Shapes, forms, and shadows: The search for the self in the plays of Shawn, Nagy, Wellman and Parks.
Item
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Title
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Shapes, forms, and shadows: The search for the self in the plays of Shawn, Nagy, Wellman and Parks.
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Identifier
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AAI9969731
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identifier
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9969731
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Creator
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Schachter, Beth Ann.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Judith Milhous
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Date
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2000
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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 | Literature, American
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Abstract
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Among avant-garde American dramatists, our postmodern moment has produced Wallace Shawn, Phyllis Nagy, Mac Wellman, and Suzi-Lori Parks. Working with feminist Neo-Bakhtinian theories, this study examines their texts, productions, and reception. Case studies focus on the raced and gendered somatic shapes in their non-linear work from 1985--1999. Incorporating dramatic literary, economic, and political contexts, I define mainstream American theater and how its terms of visibility marginalize these writers. Shawn's The Designated Mourner reveals how interdependent the constructions of Jewishness, whiteness, and heterosexual masculinity are in this Holocaust-inspired futurist play about 'passing' in various shades of white. Lesbian writer Nagy creates a surreal dramaturgy integrating music, choreography, and visual elements to subvert "reality." Her plays create a feeling of utopia and I focus on the outlines of the abjected, grotesque, masculinity in Wellman's plays. His critique of heteronarrativity confronts the sexplosive politics of the body during the NEA-4 culture wars. For Parks's Venus and film, Girl 6, I use post-colonial critiques to examine how black female identity is seen and sold as product in contemporary America. Venus describes a formative nineteenth century moment in cultural stereotyping, and Girl 6 takes place in the present. Together, they foreground the alluring power of being a commodity fetish entangled with the disempowerment of being a fetishized 'Other'. These case studies of American theater reveal the possibilities for and material obstacles to experimental drama.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
