#230209 ~ On DRAG, On BANS, On BODIES
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for February 9, 2023.
WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my irregular newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreCliquery:
Before I turn to some of what’s been clicking since my last newsletter, I lift this piece from CBS This Morning featuring CBSNews’ Christina Ruffini’s conversation with drag artist/actor Jinkx Monsoon on the occasion of their Broadway debut in the long-running Chicago revival…
EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever I link to pieces posted behind a paywall, I do so using the “gift” function that certain publications now afford subscribers. So clicking out to articles in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal should neither present hassle nor burn through your monthly allotment of free views. Here’s hoping more outlets — hello LATimes! — adopt similar technologies soon...
Now Click This:
Playbill’s Diep Tran explains why streaming Broadway shows is so complicated than it might seem…
at TheBitterSoutherner, arts writer Kelundra Smith profiles writer/director Katori Hall’s gift for crafting stories of witness…
the Los Angeles Times’ Charles McNulty considers the recent livestream presentation of the the Broadway production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy and how its success suggests the evolving potential of digital/remote theatre to “expand, enhance and enrich, rather than supplant, the traditional theatergoing experience”…
in the wake of the January shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, writer/composer/designer Howard Ho reflects on how the communities of the San Gabriel Valley “incubated a generation that grew up in its warm embrace with its own unique brand of Asian American culture” and, at the Dance Studies Association website, dance scholar Yutian Wong evinces the history of the Asian American ballroom dance community in Southern California since the late 1980s…
NYTimes film writer A.O. Scott goes deep into how the enthralling pedagogy scene in Tár works…
At TheBody, writer Timothy Murphy talks to authors/advocates Sarah Schulman and Tavia Nyong’o about their work producing Audre Lorde/James Baldwin-through the lens of Claudia Rankine — a reenactment of an actual 1984 conversation between Audre Lorde and James Baldwin about race, gender, and sexuality in Reagan’s America.
writer/actor/historian Ron Fassler introduces a fascinating multi-part series on “Replacements” in long-running shows (see also parts 2 and 3 of the series)…
at Medium, author/advocate/translator David Bowles takes on/down a recent buzzy NYTimes column about the 2020 reaction against American Dirt, digging deep into everything the columnist didn’t consider…
Playbill’s Margaret Hall reports on the astonishing post-pandemic spike in violent and disruptive audience behavior experienced by ushers and other front of house personnel…
NOTE: this article appears to have been removed from Playbill, perhaps due to its mention of the apparent fact that no procedures are in place to prevent overserving drunk patrons, but here’s a quick&dirty capture someone made of the piece for information purposes only. (See also this capture at the WaybackMachine.) I’ll also leave the original link to mark the occasion of its actual publication…
UPDATE (2/13/23): TheDailyBeast’s Lachlan Cartwright offers one explanation of “The ‘Salacious’ Mystery of a Disappearing Playbill Story”…
On DRAG:
writers Monica Huerta and Tyler Allen Tennant curate “the Drag Race cluster” at Post45 evincing how “Drag Race frames for its audience a method for reading queerness — or queer reading” and featuring nine lucidly distinctive contributions from the notable likes of Jewel Pereyra, Mary Zaborskis, and Marcos Gonsalez • Vulture’s Brock Colyar talks to drag artist Jinkx Monsoon on about their path to the Broadway stage Chicago • see also Jinkx talk about how “drag is still an act of revolution” at TheTodayShow with Hoda & Jenna • at AmericanTheatre, scholar Jennifer Buckley evinces the “too-muchness of too many kinds” infusing Taylor Mac’s transformational historiography • at Hyperallergic, curator Dakota Noot goes one-on-one with “living legend” Cyclona (aka Robert Legorreta) to discuss drag, performance art and activism • Slate’s Dan Kois tracks how Matilda’s Trunchbull “went from misogynistic caricature to drag showstopper to Emma Thompson” • PEN America warns that “attacks on drag shows and performers strike at the heart of our rights to gather, read, and perform together” • NPR’s Jaclyn Diaz reports on the efforts of at least nine state legislatures to codify drag as “adult cabaret performance” thereby limiting where, when and for whom drag artists are legally permitted to perform • TheAtlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf ponders the complicated, far-reaching, and absurd implications of the GOP-led “crusade against drag” being waged in state legislatures across the country…
On BANS:
playwright/educator Nilo Cruz talks to TheScene about his career, his writing and his recent experiences in having his work banned/censored by educational leaders in Florida • Playbill’s Meg Massseron reports on the ongoing efforts (and mounting fears) of the students trying to put on their canceled production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent amidst escalating anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in Florida • Playbill’s Molly Higgens reports on an Ohio school’s — now cancelled — cancellation of 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for “vulgarity” • PutnamCounty original Broadway cast member Jesse Tyler Ferguson weighs in on the show’s cancelation via TikTok • TheIrishTimes’s Naomi O’Leary reports on the University of Groningen’s cancelation of a production of Waiting for Godot because the Beckett estate’s insistence that “only men are suitable for this role is outdated and even discriminatory” • and Dallas CultureMap’s Lindsey Wilsen reports on Bishop Arts Theatre Center’s 1619 Project One-Act Festival — which has commissioned nine playwrights to write a short play inspired by a chapter or section in Nikole Hannah-Jones’s (now oft-banned) book, The 1619 Project • and BroadwayNews’s Caitlin Hornik reports on Dramatists Guild’s and Dramatists Legal Defense Fund’s offer to help students find a safe way to put on productions canceled by school officials…
On BODIES:
NYTimes’ Javier C. Hernández talks to tenor Limmie Pulliam about re/confronting body-size bias and anti-blackness in opera • Call Time’s Katie Birenboim (PU’16) digs deep into Broadway’s body politics with scholar/artist Ryan Donovan • at HyperAllergic, freelance arts writer Billie Walker asks whether body horror is the new intimacy in art, fashion, and cinema • at AmericanTheatre, scholar Jeffrey R. Wilson surveys a number of recent productions to assess what disabled actors bring when “cripping” the role of Richard III • at Bustle, entertainment writer/editor Jessica Derschowitz chats about “all things wellness” with actor/advocate Bonnie Milligan about her wellness routine • and in conversation with PeopleMagazine’s Michael Gioia, actor/advocate Bonnie Milligan reflects about the death of her father has informed her return to Broadway…
Psst! Did You Hear?:
Wherein I highlight recent theatrically-inclined podcasts and playlists…
In On TAP 61, podcast hosts Pannill Camp and I welcome artist/scholars Madeline Sayet and Bethany Hughes for an episode dedicated to Indigenous performance, which includes discussions of the notion of sovereignty and its importance to Native theatre over the last half century, the contribution Stephanie Nohelani Teves’s 2018 TDR article “The Theorist and the Theorized: Indigenous Critiques of Performance Studies,” and Sayet's solo show Where We Belong.
Two new episodes of my on-and-off-again-but-on-again-for-now podcast StinkyLuluSays have also dropped since my last newsletter. At center of the first is my extended discussion of an original immersive site-specific theatrical staging of The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes (one of my all-time favorite books). For more about this ambitious co-presentation by Philadelphia theatre companies EgoPo and Theatre in the X, see this fascinating (rave) review from Jeannine A. Cook at BroadStreetReview or this brief feature from Peter Crimmins at WHYY. Also in this episode, I comment “briefly” on my second encounter with the Jeffrey L. Page & Diane Paulus Broadway revisal of 1776 at Roundabout, as well as my experience of Bruce Norris’s Downstate at Playwrights Horizons; ClubbedThumb’s Winterworks; and Salty Brine’s Bigmouth Strikes Again at Joe’s Pub.
My next episode continues the experiment in building a theatre-going audio diary with reflections on how seven very different shows each confront particular conventions and expectations of theatrical form. Productions discussed in this episode include two remote performances — Woolly Mammoth’s digital film capture of Madeline Sayet’s Where We Belong and Bard at the Gate’s enhanced reading of Majkin Holmquist’s Tent Revival; two touring presentations of devised productions — The Appointment from the Philadelphia-based devised performance company Lightning Rod Special and Between Two Knees from the indigenous comedy ensemble The1491s; two new musicals — Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel’s Cornelia Street and David Lindsay Abaire and Jeanine Tesori’s Kimberly Akimbo; and finally one new/ish play, Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play.
And Lest I Forget — This Week in Fornésiana…
Wherein I highlight noteworthy recent or upcoming engagements with the life, work and legacy of legendary playwright, director and teacher María Irene Fornés...
In a fascinating and far-reaching piece at Caring for the Ages — a publication dedicated to “timely and relevant news and commentary about clinical developments and about the impact of health care policy on long-term care medicine” — editor Tess Bird talks to filmmaker (and Fornesian documentarian) Michelle Memran about “Therapeutic Filmmaking, Artistic Collaboration, and Dementia”…
Finally a Programming Note…
Attentive readers — and if you’ve gotten this far, that would be you — may have noted a bit of a shift in the formatting of this edition of #TheatreClique. I’ve been pondering the utility of the prior format for some while but, when Jonathan Mandell of NewYorkTheater recently described #TheatreClique as “extremely helpful but intensely dense,” I realized it was probably time to reassess how and why I assemble the newsletter the way that I do. Hence — this week’s experiment: leading with 10-12 pieces I just want other people to read now, then following with a few thematically topical groupings, then adding mention of particular podcasts or remote events, before finally concluding with Fornésiana. This structure may or may not be the new forever format but I do suspect it will scaffold my ongoing experimentation as I endeavor to continue being helpful while perhaps easing a bit on the intensity of my density. Of course, I always welcome your thoughts/observations/quips as well. Just send ‘em along through the usual channels. And, as ever, thanks for reading…
Until next time, dear #TheatreClique, please share this newsletter with those friends, colleagues and students who might appreciate the opportunity to encounter the many voices gathered in each week’s edition. Errors and oversights published in the newsletter will be corrected in the archival versions. And, in the meantime, keep clicking those links — good writing needs good readers and our theatre clicks count!