Community Theatre Research Articles

The Politics and Spaces of Voice: Ngũgĩ's <em>A Grain of Wheat</em> and Conrad's <em>Heart of Darkness</em>

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s classic A Grain of Wheat displays unmistakable debts to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , yet markers of this particular Conradian connection have been largely ignored by critics, who have mostly concentrated on the connections with Under Western Eyes . In this essay, I argue that this odd intertextual oversight can and should be rectified, with a view to refocusing discussion of A Grain of Wheat on the questions of literary form posed by Heart of Darkness . These formal questions, located at the nexus of voice, “addressivity,” and community, in turn, connect to crucial issues of the place of literary production in the postcolonial polity. In particular, they point to the significant change in Ngũgĩ’s cultural politics and aesthetic practice in the mid-1970s, as he became increasingly involved in popular community theater. The reading offered in this article, by shifting the focus of intertextuality to the more complex connections with Heart of Darkness , loosens A Grain of Wheat ’s bond, somewhat, with metropolitan literature and foregrounds the novel’s integration into Ngũgĩ’s project of autochton (and popular cultural) postcolonial emancipation. Because of the central, indeed, archetypical place of A Grain of Wheat in the African literary tradition and even in received understandings of the process of independence in East Africa, this recalibration of readings of the novel takes on a broader significance than merely that of studies of postcolonial intertextuality.

Nature of domestic/family violence and barriers to using services among Indian immigrant women

Domestic/family violence is a widespread major public health and human rights violation issue that runs across ethno-cultural affiliations and economic status. Relative to the actual incidence of family violence, use of services is low, and delayed for years after onset, within the broader Victorian and Australian community. Utilization is even lower for women from immigrant and refugee communities. It has been noted that family violence service utilization by Indian women immigrants in particular was especially low, relative to the size of the Indian population in Victoria. With the Indian culture understood to be traditionally a strongly male-dominated culture, it was deemed important to explore the nature of family violence experience of Indian women living in Australia, and culturally determined barriers to use of services. A partnership was formed to explore this issue through a participatory community theatre approach. Forum Theatre is a powerful tool that uses theatre for generating community understanding around hard to address issues such as domestic violence. Using such theatre-based ethnography, we aimed to identify the key issues, challenges and needs of Indian immigrant families when accessing and using services that could assist in situations of domestic/family violence.

Trumpets in the Mountains: Theater and the Politics of National Culture in Cuba by Laurie A. Frederik (review)

Reviewed by: Trumpets in the Mountains: Theater and the Politics of National Culture in Cuba by Laurie A. Frederik Maki Tanaka Trumpets in the Mountains: Theater and the Politics of National Culture in Cuba. Laurie A. Frederik. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012. xxii and 336 pp., maps, photos, notes, glossary, sources, and index. $25.95 paperback (ISBN 978-0-8223-5265-5). Rich, thorough, and beautifully-written, Trumpets in the Mountains is a rare ethnography that focuses on rural Cuba. Frederik tells the story of Cuban national identity not through official narratives, but through theater-making in remote areas, especially in the Special Period, Cuba’s post-Soviet crisis. Throughout the book, the reader follows Frederik’s journey in search of the campesino de verdad (the real peasant, rural resident), the figure of which ultimately vanishes in artistic and intellectual efforts in theater to “let him speak.” The figure, however, is recognized to embody the essence (pura cepa, pure stock) of cubanía, or Cubanness, and has been imagined, constructed, and expressed many times over in history. In his latest incarnation in the twenty-first century, the campesino inspires what Frederik terms the Hombre Novísimo (”even newer man,” newer than the Hombre Nuevo of earlier years of the Revolution): “an [End Page 275] urban man with campesino morals and a campesino soul; still communist in his humility and loyalty to the nation, but less aligned with a political party and more cognizant of a general martiano (José Martí centered) and nationalist philosophy of patriotism and of the united Latin American struggle against imperialist domination” (14). The book covers history of theater, cultural politics, and discourses of cubanía, and an in-depth look into three theater groups: Teatro de Los Elementos (Theater of the Elements) in the Escambray Mountains, La Cruzada Teatral Guantánamo-Baracoa (Theater Crusade Guantánamo to Baracoa), and El Laboratorio de Teatro Comunitario (Laboratory of Community Theater) in Guantánamo Province. These groups are called Teatro Comunitario, and were a new form of theater that emerged in the Special Period, out of the harsh conditions of material scarcity. These theater people went to live with campesinos in the “zones of silence,” as areas of difficult access are called, and “sought to preserve the old, to rescue dying traditions, and to reinsert a sense of beauty and spirituality into the lives of the Cuban people” (82). Their emphasis was on the creative process rather than the end product, where the play came out of a long process of collective effort among the actors, director, writer, (and the participating anthropologist,) as well as campesinos they lived with and interviewed, and through the experience of rural life. The created play was meant to address the story campesinos wished to tell, and they became the primary audience, who would later discuss the play with the theater people. Teatro Comunitario stood for “Theater in the community, for the community, and by the community” (82). Artists in socialist Cuba are salaried by the state, and thus guaranteed to be able to dedicate their time to the professions while expected to communicate moral values of the Revolution to the masses. In Fidel Castro’s oft-cited words, “Within the Revolution, everything, against it, nothing” (50), and that was the parameters in which artists operated. Frederik explores this condition when those moral values were subtly changing, represented in the transformation of the Hombre Nuevo into the Hombre Novísimo. The artists found themselves in a number of conflicts and tensions: between the city and the countryside, an age-old question that takes a particular manifestation in the revolutionary Cuba; between the state and the artists (funding, censorship, and recognition); artists and lay campesinos (bringing “culture” to places where they have little access to such while attempting to break barriers between intellectuals and the masses); and pseudo-culture and genuine art (selling out or art for art’s sake?). In the end, as Cuba’s search for its identity after the Revolution cannot be comprehended without its projected antithesis of North American imperialism, these opposites are revealed to be co-constitutive or “co-substantial” (261). The borders separating the two spheres are...

Jewish Theatre in Vancouver Has Chutzpah!

This article illustrates diverse Jewish Canadian theatrical experiences showcased at the Chutzpah! Festival by discussing two cutting edge productions: Kendra Fanconi’s The One That Got Away (2002) and Itai Erdal’s How to Disappear Completely. These productions demonstrate the growth of the Chutzpah! Festival from its 2001 inception to its current place as a leading annual arts festival in Vancouver. There is no distinguishable group that solely presents Jewish theatre in Vancouver, but its vibrant theatre community includes many individuals who create or participate in work that explores Jewish themes and material whether or not they themselves, or their collaborators, are Jewish.

Advice to Applicants: Labor, Value, and MFA Program Design

��� hen I ask a playwright friend of mine for reflections on his graduate school experience at a prestigious playwriting MFA program, he does not immediately have a clear answer. For many graduates of MFA programs that focus on dramatic writing, the conversation that has been happening in the theatre community for some years amounts to more than just a juicy topic for a plenary session: it is, rather, one of life and livelihood. It would be an understatement to say that there are no extensive opportunities for the “early career” playwright — and the ones that do exist do not pay even subsistence wages. 1 The more we talked about the tangled process of becoming a “professional” playwright, and the disillusioning path of the playwright who once believed a Masters program would increase the chances of having his work read or seen, and who then must face the uneven terrain of over-burdened literary departments and few work prospects, the more agitated he became. This is the emotional quality of life as a playwright, sharpening pencils for the production that will never come. He recalled his intuitive response to play readings in graduate school, which foreshadowed his later experiences on the “outside”: the process suggested an exchange that was more like a begrudging favor, and less like the collaborative ideal of a barter. Actors were there to help you “fix” your play, to read your work as a kindness, garnished with a little hope that perhaps you might be the next Tony Kushner. The residue left behind was infantilizing; we are here for you, the playwright, and in turn the writer learned to express a confused gratitude. The confusion is not surprising: MFA playwrights are being trained to enter a field that the New York Times called “obsolete” as a profession. “Richard Nelson might be the last one,” said Marsha Norman, referring to the number of playwrights who only write plays. 2 The phenomenon of playwrights migrating to television and film writing is by now (very) old news. To debate the merits of such a system is hardly worth the energy; it remains a crucial avenue for playwrights who wish to be dramatic writers and not cab drivers or mathematicians or real estate agents by day. It is a recognized and accepted fact that playwriting programs do not provide entree to full-time careers in playwriting, but more often in education or another profession, with playwriting sprinkled on the side. Even Kushner does not support himself through playwriting. 3 Often ignored, however, are the curricular imperatives that this state of affairs

The Irish Connection: Tyrone Guthrie and Regional Theater

The Irish Connection:Tyrone Guthrie and Regional Theater Patrick O'Donnell On June 27, 2006, the North American premiere of DruidSynge by Galway's Druid Theatre Company took place in the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the first production in a $125 million, three-stage structure on a new site that included thrust, proscenium, and black box stages. The premiere and the dazzling building bespoke newness and originality; but the occasion also reminded attendees of an extraordinary continuity in the Minneapolis company's history. The most conspicuous continuity was the fact that two Irishmen had played central parts in the Guthrie's history. Sir Tyrone Guthrie had founded the theater as a classics-based thrust stage theater and served as its first artistic director from 1963 to 1966. Joe Dowling had become the seventh artistic director in 1995, and it was under his leadership that the Guthrie had been reinvented in this new location. As a local journalist noted, The new Guthrie Theater is the manifest vision of one man—Joe Dowling, a fighter and a visionary, a wit and an emissary of American theatre. But who is he really? When the curtain rises on the new Guthrie, the playhouse will still bear the name of Tyrone Guthrie, the Irish director who ignited America's regional performing arts movement when he opened a theatre in Minneapolis in 1963. But the marquee credit for the $125 million riverfront megastructure that debuts in June belongs to another Irishman. Joe Dowling, artistic director since 1995, has led the Guthrie through a long and sometimes bruising quest for a bold new building designed by French architect Jean Nouvel—and into a new era.1 Dowling was acutely aware of the links; he had, in fact, employed his connection to the Irish roots of Sir Tyrone Guthrie to shape an inspiring and enabling narrative that led to moving, expanding, and re-inventing the theater. In his first press conference at the Guthrie Theater after his appointment, Dowling had declared, "I have all my life been inspired by the life and work of Tyrone Guthrie. People often think that because Guthrie was knighted, he was English. I am here to correct that misconception."2 Dowling brought a comprehensive [End Page 127] sense of Guthrie's Irish connections to his appointment. Guthrie (1900-1971) was very much a living presence among Dowling's theatrical colleagues. Dowling had joined the Abbey Theatre as a student in 1967, was accepted into the company in 1968, and began ascending the rungs of authority at the Irish National Theatre after 1970. Both Dowling's mentors, the playwright Brian Friel and Tomás Mac Anna, artistic director at the Abbey from 1973 to 1978, were deeply influenced by Guthrie. Friel attended the inaugural rehearsals of the Guthrie Theater from April to June, 1963, and completed his masterly evisceration of small-town emotional paralysis, Philadelphia, Here I Come! on returning to Ireland from his Minneapolis sojourn. Mac Anna credited Guthrie's visually stylish 1950 Gate Hamlet with influencing his inventive Irish language pantomimes and invited Guthrie to present both George Shiels's McCook's Corner and Eugene McCabe's Swift at the Abbey in 1968-69.3 Mac Anna would direct Juno and the Paycock at the Guthrie Theater in 1973 at the invitation of Guthrie's protégé, Michael Langham, before returning to Dublin to helm the Abbey and allow his own protégé, Joe Dowling to run the Peacock, the Abbey's second experimental stage. Many of Dowling's other colleagues had been imprinted by Guthrie's passion for theater. For instance Hugh Hunt, the Abbey's artistic director from 1969-70 had encouraged Dowling to set up the Young Abbey, Ireland's first theatre-in-education group, and had served as Guthrie's assistant at the Old Vic from 1951 to 1952. The web of connection can be extended through almost the whole of the Irish theatrical community.4 [End Page 128] Joseph Zeigler, in Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage (1973) categorizes the development and evolution of the regional theater movement in three images: "acorn" theatres, which were small theaters before 1960; "sapling" or intermediary and middle-sized theaters after...

The process and impact of intergenerational theatre making

PurposeThe aim of this article is to share the process and outcomes of an intergenerational community theatre project run by London Bubble in 2011.Design/methodology/approachThe article is a narrative describing the process of the project written by the project director followed by an observational evaluation from the Centre for Urban Community Research at Goldsmiths College.FindingsThe process of making community drama from gathered oral histories has positive outcomes for elders, children and adults as individuals, and the theatre that results has a wider positive impact on audiences drawn from the immediate community.Originality/valueThis process is unusual, if not unique. The article points the reader towards a fuller evaluation study, and a follow up project.

Rose Blossom Speaks

This autoethnographic essay explores the representation of one of the heroines in the old-fashioned western melodrama Deadwood Dick. Through an examination of the author’s experience performing the role of one of the heroines in a local community theatre production, this essay reflects on the way heroines are portrayed in western melodramas. It is observed that the audience plays a major role in the interpretation of the performance, thus allowing for the western melodrama to evolve and adapt to the twenty-first century.

Creative Synergy: Using Community Theatre and Appreciative Inquiry for Young People's Critical Participation in HIV Prevention and Education

This article positions community theatre as an agency for development and education based on the educational principles of Freire and Boal's theatre for development. The article argues that appreciative inquiry can enrich the practice of community theatre by approaching HIV and AIDS education as an asset-based, participatory, inclusive, learner-centered approach. The article hypothesizes that the infusion of the four-D process of appreciative inquiry into community theatre processes aimed at HIV and AIDS education will enhance young people's agency as active participants and agents of change in their communities beyond the didactic notions inherent in ABC education approaches to HIV prevention. The article argues that this approach can encourage meaningful participation and critical consciousness among young people in the HIV prevention response.

The Members and Ivhu versus the State. Two plays debating the nation in Zimbabwean community theatre

This article discusses representations of the nation in two Zimbabwean satires in the community theatre genre, i.e. cultural expression as a form of mass media and as such the plays participate in hegemonic battles. The immediate context is the political situation in Zimbabwe in 1999, when the opposition was gaining a foothold and there was a certain silent optimism about the future development of democracy and the strengthening of human rights. The plays are critical of the regime. The Members (Amakhosi Theatre Company, Bulawayo) criticises corrupt MPs and Ivhu versus the State (Rooftop Theatre Company, Harare) deals with the Zimbabwean intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The plays are analysed in terms of how they narrate actual conflicts in Zimbabwe. The analytical concepts derive from cultural studies and postcolonial theory, which emphasise that the public sphere consists of conflicting discourses and that political struggle is also a politics of representation. How do the characters experience their nation? Do the plays provide space for a multiplicity of national identities? Do they join counter-hegemonic strategies for political change?

Ginny Ratsoy, ed. Theatre in British Columbia

GINNY RATSOY, ed. Theatre in Columbia. Critical Perspectives on Theatre in English. Vol. 6. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2006. xxxvi + 228 pp. ANNE NOTHOF, ed. Theatre in Alberta. Critical Perspectives on Theatre in English. Vol. 11. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2008. xxiii + 177 pp. These two collections of reprinted essays, arranged chronologically according to their year of writing, present an impressive historical overview of the evolution of theatre and performance in these two outlying provinces. They both successfully follow the directive of general editor, Ric Knowles, that the compilations should recognize the important critical heritage of scholarly work in the field and attempt to fill in its most significant gaps by highlighting important work from and about marginalized (Theatre in Columbia, iv), and so we hear not only about the work of large companies and dominant communities (particularly noteworthy is Dianne Bessai's exhaustive article about Edmonton's--or should I say Canada's-Citadel Theatre and how it inadvertently spawned an alternative theatre movement in Edmonton) but also about work that has broadened the theatrical complexion of each of these provinces, like Vancouver Sath (essay by Uma Parameswaran), which focuses on the theatrical representation of the Southeast Asian populations in Columbia. essays take us as far back as the turn of the twentieth century and community theatre activity in Lethbridge, right up to the twenty-first-century projects of David Diamond's Headlines Theatre Company. essays are instructive not only for their historical foundations, but also in the way they create room for reflection on artists, movements, and companies lost, and the presaging of things to come. Malcolm Page's point #9, in his provocative essay, Fourteen Propositions about Theatre in Columbia is The Vancouver Playhouse, the Regional Theatre, Lacks an Identity (32). That company's demise twenty-two years later seems patently eerie in light of Page's 1990 reflection! Early in her introduction to Theatre in Columbia, Ginny Ratsoy addresses the idea that the concepts of region and regionalism are perceived by Wylie, Riegel Overlye and Perkins in the introduction to their book entitled A Sense of Place: ReEvaluating Regionalism in and American Writing (Eds. Wylie and Riegel) as 'constructs rather than natural formations' (vii) and wrestles with the question of whether there is academic legitimacy in examining theatre practice through a provincial (constructed) lens. obvious (and perhaps most pedantic) question would be what defines anything in the theatre as particularly or British Columbian. might ultimately be the significance (if any) of examining the theatre framed by these unnatural constructs? In the 1970s and 80s, the theatre community in Canada spent (some might say wasted) a lot of energy in the impossible quest to define a Canadian playwright (born here? lives here? writing about subject matter? their play has a setting?). This struggle was mostly an attempt to argue one's right to federal money that was only available if you could achieve the nationalistic determinants of the grant program. I would contend, however, that the struggle with this impossible task was as important to our journey toward understanding ourselves as a nation, as a people, as a set of communities (both geopolitical and cultural), as coming up with a quick and easy definition to which all could concur. What makes a playwright? is answered, in part, by some, all or none of those ingredients. Such is the case with trying to understand oneself as an Albertan or a Columbian (and I have been both). Theatre is a local art form, a form that takes into account and is given import by where it is being performed and for what audience. …

Returning to Roots: Pinter as Alternative Theatre Playwright

The theatrical oeuvre of Harold Pinter has its origins in the alternative theatre movement in Britain in the late 1950s. This paper will examine two later, well-known plays, The Caretaker and Betrayal, as case studies for an examination of how the alternative theatre elements which informed Pinter’s early work continue to be present in plays which are generally regarded as more theatrically conventional and mainstream. The theatrical context in which Pinter first developed has become obscured by his commercial success and political notoriety. It can be argued that the natural position for this playwright on the theatrical spectrum lies within the fringe and alternative theatre communities. This paper explores the idea that Brook, Brecht and Grotowskian techniques may be more effective, and more organic, to Pinter’s work than the mainly realistic interpretations which became the norm as the playwright’s celebrity increased.

Performing environmental change: MED Theatre and the changing face of community-based performance research

This article examines a programme of work produced by community-based theatre company, Manaton and East Dartmoor (MED) Theatre, addressing issues of climate change as they impact on life in rural Devon, UK. After some discussion of MED Theatre's constitution as a community-based company and the group's long-term engagement with the place, history, ecology and folklore of Dartmoor National Park, the article introduces the performance programme specifically designed by MED to collectively explore aspects of environmental change. Hot Air (2008) and Snow (2009) are the two community plays drawn from the programme for analysis. The performance analyses that follow examine how a community theatre company tackles the multiply complex, contradictory and conflicting issues of climate change. At stake in this analysis is also an interrogation of the term ‘community’ itself – as a concept and as a basis for cultural practices directed towards social change. The work of French theorist Jean-Luc Nancy on ‘inoperative community’ and ‘being-in-common’ is explored and elaborated as a critical framework for the performance analysis. Such alternative critical concepts of community – as ‘inoperative’ or ‘projected’ – are then applied in the analysis of the community plays thus enabling further investigation into the changing environment of community-based performance research.

Polyvocally perverse; or, the disintegrating pleasures of singing along

Contemporary philosophies of voice, like theories of the musical, rely on integration. But sound resists contextualization, integration, and wholeness. Embracing the exhilarating possibilities of vocal play, I read Stephen De Rosa’s performance of a community theatre troupe’s version of ‘The Baseball Game’ from Falsettos as a sign of the inherent multiplicity of voice. In De Rosa’s vocal agility, I hear a transgression of the integrated voice and the assumption of a polyvocality in which voice refuses the claims of a singular, corporeal identity. But, like the musical, voice can find strength in disintegration. Singing along to cast albums – which, although they separate the sound from the show, permit the musical to reach a broader audience than productions alone – fans find pleasure in a cacophonous polyvocality that our voices are always ready to unleash, if only we set them free.

Positioning people with intellectual disabilities as the experts: enhancing pre-service teachers’ competencies in teaching for diversity

The need for graduate teachers to own their professional responsibilities to engage successfully with students with special educational needs (SENs) in mainstream classrooms has been recognised in educational policies and programmes in many countries for well over two decades. Despite wide-ranging research, questions remain as to how pre-service education courses can help beginning teachers to develop the required commitment, knowledge and pedagogies to feel confident in teaching students with disabilities. Challenges to find new ways to enhance pre-service teachers’ familiarity with special needs children, overcome resistance from some towards including SEN students in mainstream classrooms and develop a sense of efficacy in teaching are common to many programmes. In this paper, we report on a pilot study where adults with intellectual disabilities, as members of a community theatre, were positioned as the experts and explored their schooling experiences and personal biographies with soon-to-be graduate teachers in a 3 h workshop. Taking the lead and working collaboratively with the workshop participants, members of Fusion Theatre used drama activities to develop understandings of strategies that helped them to learn. By challenging the traditional power relationships between those labelled as ‘disabled’ and those who would be teachers, the workshop helped the participants to engage on many levels. Here, we report on the data, analyse the findings and discuss implications for other pre-service programmes.

Why Canadians Can't Write Musicals

The Canadian Musical Theatre community may include talented writers, directors and producers, but it does not exist in a properly functioning professional environment. In some respects, the Canadian Musical Theatre is closer to an "oral tradition" than a 21st Century art form. The community lacks leadership, focus, and resources. There is a significant need for effective training programs and realistic, well-supported development opportunities. The history of the Canadian Musical Theatre has some similarities to the history of the American Musical Theatre, but its development may lag about 50 years behind.

Authority and Theatrical Community: Early Modern Spanish Theater Manuscripts

Previous articleNext article No AccessAuthority and Theatrical Community: Early Modern Spanish Theater ManuscriptsMARGARET GREERMARGARET GREER Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Renaissance Drama Volume 402012What is Renaissance Drama? Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/rd.40.41917502 Views: 20Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright © 2012 Northwestern University PressPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Dana A. Meredith Crumbling Walls, Crumbling Roles: Metatheatricality and Gender Performativity in Héctor Mendoza’s La dama boba (1981), Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 74, no.11 (Feb 2020): 5–18.https://doi.org/10.1080/00397709.2020.1707422

Authority and Theatrical Community: Early Modern Spanish Theater Manuscripts

Previous articleNext article No AccessAuthority and Theatrical Community: Early Modern Spanish Theater ManuscriptsMARGARET GREERMARGARET GREER Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Renaissance Drama Volume 402012What is Renaissance Drama? Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/rd.40.41917502 Views: 20Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright © 2012 Northwestern University PressPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Dana A. Meredith Crumbling Walls, Crumbling Roles: Metatheatricality and Gender Performativity in Héctor Mendoza’s La dama boba (1981), Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 74, no.11 (Feb 2020): 5–18.https://doi.org/10.1080/00397709.2020.1707422

Culturally Appropriate Environmental Education: An Example of a Partnership with the Hmong American Community

A partnership with the Hmong American community produced “The Wildlife and Wilderness Exploration Show,” a DVD that puts a modern twist on traditional Hmong storytelling. Key educational messages in the DVD were identified through interviews with Hmong natural resource professionals. The messages are delivered in entertaining segments in the DVD, which was created through collaboration with the Hmong arts and theater community. In contemporary Hmong American culture, DVDs are a popular form of entertainment and cultural learning, making the format appropriate for new refugees and elders with limited English proficiency, as well as the broader and multigenerational Hmong community.

Defining the Proper Members of the Renaissance Theatrical Community

For a garish most people, sign spelling out Shakespeare Drama is in like flashing a diner bulbs. fronted My point with a garish s n spelling ou Shak spe re in lashing ulbs. M point in this essay is that scholars shouldn't be joining the rest of the world in that misconception. Even though many if not most of us write some sort of cultural criticism, we routinely turn to Shakespeare (with a detour now and then toward Jonson) to sum up all of Renaissance culture. It's as if EJ's Luncheonette in Manhattan were taken to be a model for Mother's in New Orleans and the Tip Top Cafe in San Antonio.