Theater critic, dramaturge, and Village Voice staff writer Solomon
(English and Theater/City Univ. of New York Graduate Center) offers
a fresh, authoritative view of the canon as the seat, not the
nemesis, of postmodern gender theory. Solomon pairs close textual
readings of gender complexity in Shakespeare, Ibsen, Aristophanes,
and Brecht with reviews of avant-garde productions that unleashed
what she considers the inherent trangressiveness of these writers'
works. While feminist and queer theorists see only a reinforcement
of heterosexism and phallocenlricity even in the canon's most
ribald gender-bending, Solomon sees real subversion - an invitation
to question gender norms. In her analysis of the British theater
troupe Cheek by Jowl's all-male production of, As You Like It, the
Mabou Mines role-reversed King Lear (Lear is played by a woman),
the Yiddish King Lear, Charles Ludlum's Hedda Gabler, and the Split
Britches' deconstructed A Streetcar Named Desire, Solomon sees a
proper rediscovery of all the "polymorphous potential" endemic to
these plays. To Solomon, these iconoclastic productions were
neither as inventive nor as disrespectful as we might think. On the
contrary, they did justice for the frost time to the richness of
these classic texts. The crusty greats deserve more credit than
we've given them, argues Solomon. They understood quite well, as
did the Puritans who banned their art in Cromwell's England, that
theater, as imitation, as performance, as self-consciousness, as
irony, is tailor-made for revolt against the social shackles, not
just of gender, but of class, race, and sexuality. Solomon is
convincing and refreshingly nondogmatic. She has the knowledge,
style, and suppleness of mind to make bedfellows of revisionists
and dead white males. Her dissent is helpful, not dismissive,
inclusive, not harsh. This invaluable contribution to the canon
wars is rare manna from academia. (Kirkus Reviews)
This work analyzes the relationship between gender and performance
on stage in a wide-ranging series of essays that combine
theoretical analysis, close reading, and performance criticism. The
author suggests that the self-referential dimensions of theatre
participate in revealing the performance-like conventions of
gender. She argues that the mimetic apparatus of performance
denaturalizes gender even when the play's narrative insists upon
patriarchal images of femininity and masculinity. The book looks at
Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Brecht, Yiddish theatre, and
contemporary productions by the Ridiculous Theatre, Mabou Mines,
Split Britches and others, finding feminist fissures within the
performance conventions of patriarchal drama. This book calls for a
theatre-based re-examination of canonical drama. Moving beyond the
psychoanalytic approaches that have dominated feminist theatre
criticism over the last decade, the author offers alternative
techniques for investigating the relationship between theatre and
gender.
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