Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Trespassing Physical Boundaries: Transgression, Vulnerability And Resistance In Sarah Kane’S Blasted (1995), Paula Barba Guerrero, Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Sarah Kane’s Blasted has been analyzed from various perspectives that address the layers of destruction it exposes. From the questioning of its title and meaning, to the unravelling of the protagonists’ abusive relationship, the analyses have emphasized the depiction of vulnerability as the defining human trait that Jean Ganteau observes in contemporary British literature. However, a key aspect has been overlooked in the critical response to the play: for Kane vulnerability does not equal helplessness, but rather stands in opposition to it. Hence, this article concentrates on how Blasted formulates a new understanding of vulnerability that fits Judith Butler’s later …

The Unruly Womb In Early Modern English Drama: Plotting Women's Biology On The Stage, Ursula Potter

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

This study provides an accessible, informative and entertaining introduction to women’s sexual health as presented on the early modern stage, and how dramatists coded for it. Beginning with the rise of green sickness (the disease of virgins) from its earliest reference in drama in the 1560s, Ursula Potter traces a continuing fascination with the womb by dramatists through to the oxymoron of the chaste sex debate in the 1640s. She illuminates how playwrights both satirized and perpetuated the notion of the womb’s insatiable appetite.

“The Ground On Which I Stand” Healing Queer Trauma Through Performance: Crafting A Solo Performance Through The Investigation Of Ritual Poetic Drama Within The African Continuum, Ashley W. Grantham

Theses and Dissertations

“The Ground On Which I Stand”

Healing Queer Trauma through Performance:

Crafting a Solo Performance through the investigation of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum.

By: Ashley W. Grantham

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Performance Pedagogy at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

April 16^th, 2019

Thesis Adjudicator: Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Committee: Dr. Keith Byron Kirk, Director of Graduate Studies and Karen Kopryanski, Head of Voice and Speech

How does this method of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum, by extension, solo performance, …

"Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, And Broadway Bodies, Ryan Donovan

Publications and Research

This article surveys how contemporary Broadway musicals cast fat women and focuses on Hairspray. The use of fat suits and contractual weight clauses figure into the discussion of fat stigma and casting practices. Seemingly body-positive musicals both celebrate and undermine the identities staged in them.

Review Of Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind By Susan Carlile, Alexis Mcquigge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article reviews Susan Carlile's recent biography of Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind. Because much of Lennox's life story, and many of her works, remain mysterious to contemporary readers, Carlile's work highlights some unique and important aspects of the life of a - at least in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, a celebrated literary minds. Carlile's work is an important and necessary addition to the study of women's writing in the period, and contributes a great deal to those studying the works of Charlotte Lennox.

Review Of Royal Shakespeare Company Production Of Mary Pix’S The Beau Defeated, Retitled The Fantastic Follies Of Mrs. Rich, Aparna Gollapudi

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Jo Davies’s reprise of Mary Pix’s comedy The Beau Defeated, Or The Lucky Younger Brother,performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon under the title The Fantastic Follies of Mrs. Rich refocuses the comedy from its original engagement with primogeniture and middling class masculinity towards the female characters. It also diffuses Pix’s Whiggish moralism in Mrs. Rich's portrayal, highlighting instead her energy and verve. Overall, a very successful production, the performance is more Restoration comedy than the transitional work that Pix's play was when it opened in 1700.

Editing Aphra Behn In The Digital Age: An Interview With Gillian Wright And Alan Hogarth, Laura Runge, Gillian Wright, Alan Hogarth

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This interview provides a view of the work in progress for the Cambridge University Press edition of the Complete Works of Aphra Behn. Gillian Wright serves as a general editor (with Elaine Hobby, Claire Bowditch, and Mel Evans) as well as the volume editor for Behn’s poetry. Alan Hogarth is the Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Mel Evans on the computational stylistics and author attribution testing. The discussion focuses on the scope and principles of editing the poetry of Aphra Behn, the role of stylometry in establishing the corpus, the status of work, a few particular poems, and some surprises.

Reading Her Queenly Coiffure: A Collaborative Approach To The Study Of Marie-Antoinette's Hairstyles, Hélène Bilis, Jenifer Bartle, Laura M. O'Brien, Ruth R. Rogers

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Four colleagues--a faculty member, a digital services librarian, a research librarian, and a curator of Special Collections--take turns describing their role in creating an undergraduate student project around an eighteenth-century almanac that belonged to Marie-Antoinette. In recounting the steps taken, the collaborative process, the student research, and the analysis of the contents of the Trésor des Grâces almanac, we share the lessons learned for completing a digital exhibit over the course of one semester.

New Lines: Mary Ann Yates, The Orphan Of China, And The New She-Tragedy, Elaine Mcgirr

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay demonstrates a significant break in eighteenth-century tragedy from tales of fallen women begging (the audience) for forgiveness and redemption to a different kind of she-tragedy, in which the heroine is neither fallen nor sexually desired, but rather transcends nation and politics with the “natural” moral force of maternal love. I argue that this shift was made possible/legible by Susannah Cibber’s ill-health, which forced Arthur Murphy to reconceive The Orphan of China’s heroine and allowed a rival actress, Mary Ann Yates, to step into this new role and to establish a tragic ‘line’ defined in opposition to that of …

The Hidden History Of 'Oklahoma!', Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner explains that contemporary reinterpretations of the classic American musical Oklahoma! may be getting back to its root: it's based on a play by a gay Cherokee man.

Patriarchal Ecocide: An Ecofeminist Reading Of Rahul Varma's Bhopal And Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy Of The People, Rania M Rafik Khalil

English Language and Literature

Ecofeminism is a movement that sees a connection between the exploitation of the natural world and the subordination of women. This concept of ecology and feminism conceptualized by Simone de Beauvoir (1952) and later refined by Francoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 has greened artistic values across disciplines, it is however perceived to be found only sparsely in drama. Una Chaudhuri (1994) and Theresa J. May (2005) argue that theatre is both “immediate and communal” (May 85) with a wealth of productions that “awaken ecological sensibilities” (85) and contest “industrialisation’s animus against nature” (24). Within this context, Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of …

Complete Bosoms, Incomplete Men: Reading Abstinence In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

Measure for Measure has often been called one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, and as recent productions show, Measure’s problems — including sexual coercion and governmental corruption — resonate with readers and audiences today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context, arguing that protagonist Isabella represents a radical break from merchant economics by opting out of the sexual economy. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the values of abstinence, and those claims are at odds with Isabella's claims. My research will …

Illuminating The Eighteenth-Century British Stage: Perfecting Performance Through Education, Bethany Csomay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Actress studies has become “a truly interdisciplinary field” that “intersect[s] with art, music, literature, history, economics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and fashion” (Engel 752). While much scholarship has been conducted on the actress’ life, interaction with material culture, public spectacle, authority, femininity, and writings, the role of an actress’ education in her success has yet to be explored adequately or examined beyond biography. My project seeks to examine the educational beginnings of actresses and I assert there are three modes that eighteenth-century actresses often undertook to cultivate their celebrity and success: inheritance, discovery, and trial and error. This project examines the …

Review Of The Making Of Jane Austen, Mary Beth Tegan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Edinburgh Lyceum Theatre Production Of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem, Tanya M. Caldwell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article reviews the production of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem directed by Tony Cownie and produced for the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh in February and March 2018. In setting the play in Edinburgh and placing emphasis on its women characters, Cownie underscores the universal and timeless relevance of Cowley's play as well as its performance versatility.

Anna Larpent And Shakespeare, Fiona Ritchie

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Anna Larpent (1758-1832) is a crucial figure in theater history and the reception of Shakespeare since drama was a central part of her life. Larpent was a meticulous diarist: the Huntington Library holds seventeen volumes of her journal covering the period 1773-1830. These diaries shed significant light on the part Shakespeare played in her life and contain her detailed opinions of his works as she experienced them both on the page and on the stage in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. Larpent experienced Shakespeare’s works in a variety of forms: she sees Shakespeare’s plays performed, both professionally and by …

The Socially Deviant (M)Other In Euripides' "Medea" And Two Modern Adaptations, Christina Faye Kramer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For centuries male-dominated societies have developed their own culturally constructed images of the socially acceptable and socially deviant mothers. The thesis explores how the Grecian, Caribbean, and Irish cultures of Euripides’ Medea (431 BC), Steve Carter’s Pecong (1990), and Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats (1998) respectively, all based on the Medea myth, commonly define the social deviant (m)other and condemn her for her “otherness.” It also discusses the limitations of each society’s decision to label the Medea-figure as socially deviant. Euripides creates an impossible dichotomy between the culturally constructed concepts of heroism and motherhood, which he locates in …

The Personal Is Political: Performing Saint Joan In The Twenty-First Century, Susan Frances Russell

Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

Contemporary theater makers aiming to present feminist-inflected interpretation of Shaw's Saint Joan could benefit from the practice of intertextuality: examining feminist playwrights' versions of Joan's story. Two plays by contemporary writers, Carolyn Gage's The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Martha Kemper's Me, Miss Krause and Joan can illuminate the most pressing contemporary issues, highlighting the ways that Shaw's version overlaps with current feminist concerns, including intersectionality, positionality, and sexual assault. Such a process would empower performers and audience members alike, and would help playwrights, directors, and dramaturgs avoid some of the pitfalls exhibited in the recent rock musical …

Radical Black Drama-As-Theory: The Black Feminist Dramatic On The Protracted Event-Horizon, Jaye Austin Williams

Faculty Journal Articles

In this essay, I elaborate my present project, grounded in what I call drama theory, the critical theoretical dimensions of dramatic writing, and address the deeply troubling intramural tensions across Black Studies, between those who read blackness, and black cultural production, through largely futurist, celebratory lenses; and those who apply a structural analysis to blackness as the site against, upon, and through which the world coheres its soci(et)al apparatuses and machinations. I situate myself within the latter constellation, and sample here two plays by Suzan-Lori Parks to demonstrate how I translate the analyses of antiblack violence by black feminist …

Review Of Laura Engel And Elaine Mcgirr, Eds., Stage Mothers: Women, Work, And The Theater, 1660-1830, Kristina Straub

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Stage Mothers is a collection of essays that complicate the binary between female professional and domestic mother, contributing to theater history and the history of female professionalization and maternity.

Review Of Kathryn E. Davis, Liberty In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Stephanie Russo

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Heteronormativity In Eighteenth-Century Literature And Culture, Kevin Bourque

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Highest Form Of Public Scholarship, Cynthia Richards

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Women, Gender And The Arts: Intersections, Differences And Connections, Mona Narain

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

What's In A Name? New Vision For Abo, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Introduction to the new vision statements for the journal.

From Humiliation To Epiphany: The Role Of Onstage Spaces In T. S. Eliot’S Middle Plays, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

This essay looks at T. S. Eliot's major dramatic productions from the 1930s-40s: Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party as a series of investigations into spatial expressions of faith. By using onstage space in unique ways, Eliot encourages audiences to consider the connections between performance and belief, the knowable and unknowable.

Arabella’S Valentines And Literary Connections [Dot] Com: Playing With Eighteenth-Century Gender Online, Melanie D. Holm

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This article describes two digital assignments that ask students to imaginatively embody characters from eighteenth-century texts written by women in order to cultivate a greater awareness of the critical role of gender and gender critique in these works. The first of these assignments, “Arabella’s Valentines,” asks students to translate dialogue from Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote as humorous Internet memes. The second assignment, “Literary Connections [dot] com,” asks students to imagine how characters from the course archive might represent themselves on an internet dating site. Through creative role-play facilitated by these digital genres, students engage with the texts in stimulating …

Review Of Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, And Belief In Early Modern England, Amy Mallory-Kani

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

General Editor's Note, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Acts Of Provocation: Popular Antiracisms On/Through The Twenty-First Century New York Commercial Stage, Stefanie A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an abolitionist feminist study of the role of liberalism in the twenty-first century political economy. It takes as its object New York City bourgeois cultural productions (in particular Broadway theatre and the New York Times) from approximately 1984 to 2009. It offers insights into important yet widely-misunderstood features of turn-of-millennium US society: class, art, political practice, and war. In order to understand liberalism’s political and economic agenda, I look at how these objects are pitched in the struggle over racism. Sometimes when we say “liberal” we mean it in the philosophical sense, with particular attention to liberal …