some notes from the show Team: Welcome to Untitled Bathtub Theatre Project! I am so glad you are joining us here in the Yale Cabaret’s virtual communal bathtub. Cab bathtub. Cabáthtub. Cabtub. For clarity, “bathtub” has become a bit of a figurative term in this project. Consider this your invitation to attend from whatever space of solitude and comfort works best for you! The piece you are about to experience is the merging of many minds, many hearts, and many dreams. When I first started discussing the idea of setting a virtual theatre performance in bathtubs, I was filled with awe and gratitude by the outpouring of curiosity, love and enthusiasm from all directions. This project has become a sort of theatrical utopia for many, myself included. That being said, the idea went through many iterations. Early on, Maeli and I discussed doing a bathtub adaptation of Moby Dick in which all audience members would receive a toy boat in the mail and then have to ‘Poseidon’ the water around in their tubs, navigating their miniature Pequod as tiny imaginary sailors scurried about its decks, voiced by Yale School of Drama actors in a radio-drama-like broadcast. We then began considering the possibility of a solo performance, in which one actor would perform a monologue/meditation for an audience of voyeurs. Patrick directed me towards the fascinating history of one-to-one performance, and so there was a brief time during which I considered the piece becoming a solo show starring myself—this idea was fortunately scrapped quickly. As the fall semester began, urgent conversations surrounding Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, and decolonizing White American Theatre were weighing heavily on myself, as well as the students of YSD at large. As a result, it became clear that what our community needed was not mere entertainment, but a moment of cleaning, reflecting, and healing. This piece began as an experiment and I would like for it to remain framed as such. The words in this piece are not mine; they belong entirely to the devisers. Not unlike the contributions in my more typical role as set designer, I merely offered up a space in which the performance could take place. Each member of this devising team has reached deep into the core of their own experience and vulnerability to create a shared moment in which we can all exercise a little self-love, a little healing, and a little joy. Close your door, enter the “bath,” and open your mind to the diverse offerings of Untitled Bathtub Theatre Project. Splash splash. -Jimmy Stubbs, Proposer and Co-Director
Welcome, dear friend, to the tub. You’re entering a space that has become unexpectedly sacred over these past weeks. Here, we have dreamed, sung, overcome, and rejoiced. The artists whose voices you will hear today (and others you will not, but whose presences we feel) entered this watery unknown with trust and generosity to create something unlike any theatrical experience we’ve made before. It has challenged us and taught us new meaning in togetherness. I hope you can feel the love and care that swirls like a velvety bath bomb around you in this place. It is an honor to invite you into the depths. Splash splash. -Maeli Goren, Co-Director
untitled bathtub theatre project An Auditory and Sensory Experience Conceived and Proposed by Jimmy Stubbs
Devised and Performed by Sola Fadiran* Abigail C. Onwunali Madeline Seidman Hallie Voulgaris* Matthew Elijah Webb CREATIVE TEAM Directors Producers Sound Designer Dramaturg Stage Manager Intimacy Consultant Experiential Consultant
Maeli Goren & Jimmy Stubbs Sarah Cain & Chloe Knight* Allison Spann* Patrick Denney Edmond O’Neal Kelsey Rainwater Miguel Urbino
*indicates a Yale Cabaret Debut
Special Thanks: Amara Mgbeike (@onlyxamara) for her version of “Senzeni Na”, Stan Mathabane and Noel Nichols for generously sharing their expertise, Lissa, Ryan, Royce, Lena, and Ella Drewniak for lending their bathtub and support.
A note from the Cab: This piece is the perfect antidote for those seeking comfort, restoration, or exfoliation of the soul. The world around us is chaotic and uncertain, but we hope that this piece provides you all with some time for meditation and healing. When first hearing about this concept, we could not help but feel that it would be a perfect response to the horizonless present. The devising team’s innovative use of space and voice has lead to an experience like no other. This work has pushed us all to expand our definition of liveness and togetherness, as well as to expand the reach of theatre into one of the most intimate and vulnerable spaces we engage with; the bathtub. We hope that you all enjoy this truly, literally immersive world the devisers have created. -The Cab 53 Leadership Team Maeli Goren, Jisun Kim, Nicole E. Lang, Matthew Sonnenfeld
- xx
Plunging into American History, or, How a Country Started Bathing While there are many notable eccentricities in the history of Anglo-American hygiene— you can’t help but laugh at the idea of a buck-naked Benjamin Franklin subjecting the citizens of Philadelphia to practice of “air bathing” in front of his wide- open windows— on the whole, early European-Americans did not possess a strong tradition of regular washing. This is perhaps best exemplified by the story of Elizabeth Drinker, who in 1798, at the age of sixty-five, decided to finally test out the shower her husband had installed the previous year. On the other side of this aquatic adventure, she remarked that prior to her shower, she had not “been wett all over att once, for 28 years past."1 While etiquette manuals of the time, including one authored by George Washington, suggested that their readers frequently clean their hands and their teeth, these practices did not extend to the rest of the body. Even the theologian John Wesley’s famous maxim of the period that “cleanliness is next to godliness,” referred more to clean clothes than the frame they hung on. However, as the nineteenth century progressed, bathing would begin to find its way into the rhythms of domestic life. By the eve of the Civil War, many US cities had installed the water and sewage infrastructure required for indoor plumbing. Even with the advent of this technology, bathing facilities were often a low priority for antebellum homeowners, with more practical fixtures such as sinks, washtubs, and water closets taking precedent. However, thanks to architectural crusading of advocates such as Catharine Beecher and Andrew Jackson Downing, the bathroom, and its namesake basin, became a status symbol and a must-have in the smartest of American homes. But while the contemporary idea of the bathroom space was taking shape, bathing methods remained decidedly spartan. The final remnants of humoral medicine led many doctors and health reformers to believe 1
Qtd. in Richard L. Bushman and Claudia L. Bushman’s “The Early History of Cleanliness in America” The Journal of American History vol. 74, no. 4 (March 1988), 1214.
Above: an excerpt from Harriet N. Austin’s Baths and How to Take Them Right: a clipping from the 1921 Sears and Roebuck catalogue, showcasing the style of bathroom that would have been popular during the bathtub boom
that brisk submersions in cold water were the best tools to ward off miasmic clouds of disease emanating from the debris on the skin. Time was also an important factor. Baths needed to be short, as staying too long in the bath, particularly for children, could lead to “absolute injury” to the bather “by carrying to excess what is otherwise a most valuable
adjunct to health.”2 Even as tubs and washing practices became widely disseminated, many people were reticent to engage in bathing, so much so that in 1861, the physician Harriet N. Austin was moved to write an instructional book entitled Baths, and How to Take Them. With the advent of germ theory in the 1870s, the connection between a clean body and disease prevention became increasingly clear. Wedding together the previous social cachet of the bathtub and this new public health imperative, tastemakers and socialites fashioned bathing into a sign of refinement and elegance while harnessing the technology to reenforce restrictive Victorian morality. Bathtubs were transformed into sensory environments that simultaneously invited greater bodily awareness, while inscribing the virtues of self-control and denial. In their reasoning, the cold water and tight time-frame prevented a person from becoming enflamed both physiologically and emotionally. Through a proper plunge, the washed masses became links within the great chain of “progress,” the raw and regulated material with which to build modernity. However, as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth and morals began to shift, baths became both longer and, thankfully, warmer. This change was accompanied by the increased presence of tubs in American homes. A post-WWI building boom resulted in the working-class people gaining access to facilities formerly reserved for wealthy. Between 1921 and 1923, the number of bathtubs in the country doubled from 2.4 to 4.8 million. As the century progressed, bathing became a much more for languorous affair, one associated with a level of sensuality that would have enraged earlier generations. Media technologies such as magazines, radio, and film created opulent portraits of bathing beauties fueled by increasing levels of consumption of domestic products such as soap and other cleaning products. 2 Jacqueline S. Wilkie, “Submerged Sensuality: Technology and Perceptions of Bathing”
Journal of Social History vol. 19, no. 4 (Summer 1986), 652.
Actress Glynis Johns, as a mermaid, in the 1948 film Miranda
Marinetti takes a bath It would seem a bit odd to associate F.T Marinetti, the fearless leader of futurism, with an act so tender as taking a bath. Futurism, with its phallic fixation on speed, machinery, and throbbing exuberance, stands in opposition to slow, bodily, and deliberate sensuality of bathing. And yet, on the other side of the First World War, a conflict which failed to have the full political and cultural cleansing that Marinetti had imagined in one of his manifestos as the only “hygiene for the world,” the artist found himself in the summer of 1920— on a beach. Floating naked in the water, surrounded by crashing surf and beds of algae, Marinetti became aware of his senses in a way he never before experienced. I was drinking from a chalice of the sea,” he wrote, “that was full to the brim with genius.”3 Through the catalyzing combination of the sea and rays of the sun, his body became “vulcanized,” imbuing his very being with newfound stability, resilience, and strength. Reveling in the dynamics of the waves, Marinetti began to conceive of a new methodology for his stalled movement, and by the time he finally returned to the shore, Tactilism was born. For Marinetti, Tactilism became the answer to the malaise he observed in a society traumatized by new forms of warfare, and perhaps most relevantly, a flu pandemic. This painfully modern syndrome manifested in several ways, including “a sad listlessness…, hopeless pessimism, a feverish indecision afflicting instincts that have seemingly been lost, and an absolute lack of will.”4 These symptoms clogged both the social and physical body, preventing the flow and exchange of two fundamental forces of humanity: love and friendship. Aided by the lens of his oceanic revelations, Marinetti arrived at a diagnosis: “I’ve come to understand” he remarks “that human beings speak with their mouths and their eyes, yet never achieve true sincerity because of the insensibility of the
3
F.T Marinetti. “Tactilism,” in Futurism: An Anthology, eds. Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Whitman. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 265. 4 Ibid.
F.T Marinetti, Paris-Sudan, 1921, Mixed media, including sponge, sandpaper, grater, wool, brush, silver-coated paper, silk, velvet, and feathers, on cardboard, 63 x 37 x 10 cm. Private collection. This is the only extant tactile tool designed by Marinetti.
skin achieve true sincerity because of the insensibility of the skin, which is still a mediocre communicator of thought.”5 In this understanding, humanity has, in a very real way, forgotten how to feel. In a world haunted by specter of social distancing and the thousand-yard stare that characterized what we would now call PTSD, post-war people were fundamentally far-apart from each other. To combat this distance, Marinetti proposed a course of sensory education exercises that focused on “localizing the confused phenomena of will and thought on the different parts of my body,” reconfiguring haptic exchanges into “continuous transmissions of thought.”6 When we reach the other side of the COVID-19 crisis, our society will need to go through similar kind of tactile re-education and re-discover the deceptive complexity of physical closeness. In the spirit of Marinetti, Bathtub Theatre invites audience-bathers into a sensory practice that unites watery physicality with poetry, music, and storytelling to fill some of the voids created by the pandemic.
Lake-Dawn (1942), Gerardo Dottori 5 Ibid, 266. 6 Ibid.
(Radically) Soft, Sweet, and to the Point We are all tired. The world right now is relentless and exhausting. But for Queer and BIPOC folks, the burden of existence within a system designed for their destruction, is especially draining. Even as societal shifts related to the COVID crisis have caused some people take stock of the reckless speed and casual cruelty with which they live their lives, this change is still painfully slow and incremental. Taking the time and claiming space to rest and take care of oneself, to protect your body in its beautiful multiplicities, is crucial. It is a political act to uplift and celebrate the delicacy and vulnerability required by acts of care, particularly self-care. This commitment is epitomized in the concept of radical softness.
(Untitled, Lora Mathis, 2015)
Articulated independently by the artists Lora Mathis and Be Oakley, radical softness refuses to succumb to the societal conditioning that negatively equates overt and public professed emotions with bodily and psychological failure. Oakley articulates radical softness as “the tenderness of identities that gives us strength in are willingness to survive… this softness—which can express unapologetically— can never be taken away from us even in death.”1 They go on to describe this way of being as a “boundless form of resistance” which is “as soft (or intangible) as it is powerful (and infecting).” Through this softness, a collective strength is built through dynamic bonds of tender relations. It illustrates an alternative structure of power that is infinitely accessible, particularly for those who have been denied access to both the full range of emotional expression and traditional means of protest. Radical Softness is able to diffuse across mediums, moving through visual art, poems, and music, and ignite and disseminate the vital cultural restoration and healing that is already underway. Mathis doubles down on these values, defining their Radical softness as “the idea that sharing your emotions is a political move and a tactic against a society which prioritizes a lack of emotions.” Feeling are powerful, not just for the person they course through, but for those lucky enough to be caught their current. On a fundamental level, Bathtub Theatre seeks to provide a comforting container to catch these physical and emotional burdens that reside within our audience-bathers, one tub at a time.
1
Be Oakley, Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance, (New York: GenderFail Press, 2018) 6. 2 3
Ibid, 8-9.
Samantha Fabian, ““No One’s Softness Has to Look the Same Way:” An Interview with Poet and Artist Lora Mathis” Lithium Magazine, December 25th, 2016, http://www.lithiumagazine.com/2016/12/no-ones-softness-has-to-look-same-way.html
Be Oakley, Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance, 2018
Mission and Values Yale Cabaret is an artistic community that invites students from the Yale School of Drama and our neighbors throughout greater Yale University and New Haven to imagine utopia. We artist-explorers join in spirit and space to make theater that manifests our wildest collaborative visions. Fueled by the values of symbiotic collaboration, neighborliness, accountability, and wonder, we discover how much we can make, experience, and imagine together. The state of Connecticut and Yale University occupy the ancestral lands of the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples. We honor and respect their stewardship of this land. Symbiotic Collaboration.
Neighborliness.
We approach each collaboration in pursuit of our utopian ideal- that every team member is fed and fulfilled artistically, intellectually, and spiritually. We will pursue new channels of collaboration and support artists in our community to develop sustainable and generative ways to work together, because that creates JOY.
The Cab is a space for learning, growth, and the joy of storytelling for current YSD students as well as for our neighbors at greater Yale and throughout New Haven. The stories and artistic approaches on our stage will be inclusive and accessible to all in our community.
Accountability. The Cab has a responsibility to foster open and direct communication between our leadership, artists, and the communities we serve. Each member of our community is empowered to contribute to its betterment, and every member makes a difference.
Wonder. The Cab will cultivate surprise and artistic innovation. We are explorers in search of “wow”. Pushing the boundaries of theatrical expression and innovation with a well-proportioned season of courageous new plays, reinventions of established plays, and devised and multidisciplinary works, design-driven explorations, and work that is non-text-driven, The Cab strives to ignite our community’s imagination.
Please visit our website to see more about our advocacy work including our community spotlight and our features on Black Women and TGNBGNC playwrights www.yalecabaret.org
Leadership Team Co-Artistic Directors Maeli Goren Jisun Kim Nicole E. Lang
Managing Director Matthew Sonnenfeld
Staff Technical Supervisors Laura Copenhaver Cameron Waitkun
Cabaret Assistants Jake Hurwitz Jacob Santos
Accessibility Assitant Madeline Seidman
Graphic Design Mikayla Johnson
Website Design Camilla Tassi
Accessibility Researcher Madeline Charne
Artistic Associates Collaborative Leadership Leyla Levi
Design- Lighting Graham Zellers
New Works Benjamin Benne
Communication Management Edmond O’Neal
Design- Projections Henry Rodriguez
Performance Tavia Hunt
Community Collaboration Madeline Charne Eliza Orleans
Design- Scenic Miguel Urbino
Producing Estefani Castro
Design- Sound Bailey Trierweiler
Storytelling Faith ZamblĂŠ
Design- Costumes Phuong Nguyen
Imagination Manifestor Laura Copenhaver
Board of Directors Matthew Suttor, Chair Benjamin Benne Sami Cubias
Kelvin Dinkins, Jr. Anna Glover Reed Northrup Linda-Cristal Young
Our Donors Since its founding in 1968, the Yale Cabaret has been a place where Yale School of Drama students can experiment with new theatrical forms and develop our artistry outside of the classroom. With the generous support of our donors, we build on our rich legacy to make space for students and the greater New Haven community to grow together through self-expression and artistic exploration.
Cabaret PartnerS Nina Adams & Moreson Kaplan Ann Judd & Bennett Pudlin Matthew Suttor^ Cabaret Show Sponsors Joan Channick & Ruth Schmitt Matthew & Molly Goren^ Bill & Sharon Reynolds Sylvia Van Sinderen & James Sinclair Paul Walsh Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration Cabaret Friends Cabaret Enthusiasts James Ball Pamela C. Jordan Christine Barker Patrick T. Seaver Martha O. Boateng David Budries Cabaret Supporters Benjamin Kent Leon & Megan Doyon Maggie Lally Andrea Graham Jenny Nelson Ellen Lange Oakton A. Reynolds Lockheed Martin Andrew Scharenberg Bryn Scharenberg Kenneth Sonnenfeld ^ indicates the show sponsor(s) for this Live Production
Cab Potluck Come and join us for a cabaret cooking experience! October 17th at 8pm EST Cab Potluck is a community-centered event focusing on connection through nourishment of body and soul. Come into the kitchen and converse with a group of cooks attempting to create a delicious, edible meal from a basket of secret ingredients. In true Potluck fashion, we ask you to bring a contribution for the table: your art, your words, your photos, your stories, your videos, your music, anything that fits with this month’s theme!
Giving Levels Cabaret Season Sponsors $5000 • • •
Cabaret Enthusiasts $250
Recognition in the footer of our website Recognition in all pre-show reels Plus, all the perks below
• •
Cabaret Champions $2500 • • •
Cabaret Supporters $100
One Full Season Membership Dinner virtually with the Artistic Directors and Managing Director Plus, all the perks below
Cabaret Partners $1000 • •
•
• •
Invitation to all Cabaret donor parties throughout the season Plus, all the perks below
Cabaret Friends $20 • •
Recognition in all pre-show reels Plus, all the perks below
Listing in the Cabaret progams Plus, all the perks below
Cabaret Supporters <$20
Cabaret Show Sponsors $500 •
Personalized thank you video from the Artistic Directors and Managing Director Plus, all the perks below
Recognition during your show’s curtain speech & preshow reel Plus, all the perks below
•
Listing on the Cabaret website
**Corporate matching gifts are also a great way for you to double your contribution to Yale Cabaret. Check to see if your company has a gift matching program.
For more information, please visit our website, www.yalecabaret.org or call the Managing Director at 203-432-8338.
What’s Next October 23rd-24th Love Songs A multimedia experience proposed by Lily Haje and Madeline Pages Love Songs is a 34-part response to a poem. It is the impact of lighted bodies knocking sparks off each other in chaos. It is a green-lit glow worm. It is uninterpretable cryptonyms. It is insolent isolation. It is NOTHING. It is something shiny
something only for you.
217 Park Street, New Haven, CT 06511 203-432-1566 www.yalecabaret.org