Theater108 Review

Hemispheric: Contact Zones, Comparative perspectives,

Dialogue

≠Classic Ethnography: Surveying

“the other.” Us vs. Them

Marcela Fuentes fuentes@humnet.ucla.edu

Explore conceptual points central to our shared realities.

Nodes from where to explore what we have in common (for example, performance conventions such as blackface or racial impersonation, at the time of nation-formation).

Goal: a conceptual map of hemispheric knowledge and experience.

•Unstable vehicles of expression.

•Can be used to support structures of power (theater in colonial times) as well as to challenge them (stand up comedy, Teatro Bufo in anti-colonial Cuba).

•Oppositional theater: subverts the rituals that ensure exclusion. (Catedrático character in Teatro Bufo as a mockery of Spanish high-brow culture).

Guillermo Gómez-Peña: “The Chicanarian Expo”

http://hemisphericinstitute.org/journal/3.2/artistspresentation/guillermogomezpena/eng/index.html

“The stage for the theatre of the oppressed was set in the sixteenth century when the Spaniards watched their first indigenous performances.” (Taylor 22)

Refracted optic as basis for definition and self-definition.

Margaret Cho quoted in “Where’s My Parade?”Margaret Cho and the Asian American Body in Space” by Rachel Lee. P.118.

Cho Revolution (2004)

“Doing the “Asian thing,” alright. Is that ice? Haayooow! [Chops the air with her hand.] You know, you gots to chink it up sometimes, you know. You gotta get chinkay wid it.”

•Ethnography: Methodology of studying “the natives” in the European colonies to assert the superiority of the West. Humans are placed in a developmental scale. The “primitive.”

•Reverse ethnography: “Our original intent was to create a satirical commentary on Western concepts of the exotic, primitive Other.” (Fusco on CiC)

•Auto-ethnography: “representations that the so- defined others construct in response to or in dialogue with [ethnographic accounts.]” (Pratt, 3)

Decolonizing the Body

“Artifact Piece”- James Luna (1987)

Nation-building: breaking ties with colonial rule.

Design your country.

National make-up. The desired ones and the “undesirable”. Racial anxiety.

•Unfit Natives and Gauchos (their way of life did not correspond with ideas of progress as set by the forefathers who were inspired by the French Revolution) Unfit 2 Italians and poor Europeans. But, in need of a national icon, the gaucho came handy. The gaucho as “ideal” suits the image of the new nation.

Juan Moreira.- Cocoliche. Battlefield with the Italians.Model: assimilation with hierarchies. Class differentiation.

Gaucho Cocoliche

Struggle for independence. Need to define what will represent Cubanness. Cuba is colored. But not “of” the colored.

Creto Gangá. Racial ventriloquism. Literary Blackface. Ethnographic burlesque. Mockery and linguistic experimentation.Bozal- Catedrático.

Model: assimilation with boundaries. Mestizo culture but no real participation of Afro-Cubans.

Boston Tea Party. Rebels disguised as Indians. Start a revolution with tea.

“Playing Indian” (Redface) = Blackface to produce and maintain whiteness as central to the definition of U.S identity.

Foundational ritual: playing Indian and drinking Chinese tea.Fuchs would ask: “What changes in the landscape of this world?” “Who has power on this planet?” “How is it achieved?”

Enter APA Theater and Margaret Cho.

Bow Down to Your Asian Masters

18 Mighty Mountain Warriors

Can one be or choose to be “transnational”?

Add mix-raced, queer, multicultural, etc.

Multiculturalism. Development of new audiences. (289)

Learning Shakespeare and Asian American Experience. Universalism and particular

lives.

Lunch Box

Role Model

Asian Chicken Salad