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Performing Arts Presentation 2
12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
- Presenter
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- Taylor Narissa Sewann Freeman, Senior, International Studies, Drama: Performance UW Honors Program
- Mentor
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- Stefka Mihaylova, Drama
- Session
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Performing Arts Session
- Meany Hall Studio Theatre
- 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Seattle Repertory Theatre put on Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me as a part of their 2022 season. The play is an illuminating 100 minute almost solo-show of Heidi Schreck recounting her personal story of what the US Constitution, promises and gaps, means to her and the women of her family. This retrieval is prompted by the questions she received at US Constitution debates she attended all over the country, but specifically at the American Legion Hall in Wenatchee, Washington. Struck by Schreck's implementation of "Greek tragedy wailing", I argue that she signals the existence of intergenerational trauma in white American women. More so, that there is little interpersonal communication amongst white American women about their shared cultural traumatic experiences. How does she do this? I draw on theory and evidence around intergenerational trauma put forth by historical and contemporary accounts of the weaponization of white femininity, feminist interpretations of Euripides' Medea, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, literary trauma theory, and trauma theory, all of which may show us how to descend into the next step of dissecting these seemingly patterned behaviors. I formulate this argument from my phenomenological experience with the play, but support it through a semiotic analysis focusing on Heidi's "Greek tragedy wailing", her sock monkey, and the use of yellow for her blazer and promotional material. I wonder: did the play resonate with the white women in the audience? Obviously, not with the woman I passed on my way out, as she said she "didn't understand the point of the sock monkey." Is this an exact example of what Schreck is trying to point to, highlighting the oversight or lack of conversation about this topic? I am interested in theatre as a site of healing and discussion of unresolved trauma. This paper is to help us better understand Schreck and uproot white supremacy, the patriarchy, and the violence this trauma inflicts on white American women and black people in America.