bodily difference, interdependence, and toxic half-lives

189 Pages·2015·0.75 MB·English

BODILY DIFFERENCE, INTERDEPENDENCE, AND TOXIC HALF-LIVES:
REPRESENTATIONS OF DISABILITY IN D.W. GREGORY’S DIRTY PICTURES,
THE GOOD DAUGHTER, AND RADIUM GIRLS

A Dissertation
presented to
the Faculty of the Graduate School
at the University of Missouri-Columbia

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

By
BRADLEY STEPHENSON
Dr. Cheryl Black, Dissertation Supervisor
MAY 2015
The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the
dissertation entitled
BODILY DIFFERENCE, INTERDEPENDENCE, AND TOXIC HALF-LIVES:
REPRESENTATIONS OF DISABILITY IN D.W. GREGORY’S DIRTY PICTURES,
THE GOOD DAUGHTER, AND RADIUM GIRLS
presented by Bradley Stephenson,
a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy,
and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance.

Dr. Cheryl Black
______________________________________
Dr. Suzanne Burgoyne
_____________________________________
Dr. David Crespy
_____________________________________
Dr. Julie Passanante Elman
____________________________________
Dr. Jeni Hart
___________________________________
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The chapter that analyzes Dirty Pictures is a revision and expansion of my
previous essay on this play that won the American Theatre and Drama Society 2012
Emerging Scholar’s award and the South Eastern Theatre Conference 2013 Young
Scholar’s Award and is currently under editorial review for publication with Disability
Studies Quarterly. A version of chapter on The Good Daughter has been published in the
Journal of American Drama and Theatre, issue 27.2 in 2015. A portion of the chapter on
Radium Girls was presented at Theatre Symposium in 2015 under the title, Toxic Actors:
Animacy and Half-Life in D.W. Gregory’s Radium Girls.

Special thanks to Cheryl for your guidance and leadership through this process.
Thank you to Suzanne, David, Jeni, and Julie for your support, time, and wisdom when I
needed it most. Thank you to Lauren for your patience, understanding, and love even
when I made it difficult to give. Thank you to Jeffrey and Emmett for letting daddy work
on his computer for a just little while longer. Thank you to D.W. for sharing your life,
your work, your art, and your vision with me and the world.

S.D.G.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………… ii

CHAPTER 1 – Introduction................................................................................................ 1
Purpose............................................................................................................................ 6
Justification ..................................................................................................................... 8
Methodology................................................................................................................. 13
Literature Review.......................................................................................................... 19
Organization.................................................................................................................. 36

CHAPTER 2 – Whose Stage is it Anyway? Theatre and Disability Representation in
Context from Captain Hook to Judy Knoll ....................................................................... 39

CHAPTER 3 – Sexuality, Disability, and Subjectivity in Dirty Pictures ........................ 54

CHAPTER 4 – American In(ter)dependence, Disability, and The Good Daughter......... 75

CHAPTER 5 – This In-Between Life: Enfreakment, Toxic Actors, and Half-Life in
Radium Girls..................................................................................................................... 97
Enfreakment.................................................................................................................. 98
Labor ........................................................................................................................... 104
Charity......................................................................................................................... 114
Queer/Crip................................................................................................................... 119
Toxic Actors................................................................................................................ 124
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 133

CHAPTER 6 – Conclusions: Interdependent Subjectivities, Disability, and Agency.... 135

APPENDIX A – Comprehensive List of Plays............................................................... 144

APPENDIX B – Interview Transcripts........................................................................... 154

APPENDIX C – Additional Thoughts and Areas for Further Study.............................. 166

BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 173

VITA............................................................................................................................... 184
CHAPTER 1 – Introduction

Disability scholar Jim Ferris has argued that “a person with a disability often must
struggle to be seen and treated as a full person, and not just as a disability or an object of
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pity.” Attempting to address and understand these cultural oppressions, Disability
Studies has emerged over the last few decades as a distinct and growing field of study.
Disability as an embodied concept, meaning one that inhabits physical bodies in the real
world, has been and is being theorized, deconstructed, and aestheticized in fashions
similar to the more widely known critical fields of gender and race studies, queer theory,
and post-colonialism. As the field grows, its application in interdisciplinary contexts is
also becoming more prevalent. Histories and historiographies by Lennard Davis, Joseph
Shapiro, Henri-Jacques Stiker, Kim Nielsen, and Douglas Baynton, for example, are
challenging the way scholars have understood the past and how the notion of ‘normalcy’
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fits within it.
In literary and cultural fields, scholars have long noted the use of disability as a
metaphor for oppressive power structures, and many playwrights have embraced this
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metaphoric quality. In literature, disability has historically been used as a symbol of
otherness, typically either for the villain or the hero, as Victoria Ann Lewis describes in

1
Jim Ferris, “Uncovery to Recovery: Reclaiming One Man’s Body on a Nude Photo Shoot,”
Michigan Quarterly Review 37, no. 3 (Summer 1998), 513.

2
See bibliography.

3
Carrie Sandahl, “Ahhhh Freak Out! Metaphors of Disability and Femaleness in Performance.”
Theatre Topics 9 no. 1 (1999): 11-30.

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her collection Beyond Victims and Villains. Disability as a dramaturgical device is as old
as western dramatic practice itself: Oedipus limps and blinds himself; Richard III has a
hunchback; Tiny Tim and Laura Wingfield have physical impediments that emphasize
their mythic qualities of innocence and goodness. This conventional approach to the
dramaturgy of disability frames it as a metaphor for the outsider, a lack to be filled or
overcome, and a challenge to non-disabled identities. To counter these traditional (and
arguably oppressive) practices, many theatre practitioners and scholars are using applied
theatre with persons with disabilities, focusing primarily on actors with disabilities and
plays by disabled playwrights about disabilities. This theatre – by, for, and about people
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with disabilities – is commonly called “disability theatre.” For example, The DisAbility
Project, a theatre program for people with disabilities founded in 1997, was created by
theorists and practitioners of feminist theatre and has catalyzed the development of a
“disability aesthetic” which is advancing our understanding of the complex relationships
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between theatre and disability. This aesthetic continues the work of troubling our

4
Victoria Ann Lewis, Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

5
See, for example: Ann Fox and Joan Lipkin, “Res(Crip)ting Feminist Theatre Through Disability
Theatre: Selections from The DisAbility Project,” NWSA Journal 14 no. 3 (Fall 2002): 77-98; Carrie
Sandahl, “Why Disability Identity Matters: From Dramaturgy to Casting in John Belluso’s Pyretown,” Text
and Performance Quarterly 28 nos. 1-2 (January-April 2008): 225-241.

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For more on disability aesthetic, see Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2010). For more on The DisAbility Project, see: Ann Fox and Joan Lipkin, “The
Disability Project: Toward an Aesthetic of Access,” Contemporary Theatre Review 11.3-4 (2001): 119-36.
“Feminist Theatre” in this context, is a kind of activist theatre written and performed by and about women
on topics of sexual and gender equality, often with a bent towards social justice and overtly political
content.

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conceptions of bodily normalcy, yet a need remains for thoughtful study of the
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intersections of disability studies within contemporary western drama more widely.
Dramatists have represented disability on stage for millennia, contributing to
some problematic and oppressive modes of representation. However, a few contemporary
artists like Lynn Nottage, David Lindsay-Abaire, Nina Raine, Bruce Norris, Suzan-Lori
Parks, and D.W. Gregory are transforming the way that dramatists approach the
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representation of disability on stage. These playwrights do not self-identify as members
of the disability community, yet they are incorporating differentiated bodies into their
plays in ways that resist traditional metaphorical formulations of disability. I do not mean
to imply that Richard III was written without regard to the lived realities of his physical
impairment or that Laura Wingfield does not experience the world in a unique way. Both
characters are from excellent plays, to be sure; but to what extent, for example, does
Laura Wingfield’s representation contribute to a social understanding that the disabled
are merely helpless victims? The contention is that traditional metaphoric representations
begin with symbolic implications and use a character’s disability to either tell someone
else’s story or illuminate a wider theme, thus becoming a prosthetic attachment or
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supplement to the narrative or a way to visibly mark a character as ‘other.’ But this

7
See Alan Roulstone, “RiDE themed issue – On Disability: Creative Tension in Applied Theatre:
an extended review,” RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 15 no. 3 (August 2010), 434;
and Ann M. Fox, “Battles on the Body: Disability, Interpreting Dramatic Literature, and the Case of Lynn
Nottage’s Ruined,” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 5 no. 1 (2011): 1.

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See bibliography. For example: Ruined by Lynn Nottage; Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-
Abaire, Tribes by Nina Raine, Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, and Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks. Chapter
two of this project will discuss more thoroughly the history of dramatic representations of disability, with
particular emphasis on American theatre.

9
See David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the
Dependencies of Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).

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narrative prosthesis is not the only way to represent people with disabilities; as disability
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rights activists have said, “We are not a metaphor.”
These playwrights are creating new works that may present a character that can
have cerebral palsy without it defining her as a victim or villain, as bitter cripple or heroic
over-comer. Her bodily difference is simply a way of being in the world, albeit a way of
being that has significant personal and social impact. The question “why was that
character written to be disabled?” begins to break down dramaturgically and sound as
facile as questions like “why is that character written to be a woman?” or “why does this
character have a troubled childhood?” The answers to that question of disability are
leaving the oppressive and metaphoric realm of “to represent his depraved soul” or “to
symbolize the horrors of war” and entering the more inclusive and affirming realm of
“because that is part of what makes her a unique person who experiences the world in a
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unique way, and that is interesting and valuable.” Metaphor is not completely jettisoned
as a dramatic device, to be sure. All great characters of drama do, in some way, serve as a
metaphor for some larger theme. However, disability playwrights do not reject metaphor

10
Kathleen Tolan, “We Are Not a Metaphor: A Conversation about Representation,” Theatre
Communications Group, 2006, accesssed November 29, 2013.
http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/2001/metaphor.cfm. This essay is a conversation playwright Kathleen
Tolan had (via conference call and in person) with Victoria Ann Lewis, five playwrights/performers (John
Belluso, Cheryl Marie Wade, Mike Ervin, Lynn Manning, and Susan Nussbaum), two directors (Joan
Lipkin and Rick Curry), and one theorist (Carrie Sandahl).
See also Christopher Shinn, “Disability is Not Just a Metaphor,” The Atlantic, July 23, 2014.

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Questions of disability representation take on larger significance in performance, when non-
disabled actors play disabled characters, or vice versa. As Carrie Sandahl said in her conversation with
Kathleen Tolan, cited above, “When people with disabilities are performing, they challenge the way that a
lot of these dramatic metaphors work, because a lot of these usual disability roles go to non-disabled actors.
So it’s very easy to separate the metaphor from the person, because there is always some sort of distance;
the signal that ‘I’m not really disabled’ always seems to leak through.” Playwright John Belluso takes a
stronger response, noting that during a curtain call, “the actor will stand up out of the wheelchair and take a
bow, and suddenly everything that has come before has just been erased. The audience is let off the hook.
Suddenly this isn’t social history; this is just artifice.” These performative tensions are important to address,
but are generally beyond the scope of this research project.

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completely, but rather create new ones that are more in line with the lived realities of
disability and use them as “a generative source of knowledge” that can unmask
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oppressive and unjust power structures. Disability may be a metaphor for problems a
character may be facing, but the disability does not carry the burden of being the primary
problem that needs fixing in the narrative or the primary signifier of identity and how an
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audience should understand the character. A small but growing group of contemporary
playwrights is beginning to grapple with these kinds of re-visions of disability on stage,
carving new paths that incorporate disability into contemporary mainstream theatre in
ways that transcend or defy convention and affirm the lived realities of disability and
individuals with disabilities.
Within this fairly elite group of playwrights, the works of D.W. Gregory are
noteworthy for their subtle and subversive complexity, particularly in regard to the
intersection of multiple oppressive cultural hierarchies. Gregory is an active playwright,
having currently written over twenty plays that have garnered considerable favorable
critical attention – including a Pulitzer nomination – and are being widely produced. Her
oeuvre is diverse, from short children’s plays to historical dramas and wacky sex farces.
Her plays tend to have female protagonists with working-class, American roots, while
also exploring and subverting myths of American self-determination. Most provocatively,
Gregory’s plays wrestle with the portrayal of disability in her nuanced and multiply-
configured characters in ways that challenge conventional representations and pave
liberating new roads of which playwrights and literary scholars should take note.

12
Sandahl, “Why Disability Identity Matters,” 228.

13
Ibid, 234.

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Purpose
The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, I will bring representative works of
D.W. Gregory under scholarly analysis for the first time, establishing her plays as
significant cultural and artistic works that carve new ground in the representation of
diverse bodies on stage. In Concerto for the Left Hand, Michael Davidson analyzes the
practices of cultural production and argues that accounting for disability changes how art
is made. D.W. Gregory is one of the few theatre artists who are forging new modes of
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dramaturgy that account for disability beyond traditional overcoming narratives and
explore the nuances brought forth by the lived realities of diverse forms of human
embodiment. Although I am primarily interested in analyzing Gregory’s representations
of disability within the growing field of disability studies and its application in
interdisciplinary fields, her work is also fertile ground for scholars interested in the
intersectionality of multiple categories of identity, including class, gender, disability, and
American nationalism.
A secondary purpose of this study is to demonstrate the value and significance of
using disability as a primary theoretical lens for engaging with intersectional identities
(e.g. class, gender, nationality) in dramatic criticism. Using various strands of disability
studies as entry points for my analysis, I will analyze three of Gregory’s plays – Dirty
Pictures, The Good Daughter, and Radium Girls – within their cultural and literary
contexts to uncover the nuances and implications of her dramatic representations of
disability. These three plays all include representations of working-class American

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An “overcoming” narrative is a story about a person with disabilities and struggles that they
must overcome in order to succeed. These narratives are about characters who succeed “despite” their
disabilities and who are about to “get past” their weaknesses in order to thrive and accomplish something in
life. Disability in these cases serve as emotional signifiers of how brave and strong willed a character is, as
if disability is something terrifying that has no positive aspects and only serves to keep people down,
removing any social aspect of disability from the situations.
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