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I make performances for different media: film, video, the written word, the street, the stage, museums, closets, in and out of a movie screen. Today I feel overwhelmed by all the movies that are out there. "We're supposed to spend more time with each other not watching screens. Why should I make more screen-things?" More about Fritz Donnelly: http://www.tothehills.com. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE FRITZ: Play Time Fritz Donnelly English 5:30PM EST Tuesday, October 17, 2023 137 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Play Time! A Participatory Performance by Fritz Donnelly 5:30pm at Anita’s Way 137 W 42nd Street Followed by Q and A with Frank Hentschker, Sophi Kravitz, Anita Durst, and @Funwithfritz Content / Trigger Description: About Fritz: I make performances for different media: film, video, the written word, the street, the stage, museums, closets, in and out of a movie screen. Today I feel overwhelmed by all the movies that are out there. "We're supposed to spend more time with each other not watching screens. Why should I make more screen-things?" More about Fritz Donnelly: http://www.tothehills.com . About Anita’s Way: This permanent public plaza accommodates artists and audiences in the center of New York City. The passageway between the Condè Nast building on 4 Times Square and Bank of America located at One Bryant Park was named after founder and principal of chashama, Anita Durst. Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Book Reviews Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 34 1 Visit Journal Homepage Radical Experiments in American Playwriting, Tragedy, and Tourism Book Reviews By Published on December 9, 2021 Download Article as PDF Maya Roth, Editor Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry By Soyica Diggs Colbert Reviewed by Kristyl D. Tift Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion By Emeline Jouve Reviewed by Jennifer-Scott Mobley The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected By Edwin Wong Reviewed by David Pellegrini Performance and the Disney Theme Park Experience: The Tourist as Actor Edited by Jennifer A. Kokai and Tom Robson Reviewed by Hui Peng Books Received The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 34, Number 1 (Fall 2021) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2021 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References About The Authors 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Ryan McKinney Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 31 3 Visit Journal Homepage Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past Ryan McKinney By Published on May 13, 2019 Download Article as PDF Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past. Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018; Pp. 399. A new addition to Hamilton scholarship, Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America’s Past marks another valuable collaboration between its editors, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter. Consisting of fifteen insightful essays, the book presents adroitly composed analyses of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as well as its surrounding historical, cultural, social, political, and racial implications. Constructed by historians from a wide array of fields ranging from American Studies and theatre studies to history and Africana Studies, Historians on Hamilton takes up “the challenge that Miranda himself made to us when he was just beginning to write the show, ‘I want the historians to take this seriously’” (6). The scholars herein rigorously examine the musical’s relationship to history and how history is made, the claim of Hamilton as a revolutionary musical, and the musical’s proposed theatrical innovations and historical omissions. Following the introduction that sets up the tone and content, the book is divided into three sections: “Act I: The Script,” “Act II: The Stage,” and “Act III: The Audience,” each consisting of five essays. The first part begins with William Hogeland’s essay, “From Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton to Hamilton: An American Musical,” which posits that any historical inaccuracies in the musical are due, in part, to not only imprecisions in the source material (Ron Chernow’s biography), but also a lack of necessary criticism of Chernow’s work from professional historians. This section also features essays by Joanne B. Freeman, Lyra D. Monteiro, and Leslie M. Harris, who explore Alexander Hamilton’s politics, the complications associated with the casting of Hamilton, and New York City’s historical past with slavery, respectively. The section closes with Catherine Allgor’s illuminating essay, “‘Remember…I’m Your Man’: Masculinity, Marriage, and Gender in Hamilton,” which introduces readers to “coverture, or the system of laws that defined women’s subordinate legal status” (96). Allgor showcases coverture’s absence from the musical and advocates for historians and theatregoers to use Hamilton’s popularity as a means to understand coverture and its legacy in the contemporary political lexicon. “Act II: The Stage” begins with three essays that view the musical as both history and entertainment: Michael O’Malley explores Hamilton and money, as well as Hamilton’s policies as Treasury Secretary; David Waldstreicher and Jeffrey L. Pasley place Hamilton in the literary genre of “Founders Chic,” defined as “admiring individual portraits of major leaders of the Early Republic like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Hamilton” (140); and Andrew M. Schocket details how Hamilton follows a series of genre conventions that inform how this specific historical period is typically portrayed on stage and screen. Elizabeth L. Wollman’s and Brian Eugenio Herrera’s respective essays offer resonant conclusions to this section. Wollman smartly tempers Hamilton’s status as a revolutionary musical by historicizing other uber-popular Broadway musicals while arguing that although Hamilton is innovative, it is also “a carefully honed product of musical theatre history” (215). Herrera’s essay considers Hamilton’s theatrical context alongside other “presidential musicals” and notes both the importance of and the problems within the musical’s casting practices. Also recognizing the musical’s entrance into a “U.S. Latinx theater tradition” (238), Herrera highlights how the musical utilizes code-switching and signaling techniques to address Latinx audience members. The final section opens with Jim Cullen’s refreshing essay that recounts his development and teaching of a course on Hamilton and Hamilton, complete with a sample syllabus in the appendix. Act III continues with an essay by Patricia Herrera on Hamilton’s use of Hip Hop through the lens of her family’s cross-country trip through the United States’ national parks. Next, by viewing Hamilton as a work of art rather than scholarly history, Joseph M. Adelman’s essay provides a necessary counterpoint to some of the other chapters. The collection’s co-editors author the two concluding essays. Renee C. Romano’s piece, “Hamilton: A New American Civic Myth,” posits how conservatives and progressives in this country advocate for versions of American history that align with their differing politics, and that, in spite of this, Hamilton has still managed to strike a chord of agreement. Claire Bond Potter investigates Hamilton’s social media life by documenting the vastness of #HamFam (the Hamilton Family) and its current and future site as a digital archive. The final pages of the book consist of an appendix that offers the aforementioned course syllabus as well as a Hamilton/Hamilton chronology. This book is a worthy addition to popular culture studies, history, American Studies, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies and, of course, theatre and musical theatre studies. The book aims to serve students and fans of Hamilton, though ardent fans of the #HamFam may be less appreciative of the essays that are critical of the musical. Regardless, academics are certain to find value in this publication, and the book is very accessible for the general reader. Like the recent special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre devoted to an exploration of the musical across twelve articles, many of the essays herein investigate Hamilton primarily as a theatrical work. That said, true to its title, history reigns supreme in this collection, serving as the primary lens through which the majority of the essays explore Hamilton, as well as its greater cultural, political, and societal effects. Historians on Hamilton successfully meets Miranda’s challenge, presenting engaging essays in which accomplished historians do take Hamilton seriously and offer a range of perspectives on its place in, and depiction of, American history. Ryan McKinney Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 31, Number 3 (Spring 2019) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2019 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References About The Authors 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Brooklyn is Not a Sacrifice Zone is a live theater community-engaged performance that takes audience along the banks of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk hearing the stories and visions of local residents and activists who dream to topple their neighbor, a giant fracked gas depot. We imagine what the landscape could be if National Grid's site was decommissioned and the land rehabilitated. In addition, it is also an audio archive that collects the stories of those residents, creating an online forum where others can listen and learn about the challenges in living alongside fossil fuel infrastructure and industrial wasteland. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Brooklyn is Not a Sacrifice Zone (Day 1) Al Límite Collective Theater, Music, Performance Art English 30 minutes 5:00PM EST Saturday, October 28, 2023 Newtown Creek Nature Walk, Brooklyn, NY 11222, United States Free Entry, Open To All With predictions of a Nor'easter storm predicted for 21/22 Oct weekend, performances of "Brooklyn Is Not a Sacrifice Zone" will take place the following weekend on Saturday October 28th and Sunday October 29th both at 5pm. Audiences will meet at the end of Paidge Ave, near 59 Paidge Ave. in Greenpoint -- at the entrance to the Newtown Creek Nature Walk. Brooklyn is Not a Sacrifice Zone is a live theater community-engaged performance that takes audience along the banks of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk hearing the stories and visions of local residents and activists who dream to topple their neighbor, a giant fracked gas depot. We imagine what the landscape could be if National Grid's site was decommissioned and the land rehabilitated. In addition, it is also an audio archive that collects the stories of those residents, creating an online forum where others can listen and learn about the challenges in living alongside fossil fuel infrastructure and industrial wasteland. Newtown Creek Nature Walk that begins next to this address at the end of Paidge Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn: 59 Paidge Ave Brooklyn, NY 11222 United States Supported by Brooklyn Arts Council Creative Equations Fund Content / Trigger Description: Descriptions of illness caused by industrial pollution Al Límite Collective was founded in 2020 by nine core members, formerly of The Living Theatre, after years of creating collaboratively. Under The Living, we began to develop our unique focus on cross-border exchange, most notably in Mexico, in the heart of the migrant crisis where our namesake (At The Limit) was born. Al Límite Collective functions as a non-hierarchical structure, sharing artistic leadership, that strategically implements a fluid devising process inviting workshop participants to become active collaborators. This method of creation has allowed our performances to continuously evolve and transform, serving as a channel for dialogue and instantaneous connections that transcend language barriers and geographical borders. Al Límite Collective has traveled across the world, from Latin America to the Middle East, from Europe to Asia, to collaborate with artists, community members, refugee and immigrant populations in workshop intensives to devise original performances centered on local social justice issues. ELECTRIC AWAKENING, which premiered in São Paolo in 2017, marks the incubation for the creation of Al Límite Collective. The production continued evolving into an open vessel/workshop to engage with more participants from different fields. In 2019, the production was brought to Mexico as part of the AL LÍMITE TOUR, along with an experimental art festival in Tijuana addressing the injustices of the US immigration system and mass incarceration of immigrant families and asylum seekers at the border. In the summer of 2023 a few members of Al Límite Collective brought Electric Awakening to Athens, Greece and taught the show to local and international performers in self-organized space, Embros Theater produced with Institute for Experimental Arts and at the International Festival of Making Theater. As the world went into lockdown due to the pandemic, Al Límite Collective initiated a multi-media call and response art project, THE LIMINAL ARCHIVE, which welcomed individuals to contribute their creative responses to the tumultuous moment. In the summer of 2020, Al Límite Collective created a site-specific street performance, BROOKLYN IS NOT A SACRIFICE ZONE, to draw attention to the dangerous North Brooklyn fracked gas pipeline running through BIPOC and low income communities, inspired by dozens of interviews with impacted locals and performed directly in the construction sites along the pipeline route. The collective also began staging mobile performances on a four-person operated bicycle platform for spontaneous pop-up theater gliding by passersby for a moment to witness. One such performance included the construction of a cage that mirrored ICE prison cells, which was biked out to an ICE detention center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. In November 2020, invited by White Box - Harlem, Al Límite Collective staged a live immersive reading of Camus’ REVOLT IN ASTURIAS as the response to the unsettling election of the United States. In March 2021, we staged Quiet Us/ Riot Us in the streets and on rooftops throughout Brooklyn as a meditation on grief. In June 2021 we received the Silver Award for The Hear Now Festival. July 2021 we performed a live in person version of Liminal Archive which received rave reviews at the New Ohio Theatre's Ice Factory Festival. www.allimitecollective.com Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 2 Visit Journal Homepage Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s By Published on May 27, 2018 Download Article as PDF Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s. Chrystyna Dail. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016; Pp. 194. In Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s, Chrystyna Dail reveals a significant piece of theatre history and asserts its rightful place in the canon of American drama. Dail begins the book by arguing that the claim often made by theatre historians such as John Gassner that social activist theatre died in the 1930s, only to resurface in the 1960s is a false one. Engaging with Douglas McDermott’s political performance continuum, Dail contends that the group Stage for Action (SFA) created a new kind of socially conscious theatre that served as a propaganda machine for the progressive left, as well as a megaphone for civil rights, workers’ rights, the fight against fascism, and more. For Dail, SFA did more than raise awareness about these issues; it was “diligently involved in theatrical praxis,” demanding and proposing solutions to social justice problems of the day (22). Dail breaks down her historical study of SFA clearly and concisely containing just enough cultural, political, and economic history to contextualize fully the work of SFA. Dail first offers a chronicle of its creation, arguing that SFA became a “reimagining of progressive performance, both during the War and after, and as an underappreciated model for social activist theatre in the United States” (15). Founded by four young women—Perry Miller, Donna Keath, Berilla Kerr, and Peggy Clark—SFA began as a tool to support the War effort in Europe and to bring attention to the “menace of native fascism” (33). In its brief three years, SFA amplified the voices of the some of the most radically anti-racist, anti-fascist, and pro-union thinkers of the era; was one of the earliest racially integrated theatre groups in the US; and became an integral part of Henry A. Wallace’s failed 1948 presidential campaign. Dail argues that what started as a small New York-based volunteer theatre group became the breeding ground for a multitude of progressive causes nationwide. To buttress this argument throughout the book, Dail highlights particular plays within the SFA canon that exemplify the progressive politics of the group. For the second chapter, Dail “explicates the relationship between Stage for Action and labor unions during and following World War II ” (45). Dail argues that Arthur Miller’s That They May Win put SFA in the spotlight. Eleanor Roosevelt discussed the play in her nationally syndicated “My Day” column, and it played to sold-out audiences in New York and around the country. For Dail, Miller’s “missing years” (1945-1946) were spent pouring “himself into revolutionary work and leftist theatrical criticism” (47). He ultimately became the playwright in residence of the SFA. That They May Win existed in multiple versions and called for better military wages, state-sponsored childcare, and the political activism of everyday Americans. Dail also critically analyzes Les Pine and Anita Short’s satirical musical Joseph McGinnical, Cynical Pinnacle, Opus II. Dail claims that “August 1946 through November 1948 saw SFA producing work that substantiated its position as the premier social activist theatre group of the late 1940s” (69). Chapter three examines specific SFA plays that adopted progressive views on racial politics including Charles Polacheck’s Skin Deep. The play was written to advocate for racial equality and address the anti-black violence and race riots making their way across the nation. In addition, Dail includes a detailed analysis of Ben Bengal’s 1946 play All Aboard, which dealt with transportation segregation, as well as Dream Job by Arnold Perl and Talk in Darkness by Malvin Wald. Performed as a part of the Wallace campaign, which fiercely advocated for full civil rights, universal healthcare and childcare, a robust social safety net, federal minimum wage laws, and equality for women in the workplace, among other policies, these SFA productions forced Truman to take up the cause of civil rights (though not as fervently as Wallace did) in order for him to win the 1948 presidential election. In her fourth chapter, Dail looks at yet another project of the SFA—its fight against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Based on close readings, she argues that Miller wrote The Crucible after Sidney Alexander’s Salem Story, noting that “the plays share the same basic plotline and major characters” (112) and that “too many parallels exist between these two artists for the overlap in their plays to be mere coincidence” (116). Finally, she chronicles the red-baiting that several members of SFA suffered. She observes that “during the decade of 1946-1956 informants ‘named’ 40 percent of Stage for Action membership as Communists or subversives” (139) and that several SFA members were called to testify in front of HUAC. Due to the outcomes of these hearings, some lost their careers and even their lives. In her final chapter, Dail somewhat undercuts her argument that HUAC brought an end to SFA. While the group formally disbanded, several socially activist theatres and productions rose in its place. She offers in-depth readings of the post-SFA plays Open Secret by Robert Adler, who addressed the horrors of the atomic bomb, as well as We Who Are the Weavers by Joseph Shore and Scott Graham Williamson, who strongly critiqued the colonization of Puerto Rico. Dail closes her analysis and argument by making the point that the professionalism and dedication to social justice found in the SFA directly links the workers’ theatres of the 1930s with the companies founded after its disbandment such as the Free Southern Theater and El Teatro Campesino. Stage for Action serves as a fascinating and incredibly well-researched and well-written exploration into an important and oft-forgotten piece of theatre history. Given SFA’s commitment to the notion that “entertainment should have a purpose...and that purpose must be exerted to prevent war, stamp out race hatreds, combat poverty” (151) and more, I cannot think of a more appropriate time to revisit and revive their works. Erin Rachel Kaplan University of Colorado Boulder The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 30, Number 2 (Spring 2018) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2018 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References About The Authors 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

What is the role of academia in the new landscape of theater and performance after Black Live Matters, We See You W.A.T., The Time of Corona and the Climate Catastrophe in a radically changing political landscape? Should academia mirror, theorize, reflect and document — or influence, shape and actively participate in the change we want to see? PRELUDE Festival 2023 PANEL Academia and NYC Performance Tomi M Tsunoda, Daniel Irizarry, Solana Chehtman, Alexis Jemal, and Sylvaine Guyot 4:30PM EST Monday, October 16, 2023 Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All What is the role of academia in the new landscape of theater and performance after Black Live Matters, We See You W.A.T., The Time of Corona and the Climate Catastrophe in a radically changing political landscape? Should academia mirror, theorize, reflect and document — or influence, shape and actively participate in the change we want to see? Featuring Tomi M Tsunoda , Daniel Irizarry , Solana Chehtman, Alexis Jemal, and Sylvaine Guyot. Content / Trigger Description: Tomi Tsunoda has spent most of her career as a director, deviser, designer, and producer of independent performance, developing sustainable systems for performing artists to self-produce work outside of institutional contexts. This included the creation of Breedingground Productions, which shepherded more than 200 projects over the course of ten years. She is one of 17 artists worldwide who are certified in all levels and disciplines to teach Soundpainting, the universal sign language for live composition created by jazz composer Walter Thompson. Her current projects combine both practical and critical work in dramaturgy, progressive arts pedagogy, fiber art, literary non-fiction, eco-philosophy, and facilitation, putting these fields into conversation as a way to address sustainable practice and systemic change. Tomi is currently serving as Chair of Undergraduate Drama at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, having previously served as Director for Playwrights Horizons Theater School, Head of the Theater Program at NYU Abu Dhabi, Education Director for the Powerhouse Training Program at Vassar College, and as faculty and guest artist at several additional schools and conservatories. Daniel Irizarry is a Puerto Rican born International Experimental Theatre director, actor/performer and educator based in NYC. His work embraces highly stylized visceral acting, pataphysics, a celebration of GERMS & consensual audience participation. He is the Artistic Director of One-Eighth Theater and full time Lecturer at MIT Music & Theatre Arts. In his most recent work, he directed and performed the final project for the historic closing of the New Ohio Theatre titled, ‘Ultra Left Violence’ written by Robert Lyons. Other notable credits directed and performed; The Maids by Jose Rivera (New York Times Critics pick); UBU by Adam Szymkowicz (Time Out NY Critics pick), world premiere of Busu by Mishima at Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival, YOVO by Robert Lyons in NYC, Poland, Cuba, South Korea & My Onliness by Robert Lyons at New Ohio Theatre in NYC (One of the best performances Off-Broadway in 2022 by Theatermania and nominated for a 2023 HOLA award for best Outstanding performance by a lead actor. Over his career he has directed, performed and taught in Turkey, India, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Italy, Romania, UK, Colombia, among others. Most notably at: Folkwang University in Germany, Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey and Seoul Institute of the Arts in South Korea. He holds an MFA in Acting from Columbia University, a BA in Drama at The Universidad de Puerto Rico where he has returned to teach at both. Solana Chehtman is a cultural producer and engagement curator born in Buenos Aires and based in New York City since 2012. She is currently the Director of Artist Programs at Joan Mitchell Foundation, where she supports artists with unrestricted funding and professional development through the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, as well as in their long term career stewardship via the Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) program. In the past decade, Solana has partnered with a wide range of cultural organizations across the performing and visual arts to create new opportunities for artists and avenues for public participation in the arts. Prior to joining the Foundation, she served as inaugural Director of Creative Practice and Social Impact at The Shed, and as Vice President of Public Engagement at Friends of the High Line. Solana received a BA in international studies at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and holds an EdM in education policy from Teachers College, Columbia University. She was an adjunct Professor at the MA in Arts Administration at Baruch College, City University of New York between 2018 and 2021. Alexis Jemal, LCSW, LCADC, MA, JD, PhD, associate professor at Silberman School of Social Work-Hunter College, is a critical-radical so(ul)cial worker (practitioner, scholar, researcher, educator), social entrepreneur, and artivist who specializes in racial justice, radical healing, wellness, and liberation. Dr. Jemal grounds her research and scholarship in her Critical Transformative Potential Framework that develops critical consciousness and taps into radical imagination to convert consciousness into action that heals and transforms people, relationships, and environments to support everyone’s humanity to the fullest extent possible. This framework guides the development and implementation of multi-(from the molecular to the macro) level, holistic, socio-cultural, psychosocial, bio-behavioral health interventions that incorporate clinical practice, advocacy, and community and cultural organizing. She teaches courses at the master’s level in clinical practice, critical social work practice, and human behavior, and at the doctoral level in arts-based, participatory action, intervention research and public scholarship. Sylvaine Guyot is Professor of French Literature, Thought & Culture at NYU, New York, since 2021. At Harvard University, Guyot acted as the Chair for TDM Theater, Dance & Media next to her tenure at the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures. As a theatre director, she co-founded La Troupe (Harvard) and Le Théâtre de l’homme qui marche (Paris, France). She is currently developing a lecture-performance on understudied early modern female writing. Her research interests focus on seventeenth-century tragedy and spectacle culture, the history of the body and emotions, the politics of performing arts, and the formation of cultural institutions. Publications include Racine et le corps tragique (PUF, 2014) and Databases, Revenues, and Repertory: The French Stage Online, 1680-1793 (MIT Press, 2021). She is a coleader of the Comédie-Française Registers Project. She has also published articles on contemporary docu-plays that tell the stories of the under- and unrepresented. Photo credits: Tomi Tsunoda. Photo courtesy of the panelist. Daniel Irizarry. Photo courtesy of the panelist. Solana Chehtman. Photo courtesy of the panelist. Alexis Jemal. Photo courtesy of the panelist. Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Join us for one of the legendary PRELUDE dance parties. At 9:30 pm the PRELUDE FRANKIE AWARDS will be given to a group of theatre artists and artistic directors who have made a difference and changed the landscape of New York City Theatre and performance. Theresa Buchheister will receive the PRELUDE’23 Award on Thursday, the 19th, at the Segal Center following their work: VISA — Mon Amour. PRELUDE Festival 2023 CELEBRATION PRELUDE Party Everyone Other 9:00PM EST Saturday, October 14, 2023 The Tank, West 36th Street, NYC, NY, USA RSVP Join us for one of the legendary PRELUDE dance parties. At 9:30 pm the PRELUDE FRANKIE AWARDS will be given to a group of theatre artists and artistic directors who have made a difference and changed the landscape of New York City Theatre and performance. Theresa Buchheister will receive the PRELUDE’23 Award on Thursday, the 19th, at the Segal Center following their work: VISA — Mon Amour. Content / Trigger Description: Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

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

Special Issue Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 28 2 Visit Journal Homepage Scientific Research and Inquiry in American Theatre Special Issue By Published on May 31, 2016 Download Article as PDF Introduction: Performance as Alternate Form of Inquiry in the Age of STEM by Iris Smith Fischer, Guest Editor This In-Between Life: Disability, Trans-Corporeality, and Radioactive Half-Life in D. W. Gregory’s Radium Girls by Bradley Stephenson Moonwalking with Laurie Anderson: The Implicit Feminism of The End of the Moon by Vivian Appler iDream: Addressing the Gender Imbalance in STEM through Research-Informed Theatre for Social Change by Eileen Trauth, Karen Keifer-Boyd and Suzanne Trauth Setting the Stage for Science Communication: Improvisation in an Undergraduate Life Science Curriculum by Cindy L. Duckert and Elizabeth A. De Stasio Playing Sick: Training Actors for High Fidelity Simulated Patient Encounters by George Pate and Libby Ricardo References About The Authors 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

European Stages serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back European Stages 19, Fall, 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage 2024 Report from London and Berlin ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Published: November 25, 2024 Download Article as PDF ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Image Credits: Article References ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. References About the author(s) ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. European Stages European Stages, born from the merger of Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance in 2013, is a premier English-language resource offering a comprehensive view of contemporary theatre across the European continent. With roots dating back to 1969, the journal has chronicled the dynamic evolution of Western and Eastern European theatrical spheres. It features in-depth analyses, interviews with leading artists, and detailed reports on major European theatre festivals, capturing the essence of a transformative era marked by influential directors, actors, and innovative changes in theatre design and technology. European Stages is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Between Dark Aesthetics and Repetition: Reflections on the Theatre of the Bulgarian Director Veselka Kuncheva and Her Two Newest Productions Hecuba Provokes Catharsis and Compassion in the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus (W)here comes the sun? Avignon 78, 2024. Imagining Possible Worlds and Celebrating Multiple Languages and Cultures Report from Basel International Theatre Festival in Pilsen 2024 or The Human Beings and Their Place in Society SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL … SPIRITUAL, VISCERAL, VISUAL …SHAKESPEARE AS YOU LIKE IT. IN CRAIOVA, ROMANIA, FOR 30 YEARS NOW Fine art in confined spaces 2024 Report from London and Berlin Berlin’s “Ten Remarkable Productions” Take the Stage in the 61st Berliner Theatertreffen. A Problematic Classic: Lorca’s Bernarda Alba, at Home and Abroad Report from London (December 2022) Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Fecund Error is a spoken word choral music-theater piece constructed according to a procedure of repeated mistranslations of an invented hieroglyphic alphabet. The play embodies a process of trying to speak and think that which is unspeakable and unthinkable. It is an invitation to deep listening, a ritual of unknowing. PRELUDE Festival 2023 PERFORMANCE Fecund Error Ashley Kelly Tata, Jerry Lieblich, Robert M. Johanson Theater, Multimedia, Opera, Music, Choral English 20 Mins + Chat 4:30PM EST Saturday, October 21, 2023 The Tank, West 36th Street, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All Fecund Error is a spoken word choral music-theater piece constructed according to a procedure of repeated mistranslations of an invented hieroglyphic alphabet. The play embodies a process of trying to speak and think that which is unspeakable and unthinkable. It is an invitation to deep listening, a ritual of unknowing. Content / Trigger Description: Language may break down. Pictures may be language. Gesture may be implemented. Ashley Kelly Tata (they/ze/she/tata) makes multi-media works of theater, contemporary opera, performance, cyberformance, live music and immersive experiences. They have been called“fervently inventive,” by Ben Brantley in the New York Times, “extraordinarily powerful” by the LA Times, like something that “reaches out across the centuries and punches you in the throat” by Alexis Soloski in the New York Times and Tata’s production of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit was named a notable production of the decade by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. These works have been presented in venues and festivals throughout the US and internationally including at Theatre for a New Audience, Ars Nova, PS21, LA Opera, Austin Opera, The Miller Theater, National Sawdust, EMPAC, BPAC, The Crossing the Line Festival, the Holland Festival, The Big Ears Festival, The Big Sing Festival, The Prelude Festival, The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and the Fisher Center’s Summerscape Festival at Bard. Tata is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance and Artistic Producer of Theater & Performance at Bard College, NY. Jerry Lieblich (they/them) is the founder and lead artist of Third Ear. Their plays include D Deb Debbie Deborah (Clubbed Thumb – Critic’s Pick: NY Times, TimeOut NY), Tongue Depressor (The Public Theatre, Brooklyn College), Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera), Nostalgia is a Mild Form of Grief (Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theater), Ghost Stories (Cloud City - Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), Your Hair Looked Great (Abrons Arts Center), and The Barbarians (New York Theatre Workshop, Dixon Place, PRELUDE), and A Discourse on the Method… (Ensemble Studio Theatre). Their poetry has appeared Foglifter, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, Mass MOCA, Blue Mountain Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Millay Arts, UCROSS, NACL, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. They have received a Martha Boschen Porter Fund Fellowship, Wallis Annenberg Helix Fellowship from Yiddishkayt, EST/Sloan Commission and the Himan Brown Creative Writing Award (twice), and are an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Page 73's I-73 Writer's Group, and Pipeline Theater’s Playlab group. BA: Yale, Philosophy; MFA: Brooklyn College (Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney, chief instigators). Robert M. Johanson is a freelance performer/composer/director in New York City. He is a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and has performed with them in No Dice, Poetics: a Ballet Brut, Romeo and Juliet, No President, and composed music for and performed in their epic cycle Life and Times: Episodes 1-9, and Burt Turrido: an Opera. Robert has created and composed his own pieces in collaboration with both students and professionals including Life is Hard with Von Krahl Theater and The Loon with Witness Relocation. He has worked with many companies in New York City and abroad including: Elevator Repair Service, 7 Daughters of Eve, Radiohole, The Civilians, Jim Findlay, Morgan Green, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, and Spreafico Eckly. He is a frequent guest teacher at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, and has given workshops and master classes at Rutgers, Columbia University and MIT. www.tatatime.live ; www.thirdear.nyc ; www.robertmjohanson.com Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

The New Black Fest will present four excerpts from new and provocative plays that interrogate issues around immigration and green card marriages, toxic patriarchy and climate change, truth and transparency as well as a new play inspired by the absentee black character Donald Muller from the play Doubt. The four excerpts will be followed by a conversation on the topic of resistance and survival through intimacy, community and knowledge-seeking. PRELUDE Festival 2023 READING + PANEL The New Black Fest Kemiyondo Coutinho, Dennis Allen II, Hayley Spivey, and Keith Josef Adkins Theater English 90 minutes (includes panel discussion) 3:00PM EST Thursday, October 12, 2023 Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center, 5th Avenue, New York, NY, USA Free Entry, Open To All The New Black Fest will present four excerpts from new and provocative plays that interrogate issues around immigration and green card marriages, toxic patriarchy and climate change, truth and transparency as well as a new play inspired by the absentee black character Donald Muller from the play Doubt . The four excerpts will be followed by a conversation on the topic of resistance and survival through intimacy, community and knowledge-seeking. The post-reading panel features Kelley Giord, Kemiyondo Coutinho, Hayley Spivey , Dennis Allen II, and Keith Josef Adkins and is moderated by Robyne Walker Murphy. Content / Trigger Description: Language, Discussions of race, gender, sexuality Kemiyondo Coutinho (Playwright) is a multi-hyphenated writer, director and actor hailing from Uganda but who self identifies as an African nomad. Her theatrical debut, "Jabulile!", offered a heartfelt portrayal of Swazi women and transcended borders, captivating audiences worldwide in Swaziland, South Africa, Uganda, Canada, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland. Kemiyondo's poignant play, "Kawuna...you’re it," shed light on the lives of HIV-positive women in Uganda, earning recognition with a reading in New York by Hybrid Theater Works. It was further celebrated at the National Arts Festival in South Africa and headlined the 2015 Gates Foundation World AIDS Day Celebration. Notably, Kemiyondo is a recipient of Forbes Africa's esteemed 30 under 30 award, and remains grounded in her commitment to storytelling that bridges hard-hitting themes with witty comedic commentary, all aimed at making audiences feel seen. She is also the inaugural recipient of John Singleton's Filmmaker's Fellowship, Kevin Hart's Laugh Out Loud Filmmaking Fellowship, and the proud recipient of the Shadow & Act Rising Star Award. Furthermore, she has earned a place among OKAYAfrica's 100 Women of Africa To Watch. Currently, Kemiyondo contributes her creative talents as a writer and Co-executive producer on Season 3 of Starz's acclaimed series, "P-VALLEY". Dennis A. Allen II (Playwright/Director) is a multi-hyphenate in the world of theatre. As a playwright, his play The Mud is Thicker in Mississippi won the 35th annual Off Off Broadway Samuel French Festival. He is the recipient of Atlantic Theater Company’s inaugural Launch Commission, Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writer’s Group, and National Black Theatre’s “I Am Soul” Playwright Residency. Allen has directed and developed new plays by NSangou Njikam, Aziza Barnes, Tanya Everett, a.k. payne, Craig "Mums" Grant and many more. He also served as the National Playwriting Program Vice Chair for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival region 1. An adjunct professor at LaGuardia Community College, Montclair State University, The New School and is the Co-Program Director for the MFA Playwriting program at Brooklyn College. Dennis received his MFA from Brooklyn College's Playwriting program. Hayley Spivey (Playwright) is a Brooklyn based playwright, dramaturg and actor from Atlanta, Georgia. She received a B.F.A in Theatre Arts from Boston University. In Boston, Hayley worked as a Junior Dramaturg for Company One Theatre as well as freelancing at companies such as SpeakEasy Stage Company and Artists’ Theater of Boston. Currently, she is writing her own stories while working with other writers to foster excitement for their own development. Keith Josef Adkins (Playwright/Artistic Director) is a playwright, screenwriter and artistic director. His Great Migration play, The West End, had its world premiere at Cincinnati Playhouse and was a finalist for the 2022 Steinberg-ATCA New Play Award. Keith's other plays include The People Before the Park, Safe House, Pitbulls, the Last Saint on Sugar Hill, among others. He’s the recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, Samuel French's Award for Impact and Activism in the Theater Community as well as National Black Theater's Teer Spirit Award. He is the artistic director of The New Black Fest, a 13-year-old theater organization committed to fostering insurgent voices from the African Diaspora. The New Black Fest was in residence at the Lark Play Development Center for six years and has commissioned three social justice anthologies, including Facing Our Truth and Hands Up -- both published by Samuel French/Concord Theatrical. Keith and The New Black Fest was also commissioned by the Apollo Theater to develop work for their new Victoria Theater. Some of his TV writing credits include P-Valley, Outer Banks, The Good Fight. He's also developed TV projects with JJ Abrams, Don Cheadle/Steven Soderbergh. website > thenewblackfest.org - IG> @newblackfestival - Kemiyondo Coutinho IG > @kemi_yondo - Dennis Allen IG > @daallen2 - Hayley Spivey IG > @hay_lyly Watch Recording Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2023 See What's on

Drew Barker Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage How Collaboration is Dramaturgy Between Playwright and Multimedia Creator Drew Barker By Published on May 17, 2023 Download Article as PDF References About The Authors 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Brian Eugenio Herrera Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance Brian Eugenio Herrera By Published on April 23, 2015 Download Article as PDF Casting — the process whereby actors are assigned to particular roles — has largely eluded historical and theoretical inquiry. Casting’s iterative impact lends it a peculiar ephemerality. Once a role is cast, the complex array of criteria informing that decision — not only the methods and techniques of talent assessment but also the interpersonal dynamics, rumors, reputations, and “business” considerations — recedes in importance as the work of performance-making ostensibly begins. Indeed, despite its inarguable centrality in the performance-making project, the inevitably idiosyncratic sequence of events that comprise the process of how this or that actor did (or did not) get the part routinely evades the archive. I contend that such archival evasions are enabled by what we might call a “mythos of casting,” a constellation of interconnected beliefs and assumptions that have evolved within American popular performance over the last century or so. This “mythos of casting” cloaks within mystery the historical practices – by turns material, creative and proprietary – that guide how an actor’s labor is (and is not) valued as a commodity. This “mythos of casting” simultaneously provides ideological rationale for the acknowledged inequities in the allocation of the paid and unpaid labor of actors while also sustaining faith that the apparatus of casting can (and sometimes actually does) work to identify the “best” actor for a given role. The “mythos of casting” also guides most academic conversations about casting, which typically operate within one of three discursive modes: the logistical, the (non) traditional, and the mystical.[1] Logistical discourses of casting might be found most frequently on the “practice” side of the theory-practice divide in theatre studies, with conversations about how to audition (or how to run auditions) eliciting conversation and study in the acting studio, the production meeting, or the rehearsal hall. Such discussions, and the written works engaging them, typically rehearse, explicate or strategize the nuances of disparate audition structures, and are often guided by the premise of “entering the profession.”[2] Traditional — or, more aptly, “Non-Traditional” — discussions emphasize how casting operates as a mode of what scholar Angela Pao calls “both social action and artistic exploration” in which the assignment of a particular actor to a role might “dislodge established modes of perceiving,” perhaps especially with regard to the enactment of cultural identity in performance.[3] Both the logistical and non-traditional discourses of casting prioritize how practitioners might intervene in casting’s machinery to achieve particular ends. By contrast, the third discourse of casting, perhaps the most ubiquitous of the three, fixates on casting as an almost mystical process that defies easy explanation. Such “mystical” accounts arrive in a variety of formulations but always with a fascination for a kind of magic at play within casting decisions. Some such accounts emphasize the “special sight” of creative intuition wherein an ineffable mix of circumstance, luck and discernment combine to guide the director (or teacher, or casting director, or whoever) to the inspired insight that a particular actor is “right” for the role. Often responding to what Joseph Roach describes as “the easy to perceive but hard to define quality possessed by abnormally interesting people” sometimes referred to as “it,”[4] this response informs an inspired confidence like that described by producer Arthur Hornblow recalling his casting Marilyn Monroe in her first featured film role, “As soon as we saw her we knew she was the one.”[5] Other mystical accounts proffer casting as a kind of alchemical mastery, usually on the part of the genius director, in which art manifests from a deftly assembled configuration of actors. As film director John Frankenheimer famously quipped “casting is 65% the battle.” Director Martin Scorsese later upped the ante, noting that “More than 90 percent of directing is the right casting,” while a recent textbook Fundamentals of Film Directing offered a more conservative assessment, noting that “Casting is 50% of the director’s work.”[6] Casting’s mystical discourses also take fantasy form in the myriad speculative fictions spun within the “what if” scenarios rehearsed in discussions of “miscasting.” From sensational lists like “12 Actors Who Almost Had the Part” and “What If? ‘Pulp Fiction’ Near-Miss Casting” to entire books dedicated to Hollywood’s All-Time Worst Casting Blunders, the fantastic genre of the “what if” casting tale stands among the most recurring in popular performance lore. [7] Most mystical discourses of casting, however, fixate upon the moment an actor is assigned a role as the signal moment wherein the magic of performance is conjured. Indeed, while logistical and non-traditional discourses of casting propose strategic interventions into the casting process, mystical discourses instead marvel at the ineffability of casting, fetishize the shrouds of secrecy that sustain casting’s unknowable mysteries, and wonder at the transformative power summoned by whoever happens to be the one deciding which actor is to become the role. Mystical discourses of casting hint that mere mortals can never truly know why this or that actor got the part and imply that occasional peeks behind the casting curtain will only ever reveal a partial story. These mystical discourses suggest that some greater power is at work in both the methods and madnesses of casting, and that ours is not to wonder why. The many mysteries of casting might explain why the topic of casting remains so captivating to so many. Indeed, casting’s purported unknowability — that no one can never truly know how casting happens — incites the most passionate conversations about the process, whether in speculative games about who would be better in the role, or in moments of aesthetic outrage (or schadenfreude) over miscasting, or in impassioned outbursts of sometimes politicized fervor within critiques of incidents of exploitation, exclusion or unfairness in casting. Yet, even in such incisive and searching conversations, most assessments of casting controversies resolve with shrugging demurrals or simple judgments of the sort proffered by the author of one best-selling theatre appreciation textbook, who writes “There is good casting and bad casting and, of course, there is also inspired casting.”[8] The persistence of some version of this reductive good/bad/inspired matrix in even the most sophisticated conversations about casting might well reflect some awareness of the many interpersonal, proprietary, and contractual complexities that all factor into the invisible calculus guiding any casting decision. (Can anyone inside or outside the process ever really, truly or fully know why someone got a part?) Even so, this recurring fixation places too much emphasis on casting’s unknowability (its “mystery”) with too little attention to the power at play in any casting decision. As the default resolution for any and every conversation about casting, the good/bad/inspired matrix both sustains the mysterious power of casting even as it also contributes to the ongoing mystification of the material practices of casting — the mechanisms, techniques and assumptions routing the process to that final casting decision — rendering such practices beyond the archive and thus exempt from historical analysis. To discern casting’s archive and thus evince its history, performance historians and theorists might explicate the three principles most routinely invoked to explain, excuse or justify the capricious operations of the casting apparatus: equitable access to opportunity, artistic autonomy, and meritocratic achievement. Over the last century or so, these contradictory premises have come to operate in dynamic tension as a “mythos of casting,” which simultaneously sustains creative faith in the capacity of the casting apparatus to identify the best actor for a given role even as it cloaks the material practices of casting in mystery. As I take up each of these principles — equity, artistry, meritocracy — in turn below, I briefly detail how each principle guided the formation of the contemporary repertoire of casting practices as I also chart the enduring conceptual contours of the “mythos of casting.” Equity The peculiar notion that casting should be fair appears to have emerged from two distinctively twentieth century points of origin. On the one hand, the growing power of actor unions within the industries capitalizing on American popular performance amplified particular questions of equity. On the other, the extraordinary and rapid expansion of educational theatre programs at the secondary, post-secondary and pre-professional level intensified concerns about access. Over time, the belief that the casting process should be equitably accessible to all eligible or deserving performers became one of the guiding ideals of the American casting process and a foundational tenet of the mythos of casting. Concerns about fair and equitable access instigated the formation of actor unions in the United States in the nineteenth century, as producers started to hire actors to “play as cast” for only a particular production (and often without guarantee of compensation for rehearsals, truncated runs, or special wardrobes and skills). Worried that they might be shut out of their seasonal “lines of business” employment, professional actors agitated to protect their access to secure employment opportunities. As these nascent actor unions continued to fight for recognition in the early twentieth century (in both the theatre and in the emerging film industry), their organizing efforts shifted from equitable employment access and toward working conditions, wage scales and enforceability of contracts, concerns which animated the historic Actors’ Equity Association [AEA] strike in 1919.[9] In the decades that immediately followed AEA’s 1919 victory, concerns about equitable access to employment did occasionally reassert themselves within the union, perhaps most fractiously in the Depression years with the 1934 formation of the Actors’ Forum (an ad hoc pressure group of member actors who sought cooperative benefits and a minimum wage for all members) and the 1935-39 operation of the Federal Theatre Project (which rankled union leadership by employing non-union actors).[10] Yet it was not until the post-World War II years, and amidst growing national concerns about civil rights and desegregation, however, that actor unions – in what one historian has called a “gradual politicization”[11] – reasserted their inceptive investment in equitable access to employment. During the 1940s and 1950s, subcommittees within all the major actor unions began to advocate for fair and equitable access to employment opportunities for minority union members, especially actors of African descent. Through initiatives like the Negro Employment Committee in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Committee on Negro Integration in the Theatre in Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), these committees gathered and published data about the number and kind of roles available to minority actors, rehearsing and deploying strategies of advocacy that endure to this day.[12] Activist actors also, through such endeavors as AEA’s Integration Showcase (staged in 1959), argued for and demonstrated casting techniques that modeled ways of hiring actors of African descent for roles not specifically written with a black actor in mind.[13] This work by actor advocates within their unions in the 1940s and 1950s anticipated the work of AEA’s Non-Traditional Casting Project (which reanimated the premise of the Integrated Casting Committee by expanding it to also include Latina/o, Asian American, and Native American actors, as well as disabled actors).[14] This practice of assembling data and insisting that industrial casting norms adapt to rank and file realities also animated the institution of the “open audition.” The practice of the “open audition” was instituted in the 1970s to insure that all union (or union eligible) actors had access to at least one general audition for every production (or producing season) undertaken under union contract. Even though these “open call” auditions have often come over time to be regarded by many as cumbersome and hollow rituals of union compliance, the institutionalization of the open call, as well as the actor union advocacy that compelled it, not only derived from but also fortified a foundational ideal within the mythos of casting – that equitable and transparent access to the casting apparatus benefitted all actors. While midcentury actor unions worked within the entertainment industry for equitable access to opportunity for professional actors, the massive expansion of educational theater programs that boomed in high schools, universities and pre-professional training programs in the post-World War II era exerted an even more substantial influence on the idea that the casting process should be fair. Yet, in the 1940s and 1950s, no consensus existed among theatre educators about how to balance the competing priorities of fairness, efficiency and quality when assigning roles in a school or community setting. Most midcentury theatre educators advocated for some version of “tryouts.” The 1948 Play Production Primer (published in 1951 by the Mutual Improvement Association of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) defined the “tryout” as “a method of selecting talent for a cast. Either parts read from the play, or [a] display of general ability.”[15] In the spring of 1948, a series of short essays in Dramatics Magazine (then a publication addressing both high school and university theatre programs) discussed a striking array of “tryout” strategies. Some, like Blandford Jennings of Missouri’s Clayton High School, instructed students to “come prepared to read anything of their choice for a minute or two” because “reading at sight from an unfamiliar text is no fair indication of the true ability of a young reader.”[16] Others, like Esther McCabe of New York’s Salamanca High School, approached the casting of a play as “a lesson in democracy, reliability and human relationships” and assigned roles by student vote, subsequent to a full reading and discussion of the play.[17] Sam Boyd of West Virginia University affirmed the merits of “competitive reading tryouts” for their “spirit” and the “salubrious, unprejudiced attitude” they encouraged,[18] while Carnegie Mellon’s Talbot Pearson scoffed at even trying to select a single best practice. “There are so many methods of trying out the available players,” Talbot insisted, “that no rules can safely be applied” and “to list the dozen or more differing approaches would serve no practical purpose.”[19] Perhaps notably, none of these educators used the word “audition” to describe their preferred casting method. Where the word “audition” does appear with some frequency at midcentury is in the advocacy work of organizations like the American Theatre Wing and Theatre Communications Group, especially as such emerging, non-commercial but professional organizations explained their affiliation with professional training programs. For Isadora Bennett, the publicity director of the American Theatre Wing from the later 1940s through much of the 1950s, the audition represented the most effective point of connection between the professional theatre and those aspiring actors emerging from university and other training programs (like the American Theatre Wing’s own Professional Training School which enrolled hundreds of students at the time, most under the GI Bill). In a widely referenced 1955 essay published in Educational Theatre Journal, Bennett affirmed the importance of centralized auditions for “trained” actors so that such actors might be introduced to what she termed the “machinery of casting” and “the ‘technique’ of job-hunting.”[20] For Bennett, such auditions — in which aspiring professional actors might offer a concentrated display of their ability using brief, prepared excerpts from well-regarded plays — promised to serve as “aptitude tests given by warm and friendly but severe experts.” By the end of the 1950s, the idea that a concentrated and pre-prepared demonstration of aptitude before a panel of experts might be the most efficient means of talent assessment had begun to circulate more broadly and had begun to be termed an “audition.” In 1964, Michael Mabry — then the Executive Secretary of the fledgling Theatre Communications Group (TCG) — advocated for the institutionalization of a national audition, to be held annually in Chicago, as the most effective means of “keeping visible on a national scale” all American actors, not only those actors based in New York or Los Angeles but also those “committed…to seasonal employment with resident companies” while also including the “outstanding graduates of educational theatre.”[21] Thus, the significant midcentury influence of actor unions, in tandem with the rise of the educational theatre industrial complex, rehearsed the perhaps incongruous but nonetheless deeply entrenched notion that casting should be fair, and thereby also anchored the ideal of equity as a central tenet within the mythos of casting. Artistry Still, at play in every conversation about providing equitable access to actors, the mythos of casting also activates the question of whose authority guides the assignment of actor to role. For the actor, the casting process is their opportunity “to be cast” in a production and thus be given the equitable opportunity to work; for the one doing the casting, however, the casting process can take on additional valences of creative authorship, artistic autonomy and freedom of expression. In his genre-defining college textbook Introduction to the Theatre (1954), Frank Whiting of the University of Minnesota argued for the “executive ability” of the director: “Many factors must be considered in casting [and] many systems of tryout have been evolved, ranging from well-rehearsed, memorized scenes to informal interviews. None are perfect. All have advantages and disadvantages.”[22] Most educators publishing in Dramatics through the 1950s agreed that the directorial discernment should balance the pedagogic and artistic ambitions in a school production and that such judgment should remain the primary guide the final assignment of actor to role. Even Esther McCabe, whose proposed model of electoral casting marked the most dramatic departure, affirmed that she as director “reserved the right to change an unsuitable choice” once the election results were tallied.[23] Toward the end of his career, iconic theatre director Harold Clurman saw few artistic merits, for either actor or director, in the midcentury turn toward what he called the “absurd” and “arduous” "'open market' method of casting" in American theatre.[24] Such critiques of the American casting apparatus had been foundational in Clurman’s theatrical philosophy since the late 1920s, when “he prophesied that ‘immediate future of the theatre is in the actor,’ who must reject ‘type-casting’ for ‘long painful self-training.’” In co-founding the influential Group Theatre, Clurman sought a permanent ensemble company in which there would be only small parts and no star actors. Within a decade, however, the challenges of casting proved an unexpected drag on the galvanizing vision of the Group Theatre’s ensemble structure, as the number interested actors persistently far exceeded the available roles. The situation inspired Clurman to exclaim, in 1939, “Every piece of casting in the Group is a tragedy.”[25] Even so, several decades later, in his widely taught 1972 memoir of the craft On Directing, Clurman maintained his faith in the transformative potential of the ensemble as he drew unfavorable comparisons between the atomizing mechanisms of American casting (in which the actor worked as a freelancer, playing only as cast) and those used by the permanent repertory companies of Europe. Because "the American theatre has no such companies,” Clurman railed, “We proceed on the basis of 'piecework': for every new production an entirely new cast must be found - somehow, somewhere.” He continued, “The main business of casting [in the United States] is accomplished by means of auditions or readings," which Clurman characterized as "a species of theatrical shopping" wherein the actor is "reduced to a commodity and gradually comes to regard himself in that light."[26] Clurman’s contemporary and sometime colleague Elia Kazan also disliked the American casting apparatus. When asked by an interviewer about his preference for prepared auditions or cold readings, the director retorted, “I don’t do it that way. Well, sometimes I do, if it’s for a bit, but… [it] usually gets you misinformation.”[27] Where Kazan dismissed the American casting apparatus for its ineffectiveness, Clurman disdained its disruption of the creative process and its imposition of artificial, inhumane and confining limits on the artistic autonomy of the director. By so emphasizing the intangible authority of creative and executive discernment as essential to directorial autonomy, Clurman and Kazan, alongside their less famous educational counterparts, also mystified casting a constitutive and sacrosanct feature of a director’s artistic expression. By the 1990s, however, the question of whether such casting decisions were an independent expression of a performance-maker’s creative authority garnered a different measure of critique. High-profile casting controversies (like that surrounding the 1991 Broadway production of Miss Saigon) amplified how “traditional” casting habits rehearsed by the “open market” impinged upon employment opportunities available to minority and women performers. Legal scholars Jennifer L. Sheppard, Heekyung Esther Kim and Russell K. Robinson each separately examined whether a hypothetical plaintiff might challenge a particular casting decision as employment discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which held, in part, that employer prerogative was inadequate justification for favoring one identifiable group over another in matters hiring; in tandem, the scholars also assessed whether casting decisions might be considered protected speech under the First Amendment. Though their discussions remained in emphatically hypothetical (especially given the tricky and unresolved legal question of whether entertainers were rightly considered employees under federal law), all three scholars agreed that any legal challenge to a casting decision under employment law would certainly confront (and likely fail) the test of whether a director’s or producer’s casting decision might be considered a form of creative expression and, thus, a form of protected speech. For Russell K. Robinson, “our constitutional commitment to free speech does not exact a wholesale abandonment of antidiscrimination requirements,”[28] while both Kim and Sheppard advocated for voluntary shifts in casting practice and aesthetics so that, as Sheppard concluded, “employment opportunities for minority actors may be increased, while artistic freedom is preserved.”[29] (283). Thus, as casting became increasingly understood as a constitutive feature of a theatre-maker’s creative expression, claims of artistic authority, autonomy and freedom also animated the mythos of casting in American popular performance. Meritocracy The “open market” of American casting, which Isadora Bennett so celebrated and which Harold Clurman so loathed, was itself premised on the third core principle of the mythos of casting: meritocracy. Indeed, embedded in the mythos of casting is the promise that equitable access to the casting process permits the best performers to be seen, thereby presumptively enabling directors, producers and others to identify those performers best equipped to execute their artistic vision. Underlying this promise lay the ideal that, if the flow of supply and demand could be effectively marshaled, the best actor would certainly get the role. Indeed, this meritocratic ideal — matching the best actor to the role — bridged the democratizing impulse of equitable access to casting opportunities with the discerning exactitude of artistic autonomy. But even such an emphasis on finding the “best actor” for the role was itself a noteworthy, twentieth century turn. It is an intriguing historical coincidence then that the same years that remake the American casting process as something of an “open market” also mark the arrival of several high profile contests in which the notion of “best actor” falls into particular relief within the American entertainment industries. Beginning with the Oscars in the 1920s (continuing with the Tonys in the 1940s, the Obies in the 1950s and all the way through SAG’s “The Actor” in the 1990s), these notably ritualized, annual anointings of actors as “the best” emerge as a peculiarly hallmark facet of American popular performance. To be sure, competitions among actors were not an innovation of the twentieth century, with stories reaching all the way back to the acting competitions in fifth century Athens. Even so, most previous historical contestations among actors — whether between La Clairon and Madame Dumesnil in eighteenth century Paris or between Forrest and Macready in the New York of 1848 — also staged a contestation over distinctions of region, social class, aesthetics, and philosophy, with the embodied work of actors manifesting those particular divisions. Yet, in these twentieth century American contest, this multitude of best actors are so named not for enacting cultural values but for the cultural value of enactment itself. These many annual rituals also verify the meritocratic ideal of “best actor” that animates the American casting process. Within the mythos of casting, the anointing of “best actor” connects all segments in the great theatrical chain of being, drawing a connection between the tween actor pretending in her bedroom to the acclaimed icon accepting her trophy in a glittering televised ceremony. Arriving as a sort of post-dramatic conclusion to the ostensible performance, every “best actor” award tacitly ratifies the effective (and largely hidden) operation of a casting mechanism that first delivered this particular actor to the very role that then earned them the honorific of “best actor.” The “best actor” trophy then stands as a tangibly material symbol of the twined ideals of equity, artistry and meritocracy that mutually constitute the mythos of casting in American popular performance. The mythos of casting might be invoked to sustain aspiring artists in the leanest times; likewise, it might be summoned to sustain a perhaps illusory sense of affinity amidst a casting controversy. Even among those who maintain diametrically opposed points of view over the best way to determine who the best actor for the role might be, the mythos of casting affirms that the quest for the best actor remains an ideal worth pursuing. At once a lubricant and a palliative, as much a weapon as it is a shield, the mythos of casting works to provide assurance not only that there is a method to the madness of the casting process but also that the machinery of casting works. All the while, the mythos of casting continues to accomplish its primary purpose – to mystify the actual working conditions of actors, especially as they labor to find work. Brian Eugenio Herrera’s work examines the history of gender, sexuality and race within and through popular performance. He is author of Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in 20th Century US Popular Performance (Michigan) and The Latina/o Theatre Commons 2013 National Convening: A Narrative Report (HowlRound), as well as articles in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, and TDR. Herrera is presently developing a scholarly history of casting in American entertainment. He is Assistant Professor of Theater at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. [1] A noteworthy and productive departure from this pattern can be found in Daniel Banks, “The Welcome Table: Casting for an Integrated Society,” Theatre Topics 23 no. 1 (March 2013), 1-18. [2] The pioneering template of this genre is Michael Shurtleff’s Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part (New York: Walker Publishing, 1978); a more contemporary model might be Jen Rudin’s Confessions of a Casting Director: Help Actors Land Any Role with Secrets from Inside the Audition Room (New York: It Books, 2013). [3] Angela Chia-yi Pao, No Safe Spaces: Re-casting Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 2. [4] Joseph Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 1. [5] Claire Boothe Luce, “The ‘Love Goddess’ Who Never Found Any Love,” LIFE Magazine (August 7, 1964), 64. [6] Stephen B. Armstrong, ed., John Frankenheimer: Interviews, Essays, and Profiles (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013): 89; as quoted in Casting By, directed by Tom Donahue (2013; Brooklyn, NY: First Run Features, 2014), DVD; and David K. Irving, Fundamentals of Film Directing (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2010), 30. [7] Treye Greene, “12 Actors Who Almost Had the Part,” Huffington Post, 24 January 2013, accessed 5 December 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/actors-recast-in-movies_n_2543452.html; David Weiner, “What If? ‘Pulp Fiction’ Near-Miss Casting,” ET Online, 13 November 2013, accessed 5 December 2014, http://www.etonline.com/movies/140840_What_If_Pulp_Fiction_Near_Miss_Casting/; and Damien Bona, Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan: Hollywood’s All-Time Worst Casting Blunders (New York: Citadel Press, 1996). [8] Robert Cohen, Theatre, 5th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), 535. [9] For usefully comparative summaries of early twentieth century actor union activity, see Sean P. Holmes, “All Work or No Play: Key Themes in the History of the American Stage Actor as Worker,” European Journal of American Studies 2 (2008), online; and Pamela Robertson Wojcik, “Typecasting.” Criticism 45 no. 2 (Spring 2003), 225-26. For an aptly detailed narrative account of the 1919 AEA strike and its impact on the union, see Robert Simonson’s Performance of the Century: 100 Years of Actors’ Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater (Applause: New York, 2012), especially 14-61. [10] An efficient overview of AEA’s conflicts with both the Actors’ Forum and the Federal Theatre Project can be found in the epilogue to Sean P. Holmes, Weavers of Dreams, Unite!: Actors’ Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America (University if Illinois Press: Urbana, 2013), 173-178. See also Simonson, 72-73. [11] Holmes (2013), 177. [12] Stephen Vaughn, Ronald Reagan and the Struggle for Black Dignity in Cinema, 1937-1953, The Journal of Negro History 77 no. 1 (Winter 1992), 8-9; “Committee on the Integration of the Negro in the Theatre,” Box 36 Folder 1, Actors Equity Association Records, Tamiment Library/Wagner Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. See also the “Equality” chapter in Robert Simonson’s Performance of the Century, 44-173. [13] “‘Integrated Showcase’ Well Performed, but Did Show Prove Its Point?,” Variety (22 April 1959): 78, 82; “Orson Bean Rebuts on ‘Integration’; Says Race Consciousness Is Brief,” Variety (29 April 1959), 69-74. [14] See Angela Pao’s account in tandem with that of Ana Deboo’s briefer summary in, "The Non-Traditional Casting Project Continues into the '90s," The Drama Review 34 no.4 (Winter 1990), 188-191. [15] Play Production Primer: A Handbook for the Beginner or the Experienced Drama Director and All Who Are Curious About That Alluring World Behind the Footlights, Revised Edition. (Salt Lake City, UT: General Boards of the Mutual Improvement Association, 1948),185. [16] Blandford Jennings, “Rehearsing the School Play,” Dramatics Magazine (March 1948), 9-10. [17] Esther McCabe, “Casting One-Acts in a Small High School,” Dramatics Magazine (February 1948), 13. [18] Sam Boyd, Jr. “Techniques of Play Rehearsal,” Dramatics Magazine (April 1948), 6-7. [19] Talbot Pearson, “Rehearsal Procedures,” Dramatics Magazine (May 1948), 6-7. [20] Isadora Bennett, “The Training Program of the American Theatre Wing,” Educational Theatre Journal 7:1 (March 1955), 32. [21] Qtd. in Richard Schechner, “Ford, Rockefeller, and Theatre,” The Tulane Drama Review 10:1 (Autumn 1965), 35. [22] Frank M. Whiting, An Introduction to the Theatre (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 157. [23] McCabe, 13. [24] These quotations are drawn, variously, from Harold Clurman, On Directing (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 65-68. [25] Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics and Performance in the Depression Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 14, 252. [26] Harold Clurman, On Directing (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 65-68. [27] Elia Kazan, Kazan on Film: The Master Director Discusses His Films, ed. Jeff Young (New York: Newmarket Press, 2001), 130-131. [28] Russell K. Robinson, “Casting and Caste-ing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms,” California Law Review 95, no. 1 (2007), 4. [29] Heekyung Esther Kim, “Race as a Hiring/Casting Criterion: If Laurence Olivier was Rejected for the Role of Othello in Othello, Would He Have a Valid Title VII Claim?” Hastings Communication and Entertainment Law Journal 20 (1997-1998), 397-419; and Jennifer L. Sheppard, “Theatrical Casting – Discrimination or Artistic Freedom?,” Columbia-VLA Journal of Law the Arts 15 (1990-1991), 267. "The Best Actor for the Role or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance" by Brian Eugenio Herrera ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 27, Number 2 (Spring 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Phoebe Rumsey Editorial Assistant: Fabian Escalona Advisory Board: Bill Demastes Amy E. Hughes Jorge Huerta Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Esther Kim Lee Table of Contents "The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance" by Brian Eugenio Herrera "Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men" by Kee-Yoon Nahm "Capable Hands: The Myth of American Independence in D.W. Gregory's The Good Daughter" by Bradley Stephenson "Rooting Out Historical Mythologies; or, William Dunlap's A Trip to Niagara and its Sophisticated Nineteenth Century Audience" by Samuel Shanks www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References About The Authors 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. 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Marissa Nicosia & Jack Isaac Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 35 2 Visit Journal Homepage Emergent Strategy Abolitionist Pedagogy in Pandemic Time Marissa Nicosia & Jack Isaac By Published on May 20, 2023 Download Article as PDF Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.) Change is constant. (Be like water.) There is always enough time for the right work. There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it. Never a failure, always a lesson. Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.) Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass–build the resilience by building the relationships. Less prep, more presence. What you pay attention to grows. – adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy [1] Introduction In this co-authored essay, we describe and analyze the interdisciplinary course and devised theater production that we created with our undergraduate students at The Pennsylvania State University, Abington College in Spring 2022, titled “Emergent Strategy: The Winter’s Tale” and Exit, a banquet piece , respectively—their methods and content inspired by Black feminist activist adrienne maree brown’s book of the same title, as well as William Shakespeare’s play—both of which also served as core texts. brown defines emergent strategy as “how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.” [2] Part thick description, part manifesto, this essay details the teaching philosophies and performance strategies that we enacted, why, and to what ends, bearing brown’s growth- and change-oriented framework in mind. Paying careful attention to affect and lived experience, this essay blends academic prose with autotheory, with brief personal reflections embedded throughout. Ultimately, our goal is to make a case for the efficacy of abolitionist pedagogy in higher education—especially in this historic moment of late capitalism and the ongoing pandemic that it has produced. In a precarious world increasingly attuned to questions of racial equity, class consciousness, disability justice, harm reduction, and community care, professors and students alike, we argue, can benefit from adopting commensurable revolutions in our pedagogical work. [3] But what does abolition mean in the context of teaching? For us, abolitionist pedagogy has meant 1) acknowledging that schools, including colleges and universities, are deeply caught up in a project of perpetuating harm, often meted unevenly onto the most marginalized students and employees; 2) knowing that the harm that schools and schooling does is animated by a carceral logic which often situates faculty in a disciplinary, punitive and/or reward-based, and surveillance role in relation to our students; 3) consciously deciding to adopt teaching philosophies, curricula, and methods aimed at shifting these power relations in and out of the classroom toward a model of care; 4) staying vigilant that our working relationships remain aligned with our politics, modeling for our students what ethical collaboration and right relationship looks like in shared leadership; 5) being committed to shifting our thinking and practices as needed. [4] Here, it’s important to note that this framework of “abolitionist pedagogy” is partly in hindsight. When we began creating this course in December 2020, at the fore of our minds was the fact of a global pandemic that had forced us out of classrooms and onto screens—with many students and faculty variously navigating acute sickness, family emergency, burnout, depression, anxiety, addiction, technology barriers, death, grief, and financial hardship in heightened ways. While the most marginalized among us have always already been dealing with access barriers, the pandemic produced the conditions in which these issues of disparity became more mainstream discourse, and rethinking our approaches to pedagogy was urgently necessary and encouraged —including even by those institutional structures that are complicit in histories of harm. So it was nine months into this new business as usual that we began our collaboration. Marissa was a soon-to-be tenured Associate Professor and Jack a new Assistant Professor at Penn State; we met during Jack’s campus visit when Marissa served as one of the search committee members that made the hire. As luck would have it, we soon became neighbors in South Philadelphia; pandemic walks became our way of swapping resources and cooking up ideas of courses we might teach when in-person learning would recommence. Queer, anti-racist, intersectional feminists with decades of combined teaching experience, we decided to co-teach a class that would bring together our shared research interests and center the needs of our individual students and the collective whole. [5] For us, this meant designing a curriculum that enabled us to have explicit conversations about race, gender, labor, capitalism, trauma, and repair, as well as dramatically shifting the ways that we relate to our students and the work that they “produce.” We abolished grades (everyone gets an A, no exceptions); deadlines (the pace of our work can and will change as needed); and attendance policies (come as you are, when you can). [6] We built in “rest days,” where class did not convene. We moved at the speed of trust , adjusting lesson plans and activities on a week by week, day by day, moment by moment basis, with an eye always kept on what truly needed to happen next. Our choice to implement ungrading, relaxed attendance, and flexible assignment timelines meant that we could center learning, self-reflection, being present together, and group process while dispensing with traditional modes of top-down surveillance—what abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore, speaking in another context, calls acting as a “deputized cop.” [7] Make no mistake, the course was intellectually and physically rigorous, and students and faculty alike were pushed to the edges of our comfort zones. But we tried to always balance rigor with access, refusing to sacrifice our bodies and spirits in the pursuit of academic knowledge or aesthetic virtuosity. Here, we were guided by brown’s principles of Emergent Strategy cited in the opening epigraph, as well as theologian and performance artist Tricia Hersey’s imperative that we place our bodily needs above those of capital’s. The class was a resoundingly transformative experience for the six students enrolled, as well as for us. This essay is our attempt to archive that experience, as well as a public forum in which we attempt to urge readers to consider similar transformations in their own work. Thursday December 3, 2020 We slip on the ice-slick sidewalks of South Philly as we walk, masked, carrying our coffees from Shot Tower. Much later, in the summer of 2021, we will spend an entire afternoon together, sitting in the sunshine outside this same coffee shop, preparing for our upcoming course. We will have brought our marked up copies of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale ; Elinor Fuch’s “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet”; Scott Maisano’s “Now”; and Kathryn Bond Stockton’s “ Lost , or ‘Exit, Pursued by a Bear’: Causing Queer Children on Shakespeare’s TV”—and it will start to become clear that this is a project about time, suspended. [8] But on that Thursday at the beginning of winter, we don’t know any of this yet: we are just two new colleagues struggling to walk without falling. When we get to Jefferson Square, we find a bench in the sun. Beside us, a streetlamp, where someone has busted open its electrical panel and plugged in a cell-phone charger block—cord dangling in the wind. We remark on the brilliance of the unhoused to tap into the city’s electrical grid for free. The conversation turns to the community refrigerators sprinkled throughout our neighborhood; our shared love of gritty Philly; the astonishingly large gap between its wealthy and its poor, but also decades of mutual aid networks aimed at resource redistribution. [9] DSJNOJSD And the conversation broadens to collaboration. What if we brought together our shared interests in theater and temporality, adapting one of Shakespeare’s plays into an original performance that resonated with the themes of this moment? We riff on the Shakespeare plays that we like, that we love, that we feel might connect to the moment: Hamlet , Lear , Richard III. But we also carry with us some doubt about starting with a tragedy. The body count at the end of these plays does not inspire thoughts of healing or repair. We discussed an article about COVID time and time on ships, and how we are all living in wait. It brought The Tempest , Pericles , and The Winter’s Tale to mind—plays that move the reader from rupture to remedy. Winter in the Spring House The Pennsylvania State University’s Abington College is a small (3,500 student), public, four-year, local-serving, minority majority campus in the suburbs just north of Philadelphia. Students choose Abington for a variety of reasons, but often it is because they work, live at home, or need to stay near kin. Many students have significant financial need; the majority self-identify as people of color, many of whom are immigrants or first-generation Americans; a substantial portion are international students, largely from China; more than a third are the first in their families to go to college. But at its founding in 1850 and for the next 100 years to follow, Abington College was the “Ogontz School for Young Ladies”—a preparatory school for white, wealthy women (Amilia Earhart famously among them) on settled Lenape land. Our class convened twice weekly for three hours each in a tiny cottage called Spring House—the oldest freestanding building on campus, initially constructed to store dairy for the “girls.” [11] When the windows of Spring House are open, you can hear the gurgle of the stream that runs through the tree-filled gorge at the center of campus. The stream also feeds an ornamental pond where geese, ducks, and blue herons swim, huddle together on the ice, and stalk in the reeds. Tucked away from the other buildings and containing only two classrooms, a bathroom, and space for silent prayer, our work in the Spring House feels distinctly removed from the bustle of the college. With its rattling, broken heaters and glitchy technology, our classroom space is somehow simultaneously cold, hot, dry, damp, sunny, shadowy, alienating, and welcoming. Through a small basement window, you can see ferns growing underneath—a greenhouse blooming beneath our feet. (We chose to see these plants as inspirational fauna thriving in the darkness rather than a dispiriting result of institutional neglect.) We gather in the Spring House in early January 2022 and begin to study The Winter’s Tale (c.1610). Shakespeare’s tragicomedy is a work of profound loss and marvelous repair in which jealous King Leontes defies an oracle and loses his family only to reunite with his lost daughter, Perdita; wife, Queen Hermione; and beloved friend, King Polixenes, at the play’s end. The play requires a profound suspension of disbelief as extreme shifts in feeling and fortune befall its characters—a bear famously “pursues” and then devours Antigonus after he saves baby Perdita; Time arrives as Chorus to explain a sixteen-year gap between acts; a statue of Hermione comes to life. Tragedy is averted, but not forgotten, as the play explores the potential of art, and our wonder at its workings, to restore what has been lost. [12] We began the semester by reading the play out loud in its entirety, pausing frequently for clarification. Reading The Winter’s Tale together provided a foundation for discussion and aligned with our pedagogical philosophy, as we prioritized using class time for the most important labor and did not assume that students had unlimited time outside of class. Less prep, more presence. Typically, we divied up class time such that one of us taught for 75-80 minutes, we took a break, and then the other took the lead for the second half of class. Under Marissa’s guidance, we studied the play through literary methods—practicing close reading, reading literary criticism, and conducting archival and embodied research. She introduced the working practices of Shakespeare’s theater through lecture and by getting students up on their feet to perform a scene using reconstructed cue scripts. We learned about the publication and circulation of early modern drama by handling eighteenth-century printed books and looking at the spelling and punctuation in the 1632 Second Folio of Shakespeare’s works held by the library via Zoom. [13] We drew on Marissa’s research on food and medicine to discuss humoral theory as a framework for understanding character and emotions, such as Leontes’ self-diagnosed tremor cordis , the heart-palpitations of incandescent rage. A number of Marissa’s lessons were linked to sequenced writing assignments which asked students to focus on interpreting specific, brief passages from the play. But we jettisoned inflexible submission dates for written work as a part of “ungrading,” aware that flexibility accommodates a range of student needs in an ongoing pandemic, many of whom are just trying to get by in a culture of harm. After Marissa’s lesson on using the Oxford English Dictionary to interpret Shakespeare’s language, Jack did a little research: the etymology of “deadline” can be traced back to carceral origins, the line beyond which a fleeing prisoner would be shot if they crossed. The shift from deadlines to student-paced learning also meant that students were placed in the position of scholar/researcher in their own right, rather than producing work for us on an arbitrary timeline we have set without their consent. [14] We paired these literary modes with dramaturgical research and embodied theater practice, facilitated by Jack. This dramaturgical research was guided by Fuchs’s foundational “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet”—which we began the semester by discussing. Rather than focus on language and character, we paid attention to how time, space, climate, mood, light, sound, color, shape, texture and other sensory clues embedded in the text informed our visceral understanding of the world of The Winter’s Tale. Students gathered images inspired by their research, tesselating the linoleum floors with found art. These images were translated into music, music into movement. [15] The aim of this work, we instructed the students, was to move us away from Shakespeare’s world and into our own—which would be best accomplished by tracing its affective outline. Adaptation was the name of the game. So was play. We built a cohesive sense of ensemble, playing team-building games drawn from Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed arsenal and the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq. Jack led the ensemble through a codified sequence of activities derived from Lecoq’s journey of the mask, beginning with a physical exploration of the elements: water, fire, earth, air—which we did outdoors in the cold sun, wind, rain, and snow. The aim was increased embodiment, fierce wakefulness, and jeu (Lecoq’s word for the spirit of “play”) —getting actors to trust their kinesthetic impulses and one another, while learning to tell stories with their bodies. In the studio-based context, ungrading came easily: it is common not to grade performance-based work solely on merit and customary to privilege process over product. Relaxed attedance, however, poses some challenges: a show usually needs to be made on a particular timeline; the presence of the ensemble is crucial to its cohesion; and devising requires building a consistent set of skills and aesthetic vocabulary for the work in progress. So while our theory of “intrinsic motivation” was generally successful (students genuinely cared about the class and one another, and commitment was high), the reality of their complex lives meant that occasionally we had a skeleton crew at crucial moments. [16] We over-hired a production manager (Lisa Suzanne Turner), stage manager (Jaleel Hunter), and music director (Emily Bate)—anticipating that we would need some semblance of a production team to pull off what we imagined would be a large-scale, site-specific, outdoor performance in an institutional context with no regular production season; no production staff; no costume, prop, or scene shop; a very modest budget for theater; and a tiny ensemble. Musician and composer Emily Bate was pivotal, working with students to create an original libretto. When Marissa got COVID, Emily and Jack were left at the helm for several weeks. When Emily got COVID, too, music rehearsals moved to Zoom: Jack holding their tiny iPhone in the outdoor amphitheater on campus with janky wifi and two, then three, then five of the six performers present for rehearsal. Change is constant. (Be like water.) And so we were. Tuesday February 15, 2022 (Jack) We have told the students that their assignment today is to “rest.” No reading, no writing, no class. To prepare the week prior, we invited them to lay down on the floor. Heads together, feet splayed, eyes shut, we listened to an interview with Tricia Hersey, where she discusses capitalism and anti-Blackness, and rest as resistance. Originally broadcast in June 2020, the cover image for the podcast—which we close-read with our students—features a photograph by Charlie Watts: Hersey, in glorious repose; her long, yellow gown and bright, tulle petticoat dangling leisurely from the bench on which she sleeps. Behind her, a brick façade, boarded up windows, and broken panes amidst an abandoned lot. Beneath her, rows of cotton—this urban landscape turned magical real. Hersey begins: To not rest is really being violent towards your body. To align yourself with a system that says “Your body doesn’t belong to you, keep working. You are simply a tool for our production.” To align yourself with that is a slow spiritual death. [ . . .] When you don’t sleep, you’re literally killing your body. It’s not a dramatic over-the-top thing to say that. Our organs begin to break down. I remember wondering what our students—primarily working class people of color with two white professors—think of our unorthodox methods, our insistence on their rejection of domination at this school largely aimed at getting them jobs. I remember taking my place on the floor, nestled between Marissa and Trim, as Hersey goes on to refer to our bodies as “divine holding places of liberation.” [17] I remember thinking that I know this is edgy for her—a Renaissance scholar with a formidable dossier and flawless professional attire, Marissa in many ways is the portrait of “Professor.” But on this day she, like the students laying on the cold linoleum beside her, was “dressed to move,” as is the culture of our course. The following week, we regather to report back on our first day of rest. I begin by reading a short passage from Emergent Strategy , our ritual for the start of class. What are all your gifts? Are you living a life that honors all your gifts? If yes, how did you create all this possibility for yourself? If no, how can you create more possibility today? Tomorrow? This month? This year? [18] Kyleigh delights in telling the group that she took a really good nap. Aman went to the gym, and we debate the ontology of rest, of whether that kind of corporeal act constitutes labor or leisure. Madison did work and feels guilty. The only Black woman in the group, does she have the same luxury of enforced rest? We discuss. What nobody knows is that I spent our rest day not resting at all, but on a campus visit (read: interview) at the small, private and exceedingly elite liberal arts college on the other side of town—the one whose website unabashedly refers to itself as “the most beautiful campus in the known universe.” I was tired of the mold and asbestos in our buildings, of the emails inviting students and faculty to a casual donuts and coffee with cops. Ten months later, I will be driving home at 9pm from this very same room with the heater on the fritz—after wrapping up the semester with another group of gems—and as I pull out onto Woodland Road in the dark in the rain I will think to myself: I just can’t. I just can’t imagine telling these students I’m sorry, I’m trading you in for a better job on the other side of town. Sunday April 10, 2022 (Marissa) We knew that it was statistically likely that someone would get COVID during our semester together: It was me. I brought my COVID infection from Penn State Abington to an international conference in Dublin and found myself unwell, isolated, and stranded. I landed in Philadelphia less than two weeks before our scheduled performance, and just in time for our daylong retreat. We take over the Lares Banquet Room, with windows overlooking the pond. As students arrive, I stir a pot of hot chocolate and pour cups of the heavily-spiced drink—prepared from Rebeckah Winche’s seventeenth-century recipe for “chacolet”—seasoned with vanilla, chili pepper, and cinnamon. [19] We sit in a circle and I ask what they taste: they say spice, capsaicin heat, sweetness, oiliness from the cocoa nibs. I propose that tasting historical recipes, like reading The Winter’s Tale , is a form of attenuated time travel. We discuss. Our archives contain partial knowledge of past meals, past performances. We can taste a version of “chacolet” now, even if we cannot know precisely what tasting chocolate and chili pepper—newly-imported American ingredients, prepared using a recipe grounded in Indigenous knowledge—meant to Winche in England in 1666. The students teach me the music that they have been composing in my absence. I show them Frans Snyders’s “A Banquet-piece, c.1620”—a painting I saw at the National Gallery of Ireland the week earlier—as well as other contemporaneous still-lifes that are inspiring our scenic design. Jack guides us in rituals from the Passover haggadah —their holiday about to commence. What you pay attention to grows , and we are paying attention to food, movement, song, ritual, and paintings of tulips and fruit. Over pizza, Jonathan tells me that my voice and breath sound different. He is worried that I’m still sick. Later, as the light fades into a glorious pink sunset, Jack, Jaleel, and I walk the possible routes that our performance might take—singing the opening song from Exit as we travel: All you touch you change, all you change changes you, the only lasting truth is change, change, change. Adapted from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and invoked on the first page of brown’s book, these lines had become a kind of anthem—first metaphorical, now literal—for our group. [20] I stop singing. I’m short of breath. My chest hurts. My lungs can’t handle singing and walking in the cold air. April 21, 2022 It is a beautiful day in early spring; the campus is abuzz with another semester almost done. Audience members have been instructed to meet on the plaza outside the Sutherland Building—the one with Chief Ogontz eerily chiseled into stone above the door. Marissa and Jack make small-talk with guests: the dean and chancellor among them. An unassuming white, folding table—the kind on every college campus—is littered with COVID waivers and percussives: maracas, egg shakers, a xylophone. Jaleel, in black slacks and shirt and a bright orange durag that matches the glittery streaks above his eyes, greets us one by one—handing out instruments to those of us willing to play. An actor (Madison Branch), also in black with burgundy accents around her eyes, stands expectantly under the public clock on the other side of the lawn. She introduces herself to us as “Time” and teaches us a song: “ All you touch you change . . . ” We follow her, playing our instruments and singing in rounds. At the top of a hill, we glimpse a vast, green field: a banquet in the distance. We hear a drum, voices. We approach. Beneath a line of tall pines, long tables are draped in white linen and laden with flowers and fruit. Our voices join with the drums and the voices of the performers, who welcome us to their feast. Exit, a banquet piece is a site-specific, immersive performance with live music, song, monologue, ritual, and a community meal. In its conceit, it begins in the moments just after the action of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale has ended. In the last lines of the play, Leontes invites recollection: Good Paulina, Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely Each one demand and answer to his part Performed in this wide gap of time since first We were dissevered. Hastily lead away. They exit. (5.3.188-192) Exit, a banquet piece accepts Leontes’s invitation for “each” member the ensemble to share their story of the “wide gap of time”—all that has happened in the time they have been apart, “dissevered.” To the beat of Polixenes’s drum (Jonathan Bercovici), each performer tells their story in turn: my name is Polixenes and I am the hunted man; my name is Hermione and I am the accused woman; my name is Leontes and I am the regretful man; my name is Perdita and I am the queer child; my name is Florizel and I am the lover; my name is Time and I am the seer—their monologues filling the spring air, the rest of the chorus chanting underneath. The ensemble then leads the audience in a series of healing rituals, inspired, in part, by the Passover seder (it is the 7th night). Hermione (Kyleigh Byers) invites us wash our neighbors’ hands with water blessed by the light of the full moon, while Florziel (George Ye)—in a deep green cape—plays a haunting melody on the xylophone. Birds chirp, geese honk and soar overhead. At Leontes’s command (Aman Zabian), we name the things that plague us, dipping our pinkies into our wine-filled cups and tapping them on our plates: the war in Ukraine, racism at home, patriarchy, student debt, addiction, COVID-19. Perdita (Trim Walker) asks us to toast the things we want more of: we say love, joy, learning. Night falls; music swells; the Ramandan fast has concluded for another day: we feast. Students Jonathan Bercovici, Madison Branch, Kyleigh Byers, Trim Walker, George Ye, and Aman Zabian perform their monologues in Exit , a banquet piece . Audience members of diverse backgrounds share their personal narratives of the pandemic with one another. Ritual devised and led by the student ensemble. George Ye performs a solo on the xylophone as Kyleigh Byers leads audience members in a handwashing ritual. Original score written by Ye. Madison Branch as Time (foreground), Jonathan Bercovici as Polixenes, Aman Zabian as Leontes; Kyleigh Byers as Hermione, Trim Walker as Perdita, and George Ye as Florizel in Exit, a banquet piece. Audiences perform a ritual inspired by the Passover Seder, naming contemporary “plagues” that harm them, while marking their plates with droplets of wine. Production Manager Lisa Suzanne Turner (left) and Stage Manager Jaleel Hunter (bottom, right) sit with audience members in a moment of silence. Audience members were comprised of faculty, staff, students, and the local community. Photo credit: Mendal Diana Polish Thursday May 19, 2022 (Marissa) I wanted time to stop as I sat in that field and listened to the students sing. I wanted time to stop as I named the things that plague me, named the things that I want more of in my life. I wanted time to stop as I looked at the tulips, fruit, objects, and place-settings on the banquet tables that I had arranged like a Renaissance still life. I wanted time to stop as water poured over hands, music and birdsong filled the field. I wanted to linger. I wanted to dilate that moment of joy, release, pride, and beauty. I wanted time to stop. But of course, time is relentless; performance “can never be captured or transmitted through the archive”; and “the only lasting truth is change.” [21] Nevertheless, I attempted to preserve the fleeting moment. I brought home the clementines that adorned the set and baked with them, transforming the performance into a cake. [22] I served it at our final class meeting as a way of saying I love you all so much, to say that I wanted time to stop. It was a temporary solution: We devoured the cake. Thursday April 28, 2022 (Jack) In our final class meeting, we form two concentric circles, inside facing out. Eye to eye, toe to toe, everyone is given three prompts to answer (before rotating to the next partner): What is my impact in the world? In three words, what am I embodying? Where do you think I could grow? [23] I am facilitating, so I don’t play, except for the round when someone steps out into the sun. For that brief moment, I face Marissa, struggling to find the words. I say something about her learning to integrate the work of the mind and the fact of the body in answering prompt number three. And she says something about my inextinguishable fire, about learning to cool, or direct, my flames. Indeed. Like Leontes, I have tremor cordis on me: my heart dances, but not for joy. I’m not alone. Enraged by injustice, hot with desire, aren’t we all just learning how to direct the storms of our fires toward healing and justice for all? And isn’t performance always the work of the mind and the fact of the body brought together in the service of this? We carpool home, Broad Street all the way. Past the storefront churches and the mattress stores and Temple University and City Hall. When we get to South Philly, where I no longer live, Marissa and I part ways. “We did something really special,” she says, and we hug awkwardly in the car. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build resilience by building the relationships. At the heart of this course was our collaboration—a site where we modeled for our students how to move at the speed of trust. In many ways, we are incredibly different—as teachers, as artists, as scholars trained in distinct fields. But we agreed for four months to align our joint pedagogy with our shared politics and see what that might stir. Marissa is on sabbatical now, and I continue to teach at the former school for girls. I have carried on in our tradition of abolition: no grades, no deadlines, no attendance policies—which shares the Greek and Latin root, of course— politia— with “police.” I have continued with rest days, and, to the extent possible, decentering my authority in the room (which, quite possibly, sometimes reifies it; it’s hard to say for sure, but they know I care). And it’s not yet clear if I will stay for the long haul; but then again, it’s also not clear if the academy, the nation, or the planet will. So while we wait, and work, and wonder, I’m going to go ahead and place my bet on emergent strategy and/as abolitionist pedagogy for these pandemic times, and beyond—as the best we’ve got for figuring out, together, how we might get free. [24] References [1] adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico: AK Press, 2017), pp. 41-42. [2] Ibid, p. 3. [3] For more on care work, see Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018). For a great introduction to abolitionist pedagogy, see Sujani Reddy, “School is a Tracking Device: On Deschooling as Abolitionist Practice,” March 9, 2019 THIS IS HELL! , produced by mixlr, podcast, https://thisishell.com/interviews/1046-sujani-reddy ; see also Reddy’s chapter of the same title in the anthology Abolitioning Carceral Society (Brooklyn: Common Notions, 2018). Thank you to Sujani Reddy for her correspondence about pedagogy and abolition over the years. [4] After the screening of Brett Story’s stunning documentary film, The Prison in 12 Landscapes (2016) at the Lightbox Film Center in Philadelphia in December 2022, Robert Saleem Holbrook, the Executive Director of the Abolitionist Law Center, made the important distinction between decarceration and abolition. Decarceration, he noted, is dedicated to eradicating all prisons and freeing all captive people. Abolition, however, takes this project one step further: aiming to abolish all systems of oppression that uphold a carceral logic. This includes prisons, police, policing, police unions, surveillance and corrections technology and businesses that produce them, jails, detention centers, psychiatric hospitals, immigration and customs enforcement (ICE), and the nation-state itself. Thank you to Lindsay Reckson for bringing this film to our attention and for being a co-conspirator in abolitionist pedagogy more generally. [5] We have each taught in a range of institutional contexts prior to our positions at Penn State, including public and private R1s and R2s, small liberal arts colleges, art schools, and the Ivy League. Marissa began teaching as a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania; an adjunct at the University of the Arts; and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Scripps College. Jack first taught at the University of Texas at Austin as an M.A. and Ph.D. student; then a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Northern Arizona University, and Haverford College; before beginning the tenure-track at Reed College, followed by Penn State. [6] We modeled our syllabus language on Jesse Stommel, “Compassionate Grading Policies,” Jesse Stommel January 3, 2022 https://www.jessestommel.com/compassionate-grading-policies/ ; See also Asao Inoue, Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom (Fort Collins, Colorado: The WAC Clearinghouse, 2019); Alfie Kohn, “The Case Against Grades,” Educational Leadership [7] Chenjerai Kumanyika, “Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition,” June 10, 2020 Intercepted , produced by The Intercept , podcast, https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/ruth-wilson-gilmore-makes-the-case-for-abolition/ ; see also Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s forthcoming Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2023). [8] Elinor Fuchs, “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play,” in Theater , no. 34 (2) (2004): 5-9; Scott Maisano, “Now,” in Early Modern Theatricality , ed. Henry S. Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 368-85; Kathryn Bond Stockton, “ Lost , or ‘Exit, Pursued by a Bear’: Causing Queer Children on Shakespeare’s TV,” in Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare , edited by Madhavi Menon (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 421-428. [9] For a good primer on mutual aid, see Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (New York: Verso Books, 2020). [10] Jack Isaac Pryor, Time Slips: Queer Temporalities, Contemporary Performance, and the Hole of History (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017); Marissa Nicosia, Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). [11] “Historic Abington Campus,” Penn State Abington History Program https://www.abington.psu.edu/academics/history/historic-abington-campus [12] This framing of the play owes debts to Marissa’s undergraduate mentor and his scholarship. Peter Platt, Reason Diminished: Shakespeare and the Marvelous (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), esp. pp. 153-168). [13] William Shakespeare, Mr. VVilliam Shakespeares comedies, histories, and tragedies. (London, 1632). Eberly Family Special Collections, Pennsylvania State University Libraries, PR2751.A2 1632 Q. [14] “dead-line, n.” OED Online . December 2022. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/view/Entry/47657 (accessed December 22, 2022); see also Heather Froehlich, Marissa Nicosia, and Christina Riehman-Murphy, “Transcribing Recipe Manuscripts Online: V.b.380 and the ‘What’s in a Recipe?’ Undergraduate Research Project at Penn State Abington.” Early Modern Studies Journal 8(2022). https://earlymodernstudiesjournal.org/review_articles/transcribing-recipe-manuscripts-online-v-b-380-and-the-whats-in-a-recipe-undergraduate-research-project-at-penn-state-abington/ [15] The physical theater work that we did in class was informed by Jack’s training with director Anne Bogart/the SITI Company and choreographer Rosie Herrera/Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, as well as Pig Iron Theater Company and The Padova Arts Academy (Paola Coletto) where they trained in Lecoq. [16] The idea of complex lives is informed by Avery Gordon’s notion of “the right to complex personhood,” which she discusses in Ghostly Matters: Haunting and Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, p. 4). [17] “Tricia Hersey on Rest as Resistance,” June 8, 2020 for the wild, produced by Ayana Young, podcast, https://forthewild.world/listen/tricia-hersey-on-rest-as-resistance-185 ; see also, Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto (New York: Little, Brown, 2022). [18] See brown, p. 190. [19] Marissa Nicosia, “Chacolet from Rebeckah Winche’s Receipt Book at the Folger Shakespeare Library” Cooking in the Archives January 28, 2016 https://rarecooking.com/2016/01/28/chacolet-from-rebeckah-winches-receipt-book-at-the-folger-shakespeare-library/ . [20] Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1993), p. 3; brown, p. 1. [21] Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 20. [22] Earlier in the semester, Jack had suggested that Marissa try this recipe. Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, “Clementine & almond syrup cake” Jerusalem (London: Ebury, 2012), p. 294. [23] See brown, p. 185. [24] This notion of “how we get free” is inspired by the Combahee River Collective anthology; see Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, ed., How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017). About The Authors Marissa Nicosia is Associate Professor of Renaissance Literature at The Pennsylvania State University-Abington College. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Marissa’s first monograph, Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2023. She co-edited the collection, Making Milton: Print, Authorship, Afterlives (Oxford University Press, 2021), with Emma Depledge and John S. Garrison. In 2019, she co-edited a special issue of Explorations in Renaissance Culture on Renaissance Futures with John S. Garrison. She has published articles on Renaissance literature, temporality, food culture, and book history and manuscript studies. Marissa runs the public food history website Cooking in the Archives ( www.rarecooking.com ). Jack Isaac Pryor is Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies at The Pennsylvania State University-Abington College. They received their Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Their first book, Time Slips: Queer Temporalities, Contemporary Performance, and the Hole of History (2017), was published by Northwestern University Press and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies. Jack is currently co-editing the collection, Transfixt: Transgender Aesthetics at the Tipping Point, with Jules Rosskam and a special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre with Stacy Wolf (Sondheim from the Side, forthcoming 2023). They have published essays on pedagogy, queer temporality, minoritarian performance and visual culture, sex, state violence, and experimental modes of art and cultural criticism. Jack is also a director and devised theater maker. ( www.jaclynisaacpryor.com ). 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Benjamin Gillespie and Bess Rowen Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 36 2 Visit Journal Homepage Editorial Introduction Benjamin Gillespie and Bess Rowen By Published on June 6, 2024 Download Article as PDF We are honored and delighted to be the incoming co-editors of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . We have a long connection to the journal through our mutual alma mater at The Graduate Center, CUNY where the journal is housed at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and supported by the work of students in the PhD Program in Theatre and Performance. We would like to thank James F. Wilson and Naomi Stubbs for more than a decade of stewardship of the journal and for their editorial guidance and labor to keep the journal positioned at the forefront of issues facing American theatre. We will do our utmost to not only continue, but also build upon their legacy and those that came before them. The journal’s association with the American Theatre & Drama Society is also significant as we are both active members of the society and strongly believe in its mission. We are also grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers who make scholarly publication possible. The field of drama, theatre, and performance in the Americas continues to expand in scope, form, style, representation, and content. We are deeply invested in continuing to support work that covers the entirety of the Americas while exploring intersectional issues of identity and history within this vast geographic area and ensuring diversity in both authorship and subjects covered in the journal. We welcome articles with a primary basis in history and/or theory that explore issues of identity across race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and age. JADT's publication schedule consists of two issues per year: one general issue co-edited by us, and another special themed issue curated by a guest editor. We will continue with this model moving forward. We accept articles on a continuous basis and encourage authors to reach out to us with ideas for articles in advance. All full-length articles go through the traditional peer review process. We remain committed to keeping the journal open access and digitized through the generous work of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center directed by Frank Hentschker. In addition to submitting articles, we hope you will support the journal by reading it as we welcome feedback from all sources. This issue features the first collection of articles, interviews, and reviews that have fallen entirely under our purview. We begin with Valerie Joyce’s analysis of Rags , a short-lived Broadway musical meant to be a successor to Fiddler on the Roof . By looking at the way choreography tells the story of immigrants, assimilation, and acculturation, Joyce makes a case for the importance of choreography in the process of creating audience empathy for immigrant characters, which is clearly an important topic to this day. Next, we move to Danielle Rosvally’s exploration of TikTok as an important digital archive of performance, particularly of performances during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rosvally likens the proposed bans and restrictions of TikTok to theatre fires and other major losses of archival information in the pre-digital age, deftly weaving this digital performance archive together with more traditional brick and mortar theaters of the past and present. The following article, by Thomas Arthur, chronicles Jamaican actor Sidney Hibbert’s life in terms of his post-colonial experiences performing in a variety of different national contexts. This microhistory both highlights and contextualizes Hibbert’s extraordinary abilities among the transitional period of history his life spanned. Our final article is a roundtable conversation between Jim Nicola, Tanya Elder, and Daniel Diego Pardo about the archival materials left by noted theatre critic, translator, and historian Michael Feingold who died in 2022. Nicola, Elder, and Pardo discuss and work through a small sliver of the material left in boxes after Feingold’s death. In doing so, they peer into Feingold’s legacy and uncover often-overlooked pieces of queer history he engaged in, the backstory of downtown theatre, and the founding of yale/theatre which later became Theater magazine. The issue also features four book reviews that mark the end of Maya Roth’s tenure as our book review editor. We thank her for her years of service and careful curation of the book review section. We are also delighted to feature our first collection of performance reviews in this issue. Performance reviews will continue to be a feature of the journal going forward, and we are happy that this section will continue to support our mission of spotlighting performance throughout the Americas. We hope our readers enjoy all of the excellent contributions in this issue and we welcome submissions of articles, interviews, book reviews, and performance reviews. Reach out to us at jadtjournal@gmail.com . This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References About The Authors Benjamin Gillespie (PhD) is Doctoral Lecturer in Communication, Gender Studies, and Theatre at Baruch College, City University of New York. His essays and reviews have been published in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, Performance Research, Canadian Theatre Review , and a wide range of scholarly anthologies. He is currently editing two volumes: Split Britches: Fifty Years On and Late Stage: Theatrical Perspectives on Age and Aging , both to be published by the University of Michigan Press. He is Co-Editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Bess Rowen (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Villanova University. She is also affiliate faculty for both Gender & Women's Studies and Irish Studies. She is a member of Actors' Equity and an intimacy choreographer. Her first book, The Lines Between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment (2021) focuses on affective stage directions. Her next book project looks at the theatrical archetype of the “mean teenage girl.” Other recent work can be found in Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders & Sexualities , Theatre Survey , and The Eugene O'Neill Review , among other publications. She also serves as the LGBTQ+ Focus Group Representative at ATHE and as the Co-Editor of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre . Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue 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 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 Dr. Michelle Cowin Gibbs The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 33, Number 2 (Spring 2021) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2021 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center 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. 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. [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_iwusid=AONExid=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: 1st 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. ISNN 2376-4236 Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng Advisory Board: Michael Y. Bennett Kevin Byrne Tracey Elaine Chessum Bill Demastes Stuart Hecht Jorge Huerta Amy E. Hughes David Krasner Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Ariel Nereson Beth Osborne Jordan Schildcrout Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Table of Contents: “Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble” by Elizabeth M. Cizmar “Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth” by Baron Kelly “A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson's Black Feminist Intervention” by Khalid Y. Long “An Interview with Elaine Jackson” by Nathaniel G. Nesmith "Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston" by Michelle Cowin Gibbs "1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Antimusical The Mule-Bone Is Presented" by Eric M. Glover “'Ògún Yè Mo Yè!' Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities" by Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green "Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar" by Lisa B. Thompson "Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge" by Bernth Lindfors "Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation" by Olga Sanchez Saltveit "A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement" by Isaiah Matthew Wooden www.jadtjournal.org www.jadtjournal.org ">jadt@gc.cuny.eduwww.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Yu Chien Lu, Administrative Producer ©2020 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References About The Authors 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. 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Kee-Yoon Nahm Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 27 2 Visit Journal Homepage Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men Kee-Yoon Nahm By Published on April 23, 2015 Download Article as PDF Dead white males. This oft-cited phrase encapsulates the ongoing project of dismantling the privileged monopoly that white men have historically held over the formation of an artistic canon and cultural tradition. In the field of American drama, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller (despite significant differences among their work) comprise such a tradition, one that elevates the realist family drama over other forms of theatrical representation and underlines the centrality of the white male voice in both the imagined domestic settings and the actual public sphere. Through its prominence in theatre programming and education, realism continues to hold influence on how plays are written and received in the United States, evident not only in recent Pulitzer Prize winners such as Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County (2007) and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (2010), but also in designations such as “alternative,” “experimental,” or “avant-garde” theatre, which generally refer to aesthetics that are opposed to realism. This essay examines two recent plays that engage with this problematic tradition, albeit from an unconventional angle that probes and challenges existing representations of whiteness: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate and Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, which were both produced in New York in 2014.[1] On the surface, these plays stand out from the established institution that realist family drama has become in that they were written by an African-American and Asian-American respectively, challenging normative assumptions about the kinds of plays that playwrights of color can or should write. But in light of Jacobs-Jenkins and Lee’s previous, critically acclaimed work on racial identity and representation, the conscious choice to adopt—or more fittingly, appropriate—this seemingly orthodox aesthetic warrants deeper analysis. As such, this essay attempts to explain how Appropriate and Straight White Men disrupt the “traditional” link between realism and whiteness: in other words, how the purposeful emulation (rather than the rejection and dismantlement) of realist dramaturgy and stagecraft can highlight issues of racial representation, even when the form has a long and problematic history of shrouding whiteness in the myth of universality. It was in the work of feminist critics that realism was first associated with the Barthesian notion of myth as an ideological institution. To theorists such as Laura Mulvey, Catherine Belsey, and Jill Dolan (among many others), realism in mainstream cinema, literature, and theatre mystified a patriarchal value system, normalizing and universalizing the male gaze and the objectification of women by masquerading as an unmediated and natural account of reality. Following the feminist model of cultural analysis, critical race studies has demonstrated how an ideology of whiteness is reinscribed through media representations—privileging identification with white characters and the gaze of white audiences, while stereotyping non-whites to a handful of recognizable roles and scenarios. Prior to its critical scrutiny by cultural theorists, whiteness maintained a mythic status; to be white means to not be seen in terms of embodied race, to be regarded only as “unmarked, unspecific, universal.”[2] Thus demystifying whiteness in dramatic realism involves asking, for example, to what extent Death of a Salesman reflects the aspirations, struggles, and tragedy of the “common man” when Miller’s professed commonality fails to extend beyond white people. Jacobs-Jenkins explains that his initial interest in emulating realist dramaturgy for Appropriate emerged from asking, “what is the gulf between [Sam Shepard’s] Buried Child and August Wilson? I went back and read every family drama I could get my hands on, and after a while I realized they are actually all about race or ethnicity or identity. They all are but they never get credited as that.”[3] While still acknowledging that whiteness functions differently from other formations of racial identity, Jacobs-Jenkins attempts in his play to mark whiteness as a race, undermining its claim to transracial universality by making it visible. Lee engages in a similar project, although the white characters in Straight White Men are strikingly different from more stylized renditions of whiteness in her earlier pieces such as Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (2003) and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (2006).[4] In sum, myth is present in the American dramatic canon in two ways that are relevant to my reading of these ostensibly white plays. American realist drama since O’Neill largely preserved the mythic status of whiteness, equating “white” with “human” while excluding or marginalizing non-white experiences, subjectivities, and modes of spectatorship. At the same time, whiteness becomes myth most effectively through the form of realism. Elin Diamond writes: realism, more than any other form of theatre representation, mystifies the process of theatrical signification. Because it naturalizes the relation between character and actor, setting and world, realism operates in concert with ideology. And because it depends on, insists on a stability of reference, an objective world that is the source and guarantor of knowledge, realism surreptitiously reinforces (even if it argues with) the arrangements of that world.[5] Diamond’s theoretical work on mimesis, with realism as its most rigidified version, translates Barthes’s definition of myth—“the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal”—into one that is specific to the conditions and contexts of theatrical representation.[6] The critical vocabulary developed by feminist criticism on spectatorship and identification cover some of theatre’s unique conditions. We may also include here Varun Begley’s extension of Diamond’s theory to objects on stage, in which the fully rendered living room sets and realistic props (the epithetic “kitchen-sink”) of stage realism serve as “ideological guarantors” that help reinforce the truth effect of the theatrical representation: “Conventional realism proclaims what things are, rather than exploring how they might be appropriated and used.”[7] The overbearing presence of material things in Appropriate and Straight White Men fulfill the expectations of realist stagecraft, but when whiteness is highlighted, the socio-economic dimensions of these objects (property, the inheritance of wealth and social status, relationships to labor and leisure, etc.) also stand out. These twin principles outlined by previous scholarship will be crucial to my analysis: realism mystifies both itself (by replacing theatrical representation with an “objective world”) and racial hegemony (by replacing whiteness with universality). That said, the parenthetical aside in the last clause of Diamond’s quote introduces a difficult problem to the framework of realism and (de)mystification. She concedes that realism inevitably reinscribes the dominant ideology even when the intention is to challenge it. While Diamond sought to develop an analytical method that moved beyond the compromised politics of realist dramaturgy (which she calls “gestic criticism”), other scholars have attempted to qualify myth-based critiques of realism to account for realist plays that do not, in their view, reinforce hegemony.[8] Using the example of Terry Baum and Carolyn Meyer’s play Dos Lesbos (1980), which takes the form of realist drama but advances a radical feminist/lesbian perspective, Jeanie Forte attempts to “identify a feminist writing practice that emulates realism but operates as a different discursive strategy, perhaps a pseudo-realism.”[9] Similarly, Josephine Lee argues that the critical discourse on realism and ideology must be revised when dealing with Asian-American family dramas that adhere to conventional realism. Not only do the plays of Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang “work against a sense of mastery, of total identification, for either the Asian American or non-Asian American viewer,” they also provide opportunities of spectatorship that “support rather than oppose moments of sympathetic identification.”[10] Forte and Lee believe that realist dramaturgy can engender a sense of belonging and political purpose for minority groups when placed in the right hands, contrary to Diamond’s assertion that realism can only reinforce and mystify. But it seems to me that these counterarguments rely on the assumption that such plays feature characters and audiences that both belong to the minority group in question: that the Chinese-American families depicted in Chin and Hwang’s plays speak to Chinese-Americans in the audience. Only in this setting can something as inimical as “sympathetic identification” (which plays a crucial role in how ideology is reinforced, according to earlier theorists) can be recuperated “to authenticate through public performance a vision of ethnic community hitherto erased from public view.”[11] But how, then, are we to understand the all-white casts in Appropriate and Straight White Men? Strictly speaking, these plays couch the lives and perspectives of white characters within a mode of representation that subtly instates the stage as a reflection and extension of reality. Do these works still qualify as pseudo-realism, in other words, appropriations of realism that avoid its ideological pitfalls? I wish to make the case that they do, which requires a further revision of the critical discourse on realism and myth. Unlike earlier dramatic appropriations of realist dramaturgy, Jacobs-Jenkins and Lee are not interested in divorcing form and ideology; instead, they acknowledge and make full use of the historical affinity between whiteness and realism. That is, the conventionality of realism itself can highlight issues of race not by satirizing or parodying whiteness, but by rigorously embodying it. Indeed, what makes these plays so innovative and potentially radical as artistic interrogations of whiteness is the fact that they are not parodies. Some of the characters are unlikeable, but not necessarily because they are white. They are not caricatured vessels of dominant ideology, but rather individuals: struggling, confused, and emotionally torn. After all, if the “privilege of being white in white culture is not to be subjected to stereotyping in relation to one’s whiteness,” then reducing whiteness into a stereotype is subverting it without probing the full extent of the white culture that guarantees that privilege.[12] Instead, these plays surprisingly ask the audience for old-fashioned sympathetic identification towards their white characters, even as they draw attention to the privileged, unequal position that whiteness has and continues to occupy in American society. White supremacism, the most extreme manifestation of whiteness as ideology, literally forms the background of Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate, set in a derelict manor in southern Arkansas that was once a slave plantation. Following the death of the estate’s owner Ray Lafayette, his three estranged children, all middle-aged, return to their old family home to take stock of the property and auction it off to repay their father’s steep debts. The past works on the present as the family’s long and painful history emerges through expository recollections and mutual accusations of past misdeeds in typical realist style. Yet the characters are cautious and defensive when the past that they dig up touches upon the history of racism. Toni, the eldest daughter, is especially averse to admitting that the disturbing artifacts that they find in their father’s bookshelves and closets mean anything, although she repeatedly insists on remembering the past to emphasize how much she has suffered and sacrificed to keep the family from falling apart. Franz, the youngest, returns unexpectedly after running away ten years ago after he was convicted of child rape to seek emotional closure and start a new life. His fiancée, River, encourages Franz to forget the past without acknowledging the racial legacy enmiring the crumbling house: “This place is still in your bones and you need to let it go. And, tomorrow, when you see it’s gone, you’ll be free. It’ll become someone else’s problem and you’ll be able to sleep again.”[13] Before examining how these characters and their juxtaposition against the house’s history engage with issues of whiteness, it is important to note that the Lafayette siblings are fully-realized and emotionally complex (if somewhat over-expressive) people, molded from the same cast of conventional realism. Ben Brantley of the New York Times notes that Jacobs-Jenkins “has achieved the difficult feat of making them all both unlovable and impossible not to identify with,” meaning that the play does not treat these white characters as physical stand-ins for an abstract racial construction.[14] Such a concrete foundation of realist characterization is vital to how Jacobs-Jenkins then makes their whiteness salient—through their interaction with an old photograph album depicting lynchings of black men. The album’s spatial journey, discovered by accident on the living room shelf and passing through the hands of every character over the course of the play, creates a secondary plot that runs parallel to the family conflict among the Lafayette siblings; the range of responses to this document of racist violence—shock, disgust, curiosity, fascination, disregard, aversion—is as diverse as the characters’ inclinations and perspectives on more personal matters. Yet despite such individualized responses, the photographs mark all of the characters as white, as people that have never experienced the discrimination and violence that Hilton Als describes in his essay on actual lynching photographs: “Fact is, if you are even half-way colored and male in America, the dead heads hanging from the trees in these pictures, and the dead eyes or grins surrounding them, it’s not too hard to imagine how this is your life too, as it were.”[15] Whiteness becomes apparent when these characters are unable to imagine the terminated lives in the photographs. Toni refuses to believe that the photographs are even a part of her father’s life, arguing throughout the play that they could have ended up in the house by chance. Bo, the middle sibling, wants to throw them away until he discovers that there is a lucrative market for this “highly specialized collector’s item” (75). When River and Cassidy (Bo’s fourteen-year-old daughter) are caught looking at the album, River distances herself from the images by treating them as an educational tool: “Cassidy was actually very mature about them. She was asking all the right questions. She was using the internet” (53). Yet the lynching photographs do not completely upstage the main plot. In keeping the focus on the lives and emotional struggles of individual characters, whiteness shifts in and out of view, clearly visible when the photographs demand attention and fading away when the family fights take over. Jacobs-Jenkins subtly stages opportunities for these opposing registers of whiteness—visible and invisible—to bleed into one another, rather than building up to one grand gesture in which whiteness is fully exposed and demystified. In this way, Appropriate is a sophisticated and carefully crafted meditation on how whiteness functions differently from other races. Steve Garner writes: “whiteness is a position from which other identities are constructed as deviant. The invisibility of whiteness therefore stems from never having to define itself explicitly. It is seen as the human and universal position requiring no qualification.”[16] Thus whiteness is rendered invisible when Toni suffers over her divorce and sense of failure as a mother, or when Franz seeks redemption for the pain and trouble he has caused his family because the conventions of realist drama ensure that they are human first and foremost in these moments. In adhering to realism, Jacobs-Jenkins demands that the audience acknowledge and grapple with the privilege of invisibility granted to whiteness while not losing sight of race in the background. Realism’s reliance on material objects to verify the truthfulness of the representation here becomes the playwright’s principal means of keeping invisibility in check. The house itself serves this purpose well; in the end, the siblings are trying to claim a fortune accumulated through the exploitation of African-Americans. But hidden throughout the detritus cluttering the set are more explicit reminders of racist violence that intrude on the characters whenever they are about to forget the house’s racial history. For example, the important photograph album (which will resurface constantly throughout the play) makes its first appearance right after Toni and Bo’s squabble about who is more responsible for the estate’s ruin. Bo complains that the two graveyards within the property—one for the family’s ancestors, another for the slaves—make it difficult to sell the house “with all the red tape and historical ordinance crap”(21). As if the house is somehow responding to this dismissal of history, Bo’s wife Rachel discovers exactly at that moment that her eight-year-old son Ainsley had been flipping through the lynching photographs, abruptly ending both the argument and the scene. Later, Toni and Franz argue over inheritance rights and Franz’s past sex offenses when other family members enter carrying jars of desiccated body parts: “souvenirs” taken from lynchings. And in the emotional climax of the play when the pent-up anger and frustration explodes into a physical brawl involving all of the adult characters, Ainsley enters wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood he found in his grandfather’s closet. Again, this image immediately ends the fight and the scene. These shocking mementos of racism not only disrupt the dramatic structure, preventing arguments and fights from carrying on, they also mediate the audience’s perception of race in the play, turning these “people” into “white people” in the blink of an eye. The mounting evidence of their father’s racism pressures the characters themselves to navigate this difference; the siblings want to claim what is left of Ray’s material legacy but at the same time “disown” the racial legacy inscribed in his possessions. In this way, Appropriate specifically addresses the most current iteration of whiteness as ideology: the myth of the post-racial. Post-racial politics reinscribes the dominance of whiteness by claiming that American society has moved beyond race after the “success” of the Civil Rights movement (amplified by the election of President Obama). According to social critic Tim Wise, this myth insists that “economic forces, and even ingrained cultural factors within the African American community have overtaken the role of racism in explaining the conditions of life faced by black and brown folks, especially the urban poor,” denying the impact of intergenerational disadvantages caused by slavery and Jim Crow laws, as well as institutionalized racism today in the guise of colorblind public policy.[17] Not only does the notion of a post-racial society perpetuate norms and value systems that have historically privileged whites, it erects an impermeable border between whiteness before and after the eruption of race politics in the mid-twentieth century. When River accuses the entire family of racism, stressing “the evil and cruelty you’re descended from – that’s in your blood,” (84) Bo goes on a defensive rant that reflects this post-racial attitude: Nobody asked to be born, okay? And certainly nobody asked to be born into this – this –shitty history, so tell me what you want me to do. You want me to go back in time and spank my great-great grandparents? Or should I lynch myself? […] I didn’t enslave anybody! I didn’t lynch anybody! (84) Bo’s frustration and overreaction is in some ways understandable. Significantly, there is nothing in the play that suggests that he has done anything that would make him a racist in the way that his father was. But at the same time, even Bo’s appeal to his individuality is conditioned by whiteness; “I didn’t enslave anybody!” (84) can only be a meaningful statement of one’s morality to a white person. Meanwhile, the curse metaphor that River evokes is in response to Franz’s long speech about how he threw the photograph album in a lake. He describes this spontaneous act as a healing ritual for himself, which River then extends to the family’s cursed history of racist violence. But Franz struggles to find the right words to explain how he came to the decision to destroy the photographs: These things are…crazy. They are so powerful – They’re making everyone act crazy. […] They have like…an energy and, like, where did they come from? Because I never once saw them here. I never once saw Daddy with them. It’s like they came from nowhere. And I was like – maybe they emerged for a reason, you know? And I was thinking about what Rachel was saying – like these were killings – like crimes – I was like, maybe we’re actually supposed to solve this crime – maybe something is asking us to – to right what was wrong. (82) The imaginary scene of the crime and especially the bizarre fantasy that the photographs themselves want Franz “to right what was wrong” (84) turns a specific history of racist violence into an archetypal scenario. In this fantasy, the photographs depict a crime without perpetrators or victims, without origin or material substance. Thus Franz also attempts to disown the racist legacy within whiteness; his act of rendering the photographs illegible then amounts to destroying evidence. But what’s more revealing is how he describes his “epiphany” by the lake: There was a whole purpose to this journey! I didn’t just come here to heal – This wasn’t about me – this was about all of us. I came here to heal all of us – that’s what this was all about – and this feeling just took me to the edge of the water and the water seemed to be telling me, “Come on in. Come on in and cleanse yourself. Wash it all away. Take it all in with you and leave it here.” So I did. I took everything – all my pain, all Daddy’s pain, all this family’s pain, the pictures – and I left it. I washed it all away. (83) Franz’s self-healing is also healing “all of us”; individuality and universality merge into one. But in his journey of discovery, Franz traverses through the remains—the unmarked graves and the photographs—of those who cannot be sublimated into this ideal conjoining of self and world. The play reminds its audience of those that are not included in the healing ritual, that are not represented, qualifying and limiting Franz’s scope. Then again, Franz’s speech feels comically delusional even without reading the myth of whiteness into it. But that does not negate the validity of Franz’s assumedly life-changing experience; in fact, his speech comes across as ironic precisely because we believe that he believes what he says. And that principle aptly sums up how Jacobs-Jenkins uses realist characterization to great effect in this play. The family conflict is never trivialized at the expense of race politics, and even the Lafayette siblings’ desire to disassociate themselves from their ancestors’ racist legacy is a real and plausible desire, just one that does not speak to all of human experience. In the end, although all of the characters in Appropriate are white, the representation of whiteness does not envelop the entire drama. It is too limited and qualified to stake a claim in universality. If the title of Jacobs-Jenkins’s play ironically refers to notions of decorum in what we choose to represent, Lee’s title, Straight White Men, is as inappropriate a title as there can be for a realist play, wearing its ideas and politics on its sleeve rather than dissolving it in a “truthful” account of reality. Likewise, Lee’s reasoning for why she decided to write in traditional realism for the first time is highly self-conscious: “Straight White Men was an attempt to write an identity politics play, a straight white male identity politics play. And I wanted to use what I saw as the straight white man of theatrical genres, which is the straight play.”[18] Taken at face value, this statement sets up expectations that the play may be a satire of whiteness, expectations that are supported by Lee’s caricatures of white people in earlier plays. In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, which is based on the 1932 film The Mask of Fu Manchu, Terrence and Shelia, the white protagonists of the film, explore their inner moral qualms in the final scene of the play after killing the Oriental horde gathered to overthrow the Western world. Denying vehemently that any of her actions are racially motivated, Shelia shouts: “I’m going to show everyone that I can make it, that I can succeed without these complaints of racism bringing me down, making me feel bad about myself! I want everything to be fair and nondiscriminatory and based on logic, and fuck you! Everything I think is based on logic!”[19] Shelia shares the same post-racial perspective detectable in Bo’s self-defensive speech, but the joke here is that the racial Other has just been eradicated. (She does say she feels bad for “killing all of those Chinese people” in the final line of the play). [20] In Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, a play that also employs the technique of pitting lurid Asian stereotypes against “normal” white people, the white characters are utterly oblivious towards the Asians, refusing to acknowledge or even share the stage with them. While the Koreans and Korean-American grotesquely illustrate various stereotypes of Asian women and fight among themselves about identity politics, the white characters prefer to limit their conversations to their love relationship, their anxiety over potential alcoholism and other psychological problems, their desire to see Africa, and their dreams—all topics that mark them as individuals rather than members of a social group. Whiteness is finally recognized and problematized in one scene, but only for the duration of three lines: WHITE PERSON 2: You know what’s awesome? WHITE PERSON 1: What. WHITE PERSON 2: Being white. WHITE PERSON 1: Being white? WHITE PERSON 2: Yes, it’s awesome. Isn’t it? WHITE PERSON 1: I guess I never thought of it. And when I do think of it I feel like an asshole. WHITE PERSON 2: You shouldn’t feel like an asshole. Being white is great. WHITE PERSON 1: I guess so.[21] In both of her earlier plays, Lee stereotypes whiteness just as much as Asian-ness, presenting her white characters as shallow, self-centered, and clueless of the racialized world around them. If the Asian stereotypes strategically go “too far,” the white caricatures are inversely devoid of dramatic content, unwilling to follow through conflict and stuck repeating meaningless, vapid dialogue. Yet this “emptiness” as dramatic characters is what shields them from racial politics; as Dyer reflects on whiteness from his own position as a white scholar, “[h]aving no content, we can’t see that we have anything that accounts for our position of privilege and power. This is itself crucial to the security with which we occupy that position.”[22] Lee’s white caricatures demonstrate the sense of security that having no content provides, while also attempting to penetrate that barrier and encourage audiences to consider the connotations of whiteness in relation to the non-white stereotypes. Lee rethinks her strategies for representing whiteness in Straight White Men. When I asked the playwright about the all-white cast, she remarked: “if you’re going to have a play that’s called Straight White Men and there’s a minority or a woman in it, it’s like you know what that confrontation is going to be. […] There’s nothing that those two people could say to each other that would make me uncomfortable.”[23] Satire and caricature can easily become simplistic answers to a challenging political issue, and so in the spirit of continuing to challenge her audiences, Lee imbues the white characters in her latest play with a consciousness of identity politics that most satires of whiteness lack. Indeed, the white people in this play are able to speak eloquently not only about minority politics in general, but themselves in terms of race: for example, “No, our success is the problem, not the solution!”[24] or, “You can’t change the system without giving up the benefits you gain from that system” (70). Unlike the racially aversive Lafayette siblings, the three brothers in Straight White Men, also middle-aged, do not seem at first to rely on mythic notions of universality and humanity to mask their whiteness. Yet when faced with an unresolvable dilemma at the core of whiteness, even their eagerness to talk about the problem (how conventionally realist of them!) rings unsettlingly hollow. Matt, the eldest of the three sons, has moved in with his father Ed after first dropping out of graduate school, and then law school. The play takes place during the Christmas holidays when Ed’s other two sons, Jake and Drew visit to relax and spend time with the family; during this break from work and social life, the four men play games, joke around, sing, dance, decorate the Christmas tree, dress up as Santa Claus, and consume an exorbitant amount of food. Everything is swell. But then Matt suddenly breaks down crying in the middle of a Chinese take-out dinner, which prompts Jake and Drew to delve into Matt’s condition, questioning his puzzling lack of ambition and his self-professed contentment working as a temporary administrative assistant at a human rights organization. Drew believes depression is the cause, while Jake makes a more troubling diagnosis: a debilitating feeling of guilt over white male privilege. Although the play never sheds light on the truth of Matt’s problem, the bits of information that Lee provides on how these white men were raised gives weight to Jake’s explanation. In an early scene, Jake and Drew dig up a board game that they played as boys, a modified version of Monopoly retitled “Privilege.” A relic of late-twentieth century identity politics, the game features a pile of excuse cards that serve as lessons of tolerance and social justice. Some of them read: “What I said wasn’t sexist/racist/homophobic because I was joking.” and, rather on the nose, “I don’t have white privilege because it doesn’t exist” (63). Matt was the most dedicated of the three to radical identity politics, even establishing “Matt’s School for Young Revolutionaries” (66). The brothers look back to their home education with fond memories, but it is clear that these men are not revolutionaries, and that they benefit from a social structure that privileges whites. (Jake is a banker, and Drew is a professor and award-winning novelist.) Thus, even though these characters constantly mark themselves as white, disavowing myths of individual effort and transracial universality, it is uncertain whether making whiteness visible is enough to mitigate white privilege. Admittedly, Straight White Men asks the audience to think through a rather forced scenario: not all straight white men are as self-aware and knowledgeable as these characters. But Lee’s work raises pertinent questions regarding the profusion of identity politics in public discourse and the media, which may polarize audiences (potentially engendering post-racial backlash) or prevent deeper engagement with the politics of whiteness by providing easy textbook answers. Indeed, when Jake starts talking about Matt’s breakdown in terms of white privilege, Drew interjects: “you sound like an undergrad. Everyone already knows this stuff. It’s just masturbation” (70). In light of Lee’s ongoing dedication to creating theatre that makes herself and her audiences uncomfortable, Straight White Men demonstrates that the political vocabulary of the past is insufficient in tackling whiteness today. Hence realism. In his review for the New York Times, Charles Isherwood writes, “Believe it or not, Ms. Lee wants us to sympathize with the inexpressible anguish of her protagonist, a middle-aged, upper-middle-class straight white man named Matt who has failed to follow the codes of achievement that he’s expected to conform to.”[25] The prevailing cultural assumptions regarding whiteness make this request for sympathy difficult to believe, yet that is precisely what the conventions of realist drama solicits by focusing so heavily on one character’s interior struggle. Realism does not ensure that the audience will like Matt, but it does align them with the other characters as they try to pin down his predicament, to seek closure to Matt’s emotional arc. Before the play ends, however, Jake and Drew grow irritated by Matt’s inability to provide closure, and at the same time provide disclosure (as Barthes discusses regarding conventional realist narrative), to make himself fully known. When Matt refuses to give a straight answer about anything, Jake explodes with anger at the idea that his brother is a “loser for no reason”: in other words, an asocial individual rather than a representative of whiteness (74). Drew, who had believed until now that Matt’s breakdown was caused by a sense of failure and disappointment with his life, remarks coldly: “Nobody cares about your egotistic white male despair!” (75). Unable to sympathize with this “defective” dramatic character, the other three white men simply give up and exit the stage, leaving Matt “alone, staring out at the audience” (75). Although Matt’s unfathomable burden stems from whiteness, the final image of the play suggests that his is somehow different from the whiteness of the other characters. Throughout the play, Matt is treated as a special case, a “freak” in Jake’s words: JAKE: […] there’s nothing people like us can do in the world that isn’t problematic or evil, so we have to make ourselves invisible! ED: “People like us”? What’s that supposed to mean? JAKE: You know, privileged white dickheads. Women and minorities may get to pretend they’re doing enough to make the world a better place just by getting ahead, but a white guy’s pretty hard-pressed to explain why the world needs him to succeed. So Matt’s trying to stay out of the way. ED: Jake, you keep saying this, and I find it very hard to believe. JAKE: That’s because nobody else would ever do it! Matt’s a freak.(74) Significantly, Jake’s thorough analysis of whiteness only entails intervention in Matt’s special case; the social privileges enjoyed by the other white characters, while acknowledged, are regarded as an inevitable and unchangeable effect of the system—just the way things are in the world. By being ostensibly marked as white, Matt is paradoxically excluded from white “people like us” (74). But because he is only a half-finished character, lacking closure in the traditional sense, the whiteness that marks him remains unfamiliar, indeterminate, and not reified. Matt’s unarticulated dilemma suggests a potential fracturing of whiteness beyond its conventional image as an ideological monolith; to conceive of the possibility of sympathizing with Matt is to explore its rough and uneven surfaces, even if that means entering uncomfortable terrain. To conclude, I would like to return to Lee’s tongue-in-cheek observation that realism is the straight white man of theatrical genres. The American tradition of realist family drama has been closely associated with the monopoly of whiteness in theatrical representation; Jacobs-Jenkins’s response to “hearing people describe the great American family drama” is “‘There are no people of color on these lists.’ Who has access to this idea of family as a universal theme?”[26] But realism resembles straight white men in another sense as well. In drama and theatre scholarship, realism is often treated paradoxically as a bully and a loser at the same time, both overbearing as a vessel of dominant ideology and underachieving as an aesthetic form—not unlike how straight white men are distorted into easy, abstract targets of criticism. The critical lens crafted by Diamond and other theorists allows us to see through realism’s smooth surface and scrutinize its ideological foundations, but as a damaging side effect, this lens has also blinded us to the form’s untapped potential by presupposing that realism always operates in the same manner. Appropriate and Straight White Men demonstrate that realism can still be a refreshing and viable form to explore the politics of representation, and especially the politics of representing whiteness, which has relied on realist techniques throughout modern history. The first step towards utilizing the potential for realism to offer such new insight is to move away from the Barthesian framework of myth that has dominated discussions on realism in the past few decades. As a form that enables myth, realism was thought in the past to insist on “a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity.”[27] But Jacobs-Jenkins and Lee’s dramatic worlds are full of contradictions and hidden layers, despite being inhabited only by white characters. In place of “blissful clarity,” Appropriate and Straight White Men leave the audience with the feeling that they have not seen everything, that realism’s representative scope does not extend beyond the walls of the living room onstage. Kee-Yoon Nahm is a Doctorate in Fine Arts candidate in the Department of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Yale School of Drama. His current research examines strategies of appropriating cultural stereotypes in American drama and theatre from 1960 to today, in relation to contemporaneous political discourse on representation, subversion, and spectatorship. His writings have appeared in Theater, Theatre Journal, and the anthology Performing Objects and Theatrical Things. He also works as a translator and dramaturg. [1] Appropriate ran at the Signature Center from February to April 2014, following productions in Louisville, Chicago, and Washington D.C. Straight White Men opened at the Public Theater in November 2014 following its world premiere at the Wexner Center for Arts in Columbus, Ohio and a brief international tour. [2] Richard Dyer, White (London New York: Routledge, 1997) 45. [3] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Eliza Bent, “Feel that Thought: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Plays Are High-Wire Performances in Themselves,” Part 1, American Theatre (May/June 2014), http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/issue/featuredstory.cfm?story=7indexID=44, accessed 28 May2014. [4] I will provide a more detailed account of this trajectory in Lee’s work later in the discussion. [5] Elin Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis (London New York: Routledge, 1997) 4-5. [6] Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972) 142. [7] Varun Begley, “Objects of Realism: Bertolt Brecht, Roland Barthes, and Marsha Norman,” Theatre Journal 64, no. 3 (October 2012): 339. [8] For a more recent reappraisal of dramatic realism than the examples I discuss, see also Jill Dolan, “Feminist Performance Criticism and the Popular: Reviewing Wendy Wasserstein,” Theatre Journal, 60, no. 3 (October 2008): 433-457. [9] Jeanie Forte, “Realism,Narrative, and the Feminist Playwright – A Problem of Reception” Modern Drama 32, no.1 (March 1989): 117. [10] Josephine Lee, Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997) 56. [11] Ibid., 59. [12] Dyer, 11. [13] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Appropriate, unpublished manuscript, (2014), 46. Used by permission. All subsequent references are indicated in parenthesis. [14] Ben Brantley, “A Squabbling Family Kept in the Dark,” New York Times, 16 March 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/theater/in-appropriate-branden-jacobs-jenkins-subverts-tradition.html, accessed 29 November 2014. [15] Hilton Als, “GWTW” in Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000) 42. [16] Steve Garner, Whiteness: An Introduction (London New York: Routledge, 2007) 39. [17] Tim Wise, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equality (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010), 63–64. [18] Young Jean Lee, interview by the author, 8 February 2014. [19] Young Jean Lee, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2009) 173. [20] Ibid., 174. [21] Ibid., 71. [22] Dyer, 9. [23] Lee, interview by the author, 8 February 2014. [24] Young Jean Lee, Straight White Men, in American Theatre, unpublished manuscript, April 2015, 70. Used by permission. All subsequent references are indicated in parenthesis. [25] Charles Isherwood, “My Three Sons and All Their Troubles,” The New York Times. November 18, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/theater/straight-white-men-opens-at-the-public-theater.html?_r=1, accessed 29 November 2014. [26] Jacobs-Jenkins Bent, “Feel that Thought.” [27] Barthes, 143. "Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men" by Kee-Yoon Nahm ISNN 2376-4236 The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 27, Number 2 (Spring 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Editorial Board: Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson Advisory Editor: David Savran Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve Editorial Staff: Managing Editor: Phoebe Rumsey Editorial Assistant: Fabian Escalona Advisory Board: Bill Demastes Amy E. Hughes Jorge Huerta Esther Kim Lee Kim Marra Beth Osborne Robert Vorlicky Maurya Wickstrom Stacy Wolf Esther Kim Lee Table of Contents "The Best Actor for the Role, or the Mythos of Casting in American Popular Performance" by Brian Eugenio Herrera "Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men" by Kee-Yoon Nahm "Capable Hands: The Myth of American Independence in D.W. Gregory's The Good Daughter" by Bradley Stephenson "Rooting Out Historical Mythologies; or, William Dunlap's A Trip to Niagara and its Sophisticated Nineteenth Century Audience" by Samuel Shanks www.jadtjournal.org jadt@gc.cuny.edu Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Marvin Carlson, Director of Publications Rebecca Sheahan, Managing Director ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10016 References About The Authors 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Untitled Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 32 2 Visit Journal Homepage The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl By Published on June 12, 2020 Download Article as PDF The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl. Amy Muse. London: Methuen Drama Critical Companion Series, 2018; Pp. 215 + xv. Amy Muse’s The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl offers an insightful reading of the works of one of the U.S.’s most prolific contemporary playwrights. Since the premiere of Passion Play at Trinity Rep in 1997, Ruhl has won a number of accolades demonstrating her significance, including the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award (2003), the Fourth Freedom Forum Award from the Kennedy Center (2004), and a MacArthur Genius Award (2005). She has also twice been named a Pulitzer Finalist (Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2005) and In the Next Room or the vibrator play (2009)). Ruhl began writing plays in Paula Vogel’s dramatic writing course at Brown in which she wrote Dog Play, where she was able to unpack her grief at having lost her father while making the focalizer of her play the family dog (“played by a person wearing a dog mask and an apron”) (xi). Thus, Muse situates Ruhl with the “artist-thinkers” that William Demastes labels the “new alchemists,” in Muse’s words, the “artists and scientists who are re-enchanting the world through a grounding in the world” (xiii). For Muse, Ruhl’s gift of re-enchantment lies in her ability to weave works that blend the empirical and the spiritual. While not the first critical book on Ruhl (that honor belongs to James Al-Shamma’s Sarah Ruhl: A Critical Study of the Plays, published by McFarland Co. in 2011), The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl presents an important addition to critical examinations of Ruhl’s plays, even if her analysis could sometimes go further. In the Preface, Muse discusses why she structures the book not chronologically, but according to Ruhl’s “artistic and ethical concerns” (xv). Ruhl’s works, Muse argues, “call for a more phenomenological than ideological mode of analysis,” thus situating Muse as a guide through the ways in which Ruhl creates modes of feeling and transcendence by inviting audiences into conversations with the stage, rather than looking at the stage as a place for detached analysis (xiv). The next four chapters are each super-titled with a quote from Ruhl, reinforcing this sense of conversation. Muse’s first chapter deals with Ruhl’s influences, as well as her adaptations of Chekhov and Woolf, in order to demonstrate how Ruhl is more interested in writing about “Moments of Being” rather than presenting realistic representations for the stage (23). In chapter two, Muse considers four of Ruhl’s plays – Eurydice, Demeter in the City, Melancholy Play, and Scenes from Court Life or the whipping boy and his prince. She reads each work to activate an interplay with “the actual and magical” resulting in plays that on the surface feel “whimsical,” but are rather “philosophical comedies that plumb the depths with a light touch” (61). Chapter three deals more directly with Sarah Ruhl’s approach to dramatic structure; here Muse demonstrates that Ruhl, much like Maria Irene Fornes, is less interested in creating characters driven by psychological objectives and more in bringing characters into a room together where their reckonings are rich with pre-Freudian defined desire. In Chapter Four, Muse situates Passion Play, The Oldest Boy, To Peter Pan on Her 70TH Birthday, and How to Transcend a Happy Marriage with medieval Mystery Plays and plays born out of rituals. As with the Mystery Plays, Muse argues, these works of Ruhl’s have less to do with preaching morality and serve better as invitations to experiences that are holy and invisible. Each of these four chapters ends with a “Coda,” rather than a conclusion, evoking the musicality of Ruhl’s plays. For Chapter Five, Muse departs from the layout of previous chapters and interviews two artists who are well acquainted with Ruhl’s works: Sarah Rasmussen and Hayley Finn. Rasmussen is the Artistic Director of the Jungle Theatre in Minneapolis and served as assistant director for the Broadway production of In the Next Room or the vibrator play. Finn is the Associate Artistic Director of the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis and a former classmate of Ruhl’s. She directed the first workshop production of Eurydice (129, 131). One resonant moment arises when Rasmussen describes how her childhood play impacted her views of directing: “I was entranced by how a small, made up story can sound out larger truths in our lives” (qtd. 135). Rasmussen’s notions of childhood make-believe feeds well into the sense of wonder, myth, and staging of the invisible truths that guide Ruhl’s plays. Chapter Six features three critical essays: “Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play and Contemporary Medieval Performance” by Jill Stevenson; “From Pontius Pilate to Peter Pan: Lightness in the Plays of Sarah Ruhl” by Thomas Butler; and “Arrested Dev-elopement: Myth-Understanding Father-Daughter Love in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice” by Christina Dokou. Each essay demonstrates different paradigms for nuanced, in-depth discussion of Ruhl’s plays. Muse closes with an Afterword, “I Had Hoped to Give Them Pleasure,” in which she considers how writing this book may be a little premature; after all, Ruhl is a midcareer writer who will likely continue having a rich and lustrous career. In the final paragraph, Muse avers that Ruhl’s plays “are not so much about love, intimacy, communion, and transcendence as they are vehicles which the audience and the theater makers experience these pleasurable states” (177). Following the Afterword, the book includes a Chronology of major milestones in Ruhl’s personal and professional life. Muse’s writing is infectious. It is much like listening to a die-hard fan unpack their thoughts and feelings and getting swept up in their unabashed love. The only drawback is that, at times, Muse ignores possibilities for further inquiry by foregrounding summaries of Ruhl’s plays rather than her own analysis. For example, Muse makes passing mention of criticisms of Ruhl being not political enough in her writing, and yet, Ruhl has written political plays. Indeed, as authors such as Lauren Gunderson have argued, simply writing a play can be seen as a political act given our historical moment. Nonetheless, Muse’s The Drama and Theatre of Sarah Ruhl will prove to be necessary and exciting reading for our next generation of dramatic critics and dramaturgs alike. John Bray University of Georgia The Journal of American Drama and Theatre Volume 32, Number 2 (Spring 2020) ISNN 2376-4236 ©2020 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center References About The Authors 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 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

MORIAH EVANS presents Sharing at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Sharing MORIAH EVANS 7-7:50 pm Friday, October 18, 2024 Elebash Recital Hall RSVP An assemblage, a mashup of recent performance practices—it might be described as painstaking, indulgent, myopic, esoteric, spiritual, psychosocial, activist, inert. No matter what it is—all the activities shared exist as tactics of refusal and offer an otherwise. Performed by Malcolm-x Betts, Maggie Cloud, Moriah Evans, Lizzie Feidelson, Lydia Okrent, and Anh Vo Photo: David Watson LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Moriah Evans positions choreography as an expansive social process. Drawing on somatic choreographic practices and feminist critiques of dance and visual culture, her works expand dance beyond the visible, to explore different ways of sensing both ourselves and our relationships to one another. Malcolm-x Betts is a New York based visual and dance artist whose work is rooted in investigating embodiment for liberation, Black imagination, and directly engaging with challenges placed on the physical body. Maggie Cloud is a Brooklyn based performer and acupuncturist. Lizzie Feidelson is a writer and performer. Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer. Their work fleshes out the body as a vessel for apparitional forces. Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

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