Considering Calamity: Methods for Performance Research

This collection deals with various types of calamity and the ways in which theatre and performance practices address such events.
 

Just as calamity is not limited to one region, nation, or people, rehearsals and stagings of calamity cross geographical and theoretical borders, as well as academic disciplines and genres.
 

The diverse calamities discussed in this book attest to the ubiquity of the subject: "writ large," or "surface[ing] in more subtle ways," as David Krasner's fine introduction points out. The essays also illustrate the variety of performance methodologies that can be productively used to explore the topic.

The nine studies are grouped under three headings. Part One, "Aesthetics," offers Patrice Pavis's description of performances at the 2005 Avignon Festival, which sought "a fictional and aesthetic way out of the crisis" brought about by the calamities they depict.
 

Harry J. Elam, Jr. focuses on dramas, detailing how Lorraine Hansberry's last play, Les Blancs, and Suzan-Lori Parks's Pulitzer Prize-winning Topdog/Underdog reflect, in different ways, individual and social calamities.
 

Thomas A. King presents a theoretical study of the calamitous intersections of voice and text, detailing the historical "genealogy of that fantasy" of delineating clear parameters between them.

In Part Two, "Performance" SonjaArsham Kuftinec describes her work with young people from the war-torn Balkans and Jerusalem, and explores the possibilities and difficulties of creating community-based performances of calamity.
 

Tracy C. Davis, illustrating how performance theories can be used to interrogate social practices, concentrates on American civilian preparedness exercises for atomic attack in the 1950s-a rehearsal for a calamity that did not occur.
 

Linda Ben-Zvi, drawing on the work of Israeli director Nola Chilton, discusses documentary theatre, which takes its materials from calamitous events and seeks theatrical means to call attention to issues often overlooked in society.

In Part Three, "Memorialization," Susan Leigh Foster, using earthquake reports, studies what a body experiences in calamities and the ways others respond "to that body's predicament."
 

Sandra L. Richards investigates how the Black slave experience, the Maafa ("great disaster"), is written out of the histories and memories enshrined in tourist sites in Charleston, South Carolina, her target case study.
 

In the concluding essay, Harvey Young details the ways in which Dr. James Cameron's American Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has, over time, whitewashed its presentation of the history of lynching.

The strength of these diverse, wide-ranging essays stems from the sophistication and power of the writing, the significance of the subject matter, and the originality of their application of performance theories.

Linda Ben-Zvi is Professor of Theatre Studies, Tel Aviv University, editor ofAssaph: Studies in the Theatre, and President of the Samuel Beckett Society.

Tracy C. Davis is Barber Professor of Performing Arts, Northwestern University, President of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University

Jacket Design: Yael Kfir, TAU Graphic Design Studio Jacket Photo (front): Hanit Simna, in Winter in Kalandia, photo by Eyal Landesman Jacket Photo (back): Harry B. Thomason, his wife and five children, Courtesy of NARA.