Staging Race and Gender in the Era of Contemporary Crises: Dramas of African American Women Playwrights

IF 0.1 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

American, British and Canadian Studies Pub Date : 2022-12-01 DOI:10.2478/abcsj-2022-0017

Ifeta Čirić-Fazlija

{"title":"Staging Race and Gender in the Era of Contemporary Crises: Dramas of African American Women Playwrights","authors":"Ifeta Čirić-Fazlija","doi":"10.2478/abcsj-2022-0017","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Starting from the premise that contemporary crisis is a pervasive continuation of the modern “series of interrelated crises” (Fernández-Caparrós and Brígido-Corachán vii), this article examines the manner in which the US theater has responded to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously considering crises as “agents of change and transformation” (xvii) and bearing in mind the #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter movements, the article questions the likelihood of contemporary American theater overcoming its own crisis of representation. Relating modern and current crises, the essay first outlines twentieth century dramatic literature and theatersi against the backdrop of the World Wars, the 1918 health crisis, economic depression, and post-war (racialized) society, focusing on plays by American women of color. The study then centers on dramatic and theatrical developments brought about by the annus horribilis of 2020, surveying new genres, authors and performances, and discerning no significant improvement in systemic discrimination on Broadway stages. The essay also offers complementary reading of Trouble in Mind (1955), a meta-drama mirroring systemic racial and gender discrimination in American theaters, and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011) which unravels similar issues, albeit in the film industry.","PeriodicalId":37404,"journal":{"name":"American, British and Canadian Studies","volume":"148 1","pages":"54 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American, British and Canadian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/abcsj-2022-0017","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract Starting from the premise that contemporary crisis is a pervasive continuation of the modern “series of interrelated crises” (Fernández-Caparrós and Brígido-Corachán vii), this article examines the manner in which the US theater has responded to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously considering crises as “agents of change and transformation” (xvii) and bearing in mind the #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter movements, the article questions the likelihood of contemporary American theater overcoming its own crisis of representation. Relating modern and current crises, the essay first outlines twentieth century dramatic literature and theatersi against the backdrop of the World Wars, the 1918 health crisis, economic depression, and post-war (racialized) society, focusing on plays by American women of color. The study then centers on dramatic and theatrical developments brought about by the annus horribilis of 2020, surveying new genres, authors and performances, and discerning no significant improvement in systemic discrimination on Broadway stages. The essay also offers complementary reading of Trouble in Mind (1955), a meta-drama mirroring systemic racial and gender discrimination in American theaters, and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011) which unravels similar issues, albeit in the film industry.

查看原文本刊更多论文

当代危机时代的上演种族与性别:非裔美国女剧作家的戏剧

从当代危机是现代“一系列相互关联的危机”(Fernández-Caparrós和Brígido-Corachán vii)的普遍延续这一前提出发，本文考察了美国战区应对COVID-19大流行爆发的方式。同时将危机视为“变革和转型的推动者”(xvii)，并牢记#MeToo和Black Lives Matter运动，文章质疑当代美国戏剧克服自身表现危机的可能性。这篇文章结合了现代和当前的危机，首先概述了20世纪的戏剧文学和戏剧，以世界大战、1918年的健康危机、经济萧条和战后(种族化)社会为背景，重点关注美国有色人种女性的戏剧。然后，研究集中在2020年恐怖之年带来的戏剧和戏剧发展上，调查了新的流派、作者和表演，发现百老汇舞台上的系统性歧视没有显著改善。这篇文章还提供了对《心中的烦恼》(1955年)和《顺便说一下，认识维拉·斯塔克》(2011年)的补充阅读，后者揭示了类似的问题，尽管是在电影行业。《心中的烦恼》是一部反映美国影院系统性种族和性别歧视的元戏剧。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

American, British and Canadian Studies Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory

CiteScore

0.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

10 weeks

期刊介绍： Founded in 1999, American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, is currently published by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Re-launched in refashioned, biannual format, American, British and Canadian Studies is an international, peer-reviewed journal that sets out to explore disciplinary developments in Anglophone Studies in the changing environment forged by the intersections of culture, technology and electronic information. Our primary goal is to bring together in productive dialogue scholars conducting advanced research in the theoretical humanities. As well as offering innovative approaches to influential crosscurrents in contemporary thinking, the journal seeks to contribute fresh angles to the academic subject of English and promote shape-changing research across conventional boundaries. By virtue of its dynamic and varied profile and of the intercultural dialogue that it caters for, ABC Studies aims to fill a gap in the Romanian academic arena, and function as the first publication to approach Anglophone studies in a multi-disciplinary perspective. Within the proposed range of diversity, our major scope is to provide close examinations and lucid analyses of the role and future of the academic institutions at the cutting edge of high-tech. With this end in view, we especially invite contributions in the fields of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Language and Linguistics, Multimedia and Digital Arts, Translation Studies and related subjects. With its wide subject range, American, British and Canadian Studies aims to become one of the academic community’s premium scholarly resources.