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Samuel Shanks Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 2 Visit Journal Homepage Rooting Out Historical Mythologies; William Dunlap’s A Trip to Niagara and its Sophisticated Nineteenth Century Audience. Samuel Shanks By Published on April 23, 2015 Download Article as PDF William Dunlap’s final play, A Trip to Niagara (1828), might be the most misunderstood play in the history of the American stage. Despite being an unqualified success with its cosmopolitan New York audiences in 1828-9, it has been regularly, and almost always inaccurately, maligned by twentieth and twenty-first century historians who have described the play as a “well-done hackwork;” full of “puerile scenes and irrelevant characters;” and valuable only for the “certain amount of low comedy” that “could be extracted from it.” [1] At best Dunlap’s play has been described as “a workmanlike job;” at worst, “one of his poorest” efforts, a play that “could hardly be said to have challenged the preeminence of contemporary British playwrights, let alone Shakespeare.”[2] As I will argue in this essay, the glaring disconnect between the play’s warm public reception and its subsequent criticism by historians often appears to be rooted in a kind of historical mythology that haunts the field of theatre history. Unperceived biases and assumptions often color interpretations of historical evidence, and these flawed perceptions are frequently transmitted from one generation of historians to the next, forming a kind of mythology around a subject that has the power to color future interpretations of new evidence. Just such a historical mythology appears to be at the heart of most criticisms of A Trip to Niagara. The core of this myth concerns the assumption that the early American theatre and its audiences were sadly primitive, and too many histories of the American stage have followed some variation of the progress-narrative that begins with this notion of primitivism and then moves toward, and ultimately culminates in, the organic emergence of a proud national theatre in the early Twentieth Century. But a careful examination of Dunlap’s A Trip to Niagara and its original reception reveals that this image is at best incomplete; indeed, if one assumes that A Trip to Niagara was not a complete anomaly, then the notion of the primitivism of the early American stage might turn out to be fatally flawed. This overarching myth of primitivism is rooted in a series of more specific assumptions that one might think of as “sub-myths.” It is these more specifically-focused minor myths that can be heard resonating in the criticisms of Dunlap’s play. The assumptions that 1) character development did not reach beyond the presentation of simple stage-types; that 2) American theatres were polluted by pervasive and unreflective racism; that 3) spectacle-driven performances were inferior, simplistic entertainments for simple-minded spectators; and that 4) American audiences were generally unsophisticated and easily sated by inferior fare, combine to lend the impression that the early American theatre had a great deal of growing up to do. The bulk of this essay will focus on the specific problems with each of these sub-myths in turn, but for the sake of those who are not familiar with Dunlap’s final play, a brief overview of its plot will prove useful. A Quietly Complicated Play As the title indicates, A Trip to Niagara is a journey play that follows a group of European tourists, mostly English, on a trip from New York City, up the Hudson River to Albany, across the newly-opened Erie Canal to the shores of Lake Erie, and then finally the great waterfall at Niagara. The most spectacularly realized portion of the journey came in the form of production’s much-hyped ‘Eidophusikon,’ a moving diorama that shifted an enormous painted canvas across the stage between two large scrolls, which depicted the steamship voyage from New York harbor, up the Hudson River, as far as Catskill Landing.[3] The play’s satire-driven conflict arises from the divergent opinions held by the stodgy, upper-class English character Wentworth and his more open-minded sister Amelia regarding the virtues of the nation through which they travel. Wentworth is portrayed as a narrow-minded fool, and early in the play Amelia encourages her suitor, John Bull, to try to “cure” her brother of his “obstinate determination to see nothing but through the coloured glasses of the book-makers.” [4] The tourists’ journey to Niagara Falls is thereafter punctuated by John Bull’s numerous comic attempts to cure Mr. Wentworth’s “social disorder.” Along the way, the ‘travellers’ encounter a broad array of people and places, which together serve as a kind of cultural panorama to compliment the moving diorama in Act II. A Trip to Niagara is interesting in that the unspoken content of the play is, in many ways, more important than its spoken dialog. Dunlap’s nuanced celebration of American achievements in politics, engineering, and the arts serves as a quiet refutation of the works of the numerous critical “book-makers” such as Francis Trollope and the actor Charles Matthews. This unspoken content comes primarily in the form of allusions to cultural materials from the period, most of which lies outside the normal purview of many of the historians who have written about the play, and many of the clearest historiographical errors have popped up in works with a non-theatrical focus. Oral Sumner Coad and Robert Canary, Dunlap’s major biographers, both fail to notice many of the cultural references that Dunlap layered into the play’s characters. Coad describes them erroneously as a series of “dialect characters,” while Canary similarly sees them as “gallery of stage types”; both authors make a point of listing the types (Negro, Frenchman, Yankee, Irishman, etc.) as if their label fully articulated their purpose in the play.[5] Given the largely non-theatrical focus of these biographies, these misinterpretations are understandable; nonetheless, it is worth noting that both Coad and Canary, writing more than fifty years apart, each fall back on the historical myth that stock characters, and little else, were to be expected in plays from this era. It does not help that in the preface to the play, Dunlap downplays his script as a “farce” intended as “a kind of running accompaniment to the more important product of the Scene-painter.”[6] Nearly everyone who has written about this play has mistakenly taken the often self-deprecating Dunlap at his word, and has assumed that what followed would be as unimportant and simplistic as Dunlap claims. But the classification of this play as a farce is a problematic one. A Trip to Niagara really is not a farce. It is, in fact, much closer to the sort of satirical social comedies exemplified by Royal Tyler’s The Contrast, or Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion. But even this designation fails to capture the major elements of cultural panorama that are central to the play. These elements place A Trip to Niagara more in line with Dunlap’s other patriotic works such as Andre and The Glory of Columbia.[7] The fact that Dunlap downplays the significance of his own script should not surprise anyone who is familiar with this figure. In his monumental histories of both the American theatre and American painting, Dunlap continuously championed the work of his compatriots while largely downplaying the significance of his own contributions.[8] “A Gallery of Stage Types . . .” I will begin my analysis of the historical mythologies that supported the erroneous criticisms of this play by confronting the assumption that stock-characterization was the rule of the day. To be sure, the use of stock-characters was a prominent force during this period, particularly in the melodramas that were beginning to dominate the playwriting scene in the early Nineteenth Century. But exceptions to this trend were not uncommon; Shakespeare was still the most produced playwright on American stages, and there were a number of American playwrights such as John A. Stone who worked in a consciously Shakespearean vein. In short, the idea that the American theatre landscape was littered with nothing but stock-characters – a criticism which generally carried a derogative connotation within the progress narrative in which American playwrights “developed” toward the more noble goal of creating “well-rounded,” psychologically-complex characters – is simply an example of over-simplification, and that myth has guided more than one historian down the path of simplistic analysis. A careful examination reveals that A Trip to Niagara was populated by characters that were neither “stock” nor “rounded;” to evaluate the play according to this either/or standard is to misunderstand the way that the characters function in this play. Dunlap’s characters would be better described as what I term “referential” characters, which Dunlap used as a highly efficient way to invoke material from the complex cultural universe which he and his audience inhabited. The English actor Charles Matthews, the American theatre manager William Alexander Brown, and the character Leatherstocking from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers, each appear as characters in A Trip to Niagara, though they are not always acknowledged directly as such in the dialog. Dunlap’s characters have been consistently misidentified as “stock” because the historians writing about the play frequently clearly missed the embedded cultural referents that they were meant to invoke.[9] In the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, the more generalized myth of the use of stock-characters gets invoked to explain the lack of “roundness” exhibited by these characters. The tendency to jump to this conclusion is so great that several historians have overlooked the fact that the “Yankee” the “Frenchman” and “John Bull” in this play are all, in fact, the same character operating in different disguises.[10] The clearest example of Dunlap’s referential technique is his use of “Leatherstocking” from The Pioneers (1823), written by Cooper, a friend of Dunlap’s.[11] In A Trip to Niagara, Dunlap places Leatherstocking on the precise spot atop the eastern escarpment of the Catskills that Cooper describes so memorably in The Pioneers. The clarity of this quotation is unambiguous; this is no “stock” frontiersman, but an homage to a central character from two novels that were the literary toast of New York at the time that A Trip to Niagara opened at the Bowery.[12] Dunlap even has Leatherstocking speak primarily in quotes lifted directly from Cooper’s novel. Given the overwhelming popularity of both The Pioneers and The Last of the Mohicans, it seems reasonable to assume that a fair portion of the audience would have quickly grasped and appreciated what Dunlap was trying to achieve with this appropriation. Proof of this appreciation is evident in a comment made by the critic for the New York Dramatic Mirror: “We should very much like to know... why the character of Leatherstocking has been withdrawn? The first scene might have been curtailed to advantage, and this interesting part, nevertheless retained.”[13] Based on this comment, it would seem that the reviewer was seeing the production for a second time, that Leatherstocking had been pulled from the production, and that the reviewer found this choice distressing. That historians have misidentified some of the other characters in A Trip to Niagara is much more understandable, as their cultural references were often subtle, complexly-layered, and based upon cultural material that might not be generally known to many historians. Yet the very lightness of Dunlap’s hand is a significant part of the play’s charm, and the play’s success points to the presence of an audience that was sophisticated enough to successfully decode and appreciate Dunlap’s subtle references. The most consistently misinterpreted character is the one who appears variously as John Bull, Monsieur Tonson, and Jonathan. The fact that “John Bull” appears in several scenes disguised as “Jonathan” has proven to be a stumbling block for many historians as both John Bull and Jonathan were popular stock-characters from the period.[14] But in A Trip to Niagara, these characters appear as references to both their exterior life as stock-characters and to performances of those characters by Charles Matthews, an English actor whose bastardization of the Yankee character Johnathan in his performances was particularly irksome to many American spectators. Dunlap relied heavily upon his audience’s knowledge of the transatlantic Anglo-American theatre to unpack the multi-faceted satire that he embedded in this character. From his first moment onstage, John Bull’s metatheatrical aura is immediately established when Amelia declares, “Mr. Bull! You in America?” Bull replies, “Yes, Amelia, John Bull in America.”[15] Theatrically-savvy spectators would have immediately appreciated this unambiguous reference to James Kirke Paulding’s 1825 play John Bull in America, or the New Munchausen. Dunlap solidly establishes the link between John Bull and Charles Matthews by having John Bull appear in disguise first as ‘Monsieur Tonson,’ one of Matthew’s more famous roles. In this scene, John Bull is not initially recognized by Amelia. When Bull-as-Tonson inquires, “Mam’selle Wentawort, you no know a me... Not know Monsieur Tonson,” Amelia immediately responds, “Only on the stage.”[16] Again, this metatheatrical reference doubtlessly amused those Bowery spectators who were familiar with the performances from Matthews’s American tour a few years earlier. Later, when John Bull appears in his ‘Jonathan’ disguise, the Bowery spectators would have enjoyed unpacking multiple layers of metatheatrical references: standing before them was William Chapman, an American actor,[17] who was satirically referencing the English comedian Charles Mathews by playing an archetypically defined Englishman (John Bull) who was pretending to be the archetypically defined Yankee Jonathan, a character with its own significant theatrical resonances.[18] As with many of Shakespeare’s ‘breeches’ roles, the perceptual slipperiness between these elements would have served as a primary source of theatrical pleasure in these scenes. This would be a fine example of a character that was metatheatrically-complex rather than psychologically-complex, and thus clearly at odds with the myth of the pervasive use of simplistic stock-characters. Yankee characters were popular with both American and English audiences, but for very different reasons. For urban American theatre-goers, Jonathan served as a kind of cultural intermediary, allowing urbanized spectators to commune, at a comfortable distance, with the virtues of a hard life of manual labor lived close to the American soil, while still highlighting how far they had come in their quest for modern, moral refinement. For the English, Jonathan’s tendency toward crude violence and moral outrage was more straightforwardly comic. As Maura Jortner discusses in Playing ‘America’ on Nineteenth-Century Stages, the English comedian Charles Matthews was particularly successful in his outrageous portrayals of Yankee characters. As performed by Matthews, Jonathan became merely cheap, conniving, and violent; willing to cheat others out of any good or service that they could. Many American spectators, witnessing these performances in England, were not amused.[19] Dunlap used his multivalent incarnation of Jonathan as a way to push back against Matthews and his English audiences. A Trip to Niagara’s original audiences would have noticed and enjoyed the subtle ways in which William Chapman as John Bull was overplaying his Jonathan disguise for the too-gullible Englishman Wentworth. Once the spectators identified the allusion to Matthews, even the play’s title, A Trip to Niagara, would also have acquired an additional resonance as a subtle reference to Matthew’s play A Trip to America, the play in which one of the more notorious corruptions of Jonathan appears. It is worth noting that two of the histories that discuss A Trip to Niagara most favorably, Francis Hodge’s Yankee Theatre and Jortner’s Playing ‘America’ on Nineteenth-Century Stages, are each direct studies of the Yankee character in the American Theatre. Dorothy Richardson’s Moving Diorama in Play focuses entirely on this play. Each of these three historians use their detailed knowledge of the production’s original context to decode Dunlap’s references and to then push back against the tide of unwarranted criticism against this play, particularly as it applied to the presentation of the John Bull/Jonathan character.[20] Dunlap’s depiction of the free black Job Jerryson has also been frequently misunderstood, often cast off as simply another “wooly-headed” stage-negro. In this instance another historical myth -- that the American stage was universally racist in its depictions of African Americans -- has frequently been compounded with the myth of the pervasive use of stock-characterization. Yet when considered in the context of Dunlap’s celebratory cultural-diorama, it seems unlikely that this would have been the case. An analysis of Job’s role within the production, along with an awareness of Dunlap’s abolitionist leanings, makes it very difficult to see this character as yet another in a long line of thoughtlessly buffoonish stock portrayals of African Americans.[21] Job plays an important role in the comic scenes in which he appears, but dramaturgically he is positioned as a straight-man against which the non-American characters Nancy and Dennis Dougherty serve as the comics. The comedy in these scenes arises from the ways in which the foreign characters fail to understand Job’s specific Americanisms; yet it is the foreigners, and not Job, who serve as the butts of the joke. On the contrary, Dunlap’s depiction of this free black should instead be seen as a prime example of the abolitionist sentiment in the early American theatre. Dunlap’s use of name “Job” is an important allusion that sets a clearly reverential tone for this character, yet surprisingly no historian ever discusses it. The biblical tale of a prosperous man who has his wealth and family torn away from him, who then is forced to endure massive physical torture, and who in the end is liberated from his strife and rewarded for his faith and perseverance, has obvious resonances with the story of slavery in America. William Dunlap was an ardent abolitionist: he freed his family’s slaves immediately following his father’s death, he was active in the Manumission Society, and he also served as a trustee of the Free School for African Children.[22] New York’s final eradication of slavery in 1827 would have been a cause of celebration for Dunlap, and his dignified depiction of the Job would seem to be a clear celebration of this event. Dunlap uses Job as the mouthpiece for the independent democratic spirit within this play. Job and Leatherstocking are the only American characters who are given a substantive amount of dialog, and it is Job who espouses the basic tenant of American liberty when he states, “Master! – I have no master. Master indeed... I am my own master.”[23] It seems unlikely, given Dunlap’s abolitionist position, and given the celebratory tone of the play, that Dunlap would have intended these lines to be parodic. Although the word ‘deference’ never appears in the play, it is clear that much of Wentworth’s discontent with the Americans stems from the deference that he expects from them, but fails to receive. The expurgation of deference as a bedrock element of interpersonal behavior in American society was one of the most radical outcomes of the American Revolution, one which set America apart from the rest of the English-speaking world.[24] Dunlap positions Job proudly as his on-stage voice for this liberated perspective. In doing so, he was not alone in choosing to dignify African American characters; he was, after all, part of a large and growing abolitionist movement. The lack of deference that Job displays openly in A Trip to Niagara is echoed by the black house-servant Mistress Remarkable in The Pioneers. Mistress Remarkable similarly refuses to demonstrate deference to the young lady Elizabeth declaring, “I will call her Betsy as much as I please; it’s a free country, and no one can stop me... I will talk just as I please.”[25] As was A Trip to Niagara, Cooper’s novel was warmly embraced by New Yorkers in the 1820’s, many of whom would have openly celebrated the tone of Mistress Remarkable’s declaration, just as they would have celebrated Job’s sense of self-possession. Abstractions aside, Job Jerryson also serves as Dunlap’s on-stage homage to William Alexander Brown, a free Black who managed a pleasure garden and multiple theatres in New York in the 1820’s.[26] Given the allusion to Brown, that fact that Job dresses and acts as a “Black Dandy” may have served, not as an opportunity for ridicule as some have asserted, but simply as an accurate reflection of the dress and manners of the kind of gentleman in question. Dunlap’s biographer Robert Canary is one of the few to argue that the depiction of Job is in fact a dignified, rather than a parodic one stating, “He may be the first picture on the American stage of a realistic, well-educated, free Negro.”[27] Because of the long shadow of blackface minstrelsy in the American theatre, it is very tempting to simply pigeon-hole this Black-dandy as a proto-Zip-Coon. But to do so is to allow the myth of the pervasive racism of the early-American stage to obscure the clear cultural references at work. Free blacks frequently adopted the dress and manners of upper-class Euro-Americans, promenading up and down Broadway with a boldness that was a subject of vibrant debate among cultural critics at the time. However, as Marvin McAllister has powerfully argued, these public demonstrations by free Blacks of their mastery of European social conventions should be seen as significant acts of personal liberation. Far from endorsing white superiority or exhibiting false consciousness, their whiteface acts rejected the negative connotations associated with blackness and advocated an alternative, more self-possessed African-American identity.[28] It seems likely that Job was intended as the embodiment of precisely the sort of self-possession that McAllister describes.[29] Almost nothing is known about how the character Job was performed at the time or how audiences perceived Dunlap’s use of this free Black. But the New York Dramatic Mirror’s review of the production proclaimed nothing but accolades for “Mr. Reed’s black dandy.”[30] It seems reasonable to assume that there would have been were various, competing factions within the Bowery audience who might have held differing views about Dunlap’s sympathetic portrayal of a free Black in this play. However, the final abolition of slavery in New York in 1827 would surely have emboldened the abolitionists like Dunlap within the Bowery audience. Fueling the tendency to view A Trip to Niagara as “a gallery of stage types,” is the fact that there does appear to be a single instance in which Dunlap uses a stock-character in the conventional manner. The Irishman Dennis Dougherty’s comic appeal resides solely in the absurd constancy with which he vacillates between fear and gullibility. Dramaturgically, Dunlap sets up Dougherty as the extreme version of the upper-class Englishman Wentworth. Dougherty possesses none of Wentworth’s social graces, and thus the more extreme Wentworth’s opinions of America become, the more he begins to align himself with the absurdity of Dougherty’s views, and the more ridiculous Wentworth appears to the audience. The less-than-flattering portrayal of the Irishman Dougherty was not lost upon at least one member of the play’s original audience. The production’s only truly negative review was published in The Irish Shield, which bemoaned the depiction of Dougherty stating, “We are sure no Irishman ever sat for the daubed picture of Dennis Dougherty, which is no more like a son of the Emerald Isle, than Mr. H. Wallack is like a Lilliputian.”[31] The fact that Dougherty represents such a strikingly divergence within the play’s dramatis personae could be seen as one of the play’s clearest flaws. But it may also be that this is an instance in which Dunlap layered in a cultural reference that has yet to be uncovered.[32] A Spectacle of Recognition... Historical analyses of spectacle-anchored productions can be maddeningly simplistic, and display an inherent bias against the very idea of such productions. This bias is apparent in the literature on A Trip to Niagara. Nearly every historian who has written about it dutifully recites the fact that six months prior to the opening of the Bowery production, another moving-diorama-anchored production entitled Paris and London: a Tale of Both Cities opened at the Park Theatre, the Bowery’s anglophilic cross-town rival.[33] Given the Park’s status as New York’s preeminent theatre during this period, the Bowery’s subsequent decision to mount a moving-diorama spectacle of its own is consistently offered up as definitive proof of the derivative nature of the Bowery’s production.[34] There are clear problems with this conclusion, however. As the art historian Stephan Oettermann discusses in The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, diorama-based productions had become increasingly common in France, England, and America in the Nineteenth Century, and the Park theatre had no claim to originality in its decision to mount Paris and London.[35] More significantly, Paris and London was not a terribly successful production. The critic from the New York Dramatic Mirror portrayed the Park production’s lackluster ticket sales in a particularly bemused fashion: It is a light, laughable, and exceedingly laughable piece – “yet nobody goes to see it.” It has been got up with great care... the scenery is uncommonly well done, and the succession of paintings, representing the voyage from Calais to Dover, is both novel and beautiful – “yet nobody goes to see it.” The incidents are lively and amusing, the characters good of themselves... London and Paris is an agreeable trifle, which we really expected would succeed.[36] Given the enormous financial risk associated with the creation of a moving-diorama-based production, the sort of simple-minded copycatting of the Park Theatre’s production that has been attributed to the Bowery’s managers seems implausible. Why would they consciously seek to repeat the mediocre success of the Park Theatre’s production? A more likely explanation is that the Bowery managers, like their cross-town colleagues, were tapping into the rising tide of cultural interest in visually-intensive entertainments such as moving-dioramas. Their hopes for success were doubtless rooted more in L. J. M. Daguerre’s hugely successful European dioramic exhibitions in the early 1820’s than in the mediocre “precedent” set for them by their cross-town rivals.[37] A careful examination of the use of spectacle in A Trip to Niagara reveals that its success lay not in the ways in which it mindlessly aped other productions, but in the sophisticated ways that it resonated with the local, culturally savvy spectators at the Bowery Theatre. The clearest example of this is the fact that, in A Trip to Niagara, the ‘Eidophusikon,’ (the title given by the managers to the moving diorama) depicted the least exotic, most familiar portion of the journey from New York City to Niagara Falls. The diorama began scrolling as the tourists boarded their boat in New York harbor, but its visual journey extended only as far as Catskill Landing, about a hundred miles north of New York City; the most familiar portion of the journey to the Bowery’s patrons. The newly-opened Erie Canal and the scenic wonders of the Mohawk River canyon and Niagara Falls itself appear only in static scenes later in the play. So, exoticism aside, what would have been the appeal to the Bowery spectators of this comparatively local content? The immensity of seeing 25,000 feet worth of canvas gliding mechanically across the stage must surely have pushed the boundaries of the spectators’ imaginations. Furthermore, the use of the ‘double-effect’ painting technique, which was becoming prevalent at the time, would have allowed movement-oriented elements such as “boats passing through a fog,” “emergence of a rainbow,” and the “rising of the moon,” to be executed with style and elegance.[38] But far more importantly, by having the ‘Eidophusikon’ focus on the terrain closest to New York, the Bowery audience would have been fully capable of appreciating the detailed minutia that the artists worked so hard to include. Well known ships such as the frigate Hudson and the steam vessel Constitution were probably included for this very reason. As Stephen Oettermann has argued in reference to Robert Barker’s famous panorama of London, the appeal of A Trip to Niagara’s moving diorama might have come from the constant barrage of moments of recognition experienced by the audience. A Trip to Niagara’s ‘Eidophusikon’ presented viewers with visual elements that ranged from the familiar (“Hey that’s my house!”), to the famous (“Look the Bowery Theatre!”), to the alluring (“I’ve always wanted to see Catskill Mountain House!”), thus eliciting a complex, and densely packed array of individualized responses. Assuming that the interplay between these elements constituted an important source of the audience’s pleasure, then the decision to depict the comparatively familiar lower Hudson River valley, rather than the more exotic trip across the Erie Canal, was perhaps a wise one, despite the fact that it runs counter the pejorative myth that spectacles are all about exoticism and novelty. Another, far more subtle source of theatrical pleasure can be found in fact that the ‘Eidophusikon’ also appears to have been a quiet homage to the landscape painter, Thomas Cole. As with the depictions of Leatherstocking, William Alexander Brown, the Erie Canal, and the Catskill Mountain House, an homage to Cole would have tapped into the pride that the spectators felt in the achievements of their fellow New Yorkers. Thomas Cole’s name is never voiced in the play, and unlike Dunlap’s more overt homage to James Fenimore Cooper, none of Cole’s works are unambiguously quoted in the script. Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence pointing toward Thomas Cole as the ‘Eidophusikon’s muse is compelling and worthy of attention.[39] When A Trip to Niagara was produced in 1828, Thomas Cole was the artist of the moment. Prior to Cole’s emergence as the father of the Hudson River School, landscape was a minor art-form in America, existing wholly in the shadow of portraiture and historical painting. Cole’s emergence, however, sparked a craze of landscape painting that would dominate American painting for the next two generations.[40] Cole’s meteoric rise was launched in 1825 when three of his paintings were purchased by three prominent New York painters: John Trumbull, Asher Durand, and William Dunlap.[41] Dunlap took it upon himself to use his position of prominence in the artistic community to draw attention to the talented young Cole. In his history of early American art, Dunlap states, “I published in the journals of the day, an account of the young artist and his pictures; it was no puff, but an honest declaration of my opinion, and I believe it served merit by attracting attention to it.”[42] From 1825 onward, Dunlap and Cole interacted regularly. Both men were founding members of the New York Drawing Association, a group which met three times a week for drawing sessions,[43] and Dunlap and Cole were also part of J. F. Cooper’s weekly lunches (“The Bread and Cheese Club”) where writers and artists interacted more socially.[44] Given Dunlap’s close association with Cole, specific details of the ‘Eidophusikon’ take on additional meaning. The journey depicted by the moving-diorama, from New York City to Catskill Landing, is the precise journey that was made by Cole on his much-publicized first excursion to the Catskill Mountains in the summer of 1825, the journey that resulted directly in the three landscapes purchased by Trumbull, Durand, and Dunlap. This journey was a well-publicized part of the artist’s public image and of the culture of the Hudson River Valley more generally. In 1827 the owners of the steamship Albany, which plied the Hudson River route, even commissioned a painting from Cole entitled “View near the Falls of the Kauterskill [aka-Kaaterskill], in the Catskill Mountains.” This painting adorned the ship’s cabin, giving passengers an advanced view, interpreted through the eye of the famous artist, of the world that they were traversing.[45] Furthermore, the type of subject matter depicted in the ‘Eidophusikon’ was precisely the sort favored by Cole. Approaching and receding storms, in particular, are a common element in Cole’s paintings. Given Cole’s prominence, it seems almost inconceivable that Dunlap and the Bowery’s scenic painters would not have Cole in mind as they adopted his favored subjects and ‘plein-air’ study methods for this massive moving landscape. Advertisements for the production touted the fact that the scene painters worked from their own sketch-work, obtained in the field, and one wonders if the personal journeys of the scenic painters along the route of Cole’s first excursion to the Catskills might have been a form of conscious pilgrimage.[46] The fact that Cole’s name is never directly invoked is in keeping with Dunlap’s understated approach to the cultural homages in this play. Dunlap instead relied upon the audience’s cultural literacy to identify his allusions. That the ‘Eidophusikon’ was spectacular and was marketed to the public based on its size and grandeur is undeniable, but it might very well be the case that Dunlap’s production succeeded where others failed because of the quiet, understated ways in which spectacle was employed in this production. A Trip to Niagara is outstanding, less for the spectacular sights that it displayed before its audiences, than for the never-ending series of spectacular recognitions that it elicited from them. These are the precise qualities that are lost when the analyses of historical spectacles begins with a mythical assumption of their simplistic nature. Undeniably Sophisticated Audiences In an era when plays were rarely performed more than once a month, the management of the Bowery Theatre staged A Trip to Niagara an astonishing seventeen times in the first month following its premiere, often turning people away from its overflowing 3,500-seat auditorium.[47] The play and the moving-diorama that served as the most notable highlight “saved the season” for the Bowery, which was recovering from a catastrophic fire that same year. Ultimately, A Trip to Niagara became a flag-ship production for the Bowery Theatre, featuring it at major openings and holiday events throughout 1829.[48] There are two divergent conclusions that can be gleaned from the success of this production: either the production was a good one that was embraced by the Bowery’s appreciative spectators, or that that spectators who thronged to see this trifle were little more than simpletons who were “easily sated by inferior fare.” Unfortunately, the latter conclusion has been the dominant one; it flies in the face of the historical evidence, but it resonates with the larger myth of the supposed primitivism of the early American audience. Considerable evidence points to the idea that the Bowery audience of 1828 was probably a culturally sophisticated one. When it opened in 1826, the “New York Theatre”-- it was renamed the Bowery after the fire in the summer of 1828 – was the largest theatre in New York City. The playhouse boasted over 3500 seats, had the largest stage in America and was backed by the well-heeled sons of President James Monroe, John Jacob Astor, and Alexander Hamilton. Far from being the haven for working-class audiences that it would later become under the management of Thomas Hamblin, the original Bowery was envisioned as a direct competitor to the Park Theatre, which had stood as the city’s elite playhouse for more than a generation. Even the often grumpy Fanny Trollope saw the Bowery as “infinitely superior” to its cross-town rival stating, “It is indeed as pretty a theatre as I ever entered. Perfect as to size and proportion, elegantly decorated, and the scenery and machinery equal to any in London.”[49] Dunlap even included the newly reconstructed Bowery as part of his cultural diorama: the theatre’s facade served as the final static image depicted in the background prior to the start of the moving diorama. The fact that A Trip to Niagara was such a tremendous success for the Bowery marks it as a prime example of the kind of fare that the Bowery’s audiences desired. Considering how much of the production consisted of subtle, unspoken references to elite culture from the period, this might not be such a surprise after all. Aside from the references to the work of Cooper, Matthews, and Cole previously discussed, the play also makes subtle references to the nation’s luxurious modern infrastructure in the form of its hotels, roads, ships, and the newly-opened Erie Canal. Dunlap frequently combined these references in startlingly complex ways. In one particularly interesting scene, which beautifully sums up the elegant complexity of Dunlap’s referential style, Leatherstocking and Amelia conduct a reasoned debate about the merits and pitfalls of progress while standing atop the Catskill escarpment, with the facade of the newly-constructed and highly luxurious Catskill Mountain House standing silently behind them. The two characters, one of Dunlap’s invention the other of Cooper’s, politely voice their divergent opinions in a civilized discussion, and then go their separate ways, as friends. The fact that the very spot, which had once served as the private terrace of the famous frontiersman, had now been converted into a bastion of refined luxury was an ironic turn that beautifully encapsulates Dunlap’s quiet celebration of American culture, an approach which his audiences clearly embraced. This is, after all, the same scene that the reviewer for the Dramatic Mirror lamented the absence of when it was cut from one of the performances. With A Trip to Niagara, Dunlap not only celebrated the literary achievements of friends like Cooper and Cole, but also the diversity of American attitudes toward the development of their own society, all within a series of stage pictures that was saturated with multiple cultural references. In making room for multiple, competing viewpoints to hold their own in the same stage space, Dunlap’s play defies the pervasive assumption that in the Nineteenth-Century, spectacle-driven plays and their audiences were as simplistic as they have often been portrayed by historians. It remains to be seen how many other successful productions, as well as the audiences that attended them, might be better understood if we continue uprooting the historical mythologies that we have inherited, and attempt to view the past with fewer preconceived notions of what our gaze will discover. Rather than dismissing audiences that embraced productions that we dislike at first blush, we should trust in their judgment and use their enthusiasm as an indication that there must be more to these productions than meets the eye. Samuel T. Shanks is an independent scholar based out of Duluth, MN. Previously he was an Associate Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Division of General Education & Honors at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, IA. Sam’s academic interests include early American theatre, Islamic theatre, cognitive studies, and the history of scenic design. [1]There are notable exceptions to this negative treatment including studies by Francis Hodge, Yankee Theatre: The Image of America on the Stage, 1825–1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964); Maura Jortner, “Playing ‘America’ on Nineteenth-Century Stages; or, Jonathan in England and Jonathan at Home” (PhD diss, University of Pittsburgh, 2005); and particularly Dorothy B Richardson’s extensive monograph on the play, Moving Diorama in Play, William Dunlap’s Comedy “A Trip to Niagara” (Youngstown, NY: Teneo Press, 2010). The current version of this article is a revised piece based on useful feedback I received from Richardson. [2] Robert H. Canary, William Dunlap (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970), 71-73; Oral Sumner Coad, William Dunlap: A Study of his Life and Works and of his Place in Contemporary Culture (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962 [Reprint of 1917 edition from The Dunlap Society]), 177, 183; and Don Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge History of American Theatre, vol 1, eds. Don Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 11. [3] William Dunlap, “A Trip to Niagara; or, Travellers in America,” in Dramas from the American Theatre: 1762-1909, ed. Richard Moody (Amherst, MA: The World Publishing Company, 1966), 186. [4] Ibid., 181. [5] Coad, William Dunlap, 177-178. Canary, William Dunlap, 73. [6] William Dunlap, A Trip to Niagara, 178. [7] The Glory of Columbia is, in fact, an adaptation of Andre, but with much the same kind of celebratory spectacle that is employed in A Trip to Niagara. [8] Richardson postulates several other reasons why Dunlap’s disclaimer should be taken with a grain of salt. Moving Diorama, 181-185. [9] Richardson’s book is unique on this point in that it discusses several of the characters as stock while simultaneously explicating their cultural resonances. Richardson, Moving Diorama, 124-128, 213-218, 245-249. The differences between her interpretations of these characters and my own are often quite divergent, despite the fact that we are both aware of the allusions embedded in these characters. [10] Richard H. Gassan, The Birth of American Tourism: New York, the Hudson Valley, and American Culture, 1790-1830, (Amherst, MA, University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 127. Bigsby & Wilmeth, “Introduction,” 11. Coad, William Dunlap, 177-178. Canary, William Dunlap, 73. [11] The two were so close that Dunlap dedicated his 1834 History of the American Theatre to Cooper. [12] Although Leatherstocking is also central to Cooper’s far more popular novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826), it is the older, more nostalgic version of this character that Dunlap chose to include in his play. [13] “The Bowery,” New York Dramatic Mirror, Dec. 13, 1828. [14] For a list of authors who fail to uncouple John Bull from Jonathan, see note 6. [15] William Dunlap, A Trip to Niagara, 183. [16] Ibid., 183. [17] Today, it might seem odd to look upon an actor such as William Chapman, who was born in England, and merely recruited to work for an American company as an “American” actor. But there is evidence to suggest that the American public, who were themselves frequently first and second generation emigrants, saw these actors as American. Upon her arrival in Philadelphia in 1796, the prominent English actress Anne Brunton Merry was immediately hailed as a great addition to “the American Drama.” Gresdna Ann Doty, The Career of Mrs. Anne Brunton Merry in the American Theatre (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 51. [18] Richardson similarly discusses the “continually close and fluent relationship with each other” that the characters of John Bull and Jonathan would have shared. Moving Diorama, 267. [19] Maura Jortner, “Playing ‘America’ on Nineteenth-Century Stages; or, Jonathan in England and Jonathan at Home” (PhD diss, University of Pittsburgh, 2005), 93-96, 108-111. [20] Jortner, Playing ‘America’…, 93-96, 108-111. Francis Hodge, Yankee Theatre: The Image of America on the Stage, 1825–1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 74-75, 103, 162-163. [21] Gary A. Richardson, “Plays and Playwrights: 1800-1865,” in The Cambridge History of American Theatre, vol 1, eds. Don Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 289-290. Coad, William Dunlap, 177-178. Marvin McAllister, White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Color: William Brown’s African and American Theatre (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 160. [22] Coad, William Dunlap, 23. Richardson, Moving Diorama, 241. [23] Dunlap, A Trip to Niagara, 181. [24] For more on the death of deference see Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1992). [25] James Fenimore Cooper “The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna; A Descriptive Tale,” in The Leatherstocking Tales, Vol. I (New York: The Library of America, 1985), 177. [26] The authoritative history of William Brown’s career is Marvin McAllister’s White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Color: William Brown’s African and American Theatre (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). [27] Canary, William Dunlap, 74. [28] McAllister, White People Do Not Know, 22. [29] It is interesting to note that McAllister appears critical of Dunlap’s character, though he mentions the play only in passing, and with some inaccuracy, which might indicate that the analysis of this character was not a central concern to his larger project on Brown. [30] “Mr. Dunlap’s Play of A Trip to Niagara,” New York Dramatic Mirror, Dec. 20, 1828. [31] “The Drama,” The Irish Shield, January 1829. [32] Richardson notes that stage-Irishmen appear several times in Dunlap’s previous works, and thus might have been a more stable element of his dramaturgical sensibility. Moving Diorama, 124-125. [33] Gassan, American Tourism, 127. Coad, William Dunlap, 107-108. George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage, Vol III (NY: AMS Press, 1928), 378. [34] Richardson argues that “the Bowery saw that a moving panorama or diorama was not restricted to a particular genre.” This assertion of the Bowery’s following of the Park Theatre’s lead is clearly less derisive, yet still postulates a causality that does not appear to be substantiated in reliable documentation from the period. Moving Diorama, 85. [35] Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, (NY: Zone Books, 1997), 70-83, 323-324. [36] “London & Paris,” New York Mirror, 24 May 1828. The article from which these excerpts have been gleaned is actually much longer and humorously repeats “yet nobody goes to see it” again and again. [37] Oettermann, The Panorama, 74-83. [38] “Bowery Theatre,” New York Evening Post, 28 November 1828. For more on the ‘double-effect’ technique see Oettermann, The Panorama, 77-83. [39] Richardson also argues that, in addition to Cole, William Guy Wall, may have also served as a source of inspiration. Moving Diorama, 61-63. [40] For more on the emergence of Cole and the rise of the Hudson River School, see Barbara Babcock Millhouse, American Wilderness: The Story of the Hudson River School of Painting (Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press, 2007), Gail S. Davidson, Landscape Icons, Tourism, and Land Development in the Northeast,” in ‘Frederick Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape (New York: Bulfinch Press, 2006), and Harold E. Dickson, Arts of the Young Republic: The Age of William Dunlap (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1968). [41] The subject of the painting that Dunlap purchased, “Lake with Dead Trees,” was actually the lake that lay directly behind the Catskill Mountain House. VanZandt, Catskill Mountain House, 119-120. [42] William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, Vol. 3 (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1965 [1834]), 140-150. [43] Coad, William Dunlap, 105. [44] Millhouse, American Wilderness, 17. [45] Davidson, Landscape Icons, 23. [46] “Bowery Theatre,” New York Evening Post, 28 November 1828. Odell, Annals, 407. [47] “Mr. Dunlap’s Play of A Trip to Niagara,” New York Dramatic Mirror, 20 December 1828. [48] Odell, Annals, 407. [49] Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003), 209. "Rooting Out Historical Mythologies; or, William Dunlap's A Trip to Niagara and its Sophisticated Nineteenth Century Audience" by Samuel Shanks ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 27, Number 2 (Spring 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Guest Editor: Jonathan Chambers 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 "The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance" by Brian Eugenio Herrera "Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men" by Kee-Yoon Nahm "Capable Hands: The Myth of American Independence in D.W. Gregory's The Good Daughter" by Bradley Stephenson "Rooting Out Historical Mythologies; or, William Dunlap's A Trip to Niagara and its Sophisticated Nineteenth Century Audience" by Samuel Shanks 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 Introduction (JADT 27.2, 2015) The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men Capable Hands: The Myth of American Independence in D.W. Gregory's The Good Daughter Rooting Out Historical Mythologies; William Dunlap’s A Trip to Niagara and its Sophisticated Nineteenth Century Audience. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Nicole Hodges Persley 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 Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Nicole Hodges Persley By Published on May 11, 2021 Download Article as PDF Nicole Hodges Persley: I want to end this special issue for JADT with a discussion about the praxis of Black artist-scholars and what sustainability looks like in the wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. How do we sustain ourselves as we navigate teaching online, losing people we love, fighting against racial inequality, systemic racism, and for many of us raising families, running small companies, and working full time? How do we imagine a praxis that will allow us to do the social justice work we want to do with our various platforms and stay alive? Errol Hill showed us so much about creating space for interdisciplinary work and juggling the life of an artist-scholar, but his role was very different as a Black man. For Black women working in the entertainment and academic industries, our labor is often contested and invisible. At the same time, we are often charged to help "diversify" our academic institutions in ways that are taxing and distracting from our art-making. So, that's the quick version of what I would like to discuss today. If we can have a quick roll call for the reader giving us your name, title, institution, and a few of the slashes you inhabit as an artist scholar. We'll start with Monica, Stephanie, Lisa and then Eunice. I should note for this interview that Monica and I are past Presidents of The Black Theatre Association. We are all members of BTA. Eunice is the current VP and Conference Planner of BTA for 2021-2022 and will be incoming President in 2023. Monica White Ndounou: I'm Dr. Monica White Ndounou. I'm an associate professor of Theater, affiliated with Film and Media Studies and African and African American Studies at Dartmouth College, and I am currently in the Boston area. I am also an actor and director and the founding Executive Director of The CRAFT Institute as well as a founding member of the National Advisory Committee for The Black Seed Initiative. Nicole and I are also co-founders of Create Ensemble. Stephanie Leigh Batiste: I'm Professor Stephanie Batiste, I am an associate professor in the English department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I'm affiliated with Theatre and Dance, Comparative Literature, and Black Studies. I was joint-appointed to Black Studies for more than a decade…then I decided to opt for just one job. But I do extensive research in Black performance and I've written a few plays. I'm a poet, and a performer and theater-maker like the rest of you. Lisa B. Thompson: I'm Lisa B. Thompson, Dr. Professor, "Play Prof." I'm a professor, playwright, and now emerging screenwriter. As of September 1, 2021, my title will change to the Patton Professor of African African Diaspora Studies University of Texas at Austin. I'm also affiliated faculty in Theatre and Dance, English, Women and Gender studies, and the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. Eunice S. Ferreira: I'm Eunice Ferreira. I am an Associate Professor of Theater at Skidmore College affiliated with Black Studies, Intergroup Relations, and Latin American and Latinx Studies. I do work on translation/multilingual theater, mixed-race performance, theater for social change, and theater of the African diaspora. I'm a director, actor, and specialist in Cape Verdean performance. I'm the Vice President and Conference Planner of the Black Theater Association. Nicole Hodges Persley: Thanks, everyone. For our readers, I am Nicole Hodges Persley. I am jointly appointed at the University of Kansas in African and African American Studies and American Studies I am courtesy faculty in Theatre and Dance, Women Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Latinx Studies. I also work with the Kansas African Studies Center. I'm the incoming Director of Museum Studies. We have the only masters of African American Studies and Museum Studies in the nation. I'm the Artistic Director of KC Melting Pot Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. I asked us to talk about our affiliations and titles, not as a CV roll call but more so as a way to delineate the multiple slashes that we occupy as artist-scholars who teach and make Black Theater. We all do multi-modal performance work in and outside of academia. In this issue, we have used Hill's centennial to inspire conversations about milestones. Many of you know Hill was at Dartmouth and was a professor of Black theater. 1. Everyone here teaches, writes, performs, and directs Black theatre. Can you speak to your connection to Errol Hill's work and how it resonates in this particular moment for you? Lisa B. Thompson: I am most taken by Errol Hill's role as both an artist and scholar. So the fact that he was not only a but as a scholar, he did some of the "heavy lifting" for the field of Black theater permits me to hold both of those identities myself. I've not shared this yet, but I'm developing an Artist/Scholar Initiative to make "us " (artist/scholars) more legible. We have to be intelligible to both the theatre community and the academy. For years I've been convening artist/scholars panels at academic conferences (American Studies Association, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and Black Theatre Association) to make us more visible and intelligible to the academy and to show how our creative work counts as scholarship. The Artist/Scholar Initiative will not only highlight the work of current artist/scholars but it will also celebrate our artist/scholar ancestors such as Errol Hill. Nicole Hodges Persley: Wonderful. Yes, we need to situate our work within this larger genealogy of Black artist-scholar work. We can just flow here in our response order. Monica White Ndounou: Considering that I'm on the faculty at Dartmouth right now, and, to the best of my knowledge, the first Black woman to be tenured in the Theater department, Errol Hill paved the way for me in that space. And I do not take it lightly. Also, for those who may not know, there is an Errol Hill collection on campus at Rauner Library, where all of the research materials he collected throughout his lifetime and career are available to researchers. I use it in my courses with my students. For example, I created a course called "The Making of 21st Century Exhibits: Curating a National Black Theatre Museum" a collaboration with Hattiloo Theatre in Memphis, TN. I was awarded a $50,000 DCAL Experiential Learning Grant which enabled me to take my students to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, where they visited the Black Theater exhibit there. Having learned about Black theater and performance history throughout the term, they returned to campus and used the Errol Hill collection to curate an exhibit on Black Theater on campus. And Grace Hill, Errol Hill's widow, came to campus to see the exhibit, and she brought the family back to see it too. When she reached out to tell me how happy she was to see how we were using the materials, it meant a lot to me, because that was one way to pay homage to his contribution to my development as a scholar and an artist. Stephanie Leigh Batiste: I remember when I was in a transitional moment in my career when I was moving from a Cultural Studies perspective that was mostly history and literature-based to a career that was also theater and performance-based that Hill's research and scholarly curation were something of a revelation. One of the things I most loved about Hill's Theater of Black Americans (1980) was the tone and the detail and the specificity and the rigor of the approach. It seemed an approach that was not about integration…that was not about Western theatre…but took Black theater movements and practices on their own terms rooted in African practices and violent colonial histories. And yet he outlined the power of Black theater as a form of historical criticism and protest. It was absolutely foundational for approaches to Black theater that followed. It gave me permission to look in a particular way at what black people were doing in performance in defining Blackness, Black thought, and experience. His was a sophisticated and rigorously argued deployment of a revolutionary consciousness. The grace, directness, and force of his writing, so particular to Hill, was inspiring. When I started looking around for other scholars that were like him, there were few. The links between ritual, Carnival, and drama that he gave us in his research have been so central to performance studies and the connecting of black performance in the Western Hemisphere. His linking of ritual to the stage, which is now such common sense for us, takes us to performance studies and allows us to think about embodiment, identity, performance broadly as social as well as professional practice. Eunice S. Ferreira: Yes, Stephanie, the scope of Hill's research continues to be a model for so many of us who not only want to talk about performance more broadly but also want to cross oceans to do so! Hill was a model of a scholar artist working on transnational blackness –Caribbean, African, and African American theater. As a first-generation Cape Verdean American, whose creoleness, multiraciality, and notions of blackness are rooted in a rich African diasporic culture, Hill's body of work gave me permission of sorts to pursue research on Cape Verdean theater. I know it might sound a little strange that I felt I needed permission but I remember finding The Jamaican Stage, 1655-1900 at McIntyre and Moore, a favorite used bookstore when I was a grad student. I still had not settled on my dissertation topic and Hill's book, along with some other aha moments that semester, made me realize, in the Africanist sense of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o landmark book, that I had not yet finished decolonizing my mind. Since I was not grounded in Black liberation studies as an undergrad and was not necessarily getting the affirmation I needed in my performance studies course, I had to be awakened in a sense, to be shaken out of a Eurocentric mindset that valued specific historiographical approaches and topics. Seeing that blue book looking back at me from that shelf gave me a vision and blessing for my work on the Cape Verdean stage and I'm reminded of that moment every time I turn around and see it on my bookshelf. I think we all need people around us who tell us "go on, do the work, it's important and you're the one to do it" and Hill was one of those voices. Nicole Hodges Persley: Absolutely, I would agree. The paths that Hill paved for us created a really interesting landscape of African African diasporic theatre. His legacy charges other artists to pick up the mantle and to follow the clues that he leaves there for us. Particularly, I love the fact that he's not limited. Hill makes us think about blackness in this multicentric way. He left interpretation and imagination open to what Black theater scholarship could be. I think he tells us "Do what you need to do to tell the story you need to tell." 2. I'm wondering if you can talk about your resistance to definitive historical representations of Black Theatre and how you tell the stories of Black Theater in your teaching or arts practice, particularly now as we are all teaching in a converging racial and health pandemics. Monica White Ndounou: It depends on the course, because I teach black theatre in a lot of different ways. I teach black theatre through acting classes and history, literature, and criticism courses. I may also teach black theatre through a project I'm directing or do something completely different, like the museum course I mentioned earlier. And so it really depends on the angle that determines what I'm teaching at the intersections. So, for the museum course, I really wanted my students to think about the power of institutions and institution building within the context of Black theatre; to question: who controls the narrative and the institutional framework and resources? And how does that relate specifically to Black theatre? The way I'm teaching black theatre, at this moment, compared to how I may have taught pre-COVID, or even before the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is part of a continuum of Black liberation movements, all of that informs the way that I'm going to approach it. Ultimately, I never teach the same course the same way twice. Nicole Hodges Persley: That's jazz. Billie Holiday said she would never sing the same song the same way twice. Prescriptive and prescient for this moment. Lisa B. Thompson: I agree. I think we're all adjusting. This special issue comes out at a heightened moment but this is not new terrain. The history of African American theater is intrinsically tied to fights against anti-black violence and quests for liberation even before BLM. It's part of our jobs as Black theatre artists and scholars to make sure folks know that history and the kinds of persistent interventions Black theatre artists have done in the past and continue to do from Angelina Grimké to Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), from Lorraine Hansberry to Charles Fuller, from August Wilson to Lynn Nottage. Eunice S. Ferreira: Certainly not new terrain, Lisa, but this particular moment emboldened me and my pedagogy in new ways – and yes, it was an intervention! This past fall 2020 when I received a new assignment at Skidmore to teach the second course in our required theater history survey sequence, I decided that Black Theater would provide the framework – that Black, Indigenous and artists of color would take center stage, that I would prioritize artists whose works were rooted in justice and social change. I was also teaching my elective Black Theater course in the same semester and, regardless of the course title, I zoomed into all of my classes that semester as a professor of Black Theater. It was a powerful post-tenure learning moment for me. It was part of my resilience and resistance – to make it all Black Theater – if not in content, then in pedagogy, practice, and in my own sense of calling of what it means to be a teacher during a pandemic within a pandemic. Nicole Hodges Persley: I think how we approach the subject and teaching is dynamic. And I don't think probably any of us have a singular way that we go about teaching it. For me, Hill's work is a great spine for the body of Black theater and performance. Does it need supplementation for Black women and LBGTQ approaches and content? Yes, of course. For me to give a student who has never had any idea that Black people have been making theatre before a Hill book or anthology means I open a work to them that shows how much Black theater artists have accomplished way before. A Raisin in the Sun is usually their central reference point for Black Theater. Stephanie Leigh Batiste: It's a beautiful spine. I find Harry Elam, Jr.'s African American Theater and Performance very helpful. There are a lot of compendiums that strive to start at the beginning and take us to a present. Many feel very conservative to me. In a lot of ways methodologies of theater, study impact the stories about theater that we hear. We see this too, in the archive, in the way that archives are organized. They craft an order of argumentation and organization that sometimes challenges theoretical experimentation in research. Hill seemed able to do such eclectic work in his career because professionalization of the academic sphere hadn't reached the level of regimentation what it has today, where you're burdened with producing an extended book-length study, and spend an absorbing five to ten years writing it. And then you start all over again. And so it strikes me that the opportunity for a lot of that variety, the open approach, and sampling that he was accomplishing has changed. I feel like these things are interconnected in your question: history, archive, argument, teaching, and the nature of being a researcher, writer, and producer in the profession. I find when I teach theater, usually in a literary critical class, that I'm pulling together a hodgepodge of resources to gather what I need. Aligning theatrical and performance studies work to think about blackness is really a curation project for me. One of the classes I teach is called performance of literature, where I teach students an embodied theory of criticism and performance-based in abstract and theatrical jazz techniques. Together we adapt different canonical literary pieces that seem challenging and foundationally theatrical to me, like Jean Toomer's Cane and Nella Larsen's Passing. I collaborated with Omi Osun Joni L. Jones UT Austin to experiment with Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha -- and we both worked with Toni Morrison's Sula. Eunice S. Ferreira: I had never imagined teaching Black Theater without live theater attendance as part of the students' learning experience. I know that we all had to make that adjustment due to COVID, but even before the pandemic, I had to find new ways to curate, as Stephanie so eloquently stated, experiences for the students. How will I teach Black Theater at a predominantly white institution in upstate New York when I may not be able to depend on the availability of Black Theater in the region? My answer was "look to Black Theater, Eunice, look to Black Theater!" Meaning, I needed to shift my mode of thinking ingrained in me from early undergrad days from the "go see a play" model to centering the very core elements of the expressive black arts – where do we find Community? Ritual? Music? Dance? Visual Arts? Aren't those some of Hill's arguments for a national Trinidadian theater? Speaking of art, we have a gorgeous contemporary museum on campus called The Tang Teaching Museum that has played an integral role in my Black Theater class. Students have created original theater pieces inspired by the artwork of artists of Africa and the African diaspora and performed them throughout the museum. We also unpack ideas about race, class, and access to museum spaces. Through performance as research strategies, ritual, and community building, students study those who have come before them as they also draw from the elements I mentioned to adapt and create their own work. Embodied learning and the visual arts are central elements. So, too, is the need to move beyond the physical or virtual walls of many theater departments in order to teach Black theater. Lisa B. Thompson: I definitely come at Black theatre history from the viewpoint of an artist first, because I did not train in theater. I trained in cultural studies and wrote my first play in my doctoral program. I learned about Errol Hill doing research for my advisor was Harry Elam, Jr. I'm thankful that I learned about early Black theatre from him, and from conducting research for African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader that he co-edited with David Krasner. For the kind of courses I teach, there's no anthology in any field of black studies that works for me, so I'm always bringing together essays, books, films, and plays to create what I call "intellectual collages." I understand the importance of us having these foundational documents and Hill also talks about the seminal works, but I also think there are some really beautiful ways in which we can push against that by putting texts from different eras in conversation with each other. I like to disrupt the linear narrative. My foundational texts are more theatrical. My touchstones or bookends that led me as a Black feminist artist scholar are Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide /When the Rainbow Is Enuf and George Wolfe's Colored Museum. For me, those plays break up notions of the well-made play and gave me the freedom to revel in the brokenness of Blackness as well as the power and grace. I like to discuss and highlight the artists that present that brokenness in theatre, not as a site of trauma but a place to build from and heal. Errol Hill is brilliant, but he's very put together and in a way that I am not. I'm messy and I love the messiness of Black theatre. Nicole Hodges Persley: Exactly that—I love the brokenness—fragmentation-syncretic approach to Black theater-making performance and scholarship. My work on sampling, and remixing as theoretical prisms through which we can really reimagine identity formation and racial historicity. I love to think about unsettling the messy and multiple histories. Eunice S. Ferreira: I, too, love the remix and sampling as frameworks and frequently use that on syllabi and exercises. In fact, Nicole, I draw upon your own hip-hop pedagogy in doing so. And in the spirit of #CiteBlackWomen, started by Christen A. Smith, I trust that anyone inspired by "intellectual collages" will cite Lisa B. Thompson! 3.In your practice as artist-scholars, what is necessary for you to sustain the work that you do in this historical moment? Eunice S. Ferreira: One of the things I needed to do during this pandemic was lean into an amazing community of friends and scholar artists in all sorts of different ways – especially Black women scholar artists in my circle. COVID restrictions and teaching online also provided an opportunity to expand community building for students in my Black Theater course by introducing them to early-mid career scholar artists making good trouble in their work and teaching. So, if it's ok, let me give a shout out to the class visitors who not only gave students a vision of a community of Black scholars but also personally stood in the gap for me when I had several family emergencies this past fall: Shamell Bell, Kaja Dunn, Justin Emeka, Khalid Long, Sharrell D. Luckett, and Isaiah Wooden. I have to lean into community, not competition. The cut-throat academic model is soul-sucking and destructive to my spirit. Nicole, this is one of the many reasons I support the work you and Monica are doing with Create Ensemble. This is why we need The Craft Institute and The Black Seed. Let Black Theater lead the way. Monica White Ndounou: Thanks, Eunice. So many folks are doing important work. I agree with you about the importance of community. Initially, I was going to say I need a lab, a place where I can experiment and test out the theories I'm developing and encountering in my work and collaborations. But a lab may be too sterile for what I have in mind. I think it's more of an incubator or sanctuary, a safe space for healing and blossoming, a place where I can go and be with my thoughts and work, to commune with other scholar-artists and practitioners to explore the possibilities of our creativity and scholarship in practice. Stephanie Leigh Batiste: That is a great question! Can I say first that I love that we're deep in theoretical conversation with regard to your concept of sampling. In the Intro to the first collection called Black Performance I: Subject and Method that I edited for The Black Scholar (Fall 2019, vol. 49.3), I use the concept of "beat juggling" from my colleague, Gaye Teresa Johnson (2013). The beats of songs and samples from familiar tracks actively cut into each other in hip hop DJ practice create a place from which we can look for and retrieve newly framed and different histories that each of those mixed moments embeds. The blended memories and histories become lilypads in time that give us new provocations for Black identity-making. We break up linear time. Music and theatricality become grounds for self-invention. Nicole Hodges Persley: Absolutely. I cannot wait to talk to you more about it. I'm excited that Sampling and Remixing Blackness in Hip-Hop Theater and Performance is out this fall with the University of Michigan. It has been a long process, but I think it is relative to what we are experiencing in our current moment with performative allyship, self-reinvention, care, etc. Lisa B. Thompson: I can't wait to read your book, Nicole! What is necessary for me in this moment is working in the community with other artist scholars and building with local Black artists, especially Black women. I can say the same for my scholarship. I'm part of a writing group with an inspiring and supportive group of diverse scholars who have sustained me during the pandemic. I feel so fortunate to have all of these beautiful folks along with me on this journey. 4.Could you share with readers what you need as an artist scholar to stay creative in the midst of converging health and racial pandemics in American history? Lisa B. Thompson: We have been fighting for such a long time. We are all exhausted. I haven't had enough rest. None of us have especially if you're a Black/artist scholar fighting in two realms to be heard. Watching all of the death unfold around us daily as we also push to make our lives and work visible has been overwhelming. I have been keeping a list of everything I need to stay creative. We need self-care and community care. There are revolutionary possibilities in creativity. We also need time away. We need a funded residency for Black artists scholars. I would like it to create a MacDowell, Millay Colony, Hedgebrook type of space where we can meet, dream, work, and be taken care of—have food delivered to our studios, take long walks, sit by a lake, stare at trees—the whole nine. I would love us to be pampered as we create. I would like it to include childcare if someone has minor children. There's lots of chatter online about the role of Black art at this moment that I feel is necessary but I'd like for us to have more of those conversations in-house and in-person with other Black creatives and intellectuals. Not because we are afraid of airing our dirty laundry but because having these conversations on social media or whispered behind folks' backs can be damaging. Growth sometimes happens under a microscope or spotlight but it often impedes our evolution and understanding. Let's call folks in ways that nurture and support our collective growth and creativity. That's another form of community care. Stephanie Leigh Batiste: I agree. I also want our people's art to be seen. I want there to be some kind of a "not YouTube" archive. Maybe this is part of one of the things you're working on Monica, a curation, a site of curation, where new artists and artists who can't manage to get themselves on a big stage can share their work in the community. We need places to process these states of ongoing trauma that are not an academic conference or in our scholarship. We need to have a continuing live archive of new and experimental work that isn't being condoned by the mainstream institutions, social and institutional violence, and the status quo. I would like people to be able to imagine themselves as breaking form; as innovating for the stage in ways that are unencumbered by what's needed to sell a ticket. Our practice of being alive is not in producing the same thing over and over again or creating in the same form over and over again. And we know that the black avant-garde has been instrumental in pushing work and becoming the foundation for the white avant-garde in this country, who are celebrated and marked as the threshold for the transformation of form. But that's not necessarily or predominantly where the form has changed. Traditional forms have been manipulated and innovated by Black communities whose works were appropriated and then re-presented. And so that force of innovation gets stifled and smothered for not having an achievable outlet or the confidence of proclaiming one's own creativity. I worry that artists don't think that there's a future for their work. This moment seems largely nihilistic in our confrontation with these medically and socially annihilating forces. I'm hoping that the digital realm gives us a place for work. And so in that sense, I feel like I want more stages. I want more stage time. I want more production and trained tech support. I want more black actors who feel like they have the time and the energy and access to make work. You know, art, art-making is operating like a privilege, instead of a thought system. I want us to be free to think about theater as a thought system; that drama is like music--if we lose it, something in us dies, I want us to be able to practice together experimentally and vigorously in collaborative learning laboratories. Eunice S. Ferreira: This question is a difficult one. You asked what do I need and I was raised in a tradition that taught me to always focus on what others need. I am very much wired for being in the community and everything that Lisa and Stephanie said resonates very deeply with me. I try to bring a holistic approach to my teaching and I'm going to take what Stephanie has offered – encouraging students to think of art as a "thought system" and not as a privilege. And I desperately need the resources, space, and time for self-care listed by Lisa. I want to be able to do my work without having to deal with the relentless forces of systemic racism in academia on top of the violence and loss of lives scrolling on my daily news feed. And of course, institutions can assist with practical support such as funding artistic collaborations that we lead, course releases and leaves to do scholarly and creative work or immerse oneself in an intensive. Oh, that sounds so nourishing! But perhaps the most important thing I need right now to stay productive and creative is to not be weighed down by despair and to stay grounded in joy. When I share the call of joy with students, I'm also reinforcing that for myself. Pedagogy rooted in joy. And a retreat. Monica White Ndounou: We really need the ecosystems of arts and entertainment and their corresponding educational programs to be overhauled, repaired, and carefully curated for any of the work we're doing right now to be sustained. Overhaul education and formal training programs by de-centering work that reinforces white supremacy, institutionalized racism, and anti-Blackness. Rebuilding programs to recognize the intrinsic value of Black people, People of the Global Majority, and our contributions to every aspect of American society and the larger world is more likely to produce scholarship and theatre that more accurately represents the demographics of the nation and the world. As I learned through our collective work on The Black Seed, the philanthropic community can make a big difference by actively addressing an ongoing history of inequitable funding. This is critical when considering, "of the $4 billion in philanthropic support from foundations to arts organizations, 58% of that goes to the largest 2% of organizations; all white-led. The other 98% of organizations split the last 42% and arts organizations serving communities of color shared only 4% of that pie. The median budget size of the 20 largest arts organizations of color surveyed by the DeVos Institute is 90% smaller than their mainstream counterparts, and more than half of these organizations were operating in 2013 with budget deficits." Formal training, industry practice and funding have to change for the better. If things persist as they are or return to so-called "normal", my work as an artist and educator is at risk and so are the lives and livelihoods of so many of our colleagues and collaborators. This is one of the most consequential moments of our lifetimes and we need to seize it. Nicole Hodges Persley: Thank you all so much for sharing your musings about your practice as artist-scholars, your engagement with the work of Errol Hill, and the things you are doing to sustain your practice in the wake of Black Lives Matter and COVID-19. I so appreciate the opportunity to have the cipher with you. I am hopeful that the readers will explore the creative work of each artist here. We are designing new ways to be Black Theater scholars in the 21st century. We are working in multi-modal interdisciplinary ways. We are in and outside the academy. We are in the undercommons of the entertainment industry. Please check out the websites, Instagram, and Facebook pages of our artist-scholars. 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.

Samantha Briggs 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 Lessons from Our Students: Meditations on Performance Pedagogy. Stacey Cabaj and Andrea Odinov. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 126 Samantha Briggs By Published on July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Stacey Cabaj and Andrea Odinov’s Lessons from Our Students: Meditations on Performance Pedagogy begins with an invitation: “Let’s inhale deeply. And exhale completely” (ix). With this prompt, the authors set the tone for a book that is exactly what its title suggests—a meditation. At first glance, one might expect this book to be a guide on performance pedagogy, filled with strategies for teaching theatre. In reality, its focus is far broader. While the authors are acting and voice specialists and the subtitle suggests a theatre-centered approach, the book is less a how-to manual and more of a meditation on the emotional and relational aspects of teaching, advocating for a pedagogy rooted in compassion, vulnerability, and wholeness. The book is divided into three sections—Inhalation, Exhalation, and Transformation—but these distinctions feel somewhat arbitrary. While these titles suggest a thematic arc, in practice, the divisions feel loose, and the topics within each section are so varied that the distinctions between them blur. Given the brevity of the chapters, each theme receives only a small amount of space, making the organizational categories feel less necessary. In the end, the book reads more as a wide-ranging collection of reflections rather than a structured argument about teaching. This is not necessarily a flaw—the fluid nature of the book suits its meditative tone—but it does mean readers should not expect a tightly woven, easily-adaptable pedagogical framework. Theatre educators will naturally connect more directly with certain stories and classroom scenarios. Some chapters reference Fitzmaurice Voicework methods, acting exercises, and experiences in voice classrooms or productions, yet even these moments transcend disciplinary boundaries, serving more as context than content and emphasizing how educators can show up to their work with full humanity and an open heart. Thus, its insights will resonate with educators in any discipline—especially those seeking affirmation and renewal in their practice. In particular, early-career teachers and those experiencing burnout or self-doubt may find solace in its pages. More than anything, Lessons from Our Students serves as a reminder that teaching is a deeply human endeavor—one that requires presence, adaptability, and care, both for our students and ourselves. Consisting of short, stand-alone chapters the authors call “lessons,” the book is easy to read in one sitting or dip into a single chapter for a thoughtful tidbit or reflective moment whenever the whim strikes or time allows. The prose is digestible and jargon-free, an intentional choice underscored by a chapter about “Jargon Monoxide Poisoning” (11). Rather than a formal academic text, it reads like a book of personal essays or succinct, contemplative meditations on practice akin to David Whyte’s Consolations , infused with the reflective depth of Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach and the radical wisdom of adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy– a winning interdisciplinary combination if ever there was one. However, what makes Lessons from Our Students truly unique is its blending of deeply personal storytelling with a pedagogical lens—offering raw, honest reflections on teaching that feel as if the authors are speaking directly to the reader. Even more distinctive is the book’s centering of embodied, somatic, and meditative practices as essential tools for both teaching and learning. This emphasis aligns with the growing focus on social-emotional learning across disciplines, which aims to help students develop emotional awareness, self-regulation, and relationship skills, but is presented here with a deeply personal, almost poetic approach. Because of its focus on social-emotional wellness and interpersonal relationships, and its unflinching commitment to embracing the messy humanness of the classroom experience, many of the book’s lessons apply beyond theatre classrooms. Educators of any subject could benefit from the reflections in Chapter 4 on “Teacher Talking Time,” for example, which suggests that developing an awareness of and limiting teacher talking time help to create a more student-centered classroom, or Chapter 6, “Everything But the Kitchen Sink,” which gently cautions that “the desire to empower our students with decades of knowledge and expertise can feel like an educational bombardment” (14). The themes of presence, deep listening, and student-centered learning are universal, making this book relevant to anyone interested in transformative teaching, and the opportunities for engagement, presented at the end of each chapter in the form of reflection questions and/or a meditation, similarly extend beyond a theatre classroom, and in many cases, beyond a classroom at all, offering many and varied opportunities for anyone interested in holistic self-discovery. These prompts are non-judgmental, inviting, and genuinely thought-provoking, ranging from somatic explorations—“What would it feel like to take a couple of centering breaths before saying ‘yes, and’ or ‘no, but’ to an invitation?” (44)—to practical classroom considerations like “What works in your grading policy and what might be improved?” (25). Still, if you are looking for concrete teaching strategies, this book offers few. Some practical techniques are sprinkled throughout, such as Chapter 3’s “Circle Mash Up,” a repeatable check-in strategy that invites students to “speak their truth of the moment” by stating: I am…(name, pronouns, aspect of identity), I feel…(a moment of interoception), I am bringing…(news, question, needs, snacks, etc.), Grounded (move arms out to the side), And checked (hands meet overhead), In (hands move downward to heart center) (7). Like the above example, most of these approaches center on social-emotional learning rather than discipline-specific pedagogy. While this aligns with the book’s reflective and holistic approach, some readers—especially those seeking concrete methods—may find themselves wishing for more explicit directions for application. Some chapters left me hungry for such specifics, such as when the authors suggest an “Oops, Ouch, and Whoa framework” (41) for modeling meaningful apologies in the classroom without explaining what this framework is or how to use it. This emphasis on interpersonal connection and emotional well-being is no coincidence. The book’s social-emotional focus aligns with its pandemic-era origins, which heightened collective mental health challenges and emphasized the importance of social-emotional needs. The authors strike a difficult balance—rooting their reflections in the pandemic, which shapes about half the chapters, while extending their insights beyond that specific moment. They model how the challenges and lessons of remote and hybrid instruction can continue to transform post-pandemic teaching when approached with “radical openness” (ix). Perhaps one of the book’s implicit lessons is that the tenderness, compassion, desire for connection, and enforced slowing down that characterized many of our pandemic teaching experiences can and should continue to serve us now. By listening to our students, shaping our classrooms around their human needs, and remaining grounded in our humanity, we can transform our classrooms, our students, and ourselves. References Footnotes About The Author(s) SAMANTHA BRIGGS (she/her) is an educator, theatre maker, and facilitator currently serving as an Assistant Professor and area head of the theatre teaching program at the University of Utah. Her research explores how the arts can promote critical pedagogy and foster civic engagement in schools and communities. 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.

Thomas H. Arthur 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 “A Caribbean Soul in Exile”: Post-Colonial Experiences of a Jamaican Actor Thomas H. Arthur By Published on June 6, 2024 Download Article as PDF Color him black And count the bruises He was tough and slender Chiseled in bronze He died too young And he smiled too little But his dreams were the dreams of a man. --Sydney Hibbert (1986) This article investigates the career of Jamaican American theatre practitioner, Sydney Hibbert (1932-1990), who worked in Jamaica, London and the United States as an actor, teacher, and poet, and wrote meaningfully about these experiences. (1) Hibbert emerged from a colonized place and culture and was, in many ways, a postcolonial subject who negotiated the differing and often conflicting demands of values and structures created by the British, while also struggling to maintain his identity or connection with his home culture and sense of self. Educated in Kingston and London, he returned home in 1965 and, with other Jamaican students who had studied in London, attempted to establish an indigenous theatre for popular audiences of Black Jamaicans. At first this initiative failed, and Hibbert turned to the American Black Power Movement in Harlem for inspiration. Moving to New York to teach at the Harlem School of the Arts, he found frustration and rejection in the theatre world. When his agent suggested he get rid of his Jamaican accent, he refused. His struggles to preserve his Jamaican identity and find a voice among African American people reveal the challenges and complexity of postcolonial experience. Nevertheless, he managed to have a substantial career as a teacher and performer in the United States and helped start the National Black Theatre Festival of the North Carolina Black Repertory Company that exposed audiences to Black classics and new works. Hibbert was sometimes disillusioned but never idle in his pursuit of artistic accomplishment along with racial justice. (2) Black Jamaicans and the Colonial System Hibbert’s Jamaican, enslaved roots helped shape his personality and professional ambitions. Columbus landed in Jamaica on his second voyage in 1494, an arrival that was a disaster for Jamaican residents who were killed, sent to Spain as slaves, or became slaves in their native land. (3) In 1645, England captured Jamaica from the Spaniards, and in 1670, the slave trading Royal Africa Company was formed using Jamaica as its chief market and a center of their activities in the West Indies. (4) Between 1647 and 1838, British settlers imported between one and two million slaves from West Africa for plantations and estates that produced sugar, cocoa, indigo, and later coffee, with tens of thousands dying on the passage to the Caribbean. (5) Many Black Jamaicans inherited their surnames from plantation owners such as the English merchant Thomas Hibbert who immigrated to Kingston in 1734. The Hibbert family subsequently held interests in sixty estates and controlled almost half of the Jamaican slave trade. They profited from British colonialism’s triangular trade routes which began in the mother country with sugar and rum transported to Africa that was exchanged for slaves transported to the Caribbean, after which the ships were reloaded with sugar for a passage home to England. (6) By virtue of his surname, Hibbert was metaphorically part of this triangle of people, culture, and influence. Along with slavery and trade, the British brought their theatre culture, which became part of the Jamaican heritage. The first professional company to perform on the island presented John Gay’s The Beggars’ Opera in 1733 . (7) Throughout the Pre-Emancipation period, whites-only audiences were exposed to Shakespeare plays, farces and melodramas performed by European and American professional companies. (8) In 1775, the Old American Company—the first fully professional theatre group to perform in North America—staged Shakespeare’s Romeo and Julie t. In 1807, the British Parliament abolished the slave trade, and in 1834, slavery in Jamaica, but this had little cultural effect. Even after Kingston’s formerly whites-only theatres began admitting patrons on segregated and then mixed-color bases, these audiences still saw standard classics and a few current English-originated works. (9) For instance, in 1912 the new Ward Theatre opened with Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance . (10) Later, in 1941, under the aegis of the Little Theatre Movement, the Ward Theatre became the home of Boxing Day pantomimes that grew popular for a wide audience, although according to one observer, there were a “token few” black performers—the musicians and a school teacher—in the first Jack and the Beanstalk performance. (11) The next decades saw the “Jamaicanizing” of the British pantomime. (12) Perhaps more significant in the history of Jamaican theatre is the body of African-Caribbean musical and performance traditions associated with folklore, religious rituals and seasonal festivals. (13) These enactments involved storytelling, idiomatic speech, movement, gesture, personification, choreography, audience participation, and pantomime. There are parallels between the techniques of this informal theatre and formal drama which the colonial system defined as “real theatre.” The folk theatre went underground during colonialism, but re-emerged in the 1940s, forming the essential basis, sources, and techniques for a new generation of playwrights and actors seeking to define their Jamaican identity and create an indigenous theatre. Sydney Hibbert (b. 1932) grew up during the early decolonization period when Jamaicans gained universal suffrage in 1944 and full independence in 1962. (14) He had sharp words for Black voting rights: “Universal Adult ‘Sufferage’ (sic), Man to man wid’ a(n) equal X! Count the papers and forget them. Keep some pedigree and class!” (15) He became interested in theatre through a small role in a secondary school production of The Pirates of Penzance which, even though its distinctly British character had nothing to do with his own life experience, settled his goal of acting as his future occupation. “You enter into another world” doing theatre, “you’re the center of that world” he later recalled. “I knew I was always going to do this.” (16) The contrast between the world of Pirates and his own could not have been sharper. He was raised with two siblings by a widowed mother in the “lanes” (back alleys) of the Cross Roads section of Kingston with sanitary conditions so bad that residents petitioned the town council to build sewers. (17) He described it as “a heaven and a hell—a home and a prison.” (18) In a poem entitled “Actor Boy” he writes, “Boy, you come from Cross Roads/ Mek some money man!” Shame at the end of my smile/ Screaming inside my head like voices, Run, boy, run! There’s no inheritance here…” (19) A poem “Morning Call” reflects Hibbert’s disillusionment with the school curriculum: “Hiding inside the sounds change/ London bridge is falling down, Falling down… And the Lane is paved with gold, But the gingerbread houses are scarce/ And Red Riding Hood never plays here.” (20) Opportunities for education were limited because grammar schools charged fees, but Hibbert received a scholarship intended for disadvantaged Black youth at Excelsior College, recently founded by young educator A. Wesley Powell. (21) When Hibbert attended the school, it had outstanding music, speech and drama programs including performance opportunities at the Ward Theatre. While Hibbert was a student. one of Excelsior’s most famous graduates, Louise Bennett (Coverley) taught there from 1946-48. (22) Coverley, who as a student had written poetry in Jamaican patois, became a national icon in theatre, radio and TV, and champion of Jamaican folklore and indigenous literature. Later in his own poetry, Hibbert referred to “Miss Lou” in explaining his use of poetic dialect. After graduation from secondary school, he explored his interest in theatre by attending classes at the private Continental Academy, which offered tutoring in music, dance and drama. During this period, he supported himself with a low-paying civil service position in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. (23) Because of its colonial past Jamaica was believed to have a racial blending that created a homogeneous creole multi-racism. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Jamaica in June 1965 and was impressed that so many different nationalities seemed to be combined into one Jamaican identity. (24) However, recent studies indicate that “shadeism,” or colorism, was an open secret in Kingston. In “Examining Race in Jamaica,” Monique Kelly finds that both race category and skin color affected opportunities for schooling and access to household amenities. (25) As another researcher describes it, children acquired a sense of social differences based on skin color at home or in school. Sydney’s dark skin complexion was less desirable than lighter mixed-race skin, so he was considered to be lower class. In a poem describing his childhood, he wrote “your father is not backra (white)/ not even high brown skin.” (26) Perhaps the most important Black influencer in Hibbert’s early life was Jamaican-born activist Marcus Garvey (1887-1940). (27) Garvey established the “Universal Negro Improvement Association” (UNIA) in Kingston in 1914, aiming to achieve Black nationalism through the celebration of African history and culture with a Back-to-Africa message. In 1916, he moved to Harlem, New York where UNIA eventually established 700 branches in thirty-eight states, spreading to more than forty countries in Africa, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. (28) Garvey was deported from the US for possible fraud and lived in Kingston 1927-1935 where he continued to articulate ideas of Black pride and racial success. Though Hibbert was too young to understand Garvey’s message in the 1930s, when his body was brought back for burial at the National Heroes Park in 1964, Jamaica boiled with debates over Garvey’s significance and concepts of Jamaican nationhood. (29) Living in Harlem became a goal and when Hibbert finally moved there, he heard Garvey’s ideas reechoed by Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. Playing ‘the Outsider’ in London Seeking to better themselves in London with professional qualifications was standard practice for Commonwealth citizens. In 1962, Hibbert received a bursary scholarship to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Drama (RADA). At the Guildhall, one of his most important roles was in John Gay’s Polly , a classic play rife with racial satire against the British planters and colonization. The actor was likely cast for his Jamaican identity since the story takes place in the West Indies. Instead of white men wearing black makeup, Hibbert was playing a main role as a Black actor in his own skin without makeup. He received critical acclaim for his interpretation of “Cawwawkee,” the West Indian prince who in the story eventually marries Polly. According to historian Richard Dryden, this ballad opera (a sequel to The Beggar’s Opera ) “condemns the British planter, the British soldier, the British slave trade, the transportation of British criminals, and the pirate,” thus labeling all characters as being either fools or knaves except for the heroine, Polly, and the native Indians.” (30) The West Indians were the “good guys” and the white British merchants and planters the “bad guys,” setting up a racial role inversion within a safe, comedic format. Gay’s Polly has been understood as both a superficial satire and/or an early radical anti-colonial statement. Hibbert’s Shakespearean roles also fall into the outsider category, from the title part in Othello, to Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , to Feste in Twelfth Night . Othello the Moor is a Black man in a white Venetian society. Oberon is the king of the fairies and a magical being, outside ordinary human limitations. Feste is a licensed fool, free to observe and comment on the foibles of the play’s authority figures. All three characters were thought suitable for a Black actor. Hibbert received Guildhall’s characterization prize for his Feste, interpreted with humor, satire and menace, in the Shakespeare 400th anniversary celebrations. (31) His success with Shakespearean roles demonstrates his ability to “mimic the colonizer” while still honoring his love of Shakespearian language. When he returned to Kingston in August 1965, he was celebrated in the press, and promoted to the Ministry of Development and Welfare. (32) In the 1970s, Hibbert used his London training at the Colorado and Alabama Shakespeare Festivals. (33) At Colorado, his Othello moved critic J. H. Crouch to compare his portrayal with actors like “the sun-tanned Walter Huston, a liver-lipped Lawrence Olivier and a magnificently bullish Paul Robeson.” The critic wrote, “I had contemplated Othello as an exotic, a stranger, a pantaloon, a victim, a fool, even a black hero in a white melodrama, but he had not been prepared for “the pagan gentility, the curtailed, then unleashed barbarousness of Sidney Hibbert’s Othello.” Kari Howard notes, “The actor was devoted to the detail of character construction— from modest storytelling, through quiet authority, through steely authority through laughing security through rational security, through genuine dilemma, through a disintegration of personality which commands the trance (the most real I have seen).” (34) Hibbard later played Othello at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, where a critic commended the contrast between the actor’s soft-spoken delivery at the beginning and tension of a man maddened by jealousy at the end of the play. (35) Creating Jamaican-centered Theatre Returning to Kingston in August 1965, Hibbert was caught up in the attempts to identify and define indigenous Caribbean culture. His first Kingston project was 1865—A Ballad for Rebellion , written by Jamaican playwright and novelist Sylvia Wynter who had returned from London to teach at the University of West Indies and form “a truly indigenous theatre.” (36) In an interview, she explained the problem: local drama needed more serious audiences than pantomime attendees, as well as fresh, realistic scripts by West Indies playwrights. In addition, new professional standards should be developed. Wynter and her then husband Jan Carew wanted to establish The Jamaican Folk Theatre, starting with a production of her script A Child is Born . (37) This was delayed because the Ministry of Development commissioned her to write an epic historical drama about the Morant Bay Rebellion.” (38) After a year’s intensive research, it was ready in October 1965. Directed by Jamaican Lloyd Reckord, with Hibbert as his assistant and production manager, it featured over a hundred players. Reviewer Norman Rae described it as an elaborate production that ran three and a half hours and contained much “speechifying,” while missing opportunities for dramatic expression. He thought that the basic concept of the play was confused with no point of view and stereotyped character development. (39) It is difficult to assess the impact of this event, already highly politicized because the “Tercentenary of English Colonization” celebrated in 1955 was followed by “Emancipation Day” in 1965. (40) Ballad may not have been an artistic success, but Wynter’s approach to rewriting history more inclusively, from the Jamaican people’s viewpoint, marked a fundamental step in decolonizing the story. (41) Almost all local working Black actors were involved and thereby exposed to her humanization of the Black characters and the shift in collective memory. This predates Wynter’s theoretical writings, but reveals the germinal stages of her decolonial thinking. One concrete result of the performance was that the Ministry of Development promised to commission new West Indian scripts at future festivals. Within a month, Hibbert led a group of young theatre practitioners (five of whom had been in Ballad ) in establishing a new theatre company that aimed to attract audiences “beyond the Europhile elite.” (42) They selected the name “Theatre 77” reflecting their goal, “to establish a fully professional theatre company in twelve years: sixty-five plus twelve makes seventy-seven.” (43) They could not agree on any Jamaican scripts for their first performances, so they chose Edward Albee’s Zoo Story and Miss Julie by August Strindberg. According to company member Yvonne Jones (Brewster), they reasoned that both plays concern the struggle between the “haves and have nots, between the lower classes and those they serve.” Social inequality was “examined so brutally by both playwrights,” they believed that “audiences would see the parallels with their own society, which would make the double bill a sure winner.” (44) Without financial backing or public relations experience, the group nevertheless pushed forward arranging for performances in the Old Library/Dramatic theatre at the University of West Indies Mona campus. Hibbert directed Miss Julie , performed in Zoo Story , and was the producer and stage manager. The review by Harry Milner (a lead actor in Ballad ), published two days after the opening, was mixed: entitled “Promising Start” he praised some acting, but found the production “a bit melodramatic, old-fashioned, and slow.” (45) The show closed early, and the company was left with a large debt in part because of expensive programs ordered by Hibbert. Brewster later wrote that “we all were to blame for the fiasco” due to “over-optimistic audience projections, inflated egos, and a complete absence of financial and logistic planning.” (46) The group soon acquired a new performance space, “The Barn,” and staged the British playwright Roger Milner’s comedy How’s the World Treating You with Hibbert in the lead role. Norman Rae’s review was positive and Hibbert received special praise for his deadpan comedic delivery. (47) Still, the script was not written by a Jamaican and did not deal with the island’s political and social concerns. The company attempted to remedy this by next presenting recital/performances by four Jamaican writers, On the Off Beat , along with Afro-American Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes’s jazz poem Ask Your Mama . (48) These pieces, billed as happenings with the audience bringing their own cushions to sit on the floor, were directed by George Carter, already one of Jamaica’s most established theatre practitioners. (49) Still seeking subjects more relevant to their audience’s lives, the company began to hold improvisational “devising workshops” that were recorded, transcribed with scenes marked for further workshopping. These innovative activities led to Trevor Rhone’s first play Look Two in 1967. During this time, Hibbert was working with the Jamaica Festival Office as a theatre lecturer and drama tutor. (50) Theatre 77, now renamed The Barn Theatre, endured for forty years becoming an important chapter in Jamaican theatre history. Encountering Black Power in America By early 1968, Hibbert had been transferred to the Jamaican Embassy in Washington, D. C. as the cultural attaché, but he soon abandoned the Civil Service to move to Harlem. It was in Washington that Hibbert first encountered the South African playwright Athol Fugard whose work was so important to him in future years. Hibbert studied after hours at the Stage Studio, a method acting school founded by Louise Brandwen (1932-1974), a Russian-born émigré who had trained at the Moscow Art Theatre and worked with Lee Strasberg in Los Angeles. At the Stage Studio, he studied the Stella Adler technique and the teachings of Grotowski, Artaud, and Meyerhold. He was now cast in Blood Knot , one of Fugard’s first plays written as a statement against the South African racial laws. (51) The play premiered in Johannesburg on October 23, 1961, after which it was banned in the city. The American premier of Blood Knot opened Off-Broadway with James Earl Jones playing Zacharias in 1964. (52) The plot concerns two half-brothers who share the same Black mother, but one of them passes for white while the other cannot. In the Stage Studio production Hibbert, a Black Jamaican, played the darker-skinned brother Zach. This was an especially compelling story given the young actor’s experience of racism and shadeism. The significance of Fugard’s influence on Hibbert’s career cannot be overstated. He played a variety of parts created by many playwrights, but often returned to Fugard’s plays and Blood Knot . At Illinois State University in 1970, his training included non-traditional reverse casting such as a class in which white students worked on Black playwright Ron Milner’s Who’s Got His Own while Black students performed Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf . Milner’s play had been a great success at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem in 1967 and represented the trend among the Black Arts Movement’s cultural nationalists to create “Black theatre for the advancement of Black people.” (53) Hibbert also arranged a staged reading of Fugard’s Blood Knot in which he played Zachariah with a white faculty member playing his lighter-skinned brother. In 1982 Hibbert played Zachariah again at California’s South Coast Repertory Second Stage, and in 1986 he played the teacher/servant, “Sam,” in Fugard’s anti-apartheid Master Harold, and the Boys . (54) Los Angeles Times critic Lawrence Christon calls Hibbert a “forceful, compelling figure” in a Master Harold review. (55) The Santa Ana Orange County Register ’s reviewer, Jeff Rubio, focuses on the relationship between the actor’s work, playwright Fugard and South Africa. “The playwright brings apartheid into focus,” writes Rubio, “Fugard demands an identification that is beyond most performers, but Hibbert disappears into Sam.” (56) In 1987 while teaching at the North Carolina School for the Arts, Hibbert played Zachariah again in the university production of Blood Knot , receiving stellar reviews. (57) Studying Fugard, playing his roles, and thinking about racism was becoming a central concern in Hibbert’s lifework. Hibbert was drawn to Harlem in his quest to perform plays written by Black writers about their own identity. Earlier Afro-Caribbeans had been key figures in the international Harlem Renaissance. (58) In the late 1960s Harlem was alive with militant activist ferment due to the turmoil of the Civil Rights movement and assassination of Malcolm X. Black culture was fostered by the New Lafayette Theatre, the short-lived Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School, the New Heritage Repertory Theatre, Harlem Dance Theatre, the journal Umbra and the Harlem School of the Arts among others. (59) Hibbert wrote a short prose piece, “Harlem Adagio: Part of a Symphony for Black Men Uptown,” which describes the urban scene. At first, the mood of the essay is upbeat: “at the New Lafayette, there were sold-out houses of people wearing dashikis and afros you couldn’t see around!” Hibbert noticed “Black men were looking each other squarely in the eyes for the first time in their generation’s memory. Malcolm’s words were pouring out of the most unlikely mouths in word-for-word accurate quotes; Stokely Carmichael was upfronting it all over the university campuses; and the Panthers were going to lead this revolution to kingdom come.” (60) Yet Broadway was still difficult for Black actors except for superstars, and local roles were not easy to win for a newly emigrated West Indian actor. (61) After Hibbert’s fifth unsuccessful audition in one day, ranging from Equity Principals Only to Off-Off-Broadway, his agent, who had previously respected Hibbert’s Jamaican identity, urged him to lose his Caribbean accent, something the actor refused to do. His desire to keep his linguistic culture alive was certainly influenced by Louise Bennett-Coverley who, as aforementioned, had taught in Hibbert’s secondary school. In his poem “For Those in Exile,” he wrote, “Talk bad-talk with pride/ For Louise is dictionary now!” (62) At the end of “Harlem Adagio” Hibbert talks about fighting poverty, dodging bill collectors and disrespect, and becomes furious, “Jesus Christ! I gon’ kill somebody if this go on much longer…DAMN!” (63) But then Hibbert was hired as the director of the drama workshop at the Harlem School of the Arts (HAS). After his experience in Jamaica both teaching and working with cultural development, this position was a perfect fit. The school was founded in 1964 by singer Dorothy Maynor, and offered children and adults opportunities to study music, visual arts, and theatre. She wanted children to be exposed to beauty within their community and to develop their talents from an early age. Maynor selected teachers who, like Hibbert, were professional but also adaptable to people coping with deep poverty and racial prejudice. (64) HAS hired five theatre faculty and inaugurated a new performance space in a converted garage in 1969. They presented Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo that told the story of Patrice Lumumba's rise to power and assassination in 1961. Césaire, poet, writer and political figure from Martinique had been one of the founders of the French literary movement Négritude . Césaire advocated for acceptance of blackness in order to free or decolonize the mind. For his part, Hibbert directed a Nigerian play Akowawe with Afolabi Ajayi and the Moari-Moayo [Mbari Mbayo] Players, which included African music and lyrics in English, Swahili, and Yoruba. (65) Variant spellings of Yoruba names have obscured its relationship with the Mbari Mbayo clubs founded by Yoruban playwright Duro Adipo in Nigeria. Adipo’s theatre company produced performances heavily infused with Yoruba rituals, poetry, dance and theatre using authentic, historical instruments. (66) These two events show how Hibbert and the Harlem School of the Arts were instrumental in bringing contemporary pan-African culture to local audiences. Hibbert’s book of poetry, Anansi and Muntu , published in 1986, grew from free-form lyrics performed with musicians in Harlem and Los Angeles in the 1970s. (67) The explosive mid-1970s reception of Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley may have bolstered the appeal of Hibbert’s performance pieces. (68) But the actor’s work had roots in the jazz poetry performed at Theatre 77 in Kingston, particularly Langston Hughes’ Ask Your Mama—Twelve moods for Jazz , which derived from the Harlem Renaissance. Hibbert writes that “Beyond the meaning of Caribbean words and their color is the rhythm of the language,” a kind of music. (69) He hoped to communicate, “clearly and succinctly, in short staccato sentences” pulsing “like the real jazz” with the “shouts of gospel” when it was “newborn, warm and supine, splendidly cathartic and holy.” (70) An especially notable poem, “A Requiem,” commemorates Paul Robeson’s death in January 1976. It begins, “Paul Robeson left today/With dignity,” and ends “Maybe you and I, small dedication/ Living best the Force we know/For another unsung prophet/ In this Black race, against Time.” Hibbert may have attended Robeson’s funeral held in Harlem at the AME Zion Church and was deeply moved by his life struggles. Another section, Somewhere a Third World, contains poems on South Africa. “Bloodbath: for Six High School Students Shot in Soweto,” decries police brutality in the Soweto riots that protested using only English or Afrikaans in all schools. From the Black point of view, this was the language of oppression. Hibbert writes, “Robbery of a people’s native right/Their chess game of securities and power/ And the UN didn’t even notice/ Black blood dripping/Between the fingers of corporate handshakes….” (71) In a section on going home, he reflects on his exile and identity: “ We climbed over fences to larger fields/And schoolhouse places relearning/Three-hundred years’ curriculum of self. And Britons, never, never, never shall be slaves.” (72) When Hibbert revisited his mother’s house after her death in 1984 he wrote, “Dreams come solid, incessant/ Through long nights remembering/ Where I keep my pain locked up/ Hollowing out my chest.” (73) Anansi and Muntu is a journal defining his Jamaican birthright and identity in the wider international world. Teaching a Postcolonial discourse for future generations Hibbert had personal experience of cultural imperialism in British control of educational curricula as a strategy for handling colonized subjugated people. Sub-par education for African Americans was also a significant problem in the United States. While earning a graduate teaching degree at Illinois State University, he directed the Black Fine Arts Festival. In an interview he said, “We have temporarily lost track of our true cultural heritage and one of the functions of this festival will be to help us reunite this lost past with our present.” (74) He displays a Postcolonial awareness of the need to educate and excavate the African American cultural heritage as an independent story that contradicts the traditional colonial narrative. Hibbert’s teaching embodied these principles in the 1970s. His first full-time teaching job was head of the newly formed Drama department at Rutgers University, Livingston campus. This was six years after the riots in Newark, New Jersey when Black protestors took to the streets to stand against the discrimination, lack of representation and working opportunities in the city. (75) Though Rutgers had created new departments and curricula “to serve the needs of the multi-ethnic community,” Hibbert observed that Blacks had little place or input in a white power structure, which seemed to be less concerned with issues than appearances. (76) While at Rutgers, Hibbert ventured into the American South, lured by a visiting artist opportunity to play “King Lear” at a Virginia university. In this setting Hibbert experimented with delivering his lines in the rhythm and patterns of Jamaican patois (patwa). By this time a formidable teacher, white student cast members remember him “beating a drum and leading us around the room to changing rhythms while vocalizing to the movements.” (77) Rehearsals ended in discussions of how each actor’s movement synched with the lines. “It was an amazing piece of work,” writes the costumer. “Sydney would be speaking quietly and then, suddenly near the end of the play, would burst into an eloquent fury, ripping off the clothing I had put on his back.” (78) In 1983, Hibbert joined the faculty of the North Carolina School for the Arts in Winston-Salem. (79) As one of only three Black NCSA faculty members, Hibbert believed that minority students should be taught survival skills because they would go into the drama world as pioneers. (80) His efforts to get Black actors cast in the same roles as Whites were termed “heroic” in a Winston-Salem newspaper. (81) Hibbert’s approach to teaching was shown in a workshop he offered using an integrated approach to drama, dance, movement, music, poetry, and dramatic literature, while his “Putting Your Best Voice Forward” class dealt with voice production and speech as applied to the “extension of personality.” (82) Hibbert also worked with the Winston-Salem based North Carolina Black Repertory Company, the first showcase for Black theatre professionals in the state and one of the first in the nation. (83) Founded in 1979 by entrepreneur/performer Larry Leon Hamlin and fueled by the same forces that had motivated Hibbert to travel from Jamaica to the United States, the missions of the organization were to “engage, enrich and entertain” with innovative programming of a high quality that “resonates across the community and challenges social perceptions,” to expose “diverse audiences to Black classics,” as well as to develop and produce new works.” (84) Of special importance to Hibbert, the company sought to sustain Black theatre internationally and provide a space in which theatre professionals could earn a living through their craft. (85) Hibbert brought broad experience to the NCBRC and the first Black Theatre Festival, where he performed well-received pieces from Anansi and Muntu and was a guest artist at an “Evening of Aesthetic Ambience,” organized to recognize officers and board members. (86) In the first year of the National Black Theatre Festival that established it as a national force, Hibbert was a special consultant to Hamlin, the artistic director of the company, helping to organize events and influencing the productions of Fugard’s The Island and Sizwe Bansi is Dead . (87) He was in contact with Maya Angelou, his previous director who became the first national chairperson for the Festival. In recognition of his work, Angelou presented him with the 1989 Conference Award for Outstanding Service. (88) After Hibbert’s death in 1990, commemorative articles refer to his accomplishments as an actor, director, writer, and theatrical entrepreneur. (89) His evocative poetry and prose as well as his “exuberance, and demanding nature as a teacher” are noted. (90) Students remember Hibbert’s voice carrying “the heavy flavor of his native accent” combined with his “rich sense of humor” reflecting “the joy he took in life” and “in the practice of his life’s work.” (91) Hamlin summarized Hibbert’s contributions saying, “Sydney believed that no matter the amount of adversity, there was always a way to overcome that. Not only could one dream the impossible dream, but one could make that dream a reality” adding, “One of the things I most liked about him was that his growing up in Jamaica had a lot to do with who he was and how he saw things.” (92) Sydney Hibbert, a man who grew from a rigid colonial education and culture as a child to a postcolonial theatre professional pushed against the racial and cultural barriers of his day, may have longed for respect for his homeland, his home culture, and himself. A choice to earn that respect for self and nation by showing the colonizer’s culture, writ large, that he could accomplish significant things on the field that those colonizers had created, is understandable. His experience surely led him to realize the value of teaching a younger generation to do better and his own Black students to be more empowered and aware. His anti-colonialist drive emerged in his powerful performances of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, now re-envisioned, as much as in roles in Fugard’s plays that brought social and racial inequities and questions about humanity to the fore. The battle that Theatre 77/Barn colleagues fought at home and in Britain, he fought in the United States. Hibbert’s choice, however, seems to have meant walking a lonely path in a culture or society where he may never have felt completely at ease. In his poetry, he displayed a sense of anger and displacement or, as Homi Bhabha has termed it, “unhomeliness.” (93) Hibbert moved from Kingston, Jamaica, to London, to Washington, D. C., Harlem, Los Angeles, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but he never have found a physical space or social reality that was compatible with his Jamaican identity. As African American journalist Sam Fulwood III writes, animosity often clouds relationships between Caribbean immigrants and native-born African Americans citizens because of competition for jobs and differences in their dealings with whites.(94) In Hibbert’s lifetime people of West Indian descent, a minority within a minority, occupied lofty positions in American life and culture, including former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, Harvard historical/cultural sociologist Orlando Patterson, Caribbean American writer Jamaica Kincaid, and entertainer Harry Belafonte among others. Though Hibbert’s career and life accomplishments are less well-known, attention is merited because of the breadth and quality of his work as well as his passion for changing the racial discourse in Jamaica and the United States. In an age of reclaiming the histories of People of Color and seeking to understand the experiences of people growing up in a colonial setting, this work reconstructs the life of a “Caribbean soul” who successfully negotiated the changes from Jamaican colonial life to a decolonized life in the United States. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Sydney Hibbert, Anansi and Muntu: A Caribbean Soul in Exile , (Rural Hill, NC: Independent Publishing Company, 1986), 44. See also, Gerald McDermott, Anansi the Spider: a tale from the Ashanti , (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1972). Anansi is a folktale character in the shape of a spider, often considered a god of all knowledge and stories, a trickster, one of the most important characters of Caribbean folklore and the genesis of the later Brer Rabbit in the American South. Muntu embraces living and dead, ancestors and deified ancestors. The author wishes to thank Dennis C. Beck, Professor of Theatre: Theatre History/Dramatic Literature at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA and Kathleen Giles Arthur, Professor emerita of Art History, for their invaluable assistance and editorial comments. For general history, see Clinton V. Black, The History of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: Longman Publishing & Collins Educational Press,1958); Errol G. Hill, The Jamaican Stage, 1655-1900: Profile of a Colonial Theatre , (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992); Philip Sherlock and Hazel Bennett, The Story of the Jamaican People (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Rundle Publishers,1998); Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt that Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020). Sherlock and Bennett, Jamaican People , 77-98. Sherlock and Bennett, Jamaican People , 116-127. Rachel Manley, Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood, (Key Porter Books, 2009), Prologue xi. For specific information on slavery and the processing of sugar see “Sugar’s Revolution” in Ada Ferrar, Cuba: An American History , (New York: Scribner, 2021), 69 -77. Ferrar, Cuba pp. 73-74. Marlis Schweitzer calls these theatrical gatherings “sites that facilitated collective alignment with the “ideals and aesthetics of the ‘mother country,’” as quoted in Susan Valladares’ The Review of English Studies , Vol. 73, no. 309, April 2022, 322. Hill, Jamaican Stage , p. 237, n. 2, also credits Richardson Wright, Revels in Jamaica, 1682-1838 , (New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1937). By the early nineteenth century, segregation had become commonplace in the Kingston Theatre, though not many years later the “caste system,” white sailors and educated blacks, was “overriding racial lines.” Hill, Jamaican Stage , 36-37. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva suggests in Racism Without Racists , “Since theatre is based in storytelling” and “its ability to lie in the realm of the given,” it can “help [spectators] make sense of the world but in ways that reinforce the status quo,” in Rowman & Littlefield, sixth edition, 96. Hundreds of people saw costumes that were identical to those used earlier at London's Savoy Theatre, in https://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/history/story0010.html . Yvonne Brewster, Vaulting Ambition: Jamaica’s Barn Theatre, 1966-2005, (Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2017), 23. Wycliffe and Hazel Bennett, The Jamaican Theatre: Highlights of the Performing Arts in the Twentieth Century , (Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2011), 55-78. Hill, Jamaican Stage , 272-289. On folk elements (dance and music) in African-Caribbean plays, see Osita Okagbue, Culture and Identity in African and Caribbean Theatre , (London: Adonis and Abbey Publishers, 2009), 191-201. Sherlock and Bennett, in Jamaican People , p. 368, hypothesize that rejection of Nazism at the end of World War II influenced Britain’s abandonment of concepts of Empire and trusteeship. “Echoes Still Heard,” Hibbert, Anansi and Muntu , 16. He played on the spelling of suffrage to change its meaning to suffering. “Wid a(n) X” show the lines are written in Jamaican patois. Lil Thompson, “Sydney Hibbert: The Discipline Pays Off,” Winston-Salem Journal , July 31, 1986, 26. They lived at 4 Hart Lane behind Lismore Street, running off of Old Hope Rd. See https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1934-06-05/page-5/ Hibbert, “The Lane, Tempo Mystique,” Anansi and Muntu , 9. Hibbert, “Actor Boy,” Anansi and Muntu , 13. Hibbert, “Morning Call,” Anansi and Muntu , 12. Black, History of Jamaica , 137-140; A. Wesley Powell, The Excelsior-EXED Story , (Kingston: The Methodist Church in the Caribbean and Americas, Jamaica District), 1989. Powell, 27-28, 41-47. Louise Bennett was awarded a British Council scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London, and returned to teach at Excelsior 1946-48. By writing in dialect, Bennett-Coverley was following in the footsteps of Jamaican poet Claude McKay. “Local Dramatist Returns,” https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1965-08-04/page-6/ https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-133/out-of-many . King said, “Here you have people from many national backgrounds: Chinese, Indians, so-called Negroes, and you can just go down the line, Europeans, and people from many, many nations. Do you know they all live there and they have a motto in Jamaica, “Out of many people, one people.” And they say, “Here in Jamaica we are not Chinese, we are not Japanese, we are not Indians, we are not Negroes, we are not Englishmen, we are not Canadians. But we are all one big family of Jamaicans.” Monique D.D. Kelly, “Examining Race in Jamaica: How Racial Category and Skin Color Structure Social Inequality,” The Journal of Race and Social Problems , Vol. 18 (2020), 300-312. Hertice Altink, Public Secrets: Race and Skin Colour in Colonial and Independent Jamaica , (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019). Hibbert, “Actor Boy,” 13. The term “high-brown” was used in Harlem in the 1920s and found in Black women’s face powder sold as “High Brown” by the Overton-Hygienic Company, Chicago. Sherlock and Bennet, Jamaican People , 292-315, 362-63. Rupert Lewis, “Jamaican Black Power in the 1960s,” in Black Power in the Caribbean , ed., Kate Quinn, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014), 55-56. Rex Nettleford, Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica , (New York: William Morrow, 1973), 19-37. Robert G. Dryden, “John Gay's Polly: Unmasking Pirates and Fortune Hunters in the West Indies,” Eighteenth-Century Studies , Vol. 34, No. 4, (2001), 539-557. Stoney Lloyd, “Local Dramatist Returns,” Daily Gleaner , August 4, 1965, 6. Besides those listed above, he played in the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman and Patrick Hamilton’s psychological drama The Duke in Darkness , and four separate characters in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood . He produced Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and Chekov’s Uncle Vanya , which placed on the honor list of productions in the Student Repertory Theatre. “Local Dramatist Returns,” Daily Gleaner. August 4, 1965, 7-8. Hibbert took acting classes from Kingston teacher, Violette de Barovier Riel at her Continental Academy workshop and acted with the Repertory Players, Caribbean Thespians, and the Coke Drama Group. He was married and his wife joined him. Gleaner , August 10, 1963, 19 and Gleaner, August 15, 1965, 20. He portrayed what one reviewer called an elegant Thane of Cawdor in Shakespeare’s Macbeth . Carol McGinnis Kay, “The Alabama Shakespeare Festival,” Shakespeare Quarterly , Vol. 30, No. 2 (1979), 205-208. J. H. Crouch, “The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Quarterly , Vol. 21 (1970), 465-467. This critic used racial stereotypes that would be considered inappropriate today. Kari Howard, Kaleidoscope , “Drama Review: Othello a Mellow Fellow,” September 29, 1983, University of North Carolina at Asheville, 7. “First Novel Wins Acclaim,” Daily Gleaner , August 9, 1962, p. 24. See Imani D. Owens, “Toward a Truly Indigenous Theatre: Sylvia Wynter Adapts Federico García Lorca,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , 4:1 (2017), 49-67. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1962-11-25/page-9/ The Morant Bay Rebellion broke out on October 11, 1865, when several hundred black people raided the police station and stole weapons stored there. Two planters were killed, and several others were threatened. With the disturbances spreading, the Jamaican authorities put down the rebellion so brutally that direct rule from London was established, which ended representative government in the island for decades. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1965-10-17/page-18/ ; https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1965-10-26/page-18/ Veronica M. Gregg, “Commemorations in Jamaica: A Brief History of Conflicts.” Caribbean Quarterly 56, no. 1/2 (2010): 23–67, especially 28-29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654952 . Carole Boyce Davies, “From Masquerade to Maskarade,” in Sylvia Winter, On Being Human as Praxis , ed. Katherine McKittrick, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015), 203-225 https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1966-03-02/page-7/ ; Members who had been involved in Ballad were Sydney Hibbert, Billy Woung, Trevor Rhone, Grace Lannaman, and Munair Zacca. Bennett, The Jamaican Theatre , 90-94; Brewster, Vaulting Ambition, 16-20. Sydney was fresh from acting and management training in London. Trevor Rhone and Yvonne Brewster had studied at the Rose Bruford College in Kent. Rhone became a well-known playwright and was presented with the Institute of Jamaica Musgrave Gold Medal. Brewster founded the Talawa Theatre Company, London and, after a long career acting, directing and producing was awarded an Order of the British Empire. Brewster, Vaulting Ambition , 16-17. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1966-03-06/page-17/ ; As Brewster tells the story, there was no review. For the post mortem, see Trevor Rhone, Bellas Gate Boy , (Oxford, England: MacMillan Caribbean Writers, 2008), 29-32. Brewster, Vaulting Ambition, 17-19. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1966-07-20/page-26/ Daily Gleaner, “Merry-go-round,” June 14, 1966, Brewster, Vaulting Ambition , 33. George Carter had been a pioneer theatre director and lighting designer in Kingston since the 1940s. He was lighting designer for the musicals, pageants, dance and pantomimes in the Little Theatre Movement. In 1961 he received an Arts Council award to study in London at Sadler Wells Ballet and the Shakespeare Memorial theatre at Stratford. Hibbert’s post-Theatre 77 lecturing and teaching activities in Jamaica were extensive, as documented in Daily Gleaner, “Trends in Theatre,” October 06, 1965, 26; “New Slants to Known History,” October 14, 1965; “Drama workshop opens today,” April 25, 1966, 16; “Jamaica Festival Kingston and Saint Andrew Training courses,” April 26, 1966, 5; “Continental Academy Drama Course,” April 8, 1967, 18; “Festival Seminar, Drama Seminars,” April 25-29,” 1967, 26; May 11, 1967, 26. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2416/the-art-of-theatre-no-8-athol-fugard It toured to Cape town and other locations until June 1962. Soon after the show closed, laws were passed prohibiting racially mixed casts or audiences in South Africa. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095512988 and https://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/ fugard.html/. The Blood Knot starring J. D. Cannon as Morris and James Earl Jones as Zachariah at the Cricket Theatre in 1964, as noted in “Blood Knot' Lists American Premiere,” New York Times , Friday, January 31, 1964, 16. Milner's most significant contribution to African-American letters was Black Drama Anthology (1972), the earliest and most respected anthology of Black plays. It included works by Milner, Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, and Langston Hughes https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100158957 ) Winston-Salem Chronicle , “Hibbert honored by LA drama critics,” March 27, 1986, A-12. The Drama-Logue newspaper, a weekly west-coast theatre trade publication, gave Drama-Logue Theatre Critics Awards for theatre work done in Los Angeles and Southern California. See https://www.abouttheartists.com/award_groups/184-drama-logue-awards/year/1988 . Lawrence Christon in “Stage Review: Playwright as Exorcist in Master Harold and the Boys ' South Coast Repertory,” Los Angeles Times May 25, 1985, in https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-05-25 -ca-25 15632-story.html. Jeff Rubio, Santa Ana Orange County Register, May 24, 1985, 148. Robin Barksdale, “Group bound by ‘Blood Knot’” in “Close-Up,” Chronicle, April 30, 1987, A6. The Jamaican poet Claude McKay (1890-1948) settled in New York City in 1914 and wrote about Black life in Jamaica and challenges faced by Black Americans, often in the influential Pearson’s Magazine and Liberator . Marcus Garvey, founder of the UNIA, had lived in Harlem from 1916 until 1924. See the excellent film with photos and interviews by the Community Works N.Y.C. and the New Heritage Theatre Group, ( https://www.harlem-is.org/videos ) at https://youtu.be/vGG0LMPlf_Y Hibbert describes the whole Harlem scene, Ananzi , 30-31. See also James E. Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s , (Raleigh, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement , Vernon D. Mitchell, Cynthia Davis, editors (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). African-Americans Pearl Bailey ( Hello Dolly ) and James Earl Jones ( The Great White Hope) were playing starring roles on Broadway, but the Caribbean American Repertory Theatre (CART) was only founded in 1975. See Olivier Stephenson, Visions and Voices (Leeds: Peepal Press, 2013), and http://southernworldartsnews.blogspot.com/2015/03/caribbean-playwrights-converse-and.html Hibbert, Ananzi , 49. Bennett-Coverley brought recognition to the Jamaican Creole dialect through her poetry and Jamaica Radio series “Mis Lou’s Views” that ran 1965-1982. Hibbert, Anansi and Muntu , 29-34. He was divorced from his first wife and married Jamaican Claire Gutzmore in Manhattan in 1969. See https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1969-06-02/page-4/ and https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/903708390:61406?tid=&pid=&queryId=df594283-1d04-45d8-83aa-de0675f898fa&_phsrc=SVt1380&_phstart=successSource . William F. Rogers, Jr., “The Establishment of the Harlem School of the Arts,” Black Music Research Journal , Vol. 8 (1988), 223-236. Negro Digest (later Black World), Vol. 18, August 1969, 50. Spelled two different ways in the same article. See Genevieve Fabre, “A Checklist of Plays, Pageants, Rituals and Musicals by Afro-American authors performed in the United States 1960-1973,” Black World/ Negro Digest, April 1974, 95. Afolabi Ajayi is recorded a as Nigerian recipient of a scholarship to Pomona College where he graduated in 1964; he was deceased by 1975. See https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDAAU440.pdf Okeke-Agulu, Chika. “Rethinking Mbari Mbayo: Osogbo Workshops in the 1960s, Nigeria.” In African Art and Agency in the Workshop , edited by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till Forster, 154–79. Indiana University Press, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gh6fp.11 . This is a new discovery that needs to be explored. Reported in “Studies in Caribbean and South American Literature: An Annual Annotated Bibliography, 1989.” Callaloo 13, no. 3 (1990): 564. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2931339 . Anansi “is the ‘spiderman’ in Caribbean folktales who “survives by adopting a role” and “guarding his sense of humor that pricks pretension—especially his own,” whereas, “Muntu,” the Bantu word for soul, spirit or otherness, goes with Anansi on his journeys providing stability, an unshakable inner identity. He sees two worlds, past and present clearly though he often chooses to remain quiet and detached,” in Hibbert, Anansi “Introduction.” The actor’s pointed observations are a long way from the “One Love!” sensibilities in Marley’s work. For more on Marley, see Timothy White, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000) and Roger Steffens, So Many Things to Say; the Oral History of Bob Marley , (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). Hibbert, Anansi “Introduction,” p. x. Hibbert aspires to “taste, philosophize, and one day even write the answers clearly, succinctly in short staccato sentences” that will be “hailed as a new style,” pulsing “like the real jazz,” blooming with “the colors and textures of the blues,” and mounting “crescendos like the shouts of gospel when it was just newborn, warm and supine, splendidly cathartic and holy, in “Harlem Adagio,” Anansi, 29. Hibbert, “Bloodbath,” Anansi , 61. Hibbert, “For Those in Exile,” Anansi, 49. Hibbert, “Visit ’84,” Anansi , 53. “The Black Fine Arts Festival,” Illinois State University, The Vidette , Vol. 82, n. 54, April 17, 1970. The theme was “The Meaning of Blackness,” with films and prominent lecturers; The Vidette Vol. 83, no.47, March 9, 1971; Vol. 84, n.39, February 8, 1972; The Vidette , Vol. 84, n. 55, March 21, 1972. The unrest from July 12-17, 1967 “came during a period when racial tensions were exploding into violent conflagrations across the country.” Over several days in Newark, “twenty-seven people were killed — many of them black residents, as well as a white firefighter and a white police detective — and more than 700 were injured,” Rick Rojas and Khorri Atkinson, “Fifty Years After the Uprising: Five Days of Unrest That Shaped, and Haunted, Newark,” New York Times, July 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/nyregion/newark-riots-50-years.html Daily Gleaner , “Jamaican Dramatist Returns for a Visit,” May 23, 1973, 5. On the Rutgers/Livingston situation, see Paul G.E. Clemens, “The Early Years of Livingston College, 1964–1973: Revisiting The “College of Good Intentions” in The Journal of The Rutgers University Libraries , Vol. 6-7, 71-114, in http://dx.doi.org/10.14713/jrul.v68i2.1987 . Pat Woodson, “Hibbert Accepts Lead—First Reading Inspires Cast,” The Breeze , September 24, 1974, pp. 3, 6; Jeffrey Alan Dailey, Communication with author, August 2, 2021. Pat Woodson, “Lear Costume Designs,” The Breeze , October 11, 1974, 3; Pamela Johnson, Communication with author, September 30, 2021. According to the Winston-Salem Chronicle , December 6, 1990, B10, Hibbert had already lectured and done university-level workshops on the Los Angeles, Northridge and Pomona California State University campuses while performing in Southern California in the 1980s. Robin Barksdale, “Group bound by ‘Blood Knot’” in “Close-Up,” Winston-Salem Chronicle, April 30, 1987, A-6. Winston-Salem Chronicle , “The Actor as Instrument,” June 21, 1984,16, and Glenda E. Gill, “Schertzer racially biased,” in “Forum,” Chronicle , Thursday, January 21, 1988, A-5. Winston-Salem Chronicle , “The Actor as Instrument,” June 21, 1984, 16; Winston-Salem Journal , December 22, 1985, 40. These organizations included The Flonnie Anderson Theatrical Association and Nell Lite Productions, see Felecia Piggot McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory Company —Twenty-five Marvtastic Years, (Greensboro: Open Hand Publishing, LLC,2005) 22. McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory , 5, “The black self-affirmation fueled by the Civil Rights Movement carried over to the Black Powers Movement and, consequently, to its cultural wing – the Black Arts Movement.” https://www.ncblackrep.org/about-us/html . Winston-Salem Chronicle “Looking Back on 1986,” “Sydney Hibbert performs a mixture of humor and pathos in his Anansi and Muntu ,” Feb. 5, 1987, C-4; McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory, 41, 61; Winston-Salem Chronicle , “Can We Talk?” September 24, 1987, A-8. McMillan, 61; The Island and Sizwi Banzi is Dead written by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona were originally performed in 1972 in Cape town, South Africa. McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory Company , 46-50. Other celebrities were Oprah Winfrey, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, and Roscoe Lee Brown. Mabel Robinson, former NCBR Artistic Director, Winston-Salem Chronicle, December 6, 1990, B-9; Winston-Salem Chronicle , January 10, 1991, A-8. Daily Gleaner , Tuesday, January 15, 1991, 27. Patricia Smith Deering, “Renowned local dramatist remembered,” Winston-Salem Chronicle , December 6, 1990, 25. John Hoeffel, “Drama Professor Sydney Hibbert Dies of Cancer,” Winston-Salem Journal, November 30, 1990, 12; Nathan Ross Freeman wrote and directed a play based on Hibbert, Your Side Mine , that was performed at the Montage Showcase Ensemble in November 1997. See https://www.greensboro.com/ensemble-gives-playwrights-a-chance/article_68b7d190-97d4-5e5b-b6ea-891a97f0c19f.html . Homi Bhabha, “The World and the Home,” Social Text , 31/32 (1992), 141-153. Hibbert experienced the “unhomeliness” in the sense of his exile and itinerant life style. Though he became a US citizen in 1978, he was constantly moving from the East to West Coasts. In “Sermon in a Dream-Mass: Port Elizabeth, South Africa,” the lanes of Kingston where he grew up haunted his imagination becoming metaphors for danger and death. Sam Fulwood III, “U.S. Blacks: A Divided Experience,” November 25,1995, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-11-25-mn-6855-story.html . Footnotes Sydney Hibbert, Anansi and Muntu: A Caribbean Soul in Exile , (Rural Hill, NC: Independent Publishing Company, 1986), 44. See also, Gerald McDermott, Anansi the Spider: a tale from the Ashanti , (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1972). Anansi is a folktale character in the shape of a spider, often considered a god of all knowledge and stories, a trickster, one of the most important characters of Caribbean folklore and the genesis of the later Brer Rabbit in the American South. Muntu embraces living and dead, ancestors and deified ancestors. The author wishes to thank Dennis C. Beck, Professor of Theatre: Theatre History/Dramatic Literature at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA and Kathleen Giles Arthur, Professor emerita of Art History, for their invaluable assistance and editorial comments. For general history, see Clinton V. Black, The History of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: Longman Publishing & Collins Educational Press,1958); Errol G. Hill, The Jamaican Stage, 1655-1900: Profile of a Colonial Theatre , (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992); Philip Sherlock and Hazel Bennett, The Story of the Jamaican People (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Rundle Publishers,1998); Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt that Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020). Sherlock and Bennett, Jamaican People , 77-98. Sherlock and Bennett, Jamaican People , 116-127. Rachel Manley, Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood, (Key Porter Books, 2009), Prologue xi. For specific information on slavery and the processing of sugar see “Sugar’s Revolution” in Ada Ferrar, Cuba: An American History , (New York: Scribner, 2021), 69 -77. Ferrar, Cuba pp. 73-74. Marlis Schweitzer calls these theatrical gatherings “sites that facilitated collective alignment with the “ideals and aesthetics of the ‘mother country,’” as quoted in Susan Valladares’ The Review of English Studies , Vol. 73, no. 309, April 2022, 322. Hill, Jamaican Stage , p. 237, n. 2, also credits Richardson Wright, Revels in Jamaica, 1682-1838 , (New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1937). By the early nineteenth century, segregation had become commonplace in the Kingston Theatre, though not many years later the “caste system,” white sailors and educated blacks, was “overriding racial lines.” Hill, Jamaican Stage , 36-37. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva suggests in Racism Without Racists , “Since theatre is based in storytelling” and “its ability to lie in the realm of the given,” it can “help [spectators] make sense of the world but in ways that reinforce the status quo,” in Rowman & Littlefield, sixth edition, 96. Hundreds of people saw costumes that were identical to those used earlier at London's Savoy Theatre, in https://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/pages/history/story0010.html . Yvonne Brewster, Vaulting Ambition: Jamaica’s Barn Theatre, 1966-2005, (Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2017), 23. Wycliffe and Hazel Bennett, The Jamaican Theatre: Highlights of the Performing Arts in the Twentieth Century , (Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2011), 55-78. Hill, Jamaican Stage , 272-289. On folk elements (dance and music) in African-Caribbean plays, see Osita Okagbue, Culture and Identity in African and Caribbean Theatre , (London: Adonis and Abbey Publishers, 2009), 191-201. Sherlock and Bennett, in Jamaican People , p. 368, hypothesize that rejection of Nazism at the end of World War II influenced Britain’s abandonment of concepts of Empire and trusteeship. “Echoes Still Heard,” Hibbert, Anansi and Muntu , 16. He played on the spelling of suffrage to change its meaning to suffering. “Wid a(n) X” show the lines are written in Jamaican patois. Lil Thompson, “Sydney Hibbert: The Discipline Pays Off,” Winston-Salem Journal , July 31, 1986, 26. They lived at 4 Hart Lane behind Lismore Street, running off of Old Hope Rd. See https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1934-06-05/page-5/ Hibbert, “The Lane, Tempo Mystique,” Anansi and Muntu , 9. Hibbert, “Actor Boy,” Anansi and Muntu , 13. Hibbert, “Morning Call,” Anansi and Muntu , 12. Black, History of Jamaica , 137-140; A. Wesley Powell, The Excelsior-EXED Story , (Kingston: The Methodist Church in the Caribbean and Americas, Jamaica District), 1989. Powell, 27-28, 41-47. Louise Bennett was awarded a British Council scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London, and returned to teach at Excelsior 1946-48. By writing in dialect, Bennett-Coverley was following in the footsteps of Jamaican poet Claude McKay. “Local Dramatist Returns,” https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1965-08-04/page-6/ https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-133/out-of-many . King said, “Here you have people from many national backgrounds: Chinese, Indians, so-called Negroes, and you can just go down the line, Europeans, and people from many, many nations. Do you know they all live there and they have a motto in Jamaica, “Out of many people, one people.” And they say, “Here in Jamaica we are not Chinese, we are not Japanese, we are not Indians, we are not Negroes, we are not Englishmen, we are not Canadians. But we are all one big family of Jamaicans.” Monique D.D. Kelly, “Examining Race in Jamaica: How Racial Category and Skin Color Structure Social Inequality,” The Journal of Race and Social Problems , Vol. 18 (2020), 300-312. Hertice Altink, Public Secrets: Race and Skin Colour in Colonial and Independent Jamaica , (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019). Hibbert, “Actor Boy,” 13. The term “high-brown” was used in Harlem in the 1920s and found in Black women’s face powder sold as “High Brown” by the Overton-Hygienic Company, Chicago. Sherlock and Bennet, Jamaican People , 292-315, 362-63. Rupert Lewis, “Jamaican Black Power in the 1960s,” in Black Power in the Caribbean , ed., Kate Quinn, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014), 55-56. Rex Nettleford, Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica , (New York: William Morrow, 1973), 19-37. Robert G. Dryden, “John Gay's Polly: Unmasking Pirates and Fortune Hunters in the West Indies,” Eighteenth-Century Studies , Vol. 34, No. 4, (2001), 539-557. Stoney Lloyd, “Local Dramatist Returns,” Daily Gleaner , August 4, 1965, 6. Besides those listed above, he played in the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman and Patrick Hamilton’s psychological drama The Duke in Darkness , and four separate characters in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood . He produced Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and Chekov’s Uncle Vanya , which placed on the honor list of productions in the Student Repertory Theatre. “Local Dramatist Returns,” Daily Gleaner. August 4, 1965, 7-8. Hibbert took acting classes from Kingston teacher, Violette de Barovier Riel at her Continental Academy workshop and acted with the Repertory Players, Caribbean Thespians, and the Coke Drama Group. He was married and his wife joined him. Gleaner , August 10, 1963, 19 and Gleaner, August 15, 1965, 20. He portrayed what one reviewer called an elegant Thane of Cawdor in Shakespeare’s Macbeth . Carol McGinnis Kay, “The Alabama Shakespeare Festival,” Shakespeare Quarterly , Vol. 30, No. 2 (1979), 205-208. J. H. Crouch, “The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare Quarterly , Vol. 21 (1970), 465-467. This critic used racial stereotypes that would be considered inappropriate today. Kari Howard, Kaleidoscope , “Drama Review: Othello a Mellow Fellow,” September 29, 1983, University of North Carolina at Asheville, 7. “First Novel Wins Acclaim,” Daily Gleaner , August 9, 1962, p. 24. See Imani D. Owens, “Toward a Truly Indigenous Theatre: Sylvia Wynter Adapts Federico García Lorca,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , 4:1 (2017), 49-67. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1962-11-25/page-9/ The Morant Bay Rebellion broke out on October 11, 1865, when several hundred black people raided the police station and stole weapons stored there. Two planters were killed, and several others were threatened. With the disturbances spreading, the Jamaican authorities put down the rebellion so brutally that direct rule from London was established, which ended representative government in the island for decades. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1965-10-17/page-18/ ; https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1965-10-26/page-18/ Veronica M. Gregg, “Commemorations in Jamaica: A Brief History of Conflicts.” Caribbean Quarterly 56, no. 1/2 (2010): 23–67, especially 28-29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654952 . Carole Boyce Davies, “From Masquerade to Maskarade,” in Sylvia Winter, On Being Human as Praxis , ed. Katherine McKittrick, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015), 203-225 https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1966-03-02/page-7/ ; Members who had been involved in Ballad were Sydney Hibbert, Billy Woung, Trevor Rhone, Grace Lannaman, and Munair Zacca. Bennett, The Jamaican Theatre , 90-94; Brewster, Vaulting Ambition, 16-20. Sydney was fresh from acting and management training in London. Trevor Rhone and Yvonne Brewster had studied at the Rose Bruford College in Kent. Rhone became a well-known playwright and was presented with the Institute of Jamaica Musgrave Gold Medal. Brewster founded the Talawa Theatre Company, London and, after a long career acting, directing and producing was awarded an Order of the British Empire. Brewster, Vaulting Ambition , 16-17. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1966-03-06/page-17/ ; As Brewster tells the story, there was no review. For the post mortem, see Trevor Rhone, Bellas Gate Boy , (Oxford, England: MacMillan Caribbean Writers, 2008), 29-32. Brewster, Vaulting Ambition, 17-19. https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1966-07-20/page-26/ Daily Gleaner, “Merry-go-round,” June 14, 1966, Brewster, Vaulting Ambition , 33. George Carter had been a pioneer theatre director and lighting designer in Kingston since the 1940s. He was lighting designer for the musicals, pageants, dance and pantomimes in the Little Theatre Movement. In 1961 he received an Arts Council award to study in London at Sadler Wells Ballet and the Shakespeare Memorial theatre at Stratford. Hibbert’s post-Theatre 77 lecturing and teaching activities in Jamaica were extensive, as documented in Daily Gleaner, “Trends in Theatre,” October 06, 1965, 26; “New Slants to Known History,” October 14, 1965; “Drama workshop opens today,” April 25, 1966, 16; “Jamaica Festival Kingston and Saint Andrew Training courses,” April 26, 1966, 5; “Continental Academy Drama Course,” April 8, 1967, 18; “Festival Seminar, Drama Seminars,” April 25-29,” 1967, 26; May 11, 1967, 26. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2416/the-art-of-theatre-no-8-athol-fugard It toured to Cape town and other locations until June 1962. Soon after the show closed, laws were passed prohibiting racially mixed casts or audiences in South Africa. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095512988 and https://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/ fugard.html/. The Blood Knot starring J. D. Cannon as Morris and James Earl Jones as Zachariah at the Cricket Theatre in 1964, as noted in “Blood Knot' Lists American Premiere,” New York Times , Friday, January 31, 1964, 16. Milner's most significant contribution to African-American letters was Black Drama Anthology (1972), the earliest and most respected anthology of Black plays. It included works by Milner, Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, and Langston Hughes https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100158957 ) Winston-Salem Chronicle , “Hibbert honored by LA drama critics,” March 27, 1986, A-12. The Drama-Logue newspaper, a weekly west-coast theatre trade publication, gave Drama-Logue Theatre Critics Awards for theatre work done in Los Angeles and Southern California. See https://www.abouttheartists.com/award_groups/184-drama-logue-awards/year/1988 . Lawrence Christon in “Stage Review: Playwright as Exorcist in Master Harold and the Boys ' South Coast Repertory,” Los Angeles Times May 25, 1985, in https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-05-25 -ca-25 15632-story.html. Jeff Rubio, Santa Ana Orange County Register, May 24, 1985, 148. Robin Barksdale, “Group bound by ‘Blood Knot’” in “Close-Up,” Chronicle, April 30, 1987, A6. The Jamaican poet Claude McKay (1890-1948) settled in New York City in 1914 and wrote about Black life in Jamaica and challenges faced by Black Americans, often in the influential Pearson’s Magazine and Liberator . Marcus Garvey, founder of the UNIA, had lived in Harlem from 1916 until 1924. See the excellent film with photos and interviews by the Community Works N.Y.C. and the New Heritage Theatre Group, ( https://www.harlem-is.org/videos ) at https://youtu.be/vGG0LMPlf_Y Hibbert describes the whole Harlem scene, Ananzi , 30-31. See also James E. Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s , (Raleigh, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement , Vernon D. Mitchell, Cynthia Davis, editors (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). African-Americans Pearl Bailey ( Hello Dolly ) and James Earl Jones ( The Great White Hope) were playing starring roles on Broadway, but the Caribbean American Repertory Theatre (CART) was only founded in 1975. See Olivier Stephenson, Visions and Voices (Leeds: Peepal Press, 2013), and http://southernworldartsnews.blogspot.com/2015/03/caribbean-playwrights-converse-and.html Hibbert, Ananzi , 49. Bennett-Coverley brought recognition to the Jamaican Creole dialect through her poetry and Jamaica Radio series “Mis Lou’s Views” that ran 1965-1982. Hibbert, Anansi and Muntu , 29-34. He was divorced from his first wife and married Jamaican Claire Gutzmore in Manhattan in 1969. See https://gleaner.newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner/1969-06-02/page-4/ and https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/903708390:61406?tid=&pid=&queryId=df594283-1d04-45d8-83aa-de0675f898fa&_phsrc=SVt1380&_phstart=successSource . William F. Rogers, Jr., “The Establishment of the Harlem School of the Arts,” Black Music Research Journal , Vol. 8 (1988), 223-236. Negro Digest (later Black World), Vol. 18, August 1969, 50. Spelled two different ways in the same article. See Genevieve Fabre, “A Checklist of Plays, Pageants, Rituals and Musicals by Afro-American authors performed in the United States 1960-1973,” Black World/ Negro Digest, April 1974, 95. Afolabi Ajayi is recorded a as Nigerian recipient of a scholarship to Pomona College where he graduated in 1964; he was deceased by 1975. See https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDAAU440.pdf Okeke-Agulu, Chika. “Rethinking Mbari Mbayo: Osogbo Workshops in the 1960s, Nigeria.” In African Art and Agency in the Workshop , edited by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir and Till Forster, 154–79. Indiana University Press, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gh6fp.11 . This is a new discovery that needs to be explored. Reported in “Studies in Caribbean and South American Literature: An Annual Annotated Bibliography, 1989.” Callaloo 13, no. 3 (1990): 564. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2931339 . Anansi “is the ‘spiderman’ in Caribbean folktales who “survives by adopting a role” and “guarding his sense of humor that pricks pretension—especially his own,” whereas, “Muntu,” the Bantu word for soul, spirit or otherness, goes with Anansi on his journeys providing stability, an unshakable inner identity. He sees two worlds, past and present clearly though he often chooses to remain quiet and detached,” in Hibbert, Anansi “Introduction.” The actor’s pointed observations are a long way from the “One Love!” sensibilities in Marley’s work. For more on Marley, see Timothy White, Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000) and Roger Steffens, So Many Things to Say; the Oral History of Bob Marley , (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). Hibbert, Anansi “Introduction,” p. x. Hibbert aspires to “taste, philosophize, and one day even write the answers clearly, succinctly in short staccato sentences” that will be “hailed as a new style,” pulsing “like the real jazz,” blooming with “the colors and textures of the blues,” and mounting “crescendos like the shouts of gospel when it was just newborn, warm and supine, splendidly cathartic and holy, in “Harlem Adagio,” Anansi, 29. Hibbert, “Bloodbath,” Anansi , 61. Hibbert, “For Those in Exile,” Anansi, 49. Hibbert, “Visit ’84,” Anansi , 53. “The Black Fine Arts Festival,” Illinois State University, The Vidette , Vol. 82, n. 54, April 17, 1970. The theme was “The Meaning of Blackness,” with films and prominent lecturers; The Vidette Vol. 83, no.47, March 9, 1971; Vol. 84, n.39, February 8, 1972; The Vidette , Vol. 84, n. 55, March 21, 1972. The unrest from July 12-17, 1967 “came during a period when racial tensions were exploding into violent conflagrations across the country.” Over several days in Newark, “twenty-seven people were killed — many of them black residents, as well as a white firefighter and a white police detective — and more than 700 were injured,” Rick Rojas and Khorri Atkinson, “Fifty Years After the Uprising: Five Days of Unrest That Shaped, and Haunted, Newark,” New York Times, July 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/nyregion/newark-riots-50-years.html Daily Gleaner , “Jamaican Dramatist Returns for a Visit,” May 23, 1973, 5. On the Rutgers/Livingston situation, see Paul G.E. Clemens, “The Early Years of Livingston College, 1964–1973: Revisiting The “College of Good Intentions” in The Journal of The Rutgers University Libraries , Vol. 6-7, 71-114, in http://dx.doi.org/10.14713/jrul.v68i2.1987 . Pat Woodson, “Hibbert Accepts Lead—First Reading Inspires Cast,” The Breeze , September 24, 1974, pp. 3, 6; Jeffrey Alan Dailey, Communication with author, August 2, 2021. Pat Woodson, “Lear Costume Designs,” The Breeze , October 11, 1974, 3; Pamela Johnson, Communication with author, September 30, 2021. According to the Winston-Salem Chronicle , December 6, 1990, B10, Hibbert had already lectured and done university-level workshops on the Los Angeles, Northridge and Pomona California State University campuses while performing in Southern California in the 1980s. Robin Barksdale, “Group bound by ‘Blood Knot’” in “Close-Up,” Winston-Salem Chronicle, April 30, 1987, A-6. Winston-Salem Chronicle , “The Actor as Instrument,” June 21, 1984,16, and Glenda E. Gill, “Schertzer racially biased,” in “Forum,” Chronicle , Thursday, January 21, 1988, A-5. Winston-Salem Chronicle , “The Actor as Instrument,” June 21, 1984, 16; Winston-Salem Journal , December 22, 1985, 40. These organizations included The Flonnie Anderson Theatrical Association and Nell Lite Productions, see Felecia Piggot McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory Company —Twenty-five Marvtastic Years, (Greensboro: Open Hand Publishing, LLC,2005) 22. McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory , 5, “The black self-affirmation fueled by the Civil Rights Movement carried over to the Black Powers Movement and, consequently, to its cultural wing – the Black Arts Movement.” https://www.ncblackrep.org/about-us/html . Winston-Salem Chronicle “Looking Back on 1986,” “Sydney Hibbert performs a mixture of humor and pathos in his Anansi and Muntu ,” Feb. 5, 1987, C-4; McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory, 41, 61; Winston-Salem Chronicle , “Can We Talk?” September 24, 1987, A-8. McMillan, 61; The Island and Sizwi Banzi is Dead written by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona were originally performed in 1972 in Cape town, South Africa. McMillan, North Carolina Black Repertory Company , 46-50. Other celebrities were Oprah Winfrey, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, and Roscoe Lee Brown. Mabel Robinson, former NCBR Artistic Director, Winston-Salem Chronicle, December 6, 1990, B-9; Winston-Salem Chronicle , January 10, 1991, A-8. Daily Gleaner , Tuesday, January 15, 1991, 27. Patricia Smith Deering, “Renowned local dramatist remembered,” Winston-Salem Chronicle , December 6, 1990, 25. John Hoeffel, “Drama Professor Sydney Hibbert Dies of Cancer,” Winston-Salem Journal, November 30, 1990, 12; Nathan Ross Freeman wrote and directed a play based on Hibbert, Your Side Mine , that was performed at the Montage Showcase Ensemble in November 1997. See https://www.greensboro.com/ensemble-gives-playwrights-a-chance/article_68b7d190-97d4-5e5b-b6ea-891a97f0c19f.html . Homi Bhabha, “The World and the Home,” Social Text , 31/32 (1992), 141-153. Hibbert experienced the “unhomeliness” in the sense of his exile and itinerant life style. Though he became a US citizen in 1978, he was constantly moving from the East to West Coasts. In “Sermon in a Dream-Mass: Port Elizabeth, South Africa,” the lanes of Kingston where he grew up haunted his imagination becoming metaphors for danger and death. Sam Fulwood III, “U.S. Blacks: A Divided Experience,” November 25,1995, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-11-25-mn-6855-story.html . About The Author(s) Thomas Arthur received his PhD in American Studies from Indiana University and is a Professor Emeritus of Theatre at James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He has written extensively on theatre performance and film practitioners and co-authored See You at the Movies , a book on Melvyn Douglas’s acting and political activities. Arthur has led acting workshops internationally, including in the townships of South Africa as apartheid ended. 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.

Raimondo Genna 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 Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law Raimondo Genna By Published on December 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law: A Theatre of Undocumentedness. By Gad Guterman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; Pp. 236. Written in 2014, Performance, Identity, and Immigration is a timely addition to the intersecting discourses of performance studies and immigration identity formations, particularly given the rhetoric of the 2016 presidential race in the United States. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, launched his presidential campaign by claiming that immigrants from Mexico (as well as Central and South America, and the Middle East) were drug smugglers, rapists, and generic criminals. While Trump’s speech was criticized by many across the political spectrum, he was able to secure the Republican nomination—in part—by reiterating the long-dominant narrative that promotes the criminality of "illegal aliens." Gad Guterman’s work serves as a valuable intervention against such rhetoric through his critical analysis of the interwoven fields of performance studies and immigration law, and his introduction of "undocumentedness." For Guterman, "undocumentedness" moves the discourse away from the dehumanizing and highly contentious term of "illegal alien," which serves as a performative descriptive, and focuses on the structural circumstances under which undocumented immigrants must live (2). But Guterman continues to strategically rely on terms such as "illegal" and "alien" to "remind us that law constructs categories that contribute to the building of identities" (3). This serves as his thesis as he studies the intersection of performance, immigration law, and identity. Through this critical lens, Guterman examines the performances and plays of Culture Clash, Carlo Albán, Genny Lim, Josefina López, Lisa Loomer, Milcha Sánchez-Scott, Guillermo Reyes, Janet Noble, Ntare Mwine, and Yussef El Guindi, among others, and explores how the power of the law shapes identity and "the practice of belonging" as "undocumentedness forges ways of being, seeing, and existing" (9). The plays discussed and Guterman’s analyses offer inroads to examining our own legal consciousness by positioning us to examine our understanding and use of the law in our everyday lives. Guterman organizes his analysis following the framework of the Immigration and Nationality Act in an attempt to better reflect the ways the US immigration laws operate to "define and constrain both individual and collective identity" (10). Chapter 1, which serves as his introduction, is entitled Act § 237 (a)(1)(B)—Present in Violation of the Law" and focuses on the impossible subject and the performative act of self-erasure by the undocumented as a strategy for inclusion and invisibility. In chapter 2, entitled "Act § 275(a)—Improper Entry by Alien," Guterman examines what he terms "border scenarios" (after Diana Taylor) as embodied asymmetrical power exchanges between the entrant and border monitor that perform and construct the very borders being policed. Chapter 3, "Act § 274A—Unlawful Employment of Aliens," interrogates the inseparable dyad of the undocumented domestic worker and the privileged employer while examining legal nonexistence’s impact on exploitation and worker rights. In chapter 4’s "Act §212(a)(9)(B)(iii)(III)—Family Unity," Guterman explores the legal construction of the family unit through heteronormative paradigms that simultaneously patrol "counterhegemonic lifestyles" (101). Guterman investigates the heightened criminality of undocumentedness (and also documentedness of color) in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks and the implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act in chapter 5, labeled, "Act § 331—Alien Enemies." In his final chapter, entitled "Act § 505—Appeals," Guterman challenges his own assessment concerning how US law shapes individual and communal identities through self-erasure and redirects the flow of how "illegal" identities contribute to the shaping of the US through the hyper-visible performances of the Disney- and Sesame Street-inspired characters in Times Square. In each chapter, Guterman uses dramatic works and performances to assist in his analysis of the various statutes and laws, submitting that these performances —and performative practices represented within the theatre pieces—demonstrate how immigration laws shape individual and communal identities. Each chapter offers cogent and clear examinations of the theatre pieces and the various laws the plays are in communication with (whether consciously or not). For Guterman, theatre offers opportunities to shape and change the perceptions of undocumentedness by making visible what is often rendered invisible. In doing so, it helps to reshape the legal consciousness of the nation towards the undocumented. Although celebratory in the promise that theatre can serve as a space for constructive and meaningful change, Guterman challenges theatre companies who inadvertently practice invisibility even as they perform visibility. Guterman draws attention to the fact that plays such as Sánchez-Scott’s Latina, Loomer’s Living Out, and Solis’s Lydia highlight the plight of the domestic workers and their lack of rights, but are played to dominantly white, privileged audiences. Dubbing it "undocumentedface," theatre practitioners participate in the continuing exclusion and rendering invisible the very people that are represented on stage by not reaching out and making theatre available to them. Dehumanization is not simply an attribute that works on the surface, but rather is internalized by the undocumented through the external forces of law and power. Having undocumentedness made visible for general audiences allows for empathetic connections, but for the undocumented it allows for a sense of empowerment and humanization. Guterman recognizes that it is not feasible or practical for the undocumented, who rely on invisibility to escape incarceration and deportation, to perform their stories on stage themselves, but to see their narratives performed before them works towards those forced to live in the shadows to recognize themselves—and their humanity—under the lights. Gad Guterman’s Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law: A Theatre of Undocumentedness is a valuable contribution to the field of performance studies and legal practices on identity formation. Examinations of performance and the law have long informed sexual and race identity discourses, but Guterman’s project delves into the under-examined area of the undocumented. While many of the examples within Performance, Identity, and Immigration Law focus on Latina/o theatre, it is by no means the only section of the undocumentedness explored in the book. Although the impact of the law on bodies differs in various communities based on race and gender, Guterman effectively demonstrates how the law dehumanizes and criminalizes immigrants, turning them into impossible subjects. Raimondo Genna University of South Dakota 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! Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Beth Wynstra, Mary Pinard 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 The Heart/Roots Project and a Pandemic Pivot Beth Wynstra, Mary Pinard By Published on April 30, 2023 Download Article as PDF The final moment of Heart/Roots: Wabaunsee County , a new community-based play, is a poem, called “Sonnet in the Voice of the Ruin.” This moment invites an actor to embody a ruin and state, Some of us, over time, become once restored, what we were, while others of us naturally stir new ideas, art, the infinite sum of dreams, made possible on a stage by stories, breathed to life from a page. These closing lines are a fitting end to a play inspired by stories from residents living in Wabaunsee County, Kansas. The lines also speak to the location of the 2022 premiere production of Heart/Roots , namely the ruin of a burned house on the grounds of The Volland Store, a one-time mercantile and general store that opened in 1913 and soon became the social and cultural center for the surrounding rural community. While The Volland Store fell into disrepair by the 1970s, it was transformed in 2015 by visionary philanthropists Jerry and Patty Reece into an art gallery, with a residence for visiting artists; it now features an outdoor amphitheater, built from the ruin of the burned house (hereafter referred to as the Ruin). Heart/Roots , thus, is a play steeped in local history and lived experience, informed by a specific location, and cognizant of the potential for transformation. These unique characteristics indicate that in-person engagements with space, place, individuals, and narratives would be crucial ingredients for the crafting and rehearsal of the community-based play. The original plan for Heart/Roots included such in-person elements. Yet, like so many theater performances over the last few years, Heart/Roots was a production paved with Covid-induced curves, hurdles, and discoveries. Ultimately, the road we (Mary Pinard, poet and playwright, and me, Beth Wynstra, theater historian and director) needed to travel with Heart/Roots was one that included cross-country dramaturgy, technological tools and methods, and only concentrated bursts of interaction with production team and cast. Yet these elements elicited new kinds of community-building that informed and ultimately buoyed the play in surprising ways. [1] Seeds of the Project In late 2018, the seeds of Heart/Roots were planted. Mary, who had been a poet-in-residence at The Volland Store, was invited to create a work that would serve as the inaugural production in the Ruin and would run in conjunction with a traveling Smithsonian Institute exhibition called Crossroads: Change in Rural America . This exhibition continues to tour museums, libraries, and universities throughout the United States today and had a 2020 visit scheduled at The Volland Store. One goal of Crossroads is to “prompt discussions about what happened when America’s rural population became a minority of the country’s population and the ripple effects that occurred.” The exhibition also poses the question, “Why should revitalizing the rural places left behind matter to those who remain, those who left, and those who will come in the future?” [2] Mary felt a theater production would offer a compelling space to examine these questions and to bring the voices of the specific rural community of Wabaunsee County to life. She invited me, her colleague at Babson College, to join her in imagining the parameters of such a production. We were guided by theater scholars and practitioners, in particular Sonja Kuftinec, who argues that community-based theater is “grounded in locality, place, or identity” and can “directly engage and reflect its audience, by integrating local history, concerns, stories, traditions, and/or performers.” [3] We were inspired by Kuftinec’s assertion that this kind of performance has the potential to be a “site for philosophical and ethical inquiry into the forging of identity.” [4] Indeed, theater for, about, and performed by members of a specific community has the power to bring individuals together for a special, communal experience, where these individuals might recognize their own stories and experiences on the stage. Furthermore, at this time, or “crossroads,” when the landscape of rural America is literally and metaphorically changing at a rapid pace, community-based theater offers space to reaffirm identity, reflect on stories and memories, and ruminate on future possibilities. The plan we initially developed was to travel from Massachusetts, where we both reside and teach, to Volland, Kansas, to meet community members, interview individuals, collect narratives, and conduct historical research, all to create a play inspired by what we heard and learned. We would then return to Kansas for a multi-week residency to audition actors, to rehearse the play, and finally to produce the work in the Ruin. The COVID Pivot The play, scheduled for a 2020 summer production, would ultimately need to be postponed, and the Smithsonian Crossroads exhibit eventually became a digital experience. This COVID moment, while disappointing in many ways, prompted us not only to rethink our creative process, but also to return to and solidify our initial impulses for a community-based production. In other words, the COVID-mandated pause (which, for our project, extended into 2022) gave us a chance to re-consider the why and how of creating a theater performance for and about Wabaunsee County and our place as both creators and outsiders to this locale. While our project would no longer be connected to the Smithsonian exhibit, we still believed a community-based theater production could remain true to the important goals of Crossroads . We also hoped that our project would offer cast, production team, and audience an original, experiential, interactive opportunity to think about and discuss the rich history and changing dynamics in rural America in general, and in Wabaunsee County, in particular. After a two-year delay, we felt safe and ready to launch our community-based project, initially called Theater at the Ruin, in 2022. Our revised plan was to make three trips to Kansas: the first for introducing our project at several different events and venues in Wabaunsee County and to collect stories; the second for auditioning actors; and the third for in-person rehearsals, tech week, and final production. Between the first and second visit (in August and March respectively), Mary would write the play. Between the second and final visit (in June), I would direct rehearsals via Zoom. While before 2020, we could not fathom things like online rehearsals or digital story gathering, the pandemic gave us new tools and methodologies to create and collaborate. It became surprising to us how essential and helpful these technological tools ended up being for our project. Welcome to Kansas and Story Collection During our first visit to Kansas, which was my very first time in the state, we were deeply aware of our outsider status as we introduced the project and met with community members and potential actors, story-givers, and production team members. We held meetings and informational sessions at several different places: The Volland Store, an annual classic car show, the historical society, a local bakery, a yoga studio, an antique store, and even a cemetery. Our goal was to meet community members where they lived and worked, all in an effort for us to demonstrate our desire to listen and to learn. We knew well the dangers of outsiders creating community-based theater productions. Eugene van Erven warns that without careful and thoughtful interactions, community members can be “arguably used as pawns in a professional artist’s aesthetic game.” [5] Overall, we tried, at every meeting and interaction, to emphasize the fully collaborative nature of the experience we were launching and the goal of celebrating Wabaunsee County and christening the new performance space in the Ruin. Our awareness of outsider-ness also helped us to consider some crucial questions for the project: Haven’t we all been outsiders at some point? Been unsure about how to move ethically through and beyond the uncertainty and potential obstacles of difference—local, regional, personal, cultural? How then do we imagine, enter, negotiate, understand, embrace the possibilities implicit in these encounters with others not like ourselves? And how are we, in turn, shaped by them? These questions led us to consider the other outsiders who came before us, arriving and transforming the land and locale that would be central to our production. For example, we considered the turbulent unsettling initiated by European settlers who brought their own cultures, values, hopes, and unavoidable misconceptions about this place. We learned through the stories we heard and the research we conducted that the impact of this “settlement” on its own cannot be underestimated. This disruption also coincided necessarily with other kinds of unsettling developments such as the displacement of Indigenous peoples, and a maze of commerce driven by the carving into the land of more lines: roads, railroads, the establishment of fences for the burgeoning work of cattle driving and ranching, and the swift usurpations brought on by agriculture that followed on the effectiveness of the plow in breaking the prairie sod. With all of these patterns and evolutions in mind, we gingerly entered a small cattle-ranching community with an invitation for storytelling and its eventual embodiment in a play. Notions of outsider-ness would eventually form an important throughline of the stories we would hear and the script Mary would write. We also found inspiration, support, and integrity in Jerry and Patty Reece’s own outsider status and their renewing project of The Volland Store. We were able to apply many of the lessons learned from them about how best to work with—and in spite of—our position as “outsiders.” While we were grateful for the many face-to-face encounters we had on this first visit to Kansas, technological tools aided mightily with story collection. For stories shared with us in person, such as those by two cousins in their 90s who remembered the early years of The Volland Store, or those from a middle-aged rancher and fence builder, we relied on audio recordings that were saved to a file on Dropbox, so that we both could access the recordings in the weeks and months to come. Several individuals did not feel comfortable or could not be available for sharing stories with us in person. We set up a digital story collection page on The Volland Store website. Although we missed seeing and observing these storytellers in action, their narratives, delivered digitally, were significant contributions to Heart/Roots . Other Wabaunsee County residents preferred to speak to us via Zoom, either out of an abundance of caution about the pandemic or due to scheduling conflicts when we were in Kansas. These Zoom conversations, recorded with the storytellers’ permission, proved illuminating in several ways. Some storytellers, like the owner of a yoga studio in the small, nearby town of Alma, had prepared commentary and stories. Others, like a rancher and mother, who studied Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University, was open to answering our questions and actually surprised herself with how much she could detail about the special nuances and appeals of living in Wabaunsee County and her emotional attachment to the place. We found that in these Zoom sessions storytellers were forthcoming and seemed to feel safe in sharing their narratives with us. We hypothesize that perhaps home environments or the protection of a screen made certain individuals more comfortable than they would have been in person. Such dynamics would again emerge in rehearsals. Photo 1, The Ruin at the Volland Store, photo by Maddy Michaelis Heart/Roots : Creation and Zoom Rehearsals The eight monologues and scenes that comprise Heart/Roots were crafted from the stories we gathered and with additional historical details provided by The Wabaunsee County Historical Society and Museum. Mary found the recordings of story-givers especially useful since they provided her not only with narratives, but also with the flow and cadence of local speech, diction, and expression. And since a number of the most powerful stories were lyrical and informed by the rural rhythms of the land, she also pushed the limits of playwriting form. The pandemic had already jarred our process to the core, so why not allow this innovative mode even more space? Mary decided that the sonnet—a 14-line formal poem using stanzaic structure, rhyme, and metrics—would be a perfect addition to the play. It could accommodate the richness and brevity of certain stories, and it also echoed the literal contours of Wabaunsee County on a Kansas map. Suggesting the shape of a broad hand, this county map evokes those most essential capacities: to create and to work. Central to the nature of this county, the work of the human hand is thus at the core of this play, both through its characters’ experiences and in its creation by Mary as the playwright. The fact that the fingers of the human hand have a total of 14 bones also suggests a meaningful connection to the anatomy of the sonnet, whose 14 lines work themselves into poetry across a page. The final script of Heart/Roots is a tapestry of sonnets, monologues, and scenes. Like so many other elements of this project, the script was also enriched and deepened by our efforts to address and embrace the unpredictable impact of the pandemic. In March, we were able to hold auditions at The Volland Store, with again some participants opting to audition via Zoom. It seemed that the groundwork we laid through our visits to several different community locations months earlier as well as the multiple and digital ways we collected stories helped to ensure trust in us and thus a robust audition pool. Our final cast of ten included a former mayor, a grassland ecologist, a yoga studio owner (the same one who supplied a story and who offered her studio as a story-gathering location), a cattle rancher, an undergraduate student, and a paramedic. After nearly two years of teaching on Zoom as well as directing a digital production at Babson College during the pandemic, I felt comfortable using this platform for the rehearsals between March and June, when we would be returning to Kansas for the production. Although we both remain certain that in-person rehearsals for a theater production are the ideal route, Zoom provided opportunities to build important community and relationships in ways we could not have predicted. Like our story sessions on Zoom, actors in Zoom rehearsals joined us from their living rooms, kitchens, dorm rooms, and even ambulance bays. Almost every Zoom session started with one or more of the actors explaining where they were and sharing some detail about their environment. Our undergraduate student proudly shared his fraternity flag. Our paramedic showed how she could adjust her radio system to hear news of incoming emergencies and accidents. Our horse-owning cast member showed his pastures. While at the time we thought of these very local show-and-tells as a way to break the ice of the rehearsal or to get actors talking, in retrospect we see these moments as important for trust-building. It is a profound experience to see someone’s home or work environment and even more profound when that person is willing to share artifacts or facets of that place. Zoom rehearsals, by their nature, are not always conducive to getting actors on their feet or for sketching out blocking. Nonetheless, we found that these rehearsals extended our table work and thus our conversations about objective, language, and timing. I readily admit that in most rehearsal hall scenarios, I am quick to experiment with and solidify movement. The Zoom rehearsals for Heart/Roots slowed down this impulse. The conversations during our rehearsals gave actors a chance to ask questions of playwright and director, to investigate and analyze each line for meaning and objective, and to discuss with scene partners interactions and relationships. Furthermore, almost every actor told us during the rehearsal process personal stories and histories that somehow connected to or resonated with moments in the script. We cannot be certain that these important conversations would have transpired in a traditional rehearsal experience. When we consider the delicate nature of outsiders creating community-based performance, we understand how vital the talking, sharing of stories, and showing of home environments that comprised our Zoom rehearsals were to the creative process of Heart/Roots . A director, understandably, takes on a leadership position in any production. Such a position usually does not disrupt the kind of built-in, equal relationship to place that a theatrical cast and crew share. In community theater performances, when all cast and crew come from the same area, or in regional or professional theater performances, where cast and crew travel from disparate areas to a specific theater to perform, there is, for the most part, a shared connection to place. Not so with community-based theater. There is a large risk that an outsider, specifically an outsider director, might seem too authoritative or all-knowing when starting rehearsal work. This fear, we feel, could have very well come to fruition had the Heart/Roots cast and crew rehearsed in person from the very start. The Zoom moments instead allowed us to learn and talk about the place in which we would be producing the play. We built trust and ensured that when we finally could come together, for the first time, as a cast in June, we knew each other in ways that safeguarded a solid foundation to begin blocking and to begin a compressed tech week. Heart/Roots : Final Moments and Production Another seeming disadvantage that actually turned advantageous for our production was the fact that the performance space in the Ruin was an unseen and unknown entity not just for the cast but for us as well. Re-construction on the Ruin began after our first trip to Kansas in August and was ongoing when we were at The Volland Store in March. Although a few actors ventured out to the Ruin once it was completed in late Spring to practice their lines and work with their fellow actors, the space was a mystery to most of us working on the production. So, unlike many theater productions, where a director would have an intimate knowledge of the performance space and thus could guide a cast with this knowledge, the production of Heart/Roots was a moment where we all were discovering our performance space together. Although there were hurdles in this discovery process—such as how to work in 100-degree heat, how to shade the audience, how to manage interactions with mosquitos and ticks, how to ensure sound enhancements elevated actors’ voices while keeping a naturalness, and how to block a show with audience sitting on three sides—we navigated these challenges together. Perhaps the greatest difficulty, yet the one that became the most fun to solve together as a cast and production team, was the freight trains that ran on a track just yards from the Ruin and on an unpredictable schedule. Mary had written the “Train Sonnet” for just such a moment, where actors would rejoice and celebrate the passing train and then attempt to recreate the train sounds in a sonnet. We did not know, though, if we would end up using this sonnet or how often. Thus, in our 14 days together before the production opened, our team had much work to do and in tough conditions. We do feel that the bonds solidified—largely through technological means—enabled us to work together, to laugh together, and ultimately to produce a successful, sold-out run of Heart/Roots . Photo 2, Act One of Heart/Roots , photo by Stephen Deets Conclusion The final production was a civic celebration, where long-term residents and newcomers to Wabaunsee County and the Flint Hills heard stories, made connections between past and present, and saw their fellow community members perform entirely new roles on the stage. The reverberations of the show continue. In the months following the production of Heart/Roots cast members have been asked to perform moments from the play for small and large gatherings, and a published version of the script that was on sale during the production is now available for purchase at The Volland Store. And, perhaps most importantly, the Ruin has become a vibrant space for music, with future theater and dance productions already in the works. Photo 3, Audience at Heart/Roots , photo by Lorn Clement Photo 4, Curtain call of Heart/Roots , photo by Abby Amick References [1] Please see the Volland Store website for photos and more information on Heart/Roots in rehearsal and production. http://thevollandstore.com/latest-news-on-the-ruin-and-heart-roots/ [2] “Crossroads: Change in Rural America,” Smithsonian, Accessed September 15, 2022. https://www.sites.si.edu/s/topic/0TO36000000aR1sGAE/crossroads-change-in-rural-america . [3] Sonja Kuftinec, Staging America: Cornerstone and Community-Based Theater (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003): 1. [4] Ibid, xvi. [5] Eugène van Erven, “Taking to the Streets: Dutch Community Theater Goes Site-Specific,” Research in Drama Education 12, no. 1 (2007): 29. Footnotes About The Author(s) BETH WYNSTRA is an Associate Professor of English at Babson College. Beth’s book, Vows, Veils, and Masks: The Performance of Marriage in the Plays of Eugene O’Neill (University of Iowa Press, Theater History and Culture Series) will be published in 2023. Beth has written extensively on the life and plays of Eugene O’Neill and often works as a dramaturg with professional theater companies around the country who are producing the works of O’Neill. Beth regularly directs plays and musicals at Babson and is the Founding Artistic Director of The Empty Space Theater. MARY PINARD is a Professor of English and a poet. She teaches literature and poetry courses in the Arts & Humanities Division at Babson College. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals, and she has published two collections: Portal by Salmon Press in 2014, and Ghost Heart , which won the 2021 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Book Contest and was issued by the press in 2022. Over the last fifteen years, she has collaborated with a range of Boston-area musicians, theatre directors, painters, and sculptors to create performances and exhibits. She was born and raised in Seattle. 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:

Jeffrey Ullom Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 26 1 Visit Journal Homepage Playwright as Publicity: Reexamining Jane Martin and the Legacy of the Humana Festival Jeffrey Ullom By Published on March 9, 2014 Download Article as PDF In May 2011, Marc Masterson departed Actors Theatre of Louisville for a similar position as the artistic director of South Coast Repertory Theater in San Diego. Reportedly, he initially offered to remain and assist with the search for a replacement, but his proposal was not accepted as the leadership of the theatre wished to proceed without [ . . . ] [scribd id=211700037 key=key-2mngwhiptfnekrms8lyg mode=scroll height=930 width=600] 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 Between Blackface and Bondage: The Incompletely Forgotten Failure of The Underground Railroad's 1879 Midwestern Tour “One Live as Two, Two Live as One”: Bert Williams and the Uprooted Bamboo Tree Playwright as Publicity: Reexamining Jane Martin and the Legacy of the Humana Festival Feminist Periodization as a Structural Component of Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles Waiting for Triumph: Alan Schneider and the American Response to Waiting for Godot Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Beck Holden 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 The Captive Stage Beck Holden By Published on March 22, 2016 Download Article as PDF The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North . By Douglas A. Jones, Jr. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance series. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014. Pp. 218. In common American parlance, the word “slavery” tends to be inseparable from the specific institution of chattel slavery in the antebellum South. Astute scholars and critics have, however, worked to draw attention to the ways in which different, less overtly brutal systems may also deserve the name of “slavery” for the ways in which they limit the access people of color have to political agency while relying heavily upon the ongoing presence of minority groups within that system. In The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North , Douglas A. Jones, Jr. reveals how a variety of white northern antebellum performances, ranging from the respectable (lectures and portraiture) to the popular (minstrelsy, plays, broadsides, and sideshows), served to undermine black claims to American citizenship. In doing so, he deftly traces the intensifying white insistence upon black subjugation that drove the northern black intelligentsia from advocating full integration in the 1790s to calls for insurrection and emigration by the 1840s and 1850s. Jones grounds his conception of the northern proslavery imagination in one of Frederick Douglass’s speeches from 1848, in which Douglass discusses the systemic oppression faced by blacks in the North, making them, in his words, “in many respects… slaves of the community” (1). It is this idea of community slavery that shapes Jones’s book; noting that northerners generally abhorred chattel slavery but also considered blacks inferior, he explains: A complex series of assumptions, ideals, and logics . . . deemed African Americans . . . unfit for equal participation in the polity, while . . . ideally suited to serve the personal and collective interests of their white counterparts. In other words, northerners cultivated a proslavery imagination with which to maintain and, over time, widen the gulf between black freedom and full black inclusion. (1-2) He makes a convincing case that this insistence upon black subordination and subjugation points to an essentially proslavery northern psyche. This premise provides a firm base for Jones’s exploration of black antebellum political performances and the white performances that tried to eclipse them. Each chapter of The Captive Stage demonstrates a thorough understanding of its specific historical moment and careful archival research, and Jones’s arguments are consistently clear and convincing. He also demonstrates great breadth in his theoretical influences, smoothly drawing on writers ranging from Plato to Charles S. Pierce to Daphne Brooks over the course of the book; his foremost influence, however, may be Saidiya Hartman, to whom he turns repeatedly in several chapters. Jones’s first chapter shows how the deferential stage negroes in John Murdock’s plays and the mangled dialect of the popular “Bobalition” broadsides sought to render the politically active northern black laughable, at a time when black organizations were using parades and elegant oration to assert their claims to political integration and American citizenship. Next, Jones contests the recent scholarly trend of seeking progressive potential in early minstrelsy, directly challenging W.T. Lhamon, David Cockrell, and other scholars who claim that early minstrelsy privileged class over race and created a working-class alliance across the color line. Jones points out that early minstrels such as Thomas “Daddy” Rice gave openly proslavery speeches after performances and argues that the popular rhetoric regarding the struggles of the white working class in fact hinges heavily upon white supremacy. Jones’s entry into the scholarly debate over minstrelsy is skillfully wrought and highly convincing. Chapter three examines several ways in which George Washington, the slave-owning father of the nation, functioned to justify the continuation of slavery in the northern imagination; this is the chapter in which Jones offers the widest range of examples, including reverent interactions between slaves and images of Washington in popular plays, depictions of slaves in portraits of Washington, and P.T. Barnum’s exhibition of Joice Heth as Washington’s 161-year-old former wetnurse. Jones’s research on Heth in particular breaks intriguing ground, as he focuses upon Barnum’s increasing emphasis upon his ownership of Heth as a slave as the years went on, arguing compellingly that this points to a desire by Barnum’s northern patrons to join him and Washington in wielding the dominating gaze of the slaveholder. Jones’s next chapter looks at a trend he dubs “romantic racialism,” where a branch of white northerners insisted that blacks were simply different from whites, but not necessarily wholesale inferior. Jones reveals, however, how the traits that romantic racialists focused upon, such as docility and innocence, served to shape an imagined society in which blacks required the guidance of whites and still took subordinate roles to whites, buttressing his argument by examining the resistance of white Garrisonian abolitionists to the rise in black insurrectionist rhetoric in the 1840s and by analyzing the black characters from the popular temperance drama Aunt Dinah’s Pledge . His final chapter examines black abolitionist lecturer William Wells Brown and his escape-from-slavery melodrama The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom . After first charting the relationships among Brown’s earlier narration of his own escape, melodrama as a genre, and the expectations of white audiences, Jones argues that Brown’s play was shaped by the northern proslavery imagination such that it prevented him from imagining a life in the north for his protagonists after their flight from slavery. Although fans of Brown may find this position unpalatable, Jones’s argument is subtle and expertly-woven, a useful contribution to scholarship on Brown that must be taken seriously. Jones’s book is a skillful blend of historical context and performance analysis that serves to complicate our understanding of political performance culture in the antebellum North. By excavating and examining the ways in which northerners imagined black subjugation as a necessity, he both invites America to examine some of its oft-overlooked past sins and helps to reveal some of the history that underpins the systemic racial iniquities that persist today. This book offers a useful methodological model for early-career scholars, while its contents promise to prove highly valuable to scholars wrestling with questions of race and political performance, whether on stage or off. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Beck Holden 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.

Karina Gutiérrez Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 3 Visit Journal Homepage Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina Karina Gutiérrez By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina. Noe Montez. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017; Pp. 239 + xi. The precarious era of Argentina’s dictatorship (1976-1982) stifled political resistance and artistic expression. However, the years following the administrative regimes of Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Massera, and Leopoldo Galtieri prompted many people in the newly democratic Argentina to reflect upon and recoup their national identities. Noe Montez’s Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina considers (re)emerging individual and collective memory narratives and their effects on judicial policies in Argentina’s transitional postdictatorship period. Drawing on contemporary research in memory studies and theatre history, Montez recounts the momentous artistic reactions to policies implemented by the administrations of Carlos Menem, Néstor Carlos Kirchner Jr., and Cristina Kirchner. In so doing, Montez’s text contributes to a growing repertoire of Argentine works in the field of performance studies. As Montez himself rightly notes, the vast majority of scholarship on theatrical responses to the dictatorship tends to focus on the oeuvres of more internationally renowned playwrights such as Ricardo Bartis, Griselda Gambaro, and Eduardo Pavlovsky, whose works were staged during or directly following the dictatorship. Instead, Montez charts the trajectory of emerging directors, playwrights, actors, designers, and companies that flourished in Buenos Aires during this transitional era. Montez divides his book into four chapters, arranged chronologically to highlight theatrical productions that reacted to each administration’s approach to transitional justice and contributed to collective memory. Chapter one explores “disconstructive resistances,” a term that is never fully unpacked but appears to refer to the disjuncture between collective memory narratives and state-sanctioned memory narratives constructed and propagated by the Menem administration’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings held from 1989 to 1999. Each of the four plays that Montez examines in this chapter considers the limitations of state-sanctioned narratives of impunity, to say nothing of clemency and amnesty policies, directed toward those in office accused of human rights violations. Montez devotes a substantial amount of space to key performance groups and playwrights including El Periférico de Objetos, Javier Daulte, Marcelo Bertuccio, and Luis Cano. He describes their use of multimedia and avant-garde artistic practices to advance their political agendas; by exposing the artifice of authorized modes of remembrance, these artists resisted the Menem administration’s politics of erasure. The second chapter centers on how Teatroxlaindentidad, a long-running Buenos Aires-based theatre festival created to raise awareness about the hundreds of children kidnapped during the dictatorship, collaborated with artists to promote public access to declassified archives. Montez notes that works by Patricia Zangaro, Hector Levy-Daniel, and Mariana Eva Perez demonstrate the value of historical archives for the construction of personal and national identities. However, Montez adds a further dimension: he studies how institutional support from non-theatrical entities impacts an organization’s overall creative output and longevity. He offers as an example Teatroxlaindentidad’s partnership with the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The partnership is notable because the goals of the latter imposed significant restraints on the artistic visions of the former, specifically in the earliest years of this alliance. Indeed, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other stakeholders limited commissioned work in the festival’s line-up to those who spoke directly to reuniting kidnapped children with their next of kin through genetic testing. In the second half of the book, Montez attempts to capture the ideological dissonance of various agents staking claims to history. Chapter three, “Reparation, Commemoration, and Memory Construction in the Postdictatorship Generation,” looks at the importance of self-archiving or self-reflexive personal testimony as a means of talking back to state-appointed sites of memory. Of particular interest are those testimonies that “talk back” to sites established during the Néstor and Cristina Kirchner administrations (2003-2007 and 2007-2015, respectively). Montez delineates the social divide between those who favored the Kirchner administrations’ memorialization efforts and those who did not. Meanwhile, in the final chapter, Montez explores four theatrical performances produced alongside Christina Kirchner’s rebranding of the Malvinas War (also known as the Falklands War). Montez describes how the Kirchner administration sought to recast this national defeat as a point of nationalistic remembrance, shaping memory narratives of the war and the people of Malvinas. While works by Patricio Adadi, Mariana Mazover, and Lisandro Fiks critiqued Kirchner’s commemoration, Julio Cardoso’s vision fell in line with the administration’s memorialization efforts as he opted to honor veterans as heroes. The differing reactions to the Malvinas War demonstrate how acts of remembrance can be linked to acts of erasure in a variety of contradictory ways. Though Montez does not explicitly make this point, one can surmise that the opposing artistic treatments of the Falkland Islands mirror the contradictory socio-political views of these territories today. Montez’s illustration of performance and social engagement in postdictatorship Argentina highlights the nation’s vibrant and tenacious theatre scene. More importantly, his book draws attention to Argentina’s artistic agents—long neglected by U.S. scholars and theatre audiences—who are determined to grapple with identity, social justice, and individual/collective memory. Montez weaves pertinent historical content with play descriptions for what is, overall, an assessment of current artistic measures that seek to reify or contest dominant memory narratives. Scholars of Latinx theatre and performance, specifically those who concentrate on politics, will value Montez’s timely study of artistic mobilization in postdictatorship Argentina. I would, however, recommend this book be read in conjunction with texts by Diana Taylor and Jean Graham-Jones; though often cited, reading their respective theories on performance and activism firsthand may deepen understanding of Montez’s argument. Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina contributes to the growing archive of memory studies and, more importantly, to nuancing the fledgling U.S. awareness of Latin American performance and performance studies scholarship in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Karina Gutiérrez Stanford University The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 3 (Spring 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 Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Hawaiian Performance Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical Introduction: Embodied Arts "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies Unruly Reproductions: The Embodied Art of Mimicry in Vaudeville Choreographies of the Great Departure: Building Civic Bodies in the 1914 Masque of St. Louis Collective Choreography for Weathering Black Experience: Janelle Monáe and The Memphis "Tightrope" Dance History, Musicals, and the Americas Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Henry Bial 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 Hot Pursuit: Researching Across the Theatre/Film Border Henry Bial By Published on May 30, 2014 Download Article as PDF ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. The value of interdisciplinary inquiry in the study of American drama and theatre has been persuasively established, so much so that it is virtually a commonplace. Scholars working in the field today routinely draw on work from the humanities, from the social sciences, from ecobiology and cognitive science and any number of other disciplines. Yet just as globalization has not eliminated the nation state, the disciplines themselves persist. For all that scholars work to position our projects and ourselves “at the intersection between,” disciplinary assumptions linger, ghostly revenants haunting our curricula, our journals, our professional societies. Most surprisingly, perhaps, the disciplinary boundaries seem most impermeable between two fields that would seem to have the most common ground: theatre/performance studies and film/media studies. Consider inter alia the American Theatre and Drama Society, whose website lists 125 member publications since 2009, of which fewer than 10% give serious consideration to film and/or digital media.1 Over the same period, Theatre Journal has published 101 articles, 15 of which address film or television (5 in a single special issue on digital media), while the journal you are reading now, JADT, has published 51 articles with none crossing that disciplinary boundary.2 Conversely, since 2009, Cinema Journal, the publication of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, has published no articles that address the live stage.3 Hence, a disconnect: despite our overt recognition that the story of American drama in history, theory, and practice is a story of theatre and film—not to mention radio, television, and, increasingly, videogames and the internet—we generally ignore this recognition in shaping our research projects. This essay argues that the study of American drama and theatre not only allows, but also often requires the scholar to research and write across the disciplinary divide between theatre and film (as well as other related arts: radio, television, music, new media). Readers are forewarned that the overall tone is less scholarly than polemical, reflecting the sense of urgency that I feel is needed at this moment in the history of both disciplines: theatre and performance studies on the one hand, and film/media studies on the other. The title “Hot Pursuit” is drawn from the legal doctrine that allows law enforcement personnel to cross municipal, state, and (subject to certain treaty obligations) national boundaries if failing to do so would allow a suspect to escape apprehension. Too often in academia, scholars allow disciplinary boundaries to impede if not halt their pursuit of ideas. Though we claim to value interdisciplinary inquiry, we have many incentives (hiring committees, tenure and promotion, outcomes assessment, etc.) to reify disciplinary norms. Though we may desire to know everything about everything, we have to draw fences around our arguments or the book never gets finished. Hence the project that begins as “ethnicity in performance” may eventually become “Jewish memory on the US stage, 1989-1997.” The use of “principles of exclusion” such as identity, nation, genre and period is an accepted fact of academic life. It doesn’t make us bad people, or even bad scholars. Yet if we are to go after the big ideas, the ones that speak to the circulation of meaning and power within the global culture, we must work to overcome our reluctance to intrude on someone else’s turf. Constructions of identity and nation, for example, don’t just exist in the theatre. They don’t just come from the television screen. If we want to prevent such constructs from eluding our grasp, we must cast a broad net. More importantly, we must be willing to follow our subjects wherever they may lead. Toward that end, this essay considers five “myths” that must be overcome in order to facilitate such boundary-crossing scholarship. By myth, I mean an idea once held as sacred truth but now considered fictional. Though they are generally recognized as false-to-fact, myths nevertheless continue to exert influence on contemporary thought. The first three of the myths I consider have their genealogy in European modernist ideas about art; therefore resistance to these myths may be understood as a way to embrace an understanding of American drama that is “more American” (more populist, more postmodern, more problematic). The last two myths are ones that I see as more pervasive in American scholarship and popular discourse; thus pushing back against them is of particular urgency to scholars of American drama. Myth #1: Theatre is High Culture. Film is Low Culture We know, of course, that theatre has never been the exclusive province of the wealthy, nor has film ever been confined to the lower class. Yet the notion that theatre is culturally superior to film continues to permeate theatre and performance studies in any number of ways, even if the terms “high” and “low” remain unvoiced. We see it in theatre people’s characterization of film and television as sites of “selling out.” Village Voice theatre critic Michael Feingold epitomizes this point of view: “a disheartening number of theater folk share the tourist audience's preoccupation with mass culture, to the point where I sometimes feel like the hero of Ionesco's Rhinoceros, watching his friends turn into stampeding animals. But I'm not capitulating, even if the popularity of a show like Glee proves that an impulse from the theater can sometimes stir up TV's currents.”4 We see it in the patronizing tone of surprise that theatre critics use to praise a Hollywood star who performs well in a live theatre role, as well as the gleeful malice with which those same critics eviscerate the film star who acts poorly on stage. As Patrick Healy writes, “Hollywood stars often come to Broadway to prove something to themselves or to audiences, though they rarely admit it.”5 We also see it, interestingly enough, in performance studies’ valorization of the live as superior to the mediated, epitomized by Peggy Phelan’s oft-quoted formulation, “performance’s only life is in the present.”6 It is all very well to celebrate performance as that which disappears, to highlight theatre’s capacity to surprise, to point to a tradition that stretches (in the West) back to Thespis. Yet in so doing, do we not also implicitly and explicitly devalue those theatrical innovations and interventions that seem to smack too much of film? Why, as Jessica Sternfeld writes, do “theater scholars develop an arrogant, even disgusted tone when mentioning the megamusical, if they mention it at all”?7 Why, when we have rejected—or at least challenged—the (neo-)Aristotelian approach to drama in so many other quarters, does Spectacle remain the most abject element of theatre studies? For the same reason, perhaps, that Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov still abound on U.S. stages, despite a quarter century or more of attempts to de-canonize Dead White Guys: European modernism, with its attendant anti-theatricality, still lurks as the American art world’s unindicted co-conspirator.8 Film studies is haunted by the high-low myth in a different way. Concerned with establishing its legitimacy as a discipline, cinema studies for many years adopted many of the aesthetic prejudices of theatre, considering only certain types of film to be worthy of serious scholarly investigation. Films that proved too popular with the masses were suspect as art, unless and until they achieved canonical status. Most especially, film studies has tended, like theatre, to eschew sentiment, lavishing greater praise and attention on films marked by reflexive irony or existential dread, another sign of European influence.9 Hence film and media studies finds itself with a catch-22: having argued for disciplinary legitimacy (and even superiority) on the grounds that their object of study reaches more spectators than any other art form, the field for many years focused on those objects more likely to be enjoyed by a self-selected few. Only in the last twenty years has the scholarly study of popular film and television become widespread. Lee Grievson notes that the 2003 renaming of the Society of Cinema Studies’s as the Society of Cinema and Media Studies “marked a newly expansionist sense of what the discipline would cover.”10 So where are we? Theatre scholars, rapidly losing ground to film in the academy (as measured in majors, facilities, and teaching lines), gravitate toward performances that demonstrate theatre is a “higher” art form than film. Film scholars, battling to win ground from theatre (and literature), have until recently aimed their sights at work that establishes film as a “higher” art form than the general public might think. What falls out of this equation are the popular performances, including those most likely to span both disciplines: the filmic adaptations of Broadway hits, the musicals based on movies, the televised plays, the live-to-movie-theatre broadcast, and so on. The most likely site for discussions of such “crossover” performances is popular culture studies, which since the 1990s has begun to immigrate into nearly all academic domains. But popular culture studies in general, whether concerned with the live, the mediated, or the material, is further bounded by a generalized distrust of the so-called Culture Industry, a view that rests on the Marxian assumption that artworks generated for profit are (by definition) exploitative of the masses who consume them. While such a view has value as a diagnostic, challenging us to think critically about the entertainment we consume, it is ultimately self-negating. Combined with assumptions of high and low culture, such critique leads us to the absurd conclusion that the audience (the People) are always right, except for the many times that they are wrong, hoodwinked by hegemonic capitalist (and later neoliberal) structures of power. To cross this boundary, to properly apprehend the subjects of popular entertainment, we need to move past the high-low distinction, to “Americanize” the study of American drama. This is not to say that concepts such as class and taste are no longer relevant, but rather to admit that studying cultural aspects of performance need not entail rejection of all aesthetic criteria. Conversely, the study of aesthetics cannot be fully extricated from cultural considerations. Blur this border, and the theatre/film border will become significantly more permeable. Myth #2: In both theatre and film, the discrete work of art should be the primary object of study Traditional scholarship in both theatre and film (as well as most other arts) is an object-driven discipline. Or to put it another way, both theatre studies and film studies are tautologically defined by their objects of study. A theatre scholar studies plays and other theatrical events; a film scholar studies films, and perhaps other “screen” media such as television shows or websites. A work that does not fit within the boundaries of the scholar’s genre is considered at best terra incognita, at worst Out Of Bounds. Such object-driven disciplinary formations echo nineteenth century definitions of the nation-state, which has always existed more as an ideal than as a reality. They hang on a concept of the work of art that all parties recognize to be limited, if not actually false. For it is not simply the genre of study that we regard as a fixed object, but also the site. The theatre scholar routinely speaks of a play or production as if it could be contained within two hours traffic upon the stage. The film scholar speaks or writes of a film as if it were a unitary object, beginning at the opening credits and ending when the lights come back on. Yet our own experiences of both media demonstrate that, in the words of the 1935 stage production, 1959 film, 1983 radio broadcast, 1993 television broadcast, and 2002 live-to-movie theatre telecast opera Porgy and Bess, “It ain’t necessarily so.” A theatrical production changes nightly. A long-running play changes casts, venues, and (frequently) dialogue. Cabaret with Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles is not the same performance with Michelle Williams in the role (nor is either the same as a production whose performers are not recognizable from film and television). A film is comparatively more stable, but may include multiple cuts for different markets, as well as second-order viewing opportunities on television, DVD, airplanes, computers, and iPads. Moreover, as both disciplines place greater emphasis on cultural (rather than purely aesthetic) considerations, on audience reception, and on the post-performance circulation of meaning, the myth of the discretely bounded unitary artwork becomes increasingly unsustainable.11 This problem multiplies exponentially when, taking a page from performance studies, we begin to look not just at the artistic product but also at the process. What is the ontological status, for example, of a film script, of a rehearsal on a film set, of “deleted scenes?” What can theatre learn from studying auditions, replacement casts, or out of town tryouts? In practice, theatre and film scholars tend to consider process opportunistically. This is to say that we consider it only when a) access to such material is possible, and b) such material is sufficiently provocative as to enhance or illuminate our assessment of the final product. Perhaps it must be this way. Mustn’t all scholars balance the impossibility of knowing everything against the need to know something? And yet, if we expand our definition of the artwork, we might begin to blur the genre boundaries in productive ways. Should a revival of a play, for example, be treated differently from a remake of a film? What conditions determine whether a work of art is considered de novo or as a reiteration of a prior work? Can theories of adaptation applied to studies of what John Tibbetts and James Welsh call “stage plays into film”12 be readily applied to films adapted for the stage? Why has hardly any discipline taken notice of (much less theorized) the phenomenon of live television or movie-theatre broadcasts of stage performances?13 When we can properly articulate such ontological distinctions, we may begin to better understand the challenges ahead. Myth #3: Theatre is a Writer’s Medium. Film is a Director’s Medium. Among the consequences of our focus on the discrete artistic product is the attempt to attribute authorship of that product to the playwright (in theatre) or the director (in film). The assertion that the primary creator of a theatrical work is the playwright is not simply a convenient fiction nor a reflection of professional norms. Rather, we attribute authorship to the playwright because it is primarily as texts that theatrical creations circulate through time and space. Productions of, say, Oedipus separated by hundreds or thousands of years and/or hundreds or thousands of miles are nevertheless recognized as The Same Play on the basis of a shared written text. This despite the fact that the text may have been translated, emended, or otherwise transformed in the journey. We validate the playtext through its attribution to its “original creator,” the playwright. This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew. Yet the logic is circular, because the playwright is defined by the creation of the text. I believe that the plays attributed to William Shakespeare are actually the work of another Englishman, coincidentally also named William Shakespeare. This emphasis on the text/playwright dyad persists despite the fact that biographical criticism (the so-called “intentional fallacy”) has been deeply destabilized by New Criticism, poststructuralism, and reader-response theory. Driven perhaps by an imperative to “represent,” we routinely talk about our scholarship, our syllabi, and our production seasons as if the text were the play, and the playwright its only creator. The instability of the text, like the multiplicity of creative partners (actors, designers, stage managers, directors) and other vagaries of the artistic process, is treated as an occasionally illuminating curiosity. In other words, even though we know that the playscript is not the end product of the theatrical enterprise, we often behave as if it were. By contrast, the film script most often comes before the artistic process reaches fruition, and rarely circulates with the promiscuity of a theatre script. The objet d’art that is distributed, studied, and archived is the film itself. Because of this, it is the director’s contribution to the process that is most readily visible to scholars and cineastes. Hence the frisson of finality that emanates from the phrase “Director’s Cut.” It is a marketing term, of course, but an instructive one for a number of reasons. First, it reveals the desire to cling to the popular and scholarly notion of the auteur director. Second, the phrase “Director’s Cut” nearly always refers to a re-release and/or DVD “special edition,” tying it to the multiple media (film, broadcast television, video recording, online or on-demand video, etc.) through which this apparently unitary artwork is distributed. Third, the very necessity of the term “Director’s Cut” belies its own claim: if the director were truly the Author of the film, the so-called “Director’s Cut” would require no special labeling. Moreover, to the degree that film as a medium tends to emphasize (in comparison to theatre) the visual over dialogue, we can easily forget that theatre is not radio, that film is no longer silent. Yet the impossibility of archiving live performance and the seductive visuality of film are not likely to be overcome. What then, is the trans-genre scholar to do? Some significant interventions have been made through attention to filmic adaptations of plays and mixed media performances, as well as through experiments in multidimensional archiving of theatre events. Nevertheless, unless and until we move beyond the need to study a bounded Artistic Product, we will continue to be haunted by the need to identify a singular Artistic Producer. We will continue with scholarship that tacitly ignores the essentially collaborative nature of both art forms. Hot pursuit, then, means directing greater attention to process, both before and after the performance. When we consider the training, pre-production, rehearsal and rewrite processes, we see that theatre and film are fluid and multiple creations, arising from the joint inspiration and efforts of many artists, not just the one to whom authorship is formally and imperfectly attributed. When we consider the role of the audience in constructing the meaning of the artwork—let us stipulate for the moment that the audience does play such a role—we see as well that the concern with authorship is something of an academic fiction. Scholars and critics tend to consider the Artist retrospectively, not unlike juries consider a criminal defendant. What did this person do? The audience, for the most part, considers the Artist subjunctively, as police consider a fleeing suspect. Of what acts might this person be capable? Are they acting alone or in conspiracy with others? What can be learned about this person from studying the scene of the crime? Myth #4: East is East and West is West and Never the Twain Shall Meet For scholars of American drama and theatre, “New York” is a synecdoche for live performance and “Hollywood” a metonym for the film industry. Perhaps because of the continent that separates these metropoles, U.S. scholars rarely focus on the fact that many playwrights work as screenwriters (and vice versa), that many film directors also work on the stage, and that actors and designers often cross the theatre/film boundary routinely. One reason, of course, is the aforementioned emphasis on the finished work of art, and the definition of that art as the product of a playwright or director’s imagination. An artist-driven approach to scholarship would go a long way toward remedying this problem. One lamentable consequence of the influence of critical theory on both theatre and film studies is that we have, for the most part, stopped writing artist biographies. Out of approximately 300 studies listed in Theatre Journal’s “Doctoral Projects in Progress in Theatre Arts” from 2009-2013, there are fewer than 10 biographical projects, and fewer than 30 single-artist studies.14 The comparable list from 1966 alone has 12 biography projects and 30 single-artist studies out of 104 titles.15 While scholars still undertake the occasional reassessment of the impact of a major figure (e.g. Linda Ben-Zvi’s Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times) or a thematic analysis focused on a single author (e.g. Harry Elam’s The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson), we have generally ceded the field of artists’ life stories to journalists, amateurs, and the artists themselves. When, if at all, scholars read these biographies, it is generally with an eye toward extracting information in support of an object-driven analysis of the artist’s work. While the life of the artist should not, of course, be the determining factor in the interpretation of her artistic work, it is dangerous to lose sight of the human stories that lay within our field of study. Such stories are vital partly because they are human--the human being does not fit neatly into categories of medium or genre—but mostly because they are Stories. Narratives have a remarkable ability to cross disciplinary and generic boundaries. As Michel De Certeau reminds us, “What the map cuts up, the story cuts across.”16 A strong narrative, we know, can compel our involvement in film and theatre, story and song. More importantly, these particular narratives, these “tales from Hollywood” and “Broadway memories” and “my life as a famous person” books often tell us more about the real circulation of artists and ideas across multiple media than we can glean from peer-reviewed “Major Works” studies. When we shift the focus from the object to the artist, we recognize the limits of genre/media-based boundaries. A study of the film work of, for example, Katharine Hepburn, would be obviously, tragically incomplete without a consideration of her stage career. In Viewing America: Twenty-First Century Television Drama (2013), Christopher Bigsby lists several prominent American playwrights who also write (or have written) extensively for television, including David Mamet, Marsha Norman, Adam Rapp, and Theresa Rebeck.17 Bigsby also identifies many respected television writers who began their careers writing for the stage, most notably Aaron Sorkin.18 Yet just as crimes committed in Mexico may be considered inadmissible in a Texas trial, scholars often make the conscious choice to exclude such extraterritorial evidence in our consideration of an artist’s oeuvre. For example, many if not most readers of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre know that Eric Overmyer wrote On the Verge (1987). How many know that he also wrote five episodes of St. Elsewhere (1986-87) and two episodes of The Wire (2006), amidst a long career in television? How many consider this when teaching or producing On the Verge? Conversely, how many film critics and historians consider the stage beyond their purview? Jonathan Rosenbaum, for example, notes in his introduction to Discovering Orson Welles that most scholars in “Welles studies” ignore Welles’s stage work, suggesting that “they’re more parochial than Welles himself was.”19 The theatre/film boundary is persistent. To demonstrate its permeability, we must be willing to cross it in hot pursuit of those artists whose careers we examine.20 Audience-driven research similarly offers unexploited potential for boundary crossing intervention into the mythical opposition between New York and Hollywood. How many theatre audiences since the 20th century are ignorant of film? How many film audiences are truly innocent vis-à-vis theatre? True, some filmgoers (and television watchers) obviously have limited exposure to professional theatre; nevertheless, amateur, community-based and educational theatres are widely accessible.21 Certainly audiences recognize differences between media, and may indeed be more receptive to one or another form of communication. Yet all media provide cultural input, so to speak, and to ignore this threatens the utility of our research. Hot pursuit, then, means not just following the artist across the theatre/film border, but following the audience as well. This will not be easy. The audience is frustratingly diverse, and our means of accessing their response to any artwork are sketchy and incomplete. Perhaps this is why, despite the valuable theorizations of spectatorship provided by Susan Bennett, Marvin Carlson, and others, so many scholars find it far simpler to concentrate on what the Artist Intended rather than to hypothesize what the Audience Received. But the dichotomy is a false one. Recall that the unitary Artistic Producer is a fiction, no less so than the unitary Audience. If we cannot analyze either with certainty, perhaps we can—like quantum physicists, political pollsters, and bookmakers—learn to express our conclusions in terms of probability. There is (you should excuse the pun) a good chance this would help. MYTH #5: Theatre is the Past. Film is the Present. Digital Media is the Future The argument that theatre is a discipline rooted in the past while film and media studies are contemporary and forward-looking serves the need of film and media studies to separate itself from its “parent field,” rebutting those who would argue that film is merely Theatre By Other Means. In so doing, it replaces one fallacy—post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this)—with another—post hoc ergo excellens ut is (after this, therefore superior to this). The latter form of reasoning is, not coincidentally, a critical pillar supporting the concept of Manifest Destiny as it applies to US domestic and foreign policy, and so we might read it as a particularly (though not exclusively) American phenomenon. This myth draws support from a mistaken, if understandable, confusion between the study of theatre or film and the industry of entertainment. There is no doubt that film and media have displaced theatre as primary sources of mass entertainment in western culture. This says nothing, however, about the vitality of either medium as an art form or a site of scholarship. Pace Benjamin, a century and a half of photography has eviscerated neither art nor art history. Moreover, the integration of film and video into live performance is potentially a great step forward for the theatre and studies thereof. In fact, a performance studies approach might lead us to reverse the terms in this formulation. The play, after all, belongs to the repertoire, a shifting repository of cultural memory that continues to grow and change in response to local conditions. The film belongs to the archive, remaining fixed into eternity. The Hairy Ape is continually reinvented; Citizen Kane stays the same.22 In order to overcome the false premise of a backward-looking theatre and a forward-looking digital age, scholars must relentlessly historicize our sites of inquiry. We must strive to imagine ourselves into the Now that animated past performances, and we cannot take for granted that we fully grasp the Present. Whatever phenomenon we hope to illuminate, we must range broadly forward and backward across history, avoiding the pitfalls of Grand Narratives while embracing the boundary-crossing potential of detailed local narratives. We must also recognize that our own arguments are bound by time and place. If they are to remain relevant into the future they must continually be re-made. What is to be done? Calls for greater interdisciplinarity at the institutional level are by now commonplace. To the degree that consolidation of academic departments, public scholarship, and “strategic clusters” serve the neoliberal agenda in higher education, one might even argue that interdisciplinarity is the New Normal. Yet just as increased global migration has led many people in many countries to insist on tighter border controls, so too has the trend toward interdisciplinary scholarship caused a kind of backlash amongst scholars who fear the dumbing down of traditional disciplines (or, more cynically, the loss of their own discipline’s power in the intellectual marketplace). As this backlash is most common amongst those with the most to lose (department chairs, journal editors, senior faculty), the disciplinary pressures on emerging scholars remain strong. Hence at the level of the individual scholar, or even the individual work of scholarship, disciplinary borders remain difficult and dangerous to cross. To counter this, scholars of American drama and theater must embrace the doctrine of hot pursuit. We need not and should not give up our recognition of what is distinct about live performance, but we cannot and must not allow our subject to escape across the theatre-film border. Our scholarship must maintain its performativity in both senses of the word: it must remain liminal, processual, and multi-vocal; and it must establish—by its very articulation—that there is more to cultural analysis than can be contained within disciplinary or generic frames. It is no longer a question of being interdisciplinary, but of being post-disciplinary. We must even dare, at times, to be undisciplined. -------- Henry Bial is Chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of Kansas where he holds a joint appointment in American Studies and Theatre. He is the author of Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen (2005), the editor of The Performance Studies Reader (2004; Second Edition, 2007), and the co-editor of Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions (with Scott Magelssen, 2010) and Brecht Sourcebook (with Carol Martin, 2000). He currently serves as President of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). --------- Endnote: [1] See: http://www.atds.org/publications/year/ —numerical calculations based on the list as retrieved 25 January 2014. [2] Theatre Journal, volumes 61-65; Journal of American Drama and Theatre, volumes 22-25. [3] Cinema Journal, volumes 49-52. [4] Michael Feingold, “The Response to the Tony Awards Shows That Show Business Is No Longer Business As Usual,” 2010 blog post at VillageVoice.com, http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-06-22/theater/response-to-tony-awards-shows-business-is-not-business-as-usual/ Retrieved 1 March 2014. [5] Patrick Healy, “Broadway’s New Kid.” New York Times (24 February 2013), AR1. [6] Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993),146. [7] Jessica Sternfeld, The Megamusical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 5. It should be noted that Sternfeld’s book, along with recent work by Stacy Wolf, David Savran, Elizabeth Wollman and others have begun to counter this phenomenon. [8] See Martin Puchner, Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). [9] For an extended discussion of this phenomenon, see Lee Grievson, “Discipline and Publish: The Birth of Cinematology,” Cinema Journal 49, no. 1 (Fall 2009): 168-176. [10] Ibid., 175. [11] This is not to dismiss the widespread use of intertextual reading strategies, but to point out that even these strategies tend to focus on a singular discrete work to be interpreted in light of other singular works. [12] John Tibbets and James Welsh, eds. The Encyclopedia of Stage Plays Into Film (New York: Facts on File, 2001). [13] Cf. Brian Herrera and Henry Bial, eds. “As Seen on TV,” a special section of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 24, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 91-168. [14] See Theatre Journal 61, no. 2 (May 2009): 359-362; 62, no. 2 (May 2010): 329-332; 63, no. 2 (May 2011): 305-309; 64, no. 2 (May 2012): 317-322; 65, no. 2 (May 2013): 315-319. Numbers are approximate because several projects appear in more than one year. [15] See Educational Theatre Journal 18, no.2 (May 1966): 122-125. [16] Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 181. [17] Christopher Bigsby. Viewing America: Twenty-First Century Television Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), x-xi. [18] Ibid. [19] Jonathan Rosenbaum, Discovering Orson Welles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 9. [20] Notable examples of artist-driven studies include Leslie Kane’s Weasels and Wisemen: Ethics and Ethnicity in the Work of David Mamet (Palgrave, 2001), Christopher Bigsby’s Arthur Miller (Harvard University Press, 2010), and David Luhrssen’s Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). [21] Though studies by the National Endowment for the Arts suggest that less than 20% of the U.S. population regularly attends live theater, their polling methodology explicitly excludes amateur performances such as elementary and high school plays. SeeNEA brochure, All America’s A Stage: Growth and Challenges in Nonprofit Theater (2008). http://arts.gov/publications/all-americas-stage-0 (accessed 1 March 2014). [22] Such a reformulation, however, takes us back to the limits of object-driven analyses. 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 ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Footnotes ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. About The Author(s) ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. 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.

Paul Gagliardi Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 1 Visit Journal Homepage The Illusion of Work: The Con Artist Plays of the Federal Theatre Project Paul Gagliardi By Published on December 11, 2017 Download Article as PDF In a chapter of her memoir on her tenure as leader of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), Hallie Flanagan details the trials and tribulations of staging plays in New York City. While much of the chapter explores the controversies over certain plays and the successes of others, Flanagan dedicates a portion of that chapter to recalling some of the more outlandish plays produced by her unit in New York (and elsewhere). In between praise for the “insane moments” of a production of Dance of Death and for “the inspired lunacy” of Horse Eats Hat, Flanagan describes another play which she appears to consider outrageous: the confidence artist play Help Yourself by Paul Vulpius which “created comedy from its situation of the unemployed young man brightly hanging up his hat in a bank where he had no job and becoming the leading expert in a land deal that never existed in fact.” [1] The fact that the FTP staged a play featuring a man swindling a bank seems curious given that the con has historically been condemned by commentators and that, at least outwardly, the con does not seem to bear the hallmarks of work, especially given, as David Kennedy notes, the prevailing principle for Franklin Roosevelt’s programs “was work.” [2] While a play featuring a man swindling a bank may have contradicted the prevailing ideology of the New Deal, plays that featured confidence artists—defined as any person who defrauds or outwits another person or group by gaining their confidence—were hardly unusual in the FTP. [3] In addition to Help Yourself , the FTP staged John Murray and Allen Boertz’s Room Service , which was the basis for a Marx Brothers film of the same name, wherein a Broadway producer named Gordon Miller engages in a series of ruses to prevent his theatrical company from being thrown out of a hotel by management while he attempts to secure funding for their latest production. Similarly, in John Brownell’s The Nut Farm, an aspiring film director named Willie Barton outwits a shady film producer by taking control of the project and outwits the producer by selling the film to a Hollywood studio. [4] And, in Lynn Root and Harry Clork’s The Milky Way , a promoter fixes a series of boxing matches in which a scrawny milkman wins the middleweight championship. While Flanagan often promoted popular fare like the con artist plays (she frequently mentions various productions of Help Yourself in her memoir and was eager to praise similar plays during her tenure), popular plays like these have not garnered the attention of critics or scholars. For then-contemporary reviewers, the FTP con artist plays were often dismissed, in part, because they considered the plays farces, or cheap commercial fare, and they were often more inclined to write about the more controversial socially-minded theatre the FTP was producing. Meanwhile, scholars have rarely analyzed these plays; Help Yourself is dismissed as “a very mild comedy” by Malcolm Goldstein, [5] while Barry Witham employs the audience reports of the Seattle Unit’s Help Yourself as a way to gauge the socio-economic makeup of that theater’s audience. [6] Indeed scholars like Witham, Loren Kruger, and Rena Fraden have focused their efforts on the more radical and avant-garde plays performed by the agency—such as the Living Newspaper plays or Orson Welles’s productions—that were a small percentage of the overall number of productions. Recent studies such as Elizabeth Osborne’s Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal Theatre Project and Leslie Elaine Frost’s Dreaming America: Popular Front Ideals and Aesthetics in Children’s Plays of the Federal Theatre Project have contributed to FTP scholarship by examining how under-analyzed plays fit into the agency’s complicated history, but overall, comic plays are deemphasized in these works. Yet while discussions of these plays are rare, the con artist plays of the FTP were some of the agency’s most complex works and, as I hope to demonstrate in this essay, are worthy of continued study. To accomplish this, I will focus on two of the more popular con artist plays, The Milky Wa y and Help Yourself. While the plays do promote the importance of employment and hard work, they also invite their audiences to act as participants in the con of the stage, providing agency to Depression-era audiences. At the same time, these plays also reminded audiences of the problematic nature of both the American Dream in the 1930s and the dangers that tolerance of confidence artists by institutions like the banking industry still held for Americans. The Con Artist and the Federal Theatre Project: Yet despite the ideological problems presented by the con artist, one can also see the appeal of these plays for the FTP. First, Flanagan’s belief that the FTP should embrace the “geography, language origins, history, tradition, custom, occupations of the people” in its theatre aligns with regional, historical, and cultural ubiquity of the confidence artist narrative. [7] Tales of confidence men and women in American culture can be traced back to the founding of the Republic and writers, playwrights, and producers frequently centered their works on the exploits of swindlers of all types. The con artist plays were also primarily written by then-contemporary American playwrights (except for Help Yourself ) and helped fulfill Flanagan’s aim of promoting new voices in the theatre. Yet another reason why these plays likely appealed to the FTP was that they could be used to temper criticism of the agency. In one sense, producers could illustrate a collective sense of humor on the agency’s behalf by staging plays like Room Service and The Nut Farm with their less-than-flattering portrayals of actors. Additionally, given long standing connections between the confidence scheme and theatre in American culture, the theme embedded in these plays that actors and con artists were not that dissimilar may have resonated with audiences. [8] The con artist plays were also more conservative in nature than many of the radical plays the agency was known for producing. Throughout its run, the FTP was accused of promoting leftist productions by critics in the press and the Republican Party; while the agency did produce a relatively small number of Living Newspaper plays and other shows that did contain radical themes, Flanagan and her producers continually had to deal with accusations from their critics that they were promoting leftist or communist plays. As such, the agency could have staged con artist plays to deflect some of these criticisms because these works could be read by audiences and critics as promoting a safe version of the con. For starters, the plays often feature swindles that are, as Flanagan said, “outlandish”: from outfoxing a nation of boxing fans to declaring one just works at a bank, the plots of this plays border on the absurd and appear to lack any realism. Moreover, there are no real victims in the plays: in contrast to real-life swindles such as Ponzi schemes, the marks of the con artists benefit from the deception (the bankers and employees of the brick factory in Help Yourself , the hotel manager and the acting troupe in Room Service ), or are implicit in the con (boxing fans in The Milky Way ). But perhaps most importantly, the plays feature characters whose goal is employment; for them, the confidence game is a means to an end. For example, in both The Milky Way and Help Yourself , the plays conclude with the the swindler characters getting full-time work in a dairy and a bank respectively. In addition to promoting the importance of employment, the plays also feature characters who dedicate themselves fully to their labors, reinforcing work ethic norms. The connection between swindling and traditional work is not unusual, as both scholars and confidence artists have understood the con as another form of work. As Joseph Maurer asserts, many confidence artists find they must dedicate themselves fully to their con, such as being versed in “business and financial matters, have a glib knowledge of society gossip, and enough of an acquaintance with art, literature, and music to give an illusion of culture.” [9] Similarly, the con artists in these plays have to dedicate an often impressive amount of effort to maintain their illusions, from toiling to complete a film ( The Nut Farm ), to studying the performances of a banker ( Help Yourself ). While the appeal of con artist plays to the FTP may have been in their outward approval of more conservative ideals, members of agency also likely understood the more subversive nature of the plays. In one sense, it seems that FTP workers sought to restore the character of the con artist to its more heroic status, similar to how Flanagan aimed to restore theatre to its cultural status of the late nineteenth century. Indeed, there existed an interesting parallel between the character of the confidence artist and theatre during the 1930s, as modernity had changed how Americans viewed both. Whereas the rise of cinema and radio as popular entertainments had helped diminish the importance of theatre in the minds of Americans, the lingering effects of the First World War and the Great Depression altered how the American public viewed confidence artists. While the con artists in nineteenth-century culture were emblematic of an optimistic country, the confidence artists that appear in American culture after 1920, like Jay Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Elmer Gantry, are “painful victims betrayed by a vision of the new country that retains only the power to delude rather than to fulfill.” [10] And for the most part, the con artists in these plays swindle heroically, trying to protect their associates or families, or attempting to outwit institutions that were unpopular during the Depression. These plays provided the FTP the opportunity to give a measure of agency to its audiences. As Elizabeth Osborne notes, Flanagan believed that her agency should provide “economic, physical, and psychological relief” to both actors and audiences. [11] And the confidence plays could have afforded audiences the opportunity to have their spirits “uplifted,” as Flanagan often noted. This effect partially came from the confidence tales themselves, as historically Americans have long admired the confidence artist’s daring and risk—especially through the reading of literature and in the retelling of tall tales or other stories—while celebrating the plodding determination of the self-made man in ceremony. [12] However, the confidence artist plays of the FTP seem to have reversed that dynamic, as the plays invited their audiences to participate in the art of deception by enjoying their complicity as “shills” who are enjoying seeing richer, less unaware marks being deceived on-stage. In his essay on the production history of Room Service , Sebastian Trainor draws on the work of Raymond Williams and Mark Fearnow to assert that the play’s long term success (it was frequently staged through the 1950s and saw revivals in the 1990s) may have resulted “from an audience’s failure to realize that the tale portrayed the artful manipulation of the American capitalist system by the agents of an emergent ideology.” Yet Depression audiences “likely derived considerable ‘Freudian pleasure’ from witnessing the abuse of authority figures on stage” and the farcical con artist plays gave audiences the agency to engage in such fantasies. [13] Yet perhaps the most significant reason why the FTP staged so many con artist plays was because they provided the FTP another opportunity to comment upon the socio-economic issues of the Depression. In part, this is because the character has long afforded artists and writers to note, as Gary Lindberg argues, that “the boundaries [of the social structure] are already fluid, [and] that there is ample space between society’s official rules and its actual tolerances.” [14] In particular, Help Yourself and The Milky Way illustrate the long standing intersection between the con and capitalism, investigating economic themes similar to those of the Living Newspaper plays like One Third a Nation , Power , or Triple-A Plowed Under . Scholars have often noted that there is often little to no difference between the labor of the con artist and the work of “the self-made man” that is praised in American rhetoric. For example, Stephen Mihm asserts that conning and finance are “to a certain extent,” interlocked, as “the story of one is the story of the other.” [15] He argues that it is a testament to the mythology of the work ethic that it has persisted in society when dishonest swindling has been favored by Americans rather than the “plodding, methodical, gradual pursuit of wealth.” [16] Instead, Mihm argues that the true American financial ethos “captures the get-rich-quick scheme, the confidence game, and the mania for speculation” that obsessed not just antebellum America, but that continues to grip American society into this day. [17] With their representation of socio-economic issues, the con, and the intersections between them, plays like Help Yourself and The Milky Way afforded the FTP another opportunity to challenge audiences; while not as overt in addressing the audience as the Living Newspaper plays, The Milky Way and Help Yourself still offered their audiences complex themes that also implicated all levels of society and forced audience members to reevaluate the myths they believed in and their complicity in the dangerous cons. [18] The Milky Way While its popularity has fluctuated since its inception in the late nineteenth-century, professional wrestling in the United States (and elsewhere) remains one of the most popular confidence games. As Susan Maurer explains in her analysis of wrestling, professional wrestlers relish their participation as members of an elaborate confidence game, selling audiences their roles, personas, and the narratives in an environment that generally preaches the concept of “kaybabe” (the illusion that the performances and actions in and around the ring are real). [19] As Roland Barthes writes in his seminal essay on professional wrestling, the spectator of a wrestling match must attach meaning to the outcome of a match not based on the science of who won or lost, but on the match’s moment within a grander narrative. Barthes writes, “The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, this is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees.” [20] The observations of Mazar and Barthes on professional wrestling help explain the significance of the FTP productions of The Milky Way . Like other plays of its type, the play centers on an outrageous swindle (in this case in the world of boxing), but the believability of the con is not an issue here. Like the professional wrestling audience, the fictional and real audiences in and of the play are shills of the confidence artists of The Milky Way and enjoy taking part in the con. This provided Great Depression audiences a form of agency in times when many Americans questioned their own power. And while the play appears to reinforce traditional norms of work and success, The Milky Way subtly challenges the continued validity of myths like the American Dream. The Milky Way centers on a seemingly ludicrous con in the boxing world. At the beginning of the play, a middleweight boxer, Speed McFarland, is accidently knocked out by his drunken trainer during an argument. However, newspapers report that a meek and mild-mannered milkman named Burleigh Sullivan who happened to be near McFarland and his trainer knocked out McFarland. To protect his boxer’s reputation, McFarland’s manager, Gabby Sloan, decides to send Sullivan on a whirlwind tour of the United States where the milkman will appear in a series of staged fights (even Sullivan is unaware the fights are fake) in which he “knocks out” his opponents in the first round. With each succeeding fight, Sullivan’s fame grows, and Sloan decides to have McFarland and Sullivan fight in a staged bout in which Sloan and his cronies can bet heavily in favor of McFarland. However, Sullivan accidently knocks-out McFarland with an elbow to the head during the match. Having bet their life savings on the fight, the manager and his cohorts believe they will end up destitute, until Sullivan announces that he bet on himself and will buy a milk dairy with his winnings and happily give his friends jobs. Originally staged on Broadway in 1936, Root and Clork’s play was performed nine times by the FTP in 1938: Holyoke and Salem, Massachusetts; New York City; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; San Diego; Denver; and two productions in Manchester, New Hampshire. While the FTP staged the play rather frequently, press coverage of these productions is limited. [21] In many respects, the FTP productions of The Milky Way appear to have suffered from the competition of a major Hollywood adaptation, as The Milky Way was adapted for the screen by Paramount in 1936. Directed by Leo McCarey, the film starred the famous silent comedian Harold Lloyd, and many reviewers of the FTP production appear to have preferred Lloyd’s version. According to a review from the Los Angeles Evening News , the film was far superior to any stage production. The reviewer writes, “At best, the Lynn Root and Harry Clork comedy, which made a choice film vehicle for Harold Lloyd, would seem pretty flat in any stage production.” [22] In places like Manchester and Salem, productions garnered little attention from the press while reviewers of other productions found the play to be not worthy of serious attention. A member of the audience for the Portland production found the play to be trivial. The unnamed reviewer believed that “regular audiences, accustomed to serious theatre, were apathetic to this show” and some “individuals were critical of our doing a ‘trivial’ show, contrasted the bill unfavorably with Prologue to Glory, One Third a Nation , etc.” [23] Meanwhile, an unnamed reviewer for the San Diego Union noted in his or her 1938 review that the play’s authors had written a text that, while humorous and representative of the boxing world was simply entertainment. The reviewer notes, “We are ready to believe the funniest possible stories about the fighting ring promoters, champions and their trainers, but Lynn Root and Harry Clork have written a three act play that . . . is merely something to be enjoyed.” [24] One of the interesting elements of this “trivial” show was how problematic the con scheme is in The Milky Way . Boxing has long fostered the con as fixed matches have long dogged the sport. However, Sloan’s con is complicated by the fact that the key member of his scheme, Burleigh Sullivan is a terrible shill for the majority of the play, especially in terms of his performances. In his autobiography, the boxer Jake LaMotta, the inspiration for the film Raging Bull , explains that the most important aspect of throwing a fight was selling it in the ring. Recounting his infamous thrown fight with Billy Fox in 1947, LaMotta explains a successful fixed fight must, like other cons, be predicated on a near-flawless performance: I’ll also tell you something else about throwing a fight. The guy you’re throwing to has to be at least moderately good. . . . I thought the air from my punches was affecting him, but we made it to the fourth round. By then if there was anybody in the Garden who didn’t know what was happening he must have been dead drunk. There were yells and boos all over the place. Dan Parker, the Mirror guy, said the next day that my performance was so bad he was surprised the actors Equity didn’t picket the joint. [25] While Sloan is an experienced con man who is skilled at flattering boxers, promoters, and fans, Sullivan is depicted as too naïve and honest to be fully in on the con. Not only does Sullivan consistently bemoan the dishonesty of the scheme, but also he is woefully underprepared for his role. When a reporter asks Sullivan about his possible connection to the famous boxer John L. Sullivan, Sullivan responds that he has never heard of the man, which makes Sloan claim that the milkman is just joking. He exclaims, “That’s a good one! Quote that—‘The contender, with a sardonic smile and a twinkle in his eye.’ . . . He’ll clown like that with you all day.” [26] Additionally, the playwrights portray Sullivan as someone who does not even resemble a professional boxer in either appearance or performance. In his character description in the play and in FTP performance stills, Sullivan is a wiry, un-toned, and bespectacled figure who does not look like a professional athlete. In particular, the Los Angeles production of the play frequently dressed the actor in Sullivan’s role in loose sleeveless t-shirts that emphasized the character’s lack of muscle mass. Moreover, Sullivan’s in-ring performances are even weaker. During his first fight, Sullivan begins the bout with his bathrobe on. Later, in his fight with McFarland, Sullivan needs to be “boosted into the ring” like a child because he has trouble with the ropes and becomes entangled in them and his boxing style consists of incredibly awkward jabs and ducking of punches. [27] Yet while both fans and the press covering his bout condemned LaMotta’s fight, the obviously staged fights in The Milky Way do not garner such criticism from fans or media within the play, a fact made all that more complicated given Sullivan’s lack of strength and ability. In particular, the media covering Sullivan’s fights seem to be fully deceived by the bouts. One newspaper article declares that the milkman was born for the role: “Sullivan’s a natural. A born fighter. Cheered as he left the stadium.” [28] Nor is it just the press that is taken by the act: boxing patrons are completely taken with Sullivan’s performance. Audiences seem especially enamored with Sullivan’s ability to hop and duck around the ring and his knockout punch, which is a “right you can see comin’ from the dollar seats.” [29] Even during Sullivan’s title bout with McFarland (which ends in roughly sixteen seconds after McFarland knocks himself out by falling into Sullivan’s elbow) the radio announcers describe a crowd that does not boo or jeer the sudden outcome. Such a reaction seems muted in contrast to typical reactions to real boxing dives from journalists and fans. As noted earlier in this section, many of the fans, reporters, referees, and officials in attendance at some of boxing’s most infamous thrown fights were aware that they were seeing a fix, including Jake La Motta’s fight, during which calls of “fix” and “scam” rained down from the angry crowd at Madison Square Garden. However, there is a broader implication of Sullivan’s performances and of the audience’s acceptance of them. In particular, The Milky Way shows a con perpetrated on institutions. The con artists of the play symbolically subvert the power structures of the era. Not only does the complicit audience of Sullivan’s fights read his bouts as a triumph over adversity, but also as counter-con of the boxing establishment. After having been treated to a litany of fixed matches, the audiences (and perhaps even the press) within the play are celebrating their own complicity in a con that literally subverts the boxing industry and the media and metaphorically outwits other social institutions. While the believability of the play might be suspect, the theme of a fictional audience performing and participating in a confidence scheme against an institution likely would have resonated with Depression audiences. For workers and audience members used to the swindles of capitalism, the staged narrative of workers flaunting their own cons to industries and institutions that had been swindling them for ages must have been a pleasurable experience. Yet if the reactions of the boxing fans in The Milky Way are read in terms of the performances of professional wrestling, the fans’ embrace of Sullivan speaks to their need to find meaning in his bouts. The fans’ embrace of the obvious swindling in front of them signals that they read these performances not as an athletic competition, but as a staged narrative like professional wrestling that holds mythological implications. And the myth that The Milky Way is wrestling with is the American Dream. Like other con artist plays as well as many plays produced by the Children’s Theatre Unit of the FTP that Leslie Elaine Frost argues balanced ideals of model citizenry with an increasing apprehension over declining American fortunes, The Milky Way illustrates both the idealized and problematic American Dream through its portrayal of Sullivan. [30] In one sense, his story is a near-perfect representation of the American Dream, as Sullivan achieves fame and fortune and uses his winnings to purchase a dairy and provide jobs to his former con artists. Yet the model actions of Sullivan, as well as his procurement of the American Dream, is undercut by the play. Despite his pluck and hard work as a milkman, the play provides us no sense that Sullivan would have been able to maintain his station in life by working for the dairy; indeed, given the nature of many other FTP plays that addressed economic issues, it is likely that audiences would have understood Sullivan’s hold on his employment as tenuous at best. Moreover, Sullivan is only able to achieve the American Dream through a confidence scheme that not only requires the assistance of trainers, boxers, media members, and complicit national audience, but also his willingness to gamble on a staged fight rather than working hard and saving his winnings. While the play outwardly showcases a model American who achieves the American Dream, The Milky Way also illustrates the public’s fear over “viability of the American . . . economic system” and the American Dream itself. [31] Help Yourself Intellectuals in the United States have long privileged the plodding, diligent worker. For example, in his autobiography, Ben Franklin celebrates the accumulation of his wealth and the ability of a man to retire from business. But as Gary Lindberg suggests, Franklin wanted work to be treated as pleasurable because while gaining wealth has its benefits, for Franklin, the greater joy is the game of business. Lindberg explains: The model self feels exhilarated less by final rewards than by the immediate sense of competition and play . . . living for and in the amusement of the present performance. . . . The skillful player can move easily from one game to another, say from business to politics, as he senses more invigorating play or more interesting or satisfying competition. [32] While Lindberg makes clear that Franklin does not openly advocate diddling or conning, he hypothesizes that Franklin would have understood the thrill of swindling. In particular, Lindberg argues that Franklin believes one should only adopt new roles in business or in life once “the game” has lost its appeal, just as many con artists felt the need to change their roles when their work was done. The play Help Yourself shows a kind of Franklin-esque hero who manages to play at work and business by adopting and playing the role of a banker. Yet this play is not simply about workers adopting a more playful approach to their labor. In the context of the 1930s, the play is both a satirical examination of the banking industry and the tendency of Americans in any number of fields to act as confidence artists. More significantly, the play demonstrates the prevalence of the confidence scheme in American society and warns its audience about their complicity in ignoring the more dangerous confidence schemes such as the games played by the bankers in the play and in real life. Help Yourself centers on an unemployed man named Chris Stringer who wanders into a bank where his college friend Frank is a clerk. Much to Fred’s chagrin, Stringer sits at a desk and begins to work without holding a position in the company. When Fred accurately asserts that Stringer has no business training, Stringer writes up a false business memo regarding a defunct brick factory project, which leads to a meeting between his bank and a competing bank. While no one can remember the specifics of the proposal, Stringer convinces the trustees of the banks to move ahead with the project. As the project progresses, Stringer endears himself to the other employees of the bank by telling jokes, going to lunches, and dating the boss’s daughter, even though they cannot remember working with him. As the new brick factory nears completion—with additional support from the federal government—Stringer panics when he realizes that he has no employment record and will be fired, but a last-minute forgery by Fred and his girlfriend permits Stringer to stay on at the bank. At the play’s conclusion, Stringer earns a promotion to the vice presidency of the bank. [33] Given that it was produced by the FTP twenty-one times, Help Yourself left an extensive record of audience reception. [34] In its report to the FTP, the Omaha production stated the audience reaction was “very favorable,” [35] while the Des Moines report notes that many audience members left the theater repeating Stringer’s refrain of “up she goes!” [36] Meanwhile, a writer for the Boston Herald declares Help Yourself to be a “featherweight variation of the fairy tale about the Emperor’s new clothes” and “that only the most reactionary of audiences would see the political element in a harmless farce.” [37] Similarly, audience members of the Los Angeles production found the play to have provided some relief from the economic climate of the Depression, but demonstrated the limitations of theatre. As one reviewer noted, “This is an amusing way of presenting a social problem. But I don’t see the trials of the new generation being solved in this way except in the theatre.” [38] Commenting on the production of the play of by FTP Seattle, a writer for the University of Washington newspaper finds the play to be highly enjoyable, but imbued with a very serious message. She writes, “The spirit of 1929 is on the way back. The catch line of the play is ‘up she goes.’ . . . The play was not produced in the same era was Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing . A new spirit is on the march.” [39] The varied responses to Help Yourself can be explained by the play’s complicated portrayal of work and banking. Like other con artist plays produced by the FTP, the play represents more conservative ideals about employment and working. For example, not only does the play reinforce the importance of employment by having its main character procure a job, the play undermines the normal labor contract with Stringer happily working for free. When his friend asks him why he’s working without compensation, Stringer retorts that if he is not on the payroll, then he cannot get fired. If they try to cut his job, he will “keep right on working.” [40] From the perspective of employers, Stringer is the perfect employee, given that he is willing to work for free. Additionally, Stringer espouses a hyper-individualistic attitude toward work throughout the play. Stringer declares that he “changed from the unemployed to the employed not because I asked for work, but because I took it.” [41] Taking work, he reasons, was preferable to sitting idly by and waiting for work to come to him. At such moments, Stringer embodies the mythology of the self-made man. Stringer echoes these traditional views of work when he implores the bankers to proceed with the Kublinski account. He says, “We must go on working, as life goes on working. Not figure and ponder, but work. You must pick up the first packing-case you see with a shout of up she goes! ” [42] Yet despite its promotion of more business-friendly ideals, Help Yourself is far more critical of the banking system. And for audiences who likely would have suffered as the result of real-life banking policies, seeing such a representation would have given them both enjoyment and a semblance of agency. One such moment is when the bankers are swayed by Stringer’s rhetoric about work, in which the play satirizes the promotion of traditional work norms by nineteenth and twentieth-century capitalists. In the meeting between banks to discuss his business proposal, the bankers struggle to comprehend (or remember) the details of Stringer’s plan. Since he is able to detail some vague references about the fictional proposal, Stringer wins over the bankers by urging them to approve the plan through a speech that arouses the interests of the assembled businessmen. He says: Yes, gentlemen, that’s how we must begin today—“Up she goes.” This happy cry of the simple workman should be our slogan. Workers and employers, bakers and carpenters—“Up she goes!” Statesmen and politicians—Europe and America—“Up she goes!” In the mountains where the coal lies buried, in the ground where the treasures are hidden—up she goes—Out there, machines lying cold—“Up she goes.” Rusty shovels lie in the engine rooms—“Up she goes!” Damn it gentlemen, bang on the table—Forget about your positions—put aside your official expressions. [43] Stringer first heard the phrase “up she goes” while watching movers attempting to hoist a piano through a window. Stringer felt a physical reaction to watching the movers, and he says that “with much spirit my muscles began to itch to work” and he decided to just pick up a suitcase and help them carry items upstairs in the townhouse. [44] While the sight and sound of the laborers inspires Stringer to work, his evoking of the phrase “up she goes” compels the bankers to do the same. As the scene ends, the bankers dance out of the conference room shouting “up she goes” in unison. There is an irony to the fact that the actions of manual laborers compel the bankers (as well as Stringer) to act, and the play satirizes how proponents of traditional work ethics promoted the idea that work could provide workers with upward mobility when, ultimately, many workers would never achieve such aims. As such, the bankers are convinced to work by Stringer’s usage of language that parodies traditional work ethic rhetoric. In addition, Help Yourself satirizes the nature of business performance, portraying the bankers of the play who are easily duped through vague language and action. Throughout the play, Stringer is able to convince his colleagues of his legitimacy as a banker through a series of superficial gestures. While the line between the business realm and the con realm were often vague, the publication of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1935 signaled a new emphasis on the performance of business. Karen Hatthunen argues that Carnegie’s manual, is a de facto guidebook to swindling one’s professional colleagues. According to Halttunen, “Carnegie’s purpose was to train men in a very special type of corporate salesmanship, ‘the salesmanship of the system selling itself to itself.’” [45] While Carnegie’s manual demonstrated how businessmen should perform to other businessmen, it also taught its readers how to convince themselves that they were performing their roles properly. In other words, Carnegie was also selling to his readers the spectacle of selling themselves to themselves, as if a reader were both the mark and the confidence man at the same time. This insincere performance is essential to Stringer’s con of the bank. By studying the “bank inside and out,” he has learned how to craft business proposals so ensconced in vague rhetoric that the bankers reading the proposal are inclined to accept it as is. In addition, Stringer manipulates his coworkers by evoking workplace rhetoric that persuades the other worker to react per the norms of the business world. [46] When someone asks Stringer if he is a new employee, Stringer replies that he has been at the bank for years, but had been working in another department. Stringer also provides vague details about himself, such as “I was the guy in the corner” or “I always ate ham and cheese sandwiches.” [47] Invariably, the other bank employees, after a brief pause, acknowledge that they remember Stringer. At points, Stringer is even able to tell “inside jokes” that his colleagues laugh at not because they understand, but because they are supposed to laugh at such jokes per the performance norms of the business world. While Help Yourself critiques banking culture, it also suggests that these performative elements in work extend beyond the banking industry. In stating part of his rationale for engaging in his con, Stringer claims that adopting a false persona is a game that everyone plays at. When his friend asks him why he is undertaking this scam, Stringer explains, “Just the illusion of working does something for you. Everyone plays at something—children play at being policemen—politicians at being statesmen. . . . Why shouldn’t I play at working?” [48] In one sense, Stringer’s statement echoes the Franklin’s belief that one must adopt new roles once their particular game has lost its appeal; Stringer also suggests through his words and actions that the solution to one’s working ills is to play your role and others will presume you are working. [49] Yet Stringer’s declaration that “everyone plays at something” seems to have be a signal for audiences to consider not only the importance of one’s sociological role, but also how prevalent false personas (and cons) such as politicians attempting to be statesmen are in society. And yet this play, like The Milky Way , offers readers a more complex and perhaps accusatory message in its conclusion. While the play seems to suggest that understanding a role gives you believability, Help Yourself also appears to assert that this form of conning is endemic in all institutions—not just banking or other businesses. Echoing the ideological stances of some of the Living Newspaper plays, Help Yourself suggests to audiences that they need to be aware of the dangers of the con Stringer pulled. While Stringer may have demonstrated daring in swindling the banks and procured jobs for other unemployed people, he nevertheless operated a far more dangerous confidence scheme than seen in The Milky Way : while Sullivan and his cohorts engage in a scheme in the entertainment world (although they do risk their own savings and the money of gamblers), Stringer’s swindle involves two separate banks and their respective investors as well as the government, and failure of this scheme would have likely endangered the money and jobs of other people. The danger of Stringer’s con is reinforced to the audience by how the play utilizes them. Whereas the real and fictional audiences of The Milky Way are (for the most part) in on the con, the bankers in Help Yourself are mainly unaware of how Stringer operates, while FTP audience members would have understood how little he knows about the banking industry and how his con succeeds through a considerable amount of chance. As such, when Stringer is promoted to vice president of the bank at the conclusion of the play, audiences are, on the one hand, encouraged to enjoy his success, but on another, unnerved by the bank’s inability to engage in due diligence with a powerful employee and the sense that Stringer will likely try another risky proposal in the future. Just as The Milky Way questioned the stability of the American Dream, Help Yourself presented to its working class and poor audiences a rather terrifying idea: that bankers—despite New Deal reforms—would engage in the same careless and risky practices that occurred in “the spirit of 1929.” Conclusion Hallie Flanagan believed that one of the aims of the FTP was to produce theatre that should be “socially and politically, aware of the new frontier in America, a frontier not narrowly political or sectional, but universal, a frontier along which tremendous battles are being fought against ignorance, disease, unemployment, poverty and injustice.” [50] Her ideal has often influenced critics and scholars to examine overtly radical plays like the Living Newspaper plays, the national production of It Can’t Happen Here , or the works of Orson Welles while downplaying farces, comedies, or other broad entertainments. And given that plays like The Milky Way and Help Yourself were in part farcical, outlandish tales that outwardly reinforced some traditional values, downplayed the appeal of the confidence scheme, or promoted the importance of employment, it is easy to see why researchers of the FTP have focused their efforts on other plays. However, plays like The Milky Way and Help Yourself were far more representative of the goals of the FTP than many critics have observed in the past. While the plays certainly featured more heroic con artists than other elements of American culture in the first half of the twentieth century, the performances of these plays permitted audiences to “get in on the con” as the characters on stage outwitted their foes. While granting their unemployed and lower-class audiences some necessary (if temporary) agency during the Depression, the plays also illustrated how endemic the confidence scheme was in American society, as actors, boxers, bankers, and most workers engaged in swindling of some form. But more importantly, these plays also addressed their audiences’ increasing anxiety over the decline of socio-economic status in the United States, as well as the dangers posed by unregulated institutions and workers. In this sense, the con artist plays of the FTP not only afforded audiences another opportunity to consider “the new frontier in America,” but did so under the guise of entertainment. Audiences may have been singing “up she goes!” as they left productions of con artist plays, but they were very likely also contemplating the meaning and their roles in the cons. References [1] Hallie Flanagan, Arena: The Story of the Federal Theatre (1940; New York: Limelight, 1985, 77. [2] David A. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 176. [3] I use the terms “swindler,” “con artist,” “confidence artist,” as well as “confidence scheme,” “con,” and “con game” interchangeably throughout this essay. Rather than “con man,” I mainly rely on the gender-neutral term confidence artist in these pages. [4] I provide an overview of the production history of The Milky Way and Help Yourself in their respective sections, but as an example of its popularity, despite competing with a major Hollywood film adaptation, Room Service was produced seven times in three years: Wilmington, North Carolina (1938), San Francisco (1938), San Diego (1938), New Orleans (1939), Denver (1936 & 1939), and Miami, Florida (1939). See George Mason University, The Federal Theatre Project: A Catalog-Calendar of Productions (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 135. The Nut Farm was less popular. On the FTP stage, the play was only performed twice in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Springfield, Illinois (neither of which appears to have attracted much, if any, press coverage). George Mason, The Federal Theatre Project , 113. [5] Malcolm Goldstein, The Political Stage: American Drama and Theatre of the Great Depressio n (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 268. [6] Barry Witham, The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 4. [7] Flanagan, Arena , 22-23. [8] For a discussion of the overlap between theatre and the con artists of medicine shows, see James Harvey Young, The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). [9] David Maurer, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man (New York: Merril, 1940), 158. [10] William E. Lenz, Fast Talk & Flush Times: The Confidence Man as a Literary Convention (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), 199. [11] Elizabeth Osborne, Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal Theatre Project (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 6. [12] Jackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America (New York: Penguin, 2003), 100. [13] Sebastian Trainor, “It Sounds Too Much Like Comrade”: The Preservation of American Ideals in Room Service ,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 20, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 29-49, 31. [14] Gary Lindberg, The Confidence Artist in American Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 9. [15] Stephen, Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 13. [16] Ibid., 13. [17] Ibid. [18] I use Elizabeth Osborne’s reading of the Living Newspaper play Spirochete as a model to thinking about the effect of The Milky Way and Help Yourself on their respective audiences. Osborne, Staging the People , 47. [19] Sharon Mazar, Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle (Oxford, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998). [20] Roland Barthes, Mythologies. trans. Annette Lewis (1952; repr., New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 15. [21] George Mason University, The Federal Theatre Project: A Catalog-Calendar of Productions (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 103. [22] “Review of The Milky Way .” Los Angeles Evening News, August 5, 1938. Box 1040, Los Angeles The Milky Way Folder, Federal Theatre Project Collection, Library of Congress, Washington DC). Hereby referred to as FTP LC. [23] “Audience Survey.” Ibid., Portland The Milky Way Folder. [24] Review of The Milky Way . San Diego Union , August 26, 1938. Ibid.,San Diego The Milky Way Folder. [25] Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970), 162. [26] Lynn Root and Harry Clork, The Milky Way (New York: Samuel French, 1936), 84. [27] Ibid., 98. [28] Ibid., 60. [29] Ibid., 64. [30] Leslie Ann Frost, Dreaming America: Popular Front Ideals and Aesthetics in Children’s Plays of the Federal Theatre Project (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013). See also Amy Brady, “Staging the Depression: The Federal Theatre Project’s Dramas of Poverty, 1935-1939” (PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 2013). Brady details how “poverty dramas” of the FTP also represented lingering anxieties over the stability of the American Dream. [31] Frost, Dreaming America , 5. [32] Lindberg, The Confidence Artist in American Literature , 88. [33] Help Yourself was originally written after the First World War by the Austrian playwright Paul Vulpius. Vulpius was a somewhat popular playwright in Germany and Austria during the inter-war period, and was responsible for a popular play entitled Hau-rack ( Heave Ho!). According to Anselm Heinrich, a theatre group sympathetic to the Nazi Party wrote the Prussian Theatre Council in 1933 and inquired as to whether Vulpius was Jewish. Initially, the Theatre Council informed the group that Vulpius’ lawyer had informed them that Vulpius was Aryan. However, in 1934, the Prussian Theatre Council declared Vulpius to be a “non-Aryan,” quoted in Anselm Henrich, Entertainment, Propaganda, Education: Regional Theatre in Germany and Britain Between 1918 and 1945 (Herefordshire: University of Herefordshire Press, 2007), 121-22.Vulpius appears to have relocated to England at some point during the 1930s where his play Youth at the Helm was adapted into a 1936 British film entitled Jack of All Trades which centers on a con man who fakes his way through a series of jobs in order to help his sick mother. Vulpius is credited as a writer on a 1950 BBC version of Youth at the Helm which, according to the BFI, is nearly identical to the plot of Help Yourself . [34] Help Yourself was performed twenty-one times by the FTP: New York City, Syracuse, and White Plains, New York (1936); San Bernardino, California (1936); Peoria, Illinois (1936); Los Angeles (1937); Springfield, Massachusetts (1937); Denver (1937); Omaha, Nebraska(1937); Cincinnati (1937); San Francisco (1937), Wilmington, Delaware (1937); Des Moines, Iowa (1937); New York City (1937); Salem, Massachusetts (1937); Boston (1937), Bridgeport, Connecticut (1937); Philadelphia (1937); Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania (1937); Seattle (1937), and Atlanta (1938), quoted George Mason University, The Federal Theatre Project: A Catalog-Calendar of Productions (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 71-72. [35] “Audience Reaction Report.” (Box 1016, Omaha Help Yourself Folder, FTP LC). [36] “Audience Reaction Report.” Ibid., Des Moines Help Yourself Folder . [37] Review of Help Yourself.” Boston Herald . 27 Jan.1937. Ibid., Boston Help Yourself Folder. [38] “Audience Reaction Report.” (Box 1015, Los Angeles Help Yourself Folder, FTP LC). [39] Mary Sayler, “ Help Yourself. ” University of Washington Daily , November 6, 1937 (Box 1016, Help Yourself Seattle Folder, FTP LC). [40] Paul Vulpius, Help Yourself . trans. John J. Coman (New York: Samuel French, 1936), 22. [41] Ibid., 18. [42] Ibid., 63, emphasis in original. [43] Ibid., 63. [44] Ibid., 12. [45] Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture In America, 1830-1870 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1982), 185. [46] Ibid., 19. [47] Ibid., 16. [48] Ibid., 22-23. [49] In several respects, Help Yourself foreshadows How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and, as several colleagues have told me, many episodes of Seinfeld . [50] Flanagan, Arena , 372. Footnotes About The Author(s) Paul Gagliardi is currently a lecturer of American Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has written for the online journal Howlround, and will have another essay appearing in the journal LATCH this winter. His research centers on portrayals of work in American theatre and literature, and he is working on a manuscript on work-comedies of the Federal Theatre Project. He earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue May Irwin American Musical Theater Musical Theatre Books New York's Yiddish Theater Chinese Looks Reclaiming Four Child Actors through Seven Plays in US Theatre, 1794-1800 The Illusion of Work: The Con Artist Plays of the Federal Theatre Project On Bow and Exit Music Legitimate: Jerry Douglas's Tubstrip and the Erotic Theatre of Gay Liberation Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Megan Grumbling University of New England, Southern Maine Community College 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 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Megan Grumbling University of New England, Southern Maine Community College By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF Ashanti D.Williams and Robbie Harrison in Portland Stage Company and Dramatic Repertory Company's Angels in America. Photo: James A. Hadley Saint Dad Monica Wood (25 Oct.-19 Nov.) A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens (2 - 24 Dec.) The Play That Goes Wrong Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer & Henry Shields (31 Jan.- 25 Feb.) What the Constitution Means To Me Heidi Schreck (6 - 24 Mar.) Clyde’s Lynn Nottage (3 - 21 Apr.) Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches Tony Kushner, Co-Produced with Dramatic Repertory Company (1 – 26 May) Manning Benjamin Benne (5 - 16 Jun.) This 2023-24 season, Portland Stage Company celebrated its fiftieth anniversary onstage. The theatre opened the season triumphantly, having completed its $6.4 million “Making An Entrance Capital Campaign” for facility renovations, which bore fruit in a beautiful new box office and elevator, and featured an all-local cast and a collaboration with Portland’s Dramatic Repertory Company for one of the year’s most important productions, Angels in America. The season also found PSC returned to pre-pandemic theatre ways, with all in-person shows and masking “welcome but not required.” The theatre opened the season with another play by beloved Maine writer Monica Wood, Saint Dad, which had received a workshop reading at PSC the previous year. Saint Dad , set in a Maine camp on a lake, is a romp of a comedy about three siblings who sell their dad’s camp when he’s on his last legs, then try to keep this fact from him once he’s miraculously recovered. Sally Wood directed a wonderfully physical production of the play, which explores issues of family, gentrification, and being “from away,” with a standout comedic performance by local actor Moira Driscoll as the especially laconic sister. For its holiday show, PSC brought back its full-cast theatrical tradition of A Christmas Carol. Michael Dix Thomas directed a cast headed by PSC favorites Dustin Tucker as Bob Cratchit and the formidable Tom Ford as Scrooge. From there, PSC pivoted to meta-theatrical screwball comedy with The Play That Goes Wrong, about the foibles of an inept community theatre company’s production of a British murder mystery. Kevin R. Free directed a rollicking production of the show, rife with incredibly intricate set design as the play-within-a-play’s portraits, doors, walls, and floors all become hilariously compromised. The cast of eight had terrifically quick timing, and was funniest when performers let us see the community-theatre actors dropping their British characters in dismay or abandon. PSC will bring back the show this August as its summer theatre offering. March brought Heidi Schreck’s popular show What the Constitution Means To Me to the PSC stage, starring Portland actor Abigail Killeen. Brian Todd Backus directed a well-paced and emotional production, and Killeen’s nuanced and wide-ranging performance was by turns silly, tender, and enraged. The show also featured the excellent Matt Delamater, as a nuanced Legionnaire, and a rotating cast of “debaters” – young women from the local community, including Evangeline Cambria, Vagni Das, Lily Marie Jessen, Paige Scala, and the amiable and intellectually nimble Lyra Legawiec, who was onstage the night I attended. The company’s next show turned to theatre great Lynn Nottage’s recent new play, Clyde’s , about redemption, second chances, and beatific sandwiches (and an oblique sequel, of sorts, to Sweat ). Germán Cárdenas Alaminos designed a marvelous down-and-out diner kitchen set for director Dominique Rider’s production, which featured excellent rapport between the four down-and-out sandwich makers, played by Lance E. Nichols, Roland Ruiz, Tatrisha Talley, and Derek Chariton. And Breezy Leigh was a terrifying Clyde, the malevolent, deeply damaged boss lady, in her incredible, incredibly hued power outfits, including a gold and hornet-green wonder (terrific costume design was by Emily White). Up next was Tony Kushner’s theatrical powerhouse of imagination and grief, Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches , an all-local co-production with Dramatic Repertory Company, a Portland company long committed to staging new, overlooked, and challenging shows, and co-directed by Peter Brown and Keith Powell Beyland, DRC’s founder. The show featured arresting performances by Portland actors Joseph Bearor, Paul Haley, Robbie Harrison, Michela Micalizio, Denise Poirier, Nate Stephenson, Casey Turner, and Ashanti Dwight Williams. Haley’s fast-talking portrayal of Roy Cohn made him both pathological and pathos-ridden, while Harrison, as Prior, was marvelous in animating the dying man’s emotional range, between rage, terror, sadness, and fascination. PSC will stage part two of Kushner’s masterpiece, Perestroika , in 2025, again in co-production with DRC. As its regular-season mainstage closer, Portland Stage presented Manning, Benjamin Benne’s 2023 Clauder Competition Grand Prize Winning play, which was workshopped last spring as part of the 34th annual Little Festival of the Unexpected. Alex Keegan directed a cast of four in Benne’s show about two brothers who return home to their grieving father – and a supernatural zucchini – after the death of their mother. This May and June, Portland Stage presented its 35th annual Little Festival of the Unexpected, featuring a live reading of John Cariani's latest play, Not Quite Almost, another show of linked vignettes about love, hope, and being understood. Cariani is the author of the massively successful , Almost Maine, and his new show – which will take the PSC Mainstage in 2025 – is being billed as “It’s a prequel. And a sequel. You decide.” Portland Stage continues to vocally support anti-racism and the decolonization of the arts and public spaces. The theatre’s land acknowledgment encourages theatergoers to connect with Wabanaki REACH (a Maine organization that advocates for the self-determination of the Indigenous peoples in what is now called Maine) and also acknowledges Maine’s historical involvement in the slave trade. Next season will open with Conscience , a look at the relationship and political calculus between Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith before turning to Angels in America Part 2: Perestroika , in another co-production with DRC. PSC’s holiday show next season will shift to The Snow Queen , followed by an Agatha Christie murder-mystery comedy, Murder on the Links. Two Maine-grown plays, Bess Welden’s Madeleines and John Cariani’s Not Quite Almost (Or, Almost Almost, Maine) take the stage next spring, before closing with Albee’s toxically careening masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf— a terrifying classic of the canon. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Megan Grumbling is a critic, poet, and librettist. She is the author of the poetry volumes Booker's Point and Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, has written lyrics for musical compositions about octopuses and glaciers, and teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of New England. 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.

Patrick McKelvey 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 Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization Patrick McKelvey By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Scholarship on the subject of performance labor has proliferated with renewed intensity over the past decade. This development is, in part, a response to the way that scholars across the humanities and social sciences have diagnosed transformations in the organization and practice of work in the past half century as a problem of “performance.” With Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization, Judith Hamera offers a contribution to these conversations that is both methodologically innovative and politically ferocious. Hamera argues that a performance studies analysis can register, recognize, and reimagine the racialized structures of feeling that attend deindustrialization in the U.S. She does so by attending to the overabundant and hypervisible representations of two deindustrial icons: Michael Jackson and Detroit. Three interrelated questions drive Hamera’s inquiry: 1) How does structural economic change feel? 2) What is the role of performance in these transformations? 3) And how have racist hierarchies shaped the performances, including the “promises and perils,” of deindustrial life (xiv)? She pursues these questions through both archival and ethnographic methods, engaging a sprawling performance archive that includes music videos, plays, documentary films, and art installations. Hamera wrests authority from economists as the experts best equipped to explain such structural transformations, modeling a performance theorization of political economy through the analysis of what she calls “figural economies.” Figural economies concern “material and historical entities” as well as the formal, representational, affective, and rhetorical currents through which those entities circulate (13). Performance theorists working across a broad range of contexts will find this notion of “figural economies” useful, even as I suspect most will be hard pressed to mine the “rhetorical, exemplary, and metaphorical potential” of “representations with uncanny persistence” that matches that of Jackson and Detroit (xii, 3). Following an introduction that orients readers to interdisciplinary scholarship on political economy, the racialized history of industrial nostalgia, and the notion of figural economies, Hamera has organized the book in two sections: Part 1, “Michael Jackson’s Spectacular Deindustriality” and Part 2: “Detroit’s Deindustrial Homeplaces.” Two chapters comprise each part. As Hamera herself would attest, this organizational logic is premised on something of a false distinction: Jackson and Detroit are part of a shared figural economy “of race and work within an arc that took them both from epic productivity through equally epic debt and contraction to efforts at fiscal and reputational recovery” (3). Chapter one exemplifies Hamera’s commitment to challenging the presumptive whiteness of the deindustrial imagination (think: Bruce Springsteen) by examining the trope of the human motor in Jackson’s dance repertoire. In her analysis, Jackson’s virtuosity – the intersection of the “musicality” and the “sharpness of attack” (37) – characterized his expanding repertoire of steps in the mid 1980s and produced industrial nostalgia by “offer[ing] a fantasy of unalienated labor in an industrial modernity that was and never was” (51). These moves, enacted when Jackson was at the apex of his career, mediated between “a vanishing US industrial moment” and the “cruel optimism” to come (24). For example, Hamera sees in Jackson’s Thriller music video (and its choreographic afterlife), a highly mechanized reproduction of late capitalism’s zombifying effects as well as the possibility that deindustrialization might be “outdance[d]” (48). The next chapter, “Consuming Passions, Wasted Efforts,” concerns the early 2000s when Jackson no longer owed his renown to his virtuosity and work ethic but to his status as a “prodigious spender and spectacular debtor” (54). Hamera moves across representations of Jackson’s “aberrant consumption” in the Life with Michael documentary, the trials for child molestation that linked Jackon’s debt to a broader set of moral economies, and his planned comeback in the 2009 This is It tour. Hamera draws upon the work of film theorist Linda Williams to read Jackson as a star in a racial melodrama in which he comes to embody austerity politics. In so doing, Hamera demonstrates how “both spectacular and banal” performances can render visible the otherwise invisible processes of financialization (59). In chapter three, “Combustible Hopes on the National Stage,” Hamera examines figurations of Detroit in three works of theatre and features Hamera’s delightful excoriation of Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit. Through a heuristic of “re-sitting/re-citing,” which redirects performance studies’ preoccupations with the substitution of bodies to a concern with the substitution of places, Hamera analyzes the entanglement of race, home, and work in order to assess these plays’ understandings of “Detroit-ness” (109). Ultimately, the chapter demonstrates how Detroit’s figural economy, including not only D’Amour’s play but Motown, The Musical and Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit ’67, has presented the city as “synecdoche not only for deindustrialization but also for the multisystem failures of late capitalism” (106). The fourth and final chapter, “Up from the Ashes,” considers the roles of the arts in a contemporary Detroit, refigured as being on the precipice of a comeback. Hamera shows how the “kunst washing” (“art washing”) practices of Detroit encourage entrepreneurs to invest in the city as an untamed avenue in need of creativity. Such practices, she argues, frame Detroit’s black population as impoverished with regards to creativity and risk management, blaming the city’s residents for the economic damages wrought by economic elites. In effect, these art-centered efforts have exacerbated the city’s racial and economic stratification implemented through other austerity programs that have privileged private capital over state investment. But she also locates ambivalent promise in specific collaborations, like The Heidelberg Project, that counter Detroit’s “phoenix narrative” while also “refusing melancholic resignation” (163). I suspect that chapter one, an exceptional chapter in a consistently outstanding work, might be the most likely to be excerpted for undergraduate syllabi. In addition to its modeling of figural economies, this chapter is further notable because of how Hamera enriches theorizations of virtuosity by putting theorists like Paulo Virno in conversation with the history of concert dance and music. This is also the chapter in which Hamera introduces Jackson as a “defiant compliant,” so-defined because of his simultaneous embrace of global capitalism and the challenge he posed to racist modes of production (15). Hamera joins the ranks of Margaret Werry and Elizabeth Povinelli in offering some of the most compelling accounts of agency under contemporary capitalism, accounts that are irreducible to tired rehearsals of complicity and resistance. Indeed, Unfinished Business is an urgent read for scholars already steeped in literature concerning performance and political economy, as well as for those who might be newly alerted to the work that remains to be done. Patrick McKelvey University of Pittsburgh 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.

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

Vivian Appler Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of 'The End of the Moon' Vivian Appler By Published on May 26, 2016 Download Article as PDF [T]aking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skillful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all our parts. -Donna Haraway [1] Imagination and Representation: Laurie Anderson and the Performance of Science Science, a liberal cultural domain, carries certain gendered expectations with it. [2] Science disciplines such as physics, astronomy, and engineering tend to be the most heavily laden with prejudices that continue to manifest in unequal hiring practices and disparities in wages within those fields. [3] In this special issue of JADT dedicated to “Scientific Research and Inquiry in American Theatre,” it is important to recognize how theatre and other representational modes of performance impact a cultural imaginary that contains both the sciences and the arts, and that gender bias exists at all points of our social spectrum. This interdisciplinary perspective reveals that problems of inequality apply to the domain of science as well as other cultural and economic domains such as art, business, and education. Theatrical performance has long been a popular mode of social critique, and when science is understood as a part of culture, not apart from it, the potential arises for theatre’s critical pen to address science issues as social. Representation of women as contributors to knowledge production within the domain of science is an important part of the critical power of theatrical performance. The use of the theatre as a laboratory to extend and create new knowledge about science is an exceptional quality of Laurie Anderson’s performance of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in The End of the Moon (2004). In this article, I offer an explicitly feminist analysis of one high-profile piece of science-integrative performance art that is implicitly feminist in its deconstruction of science practices and transparent representation of science ideas within the community of a general theatre audience. This article contributes to a body of scholarship that is growing to match an increasing amount of science-integrative theater on the twenty-first century stage. Laurie Anderson’s performance art tends to be critiqued within a non-representational framework. Moon is no exception: she embodies her own experience as a NASA resident-artist while performing science within the experiential context of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). However, the unfamiliar and unavoidably removed nature of the science objects central to her story must be considered within a somewhat representational context. The representational quality of her female body stepping into the domain of science onstage is a critical step towards expanding liberal notions of who has access to physics and astronomy careers. Her artist’s body is equally significant because it blurs the cultural boundaries that separate science discourse and practice from other cultural realms. Anderson’s embodied intervention into the arts-science divide suggests that science should be a part of a holistic cultural conversation, one that is equally accessible to all curious participants. Interdisciplinarity is central to the realization of feminist scientific discourse. Twentieth century science writer C.P. Snow infamously observed a “two cultures” divide that has long defined interdisciplinary discourse as antagonistic. Snow’s philosophical intervention into this cultural schism often (although perhaps not intentionally) situates scientists as better culturally read than their literary and artistic peers. [4] Snow’s binary question of “arts versus science” oversimplifies a much larger issue of empathy among cultural domains which have unequal levels of inclusivity and access. Interdisciplinary performance research can disrupt this biased cultural scenario by examining science-oriented performance artists who work from a feminist perspective. Artists such as Laurie Anderson, Lauren Gunderson, and Critical Art Ensemble are informed by feminist theory even when their science-integrative performances explicitly address other socio-scientific issues. Overtly feminist analyses of such arts-science hybrid performances expose a cultural imbalance in access to fields such as astronomy and physics even as they suggest alternative pathways to these apparently elite jobs. Science-integrative performance can reveal practical and theoretical interdisciplinary commonalities among diverse cultural domains. NASA Art Program Curator Bertram Ulrich observes of Anderson’s process, “her mind works very much the same way a scientist’s would. They’re both reaching out to try to understand what’s unknown.” [5] Moon was created as an outcome of Anderson’s arts residency at NASA; in it she uses performance art to invite the average theatre-goer into the space agency’s relatively closed ranks that she, an artist, has tenuously joined. Anderson shares her research with her audience, whom she imagines to be “a woman who would be sitting in Row K. I am trying to make her laugh.” [6] Randy Gener praises Anderson’s “faux-naif mutability, her techno-artist reputation and cross-wiring of art modes [that] are part of her idiosyncratic appeal—the reason she was selected by NASA’s Art Program.” [7] It may come as a surprise that NASA even has an art program, but artistic interpretation of the space agency has existed since its inception. The NASA Art Program was founded in 1962 as an attempt to make NASA’s enterprises more available to a popular American audience. The Program’s original director, James Webb, “wanted to convey to future generations the hope and sense of wonder that characterized the early days of space exploration.” [8] While many of the artists funded by NASA have been visual artists—alumni include Annie Leibovitz, Robert Rauschenberg, Terry Riley, and Norman Rockwell—Anderson was the first performance artist invited for a residency. [9] The selection of Anderson to participate in the Art Program reveals the agency’s desire for a more inclusive performance of science within traditional scientific spaces and an understanding that a theatrical performance artist is qualified to ease access to this elite domain in ways that other science outreach activities have been unable to do. Yet, Moon , the second in a trilogy of performance pieces that Anderson has devised in response to the post-9/11 cultural climate in the U.S., is not uncritical of NASA. [10] Anderson endeavors to instill in her audiences a sense of wonder at the world while also encouraging active participation in the larger culture in which the domain of astronomy is embedded. She gives the audience glimpses into elements of the monolithic science institution through sparse verbal narration, lyrical soundscapes, and iconic images. Anderson fills the space between wonder at scientific achievement and an active engagement with the socio-political criticism of those achievements through embodied and technologically transductive performance techniques. Her position as a woman artist engaging with science issues models a culture in which all citizens are empowered to participate in disciplines that have historically, and habitually, been restricted to professional scientists that physically resemble hegemonic figures of scientific authority: white, able-bodied, Euro-American men. Anderson’s Moon intervenes into this perennial limitation of American imagination with regard to inclusive practices in astronomy. Her storytelling is a proposal for citizen engagement with the process of exploratory and experiential astronomy as it was being practiced by NASA in the mid-2000s. Anderson’s combination of the human, the technological, and the animal—represented onstage physically, imagistically, and textually—constitutes a cyborg system intent on subverting culturally accepted notions of science that have come to be, she implies, accessible only to those agents performing almost exclusively within the secret domain of the military. [11] Anderson’s citizen-scientist performance opens with a pastiche of iconic twentieth century images that have come to define an American idea of the night sky. These images’ ubiquity in American pop culture contributes to an atmosphere of familiarity that enables an empathetic relationship between general audiences and science-oriented performance to transpire. The tableau is reminiscent of Clement Hurd’s illustration of the children’s book Goodnight Moon , by Margaret Wise Brown. Anderson is seated in the downstage right chair (where Wise’s mother bunny sits), surrounded by stars—tea candles—scattered across the stage, and the moon in its upstage left corner. Anderson’s moon is a fragment, indicative of the partial relationship that a human has with any piece of the universe. This synecdochal moon is a reproduction of the well-known photograph of Neil Armstrong’s lunar footprint. Taken in 1969 and projected onto a classroom-sized screen, Anderson’s deconstructed moon is nonetheless familiar to a general American audience in 2004. Anderson transduces NASA into a familiar object by isolating a sound that is a piece of a human: a voice. The tale begins with a description of a typical day in her studio in the company of her dog. The telephone rings. She describes the NASA representative on the other end of the line not as a person, but as a voice. “The voice said, ‘this is so and so and I’m from NASA and we’d like you to be the first artist-in-residence here.’ ‘You’re not from NASA,’ and I hung up the phone.” [12] Anderson continues to recount how the voice from NASA called back, and so her astronomy-integrative performance research began. Anderson’s choice to depict NASA as a voice renders the giant organization manageable. One voice can have a conversation with another voice on the telephone, but an individual might not as easily encounter a high-profile science institution such as NASA in its entirety. Feminism and The End of The Moon In this article, I draw primarily upon theories of the posthuman, performatics, and the cyborg in order to tease out the feminist aspects of Anderson’s performance of astronomy. N. Katherine Hayles’s [13] and Rosi Braidotti’s [14] approaches to posthuman theory help to articulate a line of thought that is at once socially aware and embodied. Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” playfully addresses the shifting roles of feminism, informatics, and hybridity within the domain of science even as she argues against notions of cultural boundaries. Diana Taylor’s use of performatics is also rooted in a desire to transcend geo-political borders. Taylor suggests the term “performatic” rather than “performative” when critiquing embodied performance, “to denote the adjectival form of the nondiscursive realm of performance… [b]ecause it is vital to signal the performatic, digital, and visual fields as separate from, though always embroiled with, the discursive one so privileged by Western logocentrism.” [15] Here, I extend Taylor’s term from its original “Americas” context and apply it to the analysis of performances that deliberately blend technics, politics, and informatics in order to disrupt liberal disciplinary boundaries. Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, whose performance theory in Cyborg Theatre is deeply inspired by Braidotti’s cultural criticism, asserts that, “arguments for alternate subjectivities—nomadic, non-unitary, hybrid, cyborgean—permeate a theoretical technological landscape reflecting a need for radical rethinking about human positioning in the world.” [16] Anderson’s performatic intervention into the problem of inclusive science access alters the positionality of critique—from without—that is vital if change in a cultural imagination of science and scientists is to transpire. Anderson’s narrative is overtly cosmopolitan and science-driven, but feminist principles are implicit to the science-integrative framework that makes her global critique possible. A feminist approach to the performance of science might include the identification of the following qualities: Transparency. As hybrid technologies make more of the universe detectable to the human, so the social machine that makes these new technologies possible must maintain open and inclusive environments. Hybridity. Feminist performances of science might acknowledge the networks over which the knowledge-productive elements of socio-scientific labor are distributed. Alignment with post-colonialist and post-human “insights about the importance of the politics of location and careful grounding in geo-political terms.” [17] Cultural position in relationship to access and authority within the domain of science is directly related to the liberal, humanist social contract of the West that post-colonialist and post-human theories seek to dismantle. Performances of science that transparently enact hybrid and inclusive knowledge production practices are a step towards the realization of an equitable culture across multiple disciplinary domains. Analyses that elucidate these qualities go hand-in-hand with the realization of theory as practice. Transduction—the communication of information across different media—is caught up in the feminist analysis of the performance of science because of its potential to equalize access to disciplinary-specific information. Citing James Berkley’s analysis of Edgar Allan Poe, Hayles invokes the power of mimesis to communicate data while also providing a framework for the transfer of power from one performing agent to another through mediated interactions: “Mimesis, in [Berkley’s] account, becomes a transducer transferring the power to evoke wonder and terror from one site to another, while the sublime sets up the transfer by presupposing that a connection exists between environment and system, stimulus and affect, externalized object and internalized subject.” [18] In a broad theatrical context, the performance process begins with information found in the world and that information is transduced through the dynamic body of a performing agent. Mimetic transduction moves information from one medium (the page) to another (the stage, screen, or other performance venue) so that audiences might understand that information differently than they would were they to encounter the same information via a different medium. Embodied transduction that occurs in a science-oriented theatrical context can empower audience members to participate in science concepts even when liberal social norms deny the non-scientist easy access to the domain of science. Theatrical transduction can encourage an empathetic audience response and therefore often results in the creation of an array of culturally imaginative possibilities for audiences of science-oriented performance. Anderson’s position as both resident of NASA and science-outsider allows her to empathize with NASA scientists as well as with general audiences. She establishes herself as an artist who is qualified to comment on science issues through her performed encounter with contemporary astronomy. Her feminist intervention is implicit; she, a woman artist performing science, is also fluent in scientific discourse and therefore challenges astronomy’s habitually exclusive practices. The kind of science mastery that Anderson exhibits falls into a category that philosophers of science Kyle Powys Whyte and Robert P. Crease, citing H.M. Collins’s and R. Evans’s 2007 study, refer to as “interactional expertise,” in which a non-scientist achieves “knowledge of a scientific field that is sufficiently advanced to understand and communicate within the discourse yet unable to contribute to research.” [19] But Anderson’s work is research. She uses her “interactional” expert position to conduct performance research that endeavors, at least in part, to discover what may be missing from the domain-specific attempts to diversify the laboratory. Anderson’s passion for astronomy and cosmology is infectious, and her performance craft transduces not only science concepts but also her enthusiasm for the subject. Her knowledge of NASA’s scientific processes grew through her residency, but her status as an outsider remains and necessitates the empathetic bridge-building of her science-integrative performance. Such interdisciplinary connections are needed if NASA and other physics and astronomy laboratories are to achieve the inclusive atmosphere that they purport to desire. Yet Anderson’s stakes are higher than the interests of a single government agency. The empathetic bridges she builds are also necessary for our society to function as a whole. Anderson and the Hubble Space Telescope [20] Historically, many scientists who began as astronomy outsiders made their most remarkable discoveries, in part, because of the field’s non-normative worldview that restricted outsiders’ access to mainstream spaces in which astronomy research had been conducted. These scientists were forced to introduce a new perspective if they were to perform science at all. American women such as Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) and Vera Rubin (b. 1928) made remarkable discoveries about the cosmos that were directly connected to their limited access to traditional methods of astronomical research and experiment. Like the introduction of women and other socially excluded groups to the observatory , the addition of each new component—including machines—to the hybrid project of knowing outer-space holds the capacity to radically alter conventionally held notions of humanity’s place in the world. This was the case with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which produces breathtaking images of the universe that are now readily available in a variety of contemporary media. [21] Anderson’s performance renders the HST’s process at once transparent and curious. History, astronomy, and technology are necessarily entwined enterprises because of astronomy’s methodological reliance upon the reference to and manipulation of many different visual representations of individual astronomical objects captured over long periods of time. [22] HST images add to an archive of telescopically transduced celestial imagery that has been accumulating around the globe for centuries. HST images have become a popular way for astronomers and curious amateurs to get an idea of the appearance and composition of objects in outer-space. In Moon, Anderson speaks for the non-expert as she performs her curiosity about the way that HST engineers manipulate images of celestial objects. She explores the knowledge-generative labor performed by the HST (and its team of astronomers, technicians, and astronauts) with her audience. Her performance of HST image transduction systems creates a metaenvironmental space in which spectators participate in NASA’s transductive processes. HST images are developed through networked transduction systems in a cyborgean enterprise designed to bring previously undetectable information about deep space objects into the optical spectrum. [23] Anderson illuminates this esoteric process for her audience, but she also indicates that the process is imperfect in its ability to align perception of distant objects with the spectral truth of those objects. In astrophotography, the distant celestial body may really exist, but it is also a product of the technology that detects it, the telescopic camera that captures previously unknowable information, and a transductive process that involves choices made by intentional human agents. [24] The original object—the Andromeda Galaxy, a mountain on the moon, the Great Nebula of Orion—disappears even as it is created for observation by a general, earthbound audience, and this presents a problem for Anderson. She voices a discrepancy between how celestial objects exist in their original environments and how those objects are represented to consumer-audiences of science media. Anderson brings her critique of technologically mediated images back to the human body: “We’re always fixing up photographs,” she remarks as she compares the work of HST engineers to photoshopping a “miserable family Christmas” photo. [25] “One of the things that really bothers me about photography,” she continues, “is that you never know how hot it is in the photograph.” [26] Anderson’s problem with photoshopped family pictures analogically grounds her critique of heavily mediatized HST images. Both types of images are fragmented, removed from first-hand experience, and therefore indicative of the posthuman condition necessary to the performance of astronomy. Mary Thomas Crane points out in her examination of early modern science that much of the experience of the laboratory (and, by extension, the observatory) counters “basic sensorimotor experience.” [27] Anderson describes her frustration with astrophotography’s incapacity to accurately convey the environment of a star or a galaxy in a two-dimensional image. HST pictures, she argues, are simply archives of data that document conditions that remain forever outside the experiential grasp of the human observer. A family photograph’s observer cannot distinguish the difference between the photographic subject’s embodied experience and the record of that experience. [28] The photograph is an index of original environmental conditions; the colors, texture, and size of the sweater, and who was wearing it are indicated by the photograph, but the embodied experience of wearing the sweater, as well as the circumstances surrounding the photographic event, is a much trickier experience to share with an observing agent across distances of time and space. For consumers of HST media images, this translates to an inability to sense data that does not normally appear on the human visual spectrum, such as ultra-violet rays and x-rays. Meanwhile, these inexact documents become iconic in their representation of events in cultural memory. Colorization is one way that HST engineers attempt to transduce spectrally invisible information collected by the HST into images that are meaningful for popular audiences and astronomy experts alike. Art historian Shana Cooperstein explains that colorization “encourages people to imagine links between photography and vision, as well as between ‘truth’ and visional perception.” [29] Elizabeth A. Kessler finds that ascriptions of authenticity and authority to colorized HST images depends “on a definition of truth that rests on human perception; but color carries a greater range of meanings. . . . [C]olor can be used to label, to measure, to represent or imitate reality, or to enliven or decorate. Furthermore, it incorporates both objective and subjective elements.” [30] Kessler describes the process of colorization as one that depends upon the variability of human perception as well as a number of possible choices that might be made by individual imagists working across history. Kessler discusses “false color” as “hues” that need not have any relationship to the visual appearance of the phenomena or the wavelengths of light registered by the instrument. Instead, different colors might indicate another dimension of the data….In addition to what the color indicates, false color has come to describe a particular color palette—flat, garish hues that do not resemble natural phenomena in our world.[31] A colorized image emotionally engages a general audience because of that audience’s memory of the familiar icon and subjective associations with the colors in the image. The process is creative in that some personal choice is involved on the part of the HST engineer, but these choices are constrained due to the indexical ends of the photography experiment. Such images are breathtaking, but Anderson is unsatisfied because of the HST’s inability to transduce celestial objects in their complete spectral splendor. She describes an encounter with some of the scientists who work on HST transduction. She performs the kind of expectation that the woman in “Row K” with a casual interest in science might share by asking NASA scientists, “Could you have used a whole different color range…. How did you arrive at these colors?” [32] By “these colors” she means pinks and blues instead of her suggested alternatives of brown and gray. The answer the scientists offer is simple: “We thought people would like them.” [33] She pauses as the audience laughs at the arbitrariness of human choice involved in the transduction of information that comes to us via the space telescope, is interpreted by human engineers who manipulate that data, and manifests in journalistic media images detectable on the visual spectrum. Anderson’s tone waxes lyrical and her text shifts back to the sublime as she muses, “It looks like a painting of heaven.” [34] Colorized HST photographs affect science media viewers in a manner similar to that of acting technique with regard to audiences of realist theatre: both are capable of engendering simultaneous states of curiosity and familiarity on the part of the spectator towards the observational object. Creators of HST outreach images must weigh factors of emotional connectivity, scientific objectivity, and personal memory in the subjunctive work of representing truthful information while also stimulating popular imagination towards distant celestial phenomena. Much like the unnatural techniques that actors deploy to convey a sense of realism in representational theatrical genres, HST astronomers isolate wavelengths that are not on the visible spectrum and ascribe an unrealistic color to them. The effect is a fantastic image that the unaided human eye could never see, but that nevertheless registers as realistic and familiar in the imagination of the observer. Neither realist acting techniques nor HST image manipulation replicate identical copies of the original object of observation, be it a fictional character or a distant star. In theatrical and photographic forms, a sense of familiarity with a scenario or an image is essential for spectators to empathetically engage with the representation of a novel object. Ultimately, it is the creative agency of the individual scientist that determines how distant astronomical events appear to a general public. The subjective memory of the scientist affects the color choices made, even when those color choices don’t represent the “true” color that the human eye would see. Cognitive theatre scholar Amy Cook claims, “[t]o represent the previously invisible, to perform the seemingly impossible, is vitally important to creating the visible and the possible.” [35] Such imagination is necessary each time astronomers reinvent a familiar celestial object with a new technology. In a similar way, Anderson reinvents the domain of astronomy through her critique of HST. Astrophotography distorts the truth while representing reality; it encourages audiences to learn something new about celestial objects through the process of composite imaging. [36] A composite photographic image is created by layering several negatives and thereby blending information of each to create a single image that represents the idea of a photographic object but does not reproduce visual information in a one-to-one manner. HST images are not only colorized, but composite, consisting of layers of captured spectra that have each been assigned colors representative of different aspects of the object’s qualia. Through HST composite, colorized imaging, astronomers create new pictures of familiar objects that index more information than ever before, but that continue to resemble the iconic images captured by earlier astronomers. Visual reference to earlier astronomical icons encourages non-scientist viewers of these images to access any memory they may have about what they already know of these objects, and thus to cognitively build upon previous memories in a continuous development of learning about the objects in question. In Anderson’s composite performance of NASA, she doesn’t work simply with color, but she blends cultural memories and impressions of NASA in order to elicit a simultaneously curious and critical audience response. While her inclusion of Armstrong’s footprint brings to mind a familiar moment in the history of science, it also conjures the Cold War context surrounding the space race. As discussed above, her female artist’s body might trigger a number of associations from different audience members. For those who work within the science industry, Anderson’s performance might signal the disciplinary exclusion of certain social groups from the field. Other audience members who remember Anderson’s previous performances as works of cultural critique may expect an unsubtle criticism of NASA’s affiliations with the military. Still others who have come to expect a spectacular array of high-tech gadgetry from a Laurie Anderson production might be disappointed by the apparently simple stage technology in a piece that deals with technics that are off-limits to the average American citizen. [37] In Moon , Anderson’s trademark electric violin solos create time and space for viewers to process her performatic transduction of NASA as it mingles with subjective associations among the audience. Defying Gravity (And Other Socio-Scientific Forces) In the midst of the multi-layered web of cultural memories that individual audience members experience when faced with the iconography embedded in Moon , Anderson deconstructs NASA even as she composes it. She questions whose bodies have the authority to occupy the subject position in a national conversation about science through her cyborgean relationship to culturally familiar objects that are commonly associated with Americans in space. Parker-Starbuck, in her discussion of the fragmentation of multimedia performance, states, “[a]bject and object bodies are both bodies at a distance, bodies outside of our ‘selves.’ These bodies triangulate around the ‘subject’ as those who are refused, rejected, desired, critiqued, or negotiated with. These are the bodies that reiterate who we think we are and where we fit in the world.” [38] On Anderson’s stage, Neil Armstrong’s body, invisible save for his footprint projected on the small screen, is at once abject and object. Anderson is the subject performing astronomy “in play with” the abjected object of the first man on the moon. [39] The physical and technological space created on her cyborg stage makes room not only for her, but for the witnesses to this feminist comment on representation and authority in the domain of astronomy, to join the cultural conversation. Further altering the triangular relationship she has established among herself as subject, audience as participatory witness, and abjected icons of American space exploration, Anderson playfully manipulates simple video technology in order to defy notions of a familiar physics concept: gravity. Her challenge to physics provokes audience members to increase their engagement with socio-scientific government actions. Towards this end, she performs a spacewalk that introduces NASA’s innovative space suits as war machines. In this sequence, Anderson uses a live-feed video camera to create a performance of weightlessness. She makes her illusory technics transparent to her audience by exposing her stagecraft even as she performs it, letting spectators in on the joke. “Our moon is just the moon,” she muses as she switches the camera on and focuses it toward herself, the audience visible within the camera’s frame. [40] The image of Armstrong’s historic footprint on the upstage left screen is replaced with a live projection stream from Anderson’s camera; now she occupies both subject and object positions on her cyborg stage. She holds the camera upside-down so that her projected image appears to be floating on the space of the stage, also upside-down, with a stage light shining like a sun behind her disembodied head, which bobs gently in accord with the movement of her live body. The camera captures some of the tea candle stars on the stage, and in an instant doubles the amount of “space” represented through the handheld projection device. Through this fragmented stage presence, Anderson raises the issue of gravity, verbally reflects on the experience of seeing old photographs of astronauts “suspended, floating in space” during her residency at NASA, and imagines what it must be like to walk on the moon. [41] As she begins to perform her spacewalk, Anderson describes the technology built into NASA’s new spacesuits that will, according to Anderson, “increase your strength, say, forty times.” [42] The suits contain all kinds of “liquids” and “entry points for medicine.” [43] Just as the audience starts to dream about space suits capable of transforming the human into the superhuman (posthuman?), she disrupts the audience’s reverie with news about the grim reality of war times. The super-suit project’s contract has been transferred from NASA to a “new joint team” between MIT and the U.S. Army. [44] The suits will not be worn by astronauts but will be sent “out into the desert. Out into the world.” [45] Like the touched-up family portrait and HST photographs, no matter how much a person learns about a thing—a physical force, a moon, a space agency—there is always something that remains outside the realm of immediate experience. What remains outside the grasp of the everyday American, Anderson suggests, is the end to which NASA puts its ingenious inventions. Her criticism resonates with Parker-Starbuck’s assertion that “how bodies are modified and by whom are the ethical concerns that surround what already is, and will continue to shape both humans and non-humans alike.” [46] Parker-Starbuck’s theatrical cyborg ethic echoes Haraway’s late twentieth century cyborg provocation: “Might there be ways of developing feminist science/technology politics in alliance with anti-military science facility conversion action groups?” [47] Anderson’s performatics model an alternative way of doing science—in public—that resists traditional power structures hidden within the practice of space exploration. While the spacesuits that Anderson describes resemble more conventional popular imaginations of the cyborg in their immediate melding of human body with technology, Anderson’s “reliance on corporeal-technological relationship” in performance is also cyborg in its technics and its critique. [48] She weaves her criticism into the fabric of transparent video-play about gravity, made strange within the space of the theatre. She proclaims, “Gravity is an illusion, a trick of the eye, not a force.” [49] In the metaenvironment of Anderson’s science-integrated theatre, imagination and illusion enable non-astronaut humans to participate in this rare aspect of the human experience and critique the politics within the institution that makes such experiences possible for a select few Americans. Saying “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?” [50] she segues into a musical interlude that provides the reflective space for her audience to ponder the experience of weightlessness and the role of the individual in the socio-technological tangle of post-9/11 culture. She raises her electric violin and now the image on the screen takes the perspective of the bow as it meets the instrument’s strings. The illusion of space persists as the audience is presented with the live Anderson playing her violin beside the projected, more intimate, close-up image of her face. Quantum Anderson twins are separated by the space of the stage and connected by the electromagnetic force that powers her performance technologies, all in support of the artist’s efforts to transduce the hidden nature of NASA for the general audience assembled at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Anderson’s performatics encourage her audiences to engage with the domain of science in order to stay informed and active in a culture that would apply detection-related technologies developed in the domain of science to the art of global warfare. She presents herself as a science outsider, shares her socio-political performance response in an empathetic manner, and thus multiplies the number of non-scientists participant to the process of astronomy in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, Moon can seem to be internally contradictory—should the non-scientist viewer love NASA or fear it? Seen as parts of a cultural whole, the balance between science and art, fear and wonder, becomes evident. This ability to isolate individual components in order to realize a whole system is integral to Anderson’s posthuman stage presence. Her doubled image—on the stage as well as on the projection screen—is an embodied metaphor for the ways that humans can hold contradictory opinions about one subject. She raises the social stases of war and peace as poignant examples for 2005. “Yes,” she says, “you can keep two things in mind.…[W]e can hold both at once without dropping.” [51] The show closes with a monologue in which Anderson imagines the end of time with a mixture of theories of quantum physics, dream sequences, and, of course, the haunting musical accompaniment of her electric violin. She offers a parting comment on the hybrid nature of human cognition at the dawn of the quantum age: “Sometimes, I think I can smell light,” a suspicion that resonates with her earlier human frustration with the inadequacy of transductive technologies to replicate original conditions of deep-space phenomena. [52] Here, she suggests that such previously undetectable information is accessible by means of our extended and imaginative posthuman state. Access to the previously inaccessible becomes a matter of a change in critical, embodied, and disciplinary perspectives. Feminist, posthuman, and cyborg criticisms of the domain of science in the space of the theatre model possibilities for non-traditional bodies to participate in interdisciplinary actions and conversations having to do with science. The representation of women performing scientist roles in performance is a critical move towards a culture that might imagine, accept, allow, and encourage the female body as normative for the task of practicing physics and astronomy. Anderson is transparent in her own creative process that also renders NASA a bit less opaque for non-scientists. Her presence as a woman onstage, performing science from the perspective of an artist, offers an empathetic bridge for other curious science-outsiders to critically participate in the experience of astronomy. References [1] Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991), 181. [2] This article was written, in part, during a Dibner Research Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California in 2015. Thanks also to the New York Public Library Performing Arts Research Collections for granting me access to review the archival footage of The End of the Moon . [3] The 2013 National Science Foundation (NSF) found that “the proportion of [science and engineering] degrees awarded to women has risen since 1993. The proportion of women is lowest in engineering, computer sciences, and physics.” National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2015 , accessed October 20, 2015, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15311/digest/ . There is much action that is currently being performed within astronomy in particular to emend these disparities. Blogs such as Women in Astronomy and Astronomy in Color are evidence of actions performed by women and racial minorities who work within the discipline of astronomy towards the end of equalizing access to astronomy. Women in Astronomy , accessed 14 November 2015, womeninastronomy.blogspot.com. Astronomy in Color , accessed 14 November 2015, astronomyincolor.blogspot.com. [4] “They [literary intellectuals] still like to pretend that the traditional culture is the whole of ‘culture,’ as though the natural order didn’t exist. As though the exploration of the natural order was of no interest either in its own value or its consequences. As though the scientific edifice of the physical world was not, in its intellectual depth, complexity and articulation, the most beautiful and wonderful collective work of the mind of man. Yet most non-scientists have no conception of that edifice at all.” C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures: and A Second Look: An Expanded Version of the Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 14. [5] Ulrich in Grossnov, Michael Joseph, “Inviting the Cosmos Onto the Stage,” The New York Times, 11 November 2004, http://www.nytimes.com , accessed 1 March 2016. [6] Anderson in Solomon, Deborah, “Post-Lunarism,” The New York Times Magazine , 30 January 2005, http://www.nytimes.com , accessed 1 March 2016. [7] Gener, Randy, “Fly her to the moon: what’s art got to do with NASA? Laurie Anderson listens to the cosmic pulse,” American Theatre 22, no. 3 (2005): 26+, accessed 2 December 2014, http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA130570546&v=2.1&u=upitt_main&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=1d8012ba9f173f1b83d9bc51f4d0ad28 . [8] NASA ArtSpace , accessed 6 December 2014, http://www.nasa.gov/connect/artspace/ . [9] The Smithsonian recently curated an exhibit dedicated to the NASA Art Program’s history, documented in the book, NASA/ART—50 Years of Exploration . Selections from it may be seen on NASA’s website, https://www.nasa.gov . [10] Other pieces of the trilogy include Happiness (2001) and Dirtday! (2012). [11] Anderson has a history of connecting the dots between the domains of science, technology, and the military. Friedrich Kittler points out that she adapts the military technology of the vocoder for her representation of the voice of a pilot announcing a crash landing in the song, “From the Air” on the record Big Science (1982), also featured in the live performance, United States (1983). Mara Mills, “Media and Prosthesis: the Vocoder, the Artificial Larynx, and the History of Signal Processing,” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 21, no 1 (2012): 110, accessed 19 October 2015, http://muse.jhu.edu/article/491050 . [12] Laurie Anderson, The End of the Moon (New York: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvey Theatre, February 27, 2005), videocassette, New York Public Library, Performing Arts Research Collections, Theatre on Film and Tape. [13] N. Katherine Hayles, “Refiguring the Posthuman,” Comparative Literature Studies 41, no.3 (2004), accessed 11 May 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40247415 . [14] Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). [15] Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 6. [16] Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 14. [17] Braidotti, The Posthuman , 39. [18] Hayles, “Refiguring the Posthuman,” 313. [19] Kyle Powys White and Robert P. Crease , “Trust, Expertise, and the Philosophy of Science,” Synthese 177, no. 3 (December 2010), 411-25, accessed 26 July 2015, 417. [20] The HST is a 2.4m-wide reflective telescope that is situated three-hundred and eighty-one miles above the Earth’s surface. On 24 April 1990 it was carried in the cargo bay of the space shuttle Discovery and placed into orbit. Its “improved wavelength coverage,” will come to bear on this article’s examination of the HST role in detecting invisible spectra in the accessible performance of astronomy as it appears in The End of the Moon. Robert W Smith, “Introduction: The Power of an Idea,” Hubble’s Legacy: Reflections by Those Who Dreamed It, Built It, and Observed the Universe with It , ed. Roger D. Launius and David H. DeVorkin (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2014), 3. [21] HST has its own website that is operated by NASA. Hubblesite , accessed 19 October 2015, http://hubblesite.org . [22] Repeated observations and visual documentations of celestial objects like stars and galaxies allow astronomers to track changes in an object’s location and appearance over time and therefore learn about the object’s distance, heat, and movement. [23] The visual spectrum refers to the small portion of the energy, emitted by all objects to some degree, detectable to the human eye. [24] In a discussion of mid-late nineteenth century photographs that contain extra-visual data, art historian Josh Ellenbogen states, “[p]hotography does not reproduce data in such images, but instead it produces them.” Josh Ellenbogen, Reasoned and Unreasoned Images: The Photography of Bertillon, Galton, and Maray (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 6. [25] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [26] Ibid . [27] Mary Thomas Crane, “Analogy, Metaphor, and the New Science: Cognitive Science and Early Modern Epistemology,” Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies , ed. Lisa Zunshine (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 107. [28] The relationship of experience to the documentation of experience is a recurrent trope in Anderson’s lifelong explorations of the connections that exist between science, culture, and the military: “Stand by. This is the time. And this is the record of the time.” Laurie Anderson, “From the Air,” in RoseLee Goldberg, Laurie Anderson (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 96. [29] Cooperstein’s case study is of the imagistic history of the Orion Nebula in which she compares nineteenth century astrophotography and the photography techniques used by turn-of-the-millennium astronomers. Shana Cooperstein, “Imagery and Astronomy: Visual Antecedents Informing Non-Reproductive Depictions of the Orion Nebula,” Leonardo 47, no. 2 (2014), 133, accessed 27 May 2015, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/len/summary/v047/47.2.cooperstein.html . [30] Elizabeth A. Kessler, Picturing the Cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 154. [31] Ibid., 157. [32] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [33] Ibid. [34] Ibid. [35] Amy Cook, “If: Lear’s Feather and the Staging of Science,” The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive ,” ed. Paul Cefalu and Bryan Reynolds (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 59. [36] Ellenbogen defines the composite image as “a synthesis of data—a condensed, abbreviative representation of the kinds of information one might otherwise derive from a binomial curve, or better, a series of binomial curves that measured the particular features a given composite shows” (Ellenbogen, 9) . [37] Most reviews remark upon the pared-down technology of Moon , when compared to the technological complexity of her earlier work. [38] Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre , 95. [39] Ibid. [40] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [41] Ibid. [42] Ibid. [43] Ibid. [44] Ibid. [45] Ibid. [46] Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre , 194. [47] Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women , 169. [48] Parker-Starbuck, Cyborg Theatre , 101. [49] Ibid. Gravity is (probably) a force, but one that physicists are still seeking to adequately explain. See Lisa Randall, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions (HarperCollins ebooks, 2009). [50] Anderson, The End of the Moon . [51] Ibid. [52] Ibid. Footnotes About The Author(s) Vivian Appler is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the College of Charleston. Her writing has been published in Theatre Survey , Theatre Journal , and the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq. A former Fulbright fellow, her current research focus is on feminist performances of science. 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.

Craig Quintero Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Craig Quintero By Published on May 20, 2022 Download Article as PDF The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness. Yuko Kurahashi. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Books, 2020; Pp. 240. Yuko Kurahashi’s The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness presents the first comprehensive analysis of Ping Chong’s five-decade long theatre career in which, according to Kurahashi, Chong “has created the largest and most complex body of work of any Asian American artist” (5). Kurahashi defines Chong as an “avant-garde artist who is also Asian American” instead of an “Asian American avant-garde artist” in order to highlight that his work extends beyond issues of Asian American identity and focuses on broader global concerns of displaced communities, marginalization, and racial and economic injustice (5). Kurahashi’s study traces the evolution of Chong’s performances from his early abstract productions to his multi-media performances, historical projects, and community-based oral histories, while also detailing the manner in which “the trajectory of his life and experiences underpin” his art (173). In Chapter 1, “Transpacific Journey of Two Opera Artists,” Kurahashi introduces the broader cultural and political landscape that Chong was born into in 1946 in Toronto, noting seminal moments that led to the massive influx of Chinese immigrants to North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the discriminatory laws enacted by America and Canada to stem this flow. Chong’s parents were both Cantonese Opera artists (his father was a director and his mother was a performer) who first made their way from Guangzhou, China, to San Francisco in the 1930s with a traveling Cantonese Opera company, before moving to Canada and finally settling in New York in 1947. Kurahashi emphasizes the impact that being raised in an immigrant household had on Chong, with issues of “isolation, loneliness, and the struggle of self-identity” recurring in his work as he grapples with being a “culturally hyphenated man” in America (11). Chapter 2 details Chong’s formative collaborative relationship with Meredith Monk that began after he completed his undergraduate degree in film at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He joined the Meredith Monk Dance Company in 1972, and later that year, Chong and Monk collaborated on the dance Paris. This collaboration provided the foundation for Chong’s early performances that emphasized abstraction, non-linear or non-existent narratives, tableau, music, dance, voice-overs, “framing” by constructing faux proscenium arches, projections, “bricolage” (a technique inspired by Joseph Cornell’s artwork in which Chong juxtaposed unassociated objects onstage to create new meaning), incorporation of movement styles inspired by Japanese Noh and other Asian performance traditions, and use of language as a “medium” instead of an “instrument of communication” (35-41). Kurahashi reads these early experiments as Chong’s attempt to “integrate a multiplicity of stage elements to provoke the audience to look at the work and their world anew” (42). Chapters 3-10 introduce Chong’s major performances from 1975-2017. Kurahashi presents his works chronologically, while also dividing the performances into thematic “categories” including fear of the unknown (Chapter 3), myths (Chapter 4), modern dystopia (Chapter 5), revisionary history of East-West relations (Chapter 6), staging voices in the community (Chapter 7), memories and stories of local communities (Chapter 8), puppet theatre (Chapter 9), and collaborating with educational institutions (Chapter 10). In each chapter, Kurahashi presents “mini-reviews” of 2-5 performances in which she briefly describes the design (set, costumes, props, music, etc.) and images from the works, while also providing her interpretation of the performances’ meaning. Kurahashi’s brief analysis often relies on piecing together published reviews, resulting in a fragmented description that is difficult to visualize. Black and white rehearsal and production photographs are important additions to the book, providing readers with a clearer understanding of the performance aesthetics. Kurahashi’s analysis is most insightful in Chapters 6, 7, and 8. In Chapter 6, she critiques Chong’s “departure from the abstract and allegorical works he completed in the 1970s and 1980s” as he shifts to “historical works which focus on cultural collisions and encounters” in The East/West Quartet (82). Kurahashi describes this series as an attempt to “bring to light history which would otherwise disappear” (86). Each of the four performances addresses specific cultural and political junctures of contestation: Deshima (1990) portrays Japanese and Western colonialism from the sixteenth through twentieth century (82), Chinoiserie (1995) illustrates the manner in which Western powers attempted to assert financial and political control over China (84), After Sorrow (1997) depicts Chinese and Vietnamese culture through a poetic combination of music, dance, text, and projections (85), and Pojagi (1999) demonstrates the impact colonizers had on Korea which culminated in the division of the country during the Korean War (85). Chapters 7 and 8 are dedicated to Chong’s ongoing collaborative, community-based oral history series, Undesirable Elements (1992–present). Chong initially designed the series as a creative space for displaced people to share their personal narratives before expanding the emphasis to encompass people who he describes as having experienced “otherness beyond the boundaries of the transit” (101). For the series, Chong and his creative team visit a host community, interview local residents, select the participants for the production, conduct more in-depth interviews, refine the “scripts,” then rehearse what Chong describes as a “seated opera for the spoken word” (99). Foregoing the elaborate theatrical design of his earlier works, the Undesirable Elements series requires minimal scenery, with performers seated in a semi-circle facing the audience and reading from their scripts (100). These performances provide a public space for marginalized people to share their memories of the past and dreams for the future (110). Chong has developed over forty productions with diverse communities in cities including Berlin, Tokyo, Rotterdam, Seattle, and New York. In the book’s final chapter, “Future: ALAXSXA/ALASKA and Beyond—Quest for Identity, Otherness, and Humanity,” Kurahashi describes one of Chong’s most recent works, ALAXSXA/ALASKA, which addresses environmental and political concerns of Alaska’s Indigenous people before addressing trends in Chong’s ongoing work. In this closing analysis and throughout the book, I found myself longing for more interviews with Chong and his collaborators, more details about his creative process (how does Chong structure his interview process and textual revisions?), and clearer descriptions of Chong’s performances instead of lengthy interpretations of their meaning. Nevertheless, The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness will serve as a useful introductory resource for scholars and classrooms, helping to deepen critical understanding about one of the most important and, unfortunately, overlooked theatre artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Craig Quintero Grinnell College Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance and Transpacific Redress The Interdisciplinary Theatre of Ping Chong: Exploring Curiosity and Otherness Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration Introduction to Asian American Dramaturgies Behind the Scenes of Asian American Theatre and Performance Studies On Young Jean Lee in Young Jean Lee's We're Gonna Die by Christine Mok Representation from Cambodia to America: Musical Dramaturgies in Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band The Dramaturgical Sensibility of Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band Holding up a Lens to the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists: A Photo Essay Theatre in Hawaiʻi: An “Illumination of the Fault Lines” of Asian American Theatre Randall Duk Kim: A Sojourn in the Embodiment of Words Reappropriation, Reparative Creativity, and Feeling Yellow in Generic Ensemble Company’s The Mikado: Reclaimed Dance Planets Dramaturgy of Deprivation (없다): An Invitation to Re-Imagine Ways We Depict Asian American and Adopted Narratives of Trauma Clubhouse: Stories of Empowered Uncanny Anomalies Off-Yellow Time vs Off-White Space: Activist Asian American Dramaturgy in Higher Education Asian American Dramaturgies in the Classroom: A Reflection Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Courtney Ferriter Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 1 Visit Journal Homepage Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Courtney Ferriter By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF by Courtney Ferriter The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 1 (Fall 2018) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2018 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center In his recent book Democracy in Black (2016), Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. argues that for Americans, “collective forgetting is crucial in determining the kind of story we tell ourselves. Ours is the chosen nation, the ‘shining city upon a hill,’ as Ronald Reagan called it. America is democracy. . . . To believe this, we have to forget and willfully ignore what is going on around us.”[1] While Glaude is particularly concerned with the distortions and fairy tales Americans continue to tell ourselves about race, Tony Kushner’s epic two-part play Angels in America tackles this same theme of conveniently forgetting and willfully ignoring so as not to disrupt the American self-image with respect to sexual orientation and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play received much acclaim from critics and scholars alike for many years following its initial publication—resulting in initial runs on Broadway and the National Theatre in London in 1992-1993 and an award-winning 2003 HBO mini-series starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson—but more recently, it seems to have fallen out of favor among scholars, despite a successful 2010 revival at the Signature Theatre and a 2017 production at the National Theatre that transferred to Broadway in February 2018. Indeed, many (although not all) scholarly articles that discuss Kushner and Angels in recent years focus on how AIDS functions in the play,[2] with scant consideration of Kushner’s portrayal of democracy. I argue that Kushner is especially relevant in the socio-historical moment in which Americans currently find ourselves—one marked by political polarization and distrust of those who think differently than we do. The 2016 election was symptomatic of these problems and brought them into full view for any who still harbored doubts about how deep this divide runs, but Kushner’s play proves instructive for how to build an engaged democratic citizenry. In the epilogue to Part Two of Angels in America, Prior leaves the audience with an optimistic vision for the future, stating, “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.”[3] He then offers a blessing of “more life,” and the play concludes with the same phrase that appears at the end of Part One: “The Great Work Begins” (Perestroika, 146). As David Kornhaber has observed, many scholars and critics are dissatisfied with the play’s conclusion due to “the reconciliationist politics it seems to espouse,”[4] which for them provides “a too-easy gloss on more intractable problems”[5] that continue to plague society. Thus, Kornhaber reasons, “a lot must depend on how one figures what seem to be the two key concepts of Kushner’s conclusion: citizen and blessing.”[6] Like Kornhaber, I believe that individual understanding of the term “citizens” as well as broader notions of what constitutes citizenship figure heavily in interpretation of both the epilogue and Angels as a whole. Furthermore, I contend that Kushner’s idea of citizenship is necessarily linked to the beginning of the “Great Work” invoked at the end of both parts of the play. In Angels, “citizens” are those who are part of a Deweyan community, made up of diverse people with sometimes conflicting opinions who listen to each other and who are nonetheless connected by their desire to enact positive change in the world, to progress toward a more ideal and inclusive democracy. This is what Prior (and by extension, Kushner) means by “Great Work.” Individualism and undemocratic communication—represented by Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt—fall away by the end of Angels in America, making room for what Atsushi Fujita calls a “a new model of community,”[7] consisting of Belize, Hannah, Louis, and Prior, who value inclusivity and democratic communication. John Dewey argues in Freedom and Culture (1939) for a distinction between “society” and “community.” Society arises from the politics of individual nations, how a particular country governs, and what policies are enforced, whereas community is unrestricted and made up of individuals or groups who share a common solidarity. He explains, “[F]or a number of persons to form anything that can be called a community in its pregnant sense there must be values prized in common. Without them, any so-called social group, class, people, nation, tends to fall apart into molecules having but mechanically enforced connections with one another.”[8] Thus, for Dewey, one characteristic of community lies in shared values. Furthermore, Dewey adds democratic communication to his idea of community, arguing that “there is a difference between a society, in the sense of an association, and a community. . . . Natural associations are conditions for the existence of a community, but a community adds the function of communication in which emotions and ideas are shared as well as joint undertaking engaged in.”[9] In the case of Americans, our joint undertaking is the democratic experiment, and for this reason, we should likewise strive to embody democratic ideals of communication. In the vein of Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy, Kushner emphasizes the importance of inclusive, democratic community in Angels in America. The play models Deweyan communities while also highlighting models that are anti-Deweyan: there is no great community—no solidarity between different groups of Americans—and thus, there is no realized democracy. Kushner writes in the Afterword to Perestroika that Americans “pay high prices for maintaining the myth of the Individual,”[10] which he contrasts with the idea that “the smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction.”[11] This juxtaposition of individualism with community, illustrated in the play by Roy and Joe as opposed to the community envisioned in the epilogue, is central to Kushner’s understanding of democratic progress and what it means to be a citizen. Some leftist critics may bemoan the ending of Angels as “turn[ing] away from the kind of collective action demanded by Marx and staged by Brecht,”[12] but as Hussein Al-Badri has observed, the play’s main flaw in this regard is merely presenting “a different politic[s] than its detractors would like it to be.”[13] Kushner is ultimately more concerned with how to enact Deweyan democracy and community—which he believes will lead to real and lasting social change—than he is with envisioning an America based around socialism or Marxism. In recent years, John Dewey’s notions of community and his pedagogy have come under scrutiny from critics who rightly cite the ethnocentrism that undergirds much of his early philosophy in these matters.[14] Thomas Fallace notes that because pragmatism is “a self-correcting theory of knowledge,”[15] by 1916, Dewey understood that “a plurality of cultures was necessary for democratic living and intellectual growth.”[16] Nevertheless, Fallace argues, “ethnocentrism was built right into Dewey’s early pedagogy and philosophy.”[17] This ethnocentrism troubles Dewey’s notion of community; he conceived of community as “not merely a variety of associative ties which hold persons together in diverse ways, but an organization of all elements by an integrated principle.”[18] If Dewey believed that white people represented a more advanced form of civilization that people of color had not yet achieved, then how would it be possible to form a community in which “all elements” are organized by the same principle? As Glaude has noted, democracy for Dewey “is a form of life that requires constant attention if we are to secure the ideals that purportedly animate it.”[19] Likewise, Scott Stroud emphasizes that a “real amount of openness is implicated in the [pragmatist] habits of democracy.”[20] In other words, democracy is a process, one which must continually be reexamined to ensure that we are increasing democracy and participation among citizens, creating a more inclusive community rather than excluding or marginalizing certain voices, as Dewey was guilty of doing in his early career. As Dewey himself put it, “only when we start from a community as a fact, grasp the fact in thought so as to clarify and enhance its constituent elements, can we reach an idea of democracy which is not [merely] utopian.”[21] One particular benefit to considering the vision of Deweyan community and democracy in Kushner’s Angels is that, several generations removed from Dewey, he is interested in how to incorporate citizens from different backgrounds with vastly different life experiences into the great community Dewey envisioned, particularly African Americans and people who identify as queer. Thus, Kushner’s reexamination of community and inclusive democracy as demonstrated in Angels is itself pragmatic in its consideration of the conditions and context of American life and democracy in the 1980s and ‘90s, revising Dewey’s idea of community by incorporating more and varied groups and voices into it. Fallace argues that an important part of Dewey’s pragmatism was context: “all knowledge was context-bound; it served a purpose in a particular situation and its usefulness was dependent upon that context.”[22] Kushner speaks to a particular historical moment in his work on community, examining the anxieties and shortcomings of American democracy in light of black/white and gay/straight relations. Thus, reading Kushner as a pragmatist increases our understanding of what an ideal community might look like, taking into account the experiences of those who are often pushed to the margins of society by the not-so-silent majority. A consideration of how Kushner treated the power disparities he observed at work in society may also prove instructive for how the U.S. might address current forms of oppression and marginalization in society. I argue in the remainder of this essay that the “Great Work” to which Kushner refers at the end of both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika is, in part, a call to the greater democratic community reflected in the play’s epilogue, which is championed over the closed views of community embodied in Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt. Kushner’s vision of Deweyan community emphasizes inclusion and listening to marginal voices, for characters in Angels in America who ignore the voices of the other do so at their peril. Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt are representative of undemocratic communication in the play—Roy because he dominates those around him, and Joe because he cannot be truthful with others or see beyond himself. Dewey writes that in a democracy, “both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other.”[23] For Roy, suppression of the other in communication is par for the course. One early example of this occurs in Act One, Scene 9 of Millennium Approaches when Roy’s doctor Henry diagnoses him with AIDS. Roy then tries to force Henry to call him a homosexual, finally threatening, “No, say it. I mean it. Say: ‘Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.’ And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do” (Millennium, 44). When Henry gives him the diagnosis of AIDS, Roy counters, “No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer” (Millennium, 46). Roy forcefully suppresses Henry from telling anyone that Roy is gay by threatening his career, and he even manages to suppress the diagnosis of AIDS. The next time Henry appears is in Perestroika to facilitate Roy’s admission to the hospital, where even his medical charts, as Belize reads them, say “liver cancer” (Perestroika, 21). Roy’s relationship with his nurse Belize in Perestroika is similarly domineering, as Roy makes racist and homophobic remarks, goads Belize into using an anti-Semitic slur in one scene, knocks over pills he is supposed to take, and generally proves to be an insufferable patient. Roy also makes it clear that even though he is somewhat dependent on Belize, he does not consider him an equal in any way. Bemoaning his imminent disbarment in Act Four, Scene 1 of Perestroika, Roy says, “Every goddam thing I ever wanted they have taken from me. Mocked and reviled, all my life” (Perestroika, 87). When Belize identifies and responds, “Join the club” (Perestroika, 87). Roy says, “I don’t belong to any club you could get through the front door of. You watch yourself you take too many liberties” (Perestroika, 87). Shortly after Roy has a series of violent spasms, Belize says that he almost feels sorry for him. Roy is quick to remind him, “You. Me. No. Connection” (Perestroika, 88). Thus, Roy suppresses Belize any time Belize attempts to identify with him in the slightest. If democracy is characterized in part by open communication, then Roy’s constant desire to “win” or conquer in conversations with others exposes him as a totalitarian at heart. Roy’s totalitarian communication is a natural result of his individualism. He relishes his status as “the dragon atop the golden horde” (Perestroika, 55), maintaining that “Life is full of horror; nobody escapes; nobody; save yourself. Whatever pulls on you, whatever needs from you, threatens you” (Millennium, 58). This philosophy clearly runs counter to Kushner’s belief in the smallest indivisible unit as two people. Nevertheless, Kushner includes Roy in the play, explaining in an interview that he is “a part of the gay and lesbian community even if we don’t really want him to be a part of our community.”[24] This indicates a capacity for inclusivity in his democratic vision that Roy himself disdains in the play. This inclusive community is similarly emphasized when Louis, aided by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, recites the Mourner’s Kaddish for Roy, thus accepting him into the greater Jewish community of which they are part (albeit in death). While Joe is not like Roy in his communication in the sense that he has to win or dominate others in conversation, his general dishonesty and unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions make him undemocratic in his dealings with other characters in the play. Kushner has sometimes been criticized in scholarship on Angels in America for being too hard on Joe. Hussein Al-Badri, for example, asserts that Kushner’s omission of Joe from the community included in the epilogue runs counter to Kushner’s “own political ideology of inclusion and inclusiveness.”[25] However, this dramatic punishment seems more fitting when Joe’s undemocratic communication and individualism are taken into consideration, for then it is clear that like his mentor Roy, Joe too spurns community and democratic communication. Dewey argues for truthful communication in “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” writing, “knowledge of conditions as they are is the only solid ground for communication and sharing.”[26] Joe lies about his identity as a gay man to his wife Harper, he keeps from Louis the fact that he is a Mormon, and he repeatedly tells Harper that he is not going to leave her, only to abandon her anyway. Because Joe lacks a foundation of truthfulness with people who are important to him, open, democratic communication is not possible. Like Roy, Joe also acts with the individual—himself—in mind, rather than considering community or the circumstances and experiences of others. Following an irreparable fight with Louis in Perestroika, Joe tries to return to Harper, not because she needs him but because he is thinking of himself. He tells her, “I don’t know what will happen to me without you. Only you. Only you love me. Out of everyone in the world. . . . Please, please, don’t leave me now” (Perestroika, 139). Joe is unable to sustain a community or communicate democratically with others because he never considers the experience of the other person and only considers his own needs and desires. In fact, Joe even tells Louis that “sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be,” (Perestroika, 73) a notion that serves as Joe’s modus operandi throughout the play. Deweyan communication requires what Hongmei Peng calls sympathetic thinking, the ability to “step outside of [one’s] own experience and see it as the other would see it by putting [oneself] in the place of the other and using imagination in order to assimilate the other's experience.”[27] Since Joe proves incapable of imagining the other’s experience, he necessarily excludes rather than includes others in his would-be community, particularly Harper and Hannah. His unwillingness or inability to change in this regard is why he is not included among the democratic “citizens” in the epilogue, since undemocratic communication and exclusive community building stand in opposition to Kushner’s Deweyan model of community. Although Roy and Joe form a community of sorts in Angels, it proves to be undemocratic and representative of anti-Deweyan communication. In spite of the father/son-type relationship that Roy and Joe maintain throughout most of the play, there is much that they keep from one another, and their relationship is marked as much by silence as it is by the closeness and warm feelings for one another as mentor and mentee. This silence comes to a head in Act Four, Scene 1 of Perestroika, when Joe visits Roy in the hospital. When Joe reveals that he left his wife Harper and has been living with Louis, Roy forcefully silences Joe: JOE: Roy, please, get back into… ROY: SHUT UP! Now you listen to me. [. . .] ROY: I want you home. With your wife. Whatever else you got going, cut it dead. JOE: I can’t, Roy, I need to be with… ROY: YOU NEED? Listen to me. Do what I say. Or you will regret it. And don’t talk to me about it. Ever again. (Perestroika, 85) Roy not only silences Joe in this particular moment of the play, but he commands him never to speak of his relationship with Louis or to make any allusion to homosexuality again. Thus, Roy’s silencing of Joe is distinctly undemocratic and unrepresentative of the kind of communication expected in a democratic community. Far from being an outlier, this is not the first time Roy has stifled Joe’s communication with him. Rather than being open to hearing what Joe wants to express (even if he disagrees with it), Roy chastises him in Millennium Approaches for having ethical reservations about interfering with the disbarment committee hearing, calling Joe “Dumb Utah Mormon hick shit” (Millennium, 106) and “a sissy” (Millennium, 107). As for Joe, he claims to love Roy, but is unwilling to go to bat for him when the chips are down. Although this is a legal as well as an ethical quandary, it demonstrates that Joe’s love for Roy is more theory than practice. He asserts, “I’ll do whatever I can to help,” (Millennium, 66) but those are empty words, since he ultimately refuses the job in Washington he is offered and fails Roy. Joe and Roy cannot agree on a shared ideal toward which they can work together, and thus, their efforts at community building are doomed to fail. Given Dewey’s assertions that community involves “communication in which emotions and ideas are shared”[28] and that such community is “a pressing [concern] for democracy,”[29] Roy and Joe fail at both democratic communication and maintaining a community even with one another. In addition to their undemocratic communication, Roy and Joe are devoted to exclusion rather than inclusion and to individualism rather than community, qualities that are distinctly anti-Deweyan, and for which (along with their undemocratic communication) they are dramatically “punished” by Kushner. Roy succumbs to his illness, while Harper leaves Joe for good and Joe is nowhere to be found in the democratic community of the play’s epilogue. Unlike Roy and Joe, Louis is able and willing to change, demonstrating by the end of the play a commitment to open communication and revising harmful beliefs and actions. While Louis initially abandons Prior when the effects of AIDS become more than he can handle, he eventually sees the error of his ways and atones for his past misdeeds. Prior tells Louis when they meet after Louis’s month-long absence in Perestroika that when he cries, he “endanger[s] nothing. . . . It’s like the idea of crying when you do it. Or the idea of love” (Perestroika, 83). Similarly, Belize remarks to Louis in Millennium Approaches, “All your checks bounce, Louis; you’re ambivalent about everything” (Millennium, 95). For much of the play, Louis claims to support things in theory, but his practice reveals his own ambivalence on the subject, from his alleged love for Prior to his support of the Rainbow Coalition. However, following a conversation with Belize in Act Four, Scene 3 of Perestroika in which Belize observes that Louis is “up in the air, just like that angel, too far off the earth to pick out the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you love,” (Perestroika, 94) Louis realizes that theory and practice must be joined, both in love and in democracy. This is confirmed for him when he researches Joe’s legal decisions written on behalf of Justice Wilson and finally understands that Joe, who wants to be “a nice, nice man” (Millennium, 107)—as Roy aptly puts it—has rendered legal decisions that have real and damaging consequences for children and gay people. Dewey argues for praxis in democracy, asserting that democracy is “a personal way of individual life. . . . Instead of thinking of our own dispositions and habits as accommodated to certain institutions we have to learn to think of the latter as expressions, projections, and extensions of habitually dominant personal attitudes.”[30] Joe thus expresses a clearly undemocratic viewpoint when he tells Louis of his legal decisions, “It’s law not justice, it’s power, not the merits of its exercise, it’s not an expression of the ideal” (Perestroika, 109). The discrepancy between Joe’s theory and practice in multiple areas of life, including love and democracy, causes him to think that he must accommodate himself to institutions—like “legal fag-bashing” (Perestroika, 109) or heterosexual marriage, for example—rather than viewing such institutions democratically, as potential sites for expressing his own experiences and habits. Louis recognizes his own behavior in Joe’s habits, and after their fight, Louis finally understands the extent to which he has failed Prior. He later asks to come back to Prior and tells him, “Failing in love isn’t the same as not loving. It doesn’t let you off the hook, it doesn’t mean you’re free to not love,” (Perestroika, 140) indicating a respect for praxis that he previously lacked. In addition, Louis gains “expiation for [his] sins” (Perestroika, 121) through his recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish for Roy Cohn. Although he had previously refused to identify with Roy in any way, calling him “the polestar of human evil … the worst human being who ever lived, he isn’t human even,” (Perestroika, 93) with some coaxing from Belize and help from Ethel Rosenberg’s ghost, Louis recites the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, thus affirming Roy as part of the Jewish community. Framji Minwilla argues that the coming together of Belize, Ethel, and Louis to say Kaddish for Roy “invent[s] a more complex yet exact sense of self and a more expansively conceived idea of community.”[31] This community is a democratic one, in which people who have ideas and beliefs differing from the mainstream (like Roy, for whom this is the case not in life nor in the Reagan years of the play, but within the politics espoused by Kushner and the characters in the epilogue of Angels) are nevertheless included and acknowledged as part of the larger community. Based on his joining together of theory with practice and expanding his idea of community by praying for Roy, Louis is able to participate as a “citizen” in the epilogue: he argues at points with Belize about politics, but he is ultimately able to listen and value the presence of differing opinions in his community. Prior also makes a few missteps, but like Louis, he ultimately “succeeds because he is willing to change,”[32] to become more democratic in his communication with others and his vision of community. For instance, when he first meets Joe’s mother, Hannah, he assumes that because she is Mormon, she must be trying to convert him when she helps him to the hospital. After they arrive at the hospital, Prior tells Hannah about his visit from the Angel, and she says he had a vision, drawing a comparison with Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, and Prior once again rushes to make assumptions about her because of her Mormonism: PRIOR: But that’s preposterous, that’s… HANNAH: It’s not polite to call other people’s beliefs preposterous. He had great need of understanding. Our Prophet. His desire made prayer. His prayer made an angel. The angel was real. I believe that. PRIOR: I don’t. And I’m sorry but it’s repellent to me. So much of what you believe. HANNAH: What do I believe? PRIOR: I’m a homosexual. With AIDS. I can just imagine what you… HANNAH: No you can’t. Imagine. The things in my head. You don’t make assumptions about me, mister; I won’t make them about you. (Perestroika, 102) This is the first moment of democratic communication between Prior and Hannah. He acknowledges her point, listening and taking to heart her experiences. This openness serves him well when Hannah advises, “An angel is just a belief, with wings and arms that can carry you. It’s naught to be afraid of. If it lets you down, reject it. Seek for something new” (Perestroika, 103). Prior takes her advice, struggling with the Angel of America and returning the Book of the Anti-Migratory Epistle to Heaven. He previously identified with the Angels—their abandonment by the Almighty and desire to go back—but ultimately he insists upon progress and forward movement. Additionally, Prior’s vision of community becomes more expansive and inclusive by the end of the play. He tells Louis in Millennium Approaches that if Louis walked out on him, he would hate him forever. While he does not take Louis back as a partner in Perestroika, he forgives him, tells him he loves him, and Louis remains an important presence in Prior’s life based on their interaction in the epilogue. In Hannah’s first appearance, she does not seem particularly inclusive or capable of democratic communication given her outrage at Joe’s admission that he is gay, however she experiences a transformation in Perestroika and shows more concern for others, particularly Prior and Harper. Despite Hannah’s somewhat gruff manner—she is described by Sister Ella Chapter in Millennium Approaches as “the only unfriendly Mormon [she] ever met” (Millennium, 82)—and her claim that she “[doesn’t] have pity,” (Perestroika, 101) she tends to both Prior and Harper, both of whom have been abandoned by the person closest to them. Hannah explains her actions by claiming, “I know my duty when I see it,” (Perestroika, 66) which suggests that unlike Joe, she is willing to take the needs and experiences of others into consideration before acting. Much like Dewey, Hannah acknowledges that communication and community require cooperation, “understanding, learning, [and] other-regarding thinking.”[33] Given her sympathy and concern for Prior and Harper as well as her advice to Joe to reflect on his actions and beliefs by asking himself “what it was [he was] running from,” (Perestroika, 96) Hannah has become a Kushnerian “citizen” in the epilogue, musing about the “interconnectedness” (Perestroika, 144) of people in the world and providing hope for Prior to keep moving forward. Her advice to Prior that he should “seek for something new” (Perestroika, 103) if his beliefs fail him demonstrates her own willingness to revise previous assumptions and incorporate new knowledge into her experience, an essential quality in a member of a democratic community. As for Belize, who has been described in scholarship as the moral center of Angels in America,[34] his actions toward Roy and Louis show a commitment to inclusivity in line with Deweyan democratic community. Belize empathizes with Roy and Louis as fellow gay men, despite his outright hatred for some of their actions and ideologies. He advises Roy about the best course of treatment for late-stage AIDS, contra the opinion of Roy’s “very qualified, very expensive WASP doctor,” (Perestroika, 26) and warns him about the double-blind AZT trials. Despite the fact that Roy is a terrible patient and person who, as mentioned previously, takes every opportunity to remind Belize that Roy considers him beneath him, Belize feels, as he puts it, a sense of “solidarity. One faggot to another,” (Perestroika, 27) and reminds Louis that Roy “died a hard death” (Perestroika, 122). With Louis, Belize embodies the democratic value of believing in human nature’s capacity for change. Dewey argues in “Creative Democracy” that democracy is “a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature.”[35] Although Belize disdains Louis for his abandonment of Prior, he meets with Louis in both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika and offers him some moral guidance, indicating that he has not given up on Louis and retains some hope that he will change for the better. Belize’s inclusivity is unsurprising considering his description of Heaven as encompassing “voting booths … everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion” (Perestroika, 76) with gods who are all “brown as the mouths of rivers” (Perestroika, 76). This utopic vision eradicates all of the obstacles to justice and democratic participation of marginalized groups in the United States; everyone has gained suffrage, wealth inequality has been destroyed, and racism, sexism, and transphobia have all been tempered by mixed-race divinities and blurred gender boundaries. Belize’s idea of Heaven is aligned with Kushner’s philosophy on freedom; he argues that freedom “expand[s] outward”[36] and the most “basic gesture of freedom is to include, not to exclude.”[37] This sounds remarkably like Dewey, who concludes in “Creative Democracy” that the task of democracy is always to create “a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.”[38] Belize’s vision of Heaven and Kushner’s understanding of freedom express Dewey’s practical ideal for democracy. The four characters included in the epilogue to Angels in America—Belize, Hannah, Louis, and Prior—represent democratic community either because they have demonstrated a willingness to change, listen to others, and revise previous beliefs/actions in the course of the play, or (in Belize’s case) because that kind of inclusivity and democratic communication had already been attained. Michael Cadden argues that the epilogue to Angels “leaves us with the image of four individuals who, despite their very real differences, have chosen, based on their collective experience, to think about themselves as a community working for change.”[39] Similarly, Ron Scapp suggests that Kushner’s ending embraces “the hope of democracy.”[40] For Kushner, the “hope of democracy” is embodied in these characters who have become “citizens” (Perestroika, 146) with differing thoughts and opinions who are nevertheless capable of working together to accomplish the “Great Work” (Perestroika, 146) of expanding democracy. Roy and Joe, who were neither inclusive of dissenting voices nor able to form democratic communities, are incapable of acting as citizens and thus omitted from the epilogue, even as Kushner includes them in the greater community of the play itself. The epilogue to Angels in America ultimately advocates for a more ideal democracy, which must begin with individuals who act as citizens. This is the kind of democracy envisioned by Dewey, where all citizens believe “that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable cooperation … is itself a priceless addition to life.”[41] Such a community stands in stark contrast to the exclusive, undemocratic, and homophobic legislation and political rhetoric of the Reagan years as portrayed in the play and embodied by Roy and Joe. Kushner’s small democratic community at the end of Angels reminds the audience that democracy is a process, one toward which we must constantly work to ensure we are applying the democratic method of expanding rights and freedoms outward, revising beliefs or actions based on experience and new information, and opening ourselves to democratic communication with others. Kushner begins from the premise that including marginalized voices is not only beneficial but essential to democracy. This revises some of Dewey’s early notions, which had been grounded in ethnocentric thinking, and provides a foundation for what including others in a democratic community looks like. The inclusivity Kushner portrays in Angels in America demonstrates that democracy does not mean that all voices are considered to be equally valid; rather, Kushner highlights voices that are similarly committed to democracy as method. Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt provide examples of voices that are too partisan and too committed to their own individualistic and undemocratic ways of thinking. However, it is important to note that such people are not irredeemable; they have the capacity to change, as we see Louis do over the course of the play. As a result, such individuals deserve to be included in the larger community (as Kushner includes Roy) even if their ideology is itself anti-democratic. Kushner cautions, however, that such individualism and anti-democratic thinking is harmful to democratic inclusivity and communication. Thus, anti-democratic ideology must not be allowed to dominate at a legal level, as we see its harmful consequences in the exclusive, homophobic legislation of the Reagan administration. In addition, democratic communication is encouraged on a personal level, too, otherwise relationships and communities run the risk of being torn apart, as evidenced by Roy and Joe or Joe and Harper. Like Dewey, Kushner believes that it is necessary to revise our methods to become always more democratic and more inclusive—like the “citizens” referred to in the epilogue—progressing slowly but ever closer to true democratic communication and community with one another. In our present political moment in the United States, democratic communication and community seem like essential tools to cultivate as we work together toward a future like the one Kushner envisions in his epilogue rather than resigning ourselves to undemocratic rule by the Roy Cohns of the world. Courtney Ferriter is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Georgia. Her research interests include American pragmatism and 20th century Jewish and African American literature. She has published articles in James Baldwin Review and Education Culture. She is currently at work on an article about Harryette Mullen’s poetic wordplay as a form of resistance against white supremacy. [1] Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (New York: Broadway Books, 2016), 48. [2] See, for example, Alexander Peuser, “AIDS and the Artist’s Call to Action,” Lucerna 11 (2017): 10-22; Dennis Altman and Kent Buse, “Thinking Politically about HIV: Political Analysis and Action in Response to AIDS,” Contemporary Politics 18, no. 2 (2012): 127-140; Laura L. Beadling, “The Trauma of AIDS Then and Now: Kushner’s Angels in America on the Stage and Small Screen,” Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance 5, no. 3 (2012): 229-240; and Claudia Barnett, “AIDS = Purgatory: Prior Walter’s Prophecy and Angels in America,” Modern Drama 53, no. 4 (2010): 471-494. [3] Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part Two: Perestroika [1992] (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004), 146. All subsequent references to the play will be indicated parenthetically, e.g. (Millennium, 64) or (Perestroika, 75). [4] David Kornhaber, “Kushner at Colonus: Tragedy, Politics, and Citizenship,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 728. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid, 729. [7] Atsushi Fujita, “Queer Politics to Fabulous Politics in Angels in America: Pinklisting and Forgiving Roy Cohn,” in Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays, ed. James Fisher (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Company, 2006), 125. [8] John Dewey, Freedom and Culture [1939] in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 13: 1938-1939, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988): 71. [9] Ibid, 176. [10] Tony Kushner, “With a Little Help from My Friends,” [1993] in Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004), 149. [11] Ibid, 155. [12] Kornhaber, “Kushner at Colonus,” 736. [13] Hussein Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre: A Study of Political Discourse (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 73. [14] See, for example, Shannon Sullivan, “From the Foreign to the Familiar: Confronting Dewey Confronting Racial Prejudice,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18, no. 3 (2004): 193-202; Frank Margonis, “John Dewey’s Racialized Visions of the Student and Classroom Community,” Educational Theory 59, no. 1 (2009): 17-39; and Thomas D. Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895-1922 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011). [15] Thomas D. Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895-1922 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 4. [16] Ibid. [17] Ibid. [18] John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927), 38. [19] Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 6. [20] Scott R. Stroud, “The Challenge of Speaking with Others: A Pragmatist Account of Democratic Rhetoric,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2015): 100. [21] Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 149. [22] Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race, 9. [23] John Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” [1939] in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 14: 1939-1941, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988): 228. [24] Charlie Rose, “Tony, Tonys, and Television,” in Tony Kushner in Conversation, ed. Robert Vorlicky (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998): 46. [25] Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre, 93. [26] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 229. [27] Hongmei Peng, “Toward Inclusion and Human Unity: Rethinking Dewey’s Democratic Community,” Education Culture 25, no. 2 (2009): 82. [28] Dewey, Freedom and Culture, 176. [29] Ibid, 177. [30] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 226. Emphasis in original. [31] Framji Minwilla, “When Girls Collide: Considering Race in Angels in America,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 110. [32] Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre, 101. [33] Peng, “Toward Inclusion and Human Unity,” 82. [34] See, for example, Minwilla, “When Girls Collide,” 104-105; or Al-Badri, Tony Kushner’s Postmodern Theatre, 96. [35] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 226. [36] Tony Kushner, Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995), 6. [37] Ibid, 7. [38] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 230. [39] Michael Cadden, “Strange Angel: The Pinklisting of Roy Cohn,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 88. [40] Ron Scapp, “The Vehicle of Democracy: Fantasies toward a (Queer) Nation,” in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America, eds. Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997): 98. [41] Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” 228. "Are We 'Citizens'? Tony Kushner's Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America" by Courtney Ferriter ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 1 (Fall 2018) ©2018 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: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Table of Contents: "'Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something': Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama" by Rosa Schneider "Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging" by Rachel Merrill Moss and Gary Alan Fine "Are We 'Citizens'? Tony Kushner's Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America" by Courtney Ferriter "Edward Albee's Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" by Tison Pugh www.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 ©2018 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 Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting The Late Work of Sam Shepard Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Bodies and Playwrights Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Rachel Merrill Moss and Gary Alan Fine Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 1 Visit Journal Homepage Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging Rachel Merrill Moss and Gary Alan Fine By Published on November 8, 2018 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 Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting The Late Work of Sam Shepard Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism “Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something”: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama Pageants and Patriots: Jewish Spectacles as Performances of Belonging Are We “Citizens”? Tony Kushner’s Deweyan Democratic Vision in Angels in America Edward Albee’s Sadomasochistic Ludonarratology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Bodies and Playwrights Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Phoebe Rumsey Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 3 Visit Journal Homepage Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical Phoebe Rumsey By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical. Kevin Winkler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; Pp. 368. Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical by Kevin Winkler offers educators, students, and Bob Fosse enthusiasts a history of the choreographer’s early life, creative influences, apprenticeships, and Broadway and film successes. Winkler interrogates how Fosse’s passionate and often tumultuous relationship with collaborators, personal partners, and the musical theatre genre, in general, came together to create his indelible style and legacy. Big Deal is part of the Broadway Legacies series edited by Geoffrey Block that includes Carol Oja’s Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War and Todd Decker’s Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical. Big Deal is the second book in the series devoted to a choreographer, the first being Agnes de Mille: Telling Stories in Broadway Dance by Kara Anne Gardner. Prior to his twenty-year engagement as a curator and archivist for the New York Public Library, Winkler had a career as a professional dancer, and he danced in Fosse’s 1982 Broadway revival of Little Me. His bodily understanding of dance and keen attention to historical detail bring a fresh perspective to Fosse’s work and illuminate why Fosse privileged the dancing body above all else. To achieve this analysis, Winkler’s book traces Fosse’s career chronologically across three trajectories: the transformation of the Broadway musical over forty years, the women in his life and their influence on his aesthetic, and “the social and political climate of his era” (2). The first chapter provides an overview of Fosse’s dance training and early performance career that shaped his style. Winkler succinctly explains, “While his later work could display touches of sentimentality and pathos, it was the triangulation of vaudeville, burlesque, and nightclubs that formed the basis of Fosse’s aesthetic DNA” (17). Chapter two encapsulates Fosse’s apprenticeships as a Broadway choreographer, including his work and relationship with Jerome Robbins. Winkler is very insightful in this area as he details how Robbins watched over Fosse and, in turn, Fosse took on this role later in his career with other emerging choreographers. In chapter three, Winkler analyzes how Damn Yankees (1955) and Redhead (1959) established Fosse and his lifetime muse Gwen Verdon as forces on Broadway. He then charts Fosse’s quest for total control over a production through discussions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Sweet Charity (1966), and Pippin (1972) in the next two chapters. The book then moves to an investigation of Fosse’s work as a film director. Winkler claims “film is the ideal medium for Fosse’s perfectionism” (149) and supports this argument by describing, from chapter six and onward, how Fosse worked to incorporate the choreographic on camera. Winkler devotes considerable time to probing the physicality of the bizarre choices that Fosse made (i.e. abrupt moves from reality to fantasy and up-close camera footage of open-heart surgery) to create All That Jazz (1979), a film of his life story loosely disguised by name changes. The book closes with the titular show Big Deal (1986) and the legacy that Fosse leaves behind. It is in these final chapters where Winkler explicitly articulates one of the main interventions of the book that has been simmering throughout—how the dancers Fosse worked with, such as Gwen Verdon, Ann Reinking, and Chet Walker, are the embodiment of his work. Winkler contends that, for all of Fosse’s tangible achievements and awards, the Fosse style is ultimately about the bodily repertoire and how the technique has been passed down through generations of dancers. Fosse’s legacy consists of “the dancers who hold within their bodies his unique choreographic language” (275). Overall, the text is well written and thoroughly researched. Winkler’s description and analysis of Fosse’s choreography and creative strategies are the book’s key contributions, particularly given the minimal amount of scholarship that delves deeply into what dance is doing in musical theatre. By providing a glossary of dance terms in the preface of the book, Winkler makes a concerted effort to model a method of critically examining dance in musical theatre. Some moments in the body of the text when defining terms, such as “the concept musical” or “Brechtian” are slightly abrupt but much appreciated. There are many backstage tidbits sprinkled throughout the entire book, but Winkler is at his best when exploring Fosse’s choreographic process through descriptions of the body in motion. For instance, he describes the dancers in the now famous “Hey! Big Spender” number in Sweet Charity as “Undulating and lunging in all directions, they travel like a giant Medusa across the stage before breaking out for a final exhortation” (120). Pointedly, Winkler identifies how Fosse borrowed, revised, and tweaked previous movements as part of his process and, through this sense of repurposing over innovation, the Fosse style solidifies. At his most critical, Winkler explains Fosse’s singular vision: “That he was not aware of, or chose to ignore, innovations by his peers that he now claimed for himself made Fosse appear disengaged from what was happening elsewhere in the theatre” (268). Towards the end of the book, Winkler alleges that Fosse cast dancers regardless of race or ethnicity, an unusual practice for the time. Though this topic is not a major throughline to the book, it is worthy of mention in this current era of attempts to diversify casts. This book will be helpful to students, researchers, and educators seeking to trace the historical chronology of choreographers into director-choreographers. For scholars of musical theatre, this book rethinks Fosse’s dedication “to redefine not only how a dancing chorus looked but how it functioned” (73). Big Deal also joins the larger conversation that surrounds theatre about the collaborative process and the artistic consequences of turning away from collaboration in search of ultimate control. Phoebe Rumsey The CUNY Graduate Center The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 3 (Spring 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 Memory, Transitional Justice, and Theatre in Postdictatorship Argentina In Search of Our Warrior Mothers: Women Dramatists of the Black Arts Movement Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Hawaiian Performance Ellen Stewart Presents: Fifty Years of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical Introduction: Embodied Arts "Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, and Broadway Bodies Unruly Reproductions: The Embodied Art of Mimicry in Vaudeville Choreographies of the Great Departure: Building Civic Bodies in the 1914 Masque of St. Louis Collective Choreography for Weathering Black Experience: Janelle Monáe and The Memphis "Tightrope" Dance History, Musicals, and the Americas Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Laurence Senelick Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 1 Visit Journal Homepage The Anti-Victorianism of Victorian Revivals Laurence Senelick By Published on November 4, 2022 Download Article as PDF A striking phenomenon of American theatre in the late 1920s is the spate of revivals of Victorian drama which continued well into the next decade. These “reconstructions” were far from antiquarian. The texts were streamlined, the acting arch and the audience reaction uproarious. Spectators of the Jazz Age chose to guffaw at the ostensible innocence of the Gilded Age. These ventures had been prepared for by newspaper cartoons and memoirs that had drenched the “Gay Nineties” in an aura of roseate nostalgia. The new versions of nineteenth-century melodrama and burlesque were, however, greeted by the mockery of a generation eager to reject the values that led to the Great War. In this light, the revivalists of a past generation’s popular entertainment partook, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unwittingly, of the anti-Victorian sentiment endemic in the postwar period. Audiences applauded their own sophistication in having left such benighted attitudes behind. While these attitudes lingered, the more sober mood that accompanied the Depression led to a more affectionate retrospect of the recent past. The Gay Nineties The Gay Nineties is exclusively an American term for the last decade of the nineteenth century, a period known in Britain as the Mauve Decade or the Naughty Nineties, in France as la belle Époque and in Germany as die Kaiserzeit. Its coinage is attributed to the illustrator Richard V. Culter (1883-1929) who so entitled the series of pictures he first published in the Ogden, Utah, Standard Examiner in April 1923, and which were continued in the humor magazine Life from 1925 to 1928. A selection was published in 1927 by Doubleday, Page, as The Gay Nineties. An Album of Reminiscent Drawings. The sub-title is revealing. Culter’s line drawings belong to the genre of “the dear, dead days beyond recall” and depict the world as seen from the perspective of an uncritical adolescent. It envisages idyllic, small-town life, uncomplicated and innocent in its pleasures. An American adult who had lived in the 1890s might have recalled a less glowing scene: a decade bookended by the floods of Johnstown and Galveston, that endured the Panic of ‘93 and the subsequent three-year economic depression; the rise of the yellow press and gutter journalism; the spread of Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement and lynching throughout the South; the Spanish-American War and the advent of American imperialism; the reign of the trusts, child labor, brutal treatment of workers and dissidents; and various sensational trials, including that of Oscar Wilde. However, the differences effected over a mere generation had been so revolutionary that the pre-war past had taken on a romantic hue: a world dominated by the horse had become automated, radio had intruded into the home, and the European conflict had provided a sharp dividing line between what was considered bygone and what was thought to be up-to-date. The new decade was dubbed by journalists “The Roaring Twenties,” persuaded that their era was more urbane, dynamic and knowing than its forebears. Culter’s benign vision of the late Victorian period was quickly blurred by condescension. Bill’s Gay Nineties, a speakeasy with a parodic turn-of-the-century motif, opened on East 54 th Street in 1924, its walls covered with lurid pictures from the Police Gazette and similar period broadsides (the association of the 1890s with the growth of professional sports, especially baseball and boxing, became a commonplace). [1] The following year John Held, Jr. (1882-1958), famous for caricaturing the adolescents of the ‘20s as sheiks and shebas, [2] began to publish a series of linoleum cuts of the “Gay ‘90s” in the New Yorker . Unlike Culter’s rose-colored, mildly ironic interpretation, Held’s pictures with their crudeness and lurid captions were in tune with the newly-founded magazine’s vaunted sophistication. They implied that the world of our grandfathers had been absurd in its conventions, backward in its moralizing, and laughable in its notions of art and beauty. [3] These graphic mementos rapidly crystallized iconic signifiers of a period dimly if at all remembered by twenty- and thirty-year-olds: waxed handlebar moustaches and moustache cups, barber-shop quartets and singing waiters, the Gibson girl and wasp waists, sleeve garters and high-button shoes, straw boaters on men and ostrich plumes on women, sentimental piano ballads, horse-drawn vehicles and tandem bicycles, beer in pails and beefy chorines. As with the songs shoe-horned into the Hoboken revivals, specific decades became merged in a general impression of what was “Victorian.” [4] The earliest glimpse of this trend on Broadway would seem to be a sequence entitled “The Old Timers” in The Greenwich Village Follies of 1922 . A quintet, including the female impersonator Bert Savoy, parodied singing waiters and parlor ballads. The rendition of “Good-bye to Dear Old Alaska” by the writer John E. Hazzard (1881-1935), in walrus moustache and ill-fitting dress suit, was reported to be one of the hits of the evening. [5] However, full exploitation of Victoriana had to wait until Jerome Kern’s musical Show Boat (1927), based on Edna Ferber’s best-selling novel of the previous year. Its action moves from 1887 to the 1893 World’s Fair to the present, the most memorable moments taking place in the earliest period. Ferber herself had been attracted by show boating as “one of the most melodramatic and gorgeous bits of Americana” [6] that deserved to be memorialized. She concocted a pseudo-domestic melodrama The Parson’s Bride, which, in the musical, is turned into a mock play within a play. In his score for both the stage version and the 1935 film, Kern imbedded such gas-lit crowd-pleasers as “Goodbye, My Lady Love” and “After the Ball.” Yet the line in “Ol’ Man River,” “the land ain’t free” suggests an ante-bellum South. A general wash of Victorianism plays over the musical. Audiences are hard put to say, at any given moment, just when the action is taking place. The popularity of Show Boat may have inspired Mae West to capitalize on the Nineties in Diamond Lil, which opened on Broadway on 9 April 1928. West’s career was in a precarious position; her plays Sex (1926), The Drag (1927) and The Pleasure Man (1928) had been prosecuted and closed and she had even spent a brief time in jail. Respectable playgoers avoided her shows. At this juncture it may have occurred to her that moving her sinning protagonists to a dimly-recalled bygone era might provide just the quantum of distance to make them seem safely picturesque. Although Diamond Lil touches on such raw topics as white slavery and drug addiction, the class conflicts and seething confrontations that appear in her first draft were excised in the final version. Diamond Lil takes place on a Bowery refashioned to exploit modern New York’s fondness for its rough-and-ready past. Herbert Asbury’s popular history The Gangs of New York had been published in 1927, providing the creative team plenty of well-researched local color and anecdotal incident. [7] Effort was made to reproduce an authentic period barroom and a honky-tonk singer’s apartments, leading the English impresario Charles Cochran to declare “ Diamond Lil catches exactly the spirit of the Bowery as I first knew it in 1891, with its bosses, thugs, procurers and cops.” [8] The effect, reported the New York World , was the “garishness of a lurid lithograph seen under a flaring gas jet, and that is probably just the reason it was such good fun.” [9] What in its time might have been regarded as tawdry and objectionable, ripe for slum clearance, had taken on a sheen of glamor. The same mist of reminiscence that had softened the contours of the past in Culter’s vignettes now invested a crime-ridden rookery like the Bowery with an aura of innocent festivity. Few of the audience members would have been familiar with its gritty reality. The New York World report continued. For those of us few remaining New Yorkers who have asentimental if somewhat hazy recollection of the Bowery, Diamond Lil contains a wealth of entertainment in thelusty and lewd enthusiasm with which it paints the underworldof the ‘90s. Somebody with a genuine sense of that atmospherehas created those Bowery scenes of ten cent revelry with anauthority just as honest as the Moscow Art Theater’sstudies of Chekhov, and much nearer home. [10] There is a peculiar contradiction lurking in this statement. The reporter, while admitting his memory is faulty and roseate, nevertheless claims for Diamond Lil ’s ambience the psychological and scenic naturalism of Stanislavsky (he and the Art Theatre had visited New York in 1923). What the writer purports to remember as lived experience is informed by a sedulous but fictional reconstruction. As Marybeth Hamilton has put it in her study of West, in Diamond Lil the truth of this past had been “mediated by old-time popular entertainments, formed by melodramas, stories and song.” [11] (She might also mention the pictorial precursors). At this time books on popular ballads of the period by the musicologist Sigmund Spaeth were widely available, [12] so “The Bowery” from the Gilded Era musical comedy A Trip to Chinatown (1891) and the tearjerker “She Was Poor But She Was Honest” were sung from the stage of Diamond Lil. West had tapped into the brisk current of nostalgia, allowing her to draw her audiences from a diversity of classes and tastes. Diamond Lil raised her from a provocative pariah into a Broadway star and was the only one of her plays to be filmed. A Hoboken Idyll Show Boat and Diamond Lil were contemporary fictions that exploited the Victorian ambience. The first influential revival of an actual Victorian play took place in what might be deemed off-off-off-off Broadway. In the mid-1920s a quartet of men-about-Manhattan who styled themselves the Three-Hours-for-Lunch Club discovered Hoboken. They found that a short ferry ride to the New Jersey shore could bring them to a neighborhood rich in fine riverine views, hearty German cuisine and a potent beer neglectful of the Eighteenth Amendment. They dubbed the region, with a nod to Shakespeare’s faulty geography in The Winter’s Tale , “the last Seacoast of Bohemia.” [13] New York City in this period, with fourteen daily newspapers in English alone and seventy legitimate playhouses, could well support a flourishing subculture of talented bohemians. Of the well-connected members of the Lunch Club, Cleon Throckmorton (1897-1965) was the most closely associated with progressive dramatic movements; as a designer for the Provincetown Playhouse, he was celebrated for his scenery for plays on African-America themes: The Emperor Jones (1920), All God’s Chillun Got Wings (1922) and Porgy (1923). The Club’s founder, Christopher Morley (1890-1957), bibliophile, novelist and gourmand, was a columnist for The New York Evening Post and editor of The Saturday Review of Literature. British-born Harry Wagstaff Gribble (1896-1981 had been, from 1918, one of Broadway’s most-employed playwrights and directors, with a specialty in revue. The least of these was Conrad Milliken (dates unknown), a theatrical lawyer and dabbler in poetry. On one of their gastronomic jaunts to Hoboken Throckmorton ventured on to Hudson Street and came upon the old Rialto Theatre (pronounced Rye-alto by the locals), its nineteenth-century interior shrouded in dust. The four men, who had a soft spot for Victoriana, leased and restored, without renovating, the 750-seat playhouse. They decided to revive popular commercial plays that had recently closed on Broadway, without regard to expense, featuring a semi-professional stock company in one-week runs. In their publicity they played up the ease of reaching Hoboken, the lack of traffic, the plenitude of parking. [14] Their first venture was Kenyon Nicholson’s play of circus life, The Barker, which had ended its Broadway run in June 1927. It reopened in Hoboken on Labor Day, 3 September 1928, to a local audience and failed to make expenses. The enterprise was chiefly social, the performance followed by beer and pretzels, recitations of such parlor favorites as “The Face on the Barroom Floor” and “Dress Me Up Fair for the Ball, Marie.” After a succession of seven more lightweight plays, [15] increased word of mouth and ingenious newspaper advertising allowed the amateur impresarios to expand to two-week runs of Morley’s new satire on the League of Nations Pleased to Meet You, George Abbott’s recent comedy-melodrama Broadway and a sentimental chestnut of 1903 appropriate to the locale, Old Heidelberg, about the romance between a German prince and a beerhall waitress . An ambitious forty-week season was planned. The New Stagecraft had been prominent for a decade, promoting innovations in playwriting, design and directing. Names such as Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Craig, Appia and Copeau were bandied about by would-be theatrical progressives. News of the Provincetown Playhouse, the Washington Square Players, and the Neighborhood Playhouse filled the drama columns of newspapers and magazines. Although Throckmorton was associated with these movements, the Lunch Club regarded its Hoboken venture to be a counterblast to pretentious would-be reformers. It protested that it was preserving the American tradition of the ballyhoo producer, the Barnums and Belascos. In a contrarian mood, Morley proclaimed their enterprise to be “not a ‘little’ theatre, nor an ‘arty’ theatre nor an ‘amateur’ theatre in a cellar or a stable or a wharf or an attic,” for the Rialto was “a house redolent of the showman atmosphere.” [16] Almost unique among ‘groups of serious thinkers,’ our escapade hadabout it no flavor of Little Theatre or Drama League, no intention ofuplift, or either shocking or improving Public Taste. Our subconsciousnotion was that the theatre had been improved entirely too much; thatits essential ingredient of harmless fun had almost been forgotten. ” [17] Even the watered-down symbolism of the French playwright Henri Lenormand, regularly produced by the Theatre Guild, was considered too highbrow for their repertoire. Having reveled in “crook plays” and light comedy, they were about to discover melodrama. After Dark One series of John Held’s linoleum cuts, called “When the Theatre Was Fraught with Romance,” offered cartoon versions of turn-of-the-century hits: Sapho, Ben Hur, The Heart of Maryland, Florodora and various vaudeville acts. The Hoboken team went even farther back in its exhumation of bygone drama. Throckmorton claimed that he had run across a lithograph of Dion Boucicault’s After Dark a Play of London Life (1868) in a second-hand bookstall and thought it might be an appropriate offering for the Rialto. (He had already revived Anna Cora Mowatt’s comedy Fashion [1845] for the Provincetown Players in 1925. [18] ) A sensation drama in which the hero is tied to the tracks and saved by a plucky girl from an oncoming locomotive, After Dark was already implanted in the recesses of the popular imagination. Finding a script was not easy; the only one available was a hand-written text in the New York Public Library which provided a photostatic copy. The fourth act was missing and had to be cobbled together from part-scripts. Morley tacked on a new subtitle, Neither Wife, Maid nor Widow, added jokes and changed English references to American ones. [19] (This last emendation would have been supererogatory if they had chosen Augustin Daly’s Under the Gaslight , which had served as Boucicault’s model, for it is set in New York.) [20] Nearly a dozen period songs were inserted, from the cloying ballad “Gentle Annie” and the uproarious “McSorley’s Twins” to a blackface minstrel troupe rendering “Stand Back, I Am Here,” as the audience joined in the chorus. The intention was to have After Dark run three weeks to be followed by Morley’s dramatization of his novel Where the Blue Begins . Morley later claimed that the Boucicault play had been meant as a Christmas gift to the long-standing working-class habitués of the Rialto. Tickets were distributed to factory workers and telephone operators and Morley praised the locals’ balanced response. At first, “the house, subconsciously perceiving the delicacy of the equilibrium, thrilled with laughter that had its overtones of fine appreciation, and even a sort of tender wistfulness for the old Currier and Ives era the play symbolized.” He always denied mounting the play tongue-in-cheek or encouraging the audience to mock the performance, although he had to admit that “Hissing the villain, and marking time to the songs with hands and feet, grew up spontaneously from the very first performance.” Throckmorton the director had told the actors, “Whatever you think about it, play it straight. Anyone trying to kid his part with get a notice at once.” [21] The reviewers duly noted the conscientiousness of the staging and the earnestness of the players. [22] The managers of the Hoboken Theatre Company were well aware that they were not inventing a fad but cleverly exploiting it. Morley even remarked in print that The Rialto has “the Bowery atmosphere of Diamond Lil .” [23] Even so, the entrepreneurs were surprised to find they had a hit on their hands. The smart set from Manhattan began to throng the Twenty-third Street ferry-boats, mail orders for tickets reached 2,500 a day, and calls for reservations were so demanding that six telephones had to be installed. Soon the problem arose of restraining audience exuberance which grew so unbridled it kept stopping the show. Any fat patron coming down the aisle was greeted with cheers. [24] The sensational railway scene provoked hilarity and calls for the locomotive to tip over. Tossing small change on stage had to be warned against by the character Old Tom lest actors be harmed, and to still the ever-increasing tumult, the program carried a printed slip calling on the spectators “to draw the line between appreciative merriment and mere noisy interruption.” [25] Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times attributed the runaway success to the festive nature of the evening and the absence of the usual taboos of theatre-going. Unwittingly, he suggested, the audience was echoing Morley’s dismissal of high-minded drama by revelling in the grandiloquent claptrap. Broadway, choked with “gutter plays” and eternal complaints of the theatre’s decadence, was being bested by the “good, clean fun” of the quartet’s initiative. [26] Historically, only the attendees of court or religious theatre had been constrained by decorum and protocol; public theatres had traditionally been sites of immediate and vociferous response. After Dark, in Atkinson’s opinion, was returning the dramatic event to its origins. Unswayed by such an objective analysis, the Hoboken Chamber of Commerce protested against “the unselfconscious conduct” of the “Park Avenue carriage trade audiences…rowdyism and the cheap buffoonery and crude witticisms of self-constituted wags…creating a source of annoyance to the serious and well-intentioned theatregoer…’hooligans’ in search of liquor and ‘whoopee’” which spilled on to the sidewalks and carriage-ways. [27] Considering that Hoboken had traditionally been the playground of sailors on leave and the working class on weekends, the bacchanalian excesses of the Rialto’s moneyed public must have been uninhibited indeed to call forth such objections. The element of class conflict can also be read in this complaint: the resentment of New Jerseyites against the chronic denigration of their state by New Yorkers. Morley responded that the experiment was so new that its effects had taken the founders themselves by surprise. He too deplored the invasion of touring “sophisticates” and the “prematurely knowing.” He later declared that once Manhattanites had made a fad of the revivals he ceased to take pleasure in them; the society crowd “could not appreciate the depth, the delicate charm and the sincerity of this old Victorian drama.” Their life is “so unhappy, so empty, so fatuous, that when they come to something homely and fine, they feel a compulsion to prove it something else.” Fortunately, he noted, three months in they lost interest, and for the rest of the run “we haven’t seen a real smart person in the house.” [28] Despite the aldermen’s complaints, the unlooked-for commercial success led to the quartet being solicited by Jersey City businessmen to set up shop there. Morley bought a foundry around the corner from the Rialto as the impresarios’ headquarters and issued passports to the Free State of Hoboken. He announced that in partnership with millionaire entrepreneur Otto Kahn he had plans to build an apartment house for artists and writers on the banks of the Hudson. [29] Relenting, in September 1929 the city fathers embedded a plaque in front of the Rialto commemorating the 335 th performance of After Dark . [30] Another unexpected development was a brief recrudescence of the prolific Irish playwright Dion Boucicault and the genre of melodrama. The actor Clarence Derwent staged two Sunday-night performances of The Octoroon (1859) with an interpolated scene from London Assurance (1841) to benefit the Eleonora Duse Fellowship. Publicity stated that it would be performed “in the manner of one given at the Old Winter Garden in 1859.” [31] Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, particularly in the theatre, Augustin Daly’s prototype for After Dark , Under the Gaslight (1867), opened at Fay’s Bowery Theatre in Chinatown in May; reporters on opening night noted the sharp contrast between “gaping hobos and bread-lines’ and “Rolls Royces, Hispano-Suizas and Isotta-Franschinis.” [32] Once again audiences flocked intending to split their sides when the cardboard train shot out of the wings. The admonitions to restraint from the stage were word-for-word the same as those at the Rialto. However, in contrast to Hoboken, the actors were prone to overdo the histrionics and the house’s high spirits seemed less than spontaneous. [33] A conventional response to Victorian melodrama was beginning to coalesce. Under the Gaslight ran only three weeks before the theatre burned down on June 5. The managers of the Rialto were faced with the quandary of what to put on if and when After Dark ever ended its run. They considered pursuing the Victorian line with a musical comedy like The Belle of New York (1897) or innovating with an adaptation of Anatole France’s satirical novel The Revolt of the Angels (1914) or bucking the trend with The Age of Consent, a new play about adolescent sex. [34] Regrettably, Morley admitted, the public identified the Rialto so closely with melodrama that other genres were foreclosed, so Boucicault’s The Streets of New York (1858) and Joseph Arthur’s Blue Jeans (1890, the one with the hero menaced by a buzz-saw), moved to the top of the list. [35] The Black Crook Meanwhile, the empire-building quartet took a lease on the larger, forty-three-year-old Lyric Theatre down the block from the Rialto, featuring The Black Crook as the attraction, although at first it was merely a name to the managers. In histories of American show business The Black Crook is invariably if erroneously cited as the first true musical comedy and, more accurately, as the progenitor of the “leg show.” [36] A jerry-built extravaganza of 1866, The Black Crook grafted troops of chorines in stockinette onto a creaky Faustian framework, added hummable music, and somehow created a long-lived, much revived blockbuster with a reputation for raciness. Morley drastically reduced the chorus and the libretto, inserted such anachronistic favorites as “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” and built up the special effects of a thunder machine and a great incantation scene. In his words, “this innocent old outrage, as quaint as a lacy Valentine, considered obscene in the 60’s and 70’s, is now a perfect bliss for children.” [37] The first night, 11 March 1929, played to standing room from 9 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., but the difficulty of getting home from Hoboken in the wee hours failed to discourage another storming of the box office. For all Morley’s disclaimers about the insensitivity of Manhattan playgoers, The Black Crook seems to have been tailored to their tastes and elicited the same vociferous response. As in an English Christmas pantomime, the playgoers shouted “Watch out” when the villain closed in on the hero. Isadora Duncan-style dancers, a classical ballet and a dog act were imported, while Morley placed Rabelaisian advertisements weekly to lure the suckers in. The reviewers complained that the actors were now lampooning the show. It was not “the ‘Black Crook’ revived or reproduced, or whatever you choose to call it, but a burlesque of the old ‘Black Crook’ with a lot of modern trimmings.” [38] The question arose, Is it worth the effort? The Hoboken enterprise was now such a notorious phenomenon that The Black Crook was immortalized by an Al Hirschfeld cartoon in the New York Herald Tribune for 3 March 1929 and in lithographs by Eugene Fitsch (1892-1972), an Alsatian-born instructor at the Art Students League. By June 200,000 spectators had seen the two revivals, and Morley was announcing an ambitious new season for the sister theatres, alternating drama, comedy and music, old and new. [39] Melodramas under consideration were English, Sims’ and Pettitt’s Harbor Lights (1888) and Wilkie Collins’s No Name (1879). A tour to Detroit and Chicago was contemplated once After Dark closed in Hoboken, and a similar road show to Boston was in store for The Black Crook . An intimate offering The Shoestring Revue was also in the works. [40] While The Black Crook was still running, however, progress on the ambitious projections of the Hoboken Theatrical Company hit a speed bump. The lawyer Milliken withdrew from the partnership and sued his erstwhile colleagues over royalties for After Dark, leading to appeals and protracted litigation. [41] When the 1929/30 season began, Morley and Throckmorton followed Crook with a less ingenuous piece of exploitation. A famous shipwreck of the Star of Bengal in 1908 had been made the centerpiece of a faked autobiography and a best-selling novel by the actress Joan Lowell (1902-1967) who falsely claimed to be the captain’s daughter and the only woman amid an all-male crew. Her husband (for two years) Thompson Buchanan (1877-1937) turned this farrago of mendacity into a dramatic vehicle for her. Although the reviewer for Morley’s alma mater Haverford reported an enthusiastic opening night audience and predicted success for his production of Star of Bengal , the professional press found it unfunny and an inappropriate successor to the Hoboken follies. Ironically, Variety labelled it “too old-fashioned” even to be picked up by the movies. [42] In interviews Morley then played up the Rialto’s new offering, a Civil War melodrama The Blue and the Gray, or War is Hell , [43] but audiences stayed away in droves. The critics thought it provided the same pleasures as its precursors but the public had been soured by The Shoestring Revue and Star of Bengal. Ultimately, the iceberg on which all these productions foundered was the same that proved fatal for society at large: the stock market crash of 29 October 1929. By February 1930 the Hoboken Theatre Company had to declare bankruptcy. Despite the munificent box-office receipts of the past year, lavish spending, the Rialto’s mortgage and the treasurer’s mismanagement all contributed to the failure. [44] The theatre was rented to one Patsy de Mensa, who staged Italian plays and musicals there until he bought the building outright in 1943. [45] Against the Victorian Grain Examined more closely, the popularity of these retrievals of Victorian artefacts has to be attributed to something more pungent than nostalgia, especially, as we have seen, the audiences for the most part were not retrospecting to a past they had experienced. Rather, the responses are ripples off the wave of anti-Victorianism that swept in as that period ebbed and that crested with the disillusionment of the Great War. The attack on Victorian values, part of a lack of confidence in society’s professed ideals in general, was spearheaded by social scientists. As a result of the cultural relativism preached by the Columbia school of anthropology, that bulwark of Victorian morality, the nuclear family, was seen to be crippling to the individual and subversive to progress. These academic ideas were disseminated in Middletown by Robert and Helen Lynd (1929), which revealed the heartland to be a hotbed of bad marriages, divorce and insufficient incomes; the book’s statistics bolstered the devastating fictions of Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson. The literary historian Van Wyck Brooks, in The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1920), cited the novelist as a victim of Victorian values, whose genius had been stunted by an antipathetic cultural environment. [46] Ideas developed in Europe bolstered this attitude. Overthrowing the Victorian establishment was a deliberate goal of the Bloomsbury coterie. Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) served as an abattoir to butcher the most sacred cows of the British Empire, and he followed it with an irreverent biography of Victoria herself. His insistence that her society’s evangelical bent had led directly to the Great War stoked hostility towards the previous generation. Sigmund Freud read Strachey’s book to be a direct Oedipal attack on religion. [47] The impact of Darwin on the Victorians was replicated by that of Freud on their grandchildren, with the difference that Darwin had been resisted and Freud was enthusiastically welcomed. Touted by popular journalism, the Viennese doctor became a cultural totem worshipped even by those who never read a word he wrote: his ideas made it fashionable to discuss sex out in the open and to label the hypocritical virtues of the previous century as inhibitions and repressions. [48] In this respect, Brooks Atkinson’s analysis of the exuberant participation in the melodrama revivals was on target: audiences were throwing off the traces, turning the aisles of the playhouse into the kind of “wild party” normally fueled by bootleg liquor. They were proclaiming “ nous avons changés tout cela, ” making a declaration of independence from the black-and-white moralizing and Protestant ethics played out in the melodramas. Morley’s innocent merriment spilled off the stage to become the Saturnalia of the Roman games. The Wall Street crash did not immediately shock the American theatre-going public into a new sobriety or a fresh evaluation of the Victorians. A surprise hit of London’s West End in 1927 had been Marigold , a sentimental comedy by L. Allen Barker and F. R. Pryor, set in the Scotland of 1842. The philosophic critic Charles Morgan dismissed it as merely a pleasant way to spend an evening, “a welcome epilogue to a good dinner.” [49] Nevertheless, it ran for a year and a half in London and was seen by over 500,000 people, attracted as much by the quaintness of the crinolines as by its mawkish plot. New York audiences would have none of it. When Marigold was transferred to Broadway in 1930 it folded after thirteen performances. It would seem that the sentimentality of their great-grandfathers was still anathema to cynical New York playgoers. However, as the Depression settled in for a long stay, Americans slowly revised their opinion of their bewhiskered ancestors. The eminent Victorians whom Lytton Strachey had skewered were now apotheosized in biographical dramas. The Lady with the Lamp (about Florence Nightingale) and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (about the Brownings; both English, both 1931) were hugely successful in the same season that Marigold flopped. [50] Just as the New Deal was being legislated into existence and crowds were singing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” Laurence Housman’s Victoria Regina (1935) made a star of Helen Hayes. Even Eugene O’Neill surprised the critics in 1933 with Ah,Wilderness!, a paean to the kind of small-town life the Lynds had excoriated but Culter’s pictures had idealized. Viewed from the depths of an economic disaster, the alleged simplicity of that horse-drawn, gas-lit world held great appeal. It should be noted, however, that these were modern dramas, written and performed in a style acceptable to contemporary playgoers. The demise of the Hoboken venture did not spell the end of burlesque revivals of Victorian melodrama entirely. Lawrence Langer (1890-1962), one of the founders of the Theatre Guild, opened his New York Repertory Company at the Country Westport Playhouse on 19 June 1931 with Boucicault’s Streets of New York , and moved it to the Forty-Eighth Street Theatre in October. The audiences, conditioned by its precursors, indulged in unbridled hilarity at the musty stagecraft and outworn conventions, but the press also noted how Boucicault’s thrusts at bankers and devalued stocks hit home. [51] Nor had Morley stabled his own hobby-horse. In November 1935, the Theatre of Four Seasons, a playhouse for wealthy suburbanites in Glen Cove, Long Island, was inaugurated with his adaptation of Edward Stirling’s The Rag-picker of Paris (1848) , a bowdlerization of Félix Pyat’s sensational Le Chiffonier de Paris . Morley’s “new revised and re-edited” version abridged the play even more drastically, gave it a subtitle The Modest Modiste and studded it with stale puns and anachronistic references, winking at the jaded playgoer he had once scolded. [52] Pyat’s original had been saturated with democratic outrage and attacks on capitalism; Morley’s adaptation was, however, a high society event, the well-heeled guests at the farthest remove from both les misérables of Paris and the proletariat of Hoboken. [53] However, the most enduring specimen of the mock-the-melodrama genre occurred during the depths of the Depression and a continent away from Broadway and the Jersey shore. With the repeal of Prohibition, a couple of actors who had been playing stock in New York and Pennsylvania, Preston Shobe (1897-1978) and Galt Bell (1900-1949), moved to the West Coast (Bell was a native Californian). They came up with the idea of staging the 1843 temperance drama The Drunkard or The Fallen Saved by W. H. Smith, seating the audience at tables where they could drink beer and eat from a buffet while hissing, cheering and joining in the chorus. [54] Hoboken’s Rialto and Lyric theatres had been traditional proscenium playhouses, but this effort was to be located in an actual beer-garden. After tryouts in Carmel and Santa Barbara, Shobe and Bell opened The Drunkard , at the Theatre Mart in Los Angeles on 6 July 1933. Plans for a future repertoire, including a socialistic Uncle Tom’s Cabin, never came to pass, because it sold out for weeks in advance. Perhaps the Hollywood crowd, many of whom had benefitted from the coming of sound to turn their backs on live theatre for work in the studios, enjoyed denigrating something they saw as passé . Whatever the case, The Drunkard became a must-see for celebrities: Boris Karloff suggested an ever-changing olio of songs between the acts and W. C. Fields made it a centerpiece of his movie The Old-Fashioned Way (1934) . Even the Federal Theatre Project jumped on the bandwagon, trucking its own variants around the country. Referring to another revival of The Drunkard at the American Music Hall on 55 th Street in New York, the reviewer John Mason Brown pinpointed the attraction: “Of course making fun of antique melodramas is no longer the sport it once was. But for those who like to hear the songs of a bygone era and enjoy the irony of drinking beer in comfort at the same time they are laughing at a ridiculous sermon on the subject of a drunkard’s degradation and redemption,” it makes for a pleasant evening. [55] It constituted an exorcism of Prohibition. The Los Angeles Drunkard ran for decades, serving as the American version of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (1954), and closed only when the Fire Department insisted on a reduction in the size of the audience. No longer financially viable, The Drunkard closed on 17 October 1959, with a record of 9,477 performances. [56] On its twenty-first anniversary in 1953, the press had noted that it had beaten the record of the Broadway run of Life with Father . [57] Life with Father had begun as a series of comic reminiscences by cartoonist Clarence Day Jr (1874-1935) of his stock-broker father in the 1880s. The first piece appeared in The New Yorker in January 1933, and two years later a collection of the essays was issued. After Day’s untimely death, the musical-comedy librettists Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse wrought them in a play which opened at the Empire Theatre on 8 November 1939. The entertainment confected out of the magazine essays was a tintype of an upper middle-class New York family during the presidency of Grover Cleveland. The paterfamilias is a Republican financier of conservative, not to say retrograde, values. Although the comedy is gently subversive of its hero’s old-fashioned views, it allowed audiences to bask in the glow of prosperous domesticity while feeling superior to the autocrat of the breakfast-table. Eleven road companies brought it to two hundred and fourteen cities across the continent. Life in Father had, by its closing on 15 June 1947, chalked up 3,224 performances on Broadway alone. Once the record run had ended, it was made into a Technicolor film with William Powell in the lead. Although Life with the Father had not begun as a play, the values it enshrined were similar to those expressed in other contemporary dramatic recreations of the Victorian era. As an authority figure, Day senior and the mores of his well-upholstered milieu are subjected to ridicule tempered with affectionate forbearance. Explaining the work’s inclusion in a Best Plays anthology, the critic John Gassner wrote, “For all the pudder raised by dour anti-‘escapists,’ the remembrance of things past remains justifiable human indulgence, and I have often felt, as who has not, that what matters in escape is less what we escape from than what we escape into.” [58] When Life with Father opened, Pulitzer Prizes for 1938 and 1939 had been awarded to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, a paean to the everyday as lived in obscure villages, and Robert E. Sherwood’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1939), a tribute to frontier integrity. Coming out of the Depression and on the eve of a worldwide conflagration, American audiences seemed to be seeking in their none-too-distant past for positive values, moral and inspirational. These prize-winning dramas partook of and benefitted from the same psychological climate that produced the successful revivals and nostalgia plays dismissed or overlooked by critics. The long runs and commercial success of The Drunkard and Life with Father suggest that, on the US stage, anti-Victorian mockery and Victorian nostalgia had found a modus vivendi for co-existence. References [1] Bill’s Gay 90s stayed in operation until 2012. “Bill’s Gay Nineties – The History” . Bill’s New York City. Archived from the original on March 30, 2012. [2] Held’s cartoons, appearing as magazine covers, posters and advertising, were considered to be the graphic equivalent of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction, defining a jazz-crazed generation of flappers and ‘varsity Romeos. [3] Held’s drawings were collected in 1931 (New York: Ives Washburn) and reprinted by Dover Books in 1972 as The Wages of Sin and Other Victorian Joys & Sorrows [4] A frequent example of this is the use of Offenbach’s galop infernale from Orphée aux enfers of 1858 to score cancans supposed to characterize the Gay Nineties. The practice is endemic in movies. [5] W. J. D., “Several Sparkling Song Gems Are Born with the Latest Edition of Greenwich Village Follies,” The Music Trades 44, 1 (1 July 1922): 42. [6] Edna Ferber, A Peculiar Treasure (NY: Doubleday, 1938). The chapter on Show Boat appears on 217-304. [7] It is also the foundational source for Martin Scorsese’s film of the same name. One historian’s complaint that Scorsese conflated three decades into one could be made of most show-business evocations of “the Victorian age.” Vincent DiGirolamo, “Such, Such Were the B’hoys,” Radical History Review 2004 (90): 123-41. [8] Quoted in advertisement for Diamond Lil in Variety (22 Aug. 1928): 71; in Marybeth Hamilton, When I’m Bad, I’m Better. Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 107. [9] New York World (10 April 1928): 18, quoted in Hamilton, When I’m Bad , 110. [10] Ibid. [11] Hamilton, When I’m Bad, 117. [12] Barber Shop Ballads and How to Sing Them (1925); Read ‘Em and Weep and Weep Some More, My Lady (both 1927); and “Gentlemen, Be Seated!” (on blackface minstrelsy, 1928). [13] The chief accounts are Christopher Morley, The Seacoast of Bohemia (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929) and Born in a Beer Garden or, She Troupes to Conquer. Sundry Ejaculations by Christopher Morley, Cleon Throckmorton and Ogden Nash and Certain of the Hoboken Ads with a Commentary on Them by Earnest Elmo Calkins (New York: Foundry Press, 1930). Also see J. Brooks Atkinson, “Hilarities,” New York Times (11 Nov. 1928): 135; and “The Theatre in Hoboken,” TIME (25 May 1929). [14] “Christopher Morley Revives the Hoboken Theatre,” Scarsdale Inquirer 9,46 (5 Oct. 1928): 1. [15] What Anne Brought Home, The Spider (both 1927), The Squall (1926), The Last of Mrs Cheney , The Poor Nut (both 1925), Bulldog Drummond (1921) and The Octopus (1928). Two are comedies; the rest are thrillers or “crook” plays. [16] Morley, Seacoast of Bohemia, 9. Christopher Morley’s papers are deposited at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. [17] Morley, Seacoast of Bohemia , 20. Even their advertising pamphlet contained the disclaimer: “This is not a highbrow theatre, nor an arty theatre, nor a clinic for the exploration of the obscure woes of the nervous system.” [18] Kenneth McGovern, “Developing a Repertory Theatre,” Art & Decoration 23 (May 1925): 47, 80. [19] Cleon Throckmorton, “Putting the O.K. in Hoboken” and Morley, “She Troupes to Conquer,” both in Born in a Beer Garden , 62, 34-36 [20] The litigation over whether Boucicault had plagiarized Daly’s Under the Gaslight lasted for thirteen years. See Edward S. Rogers, “The Law of Dramatic Copyright II,” Michigan Law Review 1, 3 (Dec. 1902): 185-89. After Dark was never copyrighted, but William A. Brady, who had purchased the performance rights from Boucicault, tried unsuccessfully to enjoin the Rialto directors from producing it. “W. A. Brady Warns ‘After Dark’ Producer,” New York Times (5 Dec. 1928): 18. [21] Morley, “She Troupes to Conquer,” 37, 39. [22] “’After Dark’ revived,” New York Times (11 Dec. 1928): 40. [23] Morley, The Seacoast of Bohemia , 9 . [24] Compare the cry “Norm!” in the television sitcom Cheers . [25] “After Dark’ revived.” [26] J. Brooks Atkinson, “In the Free State of Hoboken,” New York Times (10 Feb. 1929): 113. [27] “Hoboken Criticizes Morley Audiences,” New York Times (12 April 1929): 22. [28] In a speech to a packed audience at Columbia University. “Morley Glad to Be Rid of New York Patrons, ‘Too Stupid’ to Appreciate Hoboken Revivals,” New York Times (23 July 1929): 21. [29] “The Theatre: in Hoboken.” [30] “Morley Buys Foundry to Aid Hoboken Drama,” New York Times (24 Mar. 1929): 20; “Tablet for Boucicault,” New York Times (3 Sept. 1929), 34. [31] “The Octoroon Revival,” New York Times (4 Mar. 1929): 24; “The Octoroon’ at 70 is still affective [sic]” New York Times (13 Mar 1929): 37. The Octoroon enjoyed a full month’s revival by the Phoenix Theatre in 1961, and then a radical rethinking by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins as An Octoroon in 2016. [32] “Boucicault Redivivus,” New York Times (24 Mar. 1929): 133. [33] J. Brooks Atkinson, “Bowery Melodrama,” New York Times (3 April 1929): 36. [34] “Morley to resume acting. Will appear as Old Tom in ‘After Dark’ in Hoboken” New York Times (1 July 1929): 36; “War Play for Hoboken,” New York Times (29 July 1929): 36. [35] Morley, “She Stoops,” 42-43. After Dark finally closed in November 1929, nearly a year after it had opened. Morley played old Tom in the last three performances. “’After Dark’ to close,” New York Times (27 Nov. 1929): 34. [36] The legend began with its author C. M. Barras, The Black Crook. A Most Wonderful History (Philadelphia: Barclay, 1866). The historian of light opera Kurt Gänzl has devoted many of his Kurt of Gerolstein blogs to correcting the record; e.g., 4 Oct. 2016, 8 Oct. 2016, 17 June 2018, 18 June 2018, 20 June 2018. [37] Morley, “She Stoops.” 48. Also see Ogden Nash, “Up and Down the Amazons or, The Black Crook from Behind; a Travelogue” and Earnest Elmo Calkins, “Mr. Morley Writes His Own” in Born in a Beer Garden . [38] “’Black Crook’ Revived with Lovely Chorus,” New York Times (19 Mar. 1929): 33; “The Theatre: in Hoboken.” [39] “News and Gossip of the Times Square Sector,” New York Times (30 June 1929): XI. [40] “’Black Crook’ to Close,” New York Times (30 May 1929): 26; “’Black Crook’ Reopens in Hoboken,” New York Times (10 Sept. 1929), 38; “’Shoestring Revue’ in Rehearsal,” New York Times (3 Nov. 1929): 11. [41] “Hoboken Producers Face Royalty Suit,” New York Times (26 June 1929): 33; “Gribble v. Hoboken Theatrical Co.,” Court of Chancery 17 December 1929. [42] “Morley’s ‘Star of Bengal’ Scores Success in Opening,” Haverford News (30 Sept. 1929): 1; Variety (Oct. 2, 1929): 2; “Theatre: New Play in Hoboken,” TIME (7 Oct. 1929); Oakland Tribune (11 Oct. 1929): C3. [43] “Civil War in Hoboken,” New York Times (5 Jan. 1930): X2. Although Morley claimed it was written by an anonymous war veteran and offered a prize to anyone who could identify the author, it is likely that he devised it to fit the theatre’s needs. There is no independent record of such a play. [44] “Morley’s Theatre in Bankruptcy Plea,” New York Times (4 Feb. 1930): 22; J. Brooks Atkinson, “Hoboken Blues,” New York Times (9 Feb. 1930): X1. [45] “Hoboken Theatre Sold. Scene of Morley’s Plays,” New York Times (7 Dec. 1943): 1. The Lyric was sold in 1931 and demolished in 1959. [46] Stanley Cohen, “The Assault on Victorianism in the Twentieth Century,” American Quarterly 27, 5 (Dec. 1975): 604-25. He later expanded this as Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). [47] Todd Avery, “’The Historian of the Future’: Lytton Strachey and Modernist Historiography Between the Two Cultures,” English Literary History 4 (Winter 2010): 841-66. [48] F. H. Matthews, “The Americanization of Sigmund Freud. Adaptations of Psychoanalysis Before 1917,” Journal of American Studies 1, 1 (Apr. 1967): 39-62; Ernest W. Burgess, “The Influence of Sigmund Freud upon Sociology in the U.S.,” American Journal of Sociology 70 (Nov. 1939): 356-75. [48] In 1917 the columnist Heywood Broun had speculated on what Little Eva’s death scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin would be like if Stowe’s characters had read Havelock Ellis and tried to interpret the child’s dream of angels by means of Freud. “What Mrs. H. B. Stowe Ought to Have Known,” New York Tribune (18 Feb. 1017): 40. [49] Charles Morgan, “The English Stage – ‘Marigold’ and Seymour Hicks,” New York Times (29 May 1927): X1. Also see Duncan Monks, “’The Return of the Crinoline’ in the Age of Anti-Victorianism, c.1918-39,” Academia . Marigold became the first play to be televised in the UK. [50] The Lady with the Lamp , about Florence Nightingale, was an English import which had opened in London in 1929, starring Edith Evans. [51] “Meet Mr. Boucicault,” New York Times (4 Oct. 1931): 110; “Laugh Gales Greet Revival of Old Play,” Women’s Wear Daily (7 Oct. 1931): I, 17. A musical version of The Streets of New York by Charlotte Moore opened off-Broadway in late 2021. [52] “Society Sees New Playhouse Opened,” New York Times (12 Nov. 1935), 23. Morley published the text (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1937). [53] In 1937 Throckmorton resuscitated his revival of Fashion ; and a year later, the WPA presented Clyde Fitch’s Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901) which ran only a fortnight in New York. [54] “Galt Bell, 49, revived ‘Drunkard’ on Coast.” New York Times (7 July 1949): 25. Ten Nights in a Barroom had been revived at the John Golden Theatre in New York in 1932 but held the boards for only 37 performances. [55] John Mason Brown, “The Drunkard,” quoted in John W. Frick, Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 195-96. [56] “Theatre’s Seven-Year-Old Drunkard,” TIME (17 July 1939); “’The Drunkard’, L.A.’s Favorite Melodrama,” Los Angeles Daily Mirror (21 June 1947); “’The Drunkard,’ Final Curtain Falls After Historic 26-year Run,” Victoria (Texas) Advocate ( 19 Oct. 1959): 1; Larry Harnisch, “The Drunkard,” Los Angeles Daily Mirror (14 July 2008). [57] “’The Drunkard,’ 21 Years in Los Angeles, Still Off Wagon After 7,451 Performances,” New York Times (7 July 1953): 23. [58] John Gassner, “Introduction,” Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre Second Series , ed. John Gassner (New York: Crown Publishers, 1947), xxix. Footnotes About The Author(s) LAURENCE SENELICK is Fletcher Professor Emeritus of Drama and Oratory, Tufts University, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the editor of The American Stage in the Library of America and recipient of the George Jean Nathan award for dramatic criticism. His most recent books are Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture (2018), The Final Curtain: The Art of Dying on Stage (2022) and a translation of Balzac’s The Fraudster (2022). 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 “An Art for Which There Is as Yet No Name.” Mobile Color, Artistic Composites, Temporal Objects The Anti-Victorianism of Victorian Revivals Tricks, Capers, and Highway Robbery: Philadelphia Self-Enactment upon the Early Jacksonian Stage “The Spirit of the Thing is All”: The Federal Theatre’s Staging of Medieval Drama in the Los Angeles Religious Community The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Loisaida Rise Up! 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Rowan Jalso 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 Which of These Are Censorship? The Divide Between Prior Restraint and Soft Censorship Rowan Jalso By Published on July 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Theatrical censorship in a global sense is depressingly familiar. American censorship, however, is an interesting case. It has definitely occurred in the purest sense: from 1922 to 1927, the “Play Jury” in the United States policed what performances were allowed to be produced and who was allowed to act within productions. Theatre makers in this era had to follow these rules or be banned, as was the case with Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms .(1) The First Amendment has, at times, offered protection against some forms of governmental bans, protecting American theatre more so than some other countries. However, that does not mean that governmental control of American theatre is a relic of the past. Today, many states are creating laws and policies to cut “indecent” performances off at the knees. Censorship is a broad term that encompasses a variety of distinct legal measures, and the legality of censorship varies between eras and locations. However, since we are discussing “contemporary American censorship,” I will highlight two prevalent forms: prior restraint and soft censorship.(2) Prior restraint is a form of censorship that allows the government to review the content of printed materials and prevent their publication.(3) If any material touches on a topic that the government has deemed off-limits, then that material may be censored. It has been “restrained” before it has had any chance to be reviewed by a governing body, amended by the playwright, or produced for an audience. Under a prior restraint system, if “gender ideology” is a banned topic, then anything that discusses that topic will be prohibited. Currently, this is most evident in educational settings and in situations involving state and federal funding. For example, The Laramie Project , a play which has been frequently banned or protested, was lately banned by a school in Texas in February 2024 and by Kansas schools a year earlier. It is one thing for an institution or government to forbid you from putting on a production, and another to stop yourself from staging one because you suspect that it will not draw a crowd or earn a profit, or that there could be public backlash. This second instance is known as “soft censorship.” With theatres still trying to claw their way back from the downturn caused by the pandemic, many are worried about doing anything that would kick the proverbial hornet’s nest. This can manifest as: locations that should or should not be toured through, venues that may or may not accept a production, and seasons that will or will not generate controversy. (For instance, Arena Stage’s 1992-93 season is an example of an attempt at casting diversity that created backlash from theatre donors.) All these factors and worries have to be carefully managed, on top of the issues around federal and state funding that are becoming increasingly proliferate. In today’s American theatre, there are cases of prior restraint censorship, such as theatres being denied grants unless they adhere to or avoid specific topics, and there are cases of private venues choosing to forgo certain topics. These two instances may, on the surface, appear to produce the same result—a production is not allowed to be staged—but in actuality, they are vastly different. One flies in the face of the First Amendment, and the other is a private entity’s choice not to engage with certain topics. In a confusing, reactionary, and fast-paced public sphere, it is vital to note when something is facing unconstitutional censorship and when something is just not being staged. As worrying as it is when the latter happens, it is in the private entity’s right. This provocation will explore the divide between prior restraint and soft censorship. Some theatres have been forced to toe the line in order to secure grants, while others have spoken out, employing everything from boycotts to lawsuits. Although brief, this overview of the field aims to highlight contemporary American censorship. Private and Public Institutions Refusing to Produce Certain Theatrical Productions Let us begin with “soft censorship.” In America, there are private institutions that sometimes refuse to lease venues or allow theatrical tours to perform in their areas. Many people may see a venue or a certain township’s refusal to allow a production to occur within their walls and decry it as censorship, but, in a legal sense, it is not. While the First Amendment prevents governments from limiting the speech of private individuals, there are no laws against private institutions or individuals from limiting each other. Yet, these actions may seem similar to censorship, and so this phenomenon should still be looked at as an indicator of anxieties in theatrical production. The reasons why a certain show is not staged, even when there is no First Amendment issue at play, can show what topics are being seen as too risky or inappropriate for a venue, location, or group. For example, in October 2024, New York’s Connelly Theater was unable to continue its season when the Archdiocese of New York (which owns the theatre) refused to sign booking agreements, which are needed for the bookings to be legally valid. The planned productions were Kallan Dana’s Racecar Racecar Racecar, Emil Weinstein’s Becoming Eve (based on the memoir by Abby Chava Stein), and Zach Zucker’s Jack Tucker: Comedy’s Standup Hour .(4) The SheNYC festival, which had used the Connelly for eight years, is now looking for a new venue for its 2025 festival, fearing they too will not be granted booking agreements. Due to this issue with the Archdiocese, the Connelly Theater’s artistic director resigned, and the theatre suspended all operations. The Archdiocese did not give an explicit reason to find fault in the planned plays, a spokesman said that “it is ‘standard practice’ that nothing should take place on the property that is ‘contrary to the teaching of the church.’”(5) The Archdiocese may have refused to renew the booking because of this “contrary” content, specifically Becoming Eve , an adaptation of Stein’s memoir about her coming out as trans and her Hasidic rabbinical family. The Archdiocese could have been motivated by a fear that the planned season would not generate revenue, or that it would cause outrage, or any number of other reasons. As distressing as this is, in essence, a private institution refused to house certain content, which, by law, they are within their rights to do. This differs from prior restraint, as the entity banning work is not a governmental group, but a private one. The Archdiocese is not a state or federal governmental body. They have the power to choose who and what uses their commercial space. A Note on Restricted Theatre in Schools and Higher Learning Institutions The Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) reported that approximately 67% of educators were concerned about potential controversies in the plays for their upcoming seasons. In current reporting, many high school and college productions face the heaviest restrictions, as parents can influence school boards and funding. Here are a few instances of recent academic theatrical bans: in 2023, a public arts high school in Florida canceled a production of Indecent ; an Illinois public high school canceled a production of The Prom ; an Indiana public high school canceled a production of Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood ; an Ohio public high school requested twenty-three revisions of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee before it could hit the stage; and a Texas public school board canceled several primary school field trips to see James and the Giant Peach due to a social media post that equated actors playing both male and female roles as “drag.”(6) These “theatres” are overseen by governing boards which control the funding and curriculum of the school, and so they must contend with the oversight of the students’ families (who make up the cast, crew, and audience). There is a discussion to be had regarding the differences between public and private schools, and whether the former should have First Amendment protections if they are tied to or funded by state institutions. The government cannot limit the speech of a non-governmental entity. Are public schools funded by the state or federal government governmental entities? What about private institutions that receive government grants? And how does this question change when the school in question is a primary school, and not a high school or a college? When minors are involved, worries over “indecent” content rise, and when the funding for a public school is provided by the community (taxpayers, local grants, etc.), then a situation similar to the Connelly Theater arises. If a group of private citizens or donors chooses to not fund (to allow funds to go to) a particular production due to its themes, is that within their rights? As state laws vary significantly, more work needs to be done to compile a comprehensive list of institutions that do and do not have First Amendment protections, and to examine how public funding affects private institutions, as well as the reverse, as private funds may support both private and public institutions. Contemporary American Governmental Censorship According to Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), an independent organization dedicated to advancing and defending artistic freedom globally, artists are increasingly being censored in the United States for creating work that intersects with their politics or identities—particularly those from marginalized communities, including artists of color and LGBTQIA+ individuals.(7) In many prior restraint incidents, the content that is being targeted deals with identity issues, such as LGBTQA+ representation. There are other cases of ideological depictions—namely, plays about non-Christian religions and plays engaging questions or themes of race. (Regional theatres produce more plays written by white playwrights than by playwrights of color.) One of the main components of today’s artistic attitude is the 1990 Congressional decision that stated that any grants to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) should be subject to “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.” This has become known as the “decency clause” and is an example of prior restraint; a topic is deemed unsuitable for public display from the get-go.(8) Thankfully, this clause has been challenged numerous times. In 1994, the Dallas Theater Center produced Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare, and the theatre was cited for running a sexually oriented business due to the play’s nude scene due to the decency clause, but the charges were later dropped.(9) In a 1998 ruling, a federal judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals maintained that the clause’s vague language would fetter artistic freedom.(10) A more current example of prior restraint is Florida’s 2023 House Bill 1069, an education law which is stated to “restrict media with sexual content.”(11) This legislation has had the chilling effect of curtailing a wide breadth of theatre, including Shakespeare, as many of his characters cross-dress, which is enough for Florida to classify it as sexual in nature. In Orlando, the decision was made to no longer permit Shakespeare’s plays to be read in their entirety in schools due to sexual innuendos and allusions to sex, such as in Romeo and Juliet .(12) The bill is primarily directed at K-12 schools, as it was proposed by the Senate’s “Education Pre-K-12 Committee”; however, it has also had an impact outside the classroom. During the 2023 holiday season in Orlando, a theatre hosted a “drag Christmas,” and they were instructed to sell tickets only to people 18 or older due to the performance content. And yet, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took their beverage license anyway, claiming that minors were admitted, but also stating that “the fact that there were people performing opposite to their gender was sufficient to pull their license.”(13) The ACLU’s Lawsuit Against the NEA At this time, the most significant case of prior restraint we are seeing is the new grant application policy of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for federal grants, and the ensuing lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which began on 6 March 2025. President Trump had outlined new guidelines for NEA funding, which required applicants to state that they will not “promote gender ideology” in the project for which they are requesting the grant. This move came on the heels of President Trump’s 2025 executive order 14168 that identified “male and female as the only two sexes and said that federal funds should be used to promote [this] gender ideology.”(14) Additionally, applicants for NEA grants were required to state that they were not operating DEI programs. The ACLU is filing this lawsuit on behalf of Rhode Island Latino Arts, the National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive, and Theatre Communications Group. They argue that these requirements violate the First Amendment and fall under prior restraint. They requested a temporary restraining order (TRO) or preliminary injunction on these requirements before the March 24th deadline for the NEA funding application for the 2025 fiscal year.(15) According to the ACLU website, on March 7th, the NEA agreed to remove the requirement from the application that had grant applicants state that their projects would not “promote gender ideology.” However, while the statement is no longer required for the application process, the NEA has not agreed to remove the criterion.(16) On March 27th, the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island began to hear arguments for the case. During this time, the application deadline was pushed from March 24th to April 7th, and the NEA agreed not to begin disbursing funds until April 30th, when “the agency determines how to implement the executive order.”(17) However, on April 3rd, the Court denied the motion for a TRO. The court held that: …the NEA’s decision on Feb. 6 to make any project that “promotes” what the government deems to be “gender ideology” ineligible for funds likely violated the First Amendment and exceeded its statutory authority, it… concluded that, because the NEA is currently in the process of determining whether to reimpose that ban, the court could not get in the way of the agency’s decisionmaking [ sic ] process.(18) The case is still ongoing, with the latest update being from May 12th. After the NEA’s self-imposed April 30th deadline passed, artists and theatre makers called for the clarification promised. The NEA grant guidelines still leave it unclear whether applicants must explicitly state that they are not promoting gender ideology to be eligible for funding. Therefore, the case remains in limbo, as courts will not comment on a NEA policy that is subject to change, and since the NEA has yet to clarify that policy, the ACLU has no grounds to present to the court.(19) What Does This Mean for the Field? This is by no means an exhaustive look at current threats against theatrical productions, and many of the cases discussed above may or may not be resolved by the time this paper is read. In the current political climate of 2025, theatres must worry about whether their productions will meet grant requirements that could change to align with a current political agenda. They must worry about whether they will be allowed to tour certain locations and use specific venues, or if a script can even be produced in certain institutions. It would be so nice to say that we can rest easy in the arms of the First Amendment to keep theatre safe from governmental censorship, but as it stands, that is not the case. Whether through state legislation or executive order, the rules that would have allowed all viewpoints and opinions to ring out are being sidestepped and ignored. So what are we to do? Some theatres have decided to conform to current trends and refrain from producing anything that may be divisive. Others have decided to boycott the space, as many performers did when President Trump took over the Kennedy Center: Lin-Manuel Miranda announced that a production of Hamilton , which would have played at the Kennedy Center in 2026, for the 250th anniversary of America, would be canceled, and will remain canceled as long as Trump is the chair of the center.(20) As of May 2025, this is still the case. There are lawsuits, news articles, public outcries, and eyes being drawn to the issues. These instances of true censorship, prior restraint censorship, cannot be allowed to be swept up into the never-ending tide of current events. However, at the risk of sounding like a fence straddler, we also must remain apprised enough to recognize what is actual and actionable censorship, and what are examples of private venues and entities exercising their rights. It is all too easy to jump to “Censorship!” when any production hits a roadblock. But the First Amendment allows private citizens to speak their minds, and this includes venues not wishing to associate with certain topics. It may hurt, but it is their right, and all rights need to be respected. A nuanced perspective is necessary to ensure that the field can move forward in a manner that is both legal, holistic, and respectful. The danger is present. The use of governmental power to curtail voices is on the rise. Pushing back and being too loud and too numerous to ignore is the best weapon we have against this. But we cannot let ourselves be desensitized to the volleys or be quick to jump at perceived slights. In a world that is slowly losing touch with critical thinking and nuanced analysis, we cannot fold. References Duffy and Duffy, “Watchdogs of the American Theatre 1910‐1940,” 54–56. O’Neill’s play in particular is highlighted on page 56. I’d like to thank Dr. John Fletcher at LSU for helping me land on these questions of prior restraint versus soft censorship. Baracskay, “Prior Restraint.” Racecar Racecar Racecar is a surreal trip taken by an unnamed father and daughter cross country, Becoming Eve is a true story about a female trans Rabbi, and Jack Tucker is a comedy show in which Zach Zucker portrays Jack Tucker, a divorcing, in debt, washed up comedian. PEN America, “Cancellation of Plays at New York Theater by Catholic Archdiocese Undermines Artistic Freedom.” Considine et al., “The Courage to Produce: A Conversation on High School Censorship.” PEN America. Filippo, “Censorship Problems in Commercial and Collegiate Theatre,” 192. Filippo, 193. National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley , 524 U.S. 569 (1998).” Anderson and McClain, CS/CS/HB 1069: Education. The Associated Press, “Shakespeare and Penguin Book Get Caught in Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Laws.” Considine et al. I am attaching this article to the Florida House Bill as the legal document from the Florida Senate Website is quite hard to understand. Considine’s summarization is clear and useful. Executive Order 14186. ACLU, “Artists Mount First Amendment Challenge to New Grant Requirements by the National Endowment for the Arts.” ACLU, “In Response to ACLU Lawsuit, National Endowment for the Arts Removes Certification Requirement on Funding Applications.” ACLU, “Court Hears Arguments in First Amendment Challenge to Federal Arts Funding Restriction.” ACLU, “Court Denies Preliminary Relief to Arts Organizations.” ACLU, “Arts Organizations Push for Answers in National Endowment for the Arts Funding Suit.” At the time of writing, this is the last update on the ACLU case. It is highly probable that this has changed by the time you read this. Zirin, “Is Trump Now a Patron of the Arts?” This decision occurred in February 2025, and according to the Kennedy Center webpage, is still the case. While there have been reports of David Rubenstein remaining in the position until September 2026, the most current news is that President Trump immediately replaced Rubenstein upon his appointment in February. This may be subject to change. Bibliography ACLU. “Artists Mount First Amendment Challenge to New Grant Requirements by the National Endowment for the Arts.” ACLU , March 6, 2025. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/artists-first-amendment-national-endowment-arts . ———. “Arts Organizations Push for Answers in National Endowment for the Arts Funding Suit.” ACLU , May 12, 2025. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/arts-orgs-push-for-answers-in-national-endowment-for-the-arts-funding-suit . ———. “Court Denies Preliminary Relief to Arts Organizations.” ACLU , April 3, 2025. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-denies-preliminary-relief-to-arts-organizations . ———. “Court Hears Arguments in First Amendment Challenge to Federal Arts Funding Restriction.” ACLU , March 27, 2025. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/court-hears-arguments-in-first-amendment-challenge-to-federal-arts-funding-restriction . ———. “In Response to ACLU Lawsuit, National Endowment for the Arts Removes Certification Requirement on Funding Applications.” ACLU , March 7, 2025. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/nea-funding-certification-removed . Anderson, and Stan McClain. CS/CS/HB 1069: Education, 1069 § Education Pre-K -12 Committee (ED) (2023). https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1069 . The Associated Press. “Shakespeare and Penguin Book Get Caught in Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Laws.” NPR , August 8, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192767641/shakespeare-florida-excerpts-dont-say-gay . Baracskay, Daniel. “Prior Restraint,” Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, July 2, 2024. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/prior-restraint/#:~:text=Prior%20restraint%20is%20a%20form,materials%20and%20prevent%20their%20publication . Considine, Allison, Jessica Lit, Jordan Stovall, and Nadine Smith. “The Courage to Produce: A Conversation on High School Censorship.” American Theatre , April 1, 2024. https://www.americantheatre.org/2024/04/01/the-courage-to-produce/ . Duffy, Susan, and Bernard K. Duffy. “Watchdogs of the American Theatre 1910‐1940.” Journal of American Culture 6: 1 (Spring 1983): 52–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1983.0601_52.x . Executive Order 14186 of January 20, 2025, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” 90 FR 8615 § (2025). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/30/2025-02090/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal . Filippo, Joe. “Censorship Problems in Commercial and Collegiate Theatre.” Journal of the Association for Communication Administration 23: 3 (September 1994): 192–94. Huston, Caitlin. “ACLU, Theater Companies File Lawsuit Against National Endowment for the Arts.” The Hollywood Reporter , March 6, 2025. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/aclu-theater-companies-lawsuit-against-national-endowment-for-the-arts-1236156608/ . National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley . 524 U.S. 569 (1998). PEN America. “Cancellation of Plays at New York Theater by Catholic Archdiocese Undermines Artistic Freedom.” PEN America , October 29, 2024. https://pen.org/press-release/cancellation-of-plays-at-new-york-theater-by-catholic-archdiocese-undermines-artistic-freedom/ . Zirin, James D. “Is Trump Now a Patron of the Arts?” Washington Monthly , March 13, 2025. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/03/13/is-trump-now-a-patron-of-the-arts/ . Footnotes About The Author(s) ROWAN JALSO (she/her) is a fourth-year PhD student at Louisiana State University. She received her bachelor's degree in Technical Theatre from West Virginia University and her master's degree in Theatre and Performance Research from Florida State University. She has worked as a stage manager and dramaturg at WVU and FSU. At LSU, she works as the head of house management and as a director (recent credits include No Exit and World Builders ). Her research focuses on the uses of mental illness as a horror trope in theatre (past and present). She also enjoys researching avant-garde theatre, disability studies, and has a History minor with a focus on the Interwar period and WWII Europe. 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.