquitous implementation of surveillance technologies at airports regulates self-monitoring practices requiring travelers to disclose their information voluntarily. Those who successfully perform their transparency might achieve a temporary moment of innocence, but travelers with racial baggage need to struggle against a racist state that considers them likely perpetrators of violence. Global (re)Entry fictionally simulates and repurposes the Global Entry trusted traveling program to (on top of encouraging utopian thinking) draw attention to intrusive methodologies that the Homeland Security agencies incorporate to produce prejudiced surveillance data, specifically about immigrants of color. The game starts as an invitation for voluntary performances of transparency, as theorized by Hall. The participants are asked to submit to an intrusive screening process requiring their biometric data. However, in line with the utopian performance-making rhetorics that undergird the projects, participants can refuse to perform transparency and, as such, unlock an alternative gameplay path that leads to creatively redesigning discriminatory US immigration forms. I use digital technologies and mediums to create interactive art about marginalized experiences. I cautiously navigate this path and remain vigilant about digital accessibility limitations, particularly in the global south. The new projects I develop represent my increasing interest in digital arts and new media. I, however, continue to also identify as a performance maker, an artist of color whose creative journey demonstrates an intertwined and growing web of performance and game design skills. As long as the adapted medium and methodology can empower me in my commitment to increasing representations of immigrants of color, the new work development process personally remains a dynamic terminology applicable to all artmaking practices. In Global (re)Entry , I follow an artistic mission that draws from the power of representation to enable utopian thinking as a necessary first step toward creating change in society. The utopian thinking that Global (re)Entry encourages is my intervention in the ongoing ostracization, surveillance, deportation, incarceration, and murdering of immigrants that state forces commit at US borders. In the face of such destructive realities, my project does not call for neoliberal reformations of the US immigration system. Instead, Global (re)Entry dares to ask the participants to muster the radical audacity, subversive creativity, and insurgent hopes necessary for entirely disabling a killing machine cloaked as the US immigration system. References [1] You can play Global (re)Entry at https://www.mbabaee.com/global-re-entry . [2] Music and sound by Madeline Doss, 2D art and UI by Fion Kwok, and Unity programming by Avery Weibel. [3] “Digital Arts and New Media | MFA Program at University of California, Santa Cruz,” accessed January 9, 2023, https://danmmfa.ucsc.edu/ . [4] Nadja Masura, Digital Theatre: The Making and Meaning of Live Mediated Performance, US & UK 1990-2020 , Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology (Springer International Publishing, 2020), 42. [5] I acknowledge that access to digital technology remains unequal, particularly in Global South. Steven Dixon, for example, writes that even though new digital technology and internet revolutionized performance forms across the US in the 90s, such revolution was absent or less tangible in other parts of the world with less to no resources for building the digital infrastructure that the new digital age demanded. For more, look at Steve Dixon, Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015). [6] Although the project was originally presented as a multimedia installation, it is available online to players around the world. [7] José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia (New York University Press, 2009), 1. [8] Muñoz, Cruising Utopia , 22, 25, 97. [9] Claudia Costa Pederson, Gaming Utopia: Ludic Worlds in Art, Design, and Media (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021), 6. [10] Pederson, Gaming Utopia, 184. [11] Pederson, 222. [12] While Auslander initially made this comment in Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (1999), he later revisited his argument to clarify that he does not believe technologies (vs. the people) to be the determining agent in what is live. For more, look at Auslander, Philip. “Digital Liveness: A Historico-Philosophical Perspective.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 34, no. 3 (2012): 3–11. [13] See Matthew Longo, The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). [14] See Nicole Nguyen, Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019). [15] Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015), 8. [16] Browne, Dark Matters , 16, 17. [17] Browne, 132. [18] Browne, 135. [19] Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times , 10th ed. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017), 125. [20] Puar, Terrorist Assemblages , 156. [21] Rachel Hall, The Transparent Traveler: The Performance and Culture of Airport Security (Duke University Press, 2015), 12. [22] Hall, The Transparent Traveler , 14. [23] Hall, 46. Footnotes About The Author(s) MOHAMADREZA BABAEE is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance at Indiana University, Bloomington. Their interdisciplinary scholarship and transmedia practice primarily focus on issues of migration and surveillance, particularly in connection to the Middle Eastern and Iranian diasporas in the US. Their first manuscript project, tentatively titled Modded Diasporas: Performing Iranian Identity , combines performance studies and critical game theory to explore how Iranian immigrants modify the circumstances of their systematic oppression to turn them into empowering opportunities, tools, and mediums. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 21, 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Robert Wilson’s Moby Dick at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Summer 2025 Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF By Steve Earnest Image Credits: Article It was not known that Moby Dick would be Bob Wilson’s final realized production as his death in June 2025 happened before numerous future productions already in rehearsal were fully realized. Originally conceived in 2017 and proposed for a Norwegian production a few years later, the show was put on hold for years before finally being developed at the Watermill Summer Institute and finally presented at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf in 2024. The massive work was conceived by Wilson and Ann-Christin Rommen, with scenic design by Serge Von Arx, costumes by Julia von Leliwa, music by Anna Calvi, Dom Bouffard and Chris Wheeler, video by Tomasz Jeziorski and additional lighting by Marcello Lumaca. Moby Dick revealed an important evolution in Wilsonian production style with its heavy reliance on video sequences to enhance the work’s massive scale. Previously Faust 1 & 2 at Berliner Ensemble (2016) had included several video sequences but Moby Dick greatly surpassed that with numerous incredible background video sequences, many featuring powerful scenes from the ocean as a major part of the production. Unlike many of Wilson’s previous works, often known for their long running times, Moby Dick was presented with no intermission and a running time of only ninety minutes. Herman Melville’s novel is a staple of American Literature and considers the universal issue of mankind versus nature (represented by the whale, Moby Dick) also dealing with issues of human control, the killing of animals, the nature of those who fish the oceans, the nature of killing itself as well as mankind’s eternal fight against impending doom. The text for Moby Dick was created by Wilson, Ann-Christin Rommen, Robert Koall and Lily Mertens and was characterized by its reductive nature – the spoken text was somewhat limited, and many words and sequences were repeated throughout the work with a great deal of the works focus landing on musical numbers. Anna Calvi’s extraordinary cinematic musical score included around eight musical numbers, and, like many of Wilson’s recent works, could be considered a musical theatre work to some degree given the staging, choreography and singing in the pieces. Wilson’s characteristic repetitive movement patterns and character poses aided the story’s development as each character had their own distinctive movement and gestural language – similar to mie poses used in aragoto Kabuki performances. Christopher Nell and Jürgen Sarkiss in Moby Dick . Photo credit: Lucie Jansch The framing of the work was the telling of the story of Moby Dick by an old man (possibly representing Melville himself) to a young boy, played by the popular German actor Christopher Nell. Nell is one of Germany’s most impressive current actors. Having received his training at the Hochschlule für Musik und Theater Rostock, he has played in numerous previous Wilson productions including Faust 1 & 2 at the Berliner Ensemble in 2016 as well as the leading role in Pferd Frisst Hut at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2025. Nell’s incredible physical work as one of the leading figures in Moby Dick highlighted Wilson’s physical style of performance. Nell’s uncanny physical abilities were put on full display as the character of The Boy, moved through the scenes with reckless abandon, all the while utilizing the Wilsonian soundscape to achieve many of the previously mentioned character poses. Throughout the work this technique defined many of the characters and has been a part of Wilson’s work for quite a long time. Christopher Nell and Rosa Enskat in Moby Dick. Photo Credit: Lucie Jansch Rosa Enskat as Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. Photo Credit: Lucie Jansch Melville’s text centered around the story of Ahab, designated as “Peg Leg” in Wilson’s text, who sought, above all else, to risk the life of the entire crew to exact revenge on the whale who had taken away a part of his leg several years previously. Played by Rosa Enskat, the role of Ahab was a highly physical, yet complicated role as the characteristic poses (mies) were extremely specific to motion and involved interaction with not only the other characters but with the incredible scenes of oceanic and wind movement as well as with the ship itself. Another particular element of the design included wigs that implied a particular sense of movement that was enhanced and influenced by Wilson’s staging. Perhaps the greatest examples were seen in the role of Ahab played to perfection by Rosa Enskat. The characteristic limp and leg disorder (symbolized in the Wilson production by a long black leather boot) keyed the audience into the story of the legless captain intent on revenge against the mammoth whale. Additionally, Ahab’s hair style included the directional movement that became a large part of the character’s movement repertoire. Wilson’s specificity with character placement and body alignment became even more specific in his later years with hair pieces and other elements like props (Ahab’s walking cane for example) aligned in extremely particular and exact positions. This accuracy of precise positioning has challenged many actors involved in Wilson’s works over the years but many – such as Willem Dafoe and Mikhail Baryishnikov in The Old Woman (2013 ) - found this type of specificity extremely liberating and actually gave them less to think about within the context of the work. Several of the major musical scenes of the work were extremely compelling. The gathering of the sailors for the conquest scene included an extended choral sequence as the church blessed the hunters as well as the evil hunted whale. Video sequences established the seaport while the actors engaged in a complicated musical work that blessed the ship on its important journey to destroy the monstrous creature. The inclusion of religion into the equation (also present in the Melville novel) added yet another element into the “human versus nature” them by adding the element of God on the side of humanity. The mounting of the ship was characterized by an extended and visually repetitive scene beautifully realized and involving numerous, often violent images of a seaport city. Some of the images seemed reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds as angry birds seemed to be arriving to the scene as a potential angry chorus of supporters for the important killing mission that would be achieved by Ahab and his group of sailors. Clearly embracing a non-chronological narrative, the work often shifted back to scenes between The Boy and the Old Man as they discussed the evolving story. In a curious Wilson turn, The Boy began to take on the role of a conductor and waved a conductor’s baton in numerous scenes while talking to the Old Man as well as his strong presence in numerous scenes. Several scenes featured The Boy conducting musical sequences that were a part of the works precise soundscape. Without superior internal knowledge it is impossible to know the motivation for these scenes as one of the most compelling and interesting aspects of Wilson’s works throughout his career has been the use of arbitrary and unexplained elements. In fact, that is one of the truly beautiful elements of his work and even delving into those moments are a waste of time. The main consideration should always be: “Did they work and did they make the work more interesting?” In the case of The Boy’s evolution into the world of musical conducting the answer was a resounding “yes,” and the scenes somehow recognized his maturation as well as adding numerous possibilities for comic physical action. Nell’s work was incredibly similar to the famous American comedy star Danny Kaye. Their physical resemblance was unmistakable, but Nell’s physical and vocal abilities placed him in a category equal to that great American movie actor. One of the most memorable scenes in the work occurred in the latter half as the crew was preparing to harpoon the whale. Set to Calvi’s powerful music, the musical number “We’re Gonna Reel Him In” would certainly qualify to be the pieces “Eleven O’clock Number” (in the sense of musical theatre works) and was a powerful and stirring piece that both vocally and physically embraced Wilson’s powerful aesthetic. Numerous powerful images from the scene shifted from the imaginary vessel to imaginary landscapes that displayed numerous relationships among the crew members that suggested a variety of activities and interpersonal connections. Many of the tableau created were open to individual interpretation but all were beautifully realized in classic Wilson style. The company of Moby Dick by Robert Wilson. Photo Credit: Lucie Jansch The absence of Bob Wilson in the world’s performance landscape is one of the biggest losses imaginable. The fact that Wilson brought this production of Moby Dick to the stage and realized it as a very audience friendly, time friendly and visually stunning as well as technically advanced work (to the highest levels of contemporary technology) cemented his role as one of the most important innovators (certainly as an American) in the history of theatre. Wilson was a singular artist, whose style is still just being discovered, realized and copied by artists in theatre, musical theatre, film, dance, opera and other areas like installation art where he also had a strong presence as a creator and presenter. At the time of this writing Moby Dick will be shown in Brooklyn, New York at BAM in April 2026, which will give American audiences an opportunity to see his final work by the (mostly) original Dusseldorf cast. However, Wilson’s work will not cease, as his numerous associates, such as Ann-Christin Rommen and Daryl Pinckney among others will likely work to keep the Wilson performance tradition alive to whatever degree is possible. References References About the author(s) Steve Earnest is a Professor of Theatre at Coastal Carolina University . He was a Fulbright Scholar in Nanjing, China during the 2019 – 2020 academic year where he taught and directed works in Shakespeare and Musical Theatre. A member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA, he has worked professionally as an actor with Performance Riverside, The Burt Reynolds Theatre, The Jupiter Theatre, Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Birmingham Summerfest and the Riverside Theatre of Vero Beach, among others. Film credits include Bloody Homecoming , Suicide Note and Miami Vice . His professional directing credits include Big River , Singin’ in the Rain and Meet Me in St. Louis at the Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs, Musicale at Whitehall 06 at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach and Much Ado About Nothing with the Mountain Brook Shakespeare Festival. Numer ous publications include a book, The State Acting Academy of East Berlin , published in 1999 by Mellen Press, a book chapter in Performer Training, published by Harwood Press, and a number of articles and reviews in academic journals and periodicals including Theatre Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, Western European Stages, The Journal of Beckett Studies and Backstage West . He has taught Acting, Movement, Dance, and Theatre History/Literature at California State University, San Bernardino, the University of West Georgia , the University of Montevallo and Palm Beach Atlantic University. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre from the University of Miami, FL. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Theatre in Poland, Fall 2025 Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 21 Robert Wilson’s Moby Dick at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf, Summer 2025 Dramas of Separation at Festival d’Avignon 19th Edition Polyphonies of the Present: The Pulse of the Almada Festival Summer 2025 in London, England The Tragic Ideal of Eternal Youth: Folk Myth on the Modern Stage International Theatre Festival of Sibiu 32nd Edition Review of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa by Ópera do Castelo Radu Afrim and his House Between the Blocks Report from Berlin Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Christen Mandracchia Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 1 Visit Journal Homepage More than a Props List: Redefining Material Culture as Survival and Pleasure in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined Christen Mandracchia By Published on November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF A small mining town. The sounds of the tropical Ituri rain forest. The DemocraticRepublic of Congo. A bar, makeshift furnitureand a rundown pool table. A lot of effort has gone into making the worn bar cheerful. A stack of plastic washtubs rests in the corner. An old carbattery powers the lights and audio system, a covered birdcage sits conspicuously in the cornerof the room. ([1]) How might you approach these opening stage directions from Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Ruined ? Would you start by picturing specific pieces of furniture? Does the quality and type of sound come to mind first? How does your own positionality inform these choices? As a theatre and performance scholar who also serves as a production manager, designer, and professor, I am rarely able to separate a scholarly reading from the material conditions of production. Thus, I approach these stage directions through many different lenses. For example, as a sound designer, I notice that the first specific thing Nottage mentions is the “sounds of the tropical Ituri rain forest” followed by a reference to an audio system that is plugged into “an old car battery.” These details would impact technical and artistic choices I might make. Similarly, as a lighting designer, I notice that the same battery powers the lights, which means that a production would likely need practical lighting instruments to be hung around the set, in addition to the stage lights. A props-centered approach is particularly compelling because Nottage lists “makeshift furniture” – a phrase which sparks a larger conversation, not just about the logistics of acquiring or building these objects for the stage, but one which hails the production team into the world of the play and into the minds of the characters. Therein lies the challenge. Ruined is a 2011 drama which tells the story of Mama Nadi, a Mother Courage-like figure who owns and operates the described bar in the Congolese rain forest. Her patrons are often miners of the mineral coltan, used in cellular phones, and soldiers on both sides of a bloody civil war. What does “makeshift furniture” look like in the world of this play? What objects are available to these characters, and where do these objects come from? What were these objects originally intended for and what does their second life as “makeshift furniture” reveal about the objectives, survival, innovation, and pleasure of the characters? When members of a production team must put themselves in the place of the characters to make artistic decisions, other aspects of our positionalities manifest themselves as assets or limits in this theatrical process. For example, how would my experiences as a white-ethnic, middle-class, and queer theatre scholar/practitioner in the United States help or hinder my ability to access the world of the play and the lived experiences of the characters to make well-informed, ethical, and dramaturgically accurate production decisions? I begin with this discussion of props because I contend that delving into the specific material histories of objects in the text provides new avenues of nuance and complexity that can help bridge the gap between Western scholarly, practical, and personal lived experiences and those of the characters. An article like “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” by Chandra Talpade Mohanty establishes what is at stake when Western knowledge production relies on archetypes instead of the material realities of the “third world” — especially women. She describes this archetype of the “average third world woman” as falling into gendered stereotypes such as sexual constraint, and “third world” stereotypes of “ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.” ( [2] ) She then argues that the victim narrative, in particular, reduces the complexities of the lives of “third world” women to socioeconomic or sexual terms, reinforcing the sexist stereotype of women as weak. ( [3] ) In focusing on the material objects listed in a play like Ruined , through an application of material culture theory as a methodology, this article outlines how Western theatre makers and scholars can approach plays set in the “third world” in a way that Mohanty argues would be more grounded in the “material and ideological power structures” which shape these women’s lives. ( [4] ) Toward this end, Ruined is a useful vehicle for the application of a material culture reading precisely because the play was created with the intent to “sustain the complexity” of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, knowing that her Western “first-world” audience would only know about the conflict through fragmented news clips. ( [5] ) Nottage wrote the play based on ethnographic testimony of real women who survived the war, but she also uses specifically-named material objects in the text to ground the character’s larger given circumstances in material reality. In the play’s first descriptive paragraphs, referenced above, Nottage paints a picture of a place that is “ worn ” but “ cheerful ,” “ rundown ” but “ tropical ”—evoking a comfortable place more than a war zone. As a play about what Mohanty terms the “third world” written for a “first world” audience, Nottage does not fully immerse the audience in the horrors of war immediately. I use the phrase “third world” in this context throughout this paper because it is the word that Mohanty uses to describe the groups of women who fall under this Western label. “Third world,” in its immediate context, refers to the Cold War language which identified the “first world” as the capitalist nations, who were in opposition to the Soviet Union and the expansion of communism. As Mohanty details, this term has taken on more cultural meanings than its technical use from the Cold War era—so that even words like “Western” are tied to the division between “first” and “third” world. I use the term, knowing that it is outdated and problematic in many ways, but also knowing that many of the perceptions associated with this word still exist. I use it with the knowledge that it is a cultural touchstone, conjuring a specific iconography which I hope to complicate. Hence, I will keep it in quotations to highlight the fact that it is a construction. The first allusion to violence happens five lines into the first scene, where Mama Nadi exclaims to her stock supplier Christian, a “ perpetually cheerful traveling salesman ” that she has been expecting him for three weeks. Christian explains that “Every two kilometers a boy with a Kalashnikov and pockets that need filling.” ( [6] ) Nottage begins to reveal the larger given circumstances of the play through specific mentions of an object: the Russian-made and distributed Kalashnikov, often referred to in American lexicon as an “AK.” ( [7] ) In his book on gun history aptly titled The Gun , CJ Chivers informs readers that More than six decades after its design and initial distribution, more than fifty national armies carry the automatic Kalashnikov, as do an array of police, intelligence, and security agencies. But its fuller terrain lies outside the sphere of conventional force. The Kalashnikov [culturally] marks the guerilla, the terrorist, the child soldier, the dictator, and the thug — all of whom have found it to be a ready equalizer against morally or materially superior foes. ( [8] ) Because the AK, especially the infamous AK-47, is often wielded by the NATO members’ military opponents, it is often viewed, in the American cultural archive, as a “bad guy” weapon. Conversely, it is often seen by those who wield them as a symbol of defiance against colonial powers and Western, capitalist values. For the characters in the first scene of Ruined , it represents their position as both citizens of a post-colonial, “third world” country and their vulnerability to violence at the hands of their own countrymen — thus complicating the “bad guy/good guy” or “Western/Anti-Western” binaries. Nottage’s specific mention of the Kalashnikov and other objects in the script serves as what the Combahee River Collective calls “the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” ( [9] ) Nottage’s ability to “sustain the complexity” of many topics has earned her much critical acclaim and scholarly attention. According to data from American Theatre , Nottage was the most produced playwright for the 2022-2023 theatre season in the United States. ( [10] ) Her play Clyde’s earned the top spot as the most produced play, with her Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat at number five. Intimate Apparel was the most produced play of the 2005-2006 season and the fifth most-produced play of the 2006-2007 season. ( [11] ) Ruined held the fourth spot in the 2010-2011 season. Poignantly, Intimate Apparel returned to the top-ten list in 2016-2017, and Sweat was second in the 2018-2019 season before returning to the list for 2022-2023. The data suggests that Nottage’s plays have enjoyed many “lives” beyond their initial premiere dates. As Nottage’s work continues to weave in and out of America’s top ten lists, it is necessary for scholarship to reexamine her work and the body of scholarly and dramaturgical literature dedicated to her plays. Each new “life” evidences a relevance or usefulness to public discourse in the United States on political issues of national interest including immigration, deindustrialization, globalization, and incarceration. Likewise, as national discourses now include robust discussions of the environmental and moral ethics of mining minerals in “third world” countries for electric vehicle batteries, Ruined offers readers and spectators a material methodology that can help to circumvent many of the traps of homogenization, reduction, or “Othering” that can too-often arise in public discourses on the “third world” and its women. Third World Feminism and Material Culture Theory Cultural theorist Celia Lury defines material culture as “ a culture of the use or appropriation of objects or things. ” ( [12] ) She continues: “The first half of the term — ‘material’ — points to the significance of stuff, of things in everyday practices, while the second half —‘ culture’ — indicates that this attention to the materials of everyday life is combined with a concern with the cultural, with norms, values and practices.” ( [13] ) A material culture theory reading of Nottage’s script follows what Mohanty insists that Western beholders should do every time we encounter stories of women in the “third world.” Material culture theory is an interdisciplinary way of analyzing the various ways that objects are connected to larger given circumstances and power dynamics. For marginalized groups who might be absent from the written archive, material culture theory is a way to give voice to the voiceless, or to highlight the everyday lives of people who never wrote about themselves. Material culture theory, however, is not to be confused with materialism or the Marxist tradition of historic materialism, which often only regards material objects in terms of their means of production, consumption, and the role they play in exploitation. In centering the systems of oppression in a discussion on “third world” Black women, there is a danger of falling into the “archetypal victim” that Mohanty warns against. Material culture theory considers the role that objects play in these negotiations: its production — particularly the unseen labor that goes into making it and maintaining it — but also its intended function, the ways that it participates in the creation of self-identity, its special relationships to people and other objects, and how these meanings change over time. ( [14] ) A study of objects in the script reveals the interlocking oppressions which affect the characters’ everyday lives, but also how these objects can be used as sites of agency, survival, resistance, or other negotiations of power within that structure. The play’s original director, Kate Whoriskey, states, “As a director committed to staging complexity, my task is to counter the drama with humor, spirit and wit, and to treat the stories collected in Central Africa with the understanding that at every moment the Congolese are determined to survive.” ( [15] ) I am interested in the way that role that objects play in the leveraging of these dramatic moments in favor of survival, as reflective of the way that real women in the Congo, such as the ones that this play is based on, do the same. Furthermore, material culture theory resists the anti-materialism (victim/passive) narrative that suggests that consumers are manipulated or subordinated into purchasing or gathering things. The production and consumption of material objects can just as much oppress an individual as it can empower one. Like “third world” feminism, material culture theory demands that a methodology be used to consider the individual circumstances of an object’s relationship to a person, time, and place to “sustain the complexity,” as Nottage would say. I’d like to push the conversation beyond mere survival into one of joy and pleasure. Mohanty warns that confining the “third world” woman to a survival narrative can perpetuate their image as “archetypal victims,” and “freezes” them into “objects-who-defend themselves.” ( [16] ) This essay thus considers how material objects can be used as both a means of survival and pleasure. This positioning comes in direct response to critics who have chosen to praise the play’s portrayal of sexual violence but decry the fact that Nottage wrote a romantic ending for her principle leads. Other scholars, such as Jeff Paden, have defended the play’s romantic ending in the name of its political potency. ( [17] ) Is the ending of a Black/postcolonial play predetermined to be sad or ambiguous? If so, who determines this? It is possible that this ending disturbed critics because it challenged preconceived Western notions of what the “third world” is supposed to be. And perhaps the justification of “third world” characters’ pleasure determined by its political efficacy. In the context of this paper, “third world” feminism manifests itself as both Black feminism and postcolonial feminism with an emphasis on self-definition, and how material objects are used to that end. A material culture theory reading of the text that considers how these objects contribute to the world-making that Nottage employs insists that the objects in the script are more than a props list. They are a means understanding the complex world contexts that a production has taken on the responsibility to portray. Fanta, Don’t You Wanna? The field of material culture theory has a plethora of methods for analyzing these relationships. Many are in the form of a series of questions which can be applied to an object. This section will use the questions developed by Igor Kopytoff to go through the objects in the script for Ruined to identify the characters’ material circumstances, which reveal their position in larger systems and “interlocking oppressions.” While detailing the material circumstances and synthesis of oppression is only a first step, it is a vital one. Kopytoff approaches the above considerations of a material object as a “cultural biography” of a thing. “In doing the biography of a thing,” he says, “one would ask questions similar to those one asks about people: What sociologically, are the biographical possibilities inherent in its ‘status’ and in the period and culture, and how are these possibilities realized?” ( [18] ) Kopytoff is working within an anthropological framework, however, this paper is not an anthropological treatment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the characters and events of the play are based on ethnographic testimony from real women from the DRC, Ruined is ultimately a theatrical script, and the material objects in this play exist within the larger given circumstances that Nottage has created for the stage. In this material culture reading, anthropology is replaced with script analysis and dramaturgical research, although the same questions that Kopytoff asks are used. Consider the opening stage directions of the play: “ A small mining town. The sounds of the tropical Ituri rain forest. The Democratic Republic of Congo. A bar, makeshift furniture and a rundown pool table. A lot of effort has gone into making the worn bar cheerful. A stack of plastic washtubs rests in the corner. An old car battery powers the audio system, a covered birdcage sits conspicuously in the corner of the room .” ( [19] ) These stage directions establish the immediate location of the play: a small mining town in the Ituri rain forest. But they also emphasize that the owner of the bar/brothel, who is about to be introduced as “ Mama Nadi, early forties, an attractive woman with an arrogant stride and majestic air ,” has recycled and repurposed items beyond their original functions. ( [20] ) She has put “a lot of effort” into curating these objects in a way that produces pleasure for her and her customers. The cultural biographies of the “ makeshift furniture ,” “ washtubs ,” and “ car battery ” have changed with time and with a new owner, and their positioning in this space speaks to Mama Nadi’s larger given circumstances as well as the ways that she uses objects to create her own space within those circumstances. Before Nottage mentions the Kalashnikov, she notes that Christian is drinking a Fanta soda. ( [21] ) Like the Kalashnikov, Fanta has a collective cultural meaning in “first world” material culture. While it would be difficult to impossible to track each individual audience member’s knowledge, recognition, and response to these objects in the script, Fanta’s massive American marketing campaign in the early 2000s offers clues to the audience’s possible associations. The 2001 Fanta television commercial, featuring the tropically themed female group of four, the Fantanas, and their catchy, Latinx-inspired, double-entendre jingle “Fanta, Don’t You Wanna” branded the soda as a fun and sexy party drink, associated with the Global South, where it was already incredibly popular. ( [22] ) At first glance, Christian’s choice to order a soda in a bar, specifically a Fanta, may evoke such cultural associations with fun and pleasure. The cultural biography of Fanta can serve to connect the image of the smiling African salesman character to the “first world” audience and help us understand the relationship between our material culture and the characters’. Because Fanta is specific, its biography is easier to trace as a first example. ( [23] ) The first question that Kopytoff would ask about a bottle of Fanta is, “Where does the thing come from and who made it?” A quick Google search can tell me that “Fanta is a brand of fruit-flavored carbonated drinks created by The Coca-Cola Company and marketed globally.” ( [24] ) However, Kopytoff’s question forces one to search deeper for the unseen labor and processes which created the beverage and brought it to Christian’s hands in Mama Nadi’s bar. Fanta’s presence in this space is evidence of globalization. The Coca-Cola Company is an American corporation, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, which works with local bottling partners all over the world. ( [25] ) In Africa, at the time that the play was written, the largest partner was SABMiller, a British brewing company based in London. ( [26] ) The bottling and brewing plants would be in African countries such as South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia, Comoros, Mayotte, Swaziland, Botswana and Zambia — but not the Democratic Republic of Congo. ( [27] ) In the DRC, the Coca-Cola bottling company is the Barlima Brewery, founded by Belgian businessmen during colonial occupation and owned, since 1986, by the Dutch Heineken Corporation. ( [28] ) The list of Coca-Cola products bottled at Barlima does not include Fanta, nor is it listed as being distributed in the DRC. Thus, the Fanta was made by African workers in plants owned by the Dutch, in partnership with an American company, and brought to Mama Nadi’s bar by the black market. ( [29] ) Like the exchange of the Kalashnikov rifles outside of conventional forces, Mama Nadi’s business exists outside of the standard market. She is simultaneously an avid capitalist and a disruptor of capitalist markets, defying simple or clean categories. By asking one simple question of a stage direction on the first page of the script, this methodology has yielded valuable information on the given circumstances of the play and the post-colonial, racial, and capitalist power dynamics of which the characters find themselves. Material Culture as Survival A strictly materialist reading of these circumstances related to Fanta would highlight the role that these systems play in oppressing characters like Mama Nadi. For example, the dialogue of the first scene explains that the movement of goods such as Fanta is difficult due to rebel checkpoints and taxes. A few lines after discussing the joys of his soda, Christian exclaims the quote from earlier about the Kalashnikov and pockets that need filling: “Toll, tax, tariff. They invent reasons to lighten your load.” ([30]) The material objects cannot be separated from the larger given circumstances of the piece. For example, Mama pours herself a Primus beer while Christian drinks his Fanta. Primus beer is brewed in the same Barlima Brewry which partners with Coca-Cola and is owned by the Dutch Heineken Group. Unlike Fanta, which does not distribute in the DRC, Primus has exclusivity deals with bars all over the country, and Heineken pays roughly one million dollars to the rebels to pass their checkpoints so that the beer can be distributed. ([31]) The connections between Heineken and the armed conflict in the DRC has yet to be explored in its entirety. Olivier van Beemen’s explosive book Heineken in Africa: A Multinational Unleashed exposes the company’s ties to corruption, sexual violence, human rights violations, and even genocide in the 1990s. ([32]) A material culture reading acknowledges these systems of oppression, but also asks what the object means for the characters themselves, thus centering them in the narrative, and not the multinational corporations. Here, for example, Primus beer is a significant portion of Mama’s revenue. When Mr. Harari discusses the interlocking oppressions of coltan mining and armed “two-bit militias battling for the keys to hell,” Mama responds to these factors by declaring, “True, chérie, but someone must provide them with beer and distractions.” ( [33] ) Primus is such a large part of Mama’s business that the parrot she keeps in the bar ends the play by squawking, “Mama! Primus! Mama! Primus!” ( [34] ) For Mama, her bar is more than a business, it is survival for her and the girls in her employment as prostitutes. Mama’s bar is established as a safe zone in the first scene when Christian brings his niece Sophie to work there: “I told my family I’d find a place for her . . . And here at least I know she’ll be safe. Fed.” ( [35] ) This fact is stated again in the second act when Mama asserts, “My girls, Emilene, Mazima, Josephine, ask them, they’d rather be here, than back out there in their villages where they are taken without regard. They’re safer with me than in their own homes.” ( [36] ) She describes how the interlocking oppressions which connect natural resources, multinational corporations, beer, and armed conflict also protect her: beer makes the soldiers happy and they protect her business. “Who would protect my business if [the Commander] turned on me?” she says. ( [37] ) This is emphasized when Mr. Harari exclaims to Mama, “Just, be careful, where will I drink if anything happens to you?” ( [38] ) The line emphasizes the fact that her bar is the only one in the area. By selling beer in the rainforest, she meets supply and demand for pleasure in their bleak circumstances. In this way, her business is useful to forces that would otherwise destroy her and the women she protects. Her usefulness, and therefore her financial and physical security, is symbiotically tied to Primus beer. A reading which only focuses on the means by which Primus is produced, distributed, and tied to rebel groups misses the complex material circumstances which tie it to the characters’ survival. Kopytoff asserts that a “cultural biography” of an object must consider the perspective by which one assesses an object. ( [39] ) Does one read the value of Primus beer based on how much Heineken profits from it, how much rebels profit from it, or how much Mama profits from it? The answer is to consider all of them, but to center Mama’s perspective to determine how the object is culturally marked within the world of Nottage’s script. What does her world look like without Fanta or Primus? Thanks to a report by The Economist in 2018, there is little need for speculation. In between 2009 — when Ruined was researched and written — and 2018, Heineken was forced to close two of its breweries in the DRC due to international pressures over their ties to Barlima Brewing Co. and business practices in those regions. The article explains that since 2016, “In western Congo, Angolan beer in cans—less tasty but cheaper than Primus or Tembo—has flooded the market. It is not sold at cost since the smugglers’ main aim is to acquire dollars to trade on the black market in Angola.” ( [40] ) The article also reports that “violence is worsening.” Imagining that this happened while Mama is trying to run her business, she would have to pay more money for beer, which is described as being lower quality. Furthermore, the commercial branding of Primus within the script, and in reality, is of the upmost importance. Kopytoff’s final question asks, “What has been [the object’s] career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognized ‘ages’ or periods in the thing’s ‘life,’ and what are the cultural markers for them?” ( [41] ) Both The Economist and Olivier van Beeman discuss how Primus is ingrained in Congolese culture as large sponsors of the music industry, and how Heineken sponsors campus fashion shows at universities, free nights in dance clubs, and music and sporting events. ( [42] ) This gendered meaning of the beer, and its connection to the music industry, is evident in Mama Nadi’s bar where she and Sophie sing songs about beer and about warriors. ( [43] ) In the script, when soldiers enter her bar, they immediately ask for one or two bottles of Primus, and at other times refer to themselves as “warriors” or perform hyper-masculinity. ( [44] ) What would happen if Mama told them that she does not have Primus beer in her stock? Because so much of her survival depends on the happiness of her customers, a negation of the culturally significant pleasure of drinking Primus beer could potentially result in the bar’s value decreasing. Again, the connection between Primus beer, the countries commercial and cultural institutions, and cultural markers for masculinity “sustains the complexity” of the material conditions of the characters’ lives as it also raises the stakes for what would happen if Primus were unavailable to Mama’s bar. The same can be said for mentions of the mineral coltan in the script, which is the one material object that has dominated many discourses in dramaturgy packets. From the first scene, Nottage establishes the importance of this object when Christian says, “All along the road people are talking about how this red dirt is rich with coltan.” ( [45] ) As the scenes progress, the audience is informed of the impact that coltan mining has had on the Congo, and the human rights violations which are connected to the mining and selling of this mineral for electronic devices. In fact, much of the first two scenes is dedicated to explaining this exposition, signaling that this material object is the lynchpin which connects the local economy, the armed conflict, and the sexual violence perpetrated against women. Nottage has positioned the action of the play a few months after coltan had been discovered in the rainforest. Mama says, “Six months ago it was just more black dirt,” ( [46] ) Mr. Harari informs Mama that, “in this damnable age of the mobile phone it's become quite the precious ore...” ( [47] ) Christian establishes that there are large groups of miners coming to the area: “Suddenly everyone has a shovel, and wants to stake a claim since that boastful pygmy dug up his fortune in the reserve. I guarantee there will be twice as many miners here by September.” ( [48] ) This makes Mama Nadi happy, because it means that she will have more customers, however, the character Salima connects the coltan mining to the armed conflict and atrocities, recounting how “fifteen Hema men were shot dead and buried in their own mining pit, in mud so thick it swallow them right into the ground without mercy. He say one man stuff the coltan into his mouth to keep the soldiers from stealing his hard work, and they split his belly open with a machete. ‘It’ll show him for stealing,’ he say, bragging like I should be congratulating him.” ( [49] ) Like Primus, the interlocking oppressions of coltan mining are clear, but so is the fact that Mama’s business depends on it. “Me, I thank God for deep dirty holes like Yaka-yaka,” Mama says of the local mine. ( [50] ) Since Ruined premiered in 2009, dramaturgy packets, study guides, and program notes have addressed the issue of conflict minerals, as they appear in the play, but most fail to address their importance to the characters’ survival. In a way, these dramaturgs have performed the first part of Kopytoff’s methodology on cell phones and other electronic devices that the audience might own, but do not complete the “cultural biography.” For example, Charlie Payne of the Almeida Theatre in London suggests a practical exercise for teachers and students titled “There’s no blood on my mobile!” He instructs his audience to read the context articles he has provided and “Brainstorm the supply chain, or ‘conveyor belt’, of coltan — how does it reach the consumer and what are the consequences of mobile phone consumerism in the West? Now think about this physically. Create six, eightbeat phrases — three relating to the use of coltan and three highlighting its impact in the DRC. Now try playing these all together — a literal conveyer belt from the mines to the consumer.” ( [51] ) Connected to a 2011 production, Berkely Rep Magazine featured a section entitled, “Coltan: From the Congo to you,” reporting that “In the 1990s and early 2000s, coltan emerged as a globally significant commodity essential to the production of digital technology. As world demand for mobile phones, laptops, PlayStations, and digital cameras exploded, tech industries came to increasingly rely on coltan from the Congo, which has an estimated 80% of the world’s reserves.” ( [52] ) A 2011 study guide from Arena Stage cites a United Nations study which reports that, “all parties involved in the conflict have been involved in the mining and sale of coltan. The money rebels and militias receive from these sales helps them buy more weapons and supplies for the war.” ( [53] ) These studies position the audience in relation to the events in the play, but in focusing on making the interlocking oppressions of coltan, cell phones, rebel militias, and sexual violence the sole narrative of the dramaturgy, it centers the victim narrative without adding the nuances of how coltan mining has become a means of survival for women in the DRC. As with Primus beer, the importance of coltan to survival in the DRC was highlighted in the real-world aftermath of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, section 1502, which requited “companies trading on U.S. securities exchanges to determine through supply-chain due diligence whether or not their products contain conflict minerals from DRC or neighboring countries, and report their findings annually to the SEC [Securities Exchange Commission].” ( [54] ) The Washington Post reported that, “In the fall of 2010, two months after the law’s signing, Congo’s government halted mining for six months — even at facilities not controlled by armed groups. The move had tremendous repercussions in a country where, by some estimates, a sixth of the 70 million inhabitants depend on artisanal mining.” ( [55] ) By 2014, the negative effects were felt in the Congo, where out of the nation’s hundreds of mines, only a handful were “tagged” as “conflict free.” ( [56] ) While the law was passed in an effort to curtail the stimulant role of the mining in armed conflicts, a follow up article from 2018 reports that “militias in eastern Congo have only proliferated. Miners are still working in pitiful conditions with little investment into tools and infrastructure. Much evidence points to the reality that minerals coming from mines controlled by militias are still making their way into the global market.” ( [57] ) While Ruined and the aforementioned dramaturgical packets were written without the hindsight of post-Dodd-Frank legislation, Mama Nadi’s lines suggest the immediate importance of the mine to her own survival. When Christian informs her that the violence is intensifying with the disappearance of a white pastor, her first instinctual response is to ask, “What about Yaka-yaka mine? Has the fighting scared off the miners?” ( [58] ) She is more worried about the mine closing than she is about the missing pastor. This is an example of how knowing the material circumstances, and having the hindsight of what happens when those circumstances are changed by external forces, can help contextualize and inform character objectives and value systems. Mama is putting her survival and the survival of the women in her care first in her priorities by caring about the mine’s closure. In “sustaining the complexity” of these objects in the characters’ lives, Nottage withholds the catharsis of an easy solution to the interplay of multinational corporations and violence in “third world” countries. Instead, she chooses to focus on the way that her characters not only survive, but find joy in their circumstances, and this endeavor is closely tied to material objects. Material Culture as Pleasure The importance of objects like Primus and coltan to the immediate survival of the women in the play informs the way that the characters interact with these objects and others which are listed like cigarettes and soap. ( [59] ) However, character interactions with objects are also informed by pleasure as well, and it is important to note that the beer drinking soldiers are not the only characters who derive pleasure from material objects in the script. While the men in the script enjoy a large amount of dominance and power over female pleasure in the context of this play, they do not have a monopoly on it, and they are not able to have full control over it. Unlike the archetypal victims that Mohanty describes, Nottage’s characters share joy and pleasure with male characters and enjoy pleasures of their own. The play’s opening line chooses to focus on Christian’s pleasure as he drinks his soda: “Ah. Cold. The only cold Fanta in twenty-five kilometers. You don’t know how good this tastes.” ( [60] ) The stage directions follow with, “Mama flashes a warm flirtatious smile, then pours herself a Primus beer.” ( [61] ) Knowing the complex relationship between their circumstances, the Fanta, and the Primus, it is worth noting that these characters not only profit from the sale of these objects, but they share in the pleasure of them as well. If a bottle of Fanta, for example, has made its way to Mama Nadi’s bar through a more complicated route, due to the fact that it is not distributed in the DRC, it might be considered something rare or special for the characters – signifying moments that are worth noting to the reader, viewer, in a character analysis by an actor, or in direction of the play. Christian’s line emphasizes the scarcity of Fanta, Mama’s own innovation in finding a way to refrigerate the soda in the middle of the rainforest, and Christian’s sensory enjoyment of the object. Her flirtatiousness is a recognition of Christian’s satisfaction with the Fanta before she pours herself a beverage so that she can share in the same kind of joy. “You sure you don’t want a beer?” Mama asks. “You know me better than that, chérie, I haven’t had a drop of liquor in four years,” Christian replies. The stage directions emphasize that Mama’s next line “It’s cold” is delivered “teasing.” ( [62] ) The objects become part of an improvised language of pleasure, desire, seduction, and satisfaction. This dynamic manifests itself with lipstick a few pages later: MAMA And my lipstick? CHRISTIAN Your lipstick? Aye! Did you ask me for lipstick? MAMA Of course, I did, you idiot!... Leave me alone, you’re too predictable. ( Turns away, dismissive ) CHRISTIAN Where are you going? Hey, hey what are you doing? ( Teasingly ) Chérie, I know you wanted me to forget, so you could yell at me, but you won’t get the pleasure this time. ( Christian taunts her with the lipstick. Mama resists the urge to smile .) MAMA Oh shut up and give it to me. ( He passes her the lipstick.) ( [63] ) Not only do Christian and Mama enjoy the objects individually, but the Fanta, the beer, and the lipstick are incorporated into their dynamic of pleasure. Harkening back to Kopytoff’s final questions, (“What has been [the object’s] career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognized ‘ages’ or periods in the thing’s ‘life,’ and what are the cultural markers for them?”), Fanta’s ideal career is to provide such sensory joy. The connection between beverages and flirtation is a common theme in Fanta marketing, when considering the way that the object’s career is culturally marked — or mark eted . ( [64] ) Therefore, its erotic meaning in the encounter between Christian and Mama Nadi is not necessarily contrary to its original meaning; but the raised stakes of the object’s presence in Mama Nadi’s bar signals that this encounter with the two characters is more than a reproduction of a Coca-Cola commercial. Their shared moment over two drinks indicates an early connection between the two, which will ultimately culminate in the controversial romantic ending where the two characters agree to a courtship. This ending was met with distain from critics who believed that the romantic ending undercut the tragedy of sexual violence and war present in the rest of the play, or worse, disrupted its realism. Ben Brantley of The New York Times called the ending “well shaped” and “sentimental,” ultimately deciding that “because of its artistic caution, ‘Ruined’ is likely to reach audiences averse to more adventurous, confrontational theater.” ( [65] ) Brantley’s back-handed compliment implies that Nottage’s ending is not risky enough for the subject of “third world” war. He says, “The play isn’t a form-shattering, soul-jolting shocker like Sarah Kane’s ‘Blasted,’ another and more innovative study in wartime atrocities.” His strong implication is that sentimentality appeals to the lowest common denominator of audiences, who appreciate conventional happy endings. Robert Feldberg of The Herald News asserts that “Nottage succumbs to a desire to project hope and happiness both of which she’s established as extremely unlikely by having Christian playfully woo the reluctant Mama Nadi in a scene set out of an old-fashioned romantic comedy. It’s too trivial, a cuddly ending to an otherwise resonant, deeply felt evening of theatre.” ( [66] ) Jill Dolan, on her blog The Feminist Spectator , critiques the ending similarly by stating “Suddenly, the play becomes a heterosexual romance, in which Mama and her girls are redeemed by the love of a good man.” For Dolan, the heteronormativity of their relationship and the “reintegrating the nuclear family…compromises the rigorous, clear-eyed story Ruined otherwise tells.” ( [67] ) However, something that may seem “conventional” in the context of Western drama (i.e. a romantic ending) takes on new meaning in the circumstances of the play: a Fanta isn’t just a regular soda, and flirting over it is more than a reproduction of commercial images. What does a romantic ending mean in the material context of the characters? To speak directly to Dolan’s point, the circumstances of the play complicate the sexual component of the “heterosexual romance” between Mama Nadi and Christian. Mama reveals in the final scene that she is “ruined,” which means that she has been sexually abused to the point where she can no longer have children. ( [68] ) The specific details of this are left out of the play. It is unclear as to whether this factor limits her ability to have children or her ability to have penetrative sex entirely. The other “ruined” character, Sophie, has been raped with a bayonet — another stark reference to the Kalashnikov — leaving her unable to walk without pain, let alone have intercourse. ( [69] ) Despite the vague implications for Mama’s status as “ruined”, at the very least, it disrupts the “conventional” correlation between heterosexuality and procreation. Mama Nadi and Christian may be a male/female couple, but there is very little that is “normative” about their relationship. The happiness of this ending does not erase the circumstances which complicate it. Nor is it out of place, as these reviews imply. The connection between these two characters has been established since their first page encounter with the Fanta. A reading that centers what the objects mean to the characters suggests that Mama Nadi and Christian’s relationship is “erotic,” but not necessarily sexual — drawing from Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” which cites the erotic as “providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” ( [70] ) From the beginning of the play, Mama Nadi and Christian are joined by their love of material objects. Christian sells objects, Mama buys them, and this shared passion for things provides them with an improvised language of pleasure, desire, seduction, and satisfaction. As Lorde says, “Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives.” ( [71] ) Throughout the play, Mama Nadi carefully weighs each situation in favor of her own joy and pleasure. For Mama, material objects are extensions of herself. She says, “There must always be a part of you this war can’t touch.” ( [72] ) In this moment, she is talking about a raw diamond that a miner traded to her for four beers and one of her sex workers. Although the audience does not yet know that Mama Nadi is “ruined,” the fact that she equates a material object with the one part of herself that the war cannot touch is significant given the fact that her body has been violated. For Mama, the objects are extensions of her “self” as described by psychologist and material culture theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s essay “Why We Need Things.” According to him, the human psyche and sense of identity is vague, and material things help ground people by acting as touchstones. For Csikszentmihalyi, the objects perform: “They do so first by demonstrating the owner’s power, vital erotic energy and place in the social hierarchy.” ( [73] ) For Mama Nadi, the material objects around her represent the power that she has gained within the “interlocking” systems of oppression. She exclaims, “I didn’t come here as Mama Nadi, I found her the same way miners find their wealth in the muck. I stumbled off of that road without two twigs to start a fire. I turned a basket of sweets and soggy biscuits into a business. I don’t give a damn what any of you think. This is my place, Mama Nadi’s.” ( [74] ) Thus, everything in the bar is an extension of herself and plays a role in her self-definition — or re-definition. Therefore, the stage direction in the beginning that says that “a lot of effort” has gone into making the bar look cheerful suggests that pleasure is important for the character as well, and that these objects that she surrounds herself with speak to more than survival. Lorde describes the “erotic” in a similar way; that it is something internal [read: psychological and spiritual] and not physical. Although she and Csikszentmihalyi are writing from different disciplines, and are separated by age, gender, race, and nationality, both write about the erotic, and Lorde uses material objects to describe what happens inside her “self”: During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. . . I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience. ( [75] ) Thus, she, like Mama Nadi equates a material object with her own internal vital energy. Mama’s raw diamond can be taken away, but no one can take away what it represents: the fact that she has not only survived being “ruined” but has also prospered, thrived, and found joy. Decolonizing Efforts in American Theatre As American theatre, in both academia and the industry, commits itself to anti-racism and decolonization practices, let us not forget Patricia Hill Collins’s foundational text “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought,” in which she pays homage to the long tradition of resisting negative images of Black women and moving towards self-definition as independence, self-determination, self-reliance, and survival. ( [76] ) A material culture theory reading of Ruined yields significant information on the character’s material circumstances, interlocking oppressions, survival tactics, and pleasures. Each of these forces is connected to the other, and material objects are deeply interwoven into these dynamics. However, discussions of survival and pleasure are often left out of Western assessments of “third world” women, including those surrounding works of theatre like Ruined , as shown by dramaturgical and critical academic archives. In doing so, these conversations run the risk of reinforcing victim archetypes as discussed by Mohanty’s work, which can be potentially counter-productive to anti-racist and anti-colonial efforts. Material culture theory is a methodology that can be applied to both scholarly and practical theatrical projects and evidences the ways that scholarly methods are useful and relevant to the production process. In this case, material culture theory can be used not only for the props list, but also for the places where material objects intersect with scenic dressing, costuming, practical lighting instruments, sound effect and music choices, and, of course, directing and acting choices. What kind of objects decorate the set described in the opening stage directions? Where do they come from and who made them? What do they mean to the characters? What are the characters wearing and how did those clothes come into their possession? What kind of lights did Mama Nadi use to make her bar look “cheerful”? What would be available to her? How would sound be distorted if the equipment was powered by a car battery that was also powering the lights? These are many questions that designers already ask themselves based on the design processes. These are already the kinds of conversations that take place at production meetings. Material culture theory can help ensure that the answers to these questions are culturally specific, accurate, and precise. This is especially true when engaging with marginalized groups who are often omitted from or misrepresented written archives. What story do the objects tell? How do people in these groups use objects in everyday life towards self-definition? The importance of self-definition is also articulated by Mohanty’s work on decolonizing images of the “third world” woman in white, Western feminist hegemonies, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, which critiques the role of the Western imagination in the formation of the Other. Smith says, “I say that because like many other writers I would argue that 'we', indigenous peoples, people 'of color', the Other, however we are named, have a presence in the Western imagination, in its fiber and texture, in its sense of itself, in its language, in its silences and shadows, its margins and intersections.” ( [77] ) While Mohanty’s work is primarily a critique against academic constructions of the “third world,” Smith’s is an indictment of Western imagination for the role that it played in justifying the imperial exploitation of the “third world,” indigenous people, and people of the African diaspora for centuries. In the case of Ruined , and other theatrical representations of Black women, particularly those who live in what is considered the “third world,” material culture theory avoids the assumptions that are made in the Western imagination — and the historical baggage that comes with it – and allows one to study how the characters use material objects to define themselves. Both are vital decolonizing processes for the portrayal, or “re-presentation”, as Mohanty calls it, of Black, “third world” women on the American stage. References 1. Lynn Nottage, Ruined (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2009), 5. 2. Nottage, Ruined , 5. 3. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 200), 338. 4. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 345. 5. Nottage, Ruined , xi. 6. Nottage, Ruined , xi. 7. The Kalashnikov, like the designation between the “first”, “second,” and “third world”, is a product of the Cold War, and most-often culturally associated, by Americans, with conflicts that arose as results of those international tensions and their global aftermath. 8. C. J.,Chivers, The Gun . (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 9. 9. The Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement."Women's Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3/4 (2014): 271-80, 271. 10. Nicole Rosky, “Lynn Nottage's CLYDE'S Tops List of Most-Produced Play of the Season,” Broadwayworld.com , September 23, 2022. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Lynn-Nottage-CLYDES-Tops-List-of-Most-Produced-Play-of-the-Season-20220923. 11. American Theatre Editors, “Offscript: Most-Produced WithLynn Nottage & Lauren Gunderson,” American Theatre, September 27, 2022. https://www.americantheatre.org/2022/09/27/offscript-most-produced-with-lynn-nottage-lauren-gunderson/. 12. Celia Lury, Consumer Culture . 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 9. 13. Lury, Consumer Culture, 9. 14. Lury, Consumer Culture, 21-22. 15. Nottage, Ruined, xi. 16. Mohanty, 339. 17. Jeff Paden, “Hybridity of form and political potentiality in Ruined,” in A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2016),145-159. 18. Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 66. 19. Nottage, Ruined, 5. 20. Nottage, Ruined, 5. 21. Nottage, Ruined , 5. 22. Fanta was marketed globally before it was marketed in the US due to fears that it would compete too heavily with Coca-Cola. After enjoying some popularity in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Fanta—along with other sodas—lost popularity to its sister orange soda brand Minute Maid as consumers became more interested in heathy foods and drinks. Fanta had been a bigger market item globally, especially in Africa and South America. Because of the orange soda’s popularity in Latin America,The Journal Record reported in 2001 that Fanta was being reintroduced in American markets through “Hispanic-heavy test markets in Texas, Arizona and Southern California. Sales jumped from 24.4 million cases in 2000 to 42.2 million last year, according to Beverage Digest. The jump was due to the rollout in test markets.” In 2002, the iconic Fantanas commercial was released nationally in a huge campaign,which was revived in 2004, 2006, and so on. The Fantanas became very culturally recognizable in the US, and were even featured in satires on MadTV and Family Guy. It is possible that collective memory of this marketing campaign would be accessible to “first world” audiences of Ruined in the 2010s. Admin, “Remember Fanta?: Business World,”The Journal Record, March 6, 2002, Accessed October 26, 2023,https://journalrecord.com/2002/03/06/remember-fanta-business-world/. 23. Washtubs and batteries are a bit vague. If this happens while doing a material culture reading of a play, especiallyone which takes place in a “third world” country, I recommend doing as much research as possible. In the event thatresearch fails, and a“first world” theatre maker must fill in the “gaps”, so-to-speak with their imaginations, it isimportant to remember the aforementioned “baggage” regarding Western imaginations of “third world” locationsand peoples. 24. “Fanta,” Wikipedia.org . Accessed October 30, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta. 25. "The Coca-Cola System,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Our Company,” Accessed October 30, 2018.https://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/the-coca-cola-system. 26. “Coca-Cola Beverages Africa Begins Operations,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Press Releases,” Accessed October 30,2018. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations. 27. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations. 28. Maik Dünnbier, “Big Alcohol and The War In Congo,” in Alcohol Industry, Corporate Consumption Complex, Obstacle To Development, Sustainable Development , November 2013. Accessed October 30, 2018. http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/. 29. One aspect of the play, which is interesting considering the fact that Nottage writes for a first-world audience, isthe fact that there are no representatives of the first-world that ever appear onstage. Mama and Christian mention a white pastor missionary, a Belgian shopkeeper in Bunia, and Mama talks about “blue helmets”, UN peacekeeping forces in the final scene. The only physical presence of the first-world comes in the form of imported goods or the cultural remnants of the Belgian colonization, in the form of the French language and racial divide between blacks and whites. There are several possible reasons as to why Nottage has made the choice to keep the more fortunate first-world population out of her story, but the most powerful statement that arises from their absence is, of course, their absence. Nottage makes a point that there is little to no intervention from the outside world, and there is a sense of abandonment throughout the play. 30. Nottage, Ruined, 10. 31.“How Heineken beer survives in Congo Brewers are rare colonial-era holdouts in a notorious trouble spot.” The Economist. April 21, 2018. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo. 32. Olivier van Beemen, Heineken in Africa: A Multinational Unleashed, (United Kingdom: C Hurst & Company Publishers Limited, 2021). 33. Nottage, Ruined, 28. 34. Nottage, Ruined, 102. 35. Nottage, Ruined , 15. 36. Nottage, Ruined, 86. 37. Nottage, Ruined , 85. 38. Nottage, Ruined, 28. 39. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,”68. 40. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo . 41. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 67. 42. Van Beeman, 59. 43. Nottage, Ruined, 181-124. 44. Nottage, Ruined, 28, 42, 81. 45. Nottage, Ruined, 13. 46. Nottage, Ruined , 25. 47. Nottage, Ruined, 25. 48. Nottage, Ruined , 13. 49. Nottage, Ruined , 31. 50. Nottage, Ruined, 41. 51. Charlie Payne, “Ruined Study Guide.” London: Almeida Projects, 2010. Accessed October 2018, https://www.nightwoodtheatre.net/uploads/RUINED,_STUDY_GUIDE.pdf. 52. Rachel Steinburg, “Web of Violence Untangling ‘Africa’s World War,’” The Berkeley Rep Magazine 5, no. 1 (2010-2011), 23. Accessed October 2018, https://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/pdf/program-ru.pdf. 53. Julia DePalma, “Arena’s Page Study Guide.” Arena Stage. 2011, 4. Accessed October 2018. https://www.arenastage.org/globalassets/education/school-programs/study-guide--ruined.pdf. 54. Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, “Dodd-Frank 1502 and the Congo Crisis,” Center for Strategic and InternationalStudies, August 22, 2017. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.csis.org/analysis/dodd-frank-1502-and-congo-crisis. 55. Sudarsan Raghavan, “How a well-intentioned U.S. law left Congolese miners jobless,”The Washington Post, November 30, 2014. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e. 56. Adalbert Murhi Mubalama, one of the ministers of mines, told The Washington Post, “As of October [2014], there were only 11 mines out of more than 900 here in South Kivu where minerals were “tagged” as conflict-free.”Raghavan, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e. 57. Laura Kasinof, “An ugly truth behind ‘ethical consumerism’”The Washington Post. April 19, 2018. AccessedDecember 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/19/conflict-free/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6ea84da645e7. 58. Nottage, Ruined, 40. 59. Nottage, Ruined, 5. 60. Nottage, Ruined, 5-6. 61. The interconnectedness of Fanta, Primus, the armed conflict, the movement of goods intensifies Mama and Christian’s brief moment of flirtation over the cold soda, followed by the pouring of beer. Dünnbier, http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/and 62. Nottage, Ruined, 6. 63. Nottage, Ruined , 6-7. 64. Fanta’s advertising campaign in the early 2000s featured a group of flirtatious women called the Fantanas who would sing a song called “Wanta Fanta” and seduce men into drinking the soda in various tropical scenarios. 65. Ben Brantley, “War’s Terrors, Through a Brothel Window,”The New York Times, February 11, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/theater/reviews/11bran.html. 66. Paden, 145. 67. Jill Dolan, “Ruined, by Lynn Nottage.” The Feminist Spectator, March 13, 2009. Nov 4, 2018. http://feministspectator.princeton.edu/2009/03/16/ruined-by-lynn-nottage/. 68. Nottage, Ruined , 12. 69. Nottage, Ruined , 13. 70. Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” in Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), 56. 71. Nottage, Ruined, 57. 72. Nottage, Ruined , 53. 73. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Why We Need Things,” In History from Things: Essays on Material Culture . Ed. Lubar, Steven D, and W. D Kingery, (SmithsonianInstitution Press, 1993), 23. 74. Nottage, Ruined , 86. 75. Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” 57. 76. She cites Maria Stewart writing in 1833. Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought” and “Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought,” in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd editions (New York: Routledge, 2000 [1990]), 1. 77. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012), 14. Footnotes [1] Lynn Nottage, Ruined (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2009), 5. [2] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [3] Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 200) , 338. [4] Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 345. [5] Nottage, Ruined , xi. [6] Nottage, Ruined, xi. [7] The Kalashnikov, like the designation between the “first”, “second,” and “third world”, is a product of the Cold War, and most-often culturally associated, by Americans, with conflicts that arose as results of those international tensions and their global aftermath. [8] C. J., Chivers, The Gun . (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 9. [9] The Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement." Women's Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3/4 (2014): 271-80, 271. [10] Nicole Rosky, “Lynn Nottage's CLYDE'S Tops List of Most-Produced Play of the Season,” Broadwayworld.com , September 23, 2022. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Lynn-Nottage-CLYDES-Tops-List-of-Most-Produced-Play-of-the-Season-20220923 . [11] American Theatre Editors, “Offscript: Most-Produced With Lynn Nottage & Lauren Gunderson,” American Theatre, September 27, 2022. https://www.americantheatre.org/2022/09/27/offscript-most-produced-with-lynn-nottage-lauren-gunderson/ . [12] Celia Lury, Consumer Culture . 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 9. [13] Lury, Consumer Culture , 9. [14] Lury, Consumer Culture , 21-22. [15] Nottage, Ruined , xi. [16] Mohanty, 339. [17] Jeff Paden, “Hybridity of form and political potentiality in Ruined,” in A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2016), 145-159. [18] Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 66. [19] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [20] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [21] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [22] Fanta was marketed globally before it was marketed in the US due to fears that it would compete too heavily with Coca-Cola. After enjoying some popularity in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Fanta—along with other sodas—lost popularity to its sister orange soda brand Minute Maid as consumers became more interested in heathy foods and drinks. Fanta had been a bigger market item globally, especially in Africa and South America. Because of the orange soda’s popularity in Latin America, The Journal Record reported in 2001 that Fanta was being reintroduced in American markets through “Hispanic-heavy test markets in Texas, Arizona and Southern California. Sales jumped from 24.4 million cases in 2000 to 42.2 million last year, according to Beverage Digest. The jump was due to the rollout in test markets.” In 2002, the iconic Fantanas commercial was released nationally in a huge campaign, which was revived in 2004, 2006, and so on. The Fantanas became very culturally recognizable in the US, and were even featured in satires on MadTV and Family Guy . It is possible that collective memory of this marketing campaign would be accessible to “first world” audiences of Ruined in the 2010s. Admin, “Remember Fanta?: Business World ,” The Journal Record , March 6, 2002, Accessed October 26, 2023, https://journalrecord.com/2002/03/06/remember-fanta-business-world/ . [23] Washtubs and batteries are a bit vague. If this happens while doing a material culture reading of a play, especially one which takes place in a “third world” country, I recommend doing as much research as possible. In the event that research fails, and a “first world” theatre maker must fill in the “gaps”, so-to-speak with their imaginations, it is important to remember the aforementioned “baggage” regarding Western imaginations of “third world” locations and peoples. [24] “Fanta,” Wikipedia.org . Accessed October 30, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanta . [25] “The Coca-Cola System,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Our Company,” Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/the-coca-cola-system . [26] “Coca-Cola Beverages Africa Begins Operations,” Coca-Cola Journey, “Press Releases,” Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations . [27] https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-beverages-africa-begins-operations . [28] Maik Dünnbier, “Big Alcohol and The War In Congo,” in Alcohol Industry, Corporate Consumption Complex, Obstacle To Development, Sustainable Development , November 2013. Accessed October 30, 2018. http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/ . [29] One aspect of the play, which is interesting considering the fact that Nottage writes for a first-world audience, is the fact that there are no representatives of the first-world that ever appear onstage. Mama and Christian mention a white pastor missionary, a Belgian shopkeeper in Bunia, and Mama talks about “blue helmets”, UN peacekeeping forces in the final scene. The only physical presence of the first-world comes in the form of imported goods or the cultural remnants of the Belgian colonization, in the form of the French language and racial divide between blacks and whites. There are several possible reasons as to why Nottage has made the choice to keep the more fortunate first-world population out of her story, but the most powerful statement that arises from their absence is, of course, their absence. Nottage makes a point that there is little to no intervention from the outside world, and there is a sense of abandonment throughout the play. [30] Nottage, Ruined , 10. [31] “How Heineken beer survives in Congo Brewers are rare colonial-era holdouts in a notorious trouble spot.” The Economist . April 21, 2018. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo . [32] Olivier van Beemen, Heineken in Africa: A Multinational Unleashed, (United Kingdom: C Hurst & Company Publishers Limited, 2021). [33] Nottage, Ruined , 28. [34] Nottage, Ruined , 102. [35] Nottage, Ruined , 15. [36] Nottage, Ruined , 86. [37] Nottage, Ruined , 85. [38] Nottage, Ruined , 28. [39] Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 68. [40] https://www.economist.com/business/2018/04/21/how-heineken-beer-survives-in-congo . [41] Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 67. [42] Van Beeman, 59. [43] Nottage, Ruined , 181-124. [44] Nottage, Ruined , 28, 42, 81. [45] Nottage, Ruined , 13. [46] Nottage, Ruined , 25. [47] Nottage, Ruined , 25. [48] Nottage, Ruined , 13. [49] Nottage, Ruined , 31. [50] Nottage, Ruined , 41. [51] Charlie Payne, “ Ruined Study Guide.” London: Almeida Projects, 2010. Accessed October 2018, https://www.nightwoodtheatre.net/uploads/RUINED,_STUDY_GUIDE.pdf . [52] Rachel Steinburg, “Web of Violence Untangling ‘Africa’s World War,’” The Berkeley Rep Magazine 5, no. 1 (2010-2011), 23. Accessed October 2018, https://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/pdf/program-ru.pdf . [53] Julia DePalma, “Arena’s Page Study Guide.” Arena Stage. 2011, 4. Accessed October 2018. https://www.arenastage.org/globalassets/education/school-programs/study-guide--ruined.pdf . [54] Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, “Dodd-Frank 1502 and the Congo Crisis,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 22, 2017. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.csis.org/analysis/dodd-frank-1502-and-congo-crisis . [55] Sudarsan Raghavan, “How a well-intentioned U.S. law left Congolese miners jobless,” The Washington Post , November 30, 2014. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e . [56] Adalbert Murhi Mubalama, one of the ministers of mines, told The Washington Post , “As of October [2014], there were only 11 mines out of more than 900 here in South Kivu where minerals were “tagged” as conflict-free.” Raghavan, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/how-a-well-intentioned-us-law-left-congolese-miners-jobless/2014/11/30/14b5924e-69d3-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html?utm_term=.edaa0dfda37e . [57] Laura Kasinof, “An ugly truth behind ‘ethical consumerism’” The Washington Post . April 19, 2018. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/19/conflict-free/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6ea84da645e7 . [58] Nottage, Ruined , 40. [59] Nottage, Ruined , 5. [60] Nottage, Ruined , 5-6. [61] The interconnectedness of Fanta, Primus, the armed conflict, the movement of goods intensifies Mama and Christian’s brief moment of flirtation over the cold soda, followed by the pouring of beer. Dünnbier, http://iogt.org/blog/2013/11/09/heineken-and-the-war-in-congo/ and Nottage, Ruined, 6. [62] Nottage, Ruined , 6. [63] Nottage, Ruined , 6-7. [64] Fanta’s advertising campaign in the early 2000s featured a group of flirtatious women called the Fantanas who would sing a song called “Wanta Fanta” and seduce men into drinking the soda in various tropical scenarios. [65] Ben Brantley, “War’s Terrors, Through a Brothel Window,” The New York Times , February 11, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/theater/reviews/11bran.html . [66] Paden, 145. [67] Jill Dolan, “Ruined, by Lynn Nottage.” The Feminist Spectator , March 13, 2009. Nov 4, 2018. http://feministspectator.princeton.edu/2009/03/16/ruined-by-lynn-nottage/ . [68] Nottage, Ruined , 12. [69] Nottage, Ruined , 13. [70] Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” in Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984), 56. [71] Nottage, Ruined , 57 [72] Nottage, Ruined , 53. [73] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Why We Need Things,” In History from Things: Essays on Material Culture . Ed. Lubar, Steven D, and W. D Kingery, ( Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 23. [74] Nottage, Ruined , 86. [75] Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” 57. [76] She cites Maria Stewart writing in 1833. Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought” and “Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought,” Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment , 2nd editions (New York: Routledge, 2000 [1990]), 1. [77] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012), 14. About The Author(s) Christen Mandracchia is an Assistant Professor and Production Manager in West Chester University’s Department of Theatre and Dance. She earned her doctorate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research emphasizes material histories of theatrical labor, with a special emphasis on theatre professionals who venture into non-theatrical fields. Areas of research also include theatre architecture, queer theatre history, and musical theatre. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Community Circles and Love Triangles: Gun Violence and Belonging in Oklahoma! and West Side Story Decommissioning the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field and Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline More than a Props List: Redefining Material Culture as Survival and Pleasure in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined The Politics of Trance: Victoria Woodhull and the Radical Reform of Platform Mediumship Beyond Text: Theater and Performance in Print After 1900 Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theatre Made Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian By Namrata Verghese Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF REVIEW: LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian. Central Stage, Richmond. December 7, 2024. By Namrata Verghese “For this being is yours, my love, it is no longer me / In giving myself to you, my love, I am at last free.” — Majnun, Leili & Majnun Torange Yeghiazarian’s lush reimagining of Leili & Majnun injects the ancient Persian epic with new life. From the soundscape that marries the rhythms of Iranian, Arabic, Kurdish, and western music to the visual language of graffiti art and Persian miniature painting, the production celebrates the hybridity of Iranian diasporic storytelling. Produced by Central Stage, the Bay Area’s only production company founded and operated by Iranian artists, Yeghiazarian’s Leili & Majnun updates the twelfth-century epic for a globalized audience. It also spotlights its enduring resonance: although separated from Nizami by many millennia and miles, those temporal and spatial coordinates collapse when Leili & Majnun opens, and we are simply another audience, like the thousands that came before us, listening to Nizami’s poetry with bated breath. Like many people of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage, I grew up with the story of Leila [1] and Majnun. It is, as Yeghiazarian notes in her program note, “the most popular love story in the Middle East and the many cultures influenced by the region’s literary treasures.” It is even rumored to have inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , a similarly tragic tale of star-crossed lovers. Yeghiazarian’s adaptation is based on Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi’s epic, which itself is based on the fabled love story between seventh century Arabic poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his lover, Layla bint Mahdi. Still, even within the parameters of the well-known story, Yeghiazarian’s voice shines through in the play’s balancing of old and new, tradition and innovation. As an audience member, part of the thrill of the genre of the adaptation is tracking the director’s negotiation between familiar and novel elements. Yeghiazarian keeps us guessing as to which elements of the story remain the same and which she tweaks, delivering both nostalgia and freshness in equal measure. Leili & Majnun opens with the naqqal , or narrator, reciting Persian poetry, while a taut drumroll thrums in the background. In keeping with the play’s overarching theme of blending the old with the new, Yeghiazarian casts a woman in the role of naqqal , which is traditionally performed by a man, putting a fresh, feminist twist on an ancient tradition. The directorial decision to begin with Persian, without English translation, is striking. The play does not cater to a western audience; rather, we sit with the Persian, transported to another world. Soon, the ensemble chimes in, moving us into English with the lines: “We open our story in your name, the greatest name of all, never would I begin, without your name in my call / Your name is the key to all that’s locked, the solution to whatever is blocked / O maker of our thoughts and origin of our soul, being and nothingness are equally in your control.” The choice to blend Persian poetry with an English invocation is emblematic of Yeghiazarian’s embrace of diasporic hybridity. It did not seem to alienate the audience; rather, I watched many audience members, some of whom may be familiar with Nizami’s poetry and some who certainly were not, sit up, lean forward and catch their breath. The poem’s affective power transcended language. Image 1: The Naghal (Dina Zarif); photograph by Diaspora Arts Connection In a cheeky tribute to the original epic, once again demonstrating her deftness in drawing together the ancient and the contemporary, Yeghiazarian casts Nizami as a character in his own epic. The poet walks onstage, brandishing a comically large feather pen, sparking hoots and hollers from the crowd. At the behest of his son and the king, Nizami begins to recite the “cherished Arab love poem,” that “tasty Arab tale … made even more delicious when you tell it,” as his son tells him. The following tale melds the naqqal tradition of Persian storytelling with the contemporary form of musical theater. The first song, “It Is a Celebration,” which spotlights the community’s exuberance at Qays’s birth, beautifully captures the hybridity of this reimagining. “It is a celebration / a joyful congregation / The nobleman of the Aumerian clan / has a son,” the ensemble sings, palpable delight in their voices. “At last, at last, at last!” Each “at last” is accompanied by a clap, lending the song a folksy sound. The piece brings together Arabic rhythms and English lyrics in a way that does not require translation. Even the costuming feels like a nod to this hybridity—the actor who plays Leili, for instance, wore shalvar trousers with white tennis shoes. Image 2: The ensemble (right to left: Ameen Safi, Roeen Nooran, Dina Zarif, Behzad Golemohammadi, Yasaman Asgari, Adrienne Shamszad, and Brandon DiPaula) celebrating the birth of Qays; photograph by Diaspora Arts Connection Yeghiazarian’s adaptation hits many of the canonical notes: the staging is set in the “ancient Najd Desert of Arabia,” where Leili, the “moon-faced beauty,” and Qays, pride of his father’s Bedouin clan and poet whose “ruby lips … spread pearls,” meet in school. They’re immediately smitten with each other: “Do you ever feel like your heart is about to burst?” Qays asks Leila, to which she responds, “Like a pomegranate?” The actors do a wonderful job of portraying the shy glances and nervous smiles of a burgeoning crush. The two soon fall in love— “With one sweet smile from Qays,” the ensemble narrates, “Leili was lost”—but are forcibly separated. The separation is staged poignantly: Leili tells Qays, “They’re going to take me out of school.” The light, romantic music turns darker, more dissonant. The two protest; Qays cries out, “She has a thousand curls in her hair; how could I not get tangled up?” Leili responds, “His eyes are full of poetry; I need a thousand more days to read them.” [2] As the two recite poetry professing their love, the other cast members circle the pair, stomping their feet, hissing, “Shame. Shame. Shame.” Sharp staccato notes accompany the words, filling the atmosphere with dread. Unable to bear their separation, Qays unravels. The staging of this moment adds to its affective intensity: Qays, clad in a plain white tunic, pulls the cloth from his chest. The entire garment falls apart into tattered rags that represent the character’s unraveling mental state. Qays runs into the audience, wandering up and down the stairs, searching for his lover—a particularly effective directorial choice, as audience members get to witness, up close, his visceral devastation. Eventually, Qays flees to the desert. “He wandered the dusty pathways among the tribal tents,” the ensemble laments, “Longing for Leili. Searching for Leili. Every day. Everywhere.” Because Central Stage is a volunteer-run theater, the set design is sparse, but extremely thoughtful: we transition from the community into the desert through the simple addition of a large tree in the corner of the stage, under which Qays rests during his self-imposed exile. The tree’s long, wispy tendrils simultaneously shade him and obscure him from our gaze. Here, in the desert, Qays becomes “Majnun,” the eponymous “mad” lover of the original epic. The ensemble narrates, “The clan folk were unkind … To them, he was but a cad / And so, they declared him mad: Majnun! Majnun!” He spends his days writing love poetry on scraps of paper that he throws into the wind. When travelers encounter them, they are so moved by the beautiful verse that they spread the tale of Leili and Qays far and wide. From here, the play progresses to its canonical end: the lovers, separated for decades, reunite just once more before they die, heartbroken and alone. The play ends on a bittersweet note of hope: “This earthy world is ephemeral, the other eternal and pure,” the ensemble recites, “Leili and Majnun were unified in heaven, we are assured / Their love story immortalized and spread across the world.” Image 3: Majnoon (Roeen Nooran) praying to the starry night; photograph by Diaspora Arts Connection Despite its adherence to the narrative contours of the epic, Yeghiazarian’s reimagining nevertheless bears her authorial stamp. The play is distinctive in its diasporic hybridity, both in form, as the discussion of language and music above indicates, and its content. With wry humor, Yeghiazarian often references contemporary events and locations. For instance, when describing Leili’s beauty, a cast member translates: “In the Bay Area, one might say ‘her Middle Eastern good looks swooned American hearts.’” During an intense battle scene, the stage glowing with ominous red light, a cast member pauses, stands up, and says, in the highfalutin style of a BBC reporter, “The death toll was unexpectedly high,” parodying media approaches to conflicts in the Middle East. When the battle ends, the ensemble describes it as a “triumph,” and then quips, “Although, given the description of the massive death and destruction, one wonders if Master Nizami is being facetious in describing this as a triumph.” These surprising bursts of humor are striking in their playfulness. Because the poem is, famously, a tragic love story, most of its adaptations come off somber and heavy. But the lighter moments of levity in Yeghiazarian’s adaptation distinguishes the play’s tone from other tellings and break up the gravity of the narrative. Such choices allow the audience to catch their breath and eventually make the more difficult moments hit even harder. They also underscore the play’s relevance to a contemporary audience, as these direct ties to ongoing events make the romantic epic feel current and urgent. Connecting the past and present was part of Yeghiazarian’s goal for the play; she writes in a press release that celebrating “one of the most beloved Middle Eastern love stories” felt particularly prescient “as we face heightened political volatility in the Middle East.” Ultimately, Leili & Majnun is a luminous tribute to the Nizami epic. The care invested into the production from every angle, from the cast to the creative team, feels tangible. It is a true celebration of centuries of Iranian storytelling, from the ancient to the modern. At the same time, Yeghiazarian reimagines the epic for a globalized audience, attending, in particular, to the generative creative possibilities of hybridity. In its deft braiding of traditional and unconventional elements, Leili & Majnun accomplishes what the form of the adaptation can do, at its best: make the old feel new again. [1] I use “Leili” to refer to the protagonist of Yeghiazarian’s play, entitled Leili & Majnun , and “Leila” to refer to the character in the epic. [2] As anchored in the tradition of orality as this play is, the repetition of the word “thousand” in these lines reads as an intertextual gesture to another folktale from the region that began as an oral story cycle: One Thousand and One Nights . Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Namrata Verghese is a PhD candidate in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University, and a JD candidate at Stanford Law School. Her research spans postcolonial studies, queer and trans theory, and the legal humanities; her dissertation project, Litigating Desire: Queer Literature on Trial in Twentieth Century India , locates encounters between British colonial law and queer literary production in the decades bookending Indian Independence. She was the winner of the Postcolonial Studies Association’s Postgraduate Essay Competition , and the Jeffrey S. Haber Award Prize for Student Scholarship . Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Law & Literature ; the Journal of Postcolonial Writing ; Law, Culture, and the Humanities ; the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities ; the Dukeminier Awards Journal of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law ; and the Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation . Her public scholarship has appeared in Teen Vogue , The Los Angeles Review of Books , The Millions , and elsewhere. Her work is supported by the Ric Weiland Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities and Sciences, the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis Digital Humanities Fellowship, the McCoy Center for Ethics Fellowship, the Stanford Center for South Asia Graduate Student Research Fellowship, and the Mellon Centering Race Consortium Graduate Fellowship. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Daphne P. Lei Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Daphne P. Lei By Published on May 22, 2022 Download Article as PDF “China boys, you be legendary obeyers of the law, legendary humble, legendary passive…. I curse ya honorary white!”—Frank Chin, Chickencoop Chinaman (1972) [1] “You are not White and that is what matters to some men.”—Philip Kan Gotanda, I Dream of Chang and Eng (2016) [2] The oscillation and negotiation between “honorary white” and “not white” reflect the Asian American experience on stage and in society. The first Chinese student Yung Wing graduated from Yale University in 1854; however, AAPI students continued to struggle against injustice and discrimination in the education system and finally, in 2009 President Obama signed the Executive Order 13515 to establish Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) programs on university campuses. [3] The slow recognition of AAPI students in higher education reveals a fundamental problem of negotiating a minoritarian time with the majoritarian space, which I address by interrogating similar issues in university theatre and by proposing a new dramaturgical paradigm and theatre pedagogy. I challenge contemporary diversity rhetoric, which focuses on an off-white spatial inclusivity, and I advocate for a unique minoritarian time: the off-yellow time. My brief analysis of the production of Philip Kan Gotanda’s I Dream of Chang and Eng (University of California, Irvine, 2017) illustrates the intervention of activist Asian American dramaturgy. Diversity is not just a keyword in a university’s value statement; it has an intricate and intrinsic relationship with materiality, affect, and learning. [4] California, where I reside and work, is facing unique challenges: The 2020 US Census reports that about 7.2% of the US population and 17% of California’s population is AAPI. My institution, University of California, Irvine, is both an AANAPISI and HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution); 37% of the domestic student population is AAPI, and 75% of international students are from Asian countries as of 2020. The shifting majority-minority population ratio and increasing transpacific influx [5] directly confront the familiar American “racial formation,” which relies on the sociopolitical representation of “different types of human bodies.” [6] Fortunately, Asian Americans come to the rescue with what I call utility ethnicity because they both fall within and exceed frames of racial diversity: Asian faculty often bear the extra burden of serving as token representatives or mentors for underrepresented groups; when necessary, Asians are included under the umbrella of BIPOC to boost a bigger diversity number for the institution; AAPI students are usually excluded from URM (underrepresented minority) fellowships because of the misconception of universal Asian wealth. Being “utile,” AAPI are presented as minorities, people of color, or honorary whites. Utility ethnicity , or an ethnicity with racial value contingent on institutional need, is an empty signifier because the significance of the specific racial group can be re/determined based on the context. It is also a diversity placeholder because the degrees of colorization can be re/defined to balance the ethnic diversity of the whole . Utility ethnicity allows the institutionalized diversity rhetoric to stay in flux and à la mode, so a perfect diversity snapshot of the institution is available at any given moment. Race and ethnicity are often approached in spatial terms. George Lipsitz analyzes how racism takes place through segregation, exclusion, commodification, and other means. [7] Diversity rhetoric—inclusivity, visibility, mobility, intersectionality—implies that diversity takes up space , concretely or metaphorically, two or three-dimensionally, in a majoritarian place. To include people who “look different” in a traditionally white space is a simple way to imagine diversity. [8] Just look at the multicolor recruitment brochures or diversity pie charts of any American university, which is often described as “a site of colonization and US imperialism” [9] where “white cultural identifiers are the default.” [10] Race and ethnicity in US history are always tied with citizenship. The process of naturalization/neutralization inevitably happens when minority students enter the colonial space of the university. They need to be off-white. What is off-white? “Off-white” is “a yellowish or grayish white” [11] ; to make off-white paint, one needs “stock white” mixed with a tint of “yellow oxide.” [12] To enter the space of higher education, many AAPI students try to maximize the “stock white”; however, unlike different kinds of whiteness with historically contingent mobility, [13] yellowness remains a tint that cannot be eliminated completely. Off-white, the subdued background color that every institution needs, is the best entry ticket for Asian Americans. Off-white is the new yellow in higher education; the most diversity-conscientious institution might best be an off-white institution. Although there is more awareness about “conscientious” training (vs. conventional training) [14] and color “conscious” casting (vs. color-blind casting) [15] today, for Asian American actors, progress is painfully slow. In the theatre conservatory setting, the dynamics of traditional master-disciple are similar to what Homi Bhabha calls “colonial mimicry”: “the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite.” [16] The Asian American mimicry— almost the same, but not quite; not quite, not white, only off-white —also has the implication of neutralization, naturalization, and legitimization. In general, a conservatory wishes to maximize students’ marketability with the efficient machinery running on a well-tested colonial formula at the institutional tempo. Any slippage, ambivalence, curiosity, risk-taking, or experimentation would interrupt the flow and cause deviation. AAPI theatre students go with the flow, staying low in their off-white minor or ensemble roles, which are the best roles AAPIs can hope for in a conventional season. While the off-white ensemble contributes to the look of diversity without causing a ruckus, denying actors of color their cultural identifiers is doubly failing them in education, as ethnicity-specific roles are still needed in the industry. [17] I approach Asian American dramaturgy in higher education by prioritizing temporality, which is inevitably connected to spatiality. There are different ways of considering AAPI time. Historically, vying for spatial coexistence, the East often needed to exist behind Western time. Such “temporal disjunction” deprived Asians of contemporaneity. [18] The progression/regression in immigration policies determined the spatial inclusion/exclusion of AAPIs at any historical moment. For theatre education, my emphasis is on tempo —the flow, speed, rhythm, interruption, and flexibility of time. A polyphonic tune incorporated with various tempi — andante, allegro, ritardando, staccato, legato , and rubato— describes a successful diversity theatre pedagogy. [19] Time defines space, space alters time. It is through flexible tempi that an off-yellow time can be cultivated, and equity and humanity can be imagined. I Dream of Chang and Eng (2017), the first mainstage production at the University of California, Irvine with AAPI actors in leading roles since the department’s inception in 1956, was a temporary rupture of the well-established theatre conservatory paradigm. I first proposed the play for the season of 2015–2016, understanding my chance of success would be slim, but I also knew that without an Asian American play in the season, there would be no progress for Asian theatrical visibility. The story about the famous Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), depicts Asian immigrants’ struggles against xenophobia and their ultimate success—a perfect story to address the changing campus demographics and climate. Practicality was on my mind: with racial anomaly as the theme, the script required only four Asian actors and one Black actor, which seemed a manageable challenge. The director ended up casting seven white actors and one Latinx actor, besides the aforementioned five. Strategically, instead of vouching for Asian actors’ perfect colonial mimicry (almost white), I stressed their yellowness as a unique asset for authentically portraying immigrants. After long and sincere conversations, the department promised to reconsider the play if qualified Asian actors could be identified the next year. The extended deadline motivated me to found “Theatre Woks” in late 2015 to identify and cultivate Asian talent; if I can’t find qualified Asian actors, I will make them! AAPI students responded overwhelmingly and our goal was crystal clear—to prove that we are here and we are good enough . I enlisted help to train actors, emphasizing diction and audition skills, dismantling the myth that Asians do not speak good (American midwestern) English. [20] After a few months’ work, we presented a staged reading to showcase Asian American actors, and we received the green light from the department. The mainstage season, which usually consists of six productions, is decided collectively by faculty after a laborious, months-long process. As a non-practice faculty member crossing the practice/scholarship divide obtaining a major slot for minoritized students, I understood that the unique opportunity for Chang and Eng might also create some discomfort. I volunteered to be the dramaturg. A dramaturg always needs to negotiate their inside/outside/tangential positionality. On the one hand, a faculty dramaturg in an all-student production requires even more mindfulness of the power dynamics. On the other hand, a knowledgeable Asian American dramaturg needs to take an activist role to steer the production and avoid the nightmarish embarrassment of yellowface or inauthentic Asian mise en scène . I needed to be there but not get in the way. I built a website to house my extensive research as a knowledge bank for the creative and production teams. I shared my collection of Chinese opera costumes with the MFA student designers to help them properly build the costumes, including the shoes for Afong Moy’s bound feet. I organized a two-day scholarly symposium, approaching the theme from such disciplines as disability studies, linguistics, and anthropology. I had clear communication and great rapport with the director. However, cracking institutionalized conventions such as strict protocols for staging certain types of scenes required patience and creativity. I was simultaneously a coach of language and Chinese opera movements, a consultant for the director and designers, a peer ethnographer in the mode of “deep hanging out,” [21] and a friend listening to students’ concerns (Fig. 1). Figure 1. Soon after Chang and Eng’s arrival in Boston, America was busy transforming them into Oriental commodity for the white entertainment industry. In the center, Edmund Truong (left) and Kevin Lin (right) play the famous Siamese Twins. I Dream of Chang and Eng by Philip Kan Gotanda, directed by Ricardo Rocha, at University of California, Irvine (spring, 2017). Photo by Paul R. Kennedy. To truly convey the hardships Chang and Eng faced as new immigrants in a hostile environment and to maximize the educational opportunity for students, the director set up an “off-yellow” laboratory: with the playwright’s approval, each actor would speak some of their lines in Mandarin Chinese. Among the thirteen actors, only two were native Mandarin speakers, whose yellowness became a resource for their peers, reversing the yellow/white hierarchy. [22] I translated the lines and marked them with pinyin romanization and gave individual tutorials. The equal awkwardness that all non-Mandarin speakers—both those who were AAPI and those who were not—experienced built a surprising camaraderie. Students greeted each other with their Chinese lines, including the line by the only Black character: “You are not White ( ni bushi bairen ).” This reversed colonial mimicry made the non-Asian students understand their arduous work could best make them feel “off-yellow,” whereas their fellow AAPI students constantly needed to strive for feeling “off-white.” [23] The similar awkwardness shared across racial lines offered a rare educational opportunity as the linguistically unfit challenged the conventional notion of racial misfits. The play itself engages with these critical questions of racialization. On their voyage to Boston, Chang and Eng befriend Learned Jack, a free Black sailor, who warns them of their true color: “You are not White and that is what matters to some men” (12). Thriving on displaying their freakish yellowness, Chan and Eng never understand their yellow existence in real-life horror. In a scene set in 1835, on their way to the city of Jackson, they are mistaken as “poor Indians savages” (26) (“Chocktaw. Seminoles maybe…” [43]) and nearly lynched. “Are we colored or abominations?” they ask desperately after having escaped the near-death violence. They are reminded again: “You are not white.” (45) The yellowness that spills off stage almost costs them their real lives; their color is the true abomination (Fig. 2). Figure 2. Chang and Eng are mistaken for “poor Indians savages” and nearly lynched. They ask: “Are we colored or abominations?” Learned Jack (Chris Menza, left) clarifies: “You are not white.” I Dream of Chang and Eng by Philip Kan Gotanda, directed by Ricardo Rocha, at University of California, Irvine (spring, 2017). Photo by Paul R. Kennedy. My pedagogical intervention was to alter the institutional tempo. An experienced graduate student actor of color from the cast described the institutional time/space: when opening their mouths, students of color always need to be well-informed and articulate because they don’t have the privilege of making mistakes or asking questions, unlike white students whose curiosity is encouraged. Minority students need to proceed with the speed of andante (walking) and the attitude of allegro (happy), or, as he explained to me, they are made to feel that “they do not deserve to be there.” This is exactly when time means space: allowing doubts or errors means privileged time— ritardando (slowing down) and staccato (interruption)—which translates into privileged space—“deserving to be there.” A graduate designer of color noted that faculty tended to talk to her in a slow manner as if she did not have the intellectual capacity to comprehend instructions. The change of tempo when addressing a native English speaker of color from andante to an uninvited ritardando perhaps “meant well” but backfired because of the racialized and gendered implications. Despite my activism, the systemic racialized aura and residue were still very prevalent in the overall production structure, and most minority students (both actors and crew) felt frustrated. The MFA actor of color noticed that AAPI students were belittled, often not in public: “It is privately beating them down, breaking them, making them feel worthless and lose confidence.” All AAPI students expressed similar sentiments but made a conscious choice not to speak up for fear that the first Asian American production would be the last if Asian American students were proven to be troublemakers. They felt that they had already taken up very precious space on stage, so asking for extra time would have been too much. They were extremely proud to be involved in the historic production and saddened by the difficult experience. [24] The sold-out performances were beautifully moving; many audience members came to me with sincere appreciation, often in tears. Unfortunately, the animosity toward minority students and the lack of enthusiasm for another AAPI production afterward beg the question: did the production aiming to celebrate AAPI lives become an institutional mechanism to deem Asian American students unfit? Nevertheless, there was a profound, personal impact on AAPI students and audiences, and Theatre Woks continued to thrive. My hope is that students will stage their own dramaturgical interventions and little by little, show by show, eventually change the climate of theatre at the university and beyond. Here, finally, I want to introduce another concept of time: tempo rubato, stolen time. Tempo rubato offers the flexibility to alter the tempo for learning. Tempo rubato is responsible borrowing, not outright stealing; the time borrowed needs to be paid back. Off-white is achieved through elimination, but off-yellow through deliberate cultivation. If the institutional time would allow tempo rubato , students could have the luxury to learn about ethnic and cultural complexities, such as taking the time to learn a line of Chinese or a proper movement, such as letting oneself experience embarrassment and awkwardness and creating an off-yellow time and space for all. If the institution allows activist Asian American dramaturgy to implement ritardando in the early process to inspire deep learning, andante and allegro might happen organically in the future. Instead of celebrating AAPI’s off-whiteness, Asian American activist dramatury advocates an off-yellow tempo to help imagine a space for truly diverse thinking, equitable learning, and compassionate being. References [1] Frank Chin, Chickencoop Chinaman/The Year of Dragon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 37. [2] Philip Kan Gotanda, “I Dream of Chang and Eng” (unpublished manuscript, 28 July 2016), doc file. Subsequent quotations from the play will come from this unpublished manuscript. I wish to express my gratitude to Philip Kan Gotanda, renowned pioneer Asian American playwright, filmmaker, and educator. Gotanda first introduced me to an earlier version of the play in 2012 and was very supportive throughout the production process. He was the keynote speaker in the symposium I organized for the production and saw the performance. [3] For a university to qualify for AANAPISI status, the enrollment of AAPI undergraduate students has to be at least 10%. [4] Sara Ahmed defines diversity work (programs to promote diversity), diversity practitioners (people who design and implement diversity programs and policies), and diversity world (meetings, workshops, and conference on diversity) in her book On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 2012). [5] Loan Anh Pham, “Campus UC Irvine ranked No. 2 in diversity among colleges,” AsAmNews , 21 September 2020, https://asamnews.com/2020/09/21/wall-street-journal-ranks-uc-irvine-second-in-diversity-among-nations-colleges-both-an-asian-american-pacific-islander-and-hispanic-serving-institution/. [6] Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formations in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994), 55-56. [7] George Lipsitz. How Racism Takes Place (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011). [8] Nirwar Puwar, Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of Place (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 1. [9] Claire Zhuang, “A Parting Letter to My MFA Program,” Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, 6 June 2017, https://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/a-parting-letter-to-my-mfa-program. Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20180730052129/https://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/a-parting-letter-to-my-mfa-program (accessed 7 April 2021). Frustrated with the imperialistic approach and white supremacist value in theatre education, she read the letter during her portfolio review and withdrew from the program at the University of Virginia. [10] Nicole Brewer, “Training with a Difference.” American Theatre (January 2018), 54-58. [11] Merriam-Webster , s.v. “off-white ( n. ),” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/off-white (accessed 28 May 2022). [12] Dean Stickler, The Keys to Color: A Decorator’s Handbook for Coloring Paints, Plasters and Glazes (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010), 55. According to color theory, off-white is within the shade of white, which includes cream, ivory, eggshell, vanilla, and others. [13] According to Matthew Frye Jacobson, one can be “both white and racially distinct from other whites.” Different kinds of whites (Celts, Slavs, Anglos) can “become” Caucasians (vs. non-white) at different historical moments. See Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1998), 6. In Southern California today, the large population of Armenian and Iranian Americans, which might be seen as socially and culturally “less white” than the Irish in early American history, is nevertheless “white” according to the US Census. [14] Nicole Brewer writes, “Conscientious training believes that the background and knowledge each student brings must be acknowledged as relevant and pertinent to their development in theatre.” It develops a “cross-cultural collaborative curriculum.” Brewer, “Training with a Difference,” American Theatre (January 2018), 54-58. [15] August Wilson, “The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance.” Callaloo 20, no. 3 (1998): 493-503. [16] Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” in The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 85-92. [17] Brewer, 54-58. [18] Daphne P. Lei, Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity across the Pacific (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 73-75. [19] Andante, allegro, ritardando, staccato, legato , and rubato are common musical terms to mark time. Andante ( lit. walking) is moderate speed; allegro ( lit. happy) indicates fast and bright tempo; and staccato ( lit. detached) means playing notes separately while legato ( lit. tied together) means connecting the notes while playing; ritardando is slowing down; rubato ( lit. stolen) indicates that strict tempo can be modified to allow for expressive freedom. [20] Ricardo Rocha, a PhD student with professional acting and directing experience helped me train actors. He was later chosen to be the director of Chang and Eng by the department chair. [21] Dorinne Kondo identifies Renato Rosaldo’s “deep hanging out” as an ethnographical style of dramaturgy in her World-Making: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 7. [22] I also recruited two community members, eleven-year-old twins who are native Chinese speakers to play the young twins. Their scenes were separately rehearsed, so I do not include them in the language learning experience. [23] I am obviously paying homage to José Estaban Muñoz’s theorization of “feeling brown” and Donatella Galella’s “feeling yellow.” See Muñoz, “Feeling Brown: Ethnicity and Affect in Ricardo Bracho’s ‘The Sweetest Hangover (And Other STDs),’” Theatre Journal 52, no. 1, Latino Performance (March 2000): 67-79, and Galella, “Feeling Yellow: Responding to Contemporary Yellowface in Musical Performance,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 32, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 67-77. [24] To avoid any faculty/student conflict, no students signed up for class credits with me. I interviewed them only after the production was over so they could speak frankly about their experience. Footnotes About The Author(s) Daphne P. Lei is Professor of Drama, at the University of California, Irvine. She is internationally known for her scholarship on Chinese opera, Asian American theatre, intercultural, transnational, and transpacific performance. She is the author of three monographs: Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity across the Pacific (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization: Performing Zero (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Uncrossing the Borders: Performing Chinese in Gendered (Trans)Nationalism (University of Michigan Press, 2019). Daphne P. Lei is also the co-editor of The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2020, with Charlotte McIvor) and is currently co-authoring Theatre Histories: An Introduction (Routledge, 4th edition) with Tobin Nellhaus, Tamara Underiner, and Patricia Ybarra. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine By Marina Johnson Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF In Palestine, a landscape fractured by checkpoints, walls, and forced displacement, site-specific performance becomes a radical act of world-making. To stage art in public space under conditions of occupation is not merely to perform. It is to assert a material presence, to refuse erasure, and to mobilize bodies and spaces as archives of contested histories. [1] There can be a clear danger in Palestinians asserting their identity across the constraints of the land. This article examines how site-specific performance in Palestine functions as a spatial practice that writes and rewrites dominant narratives of place, identity, and history. El Hakawati Theatre’s Salah and Basma and Nur Garabli and Studio Collective’s “Moving Visual and Performance Exhibition” transform everyday spaces into theatrical sites of remembrance by inviting audiences to navigate layered landscapes, challenge dominant narratives, and cultivate new relationships between memory and quotidian life. These performances do not simply aim to put the past on stage. Instead, they actively engage in the making of memory. By analyzing these performances, I argue that Palestinian site-specific theatre does more than commemorate the past. It activates a radical memory practice that confronts colonial spatial regimes. These works exemplify how performance can inhabit and remake space by asserting presence and resisting erasure. Salah and Basma I followed the audience down the gray stone stairs in Jerusalem’s Old City, but it became hard to differentiate between those at the site to watch the performance and those going about their lives. My heart raced, partially from excitement at finally seeing a play associated with the Palestinian National Theatre El Hakawati and partially because I was unsure what to expect in a city that feels as fraught as Jerusalem. Children ran around, adults occasionally stopped to listen to the performers, and the occasional motorcycle or cart passed by us, a disruption that made me jump while others more familiar with the sights and sounds of the Old City seemed to barely notice. In the Old City, all of the layers of Jerusalem seem to converge–religious sites, historical locales, popular cafes and bars, merchants selling spices and religious souvenirs. Would this Palestinian theatre troupe experience any problems talking about the specific Palestinian history in this play? El Hakawati’s Salah and Basma is a landmark site-specific, promenade-style performance that transforms the Old City of Jerusalem into a living archive of Palestinian memory and presence. Set in 1966, just before the Six-Day War and Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the play follows the love story of Salah, a young man returning home from university in Beirut, played by Mohammad Basha, and Basma, a spirited local nurse played by Fatima Abu Alul. They meet, fall in love, and prepare for marriage amidst a bustling, interwoven community full of humor and nostalgia. Audiences traverse the alleyways, courtyards, and springs of neighborhoods such as Harat al-Sa‘adiyya, Bab al-Hutta, and Bab al-Asbat, guided by two narrators who weave together historical commentary, personal anecdotes, and interactions with local characters. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of space as relational, always under construction, and constituted through material and social practices, Salah and Basma can be read as an intervention in the spatial politics of Jerusalem. Massey reminds us that space is not a neutral container but “the product of interrelations” and “always in the process of being made”. [2] In the Palestinian context, these interrelations include everyday acts of navigating fragmented geographies, telling stories, and performing identity. Through its site-specific form, Salah and Basma participates in what Massey describes as “practices of quotidian negotiation and contestation,” re-inscribing Palestinian presence in a landscape increasingly structured by surveillance, gentrification, and settler colonial displacement. [3] The final scene, marked by panic and poetic reflection, culminates in a collective recitation of a line from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “In Jerusalem,” inviting the audience to reflect on memories of Jerusalem and endurance. Yet, Salah and Basma is more than a nostalgic narrative or a historical reenactment–it is a performative act of spatial reclamation. The production does not simply occur in the Old City; it is of the Old City. It activates space as a co-author, layering personal and historical narratives onto the built environment, and insisting on the presence of memory within contested geographies. As we walked with the performers through the streets of Jerusalem, passing signs in Arabic, English, and Hebrew, the fictional love story unfolded against the backdrop of lived Palestinian histories, some visible, others rendered nearly invisible by ongoing processes of erasure. The quotidian rhythms of the city, motorcycles honking, children returning home for dinner, an Israeli tour guide cutting through the scene with Hebrew narration, did not disrupt the performance but heightened its insistence that history is neither static nor past. It is layered, contested by different groups, and persistently present. Hosam Abu Esheh (far right), as the character Hosam, leading the audience through the Old City of Jerusalem. Photo courtesy of El-Hakawati Theatre The narrative is framed as a guided walking tour, with characters Shaden and Hosam (played by Shaden Saleem and Hosam Abu Esheh) and blends archival memory and dramatic storytelling, with moments that blur time, space, and identity, asking the audience to “close your eyes and come back with us to a beautiful summer day in 1966.” [4] This is especially meaningful as Hosam is a lifetime resident of Jerusalem’s Old City and a keeper of much of the oral history that was part of this piece; while I did not know Hosam personally when I participated in this site-specific experience, I knew his reputation and was aware that many in the audience attended because of this famed storyteller. Salah's journey takes him through familiar places infused with local color and personal memory: his old Qur’an school led by Sheikha Sanad; the bakery where ka‘k (sesame bread) is revered; and the ironer’s shop, where he first lays eyes on Basma. Their connection grows when they reunite at the Austrian Hospice Hospital, where Basma is working. Their flirtation is sweet and shy: Salah: You’re kind. Basma: No, [I’m] Basma. They laugh. And you’re respectful. Salah: No, Salah. I’m Salah. Basma: And I’m Basma… break time is over. I have to go. Salah: Can I see you? Basma: Every day during break. [5] As their relationship deepens, Salah faces pressure from his mother to marry someone within their social class. “Are we in the spice market?” he protests when she offers him a stack of women’s photos. Despite the social gap, Basma is the daughter of Abu Khaled, a wealthy livestock trader, and Salah’s father ultimately agrees to approach the mukhtar to arrange the engagement. A formal proposal follows, culminating in a traditional engagement scene. The wedding plans are laid with communal joy and contributions, someone brings the carpet, someone the tea cups, reflecting the spirit of solidarity: “It was mutual support in building, celebrations, and sorrows.” But just as the wedding zaffe begins, the joy is shattered as gunfire interrupts the celebration. “They bombed the city, folks! They bombed Harat al-Saadiyya—they bombed Bab Hutta!” cries Abu Salah. [6] The war of 1967 has begun. The final moments of the piece are solemn and poetic, ending with a stirring recital of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “In Jerusalem,” highlighting the beauty and historical burden of the city: “I walk. I fly. I become other than me in the epiphany.” In the end, the narrators thank the audience, having taken them “just a little” into the lived past of Jerusalem’s Old City. [7] The cast of Salah and Basma in the Old City of Jerusalem in the final moments of the performance, 2023. Cast from L to R: Nidal Jubeh, Shaden Saleem, Mohammad Basha, Fatima Abu Alul, and Hosam Abu Esheh. Photo courtesy of El-Hakawati Theatre Salah and Basma enacts performative repetition through the very act of walking, narrating, and remembering. By guiding audiences through spaces both familiar and transformed, the production inscribes their bodies into a shared narrative, affirming collective claims to space and memory. In doing so, it foregrounds Arabic language, everyday Palestinian life, and the pluralistic character of Jerusalem prior to 1967. The site-specificity of the play is foundational as each location becomes both stage and character, saturated with meaning and history. Many sites served a different function in the history of the Old City than they did when we watched the piece, allowing the audience to piece together the layers of the city. As the narrators reflect on the past, the city itself bears witness, rendering visible the intimacy, plurality, and cultural continuity of Palestinian Jerusalem. The tour ends with the 1967 war beginning, a history that most watching the piece knew all too well. The closing invocation of Darwish’s poetry links this local story to a broader cultural consciousness, framing the city as both physical and metaphysical, a place where memory, identity, and resistance converge. Ultimately, Salah and Basma exemplifies how Palestinian site-specific theatre does more than commemorate the past; it asserts presence in the present, and transforms urban space into a performative act of cultural survival and belonging, where memory is not simply a record of loss, but a generative force shaping what endures. In a landscape marked by erasure, such performances are acts of defiance and hope. Nur Garabli and Studio Collective On Friday, May 9, 2025, I arrived at Queen Cafe in Yafa at 10:00 AM for the “Moving Visual and Performance Exhibition,” an event I had heard about the night before at Saraya Theatre during other Yafa Week Festival programs. Though the website promised a “visual performance art tour that moves between Yafa cafes,” the details were sparse. While my expectations were limited, I was excited for a new performance experience. As we approached Queen Cafe, the Palestinian-American friend I was with pointed out a dark blue sign bearing the double name of the street, an intervention by local Palestinians seeking to reclaim the original Arabic street names that have been replaced by official Hebrew designations. Inside the cafe, the owner, herself a Palestinian, began to speak to us about her experience in Yafa. To my surprise, she spoke in Hebrew, which the audience, seemingly composed entirely of Palestinians who lived within the 1948 borders, understood. Nur Garabli, one of the performers whose work we would be seeing that day, created performances that were also shaped by affective and linguistic tensions. Outside the café, the use of Hebrew evoked personal and intergenerational trauma. Raised in Arabic but needing to speak Hebrew as her primary language outside of the home, Garabli undertook a process of linguistic decolonization at age sixteen, choosing to speak Arabic as much as possible despite the internal and external resistance. “It’s really hard doing this decolonization shift… you have to face your demons.” [8] Her grandmother, nearing ninety, still speaks partial Hebrew, a sign of how deeply linguistic assimilation has shaped Palestinians across generations. After leaving the cafe, our group began walking. We stopped on a platform flanked by roads and located near the light rail and a bike path. There, dancer Nur Garabli began a solo performance, emerging from stillness to claim the space with powerful movement, as her arms opened wide. Her opening shouts in Arabic felt like a direct response to the Hebrew we had just heard, a connection she later confirmed in an interview. Knowing the history of the dual street names helped me attune more fully to how Garabli’s performance reclaimed the Palestinian narrative of the area. This performative walking tour exemplified the ways performers in Palestine are deeply attuned to the specifics of the places where they create performances. This performance tour exemplifies Lefebvre's concept of the “production of space,” a social process shaped by ideology, memory, and materiality. [9] It also aligns with Edward Said’s “counterpointed geographies,” where suppressed histories press against official narratives. [10] Through their movement, the performers disrupted dominant spatial orders of quotidian spaces, where all things Palestinian are usually kept figuratively out of the streets. Garabli, drawing on the Studio collective’s method of improvisation, rooted her performance in a deeply personal and political presence: “We are still here. We are still in the streets, and we do art, and we want people to know more about the city.” Her work drew from and into the city’s multiple histories, personal and collective, through an embodied vocabulary developed over years of collaborative improvisation with the site as a co-author. “We just felt the moment, the connections there,” she told me. “We focused on specific feelings… and let the space guide us.” The second solo by Garabli was performed in a sunlit, open plaza near the sea, framed by Yafa’s cityscape. Her movement–precise, expansive, and deliberate–was deeply grounded. Dressed in black with her hair in a loose braid, she began in stillness, arms slowly rising as if conjuring the invisible. She turned gently in place like a compass, then traveled through the space with soft, decisive steps. At moments, she folded inward, then rose again, echoing the rhythm of waves. Her gestures felt like they were for the land, and not the audience. When she placed her hand on her chest and then the ground, the meaning was clear: “I am here.” Nur Garabli performing in Moving Visual and Performance Exhibition in Yafa, 2025. Photo taken by author. In this same piece, Garabli balanced a woven basket on her head, an evocative gesture of harvest. Eventually, she reached a line of oranges arranged across the performance space. Glowing under the Palestinian sun, the oranges symbolized not just Jaffa’s famed citrus groves, but a history of erasure and resilience. As she threw them one by one, not violently, but with resolve, the act took on symbolic power that grew with repetition. Garabli inscribed an alternative archive into public space. “This is reclaiming the streets,” she said. “I wanted to use [the oranges] as something else… to give them different layers and hues.” [11] By expanding the idea of the orange beyond just a fruit to eat or a symbol of Yafa that people take for granted, Garabli raised the stakes. The stakes of throwing oranges may seem low, but in that the gesture mimics that of stone throwing, this act felt like defiance in a city that requires its Palestinian citizens to navigate a multiplicity of identities. Garabli’s performance was shaped as much by the city as by her body. “The space has the upper hand on the dance,” she reflected. [12] This responsiveness to space–architectural, social, political–echoes Massey’s notion of space as a relational construct. Her actions also created a repertoire of their own: a live, embodied transmission of memory that stands in contrast to written archives. In a context where Palestinian archival material is often inaccessible or destroyed, these performances become repositories of knowledge. Yafa is relatively open to public performance. Unlike Jerusalem, where “people are less ready to see these things happen in the street,” Yafa allowed for a degree of artistic visibility, though never without risk. “We understand how each city works,” Garabli explained. “But also, you can never fully predict how people will react.” [13] Performing in Arabic in public remains politically charged, and Garabli’s gesture of shouting in her native tongue was both intimate and defiant. The tour’s third movement brought us through an ancient corridor of Yafa, past stairs, facades, and sea-facing courtyards, led by three dancers from Studio Collective. I had seen them perform before, but was surprised to encounter them here, moving deliberately through a landscape I had never entered. This unfamiliar pathway ran alongside Israeli residential and museum buildings, places I would not have approached on my own. Yet the dancers moved through it as deliberate presences, claiming the space with repetition and grace. There was no music, no speech, just movement. Dressed simply, the dancers did not dramatize themselves but let their gestures activate the space. Oranges were placed on the ground, but this time, none were thrown. They existed as quiet reminders of suppressed narratives. The stone steps, blue-painted doors, and layered architecture bore the traces of colonialism and survival. The performers led us upward, ultimately arriving at Hilweh, a Palestinian café and market in the Old City. I had not realized this path even led to Hilweh, a cafe I frequent when in Yafa. Had the dancers not led me there, I may never have found an alternate path to the cafe that many Palestinians consider a refuge, and certainly one of the few Palestinian leisure sites in the city. The tour culminated near Saraya Theatre, where Studio Collective once again danced, this time on a grassy patch near trees. In an interview, dancer Rand Taha explained how their improvisation developed in real time. [14] While not all performers were from Yafa, they carried a shared awareness of its affective topography, particularly for those with ancestral ties. The dancers’ improvisational approach, honed over years of trust, enabled them to co-create a site-responsive work with minimal rehearsal. They used simple compositional tools, lines, touch, attunement, to develop a choreographic structure driven not by spectacle but by embodied presence. In the end, “Moving Visual and Performance Exhibition” was not just an aesthetic experience but a political and pedagogical one. Through their bodies, these dancers made visible what has been erased and made felt the Palestinian presence in a city that had been home to their families for generations. Conclusion Site-specific performance in Palestine emerges as a generative mode of cultural resistance, one that mobilizes space, memory, and embodiment to challenge the spatial logics of occupation. By drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and spatial theory, this article demonstrates how performances such as Salah and Basma and “Moving Visual and Performance Exhibition” reconfigure place not as a static backdrop but as a living palimpsest of histories and relationships. These performances animate space as both archive and repertoire, staging memory not only as a recollection of the past but as a practice of presence. In doing so, they contest the settler colonial impulse to fix, erase, or dominate space, and instead assert Palestinian geography as plural, affective, and alive. This work matters because it insists that performance is not ancillary to political struggle but central to how people live through, make sense of, and resist the spatial violence of occupation. The ephemeral nature of these performances, often overlooked by traditional modes of documentation or analysis, does not diminish their impact. Rather, their very impermanence underscores their urgency. They appear in fleeting moments, in everyday streets and homes, asking audiences to look again, to remember differently, to stay with the trouble of place. In a landscape fractured by checkpoints, walls, and forced displacement, site-specific performance becomes a radical act of world-making. These performances remind us that space is never neutral, and that in the Palestinian context, to perform in space is to perform the right to exist, to remember, and to return. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Al-Harah Theatre. I Was There. Written and directed by Motasem Abu Hasan. Site-specific performance at Bethlehem Site-Specific Theatre Festival, Bethlehem, Palestine, 2023. Darwish, Mahmoud. “In Jerusalem.” In The Butterfly’s Burden , translated by Fady Joudah, 211. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2007. El Hakawati (Palestinian National Theatre). Salah and Basma. Site-specific promenade performance in the Old City of Jerusalem, 2023. El-Hakawati Theatre. Salah and Basma Unpublished Script . Jerusalem: El-Hakawati Theatre, 2023 Féral, Josette. “Performance and Theatricality: The Subject Demystified.” Modern Drama 25, no. 1 (1982): 170–181. Garabli, Nur. Interview by the author. Zoom, May 2025. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: SAGE Publications, 2005. Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum, 2004. Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Studio Collective (Nur Garabli et al.). Moving Visual and Performance Exhibition. Site-specific performance tour, Yafa Week Festival, Yafa, May 9, 2025. Taha, Rand. Interview by the author. Ramallah, May 2025. Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. [1] Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.; Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. [2] Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: SAGE Publications, 2005, pp. 9, 130 [3] Ibid., pp. 154 [4] El-Hakawati Theatre. Salah and Basma Unpublished Script . Jerusalem: El-Hakawati Theatre, 2023 [5] El-Hakawati Theatre. Salah and Basma Unpublished Script . Jerusalem: El-Hakawati Theatre, 2023 [6] El-Hakawati Theatre. Salah and Basma Unpublished Script . Jerusalem: El-Hakawati Theatre, 2023 [7] Mahmoud Darwish, “In Jerusalem,” in The Butterfly’s Burden , trans. Fady Joudah (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2007), 211. [8] Garabli, Nur. Interview by the author. Zoom, May 2025. [9] Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. [10] Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. [11] Garabli, Nur. Interview by the author. Zoom, May 2025. [12] Garabli, Nur. Interview by the author. Zoom, May 2025. [13] Garabli, Nur. Interview by the author. Zoom, May 2025. [14] Taha, Rand. Interview by the author. Ramallah, May 2025. References About The Author(s) Marina Johnson is a PhD candidate at Stanford University in Theatre and Performance Studies. Prior to Stanford, Johnson received her MFA in Directing and taught at Beloit College. In Palestine she has directed at Al Harah and El Hakawati Theatres and taught directing workshops at ASHTAR Theatre. Johnson’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in The Jerusalem Quarterly, Theatre/Practice , TDR , Theatre Topics , Arab Stages , Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities , Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance, Volume I. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Alisa Zhulina Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov Alisa Zhulina By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Figure 1: Catherine Slade as Lolita in Lolita in the Garden. Courtesy of The Cuban Theater Digital Archive. “She is temperamental, changeable and unpredictable, and though she retains the limpidity of childhood, she has also preserved its mystery.” —Simone de Beauvoir, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome. “It’s not my fault.” — Alizée, “Moi…Lolita.” (1) Introduction On Halloween night in 1958, Vladimir Nabokov opened his front door to discover a schoolgirl trick-or-treating as Lolita.(2) Costumed by her parents, the nine-year-old was holding a tennis racket and a sign that read L-O-L-I-T-A.(3) Nabokov was horrified. Prior to granting Stanley Kubrick the rights to a film adaptation, Nabokov insisted: “It was perfectly all right for me to imagine a twelve-year-old Lolita. She existed only in my head. But to make a real twelve-year-old play such a part would be sinful and immoral, and I would never consent to it.”(4) Cast in the titular role at fourteen, Sue Lyon was fifteen when the film premiered in New York in 1962—still too young to be admitted to the theatre to watch herself on screen. Age was not Nabokov’s only concern. He also worried about how an actor would represent his heroine in performance. After all, popular culture had rendered his Lolita unrecognizable. The figure of the underage siren did not originate with the controversial novel.(5) Yet Lolita gave that myth its most enchanting and enduring name, inspiring several plays, a musical, a ballet, an opera, two films, and countless fashion trends that have little in common with the girl at the heart of the book— “beloved, irretrievable Dolly."(6) Despite Nabokov’s “antitheatrical prejudice,” it is in the theatre that some of the most incisive and moving responses to Nabokov’s novel can be found.(7) This article explores María Irene Fornés’s Lolita in the Garden (1977) and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive (1997) as dramatic works that challenge the Lolita myth of popular culture and represent girlhood as a tumultuous process of becoming an autonomous agent who embraces youthful desire and resists capitalist and patriarchal objectification. First, I will examine the cultural stereotype of Lolita, which is an amalgam of the fantasies of Humbert Humbert—the seductive narrator of Nabokov’s Lolita —and the distortions of popular culture. Then, I will show why Fornés and Vogel were fascinated by Nabokov’s novel, particularly its theatricality, and how they respond to Lolita and its afterlife by creating adolescent protagonists who are independent, courageous, with minds of their own. To fully appreciate Fornés’s and Vogel’s achievements in this area, it is important to spend some time with Nabokov’s novel and its ideas about theatre and acting. In a way, Fornés and Vogel were able to create their feminist versions of the teenage girl because they were attentive readers of Nabokov’s Lolita . While borrowing many elements of the novel, they amplified the voice that Nabokov silenced. The Challenges of Adapting Lolita to the Stage Nabokov distrusted theatre and embodied performance. Having written several plays, he preferred drama to a “performance-centered” model of theatre, which he associated with the loss of authorial control.(8) Lolita, My Love (1971)—the ill-fated musical by John Barry and Alan Jay Lerner—and Edward Albee’s Lolita (1981) were both excruciating flops. These stage versions attempt to adapt a novel that purposefully silences its heroine, so they end up with a two-dimensional Lolita, whose main dramatic purpose is to be the object of Humbert’s aesthetic appreciation and “foul lust.”(9) Even Nabokov’s own screenplay, which Kubrick could not use because it was “much too unwieldy” and would have taken “seven hours to run,” does not give us a deeper look into the young girl’s mind or character, though it does lift up some of her sass and wit, which the novel only hints at.(10) It is tempting to conclude then that Lolita is simply a book that resists theatrical adaptation. Nabokov has almost nothing positive to say about the art of theatre in Lolita , lumping it together with cinema and associating both with deceit, vulgar commercialism, and sexual exploitation. Clare Quilty, the “clearly guilty” character, for example, is both a hack playwright and pornographer. He first lures Dolly by casting her in his play The Enchanted Hunters and then tries to persuade her to perform in his blue films at Duk Duk Ranch. Despite Nabokov’s mistrust of mimetic theatre, theatre also figures as a space for self-determination and embodied knowledge in Lolita —his adolescent protagonist begins to develop her agency, voice, and defiance of Humbert while performing in theatre at school. Representing Girlhood in the Theatre While girlhood studies have evolved rapidly since the early 1990s, especially through their intersection with performance studies, little attention has been paid to the role that the Lolita myth has played in how girls perform their identities.(11) Fornés’s Lolita in the Garden and Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive are two salient examples of plays inspired by Lolita that spotlight the political and social agency of their female protagonists. While Nabokov’s concern about a real child embodying his female protagonist led him to draw a line between his novel and any kind of adaptation or riff on it in other media, Fornés and Vogel addressed their relationship with visual media head-on by carefully thinking through settings and stagings. In contrast to film, where the camera’s unforgiving demand for realism and close-ups motivates directors to cast underage actors in the role of Lolita, theatre can make do with actors of legal age who can play young. (12) Blanche Baker was twenty-five when Albee’s Lolita opened in New York in 1981, and Caitlin Cohn in her early twenties, when the York Theatre Company debuted a reworked version of the musical Lolita, My Love in New York in 2019.(13) Both performers appeared teen-like on stage. Neither of these conventional adaptations, however, made use of the recent trend that J. Ellen Gainor identifies in her incisive reassessment of Clare Barron’s Dance Nation (2018), namely of adult actors representing adolescence “even as they never try to mask their adulthood.”(14) According to Gainor, this “(re-)enactment of, yet also a distanced perspective on, adolescence may indicate that some broader cultural forces are at play—that we are in a moment of both retrospection and interrogation around girlhood, womanhood, and the relation between them."(15) Indeed, this cultural investigation into the relationship between girlhood and womanhood began during the postwar years (more on this later). Because Nabokov was attached to the idea of medium specificity and saw both theatrical and film adaptations of Lolita in the same light (namely, that they were art works in their own rights, far removed from his novel), he did not recognize the specific temporal potential of theatre to explore female adolescence. In the theatre, we can experience what Matthew Wagner calls “the weighting of the present with the past and the future.”(16) For example, Vogel created the role of Li’l Bit “as a character who is forty-something” who goes back in time to make sense of everything that has happened to her.(17) Fornés’s Lolita in the Garden is a children’s play and the titular role can be performed either by an adult or a child. Catherine Slade and Judy Vargas were double cast. In the production photos, Slade, who was in her twenties, appears more adultlike, while Vargas looks like a child (fig. 1 and fig. 2). If, as Adele Senior argues, “the appearance of children” in performance as “natal, biological and relational beings…demand ethical attention,” then this double-casting reveals Fornés’s awareness of the conditions of a child actor’s labor.(18) The burden of the play’s run does not fall on the shoulders of one child actor. By the time Fornés and Vogel sat down to write their plays, hurricane Lolita had already passed through the globe. Parents had stopped naming their daughters Lolita, so notorious had the novel become, and, in 1959, the citizens of Lolita, Texas, even floated the idea of changing their town’s name. Fornés and Vogel understood that they were dealing not just with Nabokov’s Lolita but with heavily mediatized versions of it (including abysmal attempts at putting the story onto the stage), and so they critically engaged with those transformations. Fornés had started to direct all of the premieres of her plays after 1973, and we can gather a lot of information about the production of Lolita in the Garden from its photos and unpublished script, even though a video recording is not available in the public domain. And, while there have been numerous productions of How I Learned to Drive , including a Broadway premiere in 2022, few directors have followed Vogel’s crucial stage directions that explore the relationship between theatre and other media. In fact, the central scene of How I Learned to Drive presents Vogel’s incisive commentary on the relationship between theatre and photography. It is important to note that Lolita in the Garden and How I Learned to Drive are not adaptations of Lolita in Linda Hutcheon’s definition of the term, namely they do not engage in “an extended intertextual engagement” with Nabokov’s novel.(19) Rather, featuring their own distinct characters and plots, these works respond to Lolita on a deeper level than more conventional adaptations precisely because they do not have to worry about fidelity to the original’s storyline. Each of these plays can be compared to a contrafact , a jazz composition consisting of an original melody superimposed on a recognizable harmonic structure or standard tune.(20) Suzan-Lori Parks once described her Red Letter plays ( In the Blood and Fucking A ) as contrafacts of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter : “Like a contrafact, if you know jazz. You take the chords, and you write your own melody.”(21) While Dolly’s voice is nearly absent from Nabokov’s Lolita , in the plays of Fornés and Vogel, the voice and agency of a young girl take center stage. Both dramatic works contrast the Lolita myth to a different vision of what it means to be a girl—idiosyncratic, defiant, self-determining. Fornés’s Lolita in the Garden is a theatrical attempt to give Nabokov’s heroine back her childhood. Vogel was in part inspired to write How I Learned to Drive as a response to Nabokov, calling her Pulitzer Prize-winning play “ Lolita from Lolita’s point of view.”(22) Both rely on their audiences being “haunted” by the preexisting text of Nabokov’s Lolita and by the cultural script of the Lolita myth.(23) “The Lolita Syndrome” The cultural stereotype of Lolita owes its iconography more to Bert Stern’s notorious poster for Kubrick’s film than to Nabokov’s novel. Stern’s photograph features a blonde fourteen-year-old Sue Lyon peeking over red heart-shaped sunglasses (found nowhere in the novel), with a cherry red lollipop between lips of the same hue. The provocative nature of the poster lies not only in its taunting tagline— “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita ?”—but also in the visual interplay between the signifiers for child and adult, a division that James Kincaid notes “has been at least for the past two hundred years heavily eroticized.”(24) This Lolita dominates visual media today as seen in the performances of pop stars like Katy Perry, Lana Del Rey, and Taylor Swift. Yet this cultural icon is far removed from Nabokov’s Dolly— an auburn-haired, freckled, sooty-lashed tomboy, who is a victim of abuse and rape, but who is also, in Kathryn Bond Stockton’s words, “an agent with sexual motives and motions of her own.”(25) The popularity of the Lolita myth was in part a response to the sweeping socioeconomic changes in the situation of men and women after the Second World War. According to Simone de Beauvoir, there is a historical reason for the “Lolita syndrome,” a term she uses for the invention of the “erotic hoyden” through the gamine charm of “Audrey Hepburn, Françoise Arnoul, Marina Vlady, Leslie Caron and Brigitte Bardot,” as well as dramatic characters such as the almost-eighteen-year-old Catherine from Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge (1955). Beauvoir argues that this “Lolita syndrome” emerged at a time when “social differences between the two sexes diminished” and consequently so did eroticism. (26) As Beauvoir notes, because the “adult woman now inhabits the same world as the man,” the attention of filmmakers, who were predominantly men, turn to the “child woman” who “moves in a universe which he cannot enter.”(27) The “age difference re-establishes between them the distance that seems necessary to desire,” so that “a new Eve” is created by fusing the “green fruit” with the “ femme fatale .”(28) In other words, while the growing economic empowerment of women dampens male desire, the girl-child possesses two interconnected features that attract male filmmakers and consumers. Her underaged status makes her an enticing taboo, while her economic dependency makes her accessible and vulnerable. In Lolita , Humbert is Dolly’s legal guardian and pays for her sexual favors. In How I Learned to Drive , Uncle Peck offers Li’l Bit free driving lessons during which he molests her. The mythmaking of Lolita also involves a fantasy of control and dominance: while the Lolita-figure of the popular imagination is “dangerous so long as she remains untamed,” she is open to “the male to domesticate her.”(29) Thus, she is, in many ways, a figure of conventional femininity. In Beauvoir’s reading, while aesthetically Brigitte Bardot might display many features of the “erotic hoyden,” her behavior on and off screen challenges that stereotype through her spontaneity, her freedom, her frank and earthy sexuality, and, most importantly, her refusal to be cast in one definitive type— “nothing can be read in Bardot’s face.”(30) Thus, the phenomenon of Bardot proves, as Tom Maguire argues in reference to HETPALEIS’s Hamilton Complex, that performance can “have efficacy in disrupting a heteronormative adult male gaze."(31) Even as Nabokov’s Lolita appeared during the postwar boom of the mischievous woman-child, its heroine resists the script of heteropatriarchy. Similarly, both Fornés and Vogel explore and ultimately reject the dominant culture’s desire for a compliant young girl molded by the demands of white heteropatriarchy when they give us their stage versions of Lolita—autonomous, queer, and—in Fornés’s case—also non-white. Before delving into my argument ( why these playwrights respond to Lolita and its influence on popular culture and why embodied performance is central to their responses), it is helpful to keep in mind two interconnected facts: the complex way that Nabokov constructs his adolescent protagonist in Lolita and the contradictory role that theatre plays in this construction. Dolly versus Lolita In American Sweethearts , Ilana Nash explains the popularity of the adolescent girl in terms of her being “a non-person constructed as a foil for adult men…who predominately controlled the production and circulation of popular culture during the twentieth century.”(32) This description of twentieth-century American culture at large also captures the oppressive and transactional relationship between Humbert and his stepdaughter. Nabokov’s Lolita poignantly captures the process of the marginalization and coercion of the adolescent girl, while the Lolita myth becomes an example of what Nash calls an “iconic abstraction representing dominant culture’s desires or nightmares.”(33) Both Beauvoir and Nash discuss this “Lolita” of the public imagination as a kind of abstraction. Indeed, the novel itself presents Lolita as such, when Humbert speaks of her as a figment of his imagination— his “own creation, another fanciful Lolita—perhaps, more real than Lolita.”(34) In this way, the novelistic character Lolita and the pop-cultural figure Lolita can be analyzed as commodities in the Marxian sense of the term. A commodity, as Marx argues, is “an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind” and has “value only because abstract human labor is objectified or materialized in it.”(35) While Lolita is the commodity that satisfies the desires of adult men with significant capital in the novel, there also exists a “real girl” in the book who is performing all the sexual and emotional labor. It speaks to the unfortunate success of Humbert’s sly narrative voice that the name that stuck to his stepdaughter is not the one that she calls herself (Dolly) but rather the romantic moniker he chooses for her (“But in my arms she was always Lolita”).(36) In fact, Humbert is the only character in the novel who refers to her as Lolita, namely the figure of his poetic and erotic imagination. Dolly, by contrast, stands for the “real girl” who appears in the novel through glimpses and traces. Thus, when I refer to the main character of Lolita as Dolly, I join critics and scholars who use this name to describe the girl-child that exists outside of Humbert’s fantasies.(37) As Michael Wood suggests, this Dolly “is what a reading finds.”(38) In other words, the reader of Nabokov’s novel must resist Humbert’s seductive voice and solipsistic visions and search for signs of Dolly. “Only Words to Play With” T he combination of exposing the oppression of the adolescent girl while simultaneously revealing glimpses of her vibrant personality is one reason that, despite its disturbing content (“a pedophile’s playbook,” as one commentator dubbed it ), Lolita has found its main defenders among female readers, including Fornés and Vogel.(39) Indeed, girls and women have always been Lolita ’s most devoted readers, often identifying with its female protagonist, even as some worry that their enjoyment of the novel “makes them complicit” in its representation of coercion and violence.(40) To name a few recent examples, Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of the novel My Dark Vanessa (2020), in which an English teacher preys on his underage student by giving her a copy of Nabokov’s Lolita , spent her adolescence on an online message board dedicated to all things Lolita. In this early Internet community, Russell talked to girls of her age obsessed with the book and to older men who lurked in the comments. In Reading Lolita in Tehran , Azar Nafisi relates how her Iranian female students draw parallels between Dolly’s loss of freedom under Humbert’s abusive guardianship and their own lives under a repressive regime. Stockton reads Dolly as a queer, “quintessential not-yet-straight child,” who resists the heteronormative cultural script that Humbert tries to impose on her.(41) And Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the HBO hit show Girls (2012-2017), calls Lolita one of her favorite novels because of “how fully realized a character Lolita is, despite the fact that we are seeing her through the lens of her stalker.”(42) As many defenders of the novel have pointed out, Lolita ’s narrative architecture and moral puzzle reveal “the true nature of sexual crimes by men against girls and women: in patriarchy, they are silenced.”(43) The good reader should notice this silencing of Dolly’s voice, become appalled at Humbert’s actions (even if taken by his rhetoric at the beginning), and—as the fictional editor John Ray implores—hear “a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita” that Humbert’s “singing violin can conjure up.”(44) What all these moralistic readings of Lolita miss is the novel’s critique of the commodification of young girls in the sexual marketplace. It is not just a matter of condemning one fictional character named Humbert Humbert and becoming a better reader with a heightened capacity for empathy and a burning curiosity about the minds of others. When Nabokov writes that, when it comes to the book cover, there is “one subject” which he is “emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl,” he reveals that he understands that his novel exists in a marketplace where sex sells.(45) Thus, Nabokov’s Lolita focuses on Humbert’s crime of abusing and silencing Dolly. If Humbert stands for the figure of the artist, Lolita asks us: what should we do with the art of creators who have done horrific, unspeakable acts? A timely question. In order to pose this question, Nabokov shapes his novel around the glimpses and traces of Dolly, who struggles to be heard through Humbert’s domineering voice. It is not Nabokov’s intention to give us a nuanced portrayal of a teenage girl. Rather, we are meant to see through Humbert’s manipulation and miss Dolly in her absence. Given the novel’s focus on the absence of its young heroine, it becomes evident why adapting Lolita has been problematic and why Nabokov worried about the afterlife of his book. Since so little is known about Dolly, works that attempt a standard adaptation of the story, such as Albee’s play and Barry and Lerner’s musical, present a superficial Lolita, who is a cross between the fantasies of Humbert and the distortions of popular culture. If, while reading Nabokov’s novel, we can picture the kind of strong woman Dolly might have become had she survived, stage and film adaptations leave little to the imagination. Moreover, the embodied performance of an actor in the role of Lolita, whether on stage or on screen, risks falling into precisely the kind of commercial objectification and sexualization of the adolescent girl, even if played by an actor of legal age, that Nabokov’s novel explicitly denounces. One need only remember the many provocative magazine covers featuring fifteen-year-old Dominique Swain, promoting the release of Adrian Lyne’s controversial Lolita (1997). Throughout Lolita , Nabokov stresses that its story should only be represented in the textual universe of literature and through the novel’s specific reorganization of events, echoing the Russian Formalist notion of the inseparability of form and content.(46) “Idiot, triple idiot! I could have filmed her! I would have had her now with me, before my eyes, in the projection room of my pain and despair!” Humbert laments at one point.(47) His missed opportunity echoes the warning at the heart of Lolita —to transpose its story into visual media and/or embodied performance is to risk slipping into child pornography. Lolita thus depends on “dismediation,” a fruitful term that Martin Harries has coined to signify the “remediation through negation of another medium . ”(48) Nabokov constructs his novel through the dismediation of cinema, photography, theatre (which he often lumps with cinema), and other media that make possible the visual representation and exploitation of young girls. While attempting to control Lolita from spilling into other media, Nabokov explores the dangerous power of language to seduce his audience and the antidotal potential of language to unveil that rhetorical coercion. Literary scholars are thus more likely to argue that the girl-child in Lolita is just a figment of Nabokov’s imagination and that what the reader is engaged with is not real, but just a text,(49) or as Humbert puts it: “Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!”(50) By contrast, theatre and performance studies scholars view texts (even closet dramas and impossible stage directions) as inherently virtual.(51) However problematic or dangerous a text is, it has the potential to be performed and corporealized in the theatre. A text, as John Muse puts it, has the “capacity to generate virtual violence.”(52) Figure 2: Judy Vargas as Lolita in Lolita in the Garden . Courtesy of The Fales Library & Special Collections. “The Theatre Had Taught Her That Trick” Nabokov maintained a lifelong interest in theatre and was aware of its virtuality. In fact, Lolita predicts the rise of virtual reality and the latter medium’s deep ties to theatre.(53) At its core, Lolita is a theatrical novel that interrogates the relationship between imagination, representation, and action. The reader witnesses Humbert go from daydreaming about Dolly to writing down his fantasy to finally enacting it, and this transition from thought to action is rendered in the novel through theatrical and cinematic metaphors. When Humbert reflects on how he managed to masturbate in Dolly’s presence, “with her legs across [his] lap” on the sofa, but without her (in his view) awareness of his onanistic endeavor, he compares the act to the theatrical performance of a magician, a comparison that moves from theatre to virtual reality to cinema: Absolutely no harm done. The conjurer had poured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady’s new white purse; and lo, the purse was intact. Thus had I delicately constructed my ignoble, ardent, sinful dream; and still Lolita was safe—and I was safe; What I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another fanciful Lolita—perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping, encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no will, no consciousness—indeed, no life of her own.(54) By the end of this attempt at justification, Humbert envisions his stepdaughter as a kind of free-floating, virtual avatar (what today we would call a hologram) that presumably has nothing to do with the girl-child Dolly. He goes on to mix theatrical and cinematic metaphors: “The child knew nothing. I had done nothing to her. And nothing prevented me from repeating a performance that affected her as little as if she were a photographic image rippling upon a screen and I a humble hunchback abusing myself in the dark.”(55) Initially, the pairing of the words “repeating” and “performance” point to a theatrical performance, in which Humbert is an actor who “repeats” the same gestures in the presence of an untouched and unaware Dolly-the-spectator, who does not understand what she is seeing. But as the sentence continues and Humbert describes an adult movie theatre, in which he is watching Dolly on screen, it becomes clear that he has a very different kind of “performance” in mind and that Dolly cannot, in fact, be as unaffected by the proceedings as he wants the reader to believe. For whatever cinematic image to appear on a screen, a real person, in this case—a real child—would have to be filmed. Nabokov’s distrust of theatre and cinema is thus connected to his protective view of child and young adolescent actors. As Nicholas Ridout points out (following the work of Bert O. States), child actors pose a particular problem onstage because the audience often worries whether children can give “properly informed consent” and whether they will be “damaged by their appearance on stage.”(56) Such concerns presume childhood innocence— a social and historical construct that has played a significant role in the preservation of white heteropatriarchy, as Robin Bernstein has argued—and are fairly recent in theatre history.(57) As Kristen Hatch has shown in her study of Shirley Temple, from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, audiences took “pleasure in children’s performances” because they accepted childhood innocence as “inviolable.”(58) By the mid-twentieth century, this “inviolable innocence” of children gave way to Freud’s theory of sexuality and to the fear that children were “in danger of being corrupted through contact with the world of adults."(59) Indeed, Nabokov himself once admitted: “If I had a little girl I might want to ban the book, too. Certainly I wouldn’t let her read it.”(60) Despite Nabokov’s public pronouncements, his own novel, published during the mid-century cultural shift in views on childhood, challenges the many myths surrounding the abstract concept of childhood, including innocence, ignorance, and lack of agency. Dolly, as we find out, has explored her sexuality before Humbert and, as Stockton notes, is “queer herself, [s]exually schooled by ‘little Lesbians.’”(61) Nabokov’s paternal attitude toward child actors echoes his prohibitive position in regard to transposing his novel to the stage and to the screen. Although he eventually did allow other artists to adapt Lolita into other media, he considered those works to be artistic creations in their own rights, far removed from his novel. Thus, Nabokov thought Kubrick’s Lolita was excellent but “only a blurred skimpy glimpse of the marvelous picture [he] imagined.”(62) And just like the novel’s depictions of childhood are more complex than Nabokov’s public statements on the matter, so are the novel’s representations of popular culture more astute and realistic than Nabokov’s own expectations. In Lolita , popular culture has already invaded almost every aspect of the characters’ lives in post-war America. There is no going back. Visual media dominate. Humbert is not only an artist but also an adman who earns his living writing perfume advertisements.(63) Dolly is “to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every foul poster.”(64) Humbert reminds her of “some crooner or actor chap” on whom she “has a crush.”(65) He describes himself at one point as “a great big handsome hunk of movieland manhood” and Charlotte, Dolly’s mother, as “a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich.”(66) Hollywood’s reach is everywhere in the novel as is its underbelly—the pornographic industry. The characters exist in a world of commodity fetishism where the “definite social relation between” people “assumes, here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things.”(67) Theatre is not immune to this type of commercialization and alienation. Upon closer examination, however, Nabokov’s attitude toward embodied performance in Lolita turns out to be deeply ambivalent. It is Dolly’s foray into acting, while rehearsing for Quilty’s play The Enchanted Hunters , that eventually leads to her escape. During one of her early attempts to stand up for herself, Humbert remarks: “It was the first time, I think, she spoke spontaneously of her pre-Humbertian childhood; perhaps, the theatre had taught her that trick.”(68) “M imetic imagination,” as Maria Tatar notes, “is less about copying and representing than about making contact and participating”—exactly the kinds of activities a student would embrace in the theatre.(69) The theatre, as I have suggested earlier, has also provided fertile ground for feminist responses to Nabokov’s Lolita. Fornés and Vogel represent different visions of girlhood on stage by contrasting it to the Lolita myth of popular culture, the heteropatriarchal fantasy of the adolescent girl, which is influenced by Humbert’s solipsistic view of Dolly. And the tensions between imagination and action explored in Lolita are amplified on the stage. Fornés Gives Lolita Back Her Voice In the late spring and early summer of 1977, Fornés directed her “ theatre piece with music for children and adults,” Lolita in the Garden , with music by Richard Weinstock and with Catherine Slade and Judy Vargas in the title role at Intar 53 Theatre in New York.(70) This unpublished play features no Humbert character, spotlighting instead Lolita as a little girl. Fornés would represent child abuse in her later play The Conduct of Life (1985), in which a thirty-three-year-old lieutenant kidnaps, terrorizes, and repeatedly rapes a twelve-year-old girl named Nena. In Lolita in the Garden , the focus is on a girl-child before anything bad happens to her. Significantly, she is described as being eleven years old in Fornés’s script (Humbert meets Dolly when she is twelve). Fornés must have read Nabokov’s Lolita with great attention, as she borrows many elements from Lolita —the lyrical name, the fairytale leitmotifs, and the garden imagery—but repurposes them, like in a contrafact, for her own melody, one that reclaims her heroine’s autonomy.(71) The production toured New York in two versions, an English and Spanish one, thereby disposing of Humbert’s exoticizing tendency to call Dolly his “Carmencita”(72) and making Fornés’s fairytale accessible to Spanish-speaking children.(73) Moreover, by casting a young Brown and a young Black girl (Vargas and Slade respectively) in the title role, Fornés challenged the cultural myth of Lolita as “an expression of whiteness.”(74) As the Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan explains, “Lolita” has always meant a very specific kind of femininity— “nubile” and white.(75) According to Givhan, Lolita “was not written within the context of what it meant to be a young black girl” because the “culture does not see black girls as having a fragile, dangerously irresistible beauty.”(76) Instead, the culture marginalizes and “oversexualize[s] black bodies.”(77) By contrast, Fornés centers the young girl of color as the main heroine of her fairytale as both vulnerable and learning to stand up for herself. The garden of the play’s title refers not only to the Garden of Eden, where innocence and temptation co-exist, but also to Charlotte’s garden where Humbert first lays eyes on Dolly. Moreover, the garden is an important metaphor for Dolly’s inner world, which Humbert admits remains inaccessible to him: “I simply did not know a thing about my darling’s mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate—dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions.”(78) It is this inner world of the child that Fornés’s theatre piece explores. And it is appropriate that music plays a crucial role in recovering the young girl’s voice. Toward the end of the novel, Humbert recalls an earlier episode, “soon after her disappearance,” when he looked down from a mountain and heard the “musical vibration” of children at play.(79) He realizes there and then that “the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from [his] side, but the absence of her voice from the concord.”(80) In Lolita in the Garden , the songs of children can now be heard loud and clear. Fornés not only gives Lolita back her childhood by writing a children’s piece in which she is the main speaking character, but also teaches her young spectators the importance of self-determinacy at a time when their parents and pedagogues are telling them what to do. The submission to parental authority is, of course, a necessary part of a child’s development, but it is also the same mechanism by which an abuser might manipulate a child (as Humbert does his stepdaughter). Fornés’s Lolita in the Garden is thus a lesson in how to think for oneself. And theatrical mimesis is a crucial step in this lesson. Set in a magical forest, populated by a talking tree, a flexible flower, and a poet-bear, the play begins with a fairy godmother named Hard granting three wishes to an eleven-year-old girl named Lolita, telling her that she can do whatever she wants and that she does not have to follow anyone’s orders. As Lolita puts it, “I want to do what I want. And I want no one to tell me what to do. And I don’t want to have to do what other people want.”(81) She also tries to stretch the definition of “three wishes,” asking Hard for “a magic prince in silver with rubies and diamonds,” “a white wedding dress so [she] can marry the prince,” and “three girlfriends who are very nice to [her] and don’t take [her] boyfriends away.”(82) But Hard reminds her that she has already used up all her three wishes when she asked for complete autonomy and rejects her desires for romantic clichés. Doing whatever she wants and not listening to anyone’s advice turns out to be a more difficult task than Fornés’s Lolita initially imagined. She learns many things the hard way—that gorging on an unlimited supply of candies, for example, makes her “feel sick and fat.”(83) And as Lolita continues to roam and play in the forest, she begins to want for someone to tell her what to do. In this way, according to Norma Ford, Lolita in the Garden is “an allegory for the responsibility that true freedom demands of us.”(84) It is difficult to gauge how aware the children in the audience were of Nabokov’s Lolita , but the adults in attendance would have picked up on the allusion. As Fornés’s Lolita learns the lesson about how to be a self-determining agent, she does so in a world marked by violence toward women. Echoes of Nabokov’s Lolita can still be heard and conjure up a sense of menace in Fornés’s contrafact, giving it a Brothers Grimm aesthetic. While Nabokov’s Lolita borrows fairytale elements from Alice in Wonderland , The Little Mermaid , and Sleeping Beauty among many others, to hint at how enchantment takes place on the level of language (the inattentive reader might fall under Humbert’s spell), Fornés restores all these magical elements in a fairytale written for children with a female adolescent at its center. When Bear asks Fornés’s Lolita “what” she is, she responds: “A child. I’m a girl.” “Ahhhh. What’s that?” asks the scared Bear. “A human being,” says Lolita.(85) This is a simple exchange but one that reminds us how invisible the humanity of young girls has been throughout the twentieth century. As Nash elucidates, the teen girl suffers a “double enforcement of oppressive representation:” “her femininity makes her more sexually objectified than teen boys in the same narratives, while her youth makes her more ignorant and diminished than grown women.”(86) By contrast, Fornés’s inclusive musical fairytale for the theatre represents the autonomy of the female adolescent by giving her back her voice and her childhood and by reminding the audience of the diversity of girls who can be the main character. Vogel’s Lolita Drives Away from the Dead-End Road Given that Vogel has mentioned on several occasions that How I Learned to Drive was in part inspired by Lolita , it is surprising how little attention has been paid to the connections between the two works aside from the occasional nod to Vogel’s interest in Nabokov’s novel. Vogel develops her own storyline and characters, so the relationship between the novel and the play may seem at first superficial. From Lolita Vogel borrows the car setting, the road motif, the subjects of pedophilia and incest, and the mixture of comedy and pathos. How I Learned to Drive follows the relationship between Li’l Bit and her aunt’s husband, Uncle Peck, from her pre-adolescent years all the way through adulthood. “I hope people are seeing the resonances,” Vogel stated in an interview with Charlie Rose, referring to the echoes between How I Learned to Drive and Lolita .(87) Vogel first read Lolita in high school and kept revisiting it during her student days at Cornell, where there had always been “a huge Nabokov presence,” as “he’d been on the faculty.”(88) While How I Learned to Drive stands on its own, there is another level to this play as a response to Nabokov’s Lolita and to the popular culture that has usurped Lolita into its apparatus of sexualizing children. First, How I Learned to Drive adopts a similar moral and temporal framework. Like Nabokov, Vogel seduces her audience by giving them a charming pedophile, one who might initially gain some of their sympathy, and by manipulating the chronology of the events in order to reveal the problem of succumbing to her seduction. Contrary to Nabokov’s modernist attachment to medium specificity, Vogel’s meticulous stage directions offer directors a roadmap for taking on the contemporary mediatized environment and for exploring theatre’s power in it. As a feminist, Vogel was unnerved by the fact that she felt sympathy for Humbert. Indeed, Vogel’s “relatively benign depiction” of Peck has garnered much attention.(89) Like Nabokov’s Lolita, How I Learned to Drive , in Vogel’s words, “dramatizes the gifts we receive from the people who hurt us.”(90) Like Humbert, Peck falls in love, and that love makes a moral demand on him. If Humbert’s gift to Dolly is “to make her live in the minds of later generations” by writing the manuscript that the reader allegedly holds, then Peck’s gift to Li’l Bit, while less artistic, is more life affirming.(91) By teaching Li’l Bit how to drive like a man (“with confidence—with aggression”(92), Peck not only saves her life, but also empowers her to “reject him and destroy him.”(93) Whether you feel (negative) empathy for Peck or not is ultimately a subjective experience. When How I Learned to Drive premiered in 1997 at the Vineyard Theatre, some critics praised its moral complexity, while others criticized Vogel for not villainizing Peck (David Morse).(94) But How I Learned to Drive is no melodrama. As Joanna Mansbridge has ably argued, Vogel’s play explores “the culture that created Peck.”(95) Significantly, Vogel makes Lil’ Bit the main narrator of How I Learned to Drive , explaining in an interview that, while she “wanted to explore the sadness of her Humbert Humbert in Peck, she didn’t want her Lolita to go down the same dead-end road.”(96) While Nabokov’s “pale, pregnant, beloved, irretrievable Dolly” dies in Gray Star, Alaska, Vogel’s Li’l Bit drives off toward an uncertain but hopeful future.(97) Referencing Cathy Caruth’s work on the delayed temporality of trauma, Ann Pellegrini argues that Vogel’s memory play reenacts “the belatedness of trauma” and the “revision” of memory through Li’l Bit’s use of “piecemeal” narration.(98) Li’l Bit goes back in time and revises the events of the past in order to gain control of them, transcend victimhood, and allow herself to heal. Graley Herren reads these “dramaturgical manipulations” of Li’l Bit as her “coping mechanism.”(99) But Li’l Bit’s narration has another function, beyond that of therapy, which align her with Humbert’s sly handling of words and his use of “retrospective verisimilitude.”(100) The play’s use of nonchronological narration forces the audience to consider at what point the relationship between the two characters becomes uncomfortable and painful for them to watch. As Vogel explains: If you look at the structure of my play, all I’m doing is asking how do you feel about this? We see a girl of seventeen and an older man in a car seat. You think you know how you feel about this relationship? Alright, fine. Now, let’s go back a year earlier. Do you still think you know what you feel about this situation? … The play is a reverse syllogism. It constantly pulls the rug out from under our emotional responses by going back earlier and earlier in time. [101] In this way, How I Learned to Drive is not simply “a drama about an individual family,” but “a way of looking on a microscopic level at how this culture sexualizes children.”(102) When How I Learned to Drive premiered in 1997, the sexualization of children in the media was at the forefront of legal and moral debates. The early nineties saw the scandal of Amy Elizabeth Fisher, branded by the media as “Long Island Lolita,” who, at the age of seventeen, shot and wounded her secret lover’s wife. The murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey took over the news cycle in late December of 1996. Beauty contest photos and videos of the little girl with bleached blonde hair and in full makeup, striking provocative poses, dominated TV screens. As Vogel reminds us, “JonBenét Ramsey was not a fluke.”(103) American consumer culture had been profiting from the sexualization of young girls for a long time, as the Calvin Klein jean ads, featuring fifteen-year-old Brooke Shields from the early 1980s, attest to. It is this mediatized environment (which had also co-opted Nabokov’s Lolita ) that Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive takes on. Vogel’s original script suggests “the notion of slides and projections, which were not used in the New York production of the play.”(104) Nor were any slides or projections employed in the Broadway premiere in the spring of 2022, which featured the original leads—Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse—and where changes in mood and in action were evoked through lighting and the reassembling of set pieces. In my discussion of the play, I look carefully at Vogel’s stage directions, arguing that her version engages in a critical intervention with visual media and that directors miss an important opportunity when they disregard them.(105) In what follows, I analyze Vogel’s stage directions by imagining what a potential production that heeded them could accomplish aesthetically and ethically. Vogel employs dismediation in the theatre—through the negation of pin-up photography—to confront mass culture’s sexualization of young girls. In a culture still dominated by gender violence, misogyny, and mass-produced images of stereotypical femininity, Vogel carves out a space of subversion, resistance, and escape (however temporary) where Li’l Bit can come into her own and write her story. It bears stressing that the role of Li’l Bit “was originally written as a character who is forty-something.”(106) Mary-Louise Parker was thirty-three when she debuted the role at the Vineyard Theatre. Thus, instead of a child actor posing for erotic photos, we witness an adult woman revisiting her past, as she looks back at the girl that she once was. If, as Paul Auslander suggests, “mediatization is a vehicle of the general code in a way that live performance is not (or is no longer),” then How I Learned to Drive acknowledges that both Li’l Bit’s coming of age and its own ontology as a theatrical work take place in a culture where mediatized representations predominate.(107) For example, during the driving lesson, when Peck instills in Li’l Bit the importance of driving aggressively, Vogel’s stage directions indicate that “ it would be nice to have slides of erotic photographs of women and cars ,” including one of “ Li’l Bit with a Bel Air .”(108) Accustomed to screens, the audience’s attention might be split between the images on the slides and the two actors onstage. Yet this set-up aptly reflects the mediatized culture in which young girls grow up. During the photo shoot, which is the central scene of the play, the Playboy aesthetic predominates at the start. Peck takes pictures of the “ nervous but curious thirteen-year-old ” Li’l Bit with a Leica camera, while “ something like Roy Orbison ” plays in the background.(109) Yet even as Peck objectifies Li’l Bit, she pushes back and he, along with the audience, begins to see her in a different light, as a unique, irreplaceable, singular human being. In other words, she resists becoming a commodity. As Peck instructs his niece on how to move her body and what poses to strike, Vogel’s directions recommend that there “ be a slide montage of actual shots of the actor playing Li’l Bit—interspersed with other models à la Playboy, Calvin Klein and Victoriana/ Lewis Carroll’s Alice Liddell .”(110) Unlike Nabokov’s Lolita , How I Learned to Drive does not posit that it is “immune from contamination by, and ontologically different from mediatized forms.”(111) Rather, by recognizing that theatre is a medium among other media and by privileging some mediatized forms over others, Vogel can influence which images of Li’l Bit are aesthetically and ethically effective and which ones are not. When Peck asks Li’l Bit to “arch [her] back” and “throw [her] head back,” the audience sees a “Playboy model in this pose,” and not the actor playing Li’l Bit. Likewise, when Peck asks Li’l Bit to put her hand on her cheek and move her hair back, “[ a ] nother classic Playboy or Vargas ” appears.(112) Evidently, Playboy and Vargas have shaped Peck’s imagination and how he views Li’l Bit. But Li’l Bit does not remain an object of this mass-produced fantasy: she resists it, becoming, to borrow Pellegrini’s turn of phrase, an “active, unruly subject of desire.”(113) When Peck calls Li’l Bit “beautiful,” she looks back at him “ a bit defiantly ” and reminds him that “Aunt Mary is beautiful.”(114) And Li’l Bit rejects Peck’s idea of creating a portfolio of her photos and sending them to Playboy when she turns eighteen. She refuses to become another commodity on the sexual marketplace. Most importantly, interspersed among all the pin-ups are the aleatory photos of Li’l Bit that Peck takes during the shoot in real time. For example, after Peck says “I love you” to Li’l Bit, the directions read: “ Li’l Bit opens her eyes; she is startled. Peck captures the shot. On the screen we see right through her .”(115) There are thus two kinds of images being contrasted in this pivotal scene. There are the sexualized pin-up photos of “aesthetic consumerism,” to which Susan Sontag claims “everyone is now addicted,” and the photos of Li’l Bit that reveal what Roland Barthes calls in Camera Lucida , “ the impossible science of the unique being .”(116) By giving space and time to both kinds of images onstage and by projecting them alongside two unique human beings as they navigate their transgressive relationship, Vogel paradoxically achieves more artistic control over the representations of her characters and the meaning of her play than Nabokov did when he tried to prohibit any visual representation and embodiment of his heroine. And while Vogel dismediates pin-up photography, she allows for photos, in which we see the mature actor playing a teenage Li’l Bit, to supplement the performance of her two actors. Not only is thirteen-year-old Li’l Bit’s wish that her erotic photos never see the light of day respected, but also the photos that we do see projected onstage—that of an older actor performing the memory of the teenage version of her character—serve as a reminder of the passage of time. In this scene, theatre and photography are engaged not so much in competition as in a symbiotic relationship that shines light on Li’l Bit’s mortality. Indeed, as Barthes points out, photography and theatre have much in common, “by way of a singular intermediary”— “by way of Death.”(117) The “first actors,” Barthes reminds us, “separated themselves from the community by playing the role of the Dead: to make oneself up was to designate oneself as a body simultaneously living and dead.”(118) According to Barthes, there are, thus, two kinds of punctums . There is the “unexpected flash” of detail that “sometimes crosses” the field of a photograph.(119) And then there is “Time, the lacerating emphasis of the noeme (‘that-has-been’), its pure representation.”(120) It is this punctum , as a trace of time and a reminder of mortality, that is amplified in the palimpsest photo shoot scene. In a way, these projected photos of the older actor posing as a teenager also function as “surrogation,” which Joseph Roach describes as the “three-sided relationship of memory, performance, and substitution.”(121) Although there are no roles for child actors in Drive , Vogel “strongly recommend[s] casting a young woman who is ‘of legal age,’ that is, twenty-one to twenty-five years old who can look as close to eleven as possible” for the role of the Teenage Greek Chorus.(122) “If the actor is too young,” Vogel explains, “the audience may feel uncomfortable.”(123) The youthful appearance and the young-sounding voice of the Teenage Greek Chorus are necessary for the scene in which the first episode of molestation occurs. In 1962, when Peck holds eleven-year-old Li’l Bit in his lap and shows her how to drive for the first time, the thirty- or forty-something-year-old actor playing Li’l Bit performs the physical actions, while the Teenage Greek Chorus speaks all the lines, standing “apart on stage.”(124) After Peck and the Teenage Greek Chorus exit, Li’l Bit faces the audience and says: “That day was the last day I lived in my body.”(125) This separation of body and voice represents, in David Savran’s words, “the radical alienation from self that results from having been molested.”(126) In this way, Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive creatively employs exactly what Nabokov’s Lolita displays anxiety about—embodied performance—in order to both stage Li’l Bit’s sexual trauma and help her transcend it. Conclusion In the fall of 1959, almost a year after the infamous Halloween episode, Nabokov visited Paris where he witnessed yet another Lolita cosplay. This time it was the twenty-nine-year-old wife of French author Alain Robbe-Grillet—Catherine—who “had dressed herself à la gamine.”(127)Nabokov was not horrified. He was delighted by the “petite, pretty wife, a young actress” who “continued [her] performance the next day” when the two writers met again for lunch.(128) Both men found it hilarious when, after serving everyone else alcohol, the waiter asked Catherine if she would like a Coca-Cola.(129) Reminiscing about this “very funny” episode, Nabokov assumed that the young woman was “pretending to be Lolita” in his “honor.”(130) Perhaps. Or, there might have been something else at play. The Robbe-Grillets were in a consensual sadomasochistic relationship, in which Catherine was the submissive. She enjoyed being “mistaken for a teenager” and being “refused admission to a film for 18.”(131) In any event, Nabokov clearly did not have a problem with age play between consenting adults, even if it involved elements borrowed and repurposed from his novel. On some level, he must have known that, just as Dolly runs away from Humbert and Quilty, so too would his Lolita escape his authorial control. What he opposed was that Lolita contribute to the kind of commodification of young girls that his novel both documents and resists. Despite Nabokov’s admonition, throughout the years, book covers for Lolita have gotten more risqué. And the name of his beloved nymphet has become associated with exactly the kind of exploitation his novel condemns, such as Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous Lolita Express plane. Amid all the misreadings and misappropriations of Nabokov’s Lolita , Fornés and Vogel have stood out as the novel’s most conscientious readers. Their theatrical responses challenge the pervasive Lolita myth of popular culture, explore the relationship between girlhood and womanhood, and present their audiences with alternative versions of the adolescent girl. Fornés’s non-white Lolita is curious, brave, and autonomous. Vogel’s Li’l Bit is witty, resilient, and not defined by her sexual trauma. Many of these characteristics can already be detected in Nabokov’s Dolly, whose fictional fate is that of the deceased muse who will “live in the minds of later generations” in the manuscript written by “HH.”(132) The artist in Nabokov’s literary universe is almost exclusively male.(133) Unless, of course, she is Vivian Darkbloom— the anagram of the author’s own name. By contrast, the protagonists of Fornés and Vogel are unmistakably artistic, writing and making sense of their pasts, presents, and futures. They give us an unforgettable portrait of the artist as a young girl. Still, Fornés and Vogel share Nabokov’s anxiety about representing youthful desire on stage. Although both playwrights show adolescence to be a time of chaos and confusion instead of “an idyll of childhood,” they are aware of the danger of their female protagonists becoming mere “objects of male desire” and capitalist consumption.(134) Reception, after all, is challenging to control. Fornés circumvents the issue by placing her heroine (who can be played by an adult or a child) into the protective environment of a theatre play for children, from which Humbert Humbert has been expelled. The erotic awakening of her Lolita is relatively tame. Vogel assigns an adult to play Li’l Bit at different stages of her life and relies on a childlike voice of another adult to communicate her protagonist’s youngest age. In the twenty-first century, however, there has been “a growing interest in children as both performers and performance makers of experimental work.”(135) Many of these performances are meant to make audiences deeply unconformable and to encourage them to think about the adult-child dynamic (136) The performance of girlhood in the theatre will always be ridden with anxieties and risks. Silencing girls, however, is no longer an ethically viable option. In their Lolita -inspired plays, Fornés and Vogel found several ways that embodied performance could channel the agency of girls during the messy, painful, exhilarating experience of growing up. There are still more to discover. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Simone de Beauvoir, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome (1959), trans. Bernard Fretchman (London: First Four Square Edition, 1962), 20. Alizée, “Moi…Lolita” [“Me… Lolita”], Gourmandises (2000). Produced by Polydor. I’d like to thank Gwendolyn Alker for bringing my attention to Fornés’s unpublished script for Lolita in the Garden and for helping me locate a copy. Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 373-74. Quoted in Graham Vickers, Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov’s Little Girl All Over Again (Chicago: Chicago Review Press , 2008), 131. Take, for example, Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, who is about fifteen years of age. See S. E. Jackson, “Whose Lulu Is It Anyway? Performing through Dramaturgies of Excess,” Theatre Journal 72, no. 1 (2020): 21-7. Vladimir Nabokov, “On a Book Entitled Lolita ,” in The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated , edited with preface, introduction, and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr. (New York: Vintage, 1991), 311-16, quote on 316. For more on Gothic Lolita fashion, see Michelle Liu Carriger, “‘Maiden’s Armor’: Global Gothic Lolita Fashion Communities and Technologies of Girly Counteridentity,” Theatre Survey 60, no. 1 (2019): 122-46. The article points out that, while the Japanese “lolita practitioners eschew all connections to Lolita , Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel,” it is possible to “consider the coincidence of the name as an example of what Anan calls ‘imaginative reconfiguration’” (131). Jonas A. Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). Siggy Frank, Nabokov’s Theatrical Imagination (New York: Cambridge University, 2012), 47. See also Vladimir Nabokov, “Playwriting,” in The Man from the USSR and Other Plays with Two Essays on the Drama , introductions and translations by Dmitri Nabokov (San Diego: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1984), 315-22. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 283. Vladimir Nabokov, Foreword to Lolita: A Screenplay (New York: Vintage, 1997), x-xi. For a survey on the recent scholarship exploring the intersections of girlhood studies and performance studies, see the special issue of Theatre Survey edited by Marlis Schweitzer. Marlis Schweitzer, “From the Editor,” Theatre Survey 60, no. 1 (2019): 1-5. Kubrick cast Sue Lyon when she was fourteen. And Dominique Swain was fifteen at the start of filming for Adrian Lyne’s Lolita (1997). Both films had to change many elements of the novel. As Louis Menand puts it, “you cannot film this story accurately and stay out of prison.” See Louis Menand, “Just Like a Woman: Adrian Lyne’s Lolita Stops Way Short of Pedophilic Perversity,” Slate , August 5, 1998, available at https://slate.com/culture/1998/08/just-like-a-woman.html . For more on the York Theatre Company’s production, see Alisa Zhulina “Teaching Lolita in the Department of Drama,” in Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era , ed. Elena Rakhimova-Sommers (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021), 73-91, at 80-81. When the musical was first tried out in Philadelphia in 1971, Annette Ferra was fifteen. When it was tried out again in Boston, she was replaced by thirteen-year-old Denise Nickerson. Both failed to gain audiences and were heavily criticized by the public and the critics. The age of the performers might have had something to do with the commercial failure. The seventies, after all, witnessed second-wave feminism, which brought attention to issues of sexuality and legal equality. J. Ellen Gainor, “ Dance Nation and Its Representational Challenges,” Modern Drama 63, no. 2 (2020): 173-96, quote on 178. Gainor, “ Dance Nation ,” 178. Matthew Wagner, Shakespeare, Theatre, and Time (New York: Routledge, 2012), 13. Paula Vogel, How I Learned Drive (1997), in The Mammary Plays (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1998), 1-92, quote on 6. Adele Senior, “Beginners On Stage: Arendt, Natality and the Appearance of Children in Contemporary Performance,” Theatre Research International 41, no. 1 (2016): 70-84, quote on 81. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006), 8. Barry Kernfeld, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz , 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Suzan-Lori Parks, “On What Inspired the Red Letter Plays,” available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdaEk3FMRxI . Paula Vogel, interview by Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose , June 19, 1997, available at https://charlierose.com/videos/5709 . Here I am thinking of Marvin Carlson’s definition of “haunting” as it relates to the text: “Indeed, in the relationship between the preexisting dramatic text and its enactment onstage we can already speak of one kind of ‘haunting’ that lies close to the structure of the theatrical experience, in which the physical embodiment of an action that is witnessed in the theatre is an important sense haunted by a preexisting text…” Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 16. James R. Kincaid, Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 6. Kathryn Bond Stockton, The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (Durham, N.C.: 2009), 120. Beauvoir, Brigitte Bardot , 8. “Love can resist familiarity; eroticism cannot.” Ibid., 14. Beauvoir elaborates: “In an age when woman drives a car and speculates on the stock exchange, an age in which she unceremoniously displays her nudity on public beaches, any attempt to revive the vamp and her mystery was out of the question” (10). Ibid. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 8 and 34. According to Beauvoir, Bardot’s performance on screen “assert[s] that one is man’s fellow and equal” and “recognize[s] that between the woman and him there is mutual desire and pleasure” (30). Thus, there is an important difference between the reception of Bardot in France and America. Beauvoir elaborates: “In France, there is still a great deal of emphasis, officially, on women’s dependence upon men. The Americans, who are actually far from having achieved sexual equality in all spheres, but who grant it theoretically, have seen nothing scandalous in the emancipation symbolized by BB. But it is, more than anything else, her frankness that disturbs most of the public and that delights the Americans” (58). Tom Maguire, “Watching Girls Watching: HETPALEIS’s Hamilton Complex ,” Diversity, Representation, and Culture in TYA (ASSITEJ: Cape Town, South Africa, 2021), 46-57. Online. Ilana Nash, American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 3. This collective imagination has been challenged in the twenty-first century with the emergence of plays centered around girlhood by dramatists like Clare Barron, Sarah DeLappe, Julia Jarcho, Ruby Rae Spiegel, and others. See Zhulina, “Teaching Lolita ,” 84. Nash, American Sweethearts , 2. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 62. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy , vol.1 (1867), trans. Ben Fowkes, with introduction by Ernest Mandel (New York: Penguin, 1990), 125 and 129. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 9. This is even true of the author of Lolita himself. Both Nabokov and his wife, Véra, referred to the female protagonist as Lolita no doubt because of how famous that name had become. See, for example, Julian W. Connolly, “Who Was Dolly Haze?” A Reader’s Guide to Nabokov’s Lolita (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 53-66 and Elizabeth Sweeney, “Lolita I Presume; On a Character Entitled ‘Lolita.’” Miranda 3 (2010): 1-12. Interestingly, in Nabokov’s screenplay, the female protagonist is called exclusively “Lolita” by everyone. This could be because, in an audiovisual genre like film, referring to the character by different names would be confusing for the audience. I prefer to use the name “Dolly” because this is how the heroine signs her first name (first in a letter from camp and then in her last letter to Humbert). Michael Wood, The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994), 117. Laura Lippman, “Watching the Detective,” Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , ed. Jenny Minton Quigley (New York: Vintage, 2021), 69-81, quote on 80. Sarah Herbold, “‘Dolorès Disparue’: Reading Misogyny in Lolita ,” Approaches to Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita , ed. Zoran Kuzmanovich and Galya Diment (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008), 134-40, quote on 134. Stockton, The Queer Child , 121. Lena Dunham, “My 10 Favorite Books: Lena Dunham,” New York Times , January 8, 2016, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/t-magazine/lena-dunham-book-list.html . Andre Dubus III, “ Lolita , Chamonix, France, 2018,” in Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , ed. Jenny Minton Quigley (New York: Vintage, 2021), 119-34, quote on 132. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 5. Vladimir Nabokov , Selected Letters, 1940-1977 , ed. Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (New York: Harcourt, 1989), 250. For more on Russian Formalism, see Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, eds., Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays , 2nd ed., trans. and intro Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, with a new intro Gary Saul Morson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2012). Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 231. Martin Harries, “Theater After Film, or Dismediation,” ELH 83, no. 2 (2016): 345-62, quote on 351. Harries discusses dismediation in the context of postwar theatre, which he argues shaped itself through “the dismediation of cinema” by scrutinizing the cinematic spectator, critiquing “mass culture as an unprecedented tool for the production of docile subjects,” and exposing the interpellation of the cinematic apparatus (351) and (354-58). “ Lolita is an incantation, but its conjuring never moves from word to flesh; the brilliance and tragedy of language is that it is only language and therefore useless.” Eric Naiman, Nabokov, Perversely (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 44. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 32. The tension between text and its corporealization through performance is “at the center of contemporary theatre theory.” See Gerald Rabkin, “Is There a Text on This Stage?: Theatre/Authorship/Interpretation,” Performing Arts Journal 9, no. 2/3 (1985): 142-59, quote on 143. See also Daniel Sack, Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage (New York: Routledge, 2017). John H. Muse, “Virtual Theatre, Virtual Spectatorship: On Jonathan Ball’s Clockfire ,” Theater 48, no. 1 (2018): 79-90, quote on 85. The earliest use of the phrase “virtual reality” can be found in Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and Its Double , trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 49. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 62. Ibid. Nicholas Ridout, Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 100. For example, as Robin Bernstein has argued, in the context of American racial projects, the performance of childhood innocence became a “crucial but naturalized element of contests over race and rights.” Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood and Race from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York: New York University, 2011), 2. Kristen Hatch, Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 16. Compare this to the position of colonial Calvinists who thought that children were “ inherently sinful and sexual” and that they had to be taught to reign in their “damnable impulses.” Bernstein, Racial Innocence , 4. Hatch, Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood , 16 and 9. Stacy Schiff, “Véra and Lo,” in Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , ed. Jenny Minton Quigley (New York: Vintage, 2021), 15-31, quote on 28. Schiff is careful to point out, however, that Nabokov said this during a book party in London when he and his publisher feared prosecution. In addition, throughout his life, Nabokov said many contradictory things about the novel and whether children should read it. Stockton, The Queer Child , 121. For the quoted material, see Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita , 133. Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions [1973] (New York: Vintage, 1990), 140. When speculating about how Kubrick’s film would turn out, Nabokov said: “It may turn out to be a lovely morning mist as perceived through mosquito netting, or it may turn out to be the swerves of a scenic drive as felt by the horizontal passenger of an ambulance” (14). Nabokov did not expect Kubrick’s adaptation to be faithful to his original. For an excellent analysis of Humbert as such an ad man, see Jacob Emery, “Humbert Humbert as Mad Man: Art and Advertising in Lolita ,” Studies in the Novel 51, no. 4 (2019): 546-68. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 148. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 39 and 37. Marx, Capital , vol. 1, 165. Ibid., 219. Maria Tatar, Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 13. María Irene Fornés, Lolita in the Garden materials, box 6, folder 7. The Fales Library, New York, NY. Fornés was familiar with Nabokov’s Lolita . Her partner, Susan Sontag, introduced Nabokov in 1964 at his reading at the 92nd Street Y. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 242 and 280. Elisa De La Roche, Teatro Hispano!: Three Major New York Companies (New York: Garland, 1995), 39. Robin Givhan, “Fashion’s Lolita : Fragile, Subversive, and a Paean to White Femininity,” Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , ed. Jenny Minton Quigley (New York: Vintage, 2021), 146-51, quote on 150. Givhan, “Fashion’s Lolita ,” 146. Givhan elaborates further: “Lolita was never a part of me mostly because she was not portrayed as black or brown—like me. She was pale with knobby knees and rosebud lips. She was a character as disconnected from me as Snow White” (149-50). Ibid., 150. Ibid. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 284. Ibid., 308. Ibid. María Irene Fornés, Lolita in the Garden , 3 . Unpublished script courtesy of Katie Gamelli. Fornés, Lolita in the Garden , 4. Ibid., 12. Norma Ford, Notes , Cuban Theater Digital Archive, available at http://ctda.library.miami.edu/writtenwork/1610 . Fornés, Lolita in the Garden , 20. Nash, American Sweethearts, 3. Vogel, Interview with Charlie Rose. Andrea Simakis, “Playwright Paula Vogel Aimed to Write a Reverse Lolita with How I Learned to Drive ,” Cleveland , May 10, 2017, available at https://www.cleveland.com/onstage/2017/03/playwright_paula_vogel_aimed_t.html . Vogel also includes a passage from Lolita in her play Hot ’n’ Throbbing (1995/2000). Graley Herren, “Narrating, Witnessing, and Healing Trauma in Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive ,” Modern Drama 53, no. 1 (2010): 103-14, quote on 103. Vogel, interview by Holmberg. In her review of Mark Brokaw’s production at the Vineyard Theatre, Jill Dolan writes that How I Learned to Drive is about “how our growth is built on loss.” Jill Dolan, review of How I Learned to Drive , Theatre Journal 50, no.1 (1998): 127-28, quote on 128. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 309. Vogel, Drive , 50. Vogel, interview by Holmberg. Joanna Mansbridge, Paula Vogel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 123-45, especially 144-45. Ibid., 145. Simakis, “Playwright Paula Vogel.” Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 316. Ann Pellegrini, “Staging Sexual Injury: How I Learned to Drive ,” Critical Theory and Performance , rev. and enlarged ed., ed. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 413-31, quote on 416 and 415. Herren, “Narrating, Witnessing,” 108. Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 71. Vogel, interview by Holmberg. Ibid. Ibid. Paula Vogel, “Notes on the New York Production,” How I Learned to Drive (New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1998), 7. Here I am inspired by Marvin Carlson’s idea that theater practitioners “have long developed their work with an intuitive understanding” of “the concept of supplement,” privileging neither performance nor the written text. This particular “text-performance dynamic” encourages “an adjustment of perception in both directions.” Marvin Carlson, “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?” Theatre Journal 37, no.1 (1985): 5-11, quote on 11. Vogel, How I Learned to Drive , 6. Paul Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture , 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 5. Vogel, How I Learned to Drive , 46. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 62. Auslander, Liveness, 5. Vogel, How I Learned to Drive , 63. Pellegrini, “Staging Sexual Injury,” 422. Vogel, How I Learned to Drive , 63. Ibid., 66. Susan Sontag, On Photography (1970, (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 24. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill & Wang, 2010), 71. Barthes, Camera Lucida , 31. Ibid. Ibid., 96 Ibid. Joseph R. Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University, 1996), 2. Vogel, How I Learned to Drive , 4. Ibid. Compare this to Jennifer Haley, author of The Nether (2013), who recommends that a “prepubescent girl” play the nine-year-old Iris. Citing Bert O. States, Haley explains that the “child actor takes the audience out of the play,” so that the “audience is assured nothing awful will be enacted upon the child.” Presumably this happens because, taken out of the play, the audience knows that there are laws in place that would protect the child actor. Jennifer Haley, The Nether (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2015), 74. Vogel, How I Learned to Drive , 88. Ibid., 90. David Savran, “Driving Ms. Vogel,” American Theatre 15, no. 8 (1998): 16-19 and 96-106, quote on 17. Nabokov, Strong Opinions , 224. Ibid., 224. Ibid. Ibid. David Sexton, “Newlight on Dark Secrets,” The Standard , April 5, 2012, available at https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/newlight-on-dark-secrets-7383257.html . Nabokov, Annotated Lolita , 306. See Alisa Zhulina, “Queen Sacrifice: The Feminine Figure of Power and Nabokov’s Strategy of Loss,” in Nabokov’s Women: The Silent Sisterhood of Textual Nomads , ed. Elena Rakhimova-Sommers ( Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 19-36. Maguire, “Watching Girls Watching,” online. Senior, “Beginners on Stage,” 21. For a survey of such recent works see Senior, “Beginners on Stage,” 71-72. For example, the Swiss theatre director Milo Rau cast children and teenagers between the ages of eight and thirteen in his Five Easy Pieces (2016) to enact the story of Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux, who raped, tortured, and killed children and young girls. Bibliography Alizée, “Moi…Lolita” [“Me… Lolita”]. Gourmandises. London: Polydor Records, 2000. Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double . Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Press, 1958. Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture . 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Barish, Jonas A. The Antitheatrical Prejudice . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography . New York: Hill & Wang, 2010. Beauvoir, Simone de. Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome (1959). Translated by Bernard Fretchman. London: First Square Edition, 1962. Bernstein, Robin. Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood and Race from Slavery to Civil Rights . New York: New York University, 2011. Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. ---. “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?” Theatre Journal 37, no.1 (1985): 5-11. Carriger, Michelle Liu. “‘Maiden’s Armor’: Global Gothic Lolita Fashion Communities and Technologies of Girly Counteridentity,” Theatre Survey 60, no. 1 (2019): 122-46. Connolly, Julian W. “Who Was Dolly Haze?” In A Reader’s Guide to Nabokov’s Lolita , 53-66. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009. Dolan, Jill. Review of How I Learned to Drive . Theatre Journal 50, no.1 (1998): 127-28. Dubus, Andre III. “ Lolita , Chamonix, France, 2018.” In Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , edited by Jenny Minton Quigley, 119-34. New York: Vintage, 2021. Dunham, Lena. “My 10 Favorite Books: Lena Dunham.” New York Times , January 8, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/t-magazine/lena-dunham-book-list.html . Emery, Jacob. “Humbert Humbert as Mad Man: Art and Advertising in Lolita ,” Studies in the Novel 51, no. 4 (2019): 546-68. Ford, Norma. Notes . Cuban Theater Digital Archive. https://ctda.library.miami.edu/writtenwork/1610 . Fornés, María Irene. Lolita in the Garden. Unpublished script courtesy of Katie Gamelli. --. Lolita in the Garden materials. Box 6, folder 7. The Fales Library, New York, NY. Frank, Siggy. Nabokov’s Theatrical Imagination . New York: Cambridge University, 2012. Gainor, Ellen J. “ Dance Nation and Its Representational Challenges,” Modern Drama 63, no. 2 (2020): 173-96. Givhan, Robin. “Fashion’s Lolita : Fragile, Subversive, and a Paean to White Femininity.” In Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , edited by Jenny Minton Quigley, 146-51. New York: Vintage, 2021. Haley, Jennifer. The Nether . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015. Harries, Martin. “Theater After Film, or Dismediation.” ELH 83, no. 2 (2016): 345-62. Hatch, Kristen. Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014. Herbold, Sarah. “‘Dolorès Disparue’: Reading Misogyny in Lolita .” In Approaches to Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita , edited by Zoran Kuzmanovich and Galya Diment, 134-40. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2008. Herren, Graley. “Narrating, Witnessing, and Healing Trauma in Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive .” Modern Drama 53, no. 1 (2010): 103-14. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation . Hoboken: CRC Press, 2006. Jackson, S. E. “Whose Lulu Is It Anyway? Performing through Dramaturgies of Excess,” Theatre Journal 72, no. 1 (2020): 21-7. Kernfeld, Barry, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz . 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Kincaid, James R. Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture . New York: Routledge, 1992. Lemon, Lee T and Marion J. Reis, eds. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays . 2nd ed. Translated by and introduction by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis. With a new introduction by Gary Saul Morson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2012. Lippman, Laura. “Watching the Detective.” In Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , edited by Jenny Minton Quigley, 69-81. New York: Vintage, 2021. Maguire, Tom. “Watching Girls Watching: HETPALEIS’s Hamilton Complex .” Diversity, Representation, and Culture in TYA. ASSITEJ: Cape Town, South Africa, 2021. 46-57. Mansbridge, Joanna. Paula Vogel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy , vol.1 (1867). Translated by Ben Fowkes. Introduction by Ernest Mandel. New York: Penguin, 1990. Menand, Louis. “Just Like a Woman.” Slate, August 5, 1998. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/1998/08/just_like_a_woman.html . Muse, John H. “Virtual Theatre, Virtual Spectatorship: On Jonathan Ball’s Clockfire .” Theater 48, no. 1 (2018): 79-90. Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita . Revised and updated edition. Edited by Alfred Appel Jr. New York: Vintage International, 1991. ---. Lolita: A Screenplay . New York: Vintage, 1997. ---. “Playwriting.” In The Man from the USSR and Other Plays with Two Essays on the Drama , introductions and translations by Dmitri Nabokov, 315-22. San Diego: Bruccoli Clark, 1984. ---. Selected Letters, 1940-1977 . Edited by Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew Joseph Bruccoli. San Diego: Harcourt, 1989. ---. Strong Opinions (1973). New York: Vintage, 1990. Naiman, Eric. Nabokov, Perversely . Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 2010. Nash, Ilana. American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Parks, Suzan-Lori. “On What Inspired the Red Letter Plays.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdaEk3FMRxI . Pellegrini, Ann. “Staging Sexual Injury: How I Learned to Drive .” In Critical Theory and Performance , revised and enlarged edition, edited by Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach, 413-31. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Rabkin, Gerald. “Is There a Text on This Stage?: Theatre/Authorship/Interpretation.” Performing Arts Journal 9, no. 2/3 (1985): 142-59. Ridout, Nicholas. Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Roach, Joseph R. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance . New York: Columbia University, 1996. Roche, Elisa de la. Teatro Hispano!: Three Major New York Companies . New York: Garland, 1995. Sack, Daniel. Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage . New York: Routledge, 2017. Savran, David. “Driving Ms. Vogel.” American Theatre 15, no. 8 (1998): 16-19 and 96-106. Senior, Adele. “Beginners On Stage: Arendt, Natality and the Appearance of Children in Contemporary Performance.” Theatre Research International 41, no. 1 (2016): 70-84. Sexton, David. “Newlight on Dark Secrets.” The Standard , April 5, 2012. https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/newlight-on-dark-secrets-7383257.html . Schiff, Stacy. “Véra and Lo.” In Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century , edited by Jenny Minton Quigley, 15-31. New York: Vintage, 2021. Schweitzer, Marlis. “From the Editor.” Theatre Survey 60, no. 1 (2019): 1-5. Simakis, Andrea. “Playwright Paula Vogel Aimed to Write a Reverse Lolita with How I Learned to Drive .” Cleveland , May 10, 2017. https://www.cleveland.com/onstage/2017/03/playwright_paula_vogel_aimed_t.html Sontag, Susan. On Photography (1977). New York: Anchor Books, 1990. Stockton, Kathryn Bond. The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century . Durham, NC: 2009. Sweeney, Elizabeth. “Lolita, I Presume; On a Character Entitled ‘Lolita’.” Miranda 3 (2010): 1- 12. Tatar, Maria. Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood . New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Vickers, Graham. Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov’s Little Girl All Over Again. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2008. Vogel, Paula. How I Learned to Drive. Revised Edition. New York: Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1998. ---. How I Learned to Drive (1997). In The Mammary Plays , 1-92. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1998. ---. Interview by Arthur Holmberg. “Through the Eyes of Lolita.” American Repertory Theater, November 17, 2009. https://americanrepertorytheater.org/media/through-the-eyes-of-lolita/ . ---. Interview by Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose , June 19, 1997. https://charlierose.com/videos/5709 . Wagner, Matthew. Shakespeare, Theatre, and Time. New York: Routledge, 2012. Wood, Michael. The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction . London: Chatto & Windus, 1994. Zhulina, Alisa. “Queen Sacrifice: The Feminine Figure of Power and Nabokov’s Strategy of Loss.” In Nabokov’s Women: The Silent Sisterhood of Textual Nomads , edited by Elena Rakhimova-Sommers , 19-36. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. ---. “Teaching Lolita in the Department of Drama.” In Teaching Nabokov’s Lolita in the #MeToo Era, edited by Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, 73-91. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021. Footnotes About The Author(s) ALISA ZHULINA is an Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Drama at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She is the author of Theater of Capital: Modern Drama and Economic Life (Northwestern University Press, 2024). Her articles and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in MLN , Modern Drama , Modernism/modernity , Theatre Journal , Theatre Survey , Performance Research , and several edited volumes. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Kirsten Lee Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 38 2 Visit Journal Homepage W. E. B. Du Bois’s Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement in Harlem and Beyond Kirsten Lee By Published on May 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF W. E. B. Du Bois is often recognized as a pioneering supporter of Harlem Renaissance theatre, particularly for his involvement with the Krigwa Players at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL). Committed to the development of a “real Negro theatre,” as he called it, Du Bois’s work with the Krigwa Players brought him into close contact with amateur and professional African American playwrights, dramaturgs, and performers. 1 Du Bois’s involvement with the Krigwa Players of Harlem represents only one facet of his work with African American theatre in the 1920s. A more expansive view of Du Bois’s involvement with theatre during the Harlem Renaissance would show how he collaborated with Black community theatres outside of Manhattan. Indeed, part of the Harlem Krigwa Players’ interpretation of Negro life celebrated Black migrations throughout the United States, illustrated by the fact that “Persons from 27 states have enrolled in Krigwa,” according to Du Bois on January 1, 1926. 2 As this article argues, Du Bois tried to represent and facilitate a broader movement promoting Black theatre grounded in Harlem but not limited to there. Ultimately, tracking the Krigwa Players’ impact inspiring Black theatre-making during the interwar period restores to view drama’slongstanding importance in African American communities. Du Bois always saw the growth of Black theatre as a national project that would rely on and speak to “Negro districts” across the United States. 3 These “Negro districts,” Du Bois understood, were cityscapes shaped by the population flows summarized as the Great Migration. Though Du Bois argued that “The Negro [was] already in the theatre and [had] been there for a long time,” he lamented that performance for “mainly a white audience” expecting “a minstrel, comedian, singer” was “the norm for the black actor” in the United States.” 4 Under such circumstances Du Bois insisted that “a Negro audience desiring to see its own life depicted by its own writers and actors” was the foundation for the “new Negro theatre” capable of contesting the racist stereotyping on display in American performance traditions. 5 For Du Bois, “Negro districts” would prove essential to provide both the audience and the artists, for Du Bois, and thus to transformation of American theatre. Black theatre’s growth in these decades was the direct beneficiary of such migrations and emerging cityscapes, which brought artists from across the United States and the world into dense urban communities. Though we may be tempted to think of the Great Migration showing up in African American plays of a slightly later period, associated with works like James Baldwin’s Amen Corner (1954), Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), and August Wilson’s The Century Cycle (1982-2005), Du Bois’s stewardship of the Little Negro Theatre movement provides an earlier example of the Great Migration’s impact on African American drama. While Baldwin, Hansberry, and Wilson contend with the cultural transformations and consequences of the Great Migration in African American communities through playwriting, Du Bois’s work within the Little Negro Theatre movement provides an example of African Americans experimenting with theatre-making during the Great Migration’s heights. Studying Krigwa in Harlem and beyond shows that Du Bois saw the Great Migration and its émigrés as critical to the national development of African American theatre. Figure 1. “135th Street, all Negro cast drama,” ca. 1925. Image used with permission of the New York Public Library Archives, the New York Public Library. Figure 2. “135th Street, all Negro cast drama” ca. 1925. Image used with permission of the New York Public Library Archives, the New York Public Library. In July 1926, Du Bois penned a piece in The Crisis announcing a launch of a project he had been working on for the past three years at the 135 th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Over these three years Du Bois had been working closely with Ernestine Rose, head librarian of the 135 th Street Branch, on the possibility of a “proposed ‘Little Negro Theatre,’” as he wrote on April 17, 1923. 6 Rose proved receptive to the idea from the first moment Du Bois presented it, passing along the request to the library's central administration in May 1923. The NYPL agreed to support the “theatre matter” provided that the Harlem Krigwa Players kept the operation rather small, offering the 135 th Street Branch basement as a potential location (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). 7 By July 1923 local theatre professionals such as Anne Wolter, a former director of Harlem’s Acme Players, were offering their services to Du Bois for the creation of a Negro drama company housed at the 135 th Street Branch. 8 Though Rose wrote to Du Bois in September 1923 suggesting that there was a groundswell of interest in the library’s theatre project, it was not until December 1925 that Du Bois submitted a memorandum to the NYPL outlining the specifics of such an African American theatre. 9 According to his memorandum, Du Bois waited in part because he wanted to be sure that the project would fill a need the existing landscape of New York’s Black theatre scene (Fig. 3). 10 Figure 3. Selection about the Harlem Krigwa Players and subsequent Black theatres from Claude McKay's essay "The Negro Theatre Movement in New York" written for the Federal Writers' Project. Federal Writers' Project Negro Group Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Du Bois’s 1925 memorandum to Rose acknowledged the then-cresting renaissance of African American drama, noting that “We have today, as we did not have previously, a half dozen or more good plays, several Negro dramatists who are writing, and a number of artists and painters who are willing to cooperate.” 11 Critically, though he would lead the Krigwa Players who would call the 135 th Street Branch their home, Du Bois viewed this collaboration with Harlem’s public library as the beginning of a broader and cross-regional “Little Negro Theatre movement.” 12 The ethos of Krigwa, an initialism adapted to transliterate “Crigwa” or “The Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists,” foregrounded Black arts as a foundation of thriving Black communities. 13 In their 1926 handbill announcing their values and plays for the season, the Harlem Krigwa Players introduce the project’s mission, namely to build “in High Harlem, New York City, a Little Theatre which shall be primarily a center where Negro authors before Negro audiences interpret Negro life as depicted by Negro artists.” 14 The Harlem Krigwa Players thus envisioned this urban “center” as the heartbeat of the 135 th Street Branch’s dramatic productions and also the “headquarters in New York” coordinating a network of Black theatre companies across the U.S. 15 In his first public-facing article on the project, the now-famous "'Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre': The Story of a Little Theatre Movement," Du Bois introduced the Krigwa Players as part of a national renaissance in Black theatre. In this 1926 article for the Crisis Du Bois describes the national development of “a new Negro theatre,” which he identifies as the as-yet underdeveloped form of the Renaissance: “Today as the renaissance of art comes among American Negroes, the theatre calls for new birth.” 16 Though Du Bois’s article on the Krigwa Players is often celebrated for its theory of the four principles that should guide “a real Negro theatre,” namely that African Americans should create theatre about us, by us, for us, and near us, he identified the Great Migration as a major precondition for "assembling the “us” in his reference. 17 Inherent in Du Bois’s definition of real Negro theatre is an urban landscape of segregated neighborhoods: “The theatre must be in a Negro neighborhood near the mass of ordinary Negro people.” 18 Through Krigwa the theatre becomes a way to re-imagine Black communities’ relationship to “expressions of racial and spatial violence” within cities as an invitation to make art. 19 In Du Bois’s theory the majority-Black area of a city becomes as important a precondition for theatre-making as Great Migration émigrés themselves. Du Bois's diagnosis of African American theatre of the New Negro era fixates on the markets for dramatic productions in Black urban hubs across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic especially. For Du Bois, newly congregated densities of African Americans across the country, especially in cities being transformed by Great Migration émigrés, made the national growth of Negro theatre possible. Du Bois’s diagnosis of African American theatre of the New Negro era fixates on the markets for dramatic productions in Black urban hubs across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic especially. For Du Bois, the idea of “real Negro theatre” could be made real through a model he would at times call the Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre (or KPLNT) aligned with the principles out Black theatre-making he developed in Harlem. In the 1926 Crisis article, for example, he announces that “A second K. P. L. N. T. is being organized in Washington, D.C.,” expressing hope that “the movement will spread widely” beyond the nation’s capital. 20 He also praises “some excellent groups of coloured amateurs are entertaining colored audiences in Cleveland, in Philadelphia and elsewhere” in the same article. 21 Yet he criticizes Philadelphia and Cleveland “groups of coloured amateurs” for casting Black performers in white-authored plays rather than writing and mounting their own productions. 22 To transform these tendencies, Du Bois suggests that there must be a total overhaul of how Black communities view and make theatre, a transformation only possible in response to “a Negro audience desiring to see its own life depicted by its own writers and actors.” 23 By being on stage or writing plays, Black actors, dramaturgs and playwrights could reconfigure their relationship to the Great Migration by aestheticizing its causes, its consequences, and its cityscapes. Du Bois saw this aestheticization as Krigwa’s major work. Du Bois believed Harlem’s Krigwa Little Negro Theatre would provide a portable model to unite Black creatives around the issue of producing theatre. The Little Negro Theatre model ultimately was meant to stimulate Black art in all its forms. Dedicated to spreading the Little Negro Theatre model beyond Harlem, the Krigwa Players Cabinet encouraged African Americans across the country “to get together a small congenial group of persons who want to do artistic work, who want to write, draw, paint, produce plays, recite, embroider, or work in any other artistic line.” 24 According to a circular written by the Krigwa Players dated January 1, 1926, each local Krigwa band, as they were to be called, would be expected to “each year produce a play, one written by its own members or one of The Crisis prize plays, or any other good play.” 25 In addition to producing an annual play, the 1926 circular encouraged local Krigwa bands to buy books, host poetry readings, curate art exhibits, visit local museums together, and to publish their works in The Crisis . 26 As the 1926 circular emphasized, each local band was to prioritize “meetings of artists who are working at their art” over “formal organization with a lot of officers and points of order.” 27 The Harlem Krigwa Players planned for The Crisis to help these local bands to connect with each other, imagining the magazine as a mediator. 28 For Du Bois and the Krigwa Players, the Litte Negro Theatre model was a way to build a national network of Black artistic communities across the United States through theatre. Their excitement for the nationalization of Black art via theatre motivated the 1926 circular’s hopeful conclusion, asking, “In how many centers can we have next the beginning of a real Krigwa Theatre which will put on a play” by 1927. 29 This hopeful conclusion was more than idealism and declared a commitment to growing Black theatre and drama as a craft. Many Black communities wrote The Crisis in 1926 indicating their interest in forming a local Krigwa band and the corresponding Little Negro Theatre, showing the immediate popularity of Krigwa’s model. Leota A. Bell of Kalamazoo, Michigan, for example, wrote to Du Bois on April 1, 1926 expressing her regrets that she could not at that time organize a local Krigwa band while confirming that she hoped to in the future. 30 That same month Reverend Neol L. J. Gonsalves of Lexington, Virginia wrote to Du Bois indicating that despite his best efforts he could not form a local Krigwa band due to lack of interest. 31 In late April 1926 W. R. Herndon of Denver, Colorado wrote Jessie Fauset at The Crisis regarding local interest in forming a Little Negro Theatre, pending further information “concerning the Krigwa idea and about organization.” 32 In November 1926 the Dixwell Community House of New Haven communicated interest in organizing “a group of players at the Dixwell Community House,” hoping to collaborate with The Crisis to produce plays the magazine publicized. 33 In reply to Du Bois’s recommendations, a Miss Leonora E Pritchett asks for the rules for a local Krigwa band at the Dixwell Community House. 34 Carrie Clifford of the Washington, D.C. Krigwa band wrote to Du Bois on July 12, 1926 asking for help sourcing a play for their debut production. In her letter Clifford took care to mention to Du Bois that the D.C. Krigwa band hoped to generate materials that could be used by other Little Negro Theatres. As Clifford posits, “Some of our members are also writing plays and hope the N.Y. Little Negro Theatre may use some of theirs some future day.” 35 The D.C. Krigwa band’s playwrights epitomized Du Bois’s dream for the Little Negro Theatre model, namely, to grow the development of Black-authored plays performed by Black actors in Black communities. But the D. C. Krigwa band’s ambitions also made real the dream of the Harlem Krigwa Players Cabinet to stimulate cross-regional collaboration among Black playwrights, dramaturgs, and performers. Though he only led the Krigwa Players of Harlem from 1925 to 1927, Du Bois calls the 135 th Street Branch’s Little Negro Theatre a small triumph in “a long wearisome fight” to develop African American drama during the New Negro era. 36 Reflecting on his work in Black theatre in a 1927 draft of an essay titled “The New Negro Theatre,” Du Bois identifies a few select cities confirming as the sites of recent national progress “toward Negro drama.” 37 Three times great pageants of Negro history and aspiration have been given in New York, Washington and Philadelphia, where audiences of perhaps 30,000 saw thousands of colored actors do folk-drama with surprising aptness and simplicity. Then there came in Harlem and spread to other cities companies of colored players in conventional Broadway plays who outside of certain obvious misfits of bloodplot and circumstance rose to heights of real dramatic ability and drew large colored audiences. 38 For Du Bois the genre of folk-drama, often understood to “arise from the community for which it was intended,” was more suited to real Negro theatre because he believed in the importance of Black artistic self-determination in all media. 39 It would not be enough to have “companies of colored players in conventional Broadway plays”: to Du Bois the growth of African American drama required Black creative collaboration and leadership on and offstage. 40 Though the Harlem Krigwa Players are speculated to have disbanded in part due to creative and financial disputes between Du Bois and playwright Eulalie Spence, their impact endured throughout the decade. 41 At the end of the 1920s African Americans were still writing the Harlem Krigwa Players expressing fervent interest in joining “the National Negro Little Theatre movement,” sometimes writing Du Bois personally to ask “Couldnt[sic] we have a little colored theatre here, such as you have in New York.” 42 The Little Negro Theatre model continued to inspire Black communities to democratize the dramatic arts throughout the New Negro Renaissance. Poised at what he thought would be the end of his formal leadership in New Negro theatre, Du Bois celebrates how the Little Negro Theatre movement “has been suspiciously begun” and “leave[s] it with fondest benediction to those better able than [he] to conduct its growth.” 43 He offers the following questions as a method for aligning the priorities of African American theatre with the values of Black artistic self-determination: The future is bright for the Little Theatre idea in Harlem. But the seed sown needs a period of incubation. We must make up our minds to certain things. Is Negro life dramatic and interesting? Do we want profit or art? Will we subordinate ourselves to authority? When these things are settled we can build a real Little Theatre movement.44 Du Bois positions Harlem’s Little Negro Theatre as one of many sites nationally of New Negro era theatre where “the future is bright.” 45 Seeing New Negro theatre as a medium for movement-building irrevocably tied African American drama to the Great Migration and the mass movements that created “Negro districts” across the country. It is these “Negro districts” bustling with Black (im)migrants that Du Bois sees as the critical laboratories of “real Negro theatre.” 46 Krigwa Little Negro Theatres were to be the means of Black creative freedom made real through the work of theatre-making. As Du Bois well understood, building a “real Little Theatre movement” would require Black creative communities united around the issue of artistic and political freedom, committed to the liberatory potential of art rather than a particular medium. 47 A hundred years later, projects like the National Black Theatre and the Black Ensemble Theatre continue to treat theatre-making as movement work and as a medium capable of harnessing “the Liberationist spirit of the past […] as a catalyzing force for our collective creative future.” 48 In such contemporary declarations, the Krigwa ethos lives on. References 1 W. E. B. Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre’: The Story of a Little Theatre Movement,” The Crisis , July 1926, 134. 2 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” Typescript, New York, N.Y., January 1, 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b034-i170 . 3 W. E. B. Du Bois, “In High Harlem, ca. October 5, 1927,” Typescript, New York, N.Y., October 5, 1927, 3, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b208-i040 . 4 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 5 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 6 W. E. B. Du Bois, “Letter to New York Public Library,” Typescript, April 17, 1923, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b022-i296 . 7 Ernestine Rose, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Typescript, April 24, 1923, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b022-i297 ; Ernestine Rose, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Typescript, May 10, 1923, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b022-i301 . 8 Anne Wolter also developed the National Ethiopian Art Theatre, which maintained some correspondence with Du Bois during these years as well, and requested his expertise and oversight. Anne Wolter was white, though she worked closely with many Black collaborators. 9 Ernestine Rose, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Typescript, September 29, 1923, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b022-i303 . 10 W. E. B. Du Bois, “Memorandum to the Librarian of the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library,” Typescript, New York, N.Y., December 18, 1925, 1, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b030-i555 . 11 Du Bois, “Memorandum to the Librarian of the 135 th Street Branch of the New York Public Library,” 1. 12 Du Bois, “Memorandum to the Librarian of the 135 th Street Branch of the New York Public Library,” 1-2. 13 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa prize leaflet,” Typescript, New York, N.Y., 1927, 1, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b039-i276 . 14 “Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre Handbill,” Typescript, New York, N.Y., 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b034-i166 . 15 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” 1. 16 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 17 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 18 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 19 Katherine McKittrick, “Plantation Futures,” Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism , vol. 17, no. 3, 2017, 10. 20 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 136. 21 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 22 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 23 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 24 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” 1. 25 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” 1. 26 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” 1. 27 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” 1. 28 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” 2. 29 Krigwa Players, “Krigwa Circular B,” 2. 30 Leota A. Bell, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Manuscript, April 1, 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b171-i485 . 31 Neol L. J. Gonsalves, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Manuscript, April 19, 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b033-i360 . 32 W. R. Herndon, “Letter to Jessie Fauset,” Manuscript, April 27, 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b033-i503 . 33 B. V. Lawson, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Typescript, November 3, 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b033-i114 . 34 Leanora E. Pritchett, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Manuscript, November 10, 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b033-i116 . 35 Carrie W. Clifford, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Manuscript, July 12, 1926, 1, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b032-i497 . 36 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The New Negro Theatre,” Typescript, New York, N.Y., 1927, 2, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/pageturn/mums312-b215-i129 . 37 Du Bois, “The New Negro Theatre,” 2. 38 Du Bois, “The New Negro Theatre,” 2-3. 39 Helene Keyssar, “Theodore Dreiser’s Dramas: American Folk Drama and Its Limits,” Theatre Journal , vol. 33, no. 3, 1981, 367. 40 Du Bois, “The New Negro Theatre,” 2-3. 41 For more on Du Bois’s dispute with Eulalie Spence, see Kathy A. Perkins, ed., Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950 (Indiana University Press, 1989), 106; New Perspectives Theatre Company, “Eulalie Spence,” accessed January 26, 2026 , https://www.newperspectivestheatre.org/eulalie-spence . For more on Harlem’s Black theatre scene after the Krigwa Players, see Claude McKay, “The Negro Theatre Movement in New York,” Typescript, Federal Writers’ Project New York Negro Group, n.d., Federal Writers’ Project Negro Group Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, accessed January 27, 2026, https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/10563282 . 42 Ardella V. Richardson, “Letter to KRIGWA,” Manuscript, December 26, 1931, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b060-i379 ; Sharlie Norman and Charlotte Van Buren, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Typescript, July 9, 1928, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b044-i150 . For examples of late 1920s correspondence to Du requesting information on the Black theatre movement, see J. W. J. Lovell, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Typescript, February 24, 1929, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b049-i387 ; Mila M. Bray, “Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois,” Manuscript, June 6, 1929, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b047-i333 . 43 Du Bois, “In High Harlem, ca. October 5, 1927,” 1. 44 Du Bois, “In High Harlem, ca. October 5, 1927,” 4-5. 45 Du Bois, “In High Harlem, ca. October 5, 1927,” 4-5. 46 Du Bois, “‘Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre,’” 134. 47 Du Bois, “In High Harlem, ca. October 5, 1927,” 4-5. 48 National Black Theatre, Our History , https://nationalblacktheatre.org/mission/ , accessed 17 Apr. 2026. Footnotes About The Author(s) Kirsten Lee is an Assistant Professor of English at Auburn University, where she specializes in early African American print and material culture, intellectual history, transnationalism, archival poetics, and Black women writers. Her current book project studies the aesthetic relationship between calls for reparations and abolitionism in Black print and manuscript across the long nineteenth century. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in  Early American Literature ,  American Literary History , and  Resources for American Literary Study . Since 2025, she has served as a co-director of the Black Women Diaries Project alongside Dr. Jennifer Putzi of the College of William and Mary. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue 100 Years of Du Bois: “Principles of a Real Negro Theatre” and “Criteria of Negro Art” “One Great and Fine Mode of Expression”: On W. E. B. Du Bois and the Exigencies of Black Drama and Theatre Reflections on Fundamental Principles An Expansive “Us”: W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Pan-Negro” Theatrical Vision W. E. B. Du Bois’s Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement in Harlem and Beyond It Was All a Dream: Shifting Du Boisian Notions in Richard Wesley’s The Talented Tenth Teaching August Wilson in an Age of Democratic Decline: Du Boisian Imperatives and Black Pedagogy Across Campus and Community Debbie with a D Talks Theatre with a T The Wild Duck Picnic at Hanging Rock Last Call: A Play with Cocktails The Dinosaurs The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism. Catherine Burroughs and J. Ellen Gainor, editors. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 652. Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation. Julius B. Fleming Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2022; Pp. 301. The Theatre of Paula Vogel: Practice, Pedagogy, and Influences. Lee Brewer Jones. New York: Methuen Drama, 2023; Pp. 194. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.