Working on Stage: Spectacularization of Labor in Contemporary US Theatre

Author

Hansol Oh, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

6-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Theatre and Performance

Advisor

David Savran

Committee Members

Jean Graham-Jones

James Wilson

Subject Categories

American Popular Culture | Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | Work, Economy and Organizations

Keywords

American Theatre, Musical Theatre, Spectacles of Labor, Postindustrial Labor Drama, Neoliberalization, Theatrical Labor

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine the US theatre’s recent attempts to perform and embody labor through critical repurposing of its means of representation that have historically participated in obscuring work. My research focuses on how the virtuosic theatrical labor of actors transforms the characters’ privatized, naturalized, and invisibilized work into a spectacular, denaturalized object for public scrutiny.

Scholarship on US theatre’s engagement with labor heretofore has focused on its thematization. By concentrating on performative and material elements of theatrical labor, my research reorients the discussion in theatre studies on the representation of labor from narrative and topical consideration to its spectacularization, which places work at the aesthetic and kinesthetic core of a given theatrical experience. Drawing on insights gleaned from musical theatre studies for an expanded understanding of the broader field and its problematics, my dissertation encompasses both dramatic plays and musicals, which scholarship has tended to treat separately.

Spectacularization gives symbolic and material places to invisibilized work and workers and brings them under public scrutiny. My research attends to spectacle’s power to destabilize habitual perception and redefines the place of spectacle in theatre studies, which has been regarded as the least important aesthetic element. I interrogate how the virtuoso performance of actors transforms what is frequently deemed “low-skilled,” “simple,” and “natural” into a spectacle of skilled work that demands attention and appreciation. I also probe how spectacularization reflects, challenges, and alters our attitudes toward understanding (post)industrial work under late capitalism, while revealing the social, political, and economic practices changing work’s shared meaning and perception.

To this end, I query how US theatre’s modes of representation have (un)intentionally suppressed, misrepresented, or underrepresented work and working characters, thereby reflecting, shaping, and negotiating how we view and value work. Interweaving historical context, textual and performance analysis, and archival research, I explain how US theatremakers are redeploying three discrete types of conventions to make work central to the theatrical experience: the mammy stereotype of the minstrel stage, stage realism, and backstage musical. Along with a specific convention, each chapter addresses a specific type of work and workplace, moving from a private household as a workplace for domestic workers to the formal workplace and the theatrical stage. Putting theatre and performance studies, labor studies, feminist studies, and American studies in conversation, my research demonstrates that the spectacularization of labor challenges its naturalization and depoliticization and points to renewed political potential and the continuing relevance of theatre in the US. Ultimately, my research claims that theatrical conventions can be reworked to critically rewrite work into the social imagination, a project that is both aesthetic and political.

Recommended Citation

Oh, Hansol, "Working on Stage: Spectacularization of Labor in Contemporary US Theatre" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5839