Troubling traditions : canonicity, theatre, and performance in the US / edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Matthew Moore, and Angela Farr Schiller.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Moore, Matthew Robert, editor.

Schiller, Angela Farr, editor.

Mantoan, Lindsey, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American drama--History and criticism.

American drama.

Theater--United States--History.

Theater.

Canon (Literature)--History and criticism.

Canon (Literature).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (333 pages)

Place of Publication:

London, England ; New York, New York : Routledge, [2022]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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

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?

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

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 ()

5. The Black Gaze/A Different Account

I The Black Gaze

II A Different Account

6. Amidst the Rubble of the Ivory Tower

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

8. "Yo, Let's Steal Their Canons!": Arab and Arab American Canonical Multiplicities

Introduction

Identity

Geography and Periodization

Authorship

Critical Intervention

Function

Conclusion

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

Appendix

10. "Frenemies" of the Canon: Our Two Decades of Studying and Teaching Disability in Drama and Performance

11. The Uses of Awe

Part III: Fluid Approaches

12. Toward and Away: The Dramatic Tension of a Queer &amp

Trans Canon

Finding the queer in the traditional canon

Queer Canonizing Projects

Canonizing a Queer Body (of) Work

13. Dancing With/Out the Canon

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

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

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

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

18. Antigone is Dead, Long Live Antigones!: Adaptation, Difference, and Instability at the Heart of the Traditional Western Canon

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

20. We Aren't Here to Teach What We Already Know

Mechanical Canon

Concrete Work on Mechanical Problems

The Too-Big Canon

21. How Do We Do the Queer Canon?

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

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-00-303141-2

1-000-48638-9

1-003-03141-2

9781003031413

OCLC:

1283848494