1st Edition
Dramaturgy and History Staging the Archive
Dramaturgy and History provides a practical account of an aspect of dramaturgical practice that is often taken for granted: dramaturgs’ engagements with history and historiography.
Dramaturgs play a vital role in amplifying and activating theatre’s unique potential to contribute to the pressing public discourse around the uses and legacies of history.This collection challenges the notion of history as an unassailable or settled set of facts, offering readers a glimpse into the processes and methods of eighteen dramaturgs working in a variety of settings, including professional theatres, universities, museums, and archives. The dramaturgs featured use history to a variety of ends: they reframe classical texts for contemporary audiences; advocate for the production of lesser-known writers and the expansion of the canon; create new works that bring women’s, LGBTQIA+,and Global Majority histories to life; and establish new and necessary archives by/of/for minoritarian artists. Collectively, they examine and animate some of the most urgent questions, concerns, and challenges that dramaturgs encounter in working with history.
An essential resource for teachers and students of dramaturgy, the collection offers a concluding hands-on exercise for each chapter to facilitate the reader’s application of the methods discussed in their own practice.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Caitlin Kane and Erin Stoneking
Part I: Production Dramaturgy: (Re)contextualizing Existing Plays
Chapter 1: Experimenting with Conceptual Casting: Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie
Khalid Y. Long
Chapter 2: (Dis)Respecting Canonical Texts
Jennifer Popple
Chapter 3: Evoked, If Not Depicted: Dramaturgy and Local Histories
Charlie Peters
Chapter 4: Punk Nuns and Early Modern Vacationlands: Dramaturgical Approaches to Staging Sor Juana in the 21st Century
Alison Hyde Pascale
Chapter 5: [Re]Fashioning Mowatt’s Comedy of Manners through Adapturgy
Janna Segal
Chapter 6: History Looking Back: Dramaturging the Gaze
Yiwen Wu
Chapter 7: “To Attach Our Floating Hearts”: The Dramaturgy of Queer Historiography
Percival Hornak
Part II: New Play Dramaturgy: Staging History and Historiography
Chapter 8: Staging the Queer Archive: soldiergirls in Process
Ryan Adelsheim
Chapter 9: Dancing Augmented Archives: Movement and Technology as Dramaturgical Practice
Al Evangelista
Chapter 10: Animating Loss: The Role of Historiography in New Play Development
Erin Stoneking
Chapter 11: Dramaturgy of Internal Displacement in Nigeria
Elaigwu P. Ameh
Chapter 12: Strength in Numbers: Cultivating Dramaturgical Collaboration Across Disciplines
Lindsay L. Barr
Chapter 13: Loops of Time: A Historicized Dramaturgy
Sam Redway
Part III: Dramaturgy and/as Public History: Connecting with Broader Publics
Chapter 14: Hands-On History: Engaging Historical Thinking through Dramaturgy
Elysia Segal
Chapter 15: Applying Brecht’s Anti-Spectacular Approach to Staging Fascism
Ilinca Tamara Todoruț
Chapter 16: "Beyond Land Acknowledgement”: Rendering Central Illinois History Along The Potawatomi Trail of Death
Nicole Anderson Cobb
Chapter 17: A Public Historian’s Guide to Dramaturging Native Plays
Laurie Arnold
Chapter 18: Archiving AfroLatine Theatre
Daphnie Sicre
Index
Biography
Caitlin Kane (she/they) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Dramatic Criticism at Kent State University.
Erin Stoneking (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at The University of Alabama.
