Performance Critiques
Celebrating The Thanksgiving Play
Lydia Heberling and the review team bring essential context, highlighting the necessity of Native stories coming to Seattle stages, beginning with Larissa Fasthorse's satire about the complexity of the Thanksgiving Holiday and performing whiteness.
Memorial Tattoos and the Fogginess of War in Seattle Rep's Last of the Boys
Stevi Costa and the review team critically examine the complexity, ambiguity, and socio-political/cultural contexts of veterans and the impacts of war on the homefront in Steven Dietz's Last of the Boys.
Ghostly Historical Knowledge: SCT's The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559
Viewing Seattle Children's Theatre's production of The Journal of Ben Uchida: Citizen 13559, Steph Hankinson and the review team remind readers that we can be "challenged (both emotionally and intellectually) by encountering the ugliest, most complicated parts of history" through the powerful tool of performance.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Blood Quantum: Native American Identity in Jihae Park's Peerless
Lydia Heberling and the review team highlight Jihae Park's success at "capturing the complexity of claiming and expressing Indigeneity" in Peerless along with potential decolonial narratives, performing on unceded Duwamish territory.
Cherdonna's A Doll's House: The Plural and Irresolute Nature of Contemporary Feminism
Lydia Heberling and review team highlight WET's commitment to bridging the gap between Ibsen's “progressive feminist plot” and the plurality of postmodern feminism in Cherdonna's A Doll's House.
Orlando: Fluidity in Gender, Desire, and Time
Steph Hankinson and the review team recognize the passion and dedication of UW Drama's Orlando (adaptation by Sarah Ruhl) and how its thematic nuance of Virginia Woolf's classic on gender and desire.
Performing Immigration (sort of): Donald Byrd’s ‘The Immigrants’
Laura Chrisman and the review team question the in/visibility of immigrants and American citizens in Donald Byrd’s (Spectrum Dance Theater) ‘The Immigrants’.