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Ryan McKinney 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 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. Ryan McKinney By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF 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. A new addition to Hamilton scholarship, Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past marks another valuable collaboration between its editors, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter. Consisting of fifteen insightful essays, the book presents adroitly composed analyses of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as well as its surrounding historical, cultural, social, political, and racial implications. Constructed by historians from a wide array of fields ranging from American Studies and theatre studies to history and Africana Studies, Historians on Hamilton takes up “the challenge that Miranda himself made to us when he was just beginning to write the show, ‘I want the historians to take this seriously’” (6). The scholars herein rigorously examine the musical’s relationship to history and how history is made, the claim of Hamilton as a revolutionary musical, and the musical’s proposed theatrical innovations and historical omissions. Following the introduction that sets up the tone and content, the book is divided into three sections: “Act I: The Script,” “Act II: The Stage,” and “Act III: The Audience,” each consisting of five essays. The first part begins with William Hogeland’s essay, “From Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton to Hamilton: An American Musical ,” which posits that any historical inaccuracies in the musical are due, in part, to not only imprecisions in the source material (Ron Chernow’s biography), but also a lack of necessary criticism of Chernow’s work from professional historians. This section also features essays by Joanne B. Freeman, Lyra D. Monteiro, and Leslie M. Harris, who explore Alexander Hamilton’s politics, the complications associated with the casting of Hamilton , and New York City’s historical past with slavery, respectively. The section closes with Catherine Allgor’s illuminating essay, “‘Remember…I’m Your Man’: Masculinity, Marriage, and Gender in Hamilton ,” which introduces readers to “coverture, or the system of laws that defined women’s subordinate legal status” (96). Allgor showcases coverture’s absence from the musical and advocates for historians and theatregoers to use Hamilton ’s popularity as a means to understand coverture and its legacy in the contemporary political lexicon. “Act II: The Stage” begins with three essays that view the musical as both history and entertainment: Michael O’Malley explores Hamilton and money, as well as Hamilton’s policies as Treasury Secretary; David Waldstreicher and Jeffrey L. Pasley place Hamilton in the literary genre of “Founders Chic,” defined as “admiring individual portraits of major leaders of the Early Republic like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Hamilton” (140); and Andrew M. Schocket details how Hamilton follows a series of genre conventions that inform how this specific historical period is typically portrayed on stage and screen. Elizabeth L. Wollman’s and Brian Eugenio Herrera’s respective essays offer resonant conclusions to this section. Wollman smartly tempers Hamilton ’s status as a revolutionary musical by historicizing other uber-popular Broadway musicals while arguing that although Hamilton is innovative, it is also “a carefully honed product of musical theatre history” (215). Herrera’s essay considers Hamilton ’s theatrical context alongside other “presidential musicals” and notes both the importance of and the problems within the musical’s casting practices. Also recognizing the musical’s entrance into a “U.S. Latinx theater tradition” (238), Herrera highlights how the musical utilizes code-switching and signaling techniques to address Latinx audience members. The final section opens with Jim Cullen’s refreshing essay that recounts his development and teaching of a course on Hamilton and Hamilton , complete with a sample syllabus in the appendix. Act III continues with an essay by Patricia Herrera on Hamilton ’s use of Hip Hop through the lens of her family’s cross-country trip through the United States’ national parks. Next, by viewing Hamilton as a work of art rather than scholarly history, Joseph M. Adelman’s essay provides a necessary counterpoint to some of the other chapters. The collection’s co-editors author the two concluding essays. Renee C. Romano’s piece, “ Hamilton : A New American Civic Myth,” posits how conservatives and progressives in this country advocate for versions of American history that align with their differing politics, and that, in spite of this, Hamilton has still managed to strike a chord of agreement. Claire Bond Potter investigates Hamilton ’s social media life by documenting the vastness of #HamFam (the Hamilton Family) and its current and future site as a digital archive. The final pages of the book consist of an appendix that offers the aforementioned course syllabus as well as a Hamilton/ Hamilton chronology. This book is a worthy addition to popular culture studies, history, American Studies, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies and, of course, theatre and musical theatre studies. The book aims to serve students and fans of Hamilton , though ardent fans of the #HamFam may be less appreciative of the essays that are critical of the musical. Regardless, academics are certain to find value in this publication, and the book is very accessible for the general reader. Like the recent special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre devoted to an exploration of the musical across twelve articles, many of the essays herein investigate Hamilton primarily as a theatrical work. That said, true to its title, history reigns supreme in this collection, serving as the primary lens through which the majority of the essays explore Hamilton , as well as its greater cultural, political, and societal effects. Historians on Hamilton successfully meets Miranda’s challenge, presenting engaging essays in which accomplished historians do take Hamilton seriously and offer a range of perspectives on its place in, and depiction of, American history. References Footnotes About The Author(s) RYAN MCKINNEY Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York 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.

S T A R R BUSBY presents Working Up A Surrender: A Communal Offering, Part I at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Working Up A Surrender: A Communal Offering, Part I S T A R R BUSBY 6-8 pm Thursday, October 17, 2024 Elebash Recital Hall Lobby RSVP Working Up A Surrender: A Communal Offering is an experience in support of community building and collective liberation that explores the question 'How can we center connection and care in a rapidly changing world?’ A Communal Offering, Part I will take place in Elebash Recital Hall Lobby, where visitors will each individually be invited to experience a private sound meditation. Visitors are welcome to arrive at Elebash Lobby at any time from 6-8 pm. Please also join us for Working Up A Surrender: A Communal Offering, Part II on Saturday, October 19, 5-5:50 pm in the Segal Theater. Working Up A Surrender: Collective Healing Experiments was first produced at JACK with the support of a NYSCA Grant LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). S T A R R busby (they/she/he/we - all pronouns said with respect) is a Black experimental artist who sings, acts, composes, educates, and is committed to the liberation of all people. A recent recipient of a NYSCA grant, S T A R R leads a music project under their name which will release a debut project in 2024 - Working Up A Surrender . She is also the lead singer of dance&b band People's Champs (www.peopleschampsnyc.com ) which released their latest project, Show Up, in the Fall of 2023. S T A R R has also supported and collaborated with artists such as The Gorillaz, Esperanza Spalding, Son Lux, X Ambassadors, Kimbra, Alice Smith, and Quelle Chris. Selected credits: If You Unfolded Us (Sable Elyse Smith, MoMA); Rest Within the Wake (James Allister Sprang, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Featured Soloist); (pray) (Ars Nova and National Black Theatre, A Singer, Composer, and Music Director)*Lucille Lortel Award Winner; The Beautiful Lady (La Mama, Boris); On Sugarland (NYTW, co-composer); Octet (Signature Theatre, Paula) *Drama Desk Award Winner; Mikrokosmos, Sterischer Herbst (Graz), Nottingham Contemporary; The Girl with the Incredible Feeling , Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi. All music available via Bandcamp and all streaming services. Love, gratitude and ashé to my blessed honorable ancestors, especially MME. linktr.ee/S_T_A_R_R Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

By Alfred Farag, Gamal Maqsoud, Lenin El-Ramly, Marvin Carlson | Contains the first English translation of short plays by leading Egyptian playwrights. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Contemporary Theatre in Egypt Alfred Farag, Gamal Maqsoud, Lenin El-Ramly, Marvin Carlson Download PDF Edited by Marvin Carlson This volume includes the proceedings of a symposium on this subject, held at the CUNY Graduate Center in February of 1999, along with the first English translations of three short plays by leading Egyptian playwrights who spoke at the symposium: Alfred Farag’s The Last Walk (1998); Gamal Maqsoud’s The Absent One (1968); and Lenin El-Ramly’s The Nightmare (1999). This volume also contains a bibliography of English translations and secondary articles on the theatre in Egypt from 1955 to 1999. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Watch Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence by Bettina Böhler at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE focuses on Christoph Schlingensief as a “family person” (Schlingensief on Schlingensief) who dealt equally with his relationship to his parents and his relationship to Germany in his work. The film traces his development from pubescent filmmaker with an artistic bloodlust to revolutionary stage director in Berlin and Bayreuth, and, ultimately, to Germany’s “national artist”, who was purportedly venerated by all and invited to create the German Pavilion for the 2011 Venice Biennale. SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE explores Schlingensief’s untiring, and ultimately inexhaustible, love-hate relationship to Germany, to its high culture, and to its petite-bourgeoisie sentiments – which he attributed to himself more than anyone else – via scenes of East Germans being made into sausage, shouts of “Kill Helmut Kohl!” (documenta X) and an attempt to rehabilitate Wagner (PARSIFAL). The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Bettina Böhler Theater, Documentary, Film, Multimedia, Opera, Performance Art This film will be screened in-person on May 18th and also be available to watch online May 16th onwards for 3 weeks. About The Film Country Germany Language German with English subtitles Running Time 122 minutes Year of Release 2020 SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE focuses on Christoph Schlingensief as a “family person” (Schlingensief on Schlingensief) who dealt equally with his relationship to his parents and his relationship to Germany in his work. The film traces his development from pubescent filmmaker with an artistic bloodlust to revolutionary stage director in Berlin and Bayreuth, and, ultimately, to Germany’s “national artist”, who was purportedly venerated by all and invited to create the German Pavilion for the 2011 Venice Biennale. SCHLINGENSIEF – A VOICE THAT SHOOK THE SILENCE explores Schlingensief’s untiring, and ultimately inexhaustible, love-hate relationship to Germany, to its high culture, and to its petite-bourgeoisie sentiments – which he attributed to himself more than anyone else – via scenes of East Germans being made into sausage, shouts of “Kill Helmut Kohl!” (documenta X) and an attempt to rehabilitate Wagner (PARSIFAL). Director, Screenplay, Editor: Bettina Böhler / With: Christoph Schlingensief, Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Volker Spengler, Alfred Edel, Udo Kier, Sophie Rois, Bernhard Schütz, Kerstin Grassmann, Helge Schneider, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Susanne Bredehöft, Tilda Swinton, Artur Albrecht, Achim von Paczenzky, Helga Stöwhase, Sebastian Rudolph a.o. / Script Counselling: Angelina Maccarone / Research and Assistant: Lydia Anemüller / Sound Design: Daniel Iribarren / Sound Mixer: Adrian Baumeister / Producer: Frieder Schlaich, Irene von Alberti / Produced by Filmgalerie 451 / In Coproduction with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (Rolf Bergmann) und Westdeutscher Rundfunk (Jutta Krug) / Founded by Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Deutscher Filmförderfonds About The Artist(s) BETTINA BÖHLER was born in Freiburg in 1960 and is one of Germany's premier film editors. She has edited over 80 feature films, documentaries and TV movies and has worked with Christian Petzold, Valeska Grisebach and other filmmakers of the Berlin School. She also has also long been associated with influential directors such as Christoph Schlingensief, Angelina Maccarone, Oskar Roehler and Margarethe von Trotta. She started her career in film at the age of 18 as an assistant editor and has been an editor since 1985. In 2007 Bettina Böhler was awarded the Bremer Filmpreis for Lifetime Achievement in European Cinema ("Bremen Film Award"). She was nominated for the Deutscher Filmpreis for Best Film Editing twice: in 2012 for her work on BARBARA (Christian Petzold) and in 2017 for WILD (Nicolette Krebitz). Bettina Böhler lectured at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB). She is a member of the European Film Academy, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Get in touch with the artist(s) kino@filmgalerie451.de and follow them on social media https://www.filmgalerie451.de/en/films/schlingensief-voice-shook-the-silence# Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

James M. Cherry Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 29 1 Visit Journal Homepage August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays. Edited by Sandra G. Shannon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016; Pp. 211. James M. Cherry By Published on December 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays . Edited by Sandra G. Shannon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016; Pp. 211. The principal undertaking of August Wilson’s playwriting career—the “Pittsburgh Cycle”—is a singular accomplishment in American theater. A series of ten plays highlighting the cultural shifts and stresses of African-American experience throughout the 20th century, the Cycle was written and staged over the course of three decades and completed shortly before Wilson’s death in 2005. Wilson situated his opus largely in the Hill District of Pittsburgh where he spent his childhood, a once-vibrant African-American community that fell into decay following failed urban development schemes and resultant poverty. Throughout the Cycle, Wilson connects the Hill District’s transformations to the larger history of African-Americans—slavery, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, persistent institutional racism—and the ways in which these realities reveal themselves on stage in micro-histories of Black lives. Wilson also foregrounds the historical linkages of music, ritual, ceremony, and oral culture as critical dramaturgical elements. As their descendants replace characters on Wilson’s stage, these are the ties that bind still. The restoration of a fragmented ancestry is personified in the reoccurring figure of Aunt Ester, the wise woman who physically embodies the link across time to Africa. Taken together, the plays of Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle can be seen as the work of playwright tethering a community to an obscured past. As Sandra G. Shannon rightly notes in her introduction to a new collection of essays, August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays, the narratives that fill Wilson’s plays are not simply representations of African-American life, but are also intensely personal, “reflect[ing] the playwright’s own fragmented life exacerbated by a complete disconnect with his biological father, by his flight from a racist Pittsburgh’s school system, and by his discovery or “reunion” with the blues, Africa, Amiri Baraka, and by his newfound regard for the vernacular of fellow Pittsburgh natives” (5). For Shannon, as well as many authors in this excellent collection, Wilson’s dual roles as an “autoethnographer of the black experience,” and as “the wounded healer” (6) who confronts his own personal history as a way to make sense of the larger historical narrative, are essential to understanding Wilson’s great accomplishment; they are also essential to comprehending what Wilson’s vision of the twentieth century means in our twenty-first. Since August Wilson’s death, there have been many attempts to examine and reconcile Wilson’s completed project, and recent scholarly treatments of the complete Cycle resonate throughout the volume under review here. Shannon’s text joins an already active critical conversation, including Harry Elam’s touchstone work The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), a recent Cambridge Companion collection, and the frequent stagings of the plays across the country. Appropriately enough, Shannon’s collection ranges widely in subjects and inventive theoretical perspectives. Sarah Saddler and Paul Bryant-Jackson’s piece on Two Trains Running brings together Manning Marable’s advocacy of a multidisciplinary “living history” to reclaim the lost narratives of people of color, and Diana Taylor’s argument to consider the “embodied behaviors that serve to e/affect the outcome of the social drama, and thus “ history” itself” (53). Saddler and Bryant-Jackson conclude that Wilson creates a document of living history in which the political struggles of the 1960s are played out on a personal and spiritual level on stage. In another essay, Psyche Williams-Forson probes the Wilson’s frequent use of food as way to depict communal and gender relationships, citing Wilson’s own interest in cultural anthropology. These arguments reframe August Wilson not just as a significant “realist” playwright, but as a writer whose works respond to various theoretical frameworks. Wilson deploys African ritual in his plays, often as a way to reconnect with a lost heritage, and several essays in this collection tease out the various dramaturgical and symbolic meanings of this connection. Artisa Green’s analysis of the “Òrìșà archetypes, sacred objects, and spaces” (10) and the Yoruban week calendar “which comprises a seven day cycle characterized by daily attributes that resulted from events which occurred in Yoruba creation stories” (156), facilitates a significant new understanding of the spiritual architecture of Gem of the Ocean . In the case of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone , Connie Rapoo looks at Loomis’ “acts of sacrifice” (177) as ways to “remember the spiritual African past in order to restore cosmic order” and to reclaim a forgotten cultural identity. More significantly, this collection often shows how Wilson’s work uses history to reflect upon contemporary concerns. Isaiah Matthew Wooden’s piece on the fraught relationship between the American justice system and the African-Americans subject to it in Gem of the Ocean is deeply relevant to the America of Black Lives Matter and police action captured on cell phone video. The concluding essay by Susan C. W. Abbottson deploys the work of theorists Alan Wilde, John McGowan, and Linda Hutcheon to investigate the optimistic, inclusive humanism in Wilson’s work. For Abbottson, “what Wilson is modeling through this cycle are lessons of responsibility, connection, history, and identity, which combine to create a final vision of what contemporary society most needs: active democracy” (200). In illuminating the experience of Black people in America, Wilson’s “self-defining American chronicle for the ages” (199) also sheds light on the desires, anxieties, and possibilities of all human beings. The main utility of the August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle is as a companion to, and an expansion of, previous Wilson scholarship. While it is inevitable for any collection to focus on some works more than others, Jitney (1982), Fences (1985), and Radio Golf (2005) are seldom addressed in this volume, though they are certainly topics of examination elsewhere. The inclusion of a production history of the Cycle would have made the text more user-friendly. Yet, the multiplicity of theoretical perspectives here acts as a provocation for other scholars to look at August Wilson’s work in new, inventive ways. Just as Wilson himself sought to forge links between the present and past, readers of his work should be encouraged to connect it with our present and future. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JAMES M. CHERRY Wabash College 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: Curtis Russell Editorial Assistant: Christine Snyder 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 Editorial Comment Historical Subjectivity and the Revolutionary Archetype in Amiri Baraka's The Slave and Luis Valdez's Bandido! Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays. Edited by Sandra G. Shannon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016; Pp. 211. Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law: A Theatre of Undocumentedness. By Gad Guterman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; Pp. 236. Kitchen Sink Realisms: Domestic Labor, Dining, and Drama in American Theatre. By Dorothy Chansky. Theatre History and Culture Series. Series editor Heather Nathans. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015; Pp. 620. Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being. Edited by Nicola Shaugnessy. London: Bloomsbury, 2013; Pp. 300. Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience. Edited by Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia, and Victor Iacono. Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues Series. Series editors: John Lutterbie and Nicola Shaugnessy. London UK, New York NY: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 260. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Dohyun Gracia Shin 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 Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Dohyun Gracia Shin By Published on January 11, 2021 Download Article as PDF Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft presents an ambitious compilation of interviews with twenty-seven contemporary women stage directors, while archiving and reflecting on relatively underrepresented women stage directors in the US and the UK. Tracing the past two decades, Marty notes that few published books focus on female stage directors. She points to two volumes by Anne Fliotsos and Wendy Vierow as rare examples. Marty distinguishes her project by focusing on mid-career women stage directors—who she argues are not featured enough by Fliotsos and Vierow. This volume provides readers the rare chance to hear disparate, highly-active women directors’ reflecting in their own words about their experiences, insights, styles, labors, and vision. Based on her experience working both as a theatre researcher and practitioner (dramaturg/director), Marty also provides a window on the contemporary theatre industry, opening far beyond how gender intersects with artistic lives. What makes this book unique in structure is that Marty directs, in effect, her book. Interview-based books deploying question-and-answer structures often feature a handful of interviewees in a chapter or section. Instead, she divides chapters, as if splitting beats, and places quotes and excerpts from her interviewees in each chapter according to its theme, as if casting speakers in dynamic dialogue. She aligns thematic chapters like scenes that build into a larger narrative: this journey of women directors pursuing their careers begins with incubating projects and concludes with each director’s own vision of today’s theatre. Although the book’s organizational structure does not provide a clear, holistic profile of each individual director, as Marty acknowledges in the introduction (9), this thematic approach instead distinctly guides readers to respect a director’s role and labor. Marty also provides a series of inspiring models, amplifying the influence of women directors working at an array of theatre venues in the US and UK. In the first two chapters, Marty sheds light on the directors’ incubating process. Chapter 1 opens by laying out how individual directors choose a particular piece of work. For example, Lear deBessonet, the founding director of the Public Theater’s Public Works project, explains that she stages classics since “no one is the authority” (24) which thereby opens up collective imagination. Marty also considers how varied directors and artistic directors actually scaffold their work: finding their niche, planning seasons, choosing collaborators, and mounting their plays in a theater. Chapter 2 demonstrates her subjects’ labor of engaging with scripts and ideas prior to rehearsals. She emphasizes each director’s signature style of analyzing the play, for instance. Further, she expands our grasp of the directorial role by examining how her subjects collaborate with playwrights, play multiple roles besides that of a director, prepare for rehearsals, and communicate with audiences. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on how these directors shape performances, starting from conceptualization of the visual and acoustic, and then moving into the rehearsal room, and, ultimately, the stage. Chapter 3 highlights how the chosen directors envision theatrical worlds visually and acoustically, collaborating with designers. Here, Marty approaches relationships between directing and designing theatre horizontally. Inspired by her subjects, she analyzes spectacle and sound beyond servers of directorial messages, conveying a comprehensive picture of the theatrical process to readers. In Rachel Chavkin’s words, it is a director’s process of “discovering the world with designers and actors” (99).True to the volume’s subtitle, Chapter 4 presents a “conversation on craft,” guided by these leading directors’ invaluable experiences and advice on the rehearsal process. Using quotes, Marty covers the practical process of rehearsal: casting actors, setting the tone for rehearsals, empowering actors, shaping the process, and using research in rehearsals. For instance, Maria Aberg, who is known for “her innovative, feminist productions of Shakespeare and other classics at the Royal Shakespeare Company” (2), introduces points she considers in the casting process when she changes the gender of a character. Readers will find many gems and tips. In the final chapters, Contemporary Women Stage Directors focuses on how each of these experienced directors develop their careers and navigate the US and UK theatre scenes. Chapter 5 considers how the directors sustain their projects, dealing with concerns such as “financial security, community, quality of life, and relationships” (159). Pursuing the theme of work-life balance, Marty places quotes from Leah Gardiner, Kimberly Senior, and Lucy Kerbel together to cover issues such as motherhood, labor and pressure. In particular, Kerbel explains that “the loop of visibility” (190) exposes directors to critics’ attention which sustains their projects. She elaborates on gendered inequality in the field by mentioning how maternity leave easily drops women directors from that loop. If Chapter 5 extensively covers their individual lives and career arcs, Chapter 6 specifically focuses on their diverse experience with systemic challenges tied to their gender, racial and/or ethnic identities in the theatre industry. The 6th chapter analyzes obstacles and disparities in the field through her array of case studies, integrating an intersectional perspective. For instance. Leah Gardiner, Paulette Randall, and KJ Sanchez tell their stories of experiencing misogyny and racism in the field. Importantly, Marty pays attention to how these women directors navigate systemic obstacles. For example, Roxana Silbert and Nadia Fall emphasize that diversity opens up more diversity and brings an alternative gaze to the field, which is dominated by white male directors. Marty concludes her book with the directors’ insight on theatre today and their expectations as working professionals. In the conclusion, Marty summarizes her interview research in two categories: what she did not find and what she did. What is notable here is her picture of a director as a relationship builder. Marty explains that “the director’s role is to build and facilitate relationships , specifically (1) between a play and an audience and (2) among members of the collaborative team” (288). Likewise, Marty, as the director of this book, builds a relationship between these women directors and her contemporary readers. She creates a bridge for these mid-stream women directors —who struggle for their comparatively underrepresented stories and insights to be heard— bringing their voices and methods as accomplished practitioners to readers, both artists and scholars. By providing many substantial examples of brilliant, motivating women stage directors from the US and UK in the early 21st century, this significant study will benefit theatre researchers and our future generation of women (and other) theater directors, artistic directors and, one hopes, producers. References Footnotes About The Author(s) DOHYUN GRACIA SHIN The Graduate Center, 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.

Bess Rowen Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month Bess Rowen By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte in It’s That Time of the Month at Soho Rep. Photos: Julieta Cervantes . Courtesy Soho Rep Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month By Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte Directed by Jess Barbagallo Soho Rep New York, NY December 3, 2023 Reviewed by Bess Rowen Right under the poster art for It’s That Time of the Month , which features a dripping red smiley face against a dark pink background, Soho Rep’s website includes a statement in large font that reads: “ Trigger Warning: There will be fluids! ” But this was the only preparation for what would transpire after I passed through the bright pink, fleshy folds that led me into the space for a unique meditation on menstruation. It’s That Time of the Month is part talk show, part game show, part variety show, and part stand-up routine written and performed by Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte, and directed by Blackwell’s frequent collaborator, Jess Barbagallo. The audience follows Blackwell’s Snatch Adams, an out of work (clown) vagina whose journey to Soho Rep is covered in an animated video (designed by Derek Rippe) that precedes Snatch’s entrance. After running from some scary laws targeting women and trans people, Snatch enters the theatre and is given the chance to make a wish. Snatch wishes for a talk show, which ends up being co-hosted by Duarte’s Tainty McCracken, a fellow comedian with the gender politics and misogyny level of an average shock jock. These two foils create an environment where improv and crowd participation are essential parts of a journey through the trails and tribulations of menstruating people, a topic that is still too rarely discussed, especially in mixed company. Before a word is ever spoken or a video played, Greg Corbino’s production design set the stage for both the “taboo” topic and the forthright approach of Blackwell and Duarte. Audiences enter through the aforementioned pink, vaginal canal into a space featuring a golden vulva—complete with clitoris—framed by an open pair of legs. Illuminated letters spell “It’s That Time of the Month” above the legs, while the area underneath each leg provides a seating area for each host. Tainty’s features a sign reading “Man Cave” while Snatch’s holds the video screen that also plays commercial breaks between each scene. Snatch and Tainty’s entrances reveal their visceral costumes, designed by Amanda Villalobos. Snatch is a six-foot-tall vagina that people can reach into—as the audience discovered when Blackwell asked audience members of different identities (e.g. gay man, lesbian, straight man) questions and then told them to take a treat out of their snatch. Tainty wears a furry coat with a puckered heart fascinator and a mantle of balls that Duarte often had to adjust throughout the performance. The layering of textures in both costumes during the performance was all the more impressive because of how much crowd interaction there was, meaning that the audience had the chance to see the details of these pieces up close. The layering of textures in each costume was yet another instance of mirroring form and content, as the structure of It’s That Time of the Month was also a purposeful mix of genres. Blackwell and Duarte were joined by Becky Hermenze and Amando Houser, who comprise the “Slit Crew,” a nod to the “Pit Crew” from RuPaul’s Drag Race . Hermenze and Houser are equally important members of this team, as it takes all four performers to accomplish all that this show requires. From cleaning up the unfortunate yeast infection that causes Snatch to spit up some mealy liquid to helping prepare the space for the special guest (Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael R. Jackson for this performance), the Slit Crew helps keep the tone consistent across the ever-shifting scenes. The performances re the most crucial component of It’s That Time of the Month since Blackwell and Duarte are the thread that ties everything together. Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte in It’s That Time of the Month at Soho Rep. Photos: Julieta Cervantes . Courtesy Soho Rep. Blackwell, a storied and respected downtown performer, has an easy-going stage presence that inspires trust. They are charming, but they are also incredibly intuitive, funny, and quick-witted. These qualities allowed for moments of gravitas and pathos that one might not expect from someone dressed as a six-foot-tall vagina. Duarte’s character is certainly more abrasive, as Tainty is meant to be a Me-Too’d comic, but she managed to use this persona to make fun of such people instead of simply recreating the type on stage. And her easy rapport with Blackwell made the two a truly dynamic duo. Within the framework of the show, Tainty was there to serve as the ignorant one, which was easier to watch because Duarte is also someone who has an experience of menstruation. Of course, one important lesson I took away from this show is that having a period does not make you an expert on one. I learned a great deal myself! Aside from the knowledge gained, I was also struck by how comforting it was to see menstruation treated as a topic that can be painful and difficult. This was possible because of Blackwell’s approach, particularly because of how their grounded, masculine energy encouraged participation from the cis men in the audience in ways that surprised and inspired me. Blackwell’s final monologue touched on some of the nuances of being a trans person who has a period, and about the differences they have noticed in how people react to them now versus how they did before their transition. Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month is a rare piece of theatre that focuses on a common bodily experience in a way that increases inclusivity and works against stereotypes and taboos through comedy. Having a trans performer lead a show about the monthly realities of periods across the gender spectrum proved an excellent model for how to push back against cisheteronormative expectations in discussions of health. And to do it in a way that included facts, prizes, puppets, and a splash zone only made it feel all the more relevant and fun. It’s That Time of the Month does indeed include the fluids it promises in its cheeky trigger warning, but those are only meant to w(h)et your appetite for what comes next. Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte in It’s That Time of the Month at Soho Rep. Photos: Julieta Cervantes . Courtesy Soho Rep. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Bess Rowen (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University. She is also affiliate faculty for both Gender & Women's Studies and Irish Studies. She is a member of Actors' Equity and an intimacy choreographer. Her first book, The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment (2021) focuses on affective stage directions. Her next book project looks at the theatrical archetype of the “mean teenage girl.” Other recent work can be found in Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders & Sexualities , Theatre Survey , and The Eugene O'Neill Review , among other publications. She also serves as the LGBTQ+ Focus Group Representative at ATHE and as the Co-Editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Erin Rachel Kaplan Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 2 Visit Journal Homepage Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s Erin Rachel Kaplan By Published on May 27, 2018 Download Article as PDF Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s . Chrystyna Dail. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016; Pp. 194. In Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s , Chrystyna Dail reveals a significant piece of theatre history and asserts its rightful place in the canon of American drama. Dail begins the book by arguing that the claim often made by theatre historians such as John Gassner that social activist theatre died in the 1930s, only to resurface in the 1960s is a false one. Engaging with Douglas McDermott’s political performance continuum, Dail contends that the group Stage for Action (SFA) created a new kind of socially conscious theatre that served as a propaganda machine for the progressive left, as well as a megaphone for civil rights, workers’ rights, the fight against fascism, and more. For Dail, SFA did more than raise awareness about these issues; it was “diligently involved in theatrical praxis,” demanding and proposing solutions to social justice problems of the day (22). Dail breaks down her historical study of SFA clearly and concisely containing just enough cultural, political, and economic history to contextualize fully the work of SFA. Dail first offers a chronicle of its creation, arguing that SFA became a “reimagining of progressive performance, both during the War and after, and as an underappreciated model for social activist theatre in the United States” (15). Founded by four young women—Perry Miller, Donna Keath, Berilla Kerr, and Peggy Clark—SFA began as a tool to support the War effort in Europe and to bring attention to the “menace of native fascism” (33). In its brief three years, SFA amplified the voices of the some of the most radically anti-racist, anti-fascist, and pro-union thinkers of the era; was one of the earliest racially integrated theatre groups in the US; and became an integral part of Henry A. Wallace’s failed 1948 presidential campaign. Dail argues that what started as a small New York-based volunteer theatre group became the breeding ground for a multitude of progressive causes nationwide. To buttress this argument throughout the book, Dail highlights particular plays within the SFA canon that exemplify the progressive politics of the group. For the second chapter, Dail “explicates the relationship between Stage for Action and labor unions during and following World War II ” (45). Dail argues that Arthur Miller’s That They May Win put SFA in the spotlight. Eleanor Roosevelt discussed the play in her nationally syndicated “My Day” column, and it played to sold-out audiences in New York and around the country. For Dail, Miller’s “missing years” (1945-1946) were spent pouring “himself into revolutionary work and leftist theatrical criticism” (47). He ultimately became the playwright in residence of the SFA. That They May Win existed in multiple versions and called for better military wages, state-sponsored childcare, and the political activism of everyday Americans. Dail also critically analyzes Les Pine and Anita Short’s satirical musical Joseph McGinnical, Cynical Pinnacle, Opus II . Dail claims that “August 1946 through November 1948 saw SFA producing work that substantiated its position as the premier social activist theatre group of the late 1940s” (69). Chapter three examines specific SFA plays that adopted progressive views on racial politics including Charles Polacheck’s Skin Deep . The play was written to advocate for racial equality and address the anti-black violence and race riots making their way across the nation. In addition, Dail includes a detailed analysis of Ben Bengal’s 1946 play All Aboard , which dealt with transportation segregation, as well as Dream Job by Arnold Perl and Talk in Darkness by Malvin Wald. Performed as a part of the Wallace campaign, which fiercely advocated for full civil rights, universal healthcare and childcare, a robust social safety net, federal minimum wage laws, and equality for women in the workplace, among other policies, these SFA productions forced Truman to take up the cause of civil rights (though not as fervently as Wallace did) in order for him to win the 1948 presidential election. In her fourth chapter, Dail looks at yet another project of the SFA—its fight against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Based on close readings, she argues that Miller wrote The Crucible after Sidney Alexander’s Salem Story , noting that “the plays share the same basic plotline and major characters” (112) and that “too many parallels exist between these two artists for the overlap in their plays to be mere coincidence” (116). Finally, she chronicles the red-baiting that several members of SFA suffered. She observes that “during the decade of 1946-1956 informants ‘named’ 40 percent of Stage for Action membership as Communists or subversives” (139) and that several SFA members were called to testify in front of HUAC. Due to the outcomes of these hearings, some lost their careers and even their lives. In her final chapter, Dail somewhat undercuts her argument that HUAC brought an end to SFA. While the group formally disbanded, several socially activist theatres and productions rose in its place. She offers in-depth readings of the post-SFA plays Open Secret by Robert Adler, who addressed the horrors of the atomic bomb, as well as We Who Are the Weavers by Joseph Shore and Scott Graham Williamson, who strongly critiqued the colonization of Puerto Rico. Dail closes her analysis and argument by making the point that the professionalism and dedication to social justice found in the SFA directly links the workers’ theatres of the 1930s with the companies founded after its disbandment such as the Free Southern Theater and El Teatro Campesino. Stage for Action serves as a fascinating and incredibly well-researched and well-written exploration into an important and oft-forgotten piece of theatre history. Given SFA’s commitment to the notion that “entertainment should have a purpose…and that purpose must be exerted to prevent war, stamp out race hatreds, combat poverty” (151) and more, I cannot think of a more appropriate time to revisit and revive their works. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Erin Rachel Kaplan University of Colorado Boulder Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s Samuel Beckett’s Theatre in America: The Legacy of Alan Schneider as Beckett’s American Director The Contemporary American Monologue: Performance and Politics Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left Introduction: Mediations of Authorship in American Postdramatic Mediaturgies Kaldor and Dorsen's "desktop performances" and the (Live) Coauthorship Paradox Ecologies of Media, Ecologies of Mind: Embodying Authorship Through Mediaturgy Dropping the Needle on the Record: Intermedial Contingency and Spalding Gray's Early Talk Performances #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS: Weaponizing Performance of Identity from the Digital to the Physical Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Watch The Making of Pinocchio by Cade & MacAskill at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. A true tale of love and transition told through the story of Pinocchio. In this hybrid of theatre and film, shot and edited all in one take, you are invited to go behind the scenes of Cade & MacAskill’s creative process and their relationship, and question what it takes to tell your truth. Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill have been creating The Making of Pinocchio since 2018, alongside and in response to Ivor’s gender transition. In this digital edition of the work, their tender and complex autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy’. With an ingenious scenography designed by Tim Spooner, layered with sound by Yas Clarke, lights by Jo Palmer and cinematography from Kirstin McMahon, the show employs split-screen, forced perspective and intimate close ups to constantly shift between between fantasy and authenticity, humour and intimacy, on stage and on screen. The Making of Pinocchio joyfully embraces the importance of imagination in queer worldmaking and the idea of transness as a state of possibility that can trouble fixed perspectives and inspire change. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents The Making of Pinocchio At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Cade & MacAskill Performance Art This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks, as well as screened in-person on May 17th. About The Film Country Scotland Language English Running Time 90 minutes Year of Release 2021 A true tale of love and transition told through the story of Pinocchio. In this hybrid of theatre and film, shot and edited all in one take, you are invited to go behind the scenes of Cade & MacAskill’s creative process and their relationship, and question what it takes to tell your truth. Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill have been creating The Making of Pinocchio since 2018, alongside and in response to Ivor’s gender transition. In this digital edition of the work, their tender and complex autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy’. With an ingenious scenography designed by Tim Spooner, layered with sound by Yas Clarke, lights by Jo Palmer and cinematography from Kirstin McMahon, the show employs split-screen, forced perspective and intimate close ups to constantly shift between between fantasy and authenticity, humour and intimacy, on stage and on screen. The Making of Pinocchio joyfully embraces the importance of imagination in queer worldmaking and the idea of transness as a state of possibility that can trouble fixed perspectives and inspire change. Commissioned by Fierce Festival, Kampnagel, Tramway & Viernulvier with support from Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Battersea Arts Centre, LIFT and Take Me Somewhere. Produced by Artsadmin. Funded by Creative Scotland, Arts Council England and Rudolf Augstein Stiftung with development support from The Work Room/Diane Torr Bursary, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, National Theatre of Scotland, Live Art Development Agency, Gessnerallee, Mousonturm, Forest Fringe, West Kowloon Cultural District & LGBT Health & Wellbeing Scotland. Created by Rosana Cade & Ivor MacAskill Performed by Rosana Cade, Ivor MacAskill, Jo Hellier & Moa Johansson, Tim Spooner & Ray Gammon Set, Prop & Costume Designer: Tim Spooner Sound Designer: Yas Clarke Sound/AV Technician and show operator: Riwa Saab Cameras: Jo Hellier & Moa Johansson Lighting Designer: Jo Palmer Relighter: Meghan Hodgson, Marty Langthorne Cinematographer: Kirstin McMahon & Jo Hellier Produced by Dr. Nora Laraki & Nene Camara for Artsadmin Creation produced by Mary Osborn for Artsadmin Production Manager: Sorcha Stott-Strzala Assistant Stage Manager: Ray Gammon Outside Eye: Nic Green Movement advisor: Eleanor Perry Captioning: Collective Text, Rosana Cade, Ivor MacAskill & Jamie Rea Caption Design: Yas Clarke & Daniel Hughes About The Artist(s) The duo holds the audience with a brand of mischievous humour that’s provocative and reassuring in equal measure.’ Exeunt Cade & MacAskill are Rosana Cade (they/them) and Ivor MacAskill (he/him): renowned queer artists and facilitators based in Glasgow, Scotland. Their work, together and individually, straddles the worlds of experimental contemporary theatre, live art, queer cabaret, film, children’s performance, site specific, and socially engaged practices. Their collaboration is born from a shared love of subversive humour, experimentation with persona and text, playful theatricality, and the joy they find in improvising together. They also share a passion for LGBTQIA+ rights and culture. They create strange, rich aesthetic worlds on stage, with unique sonic elements embedded into their work due to ongoing collaboration with sound artist and designer Yas Clarke. In 2017 they were commissioned by Fierce - Birmingham, The Marlborough - Brighton, and The Yard - London, to create Moot Moot which premiered early 2018. This was then selected as part of the British Council Showcase and the Made in Scotland Showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019, where it enjoyed a sell-out run at Summerhall, and they began to tour this show across Europe before the pandemic hit. Since 2018 they have been working on ‘The Making of Pinocchio’, which was supported though residencies at Gessnerallee in Zurich and Mousonturm in Frankfurt, as well as The Diane Torr Award bursary. They also regularly perform across club, music and performance contexts as their experimental concept band ‘Double Pussy Clit Fuck’. Footage from these gigs has inspired the creation of two new video works during the Covid Pandemic: ‘Taps Aff’, and ‘Presenting Our Selves’. The latter was commissioned by The Place - London for Splayed festival 2020, and selected as part of Scottish Queer International Film festival 2021. They are both experienced facilitators and trained volunteers with LGBT Youth (Glasgow). They are currently in the process of setting up a co-operative to open a new LGBTQIA+ second-hand shop / community space in Glasgow. Get in touch with the artist(s) nora@artsadmin.co.uk and follow them on social media Artists: @cademacaskill (Twitter and Instagram)Producer: @artsadm (Twitter and Instagram), @Artsadmin (Facebook)Fierce Festival @fiercefestivalKampnagel @kampnagel_hamburg (Instagram) @kampnagel (Twitter)Tramway @GlasgowTramwayVIERNULVIER @viernulvier.gent (Instagram) @VIERNULVIERGent (Twitter)Attenborough Centre of the Arts @AttenboroughCtrBattersea Arts Centre @Battersea_ArtsLIFT @LIFTFestival Website: https://www.cademacaskill.com/ https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/project/the-making-of-pinocchio/ Social media handles Twitter and Instagram: Commissioners and supporters: Take Me Somewhere @TMsomewhere Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Jaclyn I. Pryor 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 Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Jaclyn I. Pryor By Published on January 11, 2021 Download Article as PDF Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg’s Ensemble-Made: A Guide to Devised Theater (2019) is a valuable resource for theater educators and practitioners, particularly those who wish to deepen their knowledge of the craft variously known as devised theater, ensemble-based performance, and collective creation. Each short chapter of the book focuses on a distinct Chicago-based theater company (15 in total)—which range from large, nationally-renowned companies such as Lookingglass Theatre and The Second City to smaller, community-based collectives. Each chapter includes a brief history of the company alongside descriptions of games and exercises emblematic of their process and pedagogy. The co-written book also includes an Introduction which places the field of devising in its larger cultural and historical context, as well as a Time Line of the field and List of Exercises By Type, which function as the book’s conclusion. The authors’ methodologies are informed by their own relationship to devised theater in Chicago: Johnson is an ensemble member of the Neo-Futurists and Paz Brownrigg is the Artistic Director of Free Street Theater and cofounder of Teatro Luna—both of which are featured in the book. In this regard, they write as scholars and practitioners of devised theater but also as colleague-critics within the expansive but close-knit network of the Chicago theater community. (Colleague-criticism is a term developed by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Jill Dolan and me to describe the queer and feminist practice of writing criticism from a place of love, respect and mutual aid, as articulated in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies in 2009.) As Ensemble-Made Chicago’s introduction makes clear, Chicago theater has deep roots in ensemble-based creation methods, and, in turn, the field of devising writ large has a great debt to pay in this neighborhood-based, immigrant-rich town that propagated the craft of ensemble-based theater and performance. Johnson and Paz Brownrigg effectively detail how this history can be traced to the late 19th century emergence of the field of modern social work in the city of Chicago—which was made possible, in large part, through the establishment of the Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr Hull House on Chicago’s West Side in 1889. The Hull House was an early settlement house focused on direct services for new Americans; as the authors duly note, “very early on, Jane Addams discovered the profound effect theater had on the children who attended” (xii). The Hull House Players, as they came to be known, were part of the contemporaneously burgeoning Little Theatre Movement in the U.S. (1912-1925) which distinguished itself by its break from commercial theatre and its focus on theatre as civic good. Guided by the pivotal contributions of sociologist Neva Boyd and social worker Viola Spolin—who brought their respective skills and interests in theatre as a catalyst for play, collaboration, and issue-driven exploration to the Hull House—the authors demonstrate how the Hull House paved the way for this contemporary community of devised theatre makers to thrive. Through both its introduction as well as its body chapters, Ensemble-Made also makes a compelling case for considering devised theatre’s relationship not only to social work and arts education, as previously noted, but also to the history and methods of physical theatre. Although not always explicitly cited, many of the games and exercises featured in the book bear obvious ties not only to the pedagogy of Boyd and Spolin (and Spolin’s son, Paul Sills, who founded Second City), but also to the pedagogy of 20th century French theatre maker and educator Jacques Lecoq who developed a codified system of actor training grounded in embodiment. Featured companies, such as 500 Clown, Albany Park Theater Project, Every house has a door, and Walkabout Theater, among others, draw from physical theatre games and exercises in their creation process, resulting in work that resembles experimental performance as much as it does community-based theater. What also becomes clear, as the reader moves their way through the book, is the fact that the Chicago devised theater community is hardly confined by its midwestern geography. Dell’ Arte International (Blue Lake, CA), Third Rail Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA), Sojourn Theatre (Portland, OR), and Pilobolus Dance (Hanover, NH and Washington, CT) all receive honorable mentions in descriptions of exercises. In other words, the artists who comprise Johnson and Paz Brownrigg’s case studies cite not only one another but also those companies from around the country (and world) whose creation methods have circulated through a vast and interlocking network of theater educators and practitioners. In this regard, Ensemble-Made tacitly provides a compelling genealogy of contemporary performance traditions, making evident the ways in which “something as simple as a warm-up has a history” (xi), and revealing the complex ways in which embodied practices circulate across changing times, places and social contexts. While Ensemble-Made ’s explicit focus is more practice than theory, the authors productively place their book in conversation with the field of performance studies—specifically, Diana Taylor’s foundational The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (2003). Taylor’s work is useful to Johnson and Paz Brownrigg’s project because it provides them with a key rationale: citing Taylor, Johnson and Paz Brownrigg situate ensemble-based performance as a “repertoire event.” They elaborate, “it lives in performance and process, not necessarily in text” (xi). Because the creation process for devised theater breaks from traditional theater methods in which “the script” precedes the rehearsal process (and, relatedly, often from clearly delineated roles such as “playwright,” “director,” “performer,” and “audience”), both the devised theater event as well as the process of making the event do not always leave a clear archive for the historian to later interpret. As the authors succinctly put it, “all of [the companies under consideration] have developed a way of creating performance that is predicated on collective, rather than individual, agency. Their work starts in a room, rather than on a page, building a show bit by bit, together” (x). As such, Ensemble-Made Chicago is all the more indispensable: like the field of devising itself, it privileges process over product, while also serving as an accessible guidebook for the history, methods and practices of devised theater—making it a volume to be used in the present and future of the field. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JACLYN I. PRYOR Pennsylvania 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 "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.

Watch ORESTEIA by Carolin Mader at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. This short film is a 6.30 minute version of Aeschylus' ORESTEIA (original excerpts from part II COEPHORES by choir/choir leader/Electra/Orestes), spoken by a mysterious sea creature: „beamed“, apparently, into a very confined space near some very noisy street of Berlin, in order to complete the task of the ancient tragedy choir: to reflect and give advice. The dilemma is huge: a father murdered by the mother’s hand. Is the sin of matricide worth the revenge? Is repaying evil with evil worth it at all? Waiting for Electra and Orestes, their questions and possible answers are forshadowed in an inner monologue. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents ORESTEIA At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Carolin Mader Theater, Film, Performance Art, Spoken Word This film will be available to watch online on the festival website May 16th onwards for 3 weeks, as well as screened in-person on May 20th. About The Film Country Germany Language German Running Time 6 minutes Year of Release 2022 This short film is a 6.30 minute version of Aeschylus' ORESTEIA (original excerpts from part II COEPHORES by choir/choir leader/Electra/Orestes), spoken by a mysterious sea creature: „beamed“, apparently, into a very confined space near some very noisy street of Berlin, in order to complete the task of the ancient tragedy choir: to reflect and give advice. The dilemma is huge: a father murdered by the mother’s hand. Is the sin of matricide worth the revenge? Is repaying evil with evil worth it at all? Waiting for Electra and Orestes, their questions and possible answers are forshadowed in an inner monologue. Directed/filmed/edited by: Carolin Mader, Siren: Marina Frenk, supported by: Philipp Engelhardt, Fabrik Osloer Straße, Frauenkulturbuero NRW About The Artist(s) Carolin Mader has studied Italian and German philology and Political Science in Italy and Germany and has worked as a theatre director, actress and musician at the municipal theatre of Dortmund and in Berlin, where she lives. Her production „Die Hamletmaschine“ (Heiner Müller) was shown at the supporting program of the NRW Theatertreffen; „Ithaka“ (Gottfried Benn) and „Medea“ (Euripides) have been awarded with the young director’s award of the Frauenkulturbuero NRW. Get in touch with the artist(s) carolin.mader@hotmail.com and follow them on social media https://www.facebook.com/carolin.mader.35 Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

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

Iris Smith Fischer Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Iris Smith Fischer By Published on June 2, 2016 Download Article as PDF This special issue, sponsored by the American Theatre and Drama Society, explores forms of research and inquiry offered by theatre and performance in the age of STEM—that is, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. [1] The issue also presents developments in the scientific fields of information technology, biology, and medicine that employ techniques and approaches drawn from theatre practices. The issue poses a number of questions: What challenges and opportunities does this historical moment present for theatre to assert its relevance and necessity? How does theatre engage in alternate forms of inquiry? How does scholarship aid theatre, both by bringing theatre’s methods of inquiry into view or engaging in them itself? Can alternate forms of inquiry close the gap between practice and analysis in theatre, and counter claims that research occurs only in STEM disciplines? How can theatre offer an ethical perspective on STEM research, which claims to be value free? These are humanists’ questions, fueled by recognition that the arts themselves involve forms of research and inquiry, and that the concept of scientific objectivity, with its concomitant rejection of subjectivity, should be reexamined. Scientists, on the other hand, want to know how theatre and performance techniques can aid them in their research and teaching, or in the dissemination of results to colleagues, administrators, and the general public. For many scientists, valuable research is objective and ideology-free, separate from applications of already-produced knowledge, and clearly distinct from the creation of plays, the activities of performance artists, or the types of analysis and evaluation involved in theatre history or dramatic criticism. Yet some scientists question the exclusion of subjectivity, ideology, or empathy from STEM research and inquiry. These inquirers ask how the STEM disciplines can incorporate methods of learning borrowed from the humanities and arts, be opened more fully to participation by women, minorities, and the disabled, and teach students in the STEM disciplines to recognize, value, and use forms of embodied knowledge. The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes that the term research is not proprietary to the STEM disciplines, defining it as “systematic investigation or inquiry aimed at contributing to knowledge of a theory, topic, etc., by careful consideration, observation, or study of a subject.” Yet the OED also recognizes later disciplinary and institutional usages: “original critical or scientific investigation carried out under the auspices of an academic or other institution.” In a similarly broad fashion, the OED defines the term inquiry as “the action of seeking, esp. (now always) for truth, knowledge, or information concerning something,” and offers “search, research, investigation, examination” as related terms. [2] Theatre and performance inquire and investigate, often proceeding carefully and methodically, but offering knowledge through acts, processes, and conceptual lenses such as the mimetic, the epic, the postdramatic. These types of knowledge are often not recognized as knowledge of an objective world. The current cultural dominance of the STEM disciplines is driven both by economic exigencies and underlying ideological assumptions about what constitutes valuable research and inquiry. Identifying performance as research can be seen as a response by artists and scholars to institutional, political, and economic pressures, and as a corollary effort to break out of academic silos and loosen funding restrictions. Performance approached as research allows inquirers to recognize commonalities among disciplines and share their methodologies and techniques. This turn reflects in twenty-first-century fashion the moment in the late nineteenth century when higher education was being organized in institutions but disciplinarity had not yet taken on its more rigid twentieth-century forms. Inquiry in science was not so isolated from inquiry in philosophy or literary history. One thinks of the American pragmatists—Peirce, James, Dewey, Addams, and others—who sought to keep in view the connections between scientific advances and humanistic inquiry. A similar desire has emerged recently in many fields, among them complexity science, biosemiotics, and epigenetics, which encourage awareness of the role of embodied knowledges in research. In this regard Wendy Wheeler usefully distinguishes between conceptual, experiential, and tacit forms of knowledge. Tacit knowledge, or “creaturely skillful phenomenological knowledge,” is essential to human flourishing and artistic creativity but incapable of formulation in propositional language. Yet conceptual knowledge or “abstract intellectual knowledge that ” cannot by itself account for experiential knowledge or “phenomenological embodied knowledge how ,” i.e., readable acts created “in engagement with the world and other embodied creatures.” Biosemiotic methods of inquiry, Wheeler argues, allow access to necessary tacit knowledge through the reading of such acts. While applicable to many realms of life, human and otherwise, she notes, “Skillful being in cultural complex totalities is a specifically human skillful being in the world. Actions (especially, perhaps, political actions) driven mainly by abstract thinking, which forget embodied experience, local knowledge, and skillfulness, are always, almost by definition, dangerous.” [3] Research and inquiry should engage the phenomenological how along with the conceptual that . In an effort to claim the term research for performance practices, some have questioned the tendency in the arts to distinguish between practice and analysis, as Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter point out: While performance practices have always contributed to knowledge, the idea that performance can be more than creative production, that it can constitute intellectual inquiry and contribute new understanding and insight is a concept that challenges many institutional structures and calls into question what gets valued as knowledge. Perhaps the most singular contribution of the developing areas of practice as research (PaR) and performance as research (PAR) is the claim that creative production can constitute intellectual inquiry.[4] The movement known as Practice as Research (PaR) first developed in the United Kingdom, Riley and Hunter note, in response to government assessment tools introduced in the early 1990s to apportion funding based on departments’ research productivity. While humanities scholarship—as opposed to arts creation—more readily fits existing definitions of conceptual knowledge production (in the form of scholarly articles and monographs), arts departments in the U.K. faced the challenge of developing criteria for assessing creative activity as research, a process begun later at U.S. universities, and still ongoing. [5] Today embodied knowledges are being widely discussed at conferences and in publication. In their recent call for a working group on “Transfusions and Transductions: Science and Performance as Permeable Disciplines,” Vivian Appler and Meredith Conti argue, “As with the clinical laboratory and astronomical observatory, the theatre serves as a reflexive and generative site of transformations, a place to penetrate barriers and test innovative ideas, approaches, and practices.” [6] Also promising in closing the practice/analysis divide is the concept of situated knowledge, drawn in part from black feminist thought and summarized here by Lynette Hunter: Unlike scientific knowledge in which the effect of the observer is often a ‘problem’ and many experiments are devised in order to minimize it, in situated knowledge the whole point is that the observer is engaged. It is only through their engagement that knowledge can be manifested, and the observer is both the practitioner who makes things and the audience or respondent.[7] Calling such current developments “a moment of discovery and transition” in the long history of research in performance, Arthur Sabatini emphasizes that the training of performers is built upon considerable research into the capacities of the human body and mind. Use of the voice, breathing, manual dexterity, movement techniques, directing or choreographing for performance are all outcomes from highly proscribed and ever-evolving systems that have been researched, repeatedly tested, and advanced by practitioners worldwide.[8] Institutional pressures and burgeoning terminology may actually present opportunities to explore and document the need for embodied and situated knowledges that cross the institutional divide between arts and humanities on the one hand, and STEM disciplines on the other. Invested in both creativity and discovery, initiatives are coming from all sides to bridge that gap in terms of how research is conducted, students are trained, and knowledge is disseminated. * The articles that follow argue for the value of embodied knowledges from the nine contributors’ rich and varied backgrounds in theatre history, playwriting, both arts and science education (including science museum education), physics, molecular biology, medicine, engineering, information science and technology, feminism, gender and sexuality studies, acting, directing, and—not least—stand-up comedy. Each perspective contributes in its own way to this special issue. Bradley Stephenson, in “This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D. W. Gregory’s Radium Girls ,” approaches embodied knowledges offered by theatre in terms of disability studies, epic theatre, and recent theories of animacy. Building on Mel Chen’s concept of animacy as “the recognition that abstract concepts, inanimate objects, and things in between can be queered and racialized without human bodies present,” Stephenson argues that, in Gregory’s re-telling of the historical events involving young female workers poisoned by their interactions with radium-laced paint, “radium itself becomes an actor and character in the play.” Citing disability theory as an ally of performance and theatre studies, Stephenson explores the interactions of biological life with radioactive half-life in order to rewrite our medical understanding of radium’s effects on the body as a complex of transcorporeal agencies. Vivian Appler approaches science—in this case physics, astronomy, and engineering—as “a liberal cultural domain,” a formulation that recognizes the STEM disciplines’ roots in liberal humanism. “Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of The End of the Moon ” argues that scientists and artists alike have a social responsibility to “recognize how theatre and other representational modes of performance impact a cultural imaginary that contains both the sciences and the arts.” Appler calls for a “holistic cultural conversation” to bridge what C. P. Snow once termed ‘the two cultures divide’: “Interdisciplinary performance research can disrupt this biased cultural scenario by examining science-oriented performance artists who work from a feminist perspective.” Appler focuses on Laurie Anderson’s arts residency at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the resulting 2004 performance piece The End of the Moon : Anderson endeavors to instill in her audiences a sense of wonder at the world while also encouraging active participation in the larger culture in which the domain of astronomy is embedded. . . . [She] fills the space between wonder at scientific achievement and an active engagement with the socio-political criticism of those achievements through embodied and technologically transductive performance techniques. By means of transduction or “communication of information across different media,” Appler continues Anderson’s intervention, revealing in the performance a “cyborg system” that invites discussion of gender assumptions active both within science and outside of it. By documenting a woman performance artist embodying representations of gendered scientific research, Appler’s article shares concerns expressed by Eileen Trauth, Karen Keifer-Boyd, and Suzanne Trauth about the barriers women encounter in thinking of themselves as researchers and gaining access to the sciences. Suzanne Trauth’s play script iDream , based on Eileen Trauth’s research and documented by Karen Keifer-Boyd, is designed to “raise awareness and critique hegemonic social narratives regarding who [can] participate in the STEM field of IT [information technology].” The authors of “ iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change” have found that the scientific professions have difficulty creating gender balance. Just as scholarly publications on information technology are not written in language accessible for the general public, “the scientific model of research dissemination leaves little room for the expression of subtlety, nuance, emotion, and holistic representation.” The authors turn instead to girls, their families, and their teachers, to raise awareness of the cultural narratives at work. Transforming Eileen Trauth’s research findings into theatrical scenarios, the authors seek to “stimulate awareness, understanding, and activism about barriers to women in technological fields.” iDream employs several story lines to engage audiences during staged readings and the discussions that follow. In a work process resembling what Appler terms “interactional expertise,” albeit not in a full production or performance art but rather in a script-centered experience, the authors created an exploration of “science opportunities . . . and barriers . . . [focusing] not so much on overt barriers [but] rather the process by which a young woman might unconsciously internalize limits on her dreams.” Cindy L. Duckert and Elizabeth A. De Stasio also investigate theatre’s applications in the interaction between STEM researchers and the general public. Rather than raising awareness of constraining social narratives, the authors report on their use of Viola Spolin’s improvisation techniques to prepare undergraduate life science students to communicate complex concepts to non-experts. Duckert and De Stasio developed a required capstone course to rehearse students in performance skills they need as professionals and public intellectuals, i.e., to make their discoveries “accessible and understandable by linking scientific concepts to concepts the audience already knows.” Moreover, We want our graduates to be cognizant of their audience, to be able to react in real time to the cues the audience members send concerning their understanding of oral and visual communication, and . . . to channel their creative energy and enthusiasm for their work [in order] to communicate scientific information effectively and engagingly. Often initially resistant to engaging in theatrical improvisation, students find that even minimal awareness of performance circumstances improves their ability to communicate. While this would not surprise theatre majors, the incorporation of performance skills into a life sciences curriculum appears to leave life science majors with a new respect for the role that movement, gesture, and facial expression play in communication. The authors also note that, as teachers, they became more aware of public speaking’s embodied character, as well as physiological and neurological elements such as the linkage between mimicry (empathetic physical behaviors) and the action of mirror neurons in fostering an audience’s receptivity. Could performance techniques become part of the life sciences’ methods of disseminating discoveries? Duckert and De Stasio’s capstone course, embedded in their department’s curriculum, suggests that improvisational performance could assist STEM researchers in communicating more effectively with administrators, legislators, and the general public. This possibility also appears in “Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters,” in which George Pate and Libby Ricardo address the use of simulated patients in training medical students for clinical encounters. A relatively recent development, simulated patients—non-actors who volunteer their participation—do not learn a traditional standardized script but are given their characters’ medical and personal histories and also acting guidelines for behaving as their characters would in real-life consultations with their doctors. As the authors note, such “high fidelity” encounters rehearse the performance of empathetic responses to improvised, often unpredictable patient behaviors. The authors’ use of simulated patients follows “recent research suggesting that clinical skills are not ancillary to medical care but in fact affect healing and recovery in measurable ways.” In this regard, Pate and Ricardo’s project resembles that of Duckert and De Stasio, both in regard to the medical students’ initial reluctance to role-play and in the authors’ successful use of workshop exercises to integrate clinical skills with medical knowledge. Drawing a parallel to literary techniques of storytelling, Pate and Ricardo found that such improvisational exercises, like fictional narratives, helpfully “suggest responses without dictating them, urge behaviors without ordering them, illuminate values without oversimplifying them, and in general complicate the matters rather than clarifying or confirming them. . . . [Further,] improvisatory acting situations may offer a greater immediacy and a wider range of possible responses than a poem or story can.” Of all the activity going on in performance as research and research-informed theatre, this special issue presents only a sampling. Many other projects incorporating theatre and performance offer embodied and situated knowledges that can inform scientific research, suggest alternate forms of inquiry, and allow inquirers in the age of STEM to communicate effectively as public intellectuals. References [1] It has been a pleasure to work with JADT editors James Wilson and Naomi Stubbs, and managing editor James Armstrong. I extend my appreciation to them and also to the American Theatre and Drama Society for the opportunity to edit this special issue. My special thanks go to Cheryl Black, ATDS President, and the members of the special issue publications committee, ATDS members all, who both served as readers and provided me with excellent advice. [2] “Research,” “Inquiry,” Oxford English Dictionary (Online) (Oxford: Oxford University, Press, 2000-). http://www2.lib.ku.edu/login?url=http://www.oed.com . [3] Wendy Wheeler, The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2006), 49. [4] Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter, “Introduction,” Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), xv. [5] Ibid, xvii. Riley and Hunter distinguish among the relevant terms: “The acronym ‘PaR’ in the United Kingdom refers to ‘practice as research’ in its most inclusive sense to embrace music practices, the visual arts, dance, and theatre [while] ‘PbR’ refers to ‘practice-based research’ with a wider reach across the arts and sciences. . . . PbR is also well-established in the United Kingdom and Europe, and contributes to many areas, from the medical sciences to spectatorship studies. PbR emerges from different academic areas, but seems to have particular usage in the sciences. . . . In the United States, especially in the fields of performance and theatre studies, the acronym PAR is common shorthand for ‘performance as research’.” [6] E-mail communication from Meredith Conti, 23 May 2016. [7] Lynette Hunter, “Situated Knowledge,” in Riley and Hunter, Mapping Landscapes , 151. [8] Arthur Sabatini, “Approaching Knowledge, Research, Performance and the Arts,” in Riley and Hunter, Mapping Landscapes , 120, 118. Footnotes About The Author(s) Iris Smith Fischer is Professor of English at the University of Kansas, where she teaches modern drama, semiotics, literary and dramatic theory, and avant-garde performance. From 2007-2010 she served as editor of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. Her publications include Mabou Mines: Avant-Garde Theater in the 1970s (author, University of Michigan Press, 2011); Interrogating America through Theatre and Performance (co-editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); American Signatures: Semiotic Inquiry and Method, by Thomas A. Sebeok (editor, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). Her current book project, "Charles Peirce and the Role of Aesthetic Expression in 19th-Century U.S. Semiotics," examines the intertwined histories of theatre (Delsartist approaches to actor training and public speaking) and the still-emerging field of science-based semiotics. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Encounter Keith Josef Adkins's work The Heat Will Kill Everything in Manhattan, at this year's edition of the Prelude in the Parks festival by The Segal Centre, presented in collaboration with Summer on the Hudson/Riverside Park Conservancy. Prelude in the Parks 2024 Festival The Heat Will Kill Everything Keith Josef Adkins Theater Saturday, June 8, 2024 @ 3pm Riverside Park South, Manhattan Performance on Locomotive Picnic Lawn @61st street on the Hudson River. Enter at 59th St, or 66th St and Riverside Boulevard Summer on the Hudson/Riverside Park Conservancy Presented by Mov!ng Culture Projects and The Segal Center in collaboration with Presented by Mov!ng Culture Projects and The Segal Center View Location Details RSVP To Event A Black man’s daughter disappears during an extreme heat event. Excerpts will be performed by Francois Battiste and directed by Russell G. Jones. Keith Josef Adkins Keith Josef Adkins is a writer and artistic director. His plays have been produced around the U.S., and include The People Before The Park, about the 19th-century black community Seneca Village that was razed to create Central Park. Keith received Samuel French’s inaugural Award for Impact and Activism in the Theater Community, and a Helen Merrill Playwright Award. Keith is the co-founder and artistic director of The New Black Fest, dedicated to new and provocative playwriting and discussion from the African Diaspora. He has written for CBS’ The Good Fight, ABC’s For The People, and P-Valley on STARZ. Visit Artist Website Location Performance on Locomotive Picnic Lawn @61st street on the Hudson River. Enter at 59th St, or 66th St and Riverside Boulevard Summer on the Hudson/Riverside Park Conservancy Summer on the Hudson is Riverside Park and West Harlem Piers Park’s annual outdoor arts and culture festival that takes place from 59th Street to 181st Street along the Hudson River, from May to October. Events include concerts, dance performances, movies under the stars, DJ dance parties, children’s shows, educational workshops, special day-long festivals, wellness activities, and more. All programs and events are free to the public and no registration is required unless specifically noted. Visit Partner Website

Time is running out the Human kind before the earth goes into full self sedation. The trees have always been the guardians of the earth, but they now must conserve their strength to save themselves. Who will save the human kind from self destruction and all that is in their path? Is there someone, something that can speak for the trees, who speak for all things that inhabit this planet? PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Mud & Blood Maya Sharpe Theater, Music English 1 hour 8:00PM EST Monday, October 16, 2023 The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Time is running out the Human kind before the earth goes into full self sedation. The trees have always been the guardians of the earth, but they now must conserve their strength to save themselves. Who will save the human kind from self destruction and all that is in their path? Is there someone, something that can speak for the trees, who speak for all things that inhabit this planet? produced by The Brick Content / Trigger Description: Musician. Storyteller. Filmmaker. Maya Sharpe is multi-passionate maker and thinker. Maya's passion lies in exploring simplicity in humanity through composition. Using this tool to demonstrate there is more of a connection and love between everything than the politically derived disconnect and hatred. http://www.mayasharpe.com/ Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

By Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, Daniel Gerould | The first English-language anthology of Czech plays written after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Czech Plays: Seven New Works Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, Daniel Gerould Download PDF Czech Plays: Seven New Works is the first English-language anthology of Czech plays written after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution.” These plays explore sex and gender identity, ethnicity and violence, political corruption and religious taboos. Using innovative forms and diverse styles, they tackle the new realities of Czech society brought on by democracy and globalization with characteristic humor and intelligence. Edited by Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, Daniel Gerould Foreward by Daniel Gerould Introduction by Marcy Arlin Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

Jessica L. Peña Torres  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 México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Jessica L. Peña Torres By Published on May 8, 2023 Download Article as PDF Zapateado, burlesque dancing, and a mix of mariachi, son jarocho, and electronic music combine to create the world for MÉXICO (EXPROPRIATED), a bilingual dance-theater piece that surveys three regions of México (Jalisco, Sonora, Veracruz) through a dramatization of the origins of ballet folklórico. With songs such as “Son de la Negra,” “La Bruja,” and “La Bamba,” the dancers of Coctel Explosivo present Mexico’s folkloric diaspora while inviting the audience to reflect upon a heritage that has been as appropriated as Carolina Herrera’s latest collection. MÉXICO (EXPROPRIATED) unearths the politics and history of ballet folklórico, which has been presented as authentic Mexican culture for decades and puts it under the microscope for the audience to decide: should we keep these dances in the repertoire, or should we re-choreograph them to reflect their complicated histories? My Desilusión with Ballet Folklórico I saw the Ballet Folklórico de México de Amalia Hernández live onstage for the first time at the Strathmore Theatre in North Bethesda, MD in 2015. Even though it was a reach, I dreamed about dancing for Hernández’s company. That night in Bethesda, I became enamorada of the colors, the technique, and the professionalism of the most famous dance company in Mexico. The female dancers, all tall, very thin, and, significantly, light-skinned, looked like Barbie dolls to me. For days, I daydreamed of their high battements in “Guerrero,” the lightness of their faldeo in “Jalisco,” and their pas de vals in “Revolución.” A few months later, I moved to Mexico City to audition for the company, but a quick visit to their website shattered my hopes in seconds. The section “Auditions” listed under “requirements”: “Estatura minima: mujeres 1.68 m” (Minimum height: women 5’5’’) [i] . I was four inches too short. I thought about the dancers I had seen perform and could not help but compare my short height to their statuesque bodies. A month or so later, I was dancing with the Ballet Folclórico Nacional de México de Silvia Lozano, a sixty-year-old-company founded by a former dancer of Hernández’s, Maestra Silvia Lozano. In rehearsals, it did not take long for me to start hearing chisme (gossip) about what it was like to work for other major folklórico companies in the city. I heard rumors that teachers and administrators in Hernández’s company bullied dancers if they had darker skin or were “overweight.” More interesting, however, was criticism about how Hernández’s works were not “authentic” or “traditional,” but, rather, highly stylized. All of this chisme reminded me of the dances I had witnessed in Bethesda. The cuadros (dance suites) were very beautifully executed, yes, but the technique, including the port de bras , the battements , the forward-carrying of the upper body, the lightness of the feet, the emphasis on turnout, and the precision of the turns, resembled that of classical ballet companies. The press deemed Hernández “La Emperatriz del Tesoro Mexicano del Folklor” (the Empress of the Mexican Treasure of Folklore) who brought to the world stage the “incomparable culture of Mexico” [ii] . How does Hernández’s use of Western, classical dance factor into these achievements? Moreover, how does Hernandez’s company sell the image of Mexico to the rest of the world? How does this legacy shape Mexican understandings of what it means to be Mexican? If her dances are not particularly “authentic,” then what claims to indigeneity, if any, does she have? And how did she acquire the indigenous dance material she has adapted to the stage? These and more questions started to pull apart a tapestry in my head, one I had constructed in my time as a ballet folklórico dancer with the images I believed to be a true representation of mexicanidad . Because I had performed with ballet folklórico companies in both Mexico and the United States, I thought of Hernández’s choreographic work as the footprint for folklórico dancers everywhere; her legacy extended across borders and with it, the way audiences perceived Mexican identity. This tapestry, however, was unraveling and to replace it, I was weaving together many ethical issues that this dance form brought up. As an artist-scholar, I began to question myself: how could I even begin to address these problem as a ballet folklórico dancer? Authoethnography México (expropriated) [iii] –– in Spanish, México (expropiado) ––is the result of an auto-ethnographic project that I began in 2019. [iv] An original evening-long piece of dance theatre, this work—which premiered as a web project in 2020, during the pandemic, and on stage in Mexico City in April 2022—is my attempt to rechoreograph the ballet folklórico form as established by Hernández through Practice as Research methodology (PaR) as delineated by Robin Nelson (2013) and Vida Midgelow (2018) [v] . Utilizing cabaret, contemporary dance, folklórico, zapateado (footwork) , flamenco, burlesque, and text, México (expropriated) seeks to re-appropriate ballet folklórico’s problematic images and characters of three different cuadros:“ Jalisco,” “La Danza del Venado,” and “Veracruz.” In this article, I will discuss the (re)creation of one of the characters featured in “Jalisco:” la china poblana . Following José Muñoz’s concept of disidentification as described in his book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics [vi] , I aim to complicate the politics of my mestizo body through my artistic work. Reflecting upon Muñoz’s theory on how identity has been “formed in response to the cultural logics of heteronormativity, white supremacy, and misogyny ––cultural logics that . . . work to undergrid state power,” [vii] I argue that these same notions have been thrust upon Mexican identity. Inspired by Muñoz’s theory, I explore the social imaginary of what it means to be Mexican and actively use choreographic and theatrical tools to disidentify from these hegemonic notions, specifically as they influenced the creation of the ballet folklórico form. Since disidentification is a “strategy that works on and against dominant ideology,” [viii] I use it to challenge the traditional elements of mexicanidad [ix] . By disidentifying from the ballet folklórico form, I am “working on and against” [x] the cultural structures that I learned from a discipline that trained my body and shaped my artistic practices during my time as a professional ballet folklórico dancer in Mexico and the United States. Throughout the process of creating México (expropriated) , my cast and I considered “what is it to dance Mexican?” [xi] By exploring tropes and characters of Mexican folklore such as la china poblana , el charro , el Venado , el Negrito , and la Mulata , we investigated what it means to perform authenticity and who, in reality, were the characters that contributed to the nationalist project of the postrevolutionary period, specifically as Amalia Hernández featured them in her world-famous repertory. Lastly, I sought to reclaim agency as a former ballet folklórico professional dancer by offering an alternative interpretation of these characters, one that would provide audiences with a playful yet cutting critique of the way we perform ballet folklórico within and outside of Mexico. Because ballet folklórico was created to consolidate a national identity, it serves to reinforce hegemonic notions of mexicanidad. México (expropriated) subverts stereotypes associated with Mexican identity, performatively unveils the unethical and inauthentic practices of ballet folklórico, and actively rejects heterosexist, racist, and homophobic gender roles embedded in both traditions. This article describes and analyzes the recreation of the character of la china poblana , while also reflecting on the changes the piece underwent in several versions of the project. Originally, I planned to present the work on stage in Austin, Texas in spring 2020, with a cast of Latinx performers. (See figure 1) . However the pandemic forced me to reconfigure the work as an interactive website. In 2022, I was able to stage the work (with a Mexican cast) at Teatro Benito Juárez in Mexico City as part of the City’s Department of Culture annual programming. (See figure 2) . Over the course of its production history, the piece transformed by way of medium, cast, audience, geographical location, language (English/Spanish to Spanish-only), and time [xii] . Left: Poster for Mexico (expropriated) by Jessica Peña Torres and the Ensemble. Photos by Juan Leyva. Design by Khristian Méndez Aguirre. March 2020. Right: Poster for Mexico (expropriado) by Jessica Peña Torres and Coctel Explosivo. Photo by Mona E. Avalos. April 2022 Synopsis It’s 1955 in Mexico City and Petra, a talented and well-connected dancer and choreographer, is starting a company to show the dances of Mexico as never seen before. In order to create her repertoire, she will need to teach the dancers of her company how to embody the characters that represent each of the different regions in Mexico. Jalisco Jalisco, a state in the Pacific coast, is the home of tequila, mariachis, and colonial histories. Besides being the “whitest” region of central Mexico, Jalisco’s folkloric dances have become the epitome of Mexican dance traditions. “El Jarabe Tapatío,” for instance, is one of the most frequently performed pieces in the repertoire of any ballet folklórico, from professional companies to amateur groups. Although these dances are certainly emblematic of Mexican identity, they perpetuate heteronormative gender roles through the characters of la china poblana and el charro. In this scene, we take these traditions and re-examine them through song and dance. Mexico City 2022 live performance script excerpt: PETRA David ¿Cuántas veces te tengo que repetir esto? ¿Qué es esto? Petra imita a David con movimientos burdos. PETRA Qué vergüenza contigo. Me hiciste pasar un momento muy difícil. El charro es macho. Con el pecho arriba. Firme. Seguro de su hombría. No con movimientos afeminados. Y Mary… ¿Sabes que estoy pensando? No. Claro que no lo sabes. Tantos años en un cabaret me hacen pensar que nunca podré sacar lo corriente de ti. La China Poblana es elegante, femenina… No me estés haciendo repetir las cosas. Ustedes saben muy bien lo que quiero. Quiero un baile bien ejecutado. No vulgaridades ¿No les da pena que los venga a ver un productor y ustedes bailen como amateurs de carpa? PETRA David, how many times do I have to repeat this to you? What is this? Petra imitates David with crude movements. PETRA How embarrassing of you. You put me through a very difficult time. El charro is macho. With his chest up. Firm. Sure of his manhood. Not with effeminate movements. And Mary… You know what I’m thinking? No. Of course you don’t. So many years in a cabaret make me think that I will never be able to get the ordinary out of you. La China Poblana is elegant, feminine… Don’t make me repeat myself. You know very well what I want. I want a well-executed dance. Not… vulgarities. Don’t you feel ashamed when a producer comes to see you and you dance like amateurs from a carpa? The choreography of folkloric dances in Mexico dates back to postrevolutionary times, specifically to the 1920s and 1930s. “Jarabe Tapatío,” known outside of Mexico as “Mexican Hat Dance” became Mexico’s national dance, with la china poblan a wearing tri-color hair bows (referencing the Mexican flag) and a colorful skirt embroidered with sequins depicting a national symbol (such as the eagle), and el charro in his mariachi hat. Most, if not all, professional and collegiate ballet folklórico companies have a version of the “Jarabe Tapatío” in their repertoire. The word “jarabe” means syrup, and “tapatío,” which comes from the Nahuátl word “Thapatiotl,” [xiii] is used to name people from the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco’s capital city. The dance originated from the “Guajolote,” a dance of the Huichol community where the male bird courts the female bird [xiv] . Similar to the “Guajolote,” in “Jarabe Tapatío” el charro , played by a male dancer, pursues la china poblana , played by a female dancer [xv] . “Jarabe Tapatío” is one of the works in ballet folklórico repertoires that perpetuates hegemonic gender roles in Mexican society. Maria del Carmen Vázquez Mantecón (2000) notes that la china poblana , as a symbol of Mexican identity, represented the “grace and virtue of the Mexican woman,” who served as the object of heterosexual male desire by balancing a dichotomy between wife or prostitute [xvi] . This character also appeared frequently in the writing of 19th-century authors who described her as a mestizo woman who did not conform to society standards but rather enjoyed the freedom of her love encounters. Similar to how la china poblana became a romanticized version of the Mexican woman, el charro became “the symbol of the ideal Mexican man” [xvii] . During the conquest, the Spanish brought horses to Mexico. Those who owned and knew how to ride these majestic animals were regarded as the upper class given their European ancestry. The hacendados (landowners) often knew how to break wild horses, ride them, and perform all sorts of tricks, a feat that reflected their male prowess and social standing. The patriarchal system of 19th century Mexico put men, regardless of class, in charge of women and children in the absence of the hacendado . As such, the vaqueros (horsemen) often learned how to execute these acts in spite of their socioeconomic class. This mixing of the upper, middle and lower classes in the charrería culture led to the formation of a male identity that denoted unity, an unbreakable code of ethics, and an unyielding bravery to defend the family and the hacienda [xviii] . After the revolution ended in 1920, a nationalistic discourse called for the romanticized construction of a specific image of el charro as a strong, skilled, hard-working man to represent male vigor. In ballet folklórico, this character came to represent masculine traits that were favored by the proponents of lo mexicano . As such, el charro often appeared “pursuing and ultimately capturing the woman” he partnered in the dance [xix] . To create material for my own iteration of the cuadro of “Jalisco,” specifically “Jarabe Tapatío,” the ensemble and I played with devised work. We created scenes that reflected the expectations that the social imaginary holds for Mexican women, especially as embodied by the character of la china poblana . The rehearsals led us into big and important discussions about the female body, as it relates to shape, size, and the color of the skin. For example, our work together inspired two of the 2020 cast members, Marina DeYoe-Pedraza and Erica Saucedo, to write a poem titled “Si yo fuera la china poblana” (If I was la china poblana ). Below is a short excerpt. MARINA Si yo fuera la china poblana I would… Go Wherever I want kill and eat whatever I find. Grow into una montaña alta y vasta Too dangerous to climb ERICA If you took all of our bones, Our bodies together … bones piled on bones. Bodies bodies cuerpos Bodies that …are not ours Que no han sido nuestros cuerpos for hundreds of years… (Breath) it’s been a long time since these brown bodies could walk down the street Soft supple MARINA Si yo fuera la china poblana I would be Un Escorpión. Defend myself by puncturing and poisoning those who try to smother me. Through vivid imagery, Marina and Erica explore the possibility of escaping stereotypes and reclaiming agency by becoming either a scorpion, a horse, or even a mountain, all too dangerous for men to dominate. Marina, for example, imagines her china poblana able to defend herself from all predators that mean to subdue her. Through this poem, the dancers overtly expresses their desire to be “whatever [they] wanted.” Embodying Marina and Erica’s words, the three women of the cast (who also included Venese Alcantar) dance solos that combine contemporary technique, footwork and tender yet assertive movement. They manipulate their skirts and play with the contrast of softness and coarseness through varied movements such as jumps and turns and small and big gestures. In the word “puncturing,” for example, the dancers put their foot down and squash one of la china poblana ’s metaphorical enemies. For the filmed version, we recorded the dancers’ voices reciting the poem and paired them with James Parker’s original music and filmed them dancing one at a time. We, then, played with video images of the three dancers (dancing as soloists), either one video of one dancer alone or sometimes two or three video/dancers superimposed. Since they often moved to the same choreography, the change from body to body, at times created the image of a palimpsest of the three women, generating the illusion that even though there were all different women, they shared common histories of oppression and a desire for freedom, and at times, revenge. (See figure 3). Marina DeYoe-Pedraza, Erica Saucedo and Venese Alcantar in México (expropriated) by Jessica Peña Torres and the Ensemble Photo still from video by Michael Bruner. The Vortex, Austin, TX. October 2020. For the 2022 staged version, I wanted to incorporate the new cast’s experiences around female agency. In rehearsal, we talked about their desires to be “whatever they wanted,” and everyone wrote what that prompt meant for them. I gathered their responses and sent them to a friend and poet, Mercy Medina Gonzalez, who wrote a new Spanish-language poem for the dancers to perform. Similar to the 2020 version, the dancers recorded their voices reciting the poem. For the live performances, the dancers moved to their own voices and words, poetically arranged by Mercy but embodied by them. It was their words, their voice, their bodies that we saw onstage. Below is an excerpt of the poem: TODAS Mujer. La Mujer Mexicana que ama y crea. Yo soy La China Poblana. La que entre las cortinas de sus temblores, busca el viento para alimentar sus alas. MARY Toma el suspiro del mundo por los cuernos, y conoce cómo llevarlo hasta las raíces del alma, a todas las esquinas que nos hacen hermosas. Si yo fuera ella, me enterraría bajo la tierra para crecer como mazorca blanda y aprender el nombre de los truenos. Sería curandera y bruja, el esperpento hecho verbo. Esa mujer canta conmigo. Yo soy La China Poblana ERICA La que escarba para hallar el murmullo de la tierra blanda y consume el ardor de los que se rindieron. No le teme ni a la sangre ni a los muertos y busca el aroma de las montañas más altas las cumbres del cielo que no toca; araña. Porque el mundo le debe plenitud y contento. LOLA La que es cuerpo mío y ajeno cuerpos de cuantas nos hemos caído la que nace de huesos y de ríos yo soy La China Poblana la serpiente que deja el cuello al pico de las águilas y el veneno de la araña cuando ataca un caballo que no se monta, un cuervo que arranca los ojos de quienes nos violentan. TODAS La que conoce la amargura de la luna y carga con la sombra de los ciclos. Con su cuerpo mustio es el canal del eterno ir y venir de los vivos. No se aguanta, se transforma en la fuerza de todas las cruces enterradas en carreteras y montes. ALL THE WOMEN Woman. The Mexican Woman that loves and creates. I am La China Poblana. The one that between the curtains of her tremors, seeks the wind to feed her wings. MARY She takes the sigh of the world by the horns, and knows how to take it to the roots of the soul, to all the corners that make us beautiful. If I were her, I would bury myself under the ground to grow as soft cob and learn the name of thunder. I would be a healer and a witch, the grotesque made verb. That woman sings with me. I am La China Poblana ERICA The one who digs to find the murmur of the soft earth and consume the ardor of those who surrendered. She is not afraid of blood or the dead and seeks the scent of the highest mountains, the peaks of heaven that she does not touch; scratches. Because the world owes her fullness and contentment. LOLA The one that is my body and someone else’s bodies of how many we have fallen. The one that is born of bones and rivers I am La China Poblana the serpent that leaves the neck of the eagles beak and the venom of the spider when it attacks a horse that does not ride, a crow that plucks out the eyes of those who violate us. ALL THE WOMEN The one who knows the bitterness of the moon and carries the shadow of the cycles. With her withered body, it is the channel of the eternal coming and going of the living. She doesn’t endure, she becomes the force of all the crosses buried in roads and mountains. (See figure 4). Andrea Rubí Santillán, Samantha Romero Peña, Miriam Garma, and Ileana Díaz Manzur in México (expropiado) by Jessica Peña Torres and Coctel Explosivo. Photo by Ricardo Antonio Ramos. Teatro Benito Juárez, Mexico City. April 2022 In both the 2020 and the 2022 version, our recreation of the character of la china poblana aims to provoke the audience’s affect by simultaneously reproducing visual and aural performances of female agency. Through the evocative descriptions pronounced by the women of the cast through their bodies and voices, we hoped to touch the audience’s sensibilities and make them wonder what it would be like if women could, in fact, be whatever they wanted. Utilizing text and contemporary dance, I sought to to dis-identify from folklórico dance traditions, specifically those inscribed in performances of the character of la china poblana. Conclusion Colorful lights, elegant costumes, presentational smiles and headpieces that not even Lady Gaga could dream of… ballet folklórico offers its audience a taste of Mexico’s regional and cultural diversity. Through my auto-ethnographical project that explores, among other themes, the politics of my mestizo body, I conclude that ballet folklórico desperately needs to be re-choreographed to reflect its colonial history of cultural appropriation and exoticization . I believe that professional, collegiate, and amateur companies of the form should revisit the way they incorporate the pieces of the canon into their repertory if they wish to stop perpetuating racist, heterosexist, classist, and unethical images of the diverse regions of Mexico. When audiences think about Mexico, they often think of the distinct mariachi music, the strong charros , the beautiful china poblana , and many other images that were conceived as components of mexicanidad in postrevolutionary Mexico. These images, however, continue to paint a romanticized vision of Mexico that has never existed. As a millennial coming of age in Reynosa, Tamaulipas ––known for making the headlines of major newspapers as an incubator for cartel violence and drugs–– I think of an alternative image of Mexico to the one painted through a full-length concert of ballet folklórico. Just in 2020, for instance, the number of femicides in my home country increased to an alarming 10 per day. Ballet folklórico does not present this reality, nor the one lived by the many marginalized communities in Mexico; there’s no room for the bad and the ugly in this form. Through Mexico (expropriated) , I aimed to re-choreograph three pieces in the folklórico canon and complicate hegemonic images of mexicanidad. By deconstructing stereotypes of the nation as they relate to gender, race, and class, I aimed to dis-identify from the ballet folklórico form to complicate the discussion of what it means to be Mexican in the 21 st century. Borrowing from contemporary dance, flamenco, jazz, hip hop, and burlesque, I reclaim the agency of my own body to re-choreograph cuadros such as “Jalisco ” and recreate characters such as la china poblana. References [i] “Audiciones,” Ballet Folklórico de México de Amalia Hernández, Accessed November 22, 2018. http://balletfolkloricodemexico.com.mx. [ii] TheCharlieRoll, “Amalia Hernández y el Ballet Folklórico de México – Entrevista y Documental de 1992,” YouTube, October 26, 2017, video, http://youtube.com/watch?v=hOPBBPR-G5Y [iii] My master’s thesis “México (expropriated): Appropriation, Representation, and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico,” which I authored in the Spring 2020 to graduate from the Performance as Public Practice program at the University of Texas at Austin, explored the ballet folklórico dance form in imagining lo mexicano by focusing on Ballet Folklórico de México, Mexico’s leading and most influential company. I argued that BFM has helped the state and the social elite shape an exoticized Mexico for the consumption of foreigners and tourists, and has, within Mexico, offered a problematic embodiment of mexicanidad that reflects racial, nationalistic, class, and gender biases. In addition, I considered Hernández flawed ethnographic methodology which included appropriating and stylizing folk dances through the infusion of ballet and modern dance techniques. The company presents these dances as “authentic” to its paying audiences, and does not offer any reciprocity, support, or acknowledgment to the communities from which Hernández “borrowed” these dances. In addition, her legacy has and continues to permeate many dance companies who imitate BFM’s dances, inadvertently reproducing a colonialist model of exoticization and cultural theft. [iv] Very much inspired by Astrid Hadad’s 2019 performance of Hecha in Mexico , I developed México (expropriated) to satirize stereotypical notions of mexicanidad as imagined by Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike. Like Hadad, I aim to make a feminist intervention in national discourses of mexicanidad as developed in the postrevolutionary period . [v] As Nelson explains, in PaR methodology the doing becomes the knowing . In other words, by dancing, choreographing, writing, and performing México (expropriated) , I am both researching and providing evidence of my research inquiry. As Midgelow suggests, a PaR approach allows artist/scholars to explore the process of creating work as just as significant as the performance of that work before a live audience. [vi] José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minnesota : University of Minnesota Press, 1999). [vii] Muñoz, “Disidentifications,” 5. [viii] Muñoz, “Disidentifications,” 11. [ix] In Chapter 5 “La Moda Mexicana: Exotic Women,” of Imagining la Chica Moderna : Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917-1936 (2008) Joanne Hershfield explores the concept of mexicanidad , the state’s attempt to construct a national identity at the beginning of the 20th century. Exploiting the richness of indigenous cultures, she argues that intellectuals and politicians forged an “authentic” image of Mexico, the “domestic exotic,” rooted in stereotypes of indigenous communities, which the nation then used for capitalist consumption. [x] Muñoz, “Disidentifications,” 11. [xi] I am influenced by my advisor and Professor Rebecca Rossen, whose book, Dancing Jewish (2014), includes three sections that describe an auto-ethnographic dance project for which she asked two of her subjects to make her a “Jewish” dance. Similarly, in México (expropriated) , I explore notions of mexicanidad, as I actively think over the question “what is it to dance Mexican?” Moreover, in Dancing Jewish , Rossen argues that Jewish choreographers negotiate ethnicity and gender in tandem, while challenging “traditional models for femininity (or masculinity); advance social and political agendas; and imagine radical new possibilities for themselves as individuals, artists, and Jews.” Similarly, I argue that mexicanidad is a construction of hegemonic images that contain complex syntheses of gender, ethnicity, nationality, race, and class. Through the process of creating and performing this work, we have been able to imagine new possibilities to stage mexicanidad . [xii] An important change from the filmed to the staged version is that we increased the number of roles from six to eight. For the filmed version, there were six performers including Venese Alcantar (“Veni”), David Cruz (“David”), Marina DeYoe-Pedraza (“Mari”), Jesus Valles (“EMCEE”), Erica Saucedo (“Eri”), and myself (“Pari”). For the staged version, we created three new characters, which featured Mexico City-based performers: José David Carrera Piñón (“Sebastian”), Miriam Garma (“Lola”), Daniel Losoya (”Narrador”), Ileana Manzur (“Veni” became “Vanessa”), Roberto Mosqueda (“David”), Samantha Romero (“Erica”), Andrea Rubí (“Mary”), and myself (“Pari” became “Petra”). Lastly, for the Mexico City live performance I was able to expand the creative team, which included costume designer Edurne Fernández, technical director Pedro Pazarán, and scenic designer Gisselle Gómez Rivera. Composer James Parker created the score for both versions. Another big change from film to stage was the narrative structure of the piece. The filmed version consisted of five separate viñetas (vignettes) following an episodic narrative form. Although the characters appeared through the different scenes, there was no unifying narrative between each separate viñeta. For the Spanish-only/staged adaptation, I worked with filmmaker and screenwriter Nina Chávez Góngora to re-develop the script for the staged version, which read more like a play with numerous dance pieces, often interrupted by the EMCEE, “Narrador.” Adapting the piece to include a unifying narrative throughout gave audiences a stronger chance to connect with the characters, which in turn led to a more effective way to communicate our critique. [xiii] Cashion, quoted in Lawrence Alan Trujillo, The Spanish Influence On the Mexican Folkdance of Yucatán, Veracruz, And Jalisco, Mexico. (Denver: Dart Publications, 1974), 55. [xiv] Lawrence Alan Trujillo, The Spanish Influence On the Mexican Folkdance of Yucatán, Veracruz, And Jalisco, Mexico. (Denver: Dart Publications, 1974), 58. [xv] Sydney Hutchinson, “The Ballet Folklórico de México and the Construction of the Mexican Nation through Dance,” in Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos . (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 209. [xvi] , María del Carmen Vázquez Mantecón, “La China Mexicana, Mejor Conocida Como China Poblana,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 22, no. 77 (2000): 124. [xvii] Gabriela Mendoza-García, “The Jarabe Tapatío: Imagining Race, Nation, Class, and Gender in 1920s Mexico,” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity , edited by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 319. [xviii] Olga Nájera Ramírez, “Engendering Nationalism: Identity, Discourse, and the Mexican Charro, ” Anthropological Quarterly 67, no. 1 (1994): 4. [xix] Nájera Ramírez, “Engendering Nationalism,” 7. Bibliography “Audiciones.” Ballet Folklórico de México de Amalia Hernández. Accessed November 22, 2018. http://balletfolkloricodemexico.com.mx. Hershfield, Joanne. Imagining La Chica Moderna Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917-1936. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Hutchinson, Sydney. “The Ballet Folklórico de México and the Construction of the Mexican Nation through Dance.” In Dancing Across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos, edited by Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Norma E. Cantú, and Brenda M. Romero. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Mendoza.García, Gabriela. “The Jarabe Tapatío: Imagining Race, Nation, Class, and Gender in 1920s Mexico.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity , edited by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young, 319-343 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Midgelow, Vida. Practice-as-Research. United Kingdom: 2018. Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Nájera Ramírez, Olga. “Engendering Nationalism: Identity, Discourse, and the Mexican Charro .” Anthropological Quarterly 67, no. 1, (1994): 1-14. Nelson, Robin. Practice as Research in the Arts : Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances / Written and Edited by Robin Nelson, Director of Research, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Peña Torres, Jessica. “México (expropriated): Appropriation, Representation and Re- Choreography of Ballet Folklórico.” Austin: University of Texas at Austin, 2020. Rossen, Rebecca. Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. TheCharlieRoll. “Amalia Hernández y el Ballet Folklórico de México – Entrevista y Documental de 1992.” YouTube. October 26, 2017. Video. http://youtube.com/watch?v=hOPBBPR-G5Y. Trujillo, Lawrence Alan. The Spanish Influence On the Mexican Folkdance of Yucatán, Veracruz, And Jalisco, Mexico. Denver: Dart Publications, 1974. Vázquez Mantecón, María del Carmen. “La China Mexicana, Mejor Conocida Como China Poblana.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 22, no. 77, (2000): 123-150. Footnotes About The Author(s) JESSICA L. PEÑA TORRES (she/her) is a dance/theatre artist and emerging scholar focused on Mexican identity and performance. She graduated from The University of Texas—Pan American with a B.A. in Dance and Theatre and from the University of Texas at Austin with an M.A. in Performance as Public Practice, where she is now pursuing a Ph.D. At UT Austin, Peña Torres continues to study the intersection between nationalism and the performing arts in postrevolutionary Mexico. With her company, Coctel Explosivo, Peña Torres produces dance-theatre works that explore this intersection. 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.

Watch QUEENDOM by Agniia Galdanova at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2024. Like a young David Bowie from another planet, the whole world is one giant catwalk for intrepid 21-year-old queer artist Gena. She grew up in the far reaches of Russia, in a town built on top of an old gulag camp. Today, she stages her radical performances in supermarkets, metro stations and in the middle of Moscow streets in an alternative protest against the way LGBTQ+ people are treated in Putin’s extremely conservative Russia. People shout at her, and Gena calmly responds. With never-failing support from her grandmother, she acts out all the creatures that live inside her through her spectacular costumes, which she often makes out of tape and junk. Agniia Galdanova’s beautiful and atmospheric film is not so much a portrait as it is a direct cinematic extension of Gena’s inner universe. In other words, a film in the field between art and activism, between documentary and science fiction, and between an old and a young Russia. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents QUEENDOM At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2024 A film by Agniia Galdanova Documentary, Performance Art This film will be screened in-person on May 16th About The Film Country United States / France Language Russian, English Running Time 98 minutes Year of Release 2023 Like a young David Bowie from another planet, the whole world is one giant catwalk for intrepid 21-year-old queer artist Gena. She grew up in the far reaches of Russia, in a town built on top of an old gulag camp. Today, she stages her radical performances in supermarkets, metro stations and in the middle of Moscow streets in an alternative protest against the way LGBTQ+ people are treated in Putin’s extremely conservative Russia. People shout at her, and Gena calmly responds. With never-failing support from her grandmother, she acts out all the creatures that live inside her through her spectacular costumes, which she often makes out of tape and junk. Agniia Galdanova’s beautiful and atmospheric film is not so much a portrait as it is a direct cinematic extension of Gena’s inner universe. In other words, a film in the field between art and activism, between documentary and science fiction, and between an old and a young Russia. In press notes About The Artist(s) in press notes Get in touch with the artist(s) igormyakotin@gmail.com and follow them on social media Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2024 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here. "Nightshades" - Veronica Viper Ellen Callaghan Dancing Pina FLorian Heinzen-Ziob Genocide and Movements Andreia Beatriz, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Luis Carlos de Alencar Living Objects in Black Jacqueline Wade ORESTEIA Carolin Mader Schlingensief – A Voice that Shook the Silence Bettina Böhler The Hamlet Syndrome Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosolowski Wo/我 Jiemin Yang "talk to us" Kirsten Burger Die Kinder der Toten Nature Theater of Oklahoma:Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska Hans-Thies Lehmann – Postdramatic Theater Christoph Rüter MUSE Pete O'Hare/Warehouse Films QUEENDOM Agniia Galdanova Snow White Dr.GoraParasit The Making of Pinocchio Cade & MacAskill Women of Theatre, New York Juney Smith BLOSSOMING - Des amandiers aux amandiers Karine Silla Perez & Stéphane Milon ELFRIEDE JELINEK - LANGUAGE UNLEASHED Claudia Müller I AM NOT OK Gabrielle Lansner Making of The Money Opera Amitesh Grover Red Day Besim Ugzmajli The Books of Jacob Krzysztof Garbaczewski The Roll Call:The Roots to Strange Fruit Jonathan McCrory / National Black Theatre/ All Arts/ Creative Doula next...II (Mali/Island) Janne Gregor Chinoiserie Redux Ping Chong Festival of the Body on the Road H! Newcomer “H” Sokerissa! Interstate Big Dance Theater / Bang on a Can Maria Klassenberg Magda Hueckel, Tomasz Śliwiński Revolution 21/ Rewolucja 21 Martyna Peszko and Teatr 21 The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be Andrea Kleine The Utopians Michael Kliën and En Dynamei Conference of the Absent Rimini Protokoll (Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel) / Film By Expander Film (Lilli Kuschel and Stefan Korsinsky) GIANNI Budapesti Skizo, Theater Tri-Bühne Juggle & Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in Search of a Director) Wichaya Artamat/ For What Theatre My virtual body and my double Simon Senn / Bruno Deville SWING AND SWAY Fernanda Pessoa and Chica Barbosa The Great Grand Greatness Awards Jo Hedegaard WHO IS EUGENIO BARBA Magdalene Remoundou

Research The Martin E. Segal Theater Center is committed to supporting research about theatre and the performing arts in a myriad of ways, through written scholarly enquiries as well as audio-visual documentation of artist talks, performances, interviews, and more. Our rich archive includes practitioners from United States as well as international performing arts landscape. All material and media published by The Segal Center is made available for free on our website. Books The Segal Centre supports the creation, editing, translation and distribution of books that explore scholarly, practice and multifacted criticism of key areas and developments in the performing arts. Explore Books Visiting Scholars Program The fellowships offer theatre scholars 3-6 months of research in NYC. They get workspaces, library access, and opportunities to collaborate with other fellows, faculty, and students on their research. Explore Program Segal Talks Featuring conversations with performing arts professionals from all over the world, our Segal Talks aim to capture a cultural Weltzustand ie State of the World. Explore Talks Journals The Segal Publication Wing includes three open-access digital journals, namely Arab Stages, European Stages and the Journal of American Drama and Theatre. The journals are all available for FREE online to a global readership. Explore Journals

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

Rosa Schneider 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 “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Rosa Schneider By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF A hush falls over the previously raucous crowd as the image projected across the wall of Theatre for a New Audience and onto the bodies of the actors on stage suddenly becomes clear. The famous photograph of the August 7, 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana, fills the space. Shipp and Smith hang from a tree in the background, while in the foreground a huge crowd of white spectators smile, point at the bodies, and make eye contact with the photographer. As the audience watches in mute horror, the projection is manipulated so that Smith and Shipp’s bodies appear to sway in the trees, bringing immediacy to a decades-old event. It is within and against this backdrop that BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant, the three most versatile characters in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (2014), attempt to stage a lynch trial on the docks of a Louisiana town for Wahnotee, a Native American accused of murdering a black child. The photograph of this particularly brutal twentieth-century lynching deepens the action on stage, occurring in the 1850s of the original play. These innovations force the audience to become complicit in the trial and its bloody aftermath and simultaneously bring the audience as close to a sensation of death as possible without burning the theatre down around them. [1] This eye-catching and difficult scene, which I call reconstruction, is a key part of Jacobs-Jenkins’ compilation of theatrical techniques. Collectively, these techniques teach Jacobs-Jenkins’s twenty-first-century audience to respond both on a theatrical and a racial level in order to work in a manner they would not have been able to otherwise. Jacobs-Jenkins manipulates melodramatic structures— such as the sensation scene, tableau, and what in this article I term melodrama’s gaze—that play upon and reimagine the history of melodrama in the United States. These changes not only alter the way slavery’s violence is portrayed on stage but make melodrama comprehensible to a twenty-first-century audience unused to the genre’s demands. These reconstructions allow Jacobs-Jenkins to transform Dion Boucicault’s wildly influential melodrama The Octoroon into his own version, An Octoroon . The two plays follow essentially the same plot, but Jacobs-Jenkins makes crucial changes to the universe of The Octoroon, particularly to the characters. Jacobs-Jenkins removes many of the white characters, notably the majority of Boucicault’s plantation owners, while consolidating those he keeps. George Peyton, the new owner of Terrebonne (the plantation on which both plays take place), is merged with Salem Scudder, the well-meaning but destructive Northern overseer of Boucicault’s original, who feels particularly protective of Zoe, the eponymous octoroon. [2] George inherits Scudder’s interest in technology, particularly photography, maintaining an important plot point and gateway to the sensation scene. [3] Cuts such as these are logical, as the removed figures emphasize previously established power structures. However, these changes then create a lack of economic diversity, as the white characters who remain all belong to the upper echelons of slave-owning society. That separation makes even starker the divisions between the enslaved and laboring African-American characters and the white leisure class. Further, the elimination of characters like Scudder, Judge Caillou, and Jules Thibodeaux narrows the universe of the melodrama. Rather than showing “life in Louisiana,” which is Boucicault’s subtitle, with Terrebonne as one of a network of plantations, Jacobs-Jenkins’ edits make the plantation a world unto itself. As we shall explore at greater length below, Jacobs-Jenkins also makes significant changes to the ending of The Octoroon . Thus, with changes to character, plot, and form, Jacobs-Jenkins walks a fine line in An Octoroon between rewriting a singular play and reconstructing an entire genre. It is difficult to overstate the importance of melodrama as a theatrical form in the nineteenth-century American landscape. Between 1820 and 1870, melodrama was ubiquitous in American culture, attracting diverse audiences “from elite males to urban workers and business- class women, by the time of the Civil War.” [4] Cutting across class and racial lines, melodrama served as a location for audiences to project their hopes and assuage their fears of a rapidly changing society. The theatres and the plots explored therein served as a training ground for business-class audiences to “acquire, rehearse, and perfect the manners of polite society.” [5] Knowing this history helps us to understand the effect of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstructions. As part of this reconstruction, Jacobs-Jenkins chooses several tools that are essential to melodrama, including the sensation scene, the tableau, acting styles, and staging methods, and then fundamentally changes their core by altering melodrama’s gaze. “Melodrama’s gaze” refers to what could be included on stage in these productions: the plotlines that were of interest to the consumers and creators, the characters who could embody those stories, as well as the tools and techniques used to actualize these narratives. Jacobs-Jenkins’s changes allow him to represent subjects—slaves and slavery—that nineteenth-century melodrama’s toward which practitioners were often happy to gesture but with which they refused to engage in any depth. Slavery was long a topic on the melodramatic stage in both England and the United States, as is evident from the multiple versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin playing simultaneously during the nineteenth century. As Linda Williams argues in Playing the Race Card , melodrama is “the fundamental mode by which American mass culture has ‘talked to itself’ about the enduring moral dilemma of race.” [6] The subjects of the stories and the stories themselves that the genre told, however, were not as capacious as one might expect. An example of this exclusionary effect is the way Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was adapted into melodrama, stripping away the agency of many of its female characters. While these plotlines were partly cut for time, as only so many plots and characters from a novel can be translated onto the stage, there is also a specific set of generic conventions that Stowe’s characters like Mrs. Shelby or Mrs. Bird could not fulfill. In discussing George L. Aiken and Henry J. Conway’s adaptations, Bruce McConachie explains that: both playwrights were necessarily drawing on production practices and theatrical conventions ill-suited to realizing Stowe’s matrifocal ideals in production. Strong-willed mothers rarely appeared on the antebellum stage; most stock companies would have been hard pressed to cast several such roles since companies generally contained two to three times as many male as female actors. [7] We can thus see melodrama’s gaze at work. While Stowe’s original included a character like Mrs. Shelby, who decried the slave system from a matrifocal, anti-capitalist point of view, the melodramatic form could not accommodate such a character. There is thus a space for Jacobs-Jenkins to expand the audience’s understanding of and experience with slavery. Jacobs-Jenkins’s weaving together of theatrical techniques from different eras creates a new genre, one that incorporates elements of performance styles from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries alongside each other rather than prioritizing one century’s vision over another. Through these techniques Jacobs-Jenkins reconstructs the violence of slavery, bringing it onto the stage in a manner that marks a significant departure from the ways the institution had been represented previously, which often emphasized and lingered on physical and sexual violence. Excessive violence is often depicted to evoke sympathy for its victims. However, the spectacle can have the opposite effect: not only leaving the audience with an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism but habituating them to the sight of a black body in pain. [8] On the other hand, just as reprehensible as overemphasizing the violence of slavery is pretending that violence didn’t exist or attempting to make it palatable. Jacobs-Jenkins takes a third route, and his reconstruction of certain elements of melodrama helps the audience see the institution’s violence in a new light. Jacobs-Jenkins’s interest in form is apparent in the way he mixes elements from the American and British versions of The Octoroon . In the American version, distraught over her inability to be with George and her fear of M’Closky, Zoe commits suicide, and the play ends with her death. In the British version, M’Closky is stopped by George, and the owner of Terrebonne marries Zoe. The British audiences were outraged at the separation of the lovers, which Mark Mullen, in “The Work of the Public Mind,” reads as a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of slavery. The audience in London didn’t understand why the Peytons could not just move to a state where the law forbidding George to marry Zoe did not apply. [9] As part of his amalgamation, however, Jacobs-Jenkins includes the onstage stabbing of M’Closky, an addition in the British production, but concludes An Octoroon with the bleaker ending of Zoe’s desire to kill herself rather than become M’Closky’s property, an element of the original American version. This blended production then concludes with Jacobs-Jenkins’s own interpolation into the narrative, giving the last words and emotional beats to the female slaves Dido and Minnie, who emerge as the real heart of the play. These various endings drastically change the impact of the play, as it is significantly different, for example, if Zoe is sold but then redeemed by her white lover than if she kills herself to avoid becoming property. His reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze through his elevation of the three female slaves, Dido, Grace, and Minnie, to the center of the play, is Jacobs-Jenkins’s most extensive and provocative alteration to Boucicault’s original. These women are reconstructed as desiring agents with distinct backgrounds and personalities, who challenge the melodramatic conventions regarding the representation of slaves, especially the violence of slavery. Dido, Minnie, and Grace’s conversations educate the audience about the emotional, familial, societal, and violent cost of slavery for its victims. They actively mold the performance of their enslavement, rather than functioning as passive signifiers of slave life as they do in Boucicault’s original. This shaping occurs not only at the verbal level, through their self-conscious commentary on their positions, but also through a physical level, as Dido and Minnie are the only characters who work. They sweep cotton in the opening moments of the play, as well as serve breakfast and clean up the messes left by the white characters. While An Octoroon does include male enslaved characters (an older slave named Pete, and his grandson, Paul, both played by the Assistant in blackface), Jacobs-Jenkins’s most significant generic reconstructions occur with the enslaved women. Jacobs-Jenkins’s focus on Minnie, Grace, and Dido is also a significant departure from the genre’s customary depiction of the institution and the people trapped within it. Typically, the “stage Negro” fulfilled the low-comedy stereotype, whose comedic value was derived from “his odd dialect and his misuse of words. His special characteristic was inflated pride in badges of rank.” [10] While The Octoroon partly broke this tradition by placing Terrebonne’s slaves at the forefront of the play and turning them into a constant visual presence, [11] it did use these slaves as comic relief, with Peter, Solon, and Grace performing minstrel-like routines. [12] Boucicault’s slaves also adhere to many of the character tropes proliferated by minstrel depictions of black life. Minnie, Grace, and Pete are happy and loyal to their masters and do not run away, as most slaves at Terrebonne do in Jacobs-Jenkins’s version. The slaves are so secure within the system that the oldest slave, Pete, corrects a neighboring planter and Captain Ratts regarding how much his grandson was worth before he died, monetizing Paul even as he is mourning him: “What, Sar! You p’tend to be sorry for Paul, and prize him like dat. Five hundred dollars!—Tousand dollars, Massa Thibodeaux.” [13] The genre’s traditional refusal to engage with slavery is surprising, as melodrama would seem perfectly poised to stage the sights of slavery as a method of critique. However, while melodrama frequently depicted the institution of slavery onstage, either as sensational material or for abolitionist purposes, the scenes had to fit into larger established narratives so that the story could achieve legibility, [14] and the genre used the institution as a “mere resting point in the rush to affirm order at the play’s close.” [15] Additionally, melodrama by necessity was reactionary rather than revolutionary: the structure of the form is generally an arc that describes a fall from, and restoration to, innocence. [16] This compulsion to return to stasis has a wide-ranging effect not only on the genre’s sensibilities but on its portrait of American society, which was by definition conservative. Jeffrey Mason writes that melodrama was ever in pursuit of “the restoration of a condition that had, unexpectedly, inexplicably, and unfortunately been altered . . . culture is constantly in the process of attempting to come full circle and return to its point of origin.” [17] This originary impulse undercuts any great social change the melodrama might show, such as a successful slave rebellion or abolitionist appeal. However, Jacobs-Jenkins directly opposes the generic conventions and representations discussed above, by means of the characters that actively participate in the plot through their speech and commentary upon the action. His reconstruction centers on Dido and Minnie and occurs on multiple levels, but it is particularly noticeable in the unexpected way the two house slaves, and to a lesser extent, the field hand Grace, speak when they are in private, as well as what they say. When the three women are not observed by the white characters, they use contemporary slang and jargon, and demonstrate modern opinions regarding the division between labor and self, encapsulated in Minnie’s advice to Dido: “I know we slaves and evurthang, but you are not your job. You gotta take time out of your day to live life for you.” [18] Essentially, these women speak their own language. While it is true that BJJ and Assistant use a similar elastic vocabulary, their speech appears less out of place, as it is primarily bracketed off in the metatheatrical scenes, such as the prologue or the introduction to the sensation scene. In both cases, BJJ brings the audience out of 1859 into a significantly more contemporary space. Thus, what is crucial about Dido and Minnie’s language is that there is a meaningful disconnect between their surroundings, the 1859 plantation of The Octoroon , and their dialogue. The intention behind this change is explained in the script, as a note at the very beginning of the melodrama section. Jacobs-Jenkins writes: “I’m just going to say this right now so we can get it over with: I don’t know what a real slave sounded like. And neither do you.” [19] What emerges from this ignorance is a language that rejects the stereotyped “black voice” accent most commonly associated with slavery in the popular media. In An Octoroo n this language particularly emerges when Dido and Minnie escape from the panoptic gaze of the white characters. Dido, Minnie, and Grace’s manipulation of language gains additional significance when we consider the history of the representation of slavery in the theatre and other genres, such as prose. In slaveholding societies like the United States and England, there was a long tradition of employing slave narratives to publicize and garner support for abolition. While some of these narratives were written by the subjects themselves, they were often channeled through white interlocutors, who changed events and attitudes to appeal to wider audiences and in the process monetized the slaves’ stories. Sometimes the attempt to include more authentic elements, such as the reproduction of accents recorded in the Slave Narrative Project conducted by the W.P.A. in the 1930s, resulted in more obstruction than illumination and reinforced the damaging stereotypes they aimed to combat. This heavy-handed imitation obscured any deep engagement with the personal lives of the enslaved. [20] The impact and importance of Dido, Grace, and Minnie’s modern language is especially apparent when these women interact with the white characters. When they are back under the disciplinary gaze of George and Dora, the daughter of the neighboring plantation owner, Dido and Minnie use the same black-voice accent as Pete and Paul, emphasizing deference and obedience: DIDO : Bless’ee here it be. Here’s a dish of hoecakes—jess taste, Masr George—and here’s fried bananas; jess smell ’em. [21] The artificiality of this devoted and obsequious slave is glaringly obvious especially when we consider Dido and Minnie’s introduction. At the beginning of the play, Minnie chats with Dido about their work, while Dido reluctantly sweeps cotton about the stage: DIDO and MINNIE are discovered. DIDO is sweeping laboriously. MINNIE is just sort of lying down somewhere, fanning herself. MINNIE ( eventually ): Do you need help or…? DIDO : Naw, girl, I got it. Beat, while DIDO sweeps. MINNIE : You know, if you sweep on a diagonal with lighter, faster strokes, it’s a little more efficient. DIDO : Girl, what are you talking about? [22] From this brief exchange, we learn that Minnie thinks critically about how to make her job easier, and that Minnie and Dido address each other with familiarity, even if that familiarity is tinged with annoyance. It is leagues away from the style of speaking reproduced above. From examining the form of their conversations, we now turn to the content, analyzing what they say. At the end of the show, Dido speaks to Zoe with the same obsequiousness that she showed with George. When Zoe steals away to visit Dido in the slave quarters to obtain some poison to kill herself so that she doesn’t fall into M’Closky’s hands, Dido delays Zoe with an exaggerated black voice accent: “Missey Zoe! Why are you out in de swamp dis time ob night? And you is all wet! Missey Zoe, you catch de fever for sure!” [23] Dido and Minnie’s self-conscious performance while under the panoptic gaze of the slave-owners is not surprising. What is surprising is that, as we can see, they reproduce those behaviors when in conversation with Zoe, who is not white, but is a member of the plantation aristocracy. Dido and Minnie’s interactions with authority figures, as well as their descriptions of their quotidian lives, is made possible by Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze. Dido and Minnie frankly discuss how various forms of slavery’s violence impact them, and this discussion is underlined with a specific brand of humor. In an interview with the Village Voice , Jacobs-Jenkins asserted that the goal of his writing is to make the audience “laugh and then you have to think about your laughter for a second.” [24] Jacobs-Jenkins achieves this goal, as the moments that are most distressing are also the most humorous, reaching a crescendo when the two women discuss the physical violence that plagues their lives. While Pete, Paul, and Wahnotee exchange threats of perpetuating physical attacks, [25] Dido and Minnie are subject to threats of sexual violence. Within the first few moments of their introduction, they discuss the reality of plantation life, and the constant threat of assault: MINNIE : You ever had to fuck him? DIDO : Who? MINNIE : Mas’r/Peyton DIDO : Oh, naw! You? MINNIE : Naw, he only like lightskinnded girls. But Renee, you know, who was fuckin’ him all the time . . . MINNIE : Would you fuck him [George]? DIDO : No, Minnie! Damn. Would you? [Beat] MINNIE : Maybe. DIDO : Yeah, well, I get the feeling you don’t get a say in the matter. [26] This exchange turns on a subtle humor, more understated than Dido and Minnie’s other revelations, such as their acknowledgment of forced illiteracy [27] or their reluctance to run away. [28] However, this discussion regarding the implicit and constant presence of sexual violence raises disturbing questions. It seems to endow Minnie and Dido with a measure of agency and suggests that they and Renee had a choice in whether or not to sleep with George. The implications of this conversation spiral outward quickly, asking the audience to consider who Zoe’s mother was; though Zoe is treated well by the Peyton family, she was most likely the product of some measure of sexual violence. This awareness of unspoken sexual violence in the punch line is the closest the play comes to using the word “rape.” The agency that the modern dialect seems to ascribe to Minnie and Dido reveals itself to be fleeting, and it is clear that they exist within a violent system. While Jacobs-Jenkins recognizes and represents the violence inherent in the system, Minnie and Dido’s conversation is an important departure from the method by which melodrama staged slavery’s violence. In his version of the seminal melodrama Uncle Tom’s Cabin , George Aiken greatly increased and stylized the brutality of Tom’s cruel owner, Simon Legree, against Tom. He brought onto the stage “an aestheticized paraphernalia of cruelty (long whips, cuffs, and chains),” [29] which were put to great affective use. However, this display of physical violence was not a condemnation of the institution of slavery, but a demonstration of the wickedness of Legree, certifying his status as a villain of melodrama. Indeed, all of Legree’s added violence and wickedness became attributable to his personality, in fulfilling his role as an “anti-man-of-principle.” [30] Because the focus of the melodrama was on character, and not the institution, Uncle Tom’s Cabin “presents not a dialectic of class and economics, but specific interactions between villains and victims.” [31] This collapsing of focus can also be seen in The Octoroon , as the abuses on the plantation can be attributed to M’Closky and the mismanagement of Northern interlopers, rather than the systemic corruption of an unfair practice. Abolitionist melodramas also relied on violence in an attempt to make the horrors of slavery real for an audience who may not have understood them. However, as Douglas Jones writes, this attempt to bring the brutality of slavery closer to the white audience depended on an empathy that “readily occludes the inimitability of the captive’s suffering as a means to confirm the onlooker’s freedom; as a result, it promotes stasis and erases the magnitude of the nation’s ordinary sin.” [32] The brutality of these representations was thus more about the effect they created in the white onlookers than the subjects of that violence. The saturation and highlighting of the black body in both physical and emotional torment was the most common path through which ex-slaves could claim humanity. [33] A secondary but no less important element of the reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze is that it shifts the representative world, exploring and acknowledging multiple types of violence beyond the physical and sexual. Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction highlights the institutional demands that the enslaved see themselves as property and participate in their own dehumanization. In conversations that are hidden from their masters but are heard by the audience, Dido tells Minnie that she “grew up at the Sunnyside place on the other side of the hills. Mas’r Peyton won me in a poker game like ten years ago.” [34] Dido’s blithe story of how she came to Terrebonne is startling, as is her disregard for the destruction of familial relationships that this narrative implies. But what is most unexpected is the casualness with which she describes a complicity that is revealed to be widespread: DIDO : And this one time, Solon was like, “Girl let me borrow your baby for a second?” And so Rebecca’s dumb ass like gave him the baby and then that nigga turnt around and fucking sold the baby. MINNIE : What? DIDO : Yes, girl. Apparently Massa was about to sell Solon and Grace’s baby, but then Solon switched Rebecca’s baby out for they baby at the last minute and Massa didn’t know the difference so he just sold Rebecca’s dumb-ass baby. [35] The humor carrying this exchange is complex. On one level, it is funny because there is an asymmetrical relationship between the form and the content: what Dido and Grace say and how they say it. This exchange is also comic because it is a rare moment of triumph: Solon and Grace are able to take advantage of Judge Peyton’s stupidity. However, Dido and Minnie’s discussion simultaneously gestures to a darker point: a Peyton family inability to see African-Americans as individuals. Zoe can’t distinguish between an older and a younger black woman, and her father, Judge Peyton, also thought that African-Americans were interchangeable. [36] While this exchange reflects badly on the Peytons, it also reveals Dido and Minnie’s complicity with and active participation in perpetuating this system. This willingness is apparent again when Dido and Minnie learn that they are to be sold to help pay the debts on the plantation. Rather than run away, they participate in the sale, manipulating the process so that they will be purchased by Captain Ratts rather than Jacob M’Closky, who has a reputation for beating his slaves. [37] Dido and Minnie dress in their best “slave tunics” to convince Captain Ratts, whom they “seduce,” into buying them. [38] Minnie describes living on his boat as though it were a vacation: Imagine: if we lived on a steamboat, coasting up and down the river, looking fly, wind whipping at our hair and our slave tunics and shit and we surrounded by all these fine, muscle-y boat niggas who ain’t been wit a woman in years? [39] For both Dido, who thinks that the situation still sounds dangerous, [40] and Minnie, this is a chance at a better life, although this new life still seems fraught with the potential for sexual assault. Minnie and Dido’s attitudes run counter to modern cultural expectations, which would have them run away for the possibility of a better life rather than accepting the confines of slavery. However, in the world of An Octoroon, this is one of the only opportunities Minnie and Dido have to take control of their situation and make decisions regarding their bodily autonomy. While the ending is played for laughs, when Minnie wonders if “something were to happen that somewhere rendered these last twelve hours totally moot,” it is an indication of the effect of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction that the audience really feels for Minnie and Dido and their lost autonomy. [41] In An Octoroon, Dido, Minnie, and to a lesser extent, Grace, are not the objects of the jokes, and the audience does not laugh at them or their situation. Rather, Jacobs-Jenkins manipulates the humor found in the distance between Dido and Minnie’s modern vocabulary and performance style and their nineteenth-century conversational topics. He makes their situation strange and unfamiliar at the same time as they sound as though they are standing on a street corner in twenty-first-century Brooklyn. [42] Instead of relying on overly familiar tropes, An Octoroon shows us anew the horrors of slavery, forcing us to consider the depth and diversity of the institution’s brutality. Jacobs-Jenkins continues to represent the diversity of the institution’s brutality in his next revision of melodrama’s gaze with his treatment of Zoe. While the majority of her dialogue emerges from The Octoroon , [43] Jacobs-Jenkins uses Zoe to juxtapose melodramatic convention with a modern understanding of racial performance. As we have seen, Zoe enthusiastically participates in the hierarchical structures of the plantation, holding herself above the house and field slaves alike. She insults Dido and kicks Pete, ordering him to “Wake up you, silly Nigger! Where’s breakfast?” [44] Not only does she place herself above the field hands and participate in the casual violence of her peers, but she also does no work aside from showing George the plantation. It is thus clear that Zoe is afforded freedoms as the daughter of Terrebonne’s owner. However, Jacobs-Jenkins indicates that despite her real privileges, Zoe’s status as an octoroon requires that she suffer within an institution that surrounds her and is responsible for her birth. Indeed, Jules Zanger argues that in the North, an octoroon “represented not merely the product of the incidental sin of the individual sinner, but rather what might be called the result of cumulative institutional sin, since the octoroon was the product of four generations of illicit, enforced miscegenation made possible by the slavery system.” [45] In fact, Zoe’s entire presence in the play, especially her heritage, reminds the audience of the reality of interracial desire and an uneven balance of power. [46] This attitude then helps us to understand Zoe’s response when she is forced to reveal herself as mixed race. When George confesses his love to her, Zoe racializes herself and teaches an unbelieving George how to recognize the signs of her African heritage. This scene is a crucial demonstration that, despite all her other advantages, she is still trapped within a system that is interested in controlling its victims’ minds as well as their bodies. [47] In a scene that is taken in its entirety from The Octoroon , Zoe shows George the signs of her African heritage, transforming her body into “an artifact of racial hybridity” [48] : ZOE : George, do you see that hand you hold? Look at these fingers; do you see the nails are of a . . . bluish tinge? GEORGE : Yes, near the quick there is a faint blue mark. ZOE : Look in my eyes; is not the same color in the white? GEORGE : It is their beauty. ZOE : No! That—that is the dark, fatal mark and curse of Cain. Of the blood that feeds my heart, one drop in eight is black—bright red as the rest may be, that one drop poisons all the rest. [49] George’s examination of Zoe’s physical features for signs that the audience cannot see is a deeply tragic image. Zoe reveals not only her self-hatred—she calls herself “an unclean thing” [50] —but also the extent to which she is trapped within the system of chattel slavery. Anyone who is able to read Zoe’s body will know how to classify her, thus endangering not only her body, but her education, upbringing, and social class. Zoe is trapped within a disciplinary system that limits her choices and her happiness and curtails her options. While this scene is remarkably affecting, there remains a significant disconnect between written text and what is seen, a discord not present in Boucicault’s original, and the potent emotion and danger behind Zoe’s confession seems misplaced. This disconnect is deliberately designed, as Jacobs-Jenkins stipulates that Zoe’s role be played by “an octoroon actress, a white actress, quadroon actress, biracial actress, multi-racial actress, or an actress of color who can pass as an octoroon.” [51] Jacobs-Jenkins thus seems to undercut the reveal of this scene: if the audience can read Zoe as mixed-race already, there’s no need for her to confess. However, I would argue, that these casting specifications demonstrate the insidious nature of racializing thoughts, which ascribe negative qualities to physical minutiae, rather than the revelation of Zoe as an octoroon. Because Zoe’s opinions on race and self-worth are directly imported from the melodrama, they are in direct contrast to the play’s other explorations of race. [52] Jacobs-Jenkins builds on his reconstruction of melodrama’s gaze with a re-engagement with elements of nineteenth-century melodrama: the tableau and the sensation scene, discussed below. The tableau manipulates several artistic practices, operating simultaneously on a visual, emotional, and auditory level. The technique allows the audience to pause, read, and absorb the emotional impact of a scene, much as one would do with a painting. Peter Brooks describes tableau as providing a “visual summary of the emotional situation” of a scene, in the process fulfilling “melodrama’s primordial concern to make its signs clear, unambiguous, and impressive.” [53] In nineteenth-century melodrama, the tableau appears in moments of crisis, wherein speech and narrative fail and the emotion of the scenes can only be understood through images. Typically, it works as a punctuation mark to a particular plotline, occurs at the end of a scene, and inspires an affective response. Jacobs-Jenkins primarily follows its usual placement as a punctuation mark at particularly emotionally-charged moments. The ends of the first three acts of each melodrama section includes a tableau: Jacob M’Closky triumphing at the end of Act One, Wahnotee mourning over Paul’s body at the end of Act Two, and Zoe’s auction at the end of Act Three. However, BJJ also draws particular attention to the extraordinary nature of this theatrical feature, engaging and exploiting it. As Act One nears its end, Jacob M’Closky sets in motion his plot to ruin the Peyton family and purchase Zoe. As he revels in his expected outcome, he dives into his tableau. The stage directions describe the scene: M’CLOSKY stands with his hand extended toward the house. Music. An attempt at a TABLEAU. He holds the TABLEAU for a while before DIDO walks in with a washing bucket and some laundry. [54] We see BJJ, the character-as-playwright, rewriting melodrama in real time as M’Closky poses uncomfortably on stage. M’Closky fulfills all the requirements for a tableau: he stops the action, allowing the audience to read his posture, establishing him as the villain. Rather than serving as a punctuation mark, or creating a moment of overwhelming emotion, however, M’Closky’s overtly performative pose never quite lands, and the life of the plantation quickly resumes around the frozen overseer. This change is signaled through a return to the constant, underlying musical accompaniment. [55] Furthermore, the reassertion of the quotidian is signaled by Dido’s entrance with the laundry, which startles M’Closky, and resets the scene to a normal theatrical time. However, a moment later, the tableau is attempted again, but this time it emerges from a moment of real violence: [M’CLOSKY re-enters, stalks over to DIDO] DIDO : Hi, Mas’r M’Cl— [M’CLOSKY strikes her violently] M’CLOSKY : And don’t you ever fuckin’ sneak up on me like that again, you nigger bitch! [An actual TABLEAU.] [56] The legibility inherent in this image is why the tableau works: because the audience can quickly grasp the power dynamics of a white-presenting man physically threatening a black woman, allowing the audience to read and understand an essential power dynamic of slavery, without lingering on Dido’s pain. This tableau also reveals how much is left up to the director in An Octoroon . The stage directions only suggest that a tableau occurs, but in performance, we see that M’Closky strikes Dido, then remains standing over her. Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of the tableau forces us to re-evaluate the genre’s ability to produce and manipulate our emotions. The tableau only works when it is connected to real emotion, rather than to the conventions of the drama. Jacobs-Jenkins’ reconstruction of the tableau helps the audience see anew the violence of slavery. Like the sensation scene, tableau insists on the audience’s attention. This demand for awareness is reiterated in Act Two’s tableau, which finds Wahnotee, in an expression of grief, bending over the body of the slain boy Paul: To his horror, WAHNOTEE finds him dead, expresses great grief, raises his eyes. They fall upon the camera. He rises with a savage growl, he seizes tomahawk and smashes camera to pieces, then goes to Paul, expresses grief, sorrow, and fondness. Maybe he starts to make a grave—sobbing and digging his hands? I don’t know. In any case, there’s a TABLEAU. [57] The violence against black bodies is an essential part of slavery, and the incidental way in which Paul is murdered, mentioned in the stage directions, but not noted in the dialogue, mirrors the Peytons’ inattention to the details of their slaves’ lives: “ M’CLOSKY strikes PAUL on the head. PAUL falls dead. During the following, a large pool of blood begins to gather around PAUL’S body and M’CLOSKY’S feet. ” [58] This tableau provides the audience with a rare moment of unbridled pathos that isn’t undercut by an attempt at humor. Indeed, this is a moment that deeply humanizes Wahnotee, who is otherwise, even in Jacobs-Jenkins’s version, a thinly drawn stereotype, addicted to rum, speaking a mishmash of various languages, and prone to violence. This tableau also defies stereotypes of Native Americans that were familiar from the so-called Indian plays of the early nineteenth century, where Native American characters often played upon racial fears, threatening white characters with the possibility of sexual and physical violence. But in this tableau, Wahnotee is given space to grieve. Although M’Closky may not take notice of Paul’s death, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of Wahnotee’s tableau requires the audience to realize that these characters are not disposable. Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of the first two tableaux links these highly performative moments more closely with the text of An Octoroon . These scenes join together emotion and the violence against black bodies on stage. The final tableau, appearing at the end of Act Three, continues this work, as it punctuates the auction of Terrebonne and Zoe’s sale to M’Closky. The slave driver’s interruption of the auction adds a layer of drama to an already spectacular venture, which “materializes the most intense of symbolic transactions . . . money transforms flesh into property; property transforms flesh into money; flesh transforms money into property.” [59] The practice of staging slave auctions has a long history as a method of creating pathos for the enslaved. Henry Ward Beecher, the famed Northern abolitionist preacher, raised money to liberate young biracial girls from slavery by transforming the pulpit of his Brooklyn church into an auction yard to “heighten the emotional power of his rhetorical appeal as he evoked . . . a form of ‘spectatorial sympathy’ to play upon the affective responses in his audiences.” [60] It was converted into a specifically theatrical spectacle, however, when in The Octoroon Boucicault represented it onstage for the first time. [61] Like its first-act cousin, the tableau that emerges from An Octoroon’s auction scene also results from a theatrical failure. The sale of Terrebonne is, as Lafouche the auctioneer describes it, “a shitshow,” [62] as the majority of the Terrebonne slaves have run away, and those that are left are either old and infirm like Pete, or three women, not nearly enough to save the plantation. The scene, which should be one of high tragedy, is turned uncomfortably comic, as Dido and Minnie request to be sold together, and spend time preening to attract the attention of Captain Ratts. Lafouche reports, “the, uh, the property has requested that it be sold along with another piece of property? . . . can it do that?” [63] While not part of the reconstruction of the tableau specifically, Jacobs-Jenkins’s modern intervention into the scene emphasizes the auctioneer’s dehumanizing language, turning what should be a moment for consternation into comedy. The momentum of the scene is further derailed by the spectacle of George and M’Closky, played by the same actor, fighting each other. While double casting is a cause for humor in this scene, it is part of a larger historical argument and an important feature of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of melodrama. These two types that George and M’Closky embody, the kind slave owner hero and the evil, scheming overseer villain, were common roles in American melodrama, and come with expected behaviors and performance histories. But because these characters are here contained in one body, all of their actions are collapsed into a single, interchangeable entity. The only differences between them are a broad accent and M’Closky’s mustache and hat: easily removable costume pieces. Jacobs-Jenkins thus erases any difference between these historical touchstones, suggesting that the authority figures in plantation culture were exactly the same. Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon, in their article “Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon,” also note that “by having one actor play both of these white male characters, An Octoroon illustrates the uncomfortable similarity between a desire to own, master, or marry the mixed-race heroine, Zoe, and the implicit similarity in both endings.” [64] Merrill and Saxon acknowledge that George’s desire to possess Zoe, while dressed in slightly kinder clothing, mirrors M’Closky’s. As the bidding war over Zoe escalates, and the other powerful members of the plantation class, including Captain Ratts and Dora Sunnyside, attempt to trump the slave driver’s bid, M’Closky and George’s animosity erupts in violence: “ GEORGE rushes M’CLOSKY, slash himself, who draws his knife .” [65] After a measure of order is restored by Lafouche, M’Closky exalts over the members of the established plantation class, and goes into his pose: “ M’CLOSKY jumps on up on his chair, throws money in the air, and makes it rain.” [66] M’Closky’s purchase of Zoe, and his subsequent flaunting of his wealth, results in a tableau that whiplashes the audience into a realization that Zoe has been commodified and dehumanized even more pervasively than when she identified her African features to George. Similar to the tableau in Act One, this frozen image quickly transmogrifies the humor of the scene to tragedy. Thus in this tableau, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction operates on two significant levels: first, the tableau’s sudden shift in tone draws attention to its violence, and second, it breathes new life into a nineteenth-century theatrical element. In both cases, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction of the tableau forces the audience to absorb the quotidian violence of slavery, working through legible images and sensations rather than overwhelming scenes of physical violence. Just as the tableau operates through easily graspable images, so does the sensation scene. These two devices work on multiple levels of signification beyond the spoken word, revealing an unspeakable truth to the characters and audience. There are similarities between the way the tableau forces the audience to confront the ordinary violence of slavery and the operation of Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstructed sensation scene. After a long, metatheatrical prologue, where BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant explain and walk the audience through the meaning and history of the sensation scene, they end up reciting the whole scene, with interjections and commentary. [67] As they approach the end of the scene, BJJ announces that he “tried to figure out the next best thing, something actually related to the plot. I hope it isn’t too disappointing.” [68] The actors give themselves a shake and dive right back into the scene. George delivers an impassioned condemnation of lynch law, attempting to persuade the surrounding crowd of angry sailors not to rush to judgment, with one crucial change: he stands in front of, and among, Shipp and Smith’s swaying bodies. [69] George’s plea catalyzes a series of revelations that culminate in the exposure of An Octoroon’s villain: the dastardly slave-driver Jacob M’Closky. The sensation scene unfolds as the villain is revealed, and the boat carrying the last shipment of cotton from Terrebonne plantation explodes, represented in this version by an expulsion of cotton into the audience. Due to casting restrictions that are enumerated at the top of the show, BJJ, the playwright of the frame narrative, confesses that he “grossly underestimated the amount of white men I actually would need here,” [70] and the mob that surrounds the action and heightens the stakes is played by the audience rather than actors. George’s commentary on justice and lynch law spills beyond the confines of the stage, and into the twenty-first-century crowd. Audience members were unsettled by George’s speech, made clearly uncomfortable with their sudden involvement in the story. This discomfort expressed itself in many ways: from strained and nervous laughter, to gasps and murmurs, growing stronger as they sat with the image that seemed to expand as the photograph extended beyond its frame and onto the bodies of the actors. The face of a man staring at the audience and pointing proudly at the bodies that hang in the trees was newly embodied as it was projected directly onto George’s shirt. It is through this alchemy of dialogue and image that George’s body, ambiguously raced to begin with as he is played by a black actor in whiteface make-up, becomes the medium for bringing the violence of the Shipp and Smith lynching onto the stage without exploiting it. As George and M’Closky debate Wahnotee’s innocence or guilt, the projection remains, hanging over the action. The photograph is not given any context and the actors do not refer to it, except when it needs to come down. [71] By projecting the image of the Shipp and Smith lynching above this fictional debate, Jacobs-Jenkins summons a sharper sense of danger to M’Closky and George’s argument, reminding the audience that the discussion of lynching taking place had real-life consequences. The use of this photograph, and the diverse feelings it provoked in the audience as it remained projected on the back wall, are crucial elements of Jacobs-Jenkins reconstruction of the sensation scene. In its original context, the sensation scene mixed pathos and action, often overwhelming the audience. These scenes were produced by “extraordinary theatrical effects, often featuring disasters such as shipwrecks, avalanches, volcano explosions and so forth.” [72] The scenes were exciting in their own right, but the nineteenth-century audience particularly marveled at “the technical feat involved in replicating aspects of life that seemed beyond the resources of the stage.” [73] These technical feats created perceptible physical reactions in the audience, forging a community out of the spectators. Lynn M. Voskuil describes the construction of this feeling community: what mattered most was not merely that spectators felt such responses, but that they believed they felt them in common . . . intrinsic to their play-going experience was not only the bodily sense of nervous shudders and quivers but also the sagacity both to cultivate and manage them. [Sensation theatre required] a sophisticated spectator, one practiced at decoding spectacle and awake to its mechanisms and bodily effects. [74] While the photograph of the Shipp and Smith lynching produced these feeling communities (and the most memorable moment of the play), the projection had other consequences. The maintenance of the photograph requires the stage to be darkened to appreciate the full effect, which in turns requires an unnatural cessation of movement by the actors, as well as plot. The action can only proceed to the point at which the three frame characters, BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant, described it in the metatheatrical prologue of the scene. [75] The photograph transfixes the actors and the audience, holding both in place and preventing them from looking away, either from the lynching that has already occurred or the threat of the lynching that is possibly to come. However, the focus on the Shipp and Smith lynching literally blocks out and overwhelms the situation on stage. The audience cares less about the trial of Wahnotee when its attention is focused on the Shipp and Smith photo. Thus, like the tableau, which can only be held for a short period of time, the sensation scene sets the stage, but needs to be removed for the plot to continue forward. However, once the photo is taken down and M’Closky is revealed as a villain, Jacobs-Jenkins offers us one more complicated result of his reconstruction of the sensation scene, as he stages M’Closky’s murder. Examining this moment in terms of the characters, we see a Native American planning to kill a white man in retaliation for the murder of a black child. But when we look at the bodies of the actors, a different image emerges: We see a white man dragging a bleeding black man off to be lynched, choking and screaming, “Help! Help! Help!” The stage directions note that the violence in this moment—Wahnotee and M’Closky’s fight, Wahnotee’s stabbing of the slave driver, and Wahnotee’s clear desire to lynch M’Closky—should seem “ incredibly real .” [76] The violence of the Shipp and Smith lynching, projected and overwhelming the debate on how to move forward, is repeated and recreated, as Jacobs-Jenkins wraps up the recreation of the sensation scene. After the emotional intensity of the sensation scene, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstruction ends on a deadpan note. Once Wahnotee drags a screaming M’Closky offstage and the audience is pelted with explosive cotton balls, Assistant is the only actor left on stage. He turns to the audience, and recounts the action: “And then the boat explodes ( beat) . Sensation.” [77] This impassive delivery undermines the traditional forms of the genre, as it points the way to new methods of representation and emotion. Jacobs-Jenkins’s subversion of the sensation scene is part of An Octoroon’ s larger effort to reconstruct the formal aspects of the genre so that it becomes increasingly capacious in its representation of slavery. It accomplishes this first by shifting melodrama’s gaze so that the play not only foregrounds characters Boucicault’s original treats as punch lines, but elevates them so that these two dark-skinned black women are the heart of An Octoroon . [78] By interjecting and juxtaposing modern dialogue and character development with dialogue that casually confirms the horrors of their quotidian existence, Jacobs-Jenkins makes slavery’s violence understandable in new ways. The changes in melodrama’s gaze also alter the way that we understand the damage slavery has done to Zoe, who, although she is privileged in some ways, is still bound both by the self-hatred and racialization that leads to her suicide. This article also argues that Jacobs-Jenkins takes on more traditional elements of melodrama, such as the sensation scene and the tableau. In both cases, his reconstructions allow a twenty-first-century audience to feel some of the same effects as their nineteenth-century counterparts. By using comprehensible images, the tableau and sensation scene insist on the audience’s attention. Simultaneously, Jacobs-Jenkins’s reconstructions rocket between emotional states: from comedy to tragedy, from overwhelming sensation to blunt statement of fact, reinventing before our eyes a core American theatrical tradition. And in the process, he provides new ways of viewing and understanding slavery. References [1] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon (New York: Onstage Press, 2014), 121. This article uses the published version of An Octoroon , as well as the recording of a performance of the Sarah Benson-directed production, recorded June 6, 2014, and housed at the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library. I will also refer to instances from the Theatre for A New Audience production of the same play. TFANA and Soho Rep’s productions were both directed by Sarah Benson, the artistic director of Soho Rep. BJJ: So for a while I was thinking maybe I could actually just set this place on fire with You inside— PLAYWRIGHT: bring you as close to death as possible. BJJ/PLAYWRIGHT: That would be amazing. BJJ: And then, of course, rescue each of you one by one, PLAYWRIGHT: And then perform the rest of the show out on the street. BJJ: But that would be crazy PLAYWRIGHT: And Soho Rep. doesn’t need that. BJJ: And also I would only be able to do this show once. [2] While the omission of Salem Scudder lessens the number of characters that Jacobs-Jenkins had to account for, his dismissal had other consequences, particularly that Zoe is less universally cared for. In An Octoroon , Zoe is beloved of the Hero and the Villain, but in The Octoroon , with Scudder’s feelings of protectiveness toward her, there is a greater sense that she is a desirable commodity. Scudder’s presence in Boucicault’s original, as a well-meaning, but ultimately harmful presence on the plantation—partly to blame for Peyton’s financial woes—is an indication of the “paternalistic, racist myth of a genteel plantation culture, threatened more by a villainous Yankee than by its own inherent injustices.” Harley Erdman, “Caught in the ‘Eye of the Eternal’: Justice, Race, and the Camera, from The Octoroon to Rodney King.” Theatre Journal 45, no. 3 (October 1993): 335. This kind of specific regional nuance is of less importance in Jacobs-Jenkins’ worldview. [3] Although The Octoroon’s plot hangs on photographic evidence that Scudder’s camera provides, BJJ and Playwright point out that twenty-first-century audiences are no longer impressed or even swayed by this type of evidentiary material. BJJ explains that “we’ve gotten so used to photographs and moving images that we basically have learned how to fake photographs, so the kind of justice around which this whole thing hangs its actually kind of dated.” (Jacobs-Jenkins, 120.) While we can still be shocked by the photograph of the Shipp and Smith lynching, the audience is less impressed by the evidence the photograph of M’Closky provides. [4] Bruce A. McConachie, Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre & Society, 1820-1870 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), ix. This monograph includes an excellent history of the American engagement with the melodramatic form. [5] Ibid., 228. [6] Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), xiv. [7] Bruce A McConachie, “Out of the Kitchen and Into the Marketplace: Normalizing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ for the Antebellum Stage,” The Journal of American Drama and Theatre 3, no. 1 (1991): 11. [8] Saidiya Hartman begins her seminal work, Scenes of Subjection, with a similar observation. Viewing the consequences of a slave’s body, ravaged by violence, she writes that “Rather than inciting indignation, too often they immure us to pain by virtue of their familiarity—the oft-repeated or restored character of these accounts and our distance from them are signaled by the theatrical language usually resorted to in describing these instances–and especially because they reinforce the spectacular character of black suffering.” Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3. [9] Mark Mullen, “The Work of the Public Mind,” Nineteenth Century Theatre 27, no. 2 (Winter 1999), 100. [10] David Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater & Culture: 1800-1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 190-1. [11] Mullen argues that the very visibility of the slaves was Bouicault’s nod to an anti-slavery position, “The Work of the Public Mind,” 98. [12] Dana Van Kooy and Jeffrey N. Cox. “Melodramatic Slaves,” Modern Drama 55, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 470. [13] Dion Boucicault, “The Octoroon.” In Early American Drama , edited by Jeffrey H. Richards (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 471. [14] Douglas A Jones, The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 140. [15] Van Cooey and Cox, “Melodramatic Slaves,” 462. [16] Ibid., 462. [17] Jeffrey D. Mason, “Staging the Myth of America,” in Melodrama and the Myth of America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 15. [18] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 137. [19] Ibid., 43. [20] For an excellent discussion of the difficulties of slave narratives and their staging, see Jones, Captive Stage , 139-141. [21] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 57. [22] Ibid., 45. [23] Ibid., 131. [24] Tom Sellar, “Pay No Attention to the Man in the Bunny Suit.” Village Voice . 28 September 2015. http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/pay-no-attention-to-the-man-in-the-bunny-suit-7189537 . [25] Pete threatens Minnie: “Drop dat banana fo’ I murdah you!” and “It’s dis black-trash, new Mas’r George; day’s getting too numerous round; when I gets time, I’m gonna have to murdah some of ’em fo’ sure!” (Jacobs-Jenkins., An Octoroon , 51, 52), while Paul threatens to “gib it to” Wahnotee if the boy finds the Indian drinking rum (ibid., 60), while Wahnotee destroys George’s camera and drags M’Closky offstage (ibid., 81, 128). [26] Ibid., 47-9. [27] Ibid., 83. Minnie: I couldn’t read that sign out front, because I can’t read. Dido: I can’t read it either. You know it’s illegal for us to read. Minnie: Yee-uh, but I was hopin’ you wuz one of them secret reading niggas. You know, like Rhonda. Dido: Rhonda can read?! Minnie: Shh, girl! It’s a secret! [28] Ibid., 50. Minnie: Haven’t she heard these slave catchers got these new dogs nowadays that can fly and who are trained to fuckin drag yo’ ass out of trees and carry you back? And then, even if you can outsmart these flying dogs, once you free, what you gonna do once you free? You just gonna walk up in somebody house and be like, “Hey. I’m a slave. Help me.” That kind of naiveté is how niggas get kilt. [29] Sarah Meer, Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2005), 119. [30] McConachie, “Out of the Kitchen and Into the Marketplace,” 15. [31] Mason, “Staging the Myth of America,” 119. [32] Jones, The Captive Stage, 141. [33] Ibid., 142. [34] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon, 46. [35] Ibid, 66. [36] When Zoe approaches Dido to ask her for poison at the end of the play, she clearly doesn’t recognize Dido, whom she calls “Aunty” and “Mammy.” Zoe invents an entire history between them: “my own dear Mammy, who so often hushed me to sleep when I was a child” (Ibid., 133), although Dido did not grow up on the Peyton plantation, and is in fact the same age as Zoe (Ibid., 134). Zoe cannot see Dido as an individual, but purely as a stereotype. In Minnie’s eyes, this ignorance arises from Zoe’s choice to align herself with the white characters, in her words “hang out wit all these damn white people all the damn time” (Ibid., 134). [37] Ibid., 100. [38] Ibid., 106. [39] Ibid., 102. [40] Ibid., 102. [41] Ibid., 138. [42] While this article focuses on Dido and Minnie’s ability to transverse the generic conventions of melodrama, the male characters also engage in temporal crossing. BJJ/Assistant/Playwright, in their various cross-racial guises, step out of character and transition seamlessly between the play and the frame. [43] Dora Sunnyside, the daughter of the neighboring plantation owner and Zoe’s friend (and rival), also does not move between the framing device and the main story. While this article is primarily focused on race rather than class, it might be worthwhile to consider how these two characters are united in class status. [44] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 56. [45] Jules Zanger, “The ‘Tragic Octoroon’ In Pre-Civil War Fiction.” American Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1966): 66. [46] Merrill and Saxon, “Replaying and Rediscovering,” 131. [47] Mullen, “The Work of the Public Mind,” 110. [48] Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon. “Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon.” Theatre Journal 69, no. 2 (June 2017): 130. [49] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon, 76-7. [50] Ibid., 77. [51] Ibid., 25. This type of open-ended yet specific stipulation is used for all of the actors and characters of color. It is also odd that the only explicitly mixed race character is asked to own and represent her identity in a way that no other character, including those who put on cross-racial make-up technologies, are asked to. [52] For the male characters, race is significantly more fluid. Although BJJ suffers as a “Black Playwright” — as his work is prejudged as a reflection of current racial issues or a retelling of African folktales, a situation he describes in the metatheatrical prologue “The Art of Dramatic Composition” — he is able to put on whiteface make-up and “become” white and much more socially mobile. While Assistant’s use of blackface, or Playwright’s use of redface do not afford them privileges (Paul is killed, while Wahnotee is nearly lynched), the two actors do not seem bothered by their transformations. [53] Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 48. [54] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 64. [55] The music for the TFANA production was composed by César Alvarez and played by the onstage cellist, Lester St. Louis. While the Soho Rep and Theatre for a New Audience productions had constant musical accompaniment as well as a particularly evocative closing song, no specific musical directions are mentioned in the script. There is often a stark division between what is described in the stage directions and what appears on stage in Jacobs-Jenkins’ plays. We find this intentional vagueness throughout An Octoroon , including, as we shall see, Jacobs-Jenkins’ descriptions of his tableau: “Maybe he starts to make a grave—sobbing and digging his hands? I don’t know ” (ibid., 81). However, this desire to leave the creation of the theatrical world up to the director is also included in his 2010 debut, Neighbors , at the Public Theater. Neighbors grapples with theatre history in much the same way as An Octoroon , re-engaging with the minstrel tradition rather than melodrama. Particularly fascinating are the stage directions in Neighbors that describe minstrel interludes, including many traditional characters like Sambo, Zip Coon, Topsy, and Mammy. These interludes are drawn in excruciating detail, describing outlandish physical and sexual situations. Sambo’s interlude, for example, includes an insanely large penis, which ropes a watermelon, and which he chews through. Jacobs-Jenkins, Neighbors , 358. Neighbors ’ stage directions are incredibly detailed, while those of An Octoroon are more suggestive. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, “Neighbors.” In Reimagining A Raisin in the Sun, edited by Rebecca Ann Rugg and Harvey Young (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 307–403. [56] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 67. [57] Ibid., 81. [58] Ibid., 80. [59] Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 215. [60] Lisa Merrill, “‘May She Read Liberty in Your Eyes?’: Beecher, Boucicault and the Representation and Display of Antebellum Women’s Racially Indeterminate Bodies,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 26, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 133. [61] Mullen, “The Work of The Public Mind,” 104. For further information on the performance history of slave auctions, see Jason Stupp, “Slavery and the Theatre of History: Ritual Performance on the Auction Block.” Theatre Journal 63, no. 1 (March 2011): 61-84. [62] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 106. [63] Ibid., 106. [64] Merrill and Saxon, “Replaying and Rediscovering,” 151. [65] Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon , 110. In the Theatre for a New Audience production, this conflict became an extended scene, and a display of physical skill and comedic timing from Austin Smith, the actor who played BJJ/George/M’Closky. Smith rolled around on the ground before the auction block—where Zoe stood, gasping in horror—fighting himself. The characters shouted encouragement, and at one point, Dora kicked over George’s knife, which had gotten lost in the scuffle. The severe emotional shift, from a side-splitting scene to one of extreme pathos, was felt extensively in the audience, and carefully cultivated. [66] Ibid., 111. [67] Interjections with phrases such as: “Playwright: Anway, Pete’s like,” and commentary such as “This is actually a hole in Boucicault’s plot. Not mine.” Ibid., 119. [68] Ibid., 122. [69] Ibid., 122. [70] Ibid., 113. [71] The actors’ choice not to acknowledge the photograph is echoed in the stage directions. While Jacobs-Jenkins requires a lynching photograph, he does not specify an incident, or even a date range, that the production should employ, Ibid., 222. He leaves the choice to the director and designers. [72] Matthew Wilson Smith, “Victorian Railway Accident and the Melodramatic Imagination,” Modern Drama 55, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 508. [73] Michael Diamond, Victorian Sensation: Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking, and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Anthem Press, 2003), 219. [74] Lynn M. Voskuil, “Feeling Public: Sensation Theater, Commodity Culture, and the Victorian Public Sphere,” Victorian Studies 44, no.2 (2002): 250. [75] Ibid., 115-120. [76] Ibid., 128. [77] Ibid., 128. [78] Although approaching this scene from a different argument, Merrill and Saxon also pay close attention to Dido and Minnie’s final exchange, noting that it allows the audience to “refocus their attention on the material conditions and lives of ordinary black women rather than the eponymous octoroon.” Merrill and Saxon, “Replaying and Rediscovering,” 152. Footnotes About The Author(s) ROSA SCHNEIDER is a doctoral candidate in the Subcommittee on Theatre within the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia UnXiversity. Her research focuses on the performance of history, race, and cultural memory, on American and Caribbean stages. She has presented work at ASTR, where she serves as a member of Executive Committee of the Graduate Student Caucus, and she is also the resident dramaturge and co-artistic director of Strange Harbor, an experimental theatre company in Brooklyn. 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. 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