ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: CRAFT BEER, VINTAGE GEAR, AND SHAKESPEARE: A STUDY OF THE POSTMODERN HIPSTER, THE NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE EXCHANGE, AND THE CREATION OF CULTURAL CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Sara Elizabeth Thompson, Doctor of Philosophy, 2018 Dissertation directed by: Professor Esther Kim Lee, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies The twentieth century saw the development of numerous subcultures which shaped the mainstream culture around them through the diffusion of subcultural fashions, music, and literature into the establishment. In the twenty-first century, the postmodern hipster has emerged as a new subculture with distinctive tastes that have shaped dominant Western consumption choices. This dissertation takes a look at some of the twentieth century subcultures that created the foundations for this most recent group before exploring the position of the postmodern hipster in 2018. Building on the work of both scholarly social scientists and popular culture writers who have studied the hipster, I point out some of their key characteristics, such as cultural omnivorism, irony, and bricolage, as elements that make them prime audience members for what I call Alternative Shakespeare companies. The second half of the dissertation offers a case study of one such Alternative Shakespeare company, the New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYSX), who have built a donor base largely made up of individuals between the ages of 25 and 50. By examining NYSX’s mainstage production history, I establish their approach to Shakespeare and mixture of reverence for the text with irreverence for traditional performance methods. Then, their auxiliary performances—the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, The Sonnet Project, and the Intersections program—are analyzed as further examples of how Shakespeare’s works can be produced in ways that are attractive to the postmodern hipster. By transforming the established, high cultural position of Shakespeare’s works and transgressing against traditional methods of their production, NYSX creates a new kind of cultural capital for the plays that aligns with the kind of entertainments that the postmodern hipster seeks out. Such a model of subversion, while still respecting the integrity of the language, could be employed by other Shakespeare companies to appeal to the hipster, creating future donors and supporters by keeping Shakespeare hip. CRAFT BEER, VINTAGE GEAR, AND SHAKESPEARE: A STUDY OF THE POSTMODERN HIPSTER, THE NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE EXCHANGE, AND THE CREATION OF CULTURAL CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by Sara Elizabeth Thompson Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Advisory Committee: Esther Kim Lee, Chair and Professor Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Associate Professor James Harding, Professor Franklin J. Hildy, Professor Jo B. Paoletti, Professor Emerita Jason Farman, Dean’s Representative and Associate Professor © Copyright by Sara Elizabeth Thompson 2018 Dedication For my parents, Hugh and Joan Thompson, who always let me be my own person and follow my own path, and who continue to encourage and support me on my various journeys and adventures. For my aunt, Betty Ruth Bradshaw, who showed me the value of a light heart and a ready laugh. And for my mentor, Professor Russ McDonald, who always believed in me, even when I doubted myself, and who was a bright light to all who met him. ii Acknowledgements Thinking about writing my acknowledgements for this project has been incredibly daunting, because of all the people I have been blessed with in my life who I should thank. Friends I have had for over a decade, teachers and mentors who guided me through my formative years and college, and the community I acquired during my time living in England are all folks I could acknowledge, but I will leave it at that for the sake of space, and focus on those who have been more directly involved in the PhD process. I owe a lot of gratitude to the patience, understanding, and high standards of my advisor, Dr. Esther Kim Lee. She has proven to be a strong advocate for me to others, but also when I was being too unforgiving of myself. Her high expectations were extremely important to my drive to finish the dissertation, and also gave me confidence in my work when it lived up to them. It’s been a long and winding process, and I am ever grateful for her support, insight, and input. The rest of my committee has also been wonderful with me, encouraging my progress and accommodating of my circumstances. I feel blessed every day that I managed to make my way into this community of wonderful and warm scholars in the Theatre and Performance Studies program at UMD. I would like to give special thanks to my two out-of-department committee members: Dr. Jo Paoletti has acted as a sounding board when I panicked about my project and abilities, while her expert cultural studies perspective on chapter 3 helped tremendously with the structure; and Dr. Jason Farman, who agreed rather late in the game to come on board as my Dean’s Rep. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Theatre department’s stalwart iii administrators who have kept me on track and enrolled over the past several years, in particular Stephanie Bergwall, Crystal Gaston, and Sandy Jackson. I also have to give my endless thanks to the company members of New York Shakespeare Exchange, who have been the most helpful research subjects a scholar could ever ask for. From Pat Dwyer, who recommended the company to me for my research, to Cristina Lundy, who gave one of the most comprehensive phone interviews ever, to Vince Gatton, whose kindness, warmth, and enthusiasm made our interview feel like he was an old friend, I kept encountering wonderful folks. Of particular note, I have to thank Shane Breaux for his first-hand understanding of the trials of dissertation writing, and Ross Williams, who was always supportive and excited about my project. From the first time I met Ross, at my first ShakeBEER Pub Crawl, to the final weeks of writing, when he graciously gave me one last phone interview so I could write the Conclusion, he has been beyond helpful. I feel so much gratitude that I’ve been able to tell the story (so far) of this company. My family also deserves endless thanks for their patience, support, and love. My parents, Hugh and Joan Thompson, have always encouraged my dreams and celebrated my successes, even when they didn’t really understand how I ended up taking such an unconventional path. I always remember the first time I travelled abroad, when they literally pushed me down the walkway onto the plane. Their insistence that I travel and try new things gave me the bravery to move away from home, first to UNC Greensboro, and then across an ocean, to get my Masters at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. There have been times during this process when the only reason I did not give up was because I could not bear to iv disappoint them. None of my accomplishments in life would be possible without them. My beloved aunt, Betty Ruth Bradshaw, was another of my stalwart supporters, who encouraged me amid gentle teasing about everything from my hairstyles to my choice to study Shakespeare. She had looked forward to forcing me to wear my doctoral regalia to Thanksgiving lunch whenever I completed this degree. I hope she knows how much I wish she was here to see the finish. I also want to thank Emmylou, Patsy, and Harper for their (mostly) unconditional love throughout this PhD process. I regularly tell people that I am the luckiest in friends that anyone could ever hope to be. I stand by this statement always, and so I want to acknowledge some of the wonderful communities and support systems who have kept me going. First, my cohort: David Gregory, Adam Nixon, Kate Spanos, and Matt Wilson. I could not have asked for a better group of people to travel this journey with. Their humor, love, and commiseration created the most wonderful environment for coursework, TAing, and dissertating that anyone could ask for. They are lifelong friends, and the best cohort ever. The other graduate students I met and found to be kindred spirits have also been so valuable: Robert Croghan, Allan Davis, Elisabeth Therese Fallica, Kelsey Hunt, Chris Lewis, and Khalid Long. The value of Jess K. Witty’s support and hilarity is immeasurable. Her role as my co-crazy person has honestly done wonders for my mental health. And the editing help of other folks has demonstrated just what true friendship means. Lezlie Cross and Natalie Tenner stepped in at the last minute to help proofread sections, in addition to being wonderful friends of many years. And Aaron Tobiason has provided helpful, insightful, and even funny editing in the midst v of his other duties in life. I actually do not know what I would have done without him. My Stamp Student Activities family gave me invaluable work experiences and skills, in addition to a fun and humor-filled environment for my last two years of serving as a graduate assistant. Special thanks to Joe Calizo, Sarah Smith, Laura McGrath Hood, Andrew Bowen, Donna Lim, and my students at the Art and Learning Center and Student Entertainment Events. Once again, I ended up in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to have that special group of people enter my life. Support systems beyond UMD have also been blessings. I want to thank Sarah Wingo, who I would occasionally pester with librarian questions, and who responded even though a) she works at Villanova, and b) she is my friend and not my personal librarian. The community of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring offered me love and understanding during very difficult times, and the knowledge that my church family was always available if I needed them was a constant blessing. I also thank the Franklin’s Regulars for many a Friday afternoon that helped me decompress and gave me a reason to leave the house. I also need to thank my most recently acquired support system, the folks at the Loading Dock Raleigh, for the space to write and feel like I belonged in a new city. In particular, I want to thank the amazing women who have become fierce friends in such a short amount of time: Danielle James, Vanessa Kopp, Erica Lear, Erica Porter, and Rachel Thomas. I truly lucked out when the stars aligned to bring me to this coworking space. Finally, I need to thank several vital people in my life whom I have lost over the course of the last eight years. Mr. Bob Alexander was my high school English vi teacher, who encouraged me to develop my love of reading and writing and helped lead me on my path to the PhD. After college, I was lucky enough to call him my friend, a fellow literature nerd who cheered me on enthusiastically. Dr. Lizz Ketterer was one of my favorite people on earth, and one of my first calls or messages whenever I needed a friend. Her loss has been devastating but extremely formative, and I continue to strive to live her legacy: “Present mirth hath present laughter.” Lastly, I need to thank my mentor, Professor Russ McDonald. His impact on my life was probably second only to that of my parents, and my heart breaks that he is not here to know that I’m finishing. He took my interest in Shakespeare and turned it into a full-blown love over the course of my college career, encouraged me to pursue graduate studies in Shakespeare, and continued to cheer me on during my time in the United Kingdom and at UMD. So many of my choices after college have been a result of Russ’s advice, and I treasure the last message he sent me before his death, an email telling me he was proud of me and giving me a pep talk about the dissertation. I hope the final result would continue to make him proud. vii Table of Contents Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... viii List of Illustrations ....................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 1.1 “A Rose by Any Other Name: The Postmodern/Neo-Bohemian Hipster........... 7 1.2 “Alternative” Shakespeares .............................................................................. 10 1.3 Before it was Cool: Methodology and Theoretical Framework ....................... 15 1.4 Some Alternative Shakespeares in New York City .......................................... 19 1.5 Crafting an Argument: Chapter Breakdown ..................................................... 25 Chapter 2: Precursors to the Postmodern Hipster ....................................................... 32 2.1 Portlandia Explains it All .................................................................................. 32 2.2 Hipster Origins, and Why They Matter ............................................................ 34 2.3 The Bohemian: The Original Hipster? .............................................................. 38 2.4 The Jazz-Age Hipster and Rebellion through Appropriation ........................... 43 2.5 The Mid-Twentieth Century Hipster: The Beats and “The White Negro” ....... 47 2.6 The Mid-Twentieth Century Hipster, Take Two: Hippies and Commodified Cool ......................................................................................................................... 51 2.7 The Punk and Commodified Anger .................................................................. 55 2.8 A Pastiche Puzzle: Building Blocks of the Postmodern Hipster ...................... 58 Chapter 3: The Postmodern Hipster ............................................................................ 61 3.1 The Neo-Bohemian as Subculture .................................................................... 66 3.2 The Postmodern Hipster as the Consummate Cultural Omnivore .................... 70 3.3 Perceptions of the Mainstream: Hipster Haters ................................................ 76 3.4 Rebellion: How the Hipster Does It .................................................................. 82 3.5 Hipster Irony ..................................................................................................... 90 3.6 Race and the Postmodern Hipster ..................................................................... 94 3.7 Commodification: Is Everyone a Hipster Now? ............................................... 99 3.8 Why Hipsters and Shakespeare? ..................................................................... 106 Chapter 4: New York Shakespeare Exchange .......................................................... 113 4.1 Introduction to NYSX ..................................................................................... 113 4.2 NYSX’s Mainstage Productions ..................................................................... 119 Chapter 5: New York Shakespeare Exchange Beyond the Mainstage .................... 175 5.1 ShakesBEER Pub Crawl ................................................................................. 177 5.2 The Sonnet Project .......................................................................................... 203 5.3 Intersections .................................................................................................... 218 5.4 NYSX: Ahead of the Curve? .......................................................................... 225 Chapter 6: Conclusion............................................................................................... 230 6.1 NYSX’s New Directions................................................................................. 230 6.2 Shakespeare and the Postmodern Hipster ....................................................... 237 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 243 viii List of Illustrations Figure 1: A male hipster in an advertisement for “Astor Rectangular Eyeglasses” from retailer Vint & York……………………………………………………65 Figure 2: A female hipster from a fashion blog……………………………………...65 Figure 3: Thigh tattoo of Deacon, the character played by Dennis Hopper in the film Waterworld ………………………………………………………………….89 Figure 4: Calf tattoo of Kafka’s head on a Keith Haring-esque dog’s body………...89 Figure 5: A “boobies” mug, purchased at the Crafty Bastards Craft Fair………….. 94 Figure 6: An image from the marketing materials for NYSX’s production of Othello………………………………………………………………………129 Figure 7: Set designer G. Warren Stiles’s digital rendering of the set……………..131 Figure 8: Titus holding his murdered son, with the Clown looking on…………….138 Figure 9: The Clown (Kerry Kastin) holding the heads of Titus’s sons in front of the illuminated bulls-eye, the unlucky messenger who is about to be killed for bringing bad news…………………………………………………………..144 Figure 10: Kate Lydic, as Lavinia, reveals her missing hands to the audience…….145 Figure 11: Fortinbras on the ramparts………………………………………………151 Figure 12: Lucrece and Sextus in her bedroom…………………………………….160 Figure 13: Beatrice and Benedick…………………………………………………..167 Figure 14: Act II, scene i. The masquerade ball as a virtual reality dance party…...169 Figure 15: Don John and Borachio…………………………………………………171 Figure 16: The ShakesBEER logo, with the text “NYC’s Original Shakespearean” present to differentiate it from similar offerings in the city………………...180 Figure 17: A Google map of Stone Street in 2018………………………………….186 Figure 18: “The Traditional Fu Manchu.”………………………………………….190 Figure 19: An example of an undercut hairstyle……………………………………190 Figure 20: The tables that line Historic Stone Street to accommodate customers….192 Figure 21: A screenshot of the map featured on the Sonnet Project app…………...216 Figure 22: A scene from Comedy of Errors performed at the Grand Stafford bar in Bryan, TX…………………………………………………………………..221 Figure 23: A scene from Henry VI, Part II at Revolutions Café in Bryan, TX…….222 Figure 24: Company member Kim Krane coaching students in a scene from Twelfth Night at Texas A&M University in Bryan, TX……………………………..224 Figure 25: The “Welcome Shakespeare Nerds!” sign in front of the Gaf………….226 ix Chapter 1: Introduction As I sat at the New York City Bagel and Coffee House in Astoria, Queens, in the autumn of 2013, I could not help but overhear the rather loud conversation happening at a nearby table. In this coffeehouse, with its rustic, unfinished wooden walls and counters, antique-looking light fixtures, and variety of kombucha drinks and vegan bagel spreads, I knew I was listening to a hipster talk about Shakespeare, based on the typical clientele that this business serves. “Oh my gosh. I saw, like, the coolest thing last night. It was, like, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus done with puppets. And, like, when one of them got stabbed or whatever? The blood was silly string. It was so weird…but awesome.” I turned to verify who had just touted the “awesomeness” of Puppet Shakespeare Company’s Titus Andronicus, an off- Broadway venture that briefly became mainstream enough to sell discounted tickets at the TKTS Booth in Times Square: she was in her late-twenties, with horn-rimmed glasses, wearing skinny jeans, Toms shoes, and a slouchy sweatshirt, her hair put up in a clip and just messy enough as to look like she hadn’t actually put any effort into it. Sitting in a café, this classic example of a postmodern hipster had used Shakespeare as a form of quirky cultural capital. For her, Shakespeare was a symbol of the past adopted and appreciated in a new way, giving her a quality of different- ness or being off-kilter, while also demonstrating her intellectualism and interest in art and culture. As exemplified by this anecdote, there are opportunities for quirky Shakespeare companies to cultivate a new kind of audience member, the postmodern 1 hipster. Most major Shakespeare companies attempt to reach out to underserved, low- income audiences as part of initiatives that create theatre for social change.1 But by looking at a different target audience, the postmodern hipster, companies have a rich pool of adults in their twenties or thirties who are often middle class and interested in art and culture, which they approach with a sense of irony and a desire to experience something ‘cool,’ ‘kitschy,’ or ‘weird-but-awesome.’ Lawrence Levine, in Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, details the process by which Shakespeare changed from a form of popular entertainment to a commodity of the upper and educated classes at the end of the nineteenth century.2 The social elevation of Shakespeare gave it an aura of reverence and seriousness that suggested that audiences needed a certain level of instruction in order to enjoy it. The avant-garde and alternative producers of Shakespeare from the mid-twentieth century onwards have increasingly challenged that aura. These companies have developed their own methods and techniques of performance that have simultaneously opened Shakespeare’s plays to broader interpretation and made them more available to audiences outside the economic and cultural elite. Most recently, companies have a rich new potential demographic to capitalize on in the form of the postmodern hipster. Employing methods to make productions appealing to this new economic and cultural 1 For example, New York’s Public Theater has extensive support from various foundations and organizations for their Public Works program, which engages community members across the city to create community-based theatre. “Public Works,” accessed February 21, 2018, https://www.publictheater.org/Programs--Events/Public-Works/. 2 Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 2 force in America could prove lucrative, in addition to helping to build young adult audiences. In Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare, I argue that companies and artists whose interpretation of Shakespeare fits into the models of hipster consumption can attract this demographic to their productions. Just like handlebar mustaches and vinyl records, Shakespeare can serve as an object of the past that can be adopted and appropriated for a new generation. Bjorn Schiermer—a sociologist studying the hipster phenomenon, its origins, and reactions to it—provides a framework for my own analysis of the postmodern hipster and the ways they could be attracted to Shakespeare productions.3 One of the signal characteristics of hipster culture is an affinity for irony, but that ironic bent goes hand in hand with a nostalgic desire to recirculate social and cultural objects that have been forgotten. While Shakespeare’s plays have not been forgotten by modern Western culture, I argue that their highbrow existence has meant that for the vast majority of consumers today it has become perceived as an entertainment of the past with little use in today’s world.4 Schiermer points out that the common thread between the disparate objects that hipsters often enjoy is a shared quality of being former focuses of “intense social investment.”5 He goes on to observe that those objects often received that investment “without really deserving it,” meaning that they were not actually artistically beautiful 3 Bjorn Schiermer, “Late Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” Acta Sociologica 57, no. 167 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1177/0001699313498263. 4 It is worth noting here that “Shakespeare” throughout this dissertation refers to Shakespeare’s works and the cultural force that has developed around them, rather than referring specifically to the man, himself. 5 Schiermer, “Late Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” 168. 3 or worthy of veneration.6 I argue that the mystification of Shakespeare’s work as exclusively for the upper classes contributed to the unworthy social investment surrounding them. While the texts possess artistic beauty, removing them from the sphere of popular culture was a fate they did not deserve. Theatre companies that appeal to hipsters can demystify Shakespeare by producing it with an ever-present “wink.” By recirculating Shakespeare among contemporary young adults, these companies can take part in the “conserver” role that hipsters also adopt by facilitating the recirculation of cultural objects forgotten or overlooked by mainstream culture. One of the major ways that this conservational impulse manifests for hipsters is through the veneration of pre-digital technologies, such as record players and antique cameras, whose unique imperfections mean that they retain a measure of individuality that an infinitely reproducible digital medium like an MP3 or digital camera minimizes by design.7 Hipsters constantly strive to maintain their individual identities, but within a global economy and digital world that make change constant and the adoption of new styles and trends so fast that that individuality is under constant threat. Mainstream Shakespeare companies are often guilty of rehashed production concepts and boring performance choices that render the individuality of various productions difficult to identify. A theatre company intentionally making quirky choices that push back against tradition maintains an individualism that appeals to the neo-bohemian. This style of production, mixing unexpected elements 6 Schiermer, 168. 7 Schiermer, 168. 4 with Shakespeare to create irony and quirk, is what this project calls “Hipster Shakespeare.” Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare will examine the characteristics of Hipster Shakespeare by providing an in-depth exploration of the postmodern hipster demographic and how it emerged in the context of contemporary and preceding subcultures. The second half of this project consists of a case study of a specific theatre company, the New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYSX) in New York City, which reveals possible techniques for attracting hipsters into the audience. I chose this company because of their style of production, their donor base that mostly falls within the age range of 25-50, and their location in the metropolitan center for both hipster culture and theatre in the United States. This organization has access to a large pool of potential patrons and faces plenty of competition from other theatre companies throughout the city producing Shakespeare, other canonical plays, musical theatre, or new works. NYSX was founded in 2009 by a group of American Express employees who began staging readings of Shakespeare plays during lunch breaks and Happy Hours. These Happy Hour performances soon evolved into a regular event called the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, which takes place several times a year and involves the audience traveling with performers to four different New York City bars to drink four different beers and hear four different scenes from Shakespeare. Such events support the company’s goal of offering “innovative theatrical programming that explores what happens when contemporary culture is infused with Shakespearean 5 poetry and themes in unexpected ways.”8 Their dedication to the unexpected make them a prime example of Hipster Shakespeare. In addition to the occasional, more traditional production of a Shakespeare play (in modern dress and settings, of course), the company also produces devised plays based on Shakespeare’s works, and regularly hosts staged readings of a Shakespeare play in conjunction with another play in order to create a dialogue about common themes and how those themes translate across history. The project that NYSX has gained the most press for is the Sonnet Project, which originally began with the goal of recording all 154 sonnets in 154 different NYC locations, with 154 different New York actors, and posting them on YouTube. Here the company utilizes video, a medium that many theatre artists see as directly competing with their art form, in order to celebrate Shakespeare and make his works more accessible. For hipsters, the availability of an app for the Project means they could watch the sonnets on their phones on the way to work, providing both the modern convenience and a juxtaposition—Shakespeare in an iPhone—that appeal to this demographic. Throughout their marketing materials and interviews with company members, NYSX uses the rhetoric of ignoring the intimidating, bardolatrous image of Shakespeare to align him with other artists and, therefore, themselves. The Sonnet Project earned $50,000 to fund the work through a Kickstarter campaign, yet another modern technology and form of social networking that is increasingly being applied to Shakespearean performance. Crowdfunding via the internet has become an 8 “About NYSX | New York Shakespeare Exchange,” accessed February 2, 2018, http://www.shakespeareexchange.org/content/about-nysx. 6 increasingly popular way of acquiring the money to produce art, and it could be viewed as a modern-day equivalent of sourcing share-holders for an English Renaissance theatre. In 2017, NYSX launched the Intersections program, which aims to bring their specific style of Shakespeare to communities across the United States that might not otherwise have ready access to such events. NYSX provides a model for attracting a hipster following through their utilization of internet media, their skill in juxtaposing Shakespeare with unexpected cultural objects and spaces, and their willingness to present Shakespeare with a flavor of both irony and genuine appreciation. 1.1 “A Rose by Any Other Name: The Postmodern/Neo-Bohemian Hipster Throughout the pages of this dissertation, several terms appear repeatedly that must be addressed here for clarity. The words “postmodern” and “neo-bohemian” will be used interchangeably to refer to the generation of hipster that emerged around the turn of the twenty-first century. One reason for these prefixes is to help differentiate this hipster from their predecessors who will be discussed in chapter 2. Because of the rich twentieth-century history of the word “hipster,” the specificity of these terms helps the reader to recognize that, while related to earlier subcultures such as the Jazz Age hipster and the hippie of the 1960s, this contemporary group faces new challenges and rebels against new modes of authority. “Postmodern” and “neo- bohemian” also reflect the language used by social scientists to describe this demographic, as these words help to identify important aspects of the twenty-first 7 century hipster subculture.9 “Postmodern” is perhaps the most commonly used word by scholars who study this hipster, as well as by bloggers and essayists who write about them for a more general readership.10 Many of these writers discuss the hipster’s self-reflexivity and shunning of a subcultural identity as reasons for their postmodernity. Another important feature is the presumed inability of this subculture to create anything new, since everything has, theoretically, already been done before. The current hipster is postmodern because of their affinity for pastiche mashups of high and low culture. The dissolution of cultural barriers, according to Frederic Jameson,11 is indicative of the postmodern moment; pastiche, the only mode of production left in the postmodern period, is a central aspect of the twenty-first century hipster’s consumption. Indeed, their postmodernism is one of the reasons that mainstream culture tends to dislike the hipster so vehemently. In an article entitled 9 See, for example: Zeynep Arsel and Craig J. Thompson, “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Market Myths,” Journal of Consumer Research 37, no. 5 (n.d.); Wes Hill, “The Postmodern Hipster,” in Art after the Hipster: Identity Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017); Brett McCracken, Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2010); Ana Maria Fraile-Marcos, ed., Literature and the Glocal City: Reshaping the English Canadian Imaginary, Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature (New York: Routledge, 2014); Brent Luvaas, DIY Style: Fashion, Music and Global Digital Cultures (London: Berg, 2012). 10 Examples include: Mark Greif, Kathleen Ross, and Dayna Tortorici, What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation (New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010); Taryn Johnson, “Hipster and Postmodern Subcultural Identity,” Taryn Johnson (blog), December 29, 2016, https://medium.com/@tarynjohnson/hipster-and-postmodern-subcultural-identity-804ac06f62ab; Alexa Gould-Kavet, “The Demise of Subcultural Identity: Towards a Postmodern Theory of the Hipster and Hipster Style,” Social Networking, Academia.edu- Alexa Gould-Kavet (blog), accessed January 11, 2017, https://www.academia.edu/472161/The_Demise_of_the_Subcultural_Identity_Towards_a_Postmodern _Theory_of_The_Hipster_and_Hipster_Style; Gia Hughes, “The Hipsters’ Identity as a Postmodern Product,” The Proxart Blog (blog), July 7, 2010, https://proxart.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/too- hipster/; Jordan Zakarin, “Postmodern Eating: Hip New Food Concepts For Hipster Foodies,” Huffington Post (blog), December 14, 2010, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-zakarin/post- modern-eating-hip-new-food-concepts-for-hipster-foodies_b_796771.html. 11 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991). 8 “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization,” they are described as the culmination of all that tarnishes society today: “The hipster represents the end of Western civilization—a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.”12 Shakespeare, of course, is one of the cultural objects that Western civilization repeatedly rehashes, even before the postmodern period. The works’ malleability over the centuries therefore lends itself to continued experimentation. Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City, a study of the Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago conducted by Richard Lloyd, coins the term “neo-bohemian.”13 The changes of the 1990s and early 2000s that Lloyd discusses offer an account of postmodern hipster gentrification. The alignment of late twentieth-century hipster neighborhood development with the bohemian character of Greenwich Village in the early twentieth century creates a helpful comparison of the historical bohemians with the neo-bohemians. The early bohemian conjures ideas of artists and intellectuals shunning the comforts of conventional lives in order to be true to themselves. They also embraced a transient lifestyle, with few permanent ties or responsibilities holding them in one place. Similarly, the postmodern hipster often occupies a position in the creative class, eschewing middle-class professions that might be more in keeping with their upbringings. The transience of postmodern life is further revealed by studies that show that most members of the creative class now 12 Douglas Haddow, “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization| Journal of the Mental Environment,” Adbusters | Journal of the Mental Environment (blog), July 29, 2008, http://www.adbusters.org/article/hipster-the-dead-end-of-western-civilization/. 13 Richard Lloyd, Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City (Oxford: Taylor and Francis, 2010). 9 change jobs regularly.14 Young adults of the twenty-first century tend to rent their homes rather than buy them for a variety of reasons, but renting certainly makes it easier to move around and resist stagnation. These similarities make the word “bohemian” applicable, while the postmodern characteristics make the prefix “neo-” an important way to identify the vast differences between earlier and later groups. 1.2 “Alternative” Shakespeares Another vital term for this dissertation is “alternative Shakespeares,” which is used to describe the kinds of Shakespeare productions that can attract postmodern hipsters. One of the most important works that Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare will draw from is Theodore Shank’s Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre.15 Shank focuses his history on the experimental and alternative theatre artists that began working in the United States in the 1960s, and in the expanded version of this book he continues his study by examining more recent performers. While very few of the companies and artists he discusses use canonical dramatic literature such as Shakespeare in their performances, his methodology of presenting their histories is particularly informative for this work. Most notably, I embrace his use of the term “alternative” in his description of the type of theatre these artists are producing. The kind of Shakespeare that NYSX produces does not fit into the image of “avant-garde” or “experimental” theatre, but also is not what might be 14 For extensive data on the job habits of creatives in the twenty-first century, see Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited (New York: Basic Books, 2011). 15 Theodore Shank, Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre, New and Enlarged (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002). 10 thought of as “traditional” Shakespeare. Shank uses the following definition to describe the work of the early alternative theatre in America: It was an alternative to the theatre of the dominant complacent middle-class society which tended to perpetuate the status quo in its aesthetics, politics, working methods, and techniques. The alternative theatre companies directed themselves to new audiences, often a specific constituency such as intellectuals, artists, political radicals, workers, blacks, Chicanos, women, or gays. They explored new working methods, new techniques, and new aesthetic principles that would be in harmony with their convictions and could be used to express their new theatrical conceptions.16 This description applies to the motivations that NYSX cites in their mission statement and their search for performance techniques and ideas that challenge the status quo and seek out new audiences and working methods. The specific constituency of intellectuals, artists, and political radicals could be used to describe the bohemians and hippies who were the predecessors of the postmodern hipster, as well as the neo- bohemians who might be attracted to NYSX’s work. Shank also describes techniques used by alternative theatres that are keystones of the work of NYSX: a focus on enriching the lives of the audience and artists, a rejection of traditional theatre spaces because they inhibit the creation of a community spirit among the audience and actors, and “an aesthetic that keeps spectators conscious of the real world rather than focusing them exclusively on a fictional illusion.”17 I explore NYSX through the lenses provided by Shank’s chapters on “Social Commitment” and “New Technologies and Techniques.”18 This project expands on Shank’s work by examining an alternative theatre that produces Shakespeare in addition to devised 16 Shank, 1. 17 Shank 3. 18 Shank, Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre, 225–95. 11 works. It also adopts an ethnographic methodology to illuminate the history of the company. Scholarly works on avant-garde and experimental Shakespeare prove surprisingly few and far-between. As W. B. Worthen explains in Shakespeare Performance Studies, the two disciplines of Shakespeare Studies and Performance Studies are often at odds. The former is “constructed through centuries of textual scholarship and interpretation and so perhaps constitutively dismissive of the work of Shakespeare onstage,” while the latter is “engrained with a disciplinary suspicion of the regulatory work attributed to writing, textuality, and the archive in performance, and so perhaps constitutively dismissive of dramatic theatre.”19 In The Shakespeare Revolution, J. L. Styan explores the ways in which twentieth-century Shakespeare productions changed drastically from those of the nineteenth century.20 The most important differences came from the development of the director’s role, and the influence of literary scholars such as F. R. Leavis on the thinking of young directors educated at Cambridge (Peter Hall and John Barton) and Oxford (Peter Brook). Directors began to take ideas about the symbolism of Shakespeare’s plays and experiment with them onstage. Known as “Director’s Shakespeare,” these productions approached Shakespeare with an overreaching directorial theme, resulting in artistically rich and metaphor-heavy stagings.21 These productions also took their cues from contemporaneous avant-garde movements. Styan’s main 19 Shakespeare Performance Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 2. 20 J.L. Styan, The Shakespeare Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 21 Routledge’s Companion to Director’s Shakespeare, edited by John Russell Brown (New York, 2008) discusses this phenomenon in detail. 12 contribution, however, is a reaction against the nineteenth century’s performance- dismissing literary critics that emphasizes the importance of studying the plays in performance, rather than as literary works. Today’s scholars and artists have largely adopted this performance-based approach to the text, and Styan’s work has become canonical. With the exception of individual articles looking at particular performances by particular theatre groups, avant-garde Shakespeare has not yet inspired much work from modern scholars devoted to his plays. Several authors have done in-depth studies of individual theatre companies that specialize in new and devised works, and I use their techniques of chronicling these artists as a model for my ethnographic cultural history of NYSX.22 Worthen offers one of the noteworthy exceptions to the relative dearth of scholarly writing on avant-garde or alternative Shakespeare performance. He has explored the overlap of Shakespeare and broader performance studies theories in Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance, and most notably in his recent Shakespeare Performance Studies.23 In Shakespeare Performance Studies, Worthen begins by asking how modern interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays have complicated how the text functions in modern productions: “Is the accent on Shakespeare or on performance?”24 He hopes that his book can aid in finding “a more productive encounter, a more productive study of performance through 22 For instance: Simon Reade, Cheek by Jowl: Ten Years of Celebration, Bath: Absolute Classics, 1991; Walter Spearman, The Carolina Playmakers: The First Fifty Years, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970; Terry Stoller, Tales of the Tricycle Theatre, London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 23 WB Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); WB Worthen, Shakespeare Performance Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 24 Worthen, Shakespeare Performance Studies, 2. Emphasis his. 13 Shakespeare.”25 After establishing his focus on the relationship between text and modern performance, Worthen suggests how scholars can effectively write about performance, then proceeds to analyze specific productions of Shakespeare plays: Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’s Romeo and Juliet, Punchdrunk Theatre’s Macbeth- based Sleep No More, and Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet. His goal is to show how each of these productions “ramifies a specific understanding of the purposes of drama, theatre, and performance.”26 He explores each through a specific performance studies lens. He approaches Sleep No More, for example, with a cognitive model of character creation through the audience, while he analyzes Almereyda’s Hamlet with an eye to its use of performance technologies that he connects to the increasing digitization of the humanities. Worthen’s approach informs both my study of NYSX and my exploration of larger issues surrounding their productions. I situate NYSX’s work in larger discourses on subcultures and urban demographics, explore technology as a tool for small theatre companies, and examine the use of Shakespeare to explore issues of gender and sexuality. Several other scholarly works have informed my use of “alternative Shakespeare” to describe NYSX’s productions, including Michael Dobson’s book on amateur Shakespeare companies.27 In terms of fundraising and organizing casts and crews for productions, NYSX works in ways similar to the operations of amateur groups. Works such as The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare in Popular 25 Worthen, 3. Emphasis his. 26 Worthen, 24. 27 Michael Dobson, Shakespeare and Amateur Performance: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 14 Culture allows me to place Shakespeare and the work of these companies in the context of modern popular culture and, by proxy, contemporary Western society at large.28 Talking Shakespeare: Shakespeare Into the Millennium explores why Shakespeare is imbued with such cultural capital in the titular period.29 This collection of multidisciplinary essays illuminates how the past informs the present, and vice versa, in Shakespeare production. Mordecai Gorelik’s New Theatres for Old examines the development of stage and screen techniques and relates those developments to the political and social environments in which they took place.30 His work focuses primarily on how stage techniques and styles change as a direct response to the desires and preferences of their audiences. This approach to stage history will help me to place alternative Shakespeares in general, and NYSX in particular, within this framework in order to explore how they are meeting the needs and wants of the hipster theatre audience. 1.3 Before it was Cool: Methodology and Theoretical Framework Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare is a historical and cultural study of hipsters but also an account of the work of the New York Shakespeare Exchange. The case study utilizes ethnographical methods in addition to presenting a social performance history of NYSX. I explore some of the economic factors that have influenced the success of this Alternative Shakespeare company as well as the role 28 Robert Shaughnessy, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare in Popular Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 29 Deborah Cartmell and Michael Scott, eds., Talking Shakespeare: Shakespeare Into the Millenium (London: Palgrave, 2001). 30 Mordecai Gorelik, New Theatres for Old (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1962). 15 that the hipster may yet play in that success. Placing the company in the context of the postmodern hipster, and the hipster within the developments of late capitalism, the dissertation illuminates the ways in which both react against, and are products of, the late twentieth-century’s proliferation of multinational corporations and mass consumption and production. For the case study, I employ historiographic methods of cultural history in order to understand the experience of those working with and patronizing the company. The cooperation of NYSX’s staff in the course of this project has also enabled me to create a narrative history of their experiences. Numerous interviews, both in person and over the phone, have helped in understanding the company’s intentions, as well as their results and plans for the future. My theoretical framework is also based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his theories of cultural production.31 One of my dominant questions is how a company like NYSX is making Shakespeare a valued product to audiences that seem to be largely ignored by more institutional Shakespeare companies. Audiences are willing to embrace an alternative style of Shakespeare that departs from the institutionalized versions that the mainstream would recognize as having aesthetic and cultural value. The transgression of traditionally high-culture presentations of Shakespeare draws people to them, meaning that the social contexts within which Alternative Shakespeare operates are somehow different than those of institutional Shakespeare. The success of NYSX’s open and creative style has tapped a nerve, 31 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 16 indicating that there is a market for a kind of Shakespeare different from the standard, historically validated cultural phenomenon. Bourdieu studies the individuals that make fields of cultural production and institutions what they are, and this project observes individuals that are creating a new definition of the cultural value of Shakespeare. Those producing Hipster Shakespeare imbue the plays with value for those who otherwise might not see Shakespeare’s texts as artistic products that are appropriate for their consumption. In many ways, the direct challenge to the cultural and artistic authority of other companies can help Alternative Shakespeare companies find new audiences and distinguish themselves as a group with a cultural authority of its own that is worthy of attention and praise. Discourses on hipsters are rife with Bourdieu’s ideas on cultural value, and the work that cultural studies scholars and social scientists have done on postmodern hipsters helps to describe the kinds of audiences that are a prime demographic for Alternative Shakespeare companies. My case study is in many ways an ethnographic history, with personal observation playing an important role in places. No other scholarship has been produced on Shakespeare and hipsters or on this particular theatre company, so this study uses previous work on hipsters to underpin assertions about the success of NYSX’s techniques. Reviews, blog posts, and interviews with those involved in productions create the backbone of NYSX’s performance history. I use reviews for several reasons. From a purely utilitarian perspective, they help to reconstruct past performances that were not recorded and for which I had limited access to photographs. While the accounts of reviewers are far from objective, they provide insights into possible audience responses to the productions. The reviews also come 17 from sources as respected and institutional as the New York Times and as amateur and anonymous as an English professor’s blog or a college senior who rights theatre reviews for fun. This broad range of reviewers demonstrates the egalitarian nature of a digital world in which everyone can, literally, be a critic. The internet has played a major role in developing the postmodern hipster, both in exposing them to a wide range of cultural objects and, in turn, exposing others to their fashions and interests, causing them to continually evolve to find new transgressive modes. While the New York Times has, over the last few years, become a symbol of the progressive struggle against the “fake news” proffered by the political right, hipsters are still more likely to trust a non-mainstream reviewer, even if they might get their news from the Times. This mixture of reviewing sources covers the gamut of those that the hipster might seek out. Finally, reviews are used precisely because they do not reveal a consensus of opinions about NYSX productions. Because of the experimental nature of their projects, the company is unlikely to please all of their viewers. NYSX challenges traditional ideas about what Shakespeare productions should be, and the diversity of critical responses demonstrates that transgression. Hipsters avoid cultural objects that receive universal praise because such blanket acceptance indicates an item’s mainstream cultural capital. By presenting both positive and negative reviews, I emphasize NYSX’s willingness to take artistic risks and the potential benefit of those risks for their attempts to build audiences. Through a combination of ethnography and history, Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare compiles the story of the New York Shakespeare Exchange and presents it as an example to other theatre artists who 18 wish to tap into a new audience demographic primed for quirky and historically significant entertainment. 1.4 Some Alternative Shakespeares in New York City In addition to the occasional staging featuring puppets, New York City has no shortage of Shakespeare productions. An idea of some of the other alternative Shakespeare companies active in New York City is necessary to understand NYSX’s position in the marketplace. Since a comprehensive study of all of the alternative Shakespeare companies in New York would consume an entire dissertation (if not more), here I will briefly describe a few of the more well-known groups. A small- scale manifestation of alternative Shakespeare happens every summer in a parking lot located at 114 Norfolk St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A group called Expanded Arts started “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot” in 1995 in a municipal parking lot just a few blocks away from where the performances take place now.32 The project is currently maintained by a theatre troupe called The Drilling Company, who in recent years have extended their performances to Bryant Park.33 The group’s name spoofs the more established Shakespeare in the Park produced by the Public Theatre, which also runs during the summer. The sets for the parking lot performances are minimal, since the entire production and audience occasionally need to shift to let a car out of its parking space. The company compares such 32 “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot,” accessed July 12, 2017, http://www.shakespeareintheparkinglot.com/. 33 “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot,” accessed February 21, 2018, http://www.shakespeareintheparkinglot.com/about_BPS.htm. 19 interruptions to rain delays that force other outdoor Shakespeare performances to pause.34 Admission to all of the performances is free, with some seating provided and patrons encouraged to bring their own chairs. One of the most well-known productions of alternative Shakespeare in New York is Punchdrunk Theatre Company’s production of Sleep No More, an immersive theatre experience in Manhattan. Sleep No More has managed to accomplish an incredible feat: it is an avant-garde production that has achieved unheard-of success, partly due to the appeal it holds for younger adult audiences. Normally the line between what makes a production “mainstream” instead of “alternative” can be indistinct, but in this case, one need only look at the number of features that Sleep No More has garnered in publications like the New York Times, Elle, Vanity Fair, and Vogue.35 These pieces make it clear that the show has established a foothold in mainstream media. But features in established, respected newspapers and magazines are not the only kind of publicity Punchdrunk has inspired. They have also received attention in pieces by such hipster-catering blogs and online magazines as Gothamist, Refinery29, and Feministing, among others.36 Sleep No More is an alternative 34 “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.” 35 Erik Piepenburg, “Punchdrunk Transforms Chelsea Warehouses for ‘Sleep No More,’” The New York Times, March 16, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/theater/sleep-no-more-from- punchdrunk-transforms-chelsea-warehouses.html; Britt Aboutaleb, “Sleep No More’s Scary Fun,” ELLE, March 29, 2011, http://www.elle.com/news/culture/sleep-no-mores-scary-fun-18352; Dana Mathews, “Photos: Photos from Inside *Sleep No More’*s Haunting Halloween Celebrations,” Vanity Fair, accessed February 20, 2018, https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/photos/2011/10/sleep-no-more- slideshow-201110; “Macbeth Takes Manhattan: New Stagings of the Shakespearean Classic - Vogue,” accessed February 20, 2018, https://www.vogue.com/article/macbeth-takes-manhattan-new-stagings- of-the-shakespearean-classic. 36 “Don’t Sleep on Tickets for Sleep No More: Gothamist,” accessed February 20, 2018, http://gothamist.com/2011/03/06/sleep_no_more.php; “Punchdrunk Theatre Company’s ‘Sleep No More’ Production Will Scare You Silly,” accessed February 20, 2018, https://www.refinery29.com/sleep-no-more-experience; Womens Voices • 6 years ago, “Theater 20 Shakespeare production that has gone mainstream but still managed to keep its alternative credentials. Punchdrunk Theatre Company began in 2000, founded on the idea of producing theatre that relied on site-specific adaptations of classic works of literature, and which permitted (and depended) on audiences wandering freely through the performance space in order to collaboratively create each individual performance. Sleep No More was originally developed and performed in London in 2003; it was subsequently revived and restaged in Boston in 2009-10 in conjunction with the American Repertory Theatre before moving to New York in 2011 for what was intended to be a limited run that has now taken on a life of its own. The idea that no two theatrical performances could ever be the same is reinforced when direct spectator involvement is added into the mix. Not only does the performance style ensure that the spectator has a unique experience to share with their co-workers the following week, it also means that they have a unique experience to share even with the friends they went to the show with that night. The concept involves the audience putting on blank, white masks and wandering through roughly one-hundred rooms spread over six stories of three adjacent warehouses in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York.37 The spectators gather in the bar of a fictional hotel before the performance and are given their instructions. They then load onto an elevator that stops on various floors, sometimes abandoning individual audience members by Review: ‘Sleep No More’ — Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On,” Feministing, accessed February 20, 2018, http://feministing.com/2011/04/06/theater-review-sleep-no-more-such-stuff-as-dreams-are- made-on/. 37 Piepenburg, “Punchdrunk Transforms Chelsea Warehouses for ‘Sleep No More.’” 21 pushing them out of the elevator unexpectedly before it closes. The performers move through the various rooms, enacting different scenes from Macbeth; it is up to the individual audience member to decide where to go and when, and what to pay attention to. They are encouraged to “snoop” in Lady Macbeth’s drawers and other set pieces, making them feel as involved and immersed in the environment as possible. The details in the rooms are painstaking, reportedly the work of “more than 200 unpaid volunteer artists [who] spent about four months writing letters, coloring wallpaper, and building furniture” in order to create environments such as an abandoned hospital ward, a garden courtyard, and various bedrooms.38 The creativity of Punchdrunk’s techniques and the novelty of the production’s style have converged to yield a product that appeals to a broad swath of spectators and consumers. Visually stunning and intellectually compelling, the company’s theatrical style has helped a tiny, independent troupe become an internationally acclaimed phenomenon. Another development in alternative Shakespeare is the birth of various “Drunk Shakespeare” events and performances, both in New York and beyond. These can take many forms, but the basic premise is that some portion of those involved— whether one actor, several actors, all of the actors, and/or the audience—is intentionally drunk during the performance. The difference between these alcohol- inflected performances and NYSX’s ShakesBEER Pub Crawl will be covered in chapter 5; for now a description of one of these companies is appropriate. The most well-known “Drunk Shakespeare” is Three Day Hangover’s off-Broadway show, 38 Piepenburg. 22 where an actor drinks “at least five shots of whisky at the start of the play”39 while the other performers try to keep the story on track. This particular production was commissioned after the company achieved several other successes with more heavily adapted versions of Shakespeare’s plays. In 2013’s R+J: Star-Crossed Death Match, the audience members were welcomed into a bar, handed blue and red Solo cups, and invited to play the drinking game “Flip Cup” to help build a sense of competition between the blue Montagues and Red Capulets. Audiences then continued the immersive play experience by moving continuously throughout the performance, with some members even drafted to play certain roles. Twelfth Night, or Sir Toby Belch’s Lonely Hearts Club Cabaret was their follow-up, and once again drinking games in a bar amplified the playgoers’ experience.40 This production also featured a live karaoke band, with cast members singing many of their declarations of love and angst, and Sir Toby acting as emcee for the proceedings, reading out fake OkCupid accounts for the characters and real Craigslist “Missed Connections” entries. Hank V was another production that featured a newly crowned Prince Hal and newly dead Falstaff interacting through a game of beer pong. Most recently, Drunkle Vanya has moved Three Day Hangover out of their Shakespearean comfort zone and into a new arena of theatre classics.41 The goal of these productions is to put a fresh spin on Shakespeare’s plays, as well as to capitalize on the humor that often comes from drunkenness, either on the part of actors or audience members. Three Day Hangover’s 39 “About”, Drunk Shakespeare Society, http://www.drunkshakespeare.com/about/. Last accessed 9 January 2017. 40 “Productions,” Three Day Hangover, accessed February 20, 2018, https://www.threedayhangover.com/new-index/. 41 “Productions.” 23 FAQs page includes the question “Isn’t Shakespeare, like, really long and hard to understand and stuff?” the humorous phrasing emphasizing their attempt to appeal to a non-traditional Shakespeare audience member. The company’s response is Perhaps some productions of Shakespeare’s plays are long and hard to understand and stuff, but OUR productions most certainly are not. Our productions feel fast and fun. We bring these great stories to life in ways that are vibrant, unexpected and also very clear. We think Shakespeare’s characters and language are unforgettable and speak to folks in every age…and we pride ourselves on proving that belief with every project.42 Clearly the intention is to reach audience members who might not associate Shakespeare with fun, and to put an inebriated spin on the traditional image of the plays. The longevity of Three Day Hangover’s productions testifies to their ability to capture and maintain audience members through their marketing and the word-of- mouth generated by their performances. It also indicates an appetite for some off- kilter classics among New York’s theatre patrons. New York’s alternative Shakespeare scene offered a wide array of alternative Shakespeare companies to study, but NYSX fit very specific criteria. Shakespeare in the Parking Lot only operates during the summer months, while the year-round calendar of NYSX provides a more consistent number of performances with which to build an audience base. Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, while innovative and exciting, has become too mainstream, to the point of owning the property it occupies and opening a bar and restaurant there. The transient nature of NYSX, since they do not own their own performance space or rent any particular venue with any consistency, 42 “Questions”, Three Day Hangover website. http://www.threedayhangover.com/questions/. Last accessed 9 January 2017. 24 gives them a bohemian flair that parallels that of the postmodern hipster. And, as will be explained in chapter 5, NYSX offers productions beyond just the alcohol-soaked ones. Their repertoire is varied and ever-changing, and their central focus is always the clarity of the text for the audience. The company’s dedication to Shakespeare’s language and the rigor with which they approach the texts can be seen in their regular integration of scholarly talks with their performances. The intellectual aspects of their productions also play an important role in attracting hipster interest. In the midst of all the irony and pastiche, postmodern hipsters desire intellectual engagement and critical thought. NYSX offers a combination of playful experimentation with insightful scholarship which appeals to hipster sensibilities. 1.5 Crafting an Argument: Chapter Breakdown Chapter 2, “Precursors to the Postmodern Hipster,” will briefly examine some of the subcultures that predate the neo-bohemian. The chapter’s purpose is to demonstrate that the postmodern hipster is related to previous subcultural groups and to contextualize some of the modes of rebellion that this latest subculture employs. The groups described include the bohemians, the Jazz Age hipster of the 1930s and 1940s, the Beats of the 1950s, the hippies of the 1960s, and the punks of the 1970s and 1980s. This chapter does not attempt to summarize the significant scholarship devoted to each of these subcultures, but rather provides an overview of their most relevant characteristics, including fashion choices, notable ideologies, and their connection to the arts and literature of their particular moments. The commonalities 25 between the neo-bohemian and their predecessors are telling. Earlier groups featured a penchant for pastiche in clothing and objects and chafed against the expectations of white, middle-class society. It is also worth noting that each of the subcultures examined in chapter 2 consisted of predominantly white members. This fact is reflected in the way that the groups positioned themselves voluntarily as outsiders in contrast to mainstream, white culture. Their tendency to appropriate the cultural objects of the “other” demonstrates the members’ privileged societal position through their ability to put on and take off those objects. While the postmodern hipster demographic is more heterogeneous than their forebears, they are still overwhelmingly white. Finally, perhaps the strongest through-line for all of these subcultures is the desire for authenticity and being true to oneself. Chapter 2 shows that the neo-bohemian’s impulse towards authenticity, and the criticisms it often garners from the mainstream, has a foundation in the history of subcultural rebellion. Chapter 3 serves as an exploration of the postmodern hipster, with all of their many facets. First, the chapter establishes the criteria for identifying the postmodern hipster, a demographic that has gained notoriety in part because they are so difficult to describe. These hipsters rarely self-identify as such. The postmodern hipster is often described by “I know it when I see it,” so it is important to determine what, exactly, “it” means in regards to this subculture. Next, I make a case for the neo- bohemian serving as the ultimate cultural omnivore. I argue that the hipster displays a form of extreme omnivorism using theories and scholarship from the social sciences that address the cultural omnivore, a variant of Bourdieu’s categories of high and low 26 cultural consumers.43 They not only consume objects from various cultural statuses but combine those objects to create a bricolage in an effort to demonstrate their authenticity and individuality. A mixture of fashion choices from different periods provides an example of this. For instance, a male hipster might sport a handlebar mustache, skinny jeans cuffed at the ankles, a t-shirt from the summer camp he went to in 1994, and a fedora that his grandfather once wore. Their efforts to curate their interests in order to display authenticity, however, draw the ire of members of the mainstream. The chapter discusses this mainstream hatred of the postmodern hipster, and explains how they enact their rebellion against conventions. This rebellion manifests in the rejection of mass-produced food in favor of locally sourced and artisanal products, the preference for rented over owned housing, and the acquisition of quirky tattoos. Hipster irony, the intentional juxtaposing of cultural objects as an in-group form of humor, also plays a major role in their modes of rebellion. Chapter 3 proceeds to a discussion of race and the postmodern hipster, addressing their association with the Jazz Age hipster and Beats as well as their own direct relationship to cultural appropriation. Hipsters often adopt symbols and objects of marginalized cultures, as seen in the birth of “hipster-hop” and the popularity of 43 R.A. Peterson, “Problems in Comparative Research: The Example of Omnivorousness,” Poetics 33, no. 5–6 (2005): 257–82; Oriel Sullivan and Tally Katz-Gerro, “The Omnivore Thesis Revisited: Voracious Cultural Consumers,” European Sociological Review 23, no. 2 (April 1, 2007): 123–37, https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcl024; Koen van Eijck and John Lievens, “Cultural Omnivorousness as a Combination of Highbrow, Pop, and Folk Elements: The Relation between Taste Patterns and Attitudes Concerning Social Integration,” Poetics, Models of Omnivorous Cultural Consumption: New Directions in Research, 36, no. 2–3 (April 2008): 217–42, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2008.02.002; Alan Warde, David Wright, and Modesto Gayo-Cal, “Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness: Or, the Myth of the Cultural Omnivore,” Cultural Sociology 1, no. 2 (July 1, 2007): 143–64, https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975507078185; Alan Warde, L Martens, and W Olsen, “Consumption and the Problem of Variety: Cultural Omnivorousness, Social Distinction, and Dining Out,” Sociology 33, no. 1 (n.d.): 105–27. 27 tattoos that feature Native American imagery. Despite their progressive politics, neo- bohemians often face accusations of “Twitter activism,” the perception that posting on social media is the extent of their efforts towards social justice. For instance, while they may retweet a post from Black Lives Matter, they are perceived as being unwilling to show up to the organization’s physical demonstrations. Next, I explore the commodification of the postmodern hipster’s aesthetic and the ways that mainstream culture has adopted visual elements from the group. This adaptation on the part of the mainstream proves to be a common tactic in the face of rebellious subcultures: by infusing elements of the “out” group into popular culture, those methods of rebellion are diffused and made less threatening. Finally, the chapter makes a case for why hipsters might be attracted to Shakespeare’s works. Hipsters provide a largely untapped resource that Shakespeare companies could appeal to, due to the subculture’s role as conservers of objects of the past and their interest in intellectual and artistic pursuits. If Shakespeare is produced in an appropriately ironic and unexpected way, the postmodern hipster should be an easy audience member to attract. In order to explore the potential draw of alternative Shakespeares for the postmodern hipster, chapters 4 and 5 of Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare focus on one company in particular, the New York Shakespeare Exchange. NYSX follows a similar narrative to the companies mentioned above: a team of young-adult Shakespeare enthusiasts and theatre people come together to create something quirky, both to entertain themselves and to revitalize the plays that they love so dearly. In chapter 4, the origins of the company will be recounted, including a history of the 28 group’s productions. The chapter describes the mainstage productions that NYSX has undertaken in the years since their founding in 2009 using a combination of reviews, blog posts, marketing materials, and interviews. These accounts focus on the aspects of the productions that classify them as alternative Shakespeare, showing that the company regularly employs methods that chafe against ideas of traditional Shakespeare productions, such as design concepts that feature pastiche and color- conscious casting. Finally, chapter 5 examines some of NYSX’s endeavors beyond mainstage productions. The ShakesBEER Pub Crawl capitalizes on the traditionally low cultural position of bars by bringing Shakespeare performances to a series of watering holes over the course of an afternoon. The juxtaposition of low-status drinking with the perceived high status of Shakespeare is used by other alternative Shakespeare companies as well, but NYSX’s devotion to the works adds an element of erudition that other groups might not possess. Through a combination of thick description of some specific performance events and interviews with Ross Williams, the company’s Founding Artistic Director, the chapter analyzes and contextualizes the Pub Crawls. The next section studies the Sonnet Project, which NYSX launched to record short films of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. In addition to utilizing crowdfunding methods and making the films available on YouTube, the company also produced a phone app to make the Project accessible for the busy Shakespeare fan. The Pub Crawl and Sonnet Project then converged with the company’s mainstage productions to form the Intersections program, which provides a week-long residency by NYSX available to communities across the United States. For a fee that covers overhead costs and actor 29 housing and salaries, a group participating in the Intersections program gets a Pub Crawl, a variety of classes on Shakespeare and performance taught by NYSX’s company members, screenings of the Sonnet Project (and workshops in which students create their own sonnet films), and a culminating production of their mainstage show. Overall, chapters 4 and 5 provide a detailed portrait of how one alternative Shakespeare company operates and why their techniques might appeal to the postmodern hipster. The conclusion of Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare looks at the latest developments that NYSX has tackled and some of their plans for the future. A final interview with Williams provides insight into hopes for the company’s expansion and some thoughts about aspects of their past projects that need to adapt. This section also covers NYSX’s new Diversity Cohort, a group of playwrights that they have gathered to write new works inspired by Shakespeare. In selecting these playwrights, the company has intentionally chosen writers from a variety of ethnicities, gender identities, religious backgrounds, and physical abilities, with an eye towards both engaging these communities with Shakespeare and expanding the diversity of their pool of artists. The case study of this organization provides an example of the types of Shakespeare performances that can create audience members, and donors, for small, alternative companies. Building a foundation of young adult patrons through the infusion of contemporary life with Shakespeare and creating unexpected relationships between the past and the present could be a vital step for alternative Shakespeare companies to help secure their future. As audiences age and digital culture offers increasingly more entertainment choices, the postmodern 30 hipster, maligned by so many in the twenty-first century, could be exactly the demographic that these theatre companies need. 31 Chapter 2: Precursors to the Postmodern Hipster 2.1 Portlandia Explains it All An episode of the popular IFC television show Portlandia1 opens on a scene in Los Angeles, where neighbors Melanie (Carrie Brownstein) and Jason (Fred Armisen) run into each other on the sidewalk. Jason is eager to tell her about what he saw on his trip to Portland. He begins by saying “You remember the ‘90s, when everyone was pickling their own vegetables and brewing their own beer? People were growing out their mutton chops and waxing their handlebar mustaches?” Melanie wants to clarify “…The ‘90s?” Jason gets more excited: “Yeah! Everyone was knitting and sewing clothes for their children, people were wearing glasses all the time, like contact lenses had never been invented…” Melanie responds “Wait. Are we talking about the 1990s?” With wonder in his voice, Jason tells her “No… The 1890s…” Thus begins a music video featuring the chorus “The dream of the ‘90s is alive in Portland. Yes, the dream of the 1890s in Portland…” and a montage of various heavily bearded men in late-1800s clothing singing about the dream of the 1890s and performing the assorted antiquated tasks that Jason continues to describe to Melanie. “Remember in the 1890s when the economy was in a tailspin? Unwashed young men roamed the streets looking for work and people turned their backs on huge corporate monopolies and supported local businesses?” Jason asks. Melanie finally gets it “So from what you’re saying it’s like McKinley was never assassinated, like 1 Jonathan Krisel, “Cops Redesign,” Digital, Portlandia (IFC, 2015), Netflix. 32 the twentieth century never happened… People took streetcars. They rode inconvenient, gearless bicycles that hurt your back!” “Yeah!” Jason exclaims, and the video cuts back to a handlebar-mustachioed man on a penny-farthing bicycle and another bearded man (Armisen, again) carving his own ice cubes as the song finishes with its cast of 1890s characters standing together singing in an old-fashioned bar. This tongue-in-cheek sketch/music video is representative of most of Portlandia, a show whose entire premise is to spoof the hyper-hipster citizens of the Oregon city, known for their microbrews, quirky clothing, and interest in artisanal food and shopping local. But aside from drawing hilarious comparisons between the hobbies of modern Portlanders and the necessities of American life near the turn of the twentieth century, it also highlights that today’s hipster did not materialize out of nowhere or develop in a vacuum. Rather, they are very much a product of (and a reaction against) the modern world, turning to aspects of life and modes of creating food, clothing, and other items that existed before mass-production took hold of society and lengthened the distance between consumer and source. The sketch underlines the importance of looking at the historical roots of the postmodern hipster. In order to understand today’s hipster, their interests, and how Shakespeare companies could appeal to them and attract new audience members, one has to understand previous iterations of the hipster. By exploring the different styles, ideals, and rebellions of past generations, one can then look more closely at both the ways that the postmodern hipster fits in with this subcultural genealogy and how they diverge. The postmodern hipsters are a subculture with deep and winding roots, related to earlier, predominantly white groups like the punks of the 1970s and 1980s, 33 the hippies of the 1960s, the beats of the 1950s, the jazz hipsters of the 1930s and 1940s, and yes, even the bohemians living “the dream of the 1890s.” 2.2 Hipster Origins, and Why They Matter The Introduction briefly outlined this dissertation’s criteria for classifying a person as a hipster. What follows here is an examination of some of the subculture’s origins, and chapter 3 will provide a detailed look at the postmodern hipster, their interests, and consumption practices. Urban Dictionary provides several different definitions for “hipster.” The most up-voted definition was supplied by “Terry Parasuco” on 22 November 2007: “Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.”2 This definition, which overwhelms the 429 other definitions provided with over 184,692 up-votes as of January 27, 2018, is surprisingly non-partisan when compared with the other explanations that follow it. The one that comes in second, with 28,709 votes, was posted by “Stormageddon Dark Lord of All” on 6 October 2011, and simply states that “Hipsters can’t be defined, because then they’d fit in a category, and thus be too mainstream.” Vitriol quickly emerges in the 3rd- and 4th- ranked explanations. “Spanielx” (2009) indicates a hipster is “Someone who listens to bands you've never heard of, wears ironic tee-shirts, and believes they are better than 2 “Hipster,” Urban Dictionary, accessed January 12, 2017, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster. 34 you.”3 While “haditonvinyl” (2010) suggests “A hipster is someone who is smart enough to talk about philosophy, music, politics, art, etc. with you all day long, but not smart enough to see how big of a tool s/he is.”4 Just this cursory glance at the most popular definitions on Urban Dictionary reveals the complicated nature of the subculture. Many people who are familiar with the group, even the hipsters themselves, perceive them through a negative lens, and are eager to label them as poseurs and self-absorbed windbags.5 The fluid nature of the definition of the postmodern hipster and the refusal of many to claim ownership of the label can present challenges when researching them as a cohesive group. How can we study a group of people when they do not identify as the group we are trying to pinpoint? This phenomenon is hardly new, and the following accounts provide examples of scholars analyzing and identifying groups that resisted such identification; that same resistance seen in the hipster does not make them unidentifiable. In fact, the difficulty in identifying and classifying members of a subculture is one of the fundamental issues that scholars repeatedly come up against in subcultural studies. Ross Haenfler—in his work studying deviance and youth subcultures called Goths, Gamers, and Grrrls—asserts that “Subcultures are rarely clearly delineated, closed groups; rather, they are fluid networks constantly interacting and overlapping with other scenes and elements of popular culture.”6 3 “Hipster.” 4 “Hipster.” 5 One of the recurring themes in the Urban Dictionary definitions—as well as the definitions gathered in various news articles, blog posts, and general conversations about hipsters—is that a true hipster refuses to admit that they are a hipster. 6 Ross Haenfler, Goths, Gamers, & Grrrls: Deviance and Youth Subcultures, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3. 35 Many subcultures fail to fit neatly into tidy definitions that would make studying them a straightforward task, but scholars have persevered nonetheless. Subcultural membership is constantly changing and overlapping, and in our age of instant communication and social media, subculturists are able to borrow from other groups more quickly than ever. Subcultures do not have to be centered around a particular political cause or movement, and many participants “are interested primarily in having a good time rather than making some sort of critical statement about the larger culture.”7 Various scholars have commented on the porous nature of subcultures, using words like “neo-tribes” and “scenes” to describe the heterogeneous quality of many groups and the way that few participants live a life completely devoted to the subculture.8 Subculture today is closely related to contemporary consumer culture, with youths “shopping” for various styles and elements in an effort to create an individual aesthetic that they can claim as their own.9 Despite all of these variables that complicate the categorization of subcultures, however, …there are still recognizably distinct subcultures, characterized by relative distinctiveness, a common identity, commitment, and community… For all the overlap between subcultures and subcultural identities, for all the blending, sharing, and mixing, many youth still tend to distinguish their identity from that of others, congregating in relatively coherent groupings.10 7 Haenfler, 6. 8 See Michael Maffesoli, The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, London: Sage; Andy Bennett, “Subcultures or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste,” Sociology 33(3): 599-617; Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson, eds., Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004; Ted Polhemus, “In the Supermarket of Style”, in The Clubcultures Reader, eds. Steve Redhead, Derek Wynne, and Justin O’Connor, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, 148-51. 9 Haenfler, Goths, Gamers, & Grrrls: Deviance and Youth Subcultures, 7. 10 Haenfler, 8. 36 By examining the groups from the twentieth century, one glimpses several of the building blocks that created the foundations of this current movement, as well as some of the general trends of subcultures and their study. Given the challenges in discussing the postmodern hipster—including disdain on the part of many of those who have already written about them, the members’ refusal to claim their membership, and the absorption of hipster style into the mainstream—it is important to trace the origins of the group in order to place it in its historical context and understand the subcultural traditions that this hipster both upholds and subverts. That understanding facilitates the discussions of the postmodern hipster in chapter 3. The present chapter will briefly outline some of the most well-known subcultures in which one sees the glimmering beginnings of the current hipster. These precursors are all what Dick Hebdige would call “spectacular subcultures,” those that rely heavily on physical presentation to distinguish them from the rest of society.11 Such groups call attention to issues of class and the general difference between themselves and those around them through nonconformity and their use of physical identifiers such as clothing, behavior, and consumerism. The twentieth century fostered the Bohemians, the Jazz Age hepster/hipster, the Beat poets of the 1950s, hippies of the 1960s, and the punks of the 1970s and 80s. When viewed together, trends emerge in these mostly white subcultures that formed the groundwork for a new, unique youth movement (that in fact is not as new or unique as many assume). The following discussion surveys the extant literature to provide a 11 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1988), 91–92. 37 succinct overview of these subcultures. Each section glosses some of the most important aspects of the subculture—such as fashion, ideals, and methods of rebellion—and references scholars who have written about each group. Much of this information is general knowledge, and is included here to outline a pattern of behavior that provides a foundation to explore the postmodern hipster. These brief summaries, however, reveal the economic power of subcultures and their ability to influence and inform mainstream methods and modes of consumption, and why postmodern hipsters are a potentially lucrative group for alternative Shakespeare companies to attract. 2.3 The Bohemian: The Original Hipster? Perhaps the best place to start when tracing the origins of the hipster is with one of the original subcultures that stood on the outskirts of “proper” white society, intriguing for their strange dress and artistic endeavors. Their attraction to and enjoyment of the freedom enjoyed by those outside the mainstream have made the bohemian a romantic historical figure and a cornerstone in the founding of the avant- garde. In some ways they were the first subculture to convey a sense of “cool” that was emulated by those who were not bohemian by necessity, but who adopted the attire and gestures of bohemianism in an effort to acquire a specific kind of authenticity.12 Associated with artists and writers, in particular, American bohemians 12 R. Jay Magill Jr., Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), 145. 38 trace their roots to nineteenth-century Paris. As bohemianism spread in the United States before and after the Civil War, the artistically inclined were drawn to the lifestyle, dressing unconventionally in loose clothing, promoting the romantic ideal that the human spirit was the most important guiding force, and often living in poverty by choice. Pursuing artistic endeavors and drinking with their fellow intellectuals in bars and saloons, bohemians idealized nature but also flocked to cities in order to be around their fellows who had been romanticized in novels and newspaper articles. Before the turn of the twentieth century, writer Frank Norris was disappointed by what he found when he finally reached his mecca, New York City. Once he had achieved his goal of moving there, he accused his fellow artists in Greenwich Village of being “dilettantes and decadents who drank their beer from teacups.”13 Such accusations continue to be the kind of complaints aimed at postmodern hipsters, who are also blamed for superficiality and absurd consumption habits (although teacups of beer have yet to come back in style). One of the central characteristics of the bohemian, from the subculture’s nascence in the nineteenth century, is their unconventionality. Bohemians were often self-imposed outcasts who embraced progressive lifestyles (free-love movements were not uncommon in bohemian groups) and artistic and intellectual endeavors (some of the greatest contributions to the avant-garde have been from those who pursued unapologetically bohemian lifestyles). Members of the middle class in the early twentieth century regularly 13 Ross Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 6. 39 accused the bohemians of being mostly made up of poseurs, rather than authentically transgressive and artistic people. This accusation, the “perennial bourgeois response to bohemia,” always aims to invalidate the lives of those who live alternatively, as well as minimize the threat to mainstream culture that alternative lifestyles pose.14 Indeed, this reaction finds a voice in the criticisms of many of the later subcultures that will be explored, and is perhaps the most common opposition to the postmodern hipster expressed by those who disapprove of them. Mike Sell, in his article “Bohemianism, the Cultural Turn of the Avant-garde, and Forgetting the Roma,”15 discusses the contradictions inherent in the bohemian. Concurrently drawn to and associated with the new and often shocking—“the outre, the newest import, freshest hybrid, hardest drug”—they are also lovers of the past— “the first edition, dusty paste jewelry, forgotten vinyl records …the graffiti- and bill- encrusted walls of their grimy haunts.”16 These interests point to one of the key characteristics of both the past and present bohemian: the search for authenticity. This search often takes one to the historical past and its objects in order to find a style, art, and/or belief system that feels genuine and unique. While “to be bohemian is to be memorialist,” the objects and moments of remembrance do not need to be major historical artifacts, since the bohemian looks for “devalued places and moments, in the greasy remains of a low-budget banquet…or the flash of passion that disrupts sacrosanct sexual, racial, or class boundaries.”17 This challenge to authority and the 14 Wetzsteon, 8. 15 Mike Sell, “Bohemianism, the Cultural Turn of the Avant-Garde, and Forgetting the Roma,” TDR 51, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 41–59. 16 Sell, 42. 17 Sell, 48. 40 deliberate way in which the original bohemians portrayed themselves as “different” and “other” is indicative of the inherent theatricality of the bohemian’s rebellion, as well as the performances of later subcultures. Mary Gluck, in “Theorizing the Cultural Roots of the Bohemian Artist,” discusses the need that the bohemian had for this performative style of personal presentation as a “rebel.” 18 Because Bohemia’s “alternative vision cannot be found in any literary text or ideological tract produced by members of Bohemia… it was, rather, performed through gestures, clothes, lifestyle, and interior decoration.”19 This theatricality, however, puts the bohemian in a difficult position because it concurrently challenges their claims to authenticity. The theatricality of the early bohemian was often problematic for them. They were seen as appropriating the style of the Roma while actually being (often bourgeois) non-Roma youth who were drawn to the fashion and lifestyle of the marginalized “other.” Another fact of bohemian life was its conflation with the wandering Roma (colloquially and controversially known as the “gypsy”).20 This wandering spirit of the bohemian is often characterized romantically as belonging to those who are “lost” or “different,” traveling to new places in order to find other people like themselves. The quest to live separately from the rest of white society provided a sense of freedom. The separation was not just geographical, but also ideological, providing the bohemian with the space necessary to transgress society’s 18 Mary Gluck, “Theorizing the Cultural Roots of the Bohemian Artist,” Modernism/Modernity 7, no. 3 (n.d.): 351–78. 19 Gluck, 356. 20 Sell rightly points out that this is a dangerous comparison, since the Roma have been the very real victims of racism and genocide, both blatant (by the Nazis, for example) and systemic (they are often abused and neglected by the social safety nets in the countries where they reside). 43. 41 fashions, morality, and customs. Living like a bohemian was meant to keep one in close proximity to the difficulties of real life, and therefore “kept one young and sincere.”21 The bohemians of Greenwich Village in the early twentieth century placed themselves in contrast to the constraints imposed on middle class society: “Whatever their individual obsessions—socialism, anarchism, feminism, pacifism, free verse, cubism, Freudianism, free love, birth control—the Villagers were allied in an assault on social oppression, cultural gentility, and moral repression.”22 A survey of Greenwich Village bohemians in Harold Stearns’s 1922 Civilization in the United States, An Inquiry by Thirty-six Americans found that they felt that mainstream America “lacked emotion; Americans were hypocritical and shallow and cared nothing for culture; American values were misplaced in purely commercial activity.”23 The main goal that united the bohemians was self-fulfillment through self- expression and the ability to determine one’s own path in life.24 Authenticity in the face of industrialization and the commercialization that mass production intensified serves as a central feature of the bohemian lifestyle, proving to be an ideological through-line that connects the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century bohemian to their later subcultural counterparts throughout the twentieth century. 21 Magill Jr., Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull), 145. 22 Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960, 11. 23 Magill Jr., Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull), 149. 24 Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960, 11. 42 2.4 The Jazz-Age Hipster and Rebellion through Appropriation The next step on the journey to the postmodern bohemian, and where the word “hipster” originates, is during the Jazz Age in the years between World Wars I and II. The Oxford English Dictionary credits Jack Smiley with the first written instance of “hipster” in his 1941 book Hash House Lingo, which defined the slang of the 1930s and 1940s diner.25 There, Smiley tells the reader that a hipster is “a know-it-all.”26 Identifying the origin of the word results in a bit of circuitous searching. Related to “hep” and “hep-cat,” both words that developed within the jazz community to describe someone who understood what jazz was about and was on the cutting edge, “hipster” eventually emerged as a condescending pejorative. One of the popular tales for the origin of the word “hep,” and thus “hip,” is that it was derived from the Wolof language, spoken in Senegal and Gambia, and was used among enslaved peoples from West Africa. Unfortunately, as Jesse Sheidlower, a former editor of the OED and president of the American Dialect Society, points out, there is no evidence to support the claim.27 The word “hep” first came into use at the turn of the twentieth century, and was not widely used by African Americans until the 1930s when jazz and swing music were the pinnacle of American cool.28 Regardless of its murky beginnings, though, “hep” morphed into “hip,” and the word “hipster” appeared. The relationship of the jazz hipster to the postmodern hipster proves important, 25 Jack Smiley, Hash House Lingo, n.d. 26 Smiley, 31. 27 Jesse Sheidlower, “Crying Wolof,” Slate, December 8, 2004, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2004/12/crying_wolof.html. 28 Sheidlower. 43 particularly to understanding the neo-bohemian’s relationship to cultural appropriation. “Hipster” originally referred to black jazz musicians, but soon came to indicate white jazz enthusiasts who followed the music partly as a way to demonstrate their own rebelliousness. Jazz musicians were a different type of bohemian, living on the fringes of society due to their race or, in the case of early white jazz musicians, their association with blackness. When jazz developed, it created a musical outlet for both the pain and joy of African Americans, and ignited an intense debate in white America over its “appropriateness,” all the while revolutionizing music and dance. Jazz brought black and white together in a way that had never been done before. This birth of cool “is…a marriage that would come to dominate the entire Western cultural world—and beyond—by the end of the century.”29 The reasons for embracing jazz music were different for black jazz musicians and their white hipster followers. While black artists were chafing against centuries of oppression, white hipsters were reacting to what they saw as the strict societal expectations for success that they had to live up to.30 The popularity of jazz among white people developed partly because of the rebelliousness of associating with African American culture and, often, traveling to African American neighborhoods. In New York City in the early decades of the twentieth century, Harlem quickly transformed into an area for black residents through a combination of “white 29 Magill Jr., Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull), 146. 30 Magill Jr., 146–49. 44 flight,” the relocation of major black institutions moving up to Harlem from downtown, and the eventual housing restrictions instituted by landlords in other neighborhoods that prohibited the rent or sale of properties to black people. Once it became clear that black New Yorkers had few other options for where to live in the city, Harlem landlords began to raise rents while refusing to invest in building improvements, knowing they had a captive population. Overcrowding and poor living conditions led to high mortality rates and a prevalence of illegal activity, and the area was labeled a “vice district.”31 The forbidden and vaguely dangerous image of the neighborhood made it all the more attractive for “wealthy white slummers” to visit, going up at night to partake in the clubs and cabarets of Harlem that “catered directly to whites’ perceptions of African Americans as self-indulgent pleasure-seekers.”32 The popularity of jazz dancing in the early twentieth century inspired considerable debate about the appropriateness of such a pastime for white people. One camp disapproved of the music completely as immoral and lascivious, while those in favor of it felt the need to rationalize its appeal and explain why it was beneficial to white participants. One of the repeated refrains of jazz’s white supporters at the time was that it allowed “civilized” white people the opportunity to get in touch with their more “primitive” roots. According to the eugenicists whose theories were popular at the time, Anglo-Saxons had evolved “beyond the stages of savagery and barbarity to the highest state of rational civilization, while 31 Nicholas M. Evans, “‘Racial Cross-Dressing’ in the Jazz Age: Cultural Therapy and Its Discontents in Cabaret Nightlife,” in Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, ed. Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane Shattuck (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 393. 32 Evans, 394. 45 ‘contemporary primitives’ such as African Americans had not advanced beyond a lower position on the scale—and could never do so…”33 What the excessively restrictive “civilization” of the Victorian period had resulted in, however, was a widespread phenomenon of feelings “of unstable selfhood, of widespread emotional debilitation, anxiety, and nervousness, manifesting the condition known as neurasthenia.”34 These feelings developed in the face of a changing society, with more modernization and industrialization limiting individualism and the perceived possibility of upward mobility among middle-class white Americans. According to Nicholas Evans, this conflict between the celebration of jazz’s primitive qualities and the anxiety about its black roots led to a “racial cross- dressing”35 in which white people performed “a conscious or unconscious imitation of ‘black’ behavior,” one that allowed whites “the luxury of playing with stereotypical ‘black’ behavior while leaving intact both the stereotypes and the illusion of absolute racial difference that they perpetuate.”36 The focus on the sensuality of jazz music by white hipsters came from a desire to explore their own sexuality but still maintain a distance from it: “in an implicitly imperial relation, whites attributed to blacks the sexuality they believed lacking in themselves, so that ambivalent identification with black figures gave imagined access to that sexuality.”37 33 Evans, 396. 34 Evans, 395. 35 Evans adopts this term from Eric Lott’s essay “White Like Me: Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of American Whiteness” (in Cultures of United States Imperialism, Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). 36 Evans, “‘Racial Cross-Dressing’ in the Jazz Age: Cultural Therapy and Its Discontents in Cabaret Nightlife,” 391. 37 Evans, 391. 46 As a result, white hipsters participated in a kind of blackface while dancing to jazz music, putting on jazz dance in the same way others used grease paint.38 This complicated relationship with African American culture eventually developed into another important touchstone in the history of the hipster: the Beat Generation and Norman Mailer’s “white negro.”39 2.5 The Mid-Twentieth Century Hipster: The Beats and “The White Negro” The middle of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a new American ethos in the aftermath of World War II, and subcultures developed in reaction. When Norman Mailer wrote his nine-thousand word essay “The White Negro,” it was in the midst of what would come to be known as the “mass society,” a social order in which individualism was being threatened in favor of a structured culture full of rules and expectations for appropriate behavior and life choices. The mores of the 1950s are exemplified by the decade’s television, with Donna Reed dutifully caring for home and husband. Father Knows Best featured another perfect family in which the businessman patriarch left for work every day in his gray flannel suits and came home every night to a hot meal prepared by his wife with the latest state-of-the-art appliances. Mass production and the affluence of post-World War II society meant that life was easier for many Americans than it had been in previous generations, but society itself was oppressive in order to maintain that affluence. Individuals’ thoughts 38 Evans, 392. 39 Norman Mailer, “The White Negro,” Dissent, 1957. 47 and desires were being ignored in the quest to keep the country running smoothly.40 The hipster emerged as a figure chafing against this new structure: “The hipster [was] an underground man. He [was] to the Second World War what the Dadaist was to the first. He [was] amoral, anarchistic, gentle, and overcivilized [sic] to the point of decadence.”41 Writers like Mailer and Jack Kerouac were eager to break out of this system of the mass society, and Mailer’s “The White Negro” sought to describe the circumstances of the young men who were unsatisfied with becoming instruments of mass culture. Mailer was being faced with the so-called “Organization Man” of the 1950s, a figure for whom the ideals of individualism no longer mattered, supplanted by a reverence for the larger organizations of society, a desire to contribute to those organizations, and to trust their demands and beliefs. Unsurprisingly, young people began to rebel against this archetype and create their own answer to it, in the process morphing the meaning of the “hipster” for the second time. The Beat Generation, which developed after World War II, essentially melded the bohemian with the jazz hipster. In “The White Negro” Mailer outlines the mid- century hipster’s origins and principles. The 1950s were a period in which many were still struggling to comprehend the most widespread, devastating events in human history. People had lived through World War I, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and finally World War II, an unprecedentedly destructive thirty years that climaxed in 40 Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 52–73. 41 Robert Reisner, Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker (New York: De Capo Press, 1962), 25. 48 concentration campus and atomic bombs; the order and structure of the 1950s were the pervasive responses. Mailer explains that after World War II: …one was then obliged… to see that no matter how crippled and perverted an image of man was, the society he had created, it was nonetheless his creation… and if society was so murderous, then who could ignore the most hideous questions about his own nature? One could hardly maintain the courage to be individual, to speak with one’s own voice, for the years in which one could complacently accept oneself as part of an elite by being a radical were forever gone.42 For Mailer, society was full of Organization Men because people no longer had the courage, after seeing the pointlessness of death and inferring a corresponding pointlessness to life, to maintain their own individualism and face the monstrousness of their own humanity. The modern existentialist, the hipster, emerged out of the futility of life and death experienced by many in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The hipster was a direct answer to the conformist “square,” and the main philosophical difference between the two, according to Mailer, was that the hipster had the courage to fail, given success meant conforming. Mailer describes the reverence that the Beat had for African Americans, who he felt possessed certain inherent qualities that served as the model for the hipster lifestyle. Black Americans, Mailer explains, had “been living on the margin between totalitarianism and democracy for two centuries,” and their creation of jazz was the result. The constant danger faced by the Negro from the moment of birth was now understood by the white existentialist who had faced a similar reality in the modern world of destruction and violence. Hipsters and Negroes were connected by their 42 Mailer, “The White Negro.” 49 “collective disbelief in the words of men who had too much money and controlled too many things,” and both groups “knew almost as powerful a disbelief in the socially monolithic ideas of the single mate, the solid family, and the respectable love life…”43 In urban centers of bohemianism and petty crime, this subset of white America came in contact with the Negro, and the language of Hip “gave expression to abstract states of feeling which all could share; at least all who were Hip. And in this wedding of the white and the black it was the Negro who brought the cultural dowry.”44 Mailer’s blatant language of appropriation, his idealization and oversimplification of the struggles of African Americans, and his suggestion that a white American could understand the experience of their black countrymen, feels antiquated today, if not patently offensive. Such language also explains the source of some of the animosity and confusion surrounding the term “hipster” expressed by many older Americans or those aware of the cultural history of the term. But Mailer does provide in his essay some characteristics that can be applied to the other groups discussed in this chapter: a sense of independence and individualism, a resistance to being perceived as a member of the mass society around them, and even a system of dichotomies and dialectics that define their aesthetic and philosophies. Black Americans, “mistily observed through the self-consciously topical prose of Norman Mailer or the breathless panegyrics of Jack Kerouac… could serve for white youth as 43 Mailer. 44 Mailer. 50 the model of freedom-in-bondage.”45 The Beats searched for the kind of authenticity to oneself that they saw as lacking in the country around them, often using modern art, literature, and film to proclaim “suburban middle-class taste as sick, unnatural, and repressed…. If all that was bourgeois made sense and was consumable and pretty, art’s job was to stand against it.”46 Mainstream culture’s reaction to the Beats and its method of disarming the subculture’s transgressive power was through mockery.47 The term “beatnik” developed as a way to diffuse the power of the image of the Beat hipster, adding the Russian-sounding suffix “-nik” in order to imply an affinity with Communism. Soon the image of a goateed bongo drum player in a black turtleneck and beret became interchangeable with the Beats in the consciousness of middle-class America, despite the efforts of writers like Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg to distance themselves from this new stereotype.48 The hipster would change shape again, however, with the 1960s and the birth of the hippie. 2.6 The Mid-Twentieth Century Hipster, Take Two: Hippies and Commodified Cool The development of the hippie in the 1960s continued the theme of adopting a bohemian lifestyle as a challenge to mainstream culture’s rules and expectations. Today, the hippie conjures up images of predominantly white men and women 45 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 47–48. 46 Magill Jr., Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull), 164–65. 47 Stephen Petrus, “Rumblings of Discontent: American Popular Culture and Its Response to the Beat Generation, 1957-1960,” Studies in Popular Culture 20, no. 1 (1997): 1–17. 48 Petrus, 8. 51 frolicking at Woodstock, advocating for free love and non-violence and embracing bell-bottoms, loudly-colored and flamboyantly-printed tops, and accessories such as beads, glasses, and long hair.49 Appropriation of the seemingly exotic once again played a role in the rebellion, as hippies wore denim and the styles of people from mysterious places like Mexico and India. Turning away from American fashions was necessary because “all of inauthentic Western culture was to be discarded in exchange for the authentic other.”50 Technology inspired innovations in music and art, and hippies embraced those developments as a way to create new, authentic modes of expression while also celebrating nature. Part of the lasting impressions of the hippie stems directly from the efforts of advertising agencies to capitalize on the “coolness” of the subculture, commodifying the style of the hippie as a way consumers could, themselves, appear cool.51 In the 1960s, businesses discovered that the identities of individuals could be exploited for better sales, leading to the advent of market segmentation and demographic marketing, methods of marketing certain items differently to different groups and types of consumer.52 Instead of products being sold based on their usefulness or special features, they began to be advertised based on brand image and the public perception of particular companies. The pace of consumption accelerated drastically, and the rapid obsolescence of fashion and culture meant that consumers had to 49 The androgyny that appeared in the ‘60s and ‘70s foreshadow the postmodern hipster’s penchant for androgynous fashion. 50 Magill Jr., Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull), 170. 51 Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. 52 Frank. 52 continue consuming in order to remain hip: “hip became central to the way American capitalism understood itself and explained itself to the public.”53 Companies started to embrace the idea of the creative individual and the feeling of alienation inherent in that individual (as demonstrated by writers like Mailer and Kerouac), and began to use it in order to make their products cool. They found a particular affinity for the counterculture of the period, because the rebellion of its members meant that they were more willing to reject the products and tastes of the perceived establishment, and more likely to embrace new products with less suspicion than previous consumers.54 But, as is often the case with subcultures, the mainstream’s embrace led to an inevitable dilution of the counterculture and the adoption of their mores by the middle class. Michael Harrington, in an article for Esquire in 1972, lamented the changes that had occurred in Greenwich Village over the preceding decade: I wonder if the mass counterculture may not be a reflection of the very hyped and video-taped world it professes to despise. Bohemia could not survive the passing of its polar opposite and precondition, middle-class morality. Free love and all-night drinking and art for art’s sake were consequences of a single stern imperative: thou shalt not be bourgeois. But once the bourgeoisie itself became decadent—once businessmen started hanging nonobjective art in the boardroom—Bohemia was deprived of the stifling atmosphere without which it could not breathe.55 The hip need authority to oppose them. To be cool and transgressive, one must have something to rebel against. 53 Frank, 26. 54 Frank, 27. 55 Michael Harrington, “We Few, We Happy Few, We Bohemians,” Esquire, August 1972, 164. 53 The counterculture figure of the 1960s also faced the regular accusation that their movement “was apolitical and self-indulgent, or, when it did spill over into obviously political manifestations, confused and anarchistic.”56 Drugs and sex featured heavily in hippie culture, with adherents cultivating an aloof persona which hid “inopportune feelings behind a mask of indifference, disdain, or feigned delight.”57 The revolutionary bent of the hippie subculture emerged in opposition to the Vietnam War, a conflict that seemed pointless and was claiming countercultural members through the draft. The combination of the “earnest devotion to political change with ironic disengagement from a society they knew to be doing well but at the cost of the environment, peace, and spiritual wellness” remains the lasting image of the hippie today.58 But the opinion of their contemporaries focused on the counterculture’s apathy. The marketing revolution that occurred around them, capitalizing on and commodifying hippie “cool,” reached out to consumers who wanted to be non-conformists and rule-breakers. Those marketing campaigns solidified the revolutionary image of the 1960s counterculture and made rebellion a permanent way to sell products. Ironically, however, the normalization of the counterculture by the mainstream, along with economic difficulties in the 1970s, would produce another precursor to the postmodern hipster, the punks. But punk 56 Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, 29. 57 Magill Jr., Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion That We All Have Something to Say (No Matter How Dull), 171. 58 Magill Jr., 171. 54 rebellion rejected the gentleness of previous bohemian groups in favor of anger and shock value. 2.7 The Punk and Commodified Anger The 1970s brought a reaction against the feel-good, hippie-inspired messages of love and happiness that corporate American advertising had created in the 1960s.59 While the hippie utilized a variety of relaxed fashion trends in order to signify their refusal to conform to the strictures of mainstream culture, the punk signaled their disillusionment in a different way. Where the hippie wore loose clothing, long- flowing hair, and went barefoot, the punk demonstrated their feelings of oppression by using their clothes to exaggerate their hopelessness: tight pants and ripped shirts, hair dyed unnatural colors and shellacked into spikes all over their heads, and feet laced into Dr. Martens combat boots. One of the primary features of punk style was bricolage, with the group reproducing “the entire sartorial history of post-war working-class youth cultures in cut up form, combining elements which had originally belonged to completely different epochs.”60 The punks then combined these elements together by emphasizing the unnaturalness of the combinations, with pieces held together with safety pins, clothing pegs, and electrical tape. A foundation in philosophies of anarchy and nihilism, along with the cultural and financial upheaval of the 1970s, led to this group leaning in to their disillusionment, and 59 Neil Nehring, Popular Music, Gender, and Postmodernism: Anger Is an Energy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 98. 60 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 26. 55 turning their accessories into icons of their perceived oppression. Strait jackets and bondage straps and chains were often incorporated into outfits, and their intentionally incendiary and shocking behaviors were calculated methods of dramatizing their alienation.61 Punks found inspiration in the avant-garde visual and literary arts in their performances of self: Like Duchamp’s ‘ready mades’—manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items—a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon—could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion. Anything within or without reason could be turned into part of… ‘confrontation dressing’ so long as the rupture between natural and constructed context was clearly visible.62 Like the subcultures before them, the punks were often perceived as outsiders by choice, young white people who adopted punk elements in order to shock the adults in their lives. Their fashion elements and behaviors aggressively pushed their image as outcasts. With influences like Dadaism, Marxism, and Situationalism, the punks utilized avant-garde methods like “intentional provocation of the audience; use of untrained performers; and drastic reorganization (or disorganization) of accepted performative styles and procedures.”63 They embraced absurdity and irony in their artistic expressions. The desecration that punks employed reflected their feelings that improving the self and society were almost impossible goals.64 Aside from the fashions that the members wore, they also caused controversy with their language, 61 Hebdige, 107. 62 Hebdige, 106–7. 63 Tricia Henry, Break All Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 1. 64 Henry, 97. 56 music, and art. One of the most well-known facets of the punk subculture is punk rock music. Loud and repetitive, featuring electric instruments and screaming vocals, and with titles like “Belsen was a Gas,” “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” and “Blitzkrieg Bop,” punk rock aimed to shock with its irreverence. The punks even took to using the swastika as an empty icon, deploying it as a demonstration of the pointlessness of imbuing meaning to signs and symbols.65 The style of script used in art of punk literary magazines and on album covers also signified their position on the outskirts of society: graffiti-style typography that looked like it was spray painted and individual letters cut out of magazines and newspapers to create words that looked like they were from a ransom note were both aesthetics associated with criminal activity. Sexuality played a role in the punks’ efforts to shock others, both in the flaunting of sex and through androgynous fashion (particularly for punk women). Violating the ideas of polite society regarding sex and gender furthered the punk agenda of shock and awe. Members of the punk subculture also faced questions about their authenticity. The subculture’s signs and symbols were employed to convey an air of white, working-class struggle, but their performativity made it difficult to pinpoint what kind of class background individual punks actually came from. As with the subcultures before them, and the postmodern hipster after them, many punks presumably came from respectable, middle-class families. The punk also demonstrates another characteristic of subcultures: the dilution of the philosophical rebellion as secondary 65 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 116–17. 57 and tertiary adopters joined the movement. While the original innovators understood the meaning and reasoning behind fashion and symbolic choices, as the group gained recognition through the media later adopters were less likely to understand the subversion of symbols that the subculture celebrated.66 This pattern emerges as a regular facet of any subculture, and the social mechanisms of the mainstream culture (media, advertising, fashion producers) make the movement less threatening by absorbing its elements and calling into question the authenticity of its subversion.67 2.8 A Pastiche Puzzle: Building Blocks of the Postmodern Hipster One of the commercial realities in the decades following the “hip revolution” of the 1960s has been that marketing and the entertainment industry have appropriated youth culture and are even responsible, to some extent, for creating new trends deemed “cool” and “hip.” How can young people be rebelling against conformist consumer capitalism when they are trapped in a cycle of consumption in which their objects of rebellion are products of that same force? As Thomas Frank explains, one way that the young get around this dilemma is by using these products “in ways that are divergent or contradictory to their manufacturer’s oppressive intent”: Whatever form prefabricated youth cultures are given by their mass-culture originators ultimately doesn’t matter: they are quickly taken apart and reassembled by alienated young people in startlingly novel subcultures. As with the counterculture, it is transgression itself, the never-ending race to violate norms, that is the key to resistance.68 66 Hebdige, 122. 67 Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960, 7–8. 68 Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, 17. 58 This theory of transgressive consumption is perfectly demonstrated in subcultures of the latter half of the twentieth century. For the hippies and punks, these consumers take objects that are not considered cool by mainstream culture and reassemble them into a pastiche of styles that creates a new aesthetic. The “never-ending race to violate norms” means that as soon as a new norm is created the early adopters have to move on to something else in order to continually conform to their personal identity of non- conformity. The absorption of transgressive elements into popular culture comes in part from the mass culture’s need to make concessions to the hip: “it must make gestures toward an inversion of values… mass culture only makes concessions to them from necessity.”69 This creation of pastiche by mixing various elements of the mainstream has perhaps reached its pinnacle in the form of rebellion used by the postmodern hipster. In fact, one can take various characteristics of past subcultures in order to create this new group: the love of both the new and the old found in the bohemians, the appropriation of the jazz hipsters, the intellectualism of the Beats, the perceived apathy of the hippies and the mainstream’s efforts to commodify their style, the punks’ bricolage and active subversion of mainstream symbols, and the search for authenticity found in all five of the groups discussed in this chapter. The through-line of authenticity relates to each group’s interests in the arts, relaxed attitudes towards sex and drugs, and resistance to entering the traditional workforce. The following chapter will look more closely at the elements that define the postmodern hipster, the often-negative reaction to them, and the commodification of 69 Frank, 18. 59 their fashion and aesthetic. It will conclude with an explanation of why the postmodern hipster is a prime demographic for alternative Shakespeare productions. These two chapters serve as the foundation for the second half of the dissertation, a case study of the New York Shakespeare Exchange. 60 Chapter 3: The Postmodern Hipster In Hip: The History, John Leland asserts that moments of significant hipness occur during periods of economic and technological change.1 The great movements in hip have all coincided with new products, happily consumed by the hip as part of their desire to be on the cutting edge. One need not look too far past the turn of the twenty-first century to see how this particular period fits this theory of hip incubation. Internet culture and social media completely revolutionized the way that Americans, and particularly teenagers and young adults, perceive and interact with the world around them. The perception and performance of oneself on these digital platforms has created a culture of self-reflexivity and expanded the reach of the individual’s day-to-day “audience” of friends and acquaintances. Rather than just being concerned with how they are perceive in physical interactions, citizens of the twenty-first century often cultivate an online narrative of life events, activities, and accomplishments unthinkable even twenty years earlier. Americans in 2018 have incorporated Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and any number of other social media platforms into their daily lives. Even the president of the United States participates in his own performance of self through his regular bombastic tweets. It seems only natural that these new performance venues would spawn new subcultures among young adults as groups discover novel ways to express and demonstrate their divergence from mainstream culture. As for economic changes in 1 John Leland, Hip: The History (New York: Harper Perennial, 2004), 61. 61 the twenty-first century, these, too, have disproportionately affected those under forty. Student loan debt among young adults has increased dramatically, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that seven in ten of 2016’s college graduates had student debt, averaging $37,172.2 Young people are putting off major purchases like cars or homes for later in life. In 2005, 33.6 percent of all US homeowners were under the age of forty-four, and by 2015, that number was 25.2 percent.3 The financial prospects of young Americans have shifted significantly over the century’s first seventeen years, and youth culture has adjusted accordingly: a new style of hip has emerged in the form of the postmodern hipster, or neo-bohemian. Identifying the postmodern hipster has become more difficult in recent years for reasons of consumerism and commodification. Leland is helpful once again in explaining why and how the lines between hipsters and everyone else have blurred with his theory of the dissemination of “hip”: Hip is an ethos of individualism, but it tends to grow in cliques. It has an epidemiology. In its larval, pre-hip stage, it is a creed without followers, out of rhythm with whatever is hip at the time. Only the abject, isolated or beat down are willing to sign on. In relative isolation, a small group of individuals, forsaking the general trends around them, give each other permission to do something new. They develop their own slang as part of their group identity, and encourage each other’s idiosyncrasies as badges of membership. As the inventions become more flamboyant or cohere as a style, a second, slightly broader circle begins to adopt some of the gestures- and in turn to transmit these to a circle slightly broader than itself. With each expansion, something is lost… Individuals in close company exchange ideas and push each other to extreme behaviors, either through encouragement or one-upmanship. The successively larger circles, though appreciative and even imitative, are to 2 Josh Mitchell, “Student Debt Is About to Set Another Record, But the Picture Isn’t All Bad,” WSJ (blog), May 2, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/05/02/student-debt-is-about-to-set-another- record-but-the-picture-isnt-all-bad/. 3 U. S. Census Bureau, “American FactFinder - Results,” accessed January 11, 2017, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_15_1YR_S25 02&prodType=table. 62 increasing degrees passive consumers, taking what suits them and shaping it to their own needs.4 The trend Leland identifies can be seen in the other subcultures discussed in chapter 2, and this dissemination seems to be a process by which a group is made less threatening or different: as its style is absorbed into the mainstream, the subculture loses some of its “otherness.” This explanation contributes to this dissertation’s relatively broad interpretation of what a postmodern hipster is. While the subculture may have initially developed in a very small pocket of urban America, it has grown and thrived in the face of a social media culture that has made the “adoption of gestures” fast and expansive. I argue that because of this rapid diffusion the category of “hipster” is much broader than it once was, infusing the mainstream with a penchant for retro (see the Instagram photo app which allows everyone to give a 1970s patina to a picture of their cat) and an appreciation of ironic humor (seen in the popularity of irony-heavy television shows like 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation). For our purposes, hipsters are adults roughly between the ages of twenty and forty who enjoy creating a pastiche of modern life with retro or vintage fashion and objects, exhibit a desire for ironic juxtapositions, and cultivate an interest in the arts and culture. This chapter aims to provide an objective analysis and clearer understanding of why this subculture developed and show how they are, in many ways, a logical progression of the rebellion against authority that is such a staple of youth culture in general, and American youth culture in particular. 4 Leland, Hip: The History, 69. 63 The difficulty in classifying the hipster is one of the first roadblocks to discussing them as a subculture. A commonly heard refrain in discussions about hipsters is “I know it when I see it,” and outsiders regularly condemn the neo- bohemian for lacking the political ideology and social commentary that now seems inherent in preceding youth subcultures. This chapter aims to identify the ways in which the neo-bohemian fits into the overarching narrative of modern and postmodern subcultural development, and will identify the common threads that bind the members of this group to each other. Throughout this chapter I build on the work of scholars who have written extensively on the postmodern hipster and their reception. First, I will establish what, exactly, constitutes a hipster, based on both non-academic sources and cultural studies scholarship. That definition involves a discussion of the use of the term “postmodern” to refer to the hipster, a connection of the subculture to the concept of the cultural omnivore, and a look at hipsters’ particular brand of rebellion. I then examine the phenomenon of hipster bashing, looking at why they draw so much disdain, why no one wants to claim to be a hipster, and how race is a problematic area within the hipster subculture. Finally, I look at hipsters and consumption—what they consume and why—to contextualize my discussion of why theatre companies who produce Alternative Shakespeare could benefit from intentionally reaching out to and trying to attract hipster audience members. While a definitive ethnographic study of the hipster is beyond the scope of this project, I will identify the primary characteristics of the postmodern hipster and survey the existing literature to provide a foundation for the case studies that follow. 64 Figure 1. A male hipster in an advertisement for “Astor Rectangular Eyeglasses” from retailer Vint & York. “ASTOR Rectangular Eyeglasses-Vint and York.” 2017. Image. Retrieved from https://www.vintandyork.com/men/optical/astor-313.html. Accessed January 25, 2018. Figure 2. A female hipster from a fashion blog. “Hipster Girl Fashion—Fashion Design Images.” 2017. http://www.jiangluosan.net/HipsterGirlFashion7ddhbbomb/. Accessed January 25, 2018. 65 3.1 The Neo-Bohemian as Subculture The works of Hebdige and Haenfler discussed in chapter 2 are useful in outlining the postmodern hipster subculture. Subculture, on its most basic level, is a result of the dynamic interplay between an action and the resulting reaction, which serves as the source of a group’s meaning.5 A subculture develops when members disrupt the natural order of life in some way, however minor, and the result is “the construction of a style, in a gesture of defiance or contempt, in a smile or a sneer. It signals a Refusal.”6 That is, a refusal to fall in line and accept the elements of the world around them at face value, as a given that cannot and should not be challenged. Whether the members know it or not, they are actively pushing back against the structure of society, asking “why” in the face of a complacent culture and its established norms, trends, and tastes. The postmodern hipster pushes back against mainstream culture in ways both large and small. While they may not use safety- pinned clothing to comment on the economic violence perpetrated on their age group, as Hebdige describes, their choices do reflect a refusal to go along with the status quo of Western production and consumption. One of the aspects of hipster culture that will be discussed in this chapter is a veneration of the “local” and “artisanal” food and beverage movements. Neo-bohemians want their food to be locally sourced and lovingly prepared, whether by others or themselves. Hipsters like artisanal pickles and craft beer, organic honey from their own beehives and eggs harvested from the chickens they keep in their backyard. While outsiders might see these preferences as 5 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 2. 6 Hebdige, 3. 66 pretentious and the trappings of privilege and opportunity, using Hebdige’s criteria of “refusal” we see that the hipster is defying the mass production and heavy processing of mainstream food and drink in favor of a “purer,” simpler alternative. Nostalgia for modes of production that most hipsters have never experienced for themselves might seem strange and indulgent, but within the neo-bohemian subculture, such things are revered. One’s own homemade jams become a source of pride and status within the group. While the members may not be aware of their unifying choices, these shared interests and resistance to mass production form a major element of hipster culture. Bjorn Schiermer gathers the common threads among the works that have been written about the hipster in order to create his own definition of the group, whose postmodern traits make them difficult to pinpoint.7 His work informs this dissertation’s definition of the demographic, and reinforces that it is a subculture without a single unifying cause or criteria for membership, making it a broader and more amorphous group than the punks or Beats.8 Neo-bohemians developed in a time of social and economic upheaval, much like the subcultures examined in chapter 2: financial crises, 9/11, and skyrocketing student loan debt with no apparent prospects or possibilities of ever paying it back. Hipsters also appeared during a period of incredible technological development, with digital music, affordable personal computers, and smartphones becoming de rigeur. Hebdige states that the punks intentionally created themselves “in caricature, to substitute the diet for hunger, to slide the ragamuffin look (unkempt but meticulously coutured) between poverty and 7 Schiermer, “Late Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” 170. 8 Schiermer, 170. 67 elegance.”9 Similarly, the neo-bohemian has adopted the trappings of the working class, putting on a semblance of agency, even in small ways, in the face of unemployment, student loans, and the threat of terrorism. By choosing to ironically wear clothes associated with the past or the working classes, hipsters express nostalgia for a simpler time and assert some measure of control over their current realities. They might not be able to change much in the world, but they can at least turn certain expectations on their heads, find humor in their situation, and manufacture their own “series of subjective correlatives for the official archetypes of the crisis of modern [or postmodern] life.”10 Subcultures produce a “symbolic violation of the social order” which attracts both attention and condemnation.11 The neo-bohemian hipster garners negative reactions just like the punks and mods before them.12 Prior to the 1980s, the subcultures previously discussed were condemned both for their ideology and their sense of fashion. An interesting twist that this new version of the hipster adds to the history of subculture is that, in addition to their fashion, their lack of political engagement is criticized, and they are often compared to earlier groups. Has our society become used to and accepting, at least in some respects, of subcultures as long as we understand what they are and why they are? We can look back with nostalgia at past subcultures, understanding and appreciating them with the distance of time and experience. But the hipster also breaks the mold of what we have come to understand 9 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 65. 10 Hebdige, 65. 11 Hebdige, 10. 12 See Janna Michael, “It’s Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural Field,” Journal of Consumer Culture 15, no. 2 (2015): 163–82. 68 as a legitimate subculture, reinterpreting modes of rebellion and becoming referred to as a “postmodern subculture” by the cultural studies scholars who classify them. An explanation of the use of “postmodern” to define this demographic is in order. Various commentators on this subculture refer to it as postmodern, and the reasons for classifying it as such in this dissertation stem partly from an alignment with the existing literature due to the many ways in which the demographic’s characteristics align with critical commentary on postmodernism. One of the major reasons for the hipster’s postmodernism is due to their penchant for pastiche. In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson argues that one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism is a breakdown in distinctions between high and low culture, and the replacement of parody with pastiche.13 The development of new technologies such as computers has shifted much production to the digital realm rather than the industrial, and resulted in “a whole new culture of the image or simulacrum.”14 Jameson also posits that true individualism is a thing of the past, since everything has already been done before. Once again, pastiche is the only option because “in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.”15 These concepts ring true in the hipster’s tendency to mix objects of the past with trappings of contemporary life, and support one of the most prominent criticisms of hipsters—that they all try to be 13 Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 17. 14 Jameson 6. 15 Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), 115. 69 original but end up looking the same. Baudrillard’s ideas in Simulacra and Simulation posit that the physical and emotional distance from the real world that technology provides results in an indifference among industrialized populations.16 The postmodern hipster, in their use of pastiche and desire to distance themselves from mass production, are reacting to the effects of postmodernism around them. These characteristics, the meshing of different cultural forms together and the eschewing of the mainstream products, also contribute to a relatively new consumption model: the cultural omnivore. 3.2 The Postmodern Hipster as the Consummate Cultural Omnivore One of the trends in sociological studies of consumption culture over the past two decades has involved the development of theories about the so-called “cultural omnivore.” This type of consumer was first proposed by Richard A. Peterson in 1992, when he noticed trends in the consumption of some people of higher social status.17 Rather than adhering exclusively to the entertainment modes and activities of high culture, as described by Bourdieu, Peterson found that these high-status individuals were more open to consuming elements from popular culture. Not only that, the willingness to participate in the consumption of a variety of practices and cultural forms was accelerating and becoming its own kind of cultural capital: there was a 16 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). 17 Richard A. Peterson, “Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore and Univore,” Poetics 21, no. 4 (1992): 243–58. 70 cachet to appreciating a variety of modes and objects.18 Those capable of understanding and enjoying both the highbrow and the lowbrow exhibit a new kind of distinction, a new version of “good taste” that “crossed class, gender, ethnic, religious, age, and similar boundaries.”19 The new availability of different types of entertainments in the digital age means that a high-status consumer can listen to classical music or opera, but still find pleasure in bluegrass or the occasional pop musician. Cultural omnivores exhibit particular behaviors that make them diverge from the patterns discerned by Bourdieu, who posited that those with high social status would engage with high culture while those with low status would prefer low cultural items.20 Those who study omnivores found that Bourdieu’s theory still applies to those with low social status (those in low income brackets who also have a low level of educational attainment). In 2005, Peterson noted that cultural omnivorousness is becoming more widespread in the United States and Europe, even to the point of becoming the norm, rather than the exception.21 This change in cultural consumption is facilitated, of course, by greater access to knowledge and different cultural forms made possible by digital media. For those who live in metropolitan areas, where they have greater access to various visual and performing arts than those in more rural settings, engagement in a wide range of cultural activities is seen as important by 18 See Warde, Martens, and Olsen, “Consumption and the Problem of Variety: Cultural Omnivorousness, Social Distinction, and Dining Out,” 123–25. 19 Peterson, “Problems in Comparative Research: The Example of Omnivorousness,” 260. 20 Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 1–2. 21 Peterson, “Problems in Comparative Research: The Example of Omnivorousness,” 260. 71 more of the population.22 Those who tend to stick to cultural forms with lower status (reality tv, bestselling mystery novels, and blockbuster Hollywood movies, for example) often do so because those forms are more available to them. Additionally, th ose who have less money or leisure time often find entertainment in what is easiest to access.23 This trend helps to explain why cultural omnivorousness is more prevalent in those with higher cultural status: people with more disposable income and/or flexible time, whether due to a high level of wealth or education, are more capable of accessing a wider variety of cultural forms. Not surprisingly, the cultural omnivore is a breed of consumer who is difficult to associate with any one category of preferred entertainment. One omnivore might like classical music, Marvel comic books, and contra dancing while another prefers modern dance, Stephen King novels, and romantic comedies that make millions at the box office. So the difficulty in categorizing the omnivore is similar to that which we encounter when trying to identify the postmodern hipster. Warde, et al. classify the cultural omnivore as a category that exists “within the middle class” rather than identifying them as a completely new segment of the middle class. One of the most consistent qualities that they have in common is that “they represent the quite well educated and relatively privileged.”24 Often omnivores see their varied likes as average, “merely the norm for the university-educated middle class… not necessarily 22 Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal, “Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness,” 155. 23 Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal, 156. 24 Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal, 159. 72 held with any great consciousness or commitment.”25 Hipsters are the consummate cultural omnivore, and even take their omnivorousness a step further than their variety-seeking counterparts. This subculture seeks not only to enjoy and participate in a variety of cultural forms and activities, but find enjoyment in actually combining these forms. By juxtaposing disparate items, hipsters are able to produce a kind of gestalt experience that becomes ironic. Wearing a faded t-shirt from a 1994 summer at Camp Wamapoke along with a Victorian handlebar mustache and carrying around a vintage Polaroid camera is a studied choice. One of these items alone on a person might not be terribly noticeable. But by combining them the hipster becomes a dandy of omnivorousness. Social scientists have observed that cultural omnivorousness seems to correspond with more progressive political leanings. A 1996 study found that the tolerance of cultural omnivores extended beyond their tastes in entertainment and activities to include a higher level of toleration of the multicultural.26 By looking at the musical genres that an individual enjoyed, Bethany Bryson found that broader musical taste corresponded with higher educational attainment and, subsequently, with greater political tolerance. The study also observed that people with racist tendencies were less likely to enjoy music from genres that tend to be non-white, and that the genres with the lowest levels of educational attainment by their listeners (gospel, country, rap, and heavy metal) are the same genres that musically tolerant 25 Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal, 160. 26 Bethany Bryson, “‘Anything but Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes,” American Journal of Sociology 102, no. 3 (1996): 884–99. 73 people are more likely to claim not to enjoy. The conclusion, then, was that musical taste is a method of self-expression that individuals adopt partly as a way to symbolically separate themselves from groups they dislike.27 Another study found that “wide participation… is celebrated, associated with social good, breaking down hierarchies and barriers, and challenging powerful forces that are perceived to use culture to keep people in their place.”28 In fact, what seems to be partly at the core of omnivorousness is “the ethos of the postmodern critique which sought to rescue popular culture from elite condescension.”29 This observation is important to a study of the hipster because it suggests that their breadth of tastes would imply a more left- leaning political ideology. Their cultural omnivorousness would suggest that members of the subculture are more likely to subscribe to progressive politics, which becomes important when looking at the kinds of messages that an organization—a theatre company, for instance—puts out about their own political leanings. Despite being viewed by many as condescending in their preferences, hipsters wield their diverse cultural interests as proof of their multicultural acceptance, with omnivorism seen as a way to transcend traditional status indicators. Being “in the know” provides a level of cultural capital that transcends social class.30 While some groups might be scared away by obvious demonstrations of progressiveness from a producer of consumables, hipsters are more likely to be attracted to such displays. Their tolerance of a broad range of activities and entertainment modes suggests a desire to separate 27 Bryson, 895. 28 Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal, “Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness,” 155. 29 Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal, 160. 30 Michael, “It’s Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural Field,” 164. 74 themselves from those less open minded than they are, so creating a product that demonstrates the left-leaning stance of the company provides a way for them to do that through their consumption of that product. The openness idealized by the hipster is partly due to the value that they place on authenticity and finding their true selves. Opening themselves up to a wide variety of cultures, people, and ideas allows them to pick and choose the elements that appeal to them, which can then be incorporated to form a distinctive bricolage.31 Since adhering strictly to an outwardly imposed style or classification would be considered inauthentic, openness becomes a key tool in the mission to assemble one’s own identity.32 This search for individualism and authenticity is a reaction to a world where these qualities are increasingly difficult to find. Western society has idealized the concept of authenticity for centuries, and hipster predecessors such as the bohemians and Beats are prime examples of subcultures trying to claim authenticity in the face of the institutional power around them. Artists and bohemians “derive satisfaction from performing a creative life in spaces that remain distant from both the popular commercial mainstream and high culture venues.”33 By carving out a niche, they create an unexpected, and presumably “authentic,” mode of expression that excludes the mainstream or the art establishment. Hipster interests follow this same pattern in their amalgamations of fashion, arts and culture, and the objects they enjoy. By meshing unlike things together, they can claim an authenticity and creativity 31 Michael, 176. 32 Michael, 176. 33 Sharon Zukin, “Consuming Authenticity,” Cultural Studies 22, no. 5 (September 1, 2008): 724–48, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380802245985. 729 75 which the masses lack. Bourdieu’s concept of the connoisseur’s competence becomes a measure of cultural capital for the hipster.34 For Bourdieu, the understanding of how to properly appropriate goods and objects into one’s performance of self is a key element in the appearance of naturalness. The skill with which one executes that appropriation becomes an important marker of distinction: Following Bourdieu, this naturalness distinguishes cultural elites from people with a lower- and middle-class background who are more likely to seek confirmation from sources outside themselves. Not being considered ‘one’s true self,’ and therefore being inauthentic, can thus be seen as lacking the naturalness that is so much part of unconscious socially distinctive practices or, more generally, social and cultural boundary drawing.35 The authenticity cultivated by the hipster, then, is exclusive and exclusionary in a way that some non-hipsters find offensive, resulting in significant hipster hate. 3.3 Perceptions of the Mainstream: Hipster Haters The same contradictions that make hipsters a model postmodern subcultural group have also opened them up to criticism. A common criticism of hipsters’ melding of the contradictory is that it is fake, and all for show: “The figure of the hipster is a by-product of increasing digitally mediated self-awareness—the hipster’s birth simply registers that we’ve all gotten a little panoptic.”36 If great moments in hip occur during periods of drastic economic and/or technological change, then the 34 Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 66. 35 Michael, “It’s Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural Field,” 177. 36 Jace Clayton, “Vampires of Lima,” in What Was the Hipster: A Sociological Investigation, ed. Mark Greif, Kathleen Ross, and Dayna Tortorici (New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010), 27. 76 premise that hipsterism developed naturally from a social media inflected culture is reasonable. One of the only books that has comprehensively addressed the modern phenomenon of the hipster is What Was the Hipster: A Sociological Investigation, edited by Mark Greif, Kathleen Ross, and Dayna Tortorici.37 This work arose from a panel discussion that the journal n+1 hosted in 2009 to consider the hipster, and the book is mostly a transcript of the event followed by response papers from invited writers that extend or respond to some of the ideas presented by the discussion. What followed was a lot of hipster hate, coming from an event hosted by “a journal of literature, intellect, and politics” formed in Brooklyn in the 2000s with, presumably, a lot of hipsters on the staff. This fact was not lost on Greif, who comments on it in his preface.38 Nor was the reality that no career social scientists contributed to either the panel discussion or the book. Greif lamented that scholars had yet to produce anything on the hipster, and emphasized that the dearth of publications did not mean that scholars were not interested. They were just still “in the long and thankless stage of dissertation fieldwork, rather than on faculties where they can be easily located.”39 Despite this lack of scholarly input, Greif and his fellow editors hoped that their book would also appeal to non-scholars, “to show that the ludicrous can be studied and… that the serious and academic can be ludic, playful, ordinary.”40 The materials in the book focus primarily on how much the contributors dislike hipsters. The preface proposes an explanation for why those observing this particular subculture might 37 Greif, Ross, and Tortorici, What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation. 38 Greif, Ross, and Tortorici., xvi. 39 Greif, Ross, and Tortorici., xiv. 40 Greif, Ross, and Tortorici., xv. 77 disdain them so vehemently, which is directly related to the earlier subcultures that have already been outlined in this dissertation: The hipster represents what can happen to middle class whites, particularly, and to all elites, generally, when they focus on the struggles for their own pleasures and luxuries- seeing these as daring and confrontational—rather than asking what makes their sort of people entitled to them, who else suffers for their pleasures, and where their ‘rebellion’ adjoins social struggles that should obligate anybody who hates authority… And hipster anti- authoritarianism bespeaks a ruse by which the middle-class young can forgive themselves for abandoning the claims of counterculture—whether punk, anti- capitalist, anarchist, nerdy, or ‘60s—while retaining the coolness of subculture.41 Greif reinforces the idea that hipsters are not a cohesive group and that they are therefore only concerned with themselves. He seems to be looking on subcultures of the past—the hippies, punks, and anarchists—in an idealized, reductivist fashion, as radicals who were united in a particular cause; he sees hipsters as apathetic and selfish, only interested in themselves and appearing cool to those around them. Later in the book, Greif posits that one of the reasons for this hipster disdain is that they belong to the dominant class but are seemingly eschewing that dominance in order to meld into a subculture. According to him, “The hipster is that person, overlapping with declassing or disaffiliating groupings… who in fact aligns himself both with rebel subculture and with the dominant class, and opens up a poisonous conduit between the two.”42 Why, exactly, that conduit is “poisonous” is unclear, but one might posit that Grief finds the hipster’s unwillingness to eschew the privilege of their dominant social position problematic when they also claim the cultural capital of 41 Greif, Ross, and Tortorici., xvii. 42 Mark Greif, “Positions,” in What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation (New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010), 9. 78 an outcast subculture. The hipster’s ability to code-switch between various groups and social statuses puts them in a complicated position: they may pick and choose when and how to use their privilege, a luxury that others in outsider groups often do not share. In the conference papers that appeared as part of the event’s formal program, several comments assume that, whatever hipsters are doing, it is inherently bad and surely everyone else automatically knows why and agrees. Jace Clayton was the only one of the three main presenters at the panel discussion to offer much nuance to his take on hipsterism in Latin American cultures. He offered up the idea that hipsters have been made into scapegoats for gentrification and neighborhood change, when in fact such shifts are often started by upwardly-mobile people in a particular neighborhood starting to invest in it, making it slightly more palatable but still cheap, and thus attracting the hipsters in the first place.43 Other contributors to gentrification are able to ignore the part they play because “the figure of the hipster seems to confuse the realization that we’re all complicit in making or ruining civic spaces, by pinning the blame on a straw man in skinny jeans.”44 The n+1 publication is hardly the only example of the general disdain for the postmodern hipster in American culture. The Urbandictionary.com definitions that begin chapter 2 demonstrate it, and even skimming the titles of some of the various works on the topic shows the feelings widely associated with this subculture: “It’s Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural 43 Clayton, “Vampires of Lima,” 29. 44 Clayton, 30. 79 Field,” “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization,” Look at This F*cking Hipster, “Hating the Hipsters,” “The Sad Science of Hipsterism,” and “Why the Hipster Must Die.”45 Almost all instances of hipster-bashing involve the claim that they are inauthentic because of their performance of trendiness. The hipster might be an early adopter of a particular trend, but they are characterized by others as no longer following that trend once it appears in the mainstream. The desire for trendiness along with the claim of being authentically oneself is a difficult tightrope to walk. And those who condemn them for it are “claiming for [themselves] the much valued authenticity that [they say] hipsters are so sadly lacking.”46 Another essayist in What was the Hipster, Rob Horning, feels that the problem of hipsters is that they “reduce the particularity of anything you might be curious about or invested in into the same dreary common denominator of how ‘cool’ it is perceived to be.”47 However, this assertion involves a certain amount of projection onto the hipster, and exhibits a “Them vs. Me” dichotomy that pops up elsewhere. Horning relies on an assumption about neo-bohemian interests and a conclusion that hipsters are only interested in things because of how cool they are, whereas I genuinely like things because I truly like them and do not care about what others think about it. If hipsters approach 45 Michael, “It’s Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural Field”; Haddow, “Hipster”; Joe Mande, Look at This F*cking Hipster (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010); “Hating the Hipsters,” 33revolutionsperminute’s Blog (blog), February 28, 2012, https://33revolutionsperminute.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/hating-the-hipsters/; “The Sad Science of Hipsterism,” Psychology Today, accessed January 11, 2017, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme-fear/201009/the-sad-science-hipsterism; “Why the Hipster Must Die | Things to Do | Reviews, Guides, Things to Do, Film,” Time Out New York, accessed January 11, 2017, //www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/why-the-hipster-must-die. 46 Michael, “It’s Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural Field,” 164. 47 Rob Horning, “The Death of the Hipster,” in What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation (New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010), 81. 80 everything by considering how they are perceived by others, Horning says, then “hipsterism forces on us a sense of the burden of identity, of constantly having to curate it if only to avoid seeming like a hipster.”48 This circuitous logic seems to blame the hipster for the fact that people who decry hipsters must alter their own interests and attitudes to avoid being seen as hipsters themselves. Horning does go on to unpack his own hipster-centered neurosis a bit by admitting that hatred of the hipster might actually be an overreaction, even preceding the hipsters: “Maybe that collective fear and contempt conjures them into being, just as the Red Scare saw communists everywhere, or how the Stasi made spies of everyone. Late capitalism makes us all fear being a hipster and thus makes us all into one, to some degree.”49 In another essay in the book, Jennifer Baumgardner shares the insight that disdain for hipsters might be more closely related to the personally perceived inadequacies of the disdainer, rather than any actual fault on the part of the disdained. She says, It’s like the hatred Martha Stewart provoked for showing women that you could make domesticity into an art and a multimillion dollar fortune, or the contempt many have felt for Hillary Clinton for proving that you could be more ambitious than most men and still be a mother. Hipsters remind us of… youth and daring and style, that we don’t have anymore or perhaps never did?50 Hipster hatred, perhaps, can be more about the onlookers’ jealousies for the adventures and “coolness” of the hipster, as much about their own insecurities and disappointments as about anything the hipster is actually doing to engender animosity. 48 Horning, 81. 49 Horning, 81. 50 Jennifer Baumgardner, “Williamsburg Year Zero,” in What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation (New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010), 95. 81 As with all subcultures, the anger that they incite in others often develops as a result of the group’s refusal to conform to the accepted modes of society. In the case of the postmodern hipster, much of the distaste from others comes from the perception that they do not stand for anything other than themselves and an inability to recognize any real rebellion in their actions. Postmodern rebellion, however, takes different forms than it did for the subcultures that preceded these hipsters. Understanding this new rebellion goes hand-in-hand with recognizing that postmodern hipster transgression centers around consumption, in a world where consumption is the norm. 3.4 Rebellion: How the Hipster Does It Critics of the postmodern hipster target the financial realities and irony-laden interests of the group in an attempt to separate them from their cooler, presumably more authentic predecessors. If we look back at the subcultures discussed in chapter 2, we find them to be less cohesive and romantic than those who are remembering them today might imagine. And the ways they were perceived by their mainstream contemporaries foreshadow the critiques that the postmodern hipster now receives: the bohemians fought for no real cause other than freedom to live the lifestyle that they desired; the hipsters of the Jazz Age were mainly white kids who thought jazz was cool and liked that it made them edgy and radical to listen to it; and Norman Mailer and his fellow Beats were feeling grated against by the expectations of the 1950s that were being thrust upon them. Thomas Frank discusses the nostalgia with 82 which both liberals and conservatives think about the ‘60s, but emphasizes that, at the time, people regularly complained that young people were selfish and apathetic, certainly until the Vietnam War escalated rapidly in 1965 and the hippies adopted the cause of peace.51 And punks were… just kind of angry about stuff. All of these different subcultures, while they can be reflected on in retrospect to find the common threads between their members, were basically groups of young people who were interested in the same kind of things for their rebellion against the authoritarians in their lives. Looking at the postmodern hipster today, in the midst of its historical moment, it is difficult to see those common threads and impossible to look back on the subculture with nostalgia. Additionally, observers often cannot or will not notice the social activism of many in the community. In fact, when one looks at progressive social movements that have taken place in the first decade of the twenty-first century, hipsters have been at the center of many of them. In Robert Lanham’s satirical The Hipster Handbook, he describes the hipster as having one Republican friend and constantly referring to them as “my one Republican friend.”52 Urban farming has boomed as a result of the hipster’s preference for locally-sourced and artisanal foods, and many hipsters have their own urban farms or take part in neighborhood gardening co-ops. The Do-It-Yourself movement was also sustained by the hipster’s desire to show off their possessions (clothes, gadgets, furniture, décor, etc), secure in the knowledge of their item’s 51 Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, 1–9. 52 Robert Lanham, The Hipster Handbook (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), 3. 83 uniqueness because they made it themselves. And the Occupy Movement has been populated by hipsters concerned about the growing income inequality that has affected their own economic prospects and who have seen the corruption of Wall Street as a new kind of authoritarianism against which to rebel. In the current moment of early 2018, many hipsters have become even more politically involved as a result of the perceived dangers and authoritarianism of the Trump presidency and Republican-controlled Congress. Hipsters show passion for all kinds of things, and it seems cynical to presume that this passion is always for the sake of appearances. To craft all of one’s interests solely around what others might think would be an unfulfilling way to live, and if this generation of hipsters are so selfish, why would they choose to exert all their energies into activities that they do not actually enjoy? While activities or interests might first be embarked upon for irony’s sake, in order to sustain this behavior, the individual must find something personally appealing and inspiring in it. The current hipster is often characterized as still being financially supported by their parents, and many of the past objects that they choose to revive date from the period when their parents were young adults, and in some sense preserve the adult world hipsters experienced as children.53 A popular comedy Tumblr page called “Dads are the Original Hipsters” (subsequently made into a coffee table book) features vintage photos of men in the ‘70s and ‘80s sporting fashions that have since 53 Margo Jefferson, “19 Questions,” in What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation (New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010), 101. 84 been adopted by the hipster subculture.54 It satirically taunts the hipster reader with captions like “Your dad wore a sweatband before you did and he’s got the dry brow to prove it… his forehead ShamWow kept the saltwater sting from blurring his vision while he rocked it at basement shows.”55 But the postmodern hipster’s embrace of objects from their parents’ past puts them in stark contrast to the hipster of the ‘40s, who was reacting in a much different way towards parental authority: I know this is a huge generalization, but that impulse [to emulate their parents’ fashion] truly did not characterize the ‘40s and ‘50s hipsters. They claimed— sometimes desperately, often clumsily, by no means always effectively—to be consciously separating themselves from the look, the sound, the artifacts, the sensory world of their parents as well as that social, political, and (sometimes) economic world.56 The rebellion of the postmodern hipster is one that takes place in conjunction with parental support, its members mostly holding dear generally happy, middle-class childhood memories, so the strictures that require rebellion are not necessarily coming directly from parents as they did for previous subcultures. Perhaps this generation of parents remembers their own rebellion well enough to react differently than their own mothers and fathers did towards their children’s actions. The extended length of childhood that the millennial enjoys might also play a part. Young adults are putting off marriage until later, going off to college farther from home, and maintaining a carefree lifestyle for longer than their parents did. Since the hipster demographic is primarily between the ages of 20 and 40, the members of this group usually do not still live at home and are no longer subject to the regular scrutiny of 54 Brad Getty, Dads Are the Original Hipsters (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2012). 55 Getty, 31. 56 Jefferson, “19 Questions,” 101. 85 their wardrobe or behaviors by concerned parents worried about what the neighbors will think.57 Hipsters have earned a reputation as perpetual renters of their homes, partly because of their personal preference for a bohemian, semi-nomadic lifestyle, and partly because of their position as young adults in their particular cultural and economic moment. The hipsters’ parents most likely own their own homes, as members of the baby boom generation who saw home ownership as the pinnacle of success and achievement. Home-ownership provided a kind of freedom from being at the mercy of a landlord, and indicated a middle-class accomplishment in the post- World War II economic boom of the 1950s. Tax breaks and incentives for homeowners in the twentieth century also made buying a house a more financially sound investment for Baby-Boomers. Postmodern hipsters, on the other hand, often see home-ownership as a binding responsibility, both financially and symbolically. While paying rent to a landlord rarely involves a commitment of more than six months or a year, the mortgage necessary for buying a home is a major investment that is very complicated (and expensive) to divest oneself from. Knowing that your lease is up in a few months allows one to feel free to move somewhere new and different, ensuring that the hipster never feels trapped or bored in their living situation. It seems feasible, however, that some of these attitudes have developed in the face of many of the financial realities confronted by the young adults of the turn of the twenty-first century. These economic changes have had a major effect on the 57 Although it should be noted that a rising number of people in this age demographic are moving back in with their parents for economic reasons. 86 hipster’s ability to own a home, even if they wanted one. Most young people leaving college today do so with at least some student loan debt, and an attitude towards credit cards that often leaves young adults with a constant balance accruing exorbitant interest. The combination of these factors, with rising costs in housing markets and poor job prospects, creates a financial reality that makes gathering the amount of money necessary for a down payment on a home almost impossible for many. Add into the mix the fact that hipsters often pursue careers in the arts or public service and tend to live in areas where the cost of living is significant (sometimes as a direct correlation to the perceived “hipness” of their neighborhoods due to the influx of middle-class hipsters), and the hipster’s ability to purchase a home is often even more dismal than that of their millennial peers. By embracing a bohemian, nomadic lifestyle, the reliance on renting rather than buying a home feels more like a choice, rather than a necessity. The impermanence of renting a home rather than buying one comes in stark contrast to the more-permanent nature of another kind of hipster rebellion: tattoos. While they grate against the perception of stability inherent in home ownership, hipsters have less trouble committing to putting permanent art on their bodies, so much so that tattoos have become another signal hipster trait. In fact, there are numerous Tumblr sites, Pinterest pages, and opinion articles online devoted to hipster tattoos, with names like hipstertattoos.tumblr.com and fuckyeahhipstertattoos.tumblr.com. As with all hipster modes of expression, the originality of one’s tattoos is of the utmost importance. A hipster would never walk into a tattoo parlor and pick one of the designs displayed on the wall. Instead, a 87 hipster tattoo must be individual and express something meaningful and unique. A tribal armband tattoo or a butterfly on the lower back would be considered gauche— while something completely outlandish, like an 8-in-tall thigh tattoo of the face of Dennis Hopper’s character from the 1995 action flop Waterworld (see Figure 3)—is bizarre enough to become an expert execution of originality and, thus, cultural capital. If a hipster does get a clichéd tattoo, it must be sufficiently ironic, historical, and/or kitschy, like an old school anchor, an image appropriated from Native American culture (dreamcatchers are not uncommon), or a pinup girl. Hipster tattoos are generally much more diverse than those that might be characteristic of other subcultures precisely because of the focus on originality and the desire to subvert the expectations of the viewer. This urge leads to tattoos that are strange amalgams of the erudite and the crude (see Figure 4), and have a focus on irony, one of the central characteristics of hipsterism. 88 Figure 3. Thigh tattoo of Deacon, the character played by Dennis Hopper in the film Waterworld. Photograph taken by Danielle James, the owner of the tattoo, on January 24, 2018. Figure 4. Calf tattoo of Kafka’s head on a Keith Haring-esque dog’s body. Tattoo by Jamie Luna. “Fuck Yeah Hipster Tattoos.” March 19, 2015. Image. Accessed January 24, 2018. 89 3.5 Hipster Irony Perhaps a less obvious form of rebellion for the postmodern hipster is also one of the qualities most associated with them: a love of ironic humor and juxtapositions. This aspect of hipsterism manifests itself in the veneration of odd objects, the love of past items that no longer have widespread value among contemporary consumers. Perhaps a product was never given enough time to be appreciated and enjoyed before it was superseded by a new technology (8-track tapes). Or maybe a fashion element is associated with a now-unfashionable type of person or, if still appreciated by a large group, one that is decidedly different, and probably lower-class, than the hipsters who adopt it today (such as the proliferation of the ugly Christmas sweater). This love of consumptive irony demonstrates Hebdige’s idea of the symbolic repossession of commodities. Once a subculture repossesses a commodity, it becomes “endowed with implicitly oppositional meanings… The symbiosis in which ideology and social order, production and reproduction, are linked is neither fixed nor guaranteed.”58 What this means for subcultural groups and the societies in which they operate is that signification is constantly in flux, with the rebels struggling to alter the meaning of the sign and the “normal” asserting the disruption of the social order through outrage. In the case of the hipsters, rather than being expressed with fear or political maneuvering to make their gatherings and pleasures illegal, as was seen with various groups of youths throughout the twentieth century, mainstream culture has assumed an attitude of mockery and disdain for the irony worship that the hipster has adopted. 58 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 15. 90 The eye-rolls and mutterings about the stupidity of hipsters belie the discomfort that those around them feel when faced with the hipster’s refusal to conform and enjoy the objects that society tells them they should. A repossession of those objects by the mainstream also serves to lessen their power, as with the trend in 2017 of major retailers like Target and WalMart designing and producing intentionally ugly Christmas sweaters to sell on their racks. Rest assured, a hipster would never be caught in an ugly Christmas sweater that had not been discovered in a grandmother’s attic or on the racks of a vintage clothing store. The debut of the sweaters at Target may ensure the death of the trend among actual hipsters. The appreciation of irony is a consequence of the focus on originality and the awareness of the difficulty of living without imitation in modern society. According to Schiermer, the difficulty of truly authentic expression “forces the individual into the negative or reflective, the sheer auto-distancing from the inauthentic; that is, into the ironic.”59 And while irony is used to denote an individual’s distance from mainstream culture, it is also “first and foremost a way of being together…The successful understanding of an ironic remark creates instant social bonds, whereas mistaken irony often creates embarrassing and awkward situations.”60 By recognizing irony together, hipsters are engaging in a cerebral exercise that helps them to demonstrate a shared understanding that they are all in on the joke, “in the know” in a way that separates them from most other people but connects them to their fellow intellectuals, artists, and cultural trendsetters. While outsiders judging the hipster see 59 Schiermer, “Late Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” 171. 60 Schiermer, 171. 91 their irony as condescending and even mean, a way of looking down their noses at lower-class objects, Schiermer views their irony as a collective “reaction to overt but unconscious imitation.”61 While some elements of hipster irony clearly come from a place of contempt for the culture where they originated, such as objects related to “redneck” culture like trucker hats, other modes of popular culture can be lovingly enjoyed by hipsters as an expression of authenticity. The penchant for dive bars and other establishments where the “locals” drink is appreciated because of the realness of the other patrons.62 The reader should also observe the irony of the hipster infiltrating a dive bar for its authenticity only to have the truly authentic original patrons eventually driven out. This love of irony can also be seen in other youth subcultures that came before them. The Mods of the mid-twentieth-century United Kingdom also found a playful, ironic way to negotiate the cultural changes that were happening around them (the beginnings of mass media, changes in family structures, adjustments to the perceptions of work and leisure) but did so “by inventing an ‘elsewhere’ (the weekend, the West End) which was defined against the familiar locales of the home, the pub, the working-man’s club, the neighborhood.”63 The postmodern hipster reacts against more suburban, middle-class forces, but nonetheless is reacting against them: the preference for the local dive bar over a more respectable location frequented by others of their social class; the insistence on shopping at the farmer’s market and 61 Schiermer, 172. 62 Schiermer, 173. 63 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 74–75. 92 making their own salsa instead of more easily and cheaply getting groceries from the local supermarket; preferring to do their Christmas shopping at the quirky town craft fair instead of the big box stores. One of the more fun events that occurs in Washington, DC, every year is the “Crafty Bastards” Craft Fair, sponsored by the Washington City Paper. 64 As the name might suggest, this is not a traditional craft fair where grandmothers sell their wares in a church’s community hall. The event continues to grow, and features tattooed, young-adult artisans who make everything from ceramic mugs with sexual euphemisms and cartoon animals on them (see Fig. 5) to stylishly knitted and crocheted clothing items to handmade furniture constructed from re-purposed industrial materials. Such products of hipster irony appear harmless, if twee, to the outsider, but that irony becomes troubling when associated with the appropriation of other cultures, as when nerdy white people ostentatiously venerate old-school hip-hop. 64 “Crafty Bastards Arts & Crafts Fair,” Washington City Paper, accessed January 12, 2017, http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/craftybastards. 93 Figure 5. A “boobies” mug, purchased at the Crafty Bastards Craft Fair. Photograph taken by Sara Thompson on March 9, 2017. 3.6 Race and the Postmodern Hipster The postmodern hipster has a complicated relationship with race. On the one hand, their progressive politics mean that, at least in theory, they are more open to people of other cultures and backgrounds. But they are also accused of using their humor to trivialize racial and cultural differences and appropriating the cultures of Native and African Americans in their never-ending quest to be new and edgy. This dissertation has already touched on some of the racial aspects found in the history of the hipster, and the postmodern hipster continues this tradition. Several critiques of the postmodern hipster center around the problematic race relations of the subculture. Rob Horning, in an article called “The Death of the Hipster,” makes a connection 94 between the image of the postmodern hipster and how it directly relates to Norman Mailer’s version: … is the hipster a kind of permanent cultural middleman in hyper-mediated late capitalism, selling out alternative sources of social power developed by outsider groups- just as the original “White Negroes” evoked by Norman Mailer did to the original, pre-pejorative “hipsters,” blacks looking for modes of social expression that could serve as a source of pride, power, and unification, and as emblems of resistance? Hipsters are the infiltrators who spoil the resistance, the cool-hunting collaborators and spies.65 This comparison helps to clarify, to some extent, why these new hipsters have been given this name: if the original hipster was a person who cherry-picked the bits and pieces of another group’s culture, in this case the African American-derived jazz culture, then these postmodern young people who are perceived as picking and choosing objects of the past to incorporate into their own personal style and entertainment are taking part in a similar kind of appropriation. Instead of appropriating black culture, however, these new hipsters are taking on objects of working-class or blue-collar culture. Again, the hipster is a dominant group co-opting the cultural artifacts of a lower social class. Horning also posits that the hipster is a necessary conduit in the production of cultural capital between the outsider groups producing new cultural forms and “the stakeholders in the established cultural hegemony” in an act of cooptation that strips “their inventors’ groups… of the power and the glory, the unification and the mode of resistance.”66 The hipster discovers and adopts the new cultural forms, their social position as middle-class and mostly white thereby making them more palatable to the mainstream than the actual originators. 65 Horning, “The Death of the Hipster,” 79. Emphasis mine. 66 Horning, 79. 95 Serving as a kind of cultural middle-man, the hipster appropriates and disseminates new cultural modes while also erasing the outsiders who inspired them. Concern about the hipster’s appropriation of other cultures in part explains the animus directed their way, and a couple of essays address the racial tensions at play in this current cultural climate. Margo Jefferson, in “19 Questions,” points out that these hipsters share a connection with hip-hop, another subculture that developed at the end of the twentieth century and which also drew its name from the original hipsters of the Jazz age. She wonders, “Can it be a cultural accident that within about twenty years of each other, black and white vanguardists (and arrivistes) drew on the old black and white uses of the same word?”67 The fact that the two groups ended up with such differing meanings of this word is reminiscent of the stratification of black and white culture in the 1940s and 1950s when the term was born. But Jefferson asserts that, unlike in the mid-twentieth century, these vast differences seem to be “the result of cultural choice and niche constituencies rather than entrenched race politics and economics.”68 Hebdige points out that this convergence of white and black cultures is hardly anomalous: Of course, at different times and in different circumstances, this congruence can be more or less apparent, more or less actively perceived and experienced. Put in general terms, identification between the two groups can be either open or closed, direct or indirect, acknowledged or unacknowledged. It can be recognized and extended into actual links (the mods, skinheads, and punks) or repressed and inverted into an antagonism (teds, greasers). In either case, the relationship represents a crucial determining factor in the evolution of each youth cultural form and in the ideology both signified in that form and “acted out” by its members.69 67 Jefferson, “19 Questions,” 97. 68 Jefferson, 98. 69 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 44. 96 In fact, Hebdige argues that “the succession of white subcultural forms can be read as a series of deep-structural adaptations which symbolically accommodate or expunge the black presence.”70 For the purposes of this project, seeing the direct inspiration of black culture on the neo-bohemian is less clear than the connections that the hipsters of the 1950s claimed, but one area that can be observed is the fetishization of hip-hop music, particularly early rap from the 1980s and 1990s. In the twenty-first century, this love of hip-hop morphed into a new style of the genre, known as “hipster hop” or “hipster rap.” Another difference between the hipsters of the 1950s and those of today is the potential for black people to actively engage in the postmodern hipster subculture. While Mailer and his ilk clearly positioned African Americans as the “other” in his fetishization of their culture, black youths who wish to exhibit postmodern hipster fashion and share hipster tastes in music, art, intellectualism, and irony are more easily integrated into the subculture. While the very fact that black hipsters have their own special name, “blipsters,” points to a degree of otherness that clearly separates them from their white counterparts, at least when those outside the subculture look in and seek to label and identify its members, blipsters are largely free to engage in hipster communities and pastimes with little overt racism from their white familiars.71 The middle-class privilege of the hipster is also addressed in Patrice Evans’s essay “Hip-Hop & Hipsterism” that follows Jefferson’s in the What Was the Hipster? 70 Hebdige, 44. 71 This acceptance is not to say or assume that black hipsters do not experience more subtle forms of racism from a largely white friend group. Conversations with black hipsters indicate that they spend a lot of time being asked to speak for all black people and being tokenized as a black friend. 97 anthology. He begins with James Baldwin’s response to Mailer’s “The White Negro.” Drawing parallels between Baldwin’s critique of Mailer’s essay and his own critique of the discussion that the journal hosted about hipsters, Evans indicates that this is a particular kind of discussion: “one about Us and Them, carried on almost entirely among those who Have.”72 Evans goes on to briefly discuss the phenomenon of hipster rappers, who are regularly denounced in the hip-hop community for appealing to white audiences, “the epitome of an Uncle Tom, exploiting a robust, nourishing culture to create an empty, white-friendly shell.”73 He then brings up the blipster, which he defines as “a contemporary update on the cool black nerd, picking stuff up from white subculture to develop an accepted type. These… black dudes might even be avatars of our ethnocultural future.”74 A musical act like Ninjasonik, he says, a group who wear blipster fashions and produce “hip-hop/techno-punk music,” indicates a way that hip-hop music can synthesize “the irony, distance, and detachment” of the hipster movement: “If hipsters represent some sort of cultural exhaustion, then Ninjasonik indicates that once black people have enough middle- class traction, a certain bourgeois comfort level, then… will the hipster bogeyman raise his head for them, too…”75 Hipsterism in the black community has arisen as a result of economic and social progress, but the general dearth of blipsters is indicative of continued social inequality. For Evans: As a black boy looking at white boys, hipsterism strikes me as what happens when white folks become aware of power and inequity—but then say “Well, 72 Patrice Evans, “Hip-Hop & Hipsterism,” in What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation (New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010), 104. 73 Evans, 106–7. 74 Evans, 108. 75 Evans, 108–9. 98 what are we supposed to do? Throw our hands up and mug for the camera.” Any relinquishing of power is inevitably an aesthetic gesture.76 Here the perception that hipsters only act in order to portray themselves in a particular way appears again, this time with Evans feeling that the progressive politics expressed by this subculture are merely enacted at a surface level. Perhaps if this essay were written a couple of years later, Evans might have discussed the inadequacy of so-called “Twitter activism” and how millennials seemingly think they can effect change with hashtags, rather than physical political action. But this critique of the hipster points out that their progressive impulses have a limit. Ideologically, they feel themselves to be liberal and accepting of all kinds of people, regardless of race or sexuality, but seem unable or unwilling to do the legwork necessary to effect social change, at least with regards to racial inequalities in the United States. 3.7 Commodification: Is Everyone a Hipster Now? In the final chapter of his self-published diatribe against hipsterdom entitled The Sacred and the Profane: An Investigation of Hipsters, Jake Kinzey explains that no hipster would ever admit to being one because he believes that the term can never be anything but negative.77 He introduces in this section a helpful connection between the hipster denial of hipsterism and Slavoj Zizek’s theories of ideology.78 Zizek 76 Evans, 109–10. 77 Jake Kinzey, The Sacred and the Profane: An Investigation of Hipsters (Alresford, UK: Zero Books, 2012), 52. 78 It is worth noting here that in the discussion portion of What Was the Hipster, Zizek’s name was used repeatedly and often with disdain for his popularity among hipsters who fancied themselves philosophers. 99 posited that people still participate in ideological structures (like democracy or good luck charms) even if they do not claim to believe that they work. Belief becomes demonstrated through action. Kinzey applies this theory to hipster denial, because “they know very well that the concept of authenticity is a lie (in that it is no longer a viable mode of resistance) but their actions indicate otherwise… in calling someone a hipster, their quest for authenticity is [recognized as] a failed one from the start.”79 This cynical view of authenticity from Kinzey takes for granted both the idea that authenticity is an impossible goal and that hipsters are self-aware about their apparently failed quest for it. Kinzey’s analysis presupposes that the hipster is an inherently disingenuous person who does everything for the sake of appearances rather than genuine appreciation. For a more even-handed view of hipsters’ self-denial of their hipsterdom and its relationship to the late-capitalist bent of the movement, one need look no further than the work of economists Zeynep Arsel and Craig J. Thompson.80 In this article, Arsel and Thompson investigate “consumers who have become vested in a commercially mythologized consumption field through an incremental process of building social connections and cultural capital” that has subsequently been ridiculed or devalued by others.81 They base their work on previous articles that discuss marketplace myths, or the auras surrounding particular brands and products, and how consumers are drawn to them as a means of identity creation. Their study focuses on 79 Kinzey, The Sacred and the Profane: An Investigation of Hipsters, 52. 80 Arsel and Thompson, “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Market Myths,” 791. 81 Arsel and Thompson, 791. 100 consumers who react against these trends as threats to their individuality. These consumers, the modern-day hipsters, “use demythologizing practices to protect these investments from devaluation and to distance and distinguish their field of consumption, and corresponding consumer identities, from these undesirable associations.”82 The consumers of indie culture that Arsel and Thompson discuss are categorized under the hipster myth: “For these consumers, the hipster myth is akin to a fun-house mirror that distorts and potentially devalues their cultural interests, aesthetic predilections, and social milieu.”83 After discussing the development and history of the hipster myth and how consumers become vested in indie cultural consumption, they finally analyze the ways that these consumers create boundaries between their own identity-relevant consumption practices and the marketplace myth of the hipster in order to protect their cultural capital. This article gives economic rationalizations for the tendency of those labeled hipsters to deny and refute that label, as well as highlighting the importance of consumption to the identification of the hipster. When faced with a pervasive and visible subculture, societies adapt in order to make the differences expressed by the outside group less obvious, less different, and less threatening. However the subculture developed, it becomes tamed by the society around it through a processes of recuperating and commodifying that subculture, “the simultaneous diffusion and defusion of the subcultural style.”84 In the process of 82 Arsel and Thompson, 792. 83 Arsel and Thompson, 792. 84 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 93. 101 recuperation, subcultural signs such as dress and music are converted into mass- produced, readily available products. The commodification of hipster style in recent years demonstrates just such a process. Skinny jeans, knit hats, and vintage-style clothing has become ubiquitous in big box stores. Clothing stores that were once almost solely the purview of the hipster, like Urban Outfitters and American Apparel, have become major presences in the casual clothing market. Young adults who would never be considered neo-bohemians dress like them. Indie rock and Americana music gets played on the radio, and once-obscure, folksy bands have “sold out” by having their songs featured in Jeep commercials. 85 The ability to determine who is or is not a postmodern hipster has become more and more difficult, and that difficulty is partly the result of the recuperative process of the mainstream: It is therefore difficult…to maintain any absolute distinction between commercial exploitation on the one hand and creativity/originality on the other, even though these categories are emphatically opposed in the value systems of most subcultures. Indeed, the creation and diffusion of new styles is inextricably bound up with the process of production, publicity, and packaging which must inevitably lead to the defusion of the subculture’s subversive power.86 And just like the punks and hippies, the neo-bohemian has had their innovations adopted and intertwined into the mainstream. But rather than simply indicating a cultural change in those around them, it indicates “a real network or infrastructure of new kinds of commercial and economic institutions.”87 John Clarke discussed the 85 See the 2015 commercial for the Jeep Renegade, featuring the song “Renegade” by X Ambassadors. 86 Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, 95. 87 Hebdige, 95. 102 broader effects of the youth subculture as far back as 1976, observing that “The small-scale record shops, recording companies, the boutiques and one- or two-woman manufacturing companies—these versions of artisan capitalism, rather than more generalized and unspecific phenomena, situation the dialectic of commercial ‘manipulation.’”88 The postmodern hipster brings an initial benefit for businesses trying to capitalize on their demographic because of the comparatively large number of millennials when compared to Generation Xers.89 While Gen Xers in the first decade of the twenty-first century included an estimated forty-six million Americans, Millennials comprised roughly seventy million.90 The Baby Boomers, who produced Millennials and often provide them with money, numbered roughly seventy-nine million. The 2008 buying-power of Gen Xers was estimated to be $125 billion annually, paling in comparison with the $2 trillion possessed by the Baby Boomers. While Millennials might not be spending much of their own money yet, their access to that of their parents makes them a prime demographic for retailers.91 The rise of the postmodern hipster has certainly resulted in the subsequent rise of hipster-run or hipster-catering businesses and companies. In 2008, while stores like The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch were experiencing a decline in sales, Urban Outfitters experienced a 30 percent increase in sales worldwide in the second quarter 88 John Clarke, “Style,” in Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (Birmingham, UK: Routledge, 1976). 187 89 These seemingly arbitrary generational classifications result in some disagreement and overlap over who, exactly, fits where. Millennials are generally classified as people born between 1981 and 1996, while members of Generation X are classified as those born anywhere from 1966 to 1984, depending on who you ask. 90 Lauren Sherman, “The New Counterculture’s Buying Power,” Forbes, October 1, 2008, http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/01/hipster-buying-power-forbeslife-cx_ls_1001style.html. 91 Sherman. 103 alone.92 In 2007, second-quarter earnings had exploded by 79 percent for the retailer, with analysts attributing their success to their willingness to take fashion risks while others continued designing along more mainstream trends.93 Despite the economic downturn of 2008, Urban Outfitters continued to show revenue growth over the next decade, although that growth slowed from 13 percent in 2013 to 1 percent in 2017.94 Notably, Gap and Abercrombie both experienced negative growth numbers during the same period.95 While most of the small-scale record shops may have closed down in the face of digital downloads and the ability to order hard-to-find records online, entire industries have popped up in their place. Independent coffee shops have sprung up alongside the ubiquitous Starbucks signs of the world, serving artisan soy- and almond-milk lattes and chai teas to scruffy-looking twenty-somethings working on their laptops. Those coffees are made with locally-roasted beans, too. Hipsters run their own craft businesses online through sites like Etsy that cater to almost any quirky craft desire. There shoppers can personalize crafts for the perfect gift, or to fit exquisitely into their meticulously curated living room so that friends who come over can admire their ironic style and ability and willingness to cultivate that style. 92 Sherman. 93 Sherman. 94 “Urban Outfitters, Inc. | Revenues & Sales,” eMarketer Retail, accessed January 5, 2018, https://retail- index.emarketer.com/company/data/5374f24b4d4afd2bb444659f/5374f2a74d4afd824cc15d8b/lfy/false /urban-outfitters-inc-revenues-sales. 95 “Gap Inc. | Revenues & Sales,” eMarketer Retail, accessed January 5, 2018, https://retail- index.emarketer.com/company/data/5374f24e4d4afd2bb4446647/5374f2744d4afd824cc15891/lfy/fals e/gap-inc-revenues-sales; “Abercrombie & Fitch Co. | Revenues & Sales,” eMarketer Retail, accessed January 5, 2018, https://retail- index.emarketer.com/company/data/5374f24a4d4afd2bb444657d/5374f2574d4afd824cc155e0/lfy/fals e/abercrombie-fitch-co-revenues-sales. 104 The hipster’s spending power is, however, a double-edged sword when looking at the development of urban areas and hipsters’ search for authentic living. Postmodern hipsters are often blamed for gentrification that displaces communities that have been living in the low-income areas that artists and bohemians move into because of their grittiness. Yet they are eventually superseded by far wealthier consumers once a neighborhood has become suitably gentrified. As Sharon Zukin notes in her article about the consumption of authenticity in the twenty-first century, most of the college-educated, new residents of run-down urban areas “work in low- wage, often temporary jobs, and scramble to make a living as cultural producers.”96 But eventually, as the profile of an area is raised, property values continue to increase until the area is no longer able to sustain its “authentic” businesses: art galleries, individually owned shops, and hip loft conversions that hipsters often occupy with numerous roommates.97 Zukin gives the example of SoHo between 1970 and 2005. The ‘70s saw various zoning changes in the previously run-down, formerly industrial neighborhood that encouraged and cultivated a community of artists and bohemians. In 1980, roughly 44 percent of the buildings in that neighborhood were used for manufacturing, 31 percent were art galleries or for art-related uses, and 23 percent were individually owned retail and service locations. By 1990, 55 percent of storefronts in the neighborhood were devoted to the arts, while only 7 percent of the manufacturing locations remained. The 23 percent figure for individually owned businesses remained steady, but encroachment by chain retail and services had begun, 96 Zukin, “Consuming Authenticity.” 727 97 Zukin, 732. 105 occupying 10 percent of storefronts. By 2005, the pricing out of the arts can be seen in the fact that 52 percent of the businesses in the area were chain stores, while only 9 percent remained devoted to art galleries and stores.98 The desire of artists and hipsters in a new area for certain types of goods and services—“authentic” ones like local produce and crafts, gourmet restaurants, and boutique shops—eventually leads to a cycle of their own displacement. 3.8 Why Hipsters and Shakespeare? The presence and economic force of the hipster in postmodern culture continues to inspire studies on the group’s impact on various facets of society. As demonstrated previously in this chapter, while much of the writing on hipsters has taken a decidedly negative view of the demographic, some social scientists and economists have worked objectively to describe the impetus behind the movement and to explain its economic impact. This chapter has suggested that much of the anger directed at hipsters echoes attitudes towards previous subcultures. Despite the differences between those earlier subcultures and the current hipster, drawing the disapproval of those around them is not the only thing they have in common. We can see hints of the postmodern hipster’s interest in the arts and intellectual pursuits in the history of the subcultures that were explored in chapter 2. From the bohemian’s connection to the avant-garde through the artistic vibrancy of the Jazz Age, the writers and musicians of the mid-century, and the musical rebellion of the punks, 98 Zukin, 733. 106 each of these groups found connection and common ground in the arts, which were central to their movements. The contemporary arts organization, then, may have much to gain by catering to this latest group of trendsetters and early-adopters who appreciate and participate in artistic activities. For the purposes of explaining this dissertation’s central argument, that hipsters are a prime demographic for Shakespeare companies, returning to Schiermer proves helpful. He spells out one of the fundamental tenets of hipsterism: “hipster culture is characterized by a lack of generational distinction and by a genuine veneration of certain cultural expressions and objects of the previous generations.”99 One of the central ideas behind this dissertation is that hipsters can be drawn to Shakespeare because of the distanced place of his plays in modern society. Shakespeare can be seen as a banner of the past that can be adopted and appreciated in a new way, providing cultural capital that makes one seem distinctive or off-kilter while simultaneously cultured and intellectual. It is also important to remember that, in Schiermer’s view, irony is not inherently negative or full of disillusionment, but is rather “a form of collective enjoyment of ‘failed’ objects.”100 The identification of traditionally high culture design features (such as chandeliers) being displayed alongside low culture décor (kitschy paintings, antlers) as typical of hipster irony goes along with my thesis: Shakespeare (seen in the twentieth century as high culture) performed in “low-culture” locations (real or virtual) provides a similar juxtaposition. 99 Schiermer, “Late Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” 168. 100 Schiermer, 171. 107 It is useful to return to our definition of “hipster” as adults in their twenties or thirties who are often middle-class and interested in art and culture, which they approach with a sense of irony and a desire to have some kind of “cool,” “kitschy,” and “quirky” experience. Lawrence Levine, in his Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, has detailed the process by which Shakespeare changed from a form of popular entertainment to a commodity of the upper and educated classes at the end of the nineteenth century.101 The elevation of Shakespeare to these higher social echelons meant that the plays became perceived as needing a certain type of instruction or experience in order to comprehend, thus imbuing them with an aura of reverence and seriousness that has increasingly been challenged by the avant-garde and alternative producers of Shakespeare from the mid-twentieth century onwards. These companies have developed their own methods and techniques of performance that have simultaneously opened Shakespeare’s plays to broader interpretation and made them more available to audiences outside the economic and cultural elite. Shakespeare has long been the subject of what Schiermer calls “intense social investment.”102 One of the major identifying characteristics of hipster culture is an affinity for irony, but that ironic bent goes hand in hand with a nostalgic desire to recirculate social and cultural objects that have been forgotten. While Shakespeare has not been forgotten by modern Western culture, I argue that his highbrow existence has meant that for the vast majority of consumers today his plays are perceived as an entertainment of the past with little use in the modern world. 101 Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. 102 Schiermer, “Late Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” 168. 108 Notions of authenticity also make Shakespeare desirable for hipsters. Janna Michael, in her discussion of authenticity as it relates to hipsterism, points to two different types of authenticity: the romantic and the modern.103 Romantic authenticity idealizes the pre-industrial past, treating nostalgically the simpler time and perceiving it as a period in which people were more real and in touch with the natural world around them. Shakespeare’s works have this romantic authenticity due to the historical moment of their writing, their primary place in the European canon, and their long performance history prior to the Industrial Revolution. The modernist notion of authenticity, however, seeks to break from the constraints of traditional life, seeing the authentic only as that which is innovative, radical, and experimental. Reinventing the self and traditional art forms becomes the new way to be real. The cities, rather than nature, produce this original thought.104 This dissertation proposes that alternative Shakespeare companies occupy a unique position in the current moment, because they exhibit both romantic and modern notions of authenticity. Such companies infuse the modern ideal of experimentation and the break with traditional means of performance into the nostalgic, pre-industrial realm of Shakespeare. The result is a postmodern hipster ideal: a bricolage of authenticity. By presenting Shakespeare in ways that are subversive and that defy the viewer’s expectations, these canonical works can become a mode of cultural production that fits nicely into that niche of hipster consumption. There are new 103 Michael, “It’s Really Not Hip to Be a Hipster: Negotiating Trends and Authenticity in the Cultural Field,” 167–68. 104 Michael, 167–68. 109 companies and artists whose interpretation of Shakespeare fits the model of hipster irony, just like handlebar mustaches and vinyl records, by serving as an object of the past that can be adopted and appropriated for a new generation. Schiermer goes on to point out that often those objects received that investment “without really deserving it,” meaning that they were not actually artistically beautiful or worthy of veneration.105 The aspect of that social investment that was not deserved in the case of Shakespeare was the mystification of his work as exclusively for the higher classes. Theatre companies that appeal to hipsters are demystifying Shakespeare by producing it with an ever-present “wink.” By working to recirculate Shakespeare among modern young adults, these companies are playing the “conserver” role that hipsters also perform by participating in “the recirculation of forgotten objects for genuine aesthetic enjoyment.”106 Hipsters constantly strive to maintain their individual identities, but within a global economy and digital world that makes change constant and the adoption of new styles and trends so fast that that individuality is under constant threat. Mainstream Shakespeare companies are often guilty of rehashed production concepts and boring performance choices that make the individuality of various productions difficult to identify. Theatre companies producing Hipster Shakespeare intentionally make quirky choices that push back against tradition and, in so doing, retain an individualism that appeals to neo- bohemian sensibilities. 105 Schiermer, “Late Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” 173. 106 Schiermer, 174. 110 In this chapter, I have provided a description of the postmodern hipster that compares this subculture to others that appeared throughout the twentieth century. This chapter has also connected the hipster to the sociological concept of cultural omnivores, those with high educational status who enjoy a wide range of entertainments and activities. The hipster’s reception by the mainstream, as well as the difficulty of finding individuals claiming the name, has been discussed, as have the ways that the postmodern hipster’s styles and tastes have been diffused into the mainstream. Finally, this section has laid out the economic power of the hipster and the demonstrated financial benefits of catering to them. This chapter has connected the postmodern hipster to the hipster subcultures that came before them, as well as explained why this dissertation argues that alternative Shakespeare companies could and should work to bring these consumers into their audiences. Postmodern hipsters are hungry for entertainment that allows them to enjoy both irony and their role as conservers of past cultural objects. The following two chapters serve as a case study of one particular alternative Shakespeare company, the New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYSX). These chapters describe the origins of the company and its ideals, and provide a history of their mainstage productions and an explanation their other performance strategies: the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, the Sonnet Project, and the Intersections program. The second half of this dissertation calls attention to the ways that NYSX’s performance strategies and approaches to Shakespeare reflect the kind of characteristics and entertainment modes that appeal to postmodern hipsters. While 111 this project does not suggest that all alternative Shakespeare companies should do exactly the kinds of performances that NYSX presents, examining their techniques and approaches to Shakespeare provides a framework for combining the romantic and modern notions of authenticity in ways that can appeal to the postmodern hipster. By observing the strategies of a successful company doing quirky Shakespeare, other groups may find their own methods of employing irony and a genuine veneration for Shakespeare in order to attract their own postmodern hipster following. 112 Chapter 4: New York Shakespeare Exchange 4.1 Introduction to NYSX The New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYSX) is a company that is capitalizing on the hipster love of quirk. It was founded in 2009 by a group of American Express employees who began staging readings of Shakespeare plays during lunch breaks and Happy Hours. Many of them were theatre artists whose day jobs paid the bills while they pursued artistic fulfillment in their spare time. After the first reading, the group immediately realized they wanted to start a theatre company.1 In addition to the occasional, more traditional production of a Shakespeare play (updated to modern dress and setting, of course), the company also actively produces devised pieces based on Shakespeare’s works. The group regularly host staged readings of a Shakespeare play in conjunction with another play, such as Romeo and Juliet read in conjunction with Frank Wedekind’s Spring’s Awakening, in order to create a dialogue about common themes and how those themes translate across history. They also offer a diversity of performance types. Their ShakesBEER Pub Crawls take place several times throughout the year in various neighborhoods around New York, and The Sonnet Project aims to make the sonnets more accessible through the use of film and the internet. These individual efforts have also informed their latest venture, the Intersections program, which takes their shows on the road to various communities around the United States, at each location providing a week- 1 Ross Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, Phone, July 25, 2017. 113 long series of lectures, master classes, and performances that bring Shakespeare’s plays to life for people beyond New York City. The cliché of New York overflowing with aspiring artists working steady day jobs to support their art pervades because it accurately captures the realities faced by so many who migrate there to pursue their dreams. When NYSX began in the spare conference room at the American Express offices, the goal was to let off some steam and give the employees a chance to practice some of their skills as actors, directors, and other theatre artists. But as they decided to expand their work beyond the walls of the office building, they found themselves needing to develop a vision, a unifying idea for why their version of Shakespeare was necessary and different from the plethora of other Shakespeare offerings in New York. What resulted was a mission statement that reveals some ideals and perspectives that echo those of the post- modern hipster: New York Shakespeare Exchange offers innovative theatrical programming that explores what happens when contemporary culture is infused with Shakespearean poetry and themes in unexpected ways. We provide fresh points of entry to the work so that modern audiences will be exposed to the intrinsic power of Shakespeare. Our goal is to encourage an enthusiastic appreciation of classical theater and to expand the reach of the art form within new and existing audiences.2 Much of what this mission expresses is not uncommon in the mission statements of many modern theatre companies that specialize in classical drama. “Exposing modern audiences to the power of Shakespeare” and inciting a passion for classical theatre in “new and existing audiences” feels like a mission statement one 2 “About NYSX”, New York Shakespeare Exchange, http://www.shakespeareexchange.org/content/about-nysx. Last accessed 22 December 2016. 114 has heard before, from numerous organizations. Even mainstream companies express similar sentiments. The Public Theater, for example, which puts on the free Shakespeare in the Park performances every summer, declares its mission is to make theatre “that is accessible and relevant to all people” and stage “Shakespeare productions for underserved audiences throughout New York’s five boroughs.”3 The blending of Shakespeare with modern contexts has spread to the Public in their summer 2017 production of Julius Caesar, which featured a Trump-esque Caesar whose authoritarian leanings inspire his assassination. The production received significant media attention when it premiered, initially from conservatives who disapproved of the comparison and depiction of Caesar’s assassination, and then from liberals who rushed in to defend the production’s right to reflect current events and point out earlier precedents of using Shakespeare to illuminate contemporary life. The kerfuffle inspired boycotts on both sides, with the right boycotting the major companies that remained as corporate sponsors of the production and the left shunning the companies that withdrew their support and sponsorship of the play as a result of the uproar. The controversy surely boosted interest in 2017’s Shakespeare in the Park series and made hard-to-come-by tickets even more difficult to acquire. Another company that features a similar mission statement to that of NYSX is Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA). TFANA was founded in the 1970s with Shakespeare productions at its center, with a mission “to develop and vitalize the 3 “About Free Shakespeare in the Park”, Free Shakespeare in the Park, http://publictheater.org/en/Programs--Events/Shakespeare-in-the-Park/About/ Last accessed 22 December 2016. 115 performance and study of Shakespeare and classic drama.”4 TFANA attempts to “vitalize” Shakespeare by producing classical plays alongside modern works in order to create “a dialogue over the centuries between Shakespeare and other authors about our contemporary world,” in addition to running the largest programming of Shakespeare in New York’s public school system.5 In 2017, they also tackled the rise of extreme social conservatism in American politics with their production of Measure for Measure, using the play’s exploration of moral dilemmas to illuminate the polarization of Americans over politics and morality. What sets the NYSX’s mission statement apart from these others and makes them particularly relevant to a study of hipsters and Shakespeare is its dedication to “innovative theatrical programming that explores what happens when contemporary culture is infused with Shakespearean poetry and themes in unexpected ways.” One of the major characteristics of the postmodern hipster is their desire to mix the old with the new. Innovation is created in neo-bohemian circles when disparate elements of disparate cultures come together to create a new gestalt object or event. This mixture of seemingly unrelated elements is the foundation of the hipster irony which was outlined in chapter 3. The “unexpected” aspects of NYSX’s productions and the melding of old, often-tired Shakespeare with contemporary culture smacks of the kind of irony that hipsters adore. By placing Shakespeare within unanticipated modern contexts, NYSX is creating a juxtaposition that could very easily be used to draw in hipster crowds in search of new entertainment that imparts cultural capital. Because 4 “TFANA Home,” Theatre for a New Audience, November 25, 2010, http://www.tfana.org/. 5 “About Us,” Theatre for a New Audience, December 6, 2010, http://www.tfana.org/about/overview. 116 of their mission’s tight focus on the ironic, NYSX is already primed to appeal to this potentially lucrative audience. Almost a decade after the company was founded, their support base is overwhelmingly “young.” The vast majority of their donors are between the ages of 25 and 50, with very few over the age of 50.6 One of the reasons they cite to explain their success with younger supporters is that they see themselves as “a youthful expression of Shakespeare,” according to Artistic Director Ross Williams. “The more established purveyors of Shakespeare in the city, like the Public Theatre and the Shakespeare Society, have been around so long that they have the donors of a certain age already locked up.”7 By introducing a new kind of Shakespeare to the city, however, NYSX is attracting donations from demographics that might not traditionally be thought of as “Shakespeare donors.” By taking a closer look at the ways in which they manifest this kind of ironic Shakespeare production, one can see that their core events—the ShakesBEER Pub Crawls, the Sonnet Project, their new works inspired by Shakespeare, and the nascent Intersections touring companies—are taking their unique approach to Shakespeare and sharing it with ever-broadening audiences. In order to better explore the wide range of events and productions that NYSX presents, a chronological performance history of their mainstage productions reveals the kind of growth and evolution they have undergone in the short time since their inception. Due to budget constraints that keep NYSX from paying actors at the level that the Actor’s Equity Association demands in NYC, the company performs its mainstage productions under Equity’s 6 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 7 Williams. 117 Showcase Codes.8 These Codes allow union actors to perform for small theatre companies with no salary as long as the houses they perform in are under ninety-nine seats and the company only works within a certain budget.9 Because the Pub Crawl and Sonnet Project developed partly as a way to get around the restrictions placed on the company by the Codes, this chapter approaches the mainstage productions as the company’s core output and their other endeavors as offspring of that primary creative activity.10 This history lays the groundwork for a closer look at their more experimental efforts- the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, The Sonnet Project, and Intersections- which will feature in chapter 5. An exploration of their mainstage shows demonstrates that, even when they do “regular” Shakespeare, they still aim to present it in new and unexpected ways. The following pages will describe mainstage productions using evidence from production images, the impressions of theatre reviewers and bloggers who saw the pieces, and interviews with the artists and directors involved in the project’s development.11 This chapter will show that what sets NYSX apart from other Shakespeare theatre companies is their core mission of mixing contemporary culture with the plays. While other companies present works beyond those directly related to Shakespeare, or will alternate a modern-dress production with a more straight- 8 “NEW YORK’S HOTTEST YOUNG THEATRE COMPANY TURNS FIVE,” StageLight Magazine, August 24, 2014, https://www.stagelightmagazine.com/new-yorks-hottest-young-theatre- company-turns-five/. 9 “Actorsequity.org | Services | Agreements,” accessed September 7, 2017, http://www.actorsequity.org/agreements/agreements.asp?code=500. 10 “NEW YORK’S HOTTEST YOUNG THEATRE COMPANY TURNS FIVE.” 11 As was already discussed in the Introduction, the use of theatre reviews, both mainstream and alternative, to reconstruct the performances is as much utilitarian as it is ideological. 118 forward, traditional interpretation, NYSX produces only Shakespeare, exclusively presented through a contemporary cultural lens. Because of these two imperatives, they are poised to offer both highbrow cultural capital and the ironic juxtaposition of seemingly divergent elements (Shakespeare and modern life). By appealing to both of these hipster priorities, NYSX has found a way to both honor the integrity of Shakespeare’s text and present it with a wink. The following performance history explores how they have managed this difficult task and models the kind of work that other small Shakespeare companies could utilize to create their own neo-bohemian audiences. 4.2 NYSX’s Mainstage Productions One of the most common ways that New York Shakespeare Exchange explores Shakespeare’s relationship to modern life is through pieces “inspired by” Shakespeare’s works, often incorporating his original words with new dialogue of their own. A resident playwright for a Shakespeare company might seem nonsensical, but NYSX has had one in Kevin Brewer almost since the company began. Williams and Brewer met as young actors doing summer stock, and when both of them ended up in New York and NYSX started to materialize, Williams asked his old friend (now a playwright) if they could collaborate on a production of one of Brewer’s plays. In 2010, Williams directed an eighty-minute adaptation of Hamlet—in which all of the characters were played by two “actors,” both of whom were Brewer—called The One Man (Two Man (not quite)) Hamlet. The “other actor” was manifested by projected recordings of Brewer, which the live actor would interact with. The experimental 119 work premiered at HERE, an avant-garde theatre and performance space, inaugurating a relationship between the company and the theatre space that would prove helpful in the future (and which will be explored in more detail later in this chapter). This production was the first step towards making the idea of an “alternative” Shakespeare company a reality. The company followed that show with a repertory of staged readings called “What’s So Funny? Two Comedies. One Conversation,” a format they would return to under the more succinct title “Two Plays, One Conversation.” Those first readings alternated over the course of four nights between Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Brewer’s play Island. Island features a sixteenth-century king and his family who have been exiled to an island populated with characters from Shakespeare; the action begins when two twenty-first century women wash up on the shore. Brewer wrote the play in iambic pentameter, blending the verse with contemporary language. By featuring the two plays in conversation with each other, NYSX aimed to spark a dialogue with audiences about the apparent timelessness of Shakespeare’s comedy and how it translates for the modern reader or viewer, with that discussion facilitated by panels composed of the artists and theatre scholars. One of the biggest questions around the “Two Plays, One Conversation” series was what, exactly, audiences were interested in for talkbacks. During the first “Two Plays. One Conversation,” NYSX brought in scholars for the talkback, but for the second installment of the series they mostly held artist talkbacks. In part, these decisions 120 were simply based on who was available.12 NYSX has a close relationship with a scholar at St. John’s University named Jaime Wright, an associate professor who specializes in the relationship of rhetoric to popular culture. One of the biggest questions that NYSX seeks to answer when dealing with any play is “What connects it to today’s audience?” so Wright’s participation in talkbacks often helps to bridge the temporal and geographic distances between classical plays and modern audiences. Another factor in who was featured in the talkbacks was the makeup of the audience. For a lot of the company’s productions, particularly the staged readings, many of the audience members are there to support their friends in the company. As such, those audience members often prefer to hear their friends discuss the process and the plays. As their audiences have continued to grow and expand beyond the close circles of the company members, talkbacks have adjusted to account for those changes and continue to alternate between artist and scholar discussions.13 In 2011, the company tackled its first full-length version of one of Shakespeare’s plays, and chose the oft-overlooked Life and Death of King John, with Williams directing. A number of factors, both practical and emotional, contributed to this curious choice for a maiden full-length production. Williams, who calls himself “a bit of a champion of the underdog,” explained that he is often only mildly drawn to some of the bigger, more well-known plays, and has always had an interest in King John and its language.14 A full-blown love of the play developed as a result of a 12 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 13 Williams. 14 Williams; “Review Fix Exclusive: Ross Williams Talks ‘Titus Andronicus’ - Review Fix,” accessed September 1, 2017, http://reviewfix.com/2015/01/review-fix-exclusive-ross-williams-talks-titus- andronicus/. 121 living room reading group that he and some friends, many of them NYSX members, had been participating in called the “Roadmap Reading” series. Williams found that hearing the play read aloud made him love it even more, with the language sounding even more beautiful coming from actors with experience performing Shakespeare. The strength of the company’s attraction to ideas and excitement about making those ideas clear to its audience is in no small part due to Williams’s influence. He found himself particularly drawn to the challenge of correcting King John’s reputation as a “bad play,” an idea that resident dramaturg Shane Breaux also found exciting. “Shane is interested in embracing the play as written. Rather than assuming that Shakespeare was young and inexperienced and so that explains the mistakes in the text, Shane says ‘Shakespeare was doing something specific with this play. What was it?’”15 What they found through preparing it for performance was that King John is a history play that gets smaller and smaller as it goes along, with characters killed off until the audience is left with just a handful of the people that they started off with. It is a psychological thriller that becomes a microcosm of the issues at the heart of the play: power, betrayal, paranoia. Another reason for the choice of King John, secondary to the love that Williams and Breaux felt for the play, was a direct result of the company’s location in New York City. One of the issues that the group has repeatedly grappled with is that there is already so much Shakespeare in New York. Audiences are inundated with productions of the same major plays, over and over again, making it difficult for any one production to stand out. By choosing a play that is almost 15 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 122 never performed, NYSX planned to reach potential audience members who had King John on their “Shakespeare Bucket List” but had never taken the opportunity to see it.16 Prior to the 2011 production by NYSX, New York had not seen a major staging of King John since 2000, when Theatre for a New Audience presented it in-the-round. These two factors—an emotional affinity for the play and a logical strategy for marketing it— made it the clear choice for the company to use as its first foray into mainstage productions. Instead of trying to stage the production in period-appropriate settings and costumes, the company chose an environment that was more economical to create, with the action taking place on a stage that resembled a New York penthouse apartment, and the actors dressed like modern-day movers and shakers who were vying for power and the crown. Fight scenes involved actors jumping off furniture and attacking each other with whatever was at hand, from cocktail accoutrement to a can of mace. The riots in London featured in the second half of the play were shown as news footage on a television screen in the penthouse. The production garnered praise from most critics, who were particularly impressed with such a strong showing from a new company Off-Off Broadway. Critic Victoria Lin Chong noted that some of the choices did not quite work, such as the actors arguing over the television remote in the beginning of the play, though she acknowledged that her concerns were “just quibbling…New York Shakespeare Exchange scores an impressive debut in 16 Williams. 123 their brisk and jaunty production of Shakespeare’s much-maligned tragedy.”17 The reviewer for TimeOut, Adam Feldman, admitted to being nervous walking into the theatre due to the company’s youth and the play’s obscurity, but ended up calling it “one of my happiest surprises at the theatre in recent memory,” and, “one of the finest Off-Off Broadway productions of Shakespeare I have ever seen.”18 Andy Buck, of TheatreMania.com, offered a mixed review of the production, finding the use of the television to show the riots too pedestrian and too forceful an attempt to spoon-feed the play’s plot to a modern audience. He did give praise to Williams’s “clean yet complete version of the work” and found some of the updated staging choices, such as “the scene between the Bastard and his mother, which has been transformed into a one-sided cellphone conversation…clever and penetrating.”19 While the production had its flaws, the overall reception was positive: “New York Shakespeare Exchange has made its entrance in grand style. This young company is not just promising: it’s delivering.”20 NYSX followed up King John with another installment of their “Two Plays. One Conversation.” series in the spring of 2012, this time featuring Romeo and Juliet in repertory with Wedekind’s Spring’s Awakening. The goal of this exercise was to “examine how playwrights from distinctly different periods come into intensely 17 “Off Broadway Theater Review: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN (New York Shakespeare Exchange),” accessed July 10, 2017, http://www.stageandcinema.com/2011/09/24/king- john-nyse/. 18 “Review: The Life and Death of King John,” Time Out New York, accessed July 10, 2017, //www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/review-the-life-and-death-of-king-john-off-off-broadway. 19 “The Life and Death of King John,” TheaterMania.com, accessed July 10, 2017, http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/reviews/09-2011/the-life-and-death-of-king- john_41021.html. 20 “Review.” 124 passionate contact with today’s conflicting attitudes toward love, lust and sexuality.”21 This time the post-reading conversations featured the artists instead of outside scholars. The website’s advertisement for the discussions challenged the public: “Bring your experiences, opinions and knowledge to the theater with you - you'll need them.” The almost taunting tone of this statement reflects the kind of engagement that the series wanted to inspire from its audiences, and is just the kind of dare that might entice an intellectual hipster to take part in the conversation and share their personal knowledge and opinions. A discussion of the relative merits of two plays by writers from different historical periods ticks several hipster boxes: to engage in a discussion of art that might be seen as obscure by others; to have the opportunity to share one’s knowledge of a subject they might not be “expected” to know about; and to have an interesting activity to be able to tell others about afterwards. Later that same year, the company decided to revisit one of its earlier “Two Plays. One Conversation.” subjects by staging a full production of Kevin Brewer’s Island, or To Be or Not To Be at the Connelly Theatre on East Fourth Street. The money to produce the play came in part from a Kickstarter campaign that raised funds for The Sonnet Project, which will be discussed in chapter 5. Styled in period costume by Kristine Koury and with a set designed by G. Warren Styles to look like an Elizabethan stage, the play’s main premise is that the Tempest-esque Island is home to a community of modern people who live as if they are all characters in a 21 http://www.shakespeareexchange.org/content/past-productions. 125 Shakespeare play. After the head of a wealthy family falls from a horse and wakes up believing he is King John the Third, the inhabitants decide to create a world around that fantasy. The requisite hilarity ensues when two twenty-first century women wash up on the shore and are faced with the oddities of the island community. The story, however, does not quite hold up when put under too much scrutiny.22 One reviewer went so far as to spend 274 words describing the complicated plot and then concluded the explanation with, “Got it? Doesn’t especially matter.”23 In spite of the complicated plot, the fully fledged staging garnered mostly positive reviews, particularly for its comedic moments and solid casting. “The cast, as in King John, is terrific across the board—no small feat for a theatre working on a budget,” said Aaron Botwick of the New York theatre review blog “Scribicide.”24 Writing for Stage and Cinema, Sarah Taylor Ellis noted that “rarely is such a large and consistently solid ensemble to be seen on the stage.”25 Backstage.com proclaimed that the “elaborate and delightfully exuberant production” fit perfectly into NYSX’s mission to help modern audiences interact with classical plays in new and surprising ways.26 The madcap production continued to build on the company’s reputation for solid but 22 “What Fools These Mortals Be: Kevin Brewer’s ‘Island’ at Connelly Theater,” accessed July 10, 2017, http://localeastvillage.com/2012/09/28/what-fools-these-mortals-be-kevin-brewer%e2%80%99s- the-island-at-connelly-theater/. 23 “Ahem…All the World’s a Stage,” Scribicide / a New York-Based Theater Blog (blog), October 4, 2012, https://scribicide.com/2012/10/04/ahem-all-the-worlds-a-stage/. 24 “Ahem…All the World’s a Stage.” 25 “Off-Broadway Theater Review: ISLAND: OR, TO BE OR NOT TO BE (The Connelly Theater),” accessed July 11, 2017, http://www.stageandcinema.com/2012/10/03/island/. 26 Rob Cohen, 2012, and 7:01 P.m, “‘Island; Or, To Be or Not To Be’ Entertains as Artfully Imaginative Plagiarism of the Bard,” Backstage.com, accessed July 11, 2017, https://www.backstage.com/review/ny-theater/off-off-broadway/island-or-be-or-not-be-ny- shakespeare-exchange/. 126 quirky Shakespeare, setting the stage for the young venture to continue with fully- staged productions. But before another mainstage production, NYSX decided to try a style of performance that was completely different for them, but still in alignment with their mission statement. The casting call for the 2013 season announced that they were looking for Men and Women, any age/ethnicity. [W]ith a strong background in physical theatre/ensemble performance and a high level of physical and emotional availability. Our spring production of Pericles will be ensemble-generated, using devised theatre techniques similar to the work of Michael Chekhov and Jerzy Grotowski.27 With Pericles, directors/head devisers Erik Andrews and Harry Barandes were tasked with choreographing movement and layering it with Shakespeare’s words and story. While the two public performances of the piece were not reviewed, for the purposes of this dissertation the impetus of the project and its association with the work of Michael Chekhov and Jerzy Grotowski is significant. Chekhov and Grotowski are associated with the avant-garde and performance art, due in part to their reliance on the actor’s body to tell the story to an audience. Choosing to produce Shakespeare in this style hearkens back to experimental Shakespeare productions of the past, such as those of Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine, which helped to create the trend of “Director’s Shakespeare” in the mid-twentieth century. Artists that inspired the Beats and who embraced the counter-cultural perspectives of the hippies and punks made alternative Shakespeare a viable practice, and NYSX’s Pericles experiment was a 27 “Season Auditions (Day 2) | New York Shakespeare Exchange,” accessed July 11, 2017, http://shakespeareexchange.org/content/season-auditions-day-2. 127 way to truly embrace the avant-garde. Their other productions might contain hints of an avant-garde flavor, but the devised and movement-based Pericles ties the company ever closer to the theatrical predecessors who were so important to the subcultures that informed the postmodern hipster. While Pericles was a low-key production with a limited audience, Williams and the company viewed it as a success and an extremely gratifying process. One of the most difficult things about producing devised pieces is finding actors who can commit to the process. A devised piece can be emotionally and physically demanding, and uncertainty over the shape of the final product can make actors frustrated and anxious. When a company like NYSX, which is unable to pay its actors a living wage, tries to find actors for a devised work, it can be difficult to get the necessary level of commitment.28 For example, a few years later NYSX returned to the techniques used in Pericles to devise a production based on Hamlet. Called Sans Hamlet, the workshop-devised piece was never performed publicly. Williams felt the production was difficult to define or describe to people who were not a part of the process. Actor commitment was a constant struggle, though of the fifteen who were in the cast, on any given night they could perform as long as eight of them showed up. While it never saw the light of day, Sans Hamlet did end up being beneficial several years later, when many of the ideas developed through that process were used in Hamlet^10, a 2016 production which had the role of Hamlet performed by ten different actors. While the devised pieces have been put on the back burner for the 28 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 128 past several years, Williams still finds them to be exciting and an effective way to infuse today’s culture with Shakespeare. He hopes to return to them at some point in the future once the Intersections program is established.29 In the autumn of 2013, NYSX produced a more standard Shakespeare, this time tackling Othello under the direction of Associate Artistic Director Cristina Lundy. Othello was the first mainstage production of a “heavy-hitting,” mainstream Shakespeare play that NYSX attempted, and company members remember it as both a solid production that they are deeply proud of and a troubled production that did not get the attention it deserved. Under Lundy’s direction, the play was presented in the style of NYPD Blue and CSI, procedural crime dramas that follow police officers and detectives as they investigate and build cases over the course of an hour-long broadcast. Figure 6. An image from the marketing materials for the production indicate the procedural crime drama theme by featuring a close up image of a “murder board” that Iago built throughout the show. “Othello Publicity.” 2013. Retrieved from http://www.shakespeareexchange.org/content/past- productions. Last Accessed February 22, 2018. 29 Williams. 129 Lundy came up with the concept before she was ever asked to direct her first major show for NYSX. She thought of how many of Shakespeare’s plays feature soldiers who are actively “doing soldiery things,” such as Henry V, or that feature characters who are nominally soldiers, like the men of Much Ado About Nothing who are just returning from a war.30 In Othello, however, Lundy felt that the soldiers were more of a peacetime army, “and what is a police force but a peacetime army that maintains order?”31 The more she approached Othello as a police chief in command of a precinct of detectives and soldiers, the more she was able to fit Iago’s jealousy and “evidence-gathering” into the concept. Lundy even introduced a “murder board,” a kind of display on which investigators place evidence and suspects in order to create timelines and make connections when trying to build cases. In this production, Iago built his case on a murder board off to the side of the stage. As Lundy envisioned, by the time Iago said the line “So will I turn her virtue into pitch/ and out of her own goodness make the net/ that shall enmesh them all,”32 the board would feature strings connecting the different parts of his story, visually echoing both the “net” evoked in the text and G. Warren Stiles’s set design. The board also served as a place that Iago could return repeatedly to soliloquize to the audience and build his “case.” 30 Cristina Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy, Phone, August 3, 2017. 31 Lundy. 32 II.iii.269-71. 130 Figure 7. Set designer G. Warren Stiles’s digital rendering of the set. “Digital Rendering for New York Shakespeare Exchange’s Production of Othello.” Digital Rendering. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.gwarrenstiles.com/show---othello.html. Accessed August 14, 2017. The inspiration for the production was modern-day New York City and a response to “stop-and-frisk” policies in the city and the continuing endangerment of black men by police officers. In this world, the choice to make Othello and Iago NYPD detectives, rather than soldiers, made the racial tensions in the play starker. One of the first company members that Lundy brought on board was her fight choreographer, Alicia Rodis. When they began to discuss Othello’s strangling of Desdemona and how to stage it, Rodis commented to Lundy, “You know, strangling is the most intimate way to kill someone. It takes a long time, and you have to face them and be in close proximity to do it.”33 Lundy was “struck by how terrifying that is that your partner, the person meant to protect you, can also hurt you. If you believe 33 Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy. 131 the messaging that police are there to protect you, then their job as protectors is often what they are able to exploit to do the most damage.”34 Iago used his guise as a protector, both as Othello’s friend and as a police officer, to do irreparable damage to the other characters in the play. Lundy also went in a non-traditional direction in the casting of her Desdemona. While Desdemona is often imagined as a demure, pure figure, Lundy wanted to see what would happen if Desdemona was voluptuous and unapologetically sexually attracted to Othello. She went into the casting process wanting an actor “who made that Jessica Rabbit music play in your head.”35 The actor that was ultimately cast, Anna Van Valin, admitted to being surprised she was asked to audition, and even more so that she got the part. She thought it had been a mistake and that Lundy wanted her to audition to play Emilia. But Lundy’s vision was to explore an idea that she first read about in Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare.36 According to Burgess, when Shakespeare wrote Othello, the image of a Venetian woman to the English was of a courtesan. Lundy wondered how that would affect the audience’s relationship with Desdemona, and what kind of equivalent prejudice she might be able to introduce in a modern setting. She saw this sexy and sexual Desdemona as the solution. This Desdemona could already be seen as a kind of liability for Othello that Iago would easily see and exploit: she was both in love with and “hot for” Othello, and chose him over any of the white men around her. These were things that Iago could leverage to 34 Lundy. 35 Lundy. Jessica Rabbit refers to the cartoon female lead in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Jessica was a voluptuous, femme fatale-type character, and her entrances were frequently accompanied by a sexy, jazz anthem reminiscent of 1940s burlesque music. 36 Anthony Burgess, Shakespeare (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1970). 132 make Othello suspicious. 37 Lundy wanted to make the audience examine their own prejudices as well: “What if you can make them kind of believe it-see her as ‘a woman who would’…and Othello looks like the kind of ‘man who would’ because of his blackness.”38 In this production, both Desdemona and Othello had the shared experience of defying expectations of them based on their appearances. And while both of them had needed to be the best possible version of themselves to convince others of their goodness, Iago was a white man who could blend in because of his unremarkableness. In the white supremacist, patriarchal world in which “white and male” is considered the default category of person, “Iago is the mediocre white man who feels done wrong for not getting what he expected for himself.”39 The need to replace the actor playing Othello after the first two performances provided a major roadblock for the production. Williams recalls the change by noting, “I’m really glad Cristina was in charge of that production, because she dealt with it much better than I would have.”40 Secrecy surrounds the circumstances for the change, at least publicly.41 No clear reason was given for the fact that a new actor took over the role in the announcement made on BroadwayWorld.com, for instance.42 The site simply announced the change and provided background on the actor that 37 Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy. 38 Lundy. 39 Lundy. 40 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 41 In my interview with her, Lundy requested that I not use the names of either actor who played the role in the production, despite the fact that those actors’ names can be found easily online. Her feeling is that people could search and find the names if they wanted to, but there was no need to mention the replaced actor’s name for the purposes of this project. 42 BWW News Desk, “Isaiah Johnson Will Perform in Shakespeare Exchange’s OTHELLO Tonight,” BroadwayWorld.com, accessed July 13, 2017, http://www.broadwayworld.com/off- broadway/article/Isaiah-Johnson-Will-Perform-in-Shakespeare-Exchanges-OTHELLO-Today- 20131026. 133 would be taking over the role. In a phone interview with Lundy, she revealed that the main issue was one of safety: the original actor was not delivering the fight choreography consistently, and when that fight choreography involved strangling someone onstage, consistency is of the utmost importance. After numerous conversations with the actor about the need to exercise caution, “there came a point where the conversation was no longer moving forward,” and a change had to be made.43 This decision was incredibly daunting, as it necessitated finding a new actor as quickly as possible and teaching him the blocking before the show could reopen. By reaching out to their networks of friends and colleagues in the New York City area, they were able to find actors based on referrals from people they already trusted, which made the process easier than a casting call. Both Lundy and Williams noted that they were extremely lucky in who they found to perform for the last two weeks of the run. All in all, they only had to cancel one performance, but the new actor did end up carrying script-in-hand for the rest of the run. Lundy notes that a concern about him being uncomfortable with his lines at the expense of his fellow actors led to the decision to keep him on-book. She still believes it was the right decision, and found that several audience members came up to her after the show to mention that the new Othello was so charismatic and compelling in the role that they forgot about the script within the first five minutes.44 Unfortunately, very few reviews of the production were written, another of the factors that made the project feel “troubled” for the company. They had selected the 43 Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy. 44 Lundy. 134 play and arranged for performance space early in 2013. By the time other New York companies started announcing their star-studded productions of Shakespeare plays that would also take place in the fall, NYSX could not change their dates. In perhaps “the Shakespeariest season in New York City history,”45 audiences and reviewers were inundated with once-in-a-lifetime productions: the Donmar Warehouse’s transfer to St. Ann’s Warehouse of an all-female Julius Caesar starring Harriet Walter; a Julie Taymor-directed production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatre for a New Audience; Ethan Hawke playing Macbeth at Lincoln Center; Orlando Bloom as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at the Richard Rodgers Theatre; and Mark Rylance in a revival of Richard III and his iconic performance of Olivia in Twelfth Night at the Belasco. Before the season was over, the Royal Shakespeare Company would co-produce a production of Antony and Cleopatra with the Public Theatre, and Kenneth Branagh would perform a site-specific Macbeth at the Park Avenue Armory. Reviewers had no interest in seeing any more Shakespeare than they had to, and a relatively unknown company’s production of Othello could not compete with such powerhouses. The lower audience numbers that they encountered due to so many other productions played a major part in NYSX’s later decision to move future mainstage productions to the early spring in order to avoid the crowded theatrical calendar in the fall, when competition is stiffer. This combination of misfortunes surrounding Othello proved a significant challenge for the young company. Many of the actors became disillusioned in the face 45 Lundy. 135 of cancelled performances, and there was little NYSX could do to help them through that disillusionment. Despite the dearth of reviewers, the production’s reception was solid. Critic Sarah Moore of Theatre is Easy, a theatre reviewing website that consistently covers NYSX’s productions, found the production to be “solid and enjoyable, due largely to the direction and adaptation of Cristina Lundy and the dramaturgical work by Maria Mytilinaki.”46 Moore was particularly impressed with the work of the female actors, Van Valin (Desdemona) and Carey Van Driest (Emilia), feeling that their performances stole the show from the men in the second half. Moore, who saw the production with the original actor in the role of Othello, felt he had a strong, if somewhat melodramatic, approach to the character, but “would have liked to see him work up to the frenzied paranoia that Othello has about Desdemona and the ‘affair’ by the final act, rather than seeming to start from that level of paranoia and plateau.”47 Again, the company’s approach to the play made it urgent and current, and the decision to directly tie its issues to the struggles faced by black men in modern America demonstrated the activist bent of the company’s members. That same activism is the kind of work that the hipsters, if politically engaged, align themselves with. Social justice advocacy, even if mostly from the comfort of their social media platforms, is something that many hipsters want to present as part of their identity. The concept behind the production was widely disseminated by the blogs and papers that advertised it: “This ‘Othello’ brings the 46 “Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | Othello,” accessed July 12, 2017, http://www.theasy.com/Reviews/2013/O/othello.php. 47 “Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | Othello.” 136 Moor of Venice to a stop–and-frisk society where innocents are targeted because of their skin color,” wrote The Villager.48 In an interview, Van Valin, the play’s Desdemona, stated, “With things like ‘Stop and Frisk’ and the Trayvon Martin murder so fresh in our collective unconscious, this context shows the kind of inner conflict that can come from a man running an organization that reinforces the prejudices he has to fight every day.”49 And in an interview for the Off-Off Broadway podcast “Go See a Show!” Lundy discussed how “the contemporary world of police work—especially in ‘stop & frisk’-era NYC, where those who are trusted to protect, can be the ones most feared—made this production all the more urgent to present.”50 This construction of Shakespeare-in-performance-as-activism ticks some important hipster boxes. Lundy followed up Othello by directing one of the readings in the “Two Plays, One Conversation” series in the fall of 2014. This set of readings departed from the previous ones by incorporating one new play by Kevin Brewer (directed by Lundy), and another new play created by combining text from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and Euripides’s Trojan Women (adapted and directed by Diana Green). The next winter’s full production, Titus Andronicus, saw even more developments for the young company. The addition of new staff roles, such as Karen Greco as their public relations professional, indicates that the company’s scope and reach were 48 “All on Bard | The Villager Newspaper,” accessed July 13, 2017, http://thevillager.com/2013/10/24/all-on-bard/. 49 Michael Block, “Spotlight On...Anna Van Valin,” accessed July 13, 2017, http://www.theaterinthenow.com/2013/10/spotlight-onanna-van-valin.html. 50 “Cristina Lundy of NY Shakespeare Exchange, on ‘Othello’ and the Upcoming ShakesBEER | Go See a Show!,” accessed July 12, 2017, http://goseeashowpodcast.com/2014/02/26/cristina-lundy-of-ny- shakespeare-exchange-on-othello-and-the-upcoming-shakesbeer/. 137 growing and their plans were becoming more ambitious. According to her website, Greco specializes in helping small-scale arts and entertainment companies access professional public relations services at affordable prices, and NYSX had utilized her “PR for Smarties” program for Hamlet, Island, and Othello.51 The program gave them limited access and help from her, so for Titus they decided to hire her outright. Greco’s work with the company ensured that there was significantly more press coverage and reviews of Titus than of previous NYSX shows. One of the biggest changes that Greco pushed for was to enhance the company’s publicity images for the production.52 Figure 8. Titus holding his murdered son, with the Clown looking on. Photograph by Kalle Westerling. “NYSX’s Titus Andronicus.” 2015. Image. http://here.org/shows/detail/1576/. Last accessed February 22, 2018. During rehearsals they rented a lighting studio and took striking images that highlighted the production’s odd and shockingly violent aesthetic (see Figure 8). Such images are vital in getting press coverage before and during a run, because an 51 “ABOUT,” accessed July 13, 2017, http://www.prforsmarties.com/about/. 52 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 138 exciting and interesting image makes newspapers and magazines—and now social media outlets—want to publish them to catch the eyes of readers. The primary emphasis of the marketing efforts established the company’s purpose: “Viewed through a uniquely contemporary American lens, Shakespeare's brutal tragedy is brought to terrifying life. Running at a brisk 2 hours and 15 minutes, NYSX's Titus Andronicus punches audiences in the gut, leaving them breathless.”53 The show page on the venue’s website declared “NOT YOUR MAMA’S TITUS.”54 As part of the SubletSeries@HERE, the production had the added benefit of the space, equipment, box office, and marketing of HERE, a collaborative multi-art center that nurtures and provides space for up-and-coming artists and “groundbreaking contemporary work.”55 When describing who they cater to, HERE may as well be saying “Hipsters love us!”: HERE’s core annual audience consists of approximately 40,000 ethnically diverse, urban 20-40 somethings— an audience base that many in the field attempt to engage. We produce work that is affordable, challenging and alternative—offering our audiences the opportunity to feel that they are part of something new and fresh.56 An arts organization with such a large, diverse population of young adult patrons is comparatively rare. They are able to provide grants to support artists devising new work, have an active artist-in-residence program, and nurture fledgling artists like Eve Ensler (who developed and workshopped The Vagina Monologues there), Basil 53 Kalle Westerling, Titus PR | New York Shakespeare Exchange, accessed July 13, 2017, http://shakespeareexchange.org/content/titus-pr. 54 “HERE | SHOWS | Titus Andronicus,” accessed August 14, 2017, http://here.org/shows/detail/1576/. 55 “HERE | ABOUT: Mission & Story,” accessed July 14, 2017, http://here.org/about/mission-story/. 56 “HERE | ABOUT: Mission & Story.” 139 Twist, Young Jean Lee, and Taylor Mac. New York’s hipsters yearn for “new and fresh” experiences, and HERE has been delivering that kind of work, and helping to support it financially and with its resources, since 1993. HERE provided a model that NYSX was able to capitalize on, and served as a partner in a clever collaboration and an example of the kind of cross-pollination with other artists and artistic media that continues to hold promise for alternative Shakespeare companies. The residency at HERE was not originally supposed to happen, however. The production was meant to go up a month later in a different venue. When the original venue bumped them, the company scrambled to find another location. HERE happened to have a three-week window available, though they did not immediately warm to the idea of having Shakespeare in their hip, performance-art-heavy space. When avant-garde artists perform Shakespeare, they often drastically depart from the source material, as with Young Jean Lee’s Lear, for instance. NYSX’s devotion to the text keeps it in the category of alternative Shakespeare, for the purposes of this dissertation, and HERE’s programming staff acquiesced. The company had a preexisting relationship with HERE, as the venue had previously hosted The One Man (Two Man (not quite)) Hamlet five years before. NYSX’s reputation for doing Shakespeare “differently” (e.g., the technology-centered and decidedly avant-garde One Man…Hamlet in 2010) led the venue to offer them the space. “The fact that we were doing a bizarre circus version of a notoriously weird Shakespeare play didn’t hurt either,” Ross Williams admitted.57 57 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 140 With Williams once again taking the helm of a production, he wanted this Titus Andronicus to relish the language that he found so fascinating. As with the earlier King John, Williams was confused by the image of the play as “less good” than Shakespeare’s other tragedies when “there is a lot of really intense, emotive meat to the show.”58 Indeed, most of the numerous reviews of the production begin with some version of “This play is known for being violent and full of spectacle and not much else,” followed by a description of the production that acknowledges it has managed to overcome the play’s limitations.59 Williams’s focus on the language, his creative directorial concept for the piece, and the relative lack of other major productions of Titus Andronicus resulted in mostly positive, praise-filled reviews. The goal for the production was to have audiences remember it “as the story that Shakespeare wrote, not just a blood-fest that made them squirm.”60 When Williams asked the company’s usual question when approaching Shakespeare—“What does this play say about America today?”—he saw it as an indictment of the eye-for-an- eye cycle of violence that the modern world seems unable to shake, as well as a warning about the dangers of ignoring the will of the people in politics.61 At the start of the play, the people have elected Titus to be their new ruler, but he refuses to 58 “NEW YORK’S HOTTEST YOUNG THEATRE COMPANY TURNS FIVE.” 59 See, for example: PLASA Media Inc-Lighting & Sound America, “Theatre in Review: Titus Andronicus (New York Shakespeare Exchange/HERE) - Lighting&Sound America Online News,” Lighting&Sound America Online News, accessed September 1, 2017, http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/news/story.asp?ID=-VR4CAC.; “Review: Titus Andronicus,” StageBuddy.com, January 26, 2015, https://stagebuddy.com/theater/theater- review/review-titus-andronicus.; “Circus of Horror: Titus Andronicus,” Theater Pizzazz, February 2, 2015, http://theaterpizzazz.com/%e2%80%8bcircus-horror-%e2%80%8b-titus-andronicus/.; and “Titus Andronicus,” Exeunt Magazine (blog), accessed September 1, 2017, http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/titus-andronicus-5/. 60 “Review Fix Exclusive: Ross Williams Talks ‘Titus Andronicus’ - Review Fix.” 61 “Review Fix Exclusive: Ross Williams Talks ‘Titus Andronicus’ - Review Fix.” 141 assume the role, instead deferring to the former emperor’s eldest son, Saturninus. Williams was intrigued by the idea that “the play begins with the potential of democracy,” but when the people in charge disregard the desires of the public, “all hell breaks loose.”62 These ideas, as well as the ever-present focus on character and language, served as the jumping-off points for NYSX’s version of this play. When audience members entered the theatre space, they encountered a stage reminiscent of a tattered, vintage circus: faded red and white vertical-striped fabric like an old circus tent, and a giant, illuminated bulls-eye at center stage, whose alternating red and white concentric circles would be used throughout the play to punctuate the action. Off to one side of the stage was an old makeup table with mirror, and on the other side was a grain chute that noisily released corn into a metal tub throughout the play’s first half any time there was a murder. The production opened with the actors’ silhouettes appearing through the circus tent backdrops. A silent dumb show/dance piece ensued, with the characters whirling around the stage, stabbed one-by-one until all of them were littered, lifeless, across the stage. At the center of this performance piece was the Clown, played by Kerry Kastin, costumed like Pierrot.63 She spent much of the play sitting at the makeup table and watching the action onstage silently, occasionally stepping in to perform one of the disposable characters who enter, speak a few lines, and are then killed. Some critics loved the dumb show, one calling it “a fantastical dance of stabbings”64 and another raving that 62 “NEW YORK’S HOTTEST YOUNG THEATRE COMPANY TURNS FIVE.” 63 Pierrot is a stock pantomime and commedia dell arte character who wears white face makeup and is known for being a sad clown. 64 “This Week In New York,” accessed September 1, 2017, http://twi-ny.com/blog/2015/01/28/titus- andronicus/. 142 it was “my favorite scene, a bloodless bloodletting induction.”65 But others felt that, rather than adding an artistic, metaphorical touch, the dance was too literal. Exeunt magazine’s reviewer felt that “a Clown character who opens the action with a limp game of tag, and an odd decision to have a choreographed fight transitioning to a boy band-like synchronized dance give the production an uneasy start.”66 Another critic found it to be an “elaborate and obvious movement sequence that climaxes in everyone dropping dead—as if the production needs more of that.”67 While the addition of more deaths might have been superfluous, the prologue introduced the Clown conceit to the audience and gave the production a jarring opening. Interestingly, the Julie Taymor-directed film version of the play, Titus, also features an elaborate movement sequence in its opening moments.68 It is possible that Williams, consciously or not, was referencing the spectacle introduced by Taymor. 65 “New York Shakespeare Exchange’s Titus Andronicus | Steve Mentz,” accessed July 14, 2017, http://stevementz.com/new-york-shakespeare-exchanges-titus-andronicus/. 66 “Titus Andronicus.” 67 America, “Theatre in Review.” 68 Julie Taymor, Titus (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 1999). 143 Figure 9. The Clown (Kerry Kastin) holding the heads of Titus’s sons in front of the illuminated bulls- eye, the unlucky messenger who is about to be killed for bringing bad news. Photograph by Kalle Westerling. “Clown.” 2015. Image. http://twi-ny.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/titus.jpg. Accessed September 13, 2017. With each casual death in the beginning of the play, the release of the grain into the metal tub represented the blood being spilled, perhaps lulling the audience into a sense of complacency about the violence. Williams acknowledged that one cannot direct Titus Andronicus without blood, but was adamant that “there are theatrical ways to do it that can make the blood and violence a part of the world, but not the focus of the play.”69 However, once the violence struck Titus’s own family at the hands of others in the rape and mutilation of Lavinia by Chiron and Demetrius, a more literal spilling of blood began.70 Before the rape, Demetrius argues to his mother that Lavinia should be violated before they kill her by saying, “Stay, madam; 69 “NEW YORK’S HOTTEST YOUNG THEATRE COMPANY TURNS FIVE.” 70 It should be noted that the grain was used to mark the death of Titus’s son, Mutius, at the start of the play after Mutius blocks the way for Titus to chase after Lavinia and Bassianus, who refuse to yield to Titus’s command for Lavinia to marry Saturninus. So the violence had already touched him, technically, but not so deeply as with Lavinia’s assault. 144 here is more belongs to her;/ First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.”71 With this act of violence, the stage blood replaced the flow of the grain from the chute, though metaphorical touches remained: When Lavinia came back onstage after her attack, she shuffled to center stage and stood on the platform looking at the audience before reaching out her arms to unravel elongated sleeves in the place of her hands (see Figure 10). Figure 10. Kate Lydic, as Lavinia, reveals her missing hands to the audience. Photograph by Kalle Westerling. “Lavinia, NYSX’s Titus Andronicus.” Image. 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/theater/titus-andronicus-from-new-york-shakespeare- exchange.html?_r=0. Accessed September 14, 2017. The rest of the production proceeded with bloody violence, and reviewers noted that the late introduction of the blood made it more unsettling when it finally did arrive. “It’s an effective device: instead of becoming numbed by the violence, we 71 II.iii.860-1. 145 begin to see it in greater detail as it becomes more personal, and it is more painful for us to witness as it is for Titus Andronicus to endure.”72 This production proved to be the first time that one of their mainstage shows consistently sold out, thanks to the combination of press coverage, location at HERE, and New York theatregoers intrigued by the prospect of seeing a rarely-produced play. Reviewers, professional and amateur, praised the work far more than they found fault with it. The more metaphorical staging proved controversial (as metaphorical staging often does), with some critics raving over the choices and others feeling that they fell flat. While several critics found the grain chute interesting and a device whose symbolism was clear and accessible, others called it “strange…a bit abstract,”73 and “a bizarre device…out of place.”74 But the production as a whole was praised for solid performances and clear action. The reviewer for Stage Buddy assured readers that “there are no dreaded, ‘Wait, what's going on?’ moments that often spoil less carefully staged productions of Shakespeare.”75 And Theatre is Easy, a website that consistently reviews NYSX’s shows, similarly declared that, “Due to the consistent commitment to intention, despite being a Shakespearean play, I found the plot easier to follow than other shows not written in iambic pentameter or having words spoken with strange amounts of syllables.”76 Individual actors also stood out, including the production’s Titus, Brendan Averett. Averett—who had played one of 72 “Circus of Horror.” 73 America, “Theatre in Review.” 74 “Titus Andronicus.” 75 “Review,” January 26, 2015. 76 “Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | Titus Andronicus,” accessed July 14, 2017, http://www.theasy.com/Reviews/2015/T/titusandronicus.php. 146 the Mechanicals in Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatre for a New Audience, a production that had helped contribute to the saturation of the New York Shakespeare market in 2013—commanded the stage with his size and ability to bring out the play’s moments of black comedy. One reviewer found his performance “uneven,” but felt that the humor was his strong suit, saying, “Averett underplays the dark humor and yet manages to make it land with precision.”77 Gretchen Egolf, who played the murderous Goth queen Tamora, was a critical favorite, earning praise for her icy performance, her “viscerally ruthless” portrayal giving one reviewer goosebumps.78 A blogger who mostly panned the production found praiseworthy material in Egolf’s “fine-tuning” of the role to alternate “between evil and near caricature.”79 Another actor who won praise across the board was Warren Jackson as “an especially dynamic and somehow sympathetically evil Aaron.”80 One critic found him to be “in a class by himself…handling the verse with unusual vigor and wit,”81 and another was particularly affected by his choice to make eye contact with individual audience members during his soliloquys, helping to charm them and “coax” them along with his plans.82 Another strong aspect of the production was Elivia Bovenzi’s costume design. The costumes were mostly modern, but subtle touches and accessories referenced the play’s Roman origins and the characters’ individual quirks. Gold accents on cuffs and 77 “Review,” January 26, 2015. 78 “Titus Andronicus.” 79 “Titus Andronicus - The Front Row Center,” accessed September 1, 2017, http://thefrontrowcenter.com/2015/01/titus-andronicus/. 80 “Circus of Horror.” 81 America, “Theatre in Review.” 82 “Review,” January 26, 2015. 147 shoulders hinted at the attire of ancient Rome, with Tamora sporting a golden laurel crown. These choices also indicated the military background of certain characters, as with the golden epaulets on the shoulders of Titus’s modern black sweater. The costuming of the clown, referencing both Pierrot and Emmett Kelly, instantly communicated that the character would serve in various small roles throughout the play and would silently and resignedly witness the action unfolding onstage.83 Saturninus (Vince Gatton) was immediately recognizable as a smarmy dandy in his fur jacket and ascot, while the Goths were given touches of their modern namesakes, complete with black eyeliner and Demetrius and Chiron in black hoodies. These elements combined with Jason Lajka’s scenic design to create a world at once modern, Roman, and reminiscent of an American Dust Bowl-era traveling circus. That blending of cultural and historical elements made the production suitably edgy for the audience at HERE, and attractive for a postmodern hipster. Not only did the audience experience a play that relatively few people have seen live (certainly when compared to Othello or A Midsummer Night’s Dream), it also provided something unexpected: a Titus Andronicus set in a circus tent. NYSX used its reputation for subversive Shakespeare to secure its venue at HERE. That subversion of Shakespeare, putting the play in an odd time or place, adding a movement sequence to the beginning, or substituting grain poured out of a rusty chute for blood pouring out of a human body, makes the experience of viewing the play special to a person who appreciates and seeks out unique experiences. The production’s novelty 83 Another “sad clown” figure like Pierrot. Kelly, however, was a circus clown in the 20th Century who created the character of “Weary Willy”, based on Depression-era hobos. 148 elements created a pastiche aesthetic and the ability to talk about this distinctive performance with others later, prime elements in the creation of hipster cultural capital. That the production was mostly favorably received, with solid design elements, performances, and textual clarity, provides even more of an exclusive experience: not only did the production subvert one’s expectations of Shakespeare, but it did so while remaining true to the text, thereby maintaining its intellectual credentials. A theatrical product that approached a well-known play from a new perspective was the goal again in 2016 with Hamlet^10. The title is meant to be a mathematical equation, “Hamlet to the tenth power,” indicating that ten different actors play the title role. It also implies that more aspects and perspectives will be drawn out from the character as a result of these different interpretations. Williams was once again directing, and the idea for the staging came out of the original Pericles experimentation workshops that the company had commissioned in 2013, as well as the subsequent Sans Hamlet piece that was never performed for the public.84 Those prior efforts inspired the company to explore Hamlet’s character as expressed by multiple actors, with the goal of identifying what makes him so relevant to modern playgoers. “There’s no reason Hamlet has to be any one thing,” Williams told the free daily newspaper Metro.85 “Why would we ever need to say that Hamlet is a dashing, heroic, princely leading man type? Or white? Why can’t he be a wispy little Asian 84 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 85 “10 Actors Make 1 Hamlet in New York Shakespeare Exchange’s Production,” Metro US, March 22, 2016, https://www.metro.us/new-york/10-actors-make-1-hamlet-in-ny-shakespeare-exchange-s- new-production/zsJpcu---FIc57MrfVOrVo. 149 guy, or a fat guy?” By having different people play the role at different points, particular elements could be highlighted, as when the Hamlet who jumped into the grave to lament Ophelia’s death was played by the same actor who had played Ophelia up until that death. Lines could also take on new significance: “There is a big difference between seeing a young woman saying, ‘Get thee to a nunnery,’ versus a young man saying, ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’”86 Thus, five men and five women were cast in the title role, some playing the character for brief scenes and others playing him for longer stretches. When they were not playing Hamlet, the actors portrayed the rest of the characters that take part in the action. Sometimes more than one actor would play the role throughout the course of a single scene, with two actors engaging in a kind of debate onstage, physically manifesting Hamlet’s internal arguments. Occasionally, the entire company spoke Hamlet’s lines in unison, and during soliloquys the delivery might pass from actor to actor throughout the course of one speech. For the famous “To be, or not to be” speech, one row of actors stood close to the first row of audience members while others stood further back. Then they all began speaking the lines, but deliberately out of sync with each other. Afterwards, a single actor performed the lines again, alone, from center stage. Williams also cast two women in traditionally-male roles, with Polonius played by Julie DeLaurier and Rosencrantz by Sarin Monae West. Designers Elivia Bovenzi and Jason Lajka, who had created the costumes and set, respectively, for Titus, returned to produce a much simpler visual aesthetic this 86 “10 Actors Make 1 Hamlet in New York Shakespeare Exchange’s Production.” 150 time. Bovenzi’s color palette for the costumes was mostly dark, with blacks and grays making up the majority of the pieces, and the actors dressed in modern, comfortable clothes that facilitated movement and helped to visually indicate that the words were the primary focus of the production. The set was made up of a series of wooden boxes that could be moved and manipulated into various configurations within the in-the- round performance space. The blocks could create the ramparts for Fortinbras to discuss his plan to conquer Denmark, for example, then quickly be reconfigured to create something completely different. In the graveyard scene, the Gravedigger popped out of a centrally located, upside-down box that represented Ophelia’s grave, while the other boxes were littered around the edges, suggesting the gravestones surrounding this fresh burial plot. Figure 11. Fortinbras on the ramparts. Photograph by Martin Harris. “Publicity Photo- Fortinbras, Hamlet^10.” 2016. Image. Retrieved from http://www.nytheatre-wire.com/bb16041t.htm. Last accessed February 22, 2018. The goal of this production was far removed from the visually spectacular approach of the circus-themed Titus and served instead to put the text and the performative 151 concept at the forefront of the play. The actors’ dexterity became a focus for the audience, allowing the viewers to think about the implications of the multiple performances and minimizing the visual noise to emphasize the performers’ bodies in a clean, almost austere space. As might be expected from an experimental production of a play that is so ubiquitous and well-known, the reviews from both professional and amateur critics were mostly mixed. While one reviewer lauded it as an answer to Germaine Greer’s question, “What’s the point of doing Hamlet?”87 and another repeatedly called it “ingenious,”88 Theatre Pizzaz felt that the production was “defined more by its shortcomings than its successes.”89 One of the common complaints from reviewers was that the splicing and sharing of Hamlet’s lines between various actors made it difficult to connect with the character. As soon as the audience became comfortable with a new performer in the role, a new actor would assume the part, taking some viewers out of the action and making them focus on the concept again, rather than the text and character development. The purpose of this approach was to encourage the audience to think about the various aspects of Hamlet’s personality, and how those elements can be seen and interpreted in the modern world. In many ways, original productions of Shakespeare’s plays would have lacked the attempts at performative verisimilitude that dominated theatre after the Restoration. It seems fitting, then, for a 87 “Review: Hamlet10’: A Pleasantly Schizophrenic Take on The Bard,” OnStage Blog, accessed September 22, 2017, http://www.onstageblog.com/reviews/2016/3/29/review-hamlet10-a-pleasantly- schizophrenic-take-on-the-bard. 88 “Hamlet 10 New York Shakespeare Exchange,” 10, accessed September 20, 2017, http://www.nytheatre-wire.com/bb16041t.htm. 89 “Bad Metrics: Hamlet^10,” Theater Pizzazz, March 30, 2016, http://theaterpizzazz.com/bad-metrics- hamlet10/. 152 production of Hamlet to attempt to disrupt the audience/character relationship in order to make the viewer reflect on how a figure so ingrained in the Western canon could shed light on the experiences of people of different ages, ethnicities, genders, and body types. This strategy disrupts the idea that Hamlet, and the plays of Shakespeare as a whole, tell a story for or about one kind of person, a white, aristocratic man. By defying the preconceived notions of what a production of Hamlet is or should be, Williams and his cast attempted to make Shakespeare more accessible to modern women, people of color, and different age groups. That approach to the text understandably ruffled feathers because it divested Hamlet from the straightjacket of history and tradition that most people expect from it. Such experimentation, of course, is how a theatre company makes such a familiar play fresh and attracts a less traditional audience. The New York Times reviewed the production in a joint article which also examined Gary Busey’s One-Man Hamlet as Performed by David Carl, a Hamlet- related production running concurrently with Hamlet^10. The reviewer, Neil Genzlinger, praised this production that featured an actor playing the notoriously eccentric and unpredictable film actor Gary Busey, who told the story of Hamlet with paper dolls and video projections, interwoven with sidebars reminding the audience of Busey’s film roles.90 The review was less charmed with the experimental approach of NYSX, however. Genzlinger felt that the main conceit of having ten actors play the title role made the play difficult to follow, and was disappointed in the varying 90 Neil Genzlinger, “If You Want to Make a ‘Hamlet,’ You Have to Break Some Rules,” The New York Times, March 28, 2016, sec. Theater, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/theater/if-you-want-to- make-a-hamlet-you-have-to-break-some-rules.html. 153 degrees of talent seen across the cast. He felt unclear about the production’s central thesis and expressed that “if the idea is that all of us have some Hamlet in us, that’s hardly a revelation.”91 Other reviewers were more intrigued by the concept, however. Off-Off Online’s reviewer, Lea Fridman, felt that the goal of the exercise was to turn “an unquestioned theatrical convention,” that one actor plays one role, on its head.92 She was particularly moved by the performance of “To be or not to be,” saying that, “One of Shakespeare’s greatest soliloquies had regained an originary power and was newly fierce, fresh, and wrenching in a way we could not have imagined.”93 Austin Fimmano, of Plays to See, loved watching the different Hamlets argue amongst themselves and felt the concept made the play “more intense, more physical, and thrillingly schizophrenic.”94 Seth Simons of Exeunt Magazine echoed the NYT sentiment that the concept was reductive, but extended his criticism to some theoretical discussions of the impact of the device. Since the other characters in the play viewed each new Hamlet as the same Hamlet from previous scenes, he posited, then “how am I to lend them any weight?”95 Simons also seemed to have an understanding of dramatic performance that would make the pleasure of an avant-garde interpretation of a canonical piece more difficult: Dramatic narrative requires our acceptance that characters are characters and see each other as such. Since we have an implicit understanding that the 91 Genzlinger. 92 “Steal This Hamlet,” Off Off Online, accessed September 25, 2017, https://www.offoffonline.com/offoffonline/22872. 93 “Steal This Hamlet.” 94 “Hamlet10 | Plays To See,” accessed September 25, 2017, http://playstosee.com/hamlet10/. 95 “Review: Hamlet10 at the Flamboyán Theater,” Exeunt Magazine (blog), accessed September 25, 2017, http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/review-hamlet10-at-the-flamboyan-theater/. 154 diegetic Hamlet is a man, the “but what if he was a woman??” question doesn’t quite complicate our understanding of the play…. In Hamlet^10, the formal experiment is at odds with the immutability of Shakespeare’s text.96 Thus, this criticism smacks of exactly the kind of bardolatrous reverence to Shakespeare and his works that NYSX aims to disrupt. If a critic is unwilling to accept Shakespeare’s plays as malleable, then this particular production, and perhaps most of the productions staged by NYSX, may not be for them. Because of the risks that Williams and his colleagues take as part of their primary remit, none of their productions will ever become critical darlings with universally positive reviews. Alternative Shakespearean productions intentionally subvert the status quo of Shakespeare’s traditional cultural capital, and that subversion primes them for hipster consumers. The hipster wants to seem different and transgressive. Transgressing against Shakespeare, whose works sit on one of Western civilization’s highest pedestals, rebels against institutionalized aesthetic ideals. Through the consumption of such productions, the hipster’s affinities for rebellion, intellectualism, and aesthetics converge. Another challenge for the production, noted by Genzlinger, were variations in talent between the different actors that handled the role, arguably one of the most complex and hotly-debated characters in all of the Western canon. A few of the performers received praise across the board. Harry Barandes—who was one of the co-directors for the devised, experimental Pericles piece with NYSX—played Horatio when not taking on the title role. His Horatio was applauded for being both 96 “Review.” 155 commanding and sympathetic, and his skill with the verse was noted by several reviewers. Even the reviewers who disliked the production found him to be the most effective Hamlet and wished that he had played the role throughout.97 Julie DeLaurier as Polonius also struck reviewers with her calculated characterization: “a compelling Polonius who was just the right mix of doddering and genial.”98 But while some of the performers were praised for their dexterity with the text, others were seen as less able to do the words justice. One reviewer even provided several sentences encouraging any young actors reading his review to work on their diction and breath support in order to appropriately prepare themselves for the demands of Shakespeare’s verse.99 Theatre Pizzazz noted that switching from an adept actor to one with less skill meant that “we end up disappointed that we are not watching the better performer deliver the rich, beautiful, endlessly fascinating lines.”100 The reviewers who loved the show, however, found the skills of the entire cast praiseworthy and even noted that a production featuring less-skilled actors would not have worked as well.101 A statement that suggests the hipster appeal of this production comes from Austin Fimmano of Plays to See, an international theatre-reviewing website. Fimmano loved the production, but advised her readers: That being said, I wouldn’t recommend this show for anyone who isn’t already familiar with Hamlet. The actors switch in and out of their roles so abruptly and so often that, unless you have a good grasp of Hamlet’s lines, it 97 “Bad Metrics.”, “Review.” 98 “Bad Metrics.” 99 “Hamlet 10 New York Shakespeare Exchange.” 100 “Bad Metrics.” 101 “Steal This Hamlet.”, “Hamlet10 | Plays To See.”, “Review.” 156 would be easy to fall behind. However, if you are comfortable with the play, this production is a stimulating celebration of the Danish prince.102 Fimmano felt that a familiarity with and understanding of the play made one more likely to enjoy the production, its off-kilter approach making it difficult to follow without that insider knowledge. As discussed in chapter 3, the idea of being “in-the- know” is a foundational aspect of both the postmodern hipster demographic and the groups that came before. This need for knowledge of one cultural object in order to understand another demonstrates the cumulative nature of the cultural capital that hipsters value, and suggests why a Shakespeare company would be well-positioned to take advantage of that accumulation. This production of Hamlet also took perhaps the most mainstream of Shakespeare’s plays and subverted it with a new approach. They did not present just any other version of the classic work, but rather made it a little weird while still preserving the integrity of the text. Through that process they created an unusual, alternative Hamlet that made a product that young, artistic adults might otherwise see as “tired” and “overdone” and made it novel. While Fimmano felt that the approach made the play a little harder to understand, it created just the kind of piece that takes Shakespeare off his pedestal, the goal at the heart of NYSX’s mission statement. In the fall of 2016, the company undertook the difficult subject matter of Shakespeare’s epic poem “The Rape of Lucrece” and turned it into a full-length play written in iambic pentameter. The piece took text directly from the poem, which it supplemented with contributions from Kevin Brewer that fleshed out characters and 102 “Hamlet10 | Plays To See.” 157 provided a narrative closure absent in Shakespeare’s version. Cristina Lundy once again directed and the design was Roman, the only occasion when NYSX has set a Shakespeare work in the time and place that might have originally been intended. Lundy felt that this was important, given the story’s historical basis.103 The rape of Lucrece is typically touted as one of the major events that led to the founding of Rome. Lundy saw it as incredibly interesting and powerful, seeing it as a rape that changed the world: “When we think of Rome, we are thinking of the Rome that existed because of the rape of Lucrece.”104 Lundy felt that the story could have more of an impact on modern audiences if presented as an historical event. It could demonstrate that “this is an act by a person who is part of a power structure, and if people don’t stand up to that, people like him are going to keep doing it until they are caught and stopped.”105 She felt that there were extensive parallels to be drawn between the ancient event and modern conversations around American “rape culture” that have become more prominent in the twenty-first century. In developmental readings of the play in December of 2015, the script was much truer to Shakespeare’s original text than the final product. What struck the people involved in those readings were the echoes of Shakespeare’s text in contemporary testimonies of rape survivors: fear that they would not be believed, worries that they were “asking for it,” greater concern for the grief of their loved ones than their own, etc.106 The company did feel pressure to make the experiences of all survivors heard, but soon realized that was an 103 Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy. 104 Lundy. 105 Lundy. 106 Lundy. 158 impossible goal to accomplish in one play. Lundy believed it was important to unapologetically tell the story of this rape and avoid becoming distracted by the other directions the story could go or worry that there were other experiences that did not get reflected. She still hoped the play would have broader implications if truthfully told.107 Casting choices significantly shaped the production and the story that they were trying to tell, thanks to Lundy’s passion for the casting process. Lundy has helmed NYSX’s casting for several years now, and is fascinated by the way the simple act of putting a person in a role can affect how the entire story gets told.108 The production intentionally used colorblind casting, with Lucrece, her husband Collatinus, her servant Mirabelle (an added character), and others played by African American actors, while Sextus, Lucrece’s father Lucretius, and an otherworldly spirit introduced in the second half of the play were all played by white performers. The role of Lucrece was intentionally filled by a black actor. In Lundy’s words: “What Lucrece is written to be is the ‘ideal woman’ and the narrative that the ideal woman is white and blond doesn’t need any more help being put forward.”109 She was surprised that the actor’s identity as a black woman did not come up during tablework, but observed that the issues around the gendered power imbalance in the play seemed much more important to the actors.110 107 Lundy. 108 Lundy. 109 Lundy. 110 Lundy. Lundy finally brought up the question about race with the actor, Aaliyah Habeeb. Habeeb confirmed that, while she had not mentioned the fact, she had always kept it in the back of her mind. 159 Figure 12. Lucrece and Sextus in her bedroom. Photograph by Martin Harris. “Publicity Photo- NYSX’s The Rape of Lucrece.” 2016. Image. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-rape-of-lucrece-shakespeares-ancient- story_us_58068864e4b021af3477638e. Accessed October 4, 2017. Another important casting decision involved Leighton Samuels, the actor who would play Lucrece’s attacker, Sextus. The production chose to make him an attractive, charming, even likable figure. They believed that denying the rapist an inner life perpetuated the idea that only monsters can become rapists. In an interview, Lundy referenced a Stanford student, Brock Turner, recently convicted of rape after a high-profile trial. The defense worked to portray Turner as a likable young man with a promising future; many saw this as influencing the judge, who imposed a remarkably light sentence of only six months in prison. The punishment outraged many, and clearly influenced Lundy’s approach to the play. Lundy wanted to present her audiences with a likable Sextus in order to problematize assumptions of who commits rape. In fact, one of the reviewers who saw the show complained that Samuels’s version of Tarquin (the name Shakespeare and Livy use to refer to the 160 character Brewer called Sextus) was not monstrous enough to act as he does.111 Shakespeare’s Sextus, in the end, is “a savage, swordpoint rapist,” he says, but this version was insufficiently savage.112 This reviewer’s response reveals exactly the kind of thinking that Lundy wanted to challenge with the production. She did not want a “creepy actor.”.113 The goal was to give the audience scenes in the beginning of the play that show the chemistry between Lucrece and Sextus in ways reminiscent of a romantic comedy, with Lucrece feeling the chemistry, too, even though she is married and loves her husband.114 As Lundy explained, “the spirit he has to come into the bedroom with is one that truly believes that she must feel this way too, because it’s impossible for him to feel that way if she doesn’t also feel it.”115 His guilt over the event is seen later in his drunkenness; Lundy emphasized that this might not be the first woman he has raped, but simply “the first woman of consequence he’s raped.”116 The initial attraction between the two characters was intended to suggest to the audience the two were indeed meant to be together, which is Sextus’s perspective. By making the attacker an ostensibly decent person who the audience sees go through the process of deciding that what he wants is more important than what Lucrece wants, the play brought home the idea that it is not just monsters who are capable of such actions. Several reviewers noted the “timeliness” of the production and how current it felt in its treatment of sexual assault, “a thoughtful meditation on how little our 111 “Theater Review (NYC): ‘The Rape of Lucrece,’” Blogcritics (blog), October 19, 2016, http://blogcritics.org/theater-review-nyc-the-rape-of-lucrece/. 112 “Theater Review (NYC).” 113 Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy. 114 Lundy. 115 Lundy. 116 Lundy. 161 society has grown in its treatment of women.”117 In a phone interview, Lundy revealed that the show opened the week after the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was released, which featured then-candidate Trump explaining to another man that being famous means that you can do whatever you want to women.118 This revelation added a particular urgency to the play and the story being told, and even resulted in a bump in reviewers requesting press tickets because of the subject matter.119 She heard from numerous audience members that they had considered not coming to see the play but by the end were glad they did, grateful for the cathartic experience of seeing a measure of onstage justice.120 The first half of the production dealt mostly with the events covered by Shakespeare in his poem, but the second half took more artistic license. The spirit of Lucrece’s inner monologue was just such an invention, with act 2 beginning with Lucrece onstage alone, outwardly processing what had just happened to her. After a few minutes of soliloquy, the figure of Cassandra—the Trojan prophetess who was seen as a statue in the first act and served as a physical manifestation of female suffering—appeared to create a dialogue partner for Lucrece. This device facilitated a discussion of the assault that invoked many of the elements of contemporary discourse on rape and victim-blaming. Shakespeare’s Lucrece wonders what she could have done differently, blaming herself for finding Sextus attractive and for not letting him kill her instead of violating her, and going over and over how she could 117 “Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | The Rape of Lucrece,” accessed October 4, 2017, http://www.theasy.com/Reviews/2016/R/therapeoflucrece.php. 118 Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy. 119 Lundy. 120 Lundy. 162 have avoided the situation. Cassandra served as a foil to traditional views of sexual assault that often involve blaming the victim. She repeatedly attempted to reassure Lucrece that it was not her fault, that she reacted to the assault in the best way she could, and that no matter how she had interacted with Sextus he was not justified in attacking her. Prior to the final two weeks of rehearsals, the new character had been referred to as the “Omega,” a figure added to make a conversation with Lucrece possible but not really with a clear identity.121 During a costume meeting to decide which statue Omega would play in the first act, the idea of having her play the Cassandra statue struck a chord and the designers made Omega visually reminiscent of the prophetess. This aspect of the production was the most unconventional choice, and Lundy found its introduction so late in the rehearsal process frustrating, especially to the actor playing the part. “Had it been decided in February instead of August, it would have been more settled. That character could have benefitted from one more round of workshopping.”122 Very few reviewers even mentioned this choice, but when they did it was to express confusion. Jon Sobel wanted more clarity: “The presence of a being only Lucrece can see provides for some effectively haunting moments, but a clearer explanation is needed,” and he was unclear if the figure was supposed to be Cassandra or some indication of Lucrece’s divided soul after the attack.123 121 Lundy. 122 Lundy. 123 “Theater Review (NYC).” 163 Other feminist undertones continued through to the play’s ending. After revealing the attack to Collatinus and Lucretius, Lucrece kills herself as the men discuss how upset they are by the events. They ignore Lucrece to the point that she commits suicide right beside them and they fail to notice until after she stabs herself. In the aftermath of her death, the men continue to quibble among themselves about the best course of action, alternately compelled to kill Sextus and fearing retaliation from the king. They eventually decide to accuse Sextus publicly in the Senate, leading to the revolution that Shakespeare would have been familiar with from his studies of the ancient Romans. But the final scene of the play once again subverts traditional Shakespeare by introducing an addendum to the original story. In it, power dynamics shift to show Sextus at the mercy of his and Lucrece’s servants, Caius and Mirabelle. The latter is an invention of Brewer who immediately distrusts Sextus’s intentions toward her mistress from the beginning of the play. He is on the run from those who would punish him for the attack, and finds an inn to sleep in for the evening, making the innkeeper promise not to reveal his location. Sextus then sends his servant Caius out into the town to find him a prostitute. He prepares for a nap, ensuring that the door is locked. As he undressed and settled in to sleep, the audience saw the lid of his trunk open and Mirabelle emerge wielding two daggers. She snuck up behind him and woke him with one knife to his throat and one to his penis, taking the time to make sure he knew who she was and why she was taking revenge on him. The play ends with Mirabelle cutting off Sextus’s penis and then slitting his throat, the audience watching as he screams and flails, eventually dying. Mirabelle and Caius 164 pack their things and leave the inn, presumably safe from retaliation and content with their vengeance. The choice to focus on the agency of the female characters in a story that heavily focuses on the reactions, feelings, and actions of the men injected a feminist perspective that made the production more palatable to modern, progressive audiences. Theatre is Easy felt that Brewer and Lundy should be applauded for their focused work in developing a complex humanity in Lucrece that is notably absent in the poem itself…and by noting that Lucrece’s tragedy is built more on social constructions than her own internalized sense of shame, they have created a woman with agency, nuance, and power.124 Steve Mentz, a professor of English at St. John’s University who writes an active blog of reviews of the theatre he sees in New York, took a group of students to see the production. He noted that, on the way out of the theatre, one of the male students told him that “this was much better than Shakespeare’s version,” which sees Lucrece kill herself and Tarquin/Sextus only banished.125 Mentz felt that the student’s reaction indicated that in the modern world even young men are seeing that “these cruel old stories need better and more just endings.”126 What the change in the ending of NYSX’s piece added to the conversation around the story was a way for modern audiences—particularly young adult audiences who have grown up in a culture influenced by Title IX and online discussions of feminism—to see a more palatable conclusion to the story. The end provided both punishment to the offender and 124 “Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | The Rape of Lucrece.” 125 “NYSX’s ‘Lucrece’ | Steve Mentz,” accessed October 4, 2017, http://stevementz.com/nysxs- lucrece/. 126 “NYSX’s ‘Lucrece’ | Steve Mentz.” 165 empowerment to Mirabelle. The dialogue with the Cassandra figure in act 2 echoed the sentiments that modern audiences still hear today and provided an ideological bridge between Shakespeare and the twenty-first century that many of them may not have expected. And the injustice depicted onstage, including Mirabelle’s action while the male characters were debating how their response would affect them, provided a kind of call to action for people and gave a strong female force to an ancient story. NYSX’s mainstage production for 2017 was a more mainstream Shakespeare play and a comedy, Much Ado About Nothing. The choice was made in part because the production would be used for the inaugural “Intersections” program that will be addressed at length in chapter 5. The production featured the first resident ensemble for NYSX, with the company members performing in the mainstage production, as well as the ShakesBEER pub crawls of early 2017, in order to get them ready for their performances on the road. Another reason for picking the play was its particular relevance in the wake of the 2016 presidential campaign, given the role of cross-talk and the inaccurate accounting of events that leads to trouble for the characters. One of the big talking points in America in the months leading up to Much Ado’s opening was “fake news.” Williams drew a parallel between the consumption of the twenty- four-hour news cycle and the ways that people take information at face value and twist it to justify or affirm their beliefs with the actions of the characters in the play, who “hear things and believe them without questioning, and eventually the results are catastrophic.”127 127 BWW News Desk, “NYSX Tackles Fake News in Timely MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at Urban Stages,” BroadwayWorld.com, accessed October 11, 2017, 166 Figure 13. Beatrice and Benedick. Photograph by Martin Harris. “NYSX Promotional Poster- Much Ado About Nothing.” 2017. Poster. Retrieved from http://www.shakespeareexchange.org/content/past- productions. Last accessed February 22, 2018. The production began with the opening scene of Leonato and his community at leisure and silent, though with a technological twist: Leonato struggled with a virtual reality headset before putting it on and shutting out the world, Antonia lazily swiped left on Tinder, and the other characters were glued to their phones, presumably playing a game or scrolling through Facebook. 128 While everyone else was on some kind of device, Beatrice walked in doing the crossword puzzle in a folded New York Times, immediately indicating to the audience that she was a bit out of place in this Messina. This choice used the cultural capital signified by the New https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-off-broadway/article/NYSX-Tackles-Fake-News-in-Timely- MUCH-ADO-ABOUT-NOTHING-at-Urban-Stages-20170119. 128 The actor who played Antonia, Amanda Barron, confirmed in a post-show talkback that her character was, indeed, meant to be scrolling through Tinder, a dating app where members see pictures of potential matches and can swipe right or left on their phones depending on whether or not they like what they see. 167 York Times crossword puzzle, arguably the crème de la crème of the genre, to show “that she is an individual who values deep intelligence over fleeting digital fancy.”129 The action kicked off when a news alert came through on the characters’ phones informing them that Don Pedro and his soldiers would be returning from the war. One strategy that Williams employed in anticipation of the show’s eventual tour was to cut all the Messenger lines in the play and replace them with text messages, news alerts, or Facebook notifications. This strategy meant the company could tour with fewer actors, in addition to emphasizing the tech-centric world of the play and its role in creating confusion and suspicion. When Don Pedro did finally arrive, the Messina natives took part in another twenty-first century activity by taking selfies with him, just as those in the contemporary world might do if they came face-to-face with a celebrity. Another technological update to the world of the play came in the scene of the masquerade party (II.i). Shakespeare’s original play has the characters masking their faces in order to facilitate banter between Beatrice and Benedick, as well as the villainous Don John and Borachio’s torment of Claudio by suggesting that Don Pedro is about to betray him by asking for Hero’s hand in marriage. NYSX turned the masked ball into a virtual reality party, the headgear enabling the characters to attend as avatars of themselves. 129 B Mitchell, “REVIEW: NYSX’s Production of Much Ado About Nothing,” March 5, 2017, https://surrealtimepress.com/2017/03/05/review-nysxs-production-of-much-ado-about-nothing/. 168 Figure 14. Act II, scene i. The masquerade ball as a virtual reality dance party. Photograph by Martin Harris. “Publicity Photo- NYSX’s Much Ado About Nothing.” 2017. Image. Retrieved from https://playstosee.com/much-ado-nothing-2/. Last accessed February 22, 2018. The use of technology to update the scene was praised by reviewers, who found it to be “another smart detail befitting this fully-wired production.”130 Williams decided to use the virtual reality conceit because he felt it was a logical progression of the masquerade: What is interesting about it though is that virtual reality is a mask of sorts and you can, if there are multiple people acting in a virtual reality world, convert your appearance to look like anything. You could be standing in [a] virtual reality fantasy world having a conversation with Dolly Parton and have no idea that it’s some guy in North Dakota. It creates a more enhanced version of a mask, and certainly one based in our contemporary technology obsession.131 The set and costume designs were once again produced by Jason Lajka and Elivia Bovenzi, long-time members of the NYSX team, with newcomers Jason Fok and Matt Otto doing the lighting and sound designs, respectively. The overall aesthetic 130 Mitchell. 131 “Interview With ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Director, Ross Williams | New York Shakespeare Exchange,” accessed July 12, 2017, http://www.shakespeareexchange.org/content/interview-much- ado-about-nothing-director-ross-williams. 169 was “hyper-Modern, with eighties flair, and hints of cyberpunk.”132 The set featured a large back wall that consisted of small, white cubes reminiscent of pixels on a digital screen. They were lit in various intensities and colors to indicate different locations and scene changes. The lighting and sound designs were EDM-inspired, and the costumes were a vibrant, 1980s-esque mix of styles and colors. Beatrice wore a bright red pantsuit with a “Prose before Bros” t-shirt and towering high heels, while Hero was dressed in a bubblegum pink outfit that included a cardigan with a giant emoji on the back. The soldiers’ costumes were at once formal and functional. From the waist up their jackets were varied, with Don Pedro’s displaying his commendations and reminiscent of a dress uniform. Benedick wore a bright pink shirt, striped tie, and deep blue crushed velvet blazer, while Claudio sported a blue collared shirt with a darker blue waistcoat. Their pants were blue camouflage paired with black combat boots to indicate their recent return from war. Don John and Borachio had a punk rock bent to their uniforms: denim jackets worn open, gold chain details on the shirts underneath, and tight, acid-washed denim pants for Borachio and black leather pants for Don John (Figure 15). 132 “Review: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at the New York Shakespeare Exchange,” OnStage Blog, accessed October 11, 2017, http://www.onstageblog.com/reviews/2017/2/24/review-much-ado-about- nothing-at-the-new-york-shakespeare-exchange. 170 Figure 15. Don John and Borachio. Photograph by Martin Harris. “Publicity Photo- NYSX’s Much Ado About Nothing.” 2017. Image. Retrieved from http://goseeashowpodcast.com/2017/03/02/ross- williams-of-nysxs-much-ado-about-nothing-plus-talkback-with-shane-breaux-and-dr-jaime-wright/. Last accessed February 22, 2018. One of the most significant casting choices that Williams made involved the roles of Antonio and Borachio. Antonia became a conflation of the roles of Antonio, Margaret, Ursula, and the Friar. Because Williams cut two of the very few female parts in the play, Margaret and Ursula, he wanted to make sure he cast women in two other important roles. As part of NYSX’s commitment to casting diverse and often underrepresented actors in their plays, Williams felt (and feels) very strongly about putting women in Shakespeare’s plays wherever possible. So Antonio was no longer Hero and Beatrice’s uncle, but rather their aunt, Antonia, and DeAnna Supplee was cast as the usually male Borachio. Having both of these roles played by female actors added an extra layer of meaning to the production. In a post-performance talkback, 171 Williams mentioned that one of Antonio’s lines in V.i becomes more poignant when spoken by a woman.133 In the scene, Leonato and Antonio confront Claudio and Don Pedro and tell them that Hero has died, part of their ploy to stir regret in the young man who has publicly shamed her. Antonio rails against Claudio, saying Content yourself. God knows I loved my niece; And she is dead, slander'd to death by villains, That dare as well answer a man indeed As I dare take a serpent by the tongue: Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops! …. Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea, And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple,— Scrambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys, That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander, Go anticly, show outward hideousness, And speak off half a dozen dangerous words, How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst; And this is all.134 When delivered by a woman, Williams felt these lines testified to women’s experience of the world, with men constantly telling them what to do and exerting their power over women and their bodies. That idea resonated even more profoundly in the context of a President elevated to office in spite of his flagrant abuses of women (which he was recorded bragging about on tape). The lines became another instance when Shakespeare’s Early Modern words struck a postmodern chord by giving a woman a voice. Having Borachio played by a woman also helped along one of the more problematic plot points in the story. Williams and the company felt that 133 “Ross Williams of NYSX’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ plus Talkback with Shane Breaux and Dr. Jaime Wright | Go See a Show!,” accessed October 11, 2017, http://goseeashowpodcast.com/2017/03/02/ross-williams-of-nysxs-much-ado-about-nothing-plus- talkback-with-shane-breaux-and-dr-jaime-wright/. 134 V.i.87-99 172 the strong reactions to the idea that Hero was less than virginal, or even that she had an affair before her wedding, were difficult to reconcile. A bit of promiscuity was not the kind of thing that would evoke the intensity of the characters’ reactions in this ultra-modern, technology-obsessed world that had been created.135 The choice to have Hero reportedly have an affair with another woman helped explain why Leonato might be upset enough to want to kill his daughter. This casting injected another dose of contemporary relevance to the play, considering the ongoing political and social debates surrounding LGBT+ rights. Again, Williams avoided altering the text and instead let the casting inform the audiences’ experience of the play. This examination of New York Shakespeare Exchange’s mainstage productions provides context for the exploration of their off-shoot projects in the following chapter. It also establishes two important features of the company for the purposes of this dissertation. First, the company’s dedication to Shakespeare’s text becomes clear. Throughout their productions, they strive to make the text as accessible as possible without adding gimmicks or obscuring it with extraneous business. Williams and the company believe that Shakespeare is still relevant because the fundamental questions they asked about the human experience have yet to be answered; any updating of a play must never be done at the expense of the text. Second, this production history provides is a clear trajectory towards experimentation intended to make Shakespeare appealing to a postmodern audience. Of course, placing the plays in a contemporary New York environment—whether the Madison 135 “Ross Williams of NYSX’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ plus Talkback with Shane Breaux and Dr. Jaime Wright | Go See a Show!” 173 Avenue flat of King John, the police precinct of Othello, or the social media-saturated world of Much Ado—is hardly an unheard-of phenomenon for a present-day Shakespeare company. But NYSX’s take on the plays tends to skew towards a younger audience of adults under 50 who are interested in culture and the arts: the postmodern hipster. What other companies do less frequently is write new plays based on Shakespeare’s works or stage their shows at performance art venues like HERE. And the consistent dedication to placing Shakespeare in the context of present-day New York is more pronounced than with other companies, even when those companies occasionally stage a modern-dress production (ie. The Public). But what truly sets the New York Shakespeare Exchange apart from the crowd are their additional projects that will be examined in the next chapter: The ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, The Sonnet Project, and Intersections. These ancillary programs have grown to have a life of their own, even serving as the projects that most people associate with the company, rather than the mainstage work. While the mainstage productions provide the stable base of NYSX’s offerings, these other programs show that pushing the conventions of Shakespeare in performance even farther can expand a small company’s reach beyond the genre’s prejudicial perception as “highbrow” entertainment to cultivate new audiences among today’s hip, young, and ironic culture mavens. 174 Chapter 5: New York Shakespeare Exchange Beyond the Mainstage New York Shakespeare Exchange has built and maintained a following that fits into the modern hipster demographic and also models the kinds of techniques that could attract them if used by other companies. While the mainstage plays, as demonstrated in chapter 4, have a flavor of the avant-garde and alternative Shakespeare, programs like the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, The Sonnet Project, and Intersections also tick hipster boxes beyond the traditional arts and cultural fields that have always attracted the bohemian and countercultural subcultures that preceded the postmodern hipster. Rather than being instituted as a way specifically to reach the postmodern hipster, these outside projects were partially started as a way to work around the Actor’s Equity regulations that limit the amount of work performers can do at pay rates below Equity’s set salary standards. These guidelines provide an opportunity for smaller theatre companies in New York City to use Equity actors in their shows, even if the organizations lack the resources to pay the Equity minimum, under the Showcase Codes. These codes limit the maximum house size that actors can perform for to 99 or fewer, the length of the show’s run, and the number of performances that can be included in the run. Without those permissions, small companies like NYSX would never be able to employ Equity actors, even though the pay grades for Off-Broadway and Cabaret performances are significantly lower than those afforded to Broadway performers. In spite of the blessing that this allowance by the union affords, however, NYSX still found their desire to reach more audience 175 members limited by these constraints. That desire to expand was one of the reasons they decided to branch out and explore other programmatic offerings, which have, in many ways, become the way that most people both in and outside of New York know about the company. By offering non-traditional performances, the company is able to work around the restrictions on the audience size for their Equity actors, and also to flex their creative muscles even further. That added creativity, as well as the company’s central goal of “knocking Shakespeare off his pedestal,” make NYSX a Shakespeare theatre company whose base of financial supporters is firmly under the age of fifty. This chapter explores the non-mainstage performances and programs that the group produces using a variety of research methods. While the majority of the accounts and information come from newspaper and blog articles and interviews with members of the company, I also conducted research as a participant observer in the case of the ShakesBEER Pub Crawls. This section of the chapter, therefore, features ethnographic reporting methods that detail my own experience of the crawls, their structure, and their audience members. The programs explored here—the ShakesBEER Pub Crawls, the Sonnet Project, and Intersections—represent a variety of performance styles that reach hipster audiences through numerous methods and media. An understanding of this programming and its approaches to Shakespeare may inspire other Shakespeare companies who wish to reach younger audiences with their own innovative and creative initiatives. 176 5.1 ShakesBEER Pub Crawl One of the programs that NYSX is most known for, at least within New York City itself, is the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl. These crawls take place several times a year and are recognized as “combining the lowest of hi-jinks with Shakespeare’s most breathtaking use of language.”1 The crawls, which are marketed as “New York City’s Original Shakespeare Pub Crawl,” involve the audience traveling with performers to four different NYC bars to drink four different beers and experience four different scenes from Shakespeare over the course of an afternoon.2 These events align with the company’s goal of offering “innovative theatrical programming that explores what happens when contemporary culture is infused with Shakespearean poetry and themes in unexpected ways.”3 As discussed earlier in this dissertation, the distancing of Shakespeare from a low culture pursuit like drinking in a bar has been extensively covered by Lawrence Levine in Highbrow/Lowbrow.4 This fragmentation at the end of the nineteenth century meant that, by the beginning of the twenty-first, combining the two activities has become transgressive in a way that increases their marketability. Indeed, mixing alcohol and Shakespeare is a rising trend in the United States and abroad. In 2015, American Theatre magazine published an article about the phenomenon, examining several variations of such activities in different US cities, 1 “Intersecting with Shakespeare,” Indiegogo, accessed July 12, 2017, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/1928491. 2 These events are incredibly fun, the actors are very talented, and the Shakespeare mash-ups are often extremely clever. I highly recommend that anyone who has the chance to take part in one does so. 3 http://www.shakespeareexchange.org/content/about-nysx 4 Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. 177 including Drunk Shakespeare in NYC, Shotspeare in Los Angeles, the Backroom Shakespeare Project in Chicago, and the New York Shakespeare Exchange.5 All of these companies hope to make Shakespeare interesting to modern audiences by juxtaposing the material’s erudite reputation with the lower-class connotations of a bar and drunkenness. The claim that Shakespeare’s original audiences, and even the actors, would have been drinking during performances is often cited as a justification for the marriage of these two activities. One of the biggest variations between the companies involves the amount of drinking that the actors, themselves, do and their devotion to the original texts. Before Drunk Shakespeare, one actor takes five shots of their choice of liquor, and throughout the performance improv games are imposed on the story (for example performers may be asked to act out the next scene using only lyrics from pop songs). As much as 50 percent of the production could be improvisation.6 Back Room Shakespeare actors engage in drinking games and arm wrestling competitions with the audience before the performance. NYSX, however, prefers for their actors not to drink until they are done with their performances for the day. Williams asserts that “our commitment to making sure the language is clear has to come first (these lines are hard enough to get across in chaotic venues).”7 If an actor does drink, it tends to be as a way to enhance the story, such as when Juliet was 5 Stuart Miller, “Booze and the Bard, Two Flavors That Go Well Together,” AMERICAN THEATRE (blog), February 27, 2015, http://www.americantheatre.org/2015/02/27/booze-and-the-bard-two- flavors-that-go-well-together/. 6 “Getting Drunk With Shakespeare,” TheaterMania.com, accessed December 20, 2017, http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/08-2014/getting-drunk-with- shakespeare_69506.html. 7 Leonard Jacobs, “Raise a Glass to Pint-Size Shakespeare,” Clyde Fitch Report (blog), January 12, 2017, http://www.clydefitchreport.com/2017/01/shakesbeer-shakespeare-bar-pub-theater/. 178 seen sneaking a Mike’s Hard Lemonade to reinforce to the audience that the character is a teenager playing at being an adult.8 The emphasis that they put on the language— and the fact that they avoid the vulgarities of drinking games, binge-drinking, and arm-wrestling—sets ShakesBEER apart from its counterparts, and provides a higher level of cultural capital to hipster audience members. In the early days of NYSX, the company members who had begun their performances in a disused conference room/theatre space in the American Express building soon began moving their experiments outside of their workplace. Happy Hour seemed like a logical progression. These Happy Hour performances provided part of the inspiration for an event that would eventually turn into a staple of the company’s offerings, the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl. The pub crawl idea originally came from one of the board members, who was pushing for the group to find new ways to reach new audiences.9 The company was very aware that the New York theatre scene was saturated with fundraising events and wanted to do something a little different to entice donors and pique interest in their work. The pub crawl was presented as an alternative. That first event was held on a single weekend and sold out all 125 tickets. One of the most important lessons that came from that inaugural crawl was the idea that they needed to be performed for two weekends, partly to accommodate more patrons and partly to make the experience more satisfying for the 8 Marisa Riley, “ShakesBEER: The Shakesperean Pub Crawl That Combines Theatre And Alcohol In The Most Brilliant Way Possible,” accessed November 10, 2017, https://www.bustle.com/articles/37740-shakesbeer-the-shakesperean-pub-crawl-that-combines-theatre- and-alcohol-in-the-most-brilliant-way-possible. 9 “Getting Drunk With Shakespeare”; Vince Gatton, Interview with Vince Gatton, Phone, July 28, 2017. 179 actors. From the performers’ standpoint, the adrenaline was so high during the first weekend that it felt like it was over before they knew it. If there was not a second weekend, it seemed to some as if the whole thing never actually happened. A second performance gave performers more of a chance to savor the experience and have fun with it in a way that a single showing did not.10 Today the crawls are limited to one- hundred participants or fewer, depending on the capacities of the bars that host them. The company feels that having more than one-hundred audience members yields diminishing returns, with the patrons not getting a sufficiently high-quality experience for their investment. Occasionally this low number of spaces results in sold out events, particularly if a publication like Time Out picks up the story and includes the performances in their “Guide to Going Out.”11 Figure 16. The ShakesBEER logo, with the text “NYC’s Original Shakespearean” present to differentiate it from similar offerings in the city. Retrieved from http://shakespeareexchange.org/content/shakesbeer-0. Last accessed January 2, 2018. 10 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 11 Williams. 180 That first performance experiment proved so successful that the company was eager to find some way to brand it. They quickly discovered that the term “ShakesBEER” was so ubiquitous that it would be very difficult to copyright it. Beyond the licensing issue associated with its name, a copyright would also have been problematic because the underlying material is in the public domain. The company’s lawyers suggested that they use the word “original” in their marketing in order to brand it.12 Since then, that branding has proven helpful in developing a unique and recognizable presence among New York’s plethora of “Get Drunk and Watch Shakespeare” events. After the ShakesBEER pub crawls had become established in the city, a group nearby in New Jersey started putting on a “ShakesBEER Pub Crawl” using NYSX’s formula of traveling to the same number of bars during the same time window on a Saturday afternoon, and even using the NYSX font and logo on their marketing materials. With the “Original Shakespeare Pub Crawl” branding already established, Williams was able to contact the other company and explain that they would need to change their advertising.13 This episode demonstrates the appeal of the ShakesBEER concept, even outside of the city. These performances have the potential to attract a hipster following, partly because of the integration of beer into the equation. The pub crawls tap into the craft beer movement in the United States, which has made small, micro-brewed beers the drink of choice for many adults in their drinking prime. While older drinkers tend to 12 The New York law firm Jones Day provides pro bono legal assistance to the company. 13 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 181 be more set in their beer-drinking tastes and often do not wish to deviate, younger people have driven the success of the craft beer movement and have found cultural cachet in beer knowledge and a discriminating palate. When hipsters are not drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, the stereotypical hipster beer, they’re drinking small-batch Belgian-style Saisons brewed with pumpkin blossom and locally-roasted coffee beans. While PBR is seen as the height of hipster irony, the desire to stay on the cutting edge of any of their cultural interests has meant that, as the craft beer movement has expanded, hipsters have been on the front lines of that expansion. Whether they have helped or hindered it, depends on who you ask. In 2015, Andy Sparhawk, an employee of the Brewer’s Association, wrote an article for CraftBeer.com entitled “Hipsters and Hopheads and Beer Snobs, Oh My!”14 The piece presented claims prominent in the craft beer community about how each of the three titular groups were ruining craft beer, but then went on to point out that each was actually good for the movement. He asks, “If it wasn’t for the hipsters’ boredom with all things mainstream, would we have access to the ever-changing lineup of new beers?”15 He also points out that the craft beer movement, in and of itself, is countercultural, developing from beer drinkers’ frustration with limited and boring offerings from major, traditional beer empires like Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller. In an article from the UK newspaper The Telegraph, hipsters are credited with making the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which had been devoted to 14 Andy Sparhawk, “Hipsters and Hopheads and Beer Snobs, Oh My!,” CraftBeer.com, March 27, 2015, https://www.craftbeer.com/craft-beer-muses/hipsters-and-hopheads-and-beer-snobs-oh-my. 15 Sparhawk. 182 encouraging citizens to drink beer from local producers, obsolete.16 The hipster penchant for traditional, craft-brewed beers has meant that hundreds of new breweries have opened in the United Kingdom in the past decade, leading CAMRA to turn its focus to helping preserve traditional pubs.17 The craft beer community also has its own complicated relationship with cultural capital and perceptions of beer as highbrow or lowbrow. Traditionally in America, beer has been seen as a drink with lower cultural capital than, for example, wine or high-quality spirits. Budweiser and Miller beers are associated with the working classes, and major beer companies are a staple of football advertising, marketing themselves as beers for the common man. By positioning Shakespeare in the context of the historically low-class environs of bars and pubs and making the joke of even including “beer” in the title of the event, NYSX is subverting cultural expectations of where one is supposed to find these canonical works. There is a level of irony to juxtaposing this highbrow form of entertainment with a lowbrow environment and consumable product. But ever since the 1990s when the craft beer boom began, suddenly beer can be “fancy.” Even using the word “craft” to distinguish particular beers from mass- produced competitors indicates the skill and care taken in brewing the product. By offering an alternative to the soullessly manufactured lager, craft beer gains the cultural capital of the artisanal food and drink movement that hipsters invest in. When 16 “Brews, Beards and 5 Other Things Hipsters Have Brought Back from the Brink,” The Telegraph, accessed October 31, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/good-news/2016/03/31/brews-beards-and-5- other-things-hipsters-have-brought-back-from/. 17 “CAMRA Success,” CAMRA, accessed November 30, 2017, http://www.camra.org.uk/camra- success. 183 hipsters drink the stereotypical PBR, they do it ironically. But when they focus their attentions on craft beer, they gain the cultural capital that comes with being “in the know” about new and different beers and being seen by others as appreciating a carefully crafted, boutique product. By positioning Shakespeare in various bars and neighborhoods around New York City, NYSX not only draws in ticket-buying audience members whose interest is piqued by the beer, but also has the potential to engage inadvertent audience members who just happen to be having a beer at any of the four bars that the performances travel to on a given day. One participant, who wrote an account of their experience of the Crawl for the hipster-catering culture website broke-ass stuart,18 noted that this combination of spectators—willing and unwilling—added to the uniqueness of the experience: It was strangely awesome to hear the words of the Bard from the booming voices of skilled actors punctuated by the dejected interjections of football fans. To see the heroic Rosalind from As You Like It perched atop the bar while a Viagra commercial played behind her head. The mix of old and new, theater and television, literary fan and sports fan was an unexpectedly kick-ass mashup.19 Allyson Wolff, the writer who calls herself “a future multi-thousandaire,” intersperses similar jokes and silliness throughout her account of the experience. And through it all, she displays an appreciation for the “kick-ass mashup” of elements. Just as her 18 broke-ass stuart is a website based out of San Francisco that covers all manner of hipster-attracting entertainment, saying of its mission: “We write for busboys, poets, social workers, students, artists, musicians, magicians, mathematicians, maniacs, yodelers and everyone else out there who wants to enjoy life not as a rich person, but as a real person. Namely, we write for you.” They even have an article that outlines “The Hippest Beatnik Walkin’ Tour” http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2017/08/17/beatnik-bash-walking-tour/ 19 “ShakesBEER: An NYC Pub Crawl,” Broke-Ass Stuart’s Goddamn Website (blog), September 28, 2015, http://brokeassstuart.com/blog/2015/09/28/shakesbeer-an-nyc-pub-crawl/. 184 humor relies on the unexpected, her pleasure at the Crawl was largely derived from her participation in an activity that was “truly unique to the New York City bar scene.”20 A participant who writes for another hipster-culture website, SarahFunky, proclaims that the day is “exactly the sort of thing I dreamed I would experience when I thought about moving to New York City when I was 10.”21 For these writers, the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl is the epitome of “New York cool,” giving participants the kind of experience that can only be had in the eclectic, endlessly unique city. On one particular Crawl on a gloomy Saturday afternoon in November of 2014, audience members started to gather and chat at The Dubliner on New York’s historic Stone Street in the Financial District. While the neighborhood might initially seem far removed from the usual haunts of the hipster to those familiar with NYC, just twenty years earlier the few blocks tucked between buildings owned by the biggest names on Wall Street were run down and facing an uncertain future; Stone Street has since become a jewel in the crown of New York City rejuvenation. The neighborhood’s history is a classic example of the kind of gentrification that is so closely associated with hipsters, and so it makes the location of this crawl particularly ideal for a company that wants to pull in that audience. 20 “ShakesBEER.” 21 “ShakesBEER,” SarahFunky, accessed November 10, 2017, http://www.sarahfunky.com/shakesbeer/. 185 Figure 17. A Google map of Stone Street in 2018. “Stone St.” Map. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/maps/zdED5z9ikNS2. Last accessed February 23, 2018. Designated as a historic District by the city government in 1996, the street, which was one of the first in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in the 1600s, faced serious neglect in the middle of the twentieth century, and was “really a back alley filled with graffiti, a garbage pit; used for low-level drug dealing.”22 Through the efforts of the Alliance for Downtown New York and their Lower Manhattan Business Improvement District, major efforts to revitalize the street and bring new business to it began before the turn of the twenty-first century, thanks to money from the city ($850,000), the federal government ($800,000), and the Alliance ($150,000).23 The money was committed to repave the streets in the district with its namesake stones and install new lighting in the form of historical-looking lamp posts. With such quaint 22 “Commercial Real Estate; Turning an Alley Into a Jewel - The New York Times,” accessed February 23, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/06/nyregion/commercial-real-estate-turning-an- alley-into-a-jewel.html. 23 Ibid. 186 touches bringing out the charm of the surrounding nineteenth-century buildings and those with Dutch Renaissance and Tudor architecture, boutique development companies stepped in to boost the commercial presence. Goldman Properties was one of those companies who saw the potential in Stone Street and who specializes in such projects: “Since 1968, Goldman Properties has been driven to restore urban neighborhoods, ignite street life and create thriving global destinations.”24 The neighborhood that they started with in 1968 was the Upper West Side of Manhattan, an area that can be seen as a blueprint for today’s gentrification: a process of hipsters and those on the cutting edge leading the recolonization and eventually being priced out of the neighborhoods that they had played such a role in repopularizing.25 The property company has revitalized neighborhoods in Miami and Philadelphia, and also spearheaded the development of SoHo in the last decades of the twentieth century. Their website regularly touts their “hip” mission and even has a page that shares the company’s vision and passion for injecting arts and culture into the neighborhoods in which they work.26 Focusing on street art, Goldman seeks out new and emerging artists and commissions them to create murals in their revitalized neighborhoods, and in 2015 launched Goldman Global Arts, an incubator that provides funding to artists. When describing their 24 Goldman Properties website. http://www.goldmanproperties.com/. Last accessed on 29 December 2016. 25 “History,” Goldman Properties website. http://www.goldmanproperties.com/About-Us/History.asp. Last accessed on 29 December 2016. 26 “Art and Culture”, Goldman Properties website. http://www.goldmanproperties.com/Art-and- Culture/. Last accessed on 29 December 2016. 187 revitalization projects in Philadelphia’s Center City, they focus on the idea that, after acquiring an eighteen-floor office building and injecting their hip brand into it, the company was hand picking synergistic taste makers to open compatible, yet well differentiated boutiques, cafes, lounges, and other restaurants in our first floor spaces. Upper floors were attracting more from the “Creative Class,” including architects, public relations firms, web site designers, advertising and communication companies, and other arts, cultural, and technology related groups.27 The practices undertaken by Goldman Properties demonstrate exactly the kind of development that has previously been discussed with regards to hipster neighborhoods: a major developer (regardless of how “boutique” they may view themselves) intentionally infusing art and culture (edgy, alternative art and culture at that) into their projects as a means of attracting a certain kind of tenant and visitor. The successes of Goldman Properties reinforce the economic power of the Creative Class, hipsters among them, as well as the idea that less mainstream artistic expression can be an attractive feature for those creatives. Venue selection for the Crawls is also heavily based on logistical efficiency. One of the biggest challenges of the Crawl is finding venues within walking distance of each other that are willing to let 40-100 people come into their space and disrupt the other patrons.28 One of the trends that Williams and company have found is that clumps of bars that are under the same ownership or management are often easier to negotiate and plan with. One challenge faced by NYSX is the different ways that a theatre company and a bar are managed: a theatre company needs to be able to plan 27 “Center City Philadelphia”, Goldman Properties website. http://www.goldmanproperties.com/Real- Estate/Philadelphia.asp. Last accessed 29 December 2016. 28 Audience numbers have to be capped depending on the capacity maximums of the bars used for the crawl. 188 their performances far enough in advance to advertise, sell tickets, and get actors and directors to sign on. NYSX has found that bars are much less strict in their calendar keeping. Bar managers might agree to host the event two months in advance, and then when the day rolls around, have forgotten to put it on the schedule. The Pub Crawl organizers have taken to calling the venues several times in the weeks and days leading up to performances to confirm and remind them that the shows are coming.29 The best way for the reader to understand the tone and atmosphere of a Pub Crawl is with a description of these events, based on my own experience as a participant observer. The audience members that fill the performance spaces for the Pub Crawls tend to range in age from 30 to 60, with most of them in their 30s and early 40s. The vast majority of them are white and appear decidedly middle-class, and feature some of the attributes of the hipster: in well-kempt clothing that appears pressed, on the casual side of “business-casual,” lots of dressy jeans and button-up shirts, the men perhaps with a manicured beard and carrying a fashionable leather satchel across their shoulders, while the women sport bohemian fashion touches like hats and vintage floral patterns. For the Stone Street performance most of them are fairly non-distinctive in clothing and style, but here and there are touches of neo- bohemian fashion and aesthetic: the guy wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a pork-pie hat, bow-tie, and rolled up pants that revealed his ankles above his Oxford shoes; a man with an ironic Fu Manchu mustache (see Figure 18) who was also wearing one of the NYSX’s “Belly up to the Bard” t-shirts; and numerous undercut hairstyles (also 29 Williams Interview. 189 referred to as the “Hitler Youth” haircut) that demonstrate an engagement with fashion and keeping current, but also a slightly off-kilter sense of personal style. Figure 18. “The Traditional Fu Manchu.” Image. Retrieved from https://hairstylecamp.com/wp- content/uploads/10-fu-manchu-mustache-1.jpeg. Accessed January 2, 2018. Figure 19. An example of an undercut hairstyle. “Los Mejores Cortes de Cabello Hipster Hombre Invierno 2018.” Image. September 26, 207. Retrieved from https://modaellos.com/los-mejores-cortes- de-cabello-hipster-hombre/galeria-fotos/0. Accessed on February 23, 2018. 190 Perhaps half of the patrons wear the marks of neo-bohemia. The older members of the audience have settled into the sartorial styles that the mainstream prescribes, with the exception of a striking gentleman in his mid-to-late-60s who dons a jauntily angled beret. And the middle-aged man wearing a Captain America hoodie could never be accused of being trend-setting. This gathering is certainly not some kind of hipster mecca, but one does see the marks of neo-bohemian fashion much more clearly and in greater numbers than one might expect to find in other Shakespeare settings. And the relative youth of the audience—compared with that found at productions by other, more traditional Shakespeare companies—is noteworthy. Something is different about this company. Something is cooler here. Stone Street is quiet at this time of the week, so a group of Shakespeare buffs crowding into its bars is, if a little unorthodox, at least welcome to the bars that have agreed to host this particular event. Far from a once run-down area cut off from the main thoroughfares of Manhattan by the 1980s construction of the Goldman-Sachs building, it is now a vibrant little block of bars and restaurants, thanks to the revitalization occurring over the last few decades. Tables and seating line the cobblestoned pedestrian walkway to accommodate the large numbers of patrons who will soon swarm here to spend their Saturday night. But first? A little Shakespeare. 191 Figure 20. The tables that line Historic Stone Street to accommodate customers. “Stone Street.” 2015. Image. Retrieved from https://booknotesandfootmarks.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/stone-street.jpg. Accessed January 2, 2018. Ross Williams, the Producing Artistic Director of the New York Shakespeare Exchange, stands on a chair and rings a bell to get the crowd’s attention. Williams is a warm presence, in his early 40s and bespectacled with a neatly trimmed beard, wearing a blue-checkered, button-up shirt. Once the crowd has quieted down and focused on him, he explains the way things are going to happen today: At each of the four bars, patrons will arrive, have ample time to get a drink, settle in, and socialize with their friends and companions. Then the same bell will ring three times to signify that a scene is about to start. The scene lasts between ten and fifteen minutes, and when it’s over, the familiar three rings will sound, prompting the audience to yell “Huzzah!” in unison. After the scene ends, patrons can begin the procession to the next bar, indicated on a map on the inside of the program provided at check-in. The entire event lasts roughly three hours, with about forty-five minutes spent in each bar. Once Williams steps down from his makeshift stage, the patrons continue to mill 192 about and chat. Suddenly, the bell rings three times, and formerly random people from the crowd, dressed like any other members of the audience, begin speaking the lines of Iago, or Sir Toby Belch, or Beatrice, or Puck, and the scene is on. During the snippet of Shakespeare at the first bar, the audience is excited and warm towards the actors, but decidedly subdued, at least compared to the raucousness that will ensue as the crawl proceeds and the spectators continue to imbibe. What starts as gentle laughter and smiling faces will eventually progress to cheers, spontaneous applause, shouts of encouragement, and an audible “OooooOOOooooo!!!” when Beatrice and Benedick insult each other in the third scene (and bar) of the day. This brand of Shakespeare is a social experience, and one that engages its audience in a way that probably more closely resembles the way the plays were originally performed than can be found in most theatres that produce them today. When one imagines the audience members of today’s established Shakespeare companies, they are usually decidedly older than the thirty- to forty-year-olds taking part in an NYSX Crawl, and they are certainly quieter. In most establishment theatre of the twenty-first century, audiences are accustomed to sitting in the dark, placidly watching the action unfold, and scowling disapprovingly if someone talks or brings a beverage into the theatre space. Here at the Crawl, however, the expectation that the audience members will be somewhat active participants in the show is made clear from the moment Williams leads everyone in a practice “Huzzah!” as he finishes his welcome speech. Shakespeare’s spectators might not have migrated from pub to pub with each other, but they certainly would have been more accustomed to engaging with the actors than most modern playgoers. Some of the admittedly minimal extant 193 documentation testifying to the nature of English Renaissance performance details the reactions of crowds to plays they did not like and gives accounts of the vendors selling food and drink inside the theatre during the performance.30 While not a Shakespeare play, the metatheatrical The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) also gives insight into the circumstances of performance at the time, albeit satirically. Pestle features characters who are audience members in the world of the play and have conversations with the actors onstage in a play-within-the-play, even to the point that a greengrocer and his wife insist upon having their apprentice, Ralph, inserted into the action. The NYSX audience gains confidence and volume as they both get used to the format of the crawl and continue to drink as they go. Nobody gets embarrassingly drunk or rowdy, just jolly enough to react audibly to the action in front of them. As the crawl progresses, strangers start to have conversations as they move from bar to bar, filling the time between performances with discussions about other Crawls they have attended or where else and when they saw a production of the play from the last bar. Before you know it, a group of twenty-first century New Yorkers is having an afternoon of drinking and camaraderie fueled by Shakespeare. The scenes often engage with the text in new and exciting ways, cutting and pasting from a single play or several to create a satisfying arc for the spectator. For this particular crawl, the third scene in the third bar takes Much Ado About Nothing and packages it so that one sees almost the entire romance between Benedick and Beatrice in the course of fifteen minutes. The original play usually runs around two- 30 See, for example, Andrew Gurr’s seminal work Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, 1996. 194 and-a-half hours, as it follows the tale of soldiers newly returned from a war and the love stories that blossom with the women of the town they return to. Trickery, both well-meant and malicious, features throughout the play, but all is eventually resolved by the end, with the signature weddings of a comedy rounding out the action. While the original play is filled with subplots and villainy, Beatrice and Benedick are the mainstay, favorite characters that audiences love. The ShakesBEER version begins with the iconic bickering of the first few scenes in the play and the indignant mocking at the ball, then moves on to the gulling scenes, performed with the actors comically crouching and weaving in and out of the audience and finding various hiding places around the German-beer-hall-themed Bavaria Haus bar. Benedick’s decision to return Beatrice’s love—performed by Vince Gatton, who is a member of NYSX’s Board of Directors and a regular actor and director with the company—takes place on chairs and even the bar itself, with his declaration that “The world must be peopled!” eliciting raucous applause and whooping from everyone in the room. “Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner” and Beatrice’s subsequent gulling morphs into the confession of love in the chapel (no mention of that pesky business with Hero’s chastity), and then we skip all the way to the end of the play with the refusal to admit their love for each other and the revelation of their poems as proof from Hero and Claudio. The scene ends as Benedick kisses Beatrice while standing on the bar and being cheered on by the spectators, followed by the three dings of the bell, and the audience jovially yelling “Huzzah!” In just fifteen minutes, we are shown, arguably, the best bits of the play and allowed to skip over Much Ado’s often-boring fourth act; the company is also spared 195 the difficult-to-make-funny character of Dogberry. Not only does the Pub Crawl offer Shakespeare with a drink and audience interaction, it aims to offer it in a neat, quick package without the boring parts, an approach that aligns nicely with the preferences of today’s young adult. In a culture where everyone has a smartphone and a coffee can be procured on any corner from an efficiently run assembly line, neo-bohemians can appreciate the fast-Shakespeare approach to performance. They get to see and enjoy the plays, acquire the cultural capital that goes along with them, then quickly return to chatting with their friends and enjoying their Saturday afternoon. The Pub Crawl is, inherently, a social event, with much more time spent getting drinks and milling about chatting than actually watching the plays. In my experience of going with friends and going alone as a researcher, I can confirm that one has a much more enjoyable time when one has companions. The occasions when I have attended alone involved a lot of awkward and uncomfortable “sitting around and waiting” while those around me happily talked, laughed, and discussed the scenes they were about to see or had just seen (or, more often than not, topics completely unrelated to Shakespeare). This structure lends itself to repeat visitors and a sense of community. The man with the Fu Manchu mustache and the “Belly up to the Bard” shirt was in the audience the year before when I attended my first crawl. Back then it was summertime and he wore a vintage-chic t-shirt with cut-off sleeves and had a smiley blond woman with him. When I chatted with them about the show between scenes, he told me that it was his first time coming, too. How had he found out about it? From The Village Voice, a publication founded in 1955 by our hipster friend Norman 196 Mailer, among others. Clearly, Fu Manchu Man enjoyed himself considerably that day, as demonstrated by his return visit and purchase of the t-shirt. Not all the scenes that NYSX chooses are obvious, or even particularly interesting. The second scene on the Stone Street crawl is from Twelfth Night, and features Maria casting aspersions on Sir Toby’s plan to marry Olivia to Sir Andrew, and Toby’s subsequent work to get Andrew to stay in Illyria. The choice of scene seems odd for the setting, due to its lack of action and relative obscurity (it probably is not the scene that Shakespeare lovers think of when they consider the play). The first portion of the piece featured Maria and Sir Toby simply discussing Andrew and his unsuitability, while the second half had the actor playing Sir Andrew dancing absurdly as Toby named different moves for him to try. When Andrew finally entered, he was played by a petite man with a pink scarf draped around his head and Jackie O sunglasses, conveying a flamboyant, effeminate demeanor that seemed out- of-place and dramaturgically unsupported. But whether it was the beers starting to kick in or some kind of inside joke among the regular attendees, the crowd loved him and cheered him on throughout the rest of the scene. The acting started with the performers perched on banquet seats and chairs at one end of the upstairs section of Beckett’s Bar. The elongated nature of the room made it difficult for people at the back to see the action when it moved down to floor-level. As Toby called out dances and Andrew performed them, those who were not up close were left out of the fun. This Twelfth Night scene demonstrates that the crawls are far from an exact science. Vince Gatton has been with the company since its inception, having acted in mainstage productions, ShakesBEER Pub Crawls, and even having served as the 197 president of the board of directors. Gatton has been involved in countless Pub Crawls, both as an actor and a director, and so has a unique insight into the behind-the-scenes process of putting together a crawl. “One of our main challenges is to resist the urge to put funny things on top of a Shakespeare scene that aren’t in the text,” said Gatton.31 The goal of NYSX in general, and the Pub Crawls in particular, is to keep the text central at all times. During Pub Crawl post-mortems, the artistic forces behind a particular crawl will discuss how it went, what worked, and things that fell flat. One of the discussions that always comes up is whether a particular scene used gimmicks that obscured the text itself. The company’s goal is to show that Shakespeare is relatable to modern audiences, but putting extraneous business on top of the language defeats that purpose. Whereas some companies try to cover up the difficult aspects of the plays in this way, the NYSX team believes in the timelessness of Shakespeare’s stories and that that timelessness is rooted in the characters and the language that they speak. Indeed, the Sir Andrew and Sir Toby scene is the only one I witnessed during my participant observation research that I would describe as poorly executed, and the attempt to overlay external, textually unsupported business was largely to blame. While this tactic prevents the company from putting extra “stuff” on the plays, however, it is also one of the reasons that their productions tend to be unique, different, and hip. Gatton would tell anyone that “finding the relevance and life within the characters is much more important than trying to produce Shakespeare 31 Gatton, Interview with Vince Gatton. 198 ‘like Shakespeare.’”32 In fact, that willingness to not hold Shakespeare too dear keeps their work fresh while also bringing in new audiences: “We want to get a play on its feet and try out directorial concepts that will give people who know the plays a new way to look at it and those who don’t think it’s for them an opportunity to see that it is.”33 The Pub Crawls present scenes that work with virtually no costuming and only the scenery provided by the bar it is being performed in. One of the challenges of the Pub Crawl undertaking is that many of the fans are return customers, given the crawls happen around eight times a year and have been going on for several years now. The exigencies of producing roaming Shakespeare in bars means that, even if they wanted to, it would be difficult to devise an elaborate concept that would make them fresh each time they were performed. NYSX has to rely on the text itself and the unique atmosphere provided by each new audience and bar. A different crawl in 2014 ended in a busy sports bar in Manhattan with the Twelfth Night scene in which Malvolio finds the letter that Maria has written to dupe him into thinking that Olivia is in love with him. The actor was traversing the long, bar-height table that ran down the center of the room and was functioning as a makeshift stage when he smashed his head into one of the pendant lights hanging from the ceiling. He had to continue his soliloquy while also trying to reattach the light’s shade, which he had knocked ajar. It is precisely those unexpected moments that remind audience members of the transience and uniqueness of live theatrical performance, conditions that draw in those edgy, young adult audience members. They also valiantly take on scenes and parts of 32 Gatton. 33 Gatton. 199 Shakespeare that are beyond the traditional favorite bits or most dynamic character interactions. Cutting the text in new ways and finding the unsung heroes among Shakespeare’s scenes is how NYSX maintains this project and keeps it as fresh as a neo-bohemian audience could desire. On yet another crawl, in August of 2014, NYSX found performance space in Hell’s Kitchen, a traditionally rough neighborhood that has recently gentrified significantly and become a center for gay life in New York. Once again, the location of the performances in a center of gentrification appeals to the hipster aesthetic. The Hell’s Kitchen crawl featured an eclectic variety of bars, both hipster and not. Events began in a traditional Irish pub before moving on to Boxers HK on 9th Ave. and 50th St., where window advertisements proclaimed it as “NYC’s Premier Gay Sports Bar.” Boxers features scantily-clad male bartenders with bulging muscles, suggestively named menu items, and drink specials that advertise “pitchers” of beer (with references to “catchers” nearby).34 This particular choice of venue is an obvious clue that, to paraphrase a line from the advertisement for the company’s 2015 Titus Andronicus, “this is not your mother’s Shakespeare company.” The Crawl’s patrons embraced their surroundings with gusto, even the single, ungendered restrooms that required female patrons to walk past their male counterparts openly using urinals. Few, if any, audience members seemed embarrassed or discomfited by the situation. The selection of such a venue is also a nod to the politics of the company, several of whose founders and current regular collaborators are gay (Williams and dramaturg 34 Including pizzas called “The Twink,” “The Orgy,” and “Lick It Up.” 200 Shane Breaux have been married to each other for several years). While gay theatre practitioners are far from surprising or scandalous today, particularly in New York City, the inclusion of a venue such as Boxers is a clear message for audience members that progressive mores are at the company’s heart. Such a message is another aspect of their performances that appeals to post-modern hipsters, whose politics tend towards progressivism and a “live and let live” attitude to social issues. The ShakesBEER Pub Crawls possess several characteristics that make them ideally suited to appeal to the post-modern hipster and set them apart from other examples of alcohol-laden Shakespeare that New York has to offer. As is always the case with NYSX productions, the text is paramount, and the company insists that its actors speak the lines clearly and do not cheapen them for a quick laugh from the audience. This slavish devotion to the text in the midst of busy pubs elevates the high culture factor of the ShakesBEER performances in a way that allows them to retain the flavor of hipster irony imparted by the “low” culture, but also ensures that the event is sufficiently refined and intellectual to appeal to these culture mavens. While the marketing for ShakesBEER does not tout their textual approach, it definitely comes through once audiences experience the Crawls first-hand. In order to express that aspect of the performances to the hipster, repeat customers and word-of-mouth are the modes of advertising. An experience to tell one’s friends about remains one of the biggest factors to draw the hipster in, and being able to talk about Shakespeare in a bar that was nevertheless performed impeccably provides both a fun experience and cultural cachet. Several of the bloggers who write about the Crawl make assertions 201 along the lines of it being “what the Bard would have wanted.”35 This claim implies that there is something inherently more authentic about Shakespeare performed interactively in a bar than in a darkened, quiet theatre. The appeal to authenticity that one can find in such blog posts and in marketing materials for the crawls charms the hipster in the same way that a vinyl album or a first edition of On the Road might: somehow being closer to the source of the original makes their experience more immediate, present, and “real” than other versions. This Shakespeare is more authentic than others while also being more fun. Once again we find a comparison to stodgy, past generations of Shakespeare when a reviewer writes that the performers “are not your grandmother’s Shakespearean actors, but a young, diverse, high-energy cast of the type you might normally find on an [Upright Citizens Brigade] stage.”36 And yet the actors’ aptitude with the text helps to maintain enough decorum to keep the performance in the realm of high culture. Another appealing aspect of the crawls is the immersion in local areas of New York City that goes along with the hipster aesthetic. Because individuals’ experiences play such a large role in the creation of cultural capital, creating an “event” is key to attracting this demographic. Add into the mix the celebration of NYC businesses, in a variety of neighborhoods, and suddenly theatre becomes present and local, rather than something that can only be found within the commercialization of Broadway. NYSX is bringing theatre to the locals with these performances. For some, it provides a way to become more familiar 35 “Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | ShakesBEER,” accessed November 10, 2017, http://www.theasy.com/Reviews/2017/S/shakesbeer-pub-crawl.php. 36 “Theatre Is Easy | Reviews | ShakesBEER.” 202 with and explore the city they idealize. Others find high-quality Shakespeare brought within a few blocks of their apartment. Either way, they have a uniquely “New York” kind of experience to share with friends and coworkers and on social media. 5.2 The Sonnet Project The program that has garnered NYSX the most press, both in New York and beyond, is The Sonnet Project, which began with the goal of recording all 154 sonnets in 154 different NYC locations with 154 different New York actors. The idea behind the project is described on their website: We began this project as a continuation of our mission – getting new audiences to like Shakespeare. With The Sonnet Project, we are trying to begin a conversation with Shakespeare the playwright, not Shakespeare the icon. Shakespeare was an artist, and like all artists he was trying to find his voice. He’s no good to us on a pedestal. If we can demystify his work and connect it to our own culture, then we can really get into the heart of what Shakespeare can reveal to us, and about us.37 Their rhetoric clearly communicates a desire to ignore the intimidating, bardolatrous image of Shakespeare in order to compare him with other artists. The project uses video in order to celebrate Shakespeare and make his works more accessible. The resulting set of films makes it possible “to experience Shakespeare’s words playing opposite the character of the city itself, and the juxtaposition works beautifully.”38 Once again, the hipster focus on “juxtaposition” is apparent, this time with 37 http://sonnetprojectnyc.com/about/. 38 Bess Rowen, “Bringing Shakesy Back: New York Shakespeare Exchange’s Sonnet Project,” Huffington Post (blog), May 22, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bess-rowen/bringing-shakesy- back_b_3322140.html. 203 Shakespeare and technology. Each sonnet is presented as a short, independent film with its own aesthetic and tone. While some are funny or poignant, others are gritty and dark, such as Sonnet 61, called “way grittier than any episode of Breaking Bad” by one reviewer.39 But all of the films work to make Shakespeare exist “in a cinematic space” where his poems “can feel alive and present.”40 The project began with a Kickstarter campaign that earned $50,000 to fund the work. Such campaigns are yet another modern innovation and form of social networking that is increasingly being employed to support Shakespearean performance. Crowdfunding has become a popular way of acquiring the money to produce art and could be seen as the modern-day equivalent of sourcing share-holders for an English Renaissance theatre. In Renaissance England, theatre companies were made up of shareholders, individual actors or others related to the productions who would invest a certain amount of money in return for part ownership of the company, similar to how shareholding works in most businesses today. The idea behind online crowd-funding is to reach individuals across a community and even the world to raise money to support a project or nascent business. Online crowdfunding has its roots in the arts, and can be traced to 2001 and the launch of ArtistShare, a website that helps musicians get funded by fans who donate in return for special access to that artist, such as being allowed to watch a live-stream of a recording session.41 The website’s 39 “Feed the Meter,” PureWow, accessed July 13, 2017, http://www.purewow.com/entry_detail/ny/6571/Experience-Shakespeare-the-New-York-way.htm. 40 “The Shakespeare Sonnet Project,” Poets & Writers, October 12, 2016, https://www.pw.org/content/the_shakespeare_sonnet_project. 41 Knowledge@Wharton, “Can You Spare a Quarter? Crowdfunding Sites Turn Fans into Patrons of the Arts,” Knowledge@Wharton, accessed December 21, 2017, 204 launch roughly coincided with the birth of the postmodern hipster, and the ability to fund an artist before they get discovered by others provides a good incentive for those who like to be ahead of the curve. The rise in crowdfunding has resulted in a democratization of artist funding, moving beyond the concentrated capital and power of the mainstream entertainment industry and allowing more people opportunities to serve as patrons of the arts and more artists opportunities to create.42 The digital age makes it possible for artists to look beyond a single, wealthy benefactor and “aggregate a significant number of small donations.”43 The crowdfunding model is ideal for the middle-class, allowing them to utilize some of their disposable income while not requiring an investment beyond their means. And several writers have commented that it allows a socially acceptable way for middle-class people to “beg for money,”, although the comparison to panhandling seems less accurate than saying it allows middle-class people to do exactly what corporations do by asking investors for funding.44 While donating does not usually entitle the donor to any kind of financial share in the company, it does impart a feeling of artistic “ownership” over a project. Every little bit donated makes a difference, and if a theatre company like NYSX handles such fundraising effectively, one might expect it to help them cultivate more regular donors in the future. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/can-you-spare-a-quarter-crowdfunding-sites-turn-fans- into-patrons-of-the-arts/. 42 Knowledge@Wharton. 43 Knowledge@Wharton. 44 “Hey, Mister, Can You Spare a Thousand? Crowdfunding as the Middle-Class Version of Panhandling,” Sociology In Focus, accessed December 21, 2017, http://sociologyinfocus.com/2014/05/hey-mister-can-you-spare-a-thousand-crowdfunding-as-the- middle-class-version-of-panhandling/. 205 Indeed, New York Shakespeare Exchange has consistently and successfully employed platforms like Kickstarter to fund numerous programs and productions, most recently using the site to raise money to develop the Intersections program, which will be explored later. But the Kickstarter for The Sonnet Project in 2012 proved essential to the production of the films and set the scene for future crowdfunding efforts. By looking at what the donors received in return for certain levels of donation, one can see the community-building possibilities of such fundraising efforts, as well as the tongue-in-cheek humor of this particular organization. Slightly higher donations gave the donor some traditional theatrical fundraising offerings, such as $150 procuring an invitation to the opening night gala of Island, $100 resulting in two tickets to see the show and a credit in the program, and even an “Executive Producer” credit for any donation over $350. But other offerings were significantly more creative. For donations of $1 or more, the donor would receive “The ShakesBump,” where donors would be greeted “with an enthusiastic ‘Huzzah!’ and a chest-bump when we run into you on the street or at one of our events. (Chest-bump totally optional.)”45 Alternatively, for $15 a donor could be the recipient of a “ShakesSlam,” a Shakespearean insult curated just for them. “Will you be a ‘Bulls-pizzle’ or an ‘Odiferous rampallian ratsbane’?” the Kickstarter asked.46 A certain number of donors at the $45 mark could request a Shakespeare lesson for a teacher of their choice. On a mutually agreed upon date, Ross Williams 45 “NY Shakespeare Exchange Sonnet Project *And Island, Too,” Kickstarter, accessed November 10, 2017, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1384441698/ny-shakespeare-exchange-sonnet-project-and- island. 46 “NY Shakespeare Exchange Sonnet Project *And Island, Too.” 206 would have a Skype call with the teacher’s class to talk about Shakespeare, their performances, and answer questions the students might have. Another clever use of Skype was available for $75: the “Skype-a-Sonnet,” wherein the donor could provide a loved one with a Skyped recitation of their chosen sonnet. For $200 or more, a donor could get a “Sonnet-Gram,” a command sonnet performance for someone at any location in New York City. The official launch of the first ten sonnets happened on May 20, 2013, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, then a hotbed of hipster residents displaced by skyrocketing prices in the increasingly gentrified borough of Brooklyn. The process of producing a piece offers a director the opportunity to exercise a creative vision, but also requires that certain parameters are met for each film. If a director would like to take on a particular sonnet, they can apply through The Sonnet Project’s website, which includes an application form requesting information on what kind of camera the director uses, their vision for the film, and links to some of their previous work. It also requires that the director commit to working within certain parameters. For each sonnet, NYSX assigns the location, actor, and text coach. The NYSX text coach works with the actor prior to filming to ensure they understand the language and are delivering it clearly; the coach is then available on-set the day of filming to offer any help that may be needed. Films must be four minutes or less, which keeps them easily consumable for viewers. An endeavor that began with the goal of finishing all 154 films in time for Shakespeare’s 450th birthday celebration on April 23, 2014, soon morphed into something much more involved than just recording various actors reciting the sonnets. With each film becoming the brainchild 207 of the director assigned to it, it became clear that the project would not be finished by 2014. In fact, as of this dissertation in 2018, several sonnets have yet to be filmed. The dedication to an artistic vision was much more important to the company than sticking to its initial timeline, and each film’s uniqueness made it both a part of the larger project and “an artistic object in its own right.”47 The Sonnet Project is NYSX’s way of broadcasting their brand of Shakespeare beyond the boundaries of New York City, while also celebrating the city itself. The aesthetic of their films, and the locations chosen for them, is an important part of their appeal to new audiences. Instead of the common practice of filming a staged play in traditional fashion, as is usually seen when the National Theatre or the Globe record their productions for broadcast, NYSX makes each sonnet its own mini art film, complete with an original musical score, attention to cinematography, and a placement of the piece firmly within the modern world (and New York City, specifically). The locations in which the films are shot is of particular importance, with each one being titled “Sonnet # - Location of filming.” Sonnet 17, for instance, was filmed at the NY Public Library.48 Sonnet 16, rapped by Devon Glover, a performance artist known as “The Sonnet Man,” was shot at the Bowery Graffiti Wall.49 Sonnet 149 takes advantage of the somewhat desolate look of Washington Street, DUMBO, in Brooklyn, and closes with the speaker tossing a single rose into 47 “The Shakespeare Sonnet Project.” 48 Marco Ricci, The Sonnet Project NYC » Play Sonnet 17 (The Sonnet Project, 2013), http://sonnetprojectnyc.com/portfolio/play-sonnet-17/. 49 Robert Manning, Jr, The Sonnet Project NYC » Play Sonnet 16 (The Sonnet Project, 2014), http://sonnetprojectnyc.com/portfolio/play-sonnet-16/. 208 the river with the glimmering skyscrapers of Manhattan visible in the distance.50 On the Project’s website, one can find videos by their sonnet number, or sort them based on the borough in which they were filmed. The hipster subculture is perhaps most associated with New York, since many consider Brooklyn the mecca for its skinny jeans-wearing legions. The emphasis that the films place on geography, and the choice of particular NYC landmarks to enhance the message of each sonnet, contributes to the mythology of New York as a center for art, culture, and cool. The fact that many of the landmarks chosen are slightly obscure, and probably not familiar to many non-New Yorkers, plays into the hipster desire to be “in the know” and “ahead of the curve.” The company did extensive research into important but widely forgotten places in New York City, as well as looking into buildings and locations featured prominently in iconic films and television series.51 Williams wanted to have a mixture of well-known places that someone not living in New York might recognize, as well as others that were special to New Yorkers and might make them look more closely at locations that they walk by regularly.52 The group saw the locations as “just like Shakespeare” because “they have roots in history, but branches and leaves in contemporary culture.”53 Once they had identified roughly two-hundred sites around the city, they set about trying to 50 Dylan Endyke, The Sonnet Project NYC » Play Sonnet 149 (The Sonnet Project, 2014), http://sonnetprojectnyc.com/portfolio/play-sonnet-149/. 51 “The New York Shakespeare Exchange,” Theatre for a New Audience, February 19, 2013, http://www.tfana.org/uncategorized/york-shakespeare-exchange. 52 “Shakespeare’s Sonnets, All 154, Reimagined Through a New York Lens - The New York Times,” accessed October 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/nyregion/rise-restive-muse-154- times-all-shakespeares-sonnets-through-a-new-york-lens.html?_r=1. 53 “NYSX Brings the Bard’s Sonnets to Film with the Sonnet Project,” StageBuddy.com, November 12, 2014, https://stagebuddy.com/theater/theater-feature/nysx-brings-bards-sonnets-film-sonnet- project. 209 match each sonnet to one of them by thinking about that poem’s imagery in determining how they would fit. Sometimes the connection is obvious, such as a sonnet full of nautical imagery being shot at a wharf, but Williams also admits that some of the connections are more obscure and that he is “curious to see if our audiences will find all the connections.”54 Here again, insider knowledge is a central aspect of NYSX’s project. One can almost imagine a young woman telling a friend, “It was shot at this old World’s Fair building in Queens. You’ve probably never heard of it.”55 Even when the location is a mainstream, popular destination, such as the New York Public Library, the speaker often seems isolated from those around them, as when the actor of Sonnet 17 is shot in real-time, but the people going in and out of the library around her are sped up, appearing to be faceless, soulless blurs. “Sonnet 130- The Falconer, W. 72nd St. Central Park” takes advantage of the hipster love of ironic humor by accentuating the irony already present in Shakespeare’s poem.56 The film begins with upbeat, peppy music and shows scenes of people enjoying Central Park on a beautiful, sunny day. A couple perches near the Falconer statue and the young man lovingly starts to speak words from Petrarch’s “Sonnet LIV 54” to his girlfriend: “Those eyes. The sun’s pure golden citadel.” This moment is rudely interrupted by a dingy, drunken, presumably homeless man sitting up on the rock by the statue above them who yells out, “MY mistress’s eyes are NOTHING like the sun!” A hilariously awkward moment ensues before the couple 54 “The New York Shakespeare Exchange.” 55 Sonnet 59 was shot at the New York State Pavilion, in Flushing. 56 Ryan Blackwell, The Sonnet Project NYC » Play Sonnet 130 (The Sonnet Project, 2014), http://sonnetprojectnyc.com/portfolio/play-sonne-130/. 210 hurriedly shuffles off and the man is left to recite the Shakespeare sonnet, which pokes fun at works such as Petrarch’s. Even without knowing that the words come from Petrarch, the viewer can enjoy the juxtaposition of what the young man says and how the drunk’s words undercut it. But a quick Google search of “the sun’s pure golden citadel” reveals the origin, and a whole process of “in-the-know” appreciation of the ironic nuance found in the piece enhances one’s enjoyment. “Getting” what the film is trying to do when others probably do not just adds to a viewer’s hipness. Another film worth mentioning is “Sonnet 73- Wisteria Pergola, Central Park, Manhattan.”57 A patina colors the picture as a lone busker plays the saxophone in a mostly deserted section of the park; a distorted lens is used to enhance the sonnet’s emphasis on the waning of youth and reinforce its metaphor of the coldness and barrenness of late autumn. A voiceover recites the words of the poem while the actor is seen sitting on a bench under the Wisteria Pergola, which has been stripped of its leaves by the changing seasons. As the voice begins the couplet that indicates the sonnet’s end, the actor looks up and smiles warmly, standing to greet a figure who is initially unclear to the viewer. The two figures then begin to walk away from the camera, under the pergola, and we can see that the person who met the speaker was a man, who reaches out to take the first actor’s hand as they walk. In this piece, NYSX uses two actors who have been on the front lines in the struggle for marriage equality in the United States, and calls attention to the homosexual undertones of many of the sonnets. There are many layers to this particular film, and the actors, Pat Dwyer and 57 Malinda Sorci, The Sonnet Project NYC » Play Sonnet 73 (The Sonnet Project, 2013), http://sonnetprojectnyc.com/portfolio/play-sonnet-73/. 211 Stephen Mosher, are a married couple in real life. Their story was covered in the 2013 documentary Married and Counting, which depicts their mission to be married in every state in which it was then legally permitted in order to call attention to the unfairness in US marriage laws. Another of the sonnet films, “Sonnet 62- Alma Mater Statue, Columbia University,” also approaches the same-sex theme of the poems.58 This time, an older man begins reciting the sonnet as he waits for someone near the statue. Just before the final couplet, the camera shows a younger man, presumably a college student at Columbia, approaching. As the last two lines are recited in voiceover, the two smile at each other and embrace, walking away from the camera together. Highlighting the homosexual aspect of Shakespeare’s works lends him a sense of hipness that appeals to the progressive political leanings of the hipster. These two sonnet films were shot and released during the height of the fight for marriage equality in the United States, with the legality of such unions still determined on a state-by-state basis, rather than federally recognized.59 At the same time, young adults in America overwhelmingly subscribed to the idea that they wanted to be “on the right side of history” by supporting the legalization of same-sex marriage.60 Add in the tendency of those who are interested in the arts and culture to adopt a more relaxed attitude towards sex than the general public, and the hipster is much more likely to support marriage equality and even celebrate the transgressive nature of 58 Michael Markham, The Sonnet Project NYC » Play Sonnet 62 (The Sonnet Project, 2014), http://sonnetprojectnyc.com/portfolio/play-sonnet-62/. 59 Marriage equality would not be made law in the United States until the Supreme Court Obergefell ruling on June 26, 2015. 60 A Gallup poll conducted in 2014 found that 8 in 10 young adults favored marriage equality. Gallup, Inc, “Same-Sex Marriage Support Reaches New High at 55%,” Gallup.com, accessed January 23, 2018, http://news.gallup.com/poll/169640/sex-marriage-support-reaches-new-high.aspx. 212 showing such relationships. The choices made in the films often embrace the homosexual themes of the sonnets, rather than trying to ignore them; in so doing, they send a message to the liberal-minded hipster that Shakespeare can be interpreted as edgier than they might give him credit for. The future of The Sonnet Project has grown beyond the original 154 planned videos of that first Kickstarter. Williams has a vision of sonnet films being produced elsewhere in America and around the world. As of the end of 2017, 124 of the 154 New York Sonnet Project films had been released, and one sonnet each had been released on the Sonnet Project International and Sonnet Project USA sites.61 They hope to develop a curriculum for high school students to complement the videos that can be utilized by teachers anywhere, and eventually want to create similar lesson plans for college students. In 2015, NYSX developed a partnership with The Globe Theatre, who plan to stage some of the sonnets themselves, although they have yet to produce any at the time of this writing. The effects of such a collaboration on the company’s image are unknown, particularly for the Project’s perception in the minds of a hipster audience. It is possible that teaming up with a mainstream company might lose NYSX some “street cred.” Audience members who like the weird and quirky vibe of the group could feel that the Globe represents “establishment Shakespeare” and might see its position as a top London tourist attraction as incompatible with their goal of finding entertainment that others have not heard of. On the other hand, American hipsters could be even more drawn to the Project because the Globe is 61 See sonnetprojectinternational.org and sonnetprojectus.org. 213 foreign, meaning not everyone they know has been there or is personally familiar with it. And London’s reputation as being a home base of cool and edgy performances and artists—in addition to the home of Shakespeare’s plays—must not be forgotten. Particularly for those who have never been to the Globe themselves, the perceived authenticity and authority of the theatre, in conjunction with its remoteness from New York and connection to European cultural hipness, could impart a new level of “cool credentials” to NYSX. While unintentional, the postmodern hipster culture in America belies a nostalgia for past European cultural riches and present subversive and progressive movements. Europe is the birthplace of the Western philosophy, art, and literature that hipsters love so much, but also of the punks, socialized healthcare, and small farm-produced cheese. Scholars rebuilt the Globe to help them understand how Shakespeare would have originally been performed, but the artists who have run the theatre have also intentionally played with the space to see what else it can produce when not focused on historical reconstruction. Those who have never seen it in person might not know that much of the audience consists of school groups and families on vacation, the yard of the theatre populated mostly by patrons whose “normcore” aesthetic exists devoid of any underlying irony.62 That new coolness factor, in addition to the increased visibility of the company due to its association with an internationally-recognized entity like the Globe, could very well lead to an increase in hip new audience members, as well as a more robust online 62 Normcore is a term used to describe fashion choices that are ostensibly “normal” and middle- American, like hoodies or so-called “dad jeans,” but are worn ironically by urbanites. For some examples, see “14 Totally Normcore Street-Style Looks from Fashion Week,” https://www.thecut.com/2014/09/14-normcore-street-style-looks-from-fashion-week.html. 214 following for the Sonnet Project. The attention garnered by the Sonnet Project made several company members nervous that it was pushing NYSX away from their original focus on theatre towards an online and video presence. But that same attention made it possible for the company to grow and expand their offerings to two mainstage productions in the 2016 season.63 These musings on the use of digital media by NYSX to attract new audiences to Shakespeare’s sonnets are far from exhaustive. The videos are not really “viral” (one of the most-viewed sonnets, Sonnet 59, has almost 24,000 plays on Vimeo at the time of this writing), and it is nearly impossible to gather statistical data to support the idea that hipsters are the ones doing the viewing. What these sonnets do suggest, however, is the potential of the medium to reach out to these audience members. NYSX has proven success attracting this demographic to their live shows, and that success is due in part to the technologically-savvy and quirky way in which they approach Shakespeare’s works. The technological aspect of the Project should be similarly appealing. It now features an app, available for both iOS and Android devices, allowing a Shakespeare enthusiast to take the sonnets with them wherever they go. Each day, a different sonnet is featured. Users can then click a button under the video that says “View Location Detail” that will describe the significance of the filming location. That description then has another button that leads the user to the project’s website, where they can find the sonnet’s text as well as some analysis, more extensive information about the location’s history and contemporary existence, 63 Stuart Miller, “How Do I Film Thee? The Sonnet Project NYC Counts News Ways,” AMERICAN THEATRE (blog), April 21, 2016, http://www.americantheatre.org/2016/04/21/how-do-i-film-thee-the- sonnet-project-nyc-counts-news-ways/. 215 and information on the actors and filmmakers who produced the video. The app also has a map feature, with pins on the locations where the sonnets have been filmed; click a pin, get a sonnet. A user in New York could look at the map and watch a sonnet performed in the very location where they stand. Figure 21. A screenshot of the map featured on the Sonnet Project app. Screenshot taken by Sara Thompson on December 18, 2017. Launched in May of 2013, the app aims to make Shakespeare’s sonnets more accessible than ever before and caters to a culture of constantly busy people who “have a hard time sitting still to watch an entire Shakespearean play on a small screen.”64 Salon, a major online media group, named it “App of the Week” shortly after it launched because, “You can log in to the app, watch a sonnet, and log out in 64 Andrew Leonard, “App of the Week: The Sonnet Project,” Salon, accessed July 13, 2017, http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/app_of_the_week_the_sonnet_project/. 216 the time it takes to reheat your leftovers in the microwave for lunch.”65 The article indicates why such an approach works for the hipster, calling it “high culture packaged for the attention-deficit-disorder generation.”66 It is fast, convenient, and highbrow. Additionally, it is an odd marriage of elements—“Shakespeare’s in my phone. The entire mobile information ecosystem has been justified”67—making it tailor made for the neo-bohemian. The company hopes to add even more features to the app in the future, such as walking tours for users to follow and scavenger hunts to encourage people to seek out new and different locations where sonnets were performed. NYSX is also currently working on a curriculum for high school students that gives their teachers a two-week lesson plan that explores the sonnets and encourages students to make their own sonnet films on their mobile devices. The educational aspect of the program developed after the company heard repeatedly from teachers who were already using The Sonnet Project films in their classes. Williams has noted that “we have had a number of educators tell us that they like to use the Sonnet Project in their classroom because it’s the one time of day they can stop telling their students to put their phones away.”68 While aimed more broadly at Shakespeare enthusiasts, the curriculum and mobile app have significant potential to share the sonnets with those who might not otherwise discover them, hipsters included. Add in the novelty of having a Shakespeare app on one’s phone, and there is even more incentive for a neo-bohemian to download it. 65 Leonard. 66 Leonard. 67 Leonard. 68 “The Shakespeare Sonnet Project.” 217 5.3 Intersections At the end of 2016, NYSX announced their newest endeavor, Intersections, which would combine all of their individual events, performances, and projects into one. The idea behind Intersections is to expand the company’s scope beyond the confines of New York City. Williams has described the company’s difficulties drawing audiences within the city, citing the often-overwhelming variety of Shakespeare available to those interested in seeing a show on any given evening.69 New Yorkers are spoiled for choice in their Shakespeare, as seen by just the small sample of alternative Shakespeares mentioned in the Introduction. Intersections seeks to both break through the company’s competition problem and continue fulfilling the company’s mission to bring Shakespeare to non-traditional audiences. The program strives to take their shows to locations around the United States that might not have regular access to Shakespeare in performance and do week-long residencies with locals to engage with them and inspire new interest in his work. NYSX brings their company members to a town or city and hosts workshops, gets participants to create their own videos for the Sonnet Project, and presents a ShakesBEER Pub Crawl at local bars and restaurants, all culminating in a performance of the group’s production of a full-length Shakespeare play.70 Intersections aims to diversify the kinds of offerings NYSX can provide, partly because it frees the company from some of the challenges of working in New 69 Williams 2016. 70 For 2017, the Shakespeare play to be performed was the company’s inaugural full-length production of Much Ado About Nothing. 218 York City. Aside from the issue of competition from other companies, when traveling the group does not have to find performance or rehearsal spaces for their work, which becomes the responsibility of the host institution. NYSX does provide a liaison with experience in Pub Crawl planning to help the hosts navigate the undertaking’s numerous challenges. Another difficulty of making theatre in New York is the actor’s union requirement that performers be paid a certain minimum that NYSX is currently unable to afford. By getting out of the city, the company is able to offer actors a base salary, in addition to housing and meals, which is mostly covered by the hosting entity, roughly $20,000 for the entire week.71 When the company announced the new project, they had already arranged for Texas A&M University to host their inaugural “Intersections” experiment. Universities or private high schools are a natural fit for such an NYSX residency. The company is also focusing on the often well-funded student programming boards of colleges and universities, rather than on theatre departments, which suffer from tight budgets that are already allocated for their own productions. Williams and his collaborators hope that eventually they will find sponsors beyond educational institutions to host the group and are looking at town councils and local arts organizations whose patrons and residents might appreciate the opportunity to see a professional New York Shakespeare company. The expertise that NYSX brings with them exceeds anything likely to be found in many smaller cities and towns across America. Professional New York actors and directors, many with MFAs in their fields, provide a wealth of knowledge that would greatly enrich the 71 Williams 2016. 219 cultural life of the participants, as well as creating new Shakespeare fans from those who might never have been exposed to his work. The first experiment with the “Intersections” program proved exactly the kind of edifying cultural event that Williams and the company hoped it would be for the rural college town of Bryan, Texas, home of Texas A&M University. In April of 2016 the company had done a dry run in the town with a Pub Crawl followed by a screening of Sonnet Project films.72 The reception was warm enough for them to make Bryan the location for their first full “Intersections” endeavor. On March 17, 2017, the ensemble arrived; the next day they performed their Saturday Pub Crawl for the community. The Crawl consisted of two, 125-person crawls happening simultaneously: The groups were in bars next to each other and each watched two scenes in their original bar and then switched places to watch the other two scenes. The event culminated in everyone joining up for the final scene of the afternoon in another, larger bar. According to Williams, the audience and the actors all enjoyed themselves, and the combined crowd was much larger than any the company had played before in New York (the typical house sizes for NYSX productions in the city are 100 or fewer, due to the sizes of their venues and the Equity codes discussed earlier in this chapter). To be able to play to such a large group was exhilarating for the performers.73 In the email newsletter that the company sent out to its listserv in 72 Matt Koper, “Shakespeare-Themed Pub Crawl Returns to Downtown Bryan on Saturday,” The Eagle, accessed August 31, 2017, http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/shakespeare-themed-pub- crawl-returns-to-downtown-bryan-on-saturday/article_3976664d-f16d-5490-ad2b-b4df71c323e6.html. 73 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 220 late April, Williams gave an account of the Texas adventure to their supporters.74 The report found that the Texans were “thrilled with our rowdy approach to Shakespeare” and that they were greeted with “raucous cheers and a ton of ‘I didn’t know Shakespeare could be this FUN!’”75 Figure 22. A scene from Comedy of Errors performed at the Grand Stafford bar in Bryan, TX. Photograph by Valeria May on March 18, 2017. One of the realizations that the group had very quickly upon arriving in Texas was that many of the goals in their mission statement were going to be received differently in a rural Southern town than they are in the cosmopolitan environs of New York. Their New York audiences rarely bat an eye at the company’s interracial casting, but Williams felt that “When there was a guy in the audience at the pub crawl 74 “NYSX NEWSLETTER: These Past Few Months...Just WOW!! - sethomps1@gmail.com - Gmail,” accessed August 31, 2017, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/NYSX/15b8d0a5ccf593d6. 75 “NYSX NEWSLETTER: These Past Few Months...Just WOW!! - sethomps1@gmail.com - Gmail.” 221 wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, suddenly our choices felt more important.”76 Having interracial couples and family members in their scenes gave the Intersections company the opportunity to display a world in which these relationships were normal, and they were hopeful that it encouraged audience members to think about their preconceived notions and ideas, both about Shakespeare and about the ways people can and should interact with each other. After the performance, a man not displaying his political beliefs as clearly as the one wearing the hat approached one of the actors to thank them for the work they were doing. The man explained that he was expecting this company of New York actors to treat conservatives in a condescending way, but he felt that they had actually done just the opposite by performing a scene that was a mash-up of moments from Julius Caesar and Henry VI, Part II. Figure 23. A scene from Henry VI, Part II at Revolutions Café in Bryan, TX. Photograph taken by Valeria May on March 18, 2017. 76 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. The “Make America Great Again” red baseball cap was a symbol of the Trump campaign, enthusiastically worn by his supporters both before and after his election. 222 Both plays feature plebian characters expressing discontent with their leaders. The scenes in Henry VI, Part II that feature the rabble-rousing Jack Cade and his band of craftsmen and other working-class rebels are particularly noteworthy for their condemnation of social elites. After all, that famous Shakespeare line, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” is spoken by Cade’s lieutenant, Dick the Butcher, which is quickly followed by the impromptu trial of the Clerk of Chatham over his ability to read and write.77 The Intersections crew played the Cade scenes straight, rather than milking them for comedic value, and the effect was that the material showed Shakespeare eloquently expressing the plight of the working man. The undertone of the entire Cade storyline is a fight for respect for the working class and others in vocational professions. For this patron, these moments made him feel heard and seen, rather than diminished. This instance demonstrated for Williams the company’s mission, to take Shakespeare off his pedestal, surprising both the audience member and the company.78 Neither had imagined when they went into the performance that day that Shakespeare would give a voice to a conservative Texan in the politically-fraught times of 2017. For the rest of the week that the company was in town, they dove into teaching and working with the local community. One of the goals of the Intersections project is to create relationships between academic and civic organizations, which was achieved through working with both Texas A&M students and area students at public high schools and the Downtown Bryan Association. Williams lectured for 77 IV.ii. 78 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 223 classes in both the Performance Studies and English departments at the university, while the actors in the company worked with verse-speaking and dealing with Shakespeare’s text. The group also had the opportunity to meet with the eight top- performing theatre students at one of the local high schools. These junior and senior students were all thinking about pursuing theatre careers in New York, so the company members answered their questions and talked with them about the realities and paths for theatre professionals both in New York and elsewhere.79 Figure 24. Company member Kim Krane coaching students in a scene from Twelfth Night at Texas A&M University in Bryan, TX. Photograph taken by Ross Williams during the week of March 20, 2017. At the end of the week, the company performed their production of Much Ado About Nothing for two sold-out performances at Texas A&M’s Forum Theatre. Both performances received standing ovations from the audience, which pleased the company. As Williams noted in the newsletter, this experience demonstrated “that this model works and that there are communities out there that are clamoring for this 79 Williams. 224 kind of exposure.”80 Indeed, at least one person, an English teacher from Fort Worth, Texas, traveled the three hours to Bryan in order to participate in the pub crawl.81 So far, the week spent in Bryan is the only example of the full Intersections program in action.82 The potential for exposing non-New York hipsters to this quirky brand of Shakespeare makes the program important to mention in this dissertation. Many small-town young people see New York as the epicenter of coolness, and those interested in the arts and culture often find it difficult to connect with others who share that interest in their local communities. In discussions of NYSX’s 2016 Pub Crawl in Bryan, Jessie Ayers—the events coordinator for the Downtown Bryan Association—used the hipster buzzword “authentic” to describe the experience.83 The local paper, The Eagle, was also sure to mention the “unique” opportunity that the 2017 Pub Crawl would provide the town.84 By bringing NYSX projects to these teenagers and young adults, the company can provide an outlet for them, creating new audiences not just for Shakespeare as a whole, but for alternative Shakespeare in particular. 5.4 NYSX: Ahead of the Curve? At a ShakesBEER Pub Crawl in September of 2017, the sign outside the Gaf West bar in Hell’s Kitchen read “Welcome, Shakespeare Nerds!” 80 “NYSX NEWSLETTER: These Past Few Months...Just WOW!! - sethomps1@gmail.com - Gmail.” 81 Joanne Tan Teng Teng, “Shakesbeer at Downtown Bryan Advertises for Upcoming Shows,” The Battalion, accessed August 31, 2017, http://www.thebatt.com/news/shakesbeer-at-downtown-bryan- advertises-for-upcoming-shows/article_09a84104-0d31-11e7-9971-17e4a63f00f6.html. 82 Some changes to the Intersections model were implemented in the fall of 2017, and will be discussed in the Conclusion. 83 Koper, “Shakespeare-Themed Pub Crawl Returns to Downtown Bryan on Saturday.” 84 Koper. 225 Figure 25. The “Welcome Shakespeare Nerds!” sign in front of the Gaf. “On to Bar 2!” Image posted to the @shakesexchange Instagram account. September 23, 2017. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZZVR16HJyI/?taken-by=shakesexchange. Accessed December 29, 2017. NYSX proudly posted a picture of the sign on their Instagram, embracing the title that they, and their audience, had been given: Shakespeare nerds. The pride that the post indicates points to exactly the kind of tongue-in-cheek attitude that draws the irony- loving hipster to various forms of entertainment and experiences. Whereas in other contexts calling someone a nerd might seem like an insult or even a form of bullying, in this case it is seen as something that sets them apart from the crowd. Part of the hipster need to be “in the know” and “ahead of the curve” casts them in a nerdy light. A nerd is defined as “an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits.”85 If the hipster is a person who “is intensely focused on a process of self-making by means of strategic 85 “Definition of NERD,” accessed December 29, 2017, https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/nerd. 226 consumption,”86 then the adoption of nerdy attributes makes sense. Critics of hipsters have often accused them of appropriating nerdy signifiers (big glasses, short pants) without actually having to withstand the social stigma that being “authentically misfits” imparts on nerds.87 As one hipster-who-does-not-identify-as-a-hipster points out “if you have the power to make the 'uncool' cool, then you must really be someone cool. Get it?”88 New York Shakespeare Exchange is committed to making the uncool cool. The Shakespeare nerds who started the company in 2008 dreamed of making the plays and poems interesting to people in the modern world by integrating them into modern life. Through activities like the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, The Sonnet Project, and Intersections, they are working to make Shakespeare more accessible to everyone, but their tactics align particularly well with the trends of consumption seen in the hipster subculture. Through the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, the nerdiness of adults spending their Saturday afternoon enjoying Shakespeare scenes can appeal to hipsters because of both a) the pairing of those scenes with alcohol consumption and bar-hopping, and b) the embracing of the knowledge that it is a nerdy thing to do. By acknowledging and celebrating how uncool or strange it might be to others, they impart an irony to the proceedings that would not be present if the audiences were not, in some way, self-consciously consuming the material. In owning their nerdiness, 86 “Hipsters and the New Gilded Age – The Habit of Tlön,” accessed December 29, 2017, https://www.leekonstantinou.com/2010/10/29/hipsters-and-the-new-gilded-age/. 87 “Nerds and Hipsters: The Yin and Yang of American Subcultures,” accessed December 29, 2017, http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/31/nerds-and-hipsters-the-yin-and-yang-of-american- subcultures/. 88 “Nerds and Hipsters.” 227 hipsters position themselves in opposition to the mainstream. By adding quirk and irony to their Shakespeare offerings, NYSX provides an opportunity for the hipster to perform that opposition while also genuinely enjoying what they are consuming. The Sonnet Project puts Shakespeare in the format of the art film, while also keeping the product short and quickly consumable, two things that hipsters seek: high culture and convenience. The app, in addition to putting the sonnets on anyone’s smartphone, also makes it possible for a New York lover to find new, little-known sites used as filming locations and learn more about them with the help of the information provided through the Sonnet Project. Indie film techniques that also arm the viewer with obscure knowledge about New York City once again provide the capital of high culture as well as the intellectual superiority that comes from knowing something those around you might not. Intersections reaches out to audiences across America, intentionally taking Shakespeare to places where residents might not have regular access to or knowledge of his works. One can imagine, however, the distinct appeal to a budding hipster, perhaps a high schooler or college student who dreams of a hip life in the epicenter of cool, New York City. Or an actual nerd who learns that there are others like her who love Shakespeare even though most of her peers do not. A new spark of interest may be ignited in an English literature major who previously felt drawn only to Kerouac and Ginsberg. New York Shakespeare Exchange’s unexpected offerings, the bar crawl, the art films, and productions like Much Ado, 228 that infuse modernity and make clever parallels between Shakespeare’s plays and the world of today, can show audience members outside of a big city that these canonical works do not have to look or feel like the stereotypes that are often associated with them. Rather than being dull and uncool, NYSX finds ways to make Shakespeare surprising and hip. And if they can make something cool out of the uncool, then they must be pretty cool. Get it? 229 Chapter 6: Conclusion 6.1 NYSX’s New Directions In 2018, the New York Shakespeare Exchange finds itself at a crossroads and is spending the year doing a significant amount of restructuring. In July of 2017, the company announced a revised mission statement. While the company’s original mission statement emphasized “innovative theatrical programming that explores what happens when contemporary culture is infused with Shakespearean poetry and themes in unexpected ways,” the new statement takes a more specific approach to their goal: New York Shakespeare Exchange bridges cultural divides, starts conversations, promotes education, and brings communities together through diverse, classically-based programming that re-imagines how Shakespearean theater and poetry can impact our modern world. Brimming with an unwavering sense of adventure, our work honors the legacy of the Bard while intersecting his poetry with today’s ever-changing social, political, and technological landscapes.1 The focus on Shakespeare in the modern world still features heavily, but new talking points emerge like “bridging cultural divides,” “bringing communities together,” and “ever-changing social, political, and technological landscapes.” Much of this change has been prompted by the American political scene of 2016-18. NYSX has wanted to play a positive role in conversations about equality and representation. But another major factor in the shift in mission has been financial, particularly considering that the company is “poised to transform our organization from a part-time, artist-driven 1 “About NYSX | New York Shakespeare Exchange.” 230 company into a full-time, fully-staffed business that can support the artistic growth we are ready for.”2 While the Kickstarter campaigns were helpful for funding individual projects in the first several years of their existence, Ross Williams notes that such methods of securing donations no longer serve their purposes in the way they once did.3 As NYSX finds themselves in need of a sustainable operating budget, they have embarked on new initiatives and plan to alter some of their earlier projects in order to attract new donors. One of the major shifts has been the decision not to produce a mainstage play in 2018 in order to dedicate more time and energy to their new direction. The company stresses the importance of listening to the audience they already have, in addition to finding ways to hear the voices of potential audience members who feel excluded in some way. One way to accommodate the needs of their audience has involved introducing a more flexible model for the Intersections program. While the structure used for the residency at Texas A&M in the spring of 2017 still remains the “aspirational model,” the company realized that they would have more opportunities to reach people by adjusting the programming to the activities and duration that groups needed or could afford. The Intersections program is now an “immersion project” that engages a group in Shakespeare for a variable period of time. In the fall of 2017 NYSX worked with a high school in Brooklyn to immerse the entire school in Shakespeare for three hours out of one school day. Ten 2 “Member of the Board of Directors,” VolunteerMatch, accessed December 27, 2017, https://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp2775126.jsp. 3 Ross Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, Phone, February 2, 2018. 231 artists were divided up across the school and worked with their groups on subjects like language and imagery. A roving band of actors then periodically burst into each group’s room to do a ShakesBEER style performance. The company has a commitment for another modified Intersections program at Penn State in the spring of 2018. That residency will last for two days, with the company members teaching an audition workshop on the first evening while focusing on Shakespeare the second day. The first half of the second day will involve working with actors on how they can create the “groundling-style” relationship with the audience. For the second half of the day, film students from the Communications Department will observe the work the actors have done and collaborate with them to pare down the acting style for film. The NYSX team will then engage with the cinema students to use Shakespeare’s imagery to inform their filming techniques.4 The new, flexible model of Intersections offers shorter durations—a three hour timeslot rather than a week-long residency, for example—for groups that might not be able to accommodate an entire week of activities or afford the cost of hosting the company for that long. The flexibility also makes it easier for NYSX to tailor their offerings to the needs of the customer, giving the Intersections program a wider potential audience by making it both more affordable and more specific. The company also hopes to continue the development of educational materials related to the Sonnet Project as part of their ongoing outreach efforts. Originally hoping to finish the materials by the fall of 2017, NYSX found that their timeline 4 Williams. 232 needed to be extended.5 The company aims to create a self-driven, supplemental training plan for teachers that better prepares them to teach Shakespeare to their students. The materials will feature strategies for engaging students with the texts and will even lay out assignments for classes to make their own Sonnet Project videos. While NYSX has produced the lesson plans, the company now needs to find people willing to create the PowerPoint presentations and content that will be at the heart of the materials. Teachers have already expressed interest in the final project, whenever it is available. The mailing list for the education initiative of the Sonnet Project includes more than three-hundred educators who want to know when the materials are ready.6 Once it is finished, NYSX will pilot the program for free before they offer a paid product. The pilot period will allow them to collect feedback from users and address any concerns that might emerge when teachers actually implement the plans in the classroom. As part of NYSX’s newly-articulated mission statement, the company has also launched a new program called the Diversity Cohort. Embodying what the company calls “an experiment in using the language and stories of William Shakespeare as the launching pad for diversity-centric new work,” the Cohort consists of eight young playwrights who applied at the end of 2017 and began working together at the start of 2018.7 NYSX intentionally selected talented playwrights who represent diverse ethnic backgrounds, religious groups, genders, physical abilities, and sexual 5 Williams. 6 Williams. 7 “Diversity Cohort | New York Shakespeare Exchange,” accessed February 20, 2018, http://shakespeareexchange.org/content/diversity-cohort. 233 orientations. Over the course of six months the Cohort will take part in a series of panel discussions about Shakespeare culminating in a Diversity Cohort play festival at the beginning of May 2018. The plays that the Cohort members write will be contemporary but inspired by Shakespeare, even to the point of featuring language in verse. The initiative has two main purposes: “to bring the company into a world of new plays and work inspired by Shakespeare,” and to expand the company’s pool of artists and donors.8 The idea for the Cohort began with Williams and his collaborators brainstorming about which people they were not reaching with their work. People who do not think that Shakespeare is relevant to them, or who feel excluded from conversations about Shakespeare, drew the company’s focus, particularly in light of the fraught social and political moment following the events of 2016.9 With particular groups of people feeling attacked and marginalized by the white, heteronormative, and patriarchal powers rising to prominence in the United States, NYSX felt compelled to ensure that their conversations around Shakespeare invited as many people to the table as possible. Williams described his motivation for pursuing the Cohort: Over the past year, I’ve seen a lot of artists I respect dismiss Shakespeare as being another dead white guy who upholds systems of white patriarchy. As a white, cis-gender male, I could easily say “Shakespeare’s great, we’re going to keep doing that.” Or I could talk about the fact that the plays have an implicit bias and work on that. I believe in social change, and the way I incorporate that into Shakespeare is to acknowledge the biases and start 8 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, February 2, 2018. 9 Williams. 234 dialogues about who the plays exclude and how we can use them to elevate marginalized voices.10 The playwrights that NYSX selected initially felt that, from a socio-cultural perspective, Shakespeare did not apply to them. Recognizing that Shakespeare’s works exclude some people is vital to keeping Shakespeare relevant in the twenty- first century.11 The panel discussions at the heart of the Diversity Cohort aim to engage the wider community in the conversation about the implicit bias in Shakespeare. The varying viewpoints and artistic pedigrees of the Cohort members provide different lenses through which to envision how Shakespeare might speak to today’s world.12 That conversation will take place over the course of four monthly, public events involving the members of the Cohort. The topics covered in the discussions address various aspects of Shakespeare’s works related to marginalized communities. For example, the community discussion on February 21, 2018, was titled “Du Bois and Shakespeare: Modern Diversity in a Classical Conversation.” The evening featured a short lecture from renowned Du Bois scholar and Columbia University professor of African-American Studies and Philosophy Dr. Robert Gooding-Williams.13 The subsequent discussion addressed “how Du Bois’s analysis of Black identity formation might be addressed in the performance of traditional Western white-centric classical literature, and in relation to other identities of race, disability, and gender.”14 10 Williams. 11 Williams. 12 “Du Bois and Shakespeare: Modern Diversity in a Classical Conversation,” Qgiv.com, accessed February 20, 2018, https://secure.qgiv.com/for/nysedonate/. 13 “Du Bois and Shakespeare: Modern Diversity in a Classical Conversation.” 14 “Du Bois and Shakespeare: Modern Diversity in a Classical Conversation.” 235 Institutionally, NYSX is using the Cohort to expand the diversity of their talent pool. The Cohort playwrights will bring in their own directors and dramaturgs, increasing the diversity of NYSX’s network of directors and dramaturgs in the future. Chapters 4 and 5 provided accounts of the color-conscious casting that the company uses, showing that the organization already tries thoughtfully to cast actors of color in their productions. The casting team even goes so far as to reach out to colleagues and casting directors to ask for recommendations of non-white actors to invite for auditions.15 With the Cohort, NYSX is once again making a conscious decision to bring new artists of various identities into the company’s sphere. Another benefit of this tactic is financial. Just as the company will gain exposure to new artists, new donors will learn about the work that NYSX produces. New donors are vital to securing the future of the theatre company, and will provide the funds that can make Intersections a financially viable program for even more potential audiences.16 These new tactics continue the type of hipster-attracting programming that NYSX has produced in nearly ten years of existence. The flexibility model of the Intersections program makes it possible for groups to curate an individual experience by providing a boutique Shakespeare product. The educational materials will provide support to teachers, who can then help their young students, some of them fledgling hipsters, understand and embrace Shakespeare’s texts. Finally, the Diversity Cohort appeals to both the politically progressive impulse of the demographic and the 15 Lundy, Interview with Cristina Lundy. 16 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, February 2, 2018. 236 intellectualism that pervades the subculture. NYSX continues to grow and change, adapting to the culture around them. 6.2 Shakespeare and the Postmodern Hipster Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare argues that the postmodern hipster is a promising demographic for smaller, alternative Shakespeare companies to market to. This hipster is the most recent in a long line of bohemian subcultures that have artistic and intellectual pursuits and interests at their core. Bourdieu writes that those with high social and economic status appreciate high cultural objects, with that high culture being designated by those with status and power.17 I argue that hipsters are a particular subset of cultural omnivore, a term coined by Richard A. Peterson in 1992 that describes the broadening of individuals’ interests across high and low cultural lines.18 But while Peterson posits that most cultural omnivores are found in those with high economic status, subsequent research, including my own, has nuanced this. Cultural omnivorousness is much more widespread in the current digital age than it was in the 1990s because of the breadth of objects made accessible by the internet. Additionally, hipsters are a particular type of omnivore who tend to be middle-class and educated, but are also overwhelmingly involved in some sort of creative pursuit themselves, whether professionally or as a hobby. 17 Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 5–7. 18 Peterson, “Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore and Univore.” 237 The hipster’s financial position is potentially more precarious than that of their peers who have pursued more traditional professional paths, but they also tend to have a parental safety net. Hipsters prefer to spend money on experiences rather than material goods, and they derive cultural capital from individuality, uniqueness, and staying on the cutting-edge of developments in the arts and humanities. They also take ironic pleasure in the combination of high and low cultural elements, expanding on the broad tastes of the cultural omnivore: while the cultural omnivore is generally open to a variety of forms, hipsters derive pleasure from combining those various forms together. Cultural omnivores also tend to be more open-minded about the high and low cultural objects they encounter, while hipsters are known for being disdainful of things that they see as inauthentic or too mainstream. The popular culture elements that they do consume are either approached ironically or combined with other disparate elements in an unexpected and ironic way. The hipster’s consumption must also be conspicuous, its irony and quirkiness readily apparent to others. Because of this penchant for joining elements with disparate levels of cultural capital, Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare argues that alternative Shakespeare companies who veer into the realms of avant-garde performances are uniquely positioned to attract this consumer demographic. By combining the traditionally high cultural cachet of Shakespeare with transgressive elements which possess lower cultural capital, these companies perform the kind of omnivorism that postmodern hipsters seek. In order to give examples of the types of performances that could prove lucrative for these companies, I present a case study of the New York Shakespeare Exchange, an alternative Shakespeare company whose primary goal is to 238 find ways to integrate his works into modern life in order to “knock Shakespeare off his pedestal.” NYSX also has the distinction of being a Shakespeare company with a majority of donors who are between the ages of twenty-five and fifty, a prime demographic to attract, since older audience members tend to already be contributing to more established Shakespeare companies.19 This dissertation looked first at the company’s history and mainstage productions in order to give a foundation of the ways that they want to help audiences see Shakespeare’s works differently. In chapter 5, I examined their more creative approaches to performing the texts that demonstrate the kind of culturally omnivorous categories that attract hipster patrons: the ShakesBEER Pub Crawl, the Sonnet Project, and the Intersections program. By intentionally focusing on presenting Shakespeare in a way that integrates his work with modern life, NYSX is, wittingly or not, creating the kind of juxtaposition that draws in the hipster. By following a similar method of combining low cultural elements with the perception of high cultural status that Shakespeare elicits, other small theatre companies have an opportunity to attract hipsters, a demographic of young people who are eager to consume high culture in a non-traditional way. Future avenues for research feature several areas of expansion too fertile to be covered in the pages of this dissertation. The appearance of a search for white ethnicity among postmodern hipsters—and indeed among the other subculturists covered in chapter 2—begs for its own research project. How is the performativity of 19 Williams, Interview with Ross Williams, July 25, 2017. 239 this new subculture and its appropriation of cultural objects of the “other” indicative of a perceived lack of cultural identity for white hipsters? In what way is putting on the elements of cultures to which they are not related filling that void for them? How does this appropriation further problematize the ideologically progressive identity that most hipsters do have? Questions surrounding gender dynamics among postmodern hipsters are also mostly absent in Craft Beer, Vintage Gear, and Shakespeare. An exploration of the vulnerability of female hipsters in the period of the #MeToo movement remains to be conducted, as well as a more general look at the daily interactions and relationships between these young women and the men that they encounter. Both of these issues, white ethnicity and the position of women in hipsterdom, might then be applied more specifically to the work that NYSX has done and is continuing to do. Obviously the new directions that the company is taking are applicable to both of these subjects. Finally, the beauty and curse of conducting research on a contemporary group is the ongoing nature of any endeavor to preserve the history of the organization. No doubt entire chapters could be written on the Diversity Cohort, the new model for Intersections, the educational materials to be released for The Sonnet Project, and any number of other projects that the future might hold for the creative minds behind NYSX. In our last phone interview, I asked Ross Williams if he worried that NYSX was getting stretched too thin. After all, Intersections just launched in 2016, the mission statement changed in 2017, and the Diversity Cohort was in full swing for 2018. How, I wondered, could this group possibly keep up with so many new ideas and concepts? Williams countered by suggesting that the company was instead 240 evolving. They were in the process of significantly restructuring the board and company infrastructure to accommodate a more fundraising-focused business model. The organization intentionally left a full production off the calendar for 2018 and cut back on outreach for Intersections in order to make room for these changes. Rather than staging a few major performance events, in 2018 they will focus on more numerous, smaller events throughout the year that tell donors the story of NYSX’s artists. The Diversity Cohort discussions and play festival, as well as new “Sonnet Salons” which feature public viewings of a handful of the Sonnet Project films in various locations (mostly bars), will hopefully garner broader exposure. This attempt to attract more audiences and donors represents a double-edged sword for the hipster audience of Shakespeare. On one hand, the company is expanding on the type of programming that might appeal to the neo-bohemian in the first place. And chapter 3 demonstrated the constant change necessary to remain on the cutting-edge of culture in a digital world. As soon as the mainstream adopts a cultural object, the postmodern hipster must abandon the object and search for something new and even more obscure. This suggests a potential drawback of NYSX’s new initiatives: If the very thing that could make NYSX attractive to hipsters is tied to the company’s attempts to make Shakespeare more broadly appealing, is there a certain point at which the organization might no longer serve the niche between high culture and the mainstream? Like any object of hipster interest, it retains its value and cultural capital only so long as it remains obscure and subversive. If NYSX, or any Shakespeare company for that matter, succeeds in making Shakespeare’s works broadly accepted in contemporary culture, then the 241 hipster, presumably, would flee. However, to assume that the neo-bohemians cynically enjoy cultural objects because of the way off-beat interests make them appear to others ignores the possibility that those interests might be genuine. 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