Project MUSE®: TDR: The Drama Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in TDR: The Drama Review.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 43, no. 3 (1999) through current issueLatest Articles: TDR: The Drama ReviewTWOProject MUSE®TDR: The Drama Review1531-47151054-2043Latest articles in TDR: The Drama Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Images
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985551
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“All-A-Same, or The Chinee Laundryman.” Words and Music by Frank Dumont, 1880. See “The Transnational ‘Heathen Chinee,’ the Minstrel Form, and the Afterlife of US Slavery” by Caroline H. Yang. (Courtesy of the University of Michigan)Émilie Monnet and Waira Nina fill copper receptacles created by Leonel Vásquez in Nigamon/Tunai Montreal, 2024. See “Processing Nigamon/Tunai: Sounding Trans-Indigeneity” by Katherine Zien. (Photo by Antoine
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallImages2026-03-14text/htmlen-USImages2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®18902026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14A.M. Hernandez and the Global Details of Blackface Minstrelsy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985552
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On 31 October 1854, a traveling troupe of minstrel performers took to the stage in Richmond, Virginia, for a weeklong series of shows (Richmond Dispatch 1854). The self-styled Parrow’s Southern Opera Troupe performed every evening in Odd Fellows Hall for a 25-cent admission fee. While one of the numerous blackface minstrel ensembles that toured the United States during the antebellum period, part of their production was distinct: A.M. Hernandez, the “great Spanish Knife Thrower, India Rubber Man, and Guitarist.” Hernandez received top billing in the advertising for the performance, which highlighted his polyvalent capabilities as an entertainer available to anyone willing to pay the price of a ticket.Also known as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallA.M. Hernandez and the Global Details of Blackface Minstrelsy2026-03-14text/htmlen-USA.M. Hernandez and the Global Details of Blackface Minstrelsy2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®1025002026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14The Transnational “Heathen Chinee,” the Minstrel Form, and the Afterlife of US Slavery
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985553
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“All-A-Same, or The Chinee Laundryman.” Words and Music by Frank Dumont. Philadelphia: Chas. F. Escher, Jr., 1880. (Courtesy of the University of Michigan)In the epilog of his Representing China on the Historical London Stage, Dongshin Chang recounts his experience of attending various pantomime performances of Aladdin in and around London between 2012 and 2014. He writes that all the performances he viewed were “set in China and depict Aladdin as a carefree Chinese boy living with his mother Widow Twankey, who operates a laundry, and his younger brother Wishee-Washee” (2015:180). While many in the United States might associate Aladdin in popular culture with Disney’s 1992 adaptation set in a fictional Arabian city
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallThe Transnational “Heathen Chinee,” the Minstrel Form, and the Afterlife of US Slavery2026-03-14text/htmlen-USThe Transnational “Heathen Chinee,” the Minstrel Form, and the Afterlife of US Slavery2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®832172026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Endsieg: The Second Coming
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985554
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Endsieg, directed by Falk Richter. Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, 2024.By way of introduction: As Elfriede Jelinek’s longtime translator, I refer to her simply as Elfriede, because this is how she is, almost constantly, on my mind. Not unlike a traditional actor (as I was originally trained), the author becomes a character named Elfriede whom I research and perform in (American) English as translator. This choice is further justified, since in her post–Nobel Prize performance texts Elfriede inserts herself (unnamed) as a speaker. Note that she coyly casts herself as Miss Piggy, the blind seer of Endsieg: The Second Coming.So then, in my longtime prep work as her translator-in-performance, so to speak, which has
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallEndsieg: The Second Coming2026-03-14text/htmlen-USEndsieg: The Second Coming2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®904652026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Gal Kirn Responds to Branislav Jakovljević’s Review Essay
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985555
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The Editors of TDR received a letter from Gal Kirn in response to Branislav Jakovljević’s Concerning Books essay “The Relay of Radicalism: What Is Partisan Art to New Art Practice in Yugoslavia?” ( TDR 68.3 [T263]:209–19). We publish it here along with Jakovljević’s reply.Branislav Jakovljević’s review “The Relay of Radicalism” (2024) takes two of my works and one by Marko Ilić, each of them very different, as his main objects of criticism. I wish to thank Jakovljević for this opportunity to address some of the productive misreadings he engages in and the shortcomings he alleges. The main point of misunderstanding lies with the first epistemic question: how are we to return productively to the project of partisan
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallGal Kirn Responds to Branislav Jakovljević’s Review Essay2026-03-14text/htmlen-USGal Kirn Responds to Branislav Jakovljević’s Review Essay2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®309122026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14On the Margins of Black Minstrel History: The Georgia Minstrels and Charles B. Hicks from Macon to Melbourne
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985556
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Almost everything we think we know about “the Georgia Minstrels” comes from two sources: Robert C. Toll’s landmark 1974 study of minstrelsy, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America, and Eileen Southern’s “The Georgia Minstrels: The Early Years” (Toll 1974; Southern 1989).1 Toll’s book has long served as a vital source on both white and Black performers of minstrelsy, and it has been immensely influential on other works on the topic (see, for example, Waterhouse 1990; Lott 1993; Southern 1997). Blacking Up draws together original documents sourced from the Harvard Theatre Collection and the New York Clipper, a popular 19th-century newspaper that was a regular platform for minstrel
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallOn the Margins of Black Minstrel History: The Georgia Minstrels and Charles B. Hicks from Macon to Melbourne2026-03-14text/htmlen-USOn the Margins of Black Minstrel History: The Georgia Minstrels and Charles B. Hicks from Macon to Melbourne2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®1433582026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Blackamoors on Ballet Stages
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985557
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In December 2019, Misty Copeland, the renowned star of the American Ballet Theatre and the company’s first Black principal ballerina, commented on an Instagram post by dancers of the Moscow Bolshoi company: “And this is the reality of the ballet world.” The photograph in question was of the company’s production of La Bayadère; it featured two young dancers in full blackface, with white tunics over dark brown leotards emphasizing the dark “skin tone” of paint and fabric (see Copeland 2019; Asmelash 2019; The Moscow Times 2019).1 Some American commentators immediately attributed the Russian company’s use of blackface to Europeans “persisting” in the use of blackface as if the “painful legacy of racism and minstrel
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallBlackamoors on Ballet Stages2026-03-14text/htmlen-USBlackamoors on Ballet Stages2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®1553432026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14The Bubble Sisters and Hong Hyeon-hee: Korean Women Entertainers in the Gendered Political Economy of Blackface
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985558
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“Viewers who see our live shows often share with us, ‘You aren’t as ugly and fat as I thought!’” Ji-young of the South Korean women R&B vocal band the Bubble Sisters made this self-deprecating remark during an interview with a popular YouTube channel that features minor Korean celebrities (Geunhwangolimpik 2023).1 In response to Ji-young’s comment, the other members of the Bubble Sisters, of which Ji-young has been a member since 2013, burst into loud laughter.The Bubble Sisters made their debut in 2003 during what the South Korean media dubbed “an era of sexy women singers” (Im 2003).2 Countering this mainstream trend, the four band members strove to differentiate themselves by emphasizing their strong R&B and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallThe Bubble Sisters and Hong Hyeon-hee: Korean Women Entertainers in the Gendered Political Economy of Blackface2026-03-14text/htmlen-USThe Bubble Sisters and Hong Hyeon-hee: Korean Women Entertainers in the Gendered Political Economy of Blackface2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®1071342026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14From Blackface “Baboos” to Bollywood: Inhabiting the Other in Indian Minstrel Acts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985559
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A few years after his arrival in British India in 1861, American minstrel Dave Carson added the “Bengalee Baboo,” a caricature of an Indian clerk, to his blackface variety show (Trivedi 2007:246–49; Chattopadhyay 2024:196). Nearly a decade later, Bengali actor Ardhendu Sekhar Mustafi blackened up to lampoon the “Saheb,” or gentleman, in his improvised retort, Mustafi Saheb ka Pukka Tamasha (Mr. Mustafi’s Surely Spectacular Show, 1873).1 Then, in 1977—long after Carson and Mustafi’s impressions had waned from public memory—Hindi cinema star Amitabh Bachchan dressed up in a top hat and tails to dance the cakewalk in front of a painting of a grass-skirted black figure in the film Amar Akbar Anthony. His character
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallFrom Blackface “Baboos” to Bollywood: Inhabiting the Other in Indian Minstrel Acts2026-03-14text/htmlen-USFrom Blackface “Baboos” to Bollywood: Inhabiting the Other in Indian Minstrel Acts2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®1114362026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Enunciating a Black Geography: Liliana Angulo and the Multicultural Turn in Colombia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985560
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Negro utópico is an art piece featuring nine photographs of the Afro-Colombian artist Liliana Angulo in blackface. It was part of the exhibit Viaje sin mapa: Representaciones afro en el Arte contemporáneo colombiano (Journey Without a Map: Representations of Blackness in Contemporary Colombian Art), curated by Mercedes Angola and Raúl Cristancho in 2006.1 In Negro utópico, the artist presents a series of Black self-portraits in which she wears a large Afro wig, black gloves, a suit, and a tie. In each image, the layer of black paint on her face is so thick that her face is almost unrecognizable. Except for the black gloves, the color and pattern of the clothes and set pieces are the same as the background, which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallEnunciating a Black Geography: Liliana Angulo and the Multicultural Turn in Colombia2026-03-14text/htmlen-USEnunciating a Black Geography: Liliana Angulo and the Multicultural Turn in Colombia2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®914952026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Reorienting Blackface: New Genealogies of Racial Impersonation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985561
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In February 2025, Oscar-nominated actor Fernanda Torres issued an apology for resurfaced footage of her wearing black-face in a 2008 comedy sketch on the Brazilian television show Fantástico. Torres explained in her apology that, at the time of the aforementioned performance, “awareness of the racist history and symbolism of blackface hadn’t yet entered the mainstream public consciousness in Brazil,” but that, “thanks to better cultural understanding,” it is “very clear now that in our country and everywhere that blackface is never acceptable” (Seth 2025; emphasis added).By the time this review essay is published, there may have been another actor, politician, or media personality running similar lines, because
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallReorienting Blackface: New Genealogies of Racial Impersonation2026-03-14text/htmlen-USReorienting Blackface: New Genealogies of Racial Impersonation2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®306352026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Response to Gal Kirn
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985562
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In his response, Gal Kirn misrepresents several points I make in my review of his books Partisan Ruptures and Partisan Counter-Archives. I want to make my answer very brief, as this debate is getting away from performance studies, and might become too hermetic for the readers of TDR.First, Kirn begins by asserting that in my review I “misunderstood” and “misread” his work. My criticisms were aimed at material mistakes and conceptual shortcomings in his books. The first ones are indisputable, and I cited only a few representative examples. I want to keep it that way. If necessary, I can point out more of those. The second ones could be the subject of further conversation.Second, Kirn asserts, on the sly, a certain
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallResponse to Gal Kirn2026-03-14text/htmlen-USResponse to Gal Kirn2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®86192026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Processing Nigamon/Tunai: Sounding Trans-Indigeneity
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985563
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Waira Nina carries a copper receptable created by Leonel Vásquez. Espace Go, Montreal, 11 May 2024. (Photo by Antoine Raymond)My sense of entering a new space begins as two artists guide us into the scene, inviting us to sit on cushions, low stools, and benches interspersed throughout.1 They wear simple, elegant tunics.2 To “accentuate their connection to the ear,” each sports a bright ruffled crest of red feathers around one auricle (Monnet 2024). The low lighting shifts and twists; imagistic projections and compositions enfold us in a mise-en-scène that is at once spacious and intimate. Sounds catch me off guard: layered whispers, cries, and moans. I twitch at a sudden noise that could be an animal’s rattling
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallProcessing Nigamon/Tunai: Sounding Trans-Indigeneity2026-03-14text/htmlen-USProcessing Nigamon/Tunai: Sounding Trans-Indigeneity2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®1065422026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Blackface Geographies: Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985564
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Liliana Angulo, from the photo series Negro utópico (2001). See “Liliana Angulo and Black Geography: Blackface Performance and the Multicultural Turn in Colombia” by Danielle Roper, in this issue.On 3 January 2025, Meta terminated its AI chatbot “characters” that the company designed in 2023 to provide Instagram users with an “entertaining and engaging” experience. Earlier that day, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah shared screenshots on the social media platform Bluesky documenting her conversation with a chatbot named “Liv” that Meta billed as a “Proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller.” Liv’s AI-generated speech, Attiah wrote, was “rife with exaggerated and inauthentic ‘sass’—whatever Meta presumes
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallBlackface Geographies: Introduction2026-03-14text/htmlen-USBlackface Geographies: Introduction2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®930542026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14The Second Coming
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985565
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Entering the US is always a bit of a gamble for me.1 As you may know, there are some countries that are rather reluctant to welcome me. I lost my Russian visa back in 2013 when I was working on a project in Moscow with Katya Samuzevich from Pussy Riot—the other members were in prison at the time. A few years later, when I was due to receive the European Theatre Prize in St. Petersburg and couldn’t even get a visa for that, the Russian ambassador said to me, “You can Google yourself.”A year ago, when I was supposed to come to the Skirball Center at NYU for Antigone in the Amazon, I was once again denied a visa. The reason given was that I had founded a film school in Mosul, the former capital of the Islamic State
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallThe Second Coming2026-03-14text/htmlen-USThe Second Coming2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®305442026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Double Edge Theatre at a Crossroads—and It Is Not Alone
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985566
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Double Edge Theatre (DE) is a rural infrastructure organization rooted in artistic practice. Our mission extends beyond performance. We build and sustain the civic, cultural, and economic systems that allow artists, workers, and rural communities to thrive in place.In 1994, DE moved from the Boston area to a 100-acre farm in Ashfield, a town of 1,800, in rural western Massachusetts. For more than three decades, DE has built a replicable model that counters the extractive forces draining rural towns of people, purpose, and possibility. By integrating housing, equity, food systems, land stewardship, and cultural programming, DE creates conditions that retain and attract residents, nurture local leadership, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallDouble Edge Theatre at a Crossroads—and It Is Not Alone2026-03-14text/htmlen-USDouble Edge Theatre at a Crossroads—and It Is Not Alone2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®74502026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Wilson and Müller in Prickly Berlin
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985567
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In the summer of 1986, as a 27-year-old doctoral student, I arrived in West Berlin for what would turn out to be more than two years. I hadn’t come to study Robert Wilson or Heiner Müller. I’d come to finish a dissertation on Samuel Beckett, who’d directed eight of his plays there; and to improve my German, as well as understand the cultural pulse of that famously divided city with its abundance of lavishly funded, artistically adventurous theatres. To my surprise, I found myself increasingly fascinated by the strange and counterintuitive Wilson-Müller partnership, which I thought might be related to what I was studying, though I didn’t yet understand how.The sheer unlikeliness of the Wilson-Müller alliance, when
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallWilson and Müller in Prickly Berlin2026-03-14text/htmlen-USWilson and Müller in Prickly Berlin2026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®274652026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14Robert Wilson 1941–2025
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985568
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In March 2024, Carol Martin and I were in Barcelona. We saw an announcement of Robert Wilson’s staging of Mozart’s version of Handel’s Messiah. Because of our flight schedule, we were going to miss it, which made me unhappy because Messiah is one of my all-time favorites. When I emailed Bob my regrets, he invited us to the dress rehearsal. A magnificent performance, musically and visually, formal but not heavy, engaging with both composers. But the highlight was staying after the rehearsal to listen to Wilson giving notes to the company. He spoke quietly, with respect; he listened. One thing he said particularly stuck with us: “When you look at the audience, don’t look at everybody. Pick a person and home in. If
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/193/image/coversmallRobert Wilson 1941–20252026-03-14text/htmlen-USRobert Wilson 1941–20252026-03-142026TWOProject MUSE®77022026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-14