2023 – 2024 Events

See below for descriptions of the “On Decolonizing Theatre” seminar programming from 2023 – 2024.

“Decolonizing Mozart’s Operas”

Can Mozart be decolonized? Mozart’s best-known operas are firmly entrenched in the performance canon, yet modern sensibilities chafe at the elements of racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia in the story. Many critics, performers, and scholars have long been aware of the problematic aspects of these works, which sit uneasily alongside the exceptional aesthetic qualities of the score. On Thursday, October 5 at 6:00 – 7:30 PM CST, we questioned how Mozart’s canon may be decolonized.  We welcomed soprano Jane Archibald (Canadian Opera Company) and creative directors Teila Thiessen and Josh Shaw (Pacific Opera Project) to screen clips from recent stagings of The Magic Flute (1791) and The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) to which they had contributed. This was followed by a lively discussion examining the Canadian Opera Company and Pacific Opera Project’s contrasting approaches to “decolonizing” Mozart’s operas, focusing on the difference between recontextualizing the setting to popularize the work and decolonization per se. We specifically asked our guest speakers what strategies have been utilized to stage these works in recent times, when historical developments have focused our attention on the urgency of decolonization.  

The event was attended by 36 participants at Northwestern University.

“The Rosina Project”

The Rosina Project is a contemporary adaptation of Rossini’s 19th-century comedy The Barber of Seville, remixed by Chicago-based Hip-Hop and street artist company BraveSoul Movement. (Hip/Hopera: hip hop meets opera at a reimagined house party set in present day Chicago.) On Thursday, November 2nd at 6:30 – 7:30 PM CST, we hosted a seminar highlighting selected scenes from The Rosina Project followed by a panel discussion featuring the artistic director of Chicago Fringe Opera George Cederquist (director), dance artist and educator Kelsa ‘K-Soul’ Robinson (choreographer), creator of the hiphopera genre OperaTronic K.F. Jacques (composer/Figaro), a member of breaking crew Phaze II Crosstown Crew BRAVEMONK (Basilio), and MC musical artist Pinqy Ring (Rosina). We discussed how The Rosina Project reworked Rossini’s opera to celebrate female empowerment by placing Rosina as the story’s heroine and driver of the plot, rather than an ingenue manipulated by men. The emergence of HipHopera as a genre and its role in challenging the hegemony of Western musical theory was also a topic of interest amongst our panelists. This panel was moderated by Dr. Jesse Rosenberg (Bienen School of Music) and Dr. Ivy Wilson (co-PI, director of the Black Arts Consortium, Department of English and Program in American Studies).  

The event was attended by 22 participants at Northwestern University. A recording of the panel discussion is uploaded to YouTube. 

“The Revenge presented by Red Bull Theater“

Edward Young’s The Revenge (1721) was a mainstay of eighteenth-century repertoire, but is now little known outside scholarly circles. Often thought of as a revision of the Othello plot and set sixteenth-century Spain, it features an enslaved North African aristocrat who wreaks carefully planned revenge against the man whom he serves. In anticipation of a live screening of a staged reading of The Revenge at Red Bull Theater (NYC), the “On Decolonizing Theatre” project sponsored a hybrid seminar discussion of the play’s connections to both historical and contemporary audiences with special attention to how discourses of race, exploitation, and imperialism signify across time through text and in performance through the titular character’s agency. On Tuesday, January 16th from 6:30 – 7:30 PM CST, “On Decolonizing Theatre” hosted leading scholars of the eighteenth century to “preview” the play through video clips and a panel discussion about the production. Panelists included: Amy Huang (Bates College), Lisa Freeman (University of Illinois-Chicago), Bridget Orr (Vanderbilt University), and Cornesha Tweede (Arizona State University). This seminar was available to stream asynchronously through January 23 on  Red Bull’s website.

This event was attended by 55 people via a live stream on Red Bull Theatre’s YouTube channel. The video is available on YouTube.

The following week, on January 22nd, “On Decolonizing Theatre” broadcast Red Bull Theatre’s live reading of the play in the Main Library Forum Room on Northwestern’s Evanston campus from 5:15 – 7:00 PM. This reading was also available to stream online through Red Bull Theatre’s website. Immensely popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Edward Young’s The Revenge (1721) ghosts tale that fans of Shakespeare will recognize—a general and his new bride manipulated to tragic ends—but in the context of Spain’s conquests in North Africa. In this tale the revenger is the Moor—Zanga, an enslaved prince—who wreaks righteous vengeance on his oppressor. The fiery Zanga, a favorite role of both Ira Aldridge and Edmund Kean, finally gets his return to the spotlight. As Zanga says, “To receive me hell blows all her fires.” “On Decolonizing Theatre” partnered with Red Bull Theatre (NYC) to offer a virtual screening of the play, which featured Matt Rauch as Don Alonzo, Alexandra Silber as Isabella, and Peter Macon as Zanga, streamed at Playwrights Horizons in conjunction with Red Bull Theater in NYC.

“Cato: A Tragedy Screening and Roundtable“

Theatre and performance are at the core of US-American national identity formation. This is evident in the staging of Joseph Addison’s Cato, A Tragedy (1713) for American troops at the behest of George Washingtonin 1778,  as he defied a congressional ban on theatrical productions to inspire troops after a grueling Valley Forge winter. The play depicts the final days of Cato the Younger (95 – 46 BCE), rendering him an icon of democracy, liberty, and virtue, as he resists the tyranny of Julius Caesar. On January 22, 2024, we hosted a screening of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s professional production of Cato in anticipation of a roundtable discussion the following week. 

Cato raises fundamental questions about citizenship, freedom, and race that continue to resonate in the present. We centered these questions in a roundtable discussion on January 29, 2024, with Misty Anderson (dramaturg and Professor of English at UT-Knoxville), Shinnerrie Jackson aActor and Assistant Professor of Theatre at UT-Knoxville), Sara Monoson (Professor of Classics and Political Science at Northwestern University), and Al Tillery (Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University). This event focused on choices made in UT-Knoxville’s production.. We viewed video clips and discussed how the creative team activated Addison’s text for a twenty-first century audience through strategic cross-race and cross-gender casting choices, cuts, and blocking, which refocused attention on fundamental questions of activism, multi-generational responsibility, and resilience in the face of defeat.

The roundtable was attended by 23 participants.

BROWN BAG SERIES: On January 29, postdoc Keary Watts hosted a brown bag luncheon for undergraduate and graduate students with Professors Roxane Heinze-Bradshaw (Northwestern) and Misty Anderson (UT-Knoxville) on the topic of staging historical repertoires in the present. The event was attended by 16 Northwestern students. Participants and panelists engaged in discussion about practical matters of production dramaturgy as well as questions of how to make historical texts relevant to contemporary audiences and what to do with content that is ethically or morally problematic in the twenty-first century.

BROWN BAG SERIES: On April 23, Dr. Keary Watts hosted a public lunchtime event with Larissa Fasthorse in conjunction with his course on Theatre and Decolonization. Fasthorse, one of the most produced playwrights in the world and the first indigenous woman to have a play on Broadway, spoke with students about indigenous theatre making. Participants discussed practical approaches to decolonization that centered issues of labor, critical analysis, and belonging. 43 people attended this event, including the 16 students in Dr. Watts’s class.

“BOUND: Screening and Q&A with Co-Director Reneltta Arluk“

What can George Frideric Handel tell us about present day Canada? In co-sponsorship with the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities’ SOVEREIGNTIES DIALOGUE 2023-2024 series and the Centre for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern, this event featured a public screening of Against the Grain Theatre’s hybrid film/opera BOUND. This musical reworking of Handel’s music (from multiple oratorios and operas) tells the real-life stories of 4 Canadians of diverse backgrounds whose lives challenge the prevailing myth of Canada as a welcoming, inclusive country: the cumulative argument highlights the ongoing need for decolonization and inclusion for people with queer identities, immigrants and new Canadians, the socioeconomically disadvantaged, and people of color. The screening was followed by a Q&A with the production’s co-director  and founder of Canada’s first Indigenous theatre company, Akpik Theatre, Reneltta Arluk (Inuvialuit, Cree, and Dene). The post-screening discussion focused on Arluk’s approach to “Indigenizing” artistic spaces, highlighting the importance of the creative process in decolonizing artistic practices.

This event was attended by 25 people in Lutkin Hall at Northwestern University’s Evanston campus. 

BROWN BAG SERIES: On May 23, Arluk also joined Dr. Keary Watts’s class on “Decolonizing Theatre” earlier in the day to discuss her work at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Here, she spoke with undergraduate Theatre majors regarding her work as an Indigenous activist and theatre’s role in fighting for sovereignty in Canada. This class was attended by 18 students.