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Overview
• What is the role of language in theatre today?
• Whose language is English; what other languages do women making theatre use?
• What does it mean to write about, photograph and video live performance?
• What is the future for women's theatre in an international context increasingly united by new technologies but divided by new issues of cultural diversity?
Goodman and de Gay analysis covers issues that are central to current courses in Theatre and Performance and Women's Studies. They assess the forms which women as theatre-makers have chosen to explore in the age of new technology, and look at some of the different definitions of 'theory' offered by theatre-makers and critics including Caryl Churchill, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigiray and Julia Kristeva.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781841508788 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2001 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Languages of Theatre Shaped by Women
By Jane de Gay, Lizbeth Goodman
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2003 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-878-8
CHAPTER 1
1 Seizing Speech and Playing with Fire:Greek Mythological Heroines and International Women's Performance
Jane de Gay
Greek mythology has constituted a powerful and fascinating theatre language ever since it provided the subject matter for some of the earliest known scripted plays. As a source of exciting stories and dramatically powerful roles to enact, it has inspired much theatre exploration, both in scripted drama and unscripted performance work, including much work by women artists. However, as feminists have long pointed out, mythology needs to be approached with caution, for it has been used to enshrine ways of seeing the world, and of seeing women, which are both problematic and hard to shift. For this reason, female performers portraying mythological heroines face the perennial problem of becoming the objects of the male gaze – objects of desire, of fear, of pity. Women performers working with mythology must therefore face the challenge of shaping this theatre language without being shaped by it. Alicia Ostriker, writing about American women poets' use of mythology, commented that although language is an encoding of male privilege 'we [as women] must also have it in our power to "seize speech" and make it say what we mean.' (1982: 69) Ostriker's concern was obviously with text, but we can extend her comments to apply to the many languages of theatre, which present the more complex challenge of resisting encodings of inequality and privilege on many different levels. This chapter will explore ways in which women performers have sought to 'seize speech' by using classical mythology for their own purposes, in original pieces based on mythological material. It also considers the strategies they have used in order to avoid the ideological traps: in other words, how to play with fire without getting burned.
Mythology has inspired numerous productions by individual female performers and feminist theatre companies, and it has also been an important focus for collaborative projects among female artists internationally. For example, 'Embodying Myth/Embodying Women', an international collaboration co-ordinated by Research Theatre International, Canada, has worked with female mythic figures drawn from classical, European and North American cultures. The exploration of myths and archetypes was also the theme of a number of performances, workshops and collaborations initiated by the Magdalena Project during the 1980s and 1990s. Most notably, Magdalena's large-scale collective project, Nominatae Filiae (initiated at Holstebro, Denmark in 1988), involved the creation of contemporary characters based on female figures from mythology; and several pieces performed at the Magdalena Festival of 1994 drew their inspiration from classical mythology.
It is significant that this interest in exploring archetypes has often gone hand-in-hand with an interest in developing a women's language in theatre: for example, both questions were explored at many gatherings of the Magdalena Project. The search for feminine archetypes and for a 'women's language' may be read as part of a strategy for resisting the patriarchal ideology of myths, while seeking to create a women-centred space in which mythological heroines could be valued anew. These heroines have often been assumed to have something of value and significance to offer to all women, regardless of their culture – especially since Greek myths are known throughout the western world, so that performances based on them can be understood by diverse audiences, regardless of the language or languages spoken in the production.
Such an approach is increasingly seen to take an unhelpfully essentialist view of gender, for it implies a belief in an universal common denominator, an essence of womanhood which would be true in all cultures and places. This chapter will demonstrate that, in practice, much of the performance work on the Greek myths undertaken by women performers during the 1980s and 1990s was diverse and culturally specific. Rather than seeking to say something about all women, these performances often spoke about women in particular social or cultural situations, or, increasingly, they dealt with other axes of inequality than gender difference. Furthermore, it will demonstrate that the performance pieces which were most successful in resisting the ideological content of myths were those which took a critical approach to the stories of the characters (often coming close to deconstructing them), rather than seeking some kind of essence within them.
The idea of an archetype, as it was discussed in theatre meetings during the 1980s and 1990s becomes unstable on close inspection. Although an archetype is, by definition, a typical example or an original model of which later versions are copies, much theatrical work on archetypes has involved developing specific and diverse attributes of a character to respond to particular contemporary concerns and conditions. Susan Bassnett once suggested that there may be a pattern to the theatrical representations of particular mythological or historical female figures. In her address to the Magdalena Festival of 1994, she suggested that certain figures may have strong resonances at particular historical moments:
In a moment of great crisis in European culture, before the First World War, there was a fascination with Salomé and Cleopatra. It was the end of the age of imperialism, it was the moment of discovery of psychoanalysis, which linked sexuality and the mind – and the theatre was full of Cleopatras and Salomés. In the 1930s and 1940s, with the rise of Fascism, the Second World War and the recovery after the war, the theatre was full of Jeanne d'Arcs and Antigones. In the 1980s and 1990s, the theatre has been full of Medeas.
We could note that these are groupings which have become clearer with hindsight: that generalizations which it may have been possible to make about the early part of the twentieth century are more difficult to make about recent work. Indeed, although Bassnett identified female archetypes for moments of historical crisis and explained their significance for wartime audiences, she did not offer an explanation for the fascination with Medea in the theatre of the 1980s and 1990s, but instead ended her talk by posing the question 'Why ... Medea now?'. Although this question is intriguing (and will be considered below), it should be noted that Medea was by no means the only mythological figure represented in performances in the 1980s and 1990s. As this era also offered representations of Philomela, Persephone, Medusa, and Cassandra, among others, it might better be seen as one that celebrated and supported diversity. The last two decades of the twentieth century were increasingly marked by social and cultural diffusion, and so it has become less important to look for universal archetypes than to recognize that women theatre-makers in different social, economic and political realities may gravitate towards different female figures or may have different responses to the same figure. Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge that audiences might respond to these representations in manifold ways: Lizbeth Goodman's description of Dempsey and Millan's Mary Medusa as offering a 'persona, a shifting figure on to which we can project our interpretations freely' (Goodman, forthcoming) could apply to many of the pieces discussed here. In this chapter, I will argue that the increasing diversity of response to classical mythology is a source of strength for women seeking to make mythology their own or to make mythologies of their own.
This chapter will develop these arguments through an examination of a selection of plays and performance pieces by women from Western Europe, Australasia and North America. These are: Persephone: Bringer of Destruction, Promise of Resurrection by Gerd Christiansen (Norway); The Love of the Nightingale by Timberlake Wertenbaker (UK); Medusa by Dorothea Smartt (UK); Mary Medusa by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan (Canada); a performance of Heiner Müller's Medeamaterial by Siân Thomas (Wales); Altri Tempi and La Nozze, both written by Raffaella Battaglini and performed by Maria Teresa Telara (Italy); Story of the Fallen Hero written by Guandaline Sagliocco and Gerd Christiansen, and performed by Sagliocco (Norway); Multi-Medea, a multi-media performance/research project by Susan Kozel (UK); and Crow Station, written and performed by the Toad Lilies (New Zealand).
This is by no means an exhaustive account of performance work on these themes. Rather, the pieces considered here form a broad cross-section of examples, chosen mainly because they all in some way came within the research remit of the Open University Gender in Writing and Performance Research Group, with which I was involved from 1994–98. A number of performances discussed here were presented at the Magdalena Festival held at the Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, in 1994, which I was invited to document, along with other group members. The original plan of producing a journal-length documentation of the Festival did not come to fruition, but my reviews of the pieces by Thomas, Battaglini, Sagliocco, Christiansen, and the Toad Lilies, and my subsequent correspondence with several of these performers have been used as a basis for discussion in this chapter. The pieces by Wertenbaker, Smartt, and Dempsey and Millan were included in Lizbeth Goodman's edited collection, Mythic Women/Real Women (she also discusses them at length in her forthcoming book, Sexuality in Performance). Some of the theatre-makers whose work is discussed here maintained close contacts with the research group. For example, Dorothea Smartt performed part of her Medusa cycle ('Medusa? Medusa Black!') and Susan Kozel gave a paper on the Multi-Medea project at the Gender in Writing and Performance Research Group's 1997 conference/festival, 'Gender in the Field of Vision'.
Victims, Villains and Visionaries: The Feminist Case Against Mythology
Before looking at these productions in detail, we need to form a clearer picture of the ideological problems potentially facing these performances by examining briefly the feminist case against mythology. Firstly, classical mythology may be seen as the record of the suppression of a female culture: put very simply, it provides a set of narratives in which women are the victims. This line of criticism may be traced back to the 1920s and the work of the feminist classical scholar Jane Harrison who pointed out that classical mythology and literature were produced by the patriarchal cultures which had arisen in Greece in order to cement their victory over local matriarchal, goddess-worshipping cults (see Harrison, 1922: 257–321). The goddesses of pre-classical Greece had been represented as closely tied to the earth and independent of men: for example, Hera was a maiden and Demeter and Kore were Mother and Maiden. The victorious Olympian cult re-wrote the stories of these figures into a narrative that reflected the patriarchal family, so that Hera became the wife of Zeus, the father-god, with various other gods becoming their sons and daughters. Demeter and Kore became Mother and Daughter rather than Mother and Maiden. In this view, classical mythology celebrates the submission of matriarchal power to patriarchal.
The second part of the case against mythology is that it rehearses and substantiates a fear of women: in other words, it is a set of narratives in which women are often villains or, if they are victims, their weakness also provokes fear. This view may be traced back to Simone de Beauvoir who argued that myths have been created and upheld by men who projected their own hopes and fears onto them. In myths, men worship virile figures such as Hercules and Prometheus; women play passive, secondary roles in the stories of these heroes (de Beauvoir, 1993: 152). De Beauvoir pointed out that women are made the projection of men's fears, particularly their fear of mortality which she saw as closely linked to a patriarchal view of women's reproductive function: 'The cult of germination has always been associated with the cult of the dead. The Earth Mother engulfs the bones of her children.' (de Beauvoir, 1993: 154) Female figures have been appropriated by male authors, especially because the famous classical plays were written by men. Furthermore, the cultural history of appropriation of Greek myths by a male institutions such as the public schools, may be seen to have imposed a cultural baggage on mythological material – a popular conception of female figures – which is impossible to shift.
Feminists have adopted a number of strategies for dealing with these problems, all of which appear, to some extent, in the work of the performers under consideration. Harrison's insights have often been read in a positive way, for she has inspired many writers to find imaginative ways of reclaiming positive and affirming images of women from traditions which have buried them. This became particularly popular as a tactic amongst women writers from the 1970s onwards, given the emphasis placed by the second wave of feminism on foregrounding 'women's stories' and 'women's experience'. It can involve rejecting classical mythology in favour of a construction of what might have gone before – for example inventing and celebrating matriarchal figures like the Great Mother. However (and this is more relevant to our purposes) it can involve an attempt to reclaim positive figures of women from narratives which ultimately celebrated male victory. So, for example, it can highlight instances of female intimacy in the face of male oppression, such as the relationship between Demeter and Kore. It can also involve arresting a narrative before the point at which its female protagonist becomes a victim (or a villain): for example, celebrating the prophetic powers of Cassandra before her downfall; in other words, seeing her as a visionary.
De Beauvoir's analysis presents an even tougher challenge, for it poses the question of how to re-write demonized figures as sources of strength. It raises the question of how far women performers can reclaim or recuperate passive figures such as Philomela and Persephone – the 'victims' – or fearsome figures such as Medea (who killed her own children) or Medusa (a figure of terror who turned men into stone) – the 'villains'? One response has involved trying to see these figures as rounded characters, explaining their motives and seeking sympathy and understanding, often by exploring and critiquing the circumstances which have led to their fate. This would certainly be the approach taken by actors and directors when preparing these roles for a performance of a classical play (for example, Deborah Warner did research into child-killers while preparing to direct Euripides' Medea (Warner, 2001: 7)), but it can also be detected in the processes of performers drawing on classical characters to develop new performance pieces.
A more radical approach (and one which has become more prevalent in recent years) is to disavow these characters and these stories – to resist identification with these figures and their predicament altogether. This approach involves deconstructing the original stories in some way: drawing attention to the constructed nature of narrative, the fabricated nature of performance, to deny that such narratives have any relationship to reality, thus paving the way for radical re-writings. Such an approach gives a performer critical distance from which to view the original character, enabling them to perform the kind of parody described by Linda Hutcheon as 'extended repetition with critical difference' (1985: 7). More radically still, performers may be able to re-produce the roles and the stories ironically to empty them of their original meaning: in Judith Butler's terms they may be able 'to "cite" the law to produce it differently' (1993: 15). Theoretically, the idea of villainy could be turned on its head and made a badge of strength in much the same way as Butler advocates a reclaiming of the term 'queer'.
The languages of theatre provide special scope for this latter approach: both the techniques of metatheatre and the capacities of new media technologies provide performers with tools to view narratives critically. However, in all but the most radical of these cases, we may still see evidence of the first approach: if a performer is seen to enact the role of a classical mythological heroine, there tends to be an element of trying to achieve a rounded, realistic presentation of the 'character' which may work to compromise or restrict the effects of a more deconstructive approach; any embodiment of a heroine also potentially subjects the performer to the 'male gaze'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Languages of Theatre Shaped by Women by Jane de Gay, Lizbeth Goodman. Copyright © 2003 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Notes on Contributors,
Introduction: Speaking in Tongues – Making (Sense of) Women's Languages in Theatre,
Part 1 – Re-Shaping Theatre Traditions,
1 Seizing Speech and Playing with Fire: Greek Mythological Heroines and International Women's Performance Jane de Gay,
2 Lear's Daughters on Stage and in Multimedia and Fiona Shaw's King Lear Workshops as Case Studies in Breaking the Frame Lizbeth Goodman,
3 Playing (with) Shakespeare: Bryony Lavery's Ophelia and Jane Prendergast's I, Hamlet Jane de Gay,
4 Theorizing Practice-Based Research: Performing and Analysing Self in Role as 'I, Hamlet' Jane Prendergast,
Part 2 – Speaking for Themselves: Women Theatre-Makers at Work,
5 Transmitting the Voices, Voyages and Visions: Adapting Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse for Radio Lindsay Bell,
6 Voicing Identities, Reframing Difference(s): The Case of Fo(u)r Women,
Part 3 – Practising Theory and Theorizing Practice,
7 Scratch in the Record Leslie Hill,
8 One-to--One: Lone Journeys Helen Paris,
9 Mouth Ghosts: The Taste of the Os-Text Jools Gilson-Ellis,
10 Afterword – Shape-Shifters and Hidden Bodies Jane de Gay,
Bibliography and Further Reading,
Index,