Performance in America

Contemporary U.S. Culture and the Performing Arts

Autor: Román, David; Court, Paula; Termine, Richard
Editor: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822336754
eISBN Pdf: 9780822387442
Lloc de publicació: Durham , United States
Any de publicació digital: 2005
Mes: Novembre
Pàgines: 376
DDC: 791/.0973
Idioma: Anglés

Descripció

Performance in America demonstrates the vital importance of the performing arts to contemporary U.S. culture. Looking at a series of specific performances mounted between 1994 and 2004, well-known performance studies scholar David Román challenges the belief that theatre, dance, and live music are marginal art forms in the United States. He describes the crucial role that the performing arts play in local, regional, and national communities, emphasizing the power of live performance, particularly its immediacy and capacity to create a dialogue between artists and audiences. Román draws attention to the ways that the performing arts provide unique perspectives on many of the most pressing concerns within American studies: questions about history and politics, citizenship and society, and culture and nation.

The performances that Román analyzes range from localized community-based arts events to full-scale Broadway productions and from the controversial works of established artists such as Tony Kushner to those of emerging artists. Román considers dances produced by the choreographers Bill T. Jones and Neil Greenberg in the mid-1990s as new aids treatments became available and the aids crisis was reconfigured; a production of the Asian American playwright Chay Yew’s A Beautiful Country in a high-school auditorium in Los Angeles’s Chinatown; and Latino performer John Leguizamo’s one-man Broadway show Freak. He examines the revival of theatrical legacies by female impersonators and the resurgence of cabaret in New York City. Román also looks at how the performing arts have responded to 9/11, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the second war in Iraq. Including more than eighty illustrations, Performance in America highlights the dynamic relationships among performance, history, and contemporary culture through which the past is revisited and the future reimagined.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Here and Now
1. Not About Aids
2. Visa Denied: Chay Yew’s Theatre of Immigration and the Performance of Asian American History
3. Latino Genealogies: Broadway and Beyond—the Case of John Leguizamo
4. Archival Drag; or, the After life of Performance
5. Cabaret as Cultural History: Popular Song and Public Performance in America
6. Tragedy and the Performing Arts in the Wake of September 11, 2001
Afterword: The Time of Your Life
Notes
Bibliography
Index