Identifying Theatre
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Julia Moriarty & Jennifer Goff
In Real Life Drama, Wendy Smith’s in-depth study of the Group Theatre, she quotes Harold Clurman’s thoughts on one of the central challenges of theatre:
"If the theatre is an art, if it has any value beyond decorating the emptiness of our existence, it too, collective art though it be, must have an analogous singleness of meaning and direction. It too must say something, it too must create from the chaos which is the common experience of its members, an expression that will have, like that of the individual artist, an identity and significance with which people, sharing the common experience, may sense their kinship and to which they can attach themselves." (7)
Each instance of the art form itself must, for Clurman, take on an intentional and unique identity for it to achieve its highest potential.
An ancient and persistent art form, it can seem that theatre is simultaneously constantly evolving, and somehow endlessly entrenched in its most fundamental foundational elements. Certainly, the extraordinary challenges of the last two years have demanded numerous careful and all-too-necessary conversations about the very soul of the art we make and it seems likely that all of us could reflect on theatre we have made in our careers that may have had more or less sense of its own identity. But we continue the search.
Etudes set the theme of ‘Identity’ as an invitation to examine the ways in which conceptions of self (personal and institutional) are developed and maintained through theatrical activity. From that call we received dynamic and pensive reflections on how theatrical and performance forms are best suited to investigate such a question. Carrie Winship’s “What You See Isn’t Always What You Get: War of the Worlds” revisits a uniquely prescient work that uses the life and work of Orson Welles to examine theatrical devices that blend fiction with reality. Jennifer Meckley recounts their own embodied research and experimentation with identity through choreography in “African American Vernacular Dance: Investigating Embodied Identity in Hip-hop Dance Through Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation.” Ana Díaz Barriga takes us through an analysis of the use of puppetry to present identity and investigate layers of meaning in “The Alchemy of Puppet Theater at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.” And Matthew Reeder embarks on an critical survey of the performer and the character in “This Body is Just Meat: Identity, body perception, and death in three adapted plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.”
In our Notes from the Field section, we present pieces that document and discuss the creation of performance pieces that engage with the conception of identity and how performative elements were employed to strengthen that investigation. Adriana Domínguez, Kim McKean, and Georgina Escobar document the production of a Latinx New Works Festival via an unplanned medium during the early days of the pandemic in “Reimagining Access and Representation in the Performing Arts During Quarantine.” Amy Guerin details her process of devising a Theatre of the Oppressed project for NASA engineers and the difficulties of working remotely in “Boal in Space: Using Forum Theatre to Improve NASA Engineering.” Karen M Dabney discusses the process of devising a TYA piece based on identity and reflects on her own experiences with gender identity in “Ms. Gendered: An Educator's Journey Devising a Children's Play about Gender Identity.” Sophie Davis interrogates her own playwriting process as she attempts to dismantle the masculine subject in absurdist drama in “Silly to Think and Never Question the Absurd: Integrating the female heroine in Absurdist playwriting.”And finally, Michael Schweikardt uses the format of a design essay to reflect on his own sense of identity through key moments in his design career in “Design Essay: Modeling Identity.”
The week before this issue went live, the world lost a luminary when bell hooks passed away at the age of 69. As we put the finishing touches on this issue, I couldn’t help but think about the many ways her writing shaped my own scholarship, and indeed my identity as an educator, a writer, an artist, and a woman. In her 2000 book of essays All About Love, bell hooks wrote “definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up.” We hope this issue continues to engage in the hard work of definition, and serves as another step on the road from imagination to action.
"If the theatre is an art, if it has any value beyond decorating the emptiness of our existence, it too, collective art though it be, must have an analogous singleness of meaning and direction. It too must say something, it too must create from the chaos which is the common experience of its members, an expression that will have, like that of the individual artist, an identity and significance with which people, sharing the common experience, may sense their kinship and to which they can attach themselves." (7)
Each instance of the art form itself must, for Clurman, take on an intentional and unique identity for it to achieve its highest potential.
An ancient and persistent art form, it can seem that theatre is simultaneously constantly evolving, and somehow endlessly entrenched in its most fundamental foundational elements. Certainly, the extraordinary challenges of the last two years have demanded numerous careful and all-too-necessary conversations about the very soul of the art we make and it seems likely that all of us could reflect on theatre we have made in our careers that may have had more or less sense of its own identity. But we continue the search.
Etudes set the theme of ‘Identity’ as an invitation to examine the ways in which conceptions of self (personal and institutional) are developed and maintained through theatrical activity. From that call we received dynamic and pensive reflections on how theatrical and performance forms are best suited to investigate such a question. Carrie Winship’s “What You See Isn’t Always What You Get: War of the Worlds” revisits a uniquely prescient work that uses the life and work of Orson Welles to examine theatrical devices that blend fiction with reality. Jennifer Meckley recounts their own embodied research and experimentation with identity through choreography in “African American Vernacular Dance: Investigating Embodied Identity in Hip-hop Dance Through Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation.” Ana Díaz Barriga takes us through an analysis of the use of puppetry to present identity and investigate layers of meaning in “The Alchemy of Puppet Theater at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.” And Matthew Reeder embarks on an critical survey of the performer and the character in “This Body is Just Meat: Identity, body perception, and death in three adapted plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.”
In our Notes from the Field section, we present pieces that document and discuss the creation of performance pieces that engage with the conception of identity and how performative elements were employed to strengthen that investigation. Adriana Domínguez, Kim McKean, and Georgina Escobar document the production of a Latinx New Works Festival via an unplanned medium during the early days of the pandemic in “Reimagining Access and Representation in the Performing Arts During Quarantine.” Amy Guerin details her process of devising a Theatre of the Oppressed project for NASA engineers and the difficulties of working remotely in “Boal in Space: Using Forum Theatre to Improve NASA Engineering.” Karen M Dabney discusses the process of devising a TYA piece based on identity and reflects on her own experiences with gender identity in “Ms. Gendered: An Educator's Journey Devising a Children's Play about Gender Identity.” Sophie Davis interrogates her own playwriting process as she attempts to dismantle the masculine subject in absurdist drama in “Silly to Think and Never Question the Absurd: Integrating the female heroine in Absurdist playwriting.”And finally, Michael Schweikardt uses the format of a design essay to reflect on his own sense of identity through key moments in his design career in “Design Essay: Modeling Identity.”
The week before this issue went live, the world lost a luminary when bell hooks passed away at the age of 69. As we put the finishing touches on this issue, I couldn’t help but think about the many ways her writing shaped my own scholarship, and indeed my identity as an educator, a writer, an artist, and a woman. In her 2000 book of essays All About Love, bell hooks wrote “definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up.” We hope this issue continues to engage in the hard work of definition, and serves as another step on the road from imagination to action.
