Academic interests
American and British Theatre, 1930s American Art and Politics, Documentary Theatre, Theatre and Historiography, Performance Studies, Archive Studies, Violence and Resistance
PhD Project
Theatre of Citation: Violence and the Living Newspaper
My project explores the representation of violence in the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers. Like many works of American documentary art in the 1930s, these plays were preoccupied by both overt "subjective" violence, i.e., direct physical violence perpetrated by individuals, and more covert "systemic" violence, such as the harms caused by structural racism, capitalism and the patriarchy. I explore the Living Newspapers’ depiction of violence as a strategy for resistance, as well as the ways in which these texts position themselves as acts of resistance to the violence embedded in American culture, politics and history. I also compare the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers with the living newspaper form as it developed in the UK in the 1930s and 1940s. A central factor which shapes the representation of violence in these texts is their relationship to the news media. The thesis consequently explores the ways in which the living newspaper in both countries positioned itself as both participant in and alternative to the news media, foregrounding the role which the representation of violent acts played in this process.
In their treatment of violence (particularly the “citation” of violence onstage), the living newspapers tackled some of the key aesthetic, moral and ethical questions that continue to trouble documentary performance today. I argue that works of documentary theatre are governed by an “archival impulse,” incorporating diverse extra-theatrical elements (quotes, images, objects) to create their own performed, embodied archives. Violence shapes the ways in which living newspapers exist in and as archives, troubling the relationship between artists, audiences, researchers and the plays’ subjects. Attention to the issue of violence reveals that, far from being aesthetic “dead ends”, living newspapers grappled with issues that are familiar to contemporary political theatre makers and audiences: the value of art as activism, tensions around performance and authenticity, and the ethical and aesthetic valences of spectatorship and witnessing.
Background
Originally from California, I worked as a theatre history and literature teacher as well as a dramaturg and performer in New York City, prior to coming to Oslo. I have a BA in English & Theater Studies from Yale University and an MA in Shakespeare Studies from King's College, London.
Courses Taught
- Spring 2023: ENG2501 British Politics