What's New

Ha Ha Ha!

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:39:00 +0000

I just re-read my last blog post, written almost one year ago, about how I hoped to become a more frequent poster. Truly, I wish I had been more diligent this last year, but I was too busy figuring out how to be a full-time professor. Now that I've got one year under my belt, it's time to start reflecting, or processing, or just ranting.

For today, just some idle observations:

I still find it somewhat disorienting to have become "Dr. Martinson." In the classroom and in emails, it's all good, but in rehearsals, or with some of the students with whom I am close, it's a little stuffy feeling. I have no idea what to call myself for this grant program I will be working on over the summer.
I need to carve out time to write my own research, even as I am developing, teaching, and grading. I went months without writing my own stuff. I think I even went months without reading outside of textbooks. This must change.
I missed out on a lot of valuable professional lessons as a graduate student - I treated grad school like a lifestyle and did not consider clearly enough the job training element of it. My mistakes aren't irreparable, but I see very clearly why it took me so long to land a job, and I see that I must up my game if I am going to be a competitive candidate in the future.
I value the unique experience that is teaching at Chicago State University. I have always been committed to forging alliances across lines of difference and to thoroughly considering, in the hopes of dismantling, discrimination based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and other differences. CSU, a primarily black institution, allows me to live this commitment and to deepen my understanding of the operations of oppression and my own place of privilege within our society.

Chicago Bound!

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:09:00 +0000

Hooray! I will be teaching in the Communications, Media Arts, and Theatre (CMAT) Department at Chicago State University this August. Lots to do between then and now, but once landed in Chicago, I hope to be a more frequent blogger as I track my first year as Full Time Faculty.

Until August...

Hello, December

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:25:00 +0000

Amazing the way time accelerates.

In November, I opened and closed Big Love at Caltech. We had a fabulous cast of undergraduates who really explored what this play meant, now.

Then I began making site visits to the various ensembles featured in the NET Micro-Fest: Critical Mass Performance Group, The Ghost Road Company, Watts Village Theater Company, and The Post Natyam Collective. All of these groups were amazing and insightful and wonderful, and they revived my belief that theatre just might be able to change the world.

In December, I indulged in the Micro-Fest. Then I recovered.

And in the middle of all of that, I applied (and keep applying) for academic jobs.

More specific writing on these events to follow.

Check Mee and the American Myth

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:08:00 +0000

I just finished reading Chuck Mee's memoir, A Nearly Normal Life, which was, of course, amazing, fantastic, insightful, poetic, and powerful. You know, like anything Chuck Mee writes. (Obviously, I'm a fan. And it seems that with Chuck Mee, you're either a fan or your decidedly NOT a fan, with no in-between space).

I love this:

In truth, though I didn't know about it at the time, there were some real hardcore deviants in America in the fifties, whose lives and work, like those of my friends in Barrington, were going to make the world more accommodating for me and for others who suffered from some form of difference. (189)

And then this:

The fifties was not an undifferentiated era of conformity; a great change was already under way, one of the most fundamental transformations in America in my lifetime - not an advance in technology, nor a growth in productivity, nor a new strategic place for America in the world, but more fundamental than any of those: a change of mind. (190)

I think of all the mental and emotional labor it took to act as if there was conformity, a nice normal normalness - to act that in the face of the obvious difference: the difference of a friend struck by polio, or of the gay person(s) in the community, or of the people of color that were woven into real life but not the ideal life of television and film, or of the things that we each don't feel that we're told we are supposed to feel. Yet the myths, the stories that took so much effort to believe in, did give comfort.

Not by coincidence, this topic emerged during rehearsal last night (Mee memoir, Mee play, Mee-reading dramaturg). As we discussed Olympia, we came to the realization that she has her illusion - so beautiful, so comforting, even if a little odd - of love and marriage and happiness. And by god she is going to make reality fit that illusion. Until it simply cannot.

I suppose the disillusion is inevitable for all of us, as individuals and as a nation. It is necessary, and yet so painful (most painful for those who have invested all their time and labor and energy into it) to see it washed away, to come to accept reality for what it is and still fight to change it tangibly, and not in fantasy only.

Dramaturgy is like...

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:50:00 +0000

Dramaturgy is like living in Borges’s library during the day and then emerging into Carnival at night.

I Miss You, Pleasant Rowland

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 08:51:00 +0000

I never thought I would say it.

I stepped into American Girl Place today - I needed to pick up the newest catalog, make sure I was correct about the theatre (it is no more), and just take a quick peek at the place in preparation for an article I am going to submit.

Dr. Martinson, this ain't your grad student's American Girl Place.

The American Girl that I wrote about in my dissertation, the one that so effectively straddled the line between a mom's wants and her daughter's wants, the one that masked its storeness by constructing itself as an empowering educational resource and an experiential destination, the one that schooled young girls in refined taste a la Bourdieu, allowing girls to gain fluency in upper middle class cultural practices like seeing theatre and cafe dining, that American Girl is gone. It has been overwritten in garish pinks and purples (wherefore art thou demure berry interior design theme?) and animated to look like an awful Bratz-meetz-American-Girlz mash-up (only NEW My American Girls dolls come to life online at innerstarU.com) and buried in too many flowers and stars and butterflies (with whimsical faux hand-drawn clip art!).

I miss the old American Girl.

Not that I retract my critiques. I don't. Old American Girl did put forward a simplistic narrative of American progress as basically good, with only a few minor bumps (displacing native peoples, slavery, manifest destiny, orphan trains) along the way to the multicultural utopia of today in which we are all the same (so long as we are upper middle class - and preferably white). Old American Girl did teach girls about competitive consumption and social positioning. And the Old American Girl Musical Theatre pieces did favor deadening theatrical practices, did enforce racial difference (but only for people of color), and did serve as a commercial brought to life.

And now? It still does all that, only now it all seems so cheap. Not the prices, mind you, NEVER the prices - as long as suckers are willing to shell out the same dollars and get less, then the joke is on them. But the crap (now literally crap) you can buy, the store, the experience, the brand - its all so cynically lessened. You can practically taste the Value Engineering that has happened when you walk through the doors of American Girl Place or page through the catalogs. You can almost see the corporate honchos sweating over the products, looking for ways to save $.01 here and another over there by skimping on design and production and quality. You can essentially hear the meetings in which marketers discuss how "archiving" their historical characters will create a buying rush AND allow the brand to grow by introducing new characters. It slaps you in the face, this rush to maximize profits by giving consumers less and less and telling them it's all the same.

It was bad enough to have old American Girl make so much money by artfully masquerading as a school, a library, a museum, and a dose of feminism. New American Girl doesn't even have to be artful about it.

I miss you, Pleasant Rowland.

A brief thought on directing

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:07:00 +0000

I love directing, being the one whose task it is to guide the storytelling of theatre. I love cultivating my vision, which all the time gets better and more refined through the input of my artistic team. But I want to resist the notion that directing is the pinnacle to which we should all strive. In fact, I want to resist the Director-as-God thing that dominates theatre production in our culture. Not that I think that there shouldn't, finally, be one person with the ultimate say in the room. I do, especially when that person is me. (Actually, to be completely honest, I think that even more when it isn't me and I wish it were me; I long for that authority most when I really wish my ideas were landing with (and really know that they are being dismissed by) the person who is in charge). It's just that, when I am the one at the helm of the ship, I really rely my collaborators.

Which is why I am so looking forward to participating in the NET (Network of Ensemble Theatres) Micro-Festival this December, and look forward to making connection with some of these theatres to join them in their collective endeavors. I really want to find new models of creation. Not that the prevailing system is bad or wrong - it can be great (I'm thinking especially of my work with Kamesha Jackson Khan) and it can produce amazing art. And, in my experience, it can also lead to really muddled and/or simple and/or boring work. It depends entirely on the director.

And THIS director wants to really take the risk to explore new ways of working, to see if maybe new forms of theatre might emerge.

Interdisciplinarity

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 01:16:00 +0000

I've been working the past week on a job application letter, and a significant portion of this specific call deals interdisciplinarity. It's a topic that keeps coming up. ATHE, for example, is looking to heighten the stakes of the MD (multidisciplinary) panels, to make them so in form and content, and not solely in name. Flexibility of approach, thought, and communication, and the ability and determination to always look further than one's own comfort zone, so vital to the creation of theatre, finally has gained traction in the academy.

But it's always been there, right?

Certainly my own approach to theatre - both study and creation - involves interdisciplinarity, which to me is one of the key defining features of dramaturgy. And when I think of my practical work, I always consider myself first a dramaturg and second a director. This, of course, follows my exposure to theatre - I was literally, chronologically, FIRST a dramaturg, and only LATER a director. But titles shift and I know this, and I love directing (truly, I love directing as much as I love dramaturgy) and I know this. My view of myself as a dramaturg has to deal with the sensibility with which I approach any theatre piece. That is, in an interdisciplinary manner.

Dramaturgy requires looking for connections across difference - often different research subjects, different methodologies, or, as in my current work with Caltech, entirely different worlds:science/technology/engineering and the arts. (There shouldn't be such a discernible distance between the sciences and the arts, but it is palpable and undeniable). I am struck by how many of our group are drawn to the theatre - really drawn in that you see them sort of crave touching that artistic side of humanity - and yet how quickly they limit that artistry by making it something small and quantifiable, and also denigrate it by deeming it something inessential and unserious. It is my task to really try to connect with this audience and stress to them the absolute necessity and vitality of art. And this requires all the interdisciplinary muscle flexing I can muster, because I need to basically show them that their mode of thinking, with the different processes and values that entails, is as necessary as is ours as artists. And that our work, our research, our creation, is as needed as the next scientific or technological advancement that they create.

Empty Space, pt. I

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:07:00 +0000

It's the end of September, and despite the blazing heat here in Los Angeles, the cycles of the academic year are kicking in and it is starting to feel like fall. After a rejuvenating eight days at Director's Lab West, I find myself refreshed and ready to dive into production work at Caltech, writing at home, and, of course, the job hunt across the nation.

Working on Big Love marks a new experience for me: this is the first show that I am repeating. I directed it several years ago at De LaSalle High School in Minneapolis (a production I still adore), and I am now dramaturging it at Caltech in Pasadena. This isn't my production, it's being performed with an entirely different set of actors in an entirely different context, and yet I was concerned that I might simply attempt to recreate what I had already done, and in that attempt, create something deadly.

Last night at auditions, reading as one of the sisters on stage (we are short of women right now), I looked out across the bare stage at the unpopulated auditorium and was struck by just how empty Brook's Empty Space is. The stage seemed immense and without structure. Which is always how it is, I realized, when we start on these creative journeys.

With my DLS ensemble, we had together constructed an edifice, an architecture in which our story was told. That building is gone (as it should be, since it was of that moment), and now a new one must be raised. Those collective handholds are gone, and maybe it is because they once existed so tangibly for me, and now do not, that I was able to notice their absence.

But this is always how it is: an empty, somewhat terrifying space that we come together to fill. We build so much through our doing theatre.

Directors Lab West

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:15:00 +0000

Huzzah!

I was accepted into Directors Lab West! I cannot wait to take a week to really immerse myself back into the art of directing. It's so easy to let the everyday overwhelm the artistic...that's why I am thankful that this program exists to provide the necessary break from the quotidian that enables art to happen.

I'm also thrilled at the prospect of deepening my ties to the Los Angeles theatre community. I'm ready to really make roots here.

Viva Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:37:00 +0000

I'm gearing up to see El Vez's Viva Christmas tour on December 18. What a perfect antidote to the Holiday Blahs - a new show backed by Los Straightjackets and sure to be filled with humor, political critique, and rock and roll. I am excited to see how this new show gets me thinking in new ways.

I just sent off an article on El Vez's use of spectacle, irony, and entertainment. In it, I condense a lot of the arguments I made in my dissertation, suggesting that El Vez is able to pierce through stupefying Debordian spectacle by picking up the ultimate spectacular joke - Elvis. Elvis becomes the common access point to a show that radically revises the political, social, and consumerist tropes that surround us. By embracing spectacle, humor, and entertainment, El Vez effectively flips our encounters with pop culture, allowing us to critically assess prejudice and injustice through a thoroughly pleasurable performance event. More news if it gets published.

Dramaturgy Workshop, RUR Have Come and Gone

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:50:00 +0000

It has been a very busy past few months.

I had a lovely time working with the students of ASU in our two-part dramaturgy workshop. An excellent and excited group of students participated - they were so engaged and had so many questions for me. It's exciting to know that dramaturgy strikes a chord of interest among students. There's at least a few budding dramaturgs in Tempe doing interesting work and learning more and more about the field.

R.U.R. at Caltech was extremely successful. It was a joy to stage this play - there's so much in it that comes to life when staged and not solely read. Kudos to our actors and artistic team. We completely transformed Dabney Lounge into a working theatre space and created a funny, yet poignant telling of the story.

It was really wonderful to immerse myself in Karel Capek's world - both the fictional world of the play and the historical one of the Czechoslovak Republic. His commitment to democracy comes through in his essays, and his insouciant wit make the reading delightful and touching.

Next up: Pasadena Babalon by George Morgan.

Dramaturg on the Road

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:17:00 +0000

I am very pleased to announce that in October, I will be traveling to Arizona State University to teach dramaturgical methodologies to first-year grad students in Dr. Tamara Underiner's Research Methods course. This is an exciting opportunity: I will get to develop a much condensed introduction to dramaturgy that I can then expand into a larger syllabus for future coursework.

I am also going to begin work with TACIT (Theatre Arts at the California Institute of Technology) in a more formal capacity, as a producer/dramaturg. I will be both producing and dramaturging the fall show, Karel Capek's R.U.R. (in a new translation!). The dramaturg end is much like what I did with Life of Galileo - production dramaturgy with a dash of dramaturgical suppllement-as-outreach thrown in. For the producer role, I will seek out donations in innovative ways. What exactly does that mean? I have a few ideas that I am developing, things that I hope will situate TACIT (and theatre, more generally) at the intersection between science and culture. More details to come.

Works-in-Progress

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:08:00 +0000

I have just seen the draft of the new LMDA Review and look forward to reading the final copy when it is published in the next few weeks. My conversation with installation dramaturg Lisa Arnold appears as the final article in the Review. It was great fun to collaborate with Lisa again, but more importantly, our discussion was informative to us, and we hope to the larger dramaturgical public as well. Lisa and I have worked together on many projects, but rarely have we ever sat down (virtually, as we did this all by email) to discuss our specific methodologies and how they differ with the very disparate work that we do. Drafting this article provided insight into her process, and it also allowed me to reflect on my own work and why I do what I do the way that I do. Dramaturgs, check it out!

I've also just returned from ATHE - always invigorating. I am beginning work on another article involving my work at Caltech. I would like to take some time with this piece, so that I can move it from focusing specifically on Life of Galileo, the piece I recently dramaturged, into a larger discussion of the role of a liberal arts education at a technical institute. I believe that the dramaturgical materials I prepared for our production served as a sort of outreach for the performing arts. I'm looking forward to starting up collaboration with Caltech again in a few weeks. I'm also planning to propose a roundtable discussion on our work at TACIT (Theatre Arts at the California Institute of Technology) for next year's ATHE in Los Angeles.

An Interesting Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:07:00 +0000

I've decided to undertake a Herculian task: to re-read Brockett. The great tome, which as a graduate student I found to be so heavy with information as to become soul-crushing, still stands as the archival Bible of sorts, though seemingly every few years someone creates a new theatre history book that seeks to rival its dominance. I'm curious to see if, with PhD in hand, the book becomes something new to me. I also want to determine if I can find through this experience a new pedagogy, a way of teaching theatre history so that it becomes alive and vital.

Right now, the biggest hurdle to this experiment is finding where I've stowed the book. During the dissertation writing and the dramaturging I've done of late, I have pulled it out on more than one occasion, just to check a name or review a snippet of history to make sure it's as I remember it. The problem is that I tend to leave my Brockett carelessly lying about after I've exhausted it or it's exhausted me. Then something happens - a house guest arrives, a party ensues, I rebel against the mountains of paper that clutter my world - and I shove it somewhere out of sight. This happens with some frequency. Other books get carefully reshelved in the haphazard yet workable library system I keep in my head (fiction here, theory there, plays in the bedroom closet, loosely grouped by topic or genre and sometimes even alphabetized), but Brockett always gets shoved somewhere nonsensical.

Case in point, I pulled my Dukore off of the shelf where it always is - in the back row of the scholarly works section, next to Foucault perhaps, hidden behind the works on consumer culture theory and democratic negotiation I find more pleasurable, and thus more useful. But there he was, waiting for me patiently, knowing I would want to supplement my Brockett with him.

Where are you Brockett? And what will you hold for me when I find you and once again crack your cover?

Geoff Proehl's Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:50:00 +0000

I've just finished Geoff Proehl's new book, Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey, which is excellent. It strikes me as akin to Anne Bogart's A Director Prepares in that it voices dramaturgical urges and pursuits without prescribing a set course of action, showing an awareness that each dramaturgical process is unique as well as a wariness of reducing dramaturgy down to the role of the dramaturg. Both his articulation of the "dramaturgical sensibility" and his critique of his own dramaturgical work at the Guthrie are lively, honest, and insightful. By weaving together a wealth of dramaturgical knowledge, personal narrative, and scintillating quotes from playtexts, he models through his writing the dramaturgy he practices. He combines the rigor of academic analysis with an open - almost vulnerable - reading of his own work to create a book that is engaging and important. Indeed, I would place this at the top of the required reading list for any course on dramaturgy.

I am preparing a full review of the book, which I will post here.

ASTR 2008

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:11:00 +0000

I've just returned from the annual ASTR conference. It was a strong conference this year, but two events really stand out for me. The first was the conversation on race in the election that was held Friday night. This was, for me, the topic of the week - Barack Obama's electoral victory. What was clear in the comments portion of the night is that so many of us are still processing just what this victory might mean. As Sonja Kuftinec said, she's sort of riding the wave of emotion and still trying to find her critical feet to start to analyze the event more intellectually. This was the sentiment of many. The panel members certainly had their critical wits about them; they each presented very nuanced and interesting looks at the Obama campaign and the Obama victory. They helped to start my own critical thinking. Tricia Rose mentioned that the significance of the Obama campaign and victory are often framed in the language of a Civil Rights Era understanding of race and race relations that no longer exists. That is, we are using an outdated language in the absence of a rhetoric of post-Civil Rights Era racism. This really struck a chord with me. I'm drafting an essay entitled "Barack Obama's Rehtoric of Inclusion" to pinpoint how he is reshaping common language usages - the "universal" we, the "Yes we can" chant, and the frank discussion of race in his speech following the Rev. Wright fall-out - along with his bi-racial identity to create a new way of speaking of, understanding, and (most importantly) addressing policy to fit the current state of race relations.

The other moment took place in my own seminar on Empathy and Activism. Laura and John set up an excellent model for discussion, and it really engaged the audience. We were divided into subgroups, and each member presented about one or two minutes on their individual papers before turning to a summary of the subgroup discussion held via email before the conference. From there, each subgroup posed to the larger group a question that emerged from their discussion. For ten minutes, we as a seminar struggled with each of these questions. Finally, at the end of the subgroup conversations and questions, we opened it up to the audience at large. The room was full and the conversation was lively and engaged. Some of the ideas that came out of that larger discussion, especially a discussion of agonism in the model of Chantal Mouffe, will impact my future work and thinking. That we should create not unity, but a space for dissent is a crucial idea for theatre (and theatre scholarship).

Election Reflections

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:14:00 +0000

With the election only eight days away, I've been considering a point I raised in my El Vez paper for ASTR. In it, I state:

Organized ruling blocs attempt to rearticulate the social and cultural landscape in emotional and affective terms, evacuating from them the potential for real political engagement. As cultural theorist Lawrence Grossberg submits in We Gotta Get Out of This Place, “precisely by repoliticizing and re-ideologizing all of the social relations and cultural practices of everyday life, the new conservatism is effectively depoliticizing a large part of the population. It is creating a ‘demilitarized zone’ within everyday life through a series of ‘strategies’ directed at the national popular,” (259). Thus when Sarah Palin sneers at the community activism of Barack Obama and applauds herself, on the basis of her hockeymomdom, for her “real” American political work, she erases a potent site of democratic political action (community organizing) and politicizes an emotionally constructed identity (hockey mom) that in fact offers no possibility for involvement. Being-like replaces doing.

The revelations that the highest paid member of Palin's staff is a make-up artist and that her wardrobe drained $150,000 from the RNC coffers raise an interesting point about Palin's role in this election. While much has been made of the price tag and how this distances her from her own hockey mom image, I don't think this is the real issue. Based on my experience growing up in an elite Minnesota suburb, hockey moms can and do spend a pretty penny on their wardrobes. Hockey is an expensive sport. Though I can nostalgically remember neighborhood boys (girls didn't play hockey in those days) playing pick-up games on the pond in our backyard, in reality the equipment, the ice time, and the fees for playing in leagues all add up. There is a status attached to playing hockey, just as there is status attached to funding hockey - and hockey moms often participate in the competitive consumption that surround the sport.

What I wish I was reading more of, then, is not about her distance from Joe Six Pack (or the Joe du jour, Joe the Plumber), but about her distance from feminism. If the highest paid member of your staff is there to make you look pretty - rather than, say, to educate you on foreign policy - then it is very clear what your role in the campaign is: to be the prop woman whose being-like (glamorous eye candy) replaces any sense of doing (actually helping to administrate and guide policy (or run the Senate, as Palin seems to believe)). Thus the political power of the Vice Presidency is evacuated. Which, maybe, is along the lines of what the framers thought, although that's a different inquiry entirely. My point is that we have a woman on the ticket who spouts everyday appeal and, at times, feminist sensibilities, and yet she is a woman who ultimately was chosen by the RNC precisely because she does not threaten patriarchy. At the same time, she distracts and detracts from real political engagement; when she asks, "Who is Barack Obama?" she redirects policy debate into identity.

I don't mean to vilify Palin as the creator of this strategy. Though she is a participant, she is not the originator. I do, however, believe that affective notions of identity and lifestyle are crucial elements of contemporary consumer culture. They are used to sell products, politics, and culture. Which is why I am so passionate about studying it; we need to find modes of resistance to consumer culture if we are to regain actual power.

Conference Planner Elect

noreply@blogger.com (misskarenjean) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:01:00 +0000

After an exciting ATHE conference, I unanimously became the Dramaturgy Focus Group's Conference Planner Elect. I'm very honored to have been elected to this position and am looking forward to more excellent conferences with strong showings from the Dramaturgs.

I also joined the Membership and Marketing Commitee and ATDS.

Irony is the New Empathy

noreply@blogger.com (Miss Karen Jean) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:35:00 +0000

I'm thrilled at the possibilities for exploration in my latest work on El Vez, The Mexican Elvis. I've been invited to participate in the 2008 ASTR Seminar "Unsettling Intentions: Activism and the Limits of Empathy." I feel like this paper will not only add an interesting voice to the discussion of this seminar, but will also help me deepen my exploration of the art of El Vez. Below is the abstract I submitted:

On the “Campaign Trail” with The Mexican Elvis, Irony is the New Empathy: Constructing Alliances through the Distance Between

Mounting a fictional Presidential campaign as El Vez, The Mexican Elvis, the El Vez 4 Prez tour marries rock show bravado to political theatre. Framed as a Town Hall meeting in which candidate El Vez (backed by the Lovely Elvettes and the Memphis Mariachis) fields debate questions from concerned citizens and answers them with song, the performance successfully voices progressive political sentiments precisely because it uses irony and humor – rather than empathy – as its mode of engagement. Though empathy should facilitate a “feeling with” another, it can dangerously slip into a “subject-centered key” (Doris Sommer) wherein solipsism masked as connection simultaneously objectifies the other and erases all inequalities in a wave of universal understanding. This paper will explore how El Vez uses irony to foreground the distance between subject positions in order to prevent such colonizing acts that limit the efficacy of empathy. Rather, by marking the imperfect fit of alterity, El Vez disallows the easy equivalencies of empathy in favor of more productive connections that bridge difference rather than elide it. Because it does not prescribe a “feeling with” each other as either a starting point or an end goal, El Vez’s use of irony expands his message to reach his diverse audience base. Irony in an El Vez concert allows for the revelation of alliances across multiple subject positions to create an ethical community enacted through thought, reflection, and rock and roll.

Assessment/Reflection

noreply@blogger.com (Miss Karen Jean) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:34:00 +0000

Having wrapped up two shows, finished the final draft of the dissertation, and successfully defended, I've finally had the time to assess my recent work and reflect a bit on the process of making theatre and conducting theatre scholarship.

Art (and art scholarship) is work. It is hard work. But it also a creative process. And the very frustrating reality of work + creativity is that the creative aspect is much more unreliable than the work aspect. That is, the muse only strikes occasionally, and the reality is that to get a show staged or a dissertation written, the worker has to get up every day and rehearse, or write, to put in the labor. And in a long and drawn out process like SDD and the dissertation, that labor greatly outweighs the inspirational moments. The key to handling this fact is learning how to best use that labor, to use it to bolster the creative, rather than a) letting it completely overrun the joy of artistic creation or b) leaving those moments of vision isolated within a muddy field.

To very honestly assess SDD, what we were very good at was the creative expansion of our vision. Where the labor should have been applied, however, was in editing out ideas that didn't work. Instead, we worked exceedingly hard to cram too many ideas in, to make mediocre ideas fit our concept, to attempt to realize amazing ideas on a nothing budget. 90% of our energy was wasted on work that was, quite frankly, not going to work.

With Room 17C, I was able to scale down the ideas to a very workable size. By focusing on movement as a site of meaning, I came closer to the precision I felt was lacking with SDD. And yet I realize that I was a few steps shy of the creative vision I needed for that piece.

Thank goodness, then, for the dissertation. What encourages me most about the dissertation is that I have continued excitement and enthusiasm for my research sites. I haven't said it all, in fact I have barely started to speak on these ideas.

ASTR

noreply@blogger.com (Miss Karen Jean) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:35:00 +0000

This year's ASTR was, in my opinion, the best I have attended. It was a wonderful weekend full of great scholarship and discussion. I really enjoyed the plenaries that I attended, especially the one with Scott Magelsson, Lisa Peschel, and John Fletcher. Not only was the scholarship excellent and engaging, but more importantly, the community they established both among themselves and the audience was unique. Lisa inserted into her paper three performative interludes, performed by the three speakers, that created a new sort of model that I hope others follow in the future. This model of teamwork carried through to the Q & A portion of the presentation. There was a moment when Lisa was searching for a phrase; an audience member helped her out so that the very meaningful discussion could continue. It was a moment of collectivity and support that I have not seen before at a major conference.

My own seminar was very interesting. I thought the level of the papers was remarkable - they were of extremely high quality of thought and execution. Even better, the discussion that we shared before and during the conference was very helpful and meaningful. I thought we were able to touch on very contentious issues of identity and identification in an ethical manner that opened up the possibility for dialogue and change.

ASTR

noreply@blogger.com (Miss Karen Jean) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:48:00 +0000

ASTR is a month away and I am looking forward to presenting my paper on Will Power's Flow as part of Seminar 10. I am beginning work on condensing my dissertation chapter on hip hop theatre into a proper seminar paper.

Dramaturgy-Specific

noreply@blogger.com (Miss Karen Jean) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:50:00 +0000

I am energized by the number of jobs that specifically mention dramaturgy. It is my intent to secure a position at a University at which I can implement a rigorous Dramaturgy program. I want to train young artists in this creative and collaborative field because I believe dramaturgy is integral to crafting a strong production. Because I already have a syllabus for an introductory level dramaturgy course, my goal is to develop syllabi for intermediate and advanced dramaturgy classes so that I have a full course of study ready to go. I would marry these to practical work, perhaps developing the dramaturgy classes to work in tandem with existing directing, playwrighting, Acting, and design programs. I want to ensure that dramaturgy as a field of study is put on par with the other theatrical disciplines. If my colleagues are amenable, I would like to create a final seminar - Directing, Playwrighting, Acting, Design, and dramaturgy - in which senior students would form collaborative groups to create a final production.