Asian American Women Playwrights:

Showing What Cannot Be Told

Speaker：Karen Shimakawa

Time: 15:00-17:00，May 30, 2019 (Thursday）

Venue: Room 115, SEIS (9728太阳集团115)

Language: English

Synopsis of Talk：

It is a common instruction to beginning playwrights: "show, don't tell." Performance offers the opportunity to convey meaning -- diegetic, cultural, and affective -- without recourse to words.  But for minority subjects, this is a precarious enterprise: "not telling" an audience that does not share your cultural perspective risks their "not hearing" important information. This lecture focuses on the work of two contemporary Asian American women playwrights (Julia Cho and Young Jean Lee) to consider their strategies of conveying the "un-said" perspectives of minoritarian subjects on the American stage.

Bio of Speaker：

Karen Shimakawa is an Associate Professor of Performance Studies, Co-Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and Affiliated Faculty in the NYU School of Law.  She is the author of National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (Duke University Press, 2002) and the co-editor (with Kandice Chuh) of Orientations: Mapping Studies of the Asian Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2001).  Her research and teaching focus on critical race theory and performance.