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Samuel Yates

@syates.bsky.social

1.6K followers 375 following 9 posts

Asst. Prof at Penn State. Dramaturg. Write on disability/crip studies, queerness, musicals, literature, aesthetics, performance, and access. deaf. they/he. samuelryates.com

Posts Replies Media

Samuel Yates @syates.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Daily reminder that musical theatre is political. The US Army Chorus singing “Do You Hear the People Sing?” at the Governors Ball is a layered example of mobilizing music theatre as political commentary and satire, and how it’s interwoven with audience media literacy. m.youtube.com/watch?v=pIQh...

m.youtube.com

Les Misérables Epilogue Scene Performed at the White House Governors Ball by the US Army Chorus

YouTube video by The DailyFAFO

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Samuel Yates @syates.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

If you’re looking for a way into thinking about how theatre artists can and have resisted Trump and encroaching fascism, try my new article on musical theatre, #Broadway satire, and presidential politics: doi.org/10.1386/smt_00…. DM if you need access to a copy! #ElectionDay #musicals #dramaturgy

doi.org

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Samuel Yates @syates.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

Today, I’m holding the words of Tony Kushner close: “But hope isn’t a choice, it’s a moral obligation, a human obligation, an obligation to the cells in your body.” Full speech at www.thenation.com/article/arch...

But hope isn’t a choice, it’s a moral obligation, a human obligation, an obligation to the cells in your body. Hope is a function of those cells, it’s a bodily function the same as breathing and eating and sleeping. Hope is not naïve, hope grapples endlessly with despair. Real, vivid, powerful, thunderclap hope, like the soul, is at home in darkness, is divided; but lose your hope and you lose your soul, and you don’t want to do that, trust me, even if you haven’t got a soul, and who knows, you shouldn’t be careless about it. Will the world end if you act? Who can say? Will you lose your soul, your democratic-citizen soul, if you don’t act, if you don’t organize? I guarantee it. And you will feel really embarrassed at your ten-year class reunion. People will point, I promise you; people always know when a person has lost his soul. And no one likes a zombie, even if, from time to time, people will date them.

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