Troubling Traditions : Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the US.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (333 pages)
Intro -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Introduction: Troubling Traditions -- We See You, White Eurocentric Canon -- Holy Canons -- Why this Book Now? -- Mapping the Conversation -- Costs, Remixes, Approaches, and Departures -- We Believe In You, Future of US Theatre -- Toward a Future -- Works Cited -- Part I: Costs of Canonicity -- 1. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies -- Disciplining -- The Important and The Persuasive -- Final Thoughts: Undead White Men -- Works Cited -- 2. The Shakespeare Problem: A Conversation -- How do you Identify in the World, and What is your Relationship to the Work of William Shakespeare? -- How do you see Shakespeare's Work Operating Systemically up until this Point within Society? -- What do you think the Role of Shakespeare should be Within Theatre Training and the Field in General? -- How would you Train Theatre Makers? What do you see as Most Important to that Training? -- If it is to be Taught, How Would you Teach Shakespeare? -- Works Cited -- 3. "Go back to India if you hate my people so much": Consequences of Troubling the "Canon" in American Academia -- Scene 1 -- Scene 2 -- Scene 3 -- Scene 4 -- Notes -- Works Cited -- 4. Despite the Flames: A Conversation -- Methodology, or Why We Could Not Help but Make Such a Mess of a Straightforward Question About the US Theatrical Canon -- Where We are from and Why it Matters (or, Why We All Ended Up Talking About Land, Place, and Space to Talk About Theatre) -- On Why Home is a Four-Letter Word: -- Why Race Matters, Why Class Matters, but Mostly Why Race and Class Matter -- On Why We Hate Capitalism (and Why We Hate NAFTA Specifically) -- Aesthetics, or Reading Things We Were not Supposed to Know About. The Canon, or Why When We Try to Talk About Aesthetics We Talk About Politics and Vice-Versa -- We See You White American Theatre, or How to Self-Deport from the Regional Theatre -- Where We Find Our Homes Now, or Some Kind of Happy Ending -- A Coda, from Virginia Grise's Your Healing is Killing Me -- Works Cited -- 5. The Black Gaze/A Different Account -- I The Black Gaze -- II A Different Account -- Works Cited -- 6. Amidst the Rubble of the Ivory Tower -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Part II: Remixing Traditions -- 7. Shaking up the Canon with Cornerstone and OSF -- A. Navigating Canonical Rules with Hamlet and Oklahoma! -- Variations on a Sanskrit Classic -- B. Variations on Canonical Hauntings: Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella: A polyvocal fugue in three columns -- C. Can(n)ons -- Notes -- Works Cited -- 8. "Yo, Let's Steal Their Canons!": Arab and Arab American Canonical Multiplicities -- Introduction -- Identity -- Geography and Periodization -- Authorship -- Critical Intervention -- Function -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- 9. Your Heritage is Safe Here: Defining Three Indigenous Theatrical Canons -- A Brief History of the Canon, Punctuated by Eurocentrism and Calcification: -- The Three Canons of Native Performance -- Works Cited -- Appendix -- 10. "Frenemies" of the Canon: Our Two Decades of Studying and Teaching Disability in Drama and Performance -- Works Cited -- 11. The Uses of Awe -- Works Cited -- Part III: Fluid Approaches -- 12. Toward and Away: The Dramatic Tension of a Queer & -- Trans Canon -- Finding the queer in the traditional canon -- Queer Canonizing Projects -- Canonizing a Queer Body (of) Work -- Works Cited -- 13. Dancing With/Out the Canon -- Introduction -- Dance Studies, the Body, and the Academy -- My Body, My Canon? -- Revising for Representation: Historiography and Hierarchies -- Conclusion/Moving Forward -- Note. Works Cited -- 14. What Do We Do with the Musical Theatre Canon? -- Asking the Question -- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Canon (With apologies to Wallace Stevens and a nod to the Cole Porter list song) -- Preserving and Challenging the Traditional Musical Theatre Canon -- In, But Not Of -- The Musical Theatre Canon and the Women It Overlooked -- Canonical Show Tune Conventions -- Drowning Narcissus -- Refusing the Musical Theatre Canon: Burn the House Down -- Expanding the Canon -- Works Cited -- 15. Canons in Motion: Japanese Performance, Theatre History, and the Currents of Knowledge -- Our Canon(s) -- Problems with Canon(s) -- Teaching within and across canons -- Productive Intersections -- Canons in Motion -- Works Cited -- 16. The Kids' Table: Cross-institutional Treatment of the Canon and the Un-canonizable Nature of New Work -- Welcome -- Meet your Players -- Part I: Speed Dating, or, An Informal Interview -- Part II: Commodification and the Canon -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Part IV: Departures and Re-visions -- 17. Rethinking the Canon through the Digital -- The Problem: Canons Are (Bad) Samples -- Solution #1: Quantitative Analysis -- Solution #2: Digitized Texts -- Solution #3: Digitized Performances -- Open Syllabus -- What's Next -- Notes -- Works Cited -- 18. Antigone is Dead, Long Live Antigones!: Adaptation, Difference, and Instability at the Heart of the Traditional Western Canon -- Notes -- Works Cited -- 19. Redirecting Canonicity: PhD Exams and Actor Training -- On PhD Training -- On Actor Training -- Transcending the Canon in PhD and Actor Training: A Path Forward -- Note -- Works Cited -- 20. We Aren't Here to Teach What We Already Know -- Mechanical Canon -- Concrete Work on Mechanical Problems -- The Too-Big Canon -- Works Cited -- 21. How Do We Do the Queer Canon? -- Introduction -- We Transgress Disciplinary Boundaries. We Practice Critical Generosity -- We Turn to the Audience -- We Look to Queer Spaces -- We Say Why It Matters -- We Acknowledge the Past While We Teach the Present -- We Value Queer Mentorship -- Works Cited -- Index.
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.