El Vez performances present a powerful message of social justice and inclusion in changing US and social contexts. Make the Dream Real interrogates how this message is activated through world-building: the use of a variety of theoretical, theatrical, and musical tactics that bring into being a progressive social space that refutes the current economic, political, social, and cultural configurations of the United States.
World-building in an El Vez show makes the dream real by imagining a society in which equal rights are guaranteed, inclusivity is fostered, difference is valued, and the violence of economic inequality is mitigated. But, world-building through performance is not content to reside exclusively in the individual imagination or the social imaginary; it temporarily creates this new social space in actual time and space for the audience to experience. Using a dramaturgical methodology, which marries theoretical inquiry to theatrical practice based on dramaturgical thinking, critical proximity, and intellectual flexibility, the book delves into the theoretical foundations that inform artist Robert Lopezs work, and each chapter analyzes a different performative component he uses.
Make the Dream Real interrogates how El Vezs playful engagements hold the United States to its egalitarian promises, voicing and enacting - however fleetingly - a just and richly inclusive social space through performance.
The Forward: A Foreword by Robert Lopez
The Kind People Have a Wonderful Dream: An Introduction
If There is Any Hope for a Revolution: Activating Elvis
You May Call Me El, You May Call Me Vez: Lopez and El Vez in Performance
He with the Shiniest Pants Wins: Costumes and Merch
Like a Jukebox Exploded: Sound and Music in El Vez Performances
The Future is Unwritten, But Ive Made Notes Already: A Conclusion,
By Way of COVID and What Comes After
Bibliography
Karen Jean Martinson, is an Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her scholarly and creative work explores the intersection of contemporary USAmerican performance, consumer culture, neoliberalism, and the processes of identification, interrogating issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. In addition to writing about El Vez, The Mexican Elvis, she writes and talks (constantly) about dramaturgy and dramaturgical thinking.
