Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T00:43:30.115Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dreaming New Orleans

Desire, Cemeteries, and Elysian Fields

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2021

Joseph Roach
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Having passed the tercentenary of the “Mississippi Bubble” of 1720, the financial fiasco that accompanied the founding of New Orleans, the city continues to risk everything by gambling on the collateral of its dreams. Like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, “The City that Care Forgot” is playing out a mortgage melodrama under constant threat of dispossession, dreading the last stop on an itinerary that begins with Desire, changes at Cemeteries, and dead ends in Elysian Fields.

Type
Article
Information
TDR , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 15 - 39
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press for Tisch School of the Arts/NYU

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Adams, Jessica, Bibler, Michael P., and Accilien, Cécile. 2007. Just Below South: Intercultural Performance in the Caribbean and the U.S. South. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Ashley, Clarence “Tom,” and Foster, Gwin. 1933. “The Rising Sun Blues.” Phonograph recording. Vocation (02576).Google Scholar
Bell, Caryn Cossé. 1997. Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro–Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Bellion, Wendy. 2019. Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Robin. 2012. “Toward the Integration of Theatre History and Affect Studies: Shame and the Rude Mechs’s The Method Gun.” Theatre Journal 64, 2, 213–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Jason. 2018. City of a Million Dreams: New Orleans at Year 300. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braun, Juliane. 2019. Creole Drama: Theatre and Society in Antebellum New Orleans. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campanella, Richard. 2008. Bienville’s Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.Google Scholar
Carlson, Marvin. 2001. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clemenceau, Pierre. 1991. Personal communication from Georges Clemenceau’s grandson and the author’s next-door neighbor in New Orleans.Google Scholar
Noir, Code. (1685) 1940. Trans. Olivia Blanchard. Baton Rouge: Survey of Federal Archives in Louisiana. Louisiana Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University.Google Scholar
Codrescu, Andrei. 2006. New Orleans, Mon Amor: Twenty Years of Writings from the City. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.Google Scholar
Colbert, Soyica Diggs, Jones, Douglas A. Jr., and Vogel, Shane, eds. 2020. Race and Performance after Repetition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Colten, Craig E. 2005. An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Dempsey, Marilyn. 2011. Comments during the talkback after a screening of Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Yale National Initiative to Strengthen Teaching in Public Schools, New Haven, CT.Google Scholar
Dent, Thomas C., and Schechner, Richard, eds. 1969. The Free Southern Theater: A Documentary of the South’s Radical Black Theater, with Journals, Letters, Poetry Essays and a Play Written by Those Who Built It. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Drewal, Margaret Thompson. 1992. Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
DuComb, Christian. 2017. Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emigh, John. 2011. “Liminal Richard: Approaches to Performance Studies.” In The Rise of Performance Studies: Rethinking Richard Schechner’s Broad Spectrum, ed. Harding, James M. and Rosenthal, Cindy, 162–76. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fertel, Randy. 2019. “Improv Conference New Orleans: A Festival of Ideas.” Accessed 10 July 2020. www.improvconferencenola.com.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Lewis Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gayarré, Charles. 1885. The Creoles of History and the Creoles of Romance —A Lecture Delivered in the Hall of Tulane University, New Orleans. New Orleans: C.E. Hopkins.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Goodman, Richard. 2020. “Tennessee Williams and the French Quarter.” French Quarter Journal, 23 March. Accessed 7 July 2020. www.frenchquarterjournal.com/archives/tennessee-williams-and-the-french-quarter.Google Scholar
Gotham, Kevin Fox. 2007. Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Hanger, Kimberly S. 1997. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Andy. 2020. Katrina: A History, 1915–2015. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs-Jenkins, Branden. 2015. An Octoroon. New York: Dramatists Play Service.Google Scholar
Johnson, Jerah. 1992. “Colonial New Orleans: A Fragment of the Eighteenth-Century French Ethos.” In Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization, ed. Hirsch, Arnold R. and Logsdon, Joseph, 12–57. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Just, Sascha, dir. 2017. Big Chief: Indians Got That Fire. Documentary film. Berlin: Freytag Productions.Google Scholar
Katzman, Lisa. 2007. Tootie’s Last Suit. Documentary film. New York: Pomegranate Productions. DVD, 93 min.Google Scholar
Keber, Lily, dir. 2018. Buckjumping. Documentary film. Produced by Stephen Rose. Streaming video, 66 min.Google Scholar
Kolb, Carolyn. 1972. New Orleans: An Invitation to Discover One of America’s Most Fascinating Cities. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Landrieu, Mitch. 2018. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Law, John. 1705. Money and Trade Considered: with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money. Edinburgh: Printed by the Heirs and Successors of Andrew Anderson.Google Scholar
Logsdon, Dawn, and Elie, Lolis Eric. 2008. Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans. Film documentary. New Day Films, 68 min.Google Scholar
McKee, Sally. 2017. The Exile’s Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moses, Gilbert, O’Neal, John, Nicholas, Denise, Levey, Murray, and Schechner, Richard. 1965. “Dialogue: The Free Southern Theatre.” Tulane Drama Review 9, 4 (T28):63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moten, Fred. 2003. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
NASA. 2016. “New Study Maps Rate of New Orleans Sinking.” Jet Propulsion Laboratory News, 16 May. Accessed 1 July 2020. www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6513.Google Scholar
Nola.com. 2018. “Jazz’s ‘Musical Value Is Nil’ (1918): An Editorial We Regret.” Nola.com,, 30 August. Accessed 26 September 2020. www.nola.com/opinions/article_0660c087-e99c-51aa-8d10-4al371f8deb2.html.Google Scholar
Nyong’o, Tavia. 2019. Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Ogden, Frederick Nash. 1874. “Platform of the Crescent White League.” Frederick Nash Ogden Papers. Manuscripts Division, Tulane University Library.Google Scholar
Olivarius, Kathryn. 2019. “Immunity, Capital, and Power in Antebellum New Orleans.” American Historical Review 124, 2, 425–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osbey, Brenda Marie. 1997. All Saints: New and Selected Poems. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Perret, J. John. 1983. “Victor Séjour, Black French Playwright from Louisiana.” The French Review 57, 2: 187–93.Google Scholar
Piazza, Tom. 2005. Why New Orleans Matters. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Plessy v. Ferguson . 1896. 163 U.S. 537.Google Scholar
Powell, Lawrence N. 2012. The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Regis, Helen A. 2003. “‘Keeping Jazz Funerals Alive’: Blackness and the Politics of Memory in New Orleans.” In Southern Heritage on Display: Public Ritual and Ethnic Diversity within Southern Regionalism, ed. Ray, Celeste, 38–56. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Roach, Joseph. 1996. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Roach, Joseph. 1998. “Slave Spectacles and Tragic Octoroons: A Cultural Genealogy of Antebellum Performance.” In Exceptional Spaces: Essays in Performance and History, ed. Pollock, Della, 49–76. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Roach, Joseph. 2012. “A Feeling for Risk: Notes on Kinesthetic Empathy and the World Performance Project.” Theater 42, 1, 7–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Al. 1974. Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red-Light District. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Roth, David. 2010. Louisiana Hurricane History. Camp Springs, MD: National Weather Service. Accessed 13 July 2020. www.weather.gov/media/lch/events/lahurricanehistory.pdf.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Richard. 2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Schafer, Judith Kelleher. 2009. Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 1966. “Approaches to Theory/Criticism.” Tulane Drama Review 10, 4 (T32):20–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 1985. Between Theater & Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schechner, Richard. 2015. “The 1960s, TDR, and Performance Studies: From a 2009 Interview by Ana Bigotte Vieira and Ricardo Seiga Salgado, Revised in 2014 by Richard Schechner.” In Performed Imaginaries, 32–56. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schleifstein, Mark. 2017. “$50 Billion Plan to Save Louisiana Coast Approved by Legislature.” NOLA.com, 2 June. Accessed 7 July 2020. www.nola.com/news/environment/article_e501f847-d265-577c-a67b-f0c7c177248c.html.Google Scholar
Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sexton, Richard, and Delehanty, Randolph. 1993. New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.Google Scholar
Simon, David, and Overmyer, Eric, creators. 2010–2013. Treme. HBO Series, 36 episodes in 4 seasons.Google Scholar
Snedeker, Rebecca. 2006. By Invitation Only: The Secrets and Inner Workings of the Old-Line Carnival Societies and Debutante Balls of Mardi Gras. Documentary film. Harriman, New York: New Day Films; Independent Television Service; Palmetto Pictures. DVD, 60 min.Google Scholar
Sublette, Ned. 2008. The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books.Google Scholar
Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Shirley Elizabeth. 2009. Exiles at Home: The Struggle to Become American in Creole New Orleans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Trethewey, Natasha. 2002. Bellocq’s Ophelia. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press.Google Scholar
Vennman, Barbara. 1993. “Boundary Face-Off: New Orleans Civil Rights Law and Carnival Tradition.” TDR 37, 3 (T139):76–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, Shane. 2018. Stolen Time: Black Fad Performance and the Calypso Craze. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wilderson, Frank B. III. 2020. Afropessimism. New York: Liveright.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, Isabel. 2020. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Williams, Caroline Randall. 2020. “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument.” New York Times, 26 June. Accessed 27 July 2020. www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html.Google Scholar
Williams, Tennessee. 1951. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: Signet Books.Google Scholar

TDReading

Gilbert, Jan, and McCaffrey, Kevin, eds. 2013. “New Orleans after the Flood.” Special section of TDR 57, 1 (T217):18–88.Google Scholar
Jaksch, Helen. 2013. “The Empty Chair Is Not So Empty: Ghosts and the Performance of Memory in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” TDR 57, 1 (T217):102–15. https://doi-org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roach, Joseph. 1993. “Carnival and the Law in New Orleans.” TDR 37, 3 (T139):42–75. https://doi-org/10.2307/1146310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar