Dorothy Chansky
Biographic Data
| ID | 814916 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dorothy Chansky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dorothy |
| FAMILY NAME | Chansky |
| SIGNATURE | CHANSKY D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yahoo (United Kingdom) |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Performing Dream Homes
Reviewed by: Performing Dream Homes: Theater and the Spatial Politics of the Domestic Sphere ed. by Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson Dorothy Chansky PERFORMING DREAM HOMES: THEATER AND THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF THE DOMESTIC SPHERE. Edited by Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; pp. 238. On the first page of Performing Dream Homes, the editors point out the “domest…
Theaters of the Everyday
Reviewed by: Theaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage by Jacob Gallagher-Ross Dorothy Chansky Theaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage. By Jacob Gallagher-Ross. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018; pp. 248. On the morning I started this review, Dictionary. com's "Word of the Day" was transmundane, defined as "reaching beyond or existing outside the physical or visible world." The…
Kitchen Sink Realisms
Feminist Drama
This essay examines the history of the so-called feminist drama in the United States. It suggests that the feminist theatre is a form of protest theatre and highlights the spread of feminist thought and principles into all aspects of theatre. It discusses the influence of feminism in both repertoire and performance and explains feminist theatre workers’ goal of parity in positions of authority. This essay also considers the works of several femin…
Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918 (review)
Reviewed by: Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918 Dorothy Chansky Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918. By Susan Harris Smith. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; pp. xvii + 224. $74.95 cloth. Venue matters. This is the crucial idea in Susan Harris Smith's Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918, which considers 125 largely unknown and unproduced plays that were published in fourteen g…
Theatre in a Media Culture
Reviewed by: Theatre in a Media Culture: Production, Performance, and Perception Since 1970 Dorothy Chansky Theatre in a Media Culture: Production, Performance, and Perception Since 1970. By Amy Petersen Jensen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2007; pp. v + 221. $39.95 paper. Technology determines how we understand reality. Amy Peterson Jenson’s Theatre in a Media Culture is predicated on the idea that “the contemporary theatre audience’s a…
Oh, The Humanity and other Exclamations (review)
Reviewed by: Oh, The Humanity and other Exclamations Dorothy Chansky Oh, The Humanity and other Exclamations. By Will Eno. Directed by Jim Simpson. The Flea Theater, New York City. 10 December 2007. Click for larger view View full resolution Marisa Tomei and Brian Hutchison in OH, THE HUMANITY and other exclamations. Photo: Richard Termine. Any fear that playwright Will Eno was a one-shot phenom for THOM PAIN (based on nothing) should be dispelle…
Sisters In Sin
Reviewed by: Sisters In Sin: Brothel Drama In America, 1900–1920 Dorothy Chansky Sisters In Sin: Brothel Drama In America, 1900–1920. By Katie N. Johnson . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; pp. xii + 265. $85.00 cloth. American audiences love safe slumming. Nowadays it's movies about the "underworld," mostly focused on drugs (Do the Right Thing, Traffic, My Own Private Idaho, the opening of Citizen Ruth). In the first two decades of the…
Usable Performance Feminism for Our Time
This essay uses Betty Friedan's writing and persona as touchstones to consider how her ideas-and by extension second-wave feminism-have remained relevant to theatre practitioners and performance analysts with feminist goals. Styles in the acceptable "presentation of self in everyday life" as well as tropes in the portrayal of feminism in mainstream theatre paralleled both Friedan's concerns in her six books and also, ironically, her increasing ma…
North American Passion Plays
North American outdoor passion plays are not marginal theatrical sites; focusing critical attention on these faith-based dramas is particularly urgent in the context of the rise of religiosity in U.S. politics. The amateur evangelical shows offer troubling representations of Jews, racial exclusivity, and implicit assumptions of authenticity; yet, as community theatre endeavors, they hold forth possibilities for innovative iconography
Dialectic of Domesticity
In the 1920s, homemaking was presented for the first time to American women by advertisers and educators as a putative career, combining art, science, economics, and a rhetoric of fulfillment. This essay considers how Broadway plays promoted, challenged, debated, and sold versions of this idea across a spectrum of genres
Women, Modernism, and Performance (review)
Reviewed by: Women, Modernism, and Performance Dorothy Chansky Women, Modernism, and Performance. By Penny Farfan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; pp. xi + 173. $75.00 cloth Key terms first: the women of Penny Farfan's title are Elizabeth Robins, Ellen Terry, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Edith Craig, and Isadora Duncan. Modernism is broadly construed, as Farfan starts with Joan Templeton's observation that modernism's "chief charact…
American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War
Reviewed by: American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947–1962 Dorothy Chansky American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947–1962. By Bruce McConachie. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003; pp. xiv + 347. $49.95 cloth. What made Broadway Broadway at the height of the Cold War? Bruce McConachie's provocative new book uses cognitive science to parse th…
Re-visioning Reform
Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity. By Shannon Jackson. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 371 pages. $21.95 (paper). IN THE PREFACE TO LINES OF ACTIVITY, SHANNON JACKSON CALLS HERSELF AN "untrained historian" (vii). Two hundred seventy-three stunning and challenging pages later she admits to having produced "a performance historiography of Hull-House" (272). The initial demurral is not coyne…
Memory, manhood, management and “mentalities”
The 1936–37 Federal Theatre Project's production of The C.C.C. Murder Mystery depended on the deployment of restrictive assumptions about gender. The production targeted a specific audience: young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps. The memories of C.C.C. “boys” as octogenarians inform this analysis of this use of theatre for social change and for organizing a specific C.C.C. masculinity
The Emergence of the Modern American Theater, 1914-1929 (review)
Reviewed by: The Emergence of the Modern American Theater 1914–1929 Dorothy Chansky The Emergence of the Modern American Theater 1914–1929. By Ronald H. Wainscott. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997; pp. xi + 260. $30.00 cloth. “Nostalgic modernism” is the term Ronald Wainscott uses to describe the “oxymoronic condition” (3) characteristic of American drama in the postwar, pre-Depression era. Modernist experiments in design and dramaturgy coe…
Greek Tragedy on the American Stage
Reviewed by: Greek Tragedy on the American Stage: Ancient Drama in the Commercial Theater, 1882–1994 Dorothy Chansky Greek Tragedy On The American Stage: Ancient Drama In The Commercial Theater, 1882–1994. Karelisa V. Hartigan. Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies, Number 60. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995; pp. xi + 161. $49.95 cloth. Karelisa Hartigan’s Greek Tragedy on the American Stage chronicles critical responses to commercial pr…
The Right to Speak
The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus
The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus had a unique one-performance world premiere in the ancient stadium of Delphi in 1988. During 1989 it was performed at the National Theatre, London, and in unique historical spaces in Saltaire and Carnuntum. In it Tony Harrison remakes the fragmentary text of a satyr play by Sophocles into an astringent comedy for our times, incorporating into the action the two Edwardian papyrologists who discovered the original. This e…
Usable Performance Feminism for Our Time
This essay uses Betty Friedan's writing and persona as touchstones to consider how her ideas-and by extension second-wave feminism-have remained relevant to theatre practitioners and performance analysts with feminist goals. Styles in the acceptable "presentation of self in everyday life" as well as tropes in the portrayal of feminism in mainstream theatre paralleled both Friedan's concerns in her six books and also, ironically, her increasing ma…
The Right to Speak
The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus
The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus had a unique one-performance world premiere in the ancient stadium of Delphi in 1988. During 1989 it was performed at the National Theatre, London, and in unique historical spaces in Saltaire and Carnuntum. In it Tony Harrison remakes the fragmentary text of a satyr play by Sophocles into an astringent comedy for our times, incorporating into the action the two Edwardian papyrologists who discovered the original. This e…
The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus
The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus had a unique one-performance world premiere in the ancient stadium of Delphi in 1988. During 1989 it was performed at the National Theatre, London, and in unique historical spaces in Saltaire and Carnuntum. In it Tony Harrison remakes the fragmentary text of a satyr play by Sophocles into an astringent comedy for our times, incorporating into the action the two Edwardian papyrologists who discovered the original. This e…
The Right to Speak
Greek Tragedy on the American Stage
Reviewed by: Greek Tragedy on the American Stage: Ancient Drama in the Commercial Theater, 1882–1994 Dorothy Chansky Greek Tragedy On The American Stage: Ancient Drama In The Commercial Theater, 1882–1994. Karelisa V. Hartigan. Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies, Number 60. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995; pp. xi + 161. $49.95 cloth. Karelisa Hartigan’s Greek Tragedy on the American Stage chronicles critical responses to commercial pr…
The Emergence of the Modern American Theater, 1914-1929 (review)
Reviewed by: The Emergence of the Modern American Theater 1914–1929 Dorothy Chansky The Emergence of the Modern American Theater 1914–1929. By Ronald H. Wainscott. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997; pp. xi + 260. $30.00 cloth. “Nostalgic modernism” is the term Ronald Wainscott uses to describe the “oxymoronic condition” (3) characteristic of American drama in the postwar, pre-Depression era. Modernist experiments in design and dramaturgy coe…
Memory, manhood, management and “mentalities”
The 1936–37 Federal Theatre Project's production of The C.C.C. Murder Mystery depended on the deployment of restrictive assumptions about gender. The production targeted a specific audience: young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps. The memories of C.C.C. “boys” as octogenarians inform this analysis of this use of theatre for social change and for organizing a specific C.C.C. masculinity
Re-visioning Reform
Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity. By Shannon Jackson. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 371 pages. $21.95 (paper). IN THE PREFACE TO LINES OF ACTIVITY, SHANNON JACKSON CALLS HERSELF AN "untrained historian" (vii). Two hundred seventy-three stunning and challenging pages later she admits to having produced "a performance historiography of Hull-House" (272). The initial demurral is not coyne…
American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War
Reviewed by: American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947–1962 Dorothy Chansky American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment, 1947–1962. By Bruce McConachie. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003; pp. xiv + 347. $49.95 cloth. What made Broadway Broadway at the height of the Cold War? Bruce McConachie's provocative new book uses cognitive science to parse th…
North American Passion Plays
North American outdoor passion plays are not marginal theatrical sites; focusing critical attention on these faith-based dramas is particularly urgent in the context of the rise of religiosity in U.S. politics. The amateur evangelical shows offer troubling representations of Jews, racial exclusivity, and implicit assumptions of authenticity; yet, as community theatre endeavors, they hold forth possibilities for innovative iconography
Dialectic of Domesticity
In the 1920s, homemaking was presented for the first time to American women by advertisers and educators as a putative career, combining art, science, economics, and a rhetoric of fulfillment. This essay considers how Broadway plays promoted, challenged, debated, and sold versions of this idea across a spectrum of genres
Women, Modernism, and Performance (review)
Reviewed by: Women, Modernism, and Performance Dorothy Chansky Women, Modernism, and Performance. By Penny Farfan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; pp. xi + 173. $75.00 cloth Key terms first: the women of Penny Farfan's title are Elizabeth Robins, Ellen Terry, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Edith Craig, and Isadora Duncan. Modernism is broadly construed, as Farfan starts with Joan Templeton's observation that modernism's "chief charact…
Oh, The Humanity and other Exclamations (review)
Reviewed by: Oh, The Humanity and other Exclamations Dorothy Chansky Oh, The Humanity and other Exclamations. By Will Eno. Directed by Jim Simpson. The Flea Theater, New York City. 10 December 2007. Click for larger view View full resolution Marisa Tomei and Brian Hutchison in OH, THE HUMANITY and other exclamations. Photo: Richard Termine. Any fear that playwright Will Eno was a one-shot phenom for THOM PAIN (based on nothing) should be dispelle…
Sisters In Sin
Reviewed by: Sisters In Sin: Brothel Drama In America, 1900–1920 Dorothy Chansky Sisters In Sin: Brothel Drama In America, 1900–1920. By Katie N. Johnson . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; pp. xii + 265. $85.00 cloth. American audiences love safe slumming. Nowadays it's movies about the "underworld," mostly focused on drugs (Do the Right Thing, Traffic, My Own Private Idaho, the opening of Citizen Ruth). In the first two decades of the…
Usable Performance Feminism for Our Time
This essay uses Betty Friedan's writing and persona as touchstones to consider how her ideas-and by extension second-wave feminism-have remained relevant to theatre practitioners and performance analysts with feminist goals. Styles in the acceptable "presentation of self in everyday life" as well as tropes in the portrayal of feminism in mainstream theatre paralleled both Friedan's concerns in her six books and also, ironically, her increasing ma…
Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918 (review)
Reviewed by: Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918 Dorothy Chansky Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918. By Susan Harris Smith. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; pp. xvii + 224. $74.95 cloth. Venue matters. This is the crucial idea in Susan Harris Smith's Plays in American Periodicals, 1890–1918, which considers 125 largely unknown and unproduced plays that were published in fourteen g…
Theatre in a Media Culture
Reviewed by: Theatre in a Media Culture: Production, Performance, and Perception Since 1970 Dorothy Chansky Theatre in a Media Culture: Production, Performance, and Perception Since 1970. By Amy Petersen Jensen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2007; pp. v + 221. $39.95 paper. Technology determines how we understand reality. Amy Peterson Jenson’s Theatre in a Media Culture is predicated on the idea that “the contemporary theatre audience’s a…
Feminist Drama
This essay examines the history of the so-called feminist drama in the United States. It suggests that the feminist theatre is a form of protest theatre and highlights the spread of feminist thought and principles into all aspects of theatre. It discusses the influence of feminism in both repertoire and performance and explains feminist theatre workers’ goal of parity in positions of authority. This essay also considers the works of several femin…
Kitchen Sink Realisms
Theaters of the Everyday
Reviewed by: Theaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage by Jacob Gallagher-Ross Dorothy Chansky Theaters of the Everyday: Aesthetic Democracy on the American Stage. By Jacob Gallagher-Ross. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018; pp. 248. On the morning I started this review, Dictionary. com's "Word of the Day" was transmundane, defined as "reaching beyond or existing outside the physical or visible world." The…
Performing Dream Homes
Reviewed by: Performing Dream Homes: Theater and the Spatial Politics of the Domestic Sphere ed. by Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson Dorothy Chansky PERFORMING DREAM HOMES: THEATER AND THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF THE DOMESTIC SPHERE. Edited by Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; pp. 238. On the first page of Performing Dream Homes, the editors point out the “domest…
Art (16 works) · Theatre and Performance Studies (13 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Literature (10 works) · History (9 works) · History (9 works) · Art history (8 works) · Theater, Performance, and Music History (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)