Phish Fan Subculture:

The Possibilities of Phans’ Performance

Christina L. Allaback

Abstract

In this article, I explore the performativity of Phish fans as an authentic performance that can create chance in the people that take part in their community. Many scholars look at performance as something inscribed on the surface of an individual rather than an authentic identity. Phish fans construct their subcultural identity from subcultures before them, which were seen as resisting mainstream society, erasing the original intent of those subcultures. Does this make their performance of subculture inauthentic or weaker than the subcultures that came before them? Society often thinks of performance as a negative or a falsity. Think of watching an actor perform onstage: We see that individual onstage as a fabrication or fiction, not a reality. However, what we see on that stage is truthful to the world of the play and the actors is portraying their interpretation of that character, which includes a great deal of that actor’s identity and personality. Even though different from the past, current subculture can provide us with an interesting lens exploring our social experiences and what part performance plays in them.

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Anybody who attends a Phish show will be greeted by a myriad of sights to see and sounds to hear. From the second one finds themselves in the vicinity of a Phish show, one notices that things are changing. You might see cars smothered in stickers that you do not understand, which reference songs or might be shaped like red donuts. You will notice the music to which people are listening. You will notice the wide variety of clothing styles, some of which challenge the normative fashion of the “outside” non-Phish world. You may also notice the language people use when talking about the band. Then, there is the concert in the venue: long improvisational jams going in and out of different genres with an incredible light show. At every point in your journey, there is something to experience.

Phish is a rock band that started in 1983 with four college students in Burlington, Vermont. They became locally famous in New England, but all this changed on their first tour west. The internet was invented shortly after Phish was born, so many fans began trading tapes of shows and discussing the band over the internet. Phish’s songs are rarely played on the radio, and their album sales are very small compared to larger acts. Over the last thirty years, Phish has hosted ten massive music festivals, in which the band plays six sets, three a night. Attendance at these festivals can reach tens of thousands of people. While you might never have heard a song on the radio, Phish has sold out massive arenas. For their 2019 New Year’s Eve run, they sold 76,079 tickets across four nights of shows and earned $6.7 million.^[1] Phish was seventeenth on the list of the top twenty grossing rock and metal bands in 2018 with $38.9 million, which is more than Paul McCartney and Elton John.^[2] What is it about Phish shows that makes people such devoted followers of the band?

While Phish provides its fans with exciting musical performances, the fans themselves provide equally interesting performances. In the discipline of performance studies, we discuss identity in terms of performance: We perform our identity through our language, clothing, actions, et cetera. The Phish fan subculture follows its favorite band from town to town and performs an identity to the communities in which the band plays and to the community of fans. Before each concert, many fans gather in the parking lot to socialize. Typical parking lot scenes can demonstrate many aspects of the subculture’s theatricality through costume, spectacle, dialogue, and the Shakedown Street economy—an impromptu marketplace where more dedicated fans sell items to make money to continue touring. The performance identity of Phish, as well as the performances of multivarious fandoms, can be expressed in many ways both at the show and outside of the show.

I choose to limit my study to the activities that happen in the vicinity of the shows because these are sites where fans can actively create their identity as fans. Some fans leave their identity at the show, while other fans perform their Phish head identity in everyday life. There are many different types of fans, but I choose to examine the behaviors surrounding the physical concerts.^[3] It is at shows where many fans are drinking beer, ingesting and selling illegal drugs, bartering for goods and tickets, selling food and clothing, and creating community. Performances of identity at Phish concerts simultaneously resist and affirm what fans would call “mainstream” social values through their style, music preferences, anticorporate jargon, inattentiveness to hygiene, and use of drugs. Of course, not all fans perform all of these qualities of their identity all at once or in every given instance. Some fans are sober, some fans attend to their hygiene, but we do see various ways that fans resist the “outside” world. As cited above, this is a space in which fans can construct their individual identities.

Scholars, such as cultural theorist Dick Hebdige and his colleagues of the Birmingham School for Contemporary Cultural Studies, often analyze subcultures in terms of their polarity with society: a subculture is against society or maintains society’s values.^[4] Boppers in 1950s America had an identity aligned with classic American values: listening to rebellious music, spending money on records and merchandise, and conforming to society’s standards of femininity. Then, on the other hand, we have the punk movement as discussed by Hebdige, whose DIY aesthetic challenged and even threatened Great Britain’s traditional values.^[5] However, more recent scholarly work on subcultures diverges on this point. Although, none of this negates the liberation or personal change that fans feel results from their experiences.

I hope this project will inspire a greater understanding of our social experiences and what part performance plays within these experiences. The Phish scene illustrates not only how a subculture and our own society work but potentially reveals how people attempt to perform resistance, and whether it is even possible to perform opposition against a dominant mainstream as a means to escape it. Performance is a part of our everyday lives, and this article will hopefully contribute not only to cultural studies regarding our society but also to the dialogue regarding performance and its potential. There exists a possibility inherent to Phish fans’ performance: It is a performance of liberation and a demonstration of how a society can be made better.

In this article, I am primarily concerned with ideas and questions about performativity and authenticity. We can use the term performativity when discussing the performance of identity of Phish fans in everyday life. Performative means that behavior is inscribed on the surface of the member of the subculture rather than that identity having any inherent authenticity. A performance of an actor is a physical act of carrying out a part in a play. An actor’s performance happens in a specific context. The idea of performativity is more complex. It is a mode of communication and social action that creates an identity. An actor carries out a performance. A Phish fan is performative in that they communicate their identity as a fan via slang, material culture, and dress. Many aspects of the Phish fan identity, such as clothing style, are borrowed from subcultures that came before them, such as the hippies or the Beats. Because their style is generally seen as borrowed, the identity created by their performance as Phish fans can be viewed, by some, as inauthentic.

Because these styles are borrowed, some Phish fans might not understand their original meaning. For example, Phish fans wear the clothing of the hippie subculture, who in turn wore styles from Native American cultures, and therefore the original meaning of those styles is lost. Phish fans perform their identity as fans by wearing the costume and performing the behavior of subcultures past at Phish shows and, for many, outside of Phish shows. However, they are in a different time and context, so the identity and meaning of their costumes is not necessarily commensurate with any previous subculture’s resistance to the mainstream. One can interpret the performativity of Phish fans as one that has no meaning and is empty because it is merely a performance and not actually acting upon or resisting the mainstream culture. Some scholars’ criticism of contemporary subcultures is that they are very much a part of mainstream culture insofar as they are resisting through purchasing the commodities of past subcultures and copying them. The general theme of their argument is that fans do not resist anything through the performances of their identity, and therefore, their performances are not authentic or real.

Along with this discussion of performativity is the discussion of authenticity. How are performances of Phish fans authentic, if at all? At its basic definition, authentic means real, valid, or genuine. According to some subcultural scholars, because of their performativity—a stylized repetition of acts that are situated on the surface^[6]—members of a subculture are not authentic. In terms of philosophy, authenticity is related to existentialism and is the way that the self is true to its identity.^[7] Authenticity is how consistent an individual’s actions are with their belief systems. In simpler terms, does the individual “talk the talk and walk the walk.” Subcultures, such as the hippies, look for an authentic self away from mainstream society, freedom from social and sexual mores, and freedom from American consumerist society. Their performances might be considered authentic, as they lived the lifestyles of the identities they performed. Contemporary subcultures, like Phish fans, are looking for freedom while at the Phish show. However, is it an authentic performance?

Many scholars would argue not because of the subcultural borrowing in which Phish fans take part, arguing that they are merely copies of the subcultures that came before them and have no authenticity. According to these scholars, when fans go to the Phish show, they play with the hippie identity (among others), but then they return to the mainstream culture from which they came and, therefore, have no authentically resistant identity. Their identity is performative: an identity that sits just on the surface of the person and is not a part of their genuine identity. Saying that Phish fans’ identity is performative means that they are showing us just a repetition of acts in their communication with us. Phish fans copy the material culture and behavior of subcultures past and give it no thought. Merely, they are concerned to look the part and, according to some contemporary scholars, have no authenticity. However, I argue that such a generalization is deeply flawed.

I maintain that the performativity of Phish fans’ identity through subcultural borrowing is both positive and authentic. And I shall develop this position by applying Bourdieu’s idea of mimesis to understand how subcultures embody norms and tastes. Mimesis infers imitation but also interpretation. An actor might stand up on stage and mimic someone that they are not. But they are also interpreting the playwright’s words and making them their own. In this way, performance is a positive and active process in the creation of a character that is the actor’s own, not unlike Phish fans’ performativity in their creation of identity.

Phish fans create their own style and identity as fans through imitating styles that have come before them and making them their own. So, their performance is not totally insincere; it is perhaps much like acting, which is an interpretation of a character from a script coupled with a performance of that character. Subcultures today are a veritable pastiche of styles they adopt from past subcultures. Besides Phish phans, we see this in Grateful Dead fans, who also borrowed from the hippie and beatnik subcultures in San Francisco. In Great Britain, this is observed in the psychobilly youth subculture, which combines styles of the punks with a rockabilly aesthetic. More contemporary examples include the seapunk subculture, which formed on Facebook and includes incorporating nautical themes with styles from nineties raver and surfer subcultures but also borrows styles from pop stars like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift.^[8] Phish fans, through borrowing other subcultural styles, are constructing their own unique identity as Phish fans. Maybe it is not totally resistant to a mainstream culture, but their identity is still authentic, and the show is a place of positive identity construction for many fans.

I find a good deal of criticism of fans and subcultures quite harsh in arguing that they merely play a stylistic game or are copies of previous groups. I cannot agree with conclusions that members of a subculture perform an identity that is not unique to them, or that subcultural affiliation is one that requires no thought. Phish fans’ performance may borrow from earlier subcultures, but to argue, as many subcultural scholars do, that such borrowing is “erasing ideological commitment” ignores an important potential of such subcultural performance.

While it can be the case that some forms of subcultural borrowing do weaken resistance, Phish fans have become subcultural imperialists and look to any subculture from which to seize cultural material and reappropriate it as their statement against society. In addition, my studies and experience suggest that attending a Phish show or festival is, to a certain extent, a resistant act. It is one in which a fan can show dissatisfaction with aspects of life outside the show and satisfaction with the environment of the show. Once someone enters the world of the show or festival, there are different rules and values to which they must ascribe and a wide variety of available roles to perform.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Dancing in the Streets gives a useful history, from Greek Dionysian ritual up to contemporary raves, of ecstatic dance or “collective joy.” According to Ehrenreich, with the growth of Christianity and capitalism, the ecstatic dance that was popular in ancient Greece up through medieval times, started to disappear. Initially, it was replaced by carnivals and festivals in which class distinctions were inverted or mocked through celebratory activities that some would consider inappropriate, such as drinking, singing, dancing, and social parody. Eventually, such celebrations became a threat to the ruling classes and the church. Carnival and festival finally developed into set rules, dates, and orders in an institutional attempt to control ecstatic dance and festivity. As a result of this evolution, Ehrenreich argues, spontaneous collective festivity disappeared and there was an increase in melancholy, or what Ehrenreich argues we might call “depression” today. According to Ehrenreich, a carnival level of ecstatic dance reemerges in the twentieth century as the “rock and roll” concert. In this way, most in attendance at a Phish show are oppositional, in my view, just by the very act of going to such a carnivalesque spectacle. The collective festivity and the ecstatic dance contained within the Phish subculture then approaches the experience that Ehrenreich describes in her book. And so despite containment to the space of the Phish concert, the performance still tries to resist the culture outside.

If one were to attend a Phish show, they would see Phish fans both rebelling against certain classic American values and mirroring others. One example of this is the Shakedown Street economy. Shakedown Street is the unregulated marketplace that forms in most venue parking lots before a Phish show. The practice and terminology originated in Grateful Dead concert parking lots and takes its name from their song “Shakedown Street” about urban decay. However, it may be more closely related to the illegal activities that often happen in this section of the parking lot, referring to the possibility that the police might “shake you down” or arrest you. In this marketplace, you can purchase any number of items: food, beverages, T-shirts, souvenirs, etc. The vendors are not licensed, and some are selling illegal drugs. The primary motivation here is to make money to continue touring with the band.

The way Phish fans use capitalism and free enterprise seems oppositional to American consumerist capitalism: The goal is not to make a profit, but rather to make enough money to continue to tour along with Phish. When selling food, beverages, and merchandise, they are in competition with the large music venues, who sell products with an extremely high profit margin. Phish fans sell products in the Shakedown Street economy at significantly lower prices. The call of “Keep your money in the lot” can be heard from vendors and seen on stickers. Fans are encouraged to spend their money within the Phish fan community, rather than in the venues, many of which are owned by large corporations like Xfinity and Chase Bank. Their performance of community, at the very least, rehearses resistance. These may be small events compared with radical protests of the past, but as the Situationists suggest,^[9] protest remains most viable in the transgressive performance of everyday life within capitalist society.

The Situationists believed everyday life was the correct place for political resistance and that play and spontaneous creativity could open up the possibility for a revived desire for change. Thus, Phish subculture has the possibility for a resistance against mainstream culture through simple acts of performance, such as the economy that happens on Shakedown Street. The Situationists used an oppositional tactic in everyday life called detournement. Sadie Plant interprets the meaning as lying somewhere between diversion and subversion, writing, “It is a turning around and reclamation of lost meaning: a way of putting the stasis of the spectacle in motion. It is plagiaristic, because its materials are those which already appear within the spectacle, and subversive since its tactics are those of the reversal of perspective.”^[10]

The May Events of 1968, the large workers’ protests in France, featured detournement. Slogans commonly used in graffiti included: “Live without dead time,” “Play without shackles,” “They’re buying your happiness. Steal it!” and “Run for it! The old world is behind you!”^[11] These slogans rework phrases or clichés that then became subversive jokes. One can see Phish fans using detournement in their use of parody shirts, stickers, and other material culture. Phish fans use logos that already exist and make the logos their own by changing them into song titles. The logo that once belonged to a corporation now belongs to the fans. Not only are they subversive, but they are also very self-referential—making jokes only another Phish fan will get. In this way, the possibility of the potential for authentic opposition or rebellion lies in the performance of detournement in small everyday actions.

Theater scholar Jill Dolan also sees possibilities in performance, not of resistance, but in what she calls the utopian performative. In her book Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater, she argues that performance gives people a place to come together and share experiences that can give the audience a glimpse of a better world. She uses the term utopian performative to describe a moment in which the audience is moved to a hopeful feeling in the theater, making them think critically about the possibility of utopia. Dolan considers “art as an arena in which an alternative world can be expressed—not in a didactic way … but through the communication of an alternative experience.”^[12] Dolan analyzes the utopian performative in the context of theatrical works of art such as the play, however, the idea is applicable to Phish and their audience as well.

Dolan extends sociologist Victor Turner’s theory of communitas to partially explain the phenomenon of the utopian performative. Dolan argues that audiences form communitas, or a strongly bonded community, through the liminal experience that is the utopian performative. It is this particular type of shared bond that gives audiences the feeling that utopia is possible. Turner defines the liminal experience as being part of a ritual in which someone is separated from society to temporarily experience an unreal world, or in-between world, that prepares them for a new identity—similar to an audience in a theater that is separated from the real world.^[13] Dolan believes theater audiences are separated from society in the liminal phase of the ritual of attending a theatrical performance. Thus, as they see and experience the utopian performative, the audience forms a bond that creates communitas. The utopian performative happens onstage; communitas occurs in the audience.

As Dolan reminds us, Thomas More defined utopia as meaning literally “no place”—this is a place that does not exist.^[14]According to Dolan, utopia can also be defined as a place separated from society such that its members may imagine what they wish it were. Dolan contends that this type of meaning creation is dependent upon the ability for the theater to move away from reality and into the performative where it might enact a hopeful future. The utopian performative does not necessarily change the world but gives us hope that the world can change. It might not provide the audience with the exact means to change the world, but it produces feelings of hope and pleasure and the possibility of change.

I argue that a Phish show is a utopian performative. The audience creates a strongly bonded community while watching Phish perform onstage. The music is what gives the audience hope. This music is the creation of four bandmates who listen and follow each other. They give to each other, take turns on solos, and are flexible while they create a jam together. The four bandmates are taking artistic risks, making artistic discoveries together, and existing in harmony at that moment in the music. They provide us with somewhat of a life lesson. Phish Studies scholar Jnan Blau says, “with Phish, the latent thrill of discovery—born of spontaneous, creative emergence—is ever present and at its best, quite powerfully moving.”^[15] Blau continues to argue that Phish has five performative commitments that contain a utopian charge: a commitment to flexibility, a commitment to groove, a commitment to play, a commitment to risk, and a commitment to reflexivity. It is through these commitments that the utopian performative is created and the audience experiences communitas together from witnessing a Phish show. Blau concludes, “Indeed, performance matters beyond itself. In my experience of Phish, there is a strong sense of interconnection between the band, the music, the audience, and the overall nature and feel of each show, of each performance event.”^[16]

One can criticize Phish fans in stereotypical ways for merely wanting to find a party or suggesting that they are merely subcultural borrowers, but I argue they experience a utopian performative at a Phish show in much the same way Jill Dolan’s subjects experience it: a feeling of hope that creates communitas between those that see the performance together. Phish fans separate themselves from society for a period of time, forming a tight bond with each other and creating communitas. Through the band’s performance, the audience can experience a utopian performative; the fans love the music of Phish, and the show gives most fans a sense of hope and euphoria. Many fans try to recreate both the sense of hope that they see in the band’s performance as well as the experience they find at the show. Ultimately, they perform that which they wish the world to become. Maybe they are not changing the world, and maybe they are not directly attacking the society from which they are separated, but they attempt to transform their own personal worlds through their actions and may envision a better world through going to Phish shows. If they do not truly resist outside mainstream society, they may at least perform a rehearsal of resistance and a sort of utopia. Retreating from society into the performative in order to provide hope as to the possibilities of society, they perform an imagined, ideal world as it should be. They are “feigning what [society] would like to become.”^[17]

Subcultures of the past tried to change society or rebel against society in mass-organized ways, rather than performing an imagined ideal.^[18] Phish fans are not the subcultures of the past that lived their resistance. The hippies dropped out of society as a social experiment and changed the face of American history. The punks lived their resistance and created new styles and values that challenged the mainstream. Rastafarians lived in their own world outside of Babylon and followed their own set of rules. Phish fans today live in a different world than these subcultures, and their resistance is a performance of what could be, rather than living their resistance directly and daily. Through the lessons of past subcultures that did not necessarily change society but left a mark on history, perhaps Phish fans strive to leave another mark, rather than trying to change society as a whole. They have smaller and more derivative goals compared to subcultures of the past. Through using capitalism itself, Phish fans try to resist society in a slightly different way. It is nearly impossible to completely resist and change the world, but through small, transgressive behaviors, Phish fans show the possibility to others or experience it themselves. And through their small daily acts of resistance, they may make those around them who are not fully part of the subculture think about the possibility of resistance.

In using styles and philosophies of the past, some knowledgeable Phish fans also pay homage to the subcultures they emulate, and they may reinvent the original resistant intent. Phish fans show us an interpretation of resistance of the past, much like an actor or director shows us an interpretation of a character or a play. The Phish fan subculture copies and reinterprets those previous styles in an attempt to create meaning or to change the world around it, rather than doing exactly what those subcultures did. Through copying and interpreting, Phish fans may resist mainstream society in some way, although not completely transforming the social order.

Finally, perhaps the potential for authentic action in the Phish subculture is not merely about social change, but also about personal change. Ehrenreich believes that ecstatic dance is something we need to maintain for the health of society. As stated before, there was an outbreak of depression when the church banned festivity from society as it proved too much of a threat. Perhaps, as a civilization, we need festivity and ecstatic dance to be happy. We need to have communitas in which we can express our discontent and desire for change, or we need a space in which we can do whatever we want for a short while and imagine that we are outside the bounds of society. The Phish fan subculture fulfills a need for people living in today’s world. It is a place where people find community, satisfaction, alternative ways of living, connection, and happiness. It might not be about changing the world and making political statements.

Shortly after Phish announced reunion shows in 2009, much discussion regarding what the band means to fans appeared on internet blogs and forums. This discussion suggests the subculture is partially about personal change. Fans experience the music of Phish and communitas at the show, and they are changed from the experience. A Phunky Bitch, Tara, says on a forum message board, “[I remember] feeling so happy. I mean so damn happy … and free and content and just *perfect.* And yes I was sober. But that was really amazing to me and absolutely changed me.”^[19] In response to Tara, Rosedancer says:

I remember being at my first show and feeling like I was being given a glimpse into some secret, magical world that I didn't know existed. And feeling that I would LOVE to be part of that world: to know all the songs, to know the phans. . . . So I guess in some ways, the Phish experience gave me a different perspective; an ability to expand my thoughts beyond the world as I knew it, to think about the world as it COULD be; to think about things that may seem off-the-wall, but still be possible; to expand my definition of what is “possible.” Seeing Phish also made me more aware of the Unity and Connectedness that IS inherent in the world (and in the Universe), but that many people don't perceive. There's something that happens when Phish plays that, when they're on fire, seems to me to be stronger than any other live musicians I've seen, no matter how talented. And it screams to me of Oneness. And it's really awesome.^[20]

Mr. Miner of Mr. Miner’s Phish Thoughts, a Phish blog, says this of the community:

You are about to arrive at the greatest place on Earth: Phish. Yes, I speak of it as a place because in many ways it is. In the most literal sense, you must go to the show, so it is a concrete location. But more figuratively, Phish is a place inside of you. Phish ultimately has nothing to do with the spectacle and madness of “tour,” and everything to do with what happens inside of you. Sure, everything else is a blast, but it wouldn’t exist without that inner connection.^[21]

At this time in our country’s history, a subculture like the Phish fan community is able to help people with feelings of disillusionment and loss of community. Through all the problems and issues that our society faces, maybe it is through the performance of community that we can find a place to heal humanity and ourselves. The Phish fan subculture provides, for those who seek it, some sort of feeling of community, euphoria, or personal change. If that were not the case, fans would not go to the extent they do to attend shows and festivals or follow the band across the country. Perhaps, these fans need to follow Phish because there is no way to experience euphoria, community, or personal change outside the space of the show or festival.

The Phish fan experience shows us the importance of performance in our social experiences. Through communication, argot, clothing, and behavior, Phish fans experience the vitality of performance within their subculture. Performance is the way these fans communicate with each other, even warning fans of others who might be disingenuous. Maintaining their subcultural values, Phish fans developed a complete and flexible set of performance codes with which they communicate. They know “who is who” with very little discussion. By maintaining their subculture’s values, many of which are positive: community, freedom, and individualism, Phish fans can experience possibilities through performances that enjoin alternative frames for communication, personal expression, community, and hope. In this way, Phish fans can be a model for our society in its continuing search and maintenance of such values. Fans of anything are often scoffed at as merely consumers of their chosen media or as crazy “fanatics” that take their devotion to a band or movie or television show too far. Phish fans have the potential to show our society a positive way of living. If we, as humans, are unhappy with the world around us, we can look to subcultures like Phish fans to show us how to communicate and maintain our values with likeminded people. Fans are not crazy “fanatics” but thoughtful through their way of life and performative codes.

However, Phish fans do express resistance but are unable to affect change like past subcultures. Theirs is an open and imaginary community rather than one that directly fights the “powers that be.” In this world, real resistance seems impossible. Perhaps, past subcultural scholars are correct in some ways that subcultures’ styles are ineffective to rebel against an established order. Most Phish fans continually return to the lifestyle they had before the tour or the festival, showing how our society strictly ingrains its rules within each person. Although our society wants invented communities to reinforce normative American values, I argue our society needs these communities to give its members a sense of freedom, a place for rebellious expression, and a place to feel a sense of community—even if the freedom is temporary. As historian Edward Muir stated, subculture is a safety valve^[22] to help us feel release from rules and restrictions in our everyday lives. He says that carnivalesque events, “allow subjects to express their resentment of authority but do not change anything and, in fact, strengthen the … established social order.”^[23] We return to the outside culture when the experience is finished and after the safety valve has done its work.

Even though these fans are not truly performing resistance, their performance cannot be dismissed as a failure or as inauthentic. These fans create a community around each other with positive values. As Barbara Ehrenreich theorizes, we need, potentially, positive behaviors, such as community building, celebration, rebellion, and expression, that Phish fans exhibit in their society. If only for a short time, Phish fans are experimenting with a lifestyle that is different, positive, and somewhat utopian. Fans help each other and are kind to each other, even though their subcultural styles and philosophies might not be as “authentic” as the styles and philosophies that came before them. As I proffered earlier, this weakens their resistance, but nevertheless, they pick and choose their styles and philosophies from successful subcultures that were able to bring about some sort of change. Phish fans perform their interpretation of the resistant subcultures that came before them. Is an actor’s interpretation of Hamlet “inauthentic” because actors have been playing Hamlet, and creating new meanings, for hundreds of years? As our society keeps evolving so does the interpretation of Hamlet and so does the personal interpretation of resistant style and philosophy. An imagined and performative resistance that affects no real change is not necessarily inauthentic or somehow invaluable. There is a good deal of possibility in performance: the possibility to critique society and the possibility to imagine a better world.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Stephanie Jenkins for all that she has done for our community of scholars.

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Contributor Information

Christina Allaback received her MA in theatre history at Illinois State University and her PhD at the University of Oregon. She currently is Director of Theatre at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, and will be starting as Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg fall 2022. As a performance studies scholar, she enjoys writing about dance, political theatre, and “nerd” theatre. In 2013, she founded a grassroots science fiction theatre in Eugene, Oregon, called Trek Theatre. Besides Phish, she enjoys watching Star Trek, sewing, and spending time with her chocolate lab, Piper. Her favorite Phish show is 7/11/2000.

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