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Sweat Equity: Lynn Nottage's Radical Dialectic of Deindustrialization
Jocelyn L. Buckner
"Lynn Nottage has devoted her career to researching and telling stories of Black individuals and communities with expressed interest in laborers, advocating for their agency, humanity, and legacy. In her second Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sweat, Nottage dramatizes more recent US history, illuminating the lives of workers marginalized by the deindustrialization of the Rust Belt in the early 2000s. Sweat is emblematic of Nottage's sustained effort to deploy playwriting as activism and stand in solidarity with those whose stories she chooses to tell. As a constant theme in her works, Lynn Nottage's stories align with marginalized workers' efforts and histories, connecting the pride of the factory employees in Sweat with the dignity of Mama Nadi in Ruined, the resourcefulness of the women and men in Intimate Apparel, the resilience and tenacity of Undine Barnes in Fabulation, and the determination of the titular character in By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. These fellow laborers all demonstrate an intent to survive amid dire circumstances and diminishing resources. Sweat is another act of rebellion designed to advocate for workers' lives and meet changemakers on their own turf, advocating for a compassionate conversation about and action to alleviate the human cost of the economic policies of the past quarter-century."
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Play as Curriculum
Drew Chappell
Play as an academic field comprises multiple disciplines, definitions, and objectives and acknowledges a link between play and learning. Historically and in contemporary societies, play has been used as a teaching methodology; this occurs in formal classroom pedagogy as well as outside the classroom as part of informal and improvisational curriculum. Because play generally includes a component of pleasure, as a methodology it compels entry into learning in a way other practices do not. Yet this playful learning can be problematic, depending on outcomes and structures that define the play/learning experience through narrative and power dynamics. Scholars may analyze various aspects of curricular play, including but not limited to narratives provided, students’ lived experiences within those narratives, actions allowable, objectives and advancement, and sources developing the narratives.
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Diasporic Desires in Las Meninas
Jocelyn Buckner
"One of the contributions Lynn Nottage makes to critical debates surrounding narrative and dramatic theory is a rigorous dramaturgical historiography through which she investigates the relationship between displacement and desire throughout history and regions in the African diaspora."
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"Sustaining the Complexity" of Lynn Nottage
Jocelyn Buckner
The introduction to "A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage", edited by Jocelyn Buckner.
"A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage places this renowned, award-winning playwright's contribution to American theatre in scholarly context. The volume covers Nottage's plays, productions, activism, and artistic collaborations to display the extraordinary breadth and depth of her work.
The collection contains chapters on each of her major works, and includes a special three-chapter section devoted to Ruined, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The anthology also features an interview about collaboration and creativity with Lynn Nottage and two of her most frequent directors, Seret Scott and Kate Whoriskey."
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Anna Deavere Smith
Jocelyn L. Buckner
An overview of the life, work, and impact of Anna Deveare Smith.
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Charles Sidney Gilpin
Jocelyn L. Buckner
An overview of the life, work, and impact of Charles Sidney Gilpin.
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Henrietta Vinton Davis
Jocelyn L. Buckner
An overview of the life, work, and impact of Henrietta Vinton Davis.
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Negro Ensemble Company
Jocelyn L. Buckner
An overview of the work and impact of the Negro Ensemble Company.
Below you may find selected books and book chapters from Theatre faculty in the College of Performing Arts.
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