A theatre historian and author, a playwright, and a scholar have been selected as the three Tao House Fellows for the 2019 Travis Bogard Artist in Residence Program at Tao House.

English Professor Katie N. Johnson, of Miami University, Cincinnati, Ohio, plans to complete a monograph,Racing the Great White Way: A Counter-History of Early Twentieth-Century Broadway,that charts a fresh account of one of the most vital and formative moments of U.S. culture. The book will show how theatre shaped cultural attitudes toward national identity, immigration, sexuality, race,and urbanization, and will uncover new sites of cultural production and expand the map of spectatorship. Johnson’s central claim is that“by looking beyond Broadway…we discover not only a rich history of diverse theatrical performances, but also a powerful archive of U.S. culture transitioning to modernity.”

New York playwright, director, and media artist John Jesurun will research, write, and create a special stage design for Tabula Rasa. The play, about libraries, interpretation, memory, and mental space, will have characters but the library itself will become the lead. Tabula Rasa, set in the not too distant future, “concerns a minor academic exiled to a space station with the task of ‘decontaminating’ the major repository of archival information it contains.” Jesurun intends “the work to be an investigation into the archival qualities of the mind and the fragile nature of information.”

English professor Jane K. Dominik, San Joaquin Delta College, Stockton, California, will develop, edit, and complete for publication, Singing for Their Fathers: The Struggle for Connection and Catharsis in American Drama, a paper previously presented at the American Drama Conference. Expectations and demands of fathers and sons who strive for connection will be analyzed in nine plays by five playwrights, including O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

To learn more about the Travis Bogard Artist in Residence Program, click HERE