Volume 2 of Identity, Culture, and the Science Performance investigates performances that illuminate the hidden recesses and inscrutable mysteries of the natural and human-made worlds.
While the first volume of this series prioritizes public, outward-facing, and activist work at the intersections of art and science, this volume considers performances of localized, concealed, inexplicable, or intimate phenomena, from the closed-door procedures of biomedical trials to the impacts of climate change.
Interdisciplinary science dialogues have long been shaped by the cultures and identity communities in which they arise and circulate. The essays, interviews, and creative works included here not only expose the historical and contemporary harms created by exclusive and prejudicial processes in art and science, they also contemplate how a diverse, inclusive body of science performers might help deepen how we “see” the unseen forces of our universe, contribute to novel scientific understandings, and disrupt disciplinary hierarchies long dominated by white men of privilege. This collection expands upon extant scholarship on theatre and science by foregrounding identity as a crucial thematic and representational element within past and present performances of science.
Featuring interviews with science-integrative artists such as Lauren Gundersen (The Half-Life of Marie Curie) and Kim TallBear (Native American DNA) as well as creative works by playwrights Chantal Bilodeau and Claudia Barnett, among others, Identity, Culture, and the Science Performance, Volume 2: From the Curious to the Quantum proposes shifts in perspective and procedure necessary to establish and maintain sustainable cultures of science and art.
List of Illustrations List of Tables Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Entangled Domains: Revealing the Productive Tensions of Art and Science, Meredith Conti (University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA) and Vivian Appler (University of Georgia, USA) PART ONE: Performing Human and More-than-Human Relationships Climate, Colonization, and Performance Roundtable Claudia Barnett (Middle Tennessee State University, USA), Chantal Bilodeau (Playwright, USA), David Geary (Capilano University, Canada), Kirsten Lindquist (University of Alberta, Canada), and Kim TallBear (University of Alberta, Canada) Creative Interlude: Critical Polyamorist 100s: “Mistress of the Shears (8.29.19)”; “Winona Quarantine (04.14.20)”; “River Quantum: Instructions for Babygirl (05.13.20)”, Kim TallBear (University of Alberta, Canada) 1. Staging the Mad Past: Performance, Criticism, and Historiography in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Alexis Riley (Independent scholar, USA) 2. Through Fish Eyes: Raising Awareness of Ocean Degradation through Performance, Madhvi Venkatesh (Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, USA) and Kasi Aysola (Dance artist, USA) 3. Labouring the Medical: Female Bodies for Sale on the Contemporary Stage, Gianna Bouchard (University of Birmingham, UK) Creative Interlude: “Please Let Me Shoot You: A Monologue”, Claudia Barnett (Middle Tennessee State University, USA) PART TWO: Challenging Traditions Through the Science Performance 4. “Spooky(’s) Action at A Distance”: Remixing Relations between Science and Performanc, Mike Vanden Heuvel (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) 5. Using Short Digital Films to Counter Stereotypes about Scientists of Color and from Marginalized Backgrounds, Mónica Feliú-Mójer (Ciencia Puerto Rico and Science Communication Lab, USA) 5. Celestial Politics: Performance and the Cosmic Underclass, Felipe Cervera (UCLA, USA) Creative Interlude: “Mother” Chantal Bilodeau (Playwright, USA) PART THREE: Revising the Art-Science Repertoire 7. Performing and Negotiating Imperialism: Science, Agriculture, and Food in Puerto Rico, Teófilo Espada-Brignoni (University of Puerto Rico) 8. Brecht’s Leben des Galilei, Science, and Identity Crisis in Germany, Derek Gingrich (Lux Research Inc., USA) 9. “Let science and art have at it”: The Living Newspapers Perform Science to Promote Depression-era Theatre/Squonk Performs Theatre to Promote Trump-era Science, Emily Klein (Saint Mary’s College of California, USA) Creative Interlude: Excerpt from “Variation for Three Voices on a Letter to Nature”, Diane Stubbings (Playwright and critic, Australia) The Catastrophist Artists’ Roundtable William DeMeritt (Actor, director, and educator, USA) Martine Kei Green-Rogers (DePaul University, USA), and Lauren Gunderson (Playwright, USA) Creative Interlude: Excerpt from The Catastrophist, Lauren Gunderson (Playwright, USA) Selected Bibliography Index
Meredith Conti is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA. She is the author of Playing Sick: Performance of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine (2018) and the co-editor (along with Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.) of Theatre and the Macabre (2021). Vivian Appler is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Georgia, USA. She has published scholarship at the intersection of science and performance in Global Performance Studies, Theatre History Studies, and other journals. She is a former fellow of Fulbright and the Huntington Library.
