RAG HEAD, white supremacy, and violence: Dramatic reflections on a decade after the Oak Creek gurdwara shootings

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines how five playwrights from the global Sikh diaspora use theater to resist various forms of violence. My analysis of their plays shows how the playwrights engage with the messiness of diaspora lives, lives in which hate and state violence, domestic violence, the violence of [ongoing] colonialism, and intergenerational trauma are faced head-on -- including for the audiences of the plays and the perpetrators of violence. Through the plays, I present analyses on how experiences with violence structure our lives and on how the Sikh idea of sarbat da bhala provides a transformative and liberatory justice framework.