Woman's work: Ruth Maleczech as Mabou Mines performer, director & manager
Item
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Title
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Woman's work: Ruth Maleczech as Mabou Mines performer, director & manager
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:2c3ae39af093:11624
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identifier
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12210
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Creator
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Brater, Jessica S.,
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Contributor
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Marvin Carlson
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Performing arts | Theater history | American theater | avant-garde theater | experimental theater | Lee Breuer | Mabou Mines | Ruth Maleczech
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Abstract
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This project identifies key elements of Ruth Maleczech's body of work, tracing a central and enduring point of view of the American avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines. As co-artistic director, Maleczech created an original environment enabling her to exert control over her own artistic choices. This freedom is particularly rare for a performer, as is the ease with which Maleczech moves among the various responsibilities of performing, directing, and producing. Relying upon Mabou Mines's emphasis on the development of new work and its human resources and institutional structure, Maleczech uses the company as the context for creating a cohesive body of work with a highly individualized artistic point of view.;By considering Maleczech's production choices thematically, and by juxtaposing original interviews with published reviews, production archives and critical analysis, I establish patterns in Maleczech's body of work highlighting the inter-relationship between process and product. Chapter One focuses on Maleczech's performances in Beckett's Happy Days and Franz Kroetz's Through the Leaves, revealing her interest in making ordinary women important onstage. Chapter Two examines how Maleczech uses an historical angle in the productions Dead End Kids, Lucia's Chapters of Coming Forth by Day and Belen to experiment with representations of women onstage. Chapter Three juxtaposes two productions about fathers, Hajj and Mabou Mines's Lear, demonstrating Maleczech's interest in destabilizing traditional notions of the father figure, and by extension, all family roles. Chapter Four investigates Lee Breuer's Shaggy Dog, Red Beads, and Summa Dramatica alongside Beckett's Imagination Dead Imagine, productions on which Maleczech collaborated with her daughter, Clove Galilee, to examine Maleczech's challenges to notions of familial and artistic hierarchy. The conclusion briefly traces Imagining Imaginary Invalid and includes views of her longterm collaborators as they ponder the significance of her work.;I argue that Maleczech creates a distinct point of view in her work with Mabou Mines and in her position as a feminist, downtown New York theatre artist. By focusing her choice of material on unexpected representations of women and by consistently taking artistic and production risks she has promoted and pursued radical and revealing artistic choices.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Theatre
