ReWritten

The ReWritten creative team will stage a performance, incorporating dance, live music, and projections. (Run time approximately 70 minutes). After the performance there will be a session Q & A about the performance and the team’s iterative creative process.

Co-created by Matthew Cumbie and Tom Truss, ReWritten reflects on the intimate relationship between nineteenth-century American writers Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne to explore queerness, history, intimacy, and the written word. The relationship between Hawthorne and Melville has been characterized as one of the most mysterious and fruitful friendships in American letters, yet the letters from Hawthorne to Melville are missing. ReWritten springs from this historic gap and time-hops between then and now as an attempt to expand how we see ourselves in these stories. Through performances and community engagements, ReWritten weaves together dance, music, visual art, projection, and text, and reimagines an intergenerational queer love story.

Since 2019, ReWritten artists have been coming together to create and cultivate this iterative, multi-disciplinary performance project. Over the years, ReWritten has included residencies at the Bethany Arts Center (NY), Texas State University, Colby College (ME), Salem State University, the University of Texas El Paso, the Berkshire Pulse (MA), Dance Place (DC), and the international conference of the Melville Society (Paris, FR); site-specific explorations of Herman Melville’s farmhouse Arrowhead, developed in partnership with the Berkshire County Historical Society; workshops with local libraries and community centers; and more.

This semester the ReWritten project is coming to the University of Toronto as part of a collaboration with a University of Toronto Mississauga English & Drama course. This is possible through the generous support of the Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts; The Centre for the Study of the United States Bissell-Heyd Research Fellowship; The University of Toronto Mississauga Office of the Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation; and the UTM and UTSG Departments of English.

Get tickets for the performance. The MiST Theatre has limited capacity. If you're no longer able to attend the performance please cancel your ticket so that others can attend. Thank you!