East of the Center: Resingularizations of the Avant Garde in East Austin, Texas A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Carra Elizabeth Martinez IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Sonja Kuftinec, Advisor May 2016 Copyright Carra Elizabeth Martinez May 2016 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota. My committee generously provided their time and attention and feedback: Dr. Sonja Kuftinec, Dr. Michal Kobialka, Dr. Margaret Werry, Dr. Cindy Garcia, and Dr. Josephine Lee. My fellow graduate students filled my days at the U of M with laughter, conversation, and potlucks. Thank you Elliot Leffler, Jesse Dorst, Kimi Johnson, Eric Colleary, Stephanie Walseth, Will Daddario, Joanne Zerdy, Rita Kompelmacher, Mike Mellas, Bryan Schmidt, Kelly McKay, Kristen Stoeckeler, Hyo Jeong Hong, Misha Hadar, Rye Gentleman, David Melendez, Virgil Slade, Wesley Lummus, and Cole Bylander. Both Barbra Berlovitz and Lisa Channer provided so many pathways for me to stay in touch with the creative process inside Rarig. I will now always want to play both Agamenon and Clytemnestra in the same production. My fellowship at Penumbra Theatre kept me attune to the connection between practice and theory. And last but not least, thank you to my University of Minnesota Theatre Arts and Dance students, who were so willing to take risks and to work and to think. A special thanks goes to the Bootleggers. I always smile when I drive by any and all Halloween stores. In Minneapolis, Sonja and Michal provided me with not only rich academic support, but they also opened their homes to me and shared their families. There were so many rich hours under the pergola and over dinners with libations. Those were the hours that kept me going and that made me feel human. Those hours (and the leg breaks that followed) made me realize that yes indeed, I needed health benefits. Thank you Tim Heitman. Thank you Andy and Harris Arsham. Thank you for being my Minneapolis family. Austin, Texas, is where my heart lives. It’s my nexus of love and support. Over the course of my dissertation project so many folks made my research possible. My former colleagues at Austin Westlake always cheered me on. Special thanks to Becky Stucky, Bill Martin, and John Campbell for their love and support. Off-and-on, I lived in the homes of so many different Austinites. Those homes were both a place to stay and a place to be in community. Thank you so much Natalie George and Frank; Pam Fletcher Friday; Karen Lashelle, Deb Esquenazi, Charlie Esquenazi, and River; Kirk Lynn, Carrie Fountain, and Olive and Judah Lynn Fountain; Julia M. Smith and Michael Mergen; Lowell Bartholomee, Ellie McBride, Dirk and Murph. Ellie and Lowell, a giant, pizza- filled hug for y’all. Thank you Liz Fisher and Rob Matney for the world’s most British Harry Potter marathon. Thank you Dan VanHoozer for helping me grow up into whomever I am supposed to be. My Fusebox Festival family made large parts of this dissertation possible. Thank you Ron Berry, Brad Carlin, and Kim Turner. Thank you Anna Jackson for your warmth and compassion; thank you Ron for sharing Anna with me and for valuing my ideas and my nerdery. Thank you Rude Mechs, who were so game for this long research process and who always gave good Texas hugs. Especially thank you to Shawn Sides, Graham Reynolds, and Lana Lesley for those late-night-front-porch- red wine-and-music conversations. To Gilbert Rivera, Jane Rivera, Pete Rivera, Danny Camacho, Karen Riles, and Susana Almanza, I owe y’all an enormous debt for sharing your memories and your passions. To my family-family in Austin, thank you for the ii meals and the concert tickets and the conversation: Aunt Debbie Roberts and Uncle Bob Gottschall; Cousin Victoria Stengel and Cousin Emily Stengel; and Aunt Danna Roberts. And finally, thanks to my own immediate family: Robert Martinez; Sharron Martinez; Angela Martinez, Steven Mills, Madison Gaba, Zach Gaba, Mackenzi Mills, Gavin Mills, and Maggie and Leo; Matt Martinez, Mandy Martinez, Cade Martinez, and Lilah Martinez; and Catherine Martinez. Thanks for not drowning me in the snake pond. And remember, this is really all Grandma Freddie’s fault when you think about it. iii DEDICATION For My Austin Family and For Danny Camacho and Especially for Deborah Paradez, Julia M. Smith, Sarah Myers, Carrie Fountain, and Natalie George—Ladies Supporting Ladies iv ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the ways in which a neighborhood’s vernacular performances—its everyday spatial practices, its interactions with city and state policy, its representations of Texas identity, its communal creations of performances of festivity and protest—constitute acts of aesthetic and political ingenuity that, in the tradition of the avant garde, directly challenge the dominant forms of political subjectivity and practice that have operated across 150 years of Texas history. In the process, this study advocates for a deep examination of the relationship between performance and local productions of space in order to unearth unrecognized avant garde performances, in order to broaden the historical record of the avant garde in the U.S., and in order to challenge historiographic biases within the field of study. Using research methodologies as varied as archival research, performance ethnographies, oral histories, culturally-specific storytelling, personal interviews, and arts-based community engagement work, the dissertation offers close readings of the texts and contexts of East Austin’s avant garde performance traditions including the early Juneteenth celebrations of the black community, the Chicano teatros of the East Austin Brown Berets, and the work of the collective theatre Rude Mechs. In each of these interpretations of East Austin performance, new understandings of avant garde performance practice highlight how minoritarian communities utilize performance as a tool with which to critique and challenge the production of space and the flows of power in Austin, Texas. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 . .. .1 Chapter 2 . .34 Chapter 3 . 110 Chapter 4 . .. 208 Chapter 5 . 278 Bibliography . .. 290 1 East of the Center: Resingularizations of the Avant Garde in East Austin, Texas East of the capitol building in Austin, Texas, sits a small neighborhood in which I worked as a collaborative performer and community engagement coordinator off-and-on for fifteen years. Across those years, I noticed a pattern within theatrical performance particular to East Austin: gritty portrayals of social inequities that explored how bodies (black, white, brown, poor, queer, under-educated, and/or rarely acknowledged) were and are policed and disciplined by realities that should ostensibly crush the imagination and crush the will to create. And yet those performances surface time-and-again across East Austin’s history: the Fourth of July celebration remolded into the Juneteenth parade, a new way to understand a celebration of independence and the cultural rituals that mark participation in U.S. democracy; a performance of a cowboy western with song reshaped to question the social forces constructing ideas of gender and sexuality in the Lone Star State; a Mexican acto placed in the hands of youth in order to incite the reformation of Latino identity in East Austin. In each performance, East Austin citizens call upon lived images and symbols to highlight and critique the ways in which conceptions of social and political ideologies mold the practices of everyday life. Since the foundation of the neighborhood in the late 1800s, community members in East Austin, Texas, have wielded performance as a tool with which to passionately and creatively critique the social, political, and economic forces shaping their communities. Throughout its history, East Austin has been buffeted by racist and classist public policy which has negatively impacted the infrastructure of the neighborhood: unpaved roads, 2 segregated schools, under-funded and under-staffed schools, limited utility services, limited presence of the fire and police department, and in the present moments, arguably the fastest gentrification processes in the U.S. In response to the inequities faced by the neighborhood, minoritarian residents of East Austin self-consciously use and have used performance as a subversive tool to comment upon the routines, hierarchies, and institutions governing life in East Austin. I argue that these performances—on stage and off—operate within revised frameworks of understanding the avant garde. A new wave of avant garde scholarship forwards the social dimensions of the avant garde before an analysis of the forms of the art itself. Building upon this wave, this study considers avant garde performance practices in the diverse neighborhood of East Austin, Texas, a small community that sits just east of the capitol of Texas. Isolated from the rest of the city by racial and economic boundaries since the late 1800s, East Austin is a dynamic urban space whose performance history has yet to be thoroughly studied. A consideration of performance throughout East Austin’s history not only expands the geographical territory typically considered in studies of the U.S.-based avant garde, the long history of diversity in this working-class neighborhood also offers opportunities to consider how avant garde performance develops within culturally-specific communities. My research examines the ways in which this neighborhood’s vernacular performances— its everyday spatial practices, its interactions with city and state policy, its representations of Texas identity, its communal creations of performances of festivity and protest— constitute acts of aesthetic and political ingenuity that, in the tradition of the avant garde, directly challenge the dominant forms of political subjectivity and practice that have operated across 150 years of Texas history.