Volume 34, Issue 1, March 2024
By Susanne Shawyer
Why theatre? I ask all my students this question on the first day of class. Whether they are majors eager for a career in the arts or non-majors who have elected to spend a few months studying theatre, the answer is often the same. Why theatre? Because at some point in their lives, they found connection, community, or inspiration through a live performance experience. The artists and practitioners speak of the joy of ensemble and backstage camaraderie. Those who see themselves primarily as audience recount collective gasps, communal tears, and energy exchange with performers. Why theatre? Because theatre is an artform of collaborative storytelling. Theatre connects.
This issue of Theatre Topics explores how we connect through theatre and examines how we could connect better. It takes its inspiration from the 2023 Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference theme "Building from the Rubble: Centering Care" and corresponding call to action that challenged the profession to "see what we might become and achieve collectively when the entire field centers equity, empathy, and historically marginalized voices" ("ATHE 2023"). The authors who contributed to this issue ask big questions about the state of the profession and how we can center care in our professional relationships. They call for us to examine how we connect to our students and wider communities through the everyday work that we do, from selecting a season to teaching script analysis. They examine systems that replicate bias and privilege. They offer alternate structures that support broad definitions of scholarly and artistic excellence and feature relationships of connection and care.
In her article "Critical Conversations: Emerging BIPOC Critics Reimagine Theatre Criticism through the Digital," Michelle MacArthur explores how the field can resist the historical inequities of legacy media theatre criticism by centering connection, conversation, and collaboration. MacArthur's case study is Taking on the World, a mentorship program for emerging BIPOC critics created in collaboration with Toronto's Intermission magazine and Soulpepper Theatre's pandemic audio play series Around the World in 80 Plays. The project was built around conversation with artists, BIPOC mentors, and participants, resulting in dialogic critical responses that experimented with form and offered a plurality of voices. MacArthur argues that this model can not only "unsettle entrenched hierarchies between critic and artist, artist and audience, and critic and reader" but also produce "work that reflects the range of responses invited by any performance." I encourage readers further interested in ways that arts criticism can resist structures of privilege and inequity to engage this essay in conversation with Adam Versényi's "Arts Criticism Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century," published online in our last issue, which takes up similar issues in the theatre classroom.
In "Factors Affecting Theatre Faculty Job Satisfaction: A Thematic Analysis," Kevork Horissian, Biliana Stoytcheva, and Wei You discuss their findings from 2022's Theatre Faculty Job Satisfaction and Campus Climate Survey. Perhaps unsurprisingly, what theatre faculty enjoy most is what theatre does best: connection and collaboration. Relationships with students, creative collaborations, institutional cultures of shared goals and transparent communications, and a diversity of identities and perspectives all contribute to job satisfaction. Job dissatisfaction comes from heavy workloads, inadequate financial support, and murky promotion and tenure guidelines. As they dive deep into questions of institutional culture, faculty evaluation, and DEI initiatives, the authors provide a valuable snapshot of the state of the profession. By providing quantitative and qualitative analysis of job satisfaction, this article is essential reading for chairs, deans, program heads, and other administrators who advocate for the value of educational theatre programs.
The first of our Notes from the Field is Claire Syler's "Visit to a Familiar Planet: Some Questions to Ask Before Season Selection." Inspired by Elinor Fuchs's well-known script analysis model "EF's Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play," Syler challenges us to consider our "regional, institutional, and local world as a social text that is worth reading before (or alongside) selecting plays for a theatrical season." Her provocation asks us to examine intentionally and thoughtfully our spaces, communities, and local histories in order to produce theatre that truly connects. I hope Syler's work is taught and read as often as Fuchs's essay, as new generations of theatre-makers build exciting, equitable, and care-centered theatrical collaborations. I invite readers interested in thinking through the relationship between theatrical production and local community to read Syler's work in conversation with Deborah James and Svetlana Rogachevskaya's "Red Summer Project: Returning to Live Theatre While Putting Mission and Vision into Practice," published online in our last issue, whose case study intersects with many of Syler's useful prompts.
Next, Jeanne Tiehen reflects on her experiences with Long COVID and the disease's impact on her work as a teacher, scholar, and theatre-maker. Tiehen discusses how her embodied knowledge as a theatrical practitioner failed her in medical settings but also supported her own navigation of a new and fragile body. She ends her Note with lessons learned about her relationship with her self, her practice, and her pedagogy. These lessons embrace the messiness of process, center care in relationships, and emphasize connection. Tiehen challenges readers to embrace these lessons that promote more sustainable modes of living, teaching, and creating.
In this issue's online Note, Mackenzie L. Bounds describes her script analysis template, useful for collaborative mapping of student responses, questions, and analysis of dramatic literature. As she details her classroom exercise for analyzing and discussing scripts, Bounds shows how her model encourages students to "better identify the ways that plays are always political" artworks that are "intricately, deliberately woven rhetorical texts borne by entire ecologies of influence." Bounds's mapping exercise reminds students that, like playwrights, they also bring a unique positionality and political position to the work. Her pedagogical model demonstrates how harnessing the collaborative nature of scholarly inquiry yields positive outcomes in the script analysis classroom.
The March issue of Theatre Topics typically includes reports from the previous year's Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference. These reports mark not only the changing scholarly focus and challenges of the organization over the years but also the unsung volunteer labor of its membership. Past March issues have included keynote speeches from artists like Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Bill Rauch, Gabriela Serena Sanchez, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, remarks from ATHE presidents such as Patricia Ybarra and Harvey Young, and records of insightful plenary roundtables. ATHE is both a community of multiplicity and an organization of multiple communities—scholars, artists, teachers, and leaders who come together in shifting groups to learn, grow, and collaborate. At the heart of ATHE are its focus groups. As Immediate Past President Chase Bringardner often has said to me: "ATHE is its focus groups, and the focus group are ATHE." Therefore, this year's ATHE report shines the spotlight on new focus group activity.
After Vice President for Conference 2023 Dani Snyder-Young's invitation to question, converse, and rebuild ATHE together through collaborative inquiry and difficult conversations, in this section you'll find reports from new focus groups outlining brief histories of their development, founding, mission, and activities. Writing for the newly formed Middle Eastern Theatre Focus Group, Sarah Fahmy describes the group's goals of elevating the voices of the marginalized and supporting MENA scholars. Fahmy argues that "a truly inclusive future of theatre is only possible when we extend access to the various identities that make up the rich tapestry of our theatre world." Writing for the new Disability, Theatre, and Performance Focus Group, Winter Phong likewise emphasizes the importance of inclusion, access, and advocacy, particularly for disabled people in our profession. She highlights the group's goal of "furthering the knowledge, study, and practice of theatrical and non-theatrical performances of disability." Last in this section is a report on the recently revised name, mission, and work of the Wellness, Aging, and Community Focus Group (formerly Senior Theatre Research and Performance) by Andrew Gaines, Erika Hughes, and Georgia Grace Bowers. They emphasize the importance of relationships, collaboration, and interdependence, not just in their focus group's activities and scholarship but also for the larger organization as "ATHE continues to reconsider, reshape, and reform its very structural underpinnings in the service of creating a more socially just and equitable future."
The question of how we can connect more meaningfully and thoughtfully to each other continues in this issue's special section, "Internationalizing the US Academy," curated by Jyana S. Browne, Yizhou Huang, and Caitlin Marshall. These three scholars collaborated with international graduate students and faculty to create this series of Notes from the Field detailing the achievements and frustrations of our international colleagues. Inspired by the late Po-Hsien Chu (1986-2022), Browne, Huang, and Marshall organized this special section to "make visible the invisible labor and nimble adaptations of our international colleagues so that we might further coalitional and solidarity work and move toward institutional reforms." With contributions from Marissa Béjar, Q-mars Haeri, Yizhou Huang, Marjan Moosavi, Gustavo Prado Sampaio, Zerihun Birehanu Sira, Marcos Davi Silva Steuernagel, Rini Tarafder, and Eunwoo Yoo, this section asks Theatre Topics readers and ATHE members to take seriously the concerns of international colleagues. It urges us to work toward dismantling barriers to full access in the US academy.
Reading descriptions of the experiences of international graduate students, outlined by Yizhou Huang and the "Internationalizing ATHE" roundtable, I was struck by how little has changed in the two decades since my own time as an international graduate student in the United States. How well I remember the financial challenges faced by international students that had me weekly counting pennies, and the stress of having just one year after graduation to secure that coveted tenure-track job before my visa expired. Like Q-mars Haeri and Rini Tarafder, I also encountered the dissonance of cultural knowledge value. While I knew a lot about Michel Tremblay, Daniel MacIvor, and Sharon Pollock, Canadian theatre had little value for my American peers. Instead, I found myself in the library, frantically teaching myself about the United States Constitution to better understand a required performance of Holly Hughes's Preaching to the Perverted. I don't regret my experiences as an international graduate student—they activated my curiosity and built resilience—but I certainly understand how they can add stress to graduate students already worried about a precarious job market and, as Marjan Moosavi notes, "a certain diasporic anxiety." I am grateful for the curators and authors in this special section not only for articulating the struggles of international students and scholars but also for offering specific actions that will help our international colleagues thrive and connect in a more inclusive and equitable academy.
This issue marks my first as Editor of Theatre Topics. As Editor, I must take responsibility for any errors in the journal. In our November 2023 issue, Deborah James and Svetlana Rogachevskaya's "Red Summer Project: Returning to Live Theatre While Putting Mission and Vision into Practice" and Adam Versényi's essay "Arts Criticism Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century" were accidentally omitted from the table of contents in the print version of the journal. I apologize for this oversight. You can find these pieces in the online version of the journal accessible through the Project MUSE database.
As befits an issue centered on the idea of connection, I must thank the Theatre Topics team for facilitating my connections to our authors, anonymous reviewers, and readers. The journal relies on the steady "backstage" labor of ATHE Vice President for Research and Publications Meredith Conti, Managing Editor Aileen M. Keenan, and our anonymous reviewers who so generously donate their time in service of advancing the field. Past Editor John Fletcher mentored me with such grace and brilliance that I can think of no better model for my own editorial tenure. I extend special thanks to outgoing Book Review Editor Jessica Del Vecchio, and a warm welcome to new Book Review Editor Nathan Bowman. This issue also welcomes new Coeditor Sukanya Chakrabarti and Online Editor Trevor Boffone, who, along with my Editorial Assistant Katie Van Winkle, continue to inspire me with their insightful readings and commentary. They remind me how theatre scholarship connects across oceans and institutions, through conferences and Zoom. Like theatre, scholarship is a collaborative act—between teacher and student, between author, reviewer, and editor, and between journal and reader. I hope you enjoy this issue. I hope you connect.
Works Cited
"ATHE 2023 Annual Conference: Call to Action." Association for Theatre in Higher Education, 2022, www.athe.org/page/23conf_theme.
James, Deborah, and Svetlana Rogachevskaya. "Red Summer Project: Returning to Live Theatre While Putting Mission and Vision into Practice." Theatre Topics, vol. 33, no. 3, 2023, pp. E1-E10. doi.org/10.1353/tt.2023.a912290.
Versényi, Adam. "Arts Criticism Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century." Theatre Topics, vol. 33, no. 3, 2023, pp. E11-E15. doi.org/10.1353/tt.2023.a912292.