Introduction: Gertrude Stein's theatre and the Radio Free Stein project

Radio Free Stein is a large-scale collaborative sound project that offers radio and music theatre interpretations of Gertrude Stein’s early, lesser-known plays. The project, which I have been running for some time and is now (finally) wrapping up, has led to a series of original recordings of commissioned musical settings (available at radiofreestein.com), a handful of performances (in Vancouver, New York City, and Paris), and several chapters, article publications, and a book manuscript. Along with the goal of creating persuasive audio interpretations of Stein’s plays, the project has been motivated by a set of critical questions: What might readers be able to think and say about Stein’s plays after undergoing the process of staging them in the medium of sound? How might the particular contraints and conventions of sonic recording and performance lead to new affordances for understanding them and for criticism more generally? These questions have guided the project from its inception. This special half-issue represents further engagement with Stein’s plays, performances, and theatre poetics by some of the scholars, poets, critics, and composers who have been involved in the project as workshop participants, creative collaborators, or audience members at performances and conference presentations. Each contributor has responded to my invitation to take up questions posed by Stein’s theatre in whatever ways they see fit. Two of the essays, those that bookend the half-issue, engage directly with Radio Free Stein and Stein’s plays as phenomenological grounds for collaboration with a focus on affect (You) and temporality (Vriezen). The other four essays frame Stein’s plays, opera, and theatre vis-á-vis distinct historical considerations in the United States and Europe: radio interview and jazzcabaret vocal performance in the 1930s (Frank, Moon), Vichy France in the 1940s (Watten), and post-war American experimental music in the