THEATRE JOURNAL最新文献

Abstract:

Black theatremakers have utilized performance to imagine and stage an alternative place where policing is abolished. They usurp the normative theatrical apparatuses to enact countergeographies that become meaningful ways to resist social control. In so doing, they inhabit (and push other artists and audiences to inhabit) theatre differently through transforming the geography of the theatre itself. Dominique Morisseau, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Aleshea Harris, and Jordan Cooper urge us to see how their spatial construction is central to nourishing and emphasizing Black ways of knowing and being in the theatre. Through their dramaturgical structures within and beyond the plays themselves, I argue that these artists also consider how theatrical space can be manipulated to create alternative rules of engagement whereby blackness can be negotiated, produced, and known on different terms that the carceral system may dictate. In the broadest sense, I advocate for critical attention to the intersections of abolition, space, and Black theatre. This essay is about how space functions as a theatrical apparatus of anti-Black exclusion while also serving as the canvas for Black artists to revolt within, against, and in the face of anti-Black terror.

• 8 to abolition to infinity (8 => abolition => ∞)
• Aaron Moore Ellis (bio)

How do I hold a systemic analysis and approach when each system I am critical of is peopled, in part, by the same flawed and complex individuals that I love?

This question always leads me to self-reflection. If I can see the ways I am perpetuating systemic oppressions, if I can see where I learned the behavior and how hard it is to unlearn it, I start to have more humility as I see the messiness of the communities I am a part of, the world I live in.

—adrienne maree brown¹

(a) identiteas(er)

Situating oneself at the forefront of an academic offering can sometimes serve to simply check a box; a basic requirement for "good, balanced" scholarship. Perhaps at its best, situating oneself evinces humility and reflective acknowledgment of identities and lived experiences, which critically inform the scholar's goals, methods, subjects, and sensitivities in their work. So who am I? aaron moore ellis. I take the lead from trailblazers who refuse capitalization. Who am I to do so? A wyte, nonbinary, ashkenazi jewish, irish, AMAB, m@sc-presenting person born into relative privilege, a sett!er on stolen land. … Who am I *not* to do so? What's at stake? What's at promise? And as to spelling: why write "wyte" instead of spelling out the color? Some may be familiar with the practice of intentionally respelling words associated with pain, trauma, and oppression, so that the experiences of those impacted by those words' referent is acknowledged and their reading experience softened. For those with privilege enough not to feel the resonant impact of these words, I invite you to consider my respelling as a reminder that privilege comes with built-in blinders to others' experiences, others for whom words matter in specific ways and whose lived experiences are deeply impacted by violence and oppression; that those people with those experiences matter; and that we—all of us—can seek ways to make life more breathable, more livable, more joyful. Who am I *not* to respell these words? What's at stake in respelling, or not?

These are recurring questions—questions that don't stop me in my tracks or silence me, but rather stay on the move with me. I keep these questions with me as an [End Page E-19] invitation to others to see consonance—or dissonance—between how they witness me identify, what they hear me proclaim, and what they see me embody. That is to say, these questions invite myself into accountability—to my decisions, actions, identities, privileges, responsibilities, and abilities to respond to those most impacted by structural and interpersonal oppression, close by and across the world.

As I write and edit this reflection between u

Abstract:

Taking the popular podcast series Violation as its point of departure, this article examines the dramaturgy within the parole system, its affective politics, and its performative speech acts to consider its role in the perpetuation of mass incarceration in the United States. By training an eye on the affective economy of parole hearings, this article explores the retributive turn in the criminal legal process in the wake of neoliberal economic reforms. It focuses on the anxious performance of remorse within parole hearings as a key form of affective currency that could potentially secure release from incarceration. In the process, the article examines the significant role that remorse plays in parole hearings in entrenching a dispositional conception of personal responsibility in the criminal legal system.

Abstract:

Two plays focusing on the postincarceration experiences of sex offenders opened in 2018: Life Jacket Theatre Company's America Is Hard to See and Bruce Norris's Downstate. Both plays ask spectators to recognize the humanity of sex offenders while also keeping in mind the harm they caused. The questions at the heart of these plays are ultimately about ethics and space: how close do we as a society want to allow sex offenders? These plays stage the movement, space, and time—the spatiotemporality—of postincarceration carceral geographies and the embodied state of what I term "criminalized liminality." In this article, I pursue a two-pronged approach to examine how these plays explore the spatiotemporality of criminalized liminality: primarily, I employ critical spatial perspectives to address how the focus on the ethics of space in America and Downstate emphasizes theatre itself as a space of ethical engagement for artists and audiences; and, secondarily, that as a result of their content and form, each play invites spectators to consider what it means to act on and offstage. I ultimately conclude that although these plays invite consideration of alternatives to the criminal punishment system like abolition, their real power lies in their ultimate ambivalence. Each unsettles spectators without providing clear answers. The spatiotemporality of criminalized liminality and the slippage created by acting produce a certain generative uncertainty.

• Looking at/for Disappearing John Brown
• Ben Spatz (bio), SAJ (bio), Eero Laine (bio), Michelle Liu Carriger (bio), and Henry Bial (bio)

John Brown BBQ in Queens, New York City, https://www.johnbrownbbq.net.

(Photo: Eero Laine.)

In the mid-nineteenth century, John Brown (1800-59) riveted the United States and earned himself an execution with his radical abolitionist tactics encompassing murder and armed insurrection against the United States at Harpers Ferry (present-day West Virginia). Today, his extreme measures ensure his continued circulation across a variety of images and through various investments in his legacy and history. We began thinking together about John Brown precisely because of the promise of collaboration for considering the multifaceted figure that is performed and reperformed on murals and buttons, in sports arenas and bars, on television and in film. The work of abolition is collective and shared, and the political possibilities of the university add up to very little if they remain solitary endeavors. John Brown impels us to gather, to think and work together. Perhaps any one of us alone could have written our article, "The Unbearable Whiteness of John Brown: Theatrical Legacies and Performing Abolition," [End Page E-37] in Theatre Journal's special issue on "Abolition and Performance." But maybe we would not have done so without the others. This is a coalitional approach to political and abolitionist work in the academy. The reading group as a form has a long political history, and in some ways, our collaboration is not so different. From the beginning, however, our work was oriented toward research inquiries and the potential to then share that research with a yet larger circle. It was an opportunity not just to have a few conversations about John Brown, but to make something (an article) about John Brown.

The project began with a semi-open call posted to Facebook. The post was visible only to some, but it encouraged viewers to forward the call to friends and colleagues who might be interested in working toward an article-length piece of writing on John Brown. Many commented on the post, and the current authors were those who indicated their interest in working together. Once the five of us were all on the same email thread (albeit spaced as far east to west on the planet as northern England to California), we met via Zoom and began by discussing our interest in John Brown as a political, historical, and theatrical figure. Our initial interests were varied, and the wide-ranging examples we found of Brown were key to thinking through the article in terms of the multitude of possible John Browns and his persistent performance—of abolition, of w

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• Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater by Carla Della Gatta
• Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez

For too long, a decidedly multicultural Shakespearean analysis that foregrounds European and white ontologies has marked Latine adaptations, appropriations, and concept productions of Shakespeare plays. One of the most detrimental consequences of this ethnocentric analysis is the occlusion of the impact of Latine directors and their work on US theatre. To alleviate this obscuring, Carla Della Gatta offers Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater, a text that frames Latine Shakespearean performance not as foreign, but as integral to the fabric of US theatre. The text refreshingly employs both Latine and Latin American theorists to examine over 140 Latine-themed productions staged in both large repertory and small community venues across the United States from the 1950s to the present. Through meticulous research, the text acknowledges, validates, and values the presence, influence, and contributions of Latine theatremakers in the [End Page 404] United States through ethnographic, archival, and textual analysis.

The text begins with an introduction to its central idea, defining it as "Latinx Shakespeares," or "textual adaptations or performances in which Shakespearean plays, stories, or characters are made Latinx" (1). Helpful to those wishing to understand more about the history of mobilizing Shakespearean performances in communities of color is the text's inclusion of the initiatives implemented by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival in the 1960s, including the Spanish Mobile Theater unit and the Festival Latino. Latinx Shakespeares focuses on adaptations both textual and performative that inject Shakespearean characters, plays, and stories with Latine-minded aesthetics, strategies, sounds, and techniques.

The first chapter, "Division: The West Side Story Effect," provides the text's most incisive intervention, which gives a name to "the staging of difference of any kind in Shakespeare" (29). The West Side Story effect is also developed in later chapters as it pertains to various Shakespearean adaptations. Ultimately, the chapter focuses on the way West Side Story's legacy has informed subsequent Shakespearean stagings inclusive of race and ethnicity throughout theatre history. It also features a fascinating section underscoring the fact that West Side Story's original conception had nothing to do with Latine culture, because the central conflict was to be between "(New York-based) Catholics