Theater as Data: Computational Journeys into Theater Research Miguel Escobar Varela. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021; pp. viii + 222, 21 illustrations, 13 datasets, 4 code samples, 4 videos. $75 cloth, $29.95 paper, Open Access e-book.

Abstract

Enola Gay. What keeps the image of flight aloft in the American imagination is a technophilia that conceals violence through the aestheticized and distanced act of bombing, further realized in the drone strike. The American infatuation with flight is inextricable from how it aesthetically and anesthetically wields violence that enables the American willing suspension of disbelief that we are not performing violence ourselves. Despite these issues, Magelssen should be commended for focusing on this topic with sensitivity. Throughout, he thoughtfully engages with performance studies to connect the specificity of the historical archive with contemporary culture and politics. He takes seriously the ways in which flight has not only been central to the American cultural imagination, but also how that figuration is fundamentally shaped by disciplinary regimes of race, gender, and nation. In so doing, Magelssen effectively makes the case for flight’s centrality to America’s image of itself, with performance as one of its foundational elements.