(PDF) Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ (2018)

(PDF) Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ (2018)
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Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ (2018)
Diana Benea
2021, American Dramaturgies for the 21st Century. Ed. Julie Vatain-Corfdir. Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses
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Abstract
In conversation with recent theoretical explorations of community-based theatre and oral history performance, this article offers an analysis of Generation NYZ (2018), the 25th year anniversary production of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements series (1992-), one of the most vibrant and enduring theatrical projects of this kind on the contemporary American stage. Relying on a wide array of source materials, including interviews, archival material, and audience feedback, the three-fold inquiry looks at the dramaturgical processes at work in the creation of the play (within the context of the whole series), its main thematic concerns, as well as the politics of audience reception. This approach shows that the format of community-based theatre transcends the primacy of the text and its performance, encompassing instead a wider array of processes, from dramaturgy to reception, which could all be regarded as working towards and rehearsing “models of how we live together” (Cohen-Cruz).
Key takeaways
AI
Generation NYZ serves as a critical intervention against reductive media narratives of NYC youth.
The Undesirable Elements series has produced over 60 site-specific pieces globally since 1992.
The production relies on diverse oral histories, creating a dynamic interplay between personal and political narratives.
Community-based theatre practices empower participants and audiences, fostering collective identity and civic responsibility.
The selection process for performers involved outreach to over 50 organizations, ultimately including 7 stories from 20 interviews.
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American
Dramaturgies
For the 21st Century
Julie Vatain-Corfdir (ed.)

III Benea – 979-10-231-1805-6

SORBONNE UNIVERSITÉ PRESSES

If all the world is a stage (as the title of this series supposes), the stage of the 21st century
must be a site of remarkable anxiety—at once global and splintered, intensely up-front
and relentlessly mediatized, ever fragmenting the collective and seeking to build it
anew. How can theater, an art of intimate presence, rethink its aesthetics and reassert its
mission on such a stage? More specifically, how have American dramaturgies chosen to
engage with our new millennium? Relying on a broad understanding of “dramaturgy”
as a dynamic process, this book explores some of the inspiring trends and arresting
innovations of contemporary theater in the US, investigating both playwriting and
performance-making in order to delineate formal experiments, the imprint of socio-
political themes, and new configurations in spectatorship.
The chapters of the present volume delve into various aspects of theater-making, from
courses in playwriting to controversies in casting or discussions about the democratic
function of theater. The wide range of examples studied include development practices
at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the work of experimental companies (Ping Chong
+ Company, The Industry, New York City Players), and many plays by contemporary
authors (Clare Barron, Jackie Sibblies Drury, David Levine, Charles Mee, Dominique
Morisseau, Sarah Ruhl, Andrew Schneider, Paula Vogel, Mac Wellman). Conversations
with Young Jean Lee and Richard Maxwell add the playwright’s viewpoint to the
prismatic perspective of the volume, which is dedicated to performances in the US but
written from a decidedly international angle, thus implicitly querying what makes up the
American identity of this rich body of work.

Ouvrage publié avec le concours de Sorbonne Université,
du PRITEPS, de l’Initiative Théâtre et de VALE

Les SUP sont un service général de la faculté des lettres de Sorbonne Université

© Sorbonne Université Presses, 2021

PDF complet – 979-10-231-1793-6
ePub – 979-10-231-1808-7
isbn des tirés à part en pdf :
Foreword – 979-10-231-1794-3
I Robinson – 979-10-231-1795-0
I Sidiropoulou – 979-10-231-1796-7
I Maxwell & Jouve – 979-10-231-1797-4
I Fernández-Caparrós – 979-10-231-1798-1
II Lee & Vatain-Corfdir – 979-10-231-1799-8
II Davies – 979-10-231-1800-1
II Rigaud – 979-10-231-1801-8
II Willis – 979-10-231-1802-5
II Vasak – 979-10-231-1803-2
III Monot – 979-10-231-1804-9
III Benea – 979-10-231-1805-6
III Sigal – 979-10-231-1806-3
III Anderson, Hines & Haley – 979-10-231-1807-0

Couverture : Michaël Bosquier
Maquette et mise en page : 3d2s (Paris)/Emmanuel Marc Dubois (Issigeac)

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PRODUCING COMMUNITY: A PROCESS-ORIENTED ANALYSIS
OF PING CHONG + COMPANY’S UNDESIRABLE ELEMENTS:
GENERATION NYZ (2018) 1

Diana Benea
University of Bucharest

On January 13, 2018, Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable Elements:
Generation NYZ premiered for a sold-out audience at the Duke on 42nd Street, the
New Victory Theater’s smaller venue, conveniently located in the heart of Manhattan.
Despite its relatively short run consisting of only ten public performances, the piece 217
gained popular as well as critical acclaim, being hailed as “an inherently political show
that arrives at a time of fervently uncivil discourse,” 2 or as providing audiences with “the

american dramaturgies for the 21st century •
very best reason for resisting the current administration” 3 by looking at the actual lives
affected by recent policies. Co-written and co-directed by Sara Zatz, the company’s
associate director, and artistic collaborator Kirya Traber, playwright and cultural worker,
the piece marked the 25th anniversary of Undesirable Elements, the ongoing series of
interview-based, community-specific theatre works conceived by the award-winning
interdisciplinary artist Ping Chong, one of the most prominent voices of American
theatre and performance of the last five decades. The show explores what it means to
be a teenager in NYC in the current political climate through the lens of seven 18- to
21-year-old teenagers of different backgrounds—Mexican, Puerto Rican, Pakistani,
Jamaican, and British-Bosnian—who address their own experiences of bullying,
depression, undocumentedness, and gender fluidity, highlighting the ways in which
they have carved out their niches of resistance. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of a
nationwide journey of community engagement, the production consolidates the status
of Undesirable Elements as one of the most enduring series of this kind, while “turn[ing]
sup

1 The author would like to thank Ping Chong and Sara Zatz for their kind support
• 2021

in documenting this article. Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright
Senior Scholar Award at CUNY—The Graduate Center, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
(2017‑2018).
2 Laura Collins-Hughes, “Undesirable Elements, Documentary Theater for Uncivil
Times”, New York Times, January 15, 2018.
3 Michael Feingold, “Meet the Seven Extraordinary Individuals of Ping Chong’s
Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ”, The Village Voice, January 20, 2018.

the storytelling over to a new generation: Generation NYZ.” 4 Tellingly, four other
productions in the series have been presented on American and international stages in
the meantime, Aan Yatx’u Saani: Noble People of the Land (2018), in Juneau, Alaska,
Undesirable Elements/Dearborn (2018), at the Arab American National Museum in
Dearborn, Michigan, (Un)Conditional (2019), at Profile Theatre in Portland, Oregon,
and Undesirable Elements: Difficult Lives (2019), at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre East,
in Japan. Furthermore, Generation NYZ was revived at the prestigious La MaMa ETC
in early 2019, while Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity (2015) continues its
successful touring engagements throughout the US.
Originally meant as a one-time performance at Artists Space in 1992, Undesirable
Elements has become an ongoing series with over sixty site-specific pieces to date across
the US and several other countries, such as Japan and the Netherlands, which have been
218 produced in collaboration with a wide range of partners, including theatres of all sizes,
performing arts centers, colleges and universities, festivals, museums, and community
organizations, and supported by an equally diverse, multi-layered network of funding
bodies, combining public as well as private sector contributions. 5 Centering on the
lives of “outsiders within the mainstream community,” 6 the series explores the multiple
facets of cultural otherness and socio-political disenfranchisement in contemporary
America (and a few other spaces) through works created in and with marginalized
communities. Conceived as a choral meditation on “the metaphysics of culture and
history and its effects on the lives of individuals within a society” 7—the overarching
themes of Chong’s prolific career—the show has relied, from the very beginning, on
an adaptable structure which interweaves the dramatized stories of the performers,
most of whom are non-professional actors, with relevant historical events serving as
the background against which these life-worlds unfold. The series continues, in this
unique community-based format, Chong’s career-long interest in critically engaging

4 Ping Chong, “Creator’s Note”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ Playbill, The New
Victory Theater, 2018, p. 4.
5 The list of long-standing company funders includes the National Endowment for the
Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural
Affairs, The Ford Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Hugh and Jane Ferguson
Foundation, The Hyde and Watson Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art,
The Shubert Foundation, The Leon Levy Foundation, The Lucille Lortel Foundation, as
well as numerous individual donors. See Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ Playbill,
op. cit.
6 Ping Chong + Company, “Undesirable Elements”, Ping Chong + Company Website.
7 “Playbill for Undesirable Elements: New York (a work-in-progress) at Henry Street
Settlement’s Nations of New York Arts Festival”, Ping Chong Archive 1971-2008, NYPL.

with official History with a capital H, either by retelling it from an absolutely unusual
perspective, for instance, through an alien’s reconstruction of the racial history of the
US in Collidescope: Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America (2014), or by excavating
long-forgotten/invisible/suppressed histories, such as in Alaxsxa/Alaska (2017),
which explores the little-known history of intercultural encounters in that space, to
name but two of the company’s more recent non-Undesirable Elements productions.
Ever since the 1980s, prior to conceiving the series, Chong had been recognized as an
influential auteur 8 of the US performing and visual arts scene on the strength of his
aesthetically spectacular, multidisciplinary works bringing together text, movement,
sound scores, and a distinctive visual stagecraft, in their prismatic explorations of the
intersections of history, culture, technology, and the media. While the sparse format
of the series at hand departs from the stunning mise-en-scène of Chong’s other works,
his signature subject matter—with a focus on the dynamics of sameness and difference, 219
individual and community—nonetheless infuses and shapes the community-based
pieces as well. This is precisely what distinguishes them within the wider spectrum of

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
theatre projects of this kind, which have been traditionally produced by community-
based companies and professional ensembles primarily or exclusively devoted to this
kind of work, such as Roadside Theater 9 or Cornerstone Theater Company, 10 to name
only two of the most prominent contemporary examples. Created by an auteur whose
oeuvre has ramified, over the past five decades, in multiple artistic directions and media
(theatre and performance, visual arts and multimedia installations, and video works),
Undesirable Elements is a rara avis of this field.
Based on the oral histories of the performers, the pieces in the series bring their
own specific contributions to this continuum of historical reflection, given that they
themselves are very much about time, about chronology, about the unfolding of personal
histories against the backdrop of the march of entangled political histories. Over the
years, this flexible interweaving of micro- and macro-histories has enabled the series

8 See, for instance, Chong’s inclusion in Frank Rich’s “Auteur Directors Bring New Life
to Theater”, New York Times, November 24, 1985.
9 Founded in 1975 in central Appalachia, Roadside Theater has documented the cultural
identity of this region in plays created for, by, and with various local communities; their
more recent work also includes “intercultural” plays produced in collaboration with
other culturally specific theatres such as Pregones.
10 Founded in 1986, the LA-based Cornerstone Theater Company has created a broad
spectrum of works ranging from adaptions of the classics in rural communities across
the US (1986-92) to multi-year play cycles exploring, from multiple angles and within
diverse communities (of age, geography, culture, workplace etc.), such topics as Faith
(2001-5), Justice (2007-10), or Hunger (2011-17).

to function in a variety of contexts, accommodating a plethora of community-specific
issues and a broad spectrum of communities, ranging from immigrants who shared the
condition of cultural and linguistic in-betweenness in the “cultural” productions of
the first decade, to individuals with different types of, and experiences with, disability
(Inside/ Out…voices from the disability community, 2008), to African American women
from the same Pittsburgh neighborhood (The Women of the Hill, 2009), to survivors
of sexual abuse (Secret Survivors, 2011), or to Brooklyn-based activists (Brooklyn ’63,
2013), in more recent pieces. Replicated and adapted from production to production,
this format—which includes an introduction in the participants’ native languages,
a mix of historical and personal entries, an occasional “What Do You Think Of…?”
section, and an outro in which the cast members reintroduce themselves in English—is,
220 to my knowledge, a unique phenomenon within the landscape of community-based
theatre in the US.
Famously defined by Richard Owen Geer as theatre “of the people, by the people,
for the people,” 11 community-based theatre distinguishes itself within the larger field
of applied theatre practices by privileging the role of the community at all the stages
of developing and producing the work. To quote from Jan Cohen-Cruz, community-
based theatre is premised upon an understanding of the community as “a primary
source of the text, possibly of the performers as well, and definitely a goodly portion of
the audience.” 12 This description suggests an underlying philosophy which not only
grants access, but also invests the community with varying degrees of authority over
the finished product. Cohen-Cruz’s three-fold account calls attention to the ways
in which this type of theatre facilitates a process whereby individuals with stakes in
that community-specific issue are offered the opportunity to respond to it in a public
space, while also allowing other community members to participate in the sui generis
agora created within the frame of the performance. While the ambivalent status of
community-based theatre (is it art or social work?) continues to be a matter of critical
debate and while the practices within its wide spectrum remain quite diverse—in point
of dramaturgy, development, production (collaborations with other institutions),
and performance (aesthetic modes and forms)—what nevertheless connects such
different strands is a shared vision underlining the importance of process and a

11 Richard Owen Geer, “Of the People, By the People, and For the People: The Field of
Community Performance”, High Performance, vol. 16, no. 4, 1993, pp. 28-31.
12 Jan Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States,
New Brunswick/ New Jersey / London, Rutgers UP, 2005, p. 2.

similar conception of the political labor and the intended (if not always guaranteed)
outcomes thereof.
In this regard, Petra Kuppers discusses community-based performance as resting
“in process rather than product, in the act of working together, allowing different
voices, bodies and experiences to emerge.” 13 This might lead to imagining and
enacting certain types of group dynamics and forms of reciprocity and collaboration
predicated on the equal value of all participants and their respective contributions
to the collective project. Ultimately, the processes at work in the collective creation
of community-based theatre (from interviews, story circles and workshops, to
rehearsals, performances, and follow-up activities) provide the participants—
practitioners and non-professionals alike—as well as the audience with “models of
how we live together, suggesting something bigger than our individual selves.” 14 One
productive strand of analysis has examined the political function of such processes 221
by establishing an analogy between their core principles and those of participatory
democracies. For instance, Cohen-Cruz argues that community-based theatre

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
is informed by the same principles of “call and response” inherent in empowered
democracies, i.e., first of all, “practical orientation” towards specific concerns
“narrowly enough defined to be achievable,” secondly, “bottom-up participation”
ensuring that the voice of those affected by the aforementioned concerns is heard,
and, finally, a process of deliberation and collective decision-making predicated
on listening to each other and leading to sensible “group choices.” 15 Embedded
within such models of working and living together, and investing the community
with the function of the “dramaturg,” community-based theatre seeks to build “an
avenue to individual empowerment and community development,” 16 thus not only
responding to social realities but aiming to positively change them. Such intended
social outcomes are inextricable from its process-oriented nature, as Susan Haedicke
argues in a seminal article on the dramaturgy of this format:

These performance texts give the community a voice and help establish bonds that
create “community” largely because the “text” is not just the finished product, but
also the process. It is a process that enables the community to look at its history, its

13 Petra Kuppers, Community Performance: An Introduction, New York, Routledge, 2007,
p. 4.
14 Jan Cohen-Cruz, Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response, London and
New York, Routledge, 2010, p. 2.
15 Ibid., pp. 175-176.
16 Susan Chandler Haedicke, “Dramaturgy in Community-Based Theatre”, Journal of
Dramatic Theory and Criticism, no. 3, 1998, p. 132.

contributions, its successes, and its failures. It is a process that allows the community
to experiment with strategies to solve their particular problems. It is a process that
encourages a sense of identity and fosters pride. 17

Starting from the same premise that community-based theatre should be analyzed
not only through the lens of the finished product, but rather as process and praxis, this
essay engages in a multi-layered account of Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ,
zooming in on the dramaturgical development of the play in the first part, exploring
the thematic concerns of the text in the second, and finally offering an insight into the
reception of the production, based on a number of audience questionnaires as well as
reactions within the frame of a talkback discussion.

222
THE DRAMATURGY OF COMMUNITY-BASED ORAL HISTORY
PERFORMANCE
A brief retrospective look towards the beginnings of the series is instrumental in
understanding what has meanwhile become the formalized development process
at the core of Undesirable Elements. In the fall of 1992, Chong was commissioned
to produce a theatre piece meant to accompany an installation he had made at
Artists Space in NYC. Entitled A Facility for the Channeling and Containment of
Undesirable Elements, the installation was based on the dynamics of exclusion/
inclusion encapsulated in the image of a quarantine facility. Both pieces—the
visual arts installation and the subsequent performance—revolved around an
exploration of such questions as: “Who is doing the channeling? What, or whom, is
being contained and why? Who/ what is undesirable? And according to whom?” 18
Without providing any settled answers, the two pieces aimed instead to open up a
space of critical reflection in which the audience could grapple with such ambiguities
in a productive way. Within the frame of the performance, it was the figure of the
immigrant Other that became the vehicle for an exploration of such issues. Wishing
to create a piece based on the play of possibilities inherent in bringing together
a medley of languages and cultures on stage, Chong gathered a group of friends
and collaborators at his apartment in NYC, who were hailing from such places as

17 Ibid., p. 126.
18 “Program Notes for Ping Chong’s A Facility for the Channeling and Containment of
Undesirable Elements, Installation, Performance and Video”, Ping Chong Archive 1971-
2008, NYPL.

Ukraine, Japan, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Germany, or Lebanon, and sharing
the condition of cultural in-betweenness. They became the cast of the first
production, entitled Undesirable Elements I (a work-in-progress).
Based on the stories shared that evening at Chong’s place and developed in
collaboration with the cast, that first piece offered a journey through the diverse
political dislocations of the twentieth century, as embodied in the individual and
collective acts of remembering performed by the interviewees themselves in the space
of the quarantine facility at the gallery. These acts delved into stories and histories
from different cultural spaces, spoken in different rhythms and registers, converging
and diverging in their concerns, enhancing one another, and adding layer upon layer
of meaning to what was starting to emerge as the co-created history of a community in
the making—one that would later incorporate so many other communities and stories,
with each new piece in the series. They were stories about the colonial legacies in the 223
Philippines, the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, escaping from Ukraine during
WW2, the sterilization of Native American women, or the Civil War in Lebanon.

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
Above all, they were stories about the ambivalent condition of selves necessarily
inscribed at the intersection of multiple subject positions, allegiances, and affiliations,
stories about the challenges of forging sites of belonging while engaging in a process of
renegotiating the boundaries between past and present, as well as those between ethnic,
national, and cultural identities. While the focus of the pieces has expanded in more
recent productions, the overarching questions of belonging and of negotiating shifting
landscapes of identity while navigating various power structures and social matrixes
have been the red threads circulating, in different shapes, throughout the series.
As more and more productions were commissioned, the development process
itself acquired a more rigorous multi-step structure. It now begins with the company
reaching out to its partner organization(s) with a view to finding potential participants
who fit the focus of the production and are willing to share their personal histories on
stage. The candidates first complete an application form designed by the company,
which, in the case of Generation NYZ, included questions about their background
and family history, the groups and communities they identify with, the challenges
they see as currently urgent within such communities, their experience of living in
NYC, with a focus on memories of “feeling like an outsider,” and the spaces where
they have found “a sense of belonging or support.” 19 The questionnaires offer a first
significant insight into the model of living together promoted by this project and the

19 Ping Chong + Company, “Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ”, op. cit. The application
form was available on the website in the fall of 2017; it has since been deleted.

types of communities it hopes to engender. Such requirements as willingness “to make
critical observations about one’s culture” and “to allow others to express contrary
opinions or political views” 20 anticipate the political vision supported by the show
itself, suggesting a praxis premised upon critical distance towards one’s community (as
opposed to mythologized celebrations thereof ) as well as an informed and respectful
openness towards diversity and otherness. Based on these questionnaires, the company
then selects a number of people for the in-depth interviews. As Sara Zatz explains,
for the production under discussion, the company reached out to over fifty schools
and community organizations in NYC, hoping to find a group of teenagers of diverse
backgrounds and experiences of coming of age in the metropolis; twenty of them were
selected for the interview, and, ultimately, seven stories made their way into the show. 21
As stated in the application forms for the productions, the selected participants receive
224 stipends for the rehearsals and performances.
While the process has become more formalized over time, the germs of Undesirable
Elements have been located, then and now, in the act of sharing stories about oneself—
to company members in the interview sessions, to fellow performers in rehearsals, to
audience members in performance. Then and now, the text of the productions has
grown out of these interviews. Thus, as Chong explained in a personal interview, in that
first moment of text development, the interview sessions, the goal of the artistic team
is to create a safe and productive listening and narrating environment, so as to help
the interviewees “get at the truth of their stories,” 22 as layered, storied, or framed as
that truth might be. This process of getting at the truth also implies that the
performers have to do some background research into the histories of their families
as well as the larger political histories of their home countries. For the cast members,
this veritable learning process turns them into historians digging into their family’s
past and their respective countries’ histories, confronting the gaps and frictions of
narratives whose meaning is not always immediately decipherable. Naturally, weaving
their memories about specific events around the memories of family members
necessarily reshapes and complicates the performers’ original accounts.
It is intriguing to think about the ways in which the company then translates these
poignant fragments—interview and research entries—into dramatic forms, especially
in light of negotiating “the power and the responsibility of making public what had

20 Ibid.
21 Amy Zhang, “Creating Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ”, The  New Victory
Theater Blog, January 5, 2018.
22 Ping Chong, “Interview conducted by the author”, New York City, November 30, 2017.

been told in private.” 23 Worth emphasizing here is the fact that this is no verbatim
theatre, but a dramatization of the interview material that ensures thematic and stylistic
coherence across the series, while aesthetically heightening and harmonizing all the
individual contributions in the emerging play. Of course, this two-fold dramaturgical
orientation carries a potential for tension, setting in motion, on the one hand, a certain
negotiation of authority and “voice(s)” between the interviewees and the facilitators, 24
as well as one between the individual “monologues” shared in the interviews and their
orchestration as intersecting fragments of a “dialogue” in the play. As has been noted,
theatre projects of this type, whose purpose is “to give a voice to the voiceless,” or to
create a platform through which previously unheard voices can be amplified, often
run the risk, in Janet Gibson’s words, of speaking “for,” rather than speaking “with,”
which suggests an “appropriation” rather than a “negotiation” of voices. 25 To address
the tension delineated above, the creative team makes sure each voice and each story has 225
equal weight in the production, and all the performers have full editing rights over their
parts, including the right to change their mind about sharing certain stories or details

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
throughout the development of the piece. A comment made in a talkback by one of the
cast members of Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity, currently the most successful
piece of the series, is instrumental in understanding the principles underpinning this
stage of dramaturgical construction. Describing it as “an inclusive process” whereby
the practitioners had to rewrite her lines multiple times until she could hear her own
“voice,” 26 the performer thus offered an insight into the ethics of collaborative practice
at the heart of the project, into sharing authority over representation, and, ultimately,
into a process of collective decision-making and a sense of mutual recognition.

23 Della Pollock, “Telling the Told: Performing Like a Family”, Oral History Review, no. 18,
1990, p. 15.
24 The term is widely used in social justice and community development projects in various
fields, including applied theatre / theatre for social change, “to connote commitment
to certain principles—of enablement and participant‑centredness—and processes that
involve equitable negotiation between those involved.” Theorists and practitioners
working with such tools have called attention to the necessity of developing self‑
reflexive practices of critical facilitation, with a view to “uncovering the complexity
of the dynamics of facilitation and seeking to understand the power relations that
exist within and beyond a workshop.” Sheila Preston, “Introduction to Facilitation”,
in Sheila Preston (ed.), Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience, London,
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016, p. 1, 4, emphases in the original.
25 Janet Gibson, “Saying it Right: Creating Ethical Verbatim Theatre”, NEO: Journal for
Higher Degree Research Students in the Social Sciences and Humanities, no. 4, 2011, p. 5.
26 “Talkback with the Cast of Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity”, City Lore,
New York City, November 15, 2017.

This account of the process by no means assumes that the performers’ voice is
invested with authenticity, whereas the theatrical dramatization necessarily alters
that authenticity, but rather looks at the process of turning the interviews into the
performance text as the result of negotiating (equally constructed) representations.
What emerges at the end of this process of rewriting, editing, and restructuring the
raw interview material is a script arranged chronologically into a predetermined yet
adaptable structure, common to all the productions in the series, which interweaves
the personal and family histories of the cast, on the one hand, and significant events
of global political history with an impact on those micro-histories, on the other, in a
collage of intersecting testimonials. Finally, the text is infused with the artistic signature
of the creative team, including phrases that circulate from one production to the next
and a formalized visual, auditory, and movement-based framework that is repeated,
226 with variations, in most of the pieces, giving coherence to the series. This design
underscores the act of making memory and history on stage together: sometimes the
entire cast repeats a word, phrase, or sentence from one performer’s account, uttering
it in a collective voice and investing it with shared meaning. At various other times,
the performers become characters in their colleagues’ stories, giving voice to family,
friends, co-workers, or authorities, thus covering the entire spectrum from allies
displaying solidarity to antagonists embodying all kinds of obstacles. This polyphonic
rendering is reinforced by a choreography of ritualistic gestures performed in unison,
such as clapping or changing their seats several times during the show.
When the parts are dramatized and interwoven in what will become the provisional
text of the play, the performers finally meet each other in rehearsals and get acquainted
with their partners’ histories. Thus, the oral history process already taking shape in
the interviews comes to engender, in rehearsals, a reflexive space of re-membering
one’s history while encountering the histories of others, a space in which one’s history
acquires new significance in conversation with different voices and perspectives,
a relational environment in which everyone is, in turns, storyteller and witness. As
Della Pollock has noted, oral history is “a process of making history in dialogue, a
co-creative, co-embodied, specially framed, contextually and intersubjectively
contingent, sensuous, vital, artful in its achievement of narrative form, meaning and
ethics.” 27 Mohammad Murtaza, one of the performers of Generation NYZ, talks about
the process of co-creating this history as one of his major takeaways from the project:
“I wouldn’t get the same experience if I wasn’t working with these people and really

27 Della Pollock, “Introduction: Remembering”, in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral
History Performance, New York and Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 5.

trying to understand their backstories and how NYC has shaped them.” 28 Another
performer, Porscha Polkahantis Rippy, discusses her participation in the project along
similar lines: “I’m with people I’ve never met and we’re all coming together to tell
our stories. I’ve never heard of something like this, so just being part of the process is
exciting.” 29 As demonstrated by the “community agreements” that the participants
decide upon on their very first meeting (“respect each other’s boundaries,” “be open,”
“ask questions” etc.), 30 the rehearsal stage of the project is also informed by an ethics
of responsibility and a desire to address any tensions that might arise in the process,
including that between the interview “monologues” and their juxtaposition as a
“dialogue” in the play. While community-based drama is certainly fraught with a wide
array of anxieties inherent in the not-always-formalized power relationship holding
between the participants and the facilitators, by negotiating and abiding by some
specific principles and guidelines regulating the collaboration with the communities 227
throughout the stages of the process, the Undesirable Elements series might serve
indeed as an antidote to alleviate such concerns.

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
THE POLITICAL STAKES OF PERSONAL NARRATIVE PERFORMANCE
In the talkback following the performance on January 20th, 2018, co-creator of
the show Kirya Traber discussed one of the goals of the production as that of creating
a critical intervention in the reductive representations of NYC youth in the media
and public discourse, which most frequently portray this category as either “Upper
East / West Side fancy” or by association with “the hood, and cops, and guns.” 31 As
Traber argued, the stories of NYC teenagers are much more complicated and diverse
than these two rather stereotypical narratives which have come to dominate the
mainstream imaginary. Interested in giving voice to a wide array of stories illuminating
how particular individuals live and make sense of their multiple positionings, the play
foregrounds stories of coming of age scattered across the five boroughs, from East
New York to West Harlem, and from Far Rockaway to the Bronx. As such, it expands
the tropes of representation by bringing to the fore the seldom heard voices of young
protagonists facing multiple deprivations and vulnerabilities in a city portrayed, from

28 “Meet Generation NYZ”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ Playbill, op. cit., p. 6.
29 Ibid., p. 7.
30 Amy Zhang, “Creating Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ”, art. cit.
31 Kirya Traber, “Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements:
Generation NYZ”, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City,
January 20, 2018.

the very beginning, in a balanced manner, as a site of “diversity, acceptance, culture,
and opportunity,” but also as a space of “cops, capitalism, gentrification, homelessness,
and inequality.” 32
Just as in the previous productions, the narrative arc goes beyond the personal stories
of the performers to consider the wider historical forces that have determined the
paths of their ancestors’ lives and, in particular, their decision to settle in NYC. From
the very beginning, this contextualization suggests the ways in which the stories of
the protagonists are embedded in and framed by multiple layers of re-membering
and re-constructing, preserving the traces of all those who have interacted with
them in one way or another. This historical arc includes, on the one hand, the Great
Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the cities in the North, and,
on the other, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, signed into law by President
228 Lyndon B. Johnson, which eliminated national quotas that privileged immigration
from Western and Northern European countries in the hopes of attracting skilled
labor from other parts of the world to the US. The first migration path brought
Porscha’s grandfather to NYC from a Tennessee farm, while the second policy allowed
Mohammad’s parents to leave Pakistan for NYC after winning the visa lottery, and
Syl’s mother to flee war-torn Yugoslavia and arrive in the US as a refugee. Other
performers’ families have come to NYC in the wake of more recent dislocations:
Monica’s mother fled a life of poverty and violence in Mexico, crossing the border
into the US as an undocumented immigrant, while Rafael’s mother and siblings fled
the high crime rate in Puerto Rico for a better future on the mainland. However, for
none of them did the city prove to be as welcoming and full of opportunities as they
might have expected. For example, Mohammad’s father, a lawyer in Pakistan, was not
licensed to practice law in the US, so he had to work two jobs at Wendy’s and 7-Eleven
to support his family. Throughout his high school years, Rafael and his family had to
live in a homeless shelter, as they could not find any affordable housing. Not being able
to apply for a computer science program open to US citizens only, Monica realized
not only that her family’s undocumented status involves no legal protection, but also
that “not being a citizen is holding [her] back from [her] dreams.” 33 Overall, the play

32 Ping Chong + Company in collaboration with the performers Edwin Aguila, Monica
Victoria Tatacoya Castañeda, Syl (Andrea) Egerton, Mohammad Murtaza, De-Andra
Pryce, Porscha Polkahantis Rippy, Rafael Rosario, Undesirable Elements: Generation
NYZ, Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York
City, January 20, 2018. All subsequent references and quotes from this show are
excerpted from this performance.
33 Ibid.

succeeds in dramatizing the ways in which the performers negotiate their experiences
at the intersection of two narratives—one that they and their families have created for
themselves as residents of the US, driven by the promise of opportunity at the core of
the myth of the American dream, the other perpetuated by the political and
media discourse, which frames them as ethno-racial and/or cultural Others, or as
“illegal,” in the case of undocumented migrants.
A prominent strand of the piece gravitates around the ways in which the performers
have grappled with various forms of discrimination and social marginalization,
learning to negotiate their places within a landscape dominated by boundaries of
race, ethnicity, class, and gender. In this regard, the narrative works by accumulation
of detail: Monica was called “a dirty Mexican” by her schoolmates, who refused to
sit next to her in class; Syl was ostracized by his classmates in Strasbourg due to his
unconventional look and clothing style; Edwin’s school years were similarly marked 229
by bullying on account of his weight; in the post-9/11 climate of Islamophobia,
Mohammad was constantly harassed and called “terrorist”; finally, the examiners

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
at a college acting program audition found Porscha’s Shakespeare monologue
unexpectedly “articulate” (for a girl from the Bronx, she adds). 34 As young as they
might be, the performers understand the paradoxes and contradictions of living in
a metropolis like NYC, especially in what concerns law enforcement and police
brutality—the most striking aspect of everyday life that Syl noticed upon moving
from France to the US. The security protocols at Porscha’s high school in the
Bronx make her “feel like a criminal” every day; however, as Edwin remarks, even
if the police are everywhere, they will do nothing to fix the problem of shootings
in his neighborhood. 35 This observation illustrates one of the strategies frequently
employed in the play, namely shifting from personal experiences and individual
discontent to a critique of the larger structures perpetuating certain forms of
violence, precariousness, and structural insecurity. Significantly, the play references
several times the shooting of Mike Brown and the activism of the Black Lives
Matter movement, and even stages at one point a moment of protest in which all
the performers chant “Black Lives Matter, no justice, no peace!” 36 raising their arms
and clenching their fists. While the show certainly serves as an arena for staging one’s
identity and as a vehicle for individual empowerment, it nevertheless achieves its most
nuanced commentary when gleaning the social and political matrixes in which these

34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.

individual lives are rooted, by contextualizing their struggles against the background
of hegemonic forces that limit their agency and their claims for empowerment.
In full awareness of such limitations, the audience is positioned, throughout the play,
as a witness to the seven protagonists’ quests for identity and community. “Will I finally
find a place to belong?,” 37 Rafael poignantly asks at one point, giving voice to a concern
shared by all his stage colleagues. It is worth noting here that most of them first turn to
their mixed ethnic and cultural background as a potential site of belonging. In giving
an account of such rich backgrounds, the performers occasionally engage in deeply
subjective synesthetic descriptions of the sights, sounds, and tastes of their ancestors’
countries, emerging at the intersection of different layers of perceptual, cognitive,
and emotive experiences. As in the previous productions in the series, especially the
“cultural” pieces of the 1990s, the narrative weaves into its structure a Muslim
230 tale (of a young man’s brave deeds), a poem in French, and a wealth of references
to the Bosnian and Jamaican cuisine. Yet, as most of them learn, their hybrid lineages
do not necessarily serve as a matrix of belonging and community, nor as a source of
comfort. For instance, Mohammad finds it difficult to reconcile the gender norms in
his Muslim upbringing with those of mainstream American society; furthermore, he
realizes that his struggles with depression are “untranslatable” in his parents’ culture.
In one of the most stirring scenes of the play, we see Mohammad’s father crossing
into English so that they can finally talk about a subject like depression in a
language that allows for such conversations. Embarking on her own quest for
belonging, De-Andra comes to acknowledge that “Jamaica is home but it’s not;
when I’m in New York I feel like a Jamaican, but when I’m in Jamaica, I feel like an
American.” 38 While she is interested in celebrating her heritage by representing her
island at the West Indian Day Parade, she nonetheless feels disconnected from her
roots, “like [her] own people hate [her].” In the wake of Hurricane Maria’s
devastation of Puerto Rico, Rafael muses about the difficulties of negotiating a sense
of home in similar terms: “I worry about my sister and nephew; they’re okay, but it’s
so hard to be so far away. My heart belongs to Puerto Rico, but I’m a New Yorker
now. My life is here, the life I made for myself despite everything I’d been through
and I don’t know if I could ever go back.” 39
Such more or less fragile ties with the cultural background of their ancestors are not
enough for these bold New Yorkers, who have to create their own voices and forge their
own communities despite the setbacks outlined above. Having struggled with depression
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.

for most of his high school years, Mohammad finds his community in the world of theatre
and performance. Edwin starts to embrace the blackness in the Puerto Rican mix of
cultures, while also becoming aware of the power of music as a tool to advocate for social
issues, especially after he performs at the famous Nuyorican Poets Café. In an effort to
show that she is “not just another girl from the Bronx” and “more than the stereotypes,” 40
Porscha becomes a musician and gets to play a solo at the prestigious Carnegie Hall; she
also learns American Sign Language and plans to become an interpreter for the deaf. For
Syl, NYC becomes an environment in which non-binary individuals can feel comfortable,
a space in which gender identity can be expressed in one’s preferred personal pronouns.
Finally, as a Latina feminist, Monica discovers that she has a voice “and it feels good to
use it,” 41 especially when it comes to dismantling pervasive assumptions and damaging
stereotypes about Mexican immigrants and feminists.
231
Every day people make assumptions about me. As a Mexican immigrant, people assume,
“Oh you must clean houses.” I do, but there’s no shame in that.

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
As a Christian, people assume, “Oh you must be homophobic.” No, I believe in actual
Christianity, not judging others.
As a feminist, people assume, “Only ugly girls who can’t find a man are feminists.”
Well, I am here to say I choose who I date, and I don’t need anyone else to tell me what
beauty is. 42

As stressed in Monica’s part, finding one’s voice should not be regarded merely as
an act of self-expression, but as a critical response to the dominant discourses about
the categories with which she identifies. In her inquiries into the process of “coming
to voice,” with particular reference to women within oppressed groups, bell hooks
draws attention to its potential as “an act of resistance” whereby “speaking becomes
both a way to engage in active self-transformation and a rite of passage where one
moves from being object to being subject.” 43 Coming to voice, however, is more than
the act of telling one’s experience; as hooks makes clear in a later text, moving
into the position of the subject also allows for a “strategic” use of “coming to voice
so that you can also speak freely about other subjects” 44—about undocumentedness

40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Cambridge, South End
Press, 1989, p. 12.
44 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, London and
New York, Routledge, 1994, p. 148.

as a condition of being, in Monica’s case. Not only does this strand of the play
humanize statistics about undocumented youth, thus problematizing the simplified
representations in the media, but it also imagines a performative vision of citizenship
for the undocumented non-citizens. The ethical and political stakes of the play’s
engagement with undocumentedness lie, in fact, in disrupting Monica’s legal identity
as a “non-citizen,” and bringing to the fore the urgency of a performative notion of
citizenship enacted by “exercising, claiming and performing” rights and duties that
are otherwise unauthorized. 45 As Monica herself explains the precariousness of her
status, “to remain eligible for DACA, you can’t have any criminal record, not even an
arrest at a peaceful protest marching for your own rights, so I have to look for another
way.” This performance becomes that other way—not only a space of existence for a
category mainly defined through its legal non-existence, but also a space in which she
232 can make rights claims that are otherwise unavailable and contested, thus calling into
being a broader and more generous understanding of citizenship.
hooks’ comments might be extrapolated to all the voices in this performance and the
ways in which they are strategically employed in order to give a nuanced account of such
topics as gender fluidity, poverty, or bullying, which are often underrepresented, if not
squarely silenced or suppressed, in mainstream discourses. “Occupying” a mainstream
theatre space with their stories and bodies, and doing that in front of a diverse audience
which also included their peers, i.e., individuals for whom theatre is hardly accessible
otherwise, further reinforces the political manifesto of this young generation.

AUDIENCE RECEPTION AND THE ETHICAL DEMANDS OF LISTENING
AND SPEAKING WITH
What is remarkable about this play and the other productions in the Undesirable
Elements series is that this manifesto does not end when the show ends but actually
bleeds into the talkback discussions which follow many of the performances. Generation
NYZ thus creates an ethical space of encounter in which the audience is invited to
reflect upon these stories and invest them with unexpected layers of meaning by
placing them in conversation with their own experiences and worldviews. As a perusal
of their history of productions and events clearly shows, Ping Chong + Company has
always stressed the importance of audiences for their artistic practice, demonstrating

45 Engin F. Isin, “Performative Citizenship”, in Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene
Bloemraad, Maarten Vink (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, Oxford,
Oxford UP, 2007, p. 502.

their commitment to enriching their work by adapting it to site-specific contexts and
audience-driven agendas. As such, in addition to innovating in matters of theatrical
form and content, the company has supported a long-standing goal of diversifying
and expanding their audiences through various strategies, such as organizing related
programs (workshops, presentations etc.) meant to enhance and extend the impact
of the productions or making their shows available to members of the community by
subsidizing tickets. 46
That audience reception is part of the process and of the “text” of Generation
NYZ is also suggested by the performers themselves in a series of one-minute video
interviews produced by the company for the 2019 revival of the play at La MaMa
ETC. As brief as they might be, these interviews show the performers’ marked interest
in prompting public debate and in pushing the conventional boundaries of the play so
as to include the audience in its fabric. Notably, as part of their introductions to the 233
play, the cast found it important to talk about “people in the audience who can relate”
(Syl), about reaching “as many young people as possible” (De-Andra) and telling their

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
story “so that other people can listen to it” (Rafael), and even about “help[ing] other
people who have gone through things, or things similar” (Porscha). What seems to
motivate the performers is the fact that their message “will not echo, but is gonna go
to all the people in the audience, when they leave, they’re gonna take it with them”
(Mohammad). 47
Listening and responding to the stories being testified to on stage thus becomes an
integral part of the theatrical experience. According to D. Soyini Madison, embedded
in the genre of personal narrative performance is the permission to respond, for, as she
argues, “the stakes of the stories are often both intimately imagined and communally
constituted,” 48 both individual and inextricable from a shared history of social
processes. Madison further notes that this permission to engage with the stories on
stage results in a shift from “notions of narrative ownership to an act of sharing—from
the narrative as commodity to the narrative as commons—for the circulation of a wider
public of listeners and receivers” 49—or, in other words, from an act of speaking to, to
one of speaking with. The act of speaking with (as opposed to speaking for) is therefore

46 Ping Chong Archive 1971-2008, NYPL.
47 Ping Chong + Company, “Meet Syl”, “Meet De-Andra”, “Meet Rafael”, “Meet Porscha”,
“Meet Mohammad”, Interviews with the Cast, YouTube, January 11 and 25, 2019.
48 D. Soyini Madison, Performed Ethnography and Communication: Improvisation and
Embodied Experience, London and New York, Routledge, 2018, p. 136.
49 Ibid.

not only a major principle of the dramaturgical process, but one that expands to the
process of audience reception.
Of course, the meaning-making processes in which theatre audiences engage
have often been regarded as beyond the (full) control of theatre professionals, hence
difficult to (fully) anticipate. In the case of the testimonial performance of stories of
vulnerability and trauma, questions of reception are further complicated by what
Julie Salverson has called “an aesthetic of injury” 50 or even “an erotics of injury” 51
that might prompt a dangerous combination of superficial empathy and voyeuristic
identification on the part of the audience, while reinscribing a narrative that works
to perpetuate the status of the protagonists as victims. To quote Salverson, the ethical
conundrum at the heart of such theatre practices is: “how do you guard the Other
against the appropriation that would deny difference?” 52 Moreover, how do you guard
234 against turning the traumatic stories presented on stage into “an object of spectacle”
to be consumed by audience members? Recounting her own experiences with an arts
project about the lives of refugees in Canada, Salverson wonders whether, to what
extent, and how such performances might “invite an encounter that does not dismiss
empathy, but rather challenges the terms on which it is negotiated,” 53 creating, as she
argues elsewhere, “an ethical space in which a relationship between detachment and
contact occurs.” 54 How can this type of performance prompt an audience that has not
been affected by the issues at stake to better understand those who have? How can it
help an audience for whom such experiences of vulnerability and violence are relatable?
Ultimately, in light of the social change aspirations of community-based theatre, how
can such works contribute to creating and cultivating a sense of responsibility towards
the Other, as “active, caring citizen[s] in a collective world”? 55
The public talkback after the performance on January 20, 2018, coupled with the
audience questionnaires I designed and administered to several audience members of
diverse ages and professional backgrounds, offered an illuminating case study for the

50 Julie Salverson, “Transgressive Storytelling or an Aesthetic of Injury: Performance,
Pedagogy and Ethics”, Theatre Research in Canada/ Recherches théâtrales au Canada,
vol. 20, no. 1, 1999.
51 Julie Salverson, “Change on Whose Terms? Testimony and an Erotics of Injury”, Theater,
vol. 31, no. 3, 2001, pp. 119-125.
52 Julie Salverson, “Transgressive Storytelling”, art. cit.
53 Ibid.
54 Julie Salverson, “Change on Whose Terms?”, art. cit., p. 119.
55 Kathleen Gallagher, “Responsible Art and Unequal Societies: Towards a Theory of
Drama and the Justice Agenda”, in Kelly Freebody, Michael Finneran (eds), Drama and
Social Justice, London / New York, Routledge, 2015, p. 57.

multi-layered reception of the play. While the limited number of questionnaires and
talkback reactions to be discussed in what follows cannot account for larger patterns of
reception, such responses are nevertheless instrumental in shedding light on the many
different ways in which the audience wove its own tapestry of stories around the stories
they had just heard on stage. In many ways, “the chamber piece of story-telling,” 56
as the company describes the Undesirable Elements series, opened up to include the
stories of the audience members themselves. As prefigured in the video-interviews
with the performers, some of the responses were galvanized indeed by questions of
relatability and identification. For instance, one audience member who identified as
a Puerto Rican non-binary youth still in the closet asked Syl for advice about coming
to terms with their own quest for identity. This young spectator was so inspired by the
show that they decided to come out and acknowledge their gender non-conforming
identity, for the very first time, in a public space. “I have never seen myself represented 235
on stage before,” 57 they added, which speaks to the company’s achievement in urging
others to “come to voice” themselves. Another audience member asked Rafael about

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
making it through the years of living in the shelter, which positioned the performer as
an “expert,” investing him with the authority of lived experience. 58
Further reactions from the questionnaires I conducted highlighted that the performers
were “so brave to tell their stories which hurt them so much,” which prompted that
particular audience member to feel “happy for them that they can finally face and solve
these problems, because the most important thing is they can be someone they really want
to be.” 59 This last response emphasized the affective landscapes generated by the show
even in the absence of any identification processes at work, suggesting an interpretation
of the play as a narrative of survival and resistance, of “facing” and “solving” problems,
which skillfully escapes the dangerous cycle of violence and victimhood warned against
by Salverson. While acknowledging the obstacles inherent in the performers’
journeys, this audience member chose to focus on their agency in building their
identities, especially the ways in which they carved out their own sense of selfhood in
accordance with their desires and aspirations, as a major takeaway from the play.

56 Ping Chong + Company, “Undesirable Elements”, op. cit.
57 Audience Member #1, “Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements:
Generation NYZ”, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City,
January 20, 2018.
58 Audience Member #2, “Talkback”, event cited.
59 “Audience Questionnaire Filled in by Y.L.”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ,
Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City,
January 20, 2018.

Furthermore, besides being jolted into an awareness of their position as witnesses
of these lives, other questionnaires indicated a new or enhanced understanding of key
issues that the play facilitated. One spectator wrote about the ways in which the play
shed new light on the degree to which “life is so segregated in NYC and minorities
are very disadvantaged in every aspect of life.” 60 For such audience members, the
performance became an arena where new understandings of racism, discrimination,
and social exclusion were allowed to emerge, and a space which creates the conditions
for the otherwise invisible stories of these young people to finally pierce the public
discourse. In Madison’s words, such performances function as “pedagogies of what we
did not know or feel before, in this way,” 61 which serve to expose the audience to the
un-common and the not-yet-imagined, the still-not-known, yet not-fully-knowable
either. Still other spectators were inspired to think about the personal histories brought
236 together and given dramatic shape in this performance, and, ultimately, about the
writing of any history as implying a process of selection, editing, and organization,
which necessarily privileges some figures and voices at the expense of others. To quote
one such response: “The power of these narratives induced me to think about other
issues—perhaps not directly raised in the play. For instance, why do we consider these
stories worthy of selection and performance. What is achieved and what is silenced?” 62
Beyond the emotional burden of identification, such reactions testify to the ways in
which the show can produce a type of historical insight emerging from this collective
weaving of memories, words, and gestures into a performance. What kinds of stories,
emotional landscapes, and “comings to voice” would have been amplified had there
been a different selection of the performers? What other elements of this generation
would have been “given voice?” As such, the staging of oral histories is not only a way
of bringing “‘the storied experience’ of the uncelebrated into public conversation and
debate,” 63 but also a space of reflection about the making of such histories, calling
attention to the potential of performance to serve as “a means to express, to explore,
and vicariously to experience history.” 64

60 “Audience Questionnaire Filled in by S.S.”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ,
performance cited.
61 D. Soyini Madison, Performed Ethnography, op. cit., p. 137.
62 “Audience Questionnaire Filled in by D.V.”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ,
performance cited.
63 Jacquelyn D. Hall, “Afterword: Reverberations”, in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral
History Performance, New York / Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 188.
64 Natalie M. Fousekis, “Experiencing History: A Journey from Oral History to
Performance”, in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History Performance, New York
and Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 178.

What this selection of audience feedback demonstrates is the wide range of
possibilities for responding to the performance, the many ways of learning from the
acts of remembrance performed on stage, and, finally, the many ways of contributing
to and sharing in the act of storytelling. Emphasizing the role of the audience as
witnesses and interlocutors to these life-worlds rather than spectators per se, the show
extends an invitation not only to communal reflection on the topics raised by the
play, but, more importantly, to the type of involvement in civic life exemplified by
the cast. If performance is indeed significant because it does something in the world,
then audiences share just as much responsibility in doing their part and continuing the
work begun by the creators of the show—both performers and theatre practitioners—
in their communities. Beyond the “ethical demand” 65 of listening to and opening
oneself up to the testimony of the Other, as Amanda Stuart Fisher fittingly describes
it in Levinasian terms, there is another, subtler demand placed on the audience of 237
community-based, personal narrative performance, that of re-envisioning oneself as
a more thoughtful and more involved citizen of the world. Predicated on an ethics

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
of inclusivity, collaboration, and responsibility at all stages of its development and
production, community-based theatre seeks to model the same values in its audience
members, who are given an opportunity to practice ways of being listeners and tellers,
and, ultimately, ways of engaging with and responding to each other in a communal
setting, within the frame of the performance events and especially the talkbacks. From
the collaborative dramaturgical processes of creating the play whereby the participants
and the practitioners become partners in conversation, to the performance event which
emphasizes the collective act of “coming to voice” together as part of a community in
the making, to the reception processes which incorporate the audience into the fabric
of this community of storytellers and witnesses, community-based theatre thus creates
the conditions for a re-imagining of ways of living together within a turbulent social
and political context where such models are not always foregrounded.

65 Amanda Stuart Fisher, “Bearing Witness: The Position of Theatre Makers in the Telling
of Trauma”, in Tim Prentki, Sheila Preston (eds), The Applied Theatre Reader, London
and New York, Routledge, 2009, p. 114.

Bibliography
Audience Member #1, “Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements:
Generation NYZ”, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City,
January 20, 2018.
Audience Member #2, “Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements:
Generation NYZ”, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City,
January 20, 2018.
“Audience Questionnaire Filled in by D.V.”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ,
Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City,
January 20, 2018.
“Audience Questionnaire Filled in by S.S.”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, Performance,
The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
“Audience Questionnaire Filled in by Y.L.”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ,
Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City,
238 January 20, 2018.
“Meet Generation NYZ”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ Playbill, The New Victory
Theater, 2018, pp. 6-7.
“Playbill for Undesirable Elements: New York (a work-in-progress) at Henry Street Settlement’s
Nations of New York Arts Festival”, Ping Chong Archive 1971-2008, LPA Mss 2009-001,
Box 44, Folder 12 (Programs 1992-1994), The New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts, New York City.
“Program Notes for Ping Chong’s A Facility for the Channeling and Containment of
Undesirable Elements, Installation, Performance and Video”, Ping Chong Archive 1971-2008,
LPA Mss 2009-001, Box 44, Folder 12 (Programs 1992-1994), The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts, New York City.
“Talkback with the Cast of Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity”, City Lore, New York City,
November 15, 2017.
Chong, Ping, “Creator’s Note”, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ Playbill, The New
Victory Theater, 2018, p. 4.
Chong, Ping, “Interview conducted by the author”, New York City, November 30, 2017.
Cohen-Cruz, Jan, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States,
New Brunswick / New Jersey / London, Rutgers UP, 2005.
—, Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response, London / New York, Routledge, 2010.
Collins-Hughes, Laura, “Undesirable Elements, Documentary Theater for Uncivil Times”,
New York Times, January 15, 2018.
Feingold, Michael, “Meet the Seven Extraordinary Individuals of Ping Chong’s Undesirable
Elements: Generation NYZ”, The Village Voice, January 20, 2018.
Fisher, Amanda Stuart, “Bearing Witness: The Position of Theatre Makers in the Telling of
Trauma”, in Tim Prentki, Sheila Preston (eds), The Applied Theatre Reader, London and
New York, Routledge, 2009, pp. 108-115.

Fousekis, Natalie M., “Experiencing History: A Journey from Oral History to Performance”,
in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History Performance, New York and Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 167-186.
Gallagher, Kathleen, “Responsible Art and Unequal Societies: Towards a Theory of Drama
and the Justice Agenda”, in Kelly Freebody, Michael Finneran (eds), Drama and Social Justice:
Theory, Research, and Practice in International Contexts, London and New York, Routledge,
2015, pp. 53-68.
Geer, Richard Owen, “Of the People, By the People, and For the People: The Field of
Community Performance”, High Performance, vol. 16, no. 4, 1993, pp. 28-31.
Gibson, Janet, “Saying it Right: Creating Ethical Verbatim Theatre”, NEO: Journal for Higher
Degree Research Students in the Social Sciences and Humanities, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1-18.
Haedicke, Susan Chandler, “Dramaturgy in Community-Based Theatre”, Journal of Dramatic
Theory and Criticism, no. 3, 1998, pp. 125-132.
Hall, Jacquelyn D., “Afterword: Reverberations”, in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral
History Performance, New York / Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 187-198. 239
hooks, bell, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Cambridge, South End
Press, 1989.

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
—, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, London and New York,
Routledge, 1994.
Isin, Engin F., “Performative Citizenship”, in Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene
Bloemraad, Maarten Vink (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, Oxford,
Oxford UP, 2007, pp. 500-523.
Kuppers, Petra, Community Performance: An Introduction, New York, Routledge, 2007.
Madison, D. Soyini, Performed Ethnography and Communication: Improvisation and
Embodied Experience, London and New York, Routledge, 2018.
Ping Chong + company, “Undesirable Elements”, Ping Chong + Company Website.
—, “Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ”, Ping Chong + Company Website.
—, “Meet Syl”, “Meet De-Andra”, “Meet Rafael”, “Meet Porscha”, “Meet Mohammad”, Interviews
with the Cast, YouTube, January 11 and 25, 2019.
—, in collaboration with the performers Edwin Aguila, Monica Victoria Tatacoya Castañeda,
Syl (Andrea) Egerton, Mohammad Murtaza, De-Andra Pryce, Porscha Polkahantis Rippy,
Rafael Rosario, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, Performance, The New Victory
Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
Pollock, Della, “Telling the Told: Performing Like a Family”, Oral History Review, no. 18,
1990, pp. 1-36.
—, “Introduction: Remembering”, in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History
Performance, New York / Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 1-18.
Preston, Sheila, “Introduction to Facilitation”, in Sheila Preston (ed.), Applied Theatre:
Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience. London, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016,
pp. 1-14.

Rich, Frank, “Auteur Directors Bring New Life to Theater”, New York Times, November 24,
1985.
Salverson, Julie, “Transgressive Storytelling or an Aesthetic of Injury: Performance,
Pedagogy and Ethics”, Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada, vol. 20,
no. 1, 1999.
—, “Change on Whose Terms? Testimony and an Erotics of Injury”, Theater, vol. 31, no. 3,
2001, pp. 119-125.
Traber, Kirya, “Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements: Generation
NYZ”, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20,
2018.
Zhang, Amy, “Creating Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ”, New Victory Theater Blog,
January 5, 2018.

240

Notice
Dr. Diana Benea is Lecturer in the English Department at the University of
Bucharest, Romania, where she teaches courses in 20th and 21st century American
literature and contemporary American drama. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at
the City University of New York –The Graduate Center, with a research project on the
politics and aesthetics of contemporary American community-based theatre (2017-
2018). Her current research looks at the relationship between politics and performance,
with a focus on the theory, praxis, and pedagogy of applied theatre formats.

Abstract
In conversation with recent theoretical explorations of community-based theatre
241
and oral history performance, this article offers an analysis of Generation NYZ (2018),
the 25th year anniversary production of Ping Chong + Company’s Undesirable
Elements series (1992-), one of the most vibrant and enduring theatrical projects of this

diana benea Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis
kind on the contemporary American stage. Relying on a wide array of source
materials, including interviews, archival material, and audience feedback, the three-
fold inquiry looks at the dramaturgical processes at work in the creation of the
play (within the context of the whole series), its main thematic concerns and the
stakes of “coming to voice” (hooks), as well as the politics of audience reception.
This approach shows that the format of community-based theatre transcends the
primacy of the text and its performance, encompassing instead a broader range of
processes, from dramaturgy to reception, which could all be regarded as working
towards and rehearsing “models of how we live together” (Cohen-Cruz).

Key words
community-based theatre; oral history; youth theatre; dramaturgy; reception; social
change

Résumé
En dialogue avec les récentes explorations théoriques du théâtre communautaire et
de la performance fondée sur l’histoire orale, cet article offre une analyse de Generation
NYZ (2018), le spectacle qui a marqué le 25ème anniversaire de la série Undesirable
Elements (1992-) de Ping Chong + Company, l’un des projets théâtraux les plus durables
et les plus vivants dans son genre sur la scène américaine contemporaine. À partir d’un
large éventail de sources, d’entretiens, de documents d’archives et questionnaires aux
spectateurs, la présente analyse vise à déplier d’abord le processus dramaturgique à
l’origine de la pièce (dans le contexte de cette série) ; puis les thématiques les plus
importantes et la « découverte de la voix » (hooks) ; enfin les enjeux politiques de la
réception. Cette approche montre que le format du théâtre communautaire met en
question la primauté du texte et de sa mise-en-scène, et comprend une gamme complexe
242
de processus, de la « dramaturgie » à la réception, qui peuvent être conçus comme une
façon de répéter et de s’approprier des « modèles du vivre ensemble » (Cohen-Cruz).

Mots-clés
théâtre communautaire américain; histoire orale; théâtre pour les jeunes; dramaturgie;
réception; changement social

CRÉDITS PHOTO

Visuels de couverture : YOUARENOWHERE, créé et interprété par Andrew
Schneider, 2015 (photographie de Maria Baranova) ; Adina Verson dans Indecent, créé
et mis en scène par Paula Vogel et Rebecca Taichman, 2015 (photographie de Carol
Rosegg) ; Elizabeth Jensen dans Eurydice de Sarah Ruhl, mise en scène de Helen Kvale,
2017 (photographie de Jasmine Jones) ; Quayla Bramble dans Hopscotch créé par Yuval
Sharon pour The Industry, 2015 (photographie de Anne Cusak / LA Times, droits
réservés). Avec nos remerciements aux artistes et photographes. 281

TABLE DES MATIÈRES

Foreword
Julie Vatain-Corfdir���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������5

PART I
REALISM DEPOSED, RECLAIMED AND EXPOSED

No Adjectives: New American Realism
Marc Robinson���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������15

From Gertrude Stein to Richard Maxwell: Language, Performativity and Sensuousness 283
in 21st‑Century American Dramaturgy
Avra Sidiropoulou����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37

american dramaturgies for the 21st century •
“Plays as Sculptures”. Richard Maxwell’s Dramaturgy or the Art of Inventing New Shapes
An interview with Richard Maxwell by Emeline Jouve�����������������������������������������������������������������������������55

On Sarah Ruhl’s Transformative Theater of Lightness
Ana Fernández-Caparrós����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������65

PART II
PAGE, STAGE AND GAZE RECONFIGURED

“Fulfill Your Obligations to Yourself Aesthetically”. Young Jean Lee on Experimental
Theater and Teaching Playwriting
An interview with Young Jean Lee by Julie Vatain-Corfdir����������������������������������������������������������������������91

Investigating the Role of the Dramaturg at the National Playwrights Conference,
Eugene O’Neill Theater Center
Mary Davies�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������99
sup

The Industry: Operas for the 21st Century
• 2021

Antonia Rigaud������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������125

Metamodern Aesthetics of Selfieness and Surveillance in Youarenowhere and
I’ll Never Love Again
Emma Willis�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������149

“Blond, Blue-eyed Boy” Turned “Dark and Dusky”:
Why Can’t Edward Albee’s Nick Be Black?
Valentine Vasak������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������173

PART III
THE PURSUIT OF COMMUNITY

On Neoclassicism: Theatrocracy, the 1%, and the Democratic Paradox
Pierre-Héli Monot��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������201

Producing Community: A Process-Oriented Analysis of Ping Chong + Company’s
Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ (2018)
Diana Benea�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������217

284 Indecent: Challenging Narratives of the American Dream through Collaborative
Creation and the Use of Memory as a Dramaturgical Device
Sarah Sigal��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������243

Detroit ’67: Dramaturgy at the Intersection of the Theatrical Sphere
and the Socio‑Political Sphere
Mary Anderson, Billicia Hines, Richard Haley����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������259
References (51)
Engin F. Isin, "Performative Citizenship", in Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene Bloemraad, Maarten Vink (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2007, p. 502.
Julie Salverson, "Transgressive Storytelling or an Aesthetic of Injury: Performance, Pedagogy and Ethics", Theatre Research in Canada/ Recherches théâtrales au Canada, vol. 20, no. 1, 1999.
Julie Salverson, "Change on Whose Terms? Testimony and an Erotics of Injury", Theater, vol. 31, no. 3, 2001, pp. 119-125.
52 Julie Salverson, "Transgressive Storytelling", art. cit.
Ibid.
Julie Salverson, "Change on Whose Terms?", art. cit., p. 119.
Kathleen Gallagher, "Responsible Art and Unequal Societies: Towards a Theory of Drama and the Justice Agenda", in Kelly Freebody, Michael Finneran (eds), Drama and Social Justice, London / New York, Routledge, 2015, p. 57.
D. Soyini Madison, Performed Ethnography, op. cit., p. 137.
"Audience Questionnaire Filled in by D.V. ", Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, performance cited.
Jacquelyn D. Hall, "Afterword: Reverberations", in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History Performance, New York / Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 188.
Natalie M. Fousekis, "Experiencing History: A Journey from Oral History to Performance", in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History Performance, New York and Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 178. Bibliography Audience Member #1, "Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ", The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
Audience Member #2, "Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ", The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
"Audience Questionnaire Filled in by D.V.", Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
"Audience Questionnaire Filled in by S.S.", Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018. "Audience Questionnaire Filled in by Y.L.", Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
"Meet Generation NYZ", Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ Playbill, The New Victory Theater, 2018, pp. 6-7.
"Playbill for Undesirable Elements: New York (a work-in-progress) at Henry Street Settlement's Nations of New York Arts Festival", Ping Chong Archive 1971-2008, LPA Mss 2009-001, Box 44, Folder 12 (Programs 1992-1994), The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York City.
"Program Notes for Ping Chong's A Facility for the Channeling and Containment of Undesirable Elements, Installation, Performance and Video", Ping Chong Archive 1971-2008, LPA Mss 2009-001, Box 44, Folder 12 (Programs 1992-1994), The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York City.
"Talkback with the Cast of Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity", City Lore, New York City, November 15, 2017.
Chong, Ping, "Creator's Note", Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ Playbill, The New Victory Theater, 2018, p. 4.
Chong, Ping, "Interview conducted by the author", New York City, November 30, 2017.
Cohen-Cruz, Jan, Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States, New Brunswick / New Jersey / London, Rutgers UP, 2005.
-, Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response, London / New York, Routledge, 2010.
Collins-Hughes, Laura, "Undesirable Elements, Documentary Theater for Uncivil Times", New York Times, January 15, 2018.
Feingold, Michael, "Meet the Seven Extraordinary Individuals of Ping Chong's Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ", The Village Voice, January 20, 2018.
Fisher, Amanda Stuart, "Bearing Witness: The Position of Theatre Makers in the Telling of Trauma", in Tim Prentki, Sheila Preston (eds), The Applied Theatre Reader, London and New York, Routledge, 2009, pp. 108-115.
Fousekis, Natalie M., "Experiencing History: A Journey from Oral History to Performance", in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History Performance, New York and Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 167-186.
Gallagher, Kathleen, "Responsible Art and Unequal Societies: Towards a Theory of Drama and the Justice Agenda", in Kelly Freebody, Michael Finneran (eds), Drama and Social Justice: Theory, Research, and Practice in International Contexts, London and New York, Routledge, 2015, pp. 53-68.
Geer, Richard Owen, "Of the People, By the People, and For the People: The Field of Community Performance", High Performance, vol. 16, no. 4, 1993, pp. 28-31.
Gibson, Janet, "Saying it Right: Creating Ethical Verbatim Theatre", NEO: Journal for Higher Degree Research Students in the Social Sciences and Humanities, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1-18.
Haedicke, Susan Chandler, "Dramaturgy in Community-Based Theatre", Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, no. 3, 1998, pp. 125-132.
Hall, Jacquelyn D., "Afterword: Reverberations", in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History Performance, New York / Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 187-198.
hooks, bell, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Cambridge, South End Press, 1989.
-, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, London and New York, Routledge, 1994.
Isin, Engin F., "Performative Citizenship", in Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene Bloemraad, Maarten Vink (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2007, pp. 500-523.
Kuppers, Petra, Community Performance: An Introduction, New York, Routledge, 2007.
Madison, D. Soyini, Performed Ethnography and Communication: Improvisation and Embodied Experience, London and New York, Routledge, 2018.
Ping Chong + company, "Undesirable Elements", Ping Chong + Company Website.
-, "Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ", Ping Chong + Company Website.
-, "Meet Syl", "Meet De-Andra", "Meet Rafael", "Meet Porscha", "Meet Mohammad", Interviews with the Cast, YouTube, January 11 and 25, 2019.
-, in collaboration with the performers Edwin Aguila, Monica Victoria Tatacoya Castañeda, Syl (Andrea) Egerton, Mohammad Murtaza, De-Andra Pryce, Porscha Polkahantis Rippy, Rafael Rosario, Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ, Performance, The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
Pollock, Della, "Telling the Told: Performing Like a Family", Oral History Review, no. 18, 1990, pp. 1-36.
-, "Introduction: Remembering", in Della Pollock (ed.), Remembering Oral History Performance, New York / Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 1-18.
Preston, Sheila, "Introduction to Facilitation", in Sheila Preston (ed.), Applied Theatre: Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience. London, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016, pp. 1-14.
Rich, Frank, "Auteur Directors Bring New Life to Theater", New York Times, November 24, 1985.
Salverson, Julie, "Transgressive Storytelling or an Aesthetic of Injury: Performance, Pedagogy and Ethics", Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales au Canada, vol. 20, no. 1, 1999.
-, "Change on Whose Terms? Testimony and an Erotics of Injury", Theater, vol. 31, no. 3, 2001, pp. 119-125.
Traber, Kirya, "Talkback with the Cast and the Creators of Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ", The New Victory Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City, January 20, 2018.
Zhang, Amy, "Creating Undesirable Elements: Generation NYZ", New Victory Theater Blog, January 5, 2018.
Résumé En dialogue avec les récentes explorations théoriques du théâtre communautaire et de la performance fondée sur l'histoire orale, cet article offre une analyse de Generation NYZ (2018), le spectacle qui a marqué le 25 ème anniversaire de la série Undesirable Elements (1992-) de Ping Chong + Company, l'un des projets théâtraux les plus durables et les plus vivants dans son genre sur la scène américaine contemporaine. À partir d'un large éventail de sources, d'entretiens, de documents d'archives et questionnaires aux spectateurs, la présente analyse vise à déplier d'abord le processus dramaturgique à l'origine de la pièce (dans le contexte de cette série) ; puis les thématiques les plus importantes et la « découverte de la voix » (hooks) ; 'approprier des « modèles du vivre ensemble » (Cohen-Cruz). Mots-clés théâtre communautaire américain; histoire orale; théâtre pour les jeunes; dramaturgie; réception; changement social CRÉDITS PHOTO Visuels de couverture : YOUARENOWHERE, créé et interprété par Andrew Schneider, 2015 (photographie de Maria Baranova) ;
Adina Verson dans Indecent, créé et mis en scène par Paula Vogel et Rebecca Taichman, 2015 (photographie de Carol Rosegg) ;
Quayla Bramble dans Hopscotch créé par Yuval Sharon pour The Industry, 2015 (photographie de Anne Cusak / LA Times, droits réservés). Avec nos remerciements aux artistes et photographes.
FAQs
AI
What methodologies inform the collaborative storytelling process in Undesirable Elements?
add
The series employs a structured multi-step approach that includes interviews and community engagement, fostering a rich co-creative narrative from diverse backgrounds. This method has been executed with over 60 productions since its inception, demonstrating its adaptability across numerous communities.
How does Undesirable Elements address the theme of cultural otherness?
add
The series explores cultural otherness through narratives from marginalized communities, highlighting issues of socio-political disenfranchisement. For instance, it incorporates personal stories of immigrants, conflicting identities, and structural racism, as experienced by performers like Porscha and Mohammad.
What role does audience engagement play in the performance of Generation NYZ?
add
Audience engagement is crucial, as post-performance talkbacks encourage dialogue about the narratives, prompting individuals to reflect on their own experiences. Feedback from audience members has shown that many felt empowered to share their own stories after witnessing the performance.
How does the series reflect historical contexts relevant to the performers' stories?
add
Each production intertwines personal histories with significant historical events, like the Great Migration and immigration policies post-1965, shaping the performers' identities. This contextualization offers insights into the broader socio-political landscapes impacting their individual narratives.
What are the implications of using oral histories in community-based theatre?
add
Using oral histories allows for a nuanced representation of marginalized voices, fostering empathy and understanding among audiences. It also challenges conventional narrative ownership, shifting the focus from spectacle to collective storytelling and community identity-building.
Diana Benea
University of Bucharest, Faculty Member
Dr. Diana Benea is Asst. Professor of American Studies at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and a former Fulbright Senior Scholar in the Theater Program at the City University of New York - The Graduate Center (2017-2018). At the University of Bucharest she teaches self-designed courses in 20th and 21st century US literature(s), methodologies in cultural studies, and contemporary theater.

She has published a monograph and book chapters on Thomas Pynchon’s works, as well as articles on contemporary theater practices in the US and Romania (on migrant theater, community-based theater, TYA, Roma theater).

Her recent publications include an invited contribution on Thomas Pynchon for The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), as well as chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), American Dramaturgies for the 21st Century (Sorbonne University Press, 2021), (M)Other Perspectives: Staging Motherhood in 21st Century North American Theatre & Performance (Routledge, 2023), and Women's Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance (Bloomsbury's Methuen Drama, forthcoming).

She has also co-edited a special issue of the journal American, British and Canadian Studies (De Gruyter) on the topic Staging Crisis in Contemporary North American Theater and Performance (2022).

She was a visiting doctoral researcher at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin (2012). In 2020 she was awarded a research fellowship at the Eccles Centre for American Studies, London.

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Audience, Community and Dialogic Theatre: Actors Touring Company and Ramin Gray 2010-2015
Christine Twite
2018
This thesis is an analysis of the theatre work directed by Ramin Gray, Artistic Director of ATC (Actors Touring Company), from 2010 to 2015. It has been informed by my privileged position as ethnographer within the company as part of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award project. In the thesis, I argue that Gray’s work explores questions of how we might negotiate living within contemporary, diverse communities, particularly in the light of recent scholarly critiques of community, and contemporary British debates about identity, migration, and community. The narratives and dramaturgies of ATC’s productions during this period draw attention to what Chantal Mouffe has called the ‘democratic paradox’, whereby liberal drives towards inclusivity and plurality are held in tension with democratic drives towards unity and consensus. Gray’s work for ATC stages this paradox as politically productive, exposing it in all its discomfort, rather than as something to be repressed or eliminated. I use theoretical frameworks by Theodor Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Chantal Mouffe, Jean-Luc Nancy and Richard Sennett, particularly Mouffe’s ‘agonistic democracy’ and Sennett’s concept of the ‘dialogic’, to support my account of how ATC’s theatre has interrogated the concept of community. I examine three major productions where the tension between multiple voices and consensus has emerged in different ways, as Gray’s relationship with the company has evolved. This evolution has been observed in rehearsal, in production, and through my access to company personnel, meetings and archives. The productions are: The Golden Dragon by Roland Schimmeplfennig; a double bill of Crave by Sarah Kane and Illusions by Ivan Viripaev; and The Events by David Greig. I describe how ATC’s dramaturgical structures make explicit a link between the paradox of the individual’s relationship to the larger community and tensions pertaining to the role of the spectator in the larger theatre audience. In seeking to create this tension affectively within the body of the spectator, often creating unease or embarrassment, Gray’s work foregrounds the paradox physically as well as intellectually, a practice which I argue is fundamental to his work for ATC. This thesis suggests that contemporary debates around the term community are overlooked in much current scholarship on contemporary political theatre, and that theories of community can make a significant critical intervention in scholarship in this field. It offers a new exploration of the work that contemporary theatre and the theatre director can do to discuss, trouble and embody the concept of community. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.826514
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“Community Theatre: The New York Season 2013–14”
Joseph Cermatori
T o give an account of current issues in contemporary New York theatre, PAJ convened three critics for a season review roundtable whose format was inspired by the critical dialogues that the journal hosted in the mid-eighties and early nineties (featuring Bonnie Marranca, Gerald Rabkin, Elinor Fuchs, and Johannes Birringer). The aim of the discussion was to conduct a general review of the overall season, highlighting its most noteworthy theatrical offerings. (This was a deliberately quixotic gesture in a year when the magazine ArtReview's list of the hundred most powerful figures in the contemporary art world notably included no critics at all. 1 ) We chose to attend and consider close to twenty-five productions from a pool of over fifty possibilities, narrowing these down to a final eight for the overview below. These works amount to a rich and ambitious variety of theatre projects representing some of the most outstanding artists of our generation. They testify to a host of contemporary concerns, perhaps none more pressing than a desire to reconsider "community" and "the social" under present political and economic circumstances -particularly the continuing fallout of the 2008 financial crisis and the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street. Over several hours in May 2014, our conversation ranged over a variety of topics. These included the newfound interest in participation as an aesthetic category; the increasingly pervasive use of non-professionals, volunteers, and what one arts organization has described as "locally sourced" performers; 2 new anxieties about authority, especially the power and credibility of experts; and new ideas concerning the writing and use of text in performance.
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Community Theatre: The New York Season 2013–14 (with Joseph Cermatori and Miriam Felton-Dansky)
Ryan Anthony Hatch
Miriam Felton-dansky
PAJ: a journal of performance and art 108 (36.2), 2014
T o give an account of current issues in contemporary New York theatre, PAJ convened three critics for a season review roundtable whose format was inspired by the critical dialogues that the journal hosted in the mid-eighties and early nineties (featuring Bonnie Marranca, Gerald Rabkin, Elinor Fuchs, and Johannes Birringer). The aim of the discussion was to conduct a general review of the overall season, highlighting its most noteworthy theatrical offerings. (This was a deliberately quixotic gesture in a year when the magazine ArtReview's list of the hundred most powerful figures in the contemporary art world notably included no critics at all. 1 ) We chose to attend and consider close to twenty-five productions from a pool of over fifty possibilities, narrowing these down to a final eight for the overview below. These works amount to a rich and ambitious variety of theatre projects representing some of the most outstanding artists of our generation. They testify to a host of contemporary concerns, perhaps none more pressing than a desire to reconsider "community" and "the social" under present political and economic circumstances -particularly the continuing fallout of the 2008 financial crisis and the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street. Over several hours in May 2014, our conversation ranged over a variety of topics. These included the newfound interest in participation as an aesthetic category; the increasingly pervasive use of non-professionals, volunteers, and what one arts organization has described as "locally sourced" performers; 2 new anxieties about authority, especially the power and credibility of experts; and new ideas concerning the writing and use of text in performance.
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Dramaturgy in Community-Based Theatre
Susan Haedicke
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 1998
The real job of all good dramaturgs is to extend and explore territory that the theater has not yet made its own," writes Anne Cattaneo, dramaturg of New York's Lincoln Center Theatre. 1 Dramaturgy at community-based theatres does just that as the words, the lives, the dreams, and the history of forgotten communities take shape on stages, in community centers, or on the streets. This new "territory," in turn, requires new ways of working that stretch even the very flexible methodologies of traditional dramaturgy. Community-based dramaturgy initiates unique script development strategies and often redefines "text." Community-based dramaturgy places the authority for the artistic process primarily in the hands of the audience community. Community-based dramaturgy, closely interwoven with community development, often represents a form of social activism. Thus when looking at dramaturgy in community-based theatres, it is important to examine how it functions not only within the production process, but also in its relationship to the audience community and to the larger social system. As a "creative and critical activity," 2 dramaturgy existed as an essential part of the production process long before the term came into use, and that role remains the same today. Over the years, it has been defined as a profession, a set of tasks, or a theory. The editors of Dramaturgy in the American Theater: A Source Book suggest that dramaturgy "is not so much a matter of how to do it as it is about the development of an interconnected set of ideas, attitudes, feelings, skills, and behaviors: in short, an education." 3 And Michael Lupu, Senior Dramaturg at the Guthrie Theatre, asserts that "dramaturgy functions as a sort of monitoring device meant to keep the process on course.. .it forms the underpinning of all intuitive or deliberate choices, thoughts, debates and nurtures the passionate search for artistic truth on stage." 4 The notions of dramaturgy as an education and Susan Chandler Haedicke teaches drama at The George Washington University and is the Literary Manager for LE NEON Theatre in the Washington DC area. She is currently co-editing City Play Grounds: International Perspectives on Urban Community-Based Performance and is writing a book on Robert Alexander and the Living Stage, the community outreach theatre associated with Arena Stage in Washington DC. Her articles have appeared in several journals, including Theatre Topics, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Essays in Theatre, and she has contributed essays to volumes on Arthur Miller and Israel Horovitz. Her adaptation of Hugo's The Man Who Laughs was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award in 1996. Susan has been very active in the Theatre and Social Change Focus Group for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
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When Drama Praxis Rocks the Boat: Struggles of Subjectivity, Audience, and Performance.
Dominique Riviere
Kathleen Gallagher
Research in Drama Education, 2007
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Breathing Space: Cross-community professional theatre as a means of dissolving fixed geographical landscapes
Sara Matchett
2009
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The Fate of the Dramatic in Modern Society: Social Theory and the Theatrical Avant-Garde
Jeffrey C Alexander
Theory, Culture & Society, 2014
Avant-garde theatre is often invoked as the bellwether for a society that has become postdramatic – fragmented, alienated, and critical of efforts to create collectively shared meanings. A theatre whose sequenced actions have no narrative (so the story goes) mirrors a social world where the most conflictual situations no longer appear as drama but merely as spectacle: a society where audiences look on without any feeling or connection. Because only half right, these theses about postdramatic theatre and society are fundamentally wrong. As modern societies have expanded and differentiated, the elements that compose performances have become separated and often fragmented in both theatre and society. If they can be brought back together again, performances are viewed as authentic and meaningful. If (re)fusion cannot be achieved, performances fail to communicate meaning. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that a shared ambition to (re)fuse fragmented performative elements has defined the most important strain of avant-garde theatre over the last two centuries. Most radical theatrical innovation has sought to open live drama back up to the telos of myth and ritual. Neither in theatre nor social life can the world transcend dramaturgy; it is fundamental to the search for meaning in a world beyond cosmological religion.
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CROSSING THE THRESHOLD Tensions of Participation in Community-Based Playback Theatre Performance
rea dennis
Journal of Interactive Drama (ISSN 1994-1250) Volume 2.1, pp. 56-70, 2007
Contained by a simple accessible ritual structure playback theatre offers a unique audience experience with the possibility of participation. The opportunity to participate introduces a challenge for some. This can be further compounded by the central place of personal storytelling. It is the repeated invitation to tell a story that drives the ritual momentum in the playback theatre performance. Audience members sit with the constant possibility of volunteering, while some are preoccupied with a persistent reluctance to tell. This 'tension of participation' could be considered the more potent tension underpinning audience members' experiences in the playback theatre event - perhaps more than the dramatic tensions emerging from the performative acts of storytelling and enacting.
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Rehearsing Democracy: Advocacy, Public Intellectuals, and Civic Engagement in Theatre and Performance Studies
Jill Dolan
Theatre Topics, 2001
Let me start this argument for academic advocacy with three salient anecdotes: 1) A member of the acting faculty in my department at the University of Texas at Austin has a decal pasted on his office door designed in the ubiquitous Ghostbusters symbolic style that transliterates as "Don't Think, Act." Although I very much respect this man and his work with students and department productions, walking past this declaration of his values each day challenges everything I believe in as a theatre educator. 2) A theatre department colleague and I were recently asked to join a planning committee for a conference organized by UT's law school on questions of art and authenticity. One of their influential faculty members wants to address how a play's reception changes over time, citing, for example, the antisemitism of The Merchant of Venice as a "problem" for twenty-first-century audiences. In addition to pondering legalistic questions about intellectual property and copyright infringement, he wants to address the law as content in cultural representations. Although Holly Hughes had just been to campus, performing at a local theatre her newest performance piece, Preaching to the Perverted, the law professor didn't once refer to the legal challenge to the National Endowment for the Arts's decency pledge or its upholding by the Supreme Court. Neither did he suggest that the conference consider censorship as a legal issue that historically haunts performance and representation. While we're glad to be brought to the table for an intercollege, interdisciplinary event (with a budget, provided by the law school, of an astounding $100,000), we resent being asked to address other people's issues when they clearly have no knowledge of our own. Obviously, we will try to steer the conference conversations toward topics that are more germane to contemporary theatre and performance studies. But the invitation was extended through ignorance and presumption, and considered, once again, a theatre department as a service unit with no inherent history or critical discourse of its own.
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How Theatre Educates: Convergences and Counterpoints with Artists, Scholars and Advocates. Edited by Kathleen Gallagher and David Booth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Inc., 2003. Pp. xii + 282. $50.00 Hb; $27.95 Pb
kirsten pullen
Theatre Research International, 2004
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