June 2021 – UW Center for Performance Studies

Book Interview – London in a Box

The true cultural tipping point in the run-up to the American Revolution, writes University of Washington drama professor Odai Johnson in his new book, might not have been the Boston Tea Party, the British naval blockade or even the First Continental Congress.

Rather, Johnson suggests in “London in a Box: Englishness and Theatre in Revolutionary America,” it was that Congress’s decision in late October of 1774 to close the theaters in British America.

“To close them was a small and radical act of the Continental Congress among far weightier measures,” he writes, “but a hard shot across the bow of British culture.”

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News Article

Dr. Stefka Mihaylova was interviewed for an article in the Seattle Times about this generation of Theater Artists and how COVID-19 has affected them.

Theater has a history of adapting to major crises by reinventing itself, notes Stefka Mihaylova, assistant professor of theater history and performance theory at UW School of Drama. Theater reinvented itself when it first began competing with television and film, and during recessions and economic depressions.

“This moment is similar,” she says, referring to theater companies that have begun creating virtual content. “Theater has to meet audiences where they are, and they are at home.”

In the meantime, Mihaylova anticipates that the experience of working on screens will be beneficial to emerging actors who often do work in film and TV to pay for the work they do onstage. Their Zoom performances, she says, may even become part of their portfolios for film work.

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Book Interview – Performing Flight: From the Barnstormers to Space Tourism

University of Washington drama professor Scott Magelssen explores American aviation from the perspective of performance studies in his new book “Performing Flight: From the Barnstormers to Space Tourism,” published this summer by University of Michigan Press.

“I began to realize the important role of performance in legitimizing to American legislators and taxpayers the enormous expenditures involved in the development of space exploration in this country. The idea for the book took off (ahem) from there.”

“Performing Flight,” he writes, “explores how aviation and space travel have been fundamentally connected to the images, gestures, narrative tropes and performative acts that have helped shape the enterprise of flight in public perception and consciousness.”

— Scott

Links below for more information:

About Scott Magelssen

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