Reviewed by:

• The Porch on Windy Hill
• Heather Grimm

In spring 2023, Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Illinois produced The Porch On Windy Hill: a new play with old music, written by director Sherry Lutken in collaboration with Lisa Helmi Johanson, David M. Lutken, and Morgan Morse, who comprised the cast. Windy Hill is a family drama following white graduate student Beckett (Morse) and his biracial Korean Appalachian girlfriend Mira (Johanson). They travel from New York to North Carolina for Beckett’s research; in North Carolina, they encounter Mira’s estranged white grandfather Gar (Lutken). The evening they spend reconnecting on the titular porch (a trope so stereotypical it is mocked in the dialogue) is punctuated by performances of the string band music that Mira remembers from her childhood and that Beckett now studies. As the play progresses, the reasons for Mira’s estrangement become clear: Gar never approved of the Korean man his daughter married, and, although he loved his granddaughter, he refused to intervene when her cousin lobbed a racial slur at her. By the end of the play, Gar’s racism is revealed to be born of cowardice, an initial discomfort he was unable to express and took too long to overcome. We are left believing that Gar understands his mistakes and will try to communicate more openly. But the liberal politics the play wears on its sleeve conceal a conservative message regarding the dramaturgical engine driving the story: its music.

Lisa Helmi Johanson (Mira), David M. Lutken (Gar), and Morgan Morse (Beckett) in The Porch on Windy Hill. Photo: Michael Brosilow.

Beckett’s interest in the music featured in the play—ranging from fiddle tunes like “Bill Cheatham” to ballads like “Birmingham Jail” and popular songs like “Columbus Stockade Blues”—often served as comic relief. He stammered out jargony questions about music changing over time, oblivious [End Page 562] to Mira and Gar’s tense reunion. When Beckett asked where Gar learned a song, Gar confesses that he doesn’t remember; he’d known it all his life. Beck-ett lamented, “Wish I had that direct connection,” celebrating Gar’s “real” connection to this music and the fact that he learned it through interactions with family, as opposed to through recordings. Although Beckett was often the clown, the production asked us to take the sentiment behind this line seriously. Though Mira responded by postulating that perhaps people in the past thought they weren’t getting the “real thing” either, the structure of the play reinforced a different message. Mira’s process of reconnecting with this music alongside her grandfather allowed them to reconnect and heal. They could only come together because of their shared repertoire—and shared way of learning it, by virtue of their familial connection. Although Beckett played with them, thus also participating in this coming together, he consistently denied the validity of his performance in favor of the legitimacy of his girlfriend’s, claiming that “[i]t’s in her blood.”

Morgan Morse (Beckett), Lisa Helmi Johanson (Mira), and David M. Lutken (Gar) in The Porch on Windy Hill. Photo: Michael Brosilow.

The suggestion that music is learned by Appalachians in an atmosphere of isolation and insularity has a deep history, to which the paratexts of the play alluded. The lobby display and the plot synopsis referred to Beckett not as an ethnomusicologist—a term matching his own description of his research—but, erroneously, as a “song collector.” Song collecting, in contrast to contemporary ethnomusicology, was a baldly extractive enterprise. “Collectors” went into rural areas to find music unknown to city dwellers to catalog or sell, often selectively, in order to advance their racist or nationalist agendas. Placing Beckett in this tradition suggested that there is still untouched cultural material to be found and collected. Beckett the character may not be a song collector within the narrative, but in performance, he served as the song collector for the audience, the outsider character whose presence extracted the songs from their keepers for our...

审阅者：

• 风山的门廊
• 希瑟·格林

2023 年春季，伊利诺伊州斯科基的北光剧院制作了《风山门廊》：一部采用旧音乐的新剧，由导演雪莉·卢特肯 (Sherry Lutken) 与演员丽莎·赫尔米·约翰逊 (Lisa Helmi Johanson)、大卫·M·卢特肯 (David M. Lutken) 和摩根·莫尔斯 (Morgan Morse) 合作创作。《风山》是一部家庭剧，讲述了白人研究生贝克特（莫尔斯饰）和他的韩裔阿巴拉契亚混血女友米拉（约翰逊饰）的故事。他们从纽约前往北卡罗来纳州进行贝克特的研究。在北卡罗来纳州，他们遇到了米拉关系疏远的白人祖父加尔（卢特肯饰）。他们在有名无实的门廊上重新建立联系的那个晚上（这是一个非常刻板的比喻，在对话中被嘲笑），中间不时响起米拉童年时记忆中的弦乐队音乐，贝克特现在正在研究这些音乐。随着剧情的进展，米拉疏远的原因逐渐清晰：加尔从来不赞成他女儿嫁给的韩国男人，而且，尽管他爱他的孙女，但当她的表弟对她进行种族诽谤时，他拒绝干预。在剧的结尾，加尔的种族主义被揭露是源于怯懦，这是他最初无法表达的不适，并且花了很长时间才克服。我们相信加尔理解他的错误，并会尝试更公开地沟通。但该剧表面上的自由主义政治掩盖了关于驱动故事的戏剧引擎的保守信息：它的音乐。

《风山门廊》中的丽莎·赫尔米·约翰逊（米拉）、大卫·M·卢特肯（加尔）和摩根·莫尔斯（贝克特）。照片：迈克尔·布罗西洛。

贝克特对剧中音乐的兴趣——从《比尔·奇塔姆》这样的小提琴曲子到《伯明翰监狱》这样的民谣，再到《哥伦布栅栏布鲁斯》这样的流行歌曲——常常起到喜剧的作用。他结结巴巴地提出了一些关于音乐随时间变化的行话问题，没有注意到米拉和加尔紧张的重聚[结束第 562 页] 。当贝克特问加在哪里学了一首歌时，加承认他不记得了；他一生都知道这一点。贝克特感叹道，“希望我能有这种直接的联系”，庆祝加尔与这种音乐的“真正”联系，以及他通过与家人的互动而不是通过录音来学习它的事实。尽管贝克特经常扮演小丑，但制作要求我们认真对待这句台词背后的情感。尽管米拉回应说，也许过去的人们认为他们也没有得到“真实的东西”，但该剧的结构强化了不同的信息。米拉和祖父一起重新接触音乐的过程让他们重新建立联系并治愈了伤痛。他们之所以能够走到一起，只是因为他们拥有共同的技能，并且凭借他们的家庭关系，拥有共同的学习方式。尽管贝克特与他们一起演奏，因此也参与了这次聚会，但他始终否认自己表演的有效性，而支持女友表演的合法性，声称“这是她的血液中”。

《风山门廊》中的摩根·莫尔斯（贝克特饰）、丽莎·赫尔米·约翰逊（米拉饰）和大卫·M·勒特肯（加尔饰）。照片：迈克尔·布罗西洛。

阿巴拉契亚人在孤立和封闭的氛围中学习音乐的说法有着悠久的历史，剧中的副文本也提到了这一点。大厅的展示和情节概要没有将贝克特称为民族音乐学家（这个术语与他自己对他的研究的描述相匹配），而是错误地称为“歌曲收藏家”。与当代民族音乐学相比，歌曲收集是一项赤裸裸的榨取事业。“收藏家”深入农村地区寻找城市居民未知的音乐进行分类或出售，通常是有选择的，以推进他们的种族主义或民族主义议程。将贝克特置于这一传统中表明，仍然有未被触及的文化材料有待发现和收集。贝克特这个角色在叙事中可能不是一个歌曲收集者，但在表演中，他充当了观众的歌曲收集者，一个局外人的角色，他的存在从他们的守护者那里提取了歌曲，供我们……