Dazzle Camouflage: Spectacular Theatrical Strategies for Resistance and Resilience offers two profiles of contemporary theater artists, Jenny Romaine and The Eggplant Faerie Players, generating analysis about their shared transformative theatrical strategies. Using oral history, archival research, and experiences working with these artists, the author tells their stories and identifies the roles of Dazzle Camouflage, Re-Mixing History, and Rehearsing Resistance in their work. Both profiles are interwoven with progressive Jewish and Queer culture and politics.
Publication: April 2016
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REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS
- Review by Wendy Elisheva Somerson in make/shift: feminisms in motion (Issue 20; Summer/Fall 2017).
- Interview with Anna Elena Torres in In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. Spectacular Vernacular: An Interview with Ezra Berkley Nepon on New Yiddish Theater, Queer Performance Arts, and “Dazzle Camouflage.” (2016)
- Interview with Theodore Kerr in Arts Everywhere. “We Have a Past and a Future” (2016)
“By evoking and drawing us into these alternative worlds, Nepon’s book helps us imagine a world we want to live in – one of expansive gender possibilities, creative hilarity, and wild justice. Nepon provides a vital service by documenting how these artists remix, recycle, and rearrange traditions and rituals into contemporary queer culture, thus allowing all of us to connect to our pasts as we set out to create more fabulous futures.” (make/shift review, 2017)
Anthology essay publications
- “Let’s get this femme on the record” in Glitter & Grit: Queer Performance from the Heels on Wheels Femme Galaxy. (2015)
- “Zamlers, Tricksters, and Queers: Re-Mixing Histories in Yiddishland and Faerieland” in Transformative Language Arts in Action. (2014)
BOOK EVENTS (2016):
- Philadelphia, PA
- Manhattan, NY Book Celebration following Great Small Works’ “Muntergang and other Cheerful Downfalls!” at LaMama ETC
- Liberty, TN
- Brooklyn, NY