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Destabilizing Gender Through Performance
Part of a a collaboration between The Good Men Project and Role/Reboot on a special series about the End of Gender. Cross Posted at Ms. I am gendered, just not in all the ways you might think. Whatever part of my brain makes me like makeup and sparkly jewelry isn’t going away any more than…
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The Personal is Political, and it Always Has Been
Cross Posted at Ms. What happens when you take the Trojan women out of The Trojan Women? That’s what playwright Jocelyn Clarke has done in his new play Trojan Women (after Euripides), adapted from the Greek playwright Euripides’ 2,400-year-old original. East Coast-based experimental theater group SITI Company is currently performing the Clarke play, directed by…
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Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind: An African American Classic Finds New Life
Cross-posted at Ms. When The Help premiered earlier this summer, African American feminists bemoaned the lack of civil rights narratives told by the black women who actually lived through the era. Though it probably won’t be a Hollywood blockbuster, a bulwark American theater is about to open a civil rights play written by an African…
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the overthrow of existing conditions
I have to admit, I was skeptical of Rivka Solomon and Bobbi Ausubel’s play That Takes Ovaries before I saw it. As a theater director/professor and a feminist, I am not a fan of cultural feminism (that which valorizes women because of their biology). As theater, it tends to titillate audiences without changing the status…
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a short play written on the occasion of the assassination of osama bin laden
This Mother Jones article about how much we still don’t know about what happened in the Bin Laden raid reminded me of the short play I wrote that weekend. I was frustrated at how certain the media seemed of the narrative, particularly when their version of it confirmed their preexisting biases, and wanted to write…
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“Porgy and Bess:” Without the Racism and Sexism?
Cross-posted at MsMagazine.com How should artists approach remounting the classics? Should they respect all of the author’s original intentions and stage a version of the show that reflects them perfectly? Or should they attempt to remove the historical residue often attached to pieces that, however conscious the authors may have been of trying to do…
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a visit with SITI
Today I was privileged to sit in on rehearsals for SITI Company’s The Trojan Women at the Getty Villa. This company employs a specifically theatrical technique to make art that fully exploits the liveness of the space and time of performance. Composed of actors, designers, and a director who have been working together at a…
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the universal and the specific
In January I will be directing a university production of Our Town. Those of you who know my theatrical tastes may well be surprised to hear that I love this play. I love the theatrical device of the narrator, the lack of set, the deliberate use of stereotypes, and the simple and touching story and…
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Unemployment: A Play
An office. A fluorescently lit, cubicley structured, windowless, office. Scene one A: So, what qualifications for this job do you particularly view yourself as having? B: Well, if I could ask – the ad was a bit vague – what are the qualifications for this job – I mean, what are you hoping to –…
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rehearsal butterflies
I’m getting ready for my first rehearsal for another incarnation of American Medea tonight, and my stomach is full of butterflies. One of my teachers, Anne Bogart, always says that being nervous is a good sign – it means that you’re invested and that the work is meaningful to you. I agree, and for the…
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Holly L. Derr 