Presenter(s): Natalie Tichenor − Political Science
Faculty Mentor(s): Priscilla Yamin, Alison Gash
Poster 116
Research Area: Political Science and Theatre Arts
Funding: Wayne Morse Scholarship, Play Selected for New Voices UO Performance in 2018, Received Global Oregon Undergraduate Award
I believe plays have an unparalleled capacity to communicate a complicated and seemingly extraneous period as something relatable. In the same vein, theatre presenting historical periods has a profound capacity to illustrate the repetition of historical events, allowing for the errors of the past to highlight current troubles. This is the reason I, when troubled by the current political climate, I wrote a play. Demagogic claims about the alleged national security threats of immigrants and refugees hits close to home. During the 1940s, my family struggled in vain to obtain refugee visas for Hungarian Jewish relatives. They led rallies and lobbied the State Department, but were rebuffed because officials insisted that East European Jews were prone to radical political ideologies and thereby too threatening to receive asylum. Nearly all of these family members perished in the Holocaust. In the same period, the other side of my family, my German immigrant great- grandparents, and their family, faced discrimination because their loyalty was questioned as enemy aliens. In this prevailing political climate ordinary citizens need to mobilize on behalf of refugees, the most vetted migrants and also the group that political philosopher Michael Walzer calls “the most necessitous strangers.” From Brexit to the Trump administration’s constitutionally contested travel bans on migrants from six Muslim-majority countries, immigrants and refugees serve as convenient political scapegoats in even the most established democratic nations. Even when historical and social scientific evidence shows that these newcomers strengthen national economies and are less apt to engage in violent activity than native-born populations, they’re blamed for taking jobs, consuming public benefits, and posing significant threats. Today’s threats to constitutional principles and basic rights are frighteningly reminiscent of another haunting period in history. During the Second World War everyone with Japanese descent, regardless of citizenship, were forcibly, and without warning, placed into concentration camps. Detainees lost their homes and businesses, their educations and careers were interrupted, and their possessions stolen. They suffered the loss of faith in the government and the humiliation of being confined as traitors in their own country. My play follows closely real events. Dr. Seuss, who’s celebrated for progressive stances in his children’s books, was swept up in racial tensions and hysteria along with the majority of Americans. Seuss later travels to Japan for Life Magazine following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, distraught by the destruction he witnesses, writes Horton Hears a Who as both an apology and as a plea for future generations to stand up for the rights of others.