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David Coley Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 29 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Theatre of David Henry Hwang David Coley By Published on June 4, 2017 Download Article as PDF The Theatre of David Henry Hwang. By Esther Kim Lee. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015; pp. x + 207. The work of David Henry Hwang represents an intersection of many of the most prominent concerns of late 20th century and early 21st century drama. His plays tackle numerous facets of identity politics, such as race, gender, sexuality, and ancestry. Esther Kim Lee’s extensive survey of Hwang’s theatrical output traces all of these themes through his successes, failures, and participation in cultural discourse. Combining her own work with that of three other scholars in the final chapter, Lee’s work functions as history, analysis, and criticism, providing a portrait of one of American theatre’s most notable dramatists. Hwang is best known for his Tony Award-winning play M. Butterfly, and though it does occupy its own chapter, much more room in this text is devoted to his other works, some of which are rather obscure. This attempt at a comprehensive survey is somewhat undercut by the relative absence of discussion of his work on musicals, most of which, with the exception of Flower Drum Song, are summed up in a couple of pages. Hwang’s position on these projects as a script doctor, rather than as primary author, may contribute to the scant attention Lee pays to them. Still, despite some gaps, Lee deftly covers most all of Hwang’s plays in an accessible and thorough manner. Lee’s approach with each text is to summarize the major plot points, but then delve into the subtext of each work and how it connects with the overall concerns of Hwang as a dramatist. She starts with a trio of plays from the beginning of Hwang’s career that reflect his early grappling with some of the themes listed above as well as the culture of his home state of California. FOB (an acronym for Fresh Off the Boat) shows Hwang exploring different types of immigrant and minority experiences in America through two contrasting Chinese American characters. Lee explores the influence of Sam Shepard on this work, as well as Hwang’s wrestling with the “dilemma of assimilation” (12). The other two plays in that first (informal) trilogy, The Dance and the Railroad and Family Devotions see Hwang dramatizing the immigrant experience through its dual challenges: fitting into a new culture while maintaining one’s own. Lee follows Hwang as he expands his thematic vision to include other cultures and ideas, incorporating Japanese stories and settings in The House of Sleeping Beauties and The Sound of a Voice. The reason for this is not just a sense of interculturalism, but also to explore gender. As Lee writes, “The Japanese tradition provides the cultural underpinnings for more rigid gender divisions, which Hwang uses to examine how gender is embodied and performed in the game of power and love” (38). She also discusses Rich Relations, one of Hwang’s notable failures that saw him turn from ethnicity as a theme before returning to it in his most famous play, M. Butterfly. Lee spends the entirety of her third chapter on that text, reviewing the scholarly, critical, and commercial responses to the play. The play would launch Hwang to a new level of prominence that would drive his career in unexpected ways. The book chronicles how Hwang’s notoriety led to him being drawn into protests over whitewashing in the casting of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. His experiences with that controversy would make its way into his play Yellow Face, which Lee covers in the fifth chapter. Before that, the fourth chapter is devoted to Hwang’s 1990s output, consisting of Bondage, Face Value, another notable failure which closed during Broadway previews, Trying to Find Chinatown, and his successful return to Broadway in Golden Child. In his recent works, Hwang has continued to explore the intersecting concerns of race, gender, and globalization, as Lee notes, in texts that draw on the personal experiences of himself and his family. Hwang’s metatheatricality evolves to provide multiple perspectives on a given plot or character, with the combination of fiction and nonfiction exemplifying his style in several of his plays. Golden Child and Yellow Face, in particular, manifest this tendency. Lee writes that in Yellow Face, “…the characters wear multiple masks, and it is impossible to tell which mask is the ‘real’ one, or whether ‘realness’ exists at all” (114). The last two productions Lee covers, Chinglish and Kung Fu, a play about Bruce Lee, both deal with travel and communication between the United States and China, though the former brings together most all of the themes present in Hwang’s work more potently than the latter. After Lee reaches the end of Hwang’s oeuvre, she brings in three other scholars to give further critical analysis on previously discussed texts. The final chapter contains three short essays in which Josephine Lee compares Hwang’s 2001-updated script of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song to its 1958 original, Dan Bacalzo examines multiple versions of Golden Child, and Daphne Lei explores the globalized context of Chinglish. Esther Kim Lee’s prose deftly mixes biographical information with textual analysis, crafting a highly readable study that should be useful to both new and seasoned scholars. The breadth of the textual analysis is impressive, with the authors analyzing multiple versions of certain texts to trace Hwang’s evolution as an artist. Those interested in Hwang’s work will find plenty to enrich their understanding, while those studying Asian American theatre will find his work placed within that discourse. Details about specific productions are also found throughout, though the focus remains on the written texts. Those hoping for a larger analysis of production aesthetics and the ways in which Hwang’s texts have inspired particular design choices may find it lacking, but the book will certainly lead devotees of the author to further study of his contributions to the American stage. David Coley St. Gregory’s University The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 29, Number 2 (Spring 2017) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2017 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Acting in the Academy The Theatre of David Henry Hwang Ruth Maleczech at Mabou Mines Directing Shakespeare in America Writing, Acting, and Directing Searching for Solutions: Humanizing Climate Narratives in an Age of Global Change and Connectivity The Anthropo(s)cenography of Ricardo Monti's Marrathon Towards a Synthesis of Natural and Human History: Situating the Municipal and Ecclesiastic Viceregal Arches of 1680 Mexico City within the Lacustrine Food Futures: Speculative Performance in the Anthropocene Tú eres mi otro yo - Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy & the AnthropoScene Introduction to American Theatre and Performance in the Anthropocene Epoch Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Natalie Tenner 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 Affective Performance and Cognitive Science Natalie Tenner By Published on December 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being. Edited by Nicola Shaugnessy. London: Bloomsbury, 2013; Pp. 300. Although Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being serves as an introductory text, its usefulness is not in the structured and fixed definitions and equations a novice might desire, but instead in the illustration of the disagreements and instability that necessarily come with an interdisciplinary approach. The twelve essays utilize a range of methodologies as well as different writing styles that model the variety of ways cognitive science and affect theory can be applied to performance studies. The book is clearer in its use of cognitive science than in affect theory, in that the authors often explicitly state which aspects of cognitive theory they are employing while the inclusion of affect theory is subtler. This illustrates accurately the disagreements still surrounding how to define and use affect, and how affect, emotion, and feelings differ. The elements of cognitive science appear more consistently throughout the work, although not without some variation, and many of the essays provide examples of applying popular cognitive science approaches such as mirror neurons, conceptual metaphor theory, embodied cognition, and distributed cognition. In the introduction to the first section, “Dances with Science”, Evelyn B. Tribble and John Sutton suggest some of the difficulties of interdisciplinary work but also introduce commonly used aspects of cognitive science in the study of performance. The essays that follow outline different ways of structuring this cross-disciplinary dance. Matthew Reason and his co-authors describe an empirical study to determine a spectator’s response to watching dance. The chapter focuses mostly on the collaboration of artists and neuroscientists, highlighting the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach, but also the challenges. Anna Furse also writes on dance, and though she suggests that empirical analysis is forthcoming, the essay itself focuses on a theoretical concept of historical identity located within the body. She describes her plans to retrace her steps, both figuratively and choreographically, with her partner Esther Linley, in order to determine “what happens in the act of retrieving a forgotten or atrophied learnt embodied action, that also carries with it emotional significance?” (57). In the section’s final chapter, Erin Hood discusses the difficulty of representing pain and understanding it in others. Using the performance piece Sssshh...Succour, in which the solo performer cuts herself in a methodological fashion, Hood introduces a theme that is repeated in later essays in this book, that the presence of the body onstage reminds the spectator that the body is not separate from cognition and affect, but instead they are essentially connected. The next section, introduced by Amy Cook, focuses on embodied cognition in more traditional performances. Cook provides the first extended introduction to affect theory in this section and also introduces metaphor and conceptual blending theory as a way of relating text and cognition. Affect theory is an important concept for the first essay in this section, in which Natalie Bainter considers the many blushing faces in Thomas Heywood’s play, A Woman Killed with Kindness. The blush helps to illustrate that affect is not simply an individual bodily response, but is relational. John Lutterbie suggests in his essay that language is a dynamic system and that gesture, instead of supporting language, helps create and shape it. Language is not, then, created simply in one’s mind, but instead is embodied. Naomi Rokonitz continues to examine this relationship between text and body by considering the dying bodies in Wit and 33 Variations. Though the protagonists in both plays cultivate their minds more than their bodies, it is their bodies that we see fall apart and suffer. Again, the body on stage provides an affective experience that leads to empathy. In the third section, “The Multimodal Actor,” Rhonda Blair provides an overview of cognitive science history and two different approaches to affect theory. These essays consider the embodied cognition of the actor. Neal Utterback considers the relationship between gesture and memory. He provides an example of an empirical study and concludes “Clearly gestures are valuable tools for actors. ... Gestures have a profound effect on our ability to memorise text and construct meaning” (155). Martin Welton, like Furse, gives an early overview of a performance as experiment before it has been completed. He also makes use of affect and another recurring idea, James Gibson’s “affordances”, to discuss the relationship between cognition and the feeling of one’s feet on the ground. Gabriele Sofia finishes out this section by describing the benefit performance studies can provide to cognitive scientists. She discusses the “performative body schema” actors must create, based off of their individual body schemas, and relates this to a benefit seen in Parkinson’s disease patients who attended theatre workshops. Sofia suggests that “theatre’s peculiar strength lies in providing another reality that makes it possible to work on the ability of creating relationships” (179). In the final section, Bruce McConachie suggests that actors and spectators, like children in a sandbox, have an active relationship with each other as well as with the environment that affords them opportunities. The essays that follow in this section discuss interactive performance, which relies on the active cooperation of the spectators. The first two articles discuss the solo audience experience of the production Rotating in a Room of Images.Josephine Machon examines her experience based on the cognitive idea of synaesthesia, in which multiple senses are stimulated simultaneously from one trigger. Machon describes her experience of the immersive theatrical performance as (syn)aesthetic, as being both cerebral and corporeal. Adam Alston’s analysis of the same performance looks at it instead through the lens of risk perception, affect, and emotion, and suggests that “[w]hen considered as an affective presence, my relationship to risk was political given the influence it exerted; it controlled as much as spurred on thought and action”(227). The final essay of the collection describes the effects interactive and immersive performance had on autistic children who participated in Imaging Autism. Melissa Trimingham suggests that the children’s opportunities to touch and interact with objects, costumes, and set pieces allow them a momentary participation in a world in which “objects are steeped in meanings” which “seems to pass autistic people by” (232). Nicola Shaughnessy introduces this book by discussing the performance Schrödinger, which provides an entry point into her discussion of “intermediary spaces” (19), which is where the many disciplines in this text come together. As in the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, the essays in this book can “exist in simultaneous multiple states” (2): as studies of science and performance, as examples of cognitive and affective theories, as empirical approaches and personal journeys. The variety of approaches and topics provide multiple entry points for those interested in applying cognitive theories to their work and for those who are looking for solid examples of the relevancy of cognitive and affect theories to performance studies. Natalie Tenner University of Mary Washington The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 29, Number 1 (Fall 2016/Winter 2017) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2017 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle Affective Performance and Cognitive Science Kitchen Sink Realisms Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience Everything Plus the Kitchen Sink Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland Historical Subjectivity and the Revolutionary Archetype in Amiri Baraka's The Slave and Luis Valdez's Bandido! 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Benjamin Miller Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 3 Visit Journal Homepage Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre Benjamin Miller By Published on November 12, 2015 Download Article as PDF When George Washington Dixon took to the stage in 1834 to perform “Zip Coon,” his latest incarnation of a blackface dandy, he most likely bent his knee a little more than in his previous portrayals of the dandy, garbled his speech a little more, and added some garish costume accessories. Dixon was twisting the dandy into something new and alien. The twisting of the dandy was a theatrical response to the real black dandies who had been present in the urban centers of America for several decades, and who provoked debates about racial classifications, white and black freedoms, and the American class system. Dixon’s participation in these debates—through the bending, distorting character changes he made—continued a process of transformation of the blackface dandy in early American theatre. The exact nature of this course of alteration, and the reasons for the blackface dandy's remodelling over time, are debatable, due to the array of influences on the character, contradictory primary texts and contemporary reviews of blackface performance, and contentious methodologies for investigating blackface entertainment. This article will draw on minstrel studies to analyse the character of the blackface dandy in three iconic songs of early American blackface theatre, “My Long Tail Blue,” “Jim Crow,” and “Zip Coon.” Arguably, the earliest popular representations of black dandyism on the American stage contained features and characteristics designed to diminish any threat posed by real black dandies to the white working class’ imagined white superiority, and these features were quickly amplified in the following years to repress the perceived challenge posed by discourses and performances of black liberty. The rapid transformation of the blackface dandy entrenched a narrative of white liberty that undercut any potential arguments for cross-racial working-class solidarity, abolition, cross-racial sexual relationships, or black rights. Within a decade of the first blackface dandy treading the boards in America, a destructive discourse of blackness—exemplified in the character of Zip Coon—eliminated the possibility that early blackface theatre could provide a theatrical response to social transformations in America that might champion the causes of equality and black liberty. Exactly how these discourses and causes are investigated has been brought into question lately. Recent methodological shifts in studies of blackness have provided an important intervention within minstrel studies, providing the occasion to reassess the figure of the blackface dandy and the role of such a figure within discourses of blackface theatre, blackness, and American liberty more generally. Methodological Shifts: The Four Stages of Minstrel Studies For nearly a century, minstrel scholars have debated the role of racial discourses in blackface performance. Mikko Tuhkanen has categorized minstrel scholars into three periods, with more recent work potentially constituting a fourth shift in approaches to minstrel studies. A common feature within twentieth-century blackface minstrelsy studies, so argues Tuhkanen, is the “repetitive dismissals of earlier studies as biased, insubstantial, or politically motivated.”[1] In the 1930s Carl Wittke and Constance Rourke theorized blackface as a process of “cultural borrowing” where white performers used performance styles of black people in creating a uniquely American form of cultural expression.[2] Responding to this reading of minstrelsy, from the 1950s through the 1970s Ralph Ellison, Nathan Huggins, and Robert Toll dismissed studies such as Wittke’s and Rourke’s, claiming they focused too intently on national formations and failed to understand the harmful racial ideologies circulating in blackface entertainment; for Ellison, Huggins, and Toll blackface was “a reflecting surface” in which white anxieties about race and politics are resolved through harmful racial stereotypes of blackness.[3] Thirdly, Eric Lott pioneered a revival in minstrel studies, followed by authors such as W.T. Lhamon, Dale Cockrell and William Mahar, attempting to balance the approaches of the first two periods of minstrel studies.[4] In Love and Theft Lott argued that Ellison, Huggins and Toll were “representative of the reigning view of minstrelsy as racial domination,” suggesting their work performs a “necessary critique [that] seems somewhat crude and idealist,” and that, instead, minstrel studies should present a “subtler account of racial representations” that reads blackface minstrelsy as a “distorted mirror, reflecting displacements and condensations and discontinuities . . . multiple determinations” of whiteness and blackness.[5] The third group condemn earlier critics who claim blackface performance to be “an unequivocally racist, antiblack practice, both in intentions and effects,” and instead, insist on a more nuanced reading strategy, one that highlights the multiple determinations of identity and political issues, intentional and unintentional, that lead to the possibility of both crosscultural affinity and antiblack sentiment in blackface performance.[6] The complication of intentionality is a feature of this third group of scholars, who re-animate rebellious, anti-bourgeois themes in blackface performance, and prioritize these themes over the oppressive, racist consequences of blackface. Tuhkanen remains neutral in the debate, concluding that the development of minstrel studies “like blackface performance itself . . . has evolved with the twists and turns of its own ‘lore cycle.’”[7] Since Tuhkanen’s 2001 article, a group of scholars have taken issue with the approaches and findings of the third group. In other words, to Tuhkanen’s genealogy of blackface minstrel studies can be added a fourth turn: scholars including Daphne Brooks, Tavia Nyong’o, and Douglas Jones who question the methodologies of previous studies in order to emphasize the way black people—audiences, artists, activists, and everyday people—shaped and responded to blackface performance over time.[8] Presenting an intervention that informs the approach taken to the analysis of blackface dandies in this article, the fourth turn in minstrel studies advocates for a methodological re-orientation that reveals historical blind spots in earlier histories and suggests ways to prioritize black experiences in an analysis of white performances of blackness. Brooks’ theorization of black performance after 1850 suggests that blackface stage characters can be read as responses by white performers to challenges issued by black people arguing against white authority and control. Brooks, in identifying how late nineteenth-century black performers intent on social, cultural and political transformation inhabited and transformed the stereotypes of blackness created by the early white minstrels, urges scholars to consider minstrelsy’s “strategy of alienating the body and ‘blackness’” and “how the practice of alienation participated in the making of a dissident theatrical figure that travelled the stage in the mid-to-late nineteenth century and found itself at the center of both hegemonic and resistant social and cultural ideologies.”[9] Brooks, that is, suggests that the racial stereotypes created in early blackface performance styles were used for both oppressive and liberatory discourses of blackness. The term “alienation,” for Brooks, refers to the “white minstrel performer’s production and navigation of a violently deformed black corporeality”—a physically and representationally twisted and gnarled form of blackness—that “shored up white supremacist ideology . . . grotesquely exposing the mutual constitution” of whiteness with blackness.[10] Such a stance reiterates the concerns of the scholars in the third turn of minstrel studies—such as Lott, who advocated for an analysis of how political and social concerns of the white performers and audiences (the constitution of whiteness) energized blackface performance—while emphasizing the fusion of social and racial themes in minstrelsy to create a unique discourse of blackness that ultimately asserts white superiority. But, importantly, Brooks adds another paradigm for analysis, examining how, particularly later in the nineteenth century, the discourse of blackness was re-appropriated and transformed by black performers, critics, and authors with an interest in black liberty. An exemplary demonstration of the methodological shift advocated by Brooks is Nyong’o’s study Amalgamation Waltz, which incorporates the performances, perspectives and responses of black people into an understanding of blackface theatre. Nyong’o recounts how an editor of the Colored American, Samuel Cornish, attacked blackface minstrelsy and chastised black members of the audiences at such performances. In 1841, recounting a friend’s experience of attending a blackface show, Cornish complained: he never saw so many colored persons at the theatre in his life, hundreds were there, and among whom were many very respectable looking persons. O shame! paying money, hard earned, to support such places and such men, to heap ridicule and a burlesque upon them in their very presence, and upon their whole class.[11] While Cornish’s attempts to convince black patrons to boycott such venues may not have been entirely successful, Frederick Douglass, in 1848, clearly thought the intended audience of blackface entertainment was white, and labelled blackface performers “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of the white fellow-citizens.”[12] Nyong’o’s methodological re-focussing—bringing contemporary black voices into a consideration of blackface performance—highlights historical inaccuracies in earlier studies of blackface, the blind spots in what has been labelled an “orthodox division of minstrelsy into an early radical phase followed by its co-optation by commercial and middle-class interests by the 1850s.”[13] The radical phase, according to scholars such as Lott, Cockrell, Lhamon and Mahar, occurred from the 1820s to the 1840s as blackface performers engaged in and promoted cross-racial solidarity—even amalgamation—in the hope of uniting a working class that opposed exploitation by the upper classes.[14] The commercial stage, according to such scholars, occurred as blackface minstrelsy transformed into a form of entertainment for white audiences, where working-class audiences would enjoy criticisms of the upper class and both working-class and upper-class white audiences shared enjoyment in an oppressive discourse of antiblack racism.[15] Suggesting this orthodox historical view “merely transposes the desire for mongrel authenticity onto the mythic origins of a popular style,” Nyong’o reviews early blackface performance through the lens of black critics.[16] Early blackface performers are repositioned as capitalising on anxieties over racial amalgamation, leading to responses by black activists and abolitionists, whose criticisms of blackface performers’ attacks on black dignity demonstrated “concerns over respectability that animate black responses to the amalgamation panic.”[17] The methodological prioritization of black experience in the work of Nyongo, and others such as Brooks, has the potential to improve understandings of, and theories about, early blackface performance. Drawing directly on the methodological shift promoted by Nyong’o, Jones breaks with earlier groups of blackface scholars to theorize what can be termed the “expropriationist twist” of early blackface performance. Jones reinterprets black performance traditions—such as the slave performers who danced, sang and joked for money and goods at Catherine Market near Brooklyn during the 1820s—that Lhamon has shown to have influenced early blackface performers.[18] While Lhamon reads the lines of influence, from black to white performers, as an example of cross-racial solidarity, Jones reads the exchange differently.[19] Taking Fred Moten’s theorization of the black avant-garde—which identifies a “liberty awaiting activation, the politico-economic, ontological, and aesthetic surplus” in work by black artists and about “blackness”[20]—Jones questions the consequences of white would-be blackface entertainers appropriating the liberatory surplus of black performance. Jones describes this theft as “a cutting, ultimately ghastly, twist” in the historical development of blackface performance: Call it the turn of expropriation: those who donned burnt cork and crafted minstrelsy recognized the potentiality of the surplus of black performance and used it to activate their “liberty waiting.”[21] The expropriationist twist theorized by Jones explains the ideological dimensions of what Brooks referred to as “alienation.” The deformed corporeality enacted by white performers in an attempt to alienate blackness from the source of its original black expression did more than separate blackness from black concerns, it transformed blackness into an object used to present white, working-class concerns, particularly concerns to do with white working class freedom from labor exploitation. This twist in the performance of blackness is mirrored in minstrel studies that ignore the role of black people in provoking and responding to blackface performance. A reorientation of blackface criticism along the lines suggested by Jones, Nyong’o, and Brooks redresses the twist in studies of blackness, a twist typified by the ignorance of black voices and concerns in re-telling blackface history. For Jones, the “vast majority of the literature on early minstrelsy” uphold the orthodox historical view of minstrelsy criticized by Nyong’o; the orthodox view is the result of a methodology whereby “scholars borrow the model of those who crafted minstrelsy itself by refusing black people except when they are advantageous to one’s particular narrative.”[22] In other words, Jones escalates the need for a methodological change by likening earlier blackface scholars to the exclusionary blackface performers they study. Jones demonstrates the new methodology by examining how “an increasingly assertive free black community in the North” agitated for social change in the 1820s and 1830s, where for anxious white communities “blackface became one way to regulate and attenuate” such pressures.[23] Such an analysis reveals how “Minstrelsy emerged as a conduit of white assertion and a buffer against black protest.”[24] Beginning with a close analysis of an early blackface dandy that utilized blackness to present white concerns on stage, and examining both how this early dandy figure was transformed as blackface entertainment’s popularity bloomed and black responses to blackface theatre’s popularity, this article examines the twisting of the dandy in a way that begins to redress the twisting of minstrel studies. Central to blackface performance’s responses to white anxieties about transformations in American culture was the figure of the black dandy. In her history of black dandyism, Monica Miller states that black dandies emerged in response to several changes in American society and culture, including the end of festivals where black people had used fancy dress in parodying upper class whites, the end of the international slave trade and the abolition of slavery in various states at different times.[25] According to Miller, newly freed black people and their families or communities were accumulating modest amounts of wealth as a result of more economic freedoms and began to use fancy dress to announce their arrival as a new American demographic. The arrival of the black dandy into America’s urban centres was almost immediately followed by attacks and criticisms: “Attempts to control the perceived impertinency of these newly emboldened, newly fashionable blacks ranged from the subtle to the outrageous. Excessive responses included ripping the new clothes off the backs of those blacks dressed beyond what whites could bear.”[26] More subtle responses occurred on American stages. The blackface dandy is a stage character developed and refigured from the 1820s on to respond to the actual emergence of black dandies in American society as well as other social and cultural concerns. Given that the advent of black dandyism coincided with the use of typically upper-class clothing by white Americans who used elaborate suits and accessories to distinguish American identity, society and culture from Europe, the history of the black dandy as an argument about class and race restrictions is entangled with the history of the white dandy as an argument about American nationalism. For Miller, blackface dandies, as caricatures, “became part of a cultural critique of perceived white decadence that becomes increasingly difficult to parse from concerns about black ‘striving.’”[27] Themselves the product of various traditions, including clowning, commedia dell’arte, and burlesque, the blackface dandy developed as a stage character that was embroiled with these theatrical traditions as much as with the various social and cultural traditions that had led white and black Americans to use refined ways of dressing as embodied forms of argument in the first place. Black dandies, and associated stage representations, are the product of multiple traditions and critiques and, thus, must be analyzed as indeterminate or multiplicitous: In his adaptability, the dandy figure is firmly ensconced within the flow of African American history, linking African traditions and black recognition and subversive play with white power in the colonial period to black statements of respectability and individuality in freedom. Blackface minstrelsy and other caricatures fought against this mobility even as they acknowledged the ability of the figure and its real-life counterparts to reinvent themselves.[28] Importantly, the blackface dandy can be read as an acknowledgement of the power and rebellious force of real black dandies and, simultaneously, as an attempt by white performers to redress the arguments made by real black dandies against racial and social norms. The transformations of the blackface dandy in the early 1830s reveal the tensions between acknowledgement and neutralization of black resistance in American society and culture. An Early Blackface Dandy: Long Tail Blue The best-known performer of blackface dandyism in the period of early blackface was Dixon, born to a poor family in Richmond, Virginia, probably in 1801. Of what little is known about his early life, Cockrell describes how a circus manager noticed Dixon’s potential as a vocalist at the age of 15 and he was apprenticed to West’s traveling circus as an errand boy; also, it is likely he first used blackface as a clown in the circus.[29] Citing the various formal influences on early blackface, Lott mentions the American clown, as well as the harlequin of commedia dell’arte and the burlesque tramp, as overlapping traditions “tending more or less toward self mockery on the one hand and subversion on the other.”[30] Such diverse traditions influenced the formation of the blackface dandy character. A proponent of the self-mockery and subversion typical of blackface clowning and commedia dell’arte, Dixon became known for his performances of the blackface song “My Long Tail Blue” as early as 1827.[31] Of Dixon’s “My Long Tail Blue” the S. Foster Damon songbook—Series of Old American Songs (1936)—states: “it remained for half a century one of the standard burnt-cork songs.”[32] Given it is rare to find versions of “My Long Tail Blue” with a post-1830 publication date (where they are provided), or in post-1840 song sheet collections, it is unlikely the popularity of “My Long Tail Blue” lasted more than a decade. Nevertheless, “My Long Tail Blue” did popularize the character of the black dandy, which certainly proved to be an enduring presence, though continually altered and adjusted to respond to white concerns and black responses and challenges, in blackface entertainment over the rest of the century. In a description of some of Dixon’s performances in 1829, Cockrell points to the constituency of the audience in early blackface performance: during a three-day, late-July span, [Dixon] appeared at the Bowery Theatre, the Chatham Garden Theatre, and the Park Theatre and at all three sang in blackface . . . performing for “crowded galleries and scantily filled boxes,” a solid indication of the heart of his audience.[33] Ticket prices ensured that, generally, working-class crowds populated the gallery and upper-class audiences patronized the boxes. Cornish’s concerns in the early 1840s about black audience members in blackface shows suggest Dixon’s audience may have included black and white workers.[34] In any case, Dixon’s blackface routines appear to have been disliked by upper-class people, but delivered him success through the general approval of working-class, gallery audiences. The story narrated in “My Long Tail Blue” reveals what it is that appealed to these working-class audiences. “My Long Tail Blue” tells the story of a black dandy who courts women and flouts authority. The narrator of the song describes his blue jacket with long tails, a mark of respectability and class. The dandy—named Blue—wears his blue jacket on Sundays, while (religiously) pursuing women. While audiences enjoyed hearing about the character’s sexual pursuits, they also wished to see the upwardly mobile dandy brought down a peg or two. The song doesn’t disappoint, describing an encounter between Blue and Jim Crow.[35] In “My Long Tail Blue,” Crow is an escaped black slave who is found courting a white girl named Sue when Blue intrudes. As Blue intervenes and Crow sneaks away, Blue is arrested and his jacket is torn in a scuffle with the authorities. Blue has his jacket mended upon his release from jail and the song concludes with him advising the audience to go and buy a jacket so they too can be like him, winning the ladies’ hearts, flouting authority, and rising up the social hierarchy. Many aspects of the performance—from the costume to the lyrics, to the advertisements and musical style—represent the first moves by a white performer to alienate the black dandy in the creation of a blackface dandy. In her article “Daddy Blue: The Evolution of the Dark Dandy,” Barbara Lewis reads Blue as a dignified character (unlike the more loathsome characters that would dominate the following decades). Further, Lewis states that Blue represented the condition of some black Americans in reality: Blue’s handsome, dignified image, the epitome of rationality and reserve, reflected the situation for a sizable and growing segment of [upwardly mobile] African Americans. . . . Blue emblematically expressed the assurance and achievement of this group.[36] Lewis bases her reading of Blue as a somewhat authentic representation of actual, well-dressed black men on the lyrics, but also on a lithograph of Blue that was printed on the front page of an early publication of the song’s sheet music. Regardless of whether “My Long Tail Blue” faithfully reproduced or radically altered the figure of the black dandy, Dixon’s portrayal and his audience’s endorsement were provoked by the presence of refined, dignified black men in American public life. The lithograph for the sheet music provides a glimpse into how Dixon’s performance was framed and received. Given the aspects of the image mentioned in her analysis, Lewis is likely referring to the lithograph published by Atwill’s and reproduced here in Fig. 1. Another typical lithograph published by Firth has been reproduced in Fig. 2. While Lewis reads Blue as a dignified and respectable man of property who is ready to put his equal citizenship with white men to the test by taking his place in a “teeming metropolis,”[37] she misses some revealing details in the lithograph of Blue, details that are amplified when compared with the second lithograph. It is true, as Lewis states, that Blue appears to be dignified and wealthy; however, he is also demonized. In the Atwill’s lithograph Blue’s hat brim curls upwards at either end, simulating devil’s horns (Fig. 1).[38] In the Firth lithograph Blue’s moustache provides the devil’s curls, while the tail of his jacket flows away from his body into sharp points, mimicking something snake-ish or devilish (Fig. 2).[39] In both lithographs Blue’s eyes are squinted and shifty; they bring his character further under suspicion. These details bring into question the authenticity of Blue as a representation of real black dandies, instead offering support to the suggestions of Nyong’o and Jones that the twisting of blackness for white purposes in early blackface performance may have occurred more rapidly than the orthodox retelling of blackface history presumes. Arguably, the fact that Lewis misses these details allows her to idolize the character—perhaps in an effort to find an accurate cultural representation of the real black dandies of the period, who were bravely challenging social boundaries and confronting the often violent treatment of dignified black people. The missed details might result from an over-reliance on orthodox readings of minstrel history that place “My Long Tail Blue” in an early, radical stage of the form’s development. And yet, the lithographs need not be read as accurate portraits of actual dandies in order to recognize the agency of black dandies at the time. As Miller suggests, while the elaborate costume of real black dandies was “a symbol of a self-conscious manipulation of authority,” it was tempered by the corresponding representations of blackface dandyism, “an attempted denigratory parody of free blacks’ pride and enterprise.”[40] In comparing the lithographs, then, Blue should not be read as an accurate representation of real black dandies, but as an early response to the anxieties white society felt toward real black dandies. The demonization, brought about by the embodied arguments of black dandies, reveal the expropriative twist enacted by white performers who would go on to craft various determinations of blackness to alleviate their own concerns throughout the rest of the century. Figure 1: “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Atwill’s, c.1827). The character of a dandy, Blue, with horned top hat, shifty eyes, and a straight, dignified stance. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. Figure 2: “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Firth, c.1827). The character of a dandy, Blue, with tailed coat, spiked moustache, shifty eyes, and a formal stance. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. The liberatory surplus of real black dandies was transformed through Dixon’s portrayal into an argument for increased white working-class freedoms. For example, Blue’s blackness serves as a synonym for social transgression. Blue does not obey rules; for this he is a character that many in the predominantly white audience—with desires to escape social regulations—would have admired. His pursuit of women was also appealing to white audiences, but any association of white audience members with black freedoms needed to be controlled. Lott reads the phallic “long tail” of Blue’s coat as representing “white man’s obsession with a rampageous black penis . . . invoking the power of ‘blackness’ while deriding it, in an effort of cultural control.”[41] Further, as Nyong’o powerfully argues, the affect of cross-racial sexuality was particularly important in the first debates throughout the 1830s over racial equality, abolition and amalgamation.[42] Any boisterous delights to be taken in Blue’s sexual exploits were accompanied by concerns about crossracial relationships and their political associates, equal rights and freedom. As such, the sexual freedoms and any suggestion of equality and amalgamation are closed down in the narrative of the song by a fantasy of black-on-black violence (Crow versus Blue), that resolves the tension and allows audiences to re-assume their position as civilized, restrained white men differentiated from the violent black buffoons in the song’s narrative. The cultural control of Blue’s crossracial freedoms occurred through his alienation, his demonization, released the uncomfortable realization of shared liberatory interests with a black character at the same time as it addressed the animosity many whites felt towards the class of real black dandies populating the urban centers of America. To demonstrate the animosity working-class white people felt toward real black dandies, Lewis describes riots in Philadelphia during 1828 when “white ruffians” (whose “mobocratic tactics” were endorsed by local papers) physically assaulted and verbally insulted many elegant and well-dressed black people who attended balls and dances.[43] The social presence among white workers of genuine animosity toward black dandies and strongly held beliefs in an essential difference between white and black people led performers to respond with racial characterizations that differentiated white audiences from troubling presences such as Blue so that audiences could feel both socially and culturally secure. The alienation of Blue, then, suggests the expropriation and twisting of blackness to white ends occurred, albeit more subtly than in later performances, in the earliest blackface shows. Dixon’s “My Long Tail Blue” signalled the emergence of the professional blackface entertainer, and in doing so paved the way for an almost ubiquitous expropriation of blackness in decades to follow. In fact, it was the regional folk character of Jim Crow, named in “My Long Tail Blue,” who became the most famous character of early blackface theatre. While Dixon was having success with “My Long Tail Blue,” Rice began composing a song and dance about Jim Crow to which Dixon would respond in turn. Rice’s “Jim Crow” displayed a particular brand of animosity toward black dandies that would become a feature of blackface performance for decades to come. Attacking the Dandy: Jim Crow and Zip Coon Rice was born around 1808 and grew up “in New York’s most ethnically mixed neighborhood—the Seventh Ward—along the East River docks.”[44] After time spent working as a carpenter’s apprentice, by the mid-1820s Rice had turned to acting and was appearing in “supernumerary roles” in plays and by 1828 he was on the road full-time with a performance troupe, still performing bit-parts in various plays.[45] It was not long before Rice had stolen the show in his minor roles at the Park theatre in New York during 1828, drawing criticism from his senior actors who felt he distracted audiences from their shows, and by late 1828 Rice was on playbills for comic songs during interludes.[46] In 1830 Rice debuted a routine involving a catchy song and a quirky dance, possibly learnt from black performers at Catherine Market before Rice adapted it to the stage. The routine defined his career. By 22 September 1830, he was listed on a playbill for his performance of “Jim Crow,” a song Cockrell claims to have been instantly popular.[47] Two years later Rice was headlining with “Jim Crow” in New York. Between 1836 and 1841 Rice performed the song to acclaim in England, Ireland, Scotland, and France, returning several times to the United States, each time more popular than before.[48] While Rice’s popularity should not be underestimated—he is often incorrectly described as the first blackface performer, Jim Crow is the most well-known character from the period, and various versions of “Jim Crow” remained in the repertoire of blackface performers and folk bands for over a century—his popularity needs to be contextualized. In Cornish’s boycott call of blackface theatres he mentioned Rice by name and described him as “that most contemptible of all Buffoons,” and claimed, according to Nyong’o, that Rice’s trans-atlantic success had garnered support among Europeans for the US slave industry.[49] In other words, Rice’s popularity was not absolute and his routine was not as enlightened as scholars such as Lhamon believe. In fact, the persuasiveness of Rice’s racism may have been enabled by the slipperiness—the open-endedness—of the textual traces of his performances. There are a number of versions of “Jim Crow.” Lhamon, in his collection of songs and plays performed by Rice, reproduces a version of “The Original Jim Crow” published in New York in 1832 (hereafter referred to as version A).[50] The version has no less than forty-four short, four-line verses, each followed by the chorus: “Weel about and turn about and do jis so, / eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.”[51] Another version, published in Philadelphia in the same year, contains nineteen verses (hereafter referred to as version B), only some the same as version A. Version B is subtitled “A Comic Song (Sung by Mr. Rice at the Chestnut Theatre).”[52] In both versions the chorus is the same, yet the verses differ. Early blackface songs were highly improvised and adapted to current affairs and the place of performance. There were, however, some constants in the performance, including the chorus, followed by a lengthy musical “turn around” in which the famous hopping and spinning dance-step would be performed, the twisted knee of the character, the raggedy costume, and the oscillation between stumbling soft-shoe shuffles and energetic, bounding leaps. The wheeling and spinning nature of Jim Crow suggests that the song is playing with themes of racial inversion. The chorus—which could constitute half the performance—is an obvious example. Version A contains several verses where Jim Crow pities white people because they are not black: Kase it dar misfortune, And dey’d spend ebery dollar, If dey only could be Gentlemen ob colour. It almost break my heart, To see dem envy me, An from my soul I wish dem, Full as black as we.[53] The narrator of version A continually slips between referring to the audience as white people (“I’m glad dat I’m a niggar, / An don’t you wish you was too”), and as black people (“Now my brodder niggars,” and, above, “as black as we”).[54] Version B—recalling Blue’s invitation to follow suit—invites the (white) audience to become (black) Jim Crows: Den go ahed wite fokes Don’t be slow, Hop ober dubble trubble Jump Jim Crow.[55] While these various audience affiliations are indicative of both black and white audience members, it is also an indication of how audiences were actually invited to simultaneously associate and disassociate with blackness, or, to cite Huggins: “one could almost at will move in or out of the blackface character.”[56] This dis/association is, arguably, essential to an expropriation of black liberty—a taking hold, and removal, of the aesthetic of freedom. Like the narrative of “My Long Tail Blue,” the antics described in “Jim Crow” invite white working-class audiences to envy black freedom, despise the bourgeois, and enjoy violence toward black dandies. The lithographs on the front covers of song sheets for “Jim Crow” show the character with one bent, twisted knee, emphasising a deformed version of masculinity that served to alienate blackness and differentiate it from the ideals of white manliness held by the predominantly white, working-class audience (see, for example, Fig. 3).[57] Far from any hint of dignity shown in the character of Blue, the physical deformity of Crow acts simultaneously to explain his strange, leaping dance and to mark blackness as physically inferior to the white working-class audiences of the time. “Jim Crow” is among the earliest cultural texts that are openly hostile to black dandies (a feature of Jim Crow’s character). In version A of “Jim Crow,” three verses relate Jim Crow’s encounter with a black dandy: I met a Philadelphia niggar Dress’d up quite nice and clean . . . . So I knocked down dis Sambo And shut up his light, . . . . Says I go away you niggar Or I’ll skin you like an eel.[58] The acclamation of such violence rests uneasily against the actual violence that was being directed against well-dressed black people at the time. And yet the jokes continued as Rice’s rocketing popularity led to his own star-vehicle play Oh! Hush! Or, the Virginny Cupids. Rice’s Oh! Hush! sees the character of a black dandy, Sambo Johnson, discovering the affair of his sweetheart when he enters the kitchen where she works (and where his rival suitor, Gumbo Cuffee, has hidden). Cuffee, played by Rice, was a veritable Jim Crow: an upstart, dandy-hating, field-working, anti-authoritarian man. No script of the original performance remains, though Lhamon has edited a later adaptation by Charles White. For the purposes of this discussion, the following joke from Oh! Hush! is certainly in the spirit of “Jim Crow”: CUFF: Excuse my interrupting you for I see you am busy readin’ de paper. Would you be so kind as to enlighten us upon de principal topicks ob de day? JOHNSON: Well, Mr. Cuff, I hab no objection ‘kase I see dat you common unsophisticated gemmen hab not got edgemcation yourself, and you am ‘bliged to come to me who has. So spread around, you unintellumgent bracks, hear de news ob de day discoursed in de most fluid manner. (He reads out some local items.) Dar has been a great storm at sea and de ships hab been turned upside down. CUFF: (looks at paper): Why, Mr. Johnson, you’ve got the paper upside down! (All laugh heartily).[59] The joke is clearly on the pretentious, unintelligent, black dandy, and Cuff (a.k.a Jim Crow) is his foil. The dandy, now transformed into a despicable figure, represents a turn to what Lott labels as the scapegoating of the black dandy, a character embodying “the amalgamationist threat of abolition” and allegorically revealing “the class threat of those who were advocating for it [abolition].”[60] Such attacks on black dandyism reveal how “anticapitalist frustrations,” such as animosity toward upper-class social reformists and the abolitionist bourgeoisie, “stalled potentially positive racial feelings” to uncover “the viciously racist underside of these frustrations.”[61] That is, the dandy represented working-class bosses as well as the educated elite, some of whom had become leaders of the abolitionist movement and raised the possibility that worried white working-class people: that amalgamation and equality could eliminate racial difference among workers. To hate the dandy was to hate white reformers, black reformers, and black workers. And Jim Crow most certainly hated dandies. Through his immense success, the figure of the black dandy had been transformed. Whether Rice’s extreme popularity forced a change in Dixon’s portrayal of the black dandy, or Dixon was a keen judge of social attitudes toward blackness, Dixon’s next song continued to alienate blackness with a performance that would strip the dignity of Blue completely. In 1834, Dixon first performed the song “on which his renown finally came to rest.”[62] It is debatable whether Dixon wrote the song, or whether various little-known singers had performed it for many years before, but, undoubtedly, it was Dixon who made “Zip Coon” the only song of the 1830s to compare in popularity with “Jim Crow.” “Zip Coon” is a monstrous song that mimics certain elements of “Jim Crow.” The lyrics are often nonsensical, with the chorus consisting of “Oh, zip a duden duden duden, zip a duden day” repeated four times.[63] The opening verse leads to the chorus with the line: “Den over dubble trubble, Zip coon will jump.”[64] This line echoes Jim Crow’s insistence that white people “hop ober dubble trubble / Jump Jim Crow,” just as other lines in the song appropriate other elements of “Jim Crow.”[65] Both songs, for example, reference the 1814 battle of New Orleans, where the working-class hero of the late 1820s and early 1830s, President Andrew Jackson, had previously defeated the British forces led by Major General Edward Packenham. In the lithographs for the two songs, too, Zip mimics Crow (See Fig. 3 and Fig. 4).[66] Zip’s bent knee and arms are almost exact copies of Crow’s, and despite the obvious costume differences, Zip’s costume, like Crow’s, is exuberant and disorderly, superfluous and mis-matched. Zip, the lithograph and various appropriations within the text suggest, is Blue with a twist of Crow. Zip mimicked Crow’s invocation of popular, working-class nationalism. Perhaps Zip, as he jumped “over dubble trubble,” even incorporated a spinning leap similar to the one that Rice had made famous. Figure 3: “The Original Jim Crow” (Riley, c.1832). The character of an escaped slave, Jim Crow, with bent knee and foot and ragged clothes. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. Figure 4: “Zip Coon” (Hewitt, c.1834). The character of a buffoonish dandy, Zip Coon, with gnarled limbs in a stance similar to typical portrayals of Jim Crow. Image courtesy of John Hay Library, Brown University. The representation of blackness in “Zip Coon” is just as disjointed as in “Jim Crow,” where the narration continually oscillates between descriptions of and association with blackness. This disarray is present in the narrative voice, which slips from the first to the third person. Sometimes it is a narrator talking about meeting Zip Coon, or describing him; sometimes it is Zip himself talking about politics, his mother or a girl who loves him. The sexual pursuits and freedoms of Blue and Crow remain, but the disassociation is made all the easier by Coon’s more obvious buffoonery. As with the previous songs, “Zip Coon” allowed audiences to seize the liberties of a wealthy, sexually active, luxuriant dandy, envy those freedoms and release them with a narrative of racial deformity. The presumed political injustice of racial equality and amalgamation, then, is derided allowing white working-class audiences to fantasize about their own importance as the most manly and necessary national type. It was a belief that motivated many to protest against abolition. The twisting of the dandy—from Blue through Crow to Coon—was near absolute by the time anti-abolitionist rioters stormed a church, ransacked houses, and took siege of a theatre to disrupt a ritzy performance by renowned tragedian Edwin Forrest in 1834. Actors were driven off stage and the rioters threatened to destroy the premises until the theatre manager thought to subdue them by staging an impromtu performance catering to their ideals. He brought out an actor to sing none other than “Zip Coon.”[67] As the first three groups of minstrel scholars would have it, this riot and blackface resolution occurred at a time when early blackface performance was rebellious, encouraging cross-racial solidarity. And yet minstrelsy is here, as early as 1834 and just six years after Dixon revolutionized American theatre with “Long Tail Blue,” co-opted into an antiblack, anti-amalgamation pogrom. What was it about a blackface dandy that so calmed the crowd? Certainly not the suggestion of cross-racial affiliation. In fact, what the analysis of the blackface dandy in this article has shown is that, from the earliest representations on the blackface stage, the dandy was incorporated into a process of alienating blackness. And the dandy was rapidly twisted into a grotesque effigy to calm the minds of anti-abolitionist rioters. As Nyong’o and Jones have forcefully argued, the discourse of blackness under blackface saw the theft of potential narratives of black freedom and its transformation—disfigurement—into narratives to support white working-class freedoms.[68] But, following this expropriation and alienation, what of the potential “liberty awaiting activation”? The changes in representation of the dandy from “My Long Tail Blue,” through “Jim Crow,” to “Zip Coon” indicates a much broader shift in the representation of blackness between 1828 and 1834. The distortion of the characterization of blackness stripped the black dandy of subversive potential and had a significant impact in real life for some early nineteenth-century Americans. Lewis reads firstly Jim Crow and then Zip Coon as figures growing out of white working-class hostility towards dignified black people who were slowly accumulating wealth: If Crow served as the antithesis to Blue, Coon mixed their individual elements into a scoundrel composite, the gangling servant dressed in the master’s clothes. Coon combined the original and its reverse into a mockery of the former.[69] Lewis effectively maps the evolution of the dandy figure as it related to attitudes towards blackness in Jacksonian America. Testing Lewis’ argument, it can be seen that Lewis is correct to imply racist characters mirrored (perhaps even provoked) real violence that was occurring against black people at the time (be it through direct physical intimidation or the institution of slavery). But the analysis in this article shows that Crow was not simply the “reverse” of Blue, but a heightened form of the animosity towards black people that was actually inherent in the portrayal of Blue. Such an analysis, in tandem with Lewis’ and Miller’s analysis of the history of real black dandies, refutes claims that blackface performance was revolutionary and radical despite (or besides) its racism. Even as blackface entertainment articulated the desires of the white working class or arguments against white dandies and class traitors, blackface also represented the broader shift occurring in white social attitudes toward blackness. Seen clearly in the shift from Blue to Zip, between 1828 and 1834 the iconography of racism that permeated the popular imagination of working-class Americans amplified subhuman, demonic and grotesque features, and it did so to ease white audiences’ concerns about abolition, amalgamation and other discourses of black freedom. The figure of the blackface dandy became a cornerstone of professional blackface minstrelsy from the 1840s onward, and even into the nostalgic vaudevillian revivals of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The ways that the blackface dandy allowed for working-class animosity of the upper classes, for upper-class self-mockery, and for general mockery of black people proved popular for a more economically diverse audience than the rowdy working-class crowds of early blackface. For Lott, the diverse appeals of professional minstrelsy—many of them embodied in the character of the black dandy—closed down any cross-racial affiliation potentially inspired by blackface performance: Energies directed against the state apparatus might too easily join those focused on black people. . . . Class straits may energize interracial cooperation, but they are also often likely to close down the possibility of interracial embrace.[70] And yet, the re-readings of blackface minstrel history to account for black influences upon and responses to early blackface—applied in this paper to the blackface dandy—bring into question whether there was ever the potential for a social, inter-racial embrace with the blackface dandy as a catalyst. In fact, as the work of Brooks, Miller, and Barbara Webb show, it was not until black performers and activists such as George Walker and W.E.B. DuBois inhabited and transformed the blackface dandy stereotype that any possibility of overcoming, in a productive and unifying way, the white animosity toward black freedoms was possible.[71] Despite the best efforts of white performers to twist and alienate blackness, and despite the devastating impact of narratives of white supremacy staged through blackface performance for half a century, the surplus of black liberty was, and arguably still is, awaiting activation in these stage types, responses, and texts. Recognizing this is an essential step toward undoing the white racial privilege created in early minstrel representations. And framing early blackface texts and characters as responses to narratives of black freedom will expose them for what they are: illusions of white control. Benjamin Miller is a lecturer in the School of Letters, Art and Media at the University of Sydney. His research examines the relationship between representations of race in the US and Australia. He completed his PhD thesis in 2010 on representations of blackness and Aboriginality in American and Australian culture and has published on representations of Aboriginal people in Australian theatre, cinema and literature, and on the writing of Aboriginal author David Unaipon. [1] Mikko Tuhkanen, “Of Blackface and Paranoid Knowledge: Richard Wright, Jacques Lacan and the Ambivalence of Black Minstrelsy,” Diacritics 31, no. 2 (2001): 13. [2] See Carl Wittke, Tambo and Bones: A History of the American Minstrel Stage (Durham: Duke University Press, 1930); Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931). [3] Tuhkanen, “Of Blackface,” 16. See also Ralph Ellison, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” [1958], in Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage, 1964), 45-59; Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974). [4] Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). See also W.T. Lhamon Jr., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); William Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Ante-bellum American Popular Culture (Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1999). [5] Lott, Love and Theft, 7-8. [6] Tuhkanen, “Of Blackface,” 16. [7] Ibid., 13-14. [8] Daphne Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (London: Duke University Press, 2006); Tavia Nyong’o, The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Douglas Jones Jr., “Black Politics but Not Black People: Rethinking the Social and ‘Racial’ History of Early Minstrelsy,” TDR: The Drama Review 57, no. 2 (2013): 21-37. [9] Brooks, Bodies in Dissent, 28. [10] Ibid., 27-28. [11] Quoted in Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 120. [12] Quoted in Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 123. [13] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 8. [14] W.T. Lhamon Jr., Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 8. According to Lhamon, “The [early blackface] scripts had enough play to make them particularly useful for organizing heterogeneous publics. In flocking to see Jim Crow, disparate types discovered their mutual affinities. Around Jim Crow’s mask the dispersed riffraff of a quickening industrialism began to act out their own parts in a new play in which the insubordinates were mixing among themselves but not melding with the previously dominant” (8). [15] Cockrell, Demons, 161. For Cockrell, as early blackface transformed into minstrelsy around 1843, “Caught in the middle, between class and race, white common people had to devise both upward and downward processes and rituals” (161). [16] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 8. [17] Ibid., 8-9. [18] Lhamon, Raising Cain, 34. [19] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 30. Lhamon suggests that the blackface characterization of Jim Crow provided the “template” for a “transracial affiliation [that] was virtually unprecedented” (30). [20] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 41. [21] Jones, “Black Politics,” 25. Emphasis in original. [22] Ibid., 27-28. [23] Ibid., 17. [24] Ibid. [25] Monica Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 101. [26] Ibid., 102. [27] Ibid., 101. [28] Ibid., 105. [29] Cockrell, Demons, 96. [30] Lott, Love and Theft, 22. [31] Barbara Lewis, “Daddy Blue: The Evolution of the Dark Daddy,” in Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Minstrelsy, ed. Annemarie Bean, James V. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 257. [32] Quoted in ibid. [33] Cockrell, Demons, 96. [34] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 120. [35] As an aside, it should be noted that the Jim Crow character here was drawn from regional, oral folk tales that had been circulating for decades before the character was appropriated and adapted into the exemplar early blackface character performed by T.D. Rice. Lhamon, Raising Cain, 180. [36] Lewis, “Daddy Blue,” 259-60. [37] Ibid., 258-9. [38] “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Atwill, c.1827). [39] “My Long Tail Blue” (New York: Firth, c. 1827). [40] Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 81. [41] Lott, Love and Theft, 25-26. [42] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 72. [43] Lewis, “Daddy Blue,” 264. [44] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 1. [45] Cockrell, Demons, 62. [46] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 32-33. [47] Cockrell, Demons, 64. [48] Ibid., 65-66. [49] Nyong’o, Amalgmation Waltz, 121. [50] “The Original Jim Crow,” (New York: Riley, c.1832), republished in Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 95-102. [51] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 96. [52] “Jim Crow: A Comic Song (Sung by Rice at the Chestnut St Theatre),” (Philadelphia: Edgar, c.1832). [53] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 99. [54] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 98. It is also important here to make a note about the language of the sources I am quoting. I quote some hateful words in this article. In choosing to include these words I am following the argument of Jabari Asim in The N Word: “the word ‘nigger’ serves . . . as a linguistic extension of white supremacy, the most potent part of a language of oppression that has changed over time from overt to coded.” For Asim, the “N word” and other derogatory words are hurtful, but open identification of such language helps to identify moments of racism while also acknowledging the close relationship between language and privilege. For more, see Jabari Asim, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why (New York: Houghton, 2007), 4. [55] “Jim Crow: A Comic Song,” stanza 18. [56] Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 257. [57] “The Original Jim Crow,” n.p. [58] Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 98. [59] Ibid., 150. [60] Lott, Love and Theft, 134. [61] Ibid., 135. [62] Cockrell, Demons, 99. [63] “Zip Coon: A Favorite Comic Song (Sung by G.W. Dixon),” (New York: Hewitt, 1834). [64] Ibid., stanza 1. [65] “Jim Crow: A Comic Song,” stanza 18. [66] “The Original Jim Crow,” n.p.; “Zip Coon,” n.p. [67] Lott, Love and Theft, 132-3. [68] Nyong’o, Amalgamation Waltz, 122; Jones, “Black Politics,” 25. [69] Lewis, “Daddy Blue,” 259. [70] Lott, Love and Theft, 237. [71] Brooks, Bodies, 207-17; Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 137-45; Barbara Webb, “The Black Dandyism of George Walker: A Case Study in Genealogical Method,” The Drama Review 45, no. 4 (2001): 7-24. "Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre" by Benjamin Miller ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 27, Number 3 (Fall 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Jim Bredeson Editorial Assistant: Kyueun Kim Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Bill Demastes Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Table of Contents: “Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre” by Benjamin Miller “West of Broadway: the Rockefeller Foundation and American Theatre in the 1930s” by Malcolm Richardson “Arthur Miller: Reception and Influence in China” by Wu Wenquan, Chen Li, and Zhu Qinjuan www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Twisting the Dandy: The Transformation of the Blackface Dandy in Early American Theatre West of Broadway: the Rockefeller Foundation and American Theatre in the 1930s Arthur Miller: Reception and Influence in China Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Bernth Lindfors 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 Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Bernth Lindfors By Published on April 30, 2021 Download Article as PDF by Bernth Lindfors The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 33, Number 2 (Spring 2021) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2021 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The British Newspaper Archive continues to offer a fruitful research tool for scholars wishing to study reviews of performances by actors on the British stage. I used this remarkable resource extensively when preparing biographies of the famous Black performers Ira Aldridge and Samuel Morgan Smith,[1] and I go back to it from time to time whenever new microfilms of old papers from the nineteenth century are added to it in order to see if there are any reports or anecdotes about these two actors that I might have missed. Sure enough, I have found two documents that shed some new light on Aldridge, and I offer them here in tribute to Errol Hill’s pioneering research on black actors. The first of these accounts appeared in London’s Weekly Dispatch on February 10, 1828 as a contribution on “Metropolitan Oddities” focusing on “The African Roscius,” the name ironically bestowed upon Aldridge by the London Times in its racist review of his debut in the role of Oronooko at the Coburg Theatre on October 10, 1825. Aldridge had made his initial debut in London at age seventeen five months earlier in a condensed production of Othello at the smaller Royalty Theatre in the East End, performing under the pseudonym of Mr. Keene, a deliberately playful allusion to the surname of Edmund Kean, one of England’s greatest tragedians, famous for his portrayal of Othello. Aldridge kept this facetious stage name until the real Kean collapsed on stage while playing the Moor at Covent Garden Theatre on March 25, 1833, and managers called upon Aldridge to replace him in the same role in the same theatre two weeks later. He was then billed both honestly as Mr. Aldridge and dishonestly as “a Native of Senegal,” possibly a ploy to validate his identity as a true African performer. This charade led to a controversy so bitter that it kept Aldridge off the London stage for the next fifteen years. He had already spent eight years seeking to turn what was meant as a racial insult into a praise name, and he persisted in assuming this honorific title alluding to Roscius, a great Roman actor, for the remainder of his career. When he started appearing at the Royalty Theatre, advertisements described him as a “Gentleman of Colour from the New York Theatre,”[2] and press reports on his subsequent provincial tours spoke of him as having “attained considerable celebrity in America,”[3] a gross exaggeration. One playbill in Bristol went so far as to claim erroneously that he was “known throughout America by the appellation of the African Roscius, a performer of Colour, whose flattering reception at New York and throughout all the principal Theatres in America has induced him to visit England professionally.”[4] This was more media puffery. Later in 1826, when he was finding it difficult to secure engagements and had become nearly destitute, Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post and the Theatrical Observer; and Daily Bills of the Play actively sought to solicit funds that would enable him to return to America.[5] In these early years he was known to have moved to England from the New World, not directly from Africa. So the article in the Weekly Dispatch two and a half years later purported to clear up some of the confusion surrounding this unusual stranger. It may have been the first biographical article published on him in Britain and deserves to be remembered both for its errors as well as its truths. The author of this piece, identified only by his initials—W.L.R.—was William Leman Rede, the younger brother of Leman Thomas Rede, author of The Road to the Stage (1827). Both brothers enjoyed active careers in the theatre, William initially as a young actor and journalist who “speedily established himself in high favour as a critic on all matters connected with the drama. None better could distinguish between talent and pretension; none better adjust the intricate balance between the practiced charlatan and the unpractised man of promising merit.”[6] He had written a few early plays and novels and later became a very prolific playwright, specializing in popular farces and melodramas. At the time he wrote about Aldridge, he was only twenty-six years old, just six years older than Aldridge himself. Having seen so young an actor performed remarkably well in a variety of roles, Rede went to interview him in order to collect information on his background and previous experience. Here is his scoop on this surprising American African: THE AFRICAN ROSCIUS The London Stage has alternately presented every novelty that Europe can afford—we have had rope-dancers and wire-walkers, that performed all sorts of apparent impossibilities—we have had men-monkies, real dogs, horses, and elephants—even the less civilized quarters of the globe have supplied us with the phenomens [sic], and those lofty domes in which they profess to “hold the glass up” to nature, have been made the arena for tumblers. Novelty and merit are not twins, yet they are sometimes simultaneously produced, and the subject of my present article is one instance of this desirable conjunction. The visiters [sic] of the Coburg must all remember the genuine Oronooko [,] Gambia, c., who appeared there about three years since—his late efforts have been made in the provinces, and, as it is said, he is shortly to appear at Covent Garden Theatre, a sketch of him and his adventures may prove acceptable. FREDERICK WILLIAM KEENE (the African Roscius) is the son of the Rev. W. Keene, who, though an African by birth, is a Protestant Minister in New York, and has the care of the souls of a large number of blacks; his wife (my hero’s mother) was a Creole, and the Roscius, I believe, the “first fruits” of their union, was born in New York (24th July 1807). His early days it would be difficult to describe, unless my readers were acquainted with the pastimes followed by the juvenile in the United States. At an early age, he shewed a predilection for the drama, and when about 15, joined some Gentlemen “of his own rank and complexion,” in a Theatrical scheme; they were a sort of a chess-board company—half black half white. The theatre was situated in Green-street, New York, and their first play was Richard the Third, the principal characters by four blacks, i.e. Duke of Gloster [sic], by the Roscius; King Henry, by Mr. Bates; Richmond, Mr. Hewlett; Buckingham, Mr. Jackson; Lady Anne (the fair Lady Anne)! by a negress, called Miss Sukey Stevens; and the Queen, by a brown fair one yclept Miss Dixon. These performers of colour were set off by the appearance of a white Tressel— (Mr. Lamb). The Roscius made a decided hit, and, after a few more trials, set out on a starring tour in Boston—where he played Othello, with a black Desdemona and a white Emilia. He then returned to New York and appeared at the Park-street Theatre as a star; he ran through a round of characters in different parts of the United States, and then embarked for England—but, ere I follow him thither, another word of the Green-street Theatre. It was a desideratum in New York—where a large portion of the inhabitants are virtually, if not actually, excluded from the other playhouses on no plea but their colour; the prices were as follows—Boxes, 8s., (5s. English)—Pit, 4s.—Gallery, 2s. The company were most respectable—unlike some damsels of our drama—amid the black ladies there were no light characters. Mr. Mathews, in his piece of pleasantry, entitled “A Trip to America,” has described the performance of Hamlet at this theatre; now “I have been most accurate in my researches;” and finds that this story has only one fault; i.e.—that it is not true Hamlet was never performed at Green-street; it was, indeed, rehearsed for a Miss Johnson’s benefit, but never played. When Mathews visited the theatre, Pizarro was the play, and my hero was Rolla. One anecdote will suffice to show the genuine innocence (call it not ignorance) of the company. Fortune’s Frolic was got up, and Robin Roughhead (a Yorkshireman) played by a negro, who studied it from an Irishman, and went through the part with a fine Cork brogue: In this farce, there is one character who delivers some eight or ten lines—this part is marked in the cast as “a clown”—Messieurs of the somber hue, who had no notion of any clown but a pantomime one, such as they had seen at Price’s theatre, absolutely dressed this character a la Grimaldi! Some of the technical phrases of the drama, and portions of the texts, were perversely retained by them, though, in their mouths, they sounded paradoxical; for instance, Othello, bending over a Desdemona, as black as a crow, exclaimed— “Yet I’ll not shed her blood, nor scar That whiter skin of her’s than snow.” Let me return to the Roscius—he came to London, and drew crowded houses at the Coburg, where a piece, called The Negro’s Curse, was prepared for him by Milner. Since then he has been at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bath, and Bristol—at Manchester and Liverpool seven times, and he is now in Birmingham. Whilst in Scotland he met Mr. C. Kemble, who, I am informed, undertook to procure him an opening at Covent-Garden. The strongest point of his acting is intense feeling—not violent, but deep—there is a pathos even in his colloquial tones peculiar and affecting. Our first meeting was in High Holborn, where he had collected a mob round him by his extravagant laughter at the braying of a donkey, an animal he had never seen in America—Othello and Zanga are his favourite parts—but Mungo is, perhaps, his chef-d’oeuvre—his style of humour is totally different from that of any other performer—his drunken scene is a thing by itself—the very personification of liberty run mad—and presents a lively image of what we might conceive to be the folly of the Spartan slaves, when they had their one day of unrestrained freedom, both in speech and diet. The African Roscius (notwithstanding his faults and mannerisms) is an actor of great natural powers; he practices no tricks to catch applause, and rather under than over acts. His talents, and the singular circumstances in which he stands in the profession he has chosen, are claims upon kindness. His line is a limited one; and, I trust, if any prejudice arises on his appearance, it will be one favourable to him. He is a stranger, untaught, unaided, totally friendless in this country, and, with nothing to rely on but his talent, which is of an order that practice in the metropolis will render great. Some of the biographical details given here are known to be accurate; for instance, Aldridge’s date of birth, his father’s profession, his own predilection for the drama at an early age, and his involvement in a multiracial “Theatrical scheme” in New York. But his father’s name was Daniel, not a name that began with a W, and Rede wrongly assumed that Aldridge was the firstborn child in his family (he had a brother, Joshua, born seven years earlier).[7] However, Rede’s article contains one fact that has never before been mentioned by others: that Aldridge’s mother was “a Creole.” In those days the term spanned a range of different meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a Creole could indicate someone white, black, or a person of mixed racial ancestry. A creole white was usually “a descendant of European settlers, born or naturalized in those colonies or regions [of the West Indies or America] and more or less modified in type by the climate and surroundings.” A creole negro was “a negro born in the West Indies or America, as distinguished from one freshly imported from Africa.”[8] Since the Manhattan Death Libers records that Aldridge’s mother Luranah, mistranscribed in this source as Lavinia, was born in Delaware and buried in the cemetery of the black church her husband served, theatre scholars may assume that she belonged in the latter category of creoles, but cannot be certain that she had no mixed blood.[9] After all, Aldridge himself, during his initial performances at the Royal Coburg, was often described as not very dark-skinned. The Times said “The gentleman is in complexion the colour of a new half-penny, barring the brightness.”[10] The British Press confidently declared “Mr. Keene is a Creole.”[11] And when he came back to London to appear at Covent Garden, there was a good deal of commentary on his color being light brown or dark olive, and of an “oily and expressive mulatto tint” which “seems to show that he has European blood in his veins.”[12] Rede had never been to New York, but he knew a little about the “African Theatre” where Aldridge had made his start as a professional actor because a year earlier he had watched the comedian Charles Mathews mock and mimic a ludicrously inept “African Tragedian” he claimed to have seen butcher the role of Hamlet there. This was one of the most memorable satirical character sketches he performed in his popular one-man show Trip to America, which opened at the English Opera House on March 25, 1824. Mathews’s African was not a caricature of Aldridge in performance. Rather, it was a parody of the acting style of James Hewlett, the principal actor at that theatre. But when Aldridge started performing at the Coburg, some theatergoers went there expecting to see the actor Mathews had famously lampooned. Rede knew better, having spoken with Aldridge, but for more details on his acting career, he had to rely on whatever Aldridge told him, some of which was more fanciful than factual. There has been some good research done on New York’s African Theatre in recent decades, including studies by Errol Hill, George Thompson, Shane White, and Marvin McAllister.[13] By comparing what these scholars have said with what Aldridge told Rede, contemporary scholars may gain a better understanding of how Aldridge chose to present himself to the public and how that public responded to what they saw in him. The African Theatre originally grew out of the African Grove, a cabaret or “public garden” intended for the enjoyment of New York City’s black community. Opened in the summer of 1821 by William Alexander Brown, a West Indian, it offered drinks, music, and dramatic entertainments to its patrons, who initially met at Brown’s Thomas Street home in Lower Manhattan. After neighbors complained about the noise, Brown moved thirteen blocks further north to his home at the corner of Bleeker and Mercer streets a few months later. However, the space offered seating for only fifty people and audiences proved thinner, so in November or December of 1821, Brown decided to move his troupe again, this time south to a tavern or hotel in Park Row facing City Hall Park and next door to the well-established Park Theatre. Unfortunately for Brown, Stephen Price, the business manager at the Park Theatre, did not like having such competitors on his doorstep, especially since they were now performing three times a week and drawing white as well as black audiences. He sent in hecklers to disrupt performances by throwing firecrackers onto the stage and even arranged for police to raid the theatre one night and arrest all the actors. In order to be released, the actors had to promise that they would never act Shakespeare again. This kind of harassment led Brown to lease an empty lot on the east side of Mercer Street near Broadway and build a proper playhouse with seating for hundreds that opened in mid-July 1822. (Greene Street, mentioned by Rede, sat one short block west of Mercer.) Unfortunately, the harassment resumed almost immediately. On August 10th, a mob of white ruffians interrupted a performance, assaulted the actors, and vandalized the playhouse. Brown and his actors boldly fought back. Police arrested and charged eleven of the white rioters, some of them circus workers in the city, but the case against them was eventually dismissed. To make matters worse, a severe yellow fever epidemic had started to spread throughout the city, and by early October Brown’s theatre, now called the American Theatre, had to close. Brown took his players to Albany, where they performed for the rest of the year. Surviving playbills indicate that several performances were mounted at Brown’s new theatre in the spring and early summer of 1823, but by mid-July Brown was bankrupt. Several members of his troupe stayed together and gave scattered performances in 1824, but they had to find other venues for their entertainments.[14] What was Aldridge doing during these three years? At what point did he join the African Theatre company and take part in their performances? Theatre scholars cannot confirm this precisely. His name does not appear in any of the documents concerning the company, but he may have performed under a pseudonym since his father did not approve of such sinful behavior and wanted him to be a preacher rather than an actor. But statements made by others who knew him and also by Aldridge himself suggest that he was indeed attached to Brown’s theatre company for a time. Philip A. Bell, one of his classmates at the African Free School, recalled some years later that Aldridge left school in 1822 and joined Brown’s American Theatre in 1823 after seeing a Shakespeare performance there.[15] In an autobiography Aldridge published around 1848, he claimed that his first visit to a professional theatre, specifically the Park Theatre, had “fixed the great purpose of his life, and established the whole end and aim of his existence. He would be an actor.”[16] So he “fell to work and studied the part of Rolla, in the play Pizarro, and in that character he made ‘his first appearance on any stage.’ This was at a private theatre, where he was singularly successful, and all his fellow-performers were of his own complexion”[17]—in other words, Brown’s theatre. Brown’s troupe produced Pizarro at the Hampton Hotel next door to the Park Theatre in the winter or spring of 1822, but James Hewlett played Rolla (not Aldridge). However, a second performance of Pizarro staged by Brown’s company in Albany on December 19, 1823 may have given Aldridge the opportunity to replace Hewlett in that heroic role.[18] So Bell and Aldridge’s accounts may contain some elements of truth. Aldridge also reported that he had also once played a love-sick Ethiopian Romeo opposite an Ethiopian Juliet with the same supporting cast, but there remains no hard evidence in the extant literature on the African Theatre to support this claim.[19] How reliable was the information that Aldridge gave Rede? Richard III was among the first plays ever performed at the African Grove, the pleasure garden that Brown had created for the black community. Brown staged it three times in September and October 1821 and a fourth time in January 1822, but in at least two of the performances Hewlett played the leading role supported by Mr. Bates and Mr. Jackson but not by any of the other actors and actresses Rede names in his account. In fact, none of the female performers, except Miss Dixon who later appeared in The Poor Soldier, appear to have been employed by Brown, and it seems extremely unlikely that Aldridge (thirteen years old and still at school at that time), would have been recruited to play a major role in a Shakespearean play. However, he could have become an active member of the troupe while still young, for James McCune Smith, who also had gone to school with him, reported years later that upon graduating, Aldridge, “being of a roving disposition,” had briefly shipped out on a brig. “Shortly after his return home, Brown’s theater was opened, and Ira, with his brother Joshua, took to the stage; but their father, finding it out, took them away from the theater.”[20] It remains tempting to speculate that the two actors, listed as Hutchington and J. Hutchington, performing as Buckingham and Lord Stanley in at least one of the African Theatre’s productions of Richard III, might have been these two delinquent youths. Hutchington also earned a part as a Castilian Soldier later in the African Theatre’s first performance of Pizarro.[21] In any case, Aldridge subsequently defied his father and rejoined Brown’s troupe. The rest of what Aldridge told Rede about his career in the United States appears the kind of inflated fiction that P.T. Barnum famously called Humbug or Bunk. He had never performed before Charles Mathews at the African Theatre. In fact, Mathews had never attended a production there; instead, James Hewlett had performed privately for him in the spring of 1823, inspiring Mathews’s skit of an ignorant African Tragedian in Trip to America. Aldridge also never appeared as a star at the Park Theatre, nor is there any record of him playing Othello in Boston or running through a round of characters in different parts of the United States. Aldridge could tell funny stories about other black actors at Brown’s theatre, one of whom had imitated a Yorkshireman with an Irish brogue, and another who botched lines as Othello, but these too may have been little more than highly embellished anecdotes. But Rede’s recitation of Aldridge’s impressive string of previous appearances on stage on his provincial tours seems very accurate. Indeed, over a twenty-month period after leaving London in December 1825, Aldridge had performed not only at Brighton, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Birmingham—the major cities Rede mentions—but in at least seventeen smaller towns and villages along the way. During this time, rumors circulated that he planned to appear at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in London, but in mid-1826 his nemesis Stephen Price had become lessee of Drury Lane and remained there for the next four seasons, depriving Aldridge of that opportunity. Charles Kemble ran Covent Garden as an actor-manager and proprietor, but from 1826 to 1829 the theatre struggled with serious financial difficulty, so he probably could not have afforded to take a risk on a black actor. Rede’s article suggests that he saw that this young actor had talent and merited public attention. The last paragraph of Rede’s report in which he describes watching Aldridge perform offers a shrewd, insightful assessment of his salient abilities and minor defects. Later eyewitnesses confirm Aldridge possessed “great natural powers” as a tragedian and comedian, and one who might with further practice become still greater. But Rede need not have pitied him for being “totally friendless in this country” because Aldridge was happily married to a British woman, and two British actors he had met in New York, Henry and James Wallack, had encouraged him and helped launch him in London. Plus, by this time Rede himself had become his good friend.[22] Actually, Rede had already become so good a friend that when Aldridge announced his decision to experiment as the lessee of a theatre in Coventry on March 3, 1826 (three weeks after the publication of Rede’s essay), he said he had invited Rede to serve as his stage manager. Their collaboration included acting as well as managing the motley crew of performers and musicians they hired. Their brave experiment in running a theatre lasted barely two months, for by the end of April and beginning of May each had moved on to performer elsewhere, Aldridge in Worcester, Rede in York. I found a second source of new biographical information on Aldridge in the Carlisle Journal of April 16, 1889. It comes in the form of an amusing eyewitness report by a gentleman who recalled having seen Aldridge perform a scene from Othello at his school forty-one years earlier: Looking last week over a collection of old play bills which was in the library of the late Mr. John Clarke Ferguson, I noticed one which referred to the performance of Ira Aldridge, “the African Roscius,” in the Theatre Royal at Carlisle in the year 1848. Ira Aldridge was a man of colour—a veritable “black man”—who could assume the part of Othello without the use of burnt cork, and I have often laughed at an incident that occurred during his visit to Carlisle. He came to our school to give some recitations. It was a hot summer’s evening, and the windows of the schoolroom, which looked upon the neighboring street, were thrown wide open for the purposes of ventilation, while the boys sat listening with rapt attention to the African Roscius while he gave some scenes from Othello. He was in the midst of his address to the Senate and describing the arts by which he had wooed and won the gentle Desdemona, when a noisy fellow in the street began a most terrible row by ringing a big bell and calling “Fresh herrings!” with a loud, hoarse voice. We tittered at the curious mixture of Shakespeare and costermonger; but Ira went manfully on. So did the fresh herring merchant. My story being done She gave me for my pains a world of sighs— continued the tragedian. “All alive! Just come in!” vociferated the costermonger. Ira hesitated a moment, but resumed— She swore, in faith, ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange, ‘Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondrous pitiful, “Fresh herrings! Fresh herrings!” came booming through the window once more. The “dusky Moor,” already perspiring at every pore, with ill-concealed indignation made one final struggle— She wish’d she had not heard it— But the fresh herring man was noisier than ever— “All alive! Alive!” and the bell gave another loud clang. The blood of the African Roscius was now up. Unable longer to constrain himself he broke off in the middle of the sentence, rushed from the stage, and behind the wings we could hear him shouting—no longer the musical blank verse of the poet, but— “Stop that row, you rascal, or I’ll come and choke you with a mutton chop!” The coster was evidently taken aback for a moment by the apparition of the negro’s head through the open door; but he soon recovered his equilibrium and his voice, and the altercation which ensued helped—to the school, at least—give an amusing turn to the entertainment.[23] This prompted a response in the Carlisle Journal on 24 April the following week by another former schoolboy who remembered the same incident but also provided additional information on the black actor: A Kendal correspondent writes: — “Your notes on Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius, have interested me greatly as I knew that robustuous [sic] actor very well in Edinburgh many years ago when he played the part of Aaron, the Moor beloved by Tamora, in Titus Andronicus.[24] These remarks affirm that Aldridge made an indelible impression on audiences young and old. He could amuse schoolboys with a comical tirade and years later could remind them of the vigor with which he portrayed Aaron not as a villain but as a romantic hero. Such memories of Aldridge like the ones described in this essay, preserved in newspapers of the day, merit resurrecting and adding to the documentary record of his life and experiences. [1]My biography of Aldridge was published in four volumes by the University of Rochester Press between 2011 and 2015. The one I wrote on Morgan Smith was published by Africa World Press in Trenton, NJ in 2018. [2] There was no theatre by that name in New York City. [3] Brighton Gazette, 15 December 1825. [4] Playbill held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. The same notice appeared in the Bristol Mercury, 20 January 1826. [5] Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, August 31, 1826; Theatrical Observer; and Daily Bills of the Play, 2 September 1826. [6] “Recollections of Leman Rede,” New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, new series 80 (1847): 102-09. [7] Bernth Lindfors, Ira Aldridge: The Early Years ((Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011), 21. [8] These definitions are drawn from The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 601. [9] Lindfors, Ira Aldridge, 20. [10] London Times, 11 October 1825. [11] British Press, 11 October 1825. [12] English Chronicle, 11 April 1833; Morning Chronicle, 11 April 1833; Town Journal, 14 April 1833; the direct quotations are taken from the Globe and Traveller, 11 April 1833, and the Observer, 11 April 1833, respectively. [13] One of the first reliable accounts was given in Errol Hill’s Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors (1984). Then came A Documentary History of the African Theatre (1998) by George A. Thompson, Jr., a New York City librarian who tracked down 134 published and unpublished sources that told much of what was happening there. Next was Shane White’s Stories of Freedom in Black New York (2002) and Marvin McAllister’s White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentleman of Colour: William Brown’s African and American Theater (2003). Each provides insightful commentary on the significance of Brown’s theatre, White writing as a historian of black New York, McAllister as a theatre historian and performance theorist. [14] I have been following George Thompson’s chronology throughout this portion of the narrative. [15] Philip A. Bell, “Men We Have Known: Ira Aldridge (1867),” Elevator (San Francisco), 2, and reprinted in Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 49. [16] Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius (London: Onwhyn, [1848]), and reprinted in Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 13. [17] Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 14. [18] H.P. Phelps, Players of a Century: A Record of the Albany Stager (Albany: Joseph McDonough, 1880), 56. [19] Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, 14. [20] James McCune Smith, “Ira Aldridge,” Anglo-African Magazine, 2, no. 1 (January 1860), 27-32, and reprinted in Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, ed. Bernth Lindfors (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2007), 37-47. [21] See George A. Thompson, Jr., A Documentary History of the African Theatre (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 70 and 228, for further details. [22] For further information on Aldridge’s theatrical activities in New York, London, and on his first tours of the British provinces, see Lindfors, Ira Aldridge and the books by Hill, Thompson, White, and McAllister cited in footnote 13. [23] Carlisle Journal, 16 April 1889. [24] An Edinburgh playbill shows that Aldridge performed as Aaron there on 24 July 1850. ISNN 2376-4236 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 Table of Contents: “Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble” by Elizabeth M. Cizmar “Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth” by Baron Kelly “A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson's Black Feminist Intervention” by Khalid Y. Long “An Interview with Elaine Jackson” by Nathaniel G. Nesmith "Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston" by Michelle Cowin Gibbs "1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Antimusical The Mule-Bone Is Presented" by Eric M. Glover “'Ògún Yè Mo Yè!' Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities" by Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green "Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar" by Lisa B. Thompson "Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge" by Bernth Lindfors "Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation" by Olga Sanchez Saltveit "A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement" by Isaiah Matthew Wooden www.jadtjournal.org www.jadtjournal.org ">jadt@gc.cuny.eduwww.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Yu Chien Lu, Administrative Producer ©2020 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative The Theatre of August Wilson Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration The Theatre of Eugene O'Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Introduction to “Milestones in Black Theatre” Interviews and Afterviews on "Milestones in Black Theatre" Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Re-Imagining America and Theater: Race, Representation, and Form Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Joanna Mansbridge Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change Joanna Mansbridge By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Black Performance and Pedagogy Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Rachel E. Bauer and Kristen M. Kalz Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 32 2 Visit Journal Homepage Exploring the History and Implications of Toxicity through St. Louis: Performance Artist Allana Ross and the “Toxic Mound Tours” Rachel E. Bauer and Kristen M. Kalz By Published on May 21, 2020 Download Article as PDF On a chilly day in early April 2018, a group of sixteen people and one lovable dog met at a coffee house in St Louis, Missouri, in anticipation of the “Toxic Mound Tour.” Online, the tour was advertised as a performance art piece and an “educational field trip” to “see the realities of the landfill and other contaminated places west of the city.” [1] When our tour guide, performance artist Allana Ross, arrived, she was easy to spot in her khaki colored park ranger clothing, even without the “Toxic Mound Tours” sign she held. As we gathered around, she quickly introduced herself, then introduced her assistant and their dog, both of whom were outfitted in matching green jackets for the occasion. Before the tour began, the performer passed out tour brochures and white face masks to the group gathered around her. Most of us in the audience looked at each other with slightly worried expressions before she admitted that we did not need to wear masks for our safety, as our stay in each of the five locations would be brief. Even still, they served as a constant reminder of where we were going and the gravity of the area’s toxic legacy. As the contaminated areas we planned to visit were spread out across the greater St. Louis area, we were encouraged to introduce ourselves to one another and carpool. And just like that, we traveled to the first destination on our toxic tour. In her book, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States , Jan Cohen-Cruz states, “A community-based production is usually a response to a collectively significant issue or circumstance. It is a collaboration between an artist or ensemble and a ‘community’.” [2] The source is not the artist, but the community that surrounds the artist. [3] For Ross, community is defined in two ways: the people and the environment. In part, the community is defined by the suburban areas south and west of St. Louis and the residents who lived or live in/around the areas affected by contamination. Ross’s community-based work is “less about homogeneous communities and more about different participants exploring a common concern together,” [4] the common concern being the past, current, and future impacts of the toxic sites on the people who reside nearby. However, Ross’s performance not only elevated the significance of place/environment but also stressed the importance of being in each space—to explore it and experience it—as central to her approach. In her artist statement, she writes: I am questioning our relationship to nature itself—the culture of nature that we teach to each other through museum diorama, through titillating landscape calendars and all-expense-paid eco-adventures. A public tour of the mounds is a method of activating the viewer outside of the gallery setting as a participant in the re-invention of the culture of nature. [5] Ross grounded her performance in place, reaffirming Cohen-Cruz’s definition of community-based performance as “a local act in two senses: a social doing in one’s particular corner of the world and an artistic framing of that doing for others to appreciate.” [6] Ross privileged the environment itself and the lasting effect(s) that humans have had on the ecosystem(s) of the area. Her piece worked within the realm of environmental activism, which brought attention to the human consumption of nature and its subsequent contamination. [7] Additionally, she questioned notions of the “individual” in communities, as the environment affected people in different ways. Seemingly separate individuals become connected through location and the sense of belonging in a community. To explore toxic places, we are asked to think about the surrounding community and to consider what it must be like living there. In this essay, we explore how Ross’s performance uses place and environment, as well as a historical understanding of the sites, to illuminate the lasting impacts of environmental contamination and the very real effects it has had on local communities through the five sites on her Toxic Mound Tour. Since the 1960s, performance scholars including Richard Schechner, Una Chaudhuri, Elinor Fuchs, Wendy Arons, Stephen Bottoms, Ric Knowles, and Theresa May, among others, have theorized the practice of performance known as environmental theatre and site-specific performance, as one rooted in the place, and perhaps even the community, in which the performance occurs. [8] Tim Cresswell describes place as: constituted through reiterative social practice—place is made and remade on a daily basis. Place provides a template for practice—an unstable stage for performance. Thinking of place as performed and practiced can help us think of place in radically open and non-essentialized ways where place is constantly struggled over and remained in practical ways. [9] Furthermore, as Nick Kaye writes, site-specific art is the “exchange between the work of art and the places in which its meanings are defined.” [10] “Key to this,” as Baz Kershaw states, “becomes understanding how performance is an integral part of global ecology and eco-systems.” [11] Looking at the scholarship of Nicola Shaughnessy and Laura Levin as lenses through which to examine toxic tours allows us to further contextualize the importance of each tour site as both the set and setting. Shaughnessy looks at the possibility of “place as an event” through which the “[s]ite and place are also integral to visual and live arts practices which have moved beyond the quiet curbs of gallery spaces, to question who art is for, where it can be staged and to explore the experience of spectatorship.” [12] Ross’s attempt to “[activate] the viewer outside of the gallery setting” [13] is thus attempting to “contribute to the process of making space meaningful through practices which explore (and challenge) how we experience the environment we inhabit.” [14] Ross’s work can be also interpreted through Laura Levin’s concepts of “environmental unconsciousness” and her discussions of camouflage. Levin’s discussion of place-based, environmental performance engages with the idea that environment becomes a part of the performance that cannot be overlooked: “recognizing the independence of the non-human is not simply a philosophical project but also a political one … This framing of site-specificity provides access to … ‘environmental unconscious,’ rendering perceptible those aspects of environment that we habitually engage but routinely overlook.” [15] As such, Ross’s tour invited us into these spaces that are overlooked, whether because they have been remediated into consumable spaces or because they were so unassuming that no one realizes their significance. In recent years, there has been greater public interest in ecoadventure and ecotourism, which seek to counteract or eliminate the wastefulness of traveling by combining experiences with environmentally friendly and/or sustainable practices. [16] From a performance perspective, Scott Magelssen’s scholarship highlights recent trends in the tourism industry that “[implement] attractions that privilege explicitly performative participation by immersing tourists in living, fictive scenarios.” [17] This move towards more “authentic” experiences of tourism includes participants taking on a character and getting into the action, a move away from the passive tourism experiences that ask visitors to see and observe and then to depart without much interaction with the location. [18] For a group of strangers to take a toxic tour, we had to be willing to confront and interrogate our own ideas of health and safety, and take on, even for a few hours, the environmental risk that others are asked to undertake every day. Here, the place is central, and rather than being given a part to play, people on toxic tours are not in simulated environments; they are asked to navigate action as it comes. Contaminated places are most often found in low income and minority communities, existing away from and outside of the dominant culture, and as such, they have been referred to as sacrifice zones where both people and waste are pushed to the margins and seen as dirty, undesirable, contaminated, and/or not valuable. [19] Phaedra Pezzullo argues toxic tours typically “are noncommercial expeditions into areas that are polluted by toxins,” and are often led by community members, many of which may be sick, in hopes that doing so will raise awareness and lead to social change. [20] By willingly entering places that may be harmful, toxic tours not only challenge traditional notions of tours and/or being a tourist, which is most often associated with travel, beauty, pleasure, but they also blur the lines between “nature” and “culture,” acknowledging the ways in which each influence one another. [21] To take Ross’s toxic tour, then, is to use performance to subvert existing ideas of toxic tours as well as place and location. First, Ross did not take on the persona of someone who was sick, but instead took on the role of an authoritative outsider. She took on the dress and authority of a park ranger or nature guide, a figure generally understood as one tasked with expertise, but also one with knowledge of historical significance of place and the importance of the connection between humans and the land that sustains them. Assuming the role of expert was a particularly meaningful move in part because of our culture’s reliance on experts to help define what is safe/unsafe. Her character acted as our guide not only in traveling to each location, but also in guiding the audience through the experience: where to walk, where to look, the important features worth noting, and the site’s historical background, as it was often difficult to determine the significance of each place without her expert eye. Her character was, in fact, the only “artificial” part of the performance; the audience and the locations we visited were very much real. Second, the tour took us to sites in various stages of remediation; in some cases, the very notion of toxicity and contamination remained contested, as there were widespread disagreements about the safety of the sites, but in other cases a former contaminated site had been transformed into a park for public enjoyment. At each location she interwove local history into her performance, gathered from both official government documents and the stories of residents. Finally, rather than being in marginalized communities and spaces, the tour stops were in predominately white and/or working-class neighborhoods. This is notable because unlike typical cases of environmental uncertainty, these sites have gained greater attention simply because these communities are thought about as safe, clean, and respectable places. Almost all in attendance were from the greater St. Louis area and most lived in communities relatively close to a specific site and attended the tour because they had not actually physically visited the sites. Everyone learned about the tour through an advertisement in a local Facebook group that discusses issues of community, toxicity, health, and safety, so attendees brought with them varying degrees of knowledge. The stops on the tour are public and can be visited independently, but Ross provided the background and historical significance of place which is so often hidden. Additionally, her performance as an expert, which was informative as much as it was paternalistic, provided a feeling of protectiveness, as the group explored these largely unknown to them sites. OUR GUIDE Unlike the audience members who wore basic, contemporary clothing, bundled in coats and scarves for the chilly, rainy day, Ross donned a wide-brimmed hat and an olive-khaki button-up shirt tucked into khaki pants. A wide brown belt and hiking boots completed her ensemble. While not exact in its replica, it was culturally recognizable as a costume reminiscent of those worn by park rangers in a US context. However, Ross called herself an “urban ranger” because it was not the vast wilderness or sprawling desert she guided us through; it was the suburban space around us. Instead of the park insignia or flags that adorn the uniforms of federal park workers, Ross’s “uniform” had only two embroidered patches: a colorful taco in front of a variation of the nuclear atom symbol and a skull with a ranger’s hat similar to the one worn by Ross herself. Given the hazardous and dangerous history that surrounded the sites on the tour ahead, the patches spoke not only to the macabre reality of touring such locations, even if for the purpose of raising environmental awareness, but also to Ross’s personality. As a ranger is tasked with the protection and preservation of lands for public use, Ross tasked herself with raising local awareness “[b]y inviting the audience to consider the history of these sites in a safe space removed from their threats—to peruse a brochure, to grab a postcard, to plan a visit.” [22] In doing so, she asked that we “reconsider [our] consumption of nature,” both in terms of the way these sites were contaminated by human interference and now, as nature had reclaimed, albeit artificially, the land for parks and recreation. [23] As there was considerable distance between sites, Ross created a Spotify playlist for the drive, entitled “Atomic Musical Collection.” The playlist, which played in the background, served as an intermission of sorts where the audience could reflect on the tour as it progressed. [24] Like a true guide, Ross provided a map with the “attractions” clearly marked, and we started an approximately five-hour tour organized in a caravan, all following Ross’s white SUV with a large sign on each side emblazoned with “Toxic Mound Tours” and the signature atomic star that adorned all of her materials. STOPS ALONG THE WAY Like many industrial cities in the U.S., the greater St. Louis area has a long and contested history of sites contaminated from a wide breadth of industrial activities. Four out of the five sites on the tour corresponded to St. Louis’ involvement with WWII and Cold War weapons production. Site #1 : Times Beach, MO The first stop on our tour was Route 66 State Park, formerly Times Beach, MO, a small resort town about thirty miles outside of St. Louis. In the early 1970s, the entire town became contaminated when its twenty-three miles of roads were sprayed with dioxin-contaminated waste oil, and it later became one of the nation’s first Superfund sites. [25] In the early 1980s, Congress passed “The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act” (CERLA), most commonly referred to as the “Superfund,” which created a tax on the chemical and petroleum industry. [26] The money generated by this tax was then used to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites across the nation. In 1982, Times Beach was evacuated and residents were permanently relocated due to the high-level of contamination. Just a few short years later, the city was deemed uninhabitable and disincorporated by the state. As remediation was underway, all houses and buildings in the town were demolished and buried under a large mound at the park. Now, all that is left of this once thriving community is a large grassy mound, the faint outline of streets and roads hardly visible in parts of the park, and the last remaining building which now serves as the park’s visitor’s center. [27] The Superfund program has been met with widespread criticism since its inception from both industries and communities. As a result, in 1995, the tax was not renewed and “significant limits were put on EPA’s [Environmental Protection Agency] ability to perform cleanup work itself, and an increasing percentage of cleanups [were] being performed by PRPs [Potentially Responsible Parties]. EPA focused activity during this period and onward on ensuring that PRPs perform most of the cleanups, thus, saving dwindling public funding for government oversight of private actions.” [28] The former Times Beach town is now Route 66 State Park, and visitors use it as a recreational space for biking, walking, and running, among other activities. Save for a few informative signs at the entrance of the park, the history of this location and community has mostly been erased. Upon arrival, we laughed nervously in the safety of the parking lot, struggling to reconcile the location versus our safety: it did not look harmful. From where we stood, we could see a bathroom building near the park entrance and a wooden sign with site information, including guidelines for dogs on leashes and a map of the “Inner Loop Trail.” Ross gathered us around to give an overview of the site before we officially visited the mound. The mound was to our left as we entered, but Ross had to point it out to the tour. It was an unassuming hill covered in the shoots of early-spring grass, not as we expected. It could be easily ignored by visitors who were unaware that the contents of a town were buried underneath. Our guide instructed the group to walk to the top of the small hill, which turned out to be deceptively long. We gathered there as Ross provided information on how the dioxin-contaminated waste was introduced into the area and the amount of waste that was under our feet. On the far end, Ross pointed out a small fenced-in area with various pipes coming out of the ground, which many of us missed and/or did not know what it was. Ross explained that it was a gas extraction well for the buried waste at the site. Here, Ross’s performance speaks to Levin’s idea of the “environmental unconscious,” which “[renders] perceptible those aspects of environment that we habitually engage but routinely overlook.” [29] It was easy to overlook our environment and the significance of a location like Times Beach, as it was the oldest site and had been nearly completely erased into its new form: a park. The mound that contains the Dixon-contaminated town is just a hill. Thus, Ross’s performance, retelling of the history, and authoritative approach as “urban ranger” reconstructed the town for her audience, so that we engaged with the location as more than its park exterior. She brought our environmental unconsciousness to the fore in order to restore the site, in our imaginations, and challenge our initial perceptions of the space. The site is open to visitors daily from dawn to dusk, and many visitors take advantage of the trails, many of which are parts of the old roadways, the same ones that were once sprayed with dioxin. Many may not recognize that the uninhabitable nature of this area for day-to-day community life resulted in its transformation into a park which poses little risk for temporary visitors. Instead, we were faced with nature as it has been remade, as Ross said, as all evidence of the contamination was buried, out of sight, in the mound. [30] What was once a place where people lived is now a place for visitors to walk their dogs, gawk at the history of the town if they happened to stop by one of the parks signs, and then leave, almost without a trace. As such, we had to be taught to see the park for both what it once was and what it is today. Site #2 : Coldwater Creek The second stop on the tour was a combination of several sites with ties to Cold War era weapons production. Radioactive material made its way to the St. Louis area during the 1940s when Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, a downtown company, was commissioned to be a part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. [31] The project’s ultimate aim was to create the world’s first atomic weapon, and Mallinckrodt was tasked with purifying uranium. The project was unlike any task undertaken by the State, and to complete the work quickly and away from prying eyes, it had a top-secret security clearance which circumvented typical democratic decision making mechanisms by merely removing the project from public scrutiny. [32] Many of the workers themselves were unaware of the material they were working with and many would later develop cancer and other related diseases. [33] As the project was underway, a great deal of radioactive and/or hazardous materials were used, and much waste was generated. With limited space to store the materials and waste downtown, a property west of the city was used. [34] The property, referred to today as the St. Louis Airport Site (SLAPS), was a twenty-one acre tract of land near the St. Louis Lambert International Airport. [35] The western edge of the property bordered Coldwater Creek, a fifteen-mile creek that snakes through the backyards of various neighborhoods, before emptying into the Missouri River. [36] The site stored “mountains” of radioactive and hazardous waste in open air conditions for almost two decades. [37] As a result, radioactive waste made its way into the creek before it was later sold to a company from Colorado, which dumped whatever materials were deemed not valuable enough to transport into the local West Lake Landfill. [38] Our second tour location was near the airport and the creek. However, on the way, Ross brought us to the building housed by government officials of Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). In 1974, the federal government created FUSRAP, which was tasked “to identify, investigate and clean up or control sites throughout the United States that became contaminated as a result of the Nation’s early atomic energy program during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.” [39] In addition to the creek, landfill, and Weldon Springs location, there are over 100 identified contaminated sites around the St. Louis Area recognized by the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA. [40] While the EPA and Army Corps have remediated many of the sites, there are still some that either still need remediation and/or are contested. Regardless, the EPA maintains that these sites are safe, [41] including the landfill, but many residents believe they are experiencing negative health impacts and have created a Facebook group to share information and contest expert claims of health and safety. It was in this Facebook group that our “toxic tour” was advertised. Once arrived, we parked our caravan of cars along the side of the road, which was lined mostly by warehouse buildings in proximity to the St. Louis Airport. Here, Ross spoke about the significance of FUSRAP in the area and provided details on what became of the creek’s cleanup operation. While there, a Hazelwood police officer approached in a car. The arrival of a law enforcement officer made the audience members nervous; this was an unplanned portion of the tour. Keeping with her character, Ross introduced herself as an urban ranger to the officer, who was curious why a group such as ours was in the area. The officer seemed interested, told us to be safe, and left the scene without causing a disruption to the audience. Here, the location of the FURSAP building is reminiscent of Cresswell’s concept of place, where we can “think of place in radically open and non-essentialized ways where place is constantly struggled over and remained in practical ways.” [42] The location of the FURSAP building is indeed a place made and remade by history and perception. With the creek remediation considered complete, the weathered steel building that houses FUSRAP seemed to blend into the warehouse buildings surrounding it. Our perception was altered, remade, by Ross’s expert navigation of the site, however the building’s history had not been erased as with the previous site, and thus it was easy for our group to see and understand the significance as Ross directed our attention and shared the history of the location. The meaning of the place is, as Cresswell argues, “performed and practiced” [43] through our interaction with the guide outside of the chain-link fence that surrounds it. As such, without being on the tour with us, the Hazelwood officer had a different concept of the place’s significance than those of us who listened intently to Ross’s guidance, even though we were just down the road from the mouth of the infamous Coldwater Creek. However, the presence of authority outside of the FUSRAP location felt significant, as it was a reminder that the place we inhabited during the performance is also a part of the larger ecosystem of the area. Figure 1. FUSRAP site, April 8, 2018, (Photo by author) Soon after this interruption, the audience members were back in their cars, as we traveled—briefly this time—to our next location: Coldwater Creek. Like the FUSRAP location, this site had not been reimagined and fully transformed into a park or something else. This space was not inviting; there were no sidewalks, no facilities, and nowhere to park, and the mouth of the creek was unassuming and littered with garbage. We would not have known it was a location of significance without our guide to inform us of such, but it was easy to imagine it as a contaminated space. As with the FUSRAP building, the meaning of place is “constantly struggled over and remained.” [44] Those living along the creek have a clear perception of place while those simply driving may not upload that same definition of place. However, the performance at this location is pushed further when applying Shaughnessy’s lens of location-based performance. Shaughnessy argues that approaches such as Ross’s tour, “engage in the making of place and spatiality … Thus in site responsive work, where space is made meaningful as place through encounters between performers and spectators/participants, there is a potential to transform our perceptions of the performed environment.” [45] Ross’s interactions with the audience at this site—encouragement to explore accompanied by careful warnings of caution that pointed out debris and her now established convention of beginning with the historical significance of the site—assisted in solidifying the meaningful nature of the site for the group gathered around. Thus, Coldwater Creek was indeed transformed into a place made meaningful through Ross’s responsive performance. Large cement barriers, like those used to direct traffic on highways during construction, guarded the creek, prohibiting us from getting too close. There was a sense of nervousness among participants while approaching the creek. We were all aware of the historical contamination of the area, but did not expect to come into contact with the discarded things of today, like broken glass, scraps of paper, and discarded plastic bags. We peered into the murky water, knowing that it had been decontaminated, but the lasting uneasiness was still there for the audience members. Some climbed over the barriers, but not for long, before coming back over to the side that felt “safe.” Once gathered around, our guide talked about how it looked like a place to avoid, though it borders many people’s backyards and was once a place where children played. Before people knew it was contaminated with radioactive waste, the creek, which was prone to flooding, was thought of as a nuisance when rising water entered basements and yards. Now both former and current residents worry, and in some cases believe, that they were exposed to harmful contaminates which have negatively impacted their health. Under FUSRAP, the creek underwent, and continues to undergo, remediation, but cleanup was not extended beyond the creek into the private properties along the creek’s edge. While seemingly unremarkable, the location exudes a negative atmosphere, so much so that this was the only stop on the tour that audience members whispered to each other and refrained from openly talking at the site. While the town of Times Beach was given renewed purpose after the cleanup project was completed—an opportunity for renewed recreation—the same could not be done for the miles of this creek that remained mistreated and contaminated, at least in this area, hidden from sight unless you know where to look or were/are affected by it. Site #3 : Carrollton The next stop on our tour was the former Carrollton subdivision in Bridgeton, MO. Once one of the largest subdivisions in the area, the community was bought out in the 1990s to make room for a new runway at the airport. [46] However, the airport expansion fell through and the community was demolished anyway. Former residents now question if there were other explanations as to why their homes were destroyed, as it is now known that the subdivision was located between a radioactive creek and a radioactive landfill. Entering the area that used to be Carrollton was surreal. The tree-lined streets of the community were inhabited not long ago, and the remnants of human consumption of the land were everywhere. The roads that moved through the area were complete with turnoffs, driveways, and sidewalks, as if the homes were lifted from the earth without a trace. The area was also littered with trash, mattresses, furniture, and beer cans, showing that people had been there recently and/or used Carrollton as a dumping ground. After driving deep into the once-vibrant community, we parked just on the other side of a steel gate, complete with a sign that read, “Road Closed. No Trespassing. Property of the City of St. Louis.” Once we stepped out of our cars, the evidence of human intervention was even more present. We were careful not to step too near an open, uncovered sewer. Telephone poles and electric wires still stood along the street. Ross led us on foot to a clearing, which once was a yard, where the group took a break to talk and to decompress after the first half of the tour. Here, we gathered around a blanket for snacks of cookies, clementines, and hot tea that she prepared. We spent the time talking with the other audience members and walking around the general area; we were especially struck by the non-native plants clearly planted as landscaping, including a wall of bamboo, yucca plants that decorated the ends of what used to be driveways, and carefully placed evergreens that had outgrown their hedge-like purpose. By this point in the tour, we had developed a level of comfort with Ross and the rest of the audience members present. We had existed in “dangerous” spaces together and embodied a shared experience with each other and with our host, reflecting Shaughnessy’s idea that environmental theatre’s exchange between performer and audience allows for “a transfer of bodily sensations … which affects the participants, creating a felt exchange, an embodied experience.” [47] We had shared the experience up to this point, and that experience lead to trust, not simply assumed authority, in our guide. Figure 2. Picnic at the Carrollton Subdivision site, April 8, 2018, (Photo by author) After a bit, Ross stood up and talked to the group about Carrollton, which included a discussion of some of the rumors as to why the subdivision was evacuated. The space transformed for us, as we imagined the homes that once stood on this land, not too long ago. After all, “in site responsive work … there is a potential to transform our perceptions of the performed environment,” [48] as this too was a location that needed a bit of reconstruction through Ross’s guidance. While the driveways and sidewalks still existed, the outlines of residences that once were, Ross’s expert perspective helped us to reimage a space that was once a bustling community not that long ago. Our perspective shifted from viewing the area as a dumping ground to recognizing the lives that once centered on the suburban streets of the Carrollton subdivision. Unlike the historical distance between ourselves and the residents of Times Beach, it was easy to imagine the homes, the gardens, and the cars in the driveways. Thus, the meaning of this location was much easier to grasp than some of the others. Perhaps most ominous was a solitary light pole, long disconnected from its electric source. Ironically, Ross pointed out a current public park, built directly adjacent, that could be seen from our resting place. No fence or structure divided the park from the property where we sat, save some overgrown bushes. There was nothing to keep us in, or out, or to delineate the danger, real or fabricated, of the area of Carrollton from the recreational space next to it. Site #4 : West Lake Landfill The second to last stop on the tour was by all accounts the most well-known site on the itinerary: the West Lake Landfill. In 2010, the West Lake Landfill became the focus of national attention when it was discovered that a portion of the site was experiencing what experts called a “subsurface smoldering event,” referred to locally as an “underground fire.” [49] To make matters worse, the landfill was already known to contain illegally dumped radioactive waste. In 1973, a local company mixed 8,700 tons of radioactive waste, containing seven tons of uranium, with 3.5 times as much soil, and illegally dumped it into a local, unlined landfill. [50] In the 1990s, the landfill became a Superfund site and was added to the National Priorities List, and anti-nuclear activists had been fighting for the complete remediation of the site since the early 1970s. [51] Today, the landfill contains both radioactive waste and an underground fire. While the EPA maintains that the site is safe, residents believe they have been experiencing a variety of different health problems. [52] While much is known about this site, many residents, even those who live relatively close and those curious, have not physically gone to it. For many of the residents in the surrounding communities, the first indication that something was amiss and that they even lived near a landfill, was the presence of a chemical-like odor in the air. [53] The landfill’s existence likely went unnoticed by residents, in part by design, as landfills and industrial sites are strategically placed away from typical routes and neighborhoods. [54] But in this case, the waste was illegally dumped in a landfill in a densely populated area, and unlike many cases of toxic dumping, [55] the landfill is surrounded by predominantly white, working class neighborhoods. With greater access to resources, residents have in many ways garnered more media attention than other sites of toxicity. We felt great anticipation as we drove our car to a stop along a road that ran parallel to the edge of the landfill. Right away, we were met with a warning: “Posted. No trespassing. Keep out.,” informing us to remain on our side of the chain-link and barbed wire fence that ran the perimeter of the site. There were cameras along the fence offering constant surveillance of the area, which alerted the site’s security that our group of tourists was in the area. As we stood gazing across the expanse of the landfill, a pick-up truck pulled up just on the other side of the fence and while it never stopped, it crept slowly by us; clearly, we were being watched. Unlike Pezzullo’s definition of toxic tours that invite people into these spaces to educate the public, the operators at the landfill wanted us to keep out. [56] Here, we did not struggle with Levin’s environmental unconscious of the more unassuming sites, as the location was current and alive: we actually experienced it firsthand. This was the only point in the trip where we felt wearing the cheap, white masks may actually be necessary. While the smell was not apparent at first, it soon wafted our direction. Group members remarked on the smell and asked if it was safe to breathe the air. Our guide led the audience along the fence, providing the history of the mound we were here to explore. Not many people would go there given its status as an active landfill, even without the smoldering event that has attracted public attention. From a performance perspective, Levin argues: In environmental performance, the perspectivalism of the proscenium stage ostensibly falls away, the action no longer enframed within the confines of a single scenic picture; the staging takes place throughout a found or transformed environment. While the traditional spectator is positioned outside of the stage’s pictorial field, s/he is now placed inside of the theatrical picture. [57] Being there, we were inserted into the location and could grasp what it would be like to live at the border of the landfill, gaining an understanding of the community’s plight. Ross positioned the tour attendees in the frame of the performance by carefully “staging” the place through dictating where to stand and directing the audience’s attention through the added element of past and present knowledge, thus allowing the audience to engage fully in the setting of her performance. We felt safer in this place under her guidance and because of the authority of the character she curated. We were all fascinated by the visceral experience of standing next to the landfill. The mound seemed to breathe as if it was a living organism, given the pipes and mechanisms that allowed for the release of gasses from beneath its surface. It was hard not to be distracted by the seemingly living mound next to us, and we commented to one another that we were almost waiting for it to move. At this the fourth stop on Ross’s tour the impact of human consumption was palpable. This location is still “alive;” it has not yet faced the remediation efforts of the U.S. government and other forces. It was hard to believe that this site exists in the middle of suburbia, with residences on all sides. Figure 3. Allana Ross Overlooking the Landfill Site, April 8, 2018, (Photo by author) Before we left, Ross led the audience back up the road, past our cars, to a higher point in elevation that overlooked the landfill. Here, even though we could not see the landfill in its entirety, Our tour guide pointed out different features at the site to help us more fully grasp the gravity of the situation. Ross talked more specifically about the smoldering event, pointing to an area in the landfill where the “fire” is believed to be. We stood looking over the vast expanse of the mound, the green tarp and grass covered areas, and a seemingly endless system of pipes running in and across the surface. As Ross pointed out, it may be jarring to think of this site as alive, but that is part of the issue: the earth is alive, we just do not always treat it as such. Site #5 : Weldon Springs Most of our group left the tour after the landfill, leaving only about a third of the original participants. Pulling into a largely empty parking lot, save for only one other car, we had the final stop mostly to ourselves. While the West Lake Landfill gave the impression that every inch of the place was being closely observed and managed, the Weldon Springs site had the effect of being a world set apart, desolate, and otherworldly. Unlike the other sites of the day, which largely blended into their local environments and felt mundane, this site was intended to be a spectacle. Rising out of the largely flat terrain sat what can only be described as a mountain, covered in white-grey boulders. This mound is also a burial site of sorts, but in this case, it contains hazardous and radioactive waste. After WWII, the U.S. expanded its nuclear weapons programs. In St. Louis, production was moved to a 220-acre facility thirty miles from downtown. [58] The plant was in operation from 1957-1966, and in that time, it too generated an expansive amount of radioactive and hazardous waste, which was often stored in pits and quarries on the 17,000-acre property. The site was later remediated by the Department of Energy, and like Route 66 State Park, it was deemed uninhabitable but safe for recreational visitors. [59] For our tour group, the mound was immediately visible, rising high out of the earth. Today, the forty-five acre and seventy-five foot high mound is a tourist attraction that contains roughly “1.48 million cubic yards of PCBs, mercury, asbestos, TNT, radioactive uranium and radium, and contaminated sludge and rubble.” [60] The site includes a single story metal building which houses the “Weldon Springs Interpretive Center,” a museum and “exhibition hall preserving the legacy of the site, cleanup activities, and natural environment.” [61] Additionally, the site includes the “Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail,” which consists of a path leading to steps to climb the mound. The mention of nuclear waste is the only major connection to its past. Visitors to the mound are invited to explore, to climb to the peak and oversee their surroundings. Weldon Spring has become a local attraction, and it is now the highest peak in St. Charles County. Unlike the West Lake Landfill from where we had just come, this location invited visitors. Even though it was getting late in the day and the cold was starting to settle in past our coats, we noticed one other person in the park biking along the nature trail that wound its way around the large mound at the park’s center. In this act of bringing environment into the fore, Levin argues that the concept of camouflage of the environment engages “the spatial process by which we engage with and adapt to our material surroundings.” [62] Performance that engages the environment in which it is taking place uses camouflage to “[highlight] the non-human site as itself a performing entity, reminding us that the communication between self and setting is rarely unidirectional.” [63] Here, at Weldon Springs, the mound became the central character of the performance. It was quite a hike up a long staircase built into the side of what seemed like an endless mound of boulders. Just when we thought we were at the top, the path kept going to a central area. Ross encouraged us to walk the strange terrain, and we spent some time traversing the boulders, looking out over the edge, before heading to the highest peak. At the top, there was an area with benches and metal plaques describing the location, the history, and the cleanup of the area. There was also a diagram of the mound and details as to how it was constructed, including its dimensions. Again, this park is located within a highly populated, residential area with a local high school visible in the distance, closer than one would hope. Yet, with expanses of trees on all sides interrupted only briefly by buildings, it felt like the mound was secluded in nature. This unnatural place houses such potential danger, and yet we consumed it, temporarily, by being there. Figure 4. The surface of the Weldon Springs mound, April 8, 2018, (Photo by author) Both Shaughnessy and Levin highlight an important distinction in Ross’s performance: Ross does not engage her audience with a traditionally staged and scripted performance in these chosen spaces. On the tour, she evoked the sites of contamination, but still framed her performance as a tour of these locations, which could change based on the day, time, and audience present in creating her community. Thus, it is important to revisit Magelssen’s discussion of tourism when considering Ross’s performance. He observes that immersive tourism experiences “are tapping into the potential energies offered by inviting the audience to step through the fourth wall.” [64] Magelssen’s exploration of tourism and second-person interpretation [65] explores the ways spectators inherently become a part of the performance for the purpose of partaking in an immersive experience outside of their own lived experience. With Ross, however, we did not become a character in her performance through the means of Magelssen’s second-person interpretation. Rather, we became a part of the community built through performance and empowered by a renewed commitment to the environment/community, as we were not, in fact, complete outsiders to begin with. We said goodbye to our guide, and kept the knowledge of our experience at the forefront of our minds during the almost two-hour drive home. For a little more than five hours, a group of strangers gathered for Ross’s performance as she challenged our perception of these sites as they were consumed, and then reified, after human impact had contaminated the land. Through her tour, Ross asked us to engage with parts of our community that are outside of our everyday experiences, to know “the history of these sites in a safe space removed from their threats,” the unassuming danger that sits silently in the open among the housing developments, quiet streets, schools, and strip malls of suburban St. Louis. [66] Ross encouraged us to confront these lands: I think that it is important to repurpose the land because we depend on it and are connected to it. There is a limited amount of land and we can’t just trash it and abandon it … if we abandon these places we don’t feel the consequences, we don’t see that this is a repetitive pattern of behavior that comes from thinking we are separate from the land…so I think reckoning with the disastrous, contaminated, places that we have created is ultimately more beneficial than abandoning them for short term safety. [67] Part of our tour, then, was to confront the historical legacies of place and to see how some of these properties are now being used. Ross’s performance connected her audience to places within our community but that are still distant to many residents. Her performance brought attention to the issue of contaminated sites in the areas west of the city. Ross still hosts tours, advertised on local St. Louis-area Facebook groups, that focus on the landfill, Coldwater Creek, and current cleanup efforts. While she carried a brochure and notes containing historical facts and details on each location, Ross did not have a set script. Thus, the performance can change based on the community members present for the experience, guided by where they are able to go, how long they want to stay, and even the weather. The impact of the tour is lasting, as the sensory experience encourages participants to hold onto the images, smells, and sounds of each of the five sites, allowing Ross to achieve her goal of bringing awareness to the contamination of land in the place she too calls “home.” References [1] Allana Ross. 2017. “West Lake Landfill Facebook Page.” Facebook , March 26, 2017. https://www.facebook.com/groups/508327822519437/. [2] Jan Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 2. [3] Ibid., 2. [4] Ibid., 3. [5] Allana Ross, “Artist Statement—Allana Ross,” Allana Ross, 2017, https://allanaross.com/Statement-1. [6] Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts , 13. [7] Ibid., 5. [8] Richard Schechner, “6 axioms for environmental theatre.” ( The Drama Review: TDR 1968): 41-64.; Richard Schechner, Environmental Theater . (Hal Leonard Corporation, 1994).; Una Chaudhuri, Staging place: The Geography of Modern Drama . (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997).; Elinor Fuchs and Una Chaudhuri, eds., Land/scape/theater . (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002).; Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May, eds., Readings in Performance and Ecology . (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).; Stephen Bottoms and Matthew Goulish, eds., Small acts of repair: Performance, ecology and Goat Island . (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013).; Ric Knowles, The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning . (Montreal, CA: ECW Press, 1999). [9] Tim Cresswell, Place: An Introduction , 2nd ed. (Chichester, UK: J. Wiley & Sons, 2015), 39. [10] Nick Kaye, Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation . (New York, NY: Routledge, 2000), 65. [11] Baz Kershaw, Theatre ecology: Environments and performance events . (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 14. [12] Nicola Shaughnessy, Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice. (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 114; 102. [13] Ross, “Artist Statement — Allana Ross.” [14] Shaughnessy, Applying Performance , 113. [15] Laura Levin. Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In. (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 105-6. [16] David A Fennell and Ross Dowling, Ecotourism Policy and Planning , 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003), 1; 4. [17] Scott Magelssen. “Tourist Performance in the Twenty-first Century.” In Enacting History , edited by Scott Magelssen and Rhona Justice-Malloy. (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2011), 174.; Scott Magelssen. Living History Museums: Undoing History through Performance . (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007). [18] Magelssen, “Tourist Performance,” 177. [19] Robert Bullard, ed, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots . (Boston MA: South End Press, 1993).; Steven Lerner, Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure . (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). [20] Phaedra Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice. (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2009), 5. [21] William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England . (New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 2003). [22] Ross, “Artist Statement — Allana Ross.” [23] Ibid. [24] Allana Ross, Interview of Allana Ross of Toxic Mound Tours, interview by author, May 17, 2018. [25] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “TIMES BEACH Site Profile,” EPA’s Superfund Site Information for TIMES BEACH, n.d., https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.cleanup&id=0701237. [26] OLEM US EPA, “Superfund: CERCLA Overview,” Overviews and Factsheets, US EPA, 9 September 2015, https://www.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-cercla-overview. [27] Jennifer Sieg, “General Information: Down the ‘Mother Road’ Route 66 State Park,” Text, 6 February 2011, https://mostateparks.com/page/54997/general-information. [28] Thomas Voltaggio and John Adams, “Superfund: A Half-Century of Progress” (EPA Alumni Association, 1 March 2016), 6, https://www.epaalumni.org/hcp/superfund.pdf. [29] Levin. Performing Ground , 105-6. [30] Ross, “Artist Statement — Allana Ross.” [31] Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., “Fuel for the Atomic Age: Completion Report on St Louis- Area Uranium Operations, 1942-1967,” 30 September 1967, Environmental Archives, http://environmentalarchives.com/download/1967-09-30-mallinckrodt-fuel-atomic-age-report-st-louis-area-uranium-processing-operations/. [32] Seantel Anais and Kevin Walby, “Secrecy, Publicity, and the Bomb: Nuclear Publics and Objects of the Nevada Test Site, 1951-1992,” Cultural Studies 30, no. 6 (2016): 949–68. [33] Cheryl Wittenauer, “Woman Crusades for Ailing Nuclear Workers, Families,” Los Angeles Times , 29 February 2004, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-feb-29-adna-daughter29-story.html. [34] U.S Atomic Energy Commission, “1959-04-11 – AEC – Manhattan Project – History of the St Louis Airport Site” (U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 11 April 1959), Environmental Archives, http://environmentalarchives.com/download/1959-04-11-aec-manhattan-project-history-of-the-st-louis-airport-site/. [35] Ibid. [36] Ray Hartmann, “The Poisoned Children of Coldwater Creek Finally Get a Break,” St. Louis Magazine , 3 August 2018, https://www.stlmag.com/api/content/3f24000c-975f-11e8-b5a5-12408cbff2b0/. [37] Robert Alvarez, “West Lake Story: An Underground Fire, Radioactive Waste, and Governmental Failure,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 11 February 2016, http://thebulletin.org/west-lake-story-underground-fire-radioactive-waste-and-governmental-failure9160.; Keith Schneider, “Mountain of Nuclear Waste Splits St. Louis and Suburbs,” New York Times , 24 March 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/us/mountain-of-nuclear-waste-splits-st-louis-and-suburbs-888.html?pagewanted=all. [38] James Allen, “1974-05-16-AEC- Investigation of Cotter Corporation Illegal Dumping at Latty Avenue,” 17 May 1974, Environmental Archives, http://environmentalarchives.com/download/1974-05-16-aec-investigation-of-cotter-corporation-illegal-dumping-at-latty-avenue/.; Mary Freivogel, “Confusion Over Dumping of Radioactive Waste in County,” St Louis Post Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 30 May 1976; Mary Freivogel, “Radioactive Materials Checks Called Faulty,” St Louis Post Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 1 June 1976. [39] U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, “FUSRAP,” n.d., 1, https://www.usace.army.mil/Missions/Environmental/FUSRAP/ [40] U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, “St. Louis District > Missions > Centers of Expertise > Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program,” FUSRAP, n.d., https://www.mvs.usace.army.mil/Missions/Centers-of-Expertise/Formerly-Utilized-Sites-Remedial-Action-Program/. [41] Karl Brooks, “EPA Is Working toward a Remedy at West Lake Landfill,” Stltoday.Com , 20 February 2014, http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/epa-is-working-toward-a-remedy-at-west-lake-landfill/article_ff60744d-2c35-5439-b857-111705da97d5.html. [42] Cresswell, Place, 39. [43] Ibid. [44] Ibid. [45] Shaughnessy, Applying Performance , 113. [46] Carolyn Tuft, “Carrollton Was Once a Quiet Subdivision but Now It’s a Noisy Community in Limbo,” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 7 July 1995. [47] Shaughnessy, Applying Performance , 113. [48] Ibid. [49] Véronique LaCapra, “There’s A Burning Problem at The Bridgeton Landfill – It Stinks but Is It Unsafe?,” St. Louis Public Radio, 29 March 2013, http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/theres-burning-problem-bridgeton-landfill-it-stinks-it-unsafe. [50] Carolyn Bowers, Louis Rose, and Theresa Tighe, “A Miracle with A Price,” St Louis Post Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 12 February 1989. [51] Inc. Republic Services, “Bridgeton Landfill Timeline,” Website, 2014, http://www.bridgetonlandfill.com/bridgeton-landfill-timeline. [52] Brooks, “EPA Is Working toward a Remedy at West Lake Landfill.”; Veronique LaCapra, “Confused about the Bridgeton and West Lake Landfills? Here’s What You Should Know,” St. Louis Public Radio , 2 March 2014, http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/confused-about-bridgeton-and-west-lake-landfills-heres-what-you-should-know. [53] Jeffrey Tomich, “Hot Spot and Fumes Prompt Concern at Bridgeton Landfill,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 30 October 2012. [54] Andrew Hurley, “From Factory Town to Metropolitan Junkyard: Postindustrial Transitions on the Urban Periphery,” Environmental History 21, (2016): 3–29. [55] Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality , 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 2000).; Melissa Checker, Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2005). [56] Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism, 5. [57] Levin, Performing Ground, 68. [58] Fleishman-Hillard, Inc., “Fuel for the Atomic Age: Completion Report on St Louis- Area Uranium Operations, 1942-1967.” [59] Susan Davis and Puro, Steven, “Patterns of Intergovernmental Relations in Environmental Cleanup at Federal Facilities,” In Publius 29, no. 4 (1999), 33–53. [60] Doug Kirby, Ken Smith, and Mike Wilkins, “Nuclear Waste Adventure Trail, Weldon Spring, Missouri,” Roadside America, 1, accessed 25 October 2019, https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/14614. [61] DOE – Office of Legacy Management, “Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center and Educational Opportunities,” Energy.gov, August 2019, 1, https://www.lm.doe.gov/Weldon/Interpretive_Center/. [62] Levin, Performing Ground, 97. [63] Ibid. [64] Magelssen. “Tourist Performance,” 174. [65] Ibid., 175. [66] Ross, “Artist Statement — Allana Ross.” [67] Ross, Interview of Allana Ross of Toxic Mound Tours. Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography Introduction: Local Acts: Performing Communities, Performing Americas The Architecture of Local Performance: Stages of the Taliesin Fellowship “La conjura de Xinum” and Language Revitalization: Understanding Maya Agency through Theatre Exploring the History and Implications of Toxicity through St. Louis: Performance Artist Allana Ross and the “Toxic Mound Tours” Finding Home in the World Stage: Critical Creative Citizenship and the 13th South Asian Theatre Festival 2018 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Philip Wiles Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Philip Wiles By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF APPLIED IMPROVISATION: LEADING, COLLABORATING, AND CREATING BEYOND THE THEATRE. Edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure. London: Methuen Drama, 2018; Pp. 304. More than forty years since Keith Johnstone published Impro and more than sixty years after Viola Spolin’s seminal Improvisation for the Theater , there remains a paucity of literature concerned with either “impro” or “improv.” In this context, the scholarly rigor in Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre , a collection of essays by practitioners/facilitators as edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure, is refreshing. “Applied Improvisation,” here, refers to the use of the theories, techniques, and teachings of Spolin and Johnstone (and quite a bit of Augusto Boal) as applied outside of traditional theatrical performance contexts — often with the goal of training intrapersonal skills. While it might commonly be considered a subcategory of the broader “applied theatre,” an explicitly stated goal of this collection “is to establish AI as a field of study worthy of independent investigation” (3). While the viability of “AI” as an acronym for something other than Artificial Intelligence may be questionable in a post-ChatGPT world, the book does provide a foundation for further inquiries and can serve as a resource for practitioners and educators. As in the practice of improvisation, this collection emerges from the disparate contributions of a diverse set of practitioners and scholars. The book begins with a foreword by improvisers Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson, and an introduction by editors Dudeck and McClure that gives a brief history of the theory and practice of improvisation. Dudeck returns in the concluding chapter, moderating a conversation between comedian Neil Mullarkey and creativity and learning expert Keith Sawyer. The body of the book consists of autoethnographic essays; each chapter functions essentially as a postmortem of an applied improvisation project reflecting on successes, limitations and discoveries. Except for the introduction and conclusion, every chapter ends with a “workbook” detailing instructions for between one to three of the exercises referenced in that chapter. Application remains the editors’ central concern, and thus the book is tailored for practice in the field. The collection is divided into four parts that highlight the diversity of this field. The first, “Bringing Brands Back to Life,” consists of two essays describing how improvisation techniques were used to develop intrapersonal skills amongst service workers at a Pacific Northwest fast food chain, and to enliven market research in Karachi, Pakistan. Part 2, “Resilience and Connections,” looks at applications of improvisation in more humanitarian contexts: training resilience amongst Baltimorean oncology nurses, juvenile refugees in San Antonio, and in the wake of a typhoon in the Philippines. Part 3, “Leadership Development,” returns to a corporate environment with contributions describing how improvisation was used to modify the management culture at Tiffany & Co., coach executives in leadership skills in Hong Kong, and shake-up the organization of a real estate agency in Portland, OR. Part 4 “Higher Education,” includes chapters detailing the use of applied improvisation within the academy, including to facilitate conflict resolution at Portland State University, social justice initiatives at the Catholic University of America and communication with non-academics at Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis and the Indiana University School of Medicine. The contributors to the collection are all knowledgeable about and committed to the theory and practice of applied improvisation. However, readers should be forewarned that many of the authors have continuing relationships with their corporate clients and sometime their prose can slip into what is essentially ad-copy. “Charles Lewis Tiffany would have been amazed that 174 years after founding his stationery and small goods store in New York City, the name Tiffany & Co. would still be synonymous with quality, craftsmanship, and extravagance…” (141). That passage from Caitlin McClure’s “Tiffany & Co. Says Yes, And,” comes from one of the stronger contributions to the collection, despite a handful of sentences that read like advertisements. In her case study, McClure details how she used techniques and exercises developed by Johnstone as part of a broader effort to shift Tiffany’s management team from a theory of an “organizational culture” to an “organizational climate .” While such a distinction might appear inane, McClure ably identifies how this shift in management theory mirrors the practice of improvisation and illustrates how her workshops helped to facilitate a meaningful shift in behavior at the company. It is a highlight of the collection. Both McClure and Dudeck are heavily influenced by Johnstone—Dudeck has written a biography of Johnstone and is his literary executor—but other contributors draw on the work of Spolin, Boal and other improvisation theorists, often mixing and matching across these different and distinct traditions of improvisation. As scholarship, the book misses an opportunity to flesh out these separate genealogies and explicate how discrete strains of improvisation practice circulate and intertwine in contemporary workshops. Instead Dudeck and McClure flatten history and blur the distinctions between Spolin, Johnstone and Boal. They argue that the terms “impro” (the title of Johnstone’s book) and “improv” (closely associated with Chicago theatres like The Second City) are interchangeable (10). Neither their reasoning, nor the Facebook survey they marshal to support their claim is convincing. It is disappointing that a collection that aims to establish a new field of study would inadvertently erase complexity from that same field. Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre will interest practitioners of applied improvisation who are looking to see the cultural, practical and global range of the field as well as educators who want to demonstrate the uses of improvisation beyond theatre. The contributing essays are all written in a readable style and function as essays independent of the collection; this makes the volume easily digestible by undergraduate students. The exercises at the end of every chapter are thoroughly explained and should be easy to reproduce in studio classrooms. For these reasons and more, this volume very well may establish itself as a mainstay on the shelves of improvisation instructors. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre. Edited by Theresa Robbins Dudeck and Caitlin McClure. London: Methuen Drama, 2018. Footnotes About The Author(s) Philip Wiles is a scholar/actor/improviser from Houston, Texas who comes to the CUNY Graduate Center by way of Oklahoma and Los Angeles. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, he maintains his improv practice in the various improv comedy theatres sprinkled through the city. He holds a BFA in Drama from the University of Oklahoma, and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction America Happened to Me: Immigration, Acculturation, and Crafting Empathy in Rags Burning it Down: Theatre Fires, Collective Trauma Memory, and the TikTok Ban “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Archiving a Life in Theatre: The Legacy of Michael Feingold Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States Staged News: The Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers in New York Applied Improvisation: Leading, Collaborating, and Creating Beyond the Theatre Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century Appropriate Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month MáM Scene Partners Oh, Mary! 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Heather S. Nathans Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 1 Visit Journal Homepage Performing Anti-slavery Heather S. Nathans By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Performing Anti-slavery: Activist Women on Antebellum Stages . By Gay Gibson Cima. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 298. Gay Gibson Cima’s new book, Performing Anti-Slavery , should become a model for how to combine detailed historical research with activism. In her compelling study, she imaginatively links the struggle to end slavery in antebellum America with the larger issue of human trafficking. At once erudite and passionate, it is an exemplary piece of scholarship that will provoke discussions among scholars of American theatre, American Studies, Africana Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and other academic communities interested in how historical research can be imbued with a sense of immediacy for contemporary readers. And as the author promises, it engages with an impressive breadth of interdisciplinary methods, including performance studies, critical race theory, American studies, and feminist studies. As Cima observes in the introduction, female anti-slavery activists seldom had the luxury of presenting the kinds of public performances available to their male counterparts. So she invites her readers to consider a broader definition of what might constitute “performance” for women traditionally relegated to the domestic sphere. She examines a range of performances, from the gatherings of African American female literary societies, to the public appearances of noted escaped slave Ellen Craft, who made her way to freedom and international fame by impersonating a white slave owner. While these exist outside the realms of the playhouse proper, they nevertheless became effective sites for women to perform resistance and political consciousness. In this, the project echoes her award-winning book Early American Women Critics: Performance, Religion, Race , in which she examined how antebellum women redefined themselves as “host bodies” and their roles as cultural critics rather than mere passive observers. Performing Anti-Slavery is a natural extension of that earlier work, shifting the discourse into the realm of political activism. Cima is interested in the “stickiness” of the questions that surrounded how black and white women performed affect throughout the first half of the nineteenth century (17). She acknowledges the need for nineteenth century women to develop a wide and often subversive array of political strategies “that would enable them to reach their antislavery goals” (17). Cima pays particular attention to the question of spectatorship and how female antislavery performers such as Maria Stewart, Sarah Douglass, Ellen Craft, and Lucretia Mott, among others, conjured their imagined audiences. Rather than projecting a neutral spectator, Cima argues that activist women often invoked slaves as “the partisan, outlier spectators of their activism” (15). This paradigm shift refocused the audience’s awareness of their position, and, as Cima suggests, their understanding of their own complicity in the slave system. Cima’s study also posits what she describes as a “combination of performance strategies—working simultaneously within and outside of the state,” as a possible model for contemporary thinking about human trafficking, since “the tension . . . shows what is and what is not possible in the way of establishing human rights within a democracy” (14). Performing Anti-Slavery spans four chapters plus an epilogue that extends the discussion into the present day. In chapter one (which lays the theoretical foundation for the study), she underscores a critical distinction between sympathy and empathy, suggesting that empathy is both an ahistorical and inaccurate term to describe how nineteenth-century women engaged with enslaved women (both directly and indirectly). For Cima, the term empathy slips too easily into the realm Saidiya Hartman cautions against in her Scenes of Subjection , in which supposedly empathetic spectators displaced the slave’s body at the center of the abolitionist narrative. As Cima observes, sympathetic critical responses prompt the “second step to performing sympathy” (55). Cima also takes up the role of religion in abolitionism (as she did in Early American Women Critics ), this time turning her attention to metempsychosis, a belief in the transmigration of souls from one form to another at the time of death. As she notes, this somewhat loose adaptation of Hinduism and Buddhism was synthesized with contemporary Western writings on sympathy (68). Not content merely to witness passively, female anti-slavery activists who embraced metempsychosis openly derided women who imagined that tears could substitute for action. The concept of metempsychosis recurs throughout the study as a touchstone for how antislavery performers envisioned their activist work. Cima acknowledges that while common themes and discourses circulated among female anti-slavery activists, “anti-slavery women were fueled by wildly disparate objectives, so they generated different effects,” and indeed she returns to this theme in her epilogue in discussing present-day activist efforts (61). She reminds her reader that distinctions of class, color, and faith continued to divide women in the movement, no matter how closely their affective practices drew them together. Throughout her study, Cima pays careful attention to the ways in which female activists mobilized theatrical practices (e.g., the readings of scripted “conversations” at literary society meetings the convenings of aid societies, deliveries of public lectures, publishing of poems or jeremiads under pseudonyms designed to at once conceal and provoke). In one instance that reveals a nice attention to detail, she even points to the inherently dramatic beats or moments embedded in the cry of “oh!” that punctuate antislavery writings (for example, “with no hope to cheer them—oh!”). Cima interprets this as an “indignant shout” rather than a helpless lamentation (71). Chapters two, three, and four flow together smoothly as Cima explores the ways in which her black female subjects found compassion for themselves as well as others. For example, in chapter two she examines Sarah Douglass’s 1832 speech to the Female Literary Association of Philadelphia, in which Douglass helped to shift the rhetorical ground of abolitionist speech. As Cima argues, black women faced physical jeopardy not only for participating in antislavery gatherings, but on a daily basis as laws governing free blacks tightened in Northern states. For Douglass, feeling for the slave in bondage to the South had to be implicitly and explicitly joined to the danger facing free black women. As Cima notes, Douglass thus “created a sisterly bond, a community” (117). Cima links that recognition of compassion to the women’s ability to develop effective performative practices. The realization (which she describes as an epiphany) that outsiders did not distinguish between enslaved and free, wealthy or working class, but saw only race, helped to promote one of the most stunning episodes considered in chapter four of the study work: the escape of William and Ellen Craft and the “brilliant theatricality” that allowed Ellen Craft to perform and re-perform both black and white racial identities on a transatlantic stage in a kind of “disruptive hybridity” (182, 205). In her brief epilogue, Cima turns her attention to the urgent question of human trafficking in the twenty-first century. Quoting a report from the US “Trafficking in Persons” office, she notes that “12.3 million people exist within conditions of ‘forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution’ around the globe, and 56 percent of them are women and girls” (249). Asking, “How can artist-activists imagine interventions,” Cima cautions against the ‘new’ abolitionists whose debates over strategies and the links between slavery and the ideal democratic state risk reducing the enslaved bodies in question to the inert status of three centuries ago (247). At the end of the study, she invokes her own activist practice with the Humanities and Human Rights Initiative at Georgetown as a process that illuminated her own understanding of how the female antislavery activists of more than a century ago wrestled with the challenge of combining their sense of mission with the almost insurmountable obstacles around them. Framing the work of abolitionism as an ongoing process lifts the work of Cima’s subjects out of the past and places it firmly in our present. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Heather S. Nathans Tufts 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 American Tragedian Changes, Constants, Constraints: African American Theatre History Scholarship Performing Anti-slavery The Captive Stage Musical Theatre Studies Reflections: Fifty Years of Chicano/Latino Theatre Transgressive Engagements: The Here and Now of Queer Theatre Scholarship Strangers Onstage: Asia, America, Theatre, and Performance Thinking about Temporality and Theatre Murder Most Queer New Directions in Dramatic and Theatrical Theory: The Emerging Discipline of Performance Philosophy “Re-righting” Finland’s Winter War: Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night[s] Star Struck!: The Phenomenological Affect of Celebrity on Broadway Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jared Strange 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 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area Jared Strange By Published on May 11, 2023 Download Article as PDF For most Americans, the mere mention of “the DMV” summons nightmares of bureaucratic deadlock. For residents of the DC-Maryland-Virginia metropolitan area such as myself, it means something like home—though living a few Metro stops away from the seat of the federal government means deadlock is never far from mind. Apart from residing in the shadow of the Capitol, our DMV is characterized by a curiously disconnected sense of place. For my part, much of that has to do with the University of Maryland, my institutional home in a DC pseudo-suburb otherwise known for housing the local IKEA. Some of it has to do with the peculiarities of the District, which has outgrown its exclusively federal designation and stubbornly progressed through stages of self-rule, though not to the point where it is always clear who is in charge. As in most places, the pandemic affected this DMV in unique ways, and as in most places, theatre artists responded in turn. One of the signature issues artists faced was how to meet people where they are—a troublesome prospect in the DMV even before the advent of the pandemic. In the autumn of 2019, a group of artists came together at the urging of playwrights Jennifer Barclay and Tim J. Lord to address that challenge by leveraging the area’s significant but disparate new play development faculties. The new collective, later to be known as District Dramatists, gathered under auspicious signs at the REACH, a sparkling new space at the Kennedy Center. Optimism ran high, though the challenge of serving artists through decentralized leadership without overburdening volunteers quickly proved an obstacle. The arrival of lockdown, coupled with the furlough of our Kennedy Center advocates, brought that obstacle into especially stark relief, and ended our experiment prematurely. The dissolution of District Dramatists foreshadowed aspects of new play development, and our very artform itself, that would demand consideration over the coming years: the dynamics of space in the time of social distancing and the material needs of artists in a time of social reckoning. Unsurprisingly, the opportunities and limitations of digital space were a significant factor in navigating the first two years of the pandemic. The University of Maryland became a trailblazer in this regard when it transitioned an in-person production of Qui Nguyen’s D&D-centric play She Kills Monsters to the Zoom room under the guidance of media specialist and digital champion Jared Mezzocchi and co-director Lisa Nathans. The move quickly established and tested the rules of Zoom theatre. Over time, many artists adopted similar models, producing everything from daring new works such as FakeFriends’ Circle Jerk to small companies such as Theatre in Quarantine. The DMV also became a hive for new play development programming that sought to recreate the rehearsal space in the Zoom room, often with mixed results. In my own developmental work with Rorschach Theatre Company and UMD’s Fearless New Play Festival, I found myself contending with both the actual expectations of the Zoom rehearsal space and the imagined expectations of the “real” rehearsal space. Crucially, the shift online did suggest positive adaptations for “post-COVID” development, which has so far included making readings on Zoom, solely or in a hybrid format, something like the norm, and allowing artists to participate in initial developmental work from afar. To what degree these accessible arrangements will become standard remains to be seen. While online spaces should continue to bolster new play development through mixed modes of production, other projects speak to the enduring power of the physical. After having its original season stymied, Rorschach Theatre Company, under the leadership of co-artistic directors Randy Baker and Jenny McConnell Frederick, joined with associate artists to develop an immersive, site-specific, mail-in project titled Psychogeographies . Now in its third iteration, Psychogeographies tells epic stories of science-fiction and fantasy through boxes of letters and artifacts mailed out to subscribers monthly. Subscribers are then invited to explore the contents of each box at a corresponding location in the DMV. Each story beat draws inspiration from the location, evoking both its geographical particulars and the power dynamics that have shaped and reshaped that geography over time. The story concludes with a live, immersive performance at a venue in DC, echoing Rorschach’s long-running commitment to exploring the way space informs narrative and experience. While criss-crossing the DMV via bike, train, and car for the project’s second installment, Chemical Exile , I became especially mindful of how embracing location as the primary connective thread of a narrative resonates both with the histories of each site and the renewed appreciation for public spaces that emerged during the early days of the pandemic, when there was hardly anywhere else to go. It helped that Chemical Exile , co-developed with associate artists Kylos Brannon, Doug Robinson, Shayla Roland, and Jonelle Walker, centered on a scientist who returns to the United States to find her material world an eerie mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. The resulting sense of disorientation chimed with my efforts to grasp the region’s unique terrain and refined my attention to the ways many residents—particularly Black residents, like the play’s heroine—have had to grapple with the forces of gentrification transforming their homes into places that are strange and even hostile. As I alluded in my review of the piece for Washington City Paper , one of the challenges of “bingeing” Chemical Exile in one day—which, to be very clear, is not what Rorschach recommends—is that it made my transition from a self-driven, exploratory process into a delimited immersive performance especially jarring. Even in a space as beautifully rendered by Rorschach’s cadre of set designers (Nadir Bey, Sarah Beth Hall, and Grace Trudeau), I found myself longing for the freedom to explore the tension between the real world and the play’s world on my own. Thankfully, even as the District returns to something like the old “normal,” Baker and Frederick remain committed to producing new iterations of the project and introducing new audiences to the area’s psychogeography. For all the technological innovations and spatial rearrangements that the pandemic has forced new playmakers to adopt, one of the most significant pushes has been to empower audience members and theatre-makers who are often excluded from the head table. For my part, that push is most evident in education. When the pandemic set in, my chief side-gig at The National Theatre in DC shifted online, leading to an expansive website project aimed at documenting the institution’s history, a significant portion of which has been taken up by hosting pre-Broadway tryouts for future classics such as Fiddler on the Roof and M. Butterfly , and integrating them with DC-area high school curricula. More significant, however, was my time as a teaching artist with Young Playwrights’ Theater, an organization that specializes in in-school and after-school playwriting classes for students of all ages, including adults. One of my assignments was at Chelsea School, a small campus stuffed into a commercial building near the Mall at Prince George’s Plaza in Hyattsville, Maryland. The school specializes in helping students with language and learning difficulties, many of whom benefit from a suite of Google tools that include screen-readers and other language-processing technologies. In recognition of their needs, Young Playwrights’ Theater brought me on with license to riff on their usual curricula alongside my Chelsea co-teacher, who just so happened to be the school’s director. I initially took my freedom to experiment as an exciting opportunity to decenter the individual writing in our course and adopt something closer to a devised or writers’ room model. Instead of beginning with Freytag’s pyramid, I urged the students to build worlds based on the stories that moved them, taking note of everything from themes to characters to settings. Instead of drafting dialogue, I encouraged them to fill a Google Slides document with notes, images, ideas, or anything that would evoke what their collective imagination conjured. I wanted to prove that they already knew what made a good story and that we could create one of our own if we worked together. The actual writing would come later in the form of individual monologues set in the world of their design. As it happened, the plan for what we would produce changed over the course of the semester to eventually become a play that was conceived by the group, drafted by me, and presented semi-privately in the classroom. Nearly all those changes were programmatically driven; for example, the initial plan to rotate in new groups was discarded, meaning I effectively had to extend my curriculum by half a semester. Even with that shift in mind, progress was slow-going and sometimes frustrating, though that had more to do with larger issues than with the students. The two groups, one made up of middle-school girls and one of the high-school boys, were like any random sample of teenagers: active and engaged somedays, moody and distant others; some of them eager to bring the text to their feet, others petrified of making a fool of themselves. It was only later that I learned their teachers had brought me and a litany of other arts partners into their classrooms because the effects of pandemic pivots, staff departures, and the usual pressures of adolescent life had simply worn everybody out. My role as a teaching artist had less to do with generating new scripts or even helping the students advance their language facilities (a task I was not suited for on my own) and more to do with helping them release some of the steam that had built up during the past two years of their young lives spent tossing and turning on the waves of unrest. What I had treated as a pedagogical sandbox was really a chance to engage with one of the core values of storytelling: imagining other worlds that help us handle this one. Bearing that in mind, I think we can be happy with the results, even if I still came away with a long list of things to try differently next time. For example, I would take greater initiative to educate myself about pedagogical approaches suited to the environment, rather than referring solely to my already over-worked co-teacher. I also would not be so quick to shove the building blocks of dramatic action and character development to the back; if anything, understanding that a story depends much more on what a character does than what they say could be especially helpful to students for whom language is often a barrier. While my experience at Chelsea was immensely informative, it was also a prime reminder that meeting people where they are often has less to do with “producing” art than connecting with someone else’s reality. In that sense, it highlighted all the ways in which space can, and should, shape new play development. The screen-reading technology that helps some students process text is like the Zoom technology that kept professional read-throughs together: it’s a way to help bridge the gap of access and expand the reach of our room. Chelsea itself, shunted into an office floor above a clinic and a gym, illustrates how young people who are already on the fringes can be pushed even further from the center by physical and institutional architecture. My very presence, summoned by an exhausted administration’s cry for help, proves that no matter the method, what so often dictates the development of new stories is what the participants bring with them. Art does not arise out of a vacuum: it arises out of human beings meeting each other where they are. For all the ways that our new technologies and our old streets have changed new play development, that fact is effectively the same. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JARED STRANGE , Ph.D., MFA, is the Education Programs Manager at The National Theatre, as well as a writer, dramaturg, educator, and scholar based in Washington, DC. His scholarship and reviews can be found in Theatre Research International , Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , Comparative Drama , Theatre Journal , American Theatre magazine, 3Views on Theater , Washington City Paper , and DC Theater Arts . His plays have been workshopped and produced at the MeetFactory in Prague, DC Source Festival, Rorschach Theatre Company, WildWind Performance Lab, Bath Fringe Festival, Dayton Playhouse FutureFest, and the William Inge Theatre Festival. As a dramaturg, Jared specializes in new play development, audience engagement, and education. 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 Aural/Oral Dramaturgies: Theatre in the Digital Age México (Expropriated): Reappropriation and Rechoreography of Ballet Folklórico Making Up for Lost Time: New Play Development in Academia Post COVID 19 The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot Effing Robots Online: The Digital Dramaturgy of Translating In-Person Theatre to Online Streaming From Safe to Brave—Developing A Model for Interrogating Race, Racism and the Black Lives Matter Movement Using Devised Theater 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 Meet Me Where I Am: New Play Dispatches from the DC Area Playing Global (re)Entry: Migration, Surveillance, and Digital Artmaking The Front Porch Plays: Socially-Distanced, Covid-Safe, Micro-Theatre (Re)Generation: Creating Situational Urban Theatre During COVID and Beyond Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time Chevruta Partnership and the Playwright/Dramaturg Relationship Feeling the Future at Christian End-Time Performances Democracy Moving: Bill T. Jones, Contemporary American Performance, and the Racial Past The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre Since 1945: Edited by Julia Listengarten and Stephen Di Benedetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021; Pp. 273. Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times: Edited by Kendra Capece, Patrick Scorese. New York: Routledge, 2023; Pp. 188 Borderlands Children’s Theatre: Historical Developments and Emergence of Chicana/o/Mexican-American Youth Theatre Sarah Gancher and Jared Mezzocchi : How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator Starting with the Space: An Interview with Patrick Gabridge Reviving Feminist Archives: An Interview with Leigh Fondakowski Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Bradley Stephenson 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 This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Bradley Stephenson By Published on May 26, 2016 Download Article as PDF ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. by Bradley Stephenson The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 28, Number 2 (Spring 2016) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center D.W. Gregory’s most famous and most produced play is Radium Girls (2003), which dramatizes the story of several young women from Orange, New Jersey who developed radium poisoning as a result of their employment with the U.S. Radium Corporation during the late 1910s and early 1920s.[1] The girls were dial painters, whose delicate fingers were required to paint watch dials with radium-laced, glow-in-the-dark paint. The story was the subject of Claudia Clark’s 1997 book, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935, which provided Gregory with much of the historical context for her play.[2] Scientific progress created a new industry of radium-based glow in the dark paint, yet the material consequences of those labor practices were poorly understood. The dial painters’ fight for justice was one of the first instances in the United States of a corporation being held legally responsible for the safety and well-being of its employees. Gregory’s Radium Girls focuses on the experiences of Grace Fryer, one of the original dial painters and a key plaintiff in the case against the U.S. Radium Corporation. The play takes place between 1918 and 1928, encompassing the time from when the women began getting ill to the settlement of their case. The radium poisoning suffered by the workers resulted in bone loss, debilitating pain, loss of physical mobility, and eventually death. At the start of the play, Grace is a plucky fifteen year old girl working as a dial painter. As her friends begin getting sick and dying, the girls’ quest to uncover the truth of the mysterious illness, and the corporation’s quest to hide the truth, slam against each other in a “cinematic, briskly-paced,” highly theatrical style.[3] The play utilizes many facets of Brecht’s epic theatre, including historicization and the juxtaposition of comic, presentational scenes with more serious, naturalistic ones, simultaneously calling attention to the politicized nature of the content while emphasizing the theatricality and performative nature of the play itself. Despite the authorial instructions for this kind of stylized simplicity, the play is often over-produced with elaborate theatrical sets and costumes, larger casts, and attempts at historical realism that run counter to the playwright’s stylistic intent. I have seen a similarly over-produced production, and the pace slowed down significantly, resulting in a grim and tedious performance that lost the “descriptive simplicity and graphic candor” noted by Robert Daniels in his Variety review of the original production workshop at the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey in 2000.[4] Despite a tendency towards elaborate production style and grim tone, the play still has great potential, if understood and handled properly, to make possible the transformation of actors’ and audiences’ intra-acting bodies. The labor practices dramatized in the play were born from scientific discoveries that opened up many new possibilities, products, and potentials for profit. The story itself may be novel to some readers, but the battle of the individual versus the corporate entity, enflamed by the media, is hardly new. The debilitating physical ramifications that resulted from the interaction of bodies and radioactive particles provide a fascinating avenue of inquiry which opens up new possibilities for understanding bodies, plays, performance, and the nature of life itself. Using a variety of disability theories in the analytical foreground of a close reading of the play, this essay suggests how accounting for the interactions of scientific materialities with diverse bodies in historical and performative realities can transform the way we see our intra-acting bodies in the world, and the world in our bodies.[5] It is pertinent to ask the extent to which the Radium Girls should be considered disabled subjects. Does chronic illness fall under the umbrella of Disability? Do they start out sick and then become disabled at a certain point? Is disability itself just a social construct that is more about institutions and obstacles than bodies and capacities?[6] For the purposes of this essay, it is helpful to resituate notions of disability away from the binary of disabled vs. non-disabled. Jasbir K. Puar reframes disability more as a spectrum or “an interdependent relationship between bodily capacity and bodily debility.”[7] She uses the concept of “slow death” in a robust theorization of debility and queer sexuality that exposes the capitalist ramifications of non-normative bodies in a contemporary context: Capacity and debility are seeming opposites generated by increasingly demanding neoliberal formulations of health, agency, and choice [that generate] population aggregates. Those “folded” into life are seen as more capacious or on the side of capacity, while those targeted for premature or slow death are figured as debility. Such an analysis re-poses the questions: which bodies are made to pay for “progress”? Which debilitated bodies can be reinvigorated for neoliberalism, and which cannot?[8] From this perspective, the ramifications for the Radium Girls are significant, both historically and within the play. Are their lives and bodies the cost of scientific progress and knowledge? Can their decaying bodies be made useful to society? Their “slow death” is certainly useful to the media industry that is always intervening to get exclusive rights and sell papers in the play. Debility can be very profitable to capitalism, and so is the demand to “recover” from or overcome it.[9] It is no coincidence that the character who spearheads Grace’s public campaign and is her most powerful ally, Katherine Wiley, is the executive director of the New Jersey Consumer’s League. Wiley says in her speech to a crowd of onlookers near the end of the first act, “We do not have to accept injustice. We can use our powers as consumers to influence the practices of those who would wish to profit from our patronage.”[10] In Radium Girls, this slow death and the desire to recover from it are closely related to ideas of consumerism and scientific progress. The power to purchase the products of these scientific advances ultimately provides the key to coercing corporations into accepting responsibility for the safety of their workers. Early in the twentieth century, radium was seen as a scientific miracle and cure-all. The discovery of radium facilitated the development of nuclear medicine and radiation therapy as a cancer treatment. Radium was also commercially popularized and used in hundreds of quack remedies and natural tonics from radioactive water to cigarettes to suppositories and bath salts.[11] A notable example of these quack cures receives some prominent product placement in the play. Radithor was a famous patent medicine that was manufactured in Orange, New Jersey, at the same time as the events of the play. Its inventor, William J. A. Bailey, makes an appearance in the play – giving out free samples and basking in the media attention of his business successes – that comes off to contemporary audiences more like an infomercial than a news reel. He says, “Radioactivity is one of the most remarkable agents in medical science. I drink Radithor myself and I can vouch for its power.”[12] This idea of the agency of the radium itself can provide an interesting avenue of exploration that can deepen our understanding of labor and disabled bodies within the play and within the wider fields of science studies and disability studies. Radithor famously contributed to the death of the wealthy New England socialite Eben Byers in 1932. Ron Winslow’s headline for his article recounting the event in the August 1, 1990, issue of The Wall Street Journal was “The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off.” In the play, even the complex antagonist Arthur Roeder, president of U.S. Radium Corporation, is convinced of the healing powers of radium, and he unquestioningly consumes Radithor daily with his wife: “Diane! I have documents—I have articles—People with tumors the size of baseballs. Radium therapy—the tumors disappear. Diane. […] We save lives. We make lives better—mild radium therapy—invigorates. You can’t really think I’m a liar.”[13] Roeder’s trust and naïveté, shared by the real-life Eben Byers, are symptomatic of a world view that relegates physical matter to mere objects, without agency or action, a product to be manufactured, sold, exploited, and utilized. But radium will not remain a passive object to be manipulated. Radium is an actor that responds. In Mel Chen’s groundbreaking 2012 book, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, she re-theorizes notions of animacy as an “often racialized and sexualized means of conceptual and affective mediation between human and inhuman, animate and inanimate, whether in language, rhetoric, or imagery.”[14] Chen’s work brings notions of agency and sentience to nonlife as well as life. “Animacy is built on the recognition that abstract concepts, inanimate objects, and things in between can be queered and racialized without human bodies present, quite beyond questions of personification.”[15] From this perspective, inanimate atoms are both actants and actors with which human beings must reckon. In this way, radium itself becomes an actor and character in the play. The opening scene of the young girls giggling and painting their teeth and faces with radioactive paint takes on new meaning if one considers the radium-laced paint to have its own animacy. As a joke, the girls turn off the lights to scare their supervisor, and “their faces [glow] like jack-o’-lanterns in the dark. A scream, laughter, and the lights go up again.”[16] No longer just a childish school girl prank, the scene takes a much more sinister tone. Many audiences are probably already primed for this response, if they have any knowledge of the story or the nature of radioactive material. In a sense, Gregory is already capitalizing on the theatricality of animacy. In the theatre, objects and bodies tend to be endowed with meaning and action that always have forward motion. The opening scene with the painted faces not only characterizes the girls and their relationships; it also propels the play forward towards its inevitable conclusion. The presence of the toxic radium necessarily influences that trajectory and adds multiple shards of meaning to the action. Moving from the metaphor of the toxic to the actual toxic creates “rapidly multiplying meanings.”[17] Like the radium-laced paint in the first scene, the Radithor that the Roeders consume on stage thus becomes a new character, an actor with significant impact on the outcome of the story and the lives of the other players. What then should be made of this silent character, this toxic and invisible but always active radium, and how does Gregory account for this toxic activity in the play? Chen says that “Toxicity straddles boundaries of ‘life’ and ‘nonlife,’ as well as the literal bounds of bodies, in ways that introduce a certain complexity to the presumption of integrity of either lifely or deathly subjects.”[18] While Chen’s theorization of toxicity is robust, she relies on a boundaried binary concept of living and non-living in her theory of toxicity. In the play, Grace’s fiancé, Tom Krieder, tries to deny what he calls “this in-between life” of Grace’s radioactive debility, yet his words betray an unconscious recognition that radioactive disability seems to defy the life-nonlife binary in several crucial, and theatrical, ways.[19] Like many great characters from the history of theatre, radioactive atoms are unstable and project parts of themselves outwards, projections that can create dramatic chain reactions. Radioactive atoms have a strong objective, to attain stability. Like the minds of these characters created from words on a page, radioactive atoms have a life of their own that attracts analysis, to more fully understand the mysterious inner workings deep inside them. While this radium-as-character analogy is far from perfect, through it one can explore how Chen’s complex presumptions of integrity are realized and dramatized on multiple levels: nuclear, personal, performative, and theoretical. A fuller account of radioactivity can thus help problematize the life-nonlife binary, illuminate Radium Girls and other dramatic forms, and also enrich our notions of lives, non-lives, and half-lives, of ability and debility. In an article in the journal Nature, J. Rondo describes radium as an example of the “long-lived bone-seeking radio-elements.”[20] Rondo’s 1969 meta-analysis gathers data from multiple studies from the 1950s and earlier that tried to describe the “biological half-life” of radium, i.e., how long it takes half of the radium to leave the human body once it has been taken in. While radium’s biological half-life is not precisely identified, somewhere around 15-28 years, its radioactive half-life is well known: 1601 years. Radioactive half-life refers to the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms in a given sample of radioactive material to undergo nuclear decay. So, after one half-life of time, there will be 50% of the original amount of radioactive material remaining; after two half-lives there will be 25% less; after three, 12.5%; and so on. To give some perspective on the activity of radium, its half-life is relatively short, about 1601 years, yet radium is almost three million times more radioactive than uranium-238, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. What is most interesting about these facts is not the numbers, but the language that science uses to describe the element. Radioactive elements have “life” (or at least “half-life”) as part of their definitive natures. This half-living nature of radioactive matter in general, and radium in particular, complicates conceptions of life and non-life that go beyond biology and chemistry and raises significant ontological questions that are explored in the play. Many news articles referred to (or spectacularized) the Radium Girls as “The Living Dead.” Taking up a third of the page above a photo of a frail woman being comforted by other women, the headline of the February 11, 1938 edition of the Chicago Daily Times reads “‘Living Death’ Quiz at Bedside.”[21] These girls are not dead yet, but they are no longer fully living. As Chen might say, the presumption of their “lifely” physical integrity is in question.[22] In the play, the Radium Girls also become associated with death while still alive. “That girl is still staring at me,” Roeder says at the trial. “She looks like death, Edward.” To which his lawyer, Edward Markley, replies, “They all look like death, Arthur.”[23] Even the Sob Sister, who usually pulls at the public’s sentimental heart strings, can’t help having a moment of glee at how many papers she will sell because of the girls’ ultimate demise. REPORTER: Radium Girls Go to Court Today! SOB SISTER: Radium Girls Knock at the Doors of Justice! Will they be heard? REPORTER: These poor, injured girls face pain! SOB SISTER: Disfigurement! REPORTER: Ruin! SOB SISTER: (cheerfully) And death! […] Read it in the Graphic! We care. Because you care.[24] As described above, radium is a “bone-seeking” element, due in part to its chemical similarities with calcium. When introduced to a biological system, radium becomes a kind of living actor with two objectives: to seek bone and settle there, and to seek nuclear stability by emitting alpha particles and gamma rays.[25] Ironically, just as life is made less-living by the addition of the half-life agency of radium, death is made more “lifely” as a result of the same. In Radium Girls, after the medical examiner exhumes the remains of Amelia Maggia, the first Radium Girl to die, the body (particularly the lower and upper jaws and the lumbar vertebrae) is found to be highly radioactive with no evidence of syphilis, initially said to be the cause of death. The Sob Sister and Reporter jump in immediately: “Body is Radioactive!” “Bones of Dead Girl Kick Off Gamma Rays!”[26] Even in death, the radium still lives. Conjuring images of the Valley of Dry Bones from Ezekiel chapter 37, the radium-infused bones are still kicking off gamma rays. It is as if the toxicity of the radium prevents life from being just life, and death from being just death. The interactions of radium and bodies will always be more than the binary of life and nonlife. Likewise, as Tom says in regard to Grace’s growing debility, disability itself can be thought of as a kind of “in-between life.” People with disabilities are often viewed as “less than” or lacking some aspect of “normalcy”, a kind of half-life to be anxious about. But what if, instead of this ableist perception of defective otherness, one thought of the “half-life” of disability in this more transcendent sense of an agency that brings something more to one’s existence, something that would not be possible or conceivable without the intersection of life and half-life, of ability with debility? For there is always an intermingling of ability with disability along the spectrum of our existence. There is something about the interactions of the agency of radioactivity and the agency of biological bodies that changes the very nature of materiality, agency, and life itself. In the case of the Living Dead Girls, the merging of life with half-life brings about an association with non-life. Conversely, in the case of Maggia’s exhumed jawbone, the blending of death with half-life evokes a kind of liveliness, kicking off gamma rays. Bodies and atoms are intertwined and interacting in ways that transcend the physical and the phenomenological. Stacy Alaimo’s theory of “trans-corporeality” emphasizes this interconnectedness of human bodies with the more-than-human world. Trans-corporeality looks at the “flows of substances” and theorizes “the often unpredictable and unwanted actions of human bodies, nonhuman creatures, ecological systems, chemical agents, and other actors.”[27] This hermeneutic approach can “account for the ways in which nature, the environment, and the material world itself signify, act upon, or otherwise affect human bodies, knowledges, and practices,” thus necessitating broader ways of thinking about the world, bodies, environments, and materiality.[28] Seen in this way, Radium Girls becomes a potent example of trans-corporeal space, “in which the body can never be disentangled from the material world.”[29] The simple cause-and-effect approach to understanding the debilitating effects of radium poisoning begins to break down in favor of a more inclusive understanding of intra-acting agencies. Thus, the debilities of the Radium Girls are no longer understood as additions to or deletions from a ‘normal’ body. Rather, bodies and lives exist on a spectrum possessing various degrees of half-life that are always already relational, a kind of “intra-active becoming” that is “always the very substance of ourselves.”[30] Thus, Gregory’s depiction of Grace Fryer is not so much an image of the progression of a disabled object, but rather an image of a new way of understanding bodies, abilities, and the intra/inter-actions of the material world. These new ways of understanding are played out most concretely in the way the play explores early twentieth century labor practices and the stylized representations of disability on stage. Radium Girls is set during the same time frame of the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. Tamsen Wolff has argued a connection between theatre and the eugenics movement, noting how both dramatists and eugenicists are concerned with visibility and truth: In eugenic theory, there is a vital tension between hidden truth […] and visible truth. […] For eugenicists, this tension creates a vacillation between an assurance about what can be seen on the body and an uneasiness about what lurks unseen in the body. Of course, in theatre, a tension between hidden truth and visible truth is not only a playwright’s natural playground, but is relevant to everything from the body of the performer, to dramatic form, to stage design, to the role of the audience.[31] Wolff’s argument explores how theatre was historically and politically used as a means of indoctrinating people into a eugenic way of thought. Some veins of scientific research at the time were working towards the goal of perfecting the human race, or rather, the elimination of those individuals who did not match the traits deemed desirable by certain authority figures. This eugenic obsession with appearances contributed to twentieth century atrocities such as forced sterilization, genocide, and xenophobic world wars. Although Radium Girls does not operate as a polemic for eugenic examination (as the plays analyzed by Wolff do), it nevertheless capitalizes on the same tension between visible and invisible truth in dynamic trans-corporeal ways that challenge rather than reify able-bodied understandings of performer, audience, and the world as a whole. Radium Girls’ central themes include the “peculiarly American obsessions with health, wealth, and the commercialization of science.”[32] This commercialization of science includes the girls wanting compensation and treatment for their acquired disability, their dentist extorting funds from the company and the girls, and the marketing exploits of various entrepreneurs and quack scientists portrayed in the play. This obsession is intrinsically related to notions of capital and labor, and Radium Girls provides an interesting exploration of pre-Social Security ideas regarding disability and the wage-labor system. Even though the Social Security Administration was not founded until 1935, seven years after the events of the play end, disability was not added as an insured contingency to the social security program until the 1950s.[33] In her book The Disabled State, Deborah Stone asserts that the idea of a ‘welfare state’ is founded on “the principle that certain characteristics – youth, old age, widowhood, and sickness – render people automatically incapable of participating in the wage-labor system.”[34] Though welfare programs were common in other industrialized nations around the world, the United States had not adopted any such program during the time of the Radium Girls scandal. The idea that there were any “categorical exemptions from the labor market” had not yet taken popular hold in the American psyche.[35] The beginning of act two provides an interesting perspective on these notions of labor and fitness: REPORTER: December 4, 1927! Jack Youngwood reporting for the Newark Ledger. SOB SISTER: Nancy Jane Harland for the New York Graphic! REPORTER: On the strange case of the Radium Girls. SOB SISTER: Who claim they were poisoned at the hands of their employer. REPORTER: And now seek their day in court! SHOPGIRL: Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. SOB SISTER: That’s the price tag on their suffering! MALE SHOPPER: Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars! STORE OWNER: Ask me, it’s all a sham! CUSTOMER: What do you mean? Those girls are very sick! STORE OWNER: Sicka workin’, sure! REPORTER: Doctors say… the Radium Girls have only a year to live![36] Here Gregory presents the Store Owner, the lone representative of hard work and entrepreneurship, in a sea of consumers flanked by media representatives, all questioning the validity of the girls’ claims. He thinks they just want a handout; therefore they must be lying. Stone notes how disability has so often been historically associated with deception, and therefore the very concept of disability is predicated on the need to prove its validity.[37] For the freak shows common to traveling entertainments at this time, that expertise was doled out by the hawking ‘professors’ and ‘anthropologists’ guaranteeing that the exhibits were indeed authentic. It was the medical doctor alone who could validate ‘legitimate disability.’ Disability had become a clinical concept.[38] In this scene, the Reporter trumps the entire debate about the ‘validity of the invalids’ by invoking the claims of the almighty “doctors.” As the eugenicists proposed, science appears to have the final say over the nature and ‘normalcy’ of atypical bodies. Gregory, however, is not content merely to portray this shift in perspective towards the medical model of understanding disability in Radium Girls.[39] On the contrary, she carefully chips away at the hegemony of the scientific medical industrial complex by challenging this assumed authority. The character of Dr. Knef, the opportunistic dentist, represents not only corruption and the medical gaze that continues to enfreak and marginalize people with disabilities, but also the capitalistic gaze that permeates the play. Even though characters like Dr. Knef explore the darker side of medical politics in the quid pro quo (he trades false diagnoses for corporate payments), the play is not simply satirizing a corrupt medical professional. Rather, Gregory takes a broader and more oppositional position to the part that the medical profession plays in the hegemonic authority that denies the visibility of the disabled, and indeed would deny the very existence of the trans-corporeal. It is the character of Grace with her unwillingness to accept the status quo that helps move the play beyond simply villainizing Knef and his ilk and into this more subversive and challenging arena. Early in the play, when news reaches the dial painters that the death of their friend and fellow dial painter, Amelia Maggia, was attributed to complications from syphilis, Grace challenges the decree, and Kathryn hesitantly follows suit. GRACE: But Amelia was ever so nice. IRENE: Guess she got around more than we knew. GRACE: Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe the doctor got it wrong. IRENE: Come on. GRACE: He coulda got it wrong. Doctors are wrong sometimes. KATHRYN: That’s true. Doctor was wrong about Aunt Ivy. IRENE: What’s Mama got to do with it? KATHRYN: Irene, don’t you remember? Up to the day she died, doctor said Aunt Ivy would be fine. Said take a cup a tea, get a good night’s rest. And two days later we was taking her to Rosedale cemetery.[40] By beginning to question the infallibility of scientific ‘doctor’s orders’, the girls also begin to take a stand against the company and file suit at the end of act one. However, when another dial painter, Kathryn, also takes ill and is waiting for surgery in the hospital, her resolve fails. Faced with her own acquired toxic debility, Kathryn turns back to the doctors for refuge from her fears and loses resolve in the legal battle, leaving Grace the lone soldier in her quest for justice: KATHRYN: (abruptly). What if we don’t win? GRACE: ‘Course we’ll win. KATHRYN: But what if we don’t? My father will lose his house. We’ll be on the street. You’ll be on the street, too. Yer father must owe thousands. And you and Tom, You won’t never get married. How can ya stand it, Grace— GRACE: Kathryn, please! KATHRYN: (more agitated). How can Tom stand it? Don’t ya ever wonder, Grace? I don’t never hear him complain— GRACE: Kathryn! As soon as the judge hears our testimony, he’s gonna rule for us. All they gotta do is take one look at us. It’ll be over in a day.” KATHRYN: Think so?[41] Soon thereafter, the Sob Sister joins them in the hospital room offering them a cash deal for exclusive rights to tell their story. Kathryn’s last words alive in the play are a concession to give up the lawsuit: “Grace, maybe we should do it.”[42] Everyone abandons Grace in her fight for justice and encourages her to give up and get on with what little she has left. The eugenicist notion that disability will inevitably lead to homelessness, poverty, and solitude is deeply entrenched, and, perhaps like an early disability rights activist, Grace seems to be the only one willing to fight, further developing her character as an image of trans-corporeality that has been enlivened in some way by her interactions with the deadly radium. The historical importance of this case is also the heart of the Radium Girls’ story: industrial health reform. But the story goes much deeper. Not only did the Radium Girls fight for their own bodies and health, but their lives and their debility also interacted with others in a catalytic manner. Claudia Clark’s account of the Radium Girls describes how: Industrial health bridges the history of labor and the social history of workers, the history of medicine and the social history of health and the environment, the traditional history of politics and the social history of politics. In the case of the dialpainters, we may also study the history of women.[43] Even the radium poisoning itself was not so much a scientific discovery as it was “a social product born of political negotiation.”[44] The Radium Girls are more than just a case study; they were a catalyst for recognition and reform of the impact of industrialization and corporatism on individuals and society. Their very bodies were a source of trans-corporeal transformation in the social/industrial/political landscape. Industrialization had gripped much of the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but the tangled relationship between factory, worker, science, business, and government was only beginning to be uncovered. The case of the Radium Girls was the first instance of industrial health reform to gain public recognition and to begin to turn the tide of reckless business practices.[45] For the Radium Girls, it was not just a fight for justice, but also for recognition and acceptance in the face of powerful men publicly denying their claims. Many lost heart. Many lost their lives. When D.W. Gregory portrays Grace’s solitary battle in Radium Girls, she emphasizes the poignant fragility of living in these crucial historical events, and how science and progress interact with bodies and lives, often exacting a steep and lonely price, and often at the expense of the disabled. Though the battle for justice is lonely, the war is filled with onlookers and opportunists looking to make a buck. While Gregory represents Grace’s lonely challenge to the medical hegemony on the interpretation and ‘care’ of bodies, she visibly spotlights the speculators and Johnny-come-latelys that try to capitalize on the hype and sensation of the story. The newspapers are not the only ones trying to make a buck riding upon the girls’ crumbling backs; many people and institutions attempt to capitalize on what Jasbir K. Puar calls the “profitability of debility.”[46] During the frenetic opening of act two, with the public prattling on about the case and what they would do with the money, Grace Fryer makes her first public appearance, mediated by the news media, as a plaintiff in the case for the explicit purpose of stirring up public sympathy. (Grace appears, walking with a cane.) GRACE. I’d use it to pay my medical bills. (Reaction from CROWD.) And pay off the second mortgage on our house. The one my father took out to pay for my last operation. (Reactions of sympathy.) SOB SISTER. Pretty Grace Fryer sits at home. REPORTER. …suffering bravely through this entire ordeal. SOB SISTER. …struggling valiantly to keep up her flagging spirits— REPORTER. …for the sake of her family and her friends. GRACE. It hurts to smile. But I try to smile. I know if I don’t smile—I’ll go crazy. (Approval from the CROWD.)[47] This sequence appears at first glance to be a problematic appropriation of disability images to evoke public sympathy. What makes this exchange remarkable is that the theatrical audience gets to see the “behind the scenes” moments that take place before and after this public interchange, revealing that it is in fact a rehearsed and planned performance. At the very end of act one, Grace agrees to fight publicly to shame the company into giving in to the girls’ demands for compensation and justice. Ms. Wiley, one of the girls’ advocates, claims here and elsewhere in the play that “public sympathy” is both their strongest weapon for justice and the engine of social reform.[48] The moment after Grace’s first public appearance, Gregory utilizes a crucial stage direction signifying that “Wiley congratulates Grace” as the crowds disperse, giving approval for the stylized performance of being pitiful and marking it as a performance. Even Grace’s allies are now putting her and her disability on stylized display with a cane, enfreaking her even more, towards the goal of social justice. Alison Kafer, in her discussion of disability images on billboards, notes that “We need to recognize and challenge this strategic deployment of disability, acknowledging that rhetorics of disability acceptance and inclusion can be used to decidedly un-crip ends.”[49] Is Grace’s performance of tragic pathos an example of Wiley’s exploitation of disability for the benefit of social reform? Like the models for medical textbook photographs, Grace is not being paid for her performance. Is it a necessary ruse for the greater good? Who pays the price of progress? This Brechtian moment in the play brings the profitability issue to the surface, holding it up for scrutiny, throwing critical light on the role of exploitation in producing social reform. Though Ms. Wiley seems to genuinely want to help Grace and hold the U.S. Radium Corporation accountable for their negligence, her methods seem to implicitly condone the exploitation of disabled bodies. To think in contemporary terms, if Wiley had hired an actor to play the same part that Grace played in this public presentation, that actor would have been paid. When using actual people with actual disabilities for a media campaign on their behalf, the same performance is not compensated or seen as labor. The irony is profound: if one of the goals is to help you, then you do not get paid; if you have nothing to do with the campaign, you would get paid.[50] Grace’s aloneness in her struggle is made all the more palpable in the final scene of the play during which Grace sits at Kathryn’s grave, spreading flowers and talking of watercolor paints. The scene at the grave recalls images from the previous scene with Kathryn in the hospital, with Grace sitting at her side and offering comfort. Grace is nearing the end of her own life and at this point is most likely unable to walk. She does not move from this position in the final scene. It is a scene that powerfully reveals how truly lonely the battle for justice is, with many casualties left along the way. This final moment also raises an important question about how the play is staged and why Gregory chose not to highlight Grace’s physical condition in the script itself. In terms of theatrical spaces, Radium Girls in performance further illuminates the complex web of intra-activity between matter and biological bodies. Performers and audience share the same space, breathing the same air and feeling the same sound wave vibrations. Slight variations in these vibrations, neurologically interpreted as timbre and pitch modulations, contribute to an emotional performance and can combine with the photons reflected off an actor to generate emotional and intellectual changes in the audience, which can then set up a feedback loop with the performer, who then “feeds” off the live audience’s energy and attentive focus, all mediated by these material environmental agents. Temperature, which is just the average kinetic energy of environmental molecules, has a profound impact on audience reception, as anyone who has sat through a show where the heat was turned up a little too high can attest. And of course, the more bodies that are in a confined space like a theatre, the more body heat generated and the higher the ambient temperature. Environment and bodies, actors and audiences, are always already intra-acting in theatrical spaces, changing each other in palpable and interactive ways that are unique to live performance. Perhaps theatre itself (and especially Brechtian theatre) can be thought of as a kind of trans-corporeal, intra-active half-life that connects and impacts people in ways that could not have been otherwise conceived. By focusing on Radium Girls as a trans-corporeal space in performance, one could tease out the nuances of toxic, radioactive animacies while engaging with trans-corporeal spaces both within the world of the play and the world of the play’s performance.[51] Unfortunately, such nuances rarely enter the sphere of production in regional and professional American theatre. Since Radium Girls is “one of the most performed plays in the 21st century,” an exhaustive list is probably impossible to gather, but I have found no evidence that a production has actually featured a disabled actress in the role of Grace.[52] This fact is perhaps unsurprising for many reasons, including the nature of the acting profession and the nature of actor training programs which tend to emphasize finding an idealized “normal” state of relaxation for an actor, what Carrie Sandahl has termed the “tyranny of the neutral” for its exclusion of non-normative bodies.[53] But what might be the nuanced implications of using visible markers of disability when staging the play, particular the final scene, and how might notions of trans-corporeality affect those moments? The trans-corporeal space of Radium Girls in performance engages what Victoria Lewis calls the “reciprocal relationship between performance space and performer” which raises questions of access for audiences as well as artists.[54] The final moments of the play, where Grace sits at the grave of her friend Kathryn while US Radium President Arthur Roeder looks on from the distance, demonstrate the engaging potential of these embodied, reciprocal interactions of disability, performers, text, and audiences. In the original workshop production, prior to the script’s publication, the final scene was staged with “a doomed young girl in a wheelchair wearing high heels,” a moment the reviewer felt was a “jarring and distracting note in a drama that follows a passionate and intelligent course.”[55] Whether the wheelchair was a stage direction that was ultimately cut from the script or a choice by director Joseph Megel is unclear. Yet the question remains, how might the use of a wheelchair in this final scene operate within the kind of analysis here proposed? The cane that Grace used at the end of act one was a theatrical prop, a meta-performance of disability to arouse pity and sympathy in the crowd within the world of the play. At the grave side, however, Grace is unaware she has an audience and there are no publicity directors orchestrating her performance like Ms. Wiley did at the end of the first act. Indeed, she does not move in the final scene, so the presence of the wheelchair, or any physical marking of disability, is external to the dramatic action and thus operates in the world of the production, a prop to indicate the physical condition of the character and ostensibly to arouse pity and sympathy in the theatrical audience. This is why, I believe, using disabled markers like the wheelchair in the final scene does not work theatrically or dramatically. Audiences are now being overtly manipulated by the production to feel a certain way, and the result is “jarring and distracting” for the audience. Not to mention how problematic and ableist it is to assume that the sight of a wheel chair would or should elicit feelings of pity in an audience. However, with an absence of physical markings of disability, it could be possible to read this final image of Grace as a problematic marginalization of disabled bodies being whitewashed and minimized. We know it is near the end of Grace’s life, and we know the physical toll that radium poisoning takes on bodies, so why leave Grace motionless on the ground without any other visible acknowledgement of her physical debilities? When staging this final scene, are you damned if you do and damned if you don’t, as it were? I believe this lack of “visible disability” marked on Grace’s body, in addition to being important for the dramatic action of the scene, is a manifestation of a cultural able-bodied gaze represented by Arthur Roeder. Roeder has returned to the grave site with his now-grown daughter, some fifteen years after the case was settled. He and Grace exist in the same space in different times when he finally has his moment of realization in the last line of the play. “Try as I might, Harriet, try as I might – I cannot remember their faces. (The irony strikes him.) I never saw their faces.”[56] He could not bring himself to look at the girls in the court room, when their marked bodies were placed on full display before him and the law, and now he cannot remember the faces that continue to haunt him. Here we see a palpable example of the complex interplay of the visible and the invisible as earlier described by Wolff. Roeder’s realization that persons with disabilities have their own lives and subjectivities comes too late for the girls in the play and is a potent reminder of the power of collective cultural denial that de-humanizes individuals with disabilities, rendering them invisible. Though the original workshop production with wheelchair and high heels may not have offered this possibility, understanding the play from this disability perspective holds the potential to shift the tragedy away from Grace and onto society in a Brechtian manner that implicates all of us, as we are all intra-acting in the material world. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson explains, “Disability studies reminds us that all bodies are shaped by their environments from the moment of conception. We transform constantly in response to our surroundings and register history on our bodies. The changes that occur when our body encounters the world are what we call disability.”[57] If disability is the change that occurs when bodies encounter the world, then scholars of theatre and performance have a particularly potent (if underutilized) critical ally in disability studies for examining performances and performance texts. In the case of this essay, treating radium itself as both actor and agent in the play Radium Girls engages with historical labor practices in what Stacy Alaimo might call a posthuman environmental ethics that is “not circumscribed by the human but is instead accountable to a material world that is never merely an external place but always the very substance of our selves and others.”[58] Contemporary critical thought is well aware of the power and agency ascribed to non-living or abstract entities such as class, gender, economics, and socio-politics. However, this exploration of Radium Girls demonstrates that accounting for the agency and animacy of material entities can transform the way we see our intra-acting bodies in the world, and the world in our bodies. A Disability perspective can transform how we think about and approach theatrical spaces as well, not just in terms of accessibility and access (for audiences and artists), but in terms of how bodies and spaces are always already intra-acting on each other. In this way, the personal responsibilities that are at stake in the play (to fight ignorance, exploitation, gender inequalities, etc.) are subsumed in the communal responsibility of that environmental ethic, a kind of universalizing aspect of debility that trans-acts within and among bodies, spaces, and even atoms. The in-between half-lives of disability always intra-act with environments, other bodies, and social forces in ways that can bring new insight to theatre and performance studies, disability studies, and other theories of scientific materiality. Bradley Stephenson is an assistant professor of Theatre Arts at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC where he teaches theatre history, acting, improvisation, and playwriting. His scholarship has been published in Theatre Topics, Studies in Musical Theatre, Ecumenica, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre. [1] Events similar to the New Jersey Radium Girls also happened in Ottawa, IL and are dramatized in the play These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich (2010) which was adapted into a musical by Jessica Thebus, Andre Pluess, and Amanda Dehnert that premiered in 2015 at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre. [2] Claudia Clark, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). [3] D.W. Gregory, Radium Girls (Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2005), 8. [4] Robert L. Daniels, “Review: ‘Radium Girls,’” Variety, 23 May 2000, accessed 7 March 2016, http://variety.com/2000/legit/reviews/radium-girls-1200462095/. [5] Despite the play’s popularity and hundreds of productions since its 2000 premier, Radium Girls has yet to receive scholarly attention, a fact which I here hope to change. [6] Though such an important debate about the nature and significance of disability and chronic illness is beyond the scope of this essay, many contemporary scholars such as Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Tobin Siebers, Robert McRuer, Anna Malloy, Lennard Davis, and others are thoughtfully engaging in how to adequately and appropriately theorize and understand disability and what it means in an evolving contemporary world. [7] Jasbir K. Puar, “The Cost of Getting Better: Suicide, Sensation, Switchpoints,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18, no.1 (2011): 149. [8] Ibid., 153. [9] Ibid., 154. [10] Gregory, Radium Girls, 54. [11] For more about radium quack cures, consult the Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ Quack Cures Collection at http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/quackcures.htm and Radium Historical Items catalogue at http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1008/ML100840118.pdf (accessed 4-30-2014). See also Paul Frame, “Radioactive Curative Devices and Spas,” The Oak Ridger, 5 November 1989. [12] Gregory, Radium Girls, 37. [13] Ibid., 78. [14] Mel Y. Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 10. [15] Mel Y. Chen, “Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 17, no. 2-3 (2011): 265. [16] Gregory, Radium Girls, 13. [17] Chen, “Toxic Animacies,” 266. [18] Ibid., 279. [19] Gregory, Radium Girls, 86. [20] J. Rondo, “Long Term Retention of Radium in Man,” Nature 221, no. 5185 (15 March 1969): 1059. [21] This newspaper article is in reference to the radium dial painters from Ottawa, Illinois, a few years after the New Jersey story, but the comparison is the same. [22] Chen, “Toxic Animacies,” 279. [23] Gregory, Radium Girls, 105. [24] Ibid., 75-76. [25] Alpha particles, which are ionized helium nuclei (two protons and two neutrons), have limited penetrative ability and do not pose a danger to humans unless the alpha-emitter is ingested. Gamma rays, however are profoundly energetic and can penetrate deep into the body, altering the very DNA of cells. For the Radium Girls, the bone-seeking qualities of the element probably caused illness, debility, and death much faster than the cancerous radiation effects they would have developed had they lived long enough. This bone-seeking quality is also why the Radium Girls’ symptoms started in the mouth and jaw, since they pointed their paint brushes on their lips. [26] Gregory, Radium Girls, 82. [27] Stacy Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 9, 2. [28] Ibid., 7-8. [29] Ibid., 115. [30] Ibid., 4. Alaimo’s notion of trans-corporeality is based on Barad’s concept of “intra-active becoming” (i.e. things do not precede their relations but are always already relational). [31] Tamsen Wolff, Mendel’s Theatre: Heredity, Eugenics, and Early Twentieth-Century American Drama (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6. [32] Gregory, Radium Girls, n.p. [33] Deborah Stone, The Disabled State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 68. [34] Ibid., 21. [35] Ibid. [36] Gregory, Radium Girls, 59. [37] Stone, The Disabled State, 23. [38] Ibid., 91. [39] This medical understanding of disability is a uniquely modern phenomenon. Throughout most of history, disability was viewed from a moral or spiritual perspective, that disabilities were markings of sin or collusion with the devil, or some kind of punishment for moral turpitude. The different models of understanding disability is one of the many important contributions of disability scholars and theorists, too many to mention here. [40] Gregory, Radium Girls, 24. [41] Ibid., 65. [42] Ibid., 68. [43] Clark, Radium Girls, 5. [44] Ibid., 3. [45] Changes have been slow, particularly for women in the workforce, and industrial health is still a significant concern. Even today, approximately 100,000 Americans die each year from occupational diseases (Clark, Radium Girls, 11). The battle continues. [46] Puar, “The Cost of Getting Better,” 153. [47] Gregory, Radium Girls, 60. [48] Ibid., 58, 63. [49] Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 97. [50] While beyond the scope of this project, exploring and exposing such ironies is a critical task in the larger worlds of disability employment, performance, and the media. [51] At time of this writing, I am preparing to direct a production of Radium Girls that will attempt to capitalize on this trans-corporeal theory of half-life. Our production design will be minimalistic, and we will focus on the Brechtian elements that draw attention to the connections between performance and the world around the performance. I plan to work with my ensemble to explore the animacy of radium as an actor/character in a way that (I hope) will keep the pace and the tone both hopeful and thoughtful rather than grim and strident. A common concept image used for the show is a glowing clock face, ever reminding the audience of the girl’s impending death as a result of their radium poisoning. Such an image of time and death seems to put ankle weights on the performance, slowing the pace with a constant, dread-inducing reminder of death. Instead, the concept image from which my production will spring to life is that of a spinthariscope, a small child’s toy from the time period that contains a small (harmless) amount of radioactive material encased in a tube or small canister lined with phosphorescent material. Some were as small as rings and could be found as prizes in cereal boxes. When taken into a dark room, letting your eyes adjust, if you looked into the spinthariscope you could see tiny flashes of light every time a radioactive emanation struck the phosphorescent lining. I find this image particularly hopeful and engaging to the imagination, as well as quite beautiful. The image amplifies the light and lightness of the radium’s animacy, developing the trans-corporeal space in an upward and outward trajectory, rather than the downward and dreary trajectory of the ticking clock of doom. Dwelling on this story as merely or exclusively tragic misses the hope and benefits that arose from these events, the lives that were saved from the legislation that sparked public interest in industrial labor reform. An emphasis on the tragic is also problematic in the ways it can propagate the mindset that disability is the definition of personal tragedy and loss, rather than the trans-corporeal and generative sense that brings new perspectives and experiences to life that could not have otherwise occurred. The very first line of the show, spoken by Grace, is “So much light” (11). I see this line as the inflection point of the play: it will turn either downward and dark or upward and light, depending upon the nuances of one’s interpretation of the nature and significance of these toxic, radioactive animacies. [52] Mark Bretz, “The Sad, Tragic Tale of the ‘Radium Girls’: Theatre Review,” Ladue News, 1 April 2015, accessed 7 March 2016, http://www.laduenews.com/diversions/arts-entertainment/the-sad-tragic-tale-of-the-radium-girls-theater-review/article_ca20d23e-d8b8-11e4-86cc-7799675ff9c6.html. [53] Carrie Sandahl, “The Tyranny of Neutral: Disabililty and Actor Training,” in Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, ed. Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). While an exploration of disability and acting in the professional world is beyond the scope of this essay, such questions of access are among the most pressing on the contemporary theatrical world. [54] Victoria Lewis, “The Theatrical Landscape of Disability,” Disability Studies Quarterly 24, no. 3 (summer 2004): n.p. [55] Daniels, “Review: ‘Radium Girls,’” n.p. [56] Gregory, Radium Girls, 110. [57] Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Disability and Representation,” PMLA 120, no. 2 (March 2005), 524. [58] Alaimo, Bodily Natures, 158. “This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D. W. Gregory’s Radium Girls” by Bradley Stephenson ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 28, Number 2 (Spring 2016) ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: James Armstrong Editorial Assistant: Kyueun Kim Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Bill Demastes Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Table of Contents: “This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D. W. Gregory’s Radium Girls” by Bradley Stephenson “Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of The End of the Moon” by Vivian Appler “iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change” by Eileen Trauth, Karen Keifer-Boyd and Suzanne Trauth “Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum” by Cindy L. Duckert and Elizabeth A. De Stasio “Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters” by George Pate and Libby Ricardo www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Blue-Collar Broadway The New Humor in the Progressive Era Stages of Engagement Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM 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' Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Philip Brankin 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 Oh, Mary! Philip Brankin By Published on June 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF Conrad Ricamora and Cole Escola in Oh, Mary! Photo: Emilio Madrid Oh, Mary! By Cole Escola Directed by Sam Pinkleton Lucille Lortel Theatre New York, NY March 5, 2024 Reviewed by Philip Brankin Thinking about Oh, Mary!–– a play set during the close of the American Civil War––I cannot help but conjure up a line from the comedic persona Philomena Cunk as she ruminates on the life of Abraham Lincoln in the BBC mockumentary Cunk on Earth. In her noted droll style, she deadpans, “Lincoln’s story didn’t have a happy ending. Five days after the North won, a terrible fate befell him. He was forced to go to the theatre to watch a play.” This is the level of dark-humored irreverence found in Cole Escola’s sold-out smash hit that opened at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City and is now about to open on Broadway. But in this play, Lincoln is not the subject, only the by-product. Everything about the play and its production is meant to center Mary and highlight its star’s feral talent. Cole Escola (they/them) has created a career-defining production after years of paying their dues on a spectrum of stages from YouTube to Joe’s Pub at New York’s Public Theater. The production of Oh, Mary! is seemingly an autobiographical study of sorts of Escola’s own self-perception as a fledgling cabaret talent told through the removed lens of a mock biography of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in the events leading up to the death of her husband, President Lincoln. The queering of this momentous history is enacted through turning the lens on the First Lady, re-positioning her as an ahistorical antiheroine, and essentially making every character/historical figure homosexual or utterly camp, particularly when revealing their true selves on stage. Escola’s gag is to make Mary’s super-objective to be a cabaret star, or rather, to make a comeback to the stage as the star she sees herself as. Escola’s artistic license is fully on display in this production as they present a queer revision of history. Mary’s boredom with her life, fueled by alcoholism and an inflated ego, are exacerbated by her husband’s barely veiled homosexuality. Lincoln is her distant, bewildered husband who we learn early on is more beleaguered by Mary’s obsessive fixation on stage stardom, fueled by alcohol, than the War. Abe indulges her by hiring an acting coach in the form of none other than his secret (and jealous) lover John Wilkes Booth. So, everything is in service of Mary. The program conspicuously lists the cast all not by their names but their relation to Mary (i.e. Lincoln is listed as “Mary’s husband”). Despite this, the casting is consequential. Both Lincoln and Booth are played by stars of the all-queer helmed film Fire Island , another recent entry for queer comedy. Booth convinces Mary that he has secured for her an audition for none other than the fateful production of Our American Cousin , the play the president would later be assassinated at while watching from his box seat. But this bit of history is immaterial to the audience as we are following Mary’s journey towards stardom or self-destruction. I have been following Cole Escola and their career since the early days of content creation on social media, the place I consider to be the birthplace of their dexterity as a character actor and comedy writer. Escola’s work has always focused on queering culture and historically minded camp sensibilities. After years of digital shorts, pithy tweets, and one-person shows in cabaret spaces, this production feels like the culmination of Escola’s ability to fully realize their singular vision. As Mary Todd Lincoln, Cole Escola sets the same tone for the play from her first line. She desperately cries to Washington’s portrait in the Oval Office, “Oh mother! Why did I marry him?” Oh, Mary! is as much concerned with queering sacred American history as it is with queering other deconstructions of history on Broadway, such as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton . Oh, Mary! is a testament to the current generation of mad, queer excellence and those who might find kinship with the idiosyncratic Escola. The play takes the historical subtexts of Mary and Abraham and blows them campily out of proportion, centering the marginalized aspects of their personalities, such as Mary’s mental health or Abraham’s sexuality. By showing these characters navigate those blatantly erroneous identities and making all the wrong choices, the production frees the audience of expectation or the normative urge to conceive that anything could or should be thought of as sacred. Conrad Ricamora and Cole Escola in Oh, Mary! Photo: Emilio Madrid Oh, Mary! might be one of the most offensive comedies to play Off-Broadway, but its subversiveness plays like a labor of love for the idea of the overshadowed and oft-misunderstood First Lady, or any woman that sits at the fulcrum of history. Though the play was delivered with a massive laugh greeting nearly every single line, in a work helmed by Escola there usually comes a moment when an earnest truth is allowed just enough room to peak through and catch the audience off-guard. Diehard fans of Escola will recognize this nuance from the recent digital short film Our Home Out West in which Escola plays a Gold Rush-era Madam, in Belle Watling drag––paradigmatic of the Escola oeuvre––and works as a felicitous, subdued counterpart to their high energy Mary Todd. At one point in the film, the brothel owner’s orphaned ward asks her, “Why do people hate you so much?” In contrast to Oh, Mary! ’s atmosphere of scatological farce comes an eschatological homily on the nature of bigotry. As Cole explains, “I think because life is basically not very fair and so people like to make up their own little rules… they believe that if they follow their rules nothing bad will happen to them. So, when they see someone who’s not following their rules and doing just fine makes them scared that their rules don’t really matter and when people get scared, they get mad.” Oh, Mary! harkens back to past texts of queer import like Charles Busch’s Die, Mommie, Die! (a drag, psycho-biddy send-up of Aeschylus’ Oresteia ) or Split Britches’ Belle Reprieve (a drag satire of A Streetcar Named Desire ). All of them share a similar approach to remixing history and the historiography of Western drama. The play has some structural similarities to Roxie Hart’s journey that leads to the final, triumphant stage number that rounds out the story in the denouement of Chicago . Yet, when watching the “madcap medley” of Mary ’s grand finale, the ludicrous joy of watching the play is more akin to seeing “Little” Edie Beale of Grey Gardens finally become the singer and dancer she always said she could be (technical talent be damned!). Little Edie and Mary are both characters steeped in American (presidential) history by association, yet who enjoy basking in their own self-made mythologies. The production is a celebration of an anachronistic, gonzo-style approach to historical fiction on stage. For one thing, the setting predates what we understand and refer to as cabaret, and the cabaret finale includes music from over one-hundred years later, including the kitschiest hits of the 1970s and 80s, all while twirling and dropping a baton. Though Escola and director Sam Pinkerton are not at all interested in fidelity to dramaturgical accuracy, the production creates a consistent vision of this pivotal moment in American history. That consistency is defined in the program as “the lens of an idiot.” Escola has stated that they “wrote the show from the point of view of the audience, which is our collective third grade understanding of who Mary Todd Lincoln was.” The curls in Mary’s wig are not meant to resemble the true style of the period, but are there to accentuate her every manic move. The set, by in-demand designer dots, is meant to resemble the Oval Office, yet evokes Our American Cousin pastiche in childlike, broad strokes with blown-up proportions and spurious designs contrived from a capricious imagination. For example, the books are all clearly not real, except for the one hollowed out and hiding the hooch. The saloon setting in the latter half could be pulled from a shooting gallery in a Western theme park. Did the DC-area have saloons with swinging doors and player pianos at this time? The answer is likely “Who cares?” but more importantly, “Look at Mary go!” Everything acts as a campy gesture to the past—right down to the mock gas footlights. But the gesture is always purposefully pointing in the wrong direction and with a middle finger. Tony Macht, Bianca Leigh, and Cole Escola in Oh, Mary! Photo: Emilio Madrid Everything feels very correct in its incorrectness —a kind of purposeful queer failure à la J. Jack Halberstam. The show embraces its own failure to grasp historical accuracy and dramaturgical dignity. The camp of Oh Mary! lies in its ability to resist the normative desire of biographical texts that prop up the sedate figure of sober greatness that stands behind every great man. There’s an alienation in camp fit for Brecht. But the Verfremdungseffekt is most potent for the queer initiated of the audience. We are meant to be alienated from canonical history. Escola’s success represents a generation of queer alt-comedians with origins from social media platforms like Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, or X (formerly known as Twitter). These queer performers have carved out spaces and followings for themselves that slowly but surely gained them due recognition that they could parlay into the more dominant or traditional spaces of culture. In a time when queer subculture and counterculture are becoming the culture, what’s lost along the way may be up for debate. But what is clear from Oh Mary! is that it is leading the queer vanguard and delivering mainstream audiences a high priestess of camp. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Philip Brankin is a Visiting Professor of Theater Studies at Emory University and a doctoral student in Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Georgia where he received an MFA in Dramatic Media. His research involves queer performance cultures in digital media, focusing on social media platforms as a locus for queer identity formation today. As a practitioner, he has worked as a director, producer, actor, dramaturg, writer, and media designer. A Chicago native, he has worked with Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Second City, The Piven Theatre Workshop, About Face Theatre, Bailiwick, Chicago Opera Theatre, and Nothing Without a Company, among others. 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.

Nicholas Orvis Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Nicholas Orvis By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF PLAYING REAL: MIMESIS, MEDIA, AND MISCHIEF. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Lindsay Brandon Hunter’s Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief offers valuable insights into the practices and problems of mediatized performances that play with and against conventional notions of “the real.” Hunter wisely eschews both the well-trod liveness debates of Performance Studies and, more challengingly, the many anxieties attendant on media’s increasingly destabilized relationship to reality. Instead, she embraces these performances’ playful construction of the real as a means to make mischief—particularly, mischief with the dominant paradigms within which such performances exist. The book proves a fruitful contribution to interdisciplinary theater and performance studies, applying its analysis in equal measure to the fields of broadcast theater (such as the well-known NT Live), reality television programming, and alternate reality games (ARGs). Each of these fields, as Hunter discusses, is “tethered in some way to an imaginary of the real” (xvii-xviii). Her six core chapters are neatly divided into three pairs, one for each of the creative fields under discussion, and move from performances with which theater scholars are likely to be familiar (broadcast performances in chapter one, the Wooster Group’s 2007 Hamlet in chapter two) through a deeply theatrical slice of television (reality television in chapter three and particularly “scripted reality” in chapter four) and, then, into the growing critical terrain exploring intersections of theater, performance, and game-playing (through the particular lens of ARGs in chapters five and six). Each set of chapters offers a helpfully polyvalent reading on its source material, with the initial chapters in each pair (one, three, and five) doing the work of theorizing a medium’s relationship to the real while the subsequent chapters (two, four, and six) offer deep dives into case studies that provide nuance which complicates the previous discussion. Hunter’s writing displays an impressive command of the existing scholarly literature of what might be considered three distinct fields, in particular, drawing upon the work of Sarah Bay-Cheng and Philip Auslander, to consider these mediatized performances as not distanced from, but rather engaged in the construction of, reality. Hunter offers fruitful provocations in her close readings and theorizing. She begins by examining the ways broadcast theater, beginning with the 1964 Electronovision capture of Richard Burton’s Hamlet , have striven to “translate” the supposedly ineluctable liveness of theater to the cinema or television screen—and in so doing, she proposes, have revealed “liveness to be less theater’s ontology than its brand ” (12, original emphasis). It’s the brand of a certain kind of theater, at the very least: the well-funded, nationally acclaimed, artistically conservative institutions that can afford to finance these undertakings, such as the National Theatre in London or New York’s Metropolitan Opera. As Hunter rightly observes, these organizations are engaged not only in transmitting their performances but to didactic work that, by dictating the viewer’s focus, enforces “a particular skill of ‘reading’ theater” in accordance with the directors’ and producers’ intentions (18). Hunter suggests that through such direction, this broadcast work has the potential to disrupt, or at least inflect, the dominant norms of theatergoing (19). I wonder, however, whether in practice such disruption will come to pass or whether this medium will remain the province of artistically conservative (sometimes conservational) institutions—the ones most consistently able to muster the funds needed to create the broadcasts discussed. While Hunter’s second chapter focuses on the Wooster Group’s remixing of that 1964 Hamlet , the third and fourth chapters expand her horizons dramatically, taking in the realm of reality TV with a focus on the performance of romantic love. Hunter skillfully weaves together existing analyses and critiques from the field of media studies with her own theater-grounded theorizing; of particular note is her explication of “unreceived acting,” an inversion of Michael Kirby’s theory of “received acting” articulated in “On Acting and Not Acting.” Reality TV performers, Hunter suggests, may be read by their audiences as specifically not acting—even when their performances are clearly embedded in the histrionic conventions of reality television (53-54). This concept offers, I think, a useful way of reading not only reality TV performances but other performance approaches broadcast on social media platforms or live-streaming sites such as Twitch, as well. Hunter’s final chapters tackle alternate reality games. These games—often lengthy explorations of another world—offer exciting ground for a performance scholar, and Hunter adroitly brings both performance theorists and some notables of game studies (particularly Jane McGonigal) to bear on these performative acts of play. McGonigal’s own World Without Oil seems to offer a hopeful case study in chapter five, suggesting that ARGs can help players engage critically with the world around them. Unfortunately, this optimism is immediately undercut by chapter six’s dissection of a (somewhat sinister) 2010 game encouraging players to embrace surveillance technology when it’s in the “right hands,” Conspiracy for Good —an ARG funded in part by Nokia and featuring its then-new image recognition technology. The dichotomy of chapters five and six points to an unresolved tension in Hunter’s monograph: although she consistently returns to an optimistic view of the “mischief” these performances create, there seems to be almost as much evidence in favor of such disruption serving ill ends. Hunter acknowledges these concerns briefly in her epilogue, and it’s fair to say that this volume—begun before both the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic—is an opening salvo in the discussion of this mischief’s role in contemporary society rather than a final statement. Ultimately, Playing Real is a well-researched and valuable monograph, skillfully speaking across multiple fields to consider the ways we use theatrical artifice not only to tell stories about our reality but to construct and play with it, as well. Playing Real will be of greatest interest to researchers in performance and media studies, yet scholars—or classrooms—examining broadcast theater, intermedial theater, reality television, or ARGs will find it valuable. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) NICHOLAS ORVIS (he/him) is a doctoral candidate at the School of Drama at Yale. From 2014-2019 he was Literary Associate and Resident Dramaturg at Premiere Stages at Kean University. Other dramaturgical work includes Yale Repertory Theater, Portland Stage Company, the Tank, and the Yale Cabaret. He is a former managing editor of Theater magazine, and his critical writing has appeared in Theater , 3Views on Theatre , and HowlRound . He co-produces (with Percival Hornak) Dungeons + Drama Nerds , an ongoing podcast. His research interests include game-based performances, immersive theater, and early modern European drama. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Sharrell D. Luckett Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 26 2 Visit Journal Homepage YoungGiftedandFat: Performing Transweight Identities Sharrell D. Luckett By Published on May 29, 2014 Download Article as PDF The body will tell the truth when all else fails, with or without you.1 Misty DeBerry, Performance Artist I am a black woman who wishes for a time That I could gain my weight back And still be fine Four years ago I lived as a fat black female, actress and teacher, trying to learn to love my curves and to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I was failing miserably. I ate McDonald’s and Zaxby’s nearly every day coupled with home cooked meals. I imagined myself unattractive, undesirable, and unworthy of love and attention from men. At the same time, through weight loss advertisements, public ridicule, and size discrimination, society made it very clear that I was the gross unwanted “other.” My body was classified as morbidly obese, and I was getting larger every month. Even I began to view my largeness as unacceptable, and the only way I knew to rectify my situation was to lose the weight. As body image scholar Kathleen LeBesco has affirmed: “the possibility of passing, trying to lose weight, wanting to become ‘normal,’ is about the only recognized option available to fat women in twentieth century Anglo-American culture.”2 However, losing a large amount of weight is extremely difficult, and even if this nigh-impossible feat is accomplished, only 5% of people who achieve substantial weight loss are able to keep the weight off for long periods of time.3 Still, we diet and diet again in hopes that one day we will cross the border that separates fat from skinny. Though the efforts of Fat Studies4 scholars have not gone unnoticed, their textual and political reach has not yet proved significantly influential in the weight loss and health industries. Both Fat Rights by Anna Kirkland and Human Rights Casualties from the “War on Obesity”5by Lily O’Hara and Jane Gregg highlight the need for America to end the vilification, harassment and abjection of the fat body. As SanderGilman has noted, “Obesity presents itself today in the form of a ‘moral panic’—that is, an episode, condition, person or group of persons that have in recent times been defined as ‘a threat to societal values and interests.’”6 As my dieting failures multiplied, the constant, disapproving scrutiny of the world affected my well-being, and I spiraled into a deep depression. In America, a fat person is classified as diseased, one who must be cured of a pathological and physical illness, despite the acknowledgement that most people will fail at dieting; thereby making the border-crossing from fat to skinny a remarkable feat. In addition, physicians argue that an obese body creates exorbitant health costs and is directly correlated with mortality risks,7 while sociologists and cultural observers assert that the size and appearance of one’s body determines marriageability, upward mobility, and/or perceived attractiveness, especially for women.8 Feminist scholar Sandra Lee Bartky argues that “the disciplinary project of femininity is a‘setup:’ it requires such radical and extensive measures of bodily transformation that virtually every woman who gives herself to it is destined in some degree to fail.”9 Yet, “diet we must . . . to be saved.”10 Thus my doomed quest to achieve “normal” weight was never-ending. My depressive state of failure rendered me hopeless. The sadder I got, the bigger I grew, until I experienced my first nosebleed. The illness of my body must have scared me skinny because only a few months later I enrolled in a low-calorie shake diet and lost nearly 100 pounds within 8 months. Having succumbed to the physical and mental attacks from society by nearly starving myself, I crossed one of the most contentious, palpable borders known to women in America: the border that separates fat from skinny. This essay recounts how my border-crossing journey from morbidly obese woman to slender11 woman shaped my awareness of my outsider-within12 identity as a black woman, a theatre artist, and scholar. It is an exploration of how straddling vastly different physical and psychological identities led me to performance, what I term transweight performance, as a means of understanding this experience for myself and as a means of communicating and perhaps illuminating such experience for others. Just as the Latin prefix trans has been attached to various identity markers to signify crossing from one condition or location to another, as in transgender, I employ transweight as a term to identify someone who willfully acquires a new size identity by losing or gaining a large amount of weight in a short amount of time.13 Recently, there has been a proliferation of studies on the black female performing body, including solo/black/woman, an anthology of scripts, interviews, and essays edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera; Troubling Vision by Nicole Fleetwood, which considers the visual commodity of black bodies; and Embodying Black Experience by Harvey Young, which investigates the black performative body in various socio-political contexts.14 While these works are all significant studies that explore the black female performing body, none focus specifically on the issue of weight, or the performance of “weighted” (fat/thin) identities. This lack of literature on the black/female/transweight performative body is most likely due to the absence of black transweight women writing about and/or performing weight loss, and can also be attributed to the fact that the fat body rarely transforms. Thus, my research aims to carve out a space in scholarship for the transweight black female, one that is intensely personal and, at the same time, profoundly political. With this exploration of my border crossing, I offer my slender palimpsest of a body as an entryway into a liminal world largely unexplored. The perception that black women do not wish to be slender is a myth situated in the American imagination. Oprah Winfrey’s decades-long public struggle with her weight, Kerry Washington’s recent admittance to battling bulimia, and Jennifer Hudson’s commercially marketed, drastic weight loss are only a few examples of the stark reality about black women and their bodies. Many African-American women aspire to Eurocentric standards of body size. As Bartky asserts, “There is little evidence that women of color or working-class women are in general less committed to the incarnation of an ideal femininity than their more privileged sisters.”15 Though authors Andrea Shaw (The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies) and Susan Bordo (Unbearable Weight) provide compelling arguments as to how and why the presence of the fat female body serves as a marker of direct resistance to Eurocentric standards, one could offer that the very existence of these types of arguments hinge partially on the truth about weight loss, that is, weight is extremely hard to lose.16 Thus, in America, fatness leaves women few options, and one of them is to claim fatness as honorable and admirable. But do we love our large bodies because we adore fat or do we love our large bodies because we cannot lose the weight? I revere those Fat Studies scholars who are able to embrace their largeness, and I am in the fight with them against size discrimination. I wish I had the confidence to appreciate my largeness as actress Gabourey Sidibe, who seems not to have lost a pound since her big screen debut in Precious, apparently does. You go girl! However, in my case, I could not love the weight that categorized me in my eyes and in the eyes of others as ugly, disgusting, and non-sexual. I work to live in my honesty, and at this moment I lack the volition to re-embrace the fat body. So what occurs when the fat black female performing body transforms to slender and then engages in the performance of “thin-ness”? What happens when the black female body physically ‘passes’ in a new way? What happens when a formerly fat, black body experiences ‘double consciousness’ in a historically new way: a way in which how the ‘other’ sees the body affords that body a privilege that is unfamiliar, abounding with humanistic perks. This liminal space—the space around and within the border—is where my ethno-theatre work begins. When I crossed the border, not only was my physical body altered, but my psychological state was significantly affected as well. I changed physically and mentally in ways that I am aware of and ways that I am still discovering. I transformed from physically inferior to physically elite, from ugly to attractive, and from undesirable to desirable. My body now reads as happy, healthy, and worthy of protection. As an actress I went from mammy to mother (or wife), and from asexual, ensemble roles to sexy leading roles. I went from my body being fully costumed to scantily clad. My new body serves as a document of acceptance, my ‘passport,’ if you will, into a new privileged location. At near starvation, I crossed the border that allowed me to immigrate into an ideal American size. However, I’m just as morbidly obese mentally as I was morbidly obese physically five years ago. My outer appearance morphed, but my psyche remained the same. I do not believe myself to be a slender woman, so I feel as though I’m performing slenderness and femininity in life or in the virtual reality of the stage. As I experience fat and thin, unprivileged and privileged separately, I purposefully create and write towards a desegregation of identity. Though the world now experiences me as a slender black female actress, I process my current encounters, both on and off the stage, as a morbidly obese female actress, inhabiting an outsider-within identity. Coined by Patricia Hill Collins, an outsider-within identity initially referenced the social location of black women in the field of domesticated work. Here I use the outsider-within identity marker as theoretical framing to explore what it means to be a fat black woman living within a privileged body or ‘home.’ Simply stated, I am not fully who I appear to be, nor am I where I appear to be. I envision my mental location as one similar to that of Gloria Anzaldúa’s new mestiza: a place where she could be all that she was.17 Furthermore, I am working to build a healthy ‘third space'18 both within my psyche and in performance where my two dis/identities encounter one another. The implications of my border-crossing from morbidly obese to slender first captured my attention as an artist and scholar when I moved away from home to attend graduate school. Being surrounded by all new people and a new environment, my recent weight loss remained a secret. I was not aware that my colleagues and professors were experiencing a different physical persona. I was still living and seeing myself as a morbidly obese person, but the people at the university saw me as a slender person who belonged. There, I auditioned for and landed the leading female role in the world premiere of Holding Up the Sky, a play adapted from folklore and tales from across the globe. In the play a young married couple survives a devastating war and proceeds to build a new life with the help of other members in the community.19 At the time of auditions, I hadn’t realized that my mindset was still that of a morbidly obese woman and actress. My habits of being a workaholic and a homebody did not change when I lost weight. I still rejected the nightlife scene, for I had little desire to mingle with or even talk to men who had consistently neglected me in the past. Furthermore, I was unaware that I was negotiating space as a new physical person. Thus, when I greeted the director and production associates in auditions I believed they were seeing me as I still experienced myself: a fat woman. In The Politics of Women’s Bodies, Rose Weitz affirms that “attractiveness typically brings women more marital prospects and friendships, higher salaries, and higher school grades.”20 In the theatre, attractiveness and a thin body bring more, and better, roles for women. In her dissertation, “The Poetics of Excess: Images of Large Women on Stage and Screen,” Claire Van Ens lists five stereotypical film roles played by overweight actresses: The Butch/Bitch Lesbian, The Dowdy Dowager, One of the Boys, The Asexual/Non-Woman, and The Maternal Earth-Mother.21 Not surprisingly, as a fat stage actress, I was usually cast in similar roles. So when I perused the script for Holding Up the Sky, I focused on the ensemble roles, ignoring the lines of the leading characters. During auditions, however, the director asked me to read for the lead female role. My heart started racing because I thought surely he had made a mistake. I glanced up at the table and just as I was about to ask whether I’d been given the wrong sides, he asked me to go out and practice the lines with a young man, who eventually played my husband. I was confused and anxious. In my mind I didn’t fit the lead role. This role was clearly written for a slender, attractive woman who could believably play a beautiful, sexually desirable female. Although the young man expressed his opinion that I was perfect for the role, I squinched my face in denial as I rehearsed the lines with him. I had never been asked to play a beautiful, feminine lead, and I didn’t know how to believably accomplish this in the small amount of time that I had. Judith Butler has argued that femininity is a “mode of enacting and reenacting received gender norms which surface as so many styles of flesh.”22 Furthermore, she identifies three types of discipline that produce the feminine aesthetic: “those that aim to produce a body of a certain size and general configuration; those that bring forth from this body a specific repertoire of gestures, postures, and movements; and those that are directed toward the display of this body as an ornamented surface.”23 I knew what it meant to perform femininity because the media and public had taught me; however, as a big woman I was rarely expected to perform femininity, so my repertoire of feminine gestures was lacking. Nonetheless, when reading the role for the director, I used my imagination in a way that I’d never done before, unknowingly employing methods that Butler mentions to accurately portray femininity. I implemented the stereotypical feminine gesture of loosely hanging my hand from my extended wrist. I made sure that my long kanekalon braids were flowing down my back during the scene, and I elongated my neck as if I were a giraffe to appear model-esque. I imagined myself to be thin as I walked daintily across the floor, because I knew I had to control what I sensed was my big body. I blocked my negative thoughts and read for the part. Later that week, I received the email that I, Sharrell D. Luckett, had been cast as the lead female in the play. Although initially excited by the opportunity, extreme panic soon set in because in my mind I was convinced that I could not play the part.Because of my history as a morbidly obese person and my lack of experience on stage in a newly transformed, transweight body, my work on this role led me to suffer from psychological and physical stress. I started to experience uncontrollable anxiety when I was told that my costume would be sleeveless and would reveal my legs and torso. Also, I learned that I had to be lifted in the show twice. I was so scared that my cast mates would not be able to lift me that I promised them I would not gain weight during the rehearsal period. They brushed off my promise as one from a slender, body-conscious woman. My character also simulates sex on stage with her husband, inclusive of a vocal orgasm. Morbidly obese actresses are rarely portrayed as sexually desirable, rarely lifted, and rarely have orgasmic sex on stage. As I worked to understand the extreme anxiety that I was experiencing during the rehearsal and performance process in Holding Up the Sky, I decided that I wanted to further explore the implications of mentally living as a morbidly obese woman and actress while physically maneuvering in a slender body. Thus, I began to conduct an autoethnographic study of my transweight identity as a black, female actress. Building upon Lesa Lockford’s use of Victor Turner’s theory of social drama to analyze a weight loss support group, I used Turner’s theories to explore my transweight journey.24 As Turner posits, “the third phase [of social dramas], redress, reveals that ‘determining’ and ‘fixing’ are indeed processes, not permanent states or givens.”25 When I began my shake diet I was entering the phase of “redress” for what felt like the hundredth time (yo-yo dieting). It is in the phase of redress that I lost my obese body, while still maintaining my fat psychological existence. Similar to the writings on the “new mestiza” and “third space,” the scholarship on liminal spaces in relation to transformation describes my state of entrapment as a person who lost a large amount of weight. The liminal space I am speaking of is one in which my mind manifests in both a fat body and slender body on a daily basis. Though I’ve physically crossed a border, I am trapped by psychological borders, thus my reintegration, or transformation, is incomplete. With this discovery I realized that I was performing on various levels. My morbidly obese psyche performs as the slender person, and the slender person performs as the slender actress, and the actress performs the character. In Richard Schechner’s familiar construction, I am not me (morbidly obese Sharrell), not not me (slender Sharrell), not not not me (slender actress), and then not not not not me (slender character).26 I constantly oscillate among these liminal spaces. I am always in between entities and never feel as though I’m one integrated self. The intensive exploration of my performed affectations of survival as a black actress culminated in the creation of a solo performance text, YoungGiftedandFat, which explores my various performative selves. As D. Soyini Madison notes in her foreword to solo/black/woman, the performativity that transcends the black female performing body is a “complex mix and blend of discursive circulations, gestural economies, and historical affects that break up repetition and scatter style across hearts and minds making black female performativity contingent, otherworldly, and radically contextual.”27 My work on body size and image perception joins a long lineage of other women of the Africana diaspora who dismantle hegemonic institutions and discourses through solo performance, including my favorites Beah Richards, Nina Simone, and Whoopi Goldberg. I approached the creation of YoungGiftedandFat as an actress, a black woman, and a Fat Studies scholar. YoungGiftedandFat was birthed out of my need to suture my fat world, slender world, and liminal world; to bring together my separate lived existences, so vastly different that they would be portrayed as two complete beings. With this performance I re-affirm that black women do have serious issues with body image. And when black women are cast as sexually desirable leading ladies, they too must conform to existing expectations of thinness. With my interests and various identities in mind, I developed questions: How much of my offstage fat identity is informing the textual creation of my slender performative identity? When I write my slender voice, am I writing first through the voice of my fat self? I am also thinking about the performance of identity in relation to space. What does it mean to create a textual space (border) in which both bodies simultaneously exist? What does it mean to have both voices speak through one organism/body? My goal is not to provide universal answers but to share one woman’s attempt to suture these two selves for a unified performance. By addressing the aforementioned questions, a malleable, yet tangible script emerged. My script is a testament to the trials and tribulations of fat women and a call for critical conversations about insecurities and oppression projected onto the fat body. Though my script is an autoethnography, I also consider it a testimonial. Regarding the history of testimonials in Latina feminist tradition, Chandra Talpade Mohanty has argued that “testimonials do not focus on the unfolding of a singular woman’s consciousness (in the hegemonic tradition of European modernist autobiography); rather, their strategy is to speak from within a collective, as participants in revolutionary struggles, and to speak with the express purpose of bringing about social and political change.”28 My collective consists of fat women, slender women (however brief my encounter with this culture), and the voice(s) in my head. My story is told through the voice of my fat identity (Fat), my slender identity (Skinny), and my liminal identity (Sharrell). ‘Fat’ often speaks from the past, when she lived in the fat body, but Fat recognizes that she is trapped in a slender, unfamiliar body. ‘Skinny,’ who lives and experiences the world in a slender body, is a purposefully under-developed character because she is relatively young, existing only a little over four years. ‘Sharrell’ is the character who straddles the border. She represents the fat psyche coupled with the premature slender psyche who both live in the slender body. By writing the voices of my fat body, my slender body, and my liminal existence, I work to disrupt the “solo” versus “multiple” cast dichotomy, an artistic trait of other solo performances by black women that highlights experiences with race and gender.29 In my case, however, I am highlighting race, gender, and various size identities, making this disruptive dichotomy even more complex. For my present body houses the lived experiences of both a fat and a slender person, as well as the psyche of a bordered identity. The characters are created through prose, movement, and poetry that aims to express the complex mental reality in which I exist. In “Fat’s Lament” I struggle with my desire for the sexual gaze of black men. I’ve always wanted my black brothers to be curious about my sexual prowess so when my slender body afforded me sexual freedom and an abundance of newfound attention from men, I found myself in virtual spaces, places, and relationships that I had ‘no business’ being in. In a slender body, I am no longer sexually invisible, and I have a difficult time negotiating sexual advances from my male counterparts. This poem was born out of my new sexual identity and the agency I was afforded in ‘pullin’ attractive men. [caption id="attachment_1125" align="alignnone" width="606"] Figure 1., Sharrell D. Luckett performs an excerpt of YoungGiftedandFat at for the Univ. of Missouri’s 10th Anniversary Life Literature Series. Photo by: Rebecca Allen[/caption] “Fat’s Lament” Look at you skinny Got me wide open and hot like a pot uv grits Now I’m getting served Bubbling brown hot dog sticks Too many I ain’t got enough holes They all won’t fit; don’t make me choose dumb decisions; I ain’t used to this abuse is bliss is this what dem thin bitches be complainin’ about count me in; let em out pass the cuties but save the cooties wink at the married ones cuz they smoking guns ready to burst, pop, spaz at any second shawty swang my way, I’ll be ur 2nd blessing dumb decisions I’m rolling my 3rd blunt; all thanks to my cuteness Yeah, I’m loose and I think I’m losin. I ain’t used to this Fullness; all wrapped up in his arms Don’t mind if he’s an alcoholic cuz He, he be my daddy remind me of my daddy That’s a shame; rolling blunts with my daddy Sexing up his frame Drowning in a spa full of cold water Posin for a pic that’s gone take me under I swear I’ll let him go if you promise to love me When he leaves Wither up and get off of me; I gotta go to school Big ambitions and a lot of talk But dem mens make me fall I asked God to send me a sign I’m layin on my back just taking it I wish she’d call I swear I’ll pick up and suck the milk from her breasts Even share my eggs cuz motherhood I missed. Now skinny has got me wide open Legs stretched and I’m hoping Something good will come out of this Whipped cream rushing All this like has got me blushing And I laugh; cuz all this like is something I ain’t never had . . . In “Riot,” the personal is political, beckoning collective resistance. Again, I am solo, while at the same time representing many women who struggle with the burden of losing weight. I speak from within the border, and on both sides of the border. In this piece, my liminal identity is exploring my haunted past of being neglected and abused by men, while working to make sense of what has happened to my body. Skinny admits that she feels as though she is living a lie, but she knows that teaming up with Fat would surely strip her of her privilege. Skinny is dreaming of an imaginary world in which size doesn’t factor into how she is valued. “Riot” Father of black back Mother of strong bones Consecrated in the middle to create my song Within me, his wit The curve of his smile pearly white teeth legs that run for miles Not to mention my mathematical genius Goes unused But who needs chemistry when u’ve got the blues Too much pressure In the crock pot To be like her: hot From Jane Eyre to Elizabeth Taylor, From Beverly Johnson to a fine black woman, just name her Nothing like her The woman who bore me pain Nothing like, yet identical all the same A thing for men who didn’t love me back A thing for boys that scolded my fat These rolls on my back This meat on my thigh cut it off and it’ll stand a mile high Big, black, bitch That was my name Big, black, bitch All the lil n*ggas would proclaim Threw me into silence Forced me into shame Ran from me while playing “take yo fat friend home” “take yo fat friend home” and don’t bring her back the next day I think those boys made me hide my song In this next section, the liminal identity (Sharrell), begins to speak from the border. At the border she envisions a song. Her song is a metaphor for her ‘true identity.’ One that she feels is fat, black, young, and gifted. But which identity marker is the first marker, second, and so on? One might assume that Sharrell’s skin pigmentation of deep dark cocoa brown is her primary identity marker, especially in America. It is at this point that I, the writer, would like to note that I ‘missed’ the colorism discrimination in childhood that other dark-skinned women endured, and am not able to clearly recognize pigmentation bias against my dark skin within the black community in my adult life. My dark skin color was rarely an issue in or outside of my home. In fact, when the boys on the back of the school bus titled me ‘Big, Black, Bitch’ I remember thinking that they had the ‘black’ identity marker correct, and not understanding why being ‘big’ was so bad. That they coupled ‘big’ and ‘black’ with ‘bitch’ was the signifier that their beat box performance was meant to hurt me. Lesson learned at age nine: don’t sit in the back of the bus. The world made me hide my song My song I’m not singing it yet It’s tucked away somewhere Catching its breath Been running far too long Hiding under clothes too small Under hate that’s well worn Under burgundy rivers that sleep in my womb In feathers of the pillow that catch my tears released too soon In long awaited nights In all my years My song transcends my fears Beah Richards says A black woman speaksAbout oppression, about slavery, about all this heat Fuck those little black boys and these grown men That withheld their drooling Down with skinny bitches and all this schooling Fuck the scale Fuck a diet Fuck fruits and vegetables This is my riot And although I open my mouth My song won’t come out It sits in silence I am a black woman who wishes for a time That I could gain my weight back And still be fine That I can let my curly hair show and blow in the wind Without being seen as a threat to all men So I wear straight wigs This degree that flows down my back; I want it for every black person that has been attacked All of my n*ggas that’s been held back I read and write and read and fight Read and write and read and cry Read and write, and when I speak I fly Bag lady, why you carrying all them bags I carry them to remind me of my past All of the “no you can’ts” all of the “you’re too bigs” All of the “why you so black and yo mama light skinneds” All of the “you won’t get a jobs” all of the “they won’t let you ins” All of the “you can’t ever be a teacher cuz you distract the kids” I wish I could fall into the arms of my father and do it all again I’d whisper in his ear, that he’s a great man, I’d tell him to keep his sperm Locked away in his pants, but I guess my mama felt too good and the universe decided to give me a chance. So here I am. At this point, the “I” in the final phrase “So here I am” is the borderland. “I” is the place and space that my obese psyche and slender body share. “I” is black, a woman, and a site of total confusion, while Fat is literally trying to catch up with Skinny. “I” is Sharrell, who waits patiently at the border, hoping to fully integrate with Fat and Skinny to build a new, complete life. “So here I am” also affirms my presence in this world and my right to interrogate my identity as a means to peel myself apart and put me back together again. As I continue to think through my various personas, I have come to understand that Fat and Skinny truly experience the world differently, while my liminal self acts as sort of mediator between the two. The work that I am doing in the borderlands is born out of a desire to love that part of me which is fat just as much as the world loves that part of me which is slender. My journey is a difficult one because I am consciously making an effort to erase the border, revealing a whole human being. As I continue my research and performative inquiry, I do so knowing that I may never reach a resolution. I am also aware that the possibility of being physically deported is quite real, as my genetic make-up and appetite work against my slender existence at every meal. Nonetheless, I do believe that peace, harmony, and healthiness can co-exist in my mind, my body and my art. Thus, I explore and I write and I perform and I write some more. The work at the borderlands is multifaceted. This work is integral to my survival, for crossing over is never an easy task. I went missing in 2008 Shed my skin, withered away This body ain’t mine; it never belonged to me Escaped like a thief in the night and now I’m tryna find me With all my might What is this in my hand? What is this in my hand? If you force me to speak, I will surely tell a lie When I killed myself, I had an alibi I was at home, alone, wanting to be let out Had to find my song And now my ancestors tell me it’s been within me all along so why in God’s name am I so far from home A skinny bitch could NEVER do this shit That fat, black girl sings my song -------- Sharrell D. Luckett is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at California State University-Dominguez Hills. She is an award-winning director/producer of over 60 shows and has co-created four musicals. Luckett received her Ph.D. in Theatre at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she was selected to serve as Doctoral Marshal and keynote speaker. Her upcoming projects include the world premiere of her one-woman show, YoungGiftedandFat, and a seminal manuscript outlining the Freddie Hendricks acting method. --------- Endnote: [1] Solo performance artist Misty DeBerry made this statement at the Mellon/Northwestern University Institute of Feminist Performance in the African Diaspora, 20 June 2011. [2] Kathleen LeBesco, Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 62. [3] F. Grodstein et al., “Three-year follow-up of participants in a commercial weight loss program. Can you keep it off?” Archives of Internal Medicine (JAMA) 156, no. 12 (June 1996): 1302-1306. [4] Fat Studies is a field of study dedicated to ending discrimination against large people and accepting size diversity. [5] Lily O’Hara and Jane Gregg, “Human Rights Casualties from the “War on Obesity”: Why Focusing on Body Weight Is Inconsistent with a Human Rights Approach to Health,” Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight Society 1-1 (2012): 32-46. [6] Sander Gilman, Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 9. [7] Steven N. Blair and I-Min Lee, “Weight Loss and Risk of Mortality,” in George A. Bray, et al, eds. Handbook of Obesity (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2008), 805-818. [8] Rose Weitz, introduction to Section III: The Politics of Appearance in Rose Weitz, ed.,The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 133. See also Susie Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue (New York: Paddington Press, 1978). [9] Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” in Weitz, The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior, 25-45. [10] Gilman, Fat, 13. [11] For this essay, I define slender as being in one’s BMI (Body Mass Index) normal range or lower overweight range. [12] Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (New York: Routledge, 2000), 11-13. [13] 6 months to a year. [14] E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Eds., solo/black/woman: Scripts, Interviews, and Essays (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014; Nicole Fleetwood, Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); and Harvey Young, Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010). [15] Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” 34. [16] Andrea Shaw, The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women’s Unruly Political Bodies (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006); Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). [17] See Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987). [18] See Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture for further discussion of the ‘third space’ (New York: Routledge, 1994). [19] Holding Up the Sky is an original play adapted by Milbre Burch, first produced in 2009 2010 at the University of Missouri-Columbia, directed by Clyde Ruffin. [20] Weitz, The Politics of Women’s Bodies, 133. [21] Claire Van Ens, “The Poetics of Excess: Images of Large Women on Stage and Screen” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1999). [22] Judith Butler, “Embodied Identity in de Beauvoirs The Second Sex,” paper presented at the American Philosophical Association, 1985, quoted in Bartky, 27. [23] Ibid. [24] See Lesa Lockford, “Social Drama in the Spectacle of Femininity: The Performance of Weight Loss in the Weight Watchers Program,” Women’s Studies in Communication 19 (1996): 291-312. [25] See Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), 77. [26] See Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 4-5. [27] D. Soyini Madison, foreword to solo/black/woman, E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, eds.(Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 2014), xiii. Emphasis in original. [28] Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 81. [29] E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, introduction, solo/black/woman: scripts, interviews, and essays, xx. ----------- The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 26, Number 2 (Spring 2014) Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Guest Editor: Cheryl Black (University of Missouri) With the ATDS Editorial Board: Noreen C. Barnes (Virginia Commonwealth University), Nicole Berkin (CUNY Graduate Center), Johan Callens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Jonathan Chambers (Bowling Green State University), Dorothy Chansky (Texas Tech University), James Fisher (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Anne Fletcher (Southern Illinois University), Felicia Londré (University of Missouri-Kansas City), Kim Marra (University of Iowa ), Judith A. Sebesta (The College for All Texans Foundation), Jonathan Shandell (Arcadia University), LaRonika Thomas (University of Maryland), Harvey Young (Northwestern University) Managing Editor: Ugoran Prasad Editorial Assistant: Andrew Goldberg Circulation Manager: Janet Werther Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue The Border that Beckons and Mocks: Conrad, Failure, and Irony in O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon Alternative Transnationals: Naomi Wallace and Cross-Cultural Performances Transgenero Performance: Gender and Transformation in Fronteras Desviadas/Deviant Borders Crossing Genre, Age and Gender: Judith Anderson as Hamlet YoungGiftedandFat: Performing Transweight Identities Hot Pursuit: Researching Across the Theatre/Film Border Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Olga Sanchez Saltveit 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 Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation Olga Sanchez Saltveit By Published on April 29, 2021 Download Article as PDF by Olga Sanchez Saltveit The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 33, Number 2 (Spring 2021) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2020 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Black Latinx community represents a significant portion of the Latinx[1] population, particularly in regions of the US where many Latinx reside. In New York, 23%, in California, 15%, and in Florida, 12% of the Latinx community identify as “Afro-Latinx.”[2] These regions also encompass the most established centers of Latinx theatre making in the country, so it is surprising that Afro-descendant Latinx experiences have not been well represented in Latinx dramaturgy except in the appreciative nods toward AfroLatinx cultural heritage found in music, dance, and spirituality. The legacy of hierarchical colonial racism which infiltrates and informs Latinx anti-Blackness has also been omitted from dramatic discourse. “Racial discrimination is a skeleton in the closet of the Latin@ community,”[3] writes Carlos Flores. The absence of the Black Latinx experience in Latinx dramaturgy is simultaneously an act of anti-Blackness and a denial that anti-Blackness in Latinidad exists. However, as Daphnie Sicre[4] notes, the early twenty-first century has ushered in an era in which “Afro-Latinx are no longer non-existent or invisible in theatre,” and the rise of work authored by AfroLatinx on numerous themes calls for “a reconfiguration of the canon: Afro-Latinx theatre is crucial for the survival of Black theatre and its intersectionalities between Latinx and African Americans.”[5] Here, I focus on the work of playwright Guadalís Del Carmen who shines a light on the anti-Blackness found within the Latinx community of the US and Latin America, that is, anti-Blackness targeted toward people who might also identify as Latinx, or, AfroLatinx. UnidosUS defines an “Afro-Latino” as “an individual of African descent from Latin America or an individual who has one parent of African descent and another of Latino descent.” According to Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, “the term Afro-Latin@ has surfaced a way to signal racial, cultural, and socioeconomic contradictions within the overly vague idea of ‘Latin@.’ In addition to reinforcing those ever-active transnational ties, the Afro-Latin@ concept calls attention to the anti-Black racism within the Latin@ communities themselves.”[6] The ideology of mestizaje attempted to homogenize the Latinx identity as one of racial mixture that blended myriad cultures and backgrounds, formed by syncretism, juxtaposition, fusion, and resistance. However, many racial and phenotypical identities exist within Latinidad that continue to be subjected to the legacy of European, primarily Spanish, colonization strategies including the formation of racialized hierarchies. Colorism and phenotypical discrimination pervade Latinx culture to this day, evident in the overwhelming presence of lighter-skinned Latinx in positions of power and influence, including popular media. “It is rare to see Latin@s of African descent on Spanish-speaking television or in movies. It is equally rare to see them advertising products in national Latin@ magazines.”[7][8] This privilege surfaces in the private sphere as well, within families and among friends, where one might hope for respite from racism. Thus, the term AfroLatinx, a non-binary update, intentionally complicates Latinx identity to embrace and celebrate African descent and illuminate the racism that persists in public and private. Latinx theatre since the mid-twentieth century has dedicated itself to challenging misrepresentations and harmful stereotypes of the mainstream by creating dramas that humanize Latinx and Latin Americans in the gaze of the mainstream White Unitedstatesian audience and the “American” theatre. In myriad plays revolving around issues of social justice, the marginalized Latinx can be seen struggling against the dominant White culture.[9] In the latter quarter of the twentieth century, Latinx feminist and queer voices disrupted this dynamic, arguing that their discrimination within the Latinx community also needed to be addressed on stage.[10] In the ‘90s and early aughts, the Latinx experience of anti-Black racism from the larger White mainstream was powerfully documented by Latinx playwrights such as Josefina Baéz, Carmen Rivera, and Candido Tirado. However, the experiences of discrimination faced by Black Latinx from within the Latinx community remains less visible on Latinx stages. I have previously argued that Black Latinx are more likely to be seen on stage in Latinx roles than to be written about in Latinx plays.[11] Yet that argument is complicated by the reality that Black Latinx actors such as Del Carmen and Crystal Román, who is also cited in the article, are too often overlooked for casting in projects that should include them. Latinx anti-Blackness is so embedded in the culture and so often inflicted presumably without intended malice (as for example, in families that encourage their children not to stay out in the sun too long so as not to darken their skin tone further) that injustice and harm appear to be accepted as inevitable interpersonal insensitivity, not worth public scrutiny. That invisibility is assuredly changing, as Sicre details in her 2018 chapter on “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today.” As Sicre notes, playwright Guadalís Del Carmen was highlighted in the 2018 Latinx Theatre Commons Carnaval of New Latinx Work, held at DePaul University in Chicago. She also performed in the 2015 Latina/o Theatre Commons Carnaval as an actor. However, as a Black Latina she more often found herself in the frustrating situation, too often echoed by others, of being “too Black to be cast as a Latina, and too Latina to be cast as Black.” A journalist by training, Del Carmen turned to playwriting to create roles for herself in the Chicago area where she grew up. Soon, she began writing roles for other Latinx actors who, like her, did not see themselves represented within Latinx theatre. Del Carmen’s work could not be more timely. In 2020, with the increased activism in support of #BlackLivesMatter, and the calling out/calling in from #WeSeeYouWAT, Latinx around the nation, including those of us in theatre, have been forced to acknowledge and address our community’s implicit anti-Blackness and how it shows up on our stages. Latinx theatre making has been so focused on Latinx oppression, that it has seemingly ignored its toxicity toward AfroLatinx. Del Carmen’s transformative works spotlight AfroLatinx experiences of Latinx racism, in ways that reflect its widespread and corrosive presence within the microcosm of family dynamics as well as in the larger political sphere. Below I focus briefly on two of her plays, My Father’s Keeper and Daughters of the Rebellion, and the strategies she employs to presence Blackness and anti-Blackness in Latinx storytelling. My Father’s Keeper centers on a Dominican immigrant family living in Chicago. Del Carmen employs a telling strategy even before the play begins, making it clear through the descriptions of the dramatis personae that most of the characters are Black. The presence of an intentionally identified AfroLatinx family as the focal point of a Latinx drama was unique in 2013, when the play was first written, and remains rare. Many plays that could have been cast with Black Latinx actors, particularly those that centered on people who hail from regions with significant Afrodescendant populations such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, are by default of anti-Blackness cast with mestizo or White Latinx. As Luckett and Shaffer note, “White supremacy often controls and dictates what representations are allowed visibility, and because of this phenomenon ‘Black’ actors are often pigeon-holed within a limited barometer of what is perceived to be Blackness.”[12] Del Carmen corrects this error by stipulating the casting of Black actors, demanding the visibility of the Black who is also Latinx and the Latinx who is also Black. It is an Anzaldúan move[13] that dissolves powerful yet fictional borders between identities that in reality overlap. Next, Del Carmen addresses Latinx colorism by calling for actors of different skin tones in specific roles. The titular father, Tirsio Gonzalez and son, Armando are both identified as “Dominican” and “Black Latino.” Juana Gonzalez, Tirsio’s wife and Mondo’s mother, is also identified as Dominican, and “Lighter in complexion than the rest of the family,” which would include Sofia, Mondo’s sister who is described as Dominican. From the outset, these character descriptions alone make it clear that skin tones are important details that will influence not only casting but potentially engage the embodied experience of the actor and influence audiences’ reception. Later on, Tirsio confirms this when he shares that in his home country, “if you don't have rich name, or have the light skin, or a friend in the right place, you not go far in your career.”[14] Colorism is of course a familiar dynamic in US African American history, provoked by nineteenth century white supremacy, according to bell hooks who recounts that "racist white folks often treated lighter-skinned black folks better than their darker counterparts, and … this pattern was mirrored in black social relations.”[15] Del Carmen demonstrates the shared hierarchy at work in Latinx and Latin American culture. Mondo has married Anne, a White woman, and they have a son. Juana praises her young grandson, saying “Mi chichí will be a great man. Con those eyelaches, and his bello curly rubio head. Se parece a un angel.”[16] To which her daughter Sofía replies, “A blond baby... just what you always wanted.”[17] Del Carmen then investigates some of the shared and different experiences of anti-Black racism in the US by introducing the character of Daniel, who is identified as “African American” and who self-identifies in the script as Black. Daniel is Tirsio’s lover and confidante, and in their clandestine meetings they share their experiences as gay men who grew up in violently homophobic homes. Tirsio will never come out to his family as his experiences in the Dominican Republic have taught him that there is no place in his culture for homosexuality. Despite this, Tirsio and Daniel have a decades-long love affair. While Daniel seeks to align with Tirsio racially as well as sexually, Tirsio distances himself on the technicality that because he is Dominican, he is not Black. “The obviously Black baseball star of the Chicago Cubs, Sammy Sosa, for instance, becomes an indio (Indian) rather than a Black, since according to this national myth and tradition Dominicans ‘cannot be Black.’”[18] Haitians, argues Tirsio, are Black, while he and his son are, like Sosa, Indios. Tirsio’s internalized anti-Blackness is self-justified under the guise of nationalism. Del Carmen identifies this as a Latin American strategy. “In Latin America, nationalism takes over race. Because anti-miscegenation was not a part of Latin America, racism is seen as a US thing. I’m not Black. I’m not White. I’m Cuban, I’m Colombian, I’m Dominican.”[19] However, Daniel is not convinced, “The only difference between me, you and any Haitian,” he says, “is the boat stops of our ancestors.”[20] Del Carmen is also of Dominican heritage, born and raised in Chicago where she met few Dominicans besides her large family. “When I stepped out of my house to go to school, to go to work, there really wasn’t a lot of people around me that looked like me or sounded like me. I did grow up around a lot of macro-aggression. I’ve actually gotten into the habit of no longer saying micro because the micro affects us on a macro level.”[21] Yet, Del Carmen’s work is inspired not just by her own personal experiences but by what she sees happening globally. “One of the things I wanted to do was drop the pen on anti-Blackness in Latin America.”[22] For Del Carmen, Latinx plays about Latin American revolutions omitted important conversations about the ways in which anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and capitalism were integral parts of their dynamics. This awareness fueled her next play, Daughters of the Rebellion (previously titled, Tolstoy’s Daughters), which is set in an “unspecified Latin American country.” With this gesture, Del Carmen expands her statement on anti-Blackness in the Latinx community beyond the horizon of the US to include Latin America and to implicate the globe. This is an intentionally political act that illuminates the historic legacy of racialized and gendered hierarchies in Latin America which has yielded pervasive inequity. “Afro-Latinos comprise some 150 million of [Latin America]’s 540 million total population, and, along with women and indigenous populations, are among the poorest, most marginalized groups in the region.”[23] Del Carmen indicts Eurocentric White male supremacist ideology for the continued marginalization of those who are not White males. The titular “daughters” are half-sisters Katya Libertad Córdova (Bates) and Fanya María Córdova, both in their early 20s, raised in the same rich and aristocratic home. However, Katya and Fanya’s experiences are worlds apart, and Del Carmen makes it clear that this is due to their appearance. As with My Father’s Keeper, Del Carmen describes the characters’ physical attributes in the Cast of Characters. Katya, the daughter of a revolutionary, is described as having “strong, dark features, Afro-Latina.” Her mother, Ester, her sister Fanya and her stepfather Daniel all have “light features,” as do Presidente Burgos and his son Ramón. Franco Montés is a revolutionary who “can be indigenous or black” and Angela, Franco’s accomplice, is “Afro-Latina.”[24] When the play begins, Fanya’s father, Katya’s stepfather, Daniel is a recently elected senator who becomes fast friends with the new President of the country. However, the President has initiated policies that are highly detrimental to the Black and Indigenous people of the country. His White supremacy becomes evident in his encounters with the Córdovas, when he makes it clear he neither trusts not expects much from Katya. In a telling early scene in which the newly elected President visits their home, he alludes to the girl, then nine years old, as a “mistake” and later, years into his Presidency, one “not to be trusted” among “Those people [who] can never be trusted.”[25] As with My Father’s Keeper, in which racism intersected homophobia, Del Carmen complicates the oppressions experienced in Daughters of the Rebellion. In addition to overt anti-Blackness, the Indigenous people of this fictional nation are also under attack, forbidden to wear their traditional clothing in the capital (a negation of their public cultural identity), and are being removed from their land and executed. The play is further intersected with feminist concerns as Katya and Fanya realize that as women living in a blatantly patriarchal society, they will never be taken seriously. Even from her privileged position Fanya knows that “People still don’t believe a woman is capable of anything more than having babies.”[26] This coalitional alliance among Afrodescendants, the Indigenous, and women points to Del Carmen’s shared critique of male-dominated White supremacist ideology. In response, Del Carmen’s fictional nation is in the midst of revolution, as Blacks, Indigenous, and feminists create underground movements and divergent plans which echo the strategies of civil rights movements of the twentieth century. The two half-sisters align themselves with different approaches. Fanya is working with the President’s son to bring charges against the President and his administration in an International Court. Katya’s approach is more militant, destroying government and financial buildings. Eventually Katya and Fanya’s two paths to liberation cross and contradict each other with fatal results. The play is violent, but certainly no more than real life. The true revolution in Daughters of Rebellion as in My Father’s Keeper is the de-centering of Latinx oppression in Del Carmen’s dramaturgy. Unlike much of Latinx theatre, in neither play are the characters’ Latinx or Latin American identities the basis of their experiences of oppression. The Gonzalez family is Dominican and living in the US but the issues at the heart of My Father’s Keeper are Tirsio’s hidden sexual orientation and the self-denial of his Blackness. In Daughters of the Rebellion, Del Carmen removes the potential for anti-Latinx discrimination by situating the play within a Latin American country. If everyone is Latin American, then there is no discrimination on that basis. Del Carmen ironically twists the strategy employed by mestizaje ideology which falsely neutralized race into one raza cósmica and negated the existence of diverse racialized experiences. In Del Carmen’s works, Latinidad is neutralized. Further, the absence of distinct identification implies that this could be any Latin American country where Whiteness rules. It could also be the US. Indeed, Daughters of the Rebellion emerged from a powerfully angry moment for Del Carmen as she witnessed yet more instances of anti-Black violence in the US. I was pissed when I wrote this play. I watched a video of a neighbor taking footage of Michael Brown being killed, and that same day on C-span, I watched a documentary where Shola Lynch, a documentarian, was talking about her film, Free Angela Davis and all Political Prisoners. Fanya’s name was actually inspired by it; Angela Davis’ sister’s name is Fanya. I was watching this documentary and I literally sat there thinking to myself, ‘so nothing has changed.’ The first scene that I wrote was where Katya is about to be electrocuted, and the rest came from there… It was a response to the feeling, so Black people are not wanted anywhere, and the reality of being a Black person who’s a child of immigrants, and the realization that this is global, Black people are not wanted anywhere.[27] Del Carmen was motivated by her identification with Black people, and then recognized the same struggles existed for her as a person of Latin American heritage. In the face of anti-Blackness, nationalism would not protect her, as it does not protect Tirsio nor Katya. Del Carmen writes to create change. She writes for a broad audience with “the hope that something resonates with them and the conversation can happen.”[28] And when her voice as a playwright was silenced by the theatre closures of spring 2020, she turned to more direct action. Del Carmen’s 2020 off-Broadway debut was delayed by the COVID outbreak, so she joined the activism for Black liberation as an advocate for transformation in the field of Latinx theatre-making. Working with the Latinx Playwrights Circle (a project she co-founded) and The Sol Project (the producers of her COVID-interrupted show, Bees and Honey), Del Carmen invited fifty influential Latinx theatre makers around the country to a workshop on “Anti-Blackness in the Latinx Community” led by Radio Caña Negra. Facilitators Dash Harris Machado, Evelyn Alvarez, and Janvieve Williams Comrie provided rich content that delved into the history of Africans and Afrodescendants in Latin America, the continued racism there, and the ways in which contemporary Latinx cultures in the US have inherited and reinforced this legacy of anti-Blackness, even while simultaneously articulating a marginalized position. Latinx have certainly been subjected to injustices, including misrepresentation and harmful stereotypes. But in the US as in Latin America, despite the presence of accomplished AfroLatinx in all areas of the arts and other fields, White supremacy has helped generate an image of Latinx identity that excludes Blackness. As Del Carmen says, “I experienced a lot of anti-Blackness from what’s supposed to be my community, really feeling like I never was a full part of the Latinx community because I didn’t look like what a Latina is supposed to look like. I don’t look Italian. That’s what Latinos are supposed to look like.”[29] Recalling the feeling of unwantedness that angered her to write, she notes how it has helped her to home in on “How I use my art as a form of resistance to that feeling and what I pour back into the world which is a love of Black people and a love of being Black.”[30] Del Carmen creates works that challenge the Latinx community to confront its anti-Blackness. In addition to writing dialogue that pulls no punches, her strategies include intentionally identifying her characters as Black, complicating casting by including skin tones in the descriptions, intersecting anti-Blackness with other forms of oppression including anti-indigeneity, homophobia, and sexism, and de-centering or removing Latinx oppression from the power dynamics in her settings. Del Carmen writes for AfroLatinx liberation, knowing this focus supports a larger cause: global Black liberation. Through dramaturgy and embodiment, Del Carmen roots out and reveals the racism embedded in Latinx culture and places it center stage so that it may be destroyed. Olga Sanchez Saltveit, Assistant Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College, is Artistic Director Emerita of Milagro, the Pacific NW’s premier Latina/o/x arts culture organization. A director/devisor, scholar, and arts activist, her directorial work has been seen in Portland, Seattle, NYC, DC, Martha’s Vineyard, Peru, Venezuela, and Honduras. Olga served as co-artistic director of the People’s Playhouse in New York City and co-founding artistic director of Seattle Teatro Latino. She is a founding member of the Portland-based Latinx writers’ group Los Porteños; served on the Executive Committee and the Diversity Task Force of TCG’s board of directors, and currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons. She is a contributing scholar to the anthology of Latinx plays, Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theatre, published by Northwestern University Press 2019. [1] “Latinx” is an inclusive, non-gender binary term that began to replace the earlier, more familiar term, “Latina/o” and its variations which privilege binary gender identification. Because the term Latinx came into use more recently, the terms Latina, Latino, Latina/o, Latin@, and their plurals, are used in this article when they are appropriate to their era and authorship. [2] UnidosUSblog, “Afro Latinos Archives,” UnidosUS Blog, 26 February 2019, https://blog.unidosus.org/tag/afro-latinos/ (accessed 27 April 2021). [3] Carlos Flores, “Desde El Mero Medio: Race Discrimination within the Latin@ Community,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 323. [4] See “Afro-Latinx themes in Theatre Today” by Daphnie Sicre, for an extensive survey of theatre by AfroLatinx playwrights and performers since 1999. [5] Daphnie Sicre, “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today,” The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, edited by Kathy A. Perkins, Sandra L. Richards, Alexander Renee Craft, and Thomas DeFrantz (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 272-277. [6] Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román, “Introduction,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 2. [7] See The Afro-Latino Reader: History and Culture in the United States, a brilliant anthology edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, for a vastly more profound discussion of the diversity of Afro-Latino history through scholarly essays as well as poetry, drama, and testimonio. [8] Carlos Flores, 323. [9] A few examples of this dramaturgical dynamic include Zoot Suit (1979) by Luis Valdez, Real Women Have Curves (1990) by Josefina Lopez, and Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints (1992). [10] Examples include Blade to the Heat (1994) by Oliver Mayer, Clean (1995) by Edwin Sanchez, and Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman: Mexican Medea (1997). [11] Olga Sanchez Saltveit, “(Afro)Latinx Theatre: Embodiment and Articulation,” Label Me Latina/o, special issue: Afro-Latina/o Literature and Performance (2017): 1–20. [12] Sharrell D. Luckett and Tia M. Shaffer, “Introduction: The Affirmation,” Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 5. [13] “Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy” (Anzaldúa 20). “A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary" (Anzaldúa 25). For Gloria Anzaldúa, political boundaries such as the one between the US and Mexico were artificial and inadequate, failing to capture the complexity of the inhabitants who reside in adjacent lands. One was not simply on one side or the other but in a place that included both. [14] Guadalís Del Carmen, My Father's Keeper (2018), 18. [15] bell hooks, “Back to Black: Ending Internalized Racism,” Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation (London: Routledge, 2015), 174. [16] His beautiful curly blond head. He looks like an angel. [17] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 13. [18] Mark Sawyer, “Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latin@ Identities and Coalitions,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 532. [19] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [20] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 46. [21] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [22] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [23] “Afro-Latinos in Latin America and Considerations for U.S. Policy,” EveryCRSReport.com, Congressional Research Service, 22 January 2009. http://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32713.html (accessed on 27 April 2021). [24] Guadalís Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion (2019). [25] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion, 30. [26] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion, 74. [27] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [28] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [29] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [30] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. ISNN 2376-4236 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 Table of Contents: “Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble” by Elizabeth M. Cizmar “Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth” by Baron Kelly “A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson's Black Feminist Intervention” by Khalid Y. Long “An Interview with Elaine Jackson” by Nathaniel G. Nesmith "Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston" by Michelle Cowin Gibbs "1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Antimusical The Mule-Bone Is Presented" by Eric M. Glover “'Ògún Yè Mo Yè!' Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities" by Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green "Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar" by Lisa B. Thompson "Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge" by Bernth Lindfors "Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation" by Olga Sanchez Saltveit "A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement" by Isaiah Matthew Wooden www.jadtjournal.org www.jadtjournal.org ">jadt@gc.cuny.eduwww.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Yu Chien Lu, Administrative Producer ©2020 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative The Theatre of August Wilson Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration The Theatre of Eugene O'Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Introduction to “Milestones in Black Theatre” Interviews and Afterviews on "Milestones in Black Theatre" Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Re-Imagining America and Theater: Race, Representation, and Form Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Javier Hurtado Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences Javier Hurtado By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences testifies to the fact that “today’s theatre workers know the value and importance of the next generation,” as Jorge Huerta observes in the forward (9). The book brings together contemporary docudrama, solo performance, and plays with and without music written for young, Latina/o audiences by Latino/a playwrights. The anthology also includes six scholarly articles that conduct in-depth analysis of the plays in the collection; document conversations with leaders in the field; offer pedagogical tools; and ultimately model paradigmatic shifts in the ways Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) is produced, presented, and taught. In the introduction, José Casas writes that as an artist of color, he often feels like an “uninvited guest” in the greater landscape of TYA (9). Diane Rodriguez shares this sentiment. In an interview for the collection, she addresses what she calls “the gap,” a disconnection in the field that has not made TYA a means for “building audiences of color over the past 50 years” (88). This 581-page anthology is an attempt to address that gap, featuring plays by Josefina López, Guillermo Reyes, Lisa Loomer, and more. However, it is not a collection begging for an invitation; it is an affirmation of the work that Latina/o/x communities have already been doing for generations. By pairing these plays with essays that engage the themes of the plays in the collection as well as issues in the field of TYA, Palabras del Cielo provides critical tools for degree programs in TYA to center Latina/o plays in their classrooms and on their stages. University-driven efforts to train scholars and professionals in TYA have expanded; at thirty-one universities across the United States, there are six MFA programs, eight MA programs, seven BFA programs, and eighteen BA programs that offer degrees in educational theatre or TYA. Palabras del Cielo makes an intervention for Latina/o-specific studies in these programs. The texts within offer a unique opportunity to deepen conversations about Latina/o experiences in the United States and to interrogate the history of the craft of storytelling through the theatrical adaptation of Latina/o folktales. In turn, three of the included plays reimagine western canonical texts like Voltaire’s Candide and Dante’s Inferno. These plays allow young actors to perform a variety of acting styles and genres while maintaining a focus on the “young audience” aspect that is central to the form. Beyond the theatre classroom, this anthology could easily be used to explore how Latina/o identity and culture shifts over time, since the plays reflect issues in the community from the mid-1990s to 2014. In addition, the companion essays offer scholarly context that make the book a resource for those in the social sciences and humanities more broadly. For example, in her essay, “The Historical Developments and Emergence of Latina/o TYA: Towards a Mestizaje Theatre,” Cecilia J. Argón traces the specific trajectory of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences (LTYA) through the role of children in performance traditions from Indo-Hispanic rituals and indigenous ceremony to the Chicano Movement. Aragon concludes by affirming that “this anthology of plays recognizes the performance of regional specificity, migration, and transnationalism and global impacts on Chicana/o and Latina/o children and youth” (25). In the essay, “They Don’t Look Like Me: A Look at Representation of Marginalized Populations in TYA in the United States,” Kelly Fey uses a cultural studies framework to write about the impact that cultural representation has on identity formation and interpersonal relations. Fey also puts forth a framework to assess diversity and inclusion work being done at theaters across the United States and provides readers with a TYA Inclusivity Manifesto modeled after the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s work in audience development. Palabras del Cielo amplifies the voices of Latinos and Latinas equally throughout. However, the experiences of trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming youth and the works of playwrights who identify as Latinx are palpably absent. Despite this absence, some of the stories in this book do engage with young protagonists who challenge gender norms. Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans: A Salsa Fairytale (book and lyrics by Karen Zacharías, music by Deborah Wicks La Puma) is a great example. In this fantastic, fast-paced musical adaptation, the title character is a sixth-grade exchange student from Puerto Rico who comes to a new school to learn English. However, this fairytale is not about a young girl who goes to the ball, loses her shoes, and meets a prince; it is about two young girls who learn empathy and fairness, after tempers flare between them on the basketball court. This version of Cinderella makes a significant effort to counter the sexism of the original story. For instance, the girls compete to earn a spot on a national team with a celebrity coach, played by a fairy godfather, while his wife enjoys a day off at the spa. Like the rest of the titles in this collection, Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans is a strong play that can easily tour schools or hold an audience as part of any university or professional mainstage season. Meaning “words from heaven,” Palabras del Cielo is ultimately a stellar anthology of Latina/o TYA geared toward the classroom. It lends itself to production-based and historical survey classes at the university level, providing a necessary intervention with the potential to reverberate across stages and classrooms for generations. Javier Hurtado Tufts University The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 2 (Winter 2019) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2019 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Black Performance and Pedagogy Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

Andrea Harris Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 1 Visit Journal Homepage Sur la Pointe on the Prairie: Giuseppina Morlacchi and the Urban Problem in the Frontier Melodrama Andrea Harris By Published on March 5, 2015 Download Article as PDF When the frontier melodrama, The Scouts of the Prairie, And, Red Deviltry As It Is!, opened in Chicago in December 1872, it marked the beginning of a performance genre that would have significant impact on the American national imagination. Written by Ned Buntline (E. Z. C. Judson), the dime novel author who christened William F. Cody “Buffalo Bill,” The Scouts of the Prairie was the first stage play to star the famous frontiersman as himself, playing out the “real” drama of his Western adventures for spectators. Scouts launched a fourteen-year theatrical tradition that evolved into Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, the extremely successful performance spectacle that played across the US and in Europe for three decades. Scholars have long credited Cody’s Wild West as “the most important commercial vehicle for the fabrication and transmission of the Myth of the Frontier,” the thesis that the road to modernity was necessarily fraught with violent conflicts between “civilized” and “savage” peoples.[1] Appearing alongside Cody in the frontier play were Buntline himself, the scout John “Texas Jack” Omohundro, and, as the American Indian princess Dove Eye and Cody’s love interest, the Italian ballerina Giuseppina Morlacchi. The lion’s share of the existing scholarship on Cody’s performance focuses on his better-known large outdoor spectacles, sidelining the theatrical combinations that started his thespian career. More recent studies are expanding our knowledge of Cody’s stage plays, but even here, no one has questioned the incongruous casting of the famous Italian ballerina as an American Indian woman in the production that launched the western celebrity’s stage career, The Scouts of the Prairie.[2] Most authors mention that the cast of Scouts included a well-known Italian dancer, but stop short of asking what kind of dance she did in the play, why dance might have been included, or what meanings it might have expressed. But by casting such a neutral lens on the dancing Dove Eye, scholars have failed to understand dance itself as a meaningful text in the play. As I will show, Morlacchi’s dancing in The Scouts of the Prairie—not only the fact that she danced, but how, set in context with nineteenth-century discourses on ballet, the female ballet dancer, and the city—produces a more complex reading of Morlacchi’s character and the frontier melodrama. Born in Milan in 1836, Morlacchi was six years old when she entered the famed La Scala ballet academy, then the world’s leader in classical dance under the leadership of Carlo Blasis. With her impeccable training, Morlacchi worked with some of the most reputable choreographers in Europe, and was soon invited to join the ballet company at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. She was engaged by artist-manager Don Juan de Pol to come to the US to appear in the 1867 The Devil’s Auction, one of the elaborate ballet-spectacles that became immensely popular after the success of The Black Crook in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Morlacchi worked as both a dancer and choreographer on the ballet-spectacle stage, until she left that genre to pursue her own choreographic career. Making its home in Boston, the Morlacchi Ballet traveled the country from 1868-1872, performing a mixed repertory drawn from European Romantic and post-Romantic ballets and American spectaculars and melodramas. Critics saw in Morlacchi’s dancing the essence of European culture transported to American stages. “She has sparked an excitement among the most cultivated of our citizens and everyone wants to see her perform,”[3] asserted the New York Evening Transcript, and Boston papers concurred, “Many of the refined and cultivated people . . . whose knowledge of art has been perfected by European experiences have been the first in America to detect the genius of this danseuse.”[4] How interesting, then, to find Morlacchi, the embodiment of European classicism, the exemplar of cultured taste, appearing alongside the rugged western scouts, bringing European academic dance onto Buffalo Bill’s (otherwise) “wild” frontier stage. It is not clear how Morlacchi found her way into the western melodrama. Her company was performing at Nixon’s Opera House in Chicago in late 1872, when Buntline finally convinced Cody and Omohundro to meet him in that city for their theatrical debut. Morlacchi was a sought-after performer by theatre managers, and was known as a talented dramatic mime. Perhaps previous roles she had created for herself, including a mute Native American woman in The Wept of Wish-ton-wish, made her seem an especially attractive choice for the Dove Eye role. Perhaps it was Morlacchi’s manager, Major John M. Burke, who met Cody a year later through the dancer and became the highly influential publicity manager who crafted much of the legendary imagery of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, who pointed her towards Buntline’s cast. At any rate, at the end of her company’s season in Chicago in late 1872, Morlacchi was engaged to join the cast of The Scouts of the Prairie as Dove Eye, the Indian maiden.[5] Though no script survives, scholars have been able to rebuild much of the plot of Scouts through program scene synopses and newspaper reviews.[6] As the play opened, trapper Cale Durg (played by Buntline) entered the camp he shared with his ward, the “lovely white girl” Hazel Eye.[7] Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack (both played by themselves) stormed in “with a fiendish yell”[8] and a tale of their last hunt. Dove Eye ran into the scouts’ camp to warn them of her tribesmen’s plans to attack them, led by Wolf Slayer. Yelling war whoops, the four exited, intent on revenge. In the next scene, Hazel Eye was captured by Wolf Slayer and his Indians, recruited by the renegade Mormon Ben, who desired her for his fiftieth wife. Durg tried to save her, but he was outnumbered, and he and Hazel Eye were tied to the stake to be burned. The Indians danced and sang a “Death Dance” around Durg, while he, unperturbed, taunted his captors. Dove Eye “dance[d] in [and] sever[ed] the bonds of Hazel Eye;” together they freed Durg, and fought the Indians.[9] Bill and Jack came to the rescue, vowing “Death to the Redskins,” and Act I concluded with a massive slaughter of Indians, leading the New York Times reviewer to comment that “the unmitigated bloodshed that ends every act and almost every scene of this unique composition were so satisfactory to the public, that the management might be forgiven for hereafter assuming that the key to success must lie in the exhibition of cataracts of gore.”[10] In Act II, Bill declared his love for Dove Eye, and, in turn, Jack his for Hazel Eye. Their bliss was short-lived, however, as both women were again abducted by the Indians, and Durg again captured. Once again tied up (to a tree this time), Durg took the opportunity to deliver a temperance lecture, one of actor/playwright Buntline’s long-time causes. Durg was shot and killed by Wolf Slayer. As Act III opened, Bill and Jack swore vengeance for their slain friend, and Dove Eye and Hazel Eye expressed their loyalty to one another. The Indians gathered for a “Scalp Dance,” as a struggle between Wolf Slayer and Big Eagle, Dove Eye’s father, ended in the stabbing of the latter. When Dove Eye found her father’s body, she prayed to Manitou, the Indian god of revenge—perhaps another opportunity for a dance—then she and Hazel Eye returned to the camp for a final battle.[11] The renegades started a fire and a ferocious war ensued as the scouts and women “triumph[ed] over their enemies, with a train on the Pacific Railroad and a burning prairie in the background.”[12] In the play’s final tableau, the two couples embraced, the lights fading on the triumph of romance framed by the inevitable progression of America’s western frontier. In the very few studies that give her more than a passing mention, Dove Eye is interpreted as “the ubiquitous friendly native maiden,” or the “noble savage” in contrast to the “utter savage” of the warlike Indians around her.[13] Her character is viewed as a Pocahontas figure, giving up her people and culture for the love of the white man, Cody. A common trope on the nineteenth-century stage, the Pocahontas character served as the “most well known and irresistible symbol” of the absorption of American Indians into white culture and the expropriation of their own culture.[14] That absorption was accomplished through the lens of gender and sexuality; as Mary Dearborn notes, “it is precisely because Pocahontas is expected to embody both aspects of the image [the noble Princess and the randy Squaw] that hers is so convenient, compelling, and ultimately intolerable a legend. . . . Her story functions as a compelling locus for American feeling toward . . . miscegenation, or sexual relations between white men and ethnic women.”[15] As Buffalo Bill’s love interest, Dove Eye’s Indian Princess role fulfilled many of these elements in Scouts: the contrast of royal heritage and sexual availability; the assimilation of the forgiving, supportive Indian woman; and proof of the supremacy of white culture with the reassuring combination of Native consent and cooperation. Although the centrality of movement in Morlacchi’s role has not been taken into account in previous scholarship, a dance analysis would reinforce this reading, particularly given the fact that at least some of her dances as Dove Eye seem to have been performed on pointe. One critic noted how a “few graceful steps inserted into one of the scenes reminded playgoers of [Morlacchi’s] former triumph in the ballet.”[16] Another observed in her performance “the fawnlike bound of the antelope—if the antelope ever bounds on the points of its toes.”[17] Joellen Meglin has shown that ballet served to symbolize “civilization triumphing over savagery” in representations of Native Americans in productions at the pre-Romantic Paris Opéra.[18] In Scouts, Morlacchi’s ballet dancing would seem to have functioned similarly, the consummate European ballerina serving as the “whitening” force that mediated between civilization and savagery in Dove Eye’s character. When the Italian ballet star rose to the pointes of her slippers, the image signaled that Dove Eye was more civilized, closer to European culture than her tribesmen, especially in contrast to the other “Death” and “Scalp” dances in the play that served as signs of an “authentic” Indian culture.[19] The incorporation of ballet into Scouts literally replaced a Native dance form with a European one on Dove Eye’s body, an erasure that colluded with the US government’s efforts to colonize Native lands. Yet the “civilization” and “savagery” binary only in part explains the incongruous mixture of buckskin and pointe shoes in Morlacchi’s Dove Eye performance. Robert C. Allen has shown the way in which the female burlesque performer’s body was a site of multiple interpretations, often ambiguous and contradictory, that were related to changing gender and class roles.[20] As I will show, the ballet dancer (or “ballet-girl,” as she was known in popular discourses, no matter her rank onstage) embodied a similar set of tensions, and Morlacchi brought this complexity with her into The Scouts of the Prairie: a little bit of the burlesque tradition on the frontier stage. When dance becomes an equal part of the analysis, the way in which the foreign ballerina and her dancing served as a necessarily complicated signifier for a host of socio-cultural anxieties appears, many of them conflicting, and all of them indicating the need for the stabilizing and reassuring force of the exemplary western hero, Buffalo Bill, at the end of the play. In what follows, I attempt to widen the scope on the meanings that ballet brought into this frontier melodrama by putting it in dialogue with contemporaneous discourses of ballet and the ballet dancer in the mass circulation print industry out of which Scouts arose. Critics certainly found Morlacchi to be a civilizing force in the play, and a much-needed one at that. Although little venom was spared in appraisals of Scouts or its audience, Morlacchi was persistently set apart in the press. “Mlle Morlacchi deserves a word by herself in this wholesale slaughter,” decreed the Boston reviewer; “In the opening piece . . . she danced exquisitely and with all her accustomed grace and skill, and the audience recognized her merit and called her before the curtain accordingly.”[21] Penned another, “in her opening performance she gave a number of her beautiful dances as gracefully and as equisitely [sic] as ever.”[22] And one reviewer noted that that the “Indian scalping, buffalo shooting and redskin-whooping drama” appealed to the lower classes seated in the gallery, while the better class of patrons in the house preferred Morlacchi’s dancing in the curtain raiser.[23] For critics, Morlacchi’s dancing was a welcome respite of upper-class taste in the otherwise uncouth frontier melodrama. Such praise of Morlacchi’s dancing in The Scouts of the Prairie has been interpreted rather straightforwardly as evidence of her talent. But here the plot thickens. Critics’ responses to Scouts, and to Morlacchi’s appearance in it, are indicative of the cultural hierarchy that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, one that Lawrence Levine has described as a “struggle to establish aesthetic standards, to separate true art from the purely vulgar.”[24] Persistently dividing the audience and the content of Scouts into “high” and “low” components, the extant criticism points to the struggle over class that that was waged in theatrical life in the latter nineteenth century. And critics indeed saw The Scouts of the Prairie as class warfare. “To criticize this composition as a play, or analyze its plot, would be ridiculous, for it has nothing to do with art,” declared a New York writer. “It is simply a dime novel set to scenery.”[25] While critics readily perceived ballet as a civilizing influence in The Scouts of the Prairie, the existing criticism cannot fully demonstrate how the mostly male, working-class audience that cheered the play would have responded to the incongruous contrast of the “best dancer in New York” playing the role of an Indian woman who shot a rifle, fought, screeched war whoops and chased the bad guys—and mixed it all with the occasional Romantic-style divertissement.[26] The comparison to a dime novel pointed to the fact that playwright Ned Buntline was among the highest-paid authors of the dime novel industry: cheap popular fiction mass-produced by publishing firms between the 1840s and the 1890s, predominantly for a male, white, lower class readership.[27] Buntline’s readership was likely the same audience targeted by The Scouts of the Prairie; the script was created very quickly by piecing together characters from his dime novel series on Buffalo Bill (although the novelette on Dove Eye was published after the premiere of the play, which suggests she was a new character he created for the stage,)[28] and, as a celebrity author, Buntline received top billing, along with Cody and Omohundro. Before he turned to Western tales in 1859, Buntline was well known for his mystery-of-the-city books, which unveiled the crime and poverty of the city, along with the extravagance and decadence of the rich.[29] Alexander Saxton aligns Buntline’s turn to the West with an overall shift in dime novels after 1850 that brought the ideological dimensions of the “Free Soil hero,” particularly white egalitarianism and class mobility, into the new Western hero.[30] I will return to Saxton’s argument at the end of this article. For now, it is worth noting that Buntline was committed to a nativist political ideology that preached anti-aristocratic egalitarianism and class mobility, and blamed urban problems onto foreign presence in the US. [31] As author and activist Buntline helped shape a working-class, anti-immigrant culture in opposition to the elite and foreign corruption of the industrial city. In Buntline’s urban fiction, the city is a dangerous and unpredictable place, full of dark, secret corners in which foreign-born villains prey on working class heroes and heroines. As Shelley Streeby describes, Buntline’s urban adventures cast the city “as a feminizing space in which ‘fashion’ holds sway and distinguishes a ‘simple’ yet civilized yeoman masculinity from a ‘savage’ state that is implicitly identified with foreign, nonwhite, or urban others.”[32] Buntline often positioned the theatre as one of the primary sites of corruption and immorality in the city, as was the case in his 1848 The Mysteries and Miseries of New York.[33] More precisely, the ballet theatre was the setting for his urban melodrama, Rose Seymour, or The Ballet Girl’s Revenge. Written seven years before the premiere of The Scouts of the Prairie, this dime novel portrayed the ballet world as a den of underground crime in which wealthy and licentious immigrants preyed on poor American girls. Every time Rose, the impoverished, motherless heroine who auditions to be a ballet-girl, enters the Broadway theatre, or even dons her ballet costume, her situation quickly becomes life-threatening: she is pursued, abducted, imprisoned, lusted after, and even set aflame one night when her muslin skirt brushes the gas lights. At one point, six particularly rough male audience members, overcome by her performance, leapt onto the stage and chased her through the theatre, howling and breaking down doors in their pursuit.[34] Published four years before he gave up urban reform literature for the Buffalo Bill dime novels that launched Scouts, the ballet theatre figured in Buntline’s story as a handy metaphor for urban perversions; a violent place devoid of morals, where passions ran wild, appearances could not be trusted, and dangerous foreigners, “rich, handsome, and liberal,” constantly sought to destroy Rose’s innate American goodness.[35] Buntline’s characterization of the moral and social dangers of the ballet theatre was part of a much larger set of nineteenth-century discourses that viewed ballet as a foreign threat to American values. Anti-ballet rhetoric was multi-faceted: religious reformers saw it as a menace to middle-class morality, while dime novel and story paper authors, like Buntline, cast it as part of the larger threat posed to the working classes by immigration and industrialization. That is, attacks on ballet appeared in a wide variety of popular literature, directed at different segments of the population. But these genres were united in their anxiety over the increasing influence of a rapidly growing middle class after the Civil War. Persistent connections were made in popular discourses between this new “fashionable” class, European social and political decay, and the presence of ballet in the United States. The “ballet-girl” (as she was called, no matter her rank) became a site for these anxieties; as in Buntline’s Rose, she was a trigger for multiple concerns about foreign influence, social divisions, and the dangers to American virtues within a rapidly transforming urban space. Unlike on the Opéra stage, to American audiences in 1872, ballet would not necessarily have served as an uncomplicated or even positive symbol of modern civilization. As Barbara Barker has shown, the history of ballet in the US involved “the slow transplanting and rooting of an essentially foreign form.”[36] Since before the turn of the nineteenth century, French and Italian troupes had been touring to America, and by the early decades, European ballerinas were appearing in the US with increasing regularity. As ballet become more popular, debates raged over the meaning of a European high art on the American stage. According to Christopher Martin, by the late 1820s debates over ballet in the US had evolved into a discourse that superimposed questions of national values and identity—indeed, the very fate of the nation—onto the theatrical representation of the female body.[37] While some hoped that European ballet would help America develop its own high culture, detractors saw ballet as symptomatic of a decadent and degenerate European civilization. The latter is perhaps most famously expressed in Samuel Morse’s vitriolic speech on French ballerina Francisque Hutin’s 1827 appearance in New York, in which he decried ballet, “the PUBLIC EXPOSURE OF A NAKED FEMALE,” as “the importation of these lowest instruments of vice from the sinks of monarchical corruption.”[38] For like-minded dissenters, the problem with ballet was that it went for the senses instead of the intellect, inappropriate for the values of the young republic. As the Christian Register put it: There is nothing in Europe which so directly and effectually saps the fountains of virtue and moral sensibility. It has no fellowship with the mind. . . . It excites none of the finer sensibilities of the heart—it calls forth no moral sentiments of any kind. It is the product of a state of society worn out with luxury and indulgence and seeking excitements in the lowest order of natural propensities. . . . We should consider the establishment of the Ballet in the U. States not only as a wide dereliction from the virtues of our forefathers, but as a great moral evil—an evil more contagious and more pernicious to society than any bodily disease which has ever afflicted our country.[39] In such discourses, ballet, seducing viewers with its spectacular and feminine beauty, represented the bread and circuses of the European monarchy, a threat to not only the American theatergoer’s morals, but also to American political institutions. In the furor over ballet in America that raged for most of the nineteenth century, the dance form was linked to European civilization, and the anxieties it provoked for its critics were inextricable from concerns about the fate of the republic. Some hoped that the European art would help America develop its own high culture, but ballet’s dissenters saw it as a threat to the moral, social, and political fabric of the country. When foreign correspondents wrote columns home about the corruptions of Parisian society, ballet was embedded in their warnings. The Parisian ballet-girl was a representative of “the loosest class in the world”: self-indulgent and reckless with her body, her money, and her health.[40] Behind Paris’s proliferation of glittering amusements—its cafes, gardens, department stores, theatres, operas, and ballets—lay a society in decay, a darker world of courtesans and immorality. An attitude of extravagance had overtaken French culture, replacing the Revolutionary “watchwords” of “liberty, equality, [and] fraternity.” While the French people mouthed these ideas, and were taught that they had a democratic government, in reality, they have undergone a social revolution and have come to regard these words in another sense. Liberty [here] does not imply freedom of political action and opinion. On the contrary it means to be free from all concerns of government and to have license to do anything they please with themselves and their property. . . . The French notion of liberty is fulfilled [as long] as the people have the wherewithal to fill their stomachs and indulge their sensuality.[41] Beneath the Parisian fashionable life lurked the ruins of revolutionary ideals. In these accounts, ballet, with its “sumptuous and exhausting lifestyle,” was emblematic of the ruin to which such a life of self-indulgence would inevitably lead.[42] Ballet was a foreign other, a symbol of a decadent and degenerate European culture and political system, and a menace to republican values. But if ballet’s sensuality and excessive “indulgence” made it morally suspect in the antebellum US, by the mid-1860s such lavishness had become the major selling point for a new form, the ballet-spectacle. Most famously represented by the 1866 The Black Crook with its “bewildering forest of female legs” and “barbaric splendor,” ballet-spectacles combined elements from melodrama, farce, and parody, and featured fantastical plots, spectacular special effects, and numerous grand ballets with large casts of European ballerinas.[43] The popularity of these productions generated an outpouring of warnings about their dangers, many of them focused on the female dancer as a site of moral and social transgression. Ballet dancers contrived “to reach men through the senses; to stir their blood with material agencies as the Maria Bonfantis and Sohlkes, and Morlacchis do. Charming exemplars they for American ladies—for the pure daughters of a proud country.”[44] The real cause for alarm was that these amusements indicated a growing preoccupation with pleasure as an end in itself. As a writer for the Brooklyn Eagle parsed, it was not the popularity of ballet per se that was the problem; it was that “the function of a ballet-girl in a modern burlesque or spectacle has nothing to do with either graceful or pantomimic action. She is hired to look pretty, and to appear in little clothing.” The worry that ballet went for the senses, rather than the mind, had long troubled its critics, particularly the religiously-oriented. But after the Civil War, ballet’s pleasurable ends increasingly pointed to larger socio-economic concerns; in particular, “the enjoyment of wealth by a class to whom labor, whether of hand or brain, is alike strange. Money which brings with it no obvious duties . . . can hardly fail to be a disastrous inheritance.”[45] Whereas ballet triggered fears of the corrupting influences of foreign culture throughout the bulk of the nineteenth century, postwar it became central to a new domestic threat: the rise of a culture of consumption and the growth of a new bourgeois class. William Leach has identified the decades after the Civil War as the key period in the development of a “culture of consumer capitalism,” marked by “acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness, the cult of the new, the democratization of desire, and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society.”[46] Urbanization and industrialization eroded the familial and agricultural culture that had characterized America to that point, bringing not only rapid economic and lifestyle changes, but also creating a much more fluid socioeconomic system and an expanding class of nouveau riche in the metropolis, variously known as the “fashionables” or the “shoddy aristocracy.” This new class had gotten their fortunes quickly, probably in a business venture, but completely lacked the “good breeding and intelligence” that suited their new social class.[47] The shoddies were the most flagrant example of a society that worshipped money, and was “content with nothing less than . . . an ever-changing life of amusements.”[48] Certain spaces in the city that were built to accommodate this new upper-middle class, including the park, the shopping mall, the theatre, and the ballet-spectacle—spaces, in other words, in which the fashionable life of newness, leisure, pleasure, and social display was lived—became geographical symbols of the debauchery of this new class in popular literature.[49] Such was the case in a new genre of urban nonfiction formed after the Civil War. These works retained the “wicked city motif” found in their dime novel antecedents, yet they purported to be true accounts of city life, even guides to urban spaces. On the surface, it seems that these urban exposés were primarily addressed to upper class concerns over the disruption posed by the shoddies to the socioeconomic order; yet their wide readership also suggests they were highly popular. Nonetheless, there was a clear relationship between the genres, as the nonfiction works carried forward the core themes of popular urban fiction, including the concern that the metropolis was generating both an aristocracy and an underclass whose degenerate lifestyles were endangering American values.[50] Most of these urban nonfiction works were organized around social types and/or social spaces. A repeated structural motif was the grouping of classes of women to symbolize various forms of urban vice. As Mona Domosh notes, as the primary class of consumers, women often served as targets for fears about the rise of consumer capitalism in post-Civil War discourses. The “desiring” woman became the symbol of the lack of control and tendency for excess responsible for the moral decay of the city.[51] In the urban nonfictional exposés, certain types of women who disrupted conventional social and gender boundaries stood for the physical and moral danger of the city streets: the prostitute, the working woman, and, most importantly for my purposes, the “New York Woman.” The New York Woman served as a metaphor for the vices of “fashionable society,” as illustrated in two urban nonfiction books published in the 1860s: Marie Louise Hankins’s Women of New York and George Ellington’s The Women of New York or the Underworld of the Great City. She dressed stylishly, even extravagantly, performed an elaborate daily toilette to make herself beautiful, and devoted her time to shopping and going to parties, the theatre, the opera, and the ballet, all to the neglect of her children. Amongst the New York Woman’s trespasses was her artifice: through dress, make-up, facial enameling, false hair, false teeth, and devices such as padded calves and ankles, she could appear to be what she was not. Such external artifice pointed to internal deceit; the New York Woman could appear respectable on the outside, but be of wicked heart. “Did we speak of the falsity of women as regards their heart and their inner life,” wrote Ellington, “we would not only tire the reader, but make him lose all faith in human nature, at least as far as women are concerned.”[52] A particular dilemma was the New York Woman’s ability to pass for a higher social class than the one to which she belonged. The New York Woman was also self-indulgent. Obsessed with money and luxury, she gave into her own desires and was seemingly incapable of restraint. The urban exposés traced two possible “routes from personal indulgence to societal destruction: one path followed the course of overconsumption; the other route followed the course of sexual deviance.”[53] In the first of these, her New York Woman’s extravagance led to the downfall of others around her: the men who struggled to support her resorted to illegal ways of getting money or, frustrated by her indulgences, to infidelity; or her servants found themselves buying things they could not afford in a vain attempt to keep up with her expectations of social status. “There is no influence so powerful as that of example; and when one woman steps beyond the bounds of propriety in any direction, she is sure to be followed by a dozen other weak ones,” avowed Ellington, until finally, “the whole of society becomes demoralized and corrupted.”[54] In the second path to social degredation, women turned to various modes of prostitution in order to fulfill their extravagant need for goods, either in gift or payment form. The ballet-girl was a special subtype of the New York Woman in these books. She shared the same faults: she was overindulgent, and her appearance was the result of a great deal of embellishment. “The coryphée is not one to let a chance slip that promises any pleasure,” noted Ellington. “The majority of these girls need and must have excitement. Without it they could not exist. . . . Seemingly, they live but for the pleasures of the day.”[55] The ballet dancer’s grace was a façade that required not only make-up and hair care, but also great physical pain. Accounts of the arduous, violent nature of ballet training were ubiquitous in mid-nineteenth century exposés. Not unlike the fashionable metropolitan woman, who would undergo foot binding to make her feet smaller for the latest footwear, the ballet dancer submitted her body to abnormal suffering in order to create her illusion of perfection. She could not be trusted either. “When ‘made up’ on the stage, with aid of ribbons, gause [sic], false curls, a gay costume, and pearl power and vinegar rouge,” cautioned Hankins, “she will appear to be not more than sixteen, and as beautiful as an angel; but […] by day light, in her plain clothes, she might be taken for thirty-five—perhaps forty!”[56] Moreover, her lifestyle all too often led to sexual deviance or to her own destruction. Ellington’s summation is characteristic: “Many have risen to the goal of their ambition, many have given up and returned to their former occupations, while many have sunk low into that dark abyss from which there is no resurrection, without hope and without mercy, betrayed by those who flatter but to ruin.”[57] On the one hand, authors saw the ballet-girl as a victim of this dangerous urban world, even though her temperament made her particularly susceptible to its temptations of materialism and indulgence. This was especially true if she were American: numerous dime novels and newspaper short stories followed the adventures of good American girls, who, being forced into the ballet world (usually because they suffered financial distress, and lacked a mother’s moral guidance), had no choice but to navigate its moral and physical dangers.[58] As Ellington put it, American ballet-girls tended to be much more chaste, especially when compared to the “peculiar ideas of morality” of the French dancers.[59] But on the other hand, the ballet-girl was a symptom of a much bigger socio-economic epidemic. She personified the destruction of simple American values in the one of the city’s most dangerous places: the ballet theatre. The theatre, and especially the ballet theatre, figured prominently in this literature as one of the primary signifiers for the transforming class structure of the city under the influence of the new bourgeoisie. The ballet was one of the places the shoddies could be found flaunting their extravagance, “throw[ing] bouquets to the bare-legged dancers;” even worse, ballet was one of the disrespectable professions, along with “mineral waters” and prostitution, on which the shoddies depended for quick money.[60] In Hankins’ tale, the ballet-girl, whom she calls Helen, came from this shoddy class, forced into dancing to keep her family from starvation when her father quickly made a fortune in some unnamed business, then just as quickly lost it. Helen’s life was miserable: “with an aching heart, and a brain too often burning with the insults which she has received from those who take advantage of her exposed and unprotected situation, poor Helen Bray, like many of her sisters, comes upon the stage to dance and smile, and entertain the public world.”[61] For these authors, ballet served as a locus for the shoddies and their transgressions in multiple ways; it was the site of their creation, existence, and also their downfall. The ballet-girl thus functioned in mid-nineteenth century sensationalist urban literature very much in the way that Peter Buckley has noted of the prostitute. As a “fallen” woman, she served the narrative function of being authorized: to move among the dangerous classes of the city and to recognize—where the novelist and the reader might not—the evil intentions of the fashionably dressed. Because she [was] situated in the places of social and sexual promiscuity, where the extremes of social class converge, she provoke[d] the story of the city. [She allowed] the narration of the unnarratable.[62] The same might be said about the ballet-girl. In both the fictional mysteries-of-the-city and the nonfiction urban exposés, she was able to simultaneously reference the feminized hedonism of “fashionable” society, and the encroachment of European decadence on American society and values. Connoting an influence that was unavoidably “foreign” and potentially deviant, the ballet dancer ushered in the class conflicts and contradictions of the industrial city in all of its most dangerous, “unnarratable,” connotations. Alexander Saxton argues that what united the dime novel industry was the reliance on class struggle as a structural trope, across a diversity of subject matter. Most importantly for my purposes here, the Western narrative was “conceptualized in dime novels in terms of conflicts between fraternal egalitarianism on one hand and social hierarchy and deference on the other.”[63] The widespread support for territorial expansion in the mass press was buttressed by the belief that western lands held the fix for the socio-economic problems of the city.[64] Following this argument, Indian killing was de rigeur for the western hero because western expansion held the promise of a concept of civilization not racked by class conflict, “a western expanding white republic.”[65] Saxton views the western hero as the progeny of the prewar Free Soil hero, the literary representative of the ideals of social mobility and white fraternity that lay at the foundation of Republican ideology. Key characteristics of the western hero included lower-class roots, a background in Indian killing, and the ability to cross class divisions, usually by winning the favor of an upper-class woman’s family and marrying her.[66] Saxton’s exemplary model of such a character is Buntline’s first depiction of Cody in his 1869 Buffalo Bill: The King of the Border Men, the work that soon led both author and subject to their theatrical debut in The Scouts of the Prairie. As Bill, in Buntline’s story, leaves his modest vernacular beginnings to, first, fight the Indians who work for white ruffians, and finally, marry a banker’s daughter, he dramatizes American social advancement. Importantly for my purposes, romantic partnership is crucial to the western hero’s liberation from class boundaries. “It is not so much that lower-class origin has been denied,” explains Saxton, “but that equal access to privileges of the upper class, including acquisition of wealth and marriageability, has been triumphantly vindicated.”[67] From this perspective, one might speculate that, in the eyes of the working-class audience, as Buffalo Bill and Dove Eye embrace at the end of The Scouts of the Prairie against the backdrop of a speeding locomotive, symbol of the westward push of industrialization, perhaps the corruptions of a foreign, elitist culture that the Italian ballerina signified were at least as much in need of containment by the western hero than the alterity represented by the Indian Dove Eye. Not only the savagery of the Native American, but also the vices and cruelties of industrial conflict, were quelled under Cody’s stabilizing hand. When read intertextually with the narrative of the ballet-girl in popular literature, the spectre of a European “other” who gestured Eastward to the class and cultural reorganization of the metropolis emerges in The Scouts of the Prairie, the earliest prototype of the Wild West spectacles. In addition to affirming Dove Eye’s civilized side, Morlacchi’s ballet-dancing body pointed to social and economic worries about class, gender, and race in capitalist civilization. Several issues linger: how was Morlacchi’s dancing positioned in the play, and did the relationship between text and dance ultimately embrace these various levels of meaning or attempt to resolve them somehow? How would audiences in non-urban geographical locations have perceived ballet dancing in Scouts? What role did the racism aimed at immigrants during the period play in Morlacchi’s—and ballet’s—positioning in the frontier play?[68] These questions remain difficult to answer, given the extant textual and critical resources through which we might rebuild the way in which a high “foreign” art intersected with this dime novel drama.[69] Such problems emerge, however, when we see the incorporation of ballet dancing, and the associations it carried, as a specific dramaturgical choice in The Scouts of the Prairie, one that went far, far beyond mere spectacle to gesture towards the class and cultural divisions at the heart of the question of “civilization” itself. Andrea Harris is assistant professor of dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current book, Making Ballet American, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Her essays have appeared in Dance Chronicle, Interrogating America Through Theatre and Performance, Discourses in Dance, and Avant-Garde Performance and Material Exchange, and she is the editor of Before, Between, and Beyond, the most recent collection of dance historian Sally Banes’s works. Dr. Harris has also taught at Texas Christian University, the University of Oklahoma, and the Universidad de las Américas. Her performance credits include the Martha Graham Dance Company and Li Chiao-Ping Dance. [1] Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Atheneum, 1992), 87, 86. On the Wild West as American mythology, see also Joy Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000). [2] Sandra K. Sagala’s monograph is the most comprehensive source on these theatrical productions: see Buffalo Bill on Stage (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008). See also Roger A. Hall, Performing the American Frontier, 1870-1906 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 50-67. Neither author considers Morlacchi’s dancing in the role of Dove Eye or explores the historical context of ballet in the image or the plays. [3] Qtd. in Chris Enss, Buffalo Gals: Women of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2006), 4. [4] Qtd. in Barbara Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo: The American Careers of Marie Bonfanti, Rita Sangalli, and Giuseppina Morlacchi (New York: Dance Horizons, 1984), 121. [5] Morlacchi’s company was in financial trouble at the time, but there is no direct evidence that she took the role in Scouts out of financial desperation. The year after Scouts premiered, Morlacchi married Omohundro. She appeared in two subsequent Cody melodramas, playing an Indian maiden in The Scouts of the Plains and an Irish girl in Life on the Border, in between which she returned to the opera house for productions of Ahmed and her own production of La Bayadère. Morlacchi and Omohundro split from Cody in 1876 to create their own western combination plays, in several of which Morlacchi played an Indian maiden role. After Omohundro died in 1880, Morlacchi retired from the stage, and spent the following years teaching ballet lessons to the mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she and Omohundro owned a home. All biographical information drawn from Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 111-167. For John M. Burke, see Chris Dixon, “Introduction: The Mysterious Major Burke,” in John M. Burke, Buffalo Bill from Prairie to Palace. Introduction ed. Chris Dixon. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012). Online at Cody Studies, http://www.codystudies.org/?tag=john-m-burke (accessed 5 September 2014). [6] Early studies that mention the plot include James Monaghan, “The Stage Career of Buffalo Bill,” The Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 31, no. 4 (December 1938): 414-416; and William S.E. Coleman, “Buffalo Bill on Stage,” Players, 47, no. 2 (1971): 80-91. Craig Francis Nieuwenhuyse’s unpublished dissertation is the most detailed study of The Scouts of the Prairie, and his attempted reconstruction of the plot the most thorough. See Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage: Buffalo Bill Cody’s First Celebration of the Conquest of the American Frontier” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1981), see especially 43-74 for the plot. Sagala also includes a detailed account of the narrative (Buffalo Bill on Stage, 21-23). [7] Chicago Daily Tribune, 19 December 1872, 4. The role of Hazel Eye was initially played by Eloe Carfano, but the secondary sources are not clear about her identity. Barbara Barker, Morlacchi’s biographer, says that Carfano was a member of Morlacchi’s ballet company (Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 153); Sandra K. Sagala describes her as a “Cuban actress” who joined the Scouts’ company on tour (Sagala, Buffalo Bill on Stage, 27). Both could be true; as Sagala notes, the reviews are confusing, and it may be that reviewers could not always tell the two women apart. However, Barker’s evidence that Carfano danced with Morlacchi in Scouts is based on the after-the-fact recollection of Omohundro’s brother that “both women danced on the tips of their toes” in the play (Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 156). I have found no reviews that mention Carfano’s dancing, only Morlacchi’s. [8] Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage,” 54. Nieuwenhuyse’s source for the following quotations regarding the plot is the Troop C Ledger, Buffalo Bill Historical Center. See note 9 for details about this Ledger. [9] “The Scouts at Pike’s Opera House” (Cincinnati), Clipping, n.d n.p, William F. Cody Collection, “Stage Play Notices and Reviews 1872-1880: Black Book,” in Buffalo Bill Cody Scrapbooks 1875-1903, Manuscript 6, William F. Cody, roll 1. Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY. This is a microfilm of the Troop C Ledger, held at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, which contains numerous newspaper clippings cut so as to fit as many as possible on a page. Most of these clippings do not include dates or page numbers, and in some the name of the publication and/or its location has been omitted as well. Hereafter: BBHC Ledger. [10] “Amusements,” New York Times, 1 April 1873, 4. [11] Barker suggests a dance may have been incorporated into Dove Eye’s prayer scene; see Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 156. [12] Qtd. in Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage,” 72. [13] Hall, Performing the American Frontier, 54; Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage,” 111. [14] Rebecca Jaroff, “Opposing Forces: (Re)Playing Pocahontas and the Politics of Indian Removal on the Antebellum Stage,” Comparative Drama 40, no. 4 (Winter 2006/2007): 486. [15] Mary V. Dearborn, Pocahontas’s Daughters: Gender and Ethnicity in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 99. [16] “The Scouts of the Prairie: A Lively Representation of Border Life” (Utica), BBHC Ledger, n.d., n.p. [17] “Academy of Music” (Indianapolis), BBHC Ledger, n.d n.p. [18] Joellen Meglin, “‘Sauvages,’ Sex Role and Semiotics: Representations of Native Americans in the French Ballet 1736-1837, Part Two: The Nineteenth Century,” Dance Chronicle 23, no. 3 (2000): 291. [19] Real Native Americans were added to the cast after the premiere, where they were mixed with non-Native “extras.” Costumes, weaponry, songs, and dances included in the play all worked to signify the display of an authentic Native culture onstage. Nieuwenhuyse notes that critics had trouble seeing the difference between the Native and non-Native performers, and that, ultimately, reviewers emphasized the overall brutality of the Indians through stereotypes that reinforced government’s eradication policies. Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage,” 29, 43, 79-80, 130-31. [20] Robert C. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). [21] Boston Daily Advertiser, 4 March 1873, issue 54, column G. The reviewer’s reference to “Madmoiselle” Morlacchi points to the fact that, although predominately Italian, dancers in the ballet-spectacles were typically billed as “French” to cater to an emergent bourgeois class who saw Paris as the apex of cultural refinement, see Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 6. [22] Qtd. in Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage,” 50. [23] Qtd. in Sagala, Buffalo Bill on Stage, 64. [24] Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 128. Also see Hall, Performing the American Frontier, 12-14; Sagala, Buffalo Bill on Stage, 16, 64. [25] “The Scouts of the Prairie” (Niblo’s Garden, New York City), BBHC Ledger, n.d n.p. [26] BBHC Ledger, no title, n.d., n.p. Reviews note that, while the packed houses at The Scouts of the Prairie were predominantly male, the audience was a mixture of upper and lower class patrons. See also “From the Prairie: Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack and Ned Buntline at the Academy of Music,” which describes how “men seemed to be arranged in close layers from the orchestra railing clear away up to the remotest corners of the gallery.” BBHC, n.d., n.p. My account of Morlacchi’s dancing in the play draws on the account of her biographer Barbara Barker, who describes that Morlacchi’s choreographic style adhered to the pantomimic, dramatic style of the ballet d’action tradition in which she was trained. [27] The dime novel industry included story papers, dime novels, and pamphlets like the cheap library. Michael Denning states that the continuities and repetitions between these formats justifies embracing them all under the term “dime novels,” which also distinguishes this genre from publications aimed at a middle-class readership. I am following his usage of the term. See Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America (New York: Verso, 1987), 10-12. On the composition of the dime novel audience, see Denning, Mechanic Accents 27-30, and also Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Verso, 1990), 328. [28] Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage,” 82-83. This is not to say that Dove Eye did not have antecedents in Buntline’s novels, which invites further research. [29] Buntline’s first frontier story was Stella Delorme; of The Comanche’s Dream: A Wild and Fanciful Story of Savage Chivalry, which launched a series of Western dime novels. Nieuwenhuyse, “Six-Guns on the Stage,” 82. Buntline’s oeuvre also included international adventure romances, Naval stories, and urban melodramas. For a well-developed examination of Buntline’s career, see Chapter 5 of Peter Buckley, To the Opera House: Culture and Society in New York City, 1820-1860. (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1984). [30] Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic, 196. [31] Buntline switched party affiliations often, but was a committed member of the nativist cause from at least 1848 to the late 1850s, a member of the Order of United Americans and their offspring, the Know-Nothing Party. He also played a leading role in the American Committee, which helped instigate the 1849 Astor Place theatre riot, an event directly related to the class oppositions grafted onto the growing division between “high” and “low” culture. Later, as a celebrity author, Buntline was recruited to campaign for the Republican Party in 1876, 1880, and 1884. Splitting with the Republican Party in 1884, when he refused to support candidate James G. Blaine, he announced himself as an Independent Republican, and then fell out of favor with the Party for his earlier affiliation with the Know-Nothings. See Jay Monaghan, The Great Rascal: The Life and Adventures of Ned Buntline (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1952), 162-181, 192-217, 264, 272, 279-80. While it goes beyond the scope of my analysis of Morlacchi’s role in The Scouts of the Prairie, it also bears mention that Buntline’s nativist politics are also evident in the fact that, although the Indians in the play bear the brunt of the punishment, the real villains are the Mormon and immigrant renegades who mastermind the Indian attacks on the scouts. For a fuller account of mid-nineteenth century Republicanism than I can provide here, see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); on nativism, see Dale T. Knobel, America for the Americans: the Nativist Movement in the United States (New York: Twayne, 1996). [32] Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 143. [33] For instance, the working-class heroine is threatened by the wealthy foreigner who pursues her that he will have her reputation ruined like Clara Norris (an actress of the day) “or any other of the stock company of the theatre of vice in the city.” Elsewhere, the theatre stands as a metaphor for the dark side of the city: the domain of the city prostitute is referred to as “the theatre of nightly infamy.” Ned Buntline, The Mysteries and Miseries of New York: a story of real life (New York, 1848), 159, 9. Electronic version available by Sabin Americana. Gale, Cengage Learning, http://galenet.galegroup.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/servlet/Sabin?af=RN&ae=CY103135748&srchtp=a&ste=14, (accessed 15 August 2013). [34] Ned Buntline, Rose Seymour, or The Ballet Girl’s Revenge, a tale of the New-York Drama (New York: Hilton, 1865). [35] Ibid., 29. [36] Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 3. [37] Christopher Martin, “Naked Females and Splay-Footed Sprawlers: Ballerinas on the Stage in Jacksonian America,” Theatre Survey 51, no. 1 (May 2010): 95-114. [38] Qtd. in ibid., 100. [39] Christian Register, 8 December 1827, 6, 49. [40] “The Ballet-Girls of Paris,” Brooklyn Eagle, 22 February 1870, 6. [41] “Foreign Correspondence,” Brooklyn Eagle, 9 January 1858, 2. [42] “The Ballet-Girls of Paris,” 6. [43] Qtd. in George Freedley, “The Black Crook and the White Fawn,” in Chronicles of the American Dance: From the Shakers to Martha Graham, ed. Paul Magriel (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 77, 70. [44] Junius Henry Browne, “The Ballet as a Social Evil,” Northern Monthly, II (2 April 1868). Qtd. in Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 18. [45] “The Social Morality of the Day,” The Brooklyn Eagle, 8 June 1871, 1. Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online, http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Skins/BEagle/Client.asp?Skin=Beagle (accessed 14 November 2012). [46] William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 3. [47] George Ellington, The Women of New York: Or, the Under-World of the Great City: Illustrating the Life of Women of Fashion, Women of Pleasure, Actresses and Ballet Girls, Etc. (New York: New York Book Co., 1869), 117. [48] Ibid., 24. [49] On the construction of social spaces, including theatres, for the growing middle-class, see Mona Domosh, “The Women of New York: A Fashionable Moral Geography,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, no. 5 (2001): 577-579. On the way in which the rise of the ballet-spectacle intertwined with and helped promote the dominance of business-class theatrical production in the post-Civil War years, see Bruce McConachie, Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820-1870 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), 231-257 (especially 242-243 on ballet-spectacles, or “musical extravaganzas”). [50] Stuart M. Blumin, “Explaining the New Metropolis: Perception, Depiction, and Analysis in Mid-Nineteenth Century New York City,” Journal of Urban History 11 (November 1984): 11. See Blumin, “Explaining the New Metropolis,” 35, for the sales of these books, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. As Blumin noted in 1984, the postwar urban nonfiction is an understudied genre; I found little additional scholarship on this literature, with the exception of Mona Domosh’s “The Women of New York: A Fashionable Moral Geography.” Drawing on Blumin’s work, Denning notes that the relationship between these nonfictional urban exposés and mysteries-of-the-city novels is evidenced in the fact that some authors attempted to work in both genres; Denning, 228, no.8. [51] Domosh, “The Women of New York,” 575. [52] Ellington, The Women of New York, 90. [53] Domosh, “The Women of New York,”586. [54] Ellington, 121. [55] Ibid., 515. [56] Marie Louise Hankins, Women of New York (New York: M.L. Hankins & Co., 1861), 157-58. [57] Ellington, 514. [58] See, for example, “The Ballet Dancer,” Brooklyn Eagle, 20 August 1853, 1. [59] Ellington, 513, 511. [60] Ibid., 117, 119. [61] Hankins, Women of New York, 159-160. [62] Peter Buckley, To the Opera House: Culture and Society in New York City, 1820-1860. (PhD diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1984), 442-443. Buckley’s subject is the character of the prostitute in Ned Buntline’s 1848 The Mysteries and Miseries of New York. [63] Saxton, Rise and Fall, 330. Arguing that dime-novel thematic material often supported Republican party ideology, and that the industry maintained close ties to that party, Saxton places the western hero in popular fiction after 1850 within the lineage of the earlier “Free Soil hero,” who “by transcending the limits of region and class, could bid for national spokesmanship” (187). See Saxton, 183-203; 321-347. [64] Alexander Saxton, “Problems of Class and Race in the Origins of the Mass Circulation Press,” American Quarterly 36, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 229-230. [65] Alexander Saxton, “The Racial Trajectory of the Western Hero,” Amerasia 11, no. 2 (1984): 70. Saxton locates one source of the western hero in Jacksonian democracy, in which class divisions and upper-class dominance were broken down through appeals to egalitarian ideals within white civilization and racial hostility against enemies outside of it; see 68-70. Also Saxton, Rise and Fall, 183-201. [66] On the Free Soil hero, see Saxton, Rise and Fall, 195ff; on the western hero as the inheritor of those values, see 321-344. [67] Saxton, Rise and Fall, 337-338. [68] Matthew Frye Jacobson has documented that, with swelling immigration in the nineteenth century, “white” became no longer a singular, monolithic category, but rather plural, subject to shades and variations. Celtic, German, and Italian immigrants in particular were perceived as “savage,” or racially in-between, and thus unfit for citizenship. See Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). Some criticism of the Italian dancers who brought ballet to American shores suggests that they were at times viewed through such racialist lenses, not readily seen as “white” in the public eye. For instance, in her role as Dove Eye, Morlacchi was referred to as the scouts’ “dusky-faced friend” (“The Scouts of the Prairie: A Lively Representation of Border Life” [Utica]), and as “tawny but not tawdry” [“Academy of Music” (Indianapolis), BBHC Ledger, n.d., n.p.]. And when a Omaha reviewer described Morlacchi as “a mulatto dancer,” Cody shot back that such a claim was “simply contemptible,” and corrected that “[her] skin is as white, and blood as pure as your own—if not purer” (qtd. in Sagala, Buffalo Bill on Stage, 26). The racialist conflicts associated with Italian ballerinas in the nineteenth-century US warrant greater exploration. [69] I explore the historiographic problems associated with this research more fully in Andrea Harris, “The Phantom Dancer, or, the Case of the Mysterious Toe Shoe in the Frontier Prop Closet,” in “A Tyranny of Documents: The Performing Arts Historian as Film Noir Detective,” ed. Stephen Johnson, special issue, Performing Arts Resources 28 (2011): 151-59. "Sur la Pointe on the Prairie: Giuseppina Morlacchi and the Urban Problem in the Frontier Melodrama" by Andrea Harris ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 27, Number 1 (Winter 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Phoebe Rumsey Editorial Assistant: Fabian Escalona Advisory Board: Bill Demastes Amy E. Hughes Jorge Huerta Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Esther Kim Lee Table of Contents: "Refusing the Reproductive Imperative: Sex, Death, and the Queer Future in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom” by Jordan Schildcrout "Just Saying Our Goodbyes: Elegies' Queer Interventions into the History of 9/11" by Michelle Dvoskin James Purdy as Playwright: A Retrospective Reading of Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus" by Michael Y. Bennett “Sur la Pointe on the Prairie: Giuseppina Morlacchi and the Urban Problem in the Frontier Melodrama" by Andrea Harris www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Refusing the Reproductive Imperative: Sex, Death, and the Queer Future in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom "Just Saying Our Goodbyes": Elegies' Queer Interventions into the History of 9/11 James Purdy as Playwright: A Retrospective Reading of A Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus Sur la Pointe on the Prairie: Giuseppina Morlacchi and the Urban Problem in the Frontier Melodrama Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

Lisa B. Thompson 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 Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Lisa B. Thompson By Published on May 11, 2021 Download Article as PDF by Lisa B. Thompson The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 33, Number 2 (Spring 2021) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2021 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center If I do not bring all of who I am to whatever I do, then I bring nothing of lasting worth, for I have withheld my essence. Audre Lorde, I am Your Sister: Collected Writings Every year I return to August Wilson’s powerful speech, “The Ground on Which I Stand.” On the 25th anniversary of his groundbreaking keynote at the 1996 Theatre Communications Group National Conference, Wilson’s words still resonate.[1] I want to honor this Black theatre milestone because Wilson not only delivers a scathing critique of systemic racism in US theatre, but he also insists that Black culture is a worthy and necessary source of artistic inspiration. Although he criticizes the structural inequalities that Black artists face, Wilson also speaks about his personal journey as a playwright and a Black man. He confesses: . . . it is difficult to disassociate my concerns with theater from the concerns of my life as a black man, and it is difficult to disassociate one part of my life from another. I have strived to live it all seamless . . . art and life together, inseparable and indistinguishable. (494) Wilson’s address motivated me to craft my own manifesto as a Black feminist artist/scholar. I’m celebrating the anniversary of “The Ground on Which I Stand” speech by crafting a manifesto which echoes Wilson’s desire for a seamlessness between being a Black person and a theatre artist. As Black people throughout the African diaspora combat dual catastrophes, a global pandemic and the brutality associated with the “long emancipation,” I feel an even greater sense of urgency.[2] I also feel a sense of urgency to make all of my conflicting identities seamless. I’m proclaiming to all that will listen that I’m not only a Black artist, but I’m also a Black feminist scholar. I’m a playwright and a professor who has choreographed a professional life that includes both the arts and the academy. I’ve learned to dance on the slash between the title artist/scholar. I must dance to remain both creator and critic because I refuse to live a divided life. I will no longer deny any part of my intellectual or creative gifts. I call on all Black artist/scholars to join me and do the same. When I was a little girl, I didn’t dance quite like my friends and family. It seemed to me that they were all illustrious dancers. I recall watching my older brother Robert dance. He was a member of the San Francisco Lockers and I loved watching those Adidas sweat suit-clad dancers move in lock step. They were commanding, rhythmic, defiant, and elegant. My classmates mesmerized me as they performed stunningly choreographed routines at the school talent shows, decked out in matching psychedelic outfits. I never joined in when they perfected their dances on Saturday afternoons in a neighbor's rumpus room. Don’t feel sorry for me. This is not one of those “I was smart but lacked natural rhythm therefore I was a mocked and ostracized inauthentic Negro” essays. I had plenty of friends and could throw down with the best of them, it was just that I preferred dancing alone. Standing in front of the sofa or the bedroom mirror, I would jam to songs by the Jackson 5, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, and Prince. I despised group dances, but adored the Soul Train line because it was my stage: I could be the star dancing to my own groove. Dancing alone and in my own way has led me to a life as a Black feminist artist/scholar. I define a Black feminist artist/scholar as one who works simultaneously within the academy, pursuing scholarly research and teaching, while also producing art in the public realm for wide-ranging audiences to enjoy. Black feminist artist/scholars often center the lives and experiences of Black women, girls and femmes in both their scholarly and artistic work. I use dancing as a metaphor because dance emphasizes free but disciplined movement. It requires both posture and poise. Dance allows improvisation and planning, creativity and expression. Dance can be done in a group or solo. Dance provides a way to socialize, to become and stay strong, to communicate, to develop self-esteem, and to increase your flexibility. It’s also a way to curate a sense of embodied listening and speaking. After all, dancing around the question can be more about exploring a puzzle more deeply instead of avoiding it. You need all of those traits to survive as an artist/scholar, especially a Black feminist one. The artist/scholar defies the old adage that “those who do, do, and those that can’t, teach.” Artist/scholars often prove some of the best teachers because they have immersed themselves in two worlds, the Ivory Tower as well as the theatre, or museum, art gallery or concert hall. The artist/scholar has many work spaces: the classroom, the library, the archives, and the lab or studio where we create. Some work in completely different realms so that their artistic and scholarly fields have little or nothing in common, while the scholarship and artistry of other artist/scholars is more aligned. No matter how one’s artistic practice and scholarly interests are related, this duality helps us to become great teachers because we understand the work from two perspectives simultaneously.[3] Black artist/scholars are certainly not a new phenomenon. I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me such as anthropologist, novelist, and playwright, Zora Neale Hurston; sociologist, novelist, literary journal editor, W.E.B. Du Bois; poet and comparative literature scholar Kamau Braithwaite; and choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham. I rely on their examples for reassurance, for inspiration, and for guidance. Those tiny descriptors I shared about their work reveals only a fraction of the ground those giants cleared for us, only a morsel of their contributions to the world of arts and letters. Their pathbreaking interventions created the circumstances that allow many contemporary Black artist/scholars to enjoy the security of tenured positions in the academy–often in highly regarded and abundantly resourced institutions. I lean on the example of these precursors as I choreograph my own dance. Their brave work helps me to theorize about Black culture through my essays and books; their life stories inspire me to continue crafting plays about Black life. I draw on their wisdom to give me the confidence to claim my creativity and knowledge. This manifesto represents an attempt to leave some crumbs behind so that other Black artist/scholars who dance alone, but also in community with others, know that it’s possible to bop down their own creative and intellectual path. Toni Morrison, one of the greatest artist/scholars of all time, and a Cornell-trained literary critic, editor, teacher, and Nobel prize winning writer, explained her work simply: “I know it sounds like a lot. But I really only do one thing. I teach books. I write books. I think about books. It’s one job.”[4] She was also a librettist who even tried her hand at playwriting. Why did she downplay the multiplicity of her gifts and the vast reach of her intellectual and creative labor? I suspect that Morrison felt as I do, it is simply your work. It is how you feel compelled to show up in the world as a creator and thinker. It is your purpose. All of it. So, what does it mean to dance on the slash? It means identifying the spaces where the art and the scholarship meet. The powers that be insist that there is a line between teaching and doing, a line between artistry and scholarship, between creativity and criticism, that is not meant to be crossed. Dancing on the slash acknowledges that the line between being an artist and a scholar is a porous one. In the rare instances when that line is crossed or blurred, it’s certainly not meant to be transgressed by people like me, Black, woman, first generation college graduate, single mother. How does one dare to disregard borders in spaces where you are not supposed to even exist? There is a freedom in challenging the boundaries of disciplines—artistic and academic. To live an undisciplined life is dangerous, but it’s also thrilling in all the ways that make you whole. In her essay “Sista Docta,” African Diaspora studies and performance artist/scholar Omi Osun Joni L. Jones pushes back against the artist/scholar divide by refusing to privilege one over the other. Jones argues that “performance is a form of embodied knowledge and theorizing that challenges the academy’s print bias. While intellectual rigor has long been measured in terms of linguistic acuity and print productivity that reinforces the dominant culture’s deep meanings, performance is suspect because its ephemeral, emotional, and physical nature.” She adds that “Performance. Then, subverts the binary of artist/scholar when performance exists as scholarship.”[5] Jones makes clear that part of the dance includes rejecting hierarchies of knowledge. In the most skilled hands, a piece of work is both art and scholarship. Dancing on the slash means balancing the competing demands of two worlds that refuse to understand each other. Maintaining perfect equilibrium is impossible so there are times when artist/scholars devote more time and energy to one field or calling to the detriment of the other. It also means pushing back against those who insist that you must pick one and abandon the other. One must be careful while creating a life on a slash. The slash can be an aggressive and violent motion. You use it to cut out, diminish, partition, and destroy that which is not worthy, but also that which doesn’t serve the art or the argument. Living as an artist/scholar can be lonely because you must shuttle between two fields and feel that you are not fulfilling obligations to either field or community. As an artist/scholar, you have to accept that’s what it means to dance to the beat of different tunes. For me, it means writing plays, essays, and books all while trying to interest a producer in my latest piece. It means suffering the unspoken questions of college deans, artistic directors, department chairs, press editors, and theater boards. They wonder whether I’m an artist or a scholar? They ask is this play simply an essay placed on stage? Is this essay too theatrical? Dancing on the slash means trying to answer those questions and accepting that you can do too much and never enough at the very same time. This manifesto calls for academic and theatrical institutions to move beyond such simplistic questions and to allow space for all that artist/scholars bring to the table (or stage). How did I arrive on this slash? Like August Wilson, I began as a poet after falling in love with the words of Black Arts Movement poets such as Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni. When Ntozake Shange burst upon the theatre scene in the 1970s with her critically acclaimed choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf, I discovered how poetry can fill the stage and unveil the concerns and dreams of Black girls and women like a rainbow. I was fortunate to find myself in Shange’s classroom as a senior English major at UCLA. On the first day of class, Shange invited us to do a free write for 20 minutes and that’s when I penned my first monologue. One day, Shange invited a friend to visit our class. He was working on a production of his play in Westwood. The friend was George Wolfe and the play was The Colored Museum. Little did I know that seeing Wolfe’s work after spending a term in Shange’s presence would change the course of my life and chosen artistic genre. Wolfe’s irreverent humor and deep knowledge of Black culture blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that this outrageousness was possible! My turn from poetry to drama was complete. I remain inspired by both Shange and Wolfe’s theatrical love letters to Black people’s beautiful and powerful brokenness. Wilson looked to his mother’s pantry, his beloved Pittsburgh Hill District, Black history, and the slave quarters for inspiration. I turn to my home and working-class community in San Francisco, a rich and fertile place full of art, joy, beauty and books that made me into a Black feminist artist/scholar, a cultural producer and a cultural critic. It’s where I learned about Black culture, Black history, Black life, Black womanhood, and Black love; I learned in the pews of the Third Baptist Church, the oldest Black church in San Francisco where I was baptized in the 1970s, in the barbershop in Lakeview that I visited with my father on Saturday afternoons eavesdropping on tall tales told by men on barber stools, from the books left behind by the Black Panthers who rented an apartment from my grandmother in Oakland, the quick tongued signifying women at the beauty shop my mother took me to on special occasions too important for her kitchen stove press and curl, and the fine afroed boys that played basketball on Saturday afternoons in March Banks Park in Daly City. Although the public schools I attended did not teach much about Black history and culture, I was blessed with young Black women teachers who encouraged a smart creative skinny dark-skinned girl who became a champion of Black culture, Black history, Black life, Black womanhood, and Black love in her work for the stage and in her scholarship, as well as a staunch defender of public education. Suzan-Lori Parks’s evocative essay “The Equation for Black People on Stage” implores Black theatre makers to craft narratives that “show the world and ourselves in our beautiful and powerfully infinite variety.”[6] Those are the kind of stories I try to write, tales that present Black people, particularly the Black middle class and Black elites as neither the talented tenth or the sellouts. Interviewers often ask me who I write for and I want to say for me, all the ME’s I’ve been, I am, and may be—me as a little girl in San Francisco in the 1970s, me as a Black graduate student finding my voice, me as a Black single mother, me summering on Martha’s Vineyard, me facing the deaths of my parents, me facing the deaths of Black people murdered by police, me laughing with my homeboys and homegirls as we discuss romance after forty, me navigating the healthcare industry that renders me invisible, and me retiring someday in France, Costa Rica, or Ghana. I’m addressing the audience and telling the story that matters to me and I’ve never been overly concerned with the expectations or tastes of those who fail to recognize stories about Black people as worthy of a theatrical production on the main stage. I have spent my life entering and conquering unwelcoming institutions in the academy and in the theatre that were not designed for people like me. Most of those spaces will never include the classmates I watched dance as a young girl, but I know they belong in every space I decolonize so I bring Tracy, Rolenzo, Nedra, Baxter, Jane, Teru, Priscilla, Barris, and Tina with me as I try to dance through doors that continue to remain closed to Black, Asian, and Latinx people like them, like me. I’m known to leave the door unlocked so they or their children can slip in behind me and take back the stolen seats. This has not been an easy dance to perform. I’ve faced repeated opposition from staff and administrators as I’ve choreographed a life as both a theatre artist and scholar. Those episodes of discouragement are the very reason I believe this manifesto is essential. I want the academy to understand that for artist/scholars, artistic pursuits are not a magnificent distraction, but a way towards knowledge. Art is a way for Black studies and other scholarly fields to engage in public- facing humanities that invite multiple communities into Black life and culture and into conversation with scholars, artists, policy makers and politicians. It’s important to acknowledge what this dance offers. I imagine that some consider pursuing a life as an artist/scholar as a way to avoid the crushing financial reality of the artist’s existence in the US, especially for those of us who lack family wealth. I’ve joked in interviews that I picked academia because I wanted health insurance and food, but the life of a professor is not a safety net. While I never wanted to be a starving artist, I turned to the academy for another kind of necessary sustenance. I found a life of the mind and arts a rich place to research, teach, and discuss theories, ideas, novels, autobiographies, films, and plays about Black life. It allows artist/scholars to be paid for what we would do anyway—researching about craft, field, major and minor figures, genre and form. Working in the academy also allows us to have a group of brilliant and engaged folks to talk to on a regular basis—colleagues and students. The beneficiaries are not just the artist/scholars but also audiences, fans, and even critics. The academy provides us with a lab to try out work and to build relationships, to invite other artists to the university to showcase their work or collaborate with them. This offers a way to support those who don’t have a tenured job and may be living grant to grant, or artist residency to artist residency, but whose work deserves investment from academic institutions. I’ve hosted both local and nationally renowned artists so that students, faculty, staff and the community are in a room, workshop, lecture hall with folks changing the art world not only in theatre, but in film, television, dance, and more.[7] It’s powerful alchemy. There’s nothing more gratifying than inviting Black artists to the university to develop new work so that students get a kitchen island view of how the gumbo is made. What does it mean to be in the academy–as a Black person, and also to insist on being outside it? What does it mean to be in the academy as a woman, and to foster a life outside it? What does it mean to be a theatre artist as a Black woman, and to craft another professional life outside of it? How does a Black woman carve a life in the arts while also claiming space for herself as a feminist critic? Theorist? Teacher? As one of the few Black women full professors at my university, it can be lonely and frustrating. How does one hold the act of creation and the act of that I picked academia because I wanted health insurance and food, but the life of a professor is not a safety net. While I never wanted to be a starving artist, I turned to the academy for another kind of necessary sustenance. I found a life of the mind and arts a rich place to research, teach, and discuss theories, ideas, novels, autobiographies, films, and plays about Black life. It allows artist/scholars to be paid for what we would do anyway—researching about craft, field, major and minor figures, genre and form. Working in the academy also allows us to have a group of brilliant and engaged folks to talk to on a regular basis—colleagues and students. The beneficiaries are not just the artist/scholars but also audiences, fans, and even critics. The academy provides us with a lab to try out work and to build relationships, to invite other artists to the university to showcase their work or collaborate with them. This offers a way to support those who don’t have a tenured job and may be living grant to grant, or artist residency to artist residency, but whose work deserves investment from academic institutions. I’ve hosted both local and nationally renowned artists so that students, faculty, staff and the community are in a room, workshop, lecture hall with folks changing the art world not only in theatre, but in film, television, dance, and more.7 It’s powerful alchemy. There’s nothing more gratifying than inviting Black artists to the university to develop new work so that students get a kitchen island view of how the gumbo is made. What does it mean to be in the academy–as a Black person, and also to insist on being outside it? What does it mean to be in the academy as a woman, and to foster a life outside it? What does it mean to be a theatre artist as a Black woman, and to craft another professional life outside of it? How does a Black woman carve a life in the arts while also claiming space for herself as a feminist critic? Theorist? Teacher? As one of the few Black women full professors at my university, it can be lonely and frustrating. How does one hold the act of creation and the act of disassembly all at once? After all, to teach and to engage in scholarship, one must break the subject, the object apart. One must dissect and analyze what has been crafted and made (or at least attempted to be made) whole. The intellectual inquiry asks us to disassemble, unhinge, reveal, name, categorize, and make intelligible what the artist has prayed is magic. The scholar must reveal (or at least attempt to) reveal what is behind the curtain, and report back –in an essay, book chapter, or article, the pain, yearning, beauty, ugliness and mistakes that are the creation.[8] As a Black woman the fight to gain and maintain any status in either world is wickedly audacious, but to do so in two different worlds? Madness! But, for me it is also necessary. My art is theatre and performance and my scholarship is in the field of Black cultural studies. As an artist/scholar I’m drawn to exploring a question or idea in two ways: for instance, as a graduate student I examined representations of contemporary black middle class women’s sexuality. My study eventually became my first book, Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (2009), and a two-woman show, Single Black Female (2012), my first produced and published play. In another instance, I considered the portrayal of Africans in contemporary US theatre, which resulted in the essay, “ ‘A Single Story:’ African Women as Staged in US Theatre,” and my play Dinner, that explores cultural and class tensions within the African Diaspora. I’m writing a book that analyzes ways contemporary playwrights reimagine Black history, while simultaneously completing the last two installments of my Great Migration trilogy that traces African American migrants from the south to California and their reverse migration. These dual examinations, this dancing around questions or problems, allows me to thoroughly explore answers and present my findings for different audiences and through different means. All of my work as a Black feminist theatre artist/scholar is meant to present the complexity and delicious beauty of Black life and culture in hopes that it will help make Black people freer. Why do I remain committed to theatre? I adore theatre for many reasons, but one of them is the ease of entry. You can stand on any street corner and recite your monologues or perform a one-person show for free. That’s theatre. It may not be Broadway, but not every play or musical should be. Most importantly, it is the magic of theatre that keeps me mesmerized! Watching Viola Davis perform a scene with Denzel Washington in the revival of Fences on Broadway gave me chills. At that moment, it’s clear that Wilson has presented the ground on which he stood growing up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. When there is that kind of magic on stage, you can hear a pin drop. I’m sure you’ve felt it as an audience member because magic is not just on stage but also in the seats. A study at the University College London found that the heartbeats of audiences synchronize while watching live theatre, regardless of whether they know each other.[9] Imagine a theater full of strangers beating with one single heart. As a Black feminist artist/scholar, I’m intrigued by the thought of the hearts of strangers from every walk of life synchronizing during a story that centers the lives and experiences of Black women. No study has determined whether the heartbeats of students synchronize when they read a play together in class, but I do know that I’ve felt that group heartbeat many times during the two decades I’ve spent teaching in college classrooms. The magic is real. Lorraine Hansberry’s informal autobiography To Be Young, Gifted and Black continues to inspire me. While I am no longer young, I find Hansberry’s address to young artists poignant. She implores them to “write if you will; but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world . . . Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. Use it. . . The Nation needs your gifts.”[10] I urge Black artists of any age who also consider themselves scholars to avoid the debate that burdened my younger years. I say choose you; be an artist/scholar because you are both. In this challenging moment, our people need all of your gifts. So on the ground on which you stand, go ahead and dance. [1] August Wilson delivered his remarks on June 26, 1996, at the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) National Conference at Princeton University. It was first published in American Theatre (September 1996) and reprinted in Callaloo, Volume 20, Number 3, Summer 1997, 493-503. [2] See Ira Berlin’s The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (2015), and Rinaldo Walcott’s Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom (2021) in which both scholars articulate the condition of unfreedom and the slow movement towards full citizenship and rights for Black people globally. [3] Other contemporary Black artist/scholars dancing on their own slash include Elizabeth Alexander, poet, literature professor and President of the Mellon Foundation; Harry J. Elam, Jr., director, theatre scholar, and President of Occidental College; Monica White Ndounou, director, theatre scholar, Executive Director of the CRAFT Institute, and Associate Professor of Theater at Dartmouth; Guthrie Ramsey, composer, musician and University of Pennsylvania musicologist; and Deborah Willis, photographer, curator, photography historian, university professor and Chair of the Department of Photography Imaging at New York University. [4] Hilton Als, “Toni Morrison and The Ghosts in the House.” The New Yorker. October 20, 2003. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/27/ghosts-in-the-house (accessed November 1, 2020). [5] Joni L. Jones, “Sista Docta: Performance as Critique in the Academy.” TDR (Summer 1997) 53-54. [6] Suzan-Lori Parks, “An Equation for Black People Onstage.” The America Play and Other Works, (1995) 22. [7] The arts are an integral component of Black Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS) is comprised of the Christian-Green Gallery and the Idea Lab. Under the direction of Executive Director Cherise Smith, AGBS has had exhibits featuring the work of Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Michael Ray Charles, Genevieve Gaignard, Jacob Lawrence, Deborah Roberts, and Charles White among others. The African and African Diaspora Studies department, the John L. Warfield Center’s Performing Blackness Series, as well as the recently re-named Omi Osun Joni L. Jones Performing Artist Residency has hosted artists such as Charles O. Anderson, Pierre Bennu, Radha Blank, Sanford Biggers, Sharon Bridgforth, Laurie Carlos, Florinda Bryant, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Shirley Jo Finney, E. Patrick Johnson, Krudas Cubensi, Daniel Alexander Jones, Lorraine O’Grady, Rhonda Ross, and Stew. [8] I’ve been cautioned against focusing too much critical attention on other playwrights who are more lauded than I, but I’ve rejected that advice. To ignore their work is to betray my responsibility as a scholar which is to analyze the innovative work of Black artists. More importantly, it dishonors my deep love for Black art and Black culture. [9] “Audience Members’ Hearts Beat Together at the Theatre.” University College London Psychology and Language Sciences. 17 November 2017 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/news/2017/nov/audience-members-hearts-beat-together-theatre (accessed on Oct 28, 2020 [10] Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969) 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 Table of Contents: “Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble” by Elizabeth M. Cizmar “Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth” by Baron Kelly “A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson's Black Feminist Intervention” by Khalid Y. Long “An Interview with Elaine Jackson” by Nathaniel G. Nesmith "Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston" by Michelle Cowin Gibbs "1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Antimusical The Mule-Bone Is Presented" by Eric M. Glover “'Ògún Yè Mo Yè!' Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities" by Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green "Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar" by Lisa B. Thompson "Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge" by Bernth Lindfors "Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation" by Olga Sanchez Saltveit "A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement" by Isaiah Matthew Wooden www.jadtjournal.org www.jadtjournal.org ">jadt@gc.cuny.eduwww.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Yu Chien Lu, Administrative Producer ©2020 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative The Theatre of August Wilson Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration The Theatre of Eugene O'Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Introduction to “Milestones in Black Theatre” Interviews and Afterviews on "Milestones in Black Theatre" Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Re-Imagining America and Theater: Race, Representation, and Form Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Stephen Hong Sohn 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 Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland Stephen Hong Sohn By Published on December 16, 2016 Download Article as PDF ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. While playwright Chay Yew has garnered praise for his more than a half dozen plays, few scholars have completed any sustained critical engagements of his large body of work.[1] Yew’s productions commonly address queer Asian American experiences and associated themes, including the struggle to survive amid hostile familial ties and exclusionary social contexts. My article explores such issues through an extended analysis of Wonderland, a dramatic production involving four roles. Three of the roles—a Man, a Woman, and a Son—comprise an Asian American nuclear family. The fourth figure, a Young Man, primarily comments on scenes in which he does not take part. At the conclusion, however, it becomes clear that the Young Man plays another role: the Son as an adult. Wonderland roughly tracks the life trajectories of the three primary figures, allowing Yew to stage the challenges related to achieving success, fulfillment, and belonging, especially within the minority family. Wonderland’s 1999 La Jolla Playhouse premiere was notable since two of its cast members, Alec Mapa (Son) and Sab Shimono (Man), are queer-identifying Asian American actors, and accordingly reveals an important alignment between performance and social identity.[2] Given the relative invisibility of queer Asian American actors in general and the restrictions still attached to this historical period (i.e., pre-same-sex marriage laws), the actors’ participation in this production encourages the audience and scholars alike to consider the roles beyond the prescribed heteronormative boundaries of the nuclear family. This critical practice, informed by queer and racial perspectives, is perhaps most apt for reading the role of the Man, who as the reproductively fertile father nevertheless engages in some non-normative social dynamics and practices at various points in the play. How an Asian American role is brought to life in a performance space always undergirds my analyses, especially with respect to the racialized and queer body as part of a larger family unit.[3] Each role bears the burden of expanding the audience’s vision to include the queer Asian American as part of a domestic social construct that better integrates non-normative sexualities as part of its core foundation. My article shows how Wonderland diagnoses this problem through its thematic depictions and offers an intriguing intervention through its deployment of form—what Yew describes as a “nonmusical musical.” I investigate the “nonmusical musical” as a quintessentially queer racial performance form that employs what I term as calculated cacophonies, which elucidates how Wonderland uses dialogic, sonic, and thematic relationalities to undercut the portrayed destruction of the Asian American family. The presence of calculated cacophonies allows Wonderland to spotlight some guarded optimism: there may be a sustained possibility for the queer Asian American son to find a place in the heteronuclear family. I begin my analysis by situating the play within broader historical, cultural, literary, and dramaturgical discourses, which the play’s post-1965 time period emphasizes directly. Prior to the Immigration Act of 1965, restrictive immigration, property, and marriage laws severely impacted the expansion of Asian American families. The obstacles they faced are apparent in numerous cultural productions set before 1965. Bachelors loom large, romantic relationships are often transitory,[4] and the possibility of marrying within one’s ethnic group remains challenging given the gender imbalances perpetrated by selective entry policies that favored men for their labor. In many plays and fictions, the Asian American family itself is under constant threat of dissolution.[5] We need not look too much further than Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea[6] to see the precariousness of the family even in the post–World War II period and in the latter stages of legislatively supported Asian American exclusion. Fortunately, that book’s protagonist, Ben Loy, recovers from impotency to impregnate his wife, Mei Oi, and therefore solidify a new Chinatown future, full of generative families who will fruitfully multiply. In cultural productions set in the post-1965 period, the emergence of this social formation is more assured. The heternormatively grounded “reproductive future”[7] is finally offered as a more sustainable possibility as evidenced by the proliferation of nuclear families, however functionally or dysfunctionally rendered, and accordingly depicted in a wide range of dramas and novels.[8] These many works admittedly do show clear fractures in the Asian American nuclear family and generate instabilities concerning the future of ethnoracially specific kinship formations. But what distinguishes these dramas and fictional narratives from the ones set in earlier periods is precisely the fact of the law: Asian American families can theoretically come into existence without the barriers formed by immigration policy or citizenship dilemmas. Practically, however, these works reveal that the formation of the contemporary Asian American heteronuclear family remains fragile. The family formations we see in the post-1965 productions are also made tenuous by other social dynamics. In literary critic erin Khuê Ninh’s estimation, depictions involving the Asian American family often involve daughters who are burdened with impossible expectations; they are supposed to bring honor to the family, marry the proper partner, and achieve a high professional status. So strict are these regimes that Asian American daughters will even engage in self-destructive acts to gain personal agency.[9] While Ninh concentrates specifically on the predicament of Asian American daughters in this exploitative economy undergirding the nuclear family, her conceptualization of filial debt applies to other cultural productions and their representations of intergenerational social formations. The battleground appears on the mind and body of the Asian American child who must be properly monitored, controlled, and perhaps even programmed to guarantee future economic and familial success. But Ninh’s argument presumes the heterosexuality of the daughters. The implicit question that her research and argument bring up is: Is the Asian American child who does not procreate inherently disobedient? The answer is almost certainly yes, meaning that queer sexuality becomes diametrically opposed to Asian American family.[10] Queer Asian America, the Nonmusical Musical, and Calculated Cacophonies Wonderland vividly demonstrates the ways in which queer sexuality cannot be fully acknowledged in the Asian American family in the post-1965 period.[11] On the thematic level, Wonderland disrupts the developmental narrative of the heteronormative, nuclear Asian American family, which relies on its children’s strict obedience. In an exchange with her son at the play’s inception, the mother tells him, “Coming to this country / A big sacrifice / Don’t forget / You must be survivor / Must be what again?”; the mother supplies the only apparent correct answer: “Must be success.”[12] The family’s reputation partially lies in this generational extension, as the Son makes good on his mother’s apparent sacrifice related to her uprooting and migration from Singapore. While the play follows the expected narrative by endowing the Son’s future with a burden of the heterosexual reproductive future, it undercuts the myth of the ever-sacrificial parental generation, while attending to the need for reconfiguring familial formations and expectations, especially in light of the queer Asian American’s expulsion from the home. In the context of post-1965 Asian American literature, Min Hyoung Song argues, “If queers are reproductive future’s negation, . . . then a select group of children of Asian immigrants are its objects of veneration.”[13] To be sure, the Son in Wonderland exists in the position of “veneration,” but his position becomes precarious once his queer sexuality is revealed. Additionally, Wonderland operates on the contextual level as part of a wave of theatrical productions focused on the Asian American family that surfaced in light of the success of East West Players, Pan Asian Repertory, and other pioneering companies that first arose in the period following the Civil Rights Movement. I earlier cited a dozen or so productions involving familial social dynamics that are set in the post-1965 moment; most were staged around or after 1990 and spotlight the far more expansive array of theater companies supporting Asian American productions. As Esther Kim Lee notes,[14] the proliferation of Asian American theater in this period came with more experimental and thematically unique productions.[15] Dramas concerning the Asian American family correspondingly boast inventive staging methods and dynamic aesthetic approaches, departing from the more realist conventions that characterized earlier productions.[16] Yew’s Wonderland operates in this same fashion, especially toward its conclusion, a surrealistic tonality that I consider in more detail later. Finally, on the formal level, Wonderland’s staging and production gesture to the necessity of an innovative aesthetic approach to depict the queer Asian American family. At first glance, Wonderland might be described as a chamber play, which Heath Diehl notes “is a minimalist form in both dramaturgy and performance.”[17] Though Wonderland has been produced with some use of sets, including a view of the Pacific Ocean and a “wood-paneled stage,”[18] the play is meant to highlight the performances of the four actors. The sets themselves remain fixed, while a coordinated use of lighting helps mobilize a particularly dreamlike quality through the use of “aqua tones.”[19] Diehl’s reading of another of Yew’s works, Porcelain, advances that its form, the chamber play, is essential to enhance a particular thematic issue being staged: “the current impossibility of representing gay Asian identities and the need for alternative identity formations within Asian America.”[20] The sparseness of the stage, the longer silences in that particular production all emphasize the isolation and sense of futility experienced by Porcelain’s central character. Wonderland accrues another level of formal complexity due to Yew’s description of the drama as a “nonmusical musical” in which the “monologues and dialogues” become “arias” and “duets.”[21] Though Wonderland uses no music, the play’s stage directions encourage actors to consider their lines rhythmically. Yew’s cascading script and creative use of indents spur the actors to engage their lines with musical inflection. For the most part, the invocation of nonmusical arias and duets in Wonderland reflects the ways that spoken words (and their potential musical intonations) contain some of the chaos inherent in Wonderland’s content through a kind of mellifluous speech patterning. But in three distinct places Yew subverts the general sonorousness attached to the speaking roles. I designate these moments as calculated cacophonies because they (1) involve overlapping dialogue and argumentative language to emphasize the catastrophic deconstruction of the Asian American family, but at the same time (2) exhibit word and phrase repetitions, dialogic relationalities, and subtextual thematic connections to cohere the characters. These interlocking sequences, I contend, remind us that though the Asian American family becomes violently fractured, there exists a latent desire to find unity among its exploding parts. In this sense, the play’s nonmusical musical form employs an aesthetic construct to help accentuate one central theme: the desire to make a place for queer identity within the structure of the Asian American heteronuclear family. Therefore, one may ask what is it about the nonmusical musical that makes it the appropriate form for a performance focused on the potential but eventual impossibility of the queer Asian American family? To answer this question, I turn to the scholars engaged in both race and queerness as they arise in the musical form. Stacy Wolf, D. A. Miller, and John M. Clum respectively reveal the need to engage musicals by unveiling subtexts and subtle social arrangements that constitute queer desire as they emerge in performance-based cultural productions.[22] At the same time, such scholarship is limited because it focuses on sexuality as the element that requires a kind of spectatorial un-closeting. Asian American studies and performance scholars help expand how we read performance, especially musicals, for their veiled meanings and significations.[23] For instance, Celine P. Shimizu has reconsidered Miss Saigon through the resistant acts performed by Asian American actresses who are cast as the bar girl-prostitutes.[24] Though the musical has been vilified for stereotyping Asian women as hypersexual, Shimizu’s analysis reveals the subtle ways that actresses command their roles to articulate a space of performative agency.[25] While Shimizu focuses on the intents of actresses in those roles, her approach can be expanded to consider the ways we must engage what cannot always be directly seen. I am influenced by these critical interventions in the ways that Yew’s nonmusical musical catalyzes calculated cacophonies to emphasize a different form of spectatorial un-closeting: the desire to create a stable place for the queer child in the heteronuclear Asian American family. But if there can be no actual home for the queer child in this traditional social construct, then we can at least turn to formal and thematic hybridities to engender other relational possibilities for such fugitive belongings. I thus turn to some key scenes that hallmark how calculated cacophonies function in the nonmusical musical. Babble / Babel The first scene of calculated cacophony occurs at the conclusion of part 1. The Man, an architect, has reached the pinnacle of his career after constructing a megamall called Wonderland. At the end of part 1, however, we learn that the mall has collapsed due to shoddy construction. In this scene, Young Man, Woman, and Son all “surround Man” and “batter him with an endless barrage of questions” (366). This scene seems to break the realist conventions of the play to a certain extent because the Young Man and the Son appear on stage together at the same time and place. But it is more logical to read this moment as a rendering of accusatory discourses levied at the Man from different entities, not only from the direction of his Asian American family but also legal and occupational institutions. Phrases such as “charges of negligence” and “a fatal miscalculation” (366) suggest that the Young Man, Woman, and Son also embody the legal rhetoric that emerges in the wake of such a catastrophic architectural failure. At the same time, the Man’s family questions his integrity. The Young Man asks him whether he is a “murderer”; the Son asks whether the construction of the mall with cheaper materials was “a bad judgment call”; and the Woman repeatedly asks questions that are clipped off (366). We might call this scene a nonmusical climax moment for the drama, as it jumpstarts the second part of Wonderland: the Man and his family must grapple with the fallout of this event. This scene is the first of three in which overlapping dialogue is specifically emphasized in both the actual staging and textual directions. This moment obviously deviates from the more harmonious scenes that predominate in Wonderland. The nonmusical musical incorporates calculated cacophony here to critique the Man’s single-minded focus on the Wonderland mall as the categorical architectural symbol of his status as the ideal multidimensional family man: the good corporate son who builds an expansive consumer paradise, the filial Chinese American biological child who achieves, and the successful heterosexual husband and hardworking father. This moment is critical to stage as a calculated cacophony because it undercuts a common feature of musicals that involve group numbers meant to celebrate the success or the recognition of a central romantic relationship and compulsory heterosexuality.[26] In Wonderland, the Man’s varied familial investments, which are sublimated into the construction of the megamall, are shown to be illusions not only through the play’s narrative details but also through the use of form, as nonmusical arias and duets give way to this calculated cacophony in which voices overlap and yell over each other. The Young Man, Man, Son, and Woman cannot seem to find a common social formation to endorse in the final scene of part 1. Another level of structure to this initial scene of calculated cacophony bears scrutiny. All four actors appear on stage together, with three seemingly accusing the fourth, the Man, of negligence as an architect. All four roles are given lines with an important refrain, “you know,” which appears in an interrogative context. Even as the staging and the spoken words suggest outright hostility among the characters, the repetition of this phrase “you know” provides some dialogic unity: there is a desire for a unity based on some shared understanding. At the same time, the staged chaos of this scene makes communication sometimes unintelligible. Though the script gives the characters specific words to say, the actual production involves several minutes in which a multipronged babbling predominates among the actors. This moment of calculated cacophony brings into great relief a longer discourse coded into the early sections of part 1 related to the Wonderland mall, its relationship to spectacle, religion, and the Man’s reenvisioning of his place in a corporate family. Consequently, I move to a brief consideration of the ways that the mall’s collapse and the babbling family coheres through these interrelated themes and discourses. The drama is set at a time of heightened consumerism in Los Angeles, a space that urban studies scholars such as Edward Soja, Fredric Jameson, and Mike Davis effectively read as the quintessential postmodern city.[27] Los Angeles is perhaps the perfect location for this play, as it is associated with simulacrum, a place in which image exists above substance. The architect is hired to build a number of strip malls, which stands in direct contrast to his aesthetic aspirations to “birth / tomorrow’s concert halls / cathedrals museums skyscrapers monuments” and that such buildings would be “bold / gargantuan / towering over cities and peoples / reaching / touching the heavens” (290). His company describes these strip malls as “the new city centers / The future town squares of America / where people can come together / commune socialize fraternize” (288) and adds that “These malls will dot all over America / and no matter where you are from / where you are / when you come to a mall / you’ll feel right at home” (288). The utopian description of these locations rewrites the consumer center as the home, somehow engendering a multicultural milieu, able to embrace and include individuals from varied backgrounds, races, ages, genders, and sexualities and construct this new mall-based family. In a certain sense, then, the drama depicts the Southern California strip malls as “commodified landscapes designed to satisfy fantasies of urban living.”[28] The “fantasies of urban living,” of course, are limited in their realizations, especially since American families with higher disposable incomes and class status would be more likely to find metaphorical homes in the mall.[29] The architect buys into this line of mall-based consumerism and lets it reflect in his work. And, at first, his diligence is rewarded. Upgrading from strip malls to enclosed shopping centers, he is commissioned to build Wonderland, the sort of megamall that becomes a common site throughout Southern California in the latter half of the twentieth century.[30] This structure embodies the pinnacle of the consumer’s paradise.[31] Even more than the strip mall, the shopping mall enables the sense of a family-oriented environment, replete with clean hallways, visual diversions, and communal eating spaces. In addition, the architect believes Wonderland is the conglomeration of all his hard work and will allow him to finally pursue building his own aesthetic creations. He muses, “Surely / after this / this Wonderland / the company will give me / their favorite son / on a silver platter / more responsibilities / more projects / more buildings / of stature / of rank / that join rank / rival those of / Gehry Wright and Pei” (324). Most central is that he compares the company to a family in which he is “their favorite son.” By reconstructing the corporate world as his home, the architect promotes the idea that his compromise to do as his “parents” tell him will grant him the possibility to follow his actual dream. In some sense, Wonderland emerges as a kind of reproductive product of the Man. After having completed the Wonderland megamall, he calls it “My creation / My latter-day Tower of Babel / touching / kissing the heavens” (324). The architect’s self-congratulatory proclamation recodes the mall as something he has given birth to, giving himself godlike powers that can, at least metaphorically, transform buildings into humanlike entities, replete with the capacity to lock lips with the heavens. Unfortunately, the analogy strikes as portentous since the Tower of Babel, according to the Bible, was the very structure that engendered the linguistic pluralities that divided people. His desire to create is simultaneously too prideful, a twisted version of corporate construction and reproduction based on the flawed language of capitalist consumption. Now we can return to the climactic scene of part 1’s conclusion, as a calculated cacophony that bears out the babble that follows the Tower of Babel’s emergence. The play sources Asian American familial division in the focus and emphasis on capitalist constructs of community, which prevail over and above competing social forms. Certainly innovative in its configuration, the capitalist family nevertheless promotes superficial attachments and structures, especially as noted by the Man’s own building practices, which emphasize ornamentation and façade over integrity and foundation: “I chose / I imported / more expensive materials / Italian marble teak wood titanium / I skimmed / compromised on the rest” (396). Nonsensical speech becomes the appropriate formal and contextual mode of communication by which to root this scene in which all four actors appear at the same time on the stage with “overlapping” voices and dialogue. You Couldn’t Be / You Couldn’t Be! The second scene of calculated cacophony occurs not long after the Son comes out to his parents as queer. The dialogue appears in the script as two columns, a format that encourages the actors to speak over each other, as in the first calculated cacophony scene. This two-character scene portrays a conflict being waged between an Asian American mother and her queer Asian American son: Son “You couldn’t be” Woman You couldn’t be! “No” No! “Can’t” Can’t! I hear Not possible! every word No son of mine! (388) This pivotal dialogue clarifies the Son’s expulsion from the Asian American home, as he becomes a casualty of his own truth-telling by divulging his queer sexuality. But this scene is further notable because it emphasizes familial discord rather than the harmonious unions found in the latter stages of traditional musicals.[32] Note that the first three words are basically the same: the Son parroting back what his mother is yelling. As with the first scene of calculated cacophony, the word repetition unites the characters’ roles through oral discourse, even while the spoken words connote disharmony. In other words, the calculated cacophony shows a measure of sonic structure and alignment that ties these two characters together even amid their apparent antipathy for each other. In this sense, their inability to communicate even as they speak the same words reveals both the impossibility of and longing for a queerly informed Asian American family. We cannot call this scene a traditional duet by any means, yet nevertheless an oral subtext binds mother and son as a necessary pairing. On the thematic level, Wonderland makes an important intervention here in its portrayal of the queer Asian American who cannot coexist within the framework of the nuclear family. The play’s depiction of the Son’s repudiation by his mother follows the established work of numerous scholars. As Ski Hunter notes, “If children make disclosures, parents may regard this as an act of treason against the family and culture.”[33] After all, “traditional expectations for an Asian man, especially an eldest son, are to get married and have children, especially sons, to carry on the family name. Asian American gays and lesbians face tremendous parental pressure to fulfill their traditional roles.”[34] And the price of being perceived as treasonous to the “traditional role” can be very high, encouraging some to remain in the closet for fear that they will be “disowned, or have their identity negated / denied.”[35] Wonderland perfectly showcases the ways that coming out of the closet is a communicative act fraught with psychological and material peril. As with the first scene of calculated cacophony, the overlapping dialogue makes it likely that some audience members will misunderstand the characters’ words. This aural confusion, though, is necessary given the situational context. At the same time, the full scene continually references the failure of dialogue and what is spoken versus what is understood. The mother asks: “What will people say? / What will neighbors / say? /. . . Ay, you [Son] deaf or what? / Ay, you listening or / not?” The Son responds: “I hear / every word / yelling / saying / Every word / Sentence phrase” (388). Recall that in the first scene of calculated cacophony, language becomes a kind of babble, not necessarily conducive to a meaningful conversation. In a similar manner, this second scene shows us two figures who cannot understand the other, despite their lives being more alike than they comprehend or are willing to admit. To fully flesh out this line of reasoning, I move to short readings of other moments in Wonderland that bring into relief how this particular scene accrues deeper meaning and how the two figures appear as imperfect reflections of each other. I then go on to argue that this scene of calculated cacophony calls out to other portions of Wonderland to situate how these two figures must be considered as part of a queer Asian American genealogy. As a young woman living in Singapore, the mother meets her future husband, the Man, through her work as a bargirl. The Man relates his first impressions: “And / there she is / A woman of twenty-two / Wrapped tight / in a delicate silk cheong sam / Sipping a bright red umbrella drink / gin sling / Sitting / at the Long Bar” (284). Not surprisingly, she strikes up a conversation with the Man that night, and soon after they have sexual intercourse. While no evidence within the play ever suggests directly that she or any of the other “sarong party girls” are prostitutes, references abound that they use sexual allure to achieve their own goals. The Woman, for instance, admits to the audience that she lied about her first pregnancy to persuade the Man to marry her, a ruse that works. Based on this falsehood, the architect decides that the right thing to do is to marry her and return with her to the United States. Tellingly, the Woman distances herself from the other bargirls who expressly target who they perceive is the dim-witted “white man,” duping him into believing that their engaged performances indicate their devotion and love; their true goal, of course, is to get the valued “Green Card” (311). In contrast, the Woman believes she truly loves the Asian American architect and morally justifies deception rather than couching it within a framework of citizenship gain. That the Woman is unable to directly admit what she has done, instead calling it “motivation,” further demonstrates the screens that she places over her language, a way in which the audience then is invited to look into her divulgences for subtextual significations. Her tirade, then, concerning what neighbors might say strikes as particularly hollow given her tactics in pursuing marriage with an American transnational. I read against the content and context of the scene to reconsider the mother and son through the lens of their unity on stage, as a kind of fractured duet. The pair shares the stage with overlapping dialogue that is spoken in relative temporal unison, even if the words are not exactly the same. Additionally, the script equally emphasizes their pairing through its bifurcated structure and appearance on the page. But this connection, primarily rendered through form and overlapping dialogue spoken in rhythm—that is, this calculated cacophony—is not simply a clichéd desire for rapprochement between mother and son, but a deeper understanding of the importance of their shared, but not necessarily twinned experiences, each having a complicated connection to his or her sexuality. This second scene of calculated cacophony accordingly accrues another level of meaning because of the Son’s mocking of his mother’s accent. While he purports to listen to every word his mother says, he also states that “she speaks an endless / soundtrack of broken English / Embarrasses the fuck outta me” (388). As language fractures and communication breaks down, the nonmusical musical emphasizes these calculated cacophonies further through the problem of acculturation after transnational movement. After initially arriving in the United States, the mother’s status as a foreigner directly impacts her dreams to work as a Macy’s salesperson, as she is turned away due to her accent. The Son’s derisiveness over his mother’s English language faculties hallmarks an internalized form of racial shame, which he uses as a weapon to strike back at the mother who disowns him. In a telling twist, however, the Son metaphorically becomes the mother he has denigrated when he attempts to establish an acting career. In the Son’s final extended monologue, given during a Hollywood audition, he is asked to improvise two film scenes in which he plays a racialized Asian subject. In the first, he must “Speak broken English / Deliver Thai food” (426). The customer asks him to wait inside while he retrieves payment for the food. Spying dirty magazines on the coffee table, the delivery boy becomes aroused. When the customer returns, he reveals he is Vietnam War veteran and thinks that the delivery boy is “Cambodian Vietnamese something,” later admitting that “[Asians] all look alike” (426). Later, the delivery boy is asked whether he has “ever watched The Killing Fields” (426); he responds in the affirmative by saying “yes / It was exactly like my life” (426). After that point, the veteran becomes sexually interested in the delivery boy, and they begin to touch each other. The power differential is made apparent on multiple levels as the delivery boy waits to receive cash and willingly submits to the veteran’s erotic advances, even after being reduced to a prototypical racial phenotype. This audition requires the Son to be a foreign subject whose English is far from proficient. This role is largely more indicative of the plight faced by actors, who are hampered by a Hollywood casting system that perpetrates the image of the Asian who speaks only broken English. In an ethnographic study of Asian American actors, Joann Lee notes that many of her interviewees believe that “Asian specific roles are fine,” but the chance to do much “beyond that” is extraordinarily limited.[36] Asian American actors are too often cast as “villains, gangsters and immigrants or filler roles such as professionals, or side kick to the leading role.”[37] Wonderland emphasizes the problems brought up by Lee, as the Son takes on roles that are racially insensitive and far from the lead roles he might have dreamed of as a youth. Given that the Son is probably not more than a twenty-something at the time of the audition, we know the period is sometime in the 1980s, a cultural moment in which the Asian American registered in martial arts films such as The Karate Kid.[38] Also during this period, dozens of major Hollywood films were set in the Vietnam War era. Though perhaps offering Asian American actors more work, these films largely cast the Vietnamese figures in unspeaking civilian roles. Knowing that this audition is one of few chances for him to break into the industry, the Son tactically chooses to remain invested in the casting process, even when it involves sexually and racially reductive roles. Further still, the conclusion of the audition scene suggests the possibility that the entire process may have been a variation of the proverbial casting couch, as it is implied that the Son and the director are engaging in drug use together. The Son’s original reference to the “soundtrack” that accompanies his mother’s accented English is ultimately a prophetic and apt word choice as the son’s and mother’s connection in this scene accrues more meaning as the nonmusical musical continues onward. In its most basic definition, the soundtrack functions as a key accompaniment to a visual cultural production. The soundtrack is typically structured to operate with synchronicity, aligning with particular dialogue, visual, and other such cues in a performance. The Son’s use of “soundtrack” to describe “broken English” seems at first strange given his derisive attitude, but underlying this use of the word is perhaps an unconscious desire to remain connected to his mother, however foreign she may be. Though they cannot find a time and place to be together in that stage and at that moment, their pairing emphasizes their lives as imperfect mirrors of each other. On the one hand, the mother cannot embrace the Son for his queerness, even though she, too, is attached to what might be categorized as a deviant sexuality through her tactical entry into the United States. On the other, the Son cannot embrace his mother for her lack of English fluency, even though he, too, is attached to what might be categorized as linguistic foreign-ness when he seeks a career in Hollywood. Conditional Probabilities If the first two scenes of calculated cacophony render language as a site of miscommunication but provide formal and dialogic relationalities as a temporary salve over such chaos, then the final one offers a very different directive. The third scene of calculated cacophony appears toward the end of Wonderland, not long before the Man kills himself. At this point, the Man is touring on a sort of lecture circuit in which he speaks about architectural issues. He is forced to lecture because he cannot find other work: Young Man Given Man The function of the dire most buildings is financial straits to protect people he is swimming in from the weather (429) This scene is intriguing because it presents the bifurcated structure of the “You couldn’t be!” scene between mother and son, but diverges in one key way: the Young Man’s lines are presented in the more musical cascading format while the Man’s are not. The Man’s lines connote the monotonous circumstances under which he must lecture to “make ends meet” (429). Here, calculated cacophony appears in the guise of the staging context: only one figure is aware of the other. The Young Man appears as a kind of omniscient narrator, giving us the circumstances behind why the Man must lecture at all. But the cascading lines suggest a desire for direct musical engagement: that is, a duet (or even a playful dialogue) might be possible, but the Man, for some reason, cannot understand the impact of his words beyond their most literal meanings. In particular, he explains how “[t]he structural / components / of a building / assure that the / elements required / to fulfill / its function / to stand up” are somehow met (429). These words resonate for the Man only because he failed to uphold the “function of most buildings” in his construction of the megamall, but the larger import of the Man’s lecture is far more relational: as an architect he is tasked to protect people through structural integrity, but, as a father, he seems to have abandoned a similar duty entirely. At the precise moment he is giving the lecture, the Man’s son is turning tricks in Hollywood to survive. If the Man is forced to employ his architectural skills to make lectures about how he failed to keep him and his wife solvent, then so too is his Son pushed to instrumentalize his sexuality to endure outside of the Asian American home space. As with the second scene of calculated cacophony, the father and the son accrue another level of connection through the shared but not necessarily twinned experiences concerning spectacle, deviancy, and limited occupational options. The father is put on display on a lecture circuit to spotlight what not to do when constructing large buildings. Fittingly, the Young Man calls the father’s work something that stems from his “new found celebrity” (429). Almost concurrent with the father’s appearance at universities, the Son struggles to live independently. He takes a job as a stripper, becomes a prostitute living on the profits of his regulars, and later attempts to break into the Hollywood acting industry. The Son often has to perform, especially in sexually suggestive ways, to finance his life. These sequences involving the Son’s trials outside the home all occur just before the third scene of calculated cacophony and hence inform the way in which the Young Man and the Man cannot connect with each other, even as they appear on stage together speaking lines at the same time. Because the Young Man is who the Son eventually becomes, his presence is meant to reinforce how the Son and the Man face similar dilemmas in the period following the mall’s collapse. At the same time, the Man cannot see beyond his own myopic perspective and cannot engage the Young Man in a meaningful pairing, disrupting the possibility of a harmonious duet. As in the previously described scene between the Son and mother, the Young Man and the Man are not functioning in unison. Yet this scene also appears structured through a subtextual relationality. The Young Man’s language is rooted in the discourse of conditional probabilities. According to Alan Hájek, “In general, conditional probability is probability given some body of evidence or information, probability relativised to a specified set of outcomes, where typically this set does not exhaust all possible outcomes.”[39] This definition clarifies another elliptical connection between the Young Man and Man, as the Young Man changes the conditions of a probable outcome. In this case, the Young Man provides specific conditions, the outcome of which is the Man’s appearance on the lecture circuit. The use of the conditional probability in this context is intriguing because it can only emerge as the relationship between two elements. This scene accrues a level of unity on the basis of this conditional probability: though these characters are not seen engaging in a musical duet, they nevertheless find an associative connection through the vocabulary of statistics. As with the previous scene, this kind of subtextual link appears again as the method by which calculated cacophony operates. This scene brings to mind whether or not there may have been a different outcome: did the father necessarily have to lecture in order to make ends meet? This question seems relevant in this context precisely because of the marital instability that arises in the wake of the mall’s collapse and the Son’s expulsion from the family home. Additionally, the Young Man adopts language from a quantitative discipline, gesturing in part to the very occupational path of his father. The use of language denoting conditional probabilities would have been familiar to the father given the necessity of eliminating risk factors in building constructions. In this sense, again, there is a desire to find a connection, even if the two do not appear on stage as a concordant duo. The Memory Play and the Im/possible Queer Asian American Family The shadow that continually shrouds these frustrated nonmusical duets and group numbers appears in the guise of the fractured family unit, which requires some sort of greater unifying thread. The three scenes spotlighting what I call calculated cacophonies signal the queer child’s yearning to be accepted by his Asian American parents. If circumstances make the queer Asian American son’s embrace by his parents impossible, then the nonmusical musical operates with subtextual dialogic links that provide some measure of order amid these discordant dynamics. Further still, these scenes and their various levels of thematic and formal relationalities reveal how the child’s so-called queerness is not so alien from the ways that his parents have instrumentalized their bodies and their skills to achieve and to survive. The final scene of the nonmusical musical leads us to the image of the “golden carpet” to contest a conclusion otherwise completely devoid of promise. This moment is not one of calculated cacophony, as the actors do not confront or oppose each other. But a problem equally as obvious as that encountered in the three earlier scenes—that is, the inability to communicate—does emerge in this final scene’s collection of characters on stage. The Young Man arrives to find his mother looking out over the ocean. The Young Man tells the Woman: “Dad used to say / He’d look out and wait” (453) for an image of the setting sun that looked like a “golden carpet” (453). At first the Woman does not see this image, but then the Man appears, who by this time has killed himself, and then later the Son appears, who by this time has grown up (and whose “role” is now given over to the Young Man). Only when the Young Man, Son, and Man all appear together can the Woman see the image. This final sequence of the nonmusical musical we might reconsider in light of the earlier scenes of calculated cacophony precisely because all four characters can see the same image, but cannot actually exist in the same time and space. The “golden carpet” functions as an appropriate symbol given its suggestive connotations of homely welcome and of the path that would lead the queer son back to his family. Here, we can say that Wonderland takes some inspiration from the memory play. Epitomized by The Glass Menagerie,[40] the memory play typically uses more surrealistic and subjective staging that includes projections, stylized music, and subtle lighting to generate a production focused on “moods, a study in futility and frustration constructed on incidents rather than on a consecutive plotline, using as material the trivial happenings that can throw such huge shadows in the lives of decent yet desperate people.”[41] Yew’s Wonderland draws on these stylizations, formal and staging conceits, and nonlinear plotlines, but diverges from the traditional genre conventions precisely because a memory play is typically situated from the perspective of one character or his subjective recounting of the past.[42] Instead, Wonderland quite squarely depicts the disintegration of dreams for multiple characters, eschewing a surrealistic filter for the majority of the play while accentuating the dissolution of the Asian American heteronuclear family. Further still, the meta-theatricality inherent in the memory play is not suggested in Wonderland until the concluding arc.[43] If Wonderland can be marked as a memory play at all, then this labeling is most apt in the final pages when the Son and Young Man merge on stage. Here, realism is partly eschewed as the division between time periods collapses.[44] And memory is itself the very topic of this moment, as the past comes crashing into the present, reminding the audience that the Son and Young Man still harbor that same intimate view of the ocean, though each must reflect on it with a different parent. To consider Wonderland as a memory play at this juncture is crucial precisely because it provides a necessary countermeasure to one thematic related to the traditional musical’s finale, which operates in the mode of “celebrating romantic love and American courtship ties.”[45] The memory play, with its emphasis on the importance of what has already occurred, undercuts any future-oriented ethos suggested by the successful completion of a courtship narrative with its proverbial “happily ever after” conceit. Wonderland encourages us to look back to enable a different thematic to take center stage, one related to social formation. In this sense, the memory play begins to align more seamlessly with a different feature of the musical finale: a concluding group number that functions to “celebrate community.”[46] Anne Beggs argues that “the finales [in West Side Story and Les Misérables] . . . engage with the spirits of the dead . . . , musically reiterating their messages of hope and love.”[47] We can apply Beggs’s reading to Wonderland’s final scene, as the four actors come together as a family, united through their ability to see the “golden carpet.” Even the dead Man comes back to life to provide “messages of hope and love.” A memory is resurrected, and a family is thus reconstructed. Second, the power of this finale is also made apparent in its racializing impulses. We can turn to Lei Ouyang Bryant to consider how the musical form operates with respect to themes of race and associated social differences, as they appear in a finale. Bryant analyzes The Walleye Kid: The Musical, which involves “the story of a young Korean American adoptee named Annie and her experiences”[48] in her rural white Minnesotan home. Bryant argues that the musical, adapted from Philip Gotanda’s play of the same name, “requires a resolution where we return to the trigger incident when Annie is teased by her peers, and have the kids come back to apologize to Annie so that the company can come together as a cohesive community.”[49] As Bryant notes, the musical’s concluding group number functions to show how the Korean American adoptee can find a place among her primarily white peers, transforming the racial homogeneity that might have been predominant in a school’s culture. This reading applies equally well to Wonderland because it complicates the notion of community, as the queer Asian American family remains on stage, although without a larger group surrounding it. The isolation of the queer Asian American family suggests its radical disarticulation from structural support systems that might help to sustain a fledgling and fragile social formation. Not surprisingly, then, the surrealistic nature of this scene—the Man’s magical resurrection, the Son’s temporally anachronistic presence—undercuts its actuality and tangible materialization. Here, the actual staging of Yew’s production is most salient, especially as the use of lighting helps generate the luminescence that colors the pathway to the horizon point, resulting in a “moody” and “deceptive” atmosphere.[50] As reviewer Pat Launer notes, “The ocean is almost a palpable presence in Rachel Hauck’s dramatic set design.”[51] The word “almost” is the key, as the queer Asian American family unit cannot unify their perspectives on one “golden carpet” unless somehow magically reunited. In this sense, I extrapolate from the work of Stacy Wolf, who has argued in relation to the musical Wicked that its conclusion “unifies the community, but with irony and a critical slant.”[52] Wolf’s intervention clarifies how we might reread the promise of Wonderland’s group collective as one tempered by its ultimate impossibility. Wolf’s reading, of course, is couched in relation to the queer undertones that go unresolved: “Wicked’s queer ‘marriage’ is private, spoken only between the women and impossible to be revealed publicly. The principals must permanently separate because the community refuses to tolerate their union.”[53] Not unlike Wicked, then, the only reunion possible in Wonderland is an unrealistic one, due to the heteronormative demands placed on racialized family formations. But at least in this moment, the cacophony that comprised earlier scenes is overshadowed by this chimerical convergence, a solidarity prescribing the need for a time and place that can promote the emergence of the queer Asian American family. Wonderland’s greatest dream is the desire to form a sustainable kinship system, one that exists alongside rather than beyond the heteronuclear Asian American home. Wonderland leaves us there with a gleaming “golden carpet,” coalescing features of the memory play and the nonmusical musical, to remind us that even with such a problematic conclusion, a queer Asian American family must still be made possible. Acknowledgments: First off, I want to thank the editors of JADT, Naomi J. Stubbs and James Wilson, as well as the journal’s editorial staff for their unflagging support. I very much appreciate the Herculean efforts of my readers, who include the indefatigable Lisa Wehrle and Donatella Gallela. Stephen Hong Sohn is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Racial Asymmetries: Asian American Fictional Worlds (NYU Press, 2014), the co-editor of Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits (Temple University Press, 2006), and the editor of Karen Tei Yamashita's Anime Wong: Fictions of Performance (Coffee House Press, 2014). [1] Chay Yew’s plays have been published in two omnibus editions: Porcelain and A Language of Their Own: Two Plays (New York: Grove, 1997) and The Hyphenated American (New York: Grove, 2002). My research has yielded just a small handful of critical studies on Yew, only one of which is partially based on Wonderland: Caroline De Wagter explores the play in relation to cultural memory in “Re-configuring Cultural Memory in Chay Yew’s Wonderland and M. J. Kang’s Blessings,” in Signatures of the Past: Cultural Memory in Contemporary Anglophone North American Drama, ed. Marc Maufort and Caroline de Wagter (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 273–90. Heath A. Diehl and Jordon Schildcrout respectively engage in critical analyses of Porcelain, which is another play that focuses on queer Asian diasporic themes; see Heath A. Diehl, “Beyond The Silk Road: Staging a Queer Asian America in Chay Yew’s Porcelain,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 37, no. 1 (2004): 149–67; and Jordan Schildcrout, Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Schildcrout, in particular, does note the influence of musical forms on his production, as one of the primary roles involves an individual with a fondness for Puccini. [2] Both actors have been out for some time. Mapa discussed his queer sexuality in his one-man performance, “I Remember Mapa,” in O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance, ed. Holly Hughes and David Roman (New York: Grove, 1998), 199–228. One reference in which Shimono publicly addresses his queer sexuality occurred in 2010 in a post to Matthew’s Place, a site run by the Matthew Shepard Foundation; see Sab Shimono, interview by Thomas Howard, Voices (blog), 6 April 2010, http://www.matthewsplace.com/voice/sab-shimono/. [3] In this respect, my article honors the work of performance studies scholars such as Karen Shimakawa, Josephine Lee, and Esther Kim Lee, who have been attentive to the techniques of production, staging, and drama to their analyses and studies. See Karen Shimakawa, National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Josephine Lee, Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); and Esther Kim Lee, A History of Asian American Theater (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). [4] For several prominent examples of these transitory relationships, see Genny Lim, Bitter Cane, in The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women, ed. Velina Hasu Houston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 163–204; Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973); and David Henry Hwang, The Dance of the Railroad, in FOB and Other Plays (New York: Plume, 1990), 51-86. [5] Two examples that concern Japanese American families are Wakako Yamauchi, And the Soul Shall Dance, in Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir (New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1994), 153–208; Wakako Yamauchi, 12-1-A, in The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women, ed. Velina Hasu Houston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 45–100. [6] Louis Chu, Eat a Bowl of Tea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976). [7] Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 147. [8] Ayad Akhtar, The Who & the What (New York: Back Bay Books, 2014); Wajahat Ali, Domestic Crusaders (San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2011); Jay Antani, The Leaving of Things (Seattle: Lake Union, 2014); Frank Chin, Chickencoop Chinaman/The Year of the Dragon: Two Plays (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981); Julia Cho, Durango, in Version 3.0: Contemporary Asian American Plays, ed. Chay Yew (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2011), 327–92; Julia Cho, 99 Histories, in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas, ed. Esther Kim Lee (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 21–84; Sung Rno, Cleveland Raining, in But Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise: New Asian American Plays, ed. Velina Hasu Houston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 227–70; Lloyd Suh, American Hwangap, in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas, ed. Esther Kim Lee (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 85–150; Sung J. Woo, Everything Asian (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2009). [9] erin Khuê Ninh, Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 1-18. [10] David Eng argues the ways in which the Asian American is historically rendered as a queer subject through laws that have regulated sexuality and the development of families; see The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); and Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 204–28. [11] Some important publications do offer a number of important interventions, but are primarily rooted in social scientific analyses; see, e.g., Rosalind C. Chou, Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); and Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger, “Introduction: Embodying Asian/American Sexualities,” in Embodying Asian/American Sexualities, ed. Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 1–21. In specific studies of queer Asian American cultural productions, the emphasis has tended to remain on film, cinema, and television; see, for instance, Nguyen Tan Hoang, A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). [12] Chay Yew, Wonderland, in Hyphenated American, 312. All subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. Unless noted, typestyles and formatting are from the original. [13] Min Hyoung Song, The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, As an Asian American (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 168. Song’s reading is placed in the context of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (New York: Houghton, 2003). [14] Lee, History, 200–224. [15] For another useful consideration of East West Players, see Yuko Kurahashi, Asian American Culture on Stage: The History of the East West Players (New York: Routledge, 2013). [16] Julia Cho’s 99 Histories and Sung Rno’s Cleveland Raining, for instance, include stage directions that emphasize dream-states and the fluidity of memory. [17] Diehl, “Beyond The Silk Road,” 151. [18] Michael Phillips, “Haze Obscures the Landscape in a Troubled Wonderland,” Los Angeles Times, 6 October 1999, http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/06/entertainment/ca-19230. [19] Ibid. [20] Diehl, “Beyond The Silk Road,” 151. [21] Yew, Hyphenated American, 281. [22] Stacy Ellen Wolf, “‘We’ll Always Be Bosom Buddies’: Female Duets and the Queering of Broadway Musical Theater,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 3 (2006): 351–76; D. A. Miller, Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); John M. Clum, Something for the Boys: Musical Theater and Gay Culture (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999). For other useful sources on queerness, performance, musicals, and associated genres, see Steven Cohan, Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); and Judith Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). [23] More recently, cultural critics have explored how popular musicals have been revised using purportedly race-blind casting considerations, which have included Asian American actors and performers; see, e.g., such as Angela C. Pao, “Green Glass and Emeralds: Citation, Performance, and the Dynamics of Ethnic Parody in Thoroughly Modern Millie,” MELUS 36, no. 4 (2011): 35–60; and Donatella Galella, “Redefining America, Arena Stage, and Territory Folks in a Multiracial Oklahoma!,” Theatre Journal 67, no. 2 (2015): 213–33. [24] Celine P. Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). [25] Ibid., 51. [26] Wolf, “Bosom Buddies,” 352. [27] See Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (New York: Verso, 1989); Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991); Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage, 1992). [28] Michael Dear and Steven Flusty, “The Iron Lotus: Los Angeles and Postmodern Urbanism,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 551 (May 1997): 155. [29] Additionally, the Man must adhere to certain boundaries in the construction of these malls due to his status as what John Chase terms a “[C]onsumerist architect.” John Chase, “The Role of Consumerism in American Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education 44, no. 4 (1991): 211. [30] Timothy Davis, “The Miracle Mile Revisited: Recycling, Renovation, and Simulation along the Commercial Strip,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 7 (1997): 93–114, esp. 97. [31] For some important studies on the American shopping mall (and variations such as the shopping center), see Jon Goss, “The ‘Magic of the Mall’: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 83, no. 1 (1993): 18–47 and Lizabeth Cohen, “From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America,” American Historical Review 101, no. 4 (1996): 1050–81. [32] For a compelling case for rereading popular musicals through the lens of queer spectatorship, see Wolf, “Bosom Buddies.” [33] Ski Hunter, Coming Out and Disclosures: LGT Persons Across the Life Span (New York: Routledge, 2012), 110. [34] Nang Du, Hendry Ton, and Elizabeth J. Kramer, “New Immigrants,” in Praeger Handbook of Asian American Health, ed. William Baragar Bateman, Noilyn Abesamis-Mendoza, and Henrietta Ho-Asjoe (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009), 1:338. [35] Cirleen DeBlaere and Melanie Brewster, “Diversity across the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Community,” in Creating School Environments to Support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Students and Families: A Guide for Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth and Families, ed. Emily S. Fisher and Karen Komosa-Hawkins (New York: Routledge, 2013), 77. [36] Joann Lee, “Asian American Actors in Film, Television and Theater: An Ethnographic Case Study,” Race, Gender & Class 8, no. 4 (2001): 182. [37] The problem of racialized casting is further exacerbated by the simple lack of representational diversity in film, television, and elsewhere. Margaret Hillenbrand, “Of Myths and Men: Better Luck Tomorrow and the Mainstreaming of Asian America,” Cinema Journal 47, no. 4 (2008): 50. [38] The Karate Kid, dir. John G. Avildsen, perf. Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, Elisabeth Shue (Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1984). [39] Alan Hájek, “Conditional Probability,” in Philosophy of Statistics, ed. Prasanta S. Bandyopadhyay and Malcolm R. Forster (Amsterdam: North Holland, 2011), 7:99. [40] Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (New York: New Directions), xix–xxi. [41] Patrick O’Connor, “Theatre,” Furrow 15, no. 3 (1964): 166. [42] According to R. B. Parker, the memory play functions primarily through the subjective viewpoint of a narrator figure: “[W]e not only see exclusively what the narrator consciously wants us to see, but also see it only in the way he chooses that we should.” R. B. Parker, “The Circle Closed: A Psychological Reading of The Glass Menagerie and The Two Character Play,” Modern Drama 28, no. 4 (1985): 519. [43] For a consideration of the memory play through the lens of meta-theatrical elements, see Philip Kolin, “Something Cloudy, Something Clear: Tennessee Williams’s Postmodern Memory Play,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 12, no. 2 (1998): 35–55. Parker also considers the meta-theatrical character of the memory play by calling it a “box-within-box structure” (Parker, “The Circle Closed,” 519). [44] Diana Sandars and Rhonda V. Wilcox, “Not ‘The Same Arrangement’: Breaking Utopian Promises in the Buffy Musical,” in Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ed. Paul Gregory Attinello, Janet K. Halfyard, and Vanessa Knights (New York: Routledge, 2010), 206. In this sense, Wonderland does gesture to the central thematic of aging in the memory play and how this process necessary impacts how we look back on past events. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb, “Performing the Aging Self in Hugh Leonard’s Da and Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa,” Comparative Drama 47, no. 3 (2013): 286. [45] Andrea Most, “‘We Know We Belong to the Land’: The Theatricality of Assimilation in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!,” PMLA 113, no. 1 (1998): 79. It must be noted that Sandars and Wilcox, “Not ‘The Same Arrangement,’” provide this articulation of the musical in their context of Buffy. [46] Andrea Most specifically makes this argument in the context of Oklahoma! Most, “We Know We Belong.” [47] Anne Beggs, “‘For Urinetown is your town . . .’: The Fringes of Broadway,” Theatre Journal 62, no. 1 (2010): 46. [48] Lei Ouyang Bryant, “Performing Race and Place in Asian America: Korean American Adoptees, Musical Theatre, and the Land of 10,000 Lakes,” Asian Music 40, no. 1 (2009): 4. [49] Ibid., 9. [50] Pat Launer, “Wonderland at the La Jolla Playhouse,” KPBS, October 8, 1999, http://www.patlauner.com/review/wonderland-at-the-la-jolla-playhouse. [51] Ibid. [52] Stacy Ellen Wolf, “‘Defying Gravity’: Queer Conventions in the Musical Wicked,” Theatre Journal 60, no. 1 (2008): 17. [53] Ibid., 17–18. “Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland" by Stephen Hong Sohn ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 29, Number 1 (Fall 2016/Winter 2017) ©2017 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: 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 Table of Contents: “Historical Subjectivity and the Revolutionary Archetype in Amiri Baraka's The Slave and Luis Valdez's Bandido!” by Jose Fernandez “Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland" by Stephen Hong Sohn www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References Footnotes About The Author(s) Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle Affective Performance and Cognitive Science Kitchen Sink Realisms Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience Everything Plus the Kitchen Sink Calculated Cacophonies: The Queer Asian American Family and the Nonmusical Musical in Chay Yew's Wonderland Historical Subjectivity and the Revolutionary Archetype in Amiri Baraka's The Slave and Luis Valdez's Bandido! 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Michael Y. Bennett Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 1 Visit Journal Homepage James Purdy as Playwright: A Retrospective Reading of A Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus Michael Y. Bennett By Published on March 5, 2015 Download Article as PDF James Purdy (1914-2009)—a prolific American writer of fiction, drama, poetry, and essays—has been known almost exclusively as a novelist, recognized for his early portrayals of gay characters and themes. Accordingly, scholarship has focused almost entirely on his well-respected novels. Purdy’s most notable contribution to the theatre is indirect, by way of adaptation of his novel, Malcolm (1959), by Edward Albee in 1966. This article considers two of Purdy’s minor plays that span a large swath of his career. Why Purdy now? And why two of his minor plays? There has been a recent turn in Purdy scholarship that has been gathering steam to examine his plays, which have been mostly ignored by academia. In addition to the publication of James Purdy: Selected Plays in 2009, since 2000, four of the seven articles published on Purdy have been about his plays. Douglas Blair Turnbaugh documented Purdy’s career as a playwright and recounts how Purdy told Turnbaugh that he “would just as soon write plays as novels.”[1] Though Turnbaugh does not comment on this statement, this suggests that Purdy scholars should give his plays continued prominence. Turnbaugh claims that Purdy has an inherent theatricality and a flair for dramatic dialogue.[2] This is particularly evident in Albee’s adaptation of Malcolm. Similarly, Matthew Stadler writes, “Talk, in Purdy’s world, is the instrument of revelation.”[3] Purdy does not dwell on scene-setting exposition, character background, or speculative psychological depth.[4] Purdy focuses, instead, on “the awkwardness and abruptness of real speech.”[5] Like Stadler, Michael Feingold argues that Purdy does not pay much attention to plot.[6] Feingold discusses Purdy’s non-traditional dramatic style, which is characterized by anecdotal drama, and explains how the plays are about “why life is so full of suffering and why human beings cause each other so much pain.”[7] Purdy’s reputation as a playwright has historically suffered for two reasons. First, the success of his novels has turned the finite amount of attention towards his novels (and, therefore, largely away from his plays). And, second, what scholarship that has been written about Purdy’s plays has focused almost solely on the structure of his plays (and, largely, in comparison to the structure of his novels). While it is important that academic journals have begun to publish work on Purdy’s plays, the fact that these articles do not really consider the content of the plays, has not done much to further his reputation as a serious playwright to be studied . Besides his prolific output of novels (and poems), James Purdy wrote, in total, eleven full-length plays and twenty shorter plays during his many-decade career. While many of Purdy’s plays were produced in non-notable theatres with limited runs—between the 1966 publication of his first short play, Mr. Cough Syrup and the Phantom Sex, and the 2009 publication of his fifth collection of plays, Selected Plays, published only months after Purdy’s death—, most of Purdy’s plays were published either in book collections or in literary journals/magazines during his lifetime.Unlike other scholars, I do not focus on structure, but instead, read his two plays about circuses and clowns through the idea of “clowning around,” playing off of the well-studied and complex idea of the carnivalesque, as theorized by Mikhail Bhaktin. This essay focuses on one of Purdy’s earlier published plays, A Day After the Fair (written in the early 1970s and first published in 1977), and one of his plays first published in a recent anthology, The Paradise Circus (written in 1991 and published in 2009). Though their dates of publication vary by almost thirty years, interestingly enough, both of these plays revolve around the circus. The figure of the clown haunts the pages, offering a unique opportunity to assess a change in Purdy’s thinking with similar characters occupying similar environments in both plays. While reading these plays, we may ask, what is a clown? and what is a circus? This line of inquiry gets us far; however, there is a much larger issue at stake when we examine the figure of the clown: Purdy’s characters only become themselves when they don the mask of another. Using the figure of the clown in such a manner is a sophisticated technique to explore this (above) idea—an idea that is not entirely without precedent in the history of theatre (e.g., becoming the “brother” in Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan and “Bunburying” in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest). In the earlier play, A Day After the Fair, as Joseph Skerrett says in “James Purdy and the Works: Love and Tragedy in Five Novels,” tragedy is “played out against a backdrop of more than vaguely symbolic chaos in the natural order and/or disruption of the social order”[8] as the younger destroys the older in order to reverse the hierarchy. Love is a dangerous and destructive force here, as in Purdy’s earlier novels, because the characters cannot conceive or pursue it purely.[9] However, in the later play, The Paradise Circus, though the social order is disrupted in the beginning of the play as Arthur sells his sons and Arthur is incapable of pursuing love in the correct manner, the boys come back and the witch doctor becomes the doctor once more—restoring the social order—and Arthur does learn how to love, even though he quickly dies thereafter. Circuses are scary places in Purdy’s early works: the clowns are outcasts, and their makeup cannot hide the pain. However, by the time we get much later in his career in The Paradise Circus, life, in the end, can produce smiles. As these two plays represent his earlier and later career and both contain clowns, they offer a unique opportunity to see Purdy contemplate similar ideas and characters, but arrive at a different conclusion, demonstrating a fundamental change in Purdy’s outlook over the years. In interpreting the content of these two plays by Purdy through investigating the complex characters of the clowns, this essay aims to legitimate Purdy as a playwright and deserving of further scholarly inquiry. In A Day After the Fair, there are two grown-up brothers who are clowns. The older brother, however, will not let the younger very innocent brother assume the role of a clown (not letting him put on his makeup or costume), because the older brother feels as though he is the master clown. Like the younger brother’s lover who is a hired killer, the younger brother must become a killer, must become cold and calculating like his older brother. Only in killing his older brother, can the younger brother put on his makeup and finally become a clown. Like The Good Person of Szechwan, the previously-innocent younger brother must don another personality to live the life that he wants. The Paradise Circus, set in 1919, is about the relationship between a father and his two sons. Arthur Rawlings is mourning the death of his son Rainforth, a captain in WWI. Arthur forsakes his two younger sons, Joel and Gregory, because they do not live up to the memory of their older, now dead, brother. Joel and Gregory spend their lives working on merry-go-round wooden horses. When Senor Onofrio of the Paradise Circus meets the two boys, he propositions Arthur, who is known to be a miser. For ten thousand dollars, Onofrio will buy the two boys for the circus. If it does not work out and the boys return, he will have to return the money. At first, Arthur is shocked, but then he reasons that his sons do not love him as much as Rainforth did and agrees to the deal. After a number of years, he misses his son and wants them to return. Spurning the advice of the country doctor, Arthur turns to a witch doctor, Alda Pennington, for advice. She convinces Arthur that he must burn the ten thousand dollars, which he does. A little later the two sons miss home and run away from the circus and return home. They have grown up and claim to have hearts of stone when their father greets them again. Onofrio comes to Arthur to get his money back, but when Arthur tells him that Alda burnt it, Onofrio goes to Alda. Alda tells him that ever since he bought those boys he has not been able to perform with women. Alda says that if he ever wants his manhood back, he must leave town, forget the money and never return. Soon after Joel goes to Alda to find out if his father really burnt the money. She gives the remaining ashes to Joel. By the time Joel returns he is too late to hear what his dying father said to Gregory. Arthur told Gregory that he loves them and his dying wish was to see the stone removed from their hearts. Both sons are touched and they have appeared to regain their emotions, ending the play in an embrace. Many of Purdy’s other plays also feature types/variations of complex role-reversals. Dangerous Moonlight (unpublished to date) is a hauntingly sadistic, cold, and calculating play about making the best of a no-win situation. The action between mother and daughter, who have grown up in the lap of luxury, revolves around Val Noble, a Stanley Kowalski-like brute who lacks even the pride that Stanley exhibited in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Val is merely satisfied and accepts who he is—a veritable animal, a practical beast, whose needs are quite basic: first sustenance (taking the form of a large roast of beef) and then sex. By the end of the play, the three have made an agreement that the daughter will remain Val’s wife, while the mother will take the place of the daughter and become Val’s lover. In True (1977), Chester, a thirteen year old boy who witnessed his brother commit a murder ends up killing his brother, to demonstrate to him that he is not a liar and is true; that, “he will not grow up to be like his brother.” Here, Chester must become his brother, a killer, in order to become himself. Or Jack, in Down the Starry River (unpublished to date), is a washed-up drag performer. By the end of the play, Jack discovers that in order to make himself happy, he needs his costume to become his daily outfit; he needs to wear dresses not as an act, but in order to be himself. Donald Pease writes that Purdy laces his fiction with orphans, abandoned children, foundlings and outcasts.[10] In A Day After the Fair, the two brother-clowns are circus folk: certainly societal outcasts. Joel and Gregory in The Paradise Circus, are symbolically orphaned as Arthur sells them to the circus. The play A Day After the Fair has a pessimistic ending as the younger brother can only turn to violence in order to become what he wants. This holds true with what Pease writes when he says that there is an irreconcilable gap in their world and the world that cannot “adopt” them.[11] However, there is a very different ending in The Paradise Circus. The two brothers, who were symbolically orphaned, are reunited with their father at the end of the play as each party seems to forgive and love the other. This focus on outcasts and innocents is found throughout Purdy scholarship. Part of the reason for this reoccurring theme is that, as Skerrett documents, as a gay man, Purdy identified with a socially marginalized race. In an interview Skerrett cites in “James Purdy and the Black Mask of Humanity,” Purdy—aligning and/or identifying himself with what he sees as a powerless and stigmatized member of society—discusses that in dealing with his landlord, he felt like an oppressed black person: “They treat you like an old nigger tramp. . . . I feel like an old nigger after I've talked with him. I just feel like saying, ‘Well, white boss, you sho got to me.’”[12] Purdy expressed the same sense of oppression when he talked to Christopher Lane in a 1998 interview based on his sexuality. Purdy felt that his lack of recognition, stemmed from his perception of The New York Times as homophobic.[13] Reed Woodhouse writes how Purdy also felt personally attacked by members of the gay movement for not being “gay enough.”[14] Because of this, Purdy could most likely identify with his characters, and as Frank Baldanza says in “James Purdy on the Corruption of Innocents,” “A prominent feature in the microcosm of James Purdy's six novels and numerous short stories is the relationship between a young innocent and the corrupt adult world in which he must make his way.”[15] The social outcast and orphan figure prominently in his two plays that I discuss here. In A Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus, Purdy captures the human in the guise of a clown-suit. In order to live life, one must clown around in a world that we know to be a circus. Like a clown, Purdy’s characters must assume another self in order to be true to their own selves. In order for Purdy’s characters to live the lives that they want, they must assume the role of another: they must become another to become oneself. Though full of obvious play and humor, Purdy’s circuses, however, are no laughing matter. These transformations are painful to all involved; even clown makeup cannot hide the pain, and when the clowns fall, or get hit on the head, they really get hurt. In makeup, clown performers exaggerate their bodily expressions, and clowns take on almost universal guises. It is an easy leap to imagine a modern day circus as a Bhaktinian carnival: The body and bodily life have here a cosmic and at the same time an all-people’s character; this is not the body and its physiology in the modern sense of the words, because it is not individualized. The material bodily principle is contained not in the biological individual, not in the bourgeois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed. This is why all that is bodily becomes grandiose, exaggerated, immeasurable.[16] It is the body of the clown that becomes the focal point and not the speech. We focus on their makeup and actions. And it is in their action that the clowns grow and renew themselves. Clowns operate through degradation, but also by overcoming degradation until they do it correctly. As Bhaktin says, “the material bodily principle is a triumphant, festive principle.”[17] In the face of degradation, clowns triumph over folly. Bhaktin explains how regeneration comes out of degradation: Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one. To degrade an object does not imply merely hurling it into the void of nonexistence, into absolute destruction, but to hurl it down to the reproductive lower stratum, the zone in which conception and a new birth take place. Grotesque realism knows no other lower level; it is the fruitful earth and the womb. It is always conceiving.[18] At the moment when Purdy’s characters face degradation are they renewed. By permanently donning the mask of another, by degrading themselves and reducing their existence to a new bodily existence, by directly dealing with their orphaned status, they become themselves. The short play A Day After the Fair begins appropriately with the scene being set: “A dilapidated unfurnished room in a lonely city near which loom up enormous skyscrapers and bridges.”[19] Immediately we think of the degradation that the two clown-brothers, Neil and Arnold, encounter every time they look out of the window. Their surroundings are indicative of success and human progress, though of the lonely sort, and the two live in a dilapidated room, reflecting their failures and the process of continual worsening conditions. The play begins with Neil playing cards by himself and wishing that he is allowed to once again put on his clown suit, which his older brother, Arnold, forbids. Instead of listening to Arnold, Neil puts on the clown makeup: “I’ll put on my Clown’s face too, though Arnold’s forbidden it. . . . And it will make me lose the blues. . . . ” (3). There is something about his ordinary state that saddens Neil, and this may be in part due to. Maybe part of it is the reminder of his poverty-stricken state. The assumption of the carnivalesque being cheers him up, but also makes him feel more like himself. “I was a Clown just like him,” Neil states (3). For reasons not entirely clear to the audience, Neil was stripped of his Clown title by the Clown Master. Neil and Arnold come from a family of clowns: I said I was a clown at heart, and I need to live with Arnold. . . . We are the only clowns! My father was a clown, and his father. And before him my great grandfather was a juggler. We have always followed the circus. (5) They have a heritage, but Neil’s clown identity was stripped away. Neil is in the precarious position of both returning to his old identity—one that no longer exists—and creating a new identity. The plot of the play is a series of complex love triangles. Oswin is married to Elga, who promised Neil’s mother to take care of Neil, but Oswin loves Neil, offering to take Neil away from his overbearing older brother, Arnold. Neil loves Oswin, but also feels the same, at least obedient, love for his brother, Arnold. Elga is in love with both Arnold and Oswin (and has a weird motherly love for Neil). Arnold is in love with Elga, but has a demanding love for Neil. And wrapped up in this series of intertwining love triangles, the Clown Master seems to have had relations with all of the characters, too. The basic action of the play has Oswin, in some sort of revenge for Arnold, kill the Clown Master. Meanwhile, Neil poisons Elga and in turn, Neil kills Arnold. The love triangles afford the characters the ability to take on different roles, ones not determined by obligation. Oswin is obliged to be Elga’s husband, but Neil offers Oswin the possibility of being a lover. For Elga, too, she is obliged to be Oswin’s wife, but Arnold offers her the possibility of being a lover, as well. Neil is Arnold’s brother, but Oswin also offers Neil the possibility of being a lover. In a sense, all characters are trying to become lovers, trying to shed their obligatory mates. These characters become emboldened through love and held back by obligation. In assuming the roles of lover these characters can be free of the parts of themselves that is wrapped up in obligation. But it is not just the idea of taking on another role that frees the characters from obligation. Instead, the assumption of these other roles is only successful with an accompanying degradation. As Bhaktin says, it is only through degradation that there can be a birth. Actually, in the case of Oswin, there is a rebirth. Oswin is described as an assassin, and Oswin is in a similar situation as Neil. In assuming the role of assassin, Oswin is returning to an old identity that no longer exists. Does he return to an old self, or is he reinventing himself once more by once again becoming an assassin? It is an obligatory act, though. Arnold, through force and persuasion convinces Oswin to assassinate the Clown Master. For Oswin, killing the Clown Master, and literally degrading his body as he cuts out his tongue, frees Oswin of Arnold’s overbearing demands. Once Oswin accomplishes this task, he expects to find himself free to pursue Neil. Through assuming the role of an old/new self, degradation is allowed to occur, paving the way for freedom from obligation. The ultimate act of degradation and birth or rebirth comes from Neil’s character. Neil’s obligation to his brother is the one most firmly established. One can always divorce a wife, but a brother will always be a brother. By killing Arnold, Neil destroys part of his natural-born lineage as a clown. Like Oswin, Neil cuts out Arnold’s tongue: this degradation raises the question of whether Neil is returning to clownhood or is reinventing himself as a clown . But what it, ultimately, determines is that Neil will be the only clown. He assumes the privileged position of that title. And, finally, in the murder of his brother, Neil becomes the overbearing brute that his brother was, bullying Oswin. Neil, in freeing himself from his brother, has, in part, assumed the role of his brother. What is it about being a clown that metaphorically fits the play? First off, clowns represent both social outcasts and misfits. Not being satisfied with their role as outsiders, they yearn to become a part of society. However, clowns have a subversive means of achieving their desired goals, and they are successful through roundabout ways. For instance, they stumble until they find a certain, usually wacky, method of success. For Neil, degradation offers a way of subverting the natural order of birth and hierarchy. By toppling his brother, Neil is able to assume his old/new true and free self. The Paradise Circus opens up with an author questioning Arthur about his son, Rainforth. The author is writing a book about soldiers from the American Revolution up until WWI. Rainforth received many citations and won many medals and, as the author says, deserves to be in the book. Arthur describes Rainforth only in opposition to his two younger sons. He says, “My two youngest boys can’t hold a candle to their brother, that’s certain . . .They’re retarded boys. Never finished school . . .”[20] Arthur really has nothing to tell the author about his son except about his name: “The world wants everything ordinary. And both his name and character were extraordinary. Rainforth was right for him, whether people like it or not” (88). This sets up a classic case of a parent favoring one child and forsaking others. As a result of Arthur’s preferential treatment, his two sons, obviously, are detached from him. And because the boys are detached from Arthur, he agrees to “sell” his sons. The rest of the play, then, concerns Arthur’s attempt to buy back his sons’ love. The situation is simple; the resolution is complex. Before Arthur “sells” his sons to Onofrio, he meets with the family doctor, Dr. Hallam. Dr. Hallam is both the raisonneur, the critical outside observer, and a confidant to Arthur, much like James Herne’s famous homeopathic doctor, Dr. Larkin, in his classic play, Margaret Fleming (1890). Hallam correctly diagnoses the problem: Sometimes young men can get sick for sheer want of a little encouragement and downright affection, Rawlings. . . . And all they hear from you, if you will pardon my frankness, is a steady diet of praises for Rainforth. (91) If Arthur could follow Hallam’s simple prescription, the conflict in the play could have been avoided. But the memory of Arthur’s perfect son haunts him. In the face of Rainforth’s supposed perfection, everybody would be a disappointment. As soon as Onofrio offers to “buy” his sons, Arthur hits upon this point: “they have been a bitter disappointment to me, both of them” (95). And so three years have past and Arthur is dying to see his sons. It is not for another year until he actually sees them. Hallam warns Arthur how much they have changed. They have grown beards and have become much stronger even though they still use Arthur’s last name. Their meeting is short and polite. As Joel says, “we weren’t sure you would want to see us” (103). After the boys leave, Arthur tells Hallam, “I wouldn’t have knowed them from Adam” (103). The boys have transformed and indeed look like the “first son.” The boys have taken on a “magisterial” aura (102), and have supplanted Rainforth in might and in Arthur’s mind. Arthur’s sole preoccupation, which used to be his “grief for Rainforth” (96), is getting his two sons to love him. Arthur cannot accept the prescription that Dr. Hallam gives him. Because of Arthur’s unwillingness, or inability, to follow the doctor’s orders,we get the first of two degradations that produce growth. In Purdy’s circus, even the raisonneur and confidant must don a different guise. The “doctor” becomes a “witch” in order to be a doctor. Arthur says that he has had enough of doctors and decides to visit the local witch doctor to see if she can help him get his sons back. The traditional remedy for the situation, giving his children encouragement and showing more love, gives way to an untraditional remedy from an untraditional healer, a witch doctor. The audience must be weary of Alda Pennington before she even says a word. The stage directions read, Antique furniture everywhere, beautiful carpets and mirrors. Fresh flowers. An air of restrained wealth and comfort, not the house one would associate with a midwife or “witch.” (104) We know that Alda must be good at what she does, or at least good enough to trick people out of their money and make enough to buy antique furniture and beautiful carpets. But we might also look at it in another way. This is a person in touch with reality. We do not see the normal collection of ghastly thingamabobs that a “witch” would collect. Instead her decorations are sensible, even refined. She has one foot in magic, but the other is in a life of privilege. Her magic, then, is less foreign. And the pills that she prescribes are easier to follow than if she was a prototypical witch doctor. Like Dr. Hallam, she is both raisonneur and confidant. She quickly assesses the situation: RAWLINGS: They did come to see me . . . But without wanting to . . . They were cold as the brook after snowfall . . . Hardly said a word. ALDA: Just as they were trained. (106) After years of paternal neglect, Joel and Gregory naturally have nothing to say to him. They were, in fact, trained not to love Arthur. Dr. Hallam’s medicine would have worked it seems, if Arthur worked in usual ways. But he sold his boys. And an unusual medicine is needed to remedy that. Alda tells him, The very first thing you must do in order to regain your hold on life and in fact bring back the boys you have lost, is to burn Onofrio’s money . . . Here, before my eyes . . . (109) Alda, then, becomes a carnivalesqe doctor, one who deals in performance and bodily gestures. Her medicine is one of exaggerated excess, where the action is degrading and almost self-destructive. But these actions are done to regain a hold of one’s life. It is not enough that Arthur gets rid of the money. Alda tells him that he cannot donate the “blood money” to charity (34). He must burn it. He must symbolically rid himself of the “bargain” that was reached with Onofrio, who freed him of his sons, and will thereby free him from his own guilt, actions and despair. Arthur’s change as initiated by Alda, leads to the second of two degradations. Arthur must burn his own fortune and that of his sons’. Arthur is a miser, who, in part, defines himself by his money. He must destroy that part of himself. Alda says, “I would have staked everything on your not returning” (114). She thinks it impossible for him to take on this challenge. “I thought you at least would go on being yourself, resisting everything and everybody, that not even the lightning would touch your pride” (114). By becoming another, by becoming the opposite of a miser, one who would literally burn his own money, Arthur has become the man he always could be, a good father. In this destruction, something burns anew. When Arthur burns the money, he burns the intangible to make room for the tangible, his sons. Once the two degradations take place, that is, the degradation of a doctor to a “witch doctor” and Arthur burning his precious money, the end of the play features the rebirth of the Arthur. Arthur, paradoxically, is dying. But there is still time for this new Arthur to make an impact on the lives of his sons. And with this, Dr. Hallam returns. Now that the unnatural deed of selling his sons has been remedied by the unnatural act of burning the money, traditional medicine can once again take over. On his deathbed, Arthur says to Hallam, Greg and Joel. What can I say, what can I give them. HALLAM: You want my opinion? RAWLINGS: Oh I suppose, though your opinions always take the wind out of my sails . . . Well, go on give it to me, give me your unvarnished say, so why don’t you, though, I’ll probably choke on the words when I hear them. HALLAM: (pacing the room, his head lowered) I can only tell you what I think I’d say if I had two fine boys like you have, if also I had done to them what you have done. RAWLINGS: Sold them like cattle you said once. HALLAM: Did I now? Ah, well . . . RAWLINGS: And what would you say if you was in my stead, Doc. HALLAM: I would say . . . (hesitates) I would hope one day they would find it in their hearts to overlook my failings, and that when they were my age they would understand how hard it is to tell those we love how much we love them. (143) And this is exactly what Arthur tells Gregory (Joel was at Alda’s at the time). Even in the act of dying, something is reborn, not just in Arthur’s heart, but the stones are lifted from the hearts of his sons. As the Passover saying goes, “Our story begins with degradation, our telling ends with glory.” As evidenced by these two plays, maybe there was a softening in Purdy’s heart over the course of the years. A Day After the Fair is utterly pessimistic and tragic. However, there are signs of hope and the possibility of love, albeit brief, at the end of The Paradise Circus. In Purdy’s early novels and plays, there are numerous instances of “orphans” as societal outcasts who will never fit in and will always grasp for the love of family. This holds true in A Day After the Fair. The tale of the orphan is, as Frank Baldanza says in “Playing House for Keeps with James Purdy,” “a recurrent Ur-fable of the lonely, desperate orphan, cut off from any family intercourse in childhood, who spends his brief career ‘playing house’ with intense, doomed seriousness, frustrated in his search for metaphorical family relationships that will provide the authority, security, and warmth of familial feeling.”[21] But The Paradise Circus is different. Most of the play follows this same pattern, but forgiveness and love are ultimately shared among the characters at the end. However, maybe the more elegant way to explain this shift is to return to the idea of Bhaktin’s carnivalesque. Early in his career, Purdy hurled his orphans “down to the lower reproductive stratum.” There, in the “fruitful earth and the womb,” Purdy’s orphans could incubate and experience a “new birth,” so that years later these orphans are “continually growing and renewed.” MICHAEL Y. BENNETT is Associate Professor of English and affiliated faculty in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he teaches courses on modern drama. He is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to the Absurd (forthcoming 2015); Narrating the Past through Theatre (2012); Words, Space, and the Audience (2012); and Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd (2011/Pb 2013). He is the editor of Oscar Wilde’s Society Plays (forthcoming 2015); with Benjamin D. Carson, Eugene O'Neill's One-Act Plays: New Critical Perspectives, (2012/Pb 2014); and Refiguring Oscar Wilde’s Salome (2011). In addition, he is also Editor of The Edward Albee Review. NOTES Though much expanded here in this essay, some of the arguments about clowns and, especially, the section on The Paradise Circus come from my short article “Clowning Around in James Purdy’s The Paradise Circus,” Notes on Contemporary Literature 38.3 (May 2008): 7-10. Earlier versions of this chapter were also presented at two conferences: “Clowning Around in James Purdy’s The Paradise Circus.” 16th Annual American Literature Association Conference. Boston, May 28, 2005 and “Role-Reversals in Purdy’s A Day After the Fair.” 18th Annual American Literature Association Conference. Boston, May 26, 2007. [1] Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, “James Purdy: Playwright,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 20.2 (1998): 73. [2] Ibid. 73-74. [3] Matthew Stadler, “The Theater of Real Speech,” The James White Review 17.1 (Winter 2000): 7. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] Michael Feingold, “The Basic Question: James Purdy’s Plays,” The James White Review 17.1 (Winter 2000): 40. [7] Ibid. 40-41. [8] Joseph Taylor Skerrett, Jr., “James Purdy and the Works: Love and Tragedy in Five Novels,” Twentieth Century Literature 15.1 (April 1969): 25. [9] Ibid. 26. [10] Donald Pease, “False Starts and Wounded Allegories in the Abandoned House of Fiction of James Purdy,” Twentieth Century Literature 28.3 (Fall 1982): 335. [11] Ibid. 335-36. [12] Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., “James Purdy and the Black Mask of Humanity.” MELUS 6.2 (Summer 1979): 81. [13] Christopher Lane, “Out with James Purdy: An Interview,” Critique 40.1 (Fall 1998): 72. [14] Reed Woodhouse, “James Purdy (Re)visited,” Harvard Gay Lesbian Review 2.2 (Spring 1995): 16. [15] Frank Baldanza, “James Purdy on the Corruption of Innocents,” Contemporary Literature 15.3 (Summer 1974): 315. [16] Mikhail Bhaktin, Rabelais and His World, Trans. by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 47. [17] Ibid. [18] Ibid. [19] James Purdy, “A Day After the Fair,” in Two Plays (Dallas: New London Press, 1979) 3. All subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. [20] James Purdy, “The Paradise Circus,” in Selected Plays (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publishers, 2009), 87. All subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. [21] Frank Baldanza, “Playing House for Keeps with James Purdy,” Contemporary Literature 11.4 (Autumn 1970): 488. "James Purdy as Playwright: A Retrospective Reading of A Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus" by Michael Y. Bennett ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 27, Number 1 (Winter 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Phoebe Rumsey Editorial Assistant: Fabian Escalona Advisory Board: Bill Demastes Amy E. Hughes Jorge Huerta Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Esther Kim Lee Table of Contents: "Refusing the Reproductive Imperative: Sex, Death, and the Queer Future in Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's boom” by Jordan Schildcrout "Just Saying Our Goodbyes: Elegies' Queer Interventions into the History of 9/11" by Michelle Dvoskin James Purdy as Playwright: A Retrospective Reading of Day After the Fair and The Paradise Circus" by Michael Y. Bennett “Sur la Pointe on the Prairie: Giuseppina Morlacchi and the Urban Problem in the Frontier Melodrama" by Andrea Harris www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2015 by Martin E. 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