Week 10: Social Change, Part 2:

plastic - in your body and in your hand
modernity - power expressed through control of the body
bodies equal social status
Bourdieu - habitus ("feel for the game"/bodily knowledge based on habits)
humans reward those seen as beautiful
reshape ourselves and our lives
Topics of
Social Concern:
Plastic Surgery (Cosmetic Surgery)
Cloning
Women's Rights
Questions of Terminology
What are the differences/similarities between the following:

Propaganda play
Political Play
Agit-prop - agitation propaganda
Documentary Theatre
Living Newspaper
A Number
2002
Dolly the sheep - 1996
Caryl Churchill - British playwright
short play - fast dialogue
cloning
nature vs. nurture
identity - where is identity situated?
think about this in performance - what does the doubling do?
What is this play trying to say?
Ruined
Hallie Flanagan
Federal Theatre Project - part of the WPA
stars like Orson Welles worked with this free theatre - workers were paid to build sets, make costumes, write plays, and act in them, and the people got free entertainment
1935-8 - when it was shut down because of controversy about the political content of some of the plays
Flanagan eventually called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee
Anna Deavere Smith
Social Change, Part 2:
Questioning Society
American Plastic
Voodoo Macbeth
American actress, playwright, NYU professor
famous for her ability to embody (vocally and physically) hundreds of characters
documentary theatre - works from tapes
early works dealt with riots and race
Lynn Nottage - this play won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009
concept of "ruined"
the physical marks on their bodies
the woman he loved is dead
if you can't place it on a scale, it's nothing
you will not fight your battles on my body anymore
ruined - can't love - can't take pleasure in their bodies
Essig argues that cosmetic surgery came from an impulse to make freaks disappear - do you think this is still the case?
connection to race/ethnicity