Teenage Dick In-Person & Virtual Events
Audiences are welcome to join a series of digital events and post-show talkbacks for Teenage Dick. Throughout the run, this will be a space to reflect, connect, and build community together, alongside the cast of Teenage Dick, guest Shakespeare scholars, and Woolly staff.
TEENAGE DICK IN-PERSON EVENTS:
CONNECT WITH THE CAST
Artist Talkbacks
LOCATION: In the Theatre
DATES: Following the 3pm performance on October 2nd
Following the 2pm performances on October 10th and October 17th
Following the 8pm performance on October 6th
FREE
Immediately following the performance, join the cast of TEENAGE DICK for a series of post-show discussions.
TEENAGE DICK VIRTUAL EVENTS:
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Fast Times at Shakespeare High
September 28th, 8-8:30pm EST
Instagram Live
FREE
Just like Mike Lew’s TEENAGE DICK, some of the most popular teen films of the 1990s and 2000s adapted Shakespeare’s plays and set them in high school. What is it about high school that is so enduring? How do films like 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man, and O (not to mention many others) approach Shakespeare and his cultural legacy? Join Shakespeare scholars Yasmine Hachimi and Emily Lathrop to discuss Shakespeare, adaptation, pop culture and more!
Shakespeare, Disability, and Performance
September 30th, 7-8pm EST
Zoom
FREE
Join disability and performance scholars Justin P. Shaw and Katherine Schaap Williams, moderated by Samuel Yates. Together they will explore portrayals of disability in Shakespeare’s plays, how performances have shifted over time, and how Mike Lew’s adaptation of Richard III, TEENAGE DICK, offers new ways of discussing disability, performance, and adaptation.
Yasmine Hachimi is an advanced PhD Candidate at UC Davis. She is currently writing a dissertation on the eroticization of Tudor queens, which explores a range of popular genres from early modern letters and plays, to tv shows and fanfiction today. When she’s not working on her dissertation, you can find Yasmine immersing herself in acts of joy centered around rest, reading, and community. You can follow her on twitter: @YasmineHachimi
Emily Lathrop has a PhD in English from The George Washington University and currently serves as the Audience Engagement and Fellowship Manager at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Her current work focuses on the intersections of audience engagement, Shakespeare performance, arts administration, and the myth of universality. Her work can be found in The Rambling, the Renaissance volume of Bloomsbury’s A Cultural History of Disability series, and Routledge’s collection Shakespeare’s Audiences. You can read her performance reviews in Shakespeare Bulletin and Cahiers Élisabéthains.
Samuel Yates, Ph.D., is a deaf artist and researcher who examines the aesthetics of disability and performance. Samuel is currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Directing in the School of Theatre and Dance at Millikin University. He received his doctorate in English from The George Washington University, where his research earned the American Society for Theatre Research’s Helen Krich-Chinoy Dissertation Fellowship. He completed an M.Phil in Theatre and Performance Studies from Trinity College Dublin as a George J. Mitchell Scholar and a B.A. from Centre College. Samuel holds a Humanity in Action Senior Fellowship for his work on performance and body politics, and has artistically collaborated with theaters such as the Abbey Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, The Samuel Beckett Centre, and Gala Hispanic Theatre. His current project, Cripping Broadway: Producing Disability and the American Musical investigates disability aesthetics and accessibility practices in Broadway musicals by asking how our notions of disability and the able body inform and transform theatrical performance. Recent and forthcoming publications can be found in Music Theatre Today, Vol. 4, Studies in Musical Theatre, The Matter of Disability (U Michigan), and A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury).
Justin P. Shaw is an Assistant Professor of English at Clark University where he teaches and researches Shakespeare and early modern English literature. He is working on his first monograph which examines race and disability in early modern literature. Committed to both public and traditional scholarship, his work appears in the peer-reviewed journal Early Theatre, in the forthcoming critical volume, White People in Shakespeare, forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan, and has been discussed on NPR and podcasts such as A Bit Lit. He has helped to design exhibits for the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University such as, Desire & Consumption: The New World in the Age of Shakespeare, consulted on the exhibit First Folio: The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, and is lead developer for the digital humanities project, Shakespeare and the Players (Shakespeare [dot] emory [dot] edu)
Katherine Schaap Williams is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto. Her work on Shakespeare and early modern drama, disability studies, and performance theory has been published or is forthcoming in ELH, English Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, Early Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin, and the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, as well as several edited volumes. She edited Chapman, Jonson, and Marston’s 1605 play Eastward Ho for The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama (2020), and her monograph, Unfixable Forms: Disability, Performance, and the Early Modern English Theater, was published by Cornell University Press in 2021.In the Lobby
IN THE BALANCE: PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My name is Jessica Danielle Skintges Wallach. I am a photographer, teacher, mother, artist, wife and accessibility queen. I have been the lead character in Teenage Dick, a teenager who finds life to be hard, seemingly wildly unfair, and I blamed it on the way my body appeared to the world around me, as if it had wronged me. At the same time, I loved my body: my voice that sounded so different to others kept me sane, my legs that had that odd gait carried me places. I could see myself, whether or not others could.
This body of work comes out of a series of classes that I taught from January 2020 through June 2021 on photographing the climate crises, COVID-19, and white privilege. The goal of these classes was to create images that address the complex nature of intersectional oppressions, and represent how these things impact us personally. I hope this collection prompts you to consider your own body and the various environments you move through.
I am a white woman with Cerebral Palsy. Some of these photos allowed me to lean into my disability; allowing me to use my shaky hands. These photos are all informed by my whiteness, it dictates my every choice from lighting to depth of field to the space I photograph in. Glen Echo and the Bull Run Battlefield, the flowers in the springs of COVID. Let’s just say it is limiting at best and presents a bit of a warped perspective — neat, crisp, and in search of perfection.
These photos are dedicated to the newest members of my tribe, those with long haul COVID. To you I say, “Welcome. I believe you! I hear you. You have become a part of a group of crafty, smart, tenacious, loving and lovable people. I am sorry that you are met with disbelief time and again, not finding the help you need in the ways you need it. We have come far in the rights for disabled folk, but we have not dismantled ableism and you are bearing the brunt of that.”
To view a digital version of the exhibit, please visit here.
BIO
JESSICA WALLACH, GREATER DEPTH MEDIA
Jessica Wallach is a seasoned photographer, videographer, educator, community activist, and the owner and operator of Greater Depth Media. Since 1998, Jessica has worked with clients throughout the DMV that are actively engaged in making the world a better place. Jessica’s work behind the camera honors the aspirations of her clients by creating imagery that reflects their work and community building. For more information, please visit www.greaterdepthmedia.com.