IHC Road Scholars Speakers Bureau
Jennifer Shook
Jennifer Shook is the Artistic Director of Caffeine Theatre, where she recently directed Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, Lorca's Doña Rosita, and Eliot's The Cocktail Party. She teaches dramaturgy and theatre history at Columbia College Chicago and holds degrees from the University of Chicago, Swathmore College, and University College Galway. Jennifer has spoken for a variety of audiences with topics ranging from modernist poetry to folklore and from Ibsen to Guantanamo.Hobos and Cowboys: The Dream of Identity in Early American Performance
This multi-media presentation examines how early American music and theatre strove to create a national identity in the pursuit of happiness. As notions of the "West" return to fashion in music, clothing, and the movies, the encoding of identity begun in early bluegrass and folk music, as well as in the first American plays, extends its reach. Join theatre historian and dramaturg Jennifer Shook in this conversation about how the "Americans" in those first performances - from the crowds of New York to the tribal plains - searched for a better life beyond the western horizon.Return to the archive listing for IHC Road Scholars Speakers Bureau
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