By Valeria Orani, Frank Hentschker | A collection of contemporary Italian plays, presented in English. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu New Plays from Italy Volume 4 Valeria Orani, Frank Hentschker Download PDF Italian and American Playwrights Project is curated by Valeria Orani with Martin E. Segal’s Director, Frank Hentschker. The project brought together some of the brightest, most innovative, and most engaging Italian contemporary playwrights, developing their pieces through translation into English. Italian Playwrights Project restarted an artistic dialogue between Italy and the US, adding continuity to an on-off relationship between the two countries for the last decades. This book has been translated thanks to a grant from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. MIMOSA CAMPIRONI - FAMILY GAME (TRANSLATED BY PATRICIA GABORIK) After an earthquake, a man finds his loved ones’ bodies under his home’s rubble. Shocked, he starts to travel without a destination until he finds himself getting drunk at a highway gas station. Someone identifies him as a man who had disappeared several years before. The identity swap causes a series of unforeseeable events which, on the one hand, redeem the man’s spirits through a new love and, on the other, uncover the trauma of a terrible family tragedy. MARIANO DAMMACCO - A GOOD EDUCATION (TRANSLATED BY ADRIANA ROSSETTO) A Good Education tells the story of a woman, an aunt, who, because of the unexpected death of her sister, “inherits” her nephew, who she has to take care of for the first time in her solitary life. The reader finds himself following the adventures of this woman who has to face the hardship of someone having to create a bond, a relationship with a young boy, the last heir of her family. The aunt has to host him in her life, home, and mind. She has to educate him, plan his future, and participate in a young man's upbringing. But will she be suitable for the job? GABRIELE DI LUCA - METROPOLITAN MIRACLES (TRANSLATED BY THOMAS H. SIMPSON) While outside, the sewer, filled with garbage and toxic trash, is flooding the city, causing people to panic and forcing them to remain in their homes; in an old body shop turned kitchen specializing in takeout for people with allergies, are eight characters: Plinio, former star chef now broke; his wife Clara, former dishwasher and social climber; Igor, Clara’s son and Plinio’s step-son, who is affected by a form of emotional disorder; Patty, Plinio’s mother, a declared feminist; Cesare, an aspiring suicide attacker; Mosquito, an aspiring ex-con actor who is forced to do community service; Mohamed, a university professor from Lebanon turned underpaid, overworked rider; and Hope, a mysterious and bizarre dishwasher from Ethiopia who hides a big secret and morally controversial objectives. TATJANA MOTTA - WHITE NIGHT (TRANSLATED BY THOMAS H. SIMPSON ) A woman and a man visit a city for a brief vacation. Their plans are disrupted when they meet the guest, the owner of an apartment they rented online, a stranger who leads them from the city center to its outskirts. EDITED BY FRANK HENTSCHKERWITH VALERIA ORANI Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

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 19, Fall, 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Avignon 78, 2024. Imagining Possible Worlds and Celebrating Multiple Languages and Cultures Published: November 25, 2024 Download Article as PDF By Philippa Wehle Image Credits: Article The Seventy-Eighth Avignon Festival, June 29th to July 21st, 2024, provided audiences with a glorious opportunity to revel in the diversity and blending of artistic languages from Spanish-speaking countries along with a variety of responses - political, social and verbal - to this terrifying moment we all live in. Not just Spanish – this year’s focus language - but many other languages were heard throughout the festival, languages that were translated and projected on walls and screens in the festival venues. “Words” are everywhere as Festival director, Tiago Rodrigues, reminds us. “Words,” along with sounds, gestures, and images to help us live in this world. From Mohamed El Katib’s fascinating La Vie secrète des vieux (The Secret Life of Old People) to Angélica Liddel’s disturbing Dämon, El funeral de Bergman (Dämon, Bergman ’ s funeral), with its chorus of infirm people in wheelchairs, images of aging and references to the end of life seemed present in a number of this year’s official offerings, at least so it seemed to me. Perhaps I was especially tuned into them given my own stage of life, and the mobility issues with which I deal on a daily basis. Dämon . Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage For example, my attempt to attend Katib’s piece was unexpectedly grueling. The Chartreuse in Villeneuve lez Avignon, across the Rhone River from Avignon, is not an easy venue to get to but I wanted to see Mohamed’s latest work. (I had translated and written about his fascinating piece Stadium , about the soccer fans of Lens, France and I was determined to catch his latest documentary theatre work no matter what.) On arrival, I discovered that there were many stairs to climb in order to enter the theatre. This was not going to be possible for me. Finally, someone showed up and claimed he would get me to the theatre. “No problem,” he seemed to say and he took me and my rollator on a lengthy trip to discover some way to enter the theatre. After about 45 minutes of circling the many cloisters and empty halls of the Chartreuse, leading nowhere, another man appeared who said there was no choice but to climb some stairs to get into the theatre! He had to practically pick me up to manage those stairs, but I made it and I was delighted to attend Mohamed’s new play. I tell this story because of what it took an elderly person to finally see this show about old people who welcome end of life’s challenges with humor and gusto. It was inspiring and it was worth it. To create La Vie secrète , Mohamed interviewed a hundred elderly residents in a French nursing home and asked them to openly share their thoughts about and experiences of love, specifically physical, erotic love at their stage of life. He chose seven of these residents to perform on stage. His show takes place in a community room in a nursing home with its parquet floors and parquet-covered blocks of wood. Mohamed is on stage throughout the show, adding comments, helping when needed, and orchestrating as is his want in other documentary theatre pieces. The seven performers - “Senior Citizens” from ages 75 to 102, along with their lovely care giver, Yasmine - 35-years-old - were all perfect. As the play begins, an announcement is made that captures the irreverent sense of humor of the piece: “Given their age, these people might die on the stage. Stay calm. It is better to die on stage than at the Nursing Home.” La Vie secrète des vieux. Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Jacqueline, in her wheelchair - 91 years old and a former Radio/TV anchor - is the first to engage our interest with her feisty delivery and her honesty about the reality of a life without love, physical or otherwise. “I feel like making love every day,” she confesses, covering her mouth as if embarrassed to admit this. She misses the thrill of kissing someone you love on the lips, and the kind of relationship where you truly exist for someone else. The others follow suit. Micheline, Martine, Chille, Jean-Pierre, Annie, et al, openly share their feelings. One confides that she has the same desires as when she was 20. Another charmingly admits that she has had a love/physical relationship with another woman, after having been married to a man, but she insists she is not a lesbian, but “On the other hand …” Along with their stories are sweet moments of sharing and closeness. At one point the stage becomes a ballroom, its walls lit with colored lights and the traditional disco ball hanging from the ceiling, inviting the residents to join in the dance. We watch couples enjoying dancing together and holding each other closely. Photos are taken, as well, not selfies but a group photo of smiling residents. Unfortunately, Georges who was supposed to be part of this group, died during rehearsals at age 101. His urn is touchingly present and tributes are paid to him by the remaining members of La Vie. Spanish artist Angélica Lidell whose controversial, unconventional and scandalous work has been shown to acclaim numerous times at the Avignon Festival, was invited this year to create a new piece in the venerable Cour d’honneur of the papal palace. Dämon, El funeral de Bergman ( Dämon, Bergman’s Funeral ), an imaginary dialogue between herself and Ingmar Bergman and a scathing commentary on the indignities of aging, opened this year’s festival. For Dämon, the entire stage floor is blood-red and the only set pieces are a urinal, a bidet, and a toilet leaning up against the south wall of the Honor Court. Wearing a gauzy, see-through gown, Angélica makes her appearance stage right and strides across the stage to deliver an extraordinary rant against French theater critics seated in the audience who have dared to write negative reviews of her work. An incredible verbal assault, her “humiliations” as she calls them are stinging, to say the least. Calling them out by name and quoting from their reviews, she is alone on stage but for a false pope figure who seems a bit lost as he wanders about. She is joined eventually by a bevy of other performers among them a chorus of twelve old people, singers in wheelchairs or standing behind them in a line. “Today my mirror is the elderly,” Angélica proclaims. “And the image they reflect back to me is terrifying.” The pace picks us as several handsome young men dressed in evening black as if to attend a fancy party, grab the empty wheelchairs and run a frantic race across the stage, pushing the empty chairs as if they have to pick up more elderly before it is too late. They are joined by Angélica, who finds herself on a stretcher, against her will, it seems, but unable to stop them from pushing her across the stage. Equally absorbing but in an entirely different vein, Hécube, pas Hécube ( Hecuba, not Hecuba ) in French with English surtitles, written and directed by Avignon Festival director Tiago Rodrigues, and faultlessly performed by a splendid cast of actors from the Comédie-Française, offered audiences an extraordinary evening at the Boulbon Quarry [Later, this production was performed at a very different but equally spectacular setting, the ancient theatre of Epidauros in Greece. A report on that production appears elsewhere in this issue, as well as a report on a production at the Pilsen Festival]. Hecuba, Not Hecuba. Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage For this modern adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, the set is mostly bare. Forefront, a long table with chairs, another to the rear and a monumental statue of a Dog (or perhaps a She-Wolf) on the left. As the play begins, actors enter carrying their scripts and sit around the table to rehearse for an upcoming performance of Hecuba. They only have two weeks before it opens, but they are in a good mood. They laugh at their mistakes and tease each other. Suddenly the mood changes. The actress playing Hecuba gets up from her chair, puts on her coat and starts to leave the rehearsal. No longer Hecuba, Queen of Troy, whose son was killed by Polymestor, she becomes Nádia, a contemporary mother whose twelve-year old son Otis has run away from the state-run facility for autistic children where he and others have been sorely mistreated. She has only recently learned that these children have been bruised, undernourished and uncared for and the day of the rehearsal is the same day she is due to appear in court to demand justice for her son. As she leaves, the other actors pick up their scripts and move to the table in the rear to continue rehearsing. Soon, however, they begin to join Nádia, playing different roles in her contemporary drama. Her lawyer, Wadia, for example, who helps her prepare to confront the judge, is one of the actresses we met in the rehearsal. Another becomes the Judge and so on, as the time frame between past and present becomes increasingly blurred. There are many thrilling moments in Hecuba, pas Hecuba , but perhaps the most extraordinary features Nádia (Hecuba), seated on the ground on a flowing dark piece of silk, smoke pouring out of the statue, stares into space as she holds the giant paw of the Dog which has broken off from the statue. In this moment, her pain is so unbearable that she is ready to howl like a dog. She is both a contemporary mother mourning the loss of her son and Hecuba grieving the tragic loss of her child. It is a searing image of tragedy, contemporary and ancient. Seven Lessons. Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Sea of silence, by Tamara Cubas from Uruguay introduced audiences to seven women from “the four corners of the world,” seven different regions where the languages spoken are exotic to our ears - Edo, Arabic, Mapuche, Malay, Didxazá, Borum, and many more. They have come together to present a haunting ritual dedicated to the migration of women throughout history. Wearing gossamer, beige-colored tunics, they perform their stories on a stage covered with crystals of salt. As the performance begins, they are sisters huddled together on the ground. The piercing screams and cries they emit as they slowly rise up and stand before us are almost unbearable. Through movement, song, ritual and words they create a series of tableaux. Strange voices and dark shadows accompany them as they march slowly forward, advancing and retreating through the salt. One sings as she moves backwards, wailing at times, in despair, perhaps, that she has not been able to leave her country or her family, for surprisingly these women are not exiles, but potential migrants. At times they stop their relentless march and seated on the ground they share a moment of respite before renewing their extraordinary journey. Wayqeycuna . Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Wayqeycuna , by Tiziano Cruz, from northern Argentina, master of “scenic narratives,” invites us into his special world of performative protest and makes us feel welcome. “Wayqeycuna,” a word meaning “My brothers” in Tiziano’s native language Quechua, is the final part of a trilogy he has dedicated to his family and to all those who have known the injustices of poverty and political machinations. First his sister, who died of neglect in a hospital in Argentina at the age of 18, the second to his mother who also died, and now the final part to his father, Don Manuel Cruz whom he hasn’t seen in twenty-seven years and to his indigenous community in a remote village in the province of Jujuy. For me this was one of the most captivating pieces in the festival. In one of the festival’s smaller venues, on a small stage and for just a little over an hour, Tiziano holds our attention from the moment he rises up out of the dark wearing a pristine white outfit - white top and white trousers - and ringing a bell, to the final moments of rejoicing with him on the stage. His journey is fascinating and beautifully narrated with the help of superb video images projected against the back curtain. Finally, it is time to return home, he tells us, time to explore the notion of reconciliation. We follow Tiziano on an airplane, a train, a bus, walking and in a car as he reaches his village. The place “that holds the murmurs of my childhood.” Home is his indigenous community where he recalls the pain and injustices he has shared with his people. We walk with him and his father up the steep hills. We share the natural beauty of the area and feel the freshness of the air, as they stop to take in the view. A herd of sheep running down the steep mountain in the misty clouds, catches their attention. Father and son, wearing richly appointed serapes in royal blue and deep purple, are caught for a moment in a stunning video. They soon return to a colorful village parade, where the community is raising a glass, and enjoying each other’s company. As if to invite us to the party, Tiziano covers a large table with plates of freshly baked breads in the shapes of animals he and audience members had produced in a 3-hour workshop prior to the show. As Wayqueycuna drew to a close, Tiziano made sure that we all received one of the breads as a farewell gift from the community we had briefly become. The Days Outside. Photo © David Seldes Los dias afuera ( The Days Outside ), a documentary musical by Lola Arias from Argentina, introduces us to an amazing group of cisgender women and transgender people who have been freed from an Argentinian prison and now gather to tell us about their past behind bars and their current struggles to find ways to survive in the outside world. Composed of original songs and dance numbers, the play opens on a multi-purpose set built of scaffolding suggestive perhaps of prison walls that are now open. The actors’ energy is admirable, and their spirit gives us hope, but their freedom seems precarious. How are they surviving? What does the future hold for them? Nacho drives a taxi. His car in full view stage left speaks of possible prosperity. Noelia has become a sex worker, and she advocates for the rights of transpeople while Paula has found a job at an illegal textile factory and another in the group is a care giver. They open with a strong number. Wearing evening gowns, they sing of the terrible conditions they lived with in prison. Other Cumbia songs and catchy dance moves, especially voguing, complete their presentations, enhanced of course by strobe lighting, explosions of color and blasts of bright green, reds and blues, smoke, and a series of tableaux and video images projected on a screen above the set. At times, the stage is overflowing with multiple activities. Every space is used to create scenes of their current lives. Along with a swimming pool on the right, where three of them in bathing suits sip pina coladas; there is a concert performed by an improvised band on a table in the middle of the set, they reconstruct the challenges of life after prison and claim a future. Elizabeth Costello, Sept leçons et cinq contes moraux ( Elizabeth Costello, Seven Lectures and Five Moral Tales), based on the work of J. M. Coetzee, was created and directed by esteemed Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski, who is a well-known figure in the history of the festival. His fascinating play was the final piece in this year’s Honor Court offerings. Elizabeth Costello is a fictional literary character created by Nobel Prize winner and novelist J.M. Coetzee who appears in a number of his writings. She is clearly his alter ego. Polish theater director Krzysztof Warlikowski finds her equally fascinating and has made her the central protagonist of his play. During her fictional life, she gave a number of lectures, attended conferences and was a featured guest at many universities and other important venues. To tell her life’s story and follow her travels, Warikowski has created a set composed of a back wall extending the entire length of the stage which serves as the screen against which magnificent video images are projected throughout the show. Far right is a large bathroom and directly across, stage left, a revolving glass-enclosed structure rather like an exhibit case in a museum. “Rugs” of various colors, patterns and sizes delineate the playing areas where thirteen superb actors embody the key moments in Elizabeth’s long journey. The four-hour play is composed of a series of lectures, conferences and other moments of Costello’s academic life, along with private moments and musings as she moves towards retirement and death. As the play begins, an actor playing Coetzee is answering questions about his character Elizabeth Costello, who is played by different performers as we follow her through her life. One moment, she is lecturing on the impossibility of realism in the modern era and at another discussing a Kafka short story about an ape who learns to behave like a human. Her lectures are static at times, and not always easy to follow but one can’t help but appreciate that the ape she has evoked in her talk about Kafka becomes an important figure in the play. Wearing an ape mask and dressed as a human, he follows Elizabeth around as if to prove her theory. One feels as though one gets to know and appreciate this fictitious woman as one might a colleague in our own lives. Yes, she can be officious at times and her theories are sometimes questionable but her humanity is real. She too has had her share of pain and disappointment. Her relationship with her son John is strong as is her friendship with her friend Paul who has lost a leg in an accident. Thanks to the remarkable video scenes, we follow her closely as if we were there ourselves, especially when she is on a cruise ship in the Antarctic where she has been invited to give talks to the passengers. Her ship is enclosed by icebergs that are collapsing around her and one can only surmise that the experience of lecturing to this company is perhaps a step down from earlier times. In the final scenes of Elizabeth’s life, we find her sitting in the glass cage with her family. She is nearing the end of her life, her grandchildren (adults wearing masks) are seated outside, and her companion, the ape, is there as well. Qui som? Photo © Christophe Raynaud de Lage Who could resist Qui som? (Who are we?), created and performed by artists from the worlds of circus, dance, clowning, music and even ceramics? Who are they? They are the fabulous Franco-Catalan Baro d’evel company and it is their first time at the festival. From start to finish, we are amazed and delighted by their work. Even before the “actual” show starts, we are treated to some whimsical stage business that hints at great things to come. The set is delineated by rows of ceramic clay vases. It seems clear that they are not just décor. They are critical to the show. Even though they are tended by a man who is making sure that they remain pristine, one of them breaks, and this is clearly an accident that must be dealt with. The man brings out clay and the wherewithal to make a new vase on the spot and of course we have to wait for it to dry before we can meet the rest of this wondrous company of twelve, along with their children and a dog. Their stage curtain, if one can call it that, is made of multiple strips of colored plastic that move like shimmering ribbons, forming a movable wall. It moves menacingly forward and back like a huge wave threatening at times to engulf the players, and even the audience. Qui som? is truly “a chaos of perpetual movement,” to quote one of the company members, a non-stop two and one half hours of near-misses, pratfalls and “messy” scenarios that could not be more delightful. One particularly memorable scene takes place on a stage increasingly covered with piles and piles of crushed empty plastic bottles through which the players have to make their way, slipping and sliding and falling again on their way. Mothers . Photo © Marta Gornika Clearly, Avignon 87 was noted for its variety of opportunities to discover new work and new ways of celebrating. Mothers, A Song for Wartime , by Marta Goroneckas from Poland, a Choral work, sung and performed by a choir of Ukrainian, Belarussian and Polish women in the venerable Cour d’honneur, for example, introduced audiences to a community of activist mothers who have known destruction and death, and who show us their strength and commitment. Forever, Immersion dans Café Müller de Pina Bausch , created by the festival’s new “artiste accomplice” Boris Charmatz (recently appointed director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal), offered multiple opportunities for festival goers to attend new choreographic readings of Pina’s mythical show from 1 pm to 8 pm. To come and go as they pleased. With such diverse and compelling pieces as I have described, and there were many more, it seems clear that Avignon 78, was a great success for all. References References About the author(s) Philippa Wehle is a professor emerita of French, drama studies, and literature at Purchase College. She writes widely on contemporary theatre and performance and has translated numerous contemporary French language plays by Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Philippe Minyana, José Pliya, and others. Her current activities include translating contemporary New York theatre productions into French for supertitles. Professor Wehle is a Chevalier in the French Order of Arts and Letters. 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 Between Dark Aesthetics and Repetition: Reflections on the Theatre of the Bulgarian Director Veselka Kuncheva and Her Two Newest Productions Hecuba Provokes Catharsis and Compassion in the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus (W)here comes the sun? Avignon 78, 2024. Imagining Possible Worlds and Celebrating Multiple Languages and Cultures Report from Basel International Theatre Festival in Pilsen 2024 or The Human Beings and Their Place in Society SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL … SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL …SHAKESPEARE AS YOU LIKE IT. IN CRAIOVA, ROMANIA, FOR 30 YEARS NOW Fine art in confined spaces 2024 Report from London and Berlin Berlin’s “Ten Remarkable Productions” Take the Stage in the 61st Berliner Theatertreffen. A Problematic Classic: Lorca’s Bernarda Alba, at Home and Abroad Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch Monk in Pieces by Billy Shebar at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. Meredith Monk – composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist – is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its center, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s own work, and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery. As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and ‘70s, Monk had to fight for recognition and resources. Early reviews in The New York Times were vicious and sexist: “A disgrace to the name of dancing,” wrote one critic, and “so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way,” wrote another. Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, “she, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.” In the film’s final chapters, Monk faces mortality. We see her warily entrust her masterpiece, ATLAS, to director Yuval Sharon and singer Joanna Lynn-Jacobs for a new production at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For 60 years, Monk has directed and performed in all of her music theater works; now she must learn to let go. What will happen to such singular work after she is gone? The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Monk in Pieces Billy Shebar At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This film will be screened on May 28, at 6:10 PM, at The Segal Theatre Center RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. Country USA, Germany, France Language English Running Time 95 minutes Year of Release 2025 About The Film Meredith Monk – composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist – is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its center, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, Monk in Pieces is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s own work, and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery. As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and ‘70s, Monk had to fight for recognition and resources. Early reviews in The New York Times were vicious and sexist: “A disgrace to the name of dancing,” wrote one critic, and “so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way,” wrote another. Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, “she, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.” In the film’s final chapters, Monk faces mortality. We see her warily entrust her masterpiece, ATLAS, to director Yuval Sharon and singer Joanna Lynn-Jacobs for a new production at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. For 60 years, Monk has directed and performed in all of her music theater works; now she must learn to let go. What will happen to such singular work after she is gone? A Zeitgeist Films Release in Association with Kino Lorber About The Artist(s) Billy Shebar is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker known for High Noon on the Waterfront (2022), with John Turturro and Edward Norton, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and was broadcast on TCM and HBO; and Dark Matter (2007), starring Meryl Streep, which won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance. He collaborated with animator Bill Plympton on The New York Times viral web series Trump Bites (2018-2020) and with animator Yoni Goodman on the three-part crime series Doctor’s Orders (2021). Get in touch with the artist(s) info@110thstreet.com and follow them on social media https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/monk-in-pieces,https://monkinpieces.com/ 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

Kellen Hoxworth 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 An Expansive “Us”: W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Pan-Negro” Theatrical Vision Kellen Hoxworth By Published on May 26, 2026 Download Article as PDF In theatre and performance studies, W. E. B. Du Bois’s name has become synonymous with his manifesto for “a real Negro theatre” that is “1. About us ... 2. By us ... 3. For us ... 4. Near us .” 1 Interpreted within the context of the essay’s title, “Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre: The Story of a Little Theatre Movement,” Du Bois’s vision for Black theatre has often been interpreted to be local, topical, and “little” in the form of community theatre. 2 For instance, David Krasner interprets an extensive array of Black American drama, theatre, pageantry, and performance through the lenses provided by Du Bois’s landmark 1903 The Souls of Black Folk. Within this framework, he interprets even Du Bois’s Afro-diasporic pageant The Star of Ethiopia as an example of an “emerging Black Nationalism” among Black Americans. 3 For Krasner, the theorization of “a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness” experienced by “Black folk”—“this always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”—frames Du Bois’s political and aesthetic engagements with Black theatre firmly within the “two-ness” of Black American experience: “an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.” 4 Similar framings of Du Bois’s contributions to Black theatre and performance as focusing primarily on the “peculiar experience” of Black American identity and subjectivity and its role in the formation of the Little Negro Theatre movement across particular, local Black American communities. 5 Yet, recent scholarship on Du Bois’s pageant The Star of Ethiopia emphasizes Du Bois’s Black internationalist political vision in his artistic contributions to the Black theatrical tradition. 6 There are therefore two warring ideals of Du Bois in contemporary scholarship on Black theatre and performance: Du Bois, the Black nationalist, and Du Bois, the pan-Africanist. These two interpretations of Du Bois, however, may be reconciled through closer attention to the continuities between his writings on Black American experience and pan-Africanist history and politics. Indeed, Du Bois’s theatrical projects and his lasting influence on Black theatre makers outlines a significantly more transnational imagining of the “us” at the heart of Black theatre—an expansive “us” that situates the Black American theatre firmly within a wider Black diasporic project and politics. Through his pageant The Star of Ethiopia and his intellectual mentorship of pan-Africanist playwrights Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry, Du Bois manifested an avowedly internationalist, “pan-Negro” theatrical vision that both anticipated and elaborated upon his artistic and political investments in the Little Negro Theatre movement. Du Bois’s investments in theatre and performance drew primarily from his view that the arts should be used for “propaganda”—that is, public pedagogy dedicated to “education and social uplift.” 7 His most direct involvement with performance arose through his interest in the American pageant movement and its mobilization of mass participation in support of public enactments of history. 8 Du Bois produced his signature historical pageant, The Star of Ethiopia , in four cities across the United States in a series of iterations that involved significant revisions and reimaginings of its characters and its symbolism. The earliest iteration dates to 1911, though there is no clear surviving evidence of this earliest draft. 9 The first publicly performed version was staged in New York City in 1913 as part of the Emancipation Exposition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation under the title, The People of the Peoples and Their Gifts to Men . 10 Then, in Washington, D.C., in 1915, Du Bois produced a version under the pageant’s final title, The Star of Ethiopia , in which he transformed the figure of the “Veiled Woman” into the role of “Ethiopia.” 11 Following the 1915 production, Du Bois continued revising the pageant, culminating in additional productions in Philadelphia in 1916 and in Los Angeles in 1925. 12 Though Du Bois continually rewrote his pageant, a consistent plot arc served as its narrative spine: The Star of Ethiopia dramatizes the history of Black peoples beginning in prehistorical Africa, through the rise of Pharaonic Egypt, the arrival of Islam to the African continent, the emergence of the slave trade and the consequent enslavement of Africans, the resistance of the enslaved throughout the Americas through revolts and rebellions, and the eventual emancipation of Black Americans during the Civil War. Beginning with the 1915 production, Du Bois added a set of concluding episodes that stage the post-emancipation discrimination of the Jim Crow era and Black resilience in the face of enduring oppression. 13 As the global sweep of his pageants demonstrate, Du Bois’s vision was not simply to dramatize the history of Black people in the United States but rather, as Du Bois himself wrote in his Autobiography , “The pageant was an attempt to put into dramatic form ... a history of the Negro race.” 14 Here, Du Bois crafted The Star of Ethiopia as a dramatic parallel to his contemporaneously published scholarly text The Negro (1915), which he intended to be “a complete history of the Negro peoples.” 15 Du Bois’s conception of the relationship between Black Americans and “the Negro people” writ large had long been defined by his internationalist and pan-Africanist politics. In his 1897 essay “The Conservation of Races,” he identified “the eight million people of Negro blood in the United States of America” as “the advance guard of the Negro people,” who were connected to “Negro people” throughout the world by “pan-Negroism.” 16 Thus, as Soyica Colbert notes, Du Bois crafted the dramaturgy of The Star of Ethiopia to “present[] an international landscape instead of recounting a local history.” 17 As Krasner further observes, “In The Star of Ethiopia , Du Bois sought a cultural representation of the black diaspora, a collective consciousness among black people centered upon a common history and ancestry.” 18 Prehistoric Africans, ancient Egyptians, Muslims, Christians, animists, African enslavers and enslaved Africans, in Africa and across the Americas — all, for Du Bois, shared a common “pan-Negro” history. Moreover, Du Bois viewed “pan-Negroism” as integral to his vision of “the development of Negro genius, of Negro literature and art, [and] of Negro spirit” which only would be made possible by “Negroes bound and welded together, Negroes inspired by one vast ideal, [who] can work out in its fullness the great message we have for humanity.” 19 Therefore, by charting a world-historical arc that spans from prehistoric Africa to the contemporary United States, Du Bois fashioned “an expansive historical narrative” that promulgated an expansive conception of the Black “us” at the center of his “real Negro theatre.” 20 It is no stretch to connect Du Bois’s pageant to his later theorization of a “Little Negro Theatre.” Indeed, in his autobiography, Du Bois placed The Star of Ethiopia directly alongside his discussion of the Krigwa Players: the pageant ‘The Star of Ethiopia’ ... was an attempt to put into dramatic form for the benefit of large masses of people, a history of the Negro race. It was first attempted in the New York celebration of Emancipation in 1913; it was repeated with magnificent and breath-taking success in Washington with 1,200 participants; it was given again in Philadelphia in 1916; and in Los Angeles in 1924. Finally I attempted a little theatre movement which went far enough to secure for our little group second prize in an international competition in New York. 21 As this passage demonstrates, Du Bois saw his pageant and the Little Negro Theatre movement as part of the same project of “trying to develop Negro art and literature,” and he placed them along the same continuum of theatrical practice. 22 This reflection echoed Du Bois’s earlier 1916 writing about The Star of Ethiopia in which he asserted that “pageantry among colored people is not only possible, but in many ways of unsurpassed beauty and can be made a means of uplift and education and the beginning of a folk drama.” 23 In other words, for Du Bois, the roots of a Little Negro Theatre and its “folk drama” lay in his experiments in pageantry “for the benefit of large masses of people.” As remarkably ambitious theatrical experiments, Du Bois’s several stagings of The Star of Ethiopia anticipated his later vision for a “real Negro theatre” that was “ About ... By .... For ... and Near ” Black people. First and foremost, Du Bois wrote his pageants for Black people as correctives to the omission of Black and African history from the emergent US pageant movement. 24 He also wrote his pageants for Black people so that they might become more involved in the theatrical life of their communities. As Du Bois reflected following the 1916 pageant in Philadelphia, “It seemed to me that it might be possible with such a demonstration to get people interested in the development of Negro drama to teach on the one hand the colored people themselves the meaning of their history and their rich emotional life through a new theatre.” 25 Moreover, by enlisting everyday Black people as performers, Du Bois’s pageants were exercises in drama by Black people that, in keeping with his vision for a Little Negro Theatre, “creat[ed] a community through the process of staging.” 26 His pageants also were performed near Black people , as he staged iterations across the country to bring his dramatization of Black history to different Black communities. His vision of bringing Black pageantry to Black people is perhaps most evident in the 1915 staging in Washington, D.C., at the American League Baseball Park down the road from Howard University, where it drew a predominantly Black audience. 27 Taken together with his dramatization of Black history—itself a theatrical work about Black people in an expansive sense—Du Bois’s The Star of Ethiopia anticipated and fulfilled the “four fundamental principles” that he would later outline for “a real Negro theatre.” 28 Importantly, Du Bois’s foundational contributions to a “Pan-Negro” theatrical vision did not end with The Star of Ethiopia nor with his manifesto for a “Little Negro Theatre.” His role as a friend, teacher, and mentor to two of the most significant Black playwrights of the twentieth century—Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry—ensured that his pan-Africanist dramaturgy and politics endured well after he ceased working in the theatre. Indeed, recent scholarship on Childress and Hansberry has noted Du Bois’s significant role in serving as a pedagogue and model for both playwrights insofar as he both instructed and inspired Childress and Hansberry and their “radical visions.” 29 However, scholarship on Du Bois’s theatrical work has not yet considered the implications of his mentorship as part of his broader contributions to Black theatre and performance. The earliest known acquaintance between Du Bois, Childress, and Hansberry almost certainly occurred in the early 1950s at 53 W. 125 th Street in Harlem, where the Council on African Affairs (CAA), led by Du Bois and Paul Robeson, shared office space with Robeson’s newspaper Freedom , for which Childress and Hansberry were both regular contributing writers. Du Bois used the CAA to organize Black Americans in support of pan-Africanist politics, while he continued publishing pan-Africanist scholarship such as The World and Africa (1946). 30 The influence of Du Bois’s pan-Africanism on Hansberry’s and Childress’s dramaturgy was remarkably direct. The program for Childress’s 1952 pan-Africanist dramatic revue Gold Through the Trees —which Mary Helen Washington identifies as “virtually a textbook of 1950s Harlem leftist politics” and their Black internationalist horizons—explicitly cited Du Bois’s The World and Africa . 31 Around the same time, Childress and Hansberry coauthored the script for “A Cultural Festival in Celebration of Negro History Month” for a celebration of the first anniversary of Freedom . The production starred Childress as the emcee alongside performances by Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Beah Richards (Beulah Richardson), and Harry Belafonte. It opened with a “Nigerian Processional” replete with “African song” and characters identifying themselves as belonging to various African ethnic groups who recounted their journey through the crucible of slavery and their ongoing commitment to pan-Africanist liberation. 32 In many ways, Childress’s Gold Through the Trees and the “Cultural Festival” that she coauthored with Hansberry were continuations of the work initiated by Du Bois in The Star of Ethiopia . They were dramatizations of a “pan-Negro” political and theatrical vision that galvanized the development of Black art to engage and educate local Black communities. Moreover, Du Bois’s mentorship of Childress and Hansberry also took place in actual classrooms. Both Childress and Hansberry enrolled in Du Bois’s course on African history at the Jefferson School of Social Science in 1953. Childress wrote a final paper on the Gold Coast, while Hansberry’s final paper was titled “The Belgian Congo: A Preliminary Report on Its Land, Its History, and Its Peoples.” 33 Through this course, Du Bois created a small community of committed pan-Africanist students, a community that Du Bois further fostered by inviting students from the class to dinner at his home. 34 The relationships formed through Du Bois’s mentorship were lasting. Du Bois sought Childress’s perspective about a novel he was developing in 1955, and Childress cherished a cigarette holder Du Bois bequeathed to her. 35 Both Childress and Hansberry also maintained active relationships with Du Bois and his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois. In April 1953, Childress escorted the Du Boises to a cultural reception in honor of Herbert Aptheker, and three years later, Graham Du Bois advocated for Childress’s Trouble in Mind to be produced by a Black theatre company in Los Angeles. 36 As for Hansberry, Graham Du Bois recalled that she was Du Bois’s “favorite pupil” and that he was “exceedingly fond and proud of her.” 37 For her part, Hansberry was a longtime avid reader of Du Bois’s writing (particularly his 1939 Black Folk Then and Now ), and through his tutelage she deepened her investments in pan-Africanist thought and politics. 38 In 1960, following the incredible Broadway success of Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun , Graham Du Bois sent Hansberry a series of letters in which she expressed “how proud” she was of Hansberry’s theatrical achievements and praised her “dignity and outspoken appearances on television.” 39 Attesting to the Du Boises’ great esteem for her, in February 1964, Hansberry was selected to read Shirley Graham Du Bois’s words at a memorial in honor of W. E. B. Du Bois, which Hansberry prefaced with her own reflections on her departed mentor: It is my privilege this evening to read to you the message to this meeting from Mrs. Shirley Graham Dubois [sic]. But I should first like to make a few remarks of my own. I do not remember when I first heard the name Dubois [sic]. For some Negroes it comes into consciousness so early, so persistently that it is like the spirituals or the blues or discussions of oppression; he was a fact of our culture. People spoke of him as they did the church or the nation. He was an institution in our lives, a bulwark of our culture. I believe that his personality and thought have colored generations of Negro intellectuals, far greater, I think than some of those intellectuals know. And, without a doubt, his ideas have influenced a multitude who do not even know his name. 40 Hansberry was one vector by which Du Bois’s influence extended well beyond his own work as a scholar, political organizer, and theatre maker. For her, “to honor Du Bois [...meant] sustaining his Pan-Africanist and socialist vision”—both within and beyond the theatre. 41 As such, Hansberry interwove Du Boisian politics of Black internationalism in A Raisin in the Sun through the figure of Joseph Asagai. 42 Additionally, Hansberry drew from Du Bois’s lessons in African history in crafting her posthumously staged play on African anticolonial movements, Les Blancs , which included direct references to the research paper she submitted to Du Bois on Belgian colonialism in the Congo. 43 Thus, like Childress’s Gold Through the Trees , Hansberry’s Les Blancs is a testament to the endurance of Du Bois’s theatrical vision. Their collective Black internationalist dramatic output attests to the endurance of Du Bois’s expansive, internationalist vision of Black politics. Taken together with Du Bois’s own pageantry, Childres’s and Hansberry’s pan-African dramas exemplify the ways by which Du Bois’s “pan-Negro” theatrical “ideas have influenced a multitude who do not even know his name.” Moreover, they trace how Du Bois’s pan-Africanist and Black internationalist politics have long served as a central pillar of Black American theatre. Indeed, Du Bois’s “pan-Negro” theatrical vision influenced Black artists well beyond Childress and Hansberry. His distinctive Black internationalist aesthetics and politics may be viewed as the bedrock upon which the Black Arts Movement took root—from Amiri Baraka’s vision for an anti-Eurocentric and avant-garde “Revolutionary Theatre” to Barabara Ann Teer’s ritual theatre. 44 It would be hard to imagine a contemporary Black theatre canon without the foundation laid by Du Bois’s Black internationalist political vision. In this sense, the “ritualizing repair” enacted by Aleshea Harris’s What to Send Up When It Goes Down — which notably is subtitled “A play. A pageant. A ritual. A homegoing celebration” — exemplifies Du Bois’s enduring yet hidden influence on contemporary Black theatre. 45 With its deft combinations of propaganda and community-building and its explicit citation of Du Bois’s pageantry, Harris’s play-pageant-ritual-celebration stages a “little” community drama undergirded by an expansive “pan-Negro,” Black internationalist theatrical vision that remains urgently relevant in confronting the social and political realities of the Global Majority. References 1 W. E. B. Du Bois, “Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre: The Story of a Little Theatre Movement,” The Crisis 32, no. 3 (July 1926): 134-135, at 134. 2 On the Little Theatre movement, see Dorothy Chansky, Composing Ourselves: The Little Theatre Movement and the American Audience (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004). 3 David Krasner, Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre, 1895-1910 (St. Martin’s Press, 1997); David Krasner, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 82. 4 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1903), 3. 5 See, for instance, Ethel Pitts Walker, “Krigwa, a Theatre by, for, and about Black People,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 3 (1988): 347-356; Jonathan Shandell, “The Negro Little Theatre Movement,” in The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre , second edition, ed. Harvey Young (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 103-118. 6 Soyica Diggs Colbert, The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance, and the Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 48-90. Julia A. Walker, Performance and Modernity: Enacting Change on the Globalizing Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 123-135. 7 W. E. B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” The Crisis 32, no. 6 (October 1926): 290-297, at 296; W. E. B. Du Bois, “A Pageant [1915],” in Pamphlets and Leaflets by W. E. B. Du Bois , ed. Herbert Aptheker (Kraus-Thomson, 1986), 151-152, at 151. 8 Walker, Performance and Modernity , 124. 9 Du Bois dates his first draft to 1911, though no version from such an early date is available in his archives. See W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Star of Ethiopia,” The Crisis 11, no. 2 (December 1915): 91. Freda L. Scott argues that an undated version titled The Jewel of Ethiopia: A Masque in—Episodes is this earliest 1911 draft, though there is no clear evidence to substantiate this claim. See Freda L. Scott, “ The Star of Ethiopia : A Contribution Toward the Development of Black Drama and Theater in the Harlem Renaissance,” in The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations , ed. Amritjit Singh, William S. Shiver, and Stanley Brodwin (Garland, 1989), 257-269, at 259. 10 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The National Emancipation Exposition,” The Crisis 7, no. 1 (November 1913): 339-341; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Drama Among Black Folk,” The Crisis 12, no. 4 (August 1916): 169-173, at 171. Attesting to the importance of local site in Du Bois’s dramaturgy, this version concludes with “the All-Mother, formerly the Veiled Woman, no unveiled in her chariot with her dancing brood, and the bust of Lincoln at her side ” (Du Bois, “The National Emancipation Exposition,” 341; italics mine). Notably, Lincoln disappears from the 1915 version and subsequent iterations. 11 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Star of Ethiopia,” The Crisis 11, no. 2 (December 1915): 90-94; “The Star of Ethiopia,” Washington Bee , October 9, 1915, 1; Andrew F. Hilyer, “The Great Pageant,” Washington Bee , October 23, 1915, 1; Scott 261-265. The 1915 Washington, D.C. production has become the most well-documented and studied iteration. See Krasner, A Beautiful Pageant , 81-94; Susan Gillman, Blood Talk: American Race Melodrama and the Culture of the Occult (University of Chicago Press, 2003), 148-199; Colbert, The African American Theatrical Body , 48-90. Julia A. Walker focuses on an early draft of the 1915 production; see Performance and Modernity , 123-135. 12 Du Bois, “The Drama Among Black Folk,” 169; W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Pageant of the Angels,” The Crisis 30, no. 5 (September 1925): 217-218. For an outline of the 1925 Los Angeles pageant, see W. E. B. Du Bois, “‘The Star of Ethiopia’: A Pageant of Negro History by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois,” in Pamphlets and Leaflets by W. E. B. Du Bois , 206-209. 13 “The Star of Ethiopia,” Washington Bee , October 9, 1915, 1; Du Bois, “‘The Star of Ethiopia’: A Pageant of Negro History by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois.” 14 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (Oxford University Press, 2007), 172. 15 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro (Henry Holt, 1915), vi. 16 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races,” in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader , ed. Eric J. Sundquist (Oxford University Press, 1996), 38-47, at 42-43. 17 Soyica Diggs Colbert, The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance, and the Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 48-49. 18 Krasner 82. Walker offers a similar interpretation that “[w]hat thus begins as a specifically African American pageant becomes an expression of global Blackness more generally” (Walker, Performance and Modernity , 125-126). 19 Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races,” 42. 20 Colbert, African American Theatrical Body , 60. 21 Du Bois, Autobiography 172. 22 Du Bois, Autobiography , 172. 23 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Drama Among Black Folk,” 173. 24 Walker, Performance and Modernity , 124-125. 25 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Drama Among Black Folk,” 171. 26 Colbert, African American Theatrical Body , 65. 27 Colbert, African American Theatrical Body , 48. Howard University later purchased the land on which the stadium rested to build what is now Howard University Hospital; my thanks to Joshua Wilde for alerting me to this geography . 28 Du Bois, “Krigwa Players,” 134. 29 Imani Perry, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018); Soyica Diggs Colbert, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry (Yale University Press, 2021); Mary Helen Washington, The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s (Columbia University Press, 2014), 123-164. 30 W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and Africa, in The World and Africa | Color and Democracy , ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–164. 31 Washington 128; Judith E. Smith, “Finding a New Home in Harlem: Alice Childress and the Committee for the Negro in the Arts,” American Studies Faculty Publication Series 14 (2017): 17n21, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/amst_faculty_pubs/14 . 32 Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry, “Negro History Festival, February 29, 1952”; Alice Childress Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Box 45, File 25). This script lists both Hansberry and Childress as coauthors, although the festival program attributes authorship solely to Childress (cf. Freedom on the Anniversary of Its First Year of Publication Presents a Cultural Festival in Celebration of Negro History Month ; Alice Childress Papers, Box 8, File 8). 33 Alice Childress, “Report on the Gold Coast (n.d.)”; Alice Childress Papers, Box 46, File 4; Lorraine Hansberry, “W. E. B. Du Bois Seminar on Africa, April 20, 1953,” Lorraine Hansberry Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Box 1, File 5. Whereas Hansberry’s essay includes a note on the header stating that it was written “For Dr. Du Bois, African History Seminar, Jefferson School, New York City, 1953,” no such indication of the provenance of Childress’s essay survives; nevertheless, it is highly probable that Childress’s Gold Coast essay was written for Du Bois’s course. 34 “Dr. and Mrs. W. E. B. Du Bois invite...” June 8, 1953; Alice Childress Papers, Box 8, File 8. 35 W. E. B. Du Bois, letter to Alice Childress, March 25, 1955; Alice Childress Papers, Box 9, File 16. Alice Childress, interview with Martin Duberman; Alice Childress Papers, Box 11, File 13. 36 W. E. B. Du Bois, letter to Alice Childress, April 20, 1953; Alice Childress Papers, Box 9, File 16; “‘A Milestone on the Road to Truth’: A Cultural Reception in Honor of Dr. Herbert Aptheker, Historian,” Thursday, April 23, [1953], Alice Childress Papers, Schomburg Center, Box 10, File 1; see also Rev. B. C. Robeson, letter to Alice Childress, April 14, 1953, Alice Childress Papers, Box 10, File 1. Mae Henderson [Negro Actors Associated], letter to Alice Childress, May 2, 1956, Alice Childress Papers, Box 10, File 1. 37 Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York University Press, 2008), 18. 38 Judith E. Smith, Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940-1960 (Columbia University Press, 2004), 292, 295. 39 Shirley Graham Du Bois, letter to Lorraine Hansberry, April 15, 1960, Lorraine Hansberry Papers, Schomburg Center, Box 2, File 16. 40 Lorraine Hansberry, “Remarks by Lorraine Hansberry at Memorial Meeting for W. E. B. Du Bois, Carnegie Hall, New York City,” February 29, 1964; Lorraine Hansberry Papers, Schomburg Center, Box 56, File 21. 41 Perry 179. 42 Colbert, The African American Theatrical Body , 27-33. 43 Robert Nemiroff, “A Critical Background,” in Lorraine Hansberry, Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays (Vintage, 1994), 27-35, at 28-29. 44 Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre,” in LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Home: Social Essays (Akashic Books, 2009 [1965]), 199-203; La Donna L. Forsgren, In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement (Northwestern University Press, 2018), 17-36. 43 Isaiah Matthew Wooden, “At the Nexus of Catharsis and Black Healing: Ritualizing Repair in What to Send Up When It Goes Down ,” Theatre Annual 76 (2023): 30-43; Aleshea Harris, “ What to Send Up When It Goes Down: A play. A pageant. A ritual. A homegoing celebration ,” American Theatre 36, no. 4 (2019): 52-65, at 52. Footnotes About The Author(s) Kellen Hoxworth is an assistant professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University at Buffalo – State University of New York, where he is also affiliated with the Department of Africana and American Studies, the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Department of History. His book Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance received an Honorable Mention for the John W. Frick Book Award from the American Theatre & Drama Society. His research has been published in American Quarterly , the Journal of Dramatic Theory & Criticism , Modern Drama , TDR , Theatre Journal , Theatre Survey , and in several edited volumes, and he recently co-edited a special section of TDR on “Blackface Geographies.” He is also a recipient of the Errol Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research for outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and performance studies. 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. 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Paul E. Fallon. Cambridge, Massachusetts 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 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Paul E. Fallon. Cambridge, Massachusetts By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Jay Eddy in Boston Playwrights' Theatre Driving in Circles. Photo: Scornavacca Photography. The 2023-2024 Boston theatre season opened on a down note. After forty years, struggling through the pandemic and refocusing its mission to portray underrepresented voices, New Rep closed. Fortunately, theatre is regenerative, and newer companies are emerging. This compendium provides a snapshot of five of Boston’s independent theatre companies and highlights a representative production from their season. Moonbox Productions Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Sweeney Todd Music and Lyrics by  Stephen Sondheim , Book by  Hugh Wheeler (13 Oct. -5 Nov.) Legally Blonde Music and Lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin, Book by Heather Hach (8 Dec. -31 Dec. ) The Manic Monologues Zachary Burton and Elisa Hofmeister (16 Feb. -25 Feb.) Mermaid Hour David Valdes (26 Apr. -19 May) Boston New Works Festival 2024 (22 Jun.-24 Jun.) Moonbox Productions’ dual vision is to create exceptional theatre using local talent and connect audiences with extraordinary service organizations. Since 2011, Moonbox has staged over twenty productions, each highlighting a local non-profit. Their range is astounding, from mainstage musicals featuring large casts, live orchestras, elaborate sets, exquisite costumes, and exuberant choreography to black box intimacy where actors in street clothes on a bare stage reveal unadorned trials of the human condition. Mermaid Hour fused Moonbox’s range in a gorgeous production of an intimate drama. The arresting set featured bands of fabric swirling in a vortex of sea greens and blues toward the stage floor, where a curvilinear counter, a plinth, and a few stools anchored the unfolding family trials. Vi, a twelve-year-old trans girl, pushes every limit of her age and identity. But the play focuses on her working-class parents, struggling to do right by a child far beyond expectation. Director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary kept the family interactions tight—actors faced each other more than the audience—mirroring the circular set and reinforcing their private struggles. Speakeasy Stage Company Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 POTUS Selina Fillinger (15 Sep. -15 Oct.) The Band’s Visit Music and Lyrics by  David Yazbek , Book by  Itamar Moses (10 Nov.- 17 Dec. ), co-production with The Huntington A Case for the Existence of God Samuel D. Hunter (26 Jan. -18 Feb.) Cost of Living Martina Majok (8 Mar.-30 Mar.) A Strange Loop Michael R. Jackson (26 Apr. - 25 May) Speakeasy’s thirty-third season continued the company’s tradition of reinterpreting recent Broadway successes for a Boston audience. Their exquisite production of the 2022 New York Drama Critic Award-winning, A Case for the Existence of God , portrayed two earnest though flawed men struggling to navigate a world littered with obstacles. Can God exist within a mortgage broker’s cubicle in Twin Falls, Idaho? The two men never left their chairs in the harshly lit, tightly bound set. Quick blackouts indicated passing time and place. They moved closer as each man’s shrinking opportunity drew him to the unlikely other. Under Melinda Lopez’s understated direction, every element shrank until the set literally burst apart, and a case was made for the existence of God. Lyric Stage Boston, Massachusetts 2023-24 Assassins Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by John Weidman (15 Sep.-15 Oct.) The Game’s Afoot Ken Ludwig (10 Nov. -17 Dec. ) Trouble in Mind Alice Childress (12 Jan.-4 Feb.) Thirst Ronán Noone (23 Feb.-17 Mar.) The Drowsy Chaperone Music & Lyrics by Lisa Lambert & Greg Morrison, Book by Bob Martin & Don McKellar (5 Apr.-12 May) Yellow Face , David Henry Hwang (31 May-23 Jun.) Artistic Director Courtney O’Connor celebrated Lyric Stage Boston’s 50th season with a full season of theatrical variety. In honor of the anniversary, the Lyric’s lobby was redecorated with custom wallpaper featuring scenes from notable productions. The Drowsy Chaperone highlighted what this little theatre company does best: make big stage musicals sparkle in an intimate setting. A curmudgeonly theater maven, in the present, spins his angst and his turntable through the prism of a 1920’s-era musical that comes to life in his grungy apartment. Paul Melendy, as Man-in-the-Chair, perfectly maneuvered the transitions from exuberant production numbers to narrative commentary. Each of the fifteen musical characters is a cliché, but the clichés clicked magnificently. The energy whirling around the 244-seat theater saturated the audience with everything we love about musical theatre. Delightful costumes, especially the four-tier swimming suit that unraveled heroine Janet during “Show Off.” Abundant tricks: tap dancing, roller skating, ridiculous incognitos. Impeccable comic timing: I guffawed until my belly ached. Central Square Theater Cambridge, Massachusetts 2023-24 Angels in America, Part 2: Perestroika Tony Kushner (7 Sep. -8 Oct.) The Rocky Horror Show Richard O’Brien (28 Oct.-3 Dec.) Machine Learning Francisco Mendoza (25 Jan.-25 Feb.) Beyond Words Laura Maria Censabella (14 Mar.-14 Apr.) next to normal Brian Yorkey (30 May-23 Jun.) Central Square Theater (CST), under the consistent leadership of Executive Director Catherine Carr Kelly and Artistic Director Lee Mikeska Gardner, continued its focus on exploring social justice, science, and gender politics through theatre by producing five plays with unique perspectives. Beyond Words is a new play, produced in conjunction with Catalyst Collaborative at MIT, that tracks Dr. Irene Pepperberg and her work with Alex, an African Grey parrot, whom she prompts to meaningful communication and problem-solving. Smooth transitions and clever theatrical devices kept the audience engaged in the predictable, happy plot. Shyster scientists fixated on studying apes turn into them. Hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak no-evil muses create a Greek chorus of nay-sayers slow to appreciate Dr. Pepperberg’s remarkable science. A tennis match where Irene served up her findings was particularly satisfying. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre Boston, Massachusetts 2023-24 Fringe Festival 2023-2024 Isabelle Sanatdar Stevens, Brandon Zang, Tina Esper, and Maggie Kearnan (22 Sep. -14 Oct. ) Mr. Parent Melinda Lopez and Maurice Emmanuel Parent (10 Oct. -22 Oct.) Kill The Magistrate Abbey Fenbert (4 Dec.) Driving in Circles Jay Eddy (21 Mar. -6 Apr.) Boston Theater Marathon (5 May) Hoops Eliana Pipes (21 May) Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (BPT) has traditionally produced new plays written by students in Boston University’s MFA in Playwriting Program. This season, Artistic Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian expanded BPT’s focus by representing a wider range of the BU community. She grouped several plays by existing students into the Fringe Festivaland then offered full productions of new work by alumn i and faculty. The result was more opportunities for more voices. Driving in Circles is a new play by BU alum Jay Eddy. Writer, singer, and actor Eddy told their personal story of abuse and healing with more vitality than pathos. The pace was frantic as stand-up comedy. Two backup musicians anchored the action at keyboard and drums, while Jay was everywhere: center stage, in the audience, and bouncing off the highway that curved up and away along the rear wall. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Paul E. Fallon is an architect who spent over thirty years designing housing and healthcare facilities. A commitment to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake became the focus of his first book, Architecture by Moonlight . In 2015-2016, Paul bicycled through each of the 48 contiguous states and asked everyone he met the same question. How Will We Live Tomorrow? became his second book. Returning to Cambridge, MA, Paul continues to write blog essays, plays, and NETIR articles about Boston-area theatre companies. 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.

DeRon S. Williams Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. DeRon S. Williams By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches . Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. Sharrell D. Luckett and Tia M. Shaffer’s Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches is an exceptional addition to the field as it turns the spotlight on “Black/African ritual, processes, and methodologies to acting” (1). Rather than focusing on situating black performers in traditional acting methodologies, Luckett and Shaffer engage performance pedagogy that goes beyond the Euro-American canon through a series of ten essays, which provide a wide array of viewpoints on actor training grounded in Afrocentrism. They conclude with thoughtful commentary from notable practitioners who present insights on working with performers of color and/or performance texts/modes rooted in black culture. In the introduction, Luckett and Shaffer grapple with the origins of theatre and performance practices. They acknowledge that most U.S. acting programs operate from the perspective that theatre started with the Greeks; however, they point to evidence suggesting that many humans on the continent of Africa participated in theatrically driven rituals earlier. They then emphasize the book’s overall purpose, which is to: “1) honor and rightfully identify Blacks as central co-creators of acting and directing theory by filling the perceived void of Black acting theorists, 2) uplift, honor, and provide culturally relevant frameworks for Black people who are pursuing careers in acting, 3) provide diverse methodologies for actors and teachers of all races and cultures to utilize, and 4) provide diverse methodologies for actors and practitioners’ labor in social justice issues and activism” (2). Luckett and Shaffer subsequently chart the book’s overall structure of “Offerings” instead of chapters, as they feel “this term is more appropriate to our alignment with Black/African customs and culture, as the notion of giving is innately in the ‘fiber of our being’” (5). The first section of the book, “Methods of Social Activism,” concentrates on approaches that motivate societal change with and in largely black/African American communities with primary emphasis on women and at-risk/underserved youth. Luckett and Shaffer begin by sharing their experiences working with the Freddie Hendricks Youth Ensemble of Atlanta and the “Hendricks Method.” This approach manifests social activism and engages spirituality, devising, and hyper-ego, a concept that encourages fearlessness and “getting someone to believe they are ‘the shit’” (31). Offering two, authored by Cristal Chanelle Truscott, outlines “SoulWork,” which uses neo-spiritual or a cappella musicals as “an aesthetic tool for creating space and experience” (39). Individuals looking to establish ensembles or create communal performances would find Truscott’s approach highly useful, as it “shifts actors’ focus away from ‘me’ to ‘ours’ and rescues the audience relationship from ‘them’ to ‘all of us’” (39). Rhodessa Jones’s essay traces her work with the Medea Project, a teaching methodology that focuses on empowering incarcerated women of color. Through an arts-based approach to reducing recidivism, the Project “utilizes self-exploration techniques on an ensemble comprised of inmates, as well as community and professional actresses who stage material derived from the prisoners’ own stories” (51). Similarly, Lisa Biggs introduces readers to “Art Saves Lives,” an improvisational practice cemented in black feminism. Although she does not discuss processes or techniques, Biggs does highlight how the actress-playwright-teacher Rebecca Rice “practiced improvisation as sacred play to affirm Black women’s right to respect and to a future” (73). While the work of social activism is necessary, the offerings included in the second section, “Methods of Intervention,” target the core issue of most acting programs by emphasizing the necessity to locate plays in a cultural context in the rehearsal room. Justin Emeka’s essay is a real standout in the volume because it considers casting actors of color in classic white plays, concentrating heavily on the works of William Shakespeare. He lays out examples of how many people ignore race and its relation to the classics, and he contends that acknowledging race can augment audiences’ understandings of productions. Of all the essays in the volume, Tawnya Pettiford-Wates’s is the most enlightening, suggesting that traditional acting classrooms have alienated actors of color in their development and training. In recapping her personal training experience in Stanislavski, Chekhov, and Grotowski, Pettiford-Wates explains how this Eurocentric pedagogy has prepared her physical body but disenfranchised her spirit and soul as a black actor. For example, traditional analysis failed to connect her to the culturally steeped characters in for colored girls…. Considering this, she presents a series of useful exercises she calls Ritual Performance Drama “as an alternative methodology that directly addresses the specific needs of the black performing artist in studying the dramatic form and developing into self-actualized and empowered creative artists” (108). The work of Chinesha D. Sibley concentrates on Afrocentric approaches to directing new theatrical works where the playwright’s voice remains dominant while also honoring the interconnections between the playwright, actor, and director. She explains interconnectivity through the process of recalling culturally specific experiences and “embracing the physical and psychological traits of a people” (132) within the text and performance. “Methods of Cultural Plurality,” the final section of full essays, explores how individuals can be co-constructors of theatrical performances using techniques rooted in an Afrocentric perspective. Unlike most of the other offerings, Daniel Banks provides concrete exercises that readers can follow to develop stories and performances. Additionally, he examines Hip Hop as a globalized art form of social justice and provides a pedagogical framework through his work with the Hip Hop Theatre Initiative. Kadogo Mojo’s work is both an Afro-centric and trans-global directing methodology, linking the performance stylings of black Americans and the aboriginal people of Australia. The process formerly known as Kadogo Mojo combines “anthropology, dance, poetry, music, theatre, travel and cultural encounters” (169). Although Mojo’s essay is interesting, it simply chronicles her inspirational working modes. The section’s final offering authored by Kashi Johnson and Daphnie Sicre discusses the difficulties black students face on predominately white campuses and the ways in which they have cultivated the students’ “interest in creating an inclusive, productive pedagogical space” to develop performance techniques that “engage and empower Black students” (184). Like Banks, Johnson and Sicre bring together the traditions of Theatre of the Oppressed with the cultural aspects of Hip Hop theatre. Luckett and Shaffer conclude the book with short writings from distinguished black directors, including Tommie “Tonea” Stewart, Paul Carter Harrison, Tim Bond, Walter Dallas, Judyie Al-Bilali, Sheldon Epps, and Talvin Wilks. This unique group of practitioners offers insights on working with Afrocentric plays; personal experiences navigating the American theatre; and rituals, processes, and methods rooted in an African sensibility. An introduction to acting methodologies rooted in Afrocentrism, Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches samples multiple approaches and foregrounds a necessary pedagogical and theoretical framework for academics and practitioners. The inclusion of additional acting exercises would have made the book even more user-friendly within acting classrooms. Still, just like the prevalence of Eurocentric acting methods, the offerings in this book can—and should—be explored by individuals from all backgrounds and cultures, especially those marginalized groups such as Latinx people who have experienced similar structural oppressions in American theatre training. The text is ultimately an excellent resource to better enfranchise performers of color, particularly those who work at Predominantly White Institutions. References Footnotes About The Author(s) DERON S. WILLIAMS Eastern Connecticut State University Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Donia Mounsef Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Stage as Networked Battleground: Dissent and Censorship in Contemporary Canadian Theatre and Performance Donia Mounsef By Published on July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Theatre and censorship have long been intertwined. From early Greek theatre to twenty‑first‑century performance art, political, cultural, and social powers have repeatedly sought to suppress the performing arts. Their reasons have ranged from legal restrictions to moral objections, sexual indecency, ideological conflicts, and efforts to silence work that negatively portrays certain targeted groups or communities. Following a brief overview of the legal and political history of censorship in the Canadian and American contexts, this article explores theatrical censorship, its corresponding dissent and embattled freedoms, and the way various regimes of restraints affect performative frameworks. It also considers specific cases of censorship in Canadian theatre: the case of Denise Boucher’s The Fairies are Thirsty (1978), as well as the question of cultural appropriation and pretendianism in the work of acclaimed Québécois director Robert Lepage ( SLĀV , 2018) and his collaboration with French powerhouse director Ariane Mnouchkine ( Kanata , 2018). Lastly, we will turn to an analysis of censorship of Christopher Morris’ play The Runner at the PuSh Festival (Vancouver 2024) and the way it pitted communities against one another occasioned by the Israel-Gaza War. By doing so, I demonstrate how the functioning of censorship has shifted—especially in the Canadian context—from state or institutional sanctions to self-censorship and community grounded suppression. In general, theatre tends to attract more threats to control it than other art forms, examples of which abound. One famous example is Emile Zola’s novel Germinal (1885), the only work adapted to the stage by its author. Zola used this adaptation to launch a campaign against censorship in France under the Third Republic; the play was finally produced at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1888. Other examples of censored photographs, paintings, sculptures, rarely receive the level of attention performance does. In recent years, performance art has drawn more ire and suppression than other forms, such as Ai Weiwei’s performances Drowned Child (2016) and Sunflower Seeds (2010). Feminist performance artists experience similar suppression such as Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll (1975), which was censored while her other visual art and installations were not. The reasons why theatre and performance seem to attract more censorship range from the obvious institutional regulation of a live and living art form that has the potential to better mobilize audiences, to reasons of religious, moral, political taboos that perceive theatre expression as more subversive and less controllable than film or media. Theatre may have the power to change the world or instigate political and social unrest by promoting transgressive actions that mobilize audiences. In a way it is not censorship that conditions what is censorable: it is what is censored that often redefines censorship in theatre. Judith Butler has explained how censorship is a productive and formative power that produces that which it regulates. Butler writes: Censorship is most often referred to as that which is directed against persons or against the content of their speech. If censorship, however, is a way of producing speech, constraining in advance what will and will not become acceptable speech, then it cannot be understood exclusively in terms of juridical power.(1) Butler echoes Foucault here who considered censorship as a productive rather than a strictly regulatory mechanism. Foucault writes: What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network, which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression.(2) In different ways, forms of censorship and restrictions today are welcome and tolerated, such as what can be shown on television at certain times of the day, film, video game, and program rating. This is what marks the shift from state and regulatory censorship to community directives. More recent theorizing of censorship widens the scope of definition to encompass any censorious activity that is “external, coercive and repressive,”(3) while other new assessments associate censorship with “any attempt to modify the integrity of the artistic work and its reception.”(4) The problem with wider definitions of censorship is that they do not account for more insidious forms of suppression such as self-censorship, pre-emptive censorship, or indirect censorship, prompted by community pressure, cancel culture, vandalism, digital and social media controls, press campaigns, doxing of artists, threats of prosecution or libel, etc. More recent definitions of censorship have to do with the yielding of power beyond a strictly legal framework. In this regard, Sue Curry Jansen’s position in her book Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge argues that recent censorship has shifted towards surveillance and control not only by the state, but also by actors in the market, which I unpack in more detail below. New and various mechanisms of censorship have shifted from state-based to market- and community-driven articulations that widen the scope beyond religious, political or moral grounds. Other reasons for censorship include: artistic policies, cultural and community pressures, customs and border control of artistic products, policing and surveillance action, populist opposition in the media or public sphere, community boycott and cancel culture, denial of funding (such as by the Canada Council for the Arts, or provincial and municipal Arts Funding bodies), just to name a few examples. Similarly, serious constraints in recent years have produced vehement censorship that has taken the form of violent attacks on artists, destruction of artwork, protests and riots at venues, attacks on audiences and creative teams, threats of violence, threats of damage or boycott of host venues, demonstrations to shut down productions, and so forth. These threats have raised the stakes on the question of censorship with more violent and lethal assaults on artists and art and entertainment venues, concert halls, auditoriums, often inflicting mass casualties. Censorious attacks have reached alarming levels with incidents such as the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (2004); the plan to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westegaard (2008); the Charlie Hebdo massacre (2015); the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida (2016); the attack at the Moscow Dubrovka theatre (2002); the terror attack on the Bataclan Music Hall in France (2015); the Manchester Arena attack in the UK (2017); the recent massacre at the Nova Music Festival in Israel (2023); and the sordid list goes on. Unmistakably, censorship in the twenty-first century has shifted in methods, severity, forms, and magnitude ranging from regulatory dictates imposed by the state or its agents to forms of silencing by the community. Theatre Censorship Legal statutes pertaining to theatrical censorship fall for the most part under “community standards,”(5) pushing the regulatory debate into the public arena as not all censorship is decided on the basis of the law but more on its impact on the community. More recent definitions of censorship have thus widened the scope beyond the legal framework. Sue Curry Jansen argues that a modern understanding of censorship extends to forms of “surveillance: a mechanism for gathering intelligence that the powerful can use to tighten control over people or ideas that threaten to disrupt established systems of order.”(6) For Jansen, censorship has shifted from state or official sanctions to corporate, social, and non-governmental entities exercising indirect power and control. In the first part of her book, entitled “Parables of Persecution,” Jansen argues that, despite the Enlightenment effort to separate power and knowledge, they remain inextricably linked where one ensures the functioning of the other.(7) Surveillance of dissent is a socially structured albeit arbitrary form of silencing that enables different forms of censorship such as market censorship to dictate what is acceptable and what is to be spurned in the so-called “free market of ideas.” The digital age has also expanded officially sanctioned procedures, or censorship based on propriety or community offense. With the speed at which information and material is disseminated to global audiences, social media networks, instant transmission, or quick sharing, it becomes nearly impossible to censor offending material in time. By the time the censors get a hold of the material, it has already circulated widely. Community standards have morphed into “cancel culture” and networked society pressure. Cancel culture is generally understood as canceling support for an event, a public figure, a work, or an artist if the public considers the person or the work objectionable or offensive. Social media in recent years has exacerbated the impact of such “call outs” as the public appoints itself the arbiter of what is right, wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. This point was made clear recently by Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders in The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship who explain “media exerts an influence that is just as powerful in shaping and amplifying a culture of censoriousness that not only rivals officially recognised methods of censorship but often supersedes them. This has resulted in conditions that have been termed ‘cancel culture.’”(8) Overall, conventional and historical censorship was based on sanctioning by state or state agents, what the British commonly call “statutory censorship” (in addition to other institutional agents: the Church or religious authority, the military, the courts, etc.) tasked with ridding the stage of offensive and grievous material in the name of the state. However, late twentieth century and early twenty-first century regarded censorship as a response to ideological, social, or political grievances independent of the state and motivated for the large part by offences to the community or the commons. The most important example of this is the wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson at the Superbowl (2004).(9) As such, censorship may no longer be understood in its strictly legal framework. Today, the laws can rarely contemplate objections on moral grounds for works that express for example heresy, blasphemy, offense, or even libel. Moral ground, public morality, decency, propriety, and bienséance —the neo-classical rule of good taste—are the reasons why many plays were censored can hardly regulate harmfulness. Theatre Censorship Cases in Canada I. The Fairies are Thirsty [Les fées ont soif] Québécois poet and journalist Denise Boucher is well known for her controversial militant and feminist writing. After Québec’s Quiet Revolution, artists confronted the Church and state in more forceful ways, armed with newfound public discontent and inspired by the American Civil Rights movement.(10) Boucher’s 1978 play Les fées ont soif ( The Fairies are Thirsty ) showcases women’s issues and breaks down the stereotypical representation of women especially the archetype of the Virgin Mary, used by the Church to suppress female sexuality. The play’s title is borrowed from nineteenth century French historian, Jules Michelet, who described the origins of the fairies’ myth in the legend of Satanism and witchcraft in his essay La Sorcière (1862). In the legend, the fairies were originally a group of women in ancient Gaul who refused to stop dancing upon the arrival of Christ and his apostles. For this sacrilege, they were shrunk and doomed to live, in miniature form, in the woods until Judgement Day. Although no one was miniaturized in Boucher’s play, the story brings us three women: the quintessential mother and housewife, Marie; the prostitute, Madeleine dressed in kinky leather and feather boas; and the Virgin Mary, daringly playing herself. In a series of poetic monologues, Marie and Madeleine discuss their oppressed conditions, abuse, battery, and rape at the hands of husbands and clients emboldened by the Church’s hegemony and the state’s patriarchy, while the Virgin Mary attempts to escape from the religious archetypes that body-shame her and lock her in unattainable images of piety and modesty. Well-known director Jean-Luc Bastien agreed to direct the controversial play. In June 1978, five months before its premiere, the Montreal Arts Council pulled the funding citing its “filthy, sacrilegious and blasphemous language.”(11) The artistic director of the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, Jean-Louis Roux, denounced censorship and promised that the play will go ahead. The entire city council was castigated in the media, while cultural, artistic, and labor organizations circulated petitions defending the work. Roux promised that the play would be staged on schedule whether arts funding was available or not. It opened on 10 November 1978 and ran for a month in front of full houses and garnered a lot of acclaim. Affronted, Montreal’s Catholic Archdiocese launched a campaign to denounce the show and encouraged congregations to picket the theatre while buying blocks of tickets to attend the performance and recite the rosary as disruption. Other groups threw medals of the Virgin Mary on the stage like confetti. The “crusade” against the play continued into January 1979, when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Famously, Judge Gabrielle Vallée asked the group representing the Catholic militants: “who do you represent”? When they responded that they represent “Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin,” the magistrate immediately threw the case out. Further court cases to suppress the publication of the play were launched against the work until the Supreme Court of Canada, again, refused to hear them in 1980.(12) After its initial production, the play was rarely staged in Canada (or elsewhere). Nevertheless, it remains a significant event of how community responses to censorship can change the course of theatre history. II. Kanata & SLĀV While the theatre community’s response in the case of The Fairies are Thirsty mobilized to defend the production, aided by a secular Supreme Court adamant on protecting artistic freedom at a time when Canada (and Québec) was defining itself in terms of civil rights, the following examples in some ways are based on the opposite response. By “opposite response” I mean one in which the community, instead of rushing to the defense of the work, mobilized against it and against the artists and functioned as the impetus for censoring and cancelling the work. In the following, I turn to an analysis of two plays dealing with settler-colonial contact, Kanata , and slave songs, SLĀV , as well as a corresponding complex community response that generated debates around appropriation and representation more than obscenity. Cultural and artistic appropriation has been central to the production of aesthetic forms in Western theatre, including Canada. Examples abound of cultural theft and appropriation of Indigenous art forms and traditions and a continued lack of awareness for the dynamic of race, ethnicity, cultural identity and representation. Culture is stolen, pilfered, appropriated and traded by those who have the privilege to usurp it. On this issue, it is useful to consider the objection to overtly appropriated work as a different kind of constraint where the community responds to artwork being stolen instead of remaining silent on centuries long colonial and neo-colonial practices. Canadian (Québécois) theatre director Robert Lepage’s SLĀV as well as Ariane Mnouchkine’s and Lepage’s censored play Kanata are perfect examples of appropriation that triggered a strong community response. The projects that have been surrounded by controversies for their defense of appropriation and the advocacy of their directors for the right to “othering”—ignorant of the discontent of the communities they purportedly speak for and about. SLĀV, A Play without Blacks Robert Lepage’s SLĀV was a project on Black slavery, a play with a predominately white cast, picking cotton and singing Black slave songs. The play was scheduled for June 2018, part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. It was widely condemned by members of Quebec’s Black and Indigenous communities. Protests erupted outside the theatre accusing Lepage of appropriating “black pain for profit.”(13) Lepage acknowledged “clumsiness and misjudgments” that led to the cancellation of the show, while he promised “to do better.”(14) Nevertheless, shortly after the cancellation, Lepage became more emboldened and denounced what he called an “angry far-left mob” for protesting and shutting down the show. He attempted to divide and conquer within the ranks of the protestors after he met with a group of them. He declared fervently: “Unlike the angry far-left extremists depicted in certain media, the people I met with were welcoming, open, perceptive, intelligent, cultivated, articulate and peaceful.”(15) Obviously, Lepage would rather deal with “perceptive, intelligent, and peaceful” protesters rather than face the legitimate anger of the “mob” he deplores. Either way the community response was justified, since, as Moses Sumney (an African-American singer-songwriter who cancelled his performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival in protest of the play) stated: there is no context in which white people performing black slave songs is okay. Especially not while they are dressed like poor field workers or cotton pickers. Especially not while they are directed by a white director and in a theater charging loads of money ... This kind of black imitation is very reminiscent of blackface minstrel shows. The only thing missing is black paint.(16) This controversy produced one of the most vehement community responses (after The Fairies are Thirsty ) as a legitimate criticism and denunciation based on ethical ground. The Montreal chapter of Black Lives Matter organized the protest and mobilized a large coalition against the work dubbed “the SLĀV Resistance Collective”. Protestors took to the streets with signs that read: “Racisme ordinaire” [“ordinary racism”]; “descendants of slaves against SLĀV”; and “Slave songs weren’t written for white people to profit from.” After the first round of protests and more meetings with the Collective, an attempt was made to revive the play, without success.(17) Kanata without Indigenous People In a similar fashion, but in a more forceful way, the play Kanata generated an even larger controversy in July 2018. The show was scheduled for staging in Paris in December 2018, and in Québec in 2020, as a co-production between Robert Lepage and Ariane Mnouchkine—director of Paris based Théâtre du Soleil. Kanata claimed to explore Canada’s history “through the lens of the relationship between white and Aboriginal people.” However, there were no Indigenous actors or creators involved in the production. The announcement of the play’s premiere sparked a letter to Montréal’s newspaper Le Devoir on 14 July 2018. The letter, titled “One more time our story will be told without us, Indigenous People,” was signed by a large group of people who are Indigenous artists and community leaders, allies, intellectuals, members of arts organizations, social justice activists, cultural workers, lawyers, theatre artists, actors and producers, and so on.(18) They protested the fact that no Indigenous artists were involved in the production and none were consulted as the play was getting ready for staging. Mnouchkine and Lepage may be well-intentioned in wanting to tell the story of settler-colonial contact with Indigenous people in Kanata (the native name of Canada from the Huron-Iroquois word meaning “village” or “settlement”), however, they miss the point by perpetuating the invisibility of First Nations or Indigenous artists. The letter concluded by saying that the signatories do not wish to censure the production, but preferred if Indigenous artists and talent were included, recognized and celebrated, because, as they say, “WE ARE.”(19) The show was cancelled for the Paris production in December 2018 after a few Lepage co-producers withdrew financial support from the production making it impossible to proceed. Lepage and Mnouchkine have maintained and fought for their right to say and do art whichever way they see fit, accusing their detractors of censorship and muzzling. The cancelled show in Paris was revamped in a shorter version carrying a new title: Kanata - Episode 1. La controverse . It opened 15 December 2018 at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, the home of the Théâtre du Soleil outside Paris, as part of the Festival d’Automne. It went on to be produced at the Naples Theatre Festival in Italy in June 2019, followed by the July 2019 production at the Epidaurus & Athens Festival. The play stopped touring after the Athens production, which is considered a much shorter run than the usual Théâtre du Soleil productions. A documentary video produced by Hélène Choquette entitled Lepage au Soleil: à l'origine de Kanata was made between 2016 and 2018 and shown in Canadian cinemas in 2019. After this documentary, the play was not talked about except in the context of critical analysis of its controversy.(20) I will now turn to the reception of the revised Paris production and the meaning of community-based censorship in response to the modified version that saw the stage at the Théâtre du Soleil, with Lepage as a guest director, marking the first time the company has invited a guest director to work for free. The revised version lasted two and a half hours and included a cast of thirty-three actors, with a revamped title and story. Mnouchkine insisted begrudgingly that there will be no actors from North America. The show ran until February 2019. The reception was, at best, mixed, and at worst, highly negative. Marianne Ackerman of the Montreal Gazette newspaper describes the opening scene with great reservation and significant disapproval: The opening scenes unfold like a dream. Flanked by a forest of perfectly cylindrical pillars, a man and a woman—museum curators—discuss the merits of 19th-century paintings of Indigenous people by European artists, then disappear into fog. Enter a drifting canoe paddled by a First Nations filmmaker capturing wilderness sounds on tape. A black bear ambles across the stage, two Mounties pass in ceremonial red jackets, the idyll broken suddenly by roaring chainsaws as a swarm of loggers reduce the woods to bare stage. A totem pole is wrecked. Mounties drag an Indigenous woman off screaming, and hand her baby to a priest.(21) Ackermann continues with her sceptical assessment as the series of horror stories play out on stage: There the dream ends, and a documentary nightmare begins, dissecting the daily tragedy of Canada’s Indigenous peoples at the dismal end of a wide spectrum: missing women found murdered, junkies desperate for the next fix, social workers and police burdened with inadequate resources, paralyzed by power wrangles. We’re taken to Robert Pickton’s pig farm, made to watch as he snaps handcuffs on a young Indigenous woman, drags her into his caravan, splashes her blood on the window. We follow the actor playing Pickton via film into a jail cell, where an actor posing as a fellow killer goads him into confession.(22) In the middle of these neo-colonial horrors, and Pickton’s terror, we are invited to witness and empathize with a French couple, Miranda and Ferdinand, an artist and a painter arriving in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, around the year 2000.(23) Ferdinand struggles to get acting roles, while Miranda paints portrait of the murdered Indigenous women much to the dismay and consternation of their grieving mothers. La Controverse (the controversy in the title), emerges from Miranda’s plan to exhibit her work at a local community center but, at the last minute, the center directors realize she didn’t ask the families of the victims for permission. This results in the cancelling of the exhibition. In this complex social setting, one Indigenous character in the play opines: “Our history has been stolen from us for 400 years…Expect some strong reactions.” Miranda replies: “I’m an artist! These women moved me as human beings, not Indigenous people.” The ending is equally clunky and unwieldy: Miranda painting an abstract piece in her studio while crying censorship as she laments: “Nowadays, to understand a black person, you have to be black! To understand a Jewish person, you have to be Jewish!”(24) The fact that Lepage and Mnouchkine put together such shows is not surprising: much of their work has had Orientalist and appropriative overtones in distinctive ways. Lepage’s Zulu Time (2002) had mainly white actors playing a cast of international and African characters; The Dragon Trilogy (1987, 1991, and 2010) was a six-hour epic that told the story of a Quebec family’s relationships with immigrants from China and Japan. The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1996) was set in Hiroshima and Terezin. As for the Théâtre du Soleil’s works: L’Indiade ou l’Inde de leurs rêves (1987) deals with India’s partition ; L’Histoire terrible et inachevée de Norodom Sihanouk roi du Cambodge (1985) retells the story of modern Cambodia through the eyes of the descendants of the victims of the Khmer Rouge ; Tambours sur la digue (1999) was a Bunraku play with human puppets that told the story of floods in China. Many of Lepage’s and Mnouchkine’s plays use borrowed forms to tell the story of the other under the guise of interculturalism. Without entering into a lengthy debate on interculturalism and its detractors, suffice it to say that interculturalism is no longer a valid excuse to appropriate the story of the “other” even if the masterpieces that Lepage and Mnouchkine produce regularly garner a lot of acclaim from international, mostly white audiences. Although the two prominent directors often claim that they are fighting injustices and speaking for disenfranchised groups, they continue to appropriate other cultural forms and speak for them. Can Lepage and Mnouchkine ignore the communities’ concerns and continue advocating for a post-racial, post-identitarian, world art in which the actor should be able to play anyone and become the other, as Mnouchkine says frequently? Is there any legitimacy for Lepage’s dismissal when he says: “When it is forbidden to identify with someone else, theatre becomes ‘meaningless’”?(25) One might ask: meaningless for whom? Is there ever an ethics of appropriation? Is there such a theatre that can be at the same time a guarantor of meaning making for disenfranchised communities, a safe, affirmative space for racialized or gendered identities without resorting to silencing, occupying, or appropriating? It is a fine balance between artistic freedom and the right to free speech and literal cultural theft—museums and collections are still full of pilfered art and artifacts by colonial powers (there would be no museums in the Western world without artefacts stolen from the colonies). White entertainers continue to profit off of Black musical styles while Black performers continue to be impeded by racism. I am not arguing for or against censoring appropriative work, nor am I claiming that these artists are being unfairly censored. I am simply exercising the questions that are missing in the debate around intercultural theatre. We need not ask if artists have the right to speak or represent any culture; rather, we should ask: What has intercultural theatre done to reduce the harm done by slavery, colonialism, othering, orientalism, stereotyping? Is casting a whole show on slavery without Black actors the postmodern version of blackface or a contemporary version of nineteenth century minstrel shows? Is doing an entire show on contact between Settlers and Indigenous people without any significant participation of the Indigenous community really that far removed from ethnological expositions , which literally put indigenous people as “savages” on display in the nineteenth century? Conversely, I am not justifying or condoning the censorship of these works, I’m proposing to look at them with a different lens that challenges their methods and interrogates the norms by which societies construct dominant culture and excludes, silences, or fetishizes the other. I will conclude this section with the words of Indigenous (Anishinaabe) writer and publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm who sums it up perfectly in an article in the Globe and Mail : if the past 30 years have taught us anything, it is that there is a powerful, loud bunch of privileged white settlers who do not want to learn about us or from us. They spew out their impressions of our experience and double down when confronted with research and data and our first-hand accounts. They want to “debate” appropriation, on their terms and make these demands as if it has not been done before. As if the past 30 years of our work is meaningless because they are unaware and do not have to bother doing the research. For us, to continue to debate at this point is nothing but a type of busy work that pulls Indigenous writers and publishers away from what we ought to be doing – namely, writing, telling and publishing our own stories.(26) III. The Runner I conclude this article with a brief analysis of the events surrounding Christopher Morris’s play The Runner at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver 2024. The Runner had its first production at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille in 2018, followed by six different productions in cities across Canada to much acclaim. It won three Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Toronto’s awards for excellence in theatre) for Outstanding New Play, Outstanding Production, and Outstanding Direction. The play was scheduled to open at the PuSh Festival in 2024. But in agreement with the playwright, the festival cancelled the play after it received an open letter of protest from a collective of Palestinian, Indigenous, and Jewish community members who expressed concerns about the play’s portrayal of Palestinian-Israeli relations in the current thorny context. The censorship of the play was complicated by another protest by Palestinian artist (based in England), Basel Zaraa, whose installation/performance Dear Laila was also scheduled to open at the same festival. Zaraa issued a statement that he would pull his performance if the festival went ahead with The Runner . The Runner tells the story of an ultra-Orthodox Z.A.K.A. member, Jacob, who decides to treat a young Palestinian woman instead of an injured Israeli soldier who the woman may have killed in an alleged attack. The Z.A.K.A. ( Zihuy Korbanot Ason , or Disaster Victim Identification) is an Israeli volunteer force comprised of paramedics and disaster relief workers who respond to scenes of violent attacks and collect the remains of the dead, including their blood, so they may receive proper Jewish religious burial. Jacob is torn between his duty to attend to Israeli victims and the decision he made to give the woman CPR even though she is suspected of carrying out the attack. The backlash against the play at PuSh was due in large part to the timing (a few months after the October 7 attacks) as audiences are more and more divided on the Israel-Palestine conflict. What interests me here is the consequences of the censorship as both artists and PuSh Festival put out a statement acknowledging the harm the play may cause to Palestinians and the disappointment and anger of some members of the community who supported Morris. Alongside Morris’s statement, saying that he is saddened and unsettled “when Canadian theatres cannot be a space for the public to engage in a dynamic exchange of ideas,”(27) a joint statement from the directors of PuSh, Gabrielle Martin and Keltie Forsyth, as well as Zaraa and Morris was issued. It reads: On January 2nd, we released a statement that expressed our hope that PuSh bring us together and inspire us to have complex and nuanced conversations; to challenge ourselves and each other not only to think differently, but to feel differently…Over the past two weeks, we have been in conversation with various members of our community. We have heard those who call to cancel The Runner, feeling it is a work that perpetuates the oppression of Palestinian people. We have heard the call to present it by those who feel the work provides an empathetic, and fundamentally humanist perspective. We have also heard from those who believe theatre is the right place for difficult conversations and want us to resist censorship. We have heard the call that now is not the right time…And we have felt the desire to uphold relationships with artists. We have felt the anger expressed to us. But most importantly, we have felt the words of Festival artist Basel Zaraa.(28) The festival also included a statement from Basel Zaraa: Dear Laila is an installation I created for my young daughter, which tells the story of our family’s ongoing trauma and struggle as Palestinians exiled by Israel, starting with the massacre in our village of Tantura in Palestine, in 1948. As Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues, I cannot agree for Dear Laila to be shown alongside The Runner, a play which reinforces dehumanising narratives about Palestinians. Palestinians appear in The Runner almost exclusively as perpetrators of violence. While the Israeli characters are vividly portrayed, the Palestinian characters don't even have names, and barely speak…While many voices are welcome, artistic endeavors on this subject have a responsibility to reflect the reality that there is an occupier and an occupied.(29) To add to the mix, a statement from Christopher Morris was also issued. It reads: The Runner is a fictional story about an Israeli man who saves the life of a young Palestinian woman and is ostracized by his peers for doing so. It is an award-winning, one-person play, told from the singular perspective of a man who confronts his community’s fear and their dehumanization of others. Criticised by his own people, his empathy never wavers. For me, The Runner is a nuanced play about the need to see the humanity of others. Basel Zaraa's voice is new to Canadians and his installation Dear Laila—also nuanced & award-winning— focuses on his family experience as Palestinians exiled by Israel. It is an extraordinary, important work. Holding space for other viewpoints is essential, particularly at this moment of trauma and division. I sympathize with the PuSh Festival’s distress when Basel shared that he’d withdraw his work if The Runner remained in the festival; and when they arrived at their difficult decision to prioritize one artist’s voice over another. PuSh’s leadership has navigated this complicated situation with transparency and care. If removing The Runner is the only way Canadians can hear Basel’s crucial voice, then there is value in stepping aside…(30) In light of Zaraa’s and Morris’ statements, the festival concluded that the Runner should be cancelled and Zaraa’s performance should proceed: As a Festival, we respect Basel’s perspective. We will honour the artist whose work reflects their lived experience and cancel the presentations of The Runner by Canadian playwright Christopher Morris, whose work is rooted in years of research but who has no religious or cultural ties to the region. . . .At the same time, we believe it is a necessary choice to prioritize the work of an artist whose perspective is grossly underrepresented in Canadian theatre and performance culture.(31) I choose to cite these statements whole and in block by the artists and the PuSH Festival producers to show the level of engagement in complex and ambiguous censoring and how oppositions and dichotomy do not always play out in predictable ways. What The Runner case (and other recent cases) shows us is that the centers of power that govern censorship have become diffuse, which hints to what Gilles Deleuze called a “society of control” in his Post-Script on the Societies of Control . Deleuze delineates contemporary forms of control by government, socio-cultural and administrative regulations as operating according to different mechanisms than the conventional “normative” modes of (Foucault’s) “disciplinary powers.”(32) Deleuze’s thesis is particularly relevant for an analysis of contemporary theatre censorship in the era of networked communications, social media, and decentered power. I return to Jansen to elucidate how these diffuse centers of power in liberal democracies operate using covert censorship where there is, on the surface, a guarantee of free speech, which also becomes a commodity, but in practice, there is self-inflicted or socially sanctioned suppression that reshapes public discourse with new imperatives.(33) In this context we may not know clearly whose interests censorship serves, but we are saddled with its consequences on social and cultural ambits as the battleground is no longer between the “questionable material” and official entities, but in a network pitting various socio-cultural values and communities against each other. Conclusion Is this cancel culture or “call out” culture that produces decentered censorship a danger to theatrical freedom? Certainly, this form of censorship may run the risk of shutting down conversations that we expect the performing arts to foster in the current chilling climate of division, fear, and bias. Conversely, under-represented communities in the theatre have taken up the fight and protested against the structures that organize their exclusion in the art. Their “call outs” may have become more effective at combating racism, sexism, silencing, and marginalization, since neoliberal identity politics—the so-called “dialogue of cultures” and the “right of anyone to play anyone”—are no longer suitable to address the imbalance of power occasioned by unfettered representability. Irrevocably, questions of community censorship underline the dichotomy between the ethical and the questionable, the center and the margin, the represented and the under-represented, the mainstream and the absented. But more importantly, it underscores the reciprocal awareness of the falsity of these dichotomies, necessitating a third term. The third term is perhaps the collective “we” that the theatre can endorse in its gathering albeit irreconcilable space. References Judith Butler, Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 128. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77 , ed. Colin Gordon (Harlow: Pearson, 1980), 119 Matthew Bunn, “Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After,” History and Theory 54 (2015): 29. Anne Etienne and Chris Megson, eds, Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe: Silence and Protest , (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2024).7. In general, Canadian law considers obscene, work “that is beyond contemporary standards of tolerance” with exceptions for work that is deemed to “have artistic, literary, scientific, or educational value; material that does not extend beyond what serves the public good; material that is not beyond what is acceptable by community standards.” (The Canadian Penal Code, https://www.criminalcodehelp.ca/offences/sexual-offences/obscenity/# ). Sue Curry Jansen, Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 14. Jansen, Censorship , 6-7. Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), 5. For an in-depth discussion of this incident see Donia Mounsef, “The seen, the scene and the obscene: Commodity fetishism and corporeal ghosting,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 15, no2 (2005): 243-261. The Quiet Revolution (La Révolution tranquille) marks Québec’s period of transformation, secularisation, and anti-religious influence. Inspired by the American Civil Rights Movement, it followed the election of the Liberals to power in the 1960s and the civil rights efforts to liberate education and culture from the hold exercised by the Catholic Church. “Le Conseil des Arts de Montréal exige du TNM la modification du texte jugé « sale, d’un langage ordurier, trop vulgaire ».” “Archives, Des fées dont la soif crée la controverse.” September 24, 2018. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1125808/fees-theatre-censure-quebec-histoire-archives Marilyne Brick. “La fonction sociale du théâtre. Étude de la polémique autour de l’affaire Les fées ont soif (1978).” 18. “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises ‘to do better’.” Global News , December 28, 2018, https://globalnews.ca/news/4799541/quebec-playwright-robert-lepage-says-controversial-slav-play-reworked/ “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises…” “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises…” Graeme Hamilton, “Montreal jazz fest comes under fire for a show based on slave songs — with a mostly white cast”, The National Post , July 8, 2018, https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/montreal-jazz-fest-comes-under-fire-for-a-show-based-on-slave-songs-with-a-mostly-white-cast . “Robert Lepage commits to changes as controversial SLĀV musical returns to stage.” CBC News December 28, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/robert-lepage-slav-update-1.4960627v “Encore un fois, l’aventure se passera sans nous, les Autochtones,” Le Devoir, July 14, 2018, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/libre-opinion/532406/encore-une-fois-l-aventure-se-passera-sans-nous-les-autochtones . My translation: [“ Nous ne souhaitons pas censurer quiconque. Ce n’est pas dans nos mentalités et dans notre façon de voir le monde. Ce que nous voulons, c’est que nos talents soient reconnus, qu’ils soient célébrés aujourd’hui et dans le futur, car NOUS SOMMES ”]. "Lettre ouverte : Odeiwin, la réplique à Ariane Mnouchkine," Radio Canada July 14, 2018, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/1112629/lettre-ouverte-odeiwin-la-replique-a-ariane-mnouchkine . The documentary “shows how, the 36 actors from 11 different countries, discover in their own stories an astonishing resonance with those of the natives. How, inspired by the cosmopolitanism of the troupe, Robert Lepage tries to get them to talk about their own stories through those of the Indigenous peoples of Canada. The documentary plunges into the heart of a theatrical creation in search of universality, but turned upside down by a media scandal even before its premiere.” “Lepage au Soleil: At the Origins of Kanata.” 2019. https://www.emafilms.com/en/film/lepage-au-soleil-at-the-origins-of-kanata/ Marianne Ackerman, “Robert Lepage’s controversial Kanata opens in Paris as a rehearsal.” Montreal Gazette . December 20, 2018, https://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment-life/article217779.html . Ackerman, “Robert Lepage’s controversial Kanata…” Robert Pickton (October 24, 1949 - May 31, 2024) known in Canada as the Butcher or Pig Farmer Killer, was a Canadian serial killer in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland who was accused of killing at least 49 women between 1995-2001, most of them Indigenous women. In 2007, he was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years. However, he was killed in prison by another inmate in 2024. Laura Cappelle, “Review: In Robert Lepage’s ‘Kanata,’ the Director, Too, Plays the Victim.” The New York Times , December 17, 2018. Rick Salutin, “Cultural Appropriation sees two Robert Lepage Productions Cancelled.” August 17, 2018. https://rabble.ca/columnists/cultural-appropriation-sees-two-robert-lepage-productions-cancelled/ Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, “The cultural appropriation debate is over. It's time for action,”, Globe and Mail , May 19, 2017. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-cultural-appropriation-debate-is-over-its-time-for-action/article35072670/ Janet Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels Israel-set The Runner after Palestinian artist's input.” January 11th, 2024, https://www.createastir.ca/articles/push-festival-cancels-the-runner . Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Smith, “Performing Arts Festival Cancels…” Gilles Deleuze, “Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle,” Pourparlers , (Paris: Minuit, 1990), 3. Jansen, Censorship , 168. Bibliography Ackermann, Marianne. “Robert Lepage’s controversial Kanata opens in Paris as a rehearsal.” Montreal Gazette , December 20, 2018. https://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment-life/article217779.html Akiwenzie-Damm, Kateri “The cultural appropriation debate is over. It's time for action.” Globe and Mail, May 19, 2017. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-cultural-appropriation-debate-is-over-its-time-for-action/article35072670/ “Archives, Des fées dont la soif crée la controverse.” September 24, 2018. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1125808/fees-theatre-censure-quebec-histoire-archives Boucher, Denise. Les Fées ont soif . Montréal: Typo, 2008. ---. The Fairies Are Thirsty . Translated by Alan Brown. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1982. Brick, Marilyne. “La fonction sociale du théâtre. Étude de la polémique autour de l’affaire Les fées ont soif (1978)." https://www.erudit.org/fr/livres/lart-en-proces/proces-polemiques-art-quebec-france-1978-2021/947li.pdf Bunn, Matthew. “Reimagining Repression: New Censorship Theory and After.” History and Theory 54 (2015): 25–44. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative . New York: Routledge, 1997. “The Canadian Penal Code.” https://www.criminalcodehelp.ca/offences/sexual-offences/obscenity/# Cappelle, Laura. “Review: In Robert Lepage’s ‘Kanata,’ the Director, Too, Plays the Victim.” The New York Times . December 17, 2018. Deleuze, Gilles. “Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle.” Pourparlers . Paris: Minuit, 1990. “Encore un fois, l’aventure se passera sans nous, les Autochtones.” Le Devoir, July 14, 2018. https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/libre-opinion/532406/encore-une-fois-l-aventure-se-passera-sans-nous-les-autochtones . Etienne, Anne and Chris Megson, eds. Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe: Silence and Protest . Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2024. Etienne, Anne and Graham Saunders, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship . Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality , New York: Pantheon, 1978. ---. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979. ---. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77 , Edited by Colin Gordon. Harlow: Pearson, 1980. Hamilton, Graeme. “Montreal jazz fest comes under fire for a show based on slave songs — with a mostly white cast”. The National Post , July 8, 2018. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/montreal-jazz-fest-comes-under-fire-for-a-show-based-on-slave-songs-with-a-mostly-white-cast Hunt, Lynn, ed. The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800 . New York: Zone Books, 1993. Jansen, Sue Curry. Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. “Lettre ouverte : Odeiwin, la réplique à Ariane Mnouchkine.” Radio Canada , July 14, 2018. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/espaces-autochtones/1112629/lettre-ouverte-odeiwin-la-replique-a-ariane-mnouchkine “Lepage au Soleil: At the Origins of Kanata.” EMA Films, 2019. https://www.emafilms.com/en/film/lepage-au-soleil-at-the-origins-of-kanata/ Michelet, Jules. La Sorcière. (First Published 1862.) Paris: Flammarion, 1993. Mounsef, Donia. “The seen, the scene and the obscene: Commodity fetishism and corporeal ghosting.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 15, no. 2 (2005), 243-261. “Quebec playwright Robert Lepage promises ‘to do better’ after SLĀV controversy.” Global News , December 28, 2018. https://globalnews.ca/news/4799541/quebec-playwright-robert-lepage-says-controversial-slav-play-reworked/ “Robert Lepage commits to changes as controversial SLĀV musical returns to stage.” CBC News December 28, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/robert-lepage-slav-update-1.4960627v Salutin, Rick. “Cultural Appropriation sees two Robert Lepage Productions Cancelled.” August 17, 2018. https://rabble.ca/columnists/cultural-appropriation-sees-two-robert-lepage-productions-cancelled/ Smith, Janet. “Performing Arts festival cancels Israel-set The Runner after Palestinian artist's input.” January 11, 2024. https://www.createastir.ca/articles/push-festival-cancels-the-runner Footnotes About The Author(s) DONIA MOUNSEF (she/her), PhD, is Professor of drama and performance studies at the University of Alberta and Associate Dean, Access, Community, & Belonging (Faculty of Arts). A performance and media theorist, she is the author of Chair et révolte dans le théâtre de Bernard-Marie Koltès (l'Harmattan) and the co-editor of Toxic Media Ecologies: Critical Responses to the Cultural Politics of Planetary Crises (forthcoming) and “The Transparency of the Text” ( Yale French Studies ). She publishes widely on intermediality, visual culture, performance and politics. Her work appeared in Global Performance Studies, Contours Journal, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , Yale French Studies , Esprit Créateur , Yale Journal of Criticism , Women and Performance Journal , Féminismos , Journal of Global Studies and Contemporary Art , etc. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Censorship/Public Censure and Performance Today: Special Issue Introduction Remembering Censorship in the World Premiere of Seán O’Casey’s The Drums of Father Ned: Lafayette, Indiana, 1959 The Stage as Networked Battleground: Dissent and Censorship in Contemporary Canadian Theatre and Performance Censor/Censure: A Roundtable Which of These Are Censorship? The Divide Between Prior Restraint and Soft Censorship How Can an Artist Respond to Censorship? The Dilemma That Faces Contemporary Creatives in the UK The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project: A Roundtable Conversation Life is Drag: Documenting Spectacle as Resistance An Interview with Rachel Rampleman Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists. Michael Malek Najjar. Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2021; Pp. xvi + 237. Lessons from Our Students: Meditations on Performance Pedagogy. Stacey Cabaj and Andrea Odinov. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 126 Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene. Angenette Spalink. Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance Series, no. 3. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 116. Fauci and Kramer Our Town Frankenstein Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) By Thamir Az-Zubaidy Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Thamir R. S. Az-Zubaidy Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) depicts the life of an Iraqi young widow, Nour, from Basra who lived through the US occupation (2003-2011). The play delves into the sociopolitical context of the province during one of the drastic historical junctures of Iraq’s modern history, portraying the clash between the local and foreign narratives about Iraqi women’s rights. The Widow resists both epistemological violence that represents monolithic images of Iraqi women and the patriarchal violence that obscures women’s agency. The figure of Nour, who despite her social fragility as a young widow with a child and later on as an abandoned pregnant woman, is able to (re)create her destiny. Nour is a semi-fictitious character that Al-Azraki developed based on his early experience as a translator for international news agencies (2003-6), her late husband was killed while combating the invading troops, leaving her with a two-year-old daughter, Nour is left alone to endure the hardships of this tragic loss and also the confining societal and patriarchal norms. Arguably, in this play, Al-Azraki critiques the hypocrisy of Arabic patriarchal societies like Iraq by examining the concept of “ghira”, a local term encompassing notions of courage, honor, and men’s responsibility to guard women’s honor (Al-Azraki, 169). Notable examples of this in the play are male protagonists including Samir, a young university lecturer who runs away to Canada after getting Nour pregnant, and Samir’s father, a 65 years old man and the head of an oil company in Basra, who proposes to marry Nour temporarily (outside any legal obligations) under the pretext of protecting her and her daughter. Based on thematic analysis of the play, this paper investigates the role of Iraqi theatre in resisting gender roles in war times by centralising women’s agency in the war story. Starting from the premise that male literary writers’ works about female characters are often targeted by feminist scholars as either perpetuating stereotyping or failing to present convincing female characterization (Az-Zubaidy, 2024), I argue that despite that fact that The Widow is written by a male playwright, the play depicts details and facts that show the strong side of women like Nour. Iraqi theatre scholars argued for the specificity of gender when it is depicted by Iraqi male theatremakers. Alyaa Naser and Majeed Midhin argue that male literary figures “own the power and the authority, as well as the voice, to speak of the unspeakable for women, which may not only be acceptable, but rather more comprehensible, since society would rather listen to them, being men, than to women” (2025, 304). Paul Ricoeur’s premise of how employing narration in identity constructing is able to constitute an identity that is dictated by character itself rather than being imposed from outside. Ricoeur notes that the plot of any literary work is “an integrating process,” that gets its “dynamic identity” from and “is completed only” in the presence of “the living receiver of the narrated story” such as the reader or the audience (1991, 21). Emphasizing the role of narrative identity, Ricoeur maintains that “it is in this way that we learn to become the narrator and the hero of our own story, without actually becoming the author of our own life.” (32) Ricoeur’s argument finds its resonance in Jane Bacon who, acknowledging the affinity between language and body, proclaims that “in language the body quickly becomes gesture, a metaphor, a personification of personhood” (quoted in Parker-Starbuck & Mock 2011, 229). Thus, once the narrator, and this applies to literary genres including drama, starts narrating a story to the listener, they become the heroes of the constructed identity on stage away from the control or the authority of the author. Accordingly, what the audience watches on stage is the female character who has full control of her story. The play problematises the rhetoric of “liberating” Iraqi women which was employed prior the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Lindsey Mantoan posits that one of the major narratives of invading Iraq was “to liberate, or had already liberated, Iraqi women” from the dictator’s patriarchal grip (2018, 105-106). Yet, official reports, amongst those by international institutions, assert that, following the US-invasion of Iraq, women’s rights witnessed ongoing deterioration (Az-Zubaidy, 159). The Widow articulates these tensions between the US narrative and social reality through the exploration of the precarious situation of widowed women like Nour, the politics of male gaze, as represented by Samir’s father, and the confining societal and patriarchal norms. The US-invasion, as stated in the play, caused the death of Nour’s husband. Instead of ensuring security and peace where liberty and prosperity would thrive, the American invasion turns Iraq into a site of confrontation whose frontlines entail even the domestic spheres, fostering an environment for civil tensions. Such a socio-political landscape threatened the expression of liberal views, restricted women’s freedom and encouraged political violence, both physical and verbal. Al-Azraki’s play is divided into 18 scenes, and preceded by a prologue that casts light on Noura’s loss of her husband, Hatem, who was killed while defending the country against the invading troops. This violent incident evidenced the fact that Iraqi women received the heavy toll of successive wars since the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988). In this prologue, which recalls a similar scene in Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man , when Raina and Bluntschli met each other for the first time, the stage is overwhelmed with darkness and the sounds of “aircraft, explosion, heavy weapons” (Al-Azraki 2017, 173). Although brief, those four words adequately depict the horrific atmosphere of war, indicating the big number of casualties. Then, the figure of a “heavy-set” soldier, “mainly in silhouette”, appears on stage (173). The lights cast on Nour, who is “veiled in the Iraqi Abaya”. She addresses “the silhouetted figure”, representing her deceased husband, who was killed two years ago, saying: It has been two years, and I’ve been faithful to your memory, but there is a young man that I like, he teaches at the college where I’m taking night courses again, like you wanted me to. And I think he likes me. I make him nervous. He’s so young. He thinks I’m “an Older Woman.” ( Pause. ) Would it make you very sad? (173) In response to her inquiry, Hatem’s “ silhouetted figure rises, kisses her on the forehead, and exits ”, suggesting his love and also approval of both: her studies and love to Samir, the young teacher (173). Then, the setting changes suddenly to the present time where we see Nour inside the class, a remarkable employment of the technique of heterotopic space. Investing this technique in drama and theatre is important for examining significant issues because beyond the actual locations of performances that members of the audience observe, Joanne Tompkins argues, there are “additional sites that were evoked” to generate a thoughtful understanding of past, present and the future (2014, 58). It is worth noting that in this play, Al-Azraki presents the stage as a medium comprising imagined, as depicted in the prologue, and concrete, as portrayed in scene 1, locations. Accordingly, the employment of this technique conveys the role theatre can play in forming a connection, Tompkins proposes, between “the concrete entity” of the venue, and “an imagined location” that has to “be rendered visible” (179). Through this intersection between the two sites, Al-Azraki opens up the space in his play, I argue, to provide the widow, Nour, with the opportunity to love again, which is often resisted by societal norms. In scene 1 of the play, Samir appears at the end of a lecture, addressing the audience, as his students, asking them to prepare a play by the Iraqi-American playwright, Heather Ruffo’s Nine Parts of Desire (2006), and express their opinions of her “representation of Iraqi woman” (173). The class's reading of Rafoo establishes a background of Iraqi women’s war experiences offstage. Further, it underscores the impact of war against Iraq on both diasporic playwrights; Rafoo and Al-Azraki. In addition to introducing a feminist approach to the US- invasion, the reference to Raffo’s play serves as an analogy to The Widow as this scene presents Nour, a young woman who can reject social restrictions which will bring her under the tension of the two protective and provocative forces soon. Nour and a male student Ali started a debate about one of Raffo’s character who was portrayed as an Iraqi women who had several sexual relations: NOUR : I think the play is far from being authentic. Who is Amal? […] Like she’s Sinbad? Maybe this is believable for an American audience but for us it’s absurd. She ignores the majority of the Iraq women who suffer unbearable conditions […]. . . . ALI : I kind of agree with Nour. I think her representation of Iraqi women is too selective. She tries to challenge the stereotypical, orientalist image of the Iraqi woman, but it’s not an accurate portrayal. (179) The employment of the ‘play within a play’ technique which triggered the debate about women's rights, sexual freedom and western gender codes opens a fierce debate about religion also. Samir could not control the discussion about women’s freedom of choice and the class ended by accusing him of blasphemy and Nour of being immoral because of his critique of divine texts. Samir confirms his opinion that any text, including the Quran, is subject to free interpretation. Shocked by such a claim, Ali replies that “this is blasphemous. There can be one truthful interpretation of the Quran” (180). When the discussion turns to religious texts, Nour rushes to support Samir, her teacher and lover. While women’s situation in Basra is described in Nour’s statement “...and now we have many killers. Every day the body of a woman is thrown into the river. Rumours spread: indecent, prostitute, a traitor working for the occupation, honour killings” (176), she decides to approach her ‘young’ and “very attractive” (174) drama teacher, and express her love for him and agrees to marry him under a temporary marriage, mut’ah (1). In Scene 1, Nour tells Samir “I can’t understand you in class because I’m distracted by my feelings towards you.” It is a bold expression of her emotions and sexuality, especially in a place such as the class and by a student to her teacher. At home, she calls her sister Rana and tells her that her professor “tried to be really angry and proper, but I know he likes me, really. Guess what? I think he's a virgin” (174). The above excerpts, loaded with the pronoun “I,” signifies a strong sense of individuality, where Nour believes that she is entitled to approach and choose Samir as her lover. Nour, in this scene, not only resists patriarchal traditions set in Basrah, but also subverts the traditional male gaze. Most significantly, mut’ah marriage was performed in secrecy, and does not provide legal or social support or protection for women which shows Nour’s defying personality in a lawless atmosphere where women’s honor and sexual behaviour can determine the value of their lives as casualties of their traditions or the American troops. Bold and romantic, Nour resists these practices of violence by creating her own codes. “Is this your first time?” she asks Samir as they are about to have sex, “Have you never had a woman? Don’t worry. Come. Undress me” (177). Ketu H. Katrak notes that female sexuality, which is located within the cultural tradition, is often controlled by confining women, especially widows, within the perception of “guardians of tradition” (2006, 11). In this sense, widowed women are expected to care for their children and sacrifice their sexuality for the sake of motherhood. Katrak observes this as a process of colonizing women “within their bodies,” that they resist by attempting “to transmute the controls of their female bodily spaces from patriarchal hands into their own hands” (2006, 11) . Commenting on body representations in Iraqi literature, Hanan Jasim Khammas notes that “female sexuality was a scene for social critique whereas male sexuality represented a claim for subjectivity” (2018, 3). Sexuality is an integral element in power relations and Nour embraces it to support her agency as a young woman. However, her desire is driven by love for Samir. Ironically, when Samir’s father, who is Nour’s manager in the oil company of Basra, proposed a mut’ah marriage, she refused. Nour chooses to resist social realities that had been shaped not only by social gender restrictions, but also by political chaos: “Good people are either silenced or have escaped the country. Meanwhile hypocrites have seized the chance to take power. This used to be a secular society. Now suddenly religion has become fashionable again. Fundamentalism has become mainstream” (178). Iraqi lives transformed from living under one dictator who silenced them to a shapeless context where Iraqi people had limited choices to survive like fleeing the country. Nour’s sense of her surroundings and the reflections she provides that compares between past and the present reveals a clear side of her identity as an aware woman which I can relate to Ricoeur’s notion of constituting identity. This is further expressed in scene 7, where Nour asserts that she does not “need a sexual partner”, but “a man who can love me, and protect me, and be a safe haven for me and my daughter” (185). However, when the discussion turns to religious texts, Nour rushes to support Samir, her teacher and lover. The discussion in class leads to how heaven and hell are interpreted, where Samir observes that the description of heaven in the Quran was meant to persuade “Arabs who lived in the desert, to make them believe in God and leave their savage manners and pagan beliefs” (180). Nour backs Samir by saying: “adultery or sodomy or even stealing or lying”, are “trivial” issues compared to the eternal punishment in hell (180). Infuriated by this, Ali accuses Nour of “immodest woman”, who always supports her teacher’s “immoral, atheistic ideas” (181). Yet, Samir is threatened and warned to leave Basrah due to the secular opinions that he expressed in the class. An envelope is pushed under his door, with a letter and a bullet. The final line of the letter discloses that his open opinions about religion and women are unacceptable and he either had to leave or he will be killed, the letter ends with “And if they do not, then seize them wherever you find them and slay them” (186). This part of the Quran verse asserts that Samir is now considered a renegade. It is evident that fleeing Iraq is the sole option left for him. As Nour is now pregnant with their child, Samir asks help from his mother who suggests that the only solution is that they should get married in the court, but Samir does not have time, so he decides to leave Nour behind. Nour is strong, her resistance and resilience occur almost consecutively, and she is far from being vulnerable and submissive. Rather, she asserts her freedom of choice. That is why she refuses when Samir’s father proposes a mut’ah marriage to preserve her honor. Although Nour was punished due to her rejection by being sent to "the farthest location in the desert of Basra, Majnoon oil field” (199), she did not keep silent. An institutional and patriarchal violence against Nour is so evident in the decision of her male manager to confine her to a three- hour destination from Basra. While the manager was trying to shut her mouth “Please! Calm down, and lower your voice” (198), Nour raised her voice high attracting the attention of the office to his sexual harassment. As daring and fearless as ever, Nour’s voice becomes an expression of defiance and agency, the loud voice confirms that no one has an authority over her choices. Nour’s assertion of individuality and freedom of choice is an instance of resistance in which women, quoting Katrak’s words, attempt “to transmute the controls of their female bodily spaces from patriarchal hands into their own hands” (11). The play begins with the loss of Nour’s husband, Hatem, who died while defending Iraq against the US invasion in 2003, and ends with Samir’s murder shortly after his return to Iraq. He was shot by one of the militia members who threatened him earlier. Samir’s return is meant to compensate for his guilt of forsaking Nour behind, when she was pregnant with their child. During their last meeting, following his return from Canada, Samir tells Nour that he has returned so that they will have a “permanent, public, normal marriage” (203). Hatem and Samir are both casualties of the US invasion which caused dire impacts not only on Iraqi women, but also children. Through Nour’s storytelling which took place three years post the invasion of Iraq, the play shows that no progress had been achieved regarding Iraqi women’s status. By referring to the three females, Samir’s mother, Nour, and Yasmine, her daughter, I contend that the play underscores the transgenerational trauma encountered by female characters in the play. As Samir’s mother approaches Samir’s body, Nour hugged her, indicating solidarity and understanding of loss and bereavement. The presence of the two women near Samir’s body is another indication that it is no longer an individual traumatic incident. Samir’s mother's reaction to her son’s early unmanly behavior discloses an aspect of female solidarity which was returned when Nour hugged the mother while they both were close to Samir’s dead body. This solidarity enhances female agency as both Samir’s mother and Nour who belong to different generations were trying to achieve justice and secure women’s rights and safety. This solidarity was also projected through Yasmin, Nour’s daughter, who despite being absent from the stage, resembled the new generation of Iraqi women who will grow up under the complexities of the US- invasion, the transgenerational trauma and the transhistorical political unrest. Perpetuating the neocolonial impacts of this invasion through the emergence of armed groups extends the traumatic experiences of Iraqi people, and that of Iraqi women in particular. However, the image of two women standing together at the final scene signals their courage and resistance, not only to violence, but also to stereotyping of Iraqi women, and confinement to the domestic sphere. Al-Azraki’s The Widow is a compelling critique of the patriarchal and socio-political forces that operate to marginalize and oppress women in war-torn Iraq. While exploring the volatile environment of their personal experience, the article asserts Iraqi women’s resilience and agency. Nour’s story defied two types of violence; stereotyping and patriarchy. Despite multiple traumatic experiences of a profound psychological trauma due to the loss of her two husbands, Nour achieves her agency, succeeds in supporting herself and her daughter financially, and opposes male characters’ control over her quotidian life, body, and sexuality. Iraqi widows like Nour were able to create their journeys amid destruction and chaos. Nour, and other women who share with her similar stories, humanised war stories by sharing their intimate details, romantic side and sexual desires during times of fire and blood. Iraqi theatre in the diaspora is connected to the homeland. Portraying Iraqi stories about women who resisted violence and negation under invasion and occupation disrupts dominant narrative and representation of Iraqis as mere casualty figures and numbers. Indeed, theatre is instrumentalised to recreate history and centralise Iraqi voices, experiences and agency to tell their own stories. Telling stories means knowledge and knowledge becomes power and that is what Iraqi theatre is doing–it achieves balance through performing stories of Iraqis, not only about war, destruction and death. Rather, theatre depicts our stories of love, permanence and continuity. It is only in this way, the colonised can defeat colonisers, through storytelling. Endnotes: (1) It is achieved with a certain agreement between a man and a woman for a fixed dowry and duration. Emotional, social, and financial needs are the main reasons for conducting this form of marriage rather than a regular or a long-term commitment. Zena Al Safar notes that Mut’ah is mostly known among Shia Muslims, especially in Iran and Iraq, where they constitute the majority. Al Safar maintains that, in the last four decades, wars and conflicts had negatively influenced the “socioeconomic and security situation” in Iraq and led to “the emergence of temporary marriage in Iraq” (2025, 4-5). During those four decades many Iraqi women were left widowed or divorced (Al Safar 5). As such, their financial, and emotional needs push them to be involved in this form of marriage. (2) فَإِن لَّمْ يَعْتَزِلُوكُمْ وَيُلْقُوا إِلَيْكُمُ السَّلَمَ وَيَكُفُّوا أَيْدِيَهُمْ فَخُذُوهُمْ وَاقْتُلُوهُمْ حَيْثُ ثَقِفْتُمُوهُمْ) Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes Al-Azraki, A. (2017) “Introduction to ‘The Widow’”, in Al-Azraki, A. and James Al-Shamma, (eds) Contemporary Plays from Iraq . London: Bloomsbury. _________. (2017) ‘“The Widow”, in Al-Azraki, A. & Al-Shamma, J, (eds) Contemporary Plays from Iraq. London: Bloomsbury. Al Safar, Z. (2025). Temporary marriage in Iraq: Views and perceptions [Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1546/ Az-Zubaidy, T. R. S. (2024) “Empowering Iraqi Woman’s Voice and Revolt in Muhsin Al-Ramli’s ‘I Killed her Because I Loved her’”, Journal of Diaalfekr , (3), pp. 154-167. https://ojs.diaalfekr.com/index.php/sjlb/ article/view/55/67 Katrak, K. H. (2006) Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World . New Brunswick, London: Rutgers University Press. Khammas, H. J. (2018) “Overcoming sexuality. Ideology & Masculinity in Iraqi Fiction before and after 2003”, TRANS- , (23), pp. 1-10. Doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/trans.2037 Mantoan, L. (2018) War as Performance: Conflicts in Iraq and Political Theatricality . London: Palgrave Macmillan. Naser, A., A. & Midhin, A., A. (2025) “Honour and Reputation as Gender Politics in Ali Abdel-Nabi Al Zaidi’s Rubbish (1995) and Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017)” Theatre Research International , (49:3), pp. 299-316. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S030788332400021X Parker-Starbuck, J. and Roberta Mock. (2011) “Researching the Body in/as Performance”, in Baz Kershaw and Helen Nickolson (eds), Research Methods in Theatre and Performance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press , pp. 210-235. Raffo, H. (2006) 9 Parts of Desire . Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1991) “Life in Quest of Narrative”, in David Wood, (ed.) On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation . London and New York: Routledge, pp. 20-33. Tompkins, J. (2014) Theater’s Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space . Palgrave Macmillan. References About The Author(s) Thamir Az-Zubaidy 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. 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Kaitlin Nabors Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 2 Visit Journal Homepage Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. Kaitlin Nabors By Published on April 18, 2021 Download Article as PDF Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. James Shapiro is a prolific Shakespeare scholar and award-winning author of The Year of Lear: Shakespeare 1606 (2015), A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (2006) and Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare (2010), among other groundbreaking works. In this latest book, hailed by the New York Times as one of “The 10 Best Books of 2020,” Shapiro turns the tables on Shakespeare theatre history analysis. Rather than asking how America plays into the history of Shakespeare, he’s asking how Shakespeare plays into the history of America. Indeed, Shapiro identifies the reception of Shakespeare and the performance of his works as a vital vein running through controversial moments in American history. The titles of each chapter specify an exact year and topic that consumed that era, presented chronologically, including: “1833: Miscegenation;” “1845: Manifest Destiny;” “1849 Class Warfare;” “1916: Immigration;” “1948: Marriage;” “1998: Adultery and Same-Sex Love;” and, lastly, “2017: Left/Right.” This volume is accessible to theatre practitioners and historians alike, without requiring prior knowledge of either discipline to enjoy and engage with the crucial analysis woven throughout. Expertly-written, Shapiro’s lens feels at the same time historic and timely—as he uses the past to examine the path we took to our present. Several chapters focus on one major instance of Shakespearean performance in a pivotal time in America, before zooming out to provide context leading up to the focal event. In Chapter 3, “1849: Class Warfare,” Shapiro uses the Astor Place Riots and William Macready’s performance of Macbeth that night, for instance, to show Shakespeare at the center of an explosion of American nationalism, a topic also featured throughout newspaper headlines in 2020, the year of publication. This emblematic chapter opens the evening of the Astor Place Riots, placing the reader in the middle of the action; then Shapiro takes a step back to analyze the ways that everyone there— performers, audience, and mob—arrived at that volatile clash between the working-class, the elites, and the government. This chapter highlights the rivalry between American actor Edwin Forrest and British actor William Macready, a rivalry that culminated in the disaster at the Astor Place Opera House and which exposed growing divisions along class and cultural lines. Shapiro takes a different view than other historians, such as Nigel Cliff, arguing that the riots were not the result of Americans rejecting theatre or Shakespeare more broadly, but rather “an intense desire by the middle and lower classes to continue sharing that space, and to oppose, violently if necessary, efforts to exclude them from it” (78). Shapiro beautifully paints a picture of an America struggling through movements grown beyond the control of their leadership, as whole cultural groups experienced exclusion from common spaces and marked divides grew between socio-economic classes. By this chapter’s conclusion, readers can’t help but see unspoken parallels to currents today. Perhaps the book’s greatest wake-up call for American readers comes here, when Shapiro writes, “The Opera House may be long gone, but the divisions remain” (80). Other chapters showcase a perspective on American history that textbooks overlook, revealed by significant encounters with Shakespeare. In Chapter 1, “1833: Miscegenation,” Shapiro looks into the deep-seated racism of former President John Quincy Adams, who on the surface fought for abolition, but whose readings of Shakespeare revealed his anti-blackness when he said, “My objections to the character of Desdemona arise… from what she herself does. She absconds from her father’s house, in the dead of night, to marry a blackamoor” (8). Throughout the chapter, Shapiro presents the two sides of Adams: one in public pre-Civil War leadership positions, arguing for abolition against John C. Calhoun, and the other in his private life, where he is quoted by his mother, Abigail, and famed Shakespearean actress Fanny Kemble, to show disgust for the intermarrying of races, using Othello as a whetstone for his rage. Of Adams, Shapiro writes, “His tentative steps towards becoming an abolitionist seem to have required a counterweight, and he found it in his repudiation of amalgamation. Shakespeare gave him much to work with. By directing his hostility at Desdemona rather than Othello, he was able to sidestep criticizing black men” (20). Shapiro’s analysis underscores that Shakespeare during the abolitionist movement was a scapegoat and incitement for many, most notably a President. The last two chapters catapult the reader into present day, a transition that should feel jarring, as there is a 50-year gap from the previous chapter’s case study. Ironically, the historical jump feels all too natural, as the subject matter of previous chapters has felt so modern. In the final chapter, “2017: Left/Right,” Shapiro expertly ties together all his carefully-chosen examples from earlier chapters, highlighting his premise that in order to critically examine the present, you must first dissect the past. This chapter analyzes the hotly debated production of Julius Caesar , featuring Caesar dressed to vaguely mimic Donald Trump, produced by the Public Theater in 2017. Shapiro synopsizes the controversy surrounding the highly publicized production, consistently reminding the reader that Shakespeare and the Public Theater’s production itself were never the problem, nor its artistic value, but rather the cultural divisions exposed by conversations surrounding the production. Shapiro’s groundwork in prior chapters deftly paves the way for this contemporary case study—culminating in the confusion that the production did not result in ideological arguments, but rather partisan anger concerning optics and perceived personal attacks. Shakespeare in a Divided America ends with this chapter, highlighting America’s evolving cultural schisms through Shakespeare. There’s no epilogue, only Shapiro’s brief Bibliographical Essay, in which he describes his sources and recommends further reading. His spare one-paragraph denouement eloquently meditates on what’s to come, as polarization heightens: “The future of Shakespeare in America, like the future of the nation itself, would appear secure… Yet his future also seems as precarious as it has ever been in this nation’s history” (220). The reader is left here, encouraged to make the same connections Shapiro has given the tools to use Shakespeare as a litmus test for American divisions, using moments of unrest in our past to analyze our present and fathom our future. References Footnotes About The Author(s) KAITLIN NABORS University of Colorado, Boulder Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Vivian Appler Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Vivian Appler By Published on January 12, 2021 Download Article as PDF Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec. Julie Burelle. Performance Works, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019; 232 pp. Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States. Laura L. Mielke. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019; 296 pp. Issues that surrounded Black and Indigenous sovereignty in the mid-nineteenth century are under scrutiny again as we enter the mid-twenty-first. The summer of 2020 makes this vividly apparent: A global health crisis has exposed disparities of income and access to health care across racial and ethnic lines. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is gaining momentum while an increasingly tyrannical government works to suppress the freedom of speech and right to assemble for those who would peacefully protest anti-Black racism and police brutality. The US Supreme Court has ruled that a 3-million-acre territory in Eastern Oklahoma is, after all, the rightful land of the Muskogee (Creek) people and is therefore exempt from Oklahoma state law. In this context, Julie Burelle’s Encounters on Contested Lands and Laura L. Mielke’s Provocative Eloquence , though different in critical approach and aesthetic content, invite reflection upon legacies of conquest and genocide in the United States and Canada that continue to impede the realization of social justice now. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec is an important contribution to scholarship about performance in and of the Americas. Burelle’s performance studies method allows multiple embodied storytelling genres to be read as integral to the narrative clash between the French Québécois de souche (“the white descendants of early settlers from France, who still speak French and understand themselves… as settlers no more, colonized by the British first and, later, by the Anglo-Canadians, and rightfully belonging to the territory of Québec”) and the Indigenous peoples who reside in what is now the province of Québec (6). Burelle articulates her own positionality as French Québécois de souche throughout her criticism of Euro-Canada’s claims to nationhood and territory. Relying on Slavoj Žižek’s concept of “objective violence,” she interprets French Québec’s history of settler colonialism as it pertains to performances surrounding Canada’s Indian Act (1876), and as its damaging social contract persists into the present. Burelle claims, “[r]ace, with whiteness as its ultimate arbiter, is the unstable terrain on which settler-colonial anxieties are performed through a pas de deux between abjection and incorporation” (12). The performance examples she cites demonstrate that French Canadians’ minoritization claims rest upon acts of erasure, ignorance, or consumption of Indigenous presence, resistance, and ancestry. Burelle organizes the book’s intersectional histories around the “Oka Crisis” of 1990, in which the Mohawk people of Kanehsatà:ke defended the destruction of tribal lands by a predominantly white, francophone country club community. Burelle reads this conflict as key to understanding the fluidity of the Québécois de souche’s claims to cultural marginalization, conveniently invoked when contesting Anglo-Canada’s dominance over Québec but obscured when an alliance with Anglo-Canada would preserve French-Canadian claims over Indigenous lands. Burelle begins with an analysis of Alexis Martin’s Invention du chauffage central en Nouvelle-France ( The Invention of Central Heating in New France, 2012-2014), a play that poses paradoxical French Québécois de souche claims of abjection and what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang refer to as “settler moves to innocence” (169). Burelle historiographically frames Martin’s epic as part of the white settler-colonial legacy of Marc Lescarbot’s 1606 Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle- France. She surmises, “ Invention falls short of its reconciliatory endeavor and echoes in disturbing ways the willful offering of the land” once performed by white actors in redface for Lescarbot’s legendary conquest drama about ‘New France’ (27). Burelle further probes protestations of French-Canadian innocence in Chapter 2, “Les Racines Imaginaires/Mythical Métissages .” Through close readings of films by Euro-Canadians that examine indigeneity, Burelle charts the violence embedded French Québécois de souche affect to what she dubs a “felt Nativeness,” “never problematizing how this desire to possess Nativeness, to absorb it, is… inherently settler-colonial” (58). In this chapter, Burelle explores the many iterations of “ métis, métissé, and métissage ,” terms that broadly refer to racial and ethnic mixing, but each possessing a nuanced interpretation when it comes to various Canadian and Indigenous identities, rendering Métis and métis studies distinct foci of Canadian identities and politics (59). With the films discussed in Chapter 3 – Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, Alanis Obomsawin), Mesnak (2012, Yves Sioui Durand), and the Wapikoni Mobile project – Burelle gives voice to Indigenous filmmakers, at once revealing the objective violence implicit to the history of Canada’s Indian Act and affirming authentic representations of Indigenous culture. Chapter 4, “Endurance/Enduring Performance,” engages Indigenous women’s performances that articulate gender-based violence as an irrefutable component of Canada’s genocidal legacy. La Marche Amun (2010), conceived and organized by Michèle Taïna and Viviane Michel, was “led by a group of Innu women to demand an end to the gendered discrimination contained in the Indian Act” (21). This processional performance, situated along a “rural highway” in 2010, eerily reflected the concurrent murders of Indigenous women along Canada’s Highway 16, most of which remain under-investigated and unsolved (125). Burelle’s analysis of the endurance-beading performance, Indian Act (1999-2002), organized by Nadia Myre (Anishinaabe) for which she and 250 participants of European and Indigenous descent covered an annotated copy of the Indian Act with intricate beadwork. The final piece, many pages of which are unfinished , suggests that much work remains to be done in the ongoing processes of reconciliation and repatriation among the peoples who enact Canada’s “ colonial present tense and tense colonial present ” (4). North American genocidal legacies come into equally sharp focus in Laura Mielke’s Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States , a timely book that reframes US oratory traditions as enmeshed with abolitionism and infused with violence. Mielke considers speech acts of all kinds as she interrogates the connection between embodied action and intentional utterance. She draws from a rich array of theatrical, dramatic, oratory, legislative, and print narratives to craft a meticulous case for the power of words to incite change. Theatre, theatricality and drama inform each portion of her argument that “the antislavery speech readily drew upon theatrical forms and provocations of antislavery speech made their way back to the stage” (24). Mielke’s method is “interperformative and intertextual” (21). She considers dramatic texts and performatic contexts for each oratorical figure as she disrupts popular understandings of familiar figures from the political, melodramatic, and Shakespearean stages of the mid-nineteenth century (21). This is perhaps most evident in Chapter 1, “Edwin Forrest and Heroic Oratory.” In her analysis of Forrest’s 1838 Independence Day Oration , Mielke illustrates Forrest’s political speech as having been understood not just for its political content and delivery style, but also for its Roachian “afterglow” caused by Forrest’s embodiment of his own ideas. For audiences, memories of the actor’s famous “heroic” stage roles such as the slave rebellion leader Spartacus (1831) may have blended with the words of the speech, perhaps lending Forrest a more abolitionist tone than words alone would have conveyed (53). Mielke’s notion of “dramatic suasion” is most clearly defined in a chapter dedicated to the dramatic readings of William Wells Brown and Mary Webb. She argues that “[d]ramatic suasion, as developed by Webb and Wells Brown…, transferred the rhetoric at the heart of Garrisonian abolitionism into a genre… associated with rebellious and retributive violence and into a performative mode” (82). As enacted by the free Black bodies of Webb and Wells Brown, abolitionist narratives shifted the national conversation in the mid-nineteenth century from the implicitly anti-abolitionist question of what the US would do with a population of free Black people, to “the real question… ‘what to do with the masters’” (82). While political histories pin Mielke’s argument in chronological sequence, the event that anchors her thesis most evocatively is the caning of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the US Congress floor by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. In Chapter 3, Mielke compares the event with the tableau, “Southern Chivalry – Argument versus Club’s” by John L. Magee (1856) and then considers three theatrical adaptations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred; A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp in light of increasingly brutal resistance to the abolitionist movement. As she teases out the violent undercurrents of melodramatic forms such as the sensation scene and blackface minstrelsy, attuned to the physical violence threatened and represented onstage in all three productions, Mielke infers, “[i]t was the fear of antislavery speech’s incitement of forcible resistance that led to a very different manifestation of provocative eloquence: the vicious suppression of eloquence by resistant auditors” (84). Mielke artfully unpacks Portia’s famous “Quality of Mercy” monologue for its rhetorical threat of violence, used to alternately suppress or incite violence that in turn either perpetuated the practice of slavery or resisted it. Mielke’s analysis of Portia’s speech, and its numerous deployments in the antebellum era, helps the reader to understand the US as it is currently embroiled in an unfinished history of racial violence that simmers in words and inevitably manifests as physical brutality. Re-reading this book amidst the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement during the summer of 2020, I was brought to consider the ways that Mielke’s oratorical subjects have themselves become cultural and rhetorical touchpoints in our ongoing struggles towards social justice. By examining antislavery texts, Mielke reveals the violence that haunts even the most pacifist of entreaties. Her choice to conclude with abolitionist John Brown’s execution and the sway it held for actor John Wilkes Booth towards violently anti-abolitionist ends suggests that the question of whether or not violent action is necessary to dismantle systems of racism and oppression in the US is yet to be settled. Read together, these books deepen our grasp of the violence in which hegemonic North American concepts of citizenship, sovereignty, and suffrage are entrenched. Objective violence embedded in settler-colonial legislation compounded with the implied and enacted violence surrounding abolitionist speech echo across the continent while the struggle for social justice endures. References Footnotes About The Author(s) VIVIAN APPLER College of Charleston 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 "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States 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 14 Spring 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh By Sonali Pahwa Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF Adam Ashraf Elsayigh. On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh By Sonali Pahwa Sonali Pahwa: I proposed to interview you as part of this series to highlight the diasporic expansion of theatre about Egypt and by Egyptians since 2011. Unlike so many Egyptian artists who went into exile after the counter-revolution and return of military rule, I believe you have a longer diasporic history? Adam Ashraf Elsayigh: Yes, I wanted to offer an initial disclaimer when you reached out to me about being part of an Egyptian playwright series because, as you know, I grew up in Dubai. Egypt is a host of contradictions to me. I moved to Dubai as a toddler really, and only came back to Egypt as a teenager, which happened to coincide with the most tumultuous years, 2011-2014. I always felt a dual identity as someone raised in a hyper-American milieu. My parents are very Egyptian, and we spoke Arabic at home, but also when I moved to the US for graduate school, I realized I fit in here more than anywhere else I’d been before. I contend with this duality when I write plays about Egypt. I’ve always had a Western influence and felt cognizant that I told stories of my version of Egypt, which is a fairly upper middle-class one. I don’t think most Egyptians would see their version of their homeland reflected in it. For a long time, I felt a certain shame around that, but I’ve come to own it as a lens over time. This is my version of Egypt. However, the audience for my theatre is not primarily Egyptian. SP: Many Egyptian friends of mine are now in diaspora and have different versions of Egypt based on when they left and under what circumstances. But they are still in community with other Egyptians, through social media, the written word, or performance. This is why I wonder if the Egyptian diaspora has become the key site of cultural production about Egypt. Elsayigh: That makes sense to me. Still, when my New York dramaturg friend Salma Zohdi reached out about getting the rights to make a play about (imprisoned Egyptian revolutionary) Alaa Abdel Fattah my first impulse was to say no. I had been a 13-year-old in the Cairo suburbs, and I was not active in the protests in 2011. In fact, my form of rebellion was to tell my parents that I didn’t care about politics even though we were living through a revolution. I thought I was not the person to tell Alaa’s story. Salma was a bit older during the revolution and was very active in the streets, besides being friends with Alaa’s family, and she had a different perspective. She said I could see what needed to be centered and explained for an American audience. “You have an understanding of that world and can see it through a Western perspective,” she said, “and that has value.” That conversation was a little over a year ago. In the meantime, we got the rights to work on Alaa: A Family Trilogy and began to develop its world. We did interviews with folks who were in Egypt during the revolution, some who were politically active and some who were not. Some are now in diaspora or spent time in prison. Having all these conversations and different levels of access, while thinking about my positionality with respect to the people I interviewed, has made it incredibly gratifying to write the story. Now I am more comfortable being part of an Egyptian playwright series than I would have been a year or two ago. SP: That brings me to the question of how you use theatre as a means of place-making and spatial representation. Your first play, Drowning in Cairo , gave me such a vivid sense of Cairo when I knew it. I first went to live there months after the Queen Boat incident in 2001, around which this play is built. How do you construct worlds in your theatre? Elsayigh: I had never really seen the kind of queer Egyptian world that Drowning in Cairo depicts. My parents would speak about social class and gender in very specific ways - their thoughts on this or that neighborhood, what we can say in front of people, what is haram or ‘eib. Being surrounded by that helped me depict homophobic society not as an obvious antagonist, but a nuanced world that fractures and triangulates with the queer world. The throuple at the play’s center (Moody, Khalid, and Taha) themselves embody that triangulation. Each of them is a composite of types I knew, with social class being a key element of each type. Moody and Khalid are upper class men, and Taha is the upwardly mobile son of a domestic worker, but also often their friend and lover. I’ve never seen an Egyptian play or television show that wasn’t primarily melodrama, where people actually sound like they do in life. In writing Drowning , I was interested in how naturalistic theatre could get at a deeper truth about class and gender in this society particularly with respect to the spaces we do not talk about. I think the play is also an attempt at an epic that wants to capture modern Egypt. But I don’t think it quite lands on that front. Most of the theatre I create is a historical counter-narrative. I’m interested in people reading my plays and thinking, “I didn’t know this lens or story existed” as opposed to the current state narrative which hegemonically wants to be the only one that gets to tell the story of modern Egypt. SP: I have been to my share of Egyptian theatre, and you are right that social class is rarely staged in its natural complexity. Class conflict is often metaphorical and reconciled in a happy ending in plays. What do you think naturalistic theatre can show about social class that is so hard to talk about? Elsayigh: When I first moved to the US, I was struck by how people do not talk about social class. Of course, that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about it, or that it doesn’t exist. In cities like New York or San Francisco, you have public transit and literally rub shoulders with people, but otherwise I feel like it’s easy to live in a bubble. Where I grew up in Dubai, class is racialized and that is a whole other thing. But Cairo is not like that. Many middle- and upper-middle-class people live in buildings where someone living in the basement picks up their trash. You know their kids, or if there is a death in their family. I remember playing with our maid’s kids on visits to Egypt every summer. Till, around when I was 7, my dad told us we shouldn’t do that anymore. That class education probably happened more subtly or organically for kids who grew up in Cairo continuously, but it had to be explicitly coded for me as someone who was always somewhat on the outside. I always found it fascinating how these spaces blurred. I don’t know how to dramatize someone who is working class and remains within that identity in an Egyptian context, and I’d seen Egyptian soaps do it badly enough times that I knew I didn't want to do the same. That said, I did want to write about class, and how it intersects with queerness, in Egypt. As a teenager in Egypt, I befriended a number of gay men who’d grown up fairly working class and yet had ambitions of upward mobility (which was more possible in the past than now, both in Egypt and the US). I think that’s not untethered from their queerness. And I was interested in that kind of character and how language is part of their class identity. The reception to Drowning in Cairo in the US, particularly pertaining to this issue of class, has been somewhat preposterous. Audiences have asked me or talked about the character of Taha - the maid’s son who becomes the two other men’s friend and confidante - as if servants are entirely foreign to this culture. But middle-class Americans do have babysitters and other caretakers! And I do think this speaks to how Americans often create a layer of alienation between themselves and work depicting words outside the United States; even though I do believe the worlds I depict are not indifferent from the worlds I inhabit here in the United States. I do think audiences who create that layer of alienation often miss the point. SP: Indeed. Arab theatre in the US is so often predicated on national exchange – Algerian or Palestinian troupes performing at the Kennedy Center – that diasporic theatre can be difficult to categorize. Elsayigh: There was a time I tried to mold myself into “an Arab artist” - just not one who lives there. That crystallized for me when I moved to New York as an international student and it became evident this place was home. I quickly started to feel the city was home after moving to New York as an international student, so I’m conscious of not having the same positionality as a visiting artist. But I also am not second-generation; I don’t relate to Egyptian Americans. I have an immigrant sensibility; more likely to relate to a Peruvian who immigrated at the age of 18 than an Arab American born here. SP: Diaspora really is its own cultural category. Are you familiar with earlier generations of diasporic Egyptians who wrote in English, like Ahdaf Soueif, or Waguih Ghali who wrote Beer in the Snooker Club ? Elsayigh: Ahdaf Soueif is actually one of the three protagonists of Alaa: A Family Trilogy [she is Alaa’s aunt]. I don’t know about Waguih Ghali. SP: They headline a small but significant genre of Egyptian literature in English. English lets writers do certain things, and dramatic characters too. You have a scene in Drowning in Cairo where the three characters are in jail after a party on the Queen Boat is raided by police, and they speak in English because they don’t want others to understand them. As someone who also grew up bilingual, I am curious about how English lets you and your characters navigate class lines. Elsayigh: There have been many drafts of Drowning in Cairo with different proportions of Arabic and English. I wrote the first draft naturalistically - meaning as I think the scene would have actually happened - and it came out to 50-50 Arabic and English. To be clear, I write the Arabic in Franco-Arab script because I am an embarrassment! Eventually, I wrote a 100% Arabic variant; and another that’s 95% English for American audiences. But never a 100% one. There will never be a fully English one. I refuse. When it gets published, I think it will be the 95% English draft where you can comfortably dispense with supertitles and not be disrupted by the Arabic. You will follow the story and you’ll be fine. That was when I first moved here. I first wrote that 95% English draft very reluctantly because theatre institutions told me a play that’s 30% in Arabic (or rather, not in English) wouldn’t not have a life in the US. It infuriated me. German theatres program non-German language plays with subtitles all the time. But my opinions on dramatic language have dramatically changed over time. I’m more open to making things as easy as possible for American audiences; because they are primed to “other” people, to look for the things that separate them from the character. There’s an impulse to dehumanize… and I try to not give it a chance in my work. My upcoming trilogy about the family of political activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, for instance, is entirely in contemporary American English. I think it’s essential because it’s a political epic with so many layers of alienation already. We don’t need language to be another layer. SP: One reason I interpreted for the use of English in Drowning in Cairo was that it offers a language of queerness outside the derogatory terms for gay men in Egyptian Arabic. Your characters mention those terms but end up calling themselves gay or bisexual in English. Elsayigh: The language of Drowning in Cairo is actually on the more family-friendly side for my plays. When you get to plays that have more intimacy or are more graphic, there are no words that don’t feel derogatory for certain things in the Arabic language. Obviously that itself can be a source of drama; that question of how to create a localized vernacular in a queer community. And there’s, of course, the critique that it gets Westernized and that that’s a form of imperialism. But resisting can be hard when it’s the default, or only, language you have. SP: I feel like in theatre you can do a kind of partial translation, where your characters speak in mixed language and talk about navigating language while they are doing so themselves. Elsayigh: I enjoy when there are no supertitles and audiences accept that certain things will just wash over them. It’s incredibly liberating. Sometimes you are in a country where you don’t speak the language, but you want to go to the theatre anyway. You know you are only going to get what you get. You figure some things out and get an experience that’s unique to you. SP: I wanted to talk about the dramatization of masculinity in Drowning in Cairo . You have some very interesting characters who struggle with the version of masculinity they have inherited, like the police general’s son Khalid. He is gay and hates his father, but ends up as a police general too. What cinematic and theatrical canons do you draw upon when you write about masculinity? Elsayigh: I never think about my gender performance today. But growing up in Egypt, the concept of masculinity was a force that was so constant and so explicit. Even in middle school, boys would talk about how to look and act; or conversations about posture and what posture is “concerning” (read: effeminate). I did grow up with an idea of masculinity as something you have to perform correctly . It really does feel like a form of drag, or a very wild bit that we've all just agreed to keep doing. The character Khalid (in Drowning ) comes out of that. There is a silly Egyptian soap opera Al-Kabeer, with Ahmed Mekki, that stages masculinity through twin boys who were separated at birth. One stayed with his father in an Egyptian village and the other grows up in the US with his American mother. I don’t think it’s what they meant to make, but it’s a campy satire of a femme gay man and a hypermasculine one next to each other. Obviously, no one talks about it in those terms, but it is deeply about masculinity. SP: So much canonical Egyptian drama is written by male playwrights who do not discuss masculinity explicitly in their work. I often found that women writers were more reflexive about gender performance. Elsayigh: The obsession with masculinity is alive as ever. This is more performance studies than theatre, but the performance of masculinity is more pronounced than ever in today’s Egypt, given the police, or rather, military state. I am in online groups where some days, the moderators will notify people to delete gay dating apps from their phone because police are stopping men downtown! I mean, they literally stop you, look at you and what you are wearing and decide on that basis to look through your phone! SP: Can I now ask you about your script in progress about activist Alaa Abdel Fattah? Elsayigh: Alaa: A Family Trilogy is still a first draft, but yes, of course. The trilogy was commissioned by Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, which also did the world premiere of Drowning in Cairo , directed by Sahar Assaf. My friend who brilliantly dramaturged that production, Salma Zohdi, came to us with the idea, and the connection with Alaa’s family. The play would not have happened without them. It's a complex play: lots of interviews, hundreds of hours of writing. This piece combines me dramatizing an Egyptian political story with my practice in verbatim theatre and theatre of the real, which have always been passions of mine but distinct from playwriting. This play is documentary but not verbatim – I wanted the liberty of imagining scenes and mixing it with a memory play. These parts of my practice have been quite distinct, so I brought them together with some trepidation. But it's paid off. I think it's truly the closest I've ever come to the ethos I explicated earlier: theatre as counter-history. Salma has been part of this journey and process from day one, building the story and conducting interviews. Working with her and Sahar has been a dream. People say American theatre is a playwright’s theatre, but I do better in collaborative settings. I love co-writing things! SP: What appealed to you about this idea for a play when Salma brought it to you? Elsayigh: I think I have a complicated relationship to what it means to be political and Egyptian, and being political in relation to being Egyptian. My family was the type who were very much with the revolution when it was happening but went back to business as usual when it wasn’t. I’ve always thought that there’s a play there, and that I’d one day interview them about that moment of shift; how they went from being out in the streets every day to reverting to being pro-regime so suddenly. From a character perspective, it’s wild to me. I was writing Drowning in Cairo when the Mashrou’ Leila concert happened in Cairo where Sara Hegazi held the rainbow flag and queer people were arrested. I thought it was absurd that my little student play written at NYU Abu Dhabi could get me into any kind of trouble, but somehow it became political. When I mentioned the play on my website six months after graduating college… I won’t get into details but let’s just say it caught the wrong eyes. It turns out, one can be a national threat in a Bushwick sublet on a student visa… There has always been the question of where I get the authority to be political. I am told that I speak from privilege because I don't live in Egypt. "You're not here, why does any of this matter to you?" Which is funny because when I am in Egypt, I'm told I can't talk openly there. Okay, then who can? It seems like the answer is no one, which is the point. So when this play came to me, my first reaction was a sense of inadequacy. My first thought was that I am not the person to write it. All I knew about Alaa was that he is an activist who rose to prominence in the revolution and comes from a family of dissidents and is now imprisoned; and that his father (Ahmed Seif) was a lawyer for the Queen Boat accused. As I delved deeper into Alaa's story, especially his hundred-day hunger strike, I just... struggled to think how to depict such an act... and the rationale behind it, in a context where it feels like all hope feels futile. The futility of fighting against what felt like an inevitable and discouraging system made me ask myself, why we are undertaking this endeavor in the first place? SP: I guess because you have the space to do it? You might not feel a clear authority to tell the story, but you do have the space. Elsayigh: But the question is: What does it mean to have hope when there's no reason to have hope? Why is anyone doing this when you're dealing with a military regime that won’t respond to anything? The White House won’t issue a statement either. But you still want to do something. Once I spoke to Alaa’s family and heard their stories, I started to get the answer, and it became obvious that I had to write it. SP: For many Egyptian friends of my generation, which is older than yours, Alaa has been an enduring symbol of political activism who represents a continuity to the struggle for rights. While others have been silenced and jailed, he has maintained a public voice even from prison. Elsayigh: Yes, it is important to note that Alaa is not the only activist doing things – other people are active. But they are being actively silenced. So Alaa’s existence is itself a counter-history. When I first came to the play, I thought it would be a prison drama with him at the center. I was incredibly inspired by plays that came out of military resurgences in Argentina and South Africa, like the documentary theatre of Yael Farber. The first few interviews we did were with people who had been in prison with him or around the same time. Then I met Alaa’s mother (Laila Soueif), his sister, Mona, and his aunt, Ahdaf Soueif, and decided the play was really about the legacy and lineage of that family. Because the answer to my question was there. SP: How interesting that you have given the counter-history a differently gendered focus. Of course, this family has a well-known history of activism, but the women are not always at the center of its public historical narrative. Elsayigh: One criticism (and self-criticism) I have had for a lot of my pieces is that they are often only about men. With this play, I was conscious I don’t have a direct line to Alaa - I have never spoken to him and, unfortunately, don’t know if I ever will. But I did hear and witness the stories and stories of these three women from his life. Even though these women have been dissidents since the 1970s, and been incarcerated, the men get jailed for longer because of the public perception of men versus women’s incarceration in a patriarchal society. Many of the crimes for which Alaa was sentenced were because he went to the street to take care of Mona, or Mona was hunger striking first. But the public narrative doesn’t care. From the women in his family, there is also a sense that Alaa is experiencing things that they have not. The women may not be at the center of the public historical narrative but, in this case, they are very much at the heart of the counter-narrative. The play’s director, who is Peruvian, said that by virtue of them having this positionality, the women also have the onus of being generational storytellers who pass down memories. I get chills just thinking about some of the stories they have told me. Laila told me, for instance, that she and [Ahmed] Seif decided to conceive Mona when he was about to go to jail because they wanted to ensure the family line would be continued. That story is now at the start of the play. SP: I am curious about how this play might fashion an audience of its own, which includes those of us who care deeply about Egypt but do not live there at present. I’m also interested in how Golden Thread Productions, the director, and you as the playwright, conceive of the potential audience of the play as not just diasporic but transnational. Elsayigh: I think Alaa would hate to be spoken of as a phenomenon, but he is a transnational phenomenon. I was fascinated that during COP27 in Egypt last year, there was a campaign where celebrities like Emma Thompson and Mark Ruffalo read pieces of his writing from his 2021 anthology, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated. There are so many political prisoners under dictatorships across the world, and years ago, I did wonder about the extent of his reach. I do feel in some ways both grateful for and humbled by my work being in proximity to, or a part of, that cause. But it does say a lot about a story’s singular power to create counter-history and for social change. Salma, the dramaturg, came to Columbia to study theatre in 2013 after the coup. She said that all her friends who worked in the NGO field were worried that there would be no story of the 2011 revolution. Just a few months in, they were already forgetting what happened the previous month because there was a constant stream of new protests and new violations by the regime. Mona tweeted 150 times a day so there would be an archive to go back to, but now most people have deleted their tweets or made their Twitter accounts private out of fear. There is no public archive. In Egyptian schools, children are taught that the 2011 revolution was a success and brought Sisi to power. Counter-history sounds like a lofty idea, but history is literally being erased every day in Egypt. Al-Ahram’s news articles about Alaa have been deleted from their archive, for instance. There is a small international intelligentsia who know about Alaa and tweet #FreeAlaa whenever there is a UN summit. But I hope the average person will learn more about him as a result of this play, and there will be a broader base of people who bear witness to the life of his family. There are families like this in many parts of the world, so audiences may sense proximity and hear resonances with their own lives. SP: I also hope the play enters curricula on transnational political theatre in the US. We teach plays by Griselda Gambaro and Yael Farber, but Egyptian drama is less well known. Elsayigh: I do want the story to be as global as possible. The director is from Peru and knows what a military dictatorship is like. She can also relate to the story of criminal justice. Alaa: A Family Trilogy has an ensemble cast of 10. If it ends up being two Black people and a South Asian person and two Latino people, that's great. None of us is Alaa, but we are all performing on his behalf. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Sonali Pahwa, University Of Minnesota My ethnographic research on stage, street, and digital performance focuses on youth culture in the Arab world. My first book Theatres of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt (Northwestern University Press, 2020) examined the cultural politics of identity in Egyptian underground theatre , before and after 2011. A second project on digital performance began with articles on Egyptian bloggers who talked about self, sexuality, and revolutionary politics, a Saudi beauty YouTuber, and an Egyptian hijab influencer on Instagram. I studied the algorithmic, technological, and bodily strategies they used to assemble signature embodiments, developing a methodological toolkit for performance ethnography on digital platforms. My current research centers on digital entrepreneurs in Dubai - including those marketed as icons of modern Emirati identity and others who embody third-culture cosmopolitanism in an immigrant-majority nation. 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 Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price Review of Theaters of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt written by Sonali Pahwa Review: Decolonizing Sarah: A Hurricane Play written and directed by Samer Al-Saber “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani Review of MUKHRIJĀT AL-MASRAḤ AL-MIṢRĪ (1990-2010): DIRĀSA SĪMIYŪṬĪQĪYAH [Female Egyptian Directors (1990-2010): A Semiotic Study], written by Hadia Abd El-Fattah Review of Syrian Refugees, Applied Theater, Workshop Facilitation, and Stories: While They Were Waiting written by Fadi Skeiker Review: Layalina written by Martin Yousif Zebari, directed by Sivan Battat Up There by Wael Kadour, Introduction Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly Crossing Borders: A Theatre Practitioner’s Odyssey, An Interview with Hassan El Geretly On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh Performance Review: A FAMILY THAT HAS BEEN BLOCKED Performance Review: BETHLEHEM SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER FESTIVAL Performance Review: HOOTA. By Amer Hlehel Performance Review: LITTLE SYRIA Book Review: ACTING EGYPTIAN Book Review: MANSOUR, MONA. THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch Unbound by John English / Tom Garner at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. Discrimination, body shaming & violence. This is ballet in 2024. But a group of defiant dancers, survivors of industry abuse, want to form a radical, diverse company that opens its doors to others who have also suffered abuse, and gives these talented, traumatized survivors a chance to fight back, on stage. They find a run-down studio, and Chase Johnsey, a gender-fluid dance insurgent, to direct them. But, they have no money, no reputation, and Chase has never directed before. The dancers are brave, but young and deeply fragile. They must confront their traumas and find belief if they are ever to retake the stage. It is a journey of pain, hope, and above all resistance -to fight for justice, change lives, and create groundbreaking, liberated ballet- one choreographed step at a time. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Unbound John English / Tom Garner At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This film will be screened on May 30, at 12:00 PM, at The Segal Theatre Center RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. Country Spain Language Catalan, English Running Time 91 minutes Year of Release 2024 About The Film Discrimination, body shaming & violence. This is ballet in 2024. But a group of defiant dancers, survivors of industry abuse, want to form a radical, diverse company that opens its doors to others who have also suffered abuse, and gives these talented, traumatized survivors a chance to fight back, on stage. They find a run-down studio, and Chase Johnsey, a gender-fluid dance insurgent, to direct them. But, they have no money, no reputation, and Chase has never directed before. The dancers are brave, but young and deeply fragile. They must confront their traumas and find belief if they are ever to retake the stage. It is a journey of pain, hope, and above all resistance -to fight for justice, change lives, and create groundbreaking, liberated ballet- one choreographed step at a time. Director: John English, Tom Garner Script: John English Photography: Tom Garner Editing: John English, Tom Garner Sound: 114 Studio Production: Sara Gibbings Co-production: Troy TV / 3Cat About The Artist(s) John English John English is the co-founder of OTOXO Productions, an award winning production company, based in Barcelona. We create character focused, narrative driven docs to raise the sound of unheard voices & shed a light on unseen faces. He has created documentaries for broadcasters and platforms both in Spain & internationally, on channels & platforms such as The Guardian, TV3, El Pais, GuideDoc, BTV & ZOOMIN. Their films have picked up prizes in festivals across the globe. Also, through OTOXO’s unique ‘INto INdustry’ programme John heads up a team that give young, creative individuals a combination of rigorous training & professional filmmaking opportunities, & help them become industry professionals in their own right. John’s specific focus on the programme is in directing narrative and character development. Beyond directing, he is also a producer and story consultant, currently working with directors such as Carina Haouchine on her debut feature doc – Session Zero, and Priya Woods on her upcoming feature doc Still, Life, which has also been selected at DOCs Barcelona 2024, for the development pitch. Tom Garner Tom is the co-founder of OTOXO Productions, a production company based in Barcelona. Beyond directing, he is also the producer on a number of shorts, such as FLAMENCO IKIGAI with director Emanuel Massa, a winner at Halicarnassus film festival and RIDERS UNITING, with director Will Roberts, which featured in Huck Magazine. His feature documentary UNBOUND (2024) co-directed with John English is selected by DocsBarcelona International Documentary Film Festival. Get in touch with the artist(s) info@otoxoproductions.com and follow them on social media https://www.otoxoproductions.com/ 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

Janet Werther Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 2 Visit Journal Homepage Fauci and Kramer Janet Werther By Published on July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF FAUCI and KRAMER By Drew Fornarola Directed by Kate Powers First Look Buffalo, Canturbury Woods Performing Arts Center Buffalo, NY March 17, 2023 Reviewed by Janet Werther What do you want? Why are you here? These questions drive the dramatic action in Drew Fornarola’s play FAUCI and KRAMER . In the play, Fornarola imagines the variously bombastic and heartfelt (but always witty) repartee that would inevitably ensue if playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer returned to haunt his longtime public foe/dear friend, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Set shortly after Kramer’s death in May 2020, Fornarola’s play is part ghost story, part memory play, and part historical docudrama. Indeed, the dramaturgical instability produced by crisscrossing these always-already permeable generic boundaries is key to the play’s affective charm. FAUCI and KRAMER received its world premiere in early 2023. It was produced by First Look Buffalo , a Western New York theatre company dedicated to developing new works by regionally affiliated playwrights. The play’s discursive focus is Fauci and Kramer’s shared history of the early HIV/AIDS pandemic, but the anxiety and isolation of the early COVID-19 pandemic are its backdrop and setting. Sarah Waechter’s simple yet elegant set design captured pandemic sensibilities by dangling an assortment of face masks from Dr. Fauci’s computer screen and placing a canister of Clorox wipes and a partly used container of bright green hand sanitizer on prominent display. Kate Powers’s direction further reinforced the climate of pre-vaccine precarity. Before Fauci returned from a brief retreat to the restroom, for example, he mumble-sang “Happy Birthday” from offstage, a practice familiar, if now defunct, from a time in the early pandemic when many of us believed (or at least wished) we could ward off the virus simply by washing our hands for twenty tuneful seconds at a time. Beloved local actors Steve Jakiel and Louis Colaiacovo played Fauci and Kramer, respectively, to emotionally resonant if not always visually precise effect. This is not to suggest that FAUCI and KRAMER —in its script or costume design—failed to evoke the real men whose public images bear the weight of the play’s philosophical concerns. Colaiacovo certainly resembled Kramer in denim overalls, a chunky sweater, necklace, and small, red glasses. A full, barely graying beard and clean-shaven scalp completed the visual transformation. Unlike Dr. Anthony Fauci, however, Jakiel is a large man. Towering over his scene partner, Jakiel looked quite dissimilar to “America’s Doctor,” though attired in a suit befitting his prestigious station and professional public demeanor. This dissimilarity was acknowledged in the play’s first moments in a direct address to the audience, then mostly ignored. Verisimilitude is less important here than the affective weight of evocation, achieved through Fornarola’s words and the actors’ attention to movement, pacing, and the tensile force of their respective deliveries. Dr. Anthony Fauci (Steve Jakiel) and Larry Kramer (Louis Colaiacovo) stand in separate pools of light in front of the set for Dr. Fauci’s living room in Drew Fornarola’s FAUCI and KRAMER at First Look Buffalo (2023). Photo ©Tomas L. Waz Colaiacovo brought a bounding, enthusiastic energy to bear on his performance as Kramer, explained as the privileged agency of the dearly departed: as a ghost, Kramer has chosen to return in his prime. He remains frustrated at inequities and indignities big and small, yet Kramer’s characteristic anger was tempered in performance by good-humored annoyance at the pitiful excuse for a cup of coffee provided by Fauci’s Keurig machine. Colaiacovo’s lightly comic performance of this coffee lazzo —wanting a cup of coffee, balking at the travesty of the Keurig and Fauci’s K-cup options, considering a trip to buy better coffee, reassuring his friend that a ghost cannot get COVID at the corner store, considering that perhaps a ghost cannot buy coffee, either, brewing a K-cup, bemoaning its quality, and so forth—cast the irascible activist as crotchety but relatably human. Jakiel’s Dr. Fauci, meanwhile, remained calm and relatively unfazed in the face of frustration and uncertainty. Yet unlike Kramer’s spry ghost, he was clearly exhausted. Kramer has descended (or perhaps ascended , as the pair joke) to Fauci’s living room as the doctor labors through another sleepless night during another once-in-a-lifetime pandemic brought on by another novel and capricious virus. Kramer’s presence and the specter of HIV were, in this context, reminders of how much can be lost when medical bureaucracy acts sluggishly. Yet Fauci’s bombastic activist friend and compatriot is also a reminder of how much shared purpose and diverse tactics can accomplish, both within and outside established institutions. As the play progressed, it became increasingly immaterial whether or not actors Jakiel and Colaiacovo realistically resembled their real-life counterparts. (In a personal interview I conducted, Fornarola intimated that he’d be interested in seeing future productions of FAUCI and KRAMER pursue expansive casting choices for both roles.) Homing in on big ideas about justice, collaboration, and living a meaningful life, the arguments between these iconic (and in Kramer’s case, iconoclastic) characters develop both in personal detail and in broad, ideological strokes while the men themselves became increasingly symbolic avatars. As Jakiel and Colaiacovo stood in for Fauci and Kramer, Fauci and Kramer began to stand in for a notion of shared purpose inflected by different personal styles and political approaches to collective action. This abstraction enabled Jakiel and Colaiacovo, hometown heroes of the Buffalo, NY regional theatre community, to engage local audiences directly and intimately in the play’s dialectics: Colaiacovo is youthfully middle-aged like Kramer’s ghost, whereas Jakiel is significantly older; Colaiacovo is openly queer, whereas Jakiel is the heterosexual father of some of Buffalo’s favorite homegrown local talent. Despite their differences, however, these men are brought together by shared purpose—mitigation of harmful illness and death for Fauci and Kramer, and the intersubjective work of the theatre for Jakiel and Colaiacovo. Explicitly inviting disparate local constituencies to share space in the theatre, FAUCI and KRAMER used political and activist history as a prism through which local theatre audiences could experience co-existence, compromise, and the complex intimacy of connection across difference. When the play’s ghost first arrived, both men assume that Kramer has returned to teach Dr. Fauci some lesson. “This is no Christmas Carol ,” however, Kramer quips. Rather, the drama’s emotional climax unfurled in relation to Kramer’s personal weaknesses in a moment of fraught ambivalence. As Kramer characteristically excoriated Fauci for the shortcomings of his pragmatic approach to public health, Fauci reminded Kramer of the perhaps hypocritical preferential treatment he once received for liver failure. Ethically, shouldn’t the organ transplant have gone to a younger, healthier individual? And someone without HIV? By the end of the exchange, Kramer was stopped in his tracks. Standing at the edge of the stage, as if at a precipice, the loquacious rabblerouser was, finally, at a loss for words. Without turning to look at his scene partner, Kramer insisted that the liver was life or death. “I remember,” Fauci replied, gazing sympathetically at his all-too-human friend. After all, Dr. Fauci revealed, he was one of the doctors on Kramer’s team. The shock of this revelation, for unfamiliar audiences, is that Larry Kramer—the longtime agitator and self-styled beacon of principle—would stoop to individualism and self-preservation. As Kramer defended his individual right to survival, Fauci nodded silently along. Perhaps this is the play’s simple message: It is okay, even good, to survive. A montage of video footage from the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out concluded the performance. This miracle of medical expediency would likely never have been achieved without the lessons learned from the early days of the still ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic. Still, as my lover and I re-lived the hope and relief of those early vaccine deployments from our seats in the audience, it was hard not to notice that she and I were the only attendees wearing face masks. What would Kramer really say, looking out at all those uncovered faces as COVID still rages? Wouldn’t he rail at us? Perhaps. What’s more important, however, is what we agree to expect—and accept—from one another. I hope that future productions will encourage local producers, collaborators, and audience members to ask themselves, clearly and directly: What do you want? Why are you here? For regional theatre to flourish, the local development of new works must encourage communities to ask ourselves what we collectively need from live performance now. Who are our unique constituencies, and how can the work we produce bring them together as a community, as FAUCI and KRAMER did, if only for the length of the show? The ghost of Larry Kramer (Louis Colaiacovo) kisses the forehead of Dr. Anthony Fauci (Steve Jakiel), who is hard at work behind his home-office desk in Drew Fornarola’s FAUCI and KRAMER at First Look Buffalo (2023). Photo ©Tomas L. Waz References Footnotes About The Author(s) JANET WERTHER (they/them) holds a PhD in theatre & performance from The Graduate Center, CUNY and an MFA in dance from Sarah Lawrence College. They are currently engaged as an assistant teaching professor in theatre at the University at Buffalo. Janet’s work sits at the intersections of embodied arts practice, education, activism, and research/historiography. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Censorship/Public Censure and Performance Today: Special Issue Introduction Remembering Censorship in the World Premiere of Seán O’Casey’s The Drums of Father Ned: Lafayette, Indiana, 1959 The Stage as Networked Battleground: Dissent and Censorship in Contemporary Canadian Theatre and Performance Censor/Censure: A Roundtable Which of These Are Censorship? The Divide Between Prior Restraint and Soft Censorship How Can an Artist Respond to Censorship? The Dilemma That Faces Contemporary Creatives in the UK The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project: A Roundtable Conversation Life is Drag: Documenting Spectacle as Resistance An Interview with Rachel Rampleman Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures, and Artists. Michael Malek Najjar. Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2021; Pp. xvi + 237. Lessons from Our Students: Meditations on Performance Pedagogy. Stacey Cabaj and Andrea Odinov. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 126 Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene. Angenette Spalink. Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance Series, no. 3. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 116. Fauci and Kramer Our Town Frankenstein Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED by Claudia Müller at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. Child prodigy, scandalous author, traitor to the fatherland, feminist, fashion lover, communist, language terrorist, rebel, enfant terrible, nest fouler, brilliant, vulnerable artist. Claudia Müller's film about Elfriede Jelinek, who in 2004 was the first German speaking female writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, focuses on her artistic approach to language. ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED is a multi-layered, associative film portrait, full of contradictions; it approaches the linguistic montage technique of the artist from her very own close perspective. (production note) “Look at me NOW!” says Elfriede Jelinek at the beginning of ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED. She holds a piece of paper up to the camera, which she lowers briefly to reveal her face. On the paper is an arithmetic problem that explains the image onscreen. It is an arrangement that forces us to read – or rather, we read in order to see – and Jelinek writes in order to be seen. Seeing, in the sense of recognizing. Jelinek is shown on the move, in Vienna and other cities, in different decades. The journey begins with the Nobel Prize – Jelinek was the first Austrian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature – and works its way along specific themes that characterize the author’s work. Filmmaker Claudia Müller has made a name for herself with documentaries about such diverse personalities as Jenny Holzer, Shirin Neshat, VALIE EXPORT, and Helmut Lang. Here she works with her cinematographer Christine A. Maier with enthusiasm and aplomb, arranging current recordings and archive materials by, with, and about Jelinek into a portrait of the author. The range of the material is astonishing and manages to surprise again and again with something hitherto unknown. Müller and editor Mechthild Barth repeatedly opt for outtakes and peripheral materials, which allows us to enjoy film clips of Jelinek with her dog, for example, or holding a stack of prize money. They are images that offer resistance to the public image that is determined by a very different set of attributes. Texts read off-screen (by Stefanie Reinsperger and Sandra Hüller, among others) and material relating to dramatic events in contemporary Austrian history (such as the assassination of four Roma in Oberwart in 1995 and the massacre in Rechnitz in March 1945) complement the multi-layered collage of historical and contemporary materials. “... Everything has really been said,” Jelinek states towards the end. The author no longer appears in public nor explains anything. While Claudia Müller concentrates entirely on Jelinek’s work and thus her language, Müller’s film now gives us the opportunity to see – and to understand beyond one-dimensional causalities. (Sylvia Szely) The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Claudia Müller Theater, Documentary This film will be screened in-person on May 18th. About The Film Country Germany, Austria Language German Running Time 96 minutes Year of Release 2022 Child prodigy, scandalous author, traitor to the fatherland, feminist, fashion lover, communist, language terrorist, rebel, enfant terrible, nest fouler, brilliant, vulnerable artist. Claudia Müller's film about Elfriede Jelinek, who in 2004 was the first German speaking female writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, focuses on her artistic approach to language. ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED is a multi-layered, associative film portrait, full of contradictions; it approaches the linguistic montage technique of the artist from her very own close perspective. (production note) “Look at me NOW!” says Elfriede Jelinek at the beginning of ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED. She holds a piece of paper up to the camera, which she lowers briefly to reveal her face. On the paper is an arithmetic problem that explains the image onscreen. It is an arrangement that forces us to read – or rather, we read in order to see – and Jelinek writes in order to be seen. Seeing, in the sense of recognizing. Jelinek is shown on the move, in Vienna and other cities, in different decades. The journey begins with the Nobel Prize – Jelinek was the first Austrian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature – and works its way along specific themes that characterize the author’s work. Filmmaker Claudia Müller has made a name for herself with documentaries about such diverse personalities as Jenny Holzer, Shirin Neshat, VALIE EXPORT, and Helmut Lang. Here she works with her cinematographer Christine A. Maier with enthusiasm and aplomb, arranging current recordings and archive materials by, with, and about Jelinek into a portrait of the author. The range of the material is astonishing and manages to surprise again and again with something hitherto unknown. Müller and editor Mechthild Barth repeatedly opt for outtakes and peripheral materials, which allows us to enjoy film clips of Jelinek with her dog, for example, or holding a stack of prize money. They are images that offer resistance to the public image that is determined by a very different set of attributes. Texts read off-screen (by Stefanie Reinsperger and Sandra Hüller, among others) and material relating to dramatic events in contemporary Austrian history (such as the assassination of four Roma in Oberwart in 1995 and the massacre in Rechnitz in March 1945) complement the multi-layered collage of historical and contemporary materials. “... Everything has really been said,” Jelinek states towards the end. The author no longer appears in public nor explains anything. While Claudia Müller concentrates entirely on Jelinek’s work and thus her language, Müller’s film now gives us the opportunity to see – and to understand beyond one-dimensional causalities. (Sylvia Szely) Director Claudia Müller Cinematography Christine A. Maier Composer Eva Jantschitsch Editing Mechthild Barth Sound Design Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer Dramaturgical Advisor Brigitte Landes Narrator Ilse Ritter, Sophie Rois, Stefanie Reinsperger, Sandra Hüller, Martin Wuttke, Maren Kroymann Production Martina Haubrich, CALA Film, Claudia Wohlgenannt, Plan C Film Production Manager Hanne Lassl Participant Elfriede Jelinek Supported by Filmförderung der BKM (Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien), Arte, BR, DFFF, ÖFI - Österreichisches Filminstitut, Filmfonds Wien, FISA Filmstandort Austria, ORF Archival Research ORF Silvia Heimader About The Artist(s) Claudia Müller, born in 1964, is a German documentary filmmaker based in Berlin. She is known for her several excellent film portraits dedicated especially to international female artists. Müller has a profound knowledge of production and theory of contemporary art, as well as an intimate insight of the art scene; during almost three decades she has built up connections with artists all over the world. After her studies of German Literature, Journalism and Arts at Universities in Berlin and Cologne she worked with Peter Greenaway and Krzystof Zanoussi. Since 1991 she has been an independent television journalist and director, making numerous film documentaries. She founded her own production company PHLOX Films in 2007 (www.phlox-films.de ) Claudia Müller is particularly interested in the visual arts, with films presenting the work of artists such as Jenny Holzer (2009), Shirin Neshat (2010), Cindy Sherman (2009), Kiki Smith (2014), VALIE EXPORT (2015), Katharina Grosse (2020), Heidi Bucher (2021) as well as writer and theater director Hans Neuenfels (2011) and designer and artist Helmut Lang (2015). With her ongoing landmark documentary series Women Artists Claudia Müller has featured Katharina Grosse, Annette Messager, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Monica Bonvicini, Tatiana Trouvé, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. More than 80 female artists from varied geographical and cultural contexts have been represented in this comprehensive project. Her work has contributed to the ongoing debate on identity, gender, sexuality, feminism, female esthetics, and the visibility of women in the arts. The DVD was published by Walther König Publisher (2019). Her latest documentary series project, Art in the Desert, was broadcasted on Arte in 2019. Müller currently finished a feature-length documentary on the Austrian Nobel Prize winning writer, Elfriede Jelinek. Get in touch with the artist(s) dietmar@sixpackfilm.com and follow them on social media https://sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/filmmaker/7082/ Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF By Kalina Stefanova Image Credits: Article “Once upon a time there was a festival, and when its time came it went out into the world to seek its fortune” Liviu Timuş With all its natural givens, Piatra Neamt—a city of 80,000, ensconced in a beautiful valley surrounded by the lusciously green mountains of North-Eastern Romania, with a river running through it and a lake where flocks of swans nest all year round—could well be a thriving resort town and home of rich theatre institutions and events, like the Shaw Festival at the Niagara-on-the-Lake or the Shakespeare Festival of Canada at Stratford-on-Avon. Instead and, most surprisingly at first glance, Piatra Neamt is a home of a festival of an entirely opposite type: focused on poignant social and political issues of both national and international scale. It is the oldest international festival in Romania—an institution of a very rich and awesome biography which stands out even against the background of the festival-rich contemporary Romanian theatre scene. Let me just mention two of the other international festivals in the country: the one in Sibiu, which ranks already third in size and clout in Europe, after those in Edinburgh and Avignon, and the one in Craiova, specializing in Shakespeare, which has established itself as the must-see showcase for productions of the Bard’s oeuvre from all over the world—the first having turned 30 this year and the second to celebrate the same age in 2024. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. The Piatra Neamt Theatre Festival is run by and has its headquarters in the Youth Theatre—the only institutional theatre in the city. It belongs to the county of Neamts and is, thus, a theatre of a regional rank. At the same time, it is considered as “one of the most important Romanian cultural institutions,” as the leading Romanian critic Maria Zarnescu puts it. The theatre’s building is very special, both in terms of its architecture and of its location. Although built about half a century later than the impressive old houses in the city--in the 1930s and 1940s—it has something of their combination of shy grandeur and modesty. It is beautiful and quite big, and, while one goes up the slightly steep street leading to it, it looks even awesome. Yet, since it stands literally in the outskirts of the hill, where the main square is located, and only its upper floors are on the level of the square, once you are already in front of the theatre you have a feeling as if it holds its hat off in reverence to the beautiful old buildings above it. This exuding of humbleness, of full awareness of its place in the city landscape’s hierarchy, and of paying due respect, is further enhanced by the special glitter of the dark brown-to-black tiles of the roof, typical of the city’s roofs, as if after rain—a type of glitter celebrating nature and our modest place in it, so different from the lofty shine of the usual gilded facades of the old grand theatres. All this lack of ostentation makes the Piatra Neamt Youth Theatre’s building stand organically in sync with the general atmosphere of the city. The theatre started functioning as such only in 1959 but got its name nearly a decade later, in 1967, and soon afterwards, in 1969, the Festival had its inaugural edition. During its first seven editions (then as a biennale) it was and it wasn’t international – all at once! That is, in terms of participating productions there were no foreign ones in the selection, yet there were many invited foreign guests and the special milieu created for discussions about theatre on such an international scale substantially contributed to opening up the horizon of the Romanian theatre. So it was in effect only in 1992, when, being revived after a long pause, the Festival became de facto international and substantially grew up in size, formats and programs. The 2017 edition turned out to be a new turning point in the Festival’s development. And this was so not only because the edition was part of the celebrations of the Youth Theatre’s 50 th anniversary but also because the Festival acquired a number of very important upgrades of its profile. After-show discussions between the casts and the audience, a new workshop entitled “The Spectator as a Critic,” a photo exhibition Theatre of Youth Actors and Spectators , a jury consisting of high school students from Piatra Neamţ … And soon afterwards another novelty was added to the list: an award for overall contribution to the theatre art given to a female Romanian theatre-maker. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. Romanians at the Gate of the World . Photo: Adrian Nita. Initiator of all these substantial quality changes was the new head of the Youth Theatre and the Festival, whose very appointment was in the first place a pioneering development. For, in their already considerably long history, the two institutions got for the first time a female theatre-maker at their helm! And a very special one at that: Gianina Carbunariu, the enfant terrible of contemporary Romanian theatre. Gianina Carbunariu. Photo: Dorin Constanda. Born in Piatra Neamt, but having left it to study theatre in the beginning of the millennium, Carbunariu actually came back there with an already large collection of firsts. She was the first female director to win the Romanian Association of Theatre Professionals UNITER Award for Best Show ( For Sale , Odeon Theatre Bucharest, 2014). She was short-listed by the Romanian media as one of the 100 most influential women in Romanian society today. She was the first Romanian female artist whose works were included in the official selection of the Avignon Festival. Most importantly, all that was so, since she was so brave as to dare to challenge the status quo by raising up on stage issues and problems long overdue to be solved—issues and problems having to do with hypocrisy and double standards on a national and international scale. And she was doing it in a very artistic way, not just as an activist’s statement. In brief, in 2017, Carbunariu was already an established artist with an international reputation—as a director, as a playwright, and as an author of her shows alike—because of her ground-breaking work that was literally changing the face of the theatre both in Romania and abroad! I myself saw a stunning show by Gianina Carbunariu ( 20/20 ) several years earlier, in the very beginning of that decade, in 2011, and immediately knew I had come across a unique talent and tried to follow her work from then on. “Her greatest achievement is the remarkable balance between ethics and aesthetics,” Maria Zarnescu has written … “The audience ‘manipulation’ is done by artistic ways, not political, and the emotion keeps its own sense. So it seems that Gianina Cărbunariu found the alchemical secret through which she discovered the philosophical stone of the 21 st- century theatre.” The very acute social edge, markedly accompanied by openness for a dialogue and for finding ways to solve problems together, rather than with the imperative approach bordering on dictate, so typical for many a theatre activist today, is maybe the most important feature with which Gianina Carbunariu has endowed the Festival. In the same vein, the urgent need for ceasing the enhancement of division lines between people and for finding ways to genuinely understand each other and genuinely be together is what permeates the motivation of the theme of this year’s edition of the Festival— Safety Zone — as beautifully expressed by Carbunariu, its curator. Here’s part of her introduction: “The Safety Zone is a space of solidarity, not of polarization.The Safety Zone has room for the sort of real dialogue that TV discussions and online interactions often only mimic.In the Safety Zone, the authentic living of collective experience raises a question mark over the noise of ready-made ideas, of wrong turns that risk becoming the norm.In the Safety Zone, we celebrate together inspiration, generosity, irony, vulnerability, difference, courage, empathy, aesthetic risk-taking, and exchange of ideas. We celebrate life and trust that humanity will win in its confrontation with the absurd or with injustice.” Indeed, diversity was one of the features of the program of the Festival’s 34 th edition. It consisted of three sections—national, international, and local—in the framework of which altogether 35 productions were presented. They were works of state, regional and independently-run theatres. There were performances of huge casts and solo ones, inside –on the stage of the Piatra Neamt Theatre and on its second, so-called, “Mobile Stage,” at the other end of the town—and outside, on squares. There was drama, dance, performance art, puppets… There were shows closer to the traditional type of theatre, others having nothing to do with it, and third ones—a majority—which dwelled in the in-between area. Naturally, the most populous was the Romanian part of the program which displayed theatre from all over the country, as well as three shows of the host theatre. In keeping with the tradition of the Festival, the international program had a special Focus: European women artists (under the title Something to Declare ), and the six shows comprising it were created by female theatre-makers from Belgium, Bulgaria, The Czech Republic, Kosovo, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Notably, the diversity of the program did not translate into many-ness—this so unfortunate feature of our time. Well distributed in the framework of two weeks—from September 8 th to the 21 st —all, that theatre did not, so to speak, spill over and infringe upon the tranquil air of the town. This, to me, is a real asset of the Festival, since, the biggest festivals aside, a city can have its spirit genuinely enriched by an event only when it is not overtaken and exhausted by it. Of course, the very fine flair for keeping the right measure in the curatorial process on the part of Carbunariu doesn’t come as a surprise. After all, being in the first place a socially conscious artist, she very well knows that theatre could easily become a claustrophobic place, when theatre-makers snobbishly sniff at reality outside theatre’s walls and forget that this art is here for the sake of that very reality. So Carbunariu has managed very finely to steer and contain the Festival so as to make it feel like an organic part of everyday life and, thus, bring joy and be of potential help in the most unobtrusive way. And not only in Piatra Neamt at that! Some of the Festival’s shows are presented in two other towns as well (Roman and Târgu Neamț) and in rural parts of the Neamț county too. As a matter of fact this comes as an extension of the Youth Theatre’s profile actually, since it travels throughout the county catering to a population of 400,000. And one more aspect of the Festival’s program struck me: its truly egalitarian spirit. No genres or types of shows were there just as an addition “to fill in the picture,” or just “for atmosphere,” like confetti – a role in which, for instance, street theatre tends to be often cast at many festivals. Actually, it is exactly with a street show that the Piatra Neamt Theatre Festival started for me (as I attended its last six days) and it remained as one of the most memorable theatre experiences there. The two parts of Romanians at the Gate of the World (of the Maska Theatre, Bucharest) took place on the main square (above the Youth Theatre), which was arranged as a meeting point between us, today’s people, and eminent personalities from the time of the belle époque and the interwar period who have made great contributions in the science and arts fields. Each of them was allotted a separate small podium (about eight altogether in each part) and, like in a museum, was arranged seemingly as a wax statue, clad in a gorgeous costume of the respective time, standing or sitting on a chair, with just a few objects connected with their life and achievements placed on a small table or next to it. The invisible curtain of the show goes up when recordings of short texts about these personalities start sounding from loudspeakers next to each “small stage.” Simultaneously with the recordings, the statues gradually begin coming to life, with stiff movements at first—after all, so many years have passed since they have left our world—but with eyes full of curiosity, as if at once listening to how they are being presented to us and enjoying their visit to our world. At some point, some of them talk together with the loudspeakers, when there are quotes by them, or just sit and touch their objects. Then, as their presentation comes to an end, they “freeze” back in their initial postures. All this gets repeated many times nearly simultaneously, while the viewers move from one “exhibit” of the makers of Romanian culture and science to another and try to catch up with all their stories. In the beginning, while one is concentrated on acquainting oneself with the details about all these people and their achievements, the experience feels like a guided tour in a museum. Then one comes to realize that it is exactly to concentrate that is challenging here, since the square is not at all large and all the stories from all the stages resound loudly and at once, thus nearly overlapping and overshadowing each other. It is exactly then when this mixture of street art and traditional type of theatre, in terms of acting, gets the shape of a powerful contemporary theatrical installation which transcends by far a mere exhibiting of a past spiritual glory. It appears to be more about a juxtaposition of our world and the world of these personalities on the territory of the spirit. And the power of this installation stems, I find, from the stark contrast between the minimalism accompanying these people of great deeds, on the one hand, and the chaos and cacophony of our everyday environment, with stepped-up decibels and fights for attention, which make maintaining normality even on a small scale feel like a big achievement. No matter how vain and eccentric all these celebrities might have been in their time, compared to the ubiquity of noise and many-ness today, and the resulting lack of clear focus in the figurative sense of the word, they radiate dignified modesty and simplicity, and make one feel humbled at least for a short while. Interestingly, the topical issue of many-ness kept on reappearing in different ways in some of the next productions I saw. Not so much as an issue on focus, though, but rather as a temptation they had not fully managed to resist or vice versa—something which, either way, emerged as a factor for their overall impact. Naturally, the large-scale, indoor productions were most prone to succumbing to this so common temptation today. For instance, in The Dream (Reactor de Creatie si Experiment, Cluj-Napoca) the effect of the impressively good music, the talent of the actors and the very important issues in focus were slightly undermined by the too frequent repetition of the main refrains—a repetition that inevitably led to diminishing of their meaning. Or, in the hilariously funny Artists’ Factory (Teatrul Municipal Bacovia) the stereotypes of in-theatre relations and the scenes which look like quotes (e.g. at least close to the musical Hamilton , or the notorious case of David Merrick announcing the death of the director of 42 nd Street ) at one point piled up to an extent of going slightly over the top and threatening to exhaust the comedy. Or, in Operation “Firecracker” (Teatrul Nottara, Bucharest), while the mouse tails of the Securitate agents were an excellent phantasmagoric type of an extension of the characters, the adding of more puppet elements (mouse heads of these characters and a gigantic head of their female master) did not really contribute to enhancing the clout of the show. These ostentatious puppet theatre guest-elements as well as the projections on screens didn’t feel as if they were growing organically out of the preceding action and only overburdened the otherwise very clearly cut and well-acted production. These shows made me feel they needed some small editing for the sake of keeping the right measure. Operation Firecracker . Photo: Andrei Gindac . The most impressive of the large-scale shows to me was Magyarosauris Dacus (of Teatrul Szigligeti, Ordea), the newest work of Gianina Carbunariu. It tells the defying-imagination life-story of a much larger-than-life and truly encyclopedic type of a person – a Hungarian baron whose discovery of dinosaur fossils was just one of the impossibly wide diapason of his ventures and adventures at the turn of the 20 th century and onwards. Carbunariu’s directorial choice of having different actors and actresses play him in his different ages, endeavors, and, in effect, faces comes as an organic extension of this many-faceted personality and makes the show feel like an unassuming visit of our time to the universe of his life and, at once, as an invitation to him to peek at our world. The use of painted wings and of painted figures dropping from the ceiling while, at the same time, live music is played on proscenium further helps the mixing of times and makes references to poignant topics of the baron’s world sound strikingly contemporary—like the Western stereotypes regarding the Balkans and especially Albania, the place of women, anti-Semitism, etc. This unexpected topicality of the story happening over a century ago, of course, brings in a sad overtone about the state of our world. But can we imagine Gianiana Carbunariu doing a show even about something having happened millennia ago without a reason other than exploring our world and pointing at its problems, of course with both laughter and sorrow?! After all, she didn’t hesitate to invite even extra-terrestrials (in Planet Mirror , Piatra Neamt Youth Theatre, 2021) to make us think about ourselves and what we do to our world. Magyarosauris Dacus . Photo: Theatrul Szigligeti . There is one detail even of her show, though, which is not entirely spared by the influence of the many-ness trend: some of the costumes, more concretely the contemporary clothes of the actors. Most probably they are chosen to be very tawdry and eclectic as sort of an extension of the main character’s singular colorfulness and many-sidedness. Yet they tend to distract the attention from the very acting of the actors clad in them and, at times, even from the story itself. Their effect is similar to that of an excessive number of trailers and photos which intersperse a very well related story in a digital magazine literally getting into the way of the reader to fully enjoy the beauty of the narrative and see the depicted personality in its wholeness. La Fracture . Photo: Pauline Vanden Neste. The show that unequivocally grabbed my heart was the one that employed the most austere stage means of expression: Fracture , a 50-minute one-woman show of Yasmine Yahiatene (Little Big Horn, Belgium), where the concept, text (much less than ten full pages) and interpretation, as well the live drawings (on the stage floor) and their simultaneous animation on a screen are all created by her. The very powerful impact of this show is, of course, not a result solely of its frugality. It comes, in the first place, from the very brave associative and contrasting montage the narrative is based on. It starts with footage from a football match with Zinadine Zidane, back in 1998, which Yasmine watches with her dad, and the Marseillaise proudly resounds, yet, oddly, the bloodiness of its text coming to the fore. Footage of her father and herself growing up follow on the screen—nearly all the time they are from parties, where he’s always with a cup in hand and invariably looks happy. And then, all of a sudden, in the projection her father cries and the story makes a rapid turn, as Yasmine says something as if out of the blue which does indeed have an effect of a bolt from the blue: when her father was eight, during the Algerian war, French soldiers entered their house in Algeria and told his mom to choose between her son and her brother--whom to save, the other one would be killed. The choice was to be done immediately. Yasmine relates this very calmly and it is in the same way that she very briefly describes the horror of the running away of a mother and a child through the desert and then up to Europe. The narrative then is back again to the area of the mundane, only now the father’s drinking is placed under question, as is the connection between it and colonialism, and two songs cut through the “normal” life in Europe, saying everything that is at the bottom both of the laughter in those previous parties and the tears that followed: “We’ll always be guilty of being Africa/ Mama, the moment has come, we’ve suffered too long.” I will not spell any more beans. Importantly, Yasmine doesn’t comment, doesn’t accuse or blame, she just lays out the outline of the story and doesn’t even get overtly emotional, leaving the emotions to the altogether three songs she has us listen to--the Marseillaise and the two songs of the second half of the show. These songs serve as sort of emotional pillars that hold the very brave construction of this show which feels like a suspension bridge over the chasm of failed humanity. There is something of the spirit of the ancient traveling storytellers in Yasmine’s way of relating the narrative. Only instead of a rebeck in hand, she has a camera, recordings and electronic means to set the houses in her drawings on the floor to flames and to make tears pour from her father’s face, drawn there and seen on the screen. Also she has the courage to mix cartoon-like drawing with tragedy--maybe in order to make it easier for us to understand, at long last. To understand both the past and the present of an, alas, still ongoing drama that so often turns out to be a tragedy. The eye-opening and heart-rending quality of this show reminded me of the remarkable works of the South African director Brett Bailey, especially of his Exhibit B series, the most powerful glimpse at colonialism I have ever witnessed the art of theatre to offer. Likewise, when Fracture finishes, one has a feeling one has lived through not only a family’s story but the plight of a whole continent. The Return of Karl May . Photo: Atdhe Mulla. For me, one of the most anticipated Festival shows was The Return of Karl May , a production of Qendra Multimedia, Kosovo, since I had never before seen theatre from there and also because of the implied by the title, always a sensitive topic of Western stereotypes of the Balkans, myself being from there. With all due respect to the creators of the show and their unquestionable talent, what struck me most were the striking similarities with the first shows of Oliver Frljic. I will never forget his Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland (2010) , his international break-through work, because of the powerful impact of its direct, in-face contact with the audience, the walking-on-the-edge mixture of facts and fiction, and the no-beating-about-the-bush when it came to problems that were in urgent need to be stated out loud, no matter if that would mean trespassing into the territory of illustration or getting into a literally declarative spirit. I still present it to my students as one of the shows that started a new wave of great overtly political theatre around the beginning of the second decade of the new millennium. And I have no doubt that the team of the Kosovo company has not been directly influenced by Frljic, since they said at the after-show talk that they have actually only seen his theatre once. The thing is that now this type of theatre has for a while already been in competition with a foretold end with the placard-ness and fixation on statements of social media and the internet on the whole, and has, thus, rather exhausted its means of expression and, consequently, its power, precisely because it has become just a part of the incessant declarative talking on a global scale. So, leaving Piatra Neamt, I came to wonder if the overt social and political theatre is not in need of reinventing, or rather re-imagining of itself. Especially, given the mighty impact of the other type of social and political theatre that does not simply name, spell out loud, and shock us with, the ills of our time and world but, by transforming them into (parts of) stories, manages to make them feel genuinely ours and, thus, make us genuinely care. References References About the author(s) Kalina Stefanova , PhD, is the author/editor of 15 books on theatre and criticism. Five of them are in English: one with Palgrave Macmillan (co-editor with Marvin Carlson) and three with Routledge, launched in New York, London and Gdansk, and included in indicative reading lists in universities world-wide, as well as one with St. Kliment Orchidski University Press, launched in Wroclaw. She is also the author of 2 fiction books (published in nine countries, one of them in three editions in China). She has edited a two-volume anthology of Eastern European drama in China (China Theatre Press), the first anthology of spoken Chinese drama in Bulgarian (Bulgarian Bestseller) and a two-volume presentation of Bulgarian theatre in English (Routledge). She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the New York University (1990/1992) and has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Meiji University, Japan, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, China, among others. In 2016 she had the privilege to be appointed as Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Arts School of Wuhan University, as well as a Distinguished Researcher of the Chinese Arts Criticism Foundation of Wuhan University. She has delivered lectures and lead seminars world-wide. She served as Vice President of the International Association of Theatre Critics for two mandates (2001/2006) and as its Director Symposia (2006-2010). She was the dramaturge of the highly acclaimed production of Pentecost by David Edgar, directed by Mladen Kiselov, at the Stratford Festival of Canada, in 2007. Since 2001 she has regularly served as an independent evaluation expert of the European Commission for cultural and educational projects. She is on the editorial board of a number of theatre magazines world-wide, among which Theatre Arts of the Shanghai Theatre Academy (since 2015), European Stages of CUNY, USA, (since 2016), DramaArt, of the West-Universität Temeswar, Romania, (since 2016). She is on the board of the International Theatre Towns Alliance, affiliated with Yue Opera Town, China. Currently she’s a Full Professor of Theatre Criticism at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. Among her main interests is contributing to the creation of cultural bridges between cultures. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Report from London (December 2022) Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 “Regietheater:” two cases The Grec Festival 2023 The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Report from Germany Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco, (former) Editor, New England Theatre in Review Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage New England Theatre in Review Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco, (former) Editor, New England Theatre in Review By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF The mission of New England Theatre in Review ( NETIR ) is to document the history of producing theatres in the New England states by assessing their artistic merits, how they reflect and respond to their audiences and immediate communities, and how they fulfill their position as regional leaders supporting the growth and maturation of American theatre. Our reviewers write one-thousand-word essays that address the theatre’s full season of productions; administrative and business practices as sustainable institutions; and gender, ethnic, race, and LGBTQ+ equity, both in hiring practices and season programming. At the top of each essay is a full list of the shows, with production dates, from the 2023-24 season. Readers of this edition of NETIR who are interested in the previous history of these theatres are encouraged to consult the back issues of New England Theatre Journal. In the aggregate, these astute chronicles of the work of major American producing theatres, including American Repertory Theater, Barrington Stage, Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Portland Stage, Shakespeare & Company, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Vermont Stage, and Yale Repertory Theatre, provide an on-going critical history that is unique in American theatre scholarship. NETIR has been particularly assiduous in documenting theatre during and after the coronavirus pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter and its manifestations via “We See You White American Theatre” and other activist movements. The exigencies of the pandemic, coupled with the equally urgent need to reform theatre structure and practice along anti-racist lines, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) both on and off stage, became the twin foci for theatres across America from 2020-21 forward. Since we are still in the post-pandemic, post-reckoning era, with many theatres continuing to struggle to regain the audiences, funding, and community support of the pre-COVID years, our reviewers continue to assess the health and well-being of their theatres right now. Have theatres changed the number, type, and/or style of plays produced; revamped artistic and administrative personnel that impact programming and operations; published new guidelines and/or DEI measures? Are virtual productions still happening? Are COVID regulations (masking, vaccinations, etc.) still in place in whole or in part? Is there any sense of “back to normalcy” or, perhaps, a new normal, whatever that may mean? This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) MARTHA S. LOMONACO is a theatre director, historian, and writer. She is Professor Emerita of Theatre and American Studies at Fairfield University, where she was resident director and ran the theatre program for thirty-four years. She is the author of two monographs Every Week, A Broadway Revue: The Tamiment Playhouse, 1921-1960 and Summer Stock: An American Theatrical Phenomenon ( Choice 2004 Outstanding Academic Title) and an edited collection, Theatre Exhibitions , volume thirty-three of Performing Arts Resources . She has been editor of New England Theatre in Review since 2010. Marti holds a doctorate in Performance Studies from New York University. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial 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.

Michael Valdez 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 The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography Michael Valdez By Published on June 12, 2020 Download Article as PDF The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography . Arnold Aronson. London: Methuen Drama Publishing, 2018; Pp. 254. Arnold Aronson originally published The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography in 1981 when the term “environmental,” then recently popularized by Richard Schechner, had not yet lost ground to terms with more current purchase like “site-specific” and “immersive.” In this revised edition, after reprinting the first nine chapters save for minor alterations, the author attempts to incorporate the scenographic developments over the last four decades into his original argument, centering around the “environmental tradition.” While the two new chapters do not sustain the same level of deep, historical engagement, the small but poignant edits to the original text and the addition of illustrations throughout help to streamline and illuminate Aronson’s argument. Organized along a loosely chronological sequence, Aronson works along a continuum of environmental theatre, from completely “frontal” productions which starkly divide the audience and actors, to productions that totally incorporate the spectator into the frame of the performance. To Aronson, who echoes Schechner, environmental theatre refers to the relationship between audience, performer, and space, stipulating that a performance is not environmental if the audience retains a detached, frontal relationship to the performance even though it might take place outside of a theatre proper. The first chapter lays out myriad modes of performance that negotiate the shared space between performer and spectator, from actors reaching out through the fourth wall to outdoor, processional, multi-space, mobile engagements. Chapter two historicizes these spatial experimentations and innovations in what he terms the environmental tradition, lucidly displaying that non-frontal uses of performance space can be found in religious, non-Western and folk traditions, citing Christian mumming plays, the fêtes of the French Revolution, and the Indian festival of Bhavana . Aronson’s scenographic approach to performance history allows him to examine amusement environments such as fairs, carnivals, and processions in how attendees and audience are incorporated as performers within the larger space, and to anticipate later experimentation from Schechner’s work with The Performance Group to Reza Abdoh’s perambulatory use of New York City’s meatpacking district. While the author is the first to that this is far from an exhaustive study of non-frontal performance, his book nonetheless remains an invaluable resource for scholars and designers, offering critical touchstones in the influence of political and theoretical movements on performance forms and theatre architecture in the 20 th century. Centering performances, manifestos, and theoretical sketches by Appia, Jarry, Marinetti, Reinhardt, and Piscator among others, Aronson organizes his third chapter around early 20 th century reactions against the limitations of the proscenium stage. Aronson brings to light the environmental aspects of Futurist, Surrealist, and Dada presentations, from Marinetti’s tactile theatre that necessitated audience engagement via touch to André Breton’s call for the Surrealists to take to the streets. Bauhaus artists and architects are the focus of the fourth, where Aronson highlights Frederick Kiesler’s attempts to architecturally integrate the spectator into the scenography of the performance. The fifth and sixth chapters comprise a cogent overview of revolutionary Russian scenic innovation from the 1890s to the 1930s. Well-researched, detailed, and attentive to the broader political, sociocultural, and artistic influences from both Western Europe and the US, I believe that these chapters are best suited for scholarly use. Using Meyerhold’s progression of Constructivist experimentation as an organizational through-line, Aronson argues that environmental and post-revolutionary Russian performance share a core concern with the perception, creation, and use of space, going as far as to say the first “truly” environmental theatre productions were produced by Nikolai Okhlopkov between 1932 and 1934. Meticulously attending to disparate vectors of influence, Aronson shows that while Russian practitioners theorized these architectural innovations within contemporary Communist principles, scenographic roots can be found in Medici and revolutionary French pageants, fêtes , and processions. Chapters seven, eight, and nine survey popular postwar performance forms outside traditional theatre spaces: Happenings, found environments and transformed spaces. Aronson highlights performance experiments that attempt to manipulate and alter perception, breaking spectators out of conventional viewing habits, often using specific characteristics of spaces not originally intended for theatrical performance. Chapter eight has the only explicit section on dance; here Aronson explores the uses of found and created space in the postmodern dance movement, taking Meredith Monk’s dance-theatre work Vessel , which took place across three locales in New York City, as emblematic. Read historiographically, the first nine chapters offer a glance into early Performance Studies, revealing the author’s close proximity to the work of Richard Schechner. Not only does the text lean on one of Schechner’s coined terms, but his six axioms are reprinted in their entirety. Aronson finds a way to link back to Schechner’s work in every chapter, regardless of the time periods. Juxtaposed with the chapters on revolutionary Russian theatre architecture written with a honed eye for historical and cultural detail, the two new chapters seem like an additive gesture rather than a thoughtful reconsideration of the larger project. By framing “site-specific” and “immersive” theatre squarely in the continuation of the “environmental tradition,” Aronson glosses over key questions of perception, audience agency, history, and politics inherent to these theatrical innovations. As the author states in the introduction to the revised edition, the narrow focus on spatial organization is limited, and as such, is best read in tandem with texts like James Frieze’s edited collection Reframing Immersive Theatre , which augments a strictly scenographic analysis with broader inquiries into the political and cultural implications of these developments. Aronson’s 1981 edition has been and surely will continue to be, cited and used in introductory theatre studies and theatre design texts. Similarly, Aronson’s edited volume The Routledge Guide to Scenography is required reading for anyone in the discipline. Thus, I am left wanting at the end of this revisited monograph, having anticipated more. Still, Aronson’s text remains an important jargon-free point of entry to the intersection of theatre theory, performance, and architecture in Europe and the US, serving as jumping-off point into more nuanced, theoretically ambitious works such as Dorita Hannah’s Event-Space: Theatre Architecture and the Historical Avant-Garde and Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance by Josephine Machon. At its core, The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography lays out a vastly useful if not sparse rubric, against which students and researchers can find their bearings in the history of a number of non-frontal performance traditions. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Michael Valdez University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 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.

Steven Ofinoski Fairfield University 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 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Steven Ofinoski Fairfield University By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Jacob Mingo- Trent, Sheila Bandypadhyay, Michael F. Toomey, Madeleine Rose Maggio and Gina Fonseca in Shakespeare & Co.' A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo: Nile Scott Studios. Dear Jack, Dear Louise Ken Ludwig (26 May- 30 July) The Contention (Henry VI, Part II) William Shakespeare (17 June- 15 July) Fences August Wilson (22 July-27 Aug.) A Midsummer Night’s Dream William Shakespeare (1 Aug.-10 Sept.) Golda’s Balcony William Gibson (5-20 Aug.) Hamlet William Shakespeare (staged reading, 1-3 Sept.) Lunar Eclipse Donald Margulies (15 Sept.-22 Oct.) Thieves of Love was the theme of Shakespeare & Company’s 2023 season, which, in the words of Artistic Director Allyn Burrows, offered “an immediacy that gives the heart something to beat for . . . all these stories provide a reason for you to get drawn in to these character’s journeys as well as reflect on our own of these past years.” Certainly, audience hearts were beating for the season opener, Ken Ludwig’s charming valentine to his parents, Dear Jack, Dear Louise. Told almost entirely in letters, it charts the unlikely romance of an army doctor and an aspiring actress who meet during the chaos of World War II. Director Ariel Bock kept the action moving forward as the letters flew back and forth. David Gow and Zoya Martin were irresistible as the innocent lovers, challenged by the vagaries of war. No one would mistake the Henry VI trilogy as a high point in the Shakespeare oeuvre, but director Tina Packer, with a game cast, made Part II, here titled The Contention, into a most entertaining three hours. The flexible Packer Playhouse stage got a thorough workout as soldiers and nobles stormed up and down the aisles, across the upper gangway, sometimes making the audience more participants than spectators in the battles and rebellions. Above the stage was suspended the crown that the weakling Henry holds and that Richard of York, Senior (a nasty Nigel Gore) and Jack Cade (a hilariously numbskull Allyn Burrows) seek. They, and most of the rest of the cast of ten, did double duty with the versatile Bella Merlin taking on no less than six roles, including a very funny and feral Richard of York, who would eventually become Richard III. David Bertoldi was alternatively hilarious and heartbreaking as the hapless Henry whose hold on the crown was perilously tenuous. The only admirable character in this snake pit was Henry’s uncle Gloucester, eloquently played by Jonathan Epstein. Muffled war drums and the grisly sound of beheadings (there’s a record number of them for a Shakespeare play) provided an ominous backdrop to the dark deeds. But it was the spirited actors and the fast-paced direction that made this minor play into a major, if contentious, crowd pleaser. The second Shakespeare offering, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was set amid the tall evergreens of the outdoor New Spruce Theater, renamed the Arthur S. Waldstein Amphitheater this year. Director Burrows put his cast through its paces with rollicking hilarity that sacrificed a bit of the play’s magic for the comedy. Funniest of all was Jacob Ming-Trent’s Nick Bottom, a soulful, singing blue collar worker, tragic stage hero, and enchanted jackass. The rest of the mechanicals were a superb troupe of clowns, and the two pairs of bewitched lovers were uniformly fine and particularly funny in the fast-paced antics of the closing acts. Nigel Gore brought a needed majesty to Oberon and Javier David was a delight as both the princely Theseus and the half-witted Flute, making the most of his comedic and acrobatic skills. Successful one-person shows move past the events of the person’s life to reveal their character and how it affected those events. Golda’s Balcony, a monodrama that saw its first production here 21 years ago, managed to do that. Annette Miller brought Israel’s first woman prime minister to vivid life from her sensible shoes to her dramatic hand gestures, ably portraying her fierce devotion to her fledging nation and the overwhelming guilt she felt for neglecting her family. William Gibson’s play is set in a tense moment in Meir’s administration during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 when she considers using nuclear weapons against her Arab adversaries if the U.S. doesn’t provide the promised military aid. “The struggle with her conscience is at the center of the play,” noted director Daniel Gidron in the program and Miller successfully captured the ongoing struggle within Meir in her electrifying performance. Fences, August Wilson’s most popular play, is, in the words of director Christopher V. Edwards, “a play about scaling down gigantic dreams to fit humble lives.” “ranney” as the flawed but heroic Troy in this enthralling production, captured the character’s aching loss, frustration, and anger, most of it directed at his son (an earnest JaQuan Malik Jones), who was chasing the same dreams of athletic glory. The supporting cast was uniformly fine, especially Ella Joyce as Troy’s long-suffering wife who brought an incandescent righteousness to the climactic scene where Troy confessed his infidelity and the child that would result from it. Jon Savage’s cluttered set with its multiple fences eloquently expressed the power of these objects to both trap people in, while keeping others out. Shakespeare & Company ended its season of love with the world premiere of Donald Margulies’s Lunar Eclipse, an enchanting two-hander about a starry summer night in the life of an aging farm couple. Life has disappointed the cantankerous George. Even the eclipse he came out into his meadow to view has let him down. Em, his wife, is the eternal optimist, while dealing with the loss of a son and a hard life that she never wanted. Reed Birney and Karen Allen inhabited their characters as comfortably as his old flannel shirt and her worn jeans. The subtle shifts in the lunar light were captured by lighting designer James McNamara and Nathan Leigh’s soundscape conjured up an enchanting chorus of chirping insects and other night sounds. The play ends in a flashback, a bittersweet coda that shows these two people at the promising start of a relationship that never fulfills that promise. Birney and Allen made the convincing transformation from age to youth with voice and body and without the help of makeup or costume. An officious off-stage voice that announced the phases of the eclipse was an unnecessary distraction to this intimate drama. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) STEVEN OTFINOSKI teaches in the English department at Fairfield University. He is an award-winning playwright with productions across the Eastern states and abroad. His ten-minute comedy “The Audition” won the Best Script Award at the Short + Sweet Festival in Sydney, Australia. Steve is also the author of more than 200 books for young adults and has been the long-time reviewer of summer theater in the Berkshires for New England Theatre in Review . He lives in Stratford, Connecticut with his wife Beverly, a retired teacher and editor, and their two Aussie Shepherds. 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.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 14 Spring 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price By Hassan Hajiyah Published: May 1, 2023 Download Article as PDF Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) 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 Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price Review of Theaters of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt written by Sonali Pahwa Review: Decolonizing Sarah: A Hurricane Play written and directed by Samer Al-Saber “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani Review of MUKHRIJĀT AL-MASRAḤ AL-MIṢRĪ (1990-2010): DIRĀSA SĪMIYŪṬĪQĪYAH [Female Egyptian Directors (1990-2010): A Semiotic Study], written by Hadia Abd El-Fattah Review of Syrian Refugees, Applied Theater, Workshop Facilitation, and Stories: While They Were Waiting written by Fadi Skeiker Review: Layalina written by Martin Yousif Zebari, directed by Sivan Battat Up There by Wael Kadour, Introduction Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly Crossing Borders: A Theatre Practitioner’s Odyssey, An Interview with Hassan El Geretly On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh Performance Review: A FAMILY THAT HAS BEEN BLOCKED Performance Review: BETHLEHEM SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER FESTIVAL Performance Review: HOOTA. By Amer Hlehel Performance Review: LITTLE SYRIA Book Review: ACTING EGYPTIAN Book Review: MANSOUR, MONA. THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Previous Next Attribution:

Derek Munson Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 3 Visit Journal Homepage Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Cindy Rosenthal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017; Pp. 198. Derek Munson By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre . Cindy Rosenthal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017; Pp. 198. Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre is the first book-length study to chronicle Ellen Stewart’s exceptional contributions to twentieth and twenty-first century theatre. Written by expert in U.S. theatre Cindy Rosenthal, the book is ambitious in scope and stays true to the idiosyncratic tenets of avant-garde theatre that made Ellen Stewart famous. Rosenthal began research for the project in 2006 when TDR commissioned her to write a comprehensive article about La MaMa. Until this point, Ellen Stewart had been fiercely guarded about her privacy and determined that no book would be written about her or La MaMa. However, Rosenthal’s article pleased Stewart, so she agreed to a manuscript with the caveat that Rosenthal approach the book through the lens of La MaMa’s vast poster collection and through the words of the artists who had passed through La MaMa’s doors since its inception in 1961. The result is a historical narrative of colorful anecdotes, archival photographs, and rare posters that examine La MaMa’s longevity as the foremost Off-Off-Broadway venue. Ellen Stewart Presents is primarily an archival and ethnographic study that is organized into five chronological chapters beginning with the 1960s and ending in 2011, shortly after Stewart’s death at the age of ninety-one. Over the course of a decade, Rosenthal interviewed numerous artists and spent countless hours engaged with La MaMa’s vast collection of show business ephemera. Rosenthal tells the story of La MaMa’s early years, when the theatre was tucked away in a little basement in the East Village. She tells the story of playwrights like Lanford Wilson and Harvey Fierstein who began their careers at La MaMa and went on to achieve commercial success while other artists like Split Britches and Yara Arts Group remained committed to their downtown roots. She tells the story of the birth of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, which was instrumental in the development of avant-garde theatre in the United States. And she tells the story of print posters and how the medium arose, particularly in relation to La MaMa. But where Rosenthal excels is in the telling of the stories about Stewart’s theatre “babies,” artists who were nurtured with love and affection and enjoyed Stewart’s hands-off approach to producing (9). One such person is “Multidisciplinary artist, composer, filmmaker, and choreographer Meredith Monk” who, in 1976, created what John Killacky claims is “one of the masterpieces of the twentieth century,” the opera Quarry (67). A meditation on World War II, Quarry is characteristic of the avant-garde movement with its innovative narrative and “audience-as-set” convention. After a successful limited engagement, the opera was scheduled again a few months later, but La MaMa’s doors were closed for yet another building code violation (Stewart’s troubles with the city are chronicled in Hillary Miller’s Drop Dead: Performance in Crisis, 1970s New York ). Monk fondly remembers being with Stewart after La MaMa was shuttered, asking “What producer would be sitting there, crying with you?” (67) Quarry eventually moved to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and won an Obie Award, and Monk later brought the opera back to La MaMa in 1986. Ellen Stewart Presents features two of the posters from the original production of Quarry designed by Monk and Monica Moseley . Monk recalls that Stewart gave La MaMa artists complete freedom with poster designs, and she appreciates why Stewart finally approved a book about her life’s work: “Posters do it better than photographs. It’s hard to show in one photo what a play is about because a photograph capture[s]… a specific moment in time… a visual artist can distill one powerful image in a poster that can represent a production—and that is why she wanted to tell the story that way” (19). Indeed, Rosenthal selected more than one hundred posters from La MaMa’s archive of approximately twenty-five hundred posters (many now available online) to create a work that is as much a visual journey as it is an oral history. Ellen Stewart Presents functions on multiple historical levels—perhaps too many for a single volume—with glowing reviews and few critical detractors. Rosenthal celebrates Ellen Stewart as a force of nature who was instrumental in shaping the course of the American stage. Perhaps Stewart’s greatest legacy is the freedom she gave to theatre artists from all over the world, the freedom to innovate and explore with less constraint than commercial theatre. Today, under the new artistic leadership of Mia Yoo, La MaMa is a thriving international arts institution that includes the Umbria International workshop that gathers each summer outside of Spoleto, Italy. With so much more to tell about its subject, Ellen Stewart Presents opens the door to further scholarship about one of the most important theatre visionaries of the twentieth century. Meredith Monk remembers that if Stewart liked an idea and said, “do it,” the artist had found a new home: “Ellen was totally about love… And that’s La MaMa” (71-72). References Footnotes About The Author(s) DEREK MUNSON University of Missouri Editorial Board for Special Issue: David Bisaha Meredith Conti Leah Lowe Inga Meier Robert Vorlicky Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Embodied Arts Collective Choreography for Weathering Black Experience: Janelle Monáe and The Memphis "Tightrope" Dance Unruly Reproductions: The Embodied Art of Mimicry in Vaudeville "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies Choreographies of the Great Departure: Building Civic Bodies in the 1914 Masque of St. Louis Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Hawaiian Performance. Stephanie Nohelani Teves. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018; Pp. 220. Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Cindy Rosenthal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017; Pp. 198. In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement. La Donna L. Forsgren. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 200. Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina. Noe Montez. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017; Pp. 239 + xi. Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical. Kevin Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; Pp. 368. Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018; Pp. 399. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Eileen Curley Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Eileen Curley By Published on December 11, 2020 Download Article as PDF In 1901, David Belasco sued Harrison Grey Fiske and Minnie Maddern Fiske over the Manhattan Theatre’s production of Mrs. Burton Harrison’s play, The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch. Harrison, an established novelist and essayist by 1901, had worked with Belasco in the 1880s on amateur and professional productions of her plays, and she consulted with him on this play as well. After publishing a successful short story by the same title, Harrison revised the script and shopped it around, quickly reaching an agreement with Belasco’s rivals, the Fiskes, after months of dallying by Belasco. Shortly before the Fiskes’ production was to open, Belasco sued, arguing that he was “the sole and exclusive owner and proprietor of the play.” [1] The injunction to stop the production simultaneously seeks to disrupt the Fiskes’ production and undermines Harrison’s authorial power. Belasco claimed that the idea was his and the script was his property, even though Harrison wrote it, but instead of simply and easily disproving these claims, materials produced by the Fiskes, Harrison, and their lawyer speak at length and rather defensively about the nature of collaborative writing. These extant archival documents suggest that they feared Belasco might have a case for unremunerated collaboration, and they focus on what was then, and still sometimes is, a hazy area of copyright law. The dynamics in the case also speak to the nature of theatrical collaboration between playwrights and producers and competition between producers. Woven amid these legal and theatrical concerns is the familiar story of a woman’s labor being co-opted by a man and a woman’s capacity for professionalism being questioned by all around her. At base, Belasco claimed a woman’s work as his own and appears so confident in his right to her labor that he sued. Profit distribution from a collaboration is a legal matter, but the erasure of women’s voices from collaborations was and is so routine that this case was not immediately thrown out despite the glaring lack of a contract between the pair. Accordingly, this article analyzes the legal implications of this play’s collaborative writing and revision process, while situating that process and the resulting lawsuit in the competitive world of early twentieth-century New York producers and exploring the impact of these production conditions on aspiring female playwrights. The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch’s Ongoing Evolution through Collaboration The archival materials and press at the time often describe Harrison as an amateur playwright, but by the turn of the century, Constance Cary Harrison’s writing career seemed decidedly no longer amateurish; writing under the name Mrs. Burton Harrison, she had established herself as a novelist and essayist, publishing novels, memoirs, advice books, short stories, and columns on contemporary society. Harrison had been publishing for over two decades and was working with the agent Alice Kauser when she began work on The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch at the turn of the twentieth century. Harrison published three different versions of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch : as a short story in Smart Set magazine in March 1901, as a play which was first produced by the Fiskes in November 1901 and also published later that year, and as a short novella in the Novelettes De Luxe series in 1903; Daniel Frohman also later produced the story as a silent film in 1914. Thus, while the papers may have credited Kauser, “the introducer of unknown playwrights,” as having launched Harrison’s career, [2] it is difficult to conceive of an author with more than 15 published novels or short story collections as an amateur. Certainly, she had not had many plays professionally produced, but the rhetorical use of “amateur” in this case seem designed to disempower her when used by Belasco, to play up her feminine naiveté for benefit when employed by the Harrisons and the Fiskes, and to gender and exploit the situation for good press by the newspapers. Harrison had worked with David Belasco in the past, notably in the 1880s when she translated a number of plays, including short French comedies for amateur productions and an adaptation of a Scribe play that was produced by amateurs and professionals under the title A Russian Honeymoon . These plays were also produced under Belasco’s guidance; Harrison, notably, is the uncontested author. At the time, Belasco had recently arrived back to New York from California and was working as the stage manager at the Madison Square Theatre. Belasco assisted Harrison and the amateurs mounting these and numerous other plays at the Madison Square, which rented its facilities to amateur theatrical groups with some regularity. Belasco and Franklin Sargent also directed the professional debut of A Russian Honeymoon in April 1883, and Harrison speaks positively enough about their working relationship on this show in her 1911 memoir, Recollections Grave and Gay . She acknowledges that “largest portion of our success was owing to his training and extraordinary skill in devising pictures and effects from material that lent itself readily to lovely grouping and vivid color.” [3] Clearly, she also credits her own writing here as giving him a good foundation. The overall style of this sweeping memoir renders it difficult to tell whether there was lingering resentment ten years after the lawsuit or if she just chose to focus elsewhere; regardless, Minnie Maddern Fiske warrants a longer and much more obviously glowing recollection. [4] After their successful collaborations in the 1880s, it is perhaps no surprise that in 1900, when Harrison began working on The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , she once again turned to Belasco as she and so many others had done, looking for his assistance with staging and plot development, as well as potential production opportunities. The ensuing work resulted in the lawsuit. Some elements are clear: the two did communicate and collaborate on the drafting of an early version of the play. Belasco did work with Harrison on the script in the spring of 1900, at the Harrison’s house on East 29 th Street in New York, before the short story version was published in 1901. Harrison communicated with Belasco repeatedly, and yet she did not always incorporate his suggestions. Belasco seems to have been a much more reluctant communicator, particularly throughout 1901. Indeed, Belasco’s interactions with the script seem to have stopped in 1900, and there is little disagreement that the script, as it stood at that time, had some significant weaknesses. Letters submitted to the court from both Harrison and Belasco reveal that she attempted to contact Belasco repeatedly between the spring of 1900 and the fall of 1901 to make progress, set a contract, and get her draft manuscripts returned. Her husband, the lawyer Burton N. Harrison, also began contacting Belasco in summer 1901. Throughout, Belasco would occasionally reply directly or via his business manager, Benjamin Roeder, but significantly fewer responses from Belasco and Roeder were submitted into evidence. The extant evidence, while contradictory and at times subject to spin and to charges of being fabricated or heavily edited by Belasco, shows that the pair worked together on a script with the unwritten understanding that Belasco might produce it in the future. There was, however, no contractual agreement to do so. As the months passed in 1900 and early 1901 with no contact from Belasco, Harrison seemed to realize that she needed to finish the play, fully sever ties with Belasco, and get him to return her manuscript. Indeed, the Harrisons sent a significant number of requests to Belasco and Roeder requesting the return of various manuscripts that Harrison sent for his perusal, including but not limited to The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch . In part, the success of the short story sparked her renewed attempts to contact Belasco, attempts which appear to increase with frequency in the spring and summer of 1901. His silence clearly aggravated her, and she seemed to be demurring by claiming that she wanted to work on it, even though she still had a copy. [5] Underneath her feigned desire to just finish the project, Harrison seems, at long last, to have realized the danger that Belasco presented to her intellectual property. In May 1901, Harrison lacked any concrete commitment from Belasco. Her agent, Alice Kauser, sent the script to the Fiskes, who worked with Harrison to revise it and finally offered her a contract in October 1901. It appears that the review, acceptance, and offer process transpired quite quickly, despite the play needing and receiving revisions. Kauser confirmed receipt of the play from Harrison on the 15 th of May and Harrison Grey Fiske replied to her on the 18 th with his critique. [6] He asked to keep the manuscript to show it to Minnie Maddern Fiske, who then decided to work with Harrison throughout the summer on revising the piece before putting the script under contract, just as Belasco had done in early 1900, minus the contract. [7] The letter announcing the contract for the now revised play contract is dated 12 October 1901, two days before rehearsals began and approximately six weeks before the show opened. [8] In the intervening months between first reading and opening night, the Fiskes and Harrison continued working together on the script. When advance press for the production appeared in the papers in late October, Belasco contacted Harrison Grey Fiske, claimed ownership that he could not prove, and requested an injunction against the production, suing the Fiskes – but notably not Harrison. The Fiskes, in their amended answer to the injunction, also clearly saw that Belasco’s complaint – be it ownership, contractual, or collaborative – was with Harrison: “Constance C. Harrison is a necessary party defendant for the complete determination of the questions involved in this action.” [9] This curious decision is never addressed by Belasco in extant documents. By arguing that he owned the piece, Belasco logically would have sued the Fiskes for producing it without his approval. Given his ongoing producers’ battle with the Fiskes and others, one reasonable interpretation for why he was going after the Fiskes is that, financially, he could wound the Fiskes by interrupting rehearsals and obtain royalties from their production if it continued under an agreement. Indeed, Harrison Grey Fiske estimates the amounts the company spent preparing the production to be “about sixteen hundred dollars ($1600) a week” in salaries for the 51 company members, $8,000 in scenic and costume investiture, and “the gross expenses per week of the company and the Manhattan Theatre aggregated nearly $5,000.” [10] Yet, the omission of Harrison from the injunction also suggests that Belasco did not give credence to her work or input, a perception reinforced by his discussion of her throughout his affidavit as an employee in need of his supervision rather than as a creator or equal: “Mrs. Harrison immediately took a fancy to the story and told me that she would be able, under my supervision and in collaboration with me, to make a good play out of it.” [11] Indeed, his argument that the play was his own idea and property relies upon his presentation of Harrison as little more than someone who “molded these ideas of mine into shape and wrote out the dialogue under my supervision;” [12] the gendered bias towards and discounting of her skills is necessarily intertwined with his refusal to grant her ownership of her ideas, much less active participation in the creation of the script. Responses to the suit counter this perception thoroughly – with the Fiskes, Harrison, her husband, and Charles Lydecker, the Fiskes’ lawyer, giving Harrison credit for her work; yet, they, too, traffic in gendered perceptions of her naivete to make their case. While Belasco ultimately withdrew the suit after the Fiskes’ production had opened under a cloud of ironically profitable publicity, this overall timeline is vital for establishing that there were at least two collaborative writing relationships which produced this play, and that reality becomes a key point in the legal case. Harrison and the Fiskes worked on the piece for at least four months in 1901, through visits and letters, prior to contracting the piece for production in October. They also continued working on the piece during rehearsals. This method of writing paralleled how Harrison had been interacting with Belasco in the spring of 1900, including uncontracted jointly undertaken revision work, but the key difference is that Belasco never signed a contract with Harrison, despite communications between Roeder and the Harrisons about a potential contract. Manuscripts and Authorial Control At the time of the Belasco suit, copyright and theatrical law in the United States was still governed by the Copyright Act of 1790 and being solidified through court cases, but the type of collaboration which produces theatrical scripts was not well addressed by this law; the US legal system is still grappling with theatrical collaboration in its various permutations. Indeed, in 2012, Ryan J. Richardson remarked that “[a] few notable scholars in the legal community, however, have alleged a more systemic problem-the inability of American copyright law to adequately reward and protect the uniquely collaborative expression that is live theatre.” [13] Richardson traces through how writing and production collaborations present conundrums which parallel some of those raised in this case. Throughout her affidavit, [14] Harrison argues for ideas that Douglas Nevin also notes are the cornerstones of contemporary and historical copyright law – originality and creativity, [15] treating collaboration as merely part of the single author’s creative process. Belasco chose to focus on contracts and ownership – despite having no supporting material to suggest a claim to ownership nor any signed agreement with Harrison which permitted him to produce her play. Seemingly, the Fiskes and Harrisons feared there was sufficient grey area on the nature of collaboration and its impact on authorship – and by extension, on ownership – that they created a substantial counter-argument to this point. Indeed, Harrison may have potentially created an ownership conundrum by providing Belasco with manuscript copies of her plays. The volume and intensity of documentation about the physical manuscript suggests a deep concern regarding physical control of the manuscript versions, for a variety of possible reasons. As Derek Miller discusses, in this period where nuances of copyright law were still being actively developed in the courts, “[m]anuscripts – or in later decades, scripts printed for private use – remained important for controlling uncertain rights, particularly for playwrights whose work was valuable on both sides of the Atlantic.” [16] Belasco’s injunction notice was delivered to the Fiskes, informing them that “on the hearing of the motion for an injunction in this action, we will hand up to the court the original manuscript of ‘The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch,’” [17] which certainly seems to validate the Harrisons’ concerns. Further, the Complaint notes that the play has not yet been published or performed in public, [18] relying upon nineteenth-century notions that publication, performance, and copyright were means by which ownership could be established. [19] By submitting an original manuscript of the still unpublished text, he could argue ownership of the play. The copyright registration process at the time also complicated matters; as per typical process, Harrison sent in the title page on 8 October 1901 to copyright the title, but two copies of the script, published by the printer CG Burgoyne, were not submitted until 26 November 1901, which was the day after the show opened. [20] The title, thus, was the only part of the play that was under copyright when the injunction was issued, although Belasco seems unaware of this as the 8 November 1901 Complaint argues that “said play and title are original and […] no other play has been written or produced having said title”; [21] the play was still being revised. As will be discussed later, this timing may well have given Harrison and the Fiskes sufficient warning to alter any elements they may have attributed to Belasco. The materials also include extensive discussion of the typist, which Belasco submitted as part of an argument that since he paid to have the piece typed, he owned it. [22] Harrison does not dispute the copy of Harrison’s letter that Belasco submitted into evidence detailing these arrangements, so it is clear that the script was typed and that Belasco paid for it. Harrison’s letter reveals that she asked the typist to charge Belasco for the “Hatch” script and charge Harrison for typing another of her scripts, “His Better Half;” she also asked the typist whether the original copies of the last acts had been sent to Belasco or not because they had not been returned to her. [23] Belasco argues that this payment clearly indicates his ownership of the manuscript. Meanwhile, Harrison claims that: “Belasco expressed an eager desire to have the work of typing this play, so as it had been then finished in a rough way, done in a hurry, so as to enable him to take it with him on the voyage to Europe, sailing at the end of March [1900] – and so he requested me to send it to his typewriters (as he called them) who, he said, were very familiar with that kind of work.” She also remarks that she usually uses the “typewriters down town employed by my husband” for her own work and that she had not sent the text to them because it was not yet ready. [24] The posturing by both here is clear: Harrison is laying the groundwork to argue that the script wasn’t finished, as she does throughout her affidavit, and that it was only typed because Belasco demanded it before leaving for Europe. Belasco, meanwhile, is claiming that the fact that he paid for the Hatch script and Harrison paid for the other script clearly indicates perceived ownership of the individual scripts on the part of both parties. A third interpretation, however, is possible, when the typing note is read alongside another letter Harrison wrote to Belasco, submitted by Belasco as Exhibit 3: “Here is ‘Mrs. Hatch,’ and I send her to you with a goodspeed for her, and for you, upon your voyage!” She also included “His Better Half,” the other play that was typed. And, Harrison continues, “My husband thinks you had better send me a memorandum about the play to-morrow, so that we can look over it, before I sign anything.” [25] Harrison does not dispute this letter, either, but she also does not directly reference it in her affidavit. She does, however, acknowledge that she and her husband met with Roeder in April 1900 to discuss terms, but no contract was ever signed. Given that Harrison clearly assumed that Belasco would be producing her play at some point in the future, his decision to pay for the typing seems, perhaps, logical for a future producer who wished a copy of the play to continue their collaborative writing. The sheer number of times Harrison points out that this March 1900 encounter was the last active engagement between the two about the script suggests a strategy to establish a collaborative relationship that failed and was never solidified under contract. After all, by mid-May 1901, the Fiskes had a version of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , and Harrison may have been feeling pressure to get revisions fully underway to ready the script for possible production by them and to be clearly and fully in control of her work, physically and intellectually. Throughout the court documents, reference is made to how much work the May script needed, which may again have been a legal maneuver as well as a statement of fact. Harrison admits, for instance, in a 23 May 1901 letter that the play “is deficient in the elements of success in its present form,” [26] and her husband notes on 4 October 1901 that “the play was left unfinished a year ago last spring.” [27] The latter, presumably, is an attempt to discredit any claim Belasco may have made by establishing the length of time that had passed since his active participation in the collaboration. This 23 May letter, however, is peculiarly timed and indicative of some of the documentation challenges in this case. The Fiskes expressed interest in the script a week prior to when Harrison pleaded “I can’t bear to lose that I have already done, and I therefore appeal to your kindness to send me back your copy of the play, also my two other plays “Bitter Sweet” and “His Better Half,” which I asked you to read.” [28] On the surface, she writes in a manner which exploits numerous gendered tropes, undermining her own “deficient” work and fawning over Belasco who has his “hands full of important and successful ventures.” Given that the Fiskes are now working with her on the script and considering a production of it, however, it seems clear that Harrison’s desire to “make it better for my own satisfaction, if with no other result” is overt gendered cover for her real intent: to have the script produced by the Fiskes with no intervention by Belasco and to get the manuscript returned. Harrison claims in her affidavit that this letter was written in 1900, which does not make sense since it clearly mentions that she has “now waited for a whole year with patience and courtesy,” which correctly dates the letter as 1901. She also accuses him of changing her words in a letter submitted into evidence to be “projected collaboration” instead of “proposed collaboration,” but does not take issue with the rest of the language in the letter, leading readers to assume her date of 1900 is perhaps a typo or perhaps an attempt to obfuscate the timing of her relationship with the Fiskes. [29] Devaluing Women’s Labor Belasco’s reputation for suing competitors and being generally obstreperous was well known publicly and professionally at this point. This characterization seems to have to been accepted by all involved in this case from the very start, except for Mrs. Harrison, who appears naïve throughout the extant documents, though she is presumably playing at that gendered obliviousness by the time of the 23 May 1901 letter discussed just above. Jeannette Gilder, co-editor of The Critic and publisher of Harrison’s work, told her that she was “having the same experience with Mr. Belasco that many others have had.” [30] Her husband reports that he “was apprehensive” about Harrison’s initial contact with Belasco, “warning her of his reputation of unscrupulous dealing and for general inveracity.” Yet, Harrison reportedly “replied by reminding [him] that she had seen much of him long ago, had put him under obligations in her dealings then with him, had received repeated expressions of his gratitude, adding that she did not think he would act towards her otherwise than uprightly and with consideration.” As he notes, “[t]his sequel tells its own story.” [31] Throughout the legal materials, the Fiskes and Burton N. Harrison appear to be carefully, though not overtly, pointing towards Constance Harrison’s naiveté in dealing with Belasco. The narrative suggests that Harrison still chose to view him as the younger man who had been so helpful early on in her career; she is depicted as a trusting and ultimately exploited amateur female playwright. Clearly, other producers were willing to work with her, but it is unclear whether she was meek and trusting, or whether the legal documents wished to depict her as meek and trusting in order to play upon the judge’s sympathies. After all, it seems entirely reasonable that Harrison went to Belasco in hopes of getting her play produced by him because of their past connection; he was now in a position to make her a successful playwright. During the whole Mrs. Hatch episode, she sent him two other plays and also some sketches, about which she asked: “Can you suggest to me how I can get them produced in vaudeville or otherwise without my name? I should be so glad of an opportunity to see them played.” [32] Such decisions may reflect a calculated agency and desire to expand her writing career into the professional theatre, but they also can play into the narrative the Harrisons and the Fiskes created. This manipulation of her gendered position of power, or lack thereof, also extends into some of Belasco’s more problematic claims and her defense against them. He argued that one of the reasons why he supposedly worked with Harrison was her class and gender: “Being a society woman, familiar with the ways of society, that fact was one of the considerations that influenced me to give her the work.” [33] In doing so, Belasco could have capitalized on contemporary trends to appeal to audiences by employing society women, a strategy successfully deployed by his competitor Augustin Daly. Author’s Rights, Contracts, and Co-Authorship Belasco’s ownership concerns form the starting point for Charles Lydecker’s arguments in his “Memo in Opposition to Motion for Injunction,” which include four main points about authors’ rights and co-authorship, which he details in varying degrees and supports with citations to case law and practice. First, he notes that authors should be able to benefit from their work; he also points out that Belasco admitted that Harrison contacted him to ask for advice, implying that she was the author. For Lydecker, “[t]he turning point in all cases rests upon the rights of the author. If Mrs. Harrison is the author of the play, the right on injunction rests with her.” [34] The issue, then, becomes one of authorship and authors’ rights. The parties do not appear to be at odds on this particular point. Lydecker expands upon the issues of manuscript possession and authorship in a structured counterargument which begins with an acknowledgement that rights can be assigned by the author to another party, as in the case of Harrison granting production rights to the Fiskes. Here, Belasco is called out for clearly understanding that this is how rights work and for having no contracts to support his claims. Indeed, Lydecker notes that Belasco’s professed desire “to make arrangements to bring out the play in 1902 is a subterfuge and shows abandonment;” [35] by claiming that future plans should prohibit the Fiskes from producing the play immediately, Belasco reveals an acceptance that Harrison is the author, a desire to relate to the play as a producer in the future, and a general goal to prevent the Fiskes from profiting off of the piece. Nothing would prevent Belasco from obtaining the rights to produce the show later; indeed, he did so in 1903, where Alice Kauser reported that it “played the first week to very large business. They are going to continue it for this week (the second week) and may be for a third week if the popularity of the play continues on.” [36] Lydecker and Fiske both argue that Belasco’s failure to obtain any kind of contract with Harrison at any point during 1900 or 1901 as a key element of his lack of standing in the case. Belasco’s arguments conveniently skate past any acknowledgement that there is no signed paperwork, but they do provide another fascinating window into the complex performance of gender which floats just beneath the surface of the case. Ironically, Belasco appears to grant Harrison more agency to enter into a contract than anyone on her side of the courtroom, even though he is simultaneously trying to claim that she couldn’t possibly have written the piece herself. In some documents, Belasco claims that the Harrisons were stalling on writing an agreement, [37] but he also attests that Constance Harrison, Belasco and Benjamin Roeder, his business manager, came to terms on a contract on their own, in the Harrison’s house, while Burton Harrison was in another room. [38] The Harrisons staunchly deny his claim that they were to draw up the contract and even moreso vociferously contest that Constance had negotiated a contract without her husband’s input. [39] Extant letters from Harrison’s agent about her publishing support the Harrisons’ claim that Burton handled her contractual matters. For instance, all correspondence about the production contract was between Burton, the Fiskes, and her agent Kauser, even though later letters about the weekly grosses are addressed to Constance. This arrangement enables the defense to present an image of Mrs. Harrison as a woman unschooled in business matters, but it also undercuts the logic of Belasco’s claims. Societal expectations may well have provided a convenient defense, no matter any degree of guilt, and the Fiskes and the Harrisons appear to have exploited these social constructs when convenient. Ultimately, Lydecker argues for the same interpretation of the relationship between contract and copyright law as the Second Circuit eventually does in 1991 in Childress v. Taylor, 945 F.2d 500, 502 (2d. Cir. 1991), which notes that “In the absence of a contract, the copyright remains with the one or more persons who created copyrightable material.” [40] Lydecker notes early in the memo that “[n]o facts alleged sustain the claim that the plaintiff is an assignee of the author’s property” [41] and then returns to this point later while remarking that the contemporary case law supports the notion “that copyright vests in the employer only by agreement.” [42] Recall that at the time of the suit, Harrison had filed the title with the copyright office on 8 October 1901, [43] but the script was not submitted until after the injunction was filed and the show opened. Thus, Harrison was left to prove that she was the sole author of the piece. The legal precedents regarding joint authorship, working relationships, and collaboration are the areas which may have provided the most potential for Belasco to have a winnable argument, even if his affidavit does not make these points particularly clearly or effectively. While it should be noted that Belasco claimed full ownership rather than joint authorship, a detail which perhaps speaks more to his intention to shut down the production and a general megalomania, the case still raises numerous issues with regards to how authorship and collaboration are defined, and thus rewarded, through copyright protections and ensuing potential profitability. Lydecker establishes that if the piece were “the joint product of the minds of the plaintiff and Mrs. Harrison,” then “under a proper agreement,” the two would be legally bound to provide rights to both authors. [44] Belasco, again, has no such proof of such an agreement, but their collaboration certainly was treated as a potential problem due to this concept of “joint product.” This notion of co-authorship gets expanded further in Lydecker’s final point, which quite extensively cites case law for the various nuances of his arguments about authorship, ownership, and injunctions. After acknowledging that there was a collaboration, he argues based on contemporary understanding of copyright that “[t]o constitute joint ownership there must be a common design.” [45] Joint authorship requiring intent to create a joint work remains a hallmark of US copyright law through much of the twentieth century, though it gradually becomes complicated by questions about the degree of contribution, “work for hire” rights, and related concerns, [46] many of which are visible in this case as well. Lydecker continues by expanding on the notion of “common design,” citing a case between Levi and Rutley, wherein a playwright hired to write a play retained authorship rights. [47] This explication quite clearly responds to Belasco’s claim that Harrison worked for him. [48] Harrison’s presumption that she could receive feedback from Belasco without incorporating all of it casts further doubt on Belasco’s claims that she was working for him, rather than he providing advice to her; he did not control the content. Belasco’s own claims that he hired Harrison to write for him also undermine any potential argument about joint authorship, based on the case law Lydecker raises as well as simple logic. Harrison quite clearly believed their collaboration to be one where Belasco was to help her with her writing, presuming that Belasco would then produce the play; the Amended Answer from the Fiskes notes that Harrison was willing to pay Belasco for any consulting expenses incurred. [49] A contract to that effect might well have helped Belasco, insofar as it would have proved that Harrison had agreed to write jointly with him or for him, while also clarifying whether he had the rights to produce the play. The Confusion of Collaborative Writing Processes In addition to the confusion about establishing theatrical rights at a time when the legal systems are still responding to production developments, [50] the theatrical scripts under consideration did not come into existence in a clean process, a reality which underpins much of the legal consternation and debate around collaboration in this case. The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch followed standard procedures then as now as ever in a collaborative art: Harrison brainstormed, wrote, and revised over the course of many months with input from a wide variety of parties including potential producers, and by the time the Fiskes offered her a contract in October 1901, none of these collaborators made any claims for co-authorship. As was normal for their publishing relationship, Harrison received input from her agent, Alice Kauser, throughout the process. She also consulted her lawyer husband, Burton N. Harrison, for advice on the legal aspects of the play. Furthermore, as Fiske and Harrison both note in their affidavits, a stage manager would often provide advice to a playwright in advance of staging a play; indeed, that is how Belasco and Harrison had worked in the 1880s on plays that were considered her works, despite his input and assistance. Harrison’s correspondence archive at the NYPL does contain numerous exchanges with producers about a wide variety of her works, including The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch . [51] Kauser notes that when she sent the play to her agent in London – after the Fiskes’ production was already running – the response was positive but included a request for a happy ending and a different title. [52] And, given the collaborative work that occurred with the Fiskes both before and after their contract had been signed, it appears that pre-emptive work on a rough script was the norm. For instance, Fiske’s first reply about the play expressed some interest but noted specific revisions that would need to be made, namely that “the predominating motive of the play as found in its leading character would require, it seems to me, some relief in the amplification of the subordinate interests as they are at present. The element of maternal love is dwelt upon so continuously now that it may be monotonous.” [53] Likewise, a 1902 letter from William H. Kendal, wherein he declines to produce the play in London, also offers feedback to Harrison, suggesting that she “[reconstruct] the play giving equal prominence & interest to the man” and noting that he would look at it again if those changes were made. This letter, notably, was written after the play had already been successfully produced in New York; such notes speak both to the collaborative nature of the profession and the assumption that texts can always be updated as needed for successful production. [54] Harrison’s engagement in a collaborative writing process is not cast as any critique on her skills; indeed, the normalcy of such an approach appears to be a given. Yet, much of the discussion of the process and her naivete enables the defense to cast Belasco as a bully and her as the innocent victim. Harrison Grey Fiske, in particular, points towards Harrison’s unimpeachable moral character and naivete as a woman while taking numerous opportunities to insult Belasco as he explains the collaborative writing process. The amended answer to the injunction moves quickly from a statement of facts into a barbed gauntlet “deny[ing] on information and belief that the plaintiff [Belasco] is an author and writer of plays,” though Fiske does “admit that plaintiff has been manager of various dramatic enterprises.” [55] The slights appear throughout the affidavit, too, where Harrison Grey Fiske depicts Belasco as an unskilled man who takes credit for others’ work: “I know Mr. Belasco’s capabilities and limitations with respect to play writing, and that I know how he engages people to write plays for him and then presents them to the public as his own.” [56] This line of defense calls into question Belasco’s veracity, but it also enables Fiske to imply, throughout, that Belasco assumed he could manipulate Harrison in this fashion as well. Fiske demotes Belasco, claiming he only “rendered her certain aid and assistance as a dramatic manager and as a stage manager.” Further, he argued that Harrison was “a woman of social position and high personal character” whereas “Belasco’s claims to authorship [have] frequently been questioned in the press and through legal proceedings.” [57] Harrison’s accomplished writing career is overshadowed by her class and gender here, rhetorically, to simultaneously attack Belasco and gain the sympathies of the court. Collaboration and U.S Law While plays are often the result of this type of collaborative process, collaboration resides, then and now, in a vague legal territory, particularly as pertains to this case. Indeed, the state of current case law and legislation underscores how dependent the parties in Belasco v. Fiske were on their own argumentation and evidence. Nevin, in his argument that current copyright law should be expanded to better accommodate theatrical production processes, notes that “copyright law lacks a proper mechanism to acknowledge the single most defining characteristic of the form—collaboration.” [58] Richardson concurs, describing “a more systemic problem–the inability of American copyright law to adequately reward and protect the uniquely collaborative expression that is live theatre.” [59] He notes, however, that proposed current solutions in legal discussions insufficiently address the concerns of theatrical collaboration because of their attempts at universality and that they may indeed hinder creativity. [60] Protections afforded through joint authorship were added to the 1976 Copyright act as a result of “a series of notable cases n156 following the enactment of the Copyright Act of 1909, which conspicuously contained no express provisions governing joint authorship.” [61] In their defense documents, thus, Harrison and the Fiskes addressed legal debates which the courts still have yet to fully resolve. Additionally, Anne Ruggles Gere’s assessment of collaborative writing in women’s groups at the end of the nineteenth century provides another potential, and gendered, avenue for considering Harrison’s approaches to collaboration and concerns about the intersection between collaboration and authorship. As copyright law was being solidified, women’s groups, Gere argues, were working in various ways which “resisted dominant concepts of intellectual property and authorship. Collaboration played a major role in writing.” [62] The processes of sharing, receiving feedback, adapting texts from other sources, and generally collaborating on writing products parallels the processes used in theatrical script development. Harrison’s prior theatrical experiences included developing scripts with a group of amateur performers and, notably, Belasco; those productions appear to followed some of the models of collaborative development that Gere discusses. Many of her scripts, including The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch , draw on or overtly adapt other texts in a manner which, while legal at the time, reveals a more fluid approach to writing, authorship, and ownership than the law would eventually settle upon. Gere argues that the clubwomen were subverting norms through a variety of literacy activities including collaborative writing and adaptation, [63] and while Harrison is not obviously working with a club, Gere’s presentation of alternate views of authorship and the impact of collaboration thereon provide another potential avenue for understanding Harrison’s focus on collaboration in her affidavit. These practices question the fixed nature of authorship and textual development that copyright law relies upon for clarity. 6[64] Little in Lydecker’s memo directly cites case law specifically about collaboration, but the avenue that he took – the need to establish authorship and the nature of the rights granted to authors – may well have inspired Harrison to expend a great deal of time in her affidavit discussing their collaboration and possibly make some late changes to the text. Taken as a whole, the defense materials reveal concerns that Belasco would and could argue collaboration and thus, perhaps, joint authorship as a means of arguing co-ownership. Interestingly, Belasco only raises collaboration twice – once while describing the initial idea for the project and later while discussing the work that they did on the piece. Harrison, conversely, discusses the nature of collaboration endlessly in her affidavit, directly countering the belittling presumptions in Belasco’s affidavit by keeping the focus on her authorial power, positioning Belasco as her assistant at times and as a potential producer at others. She explains “I said to him that I had sent for him because I thought he could, and perhaps would, assist me by collaborating and staging and bringing out the play I might write.” [65] Throughout, the dispute again comes down to contracts and input on the script. Harrison points out that “[i]t is not true that, at that interview or at any time, an arrangement for collaboration with him was suggested, except as I have here above stated – collaboration with him having been suggested only as part of a suggested entire arrangement which included staging and production by him.” [66] Collaborative Writing Processes Harrison’s assessment of Belasco’s contributions to the piece as a means of collaboration form the bulk of her counter-argument and shed further light on the collaborative writing process. Belasco claims in his affidavit that “I would sometimes remain at her house from six to seven hours collaborating with her.” [67] In addition to denying the length and number of times they met, Harrison pointed out the many months between his departure for Europe in March 1900 and the suit in October 1901, “during all of which time he had utterly failed and neglected to do anything whatever in the way of collaborating.” [68] She defines collaborating as having a “share or participation in the creation of the story or in the design or plot or general structure or construction of the play,” and goes on to classify Belasco’s involvement with the script as akin to that of a stage manager. [69] While demoting Belasco here, she also neglects to mention in this section that the input he seems to have given her was quite similar in type and perhaps scope as the input given by the Fiskes. She further remarks that he had “the opportunity” to collaborate on the script since he had requested the typed version in March 1900, but that he had chosen not to do so. [70] Indeed, their descriptions of the collaborative process they used provide a fascinating look into how they both viewed each other and the work. Belasco, throughout his affidavit, discusses how he “gave her the story and the plot” and similarly dictated other elements. [71] The notes on the script which he submitted are, indeed, quite dictatorial in their presentation: the pages are merely new pieces of text with no context or elaboration. Minnie Maddern Fiske, by contrast, explained and contextualized her suggestions and requests in the extant notes. Both Belasco and Harrison acknowledge sessions where lines were read. Belasco claimed he would read the lines and Harrison would take notes. Harrison, however, describes these meetings in a way that can best be described as a thinly veiled excoriation of his talents: though it is true that, whilst I wrote he sometimes walked about the room and pulled his hair in apparent excitement, sometimes with his hands before him and trembling, as he said, in a low and agitated voice, in real or assumed emotion over what I had read him. “Ther-rills (thrills) – ther-rills, I can see the audience in their ther-rills” – and though it is true that I remember, he once sat at my desk and did the dumbshow of the “business” he said would be appropriate for the detective […] As to Mr. Belasco’s speaking a “dialogue,” he always was difficult and slow of utterance – appeared to be unable to articulate except with effort and very tediously, and in mere explosives.[72] Where neither side disputes that work was completed on the play with both parties in attendance at Mrs. Harrison’s house, the challenge then becomes establishing degree of collaboration, which even the courts still struggle to determine. Curiously, Harrison appears to have been proactively asking about collaboration – seemingly before the lawsuit even occurred. The archive includes a tantalizingly incomplete letter to Harrison which was clearly written in response to Harrison reaching out to ask if the illegibly named correspondent remembered exchanging letters about the play and about collaboration. The letter’s author replies to her inquiry: “So – my recollection of that correspondence upon matters dramatic is extremely vague. However, your statement of it seems entirely accurate. I think you wanted to know out my experience what the relations and TERMS were between collaborating dramatists, and I was obliged to confess that what should have been my experience was lodged in the bosom of THE CENTURY COMPANY who had made all the arrangements.” The letter writer continues: “I do not remember that you mentioned the name of the play, for, it seemed quite fresh to my recollection when I saw the story in the ‘The Smart Set;’” [73] the short story version of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch appeared in March 1901. While the letter writer claims to be unsure of many details, if we trust that that the conversation occurred, as implied, before the publication of the short story, then Harrison was asking about how collaborations worked in the spring of 1901 or in 1900 – long before the lawsuit and before the Fiskes became involved. Whatever sparked the original conversation, the inquiry which prompted this particular reply seemingly was meant to establish a defense – Harrison wanted to know if her correspondent had kept any of their initial set of letters, presumably to use them at trial. Tests of Originality and Plot Machinations In this particular case, the multiple collaborations may have enabled Harrison to better prepare to counter Belasco’s claims of originality, which may well have been problematic and hard to disprove legally. Originality is a key component of United States copyright law since the Copyright Act of 1790, which drew on similar ideas in English law. Belasco’s main points of contention in his often-rambling affidavit are that the plot and the storyline were his original idea and that he hired Harrison to write that particular story with significant oversight and supervision by him. Harrison claims that the story is her version of a Sardou play, Seraphine , where a father is reunited with his daughter. [74] While establishing provenance is impossible, it should be noted that some in the press claimed a third source, as they saw the story as a loose adaptation of the hit East Lynne . [75] The storyline draws on popular narratives of the time, no matter the initial inspiration. The plot, in brief, concerns a young married woman who learns that her husband is having an affair; she leaves him and has a short dalliance with a male friend in retribution, is sued for divorce and loses; she moves to California, leaving behind her young daughter, and sets up shop making lampshades as Mrs. Marian Hatch. Just as her new love interest proposes, Mrs. Marian Hatch learns of her daughter’s upcoming marriage, and so she sells everything, spurns her suitor, and moves back to NY to see her daughter, pretending to be a stitcher working on her daughter’s wedding dress to gain access. She continues to nobly suffer in silence, and after the daughter returns from her honeymoon, she learns the true identity of the stitcher, just in time for her long-lost mother to die of a weak heart. The short story was published during Harrison’s period of work with Belasco, providing Belasco with the plot and dialogue to compare to the draft manuscript which he had in his possession. What should have helped him potentially prove part of his case, however, also gave Harrison and the Fiskes a clear roadmap of what they might want to change. And changes, they made. While early drafts of the play have not been located, the major differences between the play and the short story appear to have been written in collaboration with the Fiskes rather than with Belasco. And, the substantive nature of those alterations between short story and play may well have undercut any claim of joint authorship of the play that Belasco might have made. Numerous major and minor changes were made during the process of adaptation from short story to play, and little of Belasco’s input seems to have survived the revision process, which may well have continued after the injunction was filed. Extant correspondence about the revisions is generally brief and undated, limiting our ability to parse which changes might have been happening when. Additionally, numerous short undated letters from the Fiskes request her presence at the theatre and notify her of their visits to her house, some specifically mentioning the play and others simply confirming times and dates. [76] Quite a few letters between Harrison and the Fiskes discuss the play and its development, in particular the last act, which is significantly changed from the short story version, as well as the Paul & Lina scene, the Paul & Marian scene, and Mrs. Hatch’s character. Paul Trevor, Mrs. Hatch’s love interest, is an entirely new character for the play, and the plot alterations necessary to accommodate him were quite substantial; this love interest permits Mrs. Hatch to be more sympathetic, perhaps accounting for the character imperfections which Burton Harrison recommended so that the judge’s decision is believable. Belasco and Harrison had considered making Mrs. Hatch purely innocent, but Burton Harrison objected because a judge would never have taken away an innocent society woman’s child. Harrison followed this advice, telling Belasco: “my husband says our latest scheme to make Marion innocent, except of rash impulse, has simply robbed the play of all of its strength, and made it a tissue of improbabilities. He says no judge or referee in New York would ever have condemned a woman upon such a letter […] the matter of innocence simply takes the backbone out of the play, and makes it inverterbrate.” [77] Yet, given that the Fiskes and Harrisons had nearly a month between the notice of the lawsuit and opening night, it is possible that some of the minor details that survived the short story-to-play revision process were cut, just in case. Indeed, Belasco’s complaint gave them a map of potential changes to make by submitting a typed copy of feedback on the first three acts with his affidavit as Exhibit 13; the press also ran the contents of the suit in great detail, with at least one paper reprinting the letters entered in as exhibits. [78] Remarkably few of those suggestions were in the final version of the play, perhaps because of artistic differences, but perhaps to assist with the defense. Numerous minor differences exist between the play and Belasco’s notes – instead of Adrian’s parents visiting, it’s his sister; when the lawyer enters, Mrs. Hatch says “I haven’t forgotten you” rather than Belasco’s suggested “Yes… I remembered you;” a boy is replaced by a telephone; etc. In one noticeably awkward substitution, a young boy at a May festival who had a balloon in the short story was instead given a toy boat in the play and told, “Hold fast Johnny boy. If Bobby gets it away from you, you’re gone.” The short story version was “Take care Johnny boy. […] Hold very fast to your string. If it gets away from you, you’re gone.” Belasco wrote a whole bit about balloons going up, one child losing one and crying, and Mrs. Hatch talking to the child, saying, “You can get another! My balloon went up, long ago; and I couldn’t!” None of that remains – balloons aren’t mentioned at all. [79] Johnny’s illogical need to hang onto his boat rather than his balloon seems to suggest the Fiskes and Harrison either were not quite so innocently being attacked by Belasco or were unsure of their legal standing and decided to make sure that play was sufficiently different to withstand scrutiny. One tantalizingly unclear letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Harrison suggests that they might have been editing out parts which might give Belasco grounds to argue for collaboration, unless, of course, they were worried about the critics. Fiske writes, “Do you not think it would be well to cut, in Gladys’ 2 nd Act scene – all reference to her mother so that the nasty and unfriendly ones won’t have a chance to say that we are forcing a situation!” [80] In the published version of the script, Gladys remarks periodically about her mother (Mrs. Hatch) in Act 2, but there’s only a brief reference to the off-stage Mrs. Lorimer, who is introduced as far more of the stereotypical social-climbing wicked stepmother in the short story pages which parallel Act 2. Belasco’s script notes, meanwhile, advise that an abbreviated version of the short story’s stern conversation between Mrs. Lorimer and Gladys remain, complete with the carriage arriving upstage. [81] Whether or not the Fiskes and Harrison are guiltless in this endeavor or simply covering their bases is unclear, muddied by the paper trail and the long-standing animosity between the producers. The Fiskes do seem to have been playing a little fast and loose with the truth at times, for Harrison Grey Fiske’s affidavit implies a distant, past, notion that “a collaboration with Mr. Belasco and a production of the play by him was once contemplated” [82] and he tells the press “I knew that in some sort of a way Mr. Belasco had known of the writing of the play.” [83] Yet, Minnie Maddern Fiske’s correspondence suggests that she knows the backstory and its implications. She tells Harrison in an 8 th September 1901 letter “Do not let Mr. Belasco know that I wish to present the play. The little man would hold to it with his last gasp if he thought that. I shall be so glad when it shall be finally in our hands.” [84] Whether Fiske expects a competitive battle from Belasco or whether she understands that Harrison had been working with him and was attempting to extricate herself from that relationship is unclear. Belasco was at a serious disadvantage while building his lawsuit because he did not have access to this latest version of the script, nor did he appear to know that Harrison had been working with the Fiskes since May. He reportedly told her – in July 1901 — that he wouldn’t be able to produce the show in the 1901-1902 season; [85] this document’s authenticity is questioned by Harrison, who denies ever receiving it. [86] Regardless, it still does not constitute a contractual agreement to produce the play, and in reality, by July she was already substantially revising the play based upon suggestions from the Fiskes; accordingly a whole section of Belasco’s argument falls apart. [87] His silence and failure to obtain a written contract enabled her to go elsewhere with the script, be it due to busyness or a devaluation of Harrison’s work until it was deemed stage-worthy by a competitor. He was fond of suing his competition, so it simply may be that he had no legal case and was on a deadline; he had less than a month to shut down the production, so ownership was the only logical power play that might result in a production delay and payout. Whether Harrison and the Fiskes would have been able to make a case about theatre’s collaborative writing history not constituting ownership, authorship, or joint authorship remains unknowable. The Predatory Producer and the Female Playwright The difficulties of establishing the extent of a collaboration, and thus of being able to make a case for joint authorship, rest in part on intent, as Lydecker discusses, and in part on contributions to outcome, which has become a foundation for modern legal interpretations. While the law was not settled then (or now), [88] all sides spent a significant amount of time presenting the case for their contributions to the piece in a messy and protracted collaborative process – Belasco claiming ideas and inspiration, Harrison denying his input was used in the piece, and Fiske and the Harrisons both, seemingly, working to remove any remnants of Belasco’s imprint on the piece. Layered atop this was Belasco’s bravado and the willingness of the entire defense team to cast Constance Harrison as a somewhat gullible woman for their benefit. In the end, the suit was dropped, without clear explanation, but the extensive legal archive and press coverage certainly suggest that all parties were concerned that Belasco might well have had a case despite not having a written contract with Harrison and that the rhetorical positioning of Harrison as a naïve and manipulated woman might not have been sufficient as a defense. The complexities and legal uncertainty surrounding extent of and intent to collaborate continue to appear in contemporary case law. The playwriting process of the early nineteenth century, particularly when a predatory producer encounters a female “amateur” playwright with enough skill to write a hit and a willingness to trust him despite others’ concerns, was a messy enough collaboration that the law may have granted Belasco some compensation for his input, if the script sufficiently resembled the earlier version. One wonders if Belasco’s obviously thin evidence was taken seriously simply because Harrison was a woman and “amateur” playwright and Belasco was granted immediate authority and credence as a professional man. While the case is rooted in the competitive turn-of-the-twentieth century world of producers who were fighting to establish themselves and resist the Syndicate, the implications of this case and the historical outcomes for women and their labor remain all too familiar. The legal system still grapples with defining collaboration, but women’s contributions to work products are ignored or undermined with the same unquestioned ease seen in Belasco’s affidavit. Harrison, doubly challenged as a woman and a wrongly perceived amateur author, spends years trying to work collaboratively with Belasco in a playwright-producer relationship. Belasco, who cannot be bothered to reply to her letters despite their working relationship, appears in his affidavit to be incapable of imagining that a woman would collaborate with him rather than work for him. Harrison’s capacity to function in a professional realm without male input is quite obvious in her archive – Harrison, Minnie Maddern Fiske, and Kauser are the three women who make this production happen through negotiation and collaboration. And yet, throughout the legal and press archives, Harrison’s skills and professional capacity are constantly questioned. A century later, women’s voices in collaborative work are still continually ignored, discredited, and questioned. Actual amateurs are systematically exploited for their labor through an industry that relies on underpaid positions, while experienced women are presumed amateurish, their work products and ideas claimed and turned into profit opportunities by men. That the law struggles to define collaboration reflects the messiness of creative processes; that teams still erase women’s contributions to collaborations is symptomatic of a pernicious societal ill that led Belasco and Harrison to court. References [1] Abram J. Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske . Para 4. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [2] Mary A. Worley, “Alice Kauser, Playwright, A Woman of Ideas,” Los Angeles Herald , 8 Feb 1903, 7. See also “Interview with Alice Kauser, 1904” excerpted from “Alice Kauser: A Chat with the Woman who Presides over the Largest Play Business in the World,” New York Dramatic Mirror , 31 December 1904, in Theatre in the United States: A Documentary History. Volume 1: 1750-1915 Theatre in the Colonies and the United States , ed. Barry B. Witham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 188. [3] Mrs. Burton Harrison, Recollections Grave and Gay , (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 333. [4] Harrison, Recollections , 325-327. [5] “Exhibit 11.” Copy of Letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, 23 May 1901. In Affidavit of David Belasco . Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [6] See, Letter from Alice Kauser to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 15 May 1901; Alice Kauser to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 17 May 1901; Letter from Harrison Grey Fiske to Alice Kauser, 18 May 1901; among others, in: Mrs. Burton Harrison, Correspondence re Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch, 8-MWEZ x n.c. 19,567 [Cage], Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library. [7] See, among others, Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, 8 September 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [8] Letter from Alice Kauser to Mr. Burton Harrison, 12 October 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [9] Amended Answer , 2/3 Dec. 1901, Para. 11. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [10] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske , 15 Dec. 1901. Para. 26. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [11] Affidavit of David Belasco , 8 Nov. 1901. Para. 4. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 9. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [12] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [13] Ryan J. Richardson, “The Art of Making Art: A Narrative of Collaboration in American Theatre and a Response to Calls for Change to the Copyright Act of 1976,” Cumberland Law Review , 2011/2012. 42 Cumb. L. Rev. 489. Lexis-Nexis Academic. 492. [14] It also should be reiterated that her husband was an experienced lawyer by the time of the suit. [15] Douglas M. Nevin, “No Business like Show Business: Copyright Law, the Theatre Industry, and the Dilemma of Rewarding Collaboration,” Emory Law Journal , Summer 2004: 53.3, 1537. [16] Derek Miller, Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1790-1911 . (Cambridge University Press: New York, 2018), 195. [17] Injunction . 6 November 1901. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 6. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [18] Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para 10. [19] See Miller, Copyright and the Value of Performance, 195-235, for an in-depth discussion of the intellectual traditions surrounding manuscripts, copyright performances, and related ways of establishing ownership in the nineteenth century. [20] Library of Congress, United States Copyright Office. Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870-1916. Vol. 2. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), 2448. Copyright number 48453. Issued October 8 1901, 2c Nov 26 1901. D: 935. [21] Dittenhoefer, et. al., Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para 10. [22] Whether or not he did submit the manuscript to the court is unclear. The draft script is in neither Lydecker’s nor Harrison’s files on the case. [23] “Exhibit 4.” Copy of Letter from Mrs. B. Harrison to Mr. Nash, 2 April. Affidavit of David Belasco . [24] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 38. 13 November 1901. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 8. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [25] “Exhibit 3.” Copy of Letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Sunday. Affidavit of David Belasco . [26] “Exhibit 11.” Affidavit of David Belasco . [27] “Exhibit X.” Copy of Letter from Burton N. Harrison to David Belasco, 4 October 1901. In Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison . 13 November 1901. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 6. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [28] “Exhibit 11.” Affidavit of David Belasco . [29] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 44. [30] Letter from Jeannette L. Gilder to Mrs. Burton Harrison, 10 October 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [31] Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison , 13 November 1901, Para 5. [32] “Exhibit 1,” Copy of letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Wednesday. Affidavit of David Belasco . [33] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [34] Charles Lydecker, Memo. in Opposition to Motion for Injunction , 15 Nov. 1901, Part 1. Lydecker Family Papers 1860-1983, SC 19048. Box 155 Case Files Belasco V. Fiske 1901-1903, Folder 7. Courtesy of the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections. [35] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 2. [36] Letter from Alice Kauser to Constance Cary Harrison, 14 September 1903. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [37] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 12-21. [38] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 13-14. [39] Affidavit of Burton N. Harrison , Paras. 6-10; Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Paras. 47-53. [40] Qtd. In Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 517. [41] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 2. [42] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. [43] United States Copyright Office, Catalogue of Title Entries of Books and Other Articles , Fourth Quarter 1901, Volume 29 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), 1470. [44] Lydecker, Memo., Part 3. [45] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. [46] For a general assessment of the complications and history of notions of joint authorship in US Copyright law, see Edward Valachovic, “The Contribution Requirement to a Joint Work under the Copyright Act,” Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review , 12.1 (1992): 199-219. [47] Lydecker, Memo. , Part 4. He cites Levi v. Rutley, Law Reports 6 C.P., 523, Smith J. Later cases and updates to the copyright law on joint authorship move towards a clearer definition of “work for hire” rights residing with the employer. [48] Again, these are issues with which contemporary copyright cases still grapple, though Richardson notes that work-for-hire has generally been settled as inapplicable now for contemporary production conditions: “Courts, more or less, have embraced this narrow definition of authorship, holding that because playwrights and composers initiate (and occasionally complete) the vast majority of their work before a producer is solicited to fund a production, they are considered “independent contractors” and are not subject to the work-for-hire doctrine.” Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 510. [49] While this claim is made in the Amended Answer , Para. 10, Harrison herself avoids explicitly mentioning remuneration in her affidavit. [50] See Miller throughout. [51] See Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [52] Letter from Alice Kauser to Constance Cary Harrison, 10 December 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [53] Letter from Harrison Grey Fiske to Alice Kauser, 18 May 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [54] Letter from William H. Kendal to Mr. Day, 1 July 1902. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [55] Amended Answer , Para 2. [56] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske, Para 20. [57] Amended Answer , Para 4. [58] Nevin, “No Business like Show Business,” 1534. [59] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 492. [60] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 493 [61] Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 508. [62] Anne Ruggles Gere, “Common Properties of Pleasure: Texts in Nineteenth Century Women’s Clubs,” in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature , eds. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 391. [63] Gere, “Common Properties of Pleasure,” 397-399. [64] For a general assessment of the historical development and complications of collaborative work, see Peter Jaszi, “On the Author Effect: Contemporary Copyright and Collective Creativity,” in The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature , eds. Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 29-56. [65] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 10. [66] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 16. The lack of an agreement on collaboration also appears in Para. 45, where she also accuses him of changing her words in a letter submitted into evidence to be “projected collaboration” instead of “proposed collaboration.” [67] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 8. [68] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 20. [69] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 28. [70] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 41. [71] Affidavit of David Belasco , Para. 7. [72] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Paras. 29-31. [73] Letter from Unknown Author to Constance Cary Harrison, [1901]. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [74] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison , Para. 7. [75] See, for example, J. Ranken Towse, “The Drama,” The Critic 40 no. 1 (January 1902): 39-40; “The Stage,” Town Talk 11 no. 575, (5 September 1903): 21. [76] See Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [77] “Exhibit 2.” Copy of letter from Constance Cary Harrison to David Belasco, Thursday Evening, Affidavit of David Belasco . [78] Clipping. Robinson Locke Scrapbook. Volume 203 Reel 18, page 61. Robinson Locke collection, NAFR+. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. [79] Mrs. Burton Harrison, The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch (New York: C.G. Burgoyne, 1901): 22; Mrs. Burton Harrison, “The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch,” The Smart Set (March 1901): 14; “Exhibit 13.” Note 2, Affidavit of David Belasco . [80] Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, undated. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [81] Harrison, Unwelcome , 32-33; Harrison, “Unwelcome,” 25-37. “Exhibit 13.” Note 7, Affidavit of David Belasco . [82] Affidavit of Harrison Grey Fiske , Para. 11. [83] Clipping. Robinson Locke Scrapbook. Volume 203 Reel 18, page 61. BRTC. [84] Letter from Minnie Maddern Fiske to Constance Cary Harrison, 8 September 1901. Harrison Correspondence, BRTC. [85] “Exhibit 12.” Copy of letter from David Belasco to Constance Cary Harrison, 15 July 1901. Affidavit of David Belasco . [86] Affidavit of Constance Cary Harrison . Para. 56 [87] Affidavit of David Belasco , Paras. 29-31. See also Abram J. Dittenhoefer, Complaint Belasco v. Fiske , Para. 9. [88] The current standard is that “the independent contributions of each putative joint author must be independently copyrightable; it is not enough that only the finished product be copyrightable.” Richardson, “The Art of Making Art,” 516. Footnotes About The Author(s) DR EILEEN CURLEY is Chair and Associate Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she teaches a wide range of theatre and drama courses. She is also the Editor in Chief of USITT’s quarterly journal Theatre Design & Technology. Her research on nineteenth-century amateur theatre has appeared in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Popular Entertainment Studies, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Symposium, Performing Arts Resources, and edited collections. Dr. Curley has also designed props, scenery, or projections for more than 50 productions in Indiana, New York, and Iowa. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Theatre History, Theory, and Literature from Indiana University and a B.A. in Theatre from Grinnell College. 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 "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.