#240324 ~ REVIVALS, PARAHISTORIES, CELEBRATIONS
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for March 24, 2024.
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:
For this week’s opener, I lift this episode of the latest cycle of Lynne Marie Rosenberg’s witty and incisive web-series Famous Cast Words at ALL ARTS, the award-winning arts and culture hub created by The WNET Group, the community-supported home of New York’s PBS stations. This seasons episodes feature Rosenberg in conversation the likes of Miz Jade, Tala Ashe, Maybe Burke, Daniel K. Isaac, and Larissa Fasthorse, but I thought I’d highlight this cycle’s first episode first…
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...
#NowClickThis…
Wherein I highlight some of the most click-worthy links I’ve encountered in the last few weeks…
at Hyperallergic, scholar/curator Tavia Nyong’o remembers how artist/activist Cecilia Gentilli blazed a “path in the world for the undocumented community, sex workers, and transgender people” by emphatically being “an artist, meaning one who creates something that previously didn’t exist and which the world must alter itself to accommodate”;
at TimeOutNY, writer/editor Adam Feldman documents what happend when activists disrupted a Broadway performance of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People not simply by reporting on his experience in the room where it happened but also in a followup converstation with theatremaker Nate Smith of Extinction Rebellion;
at Vogue, writer/editor Adrienne Miller talks to the dazzling cast of Uncle Vanya in anticipation of the Broadway premiere of Heidi Schreck’s new translation/adaptation;
at American Theatre, actor/editor Gabriela Furtado Coutinho considers the persistently “deep gap between the culturally responsive theory that now prevails in many academic and professional settings and its application in theatrical secondary education”;
the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s James Walsh talks to playwright/advocate Rhianna Yazzie (Navajo) about her work and about her decision in 2009, to establish New Native Theatre in Minnesota;
at Gothamist, freelance journalist Kenneal Patterson considers “New York City's vibrant and resurgent indie theater scene, where theater fanatics are finding creative ways to get their art in front of others”;
NYTimes’s Jessica Bennett talks to noted scholar/writer (and reluctant performance theorist) Judith Butler about who’s afraid of gender (and why);
in a piece that’s not explicitly theatre-related but strikes me as essential reading for anyone working within a non-profit organizational context or seeking funding from governmental entities or private philanthropiesat, policy scholar/writer Don Moynihan details the “open season on scholars of race” at his always-illuminating substack Can We Still Govern?;
and as something of a palate-cleanser, I highlight this captivating track from the new EP Let’s Just See What Happens from emerging singer-songwriter Nico Zaca…
Voices from Behind Academentia's Paywall:
If you are not academically-affiliated, or if your institution does not subscribe to ProjectMuse, shake the social media trees to see if some academic somewhere might hook you up with a pdf or two. Or check with your friendly neighborhood librarian to see if they can help. But download the pdf directly if you can. Because ACADEMIC CLICKS COUNT too!
In a brazenly multi-layered bit of self-referentiality, I wanted to highlight the recent publication of my latest scholarly essay “Revisiting (and Revising) West Side Story’s Parahistories” which arrives as part of Theatre Journal’s "extraordinary 75th Anniversary issue (so brilliantly curated and edited by Laura Edmondson, Sean Metzgar, and Carla Neuss). My essay threads LOTS of little ideas I never thought I’d find the opportunity to stitch together — most conspicuously, my glancing observations about some recent reimaginings of West Side Story but also exploring my thoughts on how “revisals” of canonical works might inflect theatre historiography; how “autoethnography” might be central to the work of performance historiographyy; and how publicly addressing one’s errors, oversights, and reconsiderations should be part of every historian’s practice. I was so grateful for the unexpected opportunity to develop this essay last summer and am now just so glad it’s actually in the world. Click the image above to be routed to the journal link and, if you don’t have institutional access to ProjectMuse, don’t be shy about asking around (or asking me) for a pdf-hookup to the essay.
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...
At the recent 10th anniversary convening of the Latinx Theatre Commons, the Fornés Institute highlighted the initiative Celebrando Fornés, which is dedicated to amplifying the visibility of Fornésian production, pedagogy and scholarship by documenting what’s happening where, when, and with whom. Click the image below for further information.
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!