Performing ‘Race’ and Challenging Racism |
Performing ‘Race’ and Challenging Racism
One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for her Father’s Racial Approval
Blog Updates
2013-04-08
Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator
It is an exciting time to be an actor, when the notion of ‘performance’ is taking on new meanings and has the potential to change the way we view the art form. Traditional definitions of ‘performance’ include the act of staging or presenting a play; a rendering of a dramatic role. Now scholar/activists like Judith Butler are exploring a new definition of performance, or ‘performativity’—looking at how we use language and behavior to construct identity.
In my solo show, One Drop of Love, I get to meld these two understandings of performance. I am an actor who portrays several different characters: my Jamaican/Pan-Africanist father, my Blackfeet–Cherokee-Danish mother, candy and fruit vendors from East and West Africa, Census Workers from the 1790s to the present, racist cops from Cambridge, MA and many others. At the same time, in taking on these roles, I explore the construction of ‘racial’ identity, and how these identities are created through speech and acts—and not through biology…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Fanshen Cox, Fanshen Cox Digiovanni