ABSTRACT
This essay discusses the welcome table casting framework as a project with spatial and temporal implications. It argues that to establish a welcome table requires being knowledgeable about the relationship between the past and the present, and the ways that that relationship influences how audiences make meaning out of what they experience in a performance. First the essay explores the long history of the welcome table as a framework for justice that multiple temporal registers. Then it discusses the representational conceit within the play that makes sense of the integrated casting choices used in performance. Finally, it discusses the site-specificity of the UMass Amherst version of the production, and what the integrated casting practices and inclusion of local campus history in the revised script add to our understanding of the cultural and political potential of the welcome table casting paradigm.
