Capstone Weekly Reflection 6- 22/10/2018

The approach of fall break caused a slump in productivity this past week but was useful as a moment of reflection. Between several conversations with Professors Joanna Settle and Tomi Tsunoda, as well as Daniela Seagrove, I’ve decided to reframe the focus of my capstone to focus solely on supeheroes, masculinity and representations and performance of power. The decision to drop the trickster as a subject of inquiry had started earlier this semester from conversations with Professor Robert Vorlicky and Tsunoda for various reasons. The major reason behind this choice had to do with simply my investment with the subject of tricksterism and the Anansi folkloric story tradition in general. Despite, or perhaps as a result, my readings of Christiane Owusu Sarpong’s ‘Critical Anthology of the Akan Stories,’ Marvels’ ‘Fairy Tales,’ and Mary Milne- Home’s ‘West Indian Stories,’ each of which dealt with the figure of Anansi in the African diaspora, my excitement and heart for this project ultimately lay with the superhero in general, and its performance of masculinity. My desire for this project has always been to reframe the portrayals of masculinity in the archetype of the superhero and the trickster was simply a means of achieving this desire. The more I studied the trickster and the Anansi figure in general, I realized that while this interested me as an academic subject, I felt no desire or excitement at the prospect of performing around this character. As such, the decision to refocus on superhero stories emerged but not with a total abandonment of the research I have conducted on Anansi and tricksters in general. The decision to frame my stories as as series of vignettes has to do with a dramaturgical structure I am interested in around the idea of a web, as well as the choice of power I have selected for the characters I am writing about; connection. Just the spider- web connects, so too am I viewing this as a source of power for the characters of my capstone story. Connection I have come to understand is the central force that patriarchal masculinity seeks to inhibit in young men as they are socialized, as discussed by bell hooks in ‘The Will to Change,’ in her chapter on emotional expression. Many young men, hooks explains, hold a desire to connect with others but are taught to destroy this desire as they grow older by their surroundings and depictions of men as stoic, authoritative loners within popular culture, particularly through superhero characters such as Spider- Man and Superman. The idea of power as connection seemed to be a way to reframe this narrative by portraying the superhero’s power as the antithesis of what patriarchal masculinity seems to repress, keeping with Michel Foucault’s idea of power as existing everywhere, as well as the potential for resistance.

In thinking of design, one thing I wanted to highlight was Professor Tsunoda’s advice to view these choices as a way into writing, so that my scenes and creative choices are synthesized rather than dissimilar. Furthermore, in thinking of how I am interested in using the ideas of Scott McCloud’s ‘Understanding Comics,’ it was useful to think about how the medium of theatre can achieve the same mechanisms of comic book stories 3 dimensionally rather than simply copying them to the stage. In terms of lighting, I realized my interest is in this concept of the gutter, whereby audiences connect series of images together by filling in the blank. For the purpose of costume design, it was helpful to consider how costume operates in this piece as a representation and marker for power and whether costumes themselves become placed on a body to imbue it with power, whether the ordinaryness of life is removed to reveal power beneath or whether power exists within the body without costume ideas. These ideas are some of what I am interested in working with in the current scene I am writing on masks, anger and the desire for power, which will be uploaded to my archive this week.