Text & Presentation, 2019

This volume is the sixteenth in a series dedicated to presenting the latest findings in the fields of comparative drama, performance, and dramatic textual analysis. Featuring some of the best work from the 2019 Comparative Drama Conference in Orlando, this book engages audiences with new research on contemporary and classic drama, performance studies, scenic design and adaptation theory in nine scholarly essays, two event transcripts and six book reviews. This year’s highlights include an interview with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and a roundtable discussion on the sixtieth anniversary of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.

Amy Muse is a professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has written a book on Sarah Ruhl as well as essays on drama, intimacy, and travel.

Edited by Amy Muse
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 223
Bibliographic Info: 5 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2020
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7038-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-4058-7
Imprint: McFarland
Series: The Comparative Drama Conference Series

Acknowledgments  vii
Preface  1
A Conversation with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Baron Kelly)  5
A Raisin in the Sun at 60: A Conversation (Teresa Gilliams, Nathaniel G. Nesmith, Janna Segal, Baron Kelly and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins)  27
Radical Resurrections: A Performance History of John Brown’s
Body (Victoria Lynn Scrimer)  49
Deep When: A Basic Design Philosophy for Addressing Holidays
in Historical Dramas (Michael Schweikardt)  63
Uncanniness and Alienation in Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit and
Airline Highway (M. Scott Phillips) 78
Precious Resources: Cultural Archiving in the Post-Apocalyptic
Worlds of Mr. Burns and Station Eleven (Paul D. Reich)  96
Past the Lyrical: Mythographic Metatheatre in Marina Carr’s
Phaedra Backwards (Phillip Zapkin)  113
Infidelity, Adaptation, and Textuality: Directing Late Medieval
and Early Modern French Farce (Scott D. Taylor)  130
Rectories Meet “One-Hour” Rooms: Williams on Summery and
Eccentric Loves (Jeffrey B. Loomis)  148
A Portrait of the Krapp as a Young[er] Man: Michael Laurence’s
Krapp, 39   (William Hutchings)  161
Waiting for Rothko (Doug Phillips)  174
Review of Literature: Selected Books
Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us (Doug Phillips)  189
Trevor Boffone, Teresa Marrero and Chantal Rodriguez, eds.
Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theater
(Osvaldo Sandoval-Leon)  193
Lopamudra Basu. Ayad Akhtar, the American Nation, and Its Others
After 9/11: Homeland Insecurity (Mahwash Shoaib)  197
Max Shulman and J. Chris Westgate, eds. Performing the Progressive
Era: Immigration, Urban Life, and Nationalism on Stage (Patrick Midgley)  200
Selby Wynn Schwartz. The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their
Afterlives (Alicia M. Goodman)  204
David Palmer, ed. Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama  (Melissa Rynn Porterfield)  207
Index  211

• From previous volumes: “Edited with care…preserves the conference experience by extending its scholarly dialogue to the wider reading community…many fine essays”—New England Theatre Journal