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Olga Sanchez Saltveit Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 2 Visit Journal Homepage Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation Olga Sanchez Saltveit By Published on April 29, 2021 Download Article as PDF The Black Latinx community represents a significant portion of the Latinx [1] population, particularly in regions of the US where many Latinx reside. In New York, 23%, in California, 15%, and in Florida, 12% of the Latinx community identify as “Afro-Latinx.” [2] These regions also encompass the most established centers of Latinx theatre making in the country, so it is surprising that Afro-descendant Latinx experiences have not been well represented in Latinx dramaturgy except in the appreciative nods toward AfroLatinx cultural heritage found in music, dance, and spirituality. The legacy of hierarchical colonial racism which infiltrates and informs Latinx anti-Blackness has also been omitted from dramatic discourse. “Racial discrimination is a skeleton in the closet of the Latin@ community,” [3] writes Carlos Flores. The absence of the Black Latinx experience in Latinx dramaturgy is simultaneously an act of anti-Blackness and a denial that anti-Blackness in Latinidad exists. However, as Daphnie Sicre [4] notes, the early twenty-first century has ushered in an era in which “Afro-Latinx are no longer non-existent or invisible in theatre,” and the rise of work authored by AfroLatinx on numerous themes calls for “a reconfiguration of the canon: Afro-Latinx theatre is crucial for the survival of Black theatre and its intersectionalities between Latinx and African Americans.” [5] Here, I focus on the work of playwright Guadalís Del Carmen who shines a light on the anti-Blackness found within the Latinx community of the US and Latin America, that is, anti-Blackness targeted toward people who might also identify as Latinx, or, AfroLatinx. UnidosUS defines an “Afro-Latino” as “an individual of African descent from Latin America or an individual who has one parent of African descent and another of Latino descent.” According to Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, “the term Afro-Latin@ has surfaced a way to signal racial, cultural, and socioeconomic contradictions within the overly vague idea of ‘ Latin@. ’ In addition to reinforcing those ever-active transnational ties, the Afro-Latin@ concept calls attention to the anti-Black racism within the Latin@ communities themselves.” [6] The ideology of mestizaje attempted to homogenize the Latinx identity as one of racial mixture that blended myriad cultures and backgrounds, formed by syncretism, juxtaposition, fusion, and resistance. However, many racial and phenotypical identities exist within Latinidad that continue to be subjected to the legacy of European, primarily Spanish, colonization strategies including the formation of racialized hierarchies. Colorism and phenotypical discrimination pervade Latinx culture to this day, evident in the overwhelming presence of lighter-skinned Latinx in positions of power and influence, including popular media. “It is rare to see Latin@s of African descent on Spanish-speaking television or in movies. It is equally rare to see them advertising products in national Latin@ magazines.” [7][8] This privilege surfaces in the private sphere as well, within families and among friends, where one might hope for respite from racism. Thus, the term AfroLatinx, a non-binary update, intentionally complicates Latinx identity to embrace and celebrate African descent and illuminate the racism that persists in public and private. Latinx theatre since the mid-twentieth century has dedicated itself to challenging misrepresentations and harmful stereotypes of the mainstream by creating dramas that humanize Latinx and Latin Americans in the gaze of the mainstream White Unitedstatesian audience and the “American” theatre. In myriad plays revolving around issues of social justice, the marginalized Latinx can be seen struggling against the dominant White culture. [9] In the latter quarter of the twentieth century, Latinx feminist and queer voices disrupted this dynamic, arguing that their discrimination within the Latinx community also needed to be addressed on stage. [10] In the ‘90s and early aughts, the Latinx experience of anti-Black racism from the larger White mainstream was powerfully documented by Latinx playwrights such as Josefina Baéz, Carmen Rivera, and Candido Tirado. However, the experiences of discrimination faced by Black Latinx from within the Latinx community remains less visible on Latinx stages. I have previously argued that Black Latinx are more likely to be seen on stage in Latinx roles than to be written about in Latinx plays. [11] Yet that argument is complicated by the reality that Black Latinx actors such as Del Carmen and Crystal Román, who is also cited in the article, are too often overlooked for casting in projects that should include them. Latinx anti-Blackness is so embedded in the culture and so often inflicted presumably without intended malice (as for example, in families that encourage their children not to stay out in the sun too long so as not to darken their skin tone further) that injustice and harm appear to be accepted as inevitable interpersonal insensitivity, not worth public scrutiny. That invisibility is assuredly changing, as Sicre details in her 2018 chapter on “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today.” As Sicre notes, playwright Guadalís Del Carmen was highlighted in the 2018 Latinx Theatre Commons Carnaval of New Latinx Work, held at DePaul University in Chicago. She also performed in the 2015 Latina/o Theatre Commons Carnaval as an actor. However, as a Black Latina she more often found herself in the frustrating situation, too often echoed by others, of being “too Black to be cast as a Latina, and too Latina to be cast as Black.” A journalist by training, Del Carmen turned to playwriting to create roles for herself in the Chicago area where she grew up. Soon, she began writing roles for other Latinx actors who, like her, did not see themselves represented within Latinx theatre. Del Carmen’s work could not be more timely. In 2020, with the increased activism in support of #BlackLivesMatter , and the calling out/calling in from #WeSeeYouWAT , Latinx around the nation, including those of us in theatre, have been forced to acknowledge and address our community’s implicit anti-Blackness and how it shows up on our stages. Latinx theatre making has been so focused on Latinx oppression, that it has seemingly ignored its toxicity toward AfroLatinx. Del Carmen’s transformative works spotlight AfroLatinx experiences of Latinx racism, in ways that reflect its widespread and corrosive presence within the microcosm of family dynamics as well as in the larger political sphere. Below I focus briefly on two of her plays, My Father’s Keeper and Daughters of the Rebellion, and the strategies she employs to presence Blackness and anti-Blackness in Latinx storytelling. My Father’s Keeper centers on a Dominican immigrant family living in Chicago. Del Carmen employs a telling strategy even before the play begins, making it clear through the descriptions of the dramatis personae that most of the characters are Black. The presence of an intentionally identified AfroLatinx family as the focal point of a Latinx drama was unique in 2013, when the play was first written, and remains rare. Many plays that could have been cast with Black Latinx actors, particularly those that centered on people who hail from regions with significant Afrodescendant populations such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, are by default of anti-Blackness cast with mestizo or White Latinx. As Luckett and Shaffer note, “White supremacy often controls and dictates what representations are allowed visibility, and because of this phenomenon ‘Black’ actors are often pigeon-holed within a limited barometer of what is perceived to be Blackness.” [12] Del Carmen corrects this error by stipulating the casting of Black actors, demanding the visibility of the Black who is also Latinx and the Latinx who is also Black. It is an Anzaldúan move [13] that dissolves powerful yet fictional borders between identities that in reality overlap. Next, Del Carmen addresses Latinx colorism by calling for actors of different skin tones in specific roles. The titular father, Tirsio Gonzalez and son, Armando are both identified as “Dominican” and “Black Latino.” Juana Gonzalez, Tirsio’s wife and Mondo’s mother, is also identified as Dominican, and “Lighter in complexion than the rest of the family,” which would include Sofia, Mondo’s sister who is described as Dominican. From the outset, these character descriptions alone make it clear that skin tones are important details that will influence not only casting but potentially engage the embodied experience of the actor and influence audiences’ reception. Later on, Tirsio confirms this when he shares that in his home country, “if you don’t have rich name, or have the light skin, or a friend in the right place, you not go far in your career.” [14] Colorism is of course a familiar dynamic in US African American history, provoked by nineteenth century white supremacy, according to bell hooks who recounts that “racist white folks often treated lighter-skinned black folks better than their darker counterparts, and … this pattern was mirrored in black social relations.” [15] Del Carmen demonstrates the shared hierarchy at work in Latinx and Latin American culture. Mondo has married Anne, a White woman, and they have a son. Juana praises her young grandson, saying “Mi chichí will be a great man. Con those eyelaches, and his bello curly rubio head. Se parece a un angel.” [16] To which her daughter Sofía replies, “A blond baby… just what you always wanted.” [17] Del Carmen then investigates some of the shared and different experiences of anti-Black racism in the US by introducing the character of Daniel, who is identified as “African American” and who self-identifies in the script as Black. Daniel is Tirsio’s lover and confidante, and in their clandestine meetings they share their experiences as gay men who grew up in violently homophobic homes. Tirsio will never come out to his family as his experiences in the Dominican Republic have taught him that there is no place in his culture for homosexuality. Despite this, Tirsio and Daniel have a decades-long love affair. While Daniel seeks to align with Tirsio racially as well as sexually, Tirsio distances himself on the technicality that because he is Dominican, he is not Black. “The obviously Black baseball star of the Chicago Cubs, Sammy Sosa, for instance, becomes an indio (Indian) rather than a Black, since according to this national myth and tradition Dominicans ‘cannot be Black.’” [18] Haitians, argues Tirsio, are Black, while he and his son are, like Sosa, Indios. Tirsio’s internalized anti-Blackness is self-justified under the guise of nationalism. Del Carmen identifies this as a Latin American strategy. “In Latin America, nationalism takes over race. Because anti-miscegenation was not a part of Latin America, racism is seen as a US thing. I’m not Black. I’m not White. I’m Cuban, I’m Colombian, I’m Dominican.” [19] However, Daniel is not convinced, “The only difference between me, you and any Haitian,” he says, “is the boat stops of our ancestors.” [20] Del Carmen is also of Dominican heritage, born and raised in Chicago where she met few Dominicans besides her large family. “When I stepped out of my house to go to school, to go to work, there really wasn’t a lot of people around me that looked like me or sounded like me. I did grow up around a lot of macro-aggression. I’ve actually gotten into the habit of no longer saying micro because the micro affects us on a macro level.” [21] Yet, Del Carmen’s work is inspired not just by her own personal experiences but by what she sees happening globally. “One of the things I wanted to do was drop the pen on anti-Blackness in Latin America.” [22] For Del Carmen, Latinx plays about Latin American revolutions omitted important conversations about the ways in which anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and capitalism were integral parts of their dynamics. This awareness fueled her next play, Daughters of the Rebellion (previously titled, Tolstoy’s Daughters ), which is set in an “unspecified Latin American country.” With this gesture, Del Carmen expands her statement on anti-Blackness in the Latinx community beyond the horizon of the US to include Latin America and to implicate the globe. This is an intentionally political act that illuminates the historic legacy of racialized and gendered hierarchies in Latin America which has yielded pervasive inequity. “Afro-Latinos comprise some 150 million of [Latin America]’s 540 million total population, and, along with women and indigenous populations, are among the poorest, most marginalized groups in the region.” [23] Del Carmen indicts Eurocentric White male supremacist ideology for the continued marginalization of those who are not White males. The titular “daughters” are half-sisters Katya Libertad Córdova (Bates) and Fanya María Córdova, both in their early 20s, raised in the same rich and aristocratic home. However, Katya and Fanya’s experiences are worlds apart, and Del Carmen makes it clear that this is due to their appearance. As with My Father’s Keeper , Del Carmen describes the characters’ physical attributes in the Cast of Characters. Katya, the daughter of a revolutionary, is described as having “strong, dark features, Afro-Latina.” Her mother, Ester, her sister Fanya and her stepfather Daniel all have “light features,” as do Presidente Burgos and his son Ramón. Franco Montés is a revolutionary who “can be indigenous or black” and Angela, Franco’s accomplice, is “Afro-Latina.” [24] When the play begins, Fanya’s father, Katya’s stepfather, Daniel is a recently elected senator who becomes fast friends with the new President of the country. However, the President has initiated policies that are highly detrimental to the Black and Indigenous people of the country. His White supremacy becomes evident in his encounters with the Córdovas, when he makes it clear he neither trusts not expects much from Katya. In a telling early scene in which the newly elected President visits their home, he alludes to the girl, then nine years old, as a “mistake” and later, years into his Presidency, one “not to be trusted” among “Those people [who] can never be trusted.” [25] As with My Father’s Keeper, in which racism intersected homophobia, Del Carmen complicates the oppressions experienced in Daughters of the Rebellion. In addition to overt anti-Blackness, the Indigenous people of this fictional nation are also under attack, forbidden to wear their traditional clothing in the capital (a negation of their public cultural identity), and are being removed from their land and executed. The play is further intersected with feminist concerns as Katya and Fanya realize that as women living in a blatantly patriarchal society, they will never be taken seriously. Even from her privileged position Fanya knows that “People still don’t believe a woman is capable of anything more than having babies.” [26] This coalitional alliance among Afrodescendants, the Indigenous, and women points to Del Carmen’s shared critique of male-dominated White supremacist ideology. In response, Del Carmen’s fictional nation is in the midst of revolution, as Blacks, Indigenous, and feminists create underground movements and divergent plans which echo the strategies of civil rights movements of the twentieth century. The two half-sisters align themselves with different approaches. Fanya is working with the President’s son to bring charges against the President and his administration in an International Court. Katya’s approach is more militant, destroying government and financial buildings. Eventually Katya and Fanya’s two paths to liberation cross and contradict each other with fatal results. The play is violent, but certainly no more than real life. The true revolution in Daughters of Rebellion as in My Father’s Keeper is the de-centering of Latinx oppression in Del Carmen’s dramaturgy. Unlike much of Latinx theatre, in neither play are the characters’ Latinx or Latin American identities the basis of their experiences of oppression. The Gonzalez family is Dominican and living in the US but the issues at the heart of My Father’s Keeper are Tirsio’s hidden sexual orientation and the self-denial of his Blackness. In Daughters of the Rebellion, Del Carmen removes the potential for anti-Latinx discrimination by situating the play within a Latin American country. If everyone is Latin American, then there is no discrimination on that basis. Del Carmen ironically twists the strategy employed by mestizaje ideology which falsely neutralized race into one raza cósmica and negated the existence of diverse racialized experiences. In Del Carmen’s works, Latinidad is neutralized. Further, the absence of distinct identification implies that this could be any Latin American country where Whiteness rules. It could also be the US. Indeed, Daughters of the Rebellion emerged from a powerfully angry moment for Del Carmen as she witnessed yet more instances of anti-Black violence in the US. I was pissed when I wrote this play. I watched a video of a neighbor taking footage of Michael Brown being killed, and that same day on C-span, I watched a documentary where Shola Lynch, a documentarian, was talking about her film, Free Angela Davis and all Political Prisoners . Fanya’s name was actually inspired by it; Angela Davis’ sister’s name is Fanya. I was watching this documentary and I literally sat there thinking to myself, ‘so nothing has changed.’ The first scene that I wrote was where Katya is about to be electrocuted, and the rest came from there… It was a response to the feeling, so Black people are not wanted anywhere , and the reality of being a Black person who’s a child of immigrants, and the realization that this is global, Black people are not wanted anywhere.[27] Del Carmen was motivated by her identification with Black people, and then recognized the same struggles existed for her as a person of Latin American heritage. In the face of anti-Blackness, nationalism would not protect her, as it does not protect Tirsio nor Katya. Del Carmen writes to create change. She writes for a broad audience with “the hope that something resonates with them and the conversation can happen.” [28] And when her voice as a playwright was silenced by the theatre closures of spring 2020, she turned to more direct action. Del Carmen’s 2020 off-Broadway debut was delayed by the COVID outbreak, so she joined the activism for Black liberation as an advocate for transformation in the field of Latinx theatre-making. Working with the Latinx Playwrights Circle (a project she co-founded) and The Sol Project (the producers of her COVID-interrupted show, Bees and Honey), Del Carmen invited fifty influential Latinx theatre makers around the country to a workshop on “Anti-Blackness in the Latinx Community” led by Radio Caña Negra. Facilitators Dash Harris Machado, Evelyn Alvarez, and Janvieve Williams Comrie provided rich content that delved into the history of Africans and Afrodescendants in Latin America, the continued racism there, and the ways in which contemporary Latinx cultures in the US have inherited and reinforced this legacy of anti-Blackness, even while simultaneously articulating a marginalized position. Latinx have certainly been subjected to injustices, including misrepresentation and harmful stereotypes. But in the US as in Latin America, despite the presence of accomplished AfroLatinx in all areas of the arts and other fields, White supremacy has helped generate an image of Latinx identity that excludes Blackness. As Del Carmen says, “I experienced a lot of anti-Blackness from what’s supposed to be my community, really feeling like I never was a full part of the Latinx community because I didn’t look like what a Latina is supposed to look like. I don’t look Italian. That’s what Latinos are supposed to look like.” [29] Recalling the feeling of unwantedness that angered her to write, she notes how it has helped her to home in on “How I use my art as a form of resistance to that feeling and what I pour back into the world which is a love of Black people and a love of being Black.” [30] Del Carmen creates works that challenge the Latinx community to confront its anti-Blackness. In addition to writing dialogue that pulls no punches, her strategies include intentionally identifying her characters as Black, complicating casting by including skin tones in the descriptions, intersecting anti-Blackness with other forms of oppression including anti-indigeneity, homophobia, and sexism, and de-centering or removing Latinx oppression from the power dynamics in her settings. Del Carmen writes for AfroLatinx liberation, knowing this focus supports a larger cause: global Black liberation. Through dramaturgy and embodiment, Del Carmen roots out and reveals the racism embedded in Latinx culture and places it center stage so that it may be destroyed. References [1] “Latinx” is an inclusive, non-gender binary term that began to replace the earlier, more familiar term, “Latina/o” and its variations which privilege binary gender identification. Because the term Latinx came into use more recently, the terms Latina, Latino, Latina/o, Latin@, and their plurals, are used in this article when they are appropriate to their era and authorship. [2] UnidosUSblog, “Afro Latinos Archives,” UnidosUS Blog, 26 February 2019, https://blog.unidosus.org/tag/afro-latinos/ (accessed 27 April 2021). [3] Carlos Flores, “Desde El Mero Medio: Race Discrimination within the Latin@ Community,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States , edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 323. [4] See “Afro-Latinx themes in Theatre Today” by Daphnie Sicre, for an extensive survey of theatre by AfroLatinx playwrights and performers since 1999. [5] Daphnie Sicre, “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today,” The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, edited by Kathy A. Perkins, Sandra L. Richards, Alexander Renee Craft, and Thomas DeFrantz (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 272-277. [6] Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román, “Introduction,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States , edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 2. [7] See The Afro-Latino Reader: History and Culture in the United States , a brilliant anthology edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, for a vastly more profound discussion of the diversity of Afro-Latino history through scholarly essays as well as poetry, drama, and testimonio. [8] Carlos Flores, 323. [9] A few examples of this dramaturgical dynamic include Zoot Suit (1979) by Luis Valdez, Real Women Have Curves (1990) by Josefina Lopez, and Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints (1992). [10] Examples include Blade to the Heat (1994) by Oliver Mayer, Clean (1995) by Edwin Sanchez, and Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman: Mexican Medea (1997) . [11] Olga Sanchez Saltveit, “(Afro)Latinx Theatre: Embodiment and Articulation,” Label Me Latina/o , special issue: Afro-Latina/o Literature and Performance (2017): 1–20. [12] Sharrell D. Luckett and Tia M. Shaffer, “Introduction: The Affirmation,” Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 5. [13] “Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy” (Anzaldúa 20). “A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (Anzaldúa 25). For Gloria Anzaldúa, political boundaries such as the one between the US and Mexico were artificial and inadequate, failing to capture the complexity of the inhabitants who reside in adjacent lands. One was not simply on one side or the other but in a place that included both. [14] Guadalís Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper (2018), 18. [15] bell hooks, “Back to Black: Ending Internalized Racism,” Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation (London: Routledge, 2015), 174. [16] His beautiful curly blond head. He looks like an angel. [17] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 13. [18] Mark Sawyer, “Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latin@ Identities and Coalitions,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States , edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 532. [19] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [20] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 46. [21] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [22] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [23] “Afro-Latinos in Latin America and Considerations for U.S. Policy,” EveryCRSReport.com , Congressional Research Service, 22 January 2009. http://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32713.html (accessed on 27 April 2021). [24] Guadalís Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion (2019). [25] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion , 30. [26] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion , 74. [27] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [28] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [29] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. [30] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020. Footnotes About The Author(s) OLGA SANCHEZ SALTVEIT Assistant Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College, is Artistic Director Emerita of Milagro, the Pacific NW’s premier Latina/o/x arts & culture organization. A director/devisor, scholar, and arts activist, her directorial work has been seen in Portland, Seattle, NYC, DC, Martha’s Vineyard, Peru, Venezuela, and Honduras. Olga served as co-artistic director of the People’s Playhouse in New York City and co-founding artistic director of Seattle Teatro Latino. She is a founding member of the Portland-based Latinx writers’ group Los Porteños; served on the Executive Committee and the Diversity Task Force of TCG’s board of directors, and currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons. She is a contributing scholar to the anthology of Latinx plays, Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theatre, published by Northwestern University Press 2019. Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey BernerCo-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf ISNN 2376-4236 Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Michelle Cowin Gibbs 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 Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Michelle Cowin Gibbs By Published on April 28, 2021 Download Article as PDF Best remembered as a novelist, fiction writer, essayist, and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston’s extensive work as a playwright has been largely overlooked in evaluating her contributions to Black theatre. Many of her plays were imagined lost until 1997, when the Library of Congress recovered a previously unknown body of her work that Hurston submitted for copyright between 1925 and 1944 as unpublished plays. [1] Rutgers University Press published the first full volume of Hurston’s plays in 2008. [2] Scholarly explorations of her playwriting legacy remain at a comparatively early stage. Yet, in those small number of plays published before 1997, including Color Struck (1926) , The First Ones (1927) and Mule Bone (1931) (co-authored with Langston Hughes), performance scholars can see a style of playwriting that presents a stark contrast to Hurston’s more popular contemporaries. Hurston was an anthropologist, auto-ethnographer, and playwright, and as such, many of her plays featured characters that reappear across her collection. Her plays also included many of the same rituals and customs that she witnessed and participated in during her fieldwork in Black Southern folk communities. Along with exploring Black Southern folk vernacular in her dramas, Hurston also included songs, games, and other rituals such as popular word play performatives like signifying, woofing, and playing the dozens. Hurston’s exploration of Black Southern folk culture plays did not validate Eurocentricity as a necessary pre-condition for recognizing, understanding, and affirming Black experiences (an approach popular among her contemporaries, including Angelina Weld Grimké, Mary P. Burrill, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson). Hurston’s plays also often failed to fit within the parameters of the propagandistic style theatre aimed at racial uplift. Thus, for many scholars of Black theatre, Hurston’s early plays have eluded easy categorization. However, I argue that by using dramaturgical analysis to explore Hurston’s plays – particularly her focus on the community game popularized in many Black communities called “playing the dozens”—students of Black theatre can access a radically different set of Black folk characters for the stage aimed at reconfiguring prevailing models of blackness and Black womenness in the early twentieth century. This short essay offers some first steps towards developing a Black feminist dramaturgical lens to contextualize Hurston’s contributions to Black theatre. While my approach is still a work in progress, I hope that it will offer a catalyst for considering Hurston’s early plays in a different light, and for developing further discourses around Black feminist dramaturgy. Hurston developed a method of playwriting that drew upon her work as an anthropologist and auto-ethnographer to depict everyday Negro life in Black Southern rural communities. [3] In particular, she affirmed Southern Black folk women identity by depicting her women characters in ways that transcended familiar archetypes and stereotypes. [4] Hurston revealed Black women’s social networks in her plays, and even though few of her works were staged during her lifetime, the networks she depicted offer insight into larger processes of Black cultural formation. For example, in De Turkey and De Law (1930), a play based on a collection of short stories from Hurston’s field work as an anthropologist and auto-ethnographer ( The Bone of Contention and The Eatonville Anthology ), the audience sees Black women who negotiate the intersections of sexism and personal autonomy in their community on a daily basis. Exploring Hurston’s dramaturgy here suggests how her field research could have contributed to the ways audiences, particularly Black women, saw themselves onstage during a time when minstrelsy attempted to strip our humanity from us. Hurston included Black Southern folk rituals and customs that also contributed to how these practices nuanced conflict and character relationships in her plays. In De Turkey and De Law , Hurston presents the town of Eatonville that becomes divided when best friends, Dave (a Baptist) and Jim (a Methodist) fall in love with the same woman, Daisy. Tempers flare, and Jim assaults Dave with a mule bone. Jim is arrested and put on trial for assault, a trial presided over by the town’s major, Joe Clarke. The town’s Baptist and Methodist folks attend the trial. The Methodist women refuse to believe that Jim will get a fair trial since Mayor Clarke is a Baptist and the trial will take place in the Baptist church. The Baptist women want to make sure justice is served. The trial gets off to a rocky start when the Methodist women are bullied by the Baptists. The church men and women engage in what Hurston describes in Mules and Men as playing the dozens, [5] a comical exchange of personal insults and verbal attacks. [6] Like other rituals she observed during her field research in Eatonville, playing the dozens is a dramatic device that helps to authenticate and ground character interactions. These verbal battles reveal both the power structures of the community as well as the complex network of personal relationships, marital relationships, gendered power structures, and perhaps most importantly, the rituals that govern their interactions. The purpose of the game, according to cultural historian Lawrence W. Levine, is to “display linguistic virtuosity for an audience of peers.” [7] In Turkey , the dozens is a way for Hurston to explore character relationships and dynamics that also contribute to the conflict in the play. For example, the game is usually played by only men, but in Turkey , both women and men play the game, which contributes to the animosity and antagonisms. Whereas the Baptist men and women want the trial to continue from their position of power in the church, the Methodist women use the dozens to push for accountability and fairness by attempting to discredit and shut down anyone that would marginalize their voices. They always stop just short of physical violence. While characters playing the dozens may make verbal threats toward each other, the purpose of the dozens is not to cause physical harm to one’s opponent. The dozens provide a nonviolent method for social control and community advocacy. [8] Rather than settling grievances using physical force, players advocate for themselves and the communities using verbal duels. [9] For example, when Mayor Clarke threatens the women with physical harm by sending in the bailiff, Lum Bailey, Hurston uses the dozens to dismantle male authority. She sows the seed of doubt over Bailey’s ability to actually, as Clarke commands, “shut dem women up or put ‘em outta here.’” [10] Methodist women, Sister Taylor and Sister Lewis, use their familial relationship with Bailey to remind him that they are his mother-figures and elders and can easily “knock every nap of yo’ head one by one.” [11] Lum Bailey retreats and the women celebrate a victory until Mayor Clarke steps in. Mayor Clarke operates from a position of power in the community. In the heated exchange between the Methodists and Baptists, Mayor Clarke remains an outsider in the game because of his relationship to the community. He does not see himself as part of the community so much as he is in charge of the community. He will not respect the nuances of the game and sees the women as a distraction rather than advocating for their right to have a voice in the community. In the same scene, Mayor Clarke admonishes Sister Nixon for talking during the trial. She turns on him and says, You can’t shut me up, not the way you live. When you quit beatin’ Mrs. Mattie and dominizing her all de time, then you kin tell other folks what to do. You ain’t none of my boss. Don’t let you’ wooden God and corn-stalk Jesus fool you now. Not de way you sells rancid bacon for fresh.[12] Sister Nixon challenges Mayor Clarke by using his immoral actions toward his wife against him. Perhaps more importantly, she reveals the intimate sharing of knowledge across the community and the way in which that knowledge confers power. Clarke does not dispute Nixon’s claims, but his anger at having been called out ripples throughout the courtroom. Sister Nixon’s husband tries to smooth things over, by pleading with her,” Aw honey, hush a while, please, and less git started.” [13] Sister Nixon obliges her husband and sits down. The trial continues. Although, it may seem that Sister Nixon yields to her husband, I believe Hurston gives the women more agency than initially appears. Sister Nixon does not apologize for her comments, and the other women in the play also feel free to speak out when they perceive an injustice or believe they are being treated unfairly. Hurston uses the trial to present a community of dynamic, smart, witty, Black women, unafraid to challenge traditional gender norms. Hurston’s depictions of Black women playing the dozens allow audience members to see the characters as more fully human onstage. [14] She uses the dozens as a way to inform a more realistic and empowered depiction of Black women that I argue, also, demonstrates her incorporation of her field research into her creation of Black women characters. [15] In Turkey , Hurston centers Black women’s autonomy and helps Black women see a representation of themselves (or their ancestors) onstage. For today’s audiences, Turkey highlights how Hurston dramatized her everyday interactions with Black folks and gave space for characters to explore Black expression onstage. [16] In tracing connections between Hurston’s ethnographic fieldwork and her playwriting, I have proposed a way of analyzing her plays that includes considering how Black Southern folk rituals and customs, such as playing the dozens, contributes to how contemporary scholars understand conflict and character relationships among Black men and women in De Turkey and De Law . In many ways, this form of Black feminist dramaturgy represents a paradoxical subject for this type of analysis of Hurston’s theatre. Black feminist dramaturgy looks at play analysis and intentionality in performance . It centers the audience’s response to the work, and in Hurston’s case, it also highlights her process of exploring Black women’s autonomy by distilling her field research into a theatrical experience. And yet, the majority of Hurston’s plays have never been produced. Outside of a few productions of some of her more well-known works, [17] contemporary scholars have had few opportunities to experience Hurston’s theatre in rehearsal and performance spaces. For me, this is where Black feminist dramaturgy truly lives. The process of playing the dozens demands an audience to witness and affirm the ritual being enacted. These interchanges reveal deep layers of oral folk culture that offer interactive experiences for both performers and audience members–I hope that they will ultimately inspire a Hurston revival in the Black theatre. References [1] William Triplett, “Hurston Plays Discovered; Find at Library of Congress May Shed New Light on Black Writer,” The Washington Post , 24 April 1997, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/04/24/hurston-plays-discovered/70a6c41e-983b-4226-8597-8d0c2f620403/ [2] Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell, Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), xv. [3] Jennifer Staple. “Zora Neale Hurston’s Construction of Authenticity Through Ethnographic Innovation,” The Western Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 1 (2006): 62, Gale Academic OneFile , https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A182035988/AONE?u=uiuc_iwu&sid=AONE&xid=a100cad1 (accessed 12 March 2021). [4] Henry Louis Gates Jr. “ Why the ‘Mule Bone’ Debate Goes on.” New York Times , 10 Feb 1998, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/10/theater/theater-why-the-mule-bone-debate-goes-on.html [5] Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (1935) (New York: 1 st Harper Perennial Modern Classic, 2008), 13. [6] Christine Levecq. “’You Heard Her, You Ain’t Blind’: Subversive Shifts in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 13, no. 1 (1994): 87-111, accessed 26 March 2021. doi:10.2307/463858. [7] Lawrence W. Levine. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 347. [8] Harry G. Lefever. “’Playing the Dozens’: A Mechanism for Social Control.” Phylon 42, no. 1 (1981): 76, accessed 29 March 2021. doi:10.2307/274886. [9] Lefever, “’Playing the Dozens,’” 80. [10] Zora Neale Hurston, De Turkey and De Law , in Zora Neale Hurston: Collected Plays, ed. Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 169. [11] Hurston, De Turkey and De Law, 169. [12] Hurston, Turkey , 172. [13] Hurston, Turkey , 172. [14] Norman Marín Calderón. “Afrocentrism, Gaze and Visual Experience in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Káñina 42, no. 1 (2018): 261, http://dx.doi.org/10.15517/rk.v42i1.33568 (accessed 23 November 2020), DOI 10.15517/RK.V42I1.33568. [15] Staple, 66. [16] Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzales, “’From Negro Expression to “’Black Performance,’” in Black Performance Theory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 3. [17] In 1932, Hurston’s The Great Day premiered on Broadway and toured major theatres in New York City, Chicago, and Orlando. Additionally, Arena Stages in Washington D.C. produced a Polk County in 2002. Footnotes About The Author(s) MICHELLE COWIN GIBBS , Ph.D. , is an assistant professor of Theatre and Head of the BA Theatre Arts program at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her scholarly research includes Zora Neale Hurston’s theatrical works and a spectrum of interdisciplinary studies in Black dance performance, Black performativity, and critical identity studies in and around The New Negro movement in early 20th century Black modernist theatre. Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf ISNN 2376-4236 Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Isaiah Matthew Wooden 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 A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement Isaiah Matthew Wooden By Published on April 28, 2021 Download Article as PDF The 1978 documentary Black Theater: The Making of a Movement opens with a striking performance by the legendary artist-activist-duo Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee that reveals the stakes of the project and the revolutionary Black artistic movements it archives. [1] Viewers first encounter Dee’s radiant face and honey-toned voice. With her eyes fixed squarely on the camera, the esteemed actress launches into a poem whose opening line offers a powerful rebuke of the notion that Black art is in any way imitative or derivative. “Black poetry is not what Shakespeare begot,” Dee recites percussively. [2] Davis quickly responds to her initiating call, adding “Nor, is it one with Tennyson.” [3] For a minute or so thereafter, the pair trade lines that remind viewers that Black art “sets up its own condition” and, indeed, “defies tradition.” [4] The performance culminates with Davis and Dee inviting viewers to join them in celebrating all that is distinct and compelling about Black art. The scene offers an evocative overture to a film that, by casting a resplendent spotlight on some of the key figures and movements that collectively revolutionized Black art in the twentieth century, distinguishes itself as a major milestone in African American theatre and performance history. Produced and directed by Woodie King, Jr., the founder of the New Federal Theatre, Black Theater: The Making of a Movement has been screened countless times since its late-70s premiere, and the academic database and video publisher Alexander Street has made it available to stream through its website. [5] For those who study and teach African American dramatic literature and theatre history, the film remains an indispensable resource for the sheer number of Black theatrical luminaries it brings together to meditate on the vital importance of Black art in the ongoing struggle for Black liberation. As the promotional description that accompanies it asserts, the film “is a veritable video encyclopedia of the leading figures, institutions, and events of a movement that transformed the American stage.” [6] In addition to Davis and Dee, the documentary features, among other theatrical innovators, Amiri Baraka, Roscoe Lee Browne, Ed Bullins, Vinnette Carroll, Robert Hooks, James Earl Jones, Lloyd Richards, Ntozake Shange, Barbara Ann Teer, Glynn Turman, and Douglas Turner Ward commenting on the rich contributions of enterprises and initiatives such as the Black Theatre Alliance, the Group Theatre Workshop, the New Lafayette Theatre, the Negro Ensemble Company, and the Urban Arts School. The film offers viewers much more than an abundance of star power or a standard accounting of the organizations and institutions that helped shape the new theatre movements that the Civil Rights activism of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s engendered. It overflows with insights about the tremendous significance and influence of the arts—theatre, especially—in Black social, cultural, and political life. Revisiting the film in the wake of the growing calls to fundamentally upend and overhaul the systems and structures reinforcing racism, antiblackness, and white supremacy in the arts reveals just how deeply relevant and resonant many of the conversations it catalogs remain. Its subjects convey with profound clarity their visions for a Black theatre that is at once revolutionary, heterogenous, and deeply attuned to the experiences of Black people. In drawing attention to a few of its more potent threads and themes in what follows, I hope to situate the current demands for change within a longer history of struggle to rework the American theatre. I also aim to explore how heeding some of the vital lessons the documentary provides might further enrich and embolden efforts to imagine, plot, and build artistic practices, strategies, principles, and conditions that are both transformative and sustainable. The documentary launches with well-known figures including Dee, Davis, playwright Owen Dodson, and director Lloyd Richards paying homage to some of the artists who they credit with making their work in the theatre possible. They give particular praise to change agents like Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson for breaking barriers and expanding possibilities for the Black theatrical imagination. Two key points emerge from these backward glances. The first is the idea that Black theatre has always been deeply connected to and rooted in community. Davis explains how Black artists in New York City responded to the bigotry and discrimination of commercial and mainstream theatres by bringing together people from their own mostly segregated neighborhoods to mount performances. In doing so, they extended a tradition that dates back to the early national period, as theatre historian Marvin McAllister outlines in his study on the “entertainments” of impresario William Brown. [7] However, as Richards observes, the little headway that Black artists did begin to make on and off Broadway in the 1940s and ’50s was quickly undermined by the racist and repressive forces of McCarthyism. Richards, reflecting on the widespread efforts to terrorize Black artists during the period, offers the second key point I want to underscore. Black theatre, he insists, is fundamentally a theatre of protest. “The theatre has been for Black people a way of protesting the circumstances within which we attempt to exist in this country,” Richards remarks. [8] An abundance of evidence in the corpus of African American dramatic literature bears out this declaration. As Daphne Brooks points out in her evocative reading of William Wells Brown’s The Escape, or a Leap for Freedom , the first play published by a Black person in the United States, African Americans have long mobilized the power of theatre and performance to forge both discursive and embodied insurgency. [9] Throughout the remainder of the documentary, King grants some of the Black arts leaders who helped heighten the fervor for a radical Black consciousness, aesthetic, and politic that intensified during the catalytic Black Power era an opportunity to elaborate on their motivations for pursuing new theatrical paradigms. The deep commitment so many of these artists had to centering experimentation in their work resounds across these conversations. Vinnette Carroll, who was both the first Black woman to stage a show on Broadway and to garner a Tony Award nomination for her direction, notes that she founded the Urban Arts Corps in 1967, in part, to create a space for Black artists to train and develop new material that might not otherwise receive nurturing or support. “It’s also a place where some writers and musicians can come and try out things and not be afraid to fail,” Carroll explains. [10] Barbara Ann Teer, who, along with actor-activist Robert Hooks co-founded the Group Theatre Workshop in 1962 and, in 1968, established the National Black Theatre in Harlem, expresses a similar sentiment. Teer recalls how she and her early collaborators at the National Black Theatre spent nearly two years collectively devising artistic processes and practices that at once “fitted the sensibilities of Black people” and demonstrated “the richness and greatness and power inherent in the form and feeling of Black life/style.” [11] To that end, they experimented with drums, rhythms, chants, and energy, all in an effort to create a theatre that was unequivocally and unapologetically Black. [12] Not every Black artist of the era committed to renouncing any and all things associated with the theatrical traditions of Europe. For example, the Group Theatre Workshop, which mounted an off-Broadway staging of Douglas Turner Ward’s Happy Ending in 1965, paved the way for the founding of the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967. While the Negro Ensemble Company would quickly fortify its reputation as a launching ground for Black artistry and talent (including a production of Errol Hill’s Man Better Man in the 1968-69 season), it did not shy away from engaging with white interlocutors and collaborators. The first work the company produced was Song of the Lusitanian Bogey by German playwright Peter Weiss, in fact. “When the decision about Song of the Lusitanian Bogey was announced I knew I would get flack,” Turner Ward recalls. [13] “But no matter. The fact, in this instance, was that authorship had no significance. The play was ‘authored’ by the real historical situation itself. Peter was merely a conduit. More significantly, the material was going to be authored by an all-Black creative team, giving it life,” he goes on to say. [14] The production proved an auspicious springboard for the company, establishing it as a formidable presence on the New York arts scene and a model that others might adopt and follow. Certainly, as James Earl Jones recollects in the documentary, many Black artists maintained profound ambivalence about what their social and artistic responsibility should be to the various movements brewing around them. Jones recalls that during the successful off-Broadway run of Jean Genet’s The Blacks , a fierce debate erupted amongst his fellow company members about what actions they should take to advance the struggle for rights, freedom, and justice. “Half of us thought it was our responsibility, our social and artistic responsibility, to go up to picket… [The] other half preferred to, as Roscoe Lee Browne would say, stick to our vocational guidance, stick to our work.” [15] While Jones notes that he sided with Browne, he also confesses that he found great value in the dissension, as it not only served to build a greater sense of ensemble amongst the company, but it also empowered each performer to clarify for themselves what form they wanted their activism to take. As the film shifts focus to the future of Black theatre in its final section, a more subtle line of conversation begins to emerge about the perils and politics of arts funding. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the drastic economic changes that occurred throughout the 1970s, the interviewees voice a palpable unease about money and resources. It surfaces in the appeal that Carroll makes for wealthy Black people to consider financially supporting the arts: “I’d like to see more Black producers doing all sorts of things in the theatre, and that Black people would invest in us because we certainly have a group of Black people now with the money to invest in the theatre,” she asserts. [16] In the wake of Nixon’s election to the U.S. presidency, many of the grant-giving institutions that had been instrumental in launching ventures like the Urban Arts Corps, the Negro Ensemble Company, and the New Lafayette Theatre (the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, among them) decided that it was too risky to continue to support Black cultural institutions and withdrew their financial backing. This left many of these organizations without the resources they needed to stay afloat. Bullins, who after a brief stint as the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party became the playwright-in-residence at the New Lafayette Theatre, explains: When Nixon came in the late 60s…he so frightened the philanthropic community that they cut back on just about all Black arts activities…So, all that money just about disappeared. And, we were working with a company of fifteen actors and all the support personnel with quite a yearly budget. And so, we couldn’t operate on the level that we had been operating on.[17] The documentary’s various discussions about funding underline just how potentially detrimental an overreliance on the goodwill and philanthropy of foundations and corporations can be to building a truly sustainable theatre. This is an important caution to take note of, especially amid calls to celebrate the commitments that institutions like the Ford and Mellon Foundations have made in recent months to granting millions of dollars to Black arts and cultural organizations. [18] These foundations have proven time and again that they are undependable. And, although they might provide some relief in the short term, the inconsistency of their funding often produces deleterious effects for Black art that are much longer-lasting. While the film’s chronological structure might suggest a progressive, teleological narrative, Black Theater: The Making of a Movement closes by exploring many of the questions and ideas that remain unaddressed or unresolved for Black theatremakers. The conclusion of the film sends an urgent call to Black artists to continue to find ways to bring the artform to Black communities and to harness its power to embolden radical change. Each of the figures featured in the documentary played a significant role in expanding possibilities for what the American theatre could be. Revisiting the film reaffirms just how solid the foundations they laid remain. It also provides an occasion for contemporary scholars and students of Black theatre to contemplate further how to capitalize on some of the “new stirrings” that have emerged in efforts to reimagine and remake the theatre—and the world—anew. [19] References [1] Black Theater: The Making of a Movement , directed by Woodie King, Jr. (1978; San Francisco: California Newsreel), https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/black-theater-the-making-of-a-movement?source=suggestion . All subsequent references are to this version of the film. [2] Black Theater . [3] Black Theater . [4] Black Theater . [5] The New Federal Theatre notably celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2020. [6] See Black Theater . [7] See Marvin McAllister, White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown’s African and American Theater (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). [8] Black Theater . [9] See Daphne A. Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). [10] Black Theater . [11] Black Theater . [12] La Donna L. Forsgren’s In Search of Our Warrior Mothers provides a wealth of evidence of some of the other ways this commitment to experimentation manifested for Teer and her Black Arts Movement contemporaries. See La Donna L. Forsgren, In Search of Our Warrior Mothers (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018). [13] Douglas Turner Ward, “Foreword,” in Classic Plays from the Negro Ensemble Company , ed. Paul Carter Harrison and Gus Edwards (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 1995), xiii. [14] Ward, “Foreword.” [15] Black Theater . [16] Black Theater . [17] Black Theater . [18] See, for example, the announcements about the Ford Foundation’s “American Cultural Treasures” initiative and the Mellon Foundation’s sponsorship of “The Black Seed.” [19] See W. E. B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” in Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present , ed. Angelyn Mitchell (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994). Footnotes About The Author(s) ISAIAH MATTHEW WOODEN is a director-dramaturg, critic, and assistant professor of Theater Arts at Brandeis University. A scholar of African American art, drama, and performance, he has contributed articles and essays to The Black Scholar , Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , Modern Drama , PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Theatre Journal , and Theatre Topics, among other scholarly and popular publications. Wooden is the co-editor of Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration (Northwestern UP 2020) and is currently at work on a monograph that explores the interplay of race and time in post-civil rights Black expressive culture. Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf ISNN 2376-4236 Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages, created in 2013 by merging Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance, serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. It explores the evolution of both Western and Eastern European theatrical scenes, offering insightful analyses, artist interviews, and comprehensive coverage of major festivals. Back to Top Untitled Keep Reading < Back European Stages Volume 18, Fall, 2024 Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Dan Venning Report from London (December 2022) Philippa Wehle Confessions, storytelling and worlds in which the impossible becomes possible. The 77th Avignon Festival, July 5-25, 2023 Ivan Medenica “Regietheater:” two cases Anton Pujol The Grec Festival 2023 Kalina Stefanova The Festival of the Youth Theatre of Piatra Neamt, Romania: A Festival for “Youth without Age” (notes on the occasion of the 34th edition) Marvin Carlson Report from Germany Ion M. Tomuș Poetry on Stage: Games, Words, Crickets..., Directed by Silviu Purcărete European Stages European Stages, created in 2013 by merging Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance, serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. It explores the evolution of both Western and Eastern European theatrical scenes, offering insightful analyses, artist interviews, and comprehensive coverage of major festivals. ISSN Number: 1050-199 Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Visit Journal Homepage

Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Back to Top Untitled Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages Volume 14 Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh Sonali Pahwa Book Review: MANSOUR, MONA. THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Zeina Salame Book Review: ACTING EGYPTIAN Marjan Moosavi Performance Review: LITTLE SYRIA Sami Ismat Performance Review: HOOTA. By Amer Hlehel Samer Al-Saber Performance Review: A FAMILY THAT HAS BEEN BLOCKED Areeg Ibrahim Performance Review: BETHLEHEM SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER FESTIVAL Marina Johnson Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly Tiran Manucharyan Crossing Borders: A Theatre Practitioner’s Odyssey, An Interview with Hassan El Geretly Iman Ezzeldin Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works Katherine Hennessey Up There by Wael Kadour, Introduction Edward Ziter Review: Layalina written by Martin Yousif Zebari, directed by Sivan Battat Sami Ismat Review of Syrian Refugees, Applied Theater, Workshop Facilitation, and Stories: While They Were Waiting written by Fadi Skeiker Sonja Arsham Kuftinec Review of MUKHRIJĀT AL-MASRAḤ AL-MIṢRĪ (1990-2010): DIRĀSA SĪMIYŪṬĪQĪYAH [Female Egyptian Directors (1990-2010): A Semiotic Study], written by Hadia Abd El-Fattah Areeg Ibrahim Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani Suzi Elnaggar “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran Matthew Randle-Bent Review: Decolonizing Sarah: A Hurricane Play written and directed by Samer Al-Saber George Potter Review of Theaters of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt written by Sonali Pahwa Suzi Elnaggar Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price Hassan Hajiyah Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage

Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Back to Top Untitled Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages Volume 15 Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Five Arab American Plays Everyone Should Read Roaa Ali Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad by Babak Rahimi Babak Rahimi MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) Suzi Elnaggar Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey Malek Najjar Carving a Path: Desiring-Production in Displaced Syrian Theatre Bart Pitchford Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage

Stephanie Lim Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Stephanie Lim By Published on December 10, 2020 Download Article as PDF For a woman to bear a child, she must . . . in her own personal way, she must . . . love her husband. Love him, as she can love only him. Only him . . . she must love—with her whole . . . heart. There. Now, you know everything.[1] Frau Bergman, Spring Awakening In the opening scene of Spring Awakening , Wendla begs her mother to explain where babies come from, to which her mother bemoans, “Wendla, child, you cannot imagine—.” In Deaf West Theatre’s version of the show, Frau Bergman speaks this line while bringing her pinky finger up to her head, palm outward, but Wendla quickly corrects the gesture, indicating that her mother has actually inverted the American Sign Language (ASL) for “imagine,” a word signed with palm facing inward. [2] As part of a larger dialogue that closes with the epigraph above, Bergman’s struggle to communicate about sexual intercourse in both ASL and English is one of many exchanges in which adults find themselves unable to communicate effectively with teenagers. The theme of (mis)communication is also evoked through characters’ refusal to communicate with each other at all, as in the musical number “Totally Fucked.” When Melchior’s teachers demand he confess to having authored the obscene 10-page document, “The Art of Sleeping With” (which they claim hastened the suicide of his best friend Moritz), they reject his attempts to explain. Whereas the dialogue between Bergman and her daughter demonstrates failed communication due partly to lack of linguistic proficiency, Melchior finds himself “totally fucked,” because the adults refuse to listen to him entirely. Moments such as these abound in Deaf West’s production of Spring Awakening and profoundly inform the musical’s dramatic arc, continually demonstrating the boundaries between Deaf and hearing worlds. These breakdowns of communication—either the inability to communicate with others or the refusal to—make the dramatic consequences of a show about miscommunication all the more compellingly tragic. The production’s choices move beyond an access-oriented approach for d/Deaf audiences, [3] as the integration of ASL adds a dramaturgical emphasis to the musical’s themes. In re-imagining the world of Spring Awakening in a d/Deaf context, the “real world” spaces off-stage that often privilege oralist and audist practices are radically inverted onstage, rendering verbal communication unreliable and, instead, prioritizing the literal gestures and physicality of sign language. Exploring the relationship between Deaf West’s Spring Awakening and traditional stagings of the show, this paper looks specifically at how the production’s intricate gestures and staging make visible the boundary between Deaf and hearing communities. The production provides not only the literal stage upon which the Deaf and hearing worlds convene, but also a space where Deaf culture and silence are often emphasized, reconsidering traditional renderings of the Deaf/hearing divide within the space and modalities of musical theatre. Troubling “All That’s Known”: Interrogating the Hearing Line English and ASL scholar Christopher Krentz offers a productive way to understand the space between Deaf and hearing worlds through what he calls the “hearing line,” or the “invisible boundary separating deaf and hearing people.” [4] Drawing from W.E.B. DuBois’ “color line,” Krentz’s hearing line calls attention to—and calls into question—the complex, ever-shifting, and uneven binary between deafness and “hearingness,” whereby identities are formed and shaped. If, at the hearing line, one’s ability to hear informs one’s identity (and corresponding privilege), the world generated in Deaf West’s Spring Awakening is an analogous manifestation of this line, made visible across private and public spaces. Additionally, in the same way that reading and writing offer for Krentz a mutual space for Deaf and hearing worlds to convene—“a place where differences may recede and binaries may be transcended” [5] —so too does the stage attempt to enlighten and alter the complicated relationship between Deaf and hearing identities. In Deaf West’s Spring Awakening , the hearing line is continually emphasized and intensified to both convey and bolster the frequent failures of communication between the adults and teenagers, a point made relentlessly in traditional productions of the musical and in the original 1891 play by Frank Wedekind. The hearing line is also troubled, disrupted, and circumvented at times, often through musical numbers, to accentuate Deaf culture, identity, and silence. In the process, the show exposes, challenges, and reconsiders the hierarchical positions of the Deaf/hearing worlds found at the hearing line, both in the show and in the real-world—ultimately attempting to bridge the gap between the two worlds. Although ASL/English productions such as this have attempted to increase access for d/Deaf audiences, Deaf West’s musical productions (which to date include Oliver! , Sleeping Beauty Wakes , Big River , Pippin , Spring Awakening , and an adaptation of Medusa ) are nonetheless criticized for not being fully accessible. d/Deaf audience members have continually noted the difficulty in understanding ASL used on-stage because of SimCom [6] (which weakens and obscures linguistic meaning, made via the hands and face, known as non-manual markers), the ineffective lighting design in some scenes (at times either too dark or too bright), and the inconsistent use of captions and clear sightlines (or clear access to d/Deaf actors’ communicative gestures and expressions). [7] Jehanne C. McCullough denounces Spring Awakening in particular for being for hearing people rather than for Deaf people because the overall design and casting of the show continually works in favor of hearing audiences. [8] As a hearing audience member, I acknowledge my own limited perspective and hearing privilege in my viewings and readings of the show. Because of the space always-already created by musical theatre (i.e. sound-centric), and given Deaf West’s uses of SimCom and captions, I was afforded more opportunities to understand what was going on. Nonetheless, by highlighting the casting, staging, and choreographic choices of Deaf West’s revival, I hope to point out how frequently the production emphasizes Deaf perspectives over hearing ones, generating an overall shift towards Deaf modalities of experiencing musical theatre. More explicitly than in their previous musicals, this production challenges the hearing line by including various moments that attempt to prioritize and even simulate Deaf experience. Several scenes in the show not only emphasize the hearing line but also purposely call into question the hierarchy that holds audism and oralism superior to deafness. During the first classroom scene, for instance, Herr Sonnenstich calls on various students to recite from Virgil’s Aeneid , enforcing what is known as oralism, the nineteenth-century practice of teaching d/Deaf students through lip reading and vocalizing, which rejects the use of ASL altogether. When Ernst uses ASL to facilitate his own vocalization of the poem, Sonnenstich berates him and angrily strikes a pointing stick against the desk. Later, when Moritz vocally recites a word incorrectly (“multim olim” instead of “multim ille”), Sonnenstich chastises him, mocking the way Moritz sounds when vocalizing and even making up random hand gestures to accompany his voice. In traditional productions, Moritz’s failure is often performed and read as a result of his laziness, his lack of scholarly aptitude, and the fact that he is caught sleeping (an action noted in the libretto); however, Moritz’s vocalized error here, wholly unaccompanied by ASL, adds a layer of complexity to the situation: his mistake might also be a mispronunciation if he does not vocalize regularly. As a result of Sonnenstich’s offensive conduct, Melchior stands up for Moritz and tries to minimize the humiliation by attempting to rationalize the mistake. Suggesting that “multim olim” be recognized as a new critical commentary on Aeneas , Melchior uses SimCom so that his classmates can all understand him. This being Melchior’s first scene also critically positions him as an ally and advocate of Deaf culture, Deaf identity, and language—an important position he maintains throughout the show. By setting the production clearly in the historical context of the late 1800s, Deaf West’s version presents oralism as the framework through which to understand the show. Many of the adults’ actions also uphold audist and oralist ideologies, a dramaturgical choice that affixes specific nuance to the constant miscommunication that pervades the show thematically. At the same time, the dramatized suppression of a rich and vibrant language like ASL and Melchior’s presence as a hearing character who undertakes the plight of his Deaf classmates bring to light the ethics of such an oppressive system. The overall story arc between Wendla and Frau Bergman also presents the devastating consequences that miscommunication, or rather the desire not to communicate at all, can have. Demonstrating the hearing line within the privacy of the home, Wendla asks her mother to explain where babies come from, as discussed in this paper’s opening example. Frau Bergman, rather than explaining the truth—birth as a natural, physiological phenomenon that may result from intercourse—evades the question and explains the process of conception as vaguely as possible, in part because she does not know how to expound on the topic through ASL. The full damage of Bergman’s failure to explain how babies are conceived is revealed in Act Two, when the Bergmans find out Wendla is pregnant. Wendla’s response is to cry out, “My God, why didn’t you tell me everything?” [9] —the only line in the show vocalized by Deaf actor Sandra Mae Frank, rather than voiced by the Voice of Wendla, Katie Boeck. Interestingly, the emphasis on communicative failure also falsely suggests the opposite of what happens: if only Wendla could “hear,” her mother could have fully communicated the truth in English. This mother-daughter relationship, as well as the relationship between hearing and deafness, is further exaggerated and complicated when two doctors become involved in Wendla’s pregnancy. The first, Doctor von Brausepulver, communicates with Wendla using SimCom during their run at The Wallis and using English only on Broadway; when Frau Bergman asks about Wendla’s nausea, Brausepulver ends by speaking but not signing, “Not uncommon. Trust me, child. You’ll be fine ” (emphasis added), performing the emphasized phrases in an over-enunciated and exaggerated manner at Wendla, indicated both vocally and physically. [10] Immediately after, Brausepulver speaks with Frau Bergman off to the side, a whispered conversation that is never spoken aloud to the audience. This secret, “silent” conversation is contrasted soon after by the second physician, Schmidt, who is recommended by Bergman’s “doctor friend” to perform Wendla’s abortion, unbeknownst to Wendla. In this second scene, Schmidt (played by a deaf performer) signs to Bergman in ASL only, “Now, listen to my instructions carefully,” and explains where to bring Wendla. These scenes function together ironically: Brausepulver whispers to Bergman to avoid Wendla’s overhearing him, even though she is deaf, while Schmidt communicates with Bergman in ASL, a language Bergman herself struggles with. The tragedy of Wendla’s eventual death is partly caused and greatly augmented by the adults’ inability and unwillingness to communicate with her and with each other. While the scenes above perpetuate the normative hierarchy of the hearing line (wherein the hearing world is often dominant), other scenes intensify the divide and prioritize silence and ASL. Specifically, Moritz’s confession to his father about failing his final exams is one of the production’s two brief scenes that are communicated entirely through ASL, though subtitled in English. Herr Stiefel continually probes Moritz for an explanation of how they can show their faces publicly: “What are your mother and I supposed to do?” “What do I tell them at the bank?” “How do we go to Church?” Stiefel’s interrogation insinuates that the family will be negatively perceived by the community because of Moritz’s failure, and the shame of Moritz’s failure can also be read as a further marginalization of the family as d/Deaf. In any staging of the scene, silence always permeates the interaction between Moritz and his father; that is, all questions go unanswered, as Moritz is unable to respond at all out of fear and/or shame. But in Deaf West’s staging, the placing of two d/Deaf actors onstage alone further heightens the power of “silence,” not as a passive space or absence of sound, but as a space that includes energy, emotion, and movement, particularly that of ASL. For hearing audiences, the minute-and-a-half scene is ostensibly done in complete silence, except for Herr Stiefel’s brief vocalized yells. While hearing audiences might experience the aural “silence” of this scene, it is the magnitude and force of Stiefel’s rage when he interrogates Moritz that is emphasized, redefining the notion of silence itself. Anyone with experience being reprimanded by a parent can immediately sense Herr Stiefel’s nonstop “shouting,” conveyed through his agitated signing and aggressive movements, like grabbing Moritz by the collar, as well as the word “failed” continuously projected/subtitled on the back wall. Silence here shows what “the deaf family experience [is] like, and how signing can be loving, but can also be angry and scream-like, thus proving to the audience how diverse of a language ASL is.” [11] Moreover, although this scene is punctuated by captions projected onto the back wall—still privileging hearing audiences in providing them a means by which to understand the scene—the prioritizing of and focus on ASL rather than on vocalized speech compels hearing audiences to reconsider the ways in which meaning is communicated, changing how audiences hear and listen , particularly in the space of musical theatre. As a further punctuation of the hearing line, the production’s casting of Deaf/“Voice of” pairs (utilized for the characters of Wendla, Moritz, Martha, Otto, Thea, and Ernst) purposely positions the younger characters in the Deaf world, thereby creating a clear alliance among the students rather than among any of the adults, none of whom were cast in Deaf/Voice of pairs, as noted in the Playbill. In addition, Melchior is positioned as the hearing line in human form, performed by a hearing actor who is fluent in ASL. That Melchior uses SimCom is problematic from a linguistic and logistical point of view, since he is the main character and has a great deal of dialogue. Dramaturgically, however, Melchior is the hearing line made manifest—a human bridge between d/Deaf and hearing worlds, such that SimCom becomes a metaphor for Melchior’s existence in and ability to move in-between both worlds. Notably, of the parents portrayed in the production, Melchior’s are the only Deaf/hearing couple—his mother being Deaf and his father being hearing, using SimCom. Melchior’s actions can thus be read as an attempt to mediate the relationships across both worlds, particularly between teachers and students, and adults and teenagers. On the one hand, because the show employs SimCom with specific characters (rather than double-casting all of the characters) in order to demonstrate the failures in communication, an ironic result is to impair another essential line of communication, diluting the messages from stage to audience. On the other hand, the use of SimCom for adult characters like Brausepulver and Frau Bergman heightens the collapse of communication and highlights the Deaf/hearing dichotomy. By using Deaf/Voice Of pairs, delineations between Deaf/hearing in the adults, and SimCom in the case of Melchior, the characters influence and embody the ever-shifting state of the hearing line in the world of the play. Musically, the production also presents, pushes against, and interrogates the hearing line through the use non-spoken and gestural languages. These languages accentuate the teenagers’ emotional, psychological, and physical states. For example, “And Then There Were None” is both an intensification of the Deaf/hearing dichotomy and an attempt to circumvent the hierarchy produced by and at the hearing line. In the epistolary song, Moritz and Frau Gabor, Melchior’s mother, write a series of letters to each other, detailed within the song’s lyrics. Although Gabor is certainly the most sympathetic and idealistic of the adults, the song itself portrays her unwillingness to believe Moritz’s “veiled threat that, should escape not be possible, [he] would take [his] own life,” creating a more nuanced iteration of her own failure in communication: she “hears” him but refuses to actually listen to what he says. Since the actors playing Moritz and Frau Gabor are d/Deaf, the number compels audiences to focus on the signing rather than on the singing. Hanschen and Georg are the only hearing characters that briefly perform lyrics through SimCom; however, the staging of the song concentrates on Gabor and Moritz, who are later joined by Otto and Ernst—all characters who are played by d/Deaf actors. Therefore, rather than marginalizing the physicality of ASL, it is put front and center, while the Voices Of are off to the sides. This is also a visceral reversal of the limited use of ASL in theatrical settings: typically, d/Deaf access to a show is performed solely by platform interpreters, who are placed off to the sides of the stage. By putting deafness and Deaf identity at the forefront, Deaf West inverts the hearing line dramaturgically through its characters and linguistically for its audiences. A second song that places emphasis on physicality, gesture, and ASL is “Totally Fucked,” which highlights the younger characters’ resistance to their adult counterparts. In traditional stagings of the show, “Totally Fucked” is the ultimate anthem of teenage angst and rebellion, underscored by the music itself. Deaf West stages this number as a rock concert, putting even more emphasis than the original Broadway production on the physical, aggressive, and sometimes sexually and linguistically explicit movements of the choreography. What becomes most important in this song—and indeed, throughout the show’s many musical numbers—is not so much the lyrics but, rather, the gestural and non-verbal languages that accompany the lyrics and music, including choreography, lighting design, and the principal focus on ASL, as in “And Then There Were None.” Sarah Wilbur suggests that Deaf West’s version of the show triumphs because of these layered gestural economies, that is, “the demands that the company’s multifaceted use of gesture places on audiences, performers, and producers.” [12] As a “visual-gestural language,” [13] ASL becomes the most powerful tool on Deaf West’s stage. “Totally Fucked” is, in all productions, a mutinous response to the “yes” or “no” that adults demand of Melchior and his peers. But in Deaf West’s version, the song also becomes an outright reversal of the hearing line in which hearing and oralism are traditionally favored. Deaf West’s “Totally Fucked” takes physicality and gestures to new heights and meanings, imbuing a song known for its loud and extreme chaos with ASL, a language just as intense, powerful, and “loud” (or, in this case, boisterous) in its own unique way. In this way, both multiplying and subverting the traditional modalities of musical theatre beyond merely vocalized speech and music, Spring Awakening highlights a Deaf perspective, a rewriting of the hearing line, through its transformative inclusion of Deaf culture, identity, and language. “I’m Gonna Be Your Bruise”: Sharing Signs On and Across Bodies Additional restructurings of the hearing line occur within Deaf West’s practice of “sharing signs,” [14] when two (or more) actors sign words/phrases together. The use of shared signs reveals how important meaning-making can occur via ASL on and across the literal bodies of performers and characters, which English alone cannot achieve. This practice arises frequently throughout Spring Awakening to emphasize the intimate and physical (often sensual and sexualized) connections between characters. In a show explicitly about sex, shared signs also add complexity to the relationships between characters and bolster the already-sexualized content of the libretto and music. Shared signs first appear in the production during “My Junk,” when Hanschen channels Desdemona and masturbates to Correggio’s Jupiter and Io . With Herr Rilow (Hanschen’s father) constantly rapping on the bathroom door, Hanschen’s urgency to “finish” is augmented by two, three, and eventually five girls who help him sign and masturbate simultaneously: Wendla holds up the picture, while Thea’s right arm signs with Hanschen’s left; when Fraulein Grossebustenhalter asks Georg to “bring out the left hand,” Hanschen switches arms, this time signing with Martha’s left arm while masturbating with his own left; finally, when Rilow demands that Hanschen go back to bed, Martha and Thea sign together, while Anna takes on the task of stroking Hanschen, and Heidi rubs Hanschen’s arms, put above his head to signal his letting go of all control. The abundance and entanglement of hands becomes visually striking, and sharing signs is conceived as an overt sexual act, used to create and complete Hanschen’s stimulation, arousal, and climax—a sexual awakening that is already written into the character. Moreover, this early sequence of shared signs, with its explicit sexual content, adds a related charge to subsequent uses of this device, which acquire similar connotations of intimacy, physicality, and sexuality. The use of shared signs in the songs following “My Junk” reinforce the teenagers’ desires to feel , close to each other and/or anything at all, since the adults in their lives refuse to do so. “The Word of Your Body,” performed by Melchior and Wendla and later reprised by Hanschen and Ernst, first occurs when Melchior and Wendla touch hands for the first time and a brief pause transpires between them. Focusing on the chorus (“O, I’m gonna be wounded. / O, I’m gonna be your wound. / O, I’m gonna bruise you. / O, you’re gonna be my bruise” [15] ), the signs and shared signs for “wound” and “bruise” speak directly to the song’s meaning, especially because the performers sign on the other person’s body. Their signs for “wounded” are made individually, but the repeated sign for “wound”—made with index fingers pointing in and slightly twisting in opposite directions—becomes an entangled idea, as they literally crisscross over and under each other’s arms while signing. Additionally, using an ASL variation to indicate “bruise,” performers sign the color “black”—made by swiping a finger across one’s forehead—on the other person’s body: in the first line, they each point to Melchior for “I’m gonna” and then sign “black” on each other’s foreheads, but in the second line, they point to Wendla for “I’m gonna” and then sign “black” across each other’s chests. As in ASL, the position of the signs adds further meaning to the song: the forehead could signify a mental “bruise,” while the chest signifies the heart or the soul/spirit, suggesting the ways in which Melchior and Wendla’s impending relationship will affect the characters. Since ASL is not normally signed on another person’s body (but, instead, on the affected spot of one’s own body), the repeated act of signing on and across another’s body makes the black and blue metaphor all the more violent and serves as a foreshadowing for the ambiguous brutality and possible rape between Wendla and Melchior that occurs later in the show. Deaf West’s staging of “Touch Me” also utilizes shared signs to visually represent the characters’ sharing of knowledge and of themselves with each other, diminishing the original staging’s emphasis on individual experience and suppressed, inner turmoil, while also accentuating relationships that are both erotic and indeterminate in nature. Melchior and Moritz’s shared signs during “Touch Me” produce ambiguous, bisexual dimensions in both characters and also positions Melchior as “top” regarding both Moritz and Wendla. The very act of sharing signs parallels Melchior’s desire to share his (sexual) knowledge with Moritz, and Moritz’s mutual desire to learn about sex from Melchior, prompted by Melchior’s self-assured insight about how it must feel for a woman to give herself to another, “defending yourself until, finally, you surrender and feel Heaven break over you.” In Raymond Knapp’s reading of Huck and Jim’s relationship in Deaf West’s Big River , Knapp notes that the sharing of signs reinforces their already-intimate friendship and “comes across as a rueful acknowledgment of their impossible love.” [16] Just as Big River ’s Huck and Jim establish a hierarchical rapport through their sharing of signs (especially in “Muddy Water”), Melchior’s position of intellectual authority over Moritz is reinforced through their interconnecting signs as well. Melchior and Moritz’s homosocial relationship—like Huck and Jim’s—is expressed gesturally, evoking homosexuality through physical, shared signs. The shared signs of “Touch Me” also move beyond Melchior and Moritz. In the original Broadway staging of the song, Melchior briefly grabs and controls Moritz’s arms during the song’s chorus (“Touch me—just like that. / And that—O, yeah—now, that’s heaven” [17] ), gesturing toward sight or enlightenment (guiding Moritz’s hands toward Moritz’s eyes) and the discovery of sexuality. The rest of the song is performed by the whole ensemble individually, choreographed within the limited spaces around and on their own bodies. In Deaf West’s version of the number, however, Georg’s solo and final chorus of the song results in a burst of choreography and shared signs amongst the younger characters. Melchior and Moritz sign together and constantly link hands and arms, and several other cast members also pair up to sign together for the chorus (Wendla and Ernst, Thea and Heidi, and Martha and Anna). This choreography underscores the sexuality of the song’s lyrics and altogether multiplies the sexual connotations of shared signs. That the performers appear here in same-sex and mixed-sex pairs adds further homosocial and bi/homosexual undercurrents to a song literally about sex and sexuality. Although the multiplicity of shared signs here could perhaps suggest something like a sexual orgy, the pairing up of the girls and of characters like Wendla and Ernst also highlights the consequences of repressing the truth about sex and of isolating girls and boys: children will educate each other about sex if their parents refuse to. By accentuating the act of sharing through the physical act of sharing signs, and by drawing sharp attention to how sign language can function in tandem with and across multiple bodies, Deaf West shifts the hearing line towards a d/Deaf production of knowledge and community- and relationship-building. “And Now Our Bodies Are The Guilty Ones”: Deaf Experience & Expression Deaf West’s production further revises the hearing line by prioritizing moments of d/Deaf experience and expression. This includes an emphasis on the body and on touch in particular, calling attention to the importance of physical expression and contact found at the hearing line from a d/Deaf perspective: effective ASL depends on the physicality of the speaker, and physical touch holds particular importance within the formation of Deaf community and interactions. Moreover, the production highlights Deaf modalities of meaning-making, including through language and music. That the production generates instances of d/Deaf sensory experience and expression also contests versions of deafness that, in the past, have been romanticized or demonized—that is, the writing of deaf characters who are either pitied or detested. Similar to nineteenth-century deaf writers who “subvert power arrangements, not to mention concepts of reality and order,” [18] Deaf West thereby rewrites the power dynamics of the hearing line and produces a d/Deaf sensibility and awareness of the world and of music in particular. Further building upon the play’s themes of communication and connection, the production stresses physical touch and sense over sight and language to simulate characters’ need to be close to others and their (blind) desire to feel anything at all. Two “games” take place in which characters are blindfolded, accentuating physicality, sensory deprivation, intensification, and feeling . In the first instance, the students play a version of blind man’s buff with Moritz: depriving him of sight, the students continually circle around him, slapping and smacking various parts of his body, then quickly pulling away before he can catch them. The second game occurs at the top of Act Two, when Melchior and Wendla are blindfolded and play a game of trust, walking on chairs that are continually being set down by the cast, literally trusting the other cast members with their “safety” and feeling their way across the stage to the piano. These blindfold games, in which characters willingly deprive themselves of sight—seemingly the most important element to ASL—address the unspeakable-ness of their lives and underscore the fact that not everything can be verbally or even gesturally communicated between them. Metaphorically, these scenes also depict the teenagers “feeling their way” through life, an irony since they actually do not know what they are doing, despite the adults always being portrayed and thought of as the most ignorant and naïve. [19] These acts of blindfolding, though ironic in a d/Deaf context, maintains focus on the sense of touch found at the heart of Deaf culture. Moreover, the actions limit the usual emphasis on English-centered or hearing-centered modalities and communication. Much like the ASL-centric “silent” scene in which Moritz admits his failure at school to his father, several scenes also show central characters briefly privileging Deaf modalities of meaning-making over English- and hearing-centered ones, or the consequences of the opposite. The scenes also primarily revolve around characters’ desires to “feel something” beyond merely the physical or emotional—that is, to feel something inexpressible through language alone. For instance, during Wendla and Melchior’s beating scene, Wendla continually presses Melchior to beat her with a wooden switch, expressing a longing to feel something (“My entire life. I’ve never . . . felt . . . Anything ”). The actor playing Melchior momentarily foregoes SimCom to sign, “I’ll teach you to say: ‘Please.’” The words are projected for hearing audiences, making this one of Melchior’s two ASL-only lines and adding a disquieting moment to what is already the most harrowing line in the scene. Melchior’s second and only other ASL-only line occurs a few scenes later, right before they have sex, when he signs “forgive me” onto Wendla’s hand; that this too is done in aural silence, with words projected, functions conversely to his line during the beating scene and demonstrates his deep regret for what transpired. Throughout these scenes, Melchior’s use of ASL-only is in the first instance chillingly harsh, but in the second an attempt at compassion, such that his brief but powerful uses of ASL over English perpetuate a complicated sexual politics at the hearing line: Melchior, who exists simultaneously in the hearing and Deaf worlds, exercises his knowledge of sex and ASL both to influence the situation but also to communicate intimately with Wendla, who is primarily read as Deaf although she has a Voice Of partner on stage. Although the act may falsely suggest that language alone can successfully express his raw, complicated emotions, Melchior’s abandoning of English functions as an attempt to communicate fully and intimately with Wendla in ways that no other relationship on stage does. In contrast to Melchior and Wendla’s relationship, a later scene between Ilse and Moritz demonstrates the damaging consequences of unequal communication between d/Deaf and hearing individuals, wherein English and hearing are privileged. While Wendla believes being beaten will allow her to feel something , Moritz believes ending his own life will allow him to feel something different than the despair caused by school and his parents, again a desire inaccessible via language. Ilse unknowingly runs into Moritz as he is searching for his gun and becomes an embodiment of the failures that can be found at the Deaf/hearing divide, specifically in her audist actions. Moritz, too distracted and overwhelmed by his own personal crisis, rejects Ilse’s continued requests (in SimCom) to walk her home, causing Ilse to purposely abandon her use of ASL. She indignantly proclaims in English-only, “You know, by the time you finally wake up, I’ll be lying on some trash heap.” She then removes her wig to reveal her baldness, having recently undergone chemotherapy, before walking offstage. [20] The performative function of removing her wig could, in part, be read as Ilse’s way of trying to stay in control of the situation even beyond her linguistic prerogative, and unlike Melchior’s purposeful abandonment of English with Wendla, Ilse’s actions reimpose the communication gap. The fact that Ilse gives up her position as an ally by discarding the use of ASL not only perpetuates the normative hierarchies of the Deaf/hearing divide and hearing line, but also demonstrates the disheartening consequences of what happens when people cease their attempts to truly communicate and empathize with each other. Momentarily generating a Deaf experience of musical meaning-making, [21] a single ASL-only musical line occurs at the very end of the show, during “The Song of Purple Summer.” These moments highlight for (predominantly hearing) audiences an even wider spectrum of Deaf (multi-)sensory experiences and meaning-making modalities that move beyond sight and speech alone. When Melchior is confronted by the ghosts of Moritz and Wendla, he decides not to kill himself and realizes that they will always be with him; this is musically signified in the repetition of the phrase “Not gone.” However, coupled with ASL, and repeated several times by the ensemble, one phrase omits the singing in favor of the signing; that is, the phrase is signed in ASL but not sung in English. As in Deaf West’s productions of Big River and Pippin , this crucial musical moment is placed towards the show’s finale, displacing hearing audiences from the audist realm but also repositioning them within the Deaf side of musical experience. No longer is music (or meaning) simply about tones and sounds, but it is now instilled with physicality and feeling for both Deaf and hearing audiences. As one final gesture toward the Deaf/hearing divide, the production splits the pairs of characters—deaf and “Voices Of”—from one another, adding dramaturgical intricacy to the deaths of characters. Before Moritz commits suicide, he pushes the Voice of Moritz’s mic down, indicating that he no longer needs an aural voice anymore; the actor playing the Voice of Moritz subsequently walks offstage, and Moritz proceeds to sign his lines without vocal accompaniment, with words projected on the wall. This matches the aural silence of the only other ASL-only scene in the show, the earlier scene between him and his father. The second death occurs when Wendla is taken to get an abortion: in a burst of chaos onstage, one doctor grabs Wendla while another grabs the Voice of Wendla, ushering them offstage in different directions; the shrieking that follows (indicating her pain and subsequent death) comes from Wendla’s side of the wings rather than the Voice of’s. As with Ilse’s earlier abandonment of ASL, Moritz’s voiceless suicide demonstrates an end to his interaction and communication with the (hearing) world, embodied through his voluntary separation from his Voice Of. This is contrasted with the unwanted death of Wendla—brought about by the actions of her mother—which includes the involuntary separation from her Voice Of and subsequent vocalized cries. The varying degrees of d/Deaf expression and experiences performed in the show—of emotions, music, life, and death—symbolize the limitations of spoken language and hearing in partiality of d/Deaf perceptions of the world on stage. In ways that traditional stagings cannot, the production’s d/Deaf lens enhances the meanings and complexities of these themes, characters, and relationships. “And All Shall Know the Wonder”: Reconsidering the Hearing Line Certainly, the integration of ASL in Deaf West’s production opens up the predominantly hearing space of musical theatre, generating a communal space geared towards accessibility and inclusion. Critics and scholars have continually praised Deaf West’s production of Spring Awakening for its groundbreaking ways of addressing issues of inclusion, accessibility, and diversity in theatrical productions, particularly with regard to the intersection of disability activism and the national theatre scene. It brought the first actor in a wheelchair, Ali Stroker, onto the Broadway musical stage, and it was also the first to provide access and innovative interpretation services to deaf-blind theatregoers. Disability Studies scholar Rachel Kolb asserts that the production’s power lies in its ability to reconsider “a question that is increasingly relevant in culture: how to tell stories in more inclusive ways.” [22] But more significantly, the dramaturgical effects of Deaf West’s staging, their artistic use of sign language via shared signs, and the retelling of Spring Awakening through a d/Deaf perspective deliberately rewrites the hearing line. While Krentz’s notion of the hearing line specifically attends to Deaf stories within literature, his ideas certainly extend to the stage, where distinctive worlds can be represented, tested, and played out. The theatrical choices in Spring Awakening thus present, interrogate, and invert the Deaf/hearing dichotomy on-stage, dramatically and dramaturgically, and give audiences a view at the damaging effects of oralism and audism found in the real-world. Rather than suggest that the hearing line itself is a negative factor, Krentz merely notes its existence, arguing that it illuminates the differences that exist between the two worlds. Yet the hearing line does create a hierarchy of difference in reality: the two sides are not equal. Such a difference plays out as a real-world divide in American culture that exists between the Deaf and hearing communities, ideologically affirmed through oralist, audist, and ableist practices and institutions—especially in the case of musical theatre. This emphasized difference and separation has also stigmatized the Deaf community as less than normate bodies, historically “viewed as a physical impairment associated with such disabilities as blindness, cognitive, and motor impairments,” and something to be diagnosed and corrected. [23] Deaf West has made it their mission to trouble the imbalances of the hearing line, not only calling attention to the hearing line itself but also calling it into question and, hopefully, subverting it in the process. In reconsidering the hearing line, ASL/Deaf musical theatre thereby becomes a 21 st century platform on which to bridge the gap between the Deaf and hearing worlds. References [1] Steven Sater, Spring Awakening (New York: Theatre Comminications Group, 2007), act 1 scene 1, Adobe Digital Editions PDF. [2] . This interaction also suggests that ASL is not Bergman’s native language, further signaling the divide between mother and daughter, and adult and teenage characters. [3] . Following Deaf Studies and cultural practice, the use of the lower-case represents the audiological state. The upper-case represents the Deaf community and culture. [4] . Christopher Krentz, Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 2. [5] . Krentz, Writing Deafness, 16. Krentz attributes this space to what Disability/Deaf Studies scholar Lennard J. Davis’s calls literature’s “deafened moment,” wherein “reading and writing are basically silent and visual acts” that produce “a meeting ground of sorts between deaf and hearing people” (Krentz, 16). In the context of Spring Awakening , the stage is “deafened” in a completely different manner: an extremely loud, un-silent space, sanctioning the sharp physicality of rock music and, in so doing, tilting the passive nature of literature toward the active, dynamic nature of musical theatre. [6] . “SimCom,” or Simultaneous Communication, refers to the simultaneous use of sign language and verbal speech by a speaker. Although it seems practical and useful for speakers in a Deaf/hearing space to use SimCom for the benefit of all present, research has shown that the messages produced and received by SimCom are not equivalent—and thus obstructive to communication—because the grammatical structures of both languages are vastly different. Such actions are akin to speaking in one language while writing in another. As such, ASL most often suffers when this practice is used. For more on SimCom, see Stephanie Tevenal and Miako Villanueva, “Are You Getting the Message?: The Effects of SimCom on the Message Received by Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Hearing Students,” Sign Language Studies 9, no. 39 (2009): 266–286. Also see Ronnie B. Wilbur and Lesa Petersen, “Modality Interactions of Speech and Signing in Simultaneous Communication,” Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research 41, no. 1 (1998): 200–12. [7] . Kayla Epstein and Alex Needham, “Spring Awakening on Broadway: Deaf Viewers Give Their Verdict,” The Guardian , 29 October 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/oct/29/spring-awakening-broadway-deaf-viewers-give-verdict . For more on creating an equitable space for d/Deaf audiences, see Brandice Rafus-Brenning, “The Aesthetics of Deaf West Theatre: Balancing the Theatre-Going Experience for Deaf and Hearing Audiences” (Master’s thesis, California State University, Northridge, 2018), 1–29. [8] . Jehanne C. McCullough, “10 Things the Raving Reviews Don’t Tell You About Spring Awakening,” 6 December 2015, https://jehanne.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/10-things-the-raving-reviews-dont-tell-you-about-spring-awakening-2/ . Soon after McCullough’s post was published, The Daily Moth posted a dialogue with McCullough, Deaf West’s Artistic Director DJ Kurs and ASL Master Linda Bove, in which Kurs and Bove explained the intent of the show, including their artistic reasoning behind using SimCom. See The Daily Moth (@TheDailyMoth), “Spring Awakening: Accessibility for Deaf,” Facebook video, 9 December 2015, https://www.facebook.com/TheDailyMoth/posts/464086633793242?__tn__=-R . [9] Sater, Spring Awakening , act 2 scene 6, Adobe Digital Editions PDF. [10] . This action performs the myth that deaf individuals can read lips or can hear better at higher volumes. This misconception is also often generated by the person speaking (or shouting) in a slow, almost childlike way, again calling attention to the hearing line. On Broadway, Brausepulver also verbally emphasized the lines and used the ASL for “fine,” although he did not use ASL for the rest of the scene. [11] . Christian Lewis, “Spring Awakening Is Currently Broadway’s Most Important Show,” Huffington Post , 4 December 2015, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-lewis/spring-awakening-is-curre_b_8721352.html . [12] . Sarah Wilbur, “Gestural Economies and Production Pedagogies in Deaf West’s Spring Awakening .” TDR: The Drama Review 60, no. 2 (2016): 146. [13] . Wilbur, “Gestural Economies and Production Pedagogies,” 148. [14] . Raymond Knapp. “Disabling Privilege, Further Reflections on Deaf West’s Big River,” Studies in Musical Theatre 9, no. 1 (2015): 105–9. [15] Sater, Spring Awakening , act 1 scene 5, Adobe Digital Editions PDF. [16] . Raymond Knapp, “‘Waitin’ for the Light to Shine’: Musicals and Disability,” The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies , ed. Blake Howe et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 828. [17] Sater, Spring Awakening , act 1 scene 4, Adobe Digital Editions PDF. [18] . Krentz, 17. [19] . This is most pronounced by Frank Wedekind’s own description of the original play as “a tragedy of childhood” and his dedication of the work “to parents and teachers.” See Emma Goldman, “Frank Wedekind—The Awakening of Spring,” in The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (The Anarchist Library, 1914), 27 February 2009, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-the-social-significance-of-the-modern-drama#toc21 . [20] . Notably, this action occurred only during performances at The Wallis. During the production’s Inner City Arts and Broadway runs, Rodriguez completed her lines in SimCom and exited the stage without removing her wig. In an article for Cosmopolitan , Rodriguez shares her experiences during chemotherapy of both wearing wigs and being bald in public, eventually learning to be comfortable with her appearance and regaining her self-confidence. For more on her experience, see Krysta Rodriguez, “What I Learned About Myself From Going Out Bald in Public,” Cosmopolitan , 30 March 2015, available at http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a38428/krysta-rodriguez-cancer-bald-wigs/ . [21] . Numerous scholars working across the fields of music, performance, and Deaf studies have pointed out the multimodal, multi-sensory ways in which d/Deaf people “listen” to music—that is, through a combination of visual, physical, and kinetic sensory encounters and experiences. See Joseph Straus, Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music (Oxford University Press, 2011); Jessica A. Holmes, “Expert Listening beyond the Limits of Hearing: Music and Deafness,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 70, no. 1 (2017): 171–220; Carol A. Padden and Tom L. Humphries, Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (Harvard University Press, 1990); and Anabel Maler, “Songs for Hands: Analyzing Interactions of Sign Language and Music,” Music Theory Online 19 (2013). [22] . Rachel Kolb, “‘Spring Awakening’ and the Power of Inclusive Art,” The Atlantic , 18 October 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/spring-awakening-and-the-power-of-inclusive-art/411061/ . [23] . Megan A. Jones, “Deafness as Culture: A Psychosocial Perspective,” Disability Studies Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2000), available at http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/344/435 . Footnotes About The Author(s) STEPHANIE LIM studies the inclusion of American Sign Language in music and musical theatre performance and the resulting cultural translations/adaptations that occur. She is the Disability Studies Assistant Area Chair for Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA), where she is also a Michael K. Schoenecke Leadership Institute Fellow. Publications appear in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Everything Sondheim, Studies in Musical Theatre, and Popular Culture Studies Journal. Stephanie is a CSU Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program (CDIP) Fellow and teaches undergraduate courses in English and Theatre at California State University, Northridge, where she received her BA and MA in English. She is currently a PhD student in Drama & Theatre at University of California, Irvine. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Michael P. Jaros Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Michael P. Jaros By Published on December 10, 2020 Download Article as PDF Appearing within the first iteration of the Black Lives Matter movement and the fraught national conversations over the legacies of the American Civil War, Suzan Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts 1-3 is her first full-length play set during that war, focusing specifically on the final period of American chattel slavery and the moment of Emancipation. [1] The work remains timely within a contemporary political environment where both racism and resistance to it are resurgent. It also departs in a number of structural and thematic ways from her previous works for the stage. Scholars have examined Parks’s plays that indirectly explore the period’s contemporary resonances, specifically her two works about black Abraham Lincoln impersonators, The America Play (1994) and Topdog/Underdog (2001), in some detail. [2] Her main characters in those works—The Found ling Father of the America Play and Link and Booth of Topdog/Underdog —both always already exist in the shadow of the Civil War President and signer of the Emancipation Proclamation. The figures they cut are perpetually perceived through Lincoln’s own cut out (which even features as a prop in The America Play ). However, the range of focus of Father Comes Home is considerably broader, indeed epic, in scope, as Parks radically revises Homer’s Odyssey to place it in the Civil-War-Era South. [3] In moving her emphasis off Lincoln or his imitators, a chorus of varied voices takes center-stage. Asked about her play’s topicality at the American Repertory Theatre in 2015, Parks was quick to point out that all her characters’ lives mattered: You know, [the characters in the play] were human. That’s the thing…I would say…that is one of my charges as an artist. And that is the only way that I am interested in, really, addressing what people call the race question…is just that reminding people that my people are people. And under that comes everything.[4] The expansion of focus of one or two persons to people helps contextualize Parks’s comments about the race question and her characters’ humanity: as we witness the existential traumas of enslavement, Parks reminds us that all her staged people are people, not just her hero. In doing so, she addresses a critical need in contemporary representations of slavery to eschew the classic heroic narrative, allowing for a broader structural critique of the systems of valuation and ranking by which slaves were perceived. Parks has her character Smith memorably allude to this idea of marketplace measurement in Part Two of her play: Maybe even with Freedom, that mark, huh, that mark of the marketplace, it will always be on us. And so maybe we will always be twisting and turning ourselves into something that is going to bring the best price. [5] With the staging of Father Comes Home, Parks engages in an ongoing cultural argument about this “mark of the marketplace” in contemporary notions of African American identity. In so doing, she confronts larger structural systems of racism and the current economic system (capitalism) that sustains it. Smith’s quote highlights an issue Parks touched on before in her two Lincoln plays and further refines in Father Comes Home , specifically black participation in this game of self-appraisal, of buying into this idea of the ranking of life. Private Smith’s words about “always twisting and turning our selves into something that is going to bring the best price [my emphasis],” highlights the communal economic trauma of slavery and its resonances in the present for black communities as a whole. Such a collective emphasis helps to resurrect this communal history, ending what Erica Edwards calls an historical “silencing” of the many agents involved in the struggle for freedom in favor of the “implicit valorization of singular, charismatic leadership” [6] which itself “values” certain persons more than others. Existing scholarship on Father Comes Home from the Wars contains little critical examination of the radical implications of her choral characters. Nadine Knight’s examination of notions of home, nostos, and Parks’ reconfiguration of the Homeric epic primarily discusses the protagonist of all three parts, Hero. Similarly, Paula Guerrero provides a deep, sustained reading of Hero’s contradictory nature, fitting him within a larger group of anti-heroic characters appearing in Parks’s oeuvre. However, the Choruses receive less critical attention: they are described as somewhat “homogenized,” and notable in their absence from Part Two of the work. [7] Paul Carter Harrison goes so far as to suggest that the Choruses in fact revert to the worst elements of blackface minstrelsy in an anodyne offering which ultimately amounts to a toned down, less-then-traumatic view of slavery for predominantly white audiences. [8] What I propose to argue here is that Parks’s two Choruses are considerably more radical than previous scholarship has suggested. Two different choral groups appear in her play—a “Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves” in Part 1 and “The Runaway Slaves” in Part 3—yet the two Choruses are comprised of the same actors. [9] In so naming them, Parks stages the transition from property (in the form of exterior valuation, they are “less than desirable”) to freedom: (they are agents stealing themselves and thus gaining some measure of self-determination as runaways). Their embodiment shifts from being reactionary to radical. Furthermore, Part Two, which includes no Chorus, is a necessary step in this shift in thinking about heroism, capitalism, and valuation that Parts One, Two, and Three collectively undertake. My line of departure involves thinking specifically about Brechtian Epic form, especially as formulated by Liz Diamond’s readings of the gestus and alienation effect. Through a series of performative interventions primarily involving the Choruses, Parks directly equates heroism with marketplace value. Responding to Harrison’s critique that the mythic form and the Choruses make the deprivation of slavery more “palatable,” I argue that Parks’s use of epic form allows the spectator to instead, in Diamond’s words “see and hear [about] it afresh,” [10] and in a way that is not palatable but confrontational. Specifically, we are confronted with the larger, structural implications of slavery on a mass of people when we deemphasize the singular, heroic protagonist, thus giving way to a more substantial criticism of bondage, self-valuation, and the economics of capitalism that sustained the peculiar institution and in turn survive well beyond it. A wealth of scholarship details how the development of the modern system of international capital and slavery were inextricably intertwined, and—along with it—ideas of individual competition and self-valuation. These “proprietorial notions of the self,” as Saidiya Hartman terms them, suffused black life and continued to do so after Emancipation. [11] Edward Baptist argues that the “expansion of slavery and financial capitalism [became] the driving force in an emerging national economic system” in the Antebellum US. Slaves’ financial worth was meticulously calculated via a complex network of valuation established by professional slave traders. [12] This price, as Caitlyn Rosenthal demonstrates, varied directly with “usefulness” on the market. Babies had low value, as did older slaves. Price topped out in the mid-twenties for both men and women. “The prices for enslaved people changed for many reasons,” she remarks, “age, sickness, or health. The acquisition of skill, or changes in the market” but also for disobedience or attempts at escape. [13] Most insidious was the way in which slaves internalized this fiscal language, this “mark of the marketplace,” even using the term “depreciation” do describe their own changes in value when they themselves faced potential sale. [14] Consequently, self-measurement and assessment are part and parcel of her characters’ dialogue in the play. “Mark it” is a constant refrain, which, as Laura Dougherty remarks, is all to close in pronunciation to “market” to be lost on the audience. [15] Opposing this system of competition and individual valuation were forms of collective resistance by a variety of means, especially via performance. After the war, and well into the twentieth century, these arose to combat structural racism and the economic inequalities that accompanied them. As Cedric Robinson describes it in his seminal work Black Marxism, the black radical tradition was borne out of a need to “imaginatively re-create a precedent metaphysic while being subjected to enslavement, racial domination and repression,” and this was most consistently, effectively done via collective action. [16] Fred Moten elaborates that such performances had a radical ability, especially via the improvisation of an ensemble, to cause a momentary “break” in the ideology of bodily commodification which “passes on the material heritage across the divide that separates slavery and ‘freedom.’” [17] The first example he gives of such radical action is in fact a chorus of singers that Frederick Douglas hears shortly after the infamous beating of his Aunt Hester in the Autobiography, a group that challenges, through its vocalized revisions, the violent performance of power that is the master lashing Hester and her screams in response. [18] Parks’s Choruses likewise point towards radical action, towards a break away from the heroic ideals which are all too tied to capitalist notions of individualism, self-valuation, and competition. This is a timely move, as heroic slave narratives remain resilient in contemporary culture. Soyica Diggs Colbert and Robert Patterson reflect on the lack of contemporary critical insight afforded by such traditional narratives. Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, which features Jamie Foxx as a black, avenging superhero let loose on southern slaveholders, offers what Colbert terms “unfettered individualism for its male protagonist as a remedy for the burdensome legacy of slavery,” which is at once “a comforting and deceptive remedy.” [19] Similarly, Patterson asserts in his analysis of 12 Years a Slave that protagonist Solomon Northrup’s own narrative, with its heroic idealization of “self-help and individual success” reinforces the dominant order, namely white, Protestant, capitalist notions of rugged self-reliance. Each narrative’s emphasis on the exceptional individual fails to address the “larger pattern of black suffering” of the vast majority of those under the yoke of slavery, as well as slavery’s link to contemporary structural racism and continued black self-appraisal in financial terms. [20] Parks de-centers the original Homeric hero, a character she simply dubs Hero in Parts One and Two, and Ulysses (invoking two white men, both Homer’s protagonist’s Latin name and the name of the leader of the Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant) in Part Three. Despite the hopes of the Chorus and other characters that he is and should remain exceptional, that he should both be measured and valued as such, Hero instead proves to simply be human and unable to personally overcome the ontological negation resulting from his enslavement and its dependent valuation. [21] In the transition from Part One to Three, it is to the Chorus and the secondary characters Homer (his foil) and Penny (his partner) that we must increasingly look to for some collective, future possibility of freedom. A MEASURE OF A MAN From the moment the curtain rises, measurement dominates the dramatic action. Part One, aptly titled A Measure of a Man, opens with the Chorus Leader “measuring the night by holding a hand up to the sky.” [22] This gest by which time is marked recurs throughout the act, and is often accompanied by Parks’s signature “Spells,” in which a character’s name is repeated in the text without being accompanied by any dialogue: Chorus Leader Chorus Leader Chorus Leader Second How much time we got?[23] Spells transpire outside language, and in this case function as a Brechtian gestus of appraisal. The gestus, Diamond remarks, is “a gesture, a word, an action, a tableau by which, separately or in series, the social attitudes encoded in the playtext become visible to the spectator.” The gestus thus “opens [the audience] up to the social ideologies that inform its production.” [24] Here, the social ideology involves measurement, marking, and assessment. Collectively, such gests engender spectatorial alienation from the event at hand. We gain enough aesthetic distance to see a familiar exchange in a new, critical light. In these exchanges, night and the coming day are assessed in slave-time: with the day shall come the end of their pseudo-freedom, the end of their limited, stolen time as people and the beginning of their time as chattel. As Part One proceeded in the ART production, more and more orange light flooded the stage as this inevitable moment of daybreak approached. The ever-approaching day will also bring with it Hero’s decision as to whether he shall follow the Boss-Master to war as his aide-de camp in the Confederate army. If he does so, his master has promised him freedom upon his return. If he refuses, he will have to stay behind and face his punishment, a punishment that all the other characters must also endure. These first few moves set the dramatic tempo of Part One. All the dominant actions of A Measure of a Man involve sizing up, and it is the Chorus, not Hero, that determines the dramatic action. In betting on Hero’s choice, they are monetizing the dramatic stakes of the play, and in so doing are drawing our attention to the fact that we as an audience have done the same thing: we have paid to see this spectacle and also to assess Hero’s choice. As Diamond puts it, these betting and marking gests force the spectator to “engage with her own corporeality” in looking and assessing the black bodies onstage for their respective measures, particularly Hero’s. Harvey Young examines an earlier manifestation of Parks’s use of Choruses in Venus , whose protagonist is Saartjie Baartman, a nineteenth century South African woman who was toured across England and France as “The Venus Hottentot,” due in no small part to white audiences’ obsession with the size of her posterior. That play’s Chorus “continually reminds the audience that the play is about looking at [her],” ensuring that our compassion for her “anchors itself in our own complicity in her spectacularization.” [25] We can only feel sympathy for the protagonist after we objectify her as much as the Chorus does. In Father Comes Home, the Chorus’ need to size up Hero also goes hand in hand with the audience’s, yet what Young terms spectacularization is even more overt: not only is the Chorus betting money themselves on Hero’s actions, but Hero is literally a slave, and his measure in that sense has an exact number (his selling price). They and we are participating in a system that reinforces such financial objectification. Moreover, the Chorus of Father Comes Home exists within the same world as Hero. Whereas in Venus the Chorus often stands outside the dramatic action and comments on it, the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves are decidedly within the play and suffer along with Hero, if not more than him. Their shared world of appraisal is reified in the exchange that ensues as the other Chorus members (Third and Fourth) join the first two onstage. The productions at ART and the Public Theatre, both directed by Jo Bonney, reinforced the choral synchronicity by placing the first, second, third, and fourth in a strong line cheating upstage; we see each arriving in turn to imitate the next at measuring the night, and all use the same gest. Though they all admit that the Leader is best at night-measurement, their appraisal of Hero himself is different: Fourth You may be the best at measuring the Night But that don’t make you the best at measuring Men. Third Early risers have their say but we gotta make our own choices on this Each of us gotta make a measure of the man We gotta choose for ourselves (Rest) I got a brass button I might be betting that Hero is– Going to the War.[26] Parks’s “Rests,” another consistent feature in her dramaturgy, afford a slightly more restrained moment of reflection or distancing than the Spell. The above Rest occurs immediately before the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves arrange their bets with their varied prized possessions (spoons, buttons, etc). These people, themselves property, are betting their own scant properties, reinforcing the system of exchange, property and assessment—of marking—in which they are themselves caught. The forms of resistance open to the Less than Desirable Slaves are, as Moten notes, “always already embedded in the structure they would escape,” [27] namely these proprietorial notions of the self. Neil Patel’s barren stage-space for the ART production reinforces the structural desolation within which these choices transpire: it is a vast, rust-colored expanse with only a short stump downstage right and a withered tree-trunk stage right of the tiny slave cabin placed center stage. The choice to be—indeed the seeming inevitability of doing so (“we gotta”)—is foregrounded by the Rest, the stage-space within which the betting transpires, and the resulting false implication that there is some sort of real, meaningful “choice” to be made. Alienation allows us to parse out these symbols. Ultimately, their bets and their choices, along with Hero’s, are existentially meaningless in this desolate space: they contribute nothing towards changing their current position of enslavement. Nevertheless hero-betting remains, as Colbert maintained of Django Unchained, “a comforting but deceptive remedy”: “There is a kind of sport to be had,” the Chorus Leader remarks, “In the consideration of someone else’s fate.” [28] This sport is the distraction that the Rest highlights; this pregnant pause troubles the preceding words. In betting on Hero’s decision, the Chorus members avoid confronting their own stark situation as being one without any real choice. Just as betting on the length of the night will not stop the arrival of day, betting on Hero’s choice shall not result in any change in their own condition. Moreover, in so doing they acquiesce to being inscribed as undesirable so that Hero might become individually exceptional. “Prime hands” like Hero were historically set up as an ideal against which all other slaves were assessed vis-à-vis labor performance and (as a result) financial worth. [29] All are caught up in these acts of appraisal, and we are continuously made aware of the contradictions lurking within the heart of these “choices,” as well as our own complicity in spectatorial appraisal. The slave Homer brings the futility of such sport home soon after arriving onstage. Homer shall not bet, he says, because he realizes the choice is meaningless: Homer Ain’t no game, Hero. Cause you shouldn’t be doing neither. Cause you shouldn’t stoop To do neither Cause both choices, Hero, To stay here and work the field To go there and fight in the field Both choices are Nothing more than the same coin Flipped over and over Two sides of the same coin And the coin ain’t even in your pocket.[30] Homer, with his vision of an oscillating coin that is not even Hero’s to spin, breaks in upon the small world within which the Chorus and Hero have lived until this moment. The talk of heroism and the resulting bets are suddenly revealed for what they are: someone else’s stories, stories that don’t apply to the people onstage and will do no one there any good. Each side of the coin means collective suffering: staying means mass-punishment for all the slaves on the plantation, and leaving means helping ensure slavery’s national continuation (by aiding the armies of the Confederacy). The Chorus’ belief in Hero begins to falter immediately after Homer’s monologue. They become more assertive, stepping in and prompting Hero to make some choice. When he initially announces that he shall not go to war, the Chorus steps in to remind him that they shall be punished far worse than he shall be for his choice: Leader That’s right. He’ll beat him hard and He’ll beat us twice as hard. Second For his 10 lashes we’ll get 20. Third For his 20 we’ll get 40. Fourth For his 50 we’ll get 100. Hero I won’t go. I can’t. My heart’s been set against it from the start. Chorus Hero Chorus Hero (Rest) Old Man So you’ll have to harm yourself in some way To take the edge off Boss’ anger.[31] The Chorus must remind Hero that his decisions have trickle-down effects on the bodies of the Less-Than-Desirable Slaves, who are quick to calculate the amplification of punishment that shall be inflicted on them due to their subordinate value to Hero. A series of Spells and a Rest alienate us from the action so that we have space to reflect upon this moment. It is Hero’s adoptive father, the Oldest Old Man, who must prompt him towards an action that takes the others’ fates into account. Hero’s exceptionalism is founded upon a competitive individualism that operates at the collective’s expense. Consequently, he does not take into account the collateral damage that his choice shall inflict on everyone else. Far from Carter’s vision of the Chorus of Less than Desirable Slaves as reanimated blackface minstrels or Guerrero’s reading of the “stereotypical roles” which they serve in the drama, what we witness as they begin to challenge Hero is an assertion of their own, collective identity. Although the first Chorus and the second are not the same , they are composed of the same actors and thus remain corporeally connected. The Runaway Slaves are the embodied successors of the Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves, who take these first steps towards agency at the end of Part One. As Moten attests, the improvisation of such ensembles is integral to any comprehension of the black, radical tradition. Such choral questioning forces a “revaluation or reconstruction of value.” [32] The ensemble, deprived of their hero, are forced to improvise. Homer proposes an alternative to this choice-less choice, something the Choral Leader agrees represents a viable “third way”: Freedom, for Homer, cannot be given; it must be taken. Freedom means stealing yourself and taking others with you. The aptly named Homer thus gives voice to one of the central ideas of the entire work: just as much as slavery is collectively endured, Freedom [33] must also be collectively, clandestinely acquired. Hero, however, views such an act as property theft: “A Stolen-Freedom?” he remarks, “That ain’t me.” [34] Running off quite literally means stealing himself and stealing Freedom would deprive him of the central choice he must make as a hero in act one, a choice Homer implies does not really matter. Moreover, stealing one’s self represents a radical exit from the status quo. Since criminality is the “only form of slave agency recognized by law,” Hartman attests, “agency of theft…challenged the figuration of the black captive as devoid of will.” [35] Running off is a radical choice that opens up the possibility of further choices. It becomes a choice that in fact matters. The problematics of Hero’s individualism are reinforced by the last significant development of Part One. Homer reveals to the Chorus that he and Hero had both, previously planned to escape together and that Hero betrayed Homer to the Boss-Master in exchange for an earlier promise of Freedom. Homer’s foot was taken as punishment, and Hero was forced to cut it off himself. Homer’s missing foot, and his limp, remain indelible onstage markers of this legacy of dehumanizing violence, and also of Hero’s failure to act heroically in the face of such terrible choices. Confronted with Hero’s un-heroic actions, the Chorus then makes their own choice, removing Hero’s name from him just as his crucial moment of choice arrives, along with the sun, at the end of the act. Leader And we can’t call you Hero. Penny That’s still his name. Third Maybe we won’t call you anything at all. The Sun Rises Chorus Penny Hero Homer Chorus Second The sun us up. Hero And my need to leave is clear. Not run off, Homer, Although I can see there’s value in it, But it’s not my road. I’ll go trot behind the Master The non-Hero that I am.[36] As the sun rises over the stage, Homer, Penny, and the Chorus’ Spells surround Hero’s, suggesting a shift in the dramatic hierarchy of the scene. We, along with the other figures onstage, await Hero’s response. It is finally the Second who must prompt Hero that the moment of choice has arrived. His resulting decision to leave is decidedly anti-climactic; it is only a default reaction to the revelation of his betrayal of Homer and the larger community. It would be unfeasible, now, for him to stay. In both the Public and ART productions, Hero slowly exits up a vast ramp, which slants down, stage right, across the entire backstage area. This afforded an extremely elaborate entrance for Hero earlier in the work, high above the others, yet it is now all of the Less than Desirable Slaves who escort him up it for his antiheroic exit. The collective mourns the loss of faith in Hero’s heroism, yet we are at once confronted with the stark, impossible nature of the choices put before him within the context of slavery. Parks thus gives the play its tragic resonance, but also opens up the possibility of Homer’s “third way” towards salvation: relinquishing the need for heroes and striking out for Freedom as a group. “The significance of becoming or belonging together in terms other than those defined by one’s status as property, will-less object, and the not-quite human.” Hartman maintains, “should not be underestimated.” [37] Such radical acts are certainly worthy of memorialization, as they transpired against immense historical odds put in place by a system set up to directly oppose communal resistance. The actions the Chorus takes here represent the beginnings of what she terms a “latent political consciousness,” [38] one more radically developed by the Runaway Slaves in Part Three. A BATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS As Part Two: A Battle in the Wilderness, opens, we quickly realize that it contains no Chorus; the choral measurement of a man is replaced by the singular, appraising measure of the white slaveholder. Whereas Parts One and Three Occur in the same locale—”a slave cabin in the middle of nowhere. Far West Texas.”— A Battle in the Wilderness , transpires on the frontier of the war itself, in “a wooded area in the South. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere.” [39] We might well assume that it is here that Hero shall distinguish himself before “coming home from the wars.” The “battle” that is depicted is more existential than actual, however, as the fighting is only heard in the far-off distance; we remain “pretty much” off the historical map, in the middle of nowhere. Just as Hero’s ability to be a hero—with actual choices —was challenged by the Chorus in A Measure of a Man, his ownership of his own self is called into question in A Battle in the Wilderness . He is physically objectified as chattel by the only white character in the play, his master the Colonel, in what Hartman has described as form of “coerced theatricality” associated with the spectacle of the auction block, what she terms the “theatre of the marketplace.” [40] The measurement and bidding of the auction block replaces the measuring of the night and the choral betting on Hero’s choice in Part One. The difference between the two plays’ forms of measurement is minimal; one follows naturally from the other, as the Chorus learned its sport of determining Hero’s measure through the language and the performative conventions of the slave auction. The pull-away from the Chorus in Part Two allows for a sustained focus on such valuation via performance, preparing the way for the complete break from it which the Runaway Slaves accomplish in Part Three. Consequently, the central assessing event of A Battle in the Wilderness is a mock-slave auction. In staging such a spectacle, Parks taps into a macabre form of performance with a long, sordid history, whose primary purpose was to mark black bodies with a marketplace value, as Joseph Roach so memorably shows in his examination of such auctions in Antebellum New Orleans. “The staged exhibition of bodies for the purpose of selling them,” he maintains, “marks those bodies publicly as not possessed of themselves as property.” [41] Moreover, the mark of the marketplace was often applied to black bodies as a performance. Slave auctions became, Roach attests, a popular form of entertainment, even for those not actually participating in the bidding. [42] Those on the auction block were frequently dressed in evening wear and made to promenade, and even dance, before later being stripped down by buyers for the final inspection. In staging such coerced theatricality, Parks again challenges our complicity in an even more stark assessment of Hero’s measure. For Diamond, such alienation allows a way to put that historicity on view, specifically “in a sign system [western commercial theatre] governed by a particular apparatus, usually owned and operated by men for the pleasure of a viewing public whose major wage earners are male.” [43] Although Diamond speaks about the gendered body here, it is equally applicable to the white, masculine appraising view of the theatre of the marketplace, and how its historicity is re-staged in a contemporary commercial theatre viewing black bodies, specifically Hero’s body, onstage. The setup for this performance occurs early on in Part Two as the Colonel converses with his captive, Smith, a mixed-race private in a colored regiment of the Union army who has successfully passed as a white Captain by taking the dead man’s uniform, thereby avoiding death at the hands of the Colonel. Hero, Smith, and the Colonel have become separated from their respective armies in the aftermath of a battle. While Hero is collecting firewood, the Colonel assures his captive that Hero shall not attempt to escape: You might have commanded them but I own them. And because I own them I have an understanding of them that you don’t have and never will. Hero knows his worth to the penny, and, well, the poor thing is honest. Meaning he won’t run off not now not ever. He told me one day: “Master,” he said, “running off, well that would be the same as stealing, he said. [44] Choral watching and assessing are replaced in Part Two by the direct assessment of the white slaveholder. We witness this assessment’s ideological internalization in both Hero and Smith: whether or not one can, or should, steal one’s self—something Hero did in fact refuse to do in Part One—becomes the internal battle in the wilderness of Part Two’s title. Smith is subsequently coerced into visually assessing Hero in a mock, two-part slave auction that the Colonel initiates to follow up on his claim about how well he “understands” Hero, which for the Colonel means Hero’s attachment to his own financial value. The Colonel collateralizes Freedom, something he has already done to Hero at least twice thus far: he promises that if Smith can guess Hero’s actual price, he will free both of them, and Hero may return with Smith to the Union lines. Despite initial protestation, Smith ultimately agrees to participate, as the chances of freeing another man are too hard to pass up. In so doing, however, Smith plays the Colonel’s game and according to his rules; he replaces the Chorus in their measuring game of Part One. The Colonel’s line, “We’ll school him, just for sport,” echoes the Choral Leader’s remark about the “sport to be had” in betting on another’s fate in Part One. Like the Chorus before him, Smith now measures and assesses worth as attached to the black body, a collective, projected “them” that includes his own body. In accepting the wager of freedom and the rules of the game, Hero agrees to be the spectacle and Smith agrees to be the appraising audience. Both play into Hero’s spectacularization, as do we, again, by watching and guessing at his financial measure. The spectator is forced, as Diamond puts it, to “engag[e] with her own temporality. She, too, becomes historicized…her material conditions, her politics, her skin, her desires.” [45] It is impossible for us to avoid considering the material conditions of this spectacle as we sit watching it in the theatre. As the mock-auction begins in the ART production, Hero is made to stand on the downstage stump and be inspected by Smith as if on the auction block. [46] He occupies the center of this stage-image, keenly reinforcing a series of groupings Bonney created in the first play in which the Chorus, Penny, and Homer surround the center-stage Hero, yet now in Part Two Hero is so centered as chattel to be sold. Taking his role as auctioneer, the Colonel describes Hero as “hardworking, trustworthy, [and as] smart but still compliant.” [47] Smith-as-bidder is forced to demean Hero by inspecting the inside of his mouth to make sure he is not getting a bum deal. Ultimately, Smith places Hero’s worth at one thousand dollars, which, we learn, is two hundred too high. Although Smith has been coerced into participating in this act of valuation, it is Hero who must conclude the inspection: the Colonel forces him to name his own price. Despite this act of shame, Hero rebels against the Colonel by remarking that he might, in fact, be worth more now and, if the Confederacy loses the war, he might be worth much more. Smith agrees, calling this “good thinking.” Such self-assessment was historically key to the auction process. If a slave refused to help sell himself for the highest price possible, whipping would ensue. [48] Hero, and to a certain extent Smith, remain incapable of conceiving of their own worth outside of a given fiscal value, even when imagining a post-emancipation future. Hero can rebel only by placing his valuation higher; thinking outside the mark of the marketplace remains impossible. Hero’s rebellion pushes the auction to the edge of the point of no return. The Colonel orders Hero to “undo himself” and stand nude before them for his final inspection. One of the largest Spell-interruptions in the script follows: Colonel Undo yourself Hero. Hero Hero Hero is thinking, no fucking way. Smith Stop. Colonel Undo yourself I said. Smith Stop. Colonel Hero Smith Colonel Colonel Alright. For his sake. We wouldn’t want the Yankee to die of fright. The Colonel approaches Hero and, quickly raising his riding crop, strikes him across the face.[49] Hero steps down from the stump and the Colonel’s control over the performance ends, yet its effects on Hero reverberate through Parks’s silent architecture: the Colonel’s own final Spells frame the two other characters’ experience of whatever transpires there. Parks also gives a rare, authorial reading of what Hero’s long solo Spell entails ( Hero is thinking, no fucking way ), deviating from her earlier suggestion in her essay “Elements of Style,” that directors and actors should interpret a Spell “as they best see fit.” [50] No fucking way, it seems, must this moment be left to chance: Hero’s “undoing himself” would be a point of no return; it is and must remain unstageable. Yet the threat of the Colonel being able to take away any semblance of Hero’s humanity, to reveal him as merely meat, saturates the air. It is just before this “no fucking way” moment becomes real that the Colonel ends the performance, so that the “Yankee,” and the audience, shall not “die of fright.” Yet after this seeming release of performative tension, the mock-auction concludes with one of the only significant onstage acts of violence in all three parts of the play. The threat of physical punishment, torture, or death that guarantees slavery is quickly, tersely realized with the Colonel’s brief movement. [51] The auction block act is powerful enough to cause Smith to momentarily drop his own performance of passing: “you don’t know anything about us,” he remarks to the Colonel, before catching himself and suggesting that “us” means “Yankees.” [52] Seeing Hero on display is all too close to Smith’s own remembered trauma of being sold at auction. Parks deftly demonstrates that this spectacle reinforces how Smith and Hero see each other, the real “us.” The performative residue of the auction act hangs over the two men even after the Colonel leaves the stage to check on the armies’ movements. Left alone, Smith reveals to Hero that he’s really a Private in a Union colored regiment, not a Captain, and therefore a mixed-race, former slave himself. We must quickly reassess our understanding of all that has just transpired. It is implied that Smith gave his own price as his guess for Hero’s worth, as he later tells Hero that he cost around the same price as Hero did when he was last sold. Smith’s estimation of Hero is thus tied to the former’s own perceived fiscal value. Smith, however, goes on to oppose their prices and attendant value with the oft-debated and enigmatic term, “Freedom.” Echoing Homer in Part One, Smith holds out Freedom as something that exists outside of valuation: Smith There’s more to Freedom than I can explain, but believe me it’s like living in Glory. Hero Who will I belong to? Smith You’ll belong to yourself. Hero So when a Patroller comes up to me, when I’m walking down the road to work or to do what-have-you and a Patroller comes up to me and says “Whose Nigger are you Nigger? I’m gonna say, “I belong to myself?” Today I can say, “I belong to the Colonel” Imagining being confronted by a Patroller, Hero holds up his hands. Reminiscent of “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Hero “I belong to the colonel,” I says now. That’s how come they don’t beat me. But when Freedom comes and they stop me and ask and I say, “I’m on my own. I’m on my own and I own my ownself.” You think the’ll leave me be? Smith I don’t know. Hero Seems like the worth of a Colored man, once he’s made Free, is less than his worth when he’s a slave. Smith Is that how come you don’t run off? Hero Maybe. I’m worth something so me running off would be like stealing. Smith Seems to me like you got a right to steal yourself.[53] In imitating the gesture of “Hands up Don’t Shoot,” Hero’s motion links his own ontological uncertainty (will his life have value in a post-slavery world?) to the modern Black Lives Matter protests. Parks maintains that the move developed organically in rehearsals when the actor playing Hero in the premiere, Sterling K. Brown, made this gesture and Parks recognized its resonance immediately, enough for it to subsequently be published as a stage direction. [54] This recognition certainly transferred to the audience, as was demonstrated in the talkback discussion I attended at the American Repertory Theatre production in 2015. Benton Greene, who played Hero in the ART production, maintained the gesture. “The gestic moment in a sense explains the play,” Diamond asserts, “but it also exceeds the play, opening it to the social and discursive ideologies that inform its production.” [55] Members of the audience remarked that they clearly connected Hero’s gesture to the modern protest movement and certainly felt it made the work resonate in the present moment. [56] Hero’s “hands up” gest directly demonstrates the relationship between his potential plight and the larger, institutional systems that encourage and sustain white hegemony both then and now. Smith’s vision of Freedom prepares the way for Hero’s one truly heroic act. When the Colonel leaves the stage to scout ahead once more, Hero lets Smith go, to atone, he attests, for a “horrible wrong” he has done, namely his previous betrayal of Homer. Before he leaves, however, Smith gives Hero his own Union Private’s coat, which the latter then puts on under his own Confederate coat. Paula Guerrero reads this as another moment of Hero’s embrasure of whiteness, as “his inherited soldier’s clothes come to substitute his body, as the power they imply eclipses his black skin, making it invisible.” [57] Alternatively, I contend that it is a communal act of subversion, a rehearsal for more radical acts of resistance that the Chorus shall undertake collectively in Part Three. [58] The coat gest transpires after each man has shown the other his brand, his literal mark of sale. It is instead a restorative moment of what Hartman terms a “belonging together,” a collectively enacted performance that might “redress and nurture the broken body,[offering] a small measure of relief from the debasements constitutive of one’s condition.” [59] Hero has gotten where he is with Smith, not alone, and their moment of cooperation is commemorated via a subversive, hidden costume-piece that Hero shall carry with him. THE UNION OF MY CONFEDERATE PARTS In the final play, The Union of My Confederate Parts, [60] Parks opposes the collective nature of Freedom with Hero’s tragic lack of recognition of the need for others as he relentlessly clings to his heroic identity, even in the face of its implicit connection to marketplace price in Part Two. Nadine M. Knight writes that throughout the three parts of the play, Parks hews to the line of the original Odyssey inasmuch as “freedom is won through the hero’s self-interest, infidelities and delay and does not apply to others.” [61] Conversely, I suggest that throughout Part Three, Freedom is both sought and potentially earned by the more radical Chorus and the influence they excerpt over Penny and Homer, who ultimately leave with them to steal their own Freedom at the play’s conclusion, leaving Hero behind. In The Union of My Confederate Parts, Parks returns us to the slave cabin “in the middle of nowhere,” but there are marked changes to both the characters who populate the stage and to the context within which their performance transpires. Most significantly, the Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves have been sold off, we learn, and are replaced onstage by The Runaway Slaves. The word “Chorus” is dropped from their name, and within their own ranks there is no choral leader, merely three equal figures. They are also played by the same actors. These are the first signs of a more radical shift away from the only nascently assertive Chorus in The Measure of a Man . In Part Three their tone becomes more collective and radical, representing what Douglas Jones, Jr. dubs a “shift from black grief to grievance.” Such collective, choral performances were vital, he notes, in the transition from slavery to freedom in order to create a “collectivist (cultural) politics that positioned the group over the individual.” [62] The Runaway Slaves map this transition in Part Three, consistently challenging Hero’s heroic individualism and winning Penny and Homer to their ranks. Their collective story, and the alliance they forge with Penny and Homer (who ultimately leave with them) forms the spine of Act Three, not Old-Hero’s long-awaited “Return From The Wars” with news not only of the death of the Colonel in the war but also of Lincoln’s far-off signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Runaway Slaves’ time, and by extension they themselves, are no longer commoditized within the measure of the Boss-Master’s workday. The Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves measured how much darkness was left until sunrise and work, but the Runaway Slaves wait for darkness to arrive so that they can run. No time-measuring gestus therefore exists in Part Three. What matters above all else to the Runaway Slaves is Freedom. Freedom from slavery is not the master’s to grant, but can only be attained with others clandestinely, by stealing one’s self. Moten terms this radical stance “fugitivity,” equating blackness itself with a fugitive state, one which represents “a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed.” [63] Consequently, the Runaway Slaves do not occupy the same physical or ideological space as Hero. In the ART production they constantly lurk in the stage-shadows, and do not focus stage-images around the erstwhile protagonist, as they did in Part One. As the action of Part Three proceeds, they become the new, collective protagonist; their interactions with Hero consistently challenge his gests of heroic return and the mark of marketplace which informs them. Appearing onstage, Hero remains, despite his encounter with Smith, heroically stuck, unable to relinquish this role and steal himself. Moreover, in choosing his new name, Ulysses, he links himself even more securely to white heroism. The long ramp again affords him his elaborate entrance into Part Three and as soon as he arrives, Ulysses performs a series of homecoming gests for Penny, Homer, and the Runaway Slaves, ones which seem fitting (to him) for a hero who has returned from the war. However, The Runaway Slaves consistently interrupt these performances from the outset, highlighting their staleness as inherited performances, as well as Ulysses’s own lack of awareness about the actual hopes and dreams of the community to which he has returned. He performs the first of these shortly after arriving: Ulysses kneels on the ground. He gets up. He kneels again. Ulysses This is what I seen them do. When they get home. It just follows but it feels right.[64] This onstage, repeated miming of the heroic return of the soldier, which “they do,” invokes its inherited, white origins (both in the Odyssey and in the Civil War itself): This gest demonstrates Ulysses’s own alienation from himself as well as from the community for which he was supposed to be a hero. His separation from the newly forming onstage community is reinforced by his immediate reaction to the Chorus when they interrupt Ulysses’s homecoming gestures by announcing their presence, emerging from the shadows around the center-stage cabin: The Runaway Slaves First : We’ll be gone by nightfall Second : In case you’re wondering Third : We’re good honest people First : Just like you Ulysses We can’t help you but much[65] Deprived of the Less than Desirable Slaves, for whom he has brought gifts, Ulysses has lost a great portion of the intended audience for his heroic return. “Just like you” implies an equality Ulysses is reluctant to acknowledge. The Chorus splits the lines into their constituent parts, each in turn interrupting Ulysses’s performance. Moreover, “good” and “honest” replace heroic deeds here as merits. Such “ordinary virtues” were part and parcel of the sort of caretaking that went on as bloodlines were continuously broken and remade on antebellum plantations. “Kindness,” remarks Baptist, led slaves to “create families of all sorts, and to care for them, feed them, and teach them.” [66] Far from merely bringing superficial gifts, the Runaway slaves bring fugitivity, this desire for freedom outside the given rules of the stage-world. They are teaching Homer to write, one of great illegalities under slavery, and they will go on to convince Penny to “break the chain” binding her to Ulysses and leave with them. Ulysses’s oppositional gests continue as he gives Homer his gift, a white alabaster shoe-last [67] to somehow replace his missing foot. Ulysses found the shoe-last in a burnt-out store and he assures Homer that it is expensive: Ulysses Homer, this here’s for you From his satchel, he pulls out a foot, more like a shoe last, made of white alabaster. Homer A foot. The Runaway Slaves First : not dark enough Third : not yet Second : Not dark enough to jet.[68] The Runaway Slaves again interrupt, cutting into Ulysses’s gift-giving performance and underlining its absurd shortfall. They in fact repeat to Homer a refrain that was his own earlier in the scene (“it’s not dark enough yet/to jet”), again inciting him to be true to their shared convictions to escape. “It’s not dark enough” becomes a double entendre that cements the collective defiance of Ulysses’s white heroism. Since the alabaster shoe last is “expensive,” Homer is supposed to be happy with the white foot. Ulysses is blind to this disparity, expressing genuine surprise when Homer is not thrilled with this token gesture, clearly meant to assuage Ulysses’s personal guilt. “It’s not dark enough” refers not only to the foot itself, but also to the fading light of the day and its potential for transgression, for fugitivity, one in which Homer himself is becoming keenly invested. The Runaway Slaves, Penny, and Homer are in fact in the midst of forming a collective that is “dark enough” to escape to Freedom; they are giving a value to blackness outside of its marketplace price. They begin to articulate a fugitive culture that is what both Hartman and Jones term oppositional, “a culture [which] resists dominant ideologies, values, and action,” [69] here most specifically an individualism associated with capitalist valuation. “Dark enough/to jet” suggests that blackness may soon become radically black (jet), which will allow the Runaway Slaves (along with Homer and Penny) to steal themselves together. Ulysses’s desire to be a hero ultimately ensures his own tragic downfall. He cannot escape the equation of the hero with value, and, this idea of value insidiously affects how he sees his fellow slaves, including even Penny. Following his “heroic” gests, Ulysses prepares to read a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation which he has brought with him when he suddenly “ decides to discuss another matter instead. ” He announces after a Spell and a Rest that he has “brought something home for [himself]” [my emphasis]. [70] This “something” is in fact his new wife, Alberta. [71] He explains to Penny that he decided to marry someone else since they could not have children (he assumes it is her issue and is unaware that Penny has in fact become pregnant with Homer’s child in his absence). He even suggests that Penny might stay behind to help Alberta tend the house; the gift he has brought for Penny is, quite bluntly, a gardening spade. This misogynistic, dehumanizing vision of Alberta as a gift, as “something” for himself, specifically a thing that might allow him to sire children, and — together with Penny and her new spade — work his little piece of land, is alarmingly close to the Boss-Master’s own views of slaves as interchangeable property, as marketplace flesh to be bred. Moreover, as Paula Guerrero points out, he even withholds telling the slaves about their own proclaimed freedom to discuss a personal matter. [72] Despite his encounter with Smith and his momentary consideration of the radical stance of “belonging together,” he decides, ultimately, to remain a hero. As Penny retreats into the tiny cabin, the Runaway Slaves once more intervene. Moving out of the shadows, they come into the full lights of the scene as night begins to fall over the stage and the stage-light turns increasingly blue: Third : Inside, Penny makes up the marriage bed And in doing so she takes her place in a long line of the Wronged Come out of the house, true wife, true love, Second : Come with us First : Come with us Third : Come break the chain. (Rest) First : I wish it was dark enough Third : I wish it was dark enough Second : Dark enough to jet. First, second and third : Not yet Not yet Not yet Not yet. Homer It will be soon.[73] It is precisely this “collectivist yearning for liberation” remarks Jones, that directly “fueled black resistance to enslavement” [74] The Chorus implores Penny to break the long chain of inherited wrong and Homer, hearing his own refrain once more, provides a resounding affirmative that it is almost time to do so, ending the choral ode. [75] The messianic future tense of the ultimate line brings the ode into our own time, where it is still not “dark enough” but “will be soon.” We, too, are being asked to imagine a world otherwise. It is Penny, upon returning, who makes the final, resounding choice of the act, permanently rejecting the passive role of the original Penelope: she leaves Ulysses behind to head north with Homer and the Runaway Slaves. Ulysses has come home from the wars, but no audience remains, save his talking dog, for his heroism. Moreover, his first act of Freedom is to bury his former master, who never actually freed him. His plight remains resolutely tragic, and his tragic choice amounts to refusing to renounce his perceived exceptionalism. Yet even Ulysses ultimately retains a trace of this collectivity and the moment he shared with Smith in Part Two: he keeps Smith’s coat. This “truth” is the war-story Ulysses may one day tell his children, the truth of how he came to possess the coat, and it shall perhaps be a story about his one actually heroic act, which involved solidarity with another former slave. [76] Parks employs a series of strategic, gestic performances across all three parts of Father Comes Home from The Wars : all her characters are marked by the marketplace, and we witness performances that both reinforce that marking but also those which demonstrate collective, performed resistance to it. “The black radical imagination,” Robin Kelley remarks, “is a collective imagination…it is fundamentally a product of struggle, of victories and losses, crises and openings, and endless conversations circulating in a shared environment.” [77] Father Comes Home from The Wars consistently confronts its audience with these crises, but also points towards openings, towards a potential for transcendence: one may, in fact, steal one’s self and run with others, embracing fugitivity and a radical, collective improvisation in the face of the pervasive mark of the marketplace. One may also simply wear another man’s coat to remind one’s self of Freedom and its possibilities. We are forced to consider both choices. Parks’s use of her own, revised Epic form allows for a broad cultural critique about how the mark of the marketplace and its lasting legacies dehumanize all of her characters. If we need heroes to resolve the action, this says a lot about both the past and present state of things. “The heart of the thing won’t change easy or quick,” [78] as Private Smith opines, but Parks provides a space for fugitivity, allowing the audience space within the shared environment of the theatre to question the mark of the marketplace’s enduring legacies, perhaps engendering a radical blackness that is “dark enough” to destabilize them References [1] Several short plays in 365 Days/365 Plays do address the Civil War and its contemporaneity. Suzan-Lori Parks, 365 Days/365 Plays (New York: TCG, 2006). The genesis of Father Comes Home actually began with 365 Days/ 365 Plays , which features eleven different works with the title “Father Comes Home from the Wars.” Each features a series of fathers returning from various wars. The premiere production of Father Comes Home took place at the Public Theater in New York on 28 October 2014. The design and production personnel then transferred to the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, with a predominantly new cast. This was the production which I saw myself in Feb. 2015. Subsequently, it has been performed at various professional and non-professional venues both in the United States and abroad. [2] Many scholars have discussed both Lincoln works. See especially the chapter “Resurrecting Lincoln: The America Play and Topdog/Underdog in Deborah Geis, Suzan Lori Parks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008): 97-125; Verna Foster, ““Suzan-Lori Park’s Staging of the Lincoln Myth in The America Play and Topdog/Underdog,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 17, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 24-35. Works that discuss the two plays in tandem tend to focus primarily on the figure of Lincoln as opposed to the broader historical context of which he is a part. [3] Parks has remarked that the play will have a total of nine parts; the other two sections shall transpire during other wars. Suzan-Lori Parks, “The ART of Human Rights with Suzan-Lori Parks,” American Repertory Theatre, 18 February 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmB3fJRAroo . Harvard University streamed this talkback session after the play, which I also attended. [4] Parks, “ART of Human Rights.” [5] Suzan-Lori Parks, Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1,2 and 3 (New York: TCG, 2015), 98. [6] Erica R. Edwards, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2012), 20-21. [7] Paula Guerrero, “Reformulating Freedom: Slavery, Alienation and Ambivalence in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3 ) , ” Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media, no. 2, (2018): 46. [8] Paul Carter Harrison, “Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars: An Arrested Development , ” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 15, no 2 (Fall 2015): 33. [9] In Part three there are only three choral members and no leader. At least in the Public Theater and American Repertory Theatre productions, in part 3 the fourth choral member instead plays Hero’s talking, cross-eyed dog, Odd-See. [10] Elin Diamond, “Brechtian Theory/Feminist Theory: Towards a Gestic Feminist Criticism,” TDR 17, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 84. [11] Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 6. [12] Edward Baptist, The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 33, 245. [13] Cailtyn Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 126. [14] Rosenthal, 135. [15] Laura Dougherty, “ Father Comes Home from the Wars, by Suzan-Lori Parks,” Theatre Journal 67, no. 3 (Oct. 2015): 562. [16] Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 309. [17] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003), 6. [18] Moten, In the Break, 21. [19] Soyica Diggs Colbert, Black Movements. Performance and Cultural Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017 ), 2. [20] Robert Patterson, ““12 Years a What? Slavery, Representation and Black Cultural Politics in 12 Years a Slave, ” The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 24-25. [21] Hartman writes: “what are the constituents of agency when one’s social condition is defined by negation and personhood refigured in the fetishized and fungible terms of object or property?” Scenes of Subjection, 52. [22] Parks, Father Comes Home, 5. [23] Parks, Father Comes Home, 5. The character names are in bold in the original script. [24] Diamond, 90. [25] Harvey Young, “Choral Compassion: In the Blood and Venus, ” Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, ed. Kevin J Wetmore and Alycia Smith-Howard (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007): 41,44. [26] Parks, Father Comes Home, 10. [27] Moten, In the Break, 2. [28] Parks, Father Comes Home, 11. [29] Rosenthal 144. [30] Parks, Father Comes Home, 42. [31] Parks, Father Comes Home , 34. [32] Moten, In the Break, 89, 21. [33] To emphasize its importance, Parks consistently capitalizes Freedom in her text, so I am following that style in this essay. [34] Parks, Father Comes Home, 47. [35] Hartman, 69. [36] Parks, Father Comes Home, 51. [37] Hartman, 59, 61. [38] Hartman, 48. [39] Parks may be referencing the historical battle in fact called the Battle of the Wilderness , which was fought between Union and Confederate forces from 5-7 May 1864, and was inconclusive in its outcome. [40] Hartman, 37. [41] Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 211. [42] Roach, 215. [43] Diamond 89. Douglas Jones Jr. also elaborates on this theatre of the marketplace, which he calls the “shared communion in the rites of the slave market – the looking, stripping, touching, bantering and evaluating [in which] white men confirmed their commonality with the other men with whom they inspected the slaves.” Douglas Jones, Jr, “Slavery and the Design of the African-American Theatre,” The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre (Cambridge: UK, Cambridge University Press, 2013), 20. [44] Parks, Father Comes Home , 67. [45] Diamond, 90. [46] This was the same stump upon which Hero’s own foot was almost cut off in Part One of the ART production, to “take the edge off Boss’ Anger” when Hero at least initially decides he shall not go to the war. We can only assume it was also the stump upon which Homer’s own foot was cut off by Hero earlier. [47] Parks, Father Comes Home, 75. [48] Hartman, 38. She quotes L.M. Mills, a former slave: “when a negro was put on the block he and to help sell himself by telling what he could do. If he refused to sell himself and acted sullen, he was sure to be stripped and given thirty lashes.” [49] Parks, Father Comes Home , 79-80. [50] Parks, “Elements of Style,” 16. [51] Parks refusal to stage such violence on a larger scale is tactical. “If the scene of the beating readily lends itself to an identification with the enslaved, notes Hartman about Douglas’ description of the beating of Aunt Hester in the Narrative, “it does so at the risk of fixing and naturalizing this condition of pained embodiment,” 20. Parks distances us from the shallow empathy of seeing Hero stripped and beaten in favor of a more complex engagement with the material conditions of slavery. Additionally, Edward Baptist remarks that the slave auction was designed to “destroy the façade of negotiation with the enslaved and established a community of right-handed power,” 98. The Colonel’s brief, violent action helps to shatter this façade. [52] Parks, Father Comes Home, 80. [53] Parks, Father Comes Home, 96. [54] Michelle Norris, “Suzan-Lori Parks’ New Play, ‘Father Comes Home from the Wars,’” NPR, 5 Dec 2014, www.npr.org . www.npr.org/2014/12/05/368640540/suzan-lori-parks-new-play-father-comes-home-from-the-wars . [55] Diamond, 90. [56] Parks, “ART of Human Rights.” [57] Guerrero, 52. [58] Parks frequently employs such subversions within more monumental versions of white history. Perhaps the most well-known is the blonde beard the Foundling Father introduces into his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in The America Play , as “his fancy.” Parks, The America Play and Other Works (New York: TCG, 1994), 163 [59] Hartman, 61. [60] The title references Parks union of the varied strands of her play together, specifically the anticipated reunion of Penny and Hero (akin to Penelope and Odysseus/Ulysses in the Odyssey ), as well as the reunion of the country at the war’s conclusion. [61] Nadine M. Knight, “Penelope Gone to the War: The Violence of Home in Neverhome and Father Comes Home from the Wars, New Voices in Classical Reception Studies , no. 11 (2016): 37. [62] Jones, 25. [63] Moten, Stolen Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 131. [64] Parks, Father Comes Home, 141. [65] Parks, Father Comes Home, 143. [66] Baptist, 282. [67] a shoe-last is a foot mold used in making and repairing shoes. [68] Parks, Father Comes Home , 145. [69] Jones, 23. [70] Parks, Father Comes Home, 146-147. [71] Parks reminded the audience during a talkback at the American Repertory Theatre that Troy, the protagonist of August Wilson’s landmark 1985 play Fences , had a mistress named Alberta. Parks picked the name Alberta as Ulysses’ new wife without immediately realizing what she had done, but quickly ascertained that her own protagonist and his plight were “so woven into the groundwater of [her] personal cultural experience,” that the name and the associations it might call to mind in the audience had to stay. Parks, “The ART of Human Rights.”. Also a victim of historical circumstance, Troy never got to play baseball in the major leagues due to the color line. His own fall echoes Ulysses’s, as a series of choices he makes to play within the system as it is, but also to play selfishly, alienates him from his own family. [72] Guerrero, 52. [73] Parks, Father Comes Home, 152. [74] Jones, 20. [75] Edward Baptist speaks to the choral power of work-songs to literally save slaves from death by despair. Lucy Thurston remarked eighty years after her enslavement that when she was considering dropping down and dying, when “she could not bring herself to go on living by herself,“ her fellow slaves begin singing to her in a chorus. “I got happy,” she remarked, “and sang with the rest,” 147. [76] Parks remarked in the talkback that the idea for the play had begun with Hero possessing the two coats. She then wrote backwards to determine how he came by them. “ART of Human Rights.” [77] Robin Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon, 2002), 150. [78] Parks, Father Comes Home, 98. Footnotes About The Author(s) DR. MICHAEL JAROS is Associate Professor of English at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in dramatic literature. His research and publications focus primarily on Irish culture and performance in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as contemporary American drama. He holds a PhD from The University of California, San Diego. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Maureen McDonnell 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 Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Maureen McDonnell By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Alison Bechdel offered a complicated and compelling memoir in her graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006), adapted by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori into the Broadway musical Fun Home (2015). Both works presented an adult Bechdel reflecting on her father’s troubled life as a closeted gay man and his possible death by suicide. As Bechdel herself noted, “it’s not like a happy story, it’s not something that you would celebrate or be proud of.” [1] Bechdel’s coining of “tragicomic” as her book’s genre highlights its fraught narrative and its visual format indebted to “comics” rather than to comedy. Bechdel’s bleak overview of her father’s life and death served as a backdrop for a production that posited truthfulness as life-affirming and as a means of survival. Fun Home ’s marketers, however, imagined that being forthright about the production’s contents and its masculine lesbian protagonist would threaten the show’s entertainment and economic potential. It was noted before the show opened that “the promotional text for the show downplays the queer aspects,” a restriction that was by design. [2] According to Tom Greenwald, Fun Home ’s chief marketing strategist and the production’s strategy officer, the main advertising objective was to “make sure that it’s never ever associated specifically with the ‘plot or subject matter.’” Instead, the marketing team decided to frame the musical as a relatable story of a family “like yours.” [3] The marketers assumed that would-be playgoers would be uninterested in this tragic hero/ine if her sexuality were known. Ticket buyers who perceived the lesbian protagonist’s sexuality as a barrier to their “recognition of [her] humanity” risked not experiencing the subsequent ethical empathy that tragedy might elicit. [4] In the marketers’ efforts to circumvent the lesbophobia and taboos against suicide they imagined would-be playgoers might hold, they became complicit in such prejudices. As the production was met with commercial and critical success, a “both/and” marketing approach surfaced: that the production was both timeless and timely, with the production newly presented as a vehicle for affirming emerging legal gains for LGBTQ+ rights generally, and marriage equality in particular. This rising sensibility that lesbian characters and culture were commodifiable might justify future shifts from Broadway’s systematic exclusion of lesbian characters, even if for mercenary, capitalistic reasons. The creative team voiced their support of lesbians and their rights throughout the run, a departure from the endorsed narrative of Greenwald’s company. The producers began to echo the creative artists’ advocacy after two nearly simultaneous events: the production’s anniversary of winning five Tony Awards and the Orlando mass shooting as the deadliest incident of violence against LGBTQ+ people in US history. The producers’ commentary swerved in June 2016 when they began championing both the production and the communities it represented, albeit a year after the show’s critical reception was secure. These evolving campaigns suggest the vulnerability of productions that feature female actors playing sexual minorities and gender non-conforming characters. By featuring a butch lesbian as its lead, Fun Home was culturally revolutionary, providing a cultural—and commercial—landmark for mainstream musical theater. The musical featured three different actors performing the characters of Alison Bechdel: “small” Alison at 8, “medium” Alison at 19, and Alison at 43. The categorizations emphasized the characters’ visual differences (e.g. “small” versus “youngest”), in keeping with what may be a cartoonist’s default parameters. The adult Bechdel character served as a narrator, drawing at an artist’s table as she observed and commented on the memories enacted by her younger counterparts. An early line of Alison’s summarizes the plot: “Caption: Dad and I both grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town. And he was gay, and I was gay, and he killed himself, and I became a lesbian cartoonist” (“Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue”). [5] This expository line frontloaded the musical’s conclusion within the first eleven minutes of performance. [6] The musical’s disclosure was strikingly more efficient than that of the marketing team. It was only after Fun Home opened that Tom Greenwald revealed that the “marketing team jokingly referred to [the play] as a ‘lesbian suicide musical.’” [7] This inaccurate characterization invited misdirection of a familiar type. [8] Despite a long cultural history that presents lesbians as necessarily isolated, doomed, and suicidal, this production challenged those tropes by presenting a lesbian protagonist who survives the dramatic action. [9] This theatrical and biographical outcome indicates the political dimensions of Fun Home ’s tragedy, as its lack of an abject lesbian underscores that the tragic lesbian figure is conjured and constructed rather than fixed and innate. The team’s “joke” not only reinforced a stereotypical narrative about lesbian death, but also suggested that they saw the narrative arc of Bruce Bechdel (Alison Bechdel’s father) upstaging that of his daughter (it is Bruce who dies by suicide in the musical). Despite the decentering and misrepresentation of Alison Bechdel’s character, playgoers would have been able to easily learn that this dramatic protagonist’s real-life counterpart helped shape this creative narrative rather than becoming a victim of it. The marketing team’s omission of Alison Bechdel from the promotional campaign was perhaps motivated by their desire to make the show more broadly appealing to investors by erasing her sexuality and survival. Such concerns about financial solvency reflected the financial structure of 21 st century Broadway productions, a time in which corporate interests frequently override artistic innovation. [10] Theater scholar Steven Adler writes of this trend, noting that production often depended upon partnerships, sometimes with the powerful real estate moguls who owned the theaters, [which] provided the best means of mounting shows. Corporations, with extensive financial and marketing resources, recognized fertile territory in the hardscrabble of midtown Manhattan and joined the fray. A Broadway presence might bolster the corporate brand, as with Disney. [11] Disney-authorized productions are sometimes called “McMusicals” (a term that emphasizes the production’s consumability) or “technomusicals,” which theater director and scholar John Bush Jones describes as “a phenomenon . . . driven by visual spectacle” and “engender[ing] little or no thinking at all.” [12] Such spectacles are often mined from popular movies and books whose familiarity allows productions to draw upon already established fan bases. American musical scholar Elizabeth Wollman points out that these moments of: synergy allow[] a company to sell itself along with any product it hawks. The Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast , for example, can be mentioned in Disney films and television shows, or advertised on Disney-owned radio stations. Disney musicals can also serve as advertisements for one another.[13] Wollman notes that “shows with corporate backing can now be hyped internationally in myriad ways long before a theatrical property begins its run,” a factor that contributes to Broadway functioning as a “global crossroads, populated by transnational corporations catering to tourists.” [14] Given that only one in five Broadway shows recoup their initial investment, derivative productions and revivals included, the marketing campaign reflects both the financial precariousness of theater generally and reticence about Fun Home ’s cultural content specifically. Investor caution is especially warranted with musicals, particularly if they are new. Commercial houses rarely undertake such efforts. Instead, creative teams who wish to develop those works mostly rely on non-profit theaters whose educational and artistic missions state their willingness to sustain financial loss. Such collaborations can be contentious, as revealed by Ars Nova’s decision to file suit for breach of contract over their billing after their production Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 transferred to Broadway in 2016, or result in a commercial juggernaut like Hamilton. [15] Fun Home ’s move from the Public Theater to Broadway was underwritten by three primary producers, Kristen Caskey, Barbara Whitman, and Mike Isaacson. In an interview published shortly after their investment was recouped, the producers provided a thumbnail sketch of the skepticism people held towards the production: “They said we were insane to do this,” said Mike Isaacson. “Really? You’re bringing that to Broadway?” recalled Barbara Whitman. “I think crazy was the word we heard most,” said Kristin Caskey.[16] Admittedly, the producers’ diction may have been only unintentionally ableist. But such comments problematically echoed the disproven historical notion that people who were sexual minorities were mentally ill, another suggestion of discomfort about Fun Home ’s treatment of sexuality from people outside of the creative team. [17] Such stereotypical conflation of “insanity” and lesbianism re-produced the specter of the tragic lesbian the producers attempted to discard. Frank disclosures aren’t the only way lesbianism surfaces within Broadway musicals. Musical theater scholar Stacy Wolf’s generative work invites playgoers to deploy “a spectatorial/auditorial ‘lesbian’ position that is not essentialist but rather performative: any willing, willful spectator may embody such a position of lesbian spectatorship” which can “lesbianize” the text. [18] Fun Home extends itself beyond presenting a “hypothetical lesbian heroine” because its protagonist’s sexuality is not solely dependent on viewers decoding subtext or deploying Wolf’s rhetorical techniques but is additionally affirmed by depicting the character Alison’s queer childhood and subsequent coming out. [19] Moreover, Fun Home offers an androcentric lead, a break from Broadway’s dominant tradition. Fun Home ’s departure from highlighting feminine lesbians risks what literature scholar Ann M. Ciasullo cautions against: dehumanizing the butch lesbian who is imagined as “too dangerous, too loaded a figure to be represented.” [20] However, one of the chief innovations of Fun Home was its butch lesbian lead. Instead of functioning as a surrogate or scapegoat, the theatrical Alisons’ desires “lead the way to a different future” rather than “fasten[ing]” lesbians “to the image of the past.” [21] This theatrical breakthrough appears nowhere in the advertising campaign. In their attempts to de-lesbianize the production, the marketers buried both the lede and the lead. There have been other musicals that prominently include identifiable lesbian characters, although that misrepresentation is often uneven at best and sometimes presents lesbian characters whose sole function seems to be as “the object of the show’s most unsavory jokes.” [22] Lisa Kron, the lyricist and book writer for Fun Home , revealed her response to what she saw as a trend: “there was a moment where someone would say the word lesbian as a non sequitur because it was funny. I’d be so on board, and then I’d be slapped in the face by it. It was just like, This character’s a joke. This is not a person .” [23] Within the production, actor Beth Malone navigated this pitfall when delivering adult Alison’s line that someone she saw briefly as a child was “an old-school butch.” Malone explained her delivery of this line and her efforts to recuperate that term as follows: When I say the word “butch,” I say it with the color of, like I’m saying the word supermodel. Because from my lens, the word butch is the most beautiful adjective I can come up with. “Oh my God, she was an old-school butch !” Like satisfying words coming out of your mouth. Still, it gets titters because the word “butch” is a punch line. For every other show that has ever existed, “butch” and “dyke” have been a punch line for the end of a gay man’s joke. So now we are taking that word, like the word queer, we’re owning it and saying, butch is a beautiful thing.[24] In Malone’s account, her artistic and activist sensibilities converged in playing this role. Such moments are bolstered because Fun Home featured a number of queer characters who are not solely defined by their orientation or gender identity, and whose presence is important for the plot. [25] Although these features were present in other productions, the non-existent track record for butch-centered musicals indicates an asymmetrical Broadway history characterized by sexism and lesbophobia. If we compare Fun Home with another contemporary musical with an LGBTQ+ lead character, Kinky Boots is an apt choice. Based on a 2005 film inspired by true events, Kinky Boots took thirty weeks to recoup its $13.5 million investment, roughly the same timeline as Fun Home (which had lower ticket prices). [26] Kinky Boots had a fuller theatrical tradition than Fun Home to draw upon: male actors inherit a variety of gendered performance traditions, theatrical practices that are increasingly familiar to and co-opted by straight playgoers. [27] Gay male leads and gender non-conforming characters played by male actors are not new features of musicals. (Consider this partial history: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Rent, Kiss of the Spider Woman, La Cage Aux Folles, Falsettos, A Chorus Line, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Avenue Q, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Spring Awakening, and Cabaret .) Stacy Wolf usefully points out a key difference between this theatrical tradition and the one women inherit, noting that “the visibility of white gay men’s alliance with musicals stems in part from capital (cultural and real) and the general visibility of a relatively identifiable affluent, urban, white, gay male culture.” [28] This disparity in capital was indicated in material ways by Fun Home ’s relatively small cast of nine, orchestra of seven, and slim advertising budget, all of which kept production costs low. Kinky Boots ’ cast was more than three times the size of Fun Home ’s, and had an orchestra of thirteen musicians. The diverging cultural capital of gay men and lesbians also surfaced in the showcasing of the titular “kinky boots” in that production’s poster campaign, and the cloaking of Bechdel’s experience within that of Fun Home , whose posters evoked the colors of the 1970s in color values too deep to invoke a rainbow flag. [29] The advertisements for Kinky Boots flaunted sexual and gender transgressiveness whereas Fun Home ’s marketers closeted their characters. Fun Home ’s marketing team was not alone in minimizing its connection with underrepresented groups outside of Broadway’s cultural mainstream. For instance, Hamilton ’s producers deliberately distanced Hamilton from the hip hop music and culture that influenced Lin-Manuel Miranda’s show, a redirection that included a name change of the show itself from Hamilton Mixtape despite his earlier hit In the Heights . [30] (Bechdel’s book title, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic , was also abridged.) Such concerns about a production’s broad appeal surface in Fun Home ’s production history, as seen in one critic’s question: “Is America ready for a musical about a middle-aged, butch lesbian?” [31] This hesitancy was echoed by the creative team and by Bechdel, who drily noted that “Lesbians are inherently uncommodifiable. . . . It’s a gift.” [32] Bechdel, in her suggestion that being imagined as uncommodifiable offers lesbians a way to resist being dehumanized, echoes the precise concern of Fun Home ’s marketers. In other words, Bechdel doesn’t realize how right the marketers imagined her to be: she hits a nerve along with her punchline. Lisa Kron discussed this concern after the musical won the 2015 Tony Award: We were constantly having to rewrite the assumed narrative, which was that this was not commercially viable. Because it’s a serious piece of work. You know, it’s not a pure entertainment, even though it is very entertaining. Because it was written by women, because it not only focuses on women characters but lesbian characters and more than that has a butch lesbian protagonist.[33] Kron clearly states her diagnosis of people’s reticence about the show’s viability: misogyny and lesbophobia, particularly towards masculine lesbians. Within that interview, Kron revealed the persistence of that narrative, even after the show was hitting crucial markers of success: Even when we were succeeding, even when it had had a successful run at the Public and we were selling tickets on Broadway, still the question was being asked “do you think this will work on Broadway?” These financial concerns lingered, despite the production’s relatively quick financial solvency. The investors of Fun Home recouped their investment of $5.25 million dollars within eight months. [34] The tour also returned its investment within eight months, benchmarks that belie the supposed need to commercially closet Fun Home. [35] The marketing of Fun Home reveals a two-pronged approach. The first tactic universalized the musical. The subsequent tactic encouraged playgoers to see the production as politically engaged. In one article, readers are told that: The subject matter, obviously, is a complication in a Broadway market dominated by lighter material. The show’s producers, Kristin Caskey, Mike Isaacson and Barbara Whitman, who raised $5.2 million [sic] to finance the Broadway transfer, are emphasizing the father-daughter relationship and journey of self-discovery, rather than the sexuality, the suicide or the fact that Alison’s father ran a funeral home (“Fun Home” was the Bechdel children’s nickname for the business).[36] Occasionally members of the creative reinforced the producers’ tenet that Fun Home is about a generic family whose story resulted in a “father-daughter heartbreaker.” [37] Judy Kuhn, who played Alison’s mother, Helen, appeared in a promo saying that “[e]verybody can relate to [the play] because everybody has a family.” [38] Elsewhere, the investor Kristin Caskey suggested that the musical offers an opportunity for “seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.” [39] Caskey volunteered that: this is how I saw the show: It was about a child and her relationship with a parent, and as she became an adult, how she came to peace with how she saw that parent. . . . I think a broad audience can relate to that, and will give the show a chance to be commercial.[40] Caskey’s comments removed gender and sexuality as factors within the theatrical work, suggesting their irrelevance for audiences. This sidestepping so overgeneralized the musical’s protagonist and her narrative arc that it nearly misrepresents the show. By the production’s end, the producing team detoured from its initial, sanitizing premise of the musical’s universal family to advance a counternarrative: that the show served as a cultural milestone. These antithetical approaches— that the production was both ahistorical and historically prescient—occurred concurrently during the Broadway run. As Fun Home prepared to move to Broadway from the Public Theater the notoriety of Bechdel’s book became a promotional tool, although not an automatically synergistic or positive one. [41] In February 2014, the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina Upstate announced that Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic would be part of their optional summer reading programs. Politicians responded by voting to defund those public colleges. Rep. Garry Smith, R-Greenville, justified his vote by explaining that the book “goes beyond the pale of academic debate. It graphically shows lesbian acts.” [42] (Readers who pick up Bechdel’s book expecting pornography might be disappointed to find relatively few anatomical moments, aside from her drawing of a male corpse in her father’s embalming studio.) Alison Bechdel and the production team went to South Carolina in April 2014 so that the cast could perform part of the musical as the six-month censorship debate was swirling. [43] This unanticipated pre-Broadway debut “tour” marked a pivot: the creative team began to directly comment on and interact with the censorship debate even as Fun Home ’s marketing products featured no references likely to cause controversy. The production’s responsiveness escalated in the upcoming months: the cast put Fun Home in dialogue with real-time national debates about marriage equality. The play opened a few days before the US Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments about the Obergefell v. Hodges case. Beth Malone commented on this timing in an interview given before the court decision: Right now, the Supreme Court is arguing for our rights as human beings, and I’m going home to my wife tonight who I married in a court of law in New York City. This is a time in our lives. This is quite a time. This is quite a season.[44] Fun Home ’s actors commented on that case in front of larger audiences as well. As he delivered his Tony speech for playing Bruce, Michael Cerveris spoke of his “hope” that the Supreme Court would support LGBTQ+ citizens’ right to marriage. [45] Eighteen days later when the court confirmed marriage equality, the evening’s performance included a new prop: a rainbow flag brought on to stage after the bows. Beth Malone put the flag around her and did a victory lap around the stage, before saying “What an amazing time to be an American. We owe this night to the people who came before us.” [46] In other interviews, Malone specified the activist and artistic pasts to which she felt indebted: The only reason Fun Home itself can be a mainstream Broadway show is because of the fringe work of my sisters that came before me, like the Five Lesbian Brothers, doing this downtown theatre that was so edgy and it was happening in the margins. The margins had to exist for a really long time before it incrementally crept toward the center.[47] After the Supreme Court passed this civil rights case in June 2015, Fun Home began to be included in publications marketed towards LGBTQ+ readers. One such instance was the article within Out magazine that exclusively featured the actors who identified as lesbian or gay in the Broadway production (Beth Malone, Roberta Colindrez, and Joel Perez) alongside Bechdel and Kron. [48] In another produced segment, Malone appears with her wife in a video that features her Fun Home pre-performance commute. [49] These curated moments provided evidence for Malone’s sense that lesbian rights are moving towards “the center” of public sympathy and support. The marketing of Fun Home as proof of American exceptionalism to seventeen ambassadors from the United Nations in March 2016 also hinted at a newfound security for LGBTQ+ people. [50] Three months later, however, Fun Home responded to an intensely harmful event that targeted LGBTQ+ people. The crimes committed at Pulse (a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida) resulted in the deaths of forty-nine victims and the wounding of fifty-eight other people. This event sparked a number of responses from Broadway workers, including at the Tony Awards which were held on the day of the attacks (12 June 2016) as scheduled. Although individual Broadway actors participated in an Orlando tribute, Fun Home was the only production to travel to Florida to be physically present with the victims, survivors, and their families. [51] Beth Malone and Michael Cerveris each wrote publicly about this pilgrimage in tones consonant with the LGBTQ+ advocacy they articulated before the production’s run. [52] The producers’ willingness to highlight the LGBTQ+ themes of the production was newly evident: Mike Isaacson : “For our company, there is no choice but to respond with what we have, what we know, and the belief that it leads to something.” Barbara Whitman : “I think we all had that same reaction: What can we do? This is something we can actually do.” Kristin Caskey : “It was one of those perfect moments where everyone aligned and did so quite quickly, understanding that many of the ideas and themes within ‘Fun Home’ would be a perfect gift and a way for the community to come together in advocation for LGBT rights.”[53] Their unified perspective diverged from Tom Greenwald’s earlier recommendation to “never ever associat[e] [the play] with . . . the subject matter.” At this moment, some fourteen months after the show opened on Broadway, the producers unambiguously voiced their objection to the homophobic and lesbophobic crimes. [54] Particularly striking is Caskey’s transition in framing Fun Home : the show is no longer about “a child and her relationship with a parent,” but a “gift . . . for the community to come together in advocation for LGBT rights,” with her suggestion that the artistic production and political advocacy were linked. The trio continued this pattern of speaking to LGBTQ+ people when in Orlando, writing in a joint statement that “as the first musical with a lesbian protagonist, we so often hear from audience members at ‘Fun Home’ that it was the first time they saw themselves represented on a Broadway stage. We all feel so helpless, but hopefully this will allow us to give back to the LGBT community in this tiny way.” [55] Here, the protagonist’s identity was presented as a pioneering choice, rather than a detail that needed to be hidden. Moreover, the producers acknowledged their debt to the LGBT community rather than distancing the show from that community. Such a development from reticence and repression to an overt championing of LGBTQ+ individuals’ rights was remarkable and challenged the historical pattern of excluding lesbian characters from Broadway stages. These actions that openly acknowledge and affirm the production’s debt to LGBTQ+ artists speak to the gains that the production enabled. Ceveris and Bechdel offer ways to see the historical context of the run. Michael Ceveris says: We’ve played through an extraordinary moment in our country’s history and the most progressive and heartening ways and the most retroactive and terrifying ways. We played through the Supreme Court’s decision, we played through the naming of the first national monument to gay and lesbian rights, and we played through a massacre that was horrific enough in itself and in its aftermath, when some of the hatred and reactionary comments that were made were just as horrifying. If there was ever a play that arrived on Broadway in the moment it was most needed, I think this would be it.[56] Ceveris encapsulated his perspective of the show as a necessary one. Bechdel’s comments featured her characteristic ambivalence: it’s a funny moment. It’s a very funny moment for LGBT culture and civil rights right now. I feel like the play and the success of the play is very much tied into what’s happening in the culture.[57] Like Bechdel in her emphasis of the production’s connection with the contemporary moment, Fun Home ’s composer Jeanine Tesori spoke of production’s role in advancing agendas outside the theater: And so I think that this has met our time, it’s a musical of our time. It makes me think . . . it’s available, what else can it do? What are the next stages? Where are we, what can we express [in] that conversation, the global conversation, the national conversation?[58] The answers to Tesori’s questions are forthcoming: it remains to be seen what artistic and commercial risks might be undertaken to create a more diverse, inclusive theatrical tradition for women actors to inhabit. Despite the censorship that characterized Fun Home ‘s early promotion, the producers ultimately reckoned with a literal tragedy that befell LGBTQ+ people. This transition suggests a recognition that tragedies can be spurred by settings, such as a homophobic society, rather than by LGBTQ+ people’s existence. Fun Home ultimately offered a way forward for a more varied performance history and for productive interplay between onstage representation and offstage politics. Fun Home ’s temporal context offers a useful demarcation of the interplay between civic and theatrical tragedies, and the creative ways that theater can elicit empathy. References [1] StuckinVermont, “Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home on Broadway,” 11:49, YouTube , 22 April 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9vD7Nc0L3k (accessed 1 May 2017). [2] Sarah Mirk, “Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home’ Will Now be a New York Musical,” Bitch Media , 11 October 2013, www.bitchmedia.org/post/alison-bechdels-fun-home-will-now-be-a-new-york-musical (accessed 17 January 2017). [3] Kalle Oskari Matilla, “Selling Queerness: The Curious Case of Fun Home ,” The Atlantic , 25 April 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/branding-queerness-the-curious-case-of-fun-home/479532/ (accessed 21 August 2016). [4] Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 334. [5] This line was taken from a “Stuck in Vermont” interview with Bechdel in 2008. Bechdel’s comment appears around 4:50 minutes into the clip. The varied sources for the musical suggest the creative team’s early openness to Bechdel’s contributions beyond the published pages of her visual memoir. StuckinVermont, “Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home on Broadway.” [6] According to Robert Petkoff, the actor playing Alison’s father during the tour, the content of the show remained a surprise to some playgoers: “There are people in the audience who are like, ‘What?! I saw kids dancing on the poster—this doesn’t seem to be that story!’” Lori McCue, “The star and designer of ‘Fun Home’ on how their show still surprises audiences,” The Washington Post , 27 April 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2017/04/27/the-star-and-designer-of-fun-home-on-how-their-show-still-surprises-audiences/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.80af729129a9 (accessed 20 July 2017). [7] Matilla, “Selling Queerness.” [8] Heather K. Love charts this genealogy in “Spectacular Failure: The Figure of the Lesbian in ‘Mulholland Drive,’” New Literary History 35, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 120–22. [9] The phrase “Bury your gays” serves as a shorthand for this narrative in popular media. GLAAD (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) provides data on the occurrence and type of LGBTQ+ representations on film and TV. See their Studio Responsibility Index for film data (www.glaad.org/sri/2018), and the “Where We Are On TV” reports (www.glaad.org/tags/where-we-are-tv). [10] Steven Adler, “Box Office,” The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical , eds. Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, and Stacy Wolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 356. [11] Ibid., 352. [12] Quoted in Mark N. Grant, “The Age of McMusicals,” The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical (Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 304–15. Jones’s primary examples of the category “technomusical” are Disney productions and those affiliated with Andrew Lloyd Webber. [13] Elizabeth Wollman, The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 145. [14] Ibid., 145, 144. [15] Michael Sokolove profiles Hamilton ’s producer Jeffrey Seller in “The C.E.O. of ‘Hamilton’ Inc.,” The New York Times , 5 April 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/magazine/the-ceo-of-hamilton-inc.html (accessed 10 May 2018). For an overview of the Great Comet attribute dispute and resolution see the following: Michael Paulson, “Three Words Lead to a Battle Over ‘Great Comet’ on Broadway,” The New York Times , 19 October 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/theater/three-words-lead-to-a-battle-over-great-comet-on-broadway.html (accessed 17 May 2018); Michael Gioia, “ Great Comet Billing Dispute Prompts Lawsuit,” Playbill , 28 October 2016, www.playbill.com/article/ars-nova-sues-great-comet-producers-and-explains-why-were-taking-a-stand (accessed 17 May 2018); Michael Paulson, “Dispute at ‘Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812’ Leads to a Lawsuit,” New York Times , 30 October 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/theater/dispute-at-natasha-pierre-the-great-comet-of-1812-leads-to-lawsuit.html (accessed 17 May 2018); Jeremy Girard, “Peace Now: ‘Natasha, Pierre’ Production and Non-Profit Group Agree to Secret Deal,” Deadline, 2 November 2016, www.deadline.com/2016/11/broadway-lawsuit-natasha-pierre-josh-groban-1201845138/ (accessed 17 May 2018). [16] Michael Paulson, “‘Fun Home’ Recoups on Broadway,” The New York Times , 13 December 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/theater/fun-home-recoups-on-broadway.html (accessed 3 June 2016). Caskey repeated the characterization of the show as “crazy” in her conversation with Whitman preserved at Story Corps. “Fun Home producers Barbara Whitman and Kristen Caskey,” Story Corps , 1 April 2016, www.archive.storycorps.org/interviews/fun-home-co-producers-barbara-whitman-and-kristin-caskey/ (accessed 14 June 2018). After the Tony Awards, Isaacson repeated this diction: “Everybody had been telling us we were crazy, even stupid” (Paulson, “Winning”). As the production went on tour within the US, Isaacson described the “whole endeavor [as] a crazy leap of faith” (Moffit, “Taking on ‘tough stuff’”). Michael Paulson, “‘Fun Home’ Finds That Winning a Tony is the Best Way to Market a Musical,” The New York Times , 9 June 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/theater/theaterspecial/fun-home-finds-that-winning-a-tony-is-the-best-way-to-market-a-musical.html (accessed 15 June 2015). Kelly Moffit, “Taking on ‘tough stuff’ with beauty, talent, humor: St. Louis-produced ‘Fun Home’ opens at The Fox,” St. Louis Public Radio , 17 November 2016, www.news.stlpublicradio.org/post/taking-tough-stuff-beauty-talent-humor-st-louis-produced-fun-home-opens-fox (accessed 21 August 2018). [17] The American Psychiatric Association included homosexuality in the second and third editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . The classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder was omitted in their 1987 volume. Neel Burton, “When Homosexuality Stopped Being a Mental Disorder,” Psychology Today , 18 September 2015, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-mental-disorder (accessed 20 August 2018). [18] Stacy Wolf, “‘Never Gonna Be a Man/Catch Me if You Can/I Won’t Grow Up’: A Lesbian Account of Mary Martin as Peter Pan,” Theatre Journal 49, no. 4 (1997): 494. She uses “lesbianize” as a verb in A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 26. This claim about audience reception is also a starting point for Wolf’s book-length projects, including Changed for Good , in which Wolf argues that Wicked musically and visually codes Elphaba and Glinda as the show’s central couple. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). [19] Chris Straayer’s phrase describes viewers’ willful interpretations of texts that do not secure the character’s sexuality or heroism. “The Hypothetical Lesbian Heroine in Narrative Feature Film,” in Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Essays on Popular Culture , eds. Corey K. Creekmur and Alexander Doty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 44–69. [20] Ann M. Ciasullo, “Making Her (In)Visible: Cultural Representations of Lesbianism and the Lesbian Body in the 1990s,” Feminist Studies 27, no. 3 (2001): 605. [21] Love, “Spectacular Failure,” 129. In the footnote that follows this sentence, Love references Elizabeth Freeman’s “Packing History, Count(er)ing Generations,” New Literary History 31 (2000): 727–44. [22] Ben Brantley, “Candy Worship in the Temple of the Prom Queen,” The New York Times , 20 April 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/theater/reviews/30blon.html (accessed 9 June 2016). In Stagestruck , playwright Sarah Schulman offers a productive overview of lesbian theatrical context and the ways that lesbian characters are considered more commodifiable when presented from non-lesbian playwrights, with Rent as a key example. Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). [23] Mirk, “Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home.’” [24] Adam Hetrick, “For Beth Malone, ‘Butch is a Beautiful Thing’—What This Fun Home Star Learned Playing Lesbian,” Playbill , 29 June 2015, www.playbill.com/news/article/for-beth-malone-butch-is-a-beautiful-thing-what-this-fun-home-star-learned-playing-lesbian-351968 (accessed 1 July 2015). [25] These are key features of “The Vito Russo Test.” See “The Vito Russo Test,” GLAAD, www.glaad.org/sri/2018/vitorusso (accessed 14 August 2018). [26] Andrew Gans, “Tony-Winning Musical Kinky Boots Recoups Initial Investment,” Playbill , 3 October 2013, www.playbill.com/article/tony-winning-musical-kinky-boots-recoups-initial-investment-com-210206 (accessed 19 June 2017). According to Brent Lang, the recuperation happened in large part because of the high costs of Kinky Boots tickets. “ Kinky Boots Recoups $13.5 Investment,” The Wrap , 3 October 2013, www.thewrap.com/kinky-boots-recoups-13-5m-investment/ (accessed 19 June 2017). For additional context, Rent recouped in fifteen weeks, Avenue Q took forty weeks, and Matilda took some nineteen months to recoup its $16 million capitalization (Adler, “Box Office,” 352). Fun Home ’s cost of $5.25 million in 2015 was less than that of Spring Awakening in 2007, which cost $6 million. Spring Awakening ’s production team was concerned that their box office might suffer from their production’s content: like Fun Home , that musical includes suicide, adult language, homoeroticism, and teenage sexuality. For Matilda box office details, see David Cox, “Broadway Musical ‘Matilda’ Turns a Profit,” Variety , 5 December 2014, www.variety.com/2014/legit/news/matilda-recoups-broadway-musical-1201372084/. For all other box office details, see Adler, “Box Office,” 352. [27] Michael Ceveris, incidentally, “set the record for playing the most performances as the East German rock ‘n’ roll singer Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” For information on Ceveris’s record, see Carey Purcell, “Michael Ceveris on the Closing of Fun Home: ‘It Arrived on Broadway in the Moment it Was Most Needed,’” Out, 22 August 2016, www.out.com/theater-dance/2016/8/22/michael-cerveris-closing-fun-home-it-arrived-broadway-moment-it-was-most (accessed 12 February 2017). [28] Stacy Wolf, “The Queer Pleasures of Mary Martin and Broadway: The Sound of Music as a Lesbian Musical,” Modern Drama 39, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 52. [29] Other details specific to Bechdel’s experience were stripped from the campaign. Whereas the cover for Bechdel’s book referenced the family’s funeral home, including a Mass card reappropriated as her book title, the musical’s poster omitted that background and that prop. [30] See Sokolove, “The C.E.O. of ‘Hamilton’, Inc.,” where Jeffrey Seller characterized the name change as a result of “gentle but persistent prodding before Miranda finally agreed.” Patricia Herrera writes about the ways in which Hamilton “proclaims an inclusive narrative of American identity that obscures the histories of racism that are at the base of so much of the American experience,” as well as the promotional distance from the show’s “acoustic environment shaped by Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American musical, oral, visual, and dance forms and practices.” Patricia Herrera, “Reckoning with America’s Racial Past, Present, and Future in Hamilton ,” in Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past , eds. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), 262, 260. [31] June Thomas, “ Fun Home Won Five Tonys. How Did a Graphic Memoir Become a Musical?” Slate , 8 June 2015, www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2013/10/08/fun_home_is_america_ready_for_a_musical_about_a_butch_lesbian.html (accessed 21 April 2017). [32] Rae Binstock, “Why Lesbian Spaces Will Always Be in Danger of Closing, and Why Some Will Always Survive,” Slate , 20 December 2016, www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/12/20/why_do_lesbian_spaces_have_such_a_hard_time_staying_in_business.html (accessed 21 April 2017). [33] “Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home’: The Coming-Out Memoir That Became a Hit Broadway Musical,” Democracy Now! , 30 July 2015, www.democracynow.org/2015/7/30/alison_bechdels_fun_home_the_coming (accessed 14 May 2017). [34] Paulson, “‘Fun Home’ Recoups.” [35] Andrew Gans, “National Tour of Fun Home Recoups Investment,” Playbill , 17 May 2017, www.playbill.com/article/national-tour-of-fun-home-recoups-investment (accessed 19 June 2017). [36] Paulson, “‘Fun Home’ Recoups.” [37] Patrick Healey, “Moving Your Show to Broadway? Not So Fast,” The New York Times , 8 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/theater/theaterspecial/moving-your-show-to-broadway-not-so-fast.html (accessed 2 May 2017). [38] “Life with Father! Learn the True Tale Behind the New Broadway Musical Fun Home ,” Broadway.com , 23 March 2015, www.broadway.com/buzz/180076/life-with-father-learn-the-true-tale-behind-the-new-broadway-musical-fun-home/ (accessed 13 March 2017). [39] Paulson, “Tonys.” Kristen Caskey was played off by the orchestra in the midst of her acceptance speech. Lisa Kron’s acceptance speech was not televised, but can be found here: Jerry Portwood, “ Fun Home was the big musical winner at the awards,” Out , 8 June 2016, www.out.com/popnography/2015/6/08/watch-lisa-kron-gives-moving-tonys-acceptance-speech (accessed 9 June 2016). [40] Healy, “Moving.” [41] The Public Theater’s Public Lab held a run of Fun Home in 2012 in their Newman theater, and a subsequent off-Broadway run at the Public Theater that began in September 2014. Manuel Betancourt, “From the Public to Broadway: Fun Home ’s Growing Pains,” HowlRound , 22 October 2015, www.howlround.com/from-the-public-to-broadway-fun-home-s-growing-pains (accessed 27 August 2018). [42] Betsy Gomez provides commentary on this provision, which “mandates that students be allowed to avoid encountering educational material they find ‘objectionable based on a sincerely held religious, moral, or cultural belief.’” Betsy Gomez, “This Compromise Is Not Acceptable: CBLDF Joins Coalition Condemning South Carolina Budget Provision,” Comic Book Legal Defense Fund , 13 June 2014, www.cbldf.org/2014/06/this-compromise-is-not-acceptable-cbldf-joins-coalition-questioning-south-carolina-budget-provision/ (accessed 22 May 2017). [43] Democracy Now! , “Alison Bechdel’s ’Fun Home.’” [44] Hetrick, “Butch is a Beautiful Thing.” [45] Michael Ceveris gave the speech on 8 June 2015. Michael Musto, “Lesbian Musical Crushes Gershwin Show, and Other Tony Awards Revelations,” Out , 8 June 2015, www.out.com/michael-musto/2015/6/08/lesbian-musical-fun-home-crushes-gershwin-show-tony-awards-revelations (accessed 10 June 2015). [46] These moments have been preserved by the production team, and can be easily accessed on their webpage. The Playbill Video site shows Kron commenting that the play is “at the cusp of an evolving opening moment.” Playbill Video, “Lisa Kron, Michael Cerveris, Judy Kuhn and Emily Skeggs Have Fun Talking “Fun Home” at BroadwayCon!,” 7:51, YouTube , 3 February 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdltIKzwLUk (accessed 13 March 2016). [47] Hetrick, “Butch is a Beautiful Thing.” [48] “Out100: The Fun Home Family,” Out , 9 November 2015, www.out.com/out100-2015/2015/11/09/out100-fun-home-family (accessed 17 May 2016). The shoot includes a stylist, an approach reminiscent of some of Rent ’s promotion techniques which included clothing lines at Manhattan’s Bloomingdales and fashion spreads featuring the cast. See Michael Riedel, “Available at Bloomies: The ‘Rent’ Rags Can Be Yours—For a Price,” New York Daily News, 30 April 1996, 35. [49] Theatre Mania, “A Day with Fun Home Star Beth Malone,” 6:35, YouTube , 30 September 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hQw_uwzJCc (accessed 3 June 2016). [50] As Matilla notes, US Ambassador Samantha Powers took her colleagues to this event in May 2016, see “Selling Queerness.” [51] Carmen Triola, “‘Fun Home’ Is Going to Orlando to Perform a Benefit Concert for Pulse Shooting Victims,” FlavorWire , 6 July 2016, www.flavorwire.com/583516/fun-home-is-going-to-orlando-to-perform-a-benefit-concert-for-pulse-shooting-victims (accessed 22 July 2016). [52] For additional reports of this trip, see the following: “Broadway’s ‘Fun Home’ Cast Sets Benefit Performance for Orlando Victims,” Hollywood Reporter , 5 July 2016, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/broadways-fun-home-cast-sets-908612 (accessed 11 April 2018); Michael Ceveris, “Taking ‘Fun Home’ to Orlando for a Catharsis Onstage and Off,” The New York Times , 6 August 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/theater/taking-fun-home-to-orlando-for-a-catharsis-onstage-and-off.html (accessed 11 April 2018); Hal Boedecker, “Pulse benefit: Broadway’s ‘Fun Home’ plays Orlando,” Orlando Sentinel , 5 July 2016, www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/tv/tv-guy/os-pulse-benefit-broadway-s-fun-home-plays-orlando-20160705-story.html (accessed 11 April 2018). [53] Mark Kennedy, “Broadway’s ‘Fun Home’ cast sets benefit for Orlando victims,” AP News , 5 July 2016, wwwapnews.com/c90a05bc88204ae4950c0ada08bf48e8 (accessed 22 July 2016). [54] After their advocacy, Isaacson was awarded an Equality Award from the St. Louis chapter of the Human Rights Campaign, and Caskey was appointed the executive vice president of Ambassador Theater Group’s North American operations. See Judith Newmark, “‘Fun Home’ reaps more honors for its producers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , 20 November 2015, www.stltoday.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/culture-club/fun-home-reaps-more-honors-for-its-producers/article_492d110f-3d24-574a-8517-a4dcd372b5f5.html (accessed 6 June 2018); Gordon Cox, “Broadway Producer Kristen Caskey Joins Ambassador Theater Group,” Variety , 29 November 2016, www.variety.com/2016/legit/news/kristin-caskey-ambassador-theater-group-north-america-1201928759/ (accessed 6 June 2018). [55] Matthew J. Palm, “‘Fun Home’: Cast is here for you,” Orlando Sentinel , 20 July 2016, www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/arts-and-theater/os-fun-home-orlando-benefit-20160713-story.html#nt=inbody-1%20Ceveris%20%E2%80%93%20idea%20in%20middle%20of%20show,%20producers%E2%80%99%20response (accessed 22 July 2016). [56] Purcell, “On the Closing of Fun Home .” [57] Democracy Now! , “Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home.’” [58] Ibid. Footnotes About The Author(s) MAUREEN MCDONNELL is Director of Women’s and Gender Studies and Professor of English at Eastern Connecticut State University. Her research interests include gender studies, early modern drama (including Shakespeare), and American Sign Language in performance. Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction: Reflections on the Tragic in Contemporary American Drama and Theatre "Take Caroline Away”: Catastrophe, Change, and the Tragic Agency of Nonperformance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change The Poetics of the Tragic in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Branding Bechdel’s Fun Home: Activism and the Advertising of a "Lesbian Suicide Musical" Haunting Echoes: Tragedy in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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

Javier Hurtado Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. Javier Hurtado By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences . Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences testifies to the fact that “today’s theatre workers know the value and importance of the next generation,” as Jorge Huerta observes in the forward (9). The book brings together contemporary docudrama, solo performance, and plays with and without music written for young, Latina/o audiences by Latino/a playwrights. The anthology also includes six scholarly articles that conduct in-depth analysis of the plays in the collection; document conversations with leaders in the field; offer pedagogical tools; and ultimately model paradigmatic shifts in the ways Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) is produced, presented, and taught. In the introduction, José Casas writes that as an artist of color, he often feels like an “uninvited guest” in the greater landscape of TYA (9). Diane Rodriguez shares this sentiment. In an interview for the collection, she addresses what she calls “the gap,” a disconnection in the field that has not made TYA a means for “building audiences of color over the past 50 years” (88). This 581-page anthology is an attempt to address that gap, featuring plays by Josefina López, Guillermo Reyes, Lisa Loomer, and more. However, it is not a collection begging for an invitation; it is an affirmation of the work that Latina/o/x communities have already been doing for generations. By pairing these plays with essays that engage the themes of the plays in the collection as well as issues in the field of TYA, Palabras del Cielo provides critical tools for degree programs in TYA to center Latina/o plays in their classrooms and on their stages. University-driven efforts to train scholars and professionals in TYA have expanded; at thirty-one universities across the United States, there are six MFA programs, eight MA programs, seven BFA programs, and eighteen BA programs that offer degrees in educational theatre or TYA. Palabras del Cielo makes an intervention for Latina/o-specific studies in these programs. The texts within offer a unique opportunity to deepen conversations about Latina/o experiences in the United States and to interrogate the history of the craft of storytelling through the theatrical adaptation of Latina/o folktales. In turn, three of the included plays reimagine western canonical texts like Voltaire’s Candide and Dante’s Inferno . These plays allow young actors to perform a variety of acting styles and genres while maintaining a focus on the “young audience” aspect that is central to the form. Beyond the theatre classroom, this anthology could easily be used to explore how Latina/o identity and culture shifts over time, since the plays reflect issues in the community from the mid-1990s to 2014. In addition, the companion essays offer scholarly context that make the book a resource for those in the social sciences and humanities more broadly. For example, in her essay, “The Historical Developments and Emergence of Latina/o TYA: Towards a Mestizaje Theatre,” Cecilia J. Argón traces the specific trajectory of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences (LTYA) through the role of children in performance traditions from Indo-Hispanic rituals and indigenous ceremony to the Chicano Movement. Aragon concludes by affirming that “this anthology of plays recognizes the performance of regional specificity, migration, and transnationalism and global impacts on Chicana/o and Latina/o children and youth” (25). In the essay, “They Don’t Look Like Me: A Look at Representation of Marginalized Populations in TYA in the United States,” Kelly Fey uses a cultural studies framework to write about the impact that cultural representation has on identity formation and interpersonal relations. Fey also puts forth a framework to assess diversity and inclusion work being done at theaters across the United States and provides readers with a TYA Inclusivity Manifesto modeled after the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s work in audience development. Palabras del Cielo amplifies the voices of Latinos and Latinas equally throughout. However, the experiences of trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming youth and the works of playwrights who identify as Latinx are palpably absent. Despite this absence, some of the stories in this book do engage with young protagonists who challenge gender norms. Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans: A Salsa Fairytale (book and lyrics by Karen Zacharías, music by Deborah Wicks La Puma) is a great example. In this fantastic, fast-paced musical adaptation, the title character is a sixth-grade exchange student from Puerto Rico who comes to a new school to learn English. However, this fairytale is not about a young girl who goes to the ball, loses her shoes, and meets a prince; it is about two young girls who learn empathy and fairness, after tempers flare between them on the basketball court. This version of Cinderella makes a significant effort to counter the sexism of the original story. For instance, the girls compete to earn a spot on a national team with a celebrity coach, played by a fairy godfather, while his wife enjoys a day off at the spa. Like the rest of the titles in this collection, Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans is a strong play that can easily tour schools or hold an audience as part of any university or professional mainstage season. Meaning “words from heaven,” Palabras del Cielo is ultimately a stellar anthology of Latina/o TYA geared toward the classroom. It lends itself to production-based and historical survey classes at the university level, providing a necessary intervention with the potential to reverberate across stages and classrooms for generations. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JAVIER HURTADO Tufts University Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. 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" Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jennie Youssef 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 The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Jennie Youssef By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Jonathan Shandell’s The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era offers in-depth, historical reconstruction of the instrumental role that Harlem’s American Negro Theatre (ANT) company played in the development of African American theatre and performance. Formed in June 1940, ANT provided African Americans with the autonomy for culturally distinct artistic expression. During the nascency of the Civil Rights Movement, ANT’s mission entailed opening a platform for “creative dialogues with whites” and fostering white support for the struggle for equality (2). Shandell meticulously documents ANT’s productions and artists using various archival materials, including play scripts, newspapers, and interviews. Shandell focuses on not only ANT’s more popular productions and artists but also more obscure, forgotten projects, and he rigorously situates his analyses within the historical and political context of the United States. Following a short introduction in which Shandell neatly situates ANT between the New Negro Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, the first chapter provides an overview of ANT’s formation and first show in the Harlem Library’s basement, its launch of the American Negro Theatre School of Drama in the mid-1940s, and its financial and institutional crisis beginning in 1945 until its collapse in 1950. Chapter two looks at three dramatic works by black playwrights: On Strivers Row (1940) by Abram Hill, Natural Man (1936) by Theodore Browne, and Garden of Time (1945) by Owen Dodson. According to Shandell, the adoption of white artistic traditions for the telling of black stories, from the Moliére style social comedy mocking black upper-class snobbery ( On Strivers Row ) to the expressionist struggle of the individual in the folktale of John Henry ( Natural Man ) and the adaptation of Medea that takes place in the South ( Garden of Time ), reveals ANT’s propensity for artistic experimentation and redefining “Euro-American traditions [without] total submission to them” (68). The next chapter narrates the history of the 1945 domestic tragedy Anna Lucasta and the play’s attempt to change the stereotypical conception of African American characters integral in the “American cultural imagination” (89). Originally a play about the struggles of a Polish immigrant family during the Great Depression, ANT’s adaptation made no allusions to African American culture. Performed by an all-black cast, the show appealed to black and white audiences and transferred to Broadway, where ANT then lost artistic control over the show and had financial disputes that later led to the company’s downfall. In the second half of the book, Shandell shifts the focus from ANT’s productions to its artist members. The fourth chapter recounts the life and work of actor-labor activist Frederick O’Neal, ANT’s cofounder. O’Neal worked to reform the white dominated stage for African American artists, but radical anti-racists criticized his moderate views and approaches in dealing with the struggle for racial justice and believing in “incremental change” (94). In 1960, he became president of Actors’ Equity’s Committee on Integration. Chapter five looks at the work of actress and dramatist Alice Childress, who costarred with O’Neal in Anna Lucasta . The child of a formerly enslaved person and German sailor, Childress was frustrated with racist and sexist discrimination in the mainstream theatre. Tired of being considered either too light or too dark for available roles, she began to write her own plays, “which she could populate with more complex, nuanced, and sympathetically drawn roles . . . particularly for African American women” (112). Focusing on her interracial plays of the 1950s and 1960s, Shandell reinterprets her works as forms of protest against racism that demonstrated the conviction that interracial alliances were necessary tools in the fight for equality. In chapter six, Shandell moves from theatre to film in a discussion of the most commercially successful actor to come out of ANT, Sidney Poitier. Examining two of the actor’s early films, No Way Out (1950) and Cry the Beloved Country (1951), Shandell argues that although both films foreshadow Poitier’s later character type of the ebony saint—a variation on the noble savage type for which he was harshly condemned by the African American community—Poitier’s character represents an important mediator between “liberal integrationist hopes and undeniable black frustrations” (153). In the fascinating concluding chapter, Shandell examines the legacy of ANT. The Buck and the Preacher (1972), a western genre film, applies the ANT tactic of redefinition, offering a view of the Wild West where the frontier hero is black and the villain is white. Shandell asserts that The Cosby Show of the 1980s “disrupted the . . . pervasive and distasteful history of caricatured representations of black characters and families” (169) by depicting “an African American well-to-do upper-middle-class family unit” (165). However, The Cosby Show never addressed the “blackness of its characters” who are “unaffected by the material consequences of racism in the United States” (165). Turning his attention to the Classical Theatre of Harlem, he acknowledges the problem of the dominance of the Euro American canon within its repertoire. Nonetheless, Shandell notes that the redeeming qualities of the company lie in the expansion of that repertoire to include canonical black playwrights, use of a predominantly black cast and crew in all productions, and more recently, community outreach efforts, such as the free Uptown Shakespeare performances at Marcus Garvey Park. This short yet comprehensive history of ANT, its key members, and their work is the first of its kind and is long overdue. Shandell’s examination of the available archival material is meticulous, and the noteworthy case studies point to how racial inequality still pervades contemporary American society. His book joins other recently published histories of black American theatre companies such as Penumbra: The Premier Stage for African American Drama by Macelle Mahala and Stages of Struggle and Celebration. A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas by Sandra M. Mayo and Elvin Holt. Scholars of African American theatre and performance, especially those whose area of focus lies within the short but significant timespan of ANT’s activities, will find Shandell’s study a crucial resource for an often overlooked but historically important institution in American theatre history. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JENNIE YOUSSEF The CUNY Graduate Center Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. 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" Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Shane Strawbridge 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 A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. Shane Strawbridge By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams . Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. The book opens with a quote from Tennessee Williams: “truth is something you need to deserve,” a statement that volume editor Katherine Weiss asserts “fl[ies] in the face of the imaginary worlds so many of his characters create” (1). From this nucleus emerges A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams , analysis of four plays that attempts to reconcile the contradiction between Williams’s “truth” and his characters’ fictions. The second release in Bloomsbury’s A Student Handbook to the Plays of… series, the text aims to provide a study guide to the most studied dramas from this celebrated American playwright. In her introduction, Weiss lays the dramaturgical framework from which the rest of the volume springs. She posits that the plays from the late 1960s and after lack “the tension and the need to express topics that were considered taboos,” leaving students and scholars to focus on Williams’s early works that explore topics such as “ageing, loneliness, and time’s devastation” (7). In the chapters that follow, scholars Stephen J. Bottoms, Patricia Hearn, Michael Hooper, Philip C. Kolin, and Weiss herself offer in-depth investigations of Tennessee Williams’s most produced and critically favored plays, The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). Following the introduction, the volume divides into four sections dedicated to plot, commentary, production history, and notes for each one of Williams’s major plays. The plot breakdowns vary in length from Streetcar ’s four-page summary to Glass Menagerie ’s eighteen-page dissection, divided scene by scene. The dramaturgical commentaries connect the plays to contextual history, culture, Williams’s biography, and contemporary playwrights and their works. These sections also offer insights into character arcs and specific actions in the plays’ pivotal moments. In addition, the scholars clarify their arguments by examining the dramatic structure and language of each play. Commentaries conclude with a history of significant productions and adaptations on stage and screen. The notes section for each play reads like a glossary of words and phrases that a layperson might find useful in understanding the plays, and that a theatre scholar or practitioner might use for closer study. Finally, a list of questions for further research opens up opportunities for more in-depth thinking. Stephen J. Bottoms, who specializes in contemporary theatre, probes The Glass Menagerie. Bottoms notes the usefulness of looking at Menagerie as “a series of inter-related paintings, each one of which presents a key component in a much bigger narrative, and which together build up to create an impression—but perhaps not a conclusive understanding—of that ‘whole story’” (19). As such, he breaks down each scene into multiple parts dealing with each character’s role in that scene, a specific hour, or a sub-title (such as Scene Five’s “Annunciation”), lending itself to the “impression” of the scene as a whole, a sort of pointillist view of the play. Bottoms suggests that had Menagerie not been the success that it was, Williams would never have achieved the sort of recognition that allowed study of him as one of the great American playwrights. Patricia Hern and Michael Hooper, who frequently collaborate on Williams scholarship, tackle A Streetcar Named Desire. The crux of their chapter lies in the “close connection between [Williams’s] writing and the circumstances of his own life” (89). For example, Hern and Hooper reference Williams’s need to hide from pain and sorrow while searching for contentment and happiness—no matter the cost to those around them—as a piece of Blanche DuBois’s “fall from grace” (92). Closely reading specific textual examples, they also link the works of Williams to playwrights such as Chekhov, Strindberg, Ibsen, and Miller, as well as authors Edgar Allan Poe and D. H. Lawrence. Author of several books about Tennessee Williams, Philip C. Kolin contributes to this volume commentary and notes on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof . His synopsis contains, like the play itself, act breaks, electing not to divide each act into sub-sections for readability. Two levels of history, “the long tradition of ante- and post-bellum (Southern) customs and their literary expression and the more recent history of the 1950s in American political life” (177) form the foundation of Kolin’s analysis. After glossing these two historical periods, he discusses the structure, drafts, and language of the play, though most of his work centers on the nuances of each character and how they “reveal various sides of Williams’s own personality,” from the “melancholy Brick” to the “sexually frustrated Maggie” (190). Kolin makes character comparisons across the Williams canon: he refers to Big Daddy as an “older Stanley Kowalski” (197), parallels Maggie’s demeanor with that of Serafina in The Rose Tattoo instead of with Amanda or Blanche, and aligns Brick’s “deliberate cruelty” (192) of rejecting Skipper with the behavior of Blanche. Sweet Bird of Youth falls to Weiss. Her summation adheres more to the model of Kolin in providing a broad overview of the events of the play as opposed to running commentary. Using examples from Williams’s play and extra-theatrical writings, Weiss addresses several themes including “The Catastrophe of Success,” “Preaching Hate,” and “The Korean War.” She evaluates the play’s structure, language, and style before analyzing the characters that Williams was “never quite satisfied with” (252). In her estimation, however, Weiss contends that they are “much more complicated than Williams realised [sic]” (253). The section ends with not only a glossary and questions for further consideration but also a list of additional resources. This handbook casts a wide net to capture all definitions of students, as per the title. If only the same wide net had been cast for the definition of “plays.” By limiting the evaluation to Williams’s four best-known and commercially successful plays, the volume leaves a desire for more study, particularly into those works that do not usually receive the same level of attention. Yet Weiss can hardly be faulted for not including the entirety of Williams’s extensive canon. Practicality and familiarity trump a comprehensive study, but one can hope that this will generate more investigation into his works. Although there are other studies of these texts available, what Weiss has done here is sculpt a text that, despite its limitations, provides an in-depth primer to one of the United States’ most decorated playwrights. Ultimately, A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams will be useful for students and professors who are searching for an easily navigable and digestible analysis of Williams and his early work. References Footnotes About The Author(s) SHANE STRAWBRIDGE Texas Tech University Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. 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" 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. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. 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. References Footnotes About The Author(s) PATRICK MCKELVEY University of Pittsburgh Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. 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" Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Konstantinos Blatanis 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 Rewriting Greek Tragedy / Confronting History in Contemporary American Drama: David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) Konstantinos Blatanis By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Ever since the late 1960s and early 1970s, a host of diverse American playwrights and directors have resorted to ancient Greek tragedy more intensely than their predecessors had ever done before. Varied in scope and aims as well as distinct in form and expression as these works have been, they have mainly served to re-contextualize the source material in their own present moment and their immediate sociocultural and political settings. Similar to what holds true for their forerunners, [1] American rewrites of Greek tragedy of the last five decades highlight in multiple and inventive ways the “‘presentist’ dimension,” which, in Hugh Grady’s terms, underlies all ventures into “works of the past.” [2] Furthermore, these modern plays also verify in practice the scholar’s argument that “the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, [and] Euripides . . . have never been mere exemplars of a later discourse on the tragic.” [3] Specifically, they manage to do so as they reclaim those resources and particular qualities of classical tragedy by means of which artists and audiences alike are able to engage with issues of historical understanding. In essence, contemporary American rewrites of Greek tragedy reaffirm in their own modes the close connections that the cultural form has perennially sustained with history on both a theoretical and a practical level. In her influential work on tragedy and modernity, Olga Taxidou insightfully stresses that history “forms one of the main structuring forces of tragic form” that has nonetheless “always occupied an ambiguous position in studies of tragedy.” [4] The author elaborates on the findings of her research and proceeds to endorse in particular those “new ways of talking about tragic form that create historical accountability, radical critique and introduce the possibility of change.” [5] It is precisely the possibility of such an accountability that fuels the aspirations in the two different plays studied in this article. Seeking to interrogate how this age-old and fertile dialogue between tragedy and history can be reclaimed in present-day terms, the discussion focuses on two works which undertake the exact same challenge while being separated from each other by four decades. In general terms, David Rabe’s The Orphan (1973) and Ellen McLaughlin’s The Persians (2003) are singled out here as objects of study precisely because they confront questions of historical perception which relate primarily to the US but also prove of great significance for the rest of the Western world during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In particular the argument in this article develops around two distant, yet intricately related and highly critical moments in recent and contemporary American history. Simultaneously, attention is specifically dedicated to the fact that both plays were voiced within a sociocultural and political climate characterized by a wide-spread and detrimental waning of historical understanding. First, The Orphan attracts interest as an experimental rewrite of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia that seeks to dissect the multiple ways in which the Vietnam trauma was engendered by a seriously compromised sense of history that the war itself intensified even further. Second, The Persians is recognized as an innovative re-reading of the homonymous Aeschylean prototype which examines the implications of the Iraq War and inspects the ways in which the dissolution of historical awareness interrelates with specific policies and practices that postindustrial late capitalism dictates on global scale at present. It is indeed no surprise that the two plays examined here grapple with these issues over the same time span during which the crisis of historical sensibility became the primary focus of attention across different disciplines and for a large number of outstanding theorists and critics who vary from Henri Lefebvre and Fredric Jameson to David Harvey and beyond. [6] As a result, the discussion seeks to elucidate the inventive ways in which both Rabe’s The Orphan and McLaughlin’s The Persians recognize the practice of re-writing as an ongoing, constantly evolving process through which they test their own “poetic, rhetorical, and performative dimensions” that, as historian Dominick LaCapra argues when he discusses the contributions of art to historiography, “not only mark but also make differences historically.” [7] It is precisely for this reason that both plays return to Greek tragedy and aspire to reclaim it as a genuinely “conflictual topos ” where, according to Taxidou’s insightful schema, “the King does not simply and unproblematically stand for the state and its people but acts as a ruse through which the whole concept of power is questioned.” [8] In other words, what inspires the explorations of historical accountability in these two modern plays is the fact that classical tragedy acquired its political significance and resonance by being first and foremost an indispensable constituent to the very birth and growth of democracy. [9] It is through this prism that both plays, similar to what scholar Sanja Bahun-Radunović notes about Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest , and Suzan-Lori Parks’s The America Play , address “one specific concern of the recent philosophy of history: the challenge to think history outside the traditional notion of (teleological, recorded) history of events, [and] yet not to deprive it of its human potential.” [10] In this plane of inquiry, central questions revolve around the political efficacy of contemporary drama and theater. In particular, this article places emphasis on whether the two plays can serve as historiographical tools of an unconventional type by means of which instances of multisided crisis are adequately interrogated. Thus, what attracts attention is the role that these works prescribe or at least anticipate for the spectator. Indeed, the issue of spectatorship proves worth exploring since the two plays undertake—in terms analogous to those LaCapra outlines for professional historiography—an “investigation already inserted in an ongoing historical process, a positioning toward which one may attempt to acquire some transformative perspective or critical purchase.” [11] In its effort to test the possibilities of such a “transformative perspective” on history, The Orphan recognizes the Aeschylean prototypical trilogy as an invaluable source of instruction. This third play in a series of four [12] —originally produced between 1969 and 1976—that sought to document the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on private landscapes as well as on the collective conscience of the American people, reaffirms in its own exceptional mode the fact that The Oresteia provides, more than anything else, incomparable guidance on how the dynamics of tragedy are simply unimaginable without the active engagement of the polis with everything that takes place in the orchestra . Indeed, this proves an acknowledgment of utmost significance for a play whose primary aim is to alert audiences to the fact that over the period of the late sixties and early seventies, in spite of the unprecedentedly vigorous antiwar movement, the American public in large part chose to ignore the very actuality of war. In reviewing the moment, Rabe has poignantly remarked on several occasions that “people [in the US] were interested in simplifications, in the debate about the war rather than in the experience of the war itself.” [13] Professionally produced for the first time in April of 1973, the play aspires to attract attention to a highly crucial aspect of a chapter of contemporary history that originally remained consequentially unaddressed. In the playwright’s own words, this is nothing less than the effort “to embrace a portion of that inherently unembraceable subject.” [14] Faced, thus, with the urgency of its own historical moment, The Orphan turns inventively towards the classical trilogy noted for its masterful response to the exact same task. As classicist Michael Walton explains, “Aeschylus’ central concerns . . . are contemporary to the Athens of his time, to the Council of the Areopagus, all but suppressed in 461 BC, and to the growth of democracy in fifth-century Athens.” [15] It is important to note that The Orphan paves its own way by attuning carefully to the instruction it receives from the source text while also aptly exploiting a significant aspect of rewriting, what Julie Sanders terms “the pleasure principle, . . . the connected interplay of expectation and surprise.” [16] In particular, the play takes a large number of major liberties with the prototype both on the thematic and the structural level and thus manages to reflect the atmosphere of confusion and indeterminacy prevalent in the US in the early seventies but also to question its own effort to address the specificity of the moment. First and foremost, the work proposes an unconventional chorus made up of multi-layered and transformational characters who inspect critically the dramatis personae drawn from the Aeschylean trilogy and at the same time interact with them directly. These essentially anonymous entities, noted as The Speaker, The Figure, The Girl, undergo a series of metamorphoses, evidently modelled upon the practices and transformation techniques of Joe Chaikin’s Open Theater, and encapsulate idiosyncratic stances as well as general attitudes prevalent in the US during the early seventies, particularly among young people. [17] Furthermore, they specifically display reactions of the type that can be expected from the members of an experimental theater group working on the classical source text. Thus, they emerge as the main agents of a conscious theatricality through which the play interrogates its own position in history. One of the first major questions the audience is invited to consider is concurrently and instructively pertinent on all these different levels of signification. The Speaker, outlined as “a young woman dressed elegantly [and] hold[ing] a flashlight and a microphone,” [18] greets both the classical figures and the spectators in these words: “Think of time as a pool. Do we speak to the past? Or merely look at it? Is it right? Left? Up? Down?” (90). The great challenge of conversing with the past, whether distant or more recent, looms particularly intensely for the play itself but even more so for its enveloping sociocultural and political context. In the US of the early seventies, the multisided crisis of a nation unable to account for its own doings rendered questions regarding historical agency and responsibility both impossible and absolutely vital. It is precisely this pressing need for questions which remain consequentially unattended that the play stresses by rewriting the prototype in a thoroughly self-conscious mode. Interest in the present discussion revolves around the validity of this historiographical attempt at a moment of crisis and thus what attracts particular attention are elements such as the distancing effect that informs Orestes’s effort to see himself within the overall course of tragic action and the employment of two distinct characters for Clytemnestra at two different moments in her life. As the twentieth-century anonymous characters invite both those onstage and those offstage to engage with the Aeschylean trilogy, emphasis is specifically placed on the ways and means through which one acquires an understanding of one’s own position in history, both as a subject and an object of it. Most of all, what the work highlights is the very notion of historical accountability. Thus, as the action in the first act accommodates fragments from the original source text, Clytemnestra Two tellingly asks Agamemnon to recognize the palpable trails of his own actions and at the same time discloses her own plans to intervene in the scheme of things as an active agent: “You smell of time gone, Agamemnon. It’s time that you bathe. . . . You are filth and filth must bathe. Where’s the net? We must have the net” (93). To the same end, Rabe attempts an extensive cross-fertilization between Agamemnon , the first part of the trilogy, and Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis . [19] The confrontation between the prototypical tragic heroine and hero unfolds thus in an unprecedented way and attention is carefully drawn once again to the issue of historical accountability: “but between this departure of Helen and our daughter’s death, nothing real exists—do you see—unless you put it there” (108). Furthermore, the work seeks to interrogate the crisis of historicity that it witnesses for its own moment and thus it intently highlights the plea Clytemnestra One addresses to her husband: “Please find a way to lift us from this fate. I beg you, Agamemnon, think! Think! . . . Pride is your motive—vanity and power. The wind is your alibi and excuse” (116–17). Undoubtedly, these are questions that prove urgent on the level of the collective and the political, and not on any exclusive or private terrain. This modern work courageously strives to reclaim and redefine in contemporary terms the qualities that made Greek tragedy, as Stathis Gourgouris argues, “especially well configured to place before the polity the event of its own hubris .” [20] Half-consciously, half-instinctively, through these loose and experimental rewriting techniques, The Orphan attempts to recast in late twentieth-century terms what Taxidou notes about the “spectacular, physical, collective, physiognomic (as Benjamin would call it) dimension of tragedy.” [21] Indeed, what incites the interrogations of historical accountability and the questions surrounding the well-being and integrity of the collective in this modern work is the recognition of the fact that in “the Athenian tragedies,” as Grady insightfully stresses, “human alienation from the social and the natural is clearly in evidence, in fact, center-stage.” [22] The scholar elaborates on his point by noting characteristically that “Greek tragedy is always materialist-for-us,” since “the difficulty of founding a stable sense of good and evil, of right and wrong, is as problematic for Orestes, Oedipus, Antigone, Creon, Pentheus, and Phaedra . . . as it is for us in the early twenty-first century.” [23] In The Orphan , Orestes’s agon serves to epitomize this precise type of problematics. At the end of act one, The Figure, “a man with a thick black beard [who] wears a T-shirt, Levi’s jacket and jeans, and boots” (89) assumes the role or even the form of Apollo and foreshadows the action of the second act in these words: “It is time that Orestes arrive with his story . . . understanding nothing. . . . And it will not be his story that will matter, nor will it be his hatred, but only the knife” (124). Reflecting his parents, Orestes faces the insurmountable difficulty of making sense of his own position as a subject and an object of history, the very challenge of “founding a stable sense of good and evil.” [24] In other words, the play resorts to classical tragedy as a paradigmatic “conflictual topos ” [25] in an effort to interrogate the specificity of its own historical moment. To this end, particular emphasis is placed on the way Orestes questions the mission with which he has been assigned: “This is written, that is written. Who is doing all this writing?” (134). However, what proves definitely formative in his case is the set of questions his mother’s plight highlights in act one and which are now dynamically reclaimed by him for the purposes of the second one: “What is my motive, which my alibi—what is my excuse?” (156). In this mode, The Orphan aspires to render possible on stage a peripeteia that unfolds concurrently both within the mythological topography of the original source text and the distinctive sociocultural and political geography of the US in the early 1970s. To this end, Pylades—who similarly to his classical counterpart accompanies Orestes—provides both on-stage and off-stage audiences with a sharp account of Aegisthus’s ways and practices: “He wars against the Persians—he diverts our resources into a pointless struggle with the Peloponnesians. He slaughters the Vietnamese. . . . . He burns their villages” (139). For the exact same reason, moments later, Pylades also delivers a short monologue which accommodates fragments of a penetrating, disarming narrative of the My Lai massacre and which materializes on stage in the form of a flash that cuts across the evolving main action (147). The play articulates its own distinctive political statement by emphasizing primarily the adventurous course Orestes follows as he confronts a cosmos imbued with violence on all different counts. The questions with which the character struggles are pertinent to both the mythological Argos and the contemporary US and thus serve to define the qualities of this exceptional historiographical inquiry. The words with which Orestes addresses Iphigenia constitute a case in point: Why our father killed you, and did your spirit move the wind? . . . I say there are certain things that, if I am to remain a human man, I must not ever cease to know them. What are they? Please tell me! Does no one want to help me? Does no one care what happens to poor Orestes fed so fucking long on bread and dreams he thinks that both are real! (158) Interestingly enough, this singular agon develops within the boundaries of a realm noted for the presence of mostly young people who are fascinated with large-scale crime as well as hallucinatory experiences, and whose centerless quest for a way out of stagnation goes hand in hand with political causes that never become fully defined or adequately developed. Despite the fact that Orestes for most of the action in act two personifies the very effort to resist this force-field of pervasive violence and terminal confusion, he eventually surrenders to it. Thus, his own act of avenging his father’s murder becomes indistinguishable from occasions that either epitomize the general public’s obsession with the Charles Manson family murders, or merely reflect the dullness and anesthesia of drug abuse. Aided decisively by The Figure—who abruptly drops the mask of Manson to assume the role of Apollo—Orestes is led to pronounce himself innocent: “I thought I could not kill. I let fear run me all over the world, but I have caressed my demon, picked up my monster, and I know now I can kill and survive” (175–76). In the final scene of the play, tragic action proves an impossibility as Orestes rises to the sky not to be released but to remain suspended in mid-air. The character emerges now as a palpable symbol of cynical acceptance of violence but also of the very failure to oppose its force and question its far-reaching repercussions. In sharp contrast to his counterpart in Aeschylus’s trilogy, Orestes here attains no deliverance either for himself or the city. His agon culminates in a phase of absolute suspension and deterritorialization during which no future perspective is visible for the private, familial context and no opening can be envisioned either for the larger one of the collective conscience. Evidently, The Orphan highlights the significance of this failure and impossibility so that the chronicle of a terribly missed opportunity can be adequately communicated to the audience. As the playwright himself sharply comments: The Vietnam War . . . was the swamp where history paused and could have shown who were and who were becoming. In its flash and violence it was a probe into the depths, an X ray knifing open the darkness with an obscene illumination against whose eloquence we closed our eyes.[26] On a surface level, the play as an unconventional historiographical attempt which turns critically towards classical tragedy and reviews its own moment, bridges the crucial gap that Terry Eagleton, in his uncommon genealogy of both tragedy and tragic theory, identifies in these words: “While the scholars have been speaking of tragedy with caught breath as estimable and ennobling, or issuing elegiac laments for its decline, history has been awash with warfare, butchery, disease, starvation, political murder.” [27] More importantly, The Orphan exploits the dynamics of a self-reflecting stage and resorts to a source text that “is above all the work of a specific period, of a definite social condition, and of a contingent moral argument,” and thus argues that this failure to see tragic action to its end defines its own standing as a work of art but even more so the historical moment in which it is voiced. [28] In an experimental mode, the play registers the specificity of the moment and does serve as a document that, in LaCapra’s schema, does not “simply represent but also supplement[s] the realities to which [it] refer[s].” [29] It is important to highlight that the play’s contribution is valuable, for as the historian explains, historical research “involves not only the processing of information but also affect, empathy, and questions of value.” [30] Thus, in the early 1970s, The Orphan as an unorthodox supplement to the multisided Vietnam crisis invited the audience to reassess the immediate moment by attending closely to all those elements that affect, empathy and questions of value render possible on stage. As a result, spectators were also led to reconsider their own positions as receivers and translators. It is contended here that the emphasis on physicality and the inspiration from the seminal explorations of the performance theater style of the sixties and the seventies [31] that inform this work do not preclude but rather reinforce Jacques Rancière’s argument that “viewing is also an action that confirms or transforms [the] distribution of positions.” [32] Indeed, precisely because viewing is pivotal in disseminating the message, historiographical endeavors of this type can never attain their potential without an “emancipated spectator” who is willing to act upon what she receives. [33] The promise Greek tragedy entails for historiography and historical awareness as well as the formative impact that the latter two have on the former have been extensively explored by Ellen McLaughlin in her numerous and significant rewrites of classical works. [34] It is no surprise that the first extant tragedy is one of them, since Aeschylus’s The Persians epitomizes precisely this promise. The work addresses directly a chapter in what was then recent history for the city of Athens and offers thus a critical insight into matters which were of primary urgency for its own immediate context. [35] For her part, McLaughlin, in the introduction to her play, clearly identifies what she deems valuable in this work and stresses that while being “the only surviving Greek tragedy that treats a contemporary theme [it is also] typical of all the Greek plays that have survived for us in its unsentimental and clear-eyed view of politics and war.” [36] Furthermore, the playwright emphasizes the fact that “the great Greek dramatists were citizens in a unique political experiment—a burgeoning democracy, newly minted, unsettled and constantly under threat, from both within and without.” [37] Evidently, this appraisal of the genre is in tandem with interrogations that define contemporary scholarship on Greek tragedy. Thus, indicatively, Taxidou elucidates the fact “that tragedy has always been about democracy,” and goes on to explain that “this notion of democracy, however, . . . is not simply about progress, visibility and civilization but also about violence, exclusion and barbarism.” [38] Aspiring to create a modern play which, in its own right, invests in these precise qualities and the ensuing possibilities of the classical genre, McLaughlin undertakes to rewrite the Aeschylean prototype as “a direct response to the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003.” [39] The act of rewriting Greek tragedy is consciously approached here as a process that renders possible a courageous engagement with recent and contemporary history. [40] Similar to what McLaughlin has attempted to achieve in most of her work, what underlies her efforts in this play is the conviction that there can never be an “easy relevance” between the source text and the present moment. [41] In particular, she explains that her effort is to steer away from a “glib, formulaic response [that] does justice neither to [the American people] nor to the Greeks and belittles the complexity of what Aeschylus was responding to and [the] distinct [American] national crisis” of the early 2000s. [42] Indeed, the play aims precisely at making audiences aware of the stark differences between the Athenian polis and its own contemporary context. To this end, both the value of the overall historiographical outlook of the original classic and its specific details are highlighted in the prologue McLaughlin co-wrote with Ethan McSweeny. Thus, in a Brechtian mode, the audience is presented, early on, with the information that the source text “contains the only eyewitness account we have of [the] battle [of Salamis], or indeed of any battle in the Persian Wars.” [43] The Persians , as a modern play, sets out to explore the multisided interaction between tragedy and history through a series of tightly organized, economical scenes that succeed each other with no formal breaks as well as by means of an equally simple, direct and unaffected dialogue construction. In this mode, the opening scene highlights the question of historical agency and brings into focus issues that relate to political power and responsibility, as the members of the chorus outline both the setting of the play and the condition that prevails in the city of Susa: RELIGION : It is a city peopled only by anxious, silent womenTheir eyes darting for omens. CHAIRMAN : And by us, the trusted,The ones who pointed west and told them to go,Commanding them to leave us and seek conquest. (267) Almost as if despite themselves, these counselors to the Persian monarchs offer a historical account which serves to disclose, first and foremost, the thrust of the imperialist expansion: “Defeat is impossible. Defeat is unthinkable. . . . When Xerxes first saw the Olympian mountains rising triumphant. . . . He thought: This too shall be Persia’s” (273). Interestingly enough, at the same moment they emerge acutely aware of the absolute stillness and sterility that now informs the Persian kingdom and as a result they are led to reflect on their own “brazen confidence” and the fact of having been “merely deafened for years by the din of [their] own empire-building” (274). Indeed, the play invites no direct parallelism between Susa of the fifth century BC and the US at the turn of the millennium. And yet, this is a highly topical interrogation for the intended audience of a play that received its first professional production in April of 2003; a critical moment in the second decade of the US as the world’s sole power. As Howard Zinn notes, the economic and military hegemony of the US, which entered a new phase in the early 1990s, is one of multiple, far-reaching implications: In the early nineties, the false socialism of the Soviet system had failed. And the American system seemed out of control—a runaway capitalism, a runaway technology, a runaway militarism, a running away of government from the people it claimed to represent.[44] It is thus no surprise that McLaughlin turns critically towards the Aeschylean tragedy and allows her own work to respond inventively to a work which, as Simon Stow insightfully notes, epitomizes the fact that “it is one thing to tell an audience to avoid hubris but quite another to try to cultivate an ethos that will help them to do so.” [45] In particular, the scholar argues that through the agonistic juxtaposition of nationalism and empathy [Aeschylus’s The Persians ] sought to cultivate in its audience an ethos appropriate to an increasingly imperialistic democracy [and thus] to motivate them to action by identifying their interests, such as avoiding the strategic and military consequences of hubris. [46] McLaughlin’s The Persians places primary emphasis on Atossa in an effort to cultivate this precise ethos in its own spectators. In an almost metadramatic tone, the figurative scheme that Justice, as a member of the chorus, employs to describe the position the queen now occupies speaks for the play’s aims; he openly likens Atossa to “a candle borne across a wasteland [that] shows a divine light” (276). As the plot develops, what proves even more illuminating is the character’s own insight into the absolute suspension and pervasive crisis in which the empire finds itself and which is inscribed on her own body: “I am haunted by my own useless importance. Every surface reflects my aging worried face back to me. I rattle around my gilded palace alone, echoing and reflecting myself” (277). Furthermore, the same lines reveal the queen’s realization that this a moment during which she is required to review her own response to history. Precisely because interest here revolves around the validity of this unconventional historiographical venture, what attracts attention is the distinctive way in which the play illuminates the character’s body as an entity that both receives and answers back to history, both intervenes in it and is ultimately claimed by it. The body of a mother and a queen as well as the motherland, a kingdom in terminal crisis, struggle here with the urgency of the moment: “What do these horrors mean? Does Persia, even now, fall from her heights, blinded and bloody? Shall my son return?” (279). Atossa’s nightmare does anticipate and at the same time fails to capture the full extent of the catastrophe Persia encounters in history. What proves valuable for the interrogation of historical accountability more than anything else in this play are the questions Atossa articulates regarding the factors that contributed to the creation of this “blinded and bloody” empire. In an effort to emphasize this interrogation even further, McLaughlin moves beyond the source text and has also recourse to Herodotus, and thus adds a choral section on the flogging of the Hellespont (292). To the same end, the pivotal role that the Herald’s account of the Persian defeat occupies in the original prototype is reclaimed here in a self-reflecting tone: “I can’t tell it well enough to make you see it. That’s only a fraction. It’s all swimming in my head. Worse things happened” (286). Reflecting the modern play in its entirety, the Herald’s narrative is valuable since, for all its fragmentary nature, it aims at a “critical purchase” of the historical moment in question. [47] Similar to what is argued here about Orestes’s agon in The Orphan , this is indeed a “fraction” that nonetheless allows “affect, empathy, and questions of value” to inform the spectators’ engagement with history. [48] Motivating audience members to grow viscerally aware of their own positions as agents who act upon what they view as interpreters and translators, the play highlights effectively the question of historical agency as well as the notion of political accountability. In other words, what unites the stage and the auditorium in this case is the effort to acknowledge the material and practical dimensions which define any given subject’s position and responsibility in time and history. Similar to The Orphan, McLaughlin’s The Persians invests in tragedy not as “an antidote to suffering and pain” but as “a radical form of critique” through which the key constituencies of the democratic polis question, first and foremost, their own actions. [49] It is indeed the agon of an active agent in history that Atossa courageously strives to fulfill when she appeals to her dead husband. Summoning Darius on stage, she manages to show both on-stage and off-stage audiences why it is imperative that the collective body of the people appeals to its past; in other words, why it is absolutely essential that the Persians reconnect with their own history. Through Atossa’s call, the play argues that recognition of the past, historical awareness and political accountability are closely interrelated. In these terms, the Persian queen leads the way for the chorus, who at first merely rush to free themselves of any responsibility for the present catastrophe and can only blame Xerxes for what they themselves had specifically authorized at a critical moment in the past. If there is anything promising in this suffering for the Persians this becomes sensible only when they turn to history. It is only thus that they may begin on their way towards a candid review of their own responsibility for the predicament Persia now faces. It is contended here that scenes of this nature allow the play to prove in practice what is promising about the very process of dynamically rewriting Greek tragedy, nothing less than the very cultivation of ethos through “agonistic” tension that Stow accurately discerns in the Aeschylean prototype. This type of critical assessment of the empire’s true worth emerges particularly pertinent to the context of the US in the early 2000s. The work outlines effectively an “agonistic” tension between blind trust in the empire’s might on the one hand, and the struggle to understand the complicated repercussions of its rule on the other. Indeed, the play receives instruction from classical tragedy which “was a questioning not a didactic genre, one that sought to provoke theoretical reflection on the values and conflicts that the audience faced as democratic citizens.” [50] Atossa’s struggle to understand the moment epitomizes what the two plays discussed here aspire to examine. Both works invite audiences to face the challenge of growing aware of the specificity of the present moment, what Rabe terms its “eloquence,” and thus to engage actively with questions which pertain to historical agency and accountability. [51] Spectators are encouraged to reflect on the responsibility of those in power as well as of those in the names of whom the empire marches on. Within this frame, the two plays revisit the classical genre seeking to cultivate “both an ethic and action ” at two disparate moments of severe crises. [52] This double effort is what Darius’s message highlights: “Mourn the dead of this great country. . . . They shall lie in the restless waves as testament / To what horrors an overweening pridefulness can reap” (299). In the original prototype, Darius delivers his speech from the palace at Susa to address the Athenian polis . In McLaughlin’s play, the words of the deceased Persian monarch are clearly meant to alert audiences in the US, but also across the Western world, of the actuality of present-day horrors. It is argued here that the endeavor that these two modern plays undertake proves particularly strenuous and thus even more vital since they both acquired shape in times during which historical understanding of the immediate moment was seriously undermined. In the early 1970s, The Orphan struggled to claim its own ground against a setting characterized by the generalized unwillingness to recognize the Vietnam War for what it really was and the ensuing hostility towards the veterans. Forty years later, The Persians confronted a historical instance infused by what Zinn terms “the atmosphere of wartime jingoism.” [53] As the historian shrewdly observes, in the early 2000s, the ubiquitous display of the American flag epitomized, among other things, the reluctance and inability of the citizens to criticize the government’s foreign policy and, in particular, the US intervention in the Middle East. [54] In both cases, key questions of the type Zinn articulates in the following lines remained, to a large extent, an impossibility for the collective American mind: “Is there ‘a national interest’ when a few people decide on war? . . . Should citizens not ask in whose interest are we doing what we are doing?” [55] The two plays studied here trace and register on stage primarily the weight of these challenging questions. Rabe’s The Orphan and McLaughlin’s The Persians target areas that are simply unthinkable without the active engagement of the audience. To this purpose, they explore the dynamics of “the adaptive faculty” and prove in practice Linda Hutcheon’s point that this “is the ability to repeat without copying, to embed difference in similarity.” [56] Furthermore, they also reflect Edward Said’s seminal insight on the act of rewriting as one that leads not backwards to a previous work but “rather toward ‘writing in progress’.” [57] As argued above, by means of this “progress” they test their own potential as versatile tools of historiographical inquiry and showcase that “what is finally at stake is the subjectivity of the spectator, which is not necessarily passive, even if the spectator remains seated in his chair.” [58] In these words, Alain Badiou shares Jacques Rancière’s view and inspects “subjective transferences, transformations [which] occur even if the spectator is immobile.” [59] It is significant to note that such transferences and transformations are particularly prominent in these two rewrites of Greek tragedy which, similar to what Toby Zinman argues about a wide array of American plays of the past two decades, manage “what media pundits and statistics cannot do: revealing the emotional truth of war.” [60] Indeed, contemporary theater work of this type incites audiences “to consider the ethical dimension of [historical] understanding [as well as the] emotional response to these insights.” [61] In these terms, the two plays discussed here prove that “viewing is an action” and thus highlight that political efficacy in drama and theater can only rely upon the level of action which is “owned by no one” but subsists between those on stage and those off stage. [62] References [1] The fact that this effort of resituating the parent text in one’s own surroundings has been a driving force for American rewrites of Greek tragedy produced well before the period on which this article focuses is precisely what Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) best exemplifies. [2] Hugh Grady, “Tragedy and Materialist Thought,” in A Companion to Tragedy , edited by Rebecca Bushnell (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 130. [3] Ibid. [4] Olga Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 15. [5] Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning , 16. [6] In his highly influential book The Production of Space , first published in 1974, Henri Lefebvre identified this very “dissolution” of historical sensibility as one of the major pathologies of contemporary Western societies. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space , trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 416. In 1983, Fredric Jameson outlined “historical amnesia” as one of the most distinguishing features of postmodernity. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” in Postmodernism and Its Discontents: Theories, Practices , edited by E. Ann Kaplan (London: Verso, 1988), 28. David Harvey, in 1990, commented specifically on postmodernism’s “incredible ability to plunder history.” David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1990), 54. [7] Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 15. [8] Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning , 5. [9] Stathis Gourgouris accurately notes that tragedy is “endemic” to democracy. Specifically, the scholar stresses that “tragic theater is political, not because of its content, but because, by all accounts, it is endemic to this peculiar mode of self-organization that emerged in Athens.” Stathis Gourgouris, “Democracy is a Tragic Regime,” PMLA 129, no. 4 (2014): 811 (emphasis in original). [10] Sanja Bahun-Radunović, “History in Postmodern Theater: Heiner Müller, Caryl Churchill, and Suzan-Lori Parks,” Comparative Literature Studies 45, no. 4 (2008): 466. [11] LaCapra, Writing History , 36. [12] The other three plays David Rabe wrote in response to the Vietnam War are Sticks and Bones (1969), The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971), and Streamers (1976). [13] David Savran, In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988), 193 (emphasis in original). [14] David Rabe, “Afterword: 1992,” in The Vietnam Plays. Volume Two: Streamers, The Orphan (New York: Grove Press, 1993), 193. [15] Michael Walton, The Greek Sense of Theatre: Tragedy and Comedy Reviewed (New York: Routledge, 2015), 74. [16] Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London: Routledge, 2006), 24–25. [17] In his detailed stage history of Rabe’s work, Philip Kolin documents insightfully how formative the experience of watching Jean-Claude Van Itallie’s The Serpent at the Open Theater in 1969 proved for the playwright. Philip C. Kolin, David Rabe: A Stage History (New York: Garland, 1988), 52. [18] David Rabe, The Orphan , in The Vietnam Plays. Volume Two , 89. Further references to this play will be noted parenthetically in the text. [19] Kolin provides information on the experience of a 1967 Off-Broadway production of Euripides’s tragedy that inspired the playwright to write a one-act play by the title The Bones of Birds , which was performed for the first time in 1968 at Villanova University while Rabe was still a graduate student there, and which he later re-worked and expanded into what resulted in The Orphan . Kolin, David Rabe , 51. [20] Gourgouris, “Democracy is a Tragic Regime,” 811. [21] Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning , 7. [22] Grady, “Tragedy and Materialist Thought,” 141. [23] Ibid. [24] Ibid. [25] Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning , 5. [26] Rabe, “Afterword: 1992,” 197. [27] Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 205. [28] Roland Barthes, “Putting on the Greeks,” in Critical Essays , trans. Richard Howard (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 65. [29] Dominick LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 62. [30] LaCapra, Writing History , 35. [31] See Kolin, David Rabe , 52. [32] Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator , trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009), 13. [33] Ibid. [34] McLaughlin’s first rewrite of Greek tragedy, Iphigenia and Other Daughters (1994) , offers a distinctive and invaluable feminine perspective into history, in general, and the role that history written by men assigns to women across the ages, in particular. The play was by no means an exception and was followed by works that also address issues of historical understanding, such as The Trojan Women (1995) and Oedipus (2005). [35] The Persians was first presented, as part of an otherwise missing trilogy, during the City Dionysia of 472 BC. In his insightful reading of Aeschylus’s work, Simon Stow quotes Harry C. Avery’s following lines on the characteristics of that historical moment, “Themistocles was probably still in Athens. Xerxes was still on the Persian throne. . . . The victories of 480 and 479 had been magnificent, but it had taken the Persians ten years to return to Greece after Marathon. What guarantee was there that the Persians would not come back again?” Simon Stow, American Mourning: Tragedy, Democracy, Resilience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 127. In the process, the scholar articulates his own point that, “in such circumstances, the dangers of overconfidence emanating from the Greek victory at Salamis were all the more pressing.” Stow, American Mourning , 127. [36] Ellen McLaughlin, “Introduction,” The Greek Plays (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005), 253. [37] Ibid. [38] Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning , 7–8. [39] McLaughlin, “Introduction,” 254. [40] Ellen McLaughlin is in no way isolated regarding her approach to Greek tragedy. It is instructive to note that a large number of significant contemporary theater practitioners have adapted the same view of the classical genre over the past few decades. It is precisely in this vein that Tony Randall, founder and artistic director of New York City’s National Actors Theatre, invited McLaughlin to pen this rewrite of Aeschylus’s work. Randall stressed that the Iraq invasion could not go unnoticed by theater people and that there was a pressing need for artists to examine what he himself termed “a terrible time in [contemporary American] history.” McLaughlin, “Introduction,” 255. Interestingly enough, several other important efforts in contemporary drama and theater had already targeted the exact same area. It suffices to note as an example Peter Sellars’s controversial production of The Persians in 1993, which was conceived as a reaction to the first Gulf War. [41] McLaughlin, “Introduction,” 254. [42] Ibid., 255. [43] Ellen McLaughlin, The Persians , in The Greek Plays , 266. Further references to this play will be noted parenthetically in the text. [44] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), 638. [45] Stow, American Mourning , 123 (emphasis in original). [46] Ibid., 126–27. [47] LaCapra, Writing History , 36. [48] LaCapra, Writing History , 35. [49] Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning , 2. [50] Stow, American Mourning , 120 (emphasis added). [51] Rabe, “Afterword: 1992,” 197. [52] Stow, American Mourning , 123 (emphasis added). [53] Zinn, A People’s History , 680. [54] Ibid. [55] Ibid., 685. [56] Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006), 174. [57] Edward Said, “On Originality,” in The World, the Text and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 136. [58] Alain Badiou, with Nicolas Touring, In Praise of Theatre , trans. Andrew Bielski (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015), 33. [59] Badiou, with Nicolas Touring, In Praise of Theatre , 35. [60] Toby Zinman, “American Theatre since 1990,” in Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama , edited by David Palmer (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018), 227. [61] Freddie Rokem, “Discursive Practices and Narrative Models: History, Poetry, Philosophy,” in History, Memory, Perfomance , edited by David Dean, Yana Meerzon, and Kathryn Prince (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 27. [62] Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator , 13 (emphasis added), 15. Footnotes About The Author(s) KONSTANTINOS BLATANIS is Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His research interests lie in American literature, modern drama, popular culture, media studies, and critical theory. He is the author of the book Popular Culture Icons in Contemporary American Drama (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003) and co-editor of the volume War on the Human: New Responses to an Ever-Present Debate (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017). Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences. Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín, ed. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2018; Pp. 581. The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era. Jonathan Shandell. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018; Pp. 213 + xii. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, & the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. Judith Hamera. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017; Pp. 286 + xvii. Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017; Pp. 233. A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams. Katherine Weiss, ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014; Pp. 290. 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" Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Book Reviews 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 Bodies and Playwrights Book Reviews By Published on November 8, 2018 Download Article as PDF Donatella Galella, Editor Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting By Amy Cook Reviewed by Ariel Nereson Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism By Patricia A. Ybarra Reviewed by Trevor Boffone The Late Work of Sam Shepard By Shannon Blake Skelton Reviewed by Carol Westcamp Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism By Kirsty Johnston Reviewed by Alexis Riley Books Received The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 1 (Fall 2018) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2018 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References Footnotes About The Author(s) Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. Patricia A. Ybarra. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2018; Pp. 247. Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. Amy Cook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Pp. 198. The Late Work of Sam Shepard. Shannon Blake Skelton. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016; Pp. 256. Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism. Kirsty Johnston. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016; Pp. 240. “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.

Book Reviews Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 2 Visit Journal Homepage Black Performance and Pedagogy Book Reviews By Published on January 28, 2019 Download Article as PDF Donatella Galella, Editor The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era By Jonathan Shandell Reviewed by Jennie Youssef Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett with Tia M. Shaffer Reviewed by DeRon S. Williams Palabras del Cielo: An Exploration of Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences Compiled by José Casas with Christina Marín Reviewed by Javier Hurtado A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams Edited by Katherine Weiss Reviewed by Shane Strawbridge Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization By Judith Hamera Reviewed by Patrick McKelvey Books Received 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) Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Johanna Hartmann and Julia Rössler Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Kiera Bono Editorial Assistant: Ruijiao Dong Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue 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.

Baron Kelly 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 Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Baron Kelly By Published on April 30, 2021 Download Article as PDF Histories of US theatre have often overlooked the contributions of Black trailblazers as agents of change. Instead of focusing on the knowledge, tradition, sacrifice, and artistry of these pioneers, mainstream histories have emphasized their acts of rebellion in ways that continue to frame their narratives in the context of the dominant white culture. While the “legitimate theatre” [1] in the United States proved impenetrable to African American artists for many years, the histories of those Black performers who created dynamic careers merit a narrative that transcends their successful “invasion” of that long-forbidden territory. This brief essay explores the legacies of Earle Hyman (1926-2017) and Frederick O’Neal (1905-1992) who represent two shining examples of excellence in a long, and largely unknown historical context in which their long track record of achievements were not recognized or could not be fully acknowledged. Hyman’s career began in the early 1940s and continued well into the twenty-first century, encompassing several significant chapters in American theatre history. His career exemplifies progressive efforts to make the American theatre more culturally diverse and inclusive, to eradicate racial and ethnic stereotypes, and integrate non-white traditions, playwrights, performers, and multicultural audiences. Earle Hyman’s brilliant theatrical career spanned the US and Europe, and he became the first Black actor to play the title roles in four of Shakespeare’s masterpieces: Hamlet , Macbeth , Othello , and King Lear , along with leading roles in Chekhov, O’Neill, Pinter, Soyinka, Albee, Fugard, Beckett, Hansberry, and Uhry. Hyman’s numerous successes established him as a leading man in the classical repertoire of the Western canon. During the 1940s and 1960s Frederick O’Neal led the way on and off the stage, working as an actor, theatre organizer, and union spokesman, advocating and working tirelessly for the inclusion of African Americans in American theatre. While Hyman was on the stage carving a career on stage in legitimate theatre, Frederick O’Neal, Hyman’s costar in Anna Lucasta , promoted the racial integration of American theatre. O’Neal insisted that the Black community and other ethnic groups had the right to act, direct, write, produce, and participate in all aspects of the American theatre. He focused on putting more “color” on Broadway. “I don’t mean in the sense of all-black shows,” he once clarified, “That will take care of itself. What I mean is a real commitment to the integration of the Broadway theatre.” [2] Both men proved that their “revolutionary acts” of penetrating fields long closed to Black actors were only the beginning of their stories. I invite contemporary theatre scholars to return to their legacies and reconsider their impact on this history of Black theatre. Earle Hyman: Two Ways of Life In the mid-1950s, the immensely talented and stately African American actor Earle Hyman pushed his way through the closed doors of classical and contemporary theatre, demonstrating artistic versatility in his roles. Almost a century after Ira Aldridge broke barriers in Europe and Russia (Ira Aldridge had crossed the Atlantic in the early 1800s, but had never been permitted to display his talent in America). Hyman became the first African American actor to demonstrate artistic versatility in a range of both Shakespearean and contemporary roles in legitimate theatre. In the late part of the twentieth century, Hyman’s popular appeal came through his work as Russell Huxtable, Bill Cosby’s television father, in The Cosby Show. However, in the professional theatre world, he was known first and foremost for performance in classic plays, especially his Shakespeare roles. Hyman’s period of prosperity in the 1950s should not be taken as evidence that the status of Black actors had generally improved to any great degree by that time. Before Hyman’s successes, two African American theatre artists of exceptional talent, Paul Robeson and Canada Lee, succeeded briefly in forcing the classical theatre doors open with their Broadway performances in Othello (1943) and The Tempest and The Duchess of Malfi (1945, and 1946), respectively. Additionally, some Black actors, including Ruby Dee, Frederick O’Neal, and Frank Silvera, had been cast in roles that were not specifically Black roles, but they were the exceptions, not the rule. Major roles written by white playwrights for Black actors were limited, and Black theatre had been ghettoized in the US. [3] Writing in the 1960s, author Roy Newquist defined the central challenge faced so many Black actors: As restrictive as the issue of whether or not the Negro is allowed to act is the problem of what he can act in. Few plays, whether classical or contemporary, include good roles for Negroes. Since audiences are still prone to judge the Negro actor as a Negro first, then as an actor, it is difficult to integrate the cast of a play by casting a Negro in a basically ‘white’ part. Plays have been written, of course, for all Negro casts, and ‘white’ plays have been played by all-Negro casts, but the former have been produced frequently enough, and the latter become Negro theater, which is another matter entirely.[4] Indeed, Hyman entered a highly segregated world of theatre. Groups like the Actors’ Equity Association (formed on 26 May 1913) engaged in constant battles with theatre managers for equal treatment, standard contracts, and basic standard civil rights for actors. Yet, throughout this struggle, they ignored the rights of Black actors. The April 1923 edition of Equity News , published by Actors’ Equity, defined the union’s position toward the Black actor: Equity’s policy has been that when colored performers act in white companies, they come under our jurisdiction and should belong to the AEA, but when they perform in all-colored companies, we don’t seek their support because this group of people has many problems of which we know nothing and have at present no way of learning. As we don’t wish to take their dues without giving something in return, we have always felt it would be infinitely better if they were to form a colored branch of Equity.[5] Equity’s policies, while appalling, hardly seem surprising in the midst of the Jim Crow era. They explicitly tie professionalism to whiteness and acceptance in a white-dominated cultural system. Additionally, the language of “We” in the statement signals an entirely white leadership team in Equity, and a refusal to acknowledge Black performers as professional equals. By the time Hyman began making his mark in the 1950s, African American activists had taken to the streets. Black protests for civil rights surfaced in American theatre as early as the mid-forties. Actors Fredi Washington, Canada Lee, and Paul Robeson attended civil rights rallies fighting for soldiers of color and their rights. African Americans who had fought for their country during World War II came home with new expectations. In New York, Black theatregoers were allowed to purchase seats anywhere in the theatre in most Broadway houses that earlier had enforced segregated seating policies. Yet attitudes changed slowly among those who controlled the entertainment industry and access to opportunities for Black artists. In 1956, after becoming the first and only African American actor cast at the American Shakespeare Festival Stratford in Stratford, Connecticut, Hyman achieved another artistic milestone when he secured the lead in, Mister Johnson, a stage adaptation of Joyce Cary’s novel about colonial days in West Africa. Hyman had previously appeared on Broadway in small roles in Climate of Eden (1952) and No Time for Sergeants (1955). However, Mister Johnson was his first leading role on Broadway since Anna Lucasta in 1944 and it offered a chance to exhibit his versatility. In the title role of Mister Roberts he portrayed a young Nigerian elevated to clerk’s status for the British Government. Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer summarize the plot as follows: Having adopted the appellation Mister, Johnson is no longer tribal, but neither is he civilized in the word’s conventional sense. Hilariously funny yet sweet happenings occur between his would-be decent employer [Harry Rudbeck] and this Nigerian boy in a backwoods outpost of empire. The two men are friends, but the gulf between them is too great for genuine understanding. In the end, the black boy is sentenced to hang for an unintentional crime. Rather than suffer the noose’s public indignity, he begs his white friend (who upholds the sentence) to shoot him. The white does. To paraphrase an old cliché of cowboy and Indian films, ‘Another Negro bites the dust.’[6] Langston Hughes observed that “on Broadway Negro characters do not shoot first. They merely get shot.” [7] Despite its critical success, Hyman faced the same problem with Mister Roberts . It offers no Black hero and no character remains to carry on the Black character’s legacy. Many playwrights of the 1950s framed Black characters as martyrs because those types of figures appeared less threatening to white audiences (and thus more commercially viable). The character of Mister Johnson reverted to that old theme stretching back to Uncle Tom’s Cabin : the innate capacity of Blacks to suffer, especially for white folk. Although Mister Johnson received mixed reviews, the top (white) critics proved unanimous in praise of Hyman’s talent. He had accomplished the American actor’s dream, “stardom” on Broadway, and a collection of glowing reviews. All the leading white New York critics heralded Hyman’s performance. Brooks Atkinson, who had followed Hyman’s career from the beginning, wrote: “The leading part is wonderfully well acted by Hyman, a gifted Negro who at last has inherited a Broadway part worthy of his talents. Mr. Hyman is a tall, supple, imaginative actor. … [He] is superb.” [8] Adding to Atkinson’s praise, Robert Coleman wrote: “Hyman is magnificent as the well-meaning, essentially honest and irresponsible native trapped between two ways of life. His dreams, accomplishments and eventual destruction are realized with touches that are irresistibly amusing and enormously disturbing. Take our word for it, Hyman is going to win many a prize this season for a truly great performance.” [9] And indeed, Hyman received a 1956 Theatre World Award for his performance. Theatre Arts declared Hyman the play’s “principal onstage asset” [10] and dubbed him, “one of the brightest entries in Broadway’s own future outlook.” [11] Richard Watts, admitting that the play had challenges, concluded that Hyman’s performance minimized these failings: “Mr. Hyman, in a part that dominates the evening and appears in virtually every scene, gives a beautiful performance, which is at the same time warmly humorous and has the quality of tragic dignity. Mister Johnson certainly has frailties, but Mr. Hyman’s characterization is so moving and real that they seem comparatively unimportant.” [12] John Chapman of the New York Daily News wrote: “It is, mostly, Hyman’s play, for the role is a long and hard one-and Hyman doesn’t falter. This is good acting.” [13] Other critics were equally impressed by Hyman’s presence and ability to capture the audience. John McClain stated, “The evening is almost entirely Hyman’s. Hyman dominates the stage and sustains you until the final curtain falls on his flattened figure.” [14] The New York Herald Tribune’s Walter Kerr wrote: In actor Hyman’s hands, Mister Johnson is sunny, ingratiating, and strangely touching throughout the play. Mr. Hyman has an enormous emotional range.” [15] Hyman was a handsome and extremely tall light-skinned Black man. He played to exclusively white audiences in the theatre bringing an exoticized and visceral truth to the stage that had not been seen before. [16] Hyman would later describe Mister Johnson as one of the high points of his career. But even Hyman’s newly acquired “star status” did not guarantee Mister Johnson an extended run. Unfortunately, the lines did not form in front of the box-office, and the show closed after 44 performances. “Broadway was just not ready for Mister Johnson ,” observed Helen Martin. “It hit too close to home. The average American audience, composed of middle-class whites, was not open to the idea of seeing injustices perpetrated by them presented on the Broadway stage.” [17] Echoing Helen Martin, Loften Mitchell observed, “The author had good intentions, but the mark of the handkerchief was on Mr. Johnson’s head and Negroes did not like it.” [18] An interesting commentary was the fact that director Robert Lewis never understood why they didn’t. He lamented that Negro groups had not booked theatre parties for the show. [19] Mister Johnson ’s Broadway fate offers one example of how Hyman both exceeded expectations for Black actors of his time but still had his success stymied by racism in the commercial mainstream US theatre. Like his character of Mister Roberts, Hyman found himself “trapped between two ways of life” – one in the mainstream white theatre that relegated him to certain types of roles, and one in the emerging Black American theatre. Once Hyman launched his career in Europe, he found himself able to move into the types of roles that shifted him away from the limited opportunities available in US theatre. Frederick O’Neal: A Real Commitment While Hyman carved a career on the “legitimate” stage in the US and Europe, Frederick O’Neal, Hyman’s costar in Anna Lucasta , promoted the racial integration of American theatre. O’Neal insisted that the Black community and other ethnic groups had the right to act, direct, write, produce, and participate in all aspects of the American theatre. He focused on putting more “color” on Broadway. “I don’t mean in the sense of all-black shows,” he once clarified, “That will take care of itself. What I mean is a real commitment to the integration of the Broadway theatre.” [20] O’Neal’s advocacy for Black actors started with his union involvement. The January 1944 edition of Equity magazine published an editorial entitled, “No Color Line.” Twenty-one years after AEA had claimed its leaders had, “no way of learning” about the “many problems” faced by “colored performers,” the organization seemed ready to reconsider some of its earlier policies. The editorial, “No Color Line,” lauded Equity for ignoring the color line when it needed Black actors in white shows: Equity adopted the policy thirty years ago when it was neither particularly expedient nor likely to obtain for it any commendation, but simply a matter of right and justice and good sense for a theatre which needed Negro actors and has benefited by their appearance. It still might be a good idea for a lot of other organizations to approach the problem of Negro members from the same angle and in the same spirit.[21] Frederick O’Neal decided to tackle the “problem” of Negro members when he joined AEA later that same year. In 1944, O’Neal chaired the Hotel Accommodations Committee. This committee addressed the difficulties facing AEA members on the road, especially minority members. No group of members was more deeply and adversely affected by not being able to secure lodging than Black performers who would have to undertake the discouraging and sometimes humiliating task of finding accommodations for themselves, however poor or inconvenient the accommodations might be. The committee and the AEA took steps to address this problem “[urging] the League of New York Theatre, the Association of Theatrical Agents and Managers, local house managers, and even the national Travelers Aid Society to make special efforts to provide adequate accommodations for minority performers on tour.” [22] From O’Neal’s point of view, finding accommodations for minority performers on the road was only part of the problem. There needed to be more “color” in the audiences as well. But how could this become a reality when many theatres remained segregated? For example, in Washington, D.C. blacks were permitted to perform on the stage of the National Theatre, but their relatives and friends could not come to see them. Equity had been aware of this situation but felt little motivation to do anything about it until after World War II. [23] As a member of the Negotiating Committee of 1947, O’Neal helped to formulate the agreement with the League of New York Theatres which stated that beginning on June 1, 1948, “the actor shall not be required to perform at any theatre in Washington, D.C., where discrimination is practiced against any actor or patron of the theatre by reason of his race, color or creed.” [24] In the June 1952 edition of Equity News , O’Neal wrote an article entitled “Integration.” He pointed out that theatre and all other forms of American entertainment were among the most powerful and influential medium of communication and education. Therefore, it was increasingly important that the role of the “Negro” citizen be adequately and accurately portrayed to reflect his/her significant presence in American society. [25] “In confirmation of the realities of the American scene today,” he wrote, “we urge the portrayal of the Negro as a more general part of the scheme of our society, for example, as postmen, doctors and teachers, without the necessity of emphasis on race.” [26] He stressed that in the recent past: A well-intentioned but ill-directed sensitivity to this problem [of racial stereotypes] has worked inadvertent harm to the Negro artist. Apprehensive of doing injustice to the Negro citizens and offending humanity, writers and producers have tended to completely eliminate the Negro in comedy and servant roles. This policy, wellmeant though it may be, is unrealistic and has seriously curtailed the employment of the Negro artist.[27] O’Neal’s faith in his fellow Equity members and his belief that integration could solve the racial problems in the theatre culminated in a practical display of “mixed casting.” With O’Neal as chair, the Equity Committee on Negro Integration, presented a two-hour program of scenes entitled “Integration Showcase 1959.” The impressive cast of “Integration Showcase” included Ralph Bellamy (then AEA’s president); Robert Preston, star of The Music Man; Geraldine Page, star of Sweet Bird of Youth; as well as many prominent Black performers, including Louis Gossett, Ossie Davis, and Diahann Carroll. The producers of “Integration Showcase” did not “seek a forum to demand the indiscriminate casting of African Americans in roles where audience credibility would be strained,” but “wanted merely to prove that more black actors could and should be cast in roles which are at present denied them arbitrarily.” The producer of the “Integration Showcase,” Windsor Lewis, stated, “the aim is to stimulate the imagination of writers, directors, and producers in every field of the entertainment world down to the level of community and amateur theaters.” [28] O’Neal added, “The point of the show is to show how the Negro actor can be used in ‘other than Negro roles’-without disturbing the artistic intent of the play. In the so-called non-designated role we see no reason why we can’t have a Negro.” [29] The star-studded event was presented to an invited audience of 1,500 actors, directors, agents, producers, and other theatre personnel connected with casting. It had taken two years for Actors’ Equity to assemble all the players in New York City at the same time. The theme expressed in the 1959 Integration Showcase, “We see no reason why we can’t have a Negro,” has echoed in the outcries of the ‘80s and ‘90s and among those who have thrust “non-traditional casting” into the limelight. In a 1992 collection of interviews with actors to determine the effect of non-traditional casting on their lives, one young actor, Mary Lee, translated O’Neal’s goals into the jargon of the ‘90s saying: “We can cut through much p.c. rhetoric in casting if we simply ask of any role: Is race (age, gender, physical ability) germane: if yes, simply cast it so. If no, give all actors an equal opportunity.” [30] While O’Neal maintained that caricatures and stereotypes should always be censured, his denied that there was anything denigrating about comic or servant roles if they were included as a part of American life. On the other hand, when Blacks were presented exclusively in such roles, it distorted their representation and impeded any attempts at integration. Again, Mary Lee’s argument echoes O’Neal’s, but brings his argument into more contemporary conversations: Sometimes the roles are stereotyped as written, sometimes not. Sometimes roles that have depth and dimension are directed as stereotypes. This is especially true for culturally specific roles. When there are more ethnically-specific lead roles out there that command our attention and respect, there will be much more respect for non-white actors in all roles, traditional or not.[31] O’Neal was a man of even temperament, who had experienced the pain of the racial divide, but believed, ideally, in an integrated society and fairness. He fought tirelessly for Black actors to be engaged for roles not racially designated. Conclusion The cultural politics of casting, access, and representation continues in the twenty-first century (most recently in the 2019 volume, Casting a Movement ). In her 2010 study, Passing Strange , Ayanna Thompson pondered the slowness of contemporary theatre to become truly multicultural. Thompson argues that even though directors as early as Orson Welles or Joseph Papp employed color-conscious casting, the mission of countering whiteness through intentional casting against color is still seen as a challenge, and as a new idea. [32] She probes the inconsistencies in contemporary casting practices. Although most regional Shakespeare festivals profess to be multicultural, their actual practices can be divided into four categories: (1) colorblind casting, assigning actors of color according to ability without regard to race; (2) societal casting, assigning actors of color to roles that were originally written for white actors; (3) conceptual casting, assigning actors of color to roles that will enhance the play’s social resonance; (4) cross cultural casting, moving the play’s milieu to a different location or culture. [33] Black theatre artists in twenty-first century America have evolved from a sense of pride, struggle, history, and achievement from those like Hyman and O’Neal who found numerous ways to surmount obstacles set before them. Their resistance to racism and their unrelenting demands for equity in access and representation wrought significant changes in US theatre. Hyman and O’Neal stand as examples of those who led the way with their artistry, integrity, talent, and intelligence bringing honor to the profession. They stories defy the familiar, mainstream narratives of Black artists to illustrate that Black performers could offer layered and complex characters in any setting. Interestingly, Hyman never described the characters he played as “white” characters. He described them as aggressive, frustrated, loving, victimized, etc. He brought his experiences to his characters and wove those experiences into the given circumstances. Similarly, O’Neal remained adamant that performers should not be confined to certain roles based on color. For O’Neal, acting meant revealing the inner worlds of the characters rather than commenting on the circumstances of the performers. Reclaiming O’Neal’s and Hyman’s unique perspectives on the role of the Black performer illuminates an era in US theatre history when Black actors struggled to establish both equity and equality in casting practices. Both men serve as vital links connecting African American trailblazing ancestors of past years when only a select few were able to walk in the corridors of legitimate theatres, to the stars of the present day as they usher in a new era in the American theatre. References [1] The term “legitimate theatre” refers to serious drama sand classical theatre work including classical comedy. It simply indicates a divide, supposedly implying that art and mere entertainment are somehow in separate camps. [2] Loften Mitchell, Voices of the Black Theatre (New Jersey: James T. White, 1975), 181. [3] Sluts . . . slaves . . . servants . . . salt-of-the-earth southern were the stultifying stereotypical s’s. These were the roles available to black actors at the time. Most were written in some white writer’s ersatz pidgin-English version of dialect. When the theatre world would be graced by the illuminating hands of August Wilson, the spoken rhythms of the Black rural poor would be perceived as folk music and take their place beside the lilting Irish brogue of Sean O’Casey and the Welsh inflected rhythms of Dylan Thomas. [4] Roy Newquist, A Special Kind of Magic (New York: Rand MacNally & Co., 1967), 113-114. [5] Equity News (April, 1923), 16. [6] Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer, Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967), 125. [7] Langston Hughes, “The Negro and American Entertainment,” in The American Negro Reference Book, ed. John P. Davis (New York: Educational Heritage, Inc., 1966), 820. [8] Brooks Atkinson, “Mister Johnson,” New York Times Theatre Reviews , 31 March 1956. [9] Robert Coleman. “Mister Johnson is Superbly Acted,” New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews , 1 April 1956. [10] Theatre Arts 15 (June 1956): 16. [11] Theatre , 16. [12] Richard Watts Jr, “Portrait of a Man of Good Will,” New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, 31 March 1956. [13] John Chapman, “Mister Johnson is a Touching Play,” New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, 31 March 1956. [14] John McClain, “A Real Hit? May Well Be,” New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, 30 March 1956. [15] Walter Kerr, “Mister Johnson,” New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews , 30 March 1956. [16] Gifted Black actresses such as Hilda Simms, Jane White, and Janice Kingslow had suffered brutally stunted careers in which, as light-skinned Black females, they had been considered uncastable in white roles because they looked too much like white. [17] Helen Martin, personal interview in her home 12 June 1996. [18] Loften Mitchell, Voices of the Black Theatre (New Jersey: James T. White, 1975), 181. [19] Mitchell, 181. [20] Mitchell, 181. [21] Equity News (January 1944), 58-60. [22] Equity News (January 1944), 58-60. [23] Equity News (April 1960), 14. [24] Equity News (April 1960), 14. [25] Equity News (June, 1952), 19. [26] Equity News (April 1960), 14. [27] Equity News (April 1960), 14. [28] Windsor Lewis, quoted in “Integration Showcase,” Ebony 14, no.10 (August 1959), 73. [29] Frederick O’Neal, quoted in “Integration Showcase,” 73. [30] Mary Lee, New Traditions (New York: New Traditions,1992), 3. [31] Lee, 3. [32] Ayanna Thompson, Passing Strange (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 99. [33] Thompson, 76. Footnotes About The Author(s) BARON KELLY is a four-time Fulbright Scholar and a Professor in Theatre and Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently, he serves on the boards of the Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare and Social Justice Series Editorial Advisory Board, the Harold Pinter Review, Comparative Drama Conference, Stanislavsky Institute, and the American Society for Research’s Executive Committee. In addition, he serves on the Fulbright Review Panel and is a member of the National Theatre Conference. Acting assignments Include Broadway; Royal National Theatre of Great Britain; Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada; Edinburgh Theatre Festival. Performances for over 30 of America’s resident theatres including the Oregon Utah, and California Shakespeare Festivals; The Guthrie; Yale Rep; Mark Taper Forum; Old Globe San Diego; Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, D.C.; Actors Theatre of Louisville; among others. His teaching of acting has led him to more than a dozen counties on five continents and in 20 American states. Editorial Board: Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf ISNN 2376-4236 Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Vivian Appler Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Vivian Appler By Published on January 12, 2021 Download Article as PDF Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec. Julie Burelle. Performance Works, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019; 232 pp. Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States. Laura L. Mielke. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019; 296 pp. Issues that surrounded Black and Indigenous sovereignty in the mid-nineteenth century are under scrutiny again as we enter the mid-twenty-first. The summer of 2020 makes this vividly apparent: A global health crisis has exposed disparities of income and access to health care across racial and ethnic lines. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is gaining momentum while an increasingly tyrannical government works to suppress the freedom of speech and right to assemble for those who would peacefully protest anti-Black racism and police brutality. The US Supreme Court has ruled that a 3-million-acre territory in Eastern Oklahoma is, after all, the rightful land of the Muskogee (Creek) people and is therefore exempt from Oklahoma state law. In this context, Julie Burelle’s Encounters on Contested Lands and Laura L. Mielke’s Provocative Eloquence , though different in critical approach and aesthetic content, invite reflection upon legacies of conquest and genocide in the United States and Canada that continue to impede the realization of social justice now. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec is an important contribution to scholarship about performance in and of the Americas. Burelle’s performance studies method allows multiple embodied storytelling genres to be read as integral to the narrative clash between the French Québécois de souche (“the white descendants of early settlers from France, who still speak French and understand themselves… as settlers no more, colonized by the British first and, later, by the Anglo-Canadians, and rightfully belonging to the territory of Québec”) and the Indigenous peoples who reside in what is now the province of Québec (6). Burelle articulates her own positionality as French Québécois de souche throughout her criticism of Euro-Canada’s claims to nationhood and territory. Relying on Slavoj Žižek’s concept of “objective violence,” she interprets French Québec’s history of settler colonialism as it pertains to performances surrounding Canada’s Indian Act (1876), and as its damaging social contract persists into the present. Burelle claims, “[r]ace, with whiteness as its ultimate arbiter, is the unstable terrain on which settler-colonial anxieties are performed through a pas de deux between abjection and incorporation” (12). The performance examples she cites demonstrate that French Canadians’ minoritization claims rest upon acts of erasure, ignorance, or consumption of Indigenous presence, resistance, and ancestry. Burelle organizes the book’s intersectional histories around the “Oka Crisis” of 1990, in which the Mohawk people of Kanehsatà:ke defended the destruction of tribal lands by a predominantly white, francophone country club community. Burelle reads this conflict as key to understanding the fluidity of the Québécois de souche’s claims to cultural marginalization, conveniently invoked when contesting Anglo-Canada’s dominance over Québec but obscured when an alliance with Anglo-Canada would preserve French-Canadian claims over Indigenous lands. Burelle begins with an analysis of Alexis Martin’s Invention du chauffage central en Nouvelle-France ( The Invention of Central Heating in New France, 2012-2014), a play that poses paradoxical French Québécois de souche claims of abjection and what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang refer to as “settler moves to innocence” (169). Burelle historiographically frames Martin’s epic as part of the white settler-colonial legacy of Marc Lescarbot’s 1606 Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle- France. She surmises, “ Invention falls short of its reconciliatory endeavor and echoes in disturbing ways the willful offering of the land” once performed by white actors in redface for Lescarbot’s legendary conquest drama about ‘New France’ (27). Burelle further probes protestations of French-Canadian innocence in Chapter 2, “Les Racines Imaginaires/Mythical Métissages .” Through close readings of films by Euro-Canadians that examine indigeneity, Burelle charts the violence embedded French Québécois de souche affect to what she dubs a “felt Nativeness,” “never problematizing how this desire to possess Nativeness, to absorb it, is… inherently settler-colonial” (58). In this chapter, Burelle explores the many iterations of “ métis, métissé, and métissage ,” terms that broadly refer to racial and ethnic mixing, but each possessing a nuanced interpretation when it comes to various Canadian and Indigenous identities, rendering Métis and métis studies distinct foci of Canadian identities and politics (59). With the films discussed in Chapter 3 – Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, Alanis Obomsawin), Mesnak (2012, Yves Sioui Durand), and the Wapikoni Mobile project – Burelle gives voice to Indigenous filmmakers, at once revealing the objective violence implicit to the history of Canada’s Indian Act and affirming authentic representations of Indigenous culture. Chapter 4, “Endurance/Enduring Performance,” engages Indigenous women’s performances that articulate gender-based violence as an irrefutable component of Canada’s genocidal legacy. La Marche Amun (2010), conceived and organized by Michèle Taïna and Viviane Michel, was “led by a group of Innu women to demand an end to the gendered discrimination contained in the Indian Act” (21). This processional performance, situated along a “rural highway” in 2010, eerily reflected the concurrent murders of Indigenous women along Canada’s Highway 16, most of which remain under-investigated and unsolved (125). Burelle’s analysis of the endurance-beading performance, Indian Act (1999-2002), organized by Nadia Myre (Anishinaabe) for which she and 250 participants of European and Indigenous descent covered an annotated copy of the Indian Act with intricate beadwork. The final piece, many pages of which are unfinished , suggests that much work remains to be done in the ongoing processes of reconciliation and repatriation among the peoples who enact Canada’s “ colonial present tense and tense colonial present ” (4). North American genocidal legacies come into equally sharp focus in Laura Mielke’s Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States , a timely book that reframes US oratory traditions as enmeshed with abolitionism and infused with violence. Mielke considers speech acts of all kinds as she interrogates the connection between embodied action and intentional utterance. She draws from a rich array of theatrical, dramatic, oratory, legislative, and print narratives to craft a meticulous case for the power of words to incite change. Theatre, theatricality and drama inform each portion of her argument that “the antislavery speech readily drew upon theatrical forms and provocations of antislavery speech made their way back to the stage” (24). Mielke’s method is “interperformative and intertextual” (21). She considers dramatic texts and performatic contexts for each oratorical figure as she disrupts popular understandings of familiar figures from the political, melodramatic, and Shakespearean stages of the mid-nineteenth century (21). This is perhaps most evident in Chapter 1, “Edwin Forrest and Heroic Oratory.” In her analysis of Forrest’s 1838 Independence Day Oration , Mielke illustrates Forrest’s political speech as having been understood not just for its political content and delivery style, but also for its Roachian “afterglow” caused by Forrest’s embodiment of his own ideas. For audiences, memories of the actor’s famous “heroic” stage roles such as the slave rebellion leader Spartacus (1831) may have blended with the words of the speech, perhaps lending Forrest a more abolitionist tone than words alone would have conveyed (53). Mielke’s notion of “dramatic suasion” is most clearly defined in a chapter dedicated to the dramatic readings of William Wells Brown and Mary Webb. She argues that “[d]ramatic suasion, as developed by Webb and Wells Brown…, transferred the rhetoric at the heart of Garrisonian abolitionism into a genre… associated with rebellious and retributive violence and into a performative mode” (82). As enacted by the free Black bodies of Webb and Wells Brown, abolitionist narratives shifted the national conversation in the mid-nineteenth century from the implicitly anti-abolitionist question of what the US would do with a population of free Black people, to “the real question… ‘what to do with the masters’” (82). While political histories pin Mielke’s argument in chronological sequence, the event that anchors her thesis most evocatively is the caning of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the US Congress floor by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. In Chapter 3, Mielke compares the event with the tableau, “Southern Chivalry – Argument versus Club’s” by John L. Magee (1856) and then considers three theatrical adaptations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred; A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp in light of increasingly brutal resistance to the abolitionist movement. As she teases out the violent undercurrents of melodramatic forms such as the sensation scene and blackface minstrelsy, attuned to the physical violence threatened and represented onstage in all three productions, Mielke infers, “[i]t was the fear of antislavery speech’s incitement of forcible resistance that led to a very different manifestation of provocative eloquence: the vicious suppression of eloquence by resistant auditors” (84). Mielke artfully unpacks Portia’s famous “Quality of Mercy” monologue for its rhetorical threat of violence, used to alternately suppress or incite violence that in turn either perpetuated the practice of slavery or resisted it. Mielke’s analysis of Portia’s speech, and its numerous deployments in the antebellum era, helps the reader to understand the US as it is currently embroiled in an unfinished history of racial violence that simmers in words and inevitably manifests as physical brutality. Re-reading this book amidst the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement during the summer of 2020, I was brought to consider the ways that Mielke’s oratorical subjects have themselves become cultural and rhetorical touchpoints in our ongoing struggles towards social justice. By examining antislavery texts, Mielke reveals the violence that haunts even the most pacifist of entreaties. Her choice to conclude with abolitionist John Brown’s execution and the sway it held for actor John Wilkes Booth towards violently anti-abolitionist ends suggests that the question of whether or not violent action is necessary to dismantle systems of racism and oppression in the US is yet to be settled. Read together, these books deepen our grasp of the violence in which hegemonic North American concepts of citizenship, sovereignty, and suffrage are entrenched. Objective violence embedded in settler-colonial legislation compounded with the implied and enacted violence surrounding abolitionist speech echo across the continent while the struggle for social justice endures. References Footnotes About The Author(s) VIVIAN APPLER College of Charleston Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Shane Strawbridge Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Shane Strawbridge By Published on January 11, 2021 Download Article as PDF Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. In 1982, Christopher Bigsby penned A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. What was originally planned as a single volume expanded to three, with volume 2 being released in 1984 and Volume 3 in 1985. Although Bigsby, a literary analyst and novelist with more than 50 books to his credit, hails from Britain, he is drawn to American playwrights because of their “stylistic inventiveness…sexual directness…[and] characters ranged across the social spectrum in a way that for long, and for the most part, had not been true of the English theatre” (1). This admiration brought Bigsby’s research across the millennium line to give us his latest offering Twenty-First Century American Playwrights . What Bigsby provides is an in-depth survey of nine writers who entered the American theatre landscape during the past twenty years, including chapters on Annie Baker, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Katori Hall, Amy Herzog, Tracy Letts, David Lindsay-Abaire, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, and Naomi Wallace. While these playwrights vary in the manner they work and styles of creative output, what places them together in this volume “is the sense that theatre has a unique ability to engage with audiences in search of some insight into the way we live…to witness how words become manifest, how artifice can, at its best, be the midwife of truth” (5). This explanation, however vague, does little to provide a concrete rubric for why these dramatists were included over others. Yet productively, although most of the playwrights included in this collection have had productions on Broadway, Bigsby eschews the misguided notion that American theatre means only Broadway with his inclusion of several writers more well-known in universities, regional theatres, and Off-Broadway—providing a refreshing change from many playwright surveys. Bigsby’s recent monograph presents a combination of playwright biography, oeuvre studies, philosophies, working methods, and dramaturgical analysis. Detailed and information-rich, his discussions can be experienced like episodes in a documentary series, gently guiding audiences through the life and catalog of these nine playwrights, proving it an accessible read for academics and enthusiasts, alike. The volume is organized so that each playwright gets their own chapter, any of which could be read independently from the rest of the text for artists and scholars wishing to do a deep dive on a single playwright. Readers do not need to be familiar with each playwright’s work to follow Bigsby’s scholarship, as he takes time to give a thorough description of each play while also unearthing the themes, styles, and methods favored by each writer. The tell-tale marks of each dramatist is dissected, including, for example: Annie Baker’s penchant for pauses (“it’s not actually silence I’m after so much as the things that we do when we’re not talking” (19)); Naomi Wallace’s political narratives (“politics and art can never be divided…that’s terribly exciting” (194)); Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s “radically different” oeuvre (“each of my projects are in part a rejection of or violent departure from a previous project” (35)); Katori Hall’s examination of diverse Black experiences (“everybody is influenced by who they are and unfortunately how other people perceive them” (68)); and Lynn Nottage’s unearthing of “memoir-less” narratives that implicate audiences (“I think that provocations is when you enter in the space and everything you believe in is challenged” (165)). In allowing the playwrights to speak for themselves, Bigsby opens the door to revealing the dramatists’ relationships to the canon. This proves useful to both students and scholars searching for context in placing the latest generation of American writers against the dominant voices of the 20th century. He analyzes many of their plays against titans of not only the American theatre, but also the world’s stage. He draws parallels between Baker’s characters in The Aliens to the vaudevillian clowns of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and the “characters on pause” from Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, for instance . Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County gets read against Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for its ability to “get through the skin and muscle, down to the bone and the marrow” of familial secrets (109). David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole is compared to O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, both plays having to “recycle their sense of lost purpose within the constraints of what should have been a place of safety” (132). Yet the text is more than an exercise in comparing and contrasting work with what came before, and 20th century models; Bigsby also considers how these works navigate contemporary socio-political issues and historical contexts on both macro and micro levels. Thus he evokes Amy Herzog’s uncomfortable family history as inspiration for After the Revolution (77-78), Sarah Ruhl being inspired to write The Clean House after overhearing a conversation at a cocktail party in which a doctor claimed they “didn’t go to medical school to clean house” (178), and Lynn Nottage’s use of the 2008 financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street as the inspiration for Sweat (164). If there are any flaws to the volume, they mostly lie with the publishers themselves. There are proofreading errors throughout — including calling Albee’s work Whose [sic] Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, referencing the Vermont Senator Bernie Saunders [sic], and an indecision about whether or not there is a second hyphen in “twenty-first century.” These detract from an otherwise engaging and solid read. Bigsby himself is not above question, however. Although he doesn’t say so directly, Bigsby gives the impression that his definition of “playwright” rejects those who write for the musical theatre, a disappointing exclusion. His introduction gives credit to the “financially no less than critically rewarding” plays—sorry, musicals—of Lin-Manuel Miranda, for instance, but still Bigsby denies him a chapter’s sustained discussion. (And because Miranda is denied, we are less likely to question the omission of other critically, commercially and culturally successful musical theatre writers). Bigsby addresses this line of critique in a way, stating that “to name some of [the excluded writers] would invite complaints of further omissions” (2). While none of his volumes to date have examined musical theater writers with his impressive, engaging lens, one can hope that he is deliberately keeping a few aces hidden up his sleeve that will serve as the basis for the inevitable—and welcome—volumes yet to come. References Footnotes About The Author(s) SHANE STRAWBRIDGE Texas Tech University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands and Provocative Eloquence Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Jaclyn I. Pryor Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 33 1 Visit Journal Homepage Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Jaclyn I. Pryor By Published on January 11, 2021 Download Article as PDF Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg’s Ensemble-Made: A Guide to Devised Theater (2019) is a valuable resource for theater educators and practitioners, particularly those who wish to deepen their knowledge of the craft variously known as devised theater, ensemble-based performance, and collective creation. Each short chapter of the book focuses on a distinct Chicago-based theater company (15 in total)—which range from large, nationally-renowned companies such as Lookingglass Theatre and The Second City to smaller, community-based collectives. Each chapter includes a brief history of the company alongside descriptions of games and exercises emblematic of their process and pedagogy. The co-written book also includes an Introduction which places the field of devising in its larger cultural and historical context, as well as a Time Line of the field and List of Exercises By Type, which function as the book’s conclusion. The authors’ methodologies are informed by their own relationship to devised theater in Chicago: Johnson is an ensemble member of the Neo-Futurists and Paz Brownrigg is the Artistic Director of Free Street Theater and cofounder of Teatro Luna—both of which are featured in the book. In this regard, they write as scholars and practitioners of devised theater but also as colleague-critics within the expansive but close-knit network of the Chicago theater community. (Colleague-criticism is a term developed by Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Jill Dolan and me to describe the queer and feminist practice of writing criticism from a place of love, respect and mutual aid, as articulated in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies in 2009.) As Ensemble-Made Chicago’s introduction makes clear, Chicago theater has deep roots in ensemble-based creation methods, and, in turn, the field of devising writ large has a great debt to pay in this neighborhood-based, immigrant-rich town that propagated the craft of ensemble-based theater and performance. Johnson and Paz Brownrigg effectively detail how this history can be traced to the late 19th century emergence of the field of modern social work in the city of Chicago—which was made possible, in large part, through the establishment of the Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr Hull House on Chicago’s West Side in 1889. The Hull House was an early settlement house focused on direct services for new Americans; as the authors duly note, “very early on, Jane Addams discovered the profound effect theater had on the children who attended” (xii). The Hull House Players, as they came to be known, were part of the contemporaneously burgeoning Little Theatre Movement in the U.S. (1912-1925) which distinguished itself by its break from commercial theatre and its focus on theatre as civic good. Guided by the pivotal contributions of sociologist Neva Boyd and social worker Viola Spolin—who brought their respective skills and interests in theatre as a catalyst for play, collaboration, and issue-driven exploration to the Hull House—the authors demonstrate how the Hull House paved the way for this contemporary community of devised theatre makers to thrive. Through both its introduction as well as its body chapters, Ensemble-Made also makes a compelling case for considering devised theatre’s relationship not only to social work and arts education, as previously noted, but also to the history and methods of physical theatre. Although not always explicitly cited, many of the games and exercises featured in the book bear obvious ties not only to the pedagogy of Boyd and Spolin (and Spolin’s son, Paul Sills, who founded Second City), but also to the pedagogy of 20th century French theatre maker and educator Jacques Lecoq who developed a codified system of actor training grounded in embodiment. Featured companies, such as 500 Clown, Albany Park Theater Project, Every house has a door, and Walkabout Theater, among others, draw from physical theatre games and exercises in their creation process, resulting in work that resembles experimental performance as much as it does community-based theater. What also becomes clear, as the reader moves their way through the book, is the fact that the Chicago devised theater community is hardly confined by its midwestern geography. Dell’ Arte International (Blue Lake, CA), Third Rail Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA), Sojourn Theatre (Portland, OR), and Pilobolus Dance (Hanover, NH and Washington, CT) all receive honorable mentions in descriptions of exercises. In other words, the artists who comprise Johnson and Paz Brownrigg’s case studies cite not only one another but also those companies from around the country (and world) whose creation methods have circulated through a vast and interlocking network of theater educators and practitioners. In this regard, Ensemble-Made tacitly provides a compelling genealogy of contemporary performance traditions, making evident the ways in which “something as simple as a warm-up has a history” (xi), and revealing the complex ways in which embodied practices circulate across changing times, places and social contexts. While Ensemble-Made ’s explicit focus is more practice than theory, the authors productively place their book in conversation with the field of performance studies—specifically, Diana Taylor’s foundational The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (2003). Taylor’s work is useful to Johnson and Paz Brownrigg’s project because it provides them with a key rationale: citing Taylor, Johnson and Paz Brownrigg situate ensemble-based performance as a “repertoire event.” They elaborate, “it lives in performance and process, not necessarily in text” (xi). Because the creation process for devised theater breaks from traditional theater methods in which “the script” precedes the rehearsal process (and, relatedly, often from clearly delineated roles such as “playwright,” “director,” “performer,” and “audience”), both the devised theater event as well as the process of making the event do not always leave a clear archive for the historian to later interpret. As the authors succinctly put it, “all of [the companies under consideration] have developed a way of creating performance that is predicated on collective, rather than individual, agency. Their work starts in a room, rather than on a page, building a show bit by bit, together” (x). As such, Ensemble-Made Chicago is all the more indispensable: like the field of devising itself, it privileges process over product, while also serving as an accessible guidebook for the history, methods and practices of devised theater—making it a volume to be used in the present and future of the field. References Footnotes About The Author(s) JACLYN I. PRYOR Pennsylvania State University Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Encounters on Contested Lands and Provocative Eloquence Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.