Living Newspapers and Circum-Atlantic Performance in 1930s New York

Clarissa Clò, University of California in San Diego

Clarissa Clò will examine Italian American and African American relations in New York during the 1930s from the perspective of cultural productions created partially in response to international events, such as the Italo-Ethiopian War.  Clo’ will explore the Federal Theatre Project’s censored “living newspaper” “Ethiopia” and Orson Welles’s Harlem production of “Macbeth” in relation to the performative aspects of the Italian immigrant press and theatre.  She will discuss how these productions are part of and enabled by a larger transoceanic cultural context of encounter, conflict, and mutual, but not necessarily equal, exchange.