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2 books match the query 'Galella, Donatella'
America in the Round
Capital, Race, and Nation at Washington D.C.'s Arena StageDonatella Galella
University of Iowa Press, 2019
Washington D.C.’s Arena Stage was the first professional regional theatre in the nation’s capital to welcome a racially integrated audience; the first to perform behind the Iron Curtain; and the first to win the Tony Award for best regional theatre. This behind-the-scenes look at one of the leading theatres in the United States shows how key financial and artistic decisions were made, using a range of archival materials such as letters and photographs as well as interviews with artists and administrators. Close-ups of major productions from The Great White Hope to Oklahoma! illustrate how Arena Stage navigated cultural trends.
More than a chronicle, America in the Round is a critical history that reveals how far the theatre could go with its budget and racially liberal politics, and how Arena both disputed and duplicated systems of power. With an innovative “in the round” approach, the narrative simulates sitting in different parts of the arena space to see the theatre through different lenses—economics, racial dynamics, and American identity.
Feeling Yellow
Asian Americans and Yellowface in Twenty-First-Century Musical TheatreDonatella Galella
University of Michigan Press, 2026
Feeling Yellow examines how yellowface has persisted on the contemporary musical stage and how Asian Americans have contested yellowface, as they stake their own claim to the theatrical stage and nation state. Donatella Galella boldly argues that the pleasures of musical theatre and the disavowal of systemic anti-Asian racism enable the ongoing portrayal of Asian and Asian American characters by non-Asian actors. Galella offers two concepts to understand these phenomena: feeling yellow and yellowface without yellowed faces. Feeling yellow encapsulates the racialized anger, despair, and alienation of Asian American artists and audiences. Yellowface without yellowed faces denotes subtle ways of conveying Asianness, such as performing Asianness with exaggerated irony, using racialized costumes rather than yellow skin and slanted eye makeup, and setting musicals in fantasy Asian lands populated by multiracial casts.
Galella utilizes musicals such as Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes, The Mikado, and Soft Power, to understand how Asian and Asian American representation is connected to larger questions: How does racial identity shape emotional reactions to musical theatre? Why does yellowface and anti-Asian racism persist? What are the terms for Asian Americans belonging in the United States? Using a range of approaches from dramaturgy to auto-ethnography and materials from interviews to Reddit posts, Feeling Yellow spotlights Asian American affect, artistry, and activism.