Theatre of Naomi Wallace

Shannon Baley, St. Edward's University, USABuell Wisner, Georgia Perimeter College, USAVivian Gornick, critic, essayist, and memoiristWalter Bilderback, Wilma Theater, USALindsay B. Cummings, University of Connecticut, USA Josephine Machon, Middlesex University, USA Beth Cleary, director, playwright, and scholarArt Borreca, University of Iowa, USANeil Chudgar, Macalester College, USAPeter Rachleff, Macalester College, USAAdam John Waterman, American University of Beirut, LebanonDominic Dromgoole, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, UKRon Daniels, directorRiccardo Hernandez, scenic designerJessica Dromgoole, producer and directorDavid Gothard, directorIsmail Khalidi, poet, actor, and playwrightDominique Hollier, actor, translator, and dramaturgRaz Shaw, director Erin B. Mee, scholar, activist, and directorJo Bonney, directorAbdelfattah Abusrour, writer, actor, and painterRobin D. G. Kelley, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

"A crucial and long overdue study of one of the fiercest, most poetic and sensual voices that the American theatre has ever produced. A book that celebrates Wallace's grace, intellectual wit, and probing intelligence." - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian "... This volume analyzes and celebrates the playwright's many achievements ... Throughout the book, Wallace is compared to Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, Caryl Churchill, Samuel Beckett, Jane Austen, W.B. Yeats, Walt Whitman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bruce Springsteen. This list is a testament to the playwright as well as to those who generated it - the astute, diverse, impassioned writers who recognize and relish the prismatic spectrum that is Naomi Wallace ... Wallace's own bibliographies ... send their readers on historical and philosophical journeys. The editors and contributors of The Theatre of Naomi Wallace have extended such journeys into a collective pilgrimage, paying homage to an extraordinary playwright with an extraordinary book." - Modern Drama

• Preface: Embodied Dialogues; Erica Stevens Abbitt Introduction: The Discourse of the Body; Scott T. Cummings PART I: WRITINGS ON WALLACE 1. Death and Desire, Apocalypse, and Utopia: Feminist Gestus and the Utopian Performative in the Plays of Naomi Wallace; Shannon Baley 2. Love in a Wound; Scott T. Cummings 3. Messianic Marxism in Naomi Wallace's Slaughter City and Things of Dry Hours; Buell Wisner 4. An American Exile in America; Vivian Gornick 5. The City that Embraced Naomi Wallace; Walter Bilderback 6. Naomi Wallace and the Dramaturgy of Rehearsal; Lindsay B. Cummings 7. Naomi Wallace and the Politics of Desire; Josephine Machon 8. Crucial Unspeakables, or Pedagogies of the Repressed: Directing Sex in the Plays of Naomi Wallace; Beth Cleary 9. Mapping The Inland Sea: Naomi Wallace's British Epic Drama; Art Borreca 10. Slip's Bluff; Neil Chudgar 11. Journeys into the Heart of Whiteness: A Labor Historian Looks at the Work of Naomi Wallace; Peter Rachleff 12. Unbearable Intimacies: Occupation, Utopia, and Creative Destruction in The Fever Chart; Adam John Waterman 13. To Girl or Not To Girl; Erica Stevens Abbitt PART II: COLLABORATORS 1. Standing on Your Head; Dominic Dromgoole 2. Naomi Is Inside My Head; Ron Daniels 3. Designing Wallace; Riccardo Hernandez 4. In the Fields of Naomi Wallace; Jessica Dromgoole 5. Radical Poetry; David Gothard 6. Being the 'Other': Naomi Wallace and the Middle East; Ismail Khalidi 7. Translating Wallace; Dominique Hollier 8. Betting on Naomi and the Boss; Raz Shaw 9. Mindscapes of Palestine; Erin B. Mee 10. Directing Wallace; Jo Bonney 11. Beautiful Resistance; Abdelfattah Abusrour 12. The Facts of Love; Robin D. G. Kelley 13. Nettle Soup; Bruce McLeod PART III: WALLACE IN HER OWN WORDS 1. "Strange Times" 2. Seven Poems 3. "Let the Right One In" 4. Manifesto 5. "We Are Also Each Other" 6. "The Fish Story" 7. The Tal Pidae Lehrstücke 8. "On Writing as Transgression"