Monsters in Performance

Michael M. Chemers is Professor and Chair of the Department of Performance, Play & Design at the University of California Santa Cruz. He was the Founding Director of the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Production Dramaturgy Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama from 2007–2012. He is the author of more than 70 peer-reviewed pieces (including seven books) on theater history, theory, adaptation, and dramaturgy. Most relevant to this project, he is the author of Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), The Monster in Theatre History: This Thing of Darkness (Routledge, 2017), served as editor for a double issue of Disability Studies Quarterly on freak shows, and edited Alexander Iliev’s Towards a Theory of Mime (Routledge, 2014) and Luis Valdez’s Theatre of the Sphere: The Vibrant Being (Routledge, 2021). He is also the author of Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010) and has articles appear in Modern Drama, New England Theatre Journal, Comparative Drama, Theatre Topics, LMDA Review, and other publications. Recent book chapters include "The Mortification of Harvey Leach."Analola Santana is Associate Professor in the Department of Theater at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Teatro y Cultura de Masas: Encuentros y Debates (México: Editorial Escenología, 2010) and Freak Performances: Dissidence in Latin American Theatre (University of Michigan Press, 2018), which considers the significance of theatrical practices that use the "freak" as a medium to explore the continuing effects of colonialism on Latin American identity. She is also the co-editor of Theatre and Cartographies of Power: Repositioning the Latina/o Americas (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018) and Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre (Routledge, 2022). She has published articles in several journals, including GESTOS, Latin American Theatre Review, Letras Femeninas, Paso de gato, Chasquí, Theatre Topics, Theatre Journal and Cuadernos de literatura. She works as a professional dramaturg and is a company member of Mexico’s famed Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes.

• Introduction: Monsters and Performance Culture: Five New ThesesMichael M. Chemers and Analola SantanaMythic Deviance1. Bali’s Rangda and Barong in Cosmic BalancingKathy Foley2. Exterminating the Phantom: Nativist Constructions of Contagion and Monsters in Nineteenth-Century New York CityMia Levenson3. Married to the Monster: Gender and Moral Ambiguity on the Gothic StageAoise Stratford4. The Xtáabay as Monstrous Woman: Gender in Maya Cultural Production in the Yucatán PeninsulaSarah CampbellForbidden Eroticism5. Monstrous Arousals: La Rose, Un Faune, La FaunePenny Farfan6. Girl/Not Girl: The Hemispheric Monsters of Alexis Scheer’s Our Dear Dead DruglordLisa Jackson-Schebetta7. Defending the Patriarchy: The Monstrous (Queer) Other and the Anti-CarnivalesqueCatherine (Katya) Vrtis8. Monsters of Africa and the Loss of IdentityAnita GonzalezThe Monstrous Body9. A Genealogy of the Fu Manchu MoustacheEsther Kim Lee10. Uncanny Affect, Performing Prosthetics: Disability, Monstrosity, and the PuppetLaura Purcell-Gates11. Monstrosity in a Pandemic: Hypercapacity, Debility, and Death in Repo! The Genetic OperaSamuel Yates12. On the Afterlife of Teratological SpecimensMargaret WerryStrange Families13. "She Ain’t Gonna Break": Theorizing the Life, Bare Life, and Living Dead Girls in The Devil’s Rejects.K. Scarlett Harrington and Bernadette Marie Calafell14. Nuclear Normativity, Monstrous Masculinity, and Matter in Burning Vision.Liz Fairchild15. Undocumented Zombies: US-Mexican Immigration, The Walking Dead, and the Effort/Shape of MonstersJeff Kaplan