Victory Gardens Crip Slam and The University of Notre Dame present:

directed by Todd Bauer, Carolyn Demanelis and Ryan Belock

Sunday, November 20, 7:30pm
Zacek McVay Theater

Milton’s classic Samson Agonistes has the flavor of Greek tragedy, but stars a Biblical hero. This mix of two different cultures presents Samson as a tragic hero, who rather than raging against the Olympian deities, calls upon the Christian God to save him. The epic provides a unique approach in which to explore blindness; it is written as a “closet drama,” intended to be read and therefore depending on the theatrical spectacle of thrilling writing.

The chorus describes what is happening for us, which, along with Milton’s exploration of his own blindness, makes Samson Agonistes one of the most enabling texts by an author with a disability.

This exploration is led by Todd Bauer, a director and professor of dramatic literature at Chicago’s Newberry Library, in collaboration with the Department of English at Notre Dame University. Professor Essaka Joshua states “Notre Dame is dedicated to bringing disability culture to the forefront of a range of academic disciplines, exploring, in our research and in the classroom, what disability means now and what it might mean in the future.”

POST-PERFORMANCE PANEL with Todd Bauer, Newberry Library; Stephen Fallon and Essaka Joshua, University of Notre Dame; Carrie Sandahl, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Mike Ervin, Crip Slam, Victory Gardens Theater.

PERFORMED by students from the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame.