Race and Performative Historiography in the American Theatre, 1991-2014 Rosa Elizabeth Schneider Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 © 2019 Rosa Elizabeth Schneider All Rights Reserved Abstract Race and Performative Historiography in the American Theatre, 1991-2014 Rosa Elizabeth Schneider The history play is among the United States' oldest theatrical forms, and since its inception the genre has been used to represent and interrogate questions of identity and citizenship. Over the last quarter of the twentieth century until the present day, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of history plays that focus on questions of race and representation. “Race and Performative Historiography in American Theatre, 1991-2014” provides an explanation for this surge, revealing that theatre-makers (playwrights, directors, actors, and designers) drew on a long tradition of metatheatrical techniques on the American stage to make race central to their representation and creation of history. This dissertation scrutinizes some of these techniques, which I have termed Performative Historiography, as these techniques rewrite the way the audience understands our national and racial past. Combining extensive performance analysis, archival work, race theory, and American theatre history, "Race and Performative Historiography" expands the discipline's understanding of the role of the theater in representing America’s racial past, present, and future. Each chapter of “Race and Performative Historiography” describes one of these techniques: sedimented time, historical synecdoche, and revision and repetition. These techniques provide theater-makers new ways of making vivid the past, exposing embedded power structures and forms of prejudice, as well thinking through and against national myths and structures of thought. Not only do these chapters describe these techniques, but they trace how these playwrights and directors give new life to older American theatrical forms: elements from minstrelsy (such as black, white, and red face), melodrama, and Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project. Tracing the afterlives of these forms, I reveal how the juxtaposition of these older traditions with contemporary models of representation creates new theatre forms, and shows that even the most daring of the new American playwrights draw on a long and storied tradition. The history play has always been a genre that American playwrights have turned to define who we are, and where we have been, as a nation. "Race and Performative Historiography" dissects the means by which they make those claims. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................ iii Dedication ............................................................................................................................ iv Introduction: The Performance of Race and the Genealogy of Performative Historiography.... 1 1.1: "We’re Not Learning History…. We’re Living It!": Underground Railroad Game and defining the History Play ........................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2: Making History: The Techniques of Performative Historiography ................................................ 6 1.3: The Past is Never Past: The Performance of Race and History, from Ponteach to Slave Ship .... 13 Chapter 2: The Past in the Present, and the Present in the Past: Sedimented Time in We are Proud to Present a Presentation and An Octoroon. ............................................................... 30 "And there you have it. / A history of German Colonial Rule in Namibia": Sedimented Time and the struggle to represent history in We Are Proud to Present a Presentation. ...................................... 35 2.1: "We Shouldn't Be Doing Anything Other Than What's Real": The historical record, metatheatrical angst, and Sedimented Time...................................................................................... 38 2.2: "But I'm saying that, As Americans--": Sedimented Time and the performance of the past...... 44 "When you burn it down/What do you put there in its place": Sedimented Time in An Octoroon... 55 2.3: "I know we slaves and evurthang, but you are not your job": Sedimented Time, Slavery, and Aural Juxtaposition.............................................................................................................................. 57 2.4: "The whole point of this thing was to make you feel something": Lynching, Projection, and Visual Sedimented Time...................................................................................................................... 66 2.5:"It looks like it actually might hurt a little": Avatar Creation, RacialiZed Performance, and Sedimented Time ................................................................................................................................ 70 Conclusion: Terror is an Era, is an Era, is an era that gwane: Marys Seacole and the Future of Sedimented time. ........................................................................................................................ 80 Chapter 3: Fake News and Costly Change: Historical Synecdoche in Zoot Suit and Caroline, or Change. ............................................................................................................................... 82 Untangling the Fact from the Fantasy: Historical Synecdoche, Newspapers, and Zoot Suit.............. 90 3.1:" Is that the way to sell papers, or is that the way to sell papers?": Building the case against the Hearst Press. ....................................................................................................................................... 92 3.2: A trial just for show: The Press's influence on the Court. ........................................................... 95 3.3: Fake News, Real Consequences: Newspaper bundles and the law. ........................................... 98 3.4 "The Very Image of the Pachuco Myth": El Pachuco, the zoot suit, and historical synecdoche. ........................................................................................................................................................... 103 3.5: The News on Stage: Zoot Suit's Transformation of the Living Newspapers. ............................. 107 "All changes come from small changes/come from coins janglin in the wash machine": Historical Synecdoche in Caroline, or Change. ............................................................................................ 110 3.6: "Put your faith and clothes in me": Historical Synecdoche and the AnthropomorphiZed Appliances. ........................................................................................................................................ 112 3.7: "I'm the daughter of a maid/in her uniform, crisp and clean!”: Caroline's uniform, and dismantling the Mammy. .................................................................................................................. 117 i 3.8: "Pocket Change/Change Me": Change and Historical Synecdoche ........................................... 121 Conclusion: Historical synecdoche and present circumstance. ..................................................... 131 Chapter 4: Exit Through the Bullethole: Repetition and Historical Re-centering in The America Play and Topdog/Underdog ............................................................................................... 133 "Little Ringing in the Ears. Slight Deafness": Repetition, the body, and historical creation in The America Play. ............................................................................................................................. 147 4.1: "A virtual twinship with greatness": centering The Lesser Known's body. ............................... 149 4.2: "He's dead but not really": The Lesser Known's narrative ........................................................ 158 “Another Black Lincoln”: Repetition and the Rewriting of History in Topdog/Underdog. .............. 164 4.3 Folding and Unfolding: seeding the assassination scene ........................................................... 166 4.4: "Something about it. I dunno. It was looking too real": The assassination and Link's body ..... 171 4.5: "Best you can do is just pretend to be yr old self": Centering Personal Narratives in the Historical. .......................................................................................................................................... 178 Conclusion: Whose Lincoln is it anyway? .................................................................................... 185 Conclusion: Slave Play and the Future of the History Play ................................................... 187 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 193 ii Acknowledgments This dissertation began on a winter's night downtown, while I was attending Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation at Soho Repertory theatre. Surrounded by dramaturgical documents, I saw history come alive before my eyes, and I was astonished in a way that I really never been. The idea was sparked there, but was nurtured by my committee: