Haymarket Square Puppet

“Monumental Dialectics: Staging the Haymarket Square Confrontation,”
in Fifth Estate 372 (Spring 2006): 9-11, 16.

In 1998, I wrote HAYMARKET, the first full-length drama about the Haymarket Square Confrontation of 1886-7.  3 1/2 years later, I worked with Tavia LaFollette to stage a street puppet show in Chicago to commemorate that tale of terror, racism, and class struggle.  This piece examines the importance of monuments in the telling and retelling of this story.

“Billionaires For Bush: A Postmortemist Accounting”
in Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 15(1), 2005, p164

“Breath in Dark Times: The Kowalchuk/Walker Project, Ten Brecht Poems,”
in Communications From the International Brecht Society, (Vol. 33, Summer 2004): 11-13.

This piece discusses an excellent performance adaptation of Brecht’s poems.

First Amendement Area

“Facial Insufficiency: Political Street Performance In New York City and the Selective Enforcement of the 1845 Mask Law,”
in TDR:  The Drama Review, 47: 4 (Winter 2003): 75-84.

When the Giuliani Administration dusts off a law from 1845 to start arresting creative activists for wearing masks in their street theatre, the resultant legal struggle raises larger questions about the right to peaceable assembly and the increasing privatization and regulation of public space.

“Electoral Guerrilla Theatre in Australia:  Pauline Pantsdown vs. Pauline Hanson,”
in TDR:  The Drama Review, 45: 2 (Summer 2001): 70-93.

A performance artist uses drag, camp, and digital composition to bring down a racist parliamentarian in Australia.

“Religious Practice in Activist Performance with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless,”
in the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Religion Focus Group’s Journal, Summer 1999: 23-29.

I worked for about a year and a half on a political performance piece with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless’ Women’s Empowerment Project, and this was my first attempt to process that work.