S10E05 | "It’s a Outrage!": Touring Theater, Settler-Colonialism, and American Mythmaking

This episode investigates two incidents from America’s dramatic past: the 1831 touring performance of the melodrama Metamora starring Edwin Forrest and the 2021-2022 national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! By putting the historical context of their creation and the various receptions to their performance in conversation, Lauren Bellatti and I. B. Hopkins explore the ways these plays respond to attempts at American self-fashioning, particularly at moments when “Americanness” was contested. These plays, they argue, give audiences a chance to understand the messiness of American identity formation, even, or maybe especially, when that kind of reflection is uncomfortable. The episode was produced by Kassie Jo Baron. Transcript available at https://bit.ly/S10E05-Transcript