ATDS at MLA – Update

ATDS held two sponsored panels at this year’s annual conference for the Modern Language Association in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The first panel was “Theater in or of Joy and Sorrow: Representation of Marginalized Communities in the Americans.” This panel, chaired by Bess Rowen, featured work by Christina Baker (Temple University) about a performance that revolves around a Mexican mother’s attempt to memorialize and make sense of her tween daughter’s disappearance, a joint presentation from Kelly Aliano (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY) and Dongshin Chang (Hunter College, CUNY) about their experiences empowering students through devised, identity-based work during Covid, and a part of Teya Juarez’s (University of Buffalo) work on the way contemporary plays consistently tie fat representation to sorrowful narratives. The joy that can be found in representation was a clear theme throughout this panel.

 

Our second panel was titled “Theater in Joy and Sorrow, Theatre of Joy and Sorrow: Performance and Embodiment of Marginalized Communities in the Americas,” and was chaired by Louise Geddes (Adelphi University). It included Jason Fitzgerald’s (University of Michigan) paper about the connection between Suzan Lori-Parks’s 365 Plays / 365 Days and the Iraq war, Eh-Den Perlove’s (University of Manchester) study of how the pandemic changed the context and resonances of Elinor T. Vaderburg’s play Bloodshot, Valerie Joyce’s (Villanova University) research on how living historiography can be used to reinscribe Black women into the narrative of history through performance, and Louise Geddes’s own work on the camp cabaret performances of Salty Brine. Here, the theme often returned to how performing sorrow could be a way to find moments of joy in both expression and representation.

 

Thanks to all for sharing their fascinating work!