1st Edition
Political and Protest Theatre after 9/11 Patriotic Dissent
This collection documents and examines political and protest theatre produced between the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Obama’s election in 2008 by British and American artists responding to their own governments’ actions and policies during this time. The plays take up topics such as the ongoing wars on terror, Blair’s support of U.S. policies, the flawed intelligence that led to the Iraq war, and illegal detentions and torture at Abu Ghraib. The authors argue that engaged artists faced a radically different sociopolitical context for their work after 9/11 compared to earlier social protest movements and new forms of theatre, and different emotional strategies were necessary to meet the challenges. The subtitle Patriotic Dissent suggests the double stance of many artists-- influenced by patriotic expressions of national solidarity, yet critical of the ways that patriotic language was put to use against others. The articles represent a broad range of theatre: Broadway musicals, documentary theatre, adaptations of classical theatre, new plays by British playwrights, street performances and installations, and musical concerts. The contributors’ case studies evaluate the effectiveness of important instances of political theatre and protest from this decade, arguing for the significance, relevance, and continuing necessity for evolving forms of political theatre today.
Editor's Introduction Part I: Mainstages 1. The 2003-04 Season and Broadway Musical Theatre as a Political Conversant, Stacy Wolf 2. The Ubiquitous Orange Jumpsuit: Staging Iconic Images and the Production of the Commons, Joshua Abrams 3. America as Rogue State: Caryl Churchill’s Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? Amelia Howe Kritzer 4. Terrorized by the War on Terror: Mark Ravenhill’s Shoot/ Get Treasure/ Repeat, Jenny Spencer 5. Unraveling the "Golden Thread": Performing the Politics of Black Watch, Marcia Blumberg 6. Voices of the Other: Documentary and Oral History Performance in Post-9/11 British Theatre, Ryan Claycomb 7. Antiwar Activism and the Structures of Trauma in the Plays of Eve Ensler and Kathryn Blume, Emily Klein Part II: Alternative Spaces 8. Culture Project’s Iraq War Plays, Jeanne Colleran 9. Descent as Dissent: Arab American Theatrical Responses to 9/11, Dalia Basiouny 10. A View of The Brig: From the Cage to the Street, Katy Ryan 11. Camping on the Streets, Squares and Wastelands Of Power: Theatrical Protest and the ‘War On Terror’ in the UK, Jenny Hughes 12. Patriot Acts: All-American Tactical Performance in the Age of Permawar, L.M. Bogad 13. Performing Citizenship: The Concert for New York City and the Construction of post-9/11 America, Jennifer L. Chan 14. The Maladapted Hothead Paisan: A Lesbian Comedy of Terrors, Sara Warner
Biography
Jenny Spencer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of Edward Bond (Cambridge UP, 1992), co-author with Jeanne Colleran of Staging Resistance: Essays on Political Theatre (U Michigan P, 1998), and former editor of Theatre Topics.
