Theatre Company Research Articles

Confronting Colorblind Commodity Racism: Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment

Surrounded by the hubbub of the 2008 presidential election, playwright Young Jean Lee considered a topic for the next project of her nonprofit experimental theater company and decided to write a black identity politics show that addressed the issues of commodity racism and perceived colorblindness. Her objective, in collaboration with five African American actors, was to expose both conscious and unconscious racial stereotyping deeply rooted in American culture and to lead the audience to connect the abstract element of racial stereotyping to the actual experiences of minority individuals. This article focuses on the development process of the 2008 project and connects it to the social, cultural and political influences that guided the process to demonstrate how the production fits into the historical landscape of dramatic literature and to illustrate the power of the performing arts as a catalyst to initiate public dialogue and to bring to the forefront the questioning of discriminative societal attitudes and practices.

Towards a New Popular Theatre (?). Reflections After the Completion of UBUmaterial Performative Archive on Instagram

The article describes the building of UBUmaterial performative archive on Instagram during the COVID-19 lockdown by Papalangki Theatre Company in Greece (2020–2021). Through an innovative format, UBUmaterial started as the attempt of three actors-narrators isolated due to pandemic to rehearse and somehow present Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. However, exploring the Instagram and play’s potentialities, the three actors soon would be transformed into narrators of their own effort, using their households and adopting a commenting stance on their everyday situation. Thus, the dramaturgy of UBUmaterial’s posts (videos) integrated most of the traditional popular theatre’s features and strategies. After a reflection on the contemporary meaning of “popularity” in theatre/performance, the article suggests that UBUmaterial (as well as other digital forms of theatre) may be considered a form of modern popular theatre.

Leach Glover, ‘Dancing Master to the Royal Family’ Part One: The Professional Dancer in Context

Leach Glover (1697–1763) danced in London's theatres from 1717 until 1741 and was a leading dancer for nearly twenty years. In 1738, he was appointed as a dancing master to Britain's royal family, a post he retained following his retirement from the stage. This article looks at Glover's family and professional background and places his theatrical career within the wider context of dancing on the London stage. It looks in detail at his first and last seasons working for John Rich, manager of the Lincoln's Inn Fields and then Covent Garden theatres. It examines not only Glover's repertoire but also his changing status in the dance company that existed within the theatrical company. As part of this investigation, it discusses some of Glover's contemporaries alongside its appraisal of his own work and looks at the challenges as well as the opportunities he experienced within the commercial environment of the London stage.

“More Than a Space”

Research Article| November 01 2021 “More Than a Space”: Conversations with Artistic Directors of Black Theater Companies Jamil Jude; Jamil Jude Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Sheila Kay Davis; Sheila Kay Davis Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ty Jones; Ty Jones Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Guinea Bennett-Price; Guinea Bennett-Price Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ron Himes; Ron Himes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Margo Hall; Margo Hall Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rebecca Flemister Rebecca Flemister Interviews and introduction Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Theater (2021) 51 (3): 35–55. https://doi.org/10.1215/01610775-9402439 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jamil Jude, Sheila Kay Davis, Ty Jones, Guinea Bennett-Price, Ron Himes, Margo Hall, Rebecca Flemister; “More Than a Space”: Conversations with Artistic Directors of Black Theater Companies. Theater 1 November 2021; 51 (3): 35–55. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01610775-9402439 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsTheater Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2021 by David Geffen School of Drama at Yale/Yale Repertory Theatre2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

‘Your luxury loft, my daily misery!’ University theatre, neighbours, and schools combat gentrification through applied theatre practices in a marginal district of Majorca, Spain

ABSTRACT This article focuses on three applied theatre projects, framed within the Theatre of the Oppressed: Neighbourhood Herstories (2018), West Majorca Story (2019), and My Life in the Borough (2019). We explore how theatre students from the University of the Balearic Islands and neighbours in the marginal district of Nou Llevant, Palma, came together to combat gentrification and recover the hitherto unvoiced history of their borough through Forum Theatre practices. We argue that the collaboration between the university theatre company and Nou Llevant school and neighbours through these three applied theatre projects resulted in community self-empowerment.

Presenting: Michael Nimbley

The following is the working script from Montreal-based artist Michael Nimbley’s presentation about his professional career. The script was co-created with his creative ally Catherine Bourgeois, the founder and artistic director of Montreal-based theatre group, Joe Jack & John. Joe Jack & John is a theatre company that produces original, bilingual, multidisciplinary shows combining video, dance, and the spoken word. Their artistic approach is deeply humanistic and inclusive; their creations represent a social microcosm by integrating professional actors with an intellectual disability or from diverse cultural backgrounds. During the time of VIBE, Nimbley was an artist-in-residence with the company. In establishing artistic residencies, Joe Jack & John are fulfilling their mission in a new way by inviting an artist living with a disability to initiate and direct a creation of their own. These residencies demonstrate a unique political stance. By handing power to an artist with an intellectual disability, they are furthering their research on marginalized aesthetics and voices. Their goal is to develop interdependent creative models and practices, promoting the emergence of underrepresented voices that have not been part of the dominant artistic trends. In doing so, they are disrupting aesthetic hierarchies and continuing to dismantle biases against artists who evolve outside the artistic establishment.

Between the scene and the silver screen: early Romanian cinema and the rediscovery of the ‘lost’ woman film pioneer Marioara Voiculescu

ABSTRACT Although some significant contributions to early filmmaking production and exhibition involve strong entrepreneurial female figures, very few women’s names appear in the histories of Balkan cinemas. Based on original archival research and press of the time, this article foregrounds the filmmaking activities of the Romanian theatre director and actress Marioara Voiculescu (1885–1976) and the role of her star persona and theatrical experience in the making of early fiction films produced by Leon M. Popescu’s Filmul de Artă company. Voiculescu achieved considerable success during her lifetime, a prolific stage career, founding her own theatre company in 1912, and playing a key role in the production of early films in 1913, yet she has received scant attention in film scholarship thus far. By shifting the focus to Voiculescu’s contribution to early cinema in Romania, I reflect more broadly on the spaces and roles that women occupied in popular culture within the ongoing process of modernisation of Romanian society.

The Italian American Studies Association at Fifty-Five: 1966–2021

The Italian American Studies Association at Fifty-Five: 1966–2021

Identity and narrative ownership in "Black Nerd" and "Wicket: A Parody Musical"

While theatre and popular media alike tend to almost exclusively favor the white, heteronormative, male perspective, much of fandom culture has developed around geek fans' ability to read alternative, and often resistant, meanings into established texts, then transform them into performances that strive to correct the flaws and fill the gaps in the source text. Analysis of Dad's Garage Theatre Company's productions of Jon Carr's Black Nerd (2018) and Travis Sharp and Haddon Kime's Wicket: A Parody Musical (2017) as case studies reveals that geek theatre uses fandom techniques of resistant reading, rewriting, and performance to disrupt and restructure hegemonic narratives to foreground the experiences and perspectives of minorities whose stories frequently fall through the gaps of the established canon.

‘Truth’, technology and transmedial theatre in Europe

Recent scholarship has expanded upon the concept of populism as performance to include a focus on how it employs digital technologies. However, what happens when theatrical performances appropriate far-right populist discourse to potentially parody how it frames its nationalist rhetoric as an appeal to ‘the people’? How do the relationships between performers and spectator-participants in such artistic works differ from those forged through the public manifestations of populist politics? How have artists who engage with populism employed technology to increase the reach and interactivity of their performances, and how does this engagement seek to undermine, and/or generate a troubling ‘belief’ in, the supposed ‘reality’ of such projects? This article critically reassesses the transmedial theatre of the late German artist Christoph Schlingensief and the Tallinn-based theatre company, Theatre NO99, in relation to current understandings of populism within an increasingly digitized, post-truth society. Schlingensief and NO99 might be seen to employ strategies of ‘subversive affirmation’ and ‘over-identification’ in their aims to resist the rise of far-right populism. Yet, we argue that these approaches can be dangerous: artists can reinforce far-right populist agendas if audiences fail to self-reflexively decode and reject subtle yet effective forms of mass manipulation – which is more likely when the components of such projects are dispersed across multiple media platforms through which counterfactual information also increasingly circulates.

Caroline, or Change: Roundabout Theatre Company, New York, NY

<i>Caroline, or Change</i>: Roundabout Theatre Company, New York, NY

Nepantlera Pedagogy in an Immigrant Youth Theater Project: The Role of a Hmong Educator in Facilitating the Exploration of Culture and Identity

Background/Context:Community-based youth theater programs afford youth opportunities to explore and “author” new identities by “performing writing.” Yet, we know much less about the ways in which immigrant youth are exploring struggles and changes within their families and ethnic community. We particularly lack research about the roles of immigrant adult educators in youth programs, and the significance to the pedagogical process of their experiences, being, and modes of interacting with young people who share with them a common ethnicity.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study:The purpose of the study is to explore the role of a community-based Hmong immigrant educator as a “nepantlera,” or boundary-crossing “guide” in Hmong youth’s negotiation of culture and identity. It is guided by three questions: (1) How does nepantlera pedagogy move beyond self–other dichotomies? (2) How does nepantlera pedagogy facilitate rewriting the self to construct new visions of ethnic identity? and (3) How does nepantlera pedagogy entail risking the personal?Setting:The research setting was a Hmong community-based arts organization in an urban center in the Midwestern United States.Population/Participants/Subjects:Three 1.5-generation Hmong American adult staff of a community-based organization, one Korean American teaching artist from a local theater company, and 11 second-generation Hmong American adolescents participated in the study.Research Design:The study draws from a critical ethnographic investigation of the culturally relevant practices of a youth theater project within a Hmong coethnic organization.Data Collection and Analysis:Ethnographic data collection occurred over the 4-month program cycle of the theater project. Data sources include field notes from participant observations, semi-structured interviews, audio and video recordings of the activities, work products, and documents about the program and organization. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis techniques.Findings/Results:The findings suggest that the nepantlera pedagogy of the Hmong immigrant educator fostered opportunities for Hmong youth to (1) disrupt binaries between first-generation and second-generation immigrants by exploring not only differences but also commonalities; (2) imagine new ethnic selves by exploring and rewriting a Hmong edict against same-last-name relationships; and (3) experience the vulnerability of their Hmong educator through disclosure about his personal life.Conclusions/Recommendations:The nepantlera pedagogy of an immigrant educator within a coethnic community-based organization brings a perspective from the nepantla, or “in-between,” of culture and identity that provides immigrant youth with a deeper level of cultural knowledge and connectedness to navigate their multiple worlds.

일본전전문학에 나타난 직업여성의 기원과 양상 -다무라 도시코(田村俊子)의 『단념』을 중심으로-

This study examines the origins and aspects of the representative occupations of women in the 1910s, “Actress” and “Female Writer,” through Akirame by Toshiko. The occupations belonged to a particular minority class of “career women” at the time. There were fewer “career women” before the war, so this was unprecedented. Unlike for men, gender-discriminatory gender norms are seen in the inclusion of “woman” in the job name. Until now, theater companies and literary circles have been the stage for men. Being active as a woman in theater and literary groups can be said to reflect some of the changed aspects of modern Japan and its new women. Akirame portrayed women who gave up college education halfway and tried to make a living by being “female writers” and “actresses.” Writer Toshiko as well as women in general say that the women in Akirame want to live as themselves, while dreaming of “self-reliance” through having a job. It is an expression of their will to live as women, and it heralds a new era in which professional women will be active.

Partnership with a Theater Company to Amplify Voices of Underrepresented-in-Medicine Students

Partnership with a Theater Company to Amplify Voices of Underrepresented-in-Medicine Students

Oily Cart's Space to Be: Exploring the Carer's Role in Sensory Theatre for Neurodiverse Audiences during COVID-19

Because sensory theatre productions are designed with neurodiverse audiences in mind, practitioners are first and foremost concerned with accessibility at all levels for their audience members, incorporating multiple senses throughout a performance to allow a variety of entry points for audiences that may have wildly divergent—and often competing—access needs. One-to-one interaction between performers and audience members results in highly flexible performances that respond to physical and auditory input from individual audience members, through which performers curate customized multisensory experiences that communicate the production's theatrical world to its audience. Given this reliance on close-up interaction, the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have posed a particular challenge for sensory theatre makers. In in-person sensory theatre, performers focus on neurodivergent audience members, with parents and paid carers often taking a (literal) back seat, but remotely delivered sensory theatre during COVID-19 hinges on the carer's facilitation of sensory engagement curated by sensory theatre practitioners. Oily Cart, a pioneering London-based sensory theatre company, responded to COVID-19 restrictions with a season of work presented in various formats in audiences’ homes, and their production Space to Be marked a shift in the company's audience engagement to include an emphasis on the carer's experience.1 Using this production as a case study, I argue that the pivotal role adopted by carers during the pandemic has the potential to shape future in-person productions, moving practitioners toward a more holistic, neurodiverse audience experience that challenges a disabled–nondisabled binary by embracing carers’ experiences alongside those of neurodivergent audience members.2

"They don't think I can cope, because I have got a learning disability…": Experiences of stigma in the lives of parents with learning disabilities.

Parents with learning disabilities report facing a widely held 'presumption of incompetence', placing them under pressure to prove their parenting competence. In collaboration with a learning disability theatre company, an inclusive research methodology explored experiences of parenting with learning disabilities, with a specific focus on the operation of stigma in parents' lives. Interviews with 17 mothers and 5 fathers who self-identified as having learning disabilities were co-facilitated by learning-disabled co-researchers, and analysed using thematic analysis, with input from people with learning disabilities. Thematic analysis generated four key themes; (1) positions of powerlessness, (2) assumptions of incompetence, (3) challenging assumptions and proving competence and (4) claiming power. Parents reported experiencing stigma and disempowerment within their networks, yet continued to embrace their valued parental identity and drew strength from involvement with self-advocacy organisations. The research informed arts-based performance pieces and resources aimed at training professionals and raising public awareness.

Hunger for Culture

The 2016 world premiere of Larissa FastHorse’s play Urban Rez, which Cornerstone Theater Company produced, presented a community-based theater experience in Los Angeles County (Tongva and Tataviam homelands). In this essay, our three co-authors utilize the concept of being a guest on Tongva land as a methodology to demonstrate Two-Spirit, Queer, and Trans representation within Indigenous theater. Through the work of the playwright, cast, and crew, the Urban Rez narrative asserted self-representation in opposition to settler imaginaries through community-based participatory storytelling. Urban Rez represented a pivot in the current American Theater landscape and a continuation of Indigenous theater legacies. Our essay offers a cross-collaboration between three performers from Urban Rez that represent a wide breadth of academic experiences, performance backgrounds, and community organizing to discuss queer, Two-Spirt, and trans experiences. The co-authors discuss the legacy of counter-narratives in Native theater, demonstrate sovereignty in the play, and utilize queer theory to understand an Indigenous queer experience on stage better. We provide a reflexive co-authorship to assert relationality in the face of heteropatriarchy and contend with our hunger for culture. The co-authors recognize the Urban Rez experience as one of the first major Indigenous theater productions in Los Angeles that included queer, Two-Spirit, and transgender characters that rejected justifying representation from a deficit narrative.

Navigating New Approaches for Grassroot Community Theatre in a (Post-)Covid World

The cultural revolution of 1968 paved the way for many artists to reconsider how and where theatre was made. Community theatre gained currency and one company who became prominent during this cultural shift was Welfare State, later Welfare State International. They were one of the theatre companies who focused not only on a community theatre aesthetic but a grassroot one. I examine the radicality of community theatre and consider the efficacy of the historical approaches to engaging with communities in a (Post-)Covid world. I acknowledge and explore the shifting understanding of communities and assert that a deeper engagement is needed to foster collectivity (Tannahill 2016; Fişek 2019; Weston 2020; Bartley 2021). To reconsider the role that theatre may play in the future, I focus on a grassroot approach to community-led work and posit that location will be a key component to how theatre is made as we emerge from a pandemic.

School Drama: Using drama for oracy in an EAL/D classroom

ABSTRACT This article examines the pedagogical potential of drama-rich processes to develop and improve oracy skills for students learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). Research was conducted through a multi-level, qualitative case study of Sydney Theatre Company and University of Sydney’s School Drama ™ program. School Drama is a co-mentoring teacher professional learning program that promotes a dual focus of developing teachers’ capacity to use drama pedagogy with literature, and improving literacy outcomes and engagement for students. The research context was an intermediate Intensive English class at a western Sydney secondary school, involving students from refugee backgrounds. Data gathering included observations, focus groups, teacher interviews, and artefact analysis. While this instance of the program presented behavioural and structural limitations, benchmarking assessment depicted a marked to moderate improvement in oracy skills. Vocabulary, imagination and creativity and confidence emerged as the most salient ways oracy was developed and improved.

Always leave the audience wanting more: An entertaining approach to stimulate engagement with health research among publics in coastal Kenya through 'Magnet Theatre'.

Background: Magnet Theatre (MT), a form of participatory community theatre, is one of several public engagement approaches used to facilitate engagement between KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) researchers and public audiences in Coastal Kenya. We describe how we used MT as an entertaining forum where audiences learn about research, and where researchers learn about how the public views research. Methods: Drama scripts depicting community interaction with different aspects of research were developed iteratively with research staff, a theatre company and community members. Six fortnightly theatre outreaches per site over two months, attracting a total of 1454 audience members were held in Mida, a rural village 30 km north of Kilifi; and in Mtwapa, a peri-urban town 45 km to the south. Audiences were presented with dramatized health research-related dilemmas and subsequently invited to enact their responses. Evaluation comprised, notes and observations from meetings, rehearsals and outreaches, transcripts from a review workshop with repeat audience members (n=21), a reflection meeting with KWTRP engagement staff (n=12), and a group discussion with the theatre company (n=9). Discussions were recorded, transcribed, translated to English and analysed using thematic approach. Results: Despite being costly in terms of time and expense, we argue that MT in public spaces can assist audience members to navigate 'border-crossings' between everyday contexts and scientific/research concepts. This can enable audiences to share their views and concerns and enact their responses to research-related dilemmas. Conclusions: While reporting on MT's successes, drawing from literature on rumours, we acknowledge the limitations of individual engagement activities in providing long-term solutions to address alternative interpretations and rumours about research, in the context of local and global inequities. MT, however, presents an opportunity for researchers to express respect to public audiences through making research more accessible and providing opportunities to listen to public views and concerns.