Theater of the Anatomical Theatre (UVA)
In the spring of 2023, I worked with students to mount a live dissection of an edible effigy of Thomas Jefferson, the man, father, slaveholder, and university’s founder at the site of the Anatomical Theatre.
The Anatomical Theatre is the only Thomas Jefferson-designed building at the university to have been torn down. Built in 1826 by enslaved laborers for the dissection of bodies, the site is marked by a low stone marker easily mistaken for some protruding underground infrastructure.
We conducted research in the Small Special Collection and Clemons Library. We workshopped ideas over snacks in my home studio. We visited hallowed sites on campus and around town.
On our journey we drifted around the Theatre as subject and site, looking for ways it might still serve as a place of autopsy–from the Greek, to ‘see for oneself.’
We brought visitors to our classroom to give us feedback on our script drafts and rehearsals. We talked about our struggles to digest certain histories and ideologies. We learned about dark humor, protest theater, the cakewalk, and iconoclasm. The final performance was well-attended and received. An epic backdrop, an edible cadaver, a 3D printed ‘phallic column’ were hits with an audience drawn to the site from Grounds and beyond.
The Theater of the Anatomical Theatre is an ongoing experiment. It operates as a living monument to the victims and lessons of that grizzly classroom. We continue to wonder whether feminism, humor, research, and our own lived experiences can illuminate and transform this underrecognized historic site.