Author: d.spataru

It’s been such a long time since I’ve read or thought about Jose Munoz’s “Disidentifications” reading, but here goes nothing. From what I understand, disidentifying means to move away from definitions of identities that are traditionally given to something or someone, and creating new forms of those identities that better suit them. I feel like this could mean updating definitions that are outdated/offensive to more currently politically correct ones, or just that the definitions of words of identification change over time and need to be reconsidered in their new meanings. The word “queer” comes to mind, as it used to be a slur against the LGBTQ+ community and now it has been reclaimed and is used proudly by many individuals in said community. On page 1, Munoz states that “the act of performing and theatricalizing queerness in public takes on ever multiplying significance” (emphasis included). When queer people or people of color (or queer people of color) get to perform their identities onstage, it allows them to disidentify with whatever traditional, stereotypical ideas that audiences may have of them or their characters, and form new identities however they choose to do so. This puts the power in the hands and actions of the performers to rewrite their identities to be more accurate to how they view themselves, rather than how other people may view them.

Jill Dolan’s “Utopia in Performance” looks at the other side of this, the perspective and experiences of the audience rather than those of the performers. The utopia of performance that Dolan talks about is the experience of people coming together into the same room to have a shared experience of what they are watching happen onstage. During this time, they are removed from their real-life selves and exist in an imaginary space that only exists for a fixed amount of time, and this creates a sort of community amongst theatregoers. Additionally, the theater provides a space for people to experiment with different realities, ones that are different from their own lived experiences and that may be more positive than what they are facing in the real world. Hence, the utopia. This article reminds me of something I was told at a theater I worked at in high school: something along the lines of “art is a platform upon which society must examine itself.” This ties back to Munoz’s idea of disidentification; if people see something onstage that they do not like the portrayal of, they have the power to redefine those things in other productions, thus bringing to life new ways of categorizing things that perhaps did not exist before. While Dolan’s analysis makes sense, the one critique that I have of her utopic experience is that it is entirely based off of her own experiences in the theater. While I personally do not disagree with her and also believe that the moments that exist during live performance are indeed special, I do take issue with the fact that she does not take into consideration alternate experiences that people may have; she focuses solely on own perspective, which is fine for an essay, just not an academic one.

Coming into this independent study, I was excited to learn how to ethically produce work for minority groups that I may or may not be a part of. I love the idea of using theater as a form of activism, and for years have struggled as a queer woman to find spaces for me to exist in. The appeal of this project was creating spaces for queer people of color to command, even if I as a white person do not think that I am necessarily qualified to be handling this work. I suppose that was part of the learning process, but something about going into this blind felt wrong, even though I/we did eventually learn that in order for these undertakings to be successful, those who are in a more privileged position have to step back to allow the people for whom this project is being produced (queer people of color) to have substantial input and to listen to them when and if they have concerns regarding the piece.

As the head of marketing and communications for the project, I did not face too many ethical dilemmas regarding who was producing the work and for what purpose(s). It felt like a safe job for me to do, one that I would be good at and also enjoy doing, and it was. From working on past shows at Baruch, and being involved in some LGBTQ+ organizations off-campus over the years, I’ve been growing a network made up of both theater and queer people, which are two of the three major target audiences for this production. I have no doubt that between Facebook groups and academic connections that we will be able to fill our house of 70 seats.

Throughout the project, I also worked very closely with Sampson Starkweather, the Publicity Coordinator at the CUNY Graduate Center, Center For Humanities. We worked together a create a new graphic for the production, and to divide and conquer our outreach to our respective networks. We had one very productive meeting where we discussed which aspects of the production would be best to publicize, both visually and verbally, and we shared networks and ideas for getting the word out, including email blasts, social media posting and sharing, and word of mouth. Our Facebook event was our main catch, and I think we worked well together because we bounced a lot of ideas off each other and I was able to offer insight into the student marketing world that Sampson was not aware of.

My biggest struggle with this project was creating the poster art for it. To be honest, I didn’t think this would be part of my job, but I hated what the original one was – a rainbow plastered over a photo of the Earth. It was like someone had heard “O, Earth!” and “queer” and overlaid the first two images that came to mind. Sampson wanted to keep the images realistic, while I wanted to go for a more graphic look (because that’s the style I work in), but we both agreed that we wanted the artwork to be vague enough to be open to interpretation, while still relating to the show. I compromised by taking his rainbow Earth and putting the rainbow behind the Earth, with text overlaid on top, and a crowd of women – activists? – on the bottom. Below are the original and final products.

All in all, I had a really good time collaborating with Sampson on this project, and I hope we have a good turnout, because the turnout will pretty much determine whether I succeeded or failed at my job. I think marketing was the best role for me in this production, because anything more hands-on that required me to physically be somewhere would have been too much to handle, and I would not have been able to dedicate to it the time that it deserved.

The first event that I attended for this class was the Artist Services Weekend at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange on February 10th. The one panel that I attended was called Process as Product, and it looked at different works of art (including photography, interviews, and performative pieces) that, as the title suggests, were meant to be presented as processes rather than just looking at a final product. I think this panel is important to this independent study because most of the work we are doing is going into the process, and the process of staging this reading is supposed to help us learn how to ethically present work that may not be for us to present. I also thought it was great and relevant that most of the panelists were people of color. All of the works spoken about were difficult to present in their own ways, because the artists all poured extremely vulnerable parts of themselves into them, and a lot of them also carried political weight, as does O, Earth. The photographer’s (Tanisha’s) piece “Bathtub” was particularly moving, and responded to state-sanctioned violence against black people, and it was heavy with depression, anger, and grief. Another panelist, Nina, collected seven generations’ worth of archived material from her own family, and questioned whether she has a right to own those stories. This connects to our project as well, because as white cis people, I wonder if we and Casey Llewellyn should be telling the story of O, Earth. Finally, the last panelist brought up the question of whether or not work is worth doing if only two people see it. Are we still willing to put in the work of creating art if there’s a chance of there being no audience? I want to say yes, because if nothing else, O, Earth is a learning experience for us. Right now as I’m writing this on May 7th, our reading has not happened yet, and I do not doubt the marketing work that I have put into it, but perhaps it is worthwhile to consider our motivations behind staging this particular piece.

The second event that I want to talk about is a staged reading that I attended with Zeynep and Ruthie on March 27th at University Settlement downtown. It was done by Honest Accomplice Theatre, an organization that focuses on highlighting women and LGBTQ+ (specifically trans) issues. The reading, titled A Chip on Her Shoulder, was about women and trans people working in the engineering field, and how the experiences of these individuals are almost always erased and overshadowed by men. The script was devised entirely by members of Honest Accomplice Theatre in collaboration with playwright and director, Kristin Rose Kelly. I honestly didn’t feel like I really learned anything new about the experiences of the women being portrayed–a lot of the scenes were kind of like, well, yeah, that’s what happens in those environments. That’s not to say that workplace sexism is okay or acceptable, just that I wish they had found a way to present it in a more insightful manner. However, I did enjoy some of the individual scenes. One in particular that I liked centered around a black woman who was told that she couldn’t do something in the office because it was deemed too difficult for her, and she shot it down by saying that she used to play with tarantulas when she was younger, so she’s not afraid of anything. There were also several scenes about coming out at work, and how difficult it is to decide to do so. My favorite scene was probably one where the trans programmer of the company sent out a mass email to everyone announcing her new name and pronouns, and answering her coworker’s questions over email. She also included that since she is the company’s programmer, she took the liberty of changing all her work usernames to her new name and her pronouns to “she”, and everyone in the office was super supportive of her transition. Despite the reading being a bit bland, I did enjoy some aspects of it, and am glad that I attended it and got to learn about specific issues that trans individuals face in the engineering field.