Dramaturgy Final Project on "Girls" by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins by Lindsay Irwin https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg en-us 2020-11-18 14:39:55 UTC 2023-05-19 14:43:22 UTC hello@padlet.com Poster/Program Cover lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936886485 2020-11-18 14:40:39 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936886485 Focusing in on individual unseen representations (BIPOC/WOMEN) lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936887043 There is power in presenting each "girl" in the spotlight, especially due to their diverse casting. This play centers under-represented demographics by co-opting greek myths for their own modern lives -- bringing this Greek tragedy into a modern sphere. ]]> 2020-11-18 14:40:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936887043 Intermediality - Use of Screens and Vlogging lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936887245 The use of actual phones, selfies, cameras and screens reflected our world in a dizzying way. As the RCP includes, intermediality allows for a "'between-ness' and undecideability" (217) that reflects the playfulness of how BJJ explores gender and time. 

In utilizing intermedial influences throughout the choreography (such as phones to take videos and selfie throughout), Kelly allows for both a bodily and virtual corporeality, contributing to the play's duality. ]]> 2020-11-18 14:40:47 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936887245 Dramaturgy of Choreography lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936904162 This play centers around the Bacchan reveling of the "girls" that were under-represented in Euripide's play. To emphasize the raving atmosphere and refocus on the corporeality of the "girls," BJJ privileges choreography as an important element of his story telling. 

"This play lulls you into a dance trance... Kelly’s choreography is artfully and specifically frenetic throughout. It reaches a delirious high point when each of the performers does a solo turn" (NY Times Review).
]]> 2020-11-18 14:43:39 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936904162 Adaptation Tactics lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936906640 BJJ show the bits of “The Bacchae” that Euripides only talked about. 

"Staging the party makes it a play about women (and transwomen, and the gender-fluid folks) rather than about egotistical, argumentative men" (NYT Review).

What Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Changed:
- Setting: Bacchus as a rave in the woods
- Theseus as Theo (gun activist) and Dionysus as Deon (amateur DJ)
- Changing what it means to be Bacchan women: partying outside of working hours rather than going "mad" and murderous.
-Bringing intermediality to the story.

Below is the Yale Rep Production Dramaturgy Note.]]> 2020-11-18 14:44:05 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936906640 Creation of Atmosphere Through Lighting & Sound lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936911856 The atmosphere of Girls was like no other. Otherworldly and spanning both historical and virtual time, I felt in another dimension of consciousness.

"Yi Zhao’s hallucinatory, audience-drenching lighting creates the visual equivalent of the electronic dance music that numbs even as it energizes." (NY Times Review)]]> 2020-11-18 14:44:59 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936911856 Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Playwright) lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936919853 Branden Jacobs-Jenkins received a B.A. (2006) from Princeton University and an M.A. (2007) from New York University, and he is a graduate (2014) of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard. His plays have been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3, Soho Rep, the Public Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, and Center Theatre Group, among many others. Jacobs-Jenkins is currently a Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and master-artist-in-residence in the Playwriting MFA program of Hunter College, City University of New York. (MacArthur Foundation)

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was listed among the Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of 2018-2019 and has been honored as a two-time finalist for the 2016 and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, respectively. (American Theatre).]]> 2020-11-18 14:46:24 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936919853 "Animal" studies Dramaturgy lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936927076 The "girls" become animals, in the bestial and/or party animal sense. They group together in packs, lounge on grass in the dead of night, and get down on all fours. While raving, this all-encompassing group reaches a raw collective self. This play brings the inside out for the audience to see, and has humans turn into a community of dancing animals. They become an iteration of "the electric animal" that Chaudari writes about in RCP 181.]]> 2020-11-18 14:47:39 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936927076 Creation of "Girls" Community/Solidarity lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936930769 "Group mentality" takes on different meaning in Girls, allowing for under-represented solidarity.

The Choreography weaves all of the "girls"' stories together into a collective mishmash and communal celebration, "showcas[ing] the women cavorting in groups large and small” (Beck BWW).]]> 2020-11-18 14:48:17 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936930769 Gun Violence: Perpetuating or Protesting? lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936949229
  • Casting Deon as a Black actor and Theo as a white actor brings racialized weight into this adaptation, especially in regards to gun violence. 
  • White men such as Theo have always been the perpetrators and Black individuals have always been the victims in America history. 
  • This show did precede summer 2020 (mainstream) calls for abolishing the prison industrial complex, defunding the police and the term "ACAB," but it is prompting me to view this play differently.
    • ]]>     2020-11-18 14:51:28 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936949229     Advertising Video lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936963888 2020-11-18 14:54:00 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936963888 Immediacy of Live streaming lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936975000 The intermedial choice to live stream scenes between Deon and Theo as they were happening onto a screen effectively blends the natural and modern world. By putting this live video in the trees at a god-like height, BJJ exemplifies limitless possibilities of what theatre can be. In showing present action that we can't see in real time on screens, the audience gains access to a supposedly private behind-the-scenes conversation. ]]> 2020-11-18 14:55:56 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936975000 Gender Queerness and Butlerian Performativity lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936981038 "Girls" are also male-presenting and use a variety of pronouns. The revelers play with aspects of Butler's gender performativity by changing their outfits  - stripping off and adding accessories throughout - performing gendered acts. 

    Butler states, “those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished” (522) - instead of only trying one performance, the "girls" experiment and expand their ideas of gender by trying differently gendered performances. ]]>     2020-11-18 14:56:53 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936981038     My Experience lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936996831 Holding the hand of a stranger next to me during the machine gun fire at the end.

    I sat next to a fellow college student -- we chatted for a couple minutes pre-show but were otherwise strangers. After the Bacchan women ripped Theo apart, we thought we were safe and that was the violence the trigger warning was referring to.

    Until a barrage of machine gun fire had us clasping hands and curling into each other. This sort of fear melded the real world and world of the play so seamlessly, but was so incredibly shocking that we were almost crying because we thought it was a live shooter. We were reminded of active shooters in movie theatres and schools; our collective recent memories of gun violence blended to make this ending believable and terrifying. We breathed a sigh of relief with quickly beating hearts and parted ways.
    ]]>     2020-11-18 14:59:36 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/936996831     How Advertised lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937011701 Blurb in my own words: Deon doesn't fit in with productive society so creates raving chaos in the woods, luring the town's "girls" of all genders to party. Theo/Theseus finds the partying revolting and rants about the merry-makers in his alt-right-pro-gun vlogs. This play pits law & order against freedom & acceptance in a modern take on Euripides' The Bacchae.
    Press Release]]>     2020-11-18 15:02:10 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937011701     More Helpful Notes from Program at Yale Rep lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937025557 From Yale Rep Program]]> 2020-11-18 15:04:32 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937025557 Production History lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937054985 Commissioned and developed at for Playwright-in-Residence Program at Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts.
    Princeton 2017 - Workshop 
    Yale Rep 2019 - World Premiere (I saw in October, 2019).]]>     2020-11-18 15:09:32 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937054985     Princeton Iteration from 2017 lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937062530 2020-11-18 15:10:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937062530 Yale Rep Artistic Director Note about "Girls" lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937096010  Director speaks to how Jenkins has adapted Euripides The Bacchae for his modern audience.]]> 2020-11-18 15:16:16 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937096010 Press Release on Playbill lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937099996 2020-11-18 15:16:55 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/937099996 Title as a Playful Parody lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1003579407 From Euripide's largely ignored Bacchan women to "Gurls" and now "Girls," BJJ seems to be calling attention to the term "girls" itself and its political undercurrents.

    BJJ centers his piece on "girls" from all gender identities to allow for playful genderfuckery and existence outside of a gender binary. He also brings into question the universal underestimation and infantilization of women - particularly in the term "girl" rather than "woman".

    I believe he uses this term in a parodic and delightfully centering way by creating a chorus of women of all identities who are lumped together as the "girls" collective. By switching from Gurls to Girls, he allows for a more universal understanding of "girls" rather than sticking to the more casual term "gurls" for girls to match the slang "clurb"/club. ]]>     2020-12-09 18:51:43 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1003579407     "Hey, Girl" by Castelluci lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021898616 My perception of this show borders on Sack's review of Castelluci's Hey, Girl (RCP 75).

    This play similarly "simultaneously profane the sacred and elevate the banal," (RCP 75) by invoking duality and camp. As shown below, Hey. Girl operates on the edge of consciousness and creates bold images that question large themes such as moldable identity; Girls also points to questions of identity with its title community of all-gendered "girls" and explores femme-identifying corporeality.

    Girls also similarly "implicates the theatre and spectator" (76) that Castelluci creates by merging the play's and the audience's reality. I especially noticed this conflation in the ending gunshots, which I've expanded on in the My Experience section. ]]>     2020-12-15 20:47:16 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021898616     Moving Collage Two lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021900968 Artificiality of technology replacing nature. The intermedial elements of this play centralize on how the natural world has changed -- and uses the setting of the Bacchus celebration, in the middle of the woods, to satirically frame this. Jenkins presents the dramatic wood setting as bizarre, commenting how our internet-informed worlds have shifted, makings screens seem more natural than nature itself.  He also brings in the issue of capitalistic consumerism as natural in how many of the "girls" own frilly clothes that do not match their setting, apply and reapply heavy makeup, and attempt to document their experience with their expensive phones. Where are these characters' animalistic qualities if nature has been replaced by screens and the communal celebration replaced by electronic dance music? ]]> 2020-12-15 20:47:58 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021900968 Collage Four lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021901983 Some themes stick across time and space -- this adaptation capitalizes on Euripide's original focus of the believer's "clouded judgement" and brings it into the 21st century by pitting individuals who stand for alt-right Law & Order and Free-thinking Protestors against each other, threatening to topple society as we know it. We watch on (as the audience below) as the story unfolds, plucked from Ancient Greece and brought into America to represent a political Bacchus that is incredibly close to home.]]> 2020-12-15 20:48:17 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021901983 Moving Collage One lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021902783 This piece speaks to the inner and outer animals and the duality that Dionysus brings out in his followers. As a god of celebration, he brings a liminal celebration into everyday working people's daily lives, letting them let loose from their menial jobs and fully live. I represented this by mismatching halves of famous couples in art -- this representation also gets at how Theseus (Theo) is more alike to Dionysus (Deon) than he would like to think. When Deon convices Theo to crossdress, he exists between his (conservative-informed) binary conceptions of gender and actually enjoys the freedom that Deon gives him.]]> 2020-12-15 20:48:32 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021902783 Questions I've Been Pondering: lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021917830 What does it mean when marginalized groups purposefully change the story created by oppressors?
     
    Does constructing a queer self unapologetically in a hetero-patriarchal society (both in public and private) and operating within Queer Temporality act as resistance?]]>     2020-12-15 20:53:16 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021917830     Queer Temporality lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021935668 J. Halberstam's idea of Queer Time in "Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies" favors the immediate present and upends value of reproductive and hetero-patriarchally motivated time. By structuring the dramatic setting as a place of liminal and unproductive time, the rave becomes anti-capitalist and pro-Queer, letting the participants forget their routine worries. BJJ encompasses this concept in his adaptation by focusing on the "urgent now" and a community that values spontaneity over routine. The below installation breaches this topic in a similarly intermedial way.]]> 2020-12-15 20:59:04 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021935668 Radical Representation lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021946860 Freccero’s essay on “Cultural Studies, Popular Culture and Pedagogy” paper discusses how marginalized groups’ limited ability to produce counter-hegemonic representations supports that if there were more (in this case Black and gender-Queer) representations  to choose from, then “bad” representations wouldn’t hurt marginalized communities so terribly by contributing to mass cultural misconceptions. 

    What does it mean for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, "who identif[ies] as queer but whose plays aren’t chiefly about LGBTQ life" to engage in topics of genderfuck and provide authentic and variant intersectional character representations? (Black, Queer and Here, American Theatre).]]>     2020-12-15 21:02:37 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021946860     BJJ's Lens and Framing lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021973347 "Many of Jacobs-Jenkins’s plays use a historical lens to satirize and comment on modern culture, particularly the ways in which race and class are negotiated in both private and public settings. Although the provocation of his audience is purposeful, Jacobs-Jenkins’s creation of unsettling, shocking, often confrontational moments... [are in] service of the story he is telling." (Macfound)

    In Girls, the phrase "Trigger Warning" was inserted in a line rather than in the program, which I found a creative solution to the TW debate. 
    ]]>     2020-12-15 21:10:52 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021973347     More About BJJ's Style lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021984563 As a Queer and Black playwright, Jenkins has spoken about the pressure to always speak to his “otherness” in his work - often commenting about how, sometimes a cow is just a cow rather than a complicated allegory for American racism and/or homophobia.

     In a New York Magazine article from 2014, he expresses:
     "He seems unable to escape... the expectation that he write solely about race. 'Race is always in play, but somehow when I walk into a room, it’s a word that’s used to put me in a corner.'" (Witchel).

    In Girls, he presents diverse characters with intersectional racial, gender, and sexual identities to create a fuller picture of modern "girls"  who may come but avoids bringing his subjectivity directly into the piece.
    ]]>     2020-12-15 21:14:36 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1021984563     Collage Two lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024163984 Queer and Natural Time. Against an unatural natural backdrop, this play explores Queer time by boiling down the Bacchus celebration into a one-night rave that seems to last for an eternity. The squares on the right represent the multiplicity of the monologuing "girls" and their intersectional experiences - as we hear their stories we find they are more alike than we originally thought.]]> 2020-12-16 14:52:28 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024163984 Moving Collage Three lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024171349 Female Sexual Agency as Natural and Queer time as warped.
    This play allows the Bacchae, or female followers, to express themselves through sexual choreography in a celebration that escapes typical surveillance of female sexuality, although the audience watches on. It also encourages viewers to let go of linear time as they know it and refocus on living in the moment and existing authentically rather than mechanically. ]]>     2020-12-16 14:53:57 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024171349     Collage One lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024328983 My representation of the Yale Rep production of "Girls" in a nutshell. Hemmed in by nature, these characters transcend gendered boundaries and try on nature for themselves. The "girls" also explore their own sexualities in this liminal space outside of normal time, egged on by the hypnotizing beat that Deon amplifies. 

     The audience surveils the "girls" as they morph into more animalistic and exploratory versions of themselves, looking through the lens of history as BJJ bends the lens to encapsulate this timely story. The "girls" stare right back, enacting an oppositional gaze - one that allows reclamation of historic oppression - in their transgressive genderfuckery and time-bending (Hobson and Halberstam).]]>     2020-12-16 15:26:57 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024328983     Collage Three lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024331625 Deon, or Dionysus, is everywhere in this play. They (the pronouns I'm using) exist beyond nature -- both as a part of the natural landscape and on the projected screen. Deon is the only character who exists comfortably in both worlds, which brings in a Queer reading of his ability to pass across genders. Criticism of the older play offers:

    "In this protodrama, Dionysus, the god of the theatre, stage-directs the play" (Gutenberg).

     in BJJ's adaptation, Deon exists across both spheres and more orchestrates and sways rather than directs, in my opinion, as the two worlds collide.

    "The original “Bacchae” opens with a stark announcement from Dionysus, god of pleasure, that’s he’s arrived and needs to be obeyed. “Girls” begins with a slight, unassuming (yet stylish) young man named Deon wandering out in the lush city park setting, glancing out to the audience and muttering 'You’re here early. I thought you were someone else. Do you mind if I ...?'" (NYT Review).
    ]]>     2020-12-16 15:27:29 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024331625     Moving Collage Four lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024333871 This play inspires us to see the "girls"/ravers as enlightened and Theo, the alt-right gun enthusiast, as animalistic due to his penchant for violence. However, this play blends the lines by opening conversations across the separated worlds. ]]> 2020-12-16 15:27:57 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024333871 Moving Collage Five lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024428965 BJJ replaces antiquated characters (especially in how Euripides represents the women as "crazy") with intersectional representations of "girls". He bends expectations and frames the story in a self-representative way, focusing on BIPOC and Queer narratives to rewrite this Greek tragedy with current subjects. He updates the Greek drama to highlight explicitly 21st Century struggles and binary oppositions by Queering and modernizing his text. The embroidery that goes outside of the frame represents how BJJ picked and chose what he decided to adapt from Euripide's original text. ]]> 2020-12-16 15:48:03 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024428965 Camp & Queerness lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024747513 Girls invokes ideas of Camp, especially through a Queer lens, which is explored in this video.

    BJJ similarly dethrones the serious in Girls by satirically questioning the seriousness of this Greek tragedy.]]>     2020-12-16 16:53:36 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024747513     BJJ's Other Works lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024848520 Appropriate (2012) has all of the trappings of an “American family drama,” but the familiar plot of a family brought together after a father’s death is disrupted by the discovery of a collection of lynching photographs among the deceased’s belongings.

    Neighbors (2010) includes performances reminiscent of historical minstrel acts performed by actors in blackface.

    An Octoroon (2014) with the meta-theatrical character of BJJ. BJJ is a playwright alter ego who guides the action of this imaginative recreation of Dion Boucicault’s nineteenth-century play of a similar name. Another Adaptation

    With Gloria (2015), Jacobs-Jenkins returns to the naturalistic play, using the biting satire of the comic drama to explore the stratified, competitive world of the modern workplace and its sometimes fatal consequences. 
    (Macfound.org) 


    ]]>     2020-12-16 17:14:18 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1024848520     Works Cited (PDF for Formatting) lirwin8 https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1025625583 Thank you for a wonderful semester! See you in the Spring :)]]> 2020-12-16 20:17:05 UTC https://padlet.com/lirwin8/xplbn2wob769r7sg/wish/1025625583