Jane Barnette

"Witch Fulfillment: Casting and Designing the Witch for Stage and Screen"

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Within popular culture, witches have always been intriguing, but the last decade has seen a significant uptick in witchy podcasts, products, books, and performance. Jane Barnette is working on the first book to consider the proliferation of the witch as a theatrical type in twenty-first-century U.S. productions. What kinds of spell do theatre-makers cast when we create plays and musicals that feature witch characters? What messages do these events communicate to the audiences about who (or what) witches represent, and why do we rely on the figure of the witch to do this work? Based on findings culled from visual research, dramaturgical analysis, and practitioner interviews, the book will address three related but distinct elements of performance: texts, signs, and bodies. Threaded throughout this book is an argument about wrighting the witch, which theatre scholar Jon D. Rossini suggests is “a simultaneous process of correction, revision, and cultural repositioning in the act of creating a new conceptual framework.” Witch Fulfillment contributes to ongoing conversations here and abroad about what is valued and what is considered excessive within representations of gender.

The Hall Center hosts several University of Kansas faculty and graduate student fellows each semester. During their residencies, our Fellows give talks about their work-in-progress. These events are public and open to all.

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