Introduction: Re/presentations of Crisis in Twenty-First-Century US Literature and Culture

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.

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The Activism of Dance Performance in Appalachia: Utilizing the Arts to Address Social and Environmental Crisis and Injustice in the Mountains

Burriss

2022

American, British and Canadian Studies

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For well over a century, the human and more-than-human of Central Appalachia have endured oppression and exploitation, primarily due to natural resource extraction. In spring 2008, the author led a dark touri to a mountaintop removal coalmining site in Southern West Virginia for colleagues, which included Dance Professor Deborah McLaughlin. As a result, the two collaborated on three evening-length dance/theater works highlighting social and environmental crises and injustices in the region. The performances incorporated contemporary dance, poetry, the spoken word, and the visual arts, as well as contemporary and traditional music. The first, Eating Appalachia: Selling Out to the Hungry Ghost, focused on mountaintop removal coalmining and its environmental and cultural destruction. With Sounds of Stories Dancing, the duo paid homage to millions of mountain residents forced to leave the region to find stable employment, despite longing to remain. In the final piece, The Shadow Waltz, they honored the lives of coalminers with black lung disease, as well as their families. This essay discusses the challenges of creating art that critiques socially constructed messages portrayed as given truths, as well as the educational and social successes of daring to dance truth to power.

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Introduction: Re/presentations of Crisis in Twenty-First-Century US Literature and Culture

Cited by 4 publications

References 9 publications

OUP accepted manuscript

OUP accepted manuscript

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

The Activism of Dance Performance in Appalachia: Utilizing the Arts to Address Social and Environmental Crisis and Injustice in the Mountains

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