So I’m screwing around on Google Scholar, because that’s what you do when you’re procrastinating on real work, and there it is. My photograph. We Players’ Macbeth at Fort Point, 2014. On the cover of Theatre History Studies. Published by the University of Alabama Press. An actual academic journal with peer review and footnotes and all the institutional weight that comes with being deemed worthy of scholarly attention.
My first thought isn’t pride or excitement. It’s: how the fuck did they even get that photo?
I’m glad they used it. It’s a good shot, Fort Point, that brutal concrete fortress under the Golden Gate Bridge, actors performing Shakespeare in a space that was built to repel Confederate warships. Site-integrated theater at its best, the kind of work that makes you remember why performance matters when it’s done right. The image captured something real about that production, about the collision of history and art and architecture.
But nobody asked. Nobody reached out. Nobody said, “Hey, we think your work belongs on the cover of our journal dedicated to preserving and analyzing theater history.” They just… took it. Found it somewhere, decided it was the right image, and ran with it.
Which is both flattering and deeply weird.
Here’s the thing about academic publishing: it moves at a glacial pace. By the time this issue came out, that production was ancient history. The actors had moved on. We Players had done other shows. I’d mounted and shot countless other performances. And yet some editor thought: yeah, this one. This belongs on the cover.
That’s validation, right? Not the kind you ask for or campaign for or even know about until Google Scholar accidentally reveals it. Just quiet recognition from people whose job is to think seriously about theater, about performance, about what’s worth preserving and studying and presenting to the academic world.
Well, we’re big rock singers
We got golden fingers
And we’re loved everywhere we go
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth
At ten thousand dollars a show
We take all kinds of pills that give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we’ve never known
Is the thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rollin’ Stone
wanna see my picture on the cover
wanna buy five copies for my mother
wanna see my smilin’ face
On the cover of the Rollin’ stone (Theatre History Studies)
Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show sang about wanting to see their picture on the cover of Rolling Stone. Wanna buy five copies for my mother, wanna see my smiling face. That song’s about desperate hunger for recognition, for fame, for proof that you matter. This is different. This is discovering you already mattered to someone, somewhere, and you didn’t even know it.
I’m not gonna lie, it’s fucking cool. In a quietly satisfying way that has nothing to do with Instagram likes or exhibition openings or any of the usual metrics we use to measure whether our work means anything. This is the University of Alabama Press saying: this image captures something essential about contemporary theater. This deserves to be on our cover.
Even if they never bothered to tell me about it.