McCarter Theatre Center & Princeton to Host August Wilson Symposium, 4/18

On Monday, April 18th, McCarter Theatre Center and Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts will host a symposium commemorating the 20th anniversary of August Wilson's seminal speech, "The Ground on Which I Stand," delivered in 1996 from the stage of the McCarter's Matthew's Theatre addressing questions of race, diversity, and cultural identity in the American Theater.

As part of the 1996 Theatre Communications Group (TCG) annual conference held at McCarter Theatre Center, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright August Wilson delivered the event's keynote address. Holding up a candid mirror to the assembled cultural organizations and the theater profession at large, the speech laid out Wilson's views on a wealth of topics including imperialism and appropriation, white privilege, historical context, and institutional funding as related to the American cultural landscape.

"The Ground on Which I Stand" launched months of debate both in terms of the historical legacy addressed in the work and proactive responses to Wilson's challenge for the future of the industry. The speech remains a significant part of Wilson's profound and lasting legacy, and a central moment in his celebrated career.

To honor the 20th anniversary of this watershed moment, this jointly-produced symposium will endeavor to explore Wilson's speech through the lens of the last twenty years of race and theater, and discuss where we stand today. The event will include a reading of the speech itself, panel discussions with prominent members of the theater community and Princeton faculty, and an open town hall discussion.

McCarter Theater Center and the Lewis Center for the Arts offers its sincere thanks to the Estate of August Wilson for their support in planning this symposium.

A preliminary schedule of the day is as follows:

MONDAY, APRIL 18 - McCARTER THEATRE CENTER

1pm: Welcome and Reading of "The Ground on Which I Stand"

2pm: As The Ground Shifts: Tracking Seismic Changes in Race and Gender Representation

Princeton's Dean of the College and Professor of English and Theater Jill Dolan moderates a conversation with theater professionals, reflecting on the context of Wilson's speech and subsequent debates, examining the contemporary history of representation in American theater, and discussing what has and has not shifted in the past twenty years.

Jill Dolan is the Dean of the College and the Annan Professor in English and Professor of Theater at Princeton University, where she also directed the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies from 2009-15. She is the author of The Feminist Spectator as Critic (1989, reissued in a 2012 anniversary edition with a new introduction and extended bibliography); Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre (2005); Theatre & Sexuality (2010); The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism for Stage and Screen (2013); and many other books and essays. In 2013, she received Distinguished Scholar Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Scholarship in the Field of Theatre Studies from the American Society for Theatre Research. In 2011, she won the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and a lifetime achievement award from the Women and Theatre Program. She writes The Feminist Spectator blog at http://feministspectator.princeton.edu, for which she won the 2010-2011 George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism.

3pm: The Ground from Which We Step: Wilson's Legacy and Our Contemporary Conversations

Princeton University Assistant Professor of Theater, Brian Herrera, moderates a discussion with artists and theater professionals, exploring how the legacy of Wilson's speech has impacted their own careers, considering today's conversation around diversity, and expressing their hopes for the future of inclusion and parity in the theater.

Brian Eugenio Herrera is, by turns, a writer, teacher and scholar presently based in New Jersey, but forever rooted in New Mexico. He is Assistant Professor of Theater at Princeton University. His work, both academic and artistic, examines the history of gender, sexuality and race within and through U.S. popular performance. He is the author of The Latina/o Theatre Commons 2013 National Convening: A Narrative Report (HowlRound, 2015) and his book Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Michigan, 2015) was recently awarded the George Jean Nathan Prize for Dramatic Criticism. Also a performer, his autobiographical solo show I Was the Voice of Democracy has been seen in more than a dozen states, as well as Beirut and Abu Dhabi, since 2010; he is currently developing two new storywork shows, Boy Like That and Touch Tones. Brian is also presently at work on two new book projects: Starring Miss Virginia Calhoun and Casting - A History, a historical study of the material practices of casting in US popular performance.

4pm: Town Hall Discussion

A moderated town hall discussion will follow both panels, providing attendees an opportunity to join the conversation as they reflect on and discuss the themes and stories shared earlier in the day.

To reserve tickets to this event, please call the McCarter Theatre Center Ticket Office at 609-258-2787. Seats are General Admission.

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