The Coloniality of Catastrophe in Caribbean Theater and Performance

The Coloniality of Catastrophe in Caribbean Theater and Performance calls attention to theater's capacity to reveal the constructed roots of catastrophe and offer counter catastrophic strategies to live and imagine otherwise. ** Engaging anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone theater from across the Caribbean and its diaspora, the 12 essays and one interview foster a pan-Caribbean view of theater, identifying shared tropes and theatrical strategies. Essays address a range of 20 th and 21 st century works that center the relentless cycle of natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods as well as the catastrophic effects of continuing coloniality more broadly. In doing so, they unsettle the normalization of catastrophe. Exploring the power of theater's situatedness, its iterative quality, and its special arrangement of time, these works remind us of the impact of embodied co-presence in the political realities of everyday life.

Engages multiple islands & languages to create a pan-Caribbean understanding of coloniality of catastrophe in theater Highlights the impact of natural disaster as man-made catastrophe across a wide range of dramatic texts Analyzes contemporary Caribbean plays that offer counter-catastrophic strategies for imagining alternative futures

Autorentext

Camilla Stevens is Professor in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, United States.

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Jon D. Rossini is Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, Davis, United States.

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Klappentext
This book is essential reading on contemporary pan-Caribbean theater. It is also a fresh take on what it might mean to rethink regional and transnational interconnection through performance. Taken together this rare collection embraces linguistic, national, temporal and geographic differences. They move beyond hackneyed scenarios of the region as a space of perpetual catastrophe and disaster and provoke a reimagination of relations between humans and the more than human world. --Honor Ford-Smith, York University Drawing upon plays and performances from the English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean this volume both investigates the enduring consequences of colonialism and catastrophe in the region and offers counter catastrophic theatrical responses that enable audiences and artists to imagine ways to recuperate and reanimate their communities in the face of catastrophe. The fascinating collection points the way to an understanding of a pan-Caribbean view of theater filled with hope. --Adam Versenyi, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill The Coloniality of Catastrophe in Caribbean Theater and Performance calls attention to theater's capacity to reveal the constructed roots of catastrophe and offer counter catastrophic strategies to live and imagine otherwise. Engaging multilingual theater from across the Caribbean and its diaspora, the essays foster a pan-Caribbean view of theater, identifying shared tropes and theatrical strategies. Essays address 20th and 21st century works that center the relentless cycle of natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods as well as the catastrophic effects of continuing coloniality more broadly. In doing so, they unsettle the normalization of catastrophe. Exploring the power of theater's situatedness, its iterative quality, and its special arrangement of time, these works remind us of the impact of embodied co-presence in the political realities of everyday life. Camilla Stevens is Professor in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, United States. Jon D. Rossini is Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, Davis, United States.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Guy Régis Jr's Post-Earthquake Vigil: Keeping Watch on Catastrophe in De toute la terre le grand effarement .- Chapter 3: "We Must Face Haiti: Rawle Gibbons's 1993 Production of The Black Jacobins.- Chapter 4: Staging the Païdeuma : Nature and Insurrection in Aimé Césaire's Une tempête.- Chapter 5: The Coloniality of Naufragio and Utopia in Teatro Buendía's Otra tempestad.- Chapter 6: Making Theater in the Face of the Storm: Shakespeare in Paradise, Healing, and Theater.- Chapter 7: Drowning in the Wake.- Chapter 8: No more drumming. Nor sticks: The Colonial Catastrophe that Conditioned Caribbean Performance.- Chapter 9: Interrogating Disaster through Apocalyptic Narratives in Dominican Theater.- Chapter 10: Sensing Catastrophic Realities in Diasporic Puerto Rican Theater.- Chapter 11: PROMESA, Anti-Colonial Drag, and Diasporic Puerto Rican Trans Revolution.- Chapter 12: Beyond Catastrophe: Teresa Hernández and the Puerto Rican Performative Body in the New Millennium.- Chapter 13: Catastrophe, Theater, Performance: Praxes of Re/Making the Caribbean With/Out Coloniality, A Conversation with Eliézer Guérismé, Judith G. Miller, Gaël Octavia, and Gina Athena Ulysse.