Channelling the dead: A conversation on Desdemona with Tina Benko

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Rapetti
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
York City ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Broad Variety ◽  
Character Building

Tina Benko is an American stage, screen and television actress who has steadily trodden the Broadway boards for twenty years while starring in films and TV series and teaching acting and movement in New York City. An intensely focused and versatile performer, Benko has played in a broad variety of genres, ranging from screwball and Shakespearean comedies to realistic Russian, Scandinavian and American plays. In this interview, she discusses the factors that attracted her to drama and theatre, her acting training and approach to character-building, and theatre as a space for healing and reconciliation as she experienced it while working in Desdemona (2012), a cross-cultural theatre adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello staged by American theatre and opera director Peter Sellars, with texts by African American Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, and music and lyrics by Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré.

‘I was your slave’: Revisioning kinship in Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré’s Desdemona

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Rapetti
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Shared Spaces ◽  
And Performance ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
Shakespearean Tragedy

This article offers a critical reading of Desdemona (2012), a cross-cultural theatre adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello staged by American theatre and opera director Peter Sellars, with texts by African American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and music and lyrics by Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré. By drawing on early modern race studies and Marshall Sahlin’s notion of ‘mutuality of being’, the article discusses Morrison’s lyrical prose as well as Traoré’s songs and performance to show how they merge and amplify one another in Sellars’ meditative staging to jointly rearticulate early modern notions of race, kinship and family embedded in Othello. By questioning what lies dormant, unseen and unheard in the Shakespearean tragedy, Desdemona supplements it with what Imtiaz Habib has termed ‘imprints of the invisible’ and invites its readers and audiences to ponder the onset of European colonialism, the slave trade, colour-based racism and their global aftermath, positing theatre as a metaphor for other civic, shared spaces where honest conversations about race, gender and class inequalities can open up a path to healing and reconciliation.

scholarly journals Maritime Migrations: Stewards of the African Grove

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-70
Author(s):  
ANITA GONZALEZ
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
York City ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Theatre Company

This essay discusses how maritime migrations contribute to movements of ideas across transnational ethnic communities. It focuses on actors from the African Grove, a New York City-based African American theatre company. Actors in this company worked as stewards on transatlantic packet ships where the architecture of the ship supported intercultural exchanges.

Quality of urban life among older adults in the world major metropolises: a cross-cultural comparative study

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
XI PAN ◽  
JASLEEN K. CHAHAL ◽  
ROSE MARIE WARD
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
York City ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Quality Of Urban Life

ABSTRACTThe concept of quality of urban life (QoUL) can be interpreted quite differently across different cultures. Little evidence has shown that the measure of QoUL, which is based on Western culture, can be applied to populations cross-culturally. In the current study, we use data from the 2006 Assessing Happiness and Competitiveness of World Major Metropolises study to identify underlying factors associated with QoUL as well as assess the consistency of the QoUL measurement among adults, aged 60 and older, in ten world major metropolises (i.e. New York City, Toronto, London, Paris, Milan, Berlin, Stockholm, Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul). Exploratory factor analysis and multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are used to analyse the data. Findings of the study suggest that the measure of QoUL is sensitive to socio-cultural differences. Community factor and intrapersonal factor are two underlying structures that are related to QoUL among older adults in ten metropolises cross-culturally. Results from the CFA indicate that Toronto is comparable with Beijing, New York City, Paris, Milan and Stockholm in QoUL, while other cities are not. The results provide insights into the development of current urban policy and promotion of quality of life among older residents in major metropolitan areas. Future researchers should continue to explore the relationship between QoUL and socio-cultural differences within international urban settings, while remaining cautious when making cross-cultural comparisons.

A Tale of Two Cities I

2019 ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
York City ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
English Speaking

The first of two companion chapters, this essay focuses especially on the historical meeting of European and African American movement vocabularies in English-speaking early-nineteenth-century contexts. It focuses particularly upon public music and dance in two creolized cities: Kingston, Jamaica, and New York City. Primary source evidence includes period illustrations (most notably, a ca. 1802 watercolor entitled A Grand Jamaica Ball) and period accounts of entertainments at lower Manhattan’s African Grove Theater; both are analyzed for the evidence they provide regarding the synthesis of creolized movement vocabularies and, by extension, cultural experiences. Methodology is drawn especially from iconography and kinesics.

Fortitude

2019 ◽  
pp. 194-226
Author(s):  
Robert S. Kurtz
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Medical Education ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
Behavioral Health ◽  
York City ◽  
Residency Education ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Covert Racism

In New York City, from the 1990s to the present, covert racism is alive and well in the field of medicine and medical education. The most heavily impacted are African American and Caribbean American females and males. The inequitable treatment thus engendered has concrete results ranging from unwarranted criticism in residency education to forced changes of medical occupations and jobs, to false attributions of behavioral health issues. Combating these challenges requires fortified character armor, seeking percipient well positioned minority, white and off-whites allies, and a willingness to maintain continued vigilance. With persistence and tenacity, success is possible in terms of protecting minorities both in the educational process, and in a mature medical life.

Box office, U.S.A., 1864–1870: Regional Profiles

1967 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-126
Author(s):  
Eugene K. Bristow ◽  
William R. Reardon
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Stock Company ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Central Concentration

Paralleling in time, though not in power, the national expansion and concentration in finance, transportation, and manufacturing, the American theatre entered the 1860's as primarily a stock-company operation, but emerged from the decade as a traveling theatre with a central concentration in New York City. Circuits and booking agencies organized by managers and producers during the seventies and eighties led eventually to the virtual monopoly of the American theatre established by the Theatrical Syndicate in 1896.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Greenland
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
York City ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Collaborative Interactions ◽  
Ideological Debate ◽  
Realistic Representation

This book challenges the convenient distinction between jazz musicians and audiences by calling attention to the collaborative interactions of performers with the other “nonperforming” participants. It provides a realistic representation of jazz in New York City by taking a somewhat paradoxical and ironic approach: it examines small, specialized jazz scenes to suggest broad-based patterns of jazz participation while also deemphasizing what is happening on stage in favor of the offstage listeners—in other words, the unseen scene. This introduction provides an overview of research on the themes addressed in the book; the symbiosis and synergism that characterize New York City's jazz scene, particularly the avant-jazz scene; and the ideological debate between essentialist and universalist positions—the former emphasizing African American cultural values and the latter emphasizing multiculturalism, individual merit, and colorblindness. The book's main argument is that jazz's deeper meanings and expressions are conveyed when both artists and audiences participate in collective improvisation.

Edna Lewis

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
African American ◽  
York City ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Oak Trees ◽  
Professional Woman ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Wild Strawberries

Edna Lewis (1916-2006) wrote some of America's most resonant, lyrical, and significant cookbooks, including the now classic The Taste of Country Cooking. Lewis cooked and wrote as a means to explore her memories of childhood on a farm in Freetown, Virginia, a community first founded by black families freed from slavery. With such observations as "we would gather wild honey from the hollow of oak trees to go with the hot biscuits and pick wild strawberries to go with the heavy cream," she commemorated the seasonal richness of southern food. After living many years in New York City, where she became a chef and a political activist, she returned to the South and continued to write. Her reputation as a trailblazer in the revival of regional cooking and as a progenitor of the farm-to-table movement continues to grow. In this first-ever critical appreciation of Lewis's work, food-world stars gather to reveal their own encounters with Edna Lewis. Together they penetrate the mythology around Lewis and illuminate her legacy for a new generation, making a case for Lewis as a critical voice in African American foodways, and a pioneering professional woman chef, and the single most important figure in regional American food.

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