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Performing Masculinities: U.S. Representations Of The Male Body In Performance Art Monologues, Darren C. Goins

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I describe and analyze the masculinities constructed in four performance art monologues staged in the US on Broadway. I examined Whoopi Goldberg’s 1984 performance Whoopi Goldberg Live, Lily Tomlin’s 1987 performance in Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Eric Bogosian’s 1990 performance Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and John Leguizamo’s 1998 performance Freak: A Semi-Demi-Quasi-Pseudo Autobiography. My method of analysis is a critical interpretation incorporating the lenses of Robert Connell and Victor Seidler. It is grounded in a social-cultural perspective using Arthur W. Frank’s “sociology of the body.” By means of …