1st Edition
Troubling Traditions Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the US
Troubling Traditions takes up a 21st century, field-specific conversation between scholars, educators, and artists from varying generational, geographical, and identity positions that speak to the wide array of debates around dramatic canons.
Unlike Literature and other fields in the humanities, Theatre and Performance Studies has not yet fully grappled with the problems of its canon. Troubling Traditions stages that conversation in relation to the canon in the United States. It investigates the possibilities for multiplying canons, methodologies for challenging canon formation, and the role of adaptation and practice in rethinking the field’s relation to established texts. The conversations put forward by this book on the canon interrogate the field’s fundamental values, and ask how to expand the voices, forms, and bodies that constitute this discipline.
This is a vital text for anyone considering the role, construction, and impact of canons in the US and beyond.
Introduction
I. Troubling Traditions - Lindsey Mantoan, Matthew Moore, Angela Farr Schiller; Part One: Costs of Canonicity; 1 The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies - Nadine George-Graves;2 The Shakespeare Problem: A Conversation - Madeline Sayet, with Sarah Enloe, Mei Ann Teo, and Dawn Monique Williams; 3 "Go back to India if you hate my people so much": Consequences of Troubling the "Canon" in American Academia - Sukanya Chakrabarti; 4 Despite the Flames: A Conversation - Patricia Ybarra, Virginia Grise, and Victor I. Cazares; 5 The Black Gaze / A Different Account - Eric M. Glover and Isaiah Matthew Wooden; 6 Amidst the Rubble of the Ivory Tower - Sara Brady; Part Two: Remixing Traditions; 7 Shaking up the Canon with Cornerstone and OSF - Sonja Arsham Kuftinec and Bill Rauch; 8 "Yo, Let's Steal Their Canons!": Arab and Arab American Canonical Multiplicities - Samer Al-Saber and Michael Malek Najjar; 10 Your Heritage is Safe Here: Defining Three Indigenous Theatrical Canons - Jay B Muskett and Jonah Winn-Lenetsky; 11 "Frenemies" of the Canon: Our Two Decades of Studying and Teaching Disability in Drama and Performance - Ann M. Fox and Carrie Sandahl; 12 The Uses of Awe - Rinde Eckert and Ellen McLaughlin; Part Three: Fluid Approaches; 13 Toward and Away: The Dramatic Tension of a Queer & Trans Canon - Finn Lefevre; 14 Dancing With/Out the Canon - Hannah Kossrin; 15 What do we do with the Musical Theater Canon?- Stacy Wolf, with Masi Asare, Rob Berman, Randall Eng, Eric M. Glover, David Savran, Georgia Stitt, Brandon Webster, and Sarah Whitfield; 16 Canons in Motion: Japanese Performance, Theatre History, and the Currents of Knowledge - Jyana S. Browne and Jessica Nakamura; 17 The Kids’ Table: Cross-institutional Treatment of the Canon and the Un-canonizable Nature of New Work - Charlie Dubach-Reinhold and Melory Mirashrafi; Part Four: Departures and Re-visions; 18 Rethinking the Canon through the Digital - Miguel Escobar Varela and Derek Miller; 19 Antigone is Dead, Long Live Antigones!: Adaptation, Difference, and Instability at the Heart of the Traditional Western Canon - Rachel M. E. Wolfe; 20 Redirecting Canonicity: PhD Exams and Actor Training - Eero Laine and Peter Zazzali; 21 We Aren’t Here to Teach What We Already Know - Jessica Brater and Michelle Liu Carriger; 22 How Do We Do the Queer Canon? - Zachary A. Dorsey, with Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Michelle Dvoskin, Lindsey Mantoan, Eleanor Owicki, Jaclyn I. Pryor, and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Biography
Lindsey Mantoan is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Communication Arts at Linfield University.
Matthew Moore is an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance at Muhlenberg College.
Angela Farr Schiller is an Associate Professor of Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
