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.

Tamara L. Smith Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 26 3 Visit Journal Homepage “Persian Like The Cat”: Crossing Borders with The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour Tamara L. Smith By Published on November 16, 2014 Download Article as PDF Tamara L. Smith/ In the wake of the attacks of September 11, Americans of Middle Eastern heritage experienced a sudden and dramatic change in how their ethnicities were perceived. As comedian and activist Dean Obeidallah explained, “On September 10, I went to bed white, and woke up Arab.”[1] Once comfortable in their American identities, they now had to contend with new cultural forces that configured them as dangerous outsiders. In the months and years that followed, the supposed existence of a so-called “Axis of Evil” of dangerous, anti-American regimes became the justification for expanding military operations abroad, while domestically it fed into a growing Orientalist sentiment that continues to configure Americans of Middle Eastern descent as potentially dangerous outsiders. In 2005, a group of United States comedians of Middle Eastern heritage adopted the alarmist moniker as a tongue-in-cheek title for their stand-up comedy performances. Part commiseration and part public relations, the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour served both as an expression of solidarity between Middle Eastern-Americans and as an act of cultural diplomacy, recasting Middle Eastern ethnic identities as familiar, patriotic, and safe. In this article, I look back to a 2006 performance by the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour in Santa Ana, California, including sets by tour members Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, and Aron Kader as well as their guest, New York Arab-American Comedy Festival founder Dean Obeidallah. Capturing a moment in which the performers were still reeling from their abrupt expulsion from mainstream American identity, the comics used the intimacy of stand-up comedy, the fluidity of their identities, and their ability to address a dual audience to reinsert themselves into what it means to be “American” in a post 9/11 world. Their performance of liminality is particularly prominent in their use of accents, which they deployed at turns to emphasize their simultaneous access to Middle Eastern and American identity positions, and to disrupt the distinctions between them. By creating a feeling of cross-border intimacy between themselves and their non-Middle Eastern audiences, and by positioning themselves as a friendly and authoritative intermediary, the comics lay the groundwork for a humanizing familiarity to develop. Once this relationship was established, the comics deployed comic inversions and juxtapositions to defuse the dominant culture’s fears of violence and fanaticism and disrupt stereotypes, while at the same time configuring themselves and others who shared their ethnicities as safe, good-humored, and—perhaps most importantly—American. Aron Kader, Maz Jobrani, and Ahmed Ahmed first came together at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where they began staging “Arabian Nights” in 2000.[2] In 2005 they began touring to other venues, and decided to change their name to the edgier “Axis of Evil.”[3] While in interviews they cite factual accuracy as the primary motive for the name change (Jobrani, who was born in Iran, is ethnically Persian rather than Arab) the choice of this provocative, topical name was inescapably a political statement that marked the group’s comedy as a reaction to the pervasive hostility towards people of Middle Eastern descent in the United States following the terrorist attacks of September 11. With their tour performances selling out, the comics put on a promotional performance and invited television producers to come see their work. The result was a partnership with Levity Productions to film a one hour special for Comedy Central. In 2006, Arab-American comic and activist Dean Obeidallah joined them in Santa Ana to film the performance, which aired on Comedy Central on 10 March 2007.[4] Although this performance was recorded and distributed both on air and on DVD, it nonetheless operates primarily as an archive of a live performance rather than as a film. Some of the techniques used to record the performance—the use of close-ups, for example—are undoubtedly filmic, but the show itself was one of a series that played out in real time before substantial live audiences. The arrangement of the space serves as a visual cue that the performance operated primarily as a live theatrical event. The OC Pavilion Theatre in Santa Ana, CA is regularly used as a live performance venue, and features a raked auditorium with fixed seating and a raised not-quite-proscenium stage. Furthermore, since the television special came into being only after the tour had become successful, the live audiences must have been the ones that the comics had in mind when they devised their sets. Most importantly, the presence of an audience is central to understanding how this performance operated. The spectators’ responses and apparent demographics, as well as how the comics addressed and referred to them during their sets were key elements in how the comics intervened in the perception of their ethnicities. The version of the show that was recorded for Comedy Central is divided into four sets, each of which is about fifteen minutes long and is performed by a single comedian. Emphasizing the increased scrutiny that people of Middle Eastern heritage have experienced since the attacks of 9/11, each of the comics begins his set by entering the stage through an airport-style metal detector, and engages in a brief skit with an ignorant and obnoxious TSA agent, played by African-American actor and comedian Loni Love. During each of their sets, the comics address the same basic question: what is it like to be an American of Middle Eastern heritage in a post-9/11 world. There is, consequently, considerable overlap in the content of the sets, as each comic offers his own take on several subjects, including terrorism, the absurdity of racial stereotypes, frustration with negative media portrayals of the Middle East and its people, and the ubiquity of racial profiling at airport security. While all of the sets present variations of the same general theme, each of the comics has a unique style and presents his set with a slightly different focus. Throughout the performance, race remains in the foreground as all of the comics self-identify by ethnicity, and each asks at least one group within the audience to do the same. Opening the show is Dean Obeidallah, a half-Arab/half-Italian from New Jersey who identifies primarily as Palestinian. Performing his set with a quiet geniality, Obeidallah’s focus is on encouraging his audience to think critically about race, racism, and the erosion of civil liberties. The second comic to perform is Egyptian-born Arab, Ahmed Ahmed. Ahmed’s comedy is more acerbic and cutting than Obeidallah’s, and he skewers the racism of the TSA and Hollywood (including his own complicity as an actor) with unflinching directness. Aron Kader performs the third set. The American-born son of a Palestinian father and white Mormon mother, Kader’s comedy focuses on his simultaneous access to, and discomfort with, the two sides of his ethnic identity. Closing out the show is Iranian Maz Jobrani. Performing with a warm and easy affect, Jobrabni is a master of the ridiculous. His high energy comedy often hinges on proposing an absurd scenario, and then acting it out to highlight its impossibility, a technique he applies with equal abandon whether imitating a terrorist who (having dialed the wrong number) accidentally tips him off to an attack, or children playing hide and seek with a young Osama bin Laden. Although the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour was unquestionably intended to entertain, the comics have also expressed the hope that their performance would serve a larger, more progressive purpose. In a March 2007 interview with the New York Times, the comics explained that they saw their work as an extension of a tradition of minority comedy in the United States, by which Jewish, black, and LGBT comedians used their craft to fight discrimination.[5] Elaborating on their desire to address negative attitudes towards Americans of Middle Eastern heritage, Obeidallah remarked that “There’s a sense of activism [in the show.] We want to show the talent and try to do something for positive coverage in the mainstream media.”[6] Indeed, the desire to foster understanding and counter negative stereotypes was a pervasive theme during the 2006 performance. During a period when the dominant image of Middle Eastern men was, as it continues to be, that of the terrorist—a role both Jobrani and Ahmed have played in order to make a living as actors—the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour was, as Jobrani explained “about putting out the positive and expressing that we can come together and laugh.”[7] This desire to “come together and laugh” echoes what sociologist Muchait Bilici argues is the central project of contemporary Muslim ethnic comedy: the desire “to bridge the divide that separates Muslims from the rest of American society by reaffirming both sides’ common humanity.”[8] While Bilici frames this process as a multilateral exchange (and, indeed the comics’ subsequent tours to the Middle East have made explicit efforts towards this kind of mutual understanding) this particular performance is focused on one side of the equation: rehabilitating the image of Muslim and ethnically Middle Eastern-Americans in the eyes of the wider US population. As Obeidallah later explained in a 2010 interview: Of course if all you see on TV is that Muslims are dusty dudes walking around with AK47’s in some kind of formation, that’s what you are going to think of Muslims. But, if you are given competing examples, like Muslims who are nice and fluffy adorable comedians running around the country, bowling with people, then I think that will change what you are going to think of Muslims.[9] The comics in this performance are working towards the expressed aim of communicating what it is to be Arab/Persian/Muslim in a way that is intelligible and accessible to the wider American population. It is the humanity of Middle Eastern-Americans that has been called into question and that needs to be reaffirmed; consequently, it is the wider US community whose perceptions the comics are out to change. This focus on changing outsider perceptions does not, however, mean comics are dismissive of those members of the audience who do share their ethnic background. To some extent, the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour is at least partly concerned with engendering a feeling of shared experience and common identity among its Middle Eastern-American audience members. The comics frequently address the audience in a way that presupposes a shared heritage. At the beginning of the show, for example, Dean Obeidallah introduces the performance by saying: “Let me ask: how many people are of Middle Eastern heritage here tonight? [Most of the audience cheers].” Similarly, Jobrani begins his set with a chant of “doo du doo doo IRAN!” that would be immediately intelligible primarily to people familiar with Iranian soccer matches. Later, he addresses his Arab audience members with the comment “We [Arabs and Persians] are very similar [. . . ] I get stupid questions, I know you do too.” Clearly differentiating between Middle Eastern insiders and the wider dominant USA culture, these moments do privilege Middle Eastern audience members. But while this type of insider reference may mark a portion of the audience as “outsiders,” it does not seek to exclude them. Instead, the comics in this performance make specific and deliberate attempts to reach out to those audience members who do not identify as Arab or Persian Americans, inviting them to view the border between their identities and the performers’ as permeable. The comics make their comedy accessible to a wider audience by frequently framing their insider comments with explanations for outsiders. Jobrani, for example, explains that “doo du doo doo IRAN!” is shouted at soccer games, and Ahmed clarifies that “haraam” means “against God,” explanations that would be unnecessary when addressing an audience comprised entirely of insiders. By granting those audience members who do not share their insider knowledge access to these references, the comics invite their understanding and, by extension, empathy. At the same time, the comics use these moments to establish their role as emissaries, performing both their status as an insider who can speak with authority on behalf of their group, and their willingness to share their knowledge with those outside it. When the portion of the audience that does share the comics’ heritage laughs at these references, they signal their agreement with the perspective that the comics express, lending further weight to their claims. In effect, by addressing multiple audiences simultaneously and by alternating between inside references and outreach, the comics reinscribe “Middle Eastern-American” as a cohesive community, while at the same time rebranding it as open and accessible to outsiders. As Ahmed puts it when addressing the white people in the audience, “welcome to our meeting.” Dean Obeidallah makes use of his position as emissary in a bit he performs part way through his set, mocking a list of offensive comments people have made about his ethnicity. Speaking conversationally, Obeidallah sets up the bit by emphasizing that the stories he is about to tell are true. He explains, “I think the best way to explain what it’s like to be Arab-American now is to share with you some of the comments people have said to me about my own heritage to my face. And I’ve actually written them down in this notebook.” Pulling a notepad from his pocket, Obeidallah provides physical evidence that the material he is about to deliver comes from his own lived experience. As he flips through the notepad, he further emphasizes this point: “But these are actual—I’m not exaggerating—these are actual comments that people have said when I tell them I’m Arab.” Framing his narrative as an explanation for presumably sympathetic non-Middle Eastern audience members, Obeidallah positions them as allies. By laughing at the racist comments other people have made, these audience members perform their acceptance of this role. These invitations extended to the wider population are even more effective because they take place in a performative context that depends on creating a sense of personal connection between audience and performer. Folklorist Ian Brodie describes this aspect of stand-up in his 2008 article, “Stand-up Comedy as Genre of Intimacy.” Brodie theorizes that stand-up comedy is “predicated on the illusion of intimacy” between audience and performer, an illusion it cultivates in two ways. First, the performance’s use of artificial amplification allows the performer to speak in a natural, conversational tone. Second, the performers incorporate personal statements and descriptions of their lived experiences into the comic narrative, typically framing these revelations as true.[10] In this respect, stand-up comedy is predisposed towards fostering an illusion that the audience has come to know the performer personally. According to Brodie, the result of this illusion of intimacy is that stand-up takes on the folkloric character of legend: it becomes a dialogic, interpersonal mode of communication in which one party communicates a worldview through a story told as true, and the other is expected to signal their agreement (through laughter, in the case of comedy).[11] In this construction, the seemingly intimate nature of the performance encourages the audience to empathise with the performer, to embrace their perspective and to perform their assent through laughter. Having emphasized that he is about to share a personal narrative, Obeidallah deploys his lived experience in a dialogic format that encourages the audience to perform their agreement with his perspective. “Oh, you’re Arab,” he begins. “Wow, I love hummus.” After a brief pause, he continues, often using facial expressions of pain or embarrassment to signal the effect that these comments have had on him. “‘Oh, you’re Arab. Oooh-kay.’ Nothing more. ‘Oh, you’re Arab. But you seem so nice.’” Implicit in his narrative is the argument that these views of his ethnicity are both pervasive and so blatantly false as to be worthy of ridicule. He pauses briefly between each example, signaling to the audience that he expects them to signal their agreement through laughter. The segment operates dialogically, and its success depends on Obeidallah’s ability to effectively address his dual audience. For those audience members who share the comic’s Middle Eastern heritage, it serves as an act of solidarity as well as a cathartic repudiation of the ignorance of the wider US population. At the same time, their presence and laughter serve to confirm to those outsiders present that Obeidallah’s narrative represents a collective truth. For those audience members who do not share his identity position, the segment serves to model the rejection of these microagressions. Much as Obeidallah appeals to his dual audience in order to engender empathy, Kader deploys a similar technique to undermine a pervasive fear of Middle Eastern hostility by demonstrating a shared sense of humor. As Bilici notes, “humor usually stands for humanity. If someone has a sense of humor, then he is just like us: likeable.”[12] Thus, content aside, the mere act of appearing in a comedy show as a Muslim or Middle Eastern-American is an act of ethnic/religious rebranding. Kader acknowledges as much early in his set when he jokes, Usually Arabs don’t come to a comedy show. . . . In the past, Arabs would come to a comedy show but they’d sit in the back in the dark and go [folds arms and assumes an Arab accent and a serious tone] “yeah, that was good. That was funny; I like that. . . . You can almost hear me laugh. . . . Anyone who thinks Arabs don’t have a sense of humor I will kill you and burn your flag. We have a very good sense of humor.” Performing the humorless Arab in the context of his own comedy show, Kader creates comic dissonance that highlights the distance between the humorless stereotype and his own humorous reality. By laughing at the joke, the Middle Eastern members of the audience perform the falseness of the stereotype en masse, amplifying the dissonance that Kader created and engaging in their own act of collective outreach. The subtext of this joke goes beyond suggesting that Middle Easterners are human because they can laugh; like many moments in the show, it directly confronts the dominant culture’s fears that people of Middle Eastern extraction are religiously fanatical and violent. The Arab that Kader performs does not merely fail to laugh; he threatens violence, saying he will “kill you and burn your flag.” In The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler theorizes that most comedy stems from what he terms “an aggressive-defensive tendency.” That is to say, most comedy is an expression—however indirect or subtle—of a desire to either exert one’s superiority over, or to defend oneself from, something or someone deemed threatening. Illustrating this second type, Koestler explains that “one of the typical situations in which laughter occurs is the sudden cessation of danger, real or imagined.”[13] In this vein, much of the comedy of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour stems from invoking the fear that people from the Middle East are dangerous, and rebranding them as safe and likeable. This particular thrust of rebranding comedy is especially prominent in Jobrani’s lovable Persian character, which uses comic incongruity to defuse fears of Iranian hostility. Describing Persians as a group, Jobrani smiles, leans backwards, and repeatedly opens his arms in a welcoming gesture. Adopting a Persian accent, he explains “Iranians don’t even say we’re Iranian. We say we’re Persian. You know, it sounds nicer, friendlier . . . I am not dangerous; I am Persian. I am Persian, like the cat. Meow!” This bit is not without irony: underlying the lovable Persian character is the implication that Iran, as a country, actually is dangerous (Jobrani describes Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program,” for example, as “first we blow you up, then we hug you”). But while the humor depends on an acknowledgement of Iran’s danger as a state, it contrasts this against the outgoing affability of Persians as a people, and suggests resistance to the country’s aggressive international stance. Later, Jobrani frames the perception that people from the Middle East are violent as the product of selective representations in popular media. “Just once,” he laments, I wish they would show us doing something positive. Just once, right? . . . Show us doing something good, like, you know, like baking a cookie or something. Right? ‘Cause I’ve been to Iran; we have cookies. Just once I want CNN to be like “now we’re going to go to Mohammad in Iran.” They go to some guy who’s like [switches to Middle Eastern accent] “Hello, I’m Mohammad. And I’m just baking a cookie. I swear to God, no bombs, no flags, nothing. Back to you Bob.” Recasting the supposedly violent Iranian as a nice guy who likes to bake, Jobrani sheds light on the discriminatory incompleteness of media portrayals, inviting the audience to repudiate it through recognition and laughter. At the same time, his comedy allows for a comedic release of tension for both those who have been afraid of Middle Eastern violence, and those who have been burdened with the stereotype. Addressing both sides of his audience simultaneously, Jobrani momentarily brings together his Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern spectators by undermining the power of the fear that separates them. Jobrani’s use of accents in this bit serves to further emphasize the ease with which he can slip between identity positions, a strategy that is particularly common among comics of Middle Eastern heritage. As Bilici notes, “These cultural entrepreneurs claim knowledge of both worlds: ethnic and mainstream,” an intermediary position Bilici claims is “best illustrated in their ability to go back and forth between accented and normal speech.”[14] Occupying a liminal space between minority and majoritarian culture, Bilici explains, the Muslim comic “stands uneasily on the fault line, yet by standing there he becomes a sort of stitch that holds together the two sides of the cultural rift.”[15] While I would question Bilici’s designation of an American accent as “normal speech,” he makes the apt observation that the fluid transition between deliberately accented English and their own habitual North American speech patterns serves to mark the comic as a go between with access to two distinct cultural identities. This function of the comic’s fluid use of accents is particularly apparent in the work of Maz Jobrani. Early in his set, after first introducing himself as “the Iranian of the group” in an American accent, Jobrani slips into a Persian accent to chant “Doo du doo doo IRAN!” By transitioning smoothly between American and Persian accents, and by first introducing his Persian accent in the context of an expression of national pride—a soccer chant—Jobrani establishes his insider status in both groups: he is proud of his Persian heritage, but this identity is in no way incompatible with his identity as an American. Later in his set, Jobrani does an extended bit in which he performs and describes the difference between Persian and Arab accents. Where his soccer chant seemed to be directed primarily to those audience members who shared his ethnic identity (and who would, therefore, be more likely to recognize and appreciate the chant), his discussion of different Middle Eastern accents is directed to both Middle Eastern and Non-Middle Eastern Americans. For the former, his gentle mockery of Persian and Arab accents makes an appeal to familiarity, confirming a shared cultural knowledge between Jobrani and those audience members already acquainted with the accents in question and the differences between the two. For those audience members who are less familiar with the accents, Jobrani’s description serves a different purpose: it positions Jobrani as an inside informant who can provide his non-Middle Eastern audience with access to unfamiliar cultural groups. But while the comics’ use of Arab and Persian accents does often work to establish their simultaneous access to and knowledge of multiple groups, the choice to use an accent that reads as foreign can also serve to differentiate between their own American identities and characters who cannot as easily lay claim to insider status in the United States—the foreigner, the recent immigrant, and the terrorist. Obeidallah and Kader, for example, each transition into Middle Eastern accents when representing their foreign or immigrant relatives. Obeidallah uses a Palestinian accent to perform his father as an innocent and befuddled immigrant who does not understand American idioms. When his Jersey friends ask his father “‘Yo, Mr. Obeidallah! What’s goin’ on? How you doin’? What’s goin’ on,” Dean Obeidallah explains, his father would reply, “I don’t know what is going on! My wife tells me nothing. Dean, what is it? Are things going down? Please somebody tell me what it is.” Similarly, when the elder Obeidallah takes communion at his wife’s Catholic church, he remarks that the wafer “needs more salt. . . . Why it does not taste better, I do not get. Ok? You can’t have like a nacho flavor, or a baklava, something fun for everybody?” By gently mocking his father’s bewilderment and pairing it with a foreign accent, Obeidallah contrasts his father’s status as an immigrant and outsider with his own insider status as a native-born American. Kader’s accented performance of his America-hating cousin serves a similar purpose. Adopting a thick Arab accent, Kader embarks on a monologue depicting his Jordanian cousin who complains continuously about “you son of a bitch bastard United States,” but who embraces Burger King and Starbucks. By positioning himself in contrast to his foreign cousin, Kader establishes himself and other Americans of Middle Eastern heritage as Americans first and foremost. In the middle of his cousin’s rant about American imperialism and his hopes for the empire’s collapse, Kader explains, he interrupted and said “Listen, Fayed, if America goes down, we’re taking Snickers and Coke and Pepsi and Twix—you know we’re not leaving a McNugget behind.” Here, Kader makes his Americanness and allegiance to American cultural interests explicit. Although Kader is critical of the United States’ tendency to “dominate with products,” he is nonetheless defensive in the face of his foreign cousin’s anti-American diatribe. Like Kader’s representation of his cousin, Ahmed’s performance of Arab speech patterns serves to underscore his own Americanness as well as his allegiance to the USA in its interests abroad. He claims to love watching news reports from the Middle East because all Middle Eastern people always start each sentence with [clicks tongue] ehhhhhhhhhhhhh. [Clicks tongue] Ehhhhhhhhhhhh [continues for three seconds, then begins speaking in a heavy Arab accent], The damned United States of America, they come into our country and they bomb our, ehhhhhhhhh. . . . [switching to North American accent] Just finish the sentence, Mustafa! Performing the resident of a Middle Eastern country as a bumbling half-wit who can barely speak (rather than an educated polyglot searching for the right words in his second language), Ahmed distances Americans of Middle Eastern descent from foreign Arabs and Muslims on the receiving end of United States military action. Ahmed’s self-identification as Egyptian at the beginning of his set softens the representation by implying an element of self-mockery, but by performing the foreign Arab as heavily accented and blundering, Ahmed implies that he has more in common, linguistically and culturally, with the Americans doing the bombing than the intellectually inferior, and potentially enemy, Arab “Mustafa.” While the performances of foreign relatives are mitigated by the performer’s affection—however frustrated—for the character he portrays, Ahmed’s performance seems less forgiving. In contrast to Kader and Obeidallah whose mockery can be characterized as the familial teasing of a specific relative’s quirks, Ahmed’s representation is targeted at a broad foreign type. In this respect, his portrayal of the foreign “Mustafa” has more in common with the other performers’ enactment of the terrorist archetype, and risks reinforcing prejudices against Middle Easterners abroad. In this respect, the comics tread a dangerous line between defusing and merely displacing such prejudices in their performances of Middle Eastern terrorists. In the course of the hour long show, each of the performers evokes the specter of Middle Eastern terrorism in two ways: commenting on the effects that Middle Eastern terrorism has had on them as Americans of Middle Eastern descent; and presenting stylized representations of terrorist figures. When performing a terrorist character, the comic almost invariably signals the transition from his own persona to the character by switching to a thick Middle Eastern accent. Ahmed, for example, uses an Arab accent to portray a terrorist, somewhere in the Middle East, who shares his name. Jobrani uses an Iranian accent to depict a terrorist who, having dialed the wrong number, tips him off to an impending attack in a midnight phone call. In his critique of the Patriot Act, Obeidallah imitates an Arab terrorist seeking information from an American library. In a thick accent, he asks the imagined librarian: “Do you have a book on, how you say, waging a Jihad against the infidel dog?” This exaggerated performance serves a dual function. On one level, by enacting the caricature of the Muslim as America-hating Jihadist, Obeidallah exposes the inherent contradiction of the stereotype used to justify the Patriot Act’s erosion of intellectual freedoms: Muslims are configured both as perpetual foreigners who cannot fully integrate into the culture of the United States, and as sneaky infiltrators who could pass unnoticed if not for government surveillance. But although Obeidallah is critical of the stereotype as a whole, by juxtaposing his own New Jersey speech patterns with implicitly foreign accent and phrasing (“how you say...”), he also highlights the distance between foreign terrorists and native-born Americans of Middle Eastern heritage. In sum, Obeidallah both calls the stereotype into question as incongruous, and illustrates that—even if it were an accurate representation of someone—it does not represent him. Moments such as these in which the comics use foreign-sounding accents to differentiate between the American of Middle Eastern heritage and the foreign terrorist are troubling: at the same time that they make Arab and Persian-Americans seem less threatening by emphasizing their Americanness, they run the risk of reinforcing prejudices directed at foreigners. But while such moments may be problematic, the comics counterbalance them with segments in which they deliberately question and destabilize the Orientalist assumptions that “foreign” accents can evoke. Obeidallah, for example, openly challenges the audience’s perception of Middle Eastern speech patterns, explaining to them that, “you’ve been conditioned by the media to be afraid of people with accents. And I can show you; I can say the same thing with or without a Middle Eastern accent; it can change the whole meaning.” He proceeds to illustrate his point by repeating the line “Hey, wait ‘till Friday night: we’ve been planning this for months. People will be talking about this for years,” first with an American accent and subsequently with an Arab accent. As the audience laughs, he reproaches them “Scary right? It’s scary because, sadly, you’re all racists.” While other moments in the show might use accents to differentiate between the Middle Eastern foreigner and the Middle Eastern American, Obeidallah’s commentary on how these accents are received calls on the audience to re-examine their assumptions. Jobrani executes a similar disruption through his imitation of his ethnically East Indian wife. Following this impersonation—of which a key feature is a heavy Indian accent—he reverts to his natural speaking voice and reveals that “she doesn’t sound like that. She was born here.” This is a moment of disruptive finesse. From the beginning of this bit, he was open that he was performing a stereotype—differentiating between East Indians and American Indians, he clarifies that his wife is “the computer kind” and not “the casino kind”—an example of his usual technique of repeating stereotypes so brazenly that they seem shockingly absurd. But his subsequent revelation that his wife does not, in fact, have a foreign accent packs a subtle double punch. On one hand, it marks the preceding imitation as a fabrication, reiterating that the generalization that Indians are good with computers is suspect. At the same time, the revelation also addresses those in the audience to whom the heavy accent seemed natural, and destabilizes the assumption that this woman who identifies as East Indian is necessarily foreign. This moment in which he reveals that he has been performing a stereotype rather than a person destabilizes every racial enactment he engages in throughout the set—from his wife, to the racist white Texan, to the generic Middle Eastern terrorist, to the lovable Persian—as well as those enacted by his fellow comedians in the rest of the show. In their 2006 performance in Santa Ana California, the comics of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour used their liminal positions and the intimacy of stand-up comedy to combat prejudice and create positive representations of people of Middle Eastern heritage in the United States. In their subsequent work, they have broadened their diplomatic mission, using the same techniques to foster mutual understanding between residents of both regions. In 2007, Jobrani, Ahmed, and Kader took the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour to the Middle East, performing twenty-seven shows in five countries. In the years since the tour disbanded, all of the comics have continued various acts of political and cultural outreach, both in the United States and abroad. In 2009 Ahmed founded Cross-Cultural Productions, with the expressed purpose of using comedy to create cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. For the company’s inaugural project, eleven American comedians—including Ahmed and Jobrani—went on a tour of the Middle East, a diplomatic project they chronicled in the 2010 film Just Like Us.[16] In 2012, Obeidallah and Kader also toured in the Middle East. Like Ahmed and Jobrani, their recent work has been characterized by a shift towards reciprocity. As Daily News Egypt reported when discussing Kader and Obeidallah’s visit to Egypt, “Building bridges is a two-way street. While these comedians are challenging the status quo of Middle Eastern misconceptions in America, they are also winning hearts and minds in the Middle East.”[17] Throughout this work, their dual identities as Middle Eastern-Americans have allowed them to serve as intermediaries. As Kader notes, “in America I feel obligated to inform an audience about the Middle East and there I am an American with an obligation to describe what Americans are feeling.”[18] In this sense, their work continues to depend on their liminal identities, and their ability to cross between a dominant culture and a feared Other through their simultaneous status as insider and outsider. This shift in the work of these comics is in keeping with changes in how United States audiences perceive the Middle East. In the years since they performed in Santa Ana, the political landscape has shifted somewhat, allowing a more nuanced popular view of the Middle East to emerge. Osama Bin Laden is dead. While the region remains unstable, the United States has withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. Hawkish representations of the terrorist threat, though still present, have consequently become less urgent and less monolithic in US media. At the same time, internal conflicts within Middle Eastern countries have changed how people within the United States see the citizens of those countries. Uprisings such as the protests following the disputed 2009 elections in Iran, the Egyptian revolution of 2011, and the ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis in Syria have allowed a more nuanced image of their populations to emerge: although images of people in the Middle East as America-hating terrorists have by no means disappeared, they are now mitigated by narratives of the people of that region as human beings who can suffer and resist, and with whom dialogue is possible and desirable. In this sense, the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour stands as both a record of its historical moment, and as a starting point for the comedians’ future acts of cultural diplomacy. By destabilizing the border between Middle Eastern-American and broader USA identities, and by positioning themselves as emissaries who could bring the two groups together, the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour sought to improve perceptions of a mistrusted ethnic group through strategies that extend well beyond presenting positive images. This is not to say that the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour was entirely unproblematic: at times, it ran the risk of displacing problematic stereotypes onto a more distant foreign Other rather than disrupting them, and the comics’ insistence on their own patriotism had the potential to lend unintended support to the same national hegemony their comedy critiqued. Despite these pitfalls, however, the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour stands as an example of how stand-up comedy can be used as a response to prejudice, and points to its potential as a humanizing expression of multi-ethnic connectivity. Tamara Smith holds a PhD in Theatre History and Criticism from the University of Texas at Austin. An independent scholar whose research focuses on expressions of identity in popular performance, she has presented at SETC, MATC, ASTR and ATHE, and has published in JADT and Ecumenica. She currently lives in Halifax, Canada. [1] Maz Jobrani, et al., The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, directed by Michael Simon (Los Angeles, CA: Levity Entertainment Group, 2008), DVD. [2] Felicia R. Lee, “Comedians as Activists, Challenging Prejudice,” New York Times (via Maz Jobrani's Press Kit), 10 March 2007, B7. [3] Paul McLoughlin, “Home-Grown Comedy,” in Y: Pulse of the New Generation, 20 April 2010, 27. [4] Betsy Rothstein, “Laughing with the Axis of Evil,” The Hill (via Maz Jobrani's Press Kit). 2007;Lee, “Comedians as Activists,” B7. [5] Qtd. in Lee, “Comedians as Activists,” B7. [6] Qtd. in ibid. [7] Jobrani et al., “The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.” [8] Mucahit Bilici, “Muslim Ethnic Comedy: Inversions of Islamophobia,” in Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friend, ed. Andrew Shyrock (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 196. [9] Natasha Baker. “The Muslims are Coming! U.S. Comedy Duo Combats Islamophobia.” Interview with Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah. Al Arabiya, 17 September 2013. [10] Ian Brodie, “Stand-up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy,” Ethnologies 30, no. 2 (2008): 170. [11] Ibid., 162. [12] Bilici, “Muslim Ethnic Comedy,” 195. [13] Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Arkana, 1989), 54. [14] Bilici, “Muslim Ethnic Comedy,” 196. [15] Ibid. [16] Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada,“My Name is Ahmed Ahmed, and I am Just Like You.” Interview with Ahmed Ahmed, Magazine Intercultures, Centre for Intercultural Learning, http://www.international.gc.ca/cfsi-icse/cil-cai/magazine/v07n02/1-3-eng.asp (accessed 10 March 2014). [17] Sadia Ashraf. “Mideastern US Comedians Combat Politics with Humor,” Daily News Egypt, 9 April 2012, 3. [18] Ibid. “Persian Like The Cat”: Crossing Borders with "The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour" by Tamara L. Smith ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 26, Number 3 (Fall 2014) ©2014 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Phoebe Rumsey Editorial Assistant: Fabian Escalona Advisory Board: Bill Demastes Amy E. Hughes Jorge Huerta Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Esther Kim Lee Table of Contents: Ida Wells-Barnett and Chicago’s Pekin Theatre by Karen Bowdre History is Distance: Metaphor, Meaning, and Performance in Serenade/The Proposition by Ariel Nereson Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Histories, Futures, and Queer Lives by Vanessa Campagna “Persian Like The Cat”: Crossing Borders with "The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour" by Tamara L. Smith www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2014 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Ida Wells-Barnett and Chicago’s Pekin Theatre History is Distance: Metaphor, Meaning, and Performance in Serenade/The Proposition Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Histories, Futures, and Queer Lives “Persian Like The Cat”: Crossing Borders with The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Catherine Heiner 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 A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Catherine Heiner By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Kaneisha lets out a scream that sends the gag falling out of her mouth and her body shivering from groin to skull. Kaneisha: Starbucks! Starbucks! Starbucks! Kaneisha falls off the bed and begins to cry. It is a full-bodied, all-hands-on-deck type of cry. Jim looks at Kaneisha, not sure what came over him, not sure why he did what he did, as the last light of the Virginia dusk begins to fade away, and a slight breeze knocks their window against the pane. Jim begins to crawl over to Kaneisha slowly when suddenly the all-hands-on-deck cry becomes a guttural laugh. Kaneisha is overcome. Slave Play (1) “What moment made you want to say ‘Starbucks’?” The question verges toward the silly, even in this context. Within Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play though, “Starbucks” resists our caffeinated associations. It functions here as a sexual safe word—a way for the characters to immediately stop their role play and return to reality. During what initially appears in the first act as a series of racially charged sexual exploits on a slave plantation—including a white mistress taking advantage of the young Black man working in her household, and an overseer awkwardly seducing a Black woman—“Starbucks” reveals that the whole scenario is a setup constructed by a pair of Yale graduate students to help three interracial couples work through their relationship issues. These characters spend the play parsing out baggage unique to these interracial relationships through an unconventional variation of therapeutic role play while attempting to name and interrogate complications around race. As the play hurtles toward the climactic third act—which includes an ambiguous and violent sexual interaction between Kaneisha, the central Black female character, and her white male partner, Jim, described in the stage direction excerpted above—whatever meaning this exchange and the use of “Starbucks” produces seems ambiguous and uncertain. This unsettled question remained in the air as the show concluded and facilitators turned the attention of remaining participants toward thoughtful reflection and discussion. From its inception, Slave Play encouraged discourse with and for audiences, originating with informal interactions with trained moderators available in the lobby (designated with “talk to me about the play” buttons) at the New York Theatre Workshop, to more formal post-show talkbacks with some members of the cast and creative team on Broadway.(2) By the time I encountered Slave Play at the Taper Forum, audiences were invited to stay after the show for brief conversations with facilitators immediately afterwards. For our conversation, facilitators focused on a structured format scaffolded by the language of the play—in this case, using “Starbucks” to encourage us to contemplate moments of discomfort. As I sat in the mostly empty auditorium of the Taper Forum in Los Angeles, I set aside my own tangled reactions to the play in favor of hearing from other audience members—given the play’s notoriety for its “shocking” material, I was curious how this self-selected community interpreted it. The premise of Slave Play , frequently alluded to in critical reviews and word-of-mouth reactions alike had been intriguing, but the humor seemed to land unevenly on the audience as the story swerved away from absurdity like a slow-motion car wreck towards the assault in act three. The conversation the play depicts involving gender, race, sexuality, and power, seemed to require a constant negotiation of audiences’ identities (in my case, white, queer, cis woman, as well as graduate student, theatre scholar, and dramaturg) in relation to the conflict, but as a whole the play resisted easy or prescriptive conclusions. For the bulk of the post-show talkback, the two facilitators led us through direct questions about these initial reactions, revelations, and what had stuck with us. Most responders prefaced their comments by clarifying that their responses “[weren’t] about the race thing, really,” and generally the conversation reflected how the discomfort of race, sexuality, and power intersected while watching the story. I noticed how these comments echoed larger observations about the play that I had seen in reviews and other publicity material,(3) identifying moments that appear “shocking” or “risky.” Finally, an older Black woman seated near the back of the auditorium raised her hand. “I would say I’m disappointed,” she began. “There was nothing here that was shocking, or…daring as everyone said this play would be. It was pretty typical. A white man having sex with a Black woman like she’s a slave? That’s expected.”(4) While there are numerous points of entry into critical analysis of Slave Play , I emphasize this moment in the post-show audience discussion to highlight the tensions of satire, empathy, and the play’s dynamics of race. Slave Play toys heavily with expectations, ultimately breaking with the initial conceit as the characters reveal the circumstances of their role play. This reveal may produce a shocking and unexpected twist for audiences, but it also cultivates an empathetic gap where any initial feelings toward these characters evaporate upon realizing the situation is not what it seems. The humor at this twist nearly carries the second act, but the unpredictability makes it difficult to interpret the threat of harm toward Kaneisha in the final act. Indeed, much of the post-show discussion focused on the individual emotional experiences of audience members in relation to discomfort and knee-jerk reactions. While this approach offered participants a chance to self-reflect, the questions center around moments of shock, surprise, or unexpected emotion, effectively side-stepping what made the humor in the first two acts effective or necessary. In examining this shift, I inquire: at what point does Slave Play cease to function as a comedy? I suggest that the initial framework of satire and humor for the first two acts significantly alters how this final moment of violence is understood in the context of its racial dynamics. All production choices of the first act lean into the comedy, including exaggerated movement that echoes the melodramatic. Given the sexual context, this blocking adds to the humor, with the wildly ridiculous postures heightening the sadomasochistic erotics. By the time the arc shifts to act three, the physical reaction of witnessing Kaneisha and Jim’s altercation seems to move from the humorous to the dangerous. In many ways, this particular altercation opens up potential for kinesthetic empathy, an “automatic, involuntary, kinesthetic response of one body to another” that produces a “feeling of sharing another person’s movement.”(5) Instead of strengthening an empathetic connection to a performance however, kinesthetic empathy can create an even further gap, since it is “limited by our own first-person experience,” where “what we simulate is our own experience of the movement, not the experience of the other. There will always be a gap between what we receive and what we experience.”(6) In negotiating this gap between a kinesthetic reaction to a staged act of violence and the use of satire, I build on Heather LaMarre’s framework of the cognitive load in satire—wherein audiences must refocus between what a satirist says and what message they initially intended.(7) In this case, Slave Play combines multiple components (including conversations on sexuality, race, and power) that increase the cognitive load to a such a point that it blurs the possibility of significant cultural critiques. (The focus of the post-show discussion highlighted this, as significantly more time was spent allowing audiences to self-reflect than to extrapolate toward larger thematic discussion.) Given the play’s portrayal of Kaneisha, this satirical imbalance reiterates rather than counteracts the hyperinvisibile status of Black women. In charting this trajectory, I position Slave Play within a larger context of satire to discuss the play’s use of humor and critique, followed by a more pointed analysis of Kaneisha addressing how her constellation of sexuality, gender, and race operates in conjunction with this satire. “A comedy of sorts” “The moment you know [Slave Play] has no consideration for black women is in act 3 when kaneisha sys something like ‘the ancestors don’t mind that we lay with demons cuz they laid with demons too” - @theeashleyray(8) Ashley Ray, a Los Angeles-based polyamorous Black queer comedian/actor/writer,(9) received a significant amount of praise for her critique of Slave Play , especially the treatment of Kaneisha, as followers noted how Ray articulated their own similar distaste. Although responses to Slave Play seem to suggest a deep concern with the final violent act, numerous critical reviews focused on the discomfort of those watching and witnessing rather than empathizing with Kaneisha. “This is a demanding play,” wrote Constance Grady for Vox in her 2018 review. “[O]ne of the things it demands is the audience’s discomfort. But that discomfort is productive—and in the end, it brings its own satisfactions.”(10) Charles McNulty, who reviewed the Taper Forum production, noted that “each time I’ve seen the work, I’ve had a different reaction, which to me is a sign of the work’s complexity.”(11) These reviews contrasted heavily with Ray’s critiques, particularly as Ray focused much of her perspective on Kaneisha’s lack of involvement as a larger observation on Black women. Ray pointed to Kaneisha’s silence as an example of this lack of consideration, noting instances where “when we think we Kaneisha’s actual motivations might be revealed, a Rihanna song plays instead.”(12) Indeed, the fact that Kaneisha cannot articulate her emotions through words functions as a primary plot point, with musical interventions representing her experience of alexithymia. (Alexithymia, a condition where an individual has trouble identifying, experiencing, and understanding their own emotions, also seems to be a common experience for most of the Black characters in this play.) Indeed, throughout much of the “process” of act two, Kaneisha’s dialogue primarily consists of defining terms, concepts, or sensations for her fellow participants rather than investigating her own experience. By including the bulk of Kaneisha’s dialogue and action in the first act through role play, the understanding of her character is based heavily in the humor and satire framed in those moments—further complicating the reading of the final scene. Indeed, beyond the comment that Kaneisha and Jim’s relationship was “expected,” very little of the post-show discussion I attended even referenced Kaneisha or the violence at the end of act three, seeming to confirm Ray’s initial critique of her treatment. In his introductory “Notes on Style,” Harris describes the world of the play as “a comedy of sorts” that “should be played as such.”(13) Harris does not include any additional guidance on this comedy, although many of the reviews include references to the “satiric” elements of the play, particularly within the overly academic second act. Sara Holdren’s Vulture review indicated that the play remained “ultimately humane,” even with its use of satire.(14) Amauta M. Firmino, who served as dramaturg for Slave Play from its origins at the Yale School of Drama through its Broadway premiere, recounted that this troubling between humor and discomfort served as an origin point for the play as well: “[Jeremy] was at a dinner party, and there’s…this conversation about a couple who, these two white people… They had been getting into role play in sex, and he had wanted to sort of…scare her or…surprise her or something. And people were joking at the dinner table about, like, pretending to rape his wife in a way, in role play, right?(15) This initial conversation led to questions of how power dynamics become visible in these moments, particularly if one partner is Black, as “[s]uddenly the power dynamics shift radically,” Firmino notes that “everyone is completely off their footing, right? And they’re no longer sure if they should be laughing or not, right?”(16) Unlike the first act, which elicited laughter through staging a sexual role play bordering on the ridiculous, the second act gets caught up in language and rhetoric, particularly as Téa and Patricia dance around buzzwords like “processing,” “interventions,” and “unpacking” as they lead the group therapy session. As the story moves into more emotionally charged dynamics in the third act, it seems to recreate this sensation of being “caught off foot,” uncertain of whether laughter is deserved. The slippery quality of satire only adds to the complicated nature of Slave Play —amid all the humor, the moments of critique get obscured. In her studies on satire and political humor, Heather L. LaMarre defines it as a genre that “uses laughter as a weapon to diminish or derogate a subject and evoke towards it attitudes of amusement, disdain, ridicule, or indignation.”(17) At its heart, satire relies on mimicry in order to exploit other existing literary genres.(18) LaMarre’s initial study included categorizing two primary forms of satire: Horatian, which mimics comedy and comments on social and ethical problems by “[telling] the truth, laughing,” and Juvenalian, which mimics tragedy, and therefore includes a more definitive, bitter approach.(19) The goal of Horatian satire seeks to evoke laughter, which “calls audiences to laugh at the folly of political circumstance without giving much credence to arguments.”(20) This laughter can quickly reduce any commentary to “just a joke,” or “not serious,” in what LaMarre refers to as message discounting. Message discounting also exists in Juvenalian satire. However, the complexity of this genre makes interpretation more difficult. Juvenalian satire can create a stronger sense of urgency for the audience in processing and understanding the material—to reconcile the humor, the audience must negotiate a larger gap between what the satirist says and what they mean.(21) The challenge for Slave Play comes in large part from Harris’s comedy—engaging with both Horatian and Juvenalian satire creates a sense of whiplash in attempting to understand how to read the emotionally charged situations. The description Harris provides suggests that some elements can (and perhaps should) emphasize the possibilities for comedy. Part one, which finds all characters in an elaborate antebellum sexual role play initially comes off as Horatian, allowing characters to “tell the truth” within their relationship dynamics “while laughing.” The second and third acts get decidedly more complicated, as it’s increasingly unclear whether Slave Play remains satirical, and if so, what exactly it satirizes. In this manner, Slave Play appears to move closer toward a Juvenalian satire. Mirroring the same pitfalls that LaMarre illuminated in her comparison of the two, Slave Play requires more input and discernment for individual interpretation. Based on her studies in media and communication, LaMarre notes that “Horatian satire leaves agency in the hands of the message recipient while Juvenalian satire places most of the agency in the hands of the message producers.”(22) The more interpretation an audience must process to understand the argument, the less ability they have to properly analyze various angles of the critique. As the characters move through their “Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy” experience, they shift from Horatian satire to Juvenalian—from humor that audiences can write off as “just a joke” to interactions so steeped in ambiguity—making it unclear whether we should laugh with a character or at them. By including an intense and visceral assault on Kaneisha in this context, Slave Play seems to trouble what actions exist under the umbrella of Horatian satire’s “just a joke.” Throughout her study, LaMarre identifies that the heavier cognitive load of Juvenalian satire makes it difficult to differentiate between humor and meaning. Ultimately, the audience becomes so preoccupied attempting to negotiate what the satirist says versus the actual intended message, they cannot fully articulate and analyze the actual arguments presented. As a result, LaMarre argues that these forms reduce the public’s motivation or ability “to think about the issues, assess the strength of relevant arguments, and attend to the political issues being presented,” and that consequently, “we are entering a world where opinion, sarcasm, innuendo, parody, and satire may have more influence on our democracy than facts and relevant truths.”(23) The stakes that LaMarre lays out become useful in examining Slave Play to understand both critical responses and the discourse the play seeks to engage. By moving from Horatian satire to Juvenalian satire to realism in such quick succession, Slave Play makes it difficult for audiences to parse out where one ends and another begins—and similarly, what the play considers “just a joke,” and what elements audiences should take seriously. In this way, contextualizing Slave Play as satire also relies on the imagined contemporary “postrace” America. Ralina L. Joseph defines postrace as “a term used by race commentators to sometimes describe, sometimes decry, and sometimes imagine another racialized world. Postrace is far from neutral; indeed, as a racial ideology, it is so loaded and powerful that it delimited the iterative space for race critics in the Obama era.”(24) Joseph points to the pitfalls of imagining America as “postrace,” as the term suggests that race is no longer significant, implying that we have moved past discrimination based on race. Instead, Joseph argues that “postraciality remains embroiled in precisely what it claims not to be,” as it both contains the immediate awareness of racial difference and an acknowledgement of that race.(25) The implication that American politics and culture are beyond—or even past—race allows the discussion of race to seemingly disappear from the conversation. The conceit that these characters have arrived to unpack the dynamics of their interracial relationships hinges on this concept of postrace, as it both obscures and emphasizes racial power dynamics to underscore its satire. For Kaneisha, this creates a position where her race simultaneously becomes the central focus in this dynamic while avoiding her particular challenges of Black womanhood. Kaneisha exists at the difficult intersection for Black women that Ralina Joseph describes as being “both hypervisible—objects of desire and scorn—and invisible entities who fail to register as significant.”(26) The hypervisibility that Joseph defines evolves further, as Amber Johnson argues that “stereotyping the body so much that the stereotypes become more visible, and thus believable,” to the point where these stereotypes even replace bodies in interpersonal interactions, rendering them hyperinvisible.(27) Recognizing this hyperinvisibility echoes the sentiments from the comment from the post-show discussion, pointing out what is “expected” in Kaneisha’s position. Kaneisha’s hyperinvisibility becomes another feature to question in negotiating satire—rather than addressing the actual harm represented, the question of what messages the play offered and what meaning it intended dominates the cognitive load. Harris has described in interviews that his intention for the play centers on its function as “a litmus test for the audience that was engaging with it.”(28) Harris’s original goals included getting the audience talking about the relationships and dynamics they witnessed, which would seem to make it an excellent opportunity for dialogic empathy through this dramatic “litmus test.” Should the audience view Slave Play as a satire, it becomes necessary to identify the intentions of the satirist and the actual message. Extrapolating from LaMarre’s work, the audience’s attention redirects in an attempt to analyze what they just saw rather than engaging with the actual themes present. For instance, rather than considering the emotional impact of racial inequalities, the audience gets preoccupied trying to discern if Jim assaulted Kaneisha. Returning to Ray’s observations, this shift makes it difficult to determine whether the play has any consideration for Kaneisha, and by extension, Black women generally, particularly as the action moves closer and closwer to realism. “I always see Slave Play as a tryptich,” Firmino described. “The first act is the artifice of the thing, right? It’s the role playing. And then the second act is a comedy of manners…that unmasks the role play and kind of talks about all of the issues behind it, and the third act is reality, right, the third act is the most real.”(29) In the realm of satire, especially satire that draws on sexual dynamics and kink, the line between assault and humor gets troublingly blurry. “Why is whiteness so central to her identity?” Kaneisha exists as both hypervisible and invisible in the space of the play, particularly by attempting to negotiate power in these moments of sadomasochistic roleplay. Sadomasochism broadly references relationships based on giving and/or receiving pain, ultimately relying on a binary power dynamic such as teacher/student, nurse/patient, or in the case of Slave Play , slave/master. Initially, Kaneisha’s participation (and Jim’s, for that matter) should allow her to “reengage intimately with white partners for whom they no longer receive sexual pleasure,” as Teá describes in act two.(30) The sadomasochistic dynamic between Jim and Kaneisha may edge toward a historical reenactment, where Harris evokes the actual legacy of Black women raped by white masters, but as many critics have pointed out, he does so in a way that reaffirms the structures of white supremacy. In an interview with Harris, Cate Young, a Black woman from the West Indies who articulates her racial identity alongside her history as a descendant of slaves, mentioned how Kaniesha’s lines during this interaction “bumped” for her, leading to questions about Kaneisha’s relationship to whiteness. “If it’s about whiteness in general,” Young described, “why is whiteness so central to [Kaneisha’s] identity? Why is interacting with whiteness in this intimate way so central to [her] identity that [she] can’t just not do that anymore when it doesn’t work for [her]?”(31) Ray followed a similar line of questioning in her review, noting that whatever liberation could exist through utilizing sadomasochism and kink occurs only “when it is removed from systemic structures of whiteness and traditional power dynamics,” a situation that does not exist in the world of this play.(32) As this scene appears as the closest to reality, it would seem that Kaneisha’s behavior affirms white supremacy rather than creating a liberatory act that critiques it. In further exploring Kaneisha’s hyperinvisibility in this context, her roleplay highlights the difference between flesh and body as analyzed by Hortense Spillers. According to Spillers, the ability to differentiate between flesh and bodies allows for an expansion of understanding personhood. The flesh, which exists prior to the body, functions as “that zero degree of social conceptualization that does not escape concealment under the brush of discourse, or that reflexes of iconography.”(33) The categorization of individual as body allows for the obscuring of violence, whereas the category of flesh allows for recognition of the marks and remembrances of the violence.(34) Spillers also suggests that the dynamic of body and flesh remains in flux throughout this narrative of enslavement, allowing space to exist as either a captive body, or as a site of crimes against the flesh. Each term offers separate possibilities in justifying racialized violence and the commodification of human life. The way that Harris evokes enslavement, both in the content of Slave Play and the title itself, suggests a bleeding between these categories. (Although during my encounter in the post-show discussion the topic of race was generally touched on in conversation, many comments suggested discomfort and avoidance of discussing the evocation of enslavement outright.) Ray similarly noted how “some people seemed to think it was a play about actual slavery which sparked the ‘I’m tired of slavery time stories!’ debate. ( Slave Play is not, technically, about ‘slavery times.’)”(35) Utilizing the history of enslavement both as a foundation for exploratory kink and for the humor of satire further adds to the cognitive load—after all, these sexual exploits seem to indicate that the power dynamics of enslavement can be laughed at as “just a joke” in this context. Leaning on Horatian satire not only leaves Kaneisha in an ambiguous place between flesh and body, but also between assault and “a joke.” This troubling of bodies, flesh, enslavement, and kink contributes heavily to the hyperinivisibility of Kaneisha due to the intersections of identities she inhabits. Kaneisha-as-body becomes hypervisible as a subject for her white partner, Jim, but Kaneisha-as-flesh remains invisible and he cannot bring himself to sexually satisfy her. In discussing how Black femininity has been understood as an excess of flesh, Nicole R. Fleetwood argues that it becomes “ a performative that doubles visibility: to see the codes of visuality operating on the (hyper)visible body that is its object . Excess flesh does not destabilize the dominant gaze or its system of visibility. Instead, it refracts the gaze back upon itself.”(36) Kaneisha’s engagement in S/M, particularly a historical scenario rooted in an unequal racial power balance, becomes an attempt to render both her Blackness and her sexuality-as-flesh visible. Black women face the most significant consequences based on this dynamic between flesh and/or body due to occupying a constellation of racialized and gendered categories. During the era of enslavement in the US, from approximately 1619 through the nineteenth century, Black women were categorized and recognized as flesh to support their position within the economic system, but not flesh capable of experiencing “fleshly” desires. Black women continued to hold this space of ambiguity—flesh unable to experience fleshly desire, only bodies in terms of labor production—in the same way that Spillers describes the captive personality as “unmade.” Saidiya V. Hartman similarly indicates that the conditions of slave agency express an oxymoron given that enslaved social existence is defined by lack of agency, asking, “What are the constituents of agency when one’s social condition is defined by negation and personhood refigured in the fetishized and fungible terms of object of property?”(37) Kaneisha’s initial appeals to Jim in act one illustrate desire of the flesh, particularly as she encourages him to dominate her in ways he finds degrading. By viewing Kaneisha as separate from her flesh (which includes her sexuality and her Blackness), Jim makes her both an object of desire and an invisible entity that fails to register as significant—he participates in her hyperinvisiblity. To bring this back to my earlier analysis on comedy, I return to my inquiry to understand when Slave Play ceases to be a comedy to further illustrate the risk of this hyperinvisibility regarding Kaneisha. Not only does she exist at a site of ambiguity between flesh and body, but between humor and critique as well. In his discussion of physical humor, John Wright identifies that staging scenes based in typicality is much more useful to humor, where “the vast majority of our comedy is based on recognition. We laugh because we can see ourselves in that situation. We laugh because we understand and we can share that understanding.”(38) Indeed, the first act allows for this recognition and understanding at the intersection of sex, desire, embarrassment, and the ridiculous . Moving into the third act, however, and an increasingly charged interaction between Kaneisha and Jim, the laughter remains. It would be impossible to conclude what exactly laughter from the audience might signify in that moment as it would require extensive generalization across multiple audiences in multiple cities and years. Still, Wright’s description of laughter as recognition is insightful—how is this situation of dominance recognized? And, to echo the comment from the talkback at the opening of this essay, does this recognition perpetuate what have (predominantly white) American audiences come to expect for Black women? Drawing on LaMarre’s conclusions, the cognitive load of balancing satirist’s intentions versus interpretations, Slave Play focuses predominantly on understanding what should be read as humor, leaving less cognitive capacity to properly analyze Kaneisha’s hyperinvisible status. Further, by utilizing sexuality as a means to explore this intersection of race, gender, and hyperinvisibility under the guise of satire, this cognitive load becomes even more challenging to fully process. In their analysis of Slave Play ’s exploration of these sexual encounters, Kari Barclay argues that this play functions as an erotic return, a performance that “restore[s] an imagined time and place of historical trauma and reconceptualize[s] it as a site of potential pleasure.”(39) While the inclusion of kink and sexual roleplay does suggest potential pleasure, as Barclay notes, the ambiguity of satire goes further to frame this pleasure as also humorous and verging on comedic. Regarding the violence of the final scene, Barclay goes on to note that “the play’s reenactment of sexual violence, even under consensual circumstances, may not have been paired with the context needed to shepherd audiences through an encounter with difficult history. […] …audiences may not have always had such a supportive environment in the theatre.”(40) I agree with Barclay’s observation on the challenges of “shepherding” the audience through these moments, and I extend this concern for Slave Play ’s audiences to address how the context of satire resists the supportive environment to engage with this difficult history while effectively reaffirming Kaneisha’s hyperinvisible status. “There sure are a lot of white people here.” The heavy cognitive load that results from layering satire, critique, and humor produces multiple instances where any given audience (or, in LaMarre’s terms, message receivers) potentially focuses excess energy on understanding the intent of the message rather than analyzing the argument itself. Given the overt nature of the play’s sexually explicit content, I suggest that this can produce situations where Slave Play unintentionally reproduces white supremacy. In her work on the subject, Dani Snyder-Young observes that white theatre audiences often desire to present themselves as “ good white people ,” which significantly impacts their conclusions about whatever performances they are viewing. She described that these white audiences “misrecognized realistically drawn white characters who perform their whiteness in ungraceful, hurtful ways as bad, racist white people, and find ways to distance themselves from these characters,” without reading these characters as representative of a generalized class of white people.(41) By denouncing racist white characters, “good white people” can distance themselves from racism without personal interrogation. In this context, the recognition of comedy within the satire allows for audience members to potentially categorize themselves as “good white people” based on the recognition of humor. Not only does the category of “good white people” resist intervention to break down white supremacy, but the movement between Horatian satire, Juvenalian satire, and realism challenges how “good white people” should interpret the action of Slave Play . Returning to his analysis of the play as a triptych, Firmino pointed out that the third act feels “the most real,” functioning predominantly as a reflection of reality rather than a satirical interpretation. Still, there is little information provided to help contextualize this transition. Indeed, the third act functions as the only time when the “Starbucks” safe word is evoked, but it lacks the immediate breakage as seen in the first act. In its first use, used by Kaneisha’s partner Jim, “Starbucks” severs the audience from the antebellum setting, creating an anachronistic dissonance that immediately hints these encounters are not what we initially believed them to be. As the play moves toward a sensation of “the most real,” the use of “Starbucks” relates to the more grounded portrayal of BDSM safe words—a term or signal that ends the sexual encounter immediately to protect those involved, particularly with rough or violent scenarios. The ambiguity of how Kaneisha uses the term at the end of the play and whether the encounter actually stops has been a point of discussion in many reviews and reactions attempting to determine if the play’s final moment should be categorized as assault or merely a specific type of sexual encounter. Actress Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, who both originated the role at Yale and performed as Kaneisha on Broadway and the West Coast, emphasized in one interview that “at the point [Kaneisha] says, ‘No,’ it stops. How it gets there is up to the interpretation of the audience.”(42) In her review, Ray reflected that on both occasions she saw the performance she thought she heard the actor playing Kaneisha say “stop,” and that she “realized [Kaneisha] uses the safeword when I read the script later.”(43) Positioning an indeterminate sexual encounter alongside extensive satire challenges precisely how the category of “good white people” gets defined, particularly when it comes to humor. I recognized this desire to align with “good white people” during my own attendance at Slave Play in 2022. I went into the experience with significant background knowledge of the play and the playwright, and upon arrival at the Taper Forum in Los Angeles felt an overwhelming wave of anxiety about how my white, female body might be interpreted in relation to the play. Unlike other aspects of my background (my theatre research, my experience as a dramaturg, etc.), the visual reading of my race and gender became more deeply felt throughout the performance. A line from Ashley Ray’s review kept swimming through my head, an observation that “there sure are a lot of white people here.”(44) I became self-conscious of my reactions (or lack thereof), and I noticed my row included a small pocket of silence while the rest of the auditorium filled with loud laughter and guffaws at the first act. This internal tension and anxiety only intensified as the play went on and I found myself repeatedly wondering how I was supposed to be implicated in relation to the characters. The weight of the cognitive load gets distracting—I could not find the humor because I was so tangled up trying to understand what I was supposed to be laughing at, or whether that laughter was permitted. My experience highlighted this site of tension between satire and critique, while recognizing that my reaction was heavily informed by my particular intersection of identities. My preoccupation with understanding how to read the humor onstage became my primary focus in an attempt to track when the story shifted from “a comedy of sorts” toward the “most real,” a process which highlighted the extent of this cognitive load. It came to a head in the final moments of act three, excerpted at the beginning of this essay—in watching Kaneisha yell “Starbucks” over and over, I questioned what exactly I had been witnessing. Contextualizing this relationship—whether as kink, satire, or assault—felt deeply necessary in understanding Kaneisha as a character, and by extension, the play’s perspectives on Black women’s hyperinvisibility. In order to consider the consequences of positioning Kaneisha as hyperinvisible, I return to the gap between satire and cognitive load. Despite the fact that Kaneisha becomes a hyperinvisible figure throughout the narrative of Slave Play , the final encounter casts the audience as witness to a highly visceral moment of violence. The emotional experience of this witnessing, even alongside the potential comedic reading of satire, can evoke what Judith Herman describes with the dialectic of trauma. “It is difficult for an observer to remain clearheaded and calm, to see more than a few fragments of the picture at one time, to retain all the pieces, and fit them together,” Herman stated. “It is even more difficult to find a language that conveys fully and precisely what one has seen. Those who attempt to describe the atrocities that they have witnessed also risk their own credibility. To speak publicly about one’s knowledge of atrocities is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims.”(45) Further, it is the victim who requires more from the witness. Herman continues that “the victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”(46) Herman’s indication that the bystander share in the burden of pain returns to Sara Ahmed’s description of the ethics of pain. The action, engagement, and remembering demanded of the witness implicitly requires that they “act about that which [they] cannot know” as Ahmed prompts, and to be “moved by what does not belong to [them.]”(47) The assault that audiences witness at the end of Slave Play may similarly move them, but Kaneisha’s hyperinvisibility further challenges the role of the witness. As Herman describes, the role of the witness comes with its own difficulties in articulating, processing, and engaging empathy—when aligned with satire, these burdens are colored by potential humor and discounting, further reinscribing Kaneisha as hyperinvisible. In acknowledging the relationship between pain and history, Ahmed indicates that the two come together through the body. She observes that “harm has a history,” and that “pain is not simply an effect of a history of harm; it is the bodily life of that history .”(48) The potential for pain that exists at the core of Slave Play could potentially offer an exploration of America’s relationship to enslavement. This approach, however, would require an acknowledgement of the specifics of this pain, rather than the ambiguity that takes place. Empathy cannot always access pain (as Ahmed argues), and the call of this pain “is a call not just for an attentive hearing, but for a different kind of inhabitance,” that results in a politics “based not on the possibility of what we might be reconciled, but on learning to live with the impossibility of reconciliation, or learning that we live with and beside each other, and yet we are not as one.”(49) The call of pain demonstrated in Slave Play , particularly in relation to Kaneisha, seems to hinge on keeping her in a state of hyperinvisibility. Slave Play asks audiences and characters to witness Kaneisha throughout her arc to sympathize with her situation, however doing so alongside the context of satirical humor still underscores the hyperinvisibility of Black female bodies. What moment made you want to say “Starbucks”? At the end of the post-show conversation, the two facilitators gave one final audience member a chance to discuss what resonated or what they would take away from this production. The young woman selected to speak sat on the opposite side of the auditorium from me, and framed her reflection as more of a question than a statement. She mentioned that she was Asian-American, and noted the importance of identifying herself that way as the play highlighted a similar gap between how we self-identify and how the world interprets or reads us. Her question centered around this gap—wondering when self-identification was no longer empowering because it relied on overt explanation rather than how one is perceived.(50) I found myself pondering this thought in relation to Kaneisha—in many ways, it didn’t matter how she self-identified because the world of the play and by extension, the audience, interpreted her based on her hyperinvisibility. Similarly, viewing what happens to Kaneisha as “expected,” as described by an earlier audience member, suggests that this hyperinvisibility had become ubiquitous with Black womanhood. The safe word “Starbucks” can remove the characters from the role play, and the audience can leave the theatre, but Kaneisha can’t seem to escape her hyperinvisibility. If this is still a comedy, perhaps it’s time to stop laughing. References Jeremy O. Harris, Slave Play , Theatre Communications Group, 2019, 161. Amauta Firmino described that the New York Theatre Workshop partnered with an organization to provide mediators/moderators after each performance. These individuals had had conversations with the creative team about the play and had been trained in mediation, providing audiences with highly informal opportunities to ask questions about what they just saw. See also: Green, Jesse. “Review: ‘Slave Play,’ Four Times as Big and Just as Searing.” New York Times , 6 October 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/theater/slave-play-review-broadway.html Accessed 8 November 2024 .; Holdren. Sara. “Theatre Review: Slave Play Blends the Terrifying and the Tantalizing.” Vulture , 10 December 2018. https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/slave-play-jeremy-harris-review.html . Accessed 8 November 2024. ; Knowles, Hannah. “A Broadway-goer railed against a play as unfair to white people. The playwright responded.” The Washington Post, 1 December 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/12/01/broadway-goer-shouted-play-was-racist-against-white-people-playwright-responded/ . Accessed 8 November 2024. Excerpt from personal field notes during post-show discussion. Harris, Jeremy O. Slave Play. Directed by Robert O’Hara, performances by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Jonathan Higginbotham, Devin Kawaoka, Chalia La Tour, Irene Sofia Lucio, Paul Alexander Nolan, Jakeem Dante Powell, and Elizabeth Stahlmann. 19 February 2022, Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California. Wanda Strukus. “Mining the Gap: Physically Integrated Performance and Kinesthetic Empathy.” The Journal of Theory and Dramatic Criticism , Spring 2011, 89 Strukus, 103. Heather L. LaMarre, Kristen D. Landreville, Dannagal Young, and Nathan Gilkerson. “Humor Works in Funny Ways: Examining Satirical Tone as a Key Determinant in Political Humor Message Processing,” Mass Communication and Society , 17, no. 3, (2012), 405. Ashley Ray. @theeashleyray, 11 February 2022. Formatting in original. Ray has since taken down the original Twitter thread, although she provides a more thorough analysis and explanation of her thoughts on Slave Play and Harris in her publication “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice” published on her Substack. “About,” https://theashleyray.com . Accessed 27 July 2022. Constance Grady. “In Slave Play, audience and actors alike spar over who has the whip.” Vox, 17 December 2018. https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/12/17/18140950/slave-play-review-jeremy-o-harris-new-york-theatre-workshop . Accessed 25 March 2024. Charles McNulty. “Jeremy O. Harris’ ‘Slave Play’ awakens the Mark Taper Forum with a jolt.” Los Angeles Times , 17 February 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-17/review-jeremy-o-harris-slave-play-in-los-angeles . Accessed 20 March 2024. Ray. “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice.” Harris, np. Holdren, Sara. “Theatre Review: Slave Play Blends the Terrifying and the Tantalizing.” Vulture , 10 December 2018. https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/slave-play-jeremy-harris-review.html . Accessed 12 July 2022. Firmino, 18 August 2022. Firmino, 18 August 2022. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 402. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 402. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 402. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 405. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 405. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 421. LaMarre, “Humor Works…” 422. Joseph, 7. Joseph, 8, 10. Joseph, 18. Johnson, Amber. "Straight Outta Erasure: Black Girl Magic Claps Back to the Hyperinvisibility of Black Women in Straight Outta Compton." National Political Science Review 19, no. 2 (2018): 36. Quoted by Cate Young. “Interview: Jeremy O. Harris Knows You Hate ‘Slave Play.’” Thirty, Flirty + Film. 11 March 2022. https://30flirtyfilm.substack.com/p/jeremy-o-harris-slave-play?s=r . Accessed 13 July 2022. Interview with the author, 18 August 2022. Harris, 75. Young, emphasis in original, np. Ray, “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice,” np. Spillers, 67 Spillers describes this in the atomizing of the captive body on page 67. Ray, np. Nicole R. Fleetwood “Excess Flesh: Black Women Performing Hypervisibility.” Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. University of Chicago Press, 2011, 112. Emphasis in original. Saidiya V. Hartman. Scenes of Subjection . Oxford University Press, 1997, 52. Wright, John. Why is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy . Nick Hern Books/Limelight Edition, 2007, 20. Kari Barclay. “Erotic Returns: Sleeping with Ancestors in Contemporary Plays about Sexual Violence.” Theatre Journal , vol. 75, no. 1, March 2023, 43. Barclay, 49-50. Dani Snyder-Young. Privileged Spectatorship: Theatrical Interventions in White Supremacy . Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2020, 124. Fitzpatrick, Felicia. “Antoinette Crowe-Legacy on Causing Conversation with Slave Play .” Broadway Direct , 7 December 2021. https://broadwaydirect.com/antoinette-crowe-legacy-on-causing-conversation-with-slave-play/ . Accessed 25 July 2022. Ray, “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice,” np. Ray, np. Herman, 2. Herman, 7-8. Ahmed, 31. Ahmed, 33-34. Emphasis in original. Ahmed, 39. Excerpt from personal field notes, 19 February 2022. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion . Second ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Barclay, Kari. “Erotic Returns: Sleeping with Ancestors in Contemporary Plays about Sexual Violence.” Theatre Journal , vol. 75, no. 1, March 2023. Chambers-Letson, Joshua. “The Body is Never Given, nor Do We Actually See It.” In Race and Performance after Repetition , edited by Soyica Diggs Colbert, Shane Vogel, and Douglas A. Jones. Duke University Press, 2020. Cummings, Lindsay B. Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance . London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Firmino, Amauta M. Personal Interview, August 18, 2022. Fitzpatrick, Felicia. “Antoinette Crowe-Legacy on Causing Conversation with Slave Play .” Broadway Direct , December 7, 2021. https://broadwaydirect.com/antoinette-crowe-legacy-on-causing-conversation-with-slave-play/ . Fleetwood, Nicole R. “Excess Flesh: Black Women Performing Hypervisibility.” Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. University of Chicago Press, 2011. Grady, Constance. “In Slave Play, audience and actors alike spar over who has the whip.” Vox, December 17, 2018. https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/12/17/18140950/slave-play-review-jeremy-o-harris-new-york-theatre-workshop . . Green, Jesse. “Review: ‘Slave Play,’ Four Times as Big and Just as Searing.” The New York Times , October 6, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/theater/slave-play-review-broadway.html Harris, Jeremy O. Slave Play . Theatre Communications Group, 2019. Harris, Jeremy O. Slave Play. Directed by Robert O’Hara, performances by Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Jonathan Higginbotham, Devin Kawaoka, Chalia La Tour, Irene Sofia Lucio, Paul Alexander Nolan, Jakeem Dante Powell, and Elizabeth Stahlmann. Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, California, February 19, 2022 Hartman, Saidiya V.. Scenes of Subjection . Oxford University Press, 1997. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery . New York, N.Y: BasicBooks, 1992. Holdren, Sara. “Theatre Review: Slave Play Blends the Terrifying and the Tantalizing.” Vulture , December 10, 2018. https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/slave-play-jeremy-harris-review.html . Johnson, Amber. "Straight Outta Erasure: Black Girl Magic Claps Back to the Hyperinvisibility of Black Women in Straight Outta Compton." National Political Science Review 19, no. 2 (2018): 34-49. Joseph, Ralina L. Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity. New York University Press, 2018. Knowles, Hannah. “A Broadway-goer railed against a play as unfair to white people. The playwright responded.” The Washington Post, December 1, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/12/01/broadway-goer-shouted-play-was-racist-against-white-people-playwright-responded/ . Kondo, Dorinne K. Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity . Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. LaMarre, Heather L., Kristen D. Landreville, Dannagal Young, and Nathan Gilkerson. “Humor Works in Funny Ways: Examining Satirical Tone as a Key Determinant in Political Humor Message Processing,” Mass Communication and Society , 2014, 17:3, 400-423. Larson, Stephanie R. What It Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture . Vol. 27. Penn State University Press, 2021. Lee, Ashley. “How the Radical Set of ‘Slave Play’ Transforms LA’s Mark Taper Forum.” The Los Angeles Times , February 16, 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-16/slave-play-set-transforms-la-mark-taper-forum . McDonald, Soraya Nadia.“The subversive ‘Slave Play’ peels back veneer of racial innocence in Northern whites.” Andscape, December 14, 2018. https://andscape.com/features/slave-play-theater-off-broadway-racism-peels-back-veneer-of-racial-innocence-in-northern-whites/ . McNulty, Charles. “Jeremy O. Harris’ ‘Slave Play’ awakens the Mark Taper Forum with a jolt.” Los Angeles Times , February 17, 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-17/review-jeremy-o-harris-slave-play-in-los-angeles . Musser, Amber Jamilla. Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism . Sexual Cultures. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance . Routledge, 1996. Pinkins, Tonya. “‘Slave Play’: Racism Doesn’t Have a Safe Word.” American Theatre Magazine , July 1, 2019. https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/07/01/slave-play-racism-doesnt-have-a-safe-word/ . Ray, Ashley. “Why I Saw Slave Play Twice.” tv i say w/ Ashley Ray. 12 March 2022. https://ashleyray.substack.com/p/why-i-saw-slave-play-twice . . Rowen, Bess. The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. Snyder-Young, Dani. Privileged Spectatorship: Theatrical Interventions in White Supremacy . Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2020. Strukus, Wanda. “Mining the Gap: Physically Integrated Performance and Kinesthetic Empathy.” The Journal of Theory and Dramatic Criticism , Spring 2011. 89-105. Wright, John. Why Is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy . Nick Hern Books/Limelight Edition, 2007. Young, Cate. “Interview: Jeremy O. Harris Knows You Hate ‘Slave Play.’” Thirty, Flirty + Film March 11, 2022. https://30flirtyfilm.substack.com/p/jeremy-o-harris-slave-play?s=r . Zillmann, Dolf. “Mechanisms of emotional involvement with drama.” Poetics , 1994, 23, 33-51. Footnotes About The Author(s) CATHERINE HEINER received her PhD in Theatre History and Performance Studies from the University of Washington. Broadly, her work considers empathy in conjunction with progressive political movements and the ways theatrical performances mobilize these affects. She has presented research at the American Society for Theatre Research annual conference, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, and the Comparative Drama Conference. As a dramaturg, she has worked on various productions, including The Oresteia (adapted by Ellen McLaughlin), The Importance of Being Earnest, American Idiot, The Lion in Winter, and the world premiere of An Evening with Two Awful Men . She currently teaches at Middle Tennessee State 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.

Eleanor Russell Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 32 1 Visit Journal Homepage Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics Eleanor Russell By Published on November 6, 2019 Download Article as PDF Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics . Soyica Diggs Colbert. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017; Pp. 232. In Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics, Soyica Diggs Colbert explores how post-Civil Rights Movement cultural products and performances of blackness re-map black ontologies and histories. In an extraordinary display of interdisciplinary rigor, Diggs Colbert describes—to name only a few examples—how Toni Morrison’s “flying Africans,” George Clinton’s spaceship, Beyoncé’s “Partition”-ary (re-)entanglements with Black pasts, and acts of marching, realize the “webs of affiliation” between contemporary black performances and their revolutionary antecedents. She writes, “ Black Movements explores how artists actively engage with certain pasts and jettison others to remember, revive, and reimagine political movements that seem to have stalled” (7). “Black movements,” as such, inaugurate and name the field of relation between Black presents and Black pasts by way of articulations of black identity, subjectivity, and comportment in revolutionary performance. Diggs Colbert’s previous monograph, The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance, and the Stage (Cambridge, 2011) prefigures the role of discursive interplay and performer-reader engagement that is the basic premise of Black Movements. The new book extends the line of thought that the black body, through acts of repetition, can be conjured—or, importantly, erased—by discursive, spatial, and temporal realignments and points of relation that perform revolutionary potential and fervor. The book’s virtuosity lies in the navigation of a plethora of scholarly and political positions. Diggs Colbert deftly summarizes and positions herself between the Afro-pessimist/Afro-optimist debate in African-American studies. In particular, she deploys ideas of opacity and elision toward the theorization of black performance in terms of supplementarity and revolutionary excess. Though drawing from Joseph Roach’s work on surrogation and Butlerian performativity, as well as many other scholars, the work’s greatest strength lies in Diggs Colbert’s treatment of her case studies as theories and/or theorists in their own right rather than merely reflections of pre-determined scholarly positions. Toni Morrisons’s ellipses, for example, make audible the revolutionary capacities of being silenced, functioning as a kind of praxis; Black Movements suggests the duty of the scholar, then, is to articulate how that theory always-already plays out in black life and, in Morrison’s case, via the performativity of text. In chapter one, Diggs Colbert argues that the ellipses empower the reader to become an archivist, interpreter, and writer; as such, just as the characters carve out complex and agentive identities and modes of relation in Beloved, for example, so does the reader, in the Morrison-encouraged expansion of what the act of reading includes. The conceptual breadth and sheer variety of case studies considered in terms of performance type and genre is a strength. This range makes it possible for Diggs Colbert to account for the idiosyncracy, hybridity, and, ultimately, opacity at the heart of black performance —and of black life and politics in performance. The consequence of this variety, however, is that it sometimes leads to a lack of clarity or impact. Specifically, the chapter on marching shows a prodigious command of how the spatial reorganization and mass comportment of, in one example, the Silent Parade in New York City in 1917 works. Diggs Colbert remarks on how the act of marching configured black bodies, costume, and accumulation in order to take up space and make “audible,” per se, the experience of being silenced. The same is true for Diggs Colbert’s discussion about the March on Washington in 1963: “Harnessing comportment in service of social reorganization clarifies how imagination and embodied action work together to shape political spheres as physical locations and ideologies” (154). Yet considering, as she often references, how foundational the publicity of Emmett Till’s brutal murder in 1955 was to the inauguration of the Civil Rights Movement and —the murder, famously, a reaction to Till allegedly whistling at a white woman—the audibly sonic (as opposed to performative silence) elements of anti-black racism and subsequent organizing are unexpectedly absent from this chapter. An odd omission, too, because Till’s supposed act—the whistle—and the act of marching itself in its most formal extreme—foot raised high, crash to the ground, triumphant and war-like— so loud. Obviously, silence as a performative can call attention to the ways that Till and others were literally silenced by being murdered. However, for a work of such breadth and investments in the phenomenology of black life (Fanonian citations abound, especially in the Introduction), the aural frame reads muted. Black Movements offers a conceptual, formal, and multidisciplinary approach to the spaciotemporal re-alignments forged by contemporary black movements with black pasts. In a necessary intervention, Diggs Colbert both critiques and elaborates upon critical race theory and black political radicalism in the fields of performance studies, African American studies, theatre history, and sociology. Black Movements was awarded an Honorable Mention for the Joe A. Calloway Prize for the Best Book on Drama or Theatre. It is a significant book, one that should be read alongside the scholarship of Saidiya Hartman, Daphne Brooks, Amber Jamilla Musser and other black feminist thinkers. Like Beyoncé reflecting back on Josephine Baker, Black Movements’ s looks to the legacies of black performance in order to imagine and build black futures. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Eleanor Russell Northwestern University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics Law and Sexuality in Tennessee Williams’s America Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze Staging Family: Domestic Deceptions of Mid-Nineteenth Century American Actresses Excavating American Theatrical History: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroon Mabou Mines Tries Again: Past, Present, and the Purgatory of Performance Space Rehearsing Bereavement with Laughter: Grief, Humor, and Estrangement Affect in Sarah Ruhl’s Plays of Mourning Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Michael P. Jaros 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 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 Michael P. Jaros By Published on December 10, 2020 Download Article as PDF Appearing within the first iteration of the Black Lives Matter movement and the fraught national conversations over the legacies of the American Civil War, Suzan Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts 1-3 is her first full-length play set during that war, focusing specifically on the final period of American chattel slavery and the moment of Emancipation. [1] The work remains timely within a contemporary political environment where both racism and resistance to it are resurgent. It also departs in a number of structural and thematic ways from her previous works for the stage. Scholars have examined Parks’s plays that indirectly explore the period’s contemporary resonances, specifically her two works about black Abraham Lincoln impersonators, The America Play (1994) and Topdog/Underdog (2001), in some detail. [2] Her main characters in those works—The Found ling Father of the America Play and Link and Booth of Topdog/Underdog —both always already exist in the shadow of the Civil War President and signer of the Emancipation Proclamation. The figures they cut are perpetually perceived through Lincoln’s own cut out (which even features as a prop in The America Play ). However, the range of focus of Father Comes Home is considerably broader, indeed epic, in scope, as Parks radically revises Homer’s Odyssey to place it in the Civil-War-Era South. [3] In moving her emphasis off Lincoln or his imitators, a chorus of varied voices takes center-stage. Asked about her play’s topicality at the American Repertory Theatre in 2015, Parks was quick to point out that all her characters’ lives mattered: You know, [the characters in the play] were human. That’s the thing…I would say…that is one of my charges as an artist. And that is the only way that I am interested in, really, addressing what people call the race question…is just that reminding people that my people are people. And under that comes everything.[4] The expansion of focus of one or two persons to people helps contextualize Parks’s comments about the race question and her characters’ humanity: as we witness the existential traumas of enslavement, Parks reminds us that all her staged people are people, not just her hero. In doing so, she addresses a critical need in contemporary representations of slavery to eschew the classic heroic narrative, allowing for a broader structural critique of the systems of valuation and ranking by which slaves were perceived. Parks has her character Smith memorably allude to this idea of marketplace measurement in Part Two of her play: Maybe even with Freedom, that mark, huh, that mark of the marketplace, it will always be on us. And so maybe we will always be twisting and turning ourselves into something that is going to bring the best price. [5] With the staging of Father Comes Home, Parks engages in an ongoing cultural argument about this “mark of the marketplace” in contemporary notions of African American identity. In so doing, she confronts larger structural systems of racism and the current economic system (capitalism) that sustains it. Smith’s quote highlights an issue Parks touched on before in her two Lincoln plays and further refines in Father Comes Home , specifically black participation in this game of self-appraisal, of buying into this idea of the ranking of life. Private Smith’s words about “always twisting and turning our selves into something that is going to bring the best price [my emphasis],” highlights the communal economic trauma of slavery and its resonances in the present for black communities as a whole. Such a collective emphasis helps to resurrect this communal history, ending what Erica Edwards calls an historical “silencing” of the many agents involved in the struggle for freedom in favor of the “implicit valorization of singular, charismatic leadership” [6] which itself “values” certain persons more than others. Existing scholarship on Father Comes Home from the Wars contains little critical examination of the radical implications of her choral characters. Nadine Knight’s examination of notions of home, nostos, and Parks’ reconfiguration of the Homeric epic primarily discusses the protagonist of all three parts, Hero. Similarly, Paula Guerrero provides a deep, sustained reading of Hero’s contradictory nature, fitting him within a larger group of anti-heroic characters appearing in Parks’s oeuvre. However, the Choruses receive less critical attention: they are described as somewhat “homogenized,” and notable in their absence from Part Two of the work. [7] Paul Carter Harrison goes so far as to suggest that the Choruses in fact revert to the worst elements of blackface minstrelsy in an anodyne offering which ultimately amounts to a toned down, less-then-traumatic view of slavery for predominantly white audiences. [8] What I propose to argue here is that Parks’s two Choruses are considerably more radical than previous scholarship has suggested. Two different choral groups appear in her play—a “Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves” in Part 1 and “The Runaway Slaves” in Part 3—yet the two Choruses are comprised of the same actors. [9] In so naming them, Parks stages the transition from property (in the form of exterior valuation, they are “less than desirable”) to freedom: (they are agents stealing themselves and thus gaining some measure of self-determination as runaways). Their embodiment shifts from being reactionary to radical. Furthermore, Part Two, which includes no Chorus, is a necessary step in this shift in thinking about heroism, capitalism, and valuation that Parts One, Two, and Three collectively undertake. My line of departure involves thinking specifically about Brechtian Epic form, especially as formulated by Liz Diamond’s readings of the gestus and alienation effect. Through a series of performative interventions primarily involving the Choruses, Parks directly equates heroism with marketplace value. Responding to Harrison’s critique that the mythic form and the Choruses make the deprivation of slavery more “palatable,” I argue that Parks’s use of epic form allows the spectator to instead, in Diamond’s words “see and hear [about] it afresh,” [10] and in a way that is not palatable but confrontational. Specifically, we are confronted with the larger, structural implications of slavery on a mass of people when we deemphasize the singular, heroic protagonist, thus giving way to a more substantial criticism of bondage, self-valuation, and the economics of capitalism that sustained the peculiar institution and in turn survive well beyond it. A wealth of scholarship details how the development of the modern system of international capital and slavery were inextricably intertwined, and—along with it—ideas of individual competition and self-valuation. These “proprietorial notions of the self,” as Saidiya Hartman terms them, suffused black life and continued to do so after Emancipation. [11] Edward Baptist argues that the “expansion of slavery and financial capitalism [became] the driving force in an emerging national economic system” in the Antebellum US. Slaves’ financial worth was meticulously calculated via a complex network of valuation established by professional slave traders. [12] This price, as Caitlyn Rosenthal demonstrates, varied directly with “usefulness” on the market. Babies had low value, as did older slaves. Price topped out in the mid-twenties for both men and women. “The prices for enslaved people changed for many reasons,” she remarks, “age, sickness, or health. The acquisition of skill, or changes in the market” but also for disobedience or attempts at escape. [13] Most insidious was the way in which slaves internalized this fiscal language, this “mark of the marketplace,” even using the term “depreciation” do describe their own changes in value when they themselves faced potential sale. [14] Consequently, self-measurement and assessment are part and parcel of her characters’ dialogue in the play. “Mark it” is a constant refrain, which, as Laura Dougherty remarks, is all to close in pronunciation to “market” to be lost on the audience. [15] Opposing this system of competition and individual valuation were forms of collective resistance by a variety of means, especially via performance. After the war, and well into the twentieth century, these arose to combat structural racism and the economic inequalities that accompanied them. As Cedric Robinson describes it in his seminal work Black Marxism, the black radical tradition was borne out of a need to “imaginatively re-create a precedent metaphysic while being subjected to enslavement, racial domination and repression,” and this was most consistently, effectively done via collective action. [16] Fred Moten elaborates that such performances had a radical ability, especially via the improvisation of an ensemble, to cause a momentary “break” in the ideology of bodily commodification which “passes on the material heritage across the divide that separates slavery and ‘freedom.’” [17] The first example he gives of such radical action is in fact a chorus of singers that Frederick Douglas hears shortly after the infamous beating of his Aunt Hester in the Autobiography, a group that challenges, through its vocalized revisions, the violent performance of power that is the master lashing Hester and her screams in response. [18] Parks’s Choruses likewise point towards radical action, towards a break away from the heroic ideals which are all too tied to capitalist notions of individualism, self-valuation, and competition. This is a timely move, as heroic slave narratives remain resilient in contemporary culture. Soyica Diggs Colbert and Robert Patterson reflect on the lack of contemporary critical insight afforded by such traditional narratives. Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, which features Jamie Foxx as a black, avenging superhero let loose on southern slaveholders, offers what Colbert terms “unfettered individualism for its male protagonist as a remedy for the burdensome legacy of slavery,” which is at once “a comforting and deceptive remedy.” [19] Similarly, Patterson asserts in his analysis of 12 Years a Slave that protagonist Solomon Northrup’s own narrative, with its heroic idealization of “self-help and individual success” reinforces the dominant order, namely white, Protestant, capitalist notions of rugged self-reliance. Each narrative’s emphasis on the exceptional individual fails to address the “larger pattern of black suffering” of the vast majority of those under the yoke of slavery, as well as slavery’s link to contemporary structural racism and continued black self-appraisal in financial terms. [20] Parks de-centers the original Homeric hero, a character she simply dubs Hero in Parts One and Two, and Ulysses (invoking two white men, both Homer’s protagonist’s Latin name and the name of the leader of the Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant) in Part Three. Despite the hopes of the Chorus and other characters that he is and should remain exceptional, that he should both be measured and valued as such, Hero instead proves to simply be human and unable to personally overcome the ontological negation resulting from his enslavement and its dependent valuation. [21] In the transition from Part One to Three, it is to the Chorus and the secondary characters Homer (his foil) and Penny (his partner) that we must increasingly look to for some collective, future possibility of freedom. A MEASURE OF A MAN From the moment the curtain rises, measurement dominates the dramatic action. Part One, aptly titled A Measure of a Man, opens with the Chorus Leader “measuring the night by holding a hand up to the sky.” [22] This gest by which time is marked recurs throughout the act, and is often accompanied by Parks’s signature “Spells,” in which a character’s name is repeated in the text without being accompanied by any dialogue: Chorus Leader Chorus Leader Chorus Leader Second How much time we got?[23] Spells transpire outside language, and in this case function as a Brechtian gestus of appraisal. The gestus, Diamond remarks, is “a gesture, a word, an action, a tableau by which, separately or in series, the social attitudes encoded in the playtext become visible to the spectator.” The gestus thus “opens [the audience] up to the social ideologies that inform its production.” [24] Here, the social ideology involves measurement, marking, and assessment. Collectively, such gests engender spectatorial alienation from the event at hand. We gain enough aesthetic distance to see a familiar exchange in a new, critical light. In these exchanges, night and the coming day are assessed in slave-time: with the day shall come the end of their pseudo-freedom, the end of their limited, stolen time as people and the beginning of their time as chattel. As Part One proceeded in the ART production, more and more orange light flooded the stage as this inevitable moment of daybreak approached. The ever-approaching day will also bring with it Hero’s decision as to whether he shall follow the Boss-Master to war as his aide-de camp in the Confederate army. If he does so, his master has promised him freedom upon his return. If he refuses, he will have to stay behind and face his punishment, a punishment that all the other characters must also endure. These first few moves set the dramatic tempo of Part One. All the dominant actions of A Measure of a Man involve sizing up, and it is the Chorus, not Hero, that determines the dramatic action. In betting on Hero’s choice, they are monetizing the dramatic stakes of the play, and in so doing are drawing our attention to the fact that we as an audience have done the same thing: we have paid to see this spectacle and also to assess Hero’s choice. As Diamond puts it, these betting and marking gests force the spectator to “engage with her own corporeality” in looking and assessing the black bodies onstage for their respective measures, particularly Hero’s. Harvey Young examines an earlier manifestation of Parks’s use of Choruses in Venus , whose protagonist is Saartjie Baartman, a nineteenth century South African woman who was toured across England and France as “The Venus Hottentot,” due in no small part to white audiences’ obsession with the size of her posterior. That play’s Chorus “continually reminds the audience that the play is about looking at [her],” ensuring that our compassion for her “anchors itself in our own complicity in her spectacularization.” [25] We can only feel sympathy for the protagonist after we objectify her as much as the Chorus does. In Father Comes Home, the Chorus’ need to size up Hero also goes hand in hand with the audience’s, yet what Young terms spectacularization is even more overt: not only is the Chorus betting money themselves on Hero’s actions, but Hero is literally a slave, and his measure in that sense has an exact number (his selling price). They and we are participating in a system that reinforces such financial objectification. Moreover, the Chorus of Father Comes Home exists within the same world as Hero. Whereas in Venus the Chorus often stands outside the dramatic action and comments on it, the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves are decidedly within the play and suffer along with Hero, if not more than him. Their shared world of appraisal is reified in the exchange that ensues as the other Chorus members (Third and Fourth) join the first two onstage. The productions at ART and the Public Theatre, both directed by Jo Bonney, reinforced the choral synchronicity by placing the first, second, third, and fourth in a strong line cheating upstage; we see each arriving in turn to imitate the next at measuring the night, and all use the same gest. Though they all admit that the Leader is best at night-measurement, their appraisal of Hero himself is different: Fourth You may be the best at measuring the Night But that don’t make you the best at measuring Men. Third Early risers have their say but we gotta make our own choices on this Each of us gotta make a measure of the man We gotta choose for ourselves (Rest) I got a brass button I might be betting that Hero is– Going to the War.[26] Parks’s “Rests,” another consistent feature in her dramaturgy, afford a slightly more restrained moment of reflection or distancing than the Spell. The above Rest occurs immediately before the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves arrange their bets with their varied prized possessions (spoons, buttons, etc). These people, themselves property, are betting their own scant properties, reinforcing the system of exchange, property and assessment—of marking—in which they are themselves caught. The forms of resistance open to the Less than Desirable Slaves are, as Moten notes, “always already embedded in the structure they would escape,” [27] namely these proprietorial notions of the self. Neil Patel’s barren stage-space for the ART production reinforces the structural desolation within which these choices transpire: it is a vast, rust-colored expanse with only a short stump downstage right and a withered tree-trunk stage right of the tiny slave cabin placed center stage. The choice to be—indeed the seeming inevitability of doing so (“we gotta”)—is foregrounded by the Rest, the stage-space within which the betting transpires, and the resulting false implication that there is some sort of real, meaningful “choice” to be made. Alienation allows us to parse out these symbols. Ultimately, their bets and their choices, along with Hero’s, are existentially meaningless in this desolate space: they contribute nothing towards changing their current position of enslavement. Nevertheless hero-betting remains, as Colbert maintained of Django Unchained, “a comforting but deceptive remedy”: “There is a kind of sport to be had,” the Chorus Leader remarks, “In the consideration of someone else’s fate.” [28] This sport is the distraction that the Rest highlights; this pregnant pause troubles the preceding words. In betting on Hero’s decision, the Chorus members avoid confronting their own stark situation as being one without any real choice. Just as betting on the length of the night will not stop the arrival of day, betting on Hero’s choice shall not result in any change in their own condition. Moreover, in so doing they acquiesce to being inscribed as undesirable so that Hero might become individually exceptional. “Prime hands” like Hero were historically set up as an ideal against which all other slaves were assessed vis-à-vis labor performance and (as a result) financial worth. [29] All are caught up in these acts of appraisal, and we are continuously made aware of the contradictions lurking within the heart of these “choices,” as well as our own complicity in spectatorial appraisal. The slave Homer brings the futility of such sport home soon after arriving onstage. Homer shall not bet, he says, because he realizes the choice is meaningless: Homer Ain’t no game, Hero. Cause you shouldn’t be doing neither. Cause you shouldn’t stoop To do neither Cause both choices, Hero, To stay here and work the field To go there and fight in the field Both choices are Nothing more than the same coin Flipped over and over Two sides of the same coin And the coin ain’t even in your pocket.[30] Homer, with his vision of an oscillating coin that is not even Hero’s to spin, breaks in upon the small world within which the Chorus and Hero have lived until this moment. The talk of heroism and the resulting bets are suddenly revealed for what they are: someone else’s stories, stories that don’t apply to the people onstage and will do no one there any good. Each side of the coin means collective suffering: staying means mass-punishment for all the slaves on the plantation, and leaving means helping ensure slavery’s national continuation (by aiding the armies of the Confederacy). The Chorus’ belief in Hero begins to falter immediately after Homer’s monologue. They become more assertive, stepping in and prompting Hero to make some choice. When he initially announces that he shall not go to war, the Chorus steps in to remind him that they shall be punished far worse than he shall be for his choice: Leader That’s right. He’ll beat him hard and He’ll beat us twice as hard. Second For his 10 lashes we’ll get 20. Third For his 20 we’ll get 40. Fourth For his 50 we’ll get 100. Hero I won’t go. I can’t. My heart’s been set against it from the start. Chorus Hero Chorus Hero (Rest) Old Man So you’ll have to harm yourself in some way To take the edge off Boss’ anger.[31] The Chorus must remind Hero that his decisions have trickle-down effects on the bodies of the Less-Than-Desirable Slaves, who are quick to calculate the amplification of punishment that shall be inflicted on them due to their subordinate value to Hero. A series of Spells and a Rest alienate us from the action so that we have space to reflect upon this moment. It is Hero’s adoptive father, the Oldest Old Man, who must prompt him towards an action that takes the others’ fates into account. Hero’s exceptionalism is founded upon a competitive individualism that operates at the collective’s expense. Consequently, he does not take into account the collateral damage that his choice shall inflict on everyone else. Far from Carter’s vision of the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves as reanimated blackface minstrels or Guerrero’s reading of the “stereotypical roles” which they serve in the drama, what we witness as they begin to challenge Hero is an assertion of their own, collective identity. Although the first Chorus and the second are not the same , they are composed of the same actors and thus remain corporeally connected. The Runaway Slaves are the embodied successors of the Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves, who take these first steps towards agency at the end of Part One. As Moten attests, the improvisation of such ensembles is integral to any comprehension of the black, radical tradition. Such choral questioning forces a “revaluation or reconstruction of value.” [32] The ensemble, deprived of their hero, are forced to improvise. Homer proposes an alternative to this choice-less choice, something the Choral Leader agrees represents a viable “third way”: Freedom, for Homer, cannot be given; it must be taken. Freedom means stealing yourself and taking others with you. The aptly named Homer thus gives voice to one of the central ideas of the entire work: just as much as slavery is collectively endured, Freedom [33] must also be collectively, clandestinely acquired. Hero, however, views such an act as property theft: “A Stolen-Freedom?” he remarks, “That ain’t me.” [34] Running off quite literally means stealing himself and stealing Freedom would deprive him of the central choice he must make as a hero in act one, a choice Homer implies does not really matter. Moreover, stealing one’s self represents a radical exit from the status quo. Since criminality is the “only form of slave agency recognized by law,” Hartman attests, “agency of theft…challenged the figuration of the black captive as devoid of will.” [35] Running off is a radical choice that opens up the possibility of further choices. It becomes a choice that in fact matters. The problematics of Hero’s individualism are reinforced by the last significant development of Part One. Homer reveals to the Chorus that he and Hero had both, previously planned to escape together and that Hero betrayed Homer to the Boss-Master in exchange for an earlier promise of Freedom. Homer’s foot was taken as punishment, and Hero was forced to cut it off himself. Homer’s missing foot, and his limp, remain indelible onstage markers of this legacy of dehumanizing violence, and also of Hero’s failure to act heroically in the face of such terrible choices. Confronted with Hero’s un-heroic actions, the Chorus then makes their own choice, removing Hero’s name from him just as his crucial moment of choice arrives, along with the sun, at the end of the act. Leader And we can’t call you Hero. Penny That’s still his name. Third Maybe we won’t call you anything at all. The Sun Rises Chorus Penny Hero Homer Chorus Second The sun us up. Hero And my need to leave is clear. Not run off, Homer, Although I can see there’s value in it, But it’s not my road. I’ll go trot behind the Master The non-Hero that I am.[36] As the sun rises over the stage, Homer, Penny, and the Chorus’ Spells surround Hero’s, suggesting a shift in the dramatic hierarchy of the scene. We, along with the other figures onstage, await Hero’s response. It is finally the Second who must prompt Hero that the moment of choice has arrived. His resulting decision to leave is decidedly anti-climactic; it is only a default reaction to the revelation of his betrayal of Homer and the larger community. It would be unfeasible, now, for him to stay. In both the Public and ART productions, Hero slowly exits up a vast ramp, which slants down, stage right, across the entire backstage area. This afforded an extremely elaborate entrance for Hero earlier in the work, high above the others, yet it is now all of the Less than Desirable Slaves who escort him up it for his antiheroic exit. The collective mourns the loss of faith in Hero’s heroism, yet we are at once confronted with the stark, impossible nature of the choices put before him within the context of slavery. Parks thus gives the play its tragic resonance, but also opens up the possibility of Homer’s “third way” towards salvation: relinquishing the need for heroes and striking out for Freedom as a group. “The significance of becoming or belonging together in terms other than those defined by one’s status as property, will-less object, and the not-quite human.” Hartman maintains, “should not be underestimated.” [37] Such radical acts are certainly worthy of memorialization, as they transpired against immense historical odds put in place by a system set up to directly oppose communal resistance. The actions the Chorus takes here represent the beginnings of what she terms a “latent political consciousness,” [38] one more radically developed by the Runaway Slaves in Part Three. A BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS As Part Two: A Battle in the Wilderness, opens, we quickly realize that it contains no Chorus; the choral measurement of a man is replaced by the singular, appraising measure of the white slaveholder. Whereas Parts One and Three Occur in the same locale—”a slave cabin in the middle of nowhere. Far West Texas.”— A Battle in the Wilderness , transpires on the frontier of the war itself, in “a wooded area in the South. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere.” [39] We might well assume that it is here that Hero shall distinguish himself before “coming home from the wars.” The “battle” that is depicted is more existential than actual, however, as the fighting is only heard in the far-off distance; we remain “pretty much” off the historical map, in the middle of nowhere. Just as Hero’s ability to be a hero—with actual choices —was challenged by the Chorus in A Measure of a Man, his ownership of his own self is called into question in A Battle in the Wilderness . He is physically objectified as chattel by the only white character in the play, his master the Colonel, in what Hartman has described as form of “coerced theatricality” associated with the spectacle of the auction block, what she terms the “theatre of the marketplace.” [40] The measurement and bidding of the auction block replaces the measuring of the night and the choral betting on Hero’s choice in Part One. The difference between the two plays’ forms of measurement is minimal; one follows naturally from the other, as the Chorus learned its sport of determining Hero’s measure through the language and the performative conventions of the slave auction. The pull-away from the Chorus in Part Two allows for a sustained focus on such valuation via performance, preparing the way for the complete break from it which the Runaway Slaves accomplish in Part Three. Consequently, the central assessing event of A Battle in the Wilderness is a mock-slave auction. In staging such a spectacle, Parks taps into a macabre form of performance with a long, sordid history, whose primary purpose was to mark black bodies with a marketplace value, as Joseph Roach so memorably shows in his examination of such auctions in Antebellum New Orleans. “The staged exhibition of bodies for the purpose of selling them,” he maintains, “marks those bodies publicly as not possessed of themselves as property.” [41] Moreover, the mark of the marketplace was often applied to black bodies as a performance. Slave auctions became, Roach attests, a popular form of entertainment, even for those not actually participating in the bidding. [42] Those on the auction block were frequently dressed in evening wear and made to promenade, and even dance, before later being stripped down by buyers for the final inspection. In staging such coerced theatricality, Parks again challenges our complicity in an even more stark assessment of Hero’s measure. For Diamond, such alienation allows a way to put that historicity on view, specifically “in a sign system [western commercial theatre] governed by a particular apparatus, usually owned and operated by men for the pleasure of a viewing public whose major wage earners are male.” [43] Although Diamond speaks about the gendered body here, it is equally applicable to the white, masculine appraising view of the theatre of the marketplace, and how its historicity is re-staged in a contemporary commercial theatre viewing black bodies, specifically Hero’s body, onstage. The setup for this performance occurs early on in Part Two as the Colonel converses with his captive, Smith, a mixed-race private in a colored regiment of the Union army who has successfully passed as a white Captain by taking the dead man’s uniform, thereby avoiding death at the hands of the Colonel. Hero, Smith, and the Colonel have become separated from their respective armies in the aftermath of a battle. While Hero is collecting firewood, the Colonel assures his captive that Hero shall not attempt to escape: You might have commanded them but I own them. And because I own them I have an understanding of them that you don’t have and never will. Hero knows his worth to the penny, and, well, the poor thing is honest. Meaning he won’t run off not now not ever. He told me one day: “Master,” he said, “running off, well that would be the same as stealing, he said. [44] Choral watching and assessing are replaced in Part Two by the direct assessment of the white slaveholder. We witness this assessment’s ideological internalization in both Hero and Smith: whether or not one can, or should, steal one’s self—something Hero did in fact refuse to do in Part One—becomes the internal battle in the wilderness of Part Two’s title. Smith is subsequently coerced into visually assessing Hero in a mock, two-part slave auction that the Colonel initiates to follow up on his claim about how well he “understands” Hero, which for the Colonel means Hero’s attachment to his own financial value. The Colonel collateralizes Freedom, something he has already done to Hero at least twice thus far: he promises that if Smith can guess Hero’s actual price, he will free both of them, and Hero may return with Smith to the Union lines. Despite initial protestation, Smith ultimately agrees to participate, as the chances of freeing another man are too hard to pass up. In so doing, however, Smith plays the Colonel’s game and according to his rules; he replaces the Chorus in their measuring game of Part One. The Colonel’s line, “We’ll school him, just for sport,” echoes the Choral Leader’s remark about the “sport to be had” in betting on another’s fate in Part One. Like the Chorus before him, Smith now measures and assesses worth as attached to the black body, a collective, projected “them” that includes his own body. In accepting the wager of freedom and the rules of the game, Hero agrees to be the spectacle and Smith agrees to be the appraising audience. Both play into Hero’s spectacularization, as do we, again, by watching and guessing at his financial measure. The spectator is forced, as Diamond puts it, to “engag[e] with her own temporality. She, too, becomes historicized…her material conditions, her politics, her skin, her desires.” [45] It is impossible for us to avoid considering the material conditions of this spectacle as we sit watching it in the theatre. As the mock-auction begins in the ART production, Hero is made to stand on the downstage stump and be inspected by Smith as if on the auction block. [46] He occupies the center of this stage-image, keenly reinforcing a series of groupings Bonney created in the first play in which the Chorus, Penny, and Homer surround the center-stage Hero, yet now in Part Two Hero is so centered as chattel to be sold. Taking his role as auctioneer, the Colonel describes Hero as “hardworking, trustworthy, [and as] smart but still compliant.” [47] Smith-as-bidder is forced to demean Hero by inspecting the inside of his mouth to make sure he is not getting a bum deal. Ultimately, Smith places Hero’s worth at one thousand dollars, which, we learn, is two hundred too high. Although Smith has been coerced into participating in this act of valuation, it is Hero who must conclude the inspection: the Colonel forces him to name his own price. Despite this act of shame, Hero rebels against the Colonel by remarking that he might, in fact, be worth more now and, if the Confederacy loses the war, he might be worth much more. Smith agrees, calling this “good thinking.” Such self-assessment was historically key to the auction process. If a slave refused to help sell himself for the highest price possible, whipping would ensue. [48] Hero, and to a certain extent Smith, remain incapable of conceiving of their own worth outside of a given fiscal value, even when imagining a post-emancipation future. Hero can rebel only by placing his valuation higher; thinking outside the mark of the marketplace remains impossible. Hero’s rebellion pushes the auction to the edge of the point of no return. The Colonel orders Hero to “undo himself” and stand nude before them for his final inspection. One of the largest Spell-interruptions in the script follows: Colonel Undo yourself Hero. Hero Hero Hero is thinking, no fucking way. Smith Stop. Colonel Undo yourself I said. Smith Stop. Colonel Hero Smith Colonel Colonel Alright. For his sake. We wouldn’t want the Yankee to die of fright. The Colonel approaches Hero and, quickly raising his riding crop, strikes him across the face.[49] Hero steps down from the stump and the Colonel’s control over the performance ends, yet its effects on Hero reverberate through Parks’s silent architecture: the Colonel’s own final Spells frame the two other characters’ experience of whatever transpires there. Parks also gives a rare, authorial reading of what Hero’s long solo Spell entails ( Hero is thinking, no fucking way ), deviating from her earlier suggestion in her essay “Elements of Style,” that directors and actors should interpret a Spell “as they best see fit.” [50] No fucking way, it seems, must this moment be left to chance: Hero’s “undoing himself” would be a point of no return; it is and must remain unstageable. Yet the threat of the Colonel being able to take away any semblance of Hero’s humanity, to reveal him as merely meat, saturates the air. It is just before this “no fucking way” moment becomes real that the Colonel ends the performance, so that the “Yankee,” and the audience, shall not “die of fright.” Yet after this seeming release of performative tension, the mock-auction concludes with one of the only significant onstage acts of violence in all three parts of the play. The threat of physical punishment, torture, or death that guarantees slavery is quickly, tersely realized with the Colonel’s brief movement. [51] The auction block act is powerful enough to cause Smith to momentarily drop his own performance of passing: “you don’t know anything about us,” he remarks to the Colonel, before catching himself and suggesting that “us” means “Yankees.” [52] Seeing Hero on display is all too close to Smith’s own remembered trauma of being sold at auction. Parks deftly demonstrates that this spectacle reinforces how Smith and Hero see each other, the real “us.” The performative residue of the auction act hangs over the two men even after the Colonel leaves the stage to check on the armies’ movements. Left alone, Smith reveals to Hero that he’s really a Private in a Union colored regiment, not a Captain, and therefore a mixed-race, former slave himself. We must quickly reassess our understanding of all that has just transpired. It is implied that Smith gave his own price as his guess for Hero’s worth, as he later tells Hero that he cost around the same price as Hero did when he was last sold. Smith’s estimation of Hero is thus tied to the former’s own perceived fiscal value. Smith, however, goes on to oppose their prices and attendant value with the oft-debated and enigmatic term, “Freedom.” Echoing Homer in Part One, Smith holds out Freedom as something that exists outside of valuation: Smith There’s more to Freedom than I can explain, but believe me it’s like living in Glory. Hero Who will I belong to? Smith You’ll belong to yourself. Hero So when a Patroller comes up to me, when I’m walking down the road to work or to do what-have-you and a Patroller comes up to me and says “Whose Nigger are you Nigger? I’m gonna say, “I belong to myself?” Today I can say, “I belong to the Colonel” Imagining being confronted by a Patroller, Hero holds up his hands. Reminiscent of “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Hero “I belong to the colonel,” I says now. That’s how come they don’t beat me. But when Freedom comes and they stop me and ask and I say, “I’m on my own. I’m on my own and I own my ownself.” You think the’ll leave me be? Smith I don’t know. Hero Seems like the worth of a Colored man, once he’s made Free, is less than his worth when he’s a slave. Smith Is that how come you don’t run off? Hero Maybe. I’m worth something so me running off would be like stealing. Smith Seems to me like you got a right to steal yourself.[53] In imitating the gesture of “Hands up Don’t Shoot,” Hero’s motion links his own ontological uncertainty (will his life have value in a post-slavery world?) to the modern Black Lives Matter protests. Parks maintains that the move developed organically in rehearsals when the actor playing Hero in the premiere, Sterling K. Brown, made this gesture and Parks recognized its resonance immediately, enough for it to subsequently be published as a stage direction. [54] This recognition certainly transferred to the audience, as was demonstrated in the talkback discussion I attended at the American Repertory Theatre production in 2015. Benton Greene, who played Hero in the ART production, maintained the gesture. “The gestic moment in a sense explains the play,” Diamond asserts, “but it also exceeds the play, opening it to the social and discursive ideologies that inform its production.” [55] Members of the audience remarked that they clearly connected Hero’s gesture to the modern protest movement and certainly felt it made the work resonate in the present moment. [56] Hero’s “hands up” gest directly demonstrates the relationship between his potential plight and the larger, institutional systems that encourage and sustain white hegemony both then and now. Smith’s vision of Freedom prepares the way for Hero’s one truly heroic act. When the Colonel leaves the stage to scout ahead once more, Hero lets Smith go, to atone, he attests, for a “horrible wrong” he has done, namely his previous betrayal of Homer. Before he leaves, however, Smith gives Hero his own Union Private’s coat, which the latter then puts on under his own Confederate coat. Paula Guerrero reads this as another moment of Hero’s embrasure of whiteness, as “his inherited soldier’s clothes come to substitute his body, as the power they imply eclipses his black skin, making it invisible.” [57] Alternatively, I contend that it is a communal act of subversion, a rehearsal for more radical acts of resistance that the Chorus shall undertake collectively in Part Three. [58] The coat gest transpires after each man has shown the other his brand, his literal mark of sale. It is instead a restorative moment of what Hartman terms a “belonging together,” a collectively enacted performance that might “redress and nurture the broken body,[offering] a small measure of relief from the debasements constitutive of one’s condition.” [59] Hero has gotten where he is with Smith, not alone, and their moment of cooperation is commemorated via a subversive, hidden costume-piece that Hero shall carry with him. THE UNION OF MY CONFEDERATE PARTS In the final play, The Union of My Confederate Parts, [60] Parks opposes the collective nature of Freedom with Hero’s tragic lack of recognition of the need for others as he relentlessly clings to his heroic identity, even in the face of its implicit connection to marketplace price in Part Two. Nadine M. Knight writes that throughout the three parts of the play, Parks hews to the line of the original Odyssey inasmuch as “freedom is won through the hero’s self-interest, infidelities and delay and does not apply to others.” [61] Conversely, I suggest that throughout Part Three, Freedom is both sought and potentially earned by the more radical Chorus and the influence they excerpt over Penny and Homer, who ultimately leave with them to steal their own Freedom at the play’s conclusion, leaving Hero behind. In The Union of My Confederate Parts, Parks returns us to the slave cabin “in the middle of nowhere,” but there are marked changes to both the characters who populate the stage and to the context within which their performance transpires. Most significantly, the Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves have been sold off, we learn, and are replaced onstage by The Runaway Slaves. The word “Chorus” is dropped from their name, and within their own ranks there is no choral leader, merely three equal figures. They are also played by the same actors. These are the first signs of a more radical shift away from the only nascently assertive Chorus in The Measure of a Man . In Part Three their tone becomes more collective and radical, representing what Douglas Jones, Jr. dubs a “shift from black grief to grievance.” Such collective, choral performances were vital, he notes, in the transition from slavery to freedom in order to create a “collectivist (cultural) politics that positioned the group over the individual.” [62] The Runaway Slaves map this transition in Part Three, consistently challenging Hero’s heroic individualism and winning Penny and Homer to their ranks. Their collective story, and the alliance they forge with Penny and Homer (who ultimately leave with them) forms the spine of Act Three, not Old-Hero’s long-awaited “Return From The Wars” with news not only of the death of the Colonel in the war but also of Lincoln’s far-off signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Runaway Slaves’ time, and by extension they themselves, are no longer commoditized within the measure of the Boss-Master’s workday. The Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves measured how much darkness was left until sunrise and work, but the Runaway Slaves wait for darkness to arrive so that they can run. No time-measuring gestus therefore exists in Part Three. What matters above all else to the Runaway Slaves is Freedom. Freedom from slavery is not the master’s to grant, but can only be attained with others clandestinely, by stealing one’s self. Moten terms this radical stance “fugitivity,” equating blackness itself with a fugitive state, one which represents “a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed.” [63] Consequently, the Runaway Slaves do not occupy the same physical or ideological space as Hero. In the ART production they constantly lurk in the stage-shadows, and do not focus stage-images around the erstwhile protagonist, as they did in Part One. As the action of Part Three proceeds, they become the new, collective protagonist; their interactions with Hero consistently challenge his gests of heroic return and the mark of marketplace which informs them. Appearing onstage, Hero remains, despite his encounter with Smith, heroically stuck, unable to relinquish this role and steal himself. Moreover, in choosing his new name, Ulysses, he links himself even more securely to white heroism. The long ramp again affords him his elaborate entrance into Part Three and as soon as he arrives, Ulysses performs a series of homecoming gests for Penny, Homer, and the Runaway Slaves, ones which seem fitting (to him) for a hero who has returned from the war. However, The Runaway Slaves consistently interrupt these performances from the outset, highlighting their staleness as inherited performances, as well as Ulysses’s own lack of awareness about the actual hopes and dreams of the community to which he has returned. He performs the first of these shortly after arriving: Ulysses kneels on the ground. He gets up. He kneels again. Ulysses This is what I seen them do. When they get home. It just follows but it feels right.[64] This onstage, repeated miming of the heroic return of the soldier, which “they do,” invokes its inherited, white origins (both in the Odyssey and in the Civil War itself): This gest demonstrates Ulysses’s own alienation from himself as well as from the community for which he was supposed to be a hero. His separation from the newly forming onstage community is reinforced by his immediate reaction to the Chorus when they interrupt Ulysses’s homecoming gestures by announcing their presence, emerging from the shadows around the center-stage cabin: The Runaway Slaves First : We’ll be gone by nightfall Second : In case you’re wondering Third : We’re good honest people First : Just like you Ulysses We can’t help you but much[65] Deprived of the Less than Desirable Slaves, for whom he has brought gifts, Ulysses has lost a great portion of the intended audience for his heroic return. “Just like you” implies an equality Ulysses is reluctant to acknowledge. The Chorus splits the lines into their constituent parts, each in turn interrupting Ulysses’s performance. Moreover, “good” and “honest” replace heroic deeds here as merits. Such “ordinary virtues” were part and parcel of the sort of caretaking that went on as bloodlines were continuously broken and remade on antebellum plantations. “Kindness,” remarks Baptist, led slaves to “create families of all sorts, and to care for them, feed them, and teach them.” [66] Far from merely bringing superficial gifts, the Runaway slaves bring fugitivity, this desire for freedom outside the given rules of the stage-world. They are teaching Homer to write, one of great illegalities under slavery, and they will go on to convince Penny to “break the chain” binding her to Ulysses and leave with them. Ulysses’s oppositional gests continue as he gives Homer his gift, a white alabaster shoe-last [67] to somehow replace his missing foot. Ulysses found the shoe-last in a burnt-out store and he assures Homer that it is expensive: Ulysses Homer, this here’s for you From his satchel, he pulls out a foot, more like a shoe last, made of white alabaster. Homer A foot. The Runaway Slaves First : not dark enough Third : not yet Second : Not dark enough to jet.[68] The Runaway Slaves again interrupt, cutting into Ulysses’s gift-giving performance and underlining its absurd shortfall. They in fact repeat to Homer a refrain that was his own earlier in the scene (“it’s not dark enough yet/to jet”), again inciting him to be true to their shared convictions to escape. “It’s not dark enough” becomes a double entendre that cements the collective defiance of Ulysses’s white heroism. Since the alabaster shoe last is “expensive,” Homer is supposed to be happy with the white foot. Ulysses is blind to this disparity, expressing genuine surprise when Homer is not thrilled with this token gesture, clearly meant to assuage Ulysses’s personal guilt. “It’s not dark enough” refers not only to the foot itself, but also to the fading light of the day and its potential for transgression, for fugitivity, one in which Homer himself is becoming keenly invested. The Runaway Slaves, Penny, and Homer are in fact in the midst of forming a collective that is “dark enough” to escape to Freedom; they are giving a value to blackness outside of its marketplace price. They begin to articulate a fugitive culture that is what both Hartman and Jones term oppositional, “a culture [which] resists dominant ideologies, values, and action,” [69] here most specifically an individualism associated with capitalist valuation. “Dark enough/to jet” suggests that blackness may soon become radically black (jet), which will allow the Runaway Slaves (along with Homer and Penny) to steal themselves together. Ulysses’s desire to be a hero ultimately ensures his own tragic downfall. He cannot escape the equation of the hero with value, and, this idea of value insidiously affects how he sees his fellow slaves, including even Penny. Following his “heroic” gests, Ulysses prepares to read a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation which he has brought with him when he suddenly “ decides to discuss another matter instead. ” He announces after a Spell and a Rest that he has “brought something home for [himself]” [my emphasis]. [70] This “something” is in fact his new wife, Alberta. [71] He explains to Penny that he decided to marry someone else since they could not have children (he assumes it is her issue and is unaware that Penny has in fact become pregnant with Homer’s child in his absence). He even suggests that Penny might stay behind to help Alberta tend the house; the gift he has brought for Penny is, quite bluntly, a gardening spade. This misogynistic, dehumanizing vision of Alberta as a gift, as “something” for himself, specifically a thing that might allow him to sire children, and — together with Penny and her new spade — work his little piece of land, is alarmingly close to the Boss-Master’s own views of slaves as interchangeable property, as marketplace flesh to be bred. Moreover, as Paula Guerrero points out, he even withholds telling the slaves about their own proclaimed freedom to discuss a personal matter. [72] Despite his encounter with Smith and his momentary consideration of the radical stance of “belonging together,” he decides, ultimately, to remain a hero. As Penny retreats into the tiny cabin, the Runaway Slaves once more intervene. Moving out of the shadows, they come into the full lights of the scene as night begins to fall over the stage and the stage-light turns increasingly blue: Third : Inside, Penny makes up the marriage bed And in doing so she takes her place in a long line of the Wronged Come out of the house, true wife, true love, Second : Come with us First : Come with us Third : Come break the chain. (Rest) First : I wish it was dark enough Third : I wish it was dark enough Second : Dark enough to jet. First, second and third : Not yet Not yet Not yet Not yet. Homer It will be soon.[73] It is precisely this “collectivist yearning for liberation” remarks Jones, that directly “fueled black resistance to enslavement” [74] The Chorus implores Penny to break the long chain of inherited wrong and Homer, hearing his own refrain once more, provides a resounding affirmative that it is almost time to do so, ending the choral ode. [75] The messianic future tense of the ultimate line brings the ode into our own time, where it is still not “dark enough” but “will be soon.” We, too, are being asked to imagine a world otherwise. It is Penny, upon returning, who makes the final, resounding choice of the act, permanently rejecting the passive role of the original Penelope: she leaves Ulysses behind to head north with Homer and the Runaway Slaves. Ulysses has come home from the wars, but no audience remains, save his talking dog, for his heroism. Moreover, his first act of Freedom is to bury his former master, who never actually freed him. His plight remains resolutely tragic, and his tragic choice amounts to refusing to renounce his perceived exceptionalism. Yet even Ulysses ultimately retains a trace of this collectivity and the moment he shared with Smith in Part Two: he keeps Smith’s coat. This “truth” is the war-story Ulysses may one day tell his children, the truth of how he came to possess the coat, and it shall perhaps be a story about his one actually heroic act, which involved solidarity with another former slave. [76] Parks employs a series of strategic, gestic performances across all three parts of Father Comes Home from The Wars : all her characters are marked by the marketplace, and we witness performances that both reinforce that marking but also those which demonstrate collective, performed resistance to it. “The black radical imagination,” Robin Kelley remarks, “is a collective imagination…it is fundamentally a product of struggle, of victories and losses, crises and openings, and endless conversations circulating in a shared environment.” [77] Father Comes Home from The Wars consistently confronts its audience with these crises, but also points towards openings, towards a potential for transcendence: one may, in fact, steal one’s self and run with others, embracing fugitivity and a radical, collective improvisation in the face of the pervasive mark of the marketplace. One may also simply wear another man’s coat to remind one’s self of Freedom and its possibilities. We are forced to consider both choices. Parks’s use of her own, revised Epic form allows for a broad cultural critique about how the mark of the marketplace and its lasting legacies dehumanize all of her characters. If we need heroes to resolve the action, this says a lot about both the past and present state of things. “The heart of the thing won’t change easy or quick,” [78] as Private Smith opines, but Parks provides a space for fugitivity, allowing the audience space within the shared environment of the theatre to question the mark of the marketplace’s enduring legacies, perhaps engendering a radical blackness that is “dark enough” to destabilize them References [1] Several short plays in 365 Days/365 Plays do address the Civil War and its contemporaneity. Suzan-Lori Parks, 365 Days/365 Plays (New York: TCG, 2006). The genesis of Father Comes Home actually began with 365 Days/ 365 Plays , which features eleven different works with the title “Father Comes Home from the Wars.” Each features a series of fathers returning from various wars. The premiere production of Father Comes Home took place at the Public Theater in New York on 28 October 2014. The design and production personnel then transferred to the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, with a predominantly new cast. This was the production which I saw myself in Feb. 2015. Subsequently, it has been performed at various professional and non-professional venues both in the United States and abroad. [2] Many scholars have discussed both Lincoln works. See especially the chapter “Resurrecting Lincoln: The America Play and Topdog/Underdog in Deborah Geis, Suzan Lori Parks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008): 97-125; Verna Foster, ““Suzan-Lori Park’s Staging of the Lincoln Myth in The America Play and Topdog/Underdog,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 17, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 24-35. Works that discuss the two plays in tandem tend to focus primarily on the figure of Lincoln as opposed to the broader historical context of which he is a part. [3] Parks has remarked that the play will have a total of nine parts; the other two sections shall transpire during other wars. Suzan-Lori Parks, “The ART of Human Rights with Suzan-Lori Parks,” American Repertory Theatre, 18 February 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmB3fJRAroo . Harvard University streamed this talkback session after the play, which I also attended. [4] Parks, “ART of Human Rights.” [5] Suzan-Lori Parks, Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1,2 and 3 (New York: TCG, 2015), 98. [6] Erica R. Edwards, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2012), 20-21. [7] Paula Guerrero, “Reformulating Freedom: Slavery, Alienation and Ambivalence in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3 ) , ” Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media, no. 2, (2018): 46. [8] Paul Carter Harrison, “Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars: An Arrested Development , ” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 15, no 2 (Fall 2015): 33. [9] In Part three there are only three choral members and no leader. At least in the Public Theater and American Repertory Theatre productions, in part 3 the fourth choral member instead plays Hero’s talking, cross-eyed dog, Odd-See. [10] Elin Diamond, “Brechtian Theory/Feminist Theory: Towards a Gestic Feminist Criticism,” TDR 17, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 84. [11] Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6. [12] Edward Baptist, The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 33, 245. [13] Cailtyn Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 126. [14] Rosenthal, 135. [15] Laura Dougherty, “ Father Comes Home from the Wars, by Suzan-Lori Parks,” Theatre Journal 67, no. 3 (Oct. 2015): 562. [16] Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 309. [17] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003), 6. [18] Moten, In the Break, 21. [19] Soyica Diggs Colbert, Black Movements. Performance and Cultural Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017 ), 2. [20] Robert Patterson, ““12 Years a What? Slavery, Representation and Black Cultural Politics in 12 Years a Slave, ” The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 24-25. [21] Hartman writes: “what are the constituents of agency when one’s social condition is defined by negation and personhood refigured in the fetishized and fungible terms of object or property?” Scenes of Subjection, 52. [22] Parks, Father Comes Home, 5. [23] Parks, Father Comes Home, 5. The character names are in bold in the original script. [24] Diamond, 90. [25] Harvey Young, “Choral Compassion: In the Blood and Venus, ” Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, ed. Kevin J Wetmore and Alycia Smith-Howard (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007): 41,44. [26] Parks, Father Comes Home, 10. [27] Moten, In the Break, 2. [28] Parks, Father Comes Home, 11. [29] Rosenthal 144. [30] Parks, Father Comes Home, 42. [31] Parks, Father Comes Home , 34. [32] Moten, In the Break, 89, 21. [33] To emphasize its importance, Parks consistently capitalizes Freedom in her text, so I am following that style in this essay. [34] Parks, Father Comes Home, 47. [35] Hartman, 69. [36] Parks, Father Comes Home, 51. [37] Hartman, 59, 61. [38] Hartman, 48. [39] Parks may be referencing the historical battle in fact called the Battle of the Wilderness , which was fought between Union and Confederate forces from 5-7 May 1864, and was inconclusive in its outcome. [40] Hartman, 37. [41] Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 211. [42] Roach, 215. [43] Diamond 89. Douglas Jones Jr. also elaborates on this theatre of the marketplace, which he calls the “shared communion in the rites of the slave market – the looking, stripping, touching, bantering and evaluating [in which] white men confirmed their commonality with the other men with whom they inspected the slaves.” Douglas Jones, Jr, “Slavery and the Design of the African-American Theatre,” The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre (Cambridge: UK, Cambridge University Press, 2013), 20. [44] Parks, Father Comes Home , 67. [45] Diamond, 90. [46] This was the same stump upon which Hero’s own foot was almost cut off in Part One of the ART production, to “take the edge off Boss’ Anger” when Hero at least initially decides he shall not go to the war. We can only assume it was also the stump upon which Homer’s own foot was cut off by Hero earlier. [47] Parks, Father Comes Home, 75. [48] Hartman, 38. She quotes L.M. Mills, a former slave: “when a negro was put on the block he and to help sell himself by telling what he could do. If he refused to sell himself and acted sullen, he was sure to be stripped and given thirty lashes.” [49] Parks, Father Comes Home , 79-80. [50] Parks, “Elements of Style,” 16. [51] Parks refusal to stage such violence on a larger scale is tactical. “If the scene of the beating readily lends itself to an identification with the enslaved, notes Hartman about Douglas’ description of the beating of Aunt Hester in the Narrative, “it does so at the risk of fixing and naturalizing this condition of pained embodiment,” 20. Parks distances us from the shallow empathy of seeing Hero stripped and beaten in favor of a more complex engagement with the material conditions of slavery. Additionally, Edward Baptist remarks that the slave auction was designed to “destroy the façade of negotiation with the enslaved and established a community of right-handed power,” 98. The Colonel’s brief, violent action helps to shatter this façade. [52] Parks, Father Comes Home, 80. [53] Parks, Father Comes Home, 96. [54] Michelle Norris, “Suzan-Lori Parks’ New Play, ‘Father Comes Home from the Wars,’” NPR, 5 Dec 2014, www.npr.org . www.npr.org/2014/12/05/368640540/suzan-lori-parks-new-play-father-comes-home-from-the-wars . [55] Diamond, 90. [56] Parks, “ART of Human Rights.” [57] Guerrero, 52. [58] Parks frequently employs such subversions within more monumental versions of white history. Perhaps the most well-known is the blonde beard the Foundling Father introduces into his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in The America Play , as “his fancy.” Parks, The America Play and Other Works (New York: TCG, 1994), 163 [59] Hartman, 61. [60] The title references Parks union of the varied strands of her play together, specifically the anticipated reunion of Penny and Hero (akin to Penelope and Odysseus/Ulysses in the Odyssey ), as well as the reunion of the country at the war’s conclusion. [61] Nadine M. Knight, “Penelope Gone to the War: The Violence of Home in Neverhome and Father Comes Home from the Wars, New Voices in Classical Reception Studies , no. 11 (2016): 37. [62] Jones, 25. [63] Moten, Stolen Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 131. [64] Parks, Father Comes Home, 141. [65] Parks, Father Comes Home, 143. [66] Baptist, 282. [67] a shoe-last is a foot mold used in making and repairing shoes. [68] Parks, Father Comes Home , 145. [69] Jones, 23. [70] Parks, Father Comes Home, 146-147. [71] Parks reminded the audience during a talkback at the American Repertory Theatre that Troy, the protagonist of August Wilson’s landmark 1985 play Fences , had a mistress named Alberta. Parks picked the name Alberta as Ulysses’ new wife without immediately realizing what she had done, but quickly ascertained that her own protagonist and his plight were “so woven into the groundwater of [her] personal cultural experience,” that the name and the associations it might call to mind in the audience had to stay. Parks, “The ART of Human Rights.”. Also a victim of historical circumstance, Troy never got to play baseball in the major leagues due to the color line. His own fall echoes Ulysses’s, as a series of choices he makes to play within the system as it is, but also to play selfishly, alienates him from his own family. [72] Guerrero, 52. [73] Parks, Father Comes Home, 152. [74] Jones, 20. [75] Edward Baptist speaks to the choral power of work-songs to literally save slaves from death by despair. Lucy Thurston remarked eighty years after her enslavement that when she was considering dropping down and dying, when “she could not bring herself to go on living by herself,“ her fellow slaves begin singing to her in a chorus. “I got happy,” she remarked, “and sang with the rest,” 147. [76] Parks remarked in the talkback that the idea for the play had begun with Hero possessing the two coats. She then wrote backwards to determine how he came by them. “ART of Human Rights.” [77] Robin Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon, 2002), 150. [78] Parks, Father Comes Home, 98. Footnotes About The Author(s) DR. MICHAEL JAROS is Associate Professor of English at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in dramatic literature. His research and publications focus primarily on Irish culture and performance in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as contemporary American drama. He holds a PhD from The University of California, San Diego. 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.

Jan Mason Western Connecticut State 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 Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 Jan Mason Western Connecticut State University By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Renata Eastlick, Carman Lacivita, and Anne Scurria in Hartford Stage's Pride and Prejudice Photo: T. Charles Erickson. Pride and Prejudice Kate Hamill, adapted from the novel by Jane Austen (12 Oct. – 5 Nov.) A Christmas Carol : A Ghost Story of Christmas Charles Dickens, adapted by Michael Wilson (24 Nov. – 24 Dec.) Simona’s Search Martin Zimmerman (18 Jan. – 11 Feb.) The Hot Wing King Katori Hall (29 Feb. – 24 Mar.) All My Sons Arthur Miller (11 Apr. – 5 May) 2.5 Minute Ride Lisa Kron (30 May – 23 Jun.) Hartford Stage’s 2023-24 season opened with a delightful production of Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, beautifully directed by Tatyana-Marie Carlo with whimsical costumes by Haydee Zeldeth and elegant scenic design by Sara Brown, complete with revolving stage. This wonderful, witty, whirlwind of a production kept audiences laughing while still managing to tug at their heartstrings when Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy finally pledged their love. Fun was the name of the game in this production with clever musical moments composed by Daniel Baker & Co. and choreographed by Shura Baryshnikov. Hartford audiences were graced with the presence of Anne Scurria, a longtime favorite company member of Providence’s Trinity Repertory Theatre, who gave a crowd-pleasing performance as both Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Bennet in this gender-bent production. It was unfortunate to learn that ticket sales for this enjoyable season-opener fell short of projections. For the past two seasons, Hartford Stage has presented Joe Landry’s pared-down It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play as its holiday offering, but last year that production undersold, and this year the theatre took a cue from its audience, bringing back former Artistic Director Michael Wilson to direct his adaptation of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol . Audiences were clearly hankering for this holiday tradition, and they came out in droves to see this lively, spectacular production that involves many families from the area with its inclusion of dozens of children and local actors. In addition to many returning performers, Allen Gilmore joined the cast as Scrooge for the first time and brought new depth to this familiar character. Alejo Vietti and Zack Brown were responsible for the fabulous costumes, with impressive wigs designed by Brittany Hartman. In January, Hartford Stage began the year with a world-premiere production of Martin Zimmerman’s Simonia’s Search . The story centered on the concept of intergenerational trauma, the idea that trauma experienced by one person may be passed to subsequent generations of a family. Weighty material by any means, though this production managed some lighter moments, with actor Christopher Bannow donning tentacles to play a sea creature in one of the more absurd twists in the non-linear plotline. Every scenic design this season (excepting A Christmas Carol ) blocked off the tricky upstage area of Hartford Stage’s large thrust theatre space, which had the dual effect of shrinking the playing area while bringing the action closer to the audience. Katori Hall’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning play The Hot Wing King was no exception, with an elaborate two-story set designed by Emmie Finckel. The playing space included a detailed living area and kitchen, an upstairs bedroom, and a side yard complete with basketball hoop. The cast skillfully delivered performances that contrasted broad comedic turns with more heartfelt moments. Israel Erron Ford, who appeared in Yale Repertory Theatre’s delightful 2019 production of Twelfth Night , gave an outstanding performance as the character Isom. This lively production was directed by Christopher Betts, rounding out his tenure as the theatre’s inaugural Willis Fellow. In 2020, Hartford Stage joined many of the nation’s cultural institutions in a realignment toward diversity, equity, and inclusion as a response to the abhorrent murder of George Floyd Jr. As part of this intentional work to create a culture of belonging and inclusion, Hartford Stage designed the Joyce C. Willis Fellowship to engage black artists in a two-year residency. Marsha Mason starred as Kate Keller in the April production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, and the powerful name recognition of both leading lady and playwright proved to be a big draw for regional Hartford audiences. Riw Rakkulchon designed the impressive set for the backyard of the Keller home, complete with a back porch of a two-story 1950s suburban house and grass-filled yard. Marsha Mason did not disappoint, and the strong ensemble gave compelling performances in Miller’s play about duty and betrayal. Lena Kaminsky gave a tour-de-force performance in 2.5 Minute Ride, Lisa Kron’s one-woman show, to round out the season in June. The simple set of cardboard boxes by Judy Gailen and effective lighting by Daisy Long deftly guided the audience through the sprawling storyline which included international travel and leaps through time spanning most of the last century. Hartford Stage has settled into a new normal post-pandemic that must be less frenzied and is certainly more economical. Prior to the pandemic,the theatre consistently presented six or sometimes seven productions in a season over and above the dutifully presented annual holiday show A Christmas Carol, which they previously treated as a separate entity and did not ever include in their season lineups. Since reopening post-pandemic, Hartford Stage has presented six shows, including A Christmas Carol . This reduction of one to two productions per year includes a shift in scheduling that puts one production in the fall before the holiday show instead of two, and four plays spanning the months of January to June. Given the theatre industry’s current trend for equitable, safe workplaces with reasonable schedules, this new normal may be a much-needed shift to a manageable workload. It should be noted however, that these reduced seasons are accompanied by a reduction in staff and sources of funding. A comparison of program notes from this season and one from the 2017-2018 season shows a reduction in artistic and administrative staff by a number ranging between one to five people across most departments, with the abolishment of staffing for apprentices and writers under commission. It is also made clear by this comparison that the number of institutional and individual donors is down from pre-pandemic levels. Although Hartford Stage has a strong history of new play development, it seems that next year there will be a pause to that tradition as well. Next season includes the classics Romeo and Juliet, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the holiday extravaganza A Christmas Carol, along with more contemporary works: Two Trains Running, Laughs in Spanish, and Hurricane Diane. This reviewer hopes Hartford Stage will continue to build back post-pandemic and succeed in its efforts to consistently bring audiences back to the theatre. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Jan Mason has directed theatre in Boston, Connecticut, and New York City, and she has directed opera in Connecticut and Italy. In New York City she developed new plays with Ensemble Studio Theatre (Theatre Lab Member); The Women’s Project (Director’s Forum Member); Rattlestick (Artistic Associate); and New Georges (Affiliated Artist and Roaring Girl). She teaches and directs at several Connecticut colleges and universities. In 2023 her play Lost & Found was produced in a festival of new work in Vermont, and her play Jack & Jill was published in Mini Plays Magazine and Literature Today . 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.

Tison Pugh Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 1 Visit Journal Homepage Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Tison Pugh By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF A relatively new term in the critical lexicon, ludonarratology theorizes the intersection of games and narrative structures in a particularly apt formulation for the theatrical world. Of the intersection of gaming and literary art, Astrid Ensslin explains that “narrative, dramatic, and/or poetic techniques are employed in order to explore the affordance and limitations of rules and other ludic structures and processes.” [1] That is to say, ludic, literary, dramatic, and poetic themes and structures often overlap, with kaleidoscopic refractions of form, structure, and story. From this new perspective, ludonarratology allows a clearer eye on the ways in which the theatre encourages its actors, producers, and audiences to engage in the rituals of play. Certainly, as a site simultaneously recreational and professional in its ambitions, the theatre multiplies the ludonarrative potential of characters qua players, in that actors must adopt the personae of their roles, with these characters then assuming complementary or contrasting stances toward one another as the plot unfolds. Such a dynamic is strikingly evident in Edward Albee’s masterpiece, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), the first act of which alerts viewers to its ludic themes through the subtitle “Fun and Games.” The actors undertaking the parts of Martha and George and of their late-night guests, Honey and Nick, must bring to life the antagonism expressed in the protagonists’ mutually tormenting games, with these sadomasochistic structures challenging viewers to consider the inherent ambiguity of Martha’s and George’s relative positions to each other. Much formalist, structuralist, and even poststructuralist narratology assumes that a given text’s protagonist is clearly identified, and much ludology similarly envisions a sharp distinction between the competitors of a game, yet sadomasochistic ludonarratology, as an interpretive and eroticized dynamic, complicates these simplistic views. Indeed, sadomasochism dismantles the certainty of many narratives because it implicitly—and sometimes explicitly—blurs the categories of sadist and masochist, leaving interpreters of the ludic story unsure of its overarching direction and thus capable of identifying with the players only through an ephemeral sense of relation that might waver in the scene’s next beat. When a game’s players continually shift in their respective positions toward one another, how can one win, how can the other lose, and how can viewers pierce through the dissolution of ostensibly antagonistic roles to determine the game’s meaning? Sadomasochistic ludonarratology envelops characters, players, and interpreters in complex wrangling over the very meaning of desire, with striking repercussions to the play of the game for all involved, particularly when plotlines reveal the characters and structures hidden from view that nonetheless guide the game’s unfolding. Under such circumstances, absence and inaction function as meaningfully as presence and play, alerting interpreters to the structural secrets hidden yet subversively in effect in sadomasochistic narratives. Theatre, Character, and Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology As a whole, the theatre creates a ludic world in and of itself, one that is defined by its lexicon of play, in which playwrights pen plays brought to life by actors playing roles. The theatrical experience is by definition an immersive one, and Sebastian Domsch posits the necessity of immersion for ludonarrative experiences: “Playing games and reading fiction are both activities that involve the temporal and partial neglect of knowledge in order to function.” [2] We know the gameworld differs from the real world, but it proceeds apace into the ludonarrative pleasures at hand. Beyond this creation of a playful zone, the theatre approximates a game in the tension between the guidelines of performance codified in a script and the inherent potential to disrupt these expectations. Building on Elizabeth Bruss’s foundational work in literary ludonarratology, Lynda Davey theorizes that theatrical narratives exhibit ludic features both in the interactions of playwrights and spectators and in the additional elements introduced through the narrative’s inherent performativity, which must be realized by actors, mise-en-scène, lighting and other requisite elements of a theatrical production. [3] Blanket statements about the theatre’s ludic aspects cannot cover all plays and all performances, yet sufficient overlap between theatre and game arises for ludonarratology to illuminate their mutual pleasures. Surely Tom Bishop is correct in his statement that “one does not need a fully worked-out theory of the nature and place of play in human life to perceive or discuss the ludic in drama.” [4] It is the objective of this essay, if not to propose a universal theory of drama, to flesh out a theory of sadomasochism in a particular theatrical artifact while suggesting its utility throughout a range of ludonarrative forms. Games require players, plays require characters, and characters require actors (i.e., players) to play them, with the overlap among these terms highlighting the ludic potential in dramas that stage agonistic and antagonistic relationships among their characters. Many formalist and structuralist theories of narrative envision characters primarily as essential functions of a story deployed to advance its plot, such that they retreat from any sense of organic individuality into a strictly utilitarian position. Aristotle, in his foundational assessment of narrative and drama, asserts that characters must align with a given plot’s ambitions: “In the characters too, exactly as in the structure of the incidents, [the poet] ought always to seek what is either necessary or probable, so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort.” [5] Extending this Aristotelian view, Joel Weinsheimer points to the ways in which narrative structures envelop and thereby erase characters: “As segments of a closed text, characters at most are patterns of recurrence, motifs which are continually recontextualized in other motifs. In semiotic criticism, characters dissolve.” [6] Characters become subsumed as their narratives progress, acting in a particular fashion so as to adhere to the expectations of the plotline’s unfolding. Both narratives and games are almost universally established upon a bedrock of conflict, and Baruch Hochman pinpoints the utility of antagonism for discerning a given character’s motivation and identity: “we tend to think of character—of people, to begin with—in terms of conflict, which may be moral, social, or psychological in nature.” [7] Viewers understand the rudimentary structure of many ludonarrative artifacts simply by identifying the characters’ relationship to one another through this lens of conflict. And certainly, such a binary relationship pitting protagonist against antagonist is encoded into the characters of myriad narratives and games, both in the theatre and beyond, such that the assumption of a sharply defined antagonism bleeds into critical perspectives on narratology and interpretation. The binary of protagonist/antagonist, nearly ubiquitous as a narrative and ludic device, predetermines a story’s outcomes, as Ronald Jacobs details: “By arranging the characters of a narrative in binary relations to one another, and doing the same thing with the descriptive terms attached to those characters, narratives help to charge social life with evaluative and dramatic intensity.” [8] Interpreters can anticipate much of the developing action of a drama simply by understanding the characters’ relationships to one another through the oppositional logic of protagonist versus antagonist, in much the same manner as spectators of a game. Whereas formalist and structuralist insights into characters focus on their positions in an overarching storyline, poststructuralist insights have expanded an understanding of their necessity beyond the paradigmatic and functionary. James Phelan discerns characters performing in a trifold fashion as mimetic (representing a personality), thematic (representing a central idea), and synthetic (representing a narrative construct). [9] The theatre productively complicates the concept of character, and Brian Richardson, in terms similar to Phelan’s, argues that dramatic characters fulfill mimetic, formal, and ideological functions, as he further theorizes the necessity of a “performative fourth dimension” in light of the fact that “when a play is enacted on stage, the characters’ portrayal by actors can greatly affect the representation and its reception; dramatic representation by its very nature tends to complicate, enhance, or dissolve the unity of a character.” [10] A particular character bears the potential to shift markedly when performed, as the actor undertaking this role might strengthen or undermine its defining aspects through the vagaries of performance, and although it is more likely that a performance would alter a character’s mimetic features, shifts in its thematic and synthetic functions are possible, too. As Thomas Malaby proposes, games are inherently processual—“Every game is an ongoing process. As it is played, it always contains the potential for generating new practices and new meanings, possibly refiguring the game itself”—with this assessment readily applicable to the ways in which plays and the characters within plays shift according to the codes of performance. [11] Ludonarrative characters liberated from zero-sum formulations of victory/loss operate within a similar framework, for in these instances they transcend the default archetypal positions of protagonist or antagonist. Typically, to play a game involves seeking to defeat one’s opponent yet not concomitantly to view one’s opponent as the co-protagonist of this joint endeavor. In many texts, whether ludonarrative or not, the protagonist and antagonist share the goal of victory over the other, no matter how loosely this victory might be defined, with disruptive potential emerging when their wrangling implicitly troubles any narratological assumption of a single protagonist journeying through various plot points to the climax and then concluding with the dénouement. Whereas in many instances the protagonist and antagonist represent simply the flip sides of the same coin, in other circumstances the “protagonist” and the “antagonist” inhabit roles defined by their mutual aggression but also by the potential for their mutual overlap such that the binary dividing them crumbles. For the interpreter of such a ludonarrative artifact, one’s sense of kinship with a protagonist is always provisional, and no end of interpretive alliances could be formed with characters assigned an antagonistic position that they nonetheless evade. As a hermeneutic relevant to desire, narrative, and game, sadomasochism enlightens the fruitful possibilities of disentangling the protagonist/antagonist binary and instead locating characters qua players in fluctuating relationships to one another. At first glance, sadomasochism would appear to represent yet another instantiation of binary logic: sadist versus masochist, in an erotic ritual pitting protagonist versus antagonist under a veneer of cruelty. Indeed, Leopold Sacher-Masoch’s foundational text of masochism, Venus in Furs , ends explicitly with a moral based on antagonism: the protagonist Severin, humiliated and defeated following his affair with the alluring Wanda, realizes that “woman, as Nature created her and as man up to now has found her attractive, is man’s enemy; she can be his slave or his mistress but never his companion.” [12] Venus in Furs delineates masochistic ritual as a game to be won or lost, yet this is only one potential ending of a sadomasochistic encounter, particularly when the binary of sadist versus masochist is reassessed as a complementary positionality accessible to both players. These archetypal positions need not stand in direct opposition to each other but might instead enable fluctuating, orbiting points of contact. In sadomasochism’s most profound contradiction, a masochist typically seeks out a sadist, thereby initiating the scripts that they will fulfill in complementary service to each other, yet in so doing, the masochist, at least implicitly and if only temporarily, assumes the dominant position. In a cash-based, capitalist economy of desire, those who write the checks control the scenarios, even while casting themselves as the abject and pitiable site of desire’s unchecked degradations. In this light, sadomasochism shatters the logic of much formalist and structural narratology, for most narratological theories presume a clearly identified protagonist. Within a sadomasochistic framework, the linearity of the protagonist’s quest gives way to undulating gyres of desire, with the sadist and masochist contributing unpredictably to the form and structure of the plot. The narratological aspects of sadomasochism are readily apparent, with Gilles Deleuze, in his iconic work Coldness and Cruelty , declaring that both masochism and sadism “tell a story.” [13] More so, masochism is inherently dramatic in its roles and staging, with Deleuze outlining its theatrical characteristics: “Masochism is above all formal and dramatic; this means that its peculiar pleasure-pain complex is determined by a particular kind of formalism, and its experience of guilt by a specific story.” [14] The masochist and the sadist ostensibly inhabit radically opposed roles yet this presumption falters in its very enunciation, particularly when the masochist initiates the encounter. In these instances, the purported victims orchestrate the erotic episode that concludes with the consummation of their desires, and so masochists and sadists do not stand against each other in fixed poles but engage in endless negotiations about the very meaning of desire, as Deleuze further explains: “Dialectic does not simply mean the free interchange of discourse, but implies transpositions or displacements of this kind, resulting in a scene being enacted simultaneously on several levels with reversals and reduplications in the allocation of roles and discourse.” [15] In this manner, sadomasochism, rather than enforcing strict binaries, subverts them, and applying this insight to the ludonarrative realm complicates spectators’ understanding both of any game afoot and of the respective positioning of its players. As a ludonarrative construct, sadomasochism applies particularly well to the theatrical realm, for although in many instances a game’s parameters are clearly demarcated, the theatre facilitates a more porous sense of play and game, one in which its players stand on unequal footings. In his description of theatre’s dark play , Richard Schechner underscores how play dissolves its own borders and how play’s protean force summons potentially dangerous situations. The traits of dark play include that it: “(a) is physically risky, (b) involves intentional confusion or concealment of the frame ‘this is play,’ (c) may continue actions from early childhood, (d) only occasionally demands make-believe, (e) plays out alternative selves.” [16] Dark play intriguingly approximates many of sadomasochism’s most complex psychological and erotic factors: in the possibility of physical harm; in the unsettling reality of sexual play at hand; in the potential for a sadomasochistic impulse to have its roots in childhood desires; in the dissolution of the construct of “make-believe” through its insistent, brute enactments; and in the sadist’s and the masochist’s adoption of their roles that allow them to access alternate aspects of their quotidian personas. Schechner further explains: “Dark play occurs when contradictory realities coexist, each seemingly capable of cancelling the other out. . . . Dark play subverts order, dissolves frames, breaks its own rules, so that the playing itself is in danger of being destroyed.” [17] Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? exemplifies these dynamics, in that the audience must “live in this meaning” of the theatrical experience, as they are simultaneously ensnared in Martha and George’s sadomasochistic game that expands ever outward, catching Honey and Nick within its web. Narrative and metanarrative merge as Honey and Nick model the audience’s reaction, with spectators, watching from the promised safety of their seats, becoming entwined in the unfolding game. As a ludonarratological hermeneutic, sadomasochism disrupts the ostensible clarity of players as adversaries, compelling interpreters to forgo the standard binary of victory/defeat for a looser, more ambiguous sense of the game’s boundaries and aims. Martha and George complicate the very meaning of game as they fiercely struggle over their marriage and their phantom child, with Albee collapsing the dualistic force of protagonist and antagonist and leaving only an oscillation of desiring characters in his wake. Martha and George’s Sadomasochistic Games The plot of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is stunning in its apparent simplicity: after attending a faculty party, Martha and George host their new acquaintances, Honey and Nick, for a round of drinks. For the three acts of the play—“Fun and Games,” “Walpurgisnacht,” and “The Exorcism”—Martha and George bicker viciously, frequently ensnaring Honey and Nick in their hostilities, while playing four so-called games: “Humiliate the Host,” “Hump the Hostess,” “Get the Guests,” and “Bringing Up Baby.” [18] The titles of these pastimes allude to Martha and George’s mutual attempts to humiliate each other, to George’s fear of (but potential desire for) cuckoldry, to their joint aggression against Honey and Nick, and to the phantom child that symbolizes their joyless marriage. Each game, C. W. Bigsby notes, “clearly act[s] as a substitute for sexual excitement.” [19] With its classic form, adhering to the Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? marches inexorably to its conclusion, as Martha and George divulge each other’s devastating truths, while their guests both observe this debacle in horror and are conscripted into its play. As Walter A. Davis avows, “Aggression is the force that structures [ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ] by ripping through all masks and roles.” [20] On the narrative’s surface, aggression abounds: Martha’s antagonism toward George positions her as the sadist to his masochist, and she inhabits this role with zest and pleasure, reveling in the humiliation she metes out to him. Before proceeding further into this discussion, however, it should be noted that Albee questioned a sadomasochistic interpretation of their marriage, declaring, “I think [Martha and George] love each other very much. It’s not an ‘S and M’ relationship. I mean there’s some problems there. They’ve had a lot of battles, but they enjoy each other’s ability to battle.” [21] Here Albee appears to envision sadomasochism as incompatible with love, but many would dispute this presumption. Also, Albee graciously conceded to an interviewer pursuing the gender dynamics of his oeuvre, “I don’t observe my plays the way you and other . . . critics observe them. I don’t think about them in those terms, so I can hardly talk about them that way.” [22] As Albee suggests, the fact that he would not discuss his play within a sadomasochistic framework—or likely within a ludonarrative framework as well—does not discount the insights gleaned from these complementary theories. Martha’s sadistic impulses define her character and her relationship with George, particularly when she insults his manhood, pointedly telling Nick and Honey “that maybe Georgie-boy didn’t have the stuff . . . that he didn’t have it in him!” She climactically concludes that he is a “FLOP! A great . . . big . . . fat . . . FLOP!” (210), with her words clearly alluding to his impotent penis. With George symbolically castrated, Martha stands as the more virile of the two, a dynamic further evident when he comments on her masculinity, telling Nick that “Martha is the daughter of our beloved boss. She is his . . . right ball, you might say” (184). Martha agrees, “I’m loud, and I’m vulgar, and I wear the pants in this house because somebody’s got to” (260). Violence, often staged yet painful in its consequences, belongs in the sadist’s repertoire, and Martha recounts an incident of physical abuse when her father was teaching George to box and she sucker-punched him: “I yelled, ‘Hey George!’ and at the same time I let go sort of a roundhouse right . . . just kidding, you know? . . . and he was off balance . . . he must have been . . . and he stumbled back a few steps, and then, CRASH, he landed . . . flat . . . in a huckleberry bush!” (191). Martha’s qualification that she was “just kidding” fractures the binary of play and seriousness, as her punch purportedly launched in jest proves her aggressive physicality with George. Furthermore, in her role as sadist Martha stands symbolically impervious to penetration of any sort, such that it would appear impossible to act upon her or otherwise to overturn the roles of the sadist/masochist dyad. This aspect of her character is evident in her retelling of her schoolgirl days at “Miss Muff’s Academy for Young Ladies.” Through this institution’s crude yet obvious allusion to female genitalia, Martha synechdochally represents herself through her vagina, as she then explains how she was “revirginized” following her brief marriage to the institution’s lawn mower (206). Through the impenetrability of her hymen—registered both in its purported reconstitution following this aborted union and in the phantom child who was never born (and who thus necessitated hymeneal penetration neither in its conception nor in its delivery)—Martha symbolizes the impermeable, imperious woman whose lovers cannot act upon her during even their most intimate encounters. Deleuze tersely comments, “The masochist is morose,” with this assessment applying well to George and his longsuffering, hangdog affect. [23] The hapless victim of his wife’s sadistic torments, George presents himself as emasculated and metaphorically castrated, acquiescing to her sadistic ploys. When Martha asserts that “ Some men would give their right arm for the chance” to marry the daughter of a college president, George replies sardonically, “Alas, Martha, in reality it works out that the sacrifice is usually of a somewhat more private portion of the anatomy” (171). George accepts his masochistic role in the play’s opening act, yet he resents it as well, telling Nick: “Do you think I like having that . . . whatever-it-is . . . ridiculing me, tearing me down, in front of . . . (Waves his hand in a gesture of contemptuous dismissal) YOU? Do you think I care for it?” (214). Explaining to Nick that he has “been trying for years to clean up the mess I made”—referring to his marriage to Martha—he reveals his coping strategies to be the masochistic triad of “accommodation, malleability, adjustment” (222). In this merciless game in which they have entangled themselves, George relies on a strategy of accommodation, apparently having lost any hope of shifting roles with his tormentor. Notwithstanding the appearance of Martha and George’s oppositional roles as firmly established, Albee adumbrates the inevitable erosion of the sadomasochistic binary. In a crucial revelation of the interlocking and mutually undercutting identities of sadist and masochist, George admits the pretense of their outwardly antagonistic relationship: “Now, on the surface of it . . . it looks to be a kind of knock-about, drag-out affair, on the surface of it” (223). Also, at several moments throughout the evening, George stages small rebellions against Martha’s sadistic tyranny, pettily insulting her. “Well, that was probably before my time ” (157), he declares in response to Martha’s questions about Bette Davis’s films, and when discussing the condition of her teeth, he again needles her about her age (163). Such scenes corrupt the logic of sadomasochism as based upon fixed positions, a theme amplified when Martha delights in George’s staged murder of her. He “shoots” her with a gun from which “a large red and yellow Chinese parasol” blossoms, and she asks him, “Where’d you get that, you bastard?” with the stage direction noting she does so with a joyous intonation (192). Indeed, this mock-violent ploy clearly arouses her, as she soon intones, “Yeah . . . that was pretty good. ( Softer ) C’mon . . . give me a kiss,” and then escalates this erotic encounter by placing his hand on her breast (193). George spurns her advances—“What are we going to have . . . blue games for the guests?”—and it is evident that his words wound Martha, as it also evident that he has seized momentary advantage in their sadomasochistic sparring. Martha encourages George to leave aside his masochistic posturing—“I like your anger. I think that’s what I like about you most . . . your anger” (162)—yet it is her sadistic treatment of him that sparks his anger, in a repeating circle of abuse and attraction. The cruelty of Martha and George’s game is balanced out by its pleasures, and several moments suggest that George not only approves but enjoys Martha’s humiliating tactics, thus pointing to the gratification he finds in their sadomasochistic rituals. In one of her salvos against his masculinity, Martha begins, “George hates Daddy . . . not for anything Daddy’s done to him, but for his own . . .”; as her words trail off, the stage directions indicate that George is “ Nodding . . . finishing it for her ” as he then declares “inadequacies” (205). This moment depicts George’s participation in his emasculation, his guiding of the sadist who torments him yet does so at his behest. A telling sign that George understands his masochistic role appears in his ready acceptance of cuckoldry, or more accurately, his insistence on his masochistic role such that cuckoldry becomes nearly unavoidable. Adultery and cuckoldry can be likened to a zero-sum game in which the lovers win and the cheated-on spouse loses, but George bleaches cuckoldry of its zero-sum dynamics by embracing his masochistic role. When Martha begins seducing Nick, George observes them, with the stage directions indicating not merely his awareness but his enjoyment of his wife’s actions: “ George enters . . . stops . . . watches a moment . . . smiles . . . laughs silently, nods his head, turns, exits, without being noticed ” (266). When Martha warns him, “We’re going to amuse ourselves, George,” he agrees, “Unh-hunh. That’s nice.” She further cautions, “You might not like it,” but he genially accedes, “No, no, now . . . you go right ahead . . . you entertain our guests” (269). This encounter might appear to contribute to the gradual unraveling of the sadomasochistic roles that Martha and George have assumed in their marital games, yet it would be more accurate to observe that they underscore the paradoxical and chimerical intransigence of these positions while also admitting the masochist’s latent power. This theme continues as George refuses to step out of his masochistic role—or in other words, he insists that the game continue despite the fact that doing so might compel Martha to cuckold him—and this refusal ironically highlights his agency in the game through his insistent and unwavering passivity. Indeed, when Martha tries to shock him with her adulterous liaison—“Never mind that. I said I was necking with one of the guests”—George encourages her, “Good . . . good. You go right on” (270). As the scene continues, he soon tells her with a touch of exasperation: “Lord, Martha, if you want the boy that much . . . have him . . . but do it honestly, will you? Don’t cover it over with all this . . . all this . . . footwork” (272). George insists on his masochism in this scene, insists that his wife cuckold him, and in so doing, asserts the agency latent in passivity by ascribing this agency to his wife’s staged desires. In such moments, sadomasochism undercuts the presumed telos of ludology in the victory/defeat dyad, for George’s victory over Martha would arise in his refusal to abandon his status as masochist, thus compelling her to remain in her sadistic and cuckolding role despite her hesitance to assert her dominance to this degree. For Martha, any ostensible victory over George by cuckolding him would entail a latent acknowledgment of the force of his passivity, and for George, his erotic defeat through his wife’s betrayal would entail the cuckold’s ultimate victory in the pleasure of abjection. The fluctuating erotics of cuckoldry are further confused by George’s expressed desire not to be cuckolded, evident when he recognizes Nick as a threat and cautions him, “You realize, of course, that I’ve been drawing you out on this stuff, not because I’m interested in your terrible lifehood, but only because you represent a direct and pertinent threat to my lifehood, and I want to get the goods on you” (228). In her reading of the play’s homosocial dynamics, Clare Virginia Eby proposes that Albee “shows how competitive masculinity sustains marriage,” further positing that the playwright depicts the manner in which “homosocial rivalry serves to underwrite heterosexual stability.” [24] George seeks to preserve the sanctity of his union with Martha while simultaneously pushing her to cuckold him through his insistent masochistic posturing. The games of “Humiliate the Host,” “Hump the Hostess,” and “Get the Guests” would appear to necessitate varying strategies to achieve their eponymous objectives, but Martha and George’s sadomasochistic marriage effectively responds to the shifting ludic engagements of the evening, for it is the very adaptability of the sadomasochistic dyad that proves its utility in each round of their evening of games. The play’s façade of sadist versus masochist cracks further at numerous points, as Martha and George expose the contradictions inherent in the sadomasochistic dyad. In a striking exchange, George acquiesces to his masochistic role as Martha confesses her exhaustion with sadism: GEORGE : You can sit there in that chair of yours, you can sit there with the gin running out of your mouth, and you can humiliate me, you can tear me apart . . . ALL NIGHT . . . and that’s perfectly all right . . . that’s OK. . . . MARTHA : YOU CAN STAND IT! GEORGE : I CANNOT STAND IT! MARTHA : YOU CAN STAND IT!! YOU MARRIED ME FOR IT!! (A silence) GEORGE ( Quietly ): That is a desperately sick lie. MARTHA : DON’T YOU KNOW IT, EVEN YET? GEORGE ( Shaking his head ): Oh . . . Martha. MARTHA : My arm has gotten tired whipping you. (257-58) In many ways, this scene represents the critical crux of interpreting Martha and George’s sadomasochistic relationship, and thus of interpreting the play as a whole: is Martha correct that George married her precisely for her sadistic talents, of which even she has grown tired, or is he correct that such an allegation is a “desperately sick lie”? It is noteworthy that these lines come shortly after a moment of domestic harmony between the two, when Martha compliments George: “It’s the most . . . life you’ve shown in a long time,” to which he genially replies, “You bring out the best in me, baby” (256). In this moment of concord, masochist and sadist agree on their mutually satisfying relationship, yet such a moment cannot last given the pressures of their relationship based on the pleasure of conflict. As Martha and George’s games entangle Honey and Nick, the audience witnesses the interpretive disarray created by sadomasochism, for this young couple can neither comprehend nor meaningfully participate in their hosts’ ludic pastimes. Nick disavows any masochistic tendencies in himself, declaring to George that “I just don’t see why you feel you have to subject other people to it” (215). He also states that “flagellation isn’t my idea of a good time,” although he concurs when George suggests that he “can admire a good flagellator . . . a real pro” (215). Honey and Nick denounce the games their hosts are playing: “I don’t like these games,” Honey intones, with Nick agreeing, “Yeah. . . . I think maybe we’ve had enough of games, now” (249). Significantly, Nick understands that any games he plays with George and Martha are unwinnable, that their ludic structures preclude meaningful intervention by outside agents. When George demands Nick’s response to his mock declension of “good, better, best, bested,” Nick explicates his host’s rhetorical trap: “All right . . . what do you want me to say? Do you want me to say it’s funny so you can contradict me and say it’s sad? Or do you want me to say it’s sad so you can turn around and say no, it’s funny. You can play that damn little game any way you want to, you know!” (175). As a ludic experience, sadomasochism establishes a framework that obscures rather than enlightens, and although Nick stumbles upon this truth early in the storyline, he is unable to extricate his wife and himself from the evening’s dark play. George, speaking with feigned awe, approves of Nick’s perceptiveness—“Very good! Very good!” (175)—yet Nick’s comprehension of the game’s traps does not allow him to participate in it and simply emphasizes his role as a bystander ensnared in events beyond his ken. One of the chief tactics in this sadomasochistic game that further destabilizes the identities of its players arises in its allegorical registers, for both the audience and Honey and Nick must pierce through the veil of Martha and George’s blurred accounts of their desires and their lives. In this vein, when George plays “Get the Guests,” he attacks Honey and Nick with an allegorical account of their marriage—“Well, it’s an allegory, really—probably—but it can be read as straight, cozy prose . . . and it’s all about a nice young couple who come out of the Middle-west. It’s a bucolic you see” (250)—as he proceeds to describe Honey and Nick’s marriage and its discontents. According to the stage directions, George ends this part of the game “ abruptly and with some disgust ,” as he concludes, “And that’s how you play Get the Guests” (254). In its doubling of storylines, allegory surrounds a deeper truth with an outer fictional layer, but George ultimately strips the outer layer from the inner, revealing the couple’s humiliating secrets inside. Allegory aligns with ludic sadomasochism in this exchange, for the positions of sadist and masochist establish an interpretative valence for the game that are then radically deconstructed as the game evolves. As allegory encourages interpreters to digest the narrative before them, it also corrupts the potential of interpretation, for the poles of interpretation inevitably shift, and often they do so in light of the savage strategies of the game afoot. As Albee’s conjoining of ludonarrative sadomasochism with allegory corrupts the antagonistic positionality of characters as players, so too does his storyline obscure essential players from view, cloaking their significance to the game’s play and resolution. In particular, the allegorical surface of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? obscures the role of Martha’s father as the instigator of the play’s dysfunctional games. This man, never depicted onstage, lurks in the background of Martha and George’s marriage, with the couple both haunted by his influence and employing him as a totemic weapon. Owing to these inescapable and tortuous family dynamics, they act as children perpetually stunted by living in this man’s shadow, such as when Martha says, “I’m firsty,” with the stage direction stressing that she is “ Imitating a tiny child ” (164). George plays along, calling her his “little yum yum” (213) and suggesting that he will make “a gweat big dwink” for her, his “little mommy” (185). With the epithet “little mommy,” George creates the paradox of an infant parent, one who ostensibly bore him yet who remains preternaturally young and dependent on him for nurturing. Contrasted with these images of Martha and George as developmentally crippled, Martha’s father represents the player who cannot be played against, the character absent from the narrative yet critical to its narrative structure, for his actions have sparked the play’s plot. Martha and George’s marriage and even George’s career have been ordered to his measure; likewise, Martha and George would not have met Honey and Nick if not for his intervention, as George reminds his wife: “If your father didn’t set up these goddamn Saturday night orgies all the time” (158). In defending her invitation to Honey and Nick despite the lateness of the hour, Martha avers, “Because Daddy said we should be nice to them, that’s way,” as she then repeats this rationale in quick succession (160). Enhancing this theme, Albee establishes Martha’s father as an allegorical representation of an arbitrary and callous deity, not just her father but The Father. George states sardonically, “He’s a god, we all know that” (170). In Martha’s account of her father—“Jesus, I admired that guy! I worshipped him . . . I absolutely worshipped him. I still do” (206)—Albee deploys the ambiguity between “Jesus” as a mild exclamation and as a direct address, allowing the conflation between her human father and the Christian deity to deepen the play’s allegorical consideration both of intergenerational and of marital family dynamics. And thus a key critical crux in interpreting Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? emerges in the meaning of a character who shapes the plot but who cannot be held accountable for his actions, who eludes the binary both of antagonist and protagonist and of sadist and masochist while sparking the antagonism that necessitates some sort of resolution. Although one might presume the father/Father corresponds with the sadist—and in Albee’s play it is Martha’s father whose psychic force traumatizes the couple—Deleuze details how this father figure embodies masochistic desire: So when we are told that the character who does the beating in masochism is the father, we are entitled to ask: Who in reality is being beaten? Where is the father hidden? Could it not be in the person who is being beaten? . . . What the subject atones for is his resemblance to the father and the father’s likeness in him: the formula of masochism is the humiliated father.[25] Aligning Martha’s father with George admits a perverse logic to the psychosexual dynamics unfolding throughout this torturous evening: Martha avenges herself against the patriarchal authority that controlled her life to the extent of annulling her first marriage and “revirginizing” her, and George allows himself to be humiliated in the effort to humiliate the father who orchestrated his humiliation. Such an interpretation gives psychological clarity to a play whose fraught emotional dynamics have long enthralled viewers, yet the shifting tides of sadomasochism complicate even this logic. As the poles of sadist and masochist inevitably shift, so too must any allegorical vision of Martha’s father as the antagonist of their marital game. This dynamic is evident in the fact that, as much as Martha’s father stands as the narrative’s invisible character, the omnipotent father who haunts and directs the players’ actions, George reveals that this figure can also be strategically deployed in his games with Martha. To invoke the father is to invoke his uncontestable authority, as in George’s cool reply to Martha’s request for a “big sloppy kiss”: GEORGE ( Too matter-of-fact ): Well, dear, if I kissed you I’d get all excited . . . I’d get beside myself, and I’d take you, by force, right here on the living room rug, and then our little guests would walk in, and . . . well, just think what your father would say about that . (164) George evades Martha’s demands for affection, and even in this early moment of the play, destabilizes the sadomasochistic binary upon which their relationship is presumably established. The father/Father is thus a conscriptable character within their antagonistically ludic marriage, one who may be deployed to advance their individual strategies while standing removed from the play at hand. For a drama with only four characters, it is striking that two additional absent fathers contribute to its plotline, with George’s and Honey’s fathers similarly entering the narrative as spectral figures whose influence cannot be evaded. George tells Nick of an incident in which a boy—presumably George himself—accidentally killed his father, with George recalling the aftermath of the fatal car accident: “And in the hospital, when he was conscious and out of danger, and when they told him that his father was dead, he began to laugh, I have been told, and his laughter grew and he would not stop” (218). George escapes his father’s influence by this man’s untimely death, with his hysterical laughter indicating his liberation from this patriarchal regime and an incipient panic induced by this newfound freedom. Nick says of Honey’s father that he “was a man of the Lord, and he was very rich,” detailing this man’s rise to fame and his accumulation of wealth: “He spent God’s money . . . and he saved his own” (226). In these paternal storylines, the fathers direct their children’s and their in-laws’ lives, constraining their choices and identities, such that the father must be surpassed in the quest for self-determination. The marital game, Albee suggests, cannot be played only by wife and husband, for they are ensnared in erotic rituals established by the preceding desires of the patriarchy. The childlessness of both couples then emerges as a definitive rebuff of patriarchy’s claim to futurity, with the children forever scarred by the previous generation ending this game that cannot be won. As Lee Edelman provocatively argues, “The Child . . . marks the fetishistic fixation of heteronormativity: an erotically charged investment in the rigid sameness of identity that is central to the compulsory narrative of reproductive futurism.” [26] Within the fictions of Albee’s play, the couples’ joint childlessness represents an anti-erotic strategy in the overarching sadomasochistic game that constitutes the American family, as they deny the Father’s power by cutting off the roots of social reproduction. The play’s final game—“Bringing Up Baby”—thus illuminates the potential of a ludic escape from the ruts of familial disharmony. Whereas Martha and George’s sadomasochistic games allow for some ambiguity in its strategies, the game concerning their phantom child requires their mutual and strict adherence to its rules. This child symbolizes both the pleasure and the hollowness of their marriage, yet many viewers have expressed disbelief over this aspect of Albee’s play, such that he defended his choice, declaring that “it always struck me as very odd that an audience would be unwilling to believe that a highly educated, sensitive, and intelligent couple, who were terribly good at playing reality and fantasy games, wouldn’t have the education, the sensitivity, and the intelligence to create a realistic symbol for themselves. To use as they saw fit.” [27] The phantom child imbues their marriage with meaning as it also establishes rules for their interactions. By mentioning the child to Honey and Nick, Martha corrupts the game, piquing George’s anger: “I mean, you can make your own rules . . . you can go around like a hopped-up Arab, slashing away at everything in sight, scarring up half the world if you want to. But somebody else try it . . . no sir!” (257). And whereas sexuality provokes eddies of humiliation and desire in their marital games that prove mutually satisfying, if also fraught, Martha appears truly to torment George by suggesting that he is not the father of their phantom child. “He’s not completely sure it’s his own kid,” she impugns, as George replies in shock, “My god, you’re a wicked woman” (202). Even within the realm of fantasy, in which George could be envisioned if not as a virile lover then at least as a genial father, Martha portrays him as impotent to the point that he could not ejaculate the phantom seed of a nonexistent child. The promise of anti-futurity, registered in the refusal to cede to the Father’s authoritarian impulses, entails the end of Martha and George’s game. Some critics have viewed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as ultimately conservative in its sexual politics, as evident in Rachel Blau Duplessis’s observation that in the play’s conclusion, “the humiliated, weak, unsuccessful man is shown to be stronger than the brutal, emasculating woman. The family problems are solved not by investigating their ultimate source . . . but by regulating family relations in a highly normative manner.” [28] From another perspective, however, their sadomasochistic marriage fractures the meaning of traditional gender roles, and through their nonexistent offspring, they have radically reformulated the meaning of family and of narrative closure. Complementing this sadomasochistic reading of the play, it is worthwhile to note that George repeatedly refers to Martha’s and his phantom child as a “little bugger” (201, 210), with this deft allusion to sodomy further highlighting the fruitlessness of their marriage. Indeed, several critics have viewed Albee’s play as a queer allegory. Richard Schechner excoriates it as “perverse and dangerous,” declaring that its theme of “sexual perversity [is] there only to titillate an impotent and homosexual theatre and audience.” [29] Sky Gilbert avows that George is a “gay man . . . with certain obvious, stereotypical gay characteristics” and that Martha “is really a part for a drag queen.” [30] John Clum acknowledges the potential for this queer allegory but argues in contrast, “In a way, it’s a good thing for gay men that [Albee] didn’t [write queer scenes]; for a gay Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would also be antigay.” [31] These various, contradictory readings testify to the protean force of a queer subtext in Albee’s play, one that corresponds well with its themes of sadomasochism and anti-futurity that, to some degree, transcend the genders of the roles. For in the end, Martha and George’s childlessness is the only effective strategy available to them in their jointly sadomasochistic struggle against the Father, a battle that has left them emotionally hollowed yet capable still of feeling, a condition aptly encapsulated in Martha’s assessment of their icy tears: “I cry alllll the time; but deep inside, so no one can see me. I cry all the time. And Georgie cries all the time, too. We both cry all the time, and then, what do we do, we cry, and we take our tears, and we put ’em in the ice box, in the goddamn ice trays (Begins to laugh) until they’re frozen” (273). The play’s conclusion may suggest a slight thaw in their frozen interiors, but the sadomasochistic strains of their marriage and their family hinders any such interpretations from fully recuperating their lives into the range of the heteronormative. Within Albee’s ludonarrative assessment of the American family and its discontents, the pleasure of Martha and George’s marriage arises in their games, as Martha divulges in a rare statement of her affection for her husband: “who keeps learning the games we play as quickly as I can change the rules; who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy, and yes I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: sad, sad, sad” (277). This enigmatic dynamic, evident in the shifting poles of sadist and masochist that embody a core logic that simultaneously falters in its enunciation and enactment, leaves Nick and Honey unsure of how to interpret a marital game that they uncomfortably observe but cannot decipher: “Hell, I don’t know when you people are lying, or what,” Nick resignedly declares (283). The ultimate game against the Father, Martha and George’s sadomasochistic rituals allow them the pleasure of a game that can never be declared, such that it must end when the one inviolate rule is crossed, as George tells Martha: “You broke our rule, baby. You mentioned him . . . you mentioned him to someone else” (307). As Jesper Juul posits of games and their rules, “rules can cue the player into imagining a world,” an apt assessment of the ways in which Martha and George’s rules animate their marriage. [32] Within the rule structure they have created, to speak of the game is to destroy it, yet it is only through speech that Martha and George can enact their rage against an exterior force that has corrupted the very core of their being. Within this instance of sadomasochistic ludonarrativity, the enemy within is the enemy without, with Martha and George striking blindly at themselves, at their guests, and at Martha’s father, playing a marital game that undulates in its play and strategies yet builds to a climax of a child who will never be born, and thus of a Father who cannot initiate another round of the game against Himself through his children. Ludonarrative Theatre and the Masochistic Audience As Martha and George’s marriage demonstrates, sadomasochism illuminates the ways in which hostile play diffuses other, often more threatening acts of violence, providing a release mechanism through the ludic structures implicated by desire. On a narrative level, these dynamics affect the development of the play’s characters, and on a metanarrative level, they affect the play’s audiences as well. Certainly, Albee envisioned Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as ensnaring the audience to the point that they are actively involved in the psychological carnage depicted on stage. In an interview with Matthew Roudané, Albee detailed how conflict and aggression stand at the heart of the dramatic experience: “All drama goes for blood in one way or another. . . . Sometimes the act of aggression is direct or indirect, but it is always an act of aggression. And this is why I try very hard to involve the audience. . . . I want the audience to participate in the dramatic experience. . . . If the drama succeeds, the audience is bloodied .” [33] Following this compelling image of a bloodied audience, Albee proceeded to explain how viewers must participate in the theatrical experience: If audiences approach the theatre . . . and are willing to participate; if they are willing to have the status quo assaulted; if they are willing to understand that the theatre is a live and dangerous experience—and therefore a life-giving force —then perhaps they are approaching the theatre in an ideal state and that’s the audience I wish I were writing for.[34] Theatre as a “live and dangerous experience” entails the dissolution of the border between stage and seats, the eradication of the safe space of viewing through the crumbling of the “fourth wall” that never existed except in the imagination of performers and viewers who desired it. An art form that bloodies, Albee’s ludic theatre positions the audience as the masochist to the narrative’s unfolding, enduring the discomforting storyline for the sake of the ultimate edification of its experience. And further aligned with masochism, playgoers initiate the sadomasochistic scripts of the theatre by purchasing their tickets, proving both their power within its commercial economy while also submitting to the powerlessness of their positions in their darkened seats. What sadomasochism shares with Albee’s sense of ludonarrative drama is the possibility for a safe space that feels unsafe, for the heady illusion of danger that unfolds within an ultimately protected milieu. Numerous theorists have demarcated play’s mercurial flirtations with danger, such as in Clifford Geertz’s classic study of Balinese cockfights, in which the illicit nature of this play, coupled with its potential to reopen and exacerbate latent hostilities, underscores the fact that games cannot always be marshaled into pre-authorized temporal and spatial boundaries. [35] So too with sadomasochism, in its erotic, its narrative, and its ludonarrative incarnations: it is only “play,” yet it is play that allows conflicts to be waged between partners that destabilize their relative positions to each other. The sadist, the masochist, and the complementary roles they inhabit inevitably bleed out from any attempt to cordon “play” from the reality of the ludonarrative event, and any observer of these interactions must likely become implicated as well, for there is no safety in simply observing, as Honey and Nick demonstrate in their blindsided reactions to Martha and George’s vicious games. And from this vantage point, sadomasochism serves as a particularly apt hermeneutic for thinking through ludonarratology’s structures and secrets. Games require players, objectives, and rules governing their interaction, with narratives similarly necessitating characters pursuing an objective while observing various strictures (whether those of realism or fantasy or any other genre). Sadomasochism tweaks these paradigms and reminds players and interpreters alike that structures hide secrets. A sadomasochistic permutation of ludonarrativity may, in many instances, be designed to withhold pertinent structural information—missing characters, undeclared rules, self-destructive strategies—that undermine the promise of the text’s telos. The game ends, as all games and all texts must, but only through the dissolution of key elements in light of the oscillating enactment of desires that plague a plot with aporias that ironically grant it its foundational meaning. For George and Martha, this aporia coheres in the image of the Father, yet the play of sadomasochistic ludonarrativity cannot be delimited to this one invisible antagonist. As it breaks the borders between characters and their desires, between audience and the perceived events, the game brews a heady concoction of desires that enable the players’ identities to fracture and to unite against an Other with whom one could not otherwise contend, for both Albee’s savaged characters and his bloodied audiences. References [1] Astrid Ensslin, Literary Gaming (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 6. [2] Sebastian Domsch, Storyplaying: Agency and Narrative in Video Games (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 27. [3] Lynda Davey, “Communication and the Game of Theatre,” Poetics 13 (1984): 5-15, at 10. For Bruss’s foundational study, see “The Game of Literature and Some Literary Games,” New Literary History 9.1 (1977): 153-72. [4] Tom Bishop, “Shakespeare’s Theater Games,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 40.1 (2010): 65-88, at 67. Bishop offers a strong reading of Shakespeare as a ludologist. [5] Aristotle, Poetics I , trans. Richard Janko (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987), 20. [6] Joel Weinsheimer, “Theory of Character: Emma ,” Poetics Today 1 (1979): 185-211, at 195. [7] Baruch Hochman, Character in Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 51. [8] Ronald Jacobs, “The Narrative Integration of Personal and Collective Identity in Social Movements,” Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations , ed. Melanie Green, Jeffrey Strange, and Timothy Brock (Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 205-28, at 216. [9] James Phelan, Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996), 29, and Living to Tell about It (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 20. [10] Brian Richardson, “Beyond Poststructuralism: Theory of Character, the Personae of Modern Drama, and the Antinomies of Critical Theory,” Modern Drama 40 (1997): 86-99, at 95. [11] Thomas Malaby, “Beyond Play: A New Approach to Games,” Games and Culture 2.2 (2007): 95-113, at 102. [12] Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs , in Masochism (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 141-293, at 271. [13] Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty , in Masochism 7-138, at 130-31. It should be mentioned that Deleuze argues against the possibility of sadomasochism, deriding it as “pseudomasochism” (124) and as a “semiological howler” (134). [14] Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty , 109. [15] Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty , 22. [16] Richard Schechner, “Playing,” Play and Culture 1 (1988): 3-19, at 14. [17] Richard Schechner, “Playing,” 12-13. [18] Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in The Collected Plays of Edward Albee, 1958-1965 (New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2007), 149-311; cited parenthetically, with all italics and capital letters in the original. [19] C. W. Bigsby, “ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee’s Morality Play,” Journal of American Studies 1.2 (1967): 257-68, at 261. [20] Walter A. Davis, Get the Guests: Psychoanalysis, Modern American Drama, and the Audience (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 214. [21] Philip C. Kolin, ed., Conversations with Edward Albee (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), 187. [22] Kamal Bhasin, “Women, Identity, and Sexuality: An Interview with Edward Albee,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 7 (1995): 18-40, at 23. [23] Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty , 71. [24] Clare Virginia Eby, “Fun and Games with George and Nick: Competitive Masculinity in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ” Modern Drama 40.5 (2007): 601-18, at 614. [25] Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty , 60. [26] Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 21. [27] William Flanagan, “The Art of the Theatre IV: Edward Albee: An Interview,” Paris Review 10 (1966): 92-121, at 111; italics in original. [28] Rachel Blau Duplessis, “In the Bosom of the Family: Contradiction and Resolution in Edward Albee,” Minnesota Review 8 (1977): 133-45, at 137. [29] Richard Schechner, “Who’s Afraid of Edward Albee?” Tulane Drama Review 7.3 (1963): 7-10, at 8-9. [30] Sky Gilbert, “Closet Plays: An Exclusive Dramaturgy at Work,” Canadian Theatre Review 59 (Summer 1989): 55-58, at 57-58. [31] John Clum, Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 189. [32] Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 196. [33] Edward Albee, quoted in Matthew Roudané, “ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? : Toward the Marrow,” The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee , ed. Stephen Bottoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39-58, at 51; italics in original. [34] Edward Albee, quoted in Matthew Roudané, “ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ,” 51. [35] As Geertz notes, “Fighting cocks . . . is like playing with fire only not getting burned. You activate village and kin group rivalries and hostilities, but in ‘play’ form, coming dangerously and entrancingly close to the expression of open and direct interpersonal and intergroup aggression (something which, again, almost never happens in the normal course of ordinary life), but not quite, because, after all, it is ‘only a cockfight’” ( The Interpretation of Cultures [New York: Basic Books, 1973], 440). Footnotes About The Author(s) TISON PUGH is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. His recent books include The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom , Precious Perversions: Humor, Homosexuality, and the Southern Literary Canon , and Truman Capote: A Literary Life at the Movies . Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: 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 Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism. Kirsty Johnston. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 240. Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. Amy Cook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Pp. 198. The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. Patricia A. Ybarra. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 247. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 18, Fall, 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF By Philippa Wehle Image Credits: Article From the daily chorusing of the ever-present cicadas to the familiar fanfare of Maurice Jarre’s trumpets, which have announced the opening of new shows in Avignon since early festival times, and the black swifts piercing the sky with their loud screams as they fly over the majestic 14th-century walls - - Avignon, the yearly festival I’ve attended since 1968 with a few missed years, is once more on my mind. Avignon, the name always brings forth indelible memories of navigating my way over cobblestones and through jubilant crowds to the many outdoor cloisters and other spaces serving as theatres during the festival. My yearly foray into this remarkable festival was no exception this year. No matter what shows may have disappointed or which ones delighted, Avignon for me is a yearly must despite my advanced age and frailties. I had to be there for the 77 th Avignon festival. I had to discover what the festival’s new director Tiago Rodrigues had in store for us. Seated among some two thousand spectators in the open-air Honor Court of the Popes’ Palace, I was ready and eager to receive Welfare , a new work by Julie Deliquet, director of the Gérard Philippe theatre in St. Denis. She is only the second woman to be invited to present a show in the Honor Court in the seventy-seven-year history of the festival, and I was looking forward to discovering her work even though some were saying that the Honor Court’s forbidding dimensions call for majestic stagings and that Deliquet’s choice of an ordinary school gymnasium was questionable. Welfare . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage. Deliquet’s Welfare , an adaptation of American filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s 1973 documentary, does indeed take place in a replica of a school gymnasium someplace in New York City in the 1970s. Stagehands are slowly taking down sports equipment and moving other athletic paraphernalia out of the way in preparation for the day’s welfare center, temporarily located in a make-shift venue. They bring out a table for the social workers who are about to begin dealing with the day’s cases while empty bleachers offer seating for the clients. A young man with a guitar provides musical commentary. A policeman strolls by. It is December. Throughout Welfare ’s two and one-half hours a cast of fifteen actors reenact the hardships of the homeless and the poor, single mothers, drug attics and others in desperate need, as well as the beleaguered director of the Welfare Center and his staff as they try to navigate their way through the overwhelming dysfunction of the system. Some clients need immediate attention. Others wait on the bleachers or wander about aimlessly. These are not anonymous people. They have names: Valerie Johnson, Roz Baker, and Larry Rivera. Their complaints are valid and their frustration is tangible as are those of the team trying to help them. Reactions range from angry outbursts to forlorn acceptance. When Valerie Johnson is told “There is no Valerie Johnson in our records. You will have to wait until January 1 st ,” we cannot help but commiserate with her, especially when her anger becomes so loud that she is carried off over the policeman’s shoulder. We also cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of the heavily pregnant woman who is told that she has to get written medical proof of her pregnancy in order to receive her stipend. Of course, we are touched by the gentleman who tells us that his dog is all he has, and we sympathize with the center’s director who is overwhelmed. Still, there is something missing. Deliquet’s theatre is a theatre of testimony. Welfare documents the situation of welfare recipients and those who help them, but the play seemed not to elevate beyond reporting. We are simply witnesses to these case histories dating from the 1970s and the losing battle that clients and staff endure. In an interview, Julie Deliquet shared that she hoped that her show would be received with anger and that her theatre would invite us to rethink the way we create society. Yet, drawing our attention to the flaws of the welfare system as it existed in the United States in the 1970s is puzzling when the system was overhauled twenty years ago and despite its many flaws, it is no longer the portrait that we encounter on Deliquet’s stage. In contrast to the many lives encountered in Welfare, The Confessions , by British author Alexander Zeldin, tells the tale of just one woman, Alice, a child of the working class in Australia, born in 1943. Based on hours of interviews Zeldin conducted with his mother, The Confessions is a portrait of an “ordinary” life with its many stories told in a series of hyper-realistic moments by nine actors playing all of the roles: mother, father, husband, friends, lover. The Confessions . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage. The play begins in the family kitchen in Australia where we meet Alice fighting with her parents who want her to go to university while she wants to break free of her confined life as a child of a conservative, narrow-minded milieu. Multiple scenes follow Alice’s determination to reinvent herself. London in the 1980s, marriage and divorce, jobs as an art history professor and social assistant, even a sexual assault. We follow her into her living room with friends, and back in a kitchen with other friends. Other scenes are set in other kitchens and other living rooms, with other sofas, chairs, sinks and refrigerators. The play’s hyper-realistic dialogue and sets and the many personal moments captured over a lifetime, leave us wishing for something beyond the stark realism of this “ordinary life.” All of it , a trilogy composed of three monologues written for actress Kate Flynn, by Alistair McDowall, co-directed by Vicky Featherstone and Sam Pritchard, and presented in Avignon by the Royal Court Theatre from London, also tells stories of women dealing with “ordinary lives,” but these three female characters escape their everyday lives through sharing their inner worlds with us. All of it . Photo: Manuel Harlan. The first monologue takes place in War time, 1940. Speaking in blank verse, a woman is sitting in her rather shabby dining room in a home she shares with her father. She is trapped at home during an air raid. To protect her against the bombs outside, she has a Morrison shelter, a large wire cage on the dining room floor, into which she crawls and stays until the air raid is over, more confined than before and still talking all the while. In the second monologue, a woman speaks to us in a pre-recorded voice that echoes throughout the theatre. She has become obsessed with a stain on her wall. As she stares at the molding, she starts to see double. Talking to herself in a psychotic rant, she becomes increasingly drawn into to the moldy green wall as it turns into rubble. The third monologue portrays a woman from birth to death. It is composed of half sentences and repeated words, from baby’s babbling to discovering language, school, her first kiss, university, motherhood, and death. She delivers her lines on a microphone, varying rhythms from fast to slow and back, repeating words, noises, and finally the mutterings of old age. Her stunning performance of “a whole life in one breath” was extraordinary. Director and Visual Artist Philippe Quesne’s new creation Le Jardin des Délices (The Garden of Delights) , loosely based on Jerome Bosch’s sixteenth century triptych of fantastical allegories, received its premiere in the Carrière Boulbon, an awe-inspiring quarry 15 kilometers outside of Avignon. The quarry had not been used as a theatre for the past seven years and one could feel a sense of expectancy and excitement in the audience. What magic would Philippe and his Vivarium Studio players conjure up for us? Le Jardin des Délices . Photo: Phiippe Dauphin. Soon, a white tourist bus appears to our left. It is being pushed into the quarry by a group of passengers, two women and six men, stranded in the middle of imposing limestone cliffs. They slowly look around and take in the landscape, barely saying a word to each other. They don’t seem concerned that they are lost and that their bus is broken down, but they do have a plan. The bus driver brings out a shovel and pickaxe and they begin digging in the quarry’s chalky soil in preparation for the arrival of a large stone egg. Le Jardin des Délices . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage. It is time to gather for the first in a series of rituals and performances that compose Le Jardin des délices . Circling around the egg, they pay tribute to this mysterious presence with music provided by a guitar, a tambourine and a recorder and even a piano played by the bus driver inside the bus. When the performance ends, they take their leave with a kiss and a bow to the egg, along with a handful of earth. What secret does the egg hold? The promise of a new life, or a way out of their predicament, perhaps, but they choose not to open it. Other rituals, other performances follow as the travelers explore possible ways to fill their time in this “garden’ where nothing green grows. While folding chairs are placed around in a wide circle, long time Vivarium artist Gaetan Vourc’h, tour guide and master of ceremonies, invites the group to feel free to express themselves in any way they choose. One reads a poem, another balances a chair in his mouth, and others strike poses reminiscent, perhaps, of figures in Bosch’s Triptych, they go about inventing micro-performances and creating “works of art.” Perhaps a stage for individual performances might provide more entertainment. They remove the sides of the bus to reveal an open stage on which one of the travelers, a man in bright red long johns, sings opera in full throat, but here again, this performance does not seem to satisfy them. Magic perhaps might offer some answers. “Do you believe in miracles?” Gaeton asks as he provides a demonstration. “Abra Cadabra” and his bald head is covered with a thick head of hair. This is fun but clearly, they must organize themselves. Perhaps this is the garden of earthly delights but as Gaeton asks, “What is your long-term strategy?” They must come up with a plan. Wearing Medieval costumes and wigs, they make their way to the quarry walls with Gaeton among them dressed as a skeleton. The play’s title lights up against the walls in giant letters with skeletons flying overhead, seeming to beckon to them. The egg is cracked open now but instead of entering it, they try to climb up the quarry walls with ladders that are much too short. Caught in the middle of an impressive lightning and thunderstorm, they seem lost until a shimmering triangle of light appears overhead. Perhaps this offers a better world than the disappointing garden of earthly delights. They seem to disappear into the smoke and loud noises and dogs barking, moving toward a better world, perhaps. They are survivors. Tiago Rodrigues’ Dans la mesure de l’impossible , ( As Far As The Impossible ), a play that Rodrigues created in 2022 at the Comédie de Genève, was a welcome choice to replace Polish director Krystan Lupa’s The Emigrants when it had to be canceled to the regrets of many. Dans la mesure de l’impossible . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage . Based on interviews with thirty some collaborators of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders who shared their harrowing experiences and first-hand accounts to create this powerful piece, performed at the Avignon Opera House, with just four performers and a percussionist. The show presents a number of questions. How to manage a refugee camp? How to deal with life and death decisions? How to survive when it is clear that one cannot change the world alone? In this world where the impossible is an everyday companion, Tiago Rodrigues offers us a theatre of words which puts us in touch with a reality that is deeply moving. The set is composed of large white sheets floating above the stage at different heights, suggestive of a tent where humanitarian workers retreat to recover from their encounters with disaster and death on a daily basis. These will be pulled up to varying heights and configurations throughout the show. Four actors, two women and two men—the humanitarian workers--deliver their lines in a mix of English, French and Portuguese. They are joined by a musician/ percussionist whose masterful drumming provides running commentary throughout the two-hour show. Thanks to them, we become familiar with the everyday lives of workers in humanitarian aid, those who witness horrors every day, and who are forced to make split-second decisions, as they provide relief from disaster and other emergencies. The geographical areas that they travel to throughout the world are referred to as The Impossible. Back home with family and friends is The Possible. “We work.” they tell us. “It’s a real job, helping to save others.” But they also admit that their work is no more than “a band aid placed on human suffering.” Of course, they are aware that the world cannot be saved and that they must go deeper into the frontier of the impossible. The stories they tell are the real-life stories that the interviewed humanitarian workers had told Tiago and his team, transposed into a form of documented theatre composed of testimonies. The horrors reported are almost too much to bear. Still, these brave humanitarians survive despite all of their scars, comforted by a beautiful rendition of a Portuguese “fado” sung a capella by one of the women. The final moments of the show, a virtuoso drum concert, sends the ear-splitting sounds of war throughout the theatre, as a reminder of the world of the Impossible. Black Lights , by noted choreographer Mathilde Monnier, portrays equally harrowing stories but of a different nature and they exclusively concern women—women who speak in a different voice, a voice between text and dance. Black Lights . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage . Inspired by a TV series, H24, on Arte, based on twenty-four hours in a woman’s life in the form of written texts by well-known women, with a focus on different kinds of violence, Mathilde Monnier chose eight of these texts as the source for her choreography performed at the open-air Carmes cloisters theatre. It was a delight to visit this new dance piece by Mathilde Monnier who had created so many wonderful pieces at the festival, beginning in 1996. Performed by eight dancer/actors of different ages and different nationalities on a stage covered with the gnarled roots of olive trees, we are confronted with the mental and physical impact of different degrees of violence. One tells us how she felt when she had to smile at her old professor when she knew what was really on his mind; another was knocked down and doused with gasoline, another regrets her docile compliancy when receiving a compliment. From uncomfortable moments and regrets to horrifying attacks, the performers of Black Light show us the experience of domination, oppression, violence and defense, legs raised high as if kicking their aggressor, fingers extended in front of a face as if to ward off an unwanted attacker and twisted bodies. Among the many Avignon shows that introduced us to varied and crucial responses to the realities of today’s world, Rebecca Chaillon and her team of Afro-descendant sisters, showed us the reality of their world as black women treated as objects of white fantasy, racism and violence in Carte Noire nommée désir , a remarkable performance piece in which they present their situation head on with urgency, humor and brio. Carte Noire nommée désir . Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage . At the Gymnase du Lycée Aubanel, a large indoor theatre in the heart of Avignon, eight black women stand on a white stage in front of us. Themes of black and white play are introduced from the beginning of the performance and even before. There are two separate audiences on either side of the stage. Only women of color were invited to sit on comfortable sofas and enjoy refreshments facing the “white” audience seated on uncomfortable seats across from them. Rebecca Chaillon, her naked body covered with white cream, is scrubbing the floor with Clorox as if her life depended on it. Her friend is sitting at a potter’s wheel, making white clay coffee cups. They exchange a few words. Time drags on as we take in this painful picture of a “devoted” servant on her knees for close to forty-five minutes. In the following scene, Rebecca begins to braid long pieces of white cloth into her black hair. Soon she is joined by her friends who perform a lengthy ritual of hair braiding as if in a beauty parlor for black women. They create a masterpiece of long heavy black and white braids that Rebecca will wear throughout the performance. Seated in the middle of a circle of her sisters, Rebecca seems to enjoy their shared admiration. Later, as Rebecca smokes and thumbs through magazines, she begins to read a number of racist want ads out loud on the order of “White Man, French, looking for his black pearl” to the delight of the audience who enjoys these outrageous ads. The audience is also delighted when invited to play “Questions pour un Champion,” a popular TV game show, with Rebecca and her company feeding them questions. They seem to know all of the answers and enjoy shouting out their response. Carte Noire “plays” with the audience in other ways too. Some are provocative and even dangerous. Performers racing into the audience to “steal” women’s handbags, creates moments of chaos and anger. Others are tongue-in-cheek amusing. A beautiful black performer lying on a table covered in foaming milk, while a group of her black friends raise their coffee cups to her, draws our laughter. One especially powerful and “shocking” tableau features a nanny surrounded by her employer and others. They do not seem to think it odd that her body is pierced front and back with a long spike, as if she has been impaled. On the contrary, they seem to be enjoying themselves, placing little plastic white babies on the pike, one after the other, as the Mother, a lovely lady In Scarlet O’Hara white dress, happily looks on. Thank goodness for other moments of wild twerk dancing and amazing aerial stunts. Carte noire, nommée désir was brave and thrilling and wonderful. A great moment in the 77 th Festival. The official Avignon 77 was a great success, 225,000 audience members and theatres were 94 % full. Tiago Rodrigues’ rich programming gave full weight to the socio-political questions of our time and many new artists were invited for the first time. There was a large presence of English-language shows In keeping with Tiago’s decision to focus on the English language this year. As thrilled as I was with this year’s festival, I admit to being disappointed that American talent was so underrepresented. Only two American companies were invited to the festival, Elevator Repair Service’s Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge , based on their debate in 1965 and Tajal Harell’s choreographed performance The Romeo . The other English language contributions were mostly British, a response to Brexit, it seems. In whatever language, however, Avignon remains the “festival of my dreams.” 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 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.

Dan Venning 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 "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Dan Venning By Published on December 10, 2020 Download Article as PDF Grifters. Flim-flammers. Matchstick men. Confidence men. [1] These are only a few of the many exotic and perhaps amusing-sounding names for those who spin the truth and perpetrate frauds on unsuspecting victims. There’s a certain charm to the concept of the con artist, as hinted at in the term “artist,” suggesting that there is an art of the con—at least in fiction, or in the abstract. As evidenced by classic films like The Sting (1973), Ocean’s Eleven (1960, 2001), and Catch Me If You Can (2002), the character of the grifter is often depicted as charming, sympathetic, fun, or glamorous. Perhaps that is part of the reason we wound up with a con man in the White House. Many Americans consistently root for the con man even in the real world. President Donald J. Trump’s very admission of being a confidence man is what leads his supporters towards this trope, since this is precisely what he has done, repeatedly. In the Access Hollywood tape where he admitted to sexual assault, he said “when you’re a star, they’ll let you get away with anything.” It’s the “get away with it” that I’m focusing on here—by deploying the trope of the con man, Trump doesn’t even have to pretend he’s honest. And he knows it: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” he said on the campaign trail. And this is nothing new for him: he’s been a shark for decades. He ends his (ghostwritten) book, Trump: The Art of the Deal (his name is indeed part of the title) by proudly describing how he obtained his private plane for a price that was less than a third of what it was actually worth. Then he goes on to promise that soon he will stop negotiating and scamming: “I’ve spent the first twenty years of my working life building, accumulating…the biggest challenge I see over the next twenty years is to figure out some creative ways to give back some of what I’ve gotten.” [2] For a true grifter like Trump, the promised reformation is always in the future, or imaginary; all that’s real is the egotism of the scam. Chuck Klosterman, the American pop culture essayist, writes about the viciousness of con artists in the chapter “Villains Who are Not Villains” in his book I Wear the Black Hat . Klosterman describes the American pop mythologizing of con artists as “people who—in theory—are bad citizens and social pariahs,” but also “charismatic.” He notes that the American con story usually involves a character who “has complex feelings about taking money from strangers,” who is “never as immoral as the person he works with,” and whose “marks” (those the con artist dupes) bear a great deal of the blame because “you can’t con an honest man.” But Klosterman also acknowledges that this is a false picture: those who have encountered real con artists know that they can destroy lives—the romanticized vision “is not something that’s true; it’s only something we believe.” [3] The con artist is especially prominent in American cultural studies. This makes sense, since the grifter is simply the fraudulent extreme of the salesman, and, as evidenced from both literary and historical figures, the salesman and the “American Dream” he hawks live at the heart of the imagination of the American capitalist marketplace. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin articulates a rhetoric of bootstrapping virtue, in which hard work, honesty, and righteousness can promise any American a comfortable life. In his showy The Art of Money Getting , P. T. Barnum positions integrity and commercial success as almost interchangeable, arguing for the monetary worth of everything from circumspect communication to charitable giving. In works such as these, we see the American Dream sold—as the art of selling. As Scott A. Sandage argues in Born Losers: A History of Failure in America , in the nineteenth century, this ideology came to be cemented as an American cultural principle: a human being’s worth (and especially a man’s masculine virtue) could be tied to their financial success: those who fail to make money suffer from some moral deficiency, and those who don’t strive for riches in the first place are even worse. [4] Under this perverse logic, Charlie Brown and Willy Loman are not the victims of their own faith in an American Dream that simply isn’t attainable to everyone, but are sad sacks who deserve to be ridiculed. And in such a rubric, Mark Twain’s The Duke and The King, the con men from Huckleberry Finn who pose as heirs to claim inheritances from deceased persons they don’t know and who eventually sell Jim back into slavery, are not villainous entertainers, but somehow come to deserve the money that they swindle from the gullible. Recently, The New Yorker ’s Jia Tolentino posited con artistry as the core aesthetic of American identity; “scamming seems to have become the dominant logic of American life,” she wrote in 2018, later expanding her argument in her book Trick Mirror to claim that grifting is “the story of a generation” and that millennials have “been raised from adolescence to . . . adulthood on a relentless demonstration that scamming pays.” [5] Indeed, such romanticizing of the figure of the grifter is as prevalent in the American musical theatre as it is in American cinema, politics, literature, and the sort of pop culture about which Klosterman and Tolentino write. At the same time, the figure of the con artist has not been adequately studied within the field of musical theatre studies, despite the fact that numerous studies of this genre argue that musicals are key to the development of American national identity—and to the personal identities of both mainstream and marginalized Americans. [6] As David Savran has argued, the Broadway musical is itself a particularly American form precisely because of its “cultural instability” born from its melding of a variety of genres and both “popular and elite cultures,” its innovations and revisions that constitute reflection “upon the history of popular entertainments in the United States, from minstrelsy to hip-hop,” and its deployment of both conservative cultural nostalgia and progressive utopianism. [7] This article thus contributes to parallel discussions of what it means to “be an American” by drawing a connection between American cultural studies and studies in American musical theatre. There are numerous examples of con artists in American musicals. Even The Duke and The King have appeared on Broadway, in Big River (1985), Roger Miller and William Hauptmann’s musical adaptation of Huckleberry Finn . Mark Bramble, Michael Stewart, and Cy Coleman brought Barnum (1980) to Broadway, allowing the great impresario himself to take advantage of the suckers born every minute. Cons are central plot points in some of the most significant works of musical theatre history: Gaylord Ravenal in Show Boat (1927) and Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls (1950) are both gamblers who win the affection of a trusting woman through trickery, as does the titular character in Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey (1940). Rodgers and Hammerstein deploy the less-than-honest salesman as comic relief through figures such as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! (1943) and Luther Billis in South Pacific (1949). A monograph-length study tracking the full development of the trope of grifters in musical theatre would certainly be possible, looking at these figures and others. To name only a few: Bialystock and Bloom in The Producers (2001), Oscar Diggs (the Wizard) in Wicked (2003), Elders Price and Cunningham in The Book of Mormon (2011), the murderous Monty in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (2012), and the main characters in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2004). Considering all of these examples from the so-called “golden age” of mid-twentieth century American musical theatre to the present, it is reasonable to interrogate what it is about American culture, and what it is about musical theatre, that makes these characters so prevalent. Examining the ways these characters are celebrated in song on stage allows us more effectively to understand the ways American culture venerates con artists, despite the actual harm they cause. In this article, I argue that musical con artists embody an extreme lionization of American individualism, becoming emblematic of the ways in which our culture wants to understand, forgive, or even idolize those who take advantage of others, precisely because grifters maintain their status as empathetic subjects, even—or perhaps especially—as they turn people and communities into objectified marks. The charm of the con artist is the charm of the individual. Part of the project of being a confidence man is the ability to maintain control of the narrative about oneself, constantly redefining and transforming the self as an individual in opposition to broader, undifferentiated groups of people who will be conned. As Lin-Manuel Miranda articulates in the final song of Hamilton (2015), “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?,” which is in a sense a celebration of historiography: who constructs the record matters. [8] The con man maintains that control of the narrative about himself—transforming from a villain into a savior, from a victimizer into a sympathetic hero. As examples of this celebration of the grifter in the American imaginary, I focus on three examples in the canon of American musical theatre—from the 1950s golden age of the form to today: Harold Hill in The Music Man (1957), Starbuck in 110 in the Shade (1963), and the title character in Dear Evan Hansen (2015). The con artist Harold Hill is the hero of Meredith Willson’s golden age musical The Music Man —which beat West Side Story for the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1958. Bill Starbuck, who sells pipe dreams of water in N. Richard Nash, Harvey Schmidt, and Tom Jones’s musical 110 in the Shade (based on Nash’s play The Rainmaker , from 1954), is ultimately depicted not as a predator but as a primal spirit of romantic—albeit not practical—passion. I utilize these first two shows because they place con artistry front-and-center in their plots: the grift isn’t secondary, at the service of a romantic narrative, or as a comic subplot. Furthermore, both The Music Man and 110 in the Shade are paragons of the mid-twentieth century book musical form, what some critics including Mark N. Grant, Raymond Knapp, John Kenrick, Larry Stempel, and others have labeled the golden age of musical theatre, before conceptual innovations in the form that began in the late twentieth century. [9] And in Dear Evan Hansen , the title character, a high school student who reaps immense social profit by spreading a lie, is never portrayed as a victimizer but instead as a sympathetic figure whose misdeeds must ultimately be forgiven and forgotten. Dear Evan Hansen is a crucial example because as an extremely recent Broadway hit, with numerous Tonys and an immense popular following, the show demonstrates that the trope remains currently in full force. Focusing on these three specific examples also allows me to examine three different types of grifters. Harold Hill is essentially a rip-off artist. Like Max Bialystock from The Producers , this type of con artist plans to provide a product that is no good or unusable. Hill is actually selling instruments and uniforms and a real musical is indeed created within The Producers , but the rip-off artist knows—and even hopes—that the community to which he sells this dud will get nothing out of it. Starbuck represents the second type. He is the classic snake-oil salesman: part evangelist but wholly a huckster, this type draws upon the conventions of a preacher to promise a salvation (in which he does not believe) but that the community he swindles desperately needs. The title character in Gantry (1970), faith healer Jonas Nightingale in Leap of Faith (2012) and Elder Price in The Book of Mormon use actual religion; but others like Masterson in Guys and Dolls or Freddy Benson, Lawrence Jameson, and “The Jackal” in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels use the promise of romance. Even Ali Hakim, who pretends laudanum is a “magic potion,” is an example of this type. In some respects, the blatant hypocrisy of this type, of which Starbuck proves a particularly nefarious example, makes him even more vicious than rip-off artists like Hill. The third type is in some ways the most morally complex. He is a precocious or developing con artist, and we watch him transition from an earnest young man into someone able and willing to con his whole world. Evan Hansen falls into this type, as do J. Pierrepont Finch from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Leo Bloom in The Producers , and Elder Cunningham in The Book of Mormon . In this article, I examine one of each of these types, demonstrating the ways in which musical theatre aesthetics position all of them as romantic heroes and who are ultimately redeemable. Most commonly, scholars have approached these sorts of figures in musicals as “tricksters,” specifically outsiders working to make their way into the American mainstream. In Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the Broadway Musical , Stuart Hecht examines figures such as Finch from Frank Loesser’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying , “an empty cipher, a fraud,” who uses charm, luck, and a gambler’s gamesmanship to win love and financial success. In his chapter “How to Succeed,” Hecht’s point is that strategies such as Finch’s are emblematic of the way that “at some level the standard book musical became a sort of tacit blueprint of how to make it in America.” [10] And one of those ways to achieve the American dream, as Finch demonstrates, is trickery. Hecht’s investigation of the impact of American Jewish immigrants on the development of the musical form in as a symbol for the promise of the American dream builds upon Andrea Most’s study, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical , which examines musical theatre from the first half of the twentieth century as a form of self-fashioning for American Jews. Most similarly argues for this self-fashioning as a form of clever trickery: “overt Jewish characters and themes actually disappear as the decades progress,” as the Jewish creators of these musicals sell Jewish-American identity as anti-Communist, white, and fully assimilated into mainstream Americana. [11] This approach to the con artist as essentially a trickster in musical theatre studies makes sense, since scholars of con men note that the character is usually portrayed as a sort of American descendant of the commedia dell’arte clown Arlecchino, the crafty servant who is always out to play a prank, but is ultimately harmless. This can be seen in analyses like those of Gary Lindberg, who in The Confidence Man in American Literature , describes the grifter as a “trickster,” “jack-of-all-trades” and “rogue survivor [with] the ability to shift shapes and yet to keep free of the world.” The characters Lindberg describes, from Huck Finn to Jay Gatsby and Saul Bellow’s Augie March, as well as real figures like Benjamin Franklin and P. T. Barnum, are always viewed with a degree of admiration as they perpetrate hoaxes that are part “masquerade.” [12] David Maurer opens his linguistic study The Confidence Man with this: “The grift has a gentle touch. It takes its toll from the ripe sucker by means of the skilled hand or the sharp wit. In this, it differs from all other forms of crime…it never employs violence to separate the mark from his money.” [13] Indeed, Maurer sounds like he is describing a trickster, not exactly a criminal. However, as I argue throughout this article, there is a crucial difference between the con artist and the commedia trickster figure. Arlecchino, his ancestors, descendants, and parallels in other theatrical traditions do indeed perpetrate frauds. They love money, are gluttonous, and lustfully pursue sex. But in the end, they usually side with the lovers or heroes in their fight against oppressive authority figures. The authentic trickster figure is more of what Robert Ray calls an “outlaw hero,” ultimately serving the broader community while enjoying life as much as possible, as opposed to the grifter who ultimately cares only about his own interests. [14] The archetypal American con artist of the sort defined by Lindberg and Maurer was, in a sense, predicted in one of the earliest studies of our country, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America . In perhaps the most famous chapter in this text, “The Main Causes Tending to Maintain a Democratic Republic in the United States,” Tocqueville articulates three main factors that allowed democracy to flourish in the United States as opposed to late-eighteenth century democratic experiments in Europe which had floundered. For Tocqueville, these three factors are the mores of the American people, the laws and constitutional structure created at the establishment of the country, and the geography itself. In describing American geography, Tocqueville presents a picture of “an almost limitless continent” made up of “empty” and “wild” spaces, which tempt Americans into embodying the spirit of individualism, ambition, and adventure that would become typical of the grifter: [Americans] find prosperity almost everywhere . . . for them desire for well-being has become a restless, burning passion which increases with satisfaction. They broke the ties of attachment to their native soil long ago and have not formed new ones since. To start with, emigration was a necessity for them; now it is a sort of gamble, and they enjoy the sensations as much as the profit.[15] In her book on con artists in nineteenth-century American fiction, Susan Kuhlmann uses strikingly similar language: It helps to consider the con man as a one-man enterprise, inspired just as much by the beauty of his scheme as by the need for aggrandizement. Viewed in this light, he represents an individualization of manifest destiny. He takes to heart the belief that a free man may be whatever he claims he is, may have whatever his skill can win, may feel at home in any man’s house. Superior wit, skill in the use of resources, a nomadic and bachelor existence, adaptability, enthusiasm, and a continual desire to better one’s condition—these are the qualities associated with the type of character whom we think of as having ‘opened’ our country. They are also qualities of the confidence man.[16] Of course, these are false stereotypes—and seductive ones indeed. Just as Tocqueville’s “openness” of an American wilderness was a myth that ignored the fact that frontier-settlers had pushed out the original inhabitants of the so-called frontier, the reality of con men is a lot less glamorous: had Harold Hill completed his original plans, River City would have lost a ton of money, celebrating its American identity with a silent parade of a band of duped people. Meredith Willson’s The Music Man opens on the most American holiday of them all, the 4 th of July (1912), with “Rock Island,” in which a chorus of salesmen alert the audience to the plans of con artist Professor Harold Hill, a swindler who comes into small towns, convinces the residents that their local culture can be improved by the presence of a boys’ band, sells them on instruments and uniforms by promising to serve as music teacher (even though in fact he actually can’t read music, and “don’t know one note from another” [17] ), and then skips town with payment. Essentially, Hill’s gimmick is selling small-town hicks on high culture and the idea of self-improvement: using their own American idealism as the very bait that turns them into his marks. [18] As with any good confidence man, Hill “never worries ’bout his line,” but makes up his scheme on the fly. In River City, Iowa (Hill’s mark during the course of the show), the grifter protagonist uses the arrival of a new pool table to rail against vice and sin, arguing that the pool table spells “Trouble / Right here in River / City! With a capital / T and that rhymes with / P and that stands for / Pool.… Fifteen numbered / Balls is the Devil’s / Tool!” [19] Hill sells the idea of the band (and music itself) as a cultural antidote to the vice about to flood River City—and the people are convinced. Although the residents of River City are uncultured, Willson goes to great pains to ensure that producers of the show and his audience, however, see the townspeople as essentially good Americans. Laurie A. Finke and Susan Aronstein place The Music Man alongside Anything Goes (1934) and Oklahoma! as a “community building … Golden Age musical […that presents] Broadway’s traditional vision of America as a land where dreams, with a little luck and a lot of hard work, can come true.” [20] In a note to directors in his libretto, Willson writes, “THE MUSIC MAN was intended to be a Valentine and not a caricature. Please do not let the actors…mug or reach for comedy effect… [they] should be natural and sincere…. The humor of this piece depends upon its technical faithfulness to the real small-town Iowans of 1912.” [21] This is reinforced by the fact that in their first song, “Iowa Stubborn,” the townspeople note that while they may be hard-nosed and thrifty, “we’ll give you our shirt / And a back to go with it / If your crops should happen to die.” [22] These are the sort of people Hill plans to swindle. Hill is redeemed, both for the citizens of River City and the audience, like so many con men in musical theatre, through the love and forgiveness of a woman he intended to dupe. Over the course of The Music Man , a romance blossoms between Hill and the town’s bookish librarian, Marian Paroo, who discovers Hill’s schemes. However, upon seeing how Hill’s feigned passion for music actually inspires her shy younger brother Winthrop and town troublemaker Tommy Djilas, Marian falls in love with Harold, who reciprocates, and at the end of the musical she comes to his defense when his scam is exposed. The band is actually created, and, although it plays badly, Harold is welcomed into the community—and Marian’s arms. Stacey Wolf describes the show’s finale, “Seventy-Six Trombones” as essentially designed to “celebrate the community.” [23] This is, of course, despite the fact that Hill has betrayed and bankrupted countless similar communities, and seduced women like Marian before, as we hear from traveling salesman Charlie Cowell: Who do you think you’re protecting? That guy’s got a girl in every county in Illinois, and he’s taken it away from every one of ’em! And that’s 102 counties! Not counting the piana teachers like you he cozies up to, to keep their mouths shut![24] Hill is redeemed within the world of The Music Man , but only because we never see those 102 earlier Marians, whose love somehow didn’t transform the con man. If Harold Hill’s villainy (stealing money from clueless but basically good communities across the Midwest) seems heartless, compare this to Bill Starbuck’s nefarious plans in 110 in the Shade and the play on which it was based, The Rainmaker , in which the con artist seeks to prey upon a community that is gullible specifically because it is desperate. The story of these works takes place in an unnamed “western state from dawn to midnight of a summer day in a time of drought” [25] during the Great Depression. In the musical, the small town is called “Three Point,” but it might as well be called nowhere. The townspeople are looking for some kind of salvation. In the opening number of the musical, “Another Hot Day,” they complain that “The earth is burnin’. / Crops is bad, / And land is dry.” [26] In his foreword to the original play, Nash describes: When drought hits the lush grasslands of the richly fertile West, they are green no more and the dying is a palpable thing. What happens to verdure and vegetation, to cattle and livestock can be read in the coldly statistical little bulletins freely issued by the Department of Agriculture. What happens to the people of the West—beyond the calculable and terrible phenomena of sudden poverty and loss of substance—is an incalculable and febrile kind of desperation. Rain will never come again; the earth will be sere forever; and in all of heaven there is no promise of remedy.[27] Into such a landscape comes Bill Starbuck, promising that from his very confidence—for he is indeed a confidence man—he can make it rain. He admits that he is a wholly self-made and invented man: “My method’s like my name / It’s all my very own. / You wanna hear my deal? / You only need a hundred dollars in advance, / In twenty-four hours, / You’ll have rain.” [28] In the character descriptions in both the play and musical versions, Starbuck is described as “ a big man, lithe, agile—a loud braggart, a gentle dreamer. He carries a short hickory stick—it is his weapon, his magic wand, his pride of manhood .” [29] Starbuck’s promise is ridiculous, but the people of Three Points are vulnerable enough that they take him up on his offer. [30] As in The Music Man , Starbuck—really just Bill Smith—somehow earns the love of a good woman who sees through his ruse, Lizzie Curry. And Starbuck, in return, saves Lizzie, allowing her to open up, find passion, and discover herself: “Suddenly I’m beautiful / All because of you,” she sings. In turn, Lizzie gets Starbuck to admit, “Lizzie — I got somethin’ to tell you — ! You were right — I am a liar … and a con man and a fake! I never made rain in my life! Not a single raindrop! — nowhere! — not anywhere at all.” [31] Yet—unlike Harold Hill—although Starbuck admits his villainy, he doesn’t change. He offers to stay with Lizzie for a few days, but not forever. He asks her to come with him, to serve as his partner, to invent her own name, “Melisande.” But ultimately, Starbuck saves Lizzie not by turning her into a grifting wanderer like himself, but by allowing her to declare her love for the local Sheriff File. [32] And then it rains. The townspeople, and the sheriff, let Starbuck go—with the hundred dollars—even despite his admission of having duped them, despite his having seduced Lizzie and physically attacked File, and despite everyone’s knowledge that he plans to replicate his scam on the next desperate town he finds. Somehow, the grotesque abuses Harold Hill and Starbuck try to perpetrate upon unsuspecting communities are sold to audiences as alluring. At least part of the answer as to how this is accomplished comes from the form of musical theatre itself. The romantic melodies of love ballads, the comic rhymes and bouncing rhythms of patter songs, the soaring and heartfelt curtain numbers that are designed to bring audiences to tears, and to standing ovations. As Raymond Knapp points out, in The Music Man con artists can indeed “find their redemption through music,” [33] even if, when one reflects upon their actions, it quickly becomes apparent that these characters do not deserve our sympathy. By comparison, the scam perpetrated by the titular character in Dear Evan Hansen might seem less nefarious. An anxiety-ridden high-school student who has been instructed to write letters to himself as a form of therapy, Evan writes a depressed letter to himself, acknowledging that “Dear Evan Hansen: It turns out, this wasn’t an amazing day after all.” He signs the letter “Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend, Me” and confesses that “All my hope is pinned on Zoe,” his crush. [34] Evan’s letter is stolen by Connor Murphy, Zoe’s brother, an angry and depressed bully, who then kills himself, and the letter is discovered. The Murphy family and students at the school think that this letter was written by Connor to Evan, and that the two were friends. Evan allows this misapprehension to be taken as the truth, and even begins to tell stories about his and Connor’s “friendship,” creating “The Connor Project” about suicide awareness—all in order to get closer to the Murphy family. Evan gains popularity in school and becomes an online celebrity for his moving tributes to his “friend” Connor. Zoe becomes his girlfriend, and her father, Larry, becomes the father that Evan, who was raised by a single mother, has never had. The Murphys offer to pay for Evan to go to college. Finally, crushed by guilt, Evan admits what he’s done to the Murphy family. But they never reveal his fraud to the wider community. He loses his girlfriend and surrogate family—all of whom he attained on false premises—and, when we last see him, quasi-forgiven by Zoe in a sun-lit orchard, he tells himself “Today is going to be a good day.” [35] Indeed, at first glance there are numerous significant differences between Evan Hansen and the pair of examples I’ve drawn from mid-twentieth century American musicals. Both The Music Man and 110 in the Shade are period pieces set decades before they were written and in provincial communities far from Broadway where they were first staged. Dear Evan Hansen is unmistakably present—the social media utilized throughout projections in this musical makes frequent references to the 2016 election. While Hill and Starbuck are life-long fraudsters who set out to destroy the communities with which they engage, what we see is Evan’s first, and hopefully only, con—which he falls into accidentally. The archetypal grifter is out for one thing: money. Yet Evan seeks different things: a relationship with Zoe, a father-figure he has never had, as well as popularity and acknowledgment within the cliquish community of high school. And of course, most notably, Hill and Starbuck are adults, while Evan Hansen is a teenager who suffers from depression. Nonetheless, the pattern articulated through works like The Music Man and 110 in the Shade still fits: while Evan isn’t out to get money, what is more valuable to a high school student than the social capital of popularity and sex with his crush? Evan is an opportunistic grifter putting his own interests above those of the community, who is somehow granted salvation in the eyes of the audience through the caring forgiveness proffered by the female lead and the affective power of soaring melodies. The audience, like the Murphy family, is asked to forgive Evan for his psychological abuse because he feels really bad about what he has done. In his critique of the play for Slate , Jason Zinoman writes that the show’s greatest success is that it “is testament to the power of skillfully crafted art to reframe, manipulate, and even obscure moral concerns.” [36] Dear Evan Hansen is a hit with teenagers; the catchphrase Evan invents to sell his lie, “You will be found,” is sold on actual marketing material for the show. The fact that con artists like Harold Hill, Bill Starbuck, and Evan Hansen are sold as heroes within these musicals, and not villains, should be of particularly little surprise to us in the era of Trump. And so, as a coda, I return to our grifter-in-chief. Perhaps to some degree because of fictional narratives like those from these musicals, some audiences of our American political spectacle assume that this con man in the White House can and will reveal himself as only a mischievous trickster or heartfelt idealist, redeeming himself and saving all of us in the process. Maybe he’ll even sing a song when he finally does so. As Klosterman writes: “Is there anything more attractive than a polite person with limitless self-belief? There is not. First, you must love yourself. And if you do that convincingly enough, others will love you too much.” [37] And as Tolentino posits, the most authentically American character type is one who lacks all authenticity, who puts the truth up for grabs and claims to be a “straight talker” while denigrating the “fake news” of verifiable facts. Some of us may know that we’re being had, but the truth is, right now, we’ve got trouble. We’re all living in River City. And in such a political landscape, it should be no surprise that once theatres reopen at the end of the coronavirus pandemic, a revival of The Music Man is returning to Broadway. The figure of the con artist in musical theatre isn’t skipping town anytime soon. The author would like to thank numerous scholars for helpful feedback on various drafts of this article. These include audience members at the 2018 Theatre History Symposium of the Mid-America Theatre Conference; Pattie Wareh and the Union College Department of English; and the editors and anonymous reviewers for JADT . References [1] The gendered term persists in discourse on this topic, despite the obvious fact that scams can be (and are) perpetrated by those of any gender. In fact, my central examples of con artists are all male, and for that reason, as well as the general term of the “confidence man,” I periodically use the male pronoun throughout this paper when discussing grifters. A broader study might examine the few female examples in musical theatre, such as the perpetrator of the long con in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels , but I suggest that this is an exception that proves the rule. [2] Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz, Trump: The Art of the Deal (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987), 366-67. [3] Chuck Klosterman, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined) (New York: Scribner, 2014), 41-43. [4] Scott A. Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). Especially noteworthy is Sandage’s quotation of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote in 1842 that “nobody fails who ought not to fail. There is always a reason, in the man , for his good or bad fortune,” 46. [5] Jia Tolentino, “The Fiends and the Folk Heroes of Grifter Season,” The New Yorker , 5 June 2018 (last accessed 10 January 2020), and Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (New York: Random House, 2019), 195. [6] See especially Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) and The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). Additionally, however, monographs and articles by Andrea Most, David Savran, Alisa Solomon, and Stacey Wolf articulate the ways in which musicals have been crucial in helping communities of Americans define themselves: from Jewish theatregoers, to middlebrow and middle-class audiences, queer viewers, and women. [7] David Savran, “The Do-Re-Mi of Musical Theatre Historiography.” In Joseph Roach, ed., Changing the Subject: Marvin Carlson and Theatre Studies, 1959 – 2009 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 225. [8] Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” Hamilton: An American Musical , ed. Jeremy McCarter (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016), 280-81. [9] Historians disagree about when this period existed and whether the term has any real validity. Some, such as John Kenrick, Raymond Knapp, and Larry Stempel, argue that the so-called “golden age” existed only for around two-and-a-half decades, from Oklahoma (1943) until the advent of rock musicals and director-driven concept musicals in the late 1960s. Mark N. Grant, the most forceful defender of the concept of a golden age, posits that this glorious period existed from the opening of Show Boat in 1927 through 1966. Many critics, however, sensibly question this perception. Kenrick argues that any musical with lasting commercial or artistic impact on the form should justifiably be considered as great as any work from the mid-twentieth century, and Stempel goes further, pointing out that philosophies such as Grant’s are grounded in artistically conservative and historically inaccurate nostalgia: “while belief in a Golden Age has been the ideological underpinning for resuscitating part of the Broadway repertoire and awakening new audiences to old excellences, it has also tended to diminish the value of newer work.” Mark N. Grant, The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004); John Kenrick, Musical Theatre: A History [Second Edition] (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 4; and Larry Stempel, Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), 657–8. [10] Stuart Hecht, Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 89, 4. [11] Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 6. [12] Gary Lindberg, The Confidence Man in American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 253-58. [13] David W. Maurer, The American Confidence Man (Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, Publisher, 1974), 3. [14] See Robert B. Ray, “The Thematic Paradigm,” in Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, eds., Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012), 377-86. [15] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America , trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Perennial Classics, 2000), 283. [16] Susan Kuhlmann, Knave, Fool, and Genius: The Confidence Man as He Appears in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), 6. [17] Quotations from The Music Man come from: Meredith Willson, The Music Man , unpublished typescript libretto, ©1958 Frank Music Corp. and Reinmer Corporation. 1-1-5. [18] Kimberly Faithbroker Canton argues that, in idolizing high culture, Hill’s particular scam in facts cements The Music Man as a kind of middlebrow work, itself perpetrating the same sort of scam. She writes that “ The Music Man , with its optimistic, faith-based ideology, sells a version of culture that is…lucrative in its averageness and uniquely American in its easy reconciliation of diametrically opposed notions of art and commerce, patriotism and individualism, truth and scam. The Music Man is an anti-intellectual ode to the middlebrow that cleverly sells the very premise that makes it a commercial triumph.” Kimberly Faithbroker Caton, “‘Who’s Selling Here?’: Sounds Like The Music Man Is Selling and We’re Buying,” Modern Drama 51, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 56. [19] Willson, 1-2-15. [20] Laurie A. Finke and Susan Aronstein, “Got Grail? Monty Python and the Broadway Stage,” Theatre Survey 48, no. 2 (November 2007): 290. Finke and Aronstein put Spamalot within this tradition, as opposed to more “deconstructive musicals of the 1970s such as Chicago and A Chorus Line ” and the works of Stephen Sondheim. [21] Willson, v. [22] Willson., 1-2-9. [23] Stacey Ellen Wolf, “‘Defying Gravity’: Queer Conventions in the Musical Wicked ,” Theatre Journal 60, no. 1 (March 2008): 17. [24] Willson, 2-3-18. [25] Nash, N. Richard, Harvey Schmidt, and Tom Jones, 110 in the Shade , unpublished typescript libretto © 1977 and Nash, N. Richard, The Rainmaker: A Romantic Comedy (New York: Random House, 1955), vi. The text of the stage direction is nearly identical in both versions. All quotations from the musical come from this typescript. [26] Nash Schmidt, and Jones, 110 in the Shade , 1-1-2. [27] Nash, The Rainmaker , vii. [28] Nash, Schmidt, and Jones, 110 in the Shade , 1-3-31. [29] Nash, Schmidt, and Jones 110 in the Shade ., iii and Nash, The Rainmaker , 57. Note how Nash highlights that Starbuck is “gentle,” and that, like Arlecchino, he carries a wooden stick. [30] In a longer study of con artistry and American theatre more broadly, it would be worth examining the impact of race on whether or not the scammer achieves forgiveness from the community he bamboozles. It’s worth mentioning the 2007 revival of 110 in the Shade , a color-conscious staging in which Lizzie Curry (played by Audra McDonald) was black. Steve Kazee, a white actor, played Starbuck. Thus, his character wasn’t just duping a drought-ridden town in hard times, he was a white man telling a black woman who had never seen herself as pretty that she was beautiful. Of course, the truth of this statement was obvious to the audience, but in this staging, Starbuck’s “charming” con was thus explicitly racialized. Furthermore, the role of race in The Music Man has been explored by Warren Hoffman in The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical . In his third chapter, “The Racial Politics of West Side Story and The Music Man ,” Hoffman argues that racial politics have at least something to do with The Music Man ’s winning of the Tony for Best Musical over the revolutionary and genre-transforming West Side Story . Hoffman positions The Music Man as a work brimming with a nostalgia for (all-white) small-town Americana. He demonstrates how in “Ya Got Trouble,” Harold Hill uses ragtime, “code for African Americans?” as a “scare tactic.” Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 82-110. [31] Nash, The Rainmaker , 162. The line is identical in the musical; Nash, 110 in the Shade , 2-4-27. [32] In the original play, File is the deputy. [33] Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity , 145. Knapp goes on to point out that both authority figures who could punish Hill and Charlie Cowell, who exposes him as a con man, never sing during the show, thus failing to earn the audience’s sympathy. [34] Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul, Dear Evan Hansen (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2017), 23-24. [35] Levenson, Pasek, and Paul., 163. [36] Jason Zinoman, “Dear Evan Hansen, You Are a Creep,” Slate , 6 June 2017 (last accessed 10 January 2020). [37] Klosterman, 57. Footnotes About The Author(s) DAN VENNING is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and English at Union College in Schenectady, NY, where he is also a core faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Programs in American Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His articles and reviews have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal , Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , Ecumenica , European Stages, PAJ , Performing Arts Resources , Shakespeare: A Journal , Shakespeare Bulletin , Shakespeare Quarterly , Theatre History Studies , TDR , Theatre Journal , Theatre Survey , as well as in several edited collections of essays. He was previously associate dramaturg for the California Shakespeare Theater and has previously taught at NYU, Wagner College, and Baruch and Hunter Colleges, CUNY. 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.

Jackie Rosenfeld and Cade M.Sikora Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Jackie Rosenfeld and Cade M.Sikora By Published on April 28, 2023 Download Article as PDF There is a tremendous amount of grief in the post-COVID world of post-secondary educational theatre regarding missed opportunities and lost time. When we, Professors Jackie Rosenfeld (Playwriting and Pedagogy) and Cade M. Sikora (Scenic Design and Technical Direction), joined the Department of Theatre at Texas AM University-Commerce in the Fall of 2021 we developed a new way for our students to engage in theatre that is epic, flexible, and opens up untold potential to connect to the outside world apart from their scheduled season of shows and regular coursework. The opportunity: workshopping and producing a radio play of Flying in the Face of God [i], a new work and docu-dramatization set aboard the famous Titanic , seemingly ending with the destruction of the ship in real-time. The outcomes: connection to each other, excitement about the production of new works, the creation of an entire extracurricular program called the New Play Development Initiative, and enhancement to the curriculums in our department. *** Sikora: This project did not start as a vehicle for any academic activity or as a radio play. Prior to coming to Texas, I was developing a docu-dramatization of the Titanic disaster as part of my own personal portfolio. The story I wanted to tell is huge. The historical event and the consequences thereof are of interest to me, and I knew early on that I was responding to the historic event as well as pop culture’s depictions of the event. To that end, please note two things about the work: The characters depicted are historical figures. The events depicted are taken from biographic information, survivors’ accounts, implied in survivors’ accounts, or at the very least are possible given the information available. This research-oriented approach to the writing geared the project to an academic environment before that was ever a consideration. Rosenfeld: Before the Fall Semester officially began, Sikora asked if I would be willing to read a draft of a play he was working on; I was. Upon finishing the immense script and sharing my initial response, I asked if I could serve as the dramaturg for this new work. We spent the semester trading drafts and feedback. Sikora was initially resistant to hearing a read-through until he finished the second draft. One afternoon in the last week of the semester, however, I was involved in a meeting with a number of students including two we thought would be particularly strong in some of the roles. When Sikora agreed, I very quickly asked the young men if they were available to read a couple of pages from a new script. Within twenty minutes, a short scene from Flying in the Face of God was read aloud for the first time. Sikora: After this first two-page read-through, I became interested in hearing more of the script. But it was huge and incomplete. I broke the play down into chunks. Instead of the mammoth text, the read-through script was whittled down to tell one of its many plotlines. This allowed us to get through a complete story in a reasonable amount of time, gave the performers an opportunity to see the trajectory of the piece, and allowed me as the playwright an opportunity to really focus on one plot at a time. Rosenfeld: The casting of the play needed to be as simple as possible. There are over 183 speaking roles in the play with many of them being white men middle-aged and older from the United States and abroad. We cast without regard to race, age, or ethnicity, allowing us to engage with a broader range of students. While we assured all the students that accents would not be required, many took it upon themselves to learn the basics of various European dialects. To allow students the opportunity to perform and the playwright to listen, we decided I would read the stage directions. Sikora: At the read-through, students were provided with a very brief biography of the characters they were reading for, and we jumped into the text. They understood that they were not reading the full text but were reading one full story from within the text. In the talkback, the students expressed interest in knowing more. Reading 1/12 of the play and only seeing glimpses of the other 11/12 had whetted their appetites. Rosenfeld: We also created a response form with specific questions for the readers to reflect on in the days after the reading. This was useful for Sikora; it was even more useful for the students. This opportunity to give feedback allowed them to think critically about a work in progress and to begin to understand the value of both their ideas and their participation. Sikora: To continue this process, I had to keep writing the play. By the end of the semester, we held six read-throughs. On any given night, we read one to three new plotlines, each time understanding the story better than the time before. Rosenfeld: Throughout the readings I continued to do dramaturgical work. Relaying all this information to the students as we progressed made it all the more exciting. Both Sikora and I were able to use all our research as teaching opportunities about primary resources and secondary resources. Sikora: There was interest from the student participants in creating some form of production. The solution we landed on was to produce a recording of a staged reading. By using all the tools we had amassed and skills we had honed over the semester of small readings, we could create one reading of the full text. This initiative spoke to a number of wants and needs which were floating around our department: our collective desire to hear what this script sounded like end-to-end, an opportunity to prototype Rosenfeld’s idea for a new play development program, and to provide a sense of closure to what had become a much bigger project than was originally imagined. To prepare for this reading, I combed the script to get a sense of just which stage directions needed to be recorded for a radio play adaptation to be successful. Owing to the precise nature of the storytelling and the huge importance on historicity, certain sections of the original text include absolute paragraphs of stage directions. As the playwright, and knowing that I would be doing the post-production, I attempted to vet out some of these fuller sections. This was also when casting choices were made. Essentially, we expanded on the model we used for the initial read-throughs: Each actor was cast in a small number of lead roles, a comparable number of supporting roles from other plotlines within the story, and any number of tertiary roles with the intention of providing our students with varieties of characters which they could perform and to minimize situations where actors spoke to themselves as different characters. There are still scenes where an actor as a lead character speaks to or around themselves as a secondary or tertiary character, but they were carefully chosen in such a way that the audience would not get confused. Over Labor Day Weekend, 2022, we recorded a final read-through of the text. As the concept of time plays an important role in the script, so too did it play for us as we had no more than three workdays to wade through over 500-pages of text. The first day was largely spent disseminating information about the event, characters, and text so that everyone was on the same page with the production. Days two and three were devoted to reading and recording. We do not have a sound studio capable of recording over a dozen people individually and that was far beyond our intended scope, anyway. We set up an impromptu recording studio on one of our performance spaces, complete with enough microphones that we could pair cast members off to share, a digital soundboard to record, and all of the masking flown in to create as much soundproofing as we could muster. Throughout the recording itself, I took notes in my script of lines or sections which I knew would need to be re-recorded, notes on timing, notes from the sound board operator, and notes on and anything else which I thought would help me in the editing process later. By the numbers, the weekend included: thirteen student performers reading for over 180 characters; one Student Sound Technician; one Prologue, twenty-four scenes, and one Epilogue, spread over 523 pages of dialogue and action; and a 400-slide dramaturgical presentation. Rosenfeld: In addition to the dramaturgical presentation, we spent a bit of time on the first day discussing mic technique. Having spent some time in the audiobook industry, I was able to give basic instructions and tips on placement and pronunciation. These new skills led to four of these students now working as professional voice actors in a curriculum video series with a major university. It became obvious early in the process that recording stage directions as planned proved to be a logistical impossibility. We were already weary of running out of time and while the information was important to understanding the action for the audience it had the contrary effect of slowing down the pacing and energy for the actors. We made the decision to record the stage directions at a later date. Instead Sikora gave important details to the cast as needed to interpret the scenes. This was fortuitous to have the experience later of reading through the play using only the stage directions. It assisted Sikora in fine-tuning some areas as well as understanding his voice as a playwright—particularly toward the end when the stage directions alone had me in tears. As the dramaturg it confirmed for me that the stage directions play a vital role in this play in communicating not just the actions of the play but also the tone, mood, and subtext. Reading a script in this way is an exercise I will use going forward with all of my own plays as well as an exercise in playwriting courses and with new works I dramaturg. The entirety of the Epilogue needed to be recorded after the fact as well. As we neared the end of the play we were more quickly approaching the end of our recording schedule. Adding to the urgency of time was the heightened emotions of the piece which we knew could not be sacrificed for speed. In an effort to bring the piece to a temporary conclusion, as none of the students had experienced the piece fully from beginning to end, Sikora and I briskly and intently read-through to the end in their stead. While the students were disappointed this did not give the cohesion and satisfactory ending preferred with live theatre, it was an opportunity to learn that recorded works have the ability to be altered in post-production. Sikora: Before I could hit the ground on editing, I arranged pick-up recordings with each member of the cast. In these pick-up recordings we re-recorded any lines which were flubbed, any rewrites which occurred after the Labor Day Weekend session, and the Epilogue. Students were brought in separately to complete these recordings in the same makeshift studio setting. To achieve this, I went through my notated copy of the script, compiled an individual document for each cast member listing their pick-up lines in chronological order, and worked with them one line at a time. Many of the actors were able to pick up right where they left off because by this point they were so familiar with the text. Occasionally, and particularly for our newer castmates who were reading the Epilogue for the first time, additional context was required and as Playwright/Director I was able to provide that while we recorded. I also recorded Rosenfeld reading stage directions in much the same way. The post-production process took place in two waves: First, an audio trailer was mixed to demonstrate the quality of work we are able to achieve outside the normal production setting. Second, I set about editing the hours of audio into a ten-and-a-half-hour final product. This mostly involved trimming the recorded dialogue and mixing it with sound effects and diegetic music in Adobe Audition. Everything from lilting period music recorded by a castmate’s father to the gentle patter of the engines to the ominous ticking of the Clock which counts down the Titanic ’s final seconds was mixed into the hours of dialogue. In addition to serving the needs of this project, this part of the process also helped me develop our theatrical sound design and engineering program as I used samples of the recording and mix to illustrate concepts to students in our Sound Design class. Rosenfeld: We released the production in consumable installments over the first week of January 2023. Students were able to share the radio play with their friends and families; the response was delightful. Our fears about the production’s length were put to rest when one listener compared the experience to listening to a limited series podcast and others compared it to an audiobook. The radio play format has a new, eager audience. We held a listening party in the theatre at the end of the month so the students could hear it together. Though not all were able to attend, it was incredibly satisfying as an educator to watch them experience the result of a yearlong endeavor. An unexpected advantage to recording this as a radio play with contemporary technology is that we are able to easily insert changes into the production. This has allowed Sikora not only to record corrections to misspoken lines but to record re-writes as well. This is something we can offer playwrights in the future through NPDI’s workshop series. It also allows us to record additional actors as interest and time allows. As noted, Flying in the Face of God has well over a hundred speaking characters and with the small size of our department that means there are a handful of occasions when an actor plays two different characters within a single scene or conversation. As new students join our program, we are able to insert new voices and create a new dynamic within the same piece without having to record the entire play with the full company. On a larger scale, this project served as a building block and test run of a program designed to prepare our students to work on new plays after they graduate. When Sikora and I decided to turn this workshop reading series into a recorded product, I took the idea to the department head as a trial run of this kind of project using in-house faculty. To that end, the ability to invite working playwrights from the Dallas Metroplex to workshop new plays with our students and provide a recording for both the playwrights and our archive is now possible and the New Play Development Initiative became an official part of the AM-Commerce Department of Theatre. *** Having started this work in 2014, it was never Sikora’s intention that Flying in the Face of God might connect to the current Pandemic, but the confluence of events that led to the production of the works at TAMUC is remarkable on that score. Sikora’s desire to tell a massive story set during the Titanic disaster fed a hunger the students had to participate in telling a theatrical story of that scale. That it is a play about real people who endured a real cataclysm made it relatable to a group of persons living through another great cataclysm. Student Kaden James noted: I felt that the characters were truly living in a once-in-a-lifetime historical event, and with that relation to our everyday life being changed due to the pandemic, I felt that my relation to the characters was on a much more human level, in knowing that they only did what they could do. There was no higher expectation or complaint to what they had done, all for the fact that they were humans in an unknown situation. . . I more related to the direness of their situation than I did to the bleakness of my own. Another student, Kiley Towne, added, “Although they were suffering and scared, the characters always let their hope drive their actions, which was a wonderful lesson for me. We can always hope for a better tomorrow.” The Pandemic stalled our collaborative and individual progress in many ways. So often it seems like we were robbed of the time and opportunities we feel we should have had. While producing Flying in the Face of God , participants came to identify with historic characters whose time also appeared to be running out. They were also able to identify and create with each other in a new, unexpected way. The excitement around this project helped spur the AM-Commerce Department of Theatre’s New Play Development Initiative. This program now includes an annual recorded workshop series, a 24 Hour Theatre Project, and a group of students including playwrights, actors, designers, and technicians who meet weekly to focus on developing new plays. [i] The recording of Flying in the Face of God, including its trailer, is available for a limited time at: https://on.soundcloud.com/VDTRM QR code to Flying in the Face of God References Footnotes About The Author(s) JACKIE ROSENFELD is the Assistant Professor of Playwriting and Theatre Pedagogy at Texas AM Commerce. Her play keepingabreast produced by Blunder Woman Productions is available on Audible. Audible to keepingabreast CADE M. SIKORA is the Assistant Professor of Scenic Design and Technical Direction at Texas AM University-Commerce. Cade Sikora's portfolio Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time How to Make a Site-Specific Theatrical Homage to a Film Icon Without Drowning in Your Ocean of Consciousness; or, The Saga of Red Lodge, Montana Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past. Ariel Nereson. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 290. Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre. Cecilia Josephine Aragόn. New York: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 158. Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age. Duška Radosavljević. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022; Pp. 224. Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances. Jill Stevenson. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2022; Pp. 243. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 16 Fall 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed By Hadeel Abelhameed Published: November 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Photo courtesy of Hassan Abdulrazzak What does it mean to be a multinational Arabic playwright? How far can the intercultural background and the transnational life experiences under incompatible sociopolitical contexts fashion the playmaking process of international theatre makers like Hassan Abdulrazzak (b. 1973)? These questions and more shaped the discourse of this interview that was conducted with Abdulrazzak on the 31st of July 2024, and edited for length and clarity. Abdulrazzak was recently elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) on the 12th of July 2024, making him one of the few Arab literary figures who are RSL’s Fellows today. The election process demands at least two substantial literary works that should enjoy “outstanding literary merits.” Abdulrazzak’s repertoire since the premier of his first play Baghdad Wedding in 2007 has been received with “almost universal acclaim.” I understand this “universality” as a universalisation of Arabic local and regional issues through portraying the other half of the story about Arabic societies. Abdulrazzak’s theatrical imaginaries correlate with the sidelined cultural and social realities of Arabic peoples. For example, the unorthodox characters under the most critical political ruptures like the Iraqi gay and chaotic Salim in Baghdad Wedding , or the Egyptian middle-class couple Layla and Hisham who duplicate the state’s corruption in their marital life in The Prophet , or through depicting marginalised “heroes” like the Palestinian Ahamd Tobasi in Here I am . When I encounter these characters, and many others, I realise that Abdulrazzak’s characters are capable of encapsulating the contradictions and diversity of Arabic micro-politics that are experienced in the mundane every day. We discussed limitations on theatrical freedom, noting different kinds of restrictions in SWANA countries, Europe, and the USA Hadeel Abelhameed: Congratulations for being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. How did you learn about it? Hassan Abdulrazzak : I got an email from my agent saying that the president of the Royal Society has a letter, and whether she can send me the letter. It informed me that I’ve been elected to be a Fellow. I didn’t really know much about the election process, but it looks like there are several Fellows who have to nominate you, and then your name has to go through a process before you become a Fellow. I knew one of the Fellows whom I suspected was behind this nomination, but I still do not know the other Fellows. It is an honour to be recognised by your peers who are already part of this Society, and the fact that they put your name forward, and then it gets chosen. It is significant. HA : You signed with the pen of Lord Byron, right? Abdulrazzak: YES! They tell you by email that this is what the setup is going to be like, and you have to make a choice. They list a number of writers. I knew from the beginning that some people decided on the day, but I knew that I wanted to go for Lord Byron. First, because it’s the oldest pen. Secondly, I have a fondness for Lord Byron because of two things. His poetry was some of the earliest poetry I read in English when I was a teenager, and in my late teens. Secondly, I briefly mentioned him in Baghdad Wedding; my first play. I felt like it was appropriate to choose his pen. I know that some people said, “Oh, he’s a problematic figure.” Well, T.S. Elliot is another problematic figure, you know. So, I decided to go for Lord Byron. HA : As you are talking about problematic literary figures, there is the question: Is it really necessary to know what their, let’s say, political and personal stances are? Does that influence the creative output that they share with humanity, because their works are part of human heritage? But then you, you go back to read, what did they write specifically under post-colonial or feminist lenses that can deconstruct literary works and classics. Abdulrazzak: I think we live in a world that is based on judgement that is accelerated by social media, and people can just give their opinions very quickly. You know, people get cancelled very quickly and their reputation never recovers. I can see a kind of a pathway: you do not dismiss everything about the person’s opinions. If they have racist or misogynist opinions, obviously, you take those opinions into account when assessing their work. But you also look at what remains of value in their body of work. Sometimes reading someone that antagonises you is of more value than reading someone with whom you fully agree. It’s a balance, like holding two things in your hand. HA : Talking about two things in one hand, you are a scientist and a playwright! How do you juggle that? Abdulrazzak: Well, I am talking to you while I am in one of the meeting rooms at the research centres of Imperial College. This is my day job. Until I wrote my first play Baghdad Wedding , writing for me it was kind of a hobby. I published a few poems, a couple of short stories, and I had some online publications. And, my uncle was Mahmoud Albayaty who passed away and was a short story writer. Actually, he wrote two novels, one was published posthumously. He had an influence on me growing up, So, I just fell into writing which was always kind of a passion of mine. But I came to the UK at the age of 13, a very delicate age, so my English was not good enough to take literature and study it properly. I studied English as a foreign language. I ended up going into the sciences that were kind of accessible and easier, but I kind of maintained a love of literature and a love of writing that is why I continued writing. I started writing seriously when I wrote my first play, and that took me into a whole other world, into the world of performance and acting and working with actors and working with directors. It was not a planned thing. It more or less just happened. HA : You were asked in one of your earlier interviews about when do you usually decide to switch from Arabic into English and vice versa? And you said when you are thinking or talking through an Iraqi character, you “think” in the Arabic language, you go back to your “Iraqiness.” So, that’s another challenge; to rewire from one language to another is actually to jump to another culture, the way they think, the way they act, the way they live and see life. Is it still a challenge? Abdulrazzak: Now, I think it is more challenging! At the beginning it was really very عفوي. It was just spontaneous, showing my bilingual skill, and I didn’t think so. It came kind of naturally to me what the language would be. I knew that I wanted to convey something about that language and so it was peppered with Iraqi phrases. For example, if two English speaking characters were in England or elsewhere, or even alone in Iraq speaking English, their language would be less peppered with the Arabic phrases. Over the years, I thought a lot about language. Should I put in Arabic phrases for this? If yes, what’s the significance? What am I trying to say? Are they speaking on their own? Are they together in one space, and are they speaking in their native language? And how do I convey that? HA : I can see this also because the themes and contexts that you choose for your plays are so diverse, ranging from naturalism to science fiction. The technique might be verbatim, or a pure creation of your imagination or even hybrid. How do you approach these different theatrical techniques and themes? Abdulrazzak: Well, this happens again, gradually, one thing leads to another. For example, Baghdad Wedding was completely from my imagination. My second play, the Prophet, I did interviews. It was about the Egyptian revolution, and I interviewed a lot of people in Cairo a year after the revolution in January 2012, gathering a lot of research and so I had a lot of testimonies based on that. However, we were not planning to do a verbatim play. There was one person in particular that gave me a testimony that really kind of sparked inspiration. So, I wrote a monologue that is there in the pieces that is very much kind of rooted in that interview and the reality of what I was told, and what it was like to be on the streets in the revolution in Egypt. The play Love, Bombs and Apples was not entirely about Palestine, it’s a series of stories, but the first monologue was an anecdote that was shared with me by a writer. And we were sitting in a cafe, and he told me this funny story, and it just stayed in my head. Then, I did pure verbatim in my play The Special Relationship , which was based on interviews with people that were deported from the United States. The play was basically their interviews edited and put together. That is the hardest play I’ve ever written. It was the hardest project I’ve ever done. And I salute anybody that does Verbatim theatre. I really admire the skill. The people who do it really well are amazing. I think for me, verbatim theatre is much harder than making stuff up, because you’re more in control of making stuff up. There is a power to verbatim because you are telling stories of what happened to real people. It’s a great way of investigating something. HA : I can see that it’s the theme itself that encourages you to choose what technique you use in the play. If you are talking about detainees, we are talking about a social class that is very marginalised who are victimised twice. First, because they are detainees in deportation centres and second because they are demonised by the dominant narrative about them in the media. So, the theme would indicate which technique you would choose? Abdulrazzak: For me, there were a couple of things I did when I decided to do the play Special Relationship as a verbatim. First, I met people who were outside of my writing comfort zone. I’ve written up to that point mainly about Arab and, not extensively, about Western characters. So, when I carried out interviews for that, I felt that there was a danger in fictionalising the experience of people whose lives are very different from my own. Of course, everybody has the right to fictionalise whatever they like, and so on. But for me, at that particular moment, I felt, no, it’s one of the reasons why I wanted the verbatim technique. Secondly, the stories themselves were just incredible. They had this kind of feeling of, you couldn’t make it up. And I met, particularly, a woman who disappeared later on. She was like a cowboy, like it’s the closest thing I’ve come to meeting a real-life cowboy. She had a cowboy hat when I met her and she had an adventurous life and she’d done all sorts of things, but also, there was something lovable about her. The two hours I spent with her, stayed with me all this time. I think about her a lot, and I wanted to do more with her story. To this day, we don’t know where she went or what happened. Like the cowboy, walking off into the sunset, just disappearing from view. Her story was so compelling, and had such elements that, you know, you couldn’t make it up. She had been a witness to various things that were really interesting. The verbatim is going to give us so much power. HA : Then, what about your choice of playwriting science fiction? Abdulrazzak: I have written two plays for students that were performed by students in Drama schools. One was called Sea Things which was set in the future and was based on a kind of place of refuge for climate change refugees. It was inspired by an earlier play I had written in Sharjah, UAE called Dhow Under the Sun where I was asked to do this project for young people from all over the Arab world who were going to submit a project on how they make a play. They had a very specific remit, which was 50:50 men and women, a cohort of 35 actors. I was asked not to make the play political. Now, of course, we got away with a lot of politics. Initially, I pitched a story about refugees, and people in charge said: “Well, that’s a bit political. We don’t want to get into regional politics.” And then I said, “Well, I’ll set it in the UAE, and it will be about climate change refugees, not refugees of war.” We decided that everybody was going to act in their own accents. Even if they were siblings. So, the politics did come into a metaphorical way. I reconfigured the play later on and created Sea Things . I created a completely different set of characters, a completely different plot. There were certain elements that were inspired by that earlier play, and they were both set in the future, looking at climate change. It was set in the future, but really it was about the present. So, different kinds of techniques for different audiences and different actors who are excited by different themes. HA : You mentioned censorship, Hassan, and you know how censorship plays a significant role in Arabic theatrical life because Arabic theatre is political. Whatever you do, it ends up having a political message. What do you think of censorship? Do you find it curtailing force? Or does it give space for creativity? Abdulrazzak: I’ve experienced censorship in both worlds. I’ve experienced censorship in the Arab world. That was the example I just mentioned, this example in the UAE. But in the Arab world, it’s funny how it works. But because it’s so blunt, sometimes you can get around it. I’ll give you an example: in this play with 35 actors, I had a scene where there was a group of women who tried to protest against the dictator of the camp. He wasn’t called the dictator of the camp, but he was kind of the person running the camp, who was controlling all the power. And they protest in the scene by belly dancing outside the store, preventing people from going in or out. And I thought that was my way of doing it. But, somebody in charge came and looked at the scene and said, “we can’t have belly dancing on stage, cut it out or replace it with something else.” Well, what else can we do? We’re in the middle of rehearsals. “How about chanting?” he said. So, we ended up having a scene that looked like an Arabic demonstration instead of the belly dancing that I tried to do, which was my own self-censorship, so, we had even a stronger scene. Another time I had my Palestinian play, And Here I Am , in a festival in Cairo, and just before the performer was going to go on stage, a man from the censorship office came on and said, “Oh, by the way, you’ve got to cut out this and this and this and this.” Luckily, I had a fantastic director. She’s English but she’s lived in the Arab world, and knows how these things work. She just went, “Yeah, of course, we’ll do it, yeah, please come and watch the performance.” And we cut nothing, and the censor didn’t care. I’ve had censorship in Britain. I’ve worked on a small project with the British Museum. They had taken out the Rosetta Stone as part of their exhibition, and they put various kinds of statues and tablets and so on. And our task as writers was to write for each character, and I picked two. The remit was you write something about the character in the past and something that has an equivalent in today’s world and I ended up writing about a priest in ancient Egypt, it was audio piece pieces, and that was recorded. I wrote the second piece set in a contemporary Coptic Church. The British Museum got very nervous, and they went and consulted with the Coptic Church which was very happy with it. They were like, “Oh, wow, something is written about us, that’s great!” It wasn’t critical, but it was kind of a tense piece, it had dramatic tension. The British Museum ended up not recording the play, just in case something bad happens or whatever. Yeah, institutions here in the West can censor as well, if they think that they’re gonna get in trouble. The biggest subject that I believe is under censorship right now is Palestine. When you come from the region, and you write about Palestine it is different. If you’re an American playwright who is writing about Palestine and doing a kind of both sides are good or bad, then you can get away with it, and your play could even end up in the National Theatre. But if you are coming with a point of view, and have a take on it, then it becomes much harder. Can censorship be an inspiring thing? One could use allegory to deal with the conflict and create a play that would have a longer shelf life. That is the kind of thing that opens up possibilities. One of the playwrights I admire massively is Carol Churchill, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting her on several occasions and talking to her. She is the mistress of metaphor on the stage. Churchill writes political plays like Far Away and other plays that are steeped in politics, but they don’t seem like they are. Instead, they come across like dark fairy tales. And I really aspire to write in that way. So, you can get around censorship by using something metaphoric, but at the same time, you create something that might have a longer shelf life. Because it’s not rooted to a particular moment or wedded to a particular situation that might one day be over. I think the metaphor allows for longevity of a play, and it’s just more interesting, because it makes the audience engage in the game of trying to decipher the play. HA : Exactly, you are relying on your audience. There is a hidden channel between you and the audience. it’s just like, I know what that means. It is an amazing moment, isn’t it? Abdulrazzak: It definitely is. I think writing in a metaphoric way is very exciting. I hope to develop plays with that approach. HA : How do you see yourself being from the second generation of migrants? You were born in Prague and lived most of your life in London. Your roots are from Iraq. How do you see this combination of three different cultures? How far do you mobilise these different contexts into a play? Abdulrazzak: I often think about things in terms of a story that sparks. I try not to think about the complexity of my identity, because if I do, it could be crippling. I lived in Iraq from the age of three to the age of eight. And that’s the strongest memory of Iraq. I didn’t go back to Iraq till 2019, a lifetime later. Obviously, I had a continuity with Iraqi society and a lot of my relatives live in Amman. You go to Amman, which has suburbs that are like a Little Iraq, you know. And there is a Little Iraq in London as well. And I’m sure it’s the case as well in Australia. I know that because I was in Australia as well. I know that there is a community there. It’s not the same as living in Iraq. What kind of stories can I tell based on that identity, is something I think about. Do I have the licence to tell stories of people living in Iraq, for example. I believe you have the right to tell any kind of stories, as long as you do the work and the research. What can I allow my identity to dictate? Right? My starting point is much more organic than that. I’m writing a musical called The Shadow World that’s got some scenes set in Yemen. The musical is inspired by a book with the same title about the arms trade, but I don’t have direct experience of Yemen. It’s not a country I visited. Rather, it’s something that I’m reaching with my imagination with some research and interviews to do it that way. At the same time, I’ve created a character who’s Yemeni British. So, I feel I’ve got kind of around that with this approach. Her identity would be something that I can tap into because it’s kind of closer to me, I think. HA : Nearly every piece I read about you, or even when you introduce yourself, you usually say “I’m of Iraqi origin.” Do you think your audience, when they come to see your plays, have in mind “I’m going to see a British-Iraqi play” or “I am going to watch a semi-Iraqi theatre”? Abdulrazzak: Actually, the Iraqi community is not usually theatre-enthusiast. It is mainly oriented towards poetry and so on. Sometimes I wonder what this specific person will think of this particular scene? Or sometimes I have, I hope, certain people as a select audience in my head, and I wonder what they would think of a certain scene or a certain play. They might come and see a play because the play is set in Iraq. They might do it just simply because of that. But I would really like to think at the end of the day, I’ve got to tell interesting stories that can compel a wide audience. And I am against the idea of putting ourselves in boxes. You can utilise your own culture, but you have to try and write the best piece of work you can. Make it as compelling as anything else by anybody else. Obviously, I come from an Iraqi family, both of my parents are Iraqi. I have cousins here, aunties, uncles. My Iraqiness is just a fact of life. This is who I am. But am I as Iraqi as somebody like Jawad Alassadi? You know, I don’t have that experience. Obviously, when he’s going to write a play while living in Iraq, he’s going to write a very different play, because he is tapping into different things. He knows his audience. He’s doing different things. Maybe if he did one of my plays like Baghdad Wedding on stage in the National Theater, nobody might like it. I can’t always gauge how something will be perceived, or go down. Especially critics here, they’re a very, very strange bunch. Like sometimes you think: “Oh, I know this critic. I know what they will like.” And you could be completely wrong. You write a play and then they completely dislike it or like it. So, I think if you spend a lot of time trying to anticipate all of that, it’s not good for the creative process. HA : I’m thinking about Baghdad Wedding . It premiered in 2007, four years after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. But the whole story is hilarious. So funny. It’s a comedy talking about different people from what the UK audience knows or hears about Iraq. Those men are very progressive figures, modern, open minded. I felt that you wanted to say something different from what UK people hear in the mainstream about what’s happening in Iraq, or life in Iraq, even before 2003. Abdulrazzak: Definitely with Baghdad Wedding, I felt very compelled to show the Iraq that I know. That meant the characters were in Britain, they went back to Iraq and so on. I wanted to show a side that I knew, the mainstream did not know about Iraq. And I think at the time, you know, the predominant image of the time that I wrote the play was that vandals were taking things from ministries and running with them. And there was a kind of a sense that Iraq is a very primitive country with some strange people who do primitive things, very uncivilised and so on. And of course, we as Iraqis know the reasons why this happened, and we know the political and sociological reasons for the looting. Iraqis, when they were on the British stage, were marginal to the story, like in Stuff happens by David Hare. I wanted to write against this play. Again, this goes back to the point of the value of being provoked by people you don’t agree with. There was definitely a drive to present another version of Iraq. Now that version also challenged some Iraqis, because there isn’t one Iraq, just like there isn’t one Britain, or one Australia. It’s your take on it. I think it was the BBC that one day interviewed me, and they interviewed somebody who had just arrived from Iraq. This young man said: “Well, nobody drinks in Iraq.” Well, no! There are people who drink and some of them even drink excessively. That’s not the population, but that is a group. I said “You have your experience in Iraq, and I have the experience that I know of Iraq. There isn’t really one Iraq.” It’s important to try and show different aspects of not just Iraq, but Arab culture, because there is such a terrible stereotype. There is such a kind of narrow representation. I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but in the UK, if a character is a Muslim woman, she must be wearing a veil. Well, there are so many other Muslim women, practising Muslim women who are not hijabi. Why do we always have to have this represented? I’m not against hijab, when it’s worn by choice, but it cannot be the only way to represent Muslim women. HA: That’s amazing. I loved Baghdad Wedding , and I noticed that it was broadcast for BBC Radio, then you co-authored it as a film with Nick Drake, right? Abdulrazzak: Yeah, we tried. We worked on it for a number of years. It almost became a film, but unfortunately, the project didn’t happen. And the rights are sitting with the big company that took it, and it’s become an impediment to getting it made. HA : It was also produced in Australia. How did it end up there? Abdulrazzak: The Belvoir Street Theatre read about it, and decided to mount their own production in 2009. It was a fantastic production. They were very hospitable. They hired an Iraqi woman who was involved with helping the actors with the accents, and also galvanising the Iraqi community to come and see the play. They did everything right. I was very impressed by them. And one of the actors who had a minor role, Osamah Sami, He’s like a big star in Australia now. He started with a small role in Baghdad Wedding , but he was very talented. I could tell this guy was going to be a star. HA : Thank you so much, Hassan. Would you like to add something? Abdulrazzak: I would just like to add, I’ve been fortunate to make theatre for a wide audience. But I really think there are a lot of Iraqi theatre makers who, for various reasons, maybe language barriers or other reasons, work for the Iraqi community only. And I think they’re unsung heroes. They make shows every now and then, whenever they can, for the Iraqi audiences. And I, I just hope that one day there will be a kind of an archive where this would be documented—especially the people who didn’t get their dues, you know, who didn’t get reviewed, or gain recognition in the societies where they settled. And I think there’s so many people who love theatre, who do theatre, who save up a bit of money and then put on a play for the community. The two prominent examples in London are Ronak Shawki and Ahlam Arab. I just wanted to mention them. And yeah, I hope there’ll be some kind of recognition for their work. HA : Yeah, I totally agree with you, Hassan. I just submitted an article about seasoned Iraqi theatre makers in Australia. They face endless challenges to present or produce Iraqi plays that would premier on the Australian multicultural stage. Accordingly, their repertoires are not nationally recognized. It is not only the language barrier as you put it. Rather, it is the lack of knowledge about funding norms, for example, and so many other power dynamics that limit their creativity. I argue that the same struggle here in Australia is the same in other Global North countries like Europe, US and Canada. Thank you so much for bringing that to our attention. Abdulrazzak: Thank you. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Dr. Hadeel Abdelhameed is a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University/ Faculty of Education, examining the revamps in educational and cultural policies that aim to reinvigorate the theatre culture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Her research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first Iraqi theatre, postcolonial and feminist theory, memory studies, and national identity. Her recent article “The Rashid Theater in Baghdad: The Drama of a Nation” examines the spatial memory in Iraq by focusing on one of the Iraqi National Theatres, the Rashid Theatre. Abdelhameed is also interested in the performative dimension of social movements. In support of the women’s contribution to Iraqi Tishreen protest movement, Abdelhameed has co-authored a book chapter, “Mothering the Protest: Gender Performativity as a Communication Mechanism in the Iraqi Protest Movement” for The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media, and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa (2023). She is a co-convenor of the Arabic Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research/ IFTR, and is on the Advisory Board of the journal Public Humanities. She is the founder of the Iraqi Women Academics Network IWAN_Iraq. Currently, she guest editing a special issue of GPS: Global Performance Studies about Iraqi theatre since the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, which will come out in 2026. 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 An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Review: GUERNICA, GAZA: VISIONS FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. By Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi Performance Review: The Tutor Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are 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 Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai By Sami Ismat Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Sadieh Rifai's world premiere of The Cave at Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre, immediately immerses us in the fraught existence of a half-Palestinian, half-American family navigating the complexities of identity during the Gulf War, 1990. A Red Orchid, celebrated for its intimate space and unflinching approach to storytelling, becomes the ideal incubator for this narrative that grapples with cultural dissonance, the immigrant experience, mental health, and the fierce protectiveness that binds a family. Rifai draws inspiration from her upbringing and crafts a story that seeks to transport us into the heart of this family, exploring their humor and their darkness. However, The Cave wrestles with an ambition that perhaps exceeds its reach, attempting to simultaneously function as a family drama, a mental health discourse, an immigrant saga, and a commentary on the political realities of the Palestinian diaspora, all while current realities in Gaza loom large. While offering moments of profound honesty and empathy, one is ultimately left questioning whether the play fully succeeds in untangling the intricate web of identity, trauma, and belonging it bravely sets out to explore for an American audience that are highly prone to cultural misinterpretation. The play's opening act portrays the family's move from Las Vegas to Columbus, Ohio. Their move is an attempt to distance themselves from the murder of their cousin, but subtly hinting at a deeper quest for a sanctuary—a "Cave"—a motif that reverberates throughout the production. It is through this family tragedy that we are introduced to the daughters Dema (Aaliyah Montana) and Noor (Milla Liss), with the loss of their cousin Jay hanging heavy in the air. The seemingly idyllic suburban home in Columbus, Ohio, becomes a deliberate juxtaposition against the turmoil festering within the family and the larger world. This gated community, with its aggressively white American middle-class aesthetic, morphs into a microcosm of America itself, exposing the alienation experienced by immigrants – a space where promises of safety and security are subverted by the realities of prejudice, cultural disjuncture, and the ever-present specter of the Gulf War. We see such xenophobia manifest in the character of the "friendly" neighbor Gail, played with precision by Ashley Neal. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Kirsten Fitzgerald, and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover . The walls of the family’s home, metaphorically a cave, are punctuated by projections of war, news, family life, and xenophobic content. This carefully curated mixture of content begins to bleed into each other, a chaotic crescendo mirroring the escalating tensions within the family and, perhaps, the worsening mental state of the father Jamil (H. Adoni Esho). The confined theatre space ensnares us within this family’s pain and joy, haunting the living space during scene transitions. Initially piled high in the first act but gradually diminishing throughout the play, the moving boxes further underscore the overarching themes of displacement, impermanence, and the family's desperate, yet ultimately futile, attempt to find a sense of belonging. The family does not just struggle to belong to the larger environment that inherently resists them, but also extends to within the household, as we witness the family constantly bickering with each other over the simplest things, such as their food choices. At its core, The Cave meticulously examines the complex and often fractured relationships between the family members from different cultural backgrounds. Jamil, portrayed with both charisma and vulnerability by Esho, is a Palestinian father battling schizophrenia and PTSD; his paranoia is fueled by personal trauma and the rampant xenophobia that permeates America. Bonnie, played with nuanced strength by Kirsten Fitzgerald, embodies the challenges of assimilation, navigating the cultural chasm between her American identity and her husband's heritage. Dema and Noor, the daughters, played with purity and unflinching honesty by Montana and Liss, find themselves caught between these two worlds, as their struggles with identity mirror the broader challenges of belonging that plague many second-generation immigrants. Through this character depiction, Rifai is successful in following a vision of helping audiences of second-generation backgrounds see themselves in these characters. Aaliyah Montana and Milla Liss in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover. The Cave attempts to show Jamil grappling with a mental illness, which remains undiagnosed within the narrative. As Jamil’s condition worsens throughout the play, the audience is only left further confused about the type of mental illness and the negligence of it by other characters in the play. Bonnie (Jamil’s wife) is the only one genuinely concerned, but she is too afraid to intervene or embrace his culture as a path towards understanding his condition. Instead, Jamil's character devolves from a charismatic and caring husband and father to a paranoid patriarch desperate to overprotect his daughters, and alienating his wife Bonnie by weaponizing his cultural identity against her. On the other hand, Bonnie makes no real attempt on her end within the dramatic narrative to resolve any of this beyond showing concern around being divorced. He leans further into his Arabic and Muslim heritage, seemingly validating long-held stereotypes among Westerners. Given that Jamil is the central brown Muslim character in the play, and very few Muslim characters grace Chicago stages annually, it raises the critical question: will the predominantly white American audiences ever be offered portrayals of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians that transcend the harmful tropes of "threat" or "traumatized subject who becomes a threat"? Even with the sincerest intentions from the playwright, can an American audience, raised on a steady diet of prejudice against brown male bodies, truly separate a character's individual struggles from ingrained societal biases against Islam? It is this tension that defines the challenge of ethical representation, of creating characters that are both authentic and free from the weight of harmful stereotypes. This is not a critique of the playwright or the autobiographical truth behind this story that she intended to mention in the talkback. Rather, it is a question of intention versus impact on non-immigrant, non-Muslim, and non-Arab audiences. A particularly unsettling scene unfolds when Jamil, in the throes of his escalating mental health crisis, proposes that his 13-year-old daughter, Dema, that she should consider marrying Omar (Omer Abbas Salem), his younger friend from the mosque in 7-8 years’ time when she’s around 18-20 years old. Jamil emphasizes this as an opportunity for his daughter to have a husband to support her higher education and pay the bills so she can reach her potential. This moment might have been intended to illustrate the character's fractured state of mind and perhaps explore themes of cultural tradition. But instead, it stumbles into dangerous territory. While the play may not explicitly depict an arranged or forced marriage, the suggestion, particularly involving a minor, evokes historical and contemporary anxieties surrounding cultural practices, specifically within Muslim communities. Coerced child marriage is a human rights violation that exists, and although this moment is much more complex, it still feeds such anxieties, given that Dema is 13 and is being asked about marriage. Such scenes risk reinforcing the "us" versus "them" dichotomy, where the culture of the "other" is portrayed as inherently deficient. By associating Jamil's mental illness with this suggestion, the play flirts with the harmful stereotype of the "violent Muslim man", subtly reinforcing the association of mental illness with dangerous behavior. It also risks perpetuating the dehumanization of Palestinian men by Western media. At times, Rifai attempts to justify that moment by connecting it to other inappropriate moments earlier – for instance, the white Grandma marrying at 16 years old, and Dema’s aunts/uncles marrying at a young age. However, is it enough to clear a whole generation of Americans born and bred on images and stories of Muslim men being awful to women, including their own daughters? The question becomes, at what cost does one attempt to represent the complexities of mental illness when it reinforces pre-existing societal biases and stereotypes? Even if unintended, the impact of such portrayals can be far-reaching, further stigmatizing mental illness within marginalized communities and perpetuating harmful stereotypes about Muslim and Arab men. The issue is not that these things do not happen; in fact, Rifai shows us multiple flawed family members, including Uncle Neil (Guy Van Swearingen), a troubled Vietnam veteran who gives a gun to Jamil, smokes near children, and takes Dema on a motorcycle with no helmet. The issue rather stems from the flawed perceptions of Westerners and their colonial gaze that feeds the idea of Western cultural exceptionalism -- a culture that chuckles at a racist, unhinged Grandma who sexualizes the body of her 13-year-old granddaughter in an earlier scene. The two scenes are set in very different contexts, but such cultural exceptionalism that finds sexualizing a 13-year-old palatable in one context, but asking her about a future marriage horrifying in another cultural context, is quite revealing of the hypocrisy in the American cultural consciousness. The character of Omar, who is not given any proper introduction beyond “Jamil’s friend from the mosque,” is portrayed as complicit in this troubling behavior. Omar also appears as a voice, a projection, and appears physically on stage to haunt Jamil’s mind with negative thoughts towards America and his family, which can dangerously conflate Islam as a religion that radicalizes and contributes to Jamil’s worsening condition. While Rifai’s intentions are far from such a simplified worldview, and those of us who are immigrants understand very well the complexities of cultural differences, it begs the question: is the American stage ready for such raw, emotional, and culturally complex stories, and when overall representation is lacking? Additionally, xenophobic ideas populate Westerners’ minds about Muslim men plotting to marry underage girls, making the impact of this moment potentially dangerous in what it could further perpetuate. Although we witness Jamil struggle and hear a tragic monologue about his traumatized childhood in Palestine, and hear that his father had mental health struggles, are those moments sufficient to absolve him in the eyes of the average American? A Muslim woman in the audience cried and empathized with him because she had the cultural understanding, but what about the rest of the audience members? Act 2 is full of moments that expose troubling cultural discrepancies. For instance, when Jamil tries to teach Dema how to physically hurt any kids bullying her at school, a moment that culturally makes sense if you grow up under occupation and must defend yourself, but will it come across to those who do not know what that’s like and don’t possess the cultural sensitivity? While Esho does a phenomenal job with his strong stage presence and deeply felt emotions as Jamil, there did not seem to be ample time given to cultural consultancy and authenticity in the production process. For instance, the Muslim prayer was questionably done, the accent did not sound Palestinian, and the Arabic words were often incorrectly pronounced, including the word for divorce in the climactic moment “talaq” repeated three times, which legally in Islam means the marriage is irredeemable. Saying “talaq” in Arabic just means divorce, without a proper address with a signifier “inti” followed by the word “taleq” not “talak” directed at the subject (Bonnie) so it will be “inti taleq” said three times. Although this may seem a little detail but given that this is the climax of the play it is important that the intensity of it for Arabic speakers does not get diffused by simple linguistic errors. This is no fault of an actor who is neither from a Palestinian nor Muslim background, but rather stems from the confines and difficulties of producing theatre authentically in such challenging times economically, where it is often difficult to provide sufficient time and resources. Immigrant stories deserve ample support, and the Palestinian diaspora in Chicago (one of the largest Palestinian communities in the country) needs to grace the stage more often. The fact that this is Rifai’s first ever play and was produced at a reputable small sized theatre in Chicago is something to be commended and appreciated. The Cave shares a story about a traumatic childhood expressed through an ensemble of brilliant actors. The stage is a cultural battleground that shatters the family through Jamil’s paranoia, which makes him turn off light bulbs, transforming the house into a dark cave. The play demonstrates how those unprotected in an alienating and xenophobic culture cannot become real protectors for their families. Even though this play is set prior to 9/11, the racism in America is very present in the text, from the crazy extremist Christian neighbor Gail to the bullying Dema faces at school to Bonnie’s family members spewing ignorant microaggressions. The play ends with Jamil divorcing Bonnie, leaving his family in despair with a burden of raising two daughters who are dealing with the grief of their killed cousin Jay and the divorce. In a beautiful final gesture the daughters exit by descending into the home's basement, which becomes their own private cave or sanctuary, with the shadow of Jay and/or Jamil looming over the house (depending on how you interpret it). But do these artistic and creative moments clear the potential impact that this story could have on Western minds in 2025? The danger is that this ending quickly shifts focus away from the Palestinian man Jamil at a time when we need the utmost empathy, considering the genocide happening in Gaza. It is impossible to know what each American audience member interprets, but Jamil could be easily vilified and seen as yet another brown Muslim man who broke a happy American family as he leaned further into his religion and cultural identity. An unfortunate and unintended impact, but a plausible one in a country that lacks diverse representation and that primarily focuses on negative stereotypes, such as those dramatized in the play Disgraced . The Cave asks whether America is ready to embrace Arab trauma without reducing Arabs and Arab Americans to cultural threats to steer away from . Or, perhaps more accurately, how do we guard against the trap of exceptionalism, ensuring that our attempts do not simply reinforce a sense of Western superiority? The answer, it seems, lies not in avoiding difficult stories but in approaching them with humility, a critical eye, and an unwavering commitment to empathy and understanding that this production is working towards. Guy Van Swearingen and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover. Aaliyah Montana and H. Adoni Esho in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Sami Ismat is a Research-Practitioner in Performance & Theatre from Damascus, Syria. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at Columbia College Chicago. His interdisciplinary artistic practice integrates performance art, devised theatre, documentary techniques, ethnographic research, filmmaking, and choreography. Across cultural institutions in Egypt, Tunisia, UAE, UK, and USA., Sami has contributed as writer, director, creator, performer, collaborator, and consultant on a variety of projects spanning across major theatres and museums to street performances and unconventional spaces. Additionally, Sami is a semi-professional soccer coach and sports administrator working nationally across the US at the adult and youth levels. Currently, he works at Edgewater Castle FC as a coach and assists in sporting operations. He also serves on the board of the foundation for the club. Sami is passionate about developing talent and creating cultural belonging through the arts and the beautiful game, globally known as football. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch Bila Burba by Duiren Wagua at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2025. The Gunadule, the original inhabitants of northern Panama, reenact their successful uprising in 1925 against the repressive Panamanian government every year. Keeping this past alive is crucial for the preservation of collective identity.. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Bila Burba At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2025 A film by Duiren Wagua Screening Information This film will be screened in-person at The Segal Centre on Friday May 16th at 12pm. 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. You may RSVP above to get a reminder about the Segal Film Festival in your inbox. Country Panama Language Spanish, Dulegaya Running Time 70 minutes Year of Release 2023 About The Film The Gunadule, the original inhabitants of northern Panama, reenact their successful uprising in 1925 against the repressive Panamanian government every year. Keeping this past alive is crucial for the preservation of collective identity. About The Artist(s) Duiren Wagua is a director, cinematographer and indigenous audiovisual producer from the Gunadule nation of Panama. With 9 years of experience in Panamanian cinematography, throughout his career he has collaborated for national and international film and television productions that have been shot in the Gunayala territory, Panama City and other locations such as: Spain, France, Denmark, Netherlands and Norway. He is Co-Founder of Wagua Films S.A., an audiovisual company that offers production services and consultancy to production companies that seek to film in the indigenous people of Panama's territories. Get in touch with the artist(s) festival@utopiadocs.net and follow them on social media https://www.utopiadocs.net/, renato@utopiadocs.net Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2025 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here His Head was a Sledgehammer Richard Foreman in Retrospect Moi-même Mojo Lorwin/Lee Breuer Benjamim de Oliveira's Open Paths Catappum! Collective Peak Hour in the House Blue Ka Wing Transindigenous Assembly Joulia Strauss Bila Burba Duiren Wagua JJ Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, Lucie Brux Acting Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film PACI JULIETTE ROUDET Radical Move ANIELA GABRYEL Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread Jean-Baptiste Mathieu This is Ballroom Juru and Vitã Reas Lola Arias The Jacket Mathijs Poppe Pidikwe Caroline Monnet Resilience Juan David Padilla Vega The Brink of Dreams Nada Riyadh, Ayman El Amir Jesus and The Sea Ricarda Alvarenga Grand Theft Hamlet Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls Theater of War Oleh Halaidych Skywalk Above Prague Václav Flegl, Jakub Voves Somber Tides Chantal Caron / Fleuve Espace Danse

Jenna Gerdsen Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Jenna Gerdsen By Published on May 23, 2022 Download Article as PDF When I left Hawaiʻi for college on the continent, I was in for quite a shock. As a mixed Asian woman born and raised in Hawaiʻi, I was used to being a part of a dominant majority. When I arrived in Washington, I lost the comforts that came with being a part of a majority and was eager to find an Asian community. I hesitantly joined the Asian American Student Association. Though I had never identified as Asian American, I assumed the group could replicate some of the comforts of home. Yet I did not feel at ease. I felt distant from the other students. My Hawaiian Pidgin and love for Hawaiian plate lunches set me apart. When someone suggested I check out the Hawaiʻi Club, I began to realize that Asianness looked and sounded differently outside of Hawaiʻi. I share this personal anecdote to illustrate that stories have triggered discussions around categorical schemas, representation, and historical fissures between Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. In The Cultural Capital of Asian American Studies: Autonomy and Representation in the University, Mark Chiang asserts Blu’s Hanging, the controversial novel by popular Japanese writer Lois-Ann Yamanaka, challenged fundamental assumptions of Asian American Studies and demanded new theorizations of Asian American cultural politics. [1] At the 1998 Association for Asian American Studies conference, Yamanaka received a fiction award, but a motion to revoke the award was initiated due her stereotypical depictions of Filipinos. The novel demonstrated the dominance of East Asians in Hawaiʻi and the prevalence of an ethnic hierarchy. In Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawaiʻi, Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Okamura assert that East Asians of Hawaiʻi often use “Local,” the pan-ethnic label unique to Hawaiʻi, to build a Pan-Asian nationhood and obscure Native Hawaiian history. [2] In less dramatic fashion, plays by Asian and Hawaiian playwrights of Hawaiʻi have reignited the urgency to reconceptualize Asian Americanness. Eager to assimilate in the continent, I turned to Esther Kim Lee’s A History of Asian American Theatre . Before reading her work, I assumed that theatre of Hawaiʻi would be a part of her study. I learned that merging theatre of Hawaiʻi with Asian American theatre comes with complications, just like my attempts to blend in at student gatherings. Lee made the strategic decision to limit her foundational study to the continent. She stated, In my view the inclusion of Hawaiʻi would necessitate a shift in the paradigm of Asian American theatre history, and the nature of this shift would hinge on whether Asian American theatre is considered as part of the larger Asian diaspora of theatre. Indeed, as Josephine Lee points out, the inclusion of Hawaiʻi in Asian American theatre history would “illuminate the fault lines” in how we, as theatre historians, have imagined Asian American culture. [3] Just as I was surprised that Esther Kim Lee’s study on Asian American theatre excluded theatre of Hawaiʻi, undergraduate students are often disappointed when Asian American theatre classes do not include Pacific Islander theatre. For instructors of Asian American theatre, the question becomes how to represent equitably both Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders without making them a monolith. Pedagogy should follow the recommendations of scholars such as J. Kehaulani Kauanui and Lisa Kahaleole Hall who argue that the label “Asian American Pacific Islander” privileges the experiences of Asian Americans over Pacific Islanders. [4] Despite its use in social justice conversations, “inclusion” in this context is an act of settler colonialism. The absorption of the Hawaiian Islands within the US empire and Americanist scholarship has obscured the identities, cultures, and histories of the various peoples of Hawaiʻi. Due to the illegal overthrow of Queen Lili’uokalani that led to the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands in 1898, Hawaiʻi has long been associated with the United States, been regarded as a strategic military base, and been a profitable appendage to the empire. The Hawaiian Islands have also been an appendage in a scholastic context. Information regarding theatre in Hawaiʻi has historically been included within Asian American theatre. The inclusion of theatre of Hawaiʻi in Asian American theatre demonstrates that the United States has played a large role in how we have come to understand Asianness. In the early 1960s, the label and genre “Asian American” were created as a way to assert that Asians have been essential members of the United States and replace the problematic descriptor of “Oriental,” which reduced Asians to foreign objects. [5] While many Asians of the continent were determined to demonstrate a sense of belonging in the United States, other Asians in Hawaiʻi were determined to demonstrate a sense of alienation from the United States. Plays written by Asians from Hawaiʻi that explore the realities of living in Hawaiʻi should be separate from but in conversation with Asian American theatre. My work is a direct response to Lee, and is also informed by the dissertations of Hawaiʻi-based scholars and theatre practitioners Tammy Haili’ōpua Baker, Sammie Choy, and Stefani Overman-Tsai that call for theatre of Hawaiʻi to be recognized as its own form and examined outside of an Asian Americanist lens. [6] I interviewed Asian and Hawaiian theatre artists and educators born and raised in Hawaiʻi to determine why theatre of Hawaiʻi should be studied separately from Asian American theatre. I concluded that it is debatable whether Hawaiʻi can be considered a part of the larger Asian diaspora considering its indigenous history and cross-racial alliances developed on sugarcane and pineapple plantations. I assert that dramatic literature of Hawaiʻi, particularly the work of Hawaiian-Samoan playwright Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, makes these fissures visible and audible. Her large body of work dramatizes interracial alliances and conflicts of Hawaiʻi. This essay features an excerpt of an interview I conducted with Kneubuhl on July 22, 2019. Our conversation about her work and its categorization demonstrates that the foundations and future of Asian American theatre rest on and are guided by understanding the nuances of Asian and Pacific Islander identities. I use my conversation with Kneubuhl to claim that it is possible and necessary to separate Asian American and Pacific Islander dramaturgies while still keeping them in conversation. Because some of Kneubuhl’s work has represented both Hawaiians and Asian settlers and their alliances and conflicts, her work has been categorized under several labels, including Asian American theatre and Pacific Islander theatre. In our conversation, Kneubuhl revealed that she embraces all of the labels assigned to her work because that allows her to more accurately characterize individual plays. Kneubuhl’s body of work resists exclusive characterization because each play’s themes, setting, and characters vary greatly. With Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in both Hawaiian culture studies and theatre, Kneubuhl bridges Hawai‘i state archives, community theatre, and the Hawaiian Renaissance movement. Kneubuhl’s work has been locally, nationally, and internationally recognized. She won the Hawai‘i Award for Literature, and her plays have been commissioned and performed in Hawai‘i, the continental United States, Asia, and Britain. When Kneubuhl emerged as one of Hawai‘i’s representative playwrights during the 1980s and 90s, she was one of the only Native Hawaiian playwrights active in Hawai‘i’s theatre scene. Today, she continues to represent Native Hawaiians and produces work that teaches Hawaiian history and celebrates Hawaiian culture from a Hawaiian perspective and advocates for Hawaiian sovereignty. Kneubuhl has been a major contributor to the repertoire of Kumu Kahua Theatre, the institutional home of Local theatre. The genre demonstrates how those who identify as Locals, a wide umbrella term unique to Hawai‘i that includes Native Hawaiians and other ethnic immigrant groups who descended from sugarcane and pineapple plantation workers, regard themselves vis-à-vis Hawai‘i’s plantations. Her work is informed and inspired by both the Hawaiian Renaissance movement and the plurality of Local culture. Inspired by those in the Hawaiian community who were reclaiming and reviving Hawaiian culture during the early 1970s, several of Kneubuhl’s plays retell Hawaiian women’s history through a contemporary, retrospective lens. Kneubuhl’s highly regarded historical pageant play January 1893 replays the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and allowed the Honolulu community to revisit a pivotal moment in Hawai‘i’s history. Written, produced, directed, and sponsored by Hawaiian activists and artists, January 1893 represented the mission of the Hawaiian Renaissance to revive Hawaiian history and culture on a state and national level. The play debuted in 1993 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the overthrow. Staged as an elaborate parade, January 1893 is still considered to be one of the most theatrically ambitious nonprofessional productions ever staged in Hawai‘i. January 1893 was performed on and around the grounds of ‘Iolani Palace, the home of the Hawaiian monarchy and the site of Lili’uokalani’s house arrest after the overthrow. As an anniversary event, the production exemplified all that remained after the annexation: ignorance and amnesia around the event, a pan-ethnic solidarity between Hawaiians and other ethnic groups in Hawai‘i, and a desire to reinstall a sovereign Hawaiian monarchy. The production reinforced the bonds between Hawaiians and other ethnic groups formed during the early days of Hawai‘i’s plantations, and rallied people in support of Hawaiian sovereignty. The play is an act of redress that fortifies Hawai‘i’s history as a legitimate, sovereign nation and challenges hegemonic interpretations of Hawai‘i’s history that characterize US imperialism as a positive force that shaped Hawai‘i into a utopic multicultural paradise. [7] Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl was one of the very first people I interviewed. Her words guided my research and offer tremendous insight for instructors and students who are eager to engage with both Asian American and Pacific Islander theatre. JG: How did you find your way to theatre? VNK: The Hawaiian Renaissance. At the time people were really interested in Hawaiian history and culture. We were attracted to the theatre because it allowed us to express who we are and where we came from in different ways. When hula and all kinds of traditional Hawaiian practices made a huge comeback, there were better plays and bigger audiences. Theatre, performance, history, and the street all came together for me. In the ’80s I participated in and wrote some of the early living history theatre in Honolulu. Now that performance type has really taken off in Hawai‘i. There’s all kinds of places and groups that are doing living histories now. When we started, a lot of academic historians were frowning on what we were doing. But the truth was that living history got people interested in Hawaiian history, in their personal history. People in Hawaiʻi need to be more aware of the colonial history. I don’t think enough people know. JG : Can you tell me about your involvement with Kumu Kahua Theatre? VNK: . I was in the right place at the right time. Kumu Kahua was new and I was new. They were hungry for scripts. I invested myself in Kumu Kahua because I really wanted to produce things that were written locally. Kumu Kahua didn’t always produce Local theatre because there just weren’t enough scripts. Sometimes they did Asian American plays that were written by Asian people who aren’t from Hawaiʻi. I was invested in a kind of theatre that was by and for the Local community and didn’t reflect the larger American theatre, popular theatre scene. I was hungry for things that reflected who I am and where I came from. I am still supportive of and invested in giving voice to our island stories or things that are relevant to our island communities. Now, there’s a whole bunch of young people and a much larger community that is invested in Local theatre. Other theatres are now just starting to do productions that have Local themes and are looking for really good locally written plays. There’s so many more people interested in our theatre. It is really rewarding to see that. JG : What would you call what you write? Would you call that Local theatre or Hawaiian theatre? VNK: People used to call my work Asian American theatre because when I started writing there was no Pacific Island theatre. I was really conflicted about that. You want people to read your plays and that was all that mattered to me. I wanted my plays out there. Some of my plays could be called Hawaiian theatre, but some are not. I’ve never quibbled over labels. I want the freedom to write whatever really touches and interests me and whatever I feel passionate about. I like to think of myself as a Pacific Island writer. Some of my plays could be categorized as Hawaiian theatre and some of them could be Local theatre and some could be neither. JG : I’ve seen your plays in anthologies by women of color. But I’ve also seen them in postcolonial anthologies. The label I’ve seen most often is either Asian American or Hawaiian. VNK : I think that people in academia need categories. Labels make it easier for them to teach. But as a writer, you’re not sitting at home thinking, “Am I a Hawaiian writer or am I a Local writer?” You’re just writing. You’re writing what comes into your head. And so I just kind of leave the labels to other people. I’ll just write the plays and they decide what they are. JG : How would you define Local theatre? VNK : That’s hard because Local theatre includes Hawaiian theatre, but Hawaiian theatre doesn’t necessarily include Local theatre. I guess you could say Hawaiian theatre is anything that has Hawaiian characters or Hawaiian issues as its main theme. Local theatre includes Asian and Asian American theatre. But out of all the labels out there, I like Pacific Island theatre the most because it’s so inclusive. Labels are hard because there’s always something left out and there’s always a gray area. It is really tricky because all these questions have come up for me for a long time. And so what I’m trying to do is not necessarily make hard and fast boundaries between things because that’s just impossible. JG: So would you say there are multiple, overlapping genres at play here? VNK: Yeah. The Local, Hawaiian, and Western. They overlap. They are not really separate from each other. I do think that there are certain kinds of colonial undertones and attitudes and certain dynamics that play out between the three. Colonialism permeated the arts in Hawaiʻi. When I was first involved with Kumu Kahua, I was just starting out in theatre. I remember I was at a party and I was talking to this woman. I said I was a theatre major, and she goes, “Oh, have you been in plays?” I said, “I’ve been in a few Kumu Kahua plays.” She looked at me and she said, “No, I mean, a real play.” Theatre in Hawaiʻi is something really special. But the problem is people have a certain idea of what Hawaiʻi is. I don’t think our island theatre really fits into that. [8] When we look at Hawaiʻi, particularly its contemporary theatre scene, we see insightful tensions that arise from the distinct yet overlapping categorical schemas of “Asian American,” “Asian,” “Pacific Islander,” “Local,” and “Hawaiian.” Kneubuhl’s remarks echo J. Kehaulani Kauanui’s essay “Asian American Studies and the ‘Pacific question’” that calls upon Asian American Studies to actively engage Indigenous and Pacific Islander Studies rather than passively absorb Hawaiian and Pacific Islander history and culture into Asian American culture. [9] Kneubuhl’s embrace of the label “Pacific writer” signifies the ongoing transpacific turn of Asian American Studies and a way to recognize holistically the many voices that make up Asian and Pacific diasporas. Decentering the United States highlights the inherent liminality and multidimensionality of Asian identities and cultures that exist across the Pacific. A transpacific, rather than a US-centric approach, can help us understand how theatre of Hawaiʻi and Asian American theatre are related but distinct from each other. Transpacific Studies, which draws from Asian American Studies, Asian Studies, Indigenous Studies, Pacific Island Studies, and American Studies, illuminates the flow in peoples, cultures, capital, ideas, and labor across the Pacific. [10] Theatre of Hawaiʻi and Asian American theatre are distinct representations of the people, cultures, and histories of the Pacific that directly inform each other and provide a model on how the field of Asian American Studies can produce new theorizations on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Kneubuhl’s work is a model for how to create equitable representation out of tremendous cultural plurality. References Footnotes [1] Mark Chiang, The Cultural Capital of Asian American Studies: Autonomy and Representation in the University (New York: New York University Press, 2009). [2] Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura, eds. Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008). [3] Esther Kim Lee, A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3. [4] Lisa Kahaleole Hall, “Navigating Our Own ‘Sea of Islands’: Remapping a Theoretical Space for Hawaiian Women and Indigenous Feminism,” Wicazo Sa Review 24 no. 2 (2009): 15–38; Kauanui, J. Kehaulani, “Where are Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders in Higher Education?” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education , 7 September 2008. [5] Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989). [6] Tammy Haili’ōpua Baker, “The Development and Function of Hana Keaka (Hawaiian Medium Theatre): A Tool for Empowering the Kānaka Maoli Consciousness” (Dissertation, University of Waikato, 2019); Sammie L. Choy, “Staging Identity: The Intercultural Theater of Hawai‘i” (Dissertation, University of Hawai‘i, 2016); Stefani Overman-Tsai, “Localizing the Islands: Theaters of Place and Culture in Hawaii’s Drama” (Dissertation, University of Hawai‘i, 2015). [7] Craig Howes, “Introduction,” in Hawai’i Nei: Island Plays (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002); Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, January 1893 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i at Manoa Press, 1993). [8] Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, interview by Jenna Gerdsen, June 2019. [9] J. Kehaulani Kauanui, “Asian American Studies and the ‘Pacific question,’” in Asian American Studies After Critical Mass , ed. Kent A. Ono (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 121-143. [10] Janet Hoskins and Viet Thanh Nguyen, Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014). About The Author(s) Jenna Gerdsen is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the School of Theatre at Florida State University. She is an emerging scholar whose work examines the racial formation of contemporary theatre of Hawai‘i and investigates how settler colonialism and immigration shape this theatre tradition vis-à-vis Indigenous and Asian American cultural production. Her research was featured in the curated panel “New Directions in Theatre and Performance” at the 2021 American Society for Theatre Research conference. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Amy B. Huang 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 A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor Amy B. Huang By Published on June 12, 2020 Download Article as PDF A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor. Edited by Amy E. Hughes and Naomi J. Stubbs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018; Pp. 353. What did it mean to strive after a life in the theatre in the United States in the antebellum period? Recent works by scholars such as Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Lisa Freeman have moved beyond a focus on a public sphere shaped by print culture and rational debate, showing how theatre and performance were also crucial sites of communion and forming a body politic. The diary of Harry Watkins (1825-1894), edited and published for the first time by Amy Hughes and Naomi Stubbs, continues to reveal the cultural importance of the theatre through a focus on the life of an actor, theatre manager, playwright, and prolific diarist. Watkins’s diary provides invaluable information about the quotidian life of a theatre professional over a fifteen-year period. In their introduction, Hughes and Stubbs make a strong case for their volume’s unique value to American cultural studies and theatre scholarship: “From 1845 to 1860, Watkins kept a diary in which he detailed the roles he performed, the plays he saw, the people he met, the books he read, and his impressions of current events. Now housed in the Harvard Theatre Collection, it is the only known diary of substantial length and density (nearly twelve hundred pages in thirteen volumes) written by a US actor during the decade leading up to the Civil War” (2). A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into nineteenth-century theatre and politics. Among other topics, it considers the following: salaries and contracts; problems with the star system; theatrical rivalries and tensions; American plays and the difficulties of adaptation; copyright laws; and encounters with famous actors and writers. In their compendium, the editors provide readers with a clear, helpful background of Watkins’s family, his time in the army before becoming an actor, and his political views. Watkins’s deep patriotism is evident across his diary and contributes to his tempered stances toward issues such as abolition, which he criticized for threatening the preservation of the Union. In their introduction and throughout footnotes, Hughes and Stubbs delineate Watkins’s specific political views while placing them in a larger cultural context; for instance, they note that “Watkins’s insouciant racism, fervent nativism, and casual misogyny were not exceptional . . . . His views mirrored those held by many white, US-born, working-and middle-class New Yorkers living during the antebellum era” (7). The editors further explain the sweeping scope of Watkins’s diary as well as their choices in the presentation. With rigorous care, they mark when Watkins’s entries become less consistent and gesture to when parts of the diary may have become lost, destroyed, or emended. Hughes and Stubbs also unpack their own editorial policies, including choices to preserve Watkins’s voice and diction, the selection of diary entries with attention to their cultural significance, and presentation of the diary in chapters grouped by the events of a theatrical season. (Their transcription of the entire diary is available via the University of Michigan Press website, as a companion to the book). Astutely, the editors strike a balance between directly presenting Watkins’s entries and providing useful, contextualizing annotations. More distinctively, the co-editors provide a map at the beginning of each chapter so that readers can easily track Watkins’s movements when traveling, often for the purposes of theatrical engagements. Such editorial contextualization greatly contributes to making Watkins’s voice, often immersed in theatrical allusions and financial and travel details, broadly accessible to a wide range of readers. Hughes and Stubbs’s chapters move chronologically, according to theatre seasons, and track Watkins’s increasing roles and growing importance in the theatre world. The entries in Chapter One, 1845-46, for example, allow readers to follow the touring actor as he plays minor roles in Corpus Christi, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and Louisville. The working-class Watkins describes financial struggles (including difficulty affording lodging and attire) at the start of his professional acting career. Later chapters such as Chapter Six: 1850-51 trace Watkins’s emerging role as a playwright, carefully attuned to play structure, dramatic effect, the abilities of actors, and the tastes of the audience. Thus, his prize-winning Nature’s Nobleman, set during the US-Mexican War and fiercely expressive of patriotic sentiment, served to connect with an audience in New York reacting to tensions and threats of disunion in the wake of policies related to slavery (such as Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850). Chapter Seven:1851-52 continues to track Watkins’s efforts at stage managing and establishing a theatrical company, highlighting the difficulties of wrangling performers. Finally, this edition of the diary ends with Watkins’s account of the theatrical seasons from 1858-60, where English audiences applauded his rendition of the blackface character, Jocko, in his play, The Pioneer Patriot, and his portrayal of a demeaning Yankee role in Tom Taylor’s The Brigand and the Banker . As this edition of the diary closes, it thus reiterates Watkins’s central emphases on American patriotism and nativism and his consistently careful consideration of his paying audiences and their tastes within widespread circuits of performance. A Player and a Gentleman offers a rare glance into the minutiae and everyday struggles of a U.S. American theatre professional in a period marked by tumult and potentiality, when theatre powerfully drew together audiences to face issues such as racial oppression and slavery, war and women’s rights. Although the diary’s ability to reflect the theatre and the antebellum period is limited in that it centers the perspective of a white, male nativist, the survival of a work of such breadth and detail is remarkable. Guided by the co-editors’ contextualization, readers can glean rich information from Watkins’s meticulous observations. For example, Watkins’s commitment to recording house size and audience appeal (as when a production of Othello fails spectacularly in the South) offers important clues to the shared political and aesthetic values in the specific communities he travels across the United States and England. The diary also vividly evokes the collaborative intimacies and unseen labor involved in creating theatre, as when managers and performers demand that Watkins cut portions of his plays, or when he arduously seeks to persuade actresses to perform in his productions. Watkins’s frank discussion of anxieties regarding finances and casting, and his hopeful expectations for and regrets over engagements also provide readers with a sense of the rich, affective undertones of life as a theatre professional in the antebellum period. As scholars increasingly attend to the wide reach of theatre and performance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Hughes and Stubbs remind us of the powerful potential in using archival resources such as diaries to simultaneously focus on the landscape of a period and a singular life. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Amy B. Huang Brown University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography Introduction: Local Acts: Performing Communities, Performing Americas The Architecture of Local Performance: Stages of the Taliesin Fellowship “La conjura de Xinum” and Language Revitalization: Understanding Maya Agency through Theatre Exploring the History and Implications of Toxicity through St. Louis: Performance Artist Allana Ross and the “Toxic Mound Tours” Finding Home in the World Stage: Critical Creative Citizenship and the 13th South Asian Theatre Festival 2018 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.