Last updated by kprzemek on 2017-11-09. Originally submitted by tomski on 2017-10-25.
WA Distinguished Professors' Lectures Series features internationally renowned scholars visiting the Faculty of English to share their research and professional expertise with WA faculty and students.
Making the Radical Palatable:
The Political Effects of U.S. Mainstream Drama
by
Prof. Jacob Juntunen
Thursday, November 9, 6.30 p.m., C1, Collegium Novum
Utilizing data from my first book, Mainstream AIDS Theatre, the Media, and Gay Civil Rights (Routledge 2016), this lecture will demonstrate the political potential of mainstream theatre in the United States at the end of the 20th century. I will examine the Broadway premiere of one play in detail, Angels in America (1993), in order to show how it helped create a political shift in the United States. I use reviews as evidence for historical reception alongside material study—such as the theater’s location, architecture, merchandise, program notes, and advertising—to create a rich description of this production and its ideological effects.
Jacob Juntunen is a playwright and theatre scholar whose work focuses on theatre’s role in forming imagined communities, paying particular attention to marginality. He is the author of Mainstream AIDS Theatre, the Media, and Gay Civil Rights: Making the Radical Palatable (Routledge 2016), and his plays are for those “who want to leave the theatre changed and moved,” as one Chicago critic described. He is the Head of the Playwriting MFA and PhD programs at Southern Illinois University, where he is Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature, Criticism, and Playwriting, as well as the Department of Theater’s Director of Graduate Studies. His current book project expands his geographic scope to examine artistic resistance to the genocidal discourse of the Nazi and Soviet regimes, particularly examining the theatre of Polish auteur Tadeusz Kantor. His reviews and articles have been published in Theatre Journal, European Theatre Journal, Polish-AngloSaxon Studies, Peace History, HowlRound.com, and several anthologies. Jacob’s scholarship and playwriting have been supported by the Fulbright Program, Krakow’s International Cultural Center, the Illinois Arts Council, SIU’s Seed Grant, and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. His plays have been produced or workshopped Off-Broadway, in Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, Washington, DC, and across the U.S. and Europe.
