I’ve been asked to speak from a Canadian position, so I’ll start, as an epigraph, with a line by that great Canadian Neil Young sung on a recent album in his archetypally Canadian high-pitched whine: “there’s a bailout comin’ but it’s not for me.”

I want to be clear about what I understand “the current climate” in our title to be: it’s a social and economic crisis precipitated by the collapse under its own weight of rampant capitalism and consolidated as a crisis by our collective failure to take the opportunity provided by that collapse to abolish a system that has despoiled most of the population of the world, human and non-human, and by our decision, rather, to prop up its corpse through an enormous investment of funds that have never been available for social programs, child poverty, or AIDS in Africa, and by further attacks on the workforce and its unions.

That said, I would like to address some of the questions about the “current climate” and its applications from where I sit within the Canadian academy, and I will do so more anecdotally than have my some of my colleagues on the panel—in part because I sometimes wonder whether the rush to acquire empirical evidence in the current “knowledge economy” might be part of the problem around the increasing corporatization of the University. This type of statistical empiricism and knowledge management has long been suspect in the arts and humanities, and in relation to questions of cultural difference, in particular, it raises many red flags for me at a time when many are attempting to decolonize methodologies. In any case, I have some stories that I think may be representative:

1. In the immediate wake of the economic downturn, my home university almost immediately dropped our Women’s Studies program, in spite of the fact that the savings realized in doing so were minimal: there were no faculty directly appointed to the program, its offerings being dependent upon faculty from other programs within the university. One secretary’s salary was saved, but the university was able to appear to be acting with “fiscal responsibility” while excising a politically troublesome program. The last time there was a financial crisis, it was our (politicized) Centre for Cultural Studies that was cut—in spite of the fact that the Centre actually brought more money in to the university in the form of grants than it cost the institution in office space or administrative support. No business or professional programs have ever been trimmed. These stories form part of a larger pattern in which crises are used, or manufactured, in order to discipline the institution into an acceptable corporate model of governance and compliance—to make infrastructural change, ideologically motivated, while evading charges of ideological pressure or the infringement of so-called academic freedom.

2. Also at my home institution we are losing the only faculty member of colour in our Theatre Studies program to another university. He is leaving in part because of the weight and unfair responsibility involved in being the only faculty member of colour, and in part because he wants to live and teach in a place where he has a community. This means that we will have even more trouble than we already have in attracting and retaining students who do not see themselves reflected at the front of the classroom, we will continue to draw suburban white students whose parents want them to be somewhere “safe” (ie, white)—and the cycle will continue. There is no money in this “climate” to replace this departing faculty member, so we will lose the position; but even if the funds were there, it is always a huge battle against the hegemonic, reproductive economy of hiring, promotion and tenure to attract, hire, and retain faculty of colour, and to allow them the privilege the rest of us have, once hired, to teach and research in whatever area they wish rather than in their own ghettoized corner of the the curriculum.

3. I was thrilled this year when an extraordinary Afro-Jamaican-Canadian dub poet, dub-theatre practitioner, playwright and performer came to Guelph to work with me as a graduate student on the history and practice of dub theatre. She is an outstanding intellect, a gifted practitioner, and a wonderful addition to any classroom or program lucky enough to have her. In recent weeks, however, she has been considering leaving the program (and the academy more generally), because of the fundamentally reproductive, capitalist economy of admission, tuition, evaluation, graduation, promotion and tenure that obtains within the academy. She is reluctant to endorse such a system through her participation, reluctant to submit herself as a docile subject of its performative disciplinarity, and understandably reluctant to bear the weight of the responsibility of trying to change such a system from within as one of its few rebellious subjects of colour who is unfairly charged, as a student, with teaching the rest of us.

4. I was discussing this student’s situation recently with Honor Ford Smith, founder of Jamaica’s Sistren theatre (and former teacher, in Jamaica, of the student’s mother), whose own doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto I had been privileged to co-supervize. Honor is, as many of you will know, a genius. We talked about the student’s situation, and Honor spoke frankly about the ways in which gaining academic accreditation (which she herself did late in her career) was enabling, but also about the ways in which it inevitably involved unutterable loss, including a kind of loss of self. As she said, “it changes you.”

5. I have been in rehearsal recently with Floyd Favel, an accomplished Plains Cree theatre director from the Poundmaker reserve in Saskatchewan who is also an accomplished playwright and actor, whose voice and video image welcome visitors to the American Indian Museum on the mall in Washington DC. Floyd told me in a break in rehearsals that he had no faith in the formal education system, for anyone, but especially for his people, and that he favoured self-education and study with elders. He did not say, but I assumed that he was referring to the inevitability of the education system as it now stands to function in relation to Native peoples, at least, as an ongoing and powerful technology of colonization and continuing cultural genocide. Why do those of us who teach Native theatre in the academy—myself included—need to have PhDs and other insignia of colonial authority? Why aren’t we hiring elders to do this, folks who have not succumbed to the disciplinary rigours of the system? Elders don’t rely on charts, graphs, stats, and other technologies of the knowledge economy. They tell stories.

Taken together, these anecdotes have huge implications for what we teach, who chooses what we teach, who teaches it, how it is taught, who is in the classroom, and where “authority” rests. Some of these questions may seem familiar or theoretically old-fashioned—not on the cutting edge of scholarly or pedagogical concern. But I would argue that the current economic so-called “climate” has made them increasingly urgent because of the very retrenchments and exclusionary practices that crisis enables. And I would argue that these questions have everything to do with what we and our students are teaching, reading, and practicing. You can’t use the tools, voices, methodologies, authorities, and practices of the master to dismantle the master’s house; you can’t allow the methods, epistemologies, protocols and standards of the master to screen access to and success within an educational system that is fundamentally culturally reproductive, and then expect it to change. And as a white man disciplined in the colonizing knowledge economy I can’t without great difficulty teach an increasing body of work to which the settler-invader is simply irrelevant: it’s not simply about resistance or subversion any more; it’s not about “us.” What the “current climate” does, however, is place in stark relief—as did the near collapse of capitalism—the priorities, protectionisms, and power plays that are more veiled in more “liberal” moments of relative financial ease. That’s the best that can be said for it, and it is perhaps a place to start.

Conference on Doctoral Program in Theatre and Performance Studies

September 18-19, 2009 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Faculty representing nearly 40 of the Ph.D. programs in Theatre and Performance Studies from the U.S. and Canada gathered for a landmark meeting at UIUC on the state of doctoral training. The conference was supported by the UIUC Department of Theatre, the UIUC Department of Dance, the UIUC School of Fine and Applied Arts, the UIUC Graduate College, and by the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR).

Most of the sessions were closed to the public so the faculty members could frankly discuss the challenges and opportunities facing current doctoral students in Theatre and Performance Studies. There were two open sessions. In the first of these open sessions, conference organizer Esther Kim Lee led a panel that presented data culled from an extensive survey completed by the PhD program heads. This survey touched upon issues such as time to degree, diversity, core requirements, and the number of graduate students in the U.S. and Canada that are currently pursuing a PhD in our field. (This number—a staggering 677—sparked a universal concern that resounded throughout the two-day meeting.) The second open session was a keynote address by Thomas Postlewait, titled “Yet Another New Atlantis: A Sketch of Our Discipline.”

The conference consisted of three closed sessions on Curriculum, Employment, and Advocacy, respectively. The Curriculum session broke out into discussions of current practices related to issues of core competency, assessment, and integration of pedagogy and practice. A recurrent theme was the apparent shift in emphasis from content requirements to methodological requirements in doctoral training.

The Employment session chairs devoted significant time to discussing the current economic climate and the ethical issues surrounding doctoral training for what we expect to be a changed academic landscape in the coming years. The concept of a “research institution” seems to be in danger in various regions, and the faculty positions that are most widely available at present may not allow our PhDs to pursue their research beyond the dissertation. We also brainstormed about survival skills for our students, issues of size, the merits and challenges of interdisciplinary studies, the changing job market over the past ten years, and career counseling.

The Advocacy session chairs engaged the group in discussions of political economy, outreach, activism, and other forms of engagement with communities beyond the academy, as well as the increasingly formalized grant structure that governs the funding of such projects. A recurrent theme was training our students in leadership skills, internationalism, and “world theatre.”

The conference closed with questions of how the Ph.D. programs in Theatre and Performance Studies from the U.S. and Canada want to collectively represent themselves and empower themselves. It was decided that this group would be called the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies, and that this consortium would commit to meeting again within the next three years. In the meantime, a volunteer task force consisting of Esther Kim Lee, Charlotte Canning, and Emily Roxworthy agreed to serve the consortium. President Tracy Davis then discussed ASTR’s shared commitment to the goals expressed by the gathered faculty, and agreed that the task force would next meet at the annual meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, this November.

Respectfully submitted,

Emily Roxworthy

Task Force, Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Theatre and Performance Studies

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Lowell Fiet, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras

Theatre in Puerto Rico reflects social tendencies that revolve around the syncretism apparent in all Caribbean cultures, with the creative impulses of inclusion and innovation, on the one hand, and the exclusion, rigidity, and violence of authoritarianism, on the other hand. In this precarious interplay of inventiveness and destruction, five historical markers serve as guideposts of a distinct theatrical tradition that extends over more than 500 years:

(1) Spanish chroniclers confirm that the pre-Columbian Taino areyto, a highly developed form of ritual, dance, and cultural performance, coincided during the first two to three decades of the 15th century with the popular medieval carnival-theatre of the Spanish conquistadores and the music and performances of the arriving Africans (text: Fernández de Oviedo);

(2) the popular creolized Iberian tradition continued to evolve, often over the objections of church and state, but by 1737, a Spanish colonial theatre with “luxurious” performances of Golden Age plays, including those of Calderón de la Barca, flourished during fiestas in San Juan (text: López de Haro);

(3) Spanish and European immigration in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries created an expanded audience for touring companies, and new theatres such as the San Juan Municipal (now Alejandro Tapia y Rivera) Theatre (1830) were built in cities throughout the Island (text: José Luis González);

(4) in the mid-19^th century a national literary tradition emerged that included plays that focused on the abolition of slavery, racial equality, and political autonomy and/or independence from Spain (texts: de Hostos and Tapia y Rivera); and

(5) after the US invasion and takeover of Puerto Rico in 1898, an extensive workers’ theatre movement took root and remained prominent in Puerto Rico until it was suppressed around 1920 (text: Dávila Santiago).

After 1920, the theatre became a less representative form, with Spanish touring companies performing for privileged audiences and amateur and university drama groups staging more serious and local drama. However, by the early 1950s, a group of talented young playwrights began to create the literary basis for the contemporary Puerto Rican theatre.

Lowell Fiet (PhD Theatre, Wisconsin 1973) has taught at Michigan State University (1973-76), the University of Oregon (1976-78), and at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras since 1978. Widely published in the field of Caribbean theatre, drama, and performance, he is also the founding editor of Sargasso (since 1983) and the author of El teatro puertorriqueño reimaginado (2004) and Caballeros, vejigantes, locas y viejos: Santiago Apóstol y los performeros afropuertorriqueños (2007). He directed the experimental theatre group Taller de Imágenes (1987-1995), the Caribbean 2000 Research Center (1995-1999), writes theatre criticism (since 1992) for the weekly newspaper Claridad, and leads the independent theatre-in-education project másTaller (mas[k] Workshop). He currently chairs the Interdisciplinary Studies Program in Humanities and the “Art, where and for whom?” institutional grant at UPR.

Active Muses in Contemporary Puerto Rican Theatre

Jessica Gaspar Concepción, University of Puerto Rico-Cayey

The essay Active Muses in Contemporary Puerto Rican Theatre presents the most important contributions of six seminal figures in contemporary Puerto Rican  theatre: Victoria Espinosa, Gilda Navarra, Myrna Casas, Rosa Luisa Márquez, Maritza Pérez and Teresa Hernández. Also, it analyzes the multiplicity of roles that these women have assumed in the practice of  theatre on the “Island.”

Jessica Aymeé Gaspar Concepción is an alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she did her dissertation “Resistance and Transformation in the ‘Other’ Puerto Rican Theatre: Performances of Rosa Luisa Márquez 1986-1998.” She currently teaches  theatre arts at the University of Puerto Rico-Cayey Campus and heads the educational-artistic project Radiografías artísticas de manifestaciones de violencia y paz (artistic x-rays of expressions of violence and peace), which is sponsored by the UPR-Cayey Commission for Violence Prevention. She headed the research project Luisa Capetillo y la palabra activa: El teatro como herramienta de creación investigación y educación (Luisa Capetillo and the active word:  theatre as a creative, research and educational tool), sponsored by the UPR-Cayey Inter-Disciplinary Research Institute and wrote the play Luisa Capetillo: La musa activa (Luisa Capetillo: the active muse) about the contributions of this feminist and anarchist Puerto Rican woman writer of the beginning of the 20th Century. This production toured in Puerto Rico and abroad.

At UPR-Cayey, Gaspar-Concepción has directed artistic projects such as Ellas y su dramaturgia del cuerpo y del espacio (women and their physical and spatial playwriting) and Expresión, acción y reflexión: No más violencia contra las mujeres (expression and action and reflection: no more violence against women), both sponsored by the UPR-Cayey Women Studies Program. She has also participated as an actress in several professional  theatre and film companies such as Teatro del Sesenta, Cimarrón e Isla Films, Ágora Teatral, and Corporación de Teatro Latino.

Theatre and Performance in the Puerto Rican Diaspora

Rosalina Perales, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras

Despite being a “small’ country, Puerto Rico has citizens living all over the world and drawing international attention to their creative work. Arts and literature provide an outlet of expression for not only Puerto Ricans living on the island but for the Puerto Rican Diaspora that consists of people born in the US and others that move off the island for primarily economic reasons –half of the Puerto Rican population now lives in the United States. During the 20^th Century, there were many examples of Puerto Rican theatre in the US, especially in New York. It was in the 1950s that the enormous success of René Marques‘ The Oxcart started the real presence of Puerto Rican theatre there. Succeeding generations of Puerto Ricans have contributed to the development and expansion of this movement, which has included poets and storytellers who also perform their texts to reach a wider audience. The theatre of social rage during the 1960s and 1970s has now evolved into a more subtle expression of social and political protest and is often modernized and packaged to compete with mainstream American theatre. Some playwrights have seen their plays produced on and off-Broadway, but the majority must continue to struggle to get their plays produced and to receive recognition in the US as well as on the island of Puerto Rico, where they believe they also belong. I propose to present a brief overview of the work of these emigrants and focus on their concerns within the theatre world.

Rosalina Perales is a Puerto Rican scholar, historian, critic, and full professor in the Drama Department at the University of Puerto Rico. She studied for her Doctorate in Europe, in the United States, and in Latin America. Since 1987, she has dedicated herself to theatre research, especially in Latin American countries, and has published Contemporary Hispanic American Theatre (volumes I and II) on the subject. She has also published numerous essays and articles. In 1996, she published a theatrical biography, Fifty Years of Puerto Rican Theatre: The Art of Victoria Espinosa. In 2002, she published Anthology of Puerto Rican Children’s Theatre and most recently, Children’s Theatre of Eugenio Maria de Hostos (2009). She is also awaiting publication of her book, Theatre and Performance of the Puerto Rican Diaspora and a collection of essays she is editing about Puerto Rican theatre under the title of Ollantay, a Latino theatre journal in New York.

She founded Bambalinas, the first theatrical journal at the University of Puerto Rico.  She has received many awards for her essays and short stories. In 2003, she was honored with the prestigious Eugenio María de Hostos Honorary Professor Award to conduct an international theatre project on Hostos’ children’s theatre. She created and continues to preside over the Puerto Rican Alliance for International Theatre Exchange and has organized an international theatre festival on the theatre of Hostos and several symposiums on theatre education.  At the moment, she is working on establishing a theatre research center at the University of Puerto Rico and trying to design a new Master’s Degree in the Drama Department.

Cultural Cartographies of Contemporary Puerto Rico:

Art, cultural action, and transformations in the public space

Mareia Quintero Rivera, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras

What has been the place of art in producing significations of Puerto Rican social experience? What is the role of metaphor in collective action and political configurations? How are art and social mobilization in contemporary Puerto Rico transforming the public sphere? This presentation aims at exploring the ways in which art and cultural action relate to some of the historic processes that articulate our contemporary notions of the Puerto Rican experience and challenges, in particular, economic dependency, ideologies of progress and urban development, and political subordination.

The last decade has seen the generation of new forms of social mobilization that inform political practice. The struggle of Peace for Vieques is the most evident expression of the reconfigurations that emerge in political discourse and action. Art and performance have played a vital part in developing metaphors that demand a more democratic public sphere, including community resistance to expropiation and displacement, the defense of the right access to public lands and the shoreline, and more recently, opposition to the current devastation of the public sector launched by the present government. This analysis pays special attention to the resignification of place or site through the mobilization of aesthetics and political action. It looks at urban spaces that have gained a symbolic density that transforms them into sites where people affirm their rights, defy inequalities, and unveil relationships of power.

Mareia Quintero Rivera is a professor and researcher of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at the University of Puerto Rico, where she currently coordinates the Masters in Cultural Agency and Administration and directs a collaborative research project in Cultural Cartographies in Contemporary Puerto Rico. Quintero has a PhD in Social History from the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and she is the author the book A cor e o som da nação: A idéia de mestiçagem na crítica musical do Caribe Hispânico e do Brasil (São Paulo, Annablume, 2000) [The Color and Sound of the Nation: The idea of mestizaje in music criticism in the Hispanic Caribbean and Brazil] as well as of diverse of essays on cultural history and cultural policies.