Theatre Arts Faculty Publications and Presentations

A Pop Parade of American Fantasy: Staging National Identity in The Mother of Us All

Leslie Atkins Durham — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:53:12 PDT

In her seminal study of the dramatic works of Gertrude Stein, They Watch Me As They Watch This, Jane Palatini Bowers argues that in her final libretto, The Mother of Us All, Stein:

dramatizes the conflict between a female's desire for power and authority and her sexual and emotional need to merge with a male other. Susan B. Anthony, the heroine of the play, resisted her biological destiny—never marrying, never having children— much like Gertrude Stein herself. Instead of becoming a natural mother, Susan B. Anthony is the metaphorical mother of us all.1

Bowers' text-based support for these assertions is extremely compelling, and, if one were not studying the work from the perspective of performance, it might seem superfluous to attempt to augment Bowers' analysis in any way. But, as I began investigating the way that The Mother of Us All was staged by the Santa Fe Opera in 1976, I found that the performance text can be driven by issues very different from those that Bowers suggests fuel the written text.

Performing Gertrude Stein: Faith Ringgold’s Signification on Primitivism in The French Collection

Leslie Atkins Durham — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:49:49 PDT

No two performances of a play will ever be exactly the same. New directors, actors, and designers will inevitably bring a playwright's words to life in different ways. Likewise, as I demonstrate in "Performing Gertrude Stein: Faith Ringgold’s Signification on Primitivism in The French Collection," when Faith Ringgold casts the central figure in her series, Willia Marie Simone, in the role of Gertrude Stein in several of her story quilts, Willia Marie alters Stein considerably. Rather than copying Stein's image, Willia Marie transforms her, or Signifies on her. She repeats and revises aspects of primitivism, and as she does so, she not only performs a new version of Gertrude Stein, she expands her audience's perception of the important role African Americans played on the stage of modernism.

Lisa Kron: Facing and Placing Lesbian Identity on New York Stages

Leslie Atkins Durham — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:36:59 PDT

Ideas about non-places and un-spaces have dominated the fields of cultural studies and performance theory for the last couple of decades. (See for example the work of Gaston Bachelard, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Herni Lefebvre, and Edward Soja.) As scholars have analyzed postmodern lived experience -- in international airports, shopping malls, amusement parks, and cyberspace -- they have variously articulated the sentiments expressed by Marc Auge in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity: "The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude and similitude" (Auge 103). Postmodern people spend ever-increasing amounts of time in transit through dehistoricized, commerce-driven placeless zones, and as a consequence both individuated subjectivities and their relationship to, and effect on, indigenous communities are, according to theorists, in extreme peril.

Found Images and Networked Americas in the Builders Association’s Alladeen

Leslie Atkins Durham — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:53:21 PDT

This essay analyzes and documents Alladeen, staged during 2002–05 by the Builders Association in collaboration with motiroti. In this visually stunning multimedia performance, three kinds of found imagery materialize the linked issues of mobility and longing dominant in contemporary networked culture. First, elements of The Arabian Nights and the famous story, “Aladdin,” traverse time, place, and media. In addition, the names, story lines, and images of characters and performers from television’s Friends become the foundation of avatars for Bangalore call-center workers seeking to pass as American on the telephone, offering them the possibility of self-definition and material advancement, while creating cultural traps that prove difficult to escape. Finally, documentary interview footage chronicles the wishes and experiences of Bangalore operators in a way so powerful that it dominates other elements on the poly-focal stage. The found objects allow the Builders to test perceived distinctions between the real and the virtual and between America, the geographical place, and the ever-evolving America in the global imagining.