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Doug Eacho

@dougeacho.bsky.social

1.5K followers 1.3K following 980 posts

performance historian, prof (U of T ➡️ NUS). writing a book about automating theatre (surrealism, cybernetics, backstage tech, ai) in which i discover to much astonishment that it was capital all along. douglaseacho.com

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Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 1d

pynchon reminding us that flappers were the original uwu smol beans

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 1d

will probably post the whole novel on this thread tbh

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 1d

tommy's still got it

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 1d

clerk, immediately as I'm walking into the bookstore: "You look like you're here for Pynchon"

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 2d

ok Lozano is now the fourth instance I know of of an "I'm quitting art" work of performance art: see also Suzanne Lacy, Allan Kaprow (arguable), and Tehching Hsieh.

others? i want this as a survey show now

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/t...

She Didn’t Speak to Other Women for 28 Years. What Did It Cost Her?

www.nytimes.com

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 3d

what do these people understand "biologically" to mean

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 4d

this looks cool as hell ty!

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 4d

in older, generalist theatre hist surveys I've come across the idea that medieval christians (say from 900-1300) "forgot" about Roman theatre: that they don't seem to have retained a memory of institutionalized performed theatre when they came across play texts. is this like. true

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 4d

@aislingmurph.bsky.social has it spot on with the excellent toronto production of Slave Play, and with the (unfair but undeniable) weirdness of this play in 2025. fascinating stuff.

www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/stag...

Yes, Slave Play is edgy and sharp. But Canadian Stage’s landmark production is more than that

Canadian premiere of Jeremy O. Harris’s opus is devastating and raw

www.theglobeandmail.com

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 6d

me: the thing about toronto is it has so much easy, untapped potential

older canadian artist friend: i've heard every foreigner who moved here say that for forty years. untapped potential is just what canada does. all of you move here and get disappointed and stuck

Brendan Dawe @dawe.bsky.social · 6d

I think Toronto regional transit planning is really conceptually quite easy! improve the infrastructure, spam more trains, improve the infrastructure, spam more trains. Like there's not huge trade offs or mega projects you just gotta figure out how to do the basic stuff.

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 7d

i like when the toronto boomers, who do not have young kids, protest about apt buildings casting shadows on playgrounds. meanwhile parents trade notes on which playgrounds have shade

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 7d

having a kid makes me care way more about basic urban infrastructure *and also* suddenly unable to attend the meetings where i could tell the city i'd like bike lanes and sidewalks so my kid does not die. oh well i'm sure the boomers who get to attend have my interests at heart

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 7d

i'm moving to singapore which gives me more excuses to dive into modern asia scholarship and, conveniently, not really bother with languages

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 7d

dower's "embracing defeat" was recommended to me as "if you could only read one book about postwar japan..." and having only read like four i am not qualified etc etc, but, it's an astonishing book

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 7d

look i'm not at all a japan expert but i did read john dower and gavin walker and often often thought "(1) wow the left in japan had a very specific formative history," and, "(2) ya this explains a lot of left-anime media"

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 7d

kojima's ideal military is pretty much the MSF in Phantom Pain: stateless non-aligned but communist sympathetic spec ops group who will tranq the world's way to decolonization. "what if there were a military that never did a murder"

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 9d

this is cursed knowledge. not only will i sound pedantic if i ever say his name, if pressed, i can only cite "a big bluesky account" as evidence for my correctness

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 10d

yeah to take the comparative exercise a different way, we could say there's a fasc-sadistic style (duterte, bolsanaro, trump) that does require masculine leaders and is diff from the euro-fasc political style, which doesn't

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 10d

honestly "contingent on donald trump's whole deal" is a fair explanation!

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 10d

yeah so RN in France and the FdI in Italy are *very* sexist and racist parties with more explicit fascist elements than even the GOP. Maybe the GOP is different - I think the protestant / catholic divide is a fair hypothesis - but "they're more hateful" just isn't true.

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 11d

again, the UK Tories offer counter-examples of despised racial outgroups occupying leadership positions in what's become a pretty white-nationalist party. maybe our theory is "evangelicals are different" but like in general people seem flexible on their political leaders' identities

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 11d

ok but why are usa right-wing voters differently sexist than french or italians? like i agree haley wouldn't have juice but i'm not sure candidate gender is such an obstacle on the right

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 14d

so the "pls apply for grant!!" and "ok but why would i if you do 't give me one of those grant-oriented jobs" conversation was constant

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 14d

... which of course they do. bc they want you to win the grant. but you have a job with no recognition of you getting the grant and that also might fire you before you get to do the grant. so you maybe want to go write an article, which can help with Job, instead of the grant, which prob won't.

Doug Eacho @dougeacho.bsky.social · 14d

small relevant anecdote: my chair repeatedly trying to get me to apply for multiyear research grants despite me holding a limited term, teaching-stream contract. these positions were expressly forbidden from such SSHRC grants except (!) ur dean can write an "exceptional case" letter ...