Re-dressing the Canon: Essays on Theatre and Gender

216 Pages·1997·4.96 MB·English

by  Alisa Solomon

Re-Dressing the Canon
What theater can most powerfully represent is not the equivalence between performativity
and performance, but their revelatory divergence. Indeed, that’s what theatrical irony is:
the startling contradiction of the stated by the shown.
(Introduction to Re-Dressing the Canon)
The writing and production of Western drama from the Greeks to the present
has often been a patriarchal enterprise, yet dramatists, directors, and actors
have always known that theater can question its own representational strategies,
calling attention to and undermining the very ideologies it may also promote.
How it does this is central to Alisa Solomon’s canny readings of Western
drama. Analyzing both canonical texts and contemporary productions in lively,
jargon-free prose, ReDressing the Canon finds the feminist and queer fissures in
the performance conventions of the Western dramatic tradition.
Solomon offers a performance-centered technique for investigating the
relationship between theater and gender, showing how theater both reproduces
and resists dominant culture. Combining theoretical analysis with performance
criticism, Re-Dressing the Canon bridges theory and practice to make for a highly
stimulating volume for theorists, students, contemporary performance-goers,
and practitioners alike.
Alisa Solomon is a theater critic, teacher, and dramaturg in New York
City. She is Associate Professor of English/Journalism at Baruch College-City
University of New York, and of English at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a
staff writer at the Village Voice.
Re-Dressing the Canon
Essays on Theater and Gender
Alisa Solomon
London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1997 Alisa Solomon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Solomon, Alisa, 1956–
Re-Dressing the canon: essays on theater and gender/Alisa Solomon
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index
1. Drama—History and criticism. 2. Women in literature.
3. Sex role in literature. 4. Theater, Yiddish.
PN1650.W65S65 1998
792’.082’09–dc21
97–2805 CIP
ISBN 0-203-36046-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-37302-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-15720-X (hbk: acid-free paper)
ISBN 0-415-15721-8 (pbk: acid-free paper)
For Peter W.Ferran incendiary teacher, cherished friend
Contents
List of plates vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: how easy is a bush suppos’d a bear 1
1 Much virtue in if: Shakespeare’s cross-dressed boy- 21
actresses and the non-illusory stage
2 The New Drama and the New Woman: reconstructing 45
Ibsen’s realism
3 Materialist girl: The Good Person of Szechwan and making 67
gender strange
4 Queering the canon: Azoi toot a Yid 91
5 Three canonical crossings 125
Cracking nature’s mold: Mabou Mines re-engenders Lear 125
People don’t do such things: Charles Ludlam’s Hedda 138
Epic fornications: Bloolips and Split Britches do Tennessee 148
Epilogue: not just a passing fancy: notes on butch 159
Notes 173
Index 197
Plates
1 Cheek by Jowl’s As You Like It, 1994 22
2 Cheek by Jowl’s As You Like It, 1994 37
3 Elizabeth Robins as Hedda Gabler, London, 1891 51
4 Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt as a young woman 97
5 Jacob Adler as the Yiddish King Lear, New York, 1892 105
6 Jennifer Miller in a Circus Amok performance, New York, 1992 119
7 Rachel Rosenthal in Pangaean Dreams: A Shamanic Journey, 1991 122
8 Ellen McElduff as Elva and Karen Evans-Kandel as Edna in the Mabou 127
Mines’ production of Lear, New York, 1990
9 Ruth Maleczech as Lear, New York, 1990 137
10 Charles Ludlam as Hedda Gabler at the American Ibsen Theater, 146
Pittsburgh, 1984
11 Peggy Shaw, Bette Bourne, Lois Weaver, and Precious Pearl in Belle 153
Reprieve, 1991
12 Photomontage by Deborah Bright, from her series, “Dream Girls”, 166
1989–1990
Acknowledgements
Everyone knows that theater is a collaborative art. So are books about theater.
Many people have helped to bring this one into being.
I am grateful to friends who leant me precious time and perspicacious
thought, offering careful, critical responses to various parts of this book and
helping immeasurably to improve it: Barbara Bowen, Elinor Fuchs, Marc
Robinson, Gordon Rogoff. Framji Minwalla has been an unstinting source of
comfort, good cheer, and keen editorial suggestions. Erika Munk not only
supplied invaluable advice on several chapters, but also sustained me through
this project with her boundless good humor and tough questions. My deepest
thanks to them.
Others indulgently cajoled and encouraged, and passed along useful articles
and ideas. I thank April Bernard, Roslyn Bernstein, Jill Dolan, Bob Gibbs, Don
Mengay, José Muñoz, Tony O’Brien, David Roman, and the late Robert Massa.
Just as important have been friends and colleagues who remind me, through
their work and in lively conversations, that theater can be—must be—a vital
way of thinking about the world. For that I thank Jerri Allyn, Anne Bogart,
Peter Brosius, Liz Diamond, Maria Irene Fornes, Rhea Gaisner, Mark Gevisser,
Holly Hughes, Tony Kushner, Ruth Maleczech, Judith Malina, Deb Margolin,
Zakes Mokae, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sinai Peter, Hanon Reznikov, Jenny Romaine,
Rachel Rosenthal, Peggy Shaw, Carmelita Tropicana, Irena Veisaite, Lois
Weaver, Mac Wellman, Sande Zeig. I also want to express my appreciation to
my teacher Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura who, among many other things, has
helped me learn to keep polishing. I am blessed with loving parents and siblings,
whose support has always enabled my quests. This project is no exception. I
thank them: Josephine Kleiman Solomon, Jack and Carolyn Solomon, Debby
and Bob Simon, Michael Solomon, Rena Solomon.
I have received institutional support from Baruch College—City University
of New York in the form of released time from teaching; I could not have
completed this work without it. I warmly thank the MacDowell Colony, where
this project, much described for ages, finally started taking shape on paper.
For their evocative photos, I thank Deborah Bright, Sheila Burnett, Malcolm
Lubliner, Dona Ann McAdams, and Sylvia Plachy. For helping me acquire
viii
photos, I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Stephanie Coen at American
Theater, Tad Coughenour, Heidi Feldman at BAM, Kricya Fisher at YIVO,
Maxine LaFantasie and Marvin Taylor at the Fales Library at New York
University, and Peggy Shaw.
Some elements of this work appeared in earlier versions, and I am grateful to
those who provided occasions for their development and wise counsel on their
content: Lesley Ferris, editor of Crossing the Stage; Erika Munk, editor of
Theater; Stanley Kauffmann, in whose honor an early version of the Ibsen
chapter was affectionately penned; Michael Warner, who invited me to speak at
the Rutgers Series in Lesbian and Gay Studies, where I first attempted “Notes on
Butch;” and Richard Goldstein, Lisa Kennedy, Amy Virshup, and Ross
Wetzsteon, editors (and former editors) at the Village Voice. Material originally
developed there is reprinted by permission of the Village Voice.
I am grateful for permission to quote from: Joachim Neugroschel’s English
translation of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, copyright 1996 by Joachim
Neugroschel. All rights reserved. “A Doll House” and “Hedda Gabler” from The
Complete Major Prose Plays of Henrik Ibsen by Henrik Ibsen, translated by Rolf
Fjelde. Translation copyright © 1965, 1970, 1978 by Rolf Fjelde. Used by
permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc. Every effort
was made to secure permissions for quotations where appropriate.
At Routledge, I warmly thank Talia Rodgers for her insights and enthusiasm,
and Sophie Powell and Diane Stafford who were never derailed by wayward
faxes and e-mails that are probably still floating somewhere in the ether.
I have dedicated this book to Peter W.Ferran, a teacher early on, who not only
shaped my outlook and approach, but nurtured and inspired me. As only the
best teachers do, he challenged me to find my own perspective and voice. He
has remained an encouraging colleague and friend, providing support and feisty
argument at crucial moments. I hope this work will stand as a fitting tribute.
Finally, though words can hardly convey the enormousness of my debt or
emotion, I thank my partner, Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark, who makes
everything possible.
The modern theater…needs to be questioned…not about whether it
manages to interest spectators in buying tickets—i.e. in the theater itself
—but about whether it manages to interest them in the world.
Bertolt Brecht