Table Of ContentRoutledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
PANDEMIC PERFORMANCE
RESILIENCE, LIVENESS, AND PROTEST IN
QUARANTINE TIMES
Edited by
Kendra Claire Capece and Patrick Scorese
Pandemic Performance
Pandemic Performance chronicles the many ways that people are surviving/
thriving through performance in a global pandemic.
Covering artists and events from across the United States: from New
York to California and from South Dakota to Texas, the chapters are equal
parts theory and practice, weaving scholarship with personal experience
from contributors who are interdisciplinary artists, scholars, journalists, and
community organizers providing unique and invaluable perspectives on the
complicated work of resilience during COVID-19.
This study will hold interest for students and scholars in the performing
arts, arts, and social justice as well as professional artmakers and creative
community organizers.
Kendra Claire Capece is a New York-based writer and researcher with
special interest in high-impact work that exposes injustice.
Patrick Scorese is an independent writer and performance-based artist
who also serves as the Associate Director of Development at the Jamaica
Center for Arts and Learning.
Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance
Studies
This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited
collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion,
politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterized by dynamic
interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics.
Tango and the Dancing Body in Istanbul
Melin Levent Yuna
The Piscatorbühne Century
Politics and Aesthetics in the Modern Theater After 1927
Drew Lichtenberg
Włodzimierz Staniewski and the Phenomenon of “Gardzienice”
S. E. Gontarski, Tomasz Wiśniewski, and Katarzyna Kręglewska
Anne Frank on the Postwar Dutch Stage
Performance, Memory, Affect
Remco Ensel
Female Aerialists in the 1920s and early 1930s
Femininity, Celebrity & Glamour
Kate Holmes
D’Oyly Carte
The Decline and Fall of an Opera Company
Paul Seeley
Performing Resilience for Systemic Pain
Meghan Moe Beitiks
Performance of Absence in Theatre, Performance and Visual Art
Sylwia Dobkowska
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre--Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS
Pandemic Performance
Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in
Quarantine Times
Edited by Kendra Claire Capece
and Patrick Scorese
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Kendra Claire Capece and Patrick
Scorese; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Kendra Claire Capece and Patrick Scorese to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-07194-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-07197-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-20587-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003205876
Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Preface x
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: pandemic performance and aliveness as art 1
KENDRA CLAIRE CAPECE AND PATRICK SCORESE
PART I
America god damn 19
1 Imagining decolonial futures: in conversation with
Autumn White Eyes 21
AUTUMN WHITE EYES AND KENDRA CLAIRE CAPECE
2 How do you hold when you need to be held? Dance and
the embodied practice of grieving 33
JOYA POWELL
3 (Re)current Unrest: the fire this time 54
CHARLES O. ANDERSON
PART II
Friction and encounter 65
4 Performative allyship and the foxes that drool: in
conversation with Brittany Talissa King 67
BRITTANY TALISSA KING, KENDRA CLAIRE CAPECE, AND
PATRICK SCORESE
vi Contents
5 Theatre in quarantine: temporality and nostalgia in
remediation 77
PATRICK SCORESE
6 “Come be people in space with us:” space-making as
mutual art and mutual aid 99
THERESA BUCHHEISTER
PART III
Building a new future 109
7 On composition, conspiracies, and “dancing in the light
of tomorrow”: in conversation with Ricardo iamuuri
Robinson 111
RICARDO IAMUURI ROBINSON AND KENDRA CLAIRE CAPECE
8 The COVID-19 ruptured art world: sustainable
elements of structural change for a transformative future 124
LEE PAINTER-KIM
9 Dancing in the rubble: post-MoMA and otherwise post-
pandemic futures 148
MARZ SAFFORE
Index 170
Contributors
Charles O. Anderson (he/him) a native of Richmond, Virginia, is
associate chair of The Department of Theatre and Dance and head of the
dance program at The University of Texas at Austin. He is founder and
artistic director of dance theatre X, the critically acclaimed afro-contem-
porary dance-theatre company he founded in 2003 in Philadelphia. He
received his BA from Cornell University and his MFA in Dance from
Temple University. Anderson was selected as one of “The 25 Artists to
Watch” by Dance Magazine and is a Pew Fellowship in the Arts
recipient. He is the first Texas-based independent artist to receive the
prestigious National Dance Production Grant awarded by the New
England Foundation for the Arts. Anderson is deeply committed to arts
and education as sites for enacting social justice, his choreographic work
set upon undergraduate students has been nationally showcased at
the Kennedy Center through the American College Dance Festival
Association where it was twice recognized for outstanding achievement
in experimental dance theatre. Professor Anderson recently founded an
MFA in Dance and Social Justice at the University of Texas at Austin, a
two-year program that is fully funded.
Theresa Buchheister (Dude Judy) (she/they) is a Kansan New Yorker,
founder and co-director of Title:Point, founder and Artistic Director of
The Exponential Festival, co-founder of Vital Joint, and Artistic Director of
The Brick Theater, an incubator of innovative theatre and performing arts
in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Theresa directs, produces, performs, curates,
facilitates, and writes for theatre and voice over.
Kendra Claire Capece (she, her) is a writer based in New York. From
advocating with youth experiencing houselessness in San Francisco and
working with refugees in Rome to amplifying the work of Black liberation
organizers in Ferguson, Oakland, and New York, Kendra seeks to actively
engage what it means to locate oneself in the process of collective liberation.
Through NYU Gallatin’s MA program, Kendra further explored what
effective resistance can and should look like for herself, not as a one-time
project but as a way of living in and with this world.
viii Contributors
Brittany Talissa King (she, her) is a freelance writer and journalist. She
has a YouTube channel and podcast called #AmericanShade with Brittany
King, which explores American racial issues and topics from her heterodox
POV. She graduated from New York University, receiving an MA in
Journalism (Cultural Reporting and Criticism) in 2019. Additionally, she
studied under writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, which broadened her scope on
journalism and the art of language. She has been published in The Republic,
The Daily Beast, Washington Square News, Forward Magazine, Fractyll
Magazine, Tablet Magazine, and is a featured writer on Medium. She is
based in New York.
Lee Painter-Kim – 페인터-김 (they, them) is from Taegu, Seoul, Tampa,
Richmond, and Brooklyn, considering their longest-lived locations ranging
between 3-6 years. They are currently an MA candidate and Fellow of
Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University; they wield a BA in
Literatures, Language, and Criticism from CUNY Hunter College and a
BFA in Painting & Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University.
They are a recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Undergraduate
Fellowship (2010–2011). They currently serve on the Programming
Committee at the Korean Diaspora non-profit GYOPO, organize with
Stop DiscriminAsian (SDA), and are a member of the Society of American
Archivists Foundation. As a part of their mutual aid practice, they provide
archival technical assistance to activists advocating for community artists in
the Central LA area. They have worked as an art worker at various
institutions since 2011. Since 2018, they continue to live in Los
Angeles, CA.
Joya Powell (she, her) is a multiethnic native Harlemite who is a Bessie
Award winning choreographer and educator passionate about community,
activism, and dances of the African Diaspora. Her company Movement of
the People, dedicated to addressing sociocultural injustices through
multidisciplinary immersive contemporary dance, performs nationally and
internationally. Joya is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University.
Ricardo iamuuri Robinson (he/him) is an artist whose works attend to
patterns and forms in sound and space, using deep listening techniques and
reproduction technologies for engaging sonic influences and reforming social
self-awareness. He calls this artistic practice “Sonarcheology” – a creative art
practice merging improvisational listening with environmental and digital
archeology. By way of this method, the art attempts to relisten to the
interrelationships between sound and shape, sonic information and sonic
place … or what he calls “the ancestry of sound.” His work can be found
online at sonarcheology.squarespace.com and lavenderfreddy.com.
Marz Saffore (she, her) is an artist, organizer, and educator born and raised
in Richmond, Virginia. She received her MFA in Studio Art from New
York University (c/o 2017). Her multimedia art practice blurs the lines
Contributors ix
between art/culture, political/personal, and private/public through
video, performance, and installation. Currently, Marz is a doctoral
student in Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU (c/o 2023).
Additionally, she teaches courses on art, media, and decolonization as an
adjunct professor at NYU. Marz is also a member of MTL+ Collective,
a group of artists, writers, and educators who combine research and
aesthetics in political action. MTL+ is the facilitator of Decolonize This
Place, an action-oriented movement centered around six strands of
struggle: Indigenous struggles, Black liberation, free Palestine, de-
gentrification, global wage workers, and dismantling patriarchy.
Patrick Scorese (he, him) is a writer, historiographer, and performance-based
artist working in New York. His original performances have been presented
in theaters, museums, galleries, bars, parks, and street corners throughout the
city. He also collaborates with Theatre of the Electric Mouth a global
theatre collective working remotely to create absurd and literary audio
dramas. His writing has appeared in MARCH: A Journal of Art and Strategy,
the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, the Journal of
Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Ex Nunc, Culturebot, and others. Patrick holds
a BA from Muhlenberg College and an MA from NYU Gallatin.
Autumn White Eyes – Waŋblí Ohítika Wiŋ (Brave Eagle Womxn)
(she/they) is Oglala Lakota and Anishinaabe, and was raised on the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation. They received a BA in Native American
Studies and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College, and an EdM in Arts
in Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. They were a
2018–2019 member of the Intercultural Leadership Institute and a
recipient of the South Dakota Arts Council’s 2019 Artist Career
Development Grant. In 2019, they self-published their first collection
of poetry entitled, Instructed by Haŋwí. Autumn is a Queer, two-spirit
femme spoken-word artist, multimedia storyteller, and works as an arts
educator. They currently reside on Lenape homelands (NJ), and are in
the process of moving back to their own homelands.
