This Body is Just Meat: Identity, body perception, and death in three adapted plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Matthew Reeder
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MATTHEW REEDER is an assistant professor of Directing and Shakespeare at Ball State University and currently serves as the coordinator of the Directing and stage management option in the Department of Theatre and Dance. Matthew transitioned into the academic realm after a 13-year career as director and artistic director in Chicago, Il, where he served as Artistic Director at BackStage Theatre Company, a director-in-residence at the Metropolis Performing Arts Center, and an ensemble member at Adventure Stage Chicago. As a freelance director, Matthew has directed for Fox Valley Repertory, Illinois Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Indiana, the Clarence Brown Theatre in Knoxville, American Stage Company in St. Petersburg, and more. Matthew is currently in his 6th tenure-track year of teaching. His book review of The Fervent Years: the Group Theatre in the 30’s was published last fall in the special “Theatre in Crisis” edition of the Texas Theatre Journal.
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Abstract
The plays of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins amplify our current social conversations around identity and body perception. With particular interest in three adapted plays, An Octoroon, Everybody, and Appropriate, this paper examines the innovative and subversive tactics that Jacobs-Jenkins uses to activate identity and body perception as complex and risky tools for dramatic engagement. In An Octoroon, and Everybody, Jacobs-Jenkins repurposes the framework of two historical plays for a contemporary audience and drops these antiquated plays into the epicenter of our current social conversations around race, body perception and identity. In Appropriate, the playwright intentionally appropriates and exploits the narrative body and the accepted identities of ‘The Classic American Theatre’ and asks the audience to stand witness as the foundations of that great house crumble to dust. Viewed together, these three adapted plays—which do not soothe nor comfort, nor even offer a satisfying sense of justice—suggest that human life and the stories left in its wake are fleeting, unpredictable and ephemeral, and that any meaningful inventory of identity is made restless by the inevitability of death.
The plays of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins amplify our current social conversations around identity and body perception. With particular interest in three adapted plays, An Octoroon, Everybody, and Appropriate, this paper examines the innovative and subversive tactics that Jacobs-Jenkins uses to activate identity and body perception as complex and risky tools for dramatic engagement. In An Octoroon, and Everybody, Jacobs-Jenkins repurposes the framework of two historical plays for a contemporary audience and drops these antiquated plays into the epicenter of our current social conversations around race, body perception and identity. In Appropriate, the playwright intentionally appropriates and exploits the narrative body and the accepted identities of ‘The Classic American Theatre’ and asks the audience to stand witness as the foundations of that great house crumble to dust. Viewed together, these three adapted plays—which do not soothe nor comfort, nor even offer a satisfying sense of justice—suggest that human life and the stories left in its wake are fleeting, unpredictable and ephemeral, and that any meaningful inventory of identity is made restless by the inevitability of death.
| etudesdec2021reeder.pdf |
