December 2023
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Julia Moriarty & Jennifer Goff
Adaptation. Revision. Reimagining. The pedagogical buzzwords of the day, and yet all reflect a sentiment that seems deeply at the heart of theatrical expression historically. Theatre and performance have always had ways of shifting recognizable parts into new orientations to create new meaning. With this issue of Etudes, we present a series of scholarship that examine the ways in which old is made new through artistic expression; sometimes political, sometimes sentimental.
We begin with Michael DeWhatley’s "“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”: Black Feminist Bookwriters and Bio-Musicals,” a detailed examination of the critical reception of three bio-musicals. The production of these shows marked a significant diversification of the representation on and behind the Broadway stage, and yet they were all similarly criticized and minimized. DeWhatley works to reframe these pieces as the significant additions to the canon they deserve to be considered. Martin Essemann’s “Li Ziqi and the Possibility of Critical Optimism” challenges consumers of social media (so, all of us) to reengage our criticality through his analysis of the subtle manipulation and construction of a Chinese YouTuber’s carefully curated cottage core channel. In our Notes from the Field section, Beri Juraic reflects in “Memory of Nanjing: Kamome Machine’s Experiments in Sharing Thoughts” upon the development of a performance piece focused on the controversial ‘Nanjing Incident.’ In this thoughtful article, Juraic questions his own role as collaborative researcher while reviewing the creative process of the company and his collaborator Hagiwara Yuta as it seeks to memorialize historically contentious events. Tony Tambasco explores the canon in the classroom with “Child’s Play: The Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching Young People to Appropriate Shakespeare.” This case study recounts his pedagogical approach to Shakespeare as a means of teaching not only production skills, but historicizing social systems and emphasizing contemporary values. A new feature for Etudes, Irina Kruchinina’s video poem “A Contrite Heart” is an intermedia approach to poetic translation and also a psycho-physical examination of the act of creation.
The adage goes that there are no new ideas under the sun, and yet this issue of Etudes highlights significant reworkings of existing texts, and the systemic treatment of such, to embrace a critical discourse reflective of the contemporary moment.
We begin with Michael DeWhatley’s "“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”: Black Feminist Bookwriters and Bio-Musicals,” a detailed examination of the critical reception of three bio-musicals. The production of these shows marked a significant diversification of the representation on and behind the Broadway stage, and yet they were all similarly criticized and minimized. DeWhatley works to reframe these pieces as the significant additions to the canon they deserve to be considered. Martin Essemann’s “Li Ziqi and the Possibility of Critical Optimism” challenges consumers of social media (so, all of us) to reengage our criticality through his analysis of the subtle manipulation and construction of a Chinese YouTuber’s carefully curated cottage core channel. In our Notes from the Field section, Beri Juraic reflects in “Memory of Nanjing: Kamome Machine’s Experiments in Sharing Thoughts” upon the development of a performance piece focused on the controversial ‘Nanjing Incident.’ In this thoughtful article, Juraic questions his own role as collaborative researcher while reviewing the creative process of the company and his collaborator Hagiwara Yuta as it seeks to memorialize historically contentious events. Tony Tambasco explores the canon in the classroom with “Child’s Play: The Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching Young People to Appropriate Shakespeare.” This case study recounts his pedagogical approach to Shakespeare as a means of teaching not only production skills, but historicizing social systems and emphasizing contemporary values. A new feature for Etudes, Irina Kruchinina’s video poem “A Contrite Heart” is an intermedia approach to poetic translation and also a psycho-physical examination of the act of creation.
The adage goes that there are no new ideas under the sun, and yet this issue of Etudes highlights significant reworkings of existing texts, and the systemic treatment of such, to embrace a critical discourse reflective of the contemporary moment.
