Subtheme:
Performing Resistance and the Refuge of Performance
Organizer: Jeffery G. Stoyanoff (Penn State Altoona)
Scholars of early drama studies have been considering drama as a form of resistance since at least (and likely before) Claire Sponsler’s seminal monograph, Drama and Resistance (1997). The playfulness of dramatic performance is an ideal site of resistance. And even if playwrights, directors, and actors are not attempting to stage resistance, audiences (past, present, and future) have their own role in reading resistance in what they see (or imagine to see when reading play texts) before them.
In our current sociopolitical climate in the United States (and the West more broadly speaking) with neofascist political movements and the continuing devaluing of higher education targeting first and foremost the arts and humanities, performance, too, has become a form of refuge. Dr. Matthew Sergi’s helming of the York Plays 2025 in Toronto (with the support and help of Poculi Ludique Societas and University of Toronto’s Center for Renaissance and Reformation Studies) demonstrated to all of us who attended the myriad ways in which drama is itself a refuge—that play is more than “just play” and is a necessary component of human experience and existence.
Of course, as many of the pageants in York Plays 2025 showed audiences, drama is often both resistance and refuge. Whether an actor playing Herod dressed as and speaking like Donald Trump while flanked by the recognizable henchfolk from the current US regime or a wheelchair user actor playing Jesus healing other disabled bodies with prosthesis, these pageants demonstrated to viewers the transformative power of performance. They resisted; they provided refuge for many of us (if only for those 18.5 hours) who are uncertain of what will become of us, our loved ones, our neighbors, et al.
The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society enthusiastically sponsors this sub-theme, seeking both veteran scholars of early performance studies as well as folks who seek to join us in our resistance and to find refuge in the possibilities of performance. We seek papers that attend to the various ways in which resistance may be performed (especially in imagined performances heretofore unstaged) and/or to important affective role performance as play serves as a refuge in times of uncertainty and unrest. Papers incorporating performance in their planned presentation are especially welcome.
