This volume rests upon two premises: 1) That collective creation is pivotal to the evolution of the modern theatre; and 2) That women have been central to the emergence and development of collective creation.
    Though written to be read as a self-contained work, Women, Collective Creation, and Devised Performance is in fact the third volume in an ongoing body of research into collective creation and devising practices from 1900 to the present. Our two previous studies, A History of Collective Creation and Collective 
Creation in Contemporary Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), argued that modern collective theatre-making praxis may be best understood as an ongoing, resistant tradition emerging, in its European and North American contexts, circa 1900 and running throughout the twentieth century and on into present-day devising practices. Our goal at the inception of this body of work had been to contest the broadly accepted view of collective creation as a minor phenomenon peculiar to the New Left political theatre of the 1960s and ’70s, associated in the main with developments in the United States, Canada, Quebec, and England (and to a lesser extent, France).  Working in collaboration with an international team of scholars, we sought to elucidate the aesthetic, processual, and political links between theatrical devising in the contemporary period, collective creation practices of the ’60s and ’70s, and pre-war experiments in collaborative theatre-making—and to do so from an internationalist perspective.  In so doing, we worked to draw out both resemblances and divergences in collective practice, and in the aesthetic, social, and/or political impulses underpinning those practices, in their particular cultural and historical contexts.
    This new volume seeks to deepen that historicization, by investigating the centrality of women to the development of collective and devised theatre-making in the modern and contemporary period. Our project is two-fold: to historicize the enormous, ongoing contribution of women to collective creation; and to investigate questions about the relationship between gender and collaborative process, authority, authorship, and attribution.
    Women must be credited with a central, foundational, and continued role in the development and transmission of practices of collective and devised theatre-making since the start of the twentieth century.  A cursory scan of a few prominent names in North America and Europe hints at the consideration women demand in the history of collective performance praxis: directors such as Joan Littlewood, Judith Malina, Ariane Mnouchkine, Elizabeth LeComte, Tina Landau, Anne Bogart, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, Lin Hixson, and Julia Varley; pioneering teachers such as Viola Spolin, Suzanne Bing, Rena Mirecka, and Roberta Carreri; companies and networks such as Lilith, WOW Cafe, At the Foot of the Mountain, Spiderwoman Theater, Guerilla Girls, Omaha Magic Theatre, Split Britches, SITI Company, Nightwood Theatre, Théâtre Expérimental des Femmes, The Magdalena Project, FEMEN, and Pussy Riot; choreographers such as Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Aileen Passloff, Trisha Brown, and Mary Overlie; playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Helene Cixous, Deb Margolin, Muriel Miguel, and Megan Terry.  And yet, the deep engagement of women in collectively generated performance has been grossly under-historicized.
    This volume traces a sprawling lineage, revealing a hitherto unacknowledged web of transmission—connecting, by way of example, the educational play movement spearheaded by such reformers as Dr. Maria Montessori in Italy, Margaret Naumberg in New York, and Neva Boyd of Chicago’s Hull-House, to the theatrical devising pedagogies of Suzanne Bing in 1920s’ France and Viola Spolin in 1930s’ Chicago, to the collective practices of (among others) Théâtre du Soleil and the Living Theatre in the 1960s, to the nomadic performances of the women of the Odin Teatret in 1980s’ Europe, to Pussy Riot’s recent protests in Russia.  In doing so, the book further elucidates a history of modern theatre begun in our previous volumes, in which the seemingly marginal and disparate practices of collective creation are revealed as central, and women practitioners further revealed as primary progenitors, renovators, stewards, and disseminators of these practices.  The history of the modern theatre is a history of collaborative methods and the history of collaborative methods is a women’s history.

This article considers the figure of Hester from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and its adaptation to contemporary African American and Irish dramatic writing. It focuses on In the Blood (1999) and Fucking A (2001) by African American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, as well as Irish dramatist Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats… (1998). These theatre-makers consciously manipulate The Scarlet Letter in that each Hester figure is a racially different and already marginalized woman who goes on to murder her child. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, I argue that Parks and Carr combine complex and overlapping processes of adaptation to expose the slippery relationship between signification and affect, and to reveal how affective economies shape and control racial and gendered bodies as well as their movements in space. In doing so, these dramatists call into question accepted conventions of judgement, justice and morality. Through processes of domestication, recontextualization and actualization, Parks and Carr engage complexly with hotly debated issues within their individual national contexts and in the wider, western milieu that they share.

check out the video of the production: https://vimeo.com/98168314

Friday, May 31, 2013
Art performance in former Dallas drug house is DFW’s most fearless this year
by Brentney Hamilton


Dead White Zombies' T.N.B. runs through June 22 in a "former drug house" at 319 Poe Street in West Dallas.
WEST DALLAS — It's a former drug house in West Dallas -- at least that's what the flyers claim. Paint chips and discarded plywood litter the broken sidewalk that leads from the empty back parking lot through knee-high weeds to the house where local performance art collective Dead White Zombies' newest site-specific installation takes place. It's arguably the most important "entertainment" that the Dallas arts community will see all year.

I knew Dead White Zombies -- headed by UT Dallas professor Thomas Riccio -- would produce an intriguing, immersive experience; there was no doubt that its new production, mysteriously titled T.N.B., would be shocking enough or just plain odd enough to warrant a $15 admission ticket. Knowing now what T.N.B. offers, I would have paid significantly more.

Written, directed, cast, and produced by Riccio and brought to life by
a host of immensely talented actors, T.N.B. is frightening, sickening, humorous, unnerving, disturbing, and astonishing. There is no way to prepare for it, except by perhaps brushing up on your Cornel West, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Malcom X, and blackploitation films. Read a critical review of Django Unchained while you're at it, since this production was written by an ostensibly non-African American writer. And, be prepared to confront the ghosts of your upbringing, whether they manifest more obviously in the form of White Guilt or still-stinging, if tacit, colonial oppression. No one is getting off the hook here.

Without revealing too much, T.N.B. is graphic. We repeat: T.N.B. is graphic. There are "f" words and "n" words. There is simulated violence of the most chilling description. And, actors will look you in the eyes after committing atrocities and rhetorically ask your approval.

Is it acceptable for artistic performances to use racially charged epithets? Is it forgivable, in a world where newsfeeds are constantly filled with reports of senseless shootings, for actors to brandish prop guns literally in the faces of -- and sometimes pointed at -- otherwise unassuming viewers? Of course these tactics are meant to disturb -- and it's clear that Riccio doesn't cheat with them simply for a cheap thrill. In fact, in later scenes, characters explicitly discuss the cultural implications, motivations, and immense power of the "n" word and the term "ho." In the end, Riccio's lesson is one of ritualistic healing, against all odds, and against miring self-destruction.

But, despite the work's high-minded message, compelling arguments stand against artistic portrayals of racial violence -- both physical and verbal. Should such be avoided at the risk of inadvertent glamorization or at the accusation of gratuitous emotional pornography? Who suffers collateral damage? What are the consequences and who bears the responsibility? I don't know. I am not entirely comfortable condoning the usage of misogyny and racism, even recognizing that both are used in an artistic context as tools to authentically depict a meaningful story. But, without T.N.B.'s aggressive push, neither would I have frankly and honestly asked myself those -- and so many more -- significant questions.


The action of T.N.B. takes place in a dilapidated house with a circular interior path -- making use of this set up, characters jump from room to room, often coming perilously close to onlookers. Whenever action moves into a different room, viewers are welcome to follow and stand in a corner or to watch through a series of projections on screens and walls, which capture the action via security cameras. The point is voyeurism. Ever wish you were in the same room as the characters of Requiem for a Dream or Dead Presidents? Imagine if those screenplays were spliced with an African American Studies lecture and doused with clever, poetic turns of phrase. While the writing for the other Dead White Zombies production I saw -- last summer's Flesh World -- was cerebral and academic, T.N.B. attains all of the former's intellectual bite while creating a slightly less abstract and more accessible narrative. You will care about these characters. And, sometimes that empathy will rock your moral core.
Shoring up the superb writing, each actor's performance is, across the board, phenomenal. It is a disservice to any of the performers to discuss one performance over any other, though Rhianna Mack's emotional acrobatics left my jaw dropped. (It should be noted that I am not a theater critic: This statement is made simply from my lay person's appreciation for art house cinema.) Each actor fully commits, even with the added obstacle of staying in character while occasionally zig-zagging around extremely nervous viewers. At one point, I could feel my heart thudding against my balled fists, and glancing around the room, I noticed other viewers' clenched jaws and tightly crossed arms. Afterward, at least three immediately lit cigarettes.
While it is an understatement to say that Dallas supports a fine theater community with a number of immensely polished and established productions, to my knowledge, no other company is experimenting with the kind of intellectually stirring and socially urgent content matter that Dead White Zombies so brazenly tackles. It is, arguably, the most significant artistic contribution to the Dallas community because of its experimentation, radicalism, and fearlessness.

Dead White Zombies' T.N.B. is a labor of love, and one of the collective's biggest challenges has been advertising its existence. The production runs through June 22 on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and tickets are available online.

How does an attention to contemporary black artistic practices animate activism of Black Lives Matter—a movement founded by three black women Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi
—and the Movement for Black Lives? How might arts leaders document and theorize black aesthetics in relationship to U.S. politics? How might arts leaders produce, research, and curate black artists and art committed to dismantling anti-black racism? As many discourses on blackness are framed around resistance to anti-blackness, how does full humanity for black art and black people manifest? What are possibilities of commitment to black people and black art amidst COVID-19?

This course considers these questions by examining canonical and contemporary art practices that champion black humanity, and intervene in anti-black racism in the criminal justice system, housing, education, employment, and everyday life. Students study foundational and contemporary critical theory invested in black aesthetics, black politics, black feminism, black queerness, black resilience, black excellence, and black joy. Guest artists (including Kemi Adeyemi, Black Embodiments Studio, Shamell Bell, street dance activist scholar, Elisheba Johnson, Wa Na Wari, Miss Jay O’Leary, Sound Theatre Company, and Nikki Yeboah, playwright and professor) will visit the course virtually, and students will engage black aesthetics in practices such as poetry, memoire, performance art, theater, dance, music, photography, film, and visual art. The course runs current with Professor Mahmoud’s the Spring 2020 exhibition at Hedreen Gallery (moved to a virtual space given COVID 19), “Abstractions of Black Citizenship: African American Art from St. Louis,” and students will engage the artists, curatorial process, and aesthetics of this exhibition.

Course assignments include writing “art critiques” on black arts and producing three short artistic projects. No artistic experience is required. The final Arts Leadership project (with attention to mission, aesthetics, budget, operations, marketing, and venue) includes a choice of a) an artistic production proposal (and optional production/performance), b) a curatorial or venue proposal, or c) a creative/research project such as an artist profile, zine, or podcast.

Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance examines collective and devised theatre practices internationally--with emphasis on Russia, Europe, and North America--from the late 20th century, into the present. Building upon the authors’ previous work, A History of Collective Creation, this volume situates contemporary collective creation in a tradition which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and traces the aesthetic, social and political shifts that have marked this mode of theatre making, from mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, to present-day devising practices.

This article considers the figure of Hester from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and its adaptation to contemporary African American and Irish dramatic writing. It focuses on In the Blood (1999) and Fucking A (2001) by African American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, as well as Irish dramatist Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats… (1998). These theatre-makers consciously manipulate The Scarlet Letter in that each Hester figure is a racially different and already marginalized woman who goes on to murder her child. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, I argue that Parks and Carr combine complex and overlapping processes of adaptation to expose the slippery relationship between signification and affect, and to reveal how affective economies shape and control racial and gendered bodies as well as their movements in space. In doing so, these dramatists call into question accepted conventions of judgement, justice and morality. Through processes of domestication, recontextualization and actualization, Parks and Carr engage complexly with hotly debated issues within their individual national contexts and in the wider, western milieu that they share.

Taking its cue from Eugene O'Neill's questioning of «faithful realism», voiced by Edmund Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night, this book examines the distant legacy of the Irish American playwright in contemporary multiethnic drama in the U.S. It explores the labyrinth of formal devices through which African American, Latina/o, First Nations, and Asian American dramatists have unconsciously reinterpreted O'Neill's questioning of mimesis. In their works, hybridizations of stage realism function as aesthetic celebrations of the spiritual potentialities of cultural in-betweenness. This volume provides detailed analyses of over forty plays authored by such key artists as August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, José Rivera, Cherríe Moraga, Hanay Geiogamah, Diane Glancy, David Henry Hwang, and Chay Yew, to give only a few prominent examples. All in all, Labyrinth of Hybridities invites its readers to reassess the cross-cultural patterns characterizing the history of twentieth century American drama.